Entertainment - Latest News, Photos And Videos

"This is Yeezy Season 1."

He wears sweatsuits to award shows, snatches moments from Taylor Swift and pulled off the easily most ridiculed wedding and relationship in pop culture today. Kanye West is "crazy," "full of himself" and oft accused of being "talentless." Still, he's an enigma of society, and not one we could easily write off. He's everywhere, and for those of us heavily involved in creative industries, has an elusive air of omnipotence. He calls himself "Yeezus," but so do we. That brings my first question: By doing so, are we saying that maybe we believe him? Just a little?

When you listen to him speak on creativity, on art, on himself, it's not a fevered rambling. He's not trying to convince anyone of anything. He's telling you what he believes, the way your pastor tells you about their interpretation of religion, the way your teacher tells you about history. The things he is saying make sense on a level. Today, what we define as creativity starts "when you're out of college" or "tomorrow" or "when you've got some free time." Our society encourages you to do one thing and leave it at that. Expansion of yourself is slightly foreign and not usually met with immediate acceptance. There's a path, and you either stay all the way or jump off, there can't be an in-between. Unless, of course, you're Kanye.

Kanye also challenges our ideas of self-esteem. If he's paying anyone to be his publicist, he's wasting money, because no one talks up Kanye better than Kanye. I mean, sure, we all think we're great and geniuses, but we don't actually tell people that. It's not socially acceptable. Is he wrong when he says he is the most important artist alive? If you weren't familiar with pop culture at all, and simply wandered into a news stand, or watched an episode of ET, you would probably say no. His face, his words, his tweets, surround us. Not to mention his music. Whether you realize it or not, you probably know the words to his remix of "Stronger," and you've jammed to "FourFive Seconds" in the last few weeks.

The only time I got really excited during the Grammy's this year was when he looked like he was gonna pull a "Kanye," an action that he inspired when he did it six years ago, that has now cemented itself in youth culture. I make "Imma let you finish but... " jokes daily. He's married to Kim Kardashian, a woman who has literally built an empire on her selfie (sorry, not sorry.) Their child, North West, is worth more than some countries. Over the years, we've watched all of this fit together, culminating into pop cultures equivalent of a First Family.

As of late, we like to make jokes about Kanye. He's outlandish enough that it's easy to do. But don't forget that at his core, Kanye makes good music, and is always committed to what he decides to do. From Day 1, he has challenged what the constraints are on what he can do -- whether that be in an interview, on a stage or on a runway. Does all of this make him a god? Or a well-performed social experiment? At what point does he ascend fame and become legend?

Follow HuffPost Teen on Twitter | Instagram | Tumblr | Pheed |

More on HuffPost:

Morning Joe's response to the University of Oklahoma fraternity's racist chant was outright cowardly. They went viral -- and for all the wrong reasons. The unfortunate part of this debacle is that Morning Joe anchors Mika Brezinski and Joe Scarborough brought up a topic that is worth a conversation. However, they did this in the most ignorant way possible.

Not to go completely intellectual on you, America, but "to understand all is to forgive all," to quote a famous French proverb and Tolstoy's War and Peace. That to me is the greatest flaw in these two news anchors' thought process. Whether you are for or against the use of the "N" word, the current social position is that it is a word that may be used by people of color (though rappers use it excessively) but not by old, white fraternity house moms, and certainly not by frat boys.

It is irrelevant how many times Trinidad James repeats the "N" word in "All Gold Everything." This logic that blames Waka Flocka Flame for racism is the same logic that blamed the Columbine shootings on Marilyn Manson. It was not his fault. This is a societal issue that needs to be faced head-on, not by playing a media game of hide and seek.

I say shame on you, Mika Brezinski and Joe Scarborough, for furthering flawed logic and being unwilling to apologize or have a real conversation on the topic. On the other hand, I applaud the University of Oklahoma for their straightforward and speedy response to these misguided young adults. I grew up in the South (though South Florida is not the "true" South), and this "under the mattress" racism never ceases to shock me. My hope is that at least a few of these students will learn to change their behavior and continue their education, following a different set of values and ideals. And it looks like it might be working; today two of the SAE brothers apologized. Maybe they have learned from their mistake, but maybe not. As I return to Washington, D.C., from the anniversary of the Selma march, I continue, with hope, energy, and enthusiasm, to work toward creating the America that Dr. King envisioned and heroes like Bayard Rustin fought for.

Richard Fowler is the youngest syndicated progressive and/or African-American radio host in the United States.

Subscribe to The Richard Fowler Show on YouTube: youtube.com/fowlershow

Join #FowlerNation on Facebook: facebook.com/RichardFowlerShow

Follow #FowlerNation on Twitter: twitter.com/fowlershow

Parental loss is a theme that has played out heavily in Disney films, but in the new version of Cinderella, a little grief is finally on display as well. What this says about how we as a culture are headed towards a more open acknowledgement of how death affects our psyches gives me hope that we are finally learning how to teach our children that it's OK to grieve.

Truthfully, when I walked into the theatre, I wasn't thinking much about the dead parent factor in this classic story; I was just looking forward to a mommy-daughter date to an advance screening benefiting JDRF on the Disney Studios lot of Kenneth Branagh's retelling of Cinderella.

But then there we were in the dark theatre, Vera on my lap making sure I kept my arms tightly wrapped around her, as we watched a bereft Cinderella say goodbye to her once luminous mother. "Have courage and be kind," Haley Atwell's character whispers to her young daughter, tears in her eyes, and in mine.

I flashed back to my 18-year old self, saying goodbye to my own dying mother, and pondered for a moment what my adult life would have looked like had she bestowed some similar platitude in her last hours. She didn't. Instead, her death cast me into many moments of having neither bravery nor compassion as I struggled to move into adulthood without her.

As the story on the screen continued to unfold, I held my daughter even closer and wondered what she was seeing, wondered if she could imagine saying goodbye to me. Not half an hour later, Cinderella was grieving the loss of her father as well, and being sent upstairs by her cruel stepmother to occupy the dusty attic with her mouse friends. Vera watched on wordlessly, her little hand warm in mine.

My daughter is well-versed in my story of parental loss. Having two healthy and active grandparents on her father's side, she is very aware of the fact that mommy's parents are dead. We've had a lot of conversations about the hows and the why's. She's seen me cry openly on anniversaries or occasions of simply missing them. I answer her questions about their absence honestly. I am, after all, a grief therapist.

I watched the death scenes in Cinderella with interest. Disney is no stranger to this parental loss plot twist (Frozen, The Little Mermaid, Bambi, The Lion King, Finding Nemo), but usually these death scenes occupy only seconds of screen time, the grieving process even less. In Frozen (and yes, I've seen it 900 times -- enough to know), the parents' deaths are glossed over so quickly and seamlessly that it's as though they never existed at all. One could have the sense that Anna and Elsa were all they ever had of each other, something having seen so many siblings mourn their parents in my grief practice, I find hard to imagine.

Some say that it was the death of Walt Disney's own mother (accidental carbon monoxide poisoning in a house he had just purchased for her) that haunted him for the duration of his life, propelling him to play out his own journey of mother loss in countless films. Others argue that it's simply effective storytelling. The quickest way to get a character to grow up is to remove the hand that feeds them. I find both points salient.

But what I find even more important, and also refreshing, is that there is actual grief on display in the new Cinderella. We see our heroine actually crying, grieving and openly missing her parents, something so often brushed over in these films. We also see her holding on to both emotional tools and objects left behind in their absence. We see her filled with understanding and compassion for others who experience suffering. And we see her bond grow even stronger with the charming prince as he tells her about his own father's pending demise. All of these are healthy characteristics of individuals who are working through the grief process, a message well worth sending to our children.

Most people I encounter struggle to understand how to talk with children about death. I've always taken a simple approach. Fact-based answers, room for exploration, honesty about the parts I don't know myself. For my new book After This, an exploration of how different viewpoints about the afterlife affect the grieving process, I had many conversations with 5-year-old Vera about death. And each time, I found myself impressed with her ability to parse this inevitable life passage into simple terms.

As adults, we tend to over-explain death, while shrinking from it at the same time. But when speaking to children about it, we must remember that the layers of nuance we have attributed to the death and grieving process are unnecessary to their developmental comprehension level. What we can do to help children face and understand death is simple: We just need to acknowledge it more openly, which is exactly what heartens me about Disney's new Cinderella.

As I walked out of the theatre, Vera's hand still clutched in mine, she told me that she cried twice. First when Cinderella lost her mother, she admitted, and then later when she married the prince. I reiterated the message I always give her when these topics arise: "Our time here together is all about love. And love never dies," and found myself grateful to Disney for being willing to further this message more than they ever have before.

2015-03-12-1426196151-9602146-ScreenShot20150312at5.16.19PM.png

Admittedly, the year I spent in Santa Barbara wasn't terribly fruitful. I went into my 5th year of higher education already frustratingly bored with the entire process. Needless to say, I wasn't there to make memories. Looking back on my time at the Brooks Institute of Photography, however, through a haze of film developing chemicals and cigarette smoke, the occasional gem presents itself.

