Innholdsfortegnelse for Wednesday, February 13, 2019 i The Hollywood Reporter

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ scorched-Feb. 7 essay let the world in on a secret Hollywood has known for decades: The National Enquirer uses hyper-aggressive tactics and, yes, outright threats to score scoops and manipulate subjects. But as the world’s richest man takes aim at the tabloid for an exposé that revealed his relationship with Lauren Sanchez, wife of Endeavor executive chairman Patrick Whitesell, a cloud now hangs over Enquirer parent company American Media Inc. and CEO David Pecker. “People are worried,” one AMI reporter tells THR, asking (as most Enquirer sources do) to remain anonymous. Chasing celebrity scandals, rehab stints or illegitimate offspring has been a focal point of Enquirer investigations for years, but, says the AMI staffer, the Bezos episode “looks like blackmail and extortion to me — that’s…

BEST PICTURE Roma Alfonso Cuaron’s movie is on a roll: It picked up four awards Feb. 10 at the British Academy’s BAFTA Awards, including best picture, foreign-language film, director and, in a very personal victory for the Mexican filmmaker, cinematography, which he himself handled. ACTRESS Olivia Colman The Favourite Seemingly benefiting from a home-court advantage, the British actress, who’d earlier won a Globe as best comedy actress, was celebrated at the BAFTA Awards, where she topped Glenn Close, her main rival this season. SUPPORTING ACTRESS Rachel Weisz The Favourite She picked up her first BAFTA Award — she was nominated for 2005’s The Constant Gardener — for playing a competitive courtier, triumphing in a field that included her co-star Emma Stone, also Oscar-nominated. CINEMATOGRAPHY Cold War Polish cinematographer Lukasz Zal…

FILM Phil Lord and Chris Miller (UTA) will direct Shazam! writer Henry Gayden’s sci-fi adaptation The Last Human for Sony. Edie Falco (ICM, Management 360) has joined James Cameron’s Avatar movies. Noah Gardner and Aidan Fitzgerald (WME) will write Aquaman spinoff horror feature about the Trench creatures for Warner Bros. Black-ish star Marsai Martin (WME, Meyer & Downs) and her Genius Productions company have signed a first-look production deal with Universal. The Erwin Brothers (WME, Ziffren Brittenham) will direct the sequel to faith-based feature I Can Only Imagine, titled I Still Believe, for Lionsgate. $87.5 M Big Number Price private equity group Raven Capital Management paid Feb. 7 to acquire bankrupt distributor Open Road’s assets, including 45 titles. Warner Bros. and Michael B. Jordan’s Outlier Society have picked up the…

Hark (SIMON & SCHUSTER, JAN. 15) BY Sam Lipsyte AGENCY WME The social satire is reminiscent of recent reported stories of reallife scammers (see: Anna Delvey). It follows a guru that gets in over his head when his “Mental Archery,” a technique to deal with sociopolitical stress, takes off and everyone wants a piece. The Lost Man (FLATIRON, OCTOBER 2018) BY Jane Harper AGENCY IPG As murder mysteries continue to be mined for feature and miniseries potential, Harper’s latest novel fits the mold, centering on two brothers attempting to unravel the suspicious death of their third sibling on the family’s land in the Australian Outback.…

Art Scene It’s a world-class collection with a little Wham! More than 200 artworks collected by the late pop icon George Michael, including sculptures by Damien Hirst, will be auctioned by Christie’s — some online (March 8 to 15), some live in London on March 14. Select works on view at Christie’s in Beverly Hills through Feb. 16 include paintings by Tracey Emin (collected by Sean Combs). With Hirst’s works pegged at $2 million or more and many six-figure lots, proceeds will go to Michael’s philanthropic causes.…

Jeannie Delgado says she met Extra host A.J. Calloway on a flight from Newark to Los Angeles in 2008. They became friendly, and in December 2008, Calloway invited her to a Christmas party at his house in New Jersey. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, so she didn’t hesitate when she was invited to another gathering in February 2009. That night, there was a freezing rain and the roads were icing up. Delgado had a front-wheel-drive vehicle, and she was worried about getting home, especially since the Extra host’s capacious house was on a steep road. Calloway offered her a guest room. “I thought it was not a big deal,” says Delgado, who works in the aviation industry. “I’m thinking this is the guest room. It turned out to be…

