Director

You may not know Eliot Mack’s name, but if a small robot has ever crept around your kitchen, you know his work.

Before he turned his MIT-trained mind to filmmaking, Mack helped lead a small team of engineers trying to solve a deeply relatable problem: how to avoid vacuuming. Whether it was figuring out how to get around furniture legs or unclog the brushes after a run-in with long hair, Mack designed everything onscreen first with software, troubleshooting virtually and getting 80% of the way there before a single part was ever manufactured.

The result was the Roomba.

When Mack pivoted to filmmaking in the early 2000s, he was struck by how chaotic Hollywood’s process felt. “You pitch the script, get the green light and you’re flying into production,” he says, sounding both amused and baffled. “There’s no CAD template, no centralized database. I was like, how do movies even get made?”

That question sent Mack down a new path, trading dust bunnies for the creative bottlenecks that slow Hollywood down.

In 2004 he founded Lightcraft Technology, a startup developing what would later be known as virtual production tools, born out of his belief that if you could design a robot in software, you should be able to design a shot the same way. The company’s early system, Previzion, sold for $180,000 and was used on sci-fi and fantasy shows like “V” and “Once Upon a Time.” But Jetset, its latest AI-assisted tool set, runs on an iPhone and offers a free tier, with pro features topping out at just $80 a month. It lets filmmakers scan a location, drop it into virtual space and block out scenes with camera moves, lighting and characters. They can preview shots, overlay elements and organize footage for editing — all from a phone. No soundstage, no big crew, no gatekeepers. Lightcraft’s pitch: “a movie studio in your pocket.”

A series on how the AI revolution is reshaping the creative foundations of Hollywood — from storytelling and performance to production, labor and power.

The goal, Mack says, is to put more power in the hands of the people making the work. “One of the big problems is how siloed Hollywood is,” he says. “We talked to an Oscar-winning editor who said, ‘I’m never going to get to make my movie’ — he was pigeonholed as just an editor. Same with an animator we know who has two Oscars.”

Eliot Mack, CEO of Lightcraft, an AI-powered virtual-production startup, wants to give creators the power and freedom to bring their ideas to life.

(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)

To Mack, the revolution of Jetset recalls the scrappy, guerrilla spirit of Roger Corman’s low-budget productions, which launched the early careers of directors like Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese. For generations of creatives stuck waiting on permission or funding, he sees this moment as a reset button.

“The things you got good at — writing, directing, acting, creating, storytelling — they’re still crazy useful,” he says. “What’s changing is the amount of schlepping you have to do before you get to do the fun stuff. Your 20s are a gift. You want to be creating at the absolute speed of sound. We’re trying to get to a place where you don’t have to ask anyone. You can just make the thing.”

AI is reshaping nearly every part of the filmmaking pipeline. Storyboards can now be generated from a script draft. Lighting and camera angles can be tested before anyone touches a piece of gear. Rough cuts, placeholder VFX, even digital costume mock-ups can all be created before the first shot is filmed. What once took a full crew, a soundstage and a six-figure budget can now happen in minutes, sometimes at the hands of a single person with a laptop.

This wave of automation is arriving just as Hollywood is gripped by existential anxiety. The 2023 writers’ and actors’ strikes brought the industry to a standstill and put AI at the center of a fight over its future. Since then, production has slowed, crew sizes have shrunk and the streaming boom has given way to consolidation and cost-cutting.

According to FilmLA, on-location filming in Greater Los Angeles dropped 22.4% in early 2025 compared with the year before. For many of the crew members and craftspeople still competing for those jobs, AI doesn’t feel like an innovation. It feels like a new way to justify doing more with less, only to end up with work that’s less original or creative.

“AI scrapes everything we artists have made off the internet and creates a completely static, banal world that can never imagine anything that hasn’t happened before,” documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis warned during a directors panel at the 2023 Telluride Film Festival, held in the midst of the strikes. “That’s the real weakness of the AI dream — it’s stuck with the ghosts. And I think we’ll get fed up with that.”

How you feel about these changes often depends on where you sit and how far along you are in your career. For people just starting out, AI can offer a way to experiment, move faster and bypass the usual barriers to entry. For veterans behind the scenes, it often feels like a threat to the expertise they’ve spent decades honing.

Past technological shifts — the arrival of sound, the rise of digital cameras, the advancement of CGI — changed how movies were made, but not necessarily who made them. Each wave brought new roles: boom operators and dialogue coaches, color consultants and digital compositors. Innovation usually meant more jobs, not fewer.

But AI doesn’t just change the tools. It threatens to erase the people who once used the old ones.

Diego Mariscal has seen first hand as AI has cut potential jobs for grips.

(Jennifer Rose Clasen)

Diego Mariscal, 43, a veteran dolly grip who has worked on “The Mandalorian” and “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” saw the writing on the wall during a recent shoot. A visual effects supervisor opened his laptop to show off a reel of high-end commercials and something was missing. “There were no blue screens — none,” Mariscal recalls. “That’s what we do. We put up blues as grips. You’d normally hire an extra 10 people and have an extra three days of pre-rigging, setting up all these blue screens. He was like, ‘We don’t need it anymore. I just use AI to clip it out.’”

Mariscal runs Crew Stories, a private Facebook group with nearly 100,000 members, where working crew members share job leads, trade tips and voice their growing fears. He tries to keep up with the steady drip of AI news. “I read about AI all day, every day,” he says. “At least 20 posts a day.”

His fear isn’t just about fewer jobs — it’s about what comes next. “I’ve been doing this since I was 19,” Mariscal says of his specialized dolly work, which involves setting up heavy equipment and guiding the camera smoothly through complex shots. “I can push a cart in a parking lot. I can push a lawnmower. What else can I do?”

Who wins, who loses and what does James Cameron think?

Before AI and digital doubles, Mike Marino learned the craft of transformation the human way: through hands-on work and a fascination that bordered on obsession.

Marino was 5 years old when he first saw “The Elephant Man” on HBO. Horrified yet transfixed, he became fixated on prosthetics and the emotional power they could carry. As a teenager in New York, he pored over issues of Fangoria, studied monsters and makeup effects and experimented with sculpting his own latex masks on his bedroom floor.

Prosthetics artist Mike Marino asks a big question related to generative AI: What role do the human creatives play?

(Sean Dougherty / For The Times)

Decades later, Marino, 48, has become one of Hollywood’s leading makeup artists, earning Oscar nominations for “Coming 2 America,” “The Batman” and last year’s dark comedy “A Different Man,” in which he helped transform Sebastian Stan into a disfigured actor.

His is the kind of tactile, handcrafted work that once seemed irreplaceable. But today AI tools are increasingly capable of achieving similar effects digitally: de-aging actors, altering faces, even generating entire performances. What used to take weeks of experimentation and hours in a makeup trailer can now be approximated with a few prompts and a trained model. To Marino, AI is more than a new set of tools. It’s a fundamental change in what it means to create.

“If AI is so good it can replace a human, then why have any human beings?” he says. “This is about taste. It’s about choice. I’m a human being. I’m an artist. I have my own ideas — mine. Just because you can make 10,000 spaceships in a movie, should you?”

Marino is no technophobe. His team regularly uses 3D scanning and printing. But he draws the line at outsourcing creative judgment to a machine. “I’m hoping there are artists who want to work with humans and not machines,” he says. “If we let AI just run amok with no taste, no choice, no morality behind it, then we’re gone.”

Not everyone sees AI’s rise in film production as a zero-sum game. Some technologists imagine a middle path. Daniela Rus, director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab and one of the world’s leading AI researchers, believes the future of filmmaking lies in a “human-machine partnership.”

AI, Rus argues, can take on time-consuming tasks like animating background extras, color correction or previsualizing effects, freeing up people to focus on what requires intuition and taste. “AI can help with the routine work,” she says. “But the human touch and emotional authenticity are essential.”

Few directors have spent more time grappling with the dangers and potential of artificial intelligence than James Cameron. Nearly 40 years before generative tools entered Hollywood’s workflow, he imagined a rogue AI triggering global apocalypse in 1984’s “The Terminator,” giving the world Skynet — now a cultural shorthand for the dark side of machine intelligence. Today, he continues to straddle that line, using AI behind the scenes on the upcoming “Avatar: Fire and Ash” to optimize visual effects and performance-capture, while keeping creative decisions in human hands. The latest sequel, due Dec. 19, promises to push the franchise’s spectacle and scale even further; a newly released trailer reveals volcanic eruptions, aerial battles and a new clan of Na’vi.

A scene from “Avatar: The Way of Water.” Director James Cameron differentiates between using machine-learning to reduce monotonous movie-making work and generative AI.

(Courtesy of 20th Century Studios/Courtesy of 20th Century Studios)

“You can automate a lot of processes that right now tie up a lot of artists doing mundane tasks,” Cameron told The Times in 2023 at a Beyond Fest screening of his 1989 film “The Abyss.” “So if we could accelerate the postproduction pipeline, then we can make more movies. Then those artists will get to do more exciting things.”

For Cameron, the promise of AI lies in efficiency, not elimination. “I think in our particular industry, it’s not going to replace people; it’s going to free them to do other things,” he believes. “It’s going to accelerate the process and bring the price down, which would be good because, you know, some movies are a little more expensive than others. And a lot of that has to do with human energy.”

Cameron himself directed five films between 1984 and 1994 and only three in the three decades since, though each one has grown increasingly complex and ambitious.

That said, Cameron has never been one to chase shortcuts for their own sake. “I think you can make pre-viz and design easier, but I don’t know if it makes it better,” he says. “I mean, if easy is your thing. Easy has never been my thing.”

He draws a line between the machine-learning techniques his team has used since the first “Avatar” to help automate tedious tasks and the newer wave of generative AI models making headlines today.

“The big explosion has been around image-based generative models that use everything from every image that’s ever been created,” he says. “We’d never use any of them. The images we make are computer-created, but they’re not AI-created.”

In his view, nothing synthetic can replace the instincts of a flesh-and-blood artist. “We have human artists that do all the designs,” he says. “We don’t need AI. We’ve got meat-I. And I’m one of the meat-artists that come up with all that stuff. We don’t need a computer. Maybe other people need it. We don’t.”

Reshaping creativity — and creative labor

Rick Carter didn’t go looking for AI as a tool. He discovered it as a lifeline.

The two-time Oscar-winning production designer, who worked with Cameron on “Avatar” and whose credits include “Jurassic Park” and “Forrest Gump,” began experimenting with generative AI tools like Midjourney and Runway during the pandemic, looking for a way to keep his creative instincts sharp while the industry was on pause. A longtime painter, he was drawn to the freedom the programs offered.

“I saw that there was an opportunity to create images where I didn’t have to go to anybody else for approval, which is the way I would paint,” Carter says by phone from Paris. “None of the gatekeeping would matter. I have a whole lot of stories on my own that I’ve tried to get into the world in various ways and suddenly there was a way to visualize them.”

Midjourney and Runway can create richly detailed images — and in Runway’s case, short video clips — from a text prompt or a combination of text and visuals. Trained on billions of images and audiovisual materials scraped from the internet, these systems learn to mimic style, lighting, composition and form, often with eerie precision. In a production pipeline, these tools can help concept artists visualize characters or sets, let directors generate shot ideas or give costume designers and makeup artists a fast way to test looks, long before physical production begins.

But as these tools gain traction in Hollywood, a deeper legal and creative dilemma is coming into focus: Who owns the work they produce? And what about the copyrighted material used to train them?

In June, Disney and Universal filed a federal copyright lawsuit against Midjourney, accusing the company of generating unauthorized replicas of characters such as Spider-Man, Darth Vader and Shrek using AI models trained on copyrighted material: what the suit calls a “bottomless pit of plagiarism.” It’s the most high-profile of several legal challenges now putting copyright law to the test in the age of generative AI.

“Forrest Gump” director Robert Zemeckis, left, with production designer Rick Carter at an art installation of the movie’s famed bench. (Carter family)

(Carter family)

Working with generative models, Carter began crafting what he calls “riffs of consciousness,” embracing AI as a kind of collaborative partner, one he could play off of intuitively. The process reminded him of the loose, improvisational early stages of filmmaking, a space he knows well from decades of working with directors like Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg.

“I’ll just start with a visual or a word prompt and see how it iterates from there and what it triggers in my mind,” Carter says. “Then I incorporate that so it builds on its own in an almost free-associative way. But it’s still based upon my own intuitive, emotional, artistic, even spiritual needs at that moment.”

He describes the experience as a dialogue between two minds, one digital and one human: “One AI is artificial intelligence. The other AI is authentic intelligence — that’s us. We’ve earned it over this whole span of time on the planet.”

Sometimes, Carter says, the most evocative results come from mistakes. While sketching out a story about a hippie detective searching for a missing woman in the Himalayas, he accidentally typed “womb” into ChatGPT instead of “woman.” The AI ran with it, returning three pages of wild plot ideas involving gurus, seekers and a bizarre mystery set in motion by the disappearance.

“I couldn’t believe it,” he says. “I would never have taken it that far. The AI is so precocious. It is trying so much to please that it will literally make something out of the mistake you make.”

Carter hasn’t used generative AI on a film yet; most of his creations are shared only with friends. But he says the technology is already slipping into creative workflows in covert ways. “There are issues with copyrights with most of the studios so for now, it’s going to be mostly underground,” he says. “People will use it but they won’t acknowledge that they’re using it — they’ll have an illustrator do something over it, or take a photo so there’s no digital trail.”

