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Did the new “Ghostbusters” movie saturate its audience over the weekend?
On Monday “Frozen Empire” dropped 75%, 10% more than “Afterlife” did in 2016 on its following Monday.
Nevertheless, the new movie and the previous one remain on track with each other. We’ll see how that holds up this week.
Sony can’t take another pasting after “Madame Web.” They need “Frozen Empire” to hold up through at least a second weekend. “Madame Web” dropped 72% on Monday.
The studio’s other main release, “YOLO,” had the third biggest Monday drop– 69%. It’s only made $1.7 million. What is it? I don’t know.
Steven Spielberg spoke at the Shoah Foundation, founded by him, denouncing antisemitism. You must watch this without fail.
“The dehumanization of any group based on their differences are the foundations of fascism.”
Good afternoon everyone.
“It fills me up,” as my late mom Leah used to say, to be here with you today–30 years after the Shoah Foundation was founded and 20 years after the University of Southern California became our dedicated partner in this endeavor–to celebrate what we have accomplished and reflect on all that we hope to achieve. I am grateful to President Folt for bringing us together and for her unflagging leadership and support. Please join me in thanking her for her ongoing commitment to our mission.
For many years, I have been incredibly fortunate to spend much of my professional life telling stories. Stories are the foundation of history. Stories can be magical, inspirational, terrifying, and unforgettable. They offer a snapshot of humanity in all its beauty and tragedy. And they are one of our strongest weapons in the fight against anti-Semitism and racial and religious hatred.
The Holocaust, or as my parents called it, “The Great Murders,” is one of the stories I heard growing up. In my grandparents’ home in Cincinnati, where I lived until I was three, my grandmother taught English to Hungarian Holocaust survivors. During these lessons, I would often sit at the table with her, and it was there that I learned to count… not in school but by being taught the numbers tattooed on survivors’ arms. One man rolled up his sleeve showed me what the number 5 looked like, then a 3 then a 7. Then he said, “Wanna see a trick: this is a 9, but when I go like this, now it’s a 6. I was only three, but I never forgot. Years later, when I was in high school in California, I was one of a small number of Jews at my school, and I got to experience what it was like to be on the receiving end of anti-semitism both verbally & physically and through silent exclusion. It was a stark reminder that even though decades had passed since the Holocaust, the distance between my grandmother’s table and the halls of my high school wasn’t very far and that discrimination against the Jews was not something that started or ended with World War II.
In the years leading up to and during the production of Schindler’s List, immersing myself in the darkness of the Holocaust was imperative. The one thing that always punctured the darkness was when Holocaust survivors would visit us in Krakow. I remember every survivor had a story to recount. But I also remember that it pained me that their stories were not being documented as proof of what had been done to them and to all the Jews of Europe. By coming forward to share their stories on camera, a permanent record would be preserved for their families, for history, for education, and for every future generation. This became my mission, this became our work. This became the Shoah Foundation.
And here we are, 30 years later, still determined to give those voices every opportunity to be heard. The 56,000 testimonies we have recorded are invaluable in teaching new generations what survivors have intoned for 80 years. Never again. Yet in listening to them, the echoes of history are unmistakable in our current climate. The rise of extremist views has created a dangerous environment, and radical intolerance leads a society to no longer celebrate differences but instead conspire to demonize those who are different to the point of creating “The Other.”
The idea of “The Other” is an idea that poisons discourse and creates a dangerous wedge throughout our communities.
“Othering” rationalizes prejudice and encourages the willful denial and distortion of reality to enforce preconceptions.
“Othering” is the kindling that fuels extremism and illiberalism. We see every day how the machinery of extremism is being used on college campuses…where now, fully 50 percent of students say they have experienced some discrimination because they are Jewish. This is happening alongside anti-Muslim, Arab, and Sikh discrimination. The creation of “the Other” and the dehumanization of ANY GROUP based on their differences, is the foundation of fascism. It’s an old playbook dusted off and being widely distributed today!
“Those who can not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” I am increasingly alarmed that we may be condemned to repeat history–to once again have to fight for the very right to be Jewish. In the face of brutality and persecution, we have always been a resilient and compassionate people who understand the power of empathy. We can rage against the heinous acts committed by the terrorists of October 7th and also decry the killing of innocent women and children in Gaza. This makes us a unique force for good in the world and is why we are here today celebrate the work of the Shoah Foundation, which is more crucial now it even was in 1994.
It is crucial in the wake of the horrific October 7 massacre.
It is crucial to the stopping of political violence caused by misinformation, conspiracy theories and ignorance.
