Category: 5. Entertainment

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EXCLUSIVE: Following the buzzy TIFF launch of the indie comedy Poetic License, marking her feature writing debut, Raffi Donatich has inked a deal to develop the TV series Sex Act for Netflix, alongside Jeremy O. Harris (Slave Play, Zola) and Lena Dunham (Too Much, Girls), sources tell Deadline.

The show is described as following an intimacy coordinator who’s never been kissed. Reps for Netflix and Dunham declined to comment. We’re told that Emmy and Golden Globe winner Sarah Paulson (American Horror Story) is attached to star, though her deal won’t be finalized until script work is completed. Reps for Paulson did not respond to requests for comment.

Sources said Donatich is writing, with Harris and Josh Godrey to exec produce for bb², alongside Dunham and Michael P. Cohen for Good Thing Going Productions, which inked a first-look TV deal with Netflix at top of year. It’s expected that Dunham will also be involved here as a director.

A New York-based writer and performer, Donatich approached bb² with the original pitch for Sex Act after working with Harris on his plays Slave Play and Daddy. bb² brought the project to Good Thing Going — a company with more history in the TV space — with the latter entity attaching prior to the inking of its Netflix deal. Harris goes way back with Dunham, just on a friendship level, and we’re told Dunham sees a lot of herself in Donatich, whom she’s taken under her wing in a mentoring capacity. bb² and Good Thing Going wrote a letter to Paulson regarding a starring role, which led to her attachment, and Good Thing Going then took the project into Netflix under their deal.

A New York-based writer and performer, Donatich’s Poetic License just premiered in the Special Presentations of TIFF and is currently seeking distribution amid a strong critical response. Marking the feature directorial debut of actress Maude Apatow, as well as the first film from her production company Jewelbox Pictures, on which we were first to report, the indie comedy watches as two inseparable best friends, Sam (Andrew Barth Feldman) and Ari (Cooper Hoffman), start to unravel as they compete for the affection of Liz (Leslie Mann), the middle-aged mom auditing their college poetry workshop. In his review of the film out of Toronto, Deadline’s Pete Hammond calls Donatich’s script “supremely intelligent and raucously amusing.” Currently, the multi-hyphenate is writing and producing LuckyChap and Fake Empire’s upcoming series Sterling Point, created by Megan Park, for Amazon. She is repped by UTA and 2AM.

Harris is best known as the creator of Broadway sensation Slave Play, which received a historic 12 nominations at the Tony Awards in 2021, and has just come off a sold-out run at the Noël Coward Theatre on the West End. He’s known in film for co-writing A24’s critically acclaimed Zola alongside director Janicza Bravo, with television credits including HBO’s Euphoria and Irma Vep. In 2023, he was nominated for another pair of Tony Awards for producing The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window and Ain’t No Mo‘. His play Daddy opened to acclaim in its UK debut at Almeida Theatre in March 2022 and made its way to the Tokyo Globe Theatre shortly thereafter. Currently the Artistic Director for the Williamstown Theatre Festival, where his most recent play Spirit of the People premiered this summer, Harris will next be seen on screen alongside Charli XCX in Pete Ohs’ film Erupjca — another TIFF-premiering title, which he also co-wrote and produced. He is represented by CAA, 2AM, and Granderson Des Rochers, as is his bb².

Dunham has recently garnered the most buzz since Girls with Too Much, her series co-created for Netflix with husband Luis Felber, which centers on the unexpected romance between a New York workaholic (Megan Stalter) and a British musician (Will Sharpe). Last month, we reported that she’s teaming with Emily Ratajkowski and author Stephanie Danler to develop an untitled Apple series, exploring female identity and modern motherhood, with A24. Upcoming, she also has Good Sex, a rom-com starring Natalie Portman and Mark Ruffalo that she’s directed and produced for Netflix from her own script. Pic is expected to premiere in 2027. Dunham will make her Broadway creative debut with 10 Things I Hate About You: The Broadway Musical and recently announced that her memoir, Famesick, will be published by Random House in April 2026. She is repped by CAA and Hansen, Jacobson, Teller.

Most recently appearing on FX’s The Bear, Paulson will next be seen starring alongside Kim Kardashian, Naomi Watts, Niecy Nash and others in Ryan Murphy’s Hulu legal drama All’s Fair, out this November. She is repped by CAA and Entertainment 360.

Barbara Jakobson, an iconic collector who was known for wide-reaching web of relationships with artists, dealers, and curators, died at 92 on August 25 in Manhattan. The cause was pneumonia, according to the New York Times.

