legacy

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Political stars often rise and fall but few have had a more dramatic trajectory than Dick Cheney in his home state of Wyoming.

Hours after Cheney died Tuesday at 84, the state lowered flags at the Republican governor’s order. Some politicians in the state offered at times measured praise of the former vice president.

But among a large majority of voters in Wyoming, Cheney has been persona non grata for more than five years now, his reputation brought down amid President Trump’s withering politics.

Trump has criticized Cheney for the drawn-out and costly Iraq war, and his daughter, former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, for saying Trump should never be allowed back in the White House after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

This resonated with many residents, including Jeanine Stebbing, of Cheyenne, whose last straw was the idea that Trump shouldn’t be reelected.

“There was no open-mindedness. Nothing about how, ‘We understand that our neighbors here are supportive of Trump.’ Just the idea that we were all stupid, is what it felt like,” Stebbing said Tuesday.

The final blow for the Cheney family in Wyoming came in 2022, when Trump supported ranching attorney Harriet Hageman to oppose Liz Cheney for a fourth term as the state’s U.S. representative.

Hageman got two-thirds of the vote in the Republican primary, a decisive win in a state with so few Democrats that the general election is considered inconsequential for major races.

Trump’s biggest gripe, ultimately, was that Liz Cheney voted to impeach him, then co-led the congressional investigation into his role in the attack. In Wyoming, a prevailing belief was Liz Cheney seemed more focused on taking down Trump than on representing the state.

“I was very disappointed that, you know, somebody who came from this state would be so adamantly blind to anything other than what she wanted to do. And he joined in as well,” Stebbing said.

Not even Dick Cheney’s endorsement of his daughter over Hageman — and of Kamala Harris over Trump last year — made a difference, as Trump’s appeal in Wyoming only grew. Trump won Wyoming by more than any other state in 2016, 2020 and 2024, the year of his biggest margin in the state.

Some expressed sadness that George W. Bush’s vice president would not be remembered well by so many in the state.

“On the 16th anniversary of my own father’s death today, I can appreciate a father who stood by his daughter, which he did loyally and truthfully,” said Republican state Sen. Tara Nethercott, who is Senate majority floor leader. “He stood by his daughter during those difficult times.”

Nethercott wouldn’t speculate if Liz Cheney might yet have a political future. Wyoming’s support of Trump “speaks volumes,” she said.

Liz Cheney has continued to live in Jackson Hole, near her parents, while traveling back and forth to Charlottesville to teach at the University of Virginia Center for Politics.

For Brian Farmer — who, like Dick Cheney, grew up in Casper and went to the University of Wyoming — Cheney’s legacy will be his service to the state, no matter where people stand on issues.

“He was always somebody whose path I looked at, sought to follow. Very quiet, soft-spoken at times, Very bombastic and loud at others,” said Farmer, executive director of the Wyoming School Boards Association.

Cheney had a 30-year career in politics, from serving as President Gerald Ford’s young chief of staff to representing Wyoming in Congress in the 1980s. He rose to a top GOP leadership role in Congress — one his daughter, too, would later fill — before being named President George H.W. Bush’s defense secretary.

After his time in office, the CEO of oilfield services company Halliburton kept active in state politics, voicing support and even stumping for Republican candidates.

And yet Cheney was so low-key and unassuming, his mere presence was the whole point — not the nice things he had to say, for example, about former Gov. Jim Geringer, who handily won reelection in 1998.

“You talk about people walking into a room and commanding it. That man did it without even speaking a word,” said state Rep. Landon Brown, a Cheyenne Republican who met him several times including at University of Wyoming football games.

“He’s going to be sincerely missed in this state,” he said. “Maybe not by everybody.”

Gruver writes for the Associated Press.

There’s no shortage of bands commemorating their glory days as decade anniversaries of albums fly by. Yet few landmark releases feel not only fresh but forward-thinking 20 years after they were recorded. My Morning Jacket stumbled onto this kind of brilliance in October 2004 when it released its fourth studio album “Z.” Across 10 tracks of lush, euphoria-driven rock ‘n’ roll, the band captured a notable tone shift in its sound that melded Southern rock, haunting folk, psychedelic soul laced with jam band energy. It’s a set of songs that still make up a huge chunk of the bands live show. In September the band performed the album in its entirety to a sold-out Hollywood Palladium for its 20th anniversary.

“We still play these songs all the time,” said frontman and principal songwriter Jim James in a recent conversation. “So it’s not like we broke up after we released ‘Z’ and then we got back together 20 years later to play these songs, and it’s such a trip. We’ve been playing them nonstop for 20 years.”

Shortly after the release of its 10th studio album “is,” the band put out a deluxe reissue of “Z” that includes four B-sides and a whole album’s worth of demo versions of songs like “Wordless Chorus,” “Off the Record” and Dodante. Recently James spoke to The Times about the enduring power of “Z” and the joy of going back to the beginning of the album’s origins to give himself and his fans a new appreciation for the groundbreaking sound the band created.

The rerelease of “Z” was prefaced earlier this year with a full-album show at the Palladium. What was it like revisiting the album on stage first before it came out (again) on vinyl and streaming?

This is our fourth album now to hit the 20-year mark. So we’ve got some experience now doing these album shows. And it’s funny because some of the earlier albums we don’t play all the songs from them so we had to go back and relearn a lot of songs. But the songs from “Z” we pretty much play all the songs all the time. So it’s pretty hilarious how it involved no effort. It just involved playing them in that order of the sequence of the album. But we kind of laughed about that. We’re like, man, we don’t really even have to do any research or anything. We were all kind of reflecting just on how grateful we are that we like playing all the songs still. It’s such a great feeling to play songs for 20 years and never really get tired of them. People still want to hear them and there’s still excitement there, and they still feel fresh. It’s really a beautiful thing.

This was your first album using an outside producer. What was that like for you as the songwriter to step in the studio with John Leckie to help you realize your vision with “Z”?

It was so great, because I really needed somebody who could work with me and not let our egos clash too much. John was just really great about coming in and respecting what I wanted to do, but also voicing his opinion and what he liked and what he didn’t like and when he thought we could do better. And it was just really so refreshing and so good for us to have him there. I mean, his track record speaks for itself, he’s somebody who you can trust right off the bat, just because of all the things they’ve done in the past. He’s such a soft-spoken gentleman but he also has this hilarious, brutal honesty about him, which was always really great.

Your lineup had also changed between the previous album “It Still Moves” and “Z” — adding keyboard player Bo Koster and guitarist Carl Broemel who are still in the band today. So was that like stepping in the studio with the “new guys” for the first time?

It was really nerve-racking and really exciting all at once. We had some touring experience under our belt with Bo and Carl, so we kind of knew that it was working out on that level, but we’d never really recorded before, so it was a real test for all of us. And I think we all knew that. So everybody brought their A game to the session and we took it really seriously, but we also had a lot of fun and just really kind of got to know each other. That was good to do that out in the middle of nowhere, out there in the Catskills, up at the studio. It gave us some time to really bond without a lot of the real-world stuff coming in or other people coming in. So I think that was really important, that we did it that way.

Do you remember what song came out of the sessions first?

“It Beats 4 U” was the first one, because that was one we had already played live before we started recording. So I think that was the first song that we started messing with. But I think they all were kind of coming to life around the same time. So by the time we got in there to start unpacking them, I had already written them and kind of made the demos of them and stuff.

