proves

If our waking hours are a canvas, the art is how one fills it: tightly packed, loosely, a little of both. At a time when they were both 40 and the art scene in ’70s New York was in thrall to street-centered youth of all stripes, real-life writer Linda Rosenkrantz asked her close friend, photographer Peter Hujar, to make a record of his activities on one day — Dec. 18, 1974 — and then narrate those details into her tape recorder the following day at her apartment.

The goal was a book about the great mundane, the stuff of life as experienced by her talented confidants. In Hujar’s case, an uncannily observant queer artist and key gay liberation figure planning his first book, what emerged was a wry narrative of phone calls (Susan Sontag), freelancing woes (is this gig going to pay?), celebrity encounters (he does an Allen Ginsberg shoot for the New York Times) and chance meetings (some guy waiting for food at the Chinese restaurant). The Hujar transcript, recovered in 2019 sans the tape, was ultimately published as “Peter Hujar’s Day.”

Now director Ira Sachs, who came across the text while filming his previous movie “Passages,” has given this quietly mesmerizing, diaristic conversation cinematic life as a filmed performance of sorts, with “Passages” star Ben Whishaw perfectly cast as Hujar and Rebecca Hall filling out the room tone as Rosenkrantz. (They also go to the roof a couple of times, which offers enough of an exterior visual to remind us that New York is the third character getting the time-capsule treatment.)

From the whistle of a tea kettle in the daylight as Hujar amusingly feels out from Rosenkrantz what’s required of him, to twilight’s more honest self-assessments and a supine cuddle between friends who’ve spent many hours together, “Peter Hujar’s Day” captures something beautifully distilled about human experience and the comfort of others. For each of us, any given day — maybe especially a day devoid of the extraordinary — is the culmination of all we’ve been and whatever we might hope to be. That makes for a stealthy significance considering that Hujar would only live another 13 years, succumbing to AIDS-related complications in 1987. It was a loss of mentorship, aesthetic brilliance and camaraderie felt throughout the art world.

Apart from not explaining Hujar for us (nor explaining his many name drops), Sachs also doesn’t hide the meta-ness of his concept, occasionally offering glimpses of a clapperboard or the crew, or letting us hear sound blips as it appears a reel is ending. There are jump cuts too, and interludes of his actors in close-up that could be color screen tests or just a nod to Hujar’s aptitude for portraits. It’s playful but never too obtrusive, approaching an idea of how art and movies play with time and can conjure their own reality.

The simple, sparsely elegant split-level apartment creates the right authenticity for Alex Ashe’s textured 16mm cinematography. The interior play of light from day to night across Whishaw and Hall’s faces is its own dramatic arc as Hujar’s details become an intimate testimony of humor, rigor and reflection. It’s not meant to be entirely Whishaw’s show, either: As justly compelling as he is, Hall makes the act of listening (and occasionally commenting or teasing) a steady, enveloping warmth. The result is a window into the pleasures of friendship and those days when the minutiae of your loved ones seems like the stuff that true connection is built on.

When British singer Kwn (pronounced kay-one) asked her friend-collaborator Kehlani to kiss her in the video for her seductive track, “Worst Behaviour,” she knew it was going to break the internet.

With steamy lyrics like “Cut the lights, turn the bass up, we gon’ hit some notes,” the original track was already making waves online when Kwn dropped it in November. It gained even more eyes when R&B superstar and five-time Grammy nominee Kehlani hopped on the remix, which they gifted to yearning fans on Valentine’s Day.

Supporters took to social media to film their live reactions and comment on the artists’ incredibly long make-out and seemingly undeniable chemistry.

“Are … we supposed to see this? Omg,” one person said on YouTube.

“This is gonna be somebody’s awakening,” commented another.

“It’s sickening how many times I’ve replayed this video lol,” declared another.

But if you ask Kwn, the two entertainers were doing just that — entertaining. As of mid-October the video, which was directed by Chris Chance, had more than 21 million views on YouTube — a number that still shocks Kwn each time she hears it.

