Jerry

Ben Stiller has made a lovely, dreamlike film about his parents, the comedian-actors Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, which is also a film about himself, his sister, Amy Stiller, and his own fatherhood as reflected back by his children and his wife, the actor Christine Taylor. Premiering Friday on Apple TV, “Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost” is a show business story, in large part, but will be emotionally familiar to anyone who has had the occasion to wonder about their parents’ lives, in their parents’ absence.

Though both had set out to be actors — “I carried Eleanora Duse’s life under one arm,” says Anne, “and ‘An Actor Prepares,’ Stanislavski, under the other” — Jerry had been thinking of getting into comedy when he met Anne. They married in 1954, but it wasn’t until 1963 that the conjoined career of Stiller and Maera took off, with an appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” They might play the last two people on Earth meeting for the first time, or an Irish girl and a Jewish boy matched by computer dating. He was a fretful perfectionist who would endlessly rehearse; Anne was naturally funny; she flowed.

As documentary subjects go, the Stillers were not remarkably dysfunctional — no violence, no skeletons — past the not uncommon situation of parents whose work, or fixation on work, often took them away from their kids, physically or mentally, with the added fillip of that work having made them famous. (There are references to Anne’s drinking, which bothered Jerry, but this is not a hole the film runs down, and there’s nothing here to suggest it diminished her life or work.) As different people with different goals — “My mom wanted to be happy independent of performing,” says Ben, “and I think for my dad performing was so important to him it was part of his happiness” — there was tension, but they loved each other, and they loved their kids, and stayed married for 62 years, until Anne’s death in 2015.

Stiller frames the film with his and Amy’s return to the Upper West Side apartment where they were raised in order to clear it out to be sold, providing the opportunity to see what their parents had left behind. (Jerry died in 2020.) And it was a lot — nothing is lost if nothing is thrown away. There are love letters, diaries, scripts, manuscripts. (Anne: “I think Jerry has a need to keep his name going and for some reason he thinks that when we check out and pass over that the Smithsonian institute is going to want his memorabilia.”) Jerry had a habit, amounting to a compulsion, of documenting their life on film and tape; some of their conversations, and arguments, would turn into routines. (“Where does the act end and the marriage begin?” Anne wonders.) Raised voices in another room might be rehearsing or fighting. One routine consisted of escalating declarations of hate: “I hated you before I met you.” “I hated you before you were born.”

They quit playing nightclubs in 1970 (they drove her “meshuggah”), but remained in public view — in guest appearances, game shows and talk shows, where, unlike the highly managed appearances of today, they seemed ready to dish the dirt on themselves, providing Ben Stiller with material for this film. And they went to work as actors, each amassing a long list of screen and stage appearances. Jerry, of course, is now best known from “Seinfeld,” where he played George’s father, Frank Costanza, and “The King of Queens,” acting in nearly 200 episodes.

Much of it has to do with Ben and Amy as children of famous people, of family vacations that became working vacations, and growing up on display. In one clip from “The Mike Douglas Show,” the siblings perform “Chopsticks” as a screechy violin duet. Young Ben, already interested in film and asked by an interviewer if his parents will feature in his movies, says that they won’t: “I’ll be making adventure or a murder or something like that, but never a comedy. I don’t like comedy.”

We get glimpses of Stiller’s own prolific career — in comedy, mostly, as it turned out — as well as confessions of his own failings as a family man. (His children, Quin and Ella, get to have their good-humored but penetrating say, as does Taylor, from whom he separated in 2017, and with whom he reunited during the pandemic.) But there’s no evident resentment on the part of Ben and Amy, just curiosity and self-examination as adults whose own lives have taught them something about being adults, amid the knowledge that their parents had parents, too, and some of their imperfections became imperfections of their own.

Both Anne and Jerry had come from dark places. “Their lives were always reaching for the light,” says the playwright John Guare, whose black comedy “The House of Blue Leaves” Anne performed in off-Broadway. “Why don’t you become a stagehand?” Jerry’s father told him when Jerry first told him of his ambition. “Where do you get off trying to be Eddie Cantor?” Anne’s mother died by suicide. “Your father was kind of a saint, you know,” Christopher Walken tells Ben.

Stiller’s approach is musical; his assembly of clips and photos is musical — poetic, not prosaic. He ends his film with a conversation between Jerry and his aged father, Willie, cut to a montage of the family through time.