It is crucial because stopping the rise of anti-semitism and hate of any kind is critical to the health of our democratic republic and the future of democracy all over the civilized world.
This brings me back to our celebration of 30 years of capturing the stories that the world must never forget. The 56,000 testimonies that we have recorded are a foundation upon which bridges can be built and we are building those bridges. A few months ago, at a gathering of a group of survivors, an 82-year-old woman named Hana Rychik shared what I know so many of us are wishing–that those who are currently being held hostage in Gaza should be safe and have hope that they will return home. And then she added something that I know means something to everyone here. “We need Peace. Peace and understanding. We should respect each other.” She said.
I want future generations to hear that story when they sit at their grandparent’s kitchen table, as I did so many years ago. I want them to hear the stories of courage from the past that the Shoah Foundation will continue to record. I also want them to know that we have fought against history repeating itself by celebrating Jewish survival and vitality. I want them to know that we believe in a just world for everyone and will always embrace Hana’s eternal wish for peace, understanding, and human dignity. When her wish becomes reality–and we can live in a world where our essential freedoms are common across all countries, peoples, and religions- that will be the most joyful story ever told.
It is now my great honor and privilege to introduce a survivor who has become one of the Shoah Foundation’s greatest champions and a treasured friend. Please welcome Ms. Celina Biniaz.
Rachel Maddow called NBC’s decision to hire Ronna McDaniel “inexplicable” and compared the former RNC Chairman to “a mobster.”
Maddow on her MSNBC show called for NBC to re-think their decision.
This came as part of a brilliant almost 25 minute speech Maddow gave, uninterrupted, about the threat of fascism, the importance of elections, and why McDaniel had repeatedly tried to undermine the 2020 election by calling its results into doubt.
For Maddow, the speech was a tour de force. But it was also obvious that she is angered by NBC. She repeatedly said that MSNBC had guaranteed that McDaniel would never appear on their channel.
But that’s not enough. Maddow is clearly incensed by what’s happened, and will not remain silent about it.
She compared McDaniel to a “mobster,” in her denunciation. It comes in the last 20 seconds of this video: “You wouldn’t hire a mobster to work in a DA’s office. You wouldn’t hire a pickpocket to work as a TSA screener.”
"We are contending with this now, not from William Dudley Pelley's brownshirt militias, but from the multi-billion dollar, massive political operation of one of the two governing parties of the United States of America."@maddow tonight on Ronna McDaniel's hiring by @NBCNewspic.twitter.com/1rElyhRwGC
Homeland Security raided Sean Diddy Combs’s estates in Los Angeles and Miami today. At one point they handcuffed his sons. The Feds are looking for evidence of sex trafficking and any record of Combs drugging or holding women against their will.
It’s been coming for months, since Combs’s girlfriend Cassie sued him for a variety of claims including sex trafficking, human trafficking, sexual battery, sexual assault, and gender-motivated violence. The lawsuit — which was settled out of court — alleged rape, battery, and forced sex acts with male sex workers.
Other women have emerged since then with similar claims, and so did a male producer. In the meantime Combs has lost all of his endorsements and has become a social pariah. He was encouraged to stay away from all Grammy activities this winter, and he obliged.
Things have not gone well for the once high flying record executive and entrepreneur. Macy’s dropped his Sean John line of clothing. His “Love” album was a huge dud sales wise.
What’s next? It’s obvious the Feds are building toward an arrest. A trial would follow, on the level of R Kelly, Michael Jackson, or OJ Simpson. For those of us who’ve known Puff Daddy since he first emerged 30 years ago, this is a stunning turn of events.
NBC correspondent Chuck Todd, former host of “Meet the Press,” has spoken.
On social media he’s picked up his impassioned speech from yesterday’s show when he was asked to comment about ex RNC chief Ronna McDaniel being hired by the network.
On the show yesterday, Todd — who rarely showed emotion when he moderated the program for years — eviscerated the network for hiring McDaniel. During her run at the RNC, McDaniel perpetuated the idea that the 2020 election was stolen, she supported the January 6th insurrection, and lied to the press over and over.
Nevertheless, once she was replaced in her job — by Donald Trump’s daughter in law, McDaniel received a $300,000 a year contract from NBC.
Todd wrote this evening: “The issue isn’t about ideology, it’s about basic truth. Those trying to make this a left-right issue are being intentionally dishonest. This is about whether honest journalists are supposed to lend their credibility to someone who intentionally tried to ruin ours.”
Nothing was said about McDaniel on tonight’s NBC News. All eyes are on MSNBC tonight to see if there is any comment at all from Rachel Maddow.
