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R. Murray Schafer, Composer Who Heard Nature’s Music, Dies at 88

R. Murray Schafer, Composer Who Heard Nature’s Music, Dies at 88

On his return to Toronto, Mr. Schafer in 1962 co-founded the innovative concert series Ten Centuries, which presented new and rarely heard music.

As his career picked up, he answered requests for new works with irreverence, composing “Son of Heldenleben,” a parodic riff on the tone poem by Richard Strauss, and “No Longer Than Ten (10) Minutes,” in which an orchestra tunes up, a conductor walks on and offstage, and the players crescendo each time the audience tries to applaud. His 1966 “Requiems for the Party-Girl,” written for the mezzo-soprano Phyllis Mailing, is a darkly virtuosic monodrama in which a woman sings of her impending suicide.

Mr. Schafer married Ms. Mailing in 1960, and they divorced in 1971. His second marriage, to Jean Reed, from 1975 to about 1999, also ended in divorce. He married Ms. James in 2011 after a long partnership. Along with her, he is survived by his brother, Paul.

Mr. Schafer began his research on soundscapes after joining the faculty at Simon Fraser University in 1965. He also invented a radical approach to teaching, calling it “creative music education.” In a series of influential booklets, he provided exercises to encourage children’s creativity, asking them to “bring an interesting sound to school” or hum along with a tune that they had heard on a street corner.

Alongside the mythic theater of “Patria,” Mr. Schafer composed more conventional scores, among them 13 string quartets and “Letters from Mignon,” a neo-Romantic song setting of love letters written to him by Ms. James. His genre-spanning oratorio “Apocalypsis” was first performed with a cast of more than 500 in 1980; it received a triumphant, career-capping revival at the Luminato Festival in Toronto in 2015.

In a 2009 short film directed by David New, Mr. Schafer offers philosophical musings on listening amid the snowy soundscape outside his home, a remote farmhouse in the Indian River area in southern Ontario.

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Sean Penn and Dylan Penn Make ‘Flag Day’ a Household Affair

Sean Penn and Dylan Penn Make ‘Flag Day’ a Family Affair

MALIBU, Calif. — Sure, Sean Penn has two Oscars. But at home, his children Dylan Frances Penn and Hopper Jack Penn wanted to pelt him with tomatoes.

“I tell jokes terribly,” Sean admitted. “They always tell me, ‘You probably should have stopped there.’”

“As you do with your dad,” Dylan added, rolling her eyes affectionately. Despite her father’s failings as a stand-up comic, she trusts him as the director who could kick-start her acting career — if she wants one. “Flag Day,” which premiered in competition at Cannes and is in theaters Aug. 20, stars the two in an adaptation of the journalist Jennifer Vogel’s memoir, “Flim-Flam Man,” about her shaky young adulthood in the orbit of her charismatic con man father, who died following a high-speed police pursuit.

Sean handed Dylan the book when she was a teenager. She passed. Now 30, she took nearly 15 more years to agree to make the film, long enough for her 61-year-old father, Sean, to come around himself to doing double-duty as director and leading man, the first time he’s tried to do both. “I don’t think stereophonically,” Sean said.

He had an easier time convincing his son, Hopper, to sign on to a small role as Vogel’s brother.

“He just asked me to play Nick and that was that,” Hopper said by email.

Sean and Dylan were sitting in their front yard in the shade of an Airstream trailer named Las Vegas, in honor of Sean’s intended elopement to Leila George. (Because of the pandemic, the couple was instead married by a county commissioner over Zoom last summer as Sean’s nonprofit CORE opened a Covid-19 testing site at Dodger Stadium that has since evolved into a fleet of mobile vaccination units.)

Alongside three large dogs continually changing their mind about where to nap, the two talked over each other, and indulgently allowed themselves to be interrupted, as they hashed out their maturing relationship. “I know what the stamps are in her passport — and she knows mine,” Sean said. “And it was thrilling that we were able to transfer it to a movie.” These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

This is a film about finding your own identity apart from your parents. Dylan, you avoided acting. You worked at an ad agency, you helped edit scripts, you delivered pizzas — how were your tips?

DYLAN PENN Terrible.

SEAN PENN That terrified me. All those frat houses around U.C.L.A.

DYLAN I started modeling like six months into being a pizza delivery girl. I would work at night doing pizza deliveries, but during the day, I was doing full hair and makeup for a shoot. So I would show up to these frat houses and they’re like, “Oh, did someone order a stripper?” Nope! Just a pizza. I always thought I would be in the film industry, but I expected to be behind the camera. When I was, like 15, 16, the first time you came to me with this project, I just felt like it was a really silly thing to do.

Acting?

