Frank (Danny DeVito) and Sweet Dee (Kaitlin Olson) consult a fellow black person (Chad Coleman). It’s … a long story. FXX
Every Sunday, we pick a new episode of the week. It could be good. It could be bad. It will always be interesting. You can read the archives here. The episode of the week for December 31 through January 7 is “The Gang Turns Black,”the season 12 premiere of FXX’s It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia knew exactly what it was doing when it kicked off its 12th season with an episode called “The Gang Turns Black.”
The FXX comedy has known how to cause a scene for more than a decade now, flinging its hedonistic characters into bizarre and increasingly ridiculous situations that plumb the depths of human decency. With every passing year, the dirtbags of It’s Always Sunny keep finding new ways to horrify their audience into the kind of relieved laughter that goes hand in hand with “at least it’s not me” schadenfreude.
At this point, It’s Always Sunny expects its viewers to expect the outlandish, and so it keeps having to up the ante.
Still: Having the gang get struck by lightning and wake up in black bodies was, uh, pretty surprising (though thankfully not because the show used blackface, which this storyline eschews … though It’s Always Sunny has let its proud degenerates go there before when shooting their unauthorized Lethal Weapon sequels.)
It was also … well, fine.
“The Gang Turns Black” — co-written by creators Glenn Howerton and Rob McElhenney, plus their co-star Charlie Day — doesn’t say anything particularly new, or even all that interesting. What it does, though, is confirm where It’s Always Sunny’s strengths and limitations lie.
As per It’s Always Sunny tradition, “The Gang Turns Black” is best when the cast is making self-reflexive, “can you believe this shit?” jokes
In the minutes after the gang wakes up from their collective electric shock — beware electric blankets in a thunderstorm, kids — they’re less concerned with the fact that they woke up as black people than the fact that they woke up as different people, period.
It’s Always Sunny knows you’re confused at this point, so it lets the show’s resident jerk-in-charge Dennis (Howerton) play devil’s advocate. “Forget the how,” he tells his friends. “It is happening. It just is.”
But again, It’s Always Sunny knows that probably isn’t enough, so it lets the others challenge that idea head on — and in catchy song form, no less, the better to honor the fact that the body swapping happened during a group viewing of The Wiz with their erstwhile group member “Old Black Man.”
“Give me one good reason,” Charlie counters, eyes widening at the fact that, you know, he’s singing. “Whoa!”
Since the only references the gang has for body swapping come from TV and movies, they all immediately start running through the different scenarios.
“I wonder why we’re singing every word that we say,” Mac muses. “Maybe we’re living out The Wiz in some way!”
After they dismiss 13 Going on 30 and Face/Off, Sweet Dee (Kaitlin Olson) guesses it could be a Quantum Leap thing. But nothing is exactly accurate to their situation — even after Sweet Dee runs into the actual Scott Bakula later on — and so they spend half the episode singing the refrain, “What are the rules?!”
This song crops up again and again throughout the gang’s misadventures, and is the best part of the episode by a long shot. “What Are the Rules?” lets the It’s Always Sunny cast do what it does best: bounce self-referential jokes off each other with bonus depraved asides, calling out the episode’s concept and each other in equal measure.
As you’ll note, this standout song has very little to do with the actual racial body swap. That’s because when this episode veers into tackling race head on, it becomes obvious that It’s Always Sunny just doesn’t have all that much to say about it after all.
Points for trying, It’s Always Sunny, but tackling race isn’t exactly your forte
“The Gang Turns Black” hits all the beats you’d expect from an It’s Always Sunny episode about racial inequality. The gang goes out into the world in their new black bodies — played by black actors, but only when the It’s Always Sunny core cast sees their reflections — and realizes that the world is a different place for them. They get arrested, and come out of the experience far worse off than they ever had in their previous decades of illegal debauchery. Frank (Danny DeVito) spends the entire episode dying to say “the n-word.”
Eventually, the gang lands in real hot water thanks to a white storeowner calling 911 on them, leading to the cops shooting an eager Charlie (Day) — whose black alter ego is an actual child — full on in the chest.
“We’ve learned our lesson,” the gang sings in a panic, as the cops cuff them and Charlie bleeds out on the sidewalk. “We’ve learned our lesson, and we want to go home!”
Of course, this being Always Sunny, the gang learning their lesson turns out to be a total misnomer — though in this episode’s case, it’s because the entire adventure turns out to be a figment of Old Black Man’s slumbering imagination.
It’s clear throughout the episode that Howerton, McElhenney, and Day wrote it to highlight the obliviousness of their characters, and the clear and present disparity between how their white dirtbags get to skate by under the radar while their black counterparts would have a hard time pulling off a single one of their shenanigans without putting themselves in serious danger.
But it’s also clear that they’re, well, white. They don’t — and can’t — speak to the actual black experience they tried to write for their characters, however brief. The best they can do is highlight the basic inequality they see, but because they can’t feel it, “The Gang Turns Black” is just a surface-level experiment.
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia airs Wednesdays at 10 pm on FXX.
One of the buzziest titles to debut at this month’s Sundance Film Festival is already off the market. “Call Me By Your Name,” a gay love story in the tradition of “Brokeback Mountain,” has sold to Sony Pictures Classics, Variety has learned.
The deal for worldwide rights, estimated to be north of $6 million, was struck after several buyers expressed serious interest. The movie will debut in the upcoming Park City festival’s Premieres section on Jan. 22.
“Call Me By Your Name,” adapted from the 2007 novel by Andre Aciman, follows an affair after a chance meeting in 1980s Italy between a 17-year-old boy (Timothee Chalamet from “Homeland”) and a twentysomething man (Armie Hammer). It’s not clear what the movie will be rated, but the book involves a sexually explicit act with a peach and other charged moments.
The film was made by acclaimed Italian director Luca Guadagnino (“A Bigger Splash”) and produced by Emilie Georges, Guadagnino, James Ivory, Marco Morabito, Howard Rosenman, Peter Spears and Rodrigo Teixeira.
Executive producers include Naima Abed, Tom Dolby, Sophie Mas, Francesco Melzi, Lourenco Sant’Anna, Derek Simonds and Margarethe Baillou.
The early sale for “Call Me By Your Name” coincides with a trend happening at film festivals, where hot properties are scooped up early, as distributors are eager to avoid all-night bidding wars with deep-pocketed players like Netflix. Last year’s Sundance featured two such big auctions for “The Birth of a Nation” (which sold for a record-breaking $17.5 million to Fox Searchlight) and “Manchester by the Sea” ($10 million to Amazon Studios). The rest of the titles in 2016 either arrived with distribution in tow or found homes in a slow trickle of deals.
WME and UTA Independent Film Group handed the sale.
If buzz and critical praise have replaced Nielsen numbers as the key metric of success for streaming networks, September was a banner month for Amazon Prime Video. Season two of the streamer’s signature series Transparent snagged four Emmy awards, while season three premiered to another round of rave reviews. Two new half-hours — U.K. import Fleabag and Tig Notaro’s One Mississippi — launched to similarly ecstatic notices, with some critics counting one or both among the fall’s best new shows. And while Woody Allen’s first-ever TV show, Crisis in Six Scenes, wasn’t as universally beloved, it nonetheless garnered Amazon a ton of attention.
