Bruce Fretts

Penn is also a creator of this NBC sitcom, which premieres Thursday and is titled after the neighborhood of the same name in Queens, the New York borough known as one of the most diverse places on earth. Penn plays a disgraced New York City councilman who tries to redeem his reputation by helping a ragtag group of immigrants navigate the United States citizenship process.

The premise seems timely in the Trump era, but “it was never meant to be a reaction to anything,” said Penn, 42, who started developing the series five years ago. “The topic of immigration goes back to the founding of our country. It is all of our stories.”

“As long as we’re mindful of that,” he added, “I’m not going to take anybody’s bait.”

Besides, said Penn, who was previously best known for his title role in the “Harold and Kumar” stoner movies, his intentions are more comic than didactic.

“I love things like Jon Stewart’s ‘Daily Show,’ but you don’t feel good about the world when you turn it off,” he explained recently, sipping cabernet at a Hell’s Kitchen hotel bar. “When I was growing up, I loved shows like ‘Perfect Strangers,’ ‘Head of the Class’ and ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.’ When you turn off the TV, not only do you feel good, you feel like you spent time with your friends.”

Then, lifting his glass, he added, “Cheers!” in an unintentional reference to another feel-good sitcom and possible “Sunnyside” influence. In an interview, Penn discussed his earlier characters’ problematic names, his experiences in the White House — real and fictional — and more. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.

Q: What inspired you to create a sitcom for yourself?

A: About six years ago, I was on a show with Jerry O’Connell and Tony Shalhoub called “We Are Men.” It was very short-lived. The morning after the third episode aired, I got a call: “Hey, don’t come to work tomorrow.” The next day my manager said, “What’s your dream job?” I said, “This was it — I want to be on a network comedy.”

Then he asked me, “But if you were going to create a show, what would it be?” I said, “Thematically, this sounds cheesy, but I love making people laugh, and I love America. It would be great if we could do a show that makes people do both of those together.” So I started putting together a project like that.

Q: You’re on NBC’s Thursday night schedule. It’s a different world — no pun intended — from the ’80s and ’90s, when having a slot there guaranteed 20 or 30 million viewers every week. Does it matter to you that you’re reaching a smaller audience these days?

A: We’re going to make it that big again! (Laughs.) No, what I like about the network space is you can bring people together in a way that you still can’t in streaming. Those services’ reach is restricted because of how much you have to pay a month for them.

Q: You grew up in New Jersey. Why set this show in Sunnyside, Queens?

A: When I was a little kid, before Edison, New Jersey, was a hotbed of Indian culture, one Sunday a month, we’d pack up the station wagon and drive to Jackson Heights. My mom would go to the Indian grocery store there. It was always very diverse. I was looking for a neighborhood like that to set the show in, and Jackson Heights and Flushing are the two I know the best, but “Flushing” is a truly terrible title for a show. Sunnyside has the same demographics and is a better title than “Jackson Heights.”

Q: Like your character, Garrett Modi, you’re the child of first-generation Indian immigrants. Your birth name was Kalpen Modi, which you shortened to Kal Penn for showbiz. Is this show autobiographical in any way?

A: Not really. I always like playing characters who are different from me. Kumar is way cooler than I’ll ever be. There are more comedic influences than real-life ones. I love Garrett and his sister Mallory’s names. When I went to name them, I went back through this long litany of beef people had with me about the names of characters I played. It started with the character I played in “National Lampoon’s Van Wilder,” Taj Mahal. That is unmistakably a very problematic name. It was a different time; we’ve moved past that. But when I got the job on “House,” they had written my role as Dr. Lawrence Kutner, and they said, “How do you feel about changing it to an Indian name?” I said “No, I auditioned for Lawrence Kutner and got it, and I want to play him.” When I started on the show, people said, “Why aren’t you playing a character named Dr. Samir Patel?” I get that we look to art forms for validation, and it means a lot to people. That said, it’s a no-win situation.

So Garrett’s parents came to America in the ’80s and they started watching “The Facts of Life” and thought Mrs. Garrett was very hard-working. Then they saw her on reruns of “Diff’rent Strokes” and were like, “Wait a second, she has two jobs? Our firstborn son has to be named after her!” Then they got into “Family Ties,” and Mallory is a slacker. Their high-performing daughter is named after Mallory, and she’s the one who’s done everything right. I just love that.

Q: How did your parents feel about using your real last name on “Sunnyside”?

A: My dad was not a fan at first. He said: “That’s a terrible idea. People are going to be confused. You used to work in politics. People might think it’s supposed to be you.” But he’s come around.

Q: Were you always equally passionate about politics and acting?

A: No, my first love was always acting. I enjoyed the sabbatical I took, but you’re not going to see me running for Senate. When I was growing up, I would hear stories about how my grandparents had marched with Gandhi, but I never thought about that as politics. I thought of it as a weird story my family told. I had never been interested in politics.

Then, in 2007, there was a writers’ strike, and my “House” co-star Olivia Wilde invited me to an event for Obama. I really liked him, and I campaigned for three days in Iowa and was really excited. It was a small campaign at that point. We were way down in the polls. I wasn’t working, so I ended up campaigning in 26 other states. Then we won, and there was an opportunity to serve in the White House. What was I going to say, “No, I’d rather do another stoner movie?”

Q: What was the transition like, going from acting to working in the Office of Public Engagement?

A: I would work on speeches and think to myself, “This needs to be more boring.” Because if I get a laugh, I was worried somebody from Politico would write, “Kumar brings down the house with American Opportunity Tax Credit speech.” That’s the wrong messaging. Then I came back to acting with a role on Season 8 of “How I Met Your Mother.” They moved so fast — the director, Pamela Fryman, was moving on after two takes. I thought: “I’m not funny anymore. I must be awful.” She said: “We’ve been here for eight years for a reason. I hired you for a reason, and I promise you if something wasn’t working, I would do another take.” It was all in my head.

