Innholdsfortegnelse for Wednesday April 12 2018 i The Hollywood Reporter

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman, 32, swooped into Hollywood for a tour that included an April 2 soiree thrown by Rupert Murdoch and a deal for Cirque du Soleil to debut in Saudi Arabia. The MBS visit coincided with news that AMC would open the country’s first movie theater on April 18, breaking a 35-year public screen ban. While the country still faces criticism of its human rights practices, reforms are set to have an impact on a cinema-starved nation of 32.3 million (70 percent under age 30). Here’s THR’s take on the opening of the complicated market. 1. HOLLYWOOD WILL FEATURE PROMINENTLY Marvel’s Black Panther is set to break the cinema ban (followed by Avengers: Infinity War), a sure sign that U.S. studios will play a big part…

Deal of the Week There won’t be a Crown controversy at HBO. Mere weeks after the production company behind the Netflix royal drama landed in hot water by admitting that Claire Foy (who played Queen Elizabeth II) had been paid less than co-star Matt Smith, HBO programming president Casey Bloys reveals the action that his team has taken to ensure that there are no such wage gaps at his network. “We just finished a process where we went through all of our [deals] and made sure that there were no inappropriate disparities in pay,” Bloys tells THR. “And if we found any, we corrected it going forward.” (He declines to cite any series that were impacted.) That is not to say HBO will begin categorically paying male and female talent…

THR’s Power Lawyers Breakfast Los Angeles, April 4 Mean Girls New York, April 8 L.A. Family Housing West Hollywood, April 5 Party Crawler Legal Eagles Sorry, Cheers fans. That beloved series is unlikely to see a reboot, NBC chairman Bob Greenblatt (2) said during a Q&A with THR editorial director Matthew Belloni (2) at the 12th Power Lawyers breakfast. What about The Office? “Maybe it’ll happen,” Greenblatt offered; he also hinted that a direct-to-consumer platform, a la CBS All Access, may be coming soon. At the Spago event, sponsored by City National Bank and Ermenegildo Zegna, THR honored Showtime executive vp and general counsel Gwen Marcus (5) with its Raising the Bar Award. — ASHLEY CULLINS Girls Night “Mean Girls is not just a story about women being bitches. With…

HOT NEW RESTAURANT Ron Meyer had breakfast at Culina at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills. … Marlon Wayans was at Doheny Room. … Steven Spielberg lunched at Tavern. … Iggy Azalea, Jerry Bruckheimer and Diane Warren sat in different corners at Craig’s. … Over at Mr Chow, Brian Grazer was in. Producer Tucker Tooley popped in on a different day. … Larry David checked out Katsuya Hollywood. Donnie Wahlberg also was in. … Lauren Hutton and Laurence Fishburne dined together at Gjusta in Venice. … Producer Max Mutchnick, CAA’s Richard Lovett, Barry Diller, Jennifer Salke and rapper T.I. shared the room at The Palm. The Henry The Quick Pitch Sam Fox, the national restaurateur behind True Food Kitchen, has taken over the former Newsroom on Robertson Boulevard with an…

Donald Trump’s standard operating procedure of conflict, insults, reversals and dismissals — fire and fury, if you will — is still reported by the news media with breathless surprise. The most obvious man on Earth is yet, to the media, always astonishing. Who’s fault is that? Covering a train wreck requires different skills from covering politics. But political reporters continue to apply the hyper-rationality of political life and its heightened sense of cause and effect to Trump and his White House. Power, in this view, necessarily has logic and purpose. Earlier this year, The New York Times broke a story about how, in June, Trump tried to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller. True enough — except that the Times story implied the culmination of a decision-making process and certain calculated…

It’s hard to imagine now — with pink slips flying at Conde Nast and Time Inc. getting sold off to the penny-pinchers at Meredith Corp. — but veteran magazine editors and publishers remember a time when small fortunes could be made simply by filling out an expense report. “There was a way to make anything go past accounting,” wistfully recalls Kim France, who as editor of Conde Nast’s now-folded Lucky magazine once chartered a private jet to Palm Springs, kept a chauffeur-driven town car idling 24 hours a day and handed out $100 Barneys gift cards to her staff as if they were candy bars. “Everything was expensable.” Another former top editor, this one at Time Inc., remembers how during the 1990s and 2000s his company went on a spending…

