Entertainment
In the mystery 'Eric,' desperation and decline manifest into a life-size monster puppet
The most idiosyncratic and striking moment on TV this summer? It could be Benedict Cumberbatch as a father running through the streets of New York in a giant, fuzzy blue monster puppet getup amid a desperate attempt to reconnect with his son.
It may sound like some sweet magical adventure, but that’s not the style of British screenwriter Abi Morgan, who created “Eric” for Netflix. She isn’t afraid to tackle big subjects and her body of work — including “Shame” (2011), which tackles sex addiction; “Suffragette” (2015), about women’s suffrage in the U.K.; and TV dramas “The Hour” and “The Split” — often leaves viewers emotionally strung out in its intense examination of human behavior, internal battles and broken systems. And “Eric” is just as visceral.
Set in 1980s New York City, the initial episode of the limited series finds Cumberbatch’s Vincent Anderson, a puppeteer and creator of a “Sesame Street”-esque children’s show “Good Day Sunshine,” exasperated by work demands and his floundering marriage to Cassie (Gaby Hoffmann). The couple’s troubles intensify when their 9-year old son, Edgar (Ivan Howe), goes missing on his walk to school. Torn up by guilt, Vincent is convinced if he turns his son’s drawing of a blue monster, Eric, into a life-size puppet on TV, Edgar will come home. And tasked with investigating the boy’s disappearance is Michael Ledroit (McKinley Belcher III), a Black and queer detective whose closeted identity becomes an obstacle at work as he pursues the case.
Eric, the life-size monster puppet, and Benedict Cumberbatch as Vincent.
(Netflix)
Morgan started with a simple idea: Can we live in a world where a kid can walk to school and come home safely? In exploring that question, the series weaves a lot of issues that plagued the city at the time: rising crime rates, a forgotten underclass, the AIDS epidemic, endemic racism, as well as government mismanagement and corruption.
“There were parallel themes that just became very apparent to me,” Morgan said during a press day with the cast in Los Angeles. “We’re looking at a world where the parents become children and the children become parents in some ways. And the notion of what is a family beyond the nuclear family of the Andersons? There’s a wider family of our city. Who looks after us in the city? Can we trust those parents — be that government, local council or our police force? And when those systems break down and expose themselves, where do we find our new boundaries of trust?”
From left, clockwise: Series creator Abi Morgan, Benedict Cumberbatch, Gaby Hoffmann and McKinley Belcher III. Morgan said the show was partly inspired by her time in New York.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Morgan sees the show as a way for audiences to ask themselves those questions through Vincent’s journey. And the city’s many issues presented in the series, inspired by Morgan’s time spent in New York in the ‘80s, added another dimension to the inciting mystery. “There was this dark underbelly. It hadn’t had that cleanup,” she said. “There was something very particular about the ‘80s — it was a melting pot and a point of change, a point of shifting sands, filled with fear and hope, and moments of great freedom and moments of really pushing down that freedom. It felt like a really rich fabric and tapestry in which to set ‘Eric.’”
With no shortage of real and existential horror lurking outside, Morgan knew from the beginning she wanted to bridge the story with a space that provided safety and comfort. Influenced by her own childhood spent backstage with her theater director father, observing how sets were created and the way costumes came to life, she saw “Good Day Sunshine” as a contrast to the city’s roughness and a way to dig deeper into how Vincent, who begins the series already on shaky ground before his mental health declines further, copes with his reality.
“He’s trying to re-create his childhood and idealizing something that was less than ideal,” Cumberbatch said. “His mental health crisis was brushed under the carpet with pharmaceuticals and very cold, cut-off, loveless parenting … he’s invested so much of himself in that show from a need that was never satisfied in his childhood.”
Morgan added that “Good Day Sunshine” is a world that Vincent can control, unlike his own, and that the puppets give life to his voices as he struggles with his mental health and alcoholism. It’s also a way to signal the value of pursuing a creative life, which stands in contrast to that of his estranged parents, particularly his father, a wealthy developer.
