Month: January 2023

In a lot of ways Joe Harden still keeps the schedule of a ball player. Up before the sun most mornings, getting to the facility and checking in with his team to talk over what the most pressing reps are before the day’s runs get underway. That he’s traded open court for open fields, that his teammates are sometimes Klay Thompson, Rui Hachimura, Kevin Love, and Channing Frye, and that some days those pressing reps are quite literally pressing — grapes — makes little difference. As in his playing days, the methodology of care and attention to the smallest detail is what’s important.

Harden, the head winemaker at Napa Valley’s Nickel & Nickel winery, was pairing basketball and wine together before the two became the NBA’s defacto cultural tag team. Growing up on his family’s ranch outside of Lodi, California, the 6-foot-7 teenager had interest from Division 1 schools across the States before committing to Notre Dame. South Bend turned out to be much farther from the sun baked, sandy loam of Lodi’s fields then Harden liked, so he transferred to UC Davis and redshirted his sophomore year before joining the Aggies the next. Off the floor he studied viticulture and enology, and after graduating Harden let basketball lead him away again. First to Bismarck, North Dakota, to play for the Warriors G League team (a year before the team relocated to Santa Cruz), and then to a pro team in Melbourne, Australia.

“I didn’t make it to the NBA. I got fairly close, I ran outta talent a little early,” Harden chuckles from his office inside “the barns” at Nickel & Nickel that house dozens of towering stainless steel fermentation tanks and the 30,000 square foot cellar dug below them. Harden and his friend and assistant winemaker, Phil Holbrook, have already been on site at Nickel for an hour before our 8 a.m. Zoom. The light is faint in the vaulted space around the makeshift office. One of Harden’s dogs, a lanky grey wolfhound, ambles in and out of frame.

When Harden returned to California from Australia he and his wife, a former University of Utah and UC Davis basketball player, moved to Napa where they didn’t know anyone and rented an apartment. Though he’d just left it behind in a formal, “for good” sense, at least when it came to his career, Harden turned to basketball.

“I was just trying to find places to go hoop and I found some little tiny, it was like a horrible run,” Harden remembers. “But it was in Yountville and I had a couple buddies that I had met there, and someone introduced me to Phil [Holbrook] and Carlo Mondavi — Tim Mondavi’s son.”

It’s likely you’ve heard of Robert Mondavi, the California wine label and family that started in Napa in 1966 an is now one of the region’s most well-known and largest producers (Holbrook also has a Mondavi connection, his grandmother is Margrit Mondavi). Their vineyard sits directly across from Nickel & Nickel’s smaller property and is where Harden got his start as a wine maker. When he went across the road to Nickel in 2018, Harden hired Holbrook on to first help with harvests as an intern, a gig that led to his current position alongside Harden.

As two people who love wine and the process of making it deeply, but have recognized from their start in the business how many barriers exist for entry, Harden and Holbrook quickly wanted to explore avenues and outlets to do things differently. One of those is working with the Roots Fund, an organization committed to seeing more of the BIPOC community in the wine industry, and the other is through collaboration.

It shouldn’t be such a surprise, giving the ebb and flow between wine and basketball in Harden’s life, that when he was looking for a project that could help him delve into wine in a different way than he does behind the tanks at Nickel, that the universe would deliver him back to basketball again. It may have been a surprise that it delivered him Klay Thompson, specifically.

“First of all, I’ve learned since I’ve started in the wine business that like everything in life, it’s all about relationships. Relationships with the farmer, relationships with the land, relationships with who you’re making the wine for. And that’s what’s exciting for me,” Harden says. “There’s a timelessness to this. I wouldn’t say I knew him, but Klay and my paths crossed back in high school. And so there was some familiarity there.”

It was Thompson and MLB player, Nolan Arenado, who approached Harden hoping to get their start in burgeoning world of pro athletes and wine. Harden initially turned them down.

“I’ve always been hesitant because, I’m not gonna name brands, but I see celebrities who go about it the way that way where it’s not interesting for a guy who’s in the cellar pulling hoses and making the wines,” Harden says. “And so when they approached me, I said, I could link you with a handful of these wineries, it’s no problem. It’ll be very easy for you and you’ll get your wine tomorrow probably.”

But Thompson and Arenado were adamant, they wanted to make something and they wanted to do it Harden’s way. That is, learning everything from the dizzying range of soil varieties that can be found in the Valley to the hard work of the harvest, the patience of the fermentation and aging process, and of course the quiet reward in opening a bottle that was theirs.

“It started fairly slow with us. We had a wine in bottle for three years before we sold a bottle of wine,” Harden recalls. “It started with opening up a bunch of wine with [Thompson] and understanding what wine he likes. Cause I said, ultimately I can make a wine that I like, but if you don’t like it, you’re not drinking it, then it’s a waste of everybody’s time.”