Last year — appropriately for a year in which the #MeToo movement was launched — marked a significant milestone on the road to gender equity in television news. In 2017, for the first time, nightly news assignment desks gave equal time to their leading male and female correspondents. Of the top 10 reporters ranked by airtime on the three broadcast networks’ weekday nightly newscasts, five were men and five were women. ABC World News Tonight gave most prominence to Jonathan Karl, Mary Bruce and Cecilia Vega. CBS Evening News relied most on Nancy Cordes and Jeff Pegues. On NBC Nightly News, Hallie Jackson and Kristen Welker shared top billing with Miguel Almaguer, Tom Costello and Gabe Gutierrez. In the mornings, when Matt Lauer was defenestrated from the Rockefeller Plaza window…

For years, Louis C.K. performed insightful standup about how repellent men truly are. Then in November, his jokes about his “constant perverted sexual thoughts” proved a little too truthful. A New York Times story forced C.K., 50, to confess to longstanding rumors that he had brought female comics back to his hotel room and masturbated in front of them. And while he was spotted at the Olive Tree Cafe (the restaurant above the Comedy Cellar) in February, he hasn’t performed since the scandal broke. “Everybody dropped him,” says Louis Faranda, executive talent producer for Carolines, “which was the right thing to do.” Gilbert Gottfried thinks the public ultimately understands the difference between C.K.’s behavior and someone like Harvey Weinstein or Bill Cosby, noting that his own career supposedly ended twice…

In 1998, Sean Combs — aka Diddy — announced his arrival in the tony enclave of East Hampton by throwing a Labor Day party at his new house on Hedges Banks Drive. What the hip-hop mogul delivered was the inaugural installment of a series of summer White Parties that eventually moved to St. Tropez and Beverly Hills. “I remember the first party he threw in the Hamptons,” Paris Hilton tells THR. “It was iconic and everyone was there.” Hilton likens Diddy (now 48 and a judge on Fox’s The Four) to a “modern-day Gatsby” for how he pulled together a 1,000-person guest list and successfully imposed a strict head-to-toe white dress code. “Having an entire party all dressed in white was a stunning sight,” says Martha Stewart, a guest at…

Iused to be married to Jason Sudeikis. At the time, he was writing on Saturday Night Live. I was in L.A. trying to make it as an actress and, like, doing the whole bicoastal thing. But once I got hired as a writer for 30 Rock, I moved to New York proper. As it turns out, we didn’t actually work in 30 Rock. We were in Queens. But it was still an amazing experience. You know when you think you’re in show business? And then you get a job, and you’re like, “Oh, no — now I’m in show business.” It was very special because we were writing about creator Tina Fey’s experiences on Saturday Night Live, so the worlds of 30 Rock and Saturday Night Live were intertwined a…

Tucked away on the 12th floor of a Flatironarea office building lies the publicity firm founded by former Democratic operative Matthew Hiltzik. Until November 2016, the 22-person Hiltzik Strategies was best known for having represented such news-magnet stars as Katie Couric, Justin Bieber and Glenn Beck. Then Trump happened, and suddenly two of Hiltzik’s PR proteges, Hope Hicks and Josh Raffel, became key White House confidants of the president and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, respectively. It was with Hiltzik that Hicks, now 29, and Raffel, 33, were first pulled into the Trump orbit via their work with Kushner (him) and Ivanka (her), who had business with the agency at the time. But their tenures at the company — nearly three years for Hicks, six-plus for Raffel — provided more than just…