“I’m super happy, man. I knew that song was going to be something, and I’m glad that the world took it in just as much as I did,” Kwn says about the track that she recorded live on Instagram in her childhood bedroom in Walthamstow in east London.

Shortly after, Kwn dropped yet another chills-down-your-spine, sapphic bedroom jam, “Do What I Say,” which is the second single from her latest EP titled “With All Due Respect.” As someone who’s been making music since she was a preteen — she picked up the drums first, then attended the acclaimed East London Arts and Music school — the 25-year-old crooner says the recognition is long overdue.

“I felt like so many people were doubting me and sleeping on me, especially after [I was] dropped from my label,” says Kwn, who was let go from U.K.-based Black Butter Records in mid-2024. The direct title, “With All Due Respect,” was meant to boldly signal that she’s “not playing games anymore,” she adds.

The nine-track EP kicks off with the “bite me intro,” in which Kwn sing-raps the commanding lyrics, “I don’t want to be humble no more/Baby, bite, bite, bite me/Bite me, bite me.” This confident energy carries throughout the project including on the EP’s second feature with fellow London girl group, Flo — whom Kwn calls this generation’s Destiny’s Child — on the sensual “Talk You Through It.”

Kwn is kicking off the U.S. and Canada stretch of her With All Due Respect tour in Los Angeles on Tuesday at the Echo, which also marks her first ever headlining tour. Ahead of the sold-out L.A. show, she phoned in from London to share what she learned from touring with Kehlani, why she thinks artists should share their creative process and why she’s much more than just that viral moment. And cough cough, there’s more music on the way.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

“I’m really just being myself on stage and letting my personality out. So I think that’s what’s captivating people, which I’m glad about,” Kwn said.

(Michelle Helena Janssen)

You started making music when you were about 11 years old after your older sister took you to her friend’s at-home studio. How exciting was it for you to be learning how to lay tracks and produce tracks at such a young age?

I feel like it was always destined, to be honest. My nan showed me a video the other day of me tapping pens on the table and making beats from a super young age. I was probably like 9 or 10, and then my mom bought me a drum kit when I was super young as well. So that was the first instrument I picked up — the drums. Then obviously I was learning little bits in school like how to record myself and produce. Then my sister introduced me to that friend and he had a studio in his house. Any time my sister would go over there, I’d go with her, maybe like once a month or something and pretty much just watch his process. I’m a very visual learner so I was learning a lot just from watching people. I’d stay up really late and watch YouTube videos of people making beats and stuff.

You’ve been making music for a long time, but you didn’t release your first official song (“wn way or another”) until 2022. Take me back to that time. How did it feel to finally share your music with the world?

I was super anxious. You always think to yourself — ‘cause I signed to a record label back then as well — that as soon as you drop your first song, that’s it. You’re gonna go off. But that’s definitely not the case, d’you know what I mean? Also, it was such a long time coming because I’d written those songs so long before that probably in like 2018 and 2019. It was a long time coming, so it kind of felt like a release as well.

You were dropped from your label just days before you released your single “Eyes Wide Open,” which started catching people’s attention. Did you feel like you’d finally figured out your sound and the direction you wanted to go in with that song?

Yeah, 100%. As soon as I made that beat, I was like Ohhh. It’s clicked now. I was trying for so long to find what I was trying to do. I think I was struggling because I didn’t really understand where I was trying to go, so the people I was working with couldn’t aid me in trying to find the sound too. So as soon as I got that, I was like “Oh, this is it.” And then when I wrote it, I was like, I’ve never heard anything like this before — in the least big-headed way possible. That was definitely the moment for me where I was like “All right, this is going to do something. It has to.” If it doesn’t, then I don’t know. Obviously I’m going to keep going but it’s gotta make a little bit of a shift somewhere for me, and it did and I’m so grateful for it.