“These guys, similar to their basketball route, they don’t wanna take any shortcuts. And that’s what’s been fun about the project for me at least, these guys were like, if you were doing this and you had their means, what would you do? And I was like, this is exactly what I would do. Klay was like, ‘Let’s go find the grapes!’,” Harden laughs.

Diamond & Key, a play on the two places its founders spend most of their time, started with a cabernet sauvignon and has since added a rosé at Thompson’s behest and Harden’s urging to only get into wine to make the kind you’d like to drink yourself.

“That’s how the rosé came about cause you know, not everyone wants to open up $150 cab four days a week. He’s a big boat guy and so he was like, I want a wine that I can have on my boat. So we made a crisp, really elegant rosé that’s been doing great.”

A surprising element that Harden’s seen athletes like Thompson and Arenado take to, as well as Hachimura, who’s partnered with Harden to produce his own cab suav, called Black Samurai, is the time capsule offshoot involved with bottling wine. Harden has felt this firsthand in working through droughts and wildfires and seeing and tasting their impacts on the finished product, but he’s also had milestones he can trace back to each vantage. He calls wine a “living, breathing thing”. Wine, as a marker of time and place, is something that initially drew Harden in and how many winemakers eventually come to refer to variances between vintages. But wine as a snapshot, as something that can essentially slow down time, has an entirely different appeal to an NBA athlete in the accelerated blur of season over season.

“That’s what’s unique about wine and I think they’re learning that as they go,” Harden nods, “It’s like, oh yeah, the ’18 vintage I was doing this, and ’20 was a really hard year for Klay and ’21 was tough, and ’22 we won a championship. So it’s kind of fun to see them link that with wine as well.”

The first batch of Diamond & Key’s rosé is doubly special to Harden because the grapes that were used to produce it were grown on the same ranch he grew up on, a place he calls “more cowboy” than Napa with grapes growing rangy and less manicured, harvested from a plot he named after his son. The grapes were also picked specifically for rosé, rare in that wine’s usual style of production. Thompson, Harden says, is fully “stoked.”

Though Harden outright rejects any title of being the go-to NBA wine guy — he guesses he’s had between 40-50 players out to the vineyard, some of which he’s turned down — his experience as an athlete does give him a unique perspective to the process, beyond the plays on words and comparable schedules.

“The basketball world is so into wine that I think people can get taken advantage of,” Harden says, “For me, I’m gonna always have the athlete’s interests, number one cause I’ve seen that, and I think that there’s a relationship and a trust there that’s really important.”

To establish that trust beyond their shared touchpoint in basketball, Harden, who is as warm and expansive as he is blunt, likes to have them come and check out the winery at Nickel and some of the other vineyards around Napa he uses for collaborative wine projects. Thompson clearly took to this immersive approach, so too did Hachimura and his family, who Harden hosted when Hachimura’s current agent and Harden’s former AAU coach for EBO, Darren Matsubara, caught up with Harden at a Warriors-Bucks game a few years ago and encouraged him to talk to Hachimura about wine.

“He just kind of fell in love with it,” Harden recalls of the now-Laker’s visit, noting his “fascination” with the entire process.

Nothing is rushed. It’s a crucial point for Harden, too, who now counts Diamond & Key, Black Samurai, a pinot noir he made for Kevin Love and Channing Frye’s Chosen Family wines, plus his own venture with Holbrook, Salty Goats, as side projects on top of his passionate anchor and day job at Nickel. Plainly put, Harden doesn’t have that much extra time on his hands, but what he does have he’s happy to use broadening the scope of the wine world by getting passionate people involved. Athletes, with their means, interest, and desire to create post-playing career hobbies and jobs, represent tangible ways to shift wine into its next iteration.

“I think that wine can be a little intimidating. And trying to knock down that barrier where, at the end of the day, I’m very passionate about what I do — but it’s fermented grape juice,” Harden smiles, “We can overcomplicate it. We can put a stuffiness to it, we can put pretension behind it. But that’s not really what I’m interested in.”

Asked if he’s ever surprised by the way basketball has continued to act as a vehicle, accelerant, and connector for him, and Harden pauses. Anyone who has a foot in multiple worlds can understand how it feels to not want to be pigeonholed by one or the other.

“I think having open doors, and showing people how wine is made, and having different groups of people visit — I think Napa Valley for a long time has just been like very wealthy white people who come and spend a ton of money. And I think in the last handful of years, athletes have helped kind of break down those barriers and that’s exciting for me,” he says, “There’s an honesty there and again, as long as the story makes sense and the wine is cool and we’re making it from grape to bottle and and growing grapes together, then I don’t really care who you are. Like let’s go do it.”

