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The Disney executive who brought Taylor Swift into “Toy Story 5” should get a raise.
Getting Taylor to write a song for the movie — and raise awareness of the film by 5000% — has created a monster at the box office.
“Toy Story 5” has made $71 million in Thursday previews and Friday shows.
The fifth installment of the Pixar series is on its way to a $150 million – plus weekend.
Who knows how much Taylor gets? Even 1% of profits is worth. And just imagine, maybe she’ll sing “I Knew It, I Knew You” at her upcoming wedding. Ka ching!
No wonder Tom Hanks looked so relaxed on MSNOW at the Obama library opening. “Toy Story 5” will make at least $30 million more than its predecessor’s opening.
Here’s a fact: Andrew Stanton’s animated heart warmer has made $5 mil more in two days than “Disclosure Day” has made in over a week.
Kanye West is known all over the world as a virulent antisemite. Many countries have banned him from performing because of it.
Not so two American municipalities that are willing to pay their taxes to supporting him.
I told you already that Kanye has two shows coming up in Tampa on June 26th and 28th. The city owns the stadium, which is named for Raymond James Financial Services.
Raymond James is cool with Kanye having released a song called “Heil Hitler” and selling swastika t shirts. They’re good with it, man. They don’t mind have their name associated with Kanye, who lost gazillion dollar deals with Adidas, The Gap, Universal Music, and other companies who didn’t want to be associated with an outspoken lover of Hitler and hater of Jews.
Now I can tell you that San Antonio, Texas will celebrate America 250 with Kanye West. He’s booked into Alamo Stadium, which is owned by the city, on July 4th. What a way to celebrate the United States’ 250th birthday that with a man who once said: “I’m a bit sleepy tonight but when I wake up I’m going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE. The funny thing is I actually can’t be Anti Semitic because black people are actually Jew also You guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda.”
Remember the Alamo, San Antonio, one of the great embarrassingly racist episodes in US history. (It’s no wonder rent cars now!)
Not one of the three Kanye West shows in Tampa or San Antonio has sold out, by the way. And this is only using part of the stadium, because he can’t fill an entire stadium unless he gives away tickets.
Olivia Rodrigo has hit a home run with her third album.
“You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love” debuted at number 1 this week and the sales numbers were pretty spectacular.
Total copies sold is 470,000. Around 260,000 of that was from downloads and CDs and LPs.
The album, like the first two, is produced by Daniel Nigro, who’s 44, married with kids, and comes from Massapequa, Long Island. He’s masterminded the whole thing. Of the 13 tracks, three are already hit singles including “The Cure” and “Drop Dead.”
Rodrigo is just 23 years old, by the way, which I’ve been three times. Maybe four, at this point. She’s an only child, is mostly Filipino American, and so far has just been very nice and hasn’t done anything publicly offensive. I know, there’s time for that, but by now at that age Justin Bieber was spitting at people.
Olivia’s parents are a schoolteacher and a family therapist, although they must have quit those jobs by now, moved into a mansion, and dancing through its halls naked with bottles of Champagne. Good for them.
All in all, so far, so good. Bravo!
Rodrigo knocked Drake off the number 1 perch. Also on the charts: Michael Jackson is still selling around 100,000 albums a week thanks to his movie.
There was literally no one else like him as director of quality sitcoms. He was not only an Emmy winner, but the gold standard. If his name appeared in the opening credits on any show, you knew you were in for a treat.
First it was “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” and its spin offs “Rhoda,” “Phyllis,” and even the drama hit, “Lou Grant.” He also directed MTM’s “Bob Newhart Show,” as well as shows that that starred Betty White, Tony Randall, and Paul Sang.
Then came the beloved hit, “Taxi,” for which he directed almost every episode. There was also “Laverne and Shirley.”
If those weren’t enough, Burrows rose to new heights with “Will and Grace,” “Cheers,” “Frasier,” “3rd Rock from the Sun,” and “Friends.”
The last few months, he played himself on Lisa Kudrow’s cutting edge HBO comedy, “The Comeback.”
Burrows won 11 Emmy Awards over his career, with an extraordinary total of 43 nominations. Some trivia from the IMDB: Burrows was nominated for an Emmy for directing a comedy episode 24 times in 26 years, one nomination every year since 1980, excluding 1997 and 2004. He has won (as director) five times.
