The ‘Deadliest Catch’ of All? Capturing Epic Footage on Dangerous Seas

The editor and cinematographer break down how they turn 25,000 hours of footage into a compelling, cohesive story.

Article written for indiewire.com

The size and scope of producing a single season of “Deadliest Catch” is hard to fully fathom. There are seven different producing-camera teams on seven different boats, rolling cameras around the clock, producing 25,000 hours of footage over the course of a fishing season.

To ensure visual and narrative cohesion and quality, series editor Rob Butler and cinematographer David Reichert — both 2023 Emmy nominees — must stay across an enormous team and complicated workflow. It’s a task complicated by their limited ability to shape what is being shot as the stories unfold. This is because it takes weeks to get the footage off the boats (they often have to wait until the fishermen come ashore to offload their catch) and FedEx hard drives to Los Angeles, where a team of seven assistant editors load and log hundreds of hours of footage every week.

“It takes weeks and weeks before it gets in the system and I have a look at it,” said Reichert. “So what we’ve done to counteract that is we spend a solid week in Dutch Harbor with all the shooters going over how to tell the story.”

As detailed in the video below, Reichert’s preproduction camera clinics are how he lays the groundwork to establish the series’ unified look and approach coverage. According to Reichert, a vast majority of the “most hardcore” camera operators are not cut out for the challenge of shooting “Deadliest Catch.” Beyond the need to capture dynamic coverage under impossible, shooting-on-rough-seas conditions, operators are also tasked with being their own sound recordist and producer, making decisions of what stories and events are most important to track, all while fighting extreme sleep depravation, motion sickness, and the need to keep safe and their equipment dry.

Reichert, who has been with the series since Season 7, is proudest of how the cinematography has evolved and improved with each season by incorporating the latest technological advances, such as cameras that work better in low light (over half the fishing takes place at night), and testing out new camera stabilizers, drones, GoPros, and other tools that help add to the series’ ever-expanding repertoire.

What has impressed Butler is how responsive Reichert and his team are to feedback from the editorial team, as everything is in service to telling a story. That’s in part because the first step in piecing together the large interweaving narrative starts with the camera operators.

“They’ll be on the boat shooting all day and before they go to bed every night, they have to sit down and write a log of what they shot and what the big moments were,” explained Butler. It is with these notes that Butler’s editorial team starts to break the story.

“It then goes to a team of associate producers who start figuring out story threads and events that happen day-to-day,” said Butler. “They [pull together related footage] into a place where [the editors] can put that into a digestible storyline.”

It’s at this point Butler — along with fellow supervising editor Isaiah Camp, co-executive producer Johnny Beechler, and showrunner Arom Starr-Paul — start using color-coded notecards to map the various storylines over different episodes and start identifying key events that will anchor the season and keep the audience watching.

News & Documentary Emmy Noms Revealed: ‘Vice News Tonight’ Dominates As CNN Leads Networks

Article written for deadline.com by Erik Pederson

The nominations are out for the 44th annual News & Documentary Emmy Awards, and CNN leads the way with a commanding 45 noms ahead of Vice (30) and ABC and PBS (26 each). See the list of nominees in all 62 categories below or click here.

Vice’s Vice News Tonight — which wrapped its eight-season run in May — scored a dominant 28 noms, more than doubling its closest program rival, CBS stalwart 60 Minutes, which landed 11. ABC’s Nightline, PBS’ Frontline and National Geographic’s Trafficked with Mariana van Zeller are next with nine apiece, followed by CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 and PBS’ POV with seven apiece.

As for the marquee categories, vying for Outstanding Live News Program are ABC World News Tonight with David  Muir (ABC), Anderson Cooper 360 (CNN), CBS Evening News with Norah O’Donnell (CBS), CBS Mornings (CBS) and Nightly News with Lester Holt (NBC). Up for Best Documentary are Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain (CNN), Escape from Kabul (HBO Max), Frontline – Putin’s Attack on Ukraine: Documenting War Crimes (PBS), Good Night Oppy (Prime Video) and The Janes (HBO Max).

