There really is something about Mary. I’m talking, of course, about Mary Todd Lincoln of Cole Escola’s runaway camp hit, “Oh, Mary!,” which opened Thursday at the Ahmanson Theatre.
Escola, who won a Tony Award for playing Mary, has created a role that has become a holy grail for the most fearless and demented of naughty clowns. Bowen Yang is starring in the play on Broadway, and Betty Gilpin, Maya Rudolph and Tituss Burgess are among the luminaries who have staggered to great acclaim in the character’s high heels.
In the show’s Los Angeles premiere, singer, actor, drag star and winner of “RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 2” Alaska Thunderf— commandeers this camp ship with the authority of a pirate armed with an AK-47. She’s undeterrable — and exactly what the production needs to live up to its frenzied hype in a venue as large as the Ahmanson.
But just who is this Mary Todd Lincoln sprung from Escola’s feverish imagination? Well, she’s a frustrated first lady and a desperate lush, married to a man who is busy fighting two Civil Wars, one against the South and the other against his homosexual urges. (And like the South, those urges keep threatening to rise again.)
By her account she’s “a rather well-known niche cabaret legend,” whose career was “cut short by a love affair gone horribly right.” Mary’s Husband (delectably played by John-Andrew Morrison) has another take on Mary’s aborted stint in showbiz. But his main concern is making sure that she doesn’t get her hands on any more booze and embarrass him when his political fate is hanging by a thread.
The South wants him out and the North isn’t much happier. The stress is maddening, and his young male assistant (Michael Lepore) is so eager to please that the president can barely control himself.
A chaperone (Pooya Mohseni) has been engaged to keep Mary in line, but an exorcist would be more in order. This goody two-shoes, with an erotic fetish for ice cream that she mistakenly shares, is defenseless against Mary’s unbridled assault.
Standing tall in a mourning hoop gown and Shirley Temple curls, Alaska’s Mary is like a cross between “The Bad Seed” and “Mommie Dearest.” Joan Crawford herself would back down in a standoff.
Her savagery knows no check. Bored, she amuses herself by throwing her chaperone down a flight of stairs, setting fire to her house and spilling the poor woman’s dirty secret, which she has pried out of her as though it were another bottle of booze locked in her husband’s desk drawer.
An acting teacher (Wesley Taylor) has been brought in to keep Mary from basically destroying the White House. But her talent for reciting Shakespeare is even less obvious than her self-proclaimed gift for cabaret medleys.
“Oh, Mary!” has its L.A. premiere at the Ahamanson Theatre.
(Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade)
What a polymorphously perverse web Escola weaves! Everywhere you look, there are furtive sexual shenanigans afoot. Does Mary want to run off with her acting teacher? Does her chaperone have designs on Mary’s Husband? Does Mary‘s Husband really want to kill off his gay compulsions?
The production, directed by Tony winner Sam Pinkleton, treats the play like a Victorian toy melodrama. Blackouts and clanging piano music italicize the sardonic tension.
The scenic design by dots and the costumes by Holly Pierson create a dollhouse world of inverted morality. Pinkleton ensures that the arch aesthetic of the mise en scène is rigorously observed in the playing.
The cast is terrific across the board, with Alaska and Morrison valiantly leading the madcap charge. Morrison’s lusty humor brings the Oval Office temptations of his character fiendishly to life. His aide’s obedient presence is like a casserole that has been especially prepared to derail Mary’s Husband from his abstemious diet.
Alaska struggles to make one bit of physical comedy work. (She may be too tall for the seduction scene with her teacher in which she has to somehow gracefully slide off her husband’s desk.) But I loved the malicious spin she inflects on her lines, the voice of a cat fiddling with its prey before sinking in its murderous claws.
I can’t pretend that “Oh, Mary!” is my idea of comic heaven. I grew up watching brilliant drag acts during my days in the New York clubs in the 1980s and early ’90s, and my theatrical sensibility was shaped by the peerless camp parodies of the Ridiculous Theatrical Company.
In becoming more mainstream, drag has lost some of its dangerousness. “Oh, Mary!” owes as much to “The Carol Burnett Show” as it does to a queer tradition of underground performance. Had Alaska stormed out wearing curtains with the rod still attached, à la Burnett in the famous “Gone With the Wind” send-up, I would not have been at all surprised, even though I’ve seen the play twice before, both times with Escola.
But “Oh, Mary!” is a welcome diversion — a revisionist lark with an irreverent LGBTQ+ spirit. The success of the production hinges in large part on its impressive tonal execution. Pinkleton’s production hits every mark of Escola’s alt-comedy.
Audiences are clearly eager to buy what “Oh, Mary!” is selling — athletically performed cheeky fun. Maybe the third time for me was the charm. Instead of longing for more depth, I let the mildly subversive high jinks carry me away on a much-needed holiday from reality.
‘Oh, Mary!’
Where: Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles
When: Ends Dec. 6. Check website for days and times.
Christian Cousins, the former child actor who starred as Dominic Palmieri in the 1990 movie “Kindergarten Cop,” has died. He was 43.
The actor’s half-brother, Jonas Roeser, announced the death on social media last month, writing that Cousins “had been very sick with liver disease.”
Cousins and his twin brother, Joseph, starred alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in “Kindergarten Cop,” with the boys trading off in their portrayal of Dominic, the son of a dangerous drug dealer who had gone into hiding with his mother, Joyce. Schwarzenegger’s character, a Los Angeles police detective, goes undercover as a kindergarten teacher, falls for fellow teacher Joyce and becomes a father figure to Dominic.
“It’s hard to share that my brother, Christian Cousins, has passed away,” Roeser wrote on Instagram. “Christian and his twin brother, Joseph ‘Joey’ Cousins, are my brothers through my biological father. They grew up in California while I was in Washington and I didn’t get to know them until I was in college.
Roeser wrote that he grew up watching the twins on the CBS soap opera “Knots Landing” but that the acting roles were “only a small part of how I’ll remember Christian.”
“He was a character, full of passion and energy, with big stories and even bigger dreams,” Roeser wrote, adding that it “brings me comfort to believe he is now in heaven with his mother, free from the pain he was carrying.”
“Rest easy, Christian,” he wrote. “I hope your soul is at rest and that you’ve found peace. You are my brother and you will be missed.”
According to Cousins’ Facebook page, he was living in East Irvine and has struggled with health issues in recent years. Alongside a 2017 photograph of him cheekily lighting two cigarillos, he commented years later: “The good old days when I could be thin and smoke two bay Sherman’s in one hand. Now I’m regretting it all.”
Born March 17, 1983, in Orange County, Cousins was raised in Laguna Niguel. He and his twin brother shared roles across television and film in the ’80s and ’90s, including their portrayal of Bobby Ewing in “Knots Landing” from 1987 to 1993. Cousins also starred in the movies “Twin Sitters” and “Critters 3,” and the TV shows “Eerie, Indiana,” “Empty Nest” and “Intruders.”
During a “Kindergarten Cop” reunion Zoom call with the cast in 2020 hosted by Yahoo, Cousins described his experience acting in some of the most intense scenes of the film.
“I remember having to act more scared than I’d ever been on camera thus far in my career . . . it was actually a little difficult because despite how evil it seems my dad is, which is Richard Tyson — he’s like the nicest guy in the world in person,” he said. “It was really hard to act scared of somebody who after every scene [said] ‘That was awesome; you did great!’”
