The Hollywood Reporter

It’s an old axiom of journalism that reporters shouldn’t make themselves part of the story. But this past week, everybody in Los Angeles, reporters included, couldn’t help but be part of one of the biggest tragedies ever to unfold in this city. Like tens of thousands of our fellow Angelenos, many THR staffers were forced to evacuate — one, sadly, even lost his home (see page 28) — fleeing from the wildfires that began ripping through Los Angeles on Jan. 7, laying waste to entire neighborhoods, from Malibu to Pasadena. There’s a bitter irony here. Just two days before the first sparks ignited, THR, like the rest of the town, was celebrating at the Golden Globes. It seemed like a rare turning point for the industry, which had just started…

Like so many Angelenos, Cheyenne Shannon’s routine came to a halt in the hours after the devastating Palisades Fire broke out on the morning of Jan. 7, followed by the Eaton Fire in Altadena. She lives in Culver City and has never come close to being evacuated but, like everyone, knows many who are temporarily — or permanently — displaced. The unfolding disaster reopened wounds of the pandemic and the fear of being forced to stay inside once again. And for the thousands of those working in the entertainment industry like Shannon, a talent agent repping music video directors, it also reignited fears that more production will leave L.A. for good. Her method of coping? Escape to the movies as much as possible. She saw three the week of the…

In one widely circulated video from the L.A. wildfires, Harrison Ford sits inside a police vehicle in blue jeans, looking distressed. What’s striking about the video — among the many more dramatic scenes of leveled neighborhoods and smoke-filled skies — is Ford’s vulnerability. The man known for playing big-screen heroes who can get out of a jam with little more than a well-timed smirk had been evacuated from his Brentwood neighborhood, just as more than 100,000 other Angelenos would be from theirs, and was dependent upon first responders for his safety. The sight of affluent public figures — even Indiana Jones himself — grappling with the potential loss of their homes is a striking new image in the growing category of climate refugees. Climate refugees are people forced to relocate…

Surfacing from the ashes of Los Angeles’ raging wildfires is a plea from local entertainment industry folk gutted by the blazes: Bring production back to the region. “One of the biggest things you can do to help our city is to shoot here,” wrote prominent cinematographer and director Rachel Morrison (The Morning Show, The Mandalorian) in an Instagram post making the rounds among behind-the-scenes film and TV workers. “We have some of the best crews in the world who need work now more than ever.” Morrison’s message speaks to an unprecedented slump in local production. The pandemic came first. Then the strikes. And when it appeared as if filming in Los Angeles had bottomed out and would soon be on the upswing amid an escalating tit-for-tat battle among filming hotspots vying…

Nobody who saw David Lynch’s works could mistake them for anyone else’s. The director, whose death at age 78 was announced by his family on Jan. 16, didn’t belong to a movement or fit easily into a genre. His pictures echoed the mindset of a Luis Buñuel or a Salvador Dalí (critic Pauline Kael called him “the first populist surrealist”) and were influenced by such film noir landmarks as Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard. His creations — including Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive and Twin Peaks — appeared timeless, strangely disconnected from any particular era or place, which made them all the more startling and disturbing. David Keith Lynch was born in Missoula, Montana, on Jan. 20, 1946. His father, Donald, was a research scientist and his mother, Edwina, an English teacher; their…

I started out writing this column intending to explain how awards shows can channel our collective emotions. How amid the unfathomable tragedies of the L.A. wildfires, they could heal our soul like Barbra Streisand at the post-Sept. 11 Emmys, or unify our disparateness like Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s posthumous win at the 1971 Grammys, or even channel our rage like Michael Moore at the 2003 Iraq War Oscars. How a well-designed Academy Awards on March 2, with some tasteful tributes from victims and a powerful acceptance speech or two, would be exactly what Los Angeles and this country needed — the national Thanksgiving dinner that awards shows can be at their best. Forget all that. I now think the Oscars should completely overhaul their formula and do something more…