Speaking of “Eyes Wide Open,” you have a distinct style in all of your videos including “Worst Behaviour” and “Do What I Say.” You use a single frame that looks like it was shot in one take. It’s very cinematic. Can you talk about why that style resonates with you? Are you a film buff?

[Laughs] I watched a film called “The Boiling Point” and that is all shot in one take. When you watch a one take — not even just a music video — you don’t want to take your eyes off of it because you don’t want to miss anything. My director, Chris Chance, and I felt like the art of music videos kind of died a little bit. There were only a select few people that were really making [captivating] videos and things that were capturing your attention, so we were like we need something that is just going to keep your eyes on it at all times. And the one take just works, man. We did that one pretty quick. We didn’t have a lot of time because the house that we were shooting in was somebody’s actual house, and I think that their kids had come home. But we just wanted something that was just super captivating and just lures you in. “Lord I Tried” was a one take too. We knew that worked and that looked incredible. And then obviously we did it with “Eyes Wide Open” as well, then after that we were like we got to keep this going. It’s becoming a theme now.

Why do you enjoy showing your process for making songs on Instagram Live? I’m sure you can’t do it as much as you used to now.

It was my manager’s idea like back in 2019 or 2020. She was like “I think you just need to go on Instagram Live. Let people see your process.” And I was like “I don’t know,” but she was like “Just trust me.” At first, it was just me, her and maybe like two other people in there. Then I would do it here and there, and then after lockdown, I started doing it a bit more. I don’t know. It was just that you don’t get to see many artists’ process in the studio. I always think about people like Beyoncé. There’s only like a few videos of her in the studio and you always think to yourself like, “Man, I wonder how these people’s brains work.” There’s loads of videos of Pharrell and I think that’s what I love about him. I can always go on the internet and search up “Pharrell in the studio” and there will be something of him whether it’s with like Justin Timberlake or Timbaland or something. I think it’s just cool to see how people’s brains work and what makes the light bulb go off at certain moments. That’s what a lot of it is in my IG lives. You can see when my brain figures something out. I think it’s cool. We shouldn’t really gate-keep our processes. I’ll [hop] off to write the lyrics because I don’t want to give them everything because people will start stealing tips and tricks, ya know what I’m sayin’? Again, it just makes you human. We’re not like these robots that churn out the music. It takes time and people should get the privilege of being able to see that, especially like my core fan base. It was just a lot of them at the time. Now it’s a lot for me because there’s so many people that come on there and they’ll end up screen recording it and putting it on the internet and that bit, I’m like “Ah, guys, come on.” I should probably get back to it a little bit more, but this year I haven’t been in the studio as much as I usually am. But I’m definitely going to get back on there for sure.

In June you dropped “With All Due Respect.” Talk to me about the inspiration for the title and what your mindset was going into the creation of that EP.

I had a different title before and then we scrapped that. I was like it needs to be something that [shows] people that I’m not playing games anymore. I felt like so many people were doubting me and sleeping on me, especially after I was dropped from my label before. I was like, “Everyone’s sleeping on me.” I’m trying to get in with artists and producers, and they’re not hitting me back. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong, but I know I can do this. And then it was Chris [Chance] that came up with that. He had sent me a list of like 12 different names [and] “With All Due Respect” was one of them.

“I think people are just starting to put out music that they genuinely love and we’re not chasing a trend or chasing a TikTok moment anymore,” Kwn said.

(Michelle Helena Janssen)

In a previous interview, you said that “With All Due Respect” is the first part of a two-part album and that you’re planning to release a B-side. Is that still the plan? If so, when can we expect that?

Yeah, absolutely. I’ve just been so busy with this promo stuff and then obviously we jumped straight into tour. It’s going well though. I’m excited about the next set of music. It’s very classic. That’s what it feels like timely.

I have to ask. Are you planning on dropping it sometime next year?

Yeah. It’s not going to be a year after that. I tell ya [laughs].