Jakobson, who appeared on ARTnews’s Top 200 Collectors list three times, from 1990 to 1992, was a central figure of the New York art world for decades. She had close relationships with some of the era’s top dealers, including Sidney Janis, Ileana Sonnabend, and Leo Castelli.

She was also a longtime trustee of the Museum of Modern Art, joining its Junior Council in the 1960s, becoming the head of that group in 1971, and being elected a full-fledged board member in 1974. But her history with the institution extended even further back to when an aunt of hers gave her a MoMA membership when she was 12, Jakobson said in an interview for a MoMA oral history in 1997.

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While serving on the Junior Council, Jakobson also became a founding member of the Studio Museum in Harlem, which opened in 1968. “Once we got it started, the idea was that we wouldn’t just be a board of white downtown New Yorkers, we would start it, we would try to get it going and we would leave,” she said in the oral history about her involvement with the Studio Museum.

As a MoMA trustee, she persuaded Castelli to donated Robert Rauschenberg’s Bed (1955), one of the artist’s first “Combines,” to the museum; it is now a cornerstone of MoMA’s permanent collection. She was also part of the committee that selected Yoshio Taniguchi to serve as the architect for MoMA’s $850 million expansion, which opened in 2004.

In an interview with the Times, dealer Jeffrey Deitch characterized Jakobson as one of a select few people “who are essential to how this whole system works, how the consensus of art and quality is formed.”

Jakobson’s townhouse in the Upper East Side, which she moved into in 1965 and in which she raised her three children, was filled with her collection. “I see the house as a vessel for an ongoing autobiographical exercise,” she told Curbed in 2021 for its “Great Rooms” column. “I keep the transformation as proof of life.”

On the ground floor at the time was a bar made of Con Ed barricades and designed by Tom Sachs. Elsewhere were works by Matthew Barney, Richard Artschwager, Barbara Bloom, Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Peter Halley, and Robert Morris, whose felt piece has not moved since she acquired it in 1970. A portrait of her by Robert Mapplethorpe, one of the many artists who she also forged a friendship with, hangs above a fireplace on the townhouse’s parlor floor.

In 2005, she sold 41 works of both art and design from her collection, which she had begun to assemble in the 1950s, at Christie’s. Among them were a brass-and-resin chair by Italian designer Carlo Mollino, Josef Albers’s Homage to the Square: Consonant (1957), Diane Arbus’s Xmas Tree in a Living Room, Levittown, L.I. (1963), and Frank Stella’s Felstzyn III (1971). (The outline of where the Stella once hung is still visible in her townhouse.)

Several of the lots exceeded their pre-sale estimates, though the Stella sold for $72,000 against an $80,000 to $120,000 estimate. The sale made $1.9 million, with 10 percent of the proceeds benefitting MoMA’s Acquisition Fund. She also used the funds to pay for new commissions for her home, including the Tom Sachs–designed bar.

Jakobson was born Barbara Petchesky on January 31, 1933, in Brooklyn. She grew up on Eastern Parkway across from the Brooklyn Museum. She studied art history at Smith College, and during her junior year there, she married John Jakobson, whom she had met when she was 17, just before starting at Smith. At the time of their marriage, John was a student at Harvard Business School and would go on to have a career as a stockbroker. (The couple divorced in 1983.)

They moved to New York in the mid-’50s, and Barbara Jakobson would soon become immersed in the city’s burgeoning postwar art world. She soon met Castelli, via an introduction from her cousin, and bought a Jasper Johns works from the artist’s first Castelli show in 1958.

Her first purchase was a work by German artist Adolf Fleischmann because she couldn’t afford a work by Piet Mondrian, her favorite artist, so “I just found the closest thing to a Mondrian that I could,” she said in the MoMA oral history.

Jakobson would go on to grow her collection over the next seven decades, but at the core of it was her love of art and artists. “This is what drives me and what keeps me interested in art, the art of my own time,” she said in the oral history. “I look to the artists to let me know what we will be thinking because the artist always is there first, they’re always these [C]assandras, whatever it is, whether it’s a new way of painting, that’s why it‘s interesting for me to look at the work of new artists.”

As another Stephen King thriller is set to hit theaters, the bestselling author has revealed his 10 favorite movies of all time.

King took to X to post the list, which comes as the Lionsgate film The Long Walk — which is based on King’s 1979 dystopian novel — is set to stroll into theaters this month.

