THR Editors’ Picks of 2023
Unmasking the AMPTP: Hollywood Labor’s Opaque Nemesis
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 […]
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Before He Turned on Putin, Yevgeny Prigozhin Made Hollywood-Style Propaganda Films to Sell His War
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.
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A Pellicano Target’s Second Act
“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 […]
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A Hollywood Insurrectionist’s Path to Extremism
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 […]
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The Auteurs of San Quentin
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, […]
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After Her Debilitating Stroke, Tatum O’Neal Attempts to Heal a Fractured Relationship With Dad Ryan O’Neal
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 — […]
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‘Home Improvement’ Star Zachery Ty Bryan Amassed a Bitcoin Fortune, Then Spiraled Amid Domestic Violence Arrest, Allegations of Fraud
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 […]
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Taylor Sheridan Does Whatever He Wants: “I Will Tell My Stories My Way”
“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 […]
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When David Zaslav Is Your Boss: 20-Plus Insiders on His Exacting Standards (And Those 6:30 a.m. Calls)
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 […]
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Spies, Killers and Internet Daddies: Pedro Pascal, Kieran Culkin and the THR Drama Actor Roundtable
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 […]
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“It Was Lightning in a Bottle”: An Oral History of MTV News
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 […]
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Ailing ‘Superman’ Star Valerie Perrine Finally Finds Her Hero: “The Guy Should Be Sainted”
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 […]
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