Category: Television Page 4 of 20

“Foe’s setting is supposed to be the Midwest in 2065. Information projected on the screen tells us that the planet’s climate is growing worse as mankind continues to pollute and ruin the air and water. The government, like Elon Musk, is intent on using space as a safety valve for humans to flee our ruined Earth. Once we completely ruin our home planet, humans will be relocated to suitable locales. The husband of this couple is being recruited to go for a year. (Why?)

A representative of the government, Terrence (Aaron Pierre), comes to the couple’s remote farm home to inform them that the husband, Junior, has been selected to live aboard a government-built space station for a year. (Why?) While he’s gone, an A.I. Replicant will serve as a companion to Junior’s wife Henrietta. Terrence tells the couple that this is a great opportunity for them. Originally, Terrence says the year-long sabbathical will take place in roughly 2 years.

Terrence leaves, but then he returns in his modernistic DeLorean-like car much sooner.

Terrence returns in just one year. He says that he must live with the couple for a period of months in order to help make the Replicant-to-be-made as authentic as possible. Terrence will be conducting confidential interviews with each of the couple and generally butting into their lives. His presence seems unwelcome and, frankly, unnecessary.

The first impulse that Junior has when their doorbell rings at a very late hour is to grab a gun and shoot. Henrietta talks him out of loading the shotgun; no shots are fired at Terrence. [Perhaps they should have been.]

Junior is not thrilled by Terrence’s news. [I couldn’t help but think of the film we watched just prior to this one where a black family in North Carolina fights for 33 years to be able to stay in their home. Two of the principals in “Silver Dollar Road” go to jail for 8 years, just to be able to remain in the only homes they have ever known. “Foe,” which screened immediately after “Silver Dollar Road,” again presents us with a home-owner who does not want to be rousted from his habitat.]

Junior makes the usual accusations about how he doesn’t want some robot living with his wife while he’s gone. He repeats the usual things about his ties to the land and how he doesn’t think that his wife would like living on an artificial construct launched into space. We, the audience, are less sure of this the more we hear of Henrietta’s angst at the sameness of their lives and how she has always felt “that there’s something else out there for me.”

Farming is already nearly impossible in the Midwest of 2065, however; the bleak picture of the future of the planet certainly seems likely after the weather we’ve all experienced this past summer. The dust storm scene reminded me of the Margot Robbie 2019 film “Dreamland.”

THE GOOD

The scenes depicting the ruined planet are all very cinematic. The lonely tone of the farm and fields is impressive, even if it looks nothing like what I would imagine a ruined Midwest would look like in 2065. We could also say that the couple seem oddly stuck in the past, themselves, with a beat-up pick-up truck and a house that could easily be from the fifties. No flat-screen TVs in evidence and a very old-fashioned look and feel to the entire setting. The acting was top-notch, and I would urge you to check it out on Amazon if you have Amazon Prime and fill me in on the gaps in my interpretation, which are many and numerous.

THE BAD

Problems with the interesting landscape do present themselves to the viewer, however. The couple this film focuses on supposedly live in a remote area that is seeing Dust Bowl-like storms and very little rain. If it’s so remote, why is this huge chicken processing plant where Junior works located in the middle nowhere? And who are the customers that Junior’s wife, Henrietta, is seen waiting on in a fancy restaurant?

I’m an Iowa girl. The landscape looked completely foreign. Dying mucky pink fields and crop circles are not part of my Midwestern experience. Even with the passage of thirty-two years, it’s hard to accept that this is supposed to be the Midwestern United States in 2065. (It is, in fact, Victoria in Australia.)

Two Irish actors (Saoirse Ronan as Henrietta and Paul Mescal as Junior) portray the Midwestern couple on the farm, which is suffering the fate of the entire planet. Based on the book Iain Reid wrote and scripted by Reid and Director Garth Davis (“Lion”), this closing night film at the Nashville Film Festival, is an Amazon/MGM project and set to have a premiere on Amazon on October 6th. ( It premiered at the New York Film Festival and will open in the U.S. on October 6th and in the U.K. on October 20th. The reviews have been somewhat negative, but it is definitely worth a look.)

SPOILER ALERT

The film owes much to “Black Mirror” episodes we have seen before, like the 2013 episode Be Right Back, starring Domhnall Gleeson as an AI facsimile for Hayley Atwell’s late boyfriend. There was a similar one on “Black Mirror” in 2011 entitled “Beyond the Sea” that starred Aaron Paul as an astronaut. And, of course, who can forget the Replicants of “Blade Runner?”

The movie opens with Henrietta (Saiorse Ronan) crying in the shower. She is bemoaning the loss of interest in her that she feels she has seen from her husband of 7 years. (“In the beginning, everything seems so new and exciting until time makes it so predictable.”)

IMHO, Henrietta has made a sort of “deal with the devil” to allow the well-made robot early access to her home and marriage. She is tired of the hum-drum existence with which her husband seems content. She wants to play the piano; Junior makes her play in the basement. She wants to travel and leave this dead place. He does not seem to want to leave his familiar homestead. This seems fairly male, in my own experience, so Henrietta’s angst at her husband’s happiness with the status quo is a motive for her behind-the-scenes collaboration with Terrence to allow the husband substitute to enter her life earlier than we originally think as we watch the film. We only learn it in a climactic scene near the end.

The give-away for “which one is the real robot” is the fact that Henrietta obviously knows Terrence when he comes to their door in the middle of the night. My companion said, “Yes, but isn’t that just because she may have signed them up for the spacecraft because of her desire to leave the farm and get away from the sameness of life?”

Possibly, but the plot seems to give the nod to the wife shacking up with the robot from the get-go and the robot being in house throughout 90% of this movie. (This despite the audience thinking that there will come a later time when the robot will be introduced.) Our thinking is that the robot is “in house” from Scene #One. The ability of a replicant to learn to “love” has been pondered before in other films, and it seems to surface again in this one. (Terrence: “Henrietta didn’t know how this would end. They’ll be studying you for years.”)

A later brief absence on Henrietta’s part caused one of us to feel that Henrietta may have gone off on the spacecraft and sent a Replicant back to live with Junior-the-robot. This could be, although I’ll leave that up to you as you watch this on Amazon.

I think I need to read the book in order to completely understand the symbolism of the bugs and other plot points. Why it is called “Foe” is another good question. I can offer some possible reasons for that title, but it doesn’t seem like the strongest fit.

