Martin Short turns 75: a look back
Actor and comedian Martin Short, best known for his roles in "Only Murders in the Building," "Saturday Night Live," "Three Amigos" and "Father of the Bride," turns 75 on Wednesday. Here's a look back at his career through the years.
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Ramy Youssef on Juggling ‘Mountainhead,' ‘#1 Happy Family USA,' ‘Mo,' ‘The Studio' and Perhaps — Eventually — a Baby
Ramy Youssef seems to have a banner year every year. The last time he appeared on Variety's Awards Circuit Podcast, he was promoting his HBO standup special 'More Feelings' and a hosting stint on 'Saturday Night Live,' having just come off of a press campaign for his first movie role in 'Poor Things' — plus Netflix had just set a comedy series co-created by Youssef and Will Ferrell. More from Variety 'Bridget Jones' Director Michael Morris on the Emmy Longform Conundrum: What's The Difference Between a Film and a TV Movie? 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That one has yet to be greenlit — 'We're in development on 'Baby,'' Youssef jokes — but there's plenty on his mind until then. If there's a throughline between the disparate things he's working on, it's that each one feels urgent, deeply connected to an of-the-moment struggle. Take 'Mountainhead,' for example. The film examines the complicated and even violent friendships between a group of tech billionaires who are wading through real-life, apocalyptic consequences of AI. 'I write a lot about man versus system, and [Armstrong's] version of it, and his entry points to it, are different than the ones that I gravitate towards as a writer,' Youssef says. 'But as an actor, it all made so much sense to me the second I read it.' Later in the conversation, Youssef relates that idea to 'Mo,' which follows an undocumented Palestinian refugee who tries, fails and tries again to get his green card in the U.S. 'With 'Mo,' we looked at man versus system in an on-the-nose way,' he says. 'You're watching him go through these courts, and through these double standards […] I felt compelled that this thing has to exist, because there is no humanization — of not just Palestinians, but even refugees. People think 'refugee' and they just see a random CNN image of people displaced on a boat near a shore. And those images need to be tethered to real families and real stories and things that you can understand.' Youssef expanded on his thoughts from a previous Variety interview, where he and Amer shared why they chose not to reference the current war in Gaza in 'Mo' Season 2, emphasizing that they wanted to be timely while still making sure the show would hold up years after the war's eventual end. This is a skill Youssef first honed by observing his comedy idols. 'I love watching old specials. Pop on an old Eddie Murphy, pop on an old George Carlin,' he says. 'Carlin's great at this, because he'll talk really topically about the time, but it always has this core emotional thing that's actually the bedrock of the joke. I don't know the senator he's talking about from the '90s, but I know exactly what he's feeling.' In '#1 Happy Family USA,' Youssef applies the Carlin treatment to 9/11. More than 20 years on, he's still meditating on how Americans at large responded to the terrorist attacks, and how that response impacted Muslim families like his own. To him, the emotional truth that still resonates today is the way he was taught to 'code switch,' or present a version of himself in public that was different from the person he truly was at home. So in the series, the Hussein family goes to absurd lengths to make the white people they meet in public more comfortable. 'Everyone has this part of themselves that they go, 'I gotta hide this now that I'm going outside.' In a way, it's the premise of 'Severance' — that thing of, 'I gotta be somebody else when I'm not home,'' Youssef says. 'With that being at the bedrock of it, we can get super wild and crazy and really go at this with a satire that that period of time has never really gotten from the perspective that we show.' He continues: 'There were so many people who were really sidelined from having their own experience for a really long time in this country. And that time is back and even worse. Anyone who lived through the early 2000s as an adult, who is Muslim, will tell you that it's worse now. This idea of needing to prove your patriotism. It's why the show is called '#1 Happy Family USA.' It's this idea that you gotta get out there on that front lawn and shout it to everybody in order to be deemed safe and worthy of living in the neighborhood.' And while the stakes of the headlines referenced in 'The Studio' are less life-and-death, the Seth Rogen-led comedy is still cut from the same 'man versus system' cloth. Even though Youssef only appears once, as the host of the Golden Globes in Episode 8, it was a logical addition to his rolodex of timely and prescient projects — though he didn't need much convincing, considering he got to bring his dog to the shoot. Also on this episode of the Awards Circuit Podcast: Variety's Clayton Davis talked this spring to star/EP Forest Whitaker about MGM+'s 'Godfather of Harlem,' now in its Season 4. The show picked up in Season 4 with Bumpy Johnson, played by Whitaker, as he continued his bloody war for control of Harlem against New York's mafia families, while contending with the emergence of a potential rival in newly arrived Black gangster Frank Lucas. 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This Father's Day, Let's Hear It for the Stepfathers