Winter is normally a hard time to get everyone to the theater to see their favorite film (unless that film is M3gan). AMC knows this, and they are doing everything in their power to get you back into those reclining seats and salute to Nicole Kidman a few more times before the season ends. In addition to showing Groundhog Day on the 30th anniversary of Groundhog Day on the actual Groundhog Day on February 3rd, the theater chain will also be offering discounted movies throughout the month of February in order to celebrate Black History Month.

Various movies from Black creators and actors will be showing at over 200 AMC locations throughout the month of February or $5, which is less than the bag of peanut M&M’s that you will end up buying anyway.

There is a new movie scheduled each week, starting with Till which will be showing from Feb. 3-9th. Jonathan Majors’ flight movie Devotion will be discounted from Feb. 10-16, while Viola Davis’ The Woman King will be showing Feb. 17-23 and, finally, the Marvel favorite Black Panther: Wakanda Forever will get discounted from Feb.24-March 2nd.

Wakanda Forever is the only movie of the bunch that is actually still in theaters from its original run after debuting in November. Angela Bassett recently secured Marvel’s first Oscar nomination for her role in the film, so if you haven’t seen it now on the big screen, February is the time.

(Via Variety)

I can’t pinpoint the turn, but at some point, “Hollywood” stopped telling pandemic stories; no more talking through masks about a shared experience that was rapidly splintering. Film and TV are a mirror of the real world, of course.

The Last Of Us is an exception by necessity. It would be silly to fully compare the real-life COVID pandemic to the Cordyceps one in the HBO series, but there are notes that hit the ear the same. Many of us know a bit more about isolation, despair, loss, and what it takes to move through (and on from) a crisis now. Many of us would like to forget all of those things, but The Last Of Us uses that, pushing on the walls we’ve built up around ourselves.

Last night’s episode is a perfect example, featuring Nick Offerman as a survivalist at the end of the world who shares his bounty with a drifter (Murray Bartlett), one meal turning into a lifetime of love and companionship.

When Bill (Offerman) lets Frank (Bartlett) into his solitary world, it’s like a bank of lights turning on, slow with a hum before achieving full brightness. Everything is tactile, fresh sensations shaking a life of routine and quiet unacknowledged desperation – the sight of Frank’s satisfaction over the trappings of civilization (a hot shower, clean clothes) and the taste of the dinner made better by the ability to share it with someone. The sound of the piano and a Linda Rondstadt song, played impulsively by Frank and then by Bill as if given permission by that act of broken protocol in his own home. That first touch of the lips and then, later, Frank’s hand on Bill’s chest as they lay in bed, one of them assured, the other nervous.

Don’t elements of that hit harder if you sheltered in place alone or without a partner? Your awakening may have not occurred after as long a time, as deep a separation from society, or within a world so savage, but didn’t it seem comparably rich and intoxicating for how the rush of sensations felt so familiar and somehow also so fresh?

Bill and Frank’s story goes on, crammed into one episode where many more would have been justified. But the impact of the total picture (including an ending that left many viewers decimated) serves the needs of the storytellers to talk about love as a balm for loss and fear and chaos. Safe harbor and what happens when the seas rise and overtake even that, leaving you dark, cold, and alone.

We have seen the facts of Joel’s life (Pedro Pascal). The show’s main character lost his daughter, Sarah (Nico Parker), and his partner, Tess (Anna Torv). He’s now searching for his brother. But we haven’t really seen Joel deal with those things directly, we’ve only seen him grit his teeth and move through. With the ballad of Bill and Frank, we’ve been pulled closer into a show that we now know is capable of hitting those emotional heights, and it’s coming for Joel, through flashbacks that add more context to Joel and Tess’ relationship and the tattered remains of Joel’s paternal instincts that keep rearing their head in his interactions with Ellie (Bella Ramsey).

Bill and Frank weren’t just a plot device or a bridge to get the main story from point A to point B, though. Their initial connection so sweet, their bickerings and sounds of settling in with each other so relatable, and their ending, inspiring such an array of emotions. Theirs is a great love story all on its own, quite probably the last great pandemic love story considering the aversion to stories that go to a place that resonates with a time many would like to forget.

I didn’t cry last night when watching Bill love Frank how he wanted to be loved on his very last day, his body ravaged by disease and his want to not be a burden made clear. Not even as Bill pushed Frank’s wheelchair down the road to the boutique, as they sat and silently traded vows, or ate one final meal in that home they had made. That home, filled with Frank’s art and the many shades of Bill’s face, a character whose capacity to love was not obvious at the start as he hid within his compound and himself, drawn out by Frank.

