The margarita isn’t simply one of the best tequila cocktails, it’s also one of the best cocktails full stop. Tart without hiding the flavor of the base spirt and often a salty note thanks to the rim — this is a drink that truly speaks to summer. The problem is that as with many cocktails, its invention is shrouded in mystery.
There are disputed stories about who actually invented this refreshing cocktail made up of tequila, freshly squeezed lime juice, and orange liqueur. Some believe it was first crafted by a bartender named Carlos “Danny” Herrera in the 1930s in Tijuana, Mexico. Others give credit for its creation to a bartender named Francisco “Pancho” Morales. In 1942, while working at a bar called Tommy’s Place in Juárez, Mexico, a guest came in and asked Morales for a “Magnolia” cocktail made with champagne, Cointreau, brandy, and egg yolk. The patron couldn’t remember the recipe but knew there was Cointreau in it and thought there might also be lime. Morales decided to use tequila and a classic cocktail was born.
Maybe…
Regardless of when it was invented and by whom, we look forward to warm weather (or literally any weather) to enjoy this tequila and citrus-filled banger. The best part? When made with the basic recipe, it couldn’t get much simpler than the Margarita. Here’s our own Zach Johnston’s recipe from a few years back:
2 oz. reposado tequila (plus a splash from the bottle)
1 oz. fresh lime juice
1oz. orange liqueur
Pinch of salt (about the size of a lentil between your fingers)
Lime wheel
Ice
Preparation:
Add ice to the rocks glass, set it aside. Add tequila, lime juice, orange liqueur, salt, and ice to a shaker. Affix the lid to the shaker and shake until the outside of the shaker is ice cold and frosted over. Strain the margarita into the waiting rocks glass over the fresh ice. Garnish with a lime wheel. Serve.
While we love the classic recipe, we love how versatile this cocktail is. That’s why we decided to highlight some of the most exciting Margarita riffs from some of our favorite bartenders. Keep scrolling to see them all.
Combine all ingredients into a cocktail shaker with ice. Strain into a rocks glass. Garnish with a dehydrated lime wheel.
Red Chile-Infused Aperol:
Steep 2-3 red chiles into 750 milliliters of Aperol for 24 hours. Strain.
Given the popularity of spicy Margaritas and mezcal, we wanted to create a drink that melds these flavors together in our own way. Aperol plays well with spice and fruit, so incorporating pineapple and red chili allows us to control the spice while referencing the sweetness that triple sec and Grand Marnier typically bring to a classic Margarita. Blending tequila blanco and mezcal incorporates smoke while staying balanced so all of the tasting notes are highlighted with each sip. It’s one of the first recipes I created for the bar and is one of our best sellers. – Jeremie Andre owner of Barely Disfigured in Brooklyn, New York
Tajin, salt, or other preferred garnish as desired
3 oz. homemade margarita mix
-1 oz. lime juice
– 1 oz. Cointreau
– .5 oz. simple syrup
Preparation:
For the margarita mix, combine the lime juice, Cointreau, and simple syrup. Stir well and set aside. In a shaker with ice, combine the tequila or mezcal, pureed mangos, and margarita mix and shake well. Rim a glass with tajin, salt, and/or other preferred garnishes. Add ice to the glass and pour in the margarita mixture. Top with fresh cubed mango and mint leaves
Fresh mango is the star of the vibrant Mango Petacon at KoKo and Bakan. The bright yellow drink is as eye-catching as it is delicious, and our guests love snapping photos of it in front of our Instagrammable décor. – Pedro Pozo, beverage director for Grupo Bakan in Miami
Dulce Vida Prickly Pear
Jasmin Porter
By Wyn Vida, beverage director at The Cathedral in Austin, Texas
Ingredients:
2 oz. Dulce Vida Blanco Tequila
1 oz. Lime Juice
.75 oz Prickly Pear Cordial (even parts Prickly Pear Juice and sugar; heat ingredients on the stove until sugar liquefies)
Garnishes: Tajin Rim, Cucumber
Preparation:
Using a peeler, make a long cucumber swath and place it along the inside of the glass before placing a large cube inside. Add all ingredients into a shaker tin, fill to the top with ice, and shake for eight seconds. Double strain into a rocks glass over a large format ice cube.
I love a good refreshing cocktail with a tajin rim to add a subtle kick. This one is much less labor-intensive than other drinks and is such a beautiful color for festive drinking. – Wyn Vida, beverage director at The Cathedral in Austin, Texas
Build, use big rock glass, served as a slushie. Garnished with a rim of tzatziki salt, mint sprigs, and a dehydrated lemon wheel.
Other Preparation:
For dill & mint syrup, parboil fresh dill and mint and infuse in hot 50/50 simple syrup for one hour. For tzatziki salt, use 200 grams of salt mixed with 100 grams of palm coconut sugar, 5 grams of dry dill, 5 grams of dry mint, and two dehydrated lemons.
The restaurant is known for its Greek cuisine and specialty Mediterranean flavors, so I was inspired by tzatziki for this drink. When I think of a warm summer day, I think of a cooling and refreshing desire to be poolside sipping on a summer fave, the margarita. I blended these concepts together into the Tzatziki Margarita. Think of an herbal cucumber slushy with coconut sugar, dehydrated dill, mint, and lime, and Vita Coco coconut water, rimmed with salt. You can only find it at Talya in Montauk. – Thibaut Castet, co-owner of Talya in Montauk, New York
Pina Coco Margarita
Rita Cantina
By beverage director and head of operations Adam Miller and head bartender Diego Rivera for Rita Cantina in East Hampton, New York
Ingredients (makes 1 pitcher):
250 Grams Sugar
270 Grams Lime Juice
500 Grams Lakewood/Fresh Pineapple
800 Grams Toasted Coconut Cazadores
1000 Grams Harmless Harvest Coconut Water
500 Grams Goya Unsweetened Coconut Milk
Preparation:
Combine all ingredients except coconut milk on stove, cook until sugar is incorporated. Put in pitcher and add coconut milk and stir. Let sit for two hours. Pour over 200-micron superbag / cheesecloth until curd stabilizes and you are dripping clear. Let gravity do the rest.
