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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>It is hopefully clear that a review and discussion of the \u003c/em>Succession \u003cem>season two finale is not suitable for people who do not want to be spoiled regarding the \u003c/em>Succession \u003cem>season two finale. If it is not clear: You will know what happened on this episode by the time you’re finished reading this piece. Choose wisely. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We began this season of \u003cem>Succession\u003c/em> with Kendall Roy half-submerged in what was supposed to be a relaxing spa soak but was more like a very wet metaphor. And he didn’t get his head above water until the last 30 seconds of the second-season finale.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There were times when this season looked like it might be about Kendall’s sister, Shiv (Sarah Snook)—her father, Logan (Brian Cox), dangled the “top job” at the company, as he calls it, in front of her face, then refused to give it to her. Shiv’s restlessness seemed like perhaps it was the biggest threat to Logan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There were times when it seemed like it might be about Kendall smoothly transitioning into being his father’s traumatized but functional right hand. After \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/08/12/750189331/succession-back-to-the-pit-of-vipers-for-another-season-of-discontent\">ending last season in the weakest possible position\u003c/a>, needing to be rescued from the father he had been trying to overthrow, Kendall became unfailingly loyal. When he put on a good performance at the congressional hearings, it suggested we could be headed for a conclusion where Kendall finally became his father’s favorite—something he wants so desperately that it drips from Jeremy Strong’s performance almost as much as sweat so often seems to.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But no. No, Logan decided it was time for a “blood sacrifice,” as he put it—someone who could be thrown to the wolves and blamed for the devastating revelations about Waystar Royco’s cruise division. Someone who would satisfy the shareholders that the problem was being taken seriously; someone who would give those shareholders, as one told Logan on the phone, “cover.” So Logan gathered the family and the top lieutenants—Kendall, Shiv and Tom, Roman (Kieran Culkin), even Greg—on the Roy yacht and watched each one try to respectfully, gently argue that the person sacrificed should emphatically not be them, no offense to whomever they suggested it \u003cem>should \u003c/em>be.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The obvious answer was Tom (Matthew Macfadyen), Shiv’s husband. He had been in charge of cruises; he had a logical connection to the crimes committed, even if they predated his leadership. After all, one of the things someone needed to take responsibility for was the cover-up, and Tom carried out key elements of the cover-up. He wouldn’t even have been just a figurehead. Tom had the advantage of being both largely expendable to the family and \u003cem>actually guilty\u003c/em>, not that they would care. Particularly if they threw in poor dopey cousin Greg, Tom’s assistant, they thought maybe that would be enough.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sarah Snook brought out Shiv’s shocking shrug-it-off energy in the scene—let’s just call it the Roy Family Murder Breakfast—in which she seemed to agree with the group that the blood sacrifice should be Tom. Her husband! Her own husband! Sure, why not? Tom was kinda \u003cem>like \u003c/em>family, she explained, without actually being family. Which you can translate as “he’s close enough for the shareholders to think it really means something for us to hand him over to be sacrificed, when in fact, \u003cem>eh\u003c/em>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it was not to be Tom, because once he and Shiv were in private and he made clear how devastated he was by her betrayal—and once that opened other wounds in their marriage to the point where he questioned its status as a going concern—Shiv shifted gears. She went to her father and said it could not be Tom. By then, it appeared that it was likely to be either Tom or Kendall who would suffer, and Shiv took the coward’s way out: She chose while refusing to choose, saying she couldn’t make the decision … but it couldn’t be Tom. (The degree to which Shiv truly loves Tom has always been an intriguing element of their marriage. Her saving him is a data point, but so was her initially being prepared not to.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And so Logan chose Kendall to be sacrificed, breaking the news gently—or what passes for gently in a man whose idea of bedside manner would be leaving you one-third of your ice chips while you’re in the hospital and he’s at your bedside feeling thirsty. Kendall would have to make a statement that he had known about the misconduct in the cruise division, he had engineered the cover-up, he had done it all, and in Logan’s words, it had gone “no higher.” Kendall would sacrifice himself to save his father, and ultimately to save the company.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So when did Kendall decide … not to? When did Kendall decide that instead of falling on his sword, he would stroll into that press conference, whip out a set of note cards and call his father “a malignant presence, a bully and a liar”? When did he decide that even knowing his father could ruin him with the story of the waiter who died after Kendall drove off a bridge, it was over? When did he decide that instead of reciting “I saw their plan; my dad’s plan was better” over and over as he did in the first episode of this season, and instead of saying “my dad told me to” the way he did when he destroyed Vaulter, he would not only sacrifice his father as the mover behind the cruises debacle but reveal his father’s deceitful, vicious personality?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9TKHvvaMfE\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>My money is on the moment in which, referring to the death of the waiter, Logan repeated an abbreviation that came out of the cruise division, used when a migrant worker or a sex worker died on a ship: NRPI. \u003cem>No Real Person Involved\u003c/em>. It is shorthand, really, for the idea that only some people matter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Logan believes in NRPI. Roman believes in it. Shiv just NRPI’d \u003cem>her own husband\u003c/em> until he specifically asked her not to. But Kendall is, perhaps ironically given the protection he accepted from his father, not an NRPI kind of person. He agonized over that accident. He hated himself for shutting down Vaulter—an act he proved he could carry out in an NRPI-style manner, provided he didn’t pay too much attention to feeling his skin go gray and clammy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kendall had already been reminded during the trip that his father doesn’t care about his feelings: Logan had forced Kendall to send his girlfriend away in the middle of the trip, a fresh humiliation that increased Kendall’s isolation. Things built up. Logan’s callous conducting of the Family Murder Breakfast and his announcement that he needed a “skull to wave” showed Kendall how ready his father was to throw away his kids, not to mention faithful lieutenants like Gerri (J. Smith-Cameron), Karl (David Rasche) and Frank (Peter Friedman).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Logan told Kendall that his was the skull that would be waved, a resigned Kendall asked him a question. Had Logan ever believed that Kendall could do the top job? After the profound cruelty of acting like he’d never really thought about it, Logan came around to an answer: “You’re not a killer,” he said. “You have to be a killer.” Jeremy Strong’s performance in this critical scene with Cox looks very different on second viewing. What originally played as agonized resignation to his situation and an understanding that he’d have to be the skull, as it were, looks now like agonized resignation to the fact that he will never have his father’s love and approval this way. He’ll never get there by trying to be good and loyal and perfect; that’s what he was doing all season, and he’s still the skull. This family only respects killers. Not the kind who accidentally cause the deaths of waiters, either. Only the kind who kill with ice-cold calculation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So that’s what Kendall did.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because Kendall, after learning the bad news, wound up on a plane back home with Greg (Nicholas Braun). This was extraordinarily bad luck for Logan, who had no way of knowing Greg had first saved some of the troublesome records Tom told him to get rid of. He had no way of knowing that when Tom found out and insisted on burning what was left, Greg \u003cem>once again \u003c/em>reserved a few in case he ever needed them. Greg spent this entire season being Chekhov’s knucklehead, and ultimately, like all the things metaphorically rendered unto Chekhov, he mattered a great deal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In order to preserve the suspense of the ending, in order to create the gasp when Kendall goes to the press conference and says “BUT” between what sounds like it will be an admission of guilt and what becomes a blast of accusations against his father, we didn’t see what happened on the plane home. We saw Greg gently tell Kendall he felt bad that Kendall had to be the blood sacrifice. And we’ve seen a friendship growing between Greg and Kendall, the only family member who’s ever shown the kid any kindness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Presumably, at some point during that flight, they talked. Greg revealed that he was holding on to the evidence Kendall needed to make accusations against Logan stick. Or Kendall opened up about being unable to get his father’s love. Or both. The key to Kendall’s ability to finally carry out the fully public attack on his father that’s been brewing since season one episode one, the key to Kendall’s escape from his father’s “protection” that’s been brewing since season two episode one? It turned out to be Greg. Greg, who saved his secret papers in a folder labeled “SECRET.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This was a season that was enjoyable to watch as it proceeded but that looks far more impressive in light of the finale. It looked at times like they had flattened Kendall’s affect too much; perhaps he was too much changed by the accident after Shiv’s wedding, too devastated and defanged to maintain the powerful dynamic between himself and his father that drove the first season. The character of Rhea Jarrell never entirely jelled, despite the reliable presence of Holly Hunter. The strange sexual connection between Roman and Gerri was picked up and put down a little abruptly, although the notion that they share \u003cem>some \u003c/em>sort of bond flared during the Family Murder Breakfast when Roman rose to her defense. Shiv’s waffling about whether she was really prepared to do battle with her father—spoiler alert: She was not—makes more sense as a prelude to her weakness in the finale. It is Shiv, perhaps, who is not a killer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And now, Kendall’s dead eyes all season make narrative sense. The story was going \u003cem>here\u003c/em>, to this place where the torment and the misery accumulated, to where Kendall was willing to blow up his family because it was better than all the other choices. Even the embarrassing tribute rap at Logan’s party is now, in context, just one of the last gasps of his desperate attempt to earn his father’s approval. Now, that rap is just more evidence that Kendall may have looked cold in the old peepers, but in fact he was doing \u003cem>everything \u003c/em>he could think of. He played a relatively non-flashy role in the now-infamous “Boar on the Floor” sequence in the episode “Hunting,” precisely because he was keeping out of as much of the drama as he could. In fact, his role in “Hunting” and at several other points during the season was to do his father’s dirty work without complaint—to inform, to obey, to expose. He was the good son.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The last bit of business to deal with is Logan’s tiny hint of a smile as he watches his son accuse him of being a monster. Is he a little impressed that Kendall is more of a killer than he thought? Does he enjoy a fight? Did he somehow \u003cem>intend \u003c/em>for this to happen, so that he himself would wind up being the skull and the company would live on? (That last theory was raised with me by a reader on Twitter, and I must say: I hadn’t thought of it, but I don’t think Logan would gamble that hard with his company.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>My vote is for some combination of all of it. Logan doesn’t mind a fight, and he hates weakness even more than aggressive attack. Some part of him only respects people who come for him. That’s not to say he won’t attempt to crush them like bugs as I can only assume he will do with Kendall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are so many lessons to take away from this episode: It is futile to seek an immoral person’s approval if you’re not prepared to be immoral yourself. Even if your husband is a goober, you’re going to feel bad if you offer to let your father destroy him. When you burn a clutch of secret papers, make sure you see them all go. Don’t alienate the tall oddball; you never know what secrets he may be hiding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And finally: If someone writes you a rap, at least try to look grateful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Roy%2C+Oh+Roy%3A+That+%27Succession%27+Finale+Was+A+Trip&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The obvious answer was Tom (Matthew Macfadyen), Shiv’s husband. He had been in charge of cruises; he had a logical connection to the crimes committed, even if they predated his leadership. After all, one of the things someone needed to take responsibility for was the cover-up, and Tom carried out key elements of the cover-up. He wouldn’t even have been just a figurehead. Tom had the advantage of being both largely expendable to the family and \u003cem>actually guilty\u003c/em>, not that they would care. Particularly if they threw in poor dopey cousin Greg, Tom’s assistant, they thought maybe that would be enough.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sarah Snook brought out Shiv’s shocking shrug-it-off energy in the scene—let’s just call it the Roy Family Murder Breakfast—in which she seemed to agree with the group that the blood sacrifice should be Tom. Her husband! Her own husband! Sure, why not? Tom was kinda \u003cem>like \u003c/em>family, she explained, without actually being family. Which you can translate as “he’s close enough for the shareholders to think it really means something for us to hand him over to be sacrificed, when in fact, \u003cem>eh\u003c/em>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it was not to be Tom, because once he and Shiv were in private and he made clear how devastated he was by her betrayal—and once that opened other wounds in their marriage to the point where he questioned its status as a going concern—Shiv shifted gears. She went to her father and said it could not be Tom. By then, it appeared that it was likely to be either Tom or Kendall who would suffer, and Shiv took the coward’s way out: She chose while refusing to choose, saying she couldn’t make the decision … but it couldn’t be Tom. (The degree to which Shiv truly loves Tom has always been an intriguing element of their marriage. Her saving him is a data point, but so was her initially being prepared not to.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And so Logan chose Kendall to be sacrificed, breaking the news gently—or what passes for gently in a man whose idea of bedside manner would be leaving you one-third of your ice chips while you’re in the hospital and he’s at your bedside feeling thirsty. Kendall would have to make a statement that he had known about the misconduct in the cruise division, he had engineered the cover-up, he had done it all, and in Logan’s words, it had gone “no higher.” Kendall would sacrifice himself to save his father, and ultimately to save the company.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So when did Kendall decide … not to? When did Kendall decide that instead of falling on his sword, he would stroll into that press conference, whip out a set of note cards and call his father “a malignant presence, a bully and a liar”? When did he decide that even knowing his father could ruin him with the story of the waiter who died after Kendall drove off a bridge, it was over? When did he decide that instead of reciting “I saw their plan; my dad’s plan was better” over and over as he did in the first episode of this season, and instead of saying “my dad told me to” the way he did when he destroyed Vaulter, he would not only sacrifice his father as the mover behind the cruises debacle but reveal his father’s deceitful, vicious personality?\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/l9TKHvvaMfE'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/l9TKHvvaMfE'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>My money is on the moment in which, referring to the death of the waiter, Logan repeated an abbreviation that came out of the cruise division, used when a migrant worker or a sex worker died on a ship: NRPI. \u003cem>No Real Person Involved\u003c/em>. It is shorthand, really, for the idea that only some people matter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Logan believes in NRPI. Roman believes in it. Shiv just NRPI’d \u003cem>her own husband\u003c/em> until he specifically asked her not to. But Kendall is, perhaps ironically given the protection he accepted from his father, not an NRPI kind of person. He agonized over that accident. He hated himself for shutting down Vaulter—an act he proved he could carry out in an NRPI-style manner, provided he didn’t pay too much attention to feeling his skin go gray and clammy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kendall had already been reminded during the trip that his father doesn’t care about his feelings: Logan had forced Kendall to send his girlfriend away in the middle of the trip, a fresh humiliation that increased Kendall’s isolation. Things built up. Logan’s callous conducting of the Family Murder Breakfast and his announcement that he needed a “skull to wave” showed Kendall how ready his father was to throw away his kids, not to mention faithful lieutenants like Gerri (J. Smith-Cameron), Karl (David Rasche) and Frank (Peter Friedman).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Logan told Kendall that his was the skull that would be waved, a resigned Kendall asked him a question. Had Logan ever believed that Kendall could do the top job? After the profound cruelty of acting like he’d never really thought about it, Logan came around to an answer: “You’re not a killer,” he said. “You have to be a killer.” Jeremy Strong’s performance in this critical scene with Cox looks very different on second viewing. What originally played as agonized resignation to his situation and an understanding that he’d have to be the skull, as it were, looks now like agonized resignation to the fact that he will never have his father’s love and approval this way. He’ll never get there by trying to be good and loyal and perfect; that’s what he was doing all season, and he’s still the skull. This family only respects killers. Not the kind who accidentally cause the deaths of waiters, either. Only the kind who kill with ice-cold calculation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So that’s what Kendall did.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because Kendall, after learning the bad news, wound up on a plane back home with Greg (Nicholas Braun). This was extraordinarily bad luck for Logan, who had no way of knowing Greg had first saved some of the troublesome records Tom told him to get rid of. He had no way of knowing that when Tom found out and insisted on burning what was left, Greg \u003cem>once again \u003c/em>reserved a few in case he ever needed them. Greg spent this entire season being Chekhov’s knucklehead, and ultimately, like all the things metaphorically rendered unto Chekhov, he mattered a great deal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In order to preserve the suspense of the ending, in order to create the gasp when Kendall goes to the press conference and says “BUT” between what sounds like it will be an admission of guilt and what becomes a blast of accusations against his father, we didn’t see what happened on the plane home. We saw Greg gently tell Kendall he felt bad that Kendall had to be the blood sacrifice. And we’ve seen a friendship growing between Greg and Kendall, the only family member who’s ever shown the kid any kindness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Presumably, at some point during that flight, they talked. Greg revealed that he was holding on to the evidence Kendall needed to make accusations against Logan stick. Or Kendall opened up about being unable to get his father’s love. Or both. The key to Kendall’s ability to finally carry out the fully public attack on his father that’s been brewing since season one episode one, the key to Kendall’s escape from his father’s “protection” that’s been brewing since season two episode one? It turned out to be Greg. Greg, who saved his secret papers in a folder labeled “SECRET.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This was a season that was enjoyable to watch as it proceeded but that looks far more impressive in light of the finale. It looked at times like they had flattened Kendall’s affect too much; perhaps he was too much changed by the accident after Shiv’s wedding, too devastated and defanged to maintain the powerful dynamic between himself and his father that drove the first season. The character of Rhea Jarrell never entirely jelled, despite the reliable presence of Holly Hunter. The strange sexual connection between Roman and Gerri was picked up and put down a little abruptly, although the notion that they share \u003cem>some \u003c/em>sort of bond flared during the Family Murder Breakfast when Roman rose to her defense. Shiv’s waffling about whether she was really prepared to do battle with her father—spoiler alert: She was not—makes more sense as a prelude to her weakness in the finale. It is Shiv, perhaps, who is not a killer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And now, Kendall’s dead eyes all season make narrative sense. The story was going \u003cem>here\u003c/em>, to this place where the torment and the misery accumulated, to where Kendall was willing to blow up his family because it was better than all the other choices. Even the embarrassing tribute rap at Logan’s party is now, in context, just one of the last gasps of his desperate attempt to earn his father’s approval. Now, that rap is just more evidence that Kendall may have looked cold in the old peepers, but in fact he was doing \u003cem>everything \u003c/em>he could think of. He played a relatively non-flashy role in the now-infamous “Boar on the Floor” sequence in the episode “Hunting,” precisely because he was keeping out of as much of the drama as he could. In fact, his role in “Hunting” and at several other points during the season was to do his father’s dirty work without complaint—to inform, to obey, to expose. He was the good son.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The last bit of business to deal with is Logan’s tiny hint of a smile as he watches his son accuse him of being a monster. Is he a little impressed that Kendall is more of a killer than he thought? Does he enjoy a fight? Did he somehow \u003cem>intend \u003c/em>for this to happen, so that he himself would wind up being the skull and the company would live on? (That last theory was raised with me by a reader on Twitter, and I must say: I hadn’t thought of it, but I don’t think Logan would gamble that hard with his company.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>My vote is for some combination of all of it. Logan doesn’t mind a fight, and he hates weakness even more than aggressive attack. Some part of him only respects people who come for him. That’s not to say he won’t attempt to crush them like bugs as I can only assume he will do with Kendall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are so many lessons to take away from this episode: It is futile to seek an immoral person’s approval if you’re not prepared to be immoral yourself. Even if your husband is a goober, you’re going to feel bad if you offer to let your father destroy him. When you burn a clutch of secret papers, make sure you see them all go. Don’t alienate the tall oddball; you never know what secrets he may be hiding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And finally: If someone writes you a rap, at least try to look grateful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Roy%2C+Oh+Roy%3A+That+%27Succession%27+Finale+Was+A+Trip&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Prince's Estate Condemns Trump's Use Of 'Purple Rain' At Campaign Rally",
