Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 960

Judd Apatow Wants to Make Amy Schumer a Movie Star

Comedian Amy Schumer became a TV star this year with the launch of her Comedy Central series Inside Amy Schumer, and now—thanks, in part, to Judd Apatow—she has the chance to become a movie star. 

Mike Fleming Jr. of Deadline reports that Apatow's production company is set to produce a screenplay optioned by Universal that Schumer will star in and write. Those are really all the details we have right now—Fleming makes no mention of plot—but it's exciting news that Schumer will get to bring her brand of comedy to the big screen. R-rated comedies with female leads, like this summer's The Heat, are still enough of a rarity that the media makes a lot of noise whenever one appears on the big screen.

Though Apatow's career as a director has been marked with charges of sexism—see: Knocked Up—he has recently had a good track record of championing female-driven projects, like Bridemaids and HBO's Girls. Bridemaids, the 2011 film starring Kristen Wiig, is now regarded as a turning point for women on screen, while Girls has been a much talked-about television cult sensation. 

Schumer seems like a perfect match for Apatow's brand of humor. She's a fairly fearless comedian who jokes frankly about sex. In the video below, she parodies the sex tips featured in women's magazines. (It's decidedly NSFW.) Her show had the highest-rated series premiere for the network this year and was renewed for a second season. Now with an Apatow-approved film on the way, Schumer seems on her way to even bigger success.

Inside Amy Schumer
Get More: Comedy Central,Funny Videos,Funny TV Shows

 

 

       

New Docs Detail U.S. Involvement in Saddam's Nerve Gas Attacks

The U.S. knew about, and in one case helped, Iraq's chemical weapons attacks against Iran in the 1980's, according to recently declassified CIA documents obtained by Foreign Policy. Their detailed timeline, also constructed with the aid of interviews with former foreign intelligence officials, indicates that the U.S. secretly had evidence of Iraqi chemical attacks in 1983. The evidence, FP writes, is "tantamount to an official American admission of complicity in some of the most gruesome chemical weapons attacks ever launched."

Ever since last week's devastating evidence of chemical attacks in Syria, analysts have looked for benchmarks to predict the U.S.'s response. On Sunday, a U.S. official suggested that the U.S. is moving closer to possible military action in the country as the U.S. has "little doubt" that an "indiscriminate" chemical attack took place. Officials are reportedly looking to the 1998 air war on Kosovo for a precedent — a similar humanitarian crisis in the face of virtually no chance of a U.N. Security Council resolution to authorize use of force, thanks to dissent from Russia. And while Foreign Policy's additional reporting places the Iraq situation in contrast to today's debate over Syria, the details reveal just how sharply, in the past, the razor of U.S. interests in the Middle East has cut: "it was the express policy of Reagan to ensure an Iraqi victory in the war, whatever the cost," the report explains. And apparently, that went up to and including helping Saddam Hussein gas Iran.

From 1983 until 1987,  the U.S. more or less sat on (and internally discussed) intelligence containing strong evidence of Iraq's chemical weapons use — early on, that meant mustard gas. Retired Air Force Col. Rick Francona told the magazine that he first learned of Iraq's chemical weapons use in 1984. All that time, Iran was publicly saying that Iraq had used chemical weapons against them. They just didn't have any evidence to take to the U.N.  Then, Iran concentrated a large number of troops near the Iraqi city of Barash, near a vulnerability in Iraq's defenses:

In late 1987, the DIA analysts in Francona's shop in Washington wrote a Top Secret Codeword report partially entitled "At The Gates of Basrah," warning that the Iranian 1988 spring offensive was going to be bigger than all previous spring offensives, and this offensive stood a very good chance of breaking through the Iraqi lines and capturing Basrah. The report warned that if Basrah fell, the Iraqi military would collapse and Iran would win the war.

President Reagan read the report and, according to Francona, wrote a note in the margin addressed to Secretary of Defense Frank C. Carlucci: "An Iranian victory is unacceptable."

