Say what you want to about James Corden, but he’s got a winner in Carpool Karaoke. The late-night segment is an absolute delight, one of the few completely wholesome things to look forward to in our modern-day hellscape of the internet. Sure, it’s basically easy PR for celebrities, but watching the Stranger Things kids belt out Biggie Smalls or Cardi B struggle to parallel park are fun little ways of both bringing these people down to earth and commiserating in our common faults.
Unfortunately, due to COVID-19 safety protocols, the bit has been off the air for the past two years, as social distancing complicated the filming too much to make it a regular occurrence. Well, social distancing guidelines have relaxed — for better or worse — and it’s pretty obvious the world could use more joy, so Corden and the gang are bringing the beloved segment back. Beginning on April 6, Carpool Karaoke returns to The Late Late Show with first guest Nicki Minaj, according to the show’s Twitter:
— The Late Late Show with James Corden (@latelateshow) April 1, 2022
Nicki’s appearance will be followed on April 18 with another segment featuring Camila Cabello. The announcement lends fuel to the rumors that Nicki Minaj is planning to release an album this year after sharing a slew of singles and feature verses including her own “Do We Have A Problem?” and Coi Leray’s “Blick Blick.” Cabello’s also got a new album coming, Familia, which will feature Ed Sheeran and Willow. Check out the teaser above.
Finding a great bottle of bourbon isn’t particularly hard. Liquor store shelves are practically overflowing with the stuff, which makes it pretty straightforward but also… sort of harder than it should be, in that there’s so much to sort through. With new bourbon releases dropping almost daily, the whole thing can feel a bit overwhelming for even the most seasoned bourbon fan.
To that end, we figured it was time to call out some new bourbons that we think are worth your time in 2022. For this list, I’m cracking a bunch of new bottles that just arrived at my door. Each of these expressions has either been released in 2022 or dropped in the last couple of months of 2021, which makes them hot right now.
I stand by all of these picks. They’re great bourbons from top to bottom. To that end, I’m not ranking these. There’s just too much green in between the cheaper and expensive bottles to make that fair. Let’s keep it simple — all of these bottles are (in one way or another) worth trying right now.
Now let’s dive in!
Also Read: The Top 5 UPROXX Bourbon Posts Of The Last Six Months
This celebrity whiskey comes from Vampire Diaries actors Paul Wesley and Ian Somerhalder. The juice is from an “undisclosed” source but from Indiana (gotta be MGP, obviously). The mash bill is a four-grain recipe of corn, rye, wheat, and malted barley that’s aged for an undisclosed amount of time before proofing all the down to 80 proof and bottling.
Tasting Notes:
The nose is light but distinct with hints of apple cider, soft caramel, a touch of singed oak, and plenty of vanilla. The palate leans into notes of marzipan with a fairgrounds caramel apple on a stick that’s just touched with salt and a distant hint of tobacco. The finish is short and sweet (and a bit thin) thanks to that low ABV, but does leave you with a nice sense of lush marzipan and applewood tobacco just touched by vanilla.
Bottom Line:
This feels like it’s simple white labeling by famous celebs. It’s really not. Paul Wesley and Ian Somerhalder are deeply involved in this whiskey and where it’s going. They’re out there hitting the streets and championing this bourbon as more than just a brand. It’s a true passion project between two real-world friends who actually care about whiskey. That alone makes this a refreshing bottle of bourbon to drink right now.
All of that said, this is still squarely in the great cocktail base category. It’s perfectly fine on the rocks but shines much more brightly in a Manhattan or old fashioned.
Penelope Bourbon is a great example of what a master blender can do with MGP whiskey. In this case, three barrels were blended — aged three to five years — to create a barrel strength expression that highlights the quality of those casks. The final product ended up being a four-grain bourbon with a mash bill of 74 percent corn, 16 percent wheat, seven percent rye, and three percent malted barley.
Tasting Notes:
The nose on this bursts forth with peaches, red berries, blueberry, and an almost savory gooseberry next to cotton candy, a touch of toffee, and very light-yet-sweet oak. The palate shines as the peaches and berries combine to make a sort of summer fruit crumble with plenty of butter, dark sugar, and spice alongside a thin line of soft leather, rich vanilla, and more of that sweet oak. The mid-palate sweetens with more cotton candy before diving into a warming and spicy finish that keeps the spice sweet and subtle.
Bottom Line:
This is a pretty damn fine sipper and mixer. I prefer it on a rock or two to calm down those ABVs, which also adds a little water that’ll help this bloom a bit in the glass. This one also works really well as a cocktail base, especially for something big like a Sazerac or boulevardier.
Bardstown Bourbon Company Founders KBS Stout Finish Bourbon (February 2022)
This new whiskey from Bardstown Bourbon Company leans into beer barrel finishing. The juice is a ten-year-old Tennessee whiskey (which is, technically, bourbon) comprised of 84 percent corn, eight percent rye, and eight perfect malted barley (which, coincidentally, is the same mash bill as Dickel). That whiskey is then transferred to KBS Stout barrels from Founders Brewing up in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The whiskey spends an additional 15 months mellowing with the stout-infused oak before bottling.