Carter has lived through a major technological shift before. “I remember when we went from analog to digital, from ‘Jurassic Park’ on,” he says. “There were a lot of wonderful artists who could draw and paint in ways that were just fantastic but they couldn’t adapt. They didn’t want to — even the idea of it felt like the wrong way to make art. And, of course, most of them suffered because they didn’t make it from the Rolodex to the database in terms of people calling them up.”

He worries that some artists may approach the technology with a rigid sense of authorship. “Early on, I found that the less I used my own ego as a barometer for whether something was artistic, the more I leaned into the process of collaboratively making something bigger than the sum of its parts — and the bigger and better the movies became.”

Others, like storyboard artist Sam Tung, are bracing against the same wave with a quiet but unshakable defiance.

Tung, whose credits include “Twisters” and Christopher Nolan’s upcoming adaptation of “The Odyssey,” has spent the last two years tracking the rise of generative tools, not just their capabilities but their implications. As co-chair of the Animation Guild’s AI Committee, he has been on the front lines of conversations about how these technologies could reshape creative labor.

To artists like Tung, the rise of generative tools feels deeply personal. “If you are an illustrator or a writer or whatever, you had to give up other things to take time to develop those skills,” he says. “Nobody comes out of the womb being able to draw or write or act. Anybody who does that professionally spent years honing those skills.”

Tung has no interest in handing that over to a machine. “It’s not that I’m scared of it — I just don’t need it,” he says. “If I want to draw something or paint something, I’ll do it myself. That way it’s exactly what I want and I actually enjoy the process. When people tell me they responded to a drawing I did or a short film I made with friends, it feels great. But anything I’ve made with AI, I’ve quickly forgotten about. There’s basically nothing I get from putting it on social media, other than the ire of my peers.”

What unsettles him isn’t just the slickness of AI’s output but how that polish is being used to justify smaller crews and faster turnarounds. “If this is left unchecked, it’s very easy to imagine a worst-case scenario where team sizes and contract durations shrink,” Tung says. “A producer who barely understands how it works might say, ‘Don’t you have AI to do 70% of this? Why do you need a whole week to turn around a sequence? Just press the button that says: MAKE MOVIE.’ ”

At 73, Carter isn’t chasing jobs. His legacy is secure. “If they don’t hire me again, that’s OK,” he says. “I’m not in that game anymore.” He grew up in Hollywood — his father was Jack Lemmon’s longtime publicist and producing partner — and has spent his life watching the industry evolve. Now, he’s witnessing a reckoning unlike any he, or anyone else, has ever imagined.

“I do have concerns about who is developing AI and what their values are,” he says. “What they use all this for is not necessarily something I would approve of — politically, socially, emotionally. But I don’t think I’m in a position to approve or not.”

Earlier this year, the Palisades fire destroyed Carter’s home, taking with it years of paintings and personal artwork. AI, he says, has given him a way to keep creating through the upheaval. “It saved me through the pandemic, and now it’s saving me through the fire,” he says, as if daring the universe to test him again. “It’s like, go ahead, throw something else at me.”

‘Prompt and pray?’ Not so fast

Many in the industry may still be dipping a toe into the waters of AI. Verena Puhm dove in.

The Austrian-born filmmaker studied acting and directing in Munich and Salzburg before moving to Los Angeles, where she built a globe-spanning career producing, writing and developing content for international networks and streamers. Her credits range from CNN’s docuseries “History of the Sitcom” to the German reboot of the cult anthology “Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction” and a naval documentary available on Tubi. More recently, she has channeled that same creative range into a deepening exploration of generative tools.

Puhm first began dabbling with AI while using Midjourney to design a pitch deck, but it wasn’t until she entered a timed generative AI filmmaking challenge at the 2024 AI on the Lot conference — informally dubbed a “gen battle” — that the creative potential of the medium hit her.

“In two hours, I made a little mock commercial,” she remembers, proudly. “It was actually pretty well received and fun. And I was like, Oh, wow, I did this in two hours. What could I do in two days or two weeks?”

What started as experimentation soon became a second act. This summer, Puhm was named head of studio for Dream Lab LA, a new creative arm of Luma AI, which develops generative video tools for filmmakers and creators. There, she’s helping shape new storytelling formats and supporting emerging creators working at the intersection of cinema and technology. She may not be a household name, but in the world of experimental storytelling, she’s fast becoming a key figure.

Verena Puhm, a director, writer and producer, has used generative AI in a number of her projects, says it’s breaking down barriers to entry.

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

Some critics dismiss AI filmmaking as little more than “prompt and pray”: typing in a few words and hoping something usable comes out. Puhm bristles at the phrase.

“Anybody that says that tells me they’ve never tried it at all, because it is not that easy and simple,” she says. “You can buy a paintbrush at Home Depot for, what, $2? That doesn’t make you a painter. When smartphones first came out, there was a lot of content being made but that didn’t mean everyone was a filmmaker.”

What excites her most is how AI is breaking down the barriers that once kept ambitious ideas out of reach. Luma’s new Modify Video tool lets filmmakers tweak footage after it’s shot, changing wardrobe, aging a character, shifting the time of day, all without reshoots or traditional VFX. It can turn a garage into a spaceship, swap a cloudy sky for the aurora borealis or morph an actor into a six-eyed alien, no green screen required.

“It’s such a relief as an artist,” Puhm says. “If there’s a project I’ve been sitting on for six years because I didn’t have a $5 million budget — suddenly there’s no limit. I remember shopping projects around and being told by producers, ‘This scene has to go, that has to go,’ just to keep the budget low. Now everything is open.”

That sense of access resonates far beyond Los Angeles. At a panel during AI on the Lot, “Blue Beetle” director Ángel Manuel Soto reflected on how transformative AI might have been when he was first starting out. “I wish tools like this existed when I wanted to make movies in Puerto Rico, because nobody would lend me a camera,” he said. “Access to equipment is a privilege we sometimes take for granted. I see this helping kids like me from the projects tell stories without going bankrupt — or stealing, which I don’t condone.”

Puhm welcomes criticism of AI but only when it’s informed. “If you hate AI and you’ve actually tested the tools and educated yourself, I’ll be your biggest supporter,” she says. “But if you’re just speaking out of fear, with no understanding, then what are you even basing your opinion on?”

She understands why some filmmakers feel rattled, especially those who, like her, grew up dreaming of seeing their work on the big screen. “I still want to make features and TV series — that’s what I set out to do,” she says. “I hope movie theaters don’t go away. But if the same story I want to tell reaches millions of people on a phone and they’re excited about it, will I really care that it wasn’t in a theater?”

“I just feel like we have to adapt to the reality of things,” she continues. “That might sometimes be uncomfortable, but there is so much opportunity if you lean in. Right now any filmmaker can suddenly tell a story at a high production value that they could have never done before, and that is beautiful and empowering.”

For many, embracing AI boils down to a simple choice: adapt or get cut from the frame.

Hal Watmough, a BAFTA-winning British editor with two decades of experience, first began experimenting with AI out of a mix of curiosity and dread. “I was scared,” he admits. “This thing was coming into the industry and threatening our jobs and was going to make us obsolete.” But once he started playing with tools like Midjourney and Runway, he quickly saw how they could not only speed up the process but allow him to rethink what his career could be.

For an editor used to working only with what he was given, the ability to generate footage on the fly, cut with it immediately and experiment endlessly without waiting on a crew or a shoot was a revelation. “It was still pretty janky at that stage, but I could see the potential,” he says. “It was kind of intoxicating. I started to think, I’d like to start making things that I haven’t seen before.”

After honing his skills with various AI tools, Watmough created a wistful, vibrant five-minute animated short called “LATE,” about an aging artist passing his wisdom to a young office worker. Over two weeks, he generated 2,181 images using AI, then curated and refined them frame by frame to shape the story.

Earlier this year, he submitted “LATE” to what was billed as the world’s first AI animation contest, hosted by Curious Refuge, an online education hub for creative technologists — and, to his delight, he won. The prize included $10,000, a pitch meeting with production company Promise Studios and, as an absurd bonus, his face printed on a potato. But for Watmough, the real reward was the sense that he had found a new creative identity.

“There’s something to the fact that the winner of the first AI animation competition was an editor,” Watmough says. “With the advent of AI, yes, you could call yourself a filmmaker but essentially I’d say most people are editors. You’re curating, selecting, picking what you like — relying on your taste.”

Thanks to AI, he says he’s made more personal passion projects in the past year and a half than during his entire previous career. “I’ll be walking or running and ideas just come. Now I can go home that night and try them,” he says. “None of that would exist without AI. So either something exists within AI or it never exists at all. And all the happiness and fulfillment that comes with it for the creator doesn’t exist either.”

Watmough hasn’t entirely lost his fear of what AI might do to the creative workforce, even as he is energized by what it makes possible. “A lot of people I speak to in film and TV are worried about losing their jobs and I’m not saying the infrastructure roles won’t radically change,” he says. “But I don’t think AI is going to replace that many — if any — creative people.”

What it will do, he says, is raise the bar. “If anyone can create anything, then average work will basically become extinct or pointless. AI can churn out remakes until the cows come home. You’ll have to pioneer to exist.”

He likens the current moment to the birth of cinema more than a century ago — specifically the Lumière brothers’ “Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat,” the 1896 short that famously startled early audiences. In the silent one-minute film, a steam train rumbles toward the camera, growing larger. Some viewers reportedly leaped from their seats, convinced it was about to crash into them.

“People ran out of the theater screaming,” Watmough says. “Now we don’t even think about it. With AI, we’re at that stage again. We’re watching the steam train come into the station and people are either really excited or they’re running out of the theater in fear. That’s where we are, right at the start. And the potential is limitless.”

Then again, he adds with a dry laugh, “I’m an eternal optimist, so take what I say with a grain of salt.”

Pregnancy centers in the U.S. that discourage women from getting abortions have been adding more medical services — and could be poised to expand further.

The expansion — including testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and even providing primary medical care — has been unfolding for years. It gained steam after the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade three years ago, clearing the way for states to ban abortion.

The push could get more momentum with Planned Parenthood closing some clinics and considering shutting others after changes to Medicaid. Planned Parenthood is not just the nation’s largest abortion provider, but also offers cancer screenings, sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment, and other reproductive health services.

“We ultimately want to replace Planned Parenthood with the services we offer,” said Heather Lawless, founder and director of Reliance Center in Lewiston, Idaho. She said about 40% of patients at the antiabortion center are there for reasons unrelated to pregnancy, including some who use the nurse practitioner as a primary caregiver.

The changes have frustrated abortion rights groups, who, in addition to opposing the centers’ antiabortion messaging, say they lack accountability; refuse to provide birth control; and offer only limited ultrasounds that cannot be used for diagnosing fetal anomalies because the people conducting them don’t have that training. A growing number also offer unproven abortion-pill reversal treatments.

Because most of the centers don’t accept insurance, the federal law restricting release of medical information doesn’t apply to them, though some say they follow it anyway. They also don’t have to follow standards required by Medicaid or private insurers, though those offering certain services generally must have medical directors who comply with state licensing requirements.

“There are really bedrock questions about whether this industry has the clinical infrastructure to provide the medical services it’s currently advertising,” said Jennifer McKenna, a senior advisor for Reproductive Health and Freedom Watch, a project funded by liberal policy organizations that researches the pregnancy centers.

Post-Roe world opened new opportunities

Perhaps best known as “crisis pregnancy centers,” these mostly privately funded and religiously affiliated centers were expanding services such as diaper banks ahead of the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling, which overturned Roe.

As abortion bans kicked in, the centers expanded medical, educational and other programs, said Moira Gaul, a scholar at the Charlotte Lozier Institute, the research arm of SBA Pro-Life America. “They are prepared to serve their communities for the long term,” she said in a statement.

In Sacramento, for instance, Alternatives Pregnancy Center in the last two years has added family practice doctors, a radiologist and a specialist in high-risk pregnancies, along with nurses and medical assistants. Alternatives — an affiliate of Heartbeat International, one of the largest associations of pregnancy centers in the U.S. — is some patients’ only health provider.

When the Associated Press asked to interview a patient who had received only non-pregnancy services, the clinic provided Jessica Rose, a 31-year-old woman who took the rare step of detransitioning after spending seven years living as a man, during which she received hormone therapy and a double mastectomy.

For the last two years, she’s received all her medical care at Alternatives, which has an OB-GYN who specializes in hormone therapy. Few, if any, pregnancy centers advertise that they provide help with detransitioning. Alternatives has treated four similar patients over the last year, though that’s not its main mission, director Heidi Matzke said.

“APC provided me a space that aligned with my beliefs as well as seeing me as a woman,” Rose said. She said other clinics “were trying to make me think that detransitioning wasn’t what I wanted to do.”

Pregnancy centers expand as health clinics decline

As of 2024, more than 2,600 antiabortion pregnancy centers operated in the U.S., up 87 from 2023, according to the Crisis Pregnancy Center Map, a project led by University of Georgia public health researchers who are concerned about aspects of the centers. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 765 clinics offered abortions last year, down more than 40 from 2023.

Over the years, pregnancy centers have received a boost in taxpayer funds. Nearly 20 states, largely Republican-led, now funnel millions of public dollars to these organizations. Texas alone sent $70 million to pregnancy centers this fiscal year, while Florida dedicated more than $29 million for its “Pregnancy Support Services Program.”