There’s a place on Broadway for the intimate chamber piece, but going small is not the preferred route for a musical comedy spun out of a popular teen movie. Tina Fey and the team behind Mean Girls understand this, as evidenced by their elevation of Regina George from imperious arbiter of high school hotness to full-blown villainess — a Medusa with better hair. As played with a delectable streak of cruelty by Taylor Louderman, Regina seems to move in a slo-mo strut, suffusing the air around her with a pink glow no doubt hazardous to the environment. “I’m the prettiest poison you’ve ever seen. I never weigh more than one-fifteen,” she coos in one solo. If the songs composed by Fey’s husband, Jeff Richmond, with lyrics by Nell Benjamin are…

While Tribeca has included TV since it screened the Friends series finale in 2004, it’s only since 2016 that it has hosted a section dedicated to the small screen. This year, it will feature 18 shows, including eight series and three season premieres. They include Rest in Power: The Trayvon Martin Story, which Jay-Z executive produced and which will air on the Paramount Network in July; Starz’s New York-set Sweetbitter; YouTube Red’s Cobra Kai, with Ralph Macchio reprising his Karate Kid role; and the season two premiere of Westworld. Plus, a number of feature films exploring iconic shows will have world premieres, like Freaks and Geeks: The Documentary, looking back at Paul Feig’s cult hit. “This year’s programming mirrors the larger festival in that each show or project drives a…

The Beijing International Film Festival has always been a stodgy, state-run affair — more of an occasion for political genuflection than a pure celebration of cinematic art. But this year’s eighth edition is facing a larger-than-usual crisis of credibility. In late March, director Luca Guadagnino’s Oscar-winning gay romance Call Me by Your Name was unceremoniously cut from the festival lineup, which offers a mixed bag of domestic and international releases ranging from the local nationalist hit Operation Red Sea to the provocative Iranian feminist drama Searing Summer. No explanation was given for pulling Call Me, but a festival insider told THR at the time that the film’s gay love story had been deemed out of bounds by senior figures. “The Beijing festival has always followed the guidelines of those at…

Look no further than the roar of Black Panther to highlight the success a Hollywood tentpole can achieve at the box office when playing to a diverse crowd in North America. African-Americans made up 35 percent to 40 percent of the film’s audience, an unprecedented showing. The Marvel Studios film has grossed nearly $1.3 billion globally, including $666 million-plus domestically, making it the No. 3 title of all time behind Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) and Avatar (2009). While the Motion Picture Association of America’s new 2017 report finds overall gains — global revenue up 5 percent year-over-year to a record $40.6 billion — domestic revenue dipped to $11.1 billion, down 2 percent. The study shows that Hollywood has a long way to go to win over all segments…

Sony’s Affirm label didn’t have much faith when it came to the film I Can Only Imagine, twice letting the Christian-themed breakout get away. Instead, the Dennis Quaid starrer now marks Roadside Attractions’ highest-grossing and most profitable film ever with a $71 million box-office haul to date. Sony originally developed the faith-based film, which chronicles the true story behind MercyMe’s song of the same name, but walked away from the project in 2015. So, producer Kevin Downes bought the rights and — along with directors Andrew and Jon Erwin — raised the film’s $7 million budget and $12 million prints-and-advertising spend through a network of wealthy and anonymous Christian investors. In August, Imagine’s grassroots marketing team — led by WTA Group’s Kris Fuhr — found that the film’s test scores…

FIRST LOOK Barry Diller doesn’t think much (“Not excited. Period.”) of Cynthia Nixon’s gubernatorial run. After all, she’s challenging Andrew Cuomo, who helped revive the IAC chair’s $250 million public park, Pier 55, now once again under construction on the Hudson River after work was halted by a judge in March 2017. Diller’s never been one to back down from a fight. But that’s precisely what the billionaire did in September amid multiple lawsuits filed by the City Club of New York (and later revealed to be funded by real estate developer Douglas Durst) that raised environmental concerns about the project. “I just said, ‘I’m out,’” recalls Diller. “It was not atmospherically something that a sane person would continue to do. My family said, ‘Just stop, this is making you…

