audience

The image of a grieving parent is not an uncommon sight on the dramatic stage. Euripides, whom Aristotle called “the most tragic of the poets,” returns to the figure of the grief-stricken parent in “Hecuba,” “Hippolytus” and “The Bacchae,” to cite just a few disparate examples of characters brought to their knees by the death of their child.

Shakespeare offers what has become the defining portrait of this inconsolable experience in “King Lear.” Cradling the lifeless body of his murdered daughter, Lear can do nothing but repeat the word “never” five times, the repetition driving home the irrevocable nature of loss.

In tragedy, the protagonist is often plagued by guilt for his own role, however inadvertent or inescapable, in the catastrophe that befell his loved one. Theseus in “Hippolytus” and Agave in “The Bacchae” both have reason to feel that they have blood on their hands. Lear, though “more sinned against than sinning,” recognizes only after it’s too late the error in judgment that led to the devastation from which there can be no return.

The difference with “Guac,” the one-man performance work at the Kirk Douglas Theatre, is that Manuel Oliver isn’t just playing a bereaved father. He is one.

Manuel Oliver in “Guac.”

(Cameron Whitman)

Oliver’s 17-year-old son, Joaquín, known as Guac to family and friends, was one of the 17 lives lost in 2018 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. The production, written and performed by Oliver, turns a parent’s grief into a theatrical work of activism.

Co-written by James Clements and directed by Michael Cotey, “Guac” has been sharing the story of Joaquín’s short but vividly lived life with audiences around the country. Oliver didn’t just love his son. He liked him. Guac was his best friend. He was also his trusted guide to American culture.

Immigrants from Venezuela, the family had made a new start in a country that Guac helped them feel was their home. To convey the meaning of Guac’s life, Oliver introduces his family members through a series of photo images he has crafted into artworks.

The last picture, and the one that remains staring at us throughout the performance, is of Guac. Oliver continues to enhance the portrait. While adding flourishes to the background and making adjustments to what his son is wearing, he tells us about the life they shared before it was tragically stolen.

Manuel Oliver works on a portrait of his late son in “Guac.”

(Donna F. Aceto)

The tragedy is overwhelmingly real. Oliver bears the weight of it by transforming his grief into fuel for activism. The performance makes the case for stricter gun law in America with the heartbreaking eloquence of a father whose life changed permanently after dropping his son off at school on a Valentine’s Day that started so promisingly.

What happened to Joaquín could happen to any of us, anytime, anywhere, in a country that has allowed its elected officials to deflect responsibility for their repeated failure to pass common sense gun legislation. While taking money from the NRA, these cynical politicians offer empty “thoughts and prayers” in place of meaningful reform. The result is that no one can go anywhere in public without eyeing the emergency exits and scanning the crowd for trouble.

Oliver isn’t a polished theatrical professional. He’s a dad, first and foremost. But it’s his comfortable ordinariness that allows him to make such a powerful connection with the audience. He’s onstage but could very well be exchanging a few neighborly words with us on our street.

Oliver summons his son by joyfully remembering his virtuosity on air guitar. Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” resounds throughout the Douglas while he enlivens the portrait with impassioned strokes. The words “I wish I was here” are added to Guac’s T-shirt, and it’s a sentiment we all devoutly, agonizingly share as Oliver brings his wife, Patricia, onto a stage that has urgently become an extension of our national reality.

In honor of Joaquín, the couple formed Change the Ref, an organization dedicated to raising awareness about mass shootings and empowering the next generation of activists through “creativity, activism, disruption and education.” “Guac” is a potent example of what can be done in the wake of a tragedy that can no longer be described as unthinkable.

YORBA LINDA — Not all the President’s men were there, but enough to make a strong showing.

Former Cabinet members Henry A. Kissinger and Richard G. Kleindienst were in attendance. So were Watergate figures Maurice Stans, once finance chairman for Nixon’s re-election committee, and G. Gordon Liddy, the convicted mastermind of the bungled burglary.

Former Nixon spokesman Ron Ziegler and Counsel Chuck Colson also paid their respects. Jo Horton Haldeman, the widow of Nixon’s chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, was in the audience. And so was Rose Mary Woods, the secretary who took responsibility for creating the infamous 18 1/2-minute gap on a critical Watergate tape.

But so was George McGovern, who was among the first named on Nixon’s infamous “enemies list,” and whose presence on the funeral’s exclusive guest list spoke more eloquently of reconciliation than some who eulogized the 37th President.

“This has been a reconciling day for me and, I think, for a lot of other people,” said McGovern, who as the Democratic nominee waged an acrimonious political fight against Nixon for the presidency in 1972 and was buried in a electoral landslide. “I kind of really feel like I’ve lost an old friend, even though we were bitter political enemies through the years.”

Colson, who spent seven months in prison for obstructing justice during the Watergate conspiracy, also spoke of healing.

“I think he achieved in death something he never quite achieved in life–to bring the nation together,” said Colson. “Maybe the wounds of Watergate are now, twenty-some years later, finally healed.”

The guest list for the funeral cut across a broad spectrum of Nixon’s political and private life: Republicans and Democrats, friends and former enemies, family members, entertainers, sports figures, religious leaders and many, many longtime staffers.

At the Yorba Linda Community Center, where many of the guests had gathered before the funeral, the Nixon faithful–wearing either purple or yellow “RN” badges that were their tickets to the funeral–embraced like long-lost friends.

Liddy and Howard H. Baker Jr., the former Tennessee senator and ranking minority member of the Judiciary Committee that held televised hearings on Watergate, rode over to the funeral site together on a shuttle.

Robert H. Finch, who served under Nixon as secretary of health, education and welfare, smiled and shook hands with Donald H. Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense under President Gerald R. Ford.

“I think the Nixon family can feel very, very good about what he accomplished, and who all is here,” Rumsfeld said. “A broad cross-section of the world is recognizing him for what he did.”

From across the Nixon years came Alexander M. Haig Jr., Haldeman’s replacement as chief of staff, and Caspar W. Weinberger, former secretary of health, education and welfare who became Ronald Reagan’s defense secretary. James R. Schlesinger, Nixon’s defense secretary, and William P. Rogers, his secretary of state, joined a few dozen others from the Nixon presidency, including political columnist and presidential aspirant Patrick J. Buchanan, security adviser Brent Scowcroft and former Atty. Gen. Elliot L. Richardson.

Even former Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, who before Nixon’s resignation left office himself in disgrace under a criminal indictment, and his wife, Judy, attended the funeral. Agnew had asked Julie Nixon Eisenhower if he would be welcome at the funeral and was assured that his presence was important. On Wednesday, he was greeted warmly.

“I’m here to pay my respects for (Nixon’s) accomplishments,” said Nixon’s vice president, who resigned in 1973 after pleading no contest to tax evasion. “It’s time to put aside 20 years of resentment, which is what I’m doing at this moment.”

More than 100 members of Congress were on the guest list, including 47 U.S. senators, House Speaker Thomas Foley (D-Wash.), Senate Democratic Leader George Mitchell of Maine and the California congressional delegation.

Representatives from across the globe, from Angola to Argentina and Singapore to Seychelles, also were in force. In all, 86 countries sent dignitaries to pay respects.

But Nixon had other admirers, too, who had little if anything to do with politics. Comedians Bob Hope and Red Skelton and actor Buddy Ebsen attended with their wives. Former Rams star Roosevelt Grier also attended.

“It was a good send-off to Richard Nixon and his future life,” said Ebsen, who also attended Pat Nixon’s funeral last summer. “There was a feeling of togetherness. It stepped across party lines and it was a beautiful happening. We need that to get all of us together.”

Said Hope: “He was a hell of a guy. Playing golf, you learn a lot about a guy’s character. His was a great character.”

The guest list was indeed impressive, with names like Walter Annenberg, George Argyros, Jesse Helms, William Lyon, Ashraf Pahlavi, Bebe Rebozo, Nelson Rockefeller, Henry Segerstrom, Mary Roosevelt and James B. Stockdale sprinkled throughout.

Orange County also had a large contingent, including a gathering of state senators and assemblymen. All five Orange County supervisors were also invited. The local Republican Central Committee distributed 100 tickets to elected officials, volunteers and others affiliated with the local party, chairman Thomas A. Fuentes said, and just about everyone who wanted in got in.

“It was dignified, sentimental and memorable,” Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder said. “I think it was Kissinger who said that when you look at the quality of a person and whether they lived well, you look at the entirety of the life. That’s how I remember Richard Nixon.”

Mourners spoke about healing and the inevitability that Nixon, in death, may finally have been absolved of his perceived sins.

Former Vice President Dan Quayle joked that Kissinger had captured it perfectly when he predicted that Nixon “would’ve liked to have read and reread all the favorable reviews that he’s had this last week.”

The Rev. Robert Schuller said he was pleased to see those reviews.

“I’m very grateful to God for the respect that’s been shown (Nixon) this last week,” said Schuller. “Society does not forgive. People tend to hold on to their hurts.”

But since Nixon’s death, Schuller said, the public is beginning to “recognize Nixon’s greatness.”

Times staff writers Alicia DiRado, Doreen Carvajal and Eric Lichtblau contributed to this report.

On the Guest List

The official U.S. delegation, members of Congress and the foreign delegation attending the funeral of Richard Nixon, according to the White House:

U.S. PRESIDENTS AND THEIR WIVES

* Bill and Hillary Clinton

* George and Barbara Bush

* Ronald and Nancy Reagan

* Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter

* Gerald and Betty Ford

NIXON ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS

* Spiro T. Agnew, former vice president

* Peter J. Brennan, former labor secretary

* Frederick B. Dent, former commerce secretary

* Elliot L. Richardson, former attorney general and health, education and welfare secretary

* William P. Rogers, former secretary of state

* Henry A. Kissinger, former secretary of state

* James R. Schlesinger, former defense secretary

* Caspar W. Weinberger, former HEW secretary

* William B. Saxbe, former attorney general

* Alexander M. Haig Jr., former chief of staff

* Brent Scowcroft, former Nixon aide

* Herb Stein, former economic adviser

* James T. Lynn, former HUD secretary

* Charles W. Colson, former special counsel to the President

* Dwight L. Chapin, former deputy assistant to the President

* Kenneth H. Dahlberg, former Midwest finance chairman of the Committee for the Re-election of the President

* Richard G. Kleindienst, former U.S. attorney general

* Ronald L. Ziegler, former press secretary

* G. Gordon Liddy, former White House aide

* Herbert W. Kalmbach, personal attorney to Nixon

* Robert H. Finch, former secretary of health, education and welfare

* Patrick J. Buchanan, speech writer

* Rose Mary Woods, former secretary

* Lyn Nofziger, former staff member

CLINTON ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS

* Defense Secretary William Perry

* Army Gen. John Shalikashvili, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

* Thomas F. (Mack) McLarty, White House chief of staff

* Strobe Talbott, deputy secretary of state

* Carol Browner, Environmental Protection Agency administrator

* Phil Lader, White House deputy chief of staff

* Dee Dee Myers, White House press secretary

* David Gergen, counselor to the President

* Bruce Lindsey, senior presidential adviser

* W. Anthony Lake, national security adviser

* Lloyd Cutler, White House special counsel

* Robert Rubin, director of National Economic Council

* Mark Gearan, White House communications director

* Pat Griffin, White House congressional affairs lobbyist

MEMBERS OF CONGRESS

More than 100 members were on the list. Among them:

* House Speaker Thomas Foley, D-Wash.

* Senate Democratic Leader George Mitchell, D-Me.

* Sen. Minority Leader Bob Dole, R-Kan.

* Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y.

* Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.

* Sen. John Danforth, R-Mo.

* Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M.

* Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

* Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Tex.

* Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah

* Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C.

* Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Tex.

* Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind.

* Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

* Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga.

* Sen. Bob Packwood, R-Ore.

* Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wyo.

* Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C.

* House Democratic Leader Richard A. Gephardt, D-Mo.

