audience

“The Pineapple” promised to be intense, but even hours before the show had begun, it had me startled.

I was warned, via a waiver attendees must sign to experience the production, to expect “intimate, and/or aggressive physical contact,” “confined spaces and passageways,” and that I may be asked to crawl, kneel or lie down. All of it would happen in a show that I was cautioned would present simulated violence or “disturbing imagery.”

As much as I love participatory, immersive theater — productions that often rely on some form of audience participation — “The Pineapple” was providing me with a checklist of things I generally avoid. It was a feeling that only grew when I reached the waiver’s end, and signed off that I was OK with claustrophobia (I am not).

What had I done?

None of it, though, had fully prepared me for what Candle House’s “The Pineapple” actually was. By the time the hourlong experience in North Hollywood had reached its conclusion, I had been straddled by a woman who forced a gloved finger down my throat, outfitted with hooded, vision-impairing face masks, grabbed by the wrists as they were taped together, ordered to crawl toward a blood-stained room, and spooned or kissed by multiple male performers.

“The Pineapple” is a secretive hourlong show that seeks to disorient attendees.

(Sona Earnest)

“The Pineapple” is a buzzed-about show among the tight-knit immersive community, one that fits into the medium’s long tradition of productions designed for a sole audience member. A short run last year in New Jersey sold out. Candle House has such a devoted following that its L.A. shows have been selling out almost as instantly as they are announced. While it’s thus far been shrouded in secrecy — “The Pineapple” will not even release a program or cast list until its run has concluded — it comes highly recommended from acquaintances who saw it on the East Coast. I was alternately excited and apprehensive to take part, and my editor would like me to note that I pitched this story on my own accord.

“The Pineapple” in its limited online description promises an alien encounter. Sign up, and an email will tell you that it will “change your life.”

For the passionate crowd of immersive enthusiasts who may want to experience “The Pineapple” and are worried I just spoiled the show, I call nonsense. For one, I believe audiences should know exactly what they are paying for, and two, I do not think “The Pineapple” can be properly spoiled. It was at times otherworldly, in moments psychedelic, and while there were scenes in which I felt fear, there were also others in which I laughed. While “The Pineapple” flirts with horror, torture and conspiracy nuts, it also provides space for Jimmy Buffett’s “Margaritaville.”

And in “The Pineapple’s” best instances, it created a sense of personal intimacy with its performers. These were actors who may have earlier been needling at or attempting to push my boundaries. “The Pineapple” wants to toy with our trust, to create a safe space where it can intermix themes of abuse and empathy until their lines are blurred. Consider its waiver, then, not just a warning but an attempt to weed out those who may be offended or triggered.

“The Pineapple” tries to break us. And it charges nearly $250 for the privilege.

“How do I put this,” says the show’s core creator/director Evan Neiden when asked his intentions behind “The Pineapple.” “I think the show is designed to boil you. Like the lobster in the pot. It gets warmer and warmer and warmer and it’s slowly acclimating you to this new set of rules that keep changing to this new environment of degeneracy and conspiracy.”

“The Pineapple” teases an alien encounter. It is theatrical production designed for one guest.

(Sona Earnest)

Neiden, the 27 year-old founder of Candle House, has long specialized in one-on-one phone productions designed to be done from the caller’s home. While drastically different in narrative content, his horror show “Claws,” in which its solo guest acts as an emergency line operator, is good prep for “The Pineapple” as it also seeks to push people to the brink of comfort.

If there is an artistic thesis behind the work of the New York-based Candle House, it is to cast its audience as performers, but then poke, prod and disorient until they stop performing and start reacting on instinct — or, in theory, become unguarded. It’s an idea that simply to get through the day we are playing a role of sorts, tuning our conversations to please others, or presenting exaggerated, false or tidied-up versions of ourselves on social media.

“In an experience like this, you’re alone with the inhabitants of the world, and they’re all there as part of your hallucination, your dream and your journey,” Neiden says. “You don’t need to worry about presenting a certain way or being perceived in a certain way. All the characters in ‘The Pineapple’ are degenerates, and this show invites you to become one as well. That’s very hard to do if someone from the respectable, outside world is watching.”

The setup for “The Pineapple” is simple. I was playing a respondent to an ad for a meeting with an alien. But things quickly spiral beyond clear narrative recognition, as piecing together the story becomes a puzzle unto itself. And it will shift depending on how one reacts, as there are multiple endings. But know only that in its opening minutes we learn that we have been swindled and are now part of a ritual of sorts to summon said alien.

“The Pineapple” offers intimate actor interactions designed to push boundaries.

(Sona Earnest)

You may find yourself, as I did, raising your voice, as “The Pineapple” did light research on me. My career was insulted, and I was mocked for fumbling around while attempting to juice a pineapple with a woefully inadequate kitchen utensil. Neiden says many attendees try to break the show itself, to push back and see how far its narrative can bend. This is typically not how I play, wanting to experience a production as its designers have intended and thus I let “The Pineapple” take the lead rather than trying to force my will upon it.

I am not easily offended and never used the safe word provided, although there were instances where I came close, namely when my feet were being aggressively, unwelcomely massaged. And yet there were scenes in which I thought about deeply personal relationships I have had, specifically when a character asked me to think of a time when forgiveness or an apology was craved from someone I am no longer closely connected with.

“The Pineapple” then began to feel like a metaphor. As I moved from darkened room to darkened room, ridiculed in one, flirted with in another, a thread of finding one’s own personal paradise in a hellscape began to emerge. Is it aliens we are seeking, “The Pineapple” begins to ask, or simply perhaps purpose? The act of forgiveness, Neiden tells me, was on his mind when crafting the show.

“I never really felt like I fully understand it,” Neiden says. “What is forgiveness? Some people say it’s letting someone off the hook. Others say it’s releasing yourself of the burden of a grudge. And it’s a word wrapped in religion and politics. There are so many definitions of it, and we hear it everywhere — forgiveness and its counterparts of guilt, shame and accountability. What does it mean? The show doesn’t answer that.”

Maybe. That’s up to the audience, not its creator.

Days after I’ve seen “The Pineapple,” friends and peers keep asking if I enjoyed it, and I don’t think it’s a simple answer. It’s not for everyone. I’m not sure it’s even for me. Simulated torture is not my idea of a good time. But “The Pineapple” did wear me down, and it’s beautiful in the way it highlights the lonely anguish at the heart of Buffett’s “Margaritaville.”

As its small cast obsesses over a fabled alien encounter and seems willing to stop at nothing to find release in a divine being, be careful, “The Pineapple” argues, of the personal Eden you seek.

At least that was my takeaway. You might walk away with an entirely different message.

“Maybe you just fell in with the wrong crowd and got abducted by aliens,” Neiden says.

When Judy Collins comes to Los Angeles, she likes to stay at the Beverly Hilton in part because “they serve a fabulous breakfast,” she says over coffee at the hotel on a recent morning. “That’s rare today,” she adds. “Too often a place will just send up a cardboard shopping bag with the things you ordered in it.”

Collins knows her amenities: At 87, the Grammy-winning singer and songwriter still plays about 120 shows a year, drawing audiences around the world with her high, clear voice and an expansive repertoire that blends the hits that made her famous in the 1960s and ’70s — Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now,” Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne,” Stephen Sondheim’s “Send in the Clowns” — with traditional folk tunes and material of her own.

Yet now she’s preparing to hang it up with a lengthy farewell tour she’s calling Sweet Judy Blue Eyes (after “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” the folk-rock classic her one-time lover Stephen Stills wrote about her for Crosby, Stills & Nash). The night before our interview, Collins played L.A.’s Ford Theatre; she’ll be back through Southern California for a Sept. 27 date at the Lobero Theatre in Santa Barbara and again next year for shows in Palm Springs and Aliso Viejo.

After we talk, she plans to do a bit of tai chi, for which she uses an app on her phone and which she wishes more people practiced. “Maybe that would alter civilization,” she says. “If we were all doing tai chi, we couldn’t be at war with Iran.” Then she’ll head to the airport for a flight home to New York, where she’s lived for decades — most of them with her husband, industrial designer Louis Nelson, who died in 2024.