When you're in your early 20's, you don't' go home when the bar is closed. You go home because it is closed. Bars in Santa Barbara closed down at 2AM, which is the zenith of convenience considering the fact that 2,700 miles away, in Washington, D.C., in a small sound booth, my dad was going live in 3, 2... One of the reasons this is of note is that I never really got to hear my Dad on the radio when I was growing up. It seemed his pieces were getting picked up on all but our local radio station, WTOP-traffic and weather on the 8's.

In the late 90s, Dad took a new job with Bloomberg Radio, which was broadcast exclusively on 11:30 A.M. in New York City, but with the advent of internet radio, a solution emerged. For years, Dad was on the early shift, and I mean early. Like, in the booth, reporting the news at 3:30 in the morning. It was a grueling schedule, and it nearly killed him, but as I was sauntering home at, say, 1:30AM on the west coast, Dad was gearing up for a 4:30AM broadcast on the east coast. I'd come stumbling into my apartment, past my roommate, who was eating microwave mac 'n' cheese over the sink with no shirt on, flop into my room and dial up Bloomberg's live feed. When Dad's broadcast was over, I would often call him in the booth.

"Bloomberg, Small," he'd answer.

"Oh, you've got honey in your voice today, Pop."

There was barely enough time to harangue me on the subject of a good night's sleep, and tell me to call my mother before he had to be back on the air.

Years before this process became old hat, Dad was UPI Radio's White House correspondent, and it's that period of his life that most of his "A" material comes from.

Under the East Wing of the White House there is a row of radio booths that make a United States Postal Service flat rate box look like an efficiency apartment south of Wilshire. It is on this floor, affectionately referred to as "the basement", that Dad spent most of the 80s and 90s shoulder to shoulder with some of the finest newsmen the industry has ever known. I don't think his colleagues would mind me calling them scalawags. They are. They are radio pirates, simultaneously capable of tear-jerking eloquence and jaw-dropping filth. Dad and his merry crew followed presidents from Moscow to Somalia to Cairo to China and beyond. I've long encouraged him to write down a detailed account of this period, but my request has gone unanswered.

So in early 2014, with a few advertising shoots under my belt, I asked my co-director, Julien Lasseur, if he'd like to stick my dad, his former colleagues, four cameras, and a king's ransom in audio equipment in a private dining room and see what happens.

We flew into D.C. and scouted for all of two days before we agreed on the Old Ebbitt Grill. There's a private dining room in their basement, and that seemed fitting. Since we only had a week to get the shoot done, we broke into teams. Team one stayed in D.C. shooting B-roll while team two drove up to Baltimore to fill a minivan with as much electrical equipment and grip as it would hold.

The shoot itself couldn't have gone smoother. We were joined by Peter Maer (CBS Radio), Bob Fuss (CBS Radio), Steve Taylor (FOX News Radio), Wendell Goler (Fox News), and Tina Stage (Bloomberg Radio). As we laughed uncontrollably at stories of missteps and reflected on how changes in technology have shaped the industry over the years, we slowly realized our makeshift studio was populated by men who had been behind the scenes of almost every major world event over the past 30 years.

We're editing the footage now, but a clip of what we captured can be seen here:

https://vimeo.com/91090340

In 2006, Clint Eastwood's film Letters from Iwo Jima received many awards, some for Eastwood as the director, others as best picture of the year. Letters is told as a flashback to the battle of Iwo Jima in 1944, provoked when Japanese archaeologists exploring old battle tunnels find a cache of poignant, ambivalent letters written by a junior Japanese soldier, a kind of memoir or time capsule that he buried in the dirt. The film depicts Iwo Jima not from the usual point perspective -- that of the Americans -- but of the Japanese soldiers that fought it. Eastwood's open-mindedness, his empathy and compassion for people from other times, places and cultures, even our enemies, was, given his history in films, surprising and almost unprecedented in American war films. Almost all the scenes took place among the Japanese, almost none portrayed the Americans. Remarkably, filmed back to back with Letters, Eastwood (now 84 years old, then 75) directed Flag of Our Fathers (2006), the life stories of the six men who raised the flag in the iconic photo of American victory. Despite his skill, Flag was basically another stereotypical war story filmed from the American point of view.

Letters was not surprisingly welcomed by Japanese audiences and critics who thought Eastwood portrayed the Japanese war mentality as it was, for better and worse, at least not all bad. The young soldier's ambivalence about Japanese warrior intransigence (fanatical, no surrender, committing suicide to avoid it), implied that Japanese soldiers were not each and every one the ruthless torturer characters presented in Hollywood's imagined World War II. American audiences, on the other hand, stayed away. Letters, which cost $19 million to produce, failed even to earn back the production costs ($13.7 million) in American theaters, saved by $55 million revenues abroad. But American critics thought the film one of the best of the year, even a classic. Flag of Our Fathers, as to be expected, took American theaters by storm and the critics praised it heavily.

I thought of these Eastwood films after seeing his new runaway success, American Sniper, acclaimed by the public and the film critics. As everyone knows, this is the story of Chris Kyle, the most successful sniper in American military history, four tours in Iraq. He's a hero but not a simple one on a white horse. He knows his first responsibility is to protect his comrades and this means killing bad guys, not to worry about just war principles. Kyle's view of his part in the battle is or should be a source of at least some disquiet for American audiences though it hardly ever is. Kyle represents the long-time Eastwood character of the anti-hero (he played many in his time). He is our protector, simultaneously good and bad with the good outweighing the bad. Kyle does the right thing for the right reasons -- war is war and its object is to kill the enemy. Nevertheless there's something a little raw in the fact that he has no regrets at all, or at least he says so. It should raise a moral intuition when he says that there's no problem in the killing, he doesn't really think about it. He's "proud of every shot he fired." He's doing a justified job, there's no dilemma for him even when those he kills (as in the film's initial sequence) are women or even children, because by carrying explosives they were putting his guys in mortal danger.

The fact is that Kyle really loves this war, its danger and battle and killing; that is, he loves war itself. War is the lyrical moment in his life, where he excels and has true purpose, the reason he can't be happy back in civilian life even with a loving family. (Post-traumatic stress disorder is another issue.) We understand this very well, it's the core of our classic depictions of war beginning with the Iliad. Some soldiers just love war and they must. They are warriors, they are courageous; they do what warriors do and are proud of it. It requires an act of imagination on our part to realize they would do the same if they were fighting on the other side.

War is the most extreme human situation, the place where the highest honor is to be won (as Aristotle said, among so many others) because war means facing the greatest danger. War is a normal if not continuous characteristic of civilization, not to dwell on it. Warriors represent the best among us at protecting the homeland and the character of our society. Yet, as J. Glenn Gray said in The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle, their very courage means the human damage done in war is worse than necessary, war lasts longer than necessary. But without its warriors a society "would lose heart."

Nevertheless, war is killing. It is justified killing, yet even justified killing constitutes a form of evil -- but it's the lesser evil and living with it is the moral burden soldiers accept to carry for the rest of us. Killing the enemy in war is not murder either in international law or just war principles. Living with your part of the mayhem debilitates many veterans. Some can't deal with it; others commit acts of crime; a few even commit suicide

What's perplexing about Sniper is that, unlike his story of the Japanese army in Letters, Eastwood's empathy for the other side is nowhere to be seen or felt. The Iraqi jihadis, or just Iraqi civilians, have no memorable faces other than, perhaps (even though he's on stage for only a few seconds), "the Butcher," their ace sniper who is killed by Kyle. The jihadis attack or retreat, kill or are killed, seeming to run around in a kind of mad courageousness. How or why they fight in such apparent disorder is not a matter in which Eastwood is much interested. Sniper is disappointing because it's a throwback to the old cowboys and Indians films of the 1920s-50s in which the white guys, the settlers, circled the wagons and the Indians attacked on horseback riding around in a circle getting shot or in Hail Mary attempts to break through. Beginning in the counter-cultural 1960s and above all as a consequence of Vietnam, the sure-thing cowboy-Indian paradigm needed revision. At that historical moment, American hero films became anti-hero films: the Eastwood cowboy films, his Dirty Harry films, the Sergio Leone films, The Godfather or even the James Bond films.

So the American public needs another sequel from Eastwood. If he has the energy (and we wish him well) he ought to make another back-to-back film depicting the Iraq insurgency this time from the point of view of the insurgents obliged on the battlefield to deal with fearsome American military technology. Such men are capable of savage acts against people and of destruction of world-historic treasures. But they are also patriots in their own minds, purist fundamentalist warriors whether religious, nationalist or ethno-sectarian. And I include even Islamic State in Syria/Iraq, the current worst of the worst. Islamic State represents a descent into barbarian depths that we must investigate if only to fight them more effectively. It's not enough to ask about jihadis, in the stereotypical American way, "Why do they hate us?" and to answer "They hate us because of our values."

