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“American Star” is an introspective British thriller with Ian McShane in the lead role of Wilson, a mysterious hitman of few words. Filmed on location in Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands, the English actor revels in the fact that his character “goes there and disobeys his first rule, which is, do the job and leave.” But is Wilson a government operative, a black ops soldier, or something else entirely? “There’s a whole other world out there we don’t know about,” McShane theorizes. Watch our exclusive video interview above.

The actor discusses some of Wilson’s quirks, including taking down a flower painting at his hotel and seemingly always wearing black. “In these three days, you get a reflection of what his life is,” McShane says. “He’s missed out on a lot, as exemplified by the people he comes into contact with. I’m not saying he regrets it,...

Spoiler Alert: This article contains details for the Season 5 return of Yellowstone on Sunday.

Written as usual by Taylor Sheridan, the long-awaited final half of Yellowstone’s fifth season opened Sunday with Beth Dutton (Kelly Reilly) pulling up to the governor’s mansion to see all hell has broken loose with emergency vehicles flashing everywhere. It isn’t much suspense that her beloved father, John Dutton (Kevin Costner), lay dead inside, before he was to face an impeachment tribunal set up by his son Jamie (Wes Bentley), the Montana attorney general.

She’s held outside by police, but brother Kayce (Luke Grimes) pulls up, flashes a badge and tells the lawman to piss off. And their worst nightmare is revealed. We don’t see John Dutton’s face, but the body is frail and bluing, the wall in the bathroom is painted with blood from a single gunshot to the head.

I remember the moment I realized how much I love television. It was March 2, 2014, and for the first time in years, I skipped the Oscar telecast completely. I did it to watch a new episode of "True Detective," which was nearing the end of its phenomenal, influential, heavily-discussed first season. The show's grip on American pop culture that year was incredible: It won five Emmys, inspired countless parodies, and lit up the internet with theories and Easter egg hunts. People read Robert W. Chambers' "The King in Yellow" after the word "Carcosa" popped up in the show. Viewers made gifs and edits of every single shot of Matthew McConaughey's hilariously bleak protagonist. And, importantly, people in Hollywood clearly started searching for the next "True Detective."

In the years that followed the show's first season, a whole host of TV series appeared that clearly followed the "True Detective" rulebook: Slow-burn criminal investigations,...

Yellowstone has become one of the biggest shows on television, as it should because the series is a brilliant piece of art, which deserves every praise it gets. Created by Taylor Sheridan, the neo-Western drama series revolves around the Dutton family who own the largest ranch in America. While there is a lot of infighting amongst the family they must all stand together to protect what’s there from several enemies. Yellowstone stars Kevin Costner, Kelly Reilly, Cole Hauser, Luke Grimes, Kelsey Asbille, Wes Bentley, Jefferson White, and Ian Bohen. Now, that Yellowstone is ending soon with Part 2 of its Season 5, we are here to suggest some similar shows while you wait for the final Yellowstone episodes.

Succession (Max & Rent on Prime Video) Credit – HBO

Succession is a satirical dark comedy-drama series created by Jesse Armstrong. The HBO series revolves around the Roy family, who own one of the biggest...

Chris Wilcha has spent decades in the film industry, yet found his career taking unexpected turns. Starting in his twenties as an ambitious documentarian, he made “The Target Shoots First,” a well-received look at his job in music marketing. But making a living as an independent filmmaker was difficult, so commercial work soon followed. Over the years, Wilcha tried starting other documentary projects but rarely finished them.

In “Flipside,” Wilcha revisits this path with reflection and humor. The film centers around a New Jersey record store where he worked as a teen, Flipside Records, that now struggles to stay relevant. Wilcha’s goal was to document the store’s history as it faced an uncertain future. Yet the film becomes much more, exploring Wilcha’s own journey from those early days with high ideals to his current life with a family and career in television commercials.

We learn of unfinished...

Two of the best pop culture fixtures of the aughts briefly collided behind the scenes, according to "The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast." In a recent episode of the endlessly delightful Lonely Island retrospective project, host Meyers and "Saturday Night Live" digital short mainstays Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, and Jorma Taccone shared a surprising behind-the-scenes moment from Schaffer's cult favorite comedy "Hot Rod," and it featured none other than prolific "Deadwood" pottymouth Al Swearengen.

In case you haven't rewatched "Hot Rod" lately, it's worth noting that "Deadwood" star Ian McShane plays the bullying stepfather to stuntman Rod (Samberg), and his antagonism is one of the major driving forces of the surreal and silly movie. "Hot Rod" came out in 2007, but it filmed a year earlier, apparently before "Deadwood" had wrapped filming on its third and final season. On that show, McShane put in an awards-worthy performance as the irascible Swearengen,...