At breakfast, Collins is wearing a patterned turquoise jacket over a matching dress and high-heeled black leather boots.

“You like these?” she asks of the boots. “These are Stuart Weitzman. I bought them 30 years ago, and I’ve never stopped wearing them.”

That’s a well-made boot.
They fit, they’re great and I reject all invitations to get rid of them.

Has your thinking about clothes changed over the decades?
I used to dress in jeans because I was a cowgirl — I hung out with rodeo riders in Colorado. As I came up, I liked what was simple. My mother made all our clothes on a Singer sewing machine for years. Now I love beaded things. I have full closets I need to go through.

Before you came onstage last night, an announcer told the audience not to take pictures or videos.
That’s my management’s doing — it’s important to them, so I go along with it. But the pictures are usually bad. Also, the phones take people’s minds off what’s going on onstage. People need the chance to focus. We’re in a period of insanity right now, so people need time to sit wherever they are. They could go to the ballet or to the theater, but they choose to come to me, and they get to sit there and they get to listen and they get to think about their own lives.

As a performer, that’s what you seek to provide.
I’m providing silence. It’s such a noisy world — so full of crappy music that plays outside all these hotels and places where we stay. It drives me nuts.

You have a line in the show where you say, “Something unexpected happened — I turned 87.” It got a good laugh.
People applaud too.

What are they saying by applauding?
They want to be acknowledged for their own ages, whether they’re 87 or 90 or 19. People are coming to see me, but they’re also coming to see their history. They’ll remember what happened 60, 70 years ago — they were probably marching at the same things I was marching at. And if they’re 19, they want to know why we’re not marching now.

Judy Collins performs on “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” in 1969.

(CBS via Getty Images)

You said we’re in a period of insanity.
This country is losing so much of the depth of our origin. The fact that workers who’ve come to this country are being taken off to God knows where — it makes no sense. Number one, these people often have some sort of legality. And secondly, they do the work here. Nobody else wants to go up to the orchards in Oregon and pick the fruit. Do you?

I can’t say that I do.
I don’t want to do that.

This tour is billed as your grand farewell.
So long, you guys.

I’m always reluctant to trust that framing. Cher’s done like eight farewell tours.
I hadn’t counted them up — shame on me.

Should we really believe you?
I think we have to believe in the present tense. What you’re hearing is what’s happening.

You had a music stand onstage with you. What was on it?
All the lyrics to all the songs.

You can’t possibly need the lyrics anymore.
Oh, yes, I do.

You’ve been singing some of them for decades.
Doesn’t matter — it has to be there in case you have to look at it.

Would you say you do look? Or is it more of a security blanket?
It’s a security blanket. But my eyes wander — I like to see who’s in the audience and what’s going on. I like to look up and down the aisles, and I like to fantasize: How did this happen?

Your life and career?
I mean, I know how it happened. I was 16, and I started going to the Denver Folklore Society, which was run by a guy named Lingo the Drifter. And Lingo the Drifter had these wonderful evenings where we all played the guitar and sang and drank illegal whiskey and so on.

Judy Collins last month in Beverly Hills.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Before Denver, you lived briefly as a kid in Los Angeles.
My father was a very eclectic and fabulous radio personality. He had a radio show for 30 years in Seattle then here in Hollywood, broadcasting out of CBS — a big deal. If we weren’t in school, we would drive up Santa Monica Boulevard into Hollywood and we’d stand around and watch them produce the radio mysteries. People would walk in a sandbox to get the sound of somebody walking up the gravel road to the door.

Are you familiar with the term “nepo baby”?
No.

It refers to the child of a famous artist who follows in their parent’s footsteps.
Oh, that’s interesting.

People use it derisively, as if to say that a kid has overly benefited from their advantages.
We certainly had advantages. For instance, the Library of Congress, which is the jewel in the crown — I don’t know what they’re doing now — but they sent us Braille books and they sent us all the shows from New York and they sent us the recordings of all the Shakespearean plays by the great Dame Judith Anderson and John Gielgud. I had all that growing up. In some ways, I wasn’t raised — I was trained. I got to see how a professional has to handle his life. My father was a professional in all ways. He drank — occasionally, not all the time — but he was absolutely organized about everything, including that.

You’ve been sober for something like half a century.
Forty-eight years. I’m in my 49th now.

You ever miss drinking?
Oh, my God, no. I was so sick — I was gone. Bye-bye.

Some people replace one addiction with another.
I had an eating disorder, which is still kind of … You know, last night, I asked for apple juice during the show — I was in trouble because I wasn’t eating. When my husband died, I stopped eating again. I’d stopped eating in the ’60s and ’70s and ’80s, but I got over that. But suddenly I didn’t want to eat again.

Would you consider that disordered eating?
I don’t know. Anyway, I have to really be careful. We had a talk about it last night. I have to eat these protein bars, and I have to eat them all the time.

Do you remember the first gig you played after your husband died?
Oh, yes — I had to go out. When my son took his life in 1992, I got a call from Joan Rivers — she and I knew each other pretty well. She was getting ready to go out and do her show in Las Vegas, and she called me in New York and she said, “I have to tell you this” — her husband had just killed himself — she said, “You cannot stay home. You have to go out.” I was canceling all my shows, and she said, “You can’t do that because you won’t ever get over this if you do.”

How did you take that advice?
I said, “Thank you,” and I called my staff and I said, “Put ’em back on.” My mother came out with me, Louis came out with me, my sister came out with me, and it was incredibly true: I had to be working or else I would die. So when it came to Louis, I was out three days later.

What did that feel like?
Well, it was wonderful because I was working. I can work and get through anything — that’s the psychological effect of what I’m doing on the stage. I’m interacting with people, I’m hearing the laughter, I’m hearing the music. What could be more healing?

This is why I’m wondering why you plan to stop touring.
But you see, I have all these other things to do — I have a life that’s not just touring. I’m working on the music for a Broadway show. And I’m doing a new book — it’s called “Singing Through the Storm,” and it’ll be out next year, I hope.

Judy Collins and Leonard Cohen attend the 41st annual Songwriters Hall of Fame ceremony in New York in 2010.

(Larry Busacca / Getty Images)

You’ve interpreted the music of so many great songwriters: Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen. Was there ever a writer whose work you admired but couldn’t find your way into?
No.

OK.
I’ll tell you my funniest Leonard story. In 2014, I think it was, I went to this little group in Norway called Democrats Abroad — lonely group of people. That night, this woman came up to me and said, “Hi, I’m Marianne.” I said, “Hi, Marianne.” And then she said, “I’m Leonard’s Marianne.” She said, “There’s something I’ve wanted to tell you for many years: We were living together in Spain, Leonard and I, and he was writing songs and we were swimming in the nude. And then one day he came to me and he said, ‘Marianne, I’m going to New York to sing my songs for Judy Collins,’ and he went to New York and he played you all his songs and you recorded them.” Marianne said, “I just wanted to tell you that you ruined my life.” Fortunately, we became friends on Facebook.

You opened last night’s set with “Both Sides Now.”
Oh, yes.

This might be the most famous song you do. Some artists would save it for later in the show.
I don’t want people to wonder for an hour and a half: Will she? Won’t she? What will I do if she doesn’t?

Do you still enjoy singing “Both Sides Now”?
I love it. It was Al Kooper who brought me to Joni — she sang it to me over the phone. Al is living a very sane, quiet life in the Northeast now. He’s married — never goes out anymore. It’s hard to think of Al Kooper just sitting there enjoying his marriage and his garden.

What will you do on the plane home today?
I’ll probably get out the computer and noodle around on the book and see what I can come up with.

The work never ends.
It never ends because it’s not done.

Giving an answer to a question that is asked at a free-flowing press conference is one thing, but Donald Trump repeated his sentiments a short time later when he was delivering a speech to an invited audience at the US Ambassador’s residence.

In fact it was almost the first thing he mentioned, hinting that maybe he realised he had kicked over a can of worms at his earlier appearance.

The rest of that speech was curious. It was billed as a 20-minute address to Irish and Irish American business leaders, but was about twice that and strayed largely into domestic US matters.

