No Parents Allowed
Salinger's book, reissued this month, features portraits of dozens of teenagers. The images capture an inflection point between childhood and adolescence: Her subjects pose among stuffed animals and pinups, dolls and drug paraphernalia. In one image, a girl named Ellen stands beside a neat bookshelf, clutching a violin. On the wall behind her is a poster of James Dean astride a motorcycle—just below it, a brochure from Brown.
Most of the rooms Salinger visited—of rich and poor teens alike—were illuminated by a single light fixture at the center of the ceiling. She brought her own studio lights, which would frequently blow a fuse. As she set up her equipment, she and her subjects would talk, often for hours. Then she would take a photograph, and the teens would see their room—and themselves—in a new light.
Photos courtesy of Adrienne Salinger / D.A.P. This article appears in the September 2025 print edition with the headline 'No Parents Allowed.'
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CNN
an hour ago
- CNN
Trump announces Kennedy Center honorees as he tries to put his stamp on DC
President Donald Trump visited the Kennedy Center on Wednesday to unveil the next recipients of its hallmark honors — and announce that he would personally host the institution's awards show in December. The appearance at the iconic performing arts complex came as Trump seeks greater authority over Washington, DC, and its most prominent cultural institutions in an aggressive bid to put his stamp on the Democratic-led city. Trump seized control of the institution's board earlier this year, telling reporters Wednesday he would oversee a sweeping revamp of the center and its programming. 'We ended the woke political programming, and we're restoring the Kennedy Center as the premier venue for performing arts anywhere in the country, anywhere in the world,' Trump said. 'We have some unbelievable plans.' Trump, who said he was '98% involved' in picking the center's next slate of honorees, announced that the awards would be given to singer and songwriter George Strait; actors Michael Crawford and Sylvester Stallone; singer Gloria Gaynor; and the rock band KISS. While insisting that he did not push to be part of the award presentations, Trump nevertheless appeared to relish the prospect of hosting a television show again, years after rising to national prominence as the face of the reality TV show 'The Apprentice.' 'I think it will be quite successful,' Trump said. 'It's been a long time. I used to host the 'Apprentice' finales, and we did rather well with that.' The visit marks the president's third Kennedy Center appearance since returning to the White House, underscoring his personal interest in the activities of the performing arts center. At Trump's behest, congressional Republicans set aside $250 million in July for renovations to the center as part of their tax and spending bill. Those funds will go toward an expansive overhaul of the Kennedy Center, Trump said, arguing that it was badly in need of repairs when he took control of its operations. 'I'm determined to make Washington, DC, safe, clean and beautiful again,' he said. 'A big part of that is going to include the Kennedy Center.' In addition to assuming oversight of the performing arts center, Trump has pressured DC's museums, memorials and other historic sites to recast American history in a more favorable light, criticizing what he called in a March executive order a 'revisionist movement' meant to 'undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States.' On Tuesday, the White House ordered a review of Smithsonian museums and exhibits to ensure alignment with that directive. Kennedy Center honorees, the members of Kiss arrive at London airport for their first European tour in 1976. The president has also embarked on wide-ranging renovation of the White House. And in an unprecedented move this week fueled by his personal frustration with incidents of crime and homelessness in DC, Trump federalized the city's police force. The sprawling effort to exert federal influence across DC is an escalation from his first term, during which he remained largely disengaged from the cultural institutions of a city that had overwhelmingly rejected him at the ballot box. Trump notably declined to attend the Kennedy Center Honors all four years after some of the honorees in 2017 said they would boycott a traditional White House pre-reception. Yet since returning to office, he has prioritized bending key elements of DC to his will, as part of what officials have framed as an effort to beautify the city and its key institutions and drive out what Trump has long criticized as 'woke' elements that don't conform to his worldview. The Kennedy Center has served as an early focal point of that project, drawing an institution that had traditionally remained above the fray of partisan politics directly into the center of the nation's culture wars. Trump in February dismissed a slew of Democratic appointees from the center's board of trustees, replacing them with aides and allies that included chief of staff Susie Wiles and second lady Usha Vance. Trump was subsequently elected chairman, with longtime confidant Ric Grenell installed as the Kennedy Center's new president. The takeover prompted sharp criticism from Democrats and angered artists connected to the Kennedy Center — including the producer of the hit musical 'Hamilton,' who cancelled an upcoming run of the show that was supposed to go through 2026. A series of other