Category: 5. Entertainment

Barbie doll designers and collectors Mario Paglino and Gianni Grossi have died in a tragic wrong-way car crash in northern Italy.

Their car, which was traveling on Sunday, July 27, in the right direction on the A4 Turin-Milan highway, collided head-on with another vehicle driven by 82-year-old Egidio Ceriano as he drove the wrong way after leaving a toll booth and steered into the wrong lane, according to ANSA, the Italian news service.

A third passenger in Paglino and Grossi’s car also died, while a fourth passenger survived, but remains in critical condition in the hospital. Ceriano, the elderly driver, also died in the wrong way collision.  

On news of the tragic car crash, Barbie doll maker Mattel on Instagram paid tribute to Paglino and Grossi in a statement: “The Barbie team is heartbroken by the loss of Mario Paglino and Gianni Grossi, two treasured creators and Mattel collaborators who brought joy and artistry to the world of Barbie as Magia 2000.”

Fashion designer Paglino and graphic art director Grossi launched their company Magia 2000 in 1999 and over the years collaborated with Mattel to create a host of Barbie dolls, dresses and special collections.

“As passionate and talented designers and lifelong collectors, their spirit and love for the brand turned every creation they touched into a masterpiece. Beyond their remarkable talent, they shared an energy that lit up every space they entered,” Mattel added alongside a photo of Paglino and Grossi posing beside a Barbie sign.

King Pentheus of Thebes and his mother, Agave, become the target of the god Dionysus’ wrath for rejecting his sybaritic cult in the ancient Greek tragedy “The Bacchae.”

In “Ecstasy,” Ivy Pochoda’s new feminist retelling, Dionysus is an international DJ with a cult following in the Electronic Dance Music, or EDM, and rave scene. Pentheus and Agave become Drew and his mother, Lena — heir and widow to a deceased hotel magnate opening a new luxury resort on a Greek island.

It’s a bloody story in the old and new, rife with decadence and depravity — one with timeless appeal judging from the multitude of stagings and adaptations over the centuries.

For Pochoda, the new project additionally marks a return to an early love — and an earlier self.

“I did Latin and Greek in middle and high school, and I was really good at it,” said Pochoda, a 1998 graduate in classics and literature. “And one of the reasons I wanted to go to Harvard was because of their classics department.”

Raised in Brooklyn, Pochoda attended high school at St. Ann’s — a private school with no grades, no set curriculum, and a philosophy of being “systematically asystematic.” One year, her teachers led the class through a translation of Ovid’s “Metamorphosis.” During another they spent the entire year translating Euripides.

“I spent my senior year in high school translating ‘The Bacchae,’” Pochoda said. “We did it start to finish, and it was really a cool experience for a 17-year-old to get that immersed in a text. And it was never really far from my brain.”

But in College, Pochoda said, it was hard to immerse herself in ancient stories in the same way.

“I found out in College that being interested in classics and being interested in mythology are not the same thing,” she said. “When I was in high school, it sort of was — we were able to overlap.”

Pochoda said it seemed to her that having a concentration in classics meant translating — like, all the time.

She wanted to spend more time discussing meaning and themes, the part of ancient storytelling that brought her joy. That’s why, halfway through her undergraduate study, Pochoda decided she would switch concentrations.

“And there was this concentration called classics and secondary fields, which was not meant to be combined with English. But I did it, and I combined it through the study of dramatic literature, which brought me back to ‘The Bacchae’ and plays that I love.”

To fulfill the novel requirements set forth by combining literature and classics, Pochoda began taking classes at American Reparatory Theater, alongside creative writing courses. She reminisces fondly about her classes with Professor Emeritus Robert Brustein and associate Robert Scanlan.

“It took me back to where I started from, which is being academic, but also creative, and applying that academia to performance and to things that are just a little off the beaten path,” she said. “Being an undergraduate and taking classes with students in the arts and working with the art professors and actually thinking about why I was studying Greek and why I was studying English literature through a dramatic focus, was a really interesting tunnel.”