“Isn’t this better than anything, just being alive?” says Jerry. “When we go, we’ll go together, you and me”

Willie: “Yeah, OK, hold hands and everything else.”

“You’ll take me to shows again when we get up there?”

“Yeah, when I go I’ll take you any place. … What is this?”

“It’s a tape recorder. … Whatever you say is on that tape. They’ll hear you forever. You’ll never be lost.”

And we see young Ben, filming a camera that’s filming him, as his father steps in behind him.

From the first time decades ago he was lampooned as a quirky upstart until now, the final stretch of his unprecedented fourth term as California’s governor, Jerry Brown has reveled in his reputation as a cheapskate.

“Nobody is tougher with a buck than I am,” he boasted during the 2010 campaign that sent him back to Sacramento.

Eight years later, Brown is poised to earn a place in the history books as the leader who helped right the ship of state. His mantra of measured spending could be a standard by which future governors are judged.

“We’re well positioned, but if the next governor doesn’t say ‘no’ at critical moments, things will get worse,” Brown said in an interview with The Times.

His promise of similar straight talk about California’s budget prevailed in the 2010 election, held in the shadow of financial collapse. The projected budget deficit he inherited — even after two years of cuts under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger — stood at $27 billion.

All of which seemed a distant memory Wednesday as Brown signed a budget creating a $13.8-billion cash reserve, the largest in state history. “I think people in California can be proud that we’re making progress,” the 80-year old Democrat said standing beside legislative leaders — the oldest of whom was only 12 when Brown was first elected governor in 1974.

While supporters tout his record on combating climate change or raising the minimum wage, the through line of Brown’s second chance as governor has always been the budget, a topic that demanded a fiscal reckoning just days after he took office.

“What surprised me was how deep the deficit became during Schwarzenegger’s last few years,” he said. “We had to get in there and cut, and find some new revenue and work it out the best way we could.”

Brown’s first moves in 2011 were to cancel new cell phones and government vehicles for state workers, political symbolism not unlike the bland Plymouth sedan he chose in the 1970s from the state vehicle pool. By spring, he convinced lawmakers to cut $8.2 billion from programs like higher education, daytime elderly care services and doctor visits for the poor.

When substantive efforts to solve the rest of the problem stalled that June, the governor did something his predecessors had never done: He vetoed the budget ratified by lawmakers.

“For a decade, the can has been kicked down the road and debt has piled up,” Brown said as he signed the veto message. “California is facing a fiscal crisis, and very strong medicine must be taken.”

The veto was a shot across the bow to the Legislature. “It communicated very clearly that there was going to be a minimum standard for the legislative budget, and they just couldn’t slap anything together and put the name ‘budget’ on it,” Brown says now.

“We were frustrated,” remembers John A. Pérez, who was Assembly speaker at the time. “But it laid the foundation for what has become eight years of on-time, balanced budgets.”

Deeper cuts ultimately were made. Within months, ratings agencies moved California’s credit outlook to positive, the beginning of a trend that has driven down interest rates for government borrowing, one way the state has saved money.

Gov. Jerry Brown’s wall of debt crumbles, but more walls are behind it »

He later turned his attention to the short-term obligations that piled up during the financial crisis, from raided school funds to Wall Street-backed deficit bonds. Branded by Brown as the state’s “wall of debt” and once towering at nearly $35 billion, today the balance is less than $5 billion.

“I tell my friends that Jerry Brown is one of the most fiscally conservative Democrats that I know,” said Connie Conway, a Tulare County Republican who served as Assembly GOP leader from 2010 to 2014. She recalls saying at one point that Brown “is the adult in the room because at least he’s admitting we have debt.”

Still, it was Republicans who handed Brown his first real budget setback in 2011, refusing to support a special statewide election to extend temporary taxes. The governor, never a back-slapping kind of politician, nonetheless mounted an intense charm offensive. He hosted private dinners for legislative Republicans where California wine flowed freely. He brought along his affable Corgi, Sutter, for visits. GOP lawmakers wouldn’t budge.

In hindsight, it was a lucky break. Special elections have historically had a disproportionately high turnout of conservative voters who likely would have rejected the plan. When Republicans balked, Brown and a coalition of business and labor leaders qualified a tax increase for the ballot in 2012, a presidential election year with strong turnout from Democrats.

