When Brandon Scott Jones was in seventh grade, his mother bought him a copy of “The Elements of Screenwriting.”
Spurred by his interest in actors Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, whose turn to writing resulted in the Oscar-winning screenplay “Good Will Hunting,” Jones says he had “one goal, which was to write a part for myself in something, whatever it was.”
Unfortunately, Jones’ first attempt at screenwriting didn’t include the same kind of realism and lived experiences as Damon and Affleck’s story of a South Boston janitor who also happens to be a math prodigy.
“It was about a pornography director and it was called ‘Whatever Happened to Darren Potter?’” Jones says, laughing during an interview this summer over smoothies at the Silver Lake Erewhon.
His interest in writing came about because he’d broken away from the rest of the family during an outing to the multiplex for a repeat viewing of “Titanic” and snuck into a screening of “Good Will Hunting” instead. Then, when they went back to see “Titanic” again, he left and caught a snippet of Paul Thomas Anderson’s porn-industry drama “Boogie Nights.”
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“This was an impressionable time where you were [at an age when you were] taking things in, so I wrote this screenplay about this prodigy actor — like ‘Good Will Hunting’ — and this pornography director,” Jones says. “There was no sex or anything like that. It was just that they were both trying to claw their way back to the top of the game.”
Jones had an early interest in writing and performing, but comedy versus drama turned out to be his strong suit.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
This script, and other early material, were written on the typewriter Jones was given for Christmas when he was in fourth grade. He carried them in a briefcase. In eighth grade, the kid who sat next to him in math class would give him notes.
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“Darren Potter” was, sadly, never produced (although Jones thinks he still has a copy of it somewhere in case anyone reading this is interested in setting up a meeting). Instead, his attempt at writing dramas has been parlayed into a career that utilizes something Jones has more familiarity with: self-deprecating humor.
Jones, a graduate of New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts, got his start at Upright Citizens Brigade, where he was in the main cast of “Asssscat,” one of the improv house’s signature shows. He was then cast in Michael Schur’s NBC philosophical comedy “The Good Place,” winning critical praise for playing a Perez Hilton-like gossip blogger named John Wheaton. And in his film roles, he’s made meals out of small parts in “Renfield,” “Isn’t It Romantic?” and “Senior Year,” co-writing the latter, about a high school cheerleader who wakes up from a coma after two decades and becomes obsessed with returning to finish her senior year and reclaiming her popularity.
He achieved Notable Character Actor status when he was cast as Curtis, a struggling actor and best friend to Cary (Drew Tarver), in the Comedy Central and Max comedy “The Other Two.” It was a part he got literally at 6:30 a.m. one weekday while playing tennis. His friends, series creators Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider, called him in a panic because another actor had dropped out of the series and they were about to begin shooting. An hour and a half later, he was on his way to the set. He’d eventually join that show’s writing staff as well.
Then came “Ghosts.” Created by Joe Port and Joe Wiseman and based on the British series of the same name, the CBS comedy falls somewhere between “The Good Place” and Jean-Paul Sartre’s dark existentialist play “No Exit.” As the show’s name suggests, it’s about spirits from different periods of American history who are, for reasons unknown to them, forced to spend eternity on the grounds of what is now a Hudson Valley estate.
In “Ghosts,” Brandon Scott Jones plays Isaac Higgintoot, who died of dysentery during the Revolutionary War.
(Bertrand Calmeau / CBS)
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Jones plays Isaac Higgintoot, a member of the American Continental Congress who — appropriately, given his last name — died of dysentery while serving as a captain in the Revolutionary War. Isaac, who always felt like an outsider in life, is now furious that his contemporary Alexander Hamilton has everything from money to a book to a musical commemorating him. Meanwhile, Isaac wants to set the record straight that “I was never at the Boston Tea Party. I was in Boston at a tea party, but it was at my Aunt Geraldine’s house.”