This boost in resources is unfolding as Republicans have barred Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid funds under the tax and spending law President Trump signed in July. While federal law already blocked the use of taxpayer funds for most abortions, Medicaid reimbursements for other health services were a big part of Planned Parenthood’s revenue.

Planned Parenthood said its affiliates could be forced to close up to 200 clinics.

Some already had closed or reorganized. They have cut abortion in Wisconsin and eliminated Medicaid services in Arizona. An independent group of clinics in Maine stopped primary care for the same reason. The uncertainty is compounded by pending Medicaid changes expected to result in more uninsured Americans.

Some abortion rights advocates worry that will mean more healthcare “deserts” where the pregnancy centers are the only option for more women.

Kaitlyn Joshua, a founder of abortion rights group Abortion in America, lives in Louisiana, where Planned Parenthood closed its clinics in September.

She’s concerned that women seeking health services at pregnancy centers as a result of those closures won’t get what they need. “Those centers should be regulated,” she said. “They should be providing information which is accurate, rather than just getting a sermon that they didn’t ask for.”

Thomas Glessner, founder and president of the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates, a network of 1,800 centers, said the centers do have government oversight through their medical directors. “Their criticism,” he said, “comes from a political agenda.”

In recent years, five Democratic state attorneys general have issued warnings that the centers, which advertise to people seeking abortions, don’t provide them and don’t refer patients to clinics that do. And the Supreme Court has agreed to consider whether a state investigation of an organization that runs centers in New Jersey stifles its free speech.

Different services than Planned Parenthood

Choices Medical Services in Joplin, Mo., where the Planned Parenthood clinic closed last year, moved from focusing solely on discouraging abortion to a broader sexual health mission about 20 years ago when it began offering STI treatment, said its executive director, Karolyn Schrage.

The center, funded by donors, works with law enforcement in places where authorities may find pregnant adults, according to Schrage and Arkansas State Police.

Schrage estimates that more than two-thirds of its work isn’t related to pregnancy.

Hayley Kelly first encountered Choices volunteers in 2019 at a regular weekly dinner they brought to dancers at the strip club where she worked. Over the years, she went to the center for STI testing. Then in 2023, when she was uninsured and struggling with drugs, she wanted to confirm a pregnancy.

She anticipated the staff wouldn’t like that she was leaning toward an abortion, but she says they just answered questions. She ended up having that baby and, later, another.

“It’s amazing place,” Kelly said. “I tell everybody I know, ‘You can go there.’”

The center, like others, does not provide contraceptives — standard offerings at sexual health clinics that experts say are best practices for public health.

“Our focus is on sexual risk elimination,” Schrage said, “not just reduction.”

Mulvihill and Kruesi write for the Associated Press.

What is it about the musical biopic that has inspired so much Oscar love? Is it the genre’s front-row seat on the turbulent, provocative, culture-shifting lives of artists we’ve worshiped from afar? Is it the transformational, go-for-broke acting showcase it affords, and the painstaking period recreation so essential to the journey back in time? Or is it simply the enduring power of popular music and the icons who’ve created and performed it?

With the release of writer-director Scott Cooper’s biographical drama “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere,” starring kudos magnet Jeremy Allen White in an immersive portrayal of The Boss circa 1982, it feels like the perfect time to flash back on some of the most honored pop-music biopics in Oscars history.

‘A Complete Unknown’ (8 nominations)

Monica Barbaro and Timothée Chalamet in “A Complete Unknown.”

(Searchlight Pictures)

This nostalgic snapshot of the early career of legendary folk singer Bob Dylan racked up eight Oscar nominations, including for picture, director (James Mangold), adapted screenplay (Mangold and Jay Cocks), and actors Timothée Chalamet (Dylan), Edward Norton (Pete Seeger) and Monica Barbaro (Joan Baez). Though it exited the awards ceremony empty-handed (it also earned nods for sound and costume design), the film enjoyed solid awards-season grosses, largely positive reviews and further burnished Chalamet’s cred as a versatile and chameleonic leading man.

‘Elvis’ (8 nominations)

Austin Butler in “Elvis.”

(Warner Bros. Pictures)

Tracking the meteoric rise and fall of the King of Rock ’n’ Roll, this electric, eclectic, midcentury biopic impressed critics, shook up the box office and made a star out of Presley proxy Austin Butler. (Go ahead, say it: “Thank you, thank you very much!”) Though “Elvis” left the building on Oscar night with zero wins from eight nods — including picture, lead actor, cinematography and film editing — the movie brought the hip-swiveling singer back into the zeitgeist and gave director Baz Luhrmann yet another feather in his movie-musical cap.

‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’ (8 nominations)

James Cagney stars as George M. Cohan in the 1942 biographical musical drama “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”

(Turner Entertainment)

An oldie but a goodie, this popular — and patriotic — musical drama, starring James Cagney as prolific composer-singer-showman George M. Cohan, was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including for picture, director (Michael Curtiz), lead actor and supporting actor (Walter Huston). Cagney won his only Oscar for the exuberant role. (He also received nominations for 1938’s “Angels With Dirty Faces” and 1955’s “Love Me or Leave Me,” another musical biopic.) “Yankee” took home additional statuettes for sound and, as the category was then called, best scoring of a musical picture.

‘Coal Miner’s Daughter’ (7 nominations)

Levon Helm and Sissy Spacek in “Coal Miner’s Daughter.”

(Universal Pictures)

Country star Loretta Lynn may have been born a coal miner’s daughter, but Sissy Spacek was born to play her, as evidenced by the Oscar she won for her striking portrayal. The film, which spanned Lynn’s humble Kentucky youth and marriage at 15 through her extraordinary rise to chart-topping fame — and the nervous breakdown that nearly derailed her career — scored seven nominations, including for picture and adapted screenplay (by Thomas Rickman). Spacek, the film’s sole Oscar winner, would go on to earn four more lead actress nominations.

‘Bound for Glory’ (6 nominations)

David Carradine, who played folk singer Woody Guthrie in “Bound for Glory,” strums a guitar at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival.

(Keystone / Hulton Archive via Getty Images)

Seminal American folk singer Woody Guthrie, who was a pivotal supporting character in last year’s “A Complete Unknown,” had a biopic all to himself in this lyrical drama directed by the great Hal Ashby. Based on Guthrie’s 1943 autobiography and starring David Carradine as the itinerant, socially conscious musician, the movie was nominated for six Oscars, including picture, adapted screenplay and film editing. It won for Haskell Wexler’s evocative cinematography and Leonard Rosenman’s sweeping score — but remained more of a critical than commercial success.

‘Ray’ (6 nominations)

Jamie Foxx in “Ray.”

(Nicola Goode)

Jamie Foxx took home the Oscar, among many other prizes, for his vibrant embodiment of pioneering singer-songwriter-pianist Ray Charles. The ambitious box-office hit, which followed the influential crossover artist from his childhood in 1930s Georgia (when he went blind) through the late 1970s — and all the successes, detours and struggles in between — garnered six nominations, including best picture and director (Taylor Hackford). Along with the lead actor award, “Ray” won for sound mixing. Foxx also earned a supporting actor nod that same year for his fine dramatic work in Michael Mann’s “Collateral.”

‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ (5 nominations)

Rami Malek in “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

(Alex Bailey / Twentieth Century Fox)

Audiences and Academy voters were kinder than many critics to this often dazzling, mega-grossing ($910 million worldwide) portrait of groundbreaking Queen frontman and co-founder Freddie Mercury, who died of complications from AIDS in 1991. Although called out for sanitizing the queer, vocally gifted musician’s private — and not-so-private — life, the movie was nominated for five Oscars, including best picture. With wins for film editing, sound editing, sound mixing and, most notably, lead actor (for Rami Malek’s captivating turn as Mercury), the picture amassed the most statuettes in that year’s race.

‘Lady Sings the Blues’ (5 nominations)

Diana Ross in “Lady Sings the Blues.”

(Paramount Pictures)

Diana Ross made an auspicious feature acting debut in this sprawling biopic about the hardships and triumphs of celebrated jazz singer Billie Holiday. An iconic music star herself — she’d recently left the hit-making Supremes to go solo — Ross earned her first (and only) Oscar nod for her galvanizing recreation. The film received four additional nominations, including for original screenplay and costume design, but won none. Ross, who lost that year to Liza Minnelli in “Cabaret,” would go on to star in just a handful of other films. (“Mahogany,” anyone?)

‘Walk the Line’ (5 nominations)

Joaquin Phoenix in “Walk the Line.”

(Suzanne Tenner / 20th Century Fox)

The life of country-folk-rockabilly star Johnny Cash received a polished, emotionally rich big-screen treatment thanks to fine direction by James Mangold (who co-wrote with Gill Dennis) and powerful star turns by Joaquin Phoenix as the complicated Man in Black and Reese Witherspoon as his resilient wife, singer June Carter Cash. The popular, well-reviewed drama collected five Oscar nominations: lead actor and actress, costume design, film editing and sound mixing. Witherspoon captured Oscar gold — along with a raft of other awards — for her memorable performance.

A curse befell Jacob Elordi when he was a child. It happened in the aisle of a Blockbuster Video. The culprit for the incantation was the image of the now emblematic Pale Man from “Pan’s Labyrinth,” flaunting eyes on his palms on the back cover of the DVD.

“My mother remembers this,” an energetic Elordi tells me in a Hollywood conference room. “I came running through the corridor and I was like, ‘I need this DVD.’ And she was like, ‘That’s so much blood and gore. You can’t watch it.’”

“She told you, ‘I’ll get it if you promise never to work with that director,’” Guillermo del Toro, the filmmaker behind the Oscar-winning dark fantasy, chimes in, sitting next to Elordi.

His wish granted, Elordi watched “Pan’s Labyrinth” at a young age. The fable set against the Spanish Civil War forever changed him. “From that moment, because of the way that Guillermo wills magic into the world and into his life, I feel like there was some kind of curse set upon me,” the actor says. “I do genuinely believe that, as out there as it sounds.”

Now, Elordi, 28, has become one of the Mexican director’s monsters in his long-gestating adaptation of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” (in theaters Friday, then on Netflix Nov. 7). Under intricate prosthetics and makeup, Elordi plays the Creature that arrogant scientist Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) breathes life into — an assemblage of dead limbs and organs imbued with a new consciousness.

Elordi with writer-director Guillermo del Toro on the set of “Frankenstein.”

(Ken Woroner / Netflix)

Receptive to tenderness but prone to violence, the nameless Creature now has, in Elordi, a performer suited for all its unruly emotions. “It was the innocence in Jacob’s portrayal that kept getting me,” says makeup artist and prosthetics designer Mike Hill. “The Creature could snap on a dime like an animal.”

Capable of complex thought, Del Toro’s version of the monster ponders the punishment of existence and the cruelty of its maker. “They’re almost like John Milton questions to the creator,” the director says of the Creature’s dialogue. “You have to give it a physicality that is heartbreakingly uncanny but also hypnotically human.”

The imposingly lanky, gracefully handsome Elordi, born in Australia, has risen in profile over the last few years, thanks to roles in the hit series “Euphoria” and the psychosexual class-climbing thriller “Saltburn.”

“It came from some other place,” Elordi says about the pull to the role of the Creature. “It felt like a growth, like a cancer in my stomach that told me that I had to play this thing.”

(Bexx Francois / For The Times)

“Frankenstein,” however, seems to have been calling his name for a long time.

“Early in my career, I had been reading what folks on the internet would say about me and someone had written after my first film, ‘The only thing this plank of wood could play is Frankenstein’s Creature. Get him off my screen!’” Elordi recalls. “I went, ‘That’s an absolutely fantastic idea.’”

The thought reentered Elordi’s mind while making Sofia Coppola’s 2023 “Priscilla,” in which he played a moody, internal Elvis Presley to Cailee Spaeny’s title character. Long before he was offered the part, the hair and makeup team on “Priscilla” shared with him their next job was, in fact, Del Toro’s “Frankenstein.”

“I looked at [hair designer] Cliona [Furey] and I said, ‘I’m supposed to be in that movie.’ And she said, ‘Did you audition?’ And I was like, ‘No, but I’m meant to be in that movie.’”

“It came from some other place,” Elordi further explains. “It felt like a growth, like a cancer in my stomach that told me that I had to play this thing. I’ve heard stories about this from actors, and when you hear them, you kind of go, ‘Sure, you were meant to play this thing.’ But I really feel like I was.”

Due to scheduling conflicts, Andrew Garfield, originally cast as the Creature, dropped out in late 2023. With production set to start in early 2024, Del Toro had limited time to find a new actor. When Elordi finally heard he was being considered, he had to read the screenplay within hours of receiving it, and be willing to dive into the darkness.

“I had a few weeks to prepare, but I was lucky to have also had my whole life — and I mean that sincerely,” he says, a grin crossing his face. “Playing this was an exploration into a cave of the self, into every experience with my father, with my mother, my experience with cinema, my scraped knees when I was 7.”

Del Toro says he knew Elordi would make the perfect Creature from speaking with him over Zoom. He remembers immediately messaging Isaac, his Victor, convinced that Elordi could play both “Adam and Jesus,” which are the two facets that the creature represents for the director.

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

(Ken Woroner / Netflix)

“I don’t think I’ve experienced miracles many times in my life,” Del Toro says. “And when somebody comes to your life in any capacity that transforms it, that happened here. This man is a miracle for this film.”

