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Biz Markie, Hip-Hop’s ‘Only a Pal’ Clown Prince, Dies at 57

Biz Markie, Hip-Hop’s ‘Just a Friend’ Clown Prince, Dies at 57

Biz Markie, the innovative yet proudly goofy rapper, D.J. and producer whose self-deprecating lyrics and off-key wail on songs like “Just a Friend” earned him the nickname Clown Prince of Hip-Hop, died on Friday. He was 57.

His death was confirmed by his manager, Jenni Izumi, who didn’t provide a cause.

He had been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in his late 40s and said that he lost 140 pounds in the years that followed. “I wanted to live,” he told ABC News in 2014.

A native New Yorker and an early collaborator with hip-hop trailblazers like Marley Marl, Roxanne Shanté and Big Daddy Kane, Biz Markie began as a teenage beatboxer and freestyle rapper. He eventually made a name for himself as the resident court jester of the Queensbridge-based collective the Juice Crew and its Cold Chillin’ label, under the tutelage of the influential radio D.J. Mr. Magic.

On “Goin’ Off” (1988), his debut album, Biz Markie introduced himself as a bumbling upstart with a juvenile sense of humor — the opening track, “Pickin’ Boogers,” was about exactly that — but his charm and his skills were undeniable, making him a plausible sell to an increasingly rap-curious crossover audience.

With direct, often mundane lyrics written in part by his childhood friend Big Daddy Kane, Biz Markie was a hip-hop Everyman whose chief love was music, a journey he broke down over a James Brown sample on his first hip-hop hit, the biographical “Vapors”; Snoop Doggy Dogg later adapted the song for his own 1997 version.

“When I was a teenager, I wanted to be down/With a lot of MC-D.J.-ing crews in town,” Biz Markie rapped. “So in school on Noble Street, I say, ‘Can I be down, champ’/They said no, and treated me like a wet food stamp.”

But Biz Markie soon outpaced his peers commercially, becoming a pop sensation with the unlikely 1989 smash “Just a Friend,” from “The Biz Never Sleeps,” which was released by Cold Chillin’ and Warner Bros. Over a plunked piano beat, borrowing its melody from the 1968 song “(You) Got What I Need,” recorded by Freddie Scott and written by Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, Biz Markie raps an extended tale about being unlucky in love.

But it was his pained, rough-edged singing on the song’s chorus — along with the “yo’ mama” jokes and the Mozart costume he wore in the music video — that made the song indelible: “Oh, baaaaby, you/You got what I neeeeeed/But you say he’s just a friend/But you say he’s just a friend.”

Writing in The New York Times, the critic Kelefa Sanneh called Biz Markie “the father of modern bad singing” and wrote, “His bellowed plea — wildly out of tune, and totally unforgettable — sounded like something concocted after a day of romantic disappointments and a night of heavy drinking.”

Biz Markie has said he was never supposed to be the vocalist handling those notes. “I asked people to sing the part, and nobody showed up at the studio,” he explained later, “so I did it myself.”

“Just a Friend” would go platinum, reaching No. 5 on Billboard’s Hot Rap Singles chart and No. 9 on the all-genre Hot 100. He said he realized how big it had gotten “when Howard Stern and Frankie Crocker and all the white stations around the country started playing it.” And although Biz Markie would never again reach the heights of “Just a Friend” — he failed to land another single on the Hot 100 — he brushed off those who referred to him dismissively as a one-hit wonder.

“I don’t feel bad,” he said. “I know what I did in hip-hop.”

Marcel Theo Hall was born April 8, 1964, in Harlem. He was raised on Long Island, where he was known around the neighborhood as Markie, and he took his original stage name, Bizzy B Markie, from the first hip-hop tape he ever heard in the late 1970s, by the L Brothers, featuring Busy Bee Starski. Always known as a prankster, he was said to have once given his high school vice principal a cake laced with laxatives.

He honed his act as a D.J. and beatboxer at Manhattan nightclubs like the Roxy, although his rhyming remained a source of insecurity. By the mid-1980s, he had fallen in with the Juice Crew, whose members began featuring him on records and eventually working with him on his lyrics and delivery.

“When I felt that I was good enough, I went to Marley Marl’s house and sat on his stoop every day until he noticed me, and that’s how I got my start,” he said.

In 1986, Biz Markie appeared on one of his earliest records, “The Def Fresh Crew” by Roxanne Shanté, providing exaggerated mouth-based percussion. That same year, he released an EP produced by Marley Marl, “Make the Music With Your Mouth, Biz,” calling himself the Inhuman Orchestra.