Saturday Night Live has made a science of Trump administration impersonations — most notably Alec Baldwin’s POTUS but also Kate McKinnon’s Kellyanne Conway and Jeff Sessions. This season, breakouts Mikey Day, 38, and Alex Moffat, 36, have found seemingly bottomless inspiration in Trump’s sons, 40-year-old Don Jr. and Eric, 34. Regular guests at the “Weekend Update” desk, Day’s Junior is the slick-haired mouthpiece and Moffat’s Eric an ADHD-afflicted man-child. THR caught up with the pair to discuss the fine art of playing Trumps. In an administration full of comic book villains, what makes your Don Jr. and Eric so satisfying? MIKEY DAY There’s an aura of privilege that’s ripe for parody. On a surface level, they seem like Wall Street villains, ones who would challenge the protagonist of an ’80s…

Weddings Robin Bronk, CEO of the Creative Coalition, married Richard Schechtman on March 17 at Beth El Synagogue Center in New Rochelle, New York, in front of 270 guests. The couple will honeymoon in Greece. Verve agent Melissa Solomon married Peter Fried, co-head of Montecito Picture Co., at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California, on March 23 in front of 115 guests. The couple will honeymoon in Africa. Births Producer Jason Blum and his wife, TV writer Lauren Schuker Blum, welcomed son Booker Tatar Blum on April 4 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Dan Pascall and wife Jocelyn Pascall, a production manager and associate producer, respectively, at stopmotion studio LAIKA, welcomed daughter Molly Eva Pascall on March 9 at Providence St. Vincent Hospital in Portland, Oregon. Congrats…

On Nov. 21, CBS News moved swiftly to fire Charlie Rose following a string of women accusing the star anchor of sexual harassment in a Washington Post article. There was an internal inquiry, and CBS News producers interviewed at least one accuser for an on-air report, but no outside investigator was hired. Skipping an outside probe in this circumstance might seem unorthodox, especially considering the lengths to which many networks, studios and talent agencies have bent over backward to engage in by-thebook procedures in the wake of a tsunami of harassment claims inspired by the #MeToo movement. But CBS’ brisk action the day after the Post dropped its Nov. 20 story on his behavior, all of which came from his time on his eponymous PBS show, coincided with Rose’s contract:…

NYC LOOK Lazio suit, $599; Egyptian-cotton shirt, $99; and tie, $49, all at Suitsupply, L.A. To Boot New York lace-ups; $395, at Saks Fifth Avenue. TO PACK To Boot New York lace-ups; $395, at Saks. Cashmere pullover; $745, at Ermenegildo Zegna, New York. Necktie; $69, at Suitsupply Soho, NYC. Made-to-measure linen hopsack sport jacket; $880, at Todd Snyder Madison Square, NYC. Carryall in nappa leather and nylon; $650, at Shinola stores. Lemon was photographed March 29 at NYC’s High Line Hotel. Traveling light is the best. You feel freer,” says CNN anchor and host of CNN Tonight Don Lemon, whose frequent work trips have made him a master of efficiency when it comes to packing. “I challenge myself to not overpack and to take classic things that I can interchange,”…

A curious thing happened when Kanye West sat down to interview his design collaborator Axel Vervoordt on March 30. As Vervoordt walked into the Calabasas offices of Yeezy — the hip-hop mogul’s Adidas fashion brand — West seemed preoccupied. He admitted his mood was due to longtime Yeezy collaborator Virgil Abloh having just been named Louis Vuitton’s menswear artistic director. But as West and Vervoordt settled in, everything clicked. The dialogue — timed to the publication of Flammarion’s Axel Vervoordt: Stories and Reflections, a memoir co-written by Michael Gardner (full disclosure: the brother of this conversation’s moderator) — ran philosophical as well as specific, including their work together (Vervoordt helped West and wife Kim Kardashian West design their nearby estate). “I need this,” says West. “This is like church for…