Toasted coconut Cazadores ingredients:
1000 Grams Cazadores Blanco
50 Grams Toasted Coconut Flake
Preparation:
Toast coconut in pan or sheet tray until lightly brown. Combine in a large vacuum bag. Seal. Cook at 145 degrees for two hours. Put in ice bath. Filter through mesh strainer and put in freezer overnight. Strain again through mesh strainer. Ready to use
For three years, Diego Rivera and I experimented to master the Margarita, one of America’s top drinks. Searching in San Juan, PR, we found the best Pina Colada at the Caribe Hilton and combined it with the Margarita for our menu. Despite a divisive lime juice issue in the Pina Colada community, we crafted a. Milk Punch Pina Colada Margarita hybrid, surprisingly delicious, low ABV, shelf-stable, and suitable for big batches. Our clarified Pina Coco Margarita, an ideal summer sip combining two favorites, uses my clarifying technique to make the drink lighter, smoother, and more margarita-like. – Adam Miller, beverage director and head of operations at Rita Cantina
Combine all ingredients in a tin and shake. Strain over ice into a rocks glass and garnish.
In developing the Pepino margarita we wanted to explore adding a touch of spice and balance with slightly sweet notes. Knowing how well cucumber and jalapeño go together we knew it would be the perfect combination with El Tequileño Reposado, as the tequila has a touch of vanilla and hints of oak which pair perfectly with sweet, spicy and earthy flavors. This margarita is balanced with just the right amount of heat from the jalapeño, and the refreshing combination of cucumber and extra added agave from our in-house margarita mix makes this a perfect cocktail for any margarita lover! Knowing everyone’s spice tolerance is different, we wanted to allow our guests who need a touch more spice to turn up the heat if they preferred, so we added a spicy Tajin rim. Viva La Rita. – Cindy Busi, VP of Enterprise Beverage & Innovation at Darden Restaurant Group
The People’s Margarita
R & D Philly
From R & D Philly in Philadelphia
Ingredients:
2 oz. Teremana Blanco
0.75 oz. Lime Juice
0.5 oz. Agave Nectar
1 oz. Pineapple Juice (to taste)
Preparation:
Shake with ice in a cocktail shaker. Strain into a rocks glass over fresh ice. Garnish with a lime wheel, pineapple leaves & sea salt (as desired).
The People’s Margarita is a fun, fresh variation on a Margarita. We use the blueprint of a Tommy’s Margarita—agave syrup, no orange liqueur—because the focus on raw, fresh ingredients not only allows the tequila itself to shine through, but it also better aligns the cocktail with the trend toward conscientious and responsible drinking. The addition of pineapple juice adds a touch of natural sweetness and makes you feel like you have your toes in the sand without having to leave your barstool. – Resa Mueller, Bartender at R&D Philly
Add all ingredients to an ice-filled cocktail shaker. Shake thoroughly and strain into a glass. Add four dashes of Aji Limo Tincture.
The Novelist is inspired by Vicki Baum, an Austrian novelist who created a novel based on the history of the royal family and colonization era in Bali named, “Loved and Death in Bali.” The base of this cocktail is tequila and mezcal. We mixed it with one of the oldest concoctions of Jamu, which has been a drink since the Ancient era, and is a mix of coconut water, betel leaf and turmeric. Passion fruit and Mango give it a fruit flavor while the Aji Limo brings heat to the cocktail, all mixed with blue curacao which turns the cocktail into a deep green color. Topped with a garnish of a peacock feather as a symbol of royalty. – Panji Wisrawan, head mixologist at Apéritif Bar at Viceroy Bali
Conan Gray is undoubtedly one of pop’s most exciting young stars. At 24, he already has two top-10 albums to his name (Kid Krow and Superache), and Taylor Swift even tapped him to help promote Fearless (Taylor’s Version). As for how Gray reached his current illustrious status, that’s just what he breaks down in the latest episode of UPROXX’s How I Blew Up.
From his perspective, his ascent wasn’t a big sudden thing, but a number of moments that gradually propelled him forward (as he put it, “little, tiny, incremental blow-ups over many years, most of them mental blow-ups”). What started it all in a big way, though, was “Idle Town,” Gray’s debut single that landed him a record deal. He explains that he knew immediately the track was a step in a new direction for him, saying, “I do remember thinking when I was making it, like, ‘Oh, this sounds a little different than the other stuff I had made.’”
Despite the song being a goodbye to his Texas hometown, he still carries the spirit of the Lonestar State with him: “I always joke that if you sing any of my songs in a Texan accent, they’re country songs.” He then sang a bit of “Oh, Heather” with some twang and a smile.
From there, he gets into that song (a Kid Krow highlight that had a long, complex gestation period) and other tracks and moments that helped him become him. So, check out the How I Blew Up episode above.
The View returned from a week-long break, and as the co-hosts shared how they spent the recent Fourth of July holiday, Ana Navarro divulged her secret passion for trolling Ron DeSantis. As a Florida resident and a Republican, Navarro is often in the orbit of Governor DeSantis and his people, so she often uses that opportunity to mock them over the state’s highly controversial “Don’t Say Gay” law.
“I just — I go around like a dog in Florida with my head outside of my car: We say gay! We say gay! We say gay!” Navarro revealed (shortly after the 4:00 mark above), leaving her co-hosts dying with laughter.