The set of “Good Day Sunshine,” the “Sesame Street”-esque show in Netflix’s “Eric.”
(Ludovic Robert / Netflix)
”That creativity is a way to liberate, heal, manage and help understand ourselves,” Morgan said. “Vincent’s desire to create a world of good, is probably one of the healthier things he has done.”
As a show within the show, “Good Day Sunshine” features an assortment of puppet characters — a mix of animals, inanimate objects and people — including one operated and voiced by Vincent, putting Cumberbatch’s chameleon voice work into practice (his eclectic credits include the dragon Smaug in “The Hobbit” trilogy and the Grinch in the eponymous 2018 animated film). Before he goes missing, Edgar observes his father at work from the sidelines and, later, watches as Vincent becomes agitated with notes from network bosses, demanding that the show broaden its appeal to get viewership numbers up, with a new puppet as a possible solution. On the subway ride home, Edgar suggests his idea for the puppet, Eric, to little fanfare from his dad.
Morgan credits series director Lucy Forbes with being a key architect behind the 7-foot monster puppet, which took roughly four weeks to perfect. Eric is a manifestation and an amalgamation of details in Edgar’s mind — a tail that mimics his cat and fur that matches the chevron of his grandmother’s mink. Vincent becomes convinced that bringing Eric to life could help bring Edgar back, and as he begins to mold the puppet from foam, Vincent also begins to hallucinate Eric, a manifestation of his inner voice, into existence in his quest to find the boy.
Cumberbatch felt the exploration of the imagined other — a device done before, including in films like “Harvey” (1950) and “Ted” — in the larger context of the story was intriguing. And bringing depth to the surreal is familiar territory for the actor, who has done green screen and motion-capture acting and understands the commitment required to make it believable. Still, as Cumberbatch tells it, acting opposite puppeteer Olly Taylor in a plush, furry costume as his character Vincent was falling apart was a surprisingly grounded experience.
“I’d often do line runs with Olly, who’s a really brilliant actor and incredibly capable puppeteer,” he said. “I tried the [Eric] voice out, I’d often read lines and sometimes not; he just got it and the rhythm was the only way it could be for Eric in that moment. It was all about trying to remind ourselves what the purpose of Eric was in relation to [Vincent’s] state of mind. At one point, I tried on the [puppet] headgear and I cried. I just had this wave of empathy for Olly and the performance he had to give in that contraption. It’s a miraculous skill.”
A scene from “Eric,” where Cassie (Gaby Hoffmann) and Vincent (Benedict Cumberbatch) hold a news conference to ask for the public’s help in finding their son, Edgar.
(Ludovic Robert / Netflix)
The puppet element helped soften some of the script elements for Hoffmann. As a mother of two children, the actor said she was initially hesitant about the heavy subject matter, but grew eager about its singular dynamic and the way the series explores the various breakdowns of systems, small and large. The series first captures the unraveling of a social institution — marriage — as Vincent and Cassie veer in opposite directions, and examines how their behavior negatively affects the parent-child dynamic.
“Vincent and Cassie are two very different people who are dealing with the world in two very different ways,” she said. “But I think that Cassie hasn’t been active in an honest way, on behalf of her son, for a while now — and on behalf of herself. I think that she knew that she needed to leave the marriage, and that it wasn’t a healthy environment for [Edgar]. As we come to find out, she has secrets and is in some denial. She’s not as deeply in it, and she’s not as avoidant and terrified of her emotions as Vincent is, or distracting herself with as many substances, but the disappearance… she definitely feels a sense of responsibility.”
When Morgan started to incorporate Ledroit into the story, she was determined not to make him a secondary character. She wanted Ledroit to go on his own journey, informed by his identity, and coming up against all the institutions — the precinct where he works or the gay nightclubs he used to visit — that are making him question his identity similar to Vincent. Playing a Black queer detective who is challenging the norm in the ‘80s, Belcher understood that sense of duty and purpose.