Months of chattering anticipation. Kanye West swinging by a friends-and-family preview. Packed crowds since the day the neo-red-sauce-joint opened Jan. 16. The Jon & Vinny’s sequel in dining-deprived Brentwood is the sensation its eponymous owners, Jon Shook (pictured below left) and Vinny Dotolo (below right), knew it would be. Which is perhaps why it’s no surprise that its service of standing reservations is already taking off, with regulars seeking to bypass the anxieties of Resy for a steady spot. “It’s cutting out the trouble if you want to come out every Tuesday night at eight o’clock for a year,” says Shook, husband of actress Shiri Appleby. “There’s a lot of families on the Westside who want to make it their family supper.” The policy, in low-key effect for years at…

BLUM & POE 2727 La Cienega Blvd. Tim Blum and Jeff Poe started in Santa Monica in 1994 and pioneered Culver City’s arts district 15 years later. Artists include L.A. painter-sculptor Mark Grotjahn (collected by Michael Ovitz). At Frieze, they’ll show Shio Kusaka’s ceramics (left), a Dave Muller mural and more. CHATEAU SHATTO 1206 Maple Ave. Parker Ito (collected by UTA CEO Jeremy Zimmer and David Hoberman) will have a special project at Felix — two 11-foot-tall paintings, populated with L.A. landmarks, in the Hollywood Roosevelt lobby — and a large painting (left) and video work at Frieze. DAVID KORDANSKY 5130 W. Edgewood Pl. Kordansky will show work by Kathryn Andrews (left) at Frieze (he also reps Mary Weatherford and Native Son director Rashid Johnson). He’ll preview his major expansion…

$400M Worldwide grosses for films in which he’s had a major role, including Employee of the Month; Good Luck, Chuck; Mr. Brooks; and Disney’s Planes. 7.8M His followers on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Cook was a pioneer in internet marketing, starting with MySpace. 40K Total tickets sold for a 2006 show at Madison Square Garden. The venue’s capacity is 20,000; Cook sold it out for two back-to-back weekends. $18M Amount embezzled in 2008 by his half brother, who was sentenced to eight years in prison (and now released). They haven’t spoken since. 5.5M Total sales of his four albums, starting with 2003’s Harmful If Swallowed. He’s had two double-platinums, including the chart-topper Retaliation. $3M-$5M Cook’s onetime quote for films. His biggest non-animated hit (in which he was the lead) was…

ALEXANDRE DESPLAT ISLE OF DOGS A two-time Oscar winner for The Grand Budapest Hotel in 2015 and The Shape of Water in 2018, Desplat, 57, is nominated for his fourth collaboration with director Wes Anderson. Set in the fictional Japanese city of Megasaki, Isle of Dogs gave Desplat the chance to explore his adoration for Japanese culture. “My admiration for the country and its music, the films of [Akira] Kurosawa,” he says. “It all culminated with this project.” LUDWIG GORANSSON BLACK PANTHER Goransson, 34, who teamed with fellow USC alum Ryan Coogler on 2013’s Fruitvale Station and 2015’s Creed in addition to the Marvel blockbuster, needed to rethink the way he scored Black Panther, to put “more focus on rhythm and sound,” he says. “I was also trying to capture…

Television Sad Songs Live musicals hit sour note for networks. p. 22 Awards Thrones War Emmy contenders scramble as GoT returns p. 28 Kacey Musgraves The country star nabs four Grammys, including album of the year, leading to a sizable sales boost for Golden Hour following the CBS telecast. John Bailey After the Oscars boot four craft categories to commercial breaks, its president faces backlash from A-list creators who say that the move alienates the show’s core viewers. James Wan As Aquaman hits $1.1 billion worldwide, Warner Bros. puts a sequel and a spinoff movie in development, with the hitmaker on board to produce both titles. J.K. Simmons The actor’s critical darling drama series Counterpoint is canceled at Starz amid a regime change after chief Chris Albrecht steps down. Showbiz…