The U.S. authorized intelligence sharing with Iraq, and gave Iraq the location of those troops. Iraq then conducted a series of devastating sarin gas attacks. You can view all of the declassified documents (or read the whole report) at Foreign Policy.

       

The National Zoo's Panda Cub is Doing Just Fine

The new giant panda cub at the National Zoo is "healthy, active, and vibrant," according researchers who finally got to examine the newborn for the first time this weekend. Mei Xiang, the zoo's female giant panda, gave birth to the 4.8 ounce cub on Friday. "The cub is robust, fully formed, and is a bright, healthy shade of pink," the National Zoo explains. Keepers won't know the gender of the new cub for a few weeks.

Mei Xiang also gave birth to a second, stillborn cub on Saturday. The emergence of the second cub led to a frightening case of mistaken identity for zoo keepers, because the second birth went unnoticed on video feeds from the panda's den. When keep, the zoo staff scrambled in "five minutes of pure terror" and "full-blown panic" as they thought Friday's seemingly healthy cub was dead. Then, keepers heard the squeals of the first cub, tucked safely under its mother's arm.

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(photos: The National Zoo/AP)

The healthy cub is eating and digesting food, has a steady heartbeat, and what appear to be properly functioning lungs. Researchers are going to try to examine the cub again on Tuesday — which isn't as easy as it sounds. Mei became, understandably, agitated when researchers took her cub away this morning.

The healthy cub is the third for Mei. her only other surviving cub was born in 2005. Almost a year ago, she gave birth to a cub, not fully developed, who died six days later.

       

ESPN's Skipper Nixed NFL Concussions Collaboration After Viewing the Trailer

ESPN's CEO John Skipper decided to end his company's partnership with a PBS's Frontline investigation into NFL concussions after viewing a trailer for the upcoming documentary. Skipper, talking to ESPN's ombudsman, said he thought the trailer sensationalized the story. Here's the trailer Skipper didn't like:

[image error]According to ombudsman Robert Lipsyte, who titled his entry "Was ESPN sloppy, naive or compromised?" Skipper objected to the trailer's tagline — “Get ready to change the way you see the game”— and the final words you hear before the trailer ends: “I’m really wondering if every single football player doesn’t have this," said by neuropathologist Ann McKee. Skipper was also “startled” by the existence of the trailer itself, which included ESPN branding when shown for the first time at an August 6 panel on the concussions project. Skipper hadn't seen or approved the trailer before it went public. That was a problem for the CEO.

But as an earlier New York Times report (not to mention Lipsyte's own take) makes clear, the issue is likely more complicated than an unwelcome trailer. Skipper marks the "catalyst" of the chain of events that led to ESPN pulling the plug as the August 6 panel at which the trailer was first shown. But a week after that, and one week before Skipper went public and severed the partnership, the CEO met with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and Steve Bornstein, president of the NFL Network. The Times described the meeting as "combative," and their sources say that Goodell pressured Skipper to cut ties with Frontline on the project. From the trailer, it's pretty easy to see how the NFL fares in the documentarians' hands: "Frontline investigates what the NFL knew, and when they knew it," the narrator says. Then, an interviewee adds, "you can't go against the NFL. They'll squash you."

[image error]Editorially, it's impossible to completely sever ESPN from the project. Two of ESPN's investigative journalists reported the basis for the PBS documentary, called League of Denial: The NFL’s Concussion Crisis. Their book, also called League of Denial, is scheduled for release in the fall, when the "Frontline" series airs. "I am the only one at ESPN who has to balance the conflict between journalism and programming," Skipper told Lipsyte. ESPN senior news producer Dwayne Bray, who is working on the documentary, seemed optimistic in his comments to the ombudsman: "This issue is about branding, not about journalism. We will still get to do the stories and no one will interfere with that.” Skipper also suggested to Lipsyte that the Frontline partnership was loosely formed. If true, Lipsyte said, "it seems an unusually sloppy execution for ESPN."

