I am a huge fan of film scores (well, to be more precise, good ones). I’m not a musician, and I think the fact that I know nothing about the inner workings of composition actually contributes to the interest: it’s an experience that is purely visceral and non-verbal. Over the years I’ve taken note of composers; which ones I liked, what kind of movies they tended to score, and what directors they often worked with. Among the most prolific of contemporary film composers is Danny Elfman, who came up with the theme music for The Simpsons and has worked numerous times with Sam Raimi, Gus Van Sant, and Tim Burton. Not only did Elfman write the songs for The Nightmare Before Christmas, he also is the singing voice for Jack Skellington himself. He is the Pumpkin King! Which makes this news in New York Post–that he settled sexual harassment charges for $830,000 with a young composer, and has been delinquent in payments–all the more heartbreaking and infuriating:

Celebrated composer Danny Elfman settled a sexual assault with former friend and composer Nomi Abadi in 2018 for a whopping $830,000 after she accused him of multiple instances of sexual harassment, according to a report.

Now she is suing Elfman again, claiming that he failed to make two installments worth $42,500 in each July 2019 and 2021 as required by terms of the settlement, Rolling Stone reported.

Elfman, 70, and Abadi, 35, met in 2015, according to the lawsuit, and the pair became fast friends.

In November 2017, however, the former child prodigy who had performed with orchestras since the age of 5, filed a report with the Los Angeles Police Department accusing Elfman of “indecent exposure,” the magazine reported.

For over a year, Elfman had exposed his genitals in front of her and masturbated multiple times without her consent, Abadi claimed.

Elfman denied the allegations in a lengthy statement to Rolling Stone.

He said their relationship was platonic, and Abadi became frustrated with him after he declined her romantic advances.

“How do I respond to accusations so serious that being innocent is not a valid defense? It is excruciating to consider that a 50-year career may be destroyed in one news cycle as a result of vicious and wholly false allegations about sexual misconduct,” he said in a statement to the magazine.

“Ms. Abadi’s allegations are simply not true. I allowed someone to get close to me without knowing that I was her ‘childhood crush’ and that her intention was to break up my marriage and replace my wife. When this person realized that I wanted distance from her, she made it clear that I would pay for having rejected her,” continued Elfman, who has been married to former actress Bridget Fonda since 2003.

“I allowed an ill-advised friendship to have far-reaching consequences, and that error in judgment is entirely my fault. I have done nothing indecent or wrong, and my lawyers stand ready to prove with voluminous evidence that these accusations are false. This is the last I will say on this subject,” he said.

A representative for the Oingo Boingo frontman subsequently told Rolling Stone that all of Elfman and Abadi’s “limited interactions” did not involve sexual contact and “were fully consensual.”

[From New York Post]

“How do I respond to accusations so serious that being innocent is not a valid defense?” What does this even mean?! Is he suggesting that if he were accused of something less severe, all he’d have to say is “I’m innocent” and that would be enough? But what’s really telling is the second sentence where he reveals the only thing he’s actually worried about–his 50 year career. A tip for men worried about their legacies: don’t emotionally, physically, or sexually abuse people you encounter.

The band rep’s quote had me pinging too. Why note that there was no sexual contact between Elfman and Abadi, and then go on to say all their meetings “were fully consensual.” Is it common to point out that meetings with friends are consensual? And of course there’s the question, like Kaiser raised when Tenoch Huerta released a statement in response to allegations last month, how can a third party attest to something being consensual? This is so disgusting and disappointing.

Embed from Getty Images

Embed from Getty Images

Embed from Getty Images

Greta Gerwig covers the current digital issue of Elle UK. The shoot is very… British. That’s not a slam nor a compliment, it’s just a statement of fact. They made her look like a lady who lunches (in London). They made her look like she’s one of King Charles’s goddaughters and she also might have had an affair with him when she was 19 and platinum blonde. Gerwig’s interview is in support of Barbie, which she co-wrote and directed. The details about the movie are slim, but that’s not even the point anymore. Some highlights:

She didn’t play with Barbies growing up: ‘My mom wasn’t crazy about Barbie. It wasn’t something that felt, necessarily, approved, which made it more intriguing.’ Her family didn’t have a TV, she wasn’t allowed to wear logos: this was not a world of Barbie Dream House-style all-American consumerism. ‘Part of the reason I think I was so intrigued [by this project] is because, not even intellectually, but from deep inside, I understand the counter-arguments. That feels rich.’