It’s great that you included so many demo versions of your songs on this rerelease. What was the process like of locating these, sifting through and sequencing which ones you wanted to put on the album?

Well, I love demos for a lot of my favorite bands — I love it when I get to hear the demos from the albums. So I’m always saving all that stuff; with my own stuff I’m always compiling all the demos, because that’s half the fun to me. Because sometimes you get this just like a beautiful glimpse into the song. Quite often, I end up liking the demo more than I like the actual album, song because you get a whole, whole new view of it. It’s also interesting when you’re sequencing for vinyl, because you don’t have unlimited time so you kind of got to pick and choose, and that kind of forces you to just choose the best. There’s a whole other round of band demos and then there were my demos, so there were a lot of things to choose from. But it kind of helps me to look at it in vinyl format. There’s still something about the vinyl time limit that helps with quality control. Just kind of pick the ones that I feel are most effective and then try and make a fun sequence so that hopefully, if somebody’s into them, it’s kind of like you get a bonus album that you can listen to.

We had four true songs, B-sides, that we really love too, that weren’t demos. So that was really nice to finally get those out, because those had been on different soundtracks. And then one wasn’t even released. So I don’t think that those weren’t even on streaming or anything for years and years. So it’s really cool to have those out kind of everywhere now, because I’ve always liked all those songs and been proud of those songs too. And I think most bands know the feeling of you know when you make a record. Sometimes songs just don’t fit the record, even if you still love the songs.

MMJ during the “Z” era.

(Sam Erickson)

Were you playing any of those live at the point where you released the album the first round, or did you shelve them for later?

We’ve always played “Where to Begin” live — off and on. We’ve also tried “Chills” a couple times, and I think we did “How Could I Know” a couple times. We’ve never played “The Devil’s Peanut Butter,” we kinda forgot that one existed until this whole [album rerelease] process started, and I found that song again. So we’ll probably play that one somewhere out on the next leg.

Was this process something that you enjoy doing, like, in terms of your how to, sort of like, reexamine an album?

I really love it because I just feel so grateful that anybody even gives a s–, you know? I mean, so there’s that part of me that’s just so grateful to even still be in the game, talking about this. But beyond that, it’s really cool for me because it’s like jumping in a time machine and going back and looking at that point in my life and getting perspective on where I am now, and seeing how I’ve grown and asking “where have I changed? Where have I not changed?” I look back and with all of these albums as they come up to this 20-year mark, and I see I’ve always been really mean and hard on myself, on Jim, but I know that Jim was doing the best he could at each time. That’s the one thing I’ve always kind of been able to see, to get myself through, to not be too hard on myself. I know I was giving it everything I had, so whether I would change things about it as I am today or not — we all look back on the past, and maybe there’s things we’d do differently, but it gives me a lot of comfort to know that I was trying as hard as I could, and all the guys in the band were trying as hard as they could. It really makes me feel proud of us for just putting in the time and effort.

Promoting policies like the “Global War on Terror”, former US Vice President Dick Cheney became the symbol of an outdated Republican Party that US voters would eventually reject. Cheney died at the age of 84.

In December 2014, an incumbent president lost a re-election bid for the first time in Nigeria’s history. 

It was a time characterised by widespread anguish and anger at how insecure the Nigerian life had become. Boko Haram, the extremist insurgent group fighting to establish what it calls an Islamic State, had intensified its violence, killing hundreds of thousands, displacing millions more, and abducting hundreds of teenage girls from school. Bombs were also being detonated in major cities at an alarming rate. For Nigerians, the incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan simply had to go. And so Muhammadu  Buhari was voted in with unflinching hope that things would get better. That hope quickly turned into disillusionment and, in some cases, anger as things began to take a different turn than was hoped for.

Today, July 13, the former president, Muhammadu Buhari, passed away at 82, signalling the conclusion of a significant political chapter. As tributes from dignitaries continue to emerge and headlines reflect on his ascent and legacy, HumAngle analyses the impact of his presidency on the lives of Nigerians beyond the halls of power, in displacement camps, remote villages, and troubled areas.

An examination of the security legacy

During his time in office from 2015 to 2023, Nigeria faced increasing violence on various fronts: the Boko Haram insurgency in the North East, a resurgence of militants in the Niger Delta, and the rising threat of terrorism and conflicts between farmers and herders in the North West and Middle Belt. 

Buhari’s administration initiated multiple military operations, including Operation Lafiya Dole, Operation Python Dance, Operation Safe Corridor, etc., yielding mixed outcomes and levels of responsibility. While some campaigns succeeded in pushing back armed groups, others faced criticism due to evidence of excessive force, extrajudicial killings, and displacements within communities. Non-kinetic counter-insurgency operations such as the Operation Safe Corridor, which was launched in 2016, also came under heavy criticism. Though the programme was designed for Boko Haram members or members of similar insurgent groups in the northeastern region to safely defect from the terror groups and return to society, HumAngle found that civilians were finding their way into these programmes, due to mass arbitrary arrests prompted by profiling and unfounded allegations. The International Crisis Group also found that, beyond innocent civilians being forced to undergo the programme, other kinds of irregularities were going on. 

“The program has also been something of a catch-all for a wide range of other individuals, including minors suspected of being child soldiers, a few high-level jihadists and alleged insurgents whom the government tried and failed to prosecute and who say they have been moved into the program against their will,” the group said in a 2021 report. At the time, more than 800 people had graduated from the programme.

The programme also did not – and still does not – have space for women, and HumAngle reported the repercussions of this.

During Buhari’s reign, terrorists were also forced out of major towns but became more entrenched in rural communities. The former president launched aggressive military campaigns against them, reclaiming villages and cities. Boko Haram retreated into hard-to-reach areas with weaker government presence, operating in remote parts of Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa States. In these areas, the group imposed strict rules, conscripted fighters, and punished dissenters, often with brutal force.

A HumAngle geospatial investigation also showed how insurgency wrecked hundreds of towns and villages in Borno state. Many of the rural settlements were overrun after Boko Haram lost urban ground under Buhari’s watch.

Even with significant investment in security, a large portion of rural Nigeria remains ungoverned to date. As the former president failed to curb the forest exploits of Boko Haram, the terror group expanded control over ungoverned spaces, particularly in the North Central and North East regions. In Niger State alone, terrorists took over communities in Shiroro, Rafi, Paikoro, and Munya LGAs, uprooting thousands and launching multiple attacks. The lack of accessible roads and communication infrastructure made rapid response nearly impossible, allowing the terrorists to operate with impunity.

HumAngle found that, under Buhari, Nigeria lost many forest areas to terrorists, especially in Niger state. In areas like Galadima Kogo, terrorists imposed taxes, enforced laws, and ran parallel administrations. The withdrawal of soldiers from key bases emboldened the terrorists. This shift from urban insurgency to rural domination underscores the failure to secure Nigeria’s vast ungoverned spaces. Analysts who conducted a study on alternative sovereignties in Nigeria confirmed that Boko Haram and other non-state actors exploited the governance gaps under Buhari’s administration to expand their influence, threatening national security.

Perspectives from areas affected by conflict

For individuals beyond Abuja and Lagos, Buhari’s governance was characterised more by the state’s tangible influence than by formal policy declarations.