President Trump has a speaking style that he describes himself as “the weave”.

He can bounce from topic to topic during any speaking engagement, veering off the script and then returning to the matter at hand.

Today he lauded his own achievements, as he sees them, such as clamping down on illegal immigration, doing deals and boosting defence production.

He repeated his criticisms once again of what he views as the UK’s lack of support for his military operation in Iran.

What do you do when a creative team mounts an acclaimed production of a beloved play, breaking box office records as one of the most successful shows in your theater’s more than 100-year history? For the Pasadena Playhouse, the answer was clear. You get them back on the boards as soon as possible — say, six months later.

Which is how it came to pass that more than a dozen creatives behind Peter Shaffer’s “Amadeus,” including director Darko Tresnjak and actor Jefferson Mays, have returned to the historic theater for a new production of Swiss dramatist Fredrich Dürrenmatt’s revenge tragicomedy “The Visit,” running through Oct. 4.

“It feels like we just cleaned out our dressing rooms and we’re moving back in,” notes Mays.

The cast and crew of the adaptation of Friedrich Durrenmatt’s “The Visit,” at the Pasadena Playhouse. Many have returned to the venue after helping stage the hit production of “Amadeus” there in April.

(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)

“Amadeus,” which ended its run in April, was a critical and box office hit, so popular that after tickets were gone, additional shows were added — which also quickly sold out. Danny Feldman, producing artistic director of the Pasadena Playhouse, puts it simply: “Theater is a team sport, and when you’ve got a winning team, you want to keep playing together.”

It was during tech for “Amadeus” that Tresnjak told Feldman of his love for “The Visit,” which he first directed in college. “I quite literally found my calling in life because of it,” says Tresnjak.

Feldman was also a fan — of both the play and working with Tresnjak — and quickly scheduled the show for the new season.

“Our job is to give artists a home where they can stretch and take risks,” says Feldman. “Audiences got to experience this artistic synchronicity during ‘Amadeus,’ and we’re so excited they get to deepen their relationship with these artists as they watch ‘The Visit.’ ”

The respect is mutual. Mays, who has won almost every major theater award in existence including a Tony and an Obie, says the Playhouse is one of the best he’s ever worked at. “It’s certainly the most healthy,” he notes. “They are unabashed theater fans and lovely people.”

Only days earlier, Mays had given what could be perceived as a backhanded compliment. “I said, ‘You don’t run a theater at all, you run a high school drama club,’ ” Mays recalls. “I meant that in the way it’s infused with joy and a sense of play and support and that we can do anything with impunity and embarrass ourselves and they will be there to pick us up and dust us off. It’s just a gorgeous feeling.”

While Mays brought Tresnjak to “Amadeus,” this time the director asked the actor to join “The Visit.” Mays admits he wasn’t very familiar with the text. Tresnjak’s production, which utilizes the 1956 adaptation by Maurice Valency, centers on the small town of Güllen, which is facing financial ruin.

Actors Jefferson Mays and Melinda Page Hamilton star in an adaptation of Friedrich Durrenmatt’s “The Visit,”at Pasadena Playhouse.

(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)

The townspeople are preparing to welcome back former resident and potential patron Claire Zachanassian (Melinda Page Hamilton), who has become the richest woman in the world since leaving. It turns out, Claire is more than happy to help. But there is one condition: Someone must kill her former lover Anton Shill (Mays), who impregnated and abandoned Claire in their youth.

Audiences expecting an easy villain and a clear case of right and wrong will be surprised as the narrative unfolds with an examination of community, complicity and corruption within institutions of power.

Tresnjak says “The Visit” can’t be described as one thing. “I don’t want to call it a feminist revenge fantasy because that belittles it,” he says. “It’s also an inversion of a medieval mystery play where the Earth Mother is not benevolent. It’s also a fun, nifty stage thriller.”

And as relevant as the day it was written, Tresnjak adds. Dürrenmatt penned “The Visit” as a critique of Switzerland’s neutrality after World War II, which he saw as an abandonment of ethics driven by capitalism.

Tresnjak says he recently directed a scene where one townsperson urges the others to hold out against Claire’s proposition of murder, on the same day news broke that the U.S. Department of Education had pressured the American Bar Assn. to end Diversity, Equity and Inclusion efforts. “It made me think how in some ways, the citizens of Güllen are better off than we are,” Tresnjak says

“It really is more timely than ever,” agrees Mays, who wonders if that might keep audiences away. In 2007, he starred in the World War I drama “Journey’s End,” which went on to win a Tony Award for best revival. “It was a beautiful play, but nobody came,” he says. “We were at war with Afghanistan and Iraq, and people had enough of war. Sometimes you hold the mirror up to the world, and it reflects it too well.”

Mays jokes he said yes because “it was only fair after I hornswoggled Darko into ‘Amadeus.’ ” The actor is known not just for his versatility but for displaying it in rapid succession. He won the 2004 Tony Award for playing more than 40 characters in “I Am My Own Wife,” and his 2022 adaptation of “A Christmas Carol” saw him take on more than 50 characters.

Mays admits the role of Anton is “a strangely passive and reactive role that I’m still not sure I’m entirely right for,” even going so far as to say, “I can name 10 actor friends who would be better.” But he was bowled over by the director’s passion. “It’s so thrilling when someone approaches you with something they are burning about, and I couldn’t say no.”

Indeed, Anton has a lot to react to; Hamilton’s Claire is the proactive role, forcing the action at every turn. Hamilton is known to TV audiences for her roles on “Mad Men” and “Desperate Housewives,” but she previously worked with Tresjnak on “Bell, Book and Candle” and “Rear Window” and is a big admirer of his work.

Melinda Page Hamilton plays Claire in an adaptation of Friedrich Durrenmatt’s “The Visit.” She is one of a handful of cast and crew that didn’t appear in “Amadeus” this spring.

(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)

“I also tried to see ‘Amadeus,’ but I couldn’t get tickets,” she says with a laugh. She was thrilled to get a call from Tresnjak, who felt it was important to cast L.A. actors and enjoys working with previous collaborators — to the point where he didn’t hold auditions.

“I think traditionally Claire has been portrayed as crazy and evil, and that didn’t interest Darko,” Hamilton says. “I also think post-Epstein, post-#MeToo, post sheer volume of terrible behavior that men get away with, it has a different resonance today.”

Tresnjak says the role of Claire has long been special to him. “This is a woman who owns everything she is, who never tells a single lie or tries to obscure what she wants,” he says. “She is simply making society look at itself.”

Tresnjak’s upbringing was largely influenced by his mother, Maria, an immigrant from Yugoslavia (now Serbia) who served as a military skydiver in World War II. “My mother was a very strong woman, a woman who fought for what she believed in,” he says. “I have no interest in doing something like ‘Streetcar,’ where a woman is being driven out of her mind. I enjoy characters with agency.”

Director Darko Tresnjak has long wanted to stage a production of Friedrich Durrenmatt’s “The Visit,” a play dear to his heart for many years.

(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)

And he’s thrilled to have found a home that supports his vision, praising Feldman and associate artistic director Jenny Slattery, who was his student when he taught at UC San Diego. “They’re not afraid of big swings and of taking chances, and not only do people seem to appreciate that, they’re coming to see it,” he says.

With two productions in a year, is it too early to hope that this team has found a recurring home at the Pasadena Playhouse? Tresnjak demures, “I wouldn’t want to put that pressure on Danny and Jenny,” but admits he would be thrilled to return. “Of course, I’m very happy here.”

Mays is equally game. “It’s such a rare and wonderful thing in this country to have a sense of company,” he says. “To have so many actors and designers back from ‘Amadeus’ and to return to a place of such support; it feels like something that rarely exists anymore.”

The biggest news to come out of two film festivals this week stemmed from documentaries about tech moguls gone bad.

When Alex Gibney’s film production “Musk” premiered at the Venice Film Festival on Tuesday, it received a five-minute standing ovation, shouts of “thank you” from the audience and endless play across social media. The nearly four-hour production chronicles the rise of the world’s first trillionaire out of the dot-com boom, and lays bare the dangers that the Tesla and SpaceX chief executive now presents as a plutocrat with questionable judgment and unchecked power.