She hopes the film subverts sexist stereotypes. Barbie, she says, is, ‘literally plastic. She’s unchanging. If you threw her out, she just wouldn’t disintegrate. If I could give that persona some humanity, some falling-apart-ness, that – in and of itself – would be be meaningful… In this sort of double mirror of the movie, Margot Robbie is also a person we expect to be perfect. What does that mean that we also do that? Is she allowed to fall apart and be vulnerable?’

Biblical inspirations: ‘It starts off in a place where there is no aging, no death, no shame, no separation. That’s an oldie but a goodie. Because I went to Catholic school, that story of Eve and Adam suddenly realising they are naked really stuck with me,’ she says. She talks about John Milton’s Paradise Lost, and the idea that there is no poetry without pain.

She just had her second baby: She retires to a private room to pump a bottle of breast milk, which is handed to her assistant, between the shoot and the interview. ‘I’m about to be 40. And there’s something about that where you’re like: Oh! I’m properly middle aged now.’ All parts of life feel extremely activated.’ She shows me a picture of her baby on her lap, at his four-month checkup the previous day. ‘He’s a little Schmoo. I don’t know if you can tell energy from the picture, but that’s very much his energy. He’s a wise little baby…. The little guy is sleeping through the night. But I’m still doing that thing where I wake up, every hour to 90 minutes, and just hover. You just keep wanting to look at that baby. So I’m slightly in a twilight state.’

She wore the same boiler suit, in different colours, every day on the ‘Barbie’ set: Now, she says, as she approaches her forties, ‘I want to start being more playfully outrageous.’ She talks about how fun it was to wear long nails and high heels for our shoot. ‘I don’t want to be 80 and look back and say I could have really done it, from 40 to 60, but I chose to be practical! But we will see how far I get with this,’ she says. Either way, it feels as though she is grabbing the current moment with both hands. ‘I’ll probably look back and say, “That was a really an amazing time. And I don’t know how all of it was possible.” But it’s filled with a lot of happiness.’

[From Elle UK]

The second baby is months old and Greta has been wearing shapeless sack dresses throughout the promotion, so it’s not like it’s huge breaking news that she gave birth before the Barbie promotion started. I like how low-key this announcement was though – like, oh by the way, I need to go pump because my baby is four months old. No one pressed her about it either, no one was really talking about it at all. I do wonder about her relationship with Noah Baumbach, especially given that he left Jennifer Jason Leigh when their son was just months old and he abruptly took up with Greta, and now Greta just had two babies back-to-back. I don’t know! It just feels…like none of my business, I know.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by ELLE UK (@elleuk)

Cover & IG courtesy of Elle UK.

Embed from Getty Images
I wholeheartedly support the writers and actors striking right now, they’re fighting the long overdue fight to structure fair payments in the era of streaming and protect against AI taking their jobs. Speaking selfishly, though, I must admit that the withdrawal symptoms from the cold turkey stop in Last Week Tonight episodes have been intense. I miss the once a week dose of someone telling the truth on TV without worrying about making it palatable for all sides, and then abruptly pivoting to absurdist statements like “Pandas don’t want to be here,” as in on Planet Earth. I know I’m not alone right now in missing John Oliver and his superlative, Emmy award-winning team of writers, so I take some joy in this story of Reddit activists protesting new policies… by flooding the network with photos of Oliver:

What the protestors are doing: Several of Reddit’s largest self-moderated communities, including r/pics and r/aww, have turned spaces that were once devoted to images of everyday life, or cute and cuddly animals, into what may now be the internet’s biggest repository for pictures of the comedian… There have been numerous pictures of Oliver posing in sharply tailored suits, and screenshots of humorous moments from his show. There is Oliver as a koala. There are images of his face superimposed on the Mediterranean fruit commonly used to garnish martinis (“John Olive”). And an AI-generated image of Oliver as a “Game of Thrones” character (“John Oliver Snow”).