* House Republican Leader Robert Michel, R-Ill.

* Rep. Newt Gingrich, R-Ga.

* Rep. Carlos Moorhead, R-Glendale

* Rep. Bill Thomas, R-Bakersfield

* Rep. David Dreier, R-San Dimas

* Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-El Cajon

* Rep. Robert K. Dornan, R-Garden Grove

* Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Simi Valley

* Rep. Wally Herger, R-Rio Oso

* Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Newport Beach

* Rep. Jay C. Kim, R-Diamond Bar

* Rep. Howard P. McKeon, R-Santa Clarita

* Rep. Ed Royce, R-Fullerton

OTHER INVITED GUESTS

* The Rev. Billy Graham, officiant

* Lynda Johnson Robb, daughter of former President Lyndon B. Johnson

* Sen. Charles Robb, D-Va.

* George McGovern, Nixon’s 1972 presidential opponent

* Bob Strauss, chairman of the Democratic National Committee when Nixon was President

* Vernon Jordan, former president of the National Urban League

* Pete Wilson, California governor

* Kenneth M. Duberstein, former White House chief of staff

* Dwayne Andreas, former ambassador to the People’s Republic of China

* Buddy Ebsen, actor

* Bob Hope, comedian

* Red Skelton, comedian

* Rupert Murdoch, media executive

* Thomas F. Riley, O.C. supervisor

* Harriett M. Wieder, O.C. supervisor

* Gaddi H. Vasquez, O.C. supervisor

* William G. Steiner, O.C. supervisor

* Roger R. Stanton, O.C. supervisor

* Thomas A. Fuentes, O.C. Republican Party chairman

* Dan Quayle, former vice president

* Walter F. Mondale, former vice president

* Walter Annenberg, former U.S. ambassador

* George Argyros, O.C. businessman

* Reza and Ashraf Pahlavi, self-proclaimed Shah of Iran and his aunt

* Richard Riordan, L.A. mayor

* Jack Kemp, former secretary of housing and urban development

* Bebe Rebozo, Nixon friend

* Henry Segerstrom, O.C. businessman

* James B. Stockdale, retired vice admiral

* The Rev. Robert H. Schuller

* Howard H. Baker, former Senate minority leader, chief of staff in Reagan Administration and the ranking minority member on the Senate Watergate Committee

* Ji Chaozhu, United Nations undersecretary general from China

* James A. Baker III, former secretary of treasury and state in Reagan and Bush administrations

FOREIGN COUNTRIES REPRESENTED

Angola, Argentina, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bangladesh, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Brunei, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Chile, China, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Ethiopia, Fiji, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Honduras, Hungary, Indonesia, India, Ireland, Israel, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Korea, Latvia, Lebanon, Liberia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Maldives, Monaco, Morocco, Mozambique, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Paraguay, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Senegal, Seychelles, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Suriname, Syria, Taiwan, Thailand, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Turkey, United Kingdom, Uruguay, Venezuela, Yemen, Zambia.

Sources: Los Angeles Times, Associated Press

The right wing‘s war on Netflix wages on.

The Pentagon issued a statement blasting the streamer’s programming and leadership Friday following an inquiry about the new series “Boots” from Entertainment Weekly. While the response from Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson did not directly address the gay coming-of-age military show, it did slam Netflix for following an “ideological agenda” that “feeds woke garbage to their audience and children.”

“Under President Trump and Secretary [Pete] Hegseth, the U.S. military is getting back to restoring the warrior ethos,” Wilson’s statement said. “Our standards across the board are elite, uniform, and sex neutral because the weight of a rucksack or a human being doesn’t care if you’re a man, a woman, gay, or straight. We will not compromise our standards to satisfy an ideological agenda, unlike Netflix whose leadership consistently produces and feeds woke garbage to their audience and children.”

The Trump administration’s efforts to restore this “warrior ethos” thus far has included banning transgender people from serving in the military, body-shaming top military brass and other service members and declaring an end to “woke” culture and policies. The statement comes amid the Pentagon’s move to enforce a new unprecedentedly restrictive media policy that paints basic reporting methods as criminal activity.

Based on Greg Cope White’s 2016 memoir “The Pink Marine,” “Boots” follows Cam Cope (Miles Heizer), a gay teenager who enlists in the Marines at a time when being gay in the military was still a crime. Noting the show’s timely themes, Times television critic Robert Lloyd called it a “perfectly decent, good-hearted, unsurprisingly sentimental miniseries” in his review.

The show’s creatives also worked closely with several advisors with past military experience to authentically portray the Marines and military life in the 1990s.

The Pentagon’s criticism against Netflix follows the recent campaign led by billionaire Elon Musk calling for people to cancel their subscriptions to the streamer. The on-again/off-again Trump ally railed against Netflix on X earlier this month after clips of “Dead End: Paranormal Park,” an animated Netflix series featuring a trans character, was making the rounds on the social media platform. The show was canceled after its second season was released in 2022.

Despite being the target of right-wing ire, Netflix also has a history of being called out for its anti-trans programming. In 2021, transphobic remarks made by comedian Dave Chappelle in his special “The Closer” led to protests, walkouts and even a resignation of a trans employee. The streamer followed that in 2022 by releasing a comedy special from Ricky Gervais that also featured transphobic material.

For those who know of the spectacle that is Juan Gabriel there is no explanation necessary, for those who don’t, no explanation will suffice.

A new Netflix docuseries attempts to capture the magic of the frequently bedazzled genre- and gender-defying showmanship of “El Divo de Juárez,” who died at 66 of natural causes in 2016, while also investigating the internality of the man behind Gabriel — Alberto Aguilera Valadez.

Juan Gabriel was known for his epic stage performances, where he was often accompanied by an orchestra, dancers and dozens of mariachis dressed in tight jackets and sombreros, while belting out such hits as “Hasta Que Te Conocí,” “El Noa Noa” and “Amor Eterno.”

His colorful outfits and flamboyant dance moves drew speculation about his sexuality, but he famously preferred to remain coy on the issue and to this day remains a queer icon throughout the Latin American world.

“Juan Gabriel: I Must, I Can, I Will,” which premieres Oct. 30, utilizes a goldmine of hundreds of thousands of personal and never-before-seen voice recordings, photos and videos of one of Mexico’s most revered singer-songwriters, giving audiences a holistic look at the pain, joy, contradictions, artistry and genius that informed Gabriel’s worldview and perception of himself.

The project is director María José Cuevas’ second production with the streaming giant — her 2023 documentary feature “The Lady of Silence: The Mataviejitas Murders” recounted the story of famous Mexican serial killer Juana Barraza, who was sentenced to 759 years in prison for killing 16 elderly women and the suspected killing of dozens more.

Cuevas’ implementation of the juxtaposed duality of Juan Gabriel and Alberto Aguilera Valadez was inspired by his insistence that the two entities were distinct yet symbiotic, as was shown in a 2014 filmed self-interview the singer conducted.

“In order to understand the greatness of Juan Gabriel, I had to know Alberto. He always played with that duality,” she said. “From a very young age he would say in interviews that he invented Juan Gabriel to shield Alberto, he invented an idol in order to protect his private identity.”

In an interview with The Times, Cuevas spoke about her personal connection to the famed singer, the overwhelming archives she had access to and the ways in which Juan Gabriel united and continues to unite people to this day.

This interview was translated and edited for length.

What was your relationship to Juan Gabriel before taking on the task of directing this documentary?

I remember clearly turning on the TV [when I was young] and seeing video clips of Juan Gabriel with his red sweater and white jeans. I later had the opportunity to go to his first performance at the Palacios de Bellas Artes in 1990 with my parents. One is accustomed to going to Bellas Artes for opera, ballet, classical music and the concert began with that formal tone, but there reached a moment where audience members couldn’t keep up the facade of elegance and everyone let their hair down.

For me that moment was incredibly revelatory, I finally noticed that he was a whirlwind in every sense of the word. I didn’t realize at the time that I was present at a such an important cultural milestone. When I watched it in retrospect, from all the camera angles we were privy to for this documentary, I got goosebumps and I wish I could go back to being 18 years old and experience it with the intensity that I have for his music now.

I think that Juan Gabriel always transports us to something personal, but also to something collective. In Mexico, Juan Gabriel’s death was a very collective experience. You would go out into the street and you would hear his music in cars, the corner store, coming out of neighbors’ houses.

How did you gain access to the vast collection of archived materials that are present in the documentary?

That’s really the treasure of the project. Juan Gabriel’s story has already been told, but what makes this project unique is that it’s a story told by [the recordings and photos] he left behind. One of the first things he did after reaching success wasn’t just to buy his mom a house, but also to buy himself a Super 8 camera. From then on he picked up the habit of recording his everyday activities as Alberto Aguilera and later on he always had a camera following around as Juan Gabriel.

From our first meetings with Netflix, I figured we should ask Gabriel’s family if they had anything to share with us. I thought maybe it would be a photo album that was laying around, maybe a box of memorabilia or a few cassettes. So it was to our great surprises when they sent us over a photo of a warehouse with shelves full of every different kind of film. It was crazy. And that’s when I remembered that Juan Gabriel’s close friend and actor Isela Vega was helping him catalog all of his videography.

I never imagined that within those videos that we’d find the public persona of Juan Gabriel and the private persona of Alberto Aguilera. Another elucidating moment was that Juan Gabriel reached a moment where he became conscious of the level of his celebrity and that it wasn’t a coincidence that he recorded most of his life. And there reached a moment where I realized he saved all these recordings so that one day people could revisit all his saved materials and they could reconstruct his personal story through what he left behind.

There’s a moment in the documentary where we’re at one of his concerts and there are men of all orientations in the crowd that are asking JuanGa to marry them. That seemed particularly powerful to me because in that moment the veil of machismo seemed to fall.

Yeah, I think an important part of making this portrait of Juan Gabriel was understanding the context of Mexico in the ‘80s. It was very conservative, very machista and then all of a sudden this guy drops in with all this talent and charisma and he says, “Here I come, get out of the way because I’m gonna conquer everyone.” And that wasn’t so simple at that time. He showed his greatness at any and every stage he was put on. He was able to win over people in every social class in a very elitist Mexico. He won over everyone from the most macho man to women.

Even greater than the achievement that was his performance at Bellas Artes were his performances in palenques when he was young. Palenques being these circular stages where you can’t hide because you’re standing right in the middle of everything. And he would take the stage late at night when everyone was already drunk and they were audiences that were, in general, very machista.

Suddenly a very young Juan Gabriel would appear to perform rancheras. I always say he was a provocateur, but also a seducer because of his ability to win over a crowd. There were audiences that would yell derogatory things at him and that’s when he’d really play with the audience.

It feels almost impossible not to be moved by the music as you watch your documentary.

He’s really magnificent. I remember throughout the whole process of making the doc and I was watching the intimate home videos of Alberto Aguilera and it really reminded me that Juan Gabriel was a human like everyone else [not just this grand entertainer]. I’d put any concert of his and I was bowing at the altar of a star. It’s amazing what a powerful character he was up on that stage.

And how have you seen JuanGa’s legacy represent something very specific in the U.S.?

For Latinos in the U.S. he’s such an important figure because his work pulls people back to their roots. One of his greatest accomplishments as a performer was when he filled the Rose Bowl in 1993. In that moment he showed his influence and strength within the Latino world. He’s absolutely one of the key figures in Latin music.

CNN is taking another shot at launching a direct-to-consumer streaming service that will make much of the channel’s news programming available without a pay TV subscription.

The unit of Warner Bros. Discovery announced Thursday it will launch an All Access subscription tier for CNN.com available for $6.99 a month starting Oct. 28. The service will provide what the company describes as “a selection” of live programming on CNN and CNN International.

The service will also have exclusive on-demand programming and a library of titles from CNN Films and CNN Original Series.

The All Access subscription will be be offered at $69.99 annually, but will carry an introductory price of $41.99 for the first year for customers signing up by Jan. 5.

