The Los Angeles Lakers had to figure out a way to deal with Jimmy Butler following his Herculean effort in the Miami Heat’s Game 3 win. Butler had the third 40-point triple-double in NBA Finals history in Game 3, navigating Miami to a win that looked like a potential springboard to turning the series around.
Then, the Lakers came out and won Game 4 behind a suffocating defense, good performances by their two stars, and plenty of help from their supporting cast. It also helped that Butler wasn’t nearly as dominant despite having a very solid game, due in large part to the fact that Los Angeles gave Anthony Davis the job of keeping him in check — according to NBA.com’s tracking data, Davis spent more time as Butler’s primary defender than anyone else, and the runner-up for the 2019-20 Defensive Player of the Year Award put the clamps on Miami’s star.
According to Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports, this wasn’t a tactical decision by the Lakers’ coaching staff. Instead, Davis asked that he be given this assignment following Butler’s performance on Sunday night.
After that game, privately, a frustrated Davis alerted teammates and coaches that he needed to be glued to Butler, sources told Yahoo Sports.
And in Monday’s practice, Davis was officially given the assignment he wanted. After the ball was tipped and when the Heat got their first offensive possession, the tone was set when Davis shadowed Butler.
After Game 4, Davis discussed getting the Butler assignment, saying, “I just tried to be locked in to him. We know that the past … the last game, he kind of just took over and imposed his will on the game on both ends of the floor, and we just tried to give him a different look. Tried to make him shoot over a contested hand, finishing over the length at the rim. Just make it tough for him. It was very easy for him in Game 3. We just wanted to switch it up. I wanted to use a lot of my energy on the defensive end, knowing the other guys on the team were going to make up the absence for me on the offensive end.”
Davis’ gravity on the defensive end of the floor is nigh unparalleled in the league, whether he’s guarding someone 1-on-1 or operating as one of the most fearsome help defenders in basketball. Butler scored 22 points and doled out nine assists on Tuesday, which is hardly an off night, but only connected on eight of his 17 field goal attempts and didn’t spend a ton of time at the free throw line, only shooting seven shots from the charity stripe. Completely stopping a player of his caliber altogether is very, very hard, but the Lakers just needed to slow him down. Davis did that, and as a result, L.A. is one game away from lifting the Larry O’Brien trophy.
Juice WRLD’s legacy lives on through his music and through his Live Free 999 Fund, founded posthumously in his honor. The foundation was formed at the beginning of the year in order to support young people through a variety of initiatives. Now, with the organization’s biggest donation yet, Live Free 999 Fund has gifted a massive array of instruments to the rapper’s former middle school.
The large donation made it possible for the school, Deer Creek Christian School, to have a fully-equipped orchestra. Live Free 999 Fund even provided instruments for students as young as pre-school.
Juice’s mother, Carmela Wallace, who established the Live Free 999 Fund, said in a statement that the rapper’s eighth-grade teacher Lannaea Alexander impacted his life. Wallace praised Alexander for having “a profound effect on my son’s life, and I have never forgotten her positive influence on him and the other students under her tutelage.”
Alexander, who is now the school’s principal, commented on the rapper’s talent and thanked the organization for their generous donation: “Jarad’s positivity and immense talent affected everyone who came into his presence. His spirit can very much be felt in the heartbeat of our school’s mission and within the very walls and floors of the school building itself. We are immensely grateful to accept this gift from Carmela and Jarad which will enable us to offer a robust music education for our students at Deer Creek Christian School.”
Find more information about the Live Free 999 Fund here.
The upcoming holiday season might be extra challenging to navigate this year with group gatherings remaining a bad idea for months to come. What will you do to fill those hours? Netflix has you covered with sleighs full of content, including the traditional and not-so-typical holiday offerings.
Plenty of original offerings are on the way, including Dolly Parton’s delight of a Christmas gift to the world. Kurt Russell will return as the coolest Santa around to help put a stop to all the mayhem-loving grinches out there, and Shondaland’s bringing us a dance-filled wonderland while Emma Roberts has the festive-romcom corner all tied up. Oh, and expect aliens and a heist and more of The Great British Baking Show to counteract the Captain Underpants-loving young man in the next room.