“I think about him being constantly one step to the left of history,” says Jones, theorizing that Isaac could have been at the signing of the Declaration of Independence but probably got there late because he’d spilled something on his shirt. Or that he and his wife, Beatrice (played in flashbacks by Hillary Anne Matthews), were “unsuccessful Machiavellians,” who took it personally when snubbed for a dinner party invitation.
Thus far in the show, Isaac has convinced Sam (Rose McIver), a clairvoyant writer who took over the estate with her husband, Jay (Utkarsh Ambudkar), to write his biography because his Wikipedia page is severely lacking. Jones says that Isaac isn’t any different from one of TV’s more memorable (modern-day) political figures, such as Selina Meyer, the singularly focused politico played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus on HBO’s “Veep.”
“To retroactively want your life to have meant something, or to have been part of something, I think is really so fun and desperate,” Jones says.
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Not that the afterlife has been too boring for Isaac. At least not in the last few years.
Each season of “Ghosts” has ended with major developments for Isaac. In the first, he realized that times have changed and it’s OK for him to come out as gay, some 250-odd years after his death. In the second, he gets engaged to Nigel (John Hartman), the ghost of a British soldier Isaac accidentally killed on the battlefield. In the third, he leaves Nigel at the altar and then is sucked into the ground by someone else he’d wronged: the ghost of a Puritan woman named Patience, who is played by Jones’ friend and “Senior Year” co-star Mary Holland.
In the Season 4 premiere of “Ghosts,” Brandon Scott Jones’ Issac faces a Puritan ghost named Patience, played by his friend and “Senior Year” co-star Mary Holland.
(CBS)
And now in Season 4 of “Ghosts,” premiering Thursday, audiences find out what exactly Patience has been plotting and whether any of the other estate’s living or dead inhabitants will even notice that Isaac is missing.
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“I think the friendship [between us] helped it in a fun way because she’s such a great character actor and a great actor in general,” Jones says of Holland. “It was fun to be surprised by all the choices that she was making. At one point in the script, her character is described as, ‘unhinged and insane.’ So a lot of what you’re seeing, if I’m acting and I’m being terrified of her, it’s also an underlying level of delight watching my friend, which is really, really nice.”
Port and Wiseman stress that they mean no offense to other members of their extensive cast and that it’s merely a coincidence that each season has ended with a big Isaac storyline. They also say that there has been a conscious effort to not make Isaac’s queerness the defining thing about him or to push him into a flamboyant stereotype.
Brandon Scott Jones on playing Isaac Higgintoot in CBS’ “Ghosts”: “I think about him being constantly one step to the left of history.”
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
“He’s much more than just that one trait,” says Port. “He’s a military man. He’s a guy from the colonial days. He’s got a bunch of different factors to his character and personality.”
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Jones, who is gay, ponders the question when asked if he thinks queer characters should be played only by queer actors.
“My genuine, honest opinion is that the process of playing a character is the process of finding empathy for somebody that you don’t know,” Jones says, noting that he felt a connection to Eric McCormack, a straight actor, and his portrayal of Will, a gay man, on NBC’s “Will & Grace.” “If we’re denying people the chance to kind of step into those shoes, then that’s problematic to me. If a straight person wants to play gay or a gay person wants to play straight, and we feel like we can’t do those things, then, to me, it starts to feel like it’s a snake eating its own tail.”
Modern-day fandom can be intense, so much so that the minuscule details of an actor’s personal life are dissected — a topic that was skewered in “The Other Two.” Jones says he doesn’t like that actors, writers or casting producers could feel “a massive desire to appease a crowd of people instead of just [play] the character.” But he also doesn’t want casting directors to claim that there are no gay actors for these types of roles simply because they’re not looking.
“I just hope that the stories that are being told are being told authentically, whether that means from behind the camera or the writer or anything like that,” says Jones, adding that “there’s also a part of me where I’m like, if somebody wanted me to play a straight character, I would like to think that I could do it.”
This season will see Isaac plunge further into his post-life crisis as he (sometimes literally) loosens his colonial-era ponytail and lets his hair down.