In Borno and Yobe, civilians faced military checkpoints and insurgent violence. School abductions like the Dapchi abduction and many others were recorded..

In Zamfara and Katsina, the president’s silence on mass abductions often resounded more than his condemnations. In Rivers and Bayelsa, the Amnesty Programme faltered, and pipeline protection frequently took precedence over human security.

What remained unaddressed

While some lauded his stance against corruption, numerous victims of violence and injustice during Buhari’s time in office did not receive restitution or formal acknowledgement of the wrongdoing. The former President remained silent during his tenure, as significant human rights violations were recorded. The investigations into military abuses, massacres, forced disappearances, and electoral violence either progressed slowly or ultimately came to an end.

Police brutality was a major problem during his tenure, leading to the EndSARS protests that swept through the entire nation in October 2020, with Lagos and Abuja being the major sites. The peaceful protests sought to demand an end to extrajudicial killings and extortion inflicted by the now-defunct Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS). For two weeks, Nigerians trooped into the streets with placards and speakers, memorialising the victims of police brutality and demanding an end to the menace. The protests came to a painful end on the night of October 20, when the Nigerian military arrived at the Lekki Toll Gate in Lagos and fired live rounds into the crowd of unarmed civilians as they sat on the floor, singing the national anthem. It is now known as the Lekki Massacre. Though the government denied that there was any violence, much less a massacre, a judicial panel of inquiry set up to investigate the incident confirmed that there had, in fact, been a massacre. 

No arrests were made, and activitsts believe some protesters arrested then may still be in detention to date.

Five years before this, on December 13 and 14, the Nigerian military opened fire on a religious procession in Zaria, containing members of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN), killing many and leaving others wounded. The incident is now known as the Zaria Massacre. HumAngle spoke to families of some of the people who were killed and children who were brutalised during this time.

Though these massacres have all been well documented, there has been little to no accountability for the aggressors or compensation for victims and their families. 

“My life became useless, losing three children and my husband to soldiers for committing no offence…I have never gone three days without my husband and all my children. This has affected my last-born, who is now in a psychiatric facility,” Sherifat Yakubu, 60, told HumAngle. 

“I feel a great wrench of sadness anytime I remember the injustice against my people, and I don’t think the authorities are ready to dispense justice,” another victim told HumAngle in 2022, highlighting the gap and lack of trust in the system created by the absence of any accountability after the incident.

Key achievements 

Beyond the headlines, Buhari played a crucial role in establishing a framework for centralised security authority. Choices regarding law enforcement, military presence, and national security circumvented local leaders and established institutions, exacerbating conflicts between the central government and regional entities. This centralisation continues to influence Nigeria’s democratic journey, disconnecting many experiences from those who are supposed to safeguard them.

Buhari rode into power on a widely hailed anti-corruption campaign, a promise honoured with the swift implementation of the already-proposed Single Treasury Account (TSA). By 2017, the programme, which consolidated up to 17,000 accounts, had saved the country up to ₦5.244 trillion. Buhari’s Presidential Initiative on Continuous Audit (PICA) eliminated over ₦54,000 ghost jobs, and Nigeria reclaimed ₦32 billion in assets in 2019. Under the same administration, Nigeria got back $300 million in Swiss-held Abacha loot. 

From 2.5 million MT in 2015, rice production rose to four million MT in 2017. In an effort to deter rice, poultry and fertiliser smuggling, the former president closed Nigeria’s land borders on August 20, 2019, a move believed to have bolstered local food production significantly. His government’s Presidential Fertiliser Initiative also produced over 60 million 50 kg bags, saving about $200 million in forex and ₦60 million yearly.

Infrastructural achievements under the late president include the completion of the Abuja-Kaduna, Itakpe-Warri and  Lagos-Ibadan railway projects, as well as the extension of the Lagos-Ibadan-Port Harcourt rail line. Notably, his government completed the Second Niger Bridge and the Lekki Deep Seaport.

Fatalities from Boko Haram reduced by 92 per cent, from 2,131 deaths in 2015 to 178 in 2021. Under the same administration, over a million Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) were resettled, and 13,000+ hostages, including some Chibok and Dapchi schoolgirls, regained freedom. The same government acquired 38 new aircraft and Nigeria’s first military satellite (Delsat-1).

In 2021, the Buhari government signed the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), restructuring the Nigerian National Petroleum Commission (NNPC) into a commercial entity and setting the stage for significant transformation in the country’s oil and gas sector.

Confronting the past may be the path forward

The passing of a president demands more than mere remembrance or the crafting of political narratives. It should create an opportunity for national reflection. As Nigeria faces fresh challenges of insecurity, displacement, and regional strife, Buhari’s legacy presents both insights and cautions. 

As official tributes accumulate, Nigerians reflect not only on what Buhari accomplished but also on what remains incomplete.

Duhan van der Merwe, for one, wants “to leave a legacy” as he prepares to earn his 50th cap versus the USA at Murrayfield on Saturday.

“There’s still a lot more to give. I wouldn’t say there’s something I want to achieve as an individual, but as a team, I probably want to look forward to this autumn nations and go and win all four games,” the Edinburgh wing said.

“Looking at the Six Nations, have a real go at that. We’ve been talking about that over the last couple of years. Hopefully, the day I retire, I’ll be able to say I’ve won a Six Nations.”

Things are looking brighter for Scotland heading into this campaign than they were for this year’s Six Nations, when a crippling injury list grew to such horrendous proportions that any chance of a title challenge was mortally wounded before the action even kicked off.

Sione Tuipulotu, Scott Cummings, Kyle Steyn and all the others have returned, with Huw Jones the only notable absentee for this autumn series.

The healthy Scottish representation on the summer British and Irish Lions tour – 12 Scots tasted action in Australia – should also inject some fresh confidence into the group.

For Van der Merwe, however, it was a mixed experience. Having played all three matches in the Test series in South Africa in 2021, he failed to break into Andy Farrell’s matchday squad for any of the three Tests against the Wallabies.

“It was obviously bittersweet,” the 30-year-old said.

“It was a really special tour to be involved in that. Unfortunately, I wasn’t selected in one of the Tests, but I’ll be taking it game by game just to try and be at my best for Scotland.

“I’m not going to particularly look at a single game and say, ‘you guys didn’t select me’ and I’m going to try and have my best game’. I’m just going to take it game by game to show what I can do as a player.”

Van der Merwe has shown exactly what he can do in a Scotland jersey since his Test debut against Georgia in 2020.

He delivered a taste of what was to come in his first Scotland outing with a try – and he has gone on to amass 32 of them in 49 caps to become the country’s record try-scorer.

Starting against the USA will give him a chance to extend that record – and an opportunity to enjoy a personal milestone that seemed unlikely when he started his rugby journey in Scotland five years ago.

“It’s an unbelievable feeling,” he said. “When I made my debut back five years ago, I never thought I’d be sitting here making my 50th. It’s just a very special moment for myself and my family.

“I came over as a pretty raw player back in 2017 to Edinburgh. So to be on the receiving side of a couple of walk-ins and a couple of lucky tries against England kind of just shows the hard work that I’ve put in over the last couple of years.

“There’s been a lot of special memories over the last five years. I’m not getting any younger, am I? I kind of have to make the most out of what I think I’ve got left. I’ve got so much more to give over the next couple of years.”

