Stephen Rodrick

Paul Schrader absentmindedly builds installation art out of seven prescription bottles, two inhalers and an empty martini glass, as we sit in a restaurant for seniors in a Manhattan high-rise. Outside, lights twinkle on the Hudson. In 1975, Schrader went to bed with a pistol under his pillow while writing “Taxi Driver.” “Having the option […]

The key to understanding Conan O’Brien’s comedy is knowing that it comes from a point of kindness. Yes, I know in this age of comics punching down, this kind of compliment may leave you with a neon “Must Avoid!” sign flashing in your bleary eyes — but stay with me. Here is an example. Early […]

NFL Sunday Ticket subscriber Leo Tolstoy once wrote, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” That’s an apt summation of the New England Patriots during their championship run in the first two decades of this century. There were six Super Bowl wins, but everyone — particularly quarterback Tom Brady […]

Popular on Variety It’s Game 6 of the 1971 World Series. Orioles-Pirates. Tied game, bottom of the ninth, two outs. Mark Belanger is on first when Don Buford rips a double down the line. Belanger should score easily on the play. Not today. In right field, the Pirates’ Roberto Clemente plays the carom perfectly — […]

Emma Stone and Yorgos Lanthimos have a sense of comic timing that rivals Nichols and May. Case in point: When I ask Lanthimos how he became aware of Stone, the 50-year-old Greek director hesitates for a moment before addressing his 35-year-old muse. “I was aware of her work,” he says. “I thought of her for […]

Popular on Variety The specter of death was all around Paul Schrader as he wrote and filmed “Oh Canada,” starring Richard Gere and Jacob Elordi. The new film, being sold by Arclight Films at the European Film Market, centers around the last days of documentary filmmaker Leonard Fife and is based on the Russell Banks’ […]

A few months after Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck were married in 2022, Lopez got a call from Jane Fonda. The two had been friends since 2005’s “Monster-in-Law,” and it was Fonda who had introduced J. Lo when she received her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Fonda was reaching out because Lopez had […]

Popular on Variety The not-so-secret fact about premieres is that the actors rarely watch, usually ducking out when the lights go down. They spend the film’s duration smoking cigarettes and reciting the cinema’s version of the serenity prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, i.e. the director’s predilection to […]

Popular on Variety Jesse Eisenberg‘s “A Real Pain” stars Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin as mismatched New York Jewish cousins. They’re on a trip to Poland in search of the life that their recently dead grandmother lived before the Holocaust. David is a buttoned up neurotic on OCD medicine while Benji is a charming fuckup with […]

Popular on Variety There’s an iconic scene in 1978’s “Superman” of Clark Kent, played by Christopher Reeve, spying Lois Lane dangling from a helicopter. He locates a revolving door, emerges as the Man of Steel, and soars upward and catches a falling Lane. “Easy, miss, I’ve got you,” says Superman. Lane is still panicking. “You’ve got me? […]

Popular on Variety There’s an iconic scene in 1978’s “Superman” of Clark Kent, played by Christopher Reeve, spying Lois Lane dangling from a helicopter. He locates a revolving door, emerges as the Man of Steel, and soars upward and catches a falling Lane. “Easy, miss, I’ve got you,” says Superman. Lane is still panicking. “You’ve got me? […]

Popular on Variety Jobs can suck. (Not this one! Everyone is very nice, and there is free Cherry Coke Zero with movie theater ice on the fifth floor.) If you’re past 25, you’ve probably had one that left you feeling like a three-legged whippet abandoned at the pound. Maybe everything was grand, and then there […]

Popular on Variety In the years before Twitter was euthanized, I’d patiently wait for the onset of the holiday season, and the renewal in my feed of the great “Love Actually” Debate. Every year, the best and brightest of the world — middle management apparatchiks, underemployed magazine writers and hall of fame doomscrollers — would […]

Popular on Variety America has long reveled in the destruction of young women. Here’s a short and not comprehensive list: Judy Garland was given amphetamines at age 16 on the set of “The Wizard of Oz” in 1938. Frances Farmer was institutionalized against her will in 1942, and Dorothy Stratten was murdered by her ex-manager […]

I first heard about FX’s “Archer” in the ready room of VAQ-135, a navy squadron who were serving an interminable deployment aboard an aircraft carrier somewhere near Midway Island. (This sounds very much like a humblebrag that Sterling Archer would obnoxiously drop into conversation). It was 2010, and the pilots had lost whatever idealism they’d […]

Summer light fades to gold in Malibu. Surfers carve tasty waves just down the road. A beautiful woman wanders toward the pool house. She crosses paths with a sweet dog heading the opposite way look…

Michael Mann is running out of time. I am in the 80-year-old director’s West Los Angeles office, talking to him about his new film, “Ferrari,” and he asks me to move closer and speak up. He then fi…

Fran Drescher is on a hero’s journey. I know because she told me. We talked on Monday for about an hour as the actors’ strike moved into a second week. So far, it’s been very dram…

U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) had a time-honored tradition during the six seasons of the original “Justified.” The rakish law man would chase a baddie across Kentucky back roa…

Some things are best in small doses. Cheesecake and Ketamine come to mind. The more-is-not-necessarily-better conundrum confronts the creators of “Scream of My Blood: A Gogol Bordello Story,” a Vic…