Archives for February 2018

Advertisement

Supported by

Image

By Jennifer Medina

Feb. 27, 2018

ANAHEIM, Calif. — On Disneyland’s Main Street, Emily Bertola spends hours working on her feet, embroidering names onto mouse ears at the Mad Hatter shop, where she has been an employee for the last two years. She usually offers visitors the sunny smile she was trained to give.

None of her customers know that for months, she slept in the back of her truck, showering at the park before her shift.

Her struggle is hardly unique to Disneyland.

Orange County is known for its affluence, and for its tourist industry. But the thousands of workers who keep its resorts, restaurants and hotels running are sometimes struggling to stay afloat.

As the state grapples with soaring housing costs, workers in California earning just above the minimum wage find it difficult to pay for basic costs. Many employees at Disneyland have moved farther inland, driving hours each day to work. Others, like Ms. Bertola, have opted to move from couch-to-couch or sleep in their cars for months at a time.

Disneyland Resort — which includes the theme park, California Adventure, and nearby hotels — employs roughly 30,000 people. It is the largest employer in Orange County and one of the biggest employers in the state.

Image

Despite their frustration with pay, in interviews with more than a dozen workers, many said they choose to stay at Disneyland, attached because of their childhood memories or reluctance to lose the perk of sometimes getting free tickets for their own children. And for many hourly workers, there are few options to make more money elsewhere. More than half of all workers in amusement and recreation, as Disneyland workers are classified, make less than $15, according to census data. About 85 percent of the 17,000 Disneyland employees who are part of a union make less than $15 an hour, according to union rolls. The current minimum wage in California is $10.50, and will reach $15 by 2022.

The cost of living is a particular challenge in Orange County, where a single adult would need to make about $33,000 a year to meet a basic monthly budget, according to the California Budget Policy Center, a Sacramento think tank. Roughly 38 percent of the county’s 1.5 million workers earn less than that. It is an issue that many low-wage workers are confronting across the state: California now has the highest rate of poverty in the country, 20.6 percent, when accounting for taxes, housing and medical costs, according to the Census Bureau.

Ms. Bertola, 24, has considered looking for a job elsewhere, but said she does not believe she could earn significantly more without a college degree. She applied for an entry-level job at Disneyland after she could no longer afford college tuition. As soon as she was hired, she left her parents’ home near the central coast and moved several hours south.

“I moved for the dream of working here,” she said in an interview before her shift one recent afternoon. “We came here as kids for our birthdays growing up and had such an amazing time. I wanted to be a part of that.”

According to a survey of thousands of low-wage employees at the park, nearly three-quarters of workers who responded said they do not earn enough money to pay for their basic monthly expenses, and one in 10 said they had been homeless in the past two years. The survey and analysis were conducted by Occidental College and the Economic Roundtable, a group that has long supported raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, and was paid for by a coalition of labor unions who represent many of the low-wage workers at the park

The survey was sent to about 17,000 workers in the park who are represented by labor unions and was completed by about 30 percent of them, including both full-time and part-time employees. The responses account for about 17 percent of the park’s overall work force.

A spokeswoman for Disney said that the survey was “inaccurate and unscientific” and produced by “politically motivated labor unions.”

“The results are deliberately distorted and do not reflect how the overwhelming majority of our 30,000 cast members feel about the company,” the spokeswoman, Lisa Haines, said in a statement. She added that most employees make above minimum wage, with entry-level roles between $11 and $17.75 an hour, and “most earn additional income through premiums and overtime.”

“We are proud of our record as a quality employer,” she said. “We have created more than 4,000 jobs over the last five years — more than any other business in Orange County.”

When she first began working, Ms. Bertola slept for months on a relative’s couch, more than an hour away from the park. She began looking for a place of her own, but she could not find even a room she could afford, she said. So night after night, she rolled up her windows and slept in the employee parking lot, comforted by security cameras. A couple of times, she said, a security officer approached her, saying “get it together and leave.” This went on for two months.

These days, Ms. Bertola shares an apartment with her boyfriend, who has worked at Disneyland for years. They each earn $11 an hour, working anywhere between 20 and 40 hours a week, or more during peak season.

“We barely can make it work with the two of us working there almost full-time,” she said.

