WASHINGTON — President Trump told a crowd in Texas on Wednesday night that he would not allow Iran to attack San Diego or Los Angeles, a comment that came two days after he made off-the-cuff remarks suggesting the West Coast cities could be struck.
“You want to see a horror show? You want to see problems? Let them hit San Diego, let them hit Los Angeles,” Trump said at a rally. He then assured the crowd: “We are not going to let that happen. We protect our cities. We protect our country.”
The San Antonio crowd cheered the remarks.
Trump’s decision to return to the subject capped two days in which the White House had been on the defensive, and it appeared aimed at tamping down the fallout from remarks he made Monday night that quickly spread online.
Speaking to a crowd in Nebraska, Trump had said: “They can take out a city, let them take out Los Angeles, let them take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay.”
The comments drew swift condemnation from California leaders, even as the White House communications director, Steven Cheung, insisted the president’s remarks had been taken out of context.
“The media freakout over President Trump’s comments is not rooted in reality,” Cheung wrote Tuesday. “He was clearly stating U.S. cities would have been threatened if a nuclear Iran hadn’t been stopped. America is safer because of the president. Iran has no nuclear, no navy, no air force, and no money.”
But the remarks were enough to rattle many in California and drew backlash from the state’s leaders, including Republican Jim Desmond, a Navy veteran running in a highly competitive U.S. House race.
“I vehemently disagree with President Trump’s comments,” Desmond wrote on social media. “America must stand up to Iran and defend our interests, but the first responsibility of our Commander in Chief is to protect the American people and our homeland.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday opened the state emergency operations center to assess potential threats following Trump’s remarks. San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass also condemned the president for potentially compromising the safety of their cities.
“San Diego is not collateral damage,” Gloria posted on social media. “We are not expendable. And we are never a ‘small price to pay.’ Keep our city out of your reckless war talk.”
On Saturday, Pope Leo addressed a massive crowd in Paris at an outdoor Mass, emphasizing that true happiness comes from faith and not material possessions. The event took place on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, attracting about 700,000 attendees who cheered as he arrived in an open-top popemobile, blessing people along the way. Notable attendees included Brigitte Macron, Marine Le Pen, Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu, and billionaire Bernard Arnault.
During his sermon, Leo expressed gratitude for his visit to France, where he aims to restore the Church’s image after recent abuse scandals. He reminded Catholics that only faith can fill their inner emptiness. Attendees appreciated his call for peace, with one supporter highlighting his consistent peace advocacy amidst global conflicts.
The pope raised concerns about the current global leadership and warned of a crisis within the UN and similar organizations. He also addressed the potential risks of developing artificial intelligence, suggesting it could lead to a troubling future.
In France, a nation where church and state are separate, the Catholic Church has seen a decline in affiliation among the younger population since World War Two. Despite recent increases in adult baptisms, official statistics show that only 25% of young adults identified as Catholic compared to 43% a decade ago. During a visit to newly baptized Catholics before the Mass, Leo urged the Church to be realistic about this small rise and to nurture the faith within the community.
Later, Pope Leo is scheduled to visit Lourdes to meet with victims of clergy abuse, continuing his efforts to address the issues within the Church.
That much was clear Saturday at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art’s opening-night soiree, where the guest list was as celebrity-heavy as any Academy Awards after-party. As the festivities kicked off around sunset in the courtyard under the museum’s towering elliptical oculus, Oprah Winfrey hugged Robert De Niro, and Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart skipped the red carpet after chatting with Spike Lee. Laura Dern and Greta Gerwig laughed together by the entrance while Samuel L. Jackson plopped down on a curved bench, joking, “Hey, look what I did!”
For the record:
1:22 p.m. Sept. 20, 2026A previous version of this article said James Cameron was photographed along with a large group of directors at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. He was not.
He didn’t sit for long because Cynthia Erivo and Andy Garcia showed up and there were more hugs and handshakes and hellos. Owen Wilson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kim Kardashian, Meg Ryan, Jack Quaid, Gov. Gavin Newsom, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Justin Trudeau, Mark Hamill and Magic Johnson were there too, and that was just the beginning.