Overseeing all four projects is Joe Lewis, a former Comedy Central staffer who joined Amazon back in March 2012 to help build the company’s TV business from the ground up. At most studios and networks, Lewis would be thought of as the head of comedy. At Amazon, he’s in charge of what the streamer more vaguely characterizes as half-hour programs — perhaps a more accurate descriptor, given how blurred the lines are between comedy and dramas these days. While Amazon has made its mark in the hour-long space — with several big projects set to bow later this fall, including the Billy Bob Thornton legal thriller Goliath — half-hours have been most instrumental in defining the service so far. In addition to the aforementioned series, Amazon has also made noise with Mozart in the Jungle, Red Oaks and, most loudly, Catastrophe. Vulture recently spoke with Lewis for nearly an hour about how he approaches series development, the importance of diversity in creating his roster of shows, and why the definition of an Amazon half-hour is likely to evolve over the next year. What follows is an edited transcript of our conversation.
So let me ask you this to start: Is there a guiding philosophy behind what you’re doing with half-hours at Amazon? What are you looking for as you develop shows?
I recently found an email I’d written to myself almost five years ago, and it’s sort of shorthand for what we wanted to develop: We look for worlds. A world [can] be oblique, like gender. Or specific, like classical music. We want to find a world that hasn’t been done before, that we think people will be curious about— and then we want to go really deep and talk about every part of that world. We’ve also been just driving toward this thing of comedies that aren’t broad; comedies that aren’t joke-based [but] are character-based; comedies that take place as five-hour stories. That was in the DNA within the first week I started working here.
Risk, from the outset, was also something that was super-important to me. Amazon is a place that embraces failure, not in that they want you to fail, but you should aim to do something big and you shouldn’t be afraid of failure. So every show that we do, we ask ourselves, “Is there a good reason we shouldn’t make this?” And if we can’t come up with anything, we don’t buy that show. Risk has to be there. The other big thing is: What is a story told in chapters that are given to you all at once?
Explain that.
So Transparent, when we first got the pilot [script] … Maura Pfefferman, Jeffrey [Tambor]’s character, came out to her family on page seven or eight. And she came out to all the kids sitting around the dining-room table, and that was the show. All the kids found out about it. We told you upfront what the show was, and that is everything that traditional TV would tell you to do. It was an excellent pilot because Jill’s an excellent writer. [But] the direction was a huge discussion she and I had. It was, “We think you should move [the coming-out scene] to the last moment of the show, and right when we find it out, the pilot has to end.” What that did was, it slowed down the entire story and it said: This a story that’s not going to take place in half-hour episodes. This is a story that’s going to slowly unfold over five hours.
That’s a key distinction between your model and traditional TV, right?
That was always the idea. How does the story follow the platform? Binge TV, streaming TV, doesn’t exist because we said we’ve got a five-hour movie called Transparent to tell. Transparent exists because we had a platform that allowed for a five-hour story, and we made that adjustment. Now, shows [are being pitched], and they’ve thought about the first season as a five-hour movie. We no longer have to push people towards that.
Joe Lewis. Photo: Rodel Astudillo
Even if you sort of had an idea about what you wanted Amazon comedies to be early on, Transparent still seems like it was transformative for the brand. It’s your Mad Men, your House of Cards, no?
That show is our flywheel. It begat more resources. All of a sudden, when Steven Soderbergh walks in with Red Oaks or Roman Coppola and Jason Schwartzman and Paul Weitz have Mozart, they’re walking in and saying, “We love the show that you’ve made.” And it is so much easier to get someone to make a show with you when they’ve started the meeting by saying they love something else that you do. So I agree, yes: Transparent was our first breakthrough show. What I’m proud of, as much as that, is that Transparent was followed by Mozart, which was followed by Catastrophe, which was followed by Red Oaks … I’m as proud that Transparent wasn’t an anomaly, that no one is writing stories — “Well, they got lucky that time.” I’m super-proud of One Mississippi and Fleabag and Woody Allen and I Love Dick, and then, in a different tone, The Tick and Jean-Claude Van Johnson.
Have you settled on a term for what to call the Amazon brand of half-hours that blend comedic and dramatic elements?
I said “traumedy” at [the TV Critics Association summer press tour], and it kind of caught on. I said it as a joke, but maybe it’s not a good word for what we do. There’s not a good word for a lot of stuff we do. People like things to be easily understood. Do we make comedies, or do we make dramas? The answer is yes. We don’t make episodic television. We don’t even make television. I jokingly call if film-o-vision. We make long-form narratives, but that’s boring to say. There’s just not a good word for what we do in either tone or form.
Do you want to add in more shows that are more laugh-out-loud funny, more uproarious?
Jean-Claude is one long action movie, and The Tick will be one long action movie. I would phrase it like this: I’m not afraid of shows that make you laugh. What’s more important to me is a show where you, the audience, is dying to know what’s going to happen. I don’t want a sitcom where you know everything’s going to be fine at the end of every week. I don’t want a procedural, where you know things are going to get solved and reset next week … I hope all of our characters have inner lives, and they’re all real, [and] you have no idea what’s going to happen next.
So if you’re anti-sitcom, does that mean no multi-cam comedy from someone like Chuck Lorre? Or animation?
No. In fact, it’s the opposite. You’ve caught me at a moment where I’m telling everyone that I want a multi-camera. What I don’t want is something with a laugh track. I don’t want something where you can predict where it’s going. But I’m so fortunate that I just run into the smartest people in my job. I’ve gotten to know Norman Lear over a time. You look at his shows, and there are long stretches without laughter. I think you can do that in multi-camera, and I’m actively looking for multi-cams because there’s no one taking on this tone that we’re looking for — serialized [comedy] shows. Horace and Pete hit on this a little bit. That was a pure creation of one man, one that I frankly really admire. So the answer is, any time someone goes, “I don’t think they’re gonna want to do that,” that makes me want to lean into that. I get incredibly excited for ideas that are hard to pull off because if you happen to pull it off, those ideas may cut through. But are we going to do a sitcom that resets every week? Probably not.
You’re not looking for your Fuller House, then.
No. I want to be really good at a few specific things. Smart, ambitious, beautiful.
More like Miramax of the 1990s, and not a big studio like Warner Bros.?
I don’t want to be any company that’s existed before, but I do want you to know that if you go here, this is what you’re going to get. But by the way? That doesn’t last forever. Look at Jean-Claude and The Tick. I feel very good about what we’ve been able to do with Fleabag and Catastrophe and all of these shows. If you’re at TV network and you’re in my job, and you buy any show you could’ve bought ten years ago, you’ve probably bought the wrong show. Brands have to evolve and change. I will continue to covet those sorts of shows that we’ve done well, but I think now in addition to that, it’s time to start branching out and doing [other] stuff. That’s why Jean-Claude and The Tick are these huge action-comedies. You don’t see stuff like that being made. They barely get made in features anymore. I love movies like the Back to the Future trilogy and Lethal Weapon. Those would be the greatest limited series of all time now. They’re funny. They’re real. They’re action. They’re huge budget. And they’re great characters that all have inner lives. It’s the exact same thing I look for.