As he typically does for all the actors in his films, Del Toro sent Elordi several books ahead of working together. Elordi’s deep-dive reading list included the bedrock Taoist guide “Tao Te Ching,” Stephen Mitchell’s well-regarded translation of the Book of Job and a text on the developmental stages of a baby.

The most complex element of the performance, Del Toro believes, is playing “nothing,” meaning the blank, pure state of mind of a living being in infancy. “A baby is everything at once,” Elordi says. “It’s deep pain, deep joy, curiosity. And you don’t have chambers for your thoughts yet.”

Right before “Frankenstein,” Elordi had been shooting Prime’s World War II miniseries “The Narrow Road to the Deep North” in Australia, an experience he describes as “grueling,” one that involved losing substantial weight. He repurposed his body’s subsequent fragility as a dramatic tool.

“My brain was kind of all over the place,” he remembers. “I had these moments of great anguish at around 3 a.m. in the morning. I’d wake and my body was in such pain. And I just realized that it was a blessing with ‘Frankenstein’ coming up, because I could articulate these feelings, this suffering.”

Aside from being an outlet for his exhaustion, the transformation also helped Elordi to recalibrate. “Frankenstein” arrived at a time where he found himself wrestling with a crisis of purpose.

“At that time in my life I really wanted to hide,” Elordi says. “I really wanted to go away for a while. I was desperate to find some kind of normalcy and rebuild the way that I acted and how I approached making movies,” Elordi says. “And when the film came along, I remember being like, ‘Ugh, I really wanted to go away right now.’ And I realized immediately the Creature was where I was supposed to go away to. I was supposed to go into that mask of freedom.”

Was he trying to escape the pressures of dawning fame? Elordi says it was much more philosophical than that.

“Who do I think I am? Who do I present myself as? What do I like? What don’t I like? Do I love? Can I love? What is love? Every single thing of being alive,” he says with a radiant smile. “The unbearable weight of being.”

“At that time in my life I really wanted to hide,” Elordi says of the moment just before taking on Del Toro’s version of the classic. “I really wanted to go away for a while. I was desperate to find some kind of normalcy and rebuild the way that I acted and how I approached making movies.”

(Bexx Francois / For The Times)

The part entailed physically burying himself in another body. It allowed Elordi to renounce any hang-ups, surrendering to a fugue state of mind. Every moment felt like a discovery.

“I was liberated in this makeup,” he adds. “I didn’t have to be this version of myself anymore. In those six months, I completely rebuilt myself. And I came out of this film with a whole new skin.”

Elordi sat for 10 hours in the makeup chair on days that required full body makeup — only four if they were only shooting the Creature’s face. “Jacob wanted to wear the makeup and he knew it would be grueling,” Hill says.

“It was nothing short of a religious experience,” Elordi says. “The excitement I had even just getting my body cast — I was buzzing.”

Hill believes that the decision to make the Creature bald for the scenes where he is a “baby” is what makes Del Toro’s take unique within the “Frankenstein” mythos.

“Instead of what happens in cloning where a baby grows, Victor literally did make a baby, just a big one,” says Hill. “The Creature learns quickly because its brain and its bodies have already lived once. God knows what this Creature knew before he forgot and needed to be reminded.”

As for the skin, Del Toro envisioned a marble-statue look that he had been pursuing in earlier movies like “Cronos,” “Blade II” and “The Devil’s Backbone.”

“Mike took it and made it incredibly subtle: flesh with the violets and the purples and the pearlescence,” Del Toro says. “He bested every concept I’ve ever imagined by making it look like parts of exsanguine bodies. That was so brilliant.”

“It was the innocence in Jacob’s portrayal that kept getting me,” says makeup artist and creature designer Mike Hill, here seen working on a model for “Frankenstein.”

(John P. Johnson / Netflix)

A Frankenstein’s monster with rainbow-colored flesh, Hill says, could only exist in the context of a Del Toro picture.

“He had to look beautiful, like a phrenology head or an anatomical manual,” Del Toro adds. “We agreed — no scars. No sutures. No vulgarity.”

Del Toro’s casting of Elordi was fully validated when the actor walked on set for the first time in full makeup. “The whole process was anticipation,” Elordi says. “And then I opened my eyes and he was looking back at me, and it was exactly what I thought it would be when I first read the screenplay.”

For Hill, it was watching Elordi doing an interview, where his limbs seemed loose and relaxed, that convinced him he was the right actor to sculpt the Creature on. “I was like, ‘Look at those wrists.’ And then he turns, and he has these lashes,” Hill says. “Big eyes are beautiful for makeup. And structurally, Jacob has an unassuming nose, so you can build on that.”

“And he has a big chin,” Hill continues amid Del Toro’s boisterous laughter. “I was like, ‘I’m not going to glue one on.’”

Amused at his anatomy being dissected in front of him, Elordi claps back, mock-defensively: “He was grotesque to look at, but he was somewhat gifted. A deformed skinny freak.”

By the time Elordi got out of the makeup chair, he says, the electricity in his body had shifted. He stepped on set physically depleted but in the ideal headspace to embody the creature as it navigates an inhospitable reality.

“He’ll forever be fused into my chemistry,” Elordi says. “He was always there and now I have a little place for him. But I can’t rationalize him.”

Whether by curse or by miracle, Elordi’s Creature lives. And the actor feels reborn.

Diane Keaton, the beloved star of “Annie Hall,” “The Godfather” and “The First Wives Club,” wooed audiences as much as she did her multiple Hollywood boyfriends. It seems that much remains true for ex-lovers Woody Allen and Al Pacino, whose high-profile romances with the Los Angeles native are back in the spotlight in the wake of her death over the weekend.

“Her face and laugh illuminated any space she entered,” Allen, Keaton’s “Annie Hall” director and co-star, wrote Sunday.

The acclaimed and controversial filmmaker reminisced on his dating relationship with Keaton for the Free Press, recalling how they first met in Manhattan in the late 1960s for his stage production of “Play It Again, Sam.” Allen’s first impression of the eventual Oscar winner was, he explained, as “if Huckleberry Finn was a gorgeous young woman.”

“The upshot is that she was so charming, so beautiful, so magical, that I questioned my sanity. I thought: Could I be in love so quickly?” he wrote, later describing their evolution from collaborators to romantic partners.

Keaton and Allen collaborated on eight movies, also including “Stardust Memories,” “Sleeper” and “Love and Death.” The 89-year-old director wrote that he “made movies for an audience of one, Diane Keaton,” and heavily valued her opinions on his work. As Allen praised Keaton’s radiating personality (“She was a million laughs to be around”) he recalled learning about her struggles with bulimia and spending Thanksgiving with her family in Orange County.

“Why we parted only God and Freud might be able to figure out,” Allen wrote.

Pacino, who shared the screen with Keaton in three “Godfather” films and dated Keaton throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s, is also thinking about what could have been. “Looking back, Al admits the love of his life was Diane who he’s always called an ‘amazing woman,’ ” a source close to the 85-year-old actor told the Daily Mail.

“I know he will forever regret he didn’t make his move when he had the chance,” the source added. “For years after he and Diane split, Al used to say, ‘If it’s meant to be, it’s never too late for a do-over. But sadly, now it is.’ ”

After news of Keaton’s death spread Saturday, stars including Bette Midler, Steve Martin, Viola Davis and Kate Hudson paid tribute on social media. “What you saw was who she was,” Midler said of her “First Wives Club” co-star. Keaton never married and is survived by two adopted children, Duke and Dexter Keaton.

Allen closed his essay emphasizing the significance of Keaton’s death: “A few days ago the world was a place that included Diane Keaton. Now it’s a world that does not. Hence it’s a drearier world.”

“Still there are her movies,” he wrote. “And her great laugh still echoes in my head.”

Hello! I’m Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.

This has turned into one of those weeks when there are just way too many movies opening. From titles that premiered earlier in the year, to films that popped up only recently, distributors have decided that today is the time to drop them in theaters. It can make for some tough calls as a moviegoer but hopefully ones with pleasant returns. Here’s some intel.

Mary Bronstein’s “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” was a standout at Sundance in January and remains one of the most powerful films of the year. Rose Byrne gives a knockout performance as Linda, a mother struggling to hold onto her own unraveling sense of self as she cares for her ill daughter.

Rose Byrne in the movie “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.”

(Logan White / A24)

In his review Glenn Whipp said, “Linda makes dozens of bad decisions in ‘If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,’ many of them seemingly indefensible until you realize that just how utterly isolated she feels. … Bronstein demands you pay attention to her, and with Byrne diving headfirst into the character’s harrowing panic, you will find you have no other choice.”

Speaking to Esther Zuckerman for a wide-ranging feature, Byrne said of the part: “Anything dealing with motherhood and shame around motherhood, whether it’s disappointment, failure — she’s got this line in the movie, ‘I wasn’t meant to do this’ — these are pretty radical things to say. People aren’t comfortable with that. So performance-wise, that was the hardest part because it was like a tightrope, the tightrope of this woman.”

Another Sundance premiere hitting theaters this week is director Bill Condon’s adaptation of “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” starring Diego Luna, Tonatiuh and Jennifer Lopez. Already a novel, a movie and a Broadway show, the story involves two men imprisoned in an Argentine jail for political crimes during the 1980s, with Lopez playing a fantasy film star who exists in their imaginations — a reverie to which they can escape.

Tonatiuh in the movie “Kiss of the Spider Woman.”

(Roadside Attractions)

For our fall preview, Carlos Aguilar spoke to Tonatiuh, a native of L.A.’s Boyle Heights, whose performance is a true breakout.

“When I first met Jennifer, I was like, ‘Oh, my God — that’s Jennifer Lopez. What the hell?’ ” he recalled, with the enthusiasm of a true fan. “I must have turned left on the wrong street because now I’m standing in front of her. How did this happen? What life am I living?”

After praising both Lopez and Tonatiuh in her review of the film, Amy Nicholson wrote, “Still, my favorite performance has to be Luna’s, whose Valentin is at once strong and vulnerable, like a mutt attempting to fend off a bear. He’s the only one who doesn’t need to prove he’s a great actor, yet he feels like a revelation. Watching him gradually turn tender sends tingles through your heartstrings.”

Among the other new releases this week is “Urchin,” the directing debut from Harris Dickinson, and the documentary “Orwell: 2+2=5,” directed by Raoul Peck. There’s also Derek Cianfrance’s true-crime comedy “Roofman,” Kathryn Bigelow’s nuclear-war thriller “A House of Dynamite” and Luca Guadagnino’s campus-set cancel culture drama “After the Hunt.”

Rebecca Miller retro and ‘Mr. Scorsese’

Robert De Niro, left, and Martin Scorsese in an undated photo from Rebecca Miller’s documentary series “Mr. Scorsese.”

(Apple TV+)

The American Cinematheque is celebrating filmmaker Rebecca Miller this weekend with a four-title retrospective plus a preview of her documentary series “Mr. Scorsese,” a five-part portrait of the life and career of Martin Scorsese.

Miller will introduce a Saturday screening of her 2023 rom-com “She Came to Me,” starring Anne Hathaway and Peter Dinklage, then do a Q&A for the first two episodes of the Scorsese project on Sunday. Also screening in the series will be 2016’s “Maggie’s Plan,” starring Julianne Moore, Ethan Hawke and Greta Gerwig; Miller’s 2002 Sundance grand jury prize winner “Personal Velocity”; and 2005’s “The Ballad of Jack and Rose,” starring Miller’s husband Daniel Day-Lewis, screening with an introduction from co-star Camilla Belle.

Ethan Hawke and Greta Gerwig in “Maggie’s Plan,” written and directed by Rebecca Miller.

(Sony Pictures Classics)

I spoke to Miller this week about the retrospective and her new Scorsese project, which premieres Oct. 17 on Apple TV+. Along with extensive interviews with Scorsese himself, the series includes insights from collaborators such as Robert De Niro, Paul Schrader and longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker as well as childhood friends, Scorsese’s children, ex-wives and fellow filmmakers such as Steven Spielberg, Brian De Palma, Ari Aster, Benny Safdie and Spike Lee.

“It feels like such an honor and so weird in a way,” said Miller of the notion of having a retrospective. “You feel like you’re just in the middle of making everything, but then you realize, no, I’ve been making these films for 30 years. And it’ll be really interesting to see how the films play now for people. It’s exciting to have them still be sort of alive.”

When you look back on your own movies, what comes to mind for you?

Funnily enough, there is a connection between “Personal Velocity” and Martin Scorsese, which is that when I was about to shoot personal “Velocity,” I was in Rome, on the set of “Gangs of New York,” and I was watching the snack trolley go by and thinking my entire budget is probably the same as their snack budget. And thinking: What am I doing? What was I thinking? How am I going to do this? But talking to [“Gangs” cinematographer] Michael Ballhaus, I told him how long we had to shoot everything, and he said, “Oh, I envy you. We shot ‘The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant’ in 10 days.” He was looking back on his days with Fassbinder as the good old days.

Then Marty gave me some advice on films with voiceovers to watch, and he ended up watching “Personal Velocity.” It was the first of my films that he saw, which then led probably to this [doc series] because he knew my films quite well. He watched them as time went on.

What interested you in Scorsese as a subject?

I knew that he was Catholic, that there was a strong spiritual element to his films. But I was interested in how that Catholicism kind of jogged with his fascination, or apparent fascination, with violence. Who is that person? How do those two things go together? And I thought that could be part of my exploration. I had a sense that all his work has a spiritual undercurrent in it, which I think it does. And I think that’s one of the things that I try to explore in the documentary. I felt I had something a little bit different to offer, for that reason.