What the company is doing: Reddit users are protesting a decision taking effect next month that will introduce fees for apps to access Reddit data, much in the way Twitter has erected a paywall for third-party access to its own platform. Reddit, for its part, is looking to bolster its revenue ahead of a rumored initial public offering. Reddit’s critics have said they object to the suddenness of the change, as well as the steep proposed fees, which are expected to force multiple app makers out of business… more than 6,000 Reddit communities went dark to protest the move, including some of the platform’s most popular forums, which claim to have more than 25 million members.

Reddit Co-founder & CEO Steve Huffman adores Elon Musk: Huffman has staunchly defended the coming move as necessary to help make Reddit a profitable enterprise. He has also sharply criticized Reddit’s volunteer moderators who are committed to the protest, describing them as out of touch and unrepresentative of the forums they lead. And he has praised Elon Musk for his handling of Twitter, citing the company’s billionaire owner as an inspiration for Huffman’s own business decisions.

John Oliver approves: In selecting Oliver as a main object of obsession, however, Reddit users are also appealing to a man with a history of wading into tech topics on-air and causing real-world effects with his show’s coverage. Over the past week, many Reddit users have expressed hopes that Oliver might air a future segment about suddenly becoming the face of the revolt, and perhaps feature their content on his show. Oliver has not committed to using any of the material, but true to form, he himself gave users his blessing to continue posting his image on Reddit and provided even more fodder for them to plaster across the site. “Dear Reddit,” he tweeted last week, “excellent work.”

[From CNN]

Of course he would be covering this if they were on air right now! This is a man who has, over his Last Week Tonight tenure, seen the openings of the John Oliver Memorial Sewer Plant and the John Oliver Koala Chlamydia Ward. And this is the second time in the span of a year that Oliver has been inserted into the intersection of art and technology: just last August he wed a cabbage on air after learning there was a vast catalog of AI-generated images devoted to the subject (it was a lovely, if brief ceremony officiated by Steve Buscemi). Reddit’s CEO Huffman sounds like a dick and I’m sure Oliver would expertly read him for filth while also managing to raise funds for the app-owners who will suffer.

photos credit: Getty and Sara De Boer/startraksphoto.com. Screenshots of Reddit.com

Joe Manganiello was the one to file for divorce from Sofia Vergara. He cited irreconcilable differences. There’s a prenup. [JustJared]
Doja Cat explains why she’s “thrown fits” her whole career. [OMG Blog]
Jennifer Lopez finally gave fans a new On The J.Lo newsletter. [LaineyGossip]
A Haunting in Venice’s trailer makes it seem like Agatha Christie was writing ghost stories and horror… and she did not. [Tom & Lorenzo]
Tony Leung: still hot. [Pajiba]
An explainer on Oppenheimer’s R-rating for sex scenes. [Jezebel]
Julia Fox’s bikini waxer is not on strike. [GFY]
It really is bonkers how many women have “I’m the client, not my husband” stories. All of these stories are completely infuriating. [Buzzfeed]
Queen Latifah is surprised that she was the first female rapper to be inducted into the National Recording Registry. [Towleroad]
Gwyneth Paltrow’s Gucci look in the Hamptons. [RCFA]

Prince George’s tenth birthday is Saturday, July 22. I would imagine that the Princess of Wales will release some new birthday portraits tonight or tomorrow, then the Sunday papers will probably get a few extra ones for their front pages. There’s been more buzz and royal embiggening about this birthday, I guess because it’s seen as a “big birthday.” Will we get this kind of birthday rollout for his 13th birthday? Or his 16th? Those feel like “bigger” landmark years to me, but whatever. So how will George spend his birthday? At home, with school friends, like a normal kid. Katie Nicholl royalsplains:

George’s birthday party: According to Nicholl, the Prince and Princess of Wales “are known to celebrate big birthdays, but they are known to do it below the radar. I’m told that this birthday party will be family, of course, close friends, friends from his old school, [and] friends from George’s new school, but it’s not going to be showy in any way. A lavish party, where there’s a huge expense, is just not William and Kate’s style. She still always bakes the cake, she will be doing a tea party, I’m told there’s going to be something of a football theme involved in the celebrations,” Nicholl added.

