So-called Hollywood ambassadors Jon Voight and Sylvester Stallone joined with a coalition of entertainment industry groups for a letter delivered this week to President Trump urging him to support tax measures and a federal tax incentive that would help bring film and TV production back to the U.S.
The letter is signed by Voight, Stallone, all the major Hollywood unions and trade groups such as the Motion Picture Assn., the Producers Guild of America and the Independent Film & Television Alliance, indicating widespread support from the entertainment industry.
“Returning more production to the United States will require a national approach and broad-based policy solutions … as well as longer term initiatives such as implementing a federal film and television tax incentive,” the letter states.
In the letter, which was obtained by The Times, the groups say they support Trump’s proposal to create a new 15% corporate tax rate for domestic manufacturing activities that would use a provision from the old Section 199 of the federal tax code as a model.
Under the previous Section 199, which expired in 2017, film and TV productions that were made in the U.S. qualified as domestic manufacturing and were eligible for that tax deduction, the letter states.
The letter also asks Trump to extend Section 181 of the federal tax code and increase the caps on tax-deductible qualified film and TV production expenditures, as well as reinstating the ability to carry back losses, which the groups say would give production companies more financial stability.
The tax measures — particularly Sections 199 and 181 — are issues the entertainment industry has long advocated for, according to two people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to comment publicly. The letter itself came together over the weekend, they said. It was intended to present different measures that shared the same goal of increasing domestic production, one person said.
For the record:
3:09 p.m. May 12, 2025A previous version of this story stated Susan Sprung’s title as executive director. She is chief executive of the Producers Guild of America.
“Everything we can do to help producers mange their budgets is important,” said Susan Sprung, chief executive of the Producers Guild of America. “In an ideal world, we’d want a federal tax incentive, in addition to these tax provisions, but we want to advocate to make it as easy as possible to produce in the United States and make it as cost-effective as possible.”
The proposals on the federal level come as states are upping their own film and TV tax credits to better compete against each other and other countries. Late last week, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed the state’s budget, which increased the cap for its film tax credit to $800 million a year, up from $700 million.
The expanded tax incentive program allocates $100 million for independent studios and gives additional incentives to companies that produce two or more projects in New York and commit to at least $100 million in qualified spending.
The program was also extended through 2036, which could help attract TV producers, who often want to know that their filming location is committed if they’re embarking on a series.
Production in New York has been slow, and the state needed this boost, said Michael Hackman, chief executive of Hackman Capital Partners, which owns two film and TV studio properties in the state, as well as several facilities in California. The increase from New York could also push California to increase its own film and TV tax credit program.
Last year, Newsom called to increase the annual amount allocated to California‘s film and TV tax credit program from $330 million to $750 million.
Two bills are currently going through the state legislature that would expand California’s incentive, including increasing the tax credit to cover up to 35% of qualified expenditures (or 40% in areas outside the Greater Los Angeles region), as well as expanding the types of productions that would be eligible for an incentive.
“We have the best infrastructure, the best talent, we have everything going for us,” Hackman said. “So if our state legislature can get more competitive with our tax credits, I think more productions will stay. But if they don’t, this will result in more productions continuing to leave the state and going to New York and to other locations.”
May 12 (UPI) — President Donald Trump‘s announcement that he wishes to place tariffs on internationally-produced films has people in the movie business worrying of another hurdle.
Trump announced his intention to implement 100% tariffs on foreign films on May 4 after meeting with actor Jon Voight. Trump has not shared details about how his tariff plan would work. Daniel Loria, senior vice president of The BoxOffice Company, told UPI the first and most difficult task will be defining what a foreign-made film is.
“Is a movie written in the U.S. for a U.S. studio, funded by a U.S. production company set in a foreign country that then comes back and does all the effects and post-production work and marketing here — because the story elements include a foreign angle, does that count as a foreign-made film?” Loria said.
“Ultimately determining what is and isn’t foreign produced, which is a difficult task to enact in a globalized economy and industry, is going to be essential to how film studios tackle this proposed era that is coming up.”
Unlike an automotive manufacturer that imports tangible products into the United States, filmmaking is far more speculative. Films are less a good or product and more an experience, Loria said.
“You’re buying the experience,” he said. “Putting a tariff on movies would be very difficult to trickle down to the moviegoer. You have to think about movie-going as a service, not a good.”
The United States has not placed tariffs on films before. American films are not subject to tariffs in other countries when they hit their theaters either. Physical media such as DVDs and Blu-rays are subject to tariffs in some cases. Other countries, such as China, may require American films to be altered to meet content guidelines.
Hollywood is recognized as the epicenter of the film world but it has increasingly become a global industry. The highest-grossing film in the world this year is the Chinese animated film Ne Zha 2. As of Friday, it has earned more than double that of the second-place film, A Minecraft Movie, reaching $1.8 billion in the worldwide box office, according to Box Office Mojo.
Box office data combines the United States and Canada’s earnings — referred to as the domestic box office — in comparison to the worldwide box office. According to Loria’s data, the domestic box office represented 21% of global sales in 2021, 29% in 2022, 27% in 2023 and about 30% in 2024.
Loria noted that while box office earnings and publicly known production costs are often cited to gauge the success of a film, it is difficult to determine which films are profitable or how profitable the business is as a whole.
“A lot of Hollywood accountants would tell you no films make money,” Loria said.
Box office numbers suggest that the industry is still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic halted productions around the world and closed theaters in the United States for more than a year. This came after a record year at the box office in 2019.
Shannon Cole is the executive director of the Vermillion Cultural Association based in Vermillion, S.D. The nonprofit organization leads art programming for the city and owns and operates the Coyote Twin Theater. It is the only theater within a 25-mile radius of the town and plays many of the biggest new releases.
Cole told UPI that the announcement of film tariffs combined with other Trump administration policies — specifically cuts to the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities — has her, other local arts leaders and local artists worried about how long they can continue doing their work.
“It means we’re looking at at least three more years of what’s already been a four-year downturn in the film industry,” Cole said. “Everyone is out of the habit of going to the movies. Now, you’re saying potentially movies could end up costing more because studios will charge theaters more to show movies?”
According to Cole, the Coyote Twin Theater’s audience was down by 40% from 2023 to 2024. The theater pays as much as 68% of ticket prices back to the studios for showing their movies, and for-profit theaters may pay more.
“2019 by far was the high watermark of the movie industry worldwide,” Cole said. “It was the best year on record for us. Everybody wants to get back to that.”
Jason Squire, professor emeritus at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts and host of The Movie Business Podcast, told UPI that the business is largely far different than the perception of glitz and glamour that is often attached to it.
“It’s a gig economy,” Squire said. “It’s people who are, in general, highly accomplished craftspeople in very specialized crafts. Many of whom are struggling because of runaway production. Because of issues of crisis within the business and the transformation that’s going on.”
Part of that transformation is the decentralization of the industry. States like Georgia, New Jersey, New Mexico and Louisiana are drawing production away from California with enticing incentives. Production incentives are not unique to the United States though.
Toronto has been growing its film production market since the 1970s, spurred on by the Ontario Film and Television Tax Credit. This 35% refundable tax credit is offered to productions that meet several criteria, including spending at least 75% of their final costs in Ontario.
India and China have surpassed the United States in terms of the number of films they produce. India offers cash rebates for qualifying production expenses.
“California built the film industry — and we’re ready to bring even more jobs home,” Newsom wrote on X. “We’ve proven what strong state incentives can do. Now it’s time for a real federal partnership to Make America Film Again.”
Voight, one of three advisers to Trump on Hollywood, has also drawn up a “Make Hollywood Great Again” plan that proposes incentives for domestic film production, according to Deadline. His proposals are laden with several incentives for a majority of physical production to be done in the United States.
Voight also proposed a 120% tariff if a film “could have been produced in the U.S.” but was produced elsewhere and receives a production tax incentive.
“The idea of placing a tariff on overseas tax incentives or government subsidies or rebates would be onerous,” Squire said. “It would throw a wrench in the works of the business model and make it more expensive, which is the last thing you want. The key to producing movies is to make them at a price you believe the public will bear and make a little more than you spent in order to keep making movies.”
Cinema United, formerly the National Association of Theatre Owners, released a statement on Thursday in response to the Trump administration’s interest in reforming the film industry.
“It is important to recognize that theatrical exhibition is not a Hollywood industry, but a Main Street industry, and proposals that support and promote the hard work being done by theatre owners will have a positive and meaningful impact in communities across this nation,” Michael O’Leary, president and CEO of Cinema United, said in a statement.
“We are committed to working with the administration, Congress and all interested parties who recognize and share the goal of ensuring that our local theatres retain both their economic and cultural significance and we thank them for their leadership.”
Taylor Swift’s voice may make a cameo in “It Ends With Us” — the 2024 film now embroiled in legal drama — but a representative for the pop star says that’s where her involvement in the movie ends.
The legal saga erupted late last year when Lively accused Baldoni, along with his team, of orchestrating a smear campaign against her after she reported on-set sexual harassment. Baldoni filed a countersuit alleging that Lively’s accusations are baseless and have caused serious harm to his career, reputation and personal life, further escalating the high-interest legal brawl.
In a statement to The Times on Friday, a spokesperson for Swift denied that the singer had any level of involvement in the film beyond agreeing to license her song “My Tears Ricochet” to be used in the trailer and a scene.
