Entertainment
From Chris Isaak to Karen O, David Lynch's musical collaborators recount his strange, sonic mysticism
Back in 2013, David Lynch was in his home recording studio late one morning, surrounded by electric guitars of different shapes and colors. With effects pedals scattered at his feet, he opened a case with an orange sunburst lap-slide guitar inside. “This is the guitar that Ben Harper gave me,” Lynch said with a smile and genuine awe in his voice, dressed in a black suit jacket and shirt, gray hair piled high on top. “That thing makes a hell of a sound.”
The occasion was the coming release of his second solo album, “The Big Dream,” but it wasn’t the first or last time we talked about his music. He was a self-taught improviser on guitar, and a high school trumpeter, but he was drawn to any sounds that tapped meaningfully into feelings of heartache and tension, beauty and noise.
Over a half-century of work, he built a well-earned reputation as a surrealist auteur and master filmmaker. But Lynch, who died last week at 78, was equally passionate about other creative mediums, from painting and photography to designing furniture, and nothing held his imagination more powerfully than the music that filled his life and work.
We were in his fully equipped recording facility, called Asymmetrical Studio — built inside the house he once used as a location for his 1997 film “Lost Highway.” He spent a lot of his time there, and it was just one sign of his lifelong obsession with sound. It held an essential role in his life as a filmmaker and, eventually, a recording artist, songwriter and producer.
Angelo Badalamenti performs at the David Lynch Foundation Music Celebration at the Theatre at Ace Hotel in 2015.
(Chris Pizzello / Invision / AP)
Lynch was a rare director with a recognizable musical aesthetic, created with the help of composer and close friend Angelo Badalamenti, among many others. He was attracted to smoky electric guitar twang and the most abrasive industrial sounds, and to rich female voices and lush layers of strings and organ. The through-line were sounds that leaned toward the smoldering and idiosyncratic — from his use of achingly passionate songs of heartbreak by Roy Orbison and Chris Isaak to his own shadowy recordings with modern torch singers Julee Cruise and Chrystabell.
Among his musical collaborators was Karen O, singer for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, who appeared on his first solo album, 2011’s “Crazy Clown Time,” and remembers Lynch’s sound as tense and passionate. “There’s an eroticism, there’s an urgency, there’s mystery, there’s darkness, there’s the edginess, the rebellion,” she says. “All that is in David’s musical taste.”
They recorded an ominous, twangy, thunderous tune called “Pinky’s Dream,” featuring a breathless Karen O vocal. “I’ve never met a Pinky,” she says now with a laugh. “It’s a character that inhabits a David Lynch dreamscape. The music is chugging along and you just feel like you’re on one of those lost highways.”
“I guess I like it low and slow, but I also like so many kinds of music,” Lynch told me during a 2015 visit to the painting studio behind his home high up in the Hollywood Hills. “I love what sound can do, what music can do, and to marry to the picture and make the whole thing greater than the sum of the parts.”
As a director, he showed a gift for placing music with stunning impact, from Samuel Barber’s deeply emotional “Adagio For Strings” in 1980’s “The Elephant Man,” to the raging thrash metal riffs of Powermad in 1990’s “Wild at Heart,” and Rebekah Del Rio’s torrid Spanish a cappella reading of “Llorando” in “Mulholland Drive.”
In “Blue Velvet,” Lynch created an eerie moment of romance and nostalgia in an otherwise disturbing scene as actor Dean Stockwell, in paisley tuxedo jacket, lip-syncs Orbison’s 1963 hit “In Dreams.” The song’s use in the film helped spark an Orbison revival, and Lynch soon co-produced a new version of the song with the singer and T-Bone Burnett for a 1987 retrospective, “In Dreams: The Greatest Hits.”
That love of music ultimately led the director to begin dabbling in creating some of his own, starting with his distinctive collaborations with Badalamenti, which stretched from “Blue Velvet” in 1986 until the composer’s death in 2022. It was an especially close relationship between director and composer that Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran compares to Federico Fellini and Nino Rota, who scored all of the Italian filmmaker’s films from 1959 to 1979.