Nicholl makes it sound like they’re doing witchcraft: She also explained that the party will either be held at Windsor Castle or, more likely, at the family’s home in Norfolk. “There’s more space there and of course it’s where they’re completely protected. So whatever does happen will stay very firmly behind closed doors.”

George and his spare: “He seems to enjoy being in the public spotlight far more than he used to,” Nicholl shared. “I think he’s definitely finding his feet and coming into his own… This is a big birthday for him, it’s an important birthday, and he strikes me as someone who is very comfortable in his own skin, and very grateful for the support of Charlotte, particularly. You don’t often see George without Charlotte. I think they’re very much a team, and she plays this important supporting role. But I do think we’ve seen George become perhaps a little less reserved, a little bit more outgoing and certainly thriving from having the support of Charlotte and Louis by his side.”

George’s future role: “George is absolutely aware of the role that lies ahead of him and he knows that his father will be king next, and after that he will be crowned king, and who knows what the landscape is going to look like? But he’s absolutely aware of his destiny.” Which is why his parents are “very anxious not to burden him with that weight and responsibility.”

The normal Wales family: “I think what they’re trying to do is raise him with that balance of normality,” Nicholl said. “And he does have a surprisingly normal life… they live in a four-bedroom cottage, they don’t even have live-in help, because there just isn’t the space, and there’s a very, very heavy influence from Kate’s family, the Middletons. Carol and Mike are very involved with George, Charlotte and Louis.”

[From ET]

God, this makes me dreadfully sad for Charlotte. Just eight years old and already forced into a position of “supporting” her future-king brother. Will they let Charlotte become her own person? Or will she always be defined by her need to support George, to be the spare, the supporting player, never the main character?

Also: the constant repetition of “Kate and William don’t have live-in help” is always fascinating to me. No one is flatly denying that Will and Kate have tons of household staff, it’s just that their staff don’t live-in. Nanny Maria has her own apartment or cottage somewhere, and various chefs, gardeners, helpers and maids are also on the Windsor property too, I would assume. What will happen when one of those people decides to gossip? Like… I’m fascinated by the arrangement at Adelaide Cottage and just how thoroughly it’s become Kate’s separation house.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.

The Invictus Games in Dusseldorf are coming up soon! Invictus is coming to Germany from September 9th through the 16th. Prince Harry will absolutely be there throughout the games and it’s my hope that Meghan joins him for the whole week. At last year’s games, Meghan was there for about three days, which was spectacular, but… yeah, I just hope she’s there for the whole shebang. Anyway, there’s something else happening around that same time, people! Baldemort is coming to New York on September 18. We shall call this Prince William’s Don’t Forget About Meeee Tour.

Prince William is making the trip across the pond! The Prince of Wales, 41, will return to the United States to attend the second Earthshot Prize Innovation Summit in New York City on Sept. 19, Kensington Palace announced on Wednesday.

Co-hosted by The Earthshot Prize and Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Summit will unveil the fifteen 2023 Earthshot Prize finalists who are trailblazing climate solutions to repair our planet by 2030. The Summit, held during New York Climate Week, will also convene previous Earthshot Prize winners and finalists with policymakers, global business leaders, philanthropists and climate activists to scale their innovative solutions. Michael R. Bloomberg, Global Advisor to the Winners of The Earthshot Prize, will also address the assembled guests.

The 2023 Earthshot Prize awards ceremony will take place in Singapore on Nov. 7. There, five winners across the Earthshot categories — Protect and Restore Nature, Clean Our Air, Revive Our Oceans, Build a Waste-Free World and Fix Our Climate — will be announced as the recipients of £1 million each to help implement their environmental solutions.

Prince William will spend two days in New York — both Sept. 18 and Sept. 19 — and also undertake a number of additional engagements and meetings.

[From People]

Something similar was thrown together at the last minute last year, only William had to cancel his trip to New York when his grandmother died. Hilariously, Peg’s big New York “tour” was only conceived when Harry was invited to speak at the United Nations one year ago for Nelson Mandela Day. Remember the hysterical crying and screeching from Salt Island when Harry spoke at the UN? William demanded that he be allowed to speak at the UN too, only it looked like Michael Bloomberg could basically only arrange for William to conduct meetings in some United Nations conference room. I absolutely expect that William will try to do something similar for this trip. Jealousy is basically the only thing motivating William at this point. Also expect the Windsors to act up something fierce during the Invictus Games.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images.

