“The Boys in The Band” Director Joe Mantello on Adapting Broadway’s Groundbreaking Play

Mart Crowley’s 1968 play The Boys in the Band is an undisputed milestone in gay history. Produced a year before the Stonewall rebellion, this story of an Upper East Side birthday gathering was groundbreaking, with gay men overtly representing themselves onstage, and asked to be seen as themselves, nothing more or less. This was a first. It was also a massive hit. For its 50th anniversary, producer Ryan Murphy revived the play on Broadway,

“Lovecraft Country” DP Michael Watson on Lensing HBO’s Multi-Genre Hit Series

If you’ve been watching Lovecraft Country on HBO, you’ve seen one of the most sublimely ambitious series on TV this year. Stripping the legendary horror writer H.P. Lovecraft for parts (the man was a seething racist and anti-Semite), creator Misha Green’s 9-episode series is equal parts horror, drama, sci-fi, and social commentary. Lovecraft Country is the show 2020 needed but probably didn’t deserve.

Cinematographer Michael Watson lensed four of Lovecraft‘s episodes,

Director Julie Taymor on The Many Perspectives of Her Gloria Steinem Biopic “The Glorias”

Director Julie Taymor’s latest feature, The Glorias, celebrates the life of a living icon of our time, Gloria Steinem, but she tells Gloria’s story in her utterly singular way. The director uses four different actresses to represent the famed women’s rights activist at different times in her life. There are imaginative, surreal sequences that express Gloria’s inner dialogue. There’s a sort of metaphysical bus, which carries Gloria through her journey, sometimes accompanied by her older or younger selves (played in the film by Ryan Kiera Armstrong,

How Hitchcock Influenced the Bold Design of Netflix’s “Ratched”

Ratched will keep you on edge. The pseudo-origin story follows nurse Mildred Ratched (Sarah Paulson) from Ken Kesey’s book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a character first enshrined by Louise Fletcher in the 1975 film adaption.

Penned as a spec script by Evan Romansky, who’s credited as a creator and executive producer, Ryan Murphy stepped in to purchase the rights and turn it into an eight-episode series on Netflix (it begins streaming today),

Emmy-Nominated DP Benedict Spence on Shooting “The End of the F***ing World”

Netflix’s The End of the F***ing World is based on Charles Forsman’s graphic novel, is a beguilingly beautiful, darkly comedic series. Adapated by Charlie Covell, the story follows two teen outsiders with different ideas about their relationship. James (Alex Lawther) believes he’s a psychopath, and while he agrees to go on a road trip with Alyssa (Jessica Barden) to find her father, his real plan is to find the perfect time to kill her.

Composer Jay Wadley on Scoring Charlie Kaufman’s Bittersweet New Film

When you think of a Charlie Kaufman film, you start with his scripts. Being John Malkovich (1999), Adaptation (2002), and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) made Kaufman that rare thing; the star screenwriter. Each of these films was fearlessly weird, often unsettling, and always bittersweet. They were funny, too. Then we started to get to know Kaufman the writer/director, beginning with Synecdoche, New York (2008),

VFX Supervisor Laurent Spillemaecker on “The Umbrella Academy” Season 2

How were the superpowered siblings over at The Umbrella Academy going to top season 1’s armageddon-causing shenanigans? How about by dropping the whole family in Dallas, in the early 1960s, and setting their family squabbles in the context of the JFK assassination? The second season of Steve Blackman and Jeremy Slater’s Netflix’s show, based on the comic book series by Gerard Way, managed to deliver on the promise of season one by forcing the super sibs to face not only their own demons but take stock of some of America’s demons to boot.

“Lovecraft Country” Director Cheryl Dunye on Shapeshifting & More in Episode 5

HBO’s Lovecraft Country, created by Executive Producer Misha Green, is being celebrated by viewers and critics alike. The story of two families that come together in the Jim Crow South to battle monsters and white racists in power has horrors both real and imagined, but there are many elements in the storytelling and many challenges to the characters that speak to the state of American race relations today. The misadventures of Atticus Freeman (Jonathan Majors),

Director Antonio Campos Explores Fanaticism and Faith in “The Devil All The Time”

Complicated characters are director/writer/producer Antonio Campos’ forte. There was the desensitized, internet-addicted prep-school student in his feature-length debut, Afterschool; the shockingly tragic television reporter in Christine; and the inexplicably violent young mother in the first season of The Sinner (Campos directed the pilot and served as that season’s executive producer).

Now, in his latest project, The Devil All the Time — streaming on Netflix starting Sept.

Meet the Background Actors Who Populate HBO’s “Perry Mason” – Part IV

Here are Parts I, II, and III of our deep-dive into the casting, costuming and prepping of Perry Mason’s background actor cast. 

A large collection of background actors voicing their objections to a case on the City Hall steps or finding themselves under the spell of Sister Alice at the Radiant Assembly in HBO’s Perry Mason aren’t just dressed, sent over to the set and told,

Meet the Background Actors Who Populate HBO’s “Perry Mason” – Part III

Here are parts I, II, and IV of our deep-dive into how HBO’s Perry Mason finds, outfits, and directs its many background actors.