The announcement comes two years after Mark Thompson took over as chief executive of the network with a mandate to guide the channel into a digital post-cable future.

CNN launched a direct-to-consumer service in 2022 called CNN+, made up of original programming featuring its current talent line-up and new additions including Audie Cornish, Chris Wallace and Kasie Hunt. But the service was shut down nine days after launch following WBD’s takeover of the network, as new management was focused on reducing debt.

CNN has seen profits decline significantly over the last five years as cord-cutting has driven down revenues received from cable and satellite companies carrying the channel.

The cable channel also saw a significant decline in ratings after WBD took over ownership of the network and executives pushed for the network to appeal more to conservative viewers.

Thompson has made few changes to the CNN program line-up as his team has focused on its digital properties. Thompson and Alex MacCallum, executive vice president of digital products and services, were both at the New York Times when the company transformed into a successful digital subscription-based news business.

In a statement, MacCallum said the All Access launch is “an essential step in CNN’s evolution as we work to give audiences the complete CNN experience in a format that reflects how audiences engage with the news today.”

CNN introduced a paywall on its website last year, giving users unfettered access to articles and video on the site for $3.99 a month. Response to the preliminary phase was encouraging, according to people inside the network who were not authorized to comment publicly.

Cable subscribers will also get the new streaming service for free.

Fox News is currently the only major cable news channel available without a pay TV subscription. The channel is offered on Fox One, the recently launched streaming service that also offers local Fox broadcast affiliates for $19.99 a month.

BRAVE Amanda Holden takes to the Britain’s Got Talent red carpet wearing the top that almost saw her flash the show’s audience at auditions.

But an onlooker said the 54-year-old “was being much more careful this time round.”

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Show judge Amanda — in a lop-sided strapless top — nearly exposed herself by lifting her left arm to wave at the crowd as she strutted on stage at the Winter Gardens in Blackpool on Saturday.

After adjusting her clothes to preserve her modesty she sat down.

Then, gesturing to her boob, she admitted: “This keeps slipping out every time I raise my arms.”

Yesterday The Sun revealed a small production team were quickly put on “nipple watch” to ensure there were no surprise appearances during filming of the ITV ­talent contest.

Undeterred, Amanda wore the strapless top again.

Our observer reported: “She waved with her left hand, where her top had more coverage than on the right-hand side, and kept her other hand firmly in her pocket most of the time.

“Amanda didn’t want any wardrobe malfunctions again. She was probably already feeling the chill in blustery Blackpool.”

Also dressed for sunnier climes was head judge Simon Cowell in shades, and fellow panellist Alesha Dixon wearing sunglasses and a crop-top.

Only hosts Ant and Dec and new judge KSI — taking over from Bruno Tonioli — looked ready for Lancashire weather.

Auditions for the 19th series of BGT, due to air next year, continue in the seaside town until the end of this week.

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An immigrant drama by Rudi Goblen about two brothers born in Nicaragua, “littleboy/littleman,” now receiving its world premiere at the Geffen Playhouse, is an American story at its core.

Lest we forget our past, America is the great democratic experiment precisely because it’s a land of immigrants. Out of many, one — as our national motto, E pluribus unum, has it. How have we lost sight of this basic tenet of high school social studies?

Our tendency to ghettoize drama — along racial or immigrant lines — reflects the failure to understand our collective story.

Goblen, who (like a.k. payne, author of “Furlough’s Paradise”) was a playwriting student of Geffen Playhouse artistic director Tarell Alvin McCraney at Yale, has created not a conventionally worked out two-hander, but an intuitively structured performance piece. Infused by live music and inflected with hip-hop style poetry, “littleboy/littleman” crashes through the fourth wall to make direct contact with theatergoers, who are seated on three sides of the playing area and always just a high-five away.

Marlon Alexander Vargas, the dynamic, sweet-faced performer who plays Fito Palomino, the more creative and mercurial of the two brothers, is on stage interacting with the audience before the play begins. As the musicians — music director Dee Simone on drums and Tonya Sweets on bass — warm up the crowd from their platform at the back of the playing area, Vargas, ever-in-motion, greets theatergoers and counts down to the start of the show.

Rules are spelled out at the top that make clear that this isn’t one of those docile theatergoing experiences, in which the audience is expected to keep mum as the actors do all the work. Spectators are encouraged to make some noise — to show love when they want to show love and to show it even when they don’t.

These friendly instructions are impishly delivered by Vargas, whose performance outside the play has an effect on our experience of his character inside the play. The fate of Fito is the emotional crux of the drama, and what happens to him matters all the more to us because of our theatrical connection to Vargas, our de facto host and impromptu buddy.

Goblen sets up a drama of fraternal contrasts. Bastian Monteyero (Alex Hernandez), the older and more straitlaced of the two brothers, has a tough, no-nonsense demeanor that’s all about discipline and conformity. He’s a bit of a recluse, but he plays by the rules and demands the same from Fito.

A street performer, Fito dreams of opening a vegan restaurant that will offer his community access to affordable, healthful meals. This idea seems far-fetched to Bastian, and he tells Fito that if he wants to continue living with him, he’s going to have to get a real job.

Bastian hooks Fito up with a friend who’s employed at a cleaning service. But scrubbing public toilets isn’t Fito’s idea of an alternative course. Bastian wants his brother off the streets. There are dangers afoot in Sweetwater, Fla., far worse than unpleasant paid work.

A law officer in town, a sadist who demands complete subservience, has it in for Fito, who describes this menacing figure as “a gangster with a badge.” He also calls him “brown on the outside, white on the inside,” and bemoans to his brother the Latino infighting (“the worst thing they ever did was give us all flags”) that only divides people who have political reason to be in solidarity.

Bastian, who affects a white-sounding Midwestern voice when he hustles donations in his telemarketing job, can’t help taking the latter comment personally. He’s made no secret that he wants to change his name so his resume won’t be ignored when he applies for management jobs.

The two brothers have different fathers, and Fito doesn’t have the option of passing. In any case, he’s more embracing of his identity as a person of color than Bastian. What both of them have in common is that they survived both their harrowing childhoods in Nicaragua and their unrelentingly challenging journeys in America, having been raised by a single mother, whose death still haunts them.

Bastian and Fito love each other, but don’t always like each other. Hernandez’s Bastian is a formidable presence, angry, strict and domineering — the qualities he’s needed to navigate a bureaucratic system that has little concern for the feelings of immigrant outsiders. Vargas’ Fito, by contrast, has his head in the clouds and his heart on his sleeve. Goblen never loses sight of their affection even as their conflict grows louder and more bruising.

Bassist Tonya Sweets, from left, Marlon Alexander Vargas and drummer Dee Simone in “littleboy/littleman” at Geffen Playhouse.

(Jeff Lorch)

“littleboy/littleman” is tricky in its theatrical rhythms. It’s like a piece of music that keeps switching harmonic structures, not wanting to get stuck in the same groove. Goblen’s manner of writing is closer to free jazz or freestyle hip-hop than traditional drama.

Director Nancy Medina’s staging, circumnavigating a theatrical circle, lifts the audience out of its proscenium passivity into something almost immersive and definitely interactive. Tanya Orellana’s scenic design and Scott Bolman’s moody lighting create a performance space that is well suited to a work composed as a series of riffs. The influence of McCraney’s “The Brothers Size” is palpable not only in the thematic architecture of the play, but also in how the piece moves on stage.

The staccato nature of the writing is helped enormously by the entrancing acting of both Vargas, who breezes through different theatrical realms as though he had wings, and Hernandez, who locks realistically into character. It’s a credit to the play and to the performers that, by the end of “littleboy/littleman,” the differences between the two brothers seem less important than what they have in common.

Not all the dramatic elements are smoothly integrated, but the production ultimately finds a coherence, not so much in the music (composed by Goblen himself), but in the emotional truth of the brothers’ pressure-cooker lives. Vulnerability unites not only Bastian and Fito, but all of us witnessing their story who hope against hope that compassion will somehow win the day.

Paramount has acquired The Free Press, a four-year-old digital news platform, and will make its co-founder Bari Weiss editor-in-chief of CBS News, the company announced Monday.

The official announcement came after months of speculation on the deal and Weiss’ high profile role within the news division. Weiss, 41, will report to Paramount Chief Executive David Ellison, who personally courted the former New York Times journalist.

“We are thrilled to welcome Bari and The Free Press to Paramount and CBS News. Bari is a proven champion of independent, principled journalism, and I am confident her entrepreneurial drive and editorial vision will invigorate CBS News,” Ellison said in a statement. “This move is part of Paramount’s bigger vision to modernize content and the way it connects — directly and passionately — to audiences around the world.”

Paramount said Weiss will “shape editorial policies, champion core values across platforms and lead innovation in how the organization reports and delivers the news.”

The union of The Free Press and CBS News will be one of the most closely watched lab experiments in the modern media era. Weiss has no experience in television or running an editorial operation on the scale of CBS News, which has more than 1,000 employees.

Paramount is paying around $150 million in cash and stock for The Free Press, a feisty, upstart operation that generated attention through opinion pieces and podcasts with a strong point of view. Its favorite targets are the excesses of progressive left and purveyors of so-called “woke” policies.

CBS News is a traditional mass appeal network TV operation with a proud legacy of journalistic excellence and the home of popular franchises “60 Minutes” and “CBS Sunday Morning.” But the division has struggled to deal with the shifts in audience habits brought about by streaming video and social media.

Weiss is a provocateur who famously resigned from her high profile role in the opinion section of the New York Times in 2020, citing bullying by her colleagues and a hostile work environment as the reasons.

Weiss acknowledged the division’s legacy in a note sent to CBS News staffers after her appointment was announced.

“Growing up, CBS was a deep family tradition,” Weiss said. “Whenever i hear the tick, tick, tick or that trumpet fanfare, it sends me right back to our den in Pittsburgh. The opportunity to build on that legacy — and to renew it in an era that so desperately needs it — is an extraordinary privilege.”

Weiss also ascends at a time when Trump has threatened news operations with lawsuits and regulatory action, such as pulling station TV licenses over what he believes is unfair criticism of him and his administration. Paramount agreed to pay $16 million to settle a Trump lawsuit making the dubious claim that a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris was deceptively edited to aid her 2024 presidential election campaign against him.

CBS News has never had an executive with the title editor-in-chief before naming Weiss to the role. It still has a president — Tom Cibrowski — a former ABC News executive hired earlier this year who will remain in his role and continue to report to to Paramount TV Media President George Cheeks.

In her note, Weiss told her staffers her goal in the coming weeks is to learn “what’s working and what isn’t, and your thoughts on how we can make CBS News the most trusted news organization in America and the world. I’ll approach it the way any reporter would — with an open mind, a fresh notebook, and an urgent deadline.”

The Free Press, which has around 170,000 paid subscribers, will continue as its own independent brand, with its own podcasts and live events business.

The late night circuit got its version of a unique crossover event Tuesday night as Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert appeared as guests on each other’s shows.

It was a fitting stunt considering both talk show hosts have been at the center of noteworthy professional situations shrouded in political and national significance, and both orbit in the same universe of President Trump’s contempt. The two hosts, who have vocally supported each other through the respective ordeals on their shows, were now able to continue the mutual backing in full force, face-to-face.

In the wake of the fallout of Kimmel’s suspension earlier this month over comments he made related to the death of conservative pundit Charlie Kirk, the recently reinstated host charged ahead with moving his L.A.-based show to Brooklyn for a week as planned, with Colbert among the star-studded list of guests. Colbert was effusive in his support of Kimmel after ABC pre-empted his talk show, criticizing the decision as “blatant censorship.”