Three of the four shows you rolled out in September had female creators — Fleabag, One Mississippi, and, of course, the new season of Transparent. You’ve also got Catastrophe, which was co-created by Sharon Horgan, as well as Jill Soloway’s new show I Love Dick. Is that sort of diversity a key goal for you?
We realized early on that most shows out there were being created by men, and had this masculine point of view and male gaze. We actively realized that if we pursued great female filmmakers, or people with that point of view — I couldn’t tell you how the shows would be different, but we knew that they would be. I think that’s come to pass. It’s all in an effort to be different, and to make stuff that cuts through … far over half of our showrunners are women. I’d like to put that out there because sometimes I think it goes unnoticed.
I love incredibly talented people, so I don’t care what gender they are. [But] I have learned from Jill, from talking with her — there’s a masculine style of leadership and a feminine style. Jill talks a lot about Alan Ball as a more feminine style. The masculine style would be, “We’re going to the horizon; everyone fall in behind me.” And then there’s what she would call a more feminine style, where you’re not in front of the group saying, “Everyone fall in behind me.” You’re behind them saying, “Let’s all go forward. How do we do this as a whole?”
What about other forms of diversity? Do you think you’ve done enough in terms of, say, people of color— particularly behind the camera?
From day one, we’ve talked about diversifying from the kind of people who have traditionally made television. We can’t do everything at once, but I think right now that work is most evident with women and with LGBTQI. And over time, you will see that become more evident in every sort of diversity. It’s something we continue to work on in our effort to be different, to do something good for the world.
Amazon has become known for your “pilot season” process, in which you post all of your series contenders online ahead of a decision on whether to move to series. Does the system work any differently for half-hours than hours?
I can’t speak to the role of [pilot season with] the hours versus half-hours, because I only do the half-hours. But it is, in essence, the same thing: a tool in our tool bag. Straight-to-series is a tool. Ordering five seasons is a tool. Haven’t found a reason to use it yet, but it’s an option out there. There is no doubt in my mind that making a pilot helps a series be better. It might only be 2 percent. You might learn one thing. But in a world of Peak TV, 2 percent could be the difference between a show that’s good and excellent. The enemy of excellent isn’t terrible. The enemy of excellent is good. And that’s what we’re trying to avoid. So the pilots allow us to take greater risks. It allows you to learn something.
Is there ever any concern about shows being seen as in competition with each other?
Listen, we picked up all of our pilots the last time. Few things bother me, but one of the few things that [does] is people talking about “voting” for pilots. There’s no vote mechanism on the site, ever. There’s no voting. We’re just trying to glean implicit data. Do people finish watching it? Do they rewatch it? And explicit data: What do critics think? What do the users think? You’re just trying to use that to make smart decisions. I think you can learn stuff [from pilots], and we’ll continue to test risky ideas that way.
And yet, as you noted, you don’t always do pilots now.
With Woody, we didn’t do it. Fleabag and Catastrophe, we didn’t do it. Catastrophe had the pilot that you’ve seen, that we got to see [first]. And Fleabag had a slightly different version that we saw. So we were able to see those ourselves [before ordering]. There was no version with Woody where we could’ve piloted the show. You look at Woody Allen and his body of work and you go, “I’m pretty sure he can pull off the writing. I’m pretty sure he can pull off the directing and the casting.” How much are we going to learn from the pilot? And he’s not going to do a pilot.
Do you think there will be a lot more projects at Amazon that skip pilot season?
My guess is in the future we’ll probably do more straight-to-series. But I’m a huge believer in pilots, and pilot season. I’m a true believer. It’s one of the best parts — that you can put these things out there. As some form of artist myself, I think it’s important that your work gets seen, and I think people like that and are attracted to it.
Plus, it gives you some extra content, since you’re streaming everything you make. The broadcast networks, up until the early 1990s, used to air their busted pilots all the time.
They also did community tests, where you would air a pilot in a small regional area and see how people reacted. This is not something we suddenly made up. There are echoes of everything throughout the history of communications and networks.
So I have to ask about working with Woody Allen. I mean, do you really work with him, or do you simply write a check to him and wait for the finished product?
Woody gets to make what Woody wants to make. I don’t suppose that I’m going to make his product better. Our role in that was talking Woody through, “Here’s why he should do TV. Here’s the opportunity.” But Woody made that show entirely on his own. I think that is the way you work with someone like Woody.
What do you think of the end result?
I’m so excited by it. I mean, I’m a lifelong fan. Just to see Woody and Elaine [May], in particular, and then see great performances from Miley [Cyrus] and Rachel [Brosnahan] and everyone else on the show.
Do you think there will be a second project from him?
I don’t have an answer. I do not know that much of the future yet.
Speaking of famous film directors: What’s the status of your Whit Stillman project, The Cosmopolitans?
Whit is currently writing the series.
So it’s still in contention and it will be made into a series?
We ordered the scripts. I hope so. Whit moves as his own pace. Whit is doing Love and Friendship for us, which is brilliant. He’s very singularly focused. But he’s writing them right now. God, I hope that we make it. I love those characters. I think Whit is a brilliant filmmaker who fits with what we do.
We’re starting to see streaming services cancel shows, rather than just keep ordering more. Netflix recently confirmed the pending end of Bloodline. You’ve ordered more seasons of everything since Transparent premiered. Are you going to just keep adding shows, or will there be a contraction at some point?
There will definitely not be contraction. We’ve gotten great feedback from our customers and from the critical community. We’ve only gotten bigger over time, and directionally we’ll continue to go that way. I want a greater breadth of content, but as long as the audience wants to see [a show] and the characters are speaking to the creators, I think we should continue to make those shows. But maybe a show doesn’t need to come back every six months. I don’t know what the right amount of time is. I know I don’t just want to make the same five shows forever. But if those five shows are good, I want them to come back however regular the interval is. So, canceling seems like an archaic term to me. The idea exists, the actors exist.
Is there a cap, then, on how many more hours and how many more shows you’ll be making over the next one to two years?
The answer is, I don’t know. Directionally, it only gets bigger. We’re only going to be making more and more [shows]. But I just think it’s important to do that in a really practiced, premeditated way … There comes a point where you have the maximum amount of value for [the service]. At that point, you don’t stop making shows, you go, “Okay, we’ve got our smart, independent-film shows. Now we want to pivot 30 degrees to the left, and start doing some action-comedies.” If those get a good reception, you start making more of those. There are a lot of categories that we’re not yet in.
Sam Sokolow is the President of EUE/Sokolow, a Los Angeles and New York based television production company that he founded with EUE/Screen Gems principals Jeff Cooney and Chris Cooney. At EUE/Sokolow, Sam oversees all aspects of television & film development and production, including script and format creation & the packaging of intellectual properties as well as full third party production services — every aspect of bringing television shows, limited series and films to market.
Currently, Sam is executive producing Genius, a scripted series for National Geographic Network. The first season of Genius is based on Walter Isaacson’s New York Times Bestseller Einstein and is being produced in partnership with OddLot Entertainment, Fox 21 Television and Imagine Entertainment with Ron Howard directing the pilot episode.