Even with all of the fitting and other work they’ve done prior to the shoot, before showing up to the set to film, background actors must prep the night before. Women are given sheets of paper with details for setting their hair in curlers (which should be in place when they arrive).

Meet the Background Actors Who Populate HBO’s “Perry Mason” – Part II

In Part I of our deep dive on the extras—properly known as background actors—in HBO’s Perry Mason, costume designer Emma Potter’s revealed just how much work goes into the wardrobes of folks we often only see on screen for only a matter of seconds. Potter’s approach to the design of the costumes for Perry Mason’s background actors was based on both her research and the sense of Los Angeles in 1932 that she got from reading the scripts for the first time.

Meet the Background Actors Who Populate HBO’s “Perry Mason” – Part I

On the west façade of Los Angeles City Hall, Perry Mason (Matthew Rhys) and Della Street (Juliet Rylance) step out of a car and begin to push their way up the long staircase, through a crowd of 200 protestors, angry about the child murder case Mason is working. But while the crowd appears to be jeering and shaking their fists, they are eerily silent.  “It’s like we’re making a silent film,” says one of the extras,

Costume Designer Analucia McGorty on Creating the Looks for the Groundbreaking “POSE”

Set in the Eighties and Nineties, POSE is a dance musical that juxtaposes several versions of life and society in New York: the downtown social and literary scene, the ball culture world, and the rise of the luxury Trump-era universe. So when it comes to what everyone in the show is wearing, Costume Designer Analucia McGorty—recently Emmy-nominated for Outstanding Period Costumes—has some challenging, and extremely fun, work to do. 

Mixing History and Modernity in the Hair and Makeup of “Mulan”

The original “Ballad of Mulan” became popular in China around the 6th century, was transformed into a beloved animated Disney feature in 1998, and now, after several months’ delay due to the coronavirus, is the studio’s most hotly anticipated live-action remake yet. So, for an approximately 1400-year-old story about a rural teenage girl who disguises herself as a boy to lead China’s Imperial army and save the Emperor, how do you even start designing everyone’s hair and makeup?

“Raised By Wolves” Line Producer Cheryl Eatock on Building Ridley Scott’s First TV Series

As one of film’s most innovative directors, Ridley Scott is a master at transporting us to worlds unlike any we’ve seen before. So it comes as no surprise that Raised by Wolves, his first foray into directing episodic television, promises to be a unique, multilayered vision as ambitious in theme and scope as Alien, Blade Runner, and The Martian.

Unspooling in 10 installments on HBO Max,

“Brave New World” VFX Supervisor & Producer Thomas Horton on Peacock’s Ambitious New Series

For visual effects supervisor Thomas Horton, Peacock’s new series Brave New World, which premiered on July 15, presented a serious challenge. Horton was tasked with overseeing the streaming channel’s ambitious adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s legendary sci-fi novel, which despite being published in 1932 still contains so many unkillable themes and foundational science fiction tropes it remains fresh today. Huxley’s vision of a futuristic dystopia ordered by an intelligence-based hierarchy is equaled only by George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four in terms of cultural impact.

Emmy-Nominated Stunt Coordinator Hiro Koda Talks “Stranger Things” Action

Stranger Things Season 3 continues to track the bizarre mysteries unfolding in Hawkins, Indiana circa 1985. Blending sci-fi, action, romance, and comedy the Netflix thriller, nominated for eight Emmys this year, embroils plucky kids, led by Eleven (Milly Bobby Brown) in their ongoing quest to bring down the mysterious “Mind Flayer” monster. Meanwhile, Sheriff Jim Hopper (David Harbour), in between flirtations with local mom Joyce (Wynona Ryder), dukes it out repeatedly with square-jawed Grigori (Soviet-born actor Andrey Ivchenko),

Director Dime Davis on Making Emmy History With “A Black Lady Sketch Show”

Last year, director Dime Davis visited California desert retreat Joshua Tree to take a break from her burgeoning career as director of Showtime drama The Chi and BET rom-com Boomerang. “I’d been trying to get my head together so I wasn’t getting back to people,” Davis recalls. But Robin Thede kept calling. The comedian had created a new sketch series for HBO and wanted Davis to direct the whole thing.

How Emmy-Nominated Editor Katheryn Naranjo Cut “Stranger Things” Season 3 Finale

The third season of The Duffer Brothers’ Netflix hit Stranger Things culminated in an epic finale with two huge battle scenes and a rollercoaster of emotional highs and lows. For the uninitiated, Stranger Things is a sci-fi/horror series set in set in the 80s (with the soundtrack to match), which follows a group of young kids as they explore what’s behind a series of supernatural happenings in their town. Winona Ryder (Joyce Byers) leads the young cast—including Millie Bobby Brown (Eleven),