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What does the morning after the VMAs feel like? A splitting headache for Van Toffler, producer of the 2025 show, which aired on CBS for the first time, in addition to MTV and Paramount Plus. The veteran television producer and former head of MTV has had a front-row seat to dozens of awards shows, and he knows the intricacies and complications involved with coordinating 13 performances.

Toffler spoke with Rolling Stone about the night’s standout moments, including Mariah Carey‘s hits medley, Sabrina Carpenter‘s rain-soaked “Tears,” Lady Gaga‘s rapid exit from Madison Square Garden, and the emotional tribute to Ozzy Osbourne featuring Steven Tyler, Joe Perry, Yungblud, and Extreme’s Nuno Bettencourt.

What are the challenges these days with award shows? You need to get the big-name talent, but you also need to showcase who’s coming up. And these productions are very expensive. How do you weigh all those things to get the best lineup?
The first thing is you have to be is rabid about researching and understanding who your audience is. And for this show, unlike others, it traversed multiple platforms with different demographics because you have MTV, CBS, and Paramount Plus. That really merited going from hit iconic artists with catalogs to brand-new artists.

You saw LL Cool J host in the first act, and then introduce Kenny G performing with Doja Cat into the expanded play stage with Lola Young. And you have Gaga in between winning an award. So that’s kind of a microcosm of what you’d like to do, where you bring out new acts with emerging songs. You don’t just spring them on the audience.

Talents like Sombr and Conan Gray and Megan Moroney are so wonderful that you want to expose them on the big stage. But you can’t just have a show of new acts, just like you can’t just have a show of established acts. It is a balance. Who’s got the biggest songs of the year, like Sabrina [Carpenter] and Tate [McRae], who are great performers, and who are some heritage acts that get these iconic awards? It definitely is a delicate dance.

And also, where do you format them in the show? How you juxtapose one versus the other? It’s a mixture of art and science, because you also have to see the performances and rehearsals to understand. “Does this go next to this one?”

Were there people you wanted to get that you couldn’t get?
Oh, undoubtedly, absolutely.

Justin Bieber? Taylor Swift?
Beyoncé, Bieber… Taylor’s not in cycle, so, you know, she’s done so many MTV awards when she is in cycle. It just didn’t feel right. But Miley’s putting out new music, and… I’m trying to think of others that I would have loved to have had. I wanted to have Harry Styles and Stevie Nicks perform together. So, you know, you shoot for the moon. Some people are recording or out of cycle. You pull together the best show you can, and the best of the year.

With the Sabrina Carpenter performance, there seemed to be some messaging in her staging. Were you aware of that?
Oh, yeah, definitely. There was messaging and then there was a sexy performance with water. So I’m not sure it all got through, but I’m sure her fans will read well into it, accurately and inaccurately.

Was it intentional to cut away from the “trans rights” sign?
No, no, I think it’s just a director making choices. That’s all.

It was so interesting that therapy got so many shout-outs during the show. These kids who have so much pressure, I don’t know how they get through a day, never mind the VMAs.
We noticed it. It is generational that so many of these young artists would thank their therapists. So many of these artists are confronted with daily pressures to make their lives seem great. And they have to live on socials. There’s no real downtime. And we talked about it. I can imagine 20 years ago, artists thanking their therapist would be like, “You’re in therapy, dude? Are you kidding me?” So it is definitely generational.

It was cool that Ariana Grande read out all the credits of her video. I’ve never seen that happen before.
I can honestly say in my memory, and I don’t have a good one, but that may be the only time craft services have been thanked.

That really meant a lot, actually, from an industry standpoint. It was very smart.
She doesn’t come out a lot. She really doesn’t do a lot of these things, and she’s filming a movie. I think obviously she was nominated a lot, but she’s got a warm spot for Mariah. I think that helped bring her out to this stage.

What was up with the microphone? It wasn’t one that drops into the stage and adjusts for height?
Not all productions go smoothly. I think that her mic was definitely too high. We used a lot of handheld mics. Those mics on stands tend to get in the way of a performer’s face. We don’t love them, but obviously we needed them for the award presentations. But it’s a lesson learned. We’ll have it come from the ceiling next time, if there is a next time.

It’s a legit situation. We did an article in Variety where we talked to stage hands about it. Sometimes you have a LeBron James and then Sabrina Carpenter. The height difference is massive.
Oh, my God. You really need to over-prepare for that stuff. The thing is, someone like Steven Tyler just keeps adjusting his mic, no matter where you put it. It’s never the right height, let’s put it that way.

You know who wasn’t good at holding a microphone? Meg Stalter. That microphone hit her entire face.
I think she maybe had an issue with her ankle beforehand and was having trouble walking. She had a rough evening. But she’s funny. She’s a funny woman.

