Twenty-five years ago (25!), I was talking with John Cusack about his movie “High Fidelity,” the one where he played Rob Gordon, a record store owner and compulsive list maker. We were batting around top-fives — Rob’s top five movies: “Blade Runner,” “Cool Hand Luke,” the two “Godfather” films and “The Shining” are as good a list as any — and I asked Cusack if he, like Rob, had a funeral music top five.
“‘Many Rivers to Cross’ feels like the perfect choice at No. 1,” Cusack answered, citing the great Jimmy Cliff’s enduring anthem of perseverance.
I’m Glenn Whipp, columnist for the Los Angeles Times and host of The Envelope newsletter, thankful I can see clearly now the rain is gone. Let’s look at how box-office success is all relative these days when it comes to awards season.
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With Oscar voters, box-office perception is reality
Misato Morita and Brendan Fraser in the movie “Rental Family.”
(James Lisle / Searchlight Pictures)
What movies are you seeing this Thanksgiving weekend? If you’re pushing aside the pie and leftovers, chances are you might be buying a ticket for “Wicked: For Good” or “Zootopia 2.” The “Wicked” sequel opened to an estimated $150 million last weekend, besting the original and making my optimistic forecast for its Oscar prospects look a little rosier.
Meanwhile, “Rental Family,” a sweet, superficial drama starring Brendan Fraser looking to savage your heartstrings once again, opened to just $3.3 million from nearly 2,000 screens. Even in a lead actor field that isn’t particularly deep this year, Fraser’s chances of returning to the Oscars are now pretty much nil.
“Rental Family” is the latest fall film festival awards contender starring an A-list (or A-list-adjacent) actor to disappear at the box office. The list includes “The Smashing Machine” (Dwayne Johnson), “Christy” (Sydney Sweeney), “After the Hunt” (Julia Roberts and Andrew Garfield) and “Die My Love” (Jennifer Lawrence).
Going through these titles, you could make a case that moviegoers are simply showing discernment. None of the movies worked. Critics shrugged, and audiences responded in kind. Good on Johnson and Sweeney for using their star power to stretch, but when people are questioning if they can afford to eat out at McDonald’s, they’re going to need a reason to buy a ticket beyond mere curiosity.
The dead-on-arrival opening weekends of these movies have recast the lead actor and actress Oscar races, boosting anyone not stained by perception of outright failure.
But in this post-pandemic age of moviegoing, what constitutes success? Pushing through to December when the critics groups (as well as “critics” groups) start handing out awards and nominations, the goal is to convey an impression of success and hope that financial windfall might follow.
For example: Joachim Trier’s decidedly unsentimental family drama “Sentimental Value” has parlayed its strong word of mouth and critical acclaim to decent-enough ticket sales in its limited engagement the last two weeks. No one expects a Norwegian-language movie to burn up the box office. Doing fine is a victory.
Then there’s Richard Linklater’s “Blue Moon,” a modest, moving portrait of legendary Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart, which opened last month in five theaters, quickly expanded to nearly 700 screens before retreating to a few dozen. It didn’t flame out commercially but has grossed a mere $2 million. That’s … OK. The strong reviews for the film and its lead, Ethan Hawke, have kept Hawke in the conversation for his first lead actor Oscar nomination.
Is it fair that Hawke lives while Lawrence, Sweeney, Roberts and Johnson, whose movies opened wide to disastrous results, feel finished?
“Oscar voters aren’t going to watch a movie that has been deemed a failure,” says a veteran awards publicist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss the situation candidly. “When people read those scary headlines opening weekend, they don’t forget.”
Oscar Isaac in “Frankenstein.”
(Ken Woroner / Netflix)
Netflix, which opens its contending films in qualifying releases before they land on the streaming platform, is mostly immune to this kind of negative publicity as it doesn’t report box-office numbers. But it will release the number of “views” its films rack up. Guillermo del Toro’s monster movie “Frankenstein” accumulated nearly 63 million views in its first 10 days; Kathryn Bigelow’s riveting thriller “A House of Dynamite” totaled 31.6 million in its first two weeks. (The company defines a view as the total time spent watching a movie divided by the running time.)
The movie to watch this weekend then, in more ways than one, is Chloé Zhao’s celebrated drama “Hamnet,” which has piled up audience awards at film festivals the last several weeks. Focus Features is platforming it in 100-plus theaters, and if you live in Southern California, you won’t have to drive too far to see this beautiful story of love and loss and transcendent catharsis.
What narrative will emerge? I’ll write more about “Hamnet” on Monday. For now, get thee to a theater and let me know what you think.
In the starting lineup, coming off the bench or even on the pickleball court, Marcus Smart knows he can deliver what the Lakers need. So LeBron James’ return and the question of how it could affect his role isn’t slowing down Smart.
“I like to [think of] myself as a Swiss Army knife,” Smart said Saturday as the Lakers prepared for a game at Utah on Sunday. “It’s not one thing I do great, but I do everything very well. … People come back, people get hurt. People have great games, have bad games. You have to adjust to whatever the game is calling for at that moment.”
With four days to regroup after James made his long-awaited season debut, the Lakers (11-4) want to continue their strong start. Smart had started nine times in a row before James’ return. Smart then played a season-low 17 minutes in Tuesday’s 140-126 win against the Jazz at home, scoring five points with three rebounds. He made just two shots, but coach JJ Redick commended Smart’s play off the bench along with the performances of Jake LaRavia, Jaxson Hayes and Gabe Vincent.
Vincent returned from a sprained ankle that cost him 11 games to score six points on two-for-three shooting from three-point range. LaRavia led the bench group with 16 points and four rebounds. He was six for 10 from the field, including two three-pointers.
Signing as a free agent this offseason, LaRavia knew getting to play with James was part of the deal. He had to wait through training camp, the preseason and 14 games to get his wish, but it was worth it. The 24-year-old LaRavia, who was five days shy of his second birthday when James made his NBA debut, knocked down a first-quarter shot off a James assist.
“It was dope to finally get on the court with him,” LaRavia said. “He brings something to this team that I don’t think we really had. It’s another level of passing ability that he’s able to do, and just the force he is on offense in transition and just when he has the ball in his hands.”
The Lakers are tied for the second-fewest transition possessions per game but they’ve been picking up the pace. Through the first nine games the team was scoring 9.5% of its points in transition. That mark ticked up to 13.4% in the last five games.
Utah (5-10) is one of the fastest teams, averaging 102.6 possessions per game. With pace increasing over the years, the heavier workloads have made minor soft-tissue injuries unfortunate realities in the NBA. They also make extended breaks between games, like the four-day reprieve the Lakers had last week, a major luxury.
In between much-needed rest and efficient practice sessions for a team that has been fully healthy for only a week, the Lakers also used the time for team bonding in the form of a trash-talk-filled pickleball tournament.
Smart and Redick and a third teammate, head video coordinator Michael Wexler — whom Redick anonymously accused of eating during the entire tournament — went to the semifinals. They lost to Luka Doncic and player development coach Ty Abbott. LaRavia and assistant coach Beau Levesque won the championship. Redick raised questions about the fairness of the team pairings.
As with everything involving ultracompetitive athletes, even the innocent pickleball games got heated. Smart was trying to be mindful to not push his limits too much.
“The last thing I need to get out and do is roll my ankle trying to play pickleball,” said Smart, who said he would rather play tennis.
It was still a welcome break from the monotony of the season, Redick said. He graded the experience an A.
“We got through this week without wanting to kill each other,” Redick said with a smirk.
Etc.
Center Deandre Ayton missed practice Saturday because of an illness. He was expected to join the team on the trip to Utah.
SACRAMENTO — On a recent day at Sacramento native Lecho Lopez’s comic shop in the city, his 5-year-old nephew read his first word aloud: “bad.” It was from a graphic novel.
There was irony in that being his first word, because Lopez credits comic books with many positive things in his life. That is why he supports repealing a city ordinance dating to 1949 that bars the distribution of many comic books to kids and teens. It is not enforced today.
“It’s a silly law,” said Lopez, who has a red-and-black tattoo of the Superman logo on his forearm, in an interview at his store, JLA Comics. “A lot of good things come out of comic books.”