“When you hear me do it, you will be shocked and amazed,” he rapped on the title track, which would also serve as a single from “Goin’ Off,” his official debut. “It’s the brand-new thing they call the human beatbox craze.”

But after the success of his first two albums, Biz Markie’s third would become a part of hip-hop history for nonmusical reasons, which would nonetheless reverberate through the genre: a copyright lawsuit.

After the release of that album, “I Need a Haircut,” in 1991, Biz Markie and his label were sued by representatives for the Irish singer-songwriter Gilbert O’Sullivan, who said eight bars of his 1972 hit “Alone Again (Naturally)” were sampled without permission on Biz Markie’s “Alone Again.” A lawyer for Mr. O’Sullivan called sampling “a euphemism in the music industry for what anyone else would call pickpocketing”; a judge agreed, calling for $250,000 in damages and barring further distribution of the album.

That ruling would help set a precedent in the music industry by requiring that even small chunks of sampled music — a cornerstone of hip-hop aesthetics and studio production — must be approved in advance. A market for sampling clearance took hold, which remains a key part of the economics behind hip-hop.

“Because of the Biz Markie ruling,” one record executive said at the time, “we had to make sure we had written clearance on everything beforehand.”

In 1993, Biz Markie responded with a pointed new album, “All Samples Cleared!” But his popularity had waned, and it would be his last release for a major label. A decade later, he returned with “Weekend Warrior” (2003), his fifth and final album, though he maintained cultural relevance as a big personality with an enduring smash in “Just a Friend.”

Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.

Biz Markie made appearances on the big and small screens, usually as a version of himself. He was seen in the movie “Men in Black II,” heard as a voice on “SpongeBob SquarePants,” and appeared on “Black-ish” and as the beatboxing pro behind “Biz’s Beat of the Day” on the children’s show “Yo Gabba Gabba!” He also became a dedicated collector of rare records and toys, including Beanie Babies, Barbies and television action figures.

But even as a novelty throwback presence, he remained jovial, calling himself “one of them unsung heroes” and comparing himself to a McRib sandwich (“when I do pop up they appreciate everything they see”) in a 2019 Washington Post interview.

“I’m going to be Biz Markie until I die,” he said. “Even after I die I’m going to be Biz Markie.”

Michael Levenson contributed reporting.

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Cannes: This Is the Solely Factor Gaspar Noé Fears About Demise

Cannes: This Is the Only Thing Gaspar Noé Fears About Death

CANNES, France — Gaspar Noé is a Cannes Film Festival fixture, but this year, he’s arriving just under the wire: After the director shot his new film “Vortex” in April and May under a cloud of secrecy, he rushed to complete it in time for a festival premiere. On Friday night, the last regular day of the festival, the film finally debuted; Noé had finished it just days before.

Maybe it’s fitting that “Vortex” arrived at the end of the festival, since Noé is chronicling what happens at the tail end of our lives. In split screen, the film follows an elderly married couple as they muddle around their cluttered Paris apartment. One camera follows the wife (Françoise Lebrun), stricken with dementia, as she struggles to make sense of her surroundings; the other follows her husband (the film director Dario Argento) as he deals with her condition and places calls to his mistress.

Though Noé has sent a jolt through past festivals with provocative projects like “Irreversible,” “Climax,” and the pornographic 3-D film “Love,” his new film exudes a different, more contemplative vibe. When we spoke earlier this week, Noé said that change in attitude happened after major events in his own life. Here are edited excerpts from our conversation:

When did the idea of old age and death start to feel more real to you?

There are shifting points in your life. My mother died in my arms, and when that happens, your perception of what’s real changes a bit. I also had a sudden brain hemorrhage a year and a half ago and I almost died of it. They said, “There is a 10 percent chance you will survive without brain damage.” Miraculously, I did.

When you get close to those situations — a car crash, a disease or whatever — the problem is not if you should have an afterlife, which of course I don’t believe in. The problem is what all the people around you are going to do with your stuff, with your books, with the bills you didn’t pay? My main concern when I was on that hospital bed was, “If I die, no one’s going to be able to manage all the books I have on the shelves.” The mess that you carry with you is the thing that keeps you alive.

What was your first experience with an older person who was losing their mental faculties?

When I was 8 or 9 years old, I met a friend who had a senile grandmother in his house. I would come and talk to the grandma and she says, “Who are you? You’re not my grandson.” I remember giving different answers to the same question, because as a kid, you can have fun with it. When it’s your own mother or father who starts losing his mind, it’s much more traumatic.