It was as predictable as the sun rising in the east – as soon as there was a backlash against Jason Aldean’s pro-lynching song “Try That in a Small Town,” there was a backlash against the backlash. CMT did the right thing by pulling the music video – which was staged at the site of an infamous lynching – this week after the video had only been airing for a few days. Other musical artists and gun-control advocates have been slamming Aldean for the song and the video. So of course the GOP and their wingnuts are tripping over themselves to declare Aldean as their favorite son of the south.

Conservatives are vigorously defending country singer Jason Aldean after the video for his controversial song, “Try That in a Small Town,” was pulled from CMT rotation following accusations that the tune promotes gun violence and sundown towns.

While Aldean has fired back at his critics, claiming allegations that he released a “pro-lynching song” are “not only meritless, but dangerous,” the video itself was filmed at Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, Tennessee—the site of the 1927 mob lynching of Henry Choate, an 18-year-old Black man who was dragged through the streets before he was hanged from the building’s window.

With the tune’s in-your-face message prompting Democratic lawmakers to condemn it as a “heinous song calling for racist violence,” and the video no longer in CMT’s rotation, it was just a matter of time before the right-wing outrage machine rallied around behind Aldean and the song itself.

Longshot GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who has made anti-wokeness a key component of his campaign, tweeted out the video on Wednesday while complaining about the “cancellation” of Aldean’s song. According to Ramaswamy, the same critics blasting “Try That in a Small Town” are the ones who glorified an inflammatory Ice-T track that conservatives wanted to ban in the early 1990s.

“Jason Aldean writes a song defending the values that ALL Americans used to share – faith, family, hard work, patriotism – only to be immediately sacrificed at the altar of censorship & cancellation,” he wrote on Twitter. “These are the same people who cheer songs like ‘Cop Killer’ & the glorification of sex and violence in hip-hop. Stand strong against these hypocrites and opportunist frauds, @Jason_Aldean. It’d be a real shame if the song hits #1. We’ll do our part & play it at our rallies.”

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem posted a video on Wednesday declaring herself “so impressed” with Aldean’s single, adding that her “good friend” helped write it. Continuing with the pandering, Noem said she had initially “hoped the video would be shot in South Dakota,” but now she’ll let the “persecuted” Aldean “play anywhere” in her state and “facilitate” any concert appearances by the artist, including at the governor’s mansion.

[From The Daily Beast]

It keeps going and going – right-wing pundits and conservative columnists are now chiming in how wokeness has come for Jason Aldean, that Aldean has been “canceled” by the left-wing mob. Literally the only thing that’s happened is that CMT said “we don’t want to air this trash on our network.” That’s it. The music video is still on YouTube, country music radio is still playing the song and I’m sure people are still streaming it. Nevermind the fact that Aldean’s album is still available for purchase – it hasn’t been banned anywhere either. No one is blocking his concerts or tours either. This is the new dumbf–k culture war, guys. Forget Bud Light, forget Hunter Biden – the new battleground is “the government should force CMT to air Jason Aldean’s lynching song!”

.@Jason_Aldean I’m from a small town. Even people in small towns are sick of violence.There’s nothing small-town or American about promoting violence. You should know that better than anyone having survived a mass shooting.

This is not American or small town-like. It’s just lame https://t.co/cuOtUO9xjr

— Sheryl Crow (@SherylCrow) July 19, 2023

Uvalde? Small town.
VA Tech? Small college town.
Newtown? Small New England town.
Parkland? Small town that had just been voted Florida’s *safest* town.

Most mass shootings occur in *small towns* @Jason_Aldean. Your listeners are dying. https://t.co/NlUN8uBzZ2

— yung auntie (she/her). (@MsPackyetti) July 17, 2023

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

Prince Harry’s Spare is a massive bestseller. Millions of copies of Spare have been sold worldwide in dozens of languages. Harry’s audiobook narration has been listened to millions of times as well. The memoir might be the single most successful venture from the Sussexes. Obviously, the British media faces a conundrum: how do they turn this incredible publishing story into a negative? Lying about what Harry wrote didn’t work. They ended up giving him millions of dollars worth of free publicity and drove up sales even more. They’ve tried crying about Spare endlessly. They’ve tried quoting Harry accurately, because his memoir is now part of the historical record and his version is now the record of so much of the past three decades. So now they’re trying a new tack: making wild claims about how people bought the book and then left it behind during their holidays.