The acting was good. Saiorse Ronan is good in everything and I looked forward to this film. Paul Mescal was a fine counterpart, but not someone whose work I was familiar with;he rose to fame in England in a television series. Some felt the accents were off. I honestly did not notice any break-through Irish accent problems.

We enjoyed the film. Drop a line and we’ll thrash the plot out together.

“Cast

Saoirse Ronan as Henrietta

Paul Mescal as Junior

Aaron Pierre as Terrence

Chris Christie: GOP Savior or GOP Gadfly?

By Connie Wilson

On June 22, 2023

In Editorial, Essays on Politics: Best Political Essays & Ideology, News, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Politics, Television

Christie in 2022

Frank Bruni is a contributing Opinion writer who was on the staff of The Times for more than 25 years. He wrote a June 21^st opinion about Chris Christie’s recent remarks during his CNN Town Hall appearance. Mr. Bruni found Christie’s remarks as refreshing and as necessary as I did, in watching this appearance.

I had also just completed reading Margaret Haberman’s book on Donald J. Trump. Haberman, the New York Times writer assigned to cover Trump over decades, interviewed hundreds of personal friends of DJT and related that Christie was very definitely trying to snag the VP nomination for himself during 2016.

Most of us who watched Mr. Christie during his Sunday morning talk show appearances know that he was the politician tapped to “prep” Donald J. Trump for debates during his run, although DJT was not a willing student at all times. One of the more startling facts that Haberman rehashed was how Trump, himself, kept Christie wondering about who would ultimately be his running mate. The three finalists were said to be Pence, Christie and Newt Gingrich. Trump called up the Indiana Senator and told him to fly out for the announcement, and Christie got wind of the Pence family’s arrival in Teterboro, N.J. It was not a happy conversation when Christie realized that Trump had been jacking him around for literally months, I’m sure.

Here’s what Frank Bruni had to say: “Chris Christie made a complete fool of himself back in 2016, fan-dancing obsequiously around Donald Trump, angling for a crucial role in his administration, nattering on about their friendship, pretending or possibly even convincing himself that Trump could restrain his ego, check his nastiness, suspend his grift and, well, serve America. But then Christie, a former two-term governor of New Jersey, had plenty of company. And he never did style himself as a saint.

It’s all water under the George Washington Bridge now. The Chris Christie of the current moment is magnificent. I don’t mean magnificent as in, “He’s going to win the Republican presidential nomination.” I don’t mean I am rooting for a Christie presidency and regard him as the country’s possible saviour.

But what he’s doing in this Republican primary contest is very, very important. It also couldn’t be more emotionally gratifying to behold. He’s telling the unvarnished truth about Trump, and he’s the only candidate doing that. A former prosecutor, he’s artfully, aggressively and comprehensively making the case against Trump, knocking down all the rationalizations Trump has mustered and all the diversions he has contrived since his 37-count federal indictment.”

In a poll released on Friday by The New Hampshire Journal, Christie had pulled into third place among Republicans in the state, far behind Trump, who had 47 percent of the vote, but not far behind Ron DeSantis, who had just 13. Christie had 9, followed by Mike Pence with 5. That partly reflects Christie’s decision to make his initial stand, so to speak, in New Hampshire. But it also reflects something else: He’s excellent at this.

Christie is to DeSantis what a Roman candle is to a scented votive. He explodes in a riot of color. DeSantis, on his best days, flickers.”

I would like to add that Christie’s performance on that CNN Town Hall, was, indeed, more like a Roman candle than the halting delivery of second place runner Ron DeSantis. I found his one-on-one answers to members of the audience to be spot-on, even when one asked about the infamous Bridgegate controversy that ended his time in New Jersey politics.

My enchantment with Christie’s fireworks makes me a cliché. In an observant and witty analysis in The Atlantic on Monday with the headline “Chris Christie, Liberal Hero,” David Graham inventoried the adoring media coverage Christie has garnered, noting that while there’s zero evidence that Christie could actually win the contest he has entered, “pundits are swooning.” It should be noted here that hard-core GOP voters were less thrilled with Christie’s sudden emergence as one of the few Republicans to let the truth prevail. Many of the most faithful Republicans—up to 70% in one poll—said they would not vote for him.

But the swoon isn’t about Christie’s prospects. It’s about the hugely valuable contrast to other Republican presidential candidates that he’s providing. And about this: The health of American democracy hinges on a reckoning within the Republican Party, and that won’t come from Democrats saying the kinds of things that Christie is now saying. They’ve been doing that for years. It’ll come — if it even can — from the words and warnings of longtime Republicans who know how to get and use the spotlight.

Did you see Christie’s CNN town hall last week? Have you watched or listened to any of his interviews? He’s funny. He’s lively. He’s crisp. And he’s right. Over the past few weeks, he has described Trump’s behavior as “vanity run amok.” Trump himself is “a petulant child.”

At the town hall: “He is voluntarily putting our country through this. If at any point before the search in August of ’22 he had just done what anyone, I suspect, in this audience would have done, which is: said, ‘All right, you’re serious? You’re serving a grand jury subpoena? Let me just give the documents back,’ he wouldn’t have been charged. Wouldn’t have been charged with anything, even though he had kept them for almost a year and a half.”

Other candidates, who prefer not to talk about the charges against Trump, are reportedly worried that his indictment will mean ceaseless chatter about him and extra difficulty promoting their own (muted and muddled) messages. Josh Barro, in his Substack newsletter Very Serious, nailed the absurdity of that, pointing out that Trump’s front-runner status and enormous lead over all of them guarantee that he’ll always monopolize the conversation, indictment or no indictment.

“The Republican nomination campaign cannot — and will not — be about anything but Donald Trump, and the media is not going to invite them on TV to talk about topics other than Donald Trump,” Barro wrote. “So, since they are going to talk about Donald Trump all the time, they had better talk about why he should not be nominated.” Christie is getting invitations and attention because he is doing precisely that. Maybe, just maybe, some of them will take note and wise up.

To the conundrum of what, if Christie qualifies for the Republican primary debates, he’ll do about the required pledge that he support whoever winds up getting the party’s nomination, he has apparently found a solution that’s suited to Republicans’ willful and nihilistic captivity to Trump, the stupidity of the pledge and the stakes of the race: He’ll sign what he must and later act as he pleases.

“I will do what I need to do to be up on that stage to try to save my party and save my democracy,” he told Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday morning.