The hardware will be handed out during separate ceremonies for the News categories on September 28 and Documentary on September 29. Both will be held at the Palladium Times Square in Manhattan and livestreamed at watch.theemmys.tv and via the Emmys apps. The awards cover programs that premiered during calendar-year 2022.

“The News & Documentary Emmy Awards honor the work of dedicated professionals working at the highest level of the broadcast journalism and documentary filmmaking professions,” said Adam Sharp, President and CEO of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. “They pay tribute to the journalists who bring us up-to-the-minute reporting on the critical stories of our time and the documentary storytellers who explore important social, cultural, and political issues in great depth.”

Outstanding Politics and Government Documentary

A Radical Life     discovery+

In Her Hands     Netflix

Independent Lens           PBS

Apart

POV       PBS

Not Going Quietly

Watergate: High Crimes In The White House       CBS

‘Race to Survive Alaska’ : USA’s High-Stakes Outdoor Competition Series Comes with a $500K Prize

Article written by Dave Quinn for people.com

Race to Survive Alaska is turning the pressure up on the outdoor reality competition series.

The new USA Network series, which premieres Monday, challenges eight teams of two to six intense races over the course of 40 days through the harshest of Alaskan landscapes — all for the chance to win $500,000.

But getting to the finish line won’t be easy. Unlike other race shows, there are no cushy hotel rooms or even planes, trains and automobiles to help them get around. Instead, these survival experts must endure more than 100 miles of inhospitable, previously unexplored terrain on the strength of their own two feet with nothing but what they can carry.

Plopped in the middle of the Aleutian Alaskan islands, they’ll have to utilize their primitive survival skills to source their own food, water and shelter. It won’t be easy as they’ll have to battle every element of the dangerous Alaskan coastline, marked by its sprawling mountain ranges, ancient glaciers, suffocating rainforests and threatening wildlife.

“I was hoping there would be an easy way, but it’s Alaska — there’s no easy way,” one says in the premiere.

It’s one thing surviving the elements; it’s a whole other surviving each other.

This being a competition, the endurance racers will also have to push through their hunger pangs, injuries and mental anguish to beat one another to the end. As for the last team to make it to the finish line at the end of each episode, they’ll be eliminated.

Will the teams form alliances to help each other get there? Or stab one another in the back to make it to the end? There are plenty of possibilities, especially considering the dynamic within the racers, who are comprised of teams from diverse backgrounds and relationships.

They include father-son duo Jeff Leininger, 53, and Hunter Leininger, 21; friends and adventurers Robin Moore, 45, and Elizabeth Killham, 36 — an ER nurse and veterinarian who met on skydiving trip; as well as Alaskan hunters Brett Gatten, 46, and Esther Sanderlin, 40, who have been dating for two years.

Two sets of siblings are on the show: Alaskan brothers Wilson Hoogendorn, 23, and Oliver Hoogendorn, 25; and siblings and adventuring enthusiasts 20something Bella Crane and Cason Crane, 29, who made history by being the first person to plant the LGBTQ+ Pride Flag on all seven summits.

There’s also ice climber and mountain guide Max Djenohan, 33, who made a name for himself on Naked and Afraid, when he spent 156 days on four different continents. “Pretty much everything I do helps me get outdoors,” Deinohan says in the premiere.

He’s racing with friend and experienced survivalist Christian Junkar, 25. Two other teams of friends — professional rock climbers Genevive Walker, 33, and Favia Dubyk, 34; and martial arts enthusiasts Hakim Isler, 45, and Justice Norman, 38 — round out the group.