“Taylor Swift never set foot on the set of this movie, she was not involved in any casting or creative decisions, she did not score the film, she never saw an edit or made any notes on the film, she did not even see ‘It Ends With Us’ until weeks after its public release, and was traveling around the globe during 2023 and 2024 headlining the biggest tour in history,” the spokesperson said, alluding to her record-breaking Eras Tour.
“Given that her involvement was licensing a song for the film, which 19 other artists also did, this document subpoena is designed to use Taylor Swift’s name to draw public interest by creating tabloid clickbait instead of focusing on the facts of the case,” the statement continued.
Swift’s name became a part of the conversation when documents Baldoni’s team published online alluded to a “a famous, and famously close, friend of Reynolds and Lively.” Lively and Swift have been friends for more than a decade and have collaborated professionally in addition to making high-profile social appearances together, like at last year’s Super Bowl.
Baldoni’s team alleges that Reynolds and the unnamed “megacelebrity friend” “pressured” him to accept changes Lively made to the script.
Lively, according to the documents published online, allegedly sent a message to Baldoni referring to herself as the character “Khaleesi” from “Game of Thrones,” and Swift and Reynolds as her “dragons.”
“My dragons also protect those I fight for,” Lively allegedly texted Baldoni. “So really we all benefit from those gorgeous monsters of mine. You will too, I can promise you.”
Welcome to Screen Gab, the newsletter for everyone who is waiting for the weekend to join the rebellion.
The highly anticipated final arc of “Andor” arrives next week, with a three-episode block that brings Cassian’s epic journey to a conclusion — cue the galactic grief. In this week’s “Catch Up,” our trusty “Star Wars” expert Tracy Brown is here to entice you to join the bandwagon before Season 2’s last installment.
Also in Screen Gab No. 180, our experts recommend a TV show about young love set in Los Angeles that’ll make you want to take a drive and listen to a playlist of yearning and heartbreak, and a collection of telecasts of notable Broadway and West End productions. Plus, Justin Hartley stops by Guest Spot to talk “Tracker.”
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Must-read stories you might have missed
Natasha Lyonne is back on the case as Charlie Cale in Season 2 of Peacock’s “Poker Face.”
Recommendations from the film and TV experts at The Times
Caissie Levy and Eleanor Worthington-Cox in “Next to Normal,” streaming on the PBS App.
(Marc Brenner)
“Next to Normal” (PBS App/ pbs.org)
I love covering the Los Angeles theater scene, but I don’t love braving rush hour traffic before taking in a live show. Thankfully, “Great Performances” is streaming freshly filmed productions from Broadway and the West End, starting with the Tony Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning work “Next to Normal.” This 2024 staging of Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey’s 2008 rock musical stars Caissie Levy, Jamie Parker, Jack Wolfe and Eleanor Worthington-Cox as a suburban family coping with crisis and mental illness. (It’s a tearjerker, so be sure to keep your blankets and tissues in tow.) The lineup continues weekly on Fridays, with David Henry Hwang’s Broadway comedy “Yellow Face” starring Daniel Dae Kim (May 16), the musical “Girl From the North Country,” featuring 20 reimagined Bob Dylan songs (May 23) and a revival of Cole Porter’s comedy “Kiss Me, Kate” starring Stephanie J. Block and Adrian Dunbar (May 30). — Ashley Lee
Michael Cooper Jr. as Justin Edwards and Lovie Simone as Keisha Clark in Netflix’s “Forever.”
You don’t always get love right on the first try, but it can still be a powerful experience. This modern day reimagining of Judy Blume’s groundbreaking 1975 novel from creator Mara Brock Akil captures the intensity of young love. Set in 2018 Los Angeles, the series follows the story of two high school students, Keisha (Lovie Simone) and Justin (Michael Cooper Jr.), who are trying to figure out who they’re becoming while experiencing the joys and insecurities of being each other’s first love. Keisha is a smart and confident track star whose circumstances pushed her to mature early, while Justin is a shy, music-loving guy who struggles with schoolwork. Their first phone call will transport you back in time and summon the butterflies. It helps, too, that L.A. plays a vital role in their love story. Production filmed in real neighborhoods — Keisha’s family lives in Crenshaw, and Justin’s family lives in the affluent View Park-Windsor Hills neighborhood. The pair visit places like the Fairfax District, the Santa Monica Pier and Little Tokyo as the season unfolds. And the soundtrack, which includes tracks from H.E.R, Nipsey Hussle and Victoria Monét, will have your ears in a love trance too. — Yvonne Villarreal
Catch up
Everything you need to know about the film or TV series everyone’s talking about
Diego Luna as Cassian Andor in Disney+’s “Andor.”
(Des Willie / Lucasfilm Ltd.)
I have been shouting from every rooftop that “Andor” is not only one of the best “Star Wars” stories ever, but one of the best TV shows around. Now I’m here, in your inbox, ahead of Season 2’s three-episode conclusion on Tuesday, to say it again.
The show follows Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) before the events of 2016‘s “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” where he is introduced as a skilled spy and dedicated leader of the Rebel Alliance who helps steal vital information about the Empire’s super weapon — the Death Star. Yes, the events of the original “Star Wars” could not have happened without the actions of Cassian and his team.
“Andor” starts five years prior to “Rogue One’s” narrative and tracks the radicalization and transformation of Cassian from disaffected minor delinquent to resistance fighter. That makes the Disney+ show a prequel series of a spinoff prequel movie of the original “Star Wars” — but don’t let this cloak of IP-ified franchise jargon shroud its broader relevance and appeal. “Andor” is more than just Cassian’s origin story.
One of the most mature and overtly political installments of “Star Wars,” the series is a meditation on how ordinary people respond to an increasingly oppressive authoritarian regime. It’s a morally complex story that shows how the actions and inactions of some of these ordinary people can contribute to the rise and retention of said regime, as well as how even the smallest acts of insurrection by others in the bleakest of times can be the spark needed for more to fight back. You don’t have to be a Jedi or wield a blaster to be a hero.
And if the show’s timely themes weren’t enough of a draw, “Andor” also has more than its fair share of incredible monologues. — Tracy Brown
Guest spot
A weekly chat with actors, writers, directors and more about what they’re working on — and what they’re watching
Justin Hartley as Colter Shaw in the CBS procedural “Tracker.”
(Darko Sikman / CBS)
The Season 2 finale of the hit CBS show “Tracker” is Sunday. But is its titular character any closer to learning the truth about his father’s death? Based on the novel “The Never Game” by Jeffery Deaver, the series stars Justin Hartley as Colter Shaw, a professional problem solver who travels the country and uses his tracking expertise to help crack mysteries for private citizens and law enforcement. While the standalone cases keep the season moving, the backstory about Colter’s father has been the slow burn looming in the background. Hartley stopped by Screen Gab recently to discuss his penchant for characters with absent daddy issues, whether he’ll direct on “Tracker” and more. — Yvonne Villarreal
As the season nears its end, it seems like we’re getting closer to the mystery of what happened to Colter’s father. With “This Is Us,” Kevin knew how his father died, but the audience didn’t. In “Tracker,” Colter is in the dark too. How did your work on “This Is Us” inform how you thought about Colter and how he moves in the world with that added burden?
I think sometimes the burden of the unknown becomes a kind of engine. It drives how you go about your business. I know that’s true for Colter. What happened to his father, the mystery surrounding his death — who might be responsible, who might be hiding the truth from him — all of that weighs heavily on him. Colter has spent his entire life finding missing people, yet the one person who continues to elude him is his father. The story behind his father’s disappearance, whether he passed away, died under mysterious circumstances or was murdered, remains unresolved. The way Colter approaches his work, the choices he makes, are directly connected to what he went through as a child. The trauma, the unanswered questions, they shape everything he does. In that sense, I think there’s definitely a comparison to Kevin Pearson on “This Is Us.” And, you know, I’ve kind of made it a thing: I don’t do projects unless the dad dies.
You’ve directed before on “This Is Us” and “Smallville.” Do you see yourself directing an episode of “Tracker” next season or in the future?
The thing about “Tracker” that’s different from “This Is Us” and “Smallville” as well, is that my character is in so many of the scenes. I’d love to direct, as long as it doesn’t take away from the production or the limited time we have on set.
I don’t know if it will happen next year. Maybe. But again, it would need to be set up properly.
What have you watched recently that you’re recommending to everyone you know?
There’s just so much good television out there right now. My wife and I watch most of these together. “Mayor of Kingstown” [Paramount+] — Jeremy Renner is amazing in it, and the whole cast is just incredible. I love that show. For something a bit lighter but still really entertaining, “The Residence” [Netflix] is fantastic. My friend Susan [Kelechi Watson] is in it, and she’s absolutely brilliant. “Paradise” [Hulu] — my friend Sterling [K. Brown], my brother, is in that. He’s fantastic. James Marsden is fantastic, the whole cast really delivers. “1923” [Paramount+] — I loved that. It’s got two really solid seasons, limited series style, but really well done. And then “Reacher” [Prime Video] — my friend Alan [Ritchson] plays Jack Reacher and does a great job. That show’s a lot of fun.
What’s your go-to comfort watch, the film or TV show you return to again and again?
