Lawrence O’Donnell: “All movies & tv series will be animation? Until there’s a vaccine?”

What Brian Dennehy Did And Didn’t Do: “The only way to do it is to grab the fucking audience by the throat, shake the shit out of ’em and say, You think you’re getting out of here alive? You’re not. Prepare to spill your fucking blood, because I’m gonna spill mine, and you’re coming with me… They’ve heard it from me before. It’s not like it’s the first time they’ve heard Dennehy fulminate out of his fear.”

Wreckless Eric: “The test results came through last night. Mine’s positive – I’ve got it. I felt deeply disturbed when I got the news and quite emotional. If I’m honest about this I’m vaguely / acutely worried in the back of my mind that I might suddenly go downhill and die, but I find getting older is a business of constantly facing up to one’s own mortality. A growing list of friends that are no longer with us appears to be developing and it’s becoming clear to me that one day I’ll be on it. So I stumble into moments of acceptance and find myself thinking that if this doesn’t kill me then old age or something else eventually will. Dying… it’s an ironic fact of life. When my mother was getting really old she said: ‘I’m not scared of dying, it’s just that it’s a great party and I’m not ready to leave it yet.’ I feel pretty much the same except that I’m not exactly not scared of dying – it’s not the being dead that worries me, it’s the manner in which it might come about. And I like being alive – I want to stay on at this party until some time in the small hours. The crappier I feel the more I’m driven to get in the studio and get things done. I’ve got albums to make. I decided a long time ago – and I’m down on record as saying this (literally as of last year’s ‘Transience’ album) that I want to leave behind an indelible stain. And I feel almost ok when I’m working on my recordings.”

Steven Zeitchik: “The celebrity-industrial complex offers plenty of reasons for skepticism. But I marvel at how John Krasinski has conducted himself. Krasinski worked two years on his new movie, A Quiet Place Part II. It was clearly a labor of love. It was also a really good film, skillful & scary & human & entertaining. He was a week away from putting it out–heck, he even presided over its premiere. And then–boom, pandemic. Many of us, if something we poured our hearts into for 2 years was suddenly shelved and couldn’t be seen by anyone–if something we poured our hearts into for 2 WEEKS was suddenly shelved–would crawl into a hole, rage against the fates & embark on a tear of unrelenting self-pity. What does Krasinski do? He doesn’t feel sorry for himself. He comes up with a YouTube show, ‘Some Good News,’ using his connections to bring in big names and his skills to create some joy in a world that badly needs it. And he throws himself into it with gusto, as if it’s the only thing that matters, as if his shelved project never existed. He undertakes initiatives to brighten the lives of the people who most deserve to have their lives brightened right now. Which, let’s face it, many of us would never have the centered-ness or selflessness to do. I’ve interviewed him and think he’d likely laugh this off, like what would be the point of dwelling on what’s lost, let me focus on what I can do to help. And that’s what makes his actions so striking. It turns out you can be hugely talented and still keep in mind what those talents should be used for. Clearly there are a lot of people doing more life-saving work right now. But I’m not sure there are many modeling a better attitude or priorities.”

“We’re talking about 500,000 or so restaurants that employ 11 million people, according to the foundation. Not coming back, or viewing a comeback as a long shot. Think about that… If regional food scenes, like regional music scenes, hint that alternative ways of thinking have gotten a foothold somewhere, why would an anti-environment, pro-pollution, anti-pluralism, pro-monoculture White House see any advantage in incentivizing that?”
Jeff Gordinier On What We’ll Lose When Independent Restaurants Don’t Come Back

“If it weren’t so galling, I’d be tickled by Thomas Keller’s pablum, as if there is anything productive to be gained from collaborating with this regime of robber barons. But it is so galling. If we ever needed concrete evidence that the fine-dining world we lionize is fundamentally irrelevant to the true joys and business of American eating, this Potemkin panel is it. Charged with saving American restaurants, this seemingly unlikely alliance of Burgundy and Big Macs mints a truth that our culinary mythology strains to elide: The fast-food industry and the fine-dining world are two sides of the same golden coin. One exudes wealth through luxurious trappings for the elite, built on the backs of minimum-wage laborers deemed unworthy to be seen or heard. The other creates wealth through populist marketing for a slightly broader spectrum of elite stockholders, built on the backs of minimum-wage laborers deemed unworthy of the profits they produce.”

LOST: Russian Documentarian Alexander Radov, 79

Oscar-Winner Gene Deitch, 95, Illustrator-Filmmaker Of Munro, Tom Terrific, Episodes Of Tom & Jerry, Popeye The Sailor Man

“McClatchy, America’s bankrupt No. 2 newspaper chain — owner of dailies in Miami, Kansas City, Charlotte, Sacramento, Fort Worth — is subject to the same consolidation logic as the rest of the industry.””

Abraham Riesman: “If you’re looking for a fun way to infuriate a Jewish male boomer, tell him that Woody Allen’s repeated insistence that he himself is a well-adjusted, athletic, barely literate anti-intellectual in real life means his onscreen characters constitute a form of Jewish minstrelsy”

Ilya Forever: DAU Is Here: The Years-In-The-Making, Stalin-Period Truman Show, Offers Its First Two Of Fourteen Parts, DAU. Natasha (137m) and DAU. Degeneration For $3 A Pop

“Armed with total creative control, Ilya Khrzhanovsky invaded a Ukrainian city, marshaled a cast of thousands and thousands, and constructed a totalitarian society in which the cameras are always rolling and the actors never go home.”
What is DAU?

“I’m challenging you to make a short film for the first (and hopefully last) Corman Quarantine Film Festival. Here are the rules…”

Gina Prince-Bythewood On Love & Basketball At 20

“Mark Rappaport, Bricoleur”

Forty Years Of “Fresh Air” In 22,000 Segments

Richard Rushfield: “This is a unique, and by and large, awful experience for most people, whether they’re directly affected or not. Maybe they’ll remember the Services as their saviors during this time, a combination babysitter-slash-boredom killer. But it’s equally possible that when quarantine passes, people will recoil from the sight of their remotes as if from a cobra, shuddering at the sight of any reminder of this horrible period. So I remain bullish that demand will return. I’m less confident about the infrastructure being there in one piece to serve that demand.”

Comic Con Canned

Sundance Institute: “The [crisis] has cast a bright light on the importance of art, reminding us that, as Joan Didion famously wrote, “we tell ourselves stories in order to live.” It has also laid bare the vulnerability of independent artists, who are mostly freelance workers and often left out of the current support systems despite their cultural and economic impact. Further, our attention is called to examine the systems and structures across our field that were already stressed and now face serious threats, from independent cinemas to acquisitions for smaller and risk-taking independent films. To put it bluntly: There can be no return to business as usual. When history looks back, this will either be the moment when we invested in artists, making it possible to turn what we’re feeling during these scary and surreal times into powerful, lasting creative work — or it will be the moment we lost a generation of art and artists because we failed to support them when and how they most needed it.”

“We are humbled and grateful to be in a city and state that is on the progressive edge of dealing with this brand-new paradigm. It’s my job, with my staff, to gnaw, bite, scratch and kick to expand and force-multiply as much as possible. The hope is that with the scientific communities’ enormous investment, we will be transitioning these sites into inoculation sites and prepare for the next such event.”
Sean Penn Joins L. A. Mayor To Kick Virus Testing’s Ass

Cannes Fremaux: “The cinema and its industries are threatened. We will have to rebuild, affirm again its importance with energy, unity and solidarity.”

“Wherever sorrow is, relief would be.”
Shakespeare Out Of The Park