Justin Bieber and Hailey Baldwin are currently in South Carolina for their wedding, and last night the couple celebrated their rehearsal dinner at the Montage in Palmetto Bluffs (which also happens to be their ceremony venue)! And while obviously this event was private, Justin and Hailey were spotted by extremely excited hotel guests chilling out on their boat:
And then some random dude spotted Justin "humping" Hailey and helpfully narrated the moment by repeatedly saying "he's humpin' her!" Cool.
Anyway, according to an E! News source "Guests arrived by boat to the rehearsal dinner on the Palmetto property. There were several water taxis that took guests over around 6:30 p.m. The dinner was on the edge of the water and was outdoors. There were many string lights hanging and lit candles. Everyone was seated at long tables and the dècor was very chic and white."
But wait, there's more! "There were waiters standing greeting guests with champagne as they arrived," the source continued, adding that Justin and Hailey joined the party slightly late and made quite an entrance. "Everyone cheered for them and they looked really happy to see everyone. Hailey and Justin both could not stop smiling."
Celeb guests apparently included Joan Smalls, Kendall Jenner, Laura and Carl Lentz, Scooter Braun, and Justine Skye, who will also be at the couple's ceremony today. EXCITING TIMES (for everyone except Jelena fans).
When Kanye West hosts an event, the pure unpredictability and uniqueness of it will bring out the masses for a truly one-of-a-kind experience. Following Sunday Service at The Greater Allen Cathedral in Queens, West and company headed to Washington Heights on Sunday night (Sept. 29) to host the final listening of his Jesus Is King: A Kanye West Experience mini-tour at the archaic United Palace Theatre.
Unfortunately, as Kim Kardashian promised, Sunday came and went without the release of Jesus Is King, which has West's fans in a state of panic. Kanye also didn't provide any insight to a possible release date during the Experience, but did run through the brisk 10-track less than half-hour project for the 1,000 some odd fans packed under the Palace's golden ceilings and sacred watchful eye.
"New York City is definitely one of my hometowns," he told the crowd. "I wasn't fully saved during Coachella. I came to know the truth and joy of Jesus. This album is an expression of the gospel." West moved right into fulfilling album opener "Beauty From Ashes," where he seems to shed his ego. "I come to you empty, free of my pride," he pleads.
Track No. 2, "Follow God," features some of West's most passionate rapping on the entire album. To fully bring the word of the gospel to NYC, Kanye instructed fans to fill the aisles and stand up, which temporarily created a more raucous environment, as a riled up mosh pit of fans joined him on stage, but were quickly told to move back once West was notified that the stage might collapse. Daughter North and son Saint kept the party going by dancing on stage for much of the night, as Kim Kardashian filmed the adorable Kodak moments from off to the side.
The electronic "On God" immediately jumped out as a standout cut from West's latest body of work. Kanye chimed in that he actually crafted the track with emerging rapper-producer Pi'erre Bourne, as Yeezy confidently boasts that he's "the greatest artist resting or alive" on the opening verse. Sadly, Young Thug isn't heard on the record, as previously rumored. At this point, the album's artwork was debuted on the projection screen. Jesus Is King's cover art depicts a biblical happening that goes along with the themes of the Sunday Service merchandise debuted this weekend.
A notable change heard Sunday was the re-recording of "Selah," one of the few tracks featuring thunderous drums on the project. Lines such as "everyone want Yandhi, my cousins mad at my auntie" have questionably been flipped to "everyone wanted Yandhi, but Jesus did the laundry." The castrated "New Body" has also been added back onto the album's fluid track list, but the Ty Dolla $ign-assisted track is still missing a new verse courtesy of Nicki Minaj.
To put a few rumors circulating online to rest, the police did not shut down West's listening session. It looked as if officers calmly strolled down the aisle to let him know of his 10 p.m. curfew, but Yeezy would finish off the Experience on a high-note with album closer "Use This Gospel." West reunited Clipse to blend worlds with Kenny G on the saxophone, which taps into West's brilliance as a collaborator, to make for one of the sharpest tracks on the project.
Overall, Jesus Is King seems to be unfinished, and it wouldn't be surprising to see the project pushed back a few weeks. Kanye flashes his greatness at times, but fails to completely flesh out his thoughts on others. He could also be waiting on a few collaborators to elevate the effort and finally bring it across the finish line. West makes sparse use of hard-hitting 808 drums on JIK, a stark change compared to a mainstay on previous Ye LPs.
The Chicago native also previewed portions of both his forthcoming documentary and IMAX film. The doc follows West in his travels across the globe and hones in on his time spent with James Turrell at his Arizona Roden Crater installation. The IMAX film is slated to hit theaters across the country on Oct. 25.
Find the latest track list of Jesus Is King below. Purchase merchandise for Sunday Service and Jesus Is King tailored to NYC on Kanye's website.
Ruby Rose is about to be a hero to little kids watching her as Batwoman on The CW. Even more than an empowering hero, Rose gets to play an openly gay heroine, the sort of role model she didn’t get to see on television. As a kid, Rose appreciated what was available, which included Lucy Lawless as Xena: Warrior Princess.
