Steve Pond's Blog, page 204

Convicted Media Executive Carlos Watson’s Nearly 10-Year Sentence Commuted by Trump While Headed to Prison

Carlos Watson, the convicted Ozy Media founder-turned-fraudster who was sentenced to nearly 10 years in prison late last year, had his sentence commuted by President Donald Trump on Friday as he was driving himself to prison.

Watson was sentenced in December to 10 years after being convicted of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. As a result, he was sentenced to 116 months in prison and ordered to pay $96 million in restitution and forfeiture. However, he will no longer have to pay up as part of the commutation. He has maintained that he did not do the crimes he was convicted of, and said during his December hearing that he is being targeted and prosecuted because of his race.

Peers and longtime supporters of Watson applauded the decision on Friday, including activist Glenn E. Martin.

“We did it. Carlos Watson is not going to prison today. First and foremost, thank God for His grace, mercy and the power of redemption,” Martin, an activist who has pushed for Watson’s release, wrote in an X post. He also thanked Alice Marie Johnson, the Trump-appointed “pardon czar” who handled Watson’s case.

We did it. @CarlosWatson is not going to prison today. First and foremost, thank God for His grace, mercy and the power of redemption.

A very special note of appreciation to @AliceMarieFree. Your advocacy, compassion, and relentless pursuit of fairness have made this moment… pic.twitter.com/M5135ZYvL3

— Glenn E. Martin (@glennEmartin) March 28, 2025

Watson and his business practices came under fire when he was found to have been impersonating other media executives on phone calls and making fake documents to deceive potential investors by lying about the financial health of the now-defunct company.

Ozy Media, which Watson launched in 2013, collapsed spectacularly in 2021 after the New York Times published an expose that accused the company of inflating its online traffic and video viewership and revealed that COO Samir Rao had impersonated a Google executive on a fundraising call with Goldman Sachs — sparking an FBI investigation.

Rao pleaded guilty last year to fraud charges as did former Ozy chief of staff Suzee Han. They both testified against Watson.

Both Watson, who is a former MSNBC anchor, and his lawyers claimed that any fraudulent activity was the fault of other Ozy employees. Watson testified that he did not intentionally pad the revenue estimates, but presented a typical financial profile for a “scrappy young company.”

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QVC Cuts 900 Staffers in Pivot to ‘Live Social Shopping’

QVC laid off approximately 900 U.S. staffers on Thursday, with many finding that it was their last day with the home-shopping giant after the company announced it would be reorganizing following the company’s consolidation with the Home Shopping Network earlier this year.

“As a result of this reorganization, we made the very difficult decision to eliminate a number of roles. In the U.S., this impacts approximately 900 team members across HSN, QVC US and our Global Shared Services,” a statement from the group on the company’s site read. “For many of these individuals, today will be their last day with QVC Group. Some will continue working with us for several months, mainly to support the transition of the HSN broadcast and the St. Petersburg campus.”

The memo stated that the reorganization was “part of our strategy to grow by becoming a live social shopping company.”

QVC acquired shopping rival HSN in 2017 and began moving staffers from HSN’s’ headquarters in St. Petersburg, Fla. to QVC’s Studio Park in West Chester, Pa.

The company has 17,000 employees globally, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, which means that the layoffs are hitting 5% of the workforce.

“We will be sharing the detail with potentially affected individuals and, where applicable, engaging in negotiations with relevant employee representation bodies, in accordance with local laws,” the company said.

On March 18, the company named Alex Wellen president and chief growth officer. “He will oversee a growing, multi-functional team, introduce new capabilities into the organization and develop and execute plans to drive success and growth at QVC Group,” a statement on the company site reads.

Wellen was previously the President and CEO of MotorTrend Group. He also held strategic executive leadership roles at Turner Broadcasting and CNN Worldwide.

