In a single week, Christopher Lloyd, the mad scientist of the 1980s trilogy Back to the Future, turned 88 and published In My Own Time: A Memoir. The 250-plus-page book traces his lonely childhood in Waveny House, in Connecticut; the start of his acting career in 1960s New York; and his battle with alcohol and cocaine addiction, subjects he has rarely discussed publicly. In the book he says the first time he took drugs was outside a comedy club in Los Angeles in the 1970s. He went up to the car of a woman he had just met and did “a couple of lines.” He writes: “That was all it took,” he writes. He got hooked almost immediately, and that’s where his cocaine abuse began.

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Actor-comedian Russell Brand said allegations of sexual misconduct have had a "devastating" impact on his life, as he testified in court Wednesday at his trial on charges of rape and sexual assault.

The post Russell Brand Denies All Charges as He Takes Stand at His Rape and Sex Assault Trial appeared first on Breitbart.

• Noah Wyle became a household name in his 20s thanks to "ER."
• But a big house and the trappings of success did not always add up to a fuller life, he said.
• These days, he says meaningful work and family life matter most to him.

Noah Wyle, 55, says his early success made him rethink what a fulfilling life looks like.

Speaking to Amy Poehler on Tuesday's episode of the "Good Hang" podcast, the newly named Sexiest Man Alive said his family taught him to use the opportunities he's had to help others and to be content with what he already has.

Wyle said that lesson stuck with him as his career took off, thanks to his role on "ER."

"I had this wonderful, huge career in my 20s when I got all the big toys, the big house. I got to see what my grandfather said was true," Wyle said. "You can only be in one room at a time. And sometimes the bigger the space, the lonelier the space."

Wyle said that realization has reshaped what he sees as worth pursuing.

"So, I've been on my own journey of defining what is enough and what makes me happy, and I've gotten to a place where it really is defined by meaningful work and meaningful family life," Wyle said. "The Pitt" star has three children from two marriages.

He said feeling fulfilled in his own life has given him room to give back and use the platform that comes with his fame to speak up about issues he cares about.

Wyle has been lending his time to a range of causes this year, including efforts to support healthcare workers and bring more film and TV jobs back to Los Angeles.

"I'm allowed to be philanthropic and feel magnanimous because my cup is full, which is a lovely thing to be able to say," Wyle said.

Other stars have similarly spoken about how getting older has changed the way they define a good life.

Kate Winslet has said that turning 50 changed how she viewed success.

"Success, actually, for me more these days is more about pulling it off, being a decent person. You know, being able to take care of people, having time for friends, also learning how to be OK with not being busy all the time," she said in a Newsweek interview in December.

Jodie Foster has said turning 60 freed her from trying to compete with her younger self.

"Everything changed. I was like, 'Yeah, I don't care. I'm no longer tortured by any of this. I don't know why I seemed to care so much,'" Foster said in a December interview with AARP.

En una sola semana, Christopher Lloyd, el científico loco de la trilogía ochentera Regreso al futuro, ha celebrado sus 88 años y ha publicado sus memorias, In My Own Time: A Memoir. Son más de 250 páginas en las que el actor recorre su solitaria infancia en Waveny (Connecticut); los inicios de su carrera actoral en el Nueva York de los años sesenta y su lucha contra la adicción al alcohol y a la cocaína, aspectos de su vida de los que rara vez ha hablado en público. En su libro cuenta que la primera ocasión que consumió drogas fue a las afueras de un club de comedia en Los Ángeles en los setenta. Se acercó al coche de una mujer a la que acababa de conocer y se metió “un par de rayas”. Según escribe: “Eso fue todo lo que hizo falta. Me enganché casi de inmediato. Me encantó, y ahí fue donde comenzó mi abuso de la cocaína”.

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How long has it been since a documentary dominated public conversation, the box office, chats between friends and social media memes? You might have to go back to 2004 and Fahrenheit 9/11, by Michael Moore, or that hybrid (but a film, nonetheless) that blew many minds — The Blair Witch Project in 1999 — to see something similar to what’s happening in the United States surrounding You Can See Everything, this season’s cultural phenomenon.

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Is Nathan Fielder interested in making something innovative and great, or does he only really care about making money?