Ruby Rose | | Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images
After the Television Critics Association for Batwoman this summer, Rose spoke with reporters further about being a role model, and the role models she had growing up. Batwoman premieres Sunday, October 6 at 8 p.m. on The CW right before Supergirl, and we’ll have more with Rose and the stars of Batwoman this week on Showbiz Cheat Sheet.
Why Xena: Warrior Princess was Ruby Rose’s hero
Sure, Xena kicked butt but that wasn’t really why Ruby Rose loved her. As a young gay woman, there were many fan theories about Xena’s relationship with Gabrielle (Renee O’Connor).
Lucy Lawless as Xena | Richard Robinson/AFP/Getty Images
“The closest I had was Xena: Warrior Princess,” Rose said. “You just had to assume that there was something with Gabrielle. It was up to the imagination but I was convinced and that definitely was probably the only thing I had on television that represented how I felt and kind of empowered me. I don’t think anything else until probably The L Word which was a different show entirely.”
‘Batwoman’ can be someone’s ‘Xena’ in 2019
Ruby Rose wishes there had been a character like she plays on Batwoman when she was little. Kate Kane (Rose) is openly gay and heroic enough to save Gotham City.
Ruby Rose and Camrus Johnson in Batwoman | Kimberley French/The CW
“It’s telling a story that I wish was on television when I was a kid,” Rose said. “I believe there are going to be people that this changes their life.”
And if Batwoman is not for you, that’s okay.
“I think there’s definitely someone for everyone in the show, but if you don’t find yourself in this show, that’s probably because there’s plenty of shows for you already out there,” Rose said.
We still need more representation on television
The landscape of television is far more diverse than it was when Ruby Rose was watching Xena, but it’s still predominantly heteronormative. Batwoman adds one more show to shift the balance.
Ruby Rose as Kate Kane in Batwoman | Elizabeth Morris/The CW
“It’s more about representation and diversity and acknowledging that there are more than just one kind of person who exists in the world that then gets displayed on television or media or film,” Rose said. “I think that’s why GLAAD is such a fantastic organization because they have been monitoring like we don’t have representation in these areas and we need it.”
Ruby Rose has input into ‘Batwoman’
Showrunner Caroline Dries and producer Sarah Schechter are listening to Ruby Rose’s input on Kate Kane and Batwoman. Rose has confidence in them too.
Ruby Rose as Batwoman | Kimberley French/The CW
“If I ever felt like there was something that I was seeing in the script or not seeing in the script or wanted more of or wanted less of, especially when it comes to Kate specifically, I think things have changed, writing have made adjustments. I’ve asked Caroline if we can do it a different way. We are collaborative in that way but as far as the show as a whole, of course if I felt like there was something I wanted to say, obviously I would but so far they’re doing an excellent job so I don’t feel like I need to put an extra cook in the kitchen.”
Ruby Rose to the Television Critics Association, 8/4/19
Meghan Markle has not led a normal life. Even long before she met Prince Harry, things were hardly ‘normal’. Her father was an Emmy winner. Even though it was for work off-screen, not many kids can say that about their dad. Later, she became a popular actress, although arguably not an A-list one.
Even though her life was never really normal before joining the royal family, some royal watchers are wondering if all the media attention that comes with being a duchess is too much for Markle.
Is Meghan Markle overwhelmed?
Meghan Markle | DAVID HARRISON/AFP/Getty Images
There have been a few hints that Duchess Meghan is not feeling the constant media attention that comes with being married to a royal family member. First, she and Prince Harry moved to Frogmore Cottage on Windsor Estate. They made headlines when they issued some pretty strict rules for their neighbors.
Now that they’re parents, the media is upset at their lack of access to Baby Archie. The public has only seen a handful of pictures of the little one.
Insiders have confirmed that the Duchess of Sussex is having a hard time adjusting to life as a member of the royal family. Even though her husband, Prince Harry, has faced intense media scrutiny his whole life, Markle reportedly doesn’t turn to the royal family for advice.
Instead, she has been asking her A-list celebrity friends how they handle the spotlight. Supposedly she’s taken tips from George and Amal Clooney, as well as singer Rihanna.
Some experts say Meghan Markle needs to change her ways
Some royal watchers think the duchess is alienating the British public with her lack of photo ops. They say she’s at risk of losing public affection for good if she doesn’t change her ways.
PR expert Anthony Burr recently told Express UK that Duchess Meghan needs to be more open with the press. He compared her to Princess Diana, her late mother-in-law. Princess Diana famously hated the constant media scrutiny she was subjected to, yet she was still very popular with the public. According to Burr: “Harry’s mother, late Princess Diana, used her wits and intelligence to work out how to keep the media onside and was crowned the People’s Princess.”
Burr says Duchess Meghan needs to do the same. He said photo opportunities could help, as allowing more media into her private life might make the press lay off a little. This is something we’ve heard before from royal experts. Burr says: “She can’t have her cake and eat it. It needs to be shared around.” In this analogy, it seems like the cake is the duchess herself.