Let’s pivot from Trump and Trump analogues to Trump sycophants. In The Atlantic, Tom Nichols described how J.D. Vance, who once spoke with such disparaging and devastating accuracy about Trump, did a self-serving about-face in his 2022 Senate race in Ohio and, reprogrammed by that victory, never looked back: “What he once wore as electoral camouflage is now tattooed all over him, in yet another fulfillment of the late Kurt Vonnegut’s warning that, eventually, ‘we are what we pretend to be.’”

Chris Christie, superhero? He has his own supersize vanity. He is arguably playing the only part in the crowded primary field available to him. And those dynamics may have as much to do with his assault on Trump as moral indignation does. Even so, saving his party and country agrees with him.

DeSantis, Pence, Tim Scott, Nikki Haley and other Republican presidential candidates are clearly telling themselves that they can’t do any good down the road if at this intersection they provoke Trump and run afoul of his supporters.

Where have we heard that before? It’s a version of what Christie said to himself in 2016. He now sees the folly of that fable.

“A Small Light” at SXSW is National Geographic Series Rediscovering the Anne Frank Story

By Connie Wilson

On April 24, 2023

In Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Reviews, Television

The official synopsis for “A Small Light:” “Based on an inspiring true story, Miep Gies was young, carefree and opinionated — at a time when opinions got you killed ― when Otto Frank asked her to help hide his family from the Nazis during WWII. Told with a modern sensibility, A SMALL LIGHT shakes the cobwebs off history and makes Miep’s story feel relevant, forcing audiences to ask themselves what they would have done in Miep’s shoes; and in modern times, asking if they would have the courage to stand up to hatred. Some stood by, Miep stood up.” The powerful, eight-part limited series is produced by ABC Signature and Keshet Studios and will begin airing on May 1st. (See last paragraph for channels and times).

Bel Powley as Miep Gies. (Photo by Connie Wilson).

The series stars Bel Powley as Miep and Liev Schreiber as Otto Frank. Anne Frank is portrayed by 17-year-old British actress Billie Boulet (“The Worst Witch,” “The Power”) and her older sister, Margot, is portrayed by Ashley Brooke (“The White House Plumbers,” “Troop Zero”). Ashley shared during the Q&A that her own grandmother was a Holocaust concentration camp survivor.

The opening episodes of the series build the character of Miep. “A Small Light” is the story of Miep Gies ; Born. Hermine Santruschitz. 15 February 1909. Vienna, Austria-Hungary (Now Austria) ; Died, 11 January 2010 (2010-01-11) (aged 100). Hoorn, Netherlands. Miep was sent from her native Vienna, Austria to be raised by the Gies family because her health was fragile. Her nuclear family felt it was in her best interests to relocate her to Amsterdam, so that she could receive medical care and a generally better quality of life. She remained in Amsterdam for the rest of her life.

Bel Powley as Miep Gies. (Photo by Connie Wilson).

Miep, as portrayd by Bel Powley (“The Morning Show,” “The King of Staten Island,” “White Boy Rick“) seems carefree and lighthearted and not that interested in either working or settling down. Her adopted family actually has conversations about the possibility of her marrying her adopted brother, to alleviate the hardship for the family unit continuing to support Miep in war-time.

This detail about Miep’s potential marriage to someone she regarded as her brother was true. It was researched by show creators Tony Phelan and Joan Rater, who are a married couple. The brother being gay, however, was poetic license, based on the gay community’s support for the Resistance in Amsterdam in WWII. The co-creators also shared that their diligent research for the series was all donated to the Anne Frank House/Museum after filming was completed.

Joan arrived late for the Q&A due to flight delays at SXSW. She explained that she and her husband were touring the Anne Frank home in Amsterdam when they became intrigued by the untold story of Miep Gies, the young woman who stepped up to help hide Otto Frank and his family when the Nazis invaded the Netherlands. The sets were exact recreations of the space in which the Franks hid.

Ashley Brooks and Billie Boullet (Margot and Anne Frank) at SXSW. (Photo by Connie Wilson).

It is clear that Miep is somewhat naïve about how bad things will become for Jewish residents of the Netherlands. (“Hitler won’t come here. We’re neutral.”) She is among those Dutch citizens who cannot believe that the Germans will invade their peaceful city and country. Others, who are more practical, are convinced that he will, in fact, invade.

May 10-15, 1940: The Queen fled to London and the Netherlands fell to the Nazis in five days.

Miep is proven wrong in her optimistic belief that “all will be well.” She then becomes very active in helping Jews go into hiding, not only helping the Franks build a secret hideaway above Otto’s Opetka office, with a staircase hidden behind a fake bookcase, but also helped to hide other Jewish families in the city.

Miep also has a romance with a bookish young man named Jan, played by Joe Cole (“Peaky Blinders”). Jan tells Miep that he is actually already married to someone else, but just doesn’t have enough money to finalize the divorce. That was an odd beginning to their courtship. Miep is shown ditching Jan at a club, as she found his bookish ways (he is reading Franz Kafka’s “Metamorphosis”) boring, initially. Ultimately, the couple discover they have many shared interests and—despite his horrible period haircut—they become a couple. Jan is played by Joe Cole (“Against the Ice,” “The Ipcress File”).

Co-creator Tony Phelan. (Photo by Connie Wilson).

As the couple become more and more involved in the Dutch Resistance—Miep in their neighborhood and Jan banding together with like-minded co-workers (he is a social worker)—the couple work together to solve problems such as how to secure extra ration books in order to feed the nine people hiding in the upper area above Otto Frank’s Opetka jam business.

It falls to the efforts and good will and chutzpah of Good Samaritans such as Miep and Jan to hide and provide for the persecuted Jews. Miep hid the Franks for over 2 years. The Franks went into hiding on July 5, 1942.

During that time, Miep was also helping hide other families. At one point, the Franks’ Jewish dentist, Dr. Pfeffer (Noah Taylor) must go into hiding with the Franks and their guests, the Van Pels family. A line in the script, when husband Jan suggests that Miep should have shared her decision with him before saying yes to Otto Frank (Liev Schreiber with his hair shaved back to mid-pate), Miep responds, “I didn’t think I needed to consult you before agreeing to save someone’s life.”

Director Susanna Fogel of “A Small Light” (Photo by Connie Wilson).

From the stage during the Q&A Joan Rater shared with the audience that she and her husband (co-creator Tony Phelan, who directed 3 episodes and scripted others) have a son about the age that Miep was when she was asked to help hide the Franks. It was being in Amsterdam and thinking about the way in which their own son might react that got them thinking about the largely untold story of Miep Gies.