Mike Fitzharris was named president of QVC U.S. brand and chief operating officer in January. Stacy Bowe was also named president of HSN brand and U.S. merchandising. The shakeup comes as QVC Group looks to become more profitable in the shifting landscape. In 2024, the company’s consolidated net revenue fell 4.8 percent to $452 million, per the SEC filing.

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‘Warfare’ Review: Alex Garland Makes One of the Most Effective War Movies Ever

In discarding Hollywood tropes in favor of truth, the makers of “Warfare” have crafted one of the most viscerally powerful stories about combat ever filmed. 

Co-written and co-directed by Alex Garland (“Civil War,” “Ex Machina”) and Ray Mendoza, the deeply immersive film tells the true story of one chaotic, terrifying day experienced by Navy SEALs on a 2006 surveillance mission in Ramadi, Iraq. It aims for utter authenticity, usually shunted aside in favor of what Hollywood thinks viewers want instead — a three-act structure, clear hero and villains, an easily digestible message, spectacular firefights. “Warfare” ignores those expectations in order to create an inescapably inside-the-nightmare, nearly real-time narrative. It relies only on the memories of those who were actually there, as collected by Mendoza, who himself was one of the SEALs pinned down in the house under siege that day.  

They’re constantly under fire and can’t pinpoint all the sources. They’re surrounded, outnumbered and their attackers are armed to the teeth. And Garland and Mendoza just show it to us without telling us how to feel about it. 

There’s no score. No slo-mo, flashy editing, crazy camera moves or shocking-and-awing gunfights. The actual on-screen body count is low; we rarely see whether shots hit their targets, despite thousands of rounds being fired. The narrative is constructed with long, extended takes, raising even higher the stress of being trapped in that situation. In fact, it’s only in the rare instances when we feel the filmmakers’ thumbs on the scale that “Warfare” loses its balance — as when it expresses the bell-rung SEALs’ dazed confusion a few too many times. But that’s a minor quibble with a movie that admirably stays out of its own way.

To say the film bears no resemblance to the usual Hollywood depiction of war is about as high a compliment as I can pay it. That doesn’t mean the story is without meaning. Perhaps the most effective way to convey that war is hell is to dump all the metaphors, story beats and shoehorned character development and just put the viewer in it, which this film accomplishes in a way very rarely seen in narrative cinema.  

It dispenses with all that “here’s a picture of my sweetheart” nonsense and throws us in the deep end. As “Black Hawk Down” succeeded in doing, it makes us forget the politics, and even the mission of the moment, putting us in the fighters’ boots as they just try to stay alive. And these are Navy SEALs, among our best-trained, highest-level warriors, who are desperately fighting to survive.  

“Warfare” doesn’t bother to argue about good guys and bad. In fact, one of the tactics the SEALs use in their last-ditch escape attempt should have audiences gasping at its consequences. But in that moment of extreme danger, you comprehend why they’re doing it. 

While Mendoza’s account is from the U.S. perspective, and his love for his comrades is clear, the experience is not romanticized. When one of these guys is grievously injured, his piercing cries of agony haunt much of the rest of the film’s soundtrack. 

It’s very hard to imagine that an impressionable young person watching this movie would come out thinking, “That was cool! I can’t wait to do that!” 

The acting is appropriately rooted in realism. There are no star turns, just a fine young cast (led by D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Will Poulter, Cosmo Jarvis, Joseph Quinn and Charles Melton) convincingly looking like well-trained operators in a completely life-or-death situation. The ensemble’s work is impeccable and without a trace of vanity. 

Cineastes may pull for “Warfare” to win at the box office because it could help impress on the industry how those artificial, familiar requirements — the same old structure, characters, conflicts, the same old “cool” view of combat — are simply not needed for a movie to be embraced by audiences. 

One sign of how un-Hollywood the film is: While I think it should be an early contender for screenplay awards, its most memorable line of dialogue is one character simply wailing, “Why? Why? Why?” That distraught screaming rang in my memory long after leaving the theater. 