The resulting Proposition 30, a surcharge on the state’s sales tax and the incomes of wealthy taxpayers, provided revenue for six years — a more robust plan, Brown now says, than what he asked Republicans to support. “We’d have been right back in the soup” with the original plan, he said. “This way, we got a couple of more years.”

Brown campaigned hard for the ballot measure, shrewdly making it about the budget’s biggest beneficiary — schools — and about his own commitment to balancing the books. On election day, it passed with 55% of the vote.

“There’s no way in hell the voters would have approved those taxes if not for their faith in his fiscal stewardship,” Pérez said.

The taxes and California’s recovering economy have since produced historic tax windfalls. The state Department of Finance estimates the 2012 tax initiative and an extension approved by voters (but not explicitly endorsed by the governor) in 2016 has, to date, generated $50 billion in additional revenue.

Brown’s budget dominance begins with a firm grip on tax revenue forecasts »

Not that all of the modern Brown era has been all about less spending. State government spending has risen by 59% since 2011. Much of that has gone to K-12 schools, as required by law, and Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program. Healthcare spending, in particular, has more than doubled in seven years, to about $23 billion in general fund costs. California has fully embraced Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act. Brown has lashed out at efforts by President Trump to rescind the law.

The rush of revenue also has allowed for a substantial savings account. Brown and lawmakers crafted a robust rainy-day reserve fund, ratified by voters in 2014. “That’s the kind of collaboration you don’t often see between legislators and governors,” Pérez said.

Through lean and flush years alike, the governor’s job approval ratings remained strong. Liberal activists routinely criticized him for not doing more to help those in need, suggesting with an increasing frequency through the years that the scion of a prominent political family had never experienced those struggles first-hand.

“They’re always asking for more,” he said. “There’s no natural limit. There’s no predator for this species of budgetary activity, except the governor.”

Even critics acknowledged that Brown kept listening to advocacy groups. In 2016, he agreed to remove a provision in the state’s welfare assistance program, CalWORKs, that denied coverage to children born while their families were already receiving benefits. The ban had been in place for almost two decades.

“We came a long way,” said state Sen. Holly Mitchell (D-Los Angeles), the chair of the Senate’s budget committee and a vocal advocate for changing the welfare rule. From the beginning, she said, Brown’s advisers said it was about the cost, not the policy.

This year, Mitchell convinced him to go even further — a small increase in the size of CalWORKs’ monthly cash grants, subsidies that failed to rise with inflation for more than a decade.

Mitchell recalled a flight from Los Angeles during which Brown, a voracious reader, spoke at length about a book that chronicled poverty around the world. “And I was able to say to him, ‘Yes, that chapter right there, that sounds like Central California,’ ” she said.

Likening income inequality to his celebrated efforts on climate change, Mitchell said she once told Brown, “By you just making it a priority, you’ve had worldwide impact. So have the same attitude about poverty.”

In recent years, Brown has agreed to expand childcare programs, Medi-Cal coverage for children regardless of immigration status and a state earned income tax credit for the working poor.

“His track record on issues of poverty, inequality and economic security adds up far better [over two terms] than it often looked in individual budget years,” said Chris Hoene, executive director of the nonprofit California Budget and Policy Center, which advocates for the working poor.

Looking beyond the one-year-at-a-time approach to state budgets may be an important legacy of the Brown administration. The governor pointed to recently adopted five-year plans as a way to get a better look at what’s over the horizon. “It gets people thinking about the inevitable consequences of the decisions in this budget,” he said.

It also may help break one of the more ignominious traditions of California governors: leaving a fiscal mess for the next person to clean up. It’s the kind of dilemma his father, the late Edmund G. “Pat” Brown, left Ronald Reagan in 1967 and he left the late George Deukmejian in 1983.

“The story is one of governors always hitting a wall and leaving a big, fat deficit,” he said. “I wanted to avoid that if I could.”

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They’re calling their favorite audible again.

One quarterback guru contacts the other, asking for help in creating a dynamic offense.

The answer is always yes. The results say as much about Jerry Neuheisel and Noel Mazzone’s devotion to one another as they do about their ability to mass-produce yards and points for UCLA.

