Innholdsfortegnelse for Wednesday, June 19, 2019 i The Hollywood Reporter

This fall, Hollywood studio executives may be in for a shock when it comes to their budgets. A bill winding through California’s legislature that takes aim at gig-fueled companies like Uber and Postmates may upend long-standing showbiz practices by reclassifying scores of independent contractors as employees, and could render tax-lucrative loan-out companies useless. The bill, AB 5, which the state assembly passed May 29, is designed to protect workers from being misclassified as independent contractors and therefore denied such employee protections as minimum wage, overtime pay and workers’ compensation. It seeks to codify and expand the California Supreme Court’s 2018 Dynamex decision, and would presume every worker is an employee — with a few exceptions for people like barbers and real estate agents — unless a company can show that…

For the second time in six years, Dan Loeb and his activist hedge fund, Third Point, are calling on Sony Corp. to spin off assets in an effort to boost rewards for investors saddled with shares of a complicated media giant that is underappreciated on Wall Street. It’s not entirely deja vu, though. Last time, Third Point encouraged the Japanese conglomerate to jettison its “bloated” entertainment assets, but now it is bullish on that business and wants it to be the focus of a “New Sony.” Sony “is one of the most undervalued large cap businesses in the world today,” trading at about eight times earnings while competitors are north of 12, Third Point argues in an open letter dated June 13. Third Point previously invested in Sony in 2013,…

Every Friday afternoon, for most of my adult life, I’ve found myself at a mosque. For half an hour, in the middle of a workday, Muslims come together for Friday prayers — it’s a time to pray, catch up with the community and get a spiritual recharge. I’ve always looked forward to this brief moment in the week and the much-needed pause for reflection it provides. While religious culture (and the industry of religion) is plagued with issues, this has always been a religious experience that I have appreciated. About a year ago, as I was leaving prayers, a middle-aged man firmly grabbed me by the arm. I didn’t know who he was, and before I could ask, he started yelling. “You’re the comedian,” he exclaimed. “I saw you on…

There was this assumption that I wasn’t a real stand-up, I had this signifier: You’re a gay stand-up, which means something different, something less than,” says Joel Kim Booster of his early days in comedy. The 31-year-old first broke out by riffing on his unusual upbringing — he was born in South Korea, adopted by a white family and raised in a strict Evangelical Christian household in Illinois — on Conan in June 2016. Even in the three short years since, he and the three other emerging comics gathered for THR’s Comedy Issue photo shoot agree, the landscape for their genre — once steeped in otherness and dominated by commentary about representation — has changed. “The one thing that distinguishes queer comedy for me as a queer person is that…

Comedy lovers, not to mention fans of Emma Thompson and Mindy Kaling, took succor in early June from the promising limited opening of Late Night. The picture, which Amazon Studios acquired at Sundance for a reported $13 million, debuted the weekend of June 7 to a per-screen average of $62,414, second only this year to Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame. A week later, the picture fizzled when it went wide, earning $5.1 million, or $2,314 per screen (a third of Men in Black: International’s per screen take, itself a disappointment), thereby proving itself the latest in a string of comedy casualties at the box office. “The hope that Crazy Rich Asians would single-handedly revive comedy has been dashed, with none able to gross over $100 million domestically, other than the January release…

After working at (then) Warner Hollywood Studios, Bill Murray would amble across the street to the bar at Formosa Cafe, the same sojourn made by generations of stars since its opening in 1939. “I sat next to a movie guy and we had two or three drinks during the lunch hour,” he recalls. “All of a sudden, I had a guy who was an emotional cripple, sobbing. I had to stay to see him through.” Other insiders who found solace at the fabled watering hole: John Wayne, who was caught in the kitchen making scrambled eggs after passing out in a booth the night before, and Tim Burton and Johnny Depp, who hashed out Ed Wood over beers. Reopening June 28 after a $2.4 million, two-year face-lift by 1933 Group,…

CONAN O’BRIEN What comedy movie would you drop everything to watch if it’s on TV? “That Fast and Furious movie where people in cars battle a submarine.” Comedy in 2019 is … “All of the greatest comedy minds in the world are competing against a video of a cat falling into a toilet, and the cat is winning.” I wish they’d retire the bit about … “Me one day retiring.” The bluest I’ve ever gone is … “We had a recurring character in the ’90s called Camel Toe Annie. Don’t google it.” My best audience ever … “The crowd for any USO show stationed in the Middle East desperate for entertainment. For the first three minutes. Then when they realize I’m not Kid Rock, things get rough.” What’s the funniest…

