After watching his mother perform in a production of “A Raisin in the Sun” at Compton Community College when he was 9 years old, Anthony Anderson knew appearing on stage would be his life’s work. Over the next handful of years, he enrolled in programs across Los Angeles to achieve that dream. Then, one morning after finishing a class at the Southern California Regional Occupational Center in Torrance, Anderson saw a Post-It note on a bulletin board that caught his attention. The note informed aspiring artists about a newly formed arts school. To be admitted, they had to submit an audition tape.
“I ripped it off the board, and I brought it home to my mother, and I said, ‘Mom, if I can get into this school, can I go here?’” Anderson says. “She said, ‘If you can get into that, yes.’”
Months later, Anderson received a letter informing him that he had been accepted into the inaugural class at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts.
Founded in 1984 and opening its doors to students in 1985, Los Angeles County High School for the Arts is located on the campus of Cal State L.A. It was established to provide students (currently 550) with conservatory-level arts training and college-prep academics within the public education system. LACHSA isn’t associated with LAUSD; instead, it partners with the Los Angeles County Office of Education, which provides funding to support it.
“I felt it to be very important that I was in an environment where other students had the same passion as I did for the arts, in particular, theater,” Anderson says. “Being around other students who had the same passion and drive that I had as an artist was very influential.”
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Over the years, LACHSA has featured a who’s who of alumni across various disciplines, including musicians Phoebe Bridgers and Haim, actors Jenna Elfman and Belissa Escobedo, and visual artists Robert Vargas, Tomashi Jackson and Kehinde Wiley. For the past seven years, the school has been ranked as the top public high school for the arts.
Drew McClelland (second from right) with students from LACHSA’s Cinematic Arts Program and actor William H. Macy (far right).
(Courtesy of LACHSA)
While the school’s accolades focus on the arts, LACHSA also aims to give its students experiences that extend beyond the program. Days are structured so that students take academic classes in the morning and arts in the afternoon. With this format, they meet and get to know classmates from other disciplines.
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Former “SNL” cast member Taran Killam points out that this also promotes the school’s social and economic diversity, acting as a mini-college experience.
“It’s such a melting pot, but you have this beautiful, focused bonding,” he says. “It’s a rare thing for kids to know, but LACHSA students are ambitious. It’s very unifying when your background is so disparate and so diverse. It’s what makes it special, and you can’t get this experience in a traditional school.”
Lara Raj attended several arts-focused high schools as she moved during her childhood. With that in mind, the member of the girl group Katseye cites LACHSA as having a major influence on her artistic development. During her time at LACHSA, Raj took music, fashion and acting classes, and says its music tech class was her favorite. There, she learned how to create beats and write songs.
“I developed my songwriting and fell in love with it through those classes,” Raj says. “I was excited to go to school every day. And I hate school.”
Before attending LACHSA, singer-actor Josh Groban didn’t know a school specializing in the arts was an option. After bouncing around schools and realizing he needed a different education to express himself equally academically and artistically, he ended up at LACHSA. There, he found like-minded, artistically inclined outsiders.
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Josh Groban, a former student of LACHSA, credits the institution with helping him find his voice.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
“I was a kid who didn’t quite know how to fit in,” Groban says. “Then at [LACHSA], I was surrounded by other students who, I think, didn’t know how to fit in either. We were there for the same reasons, which is that we felt like we needed the nourishment of the arts and being able to express ourselves on a daily basis.”
Half of LACHSA’s funding is provided by the state, with the rest provided by the LACHSA Foundation, a registered 501(c) (3). According to its executive director, Trena Pitchford, the foundation has invested $1 million each school year.
“People always ask me when I tell them I went to LaGuardia and to LACHSA if they were private schools,” Raj says. “I tell them it was created by people who are passionate about the arts and want to inspire kids.”
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“There’s a part of LACHSA that I think is a discovery point for a lot of Los Angeles County, and even the nation,” Pitchford says. “There’s so much opportunity for the school, and they’re doing it on a limited budget. What would happen if they were fully funded? What would happen if the foundation had a $40 million endowment? That would fully sustain what they’re doing right now.”
LACHSA students posing in front of the entrance to the Greek Theatre
(Courtesy of LACHSA)
LACHSAPalooza, the culmination of the foundation’s two-year fundraising campaign to celebrate the first 40 years of LACHSA, will take place at the Greek Theatre on May 30. There, student artists will perform alongside Ozomatli, Jon B., April Showers and more. From a fundraising standpoint, the foundation has high hopes of raising $2.5 million.