Fortunately for avid bibliophiles, Harper Lee was an inveterate pack rat. Born in rural Monroeville, Ala., in 1926, the author of “To Kill a Mockingbird” — whose first name is Nelle, her grandmother Ellen’s name spelled backward — spent much of her adult life in Manhattan after moving there in 1949.

First, she lived in a cold-water flat on the Upper East Side (subsisting on peanut butter sandwiches and meager bookstore and airline ticket agent salaries); then in a room in a Midtown hotel where Edith Wharton and Mark Twain once resided; a third-floor York Avenue walk-up ($20 a month for five years, where “Go Set a Watchman” and “To Kill a Mockingbird” were written); and, finally four decades at 433 E. 82nd St. There, amid “piles of her correspondence and practically every pay stub, telephone bill and canceled check ever issued to her, were notebooks and manuscripts” and eight previously unpublished early short stories and eight once-published essays and magazine articles. Those writings, discovered in her New York City apartment after she died in her Alabama hometown nine years ago, have been gathered into the welcome hybrid compendium “The Land of Sweet Forever.”

The short stories take up the first half of the collection, but it’s an unusual selection in the second half, “Essays and Miscellaneous Pieces,” that may reveal as much about the burgeoning author as the fictional juvenilia. In a contribution to “The Artists’ & Writers’ Cookbook” (1961), along with entries by Lillian Hellman, William Styron and Marianne Moore, Lee offered a one-page recipe for crackling bread, complete with the authorial observation, “some historians say by which alone fell the Confederacy.” The opening instruction is, “First, catch your pig.” After that, the ingredients (water-ground white meal, salt, baking powder, egg, milk) and directions might just as well function as an analogy for the process of writing and editing a manuscript.

In her introduction, Lee’s appointed biographer Casey Cep observes that it “takes enormous patience and unerring instincts to refine a scrap of story into something … keen and moving.” Lee admits to being “more of a rewriter than a writer.” In a 1950 letter to one of her sisters, she outlines her typical writing day, working through at least three drafts:

From around noon, work on the first draft. By dinnertime, I’ve usually put my idea down. I then stop for a sandwich or a full meal, depending on whether I’ve got to think more about the story or just finish it. After dinner, I work on a second draft, which involves sometimes tearing the story up and putting it together again in an entirely different way, or just keeping at it until everything is like I want it. Then I retype it on white paper, conforming to rules of manuscript preparation, and run out & mail it. That sounds simple, but sometimes I have worked through the night on one; usually I end up around two or three in the morning.

It’s all rather like testing, perfecting a recipe. If the product was these eight short stories, then “yes, chef” has baked a perfect loaf.

Each story illuminates Lee’s quintessential talents as the “balladeer of small-town culture” and the chronicler of city life. They display narrative skills, an acute ear for dialogue (especially the vernacular), development of fully rounded characters and vivid descriptions of settings. They also introduce subjects and significant themes — family, friendship, moral compass — that reappear in her nonfiction and novels.

Country life imposes restrictions on childhood characters in the first three stories. In “The Water Tank” anxious 12-year-old Abby Henderson, reacting to schoolyard rumors, believes she’s pregnant because she hugged a boy whose pants were unbuttoned. Anti-authoritarian first grader Dody (one of Harper’s nicknames) in “The Binoculars” is chastised for not tracing but writing her name on the blackboard. Early glimpses of “Mockingbird’s” Scout and Atticus Finch appear in the amusing “The Pinking Shears” when third grader “little Jean Louie” (without the later “s”) undermines gender rules when she whacks off a rambunctious minister’s daughter’s lengthy locks.

In New York City, where “sooner or later you meet everybody you ever knew on Fifth Avenue,” urban stress leads to a shocking monologue with an incendiary conclusion about feuding neighbors in “A Roomful of Kibble,” a frivolous kind of parlor game involving movie titles in “The Viewer and the Viewed,” and a humorous parking incident when one friend agrees to help another with lighting for a fashion show in “This Is Show Business?”

The closing title short story, “The Land of Sweet Forever,” adeptly merges locations and themes. It opens with a satirical nod to Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice”: “It is a truth generally acknowledged by the citizens of Maycomb, Ala., that a single woman in possession of little else but a good knowledge of English social history must be in want of someone to talk to.” When adult Jean Louise (now with the “s”) leaves the city for home, she has a hilarious church encounter with someone she hadn’t seen since they were children, 21-year-old Talbert Wade, now with the taint of three years as an economics major at Northwestern University and a patina full of Europe, looking “suspiciously as if he had returned from a tour and had picked up a Brooks Brothers suit on the way home.” Together, they are trying to understand why the doxology, always sung “in one way and one way only” suddenly has been “pepped up” with an energetic organ accompaniment. Before it’s resolved there is an amusing anecdote about a cow obituary in verse and a concluding bow to Voltaire’s “Candide” when Jean Louise concedes that “all things happen for the best in this, the best of all possible worlds.” The story is a resounding example of Lee’s scintillating sense of wry humor.

Big themes of love, family and friendship recur in the eight previously published essays and articles (from 1961 to 2006) that appeared in Vogue, McCall’s, an American Film Institute program (about Gregory Peck), a Book of the Month Club newsletter (on the “little boy next door” Truman Capote and “In Cold Blood”), Alabama History and Heritage Festival, and O, the Oprah Magazine (a letter about the joy of learning to read). In addition to the crackling bread recipe that serves as a fingerpost to Lee’s writing process, the standout essay “Christmas to Me” details how she received a generous gift that changed her life, allowing her to become an accomplished, published writer. In 1956, best friends, lyricist-composer Michael Brown and his wife, Joy, surprised her with an envelope on the tree with a note, “You have one year off from your job to write whatever you please. Merry Christmas.” That meant $100 every month, covering more than five times her rent.

Juvenilia is tricky. It can be evanescent, exposing weaknesses or revealing strengths and talent. “The Land of Sweet Forever” reinforces Lee’s indelible voice, contributing a rewarding addition and resource to the slim canon of her literary legacy.

The recipe for crackling bread:

First, catch your pig. Then ship it to the abattoir nearest you. Bake what they send back. Remove the solid fat and throw the rest away. Fry fat, drain off liquid grease, and combine the residue (called “cracklings”) with:

1 ½ cups water-ground white meal
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 egg
1 cup milk

Bake in very hot oven until brown (about 15 minutes).

Result: one pan crackling bread serving 6. Total cost: about $250, depending upon size of pig. Some historians say by this recipe alone fell the Confederacy.

Papinchak, a former English professor, is a freelance book critic in Los Angeles. He has also contributed interviews to Bon Appetit.

THE son of Dame Deborah James has honoured her “amazing” legacy by following in her fundraising footsteps.

Hugo Bowen ran the Royal Parks Half Marathon at the weekend, smashing his target to raise £3,000 for her Bowelbabe Fund, in true Dame Debs style.

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The 18-year-old told The Sun: “Running was something Mum and I used to do when I was younger, we often did park runs and I think I spurred her on to run a little faster.

“It was amazing, there was so much support along the route, which really helped motivate me to run harder and faster than I would have.

“It meant so much to be able to run in memory of her, and the amazing change she has inspired.”

Reflecting on the advice his running-obsessed mum would’ve given before the race, he added: “She would definitely have told me to make sure I had had a poo.

“And to ‘go smash it’, which I probably did a bit too much at the start, so I was super tired towards the end.”