Last year, when Set It Up star Glen Powell expressed interest in I Want to F*** Your Sister, Melissa Stack’s 2007 Black Listed screenplay, the writer-director had concerns that the premise had become outdated. The rom-com features a finance bro’s transformation into a better man when his attractive younger sister interns (and gets hit on) at his company. Stack thought a comedy depicting the sexual harassment of a woman in the workplace was “problematic” in the #MeToo era. But when Powell asked, “What if we swapped the genders?”, she says “it was like dominoes falling.” She could address the harassment men can face and the female attention men are supposed to desire in a laugh-out-loud, cathartic story. I Wanna F*** Your Brother was picked up in June by STXfilms with…

Somewhere along the way, left-leaning storytellers decided that the most potent weapon at their disposal in the culture wars was latex. Whether it’s burying Ed Harris in wrinkles as John McCain or Christian Bale in prosthetics and Method corpulence as Dick Cheney, there is now a cottage industry of productions that use wigs and jowls to illustrate for liberal audiences how conservative ideology is formed. It’s an easy way to generate both awards nominations and cheers from the peanut gallery, but a less effective path to meaningful perspective. Showtime’s limited series The Loudest Voice, based on the 2014 book and magazine reporting by Gabriel Sherman, benefits from its length — seven hourlong episodes, of which I’ve seen four — in that it presents a very complete portrait of its central…

Guest Column For decades, Hollywood’s major talent agencies controlled the machinery that funneled valuable human resources into hungry studios. But they craved more money, more power. With an infusion of private equity funding in the past 10 years, these agencies aggressively expanded beyond talent representation and packaging by buying entertainment enterprises and venturing into content development to reap the benefits of ownership. There is not a better reflection of this than Endeavor, a company run by CEO Ari Emanuel that includes WME, IMG, Ultimate Fighting Championship, Professional Bull Riders and The Miss Universe Organization — much of which was financed via the craving-for-profit private equity firm Silver Lake Partners. But in their quest for ever-increasing money and power, talent companies like Endeavor may have sowed the seeds of diminished influence.…

The Last Book Party (HENRY HOLT, JULY 9) BY Karen Dukess AGENCY The Gotham Group Set in 1987, Dukess’ summer read is a Devil Wears Prada-esque tale that follows an ambitious young woman in publishing who is given entree to the most rarefied space in the industry, only to discover that it is not what she expected. We Came Here to Forget (ATRIA BOOKS, JULY 2) BY Andrea Dunlop AGENCY Paradigm The novel told in alternating chapters and set in opposite worlds — an Olympics-bound ski team and Buenos Aires’ underground tango scene — is ideal fodder for platforms like Netflix and The CW that have audiences interested in pulpy mysteries.…

In a tribute to the Gilmore Drive-In that once stood where the Original Farmers Market sits today, L.A. shopping hub The Grove is launching a movie series on the top floor of its parking garage. “Level 8 Drive-In” will screen classic summer films on the last Wednesday of each month through September — starting June 26 with Grease — and host iconic cars like hot rod convertible “Greased Lightning,” loaned by the Petersen Automotive Museum. While guests can sit in their own cars, a Citi partnership allows some to watch from luxury rides including McLarens, Bentleys and Rolls-Royces; a themed concession stand also will be matched to each film. “We thought it was such a cool thing to bring back and pretty nostalgic,” says Jackie Levy, exec vp operations for…

Lawrence O’Donnell didn’t think he’d make it this long. “I had never signed a three-year contract for anything,” the MSNBC host says of his first deal at the network that’s been his home since 1996, taking a seat in a conference room down the hall from his Rockefeller Center office. “I didn’t think I had a year of it in me. I didn’t think I had anything to say.” The 2.2 million viewers who tune in to his 10 p.m. show, The Last Word, disagree — even if the 67-year-old liberal commentator trails his competitor on the right, Fox News firebrand Laura Ingraham. O’Donnell, single with one grown daughter, first came to MSNBC as a political analyst, ultimately scoring his own hour in 2010. That’s not to say it’s been…

Every Sunday night, hundreds of comedy fans — young, attractive and predominantly African American — line up outside the Laugh Factory in West Hollywood for Chocolate Sundaes, the hottest urban comedy room in the country. Launched in 1999 by Pookie Wigington, a 5-foot-3 college basketball player turned promoter, the showcase grew over two decades into a launching pad for some of the biggest black comedy stars, Kevin Hart and Tiffany Haddish among them. “Any major black comedian has done our room,” notes Lani Mackay, the show’s 33-year-old booker. Along the way, the club has frequently made comedy history. It was in December 2005, for example, that Damon Wayans defiantly broke the club’s short-lived N-word ban, instated after Michael Richards’ infamous outburst on the same stage. (It earned Wayans a three-month…