In the end, when Bill decided to also drink the wine, I came so close to tears, but the charge that broke the dam was sitting down to write these thoughts, listening to that goddamn beautiful Linda Rondstadt song, looking at my wife, and thinking about our own time in the pandemic.

A want to not turn this into a journal entry begs that I only dip ever so slightly into personal confession, but I am at a higher risk for a bad result with COVID, and so our level of isolation during COVID has been more intense than most. Additionally, in the midst of COVID, we moved 100 miles from friends and family. And so we are, in essence, all each other has, something made clear to us a few times when each had short but intense bouts of illness over the last three years.

When I think about all that, the dreams we share and how we’ve sacrificed to protect those and each other, I am completely destroyed by Bill and Frank’s end. Particularly when looking at things through Bill’s eyes and his choice to reject a world without Frank in it, because how could you not if your literal purpose for living went away?

No one wants to tell pandemic stories or live with the weight of it on their shoulders anymore. Believe me, I understand why. But they’re still out there and the feelings they evoke are still hidden inside us all. Like I said, film and TV are a mirror, one that reflects even the things we don’t want to see. And great film and TV compels us to look, to find a connection between what’s on screen and what’s in our lives, even if there’s just a sliver of commonality. Above all else, it compels us to feel, and that’s what last night’s episode of The Last Of Us accomplished.

TMZ reports Kanye West is under investigation after being accused of battery by a woman whose phone he snatched. Kanye was apparently leaving his daughter North’s basketball game when he confronted the woman and a man, who were in a car recording him. In a video posted online, Kanye can be seen accosting the voyeurs from his SUV, eventually getting out and telling them to stop filming him.

“If I say stop, stop with your cameras!” he says. However, the woman argues that because he’s a celebrity, he ought to be used to it. That only sets him off; he grabs her phone out of her hand and chucks it into the street. You can watch the video below:

Kanye has a well-documented history of confrontations with the paparazzi. As recently as last year, he was making arguments that they should pay the subjects for their photos as he was being investigated for battery for allegedly punching a fan who asked for an autograph. He didn’t face charges in that incident because Los Angeles City Attorneys declined to file them. Kanye also previously attacked a photographer in 2013 for getting overly aggressive on a day he was just not in the mood.

Uproxx Bar Stories is back! This time, Finesse2Tymes stops by to break down his viral hit “Back End,” which he previously performed on UPROXX Sessions.

“I knew this song was gonna be what it was gonna be when a number-one sensation on TikTok reposted it,” he explains. “It felt like success. I knew I was going to the top and it felt like I accomplished what I set out to accomplish in 90 days.” He also leaves with the promise that his “album is coming soon.”

Finesse2tymes hails from Memphis, Tennessee, where he was closely associated with fellow Memphis breakouts Blac Youngsta and Moneybagg Yo. However, despite gaining traction before the pandemic with his mixtape Hustle & Flow, his career was nearly derailed by a five-year prison sentence in 2018 for possession of a firearm by a felon.

With his release in July of 2022, though, he hit the ground running, dropping “Back End,” which became a TikTok hit, and releasing his mixtape 90 Days in December. The project peaked at No. 57 on the Billboard 200, and clearly, he’s just getting started. 2023 is looking bright for him.

Check out Finesse2tymes’ Uproxx Bar Story above.

Finesse2tymes is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

An incredible moment captured between a father and his newborn son has brought viewers to tears.

The viral video shows Daniel Johnson singing the worship song “Hallelujah Here Below” by Elevation Worship as he cradles his preemie son, Remington Hayze, in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).

Miraculously, as soon as Johnson begins singing a chorus of “hallelujahs,” Remington’s tiny hand raises as though he were carried away by the music. Seeing this, Johnson is instantly overcome with emotion and can’t finish the song.

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The video’s caption explains that little Remington was born four months early and given a 21% chance of survival. He turned 2 1/2 months old the day the video was posted.

Daniel’s wife Emily, who filmed the video, shared with Good Morning America that since being born prematurely at 22 weeks, Remington has received a “variety of treatments for his underdeveloped organs, including steroids for his lungs and shots for his eyes.”

Thanks to the NICU workers at Baylor Scott & White Medical Center in Temple, Texas, Remington’s condition has vastly improved over the past couple of months. He is currently being weaned off of a CPAP machine and no longer needs any medications.

This positive news reflects a recent study from Stanford Medicine, which showed a significant increase in survival rates for preemies born at Remington’s age (22 weeks) who underwent active treatment. For those born at 23 weeks, the survival rate was as high as 55%.

Still, this must be a harrowing experience for any parent going through it, even with the help of dedicated professionals. So for the Johnsons, seeing their son respond to his father’s voice in such a pure way felt like a saving grace.