I actually just watched this again last night, for probably the fourth night in a row. I’ve probably seen it over a hundred times. I could quote the entire movie. “As Good as It Gets” [VOD]. I think it’s probably the best movie ever made, in every way.
Throughout its career in the 1990s, the band Pavement remained poised for a wider commercial success that it never quite found. As leaders of the lo-fi indie rock sound, the musicians remained something of a secret passed among fans, their air of willful inscrutability, ambivalence toward conventional success and general irreverence inspiring a dedicated faithful that has only grown over the years.
The new film “Pavements” is a fittingly unconventional one for this most unconventional of bands, combining documentary footage from a wildly successful 2022 reunion tour along with scenes from the production of an improbable jukebox stage musical, an exhaustive art gallery dedicated to the group’s ephemera and a parody of a prestige Oscar-baiting biopic — all of it created especially for the movie.
For director Alex Ross Perry, it boiled down to the admittedly unanswerable question of whether the band in its time could have been bigger than it was. Then he had a lightning bolt of inspiration.
“I wanted to make a movie from the perspective of Pavement [being] — as we say onscreen in the film — the world’s most important and influential band, because that is literally true to 100,000 white Gen-X nerds,” says Perry on a recent Zoom call from his home in upstate New York.
“So what if the movie takes that not as a premise but as a fact?” asks Perry. “And builds a fictional world where this music has inspired these other things people build as shrines to their favorite musicians — a museum, a Broadway show, a crappy biopic? Let’s just do that and presume that is the cultural footprint of Pavement.”
In an unexpected stroke of luck, during the years it took Perry to see his ambitious project through, a 1999 B-side called “Harness Your Hopes” became the band’s biggest hit ever, thanks to social media algorithms. Suddenly the success that had always eluded Pavement was happening at a level never seen before.
Fred Hechinger, left, Joe Keery and Jason Schwartzman in the movie “Pavements.”
(Utopia)
The initial impulse behind the film came from Pavement’s longtime record label. Chris Lombardi, founder of Matador Records, recalls first pitching Perry’s idea to Stephen Malkmus, the band’s notoriously laconic chief songwriter, singer, guitarist and nominal leader.
“The idea was to make it confusing and weird,” says Lombardi in a phone interview from Los Angeles, about explaining the concept to Malkmus. “He was laughing about it and was like, ‘If it sucks, the songs are pretty bulletproof.’”
Perry, 40, is best known for seriocomic indie films such as “Listen Up Philip” and “Her Smell.” He also recently co-directed “Rite Here Rite Now,” a concert film for the Swedish metal band Ghost that also blended fictionalized elements.
The invented stage show, “Slanted! Enchanted! A Pavement Musical,” included arrangements of the group’s music by Keegan DeWitt and Dabney Morris and starred Michael Esper, Zoe Lister-Jones and Kathryn Gallagher. It was mounted for a few nights in New York City. The museum show in NYC’s Tribeca, “Pavements 1933-2022: A Pavement Museum,” mixed genuine memorabilia from the band’s history with made-up awards, gold and platinum records the band did not actually earn, advertisements it was not really a part of and ephemera such as a toenail clipping supposedly from Gary Young, the group’s original drummer.
For the Hollywood biopic portion of the project, titled “Range Life: A Pavement Story,” after one of the band’s most ruefully wistful songs, Perry wrote nearly 50 pages of a traditional script covering 1995 and the making of the group’s third album, “Wowee Zowee,” a sprawling, three-sided record (the fourth was left blank) that confounded many at the time but is now widely lauded and beloved.
“If we’re going to do a crappy, cliché, awards-chasing biopic, ‘Wowee Zowee’ is the moment,” says Perry. “That is the meat — that’s the best part of the biopic. That’s when they slam the brakes on their own success. It’s when they make an album that many now consider to be their masterpiece but was not seen as such at the time.
“It’s the moment in every movie where something crazy happens at this big concert: It’s Live Aid, it’s Newport, it’s whatever, we’ve all seen it,” Perry says, noting how the band was pelted with mud by the crowd at a stop on the 1995 Lollapalooza tour. “So I only wrote the ‘Wowee Zowee’ part of ‘Range Life.’ I kept saying to people, ‘Page 1 of my script would be Page 70 of ‘Range Life.’”
Kathryn Gallagher, left, Michael Esper and Zoe Lister-Jones in the movie “Pavements”
(Utopia)
To play the band, Perry put together a cast of actors who might all credibly appear in a more conventional drama, including “Stranger Things” breakout Joe Keery as Malkmus, Nat Wolff as guitarist and songwriter Scott Kannberg, Fred Hechinger (“Thelma”) as percussionist Bob Nastanovich, Jason Schwartzman as Lombardi and Tim Heidecker as Matador co-owner Gerard Cosloy.
Due to time and budget constraints, only about 15 or 20 pages of “Range Life” were actually filmed, capturing such pivotal moments as an awkward band meeting in which label executives confront the group over the uncommercial approach of its latest album and another in which Malkmus blithely declines an offer to appear on an episode of “Saturday Night Live” hosted by Quentin Tarantino. (Neither incident actually occurred.)
“Chris Lombardi said, ‘You know, Malkmus said no to everything. I could almost see him having turned down something as big as ‘SNL,’” Perry says. “And I said, ‘All right, well that’s going in the movie.’ Whether he turned down ‘SNL’ in 1995 or not, he’s turning it down now.”
Not that the band was ever above a little self-mythologizing in its day. Lombardi remembers how the label helped spread a rumor the band had turned down an offer to be on the TV show “Beverly Hills, 90210” though it had never actually been asked to appear.
“We did a lot of TV,” says Nastanovich (the real one), the de facto internal historian of Pavement because he remembers the stories the best. “Obviously the ‘Leno’ show we did was unusually poor, thankfully to the point of being so bad it was good. We clicked that button a handful of times. With the exception of ‘Letterman’ and ‘Saturday Night Live,’ we did a whole hell of a lot of TV. MTV, of course, was big at the time. We humiliated ourselves on all of those channels.”
Weaving between the fiction and contradictions of the band’s history led Perry to discover a more active, free-flowing process he has come to describe as “four-dimensional filmmaking.”
“I’m not holding a script in my pocket and saying, ‘Guys, we don’t have these lines yet.’” Perry says. “What we have is a public-facing film set where we had 3,000 people come through the museum in the four days it was open. Thousands of people came through a film set not knowing it’s a film set. And they’re being filmed and what’s happening is exactly the dramatic structure I’ve conceived.”
Malkmus himself played along at the museum, responding on camera to some of the most preposterously fake pieces in the exhibition such as an Absolut vodka ad (“Absolut Pavement”) as if they were real, providing Perry with footage he wouldn’t see until later. (Multiple cinematographers roamed at the event.)
Stephen Malkmus at the museum show in “Pavements.”
(Utopia)
“I didn’t know how amused he would be by it,” Perry says of Malkmus’ visit to the museum. “The answer was extremely, which was delightful to see because I think he got the humor in that, because the humor was only derived from the way he’s presented himself for 30 years, the way he’s written lyrics, the distanced ‘I’m playing the game, but I’m letting you know that I don’t want to play the game.’ That sort of dichotomy within him — the museum was created in that spirit.”
Eventually, the band attended a staged premiere of the movie-within-the-movie. With all the trappings of an actual film premiere — red carpet photos and a postshow Q&A in front of an actual audience — “Range Life” consisted of about 60 minutes of footage, assembled specifically for the event by the film’s editor, Robert Greene, a frequent Perry collaborator and himself a director of doc-fiction hybrids such as 2016’s “Kate Plays Christine.”
The event took place at a movie theater in Brooklyn. Everyone agrees the band was freaked out by what it saw.
“When you write something to not be good and to play every cliché note on the piano and you film it poorly where it’s just the most traditional coverage — surprise, surprise, it’s really tough to watch,” says Perry.
As Lombardi recalls of the band’s dismayed response, “I told my girlfriend, ‘I think I just killed Pavement.’”
“You certainly don’t want to be misrepresented in a negative way,” says Nastanovich. “And so that was my biggest concern walking out of there.”
Joe Keery, left, Scott Kannberg, Bob Nastanovich, Steve West, Nat Wolff, Mark Ibold and Stephen Malkmus in the movie “Pavements.”
(Utopia)
Lombardi adds, “It’s hard to see yourself up there depicted by other actors. And to see it onscreen, somebody talking about something about your life that didn’t actually happen, is really kind of a mindf—. What is going on here? Is this funny? Or is this making me feel sick? I think it was a real process to bring it all around.”
Perry completely understands why the band members were confounded by the work-in-progress that they saw.
“Imagine you’re so cool that you’ve actually never watched a Hollywood biopic,” he says. “Now imagine that you’re seeing all of those clichés play out for the first time in your life and they’re all about you. It would be extremely confusing. Nobody understood the tone because they’d never seen it before.
“Suddenly they were, ‘This can’t be the movie,’ says Perry. “And we were like, ‘It’s not. It’s empirically not the movie.’”
Yet even in the small snippets of “Range Life” that appear in the final “Pavements” film, Keery’s performance as Malkmus is unexpectedly affecting. Behind-the-scenes footage of him diligently prepping for the part becomes something of a satire of Method acting intensity and the actor’s loss of self. While working with a vocal coach, he uproariously obtains a supposed photo of the inside of Malkmus’ mouth.