“In a story like this, it would be very easy for him to just turn into a cop that comes to work and deal with the information and solving the case. But it’s really exciting as a Black queer man, to show up with all the baggage that Ledroit would be carrying in the ‘80s, to wrestle with stuff, but to leave him in a place of action that is going to be the change.”
Det. Michael Ledroit (McKinley Belcher III) is charged with finding Edgar.
(Ludovic Robert / Netflix)
Belcher also acknowledged that though the Black community isn’t a monolith, they have a complicated relationship with law enforcement. He sees his character as an instrument of change within the institution.
“I think over the course of the six episodes, that’s a place he lands on: Oh, this is what’s required for us to do what we’re really here for. And it means I must call out injustice; it means I must be intolerant of corner cutting; it means I have to own who I am and stand firmly in that and stand up as a man and say ‘no,‘” he said.
The various threads in the series take some time to come together, making for a premise that can take some finesse in distilling. But that’s what the team behind the series hopes sets it apart.
“You felt held by an imagination that contained worlds within the worlds of the story,” Cumberbatch said. “It felt fresh and new — trying to explain it to people was interesting. I’ve never really heard of anything quite like this before.”
It’s why all these months later, cozy on a sofa with Hoffmann, Cumberbatch can’t help but chuckle wistfully while recalling a moment in the series that had him, as Vincent, wearing the fuzzy Eric costume and running through the streets.
“Running and running and running and running,” Cumberbatch said. “It’s the knife-edge thing with this drama; it is very f— funny, but also weirdly heroic and desperately sad and poignant.”
Movie Reviews
Movie Review: A real-life ’70s hostage drama crackles in Gus Van Sant’s ‘Dead Man’s Wire’
It plays a little loose with facts but the righteous rage of “Dog Day Afternoon” is present enough in Gus Van Sant’s “Dead Man’s Wire,” a based-on-a-true-tale hostage thriller that’s as deeply 1970s as it is contemporary.
In February 1977, Tony Kiritsis walked into the Meridian Mortgage Company in downtown Indianapolis and took one of its executives, Dick Hall, hostage. Kiritsis held a sawed-off shotgun to the back of Hall’s head and draped a wire around his neck that connected to the gun. If he moved too much, he would die.
The subsequent standoff moved to Kiritsis’ apartment and eventually concluded in a live televised news conference. The whole ordeal received some renewed attention in a 2022 podcast dramatization starring Jon Hamm.
But in “Dead Man’s Wire,” starring Bill Skarsgård as Kiritsis, these events are vividly brought to life by Van Sant. It’s been seven years since Van Sant directed, following 2018’s “Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot,” and one of the prevailing takeaways of his new film is that that’s too long of a break for a filmmaker of Van Sant’s caliber.
Working from a script by Austin Kolodney, the filmmaker of “My Own Private Idaho” and “Good Will Hunting” turns “Dead Man’s Wire” into not a period-piece time capsule but a bracingly relevant drama of outrage and inequality. Tony feels aggrieved by his mortgage company over a land deal the bank, he claims, blocked. We’re never given many specifics, but at the same time, there’s little doubt in “Dead Man’s Wire” that Tony’s cause is just. His means might be desperate and abhorrent, but the movie is very definitely on his side.
That’s owed significantly to Skarsgård, who gives one of his finest and least adorned performances. While best known for films like “It,” “The Crow” and “Nosferatu,” here Skarsgård has little more than some green polyester and a very ’70s mustache to alter his looks. The straightforward, jittery intensity of his performance propels “Dead Man’s Wire.”
Yet Van Sant’s film aspires to be a larger ensemble drama, which it only partially succeeds at. Tony’s plight is far from a solitary one, as numerous threads suggest in Kolodney’s fast-paced script. First and foremost is Colman Domingo as a local DJ named Fred Temple. (If ever there were an actor suited, with a smooth baritone, to play a ’70s radio DJ, it’s Domingo.) Tony, a fan, calls Fred to air his demands. But it’s not just a media outlet for him. Fred touts himself as “the voice of the people.”