DYLAN Adults dressing up as different people. The real reason that I got into acting in the first place was because I told my parents [her mother is the actor Robin Wright] I wanted to direct eventually, and both of them told me that I should know what it’s like to be an actor before I direct so that I know how to direct an actor.

Was this film always going to be the two of you?

SEAN I was going to be involved in it first as an actor. She didn’t feel ready for it. And then when it came back around, it came to me as a director. So then I was just going to direct it. And then we got into a bind about a month out from shooting, and I had to just jump in and I’m so glad that I did.

DYLAN It was a real shock because we’ve never worked together. The idea of him directing me was already like a big undertaking. The idea of being so vulnerable with your own family in front of 40, 50 crew members is daunting.

SEAN Your dirty laundry is going to be aired on a daily basis. I don’t mean your family history dirty laundry, but I mean that day’s emotional interactions with each other. But on the upside, I’ve never been so excited on any movie set as when I was in a scene with her, or just watching her kill it. In particular, the thing that all actors say, but very few do, is that listening is everything. She listens in a way that I love watching because she doesn’t tell you what she’s thinking. I like putting the camera close on her because she’s not going to wink at you.

What about Sean as a director makes him unique?

DYLAN His vision is so fully realized ahead of time. Even working in a space where, financially, it was a bit of a constraint, there was no limit to making that vision become a reality. A prop, a location, my hair. Literally, the opening where Regina King and I had a scene together. I walked in and he was like, “You would not be wearing mascara.” And I remember being so pissed. It was a fight for 10 minutes to take the mascara off.

SEAN It was a two-and-a-half-hour standoff.

DYLAN I was wrong. But I’m stubborn and it was a fight.

SEAN I will just say on your behalf, a lot of times where she had a different view, more often than not, I came around to thinking that she had the right idea. So I would be very interested in seeing the things that she directs.

Acting dynasties go back to the Barrymores. But it feels like your family is shaping a directing dynasty. Dylan, both of your parents released films in the last year that they directed, and Sean, your father, Leo Penn, was a director.

SEAN I spent a lot of time with him as a kid on sets. TV one-hour dramas. He was much more patient. A gentler sort. But I’m sure that a lot of my general sense of what a director’s job is comes from him.

And he directed you in “Little House on the Prairie”?

SEAN That was summer money as an extra as a kid. I didn’t think I wanted to get involved in film until senior year of high school.

And “Judgment in Berlin” [a 1988 film that featured Sean as a trial witness].

SEAN That was a great experience. We talk about in this story, how much of your parents do you really know? The deceptions in the relationship between John and Jennifer — from John to Jennifer.

Even with a gentle, open, loving man, it took going to Berlin, knowing [that during World War II] he’d flown those low-altitude bombing missions virtually where we were, and walking with him through a square where mothers are pushing strollers. I won’t call it regret by any means, but the humanization of what he’d done from the air had wiped him out.

Getting to know one’s parents makes me think of Dylan’s Instagram post from a couple of years ago of your dad’s first wedding day.

DYLAN It was the first time that I realized, “Oh, my parents are people without me.” And this is like on a deep level, after going through a lot of family therapy. I get asked so much, “Wait, so you’re Madonna’s daughter?” Oh right! He was married to her — they had a life together.

You were 5 when you left Los Angeles and moved to Northern California. Just before, your mother was surprised by people with guns in your driveway. Do you remember that?

DYLAN I remember it vividly. It was me, my mom and my brother in the car. We pulled in around 10 p.m. and these two guys were standing in the driveway. My mom just said, “Don’t get out of the car. Don’t make a sound.” She got out and they pointed a gun at her stomach and she threw the keys in the bushes and yanked us out of the car. That superhero thing that moms take on when their children are in jeopardy.

SEAN And then they took the car.

DYLAN They crashed.

SEAN They finally crashed into a dumpster and took off running. They actually caught the second guy with a heat sensor from the aerial unit. He had gotten into a dumpster himself, but because he’d been running, his body was hot and they were able to see his heat.

DYLAN [This is one] reason my mom has said she didn’t want us growing up in this paparazzi frenzy that L.A. was becoming. Now, it’s beyond what it was in the ’90s.

It’s pretty impossible for anybody not to remark on how much you look like your mom. On the inside, do you see your dad?

DYLAN Oh my God. I feel like we’re both very alpha personalities, but with that, also being introverted in terms of our private life. I think a lot of my strength comes from watching my dad. My mom, as well, but just in different ways. I also think we see things in similar ways and emotionally react similarly, just in terms of, like movies that we watch, that we cry at —

SEAN Everything.

DYLAN It’s like what a lot of people have with their best friends. You both observe the same things.

SEAN Through a similar lens.

DYLAN Yeah, through a similar lens.

Some of these scenes seem like they would have been hard to shoot, really harrowing. You’re recording her as she’s watching you die onscreen.