“It’s been an emotional ride and…the video definitely showed how I felt because he’s a miracle baby in every sense of the word,” Daniel told GMA.

Watch the amazing moment below:

@fritojohnson89 Remington Hayze Johnson. Proof that God is faithful. Born 4 months early and given a 21% chance of survival. Today we are 2 1/2 months old giving God all the praise He deserves. #worship #nicu #nicubaby #dadsinging #elevationworship ♬ original sound – Daniel Johnson

Congrats to the Johnson family and their miracle baby. And thank you for sharing this beautiful story with the world.

The dream of Anya Taylor-Joy getting drunk and playing chess again is over.

Earlier today, a mysterious tweet appeared on the actress’ Twitter account. “The Queen’s Gambit 2,” it read before being deleted 10 minutes later. Was Taylor-Joy revealing something she wasn’t supposed to? Nope, because it wasn’t her doing the tweeting.

“My Twitter has been hacked. Apologies for all inconveniences. It’s not me!” The Menu star wrote in an Instagram story, along with a photo of her adorable cat. Variety has also confirmed that “there was no truth to the The Queen’s Gambit season two tweet.”

Taylor-Joy was quite active on Twitter during the fall in which The Queen’s Gambit debuted on Netflix and became one of its most popular limited series. In fact, her last tweet, dated November 23, 2020, celebrated The Queen’s Gambit for becoming Netflix’s “biggest scripted limited series to date” with a “record-setting 62 million households” watching “in its first 28 days.”

Taylor-Joy using Instagram to confirm her Twitter was hacked is the second best decision of the day. The best: no more The Queen’s Gambit. Not every show needs more than one season to tell a story, even the good ones. Or as co-creator Scott Frank put it, “I feel like we told the story we wanted to tell, and I worry — let me put it differently — I’m terrified that if we try to tell more, we would ruin what we’ve already told.”

Maybe Furiosa can play chess. There’s a lot of down time in the wasteland.

(Via Variety)

[Some mild spoilers for ‘Paul T. Goldman’ to follow]

When I caught the first four episodes of Peacock’s Paul T. Goldman back in December, it was already clear that it was the most unique TV show of the year, maybe ever. But I was holding off a final opinion until the last episode or two, simply because it wasn’t really clear how or whether this whole thing would come together. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one.

“We sent out five episodes to critics and certain ones were very hesitant to even plant their flag whether they liked this show or not,” Jason Woliner told me this week. “They were basing that on how it ended.”

We’ve all been burned by docuseries in the past few years (The Vow and Bad Vegan in particular owe me some time I’ll never get back) and while Paul T. Goldman isn’t exactly a docuseries (hence the uniqueness), the way it teased and withheld information put immense pressure on the finale to deliver. Amazingly, it did, humane and hilarious and surprising by turns, humanizing its subject even as some of our natural suspicions about him bore out. It was probably the most tragicomic/triumphant episode of TV I’ve seen since the Nathan For You finale (a show Woliner directed three episodes of, though not that one).

Paul T. Goldman began almost 11 years ago when subject/star Paul T. Goldman tweeted at Woliner, the director. Paul had married a woman who turned out to be scamming him, which he had turned into a memoir, then spun off into more books and ideas for a series of TV shows — even an animated cartoon starring his dog.

Central to the premise of all this was Paul’s belief that his ex-wife (his second ex-wife) and her pimp, Cadillac, were running an international sex trafficking ring. The show that Woliner actually ended up making (produced by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg) is a mix of scenes from the series that Paul wrote starring Paul, a documentary about the making of that show, and another documentary attempting to get at the truth of the sex trafficking allegations. A lot of ins, a lot of outs, a lot of what have yous.

Paul is clearly a wild-eyed dreamer — Woliner says he was influenced by Grizzly Man and American Movie — who seems mostly genuine but also extremely squirrely. A big part of the finale was trying to pin down the truth and get a satisfying answer to the question of what makes Paul tick.

One moment in particular stays with me. Paul and Jason Woliner are face to face backstage after the public premiere of the show, Paul clearly a little disappointed that it didn’t turn out quite the way he drew it up, and Woliner, after 10+ years of working with this guy, trying to figure out if he’d burned a subject and ruined a friendship in the process of trying to tell the truth. Being a documentarian or a journalist is easier if you don’t care what happens to your subjects and sources. If you do, you’re essentially trying to serve two masters.

All of that was written on Woliner’s face in the last scene. It seems as though Woliner managed to serve both masters, but it was also hard to tell exactly what Paul was thinking. Was he really okay with it or just pretending to be for the cameras? Or for his ego? In some way, that tension summed up the show perfectly. I got to follow up with Woliner this week, to see what he was thinking.

What were you thinking when you were face-to-face with Paul right after he saw the show for the first time? In your climactic ending scene.