Since opening their doors at the beginning of 2011, EUE/Sokolow has set up scripted and reality television projects at HBO, ABC, Nat Geo, NBCUniversal Television, TNT, Freeform, E!, LMN, HLN, OWN, & Travel Channel. EUE/Sokolow is currently packaging and shopping independently financed television sit-com presentations with Caryn Lucas (The Nanny), Blair Singer (Mysteries Of Laura) and Luke Greenfield (Let’s Be Cops) and developing their ever-growing slate of projects. EUE/Sokolow is currently in production on 23, a pilot for ABC Freeform, and recently saw their true crime special, The Real SVU, air on LMN.
From 2002-2009, Sam served as a founder and Co-CEO of SokoLobl Entertainment, an independent television production company based in Los Angeles. While at SokoLobl, Sam created and executive produced 10 original television series including Taildaters for MTV; Man vs. Vegas for CMT; Ballbreakers and Vegas Weddings Unveiled for GSN; Pay It Off for BET, and Deion and Pilar: Primetime Love for Oxygen. SokoLobl also executive produced the documentary film The Kentucky Kid for MTV; reality series Burned and Trick it Out for MTV and Ultimatum for Style Channel.
Previously, Sam co-wrote, produced and directed the award-winning independent feature film The Definite Maybe, starring Josh Lucas, Roy Scheider and Bob Balaban. In 1999, Sam became the first filmmaker to self-distribute his own feature film via the Internet, a groundbreaking initiative that landed him on Good Morning America and in Time Magazine.
In 2000, Sam served as Co-President of Homemade Entertainment, a venture capital backed television content website. In 1999, Sam worked in the marketing department of the NFL in New York, where he helped develop strategic marketing campaigns for the NFL brand. 1994 to 1997, Sam served as a television & radio commercial producer for Wells, Rich & Greene Advertising. He was an Associate Producer on Barbara Kopple’s Emmy Award-winning CBS movie Fallen Champ: The Untold Story of Mike Tyson. From 1993-1994, Sam held a position as a staff reporter for the New York Daily News covering crime and community affairs for the Manhattan and Queens Metro section.
Partial Filmography:
The Cover (TV) Executive Producer
Diplomatic Immunity (TV) Executive Producer
Genius (TV) Executive Producer 2017
The Real SVU (TV) Executive Producer 2016
Vacation Chasers (TV) Executive Producer 2015
F-ing Fast (TV) Executive Producer 2013
Pay It Off (TV) Executive Producer 2009
Upgrade You (TV) Executive Producer 2008 – 2009
Deion and Pilar Sanders: Prime Time Love (TV) Executive Producer 2008
The Kentucky Kid (TV) Creative Executive 2008
Hottest Mom in America (TV) Executive Producer 2007
Angola Prison Football Producer 2006
Trick It Out (TV) Executive Producer 2005
Bailbreakers (TV) Executive Producer 2005
Man vs. Vegas (TV) Executive Producer 2005
Ultimatum (TV) Executive Producer 2004
Burned (TV) Executive Producer 2003
Taildaters (TV) Executive Producer 2002 – 2003
The Definite Maybe Director, Writer 1997
Fallen Champ: Untold Story of Mike Tyson (TV) Associate Producer 1993
NatGeo Orders First-Ever Scripted Series With Ron Howard & Brian Grazer Attached | Variety | April 28, 2016
National Geographic Channel has officially jumped into the scripted game.
The cabler has given a straight-to-series order to “Genius,” an anthology series that will tell the fascinating stories of the world’s most brilliant innovators. The first installment of “Genius” will focus on Albert Einstein.
Ron Howard is attached to direct the first episode, and Brian Grazer will serve as an exec producer. Fox 21 Television Studios is producing with Howard and Grazer’s Imagine Television, OddLot Entertainment and EUE/Sokolow.
The premiere season centering around Einstein is based on Walter Isaacson’s book about the famed scientist, “Einstein: His Life and Universe.” Noah Pink will pen the television adaptation.
“’Genius’ is perfectly emblematic of our vision to create premium, distinctive and highly entertaining content that fits the National Geographic brand,” said National Geographic Channels CEO Courteney Monroe, who has recently expressed her desire to break NatGeo into the scripted space.
Pink will serve as an exec producer with Howard, Grazer, Francie Calfo, Gigi Pritzker, Rachel Shane, Sam Sokolow and Jeff Cooney. Melissa Rucker and Anna Culp are co-exec producers. A showrunner is expected to be announced soon.
“We couldn’t be happier to be working with Imagine and OddLot to bring our spirit of creative adventure and passion for great storytelling to NatGeo as they embark on their first scripted series. And to have Ron direct the first episode is incredibly exciting,” commented Fox 21 Television Studios president Bert Salke. “’Genius’ is a franchise with infinite possibilities. We think this installment that tells the fascinating backstory of the man who articulated the theory of relativity is just the beginning of a long and successful partnership between our companies.”
Howard commented, “Having already worked with National Geographic on ‘Breakthrough’ and currently in production on ‘Mars’— our exciting unscripted and scripted hybrid series that tells of our journey to colonize Mars — I look forward to their support as we tell this ambitious but intimate and revealing human story behind Einstein’s scientific brilliance. I hope that his story, as well as those of other geniuses, will both entertain and inspire the next generation of Einsteins.”
“We have been patient in our search for the perfect partners to help bring Walter Isaacson’s incredible book on Einstein to life in a unique, thought-provoking and entertaining way,” OddLot’s Pritzker said. “After cultivating the project for many years, we are ecstatic that ‘Genius’ will be OddLot’s first foray into television and that this remarkable story will be realized with Ron Howard at the helm and with the support of our great partners at NatGeo, FOX 21 TVS, Imagine and EUE/Sokolow.”
While “Genius” is the first scripted series to be greenlit at NatGeo, the cable net is developing a slew of scripted projects from high-profile talent including Scott Rudin. In December, Monroe brought on exec Carolyn Bernstein to head scripted programming.
Production is slated to begin this summer in Prague with “Genius” eyeing a spring 2017 premiere. The series will debut in 171 countries and in 45 languages.
Ann Patchett at her bookstore, Parnassus Books, in Nashville, with one of her shop dogs.CreditHeidi Ross
The pilgrims have been coming to Nashville for as long as the Grand Ole Opry has been on the radio. They come for Fan Fair and Taylor Swift concerts or just to walk down Lower Broad in cowboy boots. Parents visit their children in college. Conventioneers deplane by the thousands. Nashville is a hip city now, with a food scene, an art scene and two poorly performing professional sports teams.
With all the reasons to travel to Nashville, one might be surprised to learn that some people come just to see a small independent bookstore. It’s true. The Book Faithful journey to Music City because they still like their novels printed on paper. They come because they’ve heard about the shop dogs, or because someone told them years ago that bookstores were moving onto the endangered species list and they wanted to see one that was thriving in its natural habitat: in a strip mall, behind Fox’s Donut Den, beside Sherwin-Williams Paint Store. Some come in hopes of seeing a favorite author read, or catching a glimpse of the author who co-owns the store.
That would be me.
Karen Hayes and I opened Parnassus Books in November 2011. This summer, when Pickles and Ice Cream Maternity went out of business, we took down the adjoining wall and doubled our space. Business is good, which, by bookstore standards, means we spring for employee health insurance and pay the rent.