“We have both annual goals in terms of investment as well as sort of big visions, big dreams of where we think LACHSA could go for the next 40 years,” Pitchford says. “We also hope to put LACHSA on the national stage.’
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The honorees for the night are the late Pat Bass, LACHSA’s gospel choir director, retiring LACHSA theater department chair Lois Hunter, and Jerry Freedman, a longtime social studies teacher at the school.
For Anderson, who is serving as the night’s host, seeing Freedman recognized is very meaningful.
“He was there from the school’s beginning,” Anderson says. “He was there when I started, and he’s still there and is still beloved by the students 40-plus years later. I’m looking forward to honoring him.”
As an arts-based school in the long-standing entertainment capital of the U.S., LACHSA can educate and enable the next generation of artists to discover their voices in the backyards of production companies, studios and record labels.
“The freedom that a LACHSA student gets on the campus to discover who they are is exciting,” Pritchard says. “It’s very innovative, very creative, and it’s forward thinking, future forward. It’s an exciting and thrilling place to be.”
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Alumni agree. Without LACHSA and, in turn, a focused public arts education, pursuing a career in the arts would have been more difficult and more costly.
“It helps develop souls to be fully fledged human beings who feel like they can go off into the world and be the best versions of themselves,” Groban says. “We all felt like we were free to be who we wanted to be.”
“Specialty-focused high schools like LACHSA, be it arts or any other topic deserving of protection, because it is a gathering place for exceptionally talented, ambitious, driven kids,” Killam says. “And aren’t those the kind of people we want to be cultivating in society?”
Marlon Wayans plays Shorty, Regina Hall plays Brenda and Shawn Wayans plays Ray in Scary Movie from Paramount Pictures.
I love a spoof movie. Some of my favorite comedies or all time are spoofs. Mel Brooks is my favorite comedy filmmaker. The Naked Gun is perfect cinema. Hell, the first Scary Movie is really funny. I say all of this just to establish that I’m very much the target audience for this film. Well, in actuality, no one is the target for this new Scary Movie, though your wallets are. A shameless cash grab, there are a few funny moments, but they’re sandwiched between one of the worst things I’ll see all year.
While I’ll concede that Scary Movie has a few pretty funny bits and some other moments that made me chuckle, overall it’s a pretty dreadful flick. The targets are so scattershot, even when something lands, there’s a dud or two immediately following. Plus, while the plot is never what to focus on in something like this, it’s skewering an incredibly dated type of horror, so it already feels tired immediately upon release.
Paramount Pictures
I’m certainly not going to run down the plot for this film, but in broad strokes, it follows the plot of the fifth Scream, which combined new characters with legacy ones. Here, after a decent opening with a surprise cameo, Ghostface attacks Tuesday (Savannah Lee Nassif), the youngest daughter of the new shut in Cindy (Anna Faris). The attempted murder brings estranged big sister/older daughter Sara (Olivia Rose Keegan) and her boyfriend Jack (Cameron Scott Roberts) into town. There, they meet up with Brenda (Regina Hall) and her children, son Brad (Gregg Wayans) and daughter DEI (Sydney Park), as well as Brad’s girlfriend Elle (Ruby Snowber). Of course, other new characters are here, as are Shorty (Marlon Wayans) and Ray (Shawn Wayans). One of them is the killer, right?
As the Scream plot is generally followed, time is spent spoofing everything from recent horror like Sinners and Weapons, to older targets like Longlegs, The Substance, and Terrifier, via an Art the Clown appearance. Obviously, none of it matters and it’s all for laughs, but even with low standards, too many of these jokes just end up mean-spirited, instead of funny.
Paramount Pictures
Anna Faris and Regina Hall fare the best here, but the acting is pretty poor across the board. Faris and Hall at least lean into the funniest bits of their characters, especially since they’ve played them so many times at this point. Marlon Wayans and Shawn Wayans generate most of the rest of the laughter, but it’s diminishing returns there. The newcomers? All terrible. Other supporting players, both new and old, include Jon Abrahams, Chris Elliott, Lochlyn Munro, Cheri Oteri, Dave Sheridan, Benny Zielke, and more.