Q: After that, what was it like acting and working as a political consultant on the D.C.-set drama “Designated Survivor”?

A: I initially said no, because I knew the narrative was going to be “Kal Penn goes from Barack Obama’s White House to Kiefer Sutherland’s White House.” Then I read the script and loved it, so I signed on. We had five showrunners in three years, and depending on the showrunner, my job was either to point out everything that was inaccurate, because they wanted it to be accurate, or point out everything that’s inaccurate, so they could lean into the inaccuracy because they weren’t making a documentary. It was interesting to field texts from my former White House colleagues about things that would never happen: “Oh really, dude?” I would tell them my job was not to make it more accurate. It was to give them the tools to make a choice.

Q: Have you chosen a candidate to support in 2020 yet?

A: This is probably going to sound like a deflection, and I promise it’s not. I didn’t realize how much work putting your own show on the air is, and I’m very excited to be doing that. I helped Bernie Sanders out in the primaries and supported Hillary Clinton in the general election in 2016. I’m excited by a lot of the candidates. I like Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg and Kamala Harris. They all bring something unique. But I haven’t really had time to focus on it and make a choice.

Q: Are you worried that people who don’t share your opinions won’t tune into “Sunnyside” because they assume it will have a liberal bias?

A: Not really. We’re at a time and a place where we all have our closely held political views, and that’s a great thing. But what I love about comedy is that, like sports and music to some extent, it’s one of the few things that still tends to bring people together.

This article originally appeared in

Kal Penn Isn't Making a Political Point with His Immigration Sitcom

Kal Penn took a two-year sabbatical from acting to work in President Barack Obama’s White House, so you would be forgiven for assuming that he’s trying to make a political point with his new television series, “Sunnyside.”

For a breakout star, it was a fairly mundane audition. To cast the part of Goose, an orange tabby who plays a critical role, the makers of “Captain Marvel” were meeting different cats, including Ursula Brauner’s Reggie. “We walked into a roomful of people, and I brought a big plush bed and set it on the table,” Brauner recalled. “Reggie hung out on the bed and was as chill as any cat could be, and the filmmakers saw him embody the character then and there. That’s how he got the job.”

“Captain Marvel” earned more than $500 million worldwide in its first week of release, in no small part thanks to Reggie and three fellow felines who steal scenes as the stray who is revealed to be a ferocious alien known as a Flerken. (In the original Marvel comic books, the cat has the “Star Wars"-esque name of Chewie, but the screenwriters changed it to Goose to go along with the movie’s “Top Gun” motif.)

Goose, who got his own character poster even before the movie was released, has been singled out by reviewers (“Best of all there is an orange cat,” A.O. Scott wrote in The Times”), inspired memes and been the subject of an ode. Kevin Feige, the president of Marvel Studios, even speculated that Goose could star in shorts on the streaming service being started by Marvel’s owner, Disney.

Although special effects were involved, the actual animals are onscreen a fair amount, but at first it was going to be just Reggie. “After looking at the script and seeing the work required, we all decided it would be good to add a couple more cats to the team,” said Brauner, whose company, Animals for Hollywood, provides and trains nonhuman actors for films. In addition to Reggie and another experienced animal actor, Archie (yes, they’re named after Archie Comics characters), Brauner found two more orange tabbies, named Gonzo and Rizzo in a nod to the Muppets, at a shelter.

Each one had a specialty. “Reggie was our all-around go-to cat — he’s seen in most of the film,” Brauner said. “Archie is really rambunctious and loves to play, so we used him for the scratching scene.” The movie, set in 1995, depicts the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) suffering a cat-related injury, necessitating his signature eye-patch. (The comics’ explanation that he lost an eye in World War II didn’t jibe with the movie’s timeline.)

“Gonzo was mostly for holding in the scenes when Goose is carried,” Brauner continued. “And Rizzo was the master of all trades — we trained him in a little bit of everything, so he could step in if we needed backup.”

How do you train notoriously finicky cats? Brauner said the process was not as tough as you might think. “Cats can be just as smart, lovable and easy to train as any dog,” she said. “It’s all positive reinforcement. We use food and treats, and there are different levels. We save the real good, hot stuff for when something’s a little harder or we’re further away from the cat on the set, just to make it worth their while.”

Verbal commands and clickers were also used. “When they’ve done something right, the sound of the clicker is like an instant ‘Yes!'” Brauner explained. “They look forward to that, because they know a pet or a little piece of chicken or liver is coming.”

The cats also eagerly anticipated interacting with their two-legged co-stars. “Sam always gave them treats,” Brauner said. “Every time they saw Sam, it was like, ‘Oh, I remember you!'”

And even though Ben Mendelsohn plays an alien who fears Flerkens, he couldn’t resist cozying up to the cats either. “His costume was a challenge, because he looked so different from a normal person,” said Brauner, who was given one of the character’s prosthetics-heavy suits to use in training. Once shooting began, “Ben would always take the opportunity to hang out with the cats and make them feel comfortable, and they really needed that.”

What about Brie Larson, who stars as the titular superheroine? “She has an allergy, but it never affected us or the cats,” Brauner said. “She was wonderful and always open to helping us, and I really respected her for that.”

Even after four months of preproduction training, the cats couldn’t perform some actions that Flerkens can, like shooting tentacles from their mouths. “That’s when special effects came in,” Brauner said. “Sometimes, like in the jet when the G-force is pushing Goose back, that was computer-generated, but a lot of it was Reggie, no CG needed. The filmmakers did as much as they could just with him.”

Brauner said the most difficult part of her job was “getting the cats used to working on a chaotic movie set.” That’s also why Reggie didn’t attend the film’s premiere, although separate shots were taken of him wearing a tiny tie on the red carpet: “We try to make sure we don’t bring him out in public where something could go wrong, like a loud noise.”