First Person For many people, life after a big public mistake feels like a no-win situation. The National Enquirer stalked me for five years. They are relentless in their pursuit of destruction. It was maddening — you can’t sue them. Because most of the time the story is true. Well, let me rephrase: They add 98 percent of BS around the one piece of documentation that they have somehow gotten their grubby little hands on and that happens to be true. Second, you would be giving them private information in the deposition that you would never, ever want them to have, because of course they Hunter would use it against you. And lastly, who wants to spend their time fighting them? The thought alone makes me want to shower. Yes,…

Remember the Year of the Woman? Of course you don’t, because there’ve been so many, not just in Hollywood but in the country at large. Each time a year is labeled one of change for females, it disappears into the miasma of memory because the change was never real. The first YOW came in 1992, when an unprecedented number of women were elected to the Senate after the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings, prompting Sen. Barbara Mikulski to scoff: “Calling 1992 the Year of the Woman makes it sound like the Year of the Caribou or the Year of the Asparagus.” Oscar made YOW its theme the following year, opening the show with a photo of 67 female winners and declaring, “Oscar Celebrates Women and the Movies.” Hollywood followed with several…

Deal of the Week “It’s hard to fight the dragons.” That’s how one awards strategist sees Hulu’s Feb. 11 move to push Emmy heavyweight The Handmaid’s Tale’s third-season premiere to June and out of consideration for the 2019 race. It’s just the latest production or scheduling delay set to open up plenty of room in the drama race for new nominees — and a big boost for HBO’s three-time champ Game of Thrones, returning April 14. Of 2018’s Emmy-nominated dramas, only Thrones and NBC’s This Is Us will be eligible in 2019. Netflix’s Stranger Things, last seen in October 2017, isn’t back until July; HBO doesn’t even resume production on Westworld until March, and The Crown won’t be back on Netflix until the second half of 2019. And 2017 limited…

Early in the first episode of Aidy Bryant’s Hulu comedy Shrill, aspiring writer Annie is approached by an exercise instructor who grabs her wrist and tells her she could be “so pretty” if she lost weight. “That really happened to me,” says Bryant, 31, who stars in and co-writes the series (an adaptation of the Lindy West novel of the same name). The Arizona-born, Second City-trained comedian — who’s in her seventh season on Saturday Night Live—spent the first two weeks of summer 2018 on an Italian honeymoon with her husband, former Late Night With Seth Meyers writer Conner O’Malley, before jetting to L.A. for the Shrill writers room alongside West and showrunner Ali Rushfield. Ahead of Shrill’s March 15 premiere, Bryant called THR from her downtown Manhattan apartment to…

“Who pays? I pay. None of these girls ever pull out their credit card.”REESE WITHERSPOONThe Big Little Lies actress and producer, lamenting at TCA that her co-stars — who include Nicole Kidman, Laura Dern and Shailene Woodley — don’t pick up the tab when they go out to eat. (Witherspoon later clarified that season-two addition Meryl Streep did, once.) “It’s a startup company, albeit one with a roughly $26 billion valuation.”CHARLIE COLLIER The new Fox Entertainment CEO, acknowledging at TCA that his broadcast network will have some catching up to do after Disney’s purchase of its parent company. “It’s the real billionaire with the real newspaper versus the fake billionaire with the fake newspaper.”BILL MAHERThe Real Time host, on the battle between Amazon CEO/Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos and David…

Births Andy Cohen welcomed son Benjamin Allen Cohen via surrogate Feb. 4. Hillary Povar, vp communications at Pop TV, and husband Dirk Levinsohn welcomed Cole Luca Levinsohn on Jan. 29 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Engagements Jennifer Lawrence became engaged to art gallerist Cooke Maroney. The couple have been dating since June 2018. Congrats Terry Wood was named executive vp of Harpo Productions on Feb. 7. CBS News named Kimberly Godwin executive vp news, Charles Pavlounis executive vp business development and CFO and Ingrid Ciprian-Matthews executive vp strategic professional development Feb. 7. Rebecca Arzoian was named president of Smokehouse Television on Feb. 6. Stun, a content studio and commercial production company, tapped Renee Samms as head of a new Digital 360 division Feb. 6. Scott Lonker was named president…