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Academy Apologizes for Not Naming ‘No Other Land’ Director Hamdan Ballal in Condemnation of Violence

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences apologized Friday for withholding explicit support for the Oscar-winning co-director of documentary “No Other Land” Hamdan Ballal after he was beaten and detained in the West Bank last week.

The film organization had sent an email to its members on Wednesday condemning violence. That email did not name the documentary’s title or the name of its co-director, and it drew widespread condemnation from members, around 700 of whom at the time of publishing signed an open letter on Friday morning that read, in part, “It is indefensible for an organization to recognize a film with an award in the first week of March, and then fail to defend its filmmakers just a few weeks later.” 

On Friday afternoon, Academy CEO Bill Kramer and President Janet Yang sent an email to their nearly 11,000 members that read, “On Wednesday, we sent a letter in response to reports of violence against Oscar winner Hamdan Ballal, director of ‘No Other Land,’ connected to his artistic expression. We regret that we failed to directly acknowledge Mr. Ballal and the film by name.

“We sincerely apologize to Mr. Ballal and all artists who felt unsupported by our previous statement and want to make it clear that the Academy condemns violence of this kind anywhere in the world. We abhor the suppression of free speech under any circumstances.”

A source with knowledge of the Academy’s actions said the Friday statement was in the works before the release of the members’ petition, but was delayed until the organization could convene a meeting of its 55-member Board of Governors. It is not known whether the board was consulted before Kramer and Yang sent out the initial email on Wednesday.

The original email, which was also signed by Kramer and Yang, was in part a condemnation of violence — but in addition to not naming Ballal, it made a point of justifying the Academy’s reluctance to speak out on “social, political and economic events.”

“We fundamentally believe that film has the power to enlighten global audiences and highlight different perspectives – and we encourage our members to use their art to do so,” the original email read, in part. “The Academy condemns harming or suppressing artists foe their work or their viewpoints.

“We are living in a time of profound change, marked by conflict and uncertainty – across the globe, in the U.S., and within our own industry. Understandably, we are often asked to speak on behalf of the Academy in response to social, political, and economic events. In these instances, it is important to note that the Academy represents close to 11,000 global members with many unique viewpoints.”

Many Academy members were outraged by the suggestion that the phrase “many unique viewpoints” could justify the Academy’s refusal to condemn a specific act of violence against a recent Oscar winner.

“I had chalked up The Academy’s failure to speak out in support of a recent Oscar winner being beaten and abducted, I assumed events had happened too fast for you to take action,” wrote Documentary Branch member AJ Schnack in an email to Kramer and Yang that he later decided to make public. “I am shocked and angry that you are now letting us, your members, know that you view the abduction and beating of a recent honoree as something that members will have ‘many unique viewpoints’ of. With respect, it’s a truly heinous suggestion.

” … This cannot be the way forward if The Academy truly cares about artistic freedoms and our rights as filmmakers.”

Hallal’s co-director, Israeli filmmaker Yuval Abraham, responded to the Academy’s inaction on social media, writing, “Sadly, the U.S. Academy, which awarded us an Oscar three weeks ago, declined to publicly support Hamdan Ballal while he was beaten and tortured by Israeli soldiers and settlers.

“The European Academy voiced support, as did countless other award groups and festivals. Several U.S. Academy members — especially in the documentary branch — pushed for a statement, but it was ultimately refused,” he added. “We were told that because other Palestinians were beaten up in the settler attack, it could be considered unrelated to the film, so they felt no need to respond.”

Hallal, a Palestinian director who lives in the West Bank near the village of Susiya, said he was beaten by Jewish settlers and detained by Israeli forces on suspicion of throwing stones and damaging property, which he denied doing.

“I feel I will die, because this attack was so hard, I bleed from everywhere,” Hallal told ABC News on Thursday.

Steve Pond contributed to this report.