The author listed his favorites, but first noted his list excludes four particular films that were based on his novels or novellas.

The four titles he left out (because, one assumes, they would otherwise likely be among his personal Top 10) are 1990’s Misery, 1994’s The Shawshank Redemption, 1986’s Stand by Me and 1999’s The Green Mile. All four are frequently cited among the best King adaptations. Misery and Stand by Me notably share the same director (Rob Reiner), as do Shawshank and Mile (Frank Darabont). Also, two of them (Stand by Me and Shawshank) were based on novellas from the same collection of four stories (Different Seasons). Only one title, Misery, would be classified as a horror story despite it being the genre most strongly associated with King.

(If you’re surprised 1980’s The Shining isn’t on his list of favorite adaptations, King famously had many objections to Stanley Kubrick’s iconic film, saying, among other things, “The character of Jack Torrance has no arc in that movie. Absolutely no arc at all. All he does is get crazier. In the book, he’s a guy who’s struggling with his sanity and finally loses it … [the film is] like a big, beautiful Cadillac with no engine inside it”).

As for his list of favorite films of all time that are not based on his published works, he said the following titles were “in no particular order”: 1977’s Sorcerer, 1974’s The Godfather Part II, 1972’s The Getaway, 1993’s Groundhog Day, 1943’s Casablanca, 1948’s Treasure of the Sierra Madre, 1975’s Jaws, 1973’s Mean Streets, 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind and 1944’s Double Indemnity.

Several of these are rather common best-of-all-time choices, such as Spielberg’s Jaws and Close Encounters, Michael Curtiz’ Casablanca, Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather Part II and Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity. Harold Ramis’ Groundhog Day, too, is considered a quasi-modern masterpiece by many.

Mean Streets is an interesting choice, however, as few would rank it among Martin Scorsese’s best films (we sure didn’t).

Another intriguing pick is The Getaway (we’re assuming King means the 1972 version and not the 1994 remake). The gritty Sam Peckinpah crime drama is based on Jim Thompson’s 1958 novel, and King is a big fan of Thompson’s work.

There definitely seems to be a time period sweet spot to the list, with six of the films from the 1970s, back when King was in 20s.

Which brings us to the most surprising pick on the list: William Friedkin’s Sorcerer. The rather confusingly titled film is a bit like Treasure of the Sierra Madre and tells the story of four fugitives from very different backgrounds taking refuge in a Central American village who agree to transport trucks loaded with unstable explosives across perilous jungle roads. The film was a box office flop upon its release, though has gained some critical favor in the years since. It’s most notable for this incredibly riveting “how did they do that?” sequence where the trucks have to cross a rickety wooden bridge over a river during a rainstorm.

Bryan Fuller made a career creating idiosyncratic series like “Pushing Daisies” and “Hannibal,” and has written for many more. Now he’s readying his feature film debut, which is set to debut at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

“Dust Bunny,” which has its world premiere on Monday at TIFF as part of Midnight Madness, stars Sophie Sloan as Aurora, a young girl who is menaced by the giant, magical and bloodthirsty title beast who lives under her bed. She then hires a hitman (“Hannibal” star Mads Mikkelsen) to take care of the problem…if only he believes her.

Fuller says the story started as one of the possible episodes of the 2020 Apple TV+ series “Amazing Stories,” based on the Steven Spielberg-created anthology show from the ’80s.

“In some ways, it’s Spielberg, a homage to those traumatic childhood films of the ’80s, like ‘Poltergeist’ and, particularly, ‘Gremlins,’” Fuller says. “It was conceived and designed to be an ‘Amazing Story’ story. But as we were developing it for Apple, it was getting noted to death, and there were a lot of stories that we had developed that weren’t moving forward in the process at Apple. So I was like, ‘You know what, this would be a great movie.’”

Since Fuller has been a busy TV writer, creator and showrunner since he first wrote for “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” in 1997, he rarely thought about directing.

“I was usually consumed with a lot of rewriting, so there wasn’t much time to direct,” he says. “I’m professional and indulgent. If I were directing with so much writing responsibilities to do, and in terms of how much rewriting I do as a showrunner, it seemed I couldn’t do both. I couldn’t be 100% dedicated to the scripts, as well as taking a month off of showrunning duties to direct, so it never really was a reality for me. Initially, I had worked with a director that I was not a big fan of, and that director was assigned to me by the head of the studio and it was a bit of a disaster. I was like, ‘This could never happen again. I need to direct.’”

