Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Mark Harris @markharris.bsky.social · 4h

One good rule for a veteran writer: Break your own rules ruthlessly. I don't do profiles and rarely write about theater, so when T asked me to do a deep dive into the life & work of David Henry Hwang, naturally I said yes! Huge thanks to DHH for his time and openness. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/09/t...

How David Henry Hwang Remade Theater in His Own Image

www.nytimes.com

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Mark Harris @markharris.bsky.social · 15h

When was the last time Trump was interviewed solo on-camera by a non-servile journalist? Because it's starting to feel like that may not happen again. The risk of him being publicly challenged about factual basic information--like, "Portland is not burning"--is too great for his handlers to permit.

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Mark Harris @markharris.bsky.social · 18h

I'm going with Hallowe'en, because the later films do every bad thing that a franchise can do: Reiterate the original, add unnecessary backstory, undercut the first film with new mythology, go backwards, leap forwards, retcon, cut all ties to the original, re-establish those ties...Burn 'em all.

Matt Singer @mattsinger.bsky.social · 1d

Food for thought: What is the worst franchise made from the best movie?

15 Great Movies That Were Ruined By Becoming Franchises

These classic films should never have gotten sequels.

screencrush.com

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Mark Harris @markharris.bsky.social · 21h

He's so cognitively garbled that I can't guess what he means at the end, when he says freedom of speech "is always something I felt strongly about, but it never passed the courts."

At this point, it's important for Democratic politicians to raise questions about his brain function every single day.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 22h

Trump: "We took the freedom of speech away because that's been through the courts and the courts said you have freedom of speech, but what has happened is when they burn a flag it agitates and irritates crowds."

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Mark Harris @markharris.bsky.social · 22h

That's a scorecard judgment--it's of more use to stockholders, executives, and industry journalists than to the general public.

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Mark Harris @markharris.bsky.social · 23h

Oh, we got some FURIOUS letters about that! Pre-internet, luckily for us.

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Mark Harris @markharris.bsky.social · 1d

Hats off to one of the most craven dolts ever to do it. variety.com/2025/music/n...

House Speaker Johnson Calls Bad Bunny at Super Bowl ‘a Terrible Decision,’ Says It Should’ve Been Someone With ‘a Broader Audience’ — Like Lee Greenwood

House Speaker Mike Johnson says it is 'a terrible decision' to book Bad Bunny for the Super Bowl, saying Lee Greenwood would have been a better pick.

variety.com

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Mark Harris @markharris.bsky.social · 1d

I always felt bad when we got an actor to do a concept-y cover and it didn't work. Here's one, also from the Waterworld summer, that did--thanks to a very game movie star who was up for doing a post-scandal print interview, and an excellent stunt baby!

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Mark Harris @markharris.bsky.social · 1d

When I was movie editor at EW, we came up with this idea for a Waterworld cover. We thought it was funny--he'd spent so much time shooting on water--and obv. Costner thought it was funny enough to play along. Readers and the industry HATED it and him--"He's spitting at Hollywood." You never know.

Costner shooting a jet of water out of his mouth next to the headline "Kevin Costner speaks out for the first time about the most expensive gamble in movie history--Waterworld: The Untold Story."

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Mark Harris @markharris.bsky.social · 1d

In memory, Waterworld and The Postman (1997) often get merged. But in reality Waterworld was the movie that made people say Costner was grandiose and difficult to work with; The Postman (which ran 3 hours and couldn't even gross $20M) was the movie that made the industry say, okay, he's done.

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Mark Harris @markharris.bsky.social · 1d

Lots of interesting/grisly financial detail in this Costner piece. But it's odd that Waterworld is always misremembered as a Heaven's Gate-sized disaster. It was a flop relative to cost, but it grossed $88M in the US in '95--it was the #12 movie of the year.
www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie...

How Kevin Costner Lost Hollywood

On-set brawls. Courtroom battles. Epic bombs. Why the world's most bankable cowboy is suddenly shooting blanks.

www.hollywoodreporter.com

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Mark Harris @markharris.bsky.social · 1d

"If you're not sick of me already--"

I imagine that sentence had an end. I will never know for sure.

Joshua J. Friedman @joshuajfriedman.com · 1d

What will the new Adam O'Neal–hosted WaPo opinions podcast sound like for the next few decades? Maybe a little something like this x.com/WashPostComm...