Gov. Gavin Newsom attended the opening-night party for the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art alongside a host of other notable guests and celebrities.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
After a rousing performance by a white-robe-clad vocal collective called Voices of Fire, co-founded by Pharrell Williams, Lucas’ wife Mellody Hobson noted that, “George kept saying, ‘Will this person come? Do you think this person will come?’”
“I said, ‘They will all come,’” Hobson said as the crowd laughed during opening remarks on a raised platform in the museum’s grand lobby.
And so they did. There was even a banner moment inside the posh fifth-floor Skywalker Grill where a group of directors gathered to be photographed in what could very well become a seminal photo of Hollywood influence in the 21st century. The shot included Lucas, Jon M. Chu, Chris Columbus, Francis Ford Coppola, Lee Daniels, Guillermo del Toro, Jon Favreau, Bryce Dallas Howard, Ron Howard, Peter Jackson, Chris Meledandri, Denis Villeneuve, Christopher Nolan, Spike Lee, Tyler Perry, Steven Spielberg, Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez, Nathan Fielder and David Benioff.
Organizers were scrambling to find Gerwig, but she had dashed off somewhere else.
“Star Wars” legendMark Hamill and his wife, Marilou York, were guests at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art opening party.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
There were artists in attendance too, of course, but not as many. Jeff Koons, Refik Anadol, Judy Baca and Takashi Murakami strolled through the crowd, as did museum directors including the Broad’s Joanne Heyler and Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Michael Govan, who was relieved to be attending someone else’s party after hosting so many of his own in April and May when the new Geffen Galleries opened.
Lucas and Hobson went to great lengths to explain why the Lucas Museum matters and why it is different from other museums. Their comments, in many ways, sought to address the criticism that has been lobbed at the museum since it held its press preview a few weeks back.
Though it has received a number of rave reviews, critics have called narrative art a false conceit and argued that the juxtaposition of masterworks with pop culture ephemera does not work. Much of the criticism has been focused on a perceived lack of context since there is almost no wall text clarifying why certain curatorial choices were made.
George Lucas and his wife Mellody Hobson hosted an extravagant opening party at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
“When I started it, everybody said, ‘You’re crazy. You shouldn’t do it. It’s not going to work. People are going to come after you,’” Lucas said of his plans for the museum. “I said, ‘People have come after me all my life, especially in the movies.’”
Lucas also addressed why he curated the museum’s 100,000 square feet of gallery space on his own, noting that at a certain point plans were “getting off the rails.”
“I’m going to have to take this over because people don’t understand what I’m doing,” Lucas recalled thinking. “The idea that illustration is an art form and illustrators are artists was just too much for somebody who had been taught otherwise by the art schools that they went to and the universities that they went to.”
People with PhDs often can’t see the big picture, Lucas said, “You can’t say ‘This is art. This is not art.’ Art is in the eye of the beholder. If it is emotional to you, then it’s art. And, of course, I’ve been criticized up and down and sideways for that. But I believe it wholeheartedly — that you get to decide what art is.”
Members of the Virginia Beach vocal collective Voices of Fire, co-founded by Bishop Ezekiel Williams and Pharrell Williams perform at the Lucas Museum.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
Lucas noted that throughout his career he has worked with many illustrators, “and I will tell you, they are as talented as any artist I’ve ever met. This is the way of giving back to them something that they’ve all wanted … inevitably, all of the illustrators say the same thing — everybody from R. Crumb to Rockwell — they all say, ‘I wish I could be in a museum,’ but they can’t. There isn’t a major museum in the world that’ll have this kind of art in it. I’m hoping this will change that.”
Lucas’ comments came after his friend and co-host Queen Latifah noted to the cheering crowd that, “Paris has the Louvre, New York has the Met and now L.A. has the artistic equal.”