You can see a clip of Navarro’s trolling below:
Ana Navarro drag and shred DeSantis to pieces: “hen I gets near DeSantis and his supporters, I go around like a dog in Florida with my head outside of my car. We say gay! We say gay! We say gay!”#TheViewpic.twitter.com/lihPe8QI8a
Navarro’s admission came on the heels of Alyssa Farah Griffith sharing that she was in New Hampshire where she witnessed some DeSantis trolling as well as signs that his campaign is flailing. Via Mediaite:
“There were, like, Team Trump people… Mr. DeSantis got a ‘We say gay’ chant — this is Trump country. They have the biggest Trump sign you’ve ever seen. But what I found spending a week there is, people are over it. They’re not necessarily happy with Biden, they don’t want Trump again, they don’t seem to want DeSantis, but what are the options? It was very interesting. And, New Hampshire counts. They nominate presidents more than Iowa does.”
Navarro set the record straight that the DeSantis troller Griffith heard wasn’t her — this time.
“Well, it wasn’t me in New Hampshire screaming, ‘We say gay!’ although I wish I would have,” Navarro quipped.
It’s impossible to say what future live shows will bring, but what we can say is when and where they’ll be: Today (July 11), the group announced some additional tour dates for this fall. It’s a handful of additional shows: Boston on September 25; New Haven, Connecticut on September 28; Philadelphia on September 30, New York’s Madison Square Garden on October 10, and “a special Halloween event” (as a press release calls it) at Los Angeles’ Hollywood Bowl on October 31.
The got great support in tow, too, as Palehouse will be on hand for the first two shows, while supporting for the last three are Samia, Muna, and 100 Gevs and Sloppy Jane.
Check out the tour dates below.
09/25 — Boston, MA @ MGM Music Hall !
09/28 — New Haven, CT @ Westville Music Bowl !
09/30 — Philadelphia, PA @ TD Pavilion at The Mann ~
10/02 — New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden =
10/31 — Los Angeles, CA @ Hollywood Bowl *
! with Palehound
~ with Samia
= with Muna
* with 100 Gecs and special guest Sloppy Jane
Twenty years ago this month, one of the weirdest films ever to be distributed by a major studio in the 21st century came out. Released in a small handful of theaters the same weekend as Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over and Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle Of Life, the movie marked the directorial debut of Larry Charles, the behind-the-scenes right-hand man for Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David during the ’90s on Seinfeld who later achieved cinematic notoriety for his collaborations with Sacha Baron Cohen on the films Borat, Brüno, and The Dictator. For his first movie, Charles corralled an all-star cast headed up by John Goodman and Jeff Bridges — their first onscreen pairing since The Big Lebowskifive years prior — that also included Luke Wilson, Jessica Lange, Penelope Cruz, Angela Bassett, Val Kilmer, Mickey Rourke, Ed Harris, Bruce Dern, Christian Slater, Chris Penn, and Giovanni Ribisi.
And then there was the film’s mercurial leading man: Bob Dylan, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Charles under the pseudonyms Sergei Petrov (Dylan) and Rene Fontaine (Charles). In Masked And Anonymous, Dylan plays Jack Fate, a washed-up rocker who has been recently let out of prison so that he can perform at a benefit concert. Why was he in prison? Well, his father is the strongman-style dictator who runs what appears to be a post-apocalyptic version of America. And father and son were involved long ago with the same woman. And that’s (possibly?) why he was jailed. Also: Jack Fate is in his early 60s, and his father appears to be around the same age. And he dresses like a cowboy from a 1930s western, even though the film (possibly??) takes place in the future or at least an alternative present circa 2003.
Not much about Masked And Anonymous makes literal sense. It follows the rules of songwriting, not cinema, where surreal and nonlinear storytelling is more common, particularly in Bob Dylan songs. But mainly it’s just straight-up bonkers, following a loose narrative thread that functions primarily as a vehicle for a lot of colorful actors to give scenery-chewing performances. It’s the kind of movie where Val Kilmer shows up as a character known only as Animal Wrangler, and rambles in Bob Dylan’s general direction for several minutes about how people are worth no more than a crack in the mud at the bottom of a sun-dried lake. It’s also the kind of movie where Ed Harris dons blackface, Mickey Rourke plays the president, and Luke Wilson clubs a rock journalist to death with an old blues singer’s guitar. A real “just go with it” kind of film.
As a committed Dylan fan, I bought Masked And Anonymous on DVD as soon as it was available. (The movie only opened in four theaters, so seeing it on the big screen was all but impossible.) Upon my first viewing, I remember definitely liking it, and I remember definitely not understanding it. Each time I watched it, however, I liked it more. I later championed the movie in 2007 upon the release of another Dylan film, Todd Haynes’ kaleidoscopic I’m Not There, on the grounds that Masked And Anonymous was the “true” oddball Dylan flick.
By the time I screened it (twice!) last week ahead of talking with Larry Charles about the film’s 20th anniversary, it seemed to me like an almost straightforward (and addictively watchable) dystopian comedy. I have a blast every time I see it. My arc with Masked And Anonymous is not unlike my experience hearing many Bob Dylan songs — what initially seems impenetrably dense eventually comes to feel like pop music.
When I told Charles this last week during a Zoom call, he shared a surprising revelation: What I have seen truly is the straightforward version of Masked And Anonymous. The actually bonkers incarnation is the original three-and-a-half-hour cut culled from a sprawling 155-page screenplay that Dylan insisted — against the pleas of the film’s producers — that Charles shoot in its entirety. Only a small number of people have ever seen this version, which Charles describes as a “musical comedy spaghetti western,” and most of them were suits and moneymen who loathed it and demanded that he cut the film down. (This “Larry Charles Cut” of Masked And Anonymous evokes Renaldo And Clara, the nearly four-hour 1978 film that Dylan himself directed and then pulled from circulation. Though unlike that largely improvised film, Masked And Anonymous is entirely scripted.)
In the end, public response was not any better: Masked And Anonymous bombed at the box office and was excoriated by film critics like Roger Ebert, who gave it a half-star out of four and called it “a vanity production beyond all reason.” But that perception has changed somewhat over the years. Hardcore Dylan fanatics like me have embraced the film as a lovably gonzo product of Dylan’s utterly unique imagination. And Charles himself believes in the film now more than ever. “I thought it was an epic, and I still do,” he says. (The Dylan-themed podcast Jokermen, with whom I currently collaborate on a separate Dylan podcast about The Never Ending Tour, are hosting a rare 35mm screening of Masked And Anonymous with Charles in Los Angeles next month.)