Tasting Notes:
The nose draws you in with a balance of almost waxy cacao nibs next to oily vanilla beans, dry roasted espresso beans, milk chocolate malts, a hint of Nutella, and a bright burst of orange oils. The palate builds on that foundation and layers in hazelnuts, mulled wine spices, and a dark, thick, and spicy cherry syrup with a woody backbone. The sweetness of the cherry on the mid-palate ebbs as the woody spices and bitter dark cacao kick in late and bring about a dry finish with plenty of Nutella, espresso cream, and spicy cherry tobacco chewiness with a hint of citrus oils cutting through everything.
Bottom Line:
This sip rules. It’s one of the better attempts at stout-cask-finished bourbon on the market. It’s very easy to drink neat but benefits from a little water to really open it up in the glass (and get some of the deeper nut and cacao notes).
Larceny is made from a mash bill of 68 percent corn, 20 percent wheat, and 12 percent malted barley, which is Heaven Hill’s wheated bourbon standard mash. The whiskey in the bottle is a blend of six to eight-year-old barrels that are vatted and bottled at cask strength as-is. It’s as easy as that, folks.
Tasting Notes:
The nose opens with full-tree cedar beams next to a fire cracking away in a huge river rock fireplace. That woody note is supported by touches of warm brown butter, maple syrup, pancake batter, and a hint of sticky buns with walnuts and orange pith lurking in the background. The palate starts off sweet and nutty, kind of like almonds dipped in that maple syrup and then rolled in holiday spices with an echo of warmth. The mid-palate leans into ripe figs and spiced prunes before a vanilla husk woodiness arrives with whispers of hazelnuts, dry sweetgrass, and woody spice with a hint of cedar-infused tobacco leaves. On the very backend, there’s a bit of a sweet straw with a touch of that spicy warmth.
Bottom Line:
This is one of those bourbons that elicits a “goddamn, that’s good” from the very first sip. While the warmth on this one might be a bit much for some, it’s really well layered into the flavor profile. Moreover, those ABVs also make this a killer choice from a cocktail base. Stir up a Manhattan with this one, you won’t be disappointed.
This year’s first Elijah Craig drop is a 12-year-old whiskey made from Heaven Hill’s classic bourbon mash of 78 percent corn, 12 percent malted barley, and a mere ten percent rye. Those barrels are masterfully blended into this Barrel Proof expression with no cutting or fussing. This is as-is bourbon from the barrel.
Tasting Notes:
Caramel draws you in on the nose with a slight sourdough cinnamon roll with pecans, a touch of floral honey, and a soft and woody drug store aftershave with an echo of vanilla candle wax and singed marshmallow. The palate rolls through a soft leather and vanilla pie note as cinnamon ice cream leads to spicy oak. The mid-palate leans into a sweeter, almost creamy spice (think nutmeg-heavy eggnog) which, in turn, leads to a dry cedar bark next to a dry stewed-apple tobacco leaf folded into an old leather pouch for safekeeping.
Bottom Line:
This is one of my favorite pours of the year, so far. This is just classic bourbon in every way that never feels basic or pandering. It’s just really f*cking good all around. It also makes a dope old fashioned.
Heaven Hill Heritage Collection 17-Year-Old Barrel Proof Bourbon, First Edition (March 2022)
The base of the spirit is Heaven Hill’s classic bourbon mash of 78 percent corn, 12 percent malted barley, and a mere ten percent rye. This particular whiskey is built from several barrels from four warehouse campuses in the Bardstown area. In this case, three different ages were pulled with 17 years being the youngest. The whiskey is made from 28 percent 20-year-old barrels, 44 percent 19-year-old barrels, and 28 percent 17-year-old barrels. Once those barrels are vatted, the bourbon goes into the bottle as-is, without any cutting or fussing.
Tasting Notes:
The age is apparent from the first nose with old glove leather next to a soft hint of cobweb-draped cellar beams leading towards a dark and thick cherry syrup that’s laced with cinnamon, clove, and allspice. The nose then grows with an almost cherry-maple syrup with a buttery base pushing it toward a toffee creaminess. The palate leans into those spices with a winter-spice-laced chewy (almost wet) fistful of tobacco leaves jammed into an old cedar box. The mid-palate bursts with spiced cherry crumble with baked brown sugar and nutmeg nuts, creating a velvety texture. The finish carries the spice from that mid-palate towards a sweet finish that feels like a marrying of toffee syrup and cherrywood tobacco with that dry cedar tobacco box echoing on the far backend.
Bottom Line:
This bottle is spectacular. I can’t imagine this not making the top ten of 2022, it’s that good. If you can find one, buy two; one for sipping and one for the vault.
Old Fitzgerald Bottled-in-Bond 17-Year Spring 2022 Edition (March 2022)
This whiskey was distilled and laid down in barrels back in 2004. The barrels were vatted after 17 years and proofed down to the bottled-in-bond standard of 100 proof and then bottled in the iconic Old Fitz decanter for a Spring 2022 release.