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Mark Harris @markharris.bsky.social · 1d

Well, the joke will be on them, because I don't know how to drive!

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Mark Harris @markharris.bsky.social · 1d

Found out this evening that rats are living in our car's engine and have chewed through all the wiring, how was your day?

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Mark Harris @markharris.bsky.social · 2d

They will insist that this an overstatement, that this isn't the same as APPROVING conversion therapy, that it's "not what the case is about." But if you are an adult with a functioning moral core, you cannot divorce your actions from their consequences. This will kill kids, period, the end.

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Mark Harris @markharris.bsky.social · 2d

This will be a vote to erase 50 years of medical and psychiatric knowledge and kill gay and trans kids, because MAGA Republicans feel that in a better world, fewer of them would exist. It is that simple. Democrats must make SCOTUS expansion part of the party platform. www.nytimes.com/live/2025/10...

Supreme Court Live Updates: Justices Seem Set to Rule Against Colorado’s Ban on Conversion Therapy

www.nytimes.com

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Mark Harris @markharris.bsky.social · 2d

I think the right move here is the same as the right move for any journalist working for a suspect new boss (which has happened to almost all of us): Do exactly what you would ordinarily do, exactly the way you would ordinarily do it, until you are told point-blank that you can't. Then ask why.

David Klion @davidklion.bsky.social · 2d

The notion that Bari will be "running CBS News" is slightly misleading. What the reporting suggests is that Tom Cibrowski, a guy with normal qualifications, will be doing that. Bari will be Emperor Ellison's Vader-esque enforcer, outside the chain of command, intervening at will.

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Mark Harris @markharris.bsky.social · 2d

There has always been a small, noisy minority of gay people whose belief in gay rights boils down to "I shouldn't have to give up any of my prejudices because of who I am." And straight people in media have always fallen all over themselves to hire them.

Olivia Messer @oliviamesser.bsky.social · 2d

I kind of can’t believe this Bari Weiss quote is even real, and yet www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/b...

“I know that there are some people in this room who don’t believe that my marriage should have been legal … and that’s ok. Because we’re all Americans who want lower taxes.”

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Mark Harris @markharris.bsky.social · 2d

One bad and unfortunately influential part of Kael's legacy is that she knew how to phrase assertions that do not hold up to two seconds of scrutiny so confidently that you could mistake them for wisdom. (This one was about The Arrangement, a movie you never have to think about again.)

pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 2d

But Kazan used to know how to help us feel. Perhaps he undervalues that gift, but it's his only true one. Is it really a penance for a big movie director to try to think small? In movies, the worst sellout has always been thinking big. (1969)

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Mark Harris @markharris.bsky.social · 2d

I'd be so scared to wear this. I just don't look great in bulky sleeves.

Sexy CHOAM Nomsky costume @samthielman.com · 3d

“Ready-to-wear?” I am ready to wear this, but I don’t know if the world is ready for me to do so

A dude in a long-sleeve V-neck French cut bodysuit with shoulder pads and sandals

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Mark Harris @markharris.bsky.social · 3d

okay, this made me laugh

Adam Selzer @adamchicago.bsky.social · 3d

Here in Chicago I even see it on signs that you SHOULD obey in advance.

A homemade “do not obey in advance” sign attached to an overpass height sign.

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Mark Harris @markharris.bsky.social · 3d

...and I really do know how eager some of you are to reply "Not yet, anyway! It will be soon!" but there are ways in which that is not necessarily a perfect analogy, and one is that this is going to play out in daily ways that are publicly visible, among people who know how to leak. So...we'll see.

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Mark Harris @markharris.bsky.social · 3d

Also, I don't mean this as optimism (on Bluesky? God forbid) but taking a leadership job for which you're unqualified in a medium you haven't worked in with nothing but experienced journalists under you...is not necessarily going to go the way one thinks it might. CBS News is not a cabinet dept.>

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Mark Harris @markharris.bsky.social · 3d

I get tired of reading "Do not obey in advance" here over and over--endlessly repeating something like that can turn it into a form of self-soothing rather than a galvanizing call to action. But I hope every single CBS News employee is hearing it from someone important to them today.

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Mark Harris @markharris.bsky.social · 3d

So weird and smug. "I found a bunch of cliches in TV shows and AI couldn't be worse than that, so do whatever feels good, but, you know, human screenwriters are still important, I guess."

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