Tell me about coordinating Gaga and getting her out to Long Island from Madison Square Garden.
God, what a shit show. She had to leave the Garden, come to our event. She literally got to the security door, I don’t know, three minutes before the show started.

And obviously, she had to glam up, get in that ensemble, and then and then get onstage when she won the award. Then she had to have a police escort take her back to the Garden. They delayed the start of her show at MSG the prior night. So it was a logistical situation.

How did you handle the singing live versus singing to a track with all the dancing? Mariah especially seemed to get some flak for that.
That’s a dealer’s choice in a way. In no way do we dictate what an artist should or can or can’t do. Quite often there’s tracks and they sing along to a track or a live band. It’s really what the artist thinks they’re capable of doing based on the dancing they’re doing and the physical movement they’re doing. Some are more comfortable with the tracks. Some are just more comfortable doing live because they tour a lot. That’s really on the artist.

Which performance took the longest to put together or was most challenging logistically?
Probably the most tender and rewarding one was the Ozzy tribute. You’ve got a family in mourning. You’ve got an iconic musician. You’ve got people that you may think are appropriate or disciples of Black Sabbath and Ozzy, but that’s not what Ozzy would have felt or the family would have felt. And so there was a lot of coordination with the family on the musicians and the songs that were selected. That probably was, again, the most rewarding and the most arduous one of the bunch.

Did you hear from the family in the last 12 hours?
No, but I know that Jack, on behalf of Sharon and the family, was really happy with the musicians and understanding what tracks they were doing. I haven’t heard from them after the fact, but they were all involved in the process.

I really thought that looked tremendous. There was this one shot of Yungblud where he was bending over that could not have been choreographed any better with the the lights and the guitars. It was incredible.
I may be completely off-base on this, but as a person who loves music and has been around music most of my life, people are yearning for a live rock moment. Look at the fervor around Oasis. I was around when we tried to break Oasis in the States and no one gave a crap. And now it’s euphoric.

What else was complicated or involved a lot of feedback from the artist creatively?
Tate McRae had a bunch of different elements, but the heavy use of water and cleaning the stage with Sabrina was a big, big lift. And Doja Cat’s set was kind of funky to turn around. And then particularly when we told everyone, “Oh, Kenny G’s going to be on the staircase.” They’re kind of like, “What?” That’s the way we felt too. But, hey, that’s just almost a perfect combo of artists, Doja Cat and Kenny G. That’s kind of what should happen every day.

I’m sure every time they’re like, “We’d like 22 dancers,” you’re like, “Stop with the dancers!”
Right. This may seem critical, but even for some of the younger artists, if you’ve got the chops and the songs and you can sing, just come on and sing, right? You don’t have to create a music video. When you perform, I think it’s good enough to show the world you’ve got the chops.

Did you hear from the people about the ICE commercials and the Department of Corrections ones?
Yeah, someone told me. Was it one that led right into the show?

It felt like almost every other break was an ICE commercial or Department of Corrections. It felt like the police state was here.
This is on CBS and local TV.

Yeah.
Obviously, I have no idea or nor do I control any of the commercials. But that doesn’t make me feel good.

What’s a successful VMAs to you? Is it ratings? Is it the feedback? What is it?
Where does it register in the cultural zeitgeist? Are there memorable performances? Are there moments people talk about? For me, what is maybe most important is, “Is it connecting to audiences?” And not just on linear TV. I think we’re probably gonna find out later today that there are over a billion views of VMA content. Let me say that again, one billion views. That is astronomical, maybe the biggest in history if that’s the case.

It’s hard to get a 15-year-old to watch linear television, no matter what you do. You can have a live execution. They’re not gonna watch it. They’re gonna watch what they wanna watch on the platforms that they connect with on their mobile or YouTube.

I know we live in a business where things are measured a certain way. And people don’t always connect the dots, and they don’t always monetize these views, but typically, money follows eyeballs. But if the content is that meaningful and connects in that way in such a grand scale, that is a story to me. Regardless of whether you do 8 million or 10 million people on linear TV, if you’re getting over a billion views, then music still resonates, these performances resonate. And that was important to me in coming back to do the gig.

It was a big deal to have it on CBS.
Yeah, that’s right. They took a big swing as a company. It’s like, we’re the adults now.

Aziz Ansari’s feature directing debut, “Good Fortune,” wasn’t meant to be his first effort as a filmmaker: That would’ve been “Being Mortal,” called off mid-shoot in 2022 amid accusations of misconduct against Bill Murray. So it was inevitable that alongside the TIFF premiere of “Good Fortune,” a comedy starring Keanu Reeves and “Being Mortal” star Seth Rogen, he’d have to address the canceled film. And it turns out, they share thematic DNA.