POTENTIAL SPOILERS

Most of us are familiar with “The Diary of Anne Frank.” Only Otto survived being imprisoned. Edith (the mother) died at Auschwitz. Anne and Margot were transferred to Birkenau and died there of typhus.

As for Miep Gies, the focus of this film, she lived to be almost 101. When the Franks were arrested in August of 1944, possibly turned in by neighbors or by the cleaning person at Otto’s business, Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl were not arrested. Miep managed to excuse herself by saying she knew nothing of those in hiding. Miep and two others would rescue Anne’s diary before the Nazis cleared out the hiding place. They would eventually return the papers to Otto Frank. Anne’s father would see that Anne’s diary was published (initially as “Diary of a Young Girl”).

“A Small Light,” an 8 part series, premieres Monday, May 1, at 9/8c on National Geographic with two back-to-back episodes. New episodes will debut every Monday at 9/8c and 10/9c on National Geographic and will stream the next day on Disney +. The timeliness of the script, plus the excellent performances and on-site location shoot, have this series marked for nominations during awards season.

Listen to part of my interview with the actresses Ashley Brooke, who played Margot Frank, and 17-year-old Billie Burke, who plays Anne Frank in the 8-part National Geographic series now airing. (Ashley is also appearing in “The White House Plumbers” as Alexandra Liddy, daughter of Justin Theroux’s character of E. Gordon Liddy.) Connie met with the two stars of “A Small Light” for a one-on-one interview just prior to the film’s premiere at SXSW.

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Bob Odenkirk Rides Again: “Lucky Hank” Premieres at SXSW and Streams (AMC+) on March 19th, 2023.

By Connie Wilson

On March 28, 2023

In Books, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Pop Culture, Reviews, Television, Texas

“Lucky Hank” is Bob Odenkirk, in his first television outing since leaving “Better Call Saul.” The premiere episode of the AMC+ series premiered at SXSW on March 12^th (Oscar day), showing once and once only at the Stateside Theater in Austin.

Bob Odenkirk and cast members of “Lucky Hank”, streaming on AMC+ on March 19th.

The series owes much to the Pulitzer Prize-winning book on which it is based, “Straight Man,” by Richard Russo.

The synopsis for the series reads: “An English department chairman at an underfunded college, Professor Hank Devereaux toes the line between midlife crisis and full-blown meltdown, navigating the offbeat chaos in his personal and professional life.” As IMDB further says, William Henry Devereaux, Jr., spiritually suited to playing left field but forced by a bad hamstring to try first base, is the unlikely chairman of the English department at Railton East University. Over the course of a single convoluted week, he threatens to execute a duck, has his nose slashed by a feminist poet, discovers that his secretary writes better fiction than he does, suspects his wife of having an affair with his dean, and finally confronts his philandering elderly father, the one-time king of American Literary Theory, at an abandoned amusement park”

If this all sounds like a great vehicle for Bob Odenkirk, you’re right. The humor and sarcasm are on full display in this clip.

THE GOOD

The cast, headed by Odenkirk, is stellar. Mirielle Enos (“World War Z,” “The Killing”) plays Hanks’ wife, Lily, and she is a revelation. In the Q&A following the screening, she admitted that she “wanted to play a less closeted woman.” Her serious role in “The Killing” made her a natural choice for screenwriters Paul Lieberstein and Aaron Zelman, who had worked with her on “The Killing.” Those representing the premiere in Austin referred to the cast as “spectacular.”

The writers are similarly spectacular. Although credit must also be given to the source material, as the writers admit that they constantly “went back to the book” while also adding depth to Hank’s character.

Bob Odnkirk and Mirielle Enos onstage at the Stateside Theater in Austin, Texas, at SXSW, on March 11, 2023.

Bob Odenkirk, onstage after the screening, talked about how he ended up working this hard so soon after “Better Call Saul” ended. “I had said yes to the show. I really thought it would take forever. It didn’t.” Factor in a heart attack that Odenkirk described as, “what happens when you don’t take your heart medication” and here he is in an 8-episode series that he praised as “A place for everyone to do their best” and “A lot of variety on a journey that goes somewhere.” Odenkirk added that it was “Great use of modern TV. We had 4 different directors and travel alterations. The stories and characters progress and it is more like an 8-episode movie.”

He also praised the dream cast and said, of his character, “He’s so different from Saul, who was a loner. There are people in the right relationships. You love your wife and then, if you’re married long enough, you hate them.” (This brought laughter and an admonition from the writers, “Bob! Your wife is in the audience.”) Odenkirk continued, “If it’s a great relationship, you find your way back and you don’t even know how.” He felt that Saul and Kim in “Better Call Saul” were loners, but “I liked the way this guy relates to other people.” Pointing out the fundamental differences between his Saul character and Hank he said, “It’s fun to do wildly different things. It’s one of the reasons I went into this business.”

THE BAD

For me, the bad is that I currently don’t have AMC+. In order to watch this wildly entertaining series, I am going to have to subscribe, which means that my spouse (of 55 years) is going to be gifted with a subscription to the series (which premieres on March 19^th). Since his birthday is March 21^st, thank you, Hank, for figuring out what to give the man who has everything. This looks like a totally enjoyable, witty, well-written and well-acted 8-episode series that will entertain mightily.

Anti-Semitism on the Rise in the United States

By Connie Wilson

On March 27, 2023

In Editorial, Education, Pop Culture, Television, Texas

I’m almost caught up from the recently concluded SXSW film festival.

I still have a review of a screened horror film (“Appendage”) and one that is embargoed until April 24th for a drama financed by National Geographic commencing May 1st that will focus on the brave young woman who helped hide Otto Frank and his family in war-torn Amsterdam. Most of us know the story of Anne Frank from her recovered diary and the many spin-off dramatizations that sprang from it. Most of us did not know about Miep Gies, however.

It was Miep Gies, then a 24-year-old secretary to Otto Frank at his business (a jam factory called Opetka) who agreed to hide Otto Frank (Liev Schreiber) and his family of four (Otto, Edith, Anne and Margot) and five other Dutch Jews from the Nazis during WWII and the occupation of Holland. They lived in hiding for 2 years, until they were turned in.

Only Otto Frank survived the war after the Nazis captured the family, hiding in a hidden annex built above Mr. Frank’s business establishment, Opetka. He and his family were sent to concentration camps, separated as a family, and only Otto survived Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen.