You’ve been carrying around the idea for “Vortex” for a long time. How different would it have been if you made it years ago?

Two years ago, I wouldn’t have done it with the split screen. For example, I really liked the movie “The Father,” but it’s a theater play, it’s very artificial. I said, “Well, I’m not going to do something like that movie. Let’s try to do something that could be playful in its form.” Then I found this concept of shooting the movie with two cameras, and each camera is following one of the characters as if their lives were both complementary and separate. It’s a story of two tunnels of life.

Dario Argento is better known as a film director, and he has never led a movie as an actor. How did you convince him?

When I started preparing this movie, he was my very first idea, but I didn’t know if he would accept or not. And so one morning, I met him at his place, I came with this 10-page script and we watched “Love” together, which was probably not a good idea. I was asking him to be in a serious movie and the same time, we were watching this erotic movie I made. In the morning! But finally, he accepted on one condition. He said, “Oh, I’d like the character to have a mistress.” I said, “Of course.” I like making movies with people who own their character and their dialogue.

You’re really asking Argento and Françoise Lebrun to confront the end of their lives by playing these characters. Was that difficult for them?

When I see them, they’re not afraid of death. They’re afraid of not being fun! They’re very playful, and neither of them are anguished people. It seems the moment you’re born, you’re aware of the void you’re standing on. But in their cases, they have all this future life in front of them that they want to play with, even if it’s not long. And movies are a game.

A few years ago, I spoke to you at Cannes after your film “Climax” got great reviews. You told me you were a little startled by that reaction. Usually, they’re more polarizing.

I’m happy when the movies are well-received, it’s just that I’m so used to having bad reviews. I enjoy them — sometimes I put bad reviews on the wall — but I think you pay more attention to the reviews when you’re in doubt of the feeling you delivered. The film directors of the past usually say that their favorite movies were the ones that were most hated when they came out. “Irreversible” was probably my meanest, dirtiest movie and that was my only commercial success to this day! And the one that could have turned into a success was “Love,” but it was sold to Netflix. Everybody has seen it, but I didn’t get one cent of that. It’s like a ghost blockbuster.

“Love” even became a TikTok meme and topped Netflix’s most-viewed list.

In America and Europe, anyone who wants to jerk off and doesn’t know where to find a magazine at their parents’ home just puts on Netflix and sees the erotic movie that is recommended. So I guess the whole planet was jerking off to that movie for two, three years.

People at Cannes have been comparing “Vortex” to Michael Haneke’s “Amour.” Would you agree?

You know what? Haneke didn’t invent senility. He didn’t invent age. I was very touched when I saw “Amour.” My mother was in the process of dying, and I think I never cried more in a dark theater than when I saw that movie. But I would have made this movie even if “Amour” hadn’t existed.

Do you fear dying?

No. Because of this brain hemorrhage, I feel like I have extra time and I want to enjoy it.

There are also filmmakers who pursue a sort of immortality through their work. Is that something that you derive any power from?

I think it’s easier if you’re a writer or a painter. For example, my father was a painter and once he does a painting, the painting is always there and it doesn’t change. If you’re a director, your movies are now shown [via a Digital Cinema Package] that has a code key where if you don’t have the number, you cannot open that hard disk. Probably all the movies that we’re filming today, in the near future, you won’t be able to open all those little black boxes. So even with movies, you cannot think of immortality. If your movie lasts even 10 or 20 years after your own death, that’s great.

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Aunts Is Again, Turning Metropolis Blocks Into Dance Flooring

Aunts Is Back, Turning City Blocks Into Dance Floors

The barricades were not only pink, but pink too: terrifyingly lively, unabashedly cheerful. On a hot June evening, these barricades were placed at either end of a block in Long Island City, not just to stop traffic but to mark territory. For the next few hours this was an aunt-only zone. And while it can be difficult to describe exactly what Aunts is – it’s not an institution with a home base – it’s easy to say what it creates: a space for dance.

On June 6th, Aunts emerged from the pandemic with new organizers and Aunts Goes Public !, the first of three summer events presented as part of Open Culture NYC, in which dance artists take over a city block. In typical Aunts fashion, the performances bleed from one to the next, transforming a long street into a sensual landscape of movement and sound. Kirsten Michelle Schnittker and Tara Sheena, whizzing onto the sidewalk, echoed each other’s hops and swirls in a meditative, architectural arrangement that held their bodies tightly and delicately in space.

