Hollywood’s Vaccine Wars
Vaccination rates have plummeted at Los Angeles’s most prestigious schools. The numbers are staggering—some schools’ immunization rates are on par with South Sudan—but what does this mean for public health in the city at large?
‘SNL”s Political Secrets: An Oral History
Impersonations, political cameos, and the skit that never made it to air: An excerpt from the newly expanded oral history by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales.
Oscar to Suicide in One Year: Tracing the ‘Searching for Sugar Man’ Director’s Tragic Final Days
After the death of Malik Bendjelloul, who directed the documentary “Searching for Sugarman,” a THR writer heads to Sweden to talk to his friends, who reveal the perfectionist’s quirks, and open up about his fear, doubt and their own surprise.
It was just the type of place that the young man, a 36-year-old Swedish journalist and Oscar-winning film director named Malik Bendjelloul, might have found intriguing. The Stockholm metro system is reputed to be the largest display of public art anywhere in the world — 68.3 miles of paintings, mosaics, installations and sculptures. The station was an artistic, humane endeavor, an urban fairy-tale landscape that might have piqued his curiosity and fueled his imagination. But on that day, as the train neared, the picturesque station was transformed into a devastating scene of the director’s final moments. With a crowd of Tuesday-afternoon commuters looking on from benches or standing against walls, Bendjelloul flung himself into the path of an oncoming train.
‘West Wing’ Uncensored
An oral history of the beloved political series:
Aaron Sorkin: Kivi knew about the meeting and said, “Hey, you know what would make a good series? That.” He was pointing at the poster for The American President. “But this time you’d focus on the staffers.” I told him I wasn’t going to be doing a series and that I was meeting with John to meet John — I wanted to hear stories about China Beach and ER, and I especially wanted to hear about his years as stage manager for A Chorus Line. The next day I showed up for the lunch, and John was flanked by executives from Warner Bros. and agents from CAA. John got down to business and said, “What do you want to do?” And instead of saying, “I’m sorry, there’s been a misunderstanding. I don’t have anything to pitch,” I said, “I’d like to do a series about staffers at the White House.” And John said, “We’ve got a deal.”
Animals Were Harmed
An investigation reveals that the “No Animals Were Harmed” credit at the end of movies has come to mean almost nothing, and the American Humane Association has faced complaints about its lack of oversight:
“Last week we almost f—king killed King in the water tank," American Humane Association monitor Gina Johnson confided in an email to a colleague on April 7, 2011, about the star tiger in Ang Lee’s Life of Pi. While many scenes featuring “Richard Parker,” the Bengal tiger who shares a lifeboat with a boy lost at sea, were created using CGI technology, King, very much a real animal, was employed when the digital version wouldn’t suffice. “This one take with him just went really bad and he got lost trying to swim to the side,” Johnson wrote. “Damn near drowned.”
King’s trainer eventually snagged him with a catch rope and dragged him to one side of the tank, where he scrambled out to safety.
“I think this goes without saying but DON’T MENTION IT TO ANYONE, ESPECIALLY THE OFFICE!” Johnson continued in the email, obtained by The Hollywood Reporter. “I have downplayed the f— out of it.”