In 2000, actor and comedian Connor Ratliff booked a small role on HBO’s Band of Brothers. But the day before he was scheduled to shoot his scenes, he was fired from the miniseries supposedly because creator Tom Hanks thought he had “dead eyes.” Ratliff, understandably, has spent the last 20-plus years thinking about what one of the world’s most famous actors — and a famously nice guy, at that — has against his eyes.
So, he made a podcast about it.
Over the course of 30 episodes of Dead Eyes, Ratliff has spoken to Rian Johnson, Seth Rogen, Jon Hamm, D’Arcy Carden, Aparna Nancherla, and Judd Apatow, among others, about why Hanks fired him. It’s also a podcast about rejection, and although “not everyone has one that is so star-studded,” Ratliff told Vanity Fair, “everybody has some story like, ‘Boy, I really was feeling good and confident. And then I got thrown for a loop.’”
On Wednesday’s episode of Late Night with Seth Meyers, Ratliff revealed that he finally got in touch with Hanks and booked him for an episode of the podcast. “On March 10, for our 31st episode, our season three finale will feature my conversation with Tom Hanks,” he said, adding that “we hash out everything.” Here’s more with Vanity Fair:
“I was always of the mindset that if he remembers — great, because we’re gonna hear his side of it. If he doesn’t remember, then that’s also great. As long as we can unpack it. What we arrived at in the interview is completely satisfying to me. It was not what I expected. He did not hold back.”
You can watch the Late Night interview above, and listen to Dead Eyeshere.
Also, be sure to check out the hilarious The George Lucas Show, where Ratliff plays “retired filmmaker” George Lucas. Here’s the kind of madness you should expect:
Britney Spears has openly shared her feelings about her family in the months before and after her conservatorship came to an end, and it appears she subtly did so again with an Instagram post yesterday.
The image is formatted as a written test from elementary school. Shown is a three-part question, which asks, “Who is your hero,” “Who do you consider this person your hero,” and “Is there anything your hero is frightened of?” The respective answers, written in messy childlike handwriting, are “dad,” “he is brave,” and “mom.”
While most of Spears’ criticism about her family has been directed towards her father Jamie and her sister Jamie Lynn, this post appears to be along the same train of thought as a post Spears shared and deleted back in November, when she wrote, “My dad may have started the conservatorship 13 years ago .. but what people don’t know is is that my mom is the one who gave him the idea !!!! I will never get those years back …. she secretly ruined my life … and yes I will call her and Lou Taylor [Spears’ former business manager] out on it … so take your whole ‘I have NO IDEA what’s going on’ attitude and go f*ck yourself !!!! You know exactly what you did … my dad is not smart enough to ever think of a conservatorship ….. but tonight I will smile knowing I have a new life ahead of me !!!!”
At least, that was the general consensus before Stefani Germanotta stepped onto the scene. Considering even the greatest pop star of our era, Beyonce, had an uneasy relationship with the silver screen at best (Let’s be honest, Dreamgirls did her no real favors), the success that Lady Gaga has had in Hollywood is fairly unexpected. First as the waitress who made good in A Star Is Born, and now as Patrizia Reggiani in House Of Gucci, Gaga absolutely shines as a leading lady.
Both roles have made headlines for Gaga’s campy exaggeration — which some people have praised, and some people have mocked — but fans of Gaga’s music already knew that her irrefutable knack for storytelling is part of what made her an iconic pop star in the first place. When it comes to the art of exaggeration, and the dazzle of the spectacle, no one does it better than Gaga. Over the top is part of being at the top, and for this New York-born Italian superstar, nothing comes more naturally than overstatement.
Now that cinephiles are being exposed to her hyperbolic style as an actress, here’s a few moments from over the years during her musical career that showcase just how Gaga has always used exaggeration to great effect as a world-building tool.
Her absolutely unhinged 2009 VMAs performance of “Poker Face” into “Paparazzi” — complete with hanging messianic exit lift via wire, and blood dripping from her torso
Yes, she really began an award show performance laying flat on the ground, fallen chandelier cast to the side. Yes, the entire set’s backdrop was elaborate Rococo and late Baroque architecture for some reason. And yes, Gaga sings the entire song live while dancing with ten to fifteen other people, occasionally losing her breath, playing into the increasingly frantic nature of the performance. There’s a lengthy piano solo she plays with her heel up on the keys, there’s a moment where she walks with a cane and someone in a wheelchair is brought out like this might just be a madhouse… and when she gets up from the piano, what seemed like just a red bloom of accented color on her outfit is a full-blown bloodstain. The blood blooms all over her torso as Gaga keeps singing, eventually lifted out of the performance, above the stage on a wire. Puff looks just as confused as we all felt… this woman left nothing on stage. And you guys thought “Shallow” was campy? This was 2009 baby! Gaga was, in her own words, born this way.