Karen and I are vocal supporters of the Shop Local movement, while at the same time benefiting from the Destination Bookstore travelers. It seems as if every time I’m in the back room signing special orders or meeting with staffers to pick a book for our First Editions Club, Bill, the tall Englishman who works the front, comes to tell me a book club has just arrived from Omaha or Bangor or Sweden. I go out and pose for group pictures, recommend books, give an impromptu tour. I always ask the same question, “What made you think I’d be here?” because seriously, I’m gone a lot. They always give me the same answer: I’m not why they came. They came to see the store.
With its high wooden shelves and rolling ladders and dangling stars, Parnassus is — if I may say so myself — worth a visit, a reminder that a strip mall need not be judged by its parking lot. But there are many bookstores that could stand as the centerpiece of a vacation. Here are some categories to consider when searching for one.
Children’s Books
Before we opened Parnassus, I made a fact-finding tour of American bookstores. The best advice I got was this: If you want customers, you have to raise them yourself. That means a strong children’s section. If e-books have taken a bite out of the adult market, they’ve done very little damage to children’s books, maybe because even the most tech-savvy parents understand that reading “Goodnight Moon” off your phone doesn’t create the same occasion for bonding.
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At the Curious George Store, in Cambridge, Mass.
There are some knockout stores that sell nothing but children’s books, including the Curious George Store in Cambridge, Mass., Wild Rumpus in Minneapolis, Books of Wonder in New York, and Tree House Books in Ashland, Ore., as well as loads of general interest stores that do a particularly great job with their children’s section, like Women & Children First in Chicago and Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn.
For many of us, children’s books are the foundation of bookselling, the cornerstone, the rock on which this church is built.
Before going, be sure to check the bookstores’ events calendars for visiting authors. If I may make a sweeping generalization, children’s book authors — from those who write board books suitable for teething to those who write young adult fiction full of vampires and angst — are the nicest people on the planet. Not only will they talk to your child or young adult, they will relate to them, they will draw pictures for them, they will create an indelible link between reading and joy.
The Destination Stores
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An Unlikely Story Bookstore and Café in Plainville, Mass.CreditWarren Jagger
I’m not sure why you’d be going to Greenwood, Miss., except for a mad desire to see TurnRow Book Company. It’s one of the most beautiful bookstores I know, and the sheer unlikelihood of its presence makes a traveler feel she’s stumbled into an oasis in the Mississippi Delta. Thanks to the Viking Range plant, the town also has a few top-notch restaurants and a very pretty inn, but the bookstore is the reason to go.
And since you’re in Greenwood, you’ve got to go to Oxford, a town defined by its writers. You can visit Faulkner’s home as well as the bookstore, or make that bookstores. Richard Howorth, the former mayor of Oxford, has three locations on the downtown square: the original Square Books;Square Books, Jr., the children’s store; and Off Square, which sells discount books and provides space for author events. Despite the enormousness of Ole Miss, these three stores are the backbone of Oxford.
When was the last time you strolled around downtown Los Angeles near Skid Row? Never? I’m from Los Angeles and it took the Last Bookstore to get me there. The store’s tagline, “What are you waiting for? We won’t be here forever,” has a suitably apocalyptic ring to it, but the place is so monumental that it’s hard to imagine it going anywhere: 22,000 square feet on three floors with new and used books, vinyl records and gallery space. The whole thing appears to have been made out of books, books that are folded and fanned and stacked into towering sculptures. The clientele is as eclectic and fascinating as the reading selection. It did my heart good to see so many tattooed kids with black nail polish and nose rings sprawled out in chairs reading books.
As long as you’re going to places you never thought you’d go, head to Plainville, Mass., to see An Unlikely Story Bookstore & Café, which I hope will soon replace Disney World as the place all parents feel duty-bound to take their children. Jeff Kinney took part of the proceeds from his juggernaut series “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” and built his hometown a four-story bookstore — the ultimate fulfillment of literary civic duty. The building contains a dazzling bookshop, event space and cafe, and the top floor will soon be a Wimpy Kid museum, complete with movie props and the model for the Wimpy Kid Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade balloon. (How do you know that your character is reaching the heights of Snoopy? You get your own parade balloon.)
The Tiny Stores
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The little Corner Bookstore on the Upper East Side in Manhattan.
I’m a sucker for a little bookstore. In the right hands, the limited space can set off an explosion of personality and innovation. It’s like going to a French bistro with five tables and five things on the menu: You discover they’re exactly the right five things. New York City, land of skyrocketing rents and ubiquitous nail salons, has some of the best tiny bookstores in the world, including the Corner Bookstore,192 Books and my favorite, Three Lives & Company. Sometimes what’s lost in square footage is made up for by a brilliant staff, or maybe it’s just that the people who work in tiny stores really do know exactly where every book is located. And they’ve read them. Little bookstores give off that same warm, snug feeling one gets from reading a novel in a comfy chair. Go look at the light in Newtonville Books outside Boston, or drive down the cape to Provincetown Bookshop, that essential last stop before hitting the beach. The novelist Louise Erdrich owns the tiny Birchbark Books in Minneapolis, a store that uses a chunk of its limited space to display an elaborately carved confessional box. You’ll wish every bookstore had one.
The Venerables
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Grolier Poetry Book Shop near Harvard Square in Cambridge, Mass.CreditShef Renyolds
In Washington you see the Vietnam Memorial, the new National Museum of African American History & Culture and Politics & Prose Bookstore. It’s where the Obamas shop, and it’s where the movers and shakers of our nation’s capital come to see what’s really going on. It also happens to be where I eat lunch, as they have the best bookstore cafe I know.
Doesn’t everyone who visits Harvard go across the street to the Harvard Book Store, a shop as esteemed as the university? When you’re finished there (it will take all day), walk down Plympton Street to Grolier Poetry Book Shop. In Cambridge a store that sells nothing but poetry seems indispensable.
But if you’re interested in Grolier’s aesthetic opposite, go to the fabulous Books & Books. It’s everything I love about Miami without any of the things I don’t love about Miami, a store where books are elevated to new heights of gorgeousness. Just walking in the door of either the Coral Gables or South Beach location makes me feel like an automatic hipster, a book hipster. I always leave with armloads of art books and travel books, things I never knew I needed but I do need desperately.
And then, of course, there’s Powell’s: an entire block, a dizzying, self-proclaimed City of Books. The fact that Portland, Ore., celebrates being defined by its independent bookstore is really all you need to know about Portland.
The Personals
I went on my first book tour in 1992 when I was 28, and I have been going on book tours ever since. I have made it a point to go to bookstores in every town I’ve ever driven through. I go both as a writer and a reader, for business and for pleasure, and I have been in love with too many to make a comprehensive list here. Still, I have to call out some of my favorites, like Boswell Book Company in Milwaukee, lit by the internal fire of one Daniel Goldin, a stupendously great bookseller. And since you’re in Milwaukee, you won’t be that far from McLean & Eakin Booksellers in Petoskey, Mich., a personal favorite that proves Northern Michigan has a lot more to offer than cherries and apples. Malaprop’s was the heart and soul of Asheville, N.C., when Asheville was a sleepy little hippie town, and it’s still its heart and soul now that the city is cool and overcrowded, a position Malaprop’s maintained by being unabashedly true to itself.
