![THR's Best Stories of 2023](https://cdn.statically.io/img/www.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Best-of-2023.jpg?w=1600&h=901&crop=1)
The Hollywood Reporter editors have curated our best stories of 2023, from hard-hitting investigative pieces to newsmaking cover stories to personality profiles to thought-provoking guest columns. Take a look below.
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Harvey Weinstein’s “Jane Doe 1” Victim Reveals Identity: “I’m Tired of Hiding”
Image Credit: Photographed by Jessica Chou On Feb. 23, Weinstein was sentenced in Los Angeles to 16 additional years for the rape of the anonymous woman known only as Jane Doe 1. Finally ready to tell her story, Evgeniya Chernyshova opens up about the long road to justice and why she has chosen to reveal herself.
By Rebecca Keegan
On Dec. 19, Evgeniya Chernyshova was driving to pick out a Christmas tree near her home in Los Angeles when she got a message that she’s been waiting for, in some form or another, for five years. “We have a verdict,” read the text from Chernyshova’s attorney, Dave Ring. The 43-year-old mother of three stopped in the middle of the street, flipped on her emergency flashers and burst into tears.
As she sat in her car with her 16-year-old daughter and 23-year-old son, Chernyshova learned that a jury had convicted Harvey Weinstein of raping her in a hotel room in 2013. “I had to ask my daughter if I understood the English correctly,” says Chernyshova, who was born in Russia. “She’s like, ‘Why are you crying, mom? It’s good.'”
Weinstein’s LA trial had a mixed outcome for his victims: Of the four women the former mogul was charged with raping and assaulting in L.A., Chernyshova’s case was the only one to result in a conviction. She was the first of 44 witnesses the prosecution called to testify in the trial, and she is the only person the court allowed to deliver a statement at Weinstein’s sentencing on Feb. 23.
The judge sentenced Weinstein to 16 years for forcible rape, forcible oral copulation and penetration by foreign object. He will serve that time on top of the 23-year sentence he is currently serving in New York, an outcome which virtually guarantees the 70-year-old former producer will die in prison. Weinstein has long denied the allegations.
Starting when she reported the crime to police in 2017, Chernyshova, a former model and actress, went through the process of coming forward about Weinstein anonymously, known only as Jane Doe 1. Until now. “I’m tired of hiding,” says Chernyshova, speaking publicly for the first time. “I want my life back. I’m Evgeniya, I’ve been raped. This is my story.”
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When David Zaslav Is Your Boss: 20-Plus Insiders on His Exacting Standards (And Those 6:30 a.m. Calls)
Image Credit: Illustration by Læmeur With CNN head Chris Licht ousted, other WBD executives turn their attention to his very hands-on overlord, with one source wondering: “Who wants to have to manage him?”
By Lacey Rose, Kim Masters and Alex Weprin
On June 7, at roughly 9 a.m. ET, the media parlor game shifted abruptly from how long CNN chief executive Chris Licht would remain in the job to who would replace him.
Licht, whose turbulent tenure lasted just 13 months, had met his demise after a blistering 15,000-word profile appeared in The Atlantic. His boss, David Zaslav, who was described in the piece as the only person who could (and regularly would) interrupt Licht’s early morning workouts with 6:30 a.m. calls, has installed an interim executive leadership team: David Leavy, Virginia Moseley, Eric Sherling and internal frontrunner Amy Entelis. Multiple sources, inside Warner Bros. Discovery and out, say Zaslav will run a formal search, something he didn’t do when he hired Licht, because he can’t afford to make the same mistake twice. All seem to agree the job is twofold: The new leader will need to not only manage a challenged news network heading into an election year — one where Donald Trump is again expected to play a prominent role — but also manage Zaslav, a boss who is both exacting and impatient.
“And who wants to have to manage him?” says a source with close ties to CNN. “That’s not worth the millions of dollars a year.”
Of the 20-plus WBD insiders who spoke to The Hollywood Reporter for this article, a portrait emerges of the CEO’s management style: Zaslav knows that he needs to step back and let the new CNN leader lead, but whether he’s capable of doing so remains to be seen. “David is extremely hands-on, not like moving a camera, because that’s not his thing, but he calls, and it’s, ‘What’s next? What are you doing? What’s going on with this? What’s the status on that?’” says a former Zaslav exec. “And I’m saying it all fast because every conversation with David lasts no more than a couple of minutes, if that. You’ll be trying to explain something to him, and he’ll say, ‘Oh, you know, I gotta take this call. I’ll call you right back.’ Click! And then you never hear back.”
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“Like When a Beatle Dies”: Hollywood Unpacks Why Matthew Perry’s Loss Feels So Massive
Image Credit: Warner Bros. / Courtesy: Everett Collection Insiders who helped shaped Friends — and were shaped by it — talk about why multiple generations were so enormously attached to the star and have been hit so hard by his death.
By Lesley Goldberg
I watched Friends when it originally aired. I was in college in the 1990s, when the sitcom launched and became a cultural phenomenon. I carved Thursday nights out of my calendar, reserving the 8 p.m. hour for my Friends obsession, refusing to go out until after my weekly visit with Ross, Rachel, Monica, Chandler, Joey and Phoebe. I was experiencing many of the same things my Friends were: first love, first job and learning who I was — a little OCD (Monica), deflecting (Chandler) and a dash responsible dork (Ross).
Needless to say, Matthew Perry’s passing has been as emotional a blow for me, as it has for so many others. I remember when Kurt Cobain died and felt the impact of Magic Johnson’s revelation that he was HIV positive. Neither came close to mirroring how I feel now after Perry’s tragic death Saturday at age 54.
The love for Perry transcends generations and travels the globe. His journey as Chandler continues to resonate both for viewers who came of age when the NBC hit originally aired its 10 seasons from 1994-2004 and who have discovered the series on streaming.
His passing feels “like when a Beatle dies,” offers Warren Littlefield, the former NBC honcho who greenlit Friends.
At its height, Littlefield recalls, Friends would get as many as 50 million people watching an episode live on Thursday nights, with north of 75 million tuning in to NBC’s “Must-See TV” lineup — roughly a third of the country. “You didn’t want to go to work the next day and be at the watercooler or coffeemaker if you weren’t ready to participate in the collective experience and recount it the next day. That will never be found again,” Littlefield tells THR. “Teenagers today have no idea this existed on a network called NBC. Multiple generations have come to discover the show and claim that it’s theirs, an indication that Friends uniquely stands the test of time. There aren’t many TV shows that can accomplish that.”
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John Amos and a Family at War With Itself
Image Credit: COURTESY OF SHANNON AMOS The acrimonious battle between the children of the 83-year-old Good Times legend as they fight over his care, his legacy and his love.
By Gary Baum
In July, TV legend John Amos’ 53-year-old son, K.C., ended up in a New Jersey jail after his 57-year-old daughter, Shannon, claimed that K.C. had sent her “terroristic” threats over text message that made her believe that her life was in danger, according to a police report. These included a photo of a rifle with a caption explaining that it “can clean a turkey out from 3 football fields away.”
It was the latest in a series of sensational, headline-grabbing episodes involving the siblings this year. They’ve been locked in a bitter dispute over their father’s care, with accusations of elder abuse slung in each direction. Yet behind the scenes, The Hollywood Reporter has learned through discussions with all three Amoses that the situation is both more and less than it seems.
The painful saga goes back decades and provides an unsettling X-ray on the family life of a man who became an icon, especially among generations of African Americans, for playing the paterfamilias James Evans Sr. on Good Times. The claims and counterclaims conjure Gothic drama: infirmity, obsession, revenge, deceit, madness.
Each of the kids — he a music video director and editor, she an entertainment executive turned medicinal healer — believes they’re innocent and the other is nefarious. Their 83-year-old father, who has in the past toggled his trust between his offspring while making clear he loves them both, detests that his family life has become gossip fodder. “Whatever we’re going through is our business, not the business of the public,” he says. Yet the warring siblings, in their attempts to vanquish each other, have shown a common willingness to trump that desire for privacy by leveraging social media platforms and, in their dealings with THR, by putting forward confidential documentation to press their respective cases — even if it might undercut or embarrass their father.
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A Hollywood Insurrectionist’s Path to Extremism
Image Credit: Joel Marklund/BILDBYRÅN The real identity of one of the most infamous Capitol rioters, known as “Swedish Scarf” for his distinctive neckwear, has remained a frustrating mystery — until now. How an aspiring actor ended up at the Jan. 6 riots and on the FBI’s wanted list.
By Samuel Braslow
Standing on the ledge of a broken window next to a Beverly Hills esthetician with mascara running from the tear gas, a bearded man with wild blue eyes made an appeal to the crowd surrounding the U.S. Capitol. “Last chance, who wants to make history with me? Who’s a man? Who’s a patriot? I’m going into Capitol Hill by myself — who wants to man the fuck up? Patriots, let’s do this right fucking now!” he shouted into a megaphone.
Returning the bullhorn to the esthetician, he entered the Capitol through the broken window. Inside, in an upturned conference room, he led a group of rioters out of the room and into an adjoining hallway, where he kicked the door of another conference room several times to help open it. He and several others rifled through papers and ransacked the room, before leaving the Capitol with a souvenir gas mask.
The bearded man now stands charged of conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding and aiding and abetting, tampering with documents or proceedings, obstruction of law enforcement during civil disorder, theft of government property, destruction of government property, and entering a restricted building. His whereabouts are currently unknown.
Yet it wasn’t his Duck Dynasty-esque facial hair or his center-stage role that captured international attention in the weeks after the attempted insurrection. Instead, it was the unassuming red scarf he wore that day — by any measure, a smart wardrobe decision for D.C. winters. But to some eagle-eyed Swedes, the scarf had special meaning.
The neckwear bore the name of a small Swedish town, Skelleftea, which gave away fewer than 1,000 of the scarves to former residents in 2017 as part of an annual tradition. For citizens of the historically neutral country, the presence of the scarf on a Jan. 6 rioter raised the chilling prospect that a fellow Swede may have attempted to interfere in the American transition of power.
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Harrison Ford: “I Know Who the F*** I Am”
Image Credit: Photographed by Austin Hargrave The actor is busier than ever with Shrinking, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and 1923. We tried to get the delightfully testy 80-year-old icon to open up about his life and latest projects. Here’s how that went.
By James Hibberd
“I try to arrive with an empty mind and an open heart,” says Harrison Ford when asked what he’s thinking as he sits down for the interview. Then he sarcastically challenges: “Shatter my illusions.”
The iconic actor, you might have heard, isn’t hugely fond of chatting with the press, particularly when reporters try hard to crawl up inside his head and poke around — which is precisely what we’re about to attempt. Ford makes it clear during our conversation that he’d rather be standing on a freezing hilltop in Montana filming the Yellowstone prequel 1923, or being pummeled by stuntmen as Indiana Jones for the upcoming Dial of Destiny, or doing pretty much anything else than reveal an intimate personal sentiment. Which is what makes Ford’s other role this year — yes, he’s weirdly busy lately — rather ironic: He plays a therapist on the new Apple TV+ comedy series Shrinking, earning raves for a character that riffs on Ford’s curmudgeonly public persona (which, by several accounts that follow, doesn’t fully reflect what he’s really like).