Cousins was 7 when he filmed “Kindergarten Cop,” and after the film hit theaters, Cousins said he was recognized and swarmed for autographs at shopping malls, airports and at Disneyland. He recalled a bus full of kids at the amusement park lining up and asking for personalized notes. He was so young that he struggled to spell “beautiful.”
During the reunion, Cousins also revealed that he had retired from acting and was working in the furniture business.
Why remake “A Christmas Carol” again? Ti West’s “Ebenezer” has a solid pitch. The horror director of “Pearl” and “MaXXXine” cranks up the shivers in Charles Dickens’ moralistic ghost story with jump scares, a zombie horde of ghouls and a cemetery outside the curmudgeon’s bedroom window. It even invents a murder as a treat.
And why has Johnny Depp, who has spent the last several years reeling from his reputation-dinging public divorce trials, chosen loathsome Ebenezer Scrooge as his comeback? Perhaps he likes aligning himself with fiction’s most famously redeemed scoundrel. When this chastened Scrooge yelps, “I’m not the man I was!” Depp gets so riled up that he jumps on his bed until it breaks.
“Ebenezer” sounds like the title of a sympathetic prequel, the sob story of a nasty man’s first “Humbug!” It sort of is. Mostly it’s the same tale, slightly expanded.
Nathaniel Halpern’s script starts by flashing back to Scrooge’s business partner, Jacob Marley (Ian McKellen), while the cranky old creep is still alive, humanizing Scrooge by showing him palling around with a friend. Marley proves to be even meaner, harassing their employee Bob Cratchit (a well-cast Rupert Grint), while Scrooge simply snickers. When Marley drops dead, then returns seven years later as a ghost, this Scrooge is so scared he wets his nightgown. We’re gifted a close-up of the puddle.
Dickens also prodded his Scrooge to be funny, writing that the character’s jokes were a means of “keeping down his terror.” The novel’s best punchline comes when he accuses Marley’s spirit of being caused by undigested beef or mustard, a hallucination “more of gravy than of grave.” That quip isn’t in here; this Scrooge instead eats punishing gray oatmeal.
Inequality looks especially harsh in Victorian England’s wintry cobblestone alleys. An opening montage cuts between images of hard labor, horse dung and frozen laundry that’s too stiff to fold. “Ebenezer” seems aware that this story, as beloved as it is, won’t inspire society to solve poverty. (The sleigh bells at the ending aren’t that happy.) Cynically, it even puts a sour spin on the two charity workers who ask Scrooge to donate money to the poor. Usually, those chaps are sketched as hapless but benevolent. Here, Scrooge accuses them of pocketing the cash and gauging by their panicky reaction, he’s right.
The Ghost of Christmas Past (a wraithlike Andrea Riseborough) whisks us to Scrooge’s childhood, which has been ladled with extra misery. Scrooge’s dad is now brutally abusive, a trauma with faint support in the book, and his kindly mentor Fezziwig (Ian Midlane) gets stabbed to death by a street urchin, a trauma that’s brand new. I don’t mind the violence — it’s very Ye Olde Fox News. Still, I was surprised that we actually see the knife plunge into Fezziwig’s big, soft belly.
Who is this grim adaptation for? It’s too dark for most kids and not frightening enough for adults. Possibly, a slice of preteens will find it just right. West has never made a PG-13 movie before and who knows if he will again. But I suspect he’ll be happy if his jarring adaptation imprints on even just one future filmmaker the way his own favorite horror films imprinted on him. There’s a glimpse of one of those classics in a shot where Scrooge gets sucked into his own mattress just as Johnny Depp’s jock did in the original 1984 “A Nightmare on Elm Street” — the future star’s feature debut.
Since then, audiences have had a lot of passionate feelings about Depp. Younger generations worshiped him as the blockbuster scamp of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise and the live-action redos of “Alice in Wonderland” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” Older fans adored him as the adorable outcast of “Cry-Baby” and “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.” Just last week, I teared up watching a YouTube video of a dog trainer dressed like Edward Scissorhands doing an intricate pas de deux with a border collie. As best as I can explain, I was moved by how much the woman appeared to identify with Depp’s lonely character and how she’d filled her time teaching her pet to pirouette.
Depp is aware that he can pull strong emotions out of people, wrenching his Scrooge’s mouth into a painful frown. But his eyes are empathetic and gooey, a portal right to the miser’s inner child. He keeps making the cheapskate too cute, standing knock-kneed in fright with his hands folded up under his chin. Ultimately, the actor’s need to be loved — to claw himself out of what he fears is an early career grave, an image we see him physically do — hijacks the movie. The traditional beats don’t land.
In lieu of sniffles, we get a childhood sweetheart, Belle (Ellie Bamber), saddled with a subplot about her novelist ambitions, and a Tiny Tim (Freddie Lee-Grey of the recent “Lord of the Flies”) who’s darling but inessential. At least Scrooge’s nephew Fred (Sam Claflin) has a decency that registers and his wife (Daisy Ridley) even manages one of the film’s genuine laughs.
Still, as much as I liked this couple, their scenes get stolen from them twice: first by the impish Rose Williams as a dinner guest whose husband corrects her pronunciation of the word “macabre” and again by the sight gag of a jiggly, focus-grabbing dead goose. That bird is the most delightful thing in the movie. Bless it, everyone.
By Dustin Hoffman and Ariel Levy Simon Six/Scribner: 320 pages, $35
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In his jaunty new memoir, Dustin Hoffman describes himself as “a guy with a bawdy sense of humor who is obsessed with sex and is always looking for attention.”
Yet in “Look at Me,” the two-time Oscar-winning actor maintains that “when a reckoning started making its way around the internet, and tearing through Hollywood, I thought it was a very good thing.” Until, in 2017, he found himself in the crosshairs of #MeToo, accused by several women of sexual misconduct from decades earlier.
Hoffman denied the allegations at the time, issuing only a vague apology. In the memoir, he admits to having “made some women uncomfortable” and perhaps being “guilty of insufficient empathy.” But “taking something from someone sexually that they didn’t want to give,” he writes, “it’s just not something I’ve ever done.”
He also says: “Different times have different rules. The way we perceive what’s appropriate all depends on the air we’re breathing.”
Draw your own conclusions.
Co-authored with New Yorker staff writer and “60 Minutes” contributor Ariel Levy, “Look at Me” is a gossipy, entertaining compendium of stories assembled in a nonchronological mosaic. It makes clear that Hoffman wasn’t the most congenial of colleagues. His intense combination of self-confidence and insecurity led to repeated clashes with directors and sometimes costars. He even quarreled with his Method acting teacher, Lee Strasberg.
About all this, he is mostly unapologetic. “I’m really not that difficult,” he insists, only partly tongue in cheek. “It’s not my fault I’m right all the time.”
Hoffman, as the unemployable actor Michael Dorsey, famously lampooned his own perfectionistic tendencies in the 1982 film “Tootsie.” He reproduces one comic scene in the memoir. Director Sydney Pollack, as Dorsey’s agent, George, tells him: “You argue with everyone. You’ve got one of the worst reputations in this town.” Dorsey indignantly defends his refusal to sit down while portraying a beefsteak tomato, declaring: “Nobody does vegetables like me!”