The issue isn’t about ideology, it’s about basic truth. Those trying to make this a left-right issue are being intentionally dishonest. This is about whether honest journalists are supposed to lend their credibility to someone who intentionally tried to ruin ours.
The Michael Jackson feature film announced some casting today. They’re going to depict Berry Gordy, Diana Ross, and Gladys Knight.
But one character not so well known who will be portrayed is Bill Bray. For years, Bill was Michael’s bodyguard and surrogate father.
When Michael was arrested in 2003, Bill Bray was nowhere to be found, however. He was desperately ill. How do I know? I visited him a couple of times at his home in Los Angeles. He was barely alive. But no Jacksons were present. They had totally abandoned him. It was a bad scene.
Bill Bray was not a public figure. Can he be portrayed without remuneration to his heirs? If anyone knows where his wife, Gail, is, or other family, please email me at showbiz411@gmail.com.
Here’s the column I published on October 12, 2004. I can still recall, 20 years later, sitting in that tiny room with Bill while he was gasping for air.
JACKSON ABANDONS AILING SURROGATE FATHER
Michael Jackson is known for wanting to heal the world and help children, but he has abandoned his oldest employee and confidant in the man’s waning days.
Bill Bray, who was Jackson’s head of security for most of his career, is bedridden, ailing and in grave condition. He has not seen or heard from anyone in the Jackson family for at least five years — even though he still is loyal to them.
Bray went to work first for Motown around 1968 and then for the Jackson Five as head of security in 1971. Bray was hired by Joseph Jackson, Michael’s father, and instantly vested with one task: Keep Michael out of trouble and harm’s way.
He did that for the next two and a half decades, leaving Motown when the Jacksons did in 1978, and staying with Michael through his solo career.
Michael wrote in his 1988 memoir “Moonwalk”: “Bill is very careful and immensely professional in his job, but he doesn’t worry about things after the fact. He travels with me everywhere and occasionally he’s my only companion on short trips. I can’t imagine life without Bill; he’s warm and funny and absolutely in love with life. He’s a great man.”
Now Bray is living in dire circumstances at the age of 79 on Medicare and supplemental health insurance, which his 64-year-old wife, Gail, says is paid for by Jackson’s office. Otherwise, he says he receives no compensation from the Jacksons and has no contact with them.
Calls to Jackson’s manager, his brother Randy, were not returned.
When I went to see Bray a couple of weeks ago in Los Angeles, he was confined to a hospital bed in a cramped first-floor apartment rented by Gail, his longtime companion and wife.
He’s had cancer and strokes. Most of the day he lies in bed and watches old John Wayne movies on TV. His cognition level is minimal at times and he has trouble speaking. Even though he probably made good money with the Jacksons, those days are long gone.
Bill Bray hasn’t heard from any Jacksons in at least five years, Gail told me recently on a visit. Their apartment is a block away from the Santa Monica Freeway in a clean, but nevertheless dicey, neighborhood near South Central.
It is a far cry from Neverland or even from the Jackson family estate in Encino, Calif. Gail sleeps on a couch across from Bray’s room so she can hear him during the night.
If Bray squirreled away a lot of dough from his days as Michael’s guy in charge — as Jackson insiders insist — there’s no sign of it now.
I told Gail, who has known Bray since the late ’60s, that everybody involved in the current Michael Jackson scandal says: “Where’s Bill Bray? He would never have let this happen.”
“Michael and Bill were so close he was like his real father,” Gail told me. “That’s what he called him. There was one time at the beginning when Michael finished a show, he would run and jump in Bill’s arms when he got off stage.”
Bray traveled with the Jacksons, and then with Michael, with a devotion that often upset Gail. “When I needed him he would come back off the road for a day, then he’d have to get back to Michael.”
In fact, Bray’s name is listed as head of security on all the big Jackson tours of the ’80s and ’90s: the Victory, Bad, Dangerous and HIStory tours.
But times have changed. Jackson has been caught up in a child-molestation case for almost a year. Prior to that, he was involved in several other scandals and tabloid headlines.
Gail said calls she’d placed to Michael through his office at MJJ Productions had gone unreturned.
“I used to tell Bill, ‘You need to watch your back,'” Gail said. “Several people were jealous of Michael’s relationship with Bill and wanted to get him out.”
Among those she cited were Norma Staikos, Jackson’s secretary, who vanished from contact after the 1993 child-molestation case, and Wayne Nagin, Jackson’s security man, who has also disappeared from contact since that case.
“It’s not even that Bill wants money from Michael,” Gail said before we parted company.