Tasting Notes:
A hint of woodiness comes through on the nose via cherry tree bark with the faintest echo of dried rose next to soft vanilla oil, a hint of cedar, a distant thought of old leather, and a touch of burnt orange peels. The palate starts off softly with a lush vanilla cream that builds towards a winter spice matrix of nutmeg, allspice, and clove with a touch of cherrywood that sweetens toward dried cherries. That mid-palate builds on the cherry with spices (nutmeg and allspice) and sticky tobacco vibes as the finish arrives next to a super creamy dark cherry in vanilla cream feel with a dusting of dark chocolate and more of that dry cherry tree bark.
Bottom Line:
Again, this is spectacular whiskey. It’s so nuanced and beautiful from top to bottom. This is the sort of whiskey where you finish your first Glencairn and then a deeper understanding of great whiskey washes over you. You’ll get why/how great whiskey is actually great after drinking this.
This whiskey — a collaboration between Kentucky’s first female master distiller, Marianne Eaves, and Colorado’s famed 291 Distillery — just dropped in February. The juice in the bottle was blended by Eaves over weeks as she tasted through 291’s aspen stave-infused bourbon barrels. The end result is a blended bourbon of aspen stave finished whiskey at barrel proof.
Tasting Notes:
The nose on this one opens with freshly cut green sweetgrass with hints of savory herbs, wet cornmeal, winter spices, apple cores, and sweet and soft pine resin. The palate leans into the greenness with more of that sweetgrass leading toward a green pepper vibe next to cinnamon, clove, and nutmeg with a stewed apple pie filling edge to it. That soft and fruity mid-palate leads back to the sweet pine resin and now dried sweetgrass, dried mint, and a hint of spicy apple tobacco and stringy cedar bark on the end.
Bottom Line:
This is a solid outlier. There’s a real depth here that leans into the woodier side of the Colorado bourbon, which is renowned for its aspen stave finishing program. What makes this special is Eaves’ ability to take that a bit further and really dive into the greener aspects of the wood finishing with herbs, resins, and woody spices all creating a bold flavor profile that feels fresh.
Stellum Bourbon was one of our favorite bourbons for 2021. Just as the year ended, we got another version of Stellum that’s sure to dominate lists this year. Stellum Black Bourbon basically takes the recipe from Stellum Bourbon and uses the reserve barrels (sourced from Indiana, Tennessee, and Kentucky) from the series to create this heightened blend. The whiskey is batched and bottled at cask strength to let those barrels shine through in every sip.
Tasting Notes:
The nose opens with a mix of black and green peppercorns next to kettled corn with salted caramel sauce, dried yet sweet cedar, vanilla blossoms, and a hint of an orange creamsicle stick. That orange drives the palate as soft suede mingles with that floral vanilla vibe next to holiday spices (thnk cinnamon and clove) layered with that sweet cedar and sharp black pepper. The pepper fades out on the finish and makes way for a dark mocha chocolate/coffee bitterness with a vanilla tobacco chewiness with a hint of pepper, leather, and cedar on the far back end.
Bottom Line:
Complex, delicious, and fresh are the best ways to describe this bourbon. It’s deeply flavored but still very easy to drink. A few rocks and you’re set with this one, though I do recommend trying this is some simple bourbon cocktails.
Wild Turkey Master’s Keep One 6th Edition (September 2021)
This release from late last year is still one of the most sought-after bourbons of 2022. The juice is a blend of nine to ten-year-old bourbons chosen by Master Distiller Eddie Russell and 14-year-old bourbon barrels chosen by Eddie’s father, Master Distiller Jimmy Russell. Those barrels were blended and then re-barreled in toasted barrels for another final maturation. That juice was then just touched with that soft Kentucky limestone water and bottled as-is.
Tasting Notes:
Honey spiked with apple and orange blossoms leads the way on the nose as balls of caramel corn mingle with dry cinnamon sticks, black peppercorns, and salted caramel chews. The palate is pure butterscotch candies with a vanilla cream foundation and more of that floral honey. The mid-palate kicks up with candied ginger and black pepper spice next to cinnamon sticks dipped in cherry syrup with buttery toffee and the slightest echo of dried lavender. The finish amps up the spices to Red Hots, fresh ginger, freshly cracked black pepper, spicy tobacco with a hint of dark cacao, and a dry cedar box on the very end.
Bottom Line:
This is amazing juice. It’s one of those 100/100 bottles of bourbon. It’s new, exciting, comforting, nostalgic, deep, accessible, and kind of fun. You cannot beat this bottle of whiskey as both a premier sipper and a valuable collectible.
Keeping track of all the new albums coming out in a given month is a big job, but we’re up for it: Below is a comprehensive list of the major releases you can look forward to in April. If you’re not trying to potentially miss out on anything, it might be a good idea to keep reading.