Closer to home, at the Telluride Film Festival, it was comedian Nathan Fielder (“The Rehearsal”) and Lance Oppenheim’s “You Can See Everything” that made breaking news. Their film features unfettered access to former Theranos Chief Executive Elizabeth Holmes in the weeks before she reported to federal prison to serve a sentence of 10 years and three months. She rode the early 2000s wave of venture-capitalism consumer-tech hype, defrauding investors and the public with a bogus new way to test blood. By 2014, she was the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire.

A couple of decades ago, films about Musk and Holmes probably would have framed the pair as forward-thinking entrepreneurs and architects of a new era. Today, the pitchforks are out, and who else better represents the hubris and greed of late-stage capitalism?

There’s plenty of buzz around both films ahead of their October releases, yet the richest man in the world is helping promote the “Musk” doc by incessantly posting about Gibney and his “hit” piece.

Musk’s X posts have referred to the filmmaker as a “horrible human” and a “bitter old man” and declared, “Dogs— is worth more respect.” Always looking for a conspiracy to explain away the perfectly explainable, he wrote that the film was a “psy op.” He included in the post an image of Gibney as a puppet of the Democratic Party and George Soros. Musk also offered Trumpian prose: “Gutless Gibney’s fatal flaw of fabricating a false film.”

“Musk” is due for a theatrical release in the U.S. on Oct. 16 followed by a streaming launch on HBO Max.

Musk’s attorney Alex Spiro is threatening a lawsuit. He sent a letter to the Gibney-led Jigsaw Productions accusing the filmmaker of misrepresenting facts about the mogul. Spiro says the filmmaker suggested that Musk used his Starlink satellites to bend the 2024 election in favor of his friend and ally Donald Trump.

“You are … on notice, before release, that the insinuation is false, that the material refuting it is public, and that you chose not to be told the rest,” Spiro wrote. Spiro claimed he contacted the production “multiple times” and “requested an opportunity to present the facts in the normal fact-checking process that is the hallmark of ethical journalism. You have refused to engage.”

Gibney says Musk declined to be interviewed for the film. In his absence, the documentarian created a digital avatar of the Tesla CEO and used statements pulled from decades worth of the entrepreneur’s interviews and public appearances. The film chronicles his childhood in South Africa and his time in Silicon Valley, and suggests that Musk’s genius is not as an inventor but as an investor. His talent, the film contends, is stock-pumping.

“Musk” also reportedly explores how the trillionaire had access to sensitive techno-surveillance data when he ran the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under President Trump in 2025. Geoffrey Hinton , often referred to as the Godfather of AI, is interviewed in the film and explains why Musk’s potential access to the data is such a problem: “It’s fairly clear to me that Trump is hell-bent on corrupting the midterm elections,” Hinton says. “If you wanted to corrupt those midterm elections and you wanted to use AI, all you needed to do was get detailed information on U.S. citizens. And what DOGE did looked like just what you would do.”

Gibney in interviews about the film has warned that Musk’s widespread, unchecked power is “extremely dangerous to world democracy.”

“What I discovered was that the story of Musk was not [a] new tech story,” Gibney said in a news conference at the Venice Film Fest. “[It’s] really the story of an old wine in a new bottle. His story turns out to be the story of the confidence man, the stock pumper, his wealth and power comes from inflated stock, and so I had told that story before with Enron and with Elizabeth Holmes, and so it was a story that was oddly familiar to me.”

Gibney is renowned for taking on big money, corruption and anything else that reeks of injustice. He’s tackled Wall Street, big pharma, Scientology, Guantanamo, and even Theranos founder Holmes.

The new film about Holmes, “You Can See Everything,” offers a quirkier, up-close take on Holmes. Produced by A24 and set for an Oct. 16 theater release, it follows the disgraced CEO post-conviction, and she appears more than comfortable in front of the filmmakers and their cameras. Audiences at Telluride were surprised by the access she gave to the filmmakers, and that Holmes spoke openly about her plans to launch a biotech comeback and revive Theranos from her cell in a Texas prison camp.

Forget the celebrity glitz of high-profile film festivals. In these eat-the-rich times, it’s the dark side of wealth, fame and alleged genius that satiate audience appetites. Enter two new documentaries that feed the beast.

MS NOW wants to offer news viewers a break when they feel overwhelmed.

The Versant-owned progressive-leaning news outlet announced Tuesday that it has entered a partnership with Calm, the San Francisco company that develops apps that help with sleep and relaxation.

Calm will be a part of MS NOW’s new direct-to-consumer product that launches Wednesday.

The digital platform, called MS NOW Membership, will make the cable channel available without a pay TV subscription for the first time, along with other offerings for those who sign up to pay $7.99 a month.

Among those features will be meditation exercises created by Calm to help users process the day’s events.

“They are designed not as an invitation to tune out, but as a way to reset, regain perspective, and return to the news with renewed focus and intention,” according to a staff memo from Marcus Mabry, senior vice president for content strategy at MS NOW.

MS NOW has also enlisted a group of mental health experts who will front programs only available on the MS NOW Membership platform, including former ABC News correspondent and “Nightline” co-anchor Dan Harris. Harris is the author of “10% Happier,” and host of the podcast of the same name. He will host two weekly streaming programs to help viewers absorb the news while managing their anxiety about it.

Harris had a panic attack while delivering a newscast on ABC’s “Good Morning America” in 2004. The experience led him to become a wellness guru. Therapist Nedra Glover Tawwab, pediatric psychologist Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart, and Dr. Joel Bervell, a physician, will also have regular programs on the site, along with MS NOW breaking news anchor Richard Lui.

The Calm partnership is part of MS NOW’s overall plan to have MS NOW Membership offer more than just streaming programming. The channel’s executives are touting the venture as a gathering place for like-minded individuals who are engaged in politics.

MS NOW Membership is also giving subscribers a chance to join live discussions with the network’s anchors and reporters. There will be a midday online forumwhere they can ask questions of Rachel Maddow, Joe Scarborough, Jen Psaki, Stephanie Ruhle and other on-air talent. MS NOW correspondents will take questions in the evenings.

“We have always understood that MS NOW audiences want more than just headlines,” said MS NOW President Rebecca Kutler in a statement. “They have follow-up questions. They want to understand not only what’s happening, but why it matters. These daily conversations are designed to deepen that relationship and make our journalism even more accessible.”

The initiatives come after research by MS NOW, which broke off from NBCUniversal last year. MS NOW is now part of Versant, a new company made up of former NBCUniversal cable channels that were spun off by former owner Comcast.

Kutler has said the company is committed to providing more experiences for its audience of “super fans.” On average, MS NOW viewers watch the channel nine hours per week, second only to Fox News.

TELLURIDE, Colo. — The Telluride Film Festival has always enjoyed keeping a secret. Tucked away in the Colorado mountains with nary a red carpet or paparazzo in sight, the low-key film festival doesn’t announce its lineup until the day before opening and surprise additions have long been a fixture of the event.

But even by Telluride standards, organizers went to unusual lengths this year to keep their biggest surprise under wraps. They had carved out a prime Sunday evening slot for a world premiere that, fingers crossed, would remain unknown until the audience was seated inside the theater. Festival director Julie Huntsinger offered only a few clues beforehand. The film involved some “very known names,” she told The Times. “Do not miss it. Your jaw will be on the ground for the entire length of the film.”

For three days, trying to crack the mystery became Telluride’s unofficial parlor game. Was it Aaron Sorkin’s “The Social Reckoning”? Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune: Part Three”? Alex Gibney’s Elon Musk documentary “Musk”? By Sunday, the mounting speculation had become fodder for jokes: Introducing his new movie “Club Kid” earlier in the day, writer-director-star Jordan Firstman announced that the evening’s TBA would be a newly restored print of Jerry Seinfeld’s 2007 animated film “Bee Movie.” “Just kidding,” he added. “I love Jerry.”

The festival kept the suspense going right up to showtime. Before entering the Werner Herzog Theatre on Sunday evening, hundreds of moviegoers were required to lock their phones in pouches to prevent spreading the word. Inside, they were warned that security guards equipped with night-vision goggles would be watching for anyone who managed to keep a phone accessible.