“No matter what happens,” Neuheisel said in an interview with The Times, “as long as you’re around him you have a smile on your face.”

The latest call came from the longtime apprentice to his mentor.

With the Bruins sputtering toward an 0-4 start, Neuheisel spoke with Mazzone about possibly returning to Westwood to assist with the offense. Just like he routinely had when he was UCLA’s offensive coordinator a decade earlier, Mazzone cultivated the necessary intelligence, learning that Neuheisel would be promoted from tight ends coach to playcaller before Neuheisel did.

“He was in the car, I believe, the next morning and he was here that evening,” Neuheisel said, “and it was on to try to beat Penn State.”

Beat Penn State they did, reviving an offense and a team that have become the talk of college football. UCLA’s average of 40 points in its two victories has nearly tripled its previous output during that winless start, spawning reminders of the offense the Bruins ran under Mazzone with Neuheisel as a backup quarterback from 2012-15.

That was just the start of a winning combination.

Not long after they had parted ways at the end of their four seasons together in Westwood, Mazzone reached out to Neuheisel, convincing him to give up playing for the Obic Seagulls of Japan’s X League so that he could help Mazzone in 2017 during his second season as Texas A&M’s offensive coordinator.

“When he gave me the call and said, ‘We’re going to the SEC, we’re going to College Station, Texas,’ ” said Neuheisel, who had long known he wanted to become a coach, “I didn’t even ask questions. I got the next flight home.”

After making the 22-hour drive from Los Angeles to College Station, Neuheisel stayed at a hotel for a week and a half while searching for a place to live — even though he hadn’t been formally hired.

All that mattered was that he was back with his mentor. Now they’re together again, only the roles have been reversed.

“It’s just the first time in my life he’s actually had to listen to all my ideas,” Neuheisel said with a chuckle, “so I have enjoyed the turning of the tables.”

It was only a few weeks ago that Mazzone reconnected with two other former UCLA quarterbacks.

Getting together with Brett Hundley and Mike Fafaul in the Phoenix area to watch some football the weekend that UCLA lost to Northwestern to fall to 0-4, Mazzone and his onetime players let Neuheisel know they were thinking about him.

“They sent a picture from the bar that they were watching us play,” Neuheisel said.

What they didn’t tell him was that they were already considering the possibilities for the 68-year-old Mazzone, who was then the offensive coordinator at Saguaro High in Scottsdale, Ariz.

“At the time, we weren’t doing so great,” Hundley said of the Bruins, “so we were joking that Mazzone would probably be back at UCLA.”

A coaching lifer, Mazzone had made more than 20 stops at the high school, college and NFL levels by the time he agreed to hop into his car and return for his second stint with the Bruins after the team replaced departed offensive coordinator Tino Sunseri with Neuheisel.

Several days later, after hurried preparations and some playcalling debut blunders such as Neuheisel fumbling with the button on his headset that allowed him to talk to his quarterback, UCLA scored on each of its first five drives on the way to a 42-37 victory over then-No. 7 Penn State that qualified as the upset of the college football season.

Jubilant players hoisted Neuheisel onto their shoulders in a scene reminiscent of his greatest moment playing for Mazzone and coach Jim Mora, when he came off the bench to lead a comeback victory over Texas in 2014.

About a half hour after beating the Nittany Lions, his hair still soaked from the water players had sprayed into the locker room air, Neuheisel revealed what it meant to share this new memory with one of his favorite mentors.

“To have coach Mazzone here has been honestly one of the coolest things ever,” Neuheisel said. “To have him helping with the quarterbacks, to have us to be able to bounce ideas off of him, awesome. Awesome.”

In some ways, the circumstances weren’t that much different when they met.

Neuheisel was the new guy, just trying to prove himself.

In the fall of 2012, he was a freshman quarterback, wanting to show he belonged on the same campus where only a few months earlier his father, Rick, had been fired as the head coach. Mazzone was also a recent arrival after having been hired as part of Mora’s first UCLA staff.

“Jerry’s coming in and you’ve got Kevin Prince, Brett Hundley, Richard Brehaut — I mean, he’s walking into a quarterback room with some studs,” remembered Johnathan Franklin, the running back who would become UCLA’s all-time leading rusher by the end of that season. “All three have played before, and Brett Hundley obviously was a rock star.”