It’s really complex because you’re trying to live in a real moment. And this person is someone I’ve known for ten years. He’s a real human being. I consider him a friend. It’s not a typical documentary filmmaker-subject relationship where you just walk away and they become a piece of content.

And at the same time, I obviously knew we were filming that. I told the cameras, “Yeah, after we watch it, we’re going to go talk about it. Don’t get in our faces, stay way back, hide behind a curtain because I want a real conversation with him.”

But also in my head, I knew I was filming this. So it’s this weird mix of living in a real moment, but also I was hoping that something interesting would happen and that we would get something that would be worth putting in the last episode. I wound up getting very emotional and I really didn’t expect that I really am still trying to figure out why exactly. It’s hard to put into words. I don’t know if it was because I thought this is probably the last time we’ll be doing anything like this, or because, as usual, Paul is saying something better than I could have ever written. The way he phrased it, I thought, was so eloquent and perfect and interesting, and whether or not you want to read what he says at face value — I’ve read some stuff that was very interesting, thinking that he’s just saving face and acting like he’s okay with it. All those takes are valid. It just felt like a very powerful moment to me. There was a lot going on.

My take on that scene was that you’re in this strange position where you have a duty to the audience to depict things as true as they are and as true as you can make them, but then you’re also involved with your subject now too. Like you said, you’re friends, you’ve been around him for a decade, and you don’t want your fun thing about him to ruin his life either. Was that was a line that you were trying to walk?

Yeah, absolutely. I’d never set out to destroy Paul. I knew we would be presenting what I consider to be an honest depiction of him, including all sides. Including the stuff that’s in that last episode that’s only alluded to earlier of behavior that was objectionable that I knew people would react strongly to. There was just a lot going on. I was feeling a lot of things. And it was also, there is this weird magic that happened on this project where you would just turn the cameras on and then things would happen that were so much more interesting than I could have expected or written, often funnier, often more awkward. But also things like Natasha Blasick, the actress who played Svetlana, coming in and as soon as they sit down revealing that she had been a “mail order bride” herself and giving him new perspective on why the real Svetlana could have recoiled at his touch.

I was like, “Oh, there’s always just interesting things that happen with Paul when you film him.” The way he phrased it, “there’s stuff in there that’s not flattering, but hopefully people will see I’m a person and not a character.” And I was like, “God, it’s just always magic when we do these things.” It’s weird living in a moment like that where you’re just like, “Oh, this is going to be in this thing that lots of people will watch,” but you’re living it.

I think people will watch it, and I think the majority of people will see Paul as a person and flawed in the way that people are, but mostly good-intentioned. But it also seems like once you put something out there for a big enough audience, people are going to have all sorts of takes. Do you feel a responsibility for the reactions of the dumber viewers that aren’t going to get it? I mean, you can’t aim it at the dumbest person in the room, but you realize that your subject is going to be at the mercy of some of the dumbest people in the room and their takes.

I can only be responsible for the show, and I can’t be responsible for anyone’s reactions to it. And this is not a dumb response at all, but I’ve seen a little bit, which I expected, of “how could you platform this problematic guy who has these views about women and had this problematic behavior at times?”

My response to that is, if you watch this whole show and think that I’m just platforming this person, then I believe that’s on you because I don’t think that’s what I’ve done. Maybe it’s mostly through subtext, but even through just purely what’s on screen, this guy is examined and not just celebrated. I feel like it’s worthwhile to examine people that aren’t perfect, that are flawed, that believe things that are maybe retrograde or offensive. It’s not just a portrait of a unique person. I think there’s a lot in this story about wanting to be loved and the lengths we go to get that love. So when people have a take that I just completely disagree with, I feel content with what I put out there.

I feel like we live in a media environment where we’re receiving much more feedback than our brains were ever designed to handle, and it seems like if you’re someone like Paul who gets publicly called out for being problematic or whatever, you can either shell up and make dunking on your haters your entire personality, or you can acknowledge some of it and try to be better. I did get the sense that he is trying to improve and not just be contrarian. What was your sense?

He’s a very upbeat person. I think he wants to be liked and I really believe that, especially after that last interview when I presented him with all the stuff, debunking the sex trafficking ring, and his response to that really hit home for me that he really was not lying about this stuff. He believed it. He was not making something up to try to look like a hero. I believed him when he said he wants to be an honorable person, and so I think he’ll go on that path. At the same time, you see all these people where people come after you, people generally go right-wing, they dig in, whatever. I’ve seen some tweets being like, “Look at this guy, he’s a disgusting incel,” or whatever.

