Interview

Director

Scarlett Johansson on Her Directorial Debut “Eleanor the Great”: “I Don’t Think I Could Have Done It 10 Years Ago”

Grief makes people do crazy things. 

And sometimes that includes moving across the country after the death of your closest friend, befriending a 19-year-old college student, and lying about your identity.

Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut, Eleanor the Great, stars June Squibb as Eleanor, a 95-year-old woman who moves to New York after the passing of her dear friend. The film explores how grief spans generations,

By Andria Moore  |  September 24, 2025

Interview

Screenwriter

Novelist & Screenwriter Charlie Huston on Preserving the Raw Truth of “Caught Stealing” With Darren Aronofsky

In 2008, author Charlie Huston and filmmaker Darren Aronofsky had breakfast. The filmmaker was interested in adapting the author’s debut novel, “Caught Stealing,” the first entry in the Hank Thompson trilogy. The collaboration didn’t come to pass. 

In 2022, Huston revisited the script they wrote for Caught Stealing, which tells the story of Hank (Austin Butler), a former baseball star and now an alcoholic bartender, caught in the crossfire of criminals chasing a bag of dirty money.

By Jack Giroux  |  September 16, 2025

Interview

Cinematographer

Cinematographer Matthew Libatique on Shooting Back-to-Back NYC Thrillers for Spike Lee & Darren Aronofsky

Cinematographer Matthew Libatique grew up in Queens. He knows New York City, which is a good thing because his knowing eye lends luster to a pair of urban thrillers hitting screens this month courtesy of directors Spike Lee and Darren Aronofsky. Libatique, Oscar-nominated for Black SwanA Star Is Born, and Maestro, shot four previous movies for Lee before helping the iconic New Yorker in his latest,

By Hugh Hart  |  August 27, 2025

Interview

Creating a Corporate Dystopia With “Severance” Season 2’s Set Decorator David Schlesinger

Leading this year’s Emmys pack with 27 nominations, the sophomore season of Severance goes deeper into the cult-like and twisted Lumon Industries, where a group of employees chose a surgical procedure that permanently bifurcates their work memories (“innies”) from their true selves (“outies”). Created by Dan Erickson, the slow-burn workplace thriller follows severed employee, Mark (Adam Scott), and his colleagues who work on the labyrinthine severed floor under the supervision of Mr.

By Su Fang Tham  |  August 20, 2025

Interview

Editor, Production Designer

From Stage to Screen for “SNL50”: How Production Designers & the Editing Team Shaped 5 Decades of Comedy

As the longest-running sketch comedy show in US television history, Saturday Night Live has not only shaped generations of comedians and cultural commentary, but it’s also become an institution for live performance. Some of its most iconic moments are when cast members can’t help but laugh themselves. But behind the humor is a bustling backdrop of production design, costumes, hair, makeup, lighting,

By Daron James  |  August 20, 2025

Interview

Hair/Makeup

80 Wigs & Zero Dress Rehearsal: Inside the Hair and Makeup Magic That Made “SNL50” Possible

When Saturday Night Live first aired in October 1975, no one could have predicted it would become a cornerstone of American culture. Now, five decades later, Lorne Michaels and company have celebrated another milestone with SNL50: The Anniversary Special, a three-hour telecast directed by Liz Patrick, which brought together Studio 8H legends onto one stage.

With a star-studded cast that included current performers, alumni,

By Daron James  |  August 19, 2025

Interview

Director

Inside SNL’s Most Challenging Episode Ever: Director Liz Patrick on the 50th Anniversary Special

On a night filled with laughter, legacy, and magic, Saturday Night Live marked its 50th anniversary with an unforgettable celebration. The milestone episode infused nostalgia that paid tribute to its past with new memorable moments. But what audiences saw on screen is only a fraction of the story. Behind the scenes in the iconic Studio 8H, an enormous production effort had been unfolding for months. From production design, hair, makeup, editing,

By Daron James  |  August 18, 2025

Interview

Director

Director Gareth Edwards on Why “Jurassic World: Rebirth” Needed Real Locations & Film Stock to Capture Its Magic

Having already directed Godzilla, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and The Creator, Gareth Edwards is used to fantastical storytelling on an epic scale, as well as handling some of the biggest and best-loved IPs in the history of cinema.

Jurassic World: Rebirth, the seventh installment in the multibillion-dollar Jurassic film franchise, is one of the year’s biggest box office hits both globally and domestically.

By Simon Thompson  |  August 5, 2025

Interview

Director, Producer

Playing a Flush Hand: Inside “Poker Face” Season 2 With Producer/Director Adam Arkin

Few people in Hollywood have had as rich and varied a career as Adam Arkin. With decades of experience both in front of and behind the camera—from his breakthrough role in Northern Exposure to acclaimed directing work on series like The Americans, Justified, Sons of Anarchy, Fargo, Succession, and The Night Agent—Arkin brings decades of experience both in front and behind the camera to every project he tackles.