Keery is currently on tour with his own band, Djo, and was unavailable for comment. But Perry acknowledges the challenge the project presented to him and the other actors.
“What he said yes to — and what he did when he showed up every day — is so risky,” says Perry. “It’s such a huge risk on the part of any actor to step in front of a camera, use your own name, make fun of yourself a little bit. Make fun of your profession, make fun of your peers, definitely make fun of your publicists and also capture all of that and not seem like an a—hole.
“This has never been done before,” he continues. “If you’re the first person to do something, you might be the first pancake and you just kind of have to throw it away. And that’s entirely on the table here. There was no indication that what we were doing was going to work.”
“There’s no other band where you have that 30 years of legacy and meaning and value but 0.0% of the protectiveness of that legacy that every other band has,” says Perry of Pavement, a group he now celebrates in “Pavements.” Perry, photographed at Film Forum in New York City.
(Dutch Doscher / For The Times)
Perry appreciates the band for entrusting him with its story and capturing what has turned into a whole new chapter in the band’s history.
“There’s no other band where you have that 30 years of legacy and meaning and value but 0.0% of the protectiveness of that legacy that every other band has, that would stymie any attempt to do anything interesting,” says Perry. “Any other band with that much value behind them would just want to make something that is a piece of marketing so they can make money to be that band.”
The film premiered last fall at the Venice Film Festival before playing the New York Film Festival, where all five members of the band appeared onstage after the screening.
“Essentially two things happened that night,” says Perry. “We took this band from humble beginnings — underground clubs, college radio — and we put them onstage at Lincoln Center, which is a phenomenal career arc,” says Perry. “Three days earlier it had been Elton John presenting his Disney+ documentary. So that is not the company Pavement have ever been in.
“The other thing that happened is that I was proven right, which I really like,” he adds. “I had been saying for four years: Trust me, this is going to be very cool. This is going to be unique. No one’s ever done this before. I’m not saying it’s going to be perfect. I’m not saying it’s going to be without conflict or bumps along the way. I am promising if people see this movie for what it is, they will say, ‘This is an absolutely one-of-a-kind achievement that truly captures who this band was, is and will always be.’ And we pulled that off.”
The unorthodox methods of “Pavements” uniquely capture the elusive spirit of the band in ways a more traditional approach would not, even as it maintains a sense of mystique.
“They embody a spirit of a time of fanzines and putting out your own records and playing small shows and doing it because you wanted to do it,” says Lombardi of the band. “And not looking to capitalize in a capital-C kind of way. Trying to just make great songs for your friends, play with people you like to play with, hang out at places that were fun to hang out at and do your own thing.”
Of Perry’s film, Lombardi seems impressed. “It’s a hard thing to tell,” he says of the band’s vibe. “They did understand where those guys are coming from and that’s just not really an easy thing to convey. They did it and I’m really happy where we landed.”
“If it confuses people, then I’m pretty easy to contact,” says Nastanovich. “I can tell them what’s real and not real.”
Filmmaker James Foley, whose directing career spanned music videos, television and film, with stars including Madonna, Al Pacino and Bruce Dern, has died.
Florent Lamy, a representative for Foley, confirmed the Brooklyn-born director’s death to The Times on Thursday. Lamy did not provide a cause of death, but according to media outlets including the Hollywood Reporter, the filmmaker had been battling brain cancer. Foley was 71.
“James Foley was not only a talented director but also a dear friend,” Lamy told The Times. “He was one of my very first clients, and over time, he became someone very special in my life.”
Foley’s diverse directing career — which notably included films “Glengarry Glen Ross,” “At Close Range” and the “Fifty Shades” sequels — began in the mid-1980s. The 1984 film “Reckless” marked his directorial debut and gave him the opportunity to work alongside actors Daryl Hannah and Aidan Quinn and prolific producer-filmmaker Chris Columbus.
In the following years, Foley directed films — including 1986’s “At Close Range” (featuring Sean Penn and Christopher Walken) and 1990’s “After Dark, My Sweet” (starring Dern) — as well as music videos and other visuals for Madonna, who was en route to global pop stardom at the time. From 1985 to 1990, Foley directed music videos for Madge’s “Dress You Up” and “True Blue.” He directed both her music video “Who’s That Girl?” and her 1987 comedy of the same name.
Foley also directed music videos for rock band Deep Purple and Marky Mark, actor Mark Wahlberg’s former rap persona. He would later reunite with Wahlberg for the 1996 thriller “Fear” and 1999’s “The Corruptor,” with Chow Yun-Fat.
In 1992, Foley directed the film adaptation of playwright David Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen Ross.” One of Foley’s most popular works, the adaptation featured a star-studded cast of Pacino, Ed Harris, Jack Lemmon, Alec Baldwin, Alan Arkin, Kevin Spacey and Jonathan Pryce. Pacino received Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for his work on the dark comedy.
Foley’s final film credits, “Fifty Shades Darker” and “Fifty Shades Freed,” also were among his popular works. Foley took over the film franchise, based on E.L. James’ erotic novels, after “Fifty Shades of Grey” director Sam Taylor-Johnson departed over reported disputes with the author, who was also a producer. The “Fifty Shades” films starred Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan.
Foley also directed episodes for series “Twin Peaks,” “Hannibal,” “House of Cards” (which reunited him with Spacey) and “Billions,” among other shows.
In a 2017 interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Foley said he embraced the variety of his decades-long career. “I’ve had a very fluid career of ups and downs and lefts and rights, and I always just responded to what I was interested in at the moment and I was very unconscious about genre,” he said.
“I’ve always just followed my nose, for better or for worse, sometimes for worse. What’s best and what’s worst [about the industry] are almost the same to me,” he added. “Because what’s worst is you get pigeonholed and what’s best is I haven’t been. It means that I’m still making movies, despite hopping all over the place.”
Foley’s survivors include his brother Kevin, sisters Eileen and Jo Ann, and nephew Quinn, according to several reports. He was preceded in death by his other brother Gerard.
Her hair is red, voluminous and wild. She walks with a swagger. Her voice is raspy, and not in a sexy kind of Lauren Bacall way, but more like Peter Falk.
Long before finding her groove with unconventional roles in “Orange Is the New Black,” “Russian Doll” and now, “Poker Face,” there weren’t many options for a free spirit like Natasha Lyonne, especially when she aged from a pliable child actor into a self-aware adult.
“It’s weird that all of a sudden, one day, everybody looks at you differently and you’re aware of it,” says Lyonne, 46. “I remember the ‘Lolita’ audition, and it was like, ‘Will you slowly eat this apple?’ And I was like, ‘I know what you’re asking of me. I can eat it for you comedically.’ But no, I will not simulate sex with an apple on camera. I mean, I’d studied the history of film. These were not revelations.”
The real surprise? Lyonne forged a career by finding and later creating projects that capitalized on her undeniably intrepid personality, wrapping the roles around her eccentricities rather than conforming to what was expected of a female performer in Hollywood. Lyonne’s latest act of defiance is Season 2 of the Peacock series “Poker Face,” a murder-of-the-week mystery created by Rian Johnson (“Knives Out,” “Glass Onion”) that she stars in and executive produces. This season, in addition to writing, she’s also directing two episodes.
Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in Season 2 of Peacock’s “Poker Face.”
(Sarah Shatz / Peacock)
The series, which returns Thursday with three episodes followed by one each ensuing week, continues to follow Charlie Cale (Lyonne), a scrappy Vegas casino employee who is blessed and cursed with the ability to accurately discern when someone is lying. Following the murder of her best friend, she’s forced to outrun the mob in her 1969 Plymouth Barracuda, traversing the byways of America while solving murders along the way.
The hourlong series takes its cues from personality-driven, ‘70s-era detective dramas including “The Rockford Files” and “McCloud.” But it’s “Columbo,” starring the wonderfully rumpled Falk, that’s most heavily influenced “Poker Face.”
Lyonne recalls the 1971 pilot episode of the vintage TV series, which was directed by a 24-year-old newcomer named Steven Spielberg. “I ripped from it directorially,” Lyonne says. “I like the one long, slow [Robert] Altman-like zoom shot through the office window down to the car. And I hear Spielberg went on to do great things. It’s like, ‘You like that long shot? You’re never gonna believe what this guy does next! Holy smokes. Are you in for a ride!’”
But Charlie Cale is not Columbo. She carries a vape pen instead of a cigar and prefers cut-off shorts to a trench coat. She does, however, share the uncanny knack for arriving just as a murder’s taking place, be it on an alligator farm in Florida or a sprawling East Coast mansion. She’s confronted with a new cast of characters at every stop, and the roster of talent who inhabit those roles is impressive. The lineup includes Cynthia Erivo, Giancarlo Esposito, Katie Holmes, Justin Theroux, Alia Shawkat, John Mulaney, Kumail Nanjiani, Lili Taylor, Margo Martindale, Melanie Lynskey and Rhea Perlman.
Katie Holmes, left, guest stars this season.Also guest starring is Giancarlo Esposito.(Sarah Shatz / Peacock)
“Charlie is a great lover of people,” Lyonne says. “[My former character] Nadia in ‘Russian Doll,’ which I co-created with Amy Poehler and Leslye Headland, it’s almost like she was on her own case. But Charlie’s already been on the journey where we lose interest in ourselves and gain interest in our fellows. The mob is after her. She can’t have a phone. She can’t have roots. She can’t really fall in love. It’s lonely.”