“Freeze mother bitches!” What’s the all-time best buddy cop movie ever made? 48 Hrs? Lethal Weapon? Beverly Hills Cop? Rush Hour? The Nice Guys? In terms of story and dramatic action, any one of these titles warrants serious consideration. But when it comes to the onscreen rapport and natural chemistry between two stars in a buddy cop movie, it’s hard to beat 1995’s Bad Boys – the directorial debut of the divisive filmmaker Michael Bay. Sure, Bay has earned a rightful rep as a bold and boisterous music-video director turned filmmaker who favors big, dumb, pyrotechnic excesses over quality cinematic storytelling.

However, Bay does deserve at least a modicum of credit for pairing the comedic talents of Will Smith and Martin Lawrence together as Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett – two immensely likable Miami narcotics officers who trade crackling banter and witty one-liners whose onscreen partnership drives the engagement and entertainment level.

In “Flipside,” documentary filmmaker Chris Wilcha grapples with personal regrets and middle age through the lens of the documentary projects he started but never finished. The 96-minute doc, which premiered last year at the Toronto Intl. Film Festival, looks at those abandoned ideas including one about television writer David Milch and his connection to jazz photographer Herman Leonard; a passion project on the New Jersey record store where Wilcha worked as a teenager and a look at radio host Ira Glass’ attempts to make a musical.

Writer/director Judd Apatow executive produced “Flipside.” Apatow met Wilcha in 2009 when he hired him to make a behind-the-scenes movie about the making of “Funny People.” Wilcha moved his family of four from New York to Los Angeles to work on the project with the idea that he would become a successful documentary filmmaker. But when that career didn’t take off, Wilcha began a lucrative career making commercials.

Few big new studio wide releases, yes, but Viggo Mortensen’s latest is on 700 screens, plus limited openings for Chris Wilcha’s Flipside, Judd Apatow EP, and Spanish animated, Oscar-nominated Robot Dreams from Neon. Bleecker Street’s family drama Ezra and IFC Films’ arthouse slasher In A Violent Nature are technically wide but both well under 1,500 screens.

Viggo Mortensen directed, wrote and stars in Western The Dead Don’t Hurt presented by Shout! Studios on 730 screens. The story of star-crossed lovers on the western U.S. frontier in the 1860s sees Vivienne Le Coudy (Vicky Krieps), a fiercely independent woman, settle in Nevada with Danish immigrant Holger Olsen (Mortensen). But the outbreak of the Civil War separates them as Olsen goes to fight with the Union army, leaving Vivienne alone in a town full of corrupt officials. Premiered in Toronto, see Deadline review. It’s Mortensen’s second outing behind the camera since 2020’s Falling.

Image: Oscilloscope Laboratories You don’t have to be of a certain age to appreciate everything Chris Wilcha sets out to do in his new documentary Flipside, but it certainly helps. The way this project speaks to the Gen X experience, especially if you’ve ever thought of yourself as an artist,...

Image: Oscilloscope Laboratories

You don’t have to be of a certain age to appreciate everything Chris Wilcha sets out to do in his new documentary Flipside, but it certainly helps. The way this project speaks to the Gen X experience, especially if you’ve ever thought of yourself as an artist,...

From the second scene of Mortensen’s second feature, “The Dead Don’t Hurt” (following 2020’s excellent father-son drama “Following”), audiences know the fate of Vivienne LeCoudy (Vicky Krieps). A resilient French Canadian pioneer woman left alone for years, Vivienne dies at home in bed, a single tear making tracks on her dusty cheek. For no good reason, Mortensen opts to tell her story out of order, flashing back to Vivienne’s childhood (to show the character-defining disappearance of her fur-trapper father) and carrying on past her death to reveal whether her absentee partner (played by Mortensen) manages to avenge what happened to her.

That nonlinear narrative choice in an otherwise understated art-house Western serves to confuse more than it reveals, complicating things for the meat-and-potatoes crowd that regularly turn out for cowboy stories. Set during the Civil War but made with a mindset more in line with the #MeToo era,...

Fifteen years ago, writer/director Judd Apatow hired documentary filmmaker Chris Wilcha to film a behind-the-scenes movie about the making of “Funny People” and changed Wilcha’s life forever when the documentarian moved from New York to Los Angeles to work on the project. After he was done with the shoot, Wilcha had a hard time finding documentary work and ultimately settled into a life of directing commercials, returning to his first love of non-fiction filmmaking only sporadically as he accumulated hard drive after hard drive of footage from unfinished projects. Apatow was stunned to learn what an effect he had had on Wilcha’s life. “I didn’t even know that he moved to L.A. for the job,” Apatow told IndieWire, “and that his mom has been mad at me for decades.”