After working in salons for several years, Rebekah Pederson began working at Disneyland because she would be eligible to join the Makeup Artists and Hair Stylists Guild. She earns $11.68 an hour — an amount, she said, that “nobody can live on here.”

Some nights, the 27-year-old heads to her mother’s home in Temecula, a drive that routinely takes two hours. More often, she says, she drives along the Pacific Coast Highway and pulls over into a secluded spot near Malibu, attaching cloth to her windows before sleeping. When she wakes up, she goes to a nearby Starbucks to brush her teeth. She showers and puts on her makeup once she arrives at work, where she works on the wigs for princesses in the park.

“I do my job with a smile on my face,” she said. “Most people don’t know what I’m doing. It’s not exactly the most lovely thing to hear about, that I can’t even take care of myself.”

She works as many as 60 hours a week during the peak season, but said she would need about $700 a week to be able to make ends meet here. She said she typically makes about $350 to $500.

The economic struggles are not limited to housing: According to the report, 15 percent of employees who responded to the survey said they have received food stamps or visited a food bank.

As a grill fry and a lead cook at Cafe Orleans, Grace Torres, 28, earns anywhere between $12.88 and $18 an hour, depending on her shift, working between 32 and 40 hours a week with a schedule that varies widely. Her husband has also worked as a cook there for several years.

“Every time we get to the end of the month, I have to choose what bills to pay,” she said. “We want kids, but there’s no way we’re going to do that when we can barely afford to feed ourselves.”

Advertisement

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/27/us/disneyland-employees-wages.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Disney, Comcast and others are rushing to strike major deals in a swiftly changing media landscape. ATT has bid more than $85 billion to take over Time Warner, a proposed merger that the Justice Department is attempting to block. Consumers increasingly stream their movies and televisions shows over the internet. Upstart technology companies like Apple and Amazon nurture ambitions to rival Hollywood’s big studios. Online broadcasters are even increasingly bidding for the rights to show sports — long a major moneymaking business for traditional broadcasters and cable operators.

The saga over Sky has been one of the most drawn out deal-making dramas in media.

Mr. Murdoch, the 21st Century Fox executive chairman, has tried for years to take full control of the broadcaster, which he started in 1989. By owning the rest of Sky, 21st Century Fox would be better positioned to take on the likes of Netflix, Amazon and other streaming giants.

In 2011, Mr. Murdoch was forced to withdraw a $12 billion offer for the rest of Sky as a firestorm erupted over phone hacking by the news media in Britain. The scandal eventually led to the closing of The News of the World, the first newspaper Mr. Murdoch acquired in Britain in the late 1960s.

In December 2016, 21st Century Fox tried again, in an effort to expand its global reach and cement Mr. Murdoch’s legacy. The company agreed to buy the 61 percent of Sky that it does not own for about $16 billion.

While the Office of Communications, or Ofcom, ruled in June that Mr. Murdoch and other company executives were “fit and proper” to hold broadcasting licenses in Britain, it also said that the deal warranted more scrutiny. In the regulator’s view, the sexual harassment scandal at Fox News had amounted to “significant corporate failures.”

Then last month, Britain’s competition regulator provisionally rejected the deal, saying that it was “not in the public interest.” The regulator said it was concerned that the deal would give the Murdoch family “too much influence over public opinion and the political agenda.” It noted at the time that Murdoch-controlled outlets, which include the newspapers The Sun and The Times of London, were already consumed by nearly a third of Britain’s population.

In hopes of winning over regulators, 21st Century Fox has offered to establish a “fully independent” editorial board for Sky News and to continue to fund the Sky News brand after the transaction for at least 10 years.

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

21st Century Fox had hoped to complete the Sky deal before the Disney sale was finalized. But Comcast’s move just adds uncertainty to an already complicated process.

Disney, which declined to comment on Comcast’s proposal, must now decide how much it cares about Sky. It is also not clear if Disney would want to end up being partners with Comcast, in the event that Comcast wins majority control of Sky and Disney ultimately has Fox’s 39 percent stake.

While announcing the planned purchase of Fox’s entertainment assets in December, Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, singled out Sky as “a real crown jewel” in a television interview with Bloomberg. “We certainly would be looking forward to the opportunity to have Sky be part of our company,” he said.

Newsletter Sign Up

Continue reading the main story

Thank you for subscribing.