The setting of “Ecstasy” is far from the ivy-covered buildings of Cambridge, or even the metropolis of Los Angeles, where she lives now with her 10-year-old-daughter, but Pochoda said there is real life inspiration at play.

“Ecstasy” is set largely on the island of Naxos — a destination to which she took a trip in 2018 when working on the “Epoca” series with Kobe Bryant.

In addition to her real-life island retreat, Pochoda has also dabbled in the world of EDM. In her previous life as captain of the women’s squash team at Harvard, followed by nine years playing professionally in Europe, Pochoda got out her fair share.

“I’m not some super hardcore EDM person, but I do know about it. I mean, I’ve been to some raves and parties, which was a problem for me academically,” she said, laughing. “I will talk about it openly,” she added.

As for the decision to transpose this culture onto that of the ancient Greek god known for his love of wine and sex and revelry, Pochoda said that was easy.

“When I was thinking about what’s going on in that play, those women are raving for all intents and purposes,” she said. “In the early EDM, early trance parties, early underground music, there was a lot of suspicion of what was going on and a lot of worry that the music was making you crazy and the drugs were making you crazy. So in the book, I try to use the idea of a beat, or beats, and the build-ups of EDM.”

But to be clear, Pochoda said, this is not quite a cautionary tale.

“The main characters, they want to go to the beach and party their faces off and reconnect with their youthful exuberance and the permissiveness of youth — the permissiveness of women being allowed to do what they want to do without men telling them what they want to do, what they can’t do,” she said. “But there is a dark side to that.”

Jamie Lee Curtis is an absolutely beloved A-lister who has been working in the industry for decades. She got her big break playing protagonist Laurie in Halloween, which became a prominent horror series. She reprised this role in multiple sequels, including most recently in 2022’s Halloween Ends.

Curtis has also had some hugely popular roles in the last decade. Everything Everywhere All At Once brought her first Oscar win (Best Supporting Actress), and she plays a key character in later seasons of The Bear. The series earned her an Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series, and she was nominated again in this cycle.

Even with her horror experience, Curtis is fundamentally a great comedic actress. One of her earlier 21st-century roles is now doing well on streaming, and its success is coming at a key time.

Freaky Friday Has Become A Streaming Hit

Freakier Friday Is On The Horizon

The 2003 version of Freaky Friday is now trending on streaming. The classic body-swap comedy stars Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan as a mother-daughter duo who are horrified to find that, after a freak accident, they have switched bodies. The movie was a box office success, making $160.8 million on an estimated $20 million budget.

Freaky Friday was already a remake of the 1976 film of the same name, but the franchise is not slowing down. This August will see the release of Freakier Friday, a sequel to the 2003 film. Picking up years after its predecessor went off, it will up the stakes on the body swap premise with a four-way switch between Curtis, Lohan, and Lohan’s daughter and stepdaughter-to-be.

As per Disney+, Freaky Friday is now a fresh streaming hit. The film is currently trending on the platform, making it to No. 4 out of the Top 10 movies in the United States today (July 30). Presently, two Fantastic 4 movies are also in the Top 10, also due to a new release.

What Streaming Popularity Means For The Freaky Friday Franchise

Freakier Friday Could Be A Big Hit

Freakier Friday is coming out on Aug. 8, giving it just over a week before it hits theaters. And the fact that the first installment is trending on streaming is a good sign for the film’s success. The sequel has a strong enough publicity reach to cue Disney+ subscribers to check out the first film.

We are still waiting to see whether Freaky Friday‘s streaming success ends up tangibly impacting the box office for Freakier Friday. The first movie already set the bar high in terms of worldwide gross. It’s possible, however, that the nostalgia and the recent streaming push could elevate the sequel to even greater heights.

Source: Disney+

Edward Saatchi isn’t totally sure people will flock to Showrunner, the new AI-generated TV show service his company is launching publicly this week. But he has a vote of confidence from Amazon, which has invested in Fable, Saatchi’s San Francisco-based start-up.