Being Princess Diana might not help
To be fair, the media attention Markle is facing is technically unprecedented. Yes, Princess Diana was famously hounded by the media, but she was married to the man who was next in line for the throne. Prince Harry will almost certainly never be king, as his brother Prince William and all his children precede Prince Harry in the line of succession. Other duchesses of her level don’t usually face this kind of scrutiny but it is likely her Hollywood background makes her an interesting subject.
Also, playing nice with the media didn’t help Princess Diana. Some even blame the media for her death. There has always been a pervasive rumor that her car crash was caused by a paparazzi trying to snap a picture of her, although it’s never been proven. So if history teaches us anything, it’s that Markle can’t change media behavior, no matter what she does.
All signs point to the Duchess of Sussex wants to make her own way in the new landscape she’s found herself in. She’s decidedly not taking advice from royal experts and instead has been looking to other American celebrities instead. Duchess Meghan knew what she was getting into when she married Prince Harry, and she seems to have a plan for how to make this life ‘normal’.
“If you choose to stick around, we’ll be right back.”
“I’m not an actor, I’m a [movie/fashion] star!”
Woody Harrelson came out in a tux to start his fourth time hosting Saturday Night Live, boasting about his unlikely new role as “fashionista” before awkwardly doffing his tearaway suit to reveal the loud, silky pajamas underneath. Woody, claiming he’s always playing “murderers or the people they murder” these days, is the sort of relaxed-fit host who brings an easygoing gameness to the gig, perhaps not the most exciting pick to kick off SNL’s 45th season, but a reassuring one. Not that he had much to work with but his charm in the season’s limp first monologue. A potentially edgy exercise in Harrelson putting his foot in his mouth once he goes off-script was, in practice, as comfy and shapeless as the host’s baggy jim-jams. Tossing off intentionally offensive generalizations about immigrants and the Chinese on the one hand, and Trump and Melania on the the other, the bit saw Woody offering up a litany of apologies (including to Fox News) for being such a big ol’, loose-lipped goof, which is about as pointed as the thing got.
Harrelson was nothing but solid throughout the following episode, evincing a happy professionalism that, if the writing were better, could have elevated this first show nicely. As it was, Harrelson was front-and-center plenty, with the most high-profile role being his blinding-toothed, obliviously folksy, Obama name-dropping Joe Biden in what turned out to be an infuriatingly shallow Democratic debate sketch. Woody didn’t sound particularly like Biden, but his was a committed an consistent characterization more than an impression, and he anchored the piece ably.
Advertisement
Best/Worst sketch of the night
Let’s hop all the way to the end and steal the ten-to-one segment of this review with Aidy and Kate’s Chickham Apple Farm sketch. Sort of a transplanted “Whiskers R We” concept (or last season’s Regal Promenade Pavillion commercial) the ad for a sister-run orchard in “the part of New York state that has Confederate flags” clearly stems from someone’s experience in the questionably fun, undeniably time-passing pastime of apple picking. “I’d never picked apples before and now I have,” beams new guy Bowen Yang as one customer, “I had fun, I think.” “It was cute. Far but cute. There were lots of bees,” chimes in Melissa Villaseñor’s equally sort-of satisfied picker. With Aidy and Kate (and Woody as lone orchard employee Hank, “a troubled man who came with the property”) intermittently returning to hype up the tourist trap’s many varieties of apples (“tiny-hard,” “green,” and “apple” among them), theoretical other fruits to pick, and the joys of spending $45 to “bring home $10 worth of apples,” the sketch is a solid winner all around, building with skillful absurdity. Woody’s Hank gradually reveals that the scares in the orchard’s haunted hayride come largely from the masked local boys who “take things way too far,” and that the joint’s one sad burro is so depressed that it’s taught itself to utter the single word, “Stop.” (“He’s like Eeyore with a plan” is currently in the lead for this season’s most brilliant line.) And then there’s sister Aidy’s glassy eyed boast that the farm’s phallic gourds “came out extra penis this year.” Aidy started to break for the second time tonight—without a wardrobe (person) malfuntion we’ll get to—which was forgivable, considering how very giggle-worthy the whole sketch was.
The strategy of just giving Kyle Mooney five minutes every week to be Kyle on film paid off again in “Dad,” a ’90s sitcom parody in which Mooney’s math-flunking son vainly attempts to get his businessman dad to put down his oversized cellphone and talk to him. Another product of Mooney’s dual obsessions with cringe comedy and bad TV, the scene transforms into one of those day-glo white teen raps, complete with Chris Redd’s actual rapper slowing his game down so Mooney can keep up, that marked networks lame attempts to tap into that hip-hop music that all those darn kids were listening to. Like the best of Mooney’s (and Beck Bennett’s, although he’s not in evidence onscreen here), the joke lives in foot-shuffling awkwardness and specificity, with Woody’s preoccupied dad constantly restating exposition into that huge phone (“Charlie, we sell computers! You’re my business partner in our computer company!”), and Mooney’s fronting teen star hyping up his killer dance moves alongside Redd, only to show off with the most heavily rehearsed but stiffly low-stakes steps imaginable.