Eastwood or some other gifted director should focus the other side in constructed portrait shots, studies in character, as he did with Kyle, creating a story depicting the range and complexity of motivations and, where they exist, ambivalences. Bin Laden is an obvious choice. Is it unthinkable to suggest a film focused on the Butcher, or -- an almost unbearable thought -- Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or even "Jihadi John"? No doubt. Public empathy has limits.

Christian Grey.

Do guys like him even exist?

We may never know, but he's probably what T-Swift would call a "nightmare dressed like a daydream."

Let's be real, he's a nightmare I'd have any night.

When the Fifty Shades of Grey book became a phenomenon, my mom and sister jumped on the bandwagon and both read it immediately. I didn't have the desire to read it. So, I didn't read it.

When the time came, and I had decided that I actually wanted to read it, I was about 17. My mom had told me she didn't think I should read it. I laughed. Was it that explicit? Or shall I say -- too steamy?

I listened to her and I waited, for I'm not sure what exact reason, because if I really wanted to read it, I could have. My parents aren't crazy strict. They wouldn't disown me if I even did read the book.

Until recently, I had completely forgotten about the series.

When it was announced that the movie would come out this year on Valentine's Day, I told myself, "I would need to read the first book by the time the movie was released."

About two months ago, I decided to read it. I mean, I basically had to; I was running out of precious time.

I downloaded a digital copy of the book and started reading. In the back of my head I pictured my mom telling me how she didn't think I should read it. I giggled. Oh, how wrong was she. Nothing had changed; I'm still the same naïve virgin I was three years ago.

Being a 19-year-old college student -- let alone a girl -- I've heard my fair share of hookups, first times and bad date stories from friends, coworkers and even strangers. So I feel like nothing in this book would be too much.

When I finished the book, I immediately started the next in the series.

It was THAT good.

I don't know what it was. Was I seduced by the idea of a wealthy good-looking man taking care of your every need or was it the fantasy of a good-looking dream guy bringing an innocent virgin girl (what I'd like to think is me) into his wild BDSM playroom and changing her life? Who knows? I sure as hell don't.

I'd be lying if I said the book didn't alter my virgin mind.

In the book, Anna was (keyword: was) a virgin before meeting Christian. Maybe that's what got me in the book. Anna was a college student, virgin and hadn't really dated, if you're not catching on -- that's kind of my situation here.

The idea of BDSM is not something that you can accept overnight. I think for me, it's because I'm still in that state of mind where when I think of being "punished" or "spanked," I still think of my mom throwing her chancla at me from across the living room.

What was going to be shown, and how it was going to be shown, was a constant thought in my mind, and probably for every other person who read the book.

As the release date was approaching, we would just have to see for ourselves. I had gotten some mixed reviews about the movie from some friends, but I would have to decide if it was "disgusting" or "hot and steamy."

As I arrived to the theater I expected a line because it was Valentines day, but damn -- I have never felt so single in my life.

Not one, but TWO lines were on the side of the theater, and consisted of nothing but couples. I know this because I observed, and I observed well.

I, being proudly single on V-day, went with my two best friends for a G.N.O. (girls night out).

Part of me felt sad for all the men who looked like they were dragged there by their significant others who had wanted to see it. But, the other side of me was like:

"I'M SINGLE, HERE WITH MY BFFs AND I'M NOT ON AN AWKWARD DATE TO SEE THIS STEAMY MOVIE. MR. GREY, I AM READY TO SEE YOU."

tumblr_ndljj2yyEV1so613ao1_500.gif

Without spoiling the movie, I must say: Jamie Dornan, you are beautiful.

I would have to agree with some that say the movie is "hot and steamy," and also disagree with those who were not fans of the sex scenes.

Though the sex scenes aren't your typical rom-com scene, even little virgin me didn't think they were THAT explicit. At first, I'll admit, I was a little shocked because what was shown isn't something you see in your typical trip to the movie theater.

But then again, I had read the book, so what else was I expecting?

Overall, I would say that the movie had more of an effect on me than the book. I believe that actually seeing what Christian does to Anna on the big screen, compared to just reading it in the comfort of your own home, was a wild, and I'll admit, steamy experience.

While reading the book, I understood what he would do to her and left my virgin mind to play out how that would look. However, actually seeing it happen, intensified what I had previously read.

In the end, we all have our opinion on whether the book or movie was better.

I would say that they were both were really good.

Coming from a virgin's perspective, I advise to not be scared of the "Fifty Shades" phenomenon. The book and movie both have sexual (obviously) scenes that being a virgin is not used too. You will have to decide for yourself if it is something you will want to read or watch. I'd say: read it AND watch it!

Don't be scared, sex shouldn't be something to be scared of.

It's a part of life, whether it happens in your teen years or, if you're like me, when you're ready. (But, hopefully not when I'm 40.)

David Feldman is a sterling example of a comedian and writer who, despite his success in mainstream media -- he's won a trio each of Prime Time Emmys and Writers Guild Awards, has written for a pile of TV shows, like Roseanne and Real Time with Bill Maher, as well as for the Academy Award, the Emmys...the list goes on and on -- since 2009 he's had The David Feldman Show out there as a podcast (and also a radio show, as of the past few years) to keep him honest.

Not satisfied to maintain the status quo, his podcast has shifted formats over the years. Starting out as a live show that harkened back to the days of old time radio with a cast of comics, to nowadays as more of a straight ahead interview show. His guest going into last weekend was Larry "Bubbles" Brown, a longtime fixture in the San Francisco comedy scene dating back to the early 80's; about the same time Feldman got his start there, too.

This episode is a rambling conversation, filled with remembrances, comic moments, a few serious asides, and a handful of dead hooker jokes. It also features an attempt to display Brown's amazing ability to recall the details of plane crashes in the US by being given just a date. In this case, he's only able to pull out a couple of correct answers but then even the best psychics have their off days.

For a few brief moments, Bob Rubin, another S.F. comedy scene alumnus, joins Feldman and Brown but technical snags prevail and he's aced out of the chitchat.

There's no agenda or pressure to get anywhere in particular in this interview, and part of the fun is that it can go anywhere at all without notice. Butter.

--

Podcasts I'm also listening to this week: Who The Eff Is Sal Calanni? Epi200 Working with Spike Lee, and Monster Party: Monster Acting with Doug Jones

--

This review originally posted as part of This Week In Comedy Podcasts on Splitsider.com.

If Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, Alex Gibney's new documentary, only illuminated the outsized personality of L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the Church of Scientology, it would be a fascinating study of one of the most compelling figures of the mid-twentieth century. But this film, based on Lawrence Wright's book of the same title, is so much more, exposing the secretive society that Hubbard founded within our broader society. Given to bizarre behavior, tantrums, and self-aggrandizement, Hubbard wrote the best-selling Dianetics and with that invented an ideology. Hubbard found a way to avoid taxes by naming this phenomenon a church, and he understood that the one thing Americans truly worshiped was celebrity: John Travolta and Tom Cruise were cultivated to lure a populace to its ranks. When Hubbard died of a stroke in 1986, his reign fell to David Miscavige, who expanded the empire; his speeches to the fold -- footage shown through fair use -- are done on a spotlit stage with Nazi-esque imagery crossed with Who Wants to be a Millionaire extravaganza.

The worst offense to the church is to leave it, but several high-level parishioners have. Some interviewed in Going Clear tell tales of harrowing punishment, prison-like conditions, slave wages, and other abuses. Those who leave, among them Paul Haggis, Mike Rinder, and Sara Goldberg, tell stories of daring escape, many having to give up their families. "Spanky" Taylor, whose task was to mind high-profile Scientologists at the Hollywood Celebrity Centre, most particularly Travolta, fled, baby in arms, in a non-church friend's car. Their reasons for joining in the first place are equally fascinating. The film goes far to show Scientology as instrumental in breaking up Tom Cruise's marriage to Nicole Kidman, her children turned against her.

This particular detail was new to Lawrence Wright, he said at lunch last week at HBO -- the network will air the film on March 29 after a brief theatrical run. The New Yorker writer learned the truth about the tabloid breakup in the making of the film, well after he had researched his book. Katie Holmes' story, outside the film's purview, is yet to be revealed. Scientology does not tolerate criticism, this we know, as they took out a full-page New York Times ad attempting to discredit the film's veracity before anyone saw it. Would the lawyers at HBO allow untruths in their programming, particularly with a scrutiny-averse organization? And Alex Gibney, the gutsy filmmaker who took on abuses in the Catholic Church in his Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God -- what does he think of this negative publicity? He said his only problem was they did not print the play dates.

A version of this post also appears on Gossip Central.