Seeing him now, I have to remind myself that Ford is 80 years old, as the math seems wrong. His posture is a bit bent, but that could be from injuries sustained on movie sets and his 2015 near-fatal plane crash as much as age. When he smiles, you can glimpse all those heroes he’s played — Han Solo, Rick Deckard, Jack Ryan … they’re layered over a bit with the passage of time, but there.
“Harrison is not unlike Indy in the sense he’s carrying with him the scars of all the films he’s made — as well as his own private calamities,” Dial of Destiny director James Mangold says. “He is literally this embodiment of all those bruises, broken bones and being bounced off walls and being thrown to the floor over so many years.”
At one point, I venture to ask Ford if he’s ever had Botox, lasers or fillers. Chasing med spa holy grails would be wildly off brand for the rugged actor, but it’s hardly a crazy idea when your face gets projected onto 50-foot screens.
“That’d be a ‘no,’” Ford says, then adds with a laugh: “Where should I go?”
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Unmasking the AMPTP: Hollywood Labor’s Opaque Nemesis
Image Credit: THR Illustration During the double strike, a studio bargaining coalition run by lawyers and located in a suburban shopping mall has been portrayed by the unions as a James Bond villain set on breaking their solidarity. The Hollywood Reporter peeks behind the curtain.
By Gary Baum and Katie Kilkenny
On Sept. 8, more than four months into a historic Hollywood labor battle, the Writers Guild of America turned a klieg light on its adversary, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. Citing behind-the-scenes conversations the union’s leaders were allegedly having with unidentified legacy studio executives, its negotiating committee said in a bulletin to its members that the standstill is the result of the trade association’s own “paralysis,” pointing to the AMPTP’s “disparate business models and interests, as well as different histories and relationships with unions.”
The WGA, calling for direct negotiations with individual companies, added that the legacy studios are more amenable to its proposals than other companies — but are hamstrung by the “hard-liners” in their caucus. The labor group’s subtext: It’s looking to dismantle its nemesis. In response, the AMPTP insisted its constituent companies are “aligned” and “any suggestion to the contrary is false.” Still, multiple studio insiders say that in recent weeks Ted Sarandos — frustrated by a lack of progress in negotiations — has grumbled about Netflix leaving the AMPTP to pursue its own deal, though they add that this inclination has seemingly passed. Netflix declined to comment.
Typically a humdrum (and ignored) epicenter of contract lawyering situated in a suburban shopping mall, the AMPTP has lately taken on a SPECTRE-like aura among union members, its president, Carol Lombardini, emerging as the starring Bond villain of Hollywood’s dual strike saga. (SAG-AFTRA walked in July, when its own demands weren’t met.) That little is known or understood of the AMPTP and its byzantine operations, not just by those outside the business but even by those long employed within it, adds to the frustration and intrigue that swirl around the alliance.
Eight companies constitute the organization’s “Class A” members that, along with top AMPTP staffers, call the shots during negotiations: Disney, NBCUniversal, Paramount, Sony, Netflix, Amazon, Apple and Warner Bros. Discovery. “It’s one of the most, if not the most, powerful multi-employer associations in the world,” says a union negotiating committee member.
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The Golden Bachelor’s Not-So-Golden Past
Image Credit: Brian Bowen Smith/ABC Secret girlfriends, a juiced-up résumé and the selling of a septuagenarian stud: The secret history of America’s senior sweetheart, Gerry Turner.
By Suzanne O’Malley and Barbara Lippert
By sharp contrast to the young cads with sixpack abs previously populating the hot tubs on ABC’s The Bachelor, Gerry Turner, the handsome, 72-year-old star of The Golden Bachelor spinoff, brought fresh air and life to the franchise with something rarely seen on reality TV: genuine depth and sensitivity.
Still a grieving widower, Gerry (pronounced Gairy) cried real tears during the opening episode when he recounted the story of Toni, his beloved wife of 43 years, who tragically died of an infection just one month after their move to their “dream” retirement house on Big Long Lake in Hudson, Indiana (pop. 537).
It was a dramatic backstory. But our bachelor was able to switch gears and interact easily with the attractive — and equally senior — female contestants on the show. In doing so, he displayed such emotional awareness, authenticity and willingness to listen that his whole persona seemed to have been cooked up in some Perfect Man lab.
The “ladies” — as they’re called on the program — quickly started to swoon and declare their love for him and, let’s face it, we all fell for Ger. Evidently, the world also saw that magic while watching Golden Gerry and the women. The premiere earned the highest multiplatform rating for The Bachelor franchise since 2021, with a combined 13.9 million viewers. It also set a streaming record as ABC’s most watched episode of an unscripted series ever on Hulu after 35 days of viewing, according to ABC.
The idea that this guileless man was reawakening before our eyes to contemporary life — “I mean, I haven’t dated in 45 years,” he told Entertainment Tonight — made him a hugely compelling character. He seemed so wholesome and almost preacherly that, on The Daily Show, comedian Lewis Black joked, “This guy is like if the word ‘Gee Willikers’ became a person.”
But even in this Golden variation, this is, at bottom, a reality show, a genre mostly known for its frequent disconnection with reality.
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Brad Pitt and the Bizarre Charity Mess That’s Left Katrina Victims Stranded Again
Image Credit: Illustration by Carl Burton Owners of faulty homes built by the star’s Make It Right Foundation in New Orleans were relieved when charity Global Green promised $20.5 million for repairs. The only problem: It never had the money.
By Gary Baum
For the impacted homeowners of New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward, the August 2022 announcement that they were one step closer to being made whole — with relief coming in the form of a $20.5 million settlement — was long past due.
Hurricane Katrina made landfall 17 years earlier, devastating their neighborhood. But that was just the opening chapter of their misfortune. Their homes had been rebuilt, only to give way to rot, mold and structural defects. Their 2018 class-action lawsuit seeking damages against their original benefactors, the Make It Right Foundation and its leading man, Brad Pitt, languished in Orleans Parish court for years as their properties decayed.
“This has been one long nightmare,” says Albert Matthews, noting that his 91-year-old mother, Marion Bryan, paid the initial deposit on her new house in 2008. He says the residence became so badly compromised that Make It Right built a second one, which also had serious problems. So too, he claims, did a third, constructed by the organization in 2014. Unlike many residents, who were forced to live in substandard conditions, Bryan has stayed with her son. “It’s been very stressful for all of us,” he says. “My mother, she’s never seen the end of the tunnel from Katrina.”
In the summer of 2022, Global Green USA — another charity with Hollywood connections and a track record of helping rebuild in the region — had announced it would step up to pay and administer the $20.5 million, imminently disbursing the funds. “Hopefully this agreement will allow everyone to look ahead to other opportunities to continue to strengthen this proud community in the future,” Pitt told TMZ, as media outlets spread the welcome news.
But The Hollywood Reporter has learned that the deal has since imploded amid recrimination. History has repeated in the Lower Ninth Ward — and yet another well-intentioned and highly publicized plan for these residents has resulted in failure.
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Before He Turned on Putin, Yevgeny Prigozhin Made Hollywood-Style Propaganda Films to Sell His War
Image Credit: THR Photo - Illustration: Adobe Stock and CSA Images; Yevgeny Prigoz: Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images; Vladimir Putin: Artem Geodakyan / SPUTNIK / AFP Getty Images The former chief of the multi-tentacled Wagner group, who is believed to have died in a plane crash, didn’t just send his army of mercenaries to the Ukrainian front lines. He was also at the vanguard of Putin’s effort to counter Western cultural dominance, and using movies to do it.
By Scott Johnson
Last October, a small Russian production company called Aurum released The Best in Hell, a 107-minute feature film chronicling a brutal struggle for territory in an unnamed European city. The scenes of urban warfare are visceral and raw, and the only respite from the violence comes in the form of periodic tactical lectures aimed directly at the viewer.
The setting for The Best in Hell is the current war in Ukraine. Online detectives seem to disagree about which of the war’s recent battles the movie is based on. Some believe it’s a re-creation of the 2022 siege of Mariupol, in the disputed Donetsk region, in which thousands of civilians perished in a three-month-long battle that the Red Cross later described as “apocalyptic.”
Others think it refers to the battle of Popasna where, once the fighting had ended, the severed head and hands of a Ukrainian prisoner of war were discovered impaled on a wooden pole. Released online, the movie received wide coverage and was lauded for its realism.
The Best in Hell was shot, edited and released while the actual combatants and survivors of the battles in Mariupol and Popasna — both of which ended last May with Russian victories — were still collecting and mourning their dead. Seen in that light, the most striking feature of The Best in Hell is that it exists at all.
That a current event of such magnitude and tragedy was so quickly and seamlessly transformed into stylized movie fare is a feature of what former national security adviser H.R. McMaster calls “Russian new generation warfare.” Other experts who study Russia have described this dynamic more simply: hybrid war.
Since coming to power in Russia two decades ago, Vladimir Putin has engineered a massive propagandistic operation that stretches across Russia’s billion-dollar film and TV industry into a global network of state-run disinformation-as-journalism and on to the mysterious online world of right-wing mercenary worship known as the Wagnerverse. Mason Clark, the Russia Team lead at the Institute for the Study of War, in Washington, D.C., notes that as Putin’s global influence operations have expanded over the past two decades, and as his intentions to restore both the landmass and the stature of the former Russian Empire have become clearer, “the pool of assets engaged in national security” has grown in tandem to encompass “all of Russian society, including government, business, culture and media institutions.”
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Succession, With Smoothies: Inside the Erewhon Dynasty
Image Credit: Photographed by Maggie Shannon With Hailey Bieber smoothies and collabs with streetwear labels, the Antoci family transformed a gloomy L.A. health food store into the world’s trendiest and most extravagant market. Will they unseat Whole Foods?
By Seth Abramovitch
Maybe it was in 2014, when its second location opened in the Kardashian-rich foothills of Calabasas.
Or was it 2018, when Kanye West tweeted about “Erewhon drip,” sending legions of Yeezy wearers on a mad scramble for (then-bootleg-only) merch? How about the summer of 2022, when TikTok caught on to its Hailey Bieber smoothies ($18 and fortified with things like “vital proteins vanilla collagen” and “hyaluronic acid”), unleashing an avalanche of #Erewhon-tagged content to the tune of 450 million views?
It’s up for debate what the true tipping-point moment was that transformed Erewhon from just another L.A. health food market into a money-minting retail phenomenon. But there can be no arguing that the wildly popular chain with the strange name — pronounced “air Juan,” an anagram of “nowhere” — is doing something right.