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"content": "\u003cp>Among all the other things that transpired \u003ca href=\"https://www.mprnews.org/story/2019/10/10/trump-aims-to-turn-impeachment-probe-into-campaign-asset-at-minneapolis-rally\">at\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/10/09/768697916/trump-faces-protests-in-minneapolis-during-his-campaign-rally\">around\u003c/a> President Trump’s reelection campaign in Minneapolis Thursday night, his team played the music of a hometown hero: Prince’s “Purple Rain.” Soon after, the estate of Minnesota’s late musical hero made it clear just how unhappy it was — and \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/prince/status/1182484599781416960?s=20\">shared\u003c/a> a letter from Trump’s legal team from a year ago, in which the campaign explicitly promised not to use Prince’s music.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Politicians soundtracking – or co-opting, depending on your point of view — famous songs is a familiar conundrum for artists. Candidates want well-known, usually mood-boosting hits to get the crowd going. (One notable exception: the rather doleful “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” by the Rolling Stones, which was a favorite for then-candidate Donald J. Trump in 2016.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/prince/status/1182484599781416960\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As long as they pay for the rights to the songs, candidates in the U.S. are \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2016/07/22/487022287/cleveland-rocked-music-at-the-republican-national-convention\">generally\u003c/a> legally free to use any music they like, no matter how at odds the artists’ own politics may be from those on the campaign trail. (During his remarks at Minneapolis’ Target Center Thursday night, Trump \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=15&v=Kh3ZB_oX9cY\">said\u003c/a>: “I didn’t need Beyoncé and Jay-Z, and I didn’t need little Bruce Springsteen” to secure his 2016 electoral victory.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Melinda Newman \u003ca href=\"https://www.forbes.com/sites/melindanewman/2016/07/19/why-queen-cannot-stop-trumps-use-of-we-are-the-champions/#5d02a6386d4b\">observed\u003c/a> in \u003cem>Forbes\u003c/em> in July 2016, “The sad truth is for many artists, they cannot keep their songs from being used in this context even if they vehemently disagree with the politician who is using the song.” The only restrictions relate to political commercials.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the Prince estate might stand in a different position, due to a letter from the Trump campaign it posted to Twitter on Thursday night, and as of publication has been retweeted 28,000 times. Dated October 15, 2018, and written by the law firm Jones Day on behalf of the president’s reelection campaign, the Trump team specifically says that “going forward,” the campaign will not use any of Prince’s music at Trump rallies and other campaign events, after the estate requested it. (However, it does not stipulate how long such an agreement might last.) Given that, it looks like this situation will be one for the lawyers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2019 \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Among all the other things that transpired \u003ca href=\"https://www.mprnews.org/story/2019/10/10/trump-aims-to-turn-impeachment-probe-into-campaign-asset-at-minneapolis-rally\">at\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/10/09/768697916/trump-faces-protests-in-minneapolis-during-his-campaign-rally\">around\u003c/a> President Trump’s reelection campaign in Minneapolis Thursday night, his team played the music of a hometown hero: Prince’s “Purple Rain.” Soon after, the estate of Minnesota’s late musical hero made it clear just how unhappy it was — and \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/prince/status/1182484599781416960?s=20\">shared\u003c/a> a letter from Trump’s legal team from a year ago, in which the campaign explicitly promised not to use Prince’s music.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Politicians soundtracking – or co-opting, depending on your point of view — famous songs is a familiar conundrum for artists. Candidates want well-known, usually mood-boosting hits to get the crowd going. (One notable exception: the rather doleful “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” by the Rolling Stones, which was a favorite for then-candidate Donald J. Trump in 2016.)\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As long as they pay for the rights to the songs, candidates in the U.S. are \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2016/07/22/487022287/cleveland-rocked-music-at-the-republican-national-convention\">generally\u003c/a> legally free to use any music they like, no matter how at odds the artists’ own politics may be from those on the campaign trail. (During his remarks at Minneapolis’ Target Center Thursday night, Trump \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=15&v=Kh3ZB_oX9cY\">said\u003c/a>: “I didn’t need Beyoncé and Jay-Z, and I didn’t need little Bruce Springsteen” to secure his 2016 electoral victory.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Melinda Newman \u003ca href=\"https://www.forbes.com/sites/melindanewman/2016/07/19/why-queen-cannot-stop-trumps-use-of-we-are-the-champions/#5d02a6386d4b\">observed\u003c/a> in \u003cem>Forbes\u003c/em> in July 2016, “The sad truth is for many artists, they cannot keep their songs from being used in this context even if they vehemently disagree with the politician who is using the song.” The only restrictions relate to political commercials.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the Prince estate might stand in a different position, due to a letter from the Trump campaign it posted to Twitter on Thursday night, and as of publication has been retweeted 28,000 times. Dated October 15, 2018, and written by the law firm Jones Day on behalf of the president’s reelection campaign, the Trump team specifically says that “going forward,” the campaign will not use any of Prince’s music at Trump rallies and other campaign events, after the estate requested it. (However, it does not stipulate how long such an agreement might last.) Given that, it looks like this situation will be one for the lawyers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2019 \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Granddaughter of Westboro Baptist Church Founder Chronicles Leaving in 'Unfollow'",
"headTitle": "Granddaughter of Westboro Baptist Church Founder Chronicles Leaving in ‘Unfollow’ | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Editor’s note:\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003cem> This book review includes a homophobic slur.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many people in Topeka, Kan., first became aware of the Westboro Baptist Church in the early 1990s, when members began what would become their trademark public action: picketing to protest what they saw as the ills of an ungodly world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Megan Phelps-Roper was 5 years old when it began; as a little girl, she stood with her parents and other family members—for that’s what the church was at the time, one extended family—holding picket signs warning of gay people in the city’s Gage Park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The early signs were relatively benign in their wording. “I was surprised by how small and restrained some were compared to what came later,” Phelps-Roper writes in her new memoir, \u003cem>Unfollow\u003c/em>. Later, of course, Westboro made itself known far beyond one small Midwestern city, with members—including tiny children—brandishing signs saying things like “Thank God for Dead Soldiers” at the funerals of service members, “God Sent the Shooter” at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and the infamous “God Hates Fags,” a message so central to its mission that it became the address of the church’s website.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In \u003cem>Unfollow: A Memoir of Loving and Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church, \u003c/em>Phelps-Roper tells her story of growing up in Westboro a beloved and valued granddaughter of the church’s founder, and the torturous choice she made in her late 20s to leave it behind. A devoted follower turned apostate, Phelps-Roper remains estranged from most of her family, though several of her siblings and a few cousins have also left the church. Her grief is palpable: “Losing them was the price of honesty,” she writes. “A shredded heart for a quiet conscience.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Indeed, Phelps-Roper describes a childhood that while steeped in religious extremism was also warm and loving. The grandchildren of Fred Phelps grew up together in a family compound of houses arranged around a backyard swimming pool. They attended public schools and were allowed to check out the books they wanted at the public library. There were “pool parties and trampoline jumping and tennis playing in the summer,” she writes, and “football and snowball fights and sledding down the little hill behind our garage in the winter.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The eldest daughter in a family of 11 siblings, Phelps-Roper became her mother’s “right hand,” helping with the legal and logistical work required to carry off the picketing missions. Immersed in her grandfather’s preaching, she believed that “Westboro was the only safe haven from the wrath of God, both in this life and in the world to come.” But slowly, as she matured, graduating from college and law school, she began to wonder whether her family was right in its theology, its worldview of enemies and sin, obedience and hatred. After a series of internal church squabbles, she writes, “I was beginning to see that our first loyalty was not to the truth but to the church. That for us, the church \u003cem>was\u003c/em> the truth, and disloyalty was the only sin, unforgivable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I wish Phelps-Roper were able to tell us more about how her grandfather came to his bizarre theology, especially given that his early career as a lawyer was that of a white man from the South who represented primarily African American clients in Topeka. Somehow, his fervor for civil rights morphed into a warped ideology of hatred, one in which every disaster was evidence that God hates a morally bankrupt society. She quotes Scripture consistently throughout the book, especially the verses that illuminate why Westboro members felt empowered by the animus they inspired (a BBC documentary called them “The Most Hated Family in America”). But what will be difficult for most readers, I suspect, is understanding, as Phelps-Roper writes, how “people who were otherwise bright and well-intentioned could believe and behave as we did as members of Westboro.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The story of how Phelps-Roper extricated herself (and one of her sisters) from Westboro unfolds like a suspense novel, so I won’t spoil it here. Suffice to say, leaving was wrenching, despite its clear necessity. And life after Westboro was disorienting—liberated but also adrift, Phelps-Roper had to face the guilt over “years I had wasted hurting people in a misguided effort to serve an image of a God that seemed less real all the time.” Still, past the pain is healing. Meeting and talking with some of her former antagonists (most of whom she had met on the picket line, or in her role running the church’s Twitter presence) helped Phelps-Roper confront the contradictions in what she had been taught. She writes:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>“We could cease presuming most people were evil and ill-intentioned. The hope that sprang from this realization would become the new foundation of my life, but along with that hope came still more confusion: If there was more than one possible answer, how did anyone manage to decide between them?”\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Another realization: “Westboro is not unique.” Other groups, religious and otherwise, convince their members that they alone hold purchase on the true way. One thing all those groups have in common is a fear of the other, Phelps-Roper notes. It’s for them, including perhaps her own parents, that she writes, at the book’s end, “I want to tell them that the world isn’t evil. That it’s full and complicated and beautiful and good, filled with unknown truths and unbroken hopes, and that it’s waiting just for them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Kate Tuttle is a writer and critic based in New Jersey.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Granddaughter+Of+Westboro+Baptist+Church+Founder+Chronicles+Leaving+In+%27Unfollow%27&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Megan Phelps-Roper, who first picketed against homosexuality with her family at age 5, writes of her family, \"Losing them was the price of honesty. A shredded heart for a quiet conscience.\"",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Editor’s note:\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003cem> This book review includes a homophobic slur.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many people in Topeka, Kan., first became aware of the Westboro Baptist Church in the early 1990s, when members began what would become their trademark public action: picketing to protest what they saw as the ills of an ungodly world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Megan Phelps-Roper was 5 years old when it began; as a little girl, she stood with her parents and other family members—for that’s what the church was at the time, one extended family—holding picket signs warning of gay people in the city’s Gage Park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The early signs were relatively benign in their wording. “I was surprised by how small and restrained some were compared to what came later,” Phelps-Roper writes in her new memoir, \u003cem>Unfollow\u003c/em>. Later, of course, Westboro made itself known far beyond one small Midwestern city, with members—including tiny children—brandishing signs saying things like “Thank God for Dead Soldiers” at the funerals of service members, “God Sent the Shooter” at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and the infamous “God Hates Fags,” a message so central to its mission that it became the address of the church’s website.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In \u003cem>Unfollow: A Memoir of Loving and Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church, \u003c/em>Phelps-Roper tells her story of growing up in Westboro a beloved and valued granddaughter of the church’s founder, and the torturous choice she made in her late 20s to leave it behind. A devoted follower turned apostate, Phelps-Roper remains estranged from most of her family, though several of her siblings and a few cousins have also left the church. Her grief is palpable: “Losing them was the price of honesty,” she writes. “A shredded heart for a quiet conscience.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Indeed, Phelps-Roper describes a childhood that while steeped in religious extremism was also warm and loving. The grandchildren of Fred Phelps grew up together in a family compound of houses arranged around a backyard swimming pool. They attended public schools and were allowed to check out the books they wanted at the public library. There were “pool parties and trampoline jumping and tennis playing in the summer,” she writes, and “football and snowball fights and sledding down the little hill behind our garage in the winter.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The eldest daughter in a family of 11 siblings, Phelps-Roper became her mother’s “right hand,” helping with the legal and logistical work required to carry off the picketing missions. Immersed in her grandfather’s preaching, she believed that “Westboro was the only safe haven from the wrath of God, both in this life and in the world to come.” But slowly, as she matured, graduating from college and law school, she began to wonder whether her family was right in its theology, its worldview of enemies and sin, obedience and hatred. After a series of internal church squabbles, she writes, “I was beginning to see that our first loyalty was not to the truth but to the church. That for us, the church \u003cem>was\u003c/em> the truth, and disloyalty was the only sin, unforgivable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I wish Phelps-Roper were able to tell us more about how her grandfather came to his bizarre theology, especially given that his early career as a lawyer was that of a white man from the South who represented primarily African American clients in Topeka. Somehow, his fervor for civil rights morphed into a warped ideology of hatred, one in which every disaster was evidence that God hates a morally bankrupt society. She quotes Scripture consistently throughout the book, especially the verses that illuminate why Westboro members felt empowered by the animus they inspired (a BBC documentary called them “The Most Hated Family in America”). But what will be difficult for most readers, I suspect, is understanding, as Phelps-Roper writes, how “people who were otherwise bright and well-intentioned could believe and behave as we did as members of Westboro.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The story of how Phelps-Roper extricated herself (and one of her sisters) from Westboro unfolds like a suspense novel, so I won’t spoil it here. Suffice to say, leaving was wrenching, despite its clear necessity. And life after Westboro was disorienting—liberated but also adrift, Phelps-Roper had to face the guilt over “years I had wasted hurting people in a misguided effort to serve an image of a God that seemed less real all the time.” Still, past the pain is healing. Meeting and talking with some of her former antagonists (most of whom she had met on the picket line, or in her role running the church’s Twitter presence) helped Phelps-Roper confront the contradictions in what she had been taught. She writes:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>“We could cease presuming most people were evil and ill-intentioned. The hope that sprang from this realization would become the new foundation of my life, but along with that hope came still more confusion: If there was more than one possible answer, how did anyone manage to decide between them?”\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Another realization: “Westboro is not unique.” Other groups, religious and otherwise, convince their members that they alone hold purchase on the true way. One thing all those groups have in common is a fear of the other, Phelps-Roper notes. It’s for them, including perhaps her own parents, that she writes, at the book’s end, “I want to tell them that the world isn’t evil. That it’s full and complicated and beautiful and good, filled with unknown truths and unbroken hopes, and that it’s waiting just for them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Kate Tuttle is a writer and critic based in New Jersey.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Granddaughter+Of+Westboro+Baptist+Church+Founder+Chronicles+Leaving+In+%27Unfollow%27&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Note: This film is now in limited theatrical release before debuting on Netflix on Friday, October 25th. \u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Eddie Murphy, who had name-above-title billing in a hit movie at 21, was one of the biggest stars in the world at 25, and whose imminent “comeback” has been a three-decade topic that a steady role in the animated \u003cem>Shrek\u003c/em> franchise and an Oscar nomination (for \u003cem>Dreamgirls\u003c/em>) couldn’t silence, is an odd choice to play Rudy Ray Moore.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Moore chased success as a singer, dancer, and stand-up before finding it in his mid-forties (in the early ’70s) in the persona of Dolemite, his pimp-styled character who delivered artfully filthy rhymes over a backbeat. In the decorous language of his 2008 \u003cem>New York Times \u003c/em>obituary, Moore’s “standup comedy, records and movies related earthy rhyming tales of a vivid gaggle of characters as they lurched from sexual escapade to sexual escapade in a boisterous tradition, born in Africa, that helped shape today’s hip-hop.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Certainly the blue-chip cast that has shown up to support Murphy in the buoyant-but-superficial Netflix biopic \u003cem>Dolemite Is My Name\u003c/em> is its own tribute to Moore’s intersectional significance: Snoop Dogg and Chris Rock appear in two-scene roles, with Keegan-Michael Key, Titus Burgess, Craig Robinson, and Mike Epps in beefier parts as Moore’s various collaborators. Wesley Snipes’ effeminate characterization of D’urville Martin, who directed and played the villain in the 1975 blaxploitation classic \u003cem>Dolemite—\u003c/em>the film that solidified Moore’s cult… stardom?—may strike some viewers as homophobic, but it’s the first real performance that Snipes, who a generation ago appeared to be an actor whose versatility and magnetisim were without limit, has given in too many years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>None of these men have been cast for their resemblance to the people they’re playing. But Murphy, despite how much he seems to love filling out Dolemite’s flamboyant suits, doesn’t even try to look or sound like Moore. (His Bill Cosby impression in his 1988 concert film \u003cem>Raw\u003c/em> is a much closer act of mimicry than anything he does here.) He just throws himself headlong into this incurious depiction of Moore as an entertainer who didn’t much care whether his audience was laughing with him or at him, so long as they were laughing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLZk03rXpVc\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Neither the performance nor the movie surrounding it attempts the sort of sober psychological investigation that Will Smith brought to his performance as Muhammad Ali, for example. Murphy and director Craig Brewer (who are working together again on a \u003cem>Coming to America\u003c/em> sequel due next year) have opted for a feel-good approach, letting Scott Bomar’s pastiche-funk score and the warm camaraderie among the cast—and those wonderful suits—propel their tale of underdog triumph. What emotional depth it has comes mostly from Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s commanding turn as Lady Reed, whom Moore recruits to be his onstage comic foil after watching her deck her philandering husband at a nightclub where he’s performing. A scene where she thanks him for talking her into trying showbiz because she’s never seen anyone who looks like her on screen before feels anachronistic, but it’s moving all the same.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After a while, it becomes apparent that this is less a character study than an Origins of a Turkey movie in the tradition of the recent \u003cem>The Disaster Artist\u003c/em> or 1994’s \u003cem>Ed Wood. \u003c/em>Its screenplay, come to that, is by the \u003cem>Ed Wood\u003c/em> duo of Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, who that same decade gave us \u003cem>The People Vs. Larry Flynt \u003c/em>and \u003cem>Man on the Moon\u003c/em> (with A-lister Jim Carrey as cult comic Andy Kaufman). So clearly these writers are interested in figures whose work challenges notions of taste and propriety. But \u003cem>Dolemite Is My Name,\u003c/em> for all its potent entertainment value, never musters the same curiosity about its subject that those ’90s movies did.