Something similar could be said of Tony, who rapidly emerges as a kind of folk hero. As much as he tortures his hostage (a very good Dacre Montgomery), he’s kind to the police officers surrounding him. And as he and Dick spend more time together, Dick emerges as a kind of victim, himself. It’s his father’s bank, and when Tony gets M.L. Hall (Al Pacino) on the phone, he sounds painfully insensitive, sooner ready to sacrifice his son than acknowledge any wrongdoing.
Pacino’s presence in “Dead Man’s Wire” is a nod to “Dog Day Afternoon,” a movie that may be far better — but, then again, that’s true of most films in comparison to Sidney Lumet’s unsurpassed 1975 classic. Still, Van Sant’s film bears some of the same rage and disillusionment with the meatgrinder of capitalism as “Dog Day.”
There’s also a telling, if not entirely successful subplot of a local TV news reporter (Myha’la) struggling against stereotypes. Even when she gets the goods on the unspooling news story, the way her producer says to “chop it up” and put it on air makes it clear: Whatever Tony is rebelling against, it’s him, not his plight, that will be served up on a prime-time plate.
It doesn’t take recent similar cases of national fascination, such as Luigi Mangione, charged with killing a healthcare executive, to see contemporary echoes of Kiritsis’ tale. The real story is more complicated and less metaphor-ready, of course, than the movie, which detracts some from the film’s gritty sense of verisimilitude. Staying closer to the truth might have produced a more dynamic movie.
But “Dead Man’s Wire” still works. In the film, Tony’s demands are $5 million and an apology. It’s clear the latter means more to him than the money. The tragedy in “Dead Man’s Wire” is just how elusive “I’m sorry” can be.
“Dead Man’s Wire,” a Row K Entertainment release, is rated R for language throughout. Running time: 105 minutes. Three stars out of four.
In a bid for greater user engagement, Walt Disney Co. will introduce vertical videos to its Disney+ app over the next year, a company executive said Wednesday.
The move is part of the Burbank media and entertainment company’s effort to encourage more frequent app usage, particularly on smartphones.
“We know that mobile is an incredible opportunity to turn Disney+ into a true daily destination for fans,” Erin Teague, executive vice president of product management, said during an onstage presentation in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show. “All of the short-form Disney content you want, all in one unified app.”
Teague said the company will evolve that capability over time to determine new formats, categories and content types.
Disney’s presentation also touched on its interest in artificial intelligence. Last month, San Francisco startup OpenAI said it had reached a licensing deal with Disney to use more than 200 of the company’s popular characters in its text-to-video tool, Sora. Under the terms of that deal, users will be able to write prompts that generate short videos featuring Disney characters and use ChatGPT images to create those characters’ visages. Some of those Sora-generated videos will be shown on Disney+, though the companies said the deal did not include talent likenesses or voices.
Disney also said it would invest $1 billion into the AI company.
Part of Disney’s move toward AI is to appeal to young Gen Alpha viewers, who are more comfortable with AI and “expect to interact with entertainment” instead of simply watching stories on the screen, Teague said.
“AI is an accelerator,” she said. “It’s why collaborations with partners like OpenAI are absolutely crucial. We want to empower a new generation of fandom that is more interactive and immersive, while also respecting human creativity and protecting user safety.”
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Is This Thing On?