The unexpected connections between people and the unknown ways in which they affect each other are...

When the teaser trailer for "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" debuted last March, our reintroduction to Delia Deetz (Catherine O'Hara) and Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) was a somber one. The mother and daughter were standing graveside in a cemetery, mourning an undisclosed character. Fans of the original quickly guessed that the person being committed to the Earth was the family's patriarch, Charles Deetz (Jeffrey Jones), but Tim Burton, in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, refused to confirm this suspicion. "We'll see," was all he said at the time.

Two months later, with the release of the first full theatrical trailer, this minor mystery has been solved thanks to an utterance by Jenna Ortega, who plays Lydia's rebellious teenage daughter Astrid. "I can't believe grandpa's dead." It's Charles' death, then, that serves as the catalyst for the sequel's plot, as confirmed by the following synopsis:

After an unexpected family tragedy, three generations of the...

"It's beautiful and inspiring." Oscilloscope Labs has revealed an official trailer for a documentary film titled Flipside, which first premiered last year at the 2023 Toronto Film Festival. It's the latest creation from doc filmmaker Chris Wilcha, who worked for "This American Life" and also made a few docs, including Knock Knock It's Tig Notaro in 2015 and his breakout The Target Shoots First. Flipside is his comical attempt to save a New Jersey record store and confront a mid-life crisis. TIFF adds: "In the process of looking back, he gets inspired to revisit the half-finished documentaries that exist only on his hard drives. He pulls up old interviews that no one has seen with creative people who faced their own crossroads, including radio host Ira Glass, writer Starlee Kine, jazz photographer Herman Leonard, and television writer David Milch. The passage of time brings a deeper poignancy to their testimonies... His quest may be personal,...

Premiering at TIFF last fall, Flipside follows filmmaker Chris Wilcha as he reflects on his past and what it means to live a life of creativity. Picked up by Oscilloscope Laboratories for a North American release, featuring Judd Apatow on board as executive producer, the first trailer has now landed ahead of a May 31 debut.

Here’s the synopsis: “When filmmaker Chris Wilcha revisits the record store he worked in as a teenager in New Jersey, he finds the once-thriving bastion of music and weirdness from his youth slowly falling apart and out of touch with the times. Flipside documents his tragicomic attempt to revive the store while revisiting the abandoned documentary projects that have marked his career. In the process, he captures “The American Life” icon Ira Glass in the midst of a creative rebirth, discovers the origin story of David Bowie’s ode to a local New Jersey cable television hero,...

Documentarian Chris Wilcha is stepping back through time for his latest feature “Flipside.”

Wilcha revisits his own shelved past projects including capturing “This American Life” icon Ira Glass in the midst of a creative rebirth, an origin story of David Bowie’s ode to a local New Jersey cable television hero, and an unlikely connection between jazz photographer Herman Leonard and TV writer David Milch.

The film is the product of Wilcha returning to the record store where he worked as a teenager in New Jersey and realizing that the staple of his youth is now out of touch with the times. Per the official synopsis, “Flipside” documents Wilcha’s “tragicomic attempt to revive the store while revisiting other documentary projects he has abandoned over the years. This disparate collection of stories coheres into something strange and expansive — a moving meditation on music, work, and the sacrifices and satisfaction of...

Exclusive: Tom Payne, the British actor who starred in Fox drama series Prodigal Son, has new representation.

Payne has signed with Independent Artist Group in all areas. He was previously repped by UTA and, before that, Paradigm.

He most recently starred in the Blumhouse feature Imaginary and his next role is in Kevin Costner’s western Horizon: An America Saga.

Elsewhere, he played Paul “Jesus” Monroe on The Walking Dead and his breakout role was in Michael Man and David Milch’s HBO series Luck.

Other roles include in Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day, opposite Amy Adams and Frances McDormand, The Physician, BBC drama Best, Miss Marple and Wuthering Heights.

It is the latest actor signing for Independent Artist Group, which was created as part of the merger between APA and Agi last year. Other recent signings include Regina Hall, William H Macy, Nathalie Emmanuel, Terrance Howard, Ken Jeong,...

There is no denying that theaters are losing their charm thanks to streaming platforms like Netflix. People now would much rather prefer paying a monthly fee and enjoying more content than ever before in the comfort of their own homes. Now, it takes films like Barbie and Oppenheimer to drive people to theater halls and experience cinema first-hand.

A still from Barbie (2023)

As if this was not enough, director and producer Judd Apatow recently gave his two cents on the state of television today and how shows are just getting recycled over and over again thanks to licensing pacts between streaming platforms. Judd Apatow expressed his worries that if things keep going on like this, it might lead to fewer new shows and television becoming more of a business than art.

Judd Apatow is Worried About Netflix’s Model Judd Apatow on The Tonight Show

Many people prefer doing re-runs of their favorite television series,...