Together with her colleague Bep Voskuijl, Miep retrieved Anne Frank’s diary after the family was arrested, and kept the papers safe, returning the papers to Otto Frank when he came back to Amsterdam from Auschwitz in June of 1945. Gies had stored Anne Frank’s papers in the hopes of returning them to the girl, but gave them to Otto Frank, instead, who compiled them into a diary first published in June of 1947,

Bel Powley, who portrays Miep Gies in “A Small Light.” (Photo by Connie Wilson)

In collaboration with Alison Leslie Gold, Gies wrote the book Anne Frank Remembered: The Story of the Woman Who Helped to Hide the Frank Family in 1987. Born in 1909, she died just one month shy of her 101st birthday in 2010, which was surprising, considering the fact that she was instrumental in saving many Dutch Jews from the Holocaust. [She denied any involvement in helping hide the Franks when their hiding place was discovered.]

Considering that anti-Semitism is at its highest point since the seventies, the choice to dramatize this story at this time in history is a timely one. The Anti-Defamation League began keeping records of anti-Semitic activity in 1979. In the past 5 years, the incidences of assaults or robberies or other crimes have increased 500%. On college campuses, the incidences have risen 4o% and in Kindergarten through 12th grade schools, the incidences of such wrongdoing are up 50%.

Specifically, incidents of violence against Orthodox Jews are up 67%. Incidents of vandalism are up 51%. General harassment is up 29% and assaults, in general, are up 26%. As the experts have said, “Extremists feel emboldened right now” and various other spokesmen called it a “battleground against bigotry.”

As one CNN expert said, “It may start with the Jews, but it doesn’t end with the Jews.” A super spreader of such hatred would be social media outlets. When social influencers (like Kanye West and Mel Gibson) express hatred for the Jewish people, there are surges in such evil acts. There is a reverberation effect within and among conspiracy groups; the actions condoned by the MAGA hordes are germane.

Signs of people in positions of authority condoning, explicitly or complicitly, man’s inhumanity to man contributes to the deep-seated problem and exposes a sickness in society. Kanye West today tried to dig himself out of the deep hole he had dug for himself with his anti-Semitic rants, saying that watching Jonah Hill in “21 Jump Street” had changed his opinion to one that is more positive. Not only is this a weak defense against his previous bigoted words and actions, but it hardly seems likely to stem the tide of actions like those that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia from August 11th to 12th in 2017. That Unite the Right rally was a white supremacist rally that seems, now, to have been a watershed moment in giving radical groups permission to act in uncivil and illegal manners. It is worth noting that it took place during Donald Trump’s presidency.

The focus on the heroic actions of the Miep Gies’ of the world comes at a time that should give the excellent production “A Small Light” a welcome platform. (Review to follow in April).

“Swarm,” New Donald Glover Project, Premiered at SXSW on March 10, 2023

By Connie Wilson

On March 20, 2023

In Music, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Pop Culture, Reviews, Television

Donald Glover (“Atlanta”) and Janine Nabers, are the creative forces behind a new Amazon Prime series called “Swarm.” The series is set in Houston, until it takes our heroine on the road to a variety of cities, seemingly summoning memories of real-life fan-obsessed happenings in those cities. (The episodes are represented by a date and a label.)

It is a super violent series starring Dominique Fishback (“Judas and the Black Messiah”) as an obsessed fan of a Black singer obviously modeled on Beyonce. The series contains the message upfront, “This is not a work of fiction. Any similarity to people living and dead is intentional.”

The Black songstress, Ni’Jah Hutton (Nirine S. Brown) is about to embark on the Evolution Tour. Dre (Dominique Fishback) is so obsessed with Ni’Jah that any criticism or failure to appreciate the singer’s work as spectacular personally offends Dre, to the point of no return for the critical fan.

The first episode, which screened at SXSW on March 10th, built the relationship between Dre, her longtime best friend and roommate Marissa (Chloe Bailey) and Marissa’s boyfriend Khalid (Damson Idris). Marissa has achieved success as a make-up artist and Khalid—although he does not live with the girls—is always around. Dre’s reaction to a sex scene she unintentionally witnesses between Marissa and Khalid gives us a hint about Dre’s disdain for such emotional entanglements.

THE GOOD

“Swarm” on Amazon Prime video.

The cast, especially Dominique Fishback (“Judas and the Black Messiah”), is good. Dre (Dominique Fishback) has some serious mental issues, not the least of which is the ability to kill very energetically without much provocation. Watching someone bludgeoning another human being to death, especially those who have done nothing to deserve it, is not my idea of “entertainment.” [If it were, we would all be enjoying the mass shootings that seem to have reached epidemic proportions in the United States]. Yes, the victim failed to properly appreciate Dre’s singer of choice, but that hardly seems to merit death—except in “Swarm.” Social commentary, yes, and a good thing for this generation of social media-obsessed youth to ponder.

Call me old-fashioned. Or ask if you, too, want a modicum of violence, but not in such huge gratuitous doses with the violence being the entire plot focus. When I’m watching a character serially murder others with very little emotion (“Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer”), I want to feel that the victim has done something to deserve it (even though that is not usually the case). Yes, I know that the Jeffrey Dahmer/Ted Bundy stories have been ratings winners. I’m just not a huge fan of mindless gore or violence for the sake of gratuitous gore or violence (which is why I disliked “Evil Dead Rise,” another SXSW film.). I’m a former active voting member of Horror Writers’ Association, so it’s not that I can’t handle blood and gore in moderation. (My novel series: “The Color of Evil.”) But I also swore off 80s slasher films after a while.
There is a lot of mindless violence in this series. Later in the series, I have read, we are going to learn more about the motivation for Dre’s devotion to mayhem, but all we saw on March 10^th was a proclamation that Dre has eschewed sex and its ability to control as counter-productive, probably because of the influence of her roommate Marissa.

The theme of unbridled fan enthusiasm is a good new one to explore. The Taylor Swift ticket fiasco even provoked Congressional hearings, and my daughter used to work for Ms. Swift. I’m all for unbridled fan enthusiasm, Beehive or Swifty, and the music is great from the outset, as are the costumes. The camerawork on film by Drew Daniels is excellent as is the direction by Donald Glover, Adamma Ebo (“Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul”), Ibra Ake, and Stephen Glover. In the series’ sometimes intentionally campy fashion, it will play buzzing sounds when Dre is ramping up for the next violent act. The score by Michael Uzowuru is great.