At its 10th and newest location, a flagship store in Pasadena that opened Sept. 13, sales have been so robust that 40 employees needed to be added to the 140 already hired. Erewhon’s stores — all of them located in affluent neighborhoods within Los Angeles County — are averaging weekly sales of $1,800 per square foot, bringing in about $1 million in sales per store each week. By comparison, a well-trafficked Whole Foods — which many feel has seen a dip in quality and cachet since Amazon acquired it in 2017 — earns about the same in a much larger retail space.
For those living outside L.A. — or without access to the internet — what is Erewhon, exactly? For starters, it’s a sleek, inviting space (the stores are designed by Belgian architect Humberto Nobrega) for stocking up on trendy supplements like sea moss and lion’s mane mushroom; cult hot bar offerings (the organic buffalo cauliflower is a best-seller at $19 a pound); smoothies ($12 to $22, based on ingredients and celebrity endorsements); pristine, non-genetically modified produce and healthy snack foods with words like “heavenly,” “good” and “simple” in their names.
But it also has become Hollywood’s trendiest accessible gathering spot, where, free of velvet ropes and bouncers, the fit and famous gather to sip, munch and flirt right alongside the tourists — groupies, really — who arrive directly from LAX to pose for selfies with smoothies in hand.
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How Les Moonves and His CBS Loyalists Worked to Discredit Accuser: “It Was Sort of a Mafia Culture”
Image Credit: Illustration by Neil Jamieson A recent investigation reveals the lengths to which the ex-CBS chief’s cadre of C-suite insiders — some of whom remain with the company — went to quash allegations of sexual misconduct in order to protect their boss.
By Gary Baum
On Nov. 2, 2022, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced that she’d secured a $30.5 million settlement from CBS and its former president and CEO Leslie Moonves for misleading the company’s investors about his misconduct, concealing sexual assault allegations against him and related insider trading by another top CBS executive. Her office also released a 37-page report detailing how members of Moonves’ C-suite and others unsuccessfully sought to neutralize the crisis before it knocked off the top boss, tanked the share price and gummed up a then-nascent merger with Viacom. It’s a damning case study in corporate complicity, control and cover-up.
The report centers on a yearlong sequence of events beginning in late 2017. Then-81-year-old Phyllis Golden-Gottlieb, who died in July 2022, filed a confidential police report with the Los Angeles Police Department. Golden-Gottlieb alleged that Moonves had attacked her on multiple occasions in the 1980s, when they were both executives at Lorimar-Telepictures. The statute of limitations had long run out on any possible criminal or civil charges related to her accusations, yet she’d been spurred by the scores of younger women who’d gone public in the press against Harvey Weinstein and other prominent men in what had recently become known as the #MeToo movement.
By September 2018, after Moonves had been publicly accused of misconduct by a group of women including Golden-Gottlieb, he resigned. (While not the most famous man to be felled by #MeToo claims, he was arguably the most powerful.) Several senior executives from his regime left in his wake. But multiple other figures involved in the concealment efforts outlined in James’ brief, including a deputy who obtained the police report from an LAPD captain, as well as a security head who ran a counterintelligence probe targeting Golden-Gottlieb’s family, have remained at the company.
Since the settlement and accompanying attorney general report, media attention has focused on the compromised LAPD captain, who’s now the subject of a departmental misconduct probe. Meanwhile, the corporate brass’ attempts to undermine Golden-Gottlieb have been largely overlooked.
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The Auteurs of San Quentin
Image Credit: Photographed by Jason Henry For the incarcerated men in the first film and TV job training program in a U.S. prison, production offers a pathway to redemption.
By Rebecca Keegan
Like many independent filmmakers, Anthony Gomez has some quibbles with his own work. He wishes he’d had more time to shoot. His lead looks natural on camera but the voiceover delivery is stiff. A friend came through with some original music, but the post process was crazy. The usual stuff. What’s unusual is that Gomez, 26, made his most recent film, a short documentary about working out, while living inside San Quentin State Prison.
“It’s the first time I’ve had my parents say they’re proud of me since I graduated from high school,” Gomez says of the videos he has directed, starred in and contributed to while inside San Quentin. Among the highlights is a series of mockumentary shorts inspired by The Office. Staring deadpan into the camera after the guy next to you says something stupid, it turns out, is a cinematic language that translates to workplaces everywhere.
Gomez is one of five incarcerated men who work at ForwardThis Productions, the first film and TV production job training program located inside an American prison. Life in San Quentin is a Spartan existence, but one of the few things the men here have in abundance is stories. Gomez grew up in a small town outside Fresno and planned to join the Navy and marry his high school sweetheart. When he was 18, he drove the getaway to and from a murder (his now ex-friend was the shooter). He is now seven years into a 21-year sentence for voluntary manslaughter. “We all appreciate being in a position to tell stories about ourselves,” Gomez says. “I do matter.”
ForwardThis opened in late 2021 inside San Quentin’s media center, a burgeoning content empire staffed by incarcerated people that also produces a newspaper, The San Quentin News, website and the podcasts Ear Hustle, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and Uncuffed. The prison’s public information officer, Lt. Guim’Mara Berry, must approve all the content before it goes out to the general public. ForwardThis is housed in a tiny office behind the newsroom, with four Macs, lockers storing cameras and lenses, and a shelf of filmmaking books including Story by Robert McKee and The Shut Up and Shoot Documentary Guide.
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What Michelle Yeoh Taught Me About Motherhood
Image Credit: Illustration by Jasu Hu THR’s senior inclusion editor reflects on how the life and roles of the Everything Everywhere All at Once Oscar nominee have helped guide her own personal journey, both as a daughter and as a hopeful parent: “There’s something about Yeoh as Mother that transcends.”
By Rebecca Sun
At a stage that for most actresses signals the beginning of the end, it’s perhaps no accident that Michelle Yeoh is reaching even higher heights, 40 years into her career. There’s something about Yeoh as Mother that transcends, in every shading and variation: cool and elegant in Crazy Rich Asians, imperious and twisted in Star Trek: Discovery, harried and bewildered in Everything Everywhere All at Once. In every version she is elementally familiar, particularly to my generation. She resembles the mother we have or the one we want, the kind we fear or crave, or both.
Four years ago, after I got engaged initially without my parents’ blessing, I wrote about how Crazy Rich Asians brought painful clarity to my own standoff, caught between romance and family. Much of my epiphany was fueled by Yeoh’s exquisite portrayal of Eleanor Young — her unyieldingly lofty standards for her child’s welfare, and the child’s realization that there could be no happy ending without her as part of it. When I interviewed Yeoh for THR‘s 2018 cover story on the film, she told me she only took the role once assured that it would not play into one-dimensional stereotypes. In less capable and intuitive hands, Eleanor would be the story’s easy villain. Instead, when I took my parents to see the film on opening weekend, my mom left the theater raving about the character’s wisdom and strength and (to my chagrin at the time) found validation in their shared perspective. EEAAO‘s downtrodden laundromat owner Evelyn Wang couldn’t be more different from one-percenter Eleanor, but in her tenacity and insistence on chasing her daughter to the ends of the multiverse — chasms of culture and generations and literal rocks be damned — I saw yet another dimension of my dynamic with my mother playing out onscreen.
Both my mom and Yeoh exude a formidable presence that belies their petite stature, and although I’ve never witnessed the former deliver a literal beatdown to anyone, she has always been fearless in a confrontation and wields words as skillfully as a swordswoman does her saber. Her fortitude, both physical and mental, is superhuman, a 90-pound septuagenarian devoting her retirement years to caregiving for my father, who has Parkinson’s. Despite that work’s punishing demands, she has not sacrificed her style and qi zhi — a refined, graceful temperament — a quality that Yeoh, even as frumpy Evelyn, also radiates. Neither woman has ever been caught dead in a short, curly Asian mom perm
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Taylor Sheridan Does Whatever He Wants: “I Will Tell My Stories My Way”
Image Credit: Photographed by Emerson Miller Hollywood’s most prolific hitmaker — and THR‘s TV Producer of the Year — breaks his silence on Yellowstone ending, Kevin Costner’s exit, the potential Matthew McConaughey spinoff, his battles with studio suits, and how he’s become a powerful mega-rancher straight out of his own show: “There is no compromising.”
By James Hibberd
“They’re scared,” says Taylor Sheridan, looking amused as he steps onto his porch and away from a gaggle of publicists huddled inside his house. “They’re scared of what I might say.”
With good reason. The Yellowstone showrunner — who’s gone from an obscure actor to the most prolific writer in Hollywood in about a decade — isn’t known for pulling his punches and, lately, has been at the center of a stampede of dramatic headlines. His flagship show’s star, Kevin Costner, is exiting the series amid anonymous finger-pointing in the press. There have been showrunner shake-ups on two of his other projects — the Sylvester Stallone drama Tulsa King and the upcoming spy thriller Special Ops: Lioness — where Sheridan seized the creative reins. The creator was also the subject of a recent report that suggested he uses his production budgets to pad his pockets. And his lone-wolf writing style irks some of the writers marching in picket lines who are demanding staffing minimums on TV shows.
It’s a helluva lot of debate circling one hitmaker who created his own genre of neo-Western storytelling and whose shows are so popular, they’re propping up an entire streaming service. Over a couple of hours of conversation, Sheridan reveals his side to these stories for the first time while offering unparalleled insight into his writing and producing process.
Sheridan takes a seat wearing a button-down shirt, rugged jacket, jeans and boots, complete with spurs (he was riding earlier). The 53-year-old is a formidable wall of blue denim, and his eyes are blue, too. Elizabeth Olsen, whom he directed in Wind River, once affectionately described Sheridan as “a cowboy who’s like a combination of your dad and the Marlboro Man.”
We’re sitting behind one of his houses on his massive Four Sixes ranch. The property is wedged up in the remote Texas panhandle, several hours’ drive from the nearest major city. (The Montana ranch in Yellowstone is fictional, but the Four Sixes, or 6666 — which is also featured in the series — is real.) Sheridan finalized his purchase last year, and it covers a staggering 270,000 acres — nearly the size of Los Angeles. Stretching from his porch is a dreamy field of virgin countryside extending to the horizon under cotton-ball clouds. There’s a warm breeze and, every so often, a Texas Longhorn steer trots by.
The importance of this place to Sheridan — and its connection to Yellowstone and to the rest of his TV universe — cannot be overstated. Sheridan grew up in North Texas, where the Four Sixes is legendary. The ranch and its horse-and-cattle operation were long controlled by a single dynastic family that battled for 150 years to protect their land and keep it largely intact. Sounds familiar, right?
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Spies, Killers and Internet Daddies: Pedro Pascal, Kieran Culkin and the THR Drama Actor Roundtable
Image Credit: Photographed by Frank Ockenfels 3; Portrait Set Design: Edward Murphy Jeff Bridges, Michael Imperioli, Evan Peters and Damson Idris also join the conversation about the myth of leaving your demons on set, weirdest fan obsessions and who’s really in that Mandalorian suit.