Guests mingle at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art opening party.
(Carlin Stiehl/For The Times)
It took more than a decade for the Lucas Museum to land in L.A. after a search that included Chicago and San Francisco as well as lots of civic pushback and lawsuits over the use of public parkland.
“We did not realize how hard it would be to give a city a museum,” Hobson said during her remarks, later joking: “If your husband or spouse comes home and says they want to build a museum, I suggest your response is a hard no.”
Laura Dern, left, and Greta Gerwig spent the early part of the night chatting and laughing.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
Hobson went on to extol Lucas’ vision and his ability to never waver from his dream for the museum.
“He was driven to create a space that would showcase the brilliant illustrators that he thought were too often overlooked and ignored,” Hobson said. “And if critics say that a museum of narrative art is too much like a popcorn movie and not enough like an art film, well, we love popcorn movies in our family.”
Like a popcorn movie, the evening ended happily with a drone show in the night sky narrated by Winfrey and Jackson, and featuring images from the museum’s collection including the Cave of Altamira, N.C. Wyeth’s “The Storybook,” Julie Bell’s “The Huntress,” Banksy’s “Girl With Balloon,” the “Star Wars” Millennium Falcon and Maxfield Parrish’s “Ecstasy.”
Afterward the party moved inside from the rooftop terrace for a performance by the Black Eyed Peas.
To attract patrons, the Los Angeles County Library turned to some of the most familiar faces on earth: Hello Kitty and her friends.
The bet seemed to be paying off Friday, as thousands of adults flocked to local branches to snag library cards featuring the adorable anthropomorphic gang on launch day.
The county’s library director, Skye Patrick, told The Times Thursday evening that they were bracing for “complete mayhem.”
A library spokesperson said they were still tallying the number of card sign-ups, but at least 4,400 had been issued as of Friday afternoon.
One of them went to Mar Vista resident Sisa Salazar.
“I thought it was super cute,” the 22-year-old said as she waited in line at the Marina del Rey branch Friday afternoon.
The florist used to frequent the library in high school, checking out books and watching shows. But she lost her card in recent years.
So when she came across the special Hello Kitty-themed card on Instagram, she took the opportunity to get a replacement.
Shortly after 2 p.m. Friday, the line for Hello Kitty library cards at the Marina del Rey branch stretched out the door.
(Iris Kwok / Los Angeles Times)
The Marina del Rey library remained busy throughout the afternoon, with a steady line of more than 50 people stretching out the door. Across town, dozens of people lined up outside the South Whittier Library before its 10 a.m. opening, hoping to be among the first to snag the card.
The West Hollywood, Carson, West Covina, La Mirada, Marina del Rey and Alondra branches ran out of cards on the first day, library spokesperson Jessica Lee wrote in an email. She noted the cards can still be found at other locations and roving bookmobiles.
In addition to Hello Kitty, the card depicts several other recognizable characters produced by the Japanese company Sanrio: My Melody, Kuromi, Pompompurin, Keroppi, Cinnamoroll, Chococat and Pochacco.
Many people in line in Marina del Rey chatted about their favorite Sanrio characters and exchanged childhood memories.
Playa del Rey resident Rebecca Leach, 43, already has an L.A. County Library card, which she often uses to read e-books on the Libby app.
Playa del Rey resident Rebecca Leach said she wanted to get the Hello Kitty library card because she grew up with the character and finds it nostalgic.
(Iris Kwok / Los Angeles Times)
But for the registered nurse, who dons a Hello Kitty badge reel at work, nostalgia was part of the card’s appeal. She has fond childhood memories of playing with a color-changing Hello Kitty plush toy. Leach visited several branches Friday before finding a manageable line in Marina del Rey.
“I think it’s great that they’re promoting the library more and doing outreach,” said Jolyne Jimenez, 51, a library assistant at the Santa Monica Public Library and fan of My Melody.
She spent her day off at the Marina del Rey library waiting for the card. (The Santa Monica Public Library is independent of the L.A. County Library system.)