I wanted to like the football sketch more than I did. For one thing, it’s Heidi Gardner’s first showcase of the season. Gardner is just one of those SNL performers who pop in characterization, a quality/skill most sketch performers would kill for. Here, as the inappropriately young, dim-bulb wife of a late-middle-aged football coach (Woody), Gardner was great as usual, although her former cheerleader turned second wife isn’t as vivid a creation as some of her best Update characters. Still, I like a sketch that seems headed one way (Coach Taylor-esque inspirational halftime speech), and then veers off into a completely unexpected direction (Gardner spills that Woody’s coach apparently has some very alarming genital problems). It’s always funnier in these kind of sketches when the show puts all of the resources behind, say, outfitting a full football team in pads and helmets, and then reveals that the joke is something entirely beside that point. The details (coach’s penis makes duck noises, and only his grandmother really knows how to put that vein back in place) are okay, but it’s some of the asides (from Woody and players Kenan and Kyle) that get the biggest laughs. (Finding out that Gardner’s former student was class of ’18, leaves Woody blurting “Don’t do the math!,” while Kenan—with the deadshot deadpan we’ll thankfully be getting for at least another season—responds too one last revelation with an underplayed, “And with that, I quit.”)
The first filmed piece of the season was a commercial parody making fun of the Downton Abbey movie which was as lovingly assembled and performed as it was placidly amusing. Sort of in line with the theme of the joke—that the stakes of the film seemed appropriately pitched to what the sketch pronounced the low-stakes nature of the conflicts therein. Which is maybe a little reductive of everyone’s favorite class conflict period melodrama porn, but the review line “It feel like watching the sun set on white people as a whole” is far, far better. That it all turned out to be stealth marketing for the newJoker movie (“It’s not perfect, but at least stuff happens”) is more effort than traditional when it comes to putting a bow on a sketch, so I’ll allow it.
The truly bad sketches tonight can be found in the political comedy report below (shocker there), but the long, long setup to that giant Cheeto getting pulverized in a fan was straight-up Dean Martin Show clumsy. Everyone involved was fine (Cecily Strong’s reporter abandoned all pretense of finding her field piece on the world’s largest Cheeto museum newsworthy once the dust hit the fan), but if we know where the slapstick joke is going right from the start, then the payoff had better be a lot more smooth and shocking. I did appreciate how committed the show was to showering the cast and stage with what looked like a wheelbarrow-full of orange cheese powder (and here’s to the stage crew who no doubt worked miracles during the ad break), but, meh.
Advertisement
Weekend Update update
While SNL’s topical comedy was a mixed, if largely bland, bag tonight, at least Jost and Che came out throwing jabs—for a little while. This was the shortest Update I can remember in ages, and while some of that seemingly comes down to one or more correspondent pieces not making the cut (welcome back, Big Papi!), the anchors zipped past an overflowing news cycle with a speed suggesting something like a structural plan. Jost was unsparing, as far as Jost goes, in labeling the most recent (as of midnight anyway) Trump administration scandal “a shady, Mafia-style shakedown of the Ukraine,” and correcting Trump’s D-minus in English Twitter attack on Democratic Representative Adam Schiff by apologizing to Trump for being “a grammar Nazi.” (“I know you hate one of those things.”) Che’s first news riff of the year (on impeachment) pivoted on the idea that he, and a lot of people, don’t really know how impeachment works, which is likely very true (although not for Che, c’mon), but hardly the sharpest take on the fact that the country’s in for a Stupid Watergate of heretofore unimagined scope.
After that, it was all jokes about licking camel-balls, vegan Disney, and the CEO of vape-maker Juul (Jost calling him “a can of Four Loko with a sex addiction” made me laugh), then big Papi, and a quick exit. I will say that Che’s joke about the new catalog of white power symbols including a thumbs-up photo of Colin Jost was his edgiest dig at his desk partner’s prep school persona ever, doubled down when Jost capped his next joke with a smirking thumbs-up.
Kenan can do Big Papi any time. I surrender. As is always the case, the now-retired Red Sox legend’s first Update gig was the best, but Kenan channeling David Ortiz’s outsize enthusiasm and questionable food portion choices and marketing opportunities is just funny. Does it help that I may be the biggest Ortiz worshipper on the planet? It might, which is to say that I genuinely started counting kidneys when some jerk shot Ortiz in the gut earlier this year, something Thompson summed up with a one-word response to Jost asking how his summer went. (“Bad!”) If there’s one complaint I’ve got here, it’s that the humor about Ortiz getting shot in the Dominican Republic turned on making fun of how backward the DR is, when Ortiz himself is fiercely proud of his home country. (He did get flown to Mass General for treatment, thanks to Red Sox ownership, but that’s likely more a fact of John Henry’s love and gratitude for Ortiz, and I’m boring everyone already.) Anyway, keep getting well, big man.