On top of the thousands of must-see bands and acts for those attending South by Southwest / SXSW in 2015, I've compiled another list that attendees might find useful as we plot out our days and nights of many music genres playing across Austin next week. We don't have festival badges as they remained beyond our budget, which means we won't be able to get in to every show, but I'm still thrilled to roam the streets of Austin, see some of my favorite musicians and discover some new favorites along the way. Austin 360 and The Austin Chronicle list many of the hundreds of "side" parties, and shows that we hope to get in to without badges, and we've been RSVPing to dozens of events found on Facebook, Twitter, and elsewhere online.

This is my first SXSW, but I'm attending with five local music fans who have been seeing amazing shows for years in Austin, including my wife and her mom Valarie, whose nickname, standing at a towering five feet tall, is "Big V." I'm pretty sure Big V is unfamiliar with the Wu Tang Clan, but I love them and am starting a completely unsubstantiated rumor that they're doing a secret show with complete speculative details below.

As usual, just about every music blog and magazine that ever wrote about music has lists or have sponsored their own great shows that include some of the more than 2000 bands playing at the sprawling festival and beyond its boundaries. NPR Music picks 100, and Rolling Stone picks 30. Now for my 9 must sees on top of the many others we know and don't know yet that we can't wait to see:

Leon Bridges
Bridges oozes old school soul. If we can see Bridges and former James Brown impersonator Charles Bradley and His Extraordinaires all will be good with the world. Newport Folk Fest producer Jay Sweet has seen fit to book Bridges for this summer's festival already. In an interview I heard Bridges give he says he gave up on writing hip hop because he wasn't good at it. I'm grateful he's sticking with old school soul right now, because he's nailing it, but if he wanted to drop some rhymes in the future, I think he's got enough talent to do both.

Houndmouth
One of the biggest earworms I heard last year was Houndmouth's Penitentiary. NPR Music is currently streaming their album, Little Neon Limelight, that comes out on March 17, and compares them to The Band. Anyone who gets compared to The Band by the always reliable NPR Music crew, and whose sound draws me in so consistently is a must see.

Ibeyi
One of my colleagues with a great ear pointed this duo out to me when she told some us around the lunch table how amazing they sound. We're going to try to catch these nineteen year old French Cuban twins before every hip hop producer adds their voices to a multitude of albums and they charm everyone in the French, Spanish, and English speaking world for starters with their lush, gorgeous voices in the coming years ahead.

Mynabirds
Neil Young had a Motown period with Rick James as a bandmate. This band of Laura Burhenn's making is in part a tribute to that bit of wonderfulness. We saw her open for AC Newman at the Black Cat in Washington, DC, a couple of years ago. He was great but that night she lit the place up.

Walt Wilkins and the Mystiqueros
My father-in-law has discerning musical taste, but mostly goes to shows Big V tells him to go to. Two of the bands I've heard him talk about the most are the Rolling Stones and Walt Wilkins and the Mystiqueros. We can't wait to get to see these guys again either in New Braunfels or in Austin. All of the guys in this band are talented in their own right, and most of them write and produce for many others who are lucky to have them, as is every audience that gets to see them. Their sound is country, folk, rock, and Americana. Last night, we started our trip out with the last couple of songs by these guys over at Gruene Hall in New Braunfels, and it was the perfect start to the trip.

http://sxsw.com/

Sons of Bill
The three brothers and two others from Charlottesville, VA, who make up the literal sons of Bill Wilson came to The Hamilton in Washington, DC, three days after the release of their fantastic 2014 album Love & Logic produced by Wilco's Ken Coomer. We heard traces of Wilco, Uncle Tupelo, and detected a nice bit of Beatles influence. We'll be thrilled to see them again. One of their shows, on Thursday afternoon, at Waterloo Records, also has one of our favorites, Robert Earl Keen, playing a set.

Whiskey Shivers
Foot stompin' hollerin' fun with a side of hipster. Looking forward to catching these guys in a gig. This Austin based group apparently call their style "trashgrass," which doesn't sound nearly as awesome as they do. These guys play this afternoon with the Dirty River Boys, a band we love who we saw open for Willie Nelson a couple of years ago at the ACL Moody Theater. Willie also has a show, The Heartbreaker Banquet, with a stellar lineup, at his ranch in Luck, TX, on March 19.

The Wu Tang Clan
I spent a great many weekends on the Isle of Staten in my youth, and if what I hope is true, the Shaolin and the Wu Tang coming to Austin, could be incredible. I've seen two of the Wu confirmed for SXSW shows: Ghostface Killah and Raekwon have a bunch of confirmed sets together and separately. And RZA aka Bobby Digital is confirmed to speak at SXSW Film. I'm basically starting a completely unsubstantiated rumor driven by my hopes and dreams that I can see the Wu, who dropped a great new album in the fall, wow the SXSW crowds. Two possibilities for the Wu Re-U - Ghostface is playing Saturday afternoon at a Vans party with a group called BadBadNotGood, who sound pretty great, but who I can only dream are accompanying Inspectah Deck on the ones and twos. In another venue, Raekwon is showing up for Rachael Ray's lineup on the same day.

The Zombies
Long before zombies came to gain their most recent popularity on television and movies, this band was defining British rock. They started playing in 1961, with some break ups and make ups along the way. Hold Your Head Up, Time of the Season, and She's Not There number among their hits, and I'm hoping we can get just a little taste of their timeless genius while looking for some other new bands who might have the staying power of these incredible guys.

Denver multihyphenate Ben Roy's March calendar includes recording his third stand-up album, appearing at Grand Rapids, Michigan's LaughFest and performing at Austin's South by Southwest with both his punk band Spells and comedy collective The Grawlix. Before taking the stage at LaughFest's Orbit Room, Roy broke down his busy month and upcoming TruTV series with The Grawlix's Adam Cayton-Holland and Andrew Orvedahl.

Let's start with the recent developments regarding your show Those Who Can't.

I think it was back in October or November TruTV acquired the rights for Those Who Can't, which we had originally made as a pilot for Amazon. We went out and re-filmed the pilot around Thanksgiving on a proper budget, edited it all together, it went into post-production, it went into testing, and I guess it did very well. We just found out this past week that TruTV picked it up for ten episodes, which is pretty awesome. The writing starts immediately; we're already kind of in the process of writing. We had written six more scripts for Amazon, so some of those we're going to adapt, then work on other ideas for it. Production will be sometime between July and August in L.A.

All filming will take place in the Los Angeles area, which is kind of a bummer because we wanted to film it in Denver. But we feel confident that we can still use portions of the city much in the same way that other shows represented a city well, like Cheers did with Boston or It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which is not filmed in Philadelphia. We want to use exterior shots and as much local stuff as possible to keep that Denver flavor.

TruTV has been awesome to work with, and I don't say that because they're the hand that will be feeding me or anything. They're excited about the project and everybody seems to be extremely on board.

It's been a super-fun process. It's like a dream. There are parts of it where I'm like, "This isn't really my life." I don't think it's fully set in.

You also just completed a taping for your new album.

Yeah, Sunday and yesterday I was taping my third album in three years. I don't think I do it because I'm trying to subscribe to the Louis C.K. model or anything; I just enjoy putting out albums. I like the artistic process of it, and I think comes from the music side of my life. I have a real affection for holding CDs and looking at liner notes. And it allows me to have something to work on until production gets going.

Were you aware of LaughFest and the non-profit Gilda's Club prior to being booked here?

I had heard of it, but not until I received an offer to participate and I looked into it did I realize it's as big as it is. There are some pretty big names here. And Gilda's Club, what an amazing personality you must have had to leave that much of an impact in that short an amount of time.

Why is it important as a performer to give back?

Because you steal a lot from people! I leech off everything, everybody! I roll into town, eat their food, get trucked around, take some of the money out of their local economy and then bail out. We're the pilot fish of the entertainment industry.

Earlier I was always involved with the punk and hardcore scenes, where there was always a sense of activism, like, "Good night! Take care of each other!" With Spells, we donate proceeds from songs to charity. Like right now we have a song called "Bustin' Out," where the proceeds go to Judi's House, a great program in Denver that works with grieving kids who have lost a loved one.

And tomorrow you head to South by Southwest.

I did it once with another band, but not as an official invite. I just went down and played a some of the sides shows years ago. This year, now I'm doing it as both a comic and a musician.

You're probably the first person to do so.

I was trying to figure that out. I wondered if Donald Glover had done it at some point. I don't know if he ever did it as a stand-up or not. I know Childish Gambino had to have played down there. But it's real exciting.

What's your mental gameplan going into SxSW?

Separate the two completely. And thankfully due to production, I will. We're going to go down, do the Grawlix show we're doing at SxSW, then fly to L.A. for some stuff for Those Who Can't. Then I'm flying back on Wednesday for the music portion of SxSW. So it's just going to be non-stop for me. The other guys are going down for the Grawlix show, then go to L.A. and keep working.

That's a lot to keep track of.

But if I don't, I pick at my sutures. I'm a total "idle hands" sort of person, so being busy keeps me sober and focused.

Earlier today The Grawlix announced the end of your monthly Denver show.