That's technically the question You Can See Everything, the new A24 documentary co-directed by Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, asks about its subject, Elizabeth Holmes, the Theranos founder and convicted fraudster currently in federal prison. 

As the documentary progresses, however, it's a question one increasingly asks about Fielder himself. 

You Can See Everything was billed as an intimate look at the day-to-day life of Holmes, her romantic partner Billy Evans, and their two children, in the days before she reports for her 11-year prison sentence.

In truth, that only describes the first half of the three-hour-long film, in which Fielder and his camera crews are embedded in Holmes and Evans' cramped San Diego beach house in the month preceding her incarceration.

In part one, we truly do see everything, from Holmes making breakfast for the kids and talking to lawyers about last-minute appeals to Evans showering naked. 

All the while, Fielder obsessively explores in his own meta-comedy style a question many have asked about Holmes: Were the lies she told about Theranos' diagnostic machines merely a scam to rip off investors? Or had she actually convinced herself that these falsehoods were at most white lies in the service of a great and revolutionary technology on the cusp of becoming a reality?

Then, after 90 minutes of this exploration, Holmes checks in to prison, and Fielder's primary subject disappears from the film. The focus then shifts to Evans and whether or not he's solely responsible for a new unethical scheme Holmes has found herself enmeshed in.

In a Fielderesque reenactment, it's revealed to the audience that Evans conditioned the documentary's access to him and Holmes on the couple being paid a percentage of the film's profits.

Any ethical documentarian would have to say no to this ask. 

Subjects being economically disinterested in the films they're appearing in is what separates real documentaries, which are supposed to accurately portray real life, from fictional films and public relations puff pieces. 

Incredibly, however, Fielder, Oppenheim, and A24 eventually agree to Evans' demand for a cut of the film's profits.

Once this crooked bargain is made, You Can See Everything then shifts to exploring whether Holmes was aware that she'd be profiting from the film or whether this was a deal the domineering Evans secured without her knowledge. 

Fielder tells us that he believes the answer will shed light on whether Holmes actually sees herself as a world-changing inventor or whether she really is just out for the money. 

Fielder eventually makes this point directly to Evans during an on-camera confrontation and in a reenactment of his unfilmed meeting with Holmes in prison. By accepting payment for the documentary, the two are undercutting their case that Holmes is more than a wealth-obsessed fraudster, he tells them.

And by forfeiting their rights to back-end profits, they can make the audience more sympathetic to their case that Holmes did have motivations beyond a paycheck. 

As a humble viewer, I confess I found this investigation somewhat boring. For starters, it seemed obvious to me that Holmes was in on the scheme to get paid for the documentary from the beginning.

Moreover, it's all kind of beside the point. Once the deal to pay Evans was inked, the documentary has been irrevocably changed into an elaborate rip-off. The only question remaining is whether the subjects or the audience will be the ultimate sucker. 

When Fielder pointedly pushes Evans and Holmes to surrender profits they're contractually entitled to, he's no longer a disinterested filmmaker exploring the couple's psyches. He's an economically interested party pressuring business partners to back out of money they've been contractually promised or else risk extreme embarrassment in the film he's making.

If Fielder fails to convince the couple to surrender their rights, moviegoers are left with the knowledge that a portion of their ticket revenue is benefiting a convicted fraudster. 

If the director does succeed in his pressure campaign, it means that there's more profit to go around for the makers of the film. 

A documentary about conmen itself becoming a con would not be an uncharacteristic Fielder bit.

His projects frequently feature a deliberate, escalating blurring of the lines between art and reality. See, for instance, the second season of his show The Rehearsal, in which an investigation into airline pilots' mental well-being culminates in Fielder becoming a licensed 737 pilot while waiting on an autism diagnosis. 

Something similar can be said for the connection between the themes in the documentary and co-director Oppenheim's recent feature film Primetime about the making of the reality show To Catch a Predator. That movie was also about how TV producers can script reality and invent crimes all for the benefit of a show that's allegedly meant to merely document them.

You Can See Everything pulls off something similar. Its investigation into Holmes' motives leaves one seriously questioning the filmmaker's probity. Perhaps that makes it a genius bit of meta commentary on the unreality of documentaries.