Here’s everything coming to Netflix for this holiday season.
Holidate (Netflix film streaming 10/28)
As unexpected as it sounds, McG produces this early arrival. Emma Roberts and Luke Bracey star as two strangers who hate the holidays, so they pledge to be each other’s date for every blasted family-and-friends occasion for the next year. They have absolutely no romantic interest in each other, so you know how this will turn out, right? Well, Kristin Chenoweth co-stars, and she’s sure to spice things up.
Netflix
Dolly Parton’s Christmas on the Square (Netflix film streaming 11/22)
Everyone loves Dolly, so at least there’s one thing that you won’t be arguing about with your relatives this season. Featuring an album full of original Dolly music, this film (which co-stars Christine Baranski) revolves around how the coldest of hearts can melt in the face of family, love, and the enduring Christmas spirit of a small town.
Netflix
The Christmas Chronicles: Part Two (Netflix film streaming 11/25)
Kurt Russell’s hot Santa returns two years after Kate and Teddy saved Christmas. Kate’s now a cynical teenager with family drama, and for some reason, she’s not thrilled to spend Christmas in Cancun. The trouble truly begins when a mysterious toublemaker, Belsnickel, plots to destroy Christmas and make a ground zero out of the North Pole. Russell’s here to help save the day, and yes, Goldie Hawn’s along for the ride.
Netflix
Dance Dreams: Hot Chocolate Nutcracker (Netflix documentary streaming 11/27)
Shondaland brings us this career spotlight for Debbie Allen, who’s steadfastly guiding a group of stellar young dancers as they gear up to launch Allen’s yearly “Hot Chocolate Nutcracker” production. This film looks like a blast.
Here’s the full list of titles coming to Netflix for the holidays:
Avail. 10/28 Holidate
Avail. 11/1 A New York Christmas Wedding
Christmas Break-In
Elf Pets: A Fox Cub’s Christmas Tale
Elf Pets: Santa’s Reindeer Rescue
Elliot the Littlest Reindeer
Avail. 11/4 A Christmas Catch
Christmas With A Prince
Avail. 11/5 Operation Christmas Drop
Avail. 11/10 Dash & Lily
Avail. 11/13 Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey
Avail. 11/15 A Very Country Christmas
Hometown Holiday
Avail. 11/18 Holiday Home Makeover with Mr. Christmas
Avail. 11/19 The Princess Switch: Switched Again
Avail. 11/20 Alien Xmas
Avail. 11/22 Dolly Parton’s Christmas on the Square
In the five years since Will Butler released his first solo album Policy, he has toured the world, recorded and released Arcade Fire’s Everything Now, earned his master’s degree in public policy from Harvard, spent time raising his three children, and much more. All of these life experiences factored into the writing process of Generations, his second solo effort. The album bounces across a range of sonic inspirations from indie to alternative to punk to folk as Butler attempts to examine his role in the greater picture of American history.
To celebrate the new album, Butler talks space travel, Herman Melville, and clam chowder in the latest Indie Mixtape 20 Q&A.
What are four words you would use to describe your music?
Rock and roll, probably
It’s 2050 and the world hasn’t ended and people are still listening to your music. How would you like it to be remembered?
The pilot switched on the speakers — a Will Butler song started playing. “Earth was pretty decent sometimes, wasn’t it?” she said, as she pointed the starship towards Luyten b.
What’s your favorite city in the world to perform?
Dublin, if I must pick.
Who’s the person who has most inspired your work, and why?
Herman Melville. The mix of grand scope and dumb jokes. Big hearted but suspicious of a nothingness deep in the human soul. And so deeply American.
With that aim, we linked up with award-winning chef, tv-personality, author, and owner of New Orleans’ Johnny Sánchez, Chef Aarón Sánchez. As part of Hispanic Heritage month — which runs from September 15th through October 15th — the chef has partnered with Hispanic food brand Cacique to provide recipes and video tutorials on how to bring the authentic flavors of Mexico into your kitchen. But we wanted to go deeper so we put the Food Network star on the spot about everything from how to build the perfect taco to a breakdown of the various Mexican cheeses to the one thing Americans need to stop doing to their guacamole.