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead,\u003cem> Dolemite Is My Name\u003c/em> compresses the events of five years or so into a breezy calendar-flipping arc, starting with Moore’s triumph as a DIY peddler of dirty comedy records and climaxing with his success as a DIY film producer and star. The eureka moment wherein he decides he belongs in the pictures comes when he and his pals go—on the recommendation of a glowing newspaper review!—to see Billy Wilder’s 1974 version of \u003cem>The Front Page.\u003c/em> While the movie’s overwhelmingly white audience howls, Moore and his friends are stone-faced. Moore’s verdict is harsh but two-thirds indisputable: “That movie had no funny, no titties, and no Kung Fu!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Had Wilder had the benefit of such insight, \u003cem>Double Indemnity\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Some Like It Hot\u003c/em> might have been very different films. But Murphy-as-Moore’s other note—that \u003cem>The Front Page\u003c/em> had no performers of color—sticks, even if the notion that “people like us” (in Moore’s words) can’t appreciate the sort of mordant comedy Wilder was into is potentially problematic. Brewer, who directed \u003cem>Hustle and Flow\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Black Snake Moan,\u003c/em> is undeterred by “potentially problematic,” as is Murphy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Obviously a long-unsated appetite among black audiences to see themselves represented in mass entertainment was key to the success of the blaxploitation genre, but that alone cannot account for the specific popularity of \u003cem>Dolemite, \u003c/em>a hilariously low-rent production that made earlier penny-pinching blaxploitation hits like \u003cem>Coffy\u003c/em> or \u003cem>Black Caesar\u003c/em> look lavish by comparison. It’s full of catatonic line readings, boom mics dipping into frame, and halfhearted karate kicks from a winded star who doesn’t look fit enough to take on a flight of stairs. When my friends and I watched \u003cem>Dolemite\u003c/em> repeatedly in high school in the 90s, we would argue whether its irresistible awfulness was intentional or not.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DebCN7U65vY\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For what it’s worth, \u003cem>Dolemite Is My Name \u003c/em>splits the difference, suggesting that \u003cem>Dolemite’\u003c/em>s room-destroying sex scene was designed to be funny, but that the hilarity of its fights stemmed from genuine incompetence. In that spirit, we witness the filming of the infamous throw-down that ensues when three white FBI agents confront Dolemite in his driveway and try to take him into custody. Is it a deliberate in-joke that Martin—the director who watches his hopeless performers fumble their way through their fight choreography and concludes that a second take would be futile—is played by Snipes, the one genuine martial artist in the movie? A guy whose overindulgence in action flicks arguably ruined his career as a serious actor? Probably. In any case, it’s a fun thing to argue about with your friends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=A+Breezy+Look+At+The+Making+Of+A+Blaxploitation+Classic%3A+%27Dolemite+Is+My+Name%27+&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Note: This film is now in limited theatrical release before debuting on Netflix on Friday, October 25th. \u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Eddie Murphy, who had name-above-title billing in a hit movie at 21, was one of the biggest stars in the world at 25, and whose imminent “comeback” has been a three-decade topic that a steady role in the animated \u003cem>Shrek\u003c/em> franchise and an Oscar nomination (for \u003cem>Dreamgirls\u003c/em>) couldn’t silence, is an odd choice to play Rudy Ray Moore.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Moore chased success as a singer, dancer, and stand-up before finding it in his mid-forties (in the early ’70s) in the persona of Dolemite, his pimp-styled character who delivered artfully filthy rhymes over a backbeat. In the decorous language of his 2008 \u003cem>New York Times \u003c/em>obituary, Moore’s “standup comedy, records and movies related earthy rhyming tales of a vivid gaggle of characters as they lurched from sexual escapade to sexual escapade in a boisterous tradition, born in Africa, that helped shape today’s hip-hop.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Certainly the blue-chip cast that has shown up to support Murphy in the buoyant-but-superficial Netflix biopic \u003cem>Dolemite Is My Name\u003c/em> is its own tribute to Moore’s intersectional significance: Snoop Dogg and Chris Rock appear in two-scene roles, with Keegan-Michael Key, Titus Burgess, Craig Robinson, and Mike Epps in beefier parts as Moore’s various collaborators. Wesley Snipes’ effeminate characterization of D’urville Martin, who directed and played the villain in the 1975 blaxploitation classic \u003cem>Dolemite—\u003c/em>the film that solidified Moore’s cult… stardom?—may strike some viewers as homophobic, but it’s the first real performance that Snipes, who a generation ago appeared to be an actor whose versatility and magnetisim were without limit, has given in too many years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>None of these men have been cast for their resemblance to the people they’re playing. But Murphy, despite how much he seems to love filling out Dolemite’s flamboyant suits, doesn’t even try to look or sound like Moore. (His Bill Cosby impression in his 1988 concert film \u003cem>Raw\u003c/em> is a much closer act of mimicry than anything he does here.) He just throws himself headlong into this incurious depiction of Moore as an entertainer who didn’t much care whether his audience was laughing with him or at him, so long as they were laughing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/gLZk03rXpVc'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/gLZk03rXpVc'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Neither the performance nor the movie surrounding it attempts the sort of sober psychological investigation that Will Smith brought to his performance as Muhammad Ali, for example. Murphy and director Craig Brewer (who are working together again on a \u003cem>Coming to America\u003c/em> sequel due next year) have opted for a feel-good approach, letting Scott Bomar’s pastiche-funk score and the warm camaraderie among the cast—and those wonderful suits—propel their tale of underdog triumph. What emotional depth it has comes mostly from Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s commanding turn as Lady Reed, whom Moore recruits to be his onstage comic foil after watching her deck her philandering husband at a nightclub where he’s performing. A scene where she thanks him for talking her into trying showbiz because she’s never seen anyone who looks like her on screen before feels anachronistic, but it’s moving all the same.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After a while, it becomes apparent that this is less a character study than an Origins of a Turkey movie in the tradition of the recent \u003cem>The Disaster Artist\u003c/em> or 1994’s \u003cem>Ed Wood. \u003c/em>Its screenplay, come to that, is by the \u003cem>Ed Wood\u003c/em> duo of Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, who that same decade gave us \u003cem>The People Vs. Larry Flynt \u003c/em>and \u003cem>Man on the Moon\u003c/em> (with A-lister Jim Carrey as cult comic Andy Kaufman). So clearly these writers are interested in figures whose work challenges notions of taste and propriety. But \u003cem>Dolemite Is My Name,\u003c/em> for all its potent entertainment value, never musters the same curiosity about its subject that those ’90s movies did.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead,\u003cem> Dolemite Is My Name\u003c/em> compresses the events of five years or so into a breezy calendar-flipping arc, starting with Moore’s triumph as a DIY peddler of dirty comedy records and climaxing with his success as a DIY film producer and star. The eureka moment wherein he decides he belongs in the pictures comes when he and his pals go—on the recommendation of a glowing newspaper review!—to see Billy Wilder’s 1974 version of \u003cem>The Front Page.\u003c/em> While the movie’s overwhelmingly white audience howls, Moore and his friends are stone-faced. Moore’s verdict is harsh but two-thirds indisputable: “That movie had no funny, no titties, and no Kung Fu!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Had Wilder had the benefit of such insight, \u003cem>Double Indemnity\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Some Like It Hot\u003c/em> might have been very different films. But Murphy-as-Moore’s other note—that \u003cem>The Front Page\u003c/em> had no performers of color—sticks, even if the notion that “people like us” (in Moore’s words) can’t appreciate the sort of mordant comedy Wilder was into is potentially problematic. Brewer, who directed \u003cem>Hustle and Flow\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Black Snake Moan,\u003c/em> is undeterred by “potentially problematic,” as is Murphy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Obviously a long-unsated appetite among black audiences to see themselves represented in mass entertainment was key to the success of the blaxploitation genre, but that alone cannot account for the specific popularity of \u003cem>Dolemite, \u003c/em>a hilariously low-rent production that made earlier penny-pinching blaxploitation hits like \u003cem>Coffy\u003c/em> or \u003cem>Black Caesar\u003c/em> look lavish by comparison. It’s full of catatonic line readings, boom mics dipping into frame, and halfhearted karate kicks from a winded star who doesn’t look fit enough to take on a flight of stairs. When my friends and I watched \u003cem>Dolemite\u003c/em> repeatedly in high school in the 90s, we would argue whether its irresistible awfulness was intentional or not.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/DebCN7U65vY'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/DebCN7U65vY'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For what it’s worth, \u003cem>Dolemite Is My Name \u003c/em>splits the difference, suggesting that \u003cem>Dolemite’\u003c/em>s room-destroying sex scene was designed to be funny, but that the hilarity of its fights stemmed from genuine incompetence. In that spirit, we witness the filming of the infamous throw-down that ensues when three white FBI agents confront Dolemite in his driveway and try to take him into custody. Is it a deliberate in-joke that Martin—the director who watches his hopeless performers fumble their way through their fight choreography and concludes that a second take would be futile—is played by Snipes, the one genuine martial artist in the movie? A guy whose overindulgence in action flicks arguably ruined his career as a serious actor? Probably. In any case, it’s a fun thing to argue about with your friends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=A+Breezy+Look+At+The+Making+Of+A+Blaxploitation+Classic%3A+%27Dolemite+Is+My+Name%27+&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Kim Shattuck, the guitarist, singer and songwriter of The Muffs, The Pandoras and The Coolies died Wednesday after a two-year battle with ALS, as confirmed to \u003cem>NPR\u003c/em> by Omnivore Recordings co-founder Cheryl Pawelski. She was 56.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are very sorry to announce the passing of our bandmate and dear friend Kim Shattuck,” the Muffs’ Ronnie Barnett and Roy McDonald \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/TheMuffsMusic/posts/10156590341185382\">wrote in a statement\u003c/a>. “Besides being a brilliant songwriter, rocking guitarist and singer/screamer extraordinaire, Kim was a true force of nature. While battling ALS, Kim produced our last album, overseeing every part of the record from tracking to artwork. She was our best friend and playing her songs was an honor. Goodbye Kimba. We love you more than we could ever say.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All of us at Omnivore Recordings are devastated by the loss of our friend Kim Shattuck of The Muffs,” her most recent record label shares. “We’re thinking about all her friends and fans, especially her family and bandmates. Her creative fire will endure and inspire artists of tomorrow. We’re so grateful to have been in the audience and to have played a small part in getting more of her music out into the world.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shattuck was a music-world lifer, through and through. She spent much of the 1980s in The Pandoras, a band initially inspired by ’60s psychedelic and garage-rock and later went full-on Hollywood hard-rock. In 1991, after leaving The Pandoras, Shattuck and former bandmate Melanie Vammen formed The Muffs. While the L.A. band’s punky spunk was very much of its era—a cover of Kim Wilde’s “Kids in America” appeared on the \u003cem>Clueless\u003c/em> soundtrack and, it should be noted, inspired pretty much every cover of that song going forward—Shattuck’s gritty rasp and love for ’60s pop music sounded like nothing else on ’90s alternative-rock radio. The Muffs released five albums up until 1999—\u003cem>The Muffs; Blonder and Blonder; Happy Birthday to Me;\u003c/em> and\u003cem> Alert Today, Alive Tomorrow—\u003c/em>with studio returns in 2004 (\u003cem>Really Really Happy\u003c/em>) and 2014 (\u003cem>Whoop Dee Doo\u003c/em>). A new album, \u003cem>No Holiday\u003c/em>, is scheduled to be \u003ca href=\"http://omnivorerecordings.com/shop/no-holiday/\">released\u003c/a> on Oct. 18.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsxyaZhdW1s\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While Shattuck had one foot in college radio and another in popular music, throughout her career she stuck to her roots by guesting on songs by underground punk bands like NOFX, Bowling for Soup, Fastbacks, The Mr. T Experience and The Dollyrots. She later joined the Pixies as a bassist on a 2013 tour following the departure of Kim Deal, but was dismissed after five months. (Of the exit, she \u003ca href=\"https://www.nme.com/news/music/pixies-39-1239648#djIPS2Qr8R7cZcFv.99\">told \u003cem>NME\u003c/em>\u003c/a>: “I get the feeling they’re more introverted people than I am.”)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More recently, Shattuck recently teamed up with Melanie Vammen to start The Coolies, which released its \u003ca href=\"https://thecoolieswcr.bandcamp.com/album/uh-oh-its-the-coolies\">debut EP\u003c/a> in July, with all profits going to The ALS Association Golden West Chapter. Shattuck never publicly revealed her diagnosis; asked why the band chose this charity, she told the online magazine \u003cem>Vents\u003c/em> \u003ca href=\"https://ventsmagazine.com/2019/07/11/interview-punk-supergroup-the-coolies-feat-kim-shattuck-melanie-vammen-and-palmyra-delran/\">in July\u003c/a>, “Sadly, it runs in my damn family, and that disease is a mystery to just about every scientist! We are definitely interested in finding a cure for ALS! Cure it already!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Both contemporaries and young musicians paid tribute.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So bummed Kim Shattuck died,” \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/artists/647037067/the-distillers\">The Distillers\u003c/a>‘ Brody Dalle-Homme \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/BrodyDHomme/status/1179634196769230848\">writes on Twitter\u003c/a>. “She was HUGELY underrated. Badass guitar player and great voice, really cool songs.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“RIP to Kim Shattuck. One of the all time great voices,” Damian Abraham of hardcore band \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/artists/98800181/f-up\">F***** Up\u003c/a> says, \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/leftfordamian/status/1179545424291606528\">adding\u003c/a>, “LISTEN TO THE MUFFS!!!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A very big inspiration to me. Such style / huge tunes,” \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/artists/166018370/waxahatchee\">Waxahatchee\u003c/a>‘s Katie Crutchfield writes on \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/B3IsQY1gQHB/\">Instagram\u003c/a>, sharing stills from The Muffs’ “Sad Tomorrow” video, a song that perfectly illustrates Shattuck’s hooky pop-punk prowess and vintage-store chic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From the first ten seconds, you always knew it was a Muffs song. Shattuck screamed so sweetly, so savagely—and looked damn cool while doing so. Shattuck was a force of life who splashed vibrant colors onto punk, in songs both tough and vulnerable, with big power chords and bigger feelings about heartbreak, broken worlds and righteous anger.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an NPR Music project about women’s work in the music industry, Shattuck—always independent, forever punk—\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/buckets/music/women/artist.php?artistId=100\">offered\u003c/a> a straightforward piece of advice: “Don’t get a manager. Do it yourself. Be true to your vision and be strong.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Kim+Shattuck%2C+An+Enduring+Presence+In+L.A.+Punk%2C+Dead+At+56&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Kim Shattuck, the guitarist, singer and songwriter of The Muffs, The Pandoras and The Coolies died Wednesday after a two-year battle with ALS, as confirmed to \u003cem>NPR\u003c/em> by Omnivore Recordings co-founder Cheryl Pawelski. She was 56.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are very sorry to announce the passing of our bandmate and dear friend Kim Shattuck,” the Muffs’ Ronnie Barnett and Roy McDonald \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/TheMuffsMusic/posts/10156590341185382\">wrote in a statement\u003c/a>. “Besides being a brilliant songwriter, rocking guitarist and singer/screamer extraordinaire, Kim was a true force of nature. While battling ALS, Kim produced our last album, overseeing every part of the record from tracking to artwork. She was our best friend and playing her songs was an honor. Goodbye Kimba. We love you more than we could ever say.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All of us at Omnivore Recordings are devastated by the loss of our friend Kim Shattuck of The Muffs,” her most recent record label shares. “We’re thinking about all her friends and fans, especially her family and bandmates. Her creative fire will endure and inspire artists of tomorrow. We’re so grateful to have been in the audience and to have played a small part in getting more of her music out into the world.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shattuck was a music-world lifer, through and through. She spent much of the 1980s in The Pandoras, a band initially inspired by ’60s psychedelic and garage-rock and later went full-on Hollywood hard-rock. In 1991, after leaving The Pandoras, Shattuck and former bandmate Melanie Vammen formed The Muffs. While the L.A. band’s punky spunk was very much of its era—a cover of Kim Wilde’s “Kids in America” appeared on the \u003cem>Clueless\u003c/em> soundtrack and, it should be noted, inspired pretty much every cover of that song going forward—Shattuck’s gritty rasp and love for ’60s pop music sounded like nothing else on ’90s alternative-rock radio. The Muffs released five albums up until 1999—\u003cem>The Muffs; Blonder and Blonder; Happy Birthday to Me;\u003c/em> and\u003cem> Alert Today, Alive Tomorrow—\u003c/em>with studio returns in 2004 (\u003cem>Really Really Happy\u003c/em>) and 2014 (\u003cem>Whoop Dee Doo\u003c/em>). A new album, \u003cem>No Holiday\u003c/em>, is scheduled to be \u003ca href=\"http://omnivorerecordings.com/shop/no-holiday/\">released\u003c/a> on Oct. 18.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/vsxyaZhdW1s'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/vsxyaZhdW1s'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While Shattuck had one foot in college radio and another in popular music, throughout her career she stuck to her roots by guesting on songs by underground punk bands like NOFX, Bowling for Soup, Fastbacks, The Mr. T Experience and The Dollyrots. She later joined the Pixies as a bassist on a 2013 tour following the departure of Kim Deal, but was dismissed after five months. (Of the exit, she \u003ca href=\"https://www.nme.com/news/music/pixies-39-1239648#djIPS2Qr8R7cZcFv.99\">told \u003cem>NME\u003c/em>\u003c/a>: “I get the feeling they’re more introverted people than I am.”)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More recently, Shattuck recently teamed up with Melanie Vammen to start The Coolies, which released its \u003ca href=\"https://thecoolieswcr.bandcamp.com/album/uh-oh-its-the-coolies\">debut EP\u003c/a> in July, with all profits going to The ALS Association Golden West Chapter. Shattuck never publicly revealed her diagnosis; asked why the band chose this charity, she told the online magazine \u003cem>Vents\u003c/em> \u003ca href=\"https://ventsmagazine.com/2019/07/11/interview-punk-supergroup-the-coolies-feat-kim-shattuck-melanie-vammen-and-palmyra-delran/\">in July\u003c/a>, “Sadly, it runs in my damn family, and that disease is a mystery to just about every scientist! We are definitely interested in finding a cure for ALS! Cure it already!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Both contemporaries and young musicians paid tribute.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So bummed Kim Shattuck died,” \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/artists/647037067/the-distillers\">The Distillers\u003c/a>‘ Brody Dalle-Homme \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/BrodyDHomme/status/1179634196769230848\">writes on Twitter\u003c/a>. “She was HUGELY underrated. Badass guitar player and great voice, really cool songs.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“RIP to Kim Shattuck. One of the all time great voices,” Damian Abraham of hardcore band \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/artists/98800181/f-up\">F***** Up\u003c/a> says, \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/leftfordamian/status/1179545424291606528\">adding\u003c/a>, “LISTEN TO THE MUFFS!!!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A very big inspiration to me. Such style / huge tunes,” \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/artists/166018370/waxahatchee\">Waxahatchee\u003c/a>‘s Katie Crutchfield writes on \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/B3IsQY1gQHB/\">Instagram\u003c/a>, sharing stills from The Muffs’ “Sad Tomorrow” video, a song that perfectly illustrates Shattuck’s hooky pop-punk prowess and vintage-store chic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From the first ten seconds, you always knew it was a Muffs song. Shattuck screamed so sweetly, so savagely—and looked damn cool while doing so. Shattuck was a force of life who splashed vibrant colors onto punk, in songs both tough and vulnerable, with big power chords and bigger feelings about heartbreak, broken worlds and righteous anger.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an NPR Music project about women’s work in the music industry, Shattuck—always independent, forever punk—\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/buckets/music/women/artist.php?artistId=100\">offered\u003c/a> a straightforward piece of advice: “Don’t get a manager. Do it yourself. Be true to your vision and be strong.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Kim+Shattuck%2C+An+Enduring+Presence+In+L.A.+Punk%2C+Dead+At+56&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>In the comics and cartoons—and on film, as played by Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger and (checks notes) Jared Leto—the Joker, Batman’s archenemy, is an agent of chaos.