DYLAN It’s an awful thing to watch. It was the first time that I felt 100 percent like my dad is not there — this is my dad — and I really felt like he was shooting himself in the head. I was crying and I could hear him crying behind the camera.

SEAN Watching you cry over me. [Fake sobbing] It’s so sad to see you lose your father!

You were crying, too?

SEAN She made me cry a lot. She makes me cry a lot. You kind of feel like somebody should call Child Protective Services on you for directing. What are you putting your kid through?

There’s a line in this film: “I think the greatest hope a man can have is to leave something beautiful behind — something he made.” Am I alone in thinking that line had a resonance for you?

SEAN Oh, no. It has resonance for me as you say it. Yes. Listen, I don’t know what else I was doing here. Now with two kids that I feel so proud of who are already accomplishing things out of their own gifts. On a beautiful day, despite a pandemic and everything else, you kind of go, it’s all gravy from here. Knock wood. [Knocks on a palm tree] But no question, I would be lost without ’em.

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Josephine Baker to Be Honored With a Panthéon Burial

Josephine Baker to Be Honored With a Panthéon Burial

PARIS — Josephine Baker, an American-born Black dancer and civil rights activist who in the early 20th century became one of France’s great music-hall stars, will be laid to rest in the Panthéon, France’s storied tomb of heroes, a close adviser to President Emmanuel Macron said on Sunday.

The honor will make Ms. Baker — who became a French citizen in 1937 and died in Paris in 1975 — the first Black woman and one of very few foreign-born figures to be interred there. The Panthéon houses the remains of some of France’s most revered, including Victor Hugo, Marie Curie and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

The decision to transfer Ms. Baker’s remains, which are buried in Monaco, comes after a petition calling for the move, started by the writer Laurent Kupferman, caught the attention of Mr. Macron. The petition has garnered nearly 40,000 signatures over the past two years.

Mr. Kupferman suggested that Mr. Macron approved the reinterment “because, probably, Josephine Baker embodies the Republic of possibilities.”

“How could a woman who came from a discriminated and very poor background achieve her destiny and become a world star?” Mr. Kupferman said. “That was possible in France at a time when it was not in the United States.”

Entombment at the Panthéon can be approved only by a president, and Ms. Baker’s reinterment is highly symbolic, coming as France has been convulsed by heated culture wars over its model of social integration, and as gender and race issues have fractured the country around new political front lines.

The news was first reported by Le Parisien newspaper. The funeral will take place on Nov. 30.

Ms. Baker, born Freda Josephine McDonald in 1906 in St. Louis, started her career as a dancer in New York in the early 1920s before heading to France, where she quickly became a sensation.

She said that she had been motivated to move abroad because of discrimination that she had endured in the United States. “I just couldn’t stand America, and I was one of the first colored Americans to move to Paris,” she told The Guardian newspaper in 1974.

Along with other Black American artists — including the writers Richard Wright and James Baldwin — Ms. Baker said she found in France a freedom that she felt denied in the United States.

In Paris, Ms. Baker quickly rose to fame and became a fixture in shows at Les Folies Bergères, a famous music hall, dominating France’s cabarets with her sense of humor, her frantic dancing and her iconic songs, like “J’ai Deux Amours,” or “I Have Two Loves.”

But part of her artistic career was also built around stereotyped and erotic dances, like the so-called banana dance. The dances were riddled with racist tropes once associated with Black women and their bodies in a colonial France then fascinated with Black and African arts, prompting some activists at the time to denounce her for fueling those caricatures.

But Pap Ndiaye, a historian who specializes in Black studies, said in 2019 on France Culture radio that Ms. Baker had specifically used the stereotypes in her acts, deriding them as much as she exaggerated them.

“It is this French colonial imaginary world which she will capture and which she will play with, obviously with many nods and much distance, because Josephine Baker is not fooled,” Mr. Ndiaye said.

Ms. Baker later became a passionate civil rights advocate in the United States. She wrote about racial equality, refused to perform in segregated venues and, in 1963, joined the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. onstage to speak during the March on Washington.

In recent years, French authorities have responded to growing calls to inter more women in the Panthéon, where the vast majority of those buried are men. In 2014, Germaine Tillion and Geneviève de Gaulle-Anthonioz, who fought in the French Resistance to the Nazis, were awarded the honor, and Simone Veil, a health minister who championed France’s legalization of abortion, was laid to rest there in 2018.

Ms. Baker’s burial at the Panthéon, by nature of it being the first awarded to a Black woman, could prove politically beneficial for Mr. Macron as debates over racial discrimination are raging in France less than a year before the 2022 presidential elections. But Sunday’s announcement may also give fuel to the animosity over France’s model of integration, which Mr. Macron’s government has heated up recently.