Hugo was 14 years old when Dame Deborah died at the age of 40 in June 2022, five and a half years after being diagnosed with stage 4 bowel cancer. 

In the last weeks of her life, the Sun columnist launched her Bowelbabe Fund, aiming to raise £250,000 to help fund research into the disease to help prevent “any future Deborahs”, and give cancer patients the hope of new and better treatments.

So far, the Fund has supported more than 11 different projects, including a state-of-the-art interventional radiology machine at The Royal Marsden hospital where Deborah was treated.

Other scientific studies that have received a contribution from the Fund include one that is investigating personalised medicine for patients with bowel cancer, a cause Dame Debs was very passionate about.

And earlier this year, Deborah’s husband Seb Bowen, parents Heather and Alistair James and brother Ben James were on hand when the new Bowelbabe Lab was unveiled at The Francis Crick Institute, home to a team of scientists using ‘mini bowel tumours’ or organoids to test new and more targeted treatments.

Just days later Heather and Alistair were invited to a reception with King Charles where His Majesty hailed Deborah “an inspiration to us all, in sickness and health”.

The King went on to quote Debs parting message to her followers before she died: “Find a life worth enjoying; take risks; love deeply; have no regrets; and always, always have rebellious hope.”

“I’m honestly so proud of Mum and everything the Fund has done to help others,” Hugo added.

“I remember when she set it up she had a target of £250,000 and now we are at over £18million raised – it is beyond what any of us could’ve imagined.

“It’s such a beautiful legacy for my Mum and the research it is funding will save so many lives.”

Inspired by his mum, Hugo has already added another £4,300 to the Fund’s total, and thanked all those who have supported him so far.

“Everyone has been so supportive, I thought £3,000 would be a really difficult target to hit but we’ve smashed it and I’m so happy and honestly so surprised,” he added.

“I’m really grateful to everyone that has donated.”

Hugo was just the latest in the family to take on a running challenge, with Debs’ brother Ben and sister Sarah taking on the London Marathon this year – Sarah wearing the same poo emoji costume her sister was often seeing running in.

To donate to Hugo’s efforts, visit  https://fundraise.cancerresearchuk.org/page/hugos-royal-parks-half.

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Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt, a lovable, quick-witted nun who became a national phenomenon for her relentless support of the Loyola Chicago University basketball team during its magical Final Four run in 2018, died Thursday, the school said. She was 106.

Sister Jean, as she was known, was 98 during Loyola’s March Madness splash. Her ever-present smile and the sparkle in her eyes were trademarks as she cheered on an unheralded underdog team that notched upset after upset before falling in the semifinals.

After each victory, she was pushed onto the court in her wheelchair and Loyola players and coaches swarmed to her, believing Sister Jean had somehow authored divine intervention.

“Just to have her around and her presence and her aura, when you see her, it’s just like the world is just great because of her spirit and her faith in us and Loyola basketball,” Loyola guard Marques Townes said at the time.

For her part, the lifelong nun downplayed any celestial impact even when leading the Ramblers in pregame prayers in her role as team chaplain.

“At the end of the prayer I always ask God to be sure that the scoreboard indicates that the Ramblers have the big W,” she told the Chicago Tribune. “God always hears but maybe he thinks it’s better for us to do the ‘L’ instead of the ‘W,’ and we have to accept that.”

Sister Jean lived on the top floor of Regis Hall, a campus dormitory that housed mostly freshmen. She’d broken her left hip during a fall a few months before the March Madness run, necessitating the wheelchair. But once she recovered, the barely 5-foot-tall firebrand was plenty mobile in her Loyola maroon Nikes.

She compiled scouting reports on opponents and hand-delivered them to the coaching staff. She sent encouraging emails to players and coaches after games, celebrating or consoling them depending on the outcome.

“If I had a down game or didn’t help the team like I thought I could,” Loyola star forward Donte Ingram said at the time, “she’d be like, ‘Keep your head up. They were out to get you tonight, but you still found ways to pull through.’ Just stuff like that.”

Sister Jean could also be quick with a joke. And she was hardly self-effacing. Told that the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum sold a record number of Sister Jean statuettes, she cracked during a special media breakout session at the Final Four, “I’m not saying this in a proud fashion, but I think the company could retire when they’re finished making my bobbleheads.”

Even the Covid shutdown couldn’t dampen her spirit. In 2021 at age 102, Sister Jean traveled to Indianapolis and watched Loyola upset top-seeded Illinois 71-58 to earn a berth in that year’s Sweet 16. The Ramblers players waved to her in the stands after the game.

“It was a great moment,” Sister Jean told reporters. “We just held our own the whole time. At the end, to see the scoreboard said the W belonged to Loyola, that whole game was just so thrilling.”

Dolores Bertha Schmidt was born in San Francisco on Aug. 21, 1919, the oldest of three children. She felt a calling to become a nun in the third grade, and after high school joined a convent in Dubuque, Iowa.

After taking her vows, she returned to California and became an elementary school teacher, first at St. Bernard School in Glassell Park before moving in 1946 to St. Charles Borromeo School in North Hollywood, where she also coached several sports including basketball. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Mount St. Mary’s College in L.A. in 1949.

“At noon, during lunch on the playground, I would have the boys play the girls,” she told the Athletic. “I told them, ‘I know you have to hold back because you play full court, but we need to make our girls strong.’ And they did make them strong.”

Among her students were Cardinal Roger Mahony, who served as archbishop of Los Angeles from 1985 to 2011, Father Thomas Rausch, chairman of the theology department at Loyola Marymount, and Sister Mary Milligan, who became the first U.S.-born general superior of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary.

Sister Jean earned a master’s degree from Loyola Marymount University in L.A. in 1961 and took a teaching position in Chicago at Mundelein College, a school near Loyola that was all women at the time. She later served as dean.

Mundelein merged with Loyola in 1991 and within a few years Sister Jean became a team chaplain, a position she held until earlier this year.

“In many roles at Loyola over the course of more than 60 years, Sister Jean was an invaluable source of wisdom and grace for generations of students, faculty, and staff,” Loyola President Mark C. Reed said in a statement. “While we feel grief and a sense of loss, there is great joy in her legacy. Her presence was a profound blessing for our entire community and her spirit abides in thousands of lives. In her honor, we can aspire to share with others the love and compassion Sister Jean shared with us.”

Asked about her legacy, Sister Jean told the Chicago Tribune she hoped to be remembered as someone who served others.

“The legacy I want is that I helped people and I was not afraid to give my time to people and teach them to be positive about what happens and that they can do good for other people,” she said. “And being willing to take a risk. People might say, ‘Why didn’t I do that?’ Well, just go ahead and try it — as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody.”

This story contains spoilers for “Tron: Ares.”

Get ready to enter the Grid: “Tron: Ares” has finally hit theaters.

Directed by Joachim Rønning, “Tron: Ares” is the third installment of the classic sci-fi franchise that kicked off with the 1982 film “Tron.” And like many modern movies that are part of an expansive Hollywood franchise, “Tron: Ares” makes sure to leave the door open for future storytelling.

“Tron: Ares” does so in the closing moments of the movie’s main story as well as in a stinger that plays after the credits start to roll.