No bookstore ever made a strip mall look better than Book Passage in Corte Madera, Calif. Every author you could hope to see comes to read at Book Passage.
And then there’s Explore Booksellers in Aspen, Colo., a town that’s gotten so expensive that the bookstore would have to sell Chanel bags alongside Michael Chabon novels in order to make the rent, so a group of people got together and bought it so that the town could have a bookstore
All these bookstores will welcome you, as will those I failed to mention. They’re delicate little ecosystems based on a passion for books and a belief in community. They’re here for you, but they need your attention and support to thrive.
Of course we’d love to see you at Parnassus. The shop dogs are lazy. They pile up in the office and sleep beneath the desks, but if you ask, we’ll wake them up and send them out on the floor. When you’ve gotten your recommendations from our brilliant staff, and listened to story time in the children’s section, and seen a couple of authors (and country music stars) shopping themselves, we’ll give you advice on where to go to dinner and hear music. Or maybe you just want to sit in a quiet chair and read your new book. Go ahead, that’s what we’re here for.
A top Democratic super PAC is launching a war room that promises to make President-elect Donald Trump’s life miserable as he prepares to enter the White House.
Liberal political operative David Brock, a close ally of former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, told reporters on Tuesday that his super PAC, American Bridge, has established a war room that will act as an aggressor and a watchdog for the Trump transition team and his incoming administration.
Brock claims to have the largest archive of Trump opposition research in the Democratic Party, including thousands of hours of footage that operatives are mining for damaging material.
“The Trump administration is shaping up to be one of the most corrupt since the Gilded Age,” Brock said. “American Bridge will use everything at its disposal to hold it accountable.”American Bridge has established a rapid response team that will fact-check Trump’s claims in real time. Experts are said to be combing through Trump’s domestic and foreign business interests, his personal life, his charitable foundation and those he has associated with, using Freedom of Information Act requests to uncover new details.
Its findings will be passed along privately to the media, to lawmakers on Capitol Hill and even to Trump’s own supporters in an effort to undermine the president-elect.
Brock’s nakedly political tactics rub some in the party the wrong way.
Progressive strategist Jonathan Tasini, who supported Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the Democratic primaries, told The Hill that attacks from Clinton’s allied groups failed to make an impact on the election because Democrats didn’t give voters a reason to support their vision for the country.
“People won’t come to the Democratic Party unless we show an alternative; it’s not just about the dark art of attacking and destroying Donald Trump,” Tasini said. “David Brock is the worst possible messenger for Democrats. He should not be given a single dollar more.”
Tasini would rather see Democratic donors funding other party activities, instead of supporting Brock.
“Everything should go to rebuilding the party and energizing activists. The election results speak to how effective his strategy has been,” Tasini said.
But Brock took credit for his attack lines dragging Trump’s popularity to historic lows for a president-elect, even if it wasn’t enough to beat back Trump’s insurgent campaign.
He argued that the headwinds Clinton faced — a deep-seated desire for change and roiling anger at political elites — are what ultimately doomed the Democrat.
“There were factors that overcame voters’ view that Trump is unfit for office,” Brock said. “They voted for him despite that.”
Brock’s web of liberal groups raised some $75 million in the 2016 cycle.
In addition to American Bridge, Brock’s network of liberal groups includes the media watchdog Media Matters, the judicial and regulatory group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and the social media platform Shareblue.
All are in the process of reinventing themselves in the age of Trump.
Brock has told The Hill that Shareblue could turn into the “Breitbart of the left” — as long as it receives a significant financial investment.
He’s seeking additional funding for CREW, saying he hopes it will rival the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch. Judicial Watch had a huge impact on the 2016 elections, using regulatory channels to create a steady flow of problems for Clinton, most often related to her use of a private email server while secretary of State.
And Brock said that Media Matters will need to retrain its focus from monitoring Fox News and conservative talk radio to combating a scourge of fake news and conspiracy theories that have percolated online.
Brock and many Democrats partially blame Clinton’s loss on a proliferation of fake news spread across social media platforms like Facebook.
“A lot of garbage came spewing out of Facebook, and these companies need to adopt new standards and clean their own house,” Brock said. “We’ll be involved in a campaign to push them to do that.”
Democrats are clinging to what looks like a healthy popular vote victory for Clinton to question Trump’s legitimacy.
“The public demands this. Hillary Clinton got more votes for president than anyone in history,” said Democratic strategist James Carville. “She’ll win the popular vote by more than 2 percent, or 2.5 million votes. It would be a dereliction of duty not to do something of this magnitude.”
Brock said he didn’t have a price tag yet for the new initiatives at American Bridge but said he’d heard from donors who were energized by Clinton’s loss and eager to contribute to combating Trump.
Brock has invited 225 current donors and 175 prospective donors to a meeting in Palm Beach, Fla., over Trump’s inaugural weekend as he seeks to fund the groups he hopes will rival the Koch brothers’ network of influence on the right.
Still, several top Clinton donors interviewed by The Hill have expressed deep frustration with the direction of the party and say they’ll remain on the sidelines as Democrats rebuild.
Brock said he’s hopeful Clinton will join the fight once the sting of her election defeat is behind her.
“We’d like to see her engaged when she’s ready,” Brock said.
This isn’t Brock’s first time looking for damaging information on an administration. In the ’90s, before his politics changed, Brock dogged the Bill Clinton administration with reporting on the president’s sex life.
Born in Denmark, 1978, Christian Torpe won critical acclaim and the Danish Oscar for writing the Bille August comeback and San Sebastian winner “Stille hjerte”. He got his breakthrough with the hit TV series “Rita,” for which he was nominated for “International Producer of the year” and “European producer of the year” at the Monte Carlo Television Festival, a show that was remade in The Netherlands as “Tessa” and in France as “Sam”, where it became the highest rated premiere in six years. Following the success of Rita, he went on to create and run the TV show based on Stephen King’s “The Mist,” produced by The Weinstein Company. He currently lives in Los Angeles and Copenhagen.
Filmography:
The Mist (TV) Executive Producer, Director 2017
Sam (TV) Executive Producer 2016
Tessa (TV) Writer 2015
Hjørdis (V) Writer 2015
Rita (TV) Executive Producer 2012 – 2015
Silent Heart (Still hjerte) Writer 2014
Almost Perfect Writer 2012
Park Road (Lærkevej) (TV) Writer 2009 – 2010
Store drømme (TV) Writer 2009
Får (Short) Writer 2009
Maj & Charlie (TV) Writer 2008
Gu’skelov du kom (TV) Writer 2007
Et andet sted (Short) Writer 2006
Flyd mine tårer (Short) Writer 2005
Endelig fredag (TV) Writer 2003 – 2004
OBLS (TV) Writer 2003
Vind boxen (TV) Writer 2002
Agent: Lanny Noveck (ICM)
Manager: Principal Entertainment LA
In the Media: Stephen King’s ‘The Mist’ Gets Spike Pilot Order | Variety | Feb 25, 2016
Spike has ordered a pilot for “The Mist,” based on the classic Stephen King novella, Variety has learned.
The scripted drama, which hails from Dimension Television, tells a harrowing story about a seemingly innocuous mist that seeps into a small town and creates immense havoc. Christian Torpe will executive produce. Torpe created “Rita” in Denmark, now finishing its fourth season, and has developed programming for both Showtime and AMC.