The amount of Amazon’s funding in Fable isn’t being disclosed. The money is going toward building out Showrunner, which Fable has hyped as the “Netflix of AI”: a service that lets you type in a few words to create scenes — or entire episodes — of a TV show, either from scratch or based on an existing story-world someone else has created.

Fable is launching Showrunner to let users tinker with the animation-focused generative-AI system, following several months in a closed alpha test with 10,000 users. Initially, Showrunner will be free to use but eventually the company plans to charge creators $10-$20 per month for credits allowing them to create hundreds of TV scenes, Saatchi said. Viewing Showrunner-generated content will be free, and anyone can share the AI video on YouTube or other third-party platforms.

Saatchi’s hypothesis is that AI — instead of simply being a tool for cheaper special effects — represents a new entertainment medium, one that more closely resembles video games.

Using AI purely as a VFX tool is “a little sad,” said Saatchi, Fable’s CEO and co-founder. “The ‘Toy Story of AI’ isn’t just going to be a cheap ‘Toy Story.’ Our idea is that ‘Toy Story of AI’ would be playable, with millions of new scenes, all owned by Disney.” Saatchi said Fable is in talks about a partnership with Disney, among other Hollywood studios, about licensing IP for the Showrunner platform.

“Hollywood streaming services are about to become two-way entertainment: audiences watching a season of a show [and] loving it will now be able to make new episodes with a few words and become characters with a photo,” Saatchi said. “Our relationship to entertainment will be totally different in the next five years.”

That said, Saatchi expressed some doubt about whether people really want to be their own showrunners. “Maybe nobody wants this and it won’t work,” he said.

Saatchi previously co-founded Oculus Story Studios, formed in 2014 as a division of Oculus VR, the virtual-reality company acquired by Meta (then Facebook) for $2 billion. Oculus Story Studio produced several VR titles, including the Emmy-winning “Henry.” But as a category, VR entertainment didn’t materialize — and Meta shut down Story Studio in 2017.

“In 2014, we said, ‘Everything will take off when this happens,’” Saatchi said, like when sales of VR headsets passed a certain milestone. “And it didn’t work.” In 2019, Saatchi led the formation of Fable Studio, which pivoted away from VR to the current model of AI-fueled playable stories. (A separate company called Fable is a cybersecurity start-up focused on AI-generated security training.)

Fable’s Showrunner public launch features two original “shows” — story worlds with characters users can steer into various narrative arcs. The first is “Exit Valley,” described as “a ‘Family Guy’-style TV comedy set in ‘Sim Francisco’ satirizing the AI tech leaders Sam Altman, Elon Musk, et al.” The other is “Everything Is Fine,” in which a husband and wife, going to Ikea, have a huge fight — whereupon they’re transported to a world where they’re separated and have to find each other.

The Showrunner system lets users insert themselves into a TV show’s world, too, which has proven to be a popular use-case among the alpha testers, Saatchi said. “People are interested in putting themselves and their friends into these stories. That was a surprise,” he said. “We didn’t design it with that in mind. People want to be in fictional worlds and also want to tell stories about themselves.”

Showrunner is powered by Fable’s proprietary AI model, SHOW-2. Last year, the company published a research paper on how it built the SHOW-1 model. As part of that, it released nine AI-generated episodes based on “South Park.” The episodes, made without the permission of the “South Park” creators, received more than 80 million views. (Saatchi said he was in touch with the “South Park” team, who were reassured the IP wasn’t being deployed commercially.)

“It has been incredibly exciting to see how Showrunner ignites creativity in people,” said Jacob Madden, Fable’s head of technology and co-creator of Showrunner. “The platform allows showrunners to experiment with their stories in real-time, constantly iterating and refining their vision. Showrunner redefines what a TV show can be and I cannot wait to see what stories emerge next.”

While Saatchi is bullish on the technology, he conceded that a major weakness of Showrunner and AI in general for entertainment is that it’s more suited to episodic content rather than, say, an epic 60-episode arc a la “Breaking Bad” or “Game of Thrones.”

