Business
As the Los Angeles Wildfires Continue, Restaurants Rise Up
A few weeks ago, I had dinner at LaSorted’s in Chinatown, eating pizza and drinking wine with my husband while our toddler gnawed at a crust and threw a few salad leaves onto the floor. When I walked in this past Wednesday — as thousands of acres of Los Angeles still burned — the dining room was nearly unrecognizable, its wobbly tables reconfigured into a makeshift kitchen.
Pizza makers from all over the city were squashed inside, unpacking supplies and folding boxes. The line out the door looked like diners waiting for tables — blue Dodgers hats, oversize vintage button-downs, esoteric diner T-shirts — but this was a crew of volunteer drivers who’d signed up on Instagram. They were waiting for instructions from other volunteers who sorted hundreds of requests in a series of spreadsheets, text messages and DMs.
Thousands of firefighters are still working to contain the wildfires that displaced tens of thousands of Angelenos. Every day, several times a day, a collaborative, grass-roots patchwork of restaurant kitchens, trucks and makeshift catering operations, just like this one, feed the city’s emergency workers and evacuees.
“It’s not something you train for or something you learn,” said Tommy Brockert, the chef at LaSorted’s, who had evacuated but was now back home. “When things like this happen, people are able to do extraordinary things.”
Neighborhood restaurants aren’t exactly set up to respond to emergencies, but they just can’t help themselves. The best kind of restaurant people tend to have a fundamental sense of hospitality, combined with an ability to deftly organize chaos.
No one has a greater sense of urgency about cooking for people and caring for them, regardless of the logistical nightmares that might be involved. Day to day, that might mean that dinner service is going smoothly. When disaster strikes, it means 200 people spread across five locations will get a hot dinner.
There are so many restaurants and restaurant workers helping out (many of them displaced themselves) that the Los Angeles Times plotted them on a map. In her newsletter, the writer Emily Wilson tracked the various resources they provided, along with their fund-raisers and calls for volunteers and donations.
Khushbu Shah, a New York Times contributor who helped deliver some meals herself, wondered when all of the independent restaurants that stepped in to help might find some financial support.
Most places extending radical hospitality are doing it out of pocket or through an unsteady stream of donations, and the truth is: No one can afford it. Meanwhile, city officials have said it will be another week before many people can return home.
Chefs I spoke with over the phone this week said employees were asking for hours they couldn’t give them — their dining rooms were too quiet. They said bills were piling up. They said that a few years ago, they might have been able to weather a few tough days or even one tough week, but not now. Not after the compounding financial losses of the pandemic and the strikes. Soon, they said, the closings would start.
Still I was taken by surprise when the owners of the Ruby Fruit, a lesbian bar in Silver Lake that I reviewed a couple of years ago, announced they were closing — at least temporarily — because of the wildfires. It was becoming clear that even restaurants far away from the flames and toxic smoke weren’t safe from this disaster.
I’d canceled a few reservations in the first few days of the fires, or restaurants had called to cancel with me. Now it isn’t a safety issue as much as a vibe issue: In so many neighborhoods, restaurants are open, air purifiers running, but people still aren’t going out. When the whole city is mourning, there’s no getting away from your own sense of grief.
I didn’t realize how much I needed to get out until I showered, washed my hair and took some of my colleagues to dinner in East Hollywood. These reporters had been in the field all day, all week, or unable to step away from their laptops.
I felt my body relax the second I held a menu in my hand, the second a server came by and asked if he could bring me something to drink, something to eat. “I needed this,” one of us said, every few minutes, as plates crowded the space between us. “I really, really needed this.”
“This” wasn’t one particular dining room or must-order dish, it was being together in a Los Angeles restaurant while the wildfires still burned. It was the sense of safety, resilience and connection that restaurants insisted on sharing, even as their own staffs weathered the crisis.
There was no getting away from the grief I felt — it dined with us, it was inescapable — but there was no getting away from the gratitude, either.
Paramount Skydance Chief Executive David Ellison made his case directly to theater owners Thursday, pledging to release a minimum of 30 films a year from the combined Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery company during a speech at the CinemaCon trade convention in Las Vegas.
“I wanted to look every single one of you in the eye and give you my word,” Ellison said in a brief on-stage speech, adding that Paramount has already nearly doubled its film lineup for this year with 15 planned releases, up from eight in 2025.
He also said all films will remain in theaters exclusively for 45 days, starting Thursday. Films will then go to streaming platforms in 90 days. The amount of time that films stay in theaters — known as windowing — has been a controversial topic for theater owners, as some studios reduced that period during the pandemic. Theater operators have said the shortened window has trained audiences to wait to watch films at home and cuts into theater revenues.