Taking the stage, Huntsinger made one last plea for secrecy. “What happens in Telluride stays in Telluride,” she told the crowd, before bringing out Nathan Fielder, the deadpan comic mind behind the reality-bending television shows “Nathan for You,” “The Rehearsal” and “The Curse.”

What Telluride had been guarding so carefully was “You Can See Everything,” a nearly three-hour documentary about convicted Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, co-directed by Fielder and documentary filmmaker Lance Oppenheim. The film, which A24 will release theatrically in October, had been made largely in secret over three years.

“For those of you who don’t know who we are and are disappointed, I apologize,” Fielder, joined onstage by Oppenheim, told the crowd to laughs. “But hopefully by the end of the film, you’ll be slightly less disappointed.”

The movie begins 34 days before Holmes is due to report to federal prison, with Fielder, Oppenheim and a small crew given extraordinary access to her life with her partner, Billy Evans, and their young children. Holmes and Evans embrace what they call “radical transparency,” opening their home to the cameras in hopes of convincing the filmmakers — and eventually the world — that the public has fundamentally misunderstood her.

But as anyone familiar with Fielder’s reenactment-heavy work can imagine, “You Can See Everything” quickly becomes something far stranger than a conventional documentary. Fielder finds himself drawn from behind the camera into the story, struggling to determine whether Holmes and Evans are being candid with him or manipulating him. From there, the movie takes a series of increasingly surreal turns, including elaborate reenactments involving a Hollywood actress (her arrival is too good to spoil) that further scramble the line between reality and performance.

During a post-screening Q&A moderated by Emma Stone, who co-starred with Fielder in the darkly comic A24 series “The Curse,” Fielder said that his own inability to get a firm grip on what he was witnessing became one of the forces driving the project.

“We’re all smart and we’re really working at the top of our intelligence,” he recalled thinking as he and the crew tried to make sense of their time with Holmes and Evans. “Why can’t we make sense of what’s happening in this house?”

The project began, appropriately enough, with a magic trick.

Oppenheim said he and Fielder were at the Magic Castle in Los Angeles several years ago when a magician asked the audience to name a celebrity. Someone called out Elizabeth Holmes. Afterward, Oppenheim told Fielder he had heard through a friend of a friend that Holmes was looking for someone to document her life.

Fielder had read John Carreyrou’s “Bad Blood,” the bestselling 2018 account of Theranos’ rise and collapse and initially saw little reason to make another documentary about Holmes.

“I thought the story was really fully told,” he told the Telluride crowd. Holmes, however, had largely disappeared from public view, and Fielder was curious about what she might have to say for herself.

Meeting her only deepened that curiosity. Sitting across from Holmes, Fielder said, he found her “sort of honest and charming,” even as his brain was warning him, “No, don’t trust.” That disconnect — between what he knew about Holmes and what he felt in her presence — became central to the movie.

A24 gave Fielder and Oppenheim unusual freedom to pursue the project without any deadline or obligation to turn what they captured into a finished film. If nothing came of it, Fielder recalled being told, “you can just throw everything away.”

Holmes founded Theranos in 2003 and became one of Silicon Valley’s most celebrated young entrepreneurs by claiming the company could perform a wide range of medical tests using only a few drops of blood. The company collapsed after investigations exposed serious problems with its technology and business practices. In 2022, Holmes was convicted on four counts related to defrauding investors and later sentenced to more than 11 years in federal prison.

As shown in “You Can See Everything,” once Holmes reports to federal prison, the filmmakers’ access to her changes dramatically, with Evans — who takes over Holmes’ Twitter feed and assumes power of attorney over her decisions — becoming their main conduit. Fielder said the relationship grew strained as Evans tried to exert greater control over the project. Neither Holmes nor Evans has seen the finished movie.

Fielder is hoping to keep the film’s biggest surprises under wraps. During the Q&A, he told the Telluride audience he hoped future viewers could experience the film without knowing where it was headed. Stone seconded the request.

“You won’t be upsetting me,” Fielder joked. “You’ll be upsetting Oscar-winning actress Emma Stone.”

Fielder said that even after three years immersed in her world, he still doesn’t know quite what to make of Holmes — or how much of what she says can be believed.

“I really am struggling to this day to understand exactly what I experienced in this,” he said. “I don’t quite know what I went through.”

As the crowd filed out of the Herzog, one reaction seemed to recur more than any other: “That was wild.”

When the 53rd Telluride Film Festival kicks off Friday high in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains, its lineup will span family rupture and sumo wrestling, AIDS and rock stardom, with films touching on astronomy, Rupert Murdoch and extraterrestrial biker gangs — a typically wide-ranging mix for a festival that likes to keep audiences guessing.

For festival director Julie Huntsinger, the films share less a theme than a feeling. “Tenderness is something that I see in a lot of the movies,” she says. “This is a very heartbreaking, tender year.”

Telluride’s intimacy is part of its peculiar power. Smaller and scruffier than the annual film events of Venice, Toronto or New York, the four-day festival has no competition or juried prizes and keeps its lineup secret until the last minute. Celebrities trade red-carpet formality for jeans and flannel, while audiences crisscross town between screenings in a high school auditorium, a Masonic lodge, the county courthouse and half a dozen other spaces pressed into service for the week.

For a festival that can feel this homespun, its awards-season footprint is remarkably large. Last year, five of the 10 eventual best picture Oscar nominees screened there: “Hamnet,” “Bugonia,” “Sentimental Value,” “The Secret Agent” and “Frankenstein.”

This year there are fewer obvious awards heavyweights in the mix, at a time when prestige and independent films have become harder to finance, distribute and sell to audiences. Then again, Telluride has never depended entirely on known quantities; films such as “Slumdog Millionaire” and “Moonlight” arrived with relatively modest expectations and left as major contenders.

“It’s such a quintessential Telluride lineup,” Huntsinger says of this year’s eclectic program. “They kind of always feel that way because they’re so handmade.”

Among the more than 40 films in Telluride’s main program are new works from major directors such as Martin McDonagh, Werner Herzog, Mike Leigh, Danny Boyle and Paweł Pawlikowski. This year’s Silver Medallion tributes — the festival’s signature career honorees — will go to filmmaker Andrew Haigh and actors Sandra Hüller and John Malkovich, who will make his first trip to Telluride.

John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell in Martin McDonagh’s “Wild Horse Nine”

(Diego Araya Corvalan / Searchlight Pictures)

Haigh, whose films include “All of Us Strangers,” “Lean on Pete” and “45 Years,” returns with “A Long Winter,” adapted from a Colm Tóibín novella and relocated from the Pyrenees to the American Rockies in the 1950s. Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Caitríona Balfe, Kit Connor and Fred Hechinger star as members of a struggling family that begins to unravel after the mother disappears.

Huntsinger calls Haigh deeply humanist. “I don’t know how Andrew is so skilled at getting these performances but that is truly his gift,” she says.

Malkovich comes to Telluride with the dark comedy “Wild Horse Nine,” the latest from McDonagh, writer-director of “The Banshees of Inisherin” and “In Bruges.” Malkovich and Sam Rockwell play veteran CIA operatives who, after helping destabilize Salvador Allende’s government in 1973 Chile, head to Easter Island on a more personal assignment.

“It’s my favorite thing that McDonagh has ever done,” Huntsinger says. “He’s quite incisive. It is a timely film. And Malkovich is extraordinary.”

Hüller returns after a breakout 2023 Telluride, where she brought both “Anatomy of a Fall” and “The Zone of Interest.” She has another two films in the lineup this year: Markus Schleinzer’s “Rose,” in which she plays a woman passing as a male soldier during Europe’s Thirty Years’ War, and Pawlikowski’s “Fatherland” as Erika Mann on a journey back to postwar Germany with her father, the author and Hitler critic Thomas Mann.

Huntsinger seems as taken with Hüller herself as with her artistry — “so much intelligence and compassion for human beings,” she says.

Sandra Hüller and Hanns Zischler in the movie “Fatherland.”