As Charles outlined the making of Masked And Anonymous for me, it became clear that what happened off-screen during the shoot was just as bizarre as what happened on. The project began as a proposed comedy series for HBO inspired by Dylan’s love of Jerry Lewis movies, which he binged while on tour in the late ’90s. In the show, Dylan would have portrayed a Buster Keaton-type character who encounters a series of outrageous eccentrics in a post-apocalyptic world. Dylan and Charles were fairly outrageous eccentrics themselves at the time, showing up to the pitch meeting “wearing pajamas” (Charles) and “dressed like a gunfighter — a black cowboy hat, black duster, black boots, black gloves” (Dylan). Nevertheless, HBO bought the pitch, prompting Dylan to immediately bail. (“It’s too slapstick-y,” Dylan claimed, according to Charles.)
Instead, Dylan and Charles spent two years working on the Masked And Anonymous script. Along the way, Jack Nicholson and Johnny Depp briefly showed interest in playing, respectively, the unscrupulous concert promoter Uncle Sweetheart (ultimately played by Goodman) and the loyal roadie Bobby Cupid (the role that went to Luke Wilson). When Depp backed out, he loaned out his personal disc jockey to Dylan, and the DJ set up inside a teepee on the set to pipe songs into an earpiece plugged into Dylan’s ear. Dylan also suggested that all of the characters act out their scenes in dance, even as he struggled to hit his own marks. Charles shot the idea down.
Incredibly, despite this insanity plus a low budget and only 20 days to shoot, Charles was able to finish the film. Two decades on, he fondly recalled the chaotic production and the close working relationship he had with Dylan.
(Warning: This interview includes spoilers, though I would argue this is the kind of film that is still surprising even if you know what happens in advance.)
How did you meet Bob Dylan?
All of these are long stories. I was on a plane with Larry David going back to New York while we were doing Seinfeld. We had a little break, and we decided to fly back to hang out. A guy named Eddie Gorodetsky was on the plane. He was a comedy writer that Larry knew and I sort of knew. He came over to us and started talking, and immediately I could see Larry’s eyes glazing over. He said, “Hey, you guys like music or whatever, why don’t you sit together?” And he got up and changed seats.
Eddie sat down next to me and he had a big box of CDs. And he opens the box and it’s all this Bob Dylan stuff. I’m going, “Oh, you like Bob Dylan?” And he’s like, “Yeah. In fact, my best friend is Bob Dylan’s manager.” And I go, “That’s really weird because I had a cousin when I was a kid who I haven’t seen since I was five years old, who I’ve been told by my family that he’s Bob Dylan’s manager.” And he said, “What’s his name?” “Jeff Rosen.” He’s like, “That’s him.”
So Eddie hooked me up with Jeff, who I hadn’t seen for 30 years, and we became very close. One of the things with Jeff is I never talked about Bob Dylan with him. He’s so inundated with Bob Dylan, that’s his whole life. It’s a lot to carry because Bob is a very, very high-maintenance individual in many ways. He has a lot of projects, a lot of needs. It’s a logistical nightmare.
About two years went by. Jeff called me one day and he went, “Would you be interested in meeting Bob?” And I was like, “Yeah, of course!” He’s like, “He’s interested in doing this comedy idea. He’s been watching these Jerry Lewis movies. Would you just go talk to him about it?” And I was like, “Definitely.”
Bob has a coffee house in Santa Monica that he owns. I don’t know if he still owns it. It’s got a boxing gym in the back. I figured, “I’ll go have one meeting with Bob Dylan. I mean, what’s the chances of anything coming of it? And I will be able to tell all my friends that I met Bob Dylan.” I had no aspirations whatsoever.
I told them I was there and he comes out through the kitchen. The assistant comes over and says, “You guys want something to drink?” And I go, “Yeah, I’ll have an iced coffee.” And Bob says [affecting a Dylanesque voice], “I want something hot. I want a hot beverage.” The assistant goes away, comes back and puts our drinks down, and Bob immediately picks up my drink, my iced coffee, and starts drinking it. So now, right off the bat, I’m like, “What do I do when Bob Dylan’s drinking my drink? Should I say something? I don’t know, fuck it.” After a while he goes, “What’s the matter? Don’t you like your drink?” And I’m like, “Well, you’re actually drinking my drink. You stole my drink.” And he laughed. And we started talking about the idea almost right away from that moment. That’s how the relationship developed.
How did your collaboration work when you were writing the script?
I spent a solid two years in a cubicle with him writing. I mean, he had unending energy. We would write sometimes for 12 hours a day — writing, talking, working things out, not necessarily always scribbling. One of the first things he did was show me this beautiful box he had, and he opened the box and he dumped out all these scrap papers with little notes on them. And he said, “I don’t know what to do with this.” I started looking and there were names of characters: Uncle Sweetheart, Bobby Cupid, Tom Friend. And I said, “Well, these could be characters in a screenplay. And here’s a great line of some kind, an aphoristic line that could be a line of dialogue that’s said by this character.” He’s like, “You could do that?” And it’s like, “Yeah, of course.” I realized that’s how he writes his songs, he just has these scraps and he slowly synthesizes them into this new thing. That’s what we started doing with the screenplay.
My assumption was that Dylan originated the dialogue and you were the story guy.
Well, something about me that’s interesting, I think, is that I’m a great channeler. I sort of became Bob Dylan. So there’s actually a lot of Dylanesque dialogue in the movie that I wrote. But again, it was inspired by and channeled from him.
We had a very equal give and take. The only thing was he would never let me take home any of the scraps. I had to transcribe anything like that and leave the scraps there, because he knew how valuable anything that had his handwriting on it was. We were drawing on all kinds of different sources. We were experimenting, we were cutting and pasting. There was a lot of experimentation that even transcended the ideas to some degree.