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“After a breakup, he’s trying to reinvent himself,” Wiseman says. “He takes his hair down to see if that changes his attitude.” (He says this fits within the rules of “Ghosts,” which doesn’t permit the deceased to change what they’re wearing but does allow them modifications).
And fans will learn more about that biography.
“There’s a part of you that wonders does he just want a book about himself, regardless of how factually correct?” Jones teases.
Maybe Isaac, like the person who plays him, just wants to create a part for himself.
Directed by Ron Howard. Starring Sydney Sweeney, Jude Law, Daniel Brühl, Vanessa Kirby, Ana de Armas, Felix Kammerer, Toby Wallace, Jonathan Tittel, Ignacio Gasparini, Richard Roxburgh, Paul Gleeson, Thiago Moraes, Nicholas Denton, Tim Ross, Antonio Alvarez and Benjamín Gorroño.
SYNOPSIS:
Based on a factual account of a group of outsiders who settle on a remote island only to discover their greatest threat isn’t the brutal climate or deadly wildlife, but each other.
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Based on true events, esteemed director Ron Howard (fallen on hard times, especially given both the quality of his last film and what it led to…) seems unsure of what tone to take with Eden, a look at a power struggle on Floreana, a Galapagos Island, circa World War I.
Divided into three groups, they have all escaped civilization for one reason or another, with Dr. Friedrich Ritter (Jude Law) dedicating time to a manifesto for a new, supposedly more sensible and humane brand of social norms. He is also a quack convincing his wife, Dora Strauch (Vanessa Kirby), that this self-imposed exile will also give him the peace and time necessary to focus on curing her multiple sclerosis. His rules for a more respectable society contain everything from vegetarianism to the usual clichéd rambling about pain functioning as a necessary ingredient to growth and happiness.
That quiet isolation is impeded upon, first with the arrival of the Wittmer family, looking to escape the war, poverty, and live freely, growing their garden. Sydney Sweeney slides right into the more traditionally conservative wife role of Margaret, currently pregnant and somewhat docile toward her husband, Heinz (Daniel Bruhl), a man she married not out of love but for a severe lack of experience, and that she was asked to take his hand. That does not mean that this is a boring role for Sydney Sweeney; even if she isn’t entirely convincing regarding looks (there are times that, even in the period piece clothing, she resembles a contemporary woman) and accent, the back half allows her character ample opportunity to show that, while often quiet and passive, her character bears much intelligence and is capable of making risky choices under pressure.
Soon after Dr. Ritter intentionally settles them into a plot of land he deems will make gardening impossible and them want to leave within a few weeks, a spoiled and flirty baroness (Ana de Armas) unexpectedly shows up with a couple of young and handsome sycophants (Jonathan Tittel and All Quiet on the Western Front’s Felix Kammerer) to do everything from make her feel important, cook her canned food, steal some more canned food (somehow, she stupidly assumes what she brought would be enough to last a lifetime, and is too entitled to eat anything homegrown on the island), fornicate, and last but not least, manipulate her way into control over the island as she is looking to build a ritzy hotel solely for the rich.
Dr. Ritter couldn’t give a damn about any of these people, quick to place them into unfortunate circumstances, pitting them against one another. The joke is on him, though, as these people are either more suited for this lifestyle or competent than he or his wife, causing him to start breaking the rules going into his manifesto. Each of them (more so the baroness) knows what buttons to push to bring out his anger and insecurities.
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A solid idea for a psychological triple threat match, Ron Howard’s (co-writing alongside Noah Pink) approach to this is a clunky blending of tones that never gels. Anything involving the baroness is played over the top and campy, at odds with the more serious attempts at character study. Ana de Armas isn’t bad here, but she is in another movie entirely, and one that might have worked if that tone was consistent across the board. Giving confidence to this belief is that, once her character exits the story for reasons that won’t be spoiled, the dramatic rift between the other two groups suddenly becomes compelling, with a layer of deadly intrigue and darker impulses. At a little over 2 hours, Eden is also a film that benefits from such a running time, allowing for lengthy sequences dedicated to each group and letting their characters breathe outside the larger picture.