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To be clear: It’s a calculating, meticulously planned chaos. That speech Ledger’s Joker gives in the hospital, in \u003cem>The Dark Knight\u003c/em>? Where he says he’s not a planner, he’s just a “dog chasing cars?” Yeah, that’s a lie. Because underneath that terrifying, physiology-defying grin and that laugh like a hyena on nitrous, there’s a coldly cunning criminal mastermind—he’s just hidden it behind his purple riverboat-gambler couture and his penchant for goofy, playing-card-themed capers, hoping you don’t notice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Funny thing about the Joker. (Historically, he’s referred to as both The Joker and Joker—the definite article gets a lot less definitive around him, in much the same way it does around his opposite number, The Batman/Batman.) He’s unique among Batman’s rogues gallery. Penguin, Riddler, Catwoman, Clayface, Scarecrow—the whole lot: When \u003cem>they \u003c/em>were first introduced in the comics, they were introduced by way of their origin stories. The reader encountered them embarked upon some act of moral turpitude and immediately learned their entire deal—their real name, their background and why they settled upon whichever absurd larcenous gimmick (birds, riddles, cats, etc.) that they did.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not the Joker. When he debuted in 1940—just one year after Batman’s first appearance—he didn’t waste our time whinging on about his backstory; he just set to work killin’ folk. It took an unprecedented 11 years for him to earn an origin tale—and even then, it was a half-assed one. We didn’t learn his real name, or his background, just that he was a crook who had jumped into a vat of chemicals to escape capture by Batman, which transformed him into the grinning ghoul we know today, the Clown Prince of Crime.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s that version of his origin story (others have been offered over the years) that writer Alan Moore and artist Brian Bolland made some tweaks to in 1988’s unrelentingly grim \u003cem>The Killing Joke\u003c/em> graphic novel, and that Tim Burton took up and played with—adding a generous dollop of Jack Nicholson—in 1989’s \u003cem>Batman \u003c/em>film.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Both attempts—and that original, 1951 origin tale—diminished the character. As a concept, the Joker is a beautiful (albeit vicious) butterfly; his colors dim once you pin him to the specimen board. He functions best as a symbol, an abstract representation—or more precisely a \u003cem>distillation\u003c/em>—of the kind of random act of violence that birthed Batman in the first place. (Batman’s parents were killed by a mugger, FYI. Don’t know if you knew that. It’s possible you’ve been sealed in a vault for the past 80 years, so just in case: alley, gun, pearls, it was a whole deal.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He is a vector for disorder, for gleeful, heedless violence. If Batman is Merciless Order (he wasn’t always, but he became so, around 1970), then Joker is Sadistic Chaos. He is Batman’s perfect foil. He is, simply, The Adversary.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the many things Christopher Nolan’s \u003cem>The Dark Knight\u003c/em> got right about the character is that we only \u003cem>think \u003c/em>we want to know who he is and where he came from. The Joker works best, most purely, when unencumbered by the humdrum of the everyday. His motivations must and should remain mysterious, unknowable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Director Todd Phillips’ new film seeks to strip all mystery from the character and make his motivations \u003cem>very \u003c/em>knowable. And in that much at least, he succeeds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meet Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), a down-on-his-luck clown for hire, only … he’s having a little trouble getting hired. Arthur has a condition that causes him to burst into laughter at random intervals, which tends to creep people out. And get him beaten up. A lot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>(If you’re curious about the degree of subtlety and restraint that Phillips brings to his subject, know that \u003cem>Joker \u003c/em>is the kind of movie in which a bunch of punk kids beat up our hero while shouting “Beat him up!” and kick our hero while shouting “Kick him!”)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAGVQLHvwOY\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Arthur suffers one of his many onscreen beatings at the hands (and feet) of a bunch of Wall Street bros on the subway, who taunt him by singing “Send In The Clowns.” Nearly in its entirety. (The scene goes on for a while.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s really the only time in this otherwise grounded, grim and gritty film that we’re asked to suspend our disbelief at all—because, seriously, we’re supposed to buy that a straight finance bro would be off-book on the \u003cem>second and third verses of a Sondheim number\u003c/em>?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>(“Bro! I spent last night poundin’ brews and fallin’ down \u003cem>A Little Night Music\u003c/em> YouTube wormhole! The Dench, bro! The Dench \u003cem>crushed it\u003c/em>!” “Naw man, you gotta see my girl CZ-J in the 2009 Broadway revival, she makes Desiree’s wry and winsome melancholy A THING YOU CAN FEEL IN YOUR ‘NADS BRO.”)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the city cuts the funding for his social worker, Arthur goes off his meds and throws himself into his would-be stand-up comedy career.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It doesn’t go well. Put it that way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Joker\u003c/em> is, ostensibly, a downfall story—a tale of how a broken man got broken in the first place. To make stories compelling, to keep audiences’ interest when the conclusion is foregone, storytellers need to forgo what they know audiences already expect to see. But Phillips and his co-screenwriter Scott Silver aren’t interested in iterating or innovating, because doing so would clash with their mission statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They want us to see Arthur as a victim, pushed into becoming a monster by his mental illness and a broken government. You may or may not find that prospect irresponsible, even dangerous. Let’s leave that to social scientists. What I can tell you is that, as executed in \u003cem>Joker\u003c/em>, it’s wildly unconvincing and mundanely uninteresting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Certainly, \u003cem>Joker \u003c/em>is tense, grimy and claustrophobic, and Phoenix’s performance is a big swing, and a risky one—the kind of big, risky swing that Oscar voters historically eat up with a big ol’ spoon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the film so desperately strives to reject comic book trappings—so aches to be seen as edgy, provocative, serious, adult—that it simply apes the tone, style and content of other, better, edgier and more provocative films like \u003cem>Taxi Driver\u003c/em> and \u003cem>The King of Comedy\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Fight Club\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But \u003cem>those \u003c/em>films had a point of view, they had something to say—they implicated us in their onscreen violence, in the bad choices their characters made.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Joker \u003c/em>sees Arthur’s transformation into a mass murderer as inevitable. It’s not a choice; it’s something the world does \u003cem>to\u003c/em> him. As a result of his passivity, the story becomes little more than Arthur suffering a string of indignities until, one day, heroically (?), he doesn’t anymore. It swiftly grows predictable, then repetitive, then dull.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the film doesn’t care—it’s too busy exuding a sense of self-satisfaction, a preening, self-consciously provocative challenge to an audience—a \u003cem>humanity\u003c/em>—it holds in pitched contempt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Joker \u003c/em>thinks of itself as urgent, relevant, of the moment and—mostly, unrelentingly—not just another silly superhero movie. Ultimately, however, it devotes so much of its energy into \u003cem>not \u003c/em>being about a comic book villain that it neglects being about … much of anything, really.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=%27Joker%27+Is+Wild+...+ly+Dull&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>In the comics and cartoons—and on film, as played by Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger and (checks notes) Jared Leto—the Joker, Batman’s archenemy, is an agent of chaos.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To be clear: It’s a calculating, meticulously planned chaos. That speech Ledger’s Joker gives in the hospital, in \u003cem>The Dark Knight\u003c/em>? Where he says he’s not a planner, he’s just a “dog chasing cars?” Yeah, that’s a lie. Because underneath that terrifying, physiology-defying grin and that laugh like a hyena on nitrous, there’s a coldly cunning criminal mastermind—he’s just hidden it behind his purple riverboat-gambler couture and his penchant for goofy, playing-card-themed capers, hoping you don’t notice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Funny thing about the Joker. (Historically, he’s referred to as both The Joker and Joker—the definite article gets a lot less definitive around him, in much the same way it does around his opposite number, The Batman/Batman.) He’s unique among Batman’s rogues gallery. Penguin, Riddler, Catwoman, Clayface, Scarecrow—the whole lot: When \u003cem>they \u003c/em>were first introduced in the comics, they were introduced by way of their origin stories. The reader encountered them embarked upon some act of moral turpitude and immediately learned their entire deal—their real name, their background and why they settled upon whichever absurd larcenous gimmick (birds, riddles, cats, etc.) that they did.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not the Joker. When he debuted in 1940—just one year after Batman’s first appearance—he didn’t waste our time whinging on about his backstory; he just set to work killin’ folk. It took an unprecedented 11 years for him to earn an origin tale—and even then, it was a half-assed one. We didn’t learn his real name, or his background, just that he was a crook who had jumped into a vat of chemicals to escape capture by Batman, which transformed him into the grinning ghoul we know today, the Clown Prince of Crime.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s that version of his origin story (others have been offered over the years) that writer Alan Moore and artist Brian Bolland made some tweaks to in 1988’s unrelentingly grim \u003cem>The Killing Joke\u003c/em> graphic novel, and that Tim Burton took up and played with—adding a generous dollop of Jack Nicholson—in 1989’s \u003cem>Batman \u003c/em>film.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Both attempts—and that original, 1951 origin tale—diminished the character. As a concept, the Joker is a beautiful (albeit vicious) butterfly; his colors dim once you pin him to the specimen board. He functions best as a symbol, an abstract representation—or more precisely a \u003cem>distillation\u003c/em>—of the kind of random act of violence that birthed Batman in the first place. (Batman’s parents were killed by a mugger, FYI. Don’t know if you knew that. It’s possible you’ve been sealed in a vault for the past 80 years, so just in case: alley, gun, pearls, it was a whole deal.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He is a vector for disorder, for gleeful, heedless violence. If Batman is Merciless Order (he wasn’t always, but he became so, around 1970), then Joker is Sadistic Chaos. He is Batman’s perfect foil. He is, simply, The Adversary.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the many things Christopher Nolan’s \u003cem>The Dark Knight\u003c/em> got right about the character is that we only \u003cem>think \u003c/em>we want to know who he is and where he came from. The Joker works best, most purely, when unencumbered by the humdrum of the everyday. His motivations must and should remain mysterious, unknowable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Director Todd Phillips’ new film seeks to strip all mystery from the character and make his motivations \u003cem>very \u003c/em>knowable. And in that much at least, he succeeds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meet Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), a down-on-his-luck clown for hire, only … he’s having a little trouble getting hired. Arthur has a condition that causes him to burst into laughter at random intervals, which tends to creep people out. And get him beaten up. A lot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>(If you’re curious about the degree of subtlety and restraint that Phillips brings to his subject, know that \u003cem>Joker \u003c/em>is the kind of movie in which a bunch of punk kids beat up our hero while shouting “Beat him up!” and kick our hero while shouting “Kick him!”)\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/zAGVQLHvwOY'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/zAGVQLHvwOY'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Arthur suffers one of his many onscreen beatings at the hands (and feet) of a bunch of Wall Street bros on the subway, who taunt him by singing “Send In The Clowns.” Nearly in its entirety. (The scene goes on for a while.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s really the only time in this otherwise grounded, grim and gritty film that we’re asked to suspend our disbelief at all—because, seriously, we’re supposed to buy that a straight finance bro would be off-book on the \u003cem>second and third verses of a Sondheim number\u003c/em>?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>(“Bro! I spent last night poundin’ brews and fallin’ down \u003cem>A Little Night Music\u003c/em> YouTube wormhole! The Dench, bro! The Dench \u003cem>crushed it\u003c/em>!” “Naw man, you gotta see my girl CZ-J in the 2009 Broadway revival, she makes Desiree’s wry and winsome melancholy A THING YOU CAN FEEL IN YOUR ‘NADS BRO.”)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the city cuts the funding for his social worker, Arthur goes off his meds and throws himself into his would-be stand-up comedy career.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It doesn’t go well. Put it that way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Joker\u003c/em> is, ostensibly, a downfall story—a tale of how a broken man got broken in the first place. To make stories compelling, to keep audiences’ interest when the conclusion is foregone, storytellers need to forgo what they know audiences already expect to see. But Phillips and his co-screenwriter Scott Silver aren’t interested in iterating or innovating, because doing so would clash with their mission statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They want us to see Arthur as a victim, pushed into becoming a monster by his mental illness and a broken government. You may or may not find that prospect irresponsible, even dangerous. Let’s leave that to social scientists. What I can tell you is that, as executed in \u003cem>Joker\u003c/em>, it’s wildly unconvincing and mundanely uninteresting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Certainly, \u003cem>Joker \u003c/em>is tense, grimy and claustrophobic, and Phoenix’s performance is a big swing, and a risky one—the kind of big, risky swing that Oscar voters historically eat up with a big ol’ spoon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the film so desperately strives to reject comic book trappings—so aches to be seen as edgy, provocative, serious, adult—that it simply apes the tone, style and content of other, better, edgier and more provocative films like \u003cem>Taxi Driver\u003c/em> and \u003cem>The King of Comedy\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Fight Club\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But \u003cem>those \u003c/em>films had a point of view, they had something to say—they implicated us in their onscreen violence, in the bad choices their characters made.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Joker \u003c/em>sees Arthur’s transformation into a mass murderer as inevitable. It’s not a choice; it’s something the world does \u003cem>to\u003c/em> him. As a result of his passivity, the story becomes little more than Arthur suffering a string of indignities until, one day, heroically (?), he doesn’t anymore. It swiftly grows predictable, then repetitive, then dull.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the film doesn’t care—it’s too busy exuding a sense of self-satisfaction, a preening, self-consciously provocative challenge to an audience—a \u003cem>humanity\u003c/em>—it holds in pitched contempt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Joker \u003c/em>thinks of itself as urgent, relevant, of the moment and—mostly, unrelentingly—not just another silly superhero movie. Ultimately, however, it devotes so much of its energy into \u003cem>not \u003c/em>being about a comic book villain that it neglects being about … much of anything, really.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=%27Joker%27+Is+Wild+...+ly+Dull&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Conan O'Brien on the Joys of Podcasting, Late Night TV and Going to Therapy",
"headTitle": "Conan O’Brien on the Joys of Podcasting, Late Night TV and Going to Therapy | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Conan O’Brien has been hosting late-night TV shows for 26 years—longer than anyone else currently on the air. So when a colleague suggested he start a podcast, he initially balked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My initial reaction was, ‘Why would I do a podcast? I have a television show,'” O’Brien says. “That should be enough for anybody.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But then O’Brien thought more about the prospect, and he began to reconsider. On television, conversations with guests were constrained by TV cameras and commercial breaks; a podcast would free him to proceed more slowly and dig deeper in conversations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The podcast,\u003ca href=\"https://art19.com/shows/conan-obrien\">\u003cem> Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend\u003c/em>,\u003c/a> featuring O’Brien’s conversations with comics, actors and writers, launched November 2018. Its second season starts Oct. 7.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>O’Brien says the title of the podcast is a joke—sort of. “Sometimes when you’re in the public eye, it can get murky as to who’s really my friend. Who’s going to come visit me in the hospital? Who’s going to come over to my house when my dog dies and drink cocoa with me? Who are those people?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He appreciates how the podcast allows him to “mind meld” with his guests. “Suddenly all these people who I know in the comedy world, and some in the political world who I’ve known, and we’ve chatted, and we’ve had these seven, eight, nine minute chats on television—I can sit down and we can just go down a deep, deep, deep well, and it’s fascinating,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnzp9SXZxvo\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch3>Interview Highlights\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On how the conversations on his podcast differ from those he has with guests on late-night TV \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On television … it’s a very presentational way of having a “conversation.” And this sounds like I’m making a joke, but you need to get makeup. They put makeup on you—especially someone as translucent as I—so that you show up on television. So every day I’m in a chair and they’re painting my skull so that I appear somewhat human. And then the people I’m talking to are painted. And then there’s an audience there and cameras. And so I’ve grown accustomed to that and there’s a lot that I love about it. … But [on the podcast] I’m finding that … I can sit down and have a really long conversation with \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/01/08/683192524/ben-stiller-unlocks-an-old-fashioned-prison-break-in-escape-at-dannemora\">Ben Stiller\u003c/a>—someone who I’ve known since I met him at \u003cem>Saturday Night Live\u003c/em> in, I think, 1990 or 1989—I’ve never really had a long conversation with him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On landing the job as host of \u003c/strong>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Late Night \u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003cstrong>in 1993\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Say what you want about my career: Someone can like me; they can despise me; they can completely not care; or be completely neutral about me; but everyone would have to agree that it’s a really unusual career. Just completely unprecedented. The way that I got onto the \u003cem>Late Night\u003c/em> show was absurd. Basically, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4518912\">Lorne Michaels\u003c/a> took a complete Hail Mary pass and said, “I know this writer and he has very little performing experience besides some improv, but I think he could be good.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And I went to an audition and, because I had no chance, was completely relaxed in the audition and did really well. And then NBC said, “Well, we have no other choice.” I mean, that wouldn’t happen today. Today if there was a major late-night spot open, there would be 600 candidates from 600 different cable shows with thousands of hours of content.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On being on the brink of cancellation during his early career \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I think I was actually canceled at one point in a meeting, and then shortly after the meeting ended they said, “Well, we can’t cancel him yet, because we don’t have his replacement quite ready to go, so let’s un-cancel him, and then cancel him at the next meeting.” And then they just didn’t get around to it. So I was supposed to die about six different times, and just didn’t through some—I don’t know what else to call it other than—dumb luck. And then I think I just got lucky and it caught on just at the right time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On the nationwide comedy tour he did after a period of conflict that led to him giving up the \u003c/strong>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Tonight Show\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003cstrong> in 2010 \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was therapeutic and satisfying. All I ever wanted to do was make people laugh. I know that sounds corny. I just really do love getting in front of people and making them happy, making them laugh. And so getting to do that on a national tour and really delighting these crowds, that was great.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I think the trouble for me came after that tour because I think I emotionally crashed. … I think it was obviously very painful to have to give up the \u003cem>Tonight Show\u003c/em>. And so I avoided that pain by doing this tour where I probably burned 3,000 calories a night, would sweat through my clothes, really give everything I have, then go out and take selfies with a thousand people, then sleep for a couple of hours, but then not be able to sleep on the bus or on the plane. When that tour was over I was skeletal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On getting help after the comedy tour ended \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I had always done some therapy, but I got a lot of therapy, and I got some help with medication. That helped a lot. The smartest thing I ever did in my life was to marry my wife in 2002. It’s been 17 years, and she’s just a great partner, and very emotionally intelligent, and my best friend. So she helped me through this. And you have kids, too—I have two children, so that puts things in perspective. … All of those things helped me enormously. I’ve since become a big advocate for people—if they’re going through something and they’re having a hard time—talking to somebody, and getting some professional help.