“Today AI can’t sustain a story beyond one episode,” Saatchi said. “What AI is strongest at is deeply episodic shows with characters largely resetting every episode — sitcoms, police procedurals, space exploration.”

According to Saatchi, Fable’s AI model includes “guardrails” to block offensive or illegal behavior, including protections against copyright infringement. (Last month, Disney and NBCUniversal were the first major Hollywood studios to file an AI-related copyright lawsuit, against start-up Midjourney.) In addition to those protections, Saatchi said Showrunner has “guardrails around the story”: For example, the system can evaluate whether a specific character would “really be doing this.”

Out of the gate, Showrunner is focused on animated content because it requires much less processing power than realistic-looking live-action video scenes. Saatchi said Fable wants to stay out of the “knife fight” among big AI companies like OpenAI, Google and Meta that are racing to create photorealistic content. “If you’re competing with Google, are you going to win?” Saatchi said. “Our goal is to have the most creative models,” he said.

Fable, which has 15 employees, is based in San Francisco’s Mission District. Previous investors in the company include Day One Ventures, 8VC and Greycroft. More info is available on the company’s website at showrunner.xyz.

As a creative consultant for the likes of Harrods, Shiseido, Omorovicza, Christian Louboutin, and De Beers, Iona Judd is, in the crudest terms, paid for having vision, taste, and style. And so, when it came to planning her own wedding earlier this spring—arguably her highest-stakes gig to date—all the deliverables, from designing a logo, to custom-building a DJ booth, had to be executed to the same assiduously honed standards. “There were points when my fiancé was like, ‘What are you doing? This isn’t a client project!’, and I was like, ‘We are the clients!’,” she says. “Everyone thought I’d be a bit of a bridezilla, but I was actually so chilled. I mean, it was the most fun brief I’ve ever worked on.”

Judd technically met her now-husband, Elliot Mason, while on a girls trip to Ibiza, the summer before sitting her A-Levels. “It was a hedonistic weekend,” she says. “And I can barely remember it, if I’m honest, let alone meeting him.” Fast forward seven years, and Judd, then a 24-year-old Central Saint Martins jewelry design graduate, happened to match with the same Elliot on Bumble. “I discovered that we had lots of mutual friends, and over the course of our first date at Bar Termini, was informed that we had not only met at several of their parties, but even had full-on conversations, which, again, I couldn’t quite recall.” Judd scuttled home, a little mortified, while Mason required gentle persuading to go on a second outing. “Who would ever have thought we’d be getting married all these years later?”

The engagement took place on a wet and wild stretch of coastline famed for having been the place where 68 Celtic Christian monks were slaughtered in 806AD on the remote isle of Iona—Judd’s namesake—in the Inner Hebrides. “It was pissing it down, both of us were in waterproofs, and I basically demanded that Elliot take a photo of me, Iona, on Iona,” Judd recalls. “As I jumped up and down, he sort of murmured something to me, and so I turned around and he was on one knee.” She, of course, said yes. “I think my soul left my body for about 15 seconds. It was just the most surreal, magical thing.” The wedding, she hoped, would take place beneath the sunnier skies of the Peloponnese, but the gods had other plans. “We went on a recce to Kardamyli, and found an abandoned amphitheater overlooking the ocean,” she adds. “It was beautiful, but the village elders vetoed the idea, essentially.”

Key Facts

What Do We Know About The End Of Craig And Rodriguez’s Relationship?

Craig and Rodriguez were spotted together and had been making social media posts featuring one another as recently as last weekend. They attended a party hosted by social media celebrity David Dobrik on Saturday, multiple outlets reported, and Vulture reported Rodriguez was posting Snapchat stories of the two of them together throughout the night. Rodriguez also posted a TikTok video of the two at a Brazilian restaurant over the weekend. Fans noticed Sunday that Craig and some of her “Love Island” co-stars, including Serena Page and Leah Kateb, had unfollowed Rodriguez on Instagram. TMZ reported on Sunday Rodriguez and Craig had split, citing unnamed sources.