It was four years. I feels like it was nine years, because prior to the Grawlix we had another alt show that really led into the Grawlix. "The Grawlix" was already a name from the show we did prior, which was called Los Comicos Super Hilariosos. It was a show we did in a small art gallery in a warehouse district. It's gonna be real sad, because it also ushers in the fact that I'm going to be spending the majority of my time in Los Angeles now. I try not to get emotional talking about it, but I left Maine in '99 a super-confused and angry person. I didn't know who I was, and Denver, it's the place where I figured out who I was and was able to reinvent myself. It's hard to leave that.

I stopped drinking in 2010, right around the time we started doing The Grawlix, and that's really when I started changing how I was writing stand-up, no longer having the crutch of alcohol. So it's a very sentimental thing. It feels like the end of the era in Denver comedy. There's a huge boom and there's so many great shows, so if kind of feels like the right time.

The Doom Room, Fine Gentlemen's Club, people like Mara Wiles; literally there are shows all the time, and it's just crazy. All these guys who were part of OK Party just moved out from Omaha. They put on amazing shows and the Crom Comedy Fest in Omaha, and now they're in Denver. There's this kid Anthony Crawford from the Carolinas, who's a killer onstage. It's becoming this kind of hotbed, so it's an exciting time.

I would rather go out on a high note than have the show end when the scene was falling apart. There's no void to fill anymore. It's not that us leaving will leave a hole. There's plenty of amazing stuff still going on. The music scene in Denver is really exploding, too.

What does your move to L.A. mean for Spells?

I'll come back and forth to play in it. My wife's sisters live there in Denver, so we'll visit a lot. And the band wants to come play L.A., San Diego, Tijuana; areas like that a lot more.

What about personally? How will your life change in L.A.?

There's so many amazing comics out there that I don't know if they need another one. But I do feel good knowing I have a job. My family is really my biggest concern, but my wife is excited. She was born and grew up until she was 12 in Long Beach. She's a photographer and does largely fashion and lingerie photography. She also makes music videos with a small production crew for RuPaul's Drag Race contestants. It gives her a chance to be around more of the stuff she's interested in as well. We want to make sure our son has a good neighborhood, a school he feels comfortable at. He's excited because he's a kid, and thinks that California is everything it's been on vacation. So it's like, "We're going to go to the ocean, eat tacos, ride on roller coasters!" If it was just my wife and I, I would just bounce back and forth for work, but I feel strongly that a kid should have roots and a consistent set of friends. I'd like him to have that.

Going clubbing at night is getting sooooooo old, amiright? I mean, it's so last year to come home at 5 a.m. when you could totally just get the party going at 6 a.m. Seriously, it is all the rage these days so you should def hop on the bandwagon. Unconvinced? Here's why you should flip the switch on your party habits and hit the dance floor earlier, rather than later:

1) Because it gives you an excuse to get up on time. You're way less likely to bump the snooze button when you know you're heading out to bust a move.

2) Because it's the same as a morning workout. Dancing = cardio = burnin' those calories right up.

daybreaker dancing

Image: Via Sara Wass for Daybreaker

3) Because you drink coffee and juices instead of liquor. There's waaaaay less calories in those than in a traditional cocktail and there's no chance of a hangover. WIN.

4) Because you get HIGH ON LIFE. Seriously. Those endorphins put in WORK.

5) Because you're much more likely to run into a dancing carrot, a tap dancer, enormous gyrating jellyfish, acrobats, and a group of troubadours all at the same time and actually remember it the next day... or, ya know, later the same day.

daybreaker carrot

Image: Via Sara Wass for Daybreaker

6) Because there's no need to wear anything constricting -- like heels! It's 7am. You're probably going to work in a bit and there's nothing that's going to harsh your mellow more than trying to get down with your bad self and be restricted by stilettos. There's no time for stilettos. Club's goin' up on a Tuesday and it's doin' it in sneakers.

7) Because you're going to see people from literally every walk of life. Whether you're a dreadlock-wearing white guy from Bushwick, an overgrown finance bro, or even A BABY (yes, even BABIES hit the club), morning dance parties could (and do) appeal to all.

daybreaker baby

Image: Via Sara Wass for Daybreaker

The high-pitched sound from my KitchenAid tea kettle informs me in a not-so-subtle fashion that my beverage is ready for consumption. My half-eaten Granny Smith apple is brown beyond repair. In the early morning hours, the aforementioned sustenance helps me review a contract for my music label client; draft talking points to be incorporated into a segment for a morning news show; and secure a guest speaker for an A-list charity event. The sun has yet to rise and show its sprightly face.

I have the lovely honor of speaking to undergrads and law school students about entertainment law. I made the conscious decision years ago to create an architecture for these lectures that inspires since I am wholly uninterested in presenting a scenario that scares -- rather than shares -- the nature of this fast-paced and multidimensional legal discipline.

I was influenced in part to craft my discussions around the motivational model of the Chicken Soup for the Soul book series. I find it critical to encourage pre-law students as well as sleep-deprived law school students because there is an unattainable quality associated with entertainment law that is entirely misguided and highly prejudicial.

Practicing entertainment law does not have to be a pipe dream. I disagree with those "experts" who tritely opine that entertainment law is an extremely difficult profession to penetrate. Based on my personal experience, you do not need family connections to practice this legal discipline. Similarly, graduating from a top tier law school is not obligatory to gain entry into the profession.

Perseverance, determination and magnetism make a career in entertainment law possible. I often encourage students to secure a public relations internship; volunteer at a radio station; or work as a production assistant as those experiences furnish valuable on-the-job entertainment industry training.

It is imperative to cast your net wide to learn about film, television, publishing and music. You can get a "yes" response from a future employer if you refuse to live with "no." Get comfortable being ambitious. Do not limit your professional choices only to what seems reasonable because that is a surefire way to fall short of your potential and compromise on what you really want.

Entertainment lawyers are experts in a large number of legal disciplines, which allow them to easily segue from various categories of legal practice. Once you become an entertainment lawyer, you will develop a diverse legal portfolio that encompasses contracts, book publishing, intellectual property law, corporate finance, labor law and defamation and free speech.

Entertainment law is more than a job. It is a rewarding career. Entertainment lawyers counsel clients on their legal rights, explain to them their responsibilities under a contract and discuss, after reviewing all the options, which sour prospects should be avoided. It is personally satisfying to strike a smart, synergetic deal for your clientele because entertainment law is just as focused on repairing broken relationships as it is on nurturing new ones.

Entertainment projects bring together many different types of people, from managers, sponsors and artists to production companies and television networks. Good entertainment lawyers act as high-powered connectors because they understand each player's strengths when putting together and negotiating a deal.

You have to be able to roll with change, embrace new ventures, be kind and maintain your client's personal brand with dignity and class. Entertainment companies continually form, merge and dissolve. Your client's biggest rival today could tomorrow turn out to be their best collaborator. Likewise, you can never anticipate which personal assistant, photographer, film editor or director holds the power to green-light your client's next project. Therefore it is key to cordially work with all parties as much as humanly possible (and within the confines of the law) to get the deal done.

Entertainment law is glamorous and show business is seductive, but as one of my mentors cautiously noted, "Remember to use the glamour wisely." Sure there are tickets to music concerts and movie premieres, but some of the best "perks" involve working with charities for celebrity events so that these organizations can secure the resources and funding necessary to provide indispensable services to the community. It can be particularly alluring to use your legal skills for those who need hope.

(courtesy of TLC)

Josh Groban knows little about his mother's lineage, so sets out on a journey to learn more about the maternal side of his family tree on Who Do You Think You Are?, airing this Sunday, March 15 at 10/9c on TLC.

Josh traces his ancestors' roots from Los Angeles to Germany and follows the trail of his 8th great-grandfather, discovering a brilliant man who was a deacon, author, well-known astrologer (admired by Sir Isaac Newton), and music and singing teacher. But Josh also discovers that his ancestor's predictions of cataclysmic doom put him in the crosshairs of the church and the fate of his family on the line. Take a sneak peek:

To whet your appetite for Sunday's show, here are 10 ancestral tidbits about Josh Groban's roots.

Next up? Angie Harmon.

Make your list now!

Culturalist.com is the place to shape, share and debate your opinions on anything and everything through Top 10 lists. Want to join the conversation? You can make your own list of the Top 10 Best Movie and TV Adaptations of Books by selecting your favorites, ranking them in order, and publishing on Culturalist.

Good artists borrow, great artists steal...and smart artists adapt. It's no surprise that some of the biggest blockbusters in movie and television history are ripped from the pages of beloved books - they've already got built-in audiences and have proven their staying power. But now Culturalist's list-makers are asking: of all the amazing characters and unforgettable stories to make the jump from page to screen, which are the best? We're highlighting some of the current frontrunners, but you can see all the current rankings and weigh in by making your own list of the Top 10 Best Movie and TV Adaptations of Books? now!