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Ted Sarandos Says Netflix Is in the ‘Spending Time Business’ vs. YouTube’s ‘Killing Time’ Business

Ted Sarandos took aim at YouTube during a wide-ranging conversation at a Paley Media Council event Friday, drawing a contrast between what he called the video platform’s “killing time” business versus Netflix’s “spending time” business.

The Netflix co-CEO also argued that the Alphabet-owned video platform is “not a good recovery model” for creators, while speaking at “Beyond the Stream: A Conversation with Ted Sarandos.”

When asked about competition with YouTube, Sarandos reiterated that the streamer is focused on capturing the 80% of TV watching not on either platform. But he also said the company is competing for the chunk of YouTube viewing geared towards “professional content.”

“I think we’re a better monetization model for networks and studios for that, but I also think that there’s a whole bunch of creators that I would put in the pro-am category that are making really interesting, compelling programming to watch,” he explained. “But YouTube doesn’t give them any money up front to make it, so they’re doing it all at their own risk. You saw that MrBeast basically said he’s lost $80 million last year on his YouTube channel. So it’s not a good recovery model…if Beast had the audience that he had like that on Netflix, he wouldn’t be raising money. He’d be giving away more money.”

Sarandos said that YouTube is a good platform for creators to “cut your teeth on” or develop an idea that can then be brought to Netflix where they would assume the financial risk.

“We compete with them, along with everybody else, for entertainment, time and money. So certainly we’re competing with them for advertising dollars and professional content. So for that part of YouTube, we definitely compete. For the other parts we definitely don’t,” he continued. “I think there’s a part of the creator community that’s snackable consumption. There’s a difference between killing time and spending time. So we’re in the kind of how you spend time business moreso.”

Sarandos was also asked about Amazon MGM Studios strategy in the wake of head Jen Salke’s exit.

“Honestly, what we do, for me, is so all encompassing and difficult that I really don’t pay that much attention to them. And I don’t mean that to be in the pejorative. I don’t mean to be snotty about it. I honestly tell the employees all the time, if you’re looking over your shoulders at the competition all the time you’re going to trip, and that’s the worst thing we could do, is trip and trip over ourselves would be the worst thing to do. So I feel like we don’t really pay that much attention.”

“When we come to Netflix, we only do one thing. We have to do this really well all the time. And if you don’t like what you’re watching, if you don’t watch enough, you quit. And it’s one click, it’s very easy to quit,” Sarandos added. “So we are totally focused on this. This is the consumer promise that we’ve made, that we’re going to entertain you and we’re gonna give you a ton of value for your money. And if we don’t, you can quit. And I think that sometimes, if it’s not your strategic core, you might go adrift.”

He noted that Prime Video is an “interesting product, because a lot of people get it for free because they signed up for free shipping,” but pointed out that Amazon’s DNA is being a retailer and reseller.

“They must see something in it. They’re spending $9 billion a year doing it. There must be something that works,” he said.

When asked about Prime Video’s sports strategy with “Thursday Night Football,” Sarandos said it is “consistent with what I’m literally just guessing they’re trying to do, which is aggregate a big audience and sell stuff to them,” adding that the NFL is “pretty dependable, but very expensive.”

In addition to YouTube and Amazon, Sarandos weighed in on the Disney CEO succession search. When asked if he turned down a conversation about taking on the role, Sarandos clarified that “no one has ever talked to me about that.”

“I can’t imagine a more interesting challenge than the one I’m in,” he added. “But I’m up to my eyeballs in it every day.”

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Federal Judge Blocks Trump’s Voice of America Shutdown

A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from shutting down the U.S. Agency for Global Media, the parent company of Voice of America, on Friday.

Earlier this month, Trump signed an executive order to eliminate the agency, which was established in 1999. VOA, however, dates back to 1942.