What Else Do We Know About The Breakup?

Multiple outlets reported Charmane Smith, a friend of Craig, made and deleted a post to her Instagram story in which she urged women to go through their partner’s phones. “Search keywords like ‘I don’t like black women, I thought I would get more money from this, I’m faking this relationship, going on the show would be for clout,’” Smith’s story said, according to Us Weekly, which said it viewed the story prior to its deletion. Neither Craig nor Rodriguez have addressed Smith’s alleged claims, though Smith’s post quickly went viral online.

Are Craig And Rodriguez Still On “beyond The Villa?”

Yes, Craig and Rodriguez still star on “Love Island: Beyond the Villa,” which began airing July 13 and will continue throughout the summer. “Beyond the Villa” stars former cast members from season six of “Love Island USA” as they adjust to their relationships in Los Angeles. The series airs Thursdays on Peacock. The upcoming July 31 episode will follow Craig and Rodriguez as they “take in a foster dog as a practice run for parenthood,” according to TV Guide, and future episodes will include the couple struggling with “different opinions about living together” and the “fallout” from their anniversary dinner.

Key Background

Craig and Rodriguez met on the sixth season of “Love Island USA,” which aired in the summer of 2024 and is considered the breakout season of the American franchise, which is based on the British reality dating show. Craig was one of the original islanders who entered the villa on day one, whereas Rodriguez was a “bombshell” who joined the show on day 13. The two began a relationship shortly after Rodriguez’s entrance, though they faced a rift while Rodriguez explored a relationship with another contestant. Craig and Rodriguez made it to the finale and placed third following a fan vote. After the show, Rodriguez and Craig became active on social media, where they have millions of followers and would frequently post content about their relationship. After “Love Island USA” ended, Craig and Rodriguez continued a long-distance relationship and made several public appearances, including at the “Gladiator II” premiere in Tokyo in November and the American Music Awards and Coachella in the spring.

Tangent

The social media storm over Craig and Rodriguez’s breakup comes weeks after season seven of “Love Island USA” concluded, which garnered series high viewership while facing several controversies, resulting in producers booting two contestants from the show. In the second episode, contestant Yulissa Escobar departed the show after a podcast episode resurfaced in which she used the N-word. Escobar apologized on social media following her exit, though she decried online bullying and said some viewers have made it their “mission to break people down, not just me, but everyone who stepped into that villa.” Weeks later, contestant Cierra Ortega was removed from the show after an Instagram story she had posted resurfaced in which she used a slur for Chinese people to refer to her eyes after receiving a Botox brow lift procedure. Days after her exit, Ortega posted a video to her Instagram telling viewers she is “deeply, truly, honestly so sorry” and that she had “no idea” the word was a slur. Escobar and Ortega have both said they will not be at the season seven reunion, which will air Aug. 25 on Peacock.

Further Reading

Booted ‘Love Island’ Contestant Cierra Ortega Apologizes After Past Use Of Racial Slur Resurfaces (Forbes)

Thousands of fans lined the streets of Birmingham to watch Ozzy Osbourne make his final journey through his home city, with his tearful family laying tributes as crowds chanted the late singer’s name.

A hearse carrying Osbourne, who died last week aged 76, made its way through the city centre on Wednesday afternoon on the way to his private funeral.

The procession stopped on “Black Sabbath bridge”, where his family members placed roses among the hundreds of tributes left for the heavy metal pioneer in front of the bench depicting the band.

A visibly emotional Sharon, who was married to Osbourne for 43 years, was aided by her children, Aimee, Kelly and Jack, as she tearfully took in the sea of tributes, and signalled a peace sign to the crowd before leaving.

They were joined by a number of family members, including some of Osbourne’s grandchildren, who waved to the crowds offering their support.

People could be seen leaning out of windows, and climbing on top of walls and bus stops, to catch a glimpse of the Prince of Darkness’s funeral cortege.