Post-Apocalyptic Survival

We seem to be drawn to watching people we like in horrible - horrible - situations, and some of the biggest pop-culture phenomena in years have clawed their way up to help us satisfy that urge. From gritty graphic novels like The Walking Dead to YA sensations like The Hunger Games and Divergent, our appetite for seeing a world even more messed up than our own is as endless as that horde of walkers outside the RV.

Fantasy

"You're a wizard, Harry!" Few creative works in history have captured the public imagination in the way J.K. Rowling's boy wizard achieved, and that magic carried over to bring Harry Potter to the big screen. It may not have been first, but keeping company with crossover franchises like The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones guarantees Harry Potter a spot among the all-time greats.

Monsters and Mayhem

Some villains just need a bit more space to stretch their claws. Whether it's the roar of a t-rex from Jurassic Park, the unseen hunger of Jaws just beneath the water, or the genteel violence of The Silence of the Lambs that sets your pulse racing, some of the most iconic menaces in movie history started out as books.

Classics

Sometimes it's too easy to take a lazy potshot at Hollywood when every summer brings around a fresh crop of sequels to last year's blockbusters: "Don't they have any new ideas?" It's not just about superheroes; some of our most beloved classics started their lives as books before being adapted into tremendously important films. To Kill A Mockingbird, The Wizard of Oz, The Godfather and scores of others were printed and bound before they were shot and canned.

Think our listmakers got it wrong? Join the conversation and set the record straight by making your own list of the Top 10 Best Movie and TV Adaptations of Books now!

Photo Credit: Melissa Mack

The pen is mightier than the sword is a popular quote that gets thrown around a bunch. Many do not understand what it means though. Through the power of the pen, Fred The Godson went from a childhood in shelters to achieving personal and financial freedom. He used a pen as his weapon of choice, and has done great things with it. Born and raised in the South Bronx, Fred came from an existence so tough it would be hard to describe. He changed all that with hip-hop though. A shy kid who used to look at rappers as superheroes, he changed his reality to being one of the biggest hip-hop artists to come out of New York. Recently I had a chance to sit down with Fred to talk about how he got to where he is now, and where he plans to go.

Fred grew up in abject poverty. As the eldest of six, he lived with his young brothers and sisters in Relo Shelter in the Bronx. At the time it seemed like the only thing he would ever know. He says that his introduction to hip-hop came from living in the hood because it was just part of the culture. And the radio was something that he did not need any expensive equipment to listen to. No matter how poor his family was they always had the radio, and the sound was just as crisp as anyone else's. It was also something he was into because it allowed him to escape his reality of living in poverty with his family. But he never thought it would turn into a career.

Growing up Fred never thought he would be a rapper. He started freestyling in school for fun. Being a prankster he would always sit in the cafeteria, and make fun of the clothes people were wearing. It was never anything serious, but it was something to pass the time during lunch. As it went on though, his classmates started to ask if he had any real music. Without realizing it he had developed a fan base. Fred always responded letting them know he was not a rapper though, and this was just something he did for fun. That did not stop people from asking though. Rappers were people he looked up to, and thought of as superheroes so he did not think he would be able to do it. He kept doing this for years without taking the craft too seriously just because it was fun.

Fred realized he could take rapping more seriously in high school when his peers started getting into hip-hop as well. He said,

"I was seeing crowds of people rap. And I would ask them if they rhyme, but then would remember that we were playing basketball together just last year. So when I saw they could do it, I said maybe I could too. I knew these kids. They were normal just like me. So I started practicing, but I would not spit rhymes in front of anybody. I was too shy."

Photo Credit: Melissa Mack

One day when he was a senior in high school he decided to ditch his shyness. He saw the best kid in his school rapping, and made the decision to go after him. Though he does not remember exactly what he said that day, he remembers the reaction his classmates had. Everyone around him started going crazy. They were running and screaming. From that day he knew it was over, and he had to keep doing it. Since then he has just been working as hard as he could.

In the years since he decided to start rapping Fred has compiled quite the resume. In 2011 he was on the XXL Freshman cover, one of the most prestigious places for a young artist to be. He has done songs with Diddy, Jadakiss, Raekwon, Pusha T, Juelz Santana, and a host of other popular artists. Most recently he was even featured on a song for LL Cool J's newest album that will release later this year.

Even though he is living well now he remembers the bad times. Every time he goes to buy food, or even something as simple as a t-shirt he reminds himself what it was like to be poor. Or what it was like to want a new pair of jeans growing up knowing he could no have them. He believes it is what allows him to work as hard as he does. Fred understands the chance life gave him through hip-hop. A chance that many people from his old neighborhood never received. To him everything is a celebration. He treats life with a more lighthearted approach because he has seen much worse.

A passion for hip-hop and the power of a pen brought Fred out a situation many never do. Individuals like him are the ones who inspire the rest of us to realize there is a light at the end of a tunnel. Fred The Godson is an example of The American Dream we all cherish so much. Each year of his life Fred has climbed, and seems like he will continue to do so. Now the only thing we need to wait for is how high he ascends.

In the ancient days of traditional marketing, less than seven years ago, "content" was a term without definition or value. Today, "content" is King and the voracious appetite of our Social Media world cannot digest enough of it.

Content is purely self-promotional, but to the consumer, it is fascinating entertainment designed to be liked, shared and retweeted. As the Fortune 500 scratches their head over the phenomena, Marriott International leaps forward with their own Content Studio and the premiere of Two Bellmen, a new short film.

As most every conglomerate is joining the race, the true and unlikely benefactors are new talent, filmmakers, musicians, performers and artists who had never before been a part of the elusive equation.

Content was once a function of sponsorship. An apparel manufacture could align themselves with an event, such as the U.S. Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach, for a season, or two, or a very expensive three. This relationship provided consumer stories to tell and positive associations to make.

Red Bull, the energy drink, observed this tried-and-true world and reassembled the concept. Red Bull produced their own events. By owning their content, the promotion became pure, without the mixed messages of co-sponsors. By investing in their own promotion, the balance sheet flipped. The expense turned to revenue and the promotion became profitable. Innovative and aggressive, Red Bull has been, and will continue to be, the role model to follow. Case in Point: A headline in a September 2014 issue of Variety reads, How Marriott Wants to be the Red Bull of the Hotel Industry.

Marriott International has many customers to comfort, pamper and entertain. With 3,900 properties and 19 brands, many pillows need to be fluffed and hours of customer downtime filled. The hotel room TV is a powerful magnet, especially when your spouse is primping in the bathroom. Karin Timpone is Marriott's Global Marketing Officer. She saw the wave offshore and the need for entertainment-based marketing. Once head of product strategy and marketing for Disney-ABC Television's Digital Media group, Timpone was reminded of a former colleague.

In July 2014, David Beebe sat down as Vice President, Creative and Content Marketing, and got busy. He is well prepared for the job with an Emmy on the mantle. As a Senior Vice President at FishBowl Worldwide Media/Vin Di Bona Productions, Beebe oversaw many, many productions for many different clients and platforms. His first great success was at Disney, always an impressive address. There, Beebe was one of the founders of the Disney-ABC Television Group Digital Studio, a beautiful tarmac for the incoming Content Marketing Age. Disney is always a step ahead.

Aiming for a fast start, Beebe approached the usual suspects. Talent agencies have scrambled to snap up most of the big talent and they are more than happy to provide a pitch. For example, CAA recently signed 19-year-old Meredith Foster and they will tout the savant's beauty, fashion, and home décor genius, as well as her seven-digit follower base. It is a mad, mad, new world.

Scouting talent today no longer requires a soda fountain or a couch, just access to YouTube where popularity is easily valued by video views and subscribers. Webby Award winner Sonia Gill is very pretty and smart. She loves to travel and vlog about it. As of this very second, her video Travel Tips: How to Pack Your Toiletries has been seen 225,673 times. As of this very second, 108,542 subscribers follow her advice on Sonia's Travels, her YouTube channel. I'll bet you a Marriott mini-bar beer that her numbers have jumped before you finish reading this sentence. Gill has now partnered with Marriott to create content; the association makes sense in every way.

Marriott is moving fast with a long line-up in development and various stages of production. With 19 brands in their empire, each show or device is tailored to the personality of a hotel.

Renaissance Hotels are upscale, hip and chic. Like the namesake era of art and culture, the luxury hotel brand is focused on discovery and enjoyments. Instead of a concierge, the Renaissance Hotels feature Navigators to steer one through town. Given the beauty in synergy, a new TV show has been developed with the title Navigator Live. In the first three episodes, a band or DJ, who is playing at a Renaissance Hotel, offers tips on local hot spots, nearby sights to see and insights into their own musical development. AEG, the entertainment giant, is lending a helping hand to the production.

Dropping a perceived price point, Courtyard is a brand that offers economy and comfort. Unlike Navigator Live, Courtyard Camera aims for brawn not brain. Each episode is hosted by an NFL star. The Courtyard by Marriott YouTube channel presents hilarious Candid Camera-style shenanigans on unsuspecting Courtyard guests on hotel grounds. The production values are top-notch, the entertainment value equals, and bests, "network" standards and the brand product is presented quite cleverly, hence, not noticeably.