Judd Apatow is commenting on the trend of streamers licensing content from rival studios.

It was recently announced that Warner Bros. Discovery struck a deal to license Sex and the City to Netflix. Apatow is now looking ahead at the implications that these types of deals might have in the industry in the years ahead.

“I’m of two minds. There’s a part of me that’s an audience member: I’ll go back and rewatch Deadwood or NYPD Blue or any of the David Milch shows. I understand why people like the comfort food of television,” Apatow told Vulture in a recent interview. “But it’s a scary thing as a creator of television, because of all the streamers going, ‘Wait a second. We don’t need to spend $200 million on a new show. We can just bring back Barnaby Jones.’ They’re going to do it, then...

Judd Apatow spoke to Vulture in a recent interview about the current state of television, including why the trend of rewatching older series and licensing pacts between streamers is “scary.”

“I’m of two minds,” Apatow said. “There’s a part of me that’s an audience member: I’ll go back and rewatch ‘Deadwood’ or ‘NYPD Blue’ or any of the David Milch shows. I understand why people like the comfort food of television. But it’s a scary thing as a creator of television, because of all the streamers going, ‘Wait a second. We don’t need to spend $200 million on a new show. We can just bring back “Barnaby Jones.”‘ They’re going to do it, then you’ll get fewer new shows.”

The “This Is 40” writer-director continued, “They realize, Oh wait, Netflix can just buy shows from HBO, and I would assume they’re cheaper than making new ones.

Judd Apatow is opening up about the current state of television and why he finds it “scary” that Netflix can license shows from HBO.

The writer-director-producer told Vulture in a recent interview that licensing pacts between streaming giants is just going to lead to viewers getting “fewer new shows.”

“I’m of two minds,” Apatow explained. “There’s a part of me that’s an audience member: I’ll go back and rewatch Deadwood or NYPD Blue or any of the David Milch shows. I understand why people like the comfort food of television.”

The This Is 40 writer-director continued, “But it’s a scary thing as a creator of television, because of all the streamers going, ‘Wait a second. We don’t need to spend $200 million on a new show. We can just bring back Barnaby Jones.’ They’re going to do it, then you’ll get fewer new shows.

Judd Apatow is warning against the rise of rewatching and the implications it has for streamers not to greenlight new series.

The writer/director/producer told Vulture that Warner Bros. Discovery and HBO licensing shows like “Sex and the City” to Netflix is just a recent example of limiting audiences’ “content” options, which is no doubt “cheaper than making new ones.”

“I’m of two minds,” Apatow said of the rise of viewers rediscovering older series. “There’s a part of me that’s an audience member: I’ll go back and rewatch ‘Deadwood’ or ‘NYPD Blue’ or any of the David Milch shows. I understand why people like the comfort food of television. But it’s a scary thing as a creator of television, because of all the streamers going, ‘Wait a second. We don’t need to spend $200 million on a new show. We can just bring back “Barnaby Jones.

Fans of Yellowstone still have months to go before the Paramount Network hit returns with its last batch of episodes, but we have a TV anniversary to celebrate in the meantime. HBO’s 2004 series Deadwood, another small-screen Western, turns 20 on March 21. Created by David Milch (NYPD Blue), Deadwood was set in the titular South Dakota town, with Timothy Olyphant playing the real-life sheriff Seth Bullock and Ian McShane playing the real-life saloon owner Al Swearengen. All 36 episodes of Deadwood are streaming on Max — as the 2019 follow-up, Deadwood: The Movie — and we reckon it’s high time for you to pay that town a visit, especially if you like Yellowstone. Here’s why. 1. Deadwood also tells a tale of greed and crime in the West, set around the time of Yellowstone spinoff 1883. As Deadwood starts, it’s 1876, and the namesake community is a lawless mining camp overrun by misfits and criminals...

On March 21, 2004, HBO introduced audiences to the frontier outpost of Deadwood, where the Timothy Olyphant and Ian McShane series ran for three seasons. Fifteen years after its premiere it was revived as a standalone movie on the premium cabler. The Hollywood Reporter’s original review of season one is below:

David Milch, executive producer of NYPD Blue and, before that, Hill Street Blues, has spent years looking at society from the perspective of those who enforce its laws and impose order. His new series, Deadwood, imagines a world without law, a world ruled only by the conscience of individuals, many of whom have none. The result is a Western unlike most others. It is brutal, passionate, heroic, tragic, blanketed by coarseness and always fascinating, though some times morbidly so.

Although it would be just as solid a drama if it were cut from whole cloth, Deadwood is deeply rooted in historical reality.