Friday, April 1
Alabaster DePlume — Gold (International Anthem)
Amine Mesnaoui And Labelle — African Prayers (Lo Recordings)
Battle Ave — I Saw The Egg (Friends Club Records/Totally Real Records)
Beau Diako — Nylon (Juno Records)
Big Cheeko — Block Barry White (Nature)
Blue Wilson — Future Street (Acrophase Records)
Casually Here — Possible Worlds (Algebra Records)
Christian Alexander — I Don’t Like You (Video Store)
Christian Lee Hutson — Quitters (ANTI- Records)
Confidence Man — Tilt (Heavenly Recordings)
Crows — Beware Believers (Bad Vibrations Records)
Daniel Johns — FutureNever (BMG)
Daryl Hall — BeforeAfter (Legacy Recordings)
The Dead Tongues — Dust (Psychic Hotline)
Deathcave — II EP (Satanik Royalty Records)
Desaparecidos — Live At Shea Stadium (Freeman Street Records)
Devon Kay & The Solution — Grieving Expectation (Pure Noise Records)
Erisy Watt — Eyes Like The Ocean (American Standard Time Records)
Fatherson — Normal Fears (Easy Life)
Field Works — Station (Temporary Residence)
Gerald Clayton — Bells On Sand (Blue Note Records)
Graeme James — Seasons (Nettwerk Records)
The Greyboy Allstars — Get A Job: Music from The Original Broadcast Series Soul Dream (Knowledge Room Recordings)
The Hara — We All Wear Black EP (Scuff of The Neck)
Hari Sima — Solo en Occidente (Abstrakce Records)
Horojo Trio — Set The Record (obsessionrecords)
Jon Spencer & The HITmakers — Spencer Gets It Lit! (In the Red Records)
Karima Walker — Demos EP (Keeled Scales)
Lights — PƎP (Fueled By Ramen)
Luaka Bop — I Just Want To Be A Good Man (Luaka Bop)
Melissa Manchester — Live ’77 (Real Gone Music)
Meshuggah — Immutable (Atomic Fire)
Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway — Crooked Tree (Nonesuch Records)
Nakaya — Fire Becomes Me EP (Better Company)
Night Palace — Diving Rings (Park the Van Records)
No Frills — Downward Dog (Big Soup)
Paul Cauthen — Country Coming Down (Velvet Rose Records)
Pillow Queens — Leave The Light On (Royal Mountain Records)
Plastikman & Chilly Gonzales — Consumed In Key (Turbo Recordings)
Oscar producer Will Packer‘s interview with Good Morning America is barely hot off of the press, and already, sources for Chris Rock are disputing one of Packer’s biggest claims. Namely, that Rock didn’t want Will Smith removed from the ceremony after he walked on stage and slapped the comedian following a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith.
While conveying his version of events, Packer told GMA that Rock didn’t want Smith kicked out of the event. “That was Chris’ energy,” Packer said via Variety. “His tone was not retaliatory, it was not angry, so I was advocating what Rock wanted in that time, which was not to physically remove Will Smith at that time.”
However, sources close to Rock are saying Packer has it mixed up and the comedian was never asked about keeping Smith in the building. Via Deadline:
We’re told that Packer is conflating this from a conversation that happened after Smith slapped him onstage, where Rock told Packer he did not want to press charges. Had he chosen to do that, the LAPD would have removed Smith and arrested him. Had Packer asked Rock if he wanted Smith removed from the building, he might have gotten a different answer. The question of where Smith should have been left in place to receive his Best Actor Oscar and give a speech where he apologized to everyone but Rock, this was never asked of the comedian.
Packer’s version of events puts the onus on Rock for Smith remaining in the building, but sources close to the comedian say that’s not the case at all, which has become par for the course in the aftermath of The Slap as conflicting reports arrive like clockwork as soon as new information comes to light.
The track is from November, and, at the time, the pair said it was about “sleepwalking into adulthood.” But, halfway through, it feels as if they’re waking up as the instruments stop and they speak-sing, “Now everything is going wrong / I think I changed my mind again.” The chaos of the song is intensified in this live performance as they shred on their guitars and coordinate their twirling dance moves. Their signature deadpan is even more amusing when you can see how blank and unbothered they look when uttering depressing lines like, “This world is pretty harrowing.” The music, though, bursts with excitement and a sense of celebration in typical Wet Leg fashion, mostly because of their disarming humor: “I just need a bubble bath / To set me on a higher path.”
While people may be actively trying to move on from that fastly evaporating memory of that time we all watched Netflix and got really good at faking enthusiasm on a Zoom call, Judd Apatow probably can’t, not when his two most recent projects are so connected to that time, creating a question that the writer and director said he has been asking himself: “Do people need a comedy about this?” The answer is, unsurprisingly nuanced. So too are the projects and their connection to the pandemic.