(Agata Grzybowska / Mubi)

Elsewhere, Ira Sachs’ “The Man I Love,” starring Rami Malek, Tom Sturridge and this year’s guest director Rebecca Hall, looks back at New York’s queer creative community during the AIDS crisis. In Simon Stone’s “Elsinore,” Andrew Scott plays “Chariots of Fire” star Ian Charleson, who took on the role of Hamlet at the National Theatre while dying of AIDS. Scott’s performance is already generating early awards-season attention.

Huntsinger hopes audiences won’t overlook Arthur Harari’s “The Unknown,” an uncanny body-swapping drama starring Léa Seydoux that uses its genre premise to explore questions of identity and selfhood. “It is really dense and obtuse but I think it is rewarding and I hope people take up the challenge,” she says.

Telluride has long emphasized nonfiction and this year is no exception. Among the higher-profile entries are “Pete Townshend: Behind Blue Eyes,” a portrait of the Who guitarist and songwriter, and Nanette Burstein’s “Carl Sagan: We Are Made of Star Stuff,” about the astronomer and science communicator. The slate also includes Bryan Fogel’s endurance-sports documentary “The Row”; Pegah Ahangarani’s Iran-focused “Rehearsals for a Revolution”; and Mark Cousins’ 16-hour “The Story of Documentary Film.”

“Everest: The Other Side,” from filmmakers Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, follows mountaineers Hilaree Nelson and Jim Morrison as they prepare to climb Everest’s north face and attempt an unprecedented ski descent. Chin and Vasarhelyi won an Oscar for 2018’s “Free Solo,” their nerve-shredding chronicle of Alex Honnold’s ropeless ascent up El Capitan.

Huntsinger calls the new film “an even more complex, emotional, deep and profound examination of what we call the call of the wild.” After seeing it, she says, she ran into Chin and blurted out, “I’m so glad you’re alive.”

The looming subject of artificial intelligence will also get its own moment in Telluride. A conversation called “The Humanity Dilemma” will examine what the festival calls the “species-level event” of AI’s rise and whether an AI-dominated future is inevitable. “I’m very worried about AI,” Huntsinger says.

For all the films Telluride has announced, the one that might generate the most chatter is still under wraps.

While Telluride routinely reserves “TBA” slots for popular repeat screenings, it has occasionally used them to spring an unannounced title on audiences — as it did last year with “Frankenstein.” This year it has set aside a prime Sunday night slot for just such a surprise: a world premiere involving, Huntsinger says, some “very known names.”

“Do not miss it,” she teases. “You just won’t see this one coming and your jaw will be on the ground for the entire length of the film.” Beyond that, Huntsinger falls back on the festival’s unofficial motto: “Underpromise, overdeliver.”

Inevitably, there will be guessing. One possibility is “The Social Reckoning,” a follow-up to “The Social Network” directed by its Oscar-winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin. This one’s about Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen and Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz and stars Jeremy Strong, Mikey Madison and Jeremy Allen White. It’s due from Sony on Oct. 9. The film was still undergoing reshoots in mid-July.

Huntsinger volunteers one thing: The mystery film is not Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Digger,” a gonzo satire starring Tom Cruise, Hüller, Riz Ahmed, John Goodman and Jesse Plemons. She says Iñárritu — whose last film, “Bardo,” had a rocky reception on the 2022 festival circuit — was adamant that the decision wasn’t about avoiding festivals.

“As I understand it, there’s a big twist that he would like audiences to discover as close together as possible,” she says of “Digger,” which premieres in London Sept. 22 before opening Oct. 2.

Two of last year’s biggest Oscar contenders, “Sinners” and “One Battle After Another,” also skipped fall festival launches, raising questions about how essential such festivals — Telluride among them — remain to an awards campaign.

Huntsinger understands why a studio might hesitate to expose a film to scrutiny months before release. “The stain can happen if something gets savaged very far ahead of a release,” she says. “There’s a lot at stake.”

But she isn’t convinced the model is broken. She still believes the smaller, more challenging films Telluride tends to champion have “genuine shots” in the Oscar race.

“Getting selected is the prize,” Huntsinger says.

After all the strategizing and prognosticating, what no one can predict is which films will actually connect once audiences arrive.

“I don’t know what people are going to fall in love with,” Huntsinger says. “People have become like cats rather than dogs. You just never know what they’re going to go for.”

Jared Freid remembers the moment he found his true calling in comedy.

Oddly it came after he’d already found success with his debut Netflix special “37 & Single” in 2023, which allowed him to live the stand-up dream of making it to a big streamer. But then that moment passed and the Boston-bred comic was once again starting from square one scrounging for joke ideas. That’s when he decided to dig up an old story he’d told on stage about his dad body-shaming him during a family outing in Delrey Beach, Fla.

“We’re sitting at the beach, and my dad asked me how much I weighed, and I was so mad about it,” Freid remembers. Seething at his dad for poking at his body insecurities, the comedian dealt with his emotions like any good millennial — by podcasting about it. Venting the story that took only about a minute to tell on a microphone led to more fights with his aging boomer parents soon after when they heard the episode.

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Jared Freid sits down with LA Times Entertainment Editor Nate Jackson to discuss his new Netflix hour, “The Family Plan,” which turns a beach blowup with his dad into a sharply observed, big-hearted look at boomer-millennial family warfare and reconciliation.

Scrolling back through that memory, Freid said something clicked when he thought about the alarmingly close relationship millennials still have with their parents in adulthood including still being on the family cellphone plan. “I can pay my own cellphone bill, but I’m still on their family plan,” he said. “That says something about the millennial/boomer relationship, in my opinion. We’re weirdly attached to our parents, and in a way that no other generations were tied like that, like not mushed together.”

Extending his one-minute bit into a full hour in his new Netflix special “The Family Plan” (out on Tuesday) took two and a half years of dedication polishing the story and seeing it start to resonate on tour at shows around the world. It also required him understanding that what underlies the struggles between millennials and their parents is how shockingly alike they are despite being constantly annoyed by each other. Freid now says his goal is to be a family-friendly comedian for families that usually aren’t friendly with each other but can easily agree on that fact while they laugh at jokes about themselves.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

Your new one-hour special was inspired by a one-minute story you’ve told about a fight with your dad at the beach. You tapped into something really universal with the strife between boomer parents and their millennial children — a real tug of war for power that’s happening in a lot of people’s lives right now.

Totally, I and I feel it, especially because we can talk back to [our boomer parents] in a respectful way. We can have debates. You’re finding out your parents are just people too. I started telling people on my podcast, “Bring your parents.” This special is to be enjoyed with your family. You’d see a guy with his dad [at one of my shows], point at him and go “[Jared’s] talking about you!” That made me feel so good. I did it in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, I did it everywhere, and it was always just unbelievable how much people related to it and now it’s how I want to do comedy. This is who I am. This special means so much to me. It’s been a fight to get it out. I wanted it on a platform like Netflix because I want parents to watch it with their kids. It’s hard enough to get your parents on your Netflix account. Imagine getting them to watch a special on YouTube? They’re not going to do it. So I need this to be in a place where boomers and millennials can share it with each other and enjoy it together.

As an adult, what’s been the most interesting thing about seeing what things you picked up from your parents despite constantly arguing with them?

We’re exactly the same. We’re so alike that that’s probably why my dad’s asking me how much I weigh at the beach because I also look like him. It’s almost like an argument with yourself. I’m a version of him, and he’s a version of me. I have a lot of empathy for my parents. I’m 41, no kids, never married. They had to grow up while having a kid. I can’t understand that.

Right now there’s a lot of talk about divorcing your parents going around. I also can’t understand that for a second, because it’s not in my nature. For so many of the things that I go through in my life and feel frustrated by, [my parents] are, they’re my conscience a lot of times. Like when I wonder whether I should go right or left, I hear my mom in my head like, “You’re gonna go right? Why would you go right? You always go right. You’re lazy.” I hear them. I feel like I understand them more now, being older.

From selling life insurance in New York to headlining global tours and hit podcasts, Freid has built a devoted, largely female fan base that treats his stand-up like family therapy.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Every generation has their obstacles, and we’re constantly looking at each saying “Oh, you have it easy, no you have it easy!” But in your special, it kind of comes out that there’s obstacles for every group.