The true Malibu locals, they’ll be back. Because they know it’s the price you pay to live in paradise,” says Robert Morton, the longtime producer turned Compass real estate agent. The Emmy winner (Late Show With David Letterman), who transitioned to being a residential broker back in 2015, is seated on the deck of one of his marquee listings — the Broad Beach home of Friends producer Kevin Bright, priced at $14 million —and he’s weighing the impact of November’s Woolsey Fire on his old neighborhood (Morton called Malibu home for two decades before moving to Venice Beach in 2018). “The fire was so tragic, but every society has its burdens and then you look at a day like today and, well …” he says, gesturing to the blue skies…

STAND-UP “I’ve never seen the guy have a bad show,” says Live Nation Comedy president Geof Wills, who’s watched as Noah has gone from selling out theaters to selling out arenas. Per Billboard Boxscore, he had a top 10 comedy tour in 2018, grossing more than $5 million, and 2019 is on track to be his biggest yet with some 40 more dates lined up. Another lucrative Netflix special is on the way, too. PODCAST In April, Noah added podcaster to his dizzying résumé, inking a rich deal for his On Second Thought podcast to be housed on the subscription service Luminary, alongside those from Lena Dunham and Russell Brand. The weekly installments feature in-depth conversations on subjects including sports, science, art, capitalism and race. BOOKS Multiple sources say that Noah…

Keenen Ivory Wayans wasn’t looking to do a TV show. In 1988, he was riding high on the success of his cult hit I’m Gonna Git You Sucka and contemplating his next movie. But he took a meeting with a fledgling network called Fox, which made an offer he couldn’t refuse. “They told me I could do whatever I wanted,” Wayans, 61, recalls. What he wanted was to do a show like Saturday Night Live only much, much edgier. Homey Da Clown, Homeboy Shopping Network, Men on Films — the skits Wayans and his mostly African American cast performed each week pushed the envelope not just of TV’s color barrier but of TV comedy, won an Emmy and incubated the careers of stars Jim Carrey, Jamie Foxx and Jennifer Lopez.…

Gather six of the funniest actors on TV today and it becomes next to impossible to keep a straight face. At least twice during THR’s Comedy Actor Roundtable — which included such heavyweights as Barry’s Henry Winkler, 73, The Good Place’s Ted Danson, 71, and Black Monday’s Don Cheadle, 54 — Jim Carrey, 57, now of Showtime’s Kidding, physically hoisted himself onto the table for comedic effect. Other highlights of the boisterous 90 minutes at Hollywood’s Line 204 Studios: The sextet broke out in a rendition of the Happy Days theme; the veterans in the group spoke candidly, if comically, about Hollywood’s former drug culture (as relative newbie Timothy Simons, 41, of Veep listened in disbelief); and the typically press-shy Sacha Baron Cohen, 47, had five jaws agape as he…

BIRDS OF PASSAGE Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra’s Colombian drama is like an indigenous Godfather, revealing the slow, steady destruction of a native family that gets caught up in the international drug trade in the ’70s. Both ethnographic chronicle and thriller, it’s a superbly crafted film from the team behind 2016 foreign language Oscar nominee Embrace of the Serpent. — JORDAN MINTZER BOOKSMART Olivia Wilde delivers a fantastic directorial debut with this hilarious, blazingly paced teen comedy. The story of overachieving high school besties (played by Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever) who embark on an epic night of bad behavior before graduation, the film is as raucous as Superbad — but with characters who are even more full of surprises. — JOHN DEFORE THE LAST BLACK MAN IN SAN FRANCISCO…

In 2016, Sony Pictures’ top executives, including chief Tom Rothman, faced a dilemma: reboot Men in Black or pursue a crossover with 21 Jump Street? Initially, Sony tried to make deals for the crossover, but that plan required names such as Steven Spielberg and Walter Parkes on the Black side, and Chris Miller and Phil Lord on the Street side, to forgo rich producing deals. And when Street producer Neal Moritz refused to compromise on his first-dollar pact, several sources tell THR, the studio pivoted to a relaunch. With franchise stars Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones absent, the June 14 release Men in Black: International fizzled stateside with a $30 million opening — a franchise low. The studio had hoped for much more with the pairing of Marvel Studios’…