And I was like, well, that’s the kind of response that you’re just so dug in on that side where you’re able to just reduce someone to a word like incel. If anything, my hope for this is, this guy has beliefs that I don’t subscribe to in terms of women, in terms of the nature of relationships, but I would hope if you could watch the whole thing, that a viewer could try to arrive at a place of some complexity. And say, “Well, there might be parts of this person’s beliefs that I am not aligned with,” but to not just write people off as much as we do would be a nice thing that is probably too idealistic to think could come out of this.

When you filmed that shot after the premiere, how much of the show had he seen at that premiere at that point?

We showed the first three episodes at the premiere, and then we went backstage, and I just showed him clips of the interview with Tony Zweiner and his response to it, and a few other clips he had seen from that last episode, some of the spinoffs and stuff that he showed his dad. He hadn’t seen the Cass letter stuff, but we made him aware that that was going to be in. Obviously, he was interviewed in the show talking about it. The only thing I didn’t take him through before this came out is that I was going to be very honest as I see it in my depiction of Terri Jay in the last episode [a “pet psychic” who may have introduced Paul to the sex trafficking theses], and how I believe her role in this whole thing impacted what happened. And that was for a few reasons. He’s friends with Terri, and I didn’t want that to be a thing before it came out. So that’s really the only thing in the last episode that Paul wasn’t part of and wasn’t aware it was going to be part of.

Have you talked to him since? Has he seen all of it? Does he have a reaction?

Oh, yeah. I talk to him quite a bit. I talk to him almost every day still. I never wanted to destroy him, and it’s got to be the craziest thing to suddenly have thousands of strangers having opinions about you, even though he’s got a lot of support and love and people saying that they were inspired by his ability to absorb new information and change, he’s also got loads of people tweeting and at-ing him saying, “You’re a piece of shit and you deserve everything, and I want to fight you,” whatever.

I mean, that’s hard on a human being. And so I think he’s still processing all that stuff in there. I can’t imagine how it feels to sit down and watch someone else’s version of what your life story is and knowing that that’s going on the record.

That’s a level of control I personally would never hand over to anybody. So because of all these people saying, “This guy’s crazy, this guy is awful, he disparaged an innocent woman or what have you,” Paul has been a little bit concerned in terms of the evidence from his trial that I didn’t include in the show. We included a lot of stuff in terms of phone logs, and we tried to paint a picture, but he’s talked to me about, “Why didn’t you include this email from her to Cadillac?,” or, “Why didn’t you include this receipt I had from Las Vegas where she bought Jimmy Choos?”

It’s understandable. I believe he thinks, “Well, if that was just in there, I wouldn’t look so crazy.” And I feel like I tried to include as much as I could without being redundant or boring, or there was stuff legally we couldn’t include, but that’s the kind of stuff he’s been a little concerned with since it came out. And I said, “Tweet. Tell people to buy the book. It’s all in the book. If people want more of the story, if people want more evidence, there’s things we didn’t have time for, use it.”

Did you ever get frustrated with him for maybe not realizing that just the real story could have been as nuanced and fascinating as the TV show that he tried to turn it into? Do you think he skipped over some of the things that were actually really fascinating about “Audrey,” aside from thinking that she was running a sex trafficking ring?

I think to Paul, this was always the real story, including things that he knew were embellished or made up. My fascination was with him and with how he absorbed and changed this story. I mean, there’s a whole documentary to be made about Diana and Cadillac’s tragic relationship that went on for years that was clearly, I believe, so much more important in her life than her brief marriage to Paul. But my fascination was with Paul’s experience and depiction of events and what he did with it. That was what this was about; looking at the kind of person who would not only simplify the events of his life into a story that he wrote a book about, but then also spin that off and write autobiographical fan fiction where he can live out this hero fantasy and create this whole alternate reality where he can be vindicated and have people from his real life come back and tell him what he did was worthwhile.

That was always what I was most interested in. I don’t think there’s a version of it where he would’ve just looked at the real story and just written that, that’s just not him.

How much of the Chronicles did you have to shoot that didn’t go in?

We shot a lot and I was really trying to make it all go in because I love it. I thought it was so fascinating, and this whole thing was me trying to recreate my experience of absorbing all his material and becoming obsessed with it. Part of that was reading the Chronicles and really believing that they’re great. The writing I don’t think is notably worse than most action movies and TV shows and stuff. Yeah, there’s cheesy stuff, but the fact that you have this crazy subtext of knowing that the person you’re watching, he’s spun this off from his real life, it was so fascinating that I found it more interesting than any action movie I could watch.

So we shot a ton of Chronicles stuff, and my original idea for the finale was t keep cutting back and forth between the two planes of reality. On one track, Paul, confronting the truth that we were able to find and really digging in on the documentary side, and then keep cutting to this heightened Chronicles world where Paul is an action hero. Almost like Adaptation. And so you’re following both that would maybe converge in some way or comment on each other. We tried to cut like that and it was just a jumbled mess. It didn’t make any sense because you just couldn’t emotionally keep tracking Paul and Chronicle‘s world at the same time.