His coffin began its journey in Aston in the north of the city, passing Osbourne’s childhood home on Lodge Road and the football stadium Villa Park, where he performed a huge farewell concert with his Black Sabbath bandmates just weeks ago.

People chanted his name, held up rock hand gestures, and threw roses at the hearse carrying his coffin adorned with purple flowers spelling out “Ozzy”.

A local brass band, Bostin Brass, played songs including Black Sabbath’s Iron Man ahead of the procession of vehicles.

In an interview in 2011, Osbourne said he didn’t care what music was played at his funeral, as long as it was “a celebration, not a mope-fest”, and the atmosphere along Broad Street seemed to reflect his wishes.

Will Howell, an 18-year-old student, said Osbourne was “a legend, so you know, you gotta go and say goodbye to him”.

“I got up at six in the morning to go to work, to come here early so I could get here and see it,” he said. He has been listening to Osbourne’s music since his dad introduced it to him aged eight.

“Probably not the best age,” he said. “Ozzy changed music a lot, even inside of metal, and I think it’s just good to say goodbye to him.”

Marco, from Verona, Italy, and member of a band called Witch Ghetto, said he discovered Black Sabbath 20 years ago and “it really struck a chord”.

“They were probably pioneers without knowing they were. They just wanted to play music and have fun and follow their instincts and that’s probably the best thing you can do when you play music,” he said.

Will Taylor, a musician from Chesterfield, said it was a “no brainer” to come to the city to watch the funeral procession with his wife and dog. He is a massive fan of Black Sabbath, and Osbourne’s collaborations with the American guitarist Randy Rhoads, who died in a plane crash while on tour with Osbourne in 1982.

“A bit of me thinks if there’s something after death, then Ozzy is with Rhoads looking down wherever they are,” he said.

Osbourne was the lead singer of Black Sabbath, who formed in Birmingham in 1968 and were widely credited with defining and popularising heavy metal music.

Earlier this year Osbourne and his bandmates – Terence “Geezer” Butler, Tony Iommi and Bill Ward – were given the freedom of the city of Birmingham to recognise their “exceptional service to the city”.

Osbourne’s health declined in recent years, and he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2019.

He appeared for a surprise performance at the Commonwealth Games closing ceremony in Birmingham in 2022, and performed his last gig on 5 July in a farewell concert at Villa Park fearing global metal stars such as Anthrax, Metallica and Guns N’ Roses.

Lady Pink was five when she killed her first snake – with her bare feet. “That shows what a precocious and fearless kid I was,” says the 61-year-old. Even over the phone from upstate New York, the venerated graffiti artist is a force to be reckoned with, talking at a breakneck tempo punctuated by bursts of raucous laughter. There’s a sense that this energy might quickly combust too – she admits she “totally lost it” while preparing for her current solo show, Miss Subway NYC, at D’Stassi Art in London.

The exhibition sees her vividly recreate a New York City subway station. There are paintings in eye-popping colours depicting trains, train yards and playful portraits of the characters you typically see there: a busker in a cat costume, an elderly lady with a shopping cart and a chihuahua. With the help of her husband, fellow graffiti artist Smith, she has even meticulously reproduced layers of tags on the walls from her halcyon days, when she would risk arrest – and sometimes her life – to spray across the city at night. On the show’s opening night, more than 1,000 people showed up to pay their respects to the grande dame of graf.

Lady Pink was born Sandra Fabara in Ambato, Ecuador, in 1964. Her story begins on her grandparents’ sugarcane plantation in the Amazon rainforest – a vast, wild terrain that, like the snake who met its fate at her feet, didn’t intimidate her. Her mother had returned after leaving Pink’s father, an agricultural engineer who was a “womaniser, gambler, cheater … ”. As soon as she had enough money, when Pink was seven, they left Ecuador for New York City. “When we came here, we had no papers, we didn’t speak the language.”