Advertisement
“What do you call that act?” “The Californians!”—Recurring sketch report
As noted, Big Papi is always welcome. Others, not so much. Observe . . .
“It was my understanding there would be no math”—Political comedy report
So much for hope. Look, nobody (especially Lorne’s number one on the speed dial, Alec Baldwin) thought that a Baldwin Trump would be anything but a short term lark. But whatever heat Baldwin brought in getting under the leathery skin of someone the vocally liberal Baldwin genuinely despises dissipated almost immediately after its debut, despite ratings, Emmy, and Trump’s Twitter account heat. It’s confessedly lazy lampooning in practice from Baldwin (who can do a stellar impression or two), relying on exaggerated mannerisms and makeup, and precious little character insight. (As to how you get inside the head of someone so cosmically dim and narcissistically self-deluded, ask Anthony Atamanuik, who Baldwin himself suggested as his replacement for one shining moment, seemingly getting over his professional jealously over someone doing the exact same job approximately twice as well.) I’ve said before that SNL’s best Trump work has been done with Trump/Baldwin himself largelyin absentia, allowing the writers a chance to come at the subject from angles other than a fish-mouth, bronzer, and whatever male Trump henchman Kate McKinnon’s playing that week.
Advertisement
Well, Kate played the farcically imploding Rudy Giuliani in this season’s first cold open, with Aidy as a running-for-cover William Barr, Alex Moffat gleefully spilling treasonous secrets as his still-funny Eric Trump alongside Mikey Day’s Don Jr., Cecily’s always-welcome hype-propagandist Jeanine Pirro, and Chris Redd’s Kanye and Kenan’s Don King, jumping the Trump train on behalf of the “black whackadoo” contingent. And there was Baldwin, whose biggest joke hinged on Donald Trump not knowing that pay cable fixer Ray Donovan is fictional, calling the the visiting Liev Schreiber for help. So, that’s the joke. Trump dumb. Dumb old Trump. Kicking off a season 45 airing in the midst of Donald Trump’s steamrolling of every norm and balance in the Constitution, outright trumpeting white supremacist language at the U.N., (still) caging babies, blatantly plundering public coffers for personal gain, waging a campaign designed to preserve America as a white ethno-state, and literally bragging about that whole Michael Palin-esque “Nice Ukraine you got ’ere—shame if anyfin’ happened to it” effort to undermine an American presidential election with “Trump dumb” is exactly as dispiritingly toothless and spent as my worst predictions. At least new featured player Bowen Yang got to play his very solid Kim Jong-un again. (Oh, and praising murderous authoritarians over America’s democratic allies. Forgot that one.)
Luckily, what tonight’s premiere lacked in quality impeachment material, it made up in quantity, as three sketches (plus Update) were built around the fact that, one way or another, things are coming to a head. But if the cold open was glib and lukewarm on the subject, the Democratic town hall was an outright embarrassment of pandering guest spots and deadeningly tone-deaf mischaracterization. There were laughs—bringing in the glorious Maya Rudolph to play Kamala Harris at least promises a Baldwin upgrade going forward, should she decide to moonlight from peerlessly ushering in America’s puberty and judging humanity’s fitness to exist. But for all the things about Harris’ campaign to focus on (her dismantling Trump lackeys in Senate hearings, her record on crime, her thunder being routinely shunted to white candidates in media stories), portraying her as a catchphrase-spewing attenion-seeker isn’t just lazy, it’s irresponsible comedy. (Maya, however, nails the running joke of Harris pitching herself as the next TNT or USA badass lady lawyer. Funny’s funny.) SNL is still all-in on exporting cast jobs to high-profile guests, though, as Larry David swung by as Bernie Sanders again. David’s Sanders, too, is a funny, funny caricature, and his Bernie is David’s crotchety ranter aged up a few decades. But again, this is supposed to be a sketch about the Democratic candidates’ positions on impeachment, so having David’s major turn be about Bernie not being able to work his TV remote is satirical malpractice once more.
Advertisement
And I get that the joke of the sketch is laid out by moderator Cecily Strong as the Democrats choosing their wonted “muddled, 10-person debate” strategy for dealing with their political opposites’ more, let’s call it, wantonly ruthless power-grabs. But for the SNL machine to gaze over the smoldering news landscape concerning the gathering impeachment shitstorm and decide that “watery, irrelevantly inoffensive celebrity impression” was the direction to go in suggests that it’s Saturday Night Live, rather than the Democrats, who can’t focus up and do the damned job.