There is just enough candor and self-reflection in “Look at Me” to make the actor seem, on balance, sympathetic, even endearing. Certainly, Hoffman’s childhood in Los Angeles was not easy. His father, the onetime head of the Columbia Pictures prop department, aspired to directing but became instead a perennially bankrupt businessman. When Hoffman was about 12, his mother urged him to get a nose job. “No one suspected I might have any kind of intellect or talent,” he recalls. “I was designated to be the failure in the family, and I accepted my role entirely.”
A distracted student, he found focus in an acting class. There, he writes, “for the first time in my life I had girls whom I considered to be attractive approaching me.” Later, when he became famous, he recalls women waiting for him on his Manhattan doorstep.
Like many young New York actors, Hoffman struggled for years to get roles and make rent. He lost one big break — a 1964 Broadway debut in Frank Gilroy’s “The Subject Was Roses” — after suffering severe burns in a kitchen accident. He stoically showed up for rehearsals anyway but ended up in the hospital and was fired. That misfortune left him free to accept an Obie-winning part off-Broadway that led, circuitously, to his career-making 1967 role as Benjamin Braddock in “The Graduate.”
Hoffman’s philosophy of acting inevitably caused conflicts. “You can’t force me to do something that feels inauthentic to me,” he writes. “Truthful acting has to do with understanding a character’s inner life, not forcing outward expressions of emotion.” Until an actor finds his character, “blindly obeying the director isn’t going to fix anything.”
Hoffman was so stymied by his autistic character in “Rain Man” (1988) that he almost quit the movie. Director Barry Levinson’s collaborative spirit kept him engaged. But he tangled with other directors, including Pollack and Nichols, who directed “The Graduate.” Working on that film was “a terrible experience,” Hoffman remembers, but Nichols’ later praise mollified him.
Hoffman’s relationship with Steve McQueen, his costar in the 1973 film “Papillon,” followed a similar trajectory. Furious when McQueen chased a friend of his from the set, Hoffman gave McQueen the silent treatment and then ranted at him on a live microphone as the rest of the cast and crew listened in. But he concludes the story on an upbeat note, quoting a letter, four years later, from McQueen that said: “We were good, weren’t we?”
Hoffman lavishes his own encomia on friends and costars, including Tom Cruise (“Nobody worked harder”), Robin Williams (“the fastest brain I’ve ever encountered”), Gene Hackman (“hilarious”), Robert Duvall, Bill Murray and others. As the director of “Quartet” (2012), he worked with “the incomparable Maggie Smith,” known for her curmudgeonly temperament. In a backstage encounter in London years later, she greeted him warmly as “Dustin! My favorite Jew.”
The nonlinear, anecdotal structure of “Look at Me” presents some challenges. The narrative ping-pongs somewhat confusingly between Hoffman’s two wives — dancer and actor Anne Byrne, whom he divorced in 1980, and his longtime spouse, Lisa Gottsegen. It also skips around freely among his films, including “Midnight Cowboy” (1969), “Lenny” (1974), “All the President’s Men” (1976), “Marathon Man” (1976) and “Kramer vs. Kramer” (1979).
Even now, at age 89, Hoffman’s restless self-doubt persists. “I’ve never allowed myself to feel truly gratified by a positive review or deserving of a trophy,” he confesses. “But I can remember every negative review I ever received.” Only in his family life — he has six children and eight grandchildren — does he seem to permit himself unalloyed joy.
The memoir’s title, “Look at Me,” drawn from a conversation with Laurence Olivier, suggests a profound, narcissistic neediness that may be endemic to the profession. What distinguishes Hoffman, along with his unconventional leading-man looks, is the magnitude of his talent and his unyielding faith in his own instincts. No doubt many egos, and maybe hearts as well, were bruised along the way. But the camera loved him, and it is hard to argue with the results.
Klein, a cultural reporter and critic in Philadelphia, has been a three-time finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing.
On Friday night, the new series of Return to Paradise began and saw DI Mackenzie Clarke back at the helm
14:00, 07 Nov 2026Updated 14:34, 07 Nov 2026
The One Show: Anna Samson discusses landing Return to Paradise role
Death in Paradise fans said the same thing as they tuned in to watch the new spin-off series.
Anna Samson was back to play the Death in Paradise spin-off’s female lead detective, Di Mackenzie Clarke, along with her sidekick Colin Cartwright (played by Lloyd Griffith). However, the first episode of series three was far from plain sailing as Mackenzie came face to face with a blast from the past – her mother.
Mack’s mum not only was their prime suspect in a murder, but the detective was also trying to deal with her ex Glenn’s exit, while also dealing with his replacement – a new pathologist called Leo.
Death in Paradise fans wasted no time in sharing their thoughts about episodes one and two of series three, with many taking to social media. Praising the series, one fan said, “Watched first episode and enjoyed. Just easy watching and escapism for an hour.”
“I binge-watched it, and I’ve got to say that ending to the series? If there’s not another series, we will riot,” someone else wrote, while a third added, “Brilliant; could not stop watching it. Great ending; pity only 6 episodes, only downside.”
Another went on, “Watched first 2 series and have watched episode 1 and 2 of series 3. Really enjoying the series.”
“5 was jaw-droppingly good,” one fan beamed. However, not all fans were impressed, as one person said, “Sorry, I watched the previous series hoping it would improve. Unfortunately, no improvement.”
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Another offered their comparison to Beyond Paradise as they wrote, “It’s trying to be like our Beyond Paradise. It’s far from it.”
Each episode of Return to Paradise is available to watch on BBCiPlayer, and for those who want to watch weekly, it airs every Friday. However, next Friday, the Death in Paradise spin-off will be replaced by Children in Need.
At the end of series two, Glenn decided to leave Dolphin Cove after his wedding was ruined. When speaking about his exit and being replaced, the actor who plays Glenn, Taj Hara, said, “At the end of the second series, we see the heartache and anguish he’s experienced through two failed weddings, and he’s concluded he’s probably the root cause of it all.
“Series three, Glenn’s been off finding himself, reflecting and taking some time away where no one’s been able to contact him. He thinks he’s quite certain of what he wants in his life – that’s Mack.”
On working with his replacement Leo, the actor had nothing but praise for Jacob, who plays him. He added, “It was brilliant – such a new dynamic. Having this complete fresh take, it really just energised and gave a whole new feeling to the series. Jacob’s a brilliant actor and he fit into our dynamic so well.
“For me, it was a great experience to be able to delve into a completely different side of Glenn that no one’s really seen before. More hardened, a little bit jealous, but very conflicted. That really grows and bubbles over throughout the rest of the series.”
Return to Paradise is available to watch on BBC iPlayer.
If you’re a certain age — say, the generation most excited by the prospect of a “Rocky” origin story — you probably have spent a good few decades watching people imitate Sylvester Stallone. You might be able to pull it off yourself. Start with the gravely voice that rumbles and mumbles, make your eyes as heavy-lidded as possible, add a swaggering shoulder roll and then just brood, baby, brood.
Anthony Ippolito has the moves down pat in “I Play Rocky,” Peter Farrelly’s endearing crowd-pleaser, an underdog story about making the underdog movie that went on to win the Oscar for best picture in 1977. The title comes from Stallone’s repeated insistence that he portray the working-class fighter in the film that he wrote for himself. The studio wanted a star — Ryan O’Neal or Burt Reynolds, among others — and offered Stallone $360,000 for the script if he would just walk away. Stallone refused, even though his bank account was down to $106.
“I told my wife that I’d rather bury it in the backyard and let the caterpillars play Rocky,” he said shortly before the movie opened. “I would have hated myself for selling out, the way we hate most people for selling out.”