A City Council committee unanimously voted last week to advance the repeal and designate the third week of September as “Sacramento Comic Book Week.” It now heads to the full council for a vote. The ban prohibits distributing comic books prominently featuring an account of crime that show images of illegal acts such as arson, murder or rape to anyone under 18.
In the mid-20th century, as comic books were on the rise, fears spread over their effect on children, with some arguing they could lead to illiteracy or inspire violent crime. The industry decided to regulate itself, and local governments — from Los Angeles County to Lafayette, La. — adopted bans to shield certain comics from young people. While some cities like Sacramento still have those laws on the books, they are rarely if ever enforced.
Now, proponents of repealing the Sacramento law say it is necessary to reflect the value of comics and help protect against a modern wave of book bans.
Local artist pushes for repeal
Comic book author Eben Burgoon, who started a petition to overturn Sacramento’s ban, said that comics “have this really valuable ability to speak truth to power.”
“These antiquated laws kind of set up this jeopardy where bad actors could work hard to make this medium imperiled,” he said at a hearing Tuesday held by the City Council’s Law and Legislation Committee.
Sacramento is a great place to devote a week to celebrating comics, Burgoon said. The city has a “wonderful” comic book community, he said, and hosts CrockerCon, a comics showcase at a local art museum, every year.
Sam Helmick, president of the American Library Assn., said “there is no good reason” to have a ban such as Sacramento’s on the books, saying it “flies in the face of modern 1st Amendment norms.”
The history behind comic book bans
The movement to censor comics decades ago was not an aberration in U.S. history, said Jeff Trexler, interim director of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, which fights to protect the free speech rights of people who read or make comics.
New York, for example, created a commission in the 1920s dedicated to reviewing films to determine whether they should be licensed for public viewing, based on whether they were “obscene” or “sacrilegious” and could “corrupt morals” or “incite crime,” according to the state archives.
“Every time there’s a new medium or a new way of distributing a medium, there is an outrage and an attempt to suppress it,” Trexler said.
The California Supreme Court ruled in 1959 that a Los Angeles County policy banning the sale of “crime” comic books to minors was unconstitutional because it was too broad. Sacramento’s ban probably doesn’t pass muster for the same reason, Trexler said.
There is not a lot of recent research on whether there is a link between comic books and violent behavior, said Christopher Ferguson, a professor of psychology at Stetson University in Florida. But, he said, similar research into television and video games has not shown a link to “clinically relevant changes in youth aggression or violent behavior.”
Comic-book lovers tout their benefits
Leafing through comics like EC Comics’ “Epitaphs from the Abyss” and DC’s and Marvel’s collaboration “Batman/Deadpool,” Lopez showed an Associated Press reporter images of characters smashing the windshield of a car, smacking someone across the face and attacking Batman using bows and arrows — the kinds of scenes that might be regulated if Sacramento’s ban were enforced.
But comics with plot lines that include violence can contain positive messages, said Benjamin Morse, a media studies lecturer at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
“Spider-Man is a very mature concept,” said Morse, who became an “X-Men” fan as a kid and worked at Marvel for 10 years. “It’s a kid who’s lost his parents, his uncle dies to violence, and he vows to basically be responsible.”
Lopez’s mother bought him his first comic book, “Ultimate Spider-Man #1,” when he was about 9 years old, he said. But it was “Kingdom Come,” a comic featuring DC’s Justice League, that changed his life at a young age, with its “hyperrealistic” art that looked like nothing he had ever seen before, he said.
He said his interest in comic books helped him avoid getting involved with gangs growing up. They also improved his reading skills as someone with dyslexia.
“The only thing that I was really able to read that helped me absorb the information was comic books, because you had a visual aid to help you explain what was going on in the book,” Lopez said.
And a comic book can offer so much more, Burgoon said at last week’s hearing.
“It makes imaginative thinkers,” he said. “It does not make widespread delinquency. It does not make societal harm.”
To get it out of the way: Yes, Tobias Jesso Jr. has heard about gooning.
“Somebody put me up on it and said it was about masturbation?” says the 40-year-old singer and songwriter, which is about half-right: As detailed in an essay in Harper’s that went viral last month, to goon — a term heretofore associated with Jesso thanks to his cult-fave 2015 album “Goon” — means in Gen Z parlance to masturbate at such great lengths that the act leads to a kind of trance state.
“Well, I’ve never done that,” Jesso says. “‘Goon’ I got from ‘The Goonies’ — it’s just a brilliant movie.” He laughs. “But I don’t care. If it sells more records, sure.”
That Jesso has a record to sell at all might take some by surprise. Though “Goon” thoroughly charmed critics and fellow musicians with its early-’70s-balladeer vibe — many said he evoked the glory days of Randy Newman, Harry Nilsson and beard-and-shearling-coat-era Paul McCartney — Jesso didn’t cotton to the life of a sort-of-famous performer and almost immediately walked away from his solo career to write songs for other singers instead.
He’s thrived in that role, penning hits for the likes of Adele, Niall Horan, Harry Styles and Dua Lipa. In 2023, he was named songwriter of the year at the Grammy Awards; this month he was nominated for that prize for a second time, with the Recording Academy citing his work with Justin Bieber (“Daisies”), Haim (“Relationships”) and Olivia Dean (“Man I Need”), among others.
Yet now he’s back with an unexpected follow-up to his debut called “Shine,” which came out Friday. Stripped back for the most part to just voice and piano, it’s an earnest work of introspection from a guy who knows how to make tenderness feel like strength.
Jesso, who grew up in Vancouver and lives in Los Angeles, announced the album just last week with a music video for his song “I Love You” that features the actors Riley Keough and Dakota Johnson, with whom he’s been close since he first touched down here around 2008.
“I hit them up and was like, ‘You girls think it’s about time I use your fame to get some extra clicks?’” he says on a recent morning at his place in Silver Lake. “The video opens up on them, then it pans away and it goes to me and you never see them again.”
Says Keough, a former girlfriend: “It was a very Tobias ask.”
So why return to the spotlight? According to Jesso, he wouldn’t have had it not been for a breakup that left him “the most depressed I’ve ever been in my life, by far.” We’re sitting in a cozy den that looks out over a lush hillside garden; a bowl of persimmons sits on a coffee table while a copy of “McCartney II” peeks out from a stack of LPs.
Jesso, whose mop of curly hair has begun ever so slightly to gray, says that when he enters a songwriting session with another artist, “I leave my worries and woes outside the door. I’m there to serve you — to write the song you want to write.” It’s an approach that’s endeared him to his star collaborators and yielded songs as deep as Adele’s “To Be Loved,” a stunning meditation on the costs of divorce from her 2021 album “30.”
But earlier this year, for the first time in Jesso’s decade of behind-the-scenes work, he found himself struggling to deliver. “I was feeling so in the dumps that I’d be choking on a line that I didn’t even want to say because if I say it, I’ll start crying,” he recalls.
He cleared six weeks from his busy schedule to process his emotions; the result was a set of songs for himself about heartache — “I can see the love leaving from your eyes in the form of a tear,” he sings in “Rain” — but also about his mom’s experience with dementia and about the young son he shares with his ex-wife.
To record the music, Jesso’s instinct was to go big. “I’m a dreamer, so I was like, ‘Imagine all the people I could have help me now that I didn’t have 10 years ago,’” he says. “I went from so-and-so to so-and-so, trying out studios, making promises I couldn’t keep. But all that stuff over the weeks just kind of flaked away.”
What remained was the beautifully mellow sound of a vintage Steinway piano he’d had restored after buying it on Craiglist for $800. He keeps the piano in a small, uncluttered studio upstairs from the den at his house; that’s where he cut “Shine,” singing live as he accompanied himself in real time.
A small handful of other players appear on the album, most prominently in “I Love You,” which erupts near the end with a wild drum fill performed by Jesso’s old pal Kane Ritchotte. The idea for the percussive outburst came to Jesso after he’d consumed “a s— ton of mushrooms,” he says. “I turned to my assistant at the time — I wonder if I have it — and I said, ‘Record me right now.’ She started recording me, and what came out was that fill.”