James Burrows brought an intelligence and class to every show, even ones we don’t remember like a Kelsey Grammer sitcom called “Back to You,” and something called “Gary Got Married.”
On Twitter, there are numerous tributes. Tony Danza said: “We have lost the greatest of all time. Jimmy Burrows. I know I wouldn’t be here without him.”
Burrows came from a showbiz family. His famous father, Abe Burrows, won a Pulitzer and a Tony for “How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying.” He also wrote, directed, or doctored countless Broadway hits. He was also a target of Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn’s blacklist in the 1950s, which could have ended his career. (Ironically, Jim Burrows years later directed Lee Grant — also blacklisted– in her sole TV comedy, “Fay,” from MTM.)
James Burrows’ family said in a statement: “We celebrate the extraordinary life and enduring legacy of James ‘Jimmy’ Burrows, who passed away peacefully today surrounded by his loving family. For more than five decades, Burrows was one of the most influential and beloved directors in television history. As a legendary director, mentor, and creative force, he helped shape generations of comedy and brought immeasurable joy to audiences around the world.”
Burrows’ death is a major loss. In September, the Emmy Awards had better give him a whole segment tribute.
You all went to see “Toy Story 5” last night just to hear your hero’s song, “I Knew It, I Knew You.”
“Toy Story 5” had a whopping night with $17.5 million in previews, breaking the record for the animated series by a lot. The last “Toy Story 4” did just $12 million in 2019 on preview night.
Are we really talking a $100 million plus weekend? I guess we are.
Is Joan Cusack selling the merch in her Chicago gift shop?
The power of Taylor just never ends. The song is number 2 on iTunes today, although it’s not a streaming smash. With the release of the new Olivia Rodrigo album, “I Knew It” is pushed down to number 19 on Spotify.
I’d love to know what cut Taylor gets with that song. She has points, no doubt about it.
What’s next? Wedding parties for Taylor at “Toy Story 5”?
That’s the movie made by Luca Guadagnino about Sam Altman and Chat GPT. “Artificial” is all locked and ready to go, but Amazon/MGM says they won’t release it.
How could they? Jeff Bezos is in business with Altman to the tune of $50 billion. And let’s not forget the $75 mil Bezos lavished on the flop Melania Trump documentary just to curry favor with our bloated orange maniac.
The movie, according to sources including Matt Belloni of Puck Newsletter, goes hard on Altman and on a lot of Bezos pals like Elon Musk.
The screenplay by Simon Rich — son of former New York Times power couple Frank Rich and Alex Witchel — was flagged a year ago in media circles that it could cause an uproar. But there was also a story intentionally planted that it was “boring” to throw off the depicted billionaires.
Well, Amazon/MGM has released a lot of boring movies, so that’s not the reason they’ve dumped it. The problem is that Warner Bros. and Paramount passed on the screenplay a long time ago, before they were corporate cousins owned by the censorious Ellisons. So you can scratch those two studios for taking it off Amazon’s hands.
That leaves Universal or Disney, one of which would have to take the flak from Altman, Musk and others in the film that tells the story of the time Altman left the company AI and then returned. As much as Aaron Sorkin is preparing the sequel to “The Social Network,” this movie sounds like it’s really the next chapter.
Are we surprised about Bezos saying ‘no’ to “Artificial”? I’m actually surprised it got made, to tell you the truth. Even with a sterling cast that includes Andrew Garfield, Yura Borisov, Monica Barbaro, and so on, “Artificial” should have thrown up red flags for Bezos immediately. After all, he’s rearranged the Washington Post to take out its bite. His movie studio certainly isn’t going to be allowed to cause trouble for his real billion dollar business.
Puck says CAA is handling the screenings for new potential buyers. That’s interesting because one of the actors in the film is Billie Lourd, daughter of CAA chief Bryan Lourd (her mother was Carrie Fisher). So CAA has incentive to find “Artificial” a new home, one that can afford its $50 million price tag and also be willing to promote it at film festivals and for awards.
Will this movie ever be released? Or will it be crushed by the system? There’s a lot here we don’t know or isn’t being said. So hang on, or ask ChatGPT what happens next.
I just finished watching a new documentary about charming music producer/manager/60s pop star Peter Asher and I could watch it all over again right now.
Anyone who loves music from the 60s, 70s, and 80s will see immediately that “Everywhere Man” (a play on “Nowhere Man”) is a missing piece of the rock and pop jigsaw puzzle. Placed in its proper spot, “Everything Man” makes the whole history much clearer.