You toured with Kehlani last year (on the Europe stretch) and you said that the experience proved to you that you can really do this music thing. Fast forward just months later, you are in the midst of your first headlining tour. How does that make you feel? What was your mindset going into this tour?

I was definitely nervous. But I think I was nervous because I was like, you can fake streams. You can fake followers. You can fake all this stuff, but the one thing you can’t fake is people, real people buying tickets to your show. Not saying that I have fake streams or followers, because I absolutely do not. But the real telling is like people coming to see you at your shows, and the feedback that you get from that. And yeah, the reception has been great, man. It’s been more than I could have imagined. I’ll be honest. I have not seen a bad word about my show, which I’m really grateful for because that’s all I wanted to be honest. I just wanted to be able to have fun. I wanted to be able to engage with people. I’m not a dancer or anything, ya know, so I felt like it was going to be hard for me to engage with the crowd and give them a good show, but I’m really just being myself on stage and letting my personality out. So I think that’s what’s captivating people, which I’m glad about.

You’re kicking off the U.S. and Canada leg of your tour in L.A. on Tuesday. What can fans expect?

A good time! I keep saying it’s really a special experience to be able to do these small, intimate shows. And I know people are like, “You could’ve sold out this venue and you could’ve done this venue …” And I’m like, yeah but these intimate, almost like one-to-one moments and experiences with people is what they will appreciate a lot more in the long run. And I know I am too. I be walking into these venues and I’m like “Oh, this small. Like we definitely could’ve gone bigger.” But I’m like nah. This is what it’s about. Everybody’s gotta start somewhere and I think it’s just important, like I said, that we can have these intimate moments with each other. It’s a super super special experience, it feels great.

From Cleo Sol to Sasha Keable to Odeal to Elmiene and several others, it truly feels like the U.K. R&B scene is having a moment. How does this make you feel to be a part of such good company?

It’s great. I feel like music was kind of on a decline for a little bit. It felt like no one was really excited about music, but I feel like now it’s like “Oh, people are really getting excited about things again.” I think people are just starting to put out music that they genuinely love and we’re not chasing a trend or chasing a TikTok moment anymore. I feel like it’s just genuine music that everybody’s loving, so it feels good right now. The scene feels great.

THE SMASHING MACHINE

(15) 123 min

★★★☆☆

3

WHEN big stars take parts that require them to alter their face with prosthetics it’s often a sign they want to be taken more seriously.

Think Steve Carell in Foxcatcher and Bradley Cooper in Maestro.

In The Smashing Machine — director Benny Safdie’s biopic of UFC heavyweight champion Mark Kerr — it’s Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson’s turn to sit in the make-up artist’s chair.

Signalling a departure from the typical action hero roles he is best known for, Johnson’s nose, lips, eyebrows and hairline are transformed to play the fighter.

He’s not totally unrecognisable, though.

A professional wrestler himself, The Rock already had the fighter’s hulking physique.

Acting muscles

And he’s in familiar territory being on screen with his trademark biceps on display.

But here he proves he absolutely can flex his acting muscles too.

American amateur wrestling champion Kerr became one of the pioneers of MMA at the turn of the millennium, well before the sport became the worldwide phenomenon it is today.

We meet him as an unbeaten man, skilled at then-permitted, wincingly violent moves like eye gouges, who lives to win, and who can’t comprehend the thought of losing.

But as painkiller addiction takes hold and Kerr succumbs to his first ever defeat, he returns home a human wrecking ball, tearing his house apart in sheer frustration.

Johnson depicts this rage-fuelled tantrum with real proficiency so we can understand it as a loss of control underpinned by a deep vulnerability.

Emily Blunt, excellent as his girlfriend Dawn, can only look on as the “big man who she loves” demolishes their kitchen with his bare hands.

The real Kerr eventually acknowledged and overcame his narcotic reliance, returning from rehab to the ring.

As a sporting tale, this is in familiar triumph-over-tragedy territory, with no surprises.

While the performances are gripping, the script lacks nuance.