Likewise, Lynch and Badalamenti were “so closely linked that they almost can feel each other’s heartbeats,” says Rhodes, whose band of hitmakers also worked with Lynch on a few occasions, including his remixing two of their songs.
“I always say Angelo Badalamenti brought me into the world of music,” Lynch said. “I played the trumpet when I was young and I understand music, but I was in love with sound effects. So I wanted to build a studio to experiment with sound, but I knew I wasn’t a musician really. Angelo said, ‘David, I need lyrics.’ So I started writing lyrics for Angelo, and we worked together. And that was a combo — the David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti combo, and it brought out those things. That gave me more confidence.”
By the late 1980s, that impulse led the duo to Excalibur Sound Productions in New York City, where they worked on music with a young unknown singer, Julee Cruise, who had recorded their song “Mysteries of Love” for “Blue Velvet.” An album, 1989’s “Floating into the Night,” emerged after a year and a half of sessions, launching the single “Falling,” which had a second life as a theme for “Twin Peaks.”
In 2017, as the acclaimed third-season revival of “Twin Peaks” unfolded on Showtime, Cruise recalled to me the original directions from Lynch during her sessions. “He said, ‘Julee, you are a child full of wonder,’” said Cruise, who also performed the dreamy, mournful “The World Spins” on the series.
Julee Cruise sings the show’s theme song, “Falling,” in the pilot episode of “Twin Peaks.”
(CBS Photo Archive / Getty Images)
“I will always be known as this, and I will always be proud of this,” said Cruise, who died in 2022. Lynch also directed a one-hour musical film starring Cruise, “Industrial Symphony No. 1,” released in 1990 by Warner Bros. Records.
In subsequent years, Badalamenti was based in New Jersey, and made occasional trips to L.A. “Wherever we were, we would sit and make music,” Lynch said. Last year, the director expressed lasting sadness over the 2022 death of Badalamenti, who he called “my brother.”
“It just doesn’t seem possible that he’s gone,” Lynch said. “It just seems like I could call him up and we could make music again.”
In time, Lynch created multiple workspaces adjacent to his home in the Hollywood Hills: the recording studio, painting studio, wood shop and offices. He performed music live only one time, with his band Blue Bob in 2002, an experience he called “a traumatic thrill,” and something he wasn’t anxious to repeat.
“He wasn’t a musician. He couldn’t tell you, ‘I want an E minor here, and then I want to have eight bars of this,’” says Isaak, whose “Wicked Game” became a hit after appearing in 1990’s “Wild at Heart.” “We didn’t talk in that language.” Lynch went on to direct the music video for “Wicked Game.”
Aside from creating music alongside Lynch, Isaak appeared on camera in a prominent role in “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.” “I sure got lucky for how the stars aligned, that I got to work with him and hang with him and get to know him a little. I must have somebody up there looking over me because what a treat.”
Lynch was a filmmaker who treasured music enough to turn the Roadhouse bar in the 2017 season of “Twin Peaks” into a world-class nightclub, and included performances of complete songs in many episodes from the likes of Moby, Eddie Vedder and “The” Nine Inch Nails. In 1997, he’d recruited NIN’s Trent Reznor to create a soundscape for “Lost Highway,” and together they landed on the cover of Rolling Stone. (Lynch would later create a music video for NIN’s “Come Back Haunted.”)
Trent Reznor arrives at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in 2019.
(Evan Agostini / Invision / AP)
Some collaborations were less expected but just as rewarding. In 2011, Duran Duran asked Lynch to direct the livestream of a concert from the Mayan Theater in Los Angeles, as part of the American Express “Unstaged” series that matched musicians with filmmakers. The result was fully in character, photographed in murky black-and-white for a worldwide online audience, and layered with Lynchian imagery and juxtapositions: smoke, fire, strange objects and dead animals superimposed over the band.