Prince Harry’s memoir Spare is the ‘most dumped’ book by holidaymakers this summer, it was claimed today. The 416-page diatribe has reportedly been left in rooms, bins and by pools at holiday hotspots across Europe and further afield, including in Spain, Greece and Turkey.

Tour operator On The Beach said it had received 100 left-behind copies of the autobiography from fed-up hotel workers so far this summer, with school holidays only just getting underway.

Chief customer officer Zoe Harris told the Sun: ‘We’ve never witnessed anything quite like it. Lost property offices in our most popular resorts are brimming with copies of Spare. We thought it was funny at first but, over the past few months, several other hotels have been sending the books back.’

She said the company now has ‘bookcases full of them’ and that she has been forced to ask hotels to ‘please stop sending them over otherwise we’ll never get rid of them all.’

She added: ‘Maybe we should all take a leaf out of Harry’s book and spare ourselves the bother in the first place.’

The holiday company said it would be giving away the discarded copies online. The highly-anticipated tell-all book sold 3.2million copies in the first week of its release back in January this year – 1.4million on the first day alone. It became the fastest selling non-fiction book in the UK since records began in 1998.

[From The Daily Mail]

Congrats to Harry, he is now the John Grisham of memoirists. Grisham, one of the most popular and prolific authors of the past century, has probably seen his paperbacks left behind at vacation spots all around the world. For years, copies of Grisham’s legal dramas could be found anywhere you looked. I think The DaVinci Code was like too – everyone had a copy, copies were always being left behind. It’s quite a big deal for an author to get to that level, where your book is so ubiquitous that everyone has a copy and there are spare (heh) copies lying around wherever you go. Anyway… thanks to all of those people for buying Harry’s book and leaving Spare behind for the next vacationer to read.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by SAG-AFTRA (@sagaftra)

Ooh, this story hit a nerve for me personally because my new landlords have just brutally hacked into a 120-year-old cypress tree behind my apartment. Allegedly this was done to “improve” the “view” but it’s making my apartment hotter (less shade) and giving the pedestrians in the back alley an “improved” (totally unimpeded) view of me. It’s also a horrible thing to do to such a beautiful, healthy old tree that was home to many squirrels and birds. Anyway, my petty dispute aside, there are far more nefarious tree trimmings afoot! NBCUniversal decided to “prune” the ficus trees along one side of its LA campus, and it was a real hack job. They cut back all the branches.

Coincidentally, they did this just as the SAG-AFTRA union started striking alongside the WGA and both unions were picketing there, in the midst of a brutal heat wave. Then the LA City Controller started to investigate, because it was pretty obvious that this ‘tree trimming’ was about making things uncomfortable or hazardous for striking workers by removing any shade. The studio tried to say that they “always trim these trees in summer” but there’s photo evidence that they haven’t done this before. And guess who didn’t get the required permit to trim these trees, either?

The boundary of NBCUniversal’s lot is now a flashpoint for the on-the-ground mistrust of Hollywood’s double strike. On July 18, the WGA and SAG-AFTRA filed mirrored complaints with the National Labor Relations Board, alleging NBCUniversal had engaged in “illegal conduct” by having picketers march along blocks of Lankershim Blvd. sidewalk on the west end of its campus which were improperly obstructed by the studio’s ongoing campus construction work. The filings contend that the studio has ignored an advisory from the Los Angeles Police Department to establish concrete barriers for pedestrian safety.

Hours after The Hollywood Reporter first publicized the Labor Board complaints (the studio says it will cooperate with any agency inquiries), L.A. City Controller Kenneth Mejia — an outspoken progressive who holds the municipal office that audits government agencies — tweeted that his department would be “investigating the tree trimming that occurred outside Universal Studios where workers, writers, and actors are exercising their right to picket.”