“We are thrilled to join forces with the incredibly creative Christian Torpe and Dimension Films to develop Stephen King’s enthralling novella to a compelling series unlike anything else on television,” said Sharon Levy, Executive Vice President, Original Series, Spike.
“We are excited to be in business with Spike on their first scripted production pilot and working with the very talented Christian Torpe to further explore Stephen King’s classic novella and bring this riveting series to television audiences,” said Bob Weinstein, Co-Chariman of The Weinstein Company.
Levy, Ted Gold, SVP, Scripted Original Series, and Lauren Ruggiero, Senior Director, Scripted Programming will oversee the project.
‘The Mist’ TV Series Emerges From Dimension & Scribe Christian Torpe | Deadline | Sept 16, 2015
The Weinstein Company’s Dimension Television is developing a TV series based on The Mist, first a Stephen King novella and then a 2007 MGM film directed by Frank Darabont. The project, which Dimension says is moving forward with King’s blessing, is from writer Christian Torpe, who created the Danish series Rita which is now finishing its fourth season.
The series will tell an original story about a seemingly innocuous mist that seeps into a small town but contains limitless havoc. From psychological terrors to otherworldly creatures, the mist causes the town residents’ darkest demons to appear forcing them to battle the supernatural event and, more importantly, each other.
“The terror and drama in Stephen King’s novella are so vast that we felt serialized television is the best place to explore them in greater depth,” said Bob Weinstein, co-chairman The Weinstein Company and Dimension Films. “With this show, Christian has created a fascinating band of characters and a story with infinite scares.”
Dimension TV’s Megan Spanjian, Matthew Signer and Keith Levine will oversee the project.
TWC has been active on the TV front, most recently mining the Toronto Film Festival to pick up U.S. rights to the crime drama Trapped, an Icelandic TV series created by Everest director Baltasar Kormakur. Then today, it revealed that it has come aboard to snag North American rights to Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes’ Doctor Thorne, a three-part drama for ITV.
Torpe is repped by ICM Partners and Principal Entertainment LA.
ON LIVING
By Kerry Egan
208 pp. Riverhead Books. $24.
Hospice care is rooted in the belief that death is a natural part of life, that dying can be managed so that people may remain alert and as pain-free as possible until the end, and that a good death is as much a spiritual experience as it is a physical one, for all involved.
Here is where my mother would have said: “You must be joking.”
The Harvard Divinity School-educated hospice chaplain Kerry Egan would appreciate that sentiment. After Egan’s 5-year-old says he believes her job is to “make people die so they can go to heaven,” she writes, “He seemed remarkably calm that his mother was a Grim Reaper in clogs.” When a friend quizzes Egan on how she spends her days as a counselor to the dying and their families, Egan explains that she sits at bedsides, tries to be a peaceful presence, listens, sometimes speaks, or sings, or holds a hand, all with as much courage and kindness as she can muster. “I imagine a giant bubble of love encompassing the patient and me,” Egan says. Her friend’s response: “You consider this work?”
Yes, Egan is funny, honest and self-deprecating; however, there is nothing silly at all about her assertion that “the spiritual work of being human is learning how to love and how to forgive.”
“On Living” is part memoir, part spiritual reflection and part narration of tales told to Egan by her patients. Her transitions between other people’s stories and her own personal and professional observations can be disconcerting, but she is such good company that you will forgive her.
Chaplains traditionally hear deathbed confessions. Usually these remain secret. Many of Egan’s patients apparently want her to share theirs, and she honors those requests.
“Promise me you’ll tell my stories,” the elderly Gloria pleads. “Maybe someone else can get wise from them.” Gloria recounts the shame she inflicted on her family with a baby born out of wedlock when she was 19. (Her father “was the strictest father in the world,” who wouldn’t let her “wear skirts above the knee or a smudge of lipstick.”) She chose to keep her son in spite of strong pressure to give him up for adoption. Gloria tells Egan that the man she married, who her son believes is his father, “didn’t love him right.” She wants her son to know the truth, but is afraid to tell him. Gloria’s question — “What if he doesn’t think the best thing I ever did was a good thing at all?” — resonates after the details of the story fade.
Some of Egan’s patients have dementia and terminal cancer. One young man is left a quadriplegic after being shot during a robbery. They rave or mutely clench fists. They lie, they weep, they laugh, they swear, and they tell their stories over and over again. Egan listens, learns and writes it all down. “On Living” adds to the understanding of end-of-life issues in an important and accessible way, because Egan’s patients and caregivers could be you and me, and no doubt will be sooner than we expect. How are we to live in the meantime? Chaplain Egan offers this humble suggestion:
“If there is any great difference between the people who know they are dying and the rest of us, it’s this: They know they’re running out of time. They have more motivation to do the things they want to do, and to become the person they want to become. . . . There’s nothing stopping you from acting with the same urgency the dying feel.” If there is one thing death teaches us, it’s how to live.
“I’m privileged to have Britain’s most popular drama series on BBC One,” says Charlotte Moore, director of BBC content.
The BBC said Wednesday that it has ordered three more seasons of hit drama Call The Midwife for flagship channel BBC One.
Seasons seven to nine were commissioned by Charlotte Moore, director of BBC content, and Piers Wenger, director of BBC drama commissioning. Each season will consist of eight hourlong episodes and a holiday special. The order will take the nuns and midwives featured in the show, which in the U.S. has aired on PBS, into the mid-1960s.
The three-year renewal comes as some U.K. industry watchers have predicted more multiseason show orders amid competition for popular series from Netflix and other digital players. For example, Britain’s Channel 4 lost its hit show Black Mirror to Netflix this year.
Made by Sam Mendes’ Neal Street Productions, Call the Midwife, which debuted in 2012, has been the most-watched drama series in the U.K., the BBC said. All seasons have seen “near or over 10 million viewers per episode,” the public broadcaster said. “The series has been praised for its compassionate and bold approach to issues including stillbirth, mental health, abortion, homosexuality, race and disability.”
Said Pippa Harris, executive producer for Neal Street: “Like a truly supportive parent, the BBC has nurtured our series from conception onwards, and this exceptional three-series commission further demonstrates their care and commitment.”
Said Moore: “I’m privileged to have Britain’s most popular drama series on BBC One, and this new three-[season] commission underlines our commitment to the show.”
Heidi Thomas, creator, writer and executive producer of the show, said: “I am hugely excited by the prospect of creating three more [seasons] of Call the Midwife. In the 1960s, Britain was a country fizzing with change and challenge, and there is so much rich material — medical, social, and emotional — to be explored. We have now delivered well over one hundred babies on screen, and like those babies, the stories keep on coming!”
James Alefantis, owner of Comet Ping Pong, at his restaurant in Washington, D.C. Fake news websites have called it the home base of a child abuse ring led by Hillary Clinton and John D. Podesta.Credit Chad Bartlett for The New York Times
WASHINGTON — Days before the presidential election, James Alefantis, owner of a local pizza restaurant called Comet Ping Pong, noticed an unusual spike in the number of his Instagram followers.