The Chattanooga Film Festival returns for its eleventh year, unleashing another summer camp for cinephiles from June 21-28, 2024. While the fest already teased exciting events for their 2024 event, the first wave of feature programming promises even more genre fun.

From the press release: “In filmmaker Michael Turney’s RetroTech Romance Video Vision, a woman unlocks a dark dimension through an old Vcr, combining romance, horror, and analog technology in unique and spellbinding ways.

“Video Vision in both vibes and execution perfectly embodies the genre-blending spirit of the Chattanooga Film Festival and serves as its opening night film selection for the year. Because of the festival’s ongoing commitment to accessibility for its 2024 edition, the Cff team endeavored to find filmmakers and partners who understand the importance of this issue, and audience members will have the option of tuning into this world premiere on-site and virtually (US residents only). This theme...

“Can’t blame me.” Those are the words of Nic Pizzolatto, the creator of True Detective, in response to a post on social media criticizing season four of the HBO anthology, the first cycle in which he has had no direct involvement. That tweet, as well as reposts of messages by the viewers critical of the new season, raises the question of what the show’s original creator has been up to since he left the series.

To refresh: The 2014 season one of True Detective, starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson as Louisiana detectives tracking a serial killer, was a breakout hit for HBO, earning a Rotten Tomatoes score of 91 among critics and an 88 audience score. The freshman run went on to collect a franchise-high 12 Emmy nominations, helping Pizzolatto skyrocket to fame.

Season two, which starred Colin Farrell, Vince Vaughn and Rachel McAdams as detectives probing a corrupt politician, was far less glowingly received,...

Exclusive: Henry Simmons, Bryan Greenberg, Torrey Hanson, Ora Jones and Jasmine Batchelor are set to recur in the new MGM+ series Emperor of Ocean Park, a suspense thriller inspired by the best-selling novel of the same name from Stephen L. Carter. They join previously announced series regulars Forest Whitaker, Grantham Coleman, Tiffany Mack and Paulina Lule.

From John Wells and Sherman Payne, Emperor of Ocean Park is set in the worlds of politics, Ivy League academia and the beaches of Martha’s Vineyard. It follows Talcott Garland (Coleman), an Ivy League law professor whose quiet life is shattered when his father, Judge Oliver Garland (Whitaker), dies of an apparent heart attack. The nature of the judge’s death is questioned by Tal’s sister, Mariah (Tiffany Mack), a former journalist and inveterate conspiracy theorist, who believes that the judge, a failed Black nominee to the Supreme Court, met with foul play.

Exclusive: Oscilloscope Laboratories has taken North America on Flipside, a new documentary from filmmaker Chris Wilcha, which world premiered at last year’s Toronto Film Festival. Exec produced by Judd Apatow, the film is slated for release in theaters this year.

Flipside sees Wilcha revisit the New Jersey record store he worked at as a teenager, finding the once-thriving bastion of music and weirdness slowly falling apart and out of touch with the times. The film chronicles his tragicomic attempt to revive the store while revisiting other documentary projects he has abandoned over the years. In the process, Wilcha captures This American Life icon Ira Glass in the midst of a creative rebirth, discovers the origin story of David Bowie’s ode to a local New Jersey cable television hero, and uncovers the unlikely connection between jazz photographer Herman Leonard and TV writer David Milch. This disparate collection of stories...

It’s four for four for Jesse Armstrong.

The “Succession” creator and showrunner took home the Emmy for Best Drama Writing on Monday for penning “Connor’s Wedding,” the third episode of the HBO series’ fourth and final season, which featured the shocking death of family patriarch Logan Roy (Brian Cox). “Succession,” which was the odds-on favorite to win heading into the telecast, beat out episodes from fellow HBO dramas “The White Lotus” and “The Last of Us,” as well as AMC’s “Better Call Saul,” Disney+’s “Andor” and Apple TV+’s “Bad Sisters.”

“Succession” executive producer Mark Mylod was also nominated for directing the episode, which, as the title implies, is set during the nuptials of eldest son Connor (Alan Ruck). Logan’s death, which happens off-screen and in the wake of a confrontation with his children in the previous episode, interrupts the big day, and the four...

"Suits" creator Aaron Korsh pulled from his own life when crafting the show, which enjoyed success during its USA Network first run and has been blitzing Netflix this year.

In an interview with Nerdist back in 2014 (when "Suits" was in season 4), Korsh detailed some of his inspirations. He cited a scene in the pilot, where Pearson Hardman junior partner Louis Litt (Rick Hoffman) fires an associate in front of newly-hired protagonist Mike Ross (Patrick J. Adams). It turns out that this "associate" was a) actually a mailroom worker, b) in on the act, and c) not truthfully fired. Louis does this trick to put the fear of God (or at least the Sword of Damocles) in the firm's new employees. Korsh got this character-building moment from a fraternity trick back in his college days at the University of Pennsylvania:

"I had a roommate that went to a fraternity. And he...

