Metlife telephone

It might be a stretch to call Jonathan Murray the father of reality TV, but it’s not a preposterous suggestion. Along with his partner Mary-Ellis Bunim (who passed away in 2004), Murray created MTV’s The Real World in 1992 and went on to produce everything from Project Runway to Keeping Up With the Kardashians . MTV turns 30: a look back at the network’s earliest days While it’s true that the 1973 PBS television proto-reality show An American Family pre-dates The Real World by nearly two decades, almost no series followed in its wake and Murray and Bunim inarguably ushered in the wave of reality shows that took over American television at the turn of the millennium. Most of those shows lasted just a few years, but The Real World just began airing its 29th season on MTV. That’s even more incredible when you realize that few MTV shows even make it to Season Five. We spoke to Jonathan Murray about all the big changes the show has undergone this season, its … [Read more...] about ‘The Real World’ Keeps Turning: How MTV’s Hit Survived to Season 29

Editors’ Note: With full acknowledgment of the big-picture implications of a pandemic that has already claimed thousands of lives, cratered global economies and closed international borders, Deadline’s Coping With COVID-19 Crisis series is a forum for those in the entertainment space grappling with myriad consequences of seeing a great industry screech to a halt. The hope is for an exchange of ideas and experiences, and suggestions on how businesses and individuals can best ride out a crisis that doesn’t look like it will abate any time soon . If you have a story, email [email protected] . On March 2, stand-up comedian and Good Trouble actress Sherry Cola attended a special screening at the Soho House in West Hollywood for the uplifting Stephon Marbury documentary A Kid From Coney Island. Leaving in good spirits, Cola stepped into the elevator with a fellow Asian who was also at the popular L.A. spot. Four white men also entered. After casual greetings, one of … [Read more...] about Coping With COVID-19 Crisis: Hollywood’s Asian Community Calls On Allies For Support As Coronavirus Misinformation Incites Hate

Editor’s note: In RS 1137, we published “ Beyond Relief ,” a report that examined the failure of international efforts to rebuild Haiti following last year’s devastating earthquake. Sean Penn, a leader in the reconstruction effort, sent us a lengthy and passionate critique of the story. His full letter is presented here. To read our response, click here . S hame on me. It is not narcissism that leads me to this statement, for I have no shame in recognizing the well-populated club in which I now see I can count myself as having been a member for most of my adult American life. As a person invested in, and having benefited from, the film industry since about 1980, of course, I’d had some peripheral awareness years ago that filmmaker Jonathan Demme was a voice in our own wilderness screaming, “There is a country of people down here in total poverty (call that: no emergency rooms when their children are sick with fever) only a one-and-a-half-hour flight from Miami … [Read more...] about Sean Penn Responds to Rolling Stone’s Haiti Story

CAPE TOWN—Here they come now. Bobby’s friends. Boys and girls in bell-bottoms, hair moderately long, laughing and smoking cigarettes, chatting, taking seats on the parlor floor. It’s Illegal Movie Night in South Africa and Bobby is setting the scene for me. “Every film that comes to South Africa has to go to the Publications Control Board, and they decide whether or not it might lead to moral, political or racial aberrations if shown to the faithful citizenry. Not very many make it to the downtown theaters. Two years ago Cape Town supported seven theaters and now there are four, and one of those is running films that are 20 years old.” Fellini’s Satyricon and A Clockwork Orange were banned outright, Bobby says. So were In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. Sunday Bloody Sunday and Cabaret were edited and restricted to people over 23. They cut 45 minutes from Woodstock: now somebody introduces Arlo Guthrie and Santana comes on. All nudity is … [Read more...] about Coping in South Africa: The Capetown to Swaziland Blues

Part One: The Death I n the six years since Jimi Hendrix died, his legacy has become one of contemporary culture’s most heavily trafficked “natural” resources. At last count there were four filmed documentaries; six books (one each in France and Germany, two each in the U.S. and U.K.); one magazine and uncounted boutiques and discotheques named after his song, “Foxy Lady”; eight albums from Warners and an amazing 49 bootleg LPs; two Jimi Hendrix archives (in Seattle and Amsterdam); a Jimi Hendrix Memorial Foundation (one of the sloppier rip-offs, about which more soon); and thousands of posters and pendants and T-shirts and buttons and busts, authorized and otherwise. In addition, by spring of 1976, there’d been 165 different legal actions involving the Hendrix estate and perhaps as many more involving related figures, such as Warner Brothers and the estate of Michael Jeffrey, Hendrix’s manager who died in 1973. Settlements have ranged widely, from $300,000 in back royalties … [Read more...] about A Piece of Jimi Hendrix’s Rainbow