The South Carolina-born Indian-American actor, writer, director, and stand-up comedian is known by audiences worldwide as serial entrepreneur Tom “Treat Yo Self” Haverford on NBC’s “Parks and Recreation,” and as the more somber, lovelorn Dev Shah on the Netflix hit series “Master of None.”

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Could “Good Fortune” and his should-have-been debut “Being Mortal” have swapped titles? After all, in the TIFF premiere, Keanu Reeves plays Gabriel, the Angel of Texting and Driving — in L.A., yes, the City of Angels, where in this comedy, angels exist — and finds himself demoted to human by his angel boss (Sandra Oh). Thus, he becomes mortal. “Whoa!” Ansari told IndieWire in Toronto. “I gotta process that,” when asked.

When the news of “Being Mortal’s” cancellation broke in April 2022, Ansari said he got a deluge of “I’m sooo sorry” texts. He recalled thinking, “I can’t deal with this. I don’t wanna be in this woe-is-me moment.” Ansari said he then called Seth Rogen, also a star of “Being Mortal.” He told Rogen, “Hey, I know you’re free and were supposed to work today. If you wanna make this day less shitty for me, can you read this script [for ‘Good Fortune’]? He said, yeah, and he called me in two hours and said, ‘I’m in, let’s do it.’”

That’s how “Good Fortune” began. Ansari had a basic version of the story ready, where he plays Arj, a down-on-his-luck documentary film editor living out of his car and forced to participate in the gig economy as a Taskrabbiter and home-improvement store worker. Through the latter, Arj meets a union organizer (Keke Palmer, also a “Being Mortal” star), whom he begins dating. Through the former, Arj meets Jeff (Seth Rogen), a venture-capitalist angel investor in tech companies. When Gabriel (Reeves) intervenes because he can’t help but take pity on Arj’s lost soul, Gabriel decides to swap Arj and Jeff’s lives. There you have it, a “Prince and the Pauper”-esque fable, touched by an angel, with a rebellious and playful streak of working-class consciousness.

Empathy for the working class indeed feels like a far cry from Tom Haverford and Dev Shah. When asked about shifting from narratives about the middle class — Ansari co-created “Master of None” with his longtime collaborator Alan Yang, also a producer on “Good Fortune” — and from TV to film, Ansari said, “’Master of None’ was almost the perfect training ground to get ready to do this film. There was an episode on Season 2 called ‘New York, I Love You’ and another episode in Season 3, where the character played by Naomi Ackie [goes] through IVF. For both of those episodes, I had to do a lot of work interviewing people, trying to understand experiences that were not my own… I hope for people [who] like ‘Master of None,’ [that] this is kind of what they hoped I would do with a movie. It has a lot of the same DNA as ‘Master.’ It’s about seeing things from other people’s perspectives.”

Anasri said, “So for ‘New York, I Love You,’ there was a segment about a cab driver, a doorman, and a woman who was Deaf. This guy Stefano and I did a DoorDash ride-along, and then I took over his account and did stuff for a day. That fueled the whole segment with Seth [in ‘Good Fortune’], where he ends up doing DoorDash. I also spoke with this guy, Vincent, who tried to unionize a Home Depot in Philadelphia. He was so inspiring. The Elena character that Keke Palmer plays [is based on him]. So we interviewed a lot of people that did those kinds of gigs. That process is something that helped me tremendously in doing ‘Good Fortune.’”

Ansari said the script’s conceit about angels really began to hit home once he pulled off a casting coup with Keanu Reeves. That Ansari is himself an actor and a stand-up comedian helped him figure out the comedy of “Good Fortune,” plus the fact that he was back in the familiar mode of acting and directing in equal measure, as he had in “Master of None.” (By contrast, in “Being Mortal,” Ansari said he had a much smaller role.)

“’Being Mortal’ is based on a book by Atul Gawande that’s about life (and death) issues,” said Ansari. “It was pretty heavy at times, and it was a heavy shoot. So I was excited to do something that was much more straightforward comedy. When Keanu’s name first came up, I started watching all his films like ‘Point Break’ and ‘Speed,’ but I went back to the comedies he had done, like ‘Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure’ and ‘Parenthood’ in particular. You kind of see little bits of his comedy power. He’s very funny when he’s playing a guy that’s kind of naive, but at the same time so sweet. And that’s Gabriel, right? He’s so lovable. But he’s kind of dumb. [Laughs]“

In thinking about Reeves while looking at the script, Ansari said he could “just imagine him having this bright-eyed wonder about the internet, him being this angel that gets thrown into the deep end of being a human and struggling in L.A., but having the attitude he does. I just had a feeling it would work… He’s so great, he’s the soul of the movie.”