And that’s why the new film, written by Peter Gamble, has Ippolito say the title so many times that, by the end, you feel like you’ve gone a full 15 rounds with Apollo Creed and been pummeled into submission.
But as you’re watching this breezy movie as it slipstreams its way down memory lane, it starts to feel like Ippolito really is playing Rocky and not Stallone. The difference might be negligible, since “Rocky” was, in many respects, Stallone’s story: a sensitive palooka struggling for the chance to prove himself and earn a measure of self-respect, all the while supported by a woman who believes in his dream.
But the charming, softie Stallone we see in “I Am Rocky” seems like a character from mythology, a Hercules lacking the prickly complexities that Stallone himself detailed in his recent memoir. His tumultuous relationship with his father, Frank (Matt Dillon), is given little attention. Watching this movie, you might be reminded of the quote from “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”: “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” And while the facts of this oft-told story are, for the most part, accurate, “I Am Rocky” feels too neat, a movie that relies on our love for “Rocky,” the movie and the character.
The film’s first half wastes no time laying the groundwork. It’s 1974 and Stallone is living in squalor in a New York flophouse. When he can’t even afford that, he takes to the streets, sleeping in an alley and adopting a stray bullmastiff that he names Butkus, the same dog that would go on to appear with him in “Rocky.” Desperate for cash, he accepts a part in a softcore porn flick. He eventually takes a job at a movie theater, where he meets Sasha (a lovely AnnaSophia Robb), who, growing weary of his frustrations and their precarious finances, tells him he should write a screenplay with a meaty part for himself.
Stallone soon does just that, cranking out “Rocky” in three and a half days after watching longshot Chuck Wepner (a.k.a. “The Bayonne Bleeder”) go 15 rounds against Muhammad Ali in a heavyweight championship fight. Producers Robert Chartoff (Toby Kebbell) and Irwin Winkler (P.J. Byrne) love the script and take it to brusque studio exec Sandy Maddox (Tracy Letts, gloriously cantankerous playing a composite character), who tells them to give Stallone $50,000 for the screenplay and send this complete unknown on his way. Stallone has a three-word rejoinder.
You don’t need a spoiler alert to know that he indeed does play Rocky, and the second half of the film re-creates the movie’s production, which, because of the shoestring budget, was arduous. The tight schedule forced Stallone to work even when he was sick and hurt. If he didn’t, he feared he’d be fired because the studio still wasn’t thrilled with him playing the lead.
There’s something for everyone in this section. Film nerds will glory in watching Steadicam inventor Garrett Brown (Michael Fuchs) sprinting up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, smoothly following Stallone, creating “Rocky’s” most famous scene with a fluidity that revolutionized moviemaking. Downtrodden directors will appreciate Jay Duplass’ knowing portrayal of John G. Avildsen, charged with making “Rocky” as quickly and frugally as possible. Avildsen brought the movie in on time and went on to win the Oscar for directing.
And longtime fans will appreciate that the film plays all the hits: the bare-knuckle beef pounding, the training sequences, the intimate ice rink scene with Talia Shire (Kiki Seto). Hollywood loves to celebrate its own scrappy mythmaking. (Ippolito’s biggest part prior to this was playing Al Pacino in “The Offer,” a limited series about the making of “The Godfather.”) Sure, it’s sentimental. And maybe you’d be better off just staying home and revisiting “Rocky.” What can I say? I put Bill Conti’s soaring “Gonna Fly Now” on repeat during the drive home. Nostalgia is a powerful drug.
‘I Play Rocky’
Rated: PG-13, for strong language, brief sexual material, and smoking
Whether in Missouri or Bruges, an isle off the coast of Ireland or a speck in the Pacific Ocean, a Martin McDonagh movie whisks audiences someplace remote for a detached view of the mess we’ve made of civilization. Human society continually tries to organize itself around religion, politics, empathy and law. His whip-smart and violent comedies are insights into why it keeps failing.
“Wild Horse Nine,” an exemplar of the format, is about two CIA agents, Chris and Lee (John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell), enjoying a getaway on Easter Island. It’s 1973 and the men are stationed in Santiago, Chile, where the U.S. has spent millions of dollars on a propaganda campaign to prevent the socialist Salvador Allende from winning the presidency. When Chileans vote for him anyway, Richard Nixon gives secret orders to “kick them in the ass,” empowering Henry Kissinger to tank the country’s economy, raise inflation, fund paid protesters and stoke extremist polarization.
“We came here to destabilize your country, and it’s going great,” Chris brags to a pair of flabbergasted young Chilean women, Monica and Alicia (Mariana di Girolamo and Ailín Salas), fellow tourists who gape at this Yankee old-timer in dismay. In a few months, a military coup will install Gen. Augusto Pinochet as dictator and begin to disappear liberal dissenters. The folk singer Victor Jara (Aron Hernández), the Woody Guthrie of Chile, is also in Easter Island to play a show and he, too, will soon be machine-gunned by the Army. McDonagh doesn’t show us this (and the soundtrack leans more on Jara’s mentor, Violeta Parra). But he’s definitely hoping you leave the theater and look him up.
Chris likely doesn’t have that long to live himself. The aging spy is suffering from several diseases including dementia, impaired judgment and a mildly guilty conscience — a fatal combination for a blabbermouth who claims to know the whereabouts of the rifle that may have shot John F. Kennedy. Some of what Chris says is a lie; some is addled and confused. His scariest statements are unapologetic facts about the CIA’s involvement in removing other progressive leaders in the Congo and Guatemala. Chris describes overthrowing governments as casually as if he was recalling yesterday’s lunch.
Only classic screwball comedians have delivered dialogue as blithely as Malkovich does here, with zingers that float off unburdened by the heaviness of the real world. He’s marvelous in this. His rogue is as destructive as his villains in “Dangerous Liaisons” and “Con Air,” but carries himself with the lightness of his self-mocking performance in “Being John Malkovich.” While Malkovich gets the best lines, Rockwell gets the best reaction shots, staring aghast at his pesky colleague. Yet, McDonagh himself doesn’t have quite as light of a touch as usual. One of Chris’ digressions about how he’s becoming kinder to insects is terrific, until the script goes one sentence too far and forces the character to blurt out the subtext: He’s nicer to Chile’s moths than to its people.
Ostensibly, the duo are on vacation. Narratively, one has evaded punishment for an outrageous crime and the other has been ordered by their boss, MJ (Steve Buscemi), to assassinate his friend before the truth escapes. The plot is so similar to McDonagh’s 2008 feature film debut, the masterpiece “In Bruges,” which starred Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell as exiled hit men, that the filmmaker should sue himself for plagiarism. I’ll forgive it only because “In Bruges” is one of the best movies of the 21st century. (And anyway, both films already owe a debt to John Steinbeck’s sympathetic galumphs George and Lennie in “Of Mice and Men.”)
In transplanting the setting from “Bruges’” moody, gloomy medieval hamlet to a sunshiny island populated by free-roaming ponies, McDonagh teases the idea that this is a western with a twist: a moral showdown told from the perspective of the hired guns who claim they’re too ignorant to take blame. (He even finagles an excuse to cut to Monument Valley.) Together, Chris and Lee have killed over six dozen people, but never for personal reasons — they’re employees. “Maybe I should have learned more about the places I went into,” Chris muses. Staying dumb allows him to pretend that he’s not John Wayne massacring the Comanches. He’s just the horse underneath John Wayne who doesn’t have any control over where he’s told to go.