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

View all New York Times newsletters.

• See Sample
• Manage Email Preferences
• Not you?
• Privacy Policy
• Opt out or contact us anytime

Comcast has circled 21st Century Fox in the past. Last year, the cable giant was in preliminary talks to buy the entertainment assets owned by 21st Century Fox, including the minority stake in Sky. Disney ultimately prevailed.

At the very least, Comcast has most likely made it more expensive for 21st Century Fox to buy all of Sky. Under the terms of its proposed bid, Comcast said, it would pay 12.50 pounds, about $17.50, a share in cash. That would represent a premium of 13 percent over its closing price on Monday and is about 16 percent above 21st Century Fox’s current offer of £10.75.

On Tuesday, shares of the British broadcaster jumped by nearly one-fifth. The stock surge suggested investors expected 21st Century Fox to back away or come back with an even better offer.

Comcast shareholders seemed less pleased. The company’s stock price dropped more than 6 percent in midday trading, to about $37. Disney shares fell 4 percent, to about $105.50, and Fox shares declined 2.6 percent, to about $37.80.

An influential media analyst, Craig Moffett, who follows Comcast for MoffettNathanson, wrote in a research note that the Sky offer had positive aspects, including offering Comcast’s entertainment unit, NBCUniversal, broader distribution in Europe.

Still, “Comcast will have to twist themselves into knots to explain why satellite distribution won’t be just as obsolete in Europe as it already is in the U.S.,” Mr. Moffett said. “Perhaps worst of all, this morning’s bid doesn’t really put to rest the idea that they might still try a topping bid for Fox’s U.S. assets, including the rest of Sky” if the Justice Department ends up approving ATT’s takeover of Time Warner.

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

“The notion that Comcast might make a topping bid for Fox has weighed heavily on Comcast shares,” he added.

For either Comcast or Disney, Sky offers a platform for international expansion.

Comcast said in a statement that about a quarter of its revenue would come from international operations should it seal a deal with Sky, up from 9 percent currently. In addition to its other businesses, Sky has also announced plans to start streaming services in Spain and Switzerland.

“We look at Sky as a media company: Sky News, Sky Sports, Sky Movies,” Brian L. Roberts, Comcast’s chairman and chief executive, said on a conference call with analysts. “There’s tremendous presence in the content creation, not just the distribution.”

In a research note on Tuesday, Polo Tang, a UBS analyst, said that Sky could be “strategically interesting” to a variety of bidders, given its content and its broadcast and streaming distribution network. It also recently retained the rights to the Premier League at a lower cost than analysts had expected.

Mr. Tang said that the benign outcome of the Premier League auction potentially “gives Fox scope to raise its offers.”

Comcast said it was seeking control of more than half of Sky’s shares with Tuesday’s offer but was ultimately interested in acquiring all of the British broadcaster.

In a statement, Sky urged shareholders to take no action yet. The broadcaster added that its independent directors “are mindful of their fiduciary duties and their obligations under the U.K. Takeover Code.”

Continue reading the main story

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/27/business/dealbook/comcast-sky.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

The advice that she gave readers of The Village Voice and Playboy magazine was practical and bawdy — refined through the sharply profane voice of a woman seeking a good man, a bad boy or a great fling.

In “Sex Tips for Girls” (1983), a collection largely of her Voice columns, she avoided the dry prose of clinical manuals that had turned her off to sex. “I was thinking, ‘O.K., I have to write cleanly,’ and so I made it all jaunty and cheerful and made sure not to be slimy or weird and not salacious,” she told Salon in 2002. “It was sort of like nursery school writing.”

Sort of.

She advised women against engaging in taboo behavior when naked with men. Do not, she counseled, “laugh and point at the penile member,” “say that your husband did it exactly the same way,” or “imitate Joan Rivers.”

And she reminded her readers: “Sex is a perverse little devil and the minute you ignore it, it has a serious temper tantrum and tries every trick in the book to get you to notice. It clamors for your attention until it gets it, at which point it disappears.”

She adapted “Sex Tips” and “But Enough About You,” a 1986 collection, into a play, “A Girl’s Guide to Chaos,” which opened later that year off Broadway at the American Place Theater. The play is largely a conversation among four friends, one of whom, Cynthia (played by Debra Jo Rupp in the original production) realizes to her horror that she will have to start dating again.