Pink was a self-assured, determined and talented kid who quickly learned how to channel her pain and grief into creativity. She first got into graffiti at 15, after her boyfriend was arrested for tagging and sent to live with relatives in Puerto Rico. “I cried for a whole month, then I started tagging his name everywhere.” A painting in her London show of the artist as a teen kissing a handsome boy pays tribute to this defining moment in her personal history.

When she started high school in Queens, she met “kids who knew how to get into yards and tunnels. The more they said, ‘You can’t, you’re a girl,’ the more I had to prove them wrong. I was stubborn as a mule. I was crazy.” As one of the only women accepted by the notoriously macho graffiti scene in New York in the late 1970s, she quickly gained a reputation for tagging subway trains. “We are like a guild, a clannish, tribal group who go out at night and watch each other’s backs.”

She later earned her official moniker “Pink” from a fellow member of TC5 crew, Seen. “I was the only female in the city painting, and I needed a female name so everyone would know our crew tolerated a female,” she explains. “I knew I was the token female and that got my foot in the door – but to keep up with the big bad boys, I had to back it up with real talent too. There was sexism of course, but I’m a little bit of a badass. I don’t appreciate being walked over and I stand up strongly for myself. Even if I’m petite, I’m loud. Don’t judge me by my size, judge me by how big and fast I paint!”

She added the “Lady” title – at first inspired by the European nobility in the historical romance novels she was reading. “But I don’t write Lady – I’m terrible at the letter Y.” Later she used the Lady title to avoid confusion with the pop singer of the same name – who approached the artist to design her first album cover. “I said, ‘Hell no!’ Are you kidding me? But she’s a fan, I’m not going to say anything bad about her, she’s fine, she sings fine.”

As a young woman out at night in New York’s most insalubrious neighbourhoods in 1979, Pink was especially vulnerable. “I would dress like a boy and pretend to be a boy. The teens I ran with weren’t much bigger than me and I knew they weren’t there to protect me if shit went down. You’re in the worst neighbourhoods of New York City relying on the kindness of strangers to save your life – you’ve got to be prepared. What happens in the dark alleys of cities, you don’t want to know. You shake a spray can and hope they let you live.”

“Bombing” subway trains is one of the most perilous activities of graffiti – “loads of kids have died doing it, getting run over by the trains or electrocuted. It still happens. It’s live electricity: if you touch the rail you will die.” How did she survive? “You don’t stumble in like you’re drunk, it’s like a military manoeuvre. You know the train schedules, where to walk, where to hide. You have all of that figured out ahead of time. You need to be sure where you’re going when you’re running like panicked rats in the dark maze.”

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Still, there were more than a few close calls over the years. She recalls she once sliced her finger open and “it was bleeding badly, it was a terrible cut and I probably should have had it stitched, but I just stuck it in my pocket and it quietly bled in there. I didn’t want people to say: ‘Oh you’re a girl you’re hurt and crying, you’re going to slow us down,’ – you’ve got to be a good soldier.”

Another time, there was a near miss with an unforeseen moving train. “I had gone to pee and I thought I could just walk it,” she laughs. “Then there was a train coming and it was doing a weird curve, slanting into the wall. At the last minute I ducked, but if I had stayed standing the train would’ve taken my head off. After that, I just ran at top speed. I can’t believe I survived it.”

The 1980s were a whirlwind. She rose to fame in 1983 after featuring in Wild Style, the cult film that launched American hip-hop culture globally. Her spray-painted canvases, horror vacui compositions with bold, attention-grabbing colours of scenes inspired by the street, began to be accepted in conventional, legal art spaces, and in 1984 she was included in MoMA PS1’s The New Portrait alongside Alice Neel, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. “No one was aware it was going to launch anything, we were just in it for the moment and the money. People told us the art market was fickle and eventually we’d have to get jobs.”

Once she invited Haring to come to paint a train with her. “Just me and him, no machismo – but dude was not down, he didn’t want to cross the line of breaking laws. What he did was chalk on boards. He was a white dude; he wasn’t incurring any kind of arrests. They weren’t graffiti artists, but they were the original street artists. Graffiti artists work with spray, with fonts – and we hit stuff with wheels.”