‘Waco: American Apocalypse’ Review: A Calamity in Context

Article written by John Anderson for The Wall Street Journal

Punditry abounds regarding the polarization of the American political landscape right now, but what one might call the Big Bangs of government distrust—Ruby Ridge and Waco—are three decades old and continue to haunt a house divided. The federal government can be said to have misplayed its hand in both instances, to put it mildly. The events have been examined and re-examined, investigated and reinvestigated. But on the 30th anniversary of the Branch Davidian debacle, “Waco: American Apocalypse” attempts to put the Texas battle into a sensible context. And it’s a fascinating fool’s errand.

There’s a bit more narration than explanation in this three-part documentary series, though a deep dive into the personal enriches the storytelling. Heather Jones was 9 years old when she became the last child “freed” from the compound known as Mount Carmel Center during the 51-day standoff (she didn’t want to go). She breaks down several times in remembering her father, David, who was among the 76 Branch Davidians who died in the final conflagration on April 19, 1993 (a date commemorated two years later by Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City). Kathy Schroeder, a follower of the evidently delusional Branch Davidian “prophet” David Koresh, defends the sect’s beliefs and its leader’s dictates, including his sexual dominion over all women at the Mount Carmel compound. Chris Whitcomb, an FBI sniper who witnessed the entire siege, harbors such anger that one wonders if he should be handling a gun.

In the end, four federal agents and 82 Davidians would perish. What any student of Waco wants to know right away is who started it. Bill Buford and Jim Cavanaugh, former agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, deny up and down that their people opened fire first, though, as the series mentions, the fired-on front door of the compound and the videotapes of the initial encounter disappeared long ago. Among the critical points made by “American Apocalypse” is that congressional appropriations hearings were coming up and the ATF, which had image problems, needed a big win. There’s no debate about illegal firearms being on the premises, which is why the bureau was serving a warrant. There’s also little argument that Koresh was a familiar figure around the Mount Carmel community (about 13 miles from Waco itself) and could have been arrested at almost any time. Even Mr. Buford remembers advising against the raid on that day, because the agency had lost the element of surprise. (Reporters had stopped a postman for directions to the compound and the raid they’d caught wind of; the postman was Koresh’s brother-in-law.)

Instead, the ATF arrived in a convoy of agents, who lost the initial firefight. As TV reporter John McLemore said at the time, Koresh might have thought he was the second coming of Jesus Christ, “but the Messiah’s well-armed this time.”

“Waco: American Apocalypse” is less forensic in its approach than, say, “Waco: The Rules of Engagement,” the 1997 documentary by William Gazecki, which had the advantage of immediacy, but also had to fight its way through a fog generated by congressional hearings, widespread obfuscation and a public perception skewed by claims of child abuse at the compound and the many disturbing truths about Koresh. For all its occasionally awkward sentimentality, director Tiller Russell’s new Netflix series benefits from a long-range perspective that supports its central thesis—that the unnecessary calamity of Waco was due to the inability, or outright refusal, of one U.S. government entity to listen to another.

Or even to itself: Then-FBI hostage negotiator Gary Noesner fairly sputters over the actions of his own bureau’s Hostage Rescue Team, which undercut negotiations at several points and took actions seemingly aimed at provoking further gunfire from inside the Mount Carmel Center.

“We could expect that something stupid was going to happen,” Dallas Morning News reporter Lee Hancock says about something specific, though her sentiment becomes redundant: As comfortably as Waco fits into deep-state conspiracy theories, “American Apocalypse” makes a better case for errors of incompetence, ego and machismo.

“Waco” suffers from a few missing details. Who ordered the assault despite Mr. Buford’s warning? Who misinformed Attorney General Janet Reno about child abuse at the compound? What happened to Heather Jones’s mother, who left the Branch Davidians “family” when Koresh began breaking up marriages and sleeping with the wives? At the same time, it features people very close to the subject being very open about what happened, even if, when all is said and done, they don’t understand it now any better than they did in 1993.

The deadly Waco siege gripped the U.S. A documentary recounts the tale.

Article written by Marissa Iati for The Washington Post

By 12:25 p.m. on the 51st day of the Waco siege, the entire compound was engulfed in flames.

