It felt like 2022 all over again when Josh Gad took to Instagram to express his heartbreak about contracting a “virus known as COVID” and announce his decision to pull out of playing King Herod in the highly anticipated production of “Jesus Christ Superstar” at the Hollywood Bowl, which staged its first night of a three-night run Friday.
Gad hinted that maybe — if he tested negative — the situation might change. The following day, however, John Stamos announced on social media that his weekend “just got biblical” and that he was stepping in for Gad in the show.
On Friday, things got extra dramatic when Gad said that he had tested negative. Fans on his social media clamored to know what that might mean, but he stayed mum until Saturday when he posted a photo of himself in an elaborate gold lamé costume with the words, “See you all Sunday night.”
A rep for the Los Angeles Philharmonic said that final confirmation that Gad will step onto stage won’t come until noon Sunday.
Stamos appeared onstage as Herod on Friday night, bringing some comic relief to an electric, deeply emotional show.
After one of star Cynthia Erivo’s solos, the audience clapped so loud, long and reverently, that tears came to the singer’s eyes — which only caused the crowd to cheer harder. The moment of symbiotic love lasted for at least 3 minutes, maybe more.
The Bowl was packed with marquee names, including former Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, Jim Carrey and Ted Neely (who played Jesus in the 1973 film adaptation of the musical). Erivo brought composer Andrew Lloyd Webber onto the stage as a special guest during curtain call.
Still, Gad fans were many — you could tell because they held Olaf dolls and wore Olaf jewelry — and they could be heard expressing their sorrow at the absence of Gad in the crush of the crowd after the show.
Gad’s addition to the cast, which included Erivo as Jesus, Adam Lambert as Judas and Phillipa Soo as Mary Magdalene, was hailed by fans; and in an interview with The Times during rehearsal, Gad spoke about being beyond excited to perform at the Bowl for the very first time with a stellar cast that he called the Avengers of musical theater.
“I’ve wanted to play the Hollywood Bowl forever,” said Gad. “But I never thought I was good enough to play the Hollywood Bowl,” he added with a self-deprecating smile
Even though the role of King Herod entails a single song — a kind of comic interlude that Gad likened to the part of King George in “Hamilton” — Gad showed up at as many rehearsals as possible before he came down with COVID. He just liked sitting on the sidelines, soaking up the scene and the incredible talent on display, he said.
At a Saturday rehearsal before the show, he filmed numbers on phones for various cast members and cheered his heart out. His sense of excitement was palpable. Now he’ll get one night to give “King Herod’s Song” his all.
Lena Dunham, of “Girls” fame, with her husband Luis Felber, has created a romantic comedy, “Too Much,” premiering Thursday on Netflix. It’s lighter in tone than that previous show but still comes with plenty of dysfunction, self-sabotage and sex. (Drugs too, though it doesn’t make a case for them.) The titles of the episodes establish a negative relation to the genre: “Terms of Resentment,” “Enough, Actually,” “Notting Kill,” “Nonsense and Sensibility,” “Pity Woman,” “Ignore Sunrise,” “To Doubt a Boy.” But in the end, it wants what they’re having.
Dunham, who wrote or co-wrote all 10 episodes and directed several, has elected not to star, but has brought in Megan Stalter, from “Hacks” as her stand-in, Jessica. (Dunham plays Nora, Jessica’s depressed older sister, mostly from a bed.) Like Jessica, Dunham is an American living in England, in a relationship with a musician, so we may credit at least some details to the authority of their shared experience.
Jessica once wanted to direct films, to “say something about the female experience,” but she has been working for 15 years as a line producer for an ad agency, a job at which she is evidently good, but which means little to her. When her New York firm merges with a British company, she’s sent to London for three months to help make a Christmas commercial, starring Rita Ora. Having been left six months before by her longtime boyfriend, Zev (Michael Zegen) for willowy knitting influencer Wendy Jones (Emily Ratajkowski), to whom he’s become engaged, she is ready to go — all the more so because her happy place is “love stories set in pastoral England.”
On her first night in town, Jessica discovers that the “estate” she thought she was renting is not Pemberley but public housing; she takes a taxi to a random pub, where Felix (Will Sharpe), the boy in this 30-something love story, is performing a sad song to a few patrons. They meet-cute in the bathroom. He walks her home. They talk. He lends her his coat. (There is, interestingly, no attempt to convince us that Felix is a major talent; indeed, the suggestion is that such career as he had is on a downward slope.)
People fall out of love on television almost as often as they fall into it, sometimes as a prelude to falling back into it, or falling for someone else, and less often deciding that they are in fact happier on their own. From the wealth of self-help books, advice columns, therapists, country songs and, yes, romantic comedies that fill our culture, I reckon the messier elements of “Too Much” will feel familiar to many. There is plenty of chaos in this comedy, but its best moments come in passages of relative calm. (They are something of a relief from the dominant emotional mishigas.) A long, wordless scene consisting of a single overhead shot of Felix and Jess on a bed, as she listens to a mix he made her, is remarkably moving, not least because the actors are doing so much while doing so little.