Is this brutal watch a knockout? No, not completely.

But will the prosthetics pay off for Johnson come awards season?

They just might.

A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE

(15) 112mins

★★★★★

3

KATHRYN BIGELOW has done it again, this time turning the camera on the nightmare we all pretend that we can ignore – a nuclear strike.

The director’s tense, claustrophobic, brilliantly staged film grips you from the very first frame.

The story is simple and terrifying – an 18-minute window between a rogue missile launch in the Pacific and its projected strike on Chicago, seen from multiple perspectives.

Every decision, every glance at a screen, every phone call carries huge weight. Uncertainty is the enemy here, and Bigelow wrings every ounce of drama from it.

The cast is flawless. Idris Elba is compelling as a President caught between disbelief and duty, while Rebecca Ferguson delivers a career best as security specialist Captain Olivia Walker.

Elsewhere, Jared Harris, Gabriel Basso, Jonah Hauer-King and Anthony Ramos bring depth as they try to hold a crumbling chain of command together.

It isn’t just a thriller, it’s a heart-stopping meditation on human fragility. If you want cinema that makes you feel the weight of the world in real time, this is the one.

LINDA MARRIC

HIM

(18) 96mins

★☆☆☆☆

3

HORROR film Him feels like it has been stitched together from a dozen better movies, without ever finding a soul of its own.

In short, this is a mess.

The story follows Cameron (Tyriq Withers), a hotshot quarterback whose bright future is thrown off course after a brutal injury.

When retired legend Isaiah (Marlon Wayans) invites him to a secluded training camp, it feels like a chance to rebuild, stronger and faster than before.

But the deeper Cameron steps into Isaiah’s world, the more unsettling it becomes.

Produced by Get Out, Us and Nope director Jordan Peele, Him’s fatal flaw is its emptiness. For long stretches, nothing happens.

Characters drift around muttering ominous nonsense, occasionally raising their eyebrows at the weirdos around them, before going right back to ignoring the obvious.

Withers and Wayans put in respectable perform-ances but the dialogue is clunky, the pacing is dead on arrival and the supposedly shocking reveal is anything but. Even the stylistic additions feel less like art and more like padding for a story that never gets to the point.

Bleak, boring and painfully pretentious, Him isn’t just a bad horror film, it’s the kind of bad movie that thinks it’s being very clever.

LINDA MARRIC

When I wrote last week about how immigration raids are targeting far more laborers than criminals, and whacking the California economy at a cost to all of us, I was surprised by the number of readers who wrote to say it’s high time for immigration reform.

The cynic in me had an immediate response, which essentially was, yeah, sure.

Bipartisan attempts failed in 2006 and 2014, so there’s a fat chance of getting anywhere in this political climate.

But the more I thought about it, nobody has done more to make clear how badly we need to rewrite federal immigration law than guess who.

President Trump.

Raids, the threat of more raids, and the promise to deport 3,000 people a day, are sabotaging Trump’s economic agenda and eroding his support among Latinos. Restaurants have suffered, construction has slowed and fruit has rotted on vines as the promised crackdown on violent offenders — which would have had much more public support — instead turned into a heartless, destructive and costly eradication.

I wouldn’t bet a nickel on Trump or his congressional lackeys to publicly admit to any of that. But there have been signs that the emperor is beginning to soften hard-line positions on deportations of working immigrants and student visas, sending his MAGA posse into convulsions.

“His heart isn’t in the nativist purge the way the rest of his administration’s heart is into it,” the Cato Institute’s director of immigration studies, David J. Bier, told the New York Times. Despite the tough talk, Bier said, Trump has “always had a soft spot for the economic needs from a business perspective.”

So too, apparently, do some California GOP legislators.

In June, six Republican lawmakers led by state Sen. Suzette Martinez Valladares (R-Santa Clarita) sent Trump a letter urging him to ease up on the raids and get to work on immigration reform.