Cinematic stories of disintegrating marriages are fairly commonplace—and often depressing emotional endurance tests, besides—so it’s interesting to see co-writer/director Bradley Cooper take this variation on the theme in a fresher direction. The unhappy couple in this place is Alex and Tess Novak (Will Arnett and Laura Dern), who decide matter-of-factly to separate. Then Alex impulsively decides to get up on stage at an open-mic comedy night, and starts turning their relationship issues into material. The premise would seem to suggest an uneven balance towards Alex’s perspective, but the script is just as interested in Tess—a former Olympic-level volleyball player who retired to focus on motherhood—searching for her own purpose. And the narrative takes a provocative twist when their individual sparks of renewed happiness lead them towards something resembling an affair with their own spouse. The screenplay faces a challenge common to movies about comedians in that Alex’s material, even once he’s supposed to be actively working on it, isn’t particularly good, and Cooper isn’t particularly restrained in his own supporting performance as the comic-relief buddy character (who is called “Balls,” if that provides any hints). Yet the two lead performances are terrific—particularly Dern, who nails complex facial expressions upon her first encounter with Alex’s act—as Cooper and company turn this narrative into an exploration of how it can seem that you’ve fallen out of love with your partner, when what you’ve really fallen out of love with is the rest of your life. Available Jan. 9 in theaters. (R)
JANUARY SPECIAL SCREENINGS
KRCL’s Music Meets Movies: Dig! XX @ Brewvies: As part of a farewell to Sundance, Brewvies/KRCL’s regular Music Meets Movies series presents the extended 20th anniversary edition of the 2004 Sundance documentary about the rivalry between the Dandy Warhols and Brian Jonestown Massacre as they chart different music-biz paths. The screening takes place at Brewvies (677 S. 200 West) on Jan. 8 @ 7:30 p.m., $10 at the door or 2-for-1 with KRCL shirt. brewvies.com
Trent Harris weekend @ SLFS: Utah’s own Trent Harris has charted a singular course as an independent filmmaker, and you can catch two of his most (in)famous works at Salt Lake Film Society. In 1991’s Rubin & Ed, two mismatched souls—one an eccentric, isolated young man (Crispin Glover), the other a middle-aged financial scammer—wind up on a comedic road trip through the Utah desert; 1995’s Plan 10 from Outer Space turns Mormon theology into a crazy science-fiction parody. Get a double dose of uncut Trent Harris weirdness on Friday, Jan. 9, with Rubin & Ed at 7 p.m. and Plan 10 from Outer Space at 9 p.m. Tickets are $13.75 for each screening. slfs.org
Rob Reiner retrospective @ Brewvies Sunday Brunch: Last month’s tragic passing of actor/director Rob Reiner reminded people of his extraordinary work, particularly his first handful of features. Brewvies’ regular “Sunday Brunch” series showcases three of these films this month with This Is Spinal Tap (Jan. 11), The Princess Bride (Jan. 18) and Stand By Me (Jan. 25). All screenings are free with no reservations, on a first-come first-served basis, at noon each day. brewvies.com
David Lynch retrospective @ SLFS: It’s been a year since the passing of groundbreaking artist David Lynch, and Salt Lake Film Society’s Broadway Centre Cinemas marks the occasion with some of his greatest filmed work. In addition to theatrical features Eraserhead (Jan. 11), Inland Empire (Jan. 11), Mulholland Dr. (Jan. 12), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (Jan. 14), Blue Velvet (Jan. 19) and Lost Highway (Jan. 19), you can experience the entirety of 2017’s Twin Peaks: The Return on the big screen in two-episode blocs Jan. 16 – 18. The programming also includes the 2016 documentary David Lynch: The Art Life. slfs.org
Death by Numbers @ Utah Film Center: Directed by Kim A. Snyder (the 2025 Sundance feature documentary The Librarians), this 2024 Oscar-nominated documentary short focuses on Sam Fuentes, survivor of a school shooting who attempts to process her experience through poetry. This special screening features a live Q&A with Terri Gilfillan and Nancy Farrar-Halden of Gun Violence Prevention Center of Utah, with Zoom participation by Sam Fuentes. The screening on Wednesday, Jan. 14 at 7 p.m. at Utah Film Center (375 W. 400 North) is free with registration at the website.
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