Fuller says that his favorite part of directing was bringing the film into reality alongside Sloan, his young star.

“My favorite days were working with Sophie Sloan, who had as much experience with movies as I did — which was none,” he says. “With Sophie, we were finding it together and got to play in a way that you don’t usually get to do with an actor of a certain amount of experience. So the days with Sophie were play dates, being able to explore the performances, find the character, the cadence of the dialogue and in a way that was playful. It’s a movie that has a 10-year-old lead, so there was something about creating an environment that was going to be healthy and safe for a child and a positive experience that was a blast.”

Although film was a different medium for Fuller, he brought along the visual flair and love of color that often permeates his projects. He says that he had a unique shared language for discussing the colors of “Dust Bunny” with his cinematographer, Nicole Hirsch Whitaker.

“Our first conversations were in reference to my previous work,” Fuller says. “If ‘Pushing Daisies’ is very sweet and ‘Hannibal’ is very savory in terms of the color palette and lighting style, this has got to be mango chicken. It’s got to be savory and sweet and have a really dynamic flavor profile. So we talked a lot about flavors as opposed to colors.”

Ultimately, despite a few scary scenes, Fuller thinks “Dust Bunny” is the perfect gateway horror for families to watch together, as so many ’80s babies got hooked on the genre thanks to his beloved “Gremlins.”

Watch the “Dust Bunny” trailer below.

The Last Viking, the latest collaboration between Danish writer-director Anders Thomas Jensen and his longtime muses Mads Mikkelsen and Nikolaj Lie Kaas, is a wild, darkly comic fable about brotherhood, identity and the limits of sanity.

The frankly bonkers plot follows two brothers. Kaas plays Anker, a bank robber whose loot is entrusted to his traumatized younger brother Manfred (Mikkelsen). But by the time Kaas is released from prison, Manfred — a former Viking obsessive — has been diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder. He now believes he’s John Lennon. To jog his memory as to where he stored the cash, Kaas decides to find a collection of similarly afflicted patients — ones that think they’re George, Ringo and Paul — and bring the Fab Four back together.

For Mikkelsen and Lie Kaas, who have previously pushed Jensen’s brand of lunatic sincerity in films like Men & Chicken and Riders of Justice, The Last Viking was another chance to dive headfirst into the madness while keeping hold of something real. “The brother story was, I thought, really beautiful,” Mikkelsen notes. “That way we could be allowed to do all the insanity, but we needed these anchors, these moments where they saw each other for who they were.”

The Hollywood Reporter sat down with Mikkelsen and Lie Kaas to talk about why they keep returning to Jensen’s universe, how they found the reality inside these extreme characters, and whether they’re team Beatles or team Abba.

What made you decide to come on to this absolutely nuts movie? What about the story pulled you in?

NIKOLAJ LIE KAAS For me, it was basically the question about identity and how we have to accept that we are different people. We’re in the same community, and we have to coexist with all our differences. I think it’s a great question to raise, and that was the main reason I saw this as a great project. We also talked about the brothers and how they have to accept each other because they have this huge difference from the start.

MADS MIKKELSEN I was attracted to these guys, and because it’s Anders Thomas. This theme of being yourself, as well, but the brother story was, I thought, really beautiful. We enhanced it, made sure it was the heart of the film. That way, we could be allowed to do all the insanity, but we needed these anchors, these moments where [the two brothers] saw each other for who they were.

KAAS Because Anders’ universe is so crazy, full of all these wild personalities, we knew we had to focus on the bond. What is their profound connection? That was where we kept our attention.

You’ve both pushed the limits with Anders Thomas before, in films like Men & Chicken and Riders of Justice.

MIKKELSEN We’ve both gone to the edge of what’s possible with Anders. We might even have crossed it a few times. But it’s a nice place to be — in Anders’ universe, with friends who know how far to go. You feel comfortable reaching for that limit because you know they’ll pull you back if it’s too much. I don’t think I’d do that with any other director.

How did you approach Manfred — a grown man who thinks he’s John Lennon?

MIKKELSEN I approached him as a child — a kid seven, eight, nine years old — with the same impulses, the same narcissism, and the same sense of poetry and beauty in places no one else sees. That also makes him very difficult to live with. That informed everything I did, how he moves, how he talks, how he reacts to things. He’s a guy who tends to throw himself out of windows when things don’t go his way.

The film touches on identity and even identity politics. How does that discussion play out in Denmark, and how does it connect to the film?