Addressing the root cause of Skipper's decision, Lipsyte wrote: "beats me." But the ombudsman raises a list of questions, some deeply rooted in an ongoing debate over the line between editorial and programming at the network:

Was attention not being paid at ESPN? Too much time spent acquiring tennis rights, the SEC, Keith Olbermann, Nate Silver and Jason Whitlock, and not enough on journalism? Was ESPN naïve about the relationship with a hard-driving documentary unit whose viewership, not to mention its bottom line, was not invested in football? Was it also naïve to fail to anticipate the inevitable reaction from the NFL, which from the beginning had pointedly refused to cooperate with “Frontline” (no league footage, no Goodell interview, limited access to doctors who advise the NFL on concussions)?

And tries to provide a range of answers:

At best we've seen some clumsy shuffling to cover a lack of due diligence. At worst, a promising relationship between two journalism powerhouses that could have done more good together has been sacrificed to mollify a league under siege. The best isn't very good, but if the worst turns out to be true, it’s a chilling reminder how often the profit motive wins the duel.

Frontline's League of Denial, sans ESPN branding, will air on PBS in two parts on October 8 and 15th.

(Photos: PBS's Frontline)

       

Look at Britain's Rare Surprise Baby Turtles

While we've been caught up at home with the birth of a new baby panda at the National Zoo, our friends across the pond in Britain have their own tiny, adorable new animal births to get excited about. And their new friends were a surprise! 

Keepers at the National Sea Life Centre in Birmingham were shocked to find two baby Roti Island snake-necked turtles swimming in their tank last week. They had no idea one of the turtles had laid eggs before seeing the adorable little guys getting acquainted with their new home. "The first we knew of it was when we came in one morning and found these two youngsters swimming around," curator Graham Burrows told reporters. The turtles are now being cared for ahead of their public debut next week. 

But their birth is news itself considering the puny number of Roti Island snake-necked turtles there are in existence. Including the two just born, there are only 250 Roti Island snake-necked turtles living in captivity. "That’s more than the population left in the wild," Burrows said. The species is one of the Turtle Conservation Fund's 25 most endangered types of turtles in the world.  

It's a little heartbreaking to know something so cute could be so endangered. 

       

Christine Quinn Revives a Teen; Anthony Weiner Involved in Car Crash

The race to find Michael Bloomberg's replacement as New York City mayor heated up over the weekend with the primaries looming. For two candidates, the tale of the campaign cycle was perfectly captured in two freak accidents no one could foresee.

One candidate's campaign is nearly dead after an impossibly fast start. Some dips in the road have turned the whole thing into, well, a car crash. On Saturday, while driving to Washington for Saturday's March on Washington rally, Anthony Weiner's transportation was involved in a "chain reaction" three car accident. 

Another candidate's campaign started out hot, was briefly cooled down, and is now revived. On Sunday a teenage supporter of Democratic candidate Christine Quinn collapsed from the 81-degree heat and close quarters on stage. Quinn cared for the girl until paramedics could swoop in and make sure she's OK. "Quinn helped the girl stand and walk up the City Hall steps. Once inside, Quinn used wet paper towels to cool the girl’s legs and chest, before grabbing an ice pack to apply to the young supporter’s head," the New York Post reports. The girl was fine in the end. Quinn also earned The New York Times' official Democratic endorsement over the weekend, her second endorsement from the local papers this week. The race is seen by many as hers to lose. 

The primaries are on September 10. Sometimes, life is strangely poetic. 

       

'The Mortal Instruments' Is Not the Next 'Twilight'

Welcome to the Box Office Report, where the status quo is upheld by Oprah and bad jokes.

1. Lee Daniels's The Butler (Weinstein Company): $17 million in 3,110 theaters [Week 2]

Another week up top for The Butler thanks to white people, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Realistically being the best movie during a slow period at movie houses is what likely helped lead The Butler past the trio of new movies hitting theaters. That, and Oprah.

2. We're the Millers (Warner): $13.5 million in 3,445 theaters [Week 3]

The was so little change at the top of the box office. Jason Sudeikis is happy and healthy and ready to take home a fat pay check after seeing this one pass the $90 million mark.