BATALI : REFUGEE AID WORKER? The chef is divesting from his 24-restaurant Batali & Bastianich Hospitality Group, which is now under the leadership of Lidia Bastianich and Nancy Silverton and will be renamed. Batali is “still figuring out [his] stuff,” he told The New York Times April 2, and will travel to work with refugees in Rwanda and Greece later this month. THE PROVENCE-IAL LIFE FOR GRAYDON In January, Carter embarked on a six-month “garden leave” at a rented home in France’s Provence region. LAUER LEAVES HAMPTON HOUSE Since his Nov. 29 firing, Lauer has been spotted by paparazzi in the Hamptons, where he recently moved out of the home he shared with now-estranged wife Annette Roque. LEIVE-ING HER BEST LIFE Ex-Glamour editor Leive remains active online and off, posting photos…

Here’s the scariest phrase you can hear from Anthony Scaramucci, who, at least since the second grade, has been known as the Mooch: “Let me tell you what I really think.” It comes as the thunder clap that precedes a freak summer storm, a torrent of obscenities followed by a plain hard-spoken truth. “I got up close and personal to [the politicians],” he says, leaning across a table at the Hunt & Fish Club, the steakhouse off Times Square that he partly owns, named for the social club John Gotti had in Queens. “They’re the worst people in America. They have the worst values. They’re amoral, twisted, backstabbing liars. They front up like Richie Cunningham or Andy Griffith then fucking kill you with a lightsaber when you’re not looking.” Scaramucci…

Previously a beloved 1960s TV show and a less-than-beloved 1998 feature film, Lost in Space gets a new iteration as perhaps Netflix’s most broadly approachable series: an old-fashioned, fast-moving, family-friendly adventure unmuddied by an excess of subtext or politics. Conspicuously calculated at every turn, the show is nevertheless consistently fun — and occasionally even exciting. Developed by Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless (Dracula Untold) and run by Zack Estrin (Prison Break) — the original creator, the late Irwin Allen, retains a “created by” credit — Lost in Space is the story of the Robinsons. Mom Maureen (Molly Parker) is a brilliant aerospace engineer and Dad John (Toby Stephens) a courageous military type. A cataclysmic event on Earth has sent them and their kids — aspiring doctor Judy (Taylor Russell), wisecracking…

Like many Americans, I wasn’t prepared for the outcome,” documentary filmmaker Liz Garbus, 47, says of Donald Trump’s election as president. “So I was trying to figure out ‘How do I respond?’ Nothing felt quite right.” Then, she happened to notice a Twitter dustup between the president-elect and one of his favorite betes noires, “the failing New York Times,” over a planned meeting. “And,” she recalls,” “I was like, ‘Wow, if I could only be a fly on the wall at that meeting.’” Garbus — Oscar-nominated for films as different as the prison study The Farm: Angola, USA and the Nina Simone bio-doc What Happened, Miss Simone? — didn’t make it to that particular meeting, but through a friend, Jonathan Mahler, a writer at The New York Times Magazine, she…

In past years, CinemaCon has been a forum for topics dividing theater owners and Hollywood studios — particularly theatrical windows. But the premium VOD debate will likely take a backseat at the annual moviegoing convention to chatter about the industry’s consolidation (i.e., the proposed Disney-Fox merger). Fox has become known for its show-stopping presentations, but it could be taking its final lap around the CinemaCon stage. A record 11 distributors (Byron Allen’s Entertainment Studios will make its debut) will present trailers, footage and a parade of stars, and newly installed MPAA chairman Charles Rivkin will make his inaugural CinemaCon speech. The confab’s host, National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO) president John Fithian, spoke to THR about the Disney-Fox marriage and whether President Trump is a threat to the film business.…

Who could have imagined it would come to this? For many years, it was unthinkable that CBS Corp. chairman and CEO Leslie Moonves — seasoned, successful, admired by many on Wall Street — could be forced out of a role that he seemed born to play: running a merged CBS and Viacom. Now it seems much more than thinkable. Moonves, 68, is on the precipice, locked in battle with Shari Redstone, the 63-year-old vice chairwoman of CBS and Viacom. Shari, daughter of ailing 94-year-old empire builder Sumner Redstone, insists that Viacom and CBS must merge, an idea that once would have held great appeal for Moonves — assuming he would be in charge. But in a transforming media environment that has buffeted Viacom assets like MTV and Nickelodeon, the plan…