The WGA didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. In a statement, SAG-AFTRA noted: “Suspiciously timed construction that has forced picketers into streets without proper safety rails, and now tree trimming eliminating shade during a record heatwave, has forced SAG-AFTRA to determine that it cannot safely send its members to picket at NBCUniversal.” The actors’ union added that, through the Labor Board and other means, it was working along with the Writers Guild “to remedy this egregious violation of our members’ rights.”

The studio did not have proper permits for tree trimming: Typically, tree-trimming along public sidewalks is handled by the Los Angeles Department of Public Works’ Bureau of Street Services. Shortly after this article was first published, L.A. City Councilwoman Nithya Raman, whose jurisdiction includes the Barham Blvd. sidewalk, tweeted that she’d looked into the matter with BSS’ Urban Forestry Division and “found that no permit was issued for any tree trimming at this site.” She also shared a statement from the bureau indicating that a compliance notice had been issued to NBCUniversal and that its enforcement arm would consider an administrative citation or hearing. Prior to joining the L.A. City Council, Raman herself picketed during the 2007 WGA work stoppage in support of her husband, TV writer Vali Chandrasekaran (Modern Family, 30 Rock).

[From The Hollywood Reporter]

Allegedly the studios have since provided some “cooling tents.” But this has “studio brass ratf–king” all over it. Sorry for my crudeness but that’s just what it is. Management wants to deter the striking workers from picketing, or worse, let them get heat exhaustion. I put nothing past the same people who were quoted as saying that they wanted union members to start “losing their apartments and losing their houses” rather than pay them a living wage. They intend to drag out both strikes as long as possible, partially as a cost-cutting measure (I think) but also to attempt to weaken worker resolve. If the studios are willing to push their workers to the brink of homelessness or worse, of course they wouldn’t balk at cutting down trees so that workers can’t demonstrate. Meanwhile, according to Variety, NBCUniversal’s CEO Brian Roberts was paid $32.1 million in 2022. But it’s the writers and actors who are asking too much. I support the unions wholeheartedly and I hope NBC gets drawn into a petty, annoying hearing process over this with the city and county of Los Angeles. That would really be putting the famously tangled bureaucracy of LA to good use.

Our Office is investigating the tree trimming that occurred outside Universal Studios where workers, writers, and actors are exercising their right to picket.

The trimmed trees are LA City managed street trees.

(Before and after photos below) pic.twitter.com/xczw0bTdh9

— LA City Controller Kenneth Mejia (@lacontroller) July 19, 2023

Universal Pictures, the film production studio behind the highly anticipated Oppenheimer, has been accused of trimming trees that just so happen to line the sidewalks where Hollywood strikers have been picketing. https://t.co/rC2h7euCa9

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) July 18, 2023

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by rosariodawson (@rosariodawson)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Vogue Weddings (@vogueweddings)

Last weekend, model Barbara Palvin married actor Dylan Sprouse. Y’all know I’m an Old, so I really had to look up Dylan Sprouse and figure out why he was famous (child actor-turned-Gen Z heartthrob). I know Palvin because she’s a seriously famous model (and she had a fling with Justin Bieber years ago). Palvin is Hungarian and they decided to have their wedding in her country, on her parents’ estate, Harlekin Birtok. They invited Vogue to do the wedding-story and the photos are really great. Like, I’m not a Hungarian supermodel but this wedding seemed to be my idea of a perfect wedding – classic, simple, beautiful, not too fussy. They had 115 guests at this wedding and they plan to do a second wedding in California in a few months.

You can see the full Vogue piece here. Dylan and Barbara met six years ago at an event and they had a meet-cute when he cut in line. While they exchanged numbers, she ghosted him for six months before finally responding to him. By 2019, they were living together. He proposed to her last September on a camping trip in California.

Barabara’s wedding gown was Vivienne Westwood and it’s really beautiful! I sometimes think Westwood’s stuff is too much, too overdone, so you can tell that this look was customized for the bride. She also wore Tiffany & Co diamonds – I would have removed the choker, it does nothing for the overall wedding look. Her reception look was a red dress by Philosophy di Lorenzo Serafini.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Vogue (@voguemagazine)

Photos courtesy of Vogue & Barbara’s IG.