“Please, God, no, don’t make me do it!” she says. “I’ll be good from now on, I promise! I’ll stop feeding the dog hashish! I’ll be kind, thoughtful, sober, industrious, anything. But please, God, not the ultimate torture of dating!”

In his review in The New York Times, Stephen Holden wrote, “Like Dorothy Parker, Ms. Heimel is an urban romantic with a scathing X-ray vision that penetrates her most deeply cherished fantasies.”

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

The play ran in several cities, including Chicago and Los Angeles.

Ms. Heimel published several more collections with evocative titles like “If You Can’t Live Without Me, Why Aren’t You Dead Yet?” (1991) and “Get Your Tongue Out of My Mouth, I’m Kissing You Goodbye!” (1993). Some of the material was derived from her column at Playboy, where she tried to explain women to the magazine’s largely male readership.

“She was in the missionary position at Playboy,” she wrote of herself on the community discussion website The Well, “holding high her feminist credentials amongst the stampeding bunnies.”

Photo

In a Times review of Ms. Heimel’s book “If You Leave Me, Can I Come Too?” (1995), Sarah Ferrell observed that Ms. Heimel “writes about the same things over and over and over,” and so she wondered rhetorically if it was worth reading her latest collection. Yes, it was, she wrote.

“It’s simple,” she added. “She gets funnier, meaner and possibly even smarter, every time around.”

Cynthia Joan Glick was born in Philadelphia on July 13, 1947, and grew up nearby in Overbrook Park and Cheltenham, Pa. Her father, Bernard, was a pharmacist and pharmaceutical salesman; her mother, the former Lynne Danan, was a secretary at the Temple University School of Medicine.

After high school, Ms. Heimel told The Los Angeles Times in 1990, she left home, lived with hippies in Philadelphia for a time and then moved to Manhattan.

“She just really wanted to get out of the house and leave my parents,” Donna Evans, her sister, said in a telephone interview.

Ms. Heimel was not earning much when she moved to New York City and then, as a divorced mother, she started receiving welfare payments. (She kept the name Heimel from her first marriage.)

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

In the foreword to one of her books, her son, Mr. Ransom (who does not use the last name Heimel), wrote, “We stood on long lines, anxiously awaiting a fierce battle with a city employee over money for such luxuries as, oh, I don’t know, food.”

Her path to a writing career began with a job as a paste-up artist in the advertising department of The Soho Weekly News in Manhattan. She then moved to paste-up on the editorial side and began pitching stories. Her first was about an anarchists’ convention.

She learned to write by reading. “She was always reading something,” Michael Longacre, a former creative director and managing editor of the paper, said in a telephone interview. “She was completely devoted to P. G. Wodehouse.”

She wrote and edited at The Soho Weekly News, left briefly to work at Penthouse magazine, returned to the paper for a while and was then hired by The Voice. Her humorous advice column there was called “Problem Lady.” She also wrote a fashion column.

When an incoming Village Voice editor fired her in 1997 — he called her writing “predictable” before dismissing her — she told The New York Post, “I feel like I’ve walked into a Kafka novel where old stupid guys get to fire you.”

She also wrote for New York magazine, The Daily News and Vogue.

Ms. Heimel moved to Los Angeles in the early 1990s and worked for one season on the writing staff of “Dear John,” a sitcom that starred Judd Hirsch.

In addition to her son and her sister, she is survived by four grandchildren. Her marriages to Steven Heimel and Abe Opincar ended in divorce.

Reflecting in the mid-1990s about the backlash against feminism by both men and women, she wrote that each sex had to compromise.

To men, she wrote, “There must be no complaints when dinner is late or nonexistent, if dark roots show and the occasional leg is unwaxed.”

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

To women, she said: “Women must stop wheedling and manipulating their men when they want a new sofa. We may not pout and toss our curls like little girls who need Daddy’s permission or use sex as a power tool; we must be prepared to shoulder equal burdens or sacrifice all rights to equal opportunities.”

Continue reading the main story

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/27/obituaries/cynthia-heimel-irreverent-writer-about-sex-dies-at-70.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

It is also unclear how the will differed from any prior document Ms. Lee may have created to distribute her assets.