Kimmel, meanwhile, appeared on “The Late Show,” alongside pop star Sam Smith. Earlier this year, CBS announced it was canceling “The Late Show” and would end after the season wraps in May 2026 — marking not only the end of Colbert’s run at the helm, but also bringing the late night institution to a close after a 30-year run. The decision, the company said, was due to financial reasons and not — as many have speculated — because of Colbert’s criticism of a deal between the Trump administration and Paramount, the parent company of CBS, the network that airs “The Late Show,” over.a 2024 “60 Minutes” interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris. Kimmel was one of the many who expressed disdain over the decision, even campaigning for Colbert to win an Emmy though Kimmel was on the same ballot. (Colbert ultimately won.)

Ahead of Kimmel’s appearance on “The Late Show,” Colbert hosted another late-night host, Conan O’Brien, who appeared as a guest Monday, opening the conversation with, “Stephen, how’s late night? What’s going on? I’ve been out of it for a little bit — catch me up on what’s happening.”

“I’ll send you the obituary,” Colbert replied.

Here are five standout moments from the night of shared grievances.

Stephen Colbert, left, and Jimmy Kimmel backstage at “The Late Show.”

(Scott Kowalchyk/CBS)

Colbert says he ‘sweat through his shirt’ the day he told his staff ’The Late Show’ was canceled

In his first sit-down interview since the “The Late Show” was canceled, Colbert walked Kimmel through the timeline of his show’s cancellation. He said he received the news from their mutual manager, James Dixon, after the taping of his show on July 16. He got home to his wife, Evie McGee-Colbert, two and a half hours later. As he walked into the apartment, according to Colbert, his wife said, “What happened? You get canceled?”

Dixon knew for a week but had been hesitant to relay the news to Colbert, who was on vacation. Once he learned the show’s fate, Colbert said he was unsure about when he should break the news to his staff, debating whether to wait until after the summer break or in September. His wife, though, said he would tell them the following day.

“We get into the building,” he said, “I go up the elevator, I walk through the offices. By time I get to my offices, I have sweat through my shirt because I didn’t want to know anything my staff didn’t know. And I said, ‘I’m going to tell my staff today,’ but then we couldn’t do a show if I told them because everybody would be bummed out and I would be bummed out.”

He only told executive producer Tom Purcell at first. He got through the whole show. And then he asked the audience and staff to stick around for one more act so he could record the announcement.

“My stage manager goes, ‘Oh no, we’re done, Steve, we’re done.’ And I said, ‘nope, there’s one more act of the show. Please don’t let the audience leave.’ And he goes, ‘No, boss, no. Boss. I got that. I got the thing here. We’ve done everything.’ And I said, ‘I’m aware of that. And I’m here to tell you there’s one more act of the show,’” he explained. “So I went backstage, I said, ‘Everybody, get on Zoom.’ I told everybody as briefly as I could so they wouldn’t find out about it on air. And then I went back out on stage to tell everybody. And I was so nervous about doing it right — because there was nothing in the prompter, I was just speaking off the cuff — that I f— up twice. And I had to restart and the audience thought it was a bit and they started going, ‘Steve, you can do it.’ Because I always messed up on the sentence that told them what was happening. And then I got to the sentence that actually told them was happening, and they didn’t laugh.”

Kimmel, in turn, shared that he found out about “The Late Show’s” cancellation while attending a No Kings protest march.

Kimmel says he took the call from ABC about his suspension from the bathroom

Jimmy Kimmel on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” Tuesday.

(Scott Kowalchyk/CBS)

Like Colbert, Tuesday marked the first time Kimmel had been interviewed since his suspension earlier this month, and he detailed the day he got the news he was being pulled from the air.

Kimmel’s office is busy — there’s roughly five other people working in there with him at all times, he told Colbert. So when ABC executives wanted to speak with him less than two hours before he was set to tape that night’s episode, Kimmel resorted to the bathroom to take the call in private.

“I’m on the phone with the ABC executives, and they say, ‘Listen, we want to take the temperature down. We’re concerned about what you’re gonna say tonight, and we decided that the best route is to take the show off the air,’” Kimmel said before the audience interjected with boos.

“There was a vote, and I lost the vote, and so I put my pants back on and I walked out to my office,” before telling some of his producing team the news, he said. “My wife said I was whiter than Jim Gaffigan when I came out.”

The decision on Kimmel’s suspension came so late in the day that the audience was already in their seats and had to be sent home, Kimmel told Colbert.

A sign of the times?

While touting the crossover event in his monologue (“We thought it might be a fun way to drive the President nuts so…”), Kimmel took time to stress the groundswell of support Colbert has both in New York, where he does his show, and in Kimmel’s homebase of L.A. To prove it, the camera cut to a photo showing signs that were displayed over the 101 freeway in L.A. when Kimmel went back on the air following his suspension. They read: “Public pressure works — Kimmel is back!”

“And this is the sign that is up now,” Kimmel continued, cutting to video of more recent signage over the freeway. “It says, “Now do Colbert.”

Gavin Newsom traveled to Brooklyn. Or did he?

Seth Meyers, left, Josh Meyers as California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Jimmy Kimmel on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”

(Randy Holmes/ABC)

The California governor — who also moonlights (by proxy of his social media team) as the unofficial No. 1 Trump troll — made the cross-country trip to Brooklyn to surprise Kimmel on stage. Or did he? As the host mentioned the politician’s latest jab at Trump during his monologue, Newsom barreled onto the stage on a bike before finding his place next to Kimmel for a roughly six-minute spiel, delivered in his best California bro speak, on his mission to bring people together.

“L.A and N.Y.C., we’re not so different,” Newsom said. “I mean, we both just want to be free to smoke weed while riding our electric scooters to a drag queen brunch.”

As Kimmel pressed how exactly they can succeed in coming together, a blustering Newsom responded: “We already started, dog. These people get it. They have their own great late night hosts here in NYC, but tonight they chose my homie from L.A. They could be partying with my dude, J-Fall and The Roots crew — they’re a rap band … because you did look confused. Anyway, these Brooklyn-istas came to see you instead of checking out the political commentary of John Oliver or J-Stew or pay their respects to Colbert before he shipped off to Guantanamo Gay, or they could have gone and watched whatever that little creep Seth Meyers is doing … dude dresses like a substitute Montessori teacher. I mean, do you know why he sits down for his jokes? Same reason yo’ mama sits down to pee.”

Cue a special appearance from Seth Meyers, Kimmel’s friend and fellow late night host to rein in … his brother? For the non-late night connoisseurs reading this: Meyers’ brother, Josh, played the “Covid bro” version of Newsom during the pandemic in sketches that aired on NBC’s “Late Night with Seth Meyers.” Newsom took the gag further on Tuesday, impersonating Josh impersonating himself on Kimmel’s stage.

“We’re bros, but no, we’re not,” Newsom as Josh said. “Look, I get this all the time, probably because we’re both so hot.”

Meanwhile, keeping the planned awkwardness going, Kimmel took the opportunity to mention to Meyers that he was in town if he wanted to get dinner. Meyers responded: “What happened with your show? I thought this whole thing was, you know … “

“We’re back on the air,” Kimmel said. “We’re back on now.”

It should also be noted that Kimmel, Colbert and Meyers later posed for a photo onstage and uploaded it to their respective social media accounts with the caption, “Hi Donald!”

Guillermo brings the fun (and the tequila)

Guillermo Rodriguez, left, Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert taking a round of shots on “The Late Show.”

(Scott Kowalchyk/CBS)

Looking ahead at the remaining months Colbert will be on the air, Kimmel asked the host when he was going to “go nuts,” and suggested he lose his glasses and “maybe do some ayahuasca on set.” Kimmel then gifted him a bong with a Statue of Liberty design, which he called a “chemistry set.”

Colbert started playing along by unbuttoning his blazer and saying “f— that” to a signal that he only had a minute left in the segment. (“What are they gonna do, cancel me?” Colbert asked). Then, as if right on cue, Guillermo Rodriguez, Kimmel’s friend and sidekick on his show, came onto the stage with tequila (and three shot glasses) in hand.

On the first round of Don Julio, Colbert made a toast: “To good friends, great jobs and late-night TV.”

Colbert then poured another round and Kimmel pulled out the bong he had gifted the host. The group then took one more shot together and Kimmel toasted to Colbert.

Guillermo, who got a round of hearty cheers from the crowd, is known for giving out shots and toasting with A-Listers at awards shows and other Hollywood events.

Leonardo DiCaprio can still draw audiences to movie theaters.

His latest film, “One Battle After Another,” landed in the top spot at the box office this weekend, hauling in $22.4 million in the U.S. and Canada. Globally, the film made $48.5 million in its opening weekend. Industry analyst estimates had pegged the film’s debut at $20 million to $25 million, though some had predicted $30 million or more. Studio sources expected the film to bring in $20 million in its domestic opening.

Written and directed by auteur filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson, “One Battle After Another” tells the story of a one-time revolutionary, played by DiCaprio, who must band together with old friends and community members to rescue his daughter from a former enemy. The film, which is loosely based on a Thomas Pynchon novel, also stars Sean Penn, Teyana Taylor, Benicio Del Toro and Regina Hall. Its budget was $130 million.

“One Battle After Another” had strong interest from Hollywood cinephiles, but there were questions about whether it would connect with more casual moviegoers, particularly since early marketing was more ambiguous about its genre. In addition, adult dramas have not performed at the box office as they did before the pandemic, as older audiences have been slower to return to theaters. Fans of DiCaprio, who may have followed his career since his turn in 1997’s “Titanic,” fall into that group.

But the film notched a solid 98% approval rating on aggregator Rotten Tomatoes and has benefited from buzz about its awards potential.

“One Battle After Another” marks the latest win for Warner Bros. The studio has had a string of success at the theaters starting with April’s “A Minecraft Movie,” which has grossed a total of $957 million. That streak continued with Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners,” James Gunn’s “Superman,” Zach Cregger’s “Weapons,” and the latest installments of franchises like “The Conjuring” and “Final Destination.” It’s been a remarkable turnaround for the studio and its film chiefs Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy, who earlier this year were reportedly on the hot seat for under-performing films.

At that time, “One Battle After Another” was seen as an especially risky bet for De Luca and Abdy, but the success of the rest of the year’s lineup has reduced the pressure on this film, said Shawn Robbins, director of movie analytics at Fandango and founder of site Box Office Theory.

“They’re in an envious position right now because they don’t need this movie to over-perform,” he said. “‘One Battle After Another’ is a little bit of a cherry on top.”

“Gabby’s Dollhouse” came in second place at the box office this weekend, grossing $13.5 million. “Demon Slayer,” “The Conjuring: Last Rites” and “The Strangers: Chapter 2” rounded out the top five.

SANTA BARBARA — “In this next song,” said Paul McCartney, “we’d like you to sing along.”

Oh, this was the one?

By an hour or so into his concert Friday night at the Santa Barbara Bowl — basically somebody’s backyard by the standards of the former Beatle — McCartney had already gotten the capacity crowd to join in on a bunch of all-timers including “I’ve Just Seen a Face,” “Love Me Do,” “Jet,” “Getting Better,” “Lady Madonna,” “Let Me Roll It” and “Got to Get You Into My Life.”

But for Sir Paul, even (or especially) at age 83, there’s always a way to take an audience higher.

So as his keyboard player plunked out the song’s lovably lopsided lick, McCartney and his band cranked through a fast and jumpy rendition of “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” that left nobody any choice but to hop up and holler about the sweet certainty of life’s going on.

Paul McCartney and his band.

(Michael Owen Baker / For The Times)

A sellout pretty much as soon as it was announced, Friday’s show was a kind of warm-up gig ahead of the launch next week of the latest leg of McCartney’s Got Back world tour, which began criss-crossing the globe in 2022 and will resume Monday night in Palm Desert after a nine-month break.

On the road he’s playing arenas and stadiums, but this hillside amphitheater seats only 4,500 or so; to make the evening even more intimate, fans had to lock their phones in little pouches on the way into the venue. (The presence of several cameras swooping around on cranes suggested that McCartney was filming the concert for some unstated purpose.)