Still, should they be asked to return in any future Marvel movies — or shorts for a streaming service — Brauner said Reggie and the gang are ready for action. “I truly don’t know if that will happen,” she said. “We’re always up for that kind of challenge.”

Goose’s popularity “surprised us as much as anybody,” Brauner said. “But a lot of it is Reggie — his charisma absolutely shines through.”

Brauner said fame hadn’t changed the cats. “We try to keep them grounded,” she joked. “We’re good parents and make sure it doesn’t go to their heads.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/15/movies/captain-marvel-goose.html" id="93bd3c8b-74a7-3053-aeb3-37b417f7b7f0">The New York Times</a>.

Warning: This article contains some spoilers about “Captain Marvel,” but no cat puns.

'Captain Marvel's' Cat Was Actually Four Cats. Here's How That Worked.

Debbie, Gilpin’s character on the Netflix female-wrestling comedy “GLOW,” has only one alter ego: Liberty Belle, an All-American blonde bombshell. But over the course of a recent hour-plus conversation at a boutique cafe near her home in Brooklyn, Gilpin revealed that multiple personae are packed inside her shiny public exterior.

Or, as she described that exterior, “the Barbie bus.”

“I sometimes feel like I’m a living, breathing production of ‘Cyrano de Bergerac,’ where I am Cyrano” — Persona No. 1 alert! — “driving the Barbie bus, fooling the Roxanne of show business, getting into rooms and getting jobs,” said Gilpin, who has been open about her struggles with self-esteem. (She wrote a 2017 article for Glamour headlined “What It’s Like to Have Pea-Sized Confidence with Watermelon-Sized Boobs.”)

After toiling in semi-obscurity for nearly a decade, Gilpin is the recipient of back-to-back Emmy nominations for best supporting actress in a comedy for her heartbreakingly funny and layered portrayal of Debbie on “GLOW.” (The third season debuts Friday.) If not quite a household name, she has nonetheless come a long way from the one-dimensional babe-of-the-week roles she felt obliged to take in the past.

“When I was playing the hot chick, it was clear my job was to wear a very small costume and suck it in for the wide shot, and let the boys make the jokes,” she said. “I’m never going to devalue myself again to keep a job. It makes me sad, thinking how many times I did that.”

Today, she is dressed down, hiding her naturally brown locks under a nondescript baseball cap. But she is conversationally flamboyant, given to vivid, discursive word-jazz riffs that veer from poignant memories of growing up in the pre-commercialized South Street Seaport area of Manhattan (“Our ceiling was built out of old ship parts — it felt like our own secret little fort”) to a trenchant explanation of why she quit Twitter. (“Having that much simultaneous validation and rejection coming at me all day long was not good for my brain.”)

Raised in New York City and Connecticut by parents who are both character actors, Jack Gilpin and Ann McDonough, she was — Persona No. 2 alert! — “a ham clown, with a spaghetti pot on my head, doing jazz hands at dinner parties, whether it was wanted or not,” she said. “And I thought, ‘Oh, this is what being an actor is!’”

Gilpin’s parents urged her to study more than just theater where she attended college, at Fordham University, in the name of financial security, if nothing else. But she was determined to act. It gave her a chance to unleash her — Persona No. 3 alert! — “internal Joan of Arc-Sylvia Plath-Alanis Morissette-Kraken monster.”

But after graduation, she struggled against typecasting. “We studied a lot of theater of the absurd at Fordham and ‘building your inner ocean of weird’ was the thesis statement,” she said. “Then graduating and auditioning for things like ‘Gossip Girl,’ where the No. 1 priority is muffling your ocean of weird and curling your hair, I didn’t work for a while because I was bad at both the muffling and the curling.”

Gilpin did the starving New York City actor thing for a while, appearing off-Broadway and in bit parts on “Law &amp; Order” (once), “Law &amp; Order: Special Victims Unit” (once) and “Law &amp; Order: Criminal Intent” (twice, as different characters). She was frustrated in her attempts to find depth in limited roles — and by the internet’s response to her.

“Sometimes when I was playing a lawyer, I’d created all this identity for this person and done all this homework about what rage they were suppressing,” she said. “And the first Twitter comment was ‘Nice (expletive).’”

Things began to change when she was added to the cast of Showtime’s dark comedy “Nurse Jackie” as Dr. Carrie Roman in 2013. The character was “basically supposed to be a bimbo who slept with everyone,” Gilpin said, but two of the show’s writers, Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch, saw something in her. Something deeply odd.

“Liz and Carly were like, ‘Wait a minute, there’s a weird Sylvia Plath ham clown in there; let’s start peppering that into the writing,’” Gilpin said.

Over the final three seasons of “Nurse Jackie,” Flahive and Mensch helped to flesh out Dr. Roman into an idiosyncratic eccentric whose promiscuity was her least provocative personality trait.

“On the outside, Betty is this 1940s blond bombshell, but the closer to you get to her, you realize she’s so strange, theatrical and smart,” Flahive said in a telephone interview. “You can’t pin her down as a performer, and that’s exciting.”

If Flahive and Mensch hadn’t freed Gilpin’s inner weirdo, “I really don’t know what would’ve happened to me,” Gilpin said. “The Roxanne of the business told me if you’re in your 20s, you’re supposed to be the naked girlfriend or the supportive young mother, and then you expire and we put you in a freezer for the rest of time.”

Finally, she was getting to play Cyrano instead of Barbie. “One of them is much more interesting and has way more stories to tell,” she said. “The Barbie doll is fun, but ticktock! I have Irish genes. I’m supposed to write a poem in a field and die at 40. I’m not made for HD.”

“But that’s for me to decide and not the business,” she added. “I feel that intensely right now.”

