CultureWag

History catches up with the Golden Globes Can you hear the crash of mighty pillars collapsing all over Los Angeles? It’s a season for revolution, retribution, and revenge, a time both momentous and frightening. For decades—forever—critics have eloquently called out the many hypocrisies (and actual crimes) of show business. It turns out that this was […]

The American obsession with celebrity has always been lethal. Early in my Hollywood years, I was invited to the home of a former ingenue. The lady of the house had recently left, ushered out permanently by pneumonia, combined with prescription drug intoxication, and, curiously, iron deficiency anemia. At the time, the coroner’s ruling was not […]

I listened to a book with my mother. At least one of us got a lot out of it. A few months ago, I took a cross-country road trip with my mother. I handled all the driving, while my mother rode in the trunk, in a box from Palmetto Cremations of Batesburg-Leesville, South Carolina. The […]

The Parties Stayed Huge. It’s the Pictures that got Small. As a person of middling intelligence who has spent much of his life working around Hollywood, the lost year of 2020 has been keenly instructive. The show business I grew up in, long buffeted by disruption, has weathered a near-extinction event in Covid-19. Streaming is […]

Culture matters. We get serious about fun things, and get funny about serious things. The Red Carpet is Dead. (May it stay that way.)  As a person of middling intelligence who spent his adult life working in entertainment, the lost year of 2020 has been keenly instructive. The show business I grew up in, long in […]