prominent artists, including director Shonda Rhimes and musician Ben Folds, resigned from their positions at the center. Since then, Trump has taken a hands-on approach to overhauling programming and drawing up plans for renovating the complex. Asked about his involvement in picking the center's next honorees, Trump said he personally sifted through the candidates, rejecting some he felt were too 'woke.' He added that while he anticipated blowback for politicizing the Kennedy Center Honors, the controversy might drive up ratings for the awards show 'if we make it our kind of political.' Kennedy Center honoree George Strait performs onstage during the 54th Academy Of Country Music Awards in Las Vegas, in April 2019. On Monday, the Kennedy Center said it would host the premier of a film produced by the Christian Broadcasting Network that 'showcases the remarkable resurgence of faith among the youth in America.' It's an early sign of how programming may shift under the Trump-appointed leadership. The movie includes an appearance by Ben Carson, Trump's former secretary of Housing and Urban Development. That premier follows an earlier run of 'Les Misérables' — a favorite musical of Trump's — that the president attended in June. The appearance drew a mixed reaction, with some attendees booing Trump and four drag queens sitting below the presidential box in protest of his prior vows to rid the Kennedy Center of drag shows. Yet within the GOP, the Kennedy Center has become another rallying point for demonstrating loyalty to Trump. In July, House Republicans added a measure to a spending bill that would rename the center's opera house after first lady Melania Trump. Soon after, Rep. Bob Onder of Missouri introduced the Make Entertainment Great Again Act, which would go a step further and strip former President John F. Kennedy's name from the complex in favor of making it the 'Donald J. Trump Center for Performing Arts.' But ahead of Trump's visit on Wednesday, that proposal had yet to gain steam; so far, Onder's legislation has not attracted a single co-sponsor.
Los Angeles Times
an hour ago
- Los Angeles Times
Why a streamer beloved by fans of British TV is turning to big U.S. stars
Thirty years ago, the coming-of-age romantic comedy 'Clueless' opened in movie theaters and went on to become an enduring American pop culture touchstone. 'I'm thrilled that people love it and continue to love it,' the movie's star, Alicia Silverstone, said in a recent conversation in New York. 'Young people. Old people. It's really gone on and on, and obviously that's lovely.' AMC Networks is counting on Silverstone's multigenerational appeal to help boost the New York-based media company's streaming service Acorn TV, which specializes in British dramas and other programs from overseas. Silverstone is the lead in the new Acorn original series 'Irish Blood,' which premiered Monday. She plays hard-bitten Los Angeles divorce lawyer Fiona Sharpe, who heads to Ireland to resolve a mystery involving the father who abandoned her as a child. AMC has also signed the imperishable Brooke Shields to star in another Acorn project titled 'You're Killing Me.' She portrays a mystery novelist who teams with a young wannabe writer and influencer to investigate murders in a small New England town. The series starts shooting this summer and is set to premiere in 2026. Why put two iconic American actresses on a streaming platform with a well-defined niche of providing viewers with international locations and accents that at times require closed-captioning even when the language is English? Even the small players in streaming have to get bigger. AMC does not have the deep pockets to compete with the likes of Netflix, Prime Video and Disney+. The company has blazed its own digital path by serving dedicated audiences who will pay for an additional streaming service that caters to their passions, such as Shudder for horror fans and HIDIVE for anime lovers. The company's suite of streaming services has around 10.4 million customers. Even with that modest figure, AMC Networks' streaming revenue has steadily grown to the point where it will soon surpass what the company earns from its traditional TV channels such as AMC, BBC America, Sundance TV and WE, which continue to see subscriber declines because of cord-cutting. AMC has found that the strong fan bases for its niche services are willing to absorb price increases and are less likely to cancel. The company has managed to keep its streaming platforms priced at less than $10 a month. Now AMC Networks is looking to accelerate its subscriber growth and Acorn — the most popular and profitable of its standalone offerings — is seen as the platform best suited to the task. 'It's a service we really believe in,' Courtney Thomasma, executive vice president for streaming and content strategy at AMC Networks, told The Times in a recent interview. 'Over the last year, we've been really focused on looking for ways to continue to raise awareness of the brand and invite new viewers in who we know would also love it. We're doing that with a focus on investing in the brand and inviting bigger talent that's more familiar to North American audiences.' Many fans of Acorn — which started out as a direct marketer of British TV series on home video and was acquired by AMC in 2018 — are what Thomasma calls 'armchair travelers' who want to take in a French vineyard or the cobblestone streets of Chelsea. But AMC believes aligning Acorn more closely to the mystery genre will widen its appeal. A monthlong promotional campaign under the banner of Murder Mystery May — which featured a number of season premieres — drove Acorn TV subscription sign-ups to a four-year high. The 20 million hours watched during the month was the best ever for the service, according to AMC. The emphasis on mystery provides Acorn the latitude to cast Silverstone and Shields. One way AMC attracts star talent is the opportunity to put their own creative stamp on their programs. 