“I have dedicated the last 20 years of my life to elevating and preserving film,” said Ellison, clad in a dark jacket and shirt with blue jeans. “And at Paramount, we want to tell even more great stories on the big screen — stories that make people think, laugh, dream, wonder and feel — and we want to share them with as broad an audience as possible.”
Ellison’s CinemaCon appearance comes as more than 1,000 Hollywood actors and creatives have signed a letter opposing Paramount’s proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Supporters of the letter have said the deal would reduce competition in the industry and “further consolidate an already concentrated media landscape.”
Some theater operators have also questioned whether the combined company could achieve its goal of releasing 30 films a year, particularly after the cost cuts that are expected after the merger closes.
“People can speculate all they want — but I am standing here today telling you personally that you can count on our complete commitment,” Ellison said. “And we’ll show you we mean it.”
The speech came after a star-studded video directed by “Wicked: For Good” director Jon M. Chu that was shot on the Paramount lot on Melrose Avenue and showcased directors and actors including Issa Rae, Will Smith, Chris Pratt, James Cameron and Timothée Chalamet that are working with the company.
The video closed with “Top Gun” actor Tom Cruise perched atop the Paramount water tower.
“As you saw, the Paramount lot is alive again,” Ellison said after the video. “And we could not be more excited.”
new video loaded: Why Your Paycheck Feels Smaller
By Ben Casselman, Nour Idriss, Sutton Raphael and Stephanie Swart
April 18, 2026
Nearly two years after actor Alec Baldwin was cleared of criminal charges in the “Rust” movie shooting death, a long simmering civil negligence case is inching toward a trial this fall.
On Friday, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge denied a summary judgment motion requested by the film producers Rust Movie Productions LLC, as well as actor-producer Baldwin and his firm El Dorado Pictures to dismiss the case.
During a hearing, Superior Court Judge Maurice Leiter set an Oct. 12 trial date.
The negligence suit was brought more than four years ago by Serge Svetnoy, who served as the chief lighting technician on the problem-plagued western film. Svetnoy was close friends with cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and held her in his arms as she lay dying on the floor of the New Mexico movie set. Baldwin’s firearm had discharged, launching a .45 caliber bullet, which struck and killed her.
The Bonanza Creek Ranch in Santa Fe, N.M. in 2021.
(Jae C. Hong / Associated Press)
Svetnoy was the first crew member of the ill-fated western to bring a lawsuit against the producers, alleging they were negligent in Hutchins’ October 2021 death. He maintains he has suffered trauma in the years since. In addition to negligence, his lawsuit also accuses the producers of intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Prosecutors dropped criminal charges against Baldwin, who has long maintained he was not responsible for Hutchins’ death.
“We are pleased with the Court’s decision denying the motions for summary judgment filed by Rust Movie Productions and Mr. Baldwin,” lawyers Gary Dordick and John Upton, who represent Svetnoy, said in a statement following the hearing. “He looks forward to finally having his day in court on this long-pending matter.”
The judge denied the defendants’ request to dismiss the negligence, emotional distress and punitive damages claims. One count directed at Baldwin, alleging assault, was dropped.
Svetnoy has said the bullet whizzed past his head and “narrowly missed him,” according to the gaffer’s suit.
Attorneys representing Baldwin and the producers were not immediately available for comment.
Svetnoy and Hutchins had been friends for more than five years and worked together on nine film productions. Both were immigrants from Ukraine, and they spent holidays together with their families.
On Oct. 21, 2021, he was helping prepare for an afternoon of filming in a wooden church on Bonanza Creek Ranch. Hutchins was conversing with Baldwin to set up a camera angle that Hutchins wanted to depict: a close-up image of the barrel of Baldwin’s revolver.
The day had been chaotic because Hutchins’ union camera crew had walked off the set to protest the lack of nearby housing and previous alleged safety violations with the firearms on the set.
Instead of postponing filming to resolve the labor dispute, producers pushed forward, crew members alleged.
New Mexico prosecutors prevailed in a criminal case against the armorer, Hannah Gutierrez, in March 2024. She served more than a year in a state women’s prison for her involuntary manslaughter conviction before being released last year.
Baldwin faced a similar charge, but the case against him unraveled spectacularly.
On the second day of his July 2024 trial, his criminal defense attorneys — Luke Nikas and Alex Spiro — presented evidence that prosecutors and sheriff’s deputies withheld evidence that may have helped his defense . The judge was furious, setting Baldwin free.
Variety first reported on Friday’s court action.
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