He picks up his phone and scrolls for a moment. “Look at this,” he says, turning the screen my way: There’s Jesso in the same room we’re in right now, staring wide-eyed into the camera as he mouths the drum sounds Ritchotte would later replicate exactly.
“That song is about somebody’s inner child being in the middle of a labyrinth, and you’re trying to find them so you can convince them that you’re in love,” Jesso tells me. “You can’t get there and you’re wishing that the whole labyrinth would just be destroyed. So when it gets to that part — ‘Shatter the cracks wide open / And say, “I love you”’ — the drums are the walls coming down. That’s the shattering.”
Tobias Jesso Jr. at the 65th Grammy Awards in 2023.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
Drum theatrics aside, Jesso’s singing is the album’s clear focal point; his pleading, slightly unsteady tone gives the music an emotional intimacy that makes you feel as though you’re sitting right next to him on the piano bench.
Jesso describes his voice as something of a liability, which Keough says has been true since he was ducking the frontman’s job in the various bands he played in when he was in his early 20s. “I always loved his voice, and he just didn’t feel that way for whatever reason,” she recalls. “I don’t know if he felt a sort of shyness, which is really interesting because as a person he’s not shy whatsoever.”
Asked whether Jesso’s decision to follow up “Goon” surprised her, she says, “I was surprised he released ‘Goon’ to begin with.”
The way Jesso sees it, “My voice isn’t good enough for the songs I write, which is why I’ve chosen to work with all these other people.” What he’s comes to realize, though, is that “my voice is perfect for my songs.”
Which doesn’t mean it’s easy for him to hear it. Once he’d finished recording, Jesso asked his friend Shawn Everett to mix “Shine”; what he got back — with every imperfection of his voice under a virtual magnifying glass — terrified him. “It felt way, way, way too vulnerable,” Jesso says.
He texted Everett and said he was sorry but that he couldn’t put out the record like this. “I told him, ‘You just brought out more of me than I’m willing to share,’” he says now. “Then I got home, I smoked a big fat joint and I sat on the couch. I was like, I’m gonna wait until I’m high enough that I can press play and pretend this isn’t me.” He laughs. “I put on the headphones, and I have never in my life had such a profound experience with music.”
Who’d you imagine was singing? I don’t know — like a 50-year-old dude or maybe a 20-year-old girl who’s got a low voice? It didn’t matter — it wasn’t me, so I wasn’t listening with judgmental ears.
The paradox is that “Shine” feels like the you-est possible album. There’s no tricks. I didn’t auto-tune, I didn’t cut anything together, I didn’t do any of that. It’s me singing a take, and it’s the best take I got. Whereas with “Goon,” there were a lot of elements that maybe weren’t possible for me to do.
“Goon” was a little more elaborate — more players and producers. Which was tortuous because I’m like, “How do I recreate this thing that I didn’t even fully make myself?”
Given the unhappiness of your experience after “Goon” came out, I wondered whether this time you’d put certain restrictions on what you’re willing to do. I’ll say right off the bat: I’m not touring — no way. I’ve met enough artists who say, “I feel totally myself onstage,” to know that there’s a natural state in which people feel comfortable up there. And I’ve tried every which way — by which I mean drinking and not drinking — and I just can’t. It’s not me.
Maybe this is something I still need to work on in therapy, but by being onstage and singing, I’m basically saying, “I’m a singer,” and I’m not comfortable saying that. I’m comfortable saying, “I’m a songwriter.” So there’s this weird shame that comes in where I’m presenting myself beyond what I know my ability to be.
One of the benchmarks I needed to hit on this record was to be comfortable that I’m not misrepresenting myself, which is why I’m OK if there’s an out-of-tune note here and there or if it’s a little bit fast or slow. But even knowing that I can perform it exactly like it is on the record, there’s nothing drawing me to the stage. I don’t really want to have a relationship with fans in that way. I feel very privileged that this is not my main job.
Between “Goon” and now, songwriting became your main job. So I don’t have to take this as seriously. The parts I do take seriously — the art — I’m willing to put in the work for.
But not for success per se. Exactly. This is weird to say, but there were moments where I was toiling over this record — listening to Take No. 73 and being like, “Wait, what was the other one?” — and the thought would occur to me: I could go to work today instead of do this and potentially create much more wealth for myself than this album could ever do.
I mean, that’s almost certainly the case. In comparison, “Shine” is meaningless in terms of success and potential. And yet I was still drawn to doing it, which made me feel like I was making the right choice for myself. But when it comes to the stuff I don’t think is important, just try to get me to do it. It ain’t happening.
I went back and looked at something I wrote about a show you played at South by Southwest in 2015 where you had to start your song “True Love” five times. Oh God.
But it’s not like anybody in the crowd was mad about it. People thought it was cute. I feel like if I was onstage now — and everything’s pointing to I probably should play a show or two — I’d be able to see the value in vulnerability. It’s human, and I like that about it. But at the time I wasn’t able to cope with the people who wouldn’t see it that way. Because I wasn’t seeing it that way. I was seeing it as: I’m trying to pretend I’m OK with this, but I’m actually forgetting my song because I’m such a s— performer. Yeah, the crowd loves it, but I go offstage and I’m not looking for the comments saying, “It was so funny.” I’m looking for the ones that are like, “This guy’s a joke.” And I’m like, f—, I knew it.
Keough shares Jesso’s assessment of what’s put him in a different position today versus 10 years ago.
“With ‘Goon,’ he would have put pressure on himself” to jump through the hoops required of a performer, she says. “He was a barista straight out of the coffee shop. ‘Shine’ is straight off all his Grammys and his big songwriting career. He’s able to be more free as an artist now because the stakes are lower.”
Yet not so long ago Jesso reckoned he might be close to burning out in the pop realm. “I was kind of getting ready to dip,” he says, “because I don’t like going into a room and saying, ‘Oh, this song is blowing up — let’s do the same thing.’”
Tobias Jesso Jr. at home in Silver Lake.
(Ian Spanier / For The Times)
He clarifies that he’s not talking about working with an artist like Dua Lipa, who recruited him as a writer for her 2024 “Radical Optimism” LP. “Dua was great,” he says. “I’m talking about going into pitch sessions and sitting with a bunch of writers and figuring out how to get a song pitched. That’s never really worked for me, and the higher you get with producers, the more into that formula you’re putting yourself.”
What he found with Bieber earlier this year was nothing like that. “It was balls to the wall, ideas just flying around,” Jesso says of the roving sessions for the pop superstar’s experimental “Swag” and “Swag II” albums, which took Jesso and the rest of Bieber’s crew to France and the Bahamas and Iceland before Jesso began work on “Shine.”
“I nearly wept on more than one occasion because of how moved I felt about what Justin was doing,” Jesso says. “It was raw emotion without any tricks, without any wordplay, without any of the stuff that I’d been so jaded by in the industry.” The experience, he adds, “reinvigorated my belief in pop music.”
Which makes it an interesting time to move to Australia, as Jesso plans to do soon in order to be close to his son, Ellsworth, who’s there with Jesso’s ex-wife, the Australian singer and songwriter Emma Louise.
“D-I-V-O-R-C-E, you know — it’s always give and take to meet each other’s needs,” he says. “And one of the things was Australia. She really wants Ellsworth to go to school there, which makes sense in one sense — and professionally makes no sense at all. But I committed to it, and I want to at least give it a try and see it through.
“This album coming out and moving to Australia within the same couple months — it feels like a big moment of change,” Jesso continues. “Maybe I’m letting go of some old things, like music being scary, and embracing some new scary things. I don’t know what the hell I’m gonna do over there. Hopefully I get busy doing something. Otherwise I’ll be pitching the groundskeeper ideas for TV shows the whole time.”
How you answer may be the key in how much you enjoy the sequel, “Wicked: For Good,” which opens today and is on track to sell more tickets in its first weekend than its predecessor.
Will the new movie once again cast a spell at the Oscars? The answer, for the moment, is confusifying.