Ms. Lee never married or had children, and the court papers identified her heirs and closest living relatives as a niece and three nephews, who are expected to receive an undisclosed portion of the estate through the trust.

The will named Tonja B. Carter, Ms. Lee’s longtime lawyer, as the executor, or personal representative, of the estate, and it provided her with wide-ranging powers to shepherd Ms. Lee’s literary legacy and the rest of her assets.

Photo

Ms. Carter had gone to court in 2016 to successfully persuade Probate Judge Greg Norris of Monroe County to seal the will, citing Ms. Lee’s desire for privacy. And while the estate had stressed in court papers that making the will public could lead to the “potential harassment” of individuals identified in it, the document itself is strikingly opaque.

It was unsealed Tuesday on the basis of a lawsuit filed by The New York Times seeking to review the document. Lawyers for The Times argued that wills filed in a probate court in Alabama are typically public records, and that Ms. Lee’s privacy concerns were no different from those of others whose wills are processed through the court system.

“It’s a public record, and the press and the public have a right to public records,” said Archie Reeves, the lawyer who represented The Times.

Last week, as both sides prepared to depose witnesses, the estate withdrew its opposition to making the will public. It did not disclose its reasoning.

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

The document’s lack of transparency will likely fuel skepticism among those who feel that Ms. Carter had amassed too much power over Ms. Lee’s career and legacy. The will gives Ms. Carter substantial control over Ms. Lee’s estate and her literary properties, which are assigned to the Mockingbird Trust, an entity that was formed in 2011. Ms. Carter served as one of its two trustees at the time.

“It is not an uncommon will, and it is typically what we term a pour-over will where anything in the estate goes over to the trust and they don’t have to disclose the terms of the trust,” said Sidney C. Summey, an estate and trusts lawyer in Birmingham.

“It is done quite often by people of means, people with notoriety and people who just want to be private,” Mr. Summey said.

Ms. Lee’s relatives had supported efforts to seal the will. Phone calls to reach several members of her family were unsuccessful.

Photo

As a personal representative, Ms. Carter is entitled to compensation for her work. The will allows the personal representative to earn additional fees as part of an organization, like a law firm, that does work for the estate.

Ms. Carter declined to discuss the will, citing Ms. Lee’s penchant for privacy. “I will not discuss her affairs,” she said.

One of the two witnesses to the will, Cynthia McMillan, a former resident assistant who had helped care for Ms. Lee at a facility where she had lived, said in an interview that Ms. Lee seemed cogent when she signed it. “In my opinion, she was,” Ms. McMillian said.

Newsletter Sign Up

Continue reading the main story

Thank you for subscribing.

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

View all New York Times newsletters.

• See Sample
• Manage Email Preferences
• Not you?
• Privacy Policy
• Opt out or contact us anytime

The estate was built largely on the outsize and enduring success of Ms. Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning debut novel, “Mockingbird,” which since its publication in 1960, has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide and remains a staple on American school curriculums. In addition, “Go Set a Watchman,” her second novel, was the best-selling book of 2015 in the United States, and sold more than 1.6 million hardcover copies, according to NPD BookScan.

“Mockingbird” alone sells more than a million copies a year worldwide, generating some $3 million in royalties for the copyright holder, according to court documents.

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

Ms. Lee had always lived simply, despite her fame and mounting wealth, and long shared a modest brick home in Monroeville with her older sister, Alice, who died in 2014. Ms. Lee could be seen around town in sweatpants looking for bargains at a Dollar General Store, washing her clothes at a local Laundromat, drinking coffee at a McDonald’s or eating at David’s Catfish House, where her usual iced tea and a small plate of catfish would cost about $6.

Often miscast as reclusive, she was no hermit, but she was as ferociously private as she was famous, and shunned interviews.

She was thrust into the spotlight three years ago, when “Watchman” was released. Its publication sparked a debate about whether or not Ms. Lee had been pushed into publishing the novel, one that she had abandoned in the 1950s as an early effort at the story that would become “Mockingbird.”

Photo

At the release of “Watchman,” there were already questions about Ms. Lee’s vulnerability and her mental and physical condition. She had suffered a stroke in 2007, had severe vision and hearing problems and had moved into an assisted living facility. In 2013, in a copyright dispute that went to court, Ms. Lee’s lawyers said she had been taken advantage of and coerced into signing away her copyright because she was “an elderly woman with physical infirmities that made it difficult for her to read and see.”