“Too Much” on Netflix first look.
(Netflix)
Even as she becomes involved with Felix, Jessica continues her practice of recording private videos on her phone, on TikTok, as a sort of therapeutic diary, ranting about Zev; many are addressed directly to Wendy Jones. Meanwhile, she deals with Andrew Scott as a pretentious director (“We’ve got to make this feel like it’s Ken Loach doing a Christmas film”) and mucks in with new boss Jonno (Richard E. Grant) and colleagues Josie (Daisy Bevan), Kim (Janicza Bravo), who is interested in Josie, and chatterbox Boss (Leo Reich), who has published an “experimental PDF novel, to much acclaim” and broke up with someone because “he did not have the emotional intelligence necessary to deal with someone whose love language is being a b— in a fun way.” She confounds them with her loud, childlike American energy, filling empty spaces with words, making jokes that don’t come off. (“Just kidding” is a thing she says a lot.)
Recently sober, Felix has his own complement of bandmates, friends and friendly ex-girlfriends, including three women named Polly — Adèle Exarchopoulos plays the important one — whose history with Felix makes Jess nervous. (Jennifer Saunders is a bit of a surprise.) Sharpe, last seen on TV in the second season of “The White Lotus,” plays him quietly, a little melancholy, perhaps, but not unduly moody; even in a difficult situation — he’s carrying just as much baggage as Jessica — his energy remains low-key and relatively grounded, though he will be called upon to do some panicked running.
If the series has a fault, it’s that there’s possibly too much “Too Much.” In the movies, the business of “boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl” (substitute your preferred genders), has traditionally been settled in under two hours. The streaming economy, however, has stretched the narrative timeline, elongated the arc, padding out a predetermined number of episodes with extraneous digressions, giving minor characters things to do that don’t necessarily contribute to the story, while not developing into much on their own. There are brief cutaways to Jonno’s home life, which at least has the benefit of giving us more Grant, plus Naomi Watts as his wife, Ann; scenes back in New York likewise give us unrelated time with Rita Wilson as Jessica’s mother, Lois; Rhea Perlman her mouthy grandmother, Dottie; Dunham’s Nora and Andrew Rannells as her ex-husband, Jameson, who left her in favor of “exploring non-monogamy with a couple both named Cody.”
More problematic, an exasperating character like Jessica, lived with at such length, can become exhausting, and she does. Dunham mitigates this, and the roller coaster of Jessica and Felix’s relationship, by employing an episodic structure, setting whole or nearly whole episodes against different backdrops: a wedding, a work trip, a dinner party, Felix at home with his parents (Stephen Fry and Kaori Momoi), Jess and Felix up all night (having sex, watching “Paddington”) when she has to be fresh for work in the morning, and a flashback to Jess’ history with Zev (he’s been made a “writer,” shorthand for pathetic). Taken individually, as discrete stories, they’re easier to digest. The writing is sharp, the performances spot-on.
Stalter, who is in her fourth season stealing scenes on “Hacks,” plays a character halfway around the world from her character there. Where her Kayla is brash, entitled and self-confident to a fault, Jess is needy, full of second thoughts and self-doubts, even as she projects a kind of frantic cheerfulness. (“I’m a chill girl, I’m normal,” she tells herself, doubtfully.) Dunham often shoots Stalter straight on, filling the screen with her face, which pays benefits; she has great presence. (And sings very sweetly too, better than her boyfriend.)
The endgame, when we get to it, could not be any more conventional — which, I imagine, is the idea. One might think it parodic if it hadn’t been established that this is the dream in which Jessica lives; anything less would be unkind.
I see I’ve neglected to mention the dog. There is a little dog too, who plays an important part.
An Army veteran who grew up in Van Nuys and was awarded a Purple Heart self-deported to South Korea this week as he was threatened with being detained and deported by federal immigration forces.
On Monday, veteran Sae Joon Park, who legally immigrated from South Korea when he was seven years old, grew up in Koreatown and the San Fernando Valley and held a green card, flew back to his homeland under threat of deportation at the age of 55. He said he is being forced to leave because of drug convictions nearly two decades ago that he said were a response to the PTSD he suffered after being shot during military action in Panama.
“It’s unbelievable. I’m still in disbelief that this has actually happened,” Park said in a phone interview from Incheon early Wednesday morning. “I know I made my mistakes … but it’s not like I was a violent criminal. It’s not like I’m going around robbing people at gunpoint or hurting anyone. It was self-induced because of the problems I had.”
Sae Joon Park, an Army veteran with a Purple Heart.