When Flahive and Mensch went on to create “GLOW,” which debuted on Netflix in 2017, they gave Gilpin the meaty role of Debbie, a 1980s soap actress whose husband (Rich Sommer) sleeps with her best friend (Alison Brie) in the pilot. By joining forces with her frenemy in a campy women’s wrestling league, Debbie begins to declare her independence — in spandex.

“Liz and Carly are very meta in their writing,” Gilpin said. “They see where I am in my fear and empowerment journey, and they write it into the script like evil genius demons. As Debbie finds her self-worth, I’m doing that on our set, which is like a feminist Montessori bio-dome experiment.”

The approach seems to be working. “Betty’s body has been so objectified in the past,” Mensch said. “To watch her step into a role where she gets to fully act with her body in a new way to tell stories about both her strength and her vulnerability is thrilling.”

While it’s hard to gauge its true popularity (Netflix rarely releases viewing numbers), “GLOW” has become one of the service’s most talked-about series, earning sparkling reviews and awards and boosting the profiles of stars like Gilpin, Brie and Marc Maron, who plays a producer on the titular wrestling show. As Gilpin has dealt with newfound fame and acclaim, she has also developed — Personae Nos. 4 and 5 alert! — “an inner social worker and an inner stage mom,” she said.

“Sometimes I’m invited to a party, and I’m some cocktail of too afraid and too cool to go,” she continued. “But sometimes I’ll go and think, ‘Thank God I listened to the stage mom side of me. I feel so good being here.’ Self-celebration is not vanity, up to a point.”

It doesn’t always work out that way, though. “Sometimes I show up and I’m like, ‘Why did you make me come here, stage mom?’” she said. “That’s my social worker, who just wants me to go home and take care of myself.”

She plans to have the stage mom drive the Barbie bus to the Emmys on Sept. 20, and it will be fully tricked out.

“You have award-winning artists painting your face, shaping your hair and tailoring your clothes so suddenly you’re like” — Persona No. 6 alert! — “a Versailles porn version of yourself,” she said. “And you think, ‘Wow, I look amazing! I don’t look like myself, but after feeling invisible for so long, this feels really good.’”

She knows that feeling won’t last, and she’s OK with that. “It’s this happy balance of, ‘Put on this really beautiful gown that someone’s lending you that they may not lend you in five years, and have fun at this party,’” she said. “‘But don’t place too much value on it, because this is an ice sculpture of deceit.’”

Besides, what Gilpin is most thankful for is living and working in an era when women are increasingly showing their complex, contradictory sides, both on and off-screen.

“We owe it to generations of women sobbing into their hoop skirts and complicated bras of yore, who whispered and screamed, ‘I’m not going to take it anymore!’” she said. “So much of what’s happening in writing for women is you’re used to seeing a certain side of the embroidery, and now we’re writing for the flip side, with the knots and mistakes that we collectively made a pact years ago not to talk about.”

And if there’s one thing Gilpin loves, it’s the messiness of real life.

“Someone defecated on my stoop yesterday, and that’s one of the many reasons I love living in New York,” she said, with all seriousness. “As actors, we’re supposed to have one foot in the river of humanity and break out of that bubble. And that gentleman helped me do that yesterday. So I thank him, and I will use his work in mine.”

As for what comes after the life-altering experience of “GLOW” — what will define her next persona — Gilpin doesn’t know, but she has a hunch. “It feels like I’m in this room that I didn’t know existed, and there are all these things I ever wanted,” she said. “There’s still one more little locked box that I’m not quite sure what’s in there.”

“But honestly,” she added slyly. “I think it’s a tuba career.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/08/arts/television/glow-netflix-betty-gilpin.html" id="96f5353b-5b7f-3f8a-a746-69e640f8a435">The New York Times</a>.

How 'GLOW' Helped Betty Gilpin Embrace Her Inner Weirdo

Debbie Eagan’s got nothing on Betty Gilpin.

With perhaps the year’s first serious Oscar contender, Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood,” set for release this weekend, studios are scrambling to get trailers for their more serious-minded forthcoming films in front of the grown-up eyeballs that will be watching Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt and company. Soon, we’ll see trailers for the Nicole Kidman-led literary adaptation “The Goldfinch,” the racially explosive drama “Queen &amp; Slim” and the Harriet Tubman biopic “Harriet.”

But first it’s “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.” Quentin Tarantino and Fred Rogers may be strange bedfellows, but we live in interesting times. A biopic of the host of the long-running kiddie show “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” might seem meant for the rugrats crowd, but “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” aims squarely at the discerning adults who drove director Morgan Neville’s Rogers-themed documentary, “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?,” to a stunning $22.8 million gross last year.

The new drama stars Tom Hanks — otherwise known as the nicest man in American history this side of Rogers — and he appears to nail every aspect of his character, from his gently lilting voice to the careful way he put on his red cardigan and blue tennis shoes.

The affecting trailer hits many of the same emotional notes as the documentary did. Matthew Rhys (“The Americans”) plays a cynical journalist who’s assigned to write a profile of the often-mocked Rogers and finds himself surprised to discover a hero who represents the best of America. The screenplay, by Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster, is based on a 1998 Esquire article by Tom Junod.

Directed by Marielle Heller, who last year plumbed the darker depths of the human psyche in Melissa McCarthy’s forgery drama, “Can You Ever Forgive Me?,” “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” will be coming to your ’hood on Nov. 22, just in time for Thanksgiving.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/22/movies/its-a-beautiful-day-in-the-neighborhood-tom-hanks.html" id="7b66070a-6340-3a55-afdb-264e62c5edc2">The New York Times</a>.

You wouldn’t know it from the temperatures outside, but the summer silly season is almost over at the movies.

'A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood' Trailer: Tom Hanks as Mr. Rogers

“It’s super easy to fall flat on your face,” Erik Nordby, the visual effects supervisor for “Pokémon Detective Pikachu” (due May 10), said in a recent telephone interview. “The fans are in their 20s now and grew up with these characters.”