“That’s our wardrobe change of the evening,” he said at one point after taking off his jacket, and indeed this was a slightly trimmed-down version of the flashy multimedia production that he brought to SoFi Stadium three years ago. That night in 2022, he played three dozen tunes over two and a half hours; on Friday he did a dozen fewer — no “Maybe I’m Amazed,” no “Band on the Run” — in about an hour and 45 minutes.

The advantage of the smallness, of course, was that you could really hear what McCartney and his longtime backup band were doing up there: the folky campfire vocal harmonies in “I’ve Just Seen a Face,” the propulsive groove driving “Get Back,” the barely organized chaos of a downright raunchy “Helter Skelter.”

Then again, that assumes that tracking those details is why anybody turned up in Santa Barbara.

Though he dropped an album of new solo songs in 2020, McCartney has been pretty deep in nostalgia mode since the 2021 release of Peter Jackson’s widely adored “Get Back” docuseries. He’ll tend the machine this fall with a new book about his years with Wings and an expanded edition of the Beatles’ mid-’90s “Anthology” series; next year, a documentary about the Wings era is due from director Morgan Neville; in 2028, director Sam Mendes will unveil the four separate biopics he’s making about each Beatle, with Paul Mescal in the role of McCartney.

Paul McCartney takes the stage.

(Michael Owen Baker / For The Times)

All that looking back can make it hard for even a devoted fan to take in the legend standing before them in the flesh; instead of overwriting memories with fresh information, the mind steeped in myth can train itself to do the opposite (especially when the owner of that mind has shelled out hundreds of bucks for a concert ticket).

Yet you have to hand it to McCartney, whose face bore a dusting of silvery stubble on Friday: As predetermined as this audience was to have a good time, he was tapped into the energy of a musician making minute-to-minute decisions.

He opened the show with a zesty take on the Beatles’ “Help!,” which experts on the internet say he hadn’t played in concert since 1990, then followed it up with one of his quirkiest solo tunes in the disco-punk “Coming Up,” which he juiced with a bit of Henry Mancini’s “Peter Gunn” theme.

After a flirty “Love Me Do,” he asked the women in the crowd to “gimme a Beatles scream,” then nodded approvingly at the sound. “Imagine trying to play through that,” he added.

“Jet” had a nasty swagger and “I’ve Got a Feeling” a sexy strut; “Live and Let Die,” meanwhile, was just as trashy as you’d hope.

McCartney told moving if familiar stories about meeting Jimi Hendrix and about his mother coming to him in the dream that inspired “Let It Be”; he also told one I’d never heard about screwing up a performance of “Blackbird” — “Lot of changes,” he said of the song’s complicated guitar part — in front of Meryl Streep. Because his wife Nancy was in the house, he said, he played “My Valentine,” a weepy piano ballad anyone but Nancy probably would’ve gladly exchanged for “Junior’s Farm” or “Drive My Car.”

But then what was that choice if not a commitment to the circumstances of the moment?

Paul McCartney arrives at the Santa Barbara Bowl.

(Michael Owen Baker / For The Times)

Marlon Wayans is putting up a “defensive run-stopping front” after his latest film received negative reviews from critics.

The actor took to his Instagram account over the weekend to promote his latest film, “HIM,” which hit the big screen Friday, and told fans to form their own opinions on the project. The movie currently holds a 29% score with critics on Rotten Tomatoes.

“An opinion does not always mean it’s everyone’s opinion. Some movies are ahead of the curve,” Wayans said. “Innovation is not always embraced and art is to be interpreted and it’s subjective.”

The post include screen grabs from the Rotten Tomatoes pages of his other movies that have been classified “rotten” by the website but were later embraced by audiences like 2004’s “White Chicks,” the first two films in the “Scary Movie” franchise, 2013’s “A Haunted House” and 1996’s “Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood.” The post ends with a screen grab of the “HIM” Rotten Tomatoes page.

“I’ve had a career of making classic movies that weren’t critically received and those movies went on to be CLASSICS. So don’t take anyone’s opinion just go see for yourself,” Wayans added.

So far, audiences have given the film a 58% on Rotten Tomatoes.

The Times film critic, Amy Nicholson, credited the the film for its “stylishly” craftsmanship but said it was lacking plot.

Donald Trump’s speech to the United Nations was one of the clearest expositions of the way he sees the world, his ideology in its rawest form.

To his supporters, it will be seen as Trumpism unplugged; to his critics, Trumpism unhinged.

Over almost an hour, he took aim at his opponents and their ideas, picking them off one by one as he toured the world. He began at home, praising the United States and himself. He said the US was living through a golden age and repeated his much-disputed claim that he had personally ended seven wars, something he argued merited a Nobel Peace Prize.

But then the president laid into his hosts. The UN, he said, had not helped his peace-making. He questioned the organisation’s purpose, saying it had tremendous potential but was not living up to that. All it did, he claimed, was write strongly worded letters that it did not follow up. Empty words, he said, did not end wars.

He also attacked the UN for the aid it gave to asylum seekers hoping to enter the US, saying “The UN is supposed to stop invasions, not create them and not finance them.” The president even attacked the UN for a broken escalator and teleprompter that disrupted his visit and speech.

On one level, he has a point. Many analysts question the effectiveness of the UN in resolving conflict these days, pointing in particular to gridlock in the Security Council and the body’s unresponsive bureaucracy.

But on another level Trump can be seen himself a cause and symptom of the UN’s lack of effectiveness; for he believes global crises are best resolved by powerful men like him getting together and hammering out a deal, not using multilateral bodies like the UN to work out collective solutions. Under Trump, the US has withdrawn much of its UN funding, leaving the body forced to cut its humanitarian work around the world.

Trump saved perhaps his biggest criticism for his European allies, attacking the continent for investing in renewable energy, and opening its borders to migration.

“Europe is in serious trouble. They have been invaded by a force of illegal aliens like nobody has ever seen before… Both the immigration and suicidal energy ideas will be the death of Western Europe,” he said.

Climate change, he claimed to audible gasps, was “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world” and was lumbering European countries with expensive energy costs compared to fossil fuels. He criticised in particular the UK government for imposing new taxes on North Sea oil.

“If you don’t get away from the green energy scam, your country is going to fail,” he said.

“I love Europe. I love the people of Europe. And I hate to see it being devastated by energy and immigration. This double-tailed monster destroys everything in its wake… you want to be politically correct and you are destroying your heritage.”

Note that last point. It echoes what the president said during his state visit to the UK last week when he spoke of the importance of defending the values of what he called “the English-speaking world”.

There is a cultural edge to Mr Trump’s criticism of Europe, a sense that he believes uncontrolled immigration is threatening Europe’s heritage. Not for nothing is Trump the leader of an administration that wears its religion firmly on its sleeve. “Let us protect religious liberty,” he told the UN, “including for the most persecuted religion on the planet today – it’s called Christianity.”

On a specific point of policy, the most substantive warning Trump gave related to Russia’s war on Ukraine. He said President Putin’s refusal to end the conflict was “not making Russia look good”. He said the US was prepared “to impose a very strong round of powerful tariffs” to end the bloodshed. But he said European nations had to stop buying Russian energy, claiming he only found out two weeks ago that some were doing so.

In practice, Hungary and Slovakia are the only substantive European buyers of Russian oil. Diplomats say Mr Trump is hiding behind this so he does not have to impose secondary sanctions on India and China which are both buying huge amounts of cheap Russian energy, both of whom were cited by Trump.

Perhaps more important than his speech was Trump’s social media post a short while later where he asserted for the first time Ukraine could be in a position to win back all of its territory.

His dismissal of Russia as a “paper tiger” and not a “real military power” will hurt President Putin, who is sensitive to any suggestion his country is not a global player. Diplomats said this was the latest example of Mr Trump’s journey towards a position that is more critical of Russia.

But one should always treat Trump’s words with a pinch of salt. He was being optimistic only moments after meeting Ukraine’s President Zelensky at the UN.

And he said Ukraine could win back territory with EU and Nato support; there was no mention of the US involvement. All the evidence of the last few years is that this is a war of slow attrition and Ukraine would not retake land from Russia without massive US military support.

So this was undiluted Trump; a defence of America and the nation state, an assault on multilateralism and globalism, a stream of consciousness with questionable assertions.

Six years ago Trump’s audience at the UN laughed at his at times unfactual assertions; this year they listened largely in silence.

“I am really good at this stuff,” he told world leaders. “Your countries are going to hell.”

Inside L.A. restaurant Jaragua, on a recent Friday night, Justin Alexio moved with a measured urgency from the backroom to the front of the restaurant without disturbing anyone’s dinner. The comic, producer and creator of the Los Angeles-based comedy show, Pupusas and Punchlines, Alexio escorted guests to their tables, switched on the microphones placed around the room, and pointed a camera to the center stage before the show was to begin.

The dining area inside the Salvadoran restaurant is rather quiet for a Friday night; there’s a soccer game playing on TV as a family of six places an order for dinner. As people in the audience spread their curtido, or pickled cabbage and carrots, on their pupusas, others await for their food with anticipation, while some choose to stick to drinks. The room is filled with distractions, but comedians are not fazed — it is a welcoming atmosphere, and they know that soon the sounds of laughter will fill the air.

“I feel like eating is such a large part of Latin culture and most cultures,” Alexio said. “I wanted a place where you can eat Latin food and listen to Latin jokes.”

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, independent comedy shows had almost become a thing of the past in L.A. Not to mention that finding gigs is a difficult task, especially for Latinx comedians; according to Alexio, most comedy rooms don’t want to book more than one Latinx comedian.

Pupusas and Punchlines offers a place where they can perform in front of a packed room and joke about the immigrant experience in the U.S. — and the absurdities of the American dream in 2025 — while sharing a delicious meal.

Pupusas and Punchlines producer and creator Justin Alexio performs on March 7, 2025.

(Drew Steres)

Alexio said he started the show in 2023, after he took a long break from stand-up comedy, to instead pursue acting full time. His résumé includes appearances on NBC’s comedy series “Superstore” and ABC’s late-night show “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”

“The future of entertainment has to be more real,” he said of his decision to return to the stage. “Stand-up is live.”

The L.A. stand-up scene is quite competitive — especially for Alexio, who is an Afro-Latino of Puerto Rican, Dominican and Ecuadorian descent. As an answer to the marginalization of Black and brown people in mainstream comedy, Alexio said he decided to produce his own show, with hopes to highlight other Latinx performers as well.

Since then, he has expanded “Pupusas and Punchlines” immensely — from performing only once a month at half-capacity to selling out 115 consecutive weekly shows.

Alexio attributed the show’s success to the high-quality comedians he’s booked, as well as the food and the feeling of community it has created. People have told him they’ve driven more than an hour just for the show, while others have attended on multiple occasions.

“They want to support me and the show, they want to support the restaurant, they want to support the Latin comics … The crowd feels like they want to help these comics rise,” he said.

Patrons laugh at Pupusas and Punchlines on May 16, 2025.

(Drew Steres)

The majority of the comics Alexio books are Latinx, but he also includes performers who belong to other underrepresented groups. He showcases upcoming comics while providing clips to help grow their social media presence. After performing on his show, he said, comics have noted an uptick of new followers on social media.

Onstage at Friday’s show, comics pulled humor from topics related to immigration, religion, salsa, sexuality and other typical first-generation immigrant dilemmas. Performers feel like they can discuss topics they usually can’t perform in front of a more general club audience.

“I think any ethnicity in an ethnic crowd always thrive,” said comic Gregory Santos. “Obviously you can be a white boy and do a really good job here. I feel like it’s just an extra layer of stuff that you can talk about.”

Daisy Roxx performs at Pupusas and Punchlines in March.

(Drew Steres)

Pupusas and Punchlines is one of the few shows that caters toward the Latinx community, said comedian Rell Battle, as he rattled off a list of shows that sadly don’t exist anymore.