Let’s dive in!
…
Let’s start it off with some of the biggest mistakes people make when trying to make Mexican food at home?
Stop using unripe avocado. All it takes is a little bit of preparation to get your avocados ready to use. Stick them in a paper bag and leave them out on your counter for a few days in advance and voila, you’ll have that perfect creamy texture and flavor.
Stop using inauthentic ingredients. For example, when selecting a cheese for your recipe, in place of inauthentic options like cheddar, opt for traditional Mexican staples like Queso Fresco – the most popular Mexican-style cheese. Plus, going out to different neighborhoods and finding different/ethnic grocery stores is always a great idea. You can get to know different areas of your town or city while connecting more deeply with cultures by going to authentic stores where you’ll find exciting ingredients like an array of dried chiles to select from.
And stop being wasteful. Don’t toss it, use it all! Zest your limes before squeezing for the juice. Use the stems of your cilantro, save your veggie peels/scraps and bones in a ziplock bag and store in the freezer throughout the week to make stock on weekends that you can use for meals in the week to come. Using everything to create more flavor and stretch ingredients to make them useful for multiple meals is key, especially these days.
You’re a lover of spicy foods — what are your favorites types of salsa and which one should we start making at home?
I’m a big fan of doing salsa cruda, which is where you don’t roast any of the vegetables. I think that’s a good one. Taking the staple ingredients like jalapeño, onion, cilantro, beautiful ripe tomatoes, and just letting that speak for itself, maybe add some lime juice at the end — not being too fussy about measurements.
If you want to go the cooked salsa route, maybe chili guajillo or chile arbol for heat, with some garlic cloves. Pureeing that and simply using that as a base with a touch of vinegar, that’s a very simple straightforward hot sauce that anyone can make.
You spent time as a chef in San Francisco, Baltimore, New Orleans, New York City — all great food cities. If you had to choose a favorite, which city are you going with?
They’ve all added a lot to my culinary journey at different times of my career, but I have to say it was really exciting to be in San Francisco in the late ‘90s. It was right at the cusp of the dot-com boom and there were a lot of restaurants that were really doing the farm to table thing before it was popular and so en vogue. That was something that was really impressed upon me as a young cook, that was a really special time in San Francisco, just to see the diversity and the availability of product. But when it comes to New York City… that’s where I was brought up.
I think a lot of people would agree but it’s the best food city anywhere in the world. New York is where I laid my bones and had my first restaurant, my mom had a restaurant there for 30 years, so New York for me would have to be at the top.
I read that a lot of your cooking was heavily inspired by your mother and your grandmother. What do they still do better than you?
Hah, well they do everything better! Sadly my grandmother is passed for some time now, but I think the idea of doing traditional techniques and highlighting authentic ingredients is something my grandmother and my mom have really instilled in me as a cook and as a chef. I always gravitate towards ingredients that don’t need to be manipulated, that need to have space to shine on their own. Also, they act as a bridge and a conduit to my culture.
That’s a big reason why I’ve worked with Cacique — they’re a family-owned company and one of the leading Hispanic food brands in the country because they believe in the same principles that I do, the way I was brought up and grown. That link to authenticity.
Aaron Sanchez
Speaking of authenticity, I want to get your take on the molcajete. Do we all need one in our kitchens? I know the answer is yes, but I’m excited to hear you speak on it.
Absolutely! The molcajete is a very romantic tool that is used a lot in Mexican cooking. My mom told me this wonderful story that when there is a bride to be in Mexico it’s very typical for an older woman to pass down her molcajete to the soon to be bride, because the idea is that that molcajete has been “amansado” or seasoned and broken in and there is a lot of stories and great energies surrounding that molcajete if you get one passed down.
It’s very similar to a cast-iron skillet in the United States that your grandma might’ve made fried chicken or biscuits in or whatever, it has that same sort of levity and importance.
Could you give us a quick rundown of Mexican cheeses? I feel like when people want to describe Mexican cheeses they tend to describe them by their American counterparts when that’s not really fair or accurate.