“When something magical like that happens, you embrace it as quickly as you can,” says Duran Duran’s Rhodes. “I just love his vision and the world that he creates. I knew that merging with Duran Duran would be something mad, something surreal and beautiful and extraordinary that nobody would’ve ever expected. I felt that he had the same intention with what he was making with us. It was an absolute joy.”
For several years, Lynch harnessed his musical connections to raise funds and awareness for the David Lynch Foundation, established to promote the benefits of Transcendental Meditation. He hosted a series of music and art events on both coasts, including his popular Festival of Disruption, and a 2009 benefit concert with former Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr at Radio City Music Hall.
On his next solo album, 2013’s “The Big Dream,” he recruited Swedish singer-songwriter Lykke Li soon after she relocated to Los Angeles. He handed her a coffee-stained note with a few lyrics jotted down and said, “Make this into a song.” She accepted Lynch’s note as “a clue, a puzzle, a question” toward something new. She recast his words “I’m waiting here” as the title of the aching bonus track “I’m Waiting Here.” Recording the track was unlike a normal session.
“I’ve never done that again with anyone else,” Lykke Li says now. “He stood next to me and it was almost like he directed me how to sing. It was almost like a seance. It was really based on feeling and intuition.”
Lykke Li also notes that Lynch “saved my life,” by introducing her then to Transcendental Meditation at a time when things were fast-moving and chaotic in her life. “It was like only when I started meditating that I really found a center and it’s unlocked everything for me,” she says.
A David Lynch photo of himself with singer Chrystabell, with whom he collaborated on his final musical project.
(David Lynch)
The final project Lynch finished and released before his death was “Cellophane Memories,” a collaboration with Chrystabell, recorded at his home in 2023 and 2024. Unlike the songs of romance from their previous work together, the record was marked by an experimental layering of vocals and other effects that eased it deeper into the avant-garde.
“We were both doing what we love to do, which is to experiment and to create,” Chrystabell says now, days after Lynch’s passing. “His mind was always alive, always inspired. There were always things brewing.”
Along the way, the duo recorded several other songs in different modes, including an unfinished project that was to be called “Strange Darling.” But the filmmaker-painter-musician was already looking to their next round of songs together.
“David loved a great pop song,” the singer recalls. “That was the next thing we were going to do. He was like, ‘Chrystabell, should we write some hits next time?’”
Instead, Lynch’s musical friends and collaborators have been in mourning this week, grateful for their moments together, diving back into the work he left. Chrystabell says she has dealt with her close friend’s death by listening to music left behind.
“So much of our music is really tailor-made for these moments,” she says, recalling Lynch lyrics like “the great unknown,” “angel star” and “10 trillion miles of dark.” “He was right there, and we explored that territory. Lyrics could be cute and fun backseat kind of sexy or cosmic, otherworldly, spiritual, almost hymnal music. I was marveling at that. It all hits different now.”
Movie Reviews
Controversy Surrounds ‘The Raja Saab’ as Makers Allegedly Offer Money for Positive Reviews | – The Times of India
Prabhas-starrer ‘The Raja Saab’ is currently running in theaters; the much-awaited film was released today. The early reviews of the Maruthi-directed film have been receiving mixed to negative reviews on social media. However, a netizen has claimed that the makers of the film offered him money to delete his negative review.