One thing that stood out to me during after watching Masked And Anonymous twice this week was how much the movie seems to reflect its time — that awful post-9/11 era in America when the country was involved in two wars and the mood was very jingoistic and reflective of George W. Bush’s fundamentalist Christian allegiances. Do you feel like that informed the movie?
Well for me, in the visual style, that was important. The movie opens with Bob on a bus driving through downtown L.A. and Skid Row. And that underbelly of America was very much a great metaphor for the movie, the Third World America at that time. That’s how I imagine it. But in terms of specific politics, Bob was interested at that time in the Civil War. He was very, very obsessed with the Civil War. And a lot of the lines, which also wound up in Time Out Of Mind and in Love & Theft especially, are very Civil War influenced. So we were juxtaposing these Civil War ideas, which is gallantry and a regal quality to a lot of the language, onto this dystopian, postmodern America and seeing what would happen. A lot of it was, “Let’s try it and see what happens.” That beautiful experimentation is really the inspiration for the movie and it’s what to a large degree propels it.
There’s a lot of show-business satire in the movie, as well as meta commentary on Dylan’s own career, like when Jessica Lange’s character asks, “Are his songs going to be recognizable?” Did that come from Bob?
A lot of the autobiographical stuff — which there was a lot of autobiographical stuff in that movie — came from him. Especially Tom Friend, the Jeff Bridges character, he plays the archetypal music journalist who wants to challenge Bob, and he’s asking about Zappa and Hendrix. That’s all Bob. I think that’s from actual conversations that Bob’s had with journalists over the years where they ask, “What about Hendrix? He always left it hanging out.” Those kind of things are very much Bob.
Killing off the music journalist at the end must have been cathartic for Dylan.
That was a very tough scene to film. We shot the whole movie in 20 days and everybody was on a really, really tight schedule and doing it is essentially because of Bob. And Jeff Bridges literally had to leave the night that he was going to be killed. They had a plane to take him to his next location, which was some bigger budget movie. We’d worked 24 hours. Everybody was really tired. I wanted to make sure nobody got hurt in that kind of situation. But then his death is transcended. He has a beautiful line at the end, Jeff Bridges when he dies, which I can’t quote right now. But all that stuff, it started to dovetail nicely into a stream of consciousness, a feeling that seemed to really work for the movie. It’s very surprising and powerful and emotional in ways that weren’t really to be expected.
One of the strengths of Masked And Anonymous is the amazing cast. How did that come together?
We kept being told before we made it that Jack Nicholson wanted to play Uncle Sweetheart and Johnny Depp was going to play Bobby Cupid, and that was the original twosome. Both of them dropped out very quickly. I think Johnny Depp went to do Pirates Of The Caribbean or something like that. But as soon as Luke Wilson heard that we were doing a movie with Bob, he’s such a Bob freak that he volunteered to be in the movie as anything. And ultimately it was great for him to play Bobby Cupid.
Then the idea of John Goodman doing Uncle Sweetheart came up, which I loved. And then having Jeff Bridges be in the movie with John Goodman, because I was such a Big Lebowski fan, I thought, “Wow, those two guys as antagonists really appeals to me.” I think John really responded to the part, but a lot of the other people responded to just the idea of working with Bob. We were able to attract a lot of people because of that, like Penelope Cruz and Jessica Lange.
The movie is completely written. But I wanted it to feel like it was spontaneous and made-up, and that people were just spewing this off the top of their heads. I wanted it to feel like improvised Shakespeare in a way. Someone like Val, he just really relished that opportunity. We kept just shooting and shooting and shooting that scene, and he was finding moments.
Val Kilmer, Mickey Rourke, all these people that were supposed to be difficult, they were all just pussycats around Bob. And we wound up loving each other, and I maintained friendships with a lot of people for many years after.
How did you direct Bob Dylan?
[Chuckles.] He had a lot of very interesting ideas about how he wanted to do his performance. He tried a number of accents on me. I was like, “What is this? I don’t think this is right.” One time he wanted the whole movie to be in dance. Everything was going to be a dance. He had called Toni Basil, and I was like, “We don’t have the time to choreograph the entire movie like that.”
On the first day of filming we were going to shoot the first shot, which is Bob at this apocalyptic bus station, and it was a crane shot. I’m on top of the crane, and the crane’s supposed to come down onto him and Laura Harring, who’s playing The Lady In Red. As we’re getting ready to shoot, I’m hearing music in the background and it’s very distracting.
I’m asking people, “Do you hear that music?” Everybody hears it and it’s like, “Where’s that coming from?” People are scrambling around the building, and they’re running outside to see where this music’s coming from.
I see Bob through the monitor and he’s getting antsy and impatient. I’m like, “Man, this is the first shot of the day. I better go down and talk to him.” So I come down off the crane and I walk up to him, and as I’m walking towards him, I’m hearing the music get louder and louder and louder. And I’m like, “He really is a musical genius! He’s emanating music!” And then I realize he’s got a bug in his ear and the music is coming out of this bug in his ear.
And I go, “What are you doing?” And he points to the bug, and he tells me the name of the song — “Memphis, Tennessee” or whatever it was — that he was playing. And I was like, “You can’t do that during the scene.” And he said, “Johnny Depp told me that I should play music during the scene. It’ll help me do the scene.” And I’m like, “Johnny Depp did not tell you that! It’s very distracting. We’re hearing it everywhere. You can’t even hear what you are saying right now because the music is blasting in your ear.”
I find out that he’s hired Johnny Depp’s DJ. Johnny Depp has a traveling DJ who has set up a teepee outside of the parking lot. I go running out to the parking lot and there’s the teepee, which I didn’t notice before. And there’s a guy inside the teepee, very nice guy. And I’m like, “Hey man, you got to cut the music.” It took me 20 years before I finally read that, indeed, for some bizarre reason, Johnny Depp really does play music in his ears while he’s doing his scenes. So these were the different things Bob did to approach his performance.