Supporters of moving Ms. Baker’s remains to the Panthéon have said that it was France’s so-called universalist model — purportedly secular, colorblind and of equal opportunity — that allowed her to perform in France when she could not in the United States. But this model has also come under severe criticism recently, with some critics, especially among young minorities, accusing it of masking widespread racism and of comprising unfulfilled ideals.

The reinterment will also afford France the chance to celebrate Ms. Baker’s life outside the arts. During World War II, she served as an ambulance driver and an intelligence agent, earning her medals of honor. And in the 1950s, Ms. Baker adopted a dozen orphans of various nationalities, races and religions, with whom she lived in a chateau in southwestern France.

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SZA Simply Launched three New Tracks on SoundCloud

SZA Just Released 3 New Tracks on SoundCloud

It seems we can thank the recent full moon for the latest SZA release, at least if a recent text exchange between the singer and her astrology reader is to be believed. On Aug. 22, the 30-year-old self-released three new tracks to SoundCloud, sharing the link via a Tweet, saying, “dumping random thoughts.” From a beat you won’t be able to get out of your head to well-placed synth and acoustic guitar riffs, the tracks, titled “Nightbird,” “I Hate You,” and “Joni,” all give off completely different vibes.

Fans were quick to show their appreciation for the release, with one even asking “Can you start SZA Sundays and drop random thoughts once a week.” Seeing as Sza said yes to the fan’s question, here’s hoping that “SZA Sundays” really do become a thing. As for what’s next for the singer, apparently it’s the highly anticipated “Shirt.” There’s still no word on when her album will be released, but when she spoke with POPSUGAR back in March, she had this to say of her music, “I’m just trying to have fun and really let my heart speak and get out of my head.” You can listen to her new tracks for yourself, ahead.

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A Starry Central Park Comeback Live performance Is Silenced by Lightning

A Starry Central Park Comeback Concert Is Silenced by Lightning

The homecoming show required everyone 12 years old and up to show proof that they had had at least one dose of a vaccine; children younger than that, who are still ineligible for the vaccines, were required to wear masks.

“When it comes to the concerts, they are outdoors — they are for vaccinated folks only,” the mayor had said on Wednesday. “We are definitely encouraging mask use. But I really want to emphasize the whole key here is vaccination.”

The Central Park show came after the city had hosted a week of free hip-hop shows, with local heroes including Raekwon and Ghostface Killah in Staten Island, and KRS-One, Kool Moe Dee and Slick Rick in the Bronx. Tickets were required to attend the concert on the Great Lawn — most were free, but V.I.P. packages cost up to $5,000 — and the show was broadcast on television by CNN and on satellite radio by SiriusXM.

The concert was programmed by Clive Davis, the 89-year-old music eminence, who, in an interview this week, stressed the role that music could play in shaping society.

“It’s vital and important that New York be back,” he said.

From the stage on Saturday night, Mr. Davis, a Brooklyn native, made a plea to the audience: “Tonight, I only ask one thing: When you’re having a great time, cheer loud — loud enough so they can hear you all the way in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights.”

The abbreviated concert came at an uncertain moment for the music industry. While some high-profile artists, including Garth Brooks, BTS and Nine Inch Nails, have canceled tour dates recently, the show is largely going on in the live-music business — but it hasn’t been easy. Concert protocols, in New York and elsewhere, have been in flux for months, as the federal authorities, local governments and businesses have adjusted to the changing realities of the virus.

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A Steamy French Thriller Is a ‘Sleeper Smash Hit’

A Steamy French Thriller Is a ‘Sleeper Smash Hit’

“It’s vicarious,” Mr. Goldstein said, trying to explain why a 50-year-old French film starring actors who were largely unknown in America has been such a hit. “It’s a vacation in the south of France that a lot of people can’t take. There’s also the incredible magnetism and chemistry of the two stars, who were real-life lovers.”

The film is classified as a psychological thriller, but to first-time viewers, very little happens until the very end. “Can you believe there’s another hour of this?” I overheard one older woman marvel to her friend near the halfway mark.

“A Bigger Splash,” the marvelous 2015 remake starring Ralph Fiennes and Tilda Swinton, which Americans may be more familiar with, maintains the broad strokes of the plot, but, as the title suggests, it is much splashier. In that version, the drowning is an accidental crime of passion, far from the cold, calculating murder of “La Piscine”; the dialogue is faster, the cuts sharper, the music louder.

Watching it now, having done a deep dive (ahem) into the original, made me acutely aware it was the very absence of action, the unapologetic decadence, that kept pulling me back to the theater. This is not a film interested in passing judgment on la belle vie.