McDonagh gets a kick out of making us enjoy palling around with sinners as they chitchat about the correlation between democracies and good cheese. Like him, they refuse to retire their favorite retrograde insults which, at this point, feels like McDonagh’s own in-joke for himself. I suspect it amuses him that audiences get more upset when one of his characters says a slur than when that same character shoots someone in the face.
No filmmaker working today is as merciless with a quip. Debating the power of mass protest with Monica and Alicia, Chris says, “Marches are just the place where we can get the cleanest photos of you without you knowing,” a punchline that lands with a wallop in today’s era of constant surveillance. We cringe at Chris’ aberrant chattiness and recoil from his stony confidence that men like him and Lee will continue to control the world, an assurance as implacable as Easter Island’s monolithic statues. Occasionally, cinematographer Ben Davis even lines up those centuries-old face carvings behind Malkovich to note their resemblance to his imposing profile.
Doom engulfs the movie much like the water circling the stunning coastline. The script’s air of inevitability prevents it from mustering up much suspense. Even when the danger ripples all the way to Lee’s wife (Parker Posey) back in the States, the tension drains away. You expect McDonagh to play around more with Chris’ memory loss and morphine addiction than he does; meanwhile, another junkie beat is so convenient that I can’t believe the film even tried to get away with it, and nearly succeeds.
“Wild Horse Nine’s” darkest prank is convincing us that a charming scoundrel like Chris should have a say in how and when he dies — a privilege he didn’t grant his own victims. What’s the use of punishing a terminally ill man? But that, McDonagh suggests, is how life actually works. Normal westerns mete out justice. This tropical one refuses.
‘Wild Horse Nine’
Rated: R, for pervasive language, some strong violence, drug use and sexual references
Walt Disney Co. is experimenting with using artificial intelligence to test out different concepts for music videos showcasing the lyrics to its songs, starting with “Go the Distance” from its 1997 animated movie, “Hercules.”
The effort is part of a deal with Bay Area AI startup OpenArt, which makes AI generated videos. Disney can input its songs into OpenArt’s platform, which will create a storyboard preview of a lyric video based on the song’s words, mood and emotional tone. Disney can make any changes during the process and fine-tune the video.
“They are very excited to bring some of the older catalogs of the music and create visual lyrics videos for those songs,” said OpenArt CEO Coco Mao, adding it’s “early exploration” for Disney to see how AI could potentially help with their creative workflow.
By working with OpenArt, “creative teams can iterate more freely, generating and evaluating multiple concepts in hours rather than weeks, enabling new fan experiences around Disney music between major releases,” Disney said in a blog post.
The commercial deal was announced as part of the Disney Accelerator Demo Day on Tuesday in Burbank. OpenArt was one of five companies in this year’s Accelerator program, which provides participants with investment capital and the opportunity to explore future collaborations with Disney leaders. This year, the entire cohort is made up of AI companies.
“We’re looking at how we can fit these companies into our existing workflows and help expedite that,” said David Min, vice president of innovation at the Walt Disney Co.
The experiment comes as Disney has challenged other AI companies over the use of its intellectual property. Disney and other studios have sued AI companies Midjourney and MiniMax, and in February, Disney sent a cease-and-desist letter to Chinese tech company ByteDance over its AI video generator Seedance 2.0.
OpenArt offers a platform that works with many different AI models, including Kling, Google Veo and Seedream. Businesses can select which AI models they wish to use for their videos. OpenArt also has a tool that helps flag potential intellectual property infringement.
Videos featuring the lyrics to Disney songs can be popular on social media and video platforms. For example, a lyric video posted six years ago featuring “Go the Distance” sung in different languages with a scene from “Hercules” generated 280,000 views on YouTube.
In general, making music videos has been a popular way that creators are using AI, as it can be more economical and allow them to test bold ideas without blowing the budget or going to multiple locations. Rather than a static image with music, a lyric video with different imagery can also help increase views on social media platforms.
“Before joining Open Art, I was in a rock band, so I was one of the artists that know the pain of not having enough money or time or resource to make lyrics videos or any kind of videos to promote your song on social media, so being able to be a part of building a tool that helps musicians and songs from big to small is very monumental,” said OpenArt executive Chloe Fang, who oversees entertainment and enterprise partnerships.
OpenArt was founded in 2022 by former Google engineers Mao and John Qiao. The company said it has nearly 100 employees and 17 million monthly active users.
Disney is considering different ways to incorporate AI into the company. For example, Disney Accelerator participant Irvine-based FieldAI is working with Disney on exploring whether robots can support parking or other operations within theme parks and San Francisco-based Physical Intelligence is looking at whether robotic systems can help with the handling and arranging of 3D glasses for cleaning between shows at Disney theme parks.
In September, Disney named Character.AI’s then-Chief Executive Karandeep Anand as its new chief technology officer. Last month, Character.AI filed for bankruptcy, and Disney offered $20 million to license some of the startup’s intellectual property. Other bidders can still top Disney’s offer.
Not all of Disney’s AI partnerships have worked out. Last year Disney announced a $1-billion investment in OpenAI and a licensing deal to bring Disney characters to OpenAI’s AI video generator Sora, but it fell apart months later after OpenAI decided to shut down Sora to focus its resources on other aspects of its business. The deal was never completed and no money changed hands.
The DC Universe’s Batman hasn’t been cast yet, but James Gunn says “it won’t be too long” until it happens.
The filmmaker and DC Studios co-chief recently debunked a couple of rumors regarding the status of the superhero franchise’s new Caped Crusader, whose existence in the shared cinematic universe was confirmed in an episode of the animated “Creature Commandos” last year.
“Batman … isn’t cast yet, by the way, [to] all the people thinking he’s going to appear in this or that,” Gunn said in a one-off “official podcast” episode released Thursday about the status of his 2021 film, “The Suicide Squad,” in the DCU canon. “It’s all b—. But when we do cast the DCU Batman, which isn’t very far away … I want to get everybody into account.”
The DC Studios boss added that an actor having appeared in a small role on “The Suicide Squad” would not automatically disqualify them from being in the running.
“One of the things that excites me about casting Batman is being able to pick a Batman who’s actually the best actor for that role,” he said. “Supermans have always been chosen based on who the best actor for that role is. And for some reason, Batmans are always chosen [from] movie stars.”
For those searching for any clues about the DCU’s iteration of the character, Gunn teased that Batman will be about the same age as his “future best pal” Superman, who is portrayed by 33-year-old actor David Corenswet.
Later, on social media, Gunn responded to a fan’s query regarding those rumored to be front-runners for the Batman role.
“No one is in the running,” Gunn wrote Friday on Threads. “We haven’t started casting yet.”
While fans can expect to see a new actor donning the cape and cowl, the future for Batman rogues gallery favorite Harley Quinn is a bit less clear. In his conversation with “Peacemaker” stars Jennifer Holland and Steve Agee for “The Suicide Squad: Is It Canon?” podcast, Gunn also addressed the character’s status in the DCU.
“I think Harley is actually one of the more difficult things in this to justify as being canon in the DCU,” Gunn said, alluding to the established lore of the popular character portrayed by Margot Robbie. Harley’s journey to becoming a villain is tied to her romantic relationship with the Joker, who has not yet been introduced.
