Here's an ai prompt: Write me a vehicle for a movie star intent on making a debut on Broadway. Let's say he's a veteran of superhero flicks, so we want a character akin to his persona and a subject that comes with some contemporary relevance; maybe, because he played a tech genius onscreen, we have him wrestle with the vanguard of technology onstage. He's also acclaimed as a dramatic actor, so let's throw in a few hefty themes: addiction, suicide, adultery, trauma, and, for that genuine flawed great man zing, a pinch of misogyny.
If you plugged that prompt into a large language model like ChatGPT, it might spit out something a little like McNeal, but you could also spare the climate a few glugs of processing power and simply imagine the thing yourself. The end product, written by Ayad Akhtar and directed by Lincoln Center Theater's Bartlett Sher, doesn't stray far from what is algorithmically plausible based on past inputs. Robert Downey Jr., on shore leave between being Iron Man and winning an Oscar for Oppenheimer before returning to the CGI fold to play Doctor Doom, is in New York to star as an acclaimed writer named Jacob McNeal, or, rather, to stand tweedily in the center of the vast Vivian Beaumont stage, just below a projection of a giant iPhone screen (the design is by Michael Yeargan and Jake Barton, and Barton did the projections). McNeal is fretting about getting a call in the midst of a liver checkup, paying little attention to his doctor (Ruthie Ann Miles, underutilized here but always nice to see) as she tells him to stop drinking. The iPhone shows that the date is early October, a time of year he dreads because he keeps not winning a Nobel Prize.
この記事は New York magazine の October 07-20, 2024 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
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この記事は New York magazine の October 07-20, 2024 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です? サインイン
Inside the Patriot Wing - January 6 rioters are running their jail block like a gang. They're leaving more adicalized than ever
Early in the evening of July 13 in an isolated cell block of the D.C. Jail, about two miles east of the Capitol Building, a dozen detainees charged with some of the most violent crimes committed on January 6, 2021, were participating in a thousand-burpee challenge. The group made up roughly half of the inmates held in the block, a special unit sequestered from the jail’s other prisoners and known to its residents as “the Patriot Wing.” The challenge was in honor of a former resident of the unit, a fitness evangelist, who had recently been transferred out to serve a five-year prison sentence for attacking police officers with a floor lamp, a shoe, a nightstick, and a spiked club made from a broken table leg and nails.
A Body of Horrors - How The Substance turned Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley into one of the year's best movie monsters.
Coralie Fargeat's outré satire about modern beauty standards is a cautionary tale and 2024's wildest psychodrama, in which Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley slowly transform into a modern Frankensteined wonder. When Elisabeth Sparkle (Moore), a 50-year-old actress turned TV fitness instructor, is fired by a network executive who deems her too old, she makes a Faustian bargain, injecting herself with neon-green plasma that lets her live every other week as a sexy, spotless 20-something named Sue (Qualley). But each time Sue overstays her welcome, parts of Elisabeth's body age at punishing rates. Soon enough, she will become Monstro Elisasue, a distorted ogress who looks like Anjelica Huston in The Witches, if that movie had been 17 times more sinister.
Theater - Artificial Theatrics - Ayad Akhtar's play about AI is missing a human touch.
Here's an ai prompt: Write me a vehicle for a movie star intent on making a debut on Broadway. Let's say he's a veteran of superhero flicks, so we want a character akin to his persona and a subject that comes with some contemporary relevance; maybe, because he played a tech genius onscreen, we have him wrestle with the vanguard of technology onstage. He's also acclaimed as a dramatic actor, so let's throw in a few hefty themes: addiction, suicide, adultery, trauma, and, for that genuine flawed great man zing, a pinch of misogyny.
Boy Meets World - Actor Mark Eydelshteyn's first English-speaking role is a vape-smoking, frenzied son of a billionaire in Sean Baker's fairy tale gone wrong.
Mark eydelshteyn and I are in a car zooming down a mountain road on the first day of the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado. The young actor sits in front, while I’m in the back with two of the film’s publicists. His eyes light up as the driver informs him that his seat has a massager; he can’t believe such a thing exists. A few minutes later, he exclaims, “Guys, it really works! Let’s stop in a few minutes and change seats so you can try it out.” ¶ About half an hour later, as we settle in for our conversation in a restaurant with a dramatic view of the valley below, his buoyant mood has changed somewhat. He looks at me and asks quietly, “In your eyes, who am I?” ¶ Even stranger is what he says next: “I’m nothing.”
The System: Zak Cheney-Rice - Kamala's Comedown How the Harris campaign became a grim slog.
After an exuberant summer, an autumn chill has descended on Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign. The joyous rallies that were all over the news between mid-July, when Harris replaced Joe Biden atop the Democratic ticket, and the August convention, where she and Tim Walz accepted the party nomination, have quieted into more familiar spectacles. Her once-ascendant polling numbers have stalled and her campaign has become cautious, granting TV interviews mostly to a handful of local news channels in swing states. If the first month of her candidacy was an exhalation after the suffocating defeatism under Biden, the last weeks before Election Day have felt like a collective holding of breath.
Neighborhood News: The World's Largest Plumbing Repair - New York City's principal water-supply aqueduct gets a bypass operation.
The Delaware aqueduct, 85 miles end to end, is the longest tunnel in the world. It invisibly brings about half of New York City’s water, just over 500 million gallons per day, down from the Catskills to a holding basin in Yonkers. It’s about as old as Joe Biden, and it has not been drained for repairs since he was in high school. The stretch where it crosses under the Hudson (from Newburgh to Wappinger) passes through crumbly limestone, and it has been leaking for decades, now losing up to 35 million gallons of water daily. The best solution has been, as with many aging circulatory systems, bypass surgery. Getting down there required digging a pair of holes, 900 and 700 feet deep, then boring two and a half miles across to connect them. Two billion dollars and a decade later, that new tunnel is ready to connect to the old, and that means shutting the aqueduct off for eight months. Even just draining it so work can begin is a huge job. This summer, there were practice “dewatering events,” as the Department of Environmental Protection calls them. It’s a winter project because we use less water then.
Too Close to the Sun
With 143, Katy Perry joins the cursed ranks of pop flameouts this year.
The City's Newest Music Festival Was a Gay Dream
All Things Go brought young queer fans in front of many of their idols (just not Chappell Roan).
Eleven Madison Park Goes Casual, Sort Of
Daniel Humm is serving truffled tofu and negroni coladas at Clemente Bar.
A Cantonese Comeback
Cha Cha Tang can be frustrating, but it offers moments of excellence.