So the filmmakers spent a year — about twice the usual prep time for a project like this — redesigning roughly 60 Pokémon from the anime series. In this comic mystery, the titular yellow sleuth (voiced by Ryan Reynolds) helps a young man investigate the disappearance of his father in a city where people and monsters live side by side.

Nordby explained how five of the film’s most prominent Pokémon were reimagined:

Pikachu

“Whenever you have an extraordinarily simplistic face shape, which is essentially a flat yellow pancake, the challenge to get any real emotion out of it without feeling cartoony is huge,” Nordby said. “We shot Ryan doing a whole series of facial expressions and mapped those onto Pikachu’s face. Then we worked on it for six months until we got it right.”

Devising the detective’s body was equally challenging. First, the potentially controversial decision was made to cover him with fur, for maximum cuteness. “Then we became amateur zoologists and scoured the world for analogous animals that actually exist,” Nordby said. The closest parallel to Pikachu? Wombats. “They’re so fat and adorable.”

Not everything about Pikachu is rooted in reality, however. Take his deerstalker cap, which was a carry-over from the “Detective Pikachu” video game that was first released in Japan in 2016 and inspired the film. “It made no sense because how could it ever stay on?” Nordby asked. “And he can’t actually put it on — his arms are not long enough. So who the hell puts his hat on?” That’s a mystery even Sherlock Holmes might not be able to solve.

Psyduck

Vulnerable to stress, the angst-ridden sidekick to a reporter is constantly on the verge of exploding. Much of that anxiety is expressed in his oversize eyes, but they had to be scaled down because “they couldn’t fit inside his skull,” Nordby said. The other obstacle for Psyduck was figuring out how to keep up with the fast-paced action, given his short legs. That’s why they came up with the backpack the reporter carries him in, Nordby said. “Originally we laughed at the idea, but it ended up working quite well.”

Charizard

The dragon-ish monster that faces off against Pikachu in one of the film’s biggest battles had to feel legitimately threatening without losing the character’s essential appeal. “He’s got a fat-guy-in-a-suit vibe, with a bit of a potbelly,” Nordby said. In the original design, “the wings aren’t quite long enough or wide enough to fly, so we had to make them twice as large.” And to ensure that Charizard seemed believably menacing, the effects team added crocodilian scales to his skin.

Bulbasaur

A gaggle of these friendly, bulbous creatures come to Pikachu’s rescue, falling all over one another. “We took a series of clips of bulldog puppies jumping on top of each other and copied their movements with a rotoscope,” Nordby said. “The playfulness and top-heaviness you have with bulldogs, where they don’t quite seem like they’re ever quite comfortable on their feet, worked really well with the body shape of the Bulbasaur.”

Snubbull

The right-hand monster to the police detective played by Ken Watanabe is “a big pink fluffy mix of a rabbit with a bulldog’s face,” Nordby said. Director Rob Letterman instantly loved the design, but getting the OK from the Pokémon Co. in Japan proved more difficult. “From a Western point of view, you look at it and go, ‘This is the most adorable thing on the planet,’” Nordby said. “From their point of view, they kept using the word ‘scary.’” A lengthy negotiation led to an agreement on a revision, splitting the difference between cute and creepy.

“The entire process was a series of compromises, but the movie is better for it,” he added. “When our first trailer came out, we were very nervous, but there were all these videos online where you could see fans reacting with this childlike wish fulfillment. We wanted to root this in the real world, so these kids who had grown up and always wished they had their own Pokémon could now see a film that made them feel like they could reach out and touch them.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/09/movies/pokemon-detective-pikachu-characters.html" id="15c1694c-8fa7-3f76-a79f-afeecef5e2fb">The New York Times</a>.

Fleshing out two-dimensional cartoons into 3-D characters for a hybrid of live action and animation is far from child’s play. Just ask the makers of the coming “Sonic the Hedgehog,” who vowed to redesign their version of the beloved video-game critter after outraged fans got a look at the trailer and vehemently objected online to its humanlike teeth.

Pokémon Reimagined for 3-D

Q: Were you expecting to be nominated for best director at the Oscars?

A: I wasn’t at all. It was a surprise. I went to school as a screenwriter, so it was a great surprise to get nominated by the (Writers Guild) for best original screenplay. In the back of my mind, I was hoping I would get nominated for best original screenplay at the Oscars. I didn’t think about the best director nomination because the (Directors Guild of America) hadn’t nominated me. At the time, when I was that age, I was new to the business. The film performed very well, people loved it, and I was making the film for a core black audience. I didn’t think it was going to cross over. I thought it would be like a great rap album, so it was really a surprise to me when the film garnered such critical success. I’m always worried when certain people like my work. They’re part of the establishment — why do they like me? I was trying to do a counterculture film, like “Easy Rider.”

Q: So did you have mixed feelings about being embraced by the Oscars?

A: No, my mantra at the time was I was happy, but I don’t think I allowed myself to enjoy it as much. You do these things for the passion of it. You don’t do it for the notoriety of it. There was a political thing about it. Barbra Streisand wasn’t nominated for best director. That was a huge controversy. Some people said I took her slot. The irony was Barbra had gotten me into the DGA — she signed my application.

Q: How did that happen?

A: I was walking around the studio, and I had to get three signatures. Barbra was cutting “Prince of Tides,” and I’m a huge Barbra Streisand fan. People wouldn’t realize that. My daughter is, too. So I went to her editing room and talked to her, and she signed my application. Sidney Poitier signed it, too.

Q: That’s amazing.