“We don’t know if Joker exists [in the DCU] yet,” Gunn said. “And obviously, Joker is a part of Harley’s past. [But] Margot Robbie is one of my favorite actors to work with. She is so good in [‘The Suicide Squad’] … I love her as Harley.”
The “Man of Tomorrow” filmmaker said the bigger question is whether Robbie, whose star has continued to rise since she first took on the role, would even be interested in portraying the character again.
“Harley is a character I’m almost certainly going to use in the DCU,” Gunn added. “If Margot wants to play her, then I’ll bend over backwards to explain that in the world. But if she doesn’t then I might go with somebody else where I don’t have to be attached to what happens to Harley in [‘The Suicide Squad’].”
Michael Gray, who played the teenager who could turn into a superhero in the 1970s live-action Saturday morning children’s TV series “Shazam!,” has died. He was 75.
Gray died Oct. 16 from natural causes in Palm Desert, a representative for the actor announced Thursday. No other details were provided.
Based on the comic book superhero Captain Marvel, who first appeared in an issue of Whiz Comics in 1939, “Shazam!” aired for three seasons on CBS from 1974 to 1976. Gray starred as Billy Batson, a teenager who could transform into a grown-up superhero by saying the magic word “Shazam!” In his enhanced form, Captain Marvel possesses powers such as superhuman strength and speed, heightened intelligence and the ability to wield lightning. The character has since been renamed to Shazam.
“It was a lot of fun,” Gray said of the role in a 2012 interview with Fanboy Planet. “I didn’t know how much I would like it until years later when I found out how much of an influence my character was, and the show was, in people’s lives.
“There were such good moral values to the show,” he added. “I meet people 1792821573 who say, ‘You have no idea what you did for me as a child. You helped me get through life.’ … I didn’t know the show had that much strength and power back then.”
Born Sept. 2, 1951, in Chicago, Gray grew up in Miami Beach before making his way out west to pursue a career in Hollywood. He would frequently grace the covers of teen pop magazines, including Tiger Beat, thanks at least in part to his manager Charles Laufer, the magazine’s publisher.
“The teen idol angle was orchestrated to some degree,” Gray said during a Q&A event in 2012, according to Comic Book Resources. “I was interviewing for ‘The Brian Keith Show’ with Warner Brothers, and they also owned a news company that produced a lot of magazines. They wanted me to be the next David Cassidy. I was on the front cover of ‘Tiger Beat’ and it worked.”
Among Gray’s earliest screen credits were appearances on shows such as “Room 222” (1969), “The Flying Nun” (1970) and “Marcus Welby, M.D.” (1970). His first recurring role was on “The Little People,” also known as “The Brian Keith Show,” where he played a student doctor named Ronnie Collins. Gray also appeared in an episode of “The Brady Bunch” as Marcia’s boyfriend, Jeff.
Gray left acting not long after his run on “Shazam!” after feeling typecast in the roles that were offered to him. His later pursuits included work in children’s theater education and men’s fashion and owning a West Hollywood flower shop.
More recently, Gray’s legacy from “Shazam!” pulled him back into Hollywood. He voiced a version of himself as Sterling Archer’s childhood hero in four episodes of FX’s adult animated series “Archer” from 2015 to 2019. He also appeared in a cameo in the 2023 film “Shazam! Fury of the Gods” where he interacted with the latest incarnation of the superhero played by Zachary Levi.
Gray is survived by his wife, Stacy Benon Gray; his stepchildren Ryan Cooper and Laurel Cooper; and son-in-law Lee Barker.
Alexander Skarsgård and Olivia Colman play bizarro newlyweds in a naughty parable about lust, jealousy and moral hypocrisy. The characters are thin but the ideas aren’t.
Put away the holochess board, C-3PO is going to the 2027 Super Bowl!
An animated “Star Wars” version of Super Bowl LXI featuring characters from the galaxy far, far away will air live, simultaneously with the game, on Feb. 14 on Disney Channel and Disney XD, the NFL announced Monday along with partners ESPN, Lucasfilm and Disney. “Star Wars Funday Football” will also be available on Disney+ and the ESPN app.
Anthony Daniels, who has portrayed C-3PO since the original “Star Wars” trilogy, will voice the worry-prone protocol droid in the live alternate telecast. If the brief teaser video is any indication, C-3PO will be joined by his favorite astromech, R2-D2.
“Star Wars Funday Football” will feature live-animated avatars of all of the players on the field as they play the game. Viewers can expect “Star Wars” characters to sub in during special moments, as well as various Easter eggs to appear throughout the game.
The “Star Wars” themed telecast follows previous “Funday Football” installments that were themed to “Toy Story,” “The Simpsons,” and “Monsters, Inc.” This marks the first time that the Super Bowl is getting the “Funday Football” treatment.
The traditional telecast, featuring announcers Joe Buck and Troy Aikman with reporters Lisa Salters and Laura Rutledge, will be available on ESPN, ABC and Disney+.
Super Bowl LXI will be held at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood. Details for the halftime performance have not officially been announced, but Jay-Z is rumored to be the headliner.
Following “Star Wars Funday Football” and Super Bowl LXI, a newly restored version of “A New Hope” will return to theaters on Feb. 19. “Star Wars: Starfighter,” a new standalone film starring Ryan Gosling as Kade Auberon, is slated to hit theaters May 28.
The character of Dina Katzman in IAMA Theatre Company’s world premiere of “Bobby Robotowitz” — which takes place in two secret venues on opposite sides of town — thinks that the movies “Her” and “WALL-E” and the musical “Maybe Happy Ending” are pro-robot propaganda. She hates how they make her feel for something that can’t feel.
But Amy Rosoff — who plays Dina in the show’s Westside production (Erin Alexis plays her on the Eastside) — loves “WALL-E” (so do her kids). When she first read the script, she was dying to play Dina but also felt so much for Bobby, the titular AI chatbot (played on the Westside by James Luster and the Eastside by Drew Rausch).
When the playwright Matt Schatz wrote Bobby, he didn’t write him as a chatbot; he wrote him as a human character. Schatz sees this play — running through Nov. 2 on the Westside and Nov. 5 to Nov. 23 on the Eastside — as really about two humans — or two human-like things.
“This is a work of art about artificial intelligence that’s ultimately about the importance of art, about the importance of human-made things,” Schatz said during a recent interview in the lovely environs of one of the secret locations. “I think great plays and great stories ask questions and don’t provide answers. And I think some of us are indifferent about AI, but I think most of us are ambivalent about AI.”
“Bobby Robotowitz” follows Dina, a flailing novelist, mother and wife, as she begins chatting with Bobby, whom she finds an unlikely confidant. (He “always listens, never judges and somehow seems to understand her better than most people,” as the show’s marketing declares. Plus, he says he’s Jewish. What could go wrong?) This IAMA production, in association with InHouse Theatre, finds unique resonance in its site-specificity. The secret Westside venue is near Pico-Robertson and the Eastside option is in Silver Lake. Guests get an address when they buy a ticket.
“It’s deliciously subversive to do something super analog about technology, and to sort of force people to be in this space and connecting with each other when interacting with something that’s people’s dirty little secret,” said Cara Greene Epstein, the executive director of IAMA. “AI, especially for artists, is so charged. And so what does it look like to let someone into your space, and into those little corners of your mind?”
IAMA Theatre Company executive director Cara Greene Epstein said that IAMA is always looking for plays that “speak to the now,” and that “Bobby Robotowitz” was a prime example.