Stepfathers are everywhere, but where's their special section in the greeting card aisle? In 2008, a study estimated that about 8.4 percent of U.S. married couples of childbearing age contained a stepfather; some estimates suggest the figure is closer to 20 percent, if you fold in couples that cohabitate but aren't married. In the run-up to Father's Day this year, I'm thinking a lot about how little air time stepfathers are given in the our annual compulsory displays of love and gratitude for all types of dads. What gives? Stepfathers have always been members of my family and our community. Honestly, I never thought twice about this social arrangement until, as an adult single parent, I brought a stepfather into the home my teen son and I shared…and well, indoor fireworks are an understatement. 96 Funny Father's Day Quotes That Sum Him Up Better Than a Dad Joke Back up a sec—In my defense, I understand this stepfather salute is a too-little and possibly too-late honor for my own stepfather and my son's stepfather figure (who isn't actually married to me but is my domestic partner). However, I come by this wan praise honestly, having come of age in a time when stepfathers were basically ignored as having their own challenges and strengths. For example, growing up, the multiplex didn't give me stepfathers in sweet family sitcoms and movies like Father of the Bride. No, they offered up The Stepfather, a horror film in which a psychopath romances single women with children, only to murder them when the perfect family image disappoints him. And frankly, my first stepfather, who was married to my mom and legally adopted me, turned out to be his own horror show until my mom and I drove away one day never to return. My point here is—I didn't grow up thinking too much of the institution of male stepparenting, and until my mom married a third and final time when I was in my teens, I didn't have any male role model in the home. At the time she began getting serious with the man who is now my stepfather, I was a wary teenager that didn't want anything to do with 'mom's boyfriend,' even though he took the time to tutor me in physics, toured prospective colleges with me and gave me his old car. I didn't see then what I see now, that my working mom was tired, I was a teenage handful and this stepfather had a lot of kindness and smarts to share, but I was maybe too immature and traumatized to receive. My stepfather and I have a great relationship today—we have a two-person book club in which we make a monthly date to discuss chapters, and he's shown me how investing can be a creative act. And, as he and my mom get older, I'm all up in their doctor appointments. In retrospect, I realize he cleverly wore me down with decades of patience and dependability, since I wasn't convinced that a stepfather could possibly have any reason to make nice with someone else's bio-kids. And in my petulant youth, I didn't see how my initial rudeness—thawing to lukewarm greetings and perfunctory conversation as a young adult—could have been hurtful to him or to my mom. Until, of course, I got a taste of my own medicine. File under 'Paybacks are hell.' As a recent widow, I started dating C. My 13-year-old son really liked him, until my kid figured out C. and I were romantic. Then, my son was super angry at me and dismissive of him. One day, for example, my son breezed out of his room, glanced at my boyfriend and said, "Hello F---face." I was stunned into nervous laughter, while my boyfriend kept his cool, laughed briefly and replied with a cool hello. Then my son ignored and insulted C. for months, during which time he lambasted me, too, for being a bad mom to date so soon after his father had died, for choosing the wrong guy, for just being a disappointment overall. As a mom, this really hurt, but my boyfriend let my son's rebellion roll off his back. 'He was a grief-addled kid, was processing his grief and his pain,' C. tells me now, 'and I was a reasonable target for it. As the adult, you kind of have to suck it up and absorb it…and also I knew I was in it for the long haul with you, so I was also with him.' C. goes on to say that he thought that he and my son had things in common—both are rabid sports fans and contemporary music lovers—and that their mutual interests would give them something to bond over. Eventually. 