Innholdsfortegnelse for Award Special 22A August 2020 i The Hollywood Reporter

Brian Cox Succession (HBO) “I was given a lot of advice when I was young, and I didn’t always take it. When you’re young, you’re so bloody arrogant and full of bullshit. Something my mother told me was, ‘What’s for you will not go by you’ — in Scottish, it’s, ‘Whit’s fur ye’ll no go by ye.’ If it’s meant, it’s meant. A lot of times in our young lives, we try to circumvent the obvious. I had my fair share of rejection as a fledgling actor, but as I got older, all those things have worked out. The advice I’d give to a young actor is: Immediate success is such a trap. Look at yourself and your career. Where do you want to be when you’re 70? Do you…

When Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness arrived on Netflix just as captive audiences were adjusting to stay-at-home orders amid COVID-19, the bonkers docuseries provided just the right type of escapism. The story of several big-cat collectors and animal-rights activists, centering on the eccentric villain Joe Exotic, immediately captured the cultural zeitgeist and went on to earn six Emmy nominations, including one for outstanding documentary or nonfiction series. It also landed a nom in picture editing for a nonfiction program. Editor Doug Abel (whose credits include Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 11/9 and Errol Morris’ Oscar-winning The Fog of War) describes how the nominated team spent five years crafting the over-the top story as it unfolded. Did you expect the enthusiastic response to the series? We really didn’t. It’s that kind of…

The recession of 2008 helped popularize the somewhat silly and context-free term “mancession,” which suggested that the brunt of the crisis’ job losses were felt by men. Whether or not it was a true economic shift or just a temporary anomaly, the collective freak-out about the mancession and its impact on masculine identity made its way into a bunch of schlocky broadcast sitcoms — ABC’s Last Man Standing succeeded, while Man Up!, Work It and a half dozen others did not — that are more frequently remembered as punch lines than for their punch lines, especially given that they all arrived on TV well after the mancession, if it ever existed at all, was statistically over. As we approach the 72nd Emmy Awards, we find ourselves in another real-world recession,…

STAR TREK: PICARD (CBS ALL ACCESS) Supervising sound editor Matthew E. Taylor describes the Star Trek spinoff as a journey through “many soundscapes, both physical and psychological — physical in that the heroes experience new locations, technologies and languages. Psychological in creating the worlds of our characters’ minds as they experience nightmares, grief, horror and doubt.” Futuristic technology needed unique sound, as did the La Sirena ship. The sound team incorporated the noise of an electric motorcycle combined with electromagnetic recordings of a Dremel rotary tool powering up and down. Another key sound was the inactive Borg Cube vessel. “When inside the research section of the inactive cube, it needed to sound full of unassimilated organic life, a contrast to a Borg Cube. Yet the cube was still menacing, a…

MARTIN SHORT THE MORNING SHOW Apple TV+ When The Morning Show’s Mitch Kessler (Steve Carell) is fired from his post as a daytime morning show anchor because of workplace harassment, he turns to an old friend to commiserate: Dick Lundy, a film director who recently experienced his own professional reckoning for his sexual misconduct. Playing Lundy is Martin Short, who tells THR that he eagerly accepted the role after reading the “unusually good” scripts for the Apple TV+ show. Lundy fits in with the antagonistic rascals Short has played throughout his career. The actor admits he’s drawn to flawed characters — especially when those flaws hint at an absurd personality. “Dick Lundy believes he was part of a movement that he didn’t deserve to be a part of, and is…

THE MANDALORIAN (DISNEY+) Baby Yoda, while the most popular, wasn’t the only creature created for Jon Favreau’s ambitious Star Wars-themed The Mandalorian. Lucasfilm’s Industrial Light & Magic also brought to life the rhino-like Mudhorn, who lives in a muddy environment. “The Mudhorn’s long woolly coat, thick with mud, would define how it looked,” explains ILM VFX supervisor Hayden Jones. “For each and every Mudhorn shot, we were simulating muscle, skin, fur, solid mud, liquid mud and footfall splashes.” They used VFX software Houdini to design and groom the fur, “also allowing us to drive mud simulations and the fur concurrently to attain a more realistic result.” The team worked on creating multiple layers of mud, ranging from solid chunks running across its back to loose, viscous layers clinging to its…

On Aug. 13, 2009, Reno 911! co-creator and star Thomas Lennon broke the news to fans that Comedy Central had canceled his mockumentary show after six seasons. “Won’t be wearing the shorts again,” he tweeted. But as it turns out, Lennon was wrong. In early 2020, he donned his khaki shorts once more to begin filming new episodes of Reno 911! for mobile app Quibi. The seventh season debuted May 4, nearly 11 years after the show came to an end on Comedy Central. Though the streamer — which has struggled to attract subscribers during the four months since its launch — doesn’t disclose viewership, it says Reno 911! is a top-trending show. The road to a Reno 911! revival was a long one that started and ended with the…

Two decades before Jeffrey Katzenberg started Quibi, the video platform that has been struggling to find a sizable audience since its April 6 debut — but which was nominated for 10 shortform Emmys — the mogul tried a similar format with Pop.com. However, despite deep funding ($50 million from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen — still a drop in the bucket compared with the $1.75 billion raised for Quibi) and the involvement of such big-name stars as Steve Martin and Jerry Seinfeld, the website was doomed. Ron Howard had dreamed up the idea to put “pops” of entertainment — short, comedic videos that might one day turn into lucrative IP — on the internet. Howard and Imagine producing partner Brian Grazer brought the idea to Katzenberg and his DreamWorks co-founders, Steven…