Chloë Engel, lithe in red pants, was everywhere – her body was a vortex of movement or still as she paused near a fence at the edge of a park. Jasmine Hearn, wrapped in sculptural cloth, was lost in her own world, seemingly conjuring ghosts on the sidewalk. Symara Johnson later waved an arm back and forth with gold tinsel on her ankles and wrists, sending out golden sparks. These and several other performances came in waves. Watching them was a bit like being pulled and pushed by the water yourself.

The next takeover of the aunts will take place on Sunday at 5:30 p.m. on South Oxford Street between Fulton Street and Lafayette Avenue in Brooklyn. The third is on September 19th. (An additional performance of Aunts in October will be a collaboration with the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts and the Chocolate Factory Theater.) Each event that ends with a dance party includes about a dozen performers, plus a DJ and barricade artist. With Open Culture NYC attendees having to purchase their own barricades to block the street, aunts decided to turn that into art as well. Jonathan Allen created them for the first event; Malcolm-x will do the honor to Betts for Sunday.

What can you expect on Sunday? I like to think of aunts as a roaming adventure through power and space. Aside from multiple cast members – including Alexandra Albrecht, Rena Anakwe, Edie Nightcrawler, and Ambika Raina – it’s unpredictable, a venue for intersecting performances and multidisciplinary work. An aunt event is a place to try something out or to show a finished work. It is malleable and artist-led, open and non-judgmental.

“You get the chance to try things out with a live audience and see what works and what doesn’t,” says Laurie Berg, a long-time organizer of Aunts. “It’s like, ‘Did you just think about it when you came over on the subway?’ That’s great. That’s OK.”

Over the years, aunt events have taken place on beaches, in museums and in lofts. There is no time limit for a performance; Artists can repeat their pieces during a two and a half hour event or perform only once. For the audience, it’s a different way of seeing a performance: they can get up close to the dance or watch it from a distance. You decide where to look.

Founded in 2005 by Jmy James Kidd and Rebecca Brooks – although there were always many organizers – Aunts was taken over by Berg and Liliana Dirks-Goodman in 2009. When Dirks-Goodman left New York for Philadelphia, Berg decided it was time to open up aunts to a new generation of organizers. Together with Berg there are now six: Shana Crawford, Kadie Henderson, Jordan D. Lloyd, Larissa Velez-Jackson and Jessie Young.

“For me, the definition of curator is janitor as opposed to taste maker,” said Berg. “I’m a caretaker for aunts. I am a host and an organizer. But I don’t want to be a gatekeeper. “

“If it looks very different at the end than it did at the beginning,” she added, “that’s fine because it can’t stay the same.”

Velez-Jackson, a choreographer and interdisciplinary artist with a strong improvisational base, said much of her work began at Aunts events. Her first appearance on one was in September 2006. “Working with improvisational material in front of an audience was the place where the research would take place,” said Velez-Jackson. “When you’re live in front of people, it’s much more real – you get better.”

And for many months these experiences were rare. At a time when so many performance opportunities have been lost due to the pandemic, aunts as choreographers have a new relevance to work in public again. As Young put it, “It’s a mercury, shape-shifting form of organization that can invade and invade spaces and challenge growth from within.”

And that’s a model – caring yet free – that she believes in. What strikes Henderson about aunts is the way they look after their artists. (For one, they get paid, and even get paid if the event is canceled due to rain; they also have the option to perform at the September event if the July event is canceled.) A movement artist and vocal improviser with nonprofit experience, she was new to Aunts, but soon realized that “it would be a great opportunity for me to expand the mentoring that I normally offer,” she said, “with this extra layer I can choose the artists I supervise” . . “

Henderson’s concerns were that she didn’t “want to be at another dance event and be the only black girl there” or “another dance event where we all do the same PoMo moves,” she said, referring to postmodern dance . “With serious faces in these funky Dansko shoes and gauchos.”

“That’s not my job,” she said. “And I was a little nervous talking about it, but they were really cool. They said: ‘Kadie, we understand that.’ “

With six organizers recommending artists to perform at events, Aunts is reflecting something different in this era of contemporary dance: diverse and diverse artistic voices both behind the scenes and on stage. “Can you have a sound performer next to a movement performer next to someone who’s got into hip-hop?” Said Lloyd. “I was amazed by a wide range of voices, all doing different things, and how this could create an exciting experience.”