It’s also a lot of fun because Peter — who Mike Myers maybe based Austin Powers’s look on — is an irascible rascal who knows how to tell his remarkable story.
It begins in London in the early 60s as two things happened: he and Gordon Waller begin singing together as Peter and Gordon, and Paul McCartney dates Peter’s actress sister, Jane. Paul moves into the Asher house, where he and John Lennon use the downstairs music room to write songs like “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” Paul writes a hit for Peter and Gordon called “A World Without Love,” and we are off to the races.
By the late 60s, Peter is running the Beatles’ new Apple Records and discovers James Taylor, who makes his first album. (Asher’s also responsible for the early hits by Badfinger and Mary Hopkin, among others). Peter and James move to Los Angeles, come upon Carole King and Linda Ronstadt on the west coast music scene, and gold records fall out of the sky like stars from heaven.
Before I was lucky enough to meet Peter around 1990, he was one of my music heroes like Richard Perry and Phil Ramone. They were the Mt. Rushmore of pop producing during the wild heyday circa 1970-77. Nothing stopped them. Their taste was impeccable, as were their music chops. So much of our attributive musical soundtrack is because of them.
More recently, Peter launched a popular touring show (including a later Badfinger drummer, Jeff Alan Ross) in which he tells his story with a live band, audio, and video clips. It’s not to be missed. (Peter also hosts a chatty and fun show on Sirius XM 18 called “From Me to You.”) The doc’s directors, Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine, smartly use the show as the foundation of the film, with Peter telling his own story live on stage and in narration.
The directors very cleverly lay out Peter’s history against the buzz of the Beatles and the British invasion, then tie it all together to Peter being instrumental in the West Coast music scene that gave us Linda Ronstadt, JD Souther, Andrew Gold, and so many others. There are very detailed interviews with Paul McCartney, Ronstadt and Taylor, as well as early pals like Steve Martin and Eric Idle, so that the picture gets clearer and clearer of how so many lasting icons were hatched. It’s because it seemed like Peter was everywhere, man.
The doc fits a lot in considering how much material there is, and they even left a few things out. But nothing vital is missing, and by the time Peter’s wife, Wendy, is talking about the dinners they used to have with Joni Mitchell every few days, your mind is blown. They don’t tell you that Peter won three Grammys. Two of them, for Producer of the Year, cover a wide range of time– 1978 and 1990. In 2003 came the third, for a Robin Williams comedy album. Earlier this year, Peter co-produced Barbra Streisand’s latest duets album.
“Everywhere Man” has a lot of music in it — I don’t know how they cleared all these songs. But we are the luckier for it. The doc rolls out across the country in theaters only starting today, and it’s gift. Go see it immediately.
Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt is responding to reports that he’s been hanging around with public enemy Peter Thiel.
The Hollywood Reporter reported that Gordon-Levitt — star of “Third Rock from the Sun” and “Flora and Sun,” as well many other films — had attended Thiel’s bizarre conferences.
The actor says he did go two conferences but has never met Thiel or his people. He says, “Sometimes it’s productive to engage with those we oppose.”
Thiel — worth an estimated $28 billion — is someone everyone should oppose. A close associate of Donald Trump, he’s the founder of PayPal, Palantir, and other nefarious companies.
Other Hollywood star cited by THR who went to Dialog conferences include Josh Brolin.actress Sophia Bush, “La La Land” composer Benj Pasek, and former Justin Bieber manager Scooter Braun.
David Letterman, Tom Hanks, Stephen Colbert, and dozens of celebrities sat in the blazing sun in Chicago today for the opening of the Obama Presidential library.
The speeches by Michelle and Barack Obama each were so intelligent and heart felt, so insightful, that they reminded me of what we’ve lost — at least temporarily — and the grotesque people destroying our country.
Stevie Wonder’s spectacular musical finale with Bruce Springsteen, Bono and The Edge, Jennifer Hudson, Common, Christina Aguilera, John Legend, The Roots and more was historic. Stevie spoke about first meeting the Obamas in 2004 and how they influenced him.
Stevie proclaimed: “Don’t let fear put your dreams to sleep.”
What a thrill to see the Bidens, Clintons, and the Bushes in this moment with the Obamas. They are all on a higher ground from our present “leadership.”
Obama really trumped Trump, putting on the real America 250 celebration that Trump could not produce.