THE BAD

While the acting is fine, there is a lot of what I will call “stunt casting.” Paris Jackson (daughter of Michael Jackson) has a substantial role in the first episode. Billie Eilish is in one episode as Eva and shows real promise. Rory Culkin, brother of Macauley, shows up (sans clothing) as a one-night stand of Dre’s. Stephen Glover, who also appeared in “Atlanta,” is a presence and wrote two episodes.

And while we’re mentioning the writing, Malia Obama worked with Nabers to pen the episode “Girl, Bye.” She is credited as a staff writer.

CONCLUSION

I am not the target audience for this series. I found myself wondering about such practicalities as the disposal of bodies. That is probably from writing novels, where you realize that a keen reader will be calling you out on “plot holes.” We’re all aware of the clean-up of mayhem that we’ve seen Liev Schreiber and Harvey Keitel handle as “fixers” (“Ray Donovan,” “Pulp Fiction”). Even in “The Sopranos” murders would lead to giving Tony Soprano a call to help with clean-up.

In the episodes of “Swarm” that I saw there was little forethought or planning prior to the murders; therefore, there were many plot holes that pointed to potential problems for the perpetrator. I can’t imagine that we are going to be following obsessed fan Dre into prison, but, judging from the lack of any meaningful plotting before she commits the murder, that would be a logical conclusion for the 7 episode series.

“Swarm” will air on Prime Video. The Amazon project premiered at SXSW on Friday, March 10was being released everywhere a week later.

“Slip” Is Sexy New Series from Writer/Director/Star Zoe Lister-Jones

By Connie Wilson

On March 17, 2023

In Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Pop Culture, Reviews, Television, Texas

Zoe Lister-Jones of “Slip” at SXSW.

Zoe Lister-Jones, a frequent participant at SXSW, has written, directed and stars in a television series (Roku Originals) that takes our heroine and places her in several relationships—usually after a steamy sex scene—each one more puzzling to the central character.

As the series opens, Mae Cannon (Zoe Lister-Jones) is in a 13-year marriage to Elijah (Whitmer Thomas). The marriage has run out of passion and is like “being single together.”

While her girlfriend Gina (Tymika Tafari), with whom she works at a museum, says, “You found your person,” it’s clear that the pair is in a rut.

After a museum showing, husband Elijah bails on the after-party. That puts Mae in a bar alone, and she ends up going home with Eric (Amar Chadha-Patel), a successful composer with an international following. The sex scene is impressive and welcome for the neglected wife, but she wakes up and discovers that she has entered an alternate reality and is now married to the Eric she just slept with. (“You’re just sort of witnessing a version of your life.”)

Zoe Lister-Jones in “Slip,” a Roku original series.

If this sounds confusing to Mae, it is, but it is a tribute to the writer/director/star Ms. Lister-Jones that it is not that confusing to the audience. We soon learn that these multiple lives usually follow a sex scene and the second “alternate reality” finds our girl in a lesbian relationship with Sandy (Emily Hampshire) and the mother to a child having a birthday that day.

The writing is sharp. (“I wasn’t born to speak. I was always born to sit.”) The acting is good. The “Slip” concept is easy to follow and interesting.

Zoe Lister-Jones said she wrote all seven episodes while in quarantine. She gave thanks to Rue Donnelly and Dakota Johnson for “shepherding this from inception,” along with Boatrocker and

Roku. A Toronto composing team (one of the team is a band member of “Destroyer”) provides great musical accompaniment.

Lister-Jones acknowledged that she wanted to “use sex as the centerpiece of each episode, to feel like you are inside the sexuality.” Judging from the episodes we saw at this World Premiere, she succeeded. There is a strong emphasis on female empowerment and female pleasure and in pushing the boundaries.

The writer/director/star admitted to a bit of a fixation on Timothy Chalamet and Barbra Streisand. The latter receives a shout-out via a coffee cup that re-appears and orients us to the fact that Mae has drifted into another alternate reality. (The cup and the white shoes).

It was a refreshingly original work that was quite well done, and it will be fun to see where Zoe Lister-Jones takes the series.

Cast members: Whitmer Thomas, Tymika Tafari and Zoe Lister-Jones onstage on March 16th at SXSW for the Roku original series “Slip.”

Bob Odenkirk is “Lucky Hank” in New Series That Premiered at SXSW 2023

By Connie Wilson

On March 16, 2023

In Humor and Weird Wilson-isms, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Pop Culture, Reviews, Television

Bob Odenkirk and Mirielle Enos onstage at the Stateside Theater in Austin, Texas, at SXSW, on March 11, 2023.

“Lucky Hank” is Bob Oderkirk, in his first television outing since leaving “Better Call Saul.” The premier episode of the AMC+ series premiered at SXSW on March 12^th (Oscar day), showing once and once only at the Stateside Theater in Austin.

The series owes much to the Pulitzer Prize-winning book on which it is based, “Straight Man,” by Richard Russo.

The synopsis for the series reads: “An English department chairman at an underfunded college, Professr Hank Devereaux toes the line between midlife crisis and full-blown meltdown, navigating the offbeat chaos in his personal and professional life.” As IMDB further says, William Henry Devereaux, Jr., spiritually suited to playing left field but forced by a bad hamstring to try first base, is the unlikely chairman of the English department at Railton University. Over the course of a single convoluted week, he threatens to execute a duck, has his nose slashed by a feminist poet, discovers that his secretary writes better fiction than he does, suspects his wife of having an affair with his dean, and finally confronts his philandering elderly father, the one-time king of American Literary Theory, at an abandoned amusement park”

If this all sounds like a great vehicle for Bob Odenkirk, you’re right. The humor and sarcasm are on full display in this clip.

THE GOOD

Bob Odenkirk and cast members of “Lucky Hank”, streaming on AMC+ on March 19th.

THE BAD

“Being Mary Tyler Moore” Documentary at SXSW Highlights Groundbreaking Nature of Moore’s Work

By Connie Wilson

On March 14, 2023

In Interviews, Movies, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Pop Culture, Reviews, Television, Texas

“Being Mary Tyler Moore” documentary screens at SXSW on March 13, 2023.

Director James Adolphus, who helmed the documentary “Being Mary Tyler Moore,” was asked about his exposure to Mary Tyler Moore before he undertook making this extraordinarily intimate two- hour film about her life.