Bob would be so into what was going on in the scenes. There’s a scene where John Goodman and Jessica Lange are going back and forth and he’s sitting there and he’s got dialogue. But he would get so into their acting that he would forget that he was in the scene. And so he would forget his lines, he’d forget his cues. Also, the idea of blocking, going from point A to point B in the scene, these things were not really natural to him. Jeff Bridges was amazing, he is a consummate filmmaker, which he does not get credit for. He’s been on sets since he’s four years old, and he was very, very generous to Bob and helped walk him through a lot of these things.
But ultimately what we did was I would have Bob’s stand-in walk through the scenes, and basically do the scene with Jeff Bridges or John Goodman or Luke Wilson or Penelope Cruz, whoever it was, and Bob would stand there and he would watch the stand-in do the scene. He would copy the stand-in, and that’s basically how the performance was created.
The first time Dylan appears in the movie, he’s in prison and he’s also wearing a wig. On the DVD commentary track, you mention that Bob started wearing the wig off-camera, too.
Yeah. He did like the idea of wearing the wig so much that when we went to Sundance, he showed up in a wig, but a wig that he bought at CVS or Walgreens. And then I saw that he did a couple of music videos where he was wearing the wig. He did some live shows where he wore the wig. He was digging wearing the wig. If you know Bob and his work like Masked And Anonymous or Renaldo And Clara or the Rolling Thunder era, you know he’s all about masks and makeup and masquerades and layers of identity. So I could see why the wigs appealed to him.
In the studio, Dylan is known for working quickly and not wanting to do a lot of takes. Was he like that on the set as well?
Well, because it was 20 days there was not a lot of time. Everybody was off book, including him. He has this incredible memory. I mean, you see him on stage and he’s reeling off the songs. He doesn’t have a teleprompter or anything. He just knows all his songs by heart, those dense, poetic songs. He knows them and he could just do them, and it was the same with the dialogue. He didn’t really stumble too much on the dialogue. It was more just forgetting his cue or not hitting his mark. But in terms of the dialogue, he was pretty good, and I wanted to keep that spontaneous edge so that we did not do a lot of takes. I wanted to really capture as much as I could in real time.
For the most part Bob Dylan doesn’t say much. A lot of the movie is him looking on stoically while somebody maniacally pontificates at him.
Well, that almost goes back to the original concept for the comedy series, which was him walking through these landscapes, like Buster Keaton or Jacques Tati, and reacting rather than generating anything. Almost like a Candide feeling to it. So he’s not very verbal, but because of that when he is verbal — and there’s a lot of verbiage in the movie — it’s very interesting and profound. And, as I’m sure you feel, there’s some great, incredible lines. Lines that I still quote to this day.
Absolutely. Also, his line readings are often quite musical. I love the scene where Dylan is on the bus with Giovanni Ribisi, And he talks about his dreams. “I dream I’m walking through fire … intense heat.“ I’m a big fan of how he says intense heat.
[Laughs.] That’s one of my favorites. I thought he gave a very laconic performance. Again, it has this spaghetti western kind of feeling to it. It was a very kind of Clint Eastwood performance to me, and I really liked it a lot. Of course, people are going to complain. He was going through a period there where people were really bitching about him a lot about all kinds of things. but I found this performance to be very enigmatic and interesting and very much in keeping with the spirit of the movie. Anything else would’ve been false. As stylized as this movie is, we were trying to achieve a level of honesty, too.
In the “making of” documentary included on the DVD, you said that you filmed Dylan performing 22 songs with his band, though only about a half-dozen or so ended up in the released film.
Yes. There’s 22 songs. In the three-and-a-half hour version, they may all be in there, as a matter of fact. This was one of the first movies that was shot digitally. And I said, “Look man, I want the camera just rolling all the time.” So we shot all the rehearsals. And then there were things like “Dixie,” that was done just to warm the band up. He did a lot of covers of songs, and so I wanted to make sure all that stuff got captured.
I don’t know where those songs are now. Jeff has all that material. I have the three-and-a-half-hour cut, but I don’t have all the footage. All the dailies and all that stuff.
Do you remember any of the songs he played that didn’t make the movie?
I know that he played a lot of R&B stuff, like “Mona.” And quite a few of his own songs that were from the album that had just come out, which I think was Love & Theft. There was a wide, wide range of covers, from the Allman Brothers to “Dixie.” His band was so great and so versatile and so responsive to him that they could almost launch into anything. But the specifics of which songs didn’t make it, I would have to go and check for myself. I’m not even sure anymore.
On the commentary track you mention he played “If You See Her, Say Hello.”
Right. When we started to winnow down that movie from the three-and-a-half-hour version to the two-hour version, a lot of that stuff just fell by the wayside. And they’re great performances. That band, that was one of his motivations for even doing the movie. He loved that band so much he wanted to capture them at that peak moment in their existence.
What was Bob like on the set? Did he keep himself at a distance from the other cast members?
On the first day, I went into his trailer and said, “Look Bob, we have 20 days to shoot the movie. All these people are here for you. So what I would like to propose is I’ll put a chair on set, a comfortable chair for you, and you should sit on that chair. And between setups, instead of going back to your trailer, sit on that chair so the people, when they’re walking by you, they can just go, ‘Hi, Bob.’ It’ll mean the world to people to be able to just say hello to you, and maybe you’ll say hello back. But whatever you do, they’ll each have that encounter with you and it’s going to inspire them because we have a lot of work to do in a very short amount of time. And that connection to you, which is why they’re here, will just be a life-changing experience for them.” Because he’s a reticent person. He’s not a particularly social person and he’s not really into that kind of stuff.
And he was like, “Okay.” And he did it. So he was very personable. He happens to have a great sense of humor. It’s very dry, but he was very personable to people and he had a pretty good time, actually.