A: Yeah, and after I made “Boyz N the Hood,” I went around the lot, meeting veteran filmmakers — Francis Coppola was making “Dracula,” and Steven Spielberg was shooting “Hook.” So I’d go hang out on these sets and watch my cinematic idols work and interact with them and socialize with them. That’s what I remember most about the time. I felt like a kid in a candy store. I was living my cinematic dreams, and I was also going into a business that traditionally didn’t have people like me and wasn’t really welcoming people like me. But the generation that befriended me, at one time, they were the young game-changers. So they were anointing me to continue. Francis Coppola told me to write as many films as I can and keep them personal and make films that I’m passionate about. Not to follow the norm of what the marketplace wanted me to do. And I still have that attitude.

Q: How did you feel about being the youngest and the first African-American best director nominee ever?

A: I felt good. At the same time, it was an irony because two years before, Spike Lee would have been for “Do the Right Thing.” (He was nominated for the screenplay but not for direction and didn’t win anything.) He’s always been a big brother to me. I met him when I was 18 years old. He was deserving of that honor, but Spike’s snub helped “Boyz N the Hood” over the top.

Q: You presented an award with Spike at the Oscars that year. How did that go? Were you nervous?

A: I don’t know that I was nervous, but I felt like I was put on display. We just looked at each other like, “OK, let’s go out and do this thing.” We’ve always been really close for all these years. We’ve been cheering each other on professionally.

Q: Do you remember how you picked out what to wear?

A: I think I wore the same suit I wore to Cannes. I wasn’t as fashion-conscious then as I am now. Which I think is great. I was in preproduction on my next movie, “Poetic Justice,” hanging out with Tupac Shakur and Janet Jackson, and then I had to go to the Oscars. That was where my head really was. I even missed the Oscar luncheon because I had to rehearse with the actors. I didn’t really allow myself to enjoy it as much as I could’ve because I was nervous about getting caught up in the hype of it. The last thing I wanted to do was to be talking about just “Boyz N the Hood” 20 years later because that was the only thing I ever did. That was how I was at 24 years old. I had a lot more work to do. I wanted to express myself in all different type of genres. That’s what I’ve attempted to do over the course of my career.

Q: How did you feel when your categories came up? Did you think you might win one?

A: I was hoping I would win best screenplay. I knew Jonathan Demme was going to win best director (for “Silence of the Lambs”). He came really close to producing “Boyz.” He was the first professional director I knew who said, “You have something here with this screenplay.” He was going to get it made at Orion Pictures. He flew me to New York, he had read the script, he wanted to produce it. He took me to lunch and gave me some directing tips and took me to a screening room, and he was just about to show “Silence” to the studio for the first time. He said, “I have this film. It’s a little long right now. It’s just a rough cut. Will you sit and watch it?” I was sitting in the theater, and I was just about to watch it, and I said, “I’ve got to go do something else.” Because I was trying to hang out with Russell Simmons and Public Enemy. I’m happy I saw the film in its final form because it’s so brilliant, and it really holds up. I was hoping I would win the screenplay award because I continue to believe my film was the most original film of the year.

Q: So your applause for Demme when he won best director was genuine?

A: We were friends. When we were both nominated, we celebrated. I used his advice for my first film. He would tell me things about thematics and what’s going on behind a scene. This was just over lunch, and the things Demme told me have resonated with me to this day. I use them all the time. All those guys who were working at the time befriended me and helped my career.

Q: Does it feel like it’s been 25 years since “Boyz N the Hood”?

A: It doesn’t feel that long. I still feel like I did at that age. As I’m talking to you, I’m about to go back to that neighborhood to shoot a scene for my new series at FX, “Snowfall.” I’m sitting here, like, OK, I’m going back into my own element. How can I make this different? How can I take it to the next level? I’m never too far from South-Central Los Angeles.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/30/movies/john-singleton-interview.html" id="9b95d642-f740-37ed-aadd-0f1aaf02120f">The New York Times</a>.

In 2017, I interviewed John Singleton for an article looking back 25 years to the Oscars in 1992, the year he was nominated for best director and best screenplay for his debut, “Boyz N the Hood.” A few quotes from the director, who died Monday, wound up in the story then. But the interview covered more ground, including how he felt to be the first African-American up for best director. Here’s the transcript:

John Singleton on Early Success: I Didn't Allow Myself to Enjoy It as Much

When “Cobra Kai” debuted last year, it sounded like a one-off joke: a YouTube series catching up with the characters from the cornball-classic 1984 film “The Karate Kid.” Yet the series packed a surprising emotional punch as it traced how the original climactic showdown between the underdog Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) and the bully Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka), of the militaristic titular dojo, continues to influence their lives — and those of their children.

The 10-episode first season knocked out critics, earning a rare 100 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Its earnest tone seemed all the more surprising given the lowbrow comic credits of the creators. Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg wrote the “Harold &amp; Kumar” films, while Josh Heald penned “Hot Tub Time Machine” and its sequel.

Before Season 2’s debut on Wednesday, Hurwitz, Schlossberg and Heald waxed on and off with The New York Times. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.

Q: How did you come to revive “The Karate Kid” in the first place?

JON HURWITZ: The three of us have been friends for over 20 years. We were huge “Karate Kid” fans and bonded over it. We pitched our thoughts [to Overbrook Entertainment, which owned the rights] and got their blessing immediately. We sat down with William Zabka and convinced him, and then it was all about convincing Ralph Macchio. It was never designed to be a straight comedy. It was always meant to be more dramatic and to give Johnny the “Better Call Saul” treatment.

Q: How did you flesh out a one-dimensional character like Johnny? And why did you make him a down-and-out, divorced father while Daniel is a hugely successful, happily married car dealer?

JOSH HEALD: We loved the idea there is this long-festering karate rivalry from high school that had landed both of these adults in different places: one atop the mountain and one down in the valley. The comedy comes from frustration, regret and revenge, and that bleeds into the next generation. We position Johnny as a relic, somebody who is stuck in his time and doesn’t get along with the millennial generation.

Q: Did you study the original films before you started writing the series?