Netizen alleges bribe by the makers
On Friday morning, an X user named @BS__unfiltered posted a screenshot online. He said he received a message from the official account of ‘The Raja Saab’ after posting his review. According to him, the film’s team offered him Rs 14,000. They reportedly asked him to post a positive review of the movie instead. Sharing the screenshot, the user wrote, “What the hell mannnnn!!!! They are offering me money to delete this!!! Nahi hoga delete #TheRajaSaab #Prabhas.” However, the screenshot shared by the user is in question for its authenticity and is not verified. At this time, it is not clear if the message was real or AI-generated. The claim is still unconfirmed.See More: The Raja Saab: Movie Review and Release Live Updates: Prabhas’ film to open big at the box office
Fans share their opinions online
Fans and netizens have been active on social media, sharing their opinions about the film. While some enjoyed it, many expressed disappointment. Another internet user wrote, “A horror-fantasy with a good idea but weak execution. Prabhas gives an energetic & comical performance, & the face-off with Sanjay Dutt is the main highlight. The palace setting is interesting at first, but the messy screenplay, dragged 2nd half, uneven VFX, & weak emotional payoff reduce the impact. @MusicThaman’s music & sounding are one of the positives. From the end of the first half, the story becomes slightly interesting. There are 3 songs featuring Prabhas & @AgerwalNidhhi. Nidhhi has performed well. Some scenes feel unintentionally funny, & the climax fails to impress. Overall, a one-time watch at best. This film gives a lead for The Raja Saab Circus—1935 (Part 2), where we may see Prabhas vs. Prabhas.”
About ‘The Raja Saab’
‘The Raja Saab’ is directed and written by Maruthi. The film stars Prabhas in the lead role. The cast also includes Malavika Mohanan, Nidhhi Agerwal, Riddhi Kumar, Sanjay Dutt, and Boman Irani.
Entertainment
Healthcare cuts, ICE and AI: ‘The Pitt’s’ creator on telling authentic stories in Season 2
R. Scott Gemmill, the creator and showrunner of “The Pitt,” has always felt comfortable in a hospital.
He initially had ambitions of going into medicine — he studied gerontology, which explores the processes and problems of aging, and did some volunteer work at hospitals. He also took a nurse assistant course.
“I really thought I was going to try and get into a med school,” he said recently while seated in the recognizable lobby of the show’s fictional hospital set on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank. “I just wanted to have a job and medicine seemed like there was always going to be a need. I’m comfortable in a hospital. I wish I followed through on a certain level because I loved that ability to go in and solve problems. But my writing kicked in and that’s it — I never went back.”
But in TV land’s school of medicine, Gemmill has gone far. He did a rotation at Chicago’s County General Hospital, joining the writing staff of NBC’s popular medical drama “ER” in its sixth season. And now his turn at Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, through HBO Max’s “The Pitt,” has been a breakout success, revitalizing the medical drama genre with a fresh spin on the format — each episode tracks one hour in a shift — and energizing its audience with a traditional weekly rollout. The Emmy-winning series returned Thursday for its second season that revolves around a shift on the Fourth of July. But the fireworks arrived well before that, with HBO Max announcing on the eve of the show’s premiere that the drama has been renewed for a third season.
In the hiatus before shooting began on this season’s finale, Gemmill, whose other TV credits include “Jag” and “NCIS: Los Angeles,” talked about the show’s momentum heading into the new season, navigating how personal to get with characters, and introducing a new doctor to the mix.
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1. Noah Wyle as Dr. Robby in Season 2 of “The Pitt.” (Warrick Page / HBO Max) 2. From left: Sepideh Moafi as Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi, Taylor Dearden as Dr. Melissa King, Katherine LaNasa as charge nurse Dana Evans, Gerran Howell as Dr. Dennis Whitaker and Supriya Ganesh as Dr. Samira Mohan in “The Pitt.” (Warrick Page / HBO Max)
You started breaking Season 2 last January, as people were discovering the show week to week. People love to be critical of sophomore seasons of a breakout hit. How did that shape the second season for you and the writers?
It was weird because we wrote [Season 1] without any feedback. Not just wrote it — we shot it and produced it. We had started thinking about Season 2 before people had responded. It was a slow build. I felt like the healthcare professionals found us first, then spread through word of mouth. We were just moving forward with what we thought were the next stages of these characters’ lives. It wasn’t until later on that the accolades came and there was more pressure then. When we first started, we didn’t know if anybody was going to watch or not. We had finished it without any pressure whatsoever because nobody had weighed in on it. It was a very rarefied situation, which was nice. We hope for the best. And it seemed to work out OK. There’s a little bit of concern going into the second season because we were successful, you wonder, can you maintain that? But we try not to focus on that, and just really focus on the characters and the stories and do what we did the first season — tell really authentic, strong stories.