3. The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones (Sony): $9.3 million in 3,118 theaters

Coming in $2 million shy of soft expectations on one of the worst weeks of the summer, it's hard to imagine The Mortal Instruments becoming a regular franchise. Producers may green light a sequel if it can find success after a DVD/Blu-Ray/on-demand release, or keep slotting it into this harmless August weekend to clean up whatever dollars are left in the late summer doldrums. The Mortal Instruments could be August's Percy Jackson equivalent, maybe. Otherwise this is a bust. 

4. The World's End (Focus): $8.9 million in 1,549 theaters

On the other hand, the new comedy from Nick Frost and Simon Pegg debuted in half as many theaters and made nearly as much money. Not a bad weekend for this duo. 

5. Planes (Universal): $13.1 million in 3,378 theaters [Week 3]

Planes is a movie that is in theaters. It is marketed for children, what with it's talking vehicles and flashy colors. They might be trying to score a low-key stoner audience too now that you mention it.

       

Ted Cruz Just Wants to be an American in Peace

Do you think Sen. Ted Cruz's quest to answer the questions about his citizenship is a prelude to an eventual run at the Republican nomination for the presidency in 2016? Well, he has no idea what you're talking about. Cruz said it was merely about his current job as a freshman Texas Senator. "Serving as a U.S. senator, I think it’s appropriate that I be only American," Cruz told CNN's State of the Union. "There’s a lot of silliness," he said. "I thought it was a reasonable question when The Dallas Morning News asked for my birth certificate so I gave it to them." Cruz was born in Calgary, see, and there was some debate surrounding whether or not he could legally run for the White House because of his Canadian citizenship. Cruz renounced his Canadian citizenship, though. Our neighbors to the north have so far remained ambivalent to losing Cruz from their ranks. 

Colin Powell thinks the President should speak out more about race relations, especially in the wake of the Trayvon Martin verdict in Florida, he said on CBS's Face the Nation. The former secretary of state also said he doesn't think the Martin verdict will have any sort of long term effects on American law, though he did say it was a dark moment for Florida's judicial system. "I think that it will be seen as a questionable judgment on the part of the judicial system down there, but I don't know if it will have staying power," Powell said. "These cases come along, and they blaze across the midnight sky and then after a period of time, they're forgotten." Powell said he thinks there's still work to be done to bridge the races together, and that he wants Obama to speak about race in America more often. "I'd like to see him be more passionate about race questions, and I think that was an accurate characterization of some of the things that we were exposed to. I mean, in my lifetime, over a long career in public life, you know, I've been refused access to restaurants where I couldn't eat, even though I just came back from Vietnam, we can't give you a hamburger, come back some other time," Powell said. "And I did, right after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, I went right back to that same place and got my hamburger, and they were more than happy to serve me now. It removed a cross from their back, but we're not there yet. We're not there yet. And so we've got to keep working on it. And for the president to speak out on it is appropriate. I think all leaders, black and white, should speak out on this issue."

Sen. Bob Corker would like to know all about what the National Security Agency is doing, and he'd like to know soon, thanks. At least that's what he told Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace on Sunday. Wallace asked whether he knows everything about what the NSA is doing to spy or not spy on Americans. Corker said no, he does not know. "I'm not on the Intelligence Committee, and obviously they are privy to information that I am not, but absolutely not," Corker said. "And that's why I wrote a letter to the president this week to ask that the head of this organization come in and brief folks from top to bottom." Corker suggest the heads of the NSA should come in and give lawmakers a full run down of every operation currently in place so they may determine what oversight is necessary. "Look, I appreciate efforts to keep Americans secure," Corker said. "At the same time, this is in front of us, we are not in front of it. ... The American people want to know that those of us who are elected, (Rep.) Eliot (Engel) and I know, understand fully what's happening here. I don't think we do. I would imagine there are even members of the Intelligence Committee themselves that don't fully understand the gamut of things that are taking place."