FBI agents had been trying unsuccessfully to negotiate for the surrender of dozens of members of a fringe religious movement — the Branch Davidians, an offshoot of Seventh-day Adventists. The group had been holed up in “Ranch Apocalypse” since Feb. 28, 1993, when a federal raid had led to a lethal gun battle.

In the end, 76 people died after the FBI pumped tear gas into the group’s building and the structure burned to the ground. The tragedy was unintentional, Attorney General Janet Reno insisted afterward.

“Today,” Reno said, “was not meant to be D-Day.”

Thirty years later, a three-part Netflix documentary slated for release Wednesday recounts the drama of the mass casualty event. “Waco: American Apocalypse” tells how self-proclaimed prophet David Koresh armed his compound, about 80 miles south of Dallas, and refused to submit to an arrest warrant for alleged weapons violations, resulting in the weeks-long standoff.

The saga gripped the nation during and after the siege. Americans kept abreast of updates through newspaper stories and TV news. Congress held hearings. The Justice Department compiled a report. Eventually, 11 Branch Davidians stood trial.

The group’s beliefs were centered on the idea that the apocalypse was imminent. As the Branch Davidians’ leader in the 1990s, Koresh preached about the Book of Revelation, claimed to be the messiah and engaged in multiple “marriages.” Some children in the community alleged sexual abuse by Koresh, whose birth name was Vernon Howell, but investigations into the matter were inconclusive.

Despite the Waco tragedy’s infamy, details of the siege’s origin remain contested. The two sides disagree on who fired first when Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents advanced on the compound to carry out the warrant against Koresh. The Feb. 28, 1993, gun battle left at least four ATF agents and five Branch Davidians dead.

The government responded with a tremendous show of military force, including tanks and hundreds of law enforcement agents. At first, the ensuing negotiations were successful. More than 20 children and two elderly adults left the compound in the initial six days in exchange for a message from Koresh being broadcast on a certain radio station.

Koresh eventually agreed to surrender himself — and then reneged on his promise. When he talked with FBI negotiators, it was mostly to proselytize.

The FBI also sought to aggravate members into leaving the house by aiming spotlights at it and blaring noise, including rabbits being killed, monks chanting and Nancy Sinatra singing “These Boots are Made for Walkin’,” Branch Davidian Clive Doyle recounts in his memoir, “A Journey to Waco.”

“I got to where I was only getting about an hour or two of sleep every twenty-four hours,” he writes, according to the New Yorker.

On April 19, 1993, FBI agents tried a new tactic: breaking holes in the building with Army vehicles and pumping tear gas inside to compel the group members to leave peacefully. FBI spokesman Bob Ricks said at the time that negotiators had called Steve Schneider, Koresh’s second-in-command, that morning and notified him about the plan. Schneider slammed the phone in response, Ricks said.

The gassing began about 6 a.m. Negotiators announced over a loudspeaker that the vapor was not lethal and that the group members should exit the compound and receive medical care. Instead, Branch Davidians fired on the Army vehicles as they approached, according to the government.

Federal agents and Branch Davidians each blamed the other side for the blaze that broke out shortly after noon. In 1999, the FBI acknowledged that its tear gas was potentially incendiary but said it was used long before the fire started. The agency maintained that the Branch Davidians intentionally torched the buildings.

Wind pushed the flames through the complex quickly that day, and plumes of black smoke filled the air.

The final moments of the standoff were chilling, Ricks told reporters. One woman left the building and then tried to run back in; an FBI agent grabbed her and brought her to safety. A person wearing a gas mask appeared on the second floor of the structure and, as flames broke out, signaled that he did not want help.

Among the 76 dead that day were roughly 25 children, two pregnant women and Koresh. Nine people survived.

In a retrospective review, Edward S.G. Dennis, an assistant attorney general at the Justice Department, wrote that it was unclear whether those killed stayed in the building voluntarily, were held against their will or were shot to prevent their departure.