Better—like, significantly better—was Kenan’s turn on a fictional news roundtable show as the one pundit skeptical that, this time, Trump’s out-in-the-open, caught-red-handed criminality and straight-up sliminess will finally do him in. It’s never spoken aloud in the sketch, but the subtext that Kenan’s catchphrase, “Ain’t nothing gonna happen,” stems from him being the one black person on the panel, whose lifelong experience with how American institutions operate to protect themselves at the expense of the common good leaves him immune to his white colleagues’ “We got him this time!” optimism. Kenan’s tremendous here, finding just the right note of forbearance in his subtle mockery of his co-panelists once more thinking that simple, empirical evidence of oath-breaking wrongdoing will sway enough GOP lawmakers and white Americans to actually take a stand. The flashback gags in which his colleagues have the exact same reaction to an assiduously if incompletely compiled roster of past scandals (calling Mexicans rapists and Nazis very fine people; the Mueller Report’s findings on obstruction of justice; welcoming election interference by a hostile foreign power; mocking journalist Serge Kovaleski’s physical disabilities; that whole porn star payoff thing; that whole bragging about sexual assault thing) offers Kenan the chance to extend his character’s shtick with marvelous delicacy, never quite tipping over into outright contempt, but maintaining a knowing sympathy. (“Ohh, snap! Not Adam ‘The Hammer’ Schiff?!,” is as close to that as he gets.) It was the smartest of the three sketches by a long shot, and worth two Baldwin cold opens at least.
Advertisement
And, since we’re live, we got our first live TV cock-up of the season, and it was a doozy. Not just because some poor wardrobe person blew her cue to do a quick change on Aidy during one flashback gag, but because it gave Aidy a chance to be delightful. Breaking is a long SNL tradition, but one best enjoyed as a rare, wall-busting accident than, say, Jimmy Fallon and Horatio Sanz consistently giggling like they just discovered where the pot brownies are kept. I recognize I was harsh about the klutzy physicality in the Cheeto sketch, but Aidy and company here made the occasionally raggedy live television experience pretty irresistibly delightful before pulling it together like the pros they are.
I am hip to the musics of today
Seventeen-year-old phenom Billie Eilish brought along a high-concept for her first number, “Bad Guy,” starting out seemingly content to sing her hit on a Willy Wonka-style forced perspective room set before grabbing everyone’s attention by climbing up the walls and over the ceiling. It’s a grabby gimmick, pulled off with aplomb by the SNL technical team, and if Eilish’s rotating-set choreography left her vocals sounding especially beholden to the guide track, well, it was still neat. (And cite Fred Astaire all you want, but we all know that nobody pulled off this gag better than Boogaloo Shrimp.) Her second number, the very pretty “I Love You,” alongside brother Finneas, was as stripped down heartfelt as the first one was splashy. Eilish might suggest April Ludgate as pop star, but she wasn’t bad.
Most/Least valuable Not Ready For Prime Time Player
Aidy, even without the giggle-fits, was just delightful all night, with Kenan a tight second, and Kate and Cecily right there. With all the speculation in the off season, it’s nice to see them all back (sniff, I miss you, Leslie), as everyone else looks to make their mark. On that front, Bowen Yang made a particularly strong debut, the leap from the writers room to featured player showing him more than capable onscreen. Other (surviving) new hire Chloe Fineman didn’t get as much to do, although the fact that the noted impressionist’s Marianne Williamson got the nod over resident old pro Kate McKinnon’s (auditioned elsewhere over the summer), is a bracing vote of confidence. Ego Nwodim started out the season getting shunted off to the side once more. I think she had one line tonight, a sweat-inducing position in one’s second year. Hang in there. It doesn’t always happen at first. Or second. Just hang in there, okay?
Advertisement
“What the hell is that thing?”—The Ten-To-Oneland Report
We never need another apple-picking sketch, but that’s because it was a fine concept, exquisitely carried off. Kate and Aidy teaming up to promote some other overrated leisure businesses, however? Work that franchise. (Some suggestions: Snowmobiling, whale watching, dude ranch. You’re welcome.)
Advertisement
Stray observations
McKinnon’s Elizabeth Warren touts her energy level as being that of “a mother of five boys who all play different sports.”
Harrelson’s Biden, on his shaky lead in the polls: “I’m like plastic straws. I’ve been around forever, I’ve always worked, and now you’re mad at me.”
“Oh oh, here come the transcripts! Because if there’s anything Americans like, it’s reading.”
“They’re good boys, but if they pull you off the hayride, fight like hell,” Harrelson’s Hank advises apple pickers concerning the venue’s haunted hayride teens.
Activist Woody wears a Greta Thunberg t-shirt in the goodnights and decries environmental crimes in his monologue. Thankfully, he did not feel the need to apologize to Fox News in either case.
Also during the goodnights, Aidy Bryant made a point to direct the audience’s attention to new kids Fineman and Yang, because Aidy is, as noted, delightful.
Sigh. And speaking of this off season’s new hires, here’s all I’ve got about Shane Gillis. He didn’t get un-hired from a great gig for an “edgy” joke—he got shit-canned for racial slurs that were in no way framed as jokes. (His Twitter response to getting fired threw in a defiantly unfunny further bit of racial trolling, just to show the rightness of the decision.) Being a bigot increasingly has consequences, even for mediocre white guys.