Limited-edition library cards aren’t new in L.A. County. Previous popular designs have included cards commemorating the centennial of the 19th Amendment and the FIFA World Cup, Patrick said.
“What is uncommon is this amount of buzz,” Patrick said, adding that she hoped the heavy interest in the card would translate to increased awareness of the library’s offerings — not just books and e-books, but streaming content, household tools, musical instruments and podcast equipment.
The Hello Kitty card is available through Oct. 18, Patrick said. The library has permission to use Sanrio’s characters for one month for free and plans to restock the cards before the collaboration period ends.
John Bishop Wisdom of the Crowd mades its debut over the weekend and some BBC viewers were left turning off the gameshow
22:55, 19 Sep 2026Updated 22:56, 19 Sep 2026
Wisdom of the Crowd made its debut on BBC One over the weekend(Image: BBC)
BBC’s Wisdom of the Crowd has left fans divided after just one episode.
The new gameshow, hosted by comedian John Bishop, kicked off on Saturday (September 19) night and is inspired by a remarkable scientific discovery.
Over 100 years ago, a scientist called Francis Galton visited a farmers’ fair where a competition was being held to guess the weight of an ox. Over 800 people entered and the person with the best guess won the ox.
The scientist looked at all the guesses and what he saw blew his mind: The average guess of everyone put together was so accurate that it was even better than the best individual guess.
He called his discovery The Wisdom of the Crowd and the theory transformed the worlds of politics, economics and philosophy and now this science is about to be put to its use as a new big-money Saturday night game show.
In each show, individual contestants get three chances to beat the Wisdom of the Crowd. The whole studio is asked a question and if the contestant’s guess is better than the average guess of the Crowd then they win £10,000.
If the Crowd win, then the contestant gets another chance. If the contestant doesn’t manage to beat the Crowd on their third attempt, they’re out of the game and leave with nothing.
The £10,000 is then put in the CROWD FUND and, at the end of the show, everything left in that CROWD FUND will be shared equally by the Crowd which gives the contestants in a dilemma.
Before they’re knocked out, they can give in, forfeit the £10,000 and take a seat in the Crowd in the hope of taking a smaller share of the winnings at the end of the show.
The first episode left viewers watching at home divided with some switching off in minutes. Taking to X, formerly known as Twitter, one fan penned: “#WisdomOfTheCrowd I gave up after 20 minutes generally I thought it was boring @BBCOne.”
Another added: “This show’s all over the place, I completely lost the thread of what was happening #WisdomOfTheCrowd.” A third person said: “lasted 3 minutes and changed channels. Pish with a capital P #wisdomofthecrowd.”
However, some viewers enjoyed the programme with someone else writing: “Think #WisdomOfTheCrowd is great. Biggest compliment that it feels like an established show already. Fun & playable.” Another agreed: “I will say that #WisdomOfTheCrowd feels like its been on for years. Loving it.”
Speaking to the BBC about the new show, John previously said: “I like the idea of doing a Saturday night show that all the family can watch. Since I started in television, the landscape has changed quite a bit but one of the things that remains constant is that if you’re ever going to get the family together, it’s on a Saturday night and the format of Wisdom attracted me as an opportunity to do that.
“A lot of the questions took me by surprise because you’re always going to get random answers. If you say to people how many mobile phones does the average person have, you’re always going to get someone say something daft at either end.
“But what struck me was when you’ve got a group of people together how unified the answers were. I think that says that as a nation, we’ve got more in common with each other than we think. We all think in a certain parameter.”
Wisdom Of The Crowd continurs on Saturday, September 26 at 8.45pm on BBC iPlayer and BBC One
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.
Trump says he won’t let Iran strike L.A. or San Diego: ‘Not going to let that happen’
WASHINGTON — President Trump told a crowd in Texas on Wednesday night that he would not allow Iran to attack San Diego or Los Angeles, a comment that came two days after he made off-the-cuff remarks suggesting the West Coast cities could be struck.