With The Bubble (which you can stream on Netflix), it’s unavoidable. Commenting on the ways Hollywood trudged along during the shutdown (while also making the film itself in the shutdown), Apatow tells us, ” Everyone I know who has been in bubbles really relates way too much to what’s in the movie.” But there are relationship dynamics and commentary on the studio system that will still resonate no matter your feelings about where we are in the pandemic. To Apatow, this isn’t just a pandemic project, it’s also something that relates to The Larry Sanders Show for its behind-the-scenes focus (in this, Karen Gillan, Keegan Michael Key, Pedro Pascal, David Duchovny, Apatow’s wife Leslie Mann and their daughter Iris Apatow hang around on palatial estate while filming a dinosaur epic)
With his new book, Sicker In The Head, Apatow’s interest in long-form interviews with comedians — something he began doing when he was 15 — continues against the backdrop of the pandemic in that people were more available and perhaps a little more open to going deep into a discussion about their lives when Apatow wrote the book, a sequel to 2015’s Sick In The Head. This all makes for a fantastic set of conversations with the likes of Sam Bee, Hasan Minhaj, Amber Ruffin, David Letterman, and many more.
While culture in the time of COVID, The Bubble, and Apatow’s new book dominate the conversation, there is also a quick bit about his now infamous Oscar night tweet and what it feels like to be a polarizing figure. Here’s Judd Apatow.
This film [and the book, to a lesser extent] have such a deep connection to the pandemic. As you’re watching this unfold over the last half a year where a lot of pop culture is moving away from telling stories rooted in that, does panic set in because the movie is so rooted in the pandemic?
I think I thought about it the entire time and still do. Do people need a comedy about this? What would be the purpose of that comedy? I chose to write about isolation and how the world tries to keep moving forward even though everything has changed. So some of the satire’s about Hollywood, how ego-driven people deal with a shutdown. It’s about studios feeling the need to keep the machine moving even through all of this. I wanted to explore what happens when you take a pause and think about your life. We all talk about the Great Resignation and that’s part of what the movie is about, people whose whole lives are about trying to stay famous and trying to get all of their self-esteem from this business and then suddenly it all drops out from under them. And then they desperately try to keep it going by making this flying dinosaur movie. So it was a silly premise to talk about things that a lot of us are dealing with in our own way, how are we managing this.
You don’t have the budget of a Jurassic World, but how important was it to make this feel not distractingly terrible in terms of the way it looks when you’re showing the dinosaurs?
Well, I wasn’t sure what my budget was going to be. So when I started, I thought, well, maybe you never see the dinosaurs. Maybe you only see these people dressed in tights, the motion capture actors, the Andy Serkis-type people. And then I thought, well, maybe when you see the dinosaurs, it’s always half-finished and it’s like a crappy pencil drawing of dinosaurs or the roughest animation and it’s temp. But then we started talking to the people at Industrial Light and Magic about how we could do it, and we realized it might be really funny if every time you cut to the set, you’re just in the movie and it looks exactly like Jurassic Park and then suddenly something goes wrong and it falls apart and you reveal all the green screens and how shitty the set actually looks. And that forced me to try to understand how to do the highest level special effects.
We worked with Roger Guyette who has worked with J.J. Abrams in a lot of his movies and Star Wars and he was the essential person who taught us how to do it and storyboarded with us. And he actually pitched some of the funniest jokes in those sequences. It’s so much work. There’s like 15 minutes of dinosaur material in the movie, maybe less. It took a thousand meetings to get that right. I don’t know how people do The Avengers and have thousands of people fight thousands of people. To me, it would take 25 years to finish the movie.
I think all roads lead there at some point. It’s like the draft.
I spoke with David Duchovny a few months ago and he mentioned how you and him talked about Garry Shandling and how much you thought about him while you were on set. And he said that you had said that you thought about him every day. Curious what you’re willing to share about how you kind of felt his hand in the process, his influence, and his memory while you were there.
I mean, I was thinking about Garry’s philosophy about the work because he really believed that if you created a fully dimensional human character and got to the core of who they were, it would naturally become funny because we’re all trying to be happy. We’re all trying to get through the day. He believed that everyone wears a mask. We present ourselves to the world the way we want to be seen, but it’s actually not who we are down deep and then we go home and we cry and we’re insecure and we fall apart, but we might present as completely having our shit together. And we see that all the time when people reveal their true selves. And he always said that it’s very rare that people are very direct and honest and real with you.
With a movie like this that’s basically a relative of The Larry Sanders Show (it’s behind the scenes of the making of an action movie, not a talk show), I would think of Garry when I was writing the scenes for every character. David Duchovny is the one who wants the movie to be good and, in his head, he thinks it’s a pro-environmental message and he has great pride in the movie, and he doesn’t think of it as corny. And he’s really willing to fight hard to make it good, even though it probably can never be good. And that’s some of the comedy of it… is that he wants it to be great and it will never be great. And he’s also willing to sacrifice his time with his family and his child to get that done. So he’s lost some sense of what’s important in life, and the ridiculousness of that and the mistakes of that become comedy. That was Garry’s style.
Turning to the book, these are your peers and obviously, you’ve established yourself now many times over, but do you still feel to a certain extent like a fan? Do you still feel like an outsider to a certain extent with any of these?