By Lacey Rose
It was a Saturday afternoon in late April, and the writers strike was looming, if not inevitable. Still, the six men gathered in L.A. for The Hollywood Reporter’s annual Drama Actor Emmy Roundtable showed no signs of panic. In fact, The Old Man’s Jeff Bridges and Dahmer’s Evan Peters were busy sharing breathing exercises, while The Last of Us‘ Pedro Pascal and Succession‘s Kieran Culkin compared notes about hosting Saturday Night Live. Culkin had just been tapped by SNL for the season’s penultimate episode, one of many productions that would be shuttered a few days later. But before Hollywood came to a halt, the foursome, along with Snowfall’s Damson Idris and The White Lotus’ Michael Imperioli, got candid about the pressure, the fandom and who’s really in the Mandalorian suit. (Watch the full roundtable.)
Let’s start easy: When fans come up to you on the street, what are they likely to know you from and what do they typically say?
KIERAN CULKIN The new one, which is weird, is people feel like they can touch me. I was with my kids, and this guy just grabs me and he’s like, “Hey, man, love your show,” and I said, “No touchy.” That’s as aggressive as I could be. “No touchy.”
DAMSON IDRIS I’m apparently married to everyone. I’m everyone’s husband.
How does that get presented, exactly?
IDRIS “Hey, husband, dinner’s ready.” Then they follow me, and I jump in the SUV and dart out.
CULKIN “Come home with me.” Yeah, I get that one all the time too. (Laughs.)
PEDRO PASCAL I remember, earlier on, because of Game of Thrones and the way my character died — speaking of touching — people were super into taking selfies with their thumbs in my eyes.
CULKIN Wow, that’s a lot of trust.
PASCAL And at first, I was so earnest and happy about the success of the character in the show, I’d let them! And then I remember getting a bit of an eye infection. (Laughter.)
JEFF BRIDGES I get The Dude. People just dig The Big Lebowski, it’s such a good movie.
CULKIN Do people shout quotes at you? “This is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass.”
BRIDGES Oh yeah, the quotes.
CULKIN And the one I use a lot, because there’s never a context for it, is “Nice marmot.” Whenever there’s a lull in the conversation, I’ll just, like, point at someone’s plant and go, “Nice marmot.”
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Adele on Her Dream Hollywood Gig, Her Big Emotions and Volunteering at Her Son’s School: “The Kids Don’t Give a Flying F*** Who I Am”
Image Credit: Photographed by RUVEN AFANADOR The megastar spills tears and tea over being a class mom, why her Oscar still makes her giggle and which celebrity audience member made her freak out: “I shat myself the whole show.”
By Mesfin Fekadu
Even on her day off, Adele, the regular person, can’t escape Adele, the superstar singer.
It’s Monday, and she rolls into one of her favorite Beverly Hills restaurants for lunch, makeup-free with her hair pulled back. She’s in an oversized, comfy, long black coat, and the only real giveaway are her long sharp black nails. And, of course, her screeching laugh.
But then her song, the sweeping ballad “One and Only,” from her 21 era, comes on.
She laughs. “Every time Rich travels,” she says of her partner, sports superagent Rich Paul, with whom she lives in Beverly Hills, “the airplanes always play my music, and we can’t work out if it’s because they know that we are together, or if it’s just what they do.”
Later, the power pop ballad “Set Fire to the Rain,” plays in the background.
“You know what it is? It’s because the clientele here love me,” Adele says of the baby boomer diners who have packed the restaurant. “The people that come here — it’s my perfect audience.”
That’s part of Adele’s appeal: She’s the contemporary pop star who has locked in fans of all ages, from your grandparents who still buy physical albums at Target, to the cool kids who have helped vinyl make a comeback, to the rest of us who stream on Spotify. She is easily one of the best-selling recording artists of all time — with 120 million records sold worldwide — though her first album dropped as recently as 2008.
Her musical prowess is just one of the reasons she’s receiving the Sherry Lansing Leadership Award at The Hollywood Reporter’s annual Women in Entertainment event on Dec. 7. The singer, a longtime supporter of LGBTQ and women’s rights, is more of a silent philanthropist and has been associated with organizations including Grenfell Foundation; Sands, which supports people who have lost a baby; and Drop4Drop, which provides clean water to countries in need and was founded by her ex-husband, Simon Konecki. The mother of 11-year-old Angelo is also being highlighted for her work ethic: Just days before this interview, the 35-year-old was sick as a dog, powering through a cold to finish the final two nights of Weekends With Adele in Las Vegas. A third leg of the residency will launch in January.
“My chest was on fire,” admits Adele, still recovering. “My voice sounded all right when I sang. When I was talking, I sounded sick. I was really surprised. I was so sick. And luckily I was able to push through.” On her (sort of) day off — “they tried to put a meeting in tomorrow and I was like, ‘No. I need time’ ” — Adele is working on feeling better, with the help of comfort food.
“They do the best chicken pot pie here, but I can’t work out if that’s too indulgent for lunch on a Monday,” she says. “Fuck it, can I have it for lunch? They’re delicious.” In between bites of buttery, flaky crust and soaked vegetables, Adele dishes on being honored by THR, fighting sadness, possibly dipping her toe in acting and her love for SZA. Oh, and as with her songs, there were a few tears.
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The 100 Greatest Film Books of All Time
Image Credit: ILLUSTRATION BY THE SPORTING PRESS; IMAGES: GETTY IMAGES; ADOBE STOCK; EVERETT COLLECTION THR’s list of must-read tomes — determined by a jury of more than 300 Hollywood heavyweights including Steven Spielberg, David Zaslav, Liza Minnelli and Ava DuVernay — proves there’s one topic the supposedly reading-averse industry can’t get enough of: itself.
By Scott Feinberg
There has long been an assumption that people in the movie business — and Hollywood specifically — aren’t exactly well read. “Millions to be grabbed out here and your only competition is idiots,” Herman Mankiewicz telegrammed Ben Hecht upon his arrival out West in 1926. Meanwhile, 2023 awards contender American Fiction includes the laugh line, “Nobody in Hollywood reads. They get their assistants to read things and then summarize them. The whole town runs on book reports.”
But THR, suspecting that’s painting with too broad a brush, and aware that many usually busy people had some time on their hands during the first simultaneous strike of actors and writers in 63 years, reached out to hundreds of distinguished members of the global film community and asked them to share their picks for the greatest books related to film — autobiographies, biographies, novels, how-to, making-of and every other sort — factoring in quality, impact and influence. They each received a “ballot” listing some 1,200 notable titles, plus slots for write-ins.
Among the 322 respondents were directors (including Steven Spielberg, Ava DuVernay, Oliver Stone, John Waters and Celine Song); actors (Liza Minnelli, Alec Baldwin, Laura Dern, Colman Domingo and Sarah Paulson); producers (Jerry Bruckheimer and Amy Pascal); writers (Tom Stoppard, Paul Schrader and John Mulaney); executives (David Zaslav, Sherry Lansing, Michael Barker, Tom Rothman and Bela Bajaria); documentarians (Ken Burns, Sheila Nevins and Errol Morris); animators (Floyd Norman); composers (Nicholas Britell); agents (Toni Howard); the heads of the Academy, Academy Museum, Golden Globes, BAFTA, MPA, AFI, American Cinematheque, Black List, Alamo Drafthouse theater chain and Sundance, Toronto and Karlovy Vary film festivals; journalists (Maureen Dowd, Graydon Carter, Roxane Gay, David Remnick, Lynn Hirschberg, Michael Wolff and Lawrence O’Donnell); film critics; academics; and, yes, a host of top authors of film books.
There have previously been “greatest film books” surveys of some of these constituencies, but never all of them, and never of this size and scope. It’s with the hope that THR readers will be inspired to check out these books and learn more about the art form and business that we cover that we proudly present — in order from fewest votes to most — the 100 greatest film books of all time (click here for a printable checklist), as chosen by the people who would know best.
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Ailing ‘Superman’ Star Valerie Perrine Finally Finds Her Hero: “The Guy Should Be Sainted”
Image Credit: Photographed by Christopher Patey; Hair and Makeup by April Bautista at Dew Beauty Few lived the Hollywood dream as fully as the showgirl-turned-Oscar nominee. But now the coke-fueled, star-studded party’s over, the money’s gone and all that’s left is the devotion of another Hollywood dreamer.
By Seth Abramovitch
Valerie Perrine has a knack for cheating death.
At 25, Perrine — best known for playing Miss Teschmacher, girlfriend to Gene Hackman’s Lex Luthor in 1978’s Superman — was working in Las Vegas as a topless dancer in the Lido de Paris revue at the Stardust Hotel.
She met a charming guy in the lounge who said he was a hairstylist to the stars. They began dating. He invited Perrine to an intimate dinner party in L.A.’s Benedict Canyon. She found an understudy, but the understudy fell ill, and Perrine was forced to perform.
The party she missed would go down in infamy: It was the one in which the Manson Family slaughtered six people, including Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring — Perrine’s new hairstylist boyfriend.
Then, when she was 32, having shot to movie stardom as a thinking-woman’s bombshell, she boarded a small plane to the San Sebastian Film Festival.
She was headed there to support Bob Fosse’s Lenny, in which she played Lenny Bruce’s stripper wife, Honey Bruce, a performance that earned Perrine awards at Cannes and BAFTA and a best actress Oscar nomination.
The plane crashed upon takeoff from the tiny airport in the Pyrenees, losing a wing and its landing gear in the process. Miraculously, she walked away from the wreckage with only minor cuts and bruises. She even returned to the wreck to retrieve her makeup kit.
Now 79, Perrine is still cheating death. The actress has been quietly waging a valiant battle against Parkinson’s for a decade.
It has been a long, trying road. The disease has robbed Perrine of her mobility and much of her ability to eat and speak. But she’s still here — still smiling, still joking, still puffing on a pot pen.
Perrine insists she wants no pity and regrets nothing about her Technicolor life: not one affair (she’s been romantically linked to everyone from Jeff Bridges to Elliott Gould to Dodi Fayed); not one hit of acid (she’s taken LSD more than 400 times, by her estimation); not one career move (well, she probably should have said yes to 1981’s Body Heat and no to 1980’s Can’t Stop the Music, the Village People-starring megaflop she says killed her career, but you can’t win them all).
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The Hit Squad: Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo and Dua Lipa on the THR Songwriter Roundtable
Image Credit: Photographed by Austin Hargrave Joined by Julia Michaels, Jon Batiste and Cynthia Erivo, the music masters share the inspiration — from Barbie to heartbreak — that led to this year’s most dynamic songs in film.