Lyonne’s own journey into the world of acting turned her into a seasoned veteran before she was even old enough to vote. The New York native worked in commercials before kindergarten, and as a grade-school student landed the TV role of Opal in “Pee-wee’s Playhouse.” She also appeared in films such as “Heartburn,” “A Man Called Sarge” and “Dennis the Menace.” By her late teens, she landed her breakthrough role as the daughter of a broke single dad (played by Alan Arkin) in the 1998 indie comedy “Slums of Beverly Hills.”
“I’ve been doing this since I was 4 years old, dear reader,” jokes Lyonne, whose acting career now spans four decades. “As a child character actor, there is this kind of inner knowingness. We were completely alert, little businesspeople. If you start at 4, by 6, you kind of get the idea [of what’s going on], like ‘Don’t mumble. The Minute Maid people don’t like that in their commercial.’ By 8, you know where the bodies are buried. You know how to read a room, to perform on command. I can still smell the Pine-Sol from that Pine-Sol commercial in 1986.”
Even as a child, Lyonne didn’t quite fit the mold of precocious yet accessible girl next door: “I was trying to carve out this weird lane while discovering the heartbreak of not getting the role in ‘Curly Sue.’ I was like, I’m perfect for this thing. What’s wrong? Oh, I see. You’ve got to be Shirley Temple or you can’t really hang out.”
Lyonne pivoted to another passion: film and television history. She is a walking encyclopedia of great performances and buried, esoteric moments in both media. For a short time, she studied film and philosophy at NYU. “I was already thinking that I’ve got to transition this into filmmaking from the inside out, rather than just being an actor for hire. It took 20 years for that to materialize into a reality,” she says.
“I was already thinking that I’ve got to transition this into filmmaking from the inside out, rather than just being an actor for hire. It took 20 years for that to materialize into a reality,” Natasha Lyonne says.(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
She disappeared from the public eye for over a decade as she battled drug addiction. Her comeback included a recurring role as Nicky Nichols in “Orange Is the New Black,” Netflix’s breakout streaming hit. Lyonne has said she had plenty to draw on for the character, who was a recovering drug addict. Nicky became a fan favorite.
By 2019, Lyonne co-created her own Netflix series, the existential dark comedy “Russian Doll,” where she played Nadia, a New York City-based video game developer who gets caught in a time loop at her 36th birthday party. She’s on a quest to solve the mystery of why she dies, repeatedly.
“There were techniques [I had to learn], like actual filmmaking, actual writing, actual producing,” Lyonne says. “The parts weren’t there, and the parts are still not there. It’s like nobody’s writing them.”
But she credits collaborators like Johnson for creating parts for actors such as herself.
“Rian really is some kind of genius because he took this self-referential gig that I was doing [and turned it] into a kind of character piece. I’m self-made, I suppose,” she says. “This is the way the hair grows out of my head. I’ll commit to it. So he took that and made it into something.”
“Poker Face” is a colorful, entertaining ride through a retro murder-mystery genre, present-day pockets of quirky American culture and Lyonne’s own personal journey as seen through Charlie.
“The show is about losing this nihilistic, self-destructive streak and finding connection with another human,” Lyonne says. “You try to build a life and not kill yourself over and over again. It’s like a marathon man or a long-distance runner. But she’s been through that dark and stormy night of the soul, and come out on the other side with the sun at her back.”
Shortly after President Trump stunned Hollywood with his call for tariffs on films produced overseas, California Gov. Gavin Newsom waded into the debate with an unexpected offer.
Despite the public enmity between the two, Newsom reached out to the White House in hopes of working together on the creation of a $7.5-billion federal tax incentive to keep more productions in the U.S.
Hollywood insiders have wanted a federal tax incentive program all along. Some publicly cheered Newsom’s Monday proposal.
Many lawmakers, including Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) and Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Glendale), have advocated for a national program to try to put the U.S. on a more equal footing with foreign countries that offer generous incentives.
But such an initiative faces significant obstacles.
It will be a difficult sell to the average American taxpayer, who may not be eager to support an industry viewed as wealthy and politically liberal. It’s unclear where funding for the U.S. entertainment industry ranks on a list of ever-growing national priorities.
“I would give it 50/50 at best,” Sanjay Sharma, who teaches media and entertainment finance at USC’s Marshall School of Business, said of the incentive’s odds.
Recently, a coalition of Hollywood unions and industry trade groups — including the Motion Picture Assn. and guilds representing screenwriters, directors and actors — backed the idea of a domestic production incentive. They said the proposal would advance the administration’s goal of reshoring American jobs and providing economic growth around the country.
“As Congress undertakes 2025 tax legislation, we urge lawmakers to include a production incentive to support film and television production made by workers in America,” the coalition said in a statement.
But with so many competing priorities facing the country, including infrastructure, homelessness and the opioid crisis, lawmakers could face an uphill battle in justifying a vote to effectively subsidize the entertainment industry.
“The political optics on it are going to be very, very difficult,” said George Huang, a professor of screenwriting at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. “To most people, [the entertainment industry] seems like a frivolous thing.”
Even if a federal film tax incentive were to pass, it’s not a guarantee that filming would automatically flow back to the U.S., particularly if other countries chose to increase their own tax credit programs in response, he said.
But such a proposal would provide much-needed support for the entertainment industry, which has been battered in recent years by the effects of the pandemic, the dual writers’ and actors’ strikes in 2023 and cutbacks in spending by the studios.
The situation has created what leaders call an employment crisis in the film and TV business, particularly in California.
“Right now the industry is teetering,” Huang said. “This would go a long way in helping right the ship and putting us back on course to being the capital of the entertainment world.”
A federal tax incentive was part of a proposal from actor Jon Voight, one of Trump’s so-called Hollywood ambassadors, and his manager, Steven Paul, who traveled to Mar-a-Lago last weekend to present Trump with a plan on bringing filming jobs back to the U.S.
MPA Chief Executive Charles H. Rivkin also met with Voight last week, according to a source familiar with the matter who was not authorized to comment.
After the Deadline story published, Paul cautioned that the document was not meant as a full-on policy proposal.
“The document does not claim to represent collective views of the participating film and television organizations, but serves as a compilation of ideas explored in our discussions on how to strengthen our position as creative leaders,” Paul wrote.
In the meantime, the MPA and others have also lobbied Congress to extend and strengthen Section 181 of the federal tax code to encourage more films to stay in the U.S.
Such a move could boost smaller, independent productions as well as studio films. The section addressing film production was enacted in 2004 amid a recognition that more films were moving to Canada and Europe, and the U.S. needed to remain competitive.
Section 181 allows up to $15 million of qualified film and TV production expenses to be deductible during the year in which they were incurred — or up to $20 million if the project was produced in a low-income area, according to the MPA. Productions can qualify if three-quarters of their labor costs were in the U.S.
The measure allows filmmakers to take the deduction when the cost is incurred, rather than after the film is released. That’s important to independent filmmakers who often work on shoestring budgets and can’t wait for years to see the benefit.
“If there is a bright side, maybe some of the U.S.-based companies will start taking a look at their domestic production levels,” said Frank Albarella Jr., a partner at KPMG in its media and telecommunications unit. “Maybe there will be some more federal and state incentives right here in the U.S. That’s what people are hoping for.”
Times staff writer Stacy Perman contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump orders 100 percent tariffs on imported films and those made outside the US.
In recent years, California – home to America’s film industry – has slipped to become the sixth most preferred location to shoot and produce movies.
Hollywood producers are moving to cities in Canada, the United Kingdom, Central Europe and New Zealand, lured by a range of financial benefits on offer.
US President Donald Trump wants to reverse this trend and says he wants to “make movies in America, again”.
And he’s using the stick to do so.
Trump has ordered 100 percent tariffs on imported movies and those made outside the United States.
The move has confused Hollywood and the European film industry.
So, how will the tariffs be implemented? Will a movie partly produced outside the US be punished?
And what about films made for streaming platforms? And how will the tariffs affect the movie industry globally?
Presenter: James Bays
Guests:
Jonathan Handel – Entertainment lawyer and journalist
Chris Southworth – Secretary-general of the International Chamber of Commerce United Kingdom
Kamran Pasha – Hollywood director, screenwriter and novelist
Since the start of the year, Brandy Hernandez has applied to nearly 200 entertainment jobs.
The 22-year-old film school graduate, who works as a receptionist at the Ross Stores buying office in downtown Los Angeles, said that for most of those applications, she never heard back — not even a rejection. When she did land follow-up interviews, she was almost always ghosted afterward.
“I knew that I wouldn’t be a famous screenwriter or anything straight out of college,” said Hernandez, who graduated from the USC School of Cinematic Arts in 2024. But she thought she’d at least be qualified for an entry-level film industry job.
Studios scrambling to cut costs amid the turbulence were quick to slash low-level positions that historically got rookies in the door.
“You almost feel cursed,” said Ryan Gimeson, who graduated from Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts in 2023, in the early days of the writers’ strike.
And while screenwriting has always been a competitive field, industry veterans attested that the conditions have rarely ever been harsher for young writers.