Eden has one last piece of frustration in store once the ending credits start, noting that there are two different perspectives to these factual accounts. How Ron Howard and Noah Pink arrived at the story they have told here is anyone’s guess (presumably trying to find the truth in the middle), but that piece of information suggests a much more narratively creative and ambitious approach to the story. That’s not to guarantee it would have been better, but, aside from the intriguing curiosity of essentially every Hollywood IT actress in one movie playing mental mind games for superiority over an island, this veers between dry and overly wacky, never finding a working middle ground until it’s too late.
It takes a lot for sweet-tempered 28-year-old Nick Darnell to transform himself into Christmas’ most sought-after sourpuss.
There’s colored contacts and facial prosthetics, a protruding belly and at least an hour of makeup. But for the devout Christian and preternaturally cheerful young actor, the real metamorphosis is psychological.
“People today love to connect with the villain,” said the viral Grinch impersonator. “The world is just a darker world now.”
Darnell called the chartreuse baddie he portrays “the modern-day Santa.”
Dr. Seuss’ holiday parable “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” has been a seasonal favorite since it was published in 1957, ranking among the most popular and profitable of the author’s iconic rhyming picture books.
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The story’s sassy, brassy antihero has likewise adorned Christmas trees and school library shelves for generations. His hornlike fur forelocks and pathological refusal to assimilate have led some critics to call the Grinch ambiguously antisemitic, but those concerns have largely been glossed over by years of nostalgia.
Experts say 2025 heralds the Grinch’s ascent from Yuletide bit player to Christmas A-lister. He now crowds out Kris Kringle in store displays, social media feeds and holiday meet-and-greets.
Unlike Santa, who ho-ho-hos his way through the holiday season, Grinches twerk and pout and scream in kids’ faces. Compilations of their antics on YouTube and TikTok routinely rack up millions of views.
“I do the things that people think,” Darnell said of the role. “I’m not restrained.”
Despite the Grinch’s anti-consumerist zeal, the market for his visage has exploded in recent years.
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Target touts its “Grinchmas,” while Walmart has “WhoKnewVille.” McDonald’s sells Grinch fries, Starbucks features a “secret menu” frappuccino. Hanna Andersson, a popular purveyor of holiday pajamas, boasts roughly a dozen different Grinch patterns, compared to three Hanukkah options and just one Santa design in two colorways.
“I’m not restrained,” Grinch impersonator Nick Darnell, 28, says of his role.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
Ownership of the Grinch’s likeness is guarded as jealously as the villain protects his lair: Dr. Seuss Enterprises holds the rights to the children’s book, Warner Bros. Discovery the 1966 animated TV special, and Universal Studios the 2000 live-action Jim Carrey film, which ranks among the highest-grossing Christmas movies of all time.
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But impersonators, academics and even working Santas agree: Americans’ embrace of the Grinch in 2025 goes far beyond consumerism.
“It’s definitely more popular,” said ‘Santa’ Ed Taylor, the famed Los Angeles Santa behind the Worldwide Santa Claus Network, a training camp for the art of Christmas cheer. “It’s a little yin and yang. Maybe we need a little bit of both.”
Costume companies across Los Angeles say they’ve seen a deluge of demand for the Grinch this year. At Etoile Costume & Party Center in Tarzana, nearly half of Christmas costume rentals are now furry green villains.
“It’s about equal to Santa,” one employee said. “Maybe 40% Grinch and the rest Santa.”
Ryan Ortiz, dressed in a Grinch costume, stands next to his 1969 Volkswagen Bus in San Diego on Dec. 21.
(K.C. Alfred / The San Diego Union-Tribune via Getty Images)
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Fans of the hirsute sourpuss seek him out for his in-your-face edge — the opposite of Santa’s remote joviality. Santa enforces his regime of goodness through lists and surveillance. The Grinch will get in your face and yell at you to shut up.