A lawsuit filed by “government employees, individual journalists, unions, and nonprofits advocating for independent journalism,” accuse Lake, who is Senior Advisor to the Acting CEO of the USAGM, of “violat[ing] Plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights. Victor Morales, a Senior Analyst who has reported on U.S. and international affairs for more than two decades, is also named in the lawsuit.

“The dismantling of USAGM would clearly cause employees, contractors, and grantees irreparable harm,” the judge wrote. “And Plaintiffs have offered sufficient evidence that Defendants are doing just that.”

Andrew G. Celli Jr., who is representing the journalists bringing the suit, told the New York Times on Friday that the judge will issue a temporary restraining order, which may be as long as 21 days, according to Celli. As of Friday evening, the order had not yet been issued.

“This is a decisive victory for press freedom and the First Amendment, and a sharp rebuke to an administration that has shown utter disregard for the principles that define our democracy,” Celli said in a statement.

Plaintiffs argue that Lake’s actions are “arbitrary and capricious” because they
occurred “mere hours after the President’s executive order and did not give a justification for shutting the agency down.”

The court victory is the second for the embattled agency in as many days. On Thursday the Trump administration sidestepped a different lawsuit by restoring funding to Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty and the Open Technology Fund, which are also overseen by USAGM.

In a hearing Thursday morning, the administration asked that this lawsuit, filed by RFE and RL in order to restore said funding, be tossed because their relief has been granted, rendering the lawsuit moot. The presiding judge will hold a hearing on Monday if the funding is not restored.

As for USGAM itself, Lake added salt to the wounds on Friday morning by tweeting that the agency’s employees should “check your email for an urgent message from HR.” According to the Times, the mail was an invitation to resign, with pay and benefits offered through September.

Lake ended her tweet with, “Have a great weekend.”

The USAGM website states that the agency’s mission “is to inform, engage, and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy.”

Voice of America is just one of the cultural institutions targeted by Trump since he took office in January. He also took over as head of the Kennedy Center in Washington DC after firing the entire board of trustees.

On Thursday, he also signed an executive order to “remove improper ideology” from The Smithsonian Institution, because the museum complex supposedly promotes “narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive.”

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LA Times Hit by More Layoffs as Dozens Cut From Operations, Communications Divisions | Report

A month after at least 40 newsroom employees accepted buyouts, the Los Angeles Times has been hit by another wave of brutal layoffs, this time on the outlet’s business side.

While the full count isn’t known, Oliver Darcy reported Thursday that dozens of employees across the company’s operations and communications sections were let go this week, including Vice President of Communications Hillary Manning.

Representatives for the Los Angeles Times didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from TheWrap.

Manning also did not respond to a request for comment; as of this writing, her LA Times email address has not been deactivated.

The report of more cuts comes a month after more than 40 newsroom employees accepted buyouts offered by the paper’s billionaire owner Patrick Soon-Shiong. The exact number of affected employees in that round of cuts is unknown but at least 17 were reporters.

And as TheWrap exclusively reported, this included 23-year veteran senior writer Jeffrey Fleishman, staff writer Tracy Wilkinson and national and foreign editor Alan Zarembo, who were the first confirmed staffers to take the buyout.

At the time of those buyouts, an employee who was still at the the Times told TheWrap that six veteran copyeditors were also among those taking a buyout. This employee had particularly harsh criticism of Soon-Shiong, saying in part, “that’s a tremendous amount of institutional knowledge lost. Perhaps we should put out a missing flyer in search of the man who bought our paper and made promises about its future.”

In January 2024, following the resignation of executive editor Kevin Merida, the Times laid off 115 journalists, with more editors resigning in the following months.

But the latest cuts also follow what critics charge is Soon-Shiong imposing a decidedly right wing tilt on the paper that began when he axed the paper’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris for president.

Editorial Editor Mariel Garza resigned in protest over that decision, and as TheWrap reported at that time, editorial writer Karin Klein and Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Greene both quit the day after.

