| It's Tuesday, last night I saw the Jane Goodall documentary, Jane, at the Hollywood Bowl, and I've decided to abandon covering the primates of the entertainment industry for the more civilized life of studying chimps in Tanzania. Hello from Los Angeles, where we're processing the latest Harvey Weinstein stories with our therapists, getting to know the new Academy, and squawking at the Star Wars: The Last Jedi trailer. A DISTURBING SEQUEL The steady drip of disturbing Harvey Weinstein stories accelerated Tuesday, with The New Yorker dropping its long-in-the-works Ronan Farrow piece on the disgraced producer. In Farrow's story, the product of a 10-month investigation, 13 women allege that Weinstein sexually harassed or assaulted them, three of whom allege rape. The piece is accompanied by a chilling audio clip, in which Weinstein admits to groping a woman, and by multiple on-the-record stories including from actresses Mira Sorvino and Rosanna Arquette. A spokesperson for Weinstein told The New Yorker that "any allegations of non-consensual sex are unequivocally denied by Mr. Weinstein." Hours later, The New York Times dropped another Weinstein bombshell of its own: an account featuring seven additional allegations of harassment, from names including Angelina Jolie and former Miramax poster girl Gwyneth Paltrow. Meanwhile, as V.F.'s Yohana Desta notes, the town continues to react to the news of the allegations, which first broke in a New York Times piece last week, with Jennifer Lawrence, George Clooney, and Kate Winslet adding their voices to the chorus of support for the women. Hillary Clinton has also now condemned Weinstein, a key Democratic donor. "I was shocked and appalled by the revelations about Harvey Weinstein," Clinton said in the statement. "The behavior described by the women coming forward cannot be tolerated. Their courage and the support of others is critical in helping to stop this kind of behavior." CORSETS, BE GONE? Two years ago, when Straight Outta Compton was an unqualified box-office and critical success, I kept a hearing a strange phrase muttered around Hollywood: "but that's not an awards movie." Ultimately, the mutterers were right—F. Gary Gray's N.W.A. biopic only earned one Oscar nomination, in the awards season that would see the #OscarsSoWhite controversy explode and lead to a contentious push for a more diverse Academy membership. Would more Academy members have considered Straight Outta Compton an awards movie if it had been a critically praised, commercially successful film about, say, the Rolling Stones, whose race and age more closely mirrors the Academy's than a group of gangsta rappers? Quite possibly. But that may be changing. The demographic remaking of the Academy over the last two years has many in the film business pondering the evolving taste culture of the group, which has invited 1,457 new members over the last two years. As one Oscar strategist asked me, "What is an awards movie anymore? Who actually is the Academy membership? What do they like?" And what does that mean for this year's contenders? I dive into these questions in this piece in the latest print issue of Vanity Fair. I AM WOMAN, HEAR ME ROAR | | V.F.'s Hillary Busis writes: Strange, but true: we might not have Lynda Carter's Wonder Woman, let alone Gal Gadot's, if not for the tireless efforts of one Gloria Steinem. See, in the 1960s, the powerful superheroine was in trouble: an ill-advised comics arc had stripped her of her powers, rendering the genre's only real marquee superheroine little more than a pinup in a red bustier. So Steinem went to work, relentlessly lobbying DC Comics and putting an un-hobbled Diana Prince on the cover of the first issue of Ms. Magazine. Her efforts were ultimately successful; as director Angela Robinson tells V.F.'s Yohana Desta, Steinem is "the woman who saved Wonder Woman." Steinem also recently sat with Robinson—whose latest film, Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, explores the strange but true story of the man who created the heroine—for a conversation about Wonder Woman and feminism; you can read their fascinating dialogue here. PORGS IN SPACE V.F.'s Katey Rich writes: The latest trailer for Star Wars: The Last Jedi premiered, in a canny bit of synergy, during halftime of ABC's Monday Night Football; the ensuing online reaction, as usual, was exceedingly calm and measured. As V.F.'s Joanna Robinson pointed out, spoilerphobic fans actually had nothing to worry about: Disney and Lucasfilm are marketing only a very small slice of the story—Rey's (Daisy Ridley) training at the hands of Luke (Mark Hamill), and Kylo Ren's (Adam Driver) continued struggle between the dark and the light—and letting the rest of the film exist in brief, tantalizing teases, from Oscar Isaac's Poe giving an inspiring speech to the squawking porg who broke the Internet. Last Jedi tickets and stuffed porgs are both now on sale. DANCING WITH MILEY V.F.'s Laura Bradley writes: Get ready, "Carpool Karaoke" stans: tonight, Miley Cyrus will join James Corden in a Late Late Show jam session. In a sneak peek posted Monday, you can see that the two will enjoy at least two activities: singing "Party in the U.S.A.," and discussing Cyrus's tongue. The singer's late-night press tour for her new album, Younger Now, has been pretty delightful so far; Cyrus spent all of last week hanging out with Jimmy Fallon as a special guest on The Tonight Show, where she performed a beautiful Tom Petty tribute and even got to hug Hillary Clinton. What's next? We're hoping she'll somehow show up on Last Week Tonight for one of John Oliver's over-the-top stunts, but something tells us not to hold our breath on that one. MOTHER!'S BIGGEST FAN V.F.'s Yohana Desta writes: Just when you thought there was nothing new to say about Mother!, Darren Aronofsky's wild allegorical tale about people who dare to sit on unbraced sinks, here comes Martin Scorsese. Weeks after the Paramount film's release, the iconic director sidled up to The Hollywood Reporter to write an essay about the modern nature of film criticism, rolling his eyes at aggregators like Rotten Tomatoes. "They rate a picture the way you'd rate a horse at the racetrack," Scorsese writes before lavishing praise on Mother!, a movie he is "still experiencing weeks after I saw it." In the piece, the director says he was "extremely disturbed" by the outsized reaction to the film, particularly that F CinemaScore rating—and "even more disturbed" once he finally saw the movie itself. "It was so tactile, so beautifully staged and acted—the subjective camera and the POV reverse angles, always in motion," he writes. If Paramount is looking for an Oscar campaign to hang Mother!'s hat on, it doesn't need to look much further. That's the news for this sunny Tuesday in L.A. What are you seeing out there? Send tips, comments, and stuffed porgs to Rebecca_Keegan@condenast.com. Follow me on Twitter @thatrebecca. | | |
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