“[Santa]’s supposed to be mysterious and unknown,” said Darnell’s fiancee JadaPaige. “He’s supposed to just come in the night and you’re never supposed to see him.”
“I grew up obsessed with Santa Claus — I did not grow up obsessed with the Grinch,” Darnell said. “I was the kid waiting up in the middle of the night, peeking, wondering if Santa’s down there. A lot of modern day kids aren’t having that journey.”
Instead, many Gen Alpha youths look to the Grinch for his views on “corruption or poverty or the oversaturation of commercialism,” Darnell said.
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“Santa is looked at more like a godly figure, while the Grinch is a more everyday man,” the actor explained. “The world is so sinister and negative. [The Grinch] tells you how it is, rather than telling you everything is going to be fine.”
TikTok turbocharged that trend, with the infamous green meanie matching or beating his red rival in holiday clout.
“He has aura,” Darnell said.
Grinch impersonator Nick Darnell said the character he plays has become popular because, “He has aura.”
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
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Today’s professional Santas are often retirees with a bit of a belly and some time on their hands. Grinches, by contrast, are more likely to be working actors like Darnell, who look reverently to Carrey’s performance as a blueprint for the character’s slapstick antics and snarky reads.
Still, experts say the Grinch’s 2025 glow-up likely owes as much to holiday exhaustion and broad consumer pessimism as it does vertical video virility.
“The Grinch is the opposite side of Christmas,” said Oscar Tellez, who owns Magic Dream Costumes and Party Rentals in East Los Angeles and says he’s seen a spike in Grinch requests even as overall holiday rentals have sagged.
“Especially with the Latino community, I don’t think they feel the enthusiasm to celebrate,” Tellez said. “They are more worried about what’s gonna happen next.”
Pop culture experts agreed.
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“The economy is in big trouble, our political situation is chaotic, there’s a lot of hate — it’s no wonder that we would seek to express that through the embodiment of a monster like the Grinch,” said Michael M. Chemers, director of the Center for Monster Studies at UC Santa Cruz.
“You’ve seen these nativity displays popping up all over the country that have the Jesus figures removed and it says ‘ICE was here,’ ” he added. “I think there’s just a lot of Grinchy feeling right now in the world.”
Chemers and other scholars say the emergence of the Grinch as a foil to Santa is less a departure than a return to form: the Grinch is a “PG version” of the mythical Krampus, a shaggy, fork-tongued Germanic goat man who beats and even abducts naughty children, working as an enforcer for Father Christmas.
An “organillero,” or traditional street musician, dressed as the anti-Christmas character known as the Grinch plays on a central street in Mexico City on Dec. 9.
(Yuri Cortez/AFP via Getty Images)
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“He’s been called the Christmas devil,” said Jeff Belanger, author of “The Fright Before Christmas,” a compendium of so-called “Yuletide monsters.”
“[Krampus] represented the consequence of bad behavior, while St. Nick rewards good behavior,” he said.
Krampus likely evolved from older, pre-Christian deities, just as Christmas absorbed solstice and midwinter customs, the author explained. The Christmas most Americans grew up with only emerged as a national holiday in the wake of the Civil War, he said, about a decade after the formal introduction of Thanksgiving in 1863. It was around this time that Christmas trees became popular in the United States.
“In 1867, Charles Dickens came over to Boston and that’s when he read his ‘Christmas Carol’ for the first time in America,” spurring President Ulysses S. Grant to declare Christmas a federal holiday, Belanger said. “It was truly on the back of that story.”
The holiday’s corpulent, white-bearded dandy arrived even later, his schmaltzy persona skimmed from bony St. Nicholas between Reconstruction and 1931, when Coca-Cola debuted its iconic, brandy-flushed Santa Claus.
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“That’s when Christmas turned purely commercial, and there was no room for consequences anymore,” Belanger said.
Seuss’ Grinch sits somewhere in the middle — cuddlier than Krampus and pricklier than Santa — making him the perfect avatar for a moody, uncertain age.
Workers check Grinch inflatables ready for export at a factory in Suixi County in central China’s Anhui Province on March 19.