The film, which picks up sometime after the events of “Tron: Legacy” (2010), stars Jared Leto as an advanced AI program named Ares created by Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters), a programmer and rising CEO of a tech corporation. Greta Lee portrays Eve Kim, also a programmer and the CEO of the tech company once led by original “Tron” hero Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges).

Although extensive knowledge of the previous films is not necessarily required to understand “Tron: Ares,” fans of “Tron” and “Legacy” will be the first to recognize the significance of the doors that the film leaves open. (Turn back now if you want to avoid spoilers.)

Evan Peters as Julian Dillinger in “Tron: Ares.”

(Leah Gallo / Disney)

The mid-credits scene is a callback to ‘Tron’

“Tron: Ares” ends with Julian — the grandson of Flynn’s original “Tron” rival, Edward Dillinger — escaping into Dillinger Corp.’s Grid.

The mid-credits scene shows Julian taking in the wreckage of his digital world before noticing and activating his identity disc. After taking ahold of the glowing circular object, his digital suit starts to form in a familiar silhouette.

Those who have seen “Tron” will recognize that Julian’s suit resembles that of Sark, the villainous program written by Ed Dillinger, who led the original film’s Master Control Program army. In “Tron,” Sark was played by David Warner, who also portrayed Ed.

The scene further cements Julian as the successor to his grandfather’s legacy and leaves the possibility open for his return as a villain in a future “Tron” installment.

Jared Leto as Ares in “Tron: Ares.”

(Leah Gallo / Disney)

‘Tron: Ares’ ends by teasing a future link-up with ‘Tron: Legacy’

The new “Tron” movie ends by hinting that Ares’ story is not quite over, either. In the final moments of the film, Ares is shown looking at images of Quorra, a character portrayed by Olivia Wilde in “Tron: Legacy.”

Quorra, like Ares, started her existence in the Grid and eventually made her way out into the real world. But Quorra isn’t a man-made program; she is an “isomorphic algorithm,” or a digital being who spontaneously came into existence in the Grid. She was introduced in “Legacy” as Flynn’s charge who was learning about humanity from him.

Could a meeting between Ares and Quorra be in the “Tron” franchise’s future? Only time (and likely “Tron: Ares’” box office returns) will tell.

If there’s a scene that best encapsulates the tragically abbreviated career of John Candy, it’s not necessarily from his time on the sketch-comedy series “SCTV” or from movies like “Stripes” or “Uncle Buck.” It’s a moment in the 1987 comedy-drama “Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” when his reluctant roommate Neal Page (played by Steve Martin) has spent several minutes berating him for his relentless storytelling.

With a lump in his throat, Candy’s wounded character Del Griffith replies that he’s proud of who he is. “I like me,” he says. “My wife likes me. My customers like me. Because I’m the real article — what you see is what you get.”

That moment proves pivotal to two new projects that retrace Candy’s life and work some 31 years after the actor died from a heart attack at the age of 43. The actor would have turned 75 this month.

A biography, “John Candy: A Life in Comedy,” written by Paul Myers (released by House of Anansi Press on Tuesday), and a documentary, “John Candy: I Like Me,” directed by Colin Hanks (released Friday on Prime Video), both rely on Candy’s friends, family members and colleagues to help tell the story of his ascent, his success and the void left by his death.

In their own ways, both the book and the film show how Candy — while not without his demons — was beloved by audiences for his fundamental and authentic likability, and why he is still mourned today for the potential he never got to completely fulfill.

A family photo of John Candy and his son, Chris, seen in “John Candy: I Like Me.” (Prime Video)

John Candy, left, and Steve Martin in “Planes, Trains and Automobiles.” (Paramount Pictures)

Explaining why it was still important to memorialize Candy all these years later, Ryan Reynolds, the “Deadpool” star and a producer of the documentary, said, “When it’s something people desperately miss, but they don’t know they miss it, it’s a beautiful and rare thing. John Candy is a person that they missed desperately.”

Since his death, Candy’s immediate survivors — his widow, Rosemary; daughter, Jennifer Candy-Sullivan; and son, Chris Candy — have weighed the pluses and minuses of sharing his life with audiences and the impact it might have on them (the three are co-executive producers on the film). “It’s a balancing act,” said Chris Candy. “You want to live your life and you also want to honor theirs.”

In recent years, Candy’s children said they were encouraged by documentaries like Morgan Neville’s “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?,” about the children’s TV broadcaster Fred Rogers, as well as Hanks’ film “All Things Must Pass,” about the Tower Records retail chain.

Hanks, whose father, Tom, acted with Candy in films like “Splash” and “Volunteers,” said he struggled at first to find a compelling way to tell the story of Candy, who had a seemingly charmed and uncontroversial acting career, first in his native Toronto and then in Hollywood.

But Hanks said he was drawn into Candy’s story by a particular detail: the fact that Candy’s own father, Sidney, had died from heart disease at the age of 35, right before John turned 5. “It doesn’t take much to think about how traumatic that could be for anyone at any age,” Hanks said.

Chris Candy, from left, Jennifer Candy-Sullivan and Colin Hanks, who directed the Prime Video documentary “John Candy: I Like Me.”

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Myers, a musician and journalist who has written books about the band Barenaked Ladies and comedy troupe the Kids in the Hall, said he was drawn to Candy as a fellow Canadian and an embodiment of the national comedic spirit.

“If you’re Canadian like I am, you never stop thinking about John Candy,” Myers said. Growing up in the Toronto area, Myers said he and his siblings — including his brother Mike, the future “Shrek” and “Austin Powers” star — were avid fans of sketch comedy shows like “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” and “Saturday Night Live.”

But “SCTV,” which launched stars like Candy, Catherine O’Hara and Eugene Levy, meant even more to them. “We watched it from Day 1 and we cheered a little bit harder for them because it was like they were shooting the show blocks away from our house,” Myers said.

Reynolds, who was born and raised in Vancouver, said that Candy’s essential Canadian spirit was crucial to his success as a comic actor.

“In comedy, Canadians typically don’t punch down,” Reynolds said. “It’s more of a self-effacing humor. Their favorite target is themselves. And John did that. On screen, I felt his willingness and joy in self-effacing humor that never really veered into self-loathing humor.”

Ryan Reynolds at the Los Angeles screening of “I Like Me” earlier this month. The actor was a producer on the film.

(Todd Williamson / January Images)

Candy parlayed his repertoire of “SCTV” characters — satirical media personalities like Johnny LaRue and real-life celebrities like Orson Welles — into supporting parts in hit films like “National Lampoon’s Vacation,” “The Blues Brothers,” “Brewster’s Millions” and “Spaceballs.”

His penchants for drinking and smoking were well-known and hardly out of the ordinary for that era; they rarely impeded Candy’s work and, in at least one notable instance, seem to have enhanced it: Both the documentary and the biography recount how Candy indulged in a late-night bender with Jack Nicholson before rising the next morning to shoot a scene in “Splash” where his character fumbles, flails and smokes his way through a round of racquetball.

“That’s his work ethic, right there,” said Candy-Sullivan. “He showed up and he did the scene.”

Candy graduated to lead roles in comedies like “Summer Rental,” “The Great Outdoors” and “Who’s Harry Crumb?,” and he found a kindred spirit in the writer and director John Hughes, who helped provide Candy with some of his most enduring roles in movies like “Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” “Uncle Buck” and “Home Alone.”