I’m Glenn Whipp, columnist for the Los Angeles Times, host of The Envelope newsletter and someone hoping to see a movie at the Village before the Olympics land in L.A. in 2028. Which film should they book to kick off its revival?
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Cynthia Erivo, left, and Ariana Grande perform at the 97th Academy Awards in March.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Who wasn’t charmed by the first “Wicked” movie last year? Film critics gave it more than a pass, with reviews scoring a respectable 73 grade on aggregator site Metacritic. Audiences loved it, powering the film to a $758 million worldwide box office haul. And Oscar voters fell in line, rewarding “Wicked” with 10 nominations and wins for production design and costumes. Gratitution abounded.
Repeating success is a taller order, our beloved Dodgers notwithstanding. As noted, multiplexes should be full this first weekend and, you’d expect, the lucrative Thanksgiving weekend as well. But the reviews haven’t been as kind this time around. “Wicked: For Good” sits at a 60 on Metacritic. Empire magazine’s review sums up the sentiment: “‘Wicked: For Good,’ sure — but not quite Wicked: For Great.”
Sequels rarely land as well as the original film, so the drop-off isn’t surprising. And, if you’ve seen the Broadway musical, you already knew this was coming. All the best songs are packed into the show’s first act, culminating in the soaring, sustaining final notes of “Defying Gravity.” But you can only beat that gravitational force for so long before you fall flat on the ground.
Which brings me back to the question I first asked you: What are you looking for in a “Wicked” movie? I enjoyed all the spirited dancing and singing and, yes, the bright, candy colors of the first movie. You want a slog? The sequel takes almost an hour to bring together the two characters you truly care about — Elphaba and Glinda.
To get to that moment, you have endure a lot of filler, as if the musical doesn’t have enough material to sustain two movies totaling nearly five hours. (It doesn’t.)
The so-so critical reaction shouldn’t keep “Wicked: For Good” from picking up a best picture nomination, provided the movie’s fans keep showing up at theaters through the end of the year. With so many high-profile festival films — “The Smashing Machine,” “After the Hunt,” “Die My Love” among them — failing to connect with audiences and critics, there’s room at the inn. Academy voters will likely keep the light on.
Equaling the first film’s 10 nominations will be difficult. Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande opened the Oscars ceremony last year in spectacular fashion, but a reunion might not be in the cards. The pair were arguably co-leads in the first movie. “For Good” belongs more to Glinda than Elphaba, charting the Good Witch’s journey from complacency and compliance to … less complacency and compliance. Maybe Glinda’s going to learn from all this and take principled stands moving forward, though the movie doesn’t do enough to convince me. Grande’s dimple has more depth.
Still, Grande figures to score another supporting actress nomination and, who knows, she may well win. Voters love big theater-kid energy in this category, giving Oscars to Jennifer Hudson (“Dreamgirls”), Anne Hathaway (“Les Misérables”), Ariana DeBose (“West Side Story”) and Zoe Saldaña (“Emilia Pérez”) in recent years.
Erivo, placed in the more competitive lead class, might not be as fortunate, as she no longer centers the movie. She still masterfully conveys Elphaba’s vulnerability and sadness, but she’s also saddled with a chemistry-free love story with Capt. Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey). I won’t count her out. But Erivo could well lead the “snubs” and surprises list come nominations morning.
Repeat nominations in production design and costume design, the two Oscars the first movie won, seem safe bets. Hair and makeup does too, as does sound since voters love movies heavy on music. “Wicked: For Good” might pick up another nomination in the newly created casting category, as it won’t be a spot where voters feel like they’re repeating themselves. And while the first movie didn’t have any new songs, “For Good” sports two. Look for “The Girl in the Bubble,” sung by Grande, to pop.
Eight nominations? That’d be a win. The loss would be if “Wicked: For Good” followed the path of the two “Black Panther” movies. The first, a critical, commercial and cultural sensation, earned seven nominations, including best picture, and won three Oscars. The less-regarded sequel picked up five nods, winning one. It was not nominated for best picture.
It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad season for Angel City FC. But it’s not one the team is running away from.
“Did we put it all together this year?” team president Julie Uhrman asked. “No.”
In fact, the team won just one of its last eight games; missed the playoffs for the third time in four seasons; saw attendance plummet; lost Alyssa Thompson, its best and most exciting player, on a million-dollar transfer; and watched its two most-decorated players — Ali Riley and Christen Press — retire after a season in which they combined for two starts.
For sporting director Mark Parsons, however, it still counted as progress. Yet the team has a lot of work to do to clear the high bar of community impact and soccer success it set as its twin goals when it launched in 2022.
“This season was about putting in all the foundations and all the pieces where we get to go compete for championships from ’26 and beyond,” Parsons said. “And I could not be happier with the success we’ve been able to do. That helps us win in the future.
“Of course we’d have all loved to win a couple more games,” he added. “But the priorities were try and win, but build for the future.”
Alexander Straus, center, is introduced as Angel City coach by sporting director Mark Parsons, left, and team president Julie Uhrman during a news conference in June.
(Al Seib / For the Times)
The die for the season, for bad or worse, was cast in the embers of the deadly Palisades fire last January. That first night, as Riley’s family home burned to the ground and other players were forced to relocate, Parsons could see the flames from the gated Brentwood estate of Bob Iger and Willow Bay, Angel City’s controlling owners. He was there interviewing for the job he would get nine days later.
And he was brutally honest about what he thought the club needed.
“I looked at them and said ‘We have a lot of work to do. Unless we get really lucky, it’s going to be a roller coaster. However, we will be really excited about our team by the end of the year,’” Parsons recalled this month.
Part of the problem has to do with how Angel City was built. The team has had three general managers or sporting directors in four seasons and four coaches, including interim manager Sam Laity, over that span. Parsons and Alexander Straus, his hand-picked coach who started in June, were hired to shore up that creaky foundation and bring consistency to the team’s soccer operations, which mostly had been spinning its wheels.
For Parsons, that basically meant tearing things down and starting over. And if he had to sacrifice his first season in doing so, it was a price he was willing to pay.
“We’re going to try and compete and win every single game, because that’s why we’re here,” he said. “We are not going to do that at the expense of building a championship-winning team. This season is about building the future, to not just get to the top, but to stay at the top.”
So the team made 29 transactions in his first nine months. In addition, seven players won’t be re-signed when their contracts expire at the end of the year, among them midfielder Madison Hammond and defender Megan Reid, who are 1-2 in appearances in club history, and Japanese defender Miyabi Moriya, a World Cup and Olympic veteran.
Of the additions, Parsons is especially high on midfielders Evelyn Shores and Hina Sugita, Icelandic attacker Sveindis Jonsdottir and Zambian international Prisca Chilufya. All joined in the second half of the season, adding to a core that included rookie of the year candidate Riley Tiernan and defenders Gisele Thompson, Sarah Gorden and Savy King.
Angel City’s Sarah Gorden controls the ball against Racing Louisville on Sept. 27.
(Andy Lyons / Getty Images)
Of those eight, only Gorden is older than 28 and three of the others — Thompson, King and Shores — can’t legally buy a beer in California. Parsons will double down on one of those additions Tuesday, announcing he has signed Sugita, 28, a two-time World Cup player from Japan, through 2029.
“Most teams try not to do too much during the season. It can be unsettling,” Parsons said.
But for Angel City, every second mattered.
“The top teams in this league that have been pretty consistent the last couple of years took three years to get to a point of being in the top four. We don’t have three years,” Parsons said. “This is a city that is expected to compete and to win in a stadium that [is] rocking, that represents this community.”
That hasn’t happened for Angel City, which was founded with solid community support and an A-list ownership group of more than 100, including Hollywood stars, former U.S. national team players and deep-pocketed investors. The vision was to build a team that won games while making a deep and lasting impact on the community.
The club certainly has gotten the second part of that equation right by providing more than 2.5 million meals and more than 51,000 hours for youth and adult education; distributing equipment and staff for ongoing soccer programming for the children of migrants trapped at the U.S.-Mexico border; and funneling $4.1 million into other programs in Los Angeles. Last week the club awarded $10,000 grants and access to business coaching to 13 former players to help support the transition to the next stage of their lives.