The season picks up 10 months after that initial shift where we met everyone. How did you decide on the time jump, landing on July 4?
It really came from wanting to have Langdon [Patrick Ball] back, so I knew he had to do about 10 months of rehab. Then we were looking at what time of year would that be. We’re also somewhat limited by when we shoot in Pittsburgh. We decided to do the Fourth of July because it comes with a bunch of shenanigans.
Season 2 opens with a helmet-less Robby riding in on a motorcycle.
The motorcycle goes back to some part of Robby’s past. We don’t really talk about it, but it has a link to his father, and his father being a tinkerer of old cars and Robby needing a vacation, a hiatus of sorts. Pennsylvania is a no-helmet law [state]. And some of us who have motorcycles sometimes enjoy riding them without a motor helmet. It’s not a smart thing to do, and it speaks to Robby’s current attitude of a certain amount of carelessness on his part.
Yes, we learn that he’s going to be taking a three-month sabbatical. How soon will we discover what led to that? Is it an amalgamation of different things?
Yeah, he’s long overdue for a vacation. He knows that something’s not working in his life and this is one way he thinks that he can fix things.
How did you land on Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump in Canada as his choice for a getaway?
It was a place I knew about and it just sounded like an interesting place for him to go that has some foreboding associations with it.
A new doctor, Baran Al-Hashimi (Sepideh Moafi), center, is brought in to oversee the ER unit on the eve of Dr. Robby’s (Noah Wyle) three-month sabbatical.
(Warrick Page / HBO Max)
The season introduces a new character, Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi, played by Sepideh Moafi, who’s going to be taking over when Robby is out. She’s an advocate of generative AI and trying to get everyone on board with this idea of saving time with charting. What were your conversations with doctors in the field about that topic and what intrigued you about how healthcare professionals are thinking about this technology?
She’s someone who’s a little different with her approach, a little more contemporary and forward, as opposed to Robby; he bridges contemporary medicine and old-school medicine with his relationship that he had with Dr. Adamson, who showed him a lot of the old-school techniques that he still has in his wheelhouse if he needs them. AI is pretty much here to stay and it’s infiltrating every aspect of our lives — medicine is no exception. I would say it’s still in its infancy in the ER, but there are ways that it’s trying to be implemented. Like any other tool, it has potential to be used wisely and potential for disaster. We’re not really exploring the disastrous side of it yet but just what the realities are. The fear is that it will make the doctors more efficient, especially with things like charting, but then will that time go back to the patients or will they just have to see more patients? And so they’ll have even less time. That’s the challenge at this point.
How do you feel about it in your own industry?
I try not to think about it. I guess I’m probably in denial more than anything. I don’t have any place for it and I don’t really want to really know too much about it at this point.
We see a lightness to Robby this season. He’s involved in a situationship at work. This is a workplace drama. It hasn’t shown us the interior lives of its staff beyond the nuggets they share during their shift. How much do you want the viewers to know about them versus how much do you want your actors to just understand their characters?
It comes with the job. He’s not a monk. He’s in a relationship of convenience more than anything. I don’t think he’s a long-term planner. The fact that he hasn’t had a vacation in forever is proof of that. Robby is very good at putting on a good face until he’s not. I think what we’ll see over the course of the season is that facade start to slide.
It’s a process. The 15-hour nature of the show limits how much of that information you can dole out organically, but it also allows you to be authentic in terms of how much you actually learn about someone in a day. Most of us not just spilling our guts and saying our life story to the people we work with. As we start the season, we’ll think about: What is the journey we’re going to take this character on, and what information needs to be learned in order to achieve that? And then what medical stories will help maybe bring that out. You do it in little layers.
