Plenty of his films have been about women, but artists aren’t under any obligation to check the identity-politics boxes.
.. Is Steven Spielberg under some kind of moral or political obligation to make movies about women?
.. “I went to Indiana Jones and Jaws and every movie Steven Spielberg ever made, and by the way, he’s never made a movie with a female lead,” Banks said, bizarrely, adding, “Sorry, Steven. I don’t mean to call your ass out, but it’s true.”
.. The audience isn’t a constituency they need to reflect or to whom they need to appeal in their work. It isn’t their job to represent every group. Art is notable, in fact, for its spectacularly unrepresentative character.
Why ‘A Dog’s Purpose’ Soared in China While ‘Lego Batman’ Flopped
A Dog’s Purpose” wasn’t even going to be released in China, where few American dramas without special effects or A-list stars are successful. But Amblin last fall, seeking a Chinese investor to give its movies better play in China, sold a minority stake in the studio to Alibaba. Shortly after, Ms. Wei, of Alibaba Pictures, saw “A Dog’s Purpose” and its potential.
.. Alibaba promoted the movie alongside pet adoption agencies and held special screenings for people and their dogs, Ms. Wei said. It plumbed its online movie-ticket service to target pet owners, families, women and others it believed would like the movie. Alibaba representatives traveled to theaters to persuade exhibitors to allocate screens, bringing the e-commerce data to support their pitch.
.. Alibaba lobbied the state-run distributor to extend the movie’s run to eight weeks, twice as long as most imported films... A combination of Chinese regulations and the unpopularity of state-run television don’t allow the kind of large-scale TV ad campaigns used in U.S. marketing... China requires a few million dollars in digital advertising and a local, hands-on touch as simple as lobby displays... “It really is an enormous market in terms of how much you need to do to reach beyond the biggest cities,” said Veronika Kwan Vandenberg, Warner Bros.’ head of international distribution. “Having a local partnership is really helpful in maximizing the scale and scope of your campaign.”
Take a Night Off, Bette! Why Some Broadway Fans Prefer Understudies
Headliners will dominate Sunday’s Tony Awards, but fill-ins for the stars have their own followings, too; ‘we can’t wait for you to go on!’
Broadway obsessives, who will go to shows dozens of times, say they appreciate the energy and perspective understudies bring to their roles. Not unlike baseball fans who attend minor-league games to see the sport’s rising prospects, they also admit to taking a kind of geeky pleasure in “collecting” understudies, noting which ones they have seen in which roles over the life of a production.
.. the Broadway equivalent of, say, sightings of a rarely seen owl among bird-watchers.
.. “Understudies always bring something completely different” to the part, Ms. Goldstein said, adding that when she makes plans to see a show, she considers it a plus if there is a fill-in.
.. fans like her “just want to support the show by supporting the people who are less celebrated in it.”
How Trump’s Candidacy Has Divided Conservative Media
Ann Coulter’s role in inspiring some of Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric and policy, she tweeted – and I’m not sure if this was after his campaign announcement announcing that he was running – she tweeted (reading) I don’t care if Donald Trump wants to perform abortions in the White House after this immigration policy paper.
And I’ve just been trying to imagine somebody like William F. Buckley or George Will tweeting something like that or ever saying something like that. It’s just inconceivable, like the rhetoric has changed so much within the right-wing media. And…
DRAPER: Well, you’re not the only one who thinks that, Terry. The conservative talk show host – and in a lot of ways intellectual godfather in conservative talk radio Mark Levin tweeted back after Ann Coulter’s tweet, which, indeed, was immediately following Trump’s announcement speech. Levin had said this has to be one of the more pathetic statements that I’ve ever read.
So a lot of people who are horrified, of course, Ann Coulter has made a career out of horrifying people. And she – among her many gifts, understatement is not one of them. She also had said that that speech was the greatest thing written since “Magna Carta.” But, of course, this was self-glorification, too, since Ann Coulter recognized the rhetoric as her own.
.. GROSS: Do you think that the impact of talk radio and cable news is changing in terms of politics in America?
DRAPER: Well, what’s clear is that talk radio could dictate, basically, the tenor of the electorate. And I don’t think that that has taken place in this election cycle. The numbers show that talk radio is still a very healthy phenomenon. Though, it does not own a monopoly on conservative activism the way it did in the 1990s when Rush Limbaugh ruled the roost. Because of social media, because of Breitbart, because of Drudge – they are not the only voices that count.
.. DRAPER: Well, I think that no area of the overall Republican family has had such an awkward time with the Trump candidacy than Fox News. I mean, I think even more than the Republican National Committee. And you can actually see, on the air at Fox News, people who have made a choice to throw themselves utterly behind Trump and others who have been skeptics and others who have been vigorously opposed to him.
.. But it’s notable to me that Trump, while continually denouncing the media, is in his own way accessible to a number of us. He’s been talking to reporters from The New York Times, including myself, constantly for months and months now, where Hillary Clinton, for example, notably has not. And now, I’ve been at rallies where we are confined to this media pen and where Trump makes a big exercise out of pointing out to everyone in the audience that there is the disgusting, dishonest media. Lots of booing ensues. I’ve, you know, been a journalist for several decades so I’ve not ever been concerned that this is going to rise to a level of violence. I hope that I’m not proved wrong on that.
But to me, this is not the civil rights era and being cursed at by people in the crowd is not the same thing as what our colleagues endured 50 years ago going down to the Deep South. But it can be alarming for the uninitiated. And – but my view is that it’s for show.
I mean, Trump very much sees himself as an entertainer whose foremost job is to keep people listening. And he has said as much, that when it looks like he’s losing the crowd he’ll start talking about building the wall and having Mexico pay for it.
.. I’m saying we hoped this a year or a year and a half ago – that this election might actually provide an opportunity to sort of build at least a rickety bridge between both sides that there’d be some healing after the divisiveness of the last really 16 years or some, perhaps longer.
But there’s no end in sight to this. I think that if Trump becomes president and he abuses his authority, there will be articles of impeachment. If Hillary Clinton becomes president, the House Republicans, already lying in wait due to the Benghazi and email server situation. We’ll also be contemplating articles of impeachment. I simply do not see a way in which things become better
.. GROSS: You mentioned that Trump is good at flattering people, and that’s – your implication is that that’s kind of a tool that he uses.
DRAPER: Well, I have personal experience with him, going back to my first encounter with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago when he walked in, saw me and said nobody told me he was such a handsome guy.
(LAUGHTER)
DRAPER: And then throughout what turned out to be about a four-hour evening, Trump, you know, was constantly asking me what I thought about certain members of the media, what I thought about his chances in a particular – the state of Wisconsin, what I thought about particular commercials that other candidates were putting up. And I – as I mentioned, really couldn’t tell whether or not he was acutely interested in my opinions or wanted me to feel like that he was interested in my opinions or if he just wanted to hear my opinion, so he knew where I stood, not so that he would follow my opinions.
But, nonetheless, to be around a guy who is a billionaire and has achieved a lot, I think, you know, would probably – that would be like a momentous thing for someone. I can see how for individuals who have not been asked their opinions before by major political figures that Donald Trump doing so would make them feel like, wow, I’m a Donald Trump consultant. And my my own view is that – and I mentioned this in the story – that lest I would have had any kind of illusions that Trump really valued my insights relating to his prospects that just a few days later, I saw him on the campaign rope-line, you know, asking the very same question to total strangers. So this is just something that Trump does.