But offscreen, Candy was contending with anxiety and he was sensitive to people’s judgments about his size — remarks which often came directly from TV interviewers who thought nothing of asking him point-blank whether Candy was planning to lose weight.

When he and his sister watched archival footage of these interviews in the documentary, Chris Candy said, “It was, for both of us, uncomfortable. I wasn’t familiar with what he was putting up with and how he would mentally jujitsu in and out of those conversations. He got more and more curt about it as time goes on, and you can see it in the interviews.”

But these psychic wounds didn’t make Candy a cruel or nasty person; he simply absorbed the hurt and redoubled his efforts to be a genial performer.

“If you’re looking for darkness in the story of John Candy, a lot of it’s just internalized pain,” Myers said. “His own coping mechanism was radical niceness to everybody — making human connections so that he would have community and feel like he’s making things better.”

In the early 1990s, Candy seemed to be working nonstop. He appeared in five different feature films in 1991 alone, a year that included duds like “Nothing But Trouble” as well as a small but potentially transformative role in Oliver Stone’s drama “JFK,” where he played the flamboyant attorney Dean Andrews Jr. He was preparing his own directorial debut, a TV film called “Hostage For a Day” in which he starred with George Wendt. Candy also became a co-owner and one-man pep squad for the Toronto Argonauts, the Canadian Football League team.

Eventually, the many demands and stresses in his life came to a head. Amid a grueling shoot for the western comedy “Wagons East” in Durango, Mexico, Candy died on March 4, 1994. He had a private funeral in the Los Angeles area, followed by a public memorial in Toronto that prompted a national outpouring of grief in Canada.

“He represented the best of us,” Myers said. “He was a humanity-centric person. He brought vulnerability and humility to his characters, which is not something you usually see in broad comedy.”

Candy’s films continue to play on television and streaming — both “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” and “Home Alone” have become year-end holiday staples. But for the people involved in chronicling Candy’s life, there is a creeping sense that the actor’s legacy will not tend to itself, and that the generations who did not grow up with Candy might need reminders of what made him worth remembering.

Hanks recalled a story from the making of “I Like Me” where he and some colleagues were dining at a restaurant where the hostess asked them what they were working on.

“We said we’re making a documentary,” Hanks said. “ ‘Oh, really?’ she goes. ‘Who’s it about?’ It’s about John Candy. She goes, ‘Oh, who’s that?’ No idea who it was. I said, well, have you seen ‘Home Alone’? Remember the polka guy that picks up the mom and takes her in the van? ‘Oh, I loved him. He’s great.’”

Part of his interest in making a film about Candy, Hanks said, is “wanting to showcase the man that people love and remind them why they loved them.”

But there is also the simple pleasure in introducing Candy’s work to people who haven’t seen it before. “If you’re lucky,” Hanks said, “you get to hopefully have them go, ‘God, I want to see those movies. I want to go watch ‘SCTV.’”

Two games into the Eastern League football season and it’s already clear that the matchup on Oct. 17 featuring Garfield at South Gate should decide the league championship.

Garfield (3-2, 2-0), with All-City running back Ceasar Reyes leading the way, defeated Huntington Park 35-28 on Thursday night. South Gate (4-2, 2-0), relying on quarterback Michael Gonzalez, defeated Legacy 48-8.

Reyes rushed for 259 yards in 20 carries and scored four touchdowns. He also had eight tackles on defense. Reyes has been seeing some action as a wildcat quarterback, adding options for first-year coach Patrick Vargas.

Gonzalez passed for 202 yards and one touchdown and ran for 71 yards and two touchdowns against Legacy. He’s got 16 touchdown passes this season.

This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email [email protected].

Men’s team manager Arne Slot said Beard “did great things for this football club”.

“I think the Melwood staff and everyone that worked with him liked him so much – and that’s probably even a more important legacy to leave behind than the trophies you win,” he added.

“The person you are is always more important than what you’ve won. But in his situation, both things were combined: so successful as a manager and a great human being.

“It’s not only that he gets all the respect he deserves here at Liverpool but I think all around women’s football.”

Liverpool Women managing director Andy O’Boyle also paid tribute to Beard, saying: “On behalf of everyone at Liverpool Football Club, I’d just like to extend our greatest condolences to Matt’s family; his wife Debbie, his children Harry and Ellie, and his wider family and friends.

“It has been a really sad time for everyone. You have seen how the club and football have come together, and we extend our sympathies to Matt’s family and friends at this time.

“Matt has been an iconic figure in the women’s game. Obviously winning two WSL titles with Liverpool and then also getting promoted from the Championship up to the WSL. You can see over the years the success he has brought to the club.

“Not just the success on the pitch, the success off the pitch as well in terms of the people, the players, the staff, colleagues within the game – you can see how much love and joy he brought to Liverpool, the football club and also to women’s football and wider football.”

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

Robert Redford died this week at age 89 at his home outside Provo, Utah. The actor, producer and director had been a star for more than 60 years, going back to the 1963 comedy “Barefoot in the Park” and covering an enormously long list of performances in films such as “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “The Hot Rock,” “Downhill Racer,” “The Way We Were,” “The Candidate,” “The Sting,” “Three Days of the Condor,” “All the President’s Men,” “The Electric Horseman,” “The Natural” and many more.

Redford was also an accomplished director, winning an Oscar for his debut “Ordinary People” and going on to make films such as “A River Runs Through It,” “Quiz Show,” “The Horse Whisperer,” “The Conspirator” and others.

In a survey of his career, Amy Nicholson wrote, “To appreciate Redford fully, we have to applaud not only the work he did but the simple, feel-good roles he rejected. He could have become a celebrity without breaking a sweat as the war hero, the jock, the husband, the cowboy, the American ideal made incarnate. Yet, he had the rare ability to sidestep what audiences thought we wanted from him to instead give us something we didn’t know we needed: selfish victors (‘Downhill Racer’), self-destructive veterans (‘The Great Waldo Pepper’) and tragic men who did everything right and still failed (2013’s ‘All Is Lost’).”

Robert Redford at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York in 2015.

(Evan Agostini / Invision / AP)

Nicholson added, “Lately, the Redford roles I’ve been thinking about are the ones where his all-American appeal makes us examine all of America, good and bad. The two that instantly jump to mind are his pair of political thrillers: ‘Three Days of the Condor,’ in which he plays a CIA agent on the run from his own co-workers, and ‘All the President’s Men,’ in which he doggedly uncovers the Watergate scandal. Both films believe in the power of getting the truth out to the press; neither is so naive as to think the truth alone will save the day.”

And then there is a whole other side to Redford: his extensive work as an activist on behalf of environmental causes and his founding of the Sundance Institute, which lead to the creation of the Sundance Film Festival.

I took a look at Redford’s work with Sundance and how he did nothing less than transform Hollywood, carving out a space for independent artists and opening doors for those who had been previously shut out by the industry.

“Mr. Redford was a shining example of how to leverage success into community building, discovery and empowerment,” filmmaker Ryan Coogler said in a statement. Coogler’s own career was launched via Sundance.

“In these trying times it hurts to lose an elder like Mr. Redford, someone who through their words, their actions and their commitment left their industry in a better place than they found it.”

Robert Redford and Lauren Hutton in 1970’s “Little Fauss and Big Halsy.”