For Henderson, this collective energy creates artistic abundance. In Queens she even had to step behind the microphone and sing. “To be part of something that brought comfort and to be able to create a space in which I could find myself – of course I am moved to sing,” she said. “I want this reservoir of, damn it, we did it! And so many people didn’t. It’s my way of showing gratitude. “

Being with aunts also means the joy that it brings. Crawford, a dancer, also works at the Chocolate Factory Theater and was the production manager for the recent River to River Festival. She is busy. But aunts, to them, is worth it – and the name is everything. Aunts “has that loving, hugging support that helps you grow, that gives you experience, but it’s not like your mother,” she said. “And it’s not like your child. It is this family member who is here to let you do your thing. “

And right now, Aunts has brought that ethos to the streets, not just for artists but for audiences as well; in many ways they move as one. The street, Young said, is different from a park where she and many dancers spent hours choreographing and taking lessons during the pandemic. “There’s something about the friction, the structure, the concrete, the energy of a closed road,” she said. “It sucks the energy out even more: It’s like an artery that is locked in for art.”

Aunts

Sunday at 5:30 pm on South Oxford Street, between Fulton Street and Lafayette Avenue, in Brooklyn; Check Instagram for weather updates.

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Normani and Cardi B Staff Up For “Wild Aspect” Music Video

Normani and Cardi B Team Up For "Wild Side" Music Video

Normani is finally back with new music! On Thursday night, the 25-year-old singer dropped her latest single, titled “Wild Side,” which features the one and only Cardi B. The song slowly builds, but is sexy throughout, and the chills-inducing music video features multiple avant-garde looks, cinematic sets, and elaborate choreography. In one vignette, Normani dances with a mirror image of herself. It’s truly wild.

Normani teased the track earlier this week when she wiped her entire Instagram account clean, leaving only one video from February that featured a clip of the song. She later posted a gorgeous shot of her wearing leopard-print clothes from the music video. Of course, this isn’t the first time Normani and Cardi have teamed up for an epic music video. Normani previously made a cameo in Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s star-studded “WAP” music video back in August 2020. We can’t wait to hear what other music Normani has in store for us. In the meantime, watch her music video with Cardi B above.

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Esther Bejarano, 96, Dies; Auschwitz Survivor Fought Hate With Hip-Hop

Esther Bejarano, 96, Dies; Auschwitz Survivor Fought Hate With Hip-Hop

After the war, she restarted her life in what would become Israel. She studied singing, joined a choir, gave music lessons and in 1950 married Nissim Bejarano, a truck driver, with whom she had two children, Joram, a son, and Edna, a daughter. In 1960, she returned to Germany, settling in Hamburg, and ran a laundry service with her husband.

She is survived by her children, two grandsons and four great-grandchildren.

She found it difficult to discuss the Holocaust with anyone until the 1970s, when she watched German police officers shield right-wing extremists against protesters. The incident turned her into an activist, and she joined the Association of the Persecutees of the Nazi Regime. She began to tell her story in schools, delivered protest speeches and sang with Coincidence, the band that she formed with her children in 1989.

“I use music to act against fascism,” she told The Times. “Music is everything to me.”

Around 2009, when she was in her 80s, Mrs. Bejarano’s musical career took an unexpected turn. She was asked to join Microphone Mafia, a German hip-hop group, with whom she continued to spread her message against fascism and intolerance to young audiences in Germany and abroad, from Istanbul to Vancouver.

Onstage with the group’s Kutlu Yurtseven and Rossi Pennino, Mrs. Bejarano was an unusual figure: a tiny woman with a snow-white pixie haircut, singing in Yiddish, Hebrew and Italian.

Hip-hop was not her preferred musical genre. She joked that she persuaded her bandmates to lower their volume and stop jumping around onstage so much. She believed that hip-hop’s influence on young people could help her counter a rise in intolerance.

“Twelve years together and almost 900 concerts together, and all this thanks to your strength,” Microphone Mafia wrote on its website after Mrs. Bejarano’s death. “Your laughter, your courage, your determination, your loving manner, your understanding, your fighting heart.”

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‘Can You Carry It: Invoice T. Jones and D-Man within the Waters’ Evaluate: Nonetheless Making Waves

‘Can You Bring It: Bill T. Jones and D-Man in the Waters’ Review: Still Making Waves

What happens to a work of art when time displaces it from its original context and from the impulse that inspired it? That is a question that can elicit dry theories. But in Can You Bring It ?: Bill T. Jones and D-Man in the Waters, a new documentary by Tom Hurwitz and Rosalynde LeBlanc Loo, the answer is passionate and moving.

Jones is a co-founder of the Bill T. Jones / Arnie Zane Company, a modern dance group. It grew out of the performer duo that Jones formed with his partner Zane, who wasn’t a dancer in the early 1970s.