MIKKELSEN Everything that comes to Denmark comes five years later, and with a smaller wave. So yes, the discussion is there too. But it hasn’t influenced my life in a big way. It was very important for the media to deal with it constantly for a period. I don’t know if that’s why Anders made the film but, for me, it’s not the main theme. It’s more the “hat” the film is wearing. If you make films about politics — and you just called it “identity politics” — it’s boring. Everything is boring when it’s about politics. It has to be about human beings and their behavior. That’s the heart of a film. Then you can put a political hat on top. But it can’t be the core.

KAAS I think the film raises a big question mark about the idea of identity. It doesn’t make a statement. It asks: Can we accept our differences? That is so important. We have to coexist. That’s the main plan for everyone — to find a way, because we all have to be here.

MIKKELSEN Exactly. And Anders also shows how quickly we build walls, because somebody says, “They’re the problem.”

Which Beatle do you self-identify as?

MIKKELSEN Which one is alive? Ringo. I’d be Ringo.

KAAS I’d say the same. He’s a really nice guy; everybody talks about how nice he is. He seems to have the best time.

MIKKELSEN And he’s got no gray hair.

KAAS Exactly. I’d choose Ringo as well.

A major conflict in the film is between Abba and Beatles fans. Are you team Abba or team Beatles?

KAAS You can’t put them up against each other.

MIKKELSEN Exactly — why does there have to be a conflict? They’re great for different things. We grew up with Abba and were proud of our neighbors making music that went global. But in terms of the music itself, that’s really up to a musician to answer.

KAAS I love both worlds. You can’t say one is better than the other.

What was the most fun moment on set?

MIKKELSEN The funny thing is, if you play the “straight guy,” as Nikolaj does, then you’re standing next to complete insanity. That’s a hard job, because you’re not part of it. Being in that insanity is easier — you rarely crack up because you’re in that bubble. But being the one looking at it can be absurd.

KAAS Definitely. But honestly, we held it together better on this one. On Men & Chicken, that was tougher. You have to remind yourself that these characters don’t see their world as absurd or comedic. This is reality to them. That’s the most important thing in Anders’ films — to keep it real, even in the midst of insanity.

What makes Anders Thomas Jensen’s films so different?

KAAS I don’t think he has a choice, that’s how his mind works. In Denmark, a lot of directors envy the fact that he’s that bold. His storytelling has something of the fable about it. He creates his own realm every time.

MIKKELSEN It’s there even in his first film, Flickering Lights, that poetry was there. He didn’t really get the credit for it — people called it a “boys’ film.” But he’s always been dealing with big subjects: Family, death, life, God, Satan. Enormous things. For him, the only way to tell those stories without being pretentious is to wrap them in insanity. But inside there’s big honesty and big poetry. That’s what makes him unique.

Many of Anders Thomas’ films have been adapted into English. Do you think his work translates well internationally?

KAAS That’s a good question. I’ve seen some of his films received in the U.S., and the approach is completely different. His films tend to be received very differently in different countries. Even Canada receives them differently from the U.S.. And I honestly don’t know how Sweden will take this one.

MIKKELSEN I once accepted an award on his behalf for The Green Butchers. For Best Drama. Now, that film is obviously not a drama. But that’s how they travel sometimes. Anders is also very wordy, and subtitles can only capture maybe 30 percent of it. Those words are very important to his universe. If people still like the film despite missing that layer, then they’re getting something else out of it. But it’s hard to say what.

KAAS That’s why I’m always curious to see what happens abroad. And yes, maybe even a little worried.

MIKKELSEN Especially with Sweden. They’re so close to us, yet sometimes the establishment there interprets things very differently. But I hope they’ll love it.

Speaking of adaptations — Mads, one of your most acclaimed films, Another Round, is being remade in the U.S. What are your thoughts on that?

MIKKELSEN I’m fine with people doing it — as long as I don’t have to. (Laughs.) I don’t know how it works, honestly. Another Round had a very specific Danish approach: It looks at heavy drinking not by condemning it, but by finding comedy in it. Finding comedy in the drama without making it into a comedy. That tonality is hard to replicate. My fear is they’ll turn it into a straight comedy or a finger-wagging “don’t drink” story. But if they can’t find the same balance Thomas did, then why do it? Maybe they’ll change it completely. But then it becomes a different story.

You both work internationally but keep returning to Denmark. What brings you back?