(From Sae Joon Park)
Asked to comment on Park, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said Park has an “extensive criminal history” and has been given a final removal order, with the option to self-deport.
Park said he suffered from PTSD and addiction in the aftermath of being wounded when he was part of the U.S. forces that invaded Panama in 1989 to depose the nation’s de facto leader, Gen. Manuel Noriega.
But now Park, a legal immigrant, is targeted by federal authorities in President Trump’s recent immigration raids that have prompted widespread protests in Los Angeles and across the nation. Federal authorities have arrested more than 1,600 immigrants for deportation in Southern California between June 6 and 22, according to DHS.
A noncitizen is eligible for naturalization if they served honorably in the U.S. military for at least a year. Park served less than a year before he was wounded and honorably discharged.
As of 2021, the Department of Veteran Affairs and DHS are responsible for tracking deported veterans to make sure they still have access to VA benefits.
Park’s parents divorced when he was a toddler, and his mother immigrated from South Korea to the United States. He followed her a year later. They first lived in Koreatown, moved to Panorama City and then Van Nuys. He graduated from Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks in 1988.
Struggling at first to learn English and acclimate with his classmates, he eventually became part of the Southern California skateboarding and surfing scene of the 1980s, which is when television editor Josh Belson met him. They have been close friends ever since.
“He’s always got a smile, a very kind of vivacious energy about him,” said Belson, who attended a nearby high school when they met. “He was the kind of person you wanted to be around.”
After graduating, Park said he wasn’t ready to attend college, so he joined the military.
“The Army provided not only turning me into a man, but also providing me with the GI Bill, so you can go to college later, and they’ll pay for it. And the fact that I did believe in the country, the United States,” he said. “So I felt like I was doing something honorable. I was very proud when I joined the military.”
Park’s platoon was deployed to Panama in late 1989, where he said they experienced a firefight the first night there. The following day, he said he was carrying an M-16 when they raided the house of one of the “witches” Noriega allegedly followed. He said they saw a voodoo worship room with body parts and a cross painted in blood on the floor.
While there, he heard gunfire from the backyard and returned fire. He was shot twice, in his spine and lower left back. The bullet to his spine was partially deflected by his dog tag, which Park believes is the reason he wasn’t paralyzed. A military ambulance was delayed because of the firefight, but a Vietnam veteran who lived nearby rescued him, Park said.
“I just remember I’m just lying in my own pool of blood and just leaking out badly. So he actually went home, got his pickup truck, put me in the back of his pickup truck with two soldiers, and drove me to the hospital,” Park said.
He was then evacuated to an Army hospital in San Antonio. A four-star general awarded him a Purple Heart at his bedside. Then-President George W. Bush visited wounded soldiers there.
Park spent about two weeks there, and then went home for a month or so, until he could walk. His experience resulted in mental issues he didn’t recognize, he said.
“My biggest issue at the time, more than my injuries, was — I didn’t know what it was at the time, nobody did, because there was no such thing as PTSD at the time,” he said. Eventually, “I realized I was suffering from PTSD badly, nightmares every night, severe. I couldn’t hear loud noises, and at that time in L.A., you would hear gunshots every night you left the house, so I was paranoid at all times. And being a man and being a tough guy, I couldn’t share this with anyone.”
Park started self-medicating with marijuana, which he said helped him sleep. But he started doing harder drugs, eventually crack cocaine. He moved to Hawaii after his mother and stepfather’s L.A. store burned during the 1992 riots, and married. After Park and his wife separated, he moved to New York City, where his addiction worsened.
“It got really bad. It just got out of control — every day, every night, all day — just smoking, everything,” Park said.
One night, in the late 2000s, he was meeting his drug dealer at a Taco Bell in Queens when police surrounded his car, and the dealer fled while leaving a large quantity of crack in his glove compartment, Park said.
A judge sent Park to rehab twice, but he said he was not ready to get sober.
“I just couldn’t. I was an addict. It was so hard for me to stay clean. I’d be good for 30 days and relapse,” he said. “I’d be good for 20 days and relapse. It was such a struggle. Finally, the judge told me, ‘Mr. Park, the next time you come into my courtroom with the dirty urine, you’re gonna go to prison.’ So I got scared.”
So Park didn’t return to court, drove to Los Angeles and then returned to Hawaii, skipping bail, which is an aggravated felony.
“I did not know at the time jumping bail was an aggravated felony charge, and combined with my drug use, that’s deportable for someone like me with my green card,” he said.
U.S. Marshals were sent looking for Park, and he said once he heard about this, he turned himself in in August 2009, because he didn’t want to be arrested in front of his two children.
He served two years in prison and said immigration officials detained him for six months after he was released as he fought deportation orders. He was eventually released under “deferred action,” an act of prosecutorial discretion by DHS to put off deportation.