I always feel like a fan. I mean that’s really the root of everything I do. So when I meet someone like Harry Trevaldwyn, the guy who plays the COVID supervisor in The Bubble and he’s done nothing except put up funny videos on Instagram, there’s a part of me that feels like, “Oh, he’ll be great for the movie and I hope he does a good job.” And there’s another part of me that feels like, “Oh, I just met a new Steve Martin.” And I’m as excited by that as I was when I was 14 years old, and it doesn’t even matter if he ever becomes famous. I just know he’s great. It’s like hearing a new band that you love and sometimes it doesn’t matter if they get successful, it’s just you connect with them.
So that’s the most important part for me is my love of comedy and the people who do it. So I’m intimidated. Sure, I’m not completely relaxed talking to David Letterman because he had such an enormous impact on my life and in the lives of a lot of people in comedy in ways he doesn’t understand because he inspired us to take chances. He showed us what was possible and at certain moments we needed him to anoint us and put us on the show and give us the breaks that led to good things happening.
You talk about discovering a new comedian for the first time, hearing that voice for the first time. How important is it for you, again as you go along in your career, to keep your eyes open and ears open for that new thing as opposed to just sort of playing with your familiar toys and the comics that you know?
Well, I mean you fall in love with things in your life like a band and it does take work to look for something new and to open yourself up to be touched in a new way. I like working with new people because it’s fun to try to crack the code of how they would tell their story, how they would work as a star of a movie. So for a lot of these projects, I’m finding someone that I believe in as a performer and a presence but also someone that has a great story or an interesting inner life that I think will lead to a great film.
So if I meet somebody like Billy Eichner, who just wrote a movie with Nicholas Stoller called Bros for our company, I know he’s hilarious and I’m also interested in what he wants to say on screen and how does he want to develop his persona? It’s the first studio-made gay rom-com. It’ll come out in the fall and it’s been a four-year process of him working with Nick Stoller, writing the script and Nick directing and all of us discussing what a movie like this could be. And that’s very exciting. And part of what is really fun about it is how hard Billy Eichner will work because it’s so important to him. And it was the same way with Pete Davidson and Amy Schumer and Lena Dunham. That moment where people are given that opportunity just leads to so much passionate effort.
You mention Pete. That was one of my favorite interviews from the book that I read. With that and with a lot of these really, when it’s someone that you know, how much of it is your exploring and finding out new information that you didn’t know about their backstory and about their journey and how much it is just trying to help them kind of tell that story in a new way while connecting with them?
Usually, I know some of it and then they go deeper and tell me more. I interviewed Pete extensively for the film. We wanted to do a very extensive interview where we could use pieces of it to create documentaries about the making of the film and about Pete to educate people when the movie came out. And I took that interview and put it into the book. So we tried to go as deep as you could go. And with that interview, I hope that what his childhood experience was could come alive for people. What is the trauma of that experience? How does a young person process it? How does that lead to the choice to become a comedian and a writer and an artist? Because it tunes you into something. You become an observer, you become empathetic to other people, and you have so much in you and you want to find a way to express it. And for Pete, that meant writing comedy, sometimes dark comedy as a way to express himself. And then the film and everything that he does on Saturday Night Live. And a lot of people had difficult childhoods that led to them looking for a way to express it.
Pete is polarizing, I guess you could say. With everything that just went on [with the Oscars and Apatow’s tweet], you may be walking into that space as well where you’re someone who is a polarizing figure to an extent. With the tweet and everything that happened there, what is it like to experience that? And also, when you see some of the criticism over it, is it something you look at constructively?
I think everyone disagrees about everything right now. I don’t think you can state your opinion about anything without losing half the room and that’s an unfortunate part of our discourse right now. So if you say, “I don’t think we should deal with problems by resorting to violence,” oddly a lot of people will speak up and say, “I disagree with you.” And there’s not much you can do with that. You can’t change everybody’s mind. It’s impossible to get everybody on the same page, but I think people should be able to express themselves if they do it in a non-toxic way. And, unfortunately, a lot of what happens when people are debating these things is meant to injure.
‘The Bubble’ is streaming on Netflix and ‘Sicker In The Head’ is available to buy wherever your book-buying is done.
The Grammys are this weekend and now, just days out from the event, The Recording Academy and CBS have announced an additional artist added to the already-stacked lineup of performers: On April 3, Lady Gaga will take the Grammys stage.
It’s giving… GAGA. You didn’t think we’d show up to Vegas without her did you?
— Recording Academy / GRAMMYs (@RecordingAcad) April 1, 2022
Gaga joins a list of performers that includes Silk Sonic, Carrie Underwood, J Balvin, John Legend, Maria Becerra, BTS, Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo, Lil Nas X with Jack Harlow, Brandi Carlile, Brothers Osbourne, Nas, HER, Jon Batiste, Chris Stapleton, Ben Platt, Cynthia Erivo, Leslie Odom Jr., and Rachel Zegler. Foo Fighters were previously also included, but it was confirmed they dropped out of the show after canceling all upcoming performances due to Taylor Hawkins’ death.