“In the past 40 years of doing this, this is the most disruptive I’ve ever seen it,” said Tom Nunan, founder of Bull’s Eye Entertainment and a lecturer in the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television.
The landscape is especially dry in television writing, according to a jobs report released last month by the Writers Guild of America.
TV writing roles dropped 42% in the 2023-2024 season that coincided with the strikes, the report said. About a third of those cuts were to lower-level appointments.
It’s a far cry from the TV business Liz Alper broke into 15 years ago.
Alper, an L.A.-based writer-producer and co-founder of the fair worker treatment movement #PayUpHollywood, came up in the early 2010s, when opportunities in scripted television were still plentiful.
The CW, for instance, was putting out three original one-hour shows a night, or about 18 to 21 original pieces of programming a week, Alper said. That translated to anywhere between 100 and 200 staff writer slots.
But in the last five years or so, the rise of streaming has essentially done the opposite — poaching cable subscribers, edging out episodic programming with bingeable on-demand series and cutting writing jobs in the process.
The job scarcity has driven those in entry-level positions to stay there longer than they used to. A 2021 #PayUpHollywood survey found that most support staffers were in their late twenties, several years older than they were on average a decade ago.
Without those employees moving up and creating vacancies, recent graduates have nowhere to come in.
“I think if you have a job, it feels like you’ve got one of the lifeboats on the Titanic, and you’re not willing to give up the seat,” Alper said.
The entertainment job market has also suffered from the ongoing exodus of productions from California, where costs are high and tax incentives are low.
Legislation that would raise the state’s film tax credit to 35% of qualified spending — up from its current 20–25% rates — is pending after winning unanimous votes out of the Senate revenue and taxation committee and the Assembly arts and entertainment committee. Supporters say the move is critical for California to remain competitive with other states and countries, state legislators have argued.
Meanwhile, young creatives are questioning whether L.A. is the place to launch their careers.
Peter Gerard.
(Robert Hanashiro / For The Times)
Peter Gerard, 24, moved to L.A. from Maryland two years ago to pursue TV writing. After graduating with a data science degree from the University of Maryland, he sensed it was his last chance to chase his dream.
Within weeks of arriving in L.A. in April 2023, he landed a handful of job interviews and even felt hopeful about a few.
Then the writers guild went on strike.
“I came moments before disaster, and I had no idea,” he said.
During the slowdown, Gerard filled his time by working on independent films, attending writing classes and building his portfolio. He was fine without a full-time gig, he said, figuring L.A. would work its magic on him eventually.
Such “cosmic choreography” touched writer-producer Jill Goldsmith nearly 30 years ago, she said, when she left her job as a public defender in Chicago to pursue TV writing. After seven trying months in L.A., her luck turned when she met “NYPD Blue” co-creator David Milch in line at a Santa Monica chocolate shop. Goldsmith sent him a script, the show bought it and she got her first credit in 1998.
Goldsmith, a lecturer in the UCLA MFA program in the School of Theater, Film and Television, said she tells her students such opportunities only come when they meet fate halfway.
But hearing veteran writers mourn their lost jobs and L.A.’s bygone glory led Gerard to question his own bid for success.
“I felt sorry for them, but it also made me realize, like, ‘Wow, there’s a lot of people who want to do this, and a lot of them are much further along than me, with nothing to show for it,’” he said.
Lore Olivera.
(Robert Hanashiro / For The Times)
As the youngest staff writer in her current writers’ room, Lore V. Olivera, 26, has gotten used to her senior counterparts waxing nostalgic about the “good old times.”
“I think they’re definitely romanticizing a bit,” she said, “but there is some truth in there.”
Olivera landed her first staff writer job in 2023, a year after graduating from Stanford University. The process was straightforward: her reps cold-emailed her samples to a showrunner, he liked them, she interviewed and got the job. But Olivera said such success stories are rare.
“I was ridiculously lucky,” she said. Still, getting staffed is no finish line, she added, just a 20-week pause on the panic of finding the next gig.
Olivera is also the only staff writer in her current room, with all her colleagues holding higher titles like editor or producer. It’s a natural consequence, she said, of showrunners facing pressure to fill limited positions with heavy-hitters already proven capable of creating hits.
Olivera said she knows not every 26-year-old was getting hired a few decades ago, but even her elder peers agreed the industry has lost a former air of possibility.
“It’s definitely a slap in the face when you get here and you’re like, ‘Yeah, it’s going to be a few miserable years, and then I might not even make it,’” Olivera said. “Not even because I’m good or bad… but just because the industry is so dead and so afraid of taking chances.’”
Jolaya Gillams, who graduated from Chapman’s Dodge college in 2023, said that her class had talent in spades. But the industry hasn’t given them anywhere to put it.
“I hope that we move into an era of film where it’s new, fresh ideas and new perspectives and having an open mind to the voice of our generation,” Gillams said.
Until then, the filmmaker said she’ll continue to create work for herself.
During the strikes, Gillams and a production team with no budget made the short film “Sincero,” which won the audience award for short documentary at the 2023 Newport Beach Film Festival. As she continues the search for a distributor for the doc, she already has another project in the works.
Weary from the “black hole” of job applications, Hernandez said she, too, is focused on bringing her own work to life. In an ideal world, that leads to a film festival or two, maybe even agency representation. But mostly, what drives her is pride in the work itself.
“If I’m successful in my mind,” said Hernandez, “I’m content with that.”
By Daniel Kehlmann, translated by Ross Benjamin Summit Books: 352 pages, $29
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Daniel Kehlmann’s latest novel, “The Director,” an engrossing meditation on the exigencies of art and the dangers of artistic complicity, lands in the United States at a good time. Which is to say, a bad time, when both institutions and individuals must gauge the risks of free expression in an increasingly oppressive environment.
The German novelist most recently authored “Tyll,” shortlisted for the 2020 International Booker Prize, and his translator, Ross Benjamin, has rendered his new historical fiction in idiomatic English prose. With a page-turning narrative that is both technically sophisticated and intellectually engaging, “The Director” sits at the charmed intersection of commercial and literary fiction.
In his acknowledgments, Kehlmann says the novel was “largely inspired by the life stories of the historical G.W. Pabst and his family.” Among his inventions is a Pabst son, Jakob, an aspiring artist turned Hitler Youth member — someone whose perceptions, once astute, are polluted by circumstances. The same can be said of Pabst himself, whose monomaniacal devotion to his art inclines him to ugly compromises.
The politically tricky world of “The Director” is off-kilter in a variety of ways. (The German title, “Lichtspiel,” means both “play of light” and “film.”) Disorientation is a pervasive theme, beginning with Pabst’s attempt to establish himself, along with other expatriate film artists, in Hollywood. But language is a barrier, and the deference he demands conflicts with the movie capital’s norms. Strangers confuse him with another Austrian-born director, Fritz Lang, and Pabst’s American movie, “A Modern Hero,” fashioned from a script he loathes, is a flop.
The director’s return to Austria, in part to help his aging mother, is poorly timed. (The book’s three sections are “Outside,” “Inside” and “After.”) At Pabst’s rural estate, the once submissive caretaker, Jerzabek, and his family, now Nazis, hold the whip hand. The wife cooks comically inedible food; the daughters terrorize Jakob. The Pabst family is caught in a real-life horror movie from which escape proves difficult.
Trapped by the outbreak of war, Pabst agrees reluctantly to make movies — well-funded and ostensibly nonpolitical — for the Third Reich. His professional unease is echoed by the novel’s gently surreal bending of time and space and its metaphorical conflation of life and film.
The novel’s first-person, postwar frame involves another absurdist twist: Franz Wilzek, a resident of an Austrian sanatorium, is corralled into a live television interview. Formerly a director and, earlier, an assistant to Pabst, Wilzek suffers from dementia, and the interview reveals his befuddlement. It is cut short after Wilzek denies the existence of a lost Pabst film, “The Molander Case,” shot in World War II’s waning days. “Practically nothing is known about the circumstances of its shooting,” Kehlmann writes in the acknowledgments. That historical gap unleashes the novelist’s imagination.
Most of Kehlmann’s narration is in the third-person, with constantly shifting perspectives that add to the book’s off-kilter feel. At times we see the action through Pabst’s eyes; at others, from the viewpoint of his wife, Trude; his son, Jakob; the actor Greta Garbo; and the Reich envoy Kuno Krämer. A captured British writer offers his first-person take on Pabst’s 1943 film, “Paracelsus.” Leni Riefenstahl turns up too, as both actor and director, a collaborator in every sense. So, too, does the actor Louise Brooks, depicted as the great love of Pabst’s life.
Over time, dreamscapes, film sets and Germany’s crumbling, war-ravaged cities become indistinguishable. In films, Pabst reflects, “the painted backgrounds looked real and unreal at the same time, like something out of the strangest dreams.” In Berlin, he observes that “the edges of the houses seemed askew,” while “the street down below rolled away very straight into an endless distance,” evoking “how films had looked fifteen years earlier.”
Similarly, when Pabst visits the Nazi propaganda ministry, its geometrically baffling corridors remind him of “a trick he himself had used repeatedly in long tracking shots.” When he encounters the minister — an unnamed Joseph Goebbels — he sees him briefly as two distinct men. As Pabst moves toward the exit, the office door recedes. He finds that “the room had folded over so that he was suspended from the ceiling, walking upside down.”