Koresh, Schneider and some others had succumbed to gunshot wounds, either from themselves or from others, Dennis concluded. Those shots may have been part of a plan to prevent Koresh’s multiple “wives” from being taken away, he said, among other possibilities.

“We may never know what really happened,” Dennis wrote.

Texas state officials had the site bulldozed two weeks after the siege’s deadly conclusion. Dennis Perrotta, director of the Texas Health Department’s epidemiology division, told the Associated Press at the time that the area was “basically an unlicensed solid waste landfill.” More than 100 ATF agents also got to tour the land as part of the process of grieving the loss of their colleagues in the Feb. 28 violence.

Eleven Branch Davidians — a mix of survivors and group members who left the compound before the day of the fire — later stood trial on conspiracy murder charges for the deaths of the agents, but all were acquitted. Seven of the defendants were convicted on lesser charges, and the other four were found not guilty of all charges.

Defense attorneys had painted the siege as an overzealous attack by the federal government on the group members in their own home.

“This jury has slowed down the runaway horse,” defense attorney Tim Evans said after the verdict. “If you don’t say ‘Whoa’ every now and then, we would end up with a paramilitary police state.”

Years later, the site of the standoff is mostly bare, with few signs of the blazing spectacle that once played out there. Just a memorial plaque and one-room chapel stand on the site, welcoming those who want to remember.

Reginald Hudlin & Byron Phillips Strike First-Look Non-Scripted Deal With Fremantle’s Original Productions

Written by Peter White for deadline.com

EXCLUSIVE: Reginald Hudlin and Byron Phillips have struck a first-look deal with Original Productions after teaming up on Amazon documentary series Phat Tuesdays: The Era of Hip Hop Comedy.

The Fremantle-backed production company has signed the deal with Hudlin Entertainment and Phillips with plans to expand on the comedy docuseries.

The pair will develop and exec produce non-scripted shows with the Deadliest Catch producer. It follows the launch of Phat Tuesdays, which told the story of Black comedians at The Comedy Store in ‘90s Los Angeles.

Hudlin and Phillips have produced the Primetime Emmys together since 2020 as well as documentaries such as The Black Godfather. Hudlin has also directed documentaries such as Apple’s Sidney and comedy feature House Party. He has a scripted first-look deal with UCP. Phillips is the producer of a number of live events including the Oscars and NAACP Image Awards.

Original Productions is behind the upcoming Dan Rather documentary, Netflix’s Waco: American Apocalypse in addition to Deadliest Catch and Bering Sea Gold.

“When we began our collaboration on Phat Tuesdays, it was exciting to see that Reggie and Byron shared a sensibility for the kind of big, bold storytelling that has been the hallmark of our evolution at OP,” said Jeff Hasler, President of Original Productions. “The deeper we got into our collaboration and discussing new ideas, the more motivated we all became about finding a way to let our partnership flourish. Continuing to support Reggie and Byron’s unique voice and perspective on the kind of stories we all want to tell is a dream come true for us at OP.”

“We had a great experience making Phat Tuesdays with Fremantle and it felt like a no brainer to expand our relationship,” added Reggie Hudlin.  “While we were finishing that project, we kept coming up with new ideas that we were excited to collaborate on. I’m looking forward to what’s next.”

“We are thrilled to enter into a partnership with Fremantle/OP. Jennifer Mullin and Jeff Hasler have been so supportive of our creative vision and the range of content we look forward to producing.  It is rare to find executives that do everything in their power to clear the obstacles that get in the way of the creative process. Jen and Jeff are both unique executives and extraordinary human beings,” said Byron Phillips.

Netflix’s ‘Waco: American Apocalypse’ Trailer Captures Fallout of David Koresh Cult Takedown

Written by Larisha Paul for The Rolling Stone

THIRTY YEARS AFTER 86 people were left dead after a 51-day siege of a compound that belonged to the religious sect Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, newly-released footage and exclusive interviews will attempt to capture the fallout from the takedown of cult leader David Koresh in Netflix’s three-part documentary series Waco: American Apocalypse, out March 22.