It was a unique kind of pressure for a legacy who had been born at UCLA Medical Center at a time when his father was a Bruins assistant coach, after having starred for his alma mater as a Rose Bowl-winning quarterback.

“I was just there trying to make the team,” Neuheisel said.

What became quickly apparent given his intrinsic savvy and inquisitive nature was that his longterm future would likely be on the sideline.

“Jerry, for sure, you could always tell he was gonna be a coach from Day One,” Hundley said. “It was like his Pops 2.0.”

Equally impressive was the shrewd offensive coordinator who was quick with a quip and an answer for any challenge a defense might present. Mazzone ran an offense short on plays and long on possibilities. He would explain why certain plays worked in given situations and make sure even the quarterback understood blocking schemes so that everyone appreciated each other’s roles.

“It’s pretty much, you get your best players in space and you make a play,” Franklin said of the overriding philosophy. “I remember he used to call the plays, and he’s like, ‘Man, one guy shouldn’t tackle you, so we’re not going to work on blocking that guy — that’s between you and him, you’ve got to make it happen.’ ”

UCLA won 29 games in its first three seasons with Mazzone running the offense and Neuheisel playing a reserve role, except for the September day in 2014 when he earned a megawatt spotlight.

With Hundley sidelined by an elbow injury against nationally ranked Texas, Neuheisel came off the bench and threw a 33-yard touchdown pass to Jordan Payton with three minutes left, rallying the Bruins to a 20-17 victory. His teammates hoisted him into the air and carried him off the field.

“I mean, unbelievable,” Mazzone said after the game. “Jerry went out and handled the situation better than anyone could. I mean, he really did an awesome job. Really proud for him.”

When he called a reporter after 8 o’clock Wednesday night, Neuheisel wasn’t done for the day. It was just a momentary respite from reviewing game video, several hours left to go before he could finally head home.

His schedule has become so crazed since his promotion that tight end Hudson Habermehl recently fielded a call from Neuheisel’s wife, Nicole, asking him to take an Uber Eats delivery order upstairs to Neuheisel’s office inside the practice facility.

Habermehl was happy to do it, a small thank-you gesture for the 33-year-old coach who has done so much for him and an offense that doesn’t resemble the one from earlier this season even though the Bruins are essentially running the same plays.

If it looks more like a Mazzone offense, that’s not by coincidence.

“What made Noel’s offense so great and why I loved it is there was a utilization of space on the field,” Neuheisel said, “and I would say that is what we’ve been trying to emulate is trying to create space on the field and trying to create matchups for our players to have success.”

No one has benefited more than quarterback Nico Iamaleava, who has thrown for five touchdowns with no interceptions over the last two weeks while adding three rushing touchdowns. A previously inert running game has picked up considerable speed, averaging 253.5 yards in the victories over Penn State and Michigan State.

“It seems like there’s a new energy on offense,” Hundley said. “You know, it’s not like they got a whole new starting 11 out there. I mean, it’s the same guys that we were talking about in the beginning of the season, but now they’re putting Nico in a position to make plays.”

Habermehl said everyone’s playing freely and instinctively because Neuheisel explained the reasoning for each play and involved all position groups in offensive meetings to provide a universal understanding of concepts.

“When you coach guys,” Neuheisel said, “you need to let them in on the ‘why.’ I think it’s what I always appreciated when I was a player here and any good team I’ve been a part of.”

Neuheisel’s latest success is likely to earn him a permanent offensive coordinator job, if not a head coaching opportunity, next season. His old friend can probably expect a call asking if he’d like to be part of that staff, the answer a given.

“Wherever there’s ball,” Neuheisel said, “he’ll always find his way there.”

OAKLAND — Mayor Jerry Brown, who has projected an unconventional, even enigmatic, persona during 3 1/2 decades of public life, took a traditional step in his private life Saturday, marrying his longtime companion and manager of his upcoming campaign for state attorney general.

In a formal and quasireligious civil ceremony orchestrated by Brown himself and attended by almost 600 guests, the 67-year-old former governor exchanged rings with former Gap Inc. executive Anne Gust. It was the first marriage for each, and came after 15 years together.