The controversy surrounding “Watchman” divided Ms. Lee’s hometown, pitting some of her longtime friends and acquaintances, who doubted she had approved of the publication, against Ms. Lee’s lawyer, agent and publisher, generating the kind of public spectacle Ms. Lee abhorred. But an Alabama agency investigated whether Ms. Lee was a victim of elder abuse and financial fraud and determined that no abuse had occurred.

Some scholars and fans embraced “Watchman” as a long awaited sequel to Ms. Lee’s debut work, while others dismissed it as an inferior rough draft, one that was eventually polished and reshaped into a masterpiece. Many fans were shocked to discover that Atticus Finch, the crusading lawyer who fights for racial equality in “Mockingbird,” is depicted in “Watchman” as an aging racist and segregationist who clashes with his daughter, a grown-up Scout, over her support for civil rights.

Ms. Carter emerged as polarizing figure in the debate. She was at first credited with recovering Ms. Lee’s long lost novel, and recounted how she discovered the manuscript for “Watchman” in a safe deposit box in the summer of 2014. But others disputed that account and said Ms. Carter had been present when the manuscript was discovered in October 2011 during an appraisal by a rare books expert. The appraiser had come to inspect what was thought to be a “Mockingbird” manuscript, and Ms. Carter later said she had not realized at the time that actually a different manuscript had been reviewed.

Still, many viewed Ms. Carter as Ms. Lee’s staunchest protector, and with a coterie of friends from the area, she is now helping to expand Ms. Lee’s literary legacy.

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

Ms. Carter helps run a nonprofit, Mockingbird Company, that Ms. Lee created in 2015. It puts on a dramatization of “Mockingbird” in Monroeville each year.

A different production, drawn from the novel and scripted by Aaron Sorkin, is headed for Broadway this year. A “Mockingbird” graphic novel, adapted by Fred Fordham, was approved by Ms. Lee’s estate and will be published in the fall. And there are new plans for the Harper Lee Trail, which local officials hope will attract hundreds of thousands of tourists a year to Monroeville. Planned attractions include a museum dedicated to Harper Lee and replications of characters’ houses in “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

How this all would have sat with Ms. Lee also remains a matter of debate. She took pains to protect her intellectual property and often scorned attempts to commercialize her novel. In 2013, she sued a local museum, arguing that it had infringed on her trademark by selling “Mockingbird” themed T-shirts and trinkets (the suit was settled in 2014).

And in a letter to a friend in 1993, she complained that Monroeville was turning into a “Mockingbird” tourist attraction. She expressed particular irritation at the strangers lingering in front of her house.

“They came in VANS,” she wrote.

Continue reading the main story

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/27/books/harper-lee-will.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

HENRY I live in Harlem, and I’ve lived there for seven years. There’s this dude who lives upstairs, and I’ve seen him all the time on the elevator. All the time. Never speak. And then all of a sudden, he’s like: “You live here? That’s really great — congratulations!” And then I find out that he posted on Facebook: “Just found out that Paper Boi lives downstairs from me.” I’ve lived here for seven years! And don’t tell everybody!

Season 1 ended up being this great poaching ground for the actors — you have Marvel movies, Disney movies.

BEETZ We all sold out. [Laughter]

Does making that leap from underground sensation give you a different understanding of this more intimate project, where you have your fingerprints on everything?

Newsletter Sign Up

Continue reading the main story

Thank you for subscribing.

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

View all New York Times newsletters.

• See Sample
• Manage Email Preferences
• Not you?
• Privacy Policy
• Opt out or contact us anytime

DONALD GLOVER For me, it’s about understanding death. Those big things are not trying to die. They’re fighting tooth and nail to stay alive and be relevant. I’m not saying they’re bad — sometimes they are. But they’re not sitting there like, “Is this movie good?” They’re like, “Is this movie going to sell blankets?”

That’s a lot of what this season is about — survival. Me and Hiro never talk about how we’re going to get to Season 7. We’re never worried. If FX canceled us tomorrow, I would be like, “Dope.” I really wouldn’t be sad at all. All these people would still be my friends. And we made good things.