Even as I became more sensitive to the subtleties of the film’s dialogue (“the first swim really takes it out of you,” says Marianne, when Penelope returns from the beach having lost her virginity to Jean-Paul), I remained more interested in simply watching beautiful people do very little. “Tomorrow I will take a long siesta,” Marianne declares, lying on a couch in her bathing suit after a day by the pool. Yes, please.

That a film so grounded in the gratuitous has resonated in 2021 is perhaps not entirely surprising. After a year in which New York City suffered enormous loss and its residents lived heavily circumscribed lives, it’s understandable we are looking to take our clothes off and have a good time, onscreen and off.

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5 Issues to Do This Weekend

5 Things to Do This Weekend

Over the years, Rockaway Beach has earned the award as a synonym for resilience. Knowing this, Ivan Forde recently painted Seascape With the Fabulous Plant of Rejuvenation in the Abzu, a 5 by 90 meter mural on the corner of Rockaway Beach Boulevard and Beach 108th Street on the facade of the Rockaway Hotel. The work symbolizes “rejuvenation for NYC after the pandemic storm,” he said in a personal statement on his website.

Forde centered the cyanotype on the Mesopotamian poem “The Epic of Gilgamesh,” adding visual references to traditional healing elements associated with his own Guyanese heritage and that of the Lenape, the indigenous peoples who lived in the Rockaways centuries ago.

Created in partnership with Baxter Street CCNY and supported by the 7G Foundation and Facebook Open Arts, the Forde mural, which will be on view through the fall of 2022, is part of a series of public art initiatives the Rockaway Hotel aims to showcase to promote the feeling of renewal to pay tribute to the eventful past of the region.
MELISSA SMITH

Japan Cuts, the Japan Society’s annual survey of predominantly contemporary Japanese cinema, will again offer in-person screenings this year – at least for a handful of titles. Eight features will be shown in the theater from Friday to September 2nd. Some will be shown in the Society’s virtual cinema, film.japansociety.org, where additional titles will also be available to stream.

One possible discovery on the opening weekend is Yukiko Sode’s “Aristocrats” (screening on Saturday and August 26), a structurally surprising study of class stratification in Tokyo. Hanako (Mugi Kadowaki) wants to marry into a political family after a failed engagement.

The heart of Japan Cuts is a sneak preview of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s beautiful World War I drama “Wife of a Spy” (screening on August 27 and online from Friday). The film, which opens in September and won the directing award in Venice last year, revolves around a woman in Kobe (Yu Aoi) who suspects her secretive husband (Issey Takahashi) and his business trip to Manchuria.

For theatrical performances, those present must wear masks and provide proof of vaccination.
BEN KENIGSBERG

CHILDREN

Some of the animals at the Bronx Zoo this summer are creatures you’d rather find in the local library, including a blue horse and a very famous – and very hungry – caterpillar.

They are the creations of Eric Carle, the popular children’s author and illustrator who died in May. Set at the zoo Friday through Sunday through August 29, Eric Carle’s World of Wildlife features many of the same giant, intriguing dolls that Rockefeller Productions previously featured in its anthology The Very Hungry Caterpillar Show.

Now, however, the company is presenting four stories separately, all free with zoo entry (tickets must be reserved in advance): “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” in Giraffe Corner; “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?” And “The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse” in Grizzly Corner; and the American premiere of “The Very Busy Spider” at Astor Court. After the 15-minute shows, which start at 11 am and run at different times of the day – the last one starts at 4 pm – there is an opportunity to get to know the cast.

Visit on other days of the week? Be sure to see the zoo’s own Wildlife Theater troupe in shows about butterflies, bears and beetles.
LAUREL GRAVE

comedy

The Upright Citizens Brigade Theater is no longer stationary in New York, but its long-standing, popular showcase on Sunday evening, ASSSSCAT, has found a new home at Caveat, with one caveat: it is now called RaaaatScraps.

This newly named troupe enlivens ASSSSCAT’s improvisational format, inspired by anecdotes from a celebrity (when Raaaatscraps opened his residence at the Caveat on August 1st, Janeane Garofalo was his guest storyteller). Organized by Shannon O’Neill, and presented by the Squirrel Theater, the show features a rotating cast that includes two Squirrel board members – Michael Hartney and Corin Wells – and actors you can recognize by their scene-taking television roles such as Zach Cherry, Connor Ratliff and Peter Grosz.

This week’s star monologue will remain a surprise, but you can find out on Caveat or by livestreaming the performance, taped in Multicam HD, on Sunday at 7:30 p.m. door and $ 8 to access the stream. People who are present in person must show a vaccination card.
SEAN McCARTHY

jazz

Little Island, the man-made park and amphitheater off Manhattan’s Pier 55, has breathed new life into the pandemic art scene, thanks in particular to its month-long festival of public concerts titled NYC Free. While the music program is broad, the performances this weekend are full of world-class jazz talent. One of the highlights on Friday is a performance at 9.15 p.m. by Magos Herrera, a Mexican-American singer who oscillates between jazz, experimental classical music and Latin American folklore.