The big questions that he’s asking: Are we essentially good? Are we essentially evil? And his immense honesty with himself about who he really is, the darkness of his own soul. I don’t think that people are usually that honest with themselves. And you realize that part of his greatness has to do with his willingness to look at himself.

Martin Scorsese in an undated photo from Rebecca Miller’s documentary series “Mr. Scorsese.”

(Apple TV+)

As much as we think we know about Scorsese, he seemed so candid about some of the darkest moments of his life, especially when he talks about his drug overdose and hospitalization in the late 1970s or about some of his issues with Hollywood, especially around “The Last Temptation of Christ.” Were you ever surprised that he was so willing to go there with you?

Oh, yeah, I was. I really didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t have an agenda. I had the scaffolding of the films themselves and a strong sense that this was a man that you can’t separate from the films. So the thing is like a dance, it’s like a permanent tango between those two things. You’re not going to pry them apart. I didn’t know about the addiction. I didn’t know a lot of these things. My questions are totally genuine, there’s no manipulation. It’s all me. I was very prepared in terms of the films. But in terms of the chronology and the connective tissue of his life, I was really right there discovering it.

Martin Scorsese at work on his film “Killers of the Flower Moon,” as seen in Rebecca Miller’s documenary series “Mr. Scorsese.”

(Apple TV+)

You’re catching him such a remarkable point in his life and career. He seems very happy and settled in his personal life and yet he still makes something like “Killers of the Flower Moon,” full of passion and fire. What do you make of that?

[Screenwriter] Jay [Cocks] says he’s learned that he can be selfish in his art, but he doesn’t have to be selfish in his life. Even if your outside is regular, your inside can be boiling. And I think Marty’s inside is always going to be boiling. The seas are not calm in there and never will be.

‘They Live’ and ‘Josie and the Pussycats,’ together at last

Roddy Piper in John Carpenter’s 1988 thriller “They Live.”

(Sunset Boulevard / Corbis )

There’s a real art to putting together a double bill. Sure, you can just program movies that have the same director or share the same on-screen talent. But what about deep, thematic links that might not otherwise be noticed?

The New Beverly has put together an inspired double bill playing on Friday, Saturday and Sunday of John Carpenter’s 1988 “They Live” and Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont’s 2001 “Josie and the Pussycats.” Though one is a rough-and-tumble sci-fi action picture and the other a satirical teen-pop fantasia, they both use the idea of subliminal messages to explore how consumer culture can be a means of control.

In “They Live,” wrestler-turned-actor “Rowdy” Roddy Piper plays a drifter who lands in Los Angeles and discovers a secret network fighting against an invasion of aliens living among us.

In Michael Wilmington’s original review, after joking the movie could be called “Invasion of the Space Yuppies,” he adds, “You can forgive the movie everything because of the sheer nasty pizzazz of its central concept. … The movie daffily mixes up the paranoia of the Red Scare monster movies of the ’50’s with a different kind of nightmare: the radical’s belief that everything is tightly controlled by a small, malicious ruling elite. Everything — the flat lighting, the crazily protracted action scenes, the monolithic beat and vamp of the score — reinforces a mood of murderous persecution mania.”

Rosario Dawson, from left, Rachael Leigh Cook and Tara Reid in the movie “Josie and the Pussycats.”

(Joseph Lederer / Universal Studios)

In “Josie and the Pussycats,” a small-town rock ‘n’ roll band (Rachael Leigh Cook, Tara Reid and Rosario Dawson) are plucked from obscurity when they are signed to a major record label and all their dreams of stardom seem to come true. But they come to realize the company’s executives (a brilliant pairing of Parker Posey and Allan Cumming) are using them for their own nefarious purposes.

Aside from some very hummable songs, the film has a truly epic amount of corporate logos and branding that appears throughout. Many reviewers at the time brought this up, including the L.A. Times’ own Kenneth Turan, who noted, “It’s a potent reminder that no matter how innocent a film may seem, there’s a Hollywood cash register behind almost every frame.” In subsequent interviews, Kaplan and Elfont confirmed these were not instances of paid product placement and, in fact, the production had to fight to get them all on-screen.

Points of interest

‘Eight Men Out’ in 35mm

Charlie Sheen, center, in a scene from the film “Eight Men Out.”

(Archive Photos / Getty Images)

Writer-director John Sayles has been so consistently good for so long that it is easy to take his work for granted. Case in point: 1988’s “Eight Men Out,” which tells the story of the infamous “Black Sox” scandal, when players from the Chicago White Sox were accused of intentionally throwing the 1919 World Series in league with underworld gamblers. The movie is playing on Sunday at Vidiots in 35mm.

The film captures much of what makes Sayles so special, particularly his unique grasp of the interplay between social and economic dynamics — a sense of how things work and why. He also fully grasps the deeper implications of the forces of greed and money setting themselves upon such an unassailable symbol of wholesome Americana as baseball. It’s also what makes the movie particularly worth a revisit now. With a phenomenal cast that includes John Cusack, David Straithairn, D.B. Sweeney, Charlie Sheen, John Mahoney, Christopher Lloyd, Michael Lerner and Sayles himself, the film was a relatively early effort from cinematographer Robert Richardson, who would go on to work repeatedly with Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino.

In a review at the time, Sheila Benson wrote, “ ‘Eight Men Out’ is not a bad movie for an election year. Everything that politicians cherish as ‘old-fashioned’ and ‘American’ is here. The Grand Old Game. Idealistic little kids. Straw hats and cat’s-whisker crystal sets. And under the slogans and the platitudes, a terrifying erosion and no one to answer for it. No wonder Sayles, hardly an unpolitical animal, found it such a relevant story nearly 70 years later.”

‘The Sound of Music’ in 70mm

Julie Andrews, center, in the 1965 musical “The Sound of Music.”

(20th Century-Fox)

On Sunday the Academy Museum will screen Robert Wise’s “The Sound of Music” in 70mm, a rare opportunity to see this classic in the premium format on which it was originally released. Based on the stage musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein , the film would eventually win five Oscars, including director and best picture.

Starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, it’s the story of the singing Von Trapp family, eventually forced to flee their native Austria as the Nazis take power.

In a Times review from March 1965, Philip K. Scheuer wrote of Wise and his collaborators, “They have taken this sweet, sometimes saccharine and structurally slight story of the Von Trapp Family Singers and transformed it into close to three hours of visual and vocal broilliaance, all in the universal terms of cinema. They have invested it with new delights and even a sense of depth in human relationships — not to mention the swooning beauty of Salzburg and the Austrian Alps, which the stage, of course, could only suggest.”

Even notorious gossip columnist Hedda Hopper liked the movie, presciently writing, “The picture is superb — dramatically, musically, cinematically. Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer were born for their roles. … All children — from 7 to 90 — wil love it. The following morning I woke up singing. Producer-director Bob Wise did a magnificent job and 20th [Century Fox] will hear nothing but the sound of money for years to come.”

Diane Keaton, the actor who made film history — and won an Oscar — as the title character in Woody Allen’s beloved 1977 romantic comedy “Annie Hall,” died Saturday. She was 79. Tributes poured in from those who worked with and admired Keaton, including Bette Midler, Kate Hudson, Steve Martin and Josh Gad.

Here are some notable social media posts:

Bette Midler, the actor, singer and comedian who starred with Keaton and Goldie Hawn in the 1996 comedy “The First Wives Club,” about three divorced women who seek revenge on their ex-husbands: “The brilliant, beautiful, extraordinary Diane Keaton has died. I cannot tell you how unbearably sad this makes me. She was hilarious, a complete original, and completely without guile, or any of the competitiveness one would have expected from such a star. What you saw was who she was …oh, la, lala!”

Kate Hudson: “We love you so much Diane ❤️🕊️”

Steve Martin, who co-starred as Keaton’s husband in the “Father of the Bride” films, reposted an exchange between Keaton and Martin Short:

Short: “Who’s sexier, me or Steve Martin?

Keaton: “I mean, you’re both idiots.”

Martin then commented on the post: “Don’t know who first posted this, but it sums up our delightful relationship with Diane.”

Josh Gad: “What a monumental loss. Diane Keaton in many ways defined my love of movies. From Annie Hall to the Godfather films, from First Wives Club to Baby Boom, from Father of the Bride to Something’s Gotta Give, here resume was nothing short of iconic and hall of fame worthy. I was very fortunate to work with her many years ago on an unproduced HBO pilot and what I found was one of the most humble, ruthlessly funny, and unbelievably talented human beings I’ve ever come across. In many ways, this year will be defined by the loss of a Hollywood we will never again see. There simply are no replacements for a Gene Hackman or a Robert Redford or a Diane Keaton. They were the mavericks who helped redefine movies for a generation. … My heart goes out to Diane’s entire family during this impossible moment. RIP”

Kimberly Williams-Paisley, the actor, author and director who played Keaton’s daughter in the “Father of the Bride” films: “Diane, working with you will always be one of the highlights of my life. You are one of a kind, and it was thrilling to be in your orbit for a time. Thank you for your kindness, your generosity, your talent, and above all, your laughter. 🙏🏻🕊️💔❤️❤️❤️”

Rosie O’Donnell: “oh this breaks my heart – love to her children- what style what grace – she will be missed #ripdianekeaton”

Octavia Spencer: “Today we lost a true original. @diane_keaton wasn’t just an actress: she was a force. a woman who showed us that being yourself is the most powerful thing you can be. From Annie Hall to Something’s Gotta Give, she made every role unforgettable. But beyond the screen, she brought joy, laughter, and style that was all her own… Thank you, Diane, for reminding us that authenticity never goes out of fashion.”

Elizabeth Banks: “She was beloved in her industry. Every one of us idolizes her. Her influence on culture, fashion, art and women can’t be overstated. She was a delight. I am proud I have a career that allowed me to meet her and breathe her air.”

Viola Davis: “No!! No!!! No!! God, not yet, NO!!! Man… you defined womanhood. The pathos, humor, levity, your ever-present youthfulness and vulnerability — you tattooed your SOUL into every role, making it impossible to imagine anyone else inhabiting them. You were undeniably, unapologetically YOU!!! Loved you. Man… rest well. God bless your family, and I know angels are flying you home”

Eddie Howe was just a couple of days into an end-of-season break when the Newcastle head coach’s phone “exploded” last summer.

Sporting director Paul Mitchell had just announced that he was departing.

While there were initial tensions between the pair, Howe was the first to recognise that such a figure “protects the manager from a lot of things”.

That is why the arrival of Ross Wilson is so significant for Newcastle.

Rather than rushing into the appointment – despite the need for a sporting director during a draining transfer window – Newcastle have been keen to recruit the right person.

In Ross Wilson, who already has a good relationship with Howe, they feel they have that man.

It will fall to Wilson to help plot the medium to long-term strategy of the club.

And, after a period of boardroom upheaval, Newcastle will hope the Scot will stick around long enough to see that vision through.

WASHINGTON — President Trump said Friday that he’s placing an additional 100% tax on Chinese imports starting on Nov. 1 or sooner, potentially escalating tariff rates close to levels that in April fanned fears of a steep recession and financial market chaos.

The president said on his social media site that he is imposing these new tariffs because of export controls placed on rare earth elements by China. The new tariffs built on an earlier post Friday on Truth Social in which Trump said that “there seems to be no reason” to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping as part of an upcoming trip to South Korea.

Trump said that “starting November 1st, 2025 (or sooner, depending on any further actions or changes taken by China), the United States of America will impose a Tariff of 100% on China, over and above any Tariff that they are currently paying.”

The announcement after financial markets closed on Friday risked throwing the global economy into turmoil. Not only would the global trade war instigated by Trump be rekindled at dangerous levels, but import taxes being heaped on top of the 30% already being levied on Chinese goods could, by the administration’s past statements, cause trade to break down between the U.S. and China.

While Trump’s wording was definitive, he is also famously known for backing down from threats, such that some investors began engaging in what The Financial Times called the “TACO” trade, which stands for “Trump Always Chickens Out.” The prospect of tariffs this large could compound the president’s own political worries inside the U.S., potentially pushing up inflation at a moment when the job market appears fragile and the drags from a government shutdown are starting to compound into layoffs of federal workers.

The president also said that the U.S. government would respond to China by putting its own export controls “on any and all critical software” from American firms.

It’s possible that this could amount to either posturing by the United States for eventual negotiations or a retaliatory step that could foster new fears about the stability of the global economy.

The United States and China have been jostling for advantage in trade talks, after the import taxes announced earlier this year triggered a trade war between the world’s two largest economies. Both nations agreed to ratchet down tariffs after negotiations in Switzerland and the United Kingdom, yet tensions remain as China has continued to restrict America’s access to the difficult-to-mine rare earths needed for a wide array of U.S. technologies.

Trump did not formally cancel the meeting with Xi, so much as indicating that it might not happen as part of a trip at the end of the month in Asia. The trip was scheduled to include a stop in Malaysia, which is hosting the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit; a stop in Japan; and a visit to South Korea, where he was slated to meet with Xi ahead of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

“I was to meet President Xi in two weeks, at APEC, in South Korea, but now there seems to be no reason to do so,” Trump posted.

Trump’s threat shattered a monthslong calm on Wall Street, and the S&P 500 tumbled 2.7% on worries about the rising tensions between the world’s largest economies. It was the market’s worst day since April when the president last bandied about import taxes this high. Still, the stock market closed before the president spelled out the terms of his threat.