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On how late-night TV has changed since he started \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I launched my TV show shortly after Johnny Carson retired, so I’m still part of that era. That’s the era I come into. There’s hardly any late-night shows, and having a late-night show is this incredible rarity. There are very few of them. It’s like you’re a senator in Montana in 1880. You get to keep that job for 80 years and then get buried on your massive ranch. That’s how it felt back then. And of course that all, it started slowly, and then it’s just changed multiple times. And now, if you and I try to right now list all of the late-night shows that exist … we’d be hard-pressed to name them all and would forget some because there are that many. So it’s just different.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And I think when it first starts to happen, the natural reaction is, “How do I maintain my position? How do I keep what I have?” And I think once you realize the foolishness of that, and just what a waste of time it is, and ultimately unproductive, and just say, “You know what? I like a bunch of these other shows. These people are all very good.” And late-night talk shows have become more specialized. … The shows are completely different from each other, and everyone’s working a certain niche, but a lot of them are really good.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>AnnMarie Baldonado and Thea Chaloner produced and edited the audio of this interview. Bridget Bentz, Seth Kelley and Patrick Jarenwattananon adapted it for the Web.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 Fresh Air. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/\">Fresh Air\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=%27Conan+O%27Brien+Needs+A+Friend%27+Is+A+Joke+Name+For+A+Podcast+%E2%80%94+Sort+Of&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Conan O’Brien has been hosting late-night TV shows for 26 years—longer than anyone else currently on the air. So when a colleague suggested he start a podcast, he initially balked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My initial reaction was, ‘Why would I do a podcast? I have a television show,'” O’Brien says. “That should be enough for anybody.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But then O’Brien thought more about the prospect, and he began to reconsider. On television, conversations with guests were constrained by TV cameras and commercial breaks; a podcast would free him to proceed more slowly and dig deeper in conversations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The podcast,\u003ca href=\"https://art19.com/shows/conan-obrien\">\u003cem> Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend\u003c/em>,\u003c/a> featuring O’Brien’s conversations with comics, actors and writers, launched November 2018. Its second season starts Oct. 7.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>O’Brien says the title of the podcast is a joke—sort of. “Sometimes when you’re in the public eye, it can get murky as to who’s really my friend. Who’s going to come visit me in the hospital? Who’s going to come over to my house when my dog dies and drink cocoa with me? Who are those people?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He appreciates how the podcast allows him to “mind meld” with his guests. “Suddenly all these people who I know in the comedy world, and some in the political world who I’ve known, and we’ve chatted, and we’ve had these seven, eight, nine minute chats on television—I can sit down and we can just go down a deep, deep, deep well, and it’s fascinating,” he says.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/nnzp9SXZxvo'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/nnzp9SXZxvo'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003chr>\n\u003ch3>Interview Highlights\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On how the conversations on his podcast differ from those he has with guests on late-night TV \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On television … it’s a very presentational way of having a “conversation.” And this sounds like I’m making a joke, but you need to get makeup. They put makeup on you—especially someone as translucent as I—so that you show up on television. So every day I’m in a chair and they’re painting my skull so that I appear somewhat human. And then the people I’m talking to are painted. And then there’s an audience there and cameras. And so I’ve grown accustomed to that and there’s a lot that I love about it. … But [on the podcast] I’m finding that … I can sit down and have a really long conversation with \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/01/08/683192524/ben-stiller-unlocks-an-old-fashioned-prison-break-in-escape-at-dannemora\">Ben Stiller\u003c/a>—someone who I’ve known since I met him at \u003cem>Saturday Night Live\u003c/em> in, I think, 1990 or 1989—I’ve never really had a long conversation with him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On landing the job as host of \u003c/strong>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Late Night \u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003cstrong>in 1993\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Say what you want about my career: Someone can like me; they can despise me; they can completely not care; or be completely neutral about me; but everyone would have to agree that it’s a really unusual career. Just completely unprecedented. The way that I got onto the \u003cem>Late Night\u003c/em> show was absurd. Basically, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4518912\">Lorne Michaels\u003c/a> took a complete Hail Mary pass and said, “I know this writer and he has very little performing experience besides some improv, but I think he could be good.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And I went to an audition and, because I had no chance, was completely relaxed in the audition and did really well. And then NBC said, “Well, we have no other choice.” I mean, that wouldn’t happen today. Today if there was a major late-night spot open, there would be 600 candidates from 600 different cable shows with thousands of hours of content.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On being on the brink of cancellation during his early career \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I think I was actually canceled at one point in a meeting, and then shortly after the meeting ended they said, “Well, we can’t cancel him yet, because we don’t have his replacement quite ready to go, so let’s un-cancel him, and then cancel him at the next meeting.” And then they just didn’t get around to it. So I was supposed to die about six different times, and just didn’t through some—I don’t know what else to call it other than—dumb luck. And then I think I just got lucky and it caught on just at the right time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On the nationwide comedy tour he did after a period of conflict that led to him giving up the \u003c/strong>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Tonight Show\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003cstrong> in 2010 \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was therapeutic and satisfying. All I ever wanted to do was make people laugh. I know that sounds corny. I just really do love getting in front of people and making them happy, making them laugh. And so getting to do that on a national tour and really delighting these crowds, that was great.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I think the trouble for me came after that tour because I think I emotionally crashed. … I think it was obviously very painful to have to give up the \u003cem>Tonight Show\u003c/em>. And so I avoided that pain by doing this tour where I probably burned 3,000 calories a night, would sweat through my clothes, really give everything I have, then go out and take selfies with a thousand people, then sleep for a couple of hours, but then not be able to sleep on the bus or on the plane. When that tour was over I was skeletal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On getting help after the comedy tour ended \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I had always done some therapy, but I got a lot of therapy, and I got some help with medication. That helped a lot. The smartest thing I ever did in my life was to marry my wife in 2002. It’s been 17 years, and she’s just a great partner, and very emotionally intelligent, and my best friend. So she helped me through this. And you have kids, too—I have two children, so that puts things in perspective. … All of those things helped me enormously. I’ve since become a big advocate for people—if they’re going through something and they’re having a hard time—talking to somebody, and getting some professional help.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On how late-night TV has changed since he started \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I launched my TV show shortly after Johnny Carson retired, so I’m still part of that era. That’s the era I come into. There’s hardly any late-night shows, and having a late-night show is this incredible rarity. There are very few of them. It’s like you’re a senator in Montana in 1880. You get to keep that job for 80 years and then get buried on your massive ranch. That’s how it felt back then. And of course that all, it started slowly, and then it’s just changed multiple times. And now, if you and I try to right now list all of the late-night shows that exist … we’d be hard-pressed to name them all and would forget some because there are that many. 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"content": "\u003cp>Since 2015, under the threat of the Taliban, Afghan filmmakers Hassan Fazili and Fatima Hussaini, along with their two young daughters, have been on the run for their lives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The family fled Afghanistan after the extremist group had called for Fazili’s death over a film he’d made about one of its commanders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even as the refugee family navigates a still-incomplete journey—of death threats, discrimination and paralyzing immigration systems—Fazili and Hussaini turn their cameras on themselves and their daughters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hundreds of hours of footage that Fazili and his family all shot on their three cell phone cameras emerge as the new documentary, \u003cem>Midnight Traveler\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although the film has already started to roll out in theaters, their journey isn’t over. The family awaits a pending application to remain in Germany, where they’ve been living since April 2018.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Filming two years of the family’s three-year quest for safety and stability—from Afghanistan to Hungary—kept Fazili sane, he said in a video statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I felt like a parasite, a lowly person. Sometimes I felt like giving up,” he said. “It was this film that gave me hope. It was this film that gave me the feeling of being alive. Shooting this film gave me the feeling that one day I’d succeed. One day, the problems will end. One day, we’ll arrive at last.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Producer Emelie Mahdavian, who edited the massive catalog of video, met the family through a community of filmmakers in Tajikistan in 2015, where they were applying for protection in other countries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTT-duEoRdc\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an interview with NPR’s \u003cem>All Things Considered, \u003c/em>Mahdavian said she arranged to have a contact to meet the family in each country they passed through, and bring a laptop and a hard drive to back up their most recent footage that the contact could then mail back to her in the U.S.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a first-person account, Mahdavian said the film breaks from traditional journalistic coverage of Europe’s refugee crisis to tell a more humanistic story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Amidst this kind of tension and anxiety of the migrant experience, there’s also still the possibility for humor and joy, and a much more diverse and rich humanity to emerge, when we are in the hands of this family rather than in the hands of an outsider who’s coming and looking for a quick story,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fazili said in a press statement that, behind the camera, he struggled to balance his roles as both a protective parent and an artist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“With this film, the more problems my family has and the more pain and suffering my eyes see, the better the film becomes—and I do not know what my responsibility is at that moment: father or director?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mahdavian told NPR that “moments of high drama [were] punctuated by a lot of time of trying to keep normalcy for their family.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Fleeing for your life involves a lot of being stuck in [refugee] camps and waiting, and for people who are used to working hard, having normal lives, being asked to sit somewhere for 12 months with nothing to do in a small room in really cramped quarters.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the editing process, Mahdavian, a resident of largely conservative rural Idaho, said she considered how audiences that might not be sympathetic to migrants’ stories would receive the film.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What I found—at least in speaking to my friends and neighbors—is that people are open to being honest on a journey with somebody they appreciate not being preached to first,” she said. “That’s part of why it was important to me to not frame their story in advance with politics but to allow their story to stand on its own.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think that’s what allows the film to open a conversation … we really are just trying to allow people to know what this journey is like.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=A+Refugee+Family+Takes+Viewers+On+A+Years-Long+Escape+In+%27Midnight+Traveler%27&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Since 2015, under the threat of the Taliban, Afghan filmmakers Hassan Fazili and Fatima Hussaini, along with their two young daughters, have been on the run for their lives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The family fled Afghanistan after the extremist group had called for Fazili’s death over a film he’d made about one of its commanders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even as the refugee family navigates a still-incomplete journey—of death threats, discrimination and paralyzing immigration systems—Fazili and Hussaini turn their cameras on themselves and their daughters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hundreds of hours of footage that Fazili and his family all shot on their three cell phone cameras emerge as the new documentary, \u003cem>Midnight Traveler\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although the film has already started to roll out in theaters, their journey isn’t over. The family awaits a pending application to remain in Germany, where they’ve been living since April 2018.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Filming two years of the family’s three-year quest for safety and stability—from Afghanistan to Hungary—kept Fazili sane, he said in a video statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I felt like a parasite, a lowly person. Sometimes I felt like giving up,” he said. “It was this film that gave me hope. It was this film that gave me the feeling of being alive. Shooting this film gave me the feeling that one day I’d succeed. One day, the problems will end. One day, we’ll arrive at last.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Producer Emelie Mahdavian, who edited the massive catalog of video, met the family through a community of filmmakers in Tajikistan in 2015, where they were applying for protection in other countries.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/BTT-duEoRdc'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/BTT-duEoRdc'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>In an interview with NPR’s \u003cem>All Things Considered, \u003c/em>Mahdavian said she arranged to have a contact to meet the family in each country they passed through, and bring a laptop and a hard drive to back up their most recent footage that the contact could then mail back to her in the U.S.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a first-person account, Mahdavian said the film breaks from traditional journalistic coverage of Europe’s refugee crisis to tell a more humanistic story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Amidst this kind of tension and anxiety of the migrant experience, there’s also still the possibility for humor and joy, and a much more diverse and rich humanity to emerge, when we are in the hands of this family rather than in the hands of an outsider who’s coming and looking for a quick story,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fazili said in a press statement that, behind the camera, he struggled to balance his roles as both a protective parent and an artist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“With this film, the more problems my family has and the more pain and suffering my eyes see, the better the film becomes—and I do not know what my responsibility is at that moment: father or director?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mahdavian told NPR that “moments of high drama [were] punctuated by a lot of time of trying to keep normalcy for their family.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Fleeing for your life involves a lot of being stuck in [refugee] camps and waiting, and for people who are used to working hard, having normal lives, being asked to sit somewhere for 12 months with nothing to do in a small room in really cramped quarters.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the editing process, Mahdavian, a resident of largely conservative rural Idaho, said she considered how audiences that might not be sympathetic to migrants’ stories would receive the film.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What I found—at least in speaking to my friends and neighbors—is that people are open to being honest on a journey with somebody they appreciate not being preached to first,” she said. “That’s part of why it was important to me to not frame their story in advance with politics but to allow their story to stand on its own.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think that’s what allows the film to open a conversation … we really are just trying to allow people to know what this journey is like.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=A+Refugee+Family+Takes+Viewers+On+A+Years-Long+Escape+In+%27Midnight+Traveler%27&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Renée Zellweger Dazzles In A Go-For-Broke Portrayal Of Judy Garland",
"headTitle": "Renée Zellweger Dazzles In A Go-For-Broke Portrayal Of Judy Garland | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Academy Awards voters can rarely resist a celebrity impersonation, judging by some of the star turns that have won Oscars in recent years. These aren’t just performances; they’re jaw-dropping feats of mimicry. \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2018/02/09/583963660/pop-culture-happy-hour-gary-oldman-jowls-it-up-as-winston-churchill\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Gary Oldman\u003c/a> is Winston Churchill! \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2018/11/21/669850052/you-better-own-this-how-rami-malek-came-to-embody-freddie-mercury\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Rami Malek\u003c/a> is Freddie Mercury!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new film \u003cem>Judy\u003c/em> is being sold along similar lines: Renée Zellweger is Judy Garland! To judge by the breathless hype that has greeted the movie so far, the approach seems to be paying off.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What makes \u003cem>Judy\u003c/em> unusually fascinating for an otherwise-standard celebrity biopic is that Zellweger isn’t Judy Garland: Her transformation is impressive but hardly definitive. Even with the help of a dark wig and skillful makeup and prosthetics, she doesn’t exactly disappear into the role of the beloved singer and actress who captivated the public in movies like \u003cem>The Wizard of Oz\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Meet Me in St. Louis\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But even if you don’t always believe you’re in the presence of Garland, Zellweger nearly makes up in raw emotional commitment what she lacks in verisimilitude. Her intensely felt, go-for-broke performance sometimes runs the risk of overwhelming this sturdy screen adaptation of Peter Quilter’s stage play, \u003cem>End of the Rainbow\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://youtu.be/iJ4mU3oQW3g\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Judy\u003c/em> begins with one of several flashbacks to the teenage Garland on the set of \u003cem>The Wizard of Oz,\u003c/em> showing us how the industry created and destroyed her in the same breath. Her body and image are ruthlessly controlled by the powerful MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer, who puts her on a strict diet and gives her barbiturates and amphetamines, setting in motion the substance-abuse problem that she will struggle with for the rest of her life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But most of the movie is set in 1969, long after her Hollywood heyday and mere months before her death at the age of 47. Judy is now broke and virtually homeless, dragging herself from one crummy L.A. club performance to another. We meet her eldest child, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/artists/15836739/liza-minnelli\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Liza Minnelli\u003c/a>, at a house party, and also Judy’s third husband, Sidney Luft, who takes custody of their two young children while she reluctantly books a gig at The Talk of the Town nightclub in London. Although she’s devastated at being separated from her kids, Judy has little choice but to work overseas, where her fans can still be counted on to turn out in full force.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In London, Judy’s depression and insomnia quickly take over: She pops pills, skips rehearsals and nearly misses opening night. But once she stumbles into the spotlight and starts crooning “By Myself” and “The Trolley Song,” her confidence comes surging back and she enjoys having an appreciative crowd again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One night after a show, Judy, feeling lonely, befriends an adoring couple, Stan and Dan, and joins them for a late dinner at their apartment. In a touching scene, Dan, played by Andy Nyman, reminds Judy how much she means to her many gay fans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The director, Rupert Goold, has a deft way with actors. He gets a lovely performance from Jessie Buckley as Judy’s London handler, Rosalyn Wilder, always there to lend an ear and keep her on schedule. Finn Wittrock plays the aggressively charming music entrepreneur Mickey Deans, who becomes Judy’s fifth and final husband. Their tempestuous union does a number on Judy, who suffers a few drunken onstage meltdowns before rebounding with a climactic performance of “Over the Rainbow” that might just reduce you to tears.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a dazzling showcase for Zellweger, whose commitment is astonishing even when the illusion doesn’t always seize hold. While the actress has a sweetly quavering singing voice, she makes no effort to match Garland’s warm, velvety contralto—reportedly at the instruction of the director himself, who rightly guessed that it would be smarter to channel Garland than to imitate her. Curiously, Zellweger’s physical resemblance to Garland is most pronounced when the camera catches her in profile; she wears the character like a mask that keeps slipping. There’s something poignant about that, since Garland herself struggled to live up to a persona constructed for an audience that could love her one minute and turn on her the next.