“The ultimate goal was to arrest David Koresh and to seize all of the illegal weapons,” a man explains in a voiceover in the first trailer for the series. Though certain crucial details about the events that came to complicate that goal have remained unclear for three decades, news footage and FBI recordings featured in the series – released to the public for the first time – aim to fill in some of the blanks.

“Okay, y’all been preparing eight months for this,” Koresh states in an old recording. “How long do you think we’ve been preparing?”

Waco: American Apocalypse captures a multi-perspective image using interviews with individuals who were present both inside and outside of the Mount Carmel compound from February to April 1993, including members of Koresh’s group of followers known as the Branch Davidians.

“A lot of people have told me that he was trying to groom me,” one woman says in the trailer, speaking as the last child released from the compound alive before the fire that brought the standoff to an end ravished dozens of bodies. In another preview segment, one of Koresh’s spiritual wives recalls the intimacies she shared with him. “The whole time we were having sex, it was a bible study,” she says.

A sniper from the FBI Hostage Rescue Team, as well as the FBI Crisis Negotiation Unit Chief and the ATF tactical team, round out the law enforcement perspective, building on the foundation of the FBI’s past recordings. Interviews with key journalists from the national coverage of the event are paired with footage captured on the ground in their reporting efforts.

“Since this story first erupted thirty years ago, it’s fascinated the world as an iconic and tragic moment in American history,” director Tiller Russell shared in a statement when the series was announced. “A prophetic leader with an apocalyptic vision, a fierce debate over the right to bear arms, and testing the constitutional limits of religious freedom – it has powerful and provocative elements that still reverberate today.”

He added: “The details of what happened during the 51-day stand-off are complex and often ferociously debated, but rather than assigning blame or pointing fingers, we tried to treat it from a deeply humanist perspective – focusing on what it feels like for people on all sides to be caught in the maws of history.”

Bankruptcy Law Doesn’t Allow Debtors To Escape Student Debt: The Law Should Change

It’s difficult to conceive of a way to address the student debt issue in a way that would satisfy both conservative and liberal politicians, but a nascent movement to allow people to discharge student debt via bankruptcy may be the one policy in this realm that manages to achieve a modicum of bipartisan consensus.

Right now someone who is heavily in debt can escape nearly every obligation they have via bankruptcy either by filing a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which essentially wipes their slate clean, or a Chapter 13 bankruptcy reorganization, whereby the court establishes a repayment plan for the debtor and wipes out some fraction of their debt.

Giving people the ability to file bankruptcy is a good thing: We don’t want people saddled indefinitely with debts they are simply unable to ever repay, regardless of how they may have incurred them. Most people who file bankruptcy suffered some sort of major economic setback that put them in a financial hole they are unable to overcome on their own.

However, virtually the only debt people cannot escape from in bankruptcy is student debt, and given that it totals nearly $2 trillion, that’s a major exception. And there’s no good reason it is excluded this way: The terrific new documentary Loan Wolves—which makes its broadcast debut December 11th on MSNBC and Peacock—determines through considerable effort that the reason Congress ultimately decided to make student debt non-dischargeable via bankruptcy is simply because Congress needed a revenue raiser for a legislative package in the late 1990s.

No politician offered a legitimate policy reason to do this at the time, and most were not even aware the change was being made. The movie tracks down the key players in that legislation, each of whom now believe it should be changed.

The law prohibiting student debt to be discharged via bankruptcy is a familiar one for me even though I never had to grapple with any student debt of my own: My father was a bankruptcy lawyer for over forty years, and he inadvertently played a small role in making it more difficult for people with student debt to escape it via bankruptcy.

He was the first lawyer in the state of Illinois to advertise his services: at the time it was unclear that doing so was even legal, and it took a Supreme Court decision a few months after he began advertising to establish its legality.