The idea of a Monterey Jack cheese is what you would call in Mexico “queso blanco.” My family is from the North of Mexico and there is this huge Mennonite community and they would make this white cheese that somehow became Monterey Jack. Monterey is in the North of Mexico so it kind of got more of a generic moniker, but as far as talking about authentic cheeses, you gotta go with queso fresco ranchero.
Queso fresco is the most popular cheese in Mexico. It’s used as an accent, it adds a beautiful freshness and creaminess.
Then you have your queso cotija which I call my “seasoning cheese,” which has a very sharp saltiness to it that really elevates a lot of dishes. I actually like to use it on pasta to finish rather than a pecorino or parmesan.
Then you have the beautiful melting cheeses like the Queso Oaxaca, panela, all those different subsections of stringy high water content cheeses that melt beautifully.
The best rule of thumb is to taste them on their own, understand their flavor profile and purposes, and start implementing them in traditional dishes. That’ll help you know Mexican cheeses.
What has been the go-to quarantine snack that you’ve been throwing together around the house?
I’m always really engaged in what trends are in food. Especially right now — because we are in quarantine we have the chance to reflect. So lets rescue family recipes, or think about cooking one-pot dishes. I really believe that the next trend people are going to explore is homestyle flavors, making complex multipurpose sauces at home that can be used on multiple dishes.
Right now, I’m in love with this ragu, it has onions and carrots and mushrooms and is slow-braised with tomatoes, and Cacique Pork Chorizo really adds this beautiful seasoning and aromatic spices and then you put some ground beef in there as well and you serve that with some cheesy crispy toast points, that’s a recipe I keep making at home that my family loves.
Can you run us through what your definition of a perfect taco is?
When you think about tacos I think about them in three components. The tortilla is the base, whether its corn or flour. If its beef, or lamb, or mutton, it should go in a flour tortilla, because it has a little bit more body and it allows it to hold up to those braised flavors. Then you have your fillings, whether its a braise or carne asada or fish, that’s the center point. Then you have your salsa or garnish, whether that’s a roasted tomatillo salsa, or roasted tomato salsa, or a beautiful fresh chopped salsa. Then garnish with pickled onions, cabbage, pickled jalapeños, whatever you’re into, but the flavors need to work in synergy and harmony.
What are some Mexican ingredients that everyone should have as a pantry staple?
Beautiful crema Mexicana. You can use that for dressings or to finish dishes, or use it in a sweet capacity by serving it over fresh berries. You have to have a really great cheese a good seasoning cheese like a cotija or a queso fresco. Then make sure you have tons of cilantro, lime, all those things that wake up the palate. Pickle some chilis too!
It’s not hard to pickle chilis, just go to a farmers market, pick up some chilis, equal parts water, sugar, vinegar, and whatever spices you want and you have pickled vegetables very easily.
What do you think is a food trend that exists in Mexico that hasn’t popped off here in the States that we should start exploring?
If you go to a market place in Mexico you will see a lot of these countertop restaurants that have two or three items on the menu and are made specifically for the workers. We’re gonna start seeing more of that here. Homestyle casual restaurants that will not only cater to the Hispanic Latin community but cater to a larger audience. The way that we can continue to share aspects of our culture is by bringing home out to the masses
The way we eat at home should be shared with people in a restaurant setting.
Here in the states we have an obsession with guacamole, but that’s not the only way to utilize an avocado, what are some other ways?
If you go to Mexico you’ll see a salsa called Salsa Taquero which is basically a puree of avocado with chili, maybe some cilantro. You can tempura avocado and dip that in a nice creamy Mexican spiced sauce with some chipotle and boom that would be brilliant.
As far as guacamole though, don’t refrigerate your avocados, serve it room temperature and don’t overwork it, and never ever put raw garlic in your guacamole!
What other food cultures really inspire you outside of Mexican food?
Anything that has an abundance of flavor. Thai food, Vietnamese, I love Korean food because of all the different pickles, the bbq culture, marinated meats, I’m a huge fan of that.