From the start, Angel City games offered a welcoming place, especially for the LGBTQ community, and that helped the team finish first or second in the NWSL in attendance in each of its four seasons.
“We are committed to providing an environment of connection, community and belonging,” Uhrman said.
But while doing that the club struggled on the field, making the playoffs just once while going 30-42-24 over that span. As a result average attendance plunged nearly 16%, to 16,257 this year.
In its first three seasons, Angel City played before a home crowd that small just once, although the team still ranks second in the league, behind only the Portland Thorns. Making the team a draw again, Uhrman conceded, will require trying something new. Like winning.
“Our goal is to be a dynasty on the pitch and a legacy off the pitch,” she said. “And for that to be true, we need to win on and off the field. We need to have the positive impact in the community and continue to give back, but we also need to win championships.”
Some of the team’s most loyal supporters have grown tired of waiting.
“I’m just frustrated with the team’s performance,” said Caitlin Bryant of Burbank, a season-ticket holder from the first season who has not renewed for next year. “I’m done dragging myself down to BMO [Stadium] every other weekend until this thing turns around.
“The vibes are great. The stadium environment is great. But watching the team lose game after game, season after season, it’s exhausting and it’s not fun. I need the team to win.”
⚽ You have read the latest installment of On Soccer with Kevin Baxter. The weekly column takes you behind the scenes and shines a spotlight on unique stories. Listen to Baxter on this week’s episode of the “Corner of the Galaxy” podcast.
No matter how many times the former Fox News personality reinvents herself — friendly NBC daytime talk show, serious Sunday night news magazine anchor, desperate-to-cash-in right-wing podcaster — the old Megyn Kelly sabotages the new one.
The veteran media personality has done it again, this time managing to unite the left and right in disgust against her definition of pedophilia following last week’s dump of more documents from the Epstein files.
Last week on her eponymous SiriusXM show, Kelly said that calling the late, disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein a pedophile wasn’t all that accurate because he was “into the barely legal type” of minors, “like 15-year-olds.”
Speaking with NewsNation host Batya Ungar-Sargon, Kelly claimed to know “somebody very, very close to [the Epstein] case who is in a position to know virtually everything,” and “this person has told me from the start, years and years ago, that Jeffrey Epstein, in this person’s view, was not a pedophile.”
Epstein was charged in 2019 with the sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors. He denied the charges and pleaded not guilty before killing himself in a Manhattan jail while awaiting trial.
“He liked 15-year-old girls,” continued Kelly on her show. “I realize this is disgusting. I’m definitely not trying to make an excuse for this, I’m just giving you facts that he wasn’t into, like, 8-year-olds.”
Then she gunned it off the side of a cliff, Thelma and Louise-style, but without the heroism or the cool, vintage convertible.
“I don’t know what’s true about him, but we have yet to see anybody come forward and say, ‘I was 8, I was under 10, I was under 14, when I first came within his purview,’” Kelly said. “You can say that’s a distinction without a difference.”
Ungar-Sargon pushed back: “No, it’s not.”
Kelly replied, “I think there is a difference. There’s a difference between a 15-year-old and a 5-year-old, you know?”
No, we don’t know. Sex with a minor equals pedophilia. Period.
It’s one more instance of Kelly, 55, doing or saying whatever it takes to game the attention economy, no matter how cynical or craven.
Her clumsy attempts to make the news rather than report it didn’t particularly stand out during her 12 years at Fox News simply because she was surrounded by peers who are masters at the art of fabricating outrage for ratings, clicks and follows.
“Santa Claus is white!”
“Antifa is watching!”
“Immigrants are in your pantry, snacking on your dog!”
Kelly made it to the top of news feeds when she departed Fox in 2017. She was among a group of women who spoke out against Roger Ailes, head of the conservative cable news station, accusing him of sexual harassment and assault. Ailes resigned in 2016. Kelly became an outspoken proponent of the #MeToo movement and rode that blue-ish wave out of the conservative media ecosystem and into the mainstream with NBC News.
But by 2019, NBC canceled her talk show, “Megyn Kelly Today” after Kelly questioned if wearing blackface was really racist during a segment on Halloween costumes. She was defending Luann de Lesseps, a cast member of the reality show “The Real Housewives of New York,” who had darkened her skin to dress as Diana Ross. Kelly said that when she was a child, it “was OK, as long as you were dressing up as, like, a character.”
Just as the media ecosystem has changed, so has Kelly. She’s now partnered with Mark Halperin, a former NBC News and MSNBC contributor whose contract was canceled in 2017 amid sexual misconduct allegations. Together, they hope to build her MK media empire, jumping off the popularity of “The Megyn Kelly Show.” It’s one of the nation’s most popular right-leaning podcasts. According to data from media tracker The Righting, the program ranked as the third-largest conservative podcast, behind those hosted by Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson.
Defending a pedophile could prove to be her latest act of self-sabotage. If not, there are still plenty of chances for her to fecklessly ride the political tides, aligning with new victors while alienating whoever still believes she stands for something other than her own brand. But she’s running out of new demographics to appeal to. And the public is running out of patience with her.
WASHINGTON — In political exile at his mansion in Florida, under investigation for possessing highly classified documents, Donald Trump summoned his lawyer in 2022 for a fateful conversation. A folder had been compiled with 38 documents that should have been returned to the federal government. But Trump had other ideas.
Making a plucking motion, Trump suggested his attorney, Evan Corcoran, remove the most incriminating material. “Why don’t you take them with you to your hotel room, and if there’s anything really bad in there, like, you know, pluck it out,” Corcoran memorialized in a series of notes that surfaced during criminal proceedings.
Trump’s purported willingness to conceal evidence from law enforcement as a private citizen is now fueling concern on Capitol Hill that his efforts to thwart the release of Justice Department files in the Jeffrey Epstein investigation could lead to similar obstructive efforts — this time wielding the powers of the presidency.
Since resuming office in January, Trump has opposed releasing files from the federal probe into the conduct of his former friend, a convicted sex offender and alleged sex trafficker who is believed to have abused more than 200 women and girls. But bipartisan fervor has only grown over the case, with House lawmakers across party lines expected to unite behind a bill on Tuesday that would compel the release of the documents.
Last week, facing intensifying public pressure, the House Oversight Committee released over 20,000 files from Epstein’s estate that referenced Trump more than 1,000 times.
Those files, which included emails from Epstein himself, showed the notorious financier believed that Trump had intimate knowledge of his criminal conduct. “He knew about the girls,” Epstein wrote, referring to Trump as the “dog that hasn’t barked.”
Rep. Dave Min (D-Irvine), a member of the oversight committee, noted Trump could order the release of the Justice Department files without any action from Congress.
“The fact that he has not done so, coupled with his long and well documented history of lying and obstructing justice, raises serious concerns that he is still trying to stop this investigation,” Min said in an interview, “either by trying to persuade Senate Republicans to vote against the release or through other mechanisms.”
A spokesperson for Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said that altering or destroying portions of the Epstein files “would violate a wide range of federal laws.”
“The senator is certainly concerned that Donald Trump, who was investigated and indicted for obstruction, will persist in trying to stonewall and otherwise prevent the full release of all the documents and information in the U.S. government’s possession,” the spokesperson said, “even if the law is passed with overwhelming bipartisan support.”
After the House votes on the bill, titled the Epstein Files Transparency Act, bipartisan support in the Senate would be required to pass the measure. Trump would then have to sign it into law.
Trump encouraged Republican House members to support it over the weekend after enough GOP lawmakers broke ranks last week to compel a vote, overriding opposition from the speaker of the House. Still, it is unclear whether the president will support the measure as it proceeds to his desk.
On Monday, Trump said he would sign the bill if it ultimately passes. “Let the Senate look at it,” he told reporters.
The bill prohibits the attorney general, Pam Bondi, from withholding, delaying or redacting the publication of “any record, document, communication, or investigative material on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary.”
But caveats in the bill could provide Trump and Bondi with loopholes to keep records related to the president concealed.