China’s new restrictions

On Thursday, the Chinese government restricted access to the rare earths ahead of the scheduled Trump-Xi meeting. Beijing would require foreign companies to get special approval for shipping the metallic elements abroad. It also announced permitting requirements on exports of technologies used in the mining, smelting and recycling of rare earths, adding that any export requests for products used in military goods would be rejected.

Trump said that China is “becoming very hostile” and that it’s holding the world “captive” by restricting access to the metals and magnets used in electronics, computer chips, lasers, jet engines and other technologies.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to an Associated Press request for comment.

Sun Yun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center, said Beijing reacted to U.S. sanctions of Chinese companies this week and the upcoming port fees targeting China-related vessels but said there’s room for deescalation to keep the leaders’ meeting alive. “It is a disproportional reaction,” Sun said. “Beijing feels that deescalation will have to be mutual as well. There is room for maneuver, especially on the implementation.”

The U.S. president said the move on rare earths was “especially inappropriate” given the announcement of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza so that the remaining hostages from Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack can be released. He raised the possibility without evidence that China was trying to steal the moment from him for his role in the ceasefire, saying on social media, “I wonder if that timing was coincidental?”

There is already a backlog of export license applications from Beijing’s previous round of export controls on rare earth elements, and the latest announcements “add further complexity to the global supply chain of rare earth elements,” the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China said in a statement.

Gracelin Baskaran, director of the Critical Minerals Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., said China signaled it is open to negotiations, but it also holds leverage because to dominates the market for rare earths with 70% of the mining and 93% of the production of permanent magnets made from them that are crucial to high-tech products and the military.

“These restrictions undermine our ability to develop our industrial base at a time when we need to. And then second, it’s a powerful negotiating tool,” she said. And these restrictions can hurt efforts to strengthen the U.S. military in the midst of global tensions because rare earths are needed.

Trump’s trade war

The outbreak of a tariff-fueled trade war between the U.S. and China initially caused the world economy to shudder over the possibility of global commerce collapsing. Trump imposed tariffs totaling 145% on Chinese goods, with China responding with import taxes of 125% on American products.

The taxes were so high as to effectively be a blockade on trade between the countries. That led to negotiations that reduced the tariff charged by the U.S. government to 30% and the rate imposed by China to 10% so that further talks could take place. The relief those lower rates provided could now disappear with the new import taxes Trump threatened, likely raising the stakes not only of whether Trump and Xi meet but how any disputes are resolved.

Differences continue over America’s access to rare earths from China, U.S. restrictions on China’s ability to import advanced computer chips, sales of American-grown soybeans and a series of tit-for-tat port fees being levied by both countries starting on Tuesday.

Nebraska Republican Rep. Don Bacon said “China has not been a fair-trade partner for years,” but the Trump administration should have anticipated China’s restrictions on rare earths and refusal to buy American soybeans in response to the tariffs.

How analysts see moves by U.S. and China

Wendy Cutler, senior vice president of the Asia Society Policy Institute, said Trump’s post shows the fragility of the détente between the two countries and it’s unclear whether the two sides are willing to de-escalate to save the bilateral meeting.

Cole McFaul, a research fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, said that Trump appeared in his post to be readying for talks on the possibility that China had overplayed its hand. By contrast, China sees itself as having come out ahead when the two countries have engaged in talks.

“From Beijing’s point of view, they’re in a moment where they’re feeling a lot of confidence about their ability to handle the Trump administration,” McFaul said. “Their impression is they’ve come to the negotiating table and extracted key concessions.”

Craig Singleton, senior director of the China program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a think tank, said Trump’s post could “mark the beginning of the end of the tariff truce” that had lowered the tax rates charged by both countries.

It’s still unclear how Trump intends to follow through on his threats and how China plans to respond.

“But the risk is clear: Mutually assured disruption between the two sides is no longer a metaphor,” Singleton said. “Both sides are reaching for their economic weapons at the same time, and neither seems willing to back down.”

Boak and Tang write for the Associated Press. AP writers Stan Choe in New York and Josh Funk in Omaha, Neb., contributed to the report.

WASHINGTON — It has been four months since Elon Musk, President Trump’s bureaucratic demolition man, abandoned Washington in a flurry of recriminations and chaos.

But the Trump administration’s crusade to dismantle much of the federal government never ended. It’s merely under new management: the less colorful but more methodical Russell Vought, director of Trump’s Office of Management and Budget.

Vought has become the backroom architect of Trump’s aggressive strategy — slashing the federal workforce, freezing billions in congressionally approved spending in actions his critics often call illegal.

Now Vought has proposed using the current government shutdown as an opportunity to fire thousands of bureaucrats permanently instead of merely furloughing them temporarily. If any do return to work, he has suggested that the government need not give them back pay — contrary to a law Trump signed in 2019.

Those threats may prove merely to be pressure tactics as Trump tries to persuade Democrats to accept spending cuts on Medicaid, Obamacare and other programs.

But the shutdown battle is the current phase of a much larger one. Vought’s long-term goals, he says, are to “bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will” and “deconstruct the administrative state.”

He’s still only partway done.

“I’d estimate that Vought has implemented maybe 10% or 15% of his program,” said Donald F. Kettl, former dean of the public policy school at the University of Maryland. “There may be as much as 90% to go. If this were a baseball game, we’d be in the top of the second inning.”

Along the way, Vought (pronounced “vote”) has chipped relentlessly at Congress’ ability to control the use of federal funds, massively expanding the power of the president.

“He has waged the most serious attack on separation of powers in American history,” said Elaine Kamarck, an expert on federal management at the Brookings Institution.

He’s done that mainly by using OMB, the White House office that oversees spending, to control the day-to-day purse strings of federal agencies — and deliberately keeping Congress in the dark along the way.

“If Congress has given us authority that is too broad, then we’re going to use that authority aggressively,” Vought said last month.

Federal judges have ruled some of the administration’s actions illegal, but they have allowed others to stand. Vought’s proposal to use the shutdown to fire thousands of bureaucrats hasn’t been tested in court.

Vought developed his aggressive approach during two decades as a conservative budget expert, culminating in his appointment as director of OMB in Trump’s first term.

In 2019, he stretched the limits of presidential power by helping Trump get around a congressional ban on funding for a border wall, by declaring an emergency and transferring military funds. He froze congressionally mandated aid for Ukraine, the action that led to Trump’s first impeachment.

Even so, Vought complained that Trump had been needlessly restrained by cautious first-term aides.

“The lawyers come in and say, ‘It’s not legal. You can’t do that,’” he said in 2023. “I don’t want President Trump having to lose a moment of time having fights in the Oval Office over whether something is legal.”

Vought is a proponent of the “unitary executive” theory, the argument that the president should have unfettered control over every tentacle of the executive branch, including independent agencies such as the Federal Reserve.

When Congress designates money for federal programs, he has argued, “It’s a ceiling. It is not a floor. It’s not the notion that you have to spend every dollar.”

Most legal experts disagree; a 1974 law prohibits the president from unilaterally withholding money Congress has appropriated.

Vought told conservative activists in 2023 that if Trump returned to power, he would deliberately seek to inflict “trauma” on federal employees.

“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” he said. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work.”

When Vought returned to OMB for Trump’s second term, he appeared to be in Musk’s shadow. But once the flamboyant Tesla chief executive flamed out, the OMB director got to work to make DOGE’s work the foundation for lasting changes.

He extended many of DOGE’s funding cuts by slowing down OMB’s approval of disbursements — turning them into de facto freezes.

He helped persuade Republicans in Congress to cancel $9 billion in previously approved foreign aid and public broadcasting support, a process known as “rescission.”

To cancel an additional $4.9 billion, he revived a rarely used gambit called a “pocket rescission,” freezing the funds until they expired.

Along the way, he quietly stopped providing Congress with information on spending, leaving legislators in the dark on whether programs were being axed.

DOGE and OMB eliminated jobs so quickly that the federal government stopped publishing its ongoing tally of federal employees. (Any number would only be approximate; some layoffs are tied up in court, and thousands of employees who opted for voluntary retirement are technically still on the payroll.)

The result was a significant erosion of Congress’ “power of the purse,” which has historically included not only approving money but also monitoring how it was spent.

Even some Republican members of Congress seethed. “They would like a blank check … and I don’t think that’s appropriate,” said former Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

But the GOP majorities in both the House and Senate, pleased to see spending cut by any means, let Vought have his way. Even McConnell voted to approve the $9-billion rescission request.

Vought’s newest innovation, the mid-shutdown layoffs, would be another big step toward reducing Congress’ role.

“The result would be a dramatic, instantaneous shift in the separation of powers,” Kettl said. “The Trump team could kill programs unilaterally without the inconvenience of going to Congress.”

Some of the consequences could be catastrophic, Kettl and other scholars warned. Kamarck calls them “time bombs.”

“One or more of these decisions is going to blow up in Trump’s face,” she said.

“FEMA won’t be capable of reacting to the next hurricane. The National Weather Service won’t have the forecasters it needs to analyze the data from weather balloons.”

Even before the government shutdown, she noted, the FAA was grappling with a shortage of air traffic controllers. This week the FAA slowed takeoffs at several airports in response to growing shortages, including at air traffic control centers in Atlanta, Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth.

In theory, a future Congress could undo many of Vought’s actions, especially if Democrats win control of the House or, less likely, the Senate.

But rebuilding agencies that have been radically shrunken would take much longer than cutting them down, the scholars said.

“Much of this will be difficult to reverse when Democrats come back into fashion,” Kamarck said.

Indeed, that’s part of Vought’s plan.

“We want to make sure that the bureaucracy can’t reconstitute itself later in future administrations,” he said in April in a podcast with Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist who was slain on Sept. 10.

He’s pleased with the progress he’s made, he told reporters in July.

“We’re having fun,” he said.

Trump-appointed FBI Director Kash Patel has fired an agent-in-training over an LGBTQIA+ Pride flag.

According to three people close to the situation, the unidentified agent was terminated on the first day of the US government shutdown for displaying the flag in his workspace, per CNN.

The employee, who had previously served as a field office diversity program coordinator and had received several awards, was enrolled in new agent training at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, when he received his dismissal letter.

In the letter, Patel cited the 47th president’s claimed Article II powers to dismiss the agent without due process, referring to the flag as “political signage.”

“You are being summarily dismissed from your position as a New Agent Trainee at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, and removed from federal service,” Patel wrote, per MSNBC.

“After reviewing the facts and circumstances and considering your probationary status, I have determined that you exercised poor judgment with an inappropriate display of political signage in your work area during your previous assignment in the Los Angeles Field Office.”

While the FBI has yet to release a statement, several Democratic officials have condemned Patel’s actions.

“LGBTQ+ people should be able to serve their country openly and proudly,” Josh Sorbe, spokesperson for Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats, told The Advocate.

Openly gay California Representative Mark Takano, Chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, echoed similar sentiments in a separate statement to the outlet.

“Trump and his administration have been obsessively trying to purge our community from the federal workforce since they took power. This firing is just their next attack,” he said.

“It’s not just censorship — they’re also firing people for simply being LGBTQI+ or doing work that supports the LGBTQI+ community. These despicable acts are yet another example of how commonplace anti-LGBTQI+ discrimination is in this administration.”

The recent firing joins a growing list of anti-LGBTQIA+ moves committed by the Trump administration.

From cutting funding for HIV and LGBTQIA+ health care to erasing bisexual and trans people from the National Park Service’s website on the Stonewall National Monument, the community has been ruthlessly targeted by the former reality personality and convicted felon.

For more information on the Trump administration’s relentless attacks on the LGBTQIA+ community, click here.

Trump-appointed FBI Director Kash Patel has fired an agent-in-training over an LGBTQIA+ Pride flag.

According to three people close to the situation, the unidentified agent was terminated on the first day of the US government shutdown for displaying the flag in his workspace, per CNN.

The employee, who had previously served as a field office diversity program coordinator and had received several awards, was enrolled in new agent training at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, when he received his dismissal letter.

In the letter, Patel cited the 47th president’s claimed Article II powers to dismiss the agent without due process, referring to the flag as “political signage.”

“You are being summarily dismissed from your position as a New Agent Trainee at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, and removed from federal service,” Patel wrote, per MSNBC.

“After reviewing the facts and circumstances and considering your probationary status, I have determined that you exercised poor judgment with an inappropriate display of political signage in your work area during your previous assignment in the Los Angeles Field Office.”

While the FBI has yet to release a statement, several Democratic officials have condemned Patel’s actions.

“LGBTQ+ people should be able to serve their country openly and proudly,” Josh Sorbe, spokesperson for Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats, told The Advocate.

Openly gay California Representative Mark Takano, Chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, echoed similar sentiments in a separate statement to the outlet.

“Trump and his administration have been obsessively trying to purge our community from the federal workforce since they took power. This firing is just their next attack,” he said.

“It’s not just censorship — they’re also firing people for simply being LGBTQI+ or doing work that supports the LGBTQI+ community. These despicable acts are yet another example of how commonplace anti-LGBTQI+ discrimination is in this administration.”

The recent firing joins a growing list of anti-LGBTQIA+ moves committed by the Trump administration.

From cutting funding for HIV and LGBTQIA+ health care to erasing bisexual and trans people from the National Park Service’s website on the Stonewall National Monument, the community has been ruthlessly targeted by the former reality personality and convicted felon.

For more information on the Trump administration’s relentless attacks on the LGBTQIA+ community, click here.