Black popular culture is thriving right now, with “Black Panther,” “Get Out,” shows like “black-ish,” “The Chi,” “Insecure.” How do you make sure to sustain the momentum of this moment for black creators?

STANFIELD We don’t have to worry about that.

DONALD GLOVER That is not our problem. That is not our job. Our job is to make great things and happen to be black. That’s it.

Is it a moment of actual, lasting change?

HENRY When people say “moment,” that makes me twitch a little. I don’t want anything to be a moment. I want to be here and have our place in the pantheon. Avenues are finally open.

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

Because so many people latched onto the surrealist moments in “Atlanta,” did you feel the need to live up to them?

STEPHEN GLOVER Instead of chasing the idea of what the people want — the same thing — we thought of it as, people were receptive to these crazy ideas, so now we know anything is possible. Our ideas can be even more crazy.

Photo

You’ve had a run of great cameos — Migos, Jaleel White, Katt Williams in the new season. How many people did you have to turn down this time around?

STEPHEN GLOVER [Laughs] There were a lot of people who wanted to be in this season, of course. But it’s also one of those things where everybody’s saying, “Oh yeah, I’ll do it.” And then you’re like, “All right, be here at this time.” And it’s: “Oh, actually …” I remember Chris Rock told me, once people like him start asking to be on the show, don’t let anybody do it.

You also touched on a lot of sensitive debates in Season 1 — transgender issues, obviously race, police brutality, gun culture. In this moment, where even someone like Dave Chappelle is getting dragged for certain jokes, did you ever worry about what you can or can’t say?

STEPHEN GLOVER With our show, we talk about being real. With the Montague episode [a debate over race and gender on a Charlie Rose-like talk show], we were just trying to show a real thing, and it wasn’t about being preachy. It’s just reflecting the world we live in.

DONALD GLOVER To pretend like there is not racism, colorism, sexism, killing, all the worst parts of humanity in that area is doing a disservice to black people and humanity. If you don’t like some of the [expletive] that’s in the show, stop taking music out of our schools, stop making money out of our areas.

I just think that’s a problem millennials have — things should be this way. [Holds up iPhone] In order for you to even have this phone, a slave had to make it. Confront that. Deal with that. Don’t sit here and be like, we should censor it and make everything beautiful. Because it’s not beautiful out here.

That’s a white problem, to be honest. I don’t think any black person is watching the show being like, “You can’t do that.” It’s: “Yeah, that’s my uncle.” Or: “Yeah, that’s some real [expletive].” I don’t have to clean that up for you. You have to deal with the fact that that’s out there. I can’t change that, really. I can just show you.

Continue reading the main story

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/27/arts/television/atlanta-fx-season-2.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Photo

LOS ANGELES — For the past five years, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, have hammered Hollywood with annual reports on its exclusion of women and minorities. Academics at the University of Southern California and San Diego State University have done the same. The public has weighed in with #OscarsSoWhite.

The pressure has changed the business — a tiny bit.

That is the conclusion of the fifth annual U.C.L.A. report on diversity in Hollywood’s entertainment industry, which was released on Tuesday by the university’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment.

“Over the five-year run of the report, areas where women and people of color saw sustained progress were rare,” Ana-Christina Ramón, an author of the study, said in an interview. “You’d think there would be better results, especially given the public pressure and the ratings and box office evidence, which clearly show that diversity sells. Audiences want it.”

Photo

The 80-page report, conducted with funding from companies like Disney and the Will Jada Smith Family Foundation, includes data broken into chapters that focus on areas like directors, lead actors, talent agency representation and television series creators. As with most studies, it gives a slightly outdated snapshot, examining the top 200 theatrical film releases in 2016 and 1,251 broadcast, cable and digital platform television shows from the 2015-16 season.

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

Hollywood executives are likely to pounce on that lag, noting the recent success of the Disney-Marvel superhero film “Black Panther,” which has become the top-grossing film in history by a black director (Ryan Coogler) and featuring a largely black cast. Disney’s “A Wrinkle in Time,” directed by Ava DuVernay from a screenplay by Jennifer Lee and starring Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kaling, will arrive on March 9.

Continue reading the main story

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/27/business/media/hollywood-diversity.html?partner=rss&emc=rss