Is there something coming up that you think will be particularly illuminating?
There’s some stuff about Robby. We pulled back a lot on it, but we’ll learn a little bit about him. We’ll learn some things about Whitaker [Gerran Howell]. We know what Langdon is going through, his marriage.
After taking leave to seek treatment for prescription drug addiction, Dr. Frank Langdon (Patrick Ball) returns to work in “The Pitt.”
(Warrick Page / HBO Max)
To stay on Langdon — physicians and people in the healthcare profession are vulnerable to addiction for a variety of reasons. What was important for you in that storyline and what did you want to explore through him?
To show somebody who’s made a mistake and was doing their best to hide it as is sometimes the pattern of behavior. I don’t think most people enjoy their addiction. So, seeing someone who’s doing their best to try and heal themselves. Just because you’re going through the program and doing the steps, it doesn’t mean everyone’s going to welcome you back with open arms. There are still some bad feelings and you have to mend some bridges and fences along the way.
It’s not just Robby and Langdon. Langdon feels he owes a sort of mea culpa to almost everyone he works with, especially Santos [Isa Briones]. And whether or not she’s willing to accept that is debatable. Robby, obviously, has some really strong feelings about it because Langdon was his student, and he made Robby look kind of stupid. Robby is angry at himself for not seeing it.
How are you figuring out who’s going to shuffle in and out?
Some of it’s based on the reality; for instance — I was thinking of this today — next season would be Whitaker’s third year, so he has one more year to stay here, and then he would have to go. It’s really about where they are in their careers and what makes the most sense story-wise.
I want to talk about some of the procedures and cases that we’ll see this season because they’re pretty gnarly. Do you keep a log of cases and try to figure out how they can fit into the story as you go?
We never really start with the medicine. Sometimes we say the medicine is the wallpaper that reflects everything in the room, but what’s going on between the characters is really what’s at stake, and it’s either something going on between them and the patient, between the doctors and nurses, or internally. Ideally, it touches on a little bit of everything.
When we came back, I probably had 150 ideas of just cases. I don’t know how many of them we actually did. We had never done a hot toddler story, [where a child was overheated] but that is something that’s a real problem. That was one where we knew we were going to try and do that story, but whose is it going to be? Who does it reflect most? Then we work backwards into it. We pull from everywhere — things we think of, things we’ve heard, things we imagine. We don’t really do ripped-from-the-headlines, but we do things that seem like that because a lot of times we’re talking to professionals, asking them what was concerning them. What do they worry about? We’re extrapolating their concerns. That’s what happened with [Season 1’s] measles story. There was no measles outbreak when we wrote that story, but we knew, based on what was going on, that there would be eventually, and we just happened that the timing was in our favor.
Is there like a line you won’t cross in terms of squirm factor? Have you had to pull back?
I don’t think so, because we’ve never done anything for the sake of that. We’ve never done anything that’s not done in the ER. As long as it serves a story and a character, then I think it’s fair. We do something big for the finale that Abbot [Shawn Hatosy] and Robby are doing with a bunch of others — it takes all hands on deck. I’m interested to see how that comes out, and I’ve seen elements of it now that are terrific.
Can you share more of what kinds of topics or cases we’ll be seeing this season?
We did a sexual assault, [and] we’re looking at how budget cuts are affecting healthcare. There’s a story about someone who’s been rationing their insulin and the downsides of that.
When the One Big Beautiful Bill Act was signed into law by the president, did you have a lot of calls with professionals?
Oh, yeah, because it’s a huge issue. You figure out with the changes in the Affordable Care Act, if you suddenly have 8 to 10 million people that don’t have insurance, what’s going to happen is they’re going to stop going to their doctors. Anything that was an issue is going to get exacerbated by not being treated. So, where do they end up? Well, they’re going to end up in the ER, but they’re going to be even sicker than they would have been. We’re going to get more people, and their conditions are going to be worse. It only makes what’s already a strained system even more likely to break. Because we were just starting to shoot in the summertime, we could make some adjustments, but I don’t remember going back and changing things. We saw it coming.