When I cook at home I gravitate towards a little bit of Italian, some Lebanese cooking. Mexico is a huge melting pot, we have a big Lebanese community in Mexico, so you’ll see a lot of those dishes represented in Mexican cooking. I love those fresh Mediterranean flavors.
This question is a bit more personal but it’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about during quarantine as we become increasingly detached from our family. What advice do you have for second, third, fourth-generation Mexican Americans, on staying close to our Mexican roots?
Cuando pierdas la lengua pierdes tu patria. When you lose your tongue, you lose your country. Keep up with your Spanish. When I grew up parents didn’t want their children to be viewed as immigrants, so they only spoke English at home, but that narrative is no longer relevant.
Keep up with your Spanish, travel to Mexico, immerse yourself, visit where your family is from in Mexico, visit your ancestor’s village. Celebrate your legacy through food. That’s the best way to do it.
UK singer Ella Mai soared to the mainstream when she gained recognition for her playful track “Boo’d Up.” The song awarded Ella with a 2019 Grammy for Best R&B song and a Billboard Music Award for Top R&B Song. Ever since, the singer has remained out of the spotlight, but now, Ella is back with “Not Another Love Song,” her first solo track in two years.
Taking the soulful single to The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Ella gave a vibrant performance of the track. Taking the stage, Ella teems with warm feelings over her new love interest, but is hesitant to be direct with her emotions. “Deep in, swimmin’ in my feelings / I’ve been here before but it feels like I’m drownin’ / Sinkin’, am I overthinkin’? / Tell me, am I foolish to think you need me here,” she sings.
While “Not Another Love Song” marks her first solo effort in some time, the singer has been steadily working with other artists since her self-titled debut LP. The singer lent a verses on Mustard’s “Surface” with Ty Dolla Sign, Mahalia’s “What You Did,” and Usher’s “Don’t Waste My Time.”
Watch Ella Mai perform “Not Another Love Song” on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert above.
Ty Dolla Sign is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
The RX is Uproxx Music’s stamp of approval for the best albums, songs, and music stories throughout the year. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow, and signals the most important music being released throughout the year. The RX is the music you need, right now.
Bryson Tiller emerged in the music industry as a love-hungry 22-year-old, enthralled in the idea of winning someone’s heart, but naive to the things necessary to keep the heart he just obtained. His breakout hit “Don’t” was written from the perspective of a man who mistreated his partner, leaving her with the feeling of being undervalued and thus, seeking appreciation from outsiders. While he presents valiant efforts to literally right his wrongs to close out Trapsoul, it all proves to be too little too late. Exactly five years later, Bryson returns with his third album Anniversary, a project that aims to honor the success he relished with his 2015 debut, but one that also shows how his artistry developed in that last few years.
Anniversary presents moments where Trapsoul Bryson is a distant memory. The self-proclaimed Louisville slugger approaches life with a focus towards the long-term benefits rather than the short-term possibilities. Bryson conquers his fear of failure and makes his listeners aware of this mountain-top moment seconds into the album. “Worrying about or tryna figure out what they need to think or like it or not,” a voice says, speaking to Bryson on “Years Go By.” “Next thing you know, you ain’t gon’ wanna do this sh*t no more / But you really just gotta do you.” Tiller acknowledges the past three years he spent behind closed doors, looking for the right moment to emerge from his cave and return to his supporters who drilled him with tomatoes following his underwhelming 2017 effort, True To Self.
“I gave it my best and that’s exactly why I’m here,” he proclaims on “Keep Doing What You’re Doing.” The ill comments and sentiments of the past no longer matter to him and rightfully so. The confidence he once lost has returned and its newfound presence is sprinkled all throughout that very line. His earnings and accomplishments can’t and will not be diminished due to past failings. His late grandmother left him with the reminder to “keep doing what you’re doing,” something he reveals on the song, and Bryson returns with all intentions of doing exactly that.