On Saturday at 7.30 p.m., the MacArthur award-winning saxophonist Miguel Zenón, whose quartet will perform excerpts from his homage to the famous Puerto Rican singer Ismael Rivera, as well as the virtuoso singer Cécile McLorin Salvant and the pianist Sullivan Fortner, both Grammy winners, will provide star power on Saturday playing in a duet at 9:15 a.m.

The program on Sunday includes a show by the versatile pianist Miki Hayama at 6:30 p.m. and a series of student performances from 8:45 a.m., presented by the Afro-Latin Jazz Alliance. Reservation lists for certain shows are full, but there are vantage points all over the park to see the stage. Visit littleisland.org for more information.
GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO

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Zoë Kravitz and Channing Tatum Biking NYC | Footage

Zoë Kravitz and Channing Tatum Biking NYC | Pictures

Zoë Kravitz and Channing Tatum are causing a buzz with their latest outing, and it has a lot of fans wondering if they’re the latest duo to add to our list of surprising couples. On Wednesday, the 32-year-old actress and 41-year-old actor were spotted in NYC smiling and biking together around the East Village. While we’re not entirely sure if it’s platonic or something more, we are sure that they’ve been spending a lot of time together recently. Zoë is making her directorial debut in the upcoming film Pussy Island, in which Channing stars as a mysterious tech mogul with a private island.

It’s not the first time they’ve worked together, as Zoë and Channing voiced Catwoman and Clark Kent, respectively, in 2017’s The Lego Batman Movie, and it’s clear they’ve got quite the rapport. Back in June, they chatted with Deadline about their first meeting for Pussy Island and Channing showed up in Crocs, which Zoë was not too fond of. “When someone can just come out and tell me I should not be wearing Crocs and is so adamant about it, she completely convinced me and I never wear Crocs anymore,” he detailed.

Well, it’s a good thing Channing went for some Converse high-top kicks while hanging out with Zoë in NYC! Check out the photos from their biking outing ahead.

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A Celebrated Afghan College Fears the Taliban Will Cease the Music

A Celebrated Afghan School Fears the Taliban Will Stop the Music

For more than a decade, the Afghanistan National Institute of Music has stood as a symbol of the country’s changing identity. The school trained hundreds of young artists, many of them orphans and street hawkers, in artistic traditions that were once forbidden by the Taliban. It formed an all-female orchestra that performed widely in Afghanistan and abroad.

But in recent days, as the Taliban have been consolidating control over Afghanistan again, the school’s future has come into doubt.

In interviews, several students and teachers said they feared the Taliban, who have a history of attacking the school’s leaders, would seek to punish people affiliated with the school as well as their families. Some said they worried the school will be shut down and they will not be allowed to play again. Several female students said they had been staying inside their homes since the capital was seized on Sunday

“It’s a nightmare,” Ahmad Naser Sarmast, the head of the school, said in a telephone interview from Melbourne, Australia, where he arrived last month for medical treatment.

The Taliban banned most forms of music when they previously ruled Afghanistan, from 1996 to 2001. This time, they have promised a more tolerant approach, vowing not to carry out reprisals against their former enemies and saying that women will be allowed to work and study “within the bounds of Islamic law.”

But the Taliban’s history of violence toward artists and its general intolerance for music without religious meaning has sowed doubts among many performers.

“My concern is that the people of Afghanistan will be deprived of their music,” Mr. Sarmast said. “There will be an attempt to silence the nation.”

In 2010, Mr. Sarmast, an Afghan music scholar who was trained in Australia and plays trumpet and piano, opened the school, which has more than 400 students and staff members, with the support of the American-backed government. It was a rarity: a coeducational institution devoted to teaching music from both Afghanistan and the West.

The school’s musicians were invited to perform on many of the world’s most renowned stages, including Carnegie Hall. They played Western classical music as well as traditional Afghan music and instruments, like the rubab, which resembles the lute and is one of the national instruments of Afghanistan.

The school placed special emphasis on supporting young women, who make up a third of the student body. The school’s all-female orchestra, Zohra, founded in 2015, earned wide acclaim. Many were the first women in their families to receive formal training. In a symbol of its modern ways, head scarves for girls at the school’s campus in Kabul were optional.

Updated 

Aug. 20, 2021, 5:22 p.m. ET

The school’s habit of challenging tradition made it a target. In 2014, Mr. Sarmast was injured by a Taliban suicide bomber who infiltrated a school play. The Taliban tried to attack the school again in the years that followed, but their attempts were thwarted, Mr. Sarmast said.