Totally. I don’t do comedy to make anyone feel bad. I do it to make people laugh and enjoy. And like it was cool to see a family would come to me to take a picture afterwards, and then the parents would be like, “We’re the boomers you’re making fun of.” I’m making fun of them, but I’m also making fun of ourselves [as millennials]. And I think it strikes a balance between the two because it does show that I love my family. I love how I grew up. I love that you know the people in my life. That doesn’t mean you can’t be totally angered by them.

Where did you cut your teeth in comedy?

I started in New York. I was selling life insurance and annuities in New York, and I was writing funny emails to friends. Any time we were on the same group email, Gmail, or G Chat it was always “what did we do last weekend, and what are we going to do this weekend?” And then you just make fun of each other. Anytime someone would write back “Oh my God, I’m dying at my desk. That made me laugh so hard,” I was like, “That that feels like drugs. How do I get that?” I started doing open mics, and I kind of treated it like grad school. I did improv, sketch, and storytelling. I took all these classes, and just to see what I liked, because I just wanted to be funny for my friends. Plus I could go to open mics at night, so you could add that in and feel forward momentum.

Being a millennial comedian right now seems very much like being stuck between two worlds of having the old model of success in comedy you learned from your idols and then you have people who are younger than you who are blowing up just by like posting a random video.

What you’re saying is completely right. Like we’d look up to these guys like Colin Quinn on his show “Tough Crowd,” that’s the table I wanted to sit at, and I wanted to hang out with those guys and bust each other’s chops, that’s what comedy is. I always could see myself at that table, but I also understood that table is kind of earned. You don’t just get to it because you’re funny. When I started, you could count the comedians on one hand that could do theaters, without being on a TV show. You know, there was like Brian Regan, Kathleen Madigan, Jim Gaffigan. These people weren’t on TV, but they had their audience, so it was very different to be a stand-up. Earthquake is in that group. Then you look at the sitcom people who get to do stand-up because they were on a sitcom, like you know Seinfeld and you know Ray Romano, and these are great stand-ups.

A millennial comic wedged between club legends and viral upstarts, Freid uses candid stories and crowd work to bridge generational divides — including in L.A.’s intimate, under-the-radar comedy rooms.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

How did podcasting allow you to grow your career in a different way?

I thought “well, I’m listening to these podcasts. I should start a podcast.” And I was downloading podcasts in 15-minute increments to my iPod Nano. I love talk radio. I grew up on WEI in Boston. I love sports, I like sports talk, I like high energy shows. At that time, I thought everyone had one, but now I look like I started early. I can do a podcast where I can speak directly to people who might want to come to my shows. I didn’t even think of ads. I wasn’t thinking of that stuff. I was just [thinking] I can talk right to someone who likes what I do, and I would team up with these websites… I was trying to do this internet stuff, understanding there was power there. I was caught between two worlds, working on my stand-up as kind of my nighttime job, and then doing these podcasts and contributing wherever I could as a daytime job.

When you started working with Betches Media through podcasting on shows like “U Up?” [with platform co-founder Jordana Abraham] it opened up a lane for you to suddenly grow a female audience in a way that seemed natural despite being out of the ordinary for most straight male comedians. What’s that been like to grow that type of audience?

It’s weirdly gratifying. It’s not what I was like angling towards. I think if I was angling towards a female audience as a stand-up, it wouldn’t work. I think that it would be a lie. I’m so happy with it. I feel really thankful because you know the [founders of] Betches [Abraham, Aleen Dreksler and Samantha Fishbein] they’re my sisters. The audience is family like when they come to shows I know them, you know, that’s like a beautiful thing and I think especially in the world of stand-up where all you hear about is like the Manosphere and the Rogan types, and a lot of stand-up comedy is men dragging a girlfriend to someone they think is funny because they get an ego puff out of showing a woman who they know is to be funny. And my shows are very different. It’s women bringing their boyfriends, women who now bring their husbands, couples coming together, and I love it.

Lastly, what cellphone family plan are you and your parents currently on?

Oh, we’re on T-Mobile. I’m getting kicked off by my dad currently.

Because you’re too famous?

Yeah, he’s like it’s getting embarrassing for him. I could pay for it myself. I just like, now I got to go to the store, I gotta go do it. It’s annoying.

British actor Tim Curry, who famously commanded attention as the seductive mad scientist Dr. Frank-N-Furter in cult classic oddball musical “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” has died. He was 80.

The Daytime Emmy-winning actor’s longtime manager and friend Marcia Hurwitz confirmed that Curry died Wednesday at his home in Toluca Lake, in a statement shared with The Times. A cause of death was not revealed. The Cheshire native suffered a stroke in 2013, impairing his ability to walk. Though he remained in a wheelchair until his death, the actor continued working through his final years.

“Though widely known for his inimitable, flamboyant characters and colorful stage performances,” the statement said of Curry, “his greatest legacies to those who knew him were his curious, expansive mind and generous, gentle heart, both of which remained open and filled with anticipation until his final breath.”

Curry is best known for originating the role of Dr. Frank-N-Furter, the self-proclaimed “Sweet Transvestite” and purveyor of pleasure who guides a stranded young couple — and audiences — through an unpredictable evening of sexual exploration and liberation. He debuted the offbeat experimental musical in fishnets and pearls in 1973 on the tiny stage upstairs at the Royal Court Theater in London, where it first became an underground sensation.

“The Rocky Horror Picture Show” hit the big screen in 1975, with Susan Sarandon as Janet and Barry Bostwick as Brad. A rock ‘n’ roll take on sci-fi and horror B-movies, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” became the original midnight movie that endeared generations of audiences with its flamboyant characters, spawned interactive screenings across the country and secured its spot in the pop culture lexicon.

“It was part of the sexual revolution, really,” Curry told The Times in 2025 upon the film’s 50th anniversary. “Experiment was in the air and it was palpable. I gave them permission to be who they discovered they wanted to be. I’m proud of that.”

Curry flexed his versatile acting through more than Frank-N-Furter’s showy elevator debut and his vulnerable “I’m Going Home” finale. He was also a sinister Pennywise in the miniseries adaptation of Stephen King’s “It,” a secretive butler named Wadsworth in “Clue,” and the evil Lord of Darkness in “Legend.” A screen chameleon capable of morphing from the supernatural to the pedestrian, Curry was also known for his work as fabled pirate Long John Silver in “Muppet Treasure Island” and as a skeptical hotel concierge in “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.”

He was a prolific voice actor known for the environmental classic “FernGully: The Last Rainforest” and TV series “The Wild Thornberries,” “Star Wars: The Clone Wars,” “Over the Garden Wall” and “Aaahh!!! Real Monsters.”

Timothy James Curry was born April 19, 1946, to father Jim Curry, a Navy chaplain, and mother Maura Curry. After losing his father at age 12, Curry earned a scholarship to the Kingswood School in Bath. Curry’s grandfather took him to music halls, fostering his love for the art.

“I was really taken with the great Technicolor musicals; it’s the form that’s closest to my heart in a way,” Curry told The Times in 1992. “It’s the most comfortable synthesis of all the things I do.”

School productions eventually led Curry to the University of Birmingham, where he studied drama and English from 1965 to 1968, according to his website.

Curry made his professional debut in 1968 in the original London production of “Hair.” He had fibbed about having previous professional experience and an Equity card, but the production team thought Curry’s talents were reason enough to sponsor him. After he starred in several productions including “Titus Andronicus,” “Cinderella” and “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” co-star Richard O’Brien in 1973 invited the actor to audition for a new work — one that would later solidify Curry as a generational screen and stage icon.

With Curry anchoring as Frank-N-Furter, O’Brien’s “Rocky Horror Picture Show” first came to life at the Royal Court’s Theatre Upstairs. Then larger venues overseas included L.A.’s Roxy Theatre. Eventually, with the support of producer Lou Adler, the show made it to the screen. The same year “Rocky Horror Picture Show” hit cinemas in 1975, its Broadway run at the Belasco Theatre shuttered after 45 showings and negative reviews. Over the years, harsh criticism proved no match for “Rocky Horror Picture Show’s” unexpected staying power.