“You want to see a horror show? You want to see problems? Let them hit San Diego, let them hit Los Angeles,” Trump said at a rally. He then assured the crowd: “We are not going to let that happen. We protect our cities. We protect our country.”
The San Antonio crowd cheered the remarks.
Trump’s decision to return to the subject capped two days in which the White House had been on the defensive, and it appeared aimed at tamping down the fallout from remarks he made Monday night that quickly spread online.
Speaking to a crowd in Nebraska, Trump had said: “They can take out a city, let them take out Los Angeles, let them take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay.”
The comments drew swift condemnation from California leaders, even as the White House communications director, Steven Cheung, insisted the president’s remarks had been taken out of context.
“The media freakout over President Trump’s comments is not rooted in reality,” Cheung wrote Tuesday. “He was clearly stating U.S. cities would have been threatened if a nuclear Iran hadn’t been stopped. America is safer because of the president. Iran has no nuclear, no navy, no air force, and no money.”
But the remarks were enough to rattle many in California and drew backlash from the state’s leaders, including Republican Jim Desmond, a Navy veteran running in a highly competitive U.S. House race.
“I vehemently disagree with President Trump’s comments,” Desmond wrote on social media. “America must stand up to Iran and defend our interests, but the first responsibility of our Commander in Chief is to protect the American people and our homeland.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday opened the state emergency operations center to assess potential threats following Trump’s remarks. San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass also condemned the president for potentially compromising the safety of their cities.
“San Diego is not collateral damage,” Gloria posted on social media. “We are not expendable. And we are never a ‘small price to pay.’ Keep our city out of your reckless war talk.”
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Pope Leo Draws Massive Paris Crowd in Biggest Event of France Tour
On Saturday, Pope Leo addressed a massive crowd in Paris at an outdoor Mass, emphasizing that true happiness comes from faith and not material possessions. The event took place on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, attracting about 700,000 attendees who cheered as he arrived in an open-top popemobile, blessing people along the way. Notable attendees included Brigitte Macron, Marine Le Pen, Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu, and billionaire Bernard Arnault.
During his sermon, Leo expressed gratitude for his visit to France, where he aims to restore the Church’s image after recent abuse scandals. He reminded Catholics that only faith can fill their inner emptiness. Attendees appreciated his call for peace, with one supporter highlighting his consistent peace advocacy amidst global conflicts.
The pope raised concerns about the current global leadership and warned of a crisis within the UN and similar organizations. He also addressed the potential risks of developing artificial intelligence, suggesting it could lead to a troubling future.
In France, a nation where church and state are separate, the Catholic Church has seen a decline in affiliation among the younger population since World War Two. Despite recent increases in adult baptisms, official statistics show that only 25% of young adults identified as Catholic compared to 43% a decade ago. During a visit to newly baptized Catholics before the Mass, Leo urged the Church to be realistic about this small rise and to nurture the faith within the community.
Later, Pope Leo is scheduled to visit Lourdes to meet with victims of clergy abuse, continuing his efforts to address the issues within the Church.
With information from Reuters
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Inside Lucas Museum’s starry opening party with Oprah, Mark Hamill
If George Lucas invites you to a party, you go.
That much was clear Saturday at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art’s opening-night soiree, where the guest list was as celebrity-heavy as any Academy Awards after-party. As the festivities kicked off around sunset in the courtyard under the museum’s towering elliptical oculus, Oprah Winfrey hugged Robert De Niro, and Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart skipped the red carpet after chatting with Spike Lee. Laura Dern and Greta Gerwig laughed together by the entrance while Samuel L. Jackson plopped down on a curved bench, joking, “Hey, look what I did!”
For the record:
1:22 p.m. Sept. 20, 2026A previous version of this article said James Cameron was photographed along with a large group of directors at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. He was not.