Scott Brown also dodged 2016 questions on Fox News Sunday. Brown attended the Iowa State Fair last week, prompting a query from a fellow panel member about his intentions. "I'm going to focus on taking my message as we've talked about tonight of inclusiveness and a bigger tent, as obviously our panel here has said," the former senator said. "Because right now, there needs to be room for everybody in our tent in order for us to be effective. So I'm going to travel around the country and see what happens," he said. He's going to travel across the country, eh? Sure sounds like he's campaigning, but the semantics can be confusing. 

NBC uploaded the entire episode of Meet the Press that preceded the March on Washington. Watch that if you do nothing else today:

       

NSA Agents Were Really Excited to Bug the United Nations

The U.S. National Security Agency is accused of bugging the United Nations' New York headquarters, along with the European Union and the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, last summer, according to documents released by Edward Snowden to Germany's Der Spiegel. 

NSA agents could hardly contain their excitement after getting access to the U.N. "The data traffic gives us internal video teleconferences of the United Nations (yay!)," one document says, according to Der Spiegel. NSA experts allegedly infiltrated the U.N. system through the video conferencing set-up at the U.N.'s offices and used that to access offices for the European Union and the U.N.'s Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency office. The number of decrypted communications rose from 12 to 458 within three weeks. 

The documents released to Der Spiegel also claim the NSA has bugs in 80 embassies and consulates around the world. This seems like a very high number, which is probably why the documents allegedly say that should remain top secret otherwise everyone would be very upset. But we already know to an extent that everyone is spying on everyone at all times, even at G20 summits, so it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. 

Reuters points out some European presidents wrote an open letter to British Prime Minister David Cameron on Sunday criticizing his recent detention of Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald's partner, David Miranda. Sweden's Dagens Nyheter, Finland's Helsingin Sanomat, Denmark's Politiken and Norway's Aftenposten also criticized Cameron for threatening to press charges if the Guardian did not destroy a laptop with files leaked by Snowden. The paper complied. "(We are) deeply concerned that a stout defender of democracy and free debate such as the United Kingdom uses anti-terror legislation in order to legalize what amounts to harassment of both the paper and individuals associated with it," the letter says.

       

There Are Five New J.D. Salinger Books Coming

The big secrets revealed in Shane Salerno's new J.D. Salinger documentary and accompanying book, both appropriately titled Salinger, are here and, frankly, they are huge. The big reveal that Harvey Weinstein compared to The Crying Game is that five previously unpublished works from the last half of the famous author's life will be published starting in 2015. 

This is like spoiling the end of a movie — Weinstein was strangely right — but the news is too great not to share. According to new reports from The New York Times and the Associated Press, there will be new published works by the notoriously reclusive author starting in 2015. There are five new pieces in total, they involve some of Salinger's most beloved characters, and this delayed schedule was Salinger's plan. Before his death, Salinger instructed his estate as to when and how to release the works. The Times has the most detailed summation of the forthcoming stories: 

One collection, to be called “The Family Glass,” would add five new stories to an assembly of previously published stories about the fictional Glass family, which figured in Mr. Salinger’s “Franny and Zooey” and elsewhere, according to the claims, which surfaced in interviews and previews of the documentary and book last week.

Another would include a retooled version of a publicly known but unpublished tale, “The Last and Best of the Peter Pans,” which is to be collected with new stories and existing work about the fictional Caulfields, including “Catcher in the Rye.” The new works are said to include a story-filled “manual” of the Vedanta religious philosophy, with which Mr. Salinger was deeply involved; a novel set during World War II and based on his first marriage; and a novella modeled on his own war experiences.

So this is Salerno and Weinstein's big reveal, the secrets teased in the intense lead-up to the release of the book and movie next week. They kept everything under wraps until now, as is only appropriate for a Salinger project. 

For now, no one close to Salinger is admitting anything. The author's estate, run mostly by his son Matt Salinger and widow Colleen O'Neill, aren't commenting on anything. Salerno claims two "independent and separate" anonymous sources told him of the plans. The author only spoke with a very close-knit group of people in the later stages of his life, so it's unclear how Salerno found two people who could have known about the plan. We have to take his word and trust that his sourcing is solid.