Gaga has six nominations this year, all in conjunction with Tony Bennett: Record Of The Year; Best Pop Duo/Group Performance; and Best Music Video (all for “I Get A Kick Out Of You”); as well as Album Of The Year; Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album; and Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical; (all for Love For Sale). Gaga will presumably not be joined by Bennett for the performance, as the 95-year-old singer’s song/manager confirmed last year Bennett has retired from performing due to his age and Alzheimer’s disease.
Find the full list of 2022 Grammy nominations here.
Phoenix Rising, a new documentary on HBO that debuted at Sundance, actually became a two-part documentary on the fly. The pivotal moment occurred in January 2021 when Evan Rachel Wood came forward (on Instagram) to name Marilyn Manson (real name Brian Warner) as her alleged abuser, whom she had spoken about for several years. This discussion had already generated speculation about Manson, given the timeline (for grooming, domestic abuse, and terrorizing) regarding her testimony in front of Connecticut lawmakers for Jennifer’s Law and for California’s Phoenix Act. These laws (respectively) make more resources available for survivors and extend the statute of limitations for sexual assault cases.
As one can imagine, Evan’s articulation of Manson’s name expanded the scope of the Amy Berg-directed project, which already included Manson and Wood’s relationship in addition to exploring her earlier formative years. The project dives deep into details of Wood’s accusations, including allegations that she was “essentially raped on camera” by Manson during the filming of 2007’s “Heart-Shaped Glasses” video. She maintains that she had agreed only to simulate sex, and Wood further describes how the violence of this relationship only grew more harrowing. She accuses Manson of isolating her and dismantling her identity (after preying upon a young woman who was 19 years his junior). As the documentary also aims to prove, Wood is not alone, and several other women in this project put forth similar accusations against the singer.
Amy Berg was gracious enough to speak with us about the film. She’s no stranger to harrowing subject matter (Deliver Us From Evil, West Of Memphis, The Case Against Adnan Syed), and with this project, she hopes to communicate relatability (with Evan’s plight) to survivors of domestic abuse. It’s worth noting that — two weeks before Phoenix Rising was due to debut on HBO — Manson sued Wood while alleging “malicious falsehood” over her abuse claims, which he continues to deny. Yet Berg, Wood, and HBO pushed forward with the release as planned.
Hi Amy, I’m fiddling with Zoom camera mode, which is a great start to talking about this subject.
Yeah, and it adds a whole other layer when you’re dealing with a really heavy film, and you’re not really in the production offices either. That adds more to the isolation trauma, I guess, or something.
You’re used to difficult subject matter, but this might have topped the charts. How do you distance yourself from trigger points while doing the work that you do?
Well, yeah, I mean, I had a really strong team during the edit, and that’s how we kept it on point. Nowadays, we can work with Trello, the app that we use. We can make cards online, it’s like having a cork board [wildly gestures], so we just had to support each other, and we stayed with the story that we were trying to tell in the edit. And that was the way to keep some distance, but it’s tough. I’m not gonna lie to you and say that it doesn’t seep in. It does.
And you gotta take a load off at some point.
More so during the pandemic because you don’t have a production office, you know, for the bulk of this period that we were shooting. We didn’t really have a central office, so it was just like what we’re doing right now.
Have you been watching the Twitter conversation about this film?
Oh, I’ve been doing press for 24 hours, are you talking about today?
Yes, there’s a lot of support for Evan’s advocacy and this project, but there are (of course) trolls from toxic fandom.
I do wonder if people who are so against it actually watched the film. Because all that I saw with some of yesterday was “she has no evidence.” That’s what I kept seeing, over and over again, and I feel like the documentary shows a lot of evidence, so I’m wondering whether they’ve even seen the film, you know?
Yeah, and this film takes us back in time. I can’t speak for everyone else, but I remember, back around 2006 when Evan and Manson started dating, that something seemed very “off,” even then. Did you catch that vibe, too?
Yeah, I definitely did, and I haven’t really thought about this in a long time, actually. Because I’ve been so in this film, but I do remember, and I wasn’t a fan of Manson, and I didn’t know that much about him. I just remember the image of those two, definitely, was all over the place. And headlines everywhere, at Perez Hilton…
I seem to remember a headline (somewhere else, not Perez) that read something like, “Evan Rachel Wood Must Hate Her Parents.” Not fantastic.
And the media has traditionally been very good at making women feel like, you know, the names that they called her in the film. Calling her a “whore” and just chastising her publicly, and just kind of this culture that we have been accustomed to, and it’s so wrong. It puts you in the wrong frame of mind about everything. Because you’re constantly judging on something that you don’t know anything about. I’m really excited that we were able to un-peel this onion and tell this story because it was just really this young girl who was just trying to find her way and got caught up in the wrong thing. And it’s important to tell that story.