The almost fifteen-minute “Marry The Night” video that served as a preview of what was to come on the silver screen
Though she’s always been known for lengthy, cinematic music videos, circa 2010-2011, her visuals began to get longer and longer, stretching from 2010’s nine-minute “Alejandro” epic, and spilling all the way into 2011’s almost fifteen-minute psycho-thriller clip for “Marry The Night.” As one of the last singles off the album, but the first song on her massive Born This Way, “Marry The Night” set the tone for what was coming next for Gaga in a lot of ways. But her starring role in the accompanying short film is one of the most beloved eve. In it, Gaga appears as a woman who had been admitted to a “clinic” and undergoes a tough surgery, and builds to shots of her as a ballerina in a dance studio, then moves to her getting dropped from the show (which seems analogous to her getting dropped by Def Jam). As she douses herself in cheerios, and breaks every mirror in her apartment, only to rise from the ashes later in the video, you’ll start to realize cette dramatique actrice has been onboard all along. The fact that she directed this video herself? Well, that’s just par for the course with Gaga.
Lady Gaga appears to jump from the heights of the top of the stadium to enter her Super Bowl halftime show performance
Speaking of wires and freaky airborne dramatics, nothing sums up Gaga’s flair for gilding the lily than her rather infamous Super Bowl jump, where CGI and special effects made it appear that she began the performance on top of the stadium in Houston, and jumped off the edge to the stage on the field. Of course, that jump seen ‘round the world spawned a whole slew of ‘splainer articles letting fans know not to try this at home, no matter how much the bangers on Joanne might be speaking to them. But only Gaga would orchestrate the illusion that she jumped off the edge of a massive stadium, only to calmly take the stage and perform after. The memes this move generated also helped begin a long history of the internet having their fun with Gaga’s over-the-top antics.
Gaga offers a bit of a roadmap for why she’s insisted on her absurdist tendencies have throughout her entire career
Then again, when you hear Gaga reflect on that 2009 VMA performance in her own words, all of it begins to make sense. In some of the earliest scenes of her 2017 Netflix documentary, Five Foot Two, Gaga reflects on the way male producers in the industry often use women up and spit them out, or just want them to be a “receptacle for their pain.” She shares that one of the ways she’s combated this and fought back against it is through the very absurdism she’s become so known for throughout her career.
“You felt like you’ve had to do, like, extreme sh*t to put yourself out of the category,” Mark Ronson offers around the 12-minute mark in the documentary. “What’s the methodology?” And she responds: “The methodology behind what I’ve done is that when they wanted me to be sexy or they wanted me to be pop, I always f*cking put some absurd spin on it that made me feel like I was still in control. So you know what? If I’m going to be sexy on the VMAs and sing about the “Paparazzi,” I’m going to do it while I’m bleeding to death and reminding you of what fame did to Marilyn Monroe.”
So far though, with her absurdism as armor, Gaga has gone farther in her journey with the fame monster than plenty of her predecessors. Perhaps if more famous women found a similar way to protect their spirit and maintain control while in the spotlight, we’d see more women attain the success Gaga has achieved. And in that sense, Gaga’s exaggeration truly is her greatest super power — because it keeps Stefani Germanotta safe.
Showtime’s newest drama Super Pumped dives into the gritty reality that is working at a tech start-up in the 2010s. Season one focuses on Uber and its CEO Travis Kalanick, who is famously not a nice guy.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as Uber’s real-life founder Kalanick in the latest Showtime drama Super Pumped: The Battle For Uber which premiered last week. Kalanick is, for lack of a better word, kind of a villain. The CEO went through many uphill battles to create the ride-sharing app, but also made many mistakes along the way, which led to his ultimate downfall in 2017. Kalanick stepped down from the company after a series of mishaps — including videos of Kalanick yelling at Uber drivers, and a long list of accusations of a toxic workplace. But before all that, when Uber’s popularity initially skyrocketed, the company almost merged with its biggest competitor: Lyft.
Many people thought that this was kind of a no-brainer: two ride-sharing apps joining to become one to become to ultimate taxi replacement. But, the deal actually never went through, obviously, since the two apps still co-exist. What happened? Well, as predicted, Uber didn’t want to spend the $9 Billion that Lyft was asking for.