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Director Michael Tiddes can only do so much with this awful screenplay, but it has to be said, Tiddes still did very little with it. The script, credited to a rogues gallery of Rick Alvarez, Craig Wayans, Keenen Ivory Wayans, Marlon Wayans, and Shawn Wayans, is arguably the worst in the franchise yet. It’s so devoid of any ideas and lazy, you can’t ignore its shortcomings, even when they stumble into a funny joke.
Scary Movie is terrible. I won’t lie that there are funny moments, but anything good is surrounded by so much that’s bad. It’s a shame, too, as the most recent version of The Naked Gun gave me hope for the spoof comedy. Now? We’re probably back to square one, even if this is going to prove to be wildly profitable.
It was a strange year on Broadway, but then it’s been strange everywhere. Our world at times seems downright unrecognizable, with politicians acting like mob bosses, AI transforming not just the internet but potentially the entire economy, the cost of living leaving only the super rich able to keep up, and I won’t even mention the climate crisis, but the forecast calls for more doom and gloom.
Good work, however, won’t be denied, even if Broadway producers have perhaps overlearned the lesson of last year’s sleeper, Cole Escola’s “Oh, Mary!” Parody with a heavy dose of camp has become all the rage in a theatrical season in which the best musical winner, “Schmigadoon!,” is an affectionate sendup of golden age classics by Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe and their inspired descendants.
If Broadway is changing faster than the old guard can keep pace, the same is true for the culture in general. The economics of producing have scrambled the old playbooks. Unusual risk has occasionally brought unexpected rewards. “Schmigadoon!” fended off the competition to take the night’s top prize along with awards for both its book and score by Cinco Paul.
Michael Arden’s spectacular production of “The Lost Boys” — the staging won awards for Dane Laffrey’s scenic design and Jen Schriever and Arden’s lighting — enriched the 1980s cult film on which the show is based with human substance and high-flying showmanship. Shoshana Bean’s win for her featured performance as a persevering single mom, is a testament to the musical’s capacious heart. Ali Louis Bourzgui’s somewhat unexpected yet eminently worthy triumph for his featured performance as the vampire with front-man magnetism, catalyzed the production’s thrilling virtuosity. But few would describe this year’s ragtag selection of new musicals as robust.
The only overriding lesson may be that there are no overriding lessons. Two-time Oscar winner Adrien Brody made his Broadway debut in “The Fear of 13,” reprising his acclaimed Olivier-nominated London performance. But he didn’t even receive a nomination for his work — a snub that I found unaccountable.
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Spoofs like best musical nominee “Titanique,” a zany burlesque of James Cameron’s “Titanic” and all things Celine Dion, found new respectability on Broadway. And “Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York”), the two-person British musical by Jim Barne and Kit Buchan, endeared itself to audiences (if not so much to Tony voters) with its rom-com appeal. But what does it say about a season in which musical revivals upstaged new work?
“Ragtime,” the Lincoln Center Theatre production directed by Lear deBessonet that originated at New York City Center, was not only the most operatic offering of the season but was all the most emotionally stirring and dramatically ambitious. The show, which justly received the Tony for best musical revival contained perhaps the season’s most seismic tour de force. Joshua Henry’s Tony-winning lead performance as Coalhouse Walker Jr., the path-breaking pianist tragically ahead of his time, was astonishing in both its theatrical might and its generosity, which allowed everyone around him to shine, especially Caissie Levy, who picked up a Tony for her lead performance as a white matriarch whose political consciousness courageously awakens.
“Cats: The Jellicle Ball” pulled off the seemingly impossible by making Andrew Lloyd Webber’s megamusical look cool on Broadway. The production’s radical concept brings the queer audacity of Harlem Ballroom culture to these feline proceedings. For their imaginative daring, co-directors Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch were justly honored as were costume designer Qween Jean and choreographers Omari Wiles and Arturo Lyons, among the production’s notable awards.
“Chess,” which was strangely overlooked in the best musical revival category (“The Rocky Horror Show” strutted in instead), may not have managed to overcome the challenge of this over-elaborate geopolitical tale, even with a puckish new book. But the production made Nicholas Christopher a likely future Tony winner star.
What was old was new again on Broadway, but let’s hope that producers can still believe that the best is ahead of us.