Elements of Brown’s past, present and future converged in the half-hour ceremony packed with much of the Bay Area’s Democratic political establishment. It was held in the rotunda of a renovated, historic Civic Center office building, the sort of project Brown has promoted as a pro-development mayor. The wedding was laced with biblical readings and Gregorian chants in Latin that Brown knew all too well as a former Roman Catholic seminarian.

“I wanted the sound to be traditional,” Brown said afterward. “Most [of it] is 800 years old and nothing is less than 500.”

It was not exactly the sort of wedding people had come to expect from a man who many years ago was dubbed Gov. Moonbeam for living in Spartan fashion, driving a state-issued Plymouth and dating singer Linda Ronstadt. Nor was it the wedding of a man who studied yoga, volunteered for Mother Teresa’s home for the poor people in Calcutta, or more recently lived in lofts in gritty parts of this city.

“This is more than traditional,” former San Francisco mayor and onetime Assembly Speaker Willie Brown said after the wedding. “It would have satisfied anything the Kennedy clan would have put together. It’s California [political] history for 40 years.”

The attendees were like signposts on the political road traveled by the son and namesake of the late Gov. Edmund G. “Pat” Brown.

Jerry Brown, who grew up in San Francisco and graduated from UC Berkeley and Yale Law School, served as secretary of state from 1970 to 1974 and governor from 1975 to 1983. He also ran for president and headed the state Democratic Party. He was elected mayor of Oakland in 1999, and is seeking the Democratic nomination for state attorney general in 2006.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a former San Francisco mayor, presided over the wedding in a pink dress. The 47-year-old bride, in an ivory Diane von Furstenberg dress, was presented by her father, Rockwell T. Gust Jr., who once ran for lieutenant governor of Michigan.

Gust, who is a lawyer, and Brown, in a black suit with white shirt and tie, exchanged rings and vows. Then Feinstein declared them husband and wife, and they embraced and kissed to applause as singers performed the final chant.

Brown’s sister, Kathleen, a former state treasurer and candidate for governor, was present. So were many other Democratic politicians, including Oakland’s top city officials, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and former Gov. Gray Davis.

Oakland City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente, Brown’s designated successor as mayor, was there along with people from the early years of Brown’s career, such as Orville Schelle, dean of the journalism school at UC Berkeley, and PG&E; executive Dan Richard, who served on then Gov. Brown’s staff from 1979 to 1982.

“One person just said we should have buttons saying ‘I’m from the ‘70s,’ … ‘I’m from the ‘80s’ … ‘the ‘90s,’ ” Richard said.

After the civil ceremony in Oakland, another set of nuptials was to be held at the San Francisco church where Brown’s parents were married and he was baptized.

Then Brown said the newlyweds plan to spend a couple of days on the Russian River — then take a belated honeymoon in Italy in August — after the June primary.

“We have a little campaign in the meantime,” he said.

Micah Parsons heard the chanting.

He embraced it.

He even encouraged it.

“Thank you, Jerry!” the crowd at Lambeau Field yelled repeatedly Thursday night after the Green Bay Packers’ 27-18 win over the Washington Commanders.

The chant was addressed toward someone who was not there — Dallas Cowboys owner and general manager Jerry Jones, who traded the 26-year-old star linebacker to Green Bay one week before the start of the season after a lengthy contract dispute.

The Packers sent two first-round picks and defensive tackle Kenny Clark to Dallas as part of the deal, but the chanting fans on hand at 1265 Lombardi Ave. for “Thursday Night Football” definitely seemed to be of the opinion that their beloved team had won the trade.

“I’m gonna lay out for a minute because this crowd has something to say,” Prime Video‘s Charissa Thompson said as she and her “TNF Nightcap” co-hosts sat with Parsons on the field ahead of a postgame interview. “I know you guys know what they’re saying. They’re saying, ‘Thank you, Jerry!’”

Parsons was shown bobbing his head and swaying his shoulders to the rhythm of the chant. He and Prime analyst Ryan Fitzpatrick, who was sitting directly to Parsons’ right, could be seen lifting their arms in an effort to further stir up the crowd.

Not that these fans needed any encouragement. The cheers were loud and often during the 10-minute interview, including other chants such as “Mi-cah!” and “Go, Pack, Go!” and “Let’s Go, Micah!”

Jones was a good sport when asked about the matter Friday during a radio interview.