'And I did have some limited success in trying to bribe my way into his heart with concert tickets and food,' C. laughs. But was any of that for sure going to work? No, it was not. There was a real period of touch-and-go there for a year when, as a mom, the pressure of my son's anger and disobedience made me super worried and yes, tired like my own mom had been long ago. My boyfriend stuck with me, and with my son, even though we didn't have a rule book for step-parenting. (Again, that seeming public health silence around stepdads!) I've since researched the topic, and found that family psychologists urge the following stepdads maneuvers: Be patient—it takes 2 to 5 years for blended families to adjust Keep your spousal relationship between Mom and stepdad strong—it's a sense of security for the whole family system Parents need to really focus on the kids' needs and practice active listening Practice shoulder-to-shoulder parenting (a therapy term for engaging in side-by-side activities with the stepkid to slowly build rapport) All that tracks, and today, five years after our family's rocky beginning, I'll walk into the living room and see my son and C. cheering together watching the game on TV, or burbling stats at each other like two parakeets in a cage. The happiness I feel at the mutual respect between the two, and not incidentally, the friendship between mine and C.'s son who attends college across the country but visits a few times a year, is something I don't take for granted. This Father's Day, and every day, I wish we could all acknowledge, appreciate and majorly amplify the big dad energy of stepfathers. (Maybe buy him a steak.) Stepdads are really sailing uncharted territories and should be celebrated maybe even more than biodads, who after all, have a genetic buy-in to stick around. Stepfathers are operating on faith and generosity, as well as a bit of optimism, which all families can use more of these days. 'It was like waiting out a thunder storm, when your son was younger. I didn't feel disrespected because I was just the sounding board for his spew of feelings,' C. says now. 'And like with a thunder storm, you just wait it out then go back outside and see if its calmed down.' The 86 Best Gifts for Dad That He'll Actually Use—& Not Leave in the Garage
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New Doc Explores How Julia Sweeney's ‘SNL' Favorite Pat Became a Complex Nonbinary Icon
Julia Sweeney's popular Saturday Night Live character Pat gets their plaudits (and some criticism) as a gender non-conforming pioneer in a new clip from the upcoming documentary, We Are Pat, premiering exclusively on Rolling Stone. Sweeney played Pat throughout her run on SNL in the early Nineties and even got to star in a spin-off film, It's Pat. The inscrutability of Pat's androgyny was pushed to comedic extremes, effectively offering prominent, yet thorny representation for gender non-conforming people on television long before the term 'nonbinary' was being widely used. More from Rolling Stone USC's SoCal VoCals Are Pitch Perfect in 'Just Sing' Documentary Trailer See 'SNL' Spoof Mike Myers' Infamous Kanye West Moment in Elevator Sketch 'SNL': Watch Bad Bunny Perform 'NUEVAYoL,' 'PERFuMITO NUEVO' We Are Pat director Ro Haber tells Rolling Stone in an email they 'wanted to make a film about transness that had humor at the heart of it,' and kept coming back to their complicated feelings about Pat. 'Why am I laughing at something that's meant to laugh at me? Why do I love Pat? Is Pat a nonbinary icon or a transphobic trope of yesteryear?' Haber continues. 'In exploring these questions, it was really important that the film embraced a spirit of curiosity and conversation rather than cancel culture and judgment.' The new clip opens with Karam Ann, a professor of TV studies, noting the prescience of Pat and how the relatively new discussion around nonbinary identity and the use of they/them pronouns has 'reanimated Pat from the grave.' Actor and filmmaker River Gallo, who is nonbinary, adds, 'What's interesting to me about being nonbinary, and the definition of nonbinariness, is it's saying you're not these two things. It's not really definable but only by what it isn't. It's interesting thinking of Pat in those ways.' We Are Pat will have its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on Sunday, June 8. It's set to feature interviews with an array of queer and trans comedians and writers, including Molly Kearney, Esther Fallick, Abby McEnany, Pink Foxx, and Roz Hernandez. Sweeney also partook in the film, as did her SNL co-star Kevin Nealon. Haber says one of the most profound things they learned while making the film was from Sweeney, who created Pat while grappling with her 'own gendered pressure as a woman trying to make it in the Ninetes boys club of comedy and SNL.' 'Pat grew out of familial and societal expectations of femininity that were placed on Julia during that time, and Pat was something of an escape for her,' Haber says. 'In the film, she says, 'It was actually a joy to be Pat because I got to have a break from having to be a girl too.' That sense of reacting to a gender expectation placed on you felt really relatable to the comics in the film and me.' { pmcCnx({ settings: { plugins: { pmcAtlasMG: { iabPlcmt: 1, }, pmcCnx: { singleAutoPlay: 'auto' } } }, playerId: "d762a038-c1a2-4e6c-969e-b2f1c9ec6f8a", mediaId: "4665abb0-57e9-4e09-a93a-fa846cda00cb", }).render("connatix_player_4665abb0-57e9-4e09-a93a-fa846cda00cb_2"); }); Best of Rolling Stone The 50 Best 'Saturday Night Live' Characters of All Time Denzel Washington's Movies Ranked, From Worst to Best 70 Greatest Comedies of the 21st Century