He admitted that he had never watched any of her shows, that she was more a figure that his mother knew. (“I knew her from the lyric in the Weezer song.”) He then said, “It’s odd to make a film about someone you don’t know and to fall in love with someone after the fact. She felt like my cousin, my sister. She had to fight back against the patriarchy.”

The documentary is an attempt to reconcile the insecure woman who looked so proud and regal with the real woman inside who was not that way at all. It was an attempt to show the modest, humble person beneath the veneer. With the help of many clips from “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” it more than succeeds.

One week after the 18-year-old MTM graduated from high school, she got a job portraying Happy Hotpoint in television ads. The problem was that the young Mary had married Richard Meeker in 1954, when she was eighteen. She soon turned up pregnant, giving birth to her only child, Richard, and losing herHotpoint job in the process.

Later in the film we learn that Moiore’s own mother would gve birth to a daughter, Elizabeth, only a few months after Richard’s birth, giving Mary a sister, as well as a brother, John, who was 7 years younger. There were references to Mary’s mother’s alcoholism, but Moore’s parents were married more than 50 years. Her mother eventually sobered up and even took on duties caring for the two youngsters, Elizabeth and Richard, who were so close in age.

Mary’s marriage to Meeker did not last. She would separate and then marry again almost immediately, in 1962, to Grant Tinker, to whom she would remain married for 18 years. Her career, in 1959, included a stint as Sexy Sam, the faceless voice on “Richard Diamond, Private Investigator.” When Mary asked for a raise from her $85 per episode salary, she was fired.

Director James Adolphus of “Being Mary Tyler Moore” on March 13, 2023 at SXSW. (Photo by Connie Wilson).

Enter Carl Reiner, a comic mentor who envisioned her as the character Laurie Petrie, the wife in a 1960 pilot dubbed “Head of the Family,” The show eventually morphed into “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” When David Susskind suggested, in a somewhat offensive interview, that women should not work, Mary said, “I could waste a lot more energy sitting around chatting with other gals all day.” She became exactly what the network was horrified by: a contemporary woman. She also insisted on wearing pants on television, which broke new ground. (As a former junior high school teacher who insisted on wearing pants suits in 1969 at a time when they were banned by the school, I could relate.)

Throughout the documentary, we learn just how groundbreaking Mary Tyler Moore would become. This was just the beginning. In interviews, Mary referred to the period as “An unenlightened time. I believe in figuring out a way to contribute.”

At the end of the 5-year run of “The Dick Van Dyke Show” Mary was a hot property who charmed men without antagonizing their wives. She had a comic flair that no less an expert than Lucille Ball recognized and applauded. She was offered a picture deal with Universal and—unusual for the time—had the right to refuse to do pictures that she did not think would benefit her image.However, in order to be given permission to star in a musical version of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” on Broadway, Mary would give up that right of refusal and, following the Broadway bomb the show became, would end up in films like “Change of Habit” (1969) opposite Elvis.

In 1968, when she was 32, a miscarriage led to her diagnosis as diabetic. With a blood sugar level of 700, she was fortunate to have been discovered to have the disease, which would end her life at the age of 80 in 2017. Friends credit her Dr. husband with extending her life at least ten years.

Broadway having bombed, CBS offered her her own show. Mary and Grant Tinker jumped at the chance. Tinker saw that forming their own company would be beneficial and Mary Tyler Moore Enterprises was born, with Tinker at the helm and Mary the major talent. At one point, the company had six shows on the air at once.

Meanwhile, Tinker hired Jim Brooks and Allan Burns to write the show, which would place Mary Tyler Moore in Minneapolis as a woman making it on her own at the age of thirty.I remember how groundbreaking it was for the goal to be not just to marry, but to be independent and live on one’s own. “That Girl” with Marlo Thomas had a similar single girl protagonist, but her main mission was to find a husband.

At this point, in real life Mary Tyler Moore had never been on her own, but had been married since she was 18 years old. The entire idea of society’s pushing young women into marriage was covered in 1979’s “Kramer versus Kramer,” where Meryl Streep articulated this “never been on my own” status all the way to 5 Oscars. As someone who lived it, I can vouch that the goal was to “have a ring on your finger” by the end of college, at the latest, a goal that did not appeal to my own working mother or to me. Like Mary Tyler Moore’s onscreen character Mary Richard, this was “ahead of the times.”

Mary Tyler Moore lived the fifties ideal of marriage after school and as soon as possible. She remained mired in marital bliss, marrying Tinker immediately after divorcing Meeker. She remained a married woman until she was 44 years old, when she and Tinker divorced (1980)and she moved to New York City. She remarried for a third time in 1982 to Dr. Robert Levine, 14 years her junior.

The show that Mary Tyler Moore launched, about an independent thirtyish woman making it on her own, was a risk. It was almost killed by a terrible time slot, until Fred Silverman took over CBS, axed a lot of comedies like “Green Acres’ and moved “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” into the best time slot on television. It was, as Rosie O’Donnell termed it, “Appointment TV.” Silverman placed her show on the same night as “All in the Family” and alongside Bob Newhart’s show on Saturday nights. The rest is history, as the talented cast garnered multiple awards and still has one of the best endings of any series sit-com on television, past or present.

Lena Waithe answers questions about “Being Mary Tyler Moore” onstage at the Zach Theater during SXSW 2023 on March 13, 2023.

Mary Tyler Moore won 7 Emmies, 3 Golden Globes, and earned an Oscar nomination (for “Ordinary People”). And, as the documentary terms it, “As Mary Tyle Moore goes, so goes the nation.” This meant welcoming the 1973 Supreme Court decision to allow women the right to decide whether or not to have an abortion.In 1980, immediately after her divorce from Tinker, Mary conquered Broadway with her performance replacing Tom Conti in the play “Whose Life Is It, Anyway?” Meanwhile, she described herself as “going through adolescence” in New York City, as she was said to be involved with Michael Lindsay-Hogg, the director of the play, and was socializing after years of marriage. However, she was drinking more than she should have been, and, as he noted, sometimes that could lead to belligerence. She would curb this possibly inherited tendency towards alcoholism by a stint at the Betty Ford Clinic.

In 1980, Mary Tyler Moore was nominated as Best Actress for her role as Beth in “Ordinary People” opposite Donald Sutherland and Timothy Hutton. Director Robert Redford said he had always been fascinated by the possibility of a dark side to MTM, who might have been brittle inside with a pensiveness, anger, hurt, and confusion over such issues as her inability to connect meaningfully with her son Richard.

