O’Neill photographed everyone from the Beatles to Brigitte Bardot, but, he said, the Queen was the only person who ever made him nervous. “I researched some horse-racing jokes to break the ice and, thank God, she laughed,” he said. – The Guardian (UK)
Author: ArtsJournal2
As Cord-Cutting Becomes Bundling, The Price Is Going Up
Disney is planning to raise the price of Hulu Live by $10 per month, which might not seem like a lot, but it – and AT&T – are bellwethers as “the cost of watching live TV via streaming is getting more expensive for consumers.” – Los Angeles Times
Post-Moonves CBS Is Doing Better, Right? Uh, Two Writers Just Quit Over A Sexual Harassment Complaint
Right after two writers on Carol’s Second Act spoke with HR about inappropriate behavior from executive producer David Hunt (who is married to the star of the show), “they were told that going forward, only the credited writer on each episode would get to pitch new versions of jokes that flopped during taping. Haskins and Halpern say that they had been planning to streamline production in this manner since before Gupta spoke up. But Gupta, Magee, and two other people who worked on the show got the distinct impression the production changes were designed to keep Gupta and Hunt away from each other.” – Slate
How Has The Current President Affected Publishing? [AUDIO]
Whew. All of this: “The response has been that there’s been a couple of very successful books about Trump, but if you’re not writing about Trump, you know, where does that take you? What do you do? How does a literary novel that’s functioning on all of the rules that were there, which were not really stated prior to this moment, now function in this new moment? Is the writing of literary fiction a parlor game for the upper middle class? Maybe it is. But what happens when that upper middle class completely freaks out in response to a public event outside of that relatively small ecosystem?” – Literary Hub
The Artist Who ‘Kidnapped’ A Banksy Statue Says Sotheby’s Is Selling A Stolen Banksy
Did Banksy or Banksy’s associates re-steal the ‘kidnapped” statue? Why aren’t the police interested? And how did those who are selling it at Sotheby’s get into the artist’s garden? – The Observer (UK)
Indie Hit ‘The Farewell’ Should Totally Win Oscars, Right? But Which Oscars?
The writer/director of the hit indie, which played to surprisingly robust crowds this summer, says that it was a difficult process to get her film made – no one could figure out where to categorize it. For the Academy Awards, suddenly there’s the same issue: “Should the movie be categorized as a comedy or drama? And with its mixture of Mandarin and English, should it be defined as a foreign-language film or an American indie?” And can the actor who played the grandmother please get nominated? – The New York Times
The Trans-Siberian Orchestra Tours For Seven Weeks A Year, And Pulls In $60 Million
It’s a holiday miracle: People willing to part with their money for a classical music-prog rock mashup, especially at the holidays. But how did we get to this elaborate two-band tour setup that begins in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and extends around the entire continental U.S.? The founder, Paul O’Neill. “In the early ‘90s, O’Neill began to plot a holiday-themed live spectacle that combined progressive rock, heavy metal and classical music with elaborate stage productions” ever more elaborate by the year. – Billboard
This Woman Had More Than 70,000 Shows That News Stations Lost, Deleted, And Recorded Over
Marion Stokes, a former Communist activist who turned into a recluse, recorded MSNBC, CNN, FOX News and many other news programs, more than 70,000 of them, on Betamax and VHS tapes. “Stokes began recording around the birth of the 24-hour news cycle. She felt it was an important influence on public opinion and wanted to capture this lens through which people view current events,” according to her son. – WBUR
In The Wake Of Apparent Hostility Toward Black Guest Curator, The Guggenheim Hires Its First Full-Time Black Woman Curator
Art historian Chaédria LaBouvier, who was the first solo Black woman curator in the museum’s 80-year history, said that she was cut out of her own show, “Basquiat’s ‘Defacement’: The Untold Story.” Now the Guggenheim, without directly addressing LaBouvier’s claims, has hired the Brooklyn Museum’s Ashley James. James’s work “‘complements the Guggenheim’s mission to present the art of today,’ Nancy Spector, the Guggenheim’s artistic director and chief curator, said.” – The New York Times
The 1920s Secret Society Of Women Writers At Oxford
Spearheaded, and named, by Dorothy L. Sayers, the name of Mutual Admiration Society “both captures the spirit of the group and misrepresents it. They supported each other boldly and emphatically: no false modesty or feminine shame here. They were willing to be relentless and did not insist on being liked. … They were critical, and they were at odds. They fell apart and came together again, over the course of decades and remarkable careers that ranged from birth control advocacy to genre fiction, from classrooms to the stage.” – Literary Hub