Jack O'Brien won his Tonys for directing (inc. for "Hairspray" and "The Coast of Utopia") but it's as an actor that he's slaying "The Comeback" on HBO. We talked about that and a lot more on our latest episode. marksvincentelli.substack.com/p/wait-what-...
Nathalie Baye, one of French cinema’s support beams for the past 50+ years, has died. www.lemonde.fr/en/obituarie...
Billionaire Vincent Bolloré is a scourge on French media and by extension French politics and society, with an influence comparable to Rupert Murdoch's in the English speaking world.
www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a...
The Majestic Theater’s bathrooms aren’t ready for the onslaught of women at “Beaches.”
“It’s a couple of things that work beautifully in concert. First: no music. Audiences are so sophisticated, but what they’re not accustomed to is not being told how to feel,” Wyle says. “You take all that out and it forces a level of engagement where you’re now looking for clues within the frame of the screen, which forces you to look up from your phone. And I think that is extremely engaging, especially to young viewers who aren’t accustomed to being asked to participate in a nonpassive way in the viewing experience.
![“Second point, shooting it with almost exclusively 50-millimeter or 65-millimeter lenses, which is the most comparable to the human eye—and only shooting from the point of view of a human being that’s present in this space. There are no cameras on gurney wheels going in the hallway. There’s no cameras on the ceiling looking down from a God point of view. You are limited to the perspective of a participant. You can look away, but you can’t leave, and it becomes an endurance test for you to stay on your feet as long as we’re on our feet. Which [brings me to my] third point: real time. Real time has an aggregate sense of tension that you don’t get in any other form of storytelling. What happened before is happening now, and these two things are going to add up to the next thing. And if we throw more ingredients into this cooker and keep ratcheting it up, it’s going to pop.”](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:guthikarwozoldkzhueivkl6/bafkreihklvhtymho7wpemo5mj2f7xaiq6ulvfvcwnzo6hjstg3wixzgesy)
“Second point, shooting it with almost exclusively 50-millimeter or 65-millimeter lenses, which is the most comparable to the human eye—and only shooting from the point of view of a human being that’s present in this space. There are no cameras on gurney wheels going in the hallway. There’s no cameras on the ceiling looking down from a God point of view. You are limited to the perspective of a participant. You can look away, but you can’t leave, and it becomes an endurance test for you to stay on your feet as long as we’re on our feet. Which [brings me to my] third point: real time. Real time has an aggregate sense of tension that you don’t get in any other form of storytelling. What happened before is happening now, and these two things are going to add up to the next thing. And if we throw more ingredients into this cooker and keep ratcheting it up, it’s going to pop.”
Wyle makes eye contact for his next point, delivering it with a Robby-esque matter-of-factness. “Fourth point: The election went the other way,” he says with a shrug. “We could have been a really good show with a lot of nice things to say in a perfectly normal Kamala Harris universe. And instead we became almost a beacon of hope and humanity in an alternative universe. But in the midst of that, fifth point—this is essentially competence porn. You’re watching really smart, dedicated people do what only they know how to do at a level that you don’t know how to do it, and you’re so fucking glad that they’re there doing it, and compartmentalizing their own stuff to put your broken pieces back together. You’re so reassured by knowing that there are people out there that laugh and joke and have the ability to lock in like that.”
this is fucking unreal stuff from Noah Wyle on the magic of The Pitt. www.gq.com/story/noah-w...
Very David Cromer touch at the end of “The Fear of 13,” with a dog acting as the bacon of “Our Town.” Unfortunately it feels contrived rather than earned this time around.
In our latest podcast (for paying subs), we have a blind item: a show I recently saw that was so bad that I didn't say what it was to protect the guilty. Shouldn't be too hard to figure out… marksvincentelli.substack.com/p/wait-how-m...
I live nearby and can testify to how crossing Grand Army Plaza now can be like running a gauntlet, especially since the number of cars going through red lights is staggeringly high.
“You aren't our customers, your bosses' bosses are. It's not our job to look after you or your family. We're just here to make money, and make you obsolete. “
I recommend checking out replacement.ai
Good library haul today. The one with the craziest life isn’t the one who was in a band with Courtney Love!
This made my day: P!NK is going to host the 2026 Tony Awards.
I’m seeing “Death of a Salesman” today and “Cats: The Jellicle Ball” tomorrow: perfect double bill for Easter!
Even better would be a mashup in which Willy Loman goes to the Heaviside Layer.
I’m going to repost this at regular intervals.
This thread about the research/writing process and its relationship to AI is spot-on.
I love writing mood boards, explainers and behind-the-scenes articles, and this one about “Tristan und Isolde” at the Met has a bit of everything: www.nytimes.com/2026/04/01/a...
Yes, there are times when Lilli Cooper and Jason Kravits decide very quickly to get rid of some guest spellers in the hit revival of "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee." This and more from these two very funny people in our latest episode! marksvincentelli.substack.com/p/peter-was-...
There's a long, bad journalistic tradition: All conservative grass-roots political movements are fascinating heartland phenomena, all progressive grass-roots political movements are ineffectual bleating. This one is written off as powered by white female college grads--the wine-moms slur, basically.
Hear hear.
Such a great piece. You really nailed the appeal of the show.
And also not thinking you have to finish everything you start. (I’ve watched all of “Succession” but disliked it so much by the end that I didn’t watch the series finale but I recognize that’s just perverse.) Though course I make it to the end if I’m writing about something.
Weird to think that Liza Minnelli and Dusty Springfield were respectively only 43 and 50 when they made their comeback records with the Pet Shop Boys. At the time they felt like ancient ghosts of showbiz past. The equivalents now (in age if not in stature) would be Cheryl Tweedy and Emma Bunton.
Chances are you haven’t heard of the band the Nightingales but the doc about them, or rather frontman Robert Lloyd, is a sheer delight. Free on Plex! l.plex.tv/KWwBnfmr
Good note.
A friend was offering her great Brooklyn apartment for free in exchange for feeding her cat in June, and not one of my European friends wanted to come here. A few years ago they would all have jumped on the opportunity. (She found someone — from the US.)
No surprise there!
When will we stop pretending that “Succession” and “The White Lotus” skewered the rich? They did no such thing, merely delighted in their foibles. One of the ways to stop glorifying wealth is to stop using rich characters to tell stories. The vast rest of us are just as interesting. Imagine that.
“Project Hail Mary”: What’s going on in Sandra Hüller’s head? Is she running lines from “The Maids” or something?
The only reason to watch “Rooster” on HBO is Danielle Deadwyler, who turns out to be a perfect rom-com protagonist — a side of her talent I hadn’t seen before and I’m so there for it. (But boo for yet another handsome, bumbling British cad that the female characters apparently find irresistible.)
"the speed with which US democracy is being dismantled is unprecedented in modern history."
www.theguardian.com/world/commen...
Steven Boyer and Adam Chanler-Berat devouring a filet-o-fish in "Mother Russia" is for the ages. We discussed that scene on the podcast, but what really made me reel was Boyer informing me that Laurie Metcalf had done "Trevor" in LA! What? Just listen! marksvincentelli.substack.com/p/adam-chanl...