Amid a pitched debate about the gender pay gap in showbiz, new data from Britain provides a glimpse at the disparity at Hollywood giants overseas. The government required companies with more than 250 employees in the U.K. to report average pay and bonus gaps between men and women working there by early April. The disclosure “deliberately forces the pace of improvement,” says Claire Enders, founder of research firm Enders Analysis. “Every media company with a major pay gap has pledged to improve, which is the whole point of the exercise.” U.K.’S PAY DISPARITY BREAKDOWN…

First of all, I think Cynthia Nixon would make a wonderful governor. I worked with her on Sex and the City, then on The Big C, so I’ve known her for many years. On set, she’d be balancing a BlackBerry and her onscreen infant child. She has this kind of ability to stay calm in these environments that are anything but calm. One day I was thinking about recently was unbelievable and scary but kind of great in the end. We were shooting two episodes in L.A.; they were driving around in character in a vintage Mustang. The idea was that Carrie [Sarah Jessica Parker] couldn’t really drive, and they were driving up Sweetzer Avenue by Sunset Boulevard, an incredibly steep hill up there. And the joke was that the…

The Notorious RBG Needs an Agent If Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 85, ever decides to retire from the Supreme Court, she’s got a second life waiting for her in Hollywood. In January, Ginsburg stole the spotlight at Sundance when she popped in for the premiere of RBG, the documentary about her storied legal career (out May 4 via Magnolia). And now THR has learned that the pint-sized justice recently shot a cameo for On the Basis of Sex, the Mimi Leder movie in which Felicity Jones portrays Ginsburg as a crusading young attorney in the 1970s. According to Stephen Root, who portrays one of Ginsburg’s Harvard professors (Armie Hammer plays her husband, Marty), the 5-foot-1 Ginsburg arrived on the set to shoot a short sequence on some courthouse steps. “She had…

Preet Bharara, the former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York famously fired by Donald Trump, inspired a character on Showtime’s Billions (Paul Giamatti’s Chuck Rhoades). So how about a leading man based on New York attorney general and longtime Trump nemesis Eric Schneiderman? “I was in Los Angeles doing fundraising, and some showrunner took an interest in our Special Investigations and Prosecutions Unit,” he says. Nothing came of the meeting, but lately, the crusading AG, in his job since 2011, has been immersed in film and TV nevertheless: His office has become a key player in determining the future of The Weinstein Co., and, since his jurisdiction includes Wall Street, he’s keeping an eye on net neutrality and Disney’s proposed purchase of Fox assets — as well…

New York media’s pecking order has been so upended by the departures of the 60 and 50-somethings who dominated the scene for more than a decade that it feels less like a shake-up and more like a decapitation: Graydon Carter, 68, stepped down from Vanity Fair after 25 years, replaced by Radhika Jones, 45. Glamour’s Cindi Leive, 51, left her post of 16 years and was replaced by CNN digital editor Samantha Barry, 36, who’d never before worked in print. So disorienting has the generational turnover been that when the New York Post’s Page Six conjectured on April 2 that legendary Vogue editor Anna Wintour was planning her own exit, people didn’t so much gasp as shrug at the possibility that maybe, at age 68, she deserved to contemplate a…

When I was in my 20s, children called me Snow White. In my 40s, I feel like the withered crone who poisoned her. And in the absence of a Death Becomes Her youth serum, we women do cray shit to stay young. I’ve heard of bird-poo cream, sheep’s placenta tonic and pedicures where you put your paws in a bowl teeming with fish that chow the dead skin off your heels. If you don’t believe me, Google (if you dare), but make sure it’s before lunch. In Hollywood, where women are put out to pasture when they can no longer birth a child with a weird name, stars scramble to embrace the latest skin-care craze — and the newest may surprise even the most ardent beauty blog devotees. Cate Blanchett’s…