Now, female students say they are concerned about a return to a repressive past, when the Taliban eliminated schooling for girls and barred women from leaving home without male guardians.

Several female students — who were granted anonymity because they feared retaliation — said that it felt like their dreams to become professional musicians could disintegrate. They worried they might not be able to play music again in their lives, even as a hobby.

In recent weeks, as the Taliban swept through the country, the school’s network of overseas supporters tried to help by raising money to improve security on campus, including by installing an armed gate and walls.

But it’s now unclear if the school will even be permitted to operate under the Taliban. It is also increasingly difficult for citizens of Afghanistan to leave the country. Airport entrances have been chaotic and often impassable scenes for days, even for people with travel documentation. The Taliban control the streets, and though they say they are breaking up crowds at the airport to keep order, there are widespread reports that they are turning people away by force if they try to leave the country.

The State Department said in a statement that it was working to get American citizens, as well as locally employed staff and vulnerable Afghans, out of the country, though crowding at the airport had made it more difficult. The department said it was prioritizing Afghan women and girls, human rights defenders and journalists, among others.

“This effort is of utmost importance to the U.S. government,” the statement said.

In the 1990s, the Taliban permitted religious singing but banned other forms of music because they were seen as distractions to Islamic studies and could encourage impure behavior. Taliban officials destroyed instruments and smashed cassette tapes.

Understand the Taliban Takeover in Afghanistan

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Who are the Taliban? The Taliban arose in 1994 amid the turmoil that came after the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989. They used brutal public punishments, including floggings, amputations and mass executions, to enforce their rules. Here’s more on their origin story and their record as rulers.

Who are the Taliban leaders? These are the top leaders of the Taliban, men who have spent years on the run, in hiding, in jail and dodging American drones. Little is known about them or how they plan to govern, including whether they will be as tolerant as they claim to be.

What happens to the women of Afghanistan? The last time the Taliban were in power, they barred women and girls from taking most jobs or going to school. Afghan women have made many gains since the Taliban were toppled, but now they fear that ground may be lost. Taliban officials are trying to reassure women that things will be different, but there are signs that, at least in some areas, they have begun to reimpose the old order.

William Maley, an emeritus professor at Australian National University who has studied Afghanistan, said he was troubled by reports that the Taliban had recently sought to limit the spread of popular music in some parts of the country.

“The Taliban in the 1990s were extremely hostile to any form of music other than religious chants, and people had to hide their instruments and play music secretively,” Professor Maley said. “I would not be optimistic.”

Amid the chaos in Kabul, students, teachers and alumni of the school have exchanged frantic messages on chat groups. They have lamented the fact that they might need to hide their instruments or leave them in the care of others if they try to flee.

William Harvey, who taught violin and conducted the orchestra at the school from 2010 to 2014, said he felt despair thinking his former students might be in peril for pursuing their passion. Still, he said the school is an inspiration for artists and audiences around the world.

“It is to those students, then, that we owe a tremendous responsibility,” said Mr. Harvey, now the concertmaster of the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional in Mexico. “They must live to lift their voices again another day.”

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Entertainment

Lisa Pleasure on ‘Memory,’ ‘Westworld’ and the Lure of Techno-Noir

Lisa Joy on ‘Reminiscence,’ ‘Westworld’ and the Lure of Techno-Noir

In her first writers’ room, Lisa Joy was politely pulled aside and told she didn’t need to work so hard. After all, born in New Jersey to British-Taiwanese parents, she was just a diversity hire.

The experience did little to stifle Joy’s ambitions or work ethic. In 2013, while expecting her first child, she wrote the screenplay for “Reminiscence,” a tech-noir thriller, and began developing the cerebral sci-fi “Westworld” for HBO with her husband, the “Memento” screenwriter Jonathan Nolan.

After three seasons of the show — the fourth is on the way — Joy stepped up to direct “Reminiscence” herself. In the film, debuting Aug. 20 on HBO Max and in theaters, Hugh Jackman plays a private investigator who taps into clients’ memories but becomes torturously fixated on his own. It’s a story about the pull of the past set in the future, in a Miami that has succumbed to rising waters and is populated by people who have turned nocturnal to escape the searing heat of the day.

In a recent video call, Joy spoke from her office in Los Angeles about being a perpetual outsider, current events imitating science fiction, and her partnership with Nolan. These are edited excerpts from our conversation.

You wrote “Reminiscence” while pregnant. It does feel like the work of someone at a turning point — looking back while looking ahead.

My main goal was to write something that entertained me while I was puking with morning sickness! Certainly it was a very dramatic moment. My husband was working a lot, I was at home with the dogs. I had a lot of time to contemplate my life. At the same time, my grandfather passed away. So there was loss as well as new beginnings. Sorting through his belongings was what really started my meditation on loss, and memory, and the way our memories start to fade.