Once we’re into Cadillac, it’s like, I just want the truth. So we made it all a quick montage in that first act of the episode, and then we got into all the truth. As a result, we have so much more Chronicles. I’m back in my office today. I think there may be a 10-minute cut of just Chronicles scenes and maybe five additional minutes of just that spinoff, The Dream Catchers, that hopefully we’ll be able to release some time. We shot the giant gunfight in Moscow that I think there’s probably one second of it that wound up in the show.

It seems like he’s built this whole thing up, this is going to be his big break, he’s starring in this TV show that’s on a network. Do you feel like you are/were going to have to bear the brunt of his expectations of life not living up to whatever his expectations were?

We shot most of his screenplay, and he always knew it would have this documentary side to it that ultimately we would be including interviews, real people, the behind the scenes, all this stuff. Paul was very aware of the format and the scenes from his spinoffs, we were always shooting those thinking they would be just little snippets, a selling tool for him. He was never under the impression that we were actually shooting these whole things. Some people ask, “Wait, do they shoot a whole Chronicles movie?”

So, no. He knew we were just shooting some scenes to try them out. And Paul, in the many months of negotiating his contract, smartly held onto the rights to all this stuff. I was always clear with him. I was like, “I don’t know what our situation will be after this project. I want to do other things,” and that’s something that’s in the show.

But Paul controls all that stuff now. I see people tweeting at him asking about the Chronicles. I think he could do something else with this stuff, hopefully, I don’t think it’s impossible. I hope he gets to, because like I said, I read these stories, knowing the subtext, and they’re good. It’s not The Room or Birdemic. They’re all available on Amazon, and you wind up invested in these stories. It’s really fascinating. The Chronicles are interesting and I think there could be a life for them beyond this.

All episodes of ‘Paul T. Goldman’ are currently available on Peacock. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can read more of his reviews here.

¿Téo? is one of the Latin acts that will be performing at Coachella in April. Ahead of making his debut at the music festival, the Colombian-American singer released his new single “A Mi Cama” on Friday (January 27).

¿Téo? was born Mateo Arias. He is the brother of former Hannah Montana star and photographer Moises Arias. In the past few years, ¿Téo? has established his own career as an artist with his genre-bending songs like “Uno Dos” featuring Jaden Smith and “Buzzed.” He seamlessly blends music influences from his bicultural upbringing. “A Mi Cama” is the latest taste of his music.

“‘A Mi Cama’ is one of my favorite songs I made while I was in Medellín, Colombia visiting my family,” ¿Téo? said in statement. “I got in with producer, now turned friend Golden, where we worked on songs for the new record. The song is inspired by a night out with a girl while in Medellín.”

In “A Mi Cama,” ¿Téo? combines elements of hip-hop elements with reggaeton music. His soulful voice glides across the haunting love song. ¿Téo? sings about the romance and beauty of lovemaking. “A Mi Cama” is alluring romp that highlight’s the sensual swagger behind ¿Téo?.

On February 11, ¿Téo? will return to Medellín to perform at the Solar Festival with acts like Sean Paul, Bomba Estéreo, Black Coffee and Tokimonsta. His 18-city Sol & Luna Tour in the US will kick off on February 22. The tour will wrap in April with ¿Téo? performing at both weekends of Coachella.

Jazz revivalist Kamasi Washington and genre legend Herbie Hancock are co-curating the 2023 Hollywood Bowl Jazz Festival, the details of which have been revealed. Washington and Leon Bridges have been confirmed as the headliners, and the bill also includes New Orleans bounce pioneer Big Freedia (with The Soul Rebels), ’90s alt-rap touchstones Digable Planets, and modern jazz standard-bearers St. Paul and The Broken Bones and West Coast Get Down.

The 2023 Hollywood Bowl Jazz Festival is set for June 17-18 and will be hosted by Arsenio Hall. Tickets are available at hollywoodbowl.com.

In a statement, Hancock said, “I was thrilled when the LA Phil asked me to co-curate this festival with Kamasi and explore his extraordinary art. Our celebration this year includes so many artists — both emerging and established — at defining moments in their musical journeys. We hope to create community and connection through the music we make and leave audiences feeling uplifted and inspired.”

Washington echoed those sentiments while praising his forebear. “Herbie is one of the greatest musicians to ever live and I am so grateful to be working with him on this special show. Herbie and I have been working with the LA Phil team to create a one-of-a-kind experience that we hope will leave the audience with excitement, joy, life, soul, and most of all great music.”

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.