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Zellweger herself knows something about what it’s like to be chewed up and spat out by the industry machine. After her earlier triumphs in movies like \u003cem>Chicago\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Cold Mountain\u003c/em> (the latter for which she won an Oscar), she struggled for the next decade to find decent roles. She endured much sexist mockery from the entertainment press and only recently returned to filmmaking after a six-year hiatus. Her empathy for her subject is apparent in every scene. Renée Zellweger may not be Judy Garland, but she reminds us that technical perfection is no match for emotional truth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Copyright 2019 \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Fresh Air\u003c/a>.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Academy Awards voters can rarely resist a celebrity impersonation, judging by some of the star turns that have won Oscars in recent years. These aren’t just performances; they’re jaw-dropping feats of mimicry. \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2018/02/09/583963660/pop-culture-happy-hour-gary-oldman-jowls-it-up-as-winston-churchill\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Gary Oldman\u003c/a> is Winston Churchill! \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2018/11/21/669850052/you-better-own-this-how-rami-malek-came-to-embody-freddie-mercury\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Rami Malek\u003c/a> is Freddie Mercury!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new film \u003cem>Judy\u003c/em> is being sold along similar lines: Renée Zellweger is Judy Garland! To judge by the breathless hype that has greeted the movie so far, the approach seems to be paying off.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What makes \u003cem>Judy\u003c/em> unusually fascinating for an otherwise-standard celebrity biopic is that Zellweger isn’t Judy Garland: Her transformation is impressive but hardly definitive. Even with the help of a dark wig and skillful makeup and prosthetics, she doesn’t exactly disappear into the role of the beloved singer and actress who captivated the public in movies like \u003cem>The Wizard of Oz\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Meet Me in St. Louis\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But even if you don’t always believe you’re in the presence of Garland, Zellweger nearly makes up in raw emotional commitment what she lacks in verisimilitude. Her intensely felt, go-for-broke performance sometimes runs the risk of overwhelming this sturdy screen adaptation of Peter Quilter’s stage play, \u003cem>End of the Rainbow\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/iJ4mU3oQW3g'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/iJ4mU3oQW3g'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Judy\u003c/em> begins with one of several flashbacks to the teenage Garland on the set of \u003cem>The Wizard of Oz,\u003c/em> showing us how the industry created and destroyed her in the same breath. Her body and image are ruthlessly controlled by the powerful MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer, who puts her on a strict diet and gives her barbiturates and amphetamines, setting in motion the substance-abuse problem that she will struggle with for the rest of her life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But most of the movie is set in 1969, long after her Hollywood heyday and mere months before her death at the age of 47. Judy is now broke and virtually homeless, dragging herself from one crummy L.A. club performance to another. We meet her eldest child, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/artists/15836739/liza-minnelli\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Liza Minnelli\u003c/a>, at a house party, and also Judy’s third husband, Sidney Luft, who takes custody of their two young children while she reluctantly books a gig at The Talk of the Town nightclub in London. Although she’s devastated at being separated from her kids, Judy has little choice but to work overseas, where her fans can still be counted on to turn out in full force.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In London, Judy’s depression and insomnia quickly take over: She pops pills, skips rehearsals and nearly misses opening night. But once she stumbles into the spotlight and starts crooning “By Myself” and “The Trolley Song,” her confidence comes surging back and she enjoys having an appreciative crowd again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One night after a show, Judy, feeling lonely, befriends an adoring couple, Stan and Dan, and joins them for a late dinner at their apartment. In a touching scene, Dan, played by Andy Nyman, reminds Judy how much she means to her many gay fans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The director, Rupert Goold, has a deft way with actors. He gets a lovely performance from Jessie Buckley as Judy’s London handler, Rosalyn Wilder, always there to lend an ear and keep her on schedule. Finn Wittrock plays the aggressively charming music entrepreneur Mickey Deans, who becomes Judy’s fifth and final husband. Their tempestuous union does a number on Judy, who suffers a few drunken onstage meltdowns before rebounding with a climactic performance of “Over the Rainbow” that might just reduce you to tears.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a dazzling showcase for Zellweger, whose commitment is astonishing even when the illusion doesn’t always seize hold. While the actress has a sweetly quavering singing voice, she makes no effort to match Garland’s warm, velvety contralto—reportedly at the instruction of the director himself, who rightly guessed that it would be smarter to channel Garland than to imitate her. Curiously, Zellweger’s physical resemblance to Garland is most pronounced when the camera catches her in profile; she wears the character like a mask that keeps slipping. There’s something poignant about that, since Garland herself struggled to live up to a persona constructed for an audience that could love her one minute and turn on her the next.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Zellweger herself knows something about what it’s like to be chewed up and spat out by the industry machine. After her earlier triumphs in movies like \u003cem>Chicago\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Cold Mountain\u003c/em> (the latter for which she won an Oscar), she struggled for the next decade to find decent roles. She endured much sexist mockery from the entertainment press and only recently returned to filmmaking after a six-year hiatus. Her empathy for her subject is apparent in every scene. Renée Zellweger may not be Judy Garland, but she reminds us that technical perfection is no match for emotional truth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Copyright 2019 \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Fresh Air\u003c/a>.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "'I Will Survive' Saves Marginalized People a Spot on the Dance Floor",
"headTitle": "‘I Will Survive’ Saves Marginalized People a Spot on the Dance Floor | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>This story is part of American Anthem, a yearlong series on songs that rouse, unite, celebrate and call to action. Find more at\u003c/em> \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/series/622671774/american-anthem\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NPR.org/Anthem\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>Gloria Gaynor has said she’s pretty sure her signature song, the 1978 disco smash “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8f4mytaXttw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">I Will Survive\u003c/a>,” was created just for her. But the singer had to go through a lot before she and the song found each other.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her mother had died a couple years earlier, and Gaynor was still coping with that loss. Then her record label, Polydor, told her they were declining to renew her contract: She’d had a hit in 1975 with her cover of The Jackson 5’s “Never Can Say Goodbye,” but nothing huge since then, and they’d decided she was no longer a good investment. Gaynor soldiered on, but was slogging through a fog of grief and anxiety.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shortly after Polydor told her she was being dropped, Gaynor slipped onstage during a performance at New York’s Beacon Theatre. She finished the performance, then went out to breakfast, and finally, home to bed. “I woke up the next morning paralyzed from the waist down,” she said in a \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-Say4_E91w\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">2013 interview\u003c/a> with Audible, adding: “I’ve always believed that God allowed that to happen so he could get my attention.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Attention secured, Gaynor focused on her recovery. She endured spinal surgery and a three-month hospital stay. When she was released, she left the hospital in an unwieldy back brace that she wore for many more months.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Finally, after a few rough years, her luck began to turn. Polydor changed presidents, and the new guy was a fan. In fact, he was pretty sure he had a comeback hit for Gaynor: a song that a South African girl group had recently done well with, called “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sUhUO9Nny0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Substitute\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As it turned out, Polydor’s new president was unique in his enthusiasm for the record. In his eagerness to get it out, he cut a deal: Producer-songwriters Freddie Perren and Dino Fekaris agreed to record “Substitute” if they could put one of their own songs on the B-side of the single. They invited Gaynor in for a meeting to hear what kinds of lyrics felt most comfortable with performing. In the interview with Audible, she described what happened next.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They said, ‘We think you’re the one that we’ve been waiting for to record this song that we wrote a couple of years ago,’ ” Gaynor explained. “When I read the lyrics, I realized the reason they’d been waiting for me to record that song was that God had given that song to them for them to set aside, waiting for him to get everything in order for me to meet up with them. And that song was ‘I Will Survive.'”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://youtu.be/8f4mytaXttw\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Drummer James Gadson, who in his career has backed up Marvin Gaye and Bill Withers and been featured on hundreds of hit records, was part of the studio band put together for the session. He tells NPR they spent hours laying down tracks for “Substitute,” and were about ready to wrap things up when Freddie Perren asked them to stay a little longer and do one more song.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He said, ‘Well, man, I know everybody’s tired, but let’s just do this one song. In fact, I’ll do the intro.’ He was a great producer, played keyboards,” Gadson says, describing the arpeggio Perren played that became the song’s unmistakable opening sting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We just cut it and that was it, went home,” he says. “Three weeks later: \u003cem>bam\u003c/em>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gaynor took advance copies of the single to Studio 54, the mecca of US discotheques — she’d often sung there, and knew the DJ. “He played it while we were standing there,” she said \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/world-cafe/2019/07/17/742634817/gloria-gaynor-disco-queen-goes-gospel\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">in an interview\u003c/a> with \u003cem>World Cafe\u003c/em> on NPR member station WXPN. “The audience immediately loved it, which told me this is a hit song. New Yorkers don’t immediately love \u003cem>anything\u003c/em> — they are so jaded.” The DJ liked it too — enough that he agreed to take copies and pass them along to other DJs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Released in October 1978, “I Will Survive” was a near-instant hit, eclipsing the planned comeback song on the other side of the record. Within weeks it was playing everywhere, including Europe, where Gaynor was a longtime favorite. The song also coincided with the very beginning of the AIDS crisis, and found a particular resonance within the LGBT community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Karen Tongson, a professor at the University of Southern California who often lectures on pop culture, says she remembers first hearing the song in the 1990s through its cover versions, then learning the history behind Gaynor’s original.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was especially significant for me, because I’d just come out,” she recalls. “The song had long associations with the LGBT community as an anthem … but in my newfound activism, in my new awareness around the different struggles the community faced — particularly around the AIDS crisis — I heard the song with new ears.” [aside postid='arts_13854644']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She wasn’t the only one. Beyond gay communities, “I Will Survive” has become a global anthem for those who have felt politically oppressed, physically challenged or otherwise pushed to society’s margins.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That includes survivors of domestic abuse, for whom Gloria Gaynor herself has become a spokesperson. Cindy Southworth heads the National Network to End Domestic Violence, where Gaynor is an advocate; she remembers when the singer appeared at the organization’s global conference in 2012.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She sang her song,” Southworth says, “and singing along with her were 1,500 advocates from across the globe — many of them survivors themselves, singing in beautiful accents.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, it’s hard to go through life without hearing some version of “I Will Survive.” Its operatic sweep makes it perfect for divas; Diana Ross, Aretha Franklin and Miss Piggy have all had a go. But it’s also been covered by Johnny Mathis and Cake, performed by marching bands and symphony orchestras.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Karen Tongson says it’s the progression of the lyrics from despair to empowerment that make “I Will Survive” a deeply personal song for a lot of people: “That chorus is like coming out of the dark and into the light.” Set to a driving beat, its message is one that anyone who hears it can claim as their own. It is an anthem for people who have survived whatever life has thrown at them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Gloria Gaynor interview audio provided courtesy of Audible and WXPN’s World Café.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2019 \u003ca href=\"http://npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>This story is part of American Anthem, a yearlong series on songs that rouse, unite, celebrate and call to action. Find more at\u003c/em> \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/series/622671774/american-anthem\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NPR.org/Anthem\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>Gloria Gaynor has said she’s pretty sure her signature song, the 1978 disco smash “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8f4mytaXttw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">I Will Survive\u003c/a>,” was created just for her. But the singer had to go through a lot before she and the song found each other.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her mother had died a couple years earlier, and Gaynor was still coping with that loss. Then her record label, Polydor, told her they were declining to renew her contract: She’d had a hit in 1975 with her cover of The Jackson 5’s “Never Can Say Goodbye,” but nothing huge since then, and they’d decided she was no longer a good investment. Gaynor soldiered on, but was slogging through a fog of grief and anxiety.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shortly after Polydor told her she was being dropped, Gaynor slipped onstage during a performance at New York’s Beacon Theatre. She finished the performance, then went out to breakfast, and finally, home to bed. “I woke up the next morning paralyzed from the waist down,” she said in a \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-Say4_E91w\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">2013 interview\u003c/a> with Audible, adding: “I’ve always believed that God allowed that to happen so he could get my attention.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Attention secured, Gaynor focused on her recovery. She endured spinal surgery and a three-month hospital stay. When she was released, she left the hospital in an unwieldy back brace that she wore for many more months.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Finally, after a few rough years, her luck began to turn. Polydor changed presidents, and the new guy was a fan. In fact, he was pretty sure he had a comeback hit for Gaynor: a song that a South African girl group had recently done well with, called “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sUhUO9Nny0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Substitute\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As it turned out, Polydor’s new president was unique in his enthusiasm for the record. In his eagerness to get it out, he cut a deal: Producer-songwriters Freddie Perren and Dino Fekaris agreed to record “Substitute” if they could put one of their own songs on the B-side of the single. They invited Gaynor in for a meeting to hear what kinds of lyrics felt most comfortable with performing. In the interview with Audible, she described what happened next.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They said, ‘We think you’re the one that we’ve been waiting for to record this song that we wrote a couple of years ago,’ ” Gaynor explained. “When I read the lyrics, I realized the reason they’d been waiting for me to record that song was that God had given that song to them for them to set aside, waiting for him to get everything in order for me to meet up with them. And that song was ‘I Will Survive.'”\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/8f4mytaXttw'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/8f4mytaXttw'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Drummer James Gadson, who in his career has backed up Marvin Gaye and Bill Withers and been featured on hundreds of hit records, was part of the studio band put together for the session. He tells NPR they spent hours laying down tracks for “Substitute,” and were about ready to wrap things up when Freddie Perren asked them to stay a little longer and do one more song.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He said, ‘Well, man, I know everybody’s tired, but let’s just do this one song. In fact, I’ll do the intro.’ He was a great producer, played keyboards,” Gadson says, describing the arpeggio Perren played that became the song’s unmistakable opening sting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We just cut it and that was it, went home,” he says. “Three weeks later: \u003cem>bam\u003c/em>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gaynor took advance copies of the single to Studio 54, the mecca of US discotheques — she’d often sung there, and knew the DJ. “He played it while we were standing there,” she said \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/world-cafe/2019/07/17/742634817/gloria-gaynor-disco-queen-goes-gospel\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">in an interview\u003c/a> with \u003cem>World Cafe\u003c/em> on NPR member station WXPN. “The audience immediately loved it, which told me this is a hit song. New Yorkers don’t immediately love \u003cem>anything\u003c/em> — they are so jaded.” The DJ liked it too — enough that he agreed to take copies and pass them along to other DJs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Released in October 1978, “I Will Survive” was a near-instant hit, eclipsing the planned comeback song on the other side of the record. Within weeks it was playing everywhere, including Europe, where Gaynor was a longtime favorite. The song also coincided with the very beginning of the AIDS crisis, and found a particular resonance within the LGBT community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Karen Tongson, a professor at the University of Southern California who often lectures on pop culture, says she remembers first hearing the song in the 1990s through its cover versions, then learning the history behind Gaynor’s original.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was especially significant for me, because I’d just come out,” she recalls. “The song had long associations with the LGBT community as an anthem … but in my newfound activism, in my new awareness around the different struggles the community faced — particularly around the AIDS crisis — I heard the song with new ears.” \u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She wasn’t the only one. Beyond gay communities, “I Will Survive” has become a global anthem for those who have felt politically oppressed, physically challenged or otherwise pushed to society’s margins.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That includes survivors of domestic abuse, for whom Gloria Gaynor herself has become a spokesperson. Cindy Southworth heads the National Network to End Domestic Violence, where Gaynor is an advocate; she remembers when the singer appeared at the organization’s global conference in 2012.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She sang her song,” Southworth says, “and singing along with her were 1,500 advocates from across the globe — many of them survivors themselves, singing in beautiful accents.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, it’s hard to go through life without hearing some version of “I Will Survive.” Its operatic sweep makes it perfect for divas; Diana Ross, Aretha Franklin and Miss Piggy have all had a go. But it’s also been covered by Johnny Mathis and Cake, performed by marching bands and symphony orchestras.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Karen Tongson says it’s the progression of the lyrics from despair to empowerment that make “I Will Survive” a deeply personal song for a lot of people: “That chorus is like coming out of the dark and into the light.” Set to a driving beat, its message is one that anyone who hears it can claim as their own. It is an anthem for people who have survived whatever life has thrown at them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "6 1/2 Reasons 'Between Two Ferns: The Movie' Defies The Sketch-Into-Movie Curse",