“I’m Teyana Taylor, and even my abs have abs”. Scary Movie, the 2026 edition, couldn’t have started in a better way. Seeing the real One Battle After Another actress embracing an even more badass and hilarious version of herself as she takes on Ghostface is such a fun, brilliant piece of filmmaking. This opening sequence shows exactly what this franchise does best. Using recent happenings, such as Taylor’s Oscar loss this February, as inspiration for scary stories that feel authentic, ingenious, and timely. Along the way, several standout guest appearances pop up and twists that genuinely catch you off guard. However, those inspiring and amusing moments are quite scarce in this latest instalment.
It certainly isn’t for lack of trying, though. From Sinners to Smile and from Wednesday (or in this case, Tuesday) to Weapons, there are plenty of horror nods. Mix in a few headline-grabbing controversies, ongoing social debates, and a dash of COVID-era absurdity, and you’ve got all the ingredients for a comedic horror film. Yet those aspects follow one another at a rapid pace rather than forming a coherent story. A story that brings back the Scary Movie OG’s, Anna Faris (Smiley Face), Regina King (Honk For Jesus. Save Your Soul.), Marlon Wayans (The Curse Of Bridge Hollow), and Shawn Wayans (White Chicks), to protect their families, friends and loved ones from Ghostface, who’s on the loose again.
Along the way, they not only get help from friends but also face even more struggles; their past seems to haunt them in more than one way. Reclusive survivalist Cindy (Faris) is trying to restore her relationship with her estranged daughters, Sara (Olivia Rose Keegan) and Tuesday (Savannah Lee Nassif), while Brenda (Hall) tries to stay young by being a house mother. Meanwhile, Shorty (Marlon Wayans) is emerging as an internet podcaster who lightly engages with the manosphere while earning significant income from lowbrow but enjoyable video content. When Ghostface crashes one of his recordings, it doesn’t only end in a murder (but whose?), but also in one of the few hilarious moments in this feature.
It’s during the scenes between Shorty and the masked villain that Scary Movie finds its groove. This is largely because of the drugs smoked in the scenes, but also Shorty’s well-known, contagious laugh. It’s great to see Wayans back in his element, grabbing the chance to lean into his weed-loving, eccentric persona and running with it. His co-leads, Faris and King, once reunite again as Cindy and Brenda, who, despite the former being a republican with racial views (according to the packed script), fight evil side by side again.
Anna Faris as Cindy and Regina Hall as Brenda in ‘Scary Movie’ courtesy of Paramount
However, neither Faris nor King is given much to work with in this film, largely due to the abundance of supporting characters and newcomers, leaving them feeling like an afterthought. Because director Michael Tiddes (A Haunted House) clearly tries to pack in as many references and characters as possible — like M3GAN, Final Destination, and even Michael — the story quickly becomes too superficial and moves too fast.
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While a horror pastiche like this can certainly be lighthearted and goofy, it also has to have some substance (no pun intended, as Coralie Fargeat’s 2024 work makes an appearance, too). Sadly, that’s not the case. On top of that, the crude jokes, gross-out humour, and self-referential Easter eggs that make up much of the feature barely land. What initially works as satire eventually wears thin through repetition, becoming progressively less amusing and increasingly awkward. Ultimately, the movie feels empty and largely lifeless.
Beyond its horror parodies, the film attempts to use shock value as social commentary. Pronouns (mainly they/them) and gender transitions are pushed to the forefront, alongside ICE-, DEI-, and Epstein-related jokes in an already overcrowded narrative. But rather than provoking a reaction or the intended applause, the shock factor is effectively zero.
Fortunately, the third act finally delivers what we’ve been waiting for, giving Faris her long-overdue moment to shine. In a Ballerina-inspired sequence, she enters the house of murder and horror to take on Ghostface herself. Along the way, she battles other murderous villains while avoiding harm to innocent people, which leads to some hilarious moments. It’s such a shame that she doesn’t get the chance to show those amazing fighting skills and comedy talent in the rest of the movie.
It’s been 13 years since Scary Movie V nearly brought this franchise — originally starting as foolish yet lucrative — to its end. Yes, despite that painfully unfunny feature, the Wayans creative team certainly think that there’s still some life in this film series. However, if this Scary Movie doesn’t convince them that it’s time to box up this saga once and for all, we don’t know what will.
Scary Movie is out now in cinemas courtesy of Paramount
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