A flurry of $30 million-plus transactions — including the $39 million February sale of the Vanderbilt Mansion, which was owned by late Johnson & Johnson heiress Elizabeth Ross Johnson, to game developer Tianqiao Chen — can’t mask a hard New York real estate truth: Total sales across Manhattan are down nearly 25 percent in the first quarter of 2018, the steepest decline since 2009, and prices in the luxury sector dipped 15 percent in that same period, according to a Douglas Elliman report. Inventory, meanwhile, is up more than 4 percent. It’s still New York — which boasts three of the U.S.’ top 20 priciest ZIP codes (10013, 10007, 10282), according to a recent ranking by Property Shark — but “buyers aren’t just going to write a check for any…

In the span of eight days last November, two of morning TV’s biggest stars were summarily dismissed amid allegations of misconduct and gross abuse of power. Charlie Rose, who anchored CBS This Morning for nearly six years, was nothing less than an icon — a friend to presidents and pop stars. Matt Lauer was the linchpin of NBC’s $500 million Today show for decades. Their abrupt departure was a watershed moment for an industry that continues to be roiled by the #MeToo movement, and a painful ordeal for Rose’s and Lauer’s colleagues, especially their co-anchors. CBS’ Gayle King and Norah O’Donnell and NBC’s Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb found themselves on live TV reporting on (while personally processing) the bad behavior of the men with whom they shared an anchor…

On the night of April 2, Charlie Rose walked into Gabriel’s Bar & Restaurant, a Lincoln Center eatery that’s popular among New York’s media elite. Al Pacino had just left, while the state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who recently filed a civil lawsuit against Harvey Weinstein and The Weinstein Co., entered only minutes before the arrival of the 76-year-old ex-anchor of CBS This Morning. Rose, a legendary man-abouttown in addition to one of the most iconic broadcast journalists, once exuded an “old-school New York socialite vibe,” notes one media executive who has known him for a decade, adding, “When Charlie goes to Michael’s, it takes him 10 minutes to get to his table because people come up to him and he always says hello. He’s fearless: He’ll talk to anybody…

When your man is in a deep REM sleep, put a pillow over his face until he starts kicking,” jokes New York comic Aida Rodriguez during a recent set at the Comedy Cellar’s Village Underground. “Don’t kill him, but do it a couple of times a week so he is jumpy and scared,” the way women often feel around men. A former finalist on NBC’s Last Comic Standing, Rodriguez riffs on male-female dynamics in the #MeToo era, likening comedy to activism. “Stand-up is still one of the most sexist fields,” she says. “There are not many of us, so I’m going to use my platform.” While the sexual scandals that engulfed comic legends Bill Cosby and Louis C.K. got all the press, #MeToo is also having a real impact on…

It’s disgusting and horrible, but you gotta love it anyway. It’s New York!” From my experience of visiting the city, you don’t gotta love it anyway. What if someone said that about a guy they were trying to set you up with: “Yeah, he’s gross and smells horrible, but you gotta love him anyway. It’s Gary!” The main defense I’ve heard people make about loving New York is, “It’s New York!” I don’t find that to be a good enough reason. I don’t even think it makes sense. When I tell people how much I hate New York, they say, “You just haven’t had the New York experience yet.” First of all, I’ve had the experience, and I hope to never experience it again. I tell them that I lived…

Back in the summer of 1998, while the rest of the country was obsessing over Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton, an FBI agent named John O’Neill was not-so-quietly investigating a growing terrorist threat, arguing to anyone who’d listen that Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida was planning an attack on U.S. soil. Not many did. And, proving that history has a sense of irony, three years later — on Sept. 11, 2001 — O’Neill ended up in the World Trade Center during the tragedy. O’Neill’s story was largely unheralded until Lawrence Wright made him the centerpiece of his 2006 Pulitzer Prize-winning non-fiction thriller, The Looming Tower — and even then O’Neill remained a little-known historical footnote. But with Hulu’s 10-part miniseries adaptation — from a script by Dan Futterman (Capote, Foxcatcher) and…