"headTitle": "6 1/2 Reasons ‘Between Two Ferns: The Movie’ Defies The Sketch-Into-Movie Curse | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>The premise was simple. Clean. Direct. If one were feeling uncharitable, one might even say \u003cem>thin\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a series of 21 videos posted to Will Ferrell’s Funny or Die website, comedian Zach Galifianakis played a version of himself, interviewing celebrities. That was it. Now: It was a \u003cem>pinched \u003c/em>version of himself. A bored, distracted, irritable Zach Galifianakis, lobbing questions that were condescending and dismissive at best, and jaw-droppingly insulting at worst.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The celebrities were A-list: Brad Pitt, Natalie Portman, Bradley Cooper, Steve Carell. The setting was distinctly D-minus-list: two chairs, a black background curtain, and two large ferns. Everything about it—the harsh lighting, the static camera, the blocky, frequently misspelled chyrons—was meant to evoke the lawless frontier of public access television, where both Galifianakis and his \u003cem>Between Two Ferns\u003c/em> co-creator Scott Aukerman \u003cem>(Comedy Bang Bang)\u003c/em> got their starts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Episodes were brief: a tight three minutes and change in the early going, and later, once they hit the big time with Very Special Episodes featuring Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, nearly seven.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The news that Netflix would release a \u003cem>Between Two Ferns\u003c/em> movie (which dropped on Friday, Sept. 20) caused fans of the Web series to experience that alchemical mixture of excitement and dread that has become the defining mood of this, our current era of ceaseless reboots and relaunches. “It’s a great show,” we thought, “but it’s … a sketch, basically. And movies made out of sketches tend to …” and here we fell silent, and lowered our eyes to the floor, and perhaps we turned around in a circle three times and spat, to ward off the curse of \u003cem>It’s Pat\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And not just \u003cem>It’s Pat,\u003c/em> of course, but also \u003cem>A Night at the Roxbury,\u003c/em> and \u003cem>The Ladies’ Man,\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Stuart Saves His Family\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Now hold up,” you say. “What about \u003cem>MacGruber\u003c/em>? \u003cem>MacGruber\u003c/em> worked. And \u003cem>Wayne’s World\u003c/em>. And \u003cem>Blues Brothers,\u003c/em> after all, come on.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We agree about \u003cem>MacGruber, \u003c/em>you and I. But the three examples you listed are exceptions. And besides, for every \u003cem>Wayne’s World,\u003c/em> there’s a \u003cem>Wayne’s World 2.\u003c/em> And for every \u003cem>Blues Brothers,\u003c/em> there is, alas, a \u003cem>Blues Brothers 2000\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The point is: It is prohibitively difficult to transform a five-minute sketch into a feature-length film. But \u003cem>Between Two Ferns: The Movie\u003c/em> manages to pull it off, for 6 1/2 reasons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjljgkCQv5c\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>The 6 1/2 Reasons \u003c/strong>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Between Two Ferns: The Movie\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003cstrong> Defies The Sketch-Into-Movie Curse\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>1. It commits to the bit(s) …\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>BTF: TM\u003c/em> knows what we want, and wastes no time delivering it. It quickly sets up a rickety plot device that sends Galifianakis and a small group of cohorts on the road, searching for 10 celebrities to interview and thus deliver unto us precisely what the Web series did: celebrities we’re used to seeing being fawned over on red carpets instead enduring a passive-aggressive (and sometimes aggressive-aggressive) fileting by a truculent, beardy oaf wearing tube socks under his chinos.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first such interview, with a sullen Matthew McConaughey, gives us both interviewer and interviewee in fine form, before subjecting them to … well. You’ll see.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>2. … And then builds them out\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If the movie simply contented itself with delivering those celebrity interviews—if it offered us nothing but A-listers like Brie Larson and Tiffany Haddish looking pained and discomfited under the barrage of Galifianakis goofery—it would seem like little more than a supercut of the Web series. Which would be fine, if less than truly satisfying.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, the film justifies its existence by assiduously creating the world around that sad little set we’ve come to know so well—firstly, the public access television station of Flinch, the small North Carolina town in which this alternate-universe Zach Galifianakis churns out his show in relative obscurity. We meet his co-workers, who, we learn, regard him with everything from admiration (rare) to outright disdain (common), and he tells us (technically, he tells the documentary crew he has hired to chronicle his life) of his dream—a national talk show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We meet this reality’s version of Will Ferrell, a pompous, coked-out media mogul only too happy to exploit the bumbling host of the small-town public access talk show he has “discovered.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every additional element isn’t simply there to pad the story—they each lend their own comedic weight, which increases the film’s narrative momentum. That proves important, and it’s something most other movies made from the bones of comedy sketches have failed to execute.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>3. It casts the right people …\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the early going, the film leans into the mockumentary device, featuring testimonials from Galifianakis’ co-workers, but—perhaps owing to the fact that the movie was largely improvised—that familiar narrative infrastructure quickly collapses, and it resurfaces only fitfully as the story unfolds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, the film depends on the characters—which is to say the improv comedians—around Galifianakis to ground the film, to ablate the interviews’ caustic edge of ironic anti-comedy, and find its heart. In doing so, it pulls from the company of actors who’ve appeared on Aukerman’s \u003cem>Comedy Bang Bang\u003c/em> podcast and (late, lamented) television series (Lauren Lapkus, Ryan Gaul, Paul Rust, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-him Paul F. Tompkins) as well as newish faces like Jiavani Linayao, as a boom operator named … Boom Boom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The celebrities featured in the film’s interviews gamely play along, some more entertainingly than others, and this variance lends these segments, and the film around them, a satisfying texture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>4. … And uses them well\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The core team that Galifianakis takes with him on the road—earnest assistant Carol (Lapkus), surly camera operator Cam (Gaul) and warmly empathetic Boom Boom (Linayao) are given sufficient screen time to play off Galifianakis’ not-quite-one-note vain witlessness. This allows the nature of their respective relationships to him to grow and change, slightly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, certain celebrity interviews work to serve the larger story even as they supply the yuks. David Letterman becomes a kind of reluctant (\u003cem>deeply \u003c/em>reluctant) mentor, and Peter Dinklage supplies the film with a key plot development that propels it into its third act.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>4a. Lauren Lapkus\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I know I already mentioned Lapkus above, but her contribution here deserves a special shout-out. As Galifianakis’ concerned assistant Carol, she provides the film with its much needed emotional throughline—without her, the whole affair would soon devolve into glib silliness. Or more precisely: into nothing \u003cem>but \u003c/em>glib silliness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now of course, hers is an outsize, performative sincerity, but in the face of the movie’s sustained archness, she provides us with someone to root for during the quiet, surprisingly emotional moments.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Also? Not for nothing? Her opening bit with the iMac is such a dumb, good joke.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>5. Brevity\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>82 minutes! Just enough! Not too much!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>6. Joke density\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And so we arrive at the true secret of \u003cem>Between Two Ferns: The Movie\u003c/em>‘s singular success—the thing it knows that other sketch-into-movies (with the notable exception of \u003cem>MacGruber\u003c/em>) did not.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Joke density. Gag-per-minute frequency.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The sheer onslaught of stupid, silly, dumb, witless jokes serves twin purposes: It keeps us watching, and laughing, instead of checking our phones; and it ensures that \u003cem>BTF:TM\u003c/em> rewards repeat viewings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now: Critics who write about comedies are sorely tempted to give away some of their favorite jokes. It’s understandable, inasmuch as it provides readers with a palpable sense of the shape and tone and quality of the humor under review. But I’m both a critic and a comedy nerd, and when it comes to reviewing comedies, the latter aspect prevails; I bend over backward to avoid spoiling jokes, which are best experienced fresh.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But given the sheer number of good, solid, very dumb jokes in \u003cem>Between Two Ferns: The Movie,\u003c/em> I feel confident that I can list, with a certain amount of deliberate obfuscation, those jokes so good they managed to elicit in me a bark-laugh, upon repeated viewings, every single time:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>The Monopoly joke\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Lapkus’ delivery of “Too many A’s!”\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>The Chrissy Teigen origin story\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Galifianakis’ facial reaction to the cape/cloak distinction\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>The carton. My God, the carton\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>“MY PRECIOUS EGGS!”\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>The password joke\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Galifianakis’ variant pronunciation of the word “ruined,” which, weirdly enough, precisely echoes that of John Mulaney’s character in the \u003cem>Documentary Now! \u003c/em>episode “Co-op.”\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One last thing: The closing credits include outtakes from the film’s celebrity interviews, including several instances of Galifianakis breaking into laughter—and breaking character—over the cruelty of the question he just posed. It’s fascinating, and \u003cem>very \u003c/em>funny, but it completely punctures the entire conceit. Be warned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=6+1%2F2+Reasons+%27Between+Two+Ferns%3A+The+Movie%27+Defies+The+Sketch-Into-Movie+Curse&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "The 'Between Two Ferns' movie that dropped last week on Netflix expands on the Web series' proven formula, but its sheer joke density rewards repeat viewings.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The premise was simple. Clean. Direct. If one were feeling uncharitable, one might even say \u003cem>thin\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a series of 21 videos posted to Will Ferrell’s Funny or Die website, comedian Zach Galifianakis played a version of himself, interviewing celebrities. That was it. Now: It was a \u003cem>pinched \u003c/em>version of himself. A bored, distracted, irritable Zach Galifianakis, lobbing questions that were condescending and dismissive at best, and jaw-droppingly insulting at worst.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The celebrities were A-list: Brad Pitt, Natalie Portman, Bradley Cooper, Steve Carell. The setting was distinctly D-minus-list: two chairs, a black background curtain, and two large ferns. Everything about it—the harsh lighting, the static camera, the blocky, frequently misspelled chyrons—was meant to evoke the lawless frontier of public access television, where both Galifianakis and his \u003cem>Between Two Ferns\u003c/em> co-creator Scott Aukerman \u003cem>(Comedy Bang Bang)\u003c/em> got their starts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Episodes were brief: a tight three minutes and change in the early going, and later, once they hit the big time with Very Special Episodes featuring Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, nearly seven.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The news that Netflix would release a \u003cem>Between Two Ferns\u003c/em> movie (which dropped on Friday, Sept. 20) caused fans of the Web series to experience that alchemical mixture of excitement and dread that has become the defining mood of this, our current era of ceaseless reboots and relaunches. “It’s a great show,” we thought, “but it’s … a sketch, basically. And movies made out of sketches tend to …” and here we fell silent, and lowered our eyes to the floor, and perhaps we turned around in a circle three times and spat, to ward off the curse of \u003cem>It’s Pat\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And not just \u003cem>It’s Pat,\u003c/em> of course, but also \u003cem>A Night at the Roxbury,\u003c/em> and \u003cem>The Ladies’ Man,\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Stuart Saves His Family\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Now hold up,” you say. “What about \u003cem>MacGruber\u003c/em>? \u003cem>MacGruber\u003c/em> worked. And \u003cem>Wayne’s World\u003c/em>. And \u003cem>Blues Brothers,\u003c/em> after all, come on.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We agree about \u003cem>MacGruber, \u003c/em>you and I. But the three examples you listed are exceptions. And besides, for every \u003cem>Wayne’s World,\u003c/em> there’s a \u003cem>Wayne’s World 2.\u003c/em> And for every \u003cem>Blues Brothers,\u003c/em> there is, alas, a \u003cem>Blues Brothers 2000\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The point is: It is prohibitively difficult to transform a five-minute sketch into a feature-length film. But \u003cem>Between Two Ferns: The Movie\u003c/em> manages to pull it off, for 6 1/2 reasons.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/OjljgkCQv5c'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/OjljgkCQv5c'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>The 6 1/2 Reasons \u003c/strong>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Between Two Ferns: The Movie\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003cstrong> Defies The Sketch-Into-Movie Curse\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>1. It commits to the bit(s) …\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>BTF: TM\u003c/em> knows what we want, and wastes no time delivering it. It quickly sets up a rickety plot device that sends Galifianakis and a small group of cohorts on the road, searching for 10 celebrities to interview and thus deliver unto us precisely what the Web series did: celebrities we’re used to seeing being fawned over on red carpets instead enduring a passive-aggressive (and sometimes aggressive-aggressive) fileting by a truculent, beardy oaf wearing tube socks under his chinos.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first such interview, with a sullen Matthew McConaughey, gives us both interviewer and interviewee in fine form, before subjecting them to … well. You’ll see.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>2. … And then builds them out\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If the movie simply contented itself with delivering those celebrity interviews—if it offered us nothing but A-listers like Brie Larson and Tiffany Haddish looking pained and discomfited under the barrage of Galifianakis goofery—it would seem like little more than a supercut of the Web series. Which would be fine, if less than truly satisfying.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, the film justifies its existence by assiduously creating the world around that sad little set we’ve come to know so well—firstly, the public access television station of Flinch, the small North Carolina town in which this alternate-universe Zach Galifianakis churns out his show in relative obscurity. We meet his co-workers, who, we learn, regard him with everything from admiration (rare) to outright disdain (common), and he tells us (technically, he tells the documentary crew he has hired to chronicle his life) of his dream—a national talk show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We meet this reality’s version of Will Ferrell, a pompous, coked-out media mogul only too happy to exploit the bumbling host of the small-town public access talk show he has “discovered.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every additional element isn’t simply there to pad the story—they each lend their own comedic weight, which increases the film’s narrative momentum. That proves important, and it’s something most other movies made from the bones of comedy sketches have failed to execute.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>3. It casts the right people …\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the early going, the film leans into the mockumentary device, featuring testimonials from Galifianakis’ co-workers, but—perhaps owing to the fact that the movie was largely improvised—that familiar narrative infrastructure quickly collapses, and it resurfaces only fitfully as the story unfolds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, the film depends on the characters—which is to say the improv comedians—around Galifianakis to ground the film, to ablate the interviews’ caustic edge of ironic anti-comedy, and find its heart. In doing so, it pulls from the company of actors who’ve appeared on Aukerman’s \u003cem>Comedy Bang Bang\u003c/em> podcast and (late, lamented) television series (Lauren Lapkus, Ryan Gaul, Paul Rust, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-him Paul F. Tompkins) as well as newish faces like Jiavani Linayao, as a boom operator named … Boom Boom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The celebrities featured in the film’s interviews gamely play along, some more entertainingly than others, and this variance lends these segments, and the film around them, a satisfying texture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>4. … And uses them well\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The core team that Galifianakis takes with him on the road—earnest assistant Carol (Lapkus), surly camera operator Cam (Gaul) and warmly empathetic Boom Boom (Linayao) are given sufficient screen time to play off Galifianakis’ not-quite-one-note vain witlessness. This allows the nature of their respective relationships to him to grow and change, slightly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, certain celebrity interviews work to serve the larger story even as they supply the yuks. David Letterman becomes a kind of reluctant (\u003cem>deeply \u003c/em>reluctant) mentor, and Peter Dinklage supplies the film with a key plot development that propels it into its third act.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>4a. Lauren Lapkus\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I know I already mentioned Lapkus above, but her contribution here deserves a special shout-out. As Galifianakis’ concerned assistant Carol, she provides the film with its much needed emotional throughline—without her, the whole affair would soon devolve into glib silliness. Or more precisely: into nothing \u003cem>but \u003c/em>glib silliness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now of course, hers is an outsize, performative sincerity, but in the face of the movie’s sustained archness, she provides us with someone to root for during the quiet, surprisingly emotional moments.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Also? Not for nothing? Her opening bit with the iMac is such a dumb, good joke.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>5. Brevity\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>82 minutes! Just enough! Not too much!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>6. Joke density\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And so we arrive at the true secret of \u003cem>Between Two Ferns: The Movie\u003c/em>‘s singular success—the thing it knows that other sketch-into-movies (with the notable exception of \u003cem>MacGruber\u003c/em>) did not.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Joke density. Gag-per-minute frequency.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The sheer onslaught of stupid, silly, dumb, witless jokes serves twin purposes: It keeps us watching, and laughing, instead of checking our phones; and it ensures that \u003cem>BTF:TM\u003c/em> rewards repeat viewings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now: Critics who write about comedies are sorely tempted to give away some of their favorite jokes. It’s understandable, inasmuch as it provides readers with a palpable sense of the shape and tone and quality of the humor under review. But I’m both a critic and a comedy nerd, and when it comes to reviewing comedies, the latter aspect prevails; I bend over backward to avoid spoiling jokes, which are best experienced fresh.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But given the sheer number of good, solid, very dumb jokes in \u003cem>Between Two Ferns: The Movie,\u003c/em> I feel confident that I can list, with a certain amount of deliberate obfuscation, those jokes so good they managed to elicit in me a bark-laugh, upon repeated viewings, every single time:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>The Monopoly joke\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Lapkus’ delivery of “Too many A’s!”\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>The Chrissy Teigen origin story\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Galifianakis’ facial reaction to the cape/cloak distinction\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>The carton. My God, the carton\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>“MY PRECIOUS EGGS!”\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>The password joke\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Galifianakis’ variant pronunciation of the word “ruined,” which, weirdly enough, precisely echoes that of John Mulaney’s character in the \u003cem>Documentary Now! \u003c/em>episode “Co-op.”\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One last thing: The closing credits include outtakes from the film’s celebrity interviews, including several instances of Galifianakis breaking into laughter—and breaking character—over the cruelty of the question he just posed. It’s fascinating, and \u003cem>very \u003c/em>funny, but it completely punctures the entire conceit. Be warned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=6+1%2F2+Reasons+%27Between+Two+Ferns%3A+The+Movie%27+Defies+The+Sketch-Into-Movie+Curse&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "In Golden Age Hollywood, Film Stars Slid Into Each Others' Telegrams",