By Mesfin Fekadu
“I honestly was concerned that it was over for me,” Billie Eilish confesses at a table with Dua Lipa, Olivia Rodrigo, Jon Batiste, Cynthia Erivo and Julia Michaels, who came together to discuss their songwriting prowess and process. “We’d been trying and it wasn’t doing what it usually would do in me. I was honestly like, ‘Damn, maybe I hit my peak and I don’t know how to write anymore?’ ” Struggling for inspiration, the 21-year-old had hit a wall, until Greta Gerwig called in January with an assignment: Write a song for Barbie. The result was the emotional and scene-stealing “What Was I Made For?” that Eilish wrote with her brother and musical partner, Finneas. “Greta saved me, really, honestly,” Eilish says. “It brought us out of it and immediately we were inspired and wrote so much more after that.” A frontrunner for best original song at the 2024 Oscars, Eilish is joined by other contenders: Lipa, with her disco bop “Dance the Night,” also from Barbie; and Rodrigo — on a white-hot streak with her GUTS album — who wrote the eerie and powerful “Can’t Catch Me Now” for The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes. Rounding out THR’s annual Songwriter Roundtable are Michaels, who has penned hits for Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez and wrote “This Wish” (performed by Ariana DeBose) for Disney’s Wish; Grammy darling and Oscar winner Jon Batiste, who composed “It Never Went Away” for the Netflix doc American Symphony, which follows Batiste at a career high while his wife battles leukemia; and Tony, Emmy and Grammy winner Cynthia Erivo, who wrote “It Would Be” for the indie film Drift, which she stars in and produced.
During an hourlong taping at The Georgian Hotel in Santa Monica, the six performers traded stories about making music and more, as Lipa coined the subgenre “dance-crying” and Batiste spoke about the healing power of music, pointing specifically to Eilish and Rodrigo as artists his wife listened to while she underwent treatment for cancer.
Do you remember the first song or lyric you wrote?
CYNTHIA ERIVO I was 16 and wrote a song called “Maybe,” and I think it was given to a South African girl group or something. And I remember (starts singing), “Have you ever thought that he would never call you at all because he’s too good to be true …”
OLIVIA RODRIGO What the hell.
ERIVO (Still singing) “Pretty lady, you’re amazing.” Yeah, I remember that.
JULIA MICHAELS We’re done.
RODRIGO That’s all.
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An Oral History of the Epic ‘Titanic’ Oscars at 25
Image Credit: TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images Dozens of Hollywood insiders reflect on the most watched Oscars telecast of all time — including James Cameron, who speaks candidly about his pants falling down, his near-fight with Harvey Weinstein and his infamous “King of the World” speech: “What I wasn’t saying was, ‘I’m showing all y’all motherfuckers how it’s done!’”
By Scott Feinberg
Twenty-five years ago, both Titanic and the 70th annual Academy Awards at which it was crowned best picture made history. The film’s victory, however, was not preordained. Its Oscar campaign had to overcome naysayers who first doubted the film would be a success and then held its success against it. As for the ceremony itself, to borrow the title of an earlier British film about the ship that couldn’t sink, and then did, it was a night to remember.
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JAMES CAMERON (TITANIC WRITER/DIRECTOR/PRODUCER/EDITOR) There are parts of it that are very murky and there are parts of it that are quite vivid. The parts I remember the most are the setups themselves, the camera placement and how it was all accomplished. I remember all that quite vividly. The Academy Awards are a bit of a blur. But I’ll do my best.
TITANIC SETS SAIL AMID PREDICTIONS OF DISASTER
After hitmaker James Cameron pitched News Corp. president and COO Peter Chernin “Romeo and Juliet on the Titanic,” the exec authorized his company’s subsidiary 20th Century Fox to make Titanic for $110 million, a sizable but not unprecedented budget. But after production got underway, it quickly became apparent that the film was going to cost considerably more, which became the problem of Bill Mechanic, the newly hired Fox Filmed Entertainment chairman. Both Chernin and Mechanic ultimately answered to Rupert Murdoch.
BILL MECHANIC (FOX FILMED ENTERTAINMENT CHAIRMAN) Things went off track essentially from the get-go. The film was, to me, under-budgeted and put under time pressure, because Peter didn’t really want to make the movie. It was the general rule that people didn’t want Jim to venture out of his lane, which was sci-fi, and here he was making a large-scale romantic epic. So it was to put him under pressure to try and get him to do something else by making the conditions too harsh. But that’s testing the wrong guy. Jim went off and did everything — like change way more effects into practical — to theoretically control costs. He built the ship and all that. But he just did not have enough time, and he had a release date and a budget that were both impractical. So that’s what I walked into: it was out of control, and people put their heads in the sand. Nobody wanted to deal with it.
The media caught wind of problems.
JON LANDAU (TITANIC PRODUCER) We had TIME magazine with a headline that I think was “Gulp, Gulp, Gulp.”
CAMERON There was a thing called “Titanic Watch” in Variety. Every day, they’d do a little box on the front page talking about how much we were over budget and schedule and anything negative they could find. I don’t recall another instance where a film was singled out for that kind of abuse.
MECHANIC Everyone thought we were idiots and that this was Waterworld or Cleopatra. Nobody ever said Gone With the Wind or one of those that went a little out of control but ultimately worked.
KATE WINSLET (TITANIC LEAD ACTRESS) I was aware of all that negativity, and I remember being quite upset by that, because all I had done was quite innocently gone off and done the job and worked really hard, and I was really excited about this film and all the lovely friends I’d made. It was like, “Oh. People are being mean about our film, and it hasn’t even come out yet?” I remember being quite baffled and confused by that in ways that, if I’m honest with you, I’m still baffled and confused by. Just about how sometimes the media can create a story around something before it’s even been given legs or had a chance to walk or breathe.
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Gina Prince-Bythewood on the Oscars Shutout of ‘The Woman King’: “This Awards Season Was an Eye-Opener”
Image Credit: Michael Rowe/Getty Images With Black female-led films including Till and Saint Omer left out of the Oscar nominations, the Woman King director tells THR that “the Academy made a very loud statement, and for me to stay quiet is to accept that statement.”
By Gina Prince-Bythewood, as told to Rebecca Keegan
When the Oscar nominations were announced in January, some of the most prominent omissions were films made by and starring Black women, including Gina Prince-Bythewood’s The Woman King, with a cast led by Viola Davis; Chinonye Chukwu’s Till, starring Danielle Deadwyler; and Alice Diop’s Saint Omer, which was France’s selection for international film. Prince-Bythewood opens up about what those omissions mean to her.
I am currently a producer on a project, and the executives were adamant that the director we chose be a Black Oscar-winning director. While that sounds great, who would that be? In the 95-year history of the Academy Awards, no Black filmmaker has ever won best director. No Black woman has ever been nominated.
This awards season was an eye-opener. I was thinking about how to encapsulate what it feels like to be a Black filmmaker in the awards conversation, and I thought about my recent screening of The Woman King at UCLA, which is my alma mater. There were a couple hundred students in the film school, and it was an incredible screening. The Q&A afterward was supposed to be an hour, and it ended up being two hours of conversation. Just a beautiful environment, beautiful reception. And I left there on a high. Just 15 minutes later, I stopped in Westwood at a makeup store, Ulta, to grab something I needed for an event later. And I got followed around by the security guard. I was like, “What a contrast.” Within a half-hour period, I had people seeing me as an artist — really seeing me. And then, I was at a low of seeing a perception of me that has been built through decades of discrimination, and the images of us that the media has created. That hurt.
I’ve gotten so many texts and emails from people in the industry outraged by the Oscar nominations. Of course I’m disappointed. Who wouldn’t be? Especially because there was so much love for our film. And we can never forget that we already won. Not only does The Woman King exist in the world, but it’s a success in the world. For any hater out there hoping to gaslight and say maybe we just weren’t good enough, you can’t argue the facts of our A+ Cinemascore — which only two other films achieved last year — or the 94 percent fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes, or the number of top 10 lists including AFI and National Board of Review. We’re going to pass $100 million at the global box office, which is groundbreaking and historic. Sales on VOD and DVD are great. So, our film made money and clearly had a cultural impact, which is what we all hoped for.
But the Academy made a very loud statement, and for me to stay quiet is to accept that statement. So I agreed to speak up, on behalf of Black women whose work has been dismissed in the past, is dismissed now like Alice Diop and Saint Omer, Chinonye Chukwu and Till — and for those who haven’t even stepped on a set yet.
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A Pellicano Target’s Second Act
Image Credit: Kaitlin Saragusa Photography How ex-Hollywood journalist Anita Busch — whose career was derailed by the infamous Hollywood P.I. and who survived a brutal sexual assault — has quietly re-emerged as an advocate for mass shooting victims: “I said, ‘If I get strong again, I will never stop helping.'”
By Seth Abramovitch
“So we’re down in Uvalde, right?” Anita Busch tells me in one of the lengthy, emotional conversations we’ve had this summer. She is describing the aftermath of the 2022 Texas mass shooting in which 21 grade-school students and teachers died. “I have the team down here in Uvalde for a fifth time. And we’re getting ready to head over to Nashville to help over there,” she says. “As soon as we hit the road, I get word that there’s been a mass shooting at the outlet mall in Allen, Texas. So we divert over there instead.”
Back in the late 1990s, when Busch was a leading entertainment journalist, her points of reference all centered around Hollywood: “Paramount.” “Fox.” “CAA.” But this is her road map now: “Uvalde.” “Orlando.” “Allen” — scenes of the unthinkable yet increasingly commonplace mass-casualty shootings that have thrust the country into a seemingly unending cycle of terror, grief and helplessness.
It’s the helplessness part that Busch can’t live with. After her cousin Micayla Medek was murdered at age 23 in the 2012 Aurora movie theater shooting that took 12 lives, Busch — whose journalism career was sensationally derailed in 2002 after PI to the stars Anthony Pellicano ordered an anonymous threat on her life — found a new purpose.
The result is VictimsFirst — a nonprofit determined to revolutionize and accelerate the way help is funneled to the victims of such tragedies. The golden rule of VictimsFirst is that 100 percent of all donations go directly to shooting victims and their families. Too many other fundraising efforts, Busch says, have gone everywhere but.
Busch learned that the hard way when she tried to get a few thousand dollars for Micayla’s father, who was too distraught to work and was told that despite having raised $5 million, there was nothing available in the Aurora Victim Relief Fund to help him. Caren and Tom Teves, whose 24-year-old son, Alex, was murdered in Aurora, were among the victims who signed an open letter, authored by Busch, questioning why families had only received $5,000 each.
“It was truly unbelievable,” recalls Tom. “We fought and fought and fought. Eventually the governor got involved and a couple of congressmen, and they ended up turning the money over to the victims. But who the hell needed that at that point in your life?”
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Inside the Implosion of Justin Roiland’s Animation Empire
Image Credit: Illustration by Becki Gill To legions of Rick and Morty fans, co-creator Roiland was a quirky genius whose career was suddenly derailed by allegations of domestic violence. But to colleagues, his behavior has been troubling for years.
By Lacey Rose and Katie Kilkenny
On Jan. 9, Hulu debuted its animated comedy Koala Man, the latest installment in what was then Justin Roiland’s sprawling empire. An absurdist superhero series that features a voice cast with Hugh Jackman and Succession‘s Sarah Snook, the project seemed to cap off a particularly prolific period for its producer. In a matter of months, Roiland had released a hit video game, put a collection of paintings on exhibit, aired a sixth season of his Adult Swim juggernaut Rick and Morty, and snagged a fifth season for his other Hulu series, Solar Opposites.