“Well, I’ll tell you, the way they’re playing, the way Green Bay is playing, I’m all for them enjoying and chanting anything that they really want to [say],” Jones said on 105.3 The Fan in Dallas-Fort Worth.

Jones added: “If you make a move on a top player, this shouldn’t surprise anybody that we would have that kind of reaction from their fan base, the other team’s fan base, or, for that matter, our fan base in general. … I knew that if I got to make this trade, that this would be there.”

Parsons was selected at No. 12 overall by the Cowboys in the 2021 draft. He has made the Pro Bowl in each of his first four seasons, registering 52.5 sacks during that span.

His relationship with the Cowboys — or at least with Jones — soured going into the fifth and final year of Parsons’ rookie deal as negotiations for an extension stalled. Parsons demanded a trade Aug. 1 and got his wish weeks later. He and the Packers then agreed on a four-year, $188-million contract that makes him the highest paid non-quarterback in NFL history.

In a limited number of snaps during his first two games with Green Bay (30 in a Week 1 win over the Detroit Lions, 47 against the Commanders), Parsons has 1.5 sacks, three quarterback pressures, one quarterback hurry and three tackles.

He will return to AT&T Stadium with his new team in just a few weeks when the Packers play the Cowboys in Arlington, Texas, Sept. 28.

“Obviously, you know, my family and everyone’s looking forward to it, but I’m just gonna let the action talk,” Parsons said. “It’s just going to be funny because all my friends are there … so just going against those guys, it’s going to be heartbreaking. But, damn, I’m excited for the matchup.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-NY, speaks during a signing ceremony for The Respect for Marriage Act in the Rayburn Room of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on December 8, 2022. On Monday, Nadler announced in an interview with the New York Times that he would not seek re-election next year. File Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo

Sept. 1 (UPI) — Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler, the longest-serving congressional member from New York, announced he has decided not to run for re-election next year in order to make room for a younger generation.

Nadler, 78, who serves New York’s 12th Congressional District — which includes Midtown and the Upper West and Upper East sides of New York City — told the New York Times in an interview published Monday that it is time, after 34 years, for a generational change.

“Watching the Biden thing really said something about the necessity for generational change in the party, and I think I want to respect that,” Nadler told The Times, adding that someone younger “can maybe do better, can maybe help us more.”

In December, Nadler said he was forced to step down as the leading Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee in favor of a younger colleague. He threw his support behind Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., as his replacement.

“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as chairman and ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee these past seven years,” Nadler wrote last year in a letter to his colleagues.

“I am grateful to have had the opportunity to help lead our party’s efforts to preserve the rule of law and to provide for a more just society that respects the civil rights and civil liberties of all Americans,” he said. Nadler served as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee from 2019 to 2023.

Nadler was also preparing to face a much younger primary challenger in next year’s election. Liam Elkind, 26, who created an organization during the COVID-19 pandemic to deliver food and medicine, said his election challenge was a way of “respectfully asking” Nadler to retire.

While Nadler did not discuss who might replace him, he urged other aging Democrats to follow his lead.

“I’m not saying we should change over the entire party,” Nadler said. “But I think a certain amount of change is very helpful, especially when we face the challenge of Trump and his incipient fascism.”

On Labor Day, Nadler honored “the generations of working people who built this country and the unions that won us safer workplaces, fair wages and the weekend.”

“I will always stand with workers and their unions. And I will continue fighting back against the Trump administration’s unprecedented attacks on labor, attacks on the right to organize, on workplace protections and on the dignity of work itself,” Nadler wrote Monday in a post on X.

“Because when organized labor is strong, America is strong.”

Jerry Adler, who spent decades backstage on Broadway before reinventing himself in his 60s as a television actor, most memorably as Herman “Hesh” Rabkin on HBO’s “The Sopranos” and Howard Lyman on CBS’ “The Good Wife,” has died. He was 96.

Adler died Saturday in New York, where he lived, according to his family. A cause was not disclosed.

On “The Sopranos,” Adler played Hesh, a Jewish music producer and loan shark with long ties to the Soprano crime family. Not a member of Tony Soprano’s inner crew but close enough to be trusted, he was one of the few who could speak bluntly to James Gandolfini’s mob boss without fear of reprisal. Adler remained with the series from its 1999 pilot through the final season in 2007, a steady presence on the margins of Tony’s world.