In 2014, Uber tried to acquire the app with no success. Then, in 2019, Uber was prepared to buy Lyft for $7 Billion, but the ship had sailed, and Lyft rejected the idea, and instead stayed a separate entity.
Lyft of course has also had various blunders over the years, including sexual harassment claims from riders and ADA complaints. Though, there is still time for Uber to buy out to the app, now that Kalanick has left the company. Only time will tell. For now, you can watch Uber’s origin story on Super Pumped: The Battle For Uber on Showtime.
It’s been a little over a week since Kanye West held a listening event in Miami for his eleventh album, Donda 2, which featured appearances from Jack Harlow, Migos, Playboi Carti, Fivio Foreign, Alicia Keys, Pusha T, and more. Aside from the music that was premiered at the event, which was eventually released through Kanye’s Stem Player website, there were some big moments. At one point, Kanye angrily throw a microphone. On Wednesday, Kanye ran into some fans who asked him about that incident, which he then explained.
“It wasn’t about the sound,” Yeezy explained before revealing that he did not want to perform at the event last week. “It was the fact that I was told, one thing I was told was that I had to write the word ‘performance’ on the piece. But what I was giving you guys was performance art. I did these listening sessions when I dropped my album where I put a mask on and I give you this listening session and it’s an installation.”
He added, “And they basically forced me to mix Taco Bell and KFC. They basically forced to mix tequila with cognac. So right when I did the song and I saw myself grabbing this mic and it wasn’t my original idea, I was like, ‘I’m gonna throw this mic. Why am I doing this?’”
You can watch the mic toss and hear Kanye’s comments about it in the video above.
Jack Harlow is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
NFTs have been a big deal for about a year now, and while some are still trying to wrap their heads around what “non-fungible tokens” even are, others have dived head-first into the game. Celebrities like Snoop Dogg, Brie Larson, Johnny Depp, Steve Aoki, Nas, Eminem. and more have all hopped on the NFT train, cashing in by selling exclusive content to their fans. On the other hand, names like Kanye West have expressed no desire to join the trend, as he stated in a now-deleted Instagram post. “My focus is on building real products in the real world,” he wrote before adding, “Do not ask me to do a f*cking NFT.”
Well, it seems like Tyler The Creator is also among the skeptics, as he revealed during a recent interview that was part of Converse’s 2022 All Star series. “What the f*ck is a NFT?” he said in a response to a question about them. He later added, “I paint at home, I play instruments. … I have a friend who’s making me speakers by hand right now. What the f*ck is a NFT?”
Tyler continued, “None of the examples I’ve seen is, like, beautiful art,” he said. “It’s a f*cking monkey in a Supreme hoodie.” He concluded his point by adding that you “can’t NFT me looking at you in real life.”
You can watch the full sit-down with Tyler in the video above.
For months, the House Select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot have been patiently and meticulously amassing information about the lead-up to one of the darkest days in American history — which they’ve done despite Donald Trump shoving key documents down the toilet. They have yet to make public their findings thus far, and they still have more work to do. But they can say this: They have enough evidence already to more or less confidently state that the former president engaged in a criminal conspiracy.
As per The Daily Beast, lawyers representing the committee filed a legal brief in California that laid out a theory of how a criminal case could be made against the nation’s 45th president. The evidence they’ve acquired over hundreds of interviews — many done voluntarily by former Trump staffers — strongly suggests that Trump, conservative lawyer John Eastman, and other allies broke numerous laws in an attempt to keep the former in power.
The reason the brief was filed at all was thanks to Eastman, who became infamous as the professor who laid out a convoluted strategy for how Mike Pence could overturn the 2020 election — a scheme the former vice president ignored, thanks in part to, of all people, Dan Quayle. The committee had requests documents from Eastman. Eastman argued that those documents were too confidential to release and that they violate executive privilege. So the committee responded by arguing that what Trump and he did was illegal.
“Evidence and information available to the committee establishes a good-faith belief that Mr. Trump and others may have engaged in criminal and/or fraudulent acts, and that [Eastman’s] legal assistance was used in furtherance of those activities,” the committee’s filing read. “The evidence supports an inference that President Trump, Plaintiff [Eastman], and several others entered into an agreement to defraud the United States by interfering with the election certification process, disseminating false information about election fraud, and pressuring state officials to alter state election results and federal officials to assist in that effort.”
In the brief, the committee also argued that Trump was attempting to stop an “official proceeding,” i.e., Congress’ counting of each state’s electoral votes. That is, Trump could face the same criminal charge prosecutors have used against around 240 insurrectionists.
On top of that, the brief also accuses Trump of trying to obtain false election certificates.