Michael Gambon, the Irish-English actor best known for his role as Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore in six of the “Harry Potter” movies, has died, Variety has confirmed. He was 82.

“We are devastated to announce the loss of Sir Michael Gambon,” his family said in a statement. “Beloved husband and father, Michael died peacefully in hospital with his wife Anne and son Fergus at his bedside, following a bout of pneumonia.”

While it is easier for a character actor, often working in supporting roles, to rack up a large number of credits than it is for lead actors, Gambon was enormously prolific, with over 150 TV or film credits in an era when half that number would be impressive and unusual — and this for a man whose body of stage work was also prodigious.

He played two real kings of England: King Edward VII in “The Lost Prince” (2003) and his son, King George V,...

In the NYPD Blue Season One episode “Tempest in a C-Cup,” cop Andy Sipowicz and prosecutor Sylvia Costas wind up on an impromptu dinner date. To call the occasion unexpected would be a wild understatement, as we were introduced to the characters at the very start of the series with a drunken, rampaging Sipowicz grabbing his crotch and calling Sylvia a “pissy little bitch.” But Andy is sober now, and Sylvia finds herself charmed by his company. After he tells her about the aquarium of saltwater tropical fish he keeps in his apartment,...

Thirty years ago today, on September 21, 1993, at 10/9c, NYPD Blue premiered on ABC.

However, its debut didn't necessarily mean it reached every household.

The controversial series premiered to apocalyptic fanfare, with critics wondering if the series would usher in the end of TV as viewers knew it.

It’s funny the things you remember from your youth. I was at the age where the idea of a series willing to push the envelope, delivering a taste of the big screen on the small, sounded like an excellent idea.

They say that all publicity is good publicity, but people around the country were so concerned about the effect the show may have on the morals of the everyman that 57 local stations around the country refused to air the premiere.

A month later, there were still 45 ABC affiliates who, due to the possibility of coarse language and nudity, were still not airing it.

It’s easy to measure your life in accomplishments, to look at the accumulation of honors and accolades, of personal and professional victories, and to say, “This accumulation represents empirical success.”

It’s harder to measure your life not necessarily in failures but in potentials left unfulfilled, in half-completed tasks or the stashed items left unused, and to say, “Despite or perhaps even because of this, there is still success.”

Chris Wilcha’s new documentary, Flipside, takes on the second challenge to deliver an autobiographical portrait of how a life seemingly of disappointments and failures can be a life well lived. Glimpse Flipside in the wrong moment or from the wrong angle and it can feel a little solipsistic, albeit in a way that will be relatable to many viewers. But taken in totality and with some reflection, it’s a borderline-profound and philosophical expression of satisfaction with everything that is unfinished in life.

“Flipside,” an endearing, dizzying documentary about the crushing convergence between art and commerce, begins with a common cold open. What we presume to be our enigmatic subject, the late legendary jazz photographer Herman Leonard, offers us a few pearls of wisdom that have led to his success. An array of close-ups of the singular, black and white portraits he took of Duke Ellington, Frank Sinatra, and Nat King Cole, from a retrospective exhibition of his work, further instills his importance to an unknowing audience. These are also Leonard’s final days. He’s dying from cancer. From the opening, we think “Flipside” will be a “great man you must know more about” story.

But this documentary isn’t about the jazz photographer. At least, not directly. There are other stories: A woman writer battling writer’s block, “This American Life” creator Ira Glass’ musical, and the documentary’s primary inspiration,...

There is no surprise twist in Chris Wilcha’s Flipside, a documentary making its world premiere at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. This is not a true-crime doc or a story of unearthed family secrets. (Although there is lots of ephemera excavated after years of quasi-hoarding.) Instead of a twist, though, there is an audience awakening, one that takes a rather standard there-are-places-i-remember doc into surprisingly resonant territory. Ultimately, Flipside is a moving, funny, inventive film that may cause viewers to follow Wilcha’s lead and ask tough questions about their own lives. That is no small feat for a documentarian.

Of course, Wilcha is no novice. His first success, 1999’s The Target Shoots First, brought him rave reviews and modest fame. Wilcha shot it while working at Columbia House Records––yes, the “8 CDs for a penny” mail-order service many remember with great fondness. In Flipside, Wilcha shows the viewer his early-20s self,...