He didn’t sit for long because Cynthia Erivo and Andy Garcia showed up and there were more hugs and handshakes and hellos. Owen Wilson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kim Kardashian, Meg Ryan, Jack Quaid, Gov. Gavin Newsom, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Justin Trudeau, Mark Hamill and Magic Johnson were there too, and that was just the beginning.
Gov. Gavin Newsom attended the opening-night party for the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art alongside a host of other notable guests and celebrities.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
After a rousing performance by a white-robe-clad vocal collective called Voices of Fire, co-founded by Pharrell Williams, Lucas’ wife Mellody Hobson noted that, “George kept saying, ‘Will this person come? Do you think this person will come?’”
“I said, ‘They will all come,’” Hobson said as the crowd laughed during opening remarks on a raised platform in the museum’s grand lobby.
And so they did. There was even a banner moment inside the posh fifth-floor Skywalker Grill where a group of directors gathered to be photographed in what could very well become a seminal photo of Hollywood influence in the 21st century. The shot included Lucas, Jon M. Chu, Chris Columbus, Francis Ford Coppola, Lee Daniels, Guillermo del Toro, Jon Favreau, Bryce Dallas Howard, Ron Howard, Peter Jackson, Chris Meledandri, Denis Villeneuve, Christopher Nolan, Spike Lee, Tyler Perry, Steven Spielberg, Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez, Nathan Fielder and David Benioff.
Organizers were scrambling to find Gerwig, but she had dashed off somewhere else.
“Star Wars” legend Mark Hamill and his wife, Marilou York, were guests at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art opening party.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
There were artists in attendance too, of course, but not as many. Jeff Koons, Refik Anadol, Judy Baca and Takashi Murakami strolled through the crowd, as did museum directors including the Broad’s Joanne Heyler and Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Michael Govan, who was relieved to be attending someone else’s party after hosting so many of his own in April and May when the new Geffen Galleries opened.
Lucas and Hobson went to great lengths to explain why the Lucas Museum matters and why it is different from other museums. Their comments, in many ways, sought to address the criticism that has been lobbed at the museum since it held its press preview a few weeks back.
Though it has received a number of rave reviews, critics have called narrative art a false conceit and argued that the juxtaposition of masterworks with pop culture ephemera does not work. Much of the criticism has been focused on a perceived lack of context since there is almost no wall text clarifying why certain curatorial choices were made.
George Lucas and his wife Mellody Hobson hosted an extravagant opening party at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
“When I started it, everybody said, ‘You’re crazy. You shouldn’t do it. It’s not going to work. People are going to come after you,’” Lucas said of his plans for the museum. “I said, ‘People have come after me all my life, especially in the movies.’”
Lucas also addressed why he curated the museum’s 100,000 square feet of gallery space on his own, noting that at a certain point plans were “getting off the rails.”
“I’m going to have to take this over because people don’t understand what I’m doing,” Lucas recalled thinking. “The idea that illustration is an art form and illustrators are artists was just too much for somebody who had been taught otherwise by the art schools that they went to and the universities that they went to.”
People with PhDs often can’t see the big picture, Lucas said, “You can’t say ‘This is art. This is not art.’ Art is in the eye of the beholder. If it is emotional to you, then it’s art. And, of course, I’ve been criticized up and down and sideways for that. But I believe it wholeheartedly — that you get to decide what art is.”
Members of the Virginia Beach vocal collective Voices of Fire, co-founded by Bishop Ezekiel Williams and Pharrell Williams perform at the Lucas Museum.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
Lucas noted that throughout his career he has worked with many illustrators, “and I will tell you, they are as talented as any artist I’ve ever met. This is the way of giving back to them something that they’ve all wanted … inevitably, all of the illustrators say the same thing — everybody from R. Crumb to Rockwell — they all say, ‘I wish I could be in a museum,’ but they can’t. There isn’t a major museum in the world that’ll have this kind of art in it. I’m hoping this will change that.”
Lucas’ comments came after his friend and co-host Queen Latifah noted to the cheering crowd that, “Paris has the Louvre, New York has the Met and now L.A. has the artistic equal.”