(Wan SC/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
Grinch boosters point out that the villain repents and reforms at the end of the story, shedding his pathological hatred of Christmas.
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“I always tell people, ‘Don’t you just love how his heart grew three sizes?’ ” Taylor, the famous Santa, said of his increasingly popular crossover events.
Others note that it’s never the repentant Grinch who marauds through schools and holiday parades or blows up on social media.
“Once he’s rehabilitated, he’s no fun anymore,” Chemers said.
That makes it hard for the holiday villain to visit sick kids in the hospital, as legions of Santas do every year, or comfort children who confide in him about bullying.
“The message is one of encouragement and positivity and acknowledgment of accomplishments and encouragement to strive harder,” Taylor said. “It’s these beautiful personal development messages that Santa gets to be the conduit for.”
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The Grinch, by contrast, can affirm where you are, without ever asking you to be better.
“He can hear you and know what you’re thinking, because he has the same thoughts,” Darnell said of his beloved version of the character. “People want to know his heart and his mind, and that’s something they wouldn’t be able to ask Santa.”
Jack Black, left, and Paul Rudd in a scene from “Anaconda.”
| Photo Credit: Matt Grace
How many times have we watched 1997’s Anaconda, about a documentary crew going down the Amazon in search of a legendary snake? Alongside Jennifer Lopez (before she became JLo), Owen Wilson and Ice Cube, Jon Voight chewed up the scenery as an Ahab-esque hunter with a bizarre accent. The unkillable snake was hilarious, especially its habit of gobbling humans like chocolate éclairs from Universal Bakery in Secunderabad.
Anaconda opens with Doug McCallister (Jack Black) giving a narration of what appears to be a horror film, as there is a snake chasing someone in the sewers. It is only when the camera pulls back to reveal his puzzled-looking audience that we realise Doug is a wedding videographer, and he is pitching to clients who just want a photo of the happy couple jumping in tandem.
At Doug’s birthday party, arranged by his wife, Malie (Ione Skye), he meets his childhood friends, Griff (Paul Rudd), an actor, Kenny (Steve Zahn), who is mostly wasted, and Claire (Thandiwe Newton), a lawyer who is recently divorced from her philandering husband.
Anaconda (English)
Director: Tom Gormican
Cast: Paul Rudd, Jack Black, Steve Zahn, Thandiwe Newton, Daniela Melchior, Selton Mello
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Runtime: 99 minutes
Storyline: Friends reunite to reboot their favourite movie, Anaconda, only to find reel life turning real when a giant bloodthirsty snake hunts them
When Griff shows the horror film Doug made when they were all children, the gang remembers the good old days. Griff says he has the rights to Anaconda (there is a complicated story of how he got them or did not), and they should shoot a reboot/reimagining/spiritual sequel as a tribute to the film that afforded them so much joy.
After some initial hesitation from Doug, the friends head off to the Amazon, where they meet the snake wrangler, Carlos (Selton Mello), who cares very much for his snake. There are also some shady characters following a lovely maiden, Ana (Daniela Melchior).
Jack Black, left, and Paul Rudd in a scene from “Anaconda.”
| Photo Credit:
Bradley Patrick
As the shooting progresses, things go wrong with Carlos’s snake meeting a sticky fate and another impossibly huge snake slithering about, popping humans into its giant jaws like crisp bondas. Black is the beating heart of the film, with Rudd, Zahn and Newton giving ample support. There is a jolly charm about the film that seems just right for the season.
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Watching the friends repeat dialogues from the earlier film, especially Voight’s teeth-gnashing Paul Serone growling, “You get the privilege of hearing your bones break before the power of embrace makes your veins explode,” you cannot help but grin happily. And if you are enough of a creature feature bhakt, you might well be repeating the dialogues under your breath!
With its silly snake, likeable cast, goofy humour (including astute jibes about IP), welcome cameos, and over-the-top action, Anaconda is the perfect holiday movie to watch with friends after a gargantuan feast or to get over a grand hangover.