Three days later, that image as a high-flying animation maestro came crashing down. On Jan. 12, NBC News revealed that Roiland was facing two felony charges in Orange County stemming from an alleged 2020 domestic violence incident that occurred with a woman he was dating at the time. That August, he was arrested and released on bail. Roiland has pleaded not guilty. The news, which blindsided both his employers and his colleagues, was greeted with an outpouring of other troubling revelations surrounding his online interactions, with multiple women publishing lewd messages they claimed to have received from Roiland. He direct-messaged former Mad magazine editor Allie Goertz, a longtime fan who was prepping a Rick and Morty concept album: “Can you write a song about 9 Dick’s of different sized and ethnic origins hanging above your face, and then in the lyrics describe how they each splatter you with semen.” He allegedly messaged another woman, who posted the exchange using an anonymous Twitter account and claimed to have been underage when they began corresponding, “You should just run away from home and go into sex slavery YOU FUCKING STUPID FAGGOT BITCH (!!!) (Jk).”
Over the next two weeks, insiders say, advertisers panicked, lawyers huddled and, ultimately, one of the biggest names in animation watched as his career imploded. Roiland was stripped of his lucrative overall deal at Disney’s 20th Television Animation, and both Adult Swim (Rick and Morty) and Hulu (Solar Opposites, Koala Man) released statements that they had severed ties. Roiland will be replaced as the voices of Rick, Morty and Solar‘s alien scientist Korvo going forward. Even Squanch Games, the video game studio that he co-founded in 2016, announced that he’d resigned as CEO. Roiland, who declined to comment for this story, is due back in court for another pretrial hearing in late April.
To many of Roiland’s colleagues, the criminal charges came as a shock, but they also point to workplace behavior that has made them uncomfortable for years. According to multiple sources, who would speak only on the condition of anonymity, Roiland once paraded a high-profile porn star through the Rick and Morty writers room, openly discussed threesomes and was involved in at least one instance of alleged sexual harassment during the show’s third season, notably its first with female writers. In 2020, Cartoon Network, for which Adult Swim is the nighttime arm, conducted a formal investigation that examined Roiland’s inappropriate workplace conduct. It’s uncertain what, if any, actions were taken. Cartoon Network declined to comment.
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Dan Harmon Is Ready to Talk About All of It (Including the Justin Roiland Drama)
Image Credit: Photographed by Lenne Chai The creative force behind Rick and Morty, Community and Krapopolis was a say-anything provocateur until a changing culture, a few brushes with cancellation and lots of therapy scared him into silence. But boy does he miss his soapbox.
By Lacey Rose
There was a time, not too long ago, when Dan Harmon shared absolutely everything.
His bowel movements inspired tweets and Tumblr entries, his dysfunctional relationship with his then-partner powered hours of podcasts, and his firing from Community, his own cult TV creation, fueled a 21-city bus tour and later a documentary. A life of transparency, he reasoned, was therapeutic, healthy even for a guy who’d routinely describe himself as self-loathing and self-destructive.
Then the culture changed. “It stopped being punk rock to just say anything,” says Harmon. And he changed, or at least he tried to change. He embraced actual therapy and largely retreated from the public eye, shuttering both his popular podcast and his prolific Twitter feed. He found love in his personal life and balance in his professional one, and then he watched it all come dangerously close to vanishing as his past caught up to him. But now, at 50, he’s eager for an audience again. He misses that “parasocial relationship” with an army of devoted strangers, and the platform to share whatever it is he’s thinking as he’s thinking it. Harmon misses holding court.
So, here we are, sitting face-to-face at a North Hollywood restaurant for his first expansive profile in years, and he doesn’t want to fuck this up. In fact, before he Ubered over, he even sought counsel from ChatGPT. “What is your advice for a showrunner sitting down for an interview with The Hollywood Reporter?” he asked. It immediately spit out some tips, 10 of them in total. He rattles off a few.
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After Her Debilitating Stroke, Tatum O’Neal Attempts to Heal a Fractured Relationship With Dad Ryan O’Neal
Image Credit: Jerry Tavin/Everett Collection Recovering from an overdose-induced crisis that nearly killed her and forced her to relearn how to speak, the actress looks back on her life and career: “Weird sh** happened. It kind of went in the wrong direction to happiness.”
By Seth Abramovitch
Fifty years ago, a novice child actress named Tatum O’Neal captivated the world in Paper Moon, the Great Depression-set classic about a motherless little girl (O’Neal) and a grifter — possibly her father (played by her actual father, Ryan O’Neal) — tasked with transporting her from Kansas to an aunt in Missouri.
Her performance — funny, heartbreaking, assured beyond her years — won 10-year-old Tatum an Oscar for best supporting actress at the 1974 Academy Awards. Styled adorably in a tuxedo and tomboy haircut, a stunned Tatum — who was chaperoned by her grandfather (Ryan was overseas making Barry Lyndon with Stanley Kubrick at the time; her mother, ’60s TV actress Joanna Moore, was long absent, having succumbed to amphetamine addiction) — told the audience at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion: “All I really want to thank is my director, Peter Bogdanovich, and my father. Thank you.” A half-century later, she still holds the record for youngest Oscar winner.
It was the stuff of Hollywood fairy tales. What ensued, however, was anything but. As chronicled on the covers of countless celebrity glossies and talk shows, in gossip columns and in tell-alls, Tatum’s journey since winning her Oscar has been one steeped in pain, loss, addiction — and an eternal need to repair her tortured relationship with her father.
By his own admission, Ryan was never up to the job. “I had this peculiar thing on Paper Moon, and that is the director insisted she wasn’t my daughter,” he said on Ryan and Tatum: The O’Neals, a 2011 OWN reality series that documented a failed attempt at reconciliation. “The director insisted that my character, Moses, never thought for a second that this was his daughter. So he wanted me to make sure that I didn’t think of her as my daughter. And maybe it never wore off.”
Tatum summons me in late March, through a mutual friend. In two days, she once again will reunite with her father, whom she hasn’t seen in years. But this time things would be very different. In May 2020, Tatum O’Neal suffered a massive stroke caused by a prescription drug overdose. The stroke left her in a coma. When she finally reawakened a month and a half later, she couldn’t remember how to speak. Every day since then has been a struggle to relearn everything, from square one. And she’s doing it. Little by little, day by day.
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“It Was Lightning in a Bottle”: An Oral History of MTV News
Image Credit: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic Thirty-six years after TV’s youth-culture monolith changed the face of cable news, its star correspondents — Kurt Loder, Tabitha Soren, John Norris, SuChin Pak, Chris Connelly, Alison Stewart and Gideon Yago — reminisce about the pre-internet golden years of the coolest media job ever.
By Seth Abramovitch
In the late 1980s, a group of grumpy music journalism vets and fresh-faced 20-somethings came together for a radical media experiment: the launch of a cable news division programmed for, and largely run by American youth. On May 9, 2023 — 36 years after its inception — Paramount announced that the fruits of their labor, MTV News, had been shuttered for good.
The Hollywood Reporter reached out to many of MTV News’ star reporters — Kurt Loder, Tabitha Soren, John Norris, Alison Stewart, Chris Connelly, SuChin Pak and Gideon Yago — and visionary executives Doug Herzog and Ocean MacAdams to reminisce about the glory days of the outfit, where one day you might be hanging backstage with Prince in Paris, the next chasing a pre-White House Bill Clinton through the snowy streets of New Hampshire.
For each of them, it was a bittersweet journey they were more than happy to take.
ALISON STEWART I tell my nieces, who are in their 30s, I’m like, “Just imagine it.” (Laughs.) It’s so hard for somebody who’s under 30 to really understand — and I hope this doesn’t sound grandiose — how important it was, and the need it filled, and the way MTV News spoke to young Americans in a way that they understood.
DOUG HERZOG If you don’t remember, it’s really hard to wrap your head around what a major cultural force and influence MTV was for young people during that period. I say to my own kids, “It was like TikTok and Snapchat and Instagram and Spotify and YouTube all rolled into one.” It’s just what everybody did and where everybody went if you were under 30.
JOHN NORRIS I got pretty well-known. I think we all did.
GIDEON YAGO I remember at this one reunion we were just going through all of the bands that we were able to put on the map, all of the stories that we were able to break. It was just a run. It was like a sports team where it was just like we had something great for a couple of years there.
KURT LODER Everybody was pretty nice on the street. I think somebody tried to punch me out once, but I was in a bar, so who knows? They’ll come and say hi or whatever. MTV viewers were really into music. They knew a lot about it, and it wasn’t just a passing thing with them.
HERZOG MTV was started in ’81. I arrived in September of ’84 and was given the title “news director.” I had three news copywriters who were basically ripping stories from Billboard and rewriting press releases. I was told to build a budget and create a news department. Pretty shortly thereafter, we had formal news breaks — the VJs handled those. We started to build a little department.
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Mo'Nique Makes Peace (Mostly)
Image Credit: John Washington Jr./Netflix The Oscar-winning actress and comedian speaks for the first time about her 13-year feud with Lee Daniels, her tense showdown with Oprah, resolving her lawsuit against Netflix — and why she’s finally ready to forgive and forget: “It’s a new chapter.”
By Seth Abramovitch
Mo’Nique is beaming. She’s seated on a sofa in the sunlit living room of her Atlanta home, and she’s positively glowing.
“I’m pregnant,” she says after I point out her aura. “No, just kidding.”
What she is, it turns out, is happy — happier than she’s been in a while, says the 55-year-old Oscar-winning comedian and actress. “I’m grateful for that feeling. When you are good on the inside, I believe it shows up on the outside.
“It’s a new chapter,” she says, “but not because of Hollywood. It’s a new chapter because my babies are graduating high school. It’s a new chapter because my grandson will be going to kindergarten next year, and my granddaughter to the fifth grade. Those things, for me, are the priority.”
But her career, too, is beginning to flourish after an extended fallow period. On Feb. 22, Netflix released a trailer for the comedy special My Name Is Mo’Nique, placing its star back in the public eye after what feels like a very long time.
Mo’Nique’s cherubic face has been popping up elsewhere, as well. She stars in The Reading, a low-budget horror movie now streaming on BET+. And she plays Goldie — a “sophisticated Atlanta strip club owner with swagger and street smarts” — in BMF, short for Black Mafia Family, a Detroit-set crime drama that’s in its second season on Starz.
“It made sense,” she says of her return to the screen. “And it made dollars and cents. And for all those years, it just wasn’t making sense. Back then, I didn’t feel a glow. I felt disappointment. I felt the same injustices and inequalities that all the Black women who came to Hollywood before me felt. Oftentimes people call that anger. They call it bitterness. They call it unstable. They give it all these titles except what it really is.”