The climactic (and amply foreshadowed) blurring of nightmare, film and reality occurs in Prague, during “The Molander Case” shoot. A group of prisoners, gaunt and starving, are commandeered to serve as unusually cooperative movie extras. A stunned Wilzek, spotting a familiar face, reports that “time had become tangled like a film reel.”
Author Daniel Kehlmann.
(Heike Steinweg)
Kehlmann gives Pabst’s self-justifications their due. “The important thing is to make art under the circumstances one finds oneself in,” the director says. An actor differs: “One contorts oneself thousands of times, but dies only once … It’s simply not worth it.” Later, Pabst declares, “Art is always out of place. Always unnecessary when it’s made. And later, when you look back, it’s the only thing that mattered.”
Perception, and what one chooses not to see, is another one of the novel’s themes. “Look closely,” Jakob insists, “and the world recedes, becoming a mixture in which nothing is clean and everything runs together.” But is that true? Wilzek, the novel’s unlikely hero, does look closely, and what he sees impels him to take a moral stand.
Kehlmann’s epigraph, from the Austrian Nazi writer Heimito von Doderer’s 1966 short story collection “Under Black Stars,” describes “drifting along on a broad wave of absurdity, although we knew and saw it.” But “this very knowledge was what kept us alive,” von Doderer writes, “while others far better than we were swallowed up.” A post facto reflection on his times, it casts a troubling light on our own.
John and the Hole is a 2021 horror-drama that is currently available to watch on the streaming platform for free and a clip of the movie has recently resurfaced online
Fans have given the film a negative review(Image: Amazon/Youtube)
Amazon Prime subscribers are up in arms over a 2021 thriller that’s sparked outrage after a clip resurfaced online.
The film, John and the Hole, is a horror-drama from 2021 that’s currently free to stream on Amazon Prime. Starring Michael C. Hall, the perplexing movie follows 13-year-old John (played by Charlie Shotwell), who feels alienated from his well-to-do family and stumbles upon an incomplete bunker in the woods near his house.
In a disturbing twist, he drugs his parents (played by Michael C. Hall and Jennifer Ehle) and older sister (Taissa Farmiga), trapping them in the bunker as he takes over the household.
The story probes into John’s intricate mind, exploring his emotional detachment and the eerie family dynamics that emerge as they struggle with their unexpected imprisonment, reports Surrey Live.
The film first stirred up excitement online
However, the film’s slow burn, ambiguous storytelling, and irritating characters have led to a barrage of criticism from viewers.
Despite a recent surge in interest following clips shared on social media platforms like X and Instagram, those who left reviews on Google were overwhelmingly disappointed.
One exasperated viewer implored: “Please don’t watch this, I beg u. It’s time you’ll never get back. Two hrs of my life were just stolen from me. You’d be more productive going in ur backyard and staring at the grass, maybe you’ll see an ant or bug , maybe u won’t. Regardless, it would be better than this movie.”
The film left many viewers confused
Another viewer vented their frustration, saying: “I never write movie reviews, largely because I see it as a complete waste of time. However, this movie was so terrible that it’s worth it to warn others. DO NOT WATCH. It was SO SO SO SLOW AND NOTHING HAPPENS. I found myself so agitated by how many empty scenes there were, and I had to get up every few minutes to skip through it.”
Meanwhile, another commenter shared their letdown: “This was literally THE WORST MOVIE I have ever watched. From what the description said, I thought there would be some tale of the family trying to escape after being locked in this ‘hole’ by the 13-year-old boy. There was nothing. They were locked there and literally nothing happened. Nothing at all.”
On the flip side, some viewers appreciated the film, with a fan expressing enthusiasm: “I love the movie! I don’t know why people give it a one star!”
John and the Hole is available to watch on Amazon Prime
Looking to boost the production of Hollywood movies in the U.S., President Trump on Sunday announced a new 100% tariff applied on films produced overseas.
For more than two decades, major studios have shifted movie production to cheaper countries, including Canada, U.K., Bulgaria, New Zealand, Australia and other countries that offer generous tax benefits to build their local economies, luring films away from Hollywood.
The industry hasn’t fully recovered from shutdowns due to the COVID pandemic, labor strikes and a retrenchment by legacy entertainment companies, many of which overspent to build streaming services to compete with Netflix.
“I am authorizing the Department of Commerce, and the United States Trade Representative, to immediately begin the process of instituting a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands,” Trump said late Sunday in a post on his Truth Social platform. “WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!”
Details of the plans, as well as whether the tariffs would be imposed on U.S. based companies that shoot overseas, were not immediately available.
Movie executives on Sunday expressed bewilderment, wondering how a tariff would be imposed on a film, which, like a car, has components made in different countries while post-production often occurs in the U.S.
The Motion Picture Assn. wasn’t immediately available for comment.
Trump lamented how the “Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death.”
The president said countries that have offered “all sorts of incentives to draw our filmmakers and studios away from the United States.”
“Hollywood, and many other areas within the U.S.A., are being devastated,” Trump wrote. “This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat.”
The call for U.S. production comes after Trump tapped a trio of actors — Jon Voight, Sylvester Stallone and Mel Gibson — to be his “special ambassadors” to Hollywood. In January, Trump unveiled the initiative, calling Hollywood “a great but very troubled place.”
The president at the time said he and his ambassadors would help Hollywood spring “back — bigger, better, and stronger than ever before!”
But the envoys have kept a low profile since their appointment and many in Hollywood say they have not heard from them.
Late last month, Bloomberg News reported that Voight and his manager, Steven Paul, were preparing to present Trump with some ideas aimed at bolstering U.S. production, including offering some national incentives to help win back offshore business.
“It’s important that we compete with what’s going on around the world so there needs to be some sort of federal tax incentives,” Paul said in an interview with Bloomberg.
They may not be the Avengers, but the motley crew of Marvel Studios’ “Thunderbolts” punched their way to the top of the box office this weekend, continuing a strong season for theaters as Hollywood’s summer movie season gets underway.
The movie, which stars Florence Pugh and Sebastian Stan as part of an antihero ensemble, opened in the U.S. and Canada to $76 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates. Globally, “Thunderbolts” debuted with $162 million, including $86 million from outside the U.S. and Canada.
Before its release, “Thunderbolts” was expected to bring in about $70 million in its opening weekend, though some projections had pegged $80 million as the high end of its earning potential, according to analyst estimates.
The film’s reported budget is $180 million.
The opening weekend performance for “Thunderbolts” is in line with Marvel films such as 2021’s “Eternals,” which brought in $71 million, and “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” which made $75 million. The most recent Marvel film, “Captain America: Brave New World,” hauled in $89 million in its opening weekend in February.
Marvel’s past box office success raised the bar for the franchise, which has been difficult for every film to meet, especially given the pandemic and the dual writers and actors strikes in 2023, said Shawn Robbins, founder of film business analysis site Box Office Theory and director of analytics at Fandango.
After the 2019 blockbuster “Avengers: Endgame,” Walt Disney Co.-owned Marvel often seemed to struggle to find its footing, losing its consistency at the box office and with critics. “The Marvels” was a misfire, and movies including “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” appeared to signal a drop-off in quality.
But the largely positive reviews for “Thunderbolts” could provide momentum for Marvel’s summer release,”The Fantastic Four: First Steps.”
“In any franchise, the next film performs as well as the previous film was treated by audiences,” Robbins said.
“Sinners” came in second at the box office this weekend with $33 million domestically, down just 28% from the prior week. The acclaimed original period vampire movie has collected $180 million domestically so far, in a much-needed win for movie studio Warner Bros.
Video game-based blockbuster “A Minecraft Movie,” Ben Affleck’s “The Accountant 2” and Sony’s horror movie “Until Dawn” rounded out the top five.
The U.S.-Canada box office is now up 16% compared with the same time in 2024, a substantial improvement from earlier in the year when Hollywood fielded a number of flops.
This season’s diverse lineup, which includes family movies, R-rated horror films and now, a PG-13 superhero flick, gives audiences more reason to flock to theaters, Robbins said.
“It feels a little bit like the before times,” he said. “The fact that it’s been happening in April is a really encouraging sign going into the summer.”
Israeli soldiers and settlers have harassed a Palestinian activist featured in a recent BBC documentary that has received praise for shedding light on the plight of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
As the world’s attention has been fixed on Israel’s 18-month war on Gaza, settler attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem have spiked, forcing Palestinians to flee their homes. A lack of Israeli police action has further emboldened settlers, who cite the Torah in claiming rights over Palestinian lands.
Issa Amro, who was featured in The Settlers documentary made by British-American journalist and broadcaster Louis Theroux, released footage online showing how armed soldiers and settlers raided his house in Hebron in the occupied West Bank.
Amro said police also threatened him with arrest and told him not to file a complaint in what he said is another instance of apartheid imposed by Israel in the West Bank. Rights groups, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have accused Israel of practising apartheid in occupied territory.
Amro added on Sunday that the Israeli settlers who attacked him a day earlier told him United States President Donald Trump backed them. The settlers felt “emboldened because of the Trump administration’s blind support”, the activist said.
Theroux said he and his team have remained in regular contact with Amro.