Candy Spelling Is Suing Her Building for ‘Mismanagement’ When Candy Spelling sold for $85 million the 56,000-square-foot Holmby Hills estate where she lived for 20-plus years with producer husband Aaron Spelling and their kids, Tori and Randy, it was memorialized by HGTV’s Selling Spelling Manor in 2012. A year later, Beyond Spelling Manor tracked Candy’s downsizing to a $35 million, 18,000-square-foot, two-floor penthouse in The Century high-rise in Century City. Now comes a third installment: Candy, 73, recently filed a lawsuit in L.A. Superior Court against The Century Property Owners Association alleging “woeful mismanagement, concealment of financial … information and sheer arrogance” in failing to maintain common areas and provide adequate security while also blocking her access to financial books. It’s unclear why she wants to dig through bank statements,…

The first time I met Gloria, it was at her apartment. I arrived with Anderson, and he rang the bell. She greeted me warmly and then put Anderson to work, asking him to go under a dining room table to figure out why a light wasn’t working. Changing lights was not part of her experience. Her life is a history book of New York society. She had the best list of lovers — everyone from Frank Sinatra and Errol Flynn to husbands Sidney Lumet and her dream partner (and Anderson’s father), Wyatt Cooper. People are going to remember her for the Trial of the Century or for her jeans, but I like to think of her as a transplant from another world. Her strength and resilience gave her a power,…

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After November’s Woolsey Fire, producer Paul J. Morra was feeling lucky: His house in Corral Canyon was damaged but still standing. But then his insurer suddenly dropped him and he learned his premium would skyrocket: from $7,700 to $33,000 annually. “The insurance companies are taking advantage of a situation and it’s just plain wrong and immoral,” says Morra. “I don’t know how people are going to be able to stay in their homes.” Talk to a Malibu homeowner and you’re likely to hear similar concerns. Wildfire-related insurance losses from the November blazes have surpassed $12 billion, and the California Insurance Commissioner’s office says it has received 147 formal complaints from residents of Malibu and the surrounding areas regarding policy-related issues. Since the fire, multiple carriers have pulled out of the…

HANNAH GADSBY I wish they’d retire the bit about … Prostate exams being uncomfortable and awkward, because they sound like fun times compared to state-regulated abortion bans. The bluest I’ve ever gone is … When holding my breath listening to men tell rape jokes. My best audience ever … They all win. I’ve never had a bad gig. I am that good. And powerful. Obvs. What’s the funniest … letter of the alphabet? I’m more of a numbers man, myself. word? Oblong. animal? Echidnas. and why? Because it’s a monotreme. Christians wouldn’t like how they conceive. Write a roast joke about yourself. I am so successful, I don’t have to write my own roast jokes anymore. I’ve outsourced, and you can find them in the comment sections of my clips…

“Well, the state of political satire is certainly robust. And it has taken on a new urgency, since we now live in a world where the president of the United States goes to Normandy for D-Day, white knuckles his way through a speech without attacking our closest allies, and it is somehow hailed in the news media as one of his best moments as president. Journalism alone cannot handle these absurdities. It’s hard work making fun of the rogue planet as it hurtles toward us, but comedians are up for the challenge.”…

Dreaming of an In Living Color reunion? Four of the show’s funniest stars — Keenen Ivory Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Tommy Davidson and David Alan Grier — are on the road for the Off Color Comedy Tour. The nostalgic shows have been selling well at casinos across the country, and while the focus is stand-up, Keenen says “the hope is to expand it to a full-on In Living Color tour.” (There are also plans for a TV special, according to Paradigm’s John Maybee, who helped put the tour together.) Still, the wild afterparties that used to follow In Living Color tapings are a thing of the past. Says Grier: “We have dinner usually after the show, a glass of wine, and then it’s off to bed.”…

Drama DANIEL FIENBERG Much has been said about the seeming inevitability of HBO’s Game of Thrones and Veep as drama and comedy Emmy winners this year. We both love Veep, though you were more enthusiastic about Game of Thrones than I ended up being after those last few episodes beat me into submission. But let’s fight for some underdogs! With former nominees Westworld, The Americans, The Crown, The Handmaid’s Tale and Stranger Things all missing this cycle, what needs to make the drama series shortlist for you? TIM GOODMAN Well, let me start with two that won’t make it but should: Patriot on Amazon and Counterpart on Starz. I doubt, alas, that there will be a nod for HBO’s The Deuce or Epix’s Get Shorty, either. That said, I think Succession…