How did Bob feel about the movie when he saw it?
Well, one of the first things he told me was, “I’m never going to see this movie.” [Laughs.] And I understand that in a way. I don’t really look at my stuff after I’m done either. It’s like, don’t look back. That’s his attitude, and I appreciate that because you can’t really do that much about it. Supposedly 20 years later he did watch it, and I was told off the record that he loved it. So that’s as much as I know about that. But he told me right off the bat, “The people will like this movie if they get a chance to see it, but the critics are probably going to hate it.” And he was completely right about all that stuff.
How did you process the film’s reception? Did Bob’s prophetic words comfort you at all?
Well, it was my first movie and I thought it was great. I really was very proud of it. I thought it was an epic, and I still do. So I honestly was shattered by the response. I mean, now I can laugh about it, but I saw my life going in a certain direction based on that movie and instead I had no movie career whatsoever. It died right there. That was it. I didn’t make another movie for quite a few years, and so I was devastated by the response and was really super profoundly disappointed.
Roger Ebert was particularly vicious toward the movie.
I’ll tell you a quick story. The Sundance people, they loved the movie. They decided they would make it the centerpiece premiere at the Sundance Film Festival that year, which was a very prestigious slot at a very prestigious film festival. I was really excited, and all the actors came to the Sundance Festival to be there for the premiere. And Bob came wearing that wig.
Roger Ebert, he was like the dean of the Sundance Festival. He had this special seat in the centerpiece theater and he was treated like a king. He was royalty there. And he came backstage and he wanted to go around and have pictures taken with all the cast because it was a very starry cast. Val was there, and Mickey Rourke and Luke and John and Jessica and Penelope, all those people were there.
So we’re backstage, he’s taking pictures, he’s happy as could be, and finally it’s time to take a picture with Bob. And I go, “Okay, let me go ask Bob if he’s willing to take a picture.” And I go over to Bob and I go, “Hey, Roger Ebert’s over there, and he just wants to take a quick picture with you.” And he’s like, “I don’t feel like taking a picture.” And I’m like, “Okay.” And I go back to Roger and I go, “Hey, Bob’s not really in the mood to take the picture, blah, blah.” And he gets really, really pissed off. He storms out, takes a seat, watches the movie, and then trashes the movie the next day in his review. So that was the kind of thing that I had no control over that may have affected the whole course of the movie.
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Over the years, what have you heard from Dylan fans about the movie?
Well, there’s two streams, really. One is the people who’ve discovered the movie subsequently and love it. There’s nobody I’ve met who’s actually seen the movie who doesn’t think it’s a mind-blowing movie. So I’m very, very pleased with the response it’s had. Look, we’re talking about it 20 years later, so I know it’s had an impact on an audience. And that audience is around the world, by the way, because I get asked about it in all these different countries that I’m in and there’s always an interest in it.
So there’s that group. But there’s an equally large group that has no idea that the movie exists. And I’m always shocked by that. I’ll be working on something and I’ll go, “Well, you know, I made this Bob Dylan movie.” And they go, “Bob Dylan movie? What Bob Dylan movie?” They’ve never even heard of it or knew that it existed. And then I try to turn those people onto it, of course.
Do you still have ambitions to release the long “Larry Charles Cut” of Masked And Anonymous?
Oh my goodness. I have been trying to get it released lo these many years. I have been haranguing Jeff and anybody else I could talk to about it. We’ve seen over the last few years all of these Bootleg Series box sets coming out with different cuts and alternate takes, and maybe that’s what they are going to plan on doing at some point. I hope they do it soon. But I only, literally, have a VHS copy of it. Jeff and Bob’s company have all the reels, all the dailies. Everything is in a vault somewhere. Part of the problem, of course, is that the initial release did not do well. I think if the shorter version had been wildly successful, there would be more interest in this longer version.
In the DVD “making of” documentary, you said making this film was a transformative experience for you.
It really was. Not just the shooting of the movie, but the writing of the movie, and just being with Bob Dylan every day for a couple of years, and being able to pick his brain and hear him think and laugh with him. He really was like an inadvertent guru to me. It wasn’t like he set out to share wisdom, but he was just spewing wisdom through his very being, and I was lucky enough to be exposed to that.
The failure of the movie really forced me to decide what’s important, because he taught me about trusting my instincts, and I really did follow that path. And I’m really much more satisfied, I think, as a person and as an artist because I have done that.
As painful as the film’s initial failure was for you, it also seems appropriate, given how many Bob Dylan albums were poorly received in the moment and then hailed as classics in retrospect.
I think that’s exactly true. The thing about him is he’s had public humiliation, he’s had failure, he’s had it all and he’s still here. That’s one of his greatest lessons. He was like, “It really doesn’t matter, you just have to keep doing it.” And he’s very unpretentious about that aspect of it.
Cardi B is celebrating her daughter, Kulture, who turned five years old. In a sweet new Instagram post, she shared some tribute pictures and videos to her — along with a sweet caption.
The first photo in the slideshow is of Kulture recently, rocking a super adorable pink outfit, complete with a tutu. She also matches with a piano that she sits down at.
“My baby is five….Happy birthday to my pretty princess.It’s beautiful seeing my girl grow yet makes me a lil sad that my baby is not my little baby no more,” Cardi wrote. “light lil turn up today till the weekend.”
The specific turn up invites were Super Mario-themed, as Cardi also shared they looked like on Twitter. Pulling inspiration from the video game franchise, the invite sees Kulture dressed up as Princess Peach, with a swirly pink background.
“Noooo cause how cute is Kulture’s Birthday party invite !?” Cardi B also captioned.
On Cardi’s Instagram Story, the family went to celebrate at the American Dream Mall with decorations that were fit for a princess.
Fans are loving how special Cardi made Kulture’s big day yesterday. “Awww, can’t wait to see the decorations I know you snapped like always,” one fan commented.
“Such a great idea!!!” another added in the replies.
Check out both of Cardi’s posts about Kulture’s birthday above.