Within hours, menacing messages like “we’re on to you” began appearing in his Instagram feed. In the ensuing days, hundreds of death threats — one read “I will kill you personally” — started arriving via texts, Facebook and Twitter. All of them alleged something that made Mr. Alefantis’s jaw drop: that Comet Ping Pong was the home base of a child abuse ring led by Hillary Clinton and her campaign chief, John D. Podesta.
When Mr. Alefantis discovered that his employees were getting similar abusive messages, he looked online to unravel the accusations. He found dozens of made-up articles about Mrs. Clinton kidnapping, molesting and trafficking children in the restaurant’s back rooms. The articles appeared on Facebook and on websites such as The New Nationalist and The Vigilant Citizen, with one headline blaring: “Pizzagate: How 4Chan Uncovered the Sick World of Washington’s Occult Elite.”
None of it was true. While Mr. Alefantis has some prominent Democratic friends in Washington and was a supporter of Mrs. Clinton, he has never met her, does not sell or abuse children, and is not being investigated by law enforcement for any of these claims. He and his 40 employees had unwittingly become real people caught in the middle of a storm of fake news.
“From this insane, fabricated conspiracy theory, we’ve come under constant assault,” said Mr. Alefantis, 42, who was once in a relationship with David Brock, a provocative former right-wing journalist who became an outspoken advocate for Mrs. Clinton.
Mr. Alefantis suspects those relationships may have helped to make him a target. “I’ve done nothing for days but try to clean this up and protect my staff and friends from being terrorized,” he said.
Fake news online has been at the center of a furious debate for the past few weeks over how it may have influenced voters in the presidential election. President Obama warned last week that we are “in an age where there’s so much active misinformation and it’s packaged very well” on social media sites. The criticism has buffeted web companies such as Google and Facebook, whose chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has promised to work on technology tools to slow the gusher of false digital information.
But Mr. Alefantis’s experience shows it is not just politicians and internet companies that are grappling with the fake news fallout. He, his staff and friends have become a new kind of private citizen bull’s-eye for the purveyors of false articles and their believers.
For more than two weeks, they have struggled to deal with the abusive social media comments and to protect photos of their own children, which were used in the false articles as evidence that the pizza restaurant was running a pedophilia ring. One person even visited Comet Ping Pong to investigate the allegations for himself.
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The Comet Ping Pong pizzeria.Credit Chad Bartlett for The New York Times
To combat the fake news tide, Mr. Alefantis has contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the local police, and he has asked Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Reddit to remove the articles. Yet the misinformation has continued to spread, growing into a theory known as #pizzagate that has traveled to Ireland. At one point, Comet’s staff counted five #pizzagate Twitter posts a minute. As recently as Sunday night, the Twitter message “Don’t let up. #PizzaGate EVERYWHERE” was reposted and liked hundreds of times.
“It’s like trying to shoot a swarm of bees with one gun,” said Bryce Reh, Comet’s general manager, whose wife asked him to leave his job because of the threats and vulgar messages they both have received on their social media accounts.
Mr. Alefantis, an artist born and raised in Washington, co-founded Comet Ping Pong 10 years ago as a casual spot for clay oven pizza. The restaurant has kid-friendly features like Ping-Pong tables and a craft room. Famous natives like members of the band Fugazi have held small shows there. The eatery, which seats 120, is a mash-up of red and white checkered tablecloths and modernist murals and paintings from friends of Mr. Alefantis.
Mr. Alefantis mingles with other Washington chefs and his establishment helped him to be named No. 49 in GQ magazine’s 50 most powerful people in Washington in 2012. His customers include some high-powered locals, such as Tony Podesta, the brother of John Podesta, whom Mr. Alefantis knows casually. Mr. Alefantis and Mr. Brock, who is the founder of Media Matters for America, a website that tracks press coverage critical of the Clintons and works to debunk misinformation in the conservative press, broke up five years ago.
The misinformation campaign began when John Podesta’s email account was hacked and his emails were published by WikiLeaks during the presidential campaign. Days before the election, users on the online message board 4Chan noticed that one of Mr. Podesta’s leaked emails contained communications with Mr. Alefantis discussing a fund-raiser for Mrs. Clinton.
The 4Chan users immediately speculated about the links between Comet Ping Pong and the Democratic Party. Some posited the restaurant was part of a larger Democratic child trafficking ring, which was a theory long held by some conservative blogs. That idea jumped to other social media services such as Twitter and Reddit, where it gained momentum on the page “The_Donald.” A new Reddit discussion thread called “Pizzagate” quickly attracted 20,000 subscribers.
Glen Caplin, a former campaign official for Mrs. Clinton, did not comment directly about Comet Ping Pong but said, “WikiLeaks has spawned several conspiracy theories that have been independently debunked.” Mr. Podesta did not respond to requests for comment.
Soon, dozens of fake news articles on sites such as Facebook, Planet Free Will and Living Resistance emerged. Readers shared the stories in Saudi Arabia and on Turkish and other foreign language sites.
Last week, one supporter of the Pizzagate theory shot a live video from within the restaurant during a busy dinner shift. Local police, who had parked across the street after Mr. Alefantis filed a report about the fake news stories and threats, told the man to leave.
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Patrons at Comet Ping Pong. Several of the restaurant’s employees have been barraged with ugly social media comments over the false child abuse allegations.Credit Chad Bartlett for The New York Times
In a statement, the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department said it was monitoring the situation and is “aware of general threats being made against this establishment.” The F.B.I. said it “does not confirm or deny the existence of investigations.”
Most troubling for Mr. Alefantis and staff has been the use of children’s images, pilfered from the restaurant’s social media pages and the personal accounts of friends who had “liked” Comet Ping Pong online. Those photos have been used across dozens of websites. Parents, who declined to talk publicly for fear of retribution, have hired lawyers to get the photos removed.
Musicians who have performed at Comet Ping Pong have been pulled in, too. Amanda Kleinman, whose band, Heavy Breathing, has performed there several times, deleted her Twitter account after the abusive comments became overwhelming. Similar comments have flooded her YouTube music clips.
“We are at a dangerous place in American culture where a good percentage of people aren’t distinguishing what is a real news source based on real reporting and fact-checking and only reinforcing pre-existing ideas they have,” Ms. Kleinman said.
The frustration has been compounded by the lack of recourse for Mr. Alefantis, his friends and employees. Yelp blocked the comments sections of Comet Ping Pong’s review page after reports of abusive comments and fake news in reviews. YouTube said it prohibits threats, harassment and hate speech and has tools for flagging violations and filing complaints for the site to take further action, but has largely not blocked comments on these videos. Twitter declined to comment, and Facebook did not have any further comment.
After employees and Mr. Alefantis complained to Reddit about how Comet Ping Pong was being targeted on the site, the #pizzagate discussion thread posted a warning that revealing personal information about individuals was prohibited.
“We know that we have more work to do and we take our responsibility to address online abuse seriously,” Reddit said in a statement.
Little relief appears in sight. Over the weekend, Comet Ping Pong received dozens of calls from people screaming obscenities and threats. Mr. Alefantis got 50 nasty Instagram direct messages, including one that warned, “This place should be burned to the ground!”
On Monday morning, when Mr. Alefantis picked up his phone, he saw a text from a staff member warning that an individual might protest in front of the restaurant.
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