The musical had been revived numerous times in New York and London, including in 2001 with the Broadway revival earning multiple Tony Award nominations including a nomination for revival of a musical.

The “Rocky Horror Picture Show” film and Curry’s melodramatic Frank-N-Furter have remained cultural touchstones, spawning the popular “anticipation” online meme and inspiring spoofs on “Glee,” “The Simpsons” and a beloved character (with hormone-manipulating abilities) in the popular Japanese manga and anime “One Piece.”

To Curry, Frank-N-Furter was more than just that “sweet transvestite” obsessed with manufacturing the perfect man.

“He’s a fairly complex guy,” he told The Times in 1974. “He just takes anything he can get. He’s not fussy, really. Though I think he’s something of a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am.”

Through the late 70s to early aughts, Curry balanced stage commitments with screen projects and musical endeavors. His stage resumé includes productions of Tom Stoppard’s “Travesties” for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the title role in playwright Peter Shaffer’s “Amadeus” (that would earn him a Tony nomination) and Joseph Papp’s take on “Pirates of Penzance.” All the while, he gained fame for roles in “Annie,” “Clue,” “Home Alone 2” and “Addams Family Reunion.” As a recording artist, Curry released three albums between 1978 and 1981: “Read My Lips,” “Fearless” and “Simplicity.”

In 1988 Curry returned stateside for a U.S. tour of “Me & My Girl,” which he followed with a residency at the Pantages. It was then the actor decided to permanently return to Los Angeles as a resident. His move to Southern California coincided with the beginning of his Emmy-winning voice acting career, which started with a role for Hanna Barbera’s animated adaptation of “The Creation.”

Curry won his Daytime Emmy Award in 1991 for voicing Captain Hook in “Peter Pan and the Pirates” and earned a Grammy nomination in 2002 for the audiobook of “Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events.” He performed voice roles for video games including television and film tie-ins “Brutal Legend” and “Dragon Age: Origins.”

The British star primarily worked in voice roles after he suffered a major stroke in 2013. Since then, Curry had been in a wheelchair, with on-screen cameos including as the criminologist in the 2016 TV remake of “Rocky Horror.” Still, the image of Curry’s fierce Frank-N-Furter continues to pervade pop culture — even if that wasn’t his original intention.

“None of it was planned, really. I just knew I had to take risks,” he told The Times in 1974. “Life is like acting in that way. You’ve got to take risks. If you take big risks, it’s then up to you whether or not you pull it off.”

More than 50 years after that interview, Curry told The Times that he had no doubt in what he was doing. Revisiting his home away from home, the Roxy Theatre, in the fall of 2025, Curry said it had become “my stomping ground.”

“I had to appear as though I owned it — and I kind of did.”

“It Ends,” a microbudget marvel by 20-something writer-director Alexander Ullom, has a straightforward premise that expands in your imagination.

Four school pals — go-getter James (Phinehas Yoon), drop-out Tyler (Mitchell Cole), anxious Fisher (Noah Toth) and creative Day (Akira Jackson) — pile into a Jeep just after college graduation. The car turns onto a dark road that, to the youngsters’ growing unease, appears to stretch on forever through an infinite forest. There’s no safe place to pull over, no signs pointing toward escape, no assurance that their lives have a destination. Stop moving and a horde of desperate, violent strangers sprint from the woods to try to steal their car. Keep going … for how long? Is this hell, purgatory or just a cosmic punchline?

“It Ends” premiered at SXSW in the spring of 2025, over a year before audiences stormed Kane Parsons’ “Backrooms,” yet the two breakout filmmakers share a suspicion that our seemingly ordinary existence hides something very, very wrong. The scale of the peril is hard to comprehend and harder to articulate; they’re more curious to explore the crisis than find a fix. What matters is that humanity feels lost.

Everyone in the car already seems to sense it even before this particular ride goes awry. Yoon’s dour James has impressively (and depressingly) mapped out his next few money-making decades down to his eventual diminished sperm count. To him, the future “seems like it sucks ass.” Weary Tyler has resigned himself to blue-collar work. Fisher and Day can’t even secure jobs, stuck literally and metaphorically frittering away their youth in the back seat.

The first act has a visceral, terrifying sequence with panicky close-ups of extras sprinting pell-mell toward the car. (The credits list as many background actors as crew members.) Matthew Robert Cooper’s unnerving ambient score bleeds into the relentless dink-dink-dink of the Jeep’s strobing hazard lights.

For several minutes afterward, the images are so disorienting that we can’t even make out where anyone in the car is sitting. Then cinematographers Evan Draper and Jazleana Jones along with Ullom, who also edits, take a steadier hand with evocative montages that emphasize the passage of time.

With rare exception, the camera stays tethered to the vehicle. The blur outside becomes enveloping and unfathomable; the universe inside the car evolves as the friends invent tension-defusing rituals to keep from screaming at one another. The mood toggles between cozily habituated and heavy. How long have they been driving now?

Early on, I kept a running tally of the hours until that began to feel naive. The days blend together with no time stamps, although Ullom occasionally reveals how many miles the car has gone. I did some back-of-my-notepad math and realized you can drive massive distances faster than I would have guessed. Then I pictured myself in their seats. Excruciating.

Evading plot holes, “It Ends” paves over the obvious biological needs. The foursome discover they no longer need to eat or drink. Likewise, the car no longer needs gas. The characters check off every idea you want them to try in the small space of the car, plus other brilliant brainstorms. Bursting through the confinements of movie logic, “It Ends” untrains audiences out of their certainty that every crisis has a solution. Does it even matter what they do?

Dread runs through “It Ends,” yet I’m hesitant to frame it as a horror movie. Scares fall by the wayside when it shifts into a more philosophical gear, vibrating with questions about how to live a meaningful life: Should these victims accept their fate or keep struggling? At least one will leave the car, never to be seen again as Ullom shrewdly refuses to reveal whether that choice was right. I think the filmmaker has an answer for himself, but he’d rather ask how we feel about it. Keep an open mind. Your opinion may change more than once.

This car setting taps into our cultural belief that speeding ahead is progress, an opinion shared by films as varied as “The Fast and the Furious,” “Mad Max: Fury Road,” “Two-Lane Blacktop,” and “Thelma & Louise.” Like actual religion, to continue on versus stopping becomes a question of faith. Some find comfort deciding on an answer, any answer. Others are driven by the spiritual quest itself.

The cast of unknowns is fantastic. It’s a major feat to shoulder a movie sitting still. Yoon’s prickly, unlikable James is the character many will align with, to their chagrin. Cole’s Tyler acts practically while collapsing into a black hole of cynicism. You’ve met a dozen guys like him who all claim “So what?” is the only sensible reaction. The jokers Toth and Jackson, bless them, keep things endearing and funny.

I’m bored of studios and indie financiers forcing filmmakers to stick to so-called bankable names. From “Heated Rivalry” to “Obsession,” this has been a phenomenal year for discovering fresh faces. Hopefully Hollywood won’t misunderstand the lesson in those projects’ success. It’s not to add Connor Storrie and Inde Navarrette to that stifling shortlist — it’s how much more talent there is waiting for a shot. (And it’s worth mentioning that Yoon and Cole also direct their own movies.)

Some of Ullom’s richest themes need only a casual mention, like Fisher muttering that he has fewer photos of his family on his phone than stupid memes. The friends are passingly concerned that they’ve outsourced too much of their mental stimulation to the internet. Now that they don’t have Wi-Fi, will they run out of topics to discuss? In these murmurs, Ullom wonders how much modern technology has led us astray. Obeying GPS has trapped them on this road in the first place, and may have done the same to those wretches in the woods, each so individually fixated on carjacking the Jeep that it never occurs to them to team up. A material goal devolves people into savages. At least Ullom has a slight optimism that society can turn things around.

Climbing into my car after “It Ends” felt like a sick joke. Was I really steering straight back to work? When was the last time I pulled over for an ice cream? But I kept on driving until I made it to my desk to start this review. That’s how excited I was to share the news of Ullom’s staggering debut. It’s a thrill to see his generation of filmmakers take the wheel.