How the dating scenes between Arj (Ansari) and Elena (Ackie) are blocked brings to mind “Master of None’s” approach to the same, and Ansari agreed. He said while planning to shoot those romantic moments for “Good Fortune” that he and Alan Yang recognized this is their “bread and butter.”

Ansari also edited the film while he shot, which is a bold choice. “This notion of watching the rough cut is a nightmare. You’re so scared. If you edit as you go along, you minimize that a little bit,” Ansari said. “You just start feeling the rhythms of the movie, and you start understanding what’s working camera-wise in terms of the cinematic language. ‘Oh, these kinds of shots feel good,’ or ‘oh, let’s stay in these singles a little bit longer.’ Whatever it is, you just learn what your movie is, [and] you can kind of lean into things.” Ansari credited his editor, Daniel Haworth, with whom he worked on “Master” as well. Whenever Haworth was on set, Ansari would run in to take a look at the dailies and the evolving cut.

“Master of None” fans will be delighted to see the director’s father (Shoukath Ansari) show up in special appearances, though Ansari’s mother (Fatima Ansari) doesn’t feature in “Good Fortune” as she did in that Netflix show. Ansari said that his mom hates acting, but it was a lot of fun having his dad around, because a lot of the story is about the need for family in a place like L.A.

“Parks and Rec” fans will also notice Joe Mande, who played Morris for a few episodes on the NBC sitcom and served as a writer. In the film, Arj meets Joe’s character while Taskrabbiting in line at a Cinnabon. The casting of secondary and tertiary characters feels very intentional in this film, adding to the groundedness of a movie as much about Los Angeles as it is set there.

“We had an amazing cast director, Carmen Cuba. One role that was very fun to cast was Felipe [Felipe Garcia Martinez], who plays a dishwasher that Keanu works with,” Ansari said. “We’d been reading these people, and none of them really felt like the real guy that would be in the back of the kitchen with Keanu. So me and my producer Kelsey [Comeau] went down to his restaurant, and he came out, and we did some of the scenes.”

He added, “Then I called Keanu and said, ‘Hey, I have this idea for that character. Would it be cool if we used a real guy, because I think he would bring some authenticity to the role?’ He said, ‘Yeah, I’m down.’ So we use Felipe, and he shows up, and he’s the only person I met who doesn’t know who Keanu Reeves is! Months after we wrapped, I went down to the restaurant, and I was like, ‘Felipe!’ He was there. And I was like, ‘Did you tell all these people you’re a movie star now?’ And they’re like, ‘Oh yeah, he’s been telling us all the time. He’s telling us about Keanu and everything.’ Yeah, Felipe’s great.”

If Ansari were an angel, what would his department be? Ansari said, “Maybe the Angel of Screenwriting Inspiration? I love to help writers out that are stuck in the jam.”

“Good Fortune” premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival. Lionsgate will release the film in theaters on Friday, October 17.

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Allen Blickle, the original drummer for the Grammy-nominated sludge metal band Baroness, has died at the age of 42.

“It breaks my heart to have to share the news that my dear friend, creative partner and former bandmate Allen Blickle passed away a few days ago,” Baroness frontman John Baizley said in a statement. “I’m still in shock that he’s gone. We ask for understanding as his family and this band process his passing and grieve his loss. Allen, I love you and miss you. I treasure every moment we shared.”

Late at night, after an exhausting hike up Indonesia’s Mount Gede, Maya wakes to find her friend Itha missing from their tent. Several minutes of frantic searching later, she finds her crouched, alone, in a patch of tall grass – giggling.

“I’m talking to my friend,” Itha explains. Except no one else is there.

My whole body jolts as that “friend” suddenly erupts onto the screen. It’s the most terrified I’ve ever been in a movie theater – the kind of scared that has you peeking through your fingers and spilling popcorn on your neighbor. In my case, that’s longtime Indonesian film critic Ekky Imanjaya, who looks completely unfazed.

He’s seen hundreds of movies like “Haunting of Mount Gede.” Horror is by far the most popular genre of Indonesian cinema, accounting for 60% of the 258 movies made in the country last year, according to the Indonesian Film Board.

But these aren’t like many of the scary movies shown in theaters across the United States, in which fright itself is the point. Indonesia’s horror boom is built upon the archipelago’s rich folklore, passed down from generation to generation, and an enduring belief in the supernatural.

All countries have their own sort of ghost story, says Dr. Imanjaya, a film studies lecturer at Bina Nusantara University in Jakarta, but “many Indonesian people believe that it’s true.” Indonesians’ fascination with their country’s unique blend of Islam and folklore has helped the local film industry thrive, while those in other developing nations struggle to compete with American blockbusters.