Looking at the level of detail in your screenplay, I wonder if to some extent you had mentally directed it already?

When I write, I imagine the characters talking, I design the room, I block the scene in my head. I kind of transcribe the movie I’m already looking at. So when other directors were pitching their ideas, I realized that none of the visions aligned with my own. I wanted it to have the spirit of an independent film, to take some more risks, tell a story that wasn’t in a clear genre.

And Hugh Jackman in the lead role?

The second I even contemplated directing it, I knew Hugh was the right leading man. I wanted to show a hero unraveling, questioning his own memories and coming to understand a more nuanced version of the world. Hugh has that soulfulness. And he can also kick a lot of ass.

A lot of ass-kicking along with a lot of mind-bending.

And romance. I wanted to have all those elements in the film. Because life is like that. The polarity of film is frustrating for me. “This is an art-house film. This is a popcorn film.” I think that underestimates audiences.

You started out writing in comedy, on the series “Pushing Daisies.” When did you feel the gravitational pull toward science fiction?

I’ve always liked stories that tackle great, big timeless themes. It’s just where my curiosity took me. When I first went around trying to pitch “Reminiscence” — I was heavily pregnant — people would look at me and think, what the hell is wrong with you? Why are you writing this mysterious, dark, violent, sexy thing? Do a rom-com! People didn’t expect me to do huge, ambitious, world-building things as a junior writer.

Why set the film at some unspecified time in the future?

Stories are more universal when you don’t stick a pin in it. And when I first started contemplating this world, it was nothing like the world we live in now. I didn’t think reality would catch up to science fiction so quickly. And then, right about when the trailer dropped, there were photos of the walls they’re building in Miami. I think it was the front page of The New York Times. They looked exactly like our set designs. There are also scenes of upheaval and rioting in the streets in the movie, and political and socioeconomic unrest. There was a moment when people were like, this is too far-fetched. And then the next week riots broke out.

“Westworld” premiered around the time of #MeToo, and the treatment of the androids in the show seemed to speak to that movement. Were you conscious of drawing on your own experiences in the industry?

None of my work is explicitly confessional, but at the same time, we are who we are. I had just come off a staff that was all-male [USA’s “Burn Notice”]. I wanted to take back my story in the only way I knew how. Which was to write.

It’s not like I have some gift of prophecy. We live in this world. And we need to find a way to survive it. For me, acknowledging the cage you’re within is a way to break out of it. And it’s not just women — it’s anyone who’s felt trapped or been subjected to cruelty.

You’ve said you’ve felt like an outsider for much of your life.

I was born in America, but my mom is Asian, my dad is British. Hollywood was as far away as the moon when I was a kid. There’s always been a feeling of displacement. But almost everybody has that. That’s part of the human condition: to feel bereft from the currents rushing around us. And it’s one of the things that you can explore in fiction without being didactic or presumptuous about another person’s specific experience. And hopefully form a connection.

You were working as a consultant in finance and tech before Hollywood called — in the middle of a presentation you were giving, is that right?

It was kind of an abrupt change! I’ve always loved writing, but in the beginning, trying to be a writer was impossible. I had college debt, I had financial obligations. I worked in corporate jobs, but the whole time, I kept writing. Not because I had any expectation of being a working writer, but because it made me happy.

But working in another field for 10 years before becoming a paid writer — that’s not wasted time. When you’re a producer, it helps to be able to know how money works. Everything is a language. Math is a language. Computer science is a language. I spend a lot of time trying to be conversational in as many as possible.

There was even some Pythagorean problem-solving on your film set, wasn’t there?

It was for this complicated scene where Hugh is looking at a hologram of a memory of Hugh looking at a hologram of a memory. I called it a Hugh turducken.

Is it true a friend introduced you to Jonathan because you had a similar verbose email-writing style.

[Laughs] It’s true. We met at the premiere of “Memento.” I didn’t expect to meet my future husband on the red carpet the second I stepped on it. I was skeptical of him. Hollywood has a reputation — not entirely unwarranted. But we became friends. We were pen pals for a long time.

You ended up married and being collaborators. I’ve seen you describe creating a fictional world together as “romantic.”

I remember when we wrapped the finale of the first season. We had built Sweetwater [the town in “Westworld”] in Santa Clarita. It was a magical thing — you could walk those streets. The world in our head had manifested. Along with a child. We took a golf cart, and the sun was rising in the distance. And we drove through the center of Sweetwater, with our baby on my lap.

I am obsessed with time. There’s never enough of it, especially with the ones you love. And maybe one way to have more of it is to live in multiple worlds every day, to create whole new timelines and dimensions.