Guests mingle at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art opening party.
(Carlin Stiehl/For The Times)
It took more than a decade for the Lucas Museum to land in L.A. after a search that included Chicago and San Francisco as well as lots of civic pushback and lawsuits over the use of public parkland.
“We did not realize how hard it would be to give a city a museum,” Hobson said during her remarks, later joking: “If your husband or spouse comes home and says they want to build a museum, I suggest your response is a hard no.”
Laura Dern, left, and Greta Gerwig spent the early part of the night chatting and laughing.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
Hobson went on to extol Lucas’ vision and his ability to never waver from his dream for the museum.
“He was driven to create a space that would showcase the brilliant illustrators that he thought were too often overlooked and ignored,” Hobson said. “And if critics say that a museum of narrative art is too much like a popcorn movie and not enough like an art film, well, we love popcorn movies in our family.”
Like a popcorn movie, the evening ended happily with a drone show in the night sky narrated by Winfrey and Jackson, and featuring images from the museum’s collection including the Cave of Altamira, N.C. Wyeth’s “The Storybook,” Julie Bell’s “The Huntress,” Banksy’s “Girl With Balloon,” the “Star Wars” Millennium Falcon and Maxfield Parrish’s “Ecstasy.”
Afterward the party moved inside from the rooftop terrace for a performance by the Black Eyed Peas.
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‘Super cute’ Hello Kitty cards draw crowds to the L.A. County Library
To attract patrons, the Los Angeles County Library turned to some of the most familiar faces on earth: Hello Kitty and her friends.
The bet seemed to be paying off Friday, as thousands of adults flocked to local branches to snag library cards featuring the adorable anthropomorphic gang on launch day.
The county’s library director, Skye Patrick, told The Times Thursday evening that they were bracing for “complete mayhem.”
A library spokesperson said they were still tallying the number of card sign-ups, but at least 4,400 had been issued as of Friday afternoon.
One of them went to Mar Vista resident Sisa Salazar.
“I thought it was super cute,” the 22-year-old said as she waited in line at the Marina del Rey branch Friday afternoon.
The florist used to frequent the library in high school, checking out books and watching shows. But she lost her card in recent years.
So when she came across the special Hello Kitty-themed card on Instagram, she took the opportunity to get a replacement.
Shortly after 2 p.m. Friday, the line for Hello Kitty library cards at the Marina del Rey branch stretched out the door.
(Iris Kwok / Los Angeles Times)
The Marina del Rey library remained busy throughout the afternoon, with a steady line of more than 50 people stretching out the door. Across town, dozens of people lined up outside the South Whittier Library before its 10 a.m. opening, hoping to be among the first to snag the card.
The West Hollywood, Carson, West Covina, La Mirada, Marina del Rey and Alondra branches ran out of cards on the first day, library spokesperson Jessica Lee wrote in an email. She noted the cards can still be found at other locations and roving bookmobiles.
In addition to Hello Kitty, the card depicts several other recognizable characters produced by the Japanese company Sanrio: My Melody, Kuromi, Pompompurin, Keroppi, Cinnamoroll, Chococat and Pochacco.
Many people in line in Marina del Rey chatted about their favorite Sanrio characters and exchanged childhood memories.
Playa del Rey resident Rebecca Leach, 43, already has an L.A. County Library card, which she often uses to read e-books on the Libby app.
Playa del Rey resident Rebecca Leach said she wanted to get the Hello Kitty library card because she grew up with the character and finds it nostalgic.
(Iris Kwok / Los Angeles Times)
But for the registered nurse, who dons a Hello Kitty badge reel at work, nostalgia was part of the card’s appeal. She has fond childhood memories of playing with a color-changing Hello Kitty plush toy. Leach visited several branches Friday before finding a manageable line in Marina del Rey.
“I think it’s great that they’re promoting the library more and doing outreach,” said Jolyne Jimenez, 51, a library assistant at the Santa Monica Public Library and fan of My Melody.