In his latest podcast/interview, host and screenwriter Stuart Wright talks to screenwriter and showrunner Eric Rogers about his work as a script co-ordinator on NYPD Blue, lessons learned from David Milch, the role of the showrunner in creating Skylanders Academy for Netflix, how writing shows for 6-11 year old audiences has evolved recently, finding your voice and “3 Films That Have Impacted Everything In Your Adult Life”

Pulp Fiction (1994) Jaws (1975) Sideways (2004) / Fargo (1996)

“3 Films That Have Impacted Everything In Your Adult Life” is about those films that made you fall in love with film. The guest selects their trio of movies and we talk for 5 minutes, against the clock. When the alarm goes off for five minutes we move on to the next film.

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With TV and films stalled due to the ongoing writers and actors strike, director Judd Apatow and filmmaker J.J. Abrams sat down for a virtual conversation with Ed Solomon on Tuesday evening to talk in-depth about their writing process and working alongside filmmaker Matt Reeves as teenagers. During the 11th episode of The Black List’s Word by Word, the trio steered clear of conversations about the double strike.

At the start of the conversation, Solomon shared that Abrams and Apatow were eager to jump on the episode when learning...

This story about “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie” first appeared in the Down to the Wire: Comedy/Variety/Reality/Nonfiction issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine.

The last time Davis Guggenheim interviewed Michael J. Fox for the documentary “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie,” it came at the end of a three-year period in which the filmmaker of “An Inconvenient Truth” and “Waiting for ‘Superman’” had spent time with the actor as he reflected on his life and battled Parkinson’s disease. He left Fox’s home exhausted by the lengthy interview — “interviews are super intense and I’m hyper-focused” — but also feeling as if he’d really gotten to know the 62-year-old actor who’d become a star in his 20s with “Family Ties” and “Back to the Future.”

It was a beautiful spring day, so Guggenheim decided to walk back to his hotel, which was two miles away.

Editor’s note: One in a series of stories marking the 100th day of the WGA strike.

Although it might be important to both the Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA that every Los Angeles-area studio have a union presence during the strike, some picket lines hold more weight than others. In other words, it didn’t take long before writers — and much later, the actors — started picking their favorite locales when it came time to protest room sizes, low residuals and the future use of artificial intelligence.

As part of our ongoing coverage of the WGA strike, Deadline has visited every major picket line in the city. It wasn’t long before we figured out who had the best (and worst) turnout based on the conditions, including available sidewalk space, safety — and shade — at each studio, who touted the biggest names, and who attracted the best reunions.

Related: Striking Outside of...

Paris Barclay made some television history this morning.

Scoring a nomination Wednesday for the 75th Primetime Emmy Awards for his work on Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, the seasoned director now occupies a rarified perch.

Two-time Emmy winner Barclay is the first Black director to sweep the narrative table and be nominated in the Drama, Comedy and now Limited or Anthology Series or TV Movie categories.

“I’m mostly just incredibly grateful,” said Barclay to Deadline of today’s nomination for the show’s “Silenced” episode.

Grateful to the terrific writers I’ve been fortunate to work with on Emmy episodes – David Milch, Aaron Sorkin, Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan, and now I can add David McMillan and Janet Mock to the list.

But I’m also grateful I’ve been able to help tell stories that really matter, that really make a difference. This episode...

WGA negotiating committee co-chair Chris Keyser issued a clarion call to members and supporters earlier today.

“When you walk in circles in front of every studio in town,” he tells the guild’s members in the clip (watch it below), “you are carrying with you a cause that is larger than just us and this business, though just us and this business would have been enough. We are marching for labor, and labor is watching us.”

Not long after, Keyser put those ideas into action, taking to the picket lines outside Disney alongside writer Will Landman and, according to Landman, a very nice Bradley Whitford.

Did a couple hours at Disney this morning to close out the week! Went to tell Chris Keyser I loved his update video and didn’t realize he was chatting with @BradleyWhitford – who is just the nicest! Great way to close out another week on the picket!

There are several reasons why "Justified" is one of the finest series of the Peak Television era. The show captured the snappy repartee and peculiar characterizations of the Elmore Leonard stories on which it was based, and was cast to utter perfection. We savored every second we spent in the hotbed of Bluegrass criminality that is Harlan County, and were sad to see it close out after six seasons. But endings are important. They're necessary. And "Justified" is one of the few shows that knew precisely when to end its run.

As much as I love "The Sopranos" and "Mad Men," these shows strained a bit down the stretch. "Justified" always kept its plates spinning. After establishing the Givens-Crowder feud in the first season, creator Graham Yost and his writers expertly fleshed out their world with fascinatingly eccentric villains like Wynn Duffy (Jere Burns), Robert Quarles (Neal McDonaugh) and Katherine Hale...

When the weather outside is frightful, Prime Video's bringing something delightful — a whole slew of new movies and shows to enjoy from the comfort of your warm, comfy couch. Whether you're just enjoying a nice night in or you're hiding from visiting relatives, there's guaranteed to be something to entertain. The John Krasinski-starring "Tom Clancy: Jack Ryan" is back for a third season, if you're into spy-adventure shows, and there are also a whole bunch of movies coming to both Prime Video and their sister channel, FreeVee!