"headTitle": "In Golden Age Hollywood, Film Stars Slid Into Each Others’ Telegrams | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Ingrid Bergman was a so-so typist. Katharine Hepburn’s signature was indecipherable. Marlene Dietrich signed her letter to Ernest Hemingway as “Your Kraut.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A collection of letters, memos, telegrams and other written communiques from the golden age of Hollywood are collected in a new book. \u003cem>Letters from Hollywood\u003c/em>, edited and compiled by Barbara Hall and Rocky Lang, is a delicious peek into very famous people’s private lives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Take Audrey Hepburn. On screen, she was perfection: the bangs, the long cigarette-holder in \u003cem>Breakfast at Tiffany’s\u003c/em>, the lavish hat at Ascot in \u003cem>My Fair Lady\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13867154\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13867154\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/lettersfromhollywood_p_p289a_enl-72bffeaf34d442b672b6eba388f42ef7626e72fa-800x1037.jpg\" alt=\"In a letter to the director of 'My Fair Lady,' Audrey Hepburn asks for costume designer Cecil Beaton to send her the designs for her footwear—such that her bootmaker could replicate them. A replication of the note appears in 'Letters from Hollywood.'\" width=\"800\" height=\"1037\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/lettersfromhollywood_p_p289a_enl-72bffeaf34d442b672b6eba388f42ef7626e72fa-800x1037.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/lettersfromhollywood_p_p289a_enl-72bffeaf34d442b672b6eba388f42ef7626e72fa-160x207.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/lettersfromhollywood_p_p289a_enl-72bffeaf34d442b672b6eba388f42ef7626e72fa-768x995.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/lettersfromhollywood_p_p289a_enl-72bffeaf34d442b672b6eba388f42ef7626e72fa-1020x1322.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/lettersfromhollywood_p_p289a_enl-72bffeaf34d442b672b6eba388f42ef7626e72fa-926x1200.jpg 926w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/lettersfromhollywood_p_p289a_enl-72bffeaf34d442b672b6eba388f42ef7626e72fa.jpg 1353w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">In a letter to the director of ‘My Fair Lady,’ Audrey Hepburn asks for costume designer Cecil Beaton to send her the designs for her footwear—such that her bootmaker could replicate them. A replication of the note appears in ‘Letters from Hollywood.’ \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Sean Hepburn Ferrer & Luca Dotti/Abrams Books)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In 1963, after seeing \u003cem>the My Fair Lady\u003c/em> script for the first time, she wrote the director (in perfect schoolgirl penmanship) of her delight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>It’s MARVELLOUS, I am beyond myself with happiness and excitement! It is all so good and so solid, warm funny and enchanting. I just pray every day to be as good as the role, or is that too much to ask for? All the wonder of the musical and the play are there, it’s just smashing!\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>But perfect Audrey, it seems, had bad feet. Hepburn asks for the designer’s sketches of her shoes so that her private bootmaker in Paris can cobble them for the movie.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>One is an awful lot on ones feet when working—and since my days in the ballet I have had “trouble with me feet” unless properly “shoed.” … It does make all the difference.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>“I think it’s the kind of thing that it’s great to learn about an actress,” co-author and film historian Barbara Hall says. “We think of them—sort of put them on a pedestal, but really, she was a regular person, and obviously a very charming one.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In other words, she was a great star who knew what she needed to do her best work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bette Davis was also like that. A winner of two Oscars, she’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPPJdOGshUM\">famous for the immortal line\u003c/a> from \u003cem>All About Eve\u003c/em>: “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Years before \u003cem>Eve\u003c/em>, Bette Davis was exhausted, overworked. Hollywood studios controlled their actors in those days, and there was little rest for Warner Brothers’ biggest star.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They just kept putting her in more and more films,” Hall says. “And she felt like she needed more time between projects.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Davis wanted to make fewer pictures every year—more time off between movies. So she wrote (again, by hand) to studio head Jack Warner, protesting her contract. She ended her very firm letter:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Would appreciate your not communicating with me—it upsets me very much. I must be allowed to completely forget business. … Also arguing with me is no use—nor do I want to come back until it is settled—\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13867163\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 400px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13867163\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/9781419738098_vert-7bbdaba24c3e706b9c2cd6742b89d419a9554094-s600-c85.jpg\" alt=\"‘Letters from Hollywood’ by Rocky Lang, Barbara Hall and Peter Bogdanovich.\" width=\"400\" height=\"547\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/9781419738098_vert-7bbdaba24c3e706b9c2cd6742b89d419a9554094-s600-c85.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/9781419738098_vert-7bbdaba24c3e706b9c2cd6742b89d419a9554094-s600-c85-160x219.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Letters from Hollywood’ by Rocky Lang, Barbara Hall and Peter Bogdanovich. \u003ccite>(Harry N. Abrams)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Another letter-writer in this collection is Hattie McDaniel, the first African American to win an Oscar (for best supporting actress) as Mammy in 1939’s \u003cem>Gone with the Wind\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>McDaniel was a busy actor in the 1930s and ’40s—always playing a maid or servant. In 1947, she thanked gossip columnist Hedda Hopper for printing kind words about her. But others criticized her for taking so many servant roles. McDaniel wrote:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Truly, a maid or butler in real life is making an honest dollar, just as we are on the screen. I only hope that producers will give us Negro actors and actresses more roles, even if there will be those who call us Uncle Toms.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>The NAACP and other civil rights organizations had started pressuring studios to get rid of stereotypical roles like McDaniel was playing—the only parts African Americans could get then. The protests had a bitter result for the Oscar-winner: Hattie McDaniel found that she was getting fewer and fewer roles in the immediate postwar years, because they weren’t being written.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Among the 137 items in this book is a telegram to director William Wyler, sent in 1937 by an extremely precocious star-to-be.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>I ADMIRE YOUR PICTURES AND WOULD LIKE TO WORK FOR YOU I AM EIGHTEEN MINUTES OLD BLONDE HAIR BLUE EYES WEIGHT EIGHT POUNDS, AND I HAVE BEEN CALLED BEAUTIFUL MY FATHER WAS AN ACTOR=\u003cbr>\nJAYNE SEYMOUR FONDA.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>The real author of the telegram was Henry Fonda—Jane Fonda’s father. So in his reply to the new baby, Wyler wrote that he wanted to make a screen test of her as soon as possible. But he also took a playful shot at her dad: “WE FEEL IT OUR DUTY TO CORRECT ANY ILLUSION YOU MAY HAVE BEEN UNDER IN THE PAST … YOUR FATHER NEVER WAS AN ACTOR.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Letters from Hollywood \u003c/em>is subtitled \u003cem>Inside the Private World of Classic American Moviemaking\u003c/em>. These are very personal letters from stars, directors, heads of studios. So is it an invasion of privacy to publish them?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t think so,” says Peter Bogdanovich, the director, writer, actor, film historian and author of the book’s foreword. “It’s history.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Nina Gregory edited this story for broadcast.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=In+Golden+Age+Hollywood%2C+Film+Stars+Slid+Into+Each+Others%27+Telegrams&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Ingrid Bergman was a so-so typist. Katharine Hepburn’s signature was indecipherable. Marlene Dietrich signed her letter to Ernest Hemingway as “Your Kraut.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A collection of letters, memos, telegrams and other written communiques from the golden age of Hollywood are collected in a new book. \u003cem>Letters from Hollywood\u003c/em>, edited and compiled by Barbara Hall and Rocky Lang, is a delicious peek into very famous people’s private lives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Take Audrey Hepburn. On screen, she was perfection: the bangs, the long cigarette-holder in \u003cem>Breakfast at Tiffany’s\u003c/em>, the lavish hat at Ascot in \u003cem>My Fair Lady\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13867154\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13867154\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/lettersfromhollywood_p_p289a_enl-72bffeaf34d442b672b6eba388f42ef7626e72fa-800x1037.jpg\" alt=\"In a letter to the director of 'My Fair Lady,' Audrey Hepburn asks for costume designer Cecil Beaton to send her the designs for her footwear—such that her bootmaker could replicate them. A replication of the note appears in 'Letters from Hollywood.'\" width=\"800\" height=\"1037\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/lettersfromhollywood_p_p289a_enl-72bffeaf34d442b672b6eba388f42ef7626e72fa-800x1037.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/lettersfromhollywood_p_p289a_enl-72bffeaf34d442b672b6eba388f42ef7626e72fa-160x207.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/lettersfromhollywood_p_p289a_enl-72bffeaf34d442b672b6eba388f42ef7626e72fa-768x995.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/lettersfromhollywood_p_p289a_enl-72bffeaf34d442b672b6eba388f42ef7626e72fa-1020x1322.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/lettersfromhollywood_p_p289a_enl-72bffeaf34d442b672b6eba388f42ef7626e72fa-926x1200.jpg 926w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/lettersfromhollywood_p_p289a_enl-72bffeaf34d442b672b6eba388f42ef7626e72fa.jpg 1353w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">In a letter to the director of ‘My Fair Lady,’ Audrey Hepburn asks for costume designer Cecil Beaton to send her the designs for her footwear—such that her bootmaker could replicate them. A replication of the note appears in ‘Letters from Hollywood.’ \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Sean Hepburn Ferrer & Luca Dotti/Abrams Books)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In 1963, after seeing \u003cem>the My Fair Lady\u003c/em> script for the first time, she wrote the director (in perfect schoolgirl penmanship) of her delight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>It’s MARVELLOUS, I am beyond myself with happiness and excitement! It is all so good and so solid, warm funny and enchanting. I just pray every day to be as good as the role, or is that too much to ask for? All the wonder of the musical and the play are there, it’s just smashing!\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>But perfect Audrey, it seems, had bad feet. Hepburn asks for the designer’s sketches of her shoes so that her private bootmaker in Paris can cobble them for the movie.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>One is an awful lot on ones feet when working—and since my days in the ballet I have had “trouble with me feet” unless properly “shoed.” … It does make all the difference.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>“I think it’s the kind of thing that it’s great to learn about an actress,” co-author and film historian Barbara Hall says. “We think of them—sort of put them on a pedestal, but really, she was a regular person, and obviously a very charming one.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In other words, she was a great star who knew what she needed to do her best work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bette Davis was also like that. A winner of two Oscars, she’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPPJdOGshUM\">famous for the immortal line\u003c/a> from \u003cem>All About Eve\u003c/em>: “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Years before \u003cem>Eve\u003c/em>, Bette Davis was exhausted, overworked. Hollywood studios controlled their actors in those days, and there was little rest for Warner Brothers’ biggest star.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They just kept putting her in more and more films,” Hall says. “And she felt like she needed more time between projects.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Davis wanted to make fewer pictures every year—more time off between movies. So she wrote (again, by hand) to studio head Jack Warner, protesting her contract. She ended her very firm letter:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Would appreciate your not communicating with me—it upsets me very much. I must be allowed to completely forget business. … Also arguing with me is no use—nor do I want to come back until it is settled—\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13867163\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 400px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13867163\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/9781419738098_vert-7bbdaba24c3e706b9c2cd6742b89d419a9554094-s600-c85.jpg\" alt=\"‘Letters from Hollywood’ by Rocky Lang, Barbara Hall and Peter Bogdanovich.\" width=\"400\" height=\"547\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/9781419738098_vert-7bbdaba24c3e706b9c2cd6742b89d419a9554094-s600-c85.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/9781419738098_vert-7bbdaba24c3e706b9c2cd6742b89d419a9554094-s600-c85-160x219.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Letters from Hollywood’ by Rocky Lang, Barbara Hall and Peter Bogdanovich. \u003ccite>(Harry N. Abrams)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Another letter-writer in this collection is Hattie McDaniel, the first African American to win an Oscar (for best supporting actress) as Mammy in 1939’s \u003cem>Gone with the Wind\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>McDaniel was a busy actor in the 1930s and ’40s—always playing a maid or servant. In 1947, she thanked gossip columnist Hedda Hopper for printing kind words about her. But others criticized her for taking so many servant roles. McDaniel wrote:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Truly, a maid or butler in real life is making an honest dollar, just as we are on the screen. I only hope that producers will give us Negro actors and actresses more roles, even if there will be those who call us Uncle Toms.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>The NAACP and other civil rights organizations had started pressuring studios to get rid of stereotypical roles like McDaniel was playing—the only parts African Americans could get then. The protests had a bitter result for the Oscar-winner: Hattie McDaniel found that she was getting fewer and fewer roles in the immediate postwar years, because they weren’t being written.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Among the 137 items in this book is a telegram to director William Wyler, sent in 1937 by an extremely precocious star-to-be.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>I ADMIRE YOUR PICTURES AND WOULD LIKE TO WORK FOR YOU I AM EIGHTEEN MINUTES OLD BLONDE HAIR BLUE EYES WEIGHT EIGHT POUNDS, AND I HAVE BEEN CALLED BEAUTIFUL MY FATHER WAS AN ACTOR=\u003cbr>\nJAYNE SEYMOUR FONDA.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>The real author of the telegram was Henry Fonda—Jane Fonda’s father. So in his reply to the new baby, Wyler wrote that he wanted to make a screen test of her as soon as possible. But he also took a playful shot at her dad: “WE FEEL IT OUR DUTY TO CORRECT ANY ILLUSION YOU MAY HAVE BEEN UNDER IN THE PAST … YOUR FATHER NEVER WAS AN ACTOR.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Letters from Hollywood \u003c/em>is subtitled \u003cem>Inside the Private World of Classic American Moviemaking\u003c/em>. These are very personal letters from stars, directors, heads of studios. So is it an invasion of privacy to publish them?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t think so,” says Peter Bogdanovich, the director, writer, actor, film historian and author of the book’s foreword. “It’s history.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Nina Gregory edited this story for broadcast.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=In+Golden+Age+Hollywood%2C+Film+Stars+Slid+Into+Each+Others%27+Telegrams&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"rss": "https://podcasts.files.bbci.co.uk/p02nq0gn.rss"
}
},
"californiareport": {
"id": "californiareport",
"title": "The California Report",
"tagline": "California, day by day",
"info": "KQED’s statewide radio news program providing daily coverage of issues, trends and public policy decisions.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-California-Report-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareport",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 8
},
"link": "/californiareport",
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}
},
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"id": "californiareportmagazine",
"title": "The California Report Magazine",
"tagline": "Your state, your stories",
"info": "Every week, The California Report Magazine takes you on a road trip for the ears: to visit the places and meet the people who make California unique. The in-depth storytelling podcast from the California Report.",
"airtime": "FRI 4:30pm-5pm, 6:30pm-7pm, 11pm-11:30pm",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareportmagazine",
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"order": 10
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM3NjkwNjk1OTAz",
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}
},
"city-arts": {
"id": "city-arts",
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"info": "A one-hour radio program to hear celebrated writers, artists and thinkers address contemporary ideas and values, often discussing the creative process. Please note: tapes or transcripts are not available",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/05/cityartsandlecture-300x300.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.cityarts.net/",
"airtime": "SUN 1pm-2pm, TUE 10pm, WED 1am",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "City Arts & Lectures"
},
"link": "https://www.cityarts.net",
"subscribe": {
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/City-Arts-and-Lectures-p692/",
"rss": "https://www.cityarts.net/feed/"
}
},
"closealltabs": {
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"info": "Close All Tabs breaks down how digital culture shapes our world through thoughtful insights and irreverent humor.",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/closealltabs",
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"order": 1
},
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"title": "Code Switch / Life Kit",
"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
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"meta": {
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubnByLm9yZy9yc3MvcG9kY2FzdC5waHA_aWQ9NTEwMzEy",
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
"airtime": "THU 10pm, FRI 1am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
"link": "/radio/program/commonwealth-club",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/commonwealth-club-of-california-podcast/id976334034?mt=2",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tb253ZWFsdGhjbHViLm9yZy9hdWRpby9wb2RjYXN0L3dlZWtseS54bWw",
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}
},
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"id": "forum",
"title": "Forum",
"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9am-11am, 10pm-11pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Forum with Mina Kim and Alexis Madrigal",
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"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 9
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM5NTU3MzgxNjMz",
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"id": "freakonomics-radio",
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"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/freakonomicsRadio.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://freakonomics.com/",
"airtime": "SUN 1am-2am, SAT 3pm-4pm",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WNYC"
},
"link": "/radio/program/freakonomics-radio",
"subscribe": {
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/WNYC-Podcasts/Freakonomics-Radio-p272293/",
"rss": "https://feeds.feedburner.com/freakonomicsradio"
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},
"fresh-air": {
"id": "fresh-air",
"title": "Fresh Air",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=214089682&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/381444908/podcast.xml"
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"info": "A live production of NPR and WBUR Boston, in collaboration with stations across the country, Here & Now reflects the fluid world of news as it's happening in the middle of the day, with timely, in-depth news, interviews and conversation. Hosted by Robin Young, Jeremy Hobson and Tonya Mosley.",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510051/podcast.xml"
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},
"hidden-brain": {
"id": "hidden-brain",
"title": "Hidden Brain",
"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/series/423302056/hidden-brain",
"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "NPR"
},
"link": "/radio/program/hidden-brain",
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},
"how-i-built-this": {
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"title": "How I Built This with Guy Raz",
"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/howIBuiltThis.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this",
"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/how-i-built-this",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/3zxy",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-built-this-with-guy-raz/id1150510297?mt=2",
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},
"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
"title": "Hyphenación",
"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Hyphenacion_FinalAssets_PodcastTile.png",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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"order": 15
},
"link": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/2p3Fifq96nw9BPcmFdIq0o?si=39209f7b25774f38",
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"rss": "https://feeds.megaphone.fm/KQINC2275451163"
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},
"jerrybrown": {
"id": "jerrybrown",
"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 18
},
"link": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id1492194549",
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}
},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
"meta": {
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
"subscribe": {
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
}
},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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"rss": "https://feeds.publicradio.org/public_feeds/marketplace-pm/rss/rss"
}
},
"masters-of-scale": {
"id": "masters-of-scale",
"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
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"source": "WaitWhat"
},
"link": "/radio/program/masters-of-scale",
"subscribe": {
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"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
"subscribe": {
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
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"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/stories-teachers-share",
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}
},
"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
"title": "Morning Edition",
"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3am-9am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Morning-Edition-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/",
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"link": "/radio/program/morning-edition"
},
"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/On-Our-Watch-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "On Our Watch from NPR and KQED",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 11
},
"link": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1567098962",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5ucHIub3JnLzUxMDM2MC9wb2RjYXN0LnhtbD9zYz1nb29nbGVwb2RjYXN0cw",
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"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/0OLWoyizopu6tY1XiuX70x",
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"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/show/on-our-watch",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510360/podcast.xml"
}
},
"on-the-media": {
"id": "on-the-media",
"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
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"info": "One of public radio's most dynamic voices, Sam Sanders helped launch The NPR Politics Podcast and hosted NPR's hit show It's Been A Minute. Now, the award-winning host returns with something brand new, The Sam Sanders Show. Every week, Sam Sanders and friends dig into the culture that shapes our lives: what's driving the biggest trends, how artists really think, and even the memes you can't stop scrolling past. Sam is beloved for his way of unpacking the world and bringing you up close to fresh currents and engaging conversations. The Sam Sanders Show is smart, funny and always a good time.",
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