She spent her day off at the Marina del Rey library waiting for the card. (The Santa Monica Public Library is independent of the L.A. County Library system.)
Limited-edition library cards aren’t new in L.A. County. Previous popular designs have included cards commemorating the centennial of the 19th Amendment and the FIFA World Cup, Patrick said.
“What is uncommon is this amount of buzz,” Patrick said, adding that she hoped the heavy interest in the card would translate to increased awareness of the library’s offerings — not just books and e-books, but streaming content, household tools, musical instruments and podcast equipment.
The Hello Kitty card is available through Oct. 18, Patrick said. The library has permission to use Sanrio’s characters for one month for free and plans to restock the cards before the collaboration period ends.
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BBC Wisdom of the Crowd viewers ‘switch off’ John Bishop’s new gameshow within minutes
John Bishop Wisdom of the Crowd mades its debut over the weekend and some BBC viewers were left turning off the gameshow
22:55, 19 Sep 2026Updated 22:56, 19 Sep 2026
Wisdom of the Crowd made its debut on BBC One over the weekend(Image: BBC)
BBC’s Wisdom of the Crowd has left fans divided after just one episode.
The new gameshow, hosted by comedian John Bishop, kicked off on Saturday (September 19) night and is inspired by a remarkable scientific discovery.
Over 100 years ago, a scientist called Francis Galton visited a farmers’ fair where a competition was being held to guess the weight of an ox. Over 800 people entered and the person with the best guess won the ox.
The scientist looked at all the guesses and what he saw blew his mind: The average guess of everyone put together was so accurate that it was even better than the best individual guess.
He called his discovery The Wisdom of the Crowd and the theory transformed the worlds of politics, economics and philosophy and now this science is about to be put to its use as a new big-money Saturday night game show.
In each show, individual contestants get three chances to beat the Wisdom of the Crowd. The whole studio is asked a question and if the contestant’s guess is better than the average guess of the Crowd then they win £10,000.
If the Crowd win, then the contestant gets another chance. If the contestant doesn’t manage to beat the Crowd on their third attempt, they’re out of the game and leave with nothing.
The £10,000 is then put in the CROWD FUND and, at the end of the show, everything left in that CROWD FUND will be shared equally by the Crowd which gives the contestants in a dilemma.
Before they’re knocked out, they can give in, forfeit the £10,000 and take a seat in the Crowd in the hope of taking a smaller share of the winnings at the end of the show.
The first episode left viewers watching at home divided with some switching off in minutes. Taking to X, formerly known as Twitter, one fan penned: “#WisdomOfTheCrowd I gave up after 20 minutes generally I thought it was boring @BBCOne.”
Another added: “This show’s all over the place, I completely lost the thread of what was happening #WisdomOfTheCrowd.” A third person said: “lasted 3 minutes and changed channels. Pish with a capital P #wisdomofthecrowd.”
However, some viewers enjoyed the programme with someone else writing: “Think #WisdomOfTheCrowd is great. Biggest compliment that it feels like an established show already. Fun & playable.” Another agreed: “I will say that #WisdomOfTheCrowd feels like its been on for years. Loving it.”
Speaking to the BBC about the new show, John previously said: “I like the idea of doing a Saturday night show that all the family can watch. Since I started in television, the landscape has changed quite a bit but one of the things that remains constant is that if you’re ever going to get the family together, it’s on a Saturday night and the format of Wisdom attracted me as an opportunity to do that.
“A lot of the questions took me by surprise because you’re always going to get random answers. If you say to people how many mobile phones does the average person have, you’re always going to get someone say something daft at either end.
“But what struck me was when you’ve got a group of people together how unified the answers were. I think that says that as a nation, we’ve got more in common with each other than we think. We all think in a certain parameter.”
Wisdom Of The Crowd continurs on Saturday, September 26 at 8.45pm on BBC iPlayer and BBC One
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Elon threatens to sue over new ‘Musk’ doc. But festival crowd loves it
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.
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