NEW YORK — President Trump is openly embracing the conservative blueprint he desperately tried to distance himself from during the 2024 campaign, as one of its architects works to use the government shutdown to accelerate his goals of slashing the size of the federal workforce and punishing Democratic states.

In a post on his Truth Social site Thursday morning, Trump announced he would be meeting with his budget chief, “Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame, to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent.”

The comments represented a dramatic about-face for Trump, who spent much of last year denouncing Project 2025, The Heritage Foundation’s massive proposed overhaul of the federal government, which was drafted by many of his longtime allies and current and former administration officials.

Both of Trump’s Democratic rivals, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, made the far-right wish list a centerpiece of their campaigns, and a giant replica of the book featured prominently onstage at the Democratic National Convention.

“Donald Trump and his stooges lied through their teeth about Project 2025, and now he’s running the country straight into it,” said Ammar Moussa, a former spokesperson for both campaigns. “There’s no comfort in being right — just anger that we’re stuck with the consequences of his lies.”

Shalanda Young, director of the Office of Management and Budget under Biden, said the administration had clearly been following the project’s blueprint all along.

“I guess Democrats were right, but that doesn’t make me feel better,” she said. “I’m angry that this is happening after being told that this document was not going to be the centerpiece of this administration.”

Asked about Trump’s reversal, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said, “Democrats are desperate to talk about anything aside from their decision to hurt the American people by shutting down the government.”

Project what?

Top Trump campaign leaders spent much of 2024 livid at The Heritage Foundation for publishing a book full of unpopular proposals that Democrats tried to pin on the campaign to warn a second Trump term would be too extreme.

While many of the policies outlined in its 900-plus pages aligned closely with the agenda that Trump was proposing — particularly on curbing immigration and dismantling certain federal agencies — others called for action Trump had never discussed, like banning pornography, or Trump’s team was actively trying to avoid, like withdrawing approval for abortion medication.

Trump repeatedly insisted he knew nothing about the group or who was behind it, despite his close ties with many of its authors. They included John McEntee, his former director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office, and Paul Dans, former chief of staff at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

“I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump insisted in July 2024. “I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”

Trump’s campaign chiefs were equally critical.

“President Trump’s campaign has been very clear for over a year that Project 2025 had nothing to do with the campaign, did not speak for the campaign, and should not be associated with the campaign or the President in any way,” wrote Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita in a campaign memo. They added, “Reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed and should serve as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign — it will not end well for you.”

Trump has since gone on to stock his second administration with its authors, including Vought, “border czar” Tom Homan, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, immigration hard-liner Stephen Miller and Brendan Carr, who wrote Project 2025’s chapter on the Federal Communications Commission and now chairs the panel.

Heritage did not respond to a request for comment Thursday. But Dans, the project’s former director, said it’s been “exciting” to see so much of what was laid out in the book put into action.

“It’s gratifying. We’re very proud of the work that was done for this express purpose: to have a doer like President Trump ready to roll on Day One,” said Dans, who is currently running for Senate against Lindsey Graham in South Carolina.

Trump administration uses the shutdown to further its goals

Since his swearing in, Trump has been pursuing plans laid out in Project 2025 to dramatically expand presidential power and reduce the size of the federal workforce. They include efforts like the Department of Government Efficiency and budget rescission packages, which have led to billions of dollars being stalled, scrapped or withheld by the administration so far this year.

They are now using the shutdown to accelerate their progress.

Ahead of the funding deadline, OMB directed agencies to prepare for additional mass firings of federal workers, rather than simply furloughing those who are not deemed essential, as has been the usual practice during past shutdowns. Vought told House GOP lawmakers in a private conference call Wednesday that layoffs would begin in the next day or two.

They have also used the shutdown to target projects championed by Democrats, including canceling $8 billion in green energy projects in states with Democratic senators and withholding $18 billion for transportation projects in New York City that have been championed by Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries in their home state.

Dreaming of this moment

The moves are part of a broader effort to concentrate federal authority in the presidency, which permeated Project 2025.

In his chapter in the blueprint, Vought made clear he wanted the president and OMB to wield more direct power.

“The Director must view his job as the best, most comprehensive approximation of the President’s mind,” he wrote. Vought described OMB as “a President’s air-traffic control system,” which should be “involved in all aspects of the White House policy process,” becoming “powerful enough to override implementing agencies’ bureaucracies.”

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said on Fox News Channel that Vought “has a plan, and that plan is going to succeed in further empowering Trump. This is going to be the Democrats’ worst nightmare.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson echoed that message, insisting the government shutdown gives Trump and his budget director vast power over the federal government and the unilateral power to determine which personnel and policies are essential and which are not.

Schumer has handed “the keys of the kingdom to the president,” Johnson said Thursday. “Because they have decided to vote to shut the government down, they have now effectively turned off the legislative branch … and they’ve turned it over to the executive.”

Young said the Constitution gives the White House no such power and chastised Republicans in Congress for abandoning their duty to serve as a check on the president.

“I don’t want to hear a lecture about handing the keys over,” she said. “The keys are gone. They’re lost. They’re down a drain. This shutdown is not what lost the keys.”

Colvin writes for the Associated Press.

EPA

Warner Bros

‘Driven mad by this book’

Getty Images

Margot Robbie ‘could get away with anything’

DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY,

Former FBI Director James Comey is a longtime critic of US President Donald Trump, and testified against him in 2020.

Former FBI Director James Comey says he is innocent of criminal charges following his indictment by a United States court for allegedly making false statements and obstruction of justice.

“My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system, and I am innocent, so let’s have a trial and keep the faith,” Comey said in a video posted on Instagram on Thursday evening in the US.

The charges against Comey stem from his 2020 statement to the US Senate Judiciary Committee that he did not authorise the FBI to leak information about an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Comey served as director of the FBI from 2013 to 2017 until he was fired by Trump shortly into his first term in office.

Since then, he has become a well-known critic of the US President.

Trump wrote a celebratory post on Truth Social following news of the ex-FBI chief’s indictment.

“JUSTICE FOR AMERICA!” Trump wrote on Thursday evening in the US.

“One of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to is James Comey, the former Corrupt Head of the FBI,” the US President wrote.

The charges against Comey mark the first time that Trump has secured an indictment against one of his many high-profile critics.

On Saturday, Trump urged US Attorney General Pam Bondi to level charges against Comey as well as California Senator Adam B Schiff and New York Attorney General Letitia James in a post on Truth Social.

File Photo by Mike Theiler/UPI | License Photo

Sept. 25 (UPI) — Former FBI Director James Comey will be tried for allegedly lying to Congress and obstructing justice amid a 2020 investigation into Russian collusion claims.

The U.S. District Court of Eastern Virginia grand jury indicted Comey on two of three counts on Thursday, ABC News reported.

Interim U.S. Attorney for Eastern Virginia Lindsey Halligan secured the grand jury indictments against Comey after federal prosecutors earlier said they had no probable cause for charging the former FBI director.

Attorney General Pam Bondi lauded the indictments in a social media post on Thursday.

“Today’s indictment reflects this Department of Justice’s commitment to holding those who abuse positions of power accountable for misleading the American people,” Bondi said, as reported by Axios.

“We will follow the facts in this case,” Bondi added.

The indictment comes less than a week before the statute of limitations would have expired in the matter and made it impossible to prosecute Comey for allegedly lying to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 30, 2020.

The committee was investigating the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation into alleged collusion between Russian officials with President Donald Trump‘s successful presidential campaign during the 2016 election.

The president accused former U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert of intentionally delaying action on the matter to allow the statute of limitations to expire in the matter and fired him.

The indictment means Comey will have to appear in court for an arraignment hearing that is yet to be scheduled, where he will have to enter a plea and possibly post a bond.

He could be imprisoned for up to five years and fined if found guilty of lying to Congress and another five years and potential fines if convicted of obstruction of justice.

Henry Jaglom, the uncompromising indie filmmaker who eschewed big-budget operations in order to preserve his creative vision, died Monday night. He was 87.

Jaglom died at his Santa Monica home surrounded by his family, his daughter Sabrina Jaglom said. The writer-director, whose filmography includes “Last Summer in the Hamptons” and “Eating,” was known for his intimate, naturalistic style and foregrounding of women’s stories in his work.

Sabrina, also a director, said in a statement that her father was “larger-than-life, and made the world a lot more colorful for those of us lucky enough to know him.”

“But, most of all, he was the most loving and supportive Dad. He will be greatly missed, but impossible to forget,” she said Thursday.

From his earliest directing gigs, Jaglom was committed to creating autobiographically inspired and emotionally resonant stories with as little studio intervention as possible. He kept costs low, cast his friends and family in his movies and pursued an improvisational production style that preceded the early-2000s film genre mumblecore.

“My movies talk about the emotional side of life,” Jaglom told The Times in 2009.

“I just try to have people do what we do, which is sit around, talk, deal with the emotions of life,” he said. “It can be touching, sad, happy, but it allows people to go through some of what they go through in life and not feel isolated and lonely.”

Jaglom’s 1985 film, “Always,” in which he co-starred with his ex-wife Patrice Townsend, was inspired by the disintegration of the couple’s own relationship. Jaglom and Townsend divorced two years before the film’s release.

Nearly a decade later, conversations Jaglom had with his second wife, actor Victoria Foyt, about parenthood were distilled into 1994’s “Babyfever,” which the couple wrote, directed and Foyt starred in.

Former Times staff writer Chris Willman called the comedy-drama “remarkable in its comprehensive documentary aspects.”

“Jaglom is, as always, big on verite and improvisation; with such a large cast milling about the airy, oceanside house, he’s managed to cover just about every conceivable baby base, with sentiments ranging from banal self-interest to self-conscious belly laughs, and a lot of very real, undeniably affecting poignancy in-between,” Willman wrote in his review of the film.

“Babyfever” was lauded for sincerely engaging with topics affecting women and for starring a mostly female cast — both of which were trademarks for Jaglom, who went on to form a women’s arm to HHH Rainbow Productions, his production company with producers Howard Zucker and Henry Lange, which for many years was located on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood.

“Women are the most disenfranchised people in this business,” he told The Times in 1987. “They still have to play mostly by men’s rules. And as I’ve been successfully making million-dollar movies for some time now I thought: ‘Why can’t they do it too?’”

Jaglom was a mentee and close confidant of acclaimed filmmaker and actor Orson Welles, whose farewell performance came in Jaglom’s 1987 comedy “Someone to Love,” which screened at the Cannes Film Festival.

“He plays himself, shedding even the persona he adopted for TV talk shows,” Jaglom told The Times of Welles’ acting style in the film. “People will finally get to see him the way I knew him; it’s almost as if he was sitting there having lunch with you.”

Peter Biskind compiled conversations between the longtime friends for his popular 2013 book, “My Lunches With Orson: Conversations Between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles.”

Several people approached Jaglom about publishing the tapes before Biskind came knocking, the director told The Times in 2013. But Biskind was the first one he took seriously.

“I said, ‘You want to put yourself through all this?’” Jaglom said. “And he said, ‘Yeah, on the one condition that you don’t censor me.’”

Jaglom, born in London in 1938, was the child of Jewish parents who immigrated to England to escape Nazi persecution. Later, Jaglom’s family moved to New York, where Jaglom spent his formative years and returned after attending the University of Pennsylvania.

In New York, Jaglom trained with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio, acting in and directing off-Broadway theater and cabaret before moving to Hollywood in the late 1960s. The multihyphenate went on to make his directorial debut in 1971 with “A Safe Place,” which starred Wells and Jack Nicholson.

After finding commercial success with his third film, “Sitting Ducks” (1980), Jaglom told The Times in 1987 that he was pitched by several big-time studio heads who said, “‘When you’re ready to make a serious movie, a big movie, come and see me.’”

“I said: ‘If you love my films why would you want me to come and make one of your big ones?’” Jaglom said, adding that with a large studio at the helm, directors run the risk of ceding the “final cut.”

“As far as I’m concerned all the big stars and fancy limos and fine dressing rooms aren’t worth a thing if you don’t control your film creatively,” he said.

For years, Henry ate at the same cafe on Santa Monica’s Montana Avenue. He was always delighted when fans and aspiring filmmakers stopped to say hello.

In addition to Sabrina, Jaglom is survived by a son, Simon Jaglom, and ex-wives Townsend and Foyt, Sabrina and Simon’s mother.

Sept. 24 (UPI) — Former FBI Director James Comey is likely to be indicted soon on criminal charges in the U.S. District Court for Eastern Virginia, several media outlets reported on Wednesday.

Three unnamed sources said Comey will be indicted in the coming days on to-be-determined charges for allegedly lying to Congress in 2020, according to MSNBC, The Independent and CNBC.

Evidence suggests Comey lied to Congress while testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 30, 2020, regarding the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation into alleged Russian collusion with President Donald Trump‘s successful election campaign in 2016, MSNBC reported.

Federal law has a five-year statute of limitations on charges for lying to Congress while under oath, which would require charges to be filed against Comey no later than Tuesday.

The president urged Attorney General Pam Bondi to accelerate charges against Comey, Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and New York Attorney General Letitia James in a social media post on Saturday.

“They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done,” Trump said on Truth Social.

He accused two unnamed Democratic Party senators of pushing a “woke RINO” to become the district’s federal prosecutor for Eastern Virginia so that he could stonewall the investigation until the statute of limitations expires.

RINO is an acronym for Republican in name only.