"Interruptive marketing no longer works," Beebe says. He is referring to a commercial that elbows hard into the eye of your enjoyment. "Content Marketing seeks an emotional connection. It provides value. It creates friendships. Navigator Live offers destination content," says Beebe, "When, where, what and how. That is helpful and friendly."

Content Marketing demands great skill and subtlety. I am grateful when Pillsbury offers me a new recipe, but helpful tips on cleaning the bowl are too much. Like a progressive parent hovering over their only child, Content Marketing is a delicate balance of good advice and harassment.

Does advertising change our lifestyle and perceptions? Or vice versa? Regardless of the impossible answer, interruptive marketing has never been more obvious. The consumer is media savvy. Advertising has its place. We expect, and may even welcome, an ad on network TV, but not on my YouTube. The Skip Ad button gives me the power. Content Marketing dodges our will. Clever Content Marketing is invasive.

The Courtyard by Marriott YouTube channel offers a very obvious example between the two. The NFL pranks of Courtyard Camera are fun to watch. The humor and humanity sing louder than the Courtyard logo placement. Like popcorn, you want to watch another. And another.

On the same channel is a video, a commercial, titled Yukon Parody. Most will never see the end. Expensive production values and David Lean long shots captivate your interest. At the half way mark, you realize, jarringly, that you are watching a commercial. It is interruptive. We Americans may be fat and slow but the index finger on the mouse has never been quicker.

In the olden days, the canyon walls of Madison Avenue were tall and unscalable. Tightly knit, commercial production companies formed a community that did not welcome strangers of any kind. Talent had to sing and dance a long time before they got to stand in a craft services line.

Our new media age has upended the old paradigm. Fresh and untested talent has never experienced such opportunity. This is the era when a 13-year-old home plumbing guru can become a media star at 14 and retire by 17. Today, one can open their own advertising agency, and succeed, without ever having seen Mad Men.

The most aggressive project in the Marriott Content Studio slate is a short film titled Two Bellmen. To call it content, feels like a disservice.

The film is directed by Malakai, a creative soul haunted by the ghosts of subtle Buster Keaton, laugh out loud Hal Roach, whimsical Busby Berkeley and powder keg Sam Peckinpah. Two Bellmen is a huge opportunity for Substance Over Hype, Malakai's collective of musicians, filmmakers, actors, skateboarders, b-boyin' break dancers, traceurs, street artists - the continuing list is long and extensive.

Two Bellmen is a jambalaya of style, interest and bounce, a perfect soup for our rapid-fire, all aware, cross-platform attention spans. Two Bellmen is a savvy example of Content Marketing and the subtleties within the new medium.

In Part II of this article, we will explore the intricacies of content brand building, Marriott's aggressive and potent slate and the production challenges and branding decisions of Two Bellmen. To see the film, Click Here.

Gordy Grundy is a writer, content creator and publisher. His visual and literary work can be found at www.GordyGrundy.com.

"I'm old-fashioned, I love the moonlight,
I love the old-fashioned things.
The sound of rain upon a windowpane,
The starry song that April sings.
This year's fancies, are passing fancies
But sighing sighs, holding hands,
These my heart understands.
I know I'm old-fashioned
But I don't mind it.
That's how I want to be
As long as you agree
To stay old-fashioned with me."

These words were written by Johnny Mercer and the music by Jerome Kern for a film titled You Were Never Lovelier, penned in 1942. It was introduced by Nan Wynn who dubbed it for Rita Hayworth in a dance routine with Fred Astaire.

It has been sung by Judy Garland, Dinah Shore, Julie Andrews, Andy Williams, Blossom Dearie, the King Sisters -- and since the 1980's by Cassandra Wilson, Maria Joao, Stacey Kent and Victoria Williams. It was part of an early "try" by classical soprano Eileen Farrell in 1960. Jessye Norman followed her example in 1984. The song is a perennial!

•SPEAKING of "old-fashioned," I hope you took a look at the male fashion magazines offered last weekend. Both of them -- the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal -- were miracles of mostly attractive guys and the latest and the most outré and the oldest and classiest looks for men.

And my favorite among all of these was the portrait of the Ralph Lauren offspring -- Ralph and Ricky's eldest son Andrew.

He is offered looking handsome and turned out in a suit and smart tie. Andrew is a producer of This Is Not a Robbery, which bowed at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2008 and was a documentary about J. L. "Red" Rountree, who became a serial bank robber at the age of 86. He died in prison in 2004.

Andrew aspires to direct and rightfully admires Robert Redford, Warren Beatty, Steve McQueen and Orson Welles. He has had several other hits to his credit.

•I WONDER if Andrew Lauren can get a reservation to visit his famous father's new cafe on East 55th Street, which is all the rage and has to keep a couple of girls standing out on the sidewalk with clipboards to say who is admitted and who isn't, to The Polo Bar.

I was sitting in Orso's famed theater restaurant the other night when a friend, Bette-Ann Gwathmey, Ralph Lauren's longtime aide, came over and gave me a big hug. "Liz, Congratulations for being the only person in New York who hasn't asked me to intercede for them at The Polo Bar." (This site used to be the famous Le Cote Basque for those of us with long memories.)

Do people cramming into The Polo Bar, where the food is said to be "fabulous," find themselves eating in a basement?

• A night at the Schoenfeld Theatre with Dame Helen Mirren in her tour de force The Audience is everything that every true theater-loving theatergoer needs. They need it to get away from blockbuster musicals and to see a few really big stars who have momentarily escaped from Hollywood. The play's title refers to the history of Queen Elizabeth II, meeting with her various Prime Ministers over the course of her long, long reign.

But everyone who wants to have the Mirren experience can't and won't be included and there is nothing Helen and her producers can do about it. They are a sell-out through June 28th. For instance, the night I was taken as a guest in a party of four, I got a glimpse at the cost of my ticket, far back in Row M. I believe it was for about $139.00 so this cost the host four times that and didn't include the cost of having a car hired for arrival and departure because the weather was frankly -- dim.

We had a reasonable dinner before the show. And though someone else grabbed the dinner check, the host still spent plenty of money -- the usual sum that the theater costs these days.

When I say the evening was worth it, it was, for me at least. Peter Morgan's script calls for no real scenery. There are exposures of the people who served the Queen of England in their exact historic costumes. The Queen's dresses also appear through the years, even her informal country outfit for her castle in Scotland. These are divine.

If you happen to luck into seeing this in spite of my warnings that it all costs an arm and a leg, don't miss the gaudy guards in their costumes, swords drawn onstage, standing stock still or moving in exact tandem through the diverting entre-act. They are gloriously coordinated. And it is the best intermission I have ever seen in the theatre.

Mr. Morgan's play itself is an absorbing matter of English history for over 60 years since Elizabeth ascended to the throne in 1952 when her father, George VI died. And none of this history happens in the play consecutively.

We see the Queen dressed to receive Winston Churchill at one point and follow-up meetings with Anthony Eden or other more recent Prime Ministers. The Queen also spars with her little girl self.

Dame Mirren's Queen confers in a warm, friendly but regal manner with one Prime Minister after another. She is a bit frigid with some, one being Margaret Thatcher, but always proper. Helen changes hair and clothes in fractions of a second onstage and keeps the audience hanging, alert with curious expectation. The "dressers" out-do themselves for speed.

If you wonder how Helen Mirren appears and acts so flawlessly like the Queen, well, she won the Oscar for Peter Morgan's film about the Queen's experience in the aftermath of Princess Diana's death. I think Helen is the greatest stage actress I have ever seen. Maybe it's just because I love her as a friend and spent the night before 9/11 having dinner with her. Tragic events produce deep feelings.

Helen is trying to save her voice so I didn't go back to see her after The Audience. She knows how loved she is.

Try to find some rich friends to take you to see Mr. Morgan's play.

Hollywood, like any place that is more about its lore than the actual sum of its parts, is full of unsung heroes who have given audiences some of their most cherished cinematic moments. Odds are if you're a movie buff, you'll remember the car chases in iconic films like Bullitt, The French Connection and The Seven-Ups. Stuntman, stunt driver and later, stunt coordinator Bill Hickman was one of those people who remained virtually anonymous during his lifetime, but is responsible for some of cinema's most iconic, and hair-raising moments.

The Los Angeles native was born in 1921 and had been working in Hollywood for ten years before landing his first (visible) role in Stanley Kramer's legendary The Wild One, the 1953 film that cemented star Marlon Brando's status as an icon of post-war teen rebellion. Hickman can be seen as one of Brando's motorcycle gang and was hired by producer Kramer as a stuntman, although he received credit for neither, as he injured himself in a motorcycle race during production and had to drop out. Hickman cemented his foothold in Hollywood upon meeting James Dean on the set of Rebel Without a Cause, where he again was doing stunts. The two men became fast friends, with Hickman becoming Dean's driving mentor. "In those final days, racing was what (Dean) cared about most," Hickman remembered. "I had been teaching him things like how to put a car in a four-wheel drift, but he had plenty of skill of his own. If he had lived he might have become a champion driver. We had a running joke, I'd call him Little Bastard and he'd call me Big Bastard. I never stop thinking of those memories."