Actress Taraji P. Henson and singer Erykah Badu recently faced significant backlash for inartful comments seen as empathetic to R. Kelly, the R&B singer credibly accused of assaulting multiple teenage girls. Though many were shocked that anyone would risk their career or waste an ounce of empathy on someone like Kelly, some of us were not shocked at all. Because one of the largely unspoken realities of #MeToo has been just how complicated it is for women of color. Though supporters for men like Bill Cosby, Kelly and, most recently, politician Justin Fairfax have been criticized for victim blaming, misogyny and loyalty bordering on insanity, behind closed doors many African-Americans discuss how our tortured history haunts our views of #MeToo. Playwright Loy A. Webb mines those closeddoor conversations in The…

In a bright and airy dance studio on an austere stretch of Melrose Avenue in late January, Brie Larson is mid-spin, her face a mask of concentration, the faintest glow of perspiration on her brow. In dance, as in life, Larson gives things her all, especially when the disco ball is turning and the Chaka Khan track hits. Her hoodie tossed to the side, Larson is following the man she calls her “dance sensei” as he leads her in a simple ballet turn known as a chainés, some attitudinal walking and a move where she tilts her body back and thrusts her chin up imperiously, a la Gloria Swanson preparing for her close-up in Sunset Boulevard. This dance studio is where Larson comes to feel empowered — occasionally via the…

HOLLYWOOD’S COLLECTOR CLASS BOB GERSH (CO-PRESIDENT, THE GERSH AGENCY) There’s always been Hollywood support going back to people like [producers] Ray Stark and Doug Cramer and my parents [agency founder Phil and wife Beatrice] and Billy Wilder. In the past 10 years, it’s grown to a much wider group of people in our business: Some look at it more as investment, but still it’s good for the galleries and the museums. LARRY GAGOSIAN (GALLERIST) There was a show [in 1970 at Otis Art Institute], I still have the catalogue: “Hollywood Collects.” It had George Cukor, Vincent Price, the Shriver family. It wasn’t, “Oh, that’s a good Hollywood collection.” They were world-class collections. LILLY TARTIKOFF KARATZ (MOCA BOARD MEMBER) Steven Spielberg, Jimmy Brooks, Michael Ovitz, David Geffen, they’re all buying art.…

FRIEZE L.A. Paramount Studios, Feb. 15-17 With VIP collector hours starting Feb. 14, the fair opens to the public at 2 p.m. on Feb. 15. Tickets for the exhibitor tent ($50) are nearly sold out, but at press time, tickets for the curated program ($20) — Instagrammable site-specific installations plus films and talks — were still available for a few time slots. FELIX Hollywood Roosevelt, Feb. 14-17 Free to the public, the first-time fair — which includes a poolside Brian De Palma feature Feb. 15 — could be overrun (especially with Frieze nearly sold out). An invitation to the VIP opening, Feb. 14 (2-6 p.m.), lets you take in the sights with such expected guests as WME’s Nancy Josephson and collector Beth DeWoody. ART LOS ANGELES CONTEMPORARY Barker Hangar, Feb.…

KASSEEM “SWIZZ BEATZ” DEAN will share works from his collection in “Dreamweavers,” a show curated by his adviser, Nicola Vassell, at UTA Artist Space. The exhibition, which opens Feb. 13, features work by Nick Cave (pictured: Arm Peace), Kehinde Wiley, Karon Davis (co-founder of L.A.’s Underground Museum) and others driving what Vassell calls a “black renaissance” in art. “The show fits perfectly into what Josh Roth had created” with UTA Fine Arts, says agency chairman Jim Berkus. “A part of him will always be felt in everything we do.”…