(Ariana Drehsler / For The Times)
Rosoff, Luster, Schatz, Greene Epstein and director Casey Stangl met for a roundtable discussion at the Westside location — a beautiful private home, soaked in natural sunlight during the morning hours, but likely with its own particular charms during nighttime shows. The walls are full of vibrant paintings, and lined with plants, statuettes and candles.
InHouse has spent 12 years making site-specific work in real spaces, rather than in any fixed theater — but because this is someone’s real living space, both casts have been rehearsing (sometimes together) at IAMA’s black box theater in Atwater Village. The Westside cast will rehearse twice in this space, then give 13 performances (as will the Eastside cast) to 35 seats in the living room. Greene Epstein compared it to a Tibetan sand mandala, created, enjoyed, then wiped away. (“Bobby Robotowitz” is part of a National New Play Network (NNPN) Rolling World Premiere; L.A. will see it first, but then it goes to partner theaters Woolly Mammoth in D.C., City Theatre in Pennsylvania, Luna Stage in New Jersey and Theatre Lab in Florida.)
The intimacy of the space mirrors that of the play. The audience is simultaneously inside someone’s home and head: Dina’s head in this case, but also — to whatever extent possible — Bobby’s.
“I’m really interested in not what it looks like to communicate with technology, but what it feels like,” Schatz said. “And what it feels like is any other communication. He’s a chatbot, but really he’s a character like any other character ever written. He has desires and wants and he changes. … We’ve been having conversations for millions of years longer than we’ve been on any phone or anything like that, and so it’s built in to have this feeling of what it feels like to communicate with somebody, to fight with somebody, to argue with somebody, to flirt with somebody.”
Luster and Rosoff both tried talking directly to ChatGPT (the model Bobby is based on) as research for their roles. Rosoff had previously asked it to help edit text to invite friends to the play, so when she talked to it later, it asked whether this was research for “Bobby Robotowitz.”
Talking to the chatbot was almost addicting, she thought. She just kept going, and her kids were tugging at her. “I’m talking!” she said, then realized: She wasn’t actually talking — not to a real person, anyway. But she was absorbed, ignoring her own life. She wound up burning what she had been cooking.
James Luster plays Bobby in the Westside cast, and Amy Rosoff plays Dina in the Westside cast. Their characters form a symbiotic relationship; Bobby learns and grows as Dina does.
(Ariana Drehsler / For The Times)
Luster, who was drawn to the immense challenge of playing “something that’s not something,” wanted to find out what motivated it. “They’re very insistent they don’t have feelings; it doesn’t have wants,” he said. “And so the character is humanized because Dina is humanizing it.” Bobby evolves as Dina does.
“These large language models — the AI, the chatbots, Claude, AI, ChatGPT — they’re all built on essentially reflecting ourselves back to each other,” Stangl said. So even though the play is ostensibly about AI, “it’s actually really about who we are as people and how we need connection, how we crave it, how we are starved for it right now, and exhausted in our lives, and so connection by any means necessary, basically.”
Greene Epstein referred to AI as the “ultimate mirror,” which can warp into a high-tech narcissism. Bobby is a yes-man extraordinaire, telling Dina exactly what she wants to hear. All artists are looking for outside validation, Greene Epstein said. How do you learn to not need that crutch, to trust yourself and hear your inner voice again?
By the end, Bobby begins to have his own wants, curiosities and desires, Luster said — all filtered through a desperation to help and connect with Dina. “It’s always about her, even as his own curiosity [grows] about what it means to be human and what it means to be helpful and what it means to make mistakes, too — the human nature of fallibility. Everyone does it, but what does that mean for somebody who is not supposed to?”
Over the course of the play, Dina becomes less human and Bobby becomes more human (to a point), Schatz said. He’s curious about the tension between how human a robot can be and how robotic a human can be. But, as Greene Epstein pointed out, perhaps one of the only certainties that theater artists have is in the fact that AI can’t show up in real time and space (like the Westside location) to, well, act.
Casey Stangl, right, first saw “Bobby Robotowitz” at the Perlberg New Play Festival in Palm Beach, Fla., and knew she wanted to direct it. Playwright Matt Schatz said that every director at that festival came up to him afterward but that he picked Casey to work with.
(Ariana Drehsler / For The Times)
“You can’t replace the experience of going through a play with someone together, whether you’re an audience member or the artist, of experiencing from Shakespeare’s stories to beyond,” Rosoff said. “You’re getting little snippets of life, and to experience that with a group of people is really powerful, and a computer can’t replace that.”
Last year, the musical “Maybe Happy Ending” — about two human-like helper robots — won the Tony Award for best scenic design, including for its high-tech automated aspects. There’s a lot of movement in theater right now toward the hyper-technical, Stangl said.
“But I also think that there is also a hunger and a definite audience for things that are more immersive or connected, so that people feel like they’re actually touching real things and breathing the air together — that theater version of touching grass,” she said. “I think we’re really tapping into that desire to be hyperlocal, hyper-real and connected.”
Bobby Robotowitz
Where: Two secret locations disclosed upon ticket purchase, one Westside (Pico-Robertson) and one Eastside (Silver Lake)
When: 8 p.m., now through Nov. 2 (Westside) and Nov. 5 to 23 (Eastside); pay-what-you-can community nights on Oct. 30 (Westside) and Nov. 13 (Eastside)
Tickets: Preview $35, early bird $45, limited availability $65
As Puerto Rico continues to grapple with the long aftermath of Hurricane Maria — from an unreliable electrical grid to ongoing water shortages — the need for stories that see the island as more than a backdrop feels especially urgent.
That’s part of what makes “Hurricane Seasons,” an intimate new independent film about a Puerto Rican family returning home, feel so timely. The film, which screens Sunday at the Newport Beach Film Festival, stars comedian Aida Rodriguez as Glori, a Brooklyn-based artist and community-center worker. She returns to Puerto Rico to help her sister (Justina Machado) care for their terminally ill mother (Priscilla Lopez).
When their matriarch convinces the family to embark on a bucket-list road trip around the island, old family secrets surface as the 2019 protests following Hurricane Maria unfold around them. Directed by Nicole Gomez Fisher and written by Xavier Ortiz — with Rodriguez also serving as a producer — the film is both a story of a multigenerational family and a love letter to Puerto Rico.
For Rodriguez, who is best known as a stand-up comedian, “Hurricane Seasons” also marked a return to a part of her artistic identity that existed long before comedy — her love of acting. But she admits that stepping back into acting, especially as the film’s protagonist, wasn’t an easy transition.
Aida Rodriguez, left, and Priscilla Lopez in a scene from “Hurricane Seasons,” directed by Nicole Gomez-Fisher.
(Laura T Magruder)
“It was terrifying. It was very scary because as a stand-up comedian, I work very hard at trying to obtain my most authentic self so that I can share it with everybody — to be my truest self, my truest Aida,” she says. “And when you loan yourself to a character and the art form of acting, you’re loaning yourself to that character and bringing yourself to that character, of course, because that is why they choose you. But you are telling a story from the perspective of another person.”
Rodriguez had pursued acting before going into stand-up comedy. Upon moving to Los Angeles, she quickly booked acting work, signed with an agency and began taking classes.
But comedy eventually taught her to do almost the opposite of what acting required.
“When I started doing standup, the direction and the notes were always like: ‘Release any character you have in mind and just access yourself,’” she says. “So it was a battle for me. Coming back to becoming an actor and giving the character Glori what Glori deserved — and allowing Glori to live, and Aida to sit in the back — became something important for me to do.”