. @Issaamro who featured in The Settlers has posted videos of his latest harassment by settlers and soldiers. Our team has been in regular contact with him since the documentary and over the last 24 hours. We are continuing to monitor the situation. https://t.co/asEWKkVX5h
The BBC documentary, a follow-up to Theroux’s 2012 film The Ultra Zionists, reflects on how the situation has evolved in occupied Palestinian territory.
While conducting interviews with Palestinian and Israeli figures, the documentary explored how the settler population has grown significantly and how new military outposts and Israeli infrastructure have expanded across Palestinian territories, often with direct state support.
It delves into the religious and ideological motivations behind the Israeli expansion, which has led to mass displacement of Palestinians and violent clashes, and it questions the legality and morality of the occupation as courts rule that it undermines international laws and norms.
“You bring Jewish families [to the occupied West Bank], you live Jewish life, and this will bring light instead of darkness. And this is how the state of Israel was established, and this is what we want to do in Gaza,” Daniella Weiss, a key member of the Israeli settler movement for decades, says in the documentary.
Weiss, who has enjoyed support from a number of Israeli rabbis as well, said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “happy” about the settler expansion. Netanyahu has opposed the Palestinian sovereignty over Gaza and occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Settlers are Israeli citizens who live on private Palestinian land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. They now number more than 700,000. All Israeli settlements are considered illegal under international law.
Settlements and their expansions are seen as the biggest hurdle in the realisation of a sovereign and independent Palestinian state living side by side with Israel.
The United Nations General Assembly last year called on Israel to end its occupation of Palestinian territory. This came months after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that the Israeli presence in Palestinian territory is ‘”unlawful”.
Theroux himself was harassed as well when making part of the documentary in Hebron when Israeli soldiers approached him and tried to make him leave the area.
The harassment of Amro comes shortly after Hamdan Ballal, the Palestinian co-director of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, was attacked by Israeli settlers in his home in the West Bank village of Susya.
Armed and masked settlers vandalised his home and vehicle in late March and injured Ballal. While receiving treatment in an ambulance, Israeli soldiers blindfolded and arrested the filmmaker, who was later released without charge.
Like the harassment of Amro on Saturday, that attack was also seen as retaliation for the documentary’s international acclaim and its efforts to show the struggles of Palestinians in the West Bank.
In the first episode of the Apple TV+ show “The Studio,” Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese sells his script to the fictional Continental Studios, only to be told later by a studio chief played by Seth Rogen that the project, about Jonestown, has been killed.
Instead, the company is fast-tracking a soulless brand-based cash grab: a Kool-Aid movie.
“Just give me back my movie and let me go sell it to f— Apple, the way I should have done it in the first place,” a despairing Scorsese says.
The line could practically be an ad for how Apple TV+, the Cupertino tech giant’s streaming service, has positioned itself as a creative haven for filmmakers trying to sell bold, original ideas.
The service, which was introduced in 2019 with a splashy event featuring Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg, found success with comedy shows like “Ted Lasso” and 2022 best picture Academy Award winner “CODA.”
But the question hanging over the company was, just how serious was it about its Hollywood ambitions? Would it be the next big power player? Or would it become just another deep-pocketed short-timer? For years after they joined the company, Apple TV+ leaders Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg were dogged by rumors that their jobs were in jeopardy.
Lately though, its efforts have come more into focus. It’s been on a run of critical success with shows such as “Severance,” “The Studio” and “Your Friends & Neighbors.” Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said in a call with investors on Thursday that Apple TV+ “has become a must-see destination” and posted record viewership in the quarter.
Some have compared it to HBO — before Warner Bros. Discovery began making cuts — developing a reputation for being willing to pay big for A-list stars and creatives.
“It’s been brilliant at defining its niche … and the quality of what it does is simply superb,” said Stephen Galloway, dean of Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts. “The question is, is the niche big enough to justify the expense?”
Apple TV+’s subscriber base remains small compared to competitors, including Netflix. It lacks the deep, established libraries of Walt Disney Co. or Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max, which helps keep customers paying every month and not switching to another service. While it has good shows and movies, critics say, it lacks the volume and breadth of its competitors.
And the quality over quantity approach has its doubters. Wedbush Securities managing director Daniel Ives estimates Apple TV+ has 57 million subscribers, which he called “disappointing.” Wall Street had hoped to see 100 million or more subscribers by now, he said.
Apple has “built a mansion [and] they don’t have enough furniture, and that’s a problem from a content perspective with Apple TV+,” Ives said.
Further, tech and business news site the Information reported that Apple TV+ is losing $1 billion a year. The company’s strategy has left some rivals scratching their heads.
“I don’t understand it beyond a marketing play, but they’re really smart people,” said Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos in a March interview with Variety. “Maybe they see something we don’t.”
Apple declined to comment.
Observers noted that it can take a long time for streaming services to become profitable. NBCUniversal’s Peacock is still losing money, for example.
In recent years, subscription streaming services have been under pressure by investors to produce more profit. In an industry where there’s a lot of competition and Netflix has been declared the winner, there’s anxiety about how many platforms can survive on their own.
But Apple thinks differently about entertainment compared to its more traditional studio rivals, people familiar with the company say.
Apple TV+ is just one part of the company’s larger strategy to grow its subscription services business under Eddy Cue, which includes Apple Music, iCloud storage and Apple News, among other options.
The services category represented 25% of Apple’s overall sales of $391 billion in its last fiscal year. The company’s largest money maker remains the iPhone, which represented 51% of Apple’s total revenues in its last fiscal year.
In its most recent quarter, services reached a revenue record of $26.6 billion, up 12% from a year ago, the company said.
Apple TV+ is “a small piece of all the services that you provide,” said Alejandro Rojas, vice president of applied analytics with Parrot Analytics. “You want this to add to the overall brand experience, but without also crossing a massive gap in resources and investments.”
Apple TV+’s programming strategy has taken a talent-friendly approach, tending to favor projects with big-name stars.
One of its early major bets was “The Morning Show” with Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon and Steve Carell. Drama “Your Friends & Neighbors” stars Jon Hamm from “Mad Men.” Its February survival drama film “The Gorge” stars Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy.
One of Apple’s biggest movie releases will happen this summer with Formula 1 film “F1” (featuring Brad Pitt), which hits theaters in June, including on Imax screens. Warner Bros. is handling the theatrical release for the big-budget movie, directed by Joseph Kosinski (“Top Gun: Maverick”).
Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore, hopes “F1” will play like “Top Gun: Maverick” on a racetrack. Some of Apple’s previous filmmaker-driven, star-studded movies struggled at theaters, including “Fly Me to the Moon” and “Argylle.”
“This is a huge movie for Apple,” Dergarabedian said. “I think they picked a perfect project to really amplify their filmmaking acumen and their filmmaker relationships.”
The way Apple treats talent has a personalized touch, said creatives who have worked with the company.
Tomorrow Studios president Becky Clements said she was “forever grateful” that Apple took a shot on “Physical,” an original series starring Rose Byrne about a 1980s housewife who struggles with an eating disorder and finds strength through aerobics.
“It’s an original piece, which is often a difficult thing to pull off in the marketplace,” Clements said.
Clements credited Apple with supporting the filmmakers and not micromanaging the show, which delved into difficult material.
Ben Silverman, an executive producer on upcoming Apple TV+ series “Stick” (starring Owen Wilson), said the show’s budget allowed for traveling to North Carolina for filming, where prominent golf commentators Trevor Immelman and Jim Nantz were located during the PGA Tour.
“I think a lot of platforms are supportive of their creators right now, but they may not have the bandwidth to go as deep as Apple can on individual projects because they’re just not doing as many,” said Silverman, chairman and co-CEO of L.A.-based Propagate Content.
Not all creatives have been happy with Apple.
It threw observers for a loop when it did a short and limited theatrical release for last year’s Brad Pitt and George Clooney action-comedy movie “Wolfs,” instead of a more traditional wide release.
Director Jon Watts told Deadline he backed out of a sequel because he was surprised by Apple’s “last minute” shift and that Apple ignored his request to not reveal that he was working on a follow-up. Apple has not addressed the controversy publicly.
Like other streamers, over time, Apple TV+ has made changes to help generate more revenue, cut costs and increase customers. Last month, Apple cut the price of its streaming service temporarily to $2.99 a month. Its base monthly fee is $9.99. Last year, Apple TV+ reached a deal to sell subscriptions through Amazon.
In February, Apple TV+ captured 30% of its sign-ups via Amazon Channels, said Brendan Brady, director of strategy at research firm Antenna. High-profile releases including the new “Severance” season and “The Gorge” drove sign-ups, he added.
“It’s a combination of content driving their acquisition, and also that opening up of their distribution attracting a new audience,” Brady said.
Government officials have warned that tariffs on smartphones made in China are coming — which would harm Apple’s iPhone because many are made in the country. Increased costs to Apple’s overall business could eventually squeeze other areas of the company including Apple TV+, analysts said.
Some people who work with Apple said it’s too early to judge Apple’s success based on its estimated subscriber counts so far, and they’re placing chips on the venture succeeding in the long run.
“It’s about investing early and long-term,” Silverman said. “I’m always an entrepreneurial spirit who wants to lean in early to these platforms and partnerships, hoping that I can build a beachfront relationship.”