Unlike Bob Jones, a longtime Jackson employee who was recently terminated without notice, Bray has no plans to write a book or file a lawsuit.
“He’d just like him to visit,” Gail said.
And that’s the thing, you see. Bill Bray remains loyal to Michael Jackson despite his circumstances.
“I don’t want to say anything that would hurt Michael,” he told me.
When I did ask him if it was possible that Michael had a grown child no one knew about — as Jackson asserted to friends and I wrote about recently — that was the one time Bray let his guard down during our time together.
He laughed out loud and said: “If Michael told you that, he’s a big liar. If he told you he had a son, he’s not telling the truth.”
There are a lot of birthdays on March 25th including Elton John. Happy birthday!
But the one I observe as a national holiday is Aretha Franklin, born this day in 1942. She’d be 82 today. Aretha passed in August 2018.
I spent the evening with Aretha at her penultimate show at the Mann Center in Philadelphia in late summer 2017. She did one more show for Elton John’s AIDS Foundation in November, and that was it.
A movie about Aretha was a bust and so was a miniseries. They didn’t capture her amazing sense of humor and wit. She was so smart about music, politics, civil rights. We talked about a lot of things. She also loved to indulge herself with shopping sprees, fancy dinners, and theater nights. She lived on her own clock and schedule, but who could blame her? She was Aretha Franklin! She knew it, too. Her talent was singular and monumental.
In heaven today, Aretha’s having a grand party — she loved birthday parties. The Temptations and the Four Tops are performing. Mary Wilson is at the main table with Aretha’s sister, Irma and Carolyn. Aretha’s love, Willie Wilkerson, is sitting beside her.
The late great Tony Bennett is getting quite a tribute at Jazz at Lincoln Center.
Josh Groban is hosting a star studded group there on April 17th including Rubén Blades, Bernadette Peters, Kristin Chenoweth, Norm Lewis,Kurt Elling, Ekep Nkwelle, Robbie Lee, and Shenel Johns; pianist Bill Charlap; and Tony winning tap dancer Jared Grimes. Charlap, a long time Bennett collaborator, will get the Award for Artistic Excellence.
Wynton Marsalis is leading the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.
I wish Tony could be there! He’s so much missed!
For tickets, please contact the Jazz at Lincoln Center Events Office at 212-245-6570 or jalcgala@jazz.org.
CBS has signed a five year deal with the Golden Globes.
The much tarnished awards show scored a 9.6 million audience this year, evidence that home viewers still want it despite scandals.
Or maybe because of them.
The deal is with Dick Clark Productions, which is owned in part by the same company that owns Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard, and many other trade publications.
The Globes used to be run by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. But the HFPA was disbanded over scandals concerning finances and diversity. They used to be on NBC, which passed on new editions.
It’s a win for the Globes, but CBS is now awash in special programming. One astute TV expert tells me:
“CBS will have the GRAMMYS & AMAs, the CMT Music Video Awards, the Tonys and the Kennedy Center Honors. Then they are carrying the NAACP Awards and GRO awards which are ratings disasters, They have the Daytime Emmys and get the Emmys every 4 years, Paramount Global can also get CBS to carry the BET Awards as they play on multiple cable channels under the Paramount Global System or even the MTV Music Video Awards.
“It is like CBS will have an awards show every month, Is every show that industry’s biggest night or the “party of the year” or the “hottest night in country? This is short sighted.”
This just in: A panel of 5 cowardly judges has allowed Donald Trump to post a lower bond — $175 million — for appeal in his fraud trial. They’ve also stayed the order that Trump and his sons are barred from doing business in New York.
Disgraceful. Trump will be crowing about this as a win all over any media that will have him.
“It is ordered that the motion is granted to the extent of staying enforcement of those portions of the Judgment (1) ordering disgorgement to the Attorney General of $464,576,230.62, conditioned on defendants-appellants posting, within ten (10) days of the date of this order, an undertaking in the amount of $175 million dollars; (2) permanently barring defendants Weisselberg and McConney from serving in the financial control function of any New York corporation or similar business entity; (3) barring defendants Donald J. Trump, Weisselberg and McConney from serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation for three years; (4) barring defendant Donald J. Trump and the corporate defendants from applying for loans from New York financial institutions for three years; and (5) barring defendants Donald Trump, Jr. and Eric Trump from serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation in New York for two years. The aforesaid stay is conditioned on defendants-appellants perfecting the appeals for the September 2024 Term of this Court. The motion is otherwise denied, including to the extent it seeks a stay of enforcement of portions of the judgment (1) extending and enhancing the role of the Monitor and (2) directing the installation of an Independent Director of Compliance.”