MIKKELSEN My language, my friends, and this kind of storytelling. Anders Thomas’ films are unlike anything else. It’s just nice to come home. I love being abroad, but I love being home too. So far, I’m lucky enough to do both.

KAAS For me, it’s specifically Anders Thomas. You don’t find his kind of storytelling anywhere else. That’s a big reason to keep working with him in Denmark.

Los Angeles would go to almost any limit to express its love for Oasis, it would seem. But in a pair of reunion tour appearances at Pasadena’s Rose Bowl Stadium this weekend, the band bumped into the sole limitation that L.A. put on its adoration of the Gallagher brothers. And that bridge too far was being asked to learn and properly execute the Poznan, Manchester’s favorite dance.

Liam Gallagher did not do a great deal of talking during Saturday’s show, but when he did finally speak at length, it was to tell an apocryphal story leading into “Cigarettes and Alcohol,” the song in which this dance was to take place. “As I was swimming this morning in Santa Monica in the sea, this fucking shark jumps out,” the singer recalled. “’Mr. Gallagher…’ I said, ‘It’s Liam.’ He said, ‘Good luck trying to get that lot to do the Poznan. You know what L.A. crowds are like; they’re all stoned out of their heads, in the sun all day…’” The shark explained to Gallagher that the best he could expect was “more of a Grateful Dead kind of dance,” a swaying which the singer mockingly demonstrated. But he had faith in us. “You got it in you?” Gallagher challenged the crowd, describing the shark itself doing the Poznan as he last sighted it about two miles out to sea.

(Mind you, Gallagher does a shifting version of this story every night on tour, one that does not usually involve a shark… one that the singer identified as “Mack,” by the way, presumably in honor of “Mack the Knife.”)

Did Los Angeles pass the test? No … we failed miserably, as some hardcore Brits grumbled on social media the next day. It was not for lack of pure enthusiasm: Virtually the entire crowd seemed to be jumping up and down in unison during the following number, having some kind of grasp on what the Poznan might be supposed to look like, if not the fundamentals. But Angelenos might have mistaken it for basic pogo-ing. Simply put, the Poznan — first popularized by Polish football team Lech Poznan in the ‘60s, and picked broadly adopted by Manchester City fans a decade and a half ago — consists of audience members wrapping arms around one another’s shoulders and jumping in place with their backs to the central action. Faced with this nuance, California was largely clueless.

To be fair to L.A., though, all laziness or dance learning disabilities aside… After spending nearly two decades thinking Oasis was over and done with for good, now that they deigned to come back, would it really feel right to turn your back on them… even for the length of a song?

It would be hard to overstate just how much emotion a majority of the capacity crowd had invested in this resurrection. Thinking back on some of the other acts who have headlined the Rose Bowl over the years, it was as if the Rolling Stones, ‘N Sync and Billy Graham somehow all joined forces and came back to lead an ecstatically cultish mass-scale rock ‘n’ roll ceremony, reaffirming for the elders in the audience that they are not nearly dead, and initiating the younger enthusiasts in a kind of Britpop bar-or-bat mitzvah. Near the end of their two-hour performance, Noel Gallagher had the visuals team train a camera on a young woman in the front whom he said had been weeping throughout the whole show, and indeed, she looked like she’d been directly transported from the Ed Sullivan Theatre in 1964 to this spot. If this stuff tended to get written off back in the ‘90s as phony Beatlemania, it certainly hasn’t bitten the dust.

The audience demographics at these two SoCal shows was certainly interesting… a mixture of aspirational and actual Englishness, united in a tempory new world order marked by seemingly compulsory bucket hats.

When it comes to the true Brits, the very short U.S. leg of the band’s reunion tour seems like the inverse of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, when it moved through Europe last summer. Just as Swift’s shows overseas seemed to attract audiences that were as much as one-third American, so did Oasis’ Pasadena shows appear to draw a crowd that was about 30% European, if eavesdropping on accents could offer any indication. (Usage of the word “mate” seemed to have increased by about one-billion percent in L.A. County over the course of a weekend.)

I walked the concourse at the Rose Bowl between acts, trying to see how easy it was to distinguish the Welshmen from the wanna-bes, and so on. I went up to one middle-aged guy who just felt like he had foreignness wafting off him and asked if he had come from overseas. He turned out to be an Australian, and informed me he’d given up his left testicle to get over here, along with his eye tooth. Then he gave me a big grin that revealed, yes, a big gap where a tooth should be, and I felt grateful he did not offer to demonstate whether the other was true.