Ultimately, it doesn't really matter. There's no getting around the fact that Fielder made a crooked bargain to get his documentary made and then used his power as a director who did, in fact, see everything to screw people out of money they had been promised. 

One can imagine that the victims of Holmes' Theranos scam will find You Can See Everything a frustrating film to watch. At the end of the day, this woman defrauded them of hundreds of millions of dollars. Her precise motives for doing so probably aren't all that interesting to them.

I certainly feel a similar way as a paying viewer of the unethical travesty that is You Can See Everything.

The post Nathan Fielder Made a Dishonest Movie appeared first on Reason Magazine.

• Film producer Tommy Harper is shutting down his micro drama app VeYou after about six months.
• Harper, who sought to build the "HBO" of the genre, said he would still produce for other platforms.
• The micro drama space has shifted as tech giants push in.

The app that wanted to be the "HBO" of micro dramas is shutting down.

Prolific film producer Tommy Harper is shutting down his app, VeYou, after about six months. A message on VeYou said the service would end November 6.

Harper told Business Insider he would continue producing series, distributing them via TikTok's micro-drama app PineDrama, YouTube, and other partners.

Harper, whose credits include "Star Wars" and "Top Gun: Maverick," is one of several Hollywood vets trying to bring their prestige sensibility to micro dramas, the soapy, low-budget series that got their start in China and have exploded in the US.

The move shows how fast the space is changing as Big Tech companies lean in. Micro dramas — also called "verticals" — cost a fraction of a traditional feature-length movie, but apps often lose money because of the high cost of marketing, and VeYou didn't have massive financial backing.

"In the past year, TikTok, Meta, and YouTube all moved hard into short drama," Harper emailed. "When the three biggest attention platforms commit to a format, distribution is decided. The opportunity for an independent company is to be the best supplier to those platforms, not to compete with them for installs. So we're focused where we have the edge: making the shows."

Harper raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding for VeYou from investor S32, a venture firm started by Google Ventures founder Bill Maris, who's also backed 23andMe, Impossible Foods, and Nest. VeYou has made a handful of originals, starting with "Love Under Fire," a romance drama starring Kasey Esser, who wrote the series alongside Harper.

The micro drama market is changing fast

The micro drama space has changed dramatically in recent months.

In the past year, AI-generated characters have increasingly taken their place alongside human actors, and free, ad-supported offerings are competing with the "freemium" apps that had dominated the landscape.

A report by media consultancy Owl & Co. found two-thirds of films released by leading apps in the third quarter of this year outside China were AI-generated, up from 3% in the first quarter.

TikTok's free app PineDrama rolled out in January, and by the third quarter, it accounted for more than half of all micro drama views across 16 leading apps, according to the Owl & Co. report.

Other tech giants have also moved quickly into the space and made themselves bigger viewing destinations for micro dramas.

YouTube released a new feature that allows creators to bundle their short videos in a series of episodes or seasons, designed to be viewed sequentially.

On Meta, the dominant platform used by micro drama apps to acquire customers, some apps are running portions of their films lasting 20 minutes or more as ads to get people to subscribe.

Lori Golden-Stryer, the CEO of RIVR Media, a producing partner for VeYou, said VeYou's films set themselves apart through their scripts, acting, and direction. She said she was encouraged to see its series perform well on TikTok, based on platform data and her company's monitoring.

"People want live characters," she said. "I don't think they want AI. I've seen a lot of different verticals, and I'd like to think ours were a little cut above."

In the race for the mayoralty of Los Angeles, the second-largest city in the United States, two things are certain: a woman will win, and she will be a Democrat. But with a high share of undecided voters and only days remaining before the election, it is still unclear whether Karen Bass will win another term or whether the progressive challenger Nithya Raman will take the post.

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For the past two decades, Zoe Kazan, 43, has built a low-key career, moving between independent films and more ambitious projects. The former include Ruby Sparks (2012), a comedy she also wrote and produced. The latter include hits such as She Said (2022), in which she starred alongside Carey Mulligan as one of the New York Times reporters who exposed Harvey Weinstein’s abuses.

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