Tiller’s Anniversary attempts to do just that, updating his Trapsoul repertoire with some of the same magic that captured his fans’ hearts in 2015. Hard-hitting production encloses the heartfelt qualms of his love life that he presents. He still displays his zealous approach to love, but nowadays, his endeavors in it no longer find him scrambling to repair his faults before the window of opportunity closes. Rather, he tries to convince his love interests of the enjoyable aspects of the pleasurable world he strives to bring them into. “Always Forever” floods listeners with frustrations from a man who gives it all to a woman not giving him enough while “Outta Time,” his long-awaited collaboration with Drake, finds him accessing the damage from a relationship he’s given so much to while asking the question: “Is it still worth it?” “I don’t know, know you, no, not anymore,” Bryson sings on his verse. “And I can’t wait ’til we find a way to part ways.”
Anniversary sports plenty of highlight moments. “Time To Change” is a celebratory offering that releases the energetic spirits Bryson holds within as a man who’s recognized his wrongs and returns to correct them. “You should see me now, I’m so different / I know you like to say I went distant,” he boasts. The album’s closer “Next To You” flaunts a lush sample of Flight Facilities’ “Heart Attack.” Just like Trapsoul’s “ Right My Wrongs,” Bryson ends Anniversary with a similar love-stricken message that keenly anticipates the moment of reconnection with a highly-desired partner. “I hate when you’re away from here,” he says longingly on the track. “So far away, countin’ the days, until you get here.”
Anniversary cleans up the rubble Bryson left behind with his sophomore album and celebrates his past successes while setting the scene to achieve even more in the future. Fans expected another monumental project to place beside Trapsoul with his return, but that’s not what Anniversary strives to do. It’s simply the ribbon-cutting ceremony that precedes what one can only hope is an upcoming stellar body of work. Bryson found his footing in the industry five years ago, and though he lost it for a short moment, the Louisville native returns the hope that it’s continued presence is a bit more permanent. It’s all he and his fans could hope for.
Anniversary is out now via RCA/Trapsoul. Get it here.
It’s been a big couple days for bears. Especially big bears. Bear 747, named after the jet plane, was crowned the biggest, fattest bear during this year’s Fat Bear Week. “This year he really packed on the pounds, looking like he was fat enough to hibernate in July and yet continuing to eat until his belly seemed to drag along the ground by late September,” the Katmai National Park and Preserve said in an announcement. Same.
This week also saw the release of the trailer for Black Bear, a meta-drama starring Aubrey Plaza as a filmmaker who stays at a lake house with a couple, played by Christopher Abbott and Sarah Gadon. Weirdness, jealously, and pettiness begin to ensue. There are no fat bears in the movie, which received strong reviews after premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, as far as I can tell, but it still looks good.
Here’s the official plot synopsis:
At a remote lake house in the Adirondack Mountains, a couple entertains an out-of-town guest looking for inspiration in her filmmaking. The group quickly falls into a calculated game of desire, manipulation, and jealousy, unaware of how dangerously intertwined their lives will soon become.
Directed and written by Lawrence Michael Levine, Black Bear is out on December 4.
It wasn’t long after Angel Olsen debuted her towering album All Mirrors that the singer returned to share Whole New Mess, a collection of demos that would eventually become her All Mirrors LP. Whole New Mess offers a completely different look at the songs, revealing Olsen’s raw, post-breakup blues through a simple acoustic guitar and her haunting vocals. Bringing her music to NPR’s Tiny Desk concert series, Olsen gives a peaceful performance of four of her songs.
Seated beneath an all-encompassing canopy of trees, Olsen kicks off her set with her Whole New Mess title track, one of two songs on the record which doesn’t have an All Mirrors counterpart. Next, Olsen moves into a rendition of her 2014 track “Iota,” which she says is about “wishing that all the world could see something for what it is at the same time.” Closing out the set, Olsen shares the soulful tracks “What It Is (What It Is)” and “Waving, Smiling.”
In a statement about “Waving, Smiling” ahead of her Tiny Desk appearance, Olsen said: “‘Waving, Smiling’ in my head is the last scene, a slow-motion realization of love not lost but at peace somewhere within myself. It’s the bittersweet end of a chapter of my life – it is the final acceptance that despite coming to an end all of that time was not lost or wasted.”