The Australian took off without further giving me the time of day about his trip to America, but I did soon come across a more chatty, less drunken quartet of young British men who were catching Oasis dates around the world.                   

“Seeing the best band in the world, traveling overseas with your best mates, it’s an atraction in itself,” said a guy who identified himself only as Kieran, from Wolverhampton, England, waiting in a beer line with his fellow travelers. He’d already caught Oasis closer to home in Cardiff, then come over to catch a Toronto date before this. “It’s crazy — we’ve seen people that live down the road from us and we are seeing people that live 5000 miles away. We were at the Whisky-a-Go-Go last night to see a tribute act [the Canadian-based band Supersonic], and it was, I’d say, 70% English. We were talking to people from Coventry, Birmingham, London, Cornwall, Glasgow — everyone we spoke to seemed to be British.”

Had Kieran and his buddies seen Oasis back in the day, in the band’s original run, I asked? They looked at me like I was daft. “We’re too young! They split up when I was only 8!” Anyway, besides a chance to go on holiday overseas, the international dates are allowing hardcore fans — those who were on board the first time, and those, like Kieran, who demographically just missed ‘em then — to indulge in Oasis hoarding before the possible long winter ahead. “There was no way I was not seeing Oasis multiple times. If they come again next year,” he said, “we’ll see ‘em multiple times next year. We’ve waited long enough.”

And because the Gallagher brothers might break up again? Well, that went without saying. “There’s a high chance,” Kieran affirmed.

Further down the concourse, I ran into another quartet of friends, but these were a mixture of L.A. and Seattle residents. Their bucket hats were unusually colorful… not store-bought, much less merch-stand-bought, but made of yarn. “My wife knitted them,” said Walt, 53, from Thousand Oaks. (This was as close as anything I found to Eras Tour-style cosplay; Oasis fandom is not much about doing crafts.)

What did Oasis represent, I asked Walt? “Oasis reminds me of a time when I didn’t have as much to worry about. When I still had light in my eyes,” he added, as the rest of his group laughed. “How’s that for a quote? It’s one step beyond nostalgia. This is desperation for a more fun time.” (He declined to give his last name because “I don’t want to be in Variety sounding like a suicide.”)

On the brighter side, he was looking forward to the encore numbers, which he’d already spoiled himself with online. “I’m a sucker for the finale: it’s ‘Champagne Supernova.’ Liam’s plantive yelling – it’s more than plaintive, it’s desperate – ‘Why why why why,’ over and over again… wait till that hits this place tonight.”

Friend Jess Dolan, 43, in from Washington state, said attending the show was “super nostalgic for me. These albums came out when I was in middle school, and my daughter is in middle school right now, so it’s weird to me to be the same age she is, thinking back on music that came out when I was her age.” Jess was the rare person I talked to who had actually seen the band back in their heyday, but it was “in San Francisco, at one of those Christmas Jingle Ball-type things, ’95 or ‘96, and I was 14 then.” She marveled at the different attitude in the States toward Oasis at the end of their initial run and now. “All they had to do was break up for 16 years. They couldn’t even sell out arenas here in 2009, and now they can do this.”

Craig Detweiler, a filmmaker and academic, was at the show with his wife and grown son, doing the passing-down-of-Oasis ritual. “I think Gen Z is interested in Liam in part as this fashion icon,” said Detweiler after the concert, “and he hasn’t had the chance to be the rock star in his 50s who has sort of stuck around and everyone’s seen enough of.” For the audience, he said, “I think it’s honestly the simplicity and solidarity of the lyrics. There’s that anthemic quality, and they’re easy to pick up on and easy to repeat and join in on, so there’s no real requirements to participate. No homework required.”

And for him personally? “I’d say for me, the collective joy of this show was almost overwhelming. People shouting at the top of their lungs, including my son and I; there were a lot of dads and sons around us. And it was like they were at a church service — a lot of hands up, raised and joyous. Exaltation, for sure.”