Zane died in 1988 of AIDS-related lymphoma. The film gives a moving overview of their work-life collaboration before delving into the choices Jones made after Zane’s death. One of these decisions was the piece “D-Man in the Waters”.

The dance was inspired by a series of group improvisations. It was a mirror of the troop’s experiences, their struggles and their losses. As a choreography, it has since been performed by dozen of college and professional companies. “Can you bring it with you?” Jones asks a group of dancers at Loyola Marymount College in 2016 as they prepare the piece under the direction of Loo, a former member of the Jones / Zane Company.

These students have little knowledge of AIDS, so Jones and Loo ask them to find points in their lives where they struggle as part of a student community and in other ways. The cut between vintage recordings by Company Jones / Zane and the student production as well as recordings from another contemporary production of the piece – recorded with an intimacy on stage that is reminiscent of the in-the-ring segments of Martin Scorsese’s “Raging Bull” – ensure an unusually lively documentary experience.

Can you bring it with you: Bill T. Jones and D-Man in the Waters
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. In theaters.

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Metropolis Heart Pronounces Its 2021-2022 Season

City Center Announces Its 2021-2022 Season

The New York City Center will resume its live performances in October with the Fall for Dance Festival, one of its premier events. The dance showcase will open the theater’s 2021-2022 season, which will also include a Twyla Tharp birthday party, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s annual Christmas engagement, and two new dance series.

“We really wanted to reaffirm our commitment to the New York audience as a very New York institution and to New York artists,” said Arlene Shuler, President and CEO of City Center, about the ambitious season.

“It’s a huge opportunity for artists,” added Stanford Makishi, vice president and artistic director of dance programs. “Those I have spoken to over the past 16 months, they are all eager not only to get back on stage, but also to actually interact with the audience.”

City Center announced four orders for this year’s Fall for Dance on Tuesday. Ayodele Casel, Lar Lubovitch and Justin Peck will create new pieces that will be distributed across the festival’s five programs; and the Verdon Fosse Legacy, an organization dedicated to preserving the work of Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon, will reconstruct three dances for the festival. The full line-up and schedule will be released in early September.

In November Twyla Tharp celebrates her 80th birthday with “Twyla Now”, a program with two world premieres and signature works. A variety of stars including Sara Mearns and Robert Fairchild will perform, supported by an ensemble of young dancers.

The City Center’s new dance program will begin in 2022. Tiler Peck, director of the New York City Ballet, will inaugurate Artists at the Center, which allows an accomplished dancer to create a program; Peck’s program March 3-6 will include works by William Forsythe, Alonzo King, and others. The City Center Dance Festival, a spring counterpart to Fall for Dance, will follow from March 24th to April 10th. It will feature several New York ensembles, including the Martha Graham Dance Company, the Dance Theater of Harlem, and the Paul Taylor Dance Company.

The encores! The series, which revives rarely produced Broadway musicals, also returns in 2022. May), were announced last year. The coming encores! Season will be the first under the artistic direction of Lear deBessonet, who was announced as the successor to Jack Viertel in 2019.

More information is available at www.nycitycenter.org.

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Learn Yara Shahidi’s Response to the 2021 Emmy Nominations

GROWN-ISCH -

Yara Shahidi has a lot to celebrate! The stunning actress applauded her on Tuesday Black-ish and Mature Co-stars and the crews of the shows on their really impressive Emmy nominations. “It’s an ISH💫 family festival!” Wrote Shahidi on Instagram alongside behind-the-scenes photos from both shows. “My heart explodes when I see the talented people I work with being celebrated for their incredible work. 💫”

Black-ish was nominated for a whopping six awards, including outstanding comedy series. Tracee Ellis Ross was nominated for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy; Anthony Anderson was nominated for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy; Michelle R. Cole was nominated for Outstanding Contemporary Costumes for the episode “Our Wedding Dre”. This episode also earned the series a nomination for outstanding contemporary hairstyling. And Stacey Abrams was even nominated for an Emmy for her character voice-over performance inover Black-ish‘s “Election Special: Part 2”

And to start the senior year strong Mature was nominated for its very first Emmy Award, with Mark Doering-Powell’s nomination for Outstanding Cinematography for a half-hour single camera series. Congratulations to the -ish team!

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Britney Spears Conservatorship: Will She Ask to Finish It?

Britney Spears Conservatorship: Will She Ask to End It?

Three weeks after Britney Spears, in a passionate speech to a judge in Los Angeles, condemned the conservatories that have long controlled her life as abusive, the case will return to the courtroom on Wednesday.