HAYDEN SCHLOSSBERG: We were such huge fans of the original three movies, we didn’t have to, although we did anyway. The goal is never to consciously reference the movies when we’re writing. It’s to write the characters as they are today. Those movies are their pasts, so it’s an organic way to show footage from the original films when one of the characters is having a moment of regret. But it doesn’t feel like nostalgia for the sake of nostalgia.

Q: Are you primarily writing this show for “Karate Kid” fans?

HEALD: We’re always writing with a true respect, appreciation and reverence for the source material, and we know there are a lot of “Karate Kid” superfans out there who relate to this story. But we also wanted to write for a larger audience that doesn’t know “The Karate Kid Part III” intimately.

Q: What kind of feedback do you get from fans?

HURWITZ: We all hear a lot of stories from parents who are able to watch the show with their kids, which is new to us, since we came from the world of R-rated comedies. It’s been an entry point for a new generation to watch the original films.

Q: Do you consciously try to balance Daniel’s and Johnny’s stories with their kids’ stories?

HURWITZ: We don’t look at it in a binary way. These stories are interwoven through that initial rivalry between Johnny and Daniel. That said, it was crucial to us to create a whole new generation of characters that an audience is going to fall in love with the way we fell in love with Johnny and Daniel back in the day.

Q: Macchio and Zabka are co-executive producers on the show. How much input do they have?

HEALD: We’re really grateful to have them because they are so connected to these characters. Every day of their lives when they walk down the street, somebody shouts one of the phrases from the movies to them. It was a very delicate process of entering this relationship. They’re not in the writers room day to day, but we have a lot of discussions.

Q: Why did you decide to wait until the end of Season 1 to bring back Cobra Kai’s original sensei, the fearsome John Kreese (Martin Kove)?

HEALD: We didn’t want to put the whole buffet out there and say, “Let’s get everybody.” So it’s been a calculated approach in terms of when and if certain characters come back. We sat down with Martin before Season 1 and told him our plan, and thus began the hardest job he ever had, which was keeping that secret for nine months. We told him, “It’s going to be a real moment when you arrive that will change the shape of the show.”

Q: Any chance we’ll see more old characters return, like Daniel’s ex-girlfriend Ali, played by Elisabeth Shue?

HEALD: There’s always hope that any character from the movies may return in the series. We have love for all the actors from the movies. We have a lot of long-range plans for how and when certain characters would show up, but we can’t comment now.

Q: Bullying has changed since the ’80s. How are you dealing with that?

SCHLOSSBERG: In some ways, bullying is exactly the same and, in other ways, it’s far worse because you have social media. What we wanted to do on the show is have moments that a young audience today can relate to but that also will stand the test of time. Our approach is not just showing how much bullying sucks but also showing kids trying to do something about it. It’s not just through physical strength but inner strength.

Q: Still, there are fight scenes in every episode. Do you worry about glorifying violence among high school kids?

HURWITZ: Part of our approach to the fight scenes is also the consequences afterward. We don’t just have a fight scene and then brush it aside and there’s no lasting effect. We explore the results of these fights — the emotional and physical impact. These fights aren’t just happening in a vacuum. They’re all part of a bigger story.

Q: The show features some wicked ’80s tunes. How important is the soundtrack?

HURWITZ: Music has always been a huge part of the “Karate Kid” franchise, starting with Bill Conti’s score, which is so memorable. But the needle drops are also fun because Johnny is still stuck in the ’80s.

HEALD: Ninety percent of the songs from Season 1 were on the pages of the script. We’re very passionate about the musical touchstones of the show. We’ve been very fortunate that we’ve been able to license almost every song we’ve asked for, with a couple of glaring exceptions that were way too expensive.

Q: Any you can mention?

HEALD: Those iconic bands you’ve really got to open up the pocketbooks for — the Guns ‘N’ Roses and Metallicas of the world.

Q: So REO Speedwagon is more affordable?

HEALD: They’re not cheap either, but you have to pick and choose.

Q: How long do you see this show running?

SCHLOSSBERG: We have an end in mind for the story we’re telling. In terms of how many seasons, we’ve mapped out a few years ahead.

HURWITZ: We can’t put a number on it, but we can say: fewer than “The Simpsons.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/23/arts/television/cobra-kai-karate-kid-season-2.html" id="3db62d30-2d2d-3d47-ab2e-4c277dceef16">The New York Times</a>.

(Ask a Showrunner)

'Cobra Kai,' YouTube's 'Karate Kid' Update, Returns for Another Round

When Harrison Ford went onstage to present best picture at the 1999 Oscars, it seemed obvious that he would be handing the statuette to his old “Raiders of the Lost Ark” pal Steven Spielberg for the World War II drama “Saving Private Ryan.” After Ford opened the envelope, director John Madden recalled, “in my head, he seemed to take an extraordinary amount of time to absorb what he was reading.” Then Ford announced Madden’s film, “Shakespeare in Love,” and “it was completely surreal.”

Nobody could have predicted that outcome eight months earlier, when “Ryan” opened to rapturous reviews and terrific box-office returns. (It ultimately earned more than $485 million worldwide.) “Should we just FedEx the Oscars over to Spielberg’s house now and save everybody the trouble of voting?” one academy member was quoted as saying in Variety.

Harvey Weinstein had other ideas. The Miramax mogul had established himself as a master Oscar campaigner, having shepherded such disparate films as “My Left Foot,” “The English Patient” and “Pulp Fiction” to wins in major categories in previous years. Now, though sheer force of will, it seemed, he wanted to pull off one of the biggest upsets in Academy Awards history.

“He’s a man of extraordinary passion and determination, whether anybody likes it or not,” Madden said of Weinstein, who faces five charges including rape and two counts of predatory sexual assault. Weinstein has denied the accusations. “He was obviously a force of nature within the industry, and in other ways we hadn’t understood and are appalled to look back on.”