That My Name Is Mo’Nique exists at all is a major victory for her roller-coaster career. In 2017, Netflix approached her to star in a special and offered her $500,000 to do so. Mo’Nique was characteristically vocal about how she felt about that — that the sum was discriminatory and indicative of a pattern of underpaying Black women. She pointed to eight-figure deals paid to comedians like Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock and Amy Schumer for comparable work. Netflix abruptly called off the negotiations.
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Andrea Riseborough: Oscar’s Most Talked-About Nominee Breaks Her Silence
Image Credit: Photographed by Charlotte Hadden The best actress surprise on making To Leslie, her shape-shifting career and the debates surrounding her nomination: “It not only makes sense that this conversation would be sparked, but it is necessary.”
By Seth Abramovitch
Andrea Riseborough — the shapeshifting actress whose name is on everyone’s lips — has lived in Los Angeles since 2010. But right now she’s back in her native England, where she’s filming the HBO miniseries The Palace, a period political satire co-starring Kate Winslet. A swanky hotel tucked discreetly at the end of a narrow alleyway in London’s Soho district serves as her temporary home. Riseborough, 41, enters the hotel’s busy restaurant precisely at the agreed-upon hour — 3:30 p.m. Tea time, although she will be drinking coffee.
Nothing in her demeanor suggests someone who nine days earlier had been nominated for an Academy Award — her first, no less, after 20 prolific years of dues-paying. She is petite, practically swimming in a striped wool overcoat. Her hair is cropped boyishly short — this for another recent role, playing British Vogue editor Audrey Withers in Lee. Right now, however, it gives her a whiff of Joan of Arc. She takes a seat and removes a black mask, exposing a wan smile.
As this is Riseborough’s first major interview since that surprise nomination — but arranged before the backlash that followed it — she is aware that anything she utters over the next two hours could easily boomerang back to wound her. When asked questions about the awards campaign or the conversations about race and privilege it’s sparking, she hesitates, preferring to address those matters in a later conversation (which she will, via email).
In this moment, however, she can’t even concede to being happy about it.
“I don’t know what I know,” she says. “I think once I have time to process everything, I might understand it a bit better.”
The Oscars long have had a knack for stirring up creative controversy. But this brouhaha — call it l’Affaire Riseborough — is different. For starters, it erupted not during the ceremony but on Jan. 24, Oscar nominations morning, when Riseborough — a screen vet (she’s a favorite of auteurs like Mike Leigh, Armando Iannucci and Alejandro G. Iñárritu), if not a household name — was one of five lead actresses whose name was read aloud by Riz Ahmed. That the film she starred in was To Leslie, an ultra-low-budget indie that grossed only $27,000 in its single week in theaters, served to enhance the shock value.
How did it happen? Hollywood awards strategists will surely dissect the phenomenon for generations. What’s clear is that a word-of-mouth Hail Mary campaign aimed directly at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ acting branch and led by a raft of such A-listers as Winslet, Charlize Theron and Gwyneth Paltrow — with even competitors like Cate Blanchett jumping in — allowed Riseborough to clinch the nomination.
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Now What? The Five Crises Confronting a Post-Strike Hollywood
Image Credit: Illustration by WalrusNYC Hollywood’s “summer of strikes” may be about to wrap, but don’t pop the champagne just yet. Existential issues still loom large.
By Rebecca Keegan, Alex Weprin, Lacey Rose, Lesley Goldberg, Pamela McClintock, Winston Cho and Rick Porter
As brutal as 2023 has been for the entertainment industry, it’s possible the town will someday look back on this moment wistfully. And not just because of the picket line solidarity or cozy mogul hangs in the bargaining room.
The strikes helped earn gains for Hollywood workers in such areas as streaming residuals and AI, just as they cost the national economy more than $5 billion. But the walkouts also marked the decisive end to a bullish and ultimately unsustainable chapter in Hollywood, an era that was already on its way out when writers put their pens down May 2. This was an age when money flowed freely and companies vying to build their nascent streaming platforms competed for talent with generous and plentiful overall deals. An era when 599 scripted shows a year kept 599 different casts and crews employed. One when actual human beings — not AI — did the creative work of making films and television shows.
But that heyday has officially ended, thanks to unsexy factors like high interest rates and industry consolidation, and the strikes gave studios cover to drop their unwanted deals and trim their budgets. The new, post-strike Hollywood is going to be a much leaner one. “This business has now gone through a pandemic, a dual strike and an economic downturn, and the companies have sobered up,” says one agency executive. “The business is getting tougher. For the working-class writer, director, producer, you’re going to see a contraction.”
Post-strike Hollywood also is likely to transition from what has been a strange era in the entertainment business, one when success was often divorced from compensation, thanks to the streaming formula of big up-front paydays without the prospect of performance-based rewards — or even information about how a show or film did on a platform. It’s a system, many industry sources say, that led to a lot of crap. “Where was the incentive to stay on budget or make something great?” asks an agency source.
“There needs to be more of a focus on quality,” says Avatar producer Jon Landau. “That doesn’t necessarily mean tentpole. Whether it’s a big movie or TV show or a small one, we have to make it good.”
Post-strike, expect companies to be pickier about what they make and talent and financiers to be more closely aligned on fiscal responsibility and quality. For some creators, more guardrails and feedback will be welcome. “People are hungrier now,” says producer Todd Black. “Writers are, producers are, and studio executives are. I think we’re going to see over the next couple of years, hopefully, more productivity and more selectivity, and in some ways, I think it’s a good thing.”
In the meantime, however, the industry must still grapple with five crises the strikes might have overshadowed but certainly did not solve.
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Hollywood Reporter Critics Pick the 50 Best Films of the 21st Century (So Far)
Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection (14) Over the course of a few months, several Zoom meetings, and countless emails, six THR film critics came together to hash out, and rank, what they consider the greatest films since 2000.
By Jon Frosch, David Rooney, Sheri Linden, Lovia Gyarkye, Leslie Felperin and Jordan Mintzer
Why now? Why not?
Sure, we’ve yet to hit the quarter-century mark, when these sorts of lists tend to start landing. But we’ve arguably already lived through 100 years’ worth of upheaval, progress, pain, destruction, hope and heartache in the world — not to mention the film industry — since 2000. We thought it as good a time as any to look back at the films that have, to us, stood the ever-unfolding test of time.
In the spirit of transparency, our methodology went something like this: We all offered up titles we thought were worthy of consideration (an initial list of well over 100 movies). Everyone voted “yea” or “nay” on each of those titles. The films with the most yeas — about 80 — advanced to the next round. Everyone scored each title from 0 to 3. We tallied up the points, and then hashed it out from there. Countless emails and a few long Zoom meetings later, we had our list.
Our only parameters: All six of us had to love, like or at least respect every film on the list. And we did not consider anything from 2022; it just felt too soon (translation: after the forever-long awards season, we needed a breather from talking about Tár, Everything Everywhere All at Once and the rest of ’em).
Picking the movies we love the most, while being mindful of variety and inclusivity, significance and staying power, was difficult (we know: world’s smallest violin). We wanted our list to reflect the breadth of world cinema and of our tastes, but we also didn’t want to placate or pander or allow fear of Film Twitter or Outrage Twitter (or any Twitter) to weigh on our process.
That doesn’t mean we weren’t plagued by doubts along the way. What are we missing? Who are we leaving out? Why this movie and not that one? We know certain omissions and selections are bound to incite eye rolls, grumbles and maybe a shriek or two.
But we tried to stay true to our love of movies, these movies, and others that didn’t make the cut. (Remember, it’s only 50!) The final list is a reflection of that love, but also of a system that favors certain stories and storytellers at the expense of others. If the list is not a model of representational balance, call us out — we can take it — but also continue to call out an industry that hasn’t given us a more diverse landscape of voices to love, hate and argue over.
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Hollywood Reporter Critics Pick the 50 Best TV Shows of the 21st Century (So Far)
Image Credit: ILLUSTRATION BY KELSEY STEFANSON; IMAGES: COURTESY OF FX, HBO, AMC, THE CW, NBC, SCI FI, EVERETT COLLECTION Over the course of a few months, several Zoom meetings, lots of emails and countless Excel spreadsheets, three THR TV critics joined forces to hash out, and rank, what they consider the greatest shows since 2000.
By Daniel Fienberg, Angie Han and Robyn Bahr
Back in April, THR‘s team of intrepid film critics got together and ranked the 50 best films of the 21st century so far, delivering a list that was fascinating, head-scratching and packed with cinematic greatness. Like all well-conceived lists, it offered room for enthusiastic agreement and virulent disagreement — as well as a guarantee that any title you had yet to see was surely worth checking out.
That list began with an important question: “Why now?” Their conclusive answer: “Why not?”
That makes it even easier for us to justify our own stab at the same project: Why rank the best TV shows of the past 24 years — which isn’t even a quarter of a century — right now? Because the film critics did it first and it looked like a lot of fun!
It was not fun.
OK, that’s not exactly accurate. Debating great TV is always fun. But the past 24 years have been a television boomtown (not to be confused with the NBC drama Boomtown, which didn’t receive much consideration, though its first season was excellent). Whether you call it a golden age (or platinum, or your metal of choice), expand the boundaries of John Landgraf’s “Peak TV” well beyond its actual definition or just employ the #TooMuchTV hashtag, there’s little doubt that the television landscape on Dec. 31, 1999, has almost no resemblance to what the kids are watching on their iWatches today. (That, incidentally, is a different problem. “The kids” are watching their content on YouTube and TikTok, and they probably don’t even know what an “NBC” is, much less a Boomtown.)
There were 600 original scripted shows airing on broadcast, cable and streaming in 2022 alone. That it was already hard enough to list the 50 best shows of last year is a luxury problem. We’re living through the greatest era of television content ever, and that’s fantastic, but it makes listing very challenging. It’s likely that we excluded at least five of your favorite shows ever. We apologize.
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Ben Affleck on ‘Air,’ New CEO Gig and Those Memes: “I Am Who I Am”
Image Credit: Photographed By Austin Hargrave The actor, filmmaker and budding mogul on the disruptive production company he launched with Matt Damon, why he’s done with D.C., getting Michael Jordan’s blessing for his new film and the advice wife Jennifer Lopez gave him for this interview.
By Rebecca Keegan
It’s been 25 years since Ben Affleck became the youngest person to win the Oscar for best original screenplay at age 25 for Good Will Hunting, which he wrote with Matt Damon; 16 years since he directed his critically acclaimed first feature, Gone Baby Gone; and a decade since he won best picture for Argo, a film Affleck directed, starred in and produced. His four features as a director — all thrillers and dramas instead of the kind of franchise films that drive the modern box office — have made nearly $450 million worldwide.
It’s an enviable filmmaking résumé, and one that pretty much nobody brings up when you say the name Ben Affleck. But while the world has been scrutinizing his marriage, his mood and his coffee order, Affleck has been quietly building a new production company, Artists Equity, with Damon, founded on the premise of profit-sharing among not only directors, producers and actors but also crewmembers such as cinematographers, editors and costume designers.