Cardi B is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Most of the NBA world has been in Las Vegas this past weekend for Summer League, as the NBA has built out the summer showcase for young players into a full-on event for the entire league.
While Victor Wembanyama took center stage for his two games with the Spurs before shutting it down, a number of the NBA’s current stars have been in Vegas working out, partying, and granting some rare interviews to the many media outlets on site. On Monday night, one of the most interesting of those interviews came courtesy of Gilbert Arenas, who did a live Gil’s Arena show from Vegas and got Zion Williamson to come through and talk.
Williamson has had his name in plenty of headlines this summer, with off-court exploits and trade rumors swirling. All the while, he’s working to get back onto the floor after having another injury derail his season last year, with his weight and how it contributes to his struggles to stay healthy remaining a constant topic of conversation. Williamson has, understandably, not often wanted to wade into those waters in interviews, but with Arenas he did open up some about his struggles early in his career dieting, noting that it’s tough to bet 21 years old, with all the money you could dream of, and stay disciplined.
Zion notes that he’s trying to surround himself with more wisdom and people that will keep him in check (who knows if that’ll include Charles Barkley, who has offered to help Zion). He also went on to note that his issue is less about needing to lose a ton of weight and more about becoming more flexible and putting in the work needed to have his body more mobile and functional — at whatever weight — saying that he just needs to follow LeBron James’ blueprint.
“Bron got the blueprint, I’m doing my best to follow it.”
That would be an excellent example for Williamson to strive for, as James has always been great about taking care of his body, even when he was playing at a heavier weight. LeBron has trimmed down a touch as he’s gotten older, but there were years where he was an absolute tank, he just had the flexibility and mobility to make that work. For Williamson, he has to strike that balance, because a big part of his game is his strength and ability to muscle through contact. Losing a ton of weight would work against him in that regard, so he’s right to focus on balancing being big and strong with finding that flexibility and mobility to maximize that talent and avoid the injuries that have derailed his career thus far.
Hopefully Williamson’s recent injury woes and finding himself in trade rumors will serve as the motivation needed to fully buy in to doing that work in a way he hasn’t thus far, because he has been one of the league’s best players when he’s played, it’s just been far too common to see him in street clothes.
When Britney Spears wasn’t “sexy dancing in the house,” as Cardi B called it in “Put It On Da Floor Again,” the princess of pop was hard at work putting the final touches on her memoir. The “Pretty Girls” singer’s life story has been the center of several other creative projects, including the Broadway musical, Once Upon A One More Time. However, the entertainer’s forthcoming book, The Woman In Me, will mark the first time she is at the helm of the story being told.
In October 2022, Spears hinted that a literary work penned by her was in the works. Now, thanks to People, the official release date (October 24) and cover art has been revealed. In a statement shared with the outlet, the book was described as, “The telling [of Spears] own story, on her own terms.”
The publisher, Gallery Books’ Senior Vice President, commented on the upcoming release, saying, “Britney’s compelling testimony in open court shook the world, changed laws, and showed her inspiring strength and bravery. I have no doubt her memoir will have a similar impact — and will be the publishing event of the year. We couldn’t be more proud to help her share her story at last.”
The book website (where the memoir can be pre-ordered) also reads, “In June 2021, the whole world was listening as Britney Spears spoke in open court. The impact of sharing her voice — her truth — was undeniable, and it changed the course of her life and the lives of countless others. The Woman In Me reveals for the first time her incredible journey — and the strength at the core of one of the greatest performers in pop music history. Written with remarkable candor and humor, Spears’s groundbreaking book illuminates the enduring power of music and love — and the importance of a woman telling her own story, on her own terms, at last.”
Alabama rapper Chika was hospitalized as a result of kidney failure, resulting in two separate trips to the ICU. On Sunday (July 9), she posted a set of photos from her hospital room, writing, “Been in the ICU twice in the past month and it’s so friggin boring that i have resorted to taking prison photos. enjoy. album in a couple- a weekz.” It’s good to see she’s keeping her sense of humor despite the circumstances.
She elaborated on her diagnosis in the comments section after some less-than-friendly commenters made references to her prior suicide attempt. “You know you can spend 3 days in ICU and then get moved to the regular floor right?” she wrote. “Please shut the f*ck up, i had kidney failure.”
The rapper has had something of a rough road, despite her successes. Although she received some Grammy attention early in her career, leading to work with the likes of Stevie Wonder, she also ran afoul of one of the most belligerent fanbases in music and proved to be particularly vulnerable to their particular brand of needling.
This has led to a wider reputation as a somewhat volatile personality, although Chika refuses to tone herself down. Her struggles could prove to be worth it soon enough, though; her debut album Samson is due on 7/28 via Warner Records.
Chika is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
With the release of Special Ops: Lioness on July 23rd, Paramount+ will have officially transitioned fully into Taylor Sheridan+. The latest series from the Yellowstone creator shifts genres away from by-the-numbers Westerns into government spy action. It stars Zoe Saldaña as a CIA operative named Joe, working for the Lioness Program run by Kaitlyn Meade (Nicole Kidman). Joe brings a Marine called Raider Cruz (Laysla De Oliveira) on board as an undercover agent, and then the table-pounding meetings begin.
The trailer looks like a throwback in more than one way. First, a return to Sicario style. Albeit, this time it comes without the R rating, so it’ll be interesting to see how sharp Lioness‘s bite is.
Second, a TV show about a CIA operative engaged in the war on terror parachuting into a country where she wears a hijab? Insert shots of desert landscapes captured by spy satellites? Those are some real circa-2009 vibes.
Special Ops: Lioness also stars Michael Kelly as the co-runner of the Lioness Program and Morgan Freeman as Secretary of State Edwin Mullins, as well as LaMonica Garrett, Richard Haddad, Sam Asghari, and Martin Donovan.
The first two episodes hit Paramount+ on July 23rd, followed by weekly releases after that.
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