In mid-December 1998 — the eleventh hour in Oscar season — Weinstein decided he would throw his then-considerable clout behind “Shakespeare” for best picture. The film had a long and troubled path to the screen, with Daniel Day-Lewis and Julia Roberts slated nearly a decade earlier to play the titular playwright and his romantic muse, and Edward Zwick (“Glory”) set to direct. That plan fell apart, and Kenneth Branagh and Winona Ryder stepped into the main roles. Finally, Madden (who had directed the 1997 Victorian drama “Mrs. Brown” for Miramax) came on board, with Joseph Fiennes and Gwyneth Paltrow as his stars.

In the editing room, Madden and Weinstein clashed over the film’s tone and ending. The studio executive “wanted it to end like a romantic comedy — in other words, the boy gets the girl,” Madden said, adding that the prizewinning playwright who co-wrote the screenplay, “Tom Stoppard, and I pointed out, ‘Well, that didn’t happen.'”

Madden prevailed, and critics and audiences embraced the film even as the Bard and his beloved Viola went their separate ways. Weinstein’s team lobbied journalists and voters to convince them of the merits of “Shakespeare” — and the shortcomings of its main competitor.

“'Private Ryan’ was hit with one of the first whisper campaigns, when a rumor is spread to manipulate viewers into thinking something negative,” Sasha Stone, founder and editor of awardsdaily.com, said in a recent email. The spin? That the movie peaks in its opening sequence, a harrowing recreation of the D-Day invasion, and goes downhill from there. “Everyone knew that Weinstein played dirty,” Stone added. “Subtle but dirty.”

At the same time, Weinstein appealed to academy members’ sentimental sides. “His gift, why we called him the Oscar whisperer, is he knew voters better than they knew themselves,” Stone said. “He gave them the justification they needed to vote with their hearts, not brains.”

The voters’ hearts were with “Shakespeare” — especially since the largest bloc in the academy is actors, and “they love movies about themselves,” Stone said. As Madden noted, “the movie is a love letter to the theater and acting.”

In fact, “Shakespeare” had won the Screen Actors Guild Award for best ensemble. “That should have telegraphed it to Oscar watchers more than it did,” Turner Classic Movies host Dave Karger said in a telephone interview.

Miramax and DreamWorks, the studio behind “Private Ryan,” both spent millions on “for your consideration” ads, yet the race became seen as a David-and-Goliath battle, with Spielberg and company as the giant. “It always seemed like a hilarious juxtaposition — two movies more unalike are hard to imagine,” Madden said. “That’s why the Oscars are so fascinating.” (Spielberg ended up winning best director; “I never imagined for a second he wouldn’t,” said Madden, who was also nominated.)

When “Shakespeare” was named best picture, Weinstein took the stage along with four other credited producers, including Zwick, who had remained nominally attached to the project. “Their contributions to the film as producers were hard to define,” Madden said. “Harvey was not a producer when we were making the film” but gave himself the title later.

That irked some academy members, and rules were soon changed limiting the nature and number of producers eligible to receive Oscars. “It’s unbecoming for studio heads to insert themselves into that space, and a rampant ego produced that circumstance,” Madden said. “But success has many parents and failure is an orphan, as we know.”

Weinstein refused to apologize for his strong-arm tactics. “I believe in supporting films,” he said at the time, adding later, “I think you should get in trouble in this town for not supporting films.”

Not everyone bought his justification. “Your campaigns are obnoxious, and they do create the appearance of influence-buying,” critic Jack Mathews wrote in a post-Oscars open letter to Weinstein in The New York Daily News. He added, “What should be remembered as a great night for ‘Shakespeare’ is being remembered as an ugly fight over a gold-plated geegaw.”

Madden, for one, has fonder memories. “Though I’ve made many films since that I’ve felt equally proud of, ‘Shakespeare’ stands out because of the extraordinary arc of its journey,” said the director, whose more recent credits include the hit “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” and its sequel. “I’m perfectly happy to go down with that title next to my name.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/15/movies/oscars-harvey-weinstein.html" id="f39d8521-a030-38e1-ac90-d779567a33ca">The New York Times</a>.

(The Carpetbagger)

Oscars Rewind: When Harvey Weinstein Was a Force in Oscar Campaigns

You won’t find many people in Hollywood who say they’re happy that Daniel Day-Lewis declined to do their project, but that happened with “Philadelphia,” the Oscar-winning AIDS drama that 25 years ago led to one of the most memorable acceptance speeches in academy history.

“We were making a really serious drama, and Daniel brings that kind of weight,” the film’s screenwriter, Ron Nyswaner, recalled in a recent phone interview. But the esteemed British actor turned down the role of Andrew Beckett, a stricken gay lawyer who sues his firm for firing him, in director Jonathan Demme’s drama.

“Then Tom Hanks presented himself,” Nyswaner continued, “and it was Jonathan’s genius to see that Tom would bring that lighter touch and that invitation for the audience to come along for the ride.”

That they did. The movie grossed more than $200 million worldwide, and Hanks, who won best actor at the 1994 Academy Awards (the first of his two Oscars), tearfully thanked his wife, Rita Wilson and his co-workers on “Philadelphia.” Then he shined a spotlight on two private citizens.

“I would not be standing here if it weren’t for two very important men in my life,” he began and continued later, “Mr. Rawley Farnsworth, who was my high school drama teacher, who taught me that ‘act well the part, there all the glory lies,’ and one of my classmates under Mr. Farnsworth, Mr. John Gilkerson. I mention their names because they are two of the finest gay Americans, two wonderful men that I had the good fortune to be associated with, to fall under their inspiration at such a young age.” He went on to eulogize AIDS victims like Gilkerson, a San Francisco actor and puppeteer who died in 1989: “The streets of heaven are too crowded with angels.”

Bruce Fretts

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