“Because DOJ possesses and controls these files, it is far from certain that a vote to disclose ‘the Epstein files’ will include documents pertaining to Donald Trump,” said Barbara McQuade, who served as the United States attorney for the eastern district of Michigan from 2010 until 2017, when Trump requested a slew of resignations from U.S. attorneys.
Already, this past spring, FBI Director Kash Patel directed a Freedom of Information Act team to work with hundreds of agents to comb through the entire trove of files from the investigation, and directed them to redact references to Trump, citing his status as a private citizen with privacy protections when the probe first launched in 2006, Bloomberg reported at the time.
“It would be improper for Trump to order the documents destroyed, but Bondi could redact or remove some in the name of grand jury secrecy or privacy laws,” McQuade added. “As long as there’s a pending criminal investigation, I think she can either block disclosure of the entire file or block disclosure of individuals who are not being charged, including Trump.”
Destroying the documents would be a taller task, and “would need a loyal secretary or equivalent,” said Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, a professor emeritus and FBI historian at the University of Edinburgh.
Jeffreys-Jones recalled J. Edgar Hoover’s assistant, Helen Gandy, spending weeks at his home destroying the famed FBI director’s personal file on the dirty secrets of America’s rich and powerful.
It would also be illegal, scholars say, pointing to the Federal Records Act that prohibits anyone — including presidents — from destroying government documents.
After President Nixon attempted to assert executive authority over a collection of incriminating tapes that would ultimately end his presidency, Congress passed the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act, asserting that government documents and presidential records are federal property. Courts have repeatedly upheld the law.
While presidents are immune from prosecution over their official conduct, ordering the destruction of documents from a criminal investigation would not fall under presidential duties, legal scholars said, exposing Trump to charges of obstructing justice if he were to do so.
“Multiple federal laws bar anyone, including the president or those around him, from destroying or altering material contained in the Epstein files, including various federal record-keeping laws and criminal statutes. But that doesn’t mean that Trump or his cronies won’t consider trying,” said Norm Eisen, who served as chief ethics lawyer for President Obama and counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during Trump’s first impeachment trial.
The Democracy Defenders Fund, a nonprofit organization co-founded by Eisen, has sued the Trump administration for all records in the Epstein investigation related to Trump, warning that “court supervision is needed” to ensure Trump doesn’t attempt to subvert a lawful directive to release them.
“Perhaps the greatest danger is not altering documents but wrongly withholding them or producing and redacting them,” Eisen added. “Those are both issues that we can get at in our litigation, and where court supervision can be valuable.”
Jeffreys-Jones also said that Trump may attempt to order redactions based on claims of national security. But “this might be unconvincing for two reasons,” he said.
“Trump was not yet president at the time,” he said, and “it would raise ancillary questions if redactions did not operate in the case of President Clinton.”
Last week, Trump directed the Justice Department to investigate Epstein’s ties to Democratic figures, including Clinton, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn’s co-founder and a major Democratic donor.
He made no request for the department to similarly investigate Republicans.
Times staff writer Ana Ceballos contributed to this report.
How do you find inspiration? Say you’re doing your holiday shopping and you’re struggling to find the perfect gift for that difficult person on your list — parent, partner, paramour. How do you let your mind drift to a place where the clouds part and you achieve a sort of awakening?
I’m Glenn Whipp, columnist for the Los Angeles Times and host of The Envelope newsletter, back in your inbox for the next few months as we sail through the atmospheric river of awards season. Climb aboard.
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Cover story: The best six minutes in movies this year
(Bexx Francois / For The Times)
You might remember how much I love “Sinners,” Ryan Coogler’s audacious, genre-defying blockbuster that explores the intrinsic power of American blues music and Black life in the Jim Crow South within the context of a vampire horror movie.
So I was thrilled to talk with Coogler and his longtime department heads — a movie family that includes Oscar winners who have been with him since his 2013 debut, “Fruitvale Station” — for The Envelope’s first cover story of the season. There were a dozen different ways I could have gone with the piece, but our conversations kept coming back to the scene in the juke joint when young Sammie (Miles Caton) conjures spirits from the past and future onto the dance floor.
How did Coogler summon this scene? It goes back to that question I asked at the outset: How do you find inspiration?
For Coogler, “Sinners” began on Nov. 17, 2021, a date fixed in his mind because it was the day one of his favorite rappers, Young Dolph, was murdered. Coogler was devastated. And his mind drifted back to Nipsey Hussle, the L.A. rapper gunned down outside his South L.A. clothing store in 2019. Coogler was living in Los Angeles at the time, trying to get a “Space Jam” sequel off the ground.
“I felt like I had my heart ripped out, bro,” Coogler told me. “I have two younger brothers I’m really close with, and I remember reading an article in the L.A. Times about his older brother recounting what happened. It just broke me. And then I get the news that Dolph’s been killed in his hometown, and I just remember feeling, ‘I’m done with rap, man.’”
Later, Coogler spoke with his friend, “Black Panther” producer Nate Moore, lamenting that rappers who talk about their lives, beating the odds and escaping hardship, sometimes end up succumbing to the thing they thought they left behind. Moore isn’t a rap guy, but told Coogler that his favorite music, grunge, was just like that — in this case, artists addressing their struggles with depression and addiction and then, on occasion, overdosing or taking their own lives.
Toward the end of that day, Coogler was driving back from the set of “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.” Passing through Byron, Ga., the Oakland native looked out his window and saw, for the first time in his life, a cotton field. During our interview, Coogler pulls out his phone and finds a video his sister-in-law shot of him taking it all in and picking a sprig of cotton. Coogler kept it, eventually putting it on his work desk at home.
“That was a part of finding ‘Sinners,’” Coogler says. “The other thing that happened was I started listening to grunge music, taking a break from rap. And as soon as I put the music on, I was like, ‘Yo, this feels like my uncle’s. It led me right back to his record collection.”
That uncle, James Edmonson, loved the blues. Coogler’s cousin, Edmonson’s youngest daughter, told the filmmaker about a Bill Withers’ song, “I Can’t Write Left-Handed,” written from the perspective of a Vietnam veteran. Coogler listened to it, and it reminded him of “Rooster,” the Alice in Chains song written by guitarist Jerry Cantrell for his father, who served in Vietnam.
“So I’m playing these two songs one after another, and I’m like, ‘These genres that you wouldn’t find next to each other at a Tower Records back in the day, they’re so close,’” Coogler says. “And studying the history of it, it’s people playing it different, but it’s the same idea.”
“And that’s when I realized I had to make ‘Sinners.’”
Coogler scrolls through his phone and shows a picture of the cotton sprig on his desk. He dedicated “Sinners” to his uncle, who died about a decade before it arrived in theaters.
“So many cosmic moments came together for this movie,” Coogler says. “I was always like, ‘All right. I just gotta make sure I don’t f— it up.’”
CHICAGO — A Chicago day-care center employee who was detained by immigration agents at work as children were being dropped off last week has been released, according to her attorney.
Diana Santillana Galeano was detained Nov. 5 at the Rayito de Sol Spanish Immersion Early Learning Center on the north side of Chicago. A video showed officers struggling with her as they walked out the front door. Her attorneys said in a statement Thursday that she was released from a detention center in Indiana on Wednesday night.
“We are thrilled that Ms. Santillana was released, and has been able to return home to Chicago where she belongs,” attorney Charlie Wysong said in the statement. “We will continue to pursue her immigration claims to stay in the United States. We are grateful to her community for the outpouring of support over these difficult days, and ask that her privacy be respected while she rests and recovers from this ordeal.”
Her case reflects the Trump administration’s increasingly aggressive enforcement tactics. But her detention at a day care was unusual even under “Operation Midway Blitz,” which has resulted in more than 3,000 immigration arrests in the Chicago area since early September. Agents have rappelled from a Black Hawk helicopter in a middle-of-the-night apartment building raid, appeared with overwhelming force in recreational areas and launched tear gas amid protests.
“I am so grateful to everyone who has advocated on my behalf, and on behalf of the countless others who have experienced similar trauma over recent months in the Chicago area,” Santillana Galeano said in the same statement. “I love our community and the children I teach, and I can’t wait to see them again.”