I know there had been some discussion about an ICE story? Will we see that this season?
Yes, we have some ICE agents show up, and how that affects people in the hospital. That’s been a tricky one to try and get right without being heavy-handed and being fair to everyone on both sides of that conversation. What else do we do this year? Some fun stuff. The kind of things you would expect over the Fourth of July weekend.
How do you feel about the shipping that’s taking shape with “The Pitt” fan base?
I’m not on social media, I’m not really a part of that. My writers would tell me about things like that. The Langdon-Mel of it — I’m like, he’s married. That’s more of a big brother relationship. And Abbot and Robby — I just sort of shake my head. Our show’s not really like that. It’s not a show where people are sneaking off to have sex in a closet or anything. Those things are very subtle. And we do see a little bit this season between a couple of people, but it’s very much secondary because it’s not something we actually see, per se.
Just as he did last season, Noah Wyle is writing again this season. He’s also directing. Tell me what it’s like when you have the lead of your show involved in different aspects of the show’s creative elements?
It’s really great because he’s up to speed on everything. And because he is the centerpiece of the show, I rely on Noah a lot for guidance and help figuring out how to steer through all the icebergs. He’s a good writer and he’s a good director, and it just adds a whole other level to the writers room, in terms of the connection between us and the set. He’s there right up until, basically, we start shooting. Even when we are shooting, if he has a day off, he’s in the room or we’ll do meetings at lunchtime so he can join in and weigh in. It was Noah’s idea to do the Shema prayer for his breakdown. That was a very coordinated effort because I knew I was asking a lot of him. That’s what’s really nice about having Noah be a writer and a director. He has the vernacular to have these conversations about what he needs from me to get him to where he needs to be. It’s a very symbiotic relationship.
R. Scott Gemmill on the pressure that comes with having a breakout hit: “There’s a little bit of concern going into the second season because we were successful, you wonder, can you maintain that? But we try not to focus on that, and just really focus on the characters and the stories and do what we did the first season — tell really authentic, strong stories.”
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
Do you ever worry about him being overextended?
Yes. That’s why I don’t mind when he has a day off. But he’s just gonna fill it with work.
In Hollywood, when something’s a success, there’s an immediate impulse to figure out a way to broaden that success. Has there been talks of spinoffs, ways to build out the universe?
No, not really. We’ve talked about doing a night shift. In time, maybe that’s something we’ll explore. The show still has lots of life in it, so I wouldn’t want to distract from what we’re doing now. But I think there’s a potential to do all the craziness that comes out at night.
Like Dr. Al-Hashimi, you’ve had experience being the newcomer joining a well-oiled machine. Tell me about becoming a writer on “ER” in Season 6.
I hated it when I first went on. They had done so many stories already, and there were multiple stories told per episode, so they had gone through so many stories that it seemed like anything I suggested was already done. They all felt like Ivy League professors and I was a college dropout; I felt like I so didn’t belong there. I remember calling my wife and saying, “I hate this. This is horrible. I should never have left ‘Jag.’” But over time, I found my way and found my voice on the show.
That was the season with one of the episodes I revisit often — when Dr. Carter (Wyle) gets stabbed.
I remember having a big debate over whether Kellie Martin’s eyes should be open or closed. I was adamant that she had to have her eyes open. I’m glad I won, but that was intense. The whole show was very intense.
George Clooney has teased that he would be open to the idea of appearing on “The Pitt.” Could you see a world where that happens?
I take that with a grain of salt but, hey, I’m up for anything. I’ll try anything once.
What I appreciated about the season finale last year, especially in this world of TV where you feel like you need to have this epic cliffhanger, was how true to life it felt. Since you’ll be shooting the finale in January, what can you share about how you’re thinking about it?