His first newspaper ad explicitly targeted people with student debt. His ad, which simply read “Student Loan Relief Now: Discharge Your Debts Via Bankruptcy” set off a firestorm, and he was vilified in the media across the state for daring to encourage such a thing. The ensuing media storm contributed to the efforts of politicians in Illinois and elsewhere to limit the ability of people to escape student debt via bankruptcy.

Congress passed a law in the late 1970s that limited that ability, and gradually reduced it further for two decades until the 1998 law made it all but impossible.

My father published such an ad because as a bankruptcy lawyer he had seen how many people at the time were struggling with student debt, and he wanted to help these people start a fresh life.

While my father was a very conservative man—he used to purchase subscriptions to National Review and Commentary for area libraries—he also believed that bankruptcy was vitally important, and he pushed back on those who felt it was too often abused and needed to be reined in. When Congress modified the bankruptcy law in 1998 to limit the dischargeability of student debt via bankruptcy—and again in 2005 when it made escaping credit card debt more difficult—he delayed his retirement to deal with the aftermath of the law and its impact on debtors, working into his 80s.

While simply forgiving some portion of student debt is an idea that conservatives (rightly) abhor, people who believe in limited government should be outraged about exempting student debt from bankruptcy. Allowing people to discharge their student debt through bankruptcy would benefit solely those people with student debt who truly need some assistance, and all of us would benefit from freeing those people from the weight of this burden.

Article written on forbes.com by Ike Brannon

Best Comedy of 2022

Stand-up specials like “Rothaniel” pushed boundaries this year, and Netflix’s financial setbacks could mean that its dominance in comedy is slowing.

This year was a “best of times, worst of times” situation in comedy. When it comes to recovering from the pandemic, live stand-up fared better than Broadway. Touring shows did good business. But anxiety in the comedy world grew as Netflix hit some serious financial setbacks. Gatekeepers, like network executives and late-night bookers, continued to have less sway, but were social media algorithms any better? In this transitional year, here are some highlights.

Best Special

It’s not often that “beautiful” is the first word that comes to mind about a stand-up special. For some, that might even sound like a backhanded compliment. When did beauty ever make you laugh? But Jerrod Carmichael’s “Rothaniel,” a radically intimate, cinematically shot production, is a departure for him and stand-up more broadly. Its melancholy tone and patient pace set up new kinds of clever jokes. And its exquisite aesthetic features stunning and unexpected shots staged by the director, Bo Burnham, that emphasize the theme of mystery and secrets. Carmichael’s language manages to be unorthodox and elegant, and the way he interacts with the audience displays a vulnerability that is as moving as it is funny. (Streaming on HBO Max.)

Best Debut

The first special from Atsuko Okatsuka, “The Intruder,” has a title that sounds like a horror movie, which is apt. A charming narrator of her own anxiety, her jokes find unique angles into an ancient feeling: Fear. Premiering on HBO Max on Dec. 10, the special’s backbone is her cowering response to a stranger approaching her house, but unexpected visitors aren’t the only thing she’s afraid of. Teenagers petrify her. Their coolness unsettles. Then there’s a disastrous interaction with a stranger’s dog who licks her, and when she pushes forward, she accidentally licks the animal’s tongue. “Don’t worry,” she assures the pet’s owner nervously, “I’m married.”

[…]

Best Documentary

In “Phat Tuesdays,” a three-part series on Amazon Prime Video, the director Reginald Hudlin doesn’t just effectively and entertainingly argue for the seismic importance of the little-known Black comedy night at the Comedy Store. He also makes the 1990s Los Angeles comedy scene look like a way better time than anyone is having now. (Streaming on Amazon Prime Video.)