Every year since, Park was required to check in with federal officials and show that he was employed and sober. Meanwhile, he had sole custody of his two children, who are now 28 and 25. He was also caring for his 85-year-old mother, who is in the early stages of dementia.
During his most recent check-in, Park was about to be handcuffed and detained, but immigration agents placed an ankle monitor on him and gave him three weeks to get his affairs in order and self-deport. He is not allowed to return to the United States for 10 years. He worries he will miss his mother’s passing and his daughter’s wedding.
“That’s the biggest part. But … it could be a lot worse too. I look at it that way also,” Park said. “So I’m grateful I made it out of the United States, I guess, without getting detained.”
“I always just assumed a green card, legal residency, is just like having citizenship,” he added. “I just never felt like I had to go get citizenship. And that’s just being honest. As a kid growing up in the United States, I’ve always just thought, hey, I’m a green card holder, a legal resident, I’m just like a citizen.”
His condition has spiraled since then.
“Alright. I’m losing it. Can’t stop crying. I think PTSD kicking in strong,” Park texted Belson on Thursday. “Just want to get back to my family and take care of my mother … I’m a mess.”
Times staff writer Nathan Solis contributed to this report.
The lure for music stars to cinematize their success will never grow old, and the movies — in need of high-wattage attractions as ever — always seem ready to oblige. The latest to enter that terrain is Abel Tesfaye, the artist known as the Weeknd, whose chart-toppers over the last decade-plus have painted, in club colors and through his haunted falsetto, a hedonist performer’s ups and downs.
It’s one thing to croon about the aftertaste of youthful excess to a dirty, mesmerizing dance beat, however, and another to draw the subject out to a compelling feature length, which the turgid psychodrama “Hurry Up Tomorrow,” starring Tesfaye and directed by Trey Edward Shults, mostly fails to do. But not for lack of trying from the visually vibey “Waves” filmmaker, who wrote the movie with Tesfaye and Reza Fahim, and from co-stars Jenna Ortega and Barry Keoghan, roped into playing along in the superstar’s sandbox of tour-nightmare solipsism.
The title also belongs to the latest hit album of Tesfaye’s, released this year, which the singer-songwriter has hinted in the press to be a redemptive mic drop of sorts for his mysterious sex-and-drugs-fueled Weeknd persona. Whether you call the film a promotional tie-in or companion piece — it was filmed two years ago, before all the album’s tracks were recorded — it’s still little more than a long-form music video vanity project, straining for importance, fumbling at resonance.
A tight frame on Tesfaye’s boyish, anxious-looking face, his angry girlfriend’s breakup voice message (“I used to think you were a good person!”), and superficial pumping up from his manager (a bro-mode Keoghan), let us know all is not right backstage for this musician on the first night of a big tour. Elsewhere, a distraught young woman (Ortega) drenches a house’s interior with gasoline and sets it on fire, then drives to a gas station to refill her canister.
These tortured souls meet the night his coked-up, busted-heart malaise triggers a walk-off midperformance, and she’s there backstage to lock eyes with him and ask if he’s OK. (He’s not!) From there it’s an escapist date of air hockey, carnival rides and, once they settle in a fancy hotel room, the sharing of a sensitive new song.
In the cold light of day, though, when her vulnerabilities bump up against his reset untouchability — Ortega gets a great line, “You don’t look worried, you look scared” — this impulsive star/fan connection takes a violent turn. Anyone familiar with the HBO series “The Idol” that Tesfaye co-created will soon sense an unwelcome reprise of that short-lived showbiz yarn’s retrograde misogyny.
The germ of an edgy fantasia about an isolated pop icon’s ego death is swimming somewhere in the DNA of “Hurry Up Tomorrow,” but it’s been flattened into a superficial, tear-stained pity party. Shults and cinematographer Chayse Irvin are gifted image makers, but they seem hamstrung applying their bag of style tricks — different aspect ratios, multiple film stocks, 360 shots and roving takes — to so shallow and prideful an exercise. There’s always something to look at but little that illuminates.
As for Tesfaye, he’s not uninteresting as a screen presence, but it’s an embryonic magnetism, in need of material richer than a bunch of close-ups that culminate in a howl of a ballad. In the flimsy narrative’s pseudo-biographical contours — notably the real-life voice loss he experienced onstage a few years ago — parallels to what Prince sought to achieve with the real-life-drawn “Purple Rain” are understandable. But that film was a cannier bid for next-level success, offsetting its three-act corniness with emotional stakes that led to a crescendo of its genius headliner’s performance prowess.
“Hurry Up Tomorrow” is thinner and sloppier. It won’t slam the door on Tesfaye’s movie ambitions, but as a bid to conquer the big screen, it’s an off-putting, see-what-sticks wallow that treats the power of cinema like a midconcert costume change.
‘Hurry Up Tomorrow’
Rated: R for language throughout, drug use, some bloody violence and brief nudity