“Ironically, in a majority Latin city, there aren’t [many] consistent Latin shows,” Battle said. He described Pupusas and Punchlines as a road show of sorts — scored by genuine laughter. The audience members feel more appreciative, compared to a run-of-the-mill comedy club in Hollywood that caters more to tourists.

“People that come out to shows in Hollywood will ask me to hold the camera and take a picture of them,” Battle joked.

The crowd at Pupusas and Punchlines is not one to dismiss or antagonize comics that are not Latinx. Yet audience members would gladly correct any comic who’d assume the restaurant was Mexican, or mispronounce the word “pupusas,” as Battle sheepishly recalled during his own set. At the end of the day, they usually bond with comics over what they share in common: the drive to make it in L.A.

“When the neighborhood shows up, those are the best shows,” said Santos, between sets at Jaragua. “It’s normal people, it’s everyday neighborhood L.A. people.”

For more information on upcoming events, visit Pupusas and Punchlines on Instagram.

There were two questions the 77th Emmy Awards, held Sunday night at the Peacock Theater in downtown Los Angeles, had to answer, other than who would win what. (It’s an honor just to be nominated.)

One was how the show, a glittery evening devoted to the most popular of popular arts, would play against a world gone mad. The other, not distinct from the first, was how first-time host Nate Bargatze would do.

The ceremony is hosted by a round robin of the major networks, and this year the honor fell to CBS, whose corporate overlord, Paramount, has come to represent capitulation to the Trump administration, settling a baseless lawsuit in what is widely viewed as a payoff to grease the wheels of its merger with Skydance and promising to eliminate its DEI protocols. Executive interference in the news department amid an apparent rightward turn has led to the resignations of “60 Minutes” producer Bill Owens and CBS News President and CEO Wendy McMahon. And there’s the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show,” the timing of which some have found suspicious.

But if your goal was to avoid insulted celebrities, social media outrage or petulant notes from the White House, you could have done no better than to hire Bargatze, a clean, calm, classical, noncontroversial, nonpolitical, very funny, very successful comedian. Bargatze, who has been in comedy since 2002, saw his career explode over the last few years; his appeal is not so much mainstream, which is to say soft-edged, as it is broad — something for everybody.

The show opened quite brilliantly — perhaps confusingly, if you had missed Bargatze’s “Washington’s Dream” sketches on “Saturday Night Live” on which the routine was closely modeled, including the presence of Mikey Day, Bowen Yang and James Austin Johnson — with the host as Philo T. Farnsworth, “the inventor of television,” foreseeing the medium’s less than sensible future. First presenter Stephen Colbert followed immediately to a standing ovation and chants of his name. “While I have your attention, is anyone hiring? I have 200 very qualified candidates with me tonight who will be available in June.”

Emmys host Nate Bargatze, right, and Bowen Yang appear in an opening sketch at the 77th Primetime Emmy Awards at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles on Sunday.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

Then the host introduced his much publicized, one would say quintessentially Bargatzean, gimmick. To keep acceptance speeches short, he would donate $100,000 to the Boys & Girls Clubs of America; $1,000 per second would be deducted for anyone going over the allotted 45 seconds. Money would be added to the pot for anyone running short. (J.B. Smoove, a former Boys Club member, was a sort of co-sponsor, in the audience with a young boy and girl.) This efficiency made professional sense, though it had the potential to put a lid on what is usually the most interesting, unruly, moving, unpredictable part of the show. (If anyone had thought for a second, it also spelled trouble: Try talking for what you imagine is 45 seconds. You will be wrong.)

As it happened, the state of the world was addressed, sidelong and directly. Presenter Julianne Nicholson said of living in a post-apocalyptic bunker in “Paradise,” “compared to headlines that’s positively feel-good TV.” Jeff Hiller, winning supporting actor in a comedy series for “Somebody Somewhere,” thanked the Duplass brothers “for writing a show of connection and love in this time when compassion is seen as a weakness.” “Last Week Tonight” senior writer Daniel O’Brien dedicated their second award to “all writers of political comedy while that is still a type of show that is allowed to exist.” And in a generational echo of their “Hacks” characters, fourth-time winner Jean Smart (who has won seven Emmys overall) ended her acceptance speech saying, “Let’s be good to each other, just be good to each other,” while co-star and first-time winner Hannah Einbinder, finished with, “I just want to say: Go Birds, f— ICE, and free Palestine.” Going way over the 45-second limit, she promised to pay the difference on the tote board.

Hannah Einbinder accepts the award for supporting actress in a comedy series for “Hacks” during the show at the 77th Primetime Emmy Awards at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles on Sunday.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

After Einbeinder, the most direct acknowledgment of current bad events came from Academy Chair and CEO Cris Abrego, speaking of the Governors Award given the week before to the Corp. for Public Broadcasting. In a highly quotable speech, he noted how “Congress had voted to defund it and silence yet another cultural institution.” He continued, “In a time when division dominates the headlines, storytelling still has the power to unite us … In times of cultural regression [it reminds] us what’s at stake and what can still be achieved,” and he rattled off a number of much loved shows that challenged the status quo. “In a moment like this, neutrality is not enough. … Culture does not come from the top down, it rises from the bottom up. … Let’s make sure that culture is not a platform for the privileged but a public good for all.” The stars in the audience nodded approvingly.

There were also some pure delights among the bedrock of desultory scripted banter and unimpressive tributes to old shows (“Law & Order: SUV,” “The Golden Girls”). Reunited “Everybody Loves Raymond” co-stars Ray Romano and Brad Garrett, presenting the award for comedy series, recaptured the essence of their television brotherhood. Jennifer Coolidge, presenting the award for lead supporting actress in a comedy, sounded like she’d walked in from a Christopher Guest film. “Between us, I was actually hoping to be nominated for you tonight for my work on this season of ‘The Pitt.’ I played a horny grandmother having a colonoscopy during a power outage and I had to play a lot of levels. I even had to do my own prep.” She went on, after a while, to tell the nominees that winning “is not all it’s cracked up to be. It’s really not… I thought I had gotten really close with my fellow nominees especially after I won but I’m pretty sure they removed me from the group chat.”

The inevitable losses incurred by Bargatze’s charity gimmick provided a sort of running joke at the host’s expense, which he managed quite well, while some winners made a game of trying to put money back on the board. But the longer it went on, the more pressure it put on the winners to be short. Eventually, the show found its natural level, as winners said what they needed to, or much of it, and the count dropped tens of thousands of dollars past zero. For everyone but the bean counters, the least important thing about an awards show is it running on time; in any case, it was only a few minutes over.

And, as one might have expected, Bargatze — who made it through the three hours in a way that served the event and his own down-home ethos — paid the originally promised $100,000 and added a $250,000 tip.

Movie fans come to Toronto to get an early peek at the year’s awards heavyweights. I didn’t see a knockout punch, but I saw some strong contenders — and in a couple cases, I just got bludgeoned.

Directors Benny Safdie (“Uncut Gems”) and David Michôd (“Animal Kingdom”) faced off with competing docudramas about the sufferings of two professional brawlers whose careers peaked in the ’90s — i.e., new “Raging Bulls” for today’s nostalgists. “The Smashing Machine” is a solo effort from the younger Safdie brother after making a string of energetic cult hits with his sibling, Josh. It stars Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as MMA fighter Mark Kerr, who could beat almost anyone inside the octagon but struggled to conquer his own demons at home with his then-wife, Dawn (Emily Blunt).

Based on the names and talent involved, I was expecting anything other than what I got: a conventional biopic. Its one bit of flair is a commitment to looking as though it was filmed on VHS. But projected in Imax, it just looked dreary (as did Johnson’s hairpiece). I’ll go another round with it in a more apropos ring.

Michôd’s “Christy” shares several of the same touchstones — the bloodrush of victory, a bruising domestic life, a distracting wig — but gender-flipped. Sydney Sweeney throws a convincing jab as Christy Martin, the first female boxer to make the cover of “Sports Illustrated.” A lesbian from a conservative West Virginia family, she was pressured to hide her sexuality by wearing pastel pink in the ring and marrying her much older, emotionally abusive male coach, Jim Martin (Ben Foster). The script only has a few ideas under its belt, but they’re effective, particularly our dawning recognition that while Christy thinks she’s fighting to prove her worth, she’s really fighting for the patriarchy.

Sweeney is good, even when the leaden dialogue does her a disservice. It’s her first substantial, serious part since 2023’s underseen “Reality” and she seizes the opportunity to be talked about as something other than the internet’s most polarizing ingenue. (Social media is forever singling out one young actress to be damned now and redeemed later, sigh.) As for Foster, who first snagged my attention as the pathetic loon in “Alpha Dog,” he knows how to play a hiss-worthy heel. You spend “Christy” aching to see him get socked in the face. If you need him to take more punishment, he’s just as vile in another TIFF title, “Motor City.”

Tessa Thompson in the movie “Hedda.”

(Prime Video)

At this year’s festival, ladies in corsets did more damage than gals in padded gloves. My favorite mean girl — perhaps even my favorite film of the festival — was Nia DaCosta’s “Hedda,” a devilish and dynamic adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler,” in which the lead character (played by a fantastic Tessa Thompson) starts firing off her daddy’s old pistols as soon as the opening credits. DaCosta, who also adapted the play into a script, restages the action so that the chaos all takes place during a giant, drunken bacchanal at a rented mansion Hedda can’t afford. Thompson’s scheming newlywed manipulates the other characters with the confidence of a queen who controls all the pieces on the board, but every so often she simply has to flip the table over. The spirit is faithful; the subtext is fresh.

“Mārama,” a striking feature debut by Taratoa Stappard, bills itself as a Māori gothic and the combination works. In 1859 England, a white-passing woman from New Zealand named Mary (Ariāna Osborne) has sailed halfway around the world seeking information about her parents. The globe-trotting lord Sir Cole (Toby Stephens) strong-arms her into becoming his niece’s governess, calling the Māori a “magnificent people” while amusing his guests with parlor room reenactments of whale-hunting expeditions done with massive puppets. “Mārama” doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it’s a good ride with first-rate cinematography and production design and a story with one or two more surprises than we expect.

Similarly, “Honey Bunch,” co-directed by Madeleine Sims-Fewer and Dusty Mancinelli, is another manor-bound thriller that toys with familiar tropes. An amnesiac bride (Grace Glowicki, a go-for-broke oddball who always gets my attention) arrives at an isolated and secretive trauma center where everyone seems to be screwing with her memories, including her shady husband (Ben Petrie). Straightaway, we have our suspicions about how this is going to go. The first half of the film doesn’t deviate from the formula — it’s a little dull — but the second half is a superb right hook.

Guillermo del Toro’s grisly, occasionally great “Frankenstein,” shot in Toronto and the U.K., hews more faithfully to Mary Shelley’s novel than the 1931 Boris Karloff classic, scrapping the mob of pitchfork-wielding villagers and salvaging the wraparound story of an ambitious explorer marooned in the the Arctic ice. But it’s still very much Del Toro’s own monster. One of his smartest adjustments is retooling the romantic heroine, Elizabeth (Mia Goth), from the ideal childhood sweetheart to a science-loving pacifist with limited patience for egomaniacs like Oscar Isaac’s Victor Frankenstein. Costume designer Kate Hawley makes Goth look like an exotic beetle with antenna-ish plumes sticking out of her hair.

Jacob Elordi as the Creature in the movie “Frankenstein.”

(Ken Woroner / Netflix)

Jacob Elordi’s creature amps up the pathos a tad too much for my taste, but there’s no denying how much he’s invested in the role, or how well Del Toro’s critiques about narcissistic inventors suit the present day. Still, Del Toro knows there’s a time and place to boast: At the film’s Toronto premiere at the Princess of Wales Theatre, he playfully accused his local below-the-line crew of being too humble and made them stand up for applause. “Stop being so Canadian,” he teased.