Interim U.S. Attorney for Eastern Virginia Lindsey Halligan is expected to lead the pending prosecution, but U.S. attorneys from other districts also might participate.

If charged and convicted for allegedly lying to Congress while under oath, Comey could be sentenced to up to five years in prison and fined.

Former President Barack Obama nominated Comey as FBI director, a role that he held from Sept. 4, 2013, until Trump fired him on May 9, 2017.

With “One Battle After Another” sporting a large lead in the best picture race, it’s no surprise its beloved auteur, 11-time nominee Paul Thomas Anderson, would enjoy a similar cushion in the directing category in Round 1.

Amy Nicholson says “One Battle” “isn’t his best film — deciding that would start a real fistfight — but it’s worthy enough to claim a prize that’s long overdue.” Glenn Whipp writes, “The list of great directors who never won an Oscar is ridiculous. Kubrick, Hitchcock, Altman, Fellini. Could this be the year that [Anderson] breaks out of that club, distinguished though it may be?”

Noting Anderson could bump that nominations total to 14 this year (as writer, director and producer), Dave Karger says, “This category could well contain two female filmmakers for the first time in five years,” naming Bigelow and Zhao among his picks.

Katie Walsh points out that, surprisingly, “Ryan Coogler has never been nominated for best director, and Jafar Panahi threads an incredible tonal needle.”

Best picture | Best animated feature | Best international feature

1. Paul Thomas Anderson, “One Battle After Another”
T2. Kathryn Bigelow, “A House of Dynamite”
T2. Ryan Coogler, “Sinners”
4. Chloé Zhao, “Hamnet”
5. Jafar Panahi, “It Was Just an Accident”
6. Joachim Trier, “Sentimental Value”
7. Park Chan-wook, “No Other Choice”
8. Bill Condon, “Kiss of the Spider Woman”

RogerEbert.com

Robert Daniels

1. Kathryn Bigelow, “A House of Dynamite”
2. Paul Thomas Anderson, “One Battle After Another”
3. Jafar Panahi, “It Was Just an Accident”
4. Chloé Zhao, “Hamnet”
5. Joachim Trier, “Sentimental Value”

“With 11 prior nominations and zero wins, the Oscar has long eluded Paul Thomas Anderson. But with ‘One Battle After Another’ earning raves and an academy that has honored overdue directors three of the last four ceremonies (Jane Campion, Christopher Nolan, Sean Baker), maybe this is his year.”

Turner Classic Movies

Dave Karger

1. Paul Thomas Anderson, “One Battle After Another”
2. Kathryn Bigelow, “A House of Dynamite”
3. Chloé Zhao, “Hamnet”
4. Joachim Trier, “Sentimental Value”
5. Jafar Panahi, “It Was Just an Accident”

“On nomination day, 11-time Oscar nominee Paul Thomas Anderson will likely become a 14-time Oscar nominee. Surprisingly, he’s never won in any category. But this could certainly be his year. Meanwhile, this category could well contain two female filmmakers for the first time in five years.”

Los Angeles Times

Amy Nicholson

1. Paul Thomas Anderson, “One Battle After Another”
2. Ryan Coogler, “Sinners”
3. Kathryn Bigelow, “A House of Dynamite”
4. Park Chan-wook, “No Other Choice”
5. Bill Condon, “Kiss of the Spider Woman”

“Paul Thomas Anderson has 11 Academy Award nominations (no surprise there) and zero wins. What!? ‘One Battle After Another’ isn’t his best film — deciding that would start a real fist fight — but it’s worthy enough to claim a prize that’s long overdue.”

IndieWire

Anne Thompson

1. Paul Thomas Anderson, “One Battle After Another”
2. Ryan Coogler, “Sinners”
3. Chloé Zhao, “Hamnet”
4. Kathryn Bigelow, “A House of Dynamite”
5. Joachim Trier, “Sentimental Value”

“If ‘Sinners’ wins best picture, director could go to ‘One Battle After Another’s’ Paul Thomas Anderson after 11 nominations (and no wins) for arguably his most bravura movie to date. Both ‘Hamnet’ director Chloé Zhao and ‘House of Dynamite’s’ Kathryn Bigelow have won before.”

Tribune News Service

Katie Walsh

1. Paul Thomas Anderson, “One Battle After Another”
2. Ryan Coogler, “Sinners”
3. Jafar Panahi, “It Was Just an Accident”
4. Chloé Zhao, “Hamnet”
5. Kathryn Bigelow, “A House of Dynamite”

“It has to be Anderson, but I can see the academy recognizing former winners like Kathryn Bigelow and Chloé Zhao. Ryan Coogler has never been nominated for best director, and Jafar Panahi threads an incredible tonal needle with ‘It Was Just an Accident’ (the Palme d’Or helps too).”

Los Angeles Times

Glenn Whipp

1. Paul Thomas Anderson, “One Battle After Another”
2. Ryan Coogler, “Sinners”
3. Chloé Zhao, “Hamnet”
4. Joachim Trier, “Sentimental Value”
5. Kathryn Bigelow, “A House of Dynamite”

“The list of great directors who never won an Oscar is ridiculous. Kubrick, Hitchcock, Altman, Fellini. Could this be the year that Paul Thomas Anderson breaks out of that club, distinguished though it may be? With ‘One Battle After Another,’ he has the movie to do it.”

A Hollywood institution known for mystery, deception and drama, the Magic Castle is now gripped by a new variety of suspense.

Magic Castle mansion owner Randy Pitchford, who bought the establishment in 2022, has presented a reorganization plan to his tenant, the Academy of Magical Arts. The AMA is the nonprofit club that operates the castle and whose performer-members have helped build it into one of the world’s top venues for magic.

In a series of proposals, Pitchford has offered AMA members a choice between embracing his plan — which gives him control over castle operations and most revenue — or finding another clubhouse when the academy’s lease expires Dec. 31, 2028.

Members have until Sept. 29 to decide.

With backing from the AMA’s board of directors, Pitchford presents this moment as a chance for the academy to secure a vibrant future for the Magic Castle while preserving its legacy.

But the proposal is causing “division, fracturing and confusion” among many AMA members, as one magician, Ralph Shelton, put it. Some members, who asked not to publish their names, told The Times they believe that Pitchford is using an ultimatum to take control of the castle. Other members say they simply worry that Pitchford is giving AMA members too little information.

“The easiest people to fool are magicians and scientists,” said Shelton, a Huntington Beach attorney who put himself through law school by doing magic. “You know what they’re looking for and you work around that.”

Pitchford did not immediately respond Thursday to requests for comment on the allegation that he is using an ultimatum to take control of the castle. But Pitchford and his team had said that by taking over the risks and rewards that come with running the Castle, his company is freeing up the AMA to focus on its non-commercial mission — promoting magic — “for as long as it wishes to use the Magic Castle as its clubhouse.”

Since Sept. 8, the academy’s 4,664 members have been casting electronic votes on whether to change the organization’s bylaws and other documents to allow the proposed realignment. In previous polling, the members who voted have heavily favored a deal. A “yes” vote would mean the reorganization would begin as soon as Oct. 1.

At the Magic Castle, guests say a secret password to enter.

(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

Pitchford learned magic at the castle before building a video game empire as the co-founder of Gearbox Entertainment. In a Sept. 9 statement to The Times, he noted that he and his wife were married in the Magic Castle’s Palace of Mystery in 1997, “so our investment into its preservation and quality is quite personal to us.”

As an AMA member for more than 30 years, he said he is “thrilled that the Academy of Magical Arts, with the overwhelming support of the membership, are our ally in forging a bold, mission-first partnership for at least the next 30 years of magic at the Magic Castle.”

The Magic Castle, a 1909 Edwardian-style mansion, opened in 1963 as a clubhouse and performance venue for the Academy of Magical Arts, which was founded and sustained for years by the Larsen family. From the start, the academy was a tenant in the building, leasing from private owners, the Glover family, on terms often described as “a handshake deal.”

For decades, visitors have been drawn by the idea of dressing to the nines and roaming room to room, sipping cocktails as conjurers and sleight-of-hand artists ply their trade. Performers and members have included Cary Grant, Johnny Carson, Orson Welles, Jason Alexander, Neil Patrick Harris and Larry Wilmore (who sits on the board of directors). Exclusivity is part of the appeal, too. To get in, most guests need an invite from a member.

The enterprise ran into trouble in 2020 when the pandemic shut it down and a Times investigation detailed allegations of sexual harassment, groping and racism. In 2021, the mansion reopened amid a leadership overhaul.

Erika Larsen, president of Magic Castle Enterprises, and mansion owner Randy Pitchford.

(Tara Ziemba / Getty Images)

The latest chapter in the castle’s story began in April 2022 when Pitchford bought the property from its longtime landlords, the Glover family.

Pitchford, 54, whose Texas-based company created the popular Borderlands video game franchise, is a controversial figure in the video game industry. His purchase of the castle, valued by the L.A. County Assessor at $50 million, also included an adjacent apartment building and the 33-unit Magic Hotel next door.

About the same time as the castle purchase, Pitchford also bought intellectual property rights to the Magic Castle name from Milt Larsen, who died in 2023.

When Pitchford was announced as buyer of the castle, many academy members voiced optimism. “We were absolutely thrilled beyond measure,” said Paul Kott, an Anaheim-based commercial and residential real estate broker who has been an AMA member for 50 years. “We know his heart wants to dedicate this place to the art of magic.”

To manage the new holdings, Pitchford and his wife, Kristy Pitchford, created companies called Magic Castle Enterprises (for intellectual property) and Magic Castle Entertainment (for real estate), together known as MCE. They also enlisted Erika Larsen, daughter of castle pioneers Bill and Irene Larsen, as president of Magic Castle Enterprises, and Jessica Hopkins, granddaughter of Bill and Irene Larsen, as chief operating officer.

In January 2024, the AMA’s leadership told members that the group’s lease on the building would not be renewed — causing a surge of anxiety among members — and that academy board was negotiating with MCE in hopes of keeping the group in place.

On July 30, 2024, AMA members said they received an email that included a warning from MCE saying that if it couldn’t make a deal with the academy, MCE might “create a new club with enticing features and pricing” that “might possibly lead to [the academy’s] demise.”

(In a later email exchange with The Times, Pitchford said he did not recall that specific sentence; he did not respond to a request to confirm or deny the passage.)

In December 2024, AMA leaders invited members to vote on a proposed “resolution implementation agreement” for MCE to take over the Magic Castle’s commercial operations while the academy remained on site indefinitely and focused on its nonprofit role, including awards programs and educational efforts.

MCE reported that more than 90% of ballots favored the deal. Opponents said that a minority of members cast votes. A second vote yielded similar results.

Further details emerged in a “white paper” document that MCE circulated in February 2025. It said MCE would operate and collect revenue from the castle gift shop, bar, restaurant, box office and valet parking. AMA members would pay dues through a new entity which would divide that revenue between MCE and the academy. The Magic Castle would serve “as the exclusive clubhouse of the AMA indefinitely.”

MCE also pledged to invest $10 million in capital improvements and maintenance and relieve the AMA of remaining lease and trademark-related financial obligations. Meanwhile, the AMA board of directors would gradually shrink from nine members to five, two of them nominated by MCE.

In March, the Magic Castle announced that the MCE and AMA board of directors had signed a resolution implementation agreement, the framework for a deal. An AMA spokesperson said that MCE and the AMA board of directors “have negotiated terms for long-term access. Details of the agreement will not be released.”

“I think [Pitchford] has tried to do everything in his power to preserve the nature of this iconic place,” said longtime member Christopher Hart, who serves as chair of the academy’s board of trustees, which oversees artistic choices at the castle. Hart played “Thing,” the disembodied hand, in the “Addams Family” movies.

“The rumors have been so rampant in so many directions,” said Gay Blackstone, a longtime member who has served in many roles on the academy board of directors and board of trustees. Blackstone said she still has research to do before casting her vote but “I know that [Pitchford’s] love and passion for the magic are tremendous.”

Still, for some, doubts persist. “I don’t think the membership is being given what they need to make a good decision…. How long can we stay? how much is it going to cost?” Kott asked.

Now comes another membership vote. On Sept. 8, members began a binding vote on proposed changes in academy bylaws and other documents that would make the new deal possible. Those changes include creation of a Magic Castle Club, separate from the Academy of Magical Arts.

That “is an important wrinkle,” Shelton said.

The concept of the Magic Castle Club “is not to compete with the A.M.A., but we needed a new entity to collect dues on behalf of the A.M.A. and MCE per the arrangement,” Randy Pitchford said in a statement to The Times Sept. 15. Once an agreement is in place, Pitchford said, “All club activities, events, initiatives, etc, are and will be led and directed by the Academy of Magical Arts.”

The goal, MCE leaders have said, is “a seamless transition with a focus on an uninterrupted member and guest experience.”

If the membership rejects the changes, Christopher Grant, president of the academy’s board of directors, said in a statement that “MCE will terminate its current lease with the AMA” and the academy would need to find a new clubhouse by January 2029.

Further effects of a “no” vote, especially for academy-member performers and audiences at the Magic Castle, are harder to predict.

In his Sept. 9 statement, Pitchford suggested that the new proposal puts in place “the same kind of relationship that founded and created” the Magic Castle in the first place.

“Change is always scary,” Hart said. “Members just want the same experience they’ve always had and loved about the castle.” The proposed changes, Hart added, “could make the castle greater than it’s ever been.”