But an Oasis show doesn’t offer the attempts of, say, a Coldplay show to offer a more bounteous joy. There is a stiff-upper-lip-ness to their personal and stage personas that gives at least the appearance of an edge to the anthems. Noel Gallagher’s most memorable vintage songs in the Rose Bowl performance tended toward real emo sentiment. Yet he and his brother could only be seen breaking into a smile once or twice each, all night. Liam, the brother who clearly wanted this reunion the most, and wore the inability to re-consummate the brotherly relationship like an open wound, is still given mostly to jokes on stage more than serious statements or anything that patronizes the audience. (He dedicated one song, mysteriously, to Woody Woodpecker.) He doesn’t dance, he mostly scowls, he keeps his hands folded behind his back when he’s not shaking a tambourine or maracas, and his voice nearly sounds like a sneer — even when he’s singing a song insisting to their mum that they’re all going to live forever. Are they rude boys, or mama’s boys? Part of the accidental genius of Oasis is that they’re both, and the audience can pick its poison, or its sweet tooth. But it feeds into why men, in particular, relate to the Gallaghers: They brusquely pretend not to wear their heart on their sleeves, though we know they do.

And in that way there is something especially stoically British that continues to resonate with American fans as well as the home country followers that flocked over here for an additional dose. On the outside, you’re having a pint with them, or four, and on the inside, you’re that weepy girl on camera in the front row. Maybe this is a paradox that will live forever, even if the band doesn’t. But for now, we had 90,000 people a night dancing with tears in their eyes. Dancing the Poznan really ineptly, mind you, but dancing nonetheless.

Ayo Edebiri‘s response to a question about the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements, posed to her After the Hunt colleagues, Julia Roberts and Andrew Garfield, in a recent interview, has gone viral, as the reporter behind the inquiry is defending her line of questioning.

Federica Polidoro asked Roberts and Garfield, in an on-camera interview where they were joined by fellow star Edebiri, “Now that the #MeToo era and the Black Lives Matters are done, what [do] we have to expect in Hollywood and what we lost if we lost something with the politically correct era?” Polidoro stated her question was specifically directed at Roberts and Garfield, but Edebiri, who looked confused, responded.

After raising her hand, she began, “I know that that’s not for me and I don’t know if it’s purposeful that it’s not for me but I just am curious.”

She continued, “I don’t think it’s done. I don’t think it’s done at all. I think maybe hashtags might not be used as much, but I do think that there’s work being done by activists, by people, every day, that’s beautiful, important work that’s not finished, that’s really, really, really active for a reason, because this world is really charged. And that work isn’t finished at all. Maybe there’s not mainstream coverage in the way that there might have been, daily headlines in the way that it might have been eight or so years ago, but I don’t think it means that the work is done. That’s what I would say.”

Garfield agreed, saying, the “movements are still absolutely alive, as you say, just maybe not as labeled or covered or magnified as much.”

Two days after the interview was posted to ArtsLifeTV’s YouTube channel, Polidoro, who previously contributed to The Hollywood Reporter‘s now-defunct Italian publication, THR Roma, defended her line of questioning and said she had “been subjected to personal insults and attacks because of a question that, for some reason, was not well received by some members of the public.”

“I am not aware of any protocol that dictates the order in which questions must be asked in an interview,” she wrote in part on her Instagram account. “Censoring or delegitimizing questions considered ‘uncomfortable’ does not fall within the practice of democracy.”

She continued, suggesting that she’s neither racist nor xenophobic, and cited her extensive, long career.

“To those who unjustly accuse me of racism, I would like to clarify that in my work I have interviewed people of every background and ethnicity, and my own family is multi-ethnic, matriarchal, and feminist, with a significant history of immigration,” she wrote. “I have collaborated for over 20 years with numerous national and international publications of all political orientations, always approaching my work with openness and professional rigor. In my view, the real racists are those who see racism everywhere and seek to muzzle journalism, limiting freedom of analysis, critical thinking and the plurality of perspectives.”

The Luca Guadagnino-directed, Nora Garrett-written After the Hunt, which had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival and is set to open the New York Film Festival, is a psychological thriller about a college professor (Roberts) whose star student (Edebiri) makes an accusation against one of her colleagues (Andrew Garfield) as a dark secret from the professor’s past threatens to emerge. Michael Stuhlbarg and Chloë Sevigny round out the cast.

Ironically, the Amazon MGM Studios film’s tagline is “not everything is supposed to make you comfortable.”

During a press conference in Venice, Roberts was asked if the #MeToo thriller could be considered anti-feminist and she embraced the film’s ability to spark discussions.

“There’s a lot of old arguments that get rejuvenated in this movie in a way that does create conversation,” she said. “The best part of your question is you talking about how you all came out of the theater talking about [the film], and that’s how we wanted it to feel — that everybody comes out with all these different feelings, emotions, and points of view. You realize what you believe in strongly and what your convictions are because we stir it all up for you.”  

The movie is set to hit theaters in New York and L.A. on Oct. 10 before expanding a week later.