Pink also received an invitation from Jenny Holzer, who was wheatpasting her Truisms posters in Manhattan. “We were like the only women going out at night doing things. She was a tall lady, like two metres, she would wear a hoodie and a big coat so she could pass off as a man going around at night alone. I am very small and I couldn’t pass off like that, so I had to run with a crew. She reached out to me and suggested we collaborate.”

Holzer had done up an entire building in the Lower East Side. “It was wild out there at that time, there were a lot of people doing drugs, there was a lot of crime. But she made this beautiful, safe building, and I loved going there and working with her.” Holzer would prep three-metre-square canvases for Lady Pink to spray paint her images on, and Holzer paired them with text. The works were later shown at MoMA and Tate Modern. In 1983, 19-year-old Pink was photographed by Lisa Kahane wearing a vest emblazoned with Holzer’s famous words: “Abuse of power comes as no surprise” – in 2017 the photo went viral as an emblem of the #MeToo movement.

Though artwork sales and interest did wane in the late 1980s, Pink pivoted. She set up a mural company with her husband, doing public commissions and working in communities. While many of her peers “couldn’t handle the business, they couldn’t leave the ghetto behind, they couldn’t show up on time or answer a phone call”, she says she was able to “adapt to polite society. Artists don’t know how to hustle, and you’ve gotta hustle, hustle, hustle. Some don’t have the cojones. But good grief, you’ve got to go knocking on doors!”

She stopped illegally painting subway trains decades ago – “now I save my crazy for the galleries” – but the spirit of the subway lives on in the London show. And she says she’s still paying the price for her years of youthful rebellion. Twelve years ago, she and her husband moved upstate after “one too many” police raids on their home in NYC. “They took my stuff – including my husband – and messed with us. We had to spend money on an expensive attorney. They’ve told me to stick to the indoor stuff and not paint big old murals because they inspire people. I said yeah – community people, poets, artists, I should hope I inspire people!”

One thing is for sure: she doesn’t have any regrets. “Street art is the biggest art movement, we are in every corner of the world. By whatever means possible, we are taking over this world, it’s our whole plan! I think it’s cool, man – you’ve got to take control of your environment. You don’t need an MA to be an artist, you just need a little paint plus a little courage. Just do it!”

Alon Aboutboul, an Israeli actor who acted in dozens of films throughout his career, died this week in Israel, according to various reports. He was 60. 

Local perspective:

The Jerusalem Post reported that Aboutboul died unexpectedly while on a beach in Israel, north of Tel Aviv, on Tuesday morning, despite revival efforts from lifeguards.

His manager confirmed his death to The Hollywood Reporter.

What they’re saying:

Israel’s Minister of Culture and Sports, Miki Zohar, paid tribute to the actor on social media. 

“I was deeply saddened to hear about the sudden passing of the actor Alon Abutbul, may his memory be blessed.  

Last night, I watched an interview with him where he spoke about filming a movie he recently participated in, and the passion for his craft that radiated from him was evident even after so many years in the industry.  

Alon was a recipient of the Ophir Award and the Television Academy Award, and over the years, he portrayed a wide range of characters, bringing depth and emotion to them, leaving a profound mark on Israeli culture.  

May his memory be blessed,” he wrote, via an automated X translation. 

Israel roots

Aboutboul was born in Kiryat Ata to parents of Algerian and Egyptian descent, according to The Jerusalem Post. 

The outlet also reported he is survived by his wife and their four children, and that the family lived in Israel and Los Angeles. 

Alon Aboutboul actor

Known for:

Aboutboul is credited in more than 100 films, according to IMDB. In the U.S., he is most known for his roles in “The Dark Knight Rises,” the “Snowfall” TV series, and “Rambo III”. 

His IMDB page lists one project in pre-production, “Jacob’s Dream,” in which Aboutboul is credited with acting, co-directing and co-writing. It was about a hit man in Los Angeles who defiantly returns to Jerusalem to give his childhood friend a proper burial.

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