Again, this legal brief was only filed because Eastman is refusing to surrender key documents.
The Jan. 6 committee cannot itself charge Trump and allies with crimes. What they can do is pass this to the Department of Justice. And they probably still have to talk to Ivanka.
The Miami Heat visited Milwaukee on Wednesday night for the latest chapter in what has become one of the NBA’s best rivalries between the Heat and the Bucks.
The Bucks jumped on Miami early, running out to a quick 10-point lead, but saw the Heat steadily claw their way back in front by the end of the first half. The Heat would extend that lead to as many as 14 early in the fourth quarter, and it looked like we were headed for another impressive win for the East’s No. 1 team. However, the Bucks woke up in the final six minutes of the fourth quarter, closing on a 21-6 run to steal a win from their rivals and help their cause as they look to sew up a top-4 seed in the East.
Giannis Antetokounmpo started the comeback off with eight points in the final six minutes, as he got himself to the rim and to the foul line to start chipping away at Miami’s lead. As the Bucks got closer, the Heat’s offense got tighter and the absence of Kyle Lowry as a steadying presence became a real issue for Miami as they struggled to create good looks against a suddenly engaged Milwaukee defense. It was the effort of that swarming defense that helped the Bucks complete the comeback, starting with a steal by Khris Middleton, forced by a double team on Tyler Herro, that he parlayed into a transition three to cut the deficit to one with 13.5 seconds to play.
The Heat would call a timeout to advance the ball up the floor, but Milwaukee did a masterful job denying the pass into the backcourt, forcing a wild inbounds into Jimmy Butler at the free throw line who fell to the floor after he and Giannis collided going for the ball and eventually got tied up by the two-time MVP.
I respected the design on this one except for not getting Giannis all the way out of there. Give Wes Matthews credit here. Butler techincally has the entire court to work with, Wes denies it and forces him the other way. pic.twitter.com/yj1TC3TiiJ
The Bucks would win the tip and Jrue Holiday calmly brought the ball across and powered through Gabe Vincent and tossed the game-winning shot over the outstretched arm of Bam Adebayo.
It was the kind of game we’ve come to expect from these two teams, who tend to ratchet up the intensity even in regular season matchups. Tyler Herro’s 30-point performance off the bench led the way for Miami, with Butler and Adebayo combining for 39 points, but the late turnovers proved to be killer to Miami’s ability to hold on.
For the Bucks, it was an all-around effort from their stars, with Holiday, Middleton, and Antetokounmpo all scoring 25 or more, with Jrue dishing out 11 assists and Giannis pulling down 17 rebounds in the impressive come from behind victory.
Next week, Lucky Daye will release his sophomore album Candy Drip. He’s already released singles from it, including “Over” last fall, which arrived with a video featuring model Jordyn Woods. He followed up that single with the album’s title track and “NWA” with Lil Durk. Before it arrives on March 11, Lucky has returned to share the official tracklist.
Candy Drip will deliver 17 songs, including the aforementioned singles. Lucky will also handle most of the vocal responsibilities, as it features just three guest appearances. Smino, Lil Durk, and Chiiild will make individual contributions in what will hopefully amount to a strong follow-up to Lucky’s Grammy-nominated debut album Painted.
Shortly after Candy Drip arrives, Lucky will head out on a North American tour with singer Joyce Wrice serving as the opener for the string of shows.
You can revisit the cover art for Candy Drip above and view its full tracklist below.
This month marks the two-year anniversary of Verzuz, the platform was launched by Swizz Beatz and Timbaland that showcases beat battles held on Instagram Live. Since then, the show has held numerous duels between the likes of The Lox, Dipset, Nelly, Ludacris, Keyshia Cole, Ashanti, Jill Scott, Erykah Badu, E-40, Too Short, Gucci Mane, Jeezy, and many more. To commemorate their success, Swizz and Timbo will partner with Amazon Studios, Lena Waithe, her production company Hillman Grad Productions, and Good Trouble Studios for a special documentary.
Titled Gifted & Black, the documentary will highlight the rise of Verzuz, as well as the roots of Black music. According to Deadline, it will use “poignant interviews, gripping vérité and magnetic archival footage” to see how Black music impacts the culture.
“When we first started this mission the entire world had hit rock bottom,” Swizz Beatz said in a statement. “People were going through so much and Tim and I felt we should do something to help folks escape. The rest is history, we made the magical call to Hillman Grad because we only wanted people to see the best of the best.”
A release date for Gifted & Black has not yet been revealed but it will air on Amazon Prime Video when released.
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