(Steve Schapiro / Fahey / Klein Gallery)

I personally met Redford only once, when I moderated a Q&A in 2013 for “The Company You Keep,” in which he starred as a former ’60s radical. It would be the last feature film he directed. I was introduced to him shortly before we were to go in front of an audience together and he wanted to sit and talk for a moment. He immediately asked me about myself, where I was from and how long I had been a journalist.

It was thoroughly disarming to have someone so famous engage with me in a way that felt so genuine. Suddenly he was not a movie star, though he did indeed possess an otherworldly grace, charm and rugged beauty, but rather something even larger, someone who engaged with the world from a place of true curiosity. He leaves a lasting legacy, having touched countless lives.

There will surely be many more tributes and events to come, but Vidiots has already announced a screening of Alan J. Pakula’s 1976 “All the President’s Men,” starring Redford and Dustin Hoffman, on 35mm for Friday, Oct. 3.

‘Mysterious Skin’ in 4K

Joseph Gordon-Levitt, left, and Brady Corbet in the movie “Mysterious Skin.”

(Tartan Films)

Seeing the ongoing revival of Gregg Araki’s filmography in restored versions as fans wait for his upcoming film, “I Want Your Sex,” has been very gratifying. Tonight, the Academy Museum will present Araki’s 2004 “Mysterious Skin” in a new 4K restoration followed by a conversation with Araki, actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt and novelist Scott Heim, moderated by “Anora” filmmaker Sean Baker.

“Mysterious Skin” is a delicately told, crushingly disturbing tale of two young men (played by Gordon-Levitt and future “The Brutalist” director Brady Corbet) who each process an incident of sexual abuse from their childhood in different ways. The cast also includes Elisabeth Shue, Mary Lynn Rajskub and Michelle Trachtenberg, who died earlier this year.

Reviewing the film at the time, Kevin Thomas wrote, “The most mature work by the idiosyncratic and gifted Araki, ‘Mysterious Skin,’ based on the book by Scott Heim, highlights the director’s talent for inspiring the most demanding of portrayals from actors and for richly evoking the world his characters inhabit. The film has a mesmerizing floating quality, heightened by Harold Budd and Robin Guthrie’s deceptively serene score, and it has considerable offbeat, deadpan humor to offset its dark undertow. … it’s hard to imagine a more serious or persuasive indictment of the horrors inflicted on children by sexual abuse than ‘Mysterious Skin.’”

I spoke to Araki at the time about the perception that the film was a step toward a new-found maturity following the bratty punk charm of his earlier work.

“I like that it was a real departure for me and that people didn’t expect it,” said Araki. “I really appreciate that aspect of it, that I’ve never done a serious drama before. I do think that the film totally makes sense with all my other movies. There is a thematic similarity and the sensibilities of Scott [Heim] and myself are really attuned to each other. It’s not as if I’ve directed ‘Chicago.’”

J. Hoberman’s avant-garde NYC

An image from Ken Jacobs’ 1961 “The Whirled (aka Four Shorts of Jack Smith).”

(The Film-makers’ Coop)

On Thursday at 2220 Arts + Archives, Acropolis will present an evening in celebration of J. Hoberman’s inspiring and vivid recent book, “Everything Is Now: The 1960s New York Avant-Garde — Primal Happenings, Underground Movies, Radical Pop.”

Hoberman, formerly the longtime film critic for the Village Voice and an insightful cultural chronicler, will be present for a signing and Q&A along with a program of short films from the era surveyed by the book, when New York was a bubbling cauldron of creativity and restless energy. Titles screening will include Ken Jacobs’ 1961 “The Whirled (aka Four Shorts of Jack Smith),” Ron Rice’s 1962 “Senseless,” Michael Snow’s 1964 “New York Eye and Ear Control” and Jud Yalkut’s 1966 “D.M.T.”

In the introduction to his book, Hoberman explains his thesis of creating a snapshot of a time and place — he pays incredible attention to actual addresses, mapping out what was happening where — by saying, “Cultural innovation comes from the margins and is essentially collective. … New York City in the 1960s was one such cradle of artistic innovation. Boundaries were transgressed, new forms created. A collective drama played out in coffeehouses and bars, at openings and readings, in lofts and storefront theaters and ultimately in the streets.”

Points of interest

Joe Dante’s ‘Pirahna’

A scene from the 1978 movie “Piranha.”

(New World Pictures)

It is always heartening to see longtime local hero Joe Dante celebrated. He will be appearing at Vidiots on Friday, this time with his 1978 film, “Piranha.” Made for producer Roger Corman, the movie was obviously one in a series of films intended to capture the excitement and scares generated by “Jaws,” and it certainly accomplishes that, but it is also so much more.

From a screenplay written by John Sayles, who would go on to an illustrious career as a director himself, and with sharp, smart direction by Dante, “Piranha” is about a mutant strain of killer fish engineered by the military and accidentally released into a small community’s waterways.

Writing about the film in 1978, Charles Champlin said, “‘Piranha’ is what it is: a swift, efficient program picture which squeezes the most out of its dollars to squeeze delicious chills from the audience. But it also plays to the attitudes as well as the emotional needs of its young customers. The bad guys are scientists, the military, the police, the politicians (what were we doing in Vietnam?), authority in almost any uniform.”

Writing about the film in 2012, Dennis Lim added, “This was Dante’s first solo directorial outing after several years at Corman’s New World Pictures, where he got his start editing trailers, and it establishes a distinctive tone that he has sustained throughout his career, right on the line between homage and parody. The actors — several, including [Dick] Miller and [Kevin] McCarthy, who would go on to become frequent Dante collaborators — give performances that are once committed and tongue-in-cheek and the effects, in contrast to the sophisticated animatronics of ‘Jaws,’ are charmingly rough and ready.”

Aaliyah x2

Jet Li and Aaliyah star in “Romeo Must Die.”

(Kharen Hill / Warner Bros. Pictures)

As part of an ongoing Y2K Fridays series, the Gardena Cinema is showing a double-bill of movies starring the late singer and actor Aaliyah, with Andrzej Bartkowiak’s 2000 “Romeo Must Die” and Michael Rymer’s 2002 “Queen of the Damned.”

Riffing on “Romeo and Juliet,” the story of “Romeo Must Die” revolves around Jet Li and Aaliyah as members of warring crime families in Oakland who fall for each other.

Kevin Thomas wrote, “Body counts run high in this genre, but ‘Romeo Must Die,’ which marks Li’s first English-language starring role, tries for some depth and sophistication. … The film is a new step for both Li, who hopes to break out with it, and for recording star Aaliyah, in an accomplished film debut.”

Stuart Townsend and Aaliyah in “Queen of the Damned.”

(Jim Sheldon / Warner Bros. Pictures)

Based on one of the novels from Anne Rice’s popular “Vampire Chronicles,” “Queen of the Damned” stars Stuart Townsend as the vampire Lestat, here taking on the guise of a rock star, and Aaliyah as Akasha, the first vampire.

In his review at the time, Kenneth Turan wrote, “As directed by Michael Rymer and with the late rock star Aaliyah in the title role, ‘Queen of the Damned’ turns out to be a muddled limp biscuit of a movie, a vampire soap opera that doesn’t make much sense even on its own terms. Though the previous film based on Anne Rice’s popular novels, the Tom Cruise-starring ‘Interview With the Vampire,’ was far from a success, this brain-dead venture makes it look like a masterwork by comparison.”