There’s something really fun at the end of this season. I hope that we do it as a little Easter egg for the fans in the finale, so I’m looking forward to doing that.
Movie Reviews
‘Greenland 2: Migration’ Review: Gerard Butler in a Post-Apocalyptic Sequel That’s Exactly What You Expect
Desperate migrants are forced to leave Greenland after a malevolent force makes their island uninhabitable. No, it’s not tomorrow’s headline about Donald Trump, but rather the sequel to Ric Roman Waugh’s 2020 post-apocalyptic survival thriller. That film starring Gerard Butler and Morena Baccarin had the misfortune of opening during the pandemic and going straight to VOD. Greenland 2: Migration (now there’s a catchy title) has the benefit of opening in theaters, but it truly feels like an unnecessary follow-up. After all, how many travails can one poor family take?
That family consists of John Garrity (Butler), whose structural engineering skills designated him a governmental candidate for survival in the wake of an interstellar comet dubbed “Clarke” wreaking worldwide destruction; his wife Allison (Baccarin); and their son Nathan (now played by Roman Griffin Davis). At the end of the first film, the clan had endured numerous life-threatening crises as they made their way to the underground bunker in Greenland where survivors will attempt to make a new life.
Greenland 2: Migration
The Bottom Line It’s the end of the world as we know it…again.
Release date: Friday, January 9
Cast: Gerard Butler, Morena Baccarin, Roman Griffin Davis, Amber Rose Revah, Sophie Thompson, Trond Fausa Aurvag, William Abadie
Director: Ric Roman Waugh
Screenwriters: Mitchell LaFortune, Chris Sparling
Rated PG-13,
1 hour 38 minutes
Five years later, things aren’t going so well. Fragments of the comet continue to rain down on the planet, causing catastrophic destruction. The contaminated air prevents people from going outside, and resources are becoming increasingly scarce. But there are some plus sides, such as the bunker’s inhabitants still being able to dance to yacht rock.
When their safe haven in Greenland is destroyed, the Garritys, along with a few other survivors, are forced to flee. Their destination is France, where there are rumors of an oasis at the comet’s original crash site. And at the very least, the food is bound to be better.
It’s a perilous journey, but anyone who saw the first film knows what to expect. The Garritys, along with the bunker’s Dr. Casey (Amber Rose Revah), run into some very bad people, undergoing a series of life-threatening trials and tribulations.
Unfortunately, while the thriller mechanics are reasonably well orchestrated by director Waugh (Angel Has Fallen, Kandahar) in his fourth collaboration with Butler, Greenland 2: Migration feels as redundant as its title. While the first film featured a relatively original premise and some genuine emotional dynamics in its suspenseful situations, this one just feels rote. And while it’s made clear that the crisis has resulted in people resorting to cutthroat, deadly means to ensure their survival, the Garritys have it relatively easy. All John has to do is adopt a puppy-dog look, put a pleading tone in his voice, beg for his family’s help, and people inevitably comply.
To be fair, the film contains some genuinely arresting scenes, including one set in a practically submerged Liverpool and another in a dried-up English Channel. The latter provides the opportunity for a harrowing sequence in which the family is forced to cross a giant ravine on a treacherously fragile rope ladder.
Butler remains a sturdy screen presence, his Everyman quality lending gravitas to his character. Baccarin, whose character serves as the story’s moral conscience (early in the proceedings she spearheads a fight to open the shelter to more refugees despite the lack of resources, delivering a not-so-subtle message), more than matches his impact. William Abadie (of Emily in Paris) also makes a strong impression as a Frenchman who briefly takes the family in and begs them to take his daughter Camille (Nelia Valery de Costa) along with them.
Resembling the sort of B-movie fantasy adventure, with serviceable but unremarkable special effects, that used to populate multiplexes in the early ‘70s, Greenland 2: Migration is adequate January filler programming. The only thing it’s missing is dinosaurs.
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