Check out the list below to see everything that's coming to Prime Video this December, and I've hand-picked five great finds in case you get overwhelmed or aren't sure what to watch!

Thelma & Louise

Few stories of female friendship have the cultural staying power of Ridley Scott's 1991 crime drama "Thelma & Louise," though that might have something to do with the movie's infamous ending.

Here's a challenge. Read a random "TV shows canceled too soon" listicle floating around the internet. A series that will be on every single one (at least any that was written with a little bit of taste) is "Deadwood," HBO's gone-too-soon western.

The series ran a respectable three seasons (36 episodes) on HBO from 2004 to 2006, but ended inconclusively. The cast and crew also had more to tell. While everyone eventually got the chance to conclude the story with a two-hour wrap-up movie in 2019, "Deadwood: The Movie" was an epilogue, not a full new season of material.

Set in the eponymous South Dakota town during the 1870s, "Deadwood" was Shakespearean — literally, for most of the dialogue was written in iambic pentameter (and bounced from tragedy to farce just like the Bard's work did). The show was fairly faithful (but not bound) to history, with real men as the two leads: lawman Seth...

Studio script doctoring is remarkably lucrative work. According to a 2016 Hollywood Reporter survey, when a massively expensive film needs tweaking prior to or during shooting (or during last-second reshoots), A-list screenwriters who can deliver high-quality work within a tight window can pull down as much as 400,000 per week. Depending on the film and how broken the script is, that meter can run an awfully long time. That's some serious cheddar.

So let's say you're a rich spendthrift who loves horse racing like David Milch, the genius TV writer who created "NYPD Blue" and "Deadwood." Throughout his Emmy-winning career, Milch has poured a good deal of his earnings into many thoroughbreds, two of which won the coveted Breeders' Cup. He knows horses. But if you know horse people, you're aware that knowledge is far from omniscient. You lose more than you win. And if you're wagering a lot of money, as...

Exclusive: Kevin Costner’s civil war western at New Line, Horizon, continues to expand with a huge roster of actors including Tom Payne, Abbey Lee, Wasé Chief, Tim Guinee, Michael Angarano, Colin Cunningham, Scott Haze, Angus Macfadyen, Douglas Smith and Jon Beavers rounding out the ensemble.

They all join previously announced cast Sienna Miller, Sam Worthington, Jamie Campbell Bower, Luke Wilson, Thomas Haden Church, Jena Malone, Alejandro Edda, Tatanka Means, Michael Rooker, Isabelle Fuhrman and Ella Hunt.

Horizon chronicles a multi-faceted 15-year span of pre-and post-Civil War expansion and settlement of the American west. Experienced through the eyes of many, the epic journey is fraught with peril and intrigue from the constant onslaught of natural elements, to the interactions with the indigenous peoples who lived on the land, and the determination and at many times ruthlessness of those who sought to settle it. It reps multi-Oscar winner Costner’s return...

There is a Taylor Sheridan aesthetic. The "Sicario" writer and "Yellowstone" creator is a poet laureate of the American West, a writer who reframes its ancient archetypes for modern audiences by placing emotion first. "Hell and High Water" sweepingly considers the folk hero power of modern-day outlaws. "Those Who Wish Me Dead" is a classic white-hat-vs.-black-hat yarn set in the daredevil world of smoke jumpers. Then, there's "Yellowstone." The Paramount+ smash is an unabashedly melodramatic soap opera, a dime-store novel for the small screen. Sheridan's show disguises its seedier impulses through grit and self-seriousness. The "Yellowstone" discourse has revolved around it being immensely popular yet widely unknown. So are dime-store novels. So are the works of Taylor Sheridan. It's all part of the plan.

If you love "Yellowstone" or any of its many genre elements, here are 16 shows you can watch next that range from neo-westerns to classic soaps.

Even though it's now widely considered one of the best television series in the history of the medium, if not the very best, David Simon's "The Wire" was frequently on life support. It was a critics' darling, but viewership was never robust, and Emmy voters repeatedly shunned it (the taste-challenged organization coughed up all of two nominations during the show's run). Fortunately, HBO understood the value of committing to a high-quality program regardless of ratings. This is why top-flight artists like Martin Scorsese, Tom Hanks, and David Milch took their network-unfriendly series to the pay-cable channel.

Still, the sword of Damocles hung over "The Wire" at the conclusion of every season. Could HBO justify keeping the show on the air when it kept coming up short in the two metrics that truly matter? This uncertainty was tough for Simon, but especially brutal for the actors.

The Bunk Rides The...