Pop Culture

Rodney Ascher doesn’t need to take the red pill to explore how deep the rabbit hole goes. The documentary director has made a career out of burrowing into the dark recesses of these modern times. His debut feature, 2013’s Room 237, looked at viewers who promote alternate readings of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, while The

Bly’s book and accompanying gatherings sparked national attention (and plenty of blowback), but by the mid-90s his moment had largely dissipated. Now, in this age of post-Me Too reckoning, men’s groups with similar DNA have sprung up again–but this time with less Jung, greater diversity, and a lot of social media-savvy (similar nouveau-mythopoetic men’s groups

Are you two in talks for another collaboration sometime soon? Yes, we do have something in mind. It’s something he wrote a long time ago, and he never got it made. Now he’s refined it, and he wants to shoot it. Hopefully it’ll be this summer we’ll be filming. I would say, without giving the

Was that a big focal point in the original script? What I felt it was doing in the original script was creating a sense of the sort of danger that the kids are in when they’re left on their own, and when their grandmother can’t take care of them because of her illness. But then

It does not bother the members of PrettyMuch when people call them a boy band: Brandon Arreaga, Edwin Honoret, Nick Mara, Austin Porter and Zion Kuwonu embrace their place in history. That’s because they haven’t had to check their individual identities at the door. Where Zayn had to leave One Direction before he was allowed

I read a piece in the Times about how the FBI is going to build the cases against people who rioted at the Capitol a couple of weeks ago, and one of the participants in this Facebook page was actually a longtime informant. Felix’s account probably would have become FBI evidence of the conspiracy to

Lurie only lightly touches on this backstory in his show, which comes with a simple credo: Creativity is the only survival tool for cursed times. The show’s set-up is simple, too. Lurie, who has become a collected and well-respected painter since giving up the saxophone, paints from his home in an undisclosed location in the

You’re surely familiar with the critique of some of the stuff that you guys are doing now, which is that the sites and companies that provide a free internet to the rest of us do so basically by selling ads, and that these changes by Apple are going to threaten the business of all kinds

Implicit in all this performative athleticism is, of course, youth and vitality—Rep. Aaron Schock was perhaps a bit too explicit when, as the youngest member of Congress in 2011, he displayed his abs on the cover of Men’s Health. That was in the midst of the House Republican caucus’s obsession with P90X, a “a get-tough

Drew Barrymore: Yeah, old soft T-shirts. It’s just the softness, the feel of them, like a second skin, not wearing anything, nothing’s binding, nothing’s tight—it’s like you’re naked without having to be naked. No constriction whatsoever. I didn’t think I would wear clothes until they disintegrated, but I’ve become that person. I hate when they

Roxane Gay: “Hypnotize,” by the Notorious B.I.G. It’s just a great song—great lyric, great beat. You know, I’m a Gen X-er, and so ’90s hip-hop is really my wheelhouse. And so even though I wasn’t necessarily having a great life back then, I still think very fondly of the music. And I know all of

David Lynch: Francis Bacon makes me happy, the power of his painting. Edward Hopper makes me thrilled. Edward Kienholz’s sculptures make me happy. Alexander Calder’s sculptures make me thrilled with happiness. Vincent van Gogh makes me happy. There’s a bunch, there’s so many great painters and sculptors that are just great. Roxane Gay: The musical

Roddy Ricch: I don’t go looking for happiness in things—I look for happiness within myself. If you can’t find happiness within yourself, then you don’t have happiness. There’s nothing in the world that can give you happiness but something inside of you. David Lynch: One thing I’ve noticed is that many of us, we do

Did you anticipate people bringing up your old social media posts, including a 2012 post where you refer to rape, following the performance? That tweet was back from [around] high school. Twitter was basically just something that you would…you would just say anything. Twitter was known for the most outrageous comments. That tweet, it didn’t

The tricky thing about becoming known as a magician—as the writer, artist, and performer Derek Delgaudio has—is that people start to get a very specific idea of who you are, and what you do. Top hat, rabbit, disappearing lady, the whole deal. “The word ‘magic,’ or ‘magician,’ is such a strong word,” he says. “It

If you travelled to the nation’s capital yesterday to get a glimpse of the inauguration of a new President and Vice President, take a photo in front of the White House, or dance and celebrate with fellow Biden supporters, you were in the wrong place. The streets of the nation’s capital were almost entirely deserted,

Adam Brody, best known for playing Seth in The OC Fennell really throws the gauntlet down when Seth Cohen, Patron Saint of Simps and Cool Geeks, reveals himself to actually be just as sleazy as the next guy. “It’s probably very unsettling,” says Brody, “It throws you for a loop right off the bat and

At least one good cop. Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman famously distracted rioters on January 6, leading a group of them away from the Senate Chamber as they chased him around the Capitol building stairs, giving politicians a crucial extra couple minutes to escape. One reward for that: Goodman escorted Kamala Harris to the inauguration.