Cinematic portraits of painters (the troubled Vincent Van Gogh in particular) have always seduced directors, says THR chief film critic Todd McCarthy, who explores why in conversation with Randy Kennedy, longtime New York Times art reporter and now special projects director for global powerhouse gallery Hauser & Wirth. TODD MCCARTHY Most “serious” directors think of themselves as visual artists, descendants of those who worked in the creative arena before electricity and celluloid. They’re keen to identify with artists from a different century who, in their fantasies or self-projections, weren’t appreciated in their lifetimes. RANDY KENNEDY But it’s harder to get an artist’s work and life right in a movie than it is for any other creative subject, except maybe a writer. While it’s tempting to think that watching painters paint…

MILES MORALES Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Sony) In designing Miles Morales/Spider-Man — the African-American/Puerto Rican teen who inhabits, and helps to save, an alternate universe in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse — director Peter Ramsey says the filmmakers were looking to create an “iconic” present-day Brooklyn kid. “There were things like the hoodie, the jacket, the low-rider pants, the Nikes,” says Ramsey, who directed with Bob Persichetti and Rodney Rothman. “The goal was to get the audience to empathize with him, and to do that, you’ve got to make him as rounded and as real and specific as possible.” When Miles, voiced by Shameik Moore, begins to realize his powers, he at first wears a store-bought Halloween getup. “It’s a costume; he’s trying something on,” notes Rothman. “His frame was designed…

Ruth E. Carter scored her first costume design Oscar nomination in 1993 for Spike Lee’s Malcolm X. His advice to her at the start of the project: “Don’t think about an Oscar, just do a good job,” she says. Twenty-five years later, Carter joined Lee and Amy Adams onstage as the first three nominees called for the 2019 Academy Awards class photo at the Feb. 4 luncheon — her third nom, for Black Panther, and his first as director for BlacKkKlansman. “I’m so proud to stand next to him,” Carter says. “I just felt like we were having another life milestone, history-making moment.” She’s also poised for another accolade this awards season: the career achievement award from the Costume Designers Guild on Feb. 19. “Some of your peers get awards…

Robert Louis Stevenson — yes, he’s named after the Treasure Island novelist — was able to turn a three-day job into eight years at Universal. The third male hairstylist to get into the union in Hollywood, Stevenson made quite the impression during his first interview with Larry Germain, Universal’s hair department head. “They didn’t have black hairstylists, and he asked me if I do white hair, pointing to a magazine with a Gibson girl on the cover,” says Stevenson, who was in the Vietnam War before becoming a hairstylist. “There was an actress there getting her hair done, who had her sister with her. He asked the sister if I could do her hair, and I did it in 10 minutes.” With more than 120 credits to his name, this…

Big Deal Will writers really go on strike against their agents? That seems to be where the Writers Guild of America sees its confrontation with the Association of Talent Agents headed. The latest developments in the 10-month-old saga: a Feb. 5 meeting at which guild representatives, led by executive director David Young, allegedly stonewalled the agencies, followed by WGA member meetings that riled up the rank-and-file for a walkout. But the guild’s three big-ticket demands are all nonstarters for the agencies. The WGA insists that the firms stop collecting packaging fees, a decades-old practice in which television studios rather than talent pay a fee to the agency; cease their involvement in production-type activities, a more recent trend that big agencies see as key to survival in a world of jumbo…

Nicole Quinn may have an office at Lightspeed Venture Partners’ Sand Hill Road headquarters in Menlo Park, but don’t bother looking for her there. It’d be easier to catch her on a flight to Los Angeles, where the investor travels weekly to meet with her growing portfolio of media and e-commerce startups, including Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop, Sophia Amoruso’s Girlboss and Lady Gaga’s still-stealth new beauty business. As one of Lightspeed’s 19 U.S.-based investing partners (five of them women), Quinn has carved out a niche with media and e-commerce companies fronted by female influencer-founders. Quinn, 34, has been training for the gig since she was a young girl growing up in a London suburb and helping her entrepreneur father with his online pharmacy business. She spent eight years as a research…

She first appeared in 1968 as a character noteworthy primarily for her beauty. But as the culture changed, so did Marvel’s Carol Danvers, gaining powers and the feminist moniker of “Ms. Marvel” in the 1970s, enduring a bizarre rape storyline in 1980 and earning the right to wear pants and the title of “Captain” in 2012…