There’s a lot to talk about.

Since the June 23 hearing, there has been a deluge of court records from those involved in the administration of the conservatory group that oversees both them and their estate. The singer’s father, James P. Spears, who has been in charge of his daughter’s finances since 2008, called for an investigation into Ms. Spears’ many allegations and tried, according to competing lawyers, to shift the blame for her complaints onto others. Jodi Montgomery, a professional restorer who took over the personal care of Ms. Spears from her father in 2019, immediately pushed the blame back.

And several actors, including Ms. Spears’ longtime court-appointed attorney, have expressed their desire to end their involvement in the case as she seeks to hire a world-class firm that could help her end the deal entirely.

The hearing is scheduled to begin in Los Angeles at 1:30 p.m. PDT.

Here are five problems that could be addressed.

Days after Ms. Spears told the court that she had been molested under her supervision – said she was forced to take mood-stabilizing medication and prevented from taking off her contraceptive, blaming her management team, the janitors, for her treatment and family – her father requested an investigation.

Mr. Spears was the main actor in the arrangement from the start. In 2008, he filed for control of the singer’s business and personal affairs due to concerns about her mental health and possible substance abuse. In her speech, Ms. Spears described her father as someone who consented to everything in her life and said, “He loved being in control.”

In the court filing, Mr. Spears’ attorneys requested evidence in his daughter’s account and wrote, “It is important that the court confirm whether or not Ms. Spears testimony was correct to determine what corrective action, if any, should be taken.”

They also tried to distance Mr. Spears from questions about her wellbeing, arguing that after late 2019 he “just wasn’t involved in decisions related to Ms. Spears’ personal hygiene or medical or reproductive problems” and had been cut off from communicate with her.

Ms. Montgomery’s attorneys, who cover Ms. Spears ‘psychiatric care, responded vigorously, citing Mr. Spears’ request as “procedural error” and “totally inappropriate” and a “thinly veiled attempt to clear his name.”

Britney Spears’ litigation star

The attorneys said any questions regarding Ms. Montgomery’s tenure as a conservator would be addressed in a “comprehensive care plan” that they worked out with the singer’s medical team, the “Ms. Spears would also provide a way of ending their conservatism for the person. as she so unequivocally wishes. “

But if there was an investigation, Ms. Montgomery asked that she wait until Ms. Spears had an attorney who would “fully represent her interests.”

In her speech, Ms. Spears questioned whether her 13-year court-appointed attorney, Samuel D. Ingham III, had done enough to educate and support her. In one particularly shocking claim, Ms. Spears said she did not know it would be possible for her to file a motion to terminate the conservatoires.

Last week, Mr Ingham asked the court to step down, a motion that requires the approval of Judge Brenda Penny, who is overseeing the case. A letter of resignation was also submitted by a law firm Loeb & Loeb, which Mr. Ingham had recently brought in to assist him.

In 2008, Mr. Ingham was appointed by the court after Ms. Spears, who was hospitalized at the time, was found by another judge to be unable to appoint her own lawyer. The court could make the same decision now or allow Ms. Spears to choose her own lawyer.

An attorney for the singer’s mother, Lynne Spears, who is an interested party at the Conservatory, has also asked the court to allow the singer to choose her own attorney, arguing that her daughter was not bound by a 2008 ruling Your capacity is certainly different today. ”The American Civil Liberties Union filed an amicus brief Monday to support the court allowing Ms. Spears to choose her closest lawyer, possibly along with trustworthy, neutrals Consultants.

Mathew S. Rosengart, a prominent Hollywood attorney and former federal attorney, plans to attend the hearing to begin the process of becoming Ms. Spears’ attorney, according to one person who has been briefed on the matter. He would take a more aggressive approach and push for an end to the conservatories, the person said.

Ms. Montgomery filed her own motion to the court to appoint a curator ad litem solely to assist Ms. Spears in selecting a new attorney. The file stated that Ms. Spears had “repeatedly and consistently” sought Ms. Montgomery’s help in finding one.

Ms. Spears’ fortune, now valued at nearly $ 60 million, was controlled by her father (sometimes along with a co-restorer) for the entire duration of the Conservatory; an asset management firm, Bessemer Trust, was named a co-restorer last year after Ms. Spears petitioned to remove her father from the position.

About a week after the June 23 hearing, court documents said Bessemer Trust called for the agreement to be withdrawn, citing Ms. Spears’ criticism of the deal. When the law firm learned of Ms. Spears’ wish to end the Conservatory Council, the file said Bessemer no longer wanted to be involved.