That said, the idea that Gillis’ hiring, as has been reported, was intended to placate conservative viewers went about as terribly as such a move inevitably would. The problem with SNL’s hit-or-miss political content has never been that the show is a bastion of liberalism—it’s that Lorne Michaels has long seemed to view political neutrality as some sort of recipe for not pissing anyone off enough to hurt his show. If there’s a smart joke to be made, regardless of the political issue or figure involved, I guarantee there are writers with smarter takes than the ones that traditionally get on the air. Saturday Night Live might be an institution, but someone needs to convince Lorne it doesn’t have to be run like a public utility.
Once last thing before never talking about Shane Gillis again—I’ve heard some people engaging in the internet’s number one pastime of turning grievances into farfetched victimhood fantasies. Gillis wasn’t brought on just so he could be fired—SNL just remains woefully out of touch and sloppy when it comes to vetting and judging talent. Gillis was a lousy hire whose unsuitability was uncovered by the public in a matter of hours after he was announced, and it’s legit embarrassing how terrible Saturday Night Live remains at this.
And we’re back with the A.V. Club’s coverage of the 45th season of Saturday Night Live. I’m Dennis, and, as ever, it’s fun to be back. No, seriously.
Martin Scorsese ranges towards extremes, which is why he’ll be a manic show boater in one movie and practice rigorous self-abnegation in the next. But his gingerly-paced, three-and-a-half-hour The Irishman is something new: a self-abnegation movie set in the place where he normally showboats — the gangster dens of New York and other urban crime hubs, among bosses, lackeys, hitmen, and their families, real and “made.” Union halls, too, since the film is built around the 1975 killing (presumed, no body found) of Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa. By design, it’s an old man’s movie, and not just because it’s narrated by the elderly title character, Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro), from a wheelchair in a Catholic convalescent home. Scorsese has consciously put a cap on his adrenaline. Enriched beyond his dreams by the folks at Netflix and pressed to assemble a veritable Rat Pack — aging Scorsese vets De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Harvey Keitel, plus Al Pacino, a guest star from the other landmark gangster movie of his era, The Godfather — the director has made his most stylishly daring film: one that is pointedly sapped of style.
Consider the violence. The Irishman has no flashy-set-piece killings, no whip-pans to carnage, no scenes of mayhem suitable for re-watching while playing air-guitar. (No Rolling Stones!) For a hit in a barbershop, the camera follows the killers from behind and then comes to rest in front of some flowers — we only hear the shots. Sheeran fought in some of the grisliest, most protracted battles in World War II’s European theater (122 days in Anzio), and the detachment with which he came home to America seeps into all the film’s murders. It’s ugly, a waste, but it’s what it is. This is not De Niro the mythic executioner who vaulted over roofs in The Godfather Part II or embodied the dark soul of urban paranoia in Taxi Driver. He’s not agile or picturesque and certainly not courageous. Scorsese stages his kills as brusque, arrhythmic, ungainly — pop-pop-pop from behind and that’s it. Apart from his Judas Iscariot moment (betrayal being a lifelong Scorsese fixation), Sheeran does what he’s told to do with no evident emotion. It’s a job, like house painting.
The Irishman is, in fact, closely based on Charles Brandt’s I Heard You Paint Houses: Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran & Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa. It’s a good, messy book that further dispelled (for at least one reader) the conclusion that Kennedy was assassinated by a lone nut who was then spontaneously taken out by a grieving nightclub owner. The paint is blood, the patois representative of how gangsters talk in Steven Zaillian’s subtle, shapely screenplay. Even the most bloodcurdling figures like Tony Salerno (Domenick Lombardozzi) speak in euphemism and metaphor, not because they’re poets but because they’re disconnected from the horror they perpetrate. They’re thoroughly banal. Al Pacino’s Hoffa seems to earn the bosses’ wrath not only for threatening to take control of the Teamsters’ pension fund but for being blunt, unmannerly.
The movie is framed by Frank’s final days in a convalescent home, but it’s largely a flashback with its own flashbacks. The main thread is a long but mundane ’75 road trip with Frank at the wheel, his sometime boss and patron Russell Bufalino (Pesci) in the passenger seat, and the men’s wives in the back. They’re headed to a wedding with stops to collect payments from business owners on the way, but the vibe is so flat that it’s eerie. Something bad is coming, which is why Frank can’t get it out of his head — but he also wants to tell us how he met Bufalino (cute, in a gas station), how he made his bones stealing sides of meat, and how he began to blow up cars and warehouses and finally people for the likes of Russ and Angelo Bruno (Keitel) and Felix “Skinny Razor” DiTullio (Bobby Cannavale). Most of these men are as colorless as they are powerful — apart, of course, from Hoffa, for whom Frank goes to work at Bufalino’s request as an aide and bodyguard.
The Irishman gives you no indication that this is the Teamsters’ last hurrah, that the future — sans Hoffa, under Ronald Reagan — would make strikebreaking respectably mainstream. In the early part of the film, their antagonist is President John F. Kennedy and his brother, the attorney general, who launches a campaign against organized crime that organized criminals find inexplicable given their help (in Illinois in particular) in securing Kennedy the presidency. The bosses and the unions will stick with Kennedy because he has promised to help them reclaim their precious Havana from Castro; but after Frank delivers a truckload of weapons to a motley group of soldiers in South Florida, things go, well, South.