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Diddy Accused of Forcing Photographer to Perform Oral Sex in New Sexual Battery Lawsuit

Sean “Diddy” Combs is facing yet another lawsuit containing shocking accusations, this time from a photographer who says the rap mogul forced him to perform oral sex and other acts by threatening his career.

The plaintiff, listed anonymously as a John Doe, says he was first approached by Combs while he was working on “a commercial filmed in 2022 or 2023,” Combs was on set, the lawsuit says, for unknown reasons, and he approached the plaintiff to meet in his trailer for was was presented as “an opportunity for plaintiff to advance his career.”

However, the suit alleges, as soon as Doe entered the trailer, Combs forcibly undressed him and promised career advancement in exchange for Doe performing oral sex. “The implication was clear, also, that if plaintiff did not perform oral sex on Combs to his satisfaction, his career would be over.”

The plaintiff says he performed the act, and the filing includes other extremely graphic details about the encounter; he says he never heard from Combs again.

The lawsuit demands a jury trial and accuses combs of Sexual Battery and seeks compensatory damages, special damages, punitive damages, court costs, and any further relief the court should deem appropriate.

Through his attorneys, Combs denied the allegations. “No matter how many lawsuits are filed—especially by individuals who refuse to put their own names behind their claims—it won’t change the fact that Mr. Combs has never sexually assaulted or sex trafficked anyone—man or woman, adult or minor. We live in a world where anyone can file a lawsuit for any reason. Fortunately, a fair and impartial judicial process exists to find the truth, and Mr. Combs is confident he will prevail in court,” his lawyers said in a statement.

The lawsuit comes just days after a judge allowed a separate, $30 million sexual assault lawsuit against Combs to proceed, with some aspects of the lawsuit dismissed. Should combs prevail in that case or the latest one, Che still faces numerous criminal charges and several other lawsuits and is currently being held in jail awaiting trial in New York.

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Radio Free Europe Funding Restored as Trump Administration Sidesteps Lawsuit, but Voice of America Remains Silent

In a significant victory for the outlets, the Trump administration on Wednesday ordered that funding for Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty be restored, sidestepping the lawsuit filed by both outlets that the administration looked likely to lose.

The order also restored funding to the Open Technology Fund, but Voice of America and Radio Free Asia remain off air.

Arizona Republican Kari Lake, the Trump-appointed ‘Special Adviser’ to USAGM, issued the order to restore funding on Wednesday night. But it did not become public until Thursday morning, when Justice Department lawyers informed presiding U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth in a court filing.

In the filing, DoJ asked that the lawsuit be tossed because, “now that Plaintiff has received that relief, Defendants’ position is that this matter is now moot.” Lamberth will hold a hearing on Monday if the agreement to restore funding is not upheld.

“This is an encouraging sign that RFE/RL’s operations will be able to continue, as Congress intended. We await official confirmation from USAGM that grant funding will promptly resume based on the intention expressed in last night’s letter. We are eager to speak directly with USAGM leadership about the extraordinary and cost-effective work that RFE/RL performs for the American people,” Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty CEO Stephen Capus said in a statement.

“This is not the time for RFE/RL to go silent. Millions of people rely on us for factual information in places where censorship is widespread. We must not cede ground to our adversaries at a time when threats to America are on the rise,” he added.

RFE and RL, alongside Voice of America, Radio Free Asia and the Open Technology fund were taken down on March 14 when the Trump administration announced plans to gut U.S. Agency for Global media, the organization that oversees them.

Several Voice of America staffers filed a lawsuit on March 21, asking the courts to rule that the Trump administration had acted illegally and unconstitutionally. VoA Director Michael Abramowitz filed a similar lawsuit on Wednesday.

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‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ Broadway Review: Sarah Snook Doesn’t Paint a Pretty Portrait

A better title would be “The Parody of Dorian Gray.” Sarah Snook plays all the characters from Oscar Wilde’s 1891 novel about a young man who doesn’t grow old but whose portrait reflects both his real age and moral corruption. This solo “The Picture of Dorian Gray” opened Thursday at the Music Box after a run in London.