Affleck and Damon obtained at least $100 million in financing from investment firm RedBird Capital Partners to start and made their own financial contributions to Artists Equity, with Affleck, 50, serving as CEO, and Damon, 52, as chief creative officer. “Ben and I have both been making movies for over 30 years,” says Damon. “We know the things that actually matter to people — but ask Ben to see the spreadsheets.”
Their company’s first movie and Affleck’s latest as a director, is Air, the story of how Michael Jordan’s family and a group of executives at Nike revolutionized the business with one historic sneaker deal. Air, which Amazon will premiere at the South by Southwest film festival March 18 before releasing it wide theatrically April 5, stars Viola Davis as Jordan’s mother; Damon, Chris Tucker and Jason Bateman as execs at Nike; and Affleck as Nike co-founder and former CEO Phil Knight. Making Air was “an unbelievable experience that me and my husband and even my hair and makeup team still talk about to this day,” says Davis, whose husband, actor and producer Julius Tennon, plays Jordan’s father in the film. “Ben’s an auteur and so unbelievably kind and respectful. It was one of our top experiences of being treated the way we felt we deserved to be treated.”
Over the course of two wide-ranging interviews in March, Affleck spoke with THR about what he’s learned from his ups and downs — from a tearful moment in 2007, when he realized his career wasn’t actually over, to the agony of almost wishing that it was, on Justice League. Affleck describes what it was like to wear the Batsuit once more for this summer’s The Flash, how he secured Jordan’s blessing for Air, what advice wife Jennifer Lopez gave him for the movie and this interview, and what it’s like to be a walking meme: “At a certain point,” says Affleck, “I am who I am.”
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How ‘The Last of Us’ Plans to Bring the Zombie Genre Back to Life
Image Credit: PHOTOGRAPHED BY RYAN PFLUGER Inside HBO’s zombie apocalypse plan: A new drama starring Game of Thrones veterans Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey from Chernobyl creator Craig Mazin that aims to overcome Hollywood’s legacy of weak video game adaptations and become a monster hit. “We put all of ourselves into this.”
By James Hibberd
Craig Mazin looks exasperated.
The Last of Us showrunner just finished a marathon press junket for his upcoming HBO zombie drama, and every reporter that trotted into his hotel suite asked him the same question. “Literally all day long,” he marvels. “Over and over. They even phrased it the same way.”
The question: What are the challenges of adapting a video game?
Which is fine, as questions go. But it’s actually the polite version of the real question, which is this: Can you make a dramatic adaptation of a video game that doesn’t disappoint like all the rest of them have?
After all, Hollywood has been attempting to alchemize games into movies and TV shows for decades — from Street Fighter to Doom to Halo to Assassin’s Creed. And aside from a few kid-targeted titles like Sonic franchise, the result has been billions of pixels of meh.
In this case, however, the answer to the question Mazin kept being asked should be clear to anybody who played 2013’s cinematic The Last of Us, which follows a hard-case survivor named Joel tasked with smuggling special “cargo” — a teenage girl named Ellie — across a postapocalyptic, zombie-filled former United States.
“The way to break the video game curse is to adapt the best video game story ever — not by a little, but by a lot,” Mazin says. “So I flat-out cheated.”
The Last of Us’ complex, emotionally wrenching storyline seems ideal for a debut season of television. The series, co-produced by Sony and premiering Jan. 15, is toplined by two Game of Thrones veterans — Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey — and could very well become HBO’s Next Big Thing at a time when competition for the prestige TV streaming crown is fiercer than ever and belt-tightening cuts have made every major series launch really count. But it was a minor miracle the game was made in the first place, and now it’s become a show that somehow must get everything right — or risk becoming the gaming industry’s biggest Hollywood disappointment yet.
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‘Home Improvement’ Star Zachery Ty Bryan Amassed a Bitcoin Fortune, Then Spiraled Amid Domestic Violence Arrest, Allegations of Fraud
Image Credit: Illustration by Barbara Gibson; Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic; Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection/Getty Images; Mario Casilli/TV Guide/Touchstone Television/Courtesy Everett Collection The 41-year-old seemed to have avoided the pitfalls of child stardom, then “he torched … all aspects of his life.” How did it all go so wrong? Friends, family, TV dad Tim Allen and Bryan himself talked to The Hollywood Reporter to detail his fall.
By Chris Gardner
Every episode of ABC’s blockbuster 1990s sitcom Home Improvement ended with a life lesson. For eight seasons and 203 episodes, Americans tuned in weekly by the tens of millions to watch Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor, wife Jill and their three sons wrestle with dilemmas typical of middle-class American households, only to discover solutions and restore peace in a tight 22 minutes.
“What a Drag,” a season seven entry that aired Feb. 24, 1998, focused a lens on eldest son Brad, played by Zachery Ty Bryan, as it’s discovered he stashed marijuana in the family’s backyard gazebo. When confronted, Brad lies and deflects but eventually comes clean to his parents, played by Tim Allen and Patricia Richardson, and younger brother Randy (Jonathan Taylor Thomas), who says in melodramatic fashion, “I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on with you.”
The episode culminates with a heart-to-heart on the living room sofa. “When you’re young, you want to have adventures. You think nothing bad can happen to you. It’s not true,” offers Richardson’s Jill after she, too, arrives at an honest moment of reflection to reveal that when she experimented with (laced) weed at a Led Zeppelin concert, it landed her behind bars. “Why would you want to take that risk?”
Tim picked it up from there. “Your life’s on track now. You don’t want to do stuff that will get it off track,” he advises. Brad apologizes and awaits “sentencing” before Tim lovingly concludes that he’s “a good kid” in such a way that it’s easy to see why he earned the title of America’s Dad.
By all accounts, Zachery Ty Bryan was a good kid. Friends and colleagues recall a strong work ethic, a love for family, a talent for soccer and a fierce ambition. The drive persisted into adulthood. “No rich parents. No assistance. No handouts. No favors. No excuses. Straight hunger. Straight ambition. Straight hustle. If I want it, I’m gonna go get it. Period,” Bryan tweeted on July 16, 2020. That same year, a darker version of Bryan began to emerge. Sources say his life had taken a dramatic turn evidenced by arrests for domestic violence and driving under the influence, and a trail of jilted investors who believe they were duped in a crypto scheme. The narrative puts a 2020s spin on the age-old parable of the promising child actor who goes off the rails later in life.
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Inside Amazon Studios: Big Swings Hampered by Confusion and Frustration
Image Credit: THR Illustration Despite ambitious bets like Daisy Jones & The Six and Citadel, insiders complain that there’s still “no vision for what an Amazon Prime show is.” But chief Jen Salke says they are missing the point: “You don’t reverse-engineer true creative vision.”
By Kim Masters
It’s long been an open secret that Jeff Bezos has yearned for his own Game of Thrones, and that Amazon’s big swing as it reached for its own massive hit was The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, believed to be the most expensive series ever made.
Last September, the show began with a bang, delivering the biggest debut ever on the streamer in what Amazon Studios chief Jennifer Salke called “a very culturally defining moment” for the company. But when season one wrapped, the show was less defining than hoped, falling short of being the breakout hit that Amazon had envisioned.
While Amazon, like other streamers, provides only limited data — and internally, it held information even more closely than usual on the series — sources confirm that The Rings of Power had a 37 percent domestic completion rate (customers who watched the entire series). Overseas, it reached 45 percent. (A 50 percent completion rate would be a solid but not spectacular result, according to insiders). The show has not been a major awards contender, either, overlooked by the major guilds with the exception of one SAG-AFTRA nomination for stunt ensemble.
But according to Salke, the series has worked. “This desire to paint the show as anything less than a success — it’s not reflective of any conversation I’m having internally,” she says. The second season, currently in production, will have more dramatic story turns, she adds. “That’s a huge opportunity for us. The first season required a lot of setting up.”
Data from Nielsen on minutes watched reveals that when it comes to original shows generally, Amazon has lagged. In 2022, Netflix hoovered up the top 10 spots for original streaming series, with Amazon’s The Boys in 11th place — ahead of The Rings of Power at No. 15. Using the same measurement, none of the top 15 originals of 2021 came from Amazon. (Netflix again took all the slots except for Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale in 10th place, Apple’s Ted Lasso at 12, and Disney+’s WandaVision in the 14th spot.)
Many current and former Amazon executives, as well as showrunners who have series at the streamer and agents who make deals there, believe that this is no accident. They describe Amazon Studios as a confusing and frustrating place to do business. When it comes to movies, where Amazon’s footprint is expanding following the $8.5 billion acquisition of MGM a year ago, a veteran producer says that, in recent years, “there has been no sense of what the philosophy is.”
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When a Ketamine Therapy Visit Goes Horribly Wrong
Image Credit: Istvan Kadar Photography I sought help from a ketamine clinic like Matthew Perry. Things went wrong. What happened was the scariest experience of my life.
By James Hibberd
If it’s a trendy health or wellness hack, I’ve probably tried it. Meditation apps, gratitude journals, bulletproof coffee, sleep optimization — done all that. I went through a cryotherapy phase, which has now evolved into a cold plunging phase (because why be merely shivering for three minutes when you can be freezing in agony for six?). Infrared sauna? The Finnish are onto something. Red light LED mask? Let’s glow!
So I was probably always going to get around to trying ketamine therapy, which I did two years ago. I had read all the things: How the animal tranquilizer and party drug can work wonders for treatment-resistant depression. How it can “reset your brain.” How ketamine’s unique dissociative effect allows the user to take a step back, get off their hamster-wheel of ego-driven thinking and obtain some healing distance on past traumas.
Which sounded terrific. I wasn’t depressed, exactly, but felt stuck in a rut — like one of those Westworld androids that keep doing the same patterns of behavior over and over. Also, when I was a bit younger, I had watched both my parents decline and perish from illnesses that are among the worst our world has to offer, and those memories still haunted (my mom had cancer and my dad had Alzheimer’s, and, in case you’re wondering, Alzheimer’s wins that particular “which is more fucking awful” race hands down). I suspect those experiences, and wanting to reduce the odds of contracting a similar disease myself, are a big reason I chase wellness trends (“not today” as Syrio Forel declared).
So: Ketamine therapy? Sure. But done properly — in a controlled setting, administered by professionals. There were several recently launched clinics in Austin to choose from. I picked one (which will remain nameless) with decent online reviews. The cost was about $400. It was located in a somewhat modest-looking strip mall, but let’s not judge.
I showed up for my appointment, filled out forms, and signed a waiver. There was no real interview or pre-treatment counseling. I was ushered to a small, dim room with blinds on the windows. The room’s centerpiece was a cushy faux-leather recliner that faced an LED TV that was mounted high on the wall. Next to the chair was an IV stand. The technician was a young woman, let’s call her “Sarah.” It was unclear if she had any medical credentials, but she had this I’m-just-going-through-the-motions, “do you want to order any appetizers?” casualness that made me think not.
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