The Department of Homeland Security said last week that the woman, who is from Colombia, entered the U.S. illegally in June 2023 but obtained authorization to work under the Biden administration. The department denied that the day care was targeted.
The City of Pasadena and the Rose Bowl Operating Co. requested a preliminary injunction and temporary restraining order Monday in Los Angeles County Superior Court seeking to prevent UCLA from leaving the Rose Bowl or terminating its stadium lease until pending litigation against the school is resolved.
The filing contends that the plaintiffs would suffer “immediate and irreparable harm if the status quo is not preserved during the pendency of this lawsuit.” A hearing has tentatively been scheduled for Wednesday morning.
UCLA responded in a statement that it was still evaluating options for its football home, though someone familiar with the university’s thinking on the matter later confirmed to The Times that if the Bruins decided to leave for SoFi Stadium, they would want to do so for the 2026 season.
In their Monday filing, the plaintiffs contended that: “there is no way to sugarcoat it: UCLA has confirmed its imminent departure, severely destabilizing Plaintiffs’ core operations. Those operations are structured around and contingent upon UCLA. Without confirmation that UCLA intends to honor its contractual commitments — at least during the pendency of this litigation — Plaintiffs are deprived of the ability to plan and manage the stadium’s schedule and their ongoing business operations, including cultivating and securing future business partners and opportunities, retaining personnel, and maintaining confidence among the many vendors and sponsors who rely on UCLA Football.
“Equally troubling is the precedent UCLA is setting. Stadium and arena public-private partnerships, and the financing that makes them possible, turn on enforceable, long-term contracts, with terms that typically follow the public debt incurred. UCLA’s attempt to break its contract decades early critically undermines these structures.”
YouTube TV customers are bracing for another frustrating weekend.
For the last week, YouTube TV’s 10 million subscribers have been denied access to ESPN, ABC and other Walt Disney Co. channels in a dispute that has swelled into one of the largest TV blackouts in a decade. Instead of turning on “College GameDay,” “Monday Night Football” or “Dancing With the Stars,” customers have been greeted with a grim message: “Disney channels are unavailable.”
The standoff began Oct. 30 when the two behemoths hit an impasse in their negotiations over a new distribution contract covering Disney’s channels and ABC stations.
Google, which owns YouTube, has rebuffed Disney’s demands for fee increases for ESPN, ABC and other channels. The Burbank entertainment giant has been seeking a revenue boost to support its content production and streaming ambitions, and help pay for ESPN’s gargantuan sports rights deals.
Talks are ongoing, but the two sides remain apart on major issues — prolonging the stalemate.
“Everyone is kind of sick of these big-time companies trying to get the best of one another,” said Nick Newton, 30, who lives near San Francisco and subscribes to YouTube TV. “The people who are suffering are the middle-class and lower-class people that just love sports … because it’s our escape from the real world.”
Both companies declined to comment for this article.
The skirmish is just the latest between YouTube and programming companies. Since August, Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corp., Comcast’s NBCUniversal and Spanish-language broadcaster TelevisaUnivision have all complained that YouTube TV was trying to use its market muscle to squeeze them for concessions.
Here’s a look at what’s driving the escalating tensions:
Google’s growing clout in television
The struggle between Disney and YouTube reflects television’s fast-shifting dynamics.
Disney has long entered carriage negotiations with tremendous leverage, in large part because it owns ESPN, which is a must-have channel for legions of sports fans.
Programmers, including Disney, structured their distribution contracts to expire near a pivotal programming event, such as a new season of NFL football. The timing motivated both sides to quickly reach a deal rather than risk alienating customers.
But for Google’s parent, Alphabet, YouTube TV is just a sliver of their business. The tech company generated $350 billion in revenue last year, the vast majority coming from Google search and advertising. That gives YouTube a longer leash to hold out for contract terms it finds acceptable.
“This dispute is not that painful for Google,” said analyst Richard Greenfield of LightShed Partners, noting that YouTube TV could probably withstand “two weekends without college football, and two weeks without ‘Monday Night Football’ — as long as their consumers stay with them.”
Disney, however, depends on TV advertising and pay-TV distribution fees. The week-long blackout has already dampened TV ratings, which means less revenue for the company.
Consumers like YouTube TV
For decades, throngs of consumers loathed their cable company — a sentiment that Disney and other programmers were able to use in their favor in past battles. Customer defections prompted several pay-TV companies to find a compromise to restore the darkened TV channels and stanch the subscriber bleeding.
But YouTube is banking on a more loyal user base, including millions of customers who switched to the service from higher-priced legacy providers.
“I’ll stick this thing out with YouTube TV,” Newton said, adding that he hoped the dispute didn’t drag on for weeks.
“This is one of the problems facing Disney,” Greenfield said. “It’s been a noticeable change in tone from past carriage fee battles. If customer losses stay at a minimum, then Disney is going to be in a tough place.”
It boils down to power and money
YouTube TV is the fastest-growing television service in the U.S. Analysts expect that, within a couple of years, YouTube TV will have more pay-TV customers than industry leaders Spectrum and Comcast.
In the current negotiations, Google has asked Disney to agree to lower its rates when YouTube TV surpasses Comcast’s and Spectrum’s subscriber counts. Disney maintains that YouTube already pays preferred rates, in recognition of its competitive standing, and that Google is trying to drive down the value of Disney’s networks.
“YouTube TV and its owner, Google … want to use their power and extraordinary resources to eliminate competition and devalue the very content that helped them build their service,” top Disney executives wrote last Friday in an email to their staff.
People close to YouTube TV reject the characterization, saying the service has been a valuable partner by providing a strong service that brings Disney billions of dollars a year in distribution revenue.
“The bottom line is that our channels are extremely valuable, and we can only continue to program them with the sports and entertainment viewers love most if we stand our ground,” the Disney executives wrote in last week’s email. “We are asking nothing more of YouTube TV than what we have gotten from every other distributor — fair rates for our channels.”
Higher sports rights fees
A major reason Disney is asking for higher fees is because it’s grappling with a huge escalation in sports costs.
Disney is on the hook to pay $2.6 billion a year to the NBA, another $2.7 billion annually to the NFL, and $325 million a year for the rights to stream World Wrestling Entertainment. Such sports rights contracts have nearly doubled in the last decade, leading to the strain on TV broadcasters.
In addition, deep-pocketed streaming services, including Amazon, Apple and Netflix, have jumped into sports broadcasting, driving up the cost for the legacy broadcasters.
The crowded field also strains the wallets of sports fans, and appears to be adding to the fatigue over the YouTube TV-Disney fight.
Newton wrote in a recent Twitter post that he was spending $400 a month for his various internet, phone and TV services, including Disney+ and NFL Sunday Ticket, which is distributed by YouTube TV.
“I’m already on all the major subscriptions to watch football these days,” Newton, a third-generation San Francisco 49ers fan, said. “You need Netflix. You need Peacock, you need Amazon Prime and the list goes on and on. I’m at the point where I’m not paying for anything else.”
A federal judge in Rhode Island ordered the Trump administration Thursday to find the money to fully fund SNAP benefits for November.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell Jr. gave President Trump’s administration until Friday to make the payments through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, though it’s unlikely the 42 million Americans — about 1 in 8, most of them in poverty — will see the money on the debit cards they use for groceries nearly that quickly.
The order was in response to a challenge from cities and nonprofits complaining that the administration was only offering to cover 65% of the maximum benefit, a decision that would have left some recipients getting nothing for this month.
“The defendants failed to consider the practical consequences associated with this decision to only partially fund SNAP,” McConnell said in a ruling from the bench after a brief hearing. “They knew that there would be a long delay in paying partial SNAP payments and failed to consider the harms individuals who rely on those benefits would suffer.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
McConnell was one of two judges who ruled last week that the administration could not skip November’s benefits entirely because of the federal shutdown.
The Trump administration chose partial payments this week
Last month, the administration said that it would halt SNAP payments for November if the government shutdown wasn’t resolved.
A coalition of cities and nonprofits sued in federal court in Rhode Island and Democratic state officials from across the country did so in Massachusetts.