"Little Bastard" James Dean on the left and "Big Bastard" Bill Hickman, right, flank Dean's 1955 Porsche Spyder 550. Below, the fatal wreck that killed James Dean. Unconfirmed if that's Hickman on the left, in overalls.

"Little Bastard" was also the nickname painted onto Dean's fateful 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder, the car he was driving September 30, 1955, en route to a race being held in Salinas, CA. Hickman was following directly behind Dean in a station wagon, pulling a trailer, when Dean collided with a Ford sedan. Hickman was the first person on the scene of the accident, and pulled Dean from the wreckage. Hickman recalled the day in an interview with Dean expert Warren Beath: "We were about two or three minutes behind him. I pulled him out of the car, and he was in my arms when he died, his head fell over. I heard the air coming out of his lungs the last time. Didn't sleep for five or six nights after that, just the sound of the air coming out of his lungs."

Hickman paid the bills for the next decade with bit parts in film and television, his imposing stature and rough-hewn face making him ideal as a heavy or a cop. However, he made his primary living as a stuntman and stunt driver. It was 1968's Bullitt, with Steve McQueen, that began Hickman's ride from journeyman to legend. Hickman and McQueen would drive for hours together during the film's production, trying to devise the ultimate car chase ever committed to celluloid. The final result, a ten minute sequence that still raises the hackles of audiences everywhere, was unprecedented in its time. Hickman, playing the bespectacled hit man in the Dodge Charger, dueling with McQueen's Ford Mustang GT 390, added a nice personal touch by buckling his seatbelt before stomping on the gas, belying his status as a pro. This not only wasn't the law in '68, but was virtually ignored by most civilian drivers.

1971's Best Picture winner The French Connection raised the stakes even higher. Hickman was hired by director William Friedkin not only as the film's stunt coordinator, but to play what would become Hickman's most significant acting role: Federal Agent Bill Mulderig, a thorn in NYPD detective Popeye Doyle (Gene Hackman)'s side, whom Popeye ends up (accidentally or not) killing in the film's surreal climax. The filming of the legendary chase scene underneath an elevated train in Brooklyn was as dangerous as it was foolhardy. Friedkin recalled the event in his 2013 memoir, The Friedkin Connection: "(Bill) was a skilled stunt driver, but his ideas were more sizzle than steak." Friedkin expressed disappointment to Hickman over drinks in a local bar. Fueled by booze and exhaustion, Hickman steamed "You want me to show you something? Put the car on Stillwell (Ave.) tomorrow morning, then I want you to get in it with me, if you've got the balls!"

The scene was performed in real traffic, with no permits, Hickman behind the wheel, Friedkin in the back seat behind him with a camera, flanked by real-life NYPD officer Randy Jurgensen, armed with his badge in case they ran into trouble from unsuspecting cops. Hickman accidentally clips another stunt driver's car during the sequence, which Friedkin kept in the final cut for realism.

Hickman's final legendary piece of driving, which many feel is his finest hour, was in The Seven-Ups, the 1973 follow-up to The French Connection, directed by the producer of both Bullitt and The French Connection, Philip D'Antoni. In it, Hickman's 1973 Pontiac Grand Ville is pursued at breakneck speeds by Roy Scheider's '73 Pontiac Ventura, climaxing in a white-knuckle crash Hickman said was inspired by the car accident that killed actress Jayne Mansfield in 1967.

Hickman continued to work as a stunt coordinator during the 1970s, with work in cult classics such as 1971's Vanishing Point and 1973's Electra Glide in Blue being standouts. 1978's Capricorn One was his swan song. Bill Hickman died of cancer in 1986, aged 65.

Left to right: Lew Smith, Barbara Stanwyck, Clark Gable and Bill Hickman clown on the set of 1950's racing drama,"To Please a Lady."

Seymour Bernstein at 88 is such a loveable man, and so talented an interpreter of classical music, it is easy to fall in love with him. But that's not why Ethan Hawke was so inspired at meeting him at a dinner party, so much that he knew he wanted to spend more time with Seymour documenting him. Hawke's movie Seymour: An Introduction captures Seymour's wisdom and generosity. It should be mandatory viewing for anyone in the arts, in fact, everyone alive. Seymour's gift as a teacher of piano is to supply ample instruction, carrying over into life itself, advocating integration and balance. He believes, "Whatever talent you have is the essence of who you are." Hawke's goal was to show young people, how a passion for an art form can inform the art form and life; in this anti-Whiplash, Seymour helps Hawke with his stage fright, ironic because after stellar reviews on the concert circuit himself, as a young man, he gave up performing because the pre-performance anxiety was unmanageable. So it was a special treat when he sat at the piano performing for invited dinner guests at last fall's New York Film Festival.

Presenting their unlikely collaboration, Seymour and Ethan are a great comedy duo, finishing one another's sentences. Bernstein interrupts Hawke who takes it with a knowing grin. Unlike other actors of his generation, Hawke is not cocky. Knowing he has a lot to learn, he seeks out these savants. He sat at Gregory Corso's deathbed and recited the beat poet's "Marriage." The poem had been part of his movie Reality Bites, and Hawke made it emblematic of Gen X. In the recent Boyhood, his Oscar nominated performance as ex-husband and dad was sensitive, smart, and humble. In interviews he notes that when he gets favorable reviews, it is usually because critics have a positive relationship with the character he's playing, even if it is a villain; he's doing what they want. He was not praised for his Macbeth at Lincoln Center last year, which for me was a brave and solid performance. It says a lot about Ethan Hawke that he could appreciate Seymour Bernstein, keep learning, and venture into what is for him the uncharted genre of documentary filmmaking to make this beautiful film about an artist whose work you may not otherwise know.

A version of this post also appears on Gossip Central.

Note: Do not read on if you have not seen Season 6, Episode 14 of CBS's The Good Wife, titled "Mind's Eye."

Oh, to enter Alicia Florrick's head. As she preps for an interview with an editorial board of news org, we get to see how crowded it is in there. "Are you ok," Marissa asks her. Yes, no. Maybe.

The editing last week was something else. And while she works out her career, an eviction suit coming from Canning, and some leftover parenting issues, the best part is when she remembers Will.

One annoying thing is that the guy on the balcony was most certainly not Josh Charles. Twitter was not happy. But I didn't care. The quick shots, filled with music, and clean white sheets. Am I the only person who thought it was a perfect way to show how heartsick she still is?

And then the music was perfect.

Again, we can agree to disagree:

The music on this episode of #TheGoodWife is annoying.
— city girl dc (@citygirldc) March 9, 2015

The music is on point tonight! #TheGoodWife
— Smith Mom (@Smithmomiowa) March 9, 2015

@christinechoute @davidbuckley39 Some shows hit you over the head with music..#TheGoodWife is musically perfect. Always.
— Sue (@HeckSociety) March 9, 2015

I wasn't fast enough with Shazam. What was the tango music played tonight on #TheGoodWife?
— Bobbie Barrett (@Touchstone13) March 9, 2015

I've been jamming all week. Here's "La Luna" by Lucy Schwarz. Not the first time they've featured her, by the way. Her tune "Captain Sunshine" was in a 2013 episode.

And here's that perfect tune as she clears her head and thinks of all of her men:

Julieta Venegas, Bajofondo - Pa' Bailar from nigani on Vimeo.

You can find the Velvet Underground on your own. Let me know what you thought @karenfratti.

The Good Wife airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on CBS.

I Can't Keep Up With Kanye -- And That's a Good Thing

Morning Joe's Cowardly Attack on Hip-hop

Disney Finally Tackles Grief in Cinderella

The Basement

'American Sniper': A Cowboys and Indians Tale

Fifty Shades of -- Wow, I'm a Virgin

Podcast Review: The David Feldman Show

Going Clear: Why Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman Had to Part

9 to See at SXSW and a Wu Tang Rumor

Comic Ben Roy on SxSW, LaughFest and His New Grawlix TruTV Series

7 Reasons Why You Should Go Clubbing in the A.M.

Chicken Soup for the Entertainment Lawyer's Soul

Exclusive Video: Josh Groban Discovering Remarkable and Controversial Ancestor

The Best Books on Screen

Shelters to Sold Out Shows: Fred the Godson

Marriott Gets Bullish on Content Marketing and New Talent Is Grabbing the Horns, Part I

A Night With Dame Helen Mirren in The Audience Is Everything That Every Theatergoer Needs

Bill Hickman: Hollywood's Wheelman

Ethan Hawke's Love Letter to Seymour Bernstein

'Good Wife' Recap: All the Best Songs From 'Mind's Eye'