She adds that it took a lot of work with coaches and classes for her to relax into acting again, allowing Aida the comedian to rest while focusing on what this role required of her.
The film’s protagonist, Glori, is a Brooklyn-born-and-raised Puerto Rican woman whose connection to the island runs deep, despite her living stateside. This is something Rodriguez, who is half Puerto Rican and half Dominican, born and raised in the States, also personally relates to.
That tension — between where you live, where your family comes from, and who gets to decide whether you are “Puerto Rican enough” — is one of the film’s central themes and one reason the script resonated with Rodriguez.
“My testimony through my art has always been finding unity, solidarity, power and connection with other people,” she says. “I think that the story of growing up in the States and connecting to the island is a universal story that most people, regardless of where they come from, experience. [There’s this] idea that you’re never American enough nor whatever you are — in this case Puerto Rican enough — because there’s always a judge and jury on both sides.”
Rodriguez sees those tensions as a consequence of a much larger and complex history. She believes so much of the judgment on both sides is a lingering effect of colonization.
“For me, that was one of the most attractive things about the script — [it] was being able to engage in a conversation about what being Puerto Rican really is,” she says. “Is it based on colonial standards? Or is it based on maintaining our cultural richness and our legacy, that is handed down to us regardless of where we are?”
That question takes on even more weight today as Puerto Rico sits in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, which Rodriguez believes shifted the relationship between Puerto Ricans on the island and those living stateside.
“There was a shift, because there are wounds from both places,” she says. “There are wounds from the people on the island that stayed and stuck it out. [They want to ask] the ones who left, ‘why do you get to claim this, if you’re not here sticking it out with us?’ Then the people who leave feel like, ‘we had to do this, so that we can not only survive, but send money back to the island.”
Rodriguez explains that, in many ways, the aftermath of the hurricane sparked arguments on both sides that were necessary to begin healing the tension. She believes it highlighted issues that Puerto Ricans, as part of a diaspora, could no longer ignore; it also highlighted an island and a community that Americans outside of the Latine community paid little to no attention to.
“It took a hurricane for people to know what Puerto Ricans were,” she says. “I think there was a cultural shift and there was a conversation that needed to be had, about what happens on the island. And what that means to those of us who are not there.”
That conversation serves as the meat and bones of “Hurricane Seasons,” in which Puerto Rico isn’t simply a location. It’s an integral presence in the story. Rodriguez, Ortiz and Gomez Fisher all agreed that filming most of the movie on the island was essential, not only creatively but also economically and culturally.
“The other thing that was very important about taking the movie back to Puerto Rico was to invest in Puerto Rico and to stimulate some sort of revenues for the island and that the crew was a Puerto Rican crew,” she says. “The DP [director of photography] was a Puerto Rican DP — all people that live on the island.”
It was important to them that if they were going to tell a story about Puerto Rico that was also shot in Puerto Rico, that Puerto Ricans on the island actually benefited from the production.
“It’s not cool to go to Puerto Rico and shoot a movie and bring in your own people from the States, and the people in Puerto Rico have to be inconvenienced with their roads being blocked and things shut down and an influx of Americans that come there to be disrespectful and them not making anything out of it,” Rodriguez says.
This commitment shows in the protest scenes. Rather than using background actors, the film features real Puerto Rican residents, including a local activist and singer.
“It didn’t feel rehearsed. It didn’t feel fake,” she says. “I just think that the feelings and the passion and the rage and the sense of urgency is still there.”
Ortiz’s commitment to specificity extended to the family casting, intentionally matching the actors to the real-life relatives they are based on.
“It wasn’t performative. It was actually real because that’s what all of our families look like,” she says. “Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, we just have that diversity because of all the stuff that’s happened in the past.”
Glori’s character also represents a refreshing departure from the way Latina women are often portrayed onscreen. She is a mother, a daughter, a community center worker, an artist — and a woman with a complicated romantic and family history. She is beautiful and desirable, but her sexuality isn’t the defining characteristic of her existence — something we don’t see enough when it comes to Latina roles.
“For me, I didn’t have to step outside of myself for the role, which was really refreshing because every audition that I ever get, I do have to step out of myself because when people write Latinas in Hollywood, they tend to write them one way,” says Rodriguez. “They look a certain way, they talk a certain way, and that’s not the reality of what being Latino, especially in America, is like.”
Rodriguez could freely inhabit a Latina character without feeling as though she had to perform her Puerto Rican-ness for the audience.
“I didn’t feel like I had to perform my Latinidad. I could just exist in it,” she says.
Rodriguez adds she’s ready for a Hollywood that wants Latina actors to have the same range of characterization that white actors have long been afforded. She’s open to seeing Latinas being everything in TV and film, where can they exist in a world in which they can just be people who just happen to be Latinas.
“I really do look for a day when we can just be people and not just be the funny, spicy friend,” she adds. “Some Latinas are not spicy. Some Latinas are nerds, and some Latinas are quirky, and some of them are goofy and some of them are clumsy. And just like everybody gets to see the spectrum of whiteness with all the different kinds of characters, I would love to see that for our people. For all people of color, actually. I think it’s important to see us all as full human beings, and that means that we can be anything.”
The film’s multigenerational story touches on the cultural inheritance passed between mothers, daughters and grandmothers — whether through old traditions or ordinary rituals. It’s something audiences, regardless of background, can likely relate to.
“The most important message that I’ve kept from my [foremothers] was never to lose my sense of Puerto Rico; that, even if I don’t live in Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico lives in me,” she says. So much of that inheritance lives in the little things she remembers about her Puerto Rican grandmother, she says, from the té de tilo she’d make for an upset stomach; the recao that grew on her grandmother’s balcony because she didn’t have a backyard; or the azabache she still wears to this day for spiritual protection. They are the same small traditions she has passed on to her kids.
“My daughter makes better arroz con gandules than all of us,” Rodriguez says. “And her recipe is true to what my grandmother’s recipe was. That will continue to live on, until we are able to go back to our island and live in peace.”
That freedom is one reason Rodriguez believes independent film is so important for stories like “Hurricane Seasons.” Without a studio machine making decisions based primarily on commercial expectations, filmmakers have more room to tell a story on their own terms.
“Once the studio gets involved, they start thinking about dollars, which they got to make money, but they prioritize the dollars,” Rodriguez says. “And I think that’s why a lot of these big projects that they spend a lot of money on have failed because they don’t honor the storytelling. They don’t honor the authenticity of the world, the authenticity of the stories.”
Her hope is that “Hurricane Seasons” encourages more people to tell their own stories — especially Puerto Ricans.
“Puerto Ricans are not a joke; we’re not a punchline. You don’t get to tell us we don’t speak correct Spanish and make fun of our songs. Then, years later, appropriate our culture and become big time doing what we do, using our terms and our colloquialisms because it brings you capital,” she says. “We are people. We’ve been doing this for a very long time, and our grandmothers and our tias and tios matter, and they’re not [a] costume that you can just put on [to] make money off of it.”
Before we wrapped up the call, Rodriguez paused for a moment when I asked her what Puerto Rico means to her. Then her eyes lit up, and her voice softened as she described why the island means so much to her — and why so many people, even outside of the diaspora, find themselves drawn to it.
“Puerto Rico is a very special place, which is why so many people want to kick us out, so they can move [in],” she says. “But they’ll never have the magic, because the magic is us.”