By Bryan Abrams  |  July 10, 2025

Interview

Director

How Cinematographer & Director Jessica Lee Gagné Shaped “Severance” Season 2’s Most Devastating Episode

After racking up 14 Emmy nominations for its first season in 2022, Severance returned this spring with a much-ballyhooed set of episodes that fortifies the show’s stature as a dread-saturated mind game drama on par with Twin Peaks and Lost. In the Apple TV+ + series, creepy experiments conducted by cult-like Lumon Industries center on split personalities (Adam Scott, Britt Lower, Zach Cherry, and Dichen Lachmann) wrestling with their “innie/outie”

By Hugh Hart  |  May 28, 2025

Interview

Production Designer

Designing Dance: Production Designer Bill Groom’s Meticulous Ballet World-Building in “Étoile”

In the world of ballet as dramatized in Étoile, prickly personalities throw tantrums one minute and dance with exquisite grace the next. Created by former dancer Amy Sherman-Palladino and her husband Dan Palladino, the Amazon Prime series (now streaming) follows imagines a contentious talent swap between New York and Parisian dance companies desperate to create buzz about their new seasons.   

It doesn’t go well.

The quarrelsome characters include Cheyanne (Lou De Laâge) the world’s best ballet dancer and eco-activist who publicly denounces the company’s billionaire arms-dealer benefactor;

By Hugh Hart  |  May 19, 2025

Interview

Director, Screenwriter, Showrunner

Behind Netflix’s “The Four Seasons”: How “30 Rock” Veterans Lang Fisher & Tracey Wigfield Reimagined a Classic With Tina Fey

Adapted from the classic romantic comedy of the same name, Tina Fey, Lang Fisher, and Tracey Wigfield‘s The Four Seasons is a contemporary take on a tale as middle-aged as time: the highs and lows of evolving friendships and relationships between friends who have reached the middle innings of life.

The original film was written and directed by Alan Alda and co-starred Alda and Carol Burnett, and it was one of 1981’s biggest box office hits.

By Simon Thompson  |  May 7, 2025

Interview

Cinematographer

“Daredevil: Born Again” DPs Hillary Fyfe Spera & Pedro Gómez Millán on Lensing NYC’s Mean Streets

Daredevil built a fierce fandom when the show first appeared in 2015, introducing Charlie Cox as visually impaired lawyer Matt Murdock, whose alter ego roamed the streets of New York at night as Daredevil, a superhero with heightened senses and lethally honed fighting skills. After nearly a decade, Cox reprises his role in Daredevil: Born Again, and in the first of two already planned seasons, doesn’t disappoint. 

With the tagline,

By Leslie Combemale  |  April 16, 2025

Interview

Director, Stunt Coordinator/Stunt Person

“Daredevil: Born Again’s” Stunt Coordinator & Second Unit Director Philip Silvera on Big City Brawling

At the beginning of Season 1 of the Disney+ revival of the Daredevil storyline, Daredevil: Born Again, Marvel vigilante Matt Murdock/Daredevil is operating more or less as a yuppie. Matt has hung up his superhero suit to keep his heroics to the courthouse, working as a defense attorney and taking on clients pro bono when he believes in their innocence, but they can’t afford him. But with the murder of his friend and colleague,

By Susannah Edelbaum  |  April 15, 2025

Interview

Producer

From “Elf” to “Blue Bloods”: Veteran Producer Santiago Quiñones on the Unique Advantages of Filming in New York

Santiago Quiñones was a co-executive producer on Blue Bloods, CBS’s long-running police procedural that followed the Reagan family through their dynastic run within the NYPD. Quiñones, a born and bred New Yorker, joined the show assuming that, like previous projects, he might be moving on after a little while for another opportunity. Instead, he stayed for a decade, which kept him home alongside his family as his children grew and his colleagues became extended family members.

By Bryan Abrams  |  March 4, 2025

Interview

Cinematographer

“Run” Cinematographer Hillary Spera on Creating Hulu’s Breathless Thriller

Co-writer and director Aneesh Chaganty’s Run moves like a thoroughbred thriller thanks to all its constituent parts working in perfect unison. The stellar cast, led by Sarah Paulson and newcomer Kiera Allen, Chagnaty’s lean script, co-written with Sev Ohanian, and Chagnaty and his crew’s exacting execution. The film is centered on the too-close-for-comfort relationship between a mother in daughter—Diane (Paulson) is a zealously devoted guardian of her daughter Chloe (Allen), who is paralyzed from the waist down and also deals with a variety of other ailments,

By Bryan Abrams  |  November 18, 2020