The question for Judge Penny will be whether Mr. Spears will be allowed to remain the sole curator of Ms. Spears’ estate despite a formal request from her attorney and now an emotional request to remove it.

Since Ms. Spears’ speech, there has been a “significant increase in the number and severity of threatening posts” about Ms. Montgomery on social media and other communications threatening violence or death against her, she said in a court file.

As a result, Ms. Montgomery has asked the court to require Ms. Spears’ estate to pay her security if Mr. Spears agrees. A court file filed on her behalf stated that Ms. Montgomery had sent the threats to the security company Mr. Spears appointed, recommending that they remain under protection around the clock.

Mr. Spears has contradicted this agreement. In his own court record, attorneys alleged that Ms. Montgomery’s security services would indefinitely top $ 50,000 a month – an expense he described as inappropriate. He also argued that such payments would set a standard that would require Ms. Spears to cover security costs for anyone threatened as a result of the high profile case.

“MS. Montgomery isn’t the only person involved in this conservatory who has received threats and / or death threats,” wrote Mr. Spears’ attorneys.

The legal machinations that followed the June 23 hearing all lead to the same question: Will Ms. Spears formally appeal to dissolve the Conservatory?

The motion was possible within days of Ms. Spears addressing the court, but the resignation of her court-appointed attorney complicated matters.

If the judge believes the singer can choose her new lawyer, the petition could be filed shortly after that person is approved by the judge. Then it is possible that another Conservatory representative – most likely Mrs. Spears’ father – will object to the termination and initiate a lawsuit before the judge makes a final decision.

In her statements in court, Ms. Spears said repeatedly that she wanted to quit the Conservatory without additional psychological investigations, which she had found invasive over the years. But this can be an uphill battle, especially if one of Ms. Spears’ restorers is against ending the arrangement.

Chris Johnson, a California trust and estate attorney who has worked with conservatories and is not involved in the Spears case, said judges rely heavily on the opinions of medical experts in deciding whether to end a conservatory administration and that Ms. Spears doing this would likely need to be re-evaluated, possibly before being allowed to hire her own attorney.

“In many cases, getting rid of a conservatory can be more difficult than starting it at all,” said Johnson.

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Entertainment

Paul Huntley, Hair Grasp of Broadway and Hollywood, Is Lifeless at 88

Paul Huntley, Hair Master of Broadway and Hollywood, Is Dead at 88

For the show “Diana” – a version shot without an audience during the pandemic and due to premiere on Netflix on October 1st – he created four wigs for actress Jeanna de Waal to portray the style of the Princess of Wales has changed over time, from lousy naivete to windswept sophistication.

Paul Huntley was born on July 2, 1933 in Greater London, one of five children of a military man and a housewife. From an early age he was fascinated by his mother’s film magazines. After school, he tried to find an apprenticeship in the film industry, but the flooded job market after World War II did not offer a place for him, so he enrolled at an acting school in London.

He eventually helped design hair for school productions and in the 1950s, after two years of military service, became an apprentice at Wig Creations, a major London theater company. He became the main designer and worked with Vivien Leigh, Marlene Dietrich and Laurence Olivier.

Mr. Huntley helped construct the signature braids that Elizabeth Taylor wore in the 1963 film “Cleopatra”. Ms. Taylor introduced him to director Mike Nichols, who a decade later hired Mr. Huntley to do hair for his Broadway production of “Uncle Vanya” in Circle in the Square. He eventually became a designer for plays and musicals, including “The Real Thing”, “The Heidi Chronicles” and “Crazy for You”.

Join The Times theater reporter Michael Paulson in conversation with Lin-Manuel Miranda, see a performance of Shakespeare in the Park, and more as we explore the signs of hope in a transformed city. For a year now, the “Offstage” series has accompanied the theater through a shutdown. Now let’s look at his recovery.

Mr. Huntley returned to a show on a regular basis to make sure standards were being met. He referred to himself as “the hair police”.

Tony Awards are not given for hair design, but Mr. Huntley was given a special Tony in 2003.

“Everyone says, ‘I want Paul Huntley,'” Broadway producer Emanuel Azenberg once told the Times. “He does the hair organically for the show. It’s not about him. “

Mr. Huntley saw hair not just as a decorative element, but as an expression of an era or a change in society and an integral part of character development. For “Thoroughly Modern Millie” he tried to remember New York City in 1922, his pony, his spit curls and finger waves were marked by a feeling of liberation after the First World War.