theringer.com
Richard Lewis wasn’t the first neurotic stand-up comic, but he was one of the best—and, as contradictory as it sounds, probably the most comfortable. “When I’m on stage, I’m the happiest I could ever be,” he told me in 2022, during an interview about his friend Warren Zevon. “I’m just in touch with who I am, and want to express it. It’s just calm. It’s like the eye of a hurricane.” Lewis, who died of a heart attack on Tuesday at 76, wasn’t being hyperbolic. Over the course of his career, he spok…
28 days ago
theringer.com
Issa López’s long, icy road to True Detective began with a coffee table book and a videotape. Growing up in Mexico City in the 1980s, she loved scary movies. So, as a gift, her father gave her a tome filled with still photographs from horror films. When she flipped through the pages, one image stopped her cold. “Are those legs coming out of someone’s head?” López recalls asking herself. The grotesque creature she saw, a disembodied head with long spider legs, was from The Thing. And as soon as s…
2 months ago
theringer.com
With three elegantly simple words, Josh Bowen spoke for millions of NFL fans: “This shit sucks.” The Kansas City native, who owns John Brown Smokehouse in Queens, had no clue that Saturday’s Chiefs-Dolphins wild-card game was airing exclusively on Peacock, NBCUniversal’s streaming service, until we spoke this week. When I told him, he didn’t believe me at first. “I was just assuming this was gonna be on TV like a normal playoff game would be,” he said. “So I’m gonna have to pay for a subscriptio…
3 months ago
theringer.com
David Krumholtz hadn’t worked for 16 months straight. He’d been a Hollywood actor since he was a teenager and wondered whether the ride, finally, was over. “I was thinking, ‘Oh, well, they’ve seen enough, and I’ve come to the end of something wonderful, and all good things come to an end,’” the 45-year-old tells me in late November. “And that was my perspective on it, and it hurt. But I was trying to remain hopeful.” Not long after that, his agent dropped him. “Which was a bummer,” he says. Then…
3 months ago
theringer.com
The Talking Heads’ 1984 concert movie—which A24 recently rereleased in theaters—is as propulsive today as it was the day it came out: an ingenious, joyous celebration of music and the iconic band captured in it
6 months ago
theringer.com
Since the release of ‘In Utero’ 30 years ago, fans and nonfans alike have been forever in debt to the band’s priceless artifacts
6 months ago
theringer.com
When he finished shooting his final scene as the hitman/wannabe actor Barry Berkman, Bill Hader didn’t really have time to think about it. “Gavin Kleintop, the first AD, went, ‘Hey, that’s it,’” he says. “And I was like, ‘Yeah, wild. All right, next setup.’” But the Emmy-winning cocreator, executive producer, writer, and star of Barry isn’t nonchalant about parting ways with a character he’s played since 2018. It’s just that since HBO picked up the show, he hasn’t been able to focus on only one…
12 months ago
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Driving home one day in the early ’90s, Conan O’Brien found himself in a familiar situation: alone in his car, laughing. He had spotted a billboard that he’d never seen before. He doesn’t remember the exact details of it, but one word stuck out: “It just said ‘monorail.’ I don’t even know why.” This giant advertisement was completely inexplicable, yet O’Brien also saw it as a perfect joke on itself. “Monorails were always funny to me because they’re a phony promise of the future,” he says. “It r…
about 1 year ago
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David Letterman, 20 years later, still thinks about the interview. “It was the only time in my talk show history that I did anything like that,” he says. “I’ve never sat down and talked to anybody on television where we both understood they were about to die.” Warren Zevon appeared on Late Show With David Letterman on October 30, 2002. That summer, he had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Doctors gave him a few months to live. To say goodbye to the musician who had graced his stage dozen…
over 1 year ago
theringer.com
Ahead of the release of Lightyear, The Ringer is hosting Pixar Week—a celebration of the toys, rats, clown fish, and more that helped define one of the greatest studios of the 21st century. At the heart of the occasion is the Best Pixar Character Bracket, a cutthroat tournament to determine the most iconic figure of them all. Check back throughout the week to vote for your favorite characters and read a selection of stories that spotlight some of Pixar’s finest moments. To infinity … and beyond!…
almost 2 years ago
theringer.com
Alan Siegel interviews the people behind the ‘Breaking Bad’ spinoff
almost 2 years ago