“Focus deportations on criminals,” Martinez Valladares wrote, “and support legal immigration and visa policies that will build a strong economy, secure our borders and protect our communities.”

Then in July, a bipartisan group of California lawmakers led by State Sen. Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh (R-Yucaipa), followed suit.

Ochoa Bogh urged “immediate federal action … to issue expedited work permits to the millions of undocumented immigrants who are considered essential workers, such as farmworkers who provide critical services. These workers support many industries that keep our country afloat and, regardless of immigration status, we must not overlook the value of their economic, academic, and cultural contributions to the United States.”

State Sen. Suzette Martinez Valladares (R-Santa Clarita) sent President Trump a letter urging him to ease up on raids and focus on immigration reform.

(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

Ochoa Bogh told me she heard from constituents in agriculture and hospitality who complained about the impact of raids. She said her aunt, a citizen, “is afraid to go out and carries a passport with her now because she’s afraid they might stop her.”

The senator said she blames both Democrats and Republicans for the failure to deliver sensible immigration reform over the years, and she told me her own family experience guides her thinking on what could be a way forward.

Her grandfather was a Mexican guest worker in the Bracero Program of the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s, ended up being sponsored for legal status, and eventually moved his entire family north. Since then, children and grandchildren have gone to school, worked, prospered and contributed.

If Trump were to respond to her letter and visit her district, Ochoa Bogh said, “I would absolutely have him visit my family.”

Her relatives include restaurateurs, the owners of a tailoring business, a county employee and a priest.

“We don’t want undocumented people in our country. … But we need a work permit process” that serves the needs of employers and workers, Ochoa Bogh said.

Public opinion polls reflect similar attitudes. Views are mixed, largely along party lines, but a Pew study in June found 42% approval and 47% disapproval of Trump’s overall approach on immigration.

A July Gallup poll found increasing support for immigration in general, with 85% in favor of a pathway to citizenship for immigrants brought to the U.S. as minors, and 60% support among Republicans for legal status of all undocumented people if certain requirements are met.

State Sen. Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh, shown with Senate Republican Leader Scott Wilk in 2022, says constituents in agriculture and hospitality have complained about the impact of raids.

(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

So it’s not entirely surprising that a bipartisan congressional immigration reform bill, the Dignity Act of 2025, was introduced in July by a Florida Republican and a Texas Democrat. It would allow legal status for those who have lived in the U.S. for five years, are working and paying taxes, and have no criminal record.

Victor Narro, project director at the UCLA Labor Center, isn’t optimistic, given political realities. But he’s been advocating for immigration reform for decades and said “we need to continue the fight because there will be a time of reckoning” in which the U.S. will “have to rely on immigrant workers to assure economic survival.”

“Germany had to resort to guest worker programs when birth rates declined,” said Kevin Johnson, a former UC Davis law school dean. “We may be begging for workers from other nations in the not too distant future.”

“No side wants to give the other a victory, but there have got to be ways to close that gap,” said Hiroshi Motomura, a UCLA immigration scholar whose new book, “Borders and Belonging: Toward A Fair Immigration Policy,” examines the history and causes of immigration, as well as the complexities of arguments for and against.

“Practically and politically, there’s potential” for reform, Motomura said, and he sees a better chance for rational conversations at the local level than in the heat of national debate. “You’re more likely to hear stories of mixed families … and that kind of thing humanizes the situation instead of turning it into a lot of abstract statistics.”

Ochoa Bogh told me that when she wrote her letter to Trump, the feedback from constituents included both support and criticism. She said she met with her critics, who told her she should be focused on jobs for citizens rather than for undocumented immigrants.

She said she told them she is all for “American people doing American jobs.” But “we have a workforce shortage in the state in various industries,” and a U.S.-born population that is not stepping up to do certain kinds of work.

“I said to them, ‘You can’t keep your eyes closed and say this is what it should be, when there are certain realities we have to navigate.”

So what are the chances of progress on immigration reform?

Not great at the moment.

But as readers suggested, a better question is this:

Why not?

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