The attorney general’s grilling of Hoffa is rich in period detail, but the movie is not designed as an epic, like The Aviator. It’s a film of faces. Odd faces, at times. Faces that — thanks to computer “de-aging” — don’t always match the voices and bodies. Grateful to relive the past with these beloved movie stars, I mostly pushed the dermal irregularities from my mind, though when Pesci’s Bufalino phones Hoffa to recommend “that kid I was talkin’ to you about,” it takes a moment to register it’s De Niro. The time machine can travel only so far back.
But it’s great to see De Niro back with Scorsese, who needed a break from Leo and all those kid actors. After years of doing anything and everything and not seeming fully invested (like Anjelica Huston, I’ve wondered, How big is his nut?), De Niro is once more inspired to test himself. His Frank is a man who feels nothing specific yet is in evident pain throughout — which sometimes manifests itself in a toothless grimace that recalls Bela Lugosi but more often translates into stammers that suggest inner panic. He is most of all befuddled by his own actions — a weird but fascinating quality in a protagonist. And who can resist seeing him across from Keitel and Pesci?
At the premiere New York Film Festival press screening, I heard all sorts of huzzahs about Pacino — and he is wonderful — but it’s Pesci who thrilled me to the core. A pop-top in Raging Bull and especially Goodfellas and Casino, he plays Bufalino as almost supernaturally focused and watchful, always hypersensitive to other peoples’ rhythms. Who could imagine Pesci triumphing as a man who looks for equilibrium, who seeks to modulate every encounter, who accepts that murder is inevitable but sadly, seeing in it a sign of failure? I thank the gods of acting that he came out of retirement to do this.
And Pacino? Scorsese nudges him out of his familiar rhythms, evidently refusing to let him do the kind of freestyle acting that he fancies is bebop but is more often ham. This is a “head” Pacino performance, not a cojones one. On the stump, Pacino’s shoulders go stiff and he jerks in the manner of Richard Nixon — but Nixon’s manner might well have rubbed off on the real Hoffa. It’s plausible. Zaillian’s firm dramatic beats keep Pacino in the moment, and it’s a joy to see him go eye to eye with the superb Stephen Graham as the febrile Anthony Provenzano (Tony Pro), each man staring daggers that they seem one moment away from materializing and flinging. Most of all, Pacino lets you feel Hoffa’s relish for the job, which is partly legitimate and partly based on patronage and bribes and occasional rough stuff. It merges with Pacino’s relish for these co-stars and this script.
It’s fun to see Welker White as Hoffa’s wily wife, Jo — White was the girl with the hat in the coked-up climax of Goodfellas — along with assorted not-de-aged faces of the actors playing mobsters and union men. But the subplot featuring Frank’s hyper-attentive daughter Peggy (Lucy Gallina as a girl, Anna Paquin grown up) isn’t woven gracefully into the narrative and sticks out.
The Irishman (which will have a limited theatrical run beginning November 1 and head to Netflix on November 27) doesn’t fully earn its epic running time. But it’s overlong, it’s not overscaled. When Scorsese sets out to make an epic — in, say, The Aviator or Gangs of New York — he often loses the pulse or goes to too flamboyant lengths to speed it up. After Raging Bull, his adrenaline was a little suspect, much of it born of real filmmaking passion but some of it spurious, suggesting a chef who snorts a line of coke and dances around a kitchen yelling, “Can I cook!” There’s a faint suggestion here that he regrets some of his past pyrotechnics, that he sacrificed depth for momentum. For Scorsese, the slowing-down in The Irishman is radical, and it pays off in the long series of final scenes in which the characters are too old to move as they once did. They can’t hide inside motion, and so Scorsese doesn’t — and the upshot is one of his most satisfying films in decades.
Metallica lead singer James Hetfield has re-entered rehab, forcing the band to has postpone its upcoming concert tour in Australia and New Zealand.
“As most of you probably know, our brother James has been struggling with addiction on and off for many years. He has now, unfortunately, had to re-enter a treatment program to work on his recovery again,” the band announced in a string of tweets on Friday.
The 56-year-old singer-songwriter has previously discussed his struggles with addiction and alcoholism, particularly in the 2004 documentary “Metallica: Some Kind of Monster.”
“Fear was a big motivator in that for me,” told podcaster Joe Rogan two years ago. “Losing my family, that was the thing that scared me so much, that was the bottom I hit, that my family is going to go away because of my behaviors that I brought home from the road. I got kicked out of my house by my wife, I was living on my own somewhere, I did not want that. Maybe as part of my upbringing, my family kind of disintegrated when I was a kid. Father left, mother passed away, had to live with my brother, and then kind of just, where did my stuff go? It just kind of floated away, and I do not want that happening. No matter what’s going on, we’re going to talk this stuff out, and make it work.”
The statement by the band, which also includes drummer Lars Ulrich, guitarist Kirk Hammett and bassist Rob Trujillo, said that tickets already purchased would be refunded.