It started with the slush. Dean Valentine — the former UPN CEO, onetime Walt Disney TV president and leading art collector (an early fan of Takashi Murakami, he also owns works by Ed Ruscha and Andrea Zittel) — found himself ankle-deep in icy gray puddles as he trudged around New York City in March from the art fairs that take place annually on the Hudson River’s titanic piers to other fairs across town. Each event felt chillier and more inhospitable than the last. “Art fairs are very much now like supermarket aisles,” he recalls thinking. Over dinner that night with gallerists Anton Kern and Tanya Leighton, Valentine discovered a consensus: “They appreciated [fairs for] the opportunity to have commerce and they participated as much as they could, but they too…

GREENBLATT’S DELI, JUST NEXT door to the Laugh Factory on Sunset Boulevard, has been raising the cholesterol levels of stand-up comics for 40 years. Jerry Seinfeld, Dave Chappelle, Kathy Griffin, Tim Allen — they’ve all scarfed down the restaurant’s famous corned beef sandwiches and noodle kugel during late-night after-show hangouts. And right now, sitting unnoticed in a booth, wearing a vintage Kenny Rogers T-shirt and slurping chicken soup, is a comic who not long ago was one of Laugh Factory’s biggest draws. Indeed, Dane Cook at one time was the most successful stand-up on the planet, earning upward of $20 million a tour. Also, the most hated. “It has to be authentic,” Cook, 46, says as he slowly stirs the soup in his bowl. “It has to be raw. I…

1. MARK RONSON “Shallow” (A Star Is Born) “Tell me something boy, aren’t you tired trying to fill that void” “When she sang that line, from the combination of the tone of her voice, her delivery and the lyric itself, I really felt it. I was feeling pretty hollow at the time as I was going through a lot in my personal life as well, so it just hit me in the gut, super hard. The way she sings that verse still gets me even when I hear it now.” 2. DIANE WARREN “I’ll Fight” (RBG) “I’ll have your back when your back’s to the wall.” “That is really what the song is about: In those moments when you don’t have the strength, that is when I will be there…

Female directors of animated features remain few and far between, but that could change if some of the creators of this year’s Oscar-nominated animated shorts are given a chance. Consider Pixar’s Bao: It was written and directed by Domee Shi — the first woman to helm a Pixar short — and follows an aging Chinese mom suffering from empty nest syndrome who gets another chance at motherhood when one of her dumplings springs to life. “I feel honored and humbled to be first, but hopefully not the last of many more female filmmakers,” Shi says. Late Afternoon, a hand-drawn short about an elderly woman with dementia who drifts in and out of her memories, marks the first Oscar nomination for writer-director Louise Bagnall. The short was produced out of Ireland’s…

ADAM MCKAY Paul Selvin Award His Vice script will be honored for embodying “the spirit of the constitutional and civil rights and liberties that are indispensable to the survival of free writers everywhere.” JENJI KOHAN Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award The TV award will be bestowed on Kohan, the creator of Weeds and Orange Is the New Black who also is executive producer and writer on Netflix’s GLOW. JOAN MEYERSON Morgan Cox Award The honor recognizes the award-winning TV writer-producer and longtime WGA West board member’s dedication to the guild. She’s been a member since 1972. AGNES VARDA Jean Renoir Award In 2018, the iconic French filmmaker, 90, became the oldest person to be nominated for a competitive Academy Award with her documentary Faces Places. NICOLE DUBUC Animation Writers Caucus Animation…

Jussie Smollett, the star of Fox’s Empire whose recent attack in Chicago is being investigated as an anti-gay and racist hate crime, got his first major role in 1991’s A Little Piece of Heaven, one of the more out-there TV movies. The main character, played by Kirk Cameron, then 21, is caring for his developmentally disabled sister after their parents die. The girl wants someone her own age to play with, so her brother drugs and kidnaps a boy (Smollett, then 9) from a local orphanage, brings him to their Midwestern pig farm and tells him he’s died and gone to heaven. (When told this, the Smollett character says, “Where’s the other African-Americans? Where’s Dr. King?”) Though the premise sounds over the top, The Hollywood Reporter was ecstatic about the…