[…]

Best Comedy With Music

In this booming alt-comedy genre, Matt Rogers’s new Showtime special, “Have You Heard of Christmas?” — which straddles lines between holiday album spoof and dead serious homage, ironic schmaltz and genuine emotion — stands out for its commitment to sultry-to-the-point-of-silly songs. In this regard, it’s more in the spirit of Sandra Bernhard’s annual New Year’s Eve show than Bo Burnham. (Streaming on Showtime.)

Most Popular New Trend in Specials

This was the year when otherwise polished stand-up specials regularly incorporated conversations with audience members. Patton Oswalt riffed with ticket buyers for several minutes in “We All Scream.” Joel Kim Booster built interactions with one person into the connective tissue of his show, “Psychosexual.” Hasan Minhaj (“The King’s Jester”) and Andrew Schulz (“Infamous”) did plenty of crowd work. Matteo Lane did an entire show of it (“The Advice Special”). Perhaps the absence of audiences during the pandemic made comics a little more eager to bring people into the performance.

Best Sign That Netflix’s Dominance Is Over

The year began with Netflix’s stock price plummeting, the company cutting staff and then, most notably, trying out a leasing model. In that approach, stand-up comics (like Chris Distefano and Whitney Cummings) pay their own production and marketing costs, receive a smaller fee and get the rights to their material back after a window on the site. The platform famous for giving out tens of millions of dollars to comics has entered the austerity era.

Best Sign That Netflix Still Dominates

No other streamer has come close to competing with it. FX and Peacock dabbled. Amazon did more than that. And HBO Max had a few hits. But we’re still waiting for a rival to fully engage in stand-up comedy.

Best YouTube Special

You can make an argument that the best producer of specials right now is YouTube, especially when you factor in price for the viewer. Among the comics who released funny specials for free were Fahim Anwar, Ari Shaffir, Liz Miele and Ali Siddiq. But the one that made me laugh loudest was “Jokes From the Underground” by Raanan Hershberg, whose punchy and deliriously funny club comedy made me laugh after second and third viewings.

 

Article written by Jason Zinoman for nytimes.com

Biden clocks 118 mph but loses drag race against Colin Powell’s son on ‘Jay Leno’s Garage’

 

President Biden zoomed behind the wheel of a classic Corvette, hitting 118 mph as he competed in a drag race in an episode of “Jay Leno’s Garage” that aired Wednesday night.

Biden, 79, packed into a 1967 Corvette Stingray with a 350 horsepower, a classic car that was a wedding gift from his father.

“I was getting married in August of ’67. My dad didn’t have a lot of money but he ran the largest Chevrolet dealership in the state for years,” he said. “So, there’s 75 people outside the dealership. We pull up, they spread. My dad says, ‘This is my wedding gift.’”

 

Biden buckled in for the race at a Secret Service training facility in Beltsville, Md., against Michael Powell the son of former Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Powell, behind the wheel of a 2015 Corvette Stingray with 455 horsepower, had a slight advantage against the president after beating him off the line.

But Biden hung in close as he clocked in at 118 mph, coming in not far behind Powell as they rolled to a stop.

“I am in so much trouble,” Leno joked after Biden completed the race. “Uh oh, here comes the Secret Service.”

Powell’s victory settles a score between Biden and the late Colin Powell after they raced against each other in season two of “Jay Leno’s Garage.” The 2016 drag race ended in a Biden win.

Biden, a known car enthusiast, appeared on the CNBC show to promote electric vehicles (EVs), which were a major part of the Inflation Reduction Act passed in August.

The legislation includes new incentives to encourage the use of EVs, with the federal government rolling out more charging stations and tax credits for the purchase of the eco-friendly cars.

Biden also drove an electrified 1978 Ford F100 truck, which he said was “quiet as hell” and smooth to drive.

 

The president also discussed the importance of EVs, calling it an “answer” to the financial security of automobile companies and a chance to do “something good.”

“This is the only time you get to drive,” Leno remarked.

“Yeah, it is,” Biden replied. “It’s the God’s truth, and I miss it.”

 

Article written by Brad Dress for thehill.com