At the top of the two-hour show, written and directed by Kip Williams, Snook gives us three impersonations in quick succession: the epigram-spouting roue Lord Henry Wotton, the troubled portraitist Basil Hallward and the callow young beauty Dorian Gray. Depending on where you’re sitting in the Music Box, you may or may not be able to see Snook while she performs this revolving-door act. You can definitely see her face as it is projected on a big screen that’s suspended middle stage. Snook sits behind that screen as she’s recorded by four camera operators. Maybe, if Snook where seated downstage and facing us, her acting here would be more impressive. From what we see on the big screen, her impersonation of three male characters is pretty crude in a burlesque sort of way. Eventually, Snook does move downstage with her scrum of camera operators in tow. It’s then that other characters emerge, not always in person on stage but on that big screen, which is joined by a bunch of other smaller screens that float under the proscenium.

Yes, a lot of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” is taped, and it’s in these canned performances that Snook achieves remarkable transformations that elude her when performing in person. Much of this legerdemain derives from Marg Horwell’s wonderfully ornate Victorian costumes and the uncredited hair and makeup designs, which are remarkable. These changes in pre-recorded physical properties are far more impressive than what Snook manages to perform live on stage.

In one major coup de theatre, Snook’s Lord Henry emerges in the flesh to sit down at a dinner party that includes five other characters, all played by Snook on tape. It is every bit as awesome as what Alec Guinness achieves playing several members of the D’Ascoyne family in the 1949 film classic “Kind Hearts and Coronets.”

Snook’s Dorian Gray, on the other hand, is a mixed bag. In the beginning, the character comes loaded with blond curls, and he acts and sounds a lot like Glynis Johns in “The Chapman Report.” Clearly, Johns playing a ditzy, sex-starved housewife in that 1962 screen potboiler is the far more delightful camp effort.

Not that Snook doesn’t have her fun moments playing Dorian. Despite all the movie screens on stage, it is an awesomely unexpected twist that one of the only glimpses we get of the corrupted portrait of Dorian Gray comes to us via an iPhone camera. The joke is, the horror is Snook’s own face. Granted, she’s lit terribly by designer Nick Schlieper. Otherwise, it’s a truly magical iPhone that creates distorted images of Snook’s face, which provides a devastating critique of people who take selfies. How video designer David Bergman achieves these grotesque effects I have no idea. I’m only a theater critic.

The other wonderful gag here is that Dorian’s biggest worry is not his rapidly deteriorating portrait on the wall. Rather, he keeps checking his mirror and iPhone to make sure his face remains young and untouched despite all the debauchery.

Williams’ adaptation follows Wilde’s original story more closely than the 1945 MGM movie starring George Sanders as Lord Henry and Hurd Hatfield as Dorian. Hatfield does something unexpected in that horror classic: His face throughout remains a tabula rasa. The actor lets the painting do all the acting. Snook takes a very different approach. She eschews the blond curls halfway through the show to don a slick pompadour that’s closer to what Glynis Johns sports in “The Chapman Report.” Snook also goes full-throttle to tear up the stage, even though there isn’t much scenery to put through her acting shredder. Dorian’s visit to an opium den takes us into the bowels of the Music Box – thanks to all those camera operators – and later, Dorian has a shoot-out in the forest with James Vain, brother of the jilted Sybil Vain, who has committed suicide. Bergman’s video design and Horwell’s scenic design make it nearly impossible to tell the difference between what’s happening on stage and what’s being projected on all those frenetically moving screens. It’s a technical tour de force.

As for Snook, her performance goes completely over the top. It’s grand. It’s fraught. She’s no longer Dorian Gray, much less Glynis Johns. She is an actor going mad in front of our eyes. Or perhaps Snook is just showing off big time.

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