Hesh turned up in some of the show’s most memorable arcs, helping Tony’s protégé Christopher and his girlfriend Adriana in their ill-fated stab at the music business, joining Tony in a horse-racing venture and, in the final season, watching their relationship sour when the boss pressed him for a large loan.

Steven Van Zandt, Adler’s “Sopranos” castmate and guitarist for Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, paid tribute to Adler on social media: “Such an honor working with you. Travel well my friend.”

While “The Sopranos” launched a number of previously little-known actors to instant fame, Adler’s rise was unusual, the culmination of more than four decades spent behind the scenes on Broadway before he ever stepped in front of a camera.

A Brooklyn native born Feb. 4, 1929, Adler began his career as an assistant stage manager in 1950 on “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” and went on to work as stage manager, production manager or supervisor on more than 50 shows, including the original “My Fair Lady,” Harold Pinter’s “The Homecoming” and “The Apple Tree,” directed by Mike Nichols. He also directed several productions.

By the 1980s, he had moved to Los Angeles to be closer to his children and found steady work in daytime television as a stage manager. It wasn’t until his early 60s that acting entered the picture. After debuting on CBS’ “Brooklyn Bridge” in 1991, Adler found steady film and TV work as a character actor through the 1990s, appearing in Joe Pesci’s “The Public Eye” (1992) and Woody Allen’s “Manhattan Murder Mystery” (1993).

After “The Sopranos,” Adler remained a familiar presence on television. He joined “The Good Wife” in 2011 as Howard Lyman, a blustery, out-of-touch partner at the Lockhart/Gardner law firm. What was initially meant to be a one-off guest spot turned into a recurring role across six seasons, with Adler reprising the part in “The Good Fight” in 2017 and 2018.

Adler also recurred on FX’s “Rescue Me” as fire chief Sidney Feinberg and appeared in series ranging from “Northern Exposure” and “Mad About You” to “Transparent” and “Broad City.” His film credits include “In Her Shoes” (2005), “Synecdoche, New York” (2008) and “A Most Violent Year” (2014).

Adler returned to Broadway as a performer late in life, appearing in Elaine May’s 2000 comedy “Taller Than a Dwarf” and Larry David’s “Fish in the Dark” in 2015. Adler’s last screen credit came in the 2019 revival season of “Mad About You.” In 2024, he published a memoir, “Too Funny for Words: Backstage Tales From Broadway, Television, and the Movies,” reflecting on his unusual path through show business.

On Instagram, “Sopranos” co-star Michael Imperioli, who played Christopher, praised Adler as “a fantastic actor and the kindest of human beings. He brought so much humor, intelligence and truth to the role of Herman ‘Hesh’ Rabkin and was one of my favorite characters on ‘The Sopranos.’ I loved working and spending time with Jerry. A true class act.”

Survivors include his wife, Joan Laxman, whom he married in 1994, and his daughters, Alisa, Amy, Laura and Emily.

Jerry Jones was diagnosed with Stage 4 melanoma in 2010 but overcame it with the help of an experimental trial drug, the Dallas Cowboys owner revealed this week.

“I was saved by a fabulous treatment and great doctors and a real miracle [drug] called PD-1 [therapy],” Jones told the Dallas Morning News on Tuesday. “I went into trials for that PD-1 and it has been one of the great medicines.

“I now have no tumors.”

Jones told the Morning News that he was diagnosed with cancer in June 2010 and began treatment at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston soon after. In the decade that followed, Jones said, he underwent lung surgery twice and lymph node surgery two times as well.

He did not indicate when he began the PD-1 therapy.

According to the American Cancer Society, PD-1 is a protein that acts as an “off switch” to keep certain immune cells — T cells — from attacking normal cells. PD-1 inhibitor therapy blocks this protein to help the immune system better find and attack cancer cells.

Jones, 82, serves as the Cowboys’ president and general manager in addition to his role as owner. The first public mention of his diagnosis appears to have come during Episode 5 of the Netflix docuseries “America’s Team: The Gambler and His Cowboys,” which will be released Tuesday.

While telling an anecdote about a completely different subject — his relationship with former Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson — Jones casually mentions that “12 or so years ago … I had some cancer treatment” at MD Anderson.

The Morning News followed up on that comment during its wider-range interview with Jones.