Del Toro told the audience that when he first saw Karloff’s creation as a boy, he thought to himself, “That’s my messiah, that’s the guy I’m going to follow like Jesus.” But the prize for the most idol-worshipping film in the festival belongs to Baz Luhrmann’s “EPiC,” which stands for “Elvis Presley in Concert.” Constructed from hours of previously unseen live footage from Presley’s stint in Las Vegas, its rapturous showing felt like attending the church of Elvis.

Luhrmann insists that “EPiC” is neither a concert film nor a documentary. I don’t see the issue with calling it either, but it’s also fair to consider it a companion piece to Luhrmann’s 2022 “Elvis.” It certainly shows that Austin Butler’s Oscar-nominated portrayal of the King wasn’t one rhinestone over the top. Here, the real Presley is charismatic as hell, and looks great beaded in sanctified sweat. Whenever he throws a damp scarf into the audience, the women go so crazy you’d think it was the Shroud of Turin.

Luhrmann continues to be outraged that Col. Tom Parker constricted Presley’s artistic growth by parking him in the city of buffet tables rather than letting him tour the world. Presley only did one week of international concerts during his entire career: five shows in Canada, two of them just a 10-minute drive from my theater. You can hear Presley’s resentment toward the better-traveled (and at the time, better-respected) artists stealing his spot on the charts. “It’s so dry in here, I feel like I’ve got Bob Dylan in my mouth,” he jokes. Later, he slings a guitar around his neck to strum “Little Sister,” and then speeds up the tempo and starts belting the Beatles’ “Get Back,” a subtle dig that the boys from Britain weren’t always that original.

A scene from the movie “A Useful Ghost.”

(TIFF)

Speaking of, I can’t wrap up my final dispatch from this year’s Toronto International Film Festival without mentioning the most creative Oscar contender I saw all week: “A Useful Ghost,” which won the Grand Prix of Critics’ Week at Cannes and will be Thailand’s entry for an Academy Award. Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s arch hybrid of horror, comedy, romance and political thriller starts when a self-described “academic ladyboy” (Wisarut Homhuan) discovers that his new vacuum cleaner is possessed. From there, the movie defies prediction at every turn.

I ducked into “A Useful Ghost” on a whim, wondering how it would pair with TIFF’s world premiere of “Dust Bunny,” a nice and nasty Roald Dahl-esque adventure in which a little girl hires Mads Mikkelsen to battle a man-eating monster under her bed. I came out of the theater abuzz with energy. Even though some of this season’s noisiest awards hopefuls are rooted in classic genres, there are still directors making movies that feel entirely new — and still audiences delighted to cheer for a big swing.

Tell someone about “The Cortège,” and it may inspire as much apprehension as it does curiosity.

A theatrical procession running this month at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center, “The Cortège” promises to explore grief, loss, mourning and our collective disconnection from one another. It’s a dramatic interpretation of a funeral, albeit one with jubilant street-inspired dance and a Sasquatch-like creature. And robots and drones.

I arrived at “The Cortège” just weeks removed from attending a very real, deeply personal funeral for my mother. Did I want to revisit that space as part of my weekend’s entertainment, and would the show inspire a new round of tears? The answer to both turned out to be yes.

“The Cortège” is alternately playful and serious as it explores the cycle of life.

(Emil Ravelo / For The Times)

For “The Cortège” approaches a difficult subject matter with an imaginative question: What if we explore grief not with isolation or solemness, but with wonder? It’s a prompt that’s ripe for an era of divisive politics, financial stress and often isolating technology.

Beginning at twilight and extending into the evening, “The Cortège” starts with an overture, a six-piece band performing in the center of the field. We’re seated either on the grass on portable pads with backs or in folding chairs on an elevated platform.

Soon, a mist erupts on a far end of the field; a lone figure emerges who crawls and then walks to the center. He’ll move in place for much of the show, remaining silent as a fantastical life transpires around him — dancers, ornately costumed characters and larger-than-life puppets will surreally reflect the journey of life.

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Inspired as much by Walt Disney’s approach to fairy tales as, say, Carl Jung’s theories of collective consciousness, “The Cortège” is a revival of an ancient art — the procession — that aims to be a modern rite of passage. A ritual, “The Cortège” is a communal experience, one that seeks to erase borders between audience and performer while imagining a more optimistic world.

Think of it as theater as a healing exercise, or simply an abstracted evening with elaborate, vibrant costumes and choreographed drones creating new constellations in the sky. It’s also a bit of a dance party, with original music composed by Tokimonsta, El Búho and Boreta.

““The Cortège” builds to a final that invites audience participation — and maybe a little dancing.

(Emil Ravelo / For The Times)

“The Cortège” comes from Jeff Hull, a Bay Area artist best known for devising participatory and mysterious experiences that have used real-world settings as a game board — some may recall the beloved underground experiment “The Jejune Institute.” This, however, is a more personal show. It’s informed as much by the struggles and challenges of adulthood as it is the awe and playfulness that Hull experienced when he was younger, specifically his time working as a teen at Oakland’s Children’s Fairyland, a theme park-like playground for young kids.

“Every day I would follow the yellow brick road and have a magic key and slide down a rabbit hole, and I would wonder why the rest of the world wasn’t like that,” Hull says. “I’ve been trying to make it like that ever since. Why can’t we play? Why does it all have to be barriers? That’s the motivation from a childlike place, but now I also have motivation from a wise elder space.”

In turn, “The Cortège” is part festive renewal and part philosophical recollection. At the start, music is mournful but not quite sorrowful, a lightly contemplative jazz-inspired feel anchored by a steel hang drum. The music shifts through reggae stylings and Eastern rhythms. Performers are robed and instruments are carried on ramshackle wheelbarrows, setting up the transitory mood of the night.

What follows will touch on religious and mystical iconography — we’ll meet three lantern-carrying masked figures, for instance, with exaggerated, regal adornments as they herald a birth. Expect a mixture of old and new technologies. Drones will form to mark a passage of eras, a marching band will conjure New Orleans revelry, and towering, furry creatures may invite youthful spiritedness while militant, robotic canines will represent clashing images of human ingenuity and violence.

Think of “The Cortège” as a ceremonial rite of passage — a show that wants audiences to find healing via community.

(Emil Ravelo / For The Times)

For much of the show, we are asked to wear glowing headphones. Their luminescence highlights the crowd while also creating a more intimate, reflective atmosphere. It’s not quite a sound bath and it’s not quite a play, but as more figures enter the field — some haunting and dreamlike with their bodies shaped like arrowheads, and others sillier bursts of feathered color — “The Cortège” takes on a ceremonial, meditative feel.

While some may indeed come for the outsized costumes and extended dance sequences, Hull says the show is the entertainment equivalent of “shadow work,” that is the therapeutic uncovering of suppressed, forgotten or hidden memories.

“Shadow work is something we need to do as individuals, but it’s also something we need to do as a culture,” Hull says. “Let’s look at ourselves. Let’s look at what we don’t want to admit about ourselves. How can we bring that to life? When you do it as an individual, we’re actually partly doing something for the collective. That’s a big aspect of ‘The Cortège.’ Let’s do shadow work as a cultural moment. It’s not all just meant to be entertainment.”

Audiences are asked to wear headphones during “The Cortège,” creating an intimate relationship with the music.

(Emil Ravelo / For The Times)

Ultimately, however, “The Cortège” is an invitation, a hand extended to the audience asking us to consider and reimagine our own journey through life. Emerging from both the traumatic end of a relationship and the death of my mother, I appreciated the way in which “The Cortège” sought to put our existence in perspective, to reinterpret, essentially, the individual as the communal for a celebratory reminder that we’ve all struggled as much as we’ve dreamed.

Hull says “The Cortège” was born from a time of strife.

“What you mentioned, losing a loved one and going through a separation, my version of that is I had Guillain-Barre Syndrome and was walking with a cane. My wife was diagnosed with cancer and then she lost her father. And this was all during a time when the sun didn’t come out. It was dark out, all day, because of the California wildfires. It was a shift between taking everything personally and realizing that all the things I mentioned were things we all have to go through.”

The show is purposefully abstracted, says Hull, to allow audience members to attach their own narratives. It’s a work of pageantry, inspired in part by Hull’s fascination with medieval morality plays, specifically the story of “Everyman,” an examination of self and of our relationship to a higher power.

“The tale of ‘Everyman’ was one in which a universal protagonist met with all of the challenges of life and a reckoning with himself and with God,” Hull says. “That’s literally what we’re doing here. It is a revival of ancient European pageantry.”

Drones will form constellations in the sky during “The Cortège.”

(Emil Ravelo / For The Times)

Hull’s name is well-known among those who follow what is the still-emerging niche of so-called immersive entertainment, media that, broadly speaking, asks participants to take on an interactive role. Those who went deep into “The Jejune Institute,” which ran in the late 2000s in San Francisco and inspired a documentary as well as the AMC series “Dispatches from Elsewhere,” could discover a narrative that examined the fragility — or the allure — of human belief systems. It was often, for instance, compared to a cult.

“The Cortège” is clearly a departure. And Hull today is skeptical of the word “immersive.” Though “The Cortege” invites audiences onto the field in its final act and then asks participants to join in a reception (the afterlife), Hull finds much of what is classified today as immersive to be lacking, emphasizing spectacle and imagery over human emotion.

“The Cortège,” says Hull, is “not a metafiction.” Or don’t think of it as a show about a rite of passage. It’s intended to be a rite of passage itself. “That’s kind of the thesis of this piece,” Hull, 56, says, before expanding on his evolved take on the immersive field.

“There’s this world of immersive entertainment, but what are we immersing ourselves in?” he says. “Is this just sensory stimulation? Is this gesturing at the numinous? Is this referencing the mystical? There’s no meta-narrative here.”

Hull’s hope is “The Cortège” will erase the line between the performative and the restorative. “We all want to have a pretend metafictional relationship to transformative experiences rather than genuine transformative experiences,” he says.

Not quite a play and not quite a dance show, “The Cortège” incorporates elements of both during its procession.

(Emil Ravelo / For The Times)

We can get there, Hull believes, by engaging with an art form that has largely been discarded by the Western world.

“We are reconnecting a lost lineage to that which is ancient and to that which is eternal,” Hull says. “A procession is people walking together; that is simply what a procession is. Where are they walking from? They’re walking from their past. Where are they walking to? They’re walking toward the future. That’s what we’re doing.”

I won’t spoil the moment that made me tear up other than to say it was not due to the jolting of any memories. For “The Cortège” is also exultant — a procession, yes, but a walk into an imagined world.

Julio Torres is always in search of the next challenge. The writer, comedian, actor and producer is adding the title of playwright to his ever-growing, multi-hyphenate list of occupations. Since his days as an Emmy-nominated writer for “Saturday Night Live,” Torres has written and starred in the Peabody Award-winning HBO Max original series “Los Espookys,” wrote and starred in the HBO Max original series “Fantasmas” and directed, wrote and starred in his first feature film, “Problemista,” co-starring Tilda Swinton.

For his latest venture, Torres made his way to the stage — admittedly not knowing exactly what goes on in the theater, but willing to take a shot with his first comedic play, “Color Theories.” In it, the audience gets a closer look at the eccentricities that frame his imaginative inner world.

As the son of a civil engineer and architect/fashion designer, Torres’ knack for world building comes as no surprise. In a recent feature for Architectural Digest, Torres opened the doors to his wonderland Brooklyn studio apartment, which contained escapist daydream corners and custom futuristic furniture made of glass, chromatic metals and mirrors, all cut and shaped into squiggles and sharp edges. With elements of retro-elegance and the ambiance of a playhouse, Torres’ vision is nostalgically absurdist and highly refined.

The same can be said about most of his work, including his vision for “Color Theories.” In order to bring his ever unpredictable vision to life, Torres teamed up with longtime scenic design collaborator Tommaso Ortino to create a fantastical surrealist stage for his live theatrical debut, which took place Sept. 3 at the Performance Space New York, located in downtown Manhattan.