Watch Angel Olsen’s NPR Tiny Desk concert above and revisit our review of her recent album Whole New Messhere.
A couple of weeks ago I met a friend, outside, that I hadn’t seen in about six months, even though we only live about two miles from each other. Not long into our reunion, he tells me, not prefacing the blow, “Here’s why you’re annoying.” Summoning what little ego I have left these days, I braced for more. He continues, “Since March, I’ve tried to be positive. I’ve tried to tell myself that things will be back to normal somewhat soon and maybe life can return to some semblance of normal. Then I talk to you and it deflates me every time. And the annoying part is … you were right every single time.”
The thing is, he’s correct. I have both been right a lot and I’ve been pretty annoying. (When I have been wrong, it’s almost always been on the side of believing large corporations, like movie theaters and theme parks, would err on the side of caution and not decide to roll the dice with reopening and hope for the best.) And the fact I’ve been right a lot is infuriating because, and I’m guessing this won’t be a surprise: I am not an infectious disease expert, I am not a scientist, and I am not a doctor of any kind. The only thing I am is someone who reads things written about the virus by people who are all those aforementioned professions and listens to what they say and how this whole thing will turn out. And it turns out they are right and I just spout off whatever it is they are saying. And if I, someone who knows nothing, can be right most of the time just by listening to experts, it makes literally no sense that the people in charge of our health and safety can’t just do the same thing. I am livid. You should be livid. And then I watched Alex Gibney’s new documentary, Totally Under Control, and I wanted to scream.
Gibney’s doc paints a picture that the Trump Administration’s response to the coronavirus is, at the very least, incompetent and, more likely, criminal. It argues that they have literally botched everything and they’ve perhaps done it on purpose, which is pretty evident to anyone paying attention but Gibney puts all the pieces in order with a sobering and scorching result. Totally Under Control shows that Trump didn’t downplay the virus to invoke calm. He did so in an effort to keep the markets high so that he could win re-election. Honestly, after watching this film, it’s hard not to think that many involved with this administration should be in prison. (Literally one of the first talking heads we see in the film, The New York Times’ Michael Shear, now has Covid-19 from covering press briefings at the White House.)
The emotional epicenter of the film comes from Rick Bright, the former BARDA director who filed a whistleblower complaint against the Trump administration for their insistence that the CDC mass-produce hydroxychloroquine. Everything about this saga is maddening and, frankly, stupid. Gibney interviews the doctor who claims hydroxychloroquine is a miracle drug, which got the attention of Fox News, which got the attention of Trump – who then went all-in on a drug that nearly every medical professional says does not help (as evidenced by the fact that he himself has not been treated with it during his own battle with COVID). But since everything is stupid, Trump wanted it, so he got it. At least until Bright, who was out of other options, came forward to the media to explain the nonsense that was happening. Of course, he was fired two weeks later. And as he tells his story, he starts openly weeping as he explains how difficult it is to come forward in this administration. Opening the door for notoriety, ridicule from the president, and death threats.
It’s easy to say, with anything like Totally Under Control, that no one will care and nothing changes. I don’t believe that’s true. Yes, it’s true that Donald Trump’s ardent supporters won’t change their minds. There’s always going to be some goon ready to talk to a camera about what a great man the president is and how he fought COVID for you. But reality paints a different picture. The polls keep moving away from Trump. People are listening. People are paying attention. We are living through one of the most despicable performances by a president in American history and what Gibney does is piece together what we know so far: from the lack of initial response, to the botched testing, to states having to bypass the federal government to obtain much-needed PPE, to the corruption, to the ineptitude – literally everything this administration did was wrong. And here are the last eight months all laid out for us, and it’s infuriating.
Gibney finished his film just last week. I can’t help but imagine him finally locking the film, sending it off to his distributor and feeling some form of satisfaction that at least his film includes everything we know to date. Then I imagine him saying he needs to add one final thing, which comes in the form of a postscript during the credits: That, after all this, one day after the film was completed, Donald Trump announced that he has tested positive for Covid-19.
‘Totally Under Control’ will stream via VOD on October 13, and via Hulu on October 20.
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Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