The judges in both cases ordered the government to use one emergency reserve fund containing more than $4.6 billion to pay for SNAP for November but gave it leeway to tap other money to make the full payments, which cost between $8.5 billion and $9 billion each month.
On Monday, the administration said it would not use additional money, saying it was up to Congress to appropriate the funds for the program and that the other money was needed to shore up other child hunger programs.
The partial funding brought on complications
McConnell harshly criticized the Trump administration for making that choice.
“Without SNAP funding for the month of November, 16 million children are immediately at risk of going hungry,” he said. “This should never happen in America. In fact, it’s likely that SNAP recipients are hungry as we sit here.”
Tyler Becker, the attorney for the government, unsuccessfully argued that the Trump administration had followed the court’s order in issuing the partial payments. “This all comes down to Congress not having appropriated funds because of the government shutdown,” he said.
Kristin Bateman, a lawyer for the coalition of cities and nonprofit organizations, told the judge the administration had other reasons for not fully funding the benefits.
“What defendants are really trying to do is to leverage people’s hunger to gain partisan political advantage in the shutdown fight,” Bateman told the court.
McConnell said last week’s order required that those payments be made “expeditiously” and “efficiently” — and by Wednesday — or a full payment would be required. “Nothing was done consistent with the court’s order to clear the way to expeditiously resolve it,” McConnell said.
There were other twists and turns this week
The administration said in a court filing on Monday that it could take weeks or even months for some states to make calculations and system changes to load the debit cards used in the SNAP program. At the time, it said it would fund 50% of the maximum benefits.
The next day, Trump appeared to threaten not to pay the benefits at all unless Democrats in Congress agreed to reopen the government. His press secretary later said that the partial benefits were being paid for November — and that it is future payments that are at risk if the shutdown continues.
And Wednesday night, it recalculated, telling states that there was enough money to pay for 65% of the maximum benefits.
Under a decades-old formula in federal regulations, everyone who received less than the maximum benefit would get a larger percentage reduction. Some families would have received nothing and some single people and two-person households could have gotten as little as $16.
Carmel Scaife, a former day care owner in Milwaukee who hasn’t been able to work since receiving multiple severe injuries in a car accident seven years ago, said she normally receives $130 a month from SNAP. She said that despite bargain hunting, that is not nearly enough for a month’s worth of groceries.
Scaife, 56, said that any cuts to her benefit will mean she will need to further tap her Social Security income for groceries. “That’ll take away from the bills that I pay,” she said. “But that’s the only way I can survive.”
The next legal step is unclear
This type of order is usually not subject to an appeal, but the Trump administration has challenged other rulings like it before.
An organization whose lawyers filed the challenge signaled it would continue the battle if needed.
“We shouldn’t have to force the President to care for his citizens,” Democracy Forward President and CEO Skye Perryman said in a statement, “but we will do whatever is necessary to protect people and communities.”
It often takes SNAP benefits a week or more to be loaded onto debit cards once states initiate the process.
Mulvihill and Casey write for the Associated Press. AP writers Sara Cline in Baton Rouge, La.; Susan Haigh in Hartford, Conn.; and Gary Robertson in Raleigh, N.C., contributed to this report.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art management on Wednesday declined to voluntarily recognize the union its employees announced they were forming last week. This means LACMA United cannot move forward with collective bargaining efforts until it is formalized by a National Labor Relations Board election. Complicating matters further, NLRB activities — including elections — are on hold amid the federal government shutdown.
The disconnect between staff — a clear majority of whom signed union authorization cards — and management comes at a significant moment in the museum’s history as LACMA works tirelessly to open its $720-million David Geffen Galleries. The new home for its encyclopedic permanent collection, designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Peter Zumthor, contains 110,000 square feet of gallery space and is scheduled to open to the public in April after more than a decade of planning, fundraising and building.
In a news release, the union noted that organizing efforts — in the works for more than two years — have taken on added urgency as workloads have increased in the face of opening the new building.
“Staff across departments — many performing demanding physical labor — are stretched thin as deadlines accelerate,” LACMA United wrote. “Without adequate protections, this pace is unsustainable and has already contributed to burnout and turnover among dedicated employees who deserve better from an institution they’ve helped build.”
The union’s organizing committee added in a statement, “We are disappointed that LACMA leadership has chosen to delay rather than embrace the democratic will of its workers. While the museum reimagines itself as a more collaborative, less hierarchical institution in its new David Geffen Galleries, it has declined to extend that same vision to its relationship with the very people who bring LACMA’s mission to life every day.”
“LACMA’s leadership has great respect for our team and for everyone’s right to make their own choice on this important issue,” Michael Govan, the museum’s director and chief executive, said in an email. “No matter the outcome, my commitment to our employees — to listen, to support them, and to continue building a strong and respectful workplace — remains unchanged.”
Management’s decision stands counter to those made by other cultural institutions across the city, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Academy Museum and the Natural History Museum, all of which voluntarily recognized their unions over the last six years.
LACMA United represents more than 300 workers from across all departments, including curators, educators, art installers, conservators, registrars, visitor services staff, facilities workers, researchers and designers. The union is asking for improved wages, benefits and working conditions in what has proved to be a challenging climate for museum workers across the county.
The union did not demonstrate at last week’s celebrity-packed LACMA Art + Film Gala, which was co-hosted by Leonardo DiCaprio and fashion designer Eva Chow, and raised more than $6.5 million in support of the museum and its programs.
A federal grand jury subpoena has been served on the Los Angeles Fire Department for firefighters’ text messages and other communications about smoke or hot spots in the area of the Jan. 1 Lachman brushfire, which reignited six days later into the massive Palisades fire, according to an internal department memo.
The Times reported last week that a battalion chief ordered firefighters to pack up their hoses and leave the burn area the day after the Lachman fire, even though they complained that the ground was still smoldering and rocks were hot to the touch. In the memo, the department notified its employees of the subpoena, which it said was issued by the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles.
“The subpoena seeks any and all communications, including text messages, related to reports of fire, smoke, or hotspots received between” 10 p.m. on New Year’s Eve and 10 a.m. on Jan. 7, said the memo, which was dated Tuesday.
A spokesperson with the U.S. attorney’s office declined to confirm that a subpoena was issued and otherwise did not comment. The memo did not include a copy of the subpoena.
The memo said the subpoena was issued in connection with an “ongoing criminal investigation” conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
It is unclear from the memo whether the subpoena is directly related to the case against Rinderknecht, who has pleaded not guilty.
During the Rinderknecht investigation, ATF agents concluded that the fire smoldered and burned for days underground “within the root structure of dense vegetation,” until heavy winds caused it to spark the Palisades inferno, according to an affidavit attached to the criminal complaint against Rinderknecht.
The Palisades fire, the most destructive in the city’s history, killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of homes, businesses and other structures.
Last week, The Times cited text messages among firefighters in reporting that crews mopping up the Lachman fire had warned the battalion chief that remnants of the blaze were still smoldering.
The battalion chief listed as being on duty the day firefighters were ordered to leave the Lachman fire, Mario Garcia, has not responded to requests for comment.
In one text message, a firefighter who was at the scene on Jan. 2 wrote that the battalion chief had been told it was a “bad idea” to leave because of the visible signs of smoking terrain, which crews feared could start a new fire if left unprotected.
“And the rest is history,” the firefighter wrote in recent weeks.
A second firefighter was told that tree stumps were still hot at the location when the crew packed up and left, according to the texts. And a third firefighter said this month that crew members were upset when told to pack up and leave but that they could not ignore orders, according to the texts. The third firefighter also wrote that he and his colleagues knew immediately that the Palisades fire was a rekindle of the Jan. 1 blaze.
The Fire Department has not answered questions about the firefighter accounts in the text messages but has previously said that officials did everything they could to ensure that the Lachman fire was fully extinguished. The department has not provided dispatch records of all firefighting and mop-up activity before Jan. 7.
After The Times published the story, Mayor Karen Bass directed interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva to launch an investigation into the matter, while critics of her administration have asked for an independent inquiry.