Julio Torres performs in “Color Theories” at the Performance Space New York.

(Emilio Madrid)

Before Torres begins his performance, the audience is greeted by a giant book doused in bold, mostly primary colors, a grandfather clock with the numbers melted off its face à la Dalí and tall, blank scrolls. On top of the book lies a giant lipstick-stained wine glass, and an actor lying face down in a bubble-shaped, burgundy satin cloak — or, Drew Rollins playing the role of spilled wine. Rollins is accompanied by Nick Myers, who sits on the side of the stage dressed as a music box in silver foil and oversized pearls. They both play the roles of Torres’ stagehands and narrative helpers. Costumes were designed by Muriel Parra, best known for her work in “A Fantastic Woman” (2017), “Neruda” (2016) and “The Settlers” (2023).

Once the lights come down and the play begins, the whimsical characters crack open the giant book, revealing a stark contrast of blank pages. They proceed to open a flap where the comedian emerges, from the cushioned interior of his own creation. He begins by describing the abstract personalities of different letters of the alphabet, referring to them as staff with “wants, needs, hopes and dreams.” From there, he seamlessly transitions into the definition of the first color on the list: navy blue, which represents (American) bureaucracy, policing and control. Throughout the play, this “law and order” blue encroaches on the existence of every color selected by Torres.

Upon noticing that Torres is spending too much time discussing navy blue, his robotic buddy Bebo — also a recurring character in “Fantasmas” — pops out of the giant clock and serves as a colonel of time and color story order. (He also happens to be blue.)

What Torres dubs as “relaxed” green, “commercial-portrayals-of-joy” yellow, “lusty and ragey” red, “teenage” orange, “soft” beige and “mysterious” purple are all accompanied by playful examples of behaviors, objects and societal conditioning that represent each color. The operatic sound effects paired with each color were created by Lia Ouyang Rusli, who was tasked with the important role of not only composing the sounds for each color, but their respective emotions. Torres explained in a separate interview: “Green should also sound like we combined the sounds of yellow and blue, and so that’s fun.”

One of the most poignant moments of the play is during his green monologue, when Torres reminisces about the video store he grew up visiting in San Salvador. He unashamedly admits he never returned a movie on time, so the owner would bargain the late fee with him based on if the movie was requested during the days it was off the shelf or not.

“This was all working perfectly fine until Blockbuster came in and suddenly we were in a navy blue system,” he explains — with a nod to the U.S. influence on El Salvador, namely in the way American capitalism infringes on countries within reach of its empirical tentacles.

Immigration status is a recurring theme in much of Torres’ work. In his directorial debut, “Problemista,” Torres plays the protagonist Alejandro, who scrambles to find a work visa in 30 days after being fired from his job — and makes desperate attempts to earn quick cash in an effort to pay his legal fees. In “Color Theories,” Torres describes several run-ins with airport immigration authorities and the complications of traveling with a Salvadoran passport.

He recounts being turned away from entering Costa Rica because his passport was too wrinkled — and of being taken to an interrogation room for not knowing he needed a travel visa to enter the U.K. While detained, he noticed authorities had branded the interrogation area as a pseudo-mental wellness safe space — messaging that contradicted the reality of his experience.

Torres uses blue and red to exemplify his anti-capitalist stance by endearingly explaining how those with extreme wealth maneuver tax evasion, how governments allow and excuse war crimes, and how pervasive individualism prevents progress. “Color Theories” reaches its apex when Torres begins discussing the space between the shades black and white — neither representing good nor evil, but rather the known and the unknown.

Julio Torres’ new play “Color Theories” at Performance Space New York.

(Emilio Madrid)

It’s a beautiful way to take what have become very divisive points of view and create an atmosphere of shared humanity among the audience. From here, the colors that become the focal point are bright, airy mixes of pastels, which highlight the beauty in all of our differences and ranges of knowledge.

In just over an hour, Torres delivers a concise portrait of how he navigates and experiences the world in terms an elementary schoolchild can understand — which he jokes about by saying the play will be taken to schools across the U.S. His character development transitions from a justified frustration to the conclusion that humans behaving as though they know it all is the ultimate act of hubris.

“Color Theories” does not communicate as a pessimistic rant about the world but rather examines how government and institutions of power shape our society — and how that power complicates and often oppresses the everyday reality of the average person — by using humorous, universally relatable vantage points and lighthearted pop culture moments.

Noel Gallagher scanned the audience at the Rose Bowl on Saturday night and pointed down at a fan in the front row. “Young lady, what’s your name?” he asked, tilting his head to try to catch the answer. “I can’t really hear you, but this next song is for you.” As he spoke, a camera found a woman wearing an Oasis T-shirt openly weeping — openly sobbing — and sent her image to the giant video screens flanking the stage. “She’s been in tears all night, this girl,” Gallagher added, “which I hope is not a review of the f— gig.”

Not far from it, in fact: Since launching its reunion tour in early July, Oasis — the swaggering British rock band formed in the early 1990s by Gallagher on guitar and his younger brother Liam on lead vocals — has been traveling the world inspiring great outpourings of emotion wherever it goes. On social media, memes have proliferated equating the catharsis to be had at an Oasis concert to a form of therapy; more than one observer has suggested that gathering with tens of thousands of people to sing along with the Gallaghers’ songs might turn out to be the cure for the male loneliness epidemic.

Along with the blockbuster ticket sales and the pop-up merch stores, this nightly purification ritual has positioned Oasis Live ’25 — the band’s first run of shows in more than a decade and a half — as this year’s version of Taylor Swift’s Eras tour. Which of course some tour was destined to be: At a moment of encroaching technological alienation, humans are naturally searching out opportunities for real-world connection (which is one reason why thousands paid money last month to sit in a movie theater and watch Netflix’s “KPop Demon Hunters” for the second — or fifth, or 12th — time with other humans).

Oasis performs Saturday night at the Rose Bowl.

(Kevin Winter / Getty Images)

Yet I’m not sure I’d have called that it would be an old rock group with three guitarists that would get it done, never mind this old rock group in particular: The first of two dates at the Rose Bowl, Saturday’s sold-out show came 31 years after Oasis almost broke up for the first time following a chaotic 1994 gig at the Whisky a Go Go where the famously combative Gallaghers — having mistaken crystal meth for cocaine, as the story goes — nearly came to blows; Oasis’ long-promised breakup finally took in 2009, after which the brothers spent years trading savage insults in the press (and anywhere else they could do it).

How exactly Noel, now 58, and Liam, 52, managed to come back together hasn’t yet been told; one suspects that sufficiently humongous bags of cash had something to do with it. On the road, the Gallaghers are accompanied by Oasis’ original guitarist, Paul Arthurs (known delightfully as Bonehead), along with Gem Archer on guitar, Andy Bell on bass, Joey Waronker on drums and Christian Madden on keyboards. At the Rose Bowl, celebrities in attendance included Paul McCartney, Leonardo DiCaprio, Billie Eilish, Metallica’s James Hetfield, Laufey and MGK — a varied list of names that tells you something about the broad appeal of classic Oasis songs like “Wonderwall,” “Roll With It,” “Some Might Say,” “Champagne Supernova” and “Don’t Look Back in Anger,” the last of which was the tune Noel dedicated to the woman shedding tears of joy in the front row.

Liam Gallagher, left, and Noel Gallagher at the Rose Bowl.

(Kevin Winter / Getty Images)

The songs indeed were the thing on Saturday. Oasis sounded great, with those three guitars snarling and shimmering over sturdy grooves that mapped a middle ground among punk, glam and late-Beatles balladry; Liam’s voice was somehow both brawny and sweet as he reached for the high notes with a kind of taunting effortlessness. And the brothers engaged in a bit of lovable stage business, as when Liam — looking superb as always in his signature shades and anorak — balanced a tambourine on his head and offered gnomic shout-outs to Woody Woodpecker and to the sword swallowers in the audience.

But this was the least showy pop show I’ve seen in years; Oasis’ comeback is as much about the crowd as it is about the band — as much about the people singing along with the music as it is about the people making it. Song after song took the imperative mood: “Acquiesce,” “Bring It On Down,” “Fade Away,” “Stand By Me,” “Cast No Shadow,” “Slide Away” — each a command happily obeyed until the next one was issued forth, each abstract enough in its emotional specifics to satisfy whatever need it might meet. (“Someday you will find me / Caught beneath the landslide / In a Champagne supernova in the sky” still makes gloriously little sense.)

Because they’d done so much to bring the audience together, you couldn’t help by the end of the concert to long for a glimpse of a little brotherly love between the Gallaghers. They obliged during the finale, Liam circling Noel then clapping him on the back as the last chords of “Champagne Supernova” rang out and fireworks filled the sky with smoky light. It wasn’t much, and it was more than enough.

NEW YORK — If Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear vaults into national prominence as a Democratic leader, he may one day look back at Thursday as a key step in that direction.

SiriusXM announced that it was giving Beshear’s new podcast a national platform starting this month, along with featuring him in a regular call-in show on its Progress network.

President Trump’s appearances on podcasts were a pivotal media strategy in his successful 2024 Republican campaign. Moving forward, mastering a personal podcast could replace soft-focus biographies or wonky books as a way for politicians to increase their profiles.

Beshear said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” this summer that he will “take a look” at running for president in 2028. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, also in the circle of potential presidential nominees, started his own podcast earlier this year.

Speaking to the anxiety of Americans

In an interview, Beshear said a motivating factor in his own podcast was people who have come up to him, especially during the Trump administration, to talk about their anxieties.

“That’s how Americans feel,” he said. “They feel like the news hits them minute after minute after minute. And it can feel like chaos. It can feel like the world is out of control. With this podcast, we’re trying to help Americans process what we’re going through.”

He’s already done nearly two dozen podcasts, with his audience heavily weighted toward Kentucky residents. His guests have included some potential Democratic presidential rivals, including Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar. Entrepreneur Mark Cuban, former Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari and Kentucky-born actor and comic Steve Zahn have also appeared.

Beshear, the son of a former governor who’s been leading Kentucky since 2019, talks issues himself. Two of his friends, a Republican and a Democrat, are regular guests, and his 16-year-old son helps Dad navigate some youthful lingo.

Newsom attracted attention — some of it negative among Democrats — for interviewing conservative guests Steve Bannon, Michael Savage and Charlie Kirk on his podcast.

“I did disagree with him on certain guests because I don’t like to give oxygen to hate,” Beshear said. “But Gavin is out there really working to communicate with the American people, and he deserves to be commended for it.”

Newsom’s podcast started slowly in the marketplace but has caught fire in recent weeks, his regular audiences jumping from the tens of thousands to the hundreds of thousands, said Paul Riismandel, president of Signal Hill Insights, an audio-focused market research company.

The California governor’s increased visibility, particularly on social media, is likely a factor in the growing popularity of the podcast, Riismandel said. But it’s also a function of how podcasts often catch on: Many tend to be slow burns as audiences discover them, he said.

Learning to master the format of podcasts

Whether ambitious politicians start their own podcasts or not, they’re going to have to be familiar going forward with what makes people successful in the format.

“With a podcast, the audience expects a more unfiltered, authentic kind of conversation and presentation,” Riismandel said. If politicians come across as too controlled, looking for the sort of soundbites that will be broken out in a television appearance, it’s not likely to work, he said. They have to be willing to open up.

“That is something that is probably new for a lot of politicians,” he said, “and new for their handlers.”

Beshear’s first podcast for SiriusXM will feature an interview with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), conducted in the company’s New York studio and debuting Sept. 10. The Progress network will air Beshear’s podcasts regularly on Saturdays at 11 a.m. Eastern.

The first live call-in show will be next Tuesday at noon, with Beshear joined by Progress host John Fugelsang.

Beshear stressed that his work for SiriusXM is “not just aimed at a Democratic audience.”

“We’re aiming,” he said, “at an American audience.”

Bauder writes for the Associated Press.