Also in 1980, Mary’s son Richard, then aged 24, would die of a gun shot wound. The documentary says he had a gun collection, was inherently clumsy, and it was an accident. Three weeks after his death, MTM would be nominated for an Oscar as Best Actress for her role in “Ordinary People.” She would also lose her younger sister, Elizabeth, to a drug overdose at the age of 21. Her younger brother John would die of kidney cancer.

Mary met Dr. Robert Levine, her third husband, when he cared for her ailing mother in 1982. The line in the documentary is that “She fell in love for the first time in her life.” Yet Grant Tinker’s children, who became her step-children, testify to the good years with Mary Tyler Moore as their step-mom. The 14-years-younger Levine would remain her husband till the end, caring for her in their bucolic Connecticut home. The couple was devoted to one another and Levine set the plans in motion to produce this documentary, despite turning down many earlier overtures.

The now 73-year-old Levine reached out to Lena Waithe (“Ready Player One,” “Master of None”) after reading an interview in “Vanity Fair,” in which she expressed an interest in doing a documentary about Mary Tyler Moore’s life.When asked about his decision to share his private film of Mary with Producer/Director/Writer Waite, Dr.Levine, an executive producer, said, to laughter, “To have a Black queer girl from the South side of Chicago want to tell her story. Are you kidding me?”

Dr. Levine was asked what surprised him after seeing the film. He responded, “I had never seen the bridal shower footage with Betty White and others. It was simple and natural. She talked about me making her a tuna fish sandwich in the middle of the night. Things like that had the most impact for her. It is the simple kindnesses that really have the most impact.The journey of her life was the journey of women in this country. As a human being, she felt the need to keep going forward. She was ahead of the times. I didn’t want a derivative feeling. A new voice coming forward (Lena Waithe) was interesting to me.”

Waithe added, “I wanted to give a real sense of how she was as a person.” The decision to use voice-over(s) rather than the talking head documentary approach was Waithe’s.

The documentary is long, at 2 hours, but it is very good. While an interview with Rona Barrett is over-used and David Susskind comes off poorly as an ultra-conservative fossil of the times in his onscreen interview, I would highly recommend this HBO documentary, funded by Fifth Season, if you are or were a fan of Mary Tyler Moore’s work. She helped raise over $2 billion for Juvenile Diabetes and gave so many other working women a model that remains groundbreaking.

Credits:

Venue: SXSW Film Festival (Documentary Spotlight)
Distributor: HBO
Production companies: HBO Documentary Films, Fifth Season, Hillman Grad, The Mission Entertainment, Good Trouble Studios
Director: James Adolphus
Producers: Ben Selkow, James Adolphus, Lena Waithe, Rishi Rajani, Debra Martin Chase, Andrew C. Coles, Laura Gardner
Executive producers: S. Robert Levine, Michael Bernstein, Nancy Abraham, Lisa Heller
Cinematography: James Adolphus
Editor: Mariah Rehmet
Archival Producer: Libby Kreutz
Music: Theodosia Roussos
2 hour

New David E. Kelly Series “Love & Death” Premieres at SXSW 2023

By Connie Wilson

On March 12, 2023

In Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Pop Culture, Reviews, Television, Texas

Lily Rabe, Jesse Plemons and Elizabeth Olson onstage after the Premiere of "Love & Death" at SXSW on March 11th, 2023. Jesse Plemons (“Breaking Bad”) appeared onstage at the Paramount Theater in Austin, Texas at SXSW with his castmates (Lily Rabe and Elizabeth Olsen) after the March 11th premiere of the first two episodes of the David E. Kelly series “Love & Death.” The series was written by Kelly but directed by Texas-born Leslie Linka Glatter. Plemons was a shadow of his former self, showing off a remarkable weight loss post series.

Co-star in this drama about the Candace Montgomery murder of her lover’s wife that took place in 1980 was Elizabeth Olson. HBO will be broadcasting the 6-part series.

True credit for the story of an affair gone horribly wrong goes to Texas Monthly articles that the Texas-born director had read, as had Kelly, whose many television shows include “L.A. Law,” “The Practice,” “Doogie Howser,” “Allie McBeal,” “Picket Fences,” and “Chicago Hope.”

The film starts in September, 1978, and, as we were told in the Q&A following the showing of the first two episodes, the series will delve deeply into the town and its residents before covering the same ground that was covering in the 1990 film “Murder in a Small town” or the 2022 Jessica Biel starring vehicle “Candy.” Evidence of Love: A True Story of Passion and Death in the Suburbs, a book examining the case and events following the trial, written by Dallas-based journalists John Bloom and Jim Atkinson, was published in January 1984. The HBO Max series will be released in April (2023).

Kelly, onstage after the screening, said, “If this story wasn’t true, you couldn’t make it up.” The creators commented on the lists of “dos” and “don’ts” that the couple make up prior to embarking on their sexual adventures. They are straight from the original lists the cheating lovers made up before embarking on their affair. Not to ruin the suspense of this story told so many times, but, although Candace Montgomery bludgeoned Betty Gore 41 times with a wood-hewing axe, she was found innocent on October 30, 1980, by a jury of 9 women and 3 men in McKinney, Texas.

Jesse Plemons in a still from the new series “Love & Death.”

The director said, “This is not a show about failing marriages. It’s about so much more.” “To be honest and have empathy, we didn’t want it to be just a true crime drama,” said the writer and director.

The interviewer from “Elle” magazine, asked, ”How could this happen?”

The answer, given by the director, was “Reality creeps up on our expectations. It’s really about how boredom and reality can creep into a long-time marriage.” Another cast member said, “We don’t play the ending (i.e., the murder). We play the moment.”

Jesse Plemons—in real life married to Kirsten Dunst and looking completely different onstage than he does in the film due to a huge weight loss— said, “They just wanted to be seen and heard. There is no hiding from what is true in yourself.” One scene that illustrates this is the one where Candace Montgomery attempts to snuggle with her spouse, saying that she knows that “Snugglepuss” was his favorite character. Her husband squirms free of Candy’s embrace and corrects her. “It’s Snagglepuss.”

Series director Leslie Linka Glatter (“Love & Death”).

I felt as though I had already seen multiple adaptations of this story, because I had. This one will cover ground already covered several times before. If you aren’t at all familiar with the crime, this one will be an in-depth examination. It may not have been re-examined and/or re-litigated as often as the JFK assassination, but the decade is young