Obviously, there was a point when the project expanded. That was the moment when Evan posted on Instagram, but how was the flow going until that point, where you tied in her family history?
The film’s chronology is in real time. We got into her backstory right away, so we could understand everything that had happened historically before [Manson touring technician/personal assistant] Dan Cleary had tweeted [a thread] in August 2020, or it might have been early September. When Manson’s last album came out, Cleary tweeted, and that was a turning point in the documentary at that time because it was the first time that a man in the music industry stood up for Evan. And kind-of, the floodgates were open at that point. It bought so much stuff up, so that’s when we started to follow her through the investigation and talking to other folks and dealing with her family and then publicly naming him. It all happened in real time.
It was sobering to watch how, even with Evan having the public profile that she did, she found it so hard to get out of that relationship. What do you want to communicate to women who have no support network and find it similarly hard to exit dangerous situations?
Well, Evan tried to kill herself multiple times, and she didn’t have any resources at the time, and she feels that something propelled her to look at her life and know that it was worth living, at the time that she was dying, basically. I guess there is a more public conversation about domestic violence, and there are resources, and we’re trying to make sure, through the film’s website that people have access to the right phone numbers. But it’s just important to start communicating this more. We hear the vocabulary words of “grooming” and “gaslighting,” but do we really understand what they mean? Do we understand that, if we’re in a situation that is abusive? That’s what the film is designed to convey, to be more relatable. So she seems to have a certain stature, but she was a victim as well.
Now, you got involved with the project when Evan was working on the Phoenix Act. At that point, were you aware of how many women would eventually come forward with allegations against him?
They had told me that it was over 20 people that they had heard of at that time, so once she testified in Sacramento, even though she didn’t name him, there was a lot of conversation that started happening. So I don’t think we know how many people have been abused by him at this point. It’s a small group that we talked to, but I’m sure that these kinds of stories are not isolated. When somebody has these kind of patterns, I imagine that we’ll be hearing a lot of other stories.
Obviously, you can’t talk about his lawsuit.
Thank you for answering that question! I definitely cannot.
Can you comment on the timing of his filing?
Look, it’s not a surprise. A major film is coming out on HBO with a high profile, so it’s not a surprise that this would be a retaliatory action, but I just cannot comment on the lawsuit.
There’s one line in the film — and Evan’s brother said it, that Manson is a “wolf in wolf’s clothing” — which hit incredibly hard.
Yeah, everything that her brother said was so thoughtful and impactful. He was the one constant in her life, for her whole life. And he called things out in a way that was both sensitive and spot-on. His words were very impactful from the get-go.
Brothers are the best. And I don’t want to say that I enjoyed the subject matter of the film, but I appreciate the way that it was handled.
Thank you! And thank you so much for your time.
‘Phoenix Rising’ is currently streaming on HBO Max.
As The Saga of the Slap continues, Oscars producer Will Packer is defending how the all-consuming Will Smith and Chris Rock moment was handled despite the chaos that ensued behind the scenes. During an in-depth interview with Good Morning America, Packer walked through what happened from the moment Rock left the stage to the surreal moment when Smith, who was still in the building, took the podium and received a standing ovation while accepting the Oscar for Best Actor.
According to Packer, Rock was the one who fought to keep Smith in the building and out of handcuffs, which the LAPD was ready to do. As for the Academy members applauding Smith, Packer claims it had nothing to do with The Slap. Via Variety:
“It wasn’t like this was somebody they didn’t know,” Packer said. “It doesn’t make anything that he did right, and doesn’t excuse that behavior at all, but I think that the people in that room who stood up stood up for somebody who they knew, who was a peer, who was a friend, who was a brother, who has a three decades-plus long career of being the opposite of what we saw in that moment. I think these people saw the person that they know and were hoping that somehow, some way this was an aberration…I don’t think that these were people that were applauding anything at all about that moment.”
As for the conflicting reports on whether or not Smith was asked to leave the building, Packer denied reports that he spoke to Smith and told the actor he wanted him to stay. The Oscars producer said he never had any conversations with Smith directly after The Slap, but he was told that Academy members wished to “physically remove” Smith from the building, which obviously, didn’t occur. However, Packer did say that Smith reached out the next morning and apologized for the incident.
Sky Ferreira‘s debut album, the 2013 Night Time, My Time, is a whirlwind of alt-rock that became a staple of 2010s indie music almost instantly. The wait for her follow-up Masochism has been torturously long; last year, though, she said it would be “actually coming out this time” when it was put on a list of most anticipated albums of 2022. Though fans remained skeptical, Ferreira’s mother built up the suspense by sharing a photo of her daughter on her Instagram Story with the words, “new album coming March.”
So, of course, the grunge-pop star waited until the last day of March to prove herself. She posted a teaser clip on Instagram yesterday—only 18 seconds of a searing, heavy sound floating aimlessly behind her airy, echoey vocals. The art says “Don’t Forget,” which many are interpreting as the title of this possible single. The caption reads: “remember me?”
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You didn’t think we’d show up to Vegas without her did you?