'They become as invested in the success of the projects as we are,' Thomasma said. Silverstone came on to 'Irish Blood' as executive producer and became involved in the development of the series. She was involved in the hiring of key positions in the production and worked with the writers. She's happy with the result. 'I thought it was quirky and also an emotionally deep drama,' Silverstone said. 'There's a lot for me to do.' Shields and writer Robin Bernheim pitched the generation gap tandem at the center of 'You're Killing Me' to AMC, and the actor remains deeply involved in the process as shooting begins. 'This is the first time I've ever had this much creative control as an executive producer,' Shields said in an interview. 'I feel lucky that they entrusted me to do what we're doing.' Acorn teams with production partners around the world and generates revenue from selling some of its series for second runs on international broadcasters and PBS. AMC spends in the range of $1 million per episode for its cost-efficient series, which are heavy on dialogue and largely car-chase free. The audience is older — they are avid readers who are likely to subscribe to newspapers, watch cable news and PBS, and enjoy solving puzzles. And though Acorn is hoping to attract more younger subscribers, the service won't be losing its British accent. Acorn recently launched 'Art Detectives' with Stephen Moyer, who also is an executive producer. The series, about a Heritage Crime Unit that solves murders connected to art and antiques, had the strongest premiere in the streamer's history. Later this year, it will offer a new six-episode series starring Matthew Lewis, known for his Neville Longbottom role in the Harry Potter films. Based on the series of Canon Clements mystery novels by the Rev. Richard Coles, 'Murder Before Evensong' is a co-production with British broadcaster Channel 5. 'We pride ourselves on being a boutique neighborhood store, the kind that you walk in, you know the owner [and] the owner knows you,' Thomasma said. 'We have deep connection to our audience.'
Los Angeles Times
an hour ago
- Los Angeles Times
L.A.'s rebel architects, now elders, revisit norm-busting Venice Beach art scene
On a wide, empty stretch of Venice Beach in 1980, seven Los Angeles architects — Frank Gehry, Thom Mayne, Eric Owen Moss, Coy Howard, Craig Hodgetts, Robert Mangurian and Frederick Fisher — gathered for a group portrait by photographer Ave Pildas. Clad in mismatched outfits and standing casually in the sand, they looked more like a rumpled rock band than the future of American architecture. The resulting image, published in Interiors magazine, distilled a seismic moment in L.A.'s creative history. Those seven, gazing in their own directions yet joined in a sense of mischievous rebellion and cocky exuberance, represented a new generation that was bringing a brash, loose creativity to their work and starting to distance itself from the buttoned-up codes and expectations of the architecture establishment. Each would go on to have a successful career, from Pritzker Architecture Prize winners to directors of architecture schools. And they and their compatriots would, for a while at least, help put a rapidly changing L.A. at the center of the built culture. 'That one photograph contains a whole world,' notes filmmaker Russell Brown, who recently directed a 12-part documentary series about that Venice architecture scene. 'There was risk going on, and freedom; it was all about ideas.' 'It's become a kind of reference point,' adds architectural journalist Frances Anderton, host of the series. 'It just keeps reappearing whenever there's a conversation about that period.' The 1980 image is the jumping-off point for 'Rebel Architects: From Venice to the World Stage,' produced by Brown's nonprofit, Friends of Residential Treasures: Los Angeles. Four of the architects — now in their 70s and 80s — gathered for a (far less brash) new photo and an honest conversation about their early careers in L.A., and what's transpired since for the series, which began streaming monthly on FORT: LA's website July 1. A native Angeleno with a background in feature and documentary filmmaking, Brown conceived of the concept after a chat with architect Robert Thibodeau, co-founder of Venice-based DU Architects. After a deeper dive into the image with Anderton, the idea for a reunion was born. 'We thought, why don't we restage the photo and then use that as an excuse to get the guys together?' Brown explains. He preferred a spontaneous, lighthearted group discussion to the typical documentary, with its one-on-one interviews and heavy production. 'It's about the chemistry between creative peers,' says Brown. 'The real legacy of these architects isn't just in the buildings. It's in the conversations they started — and are still having.' He added: 'There's a spark that happens when they're together ... They talk about failure, competition, teaching, aging. It's a very human exchange.' Episode 1, titled 'Capturing a Moment in L.A. Architecture,' opens with four of the surviving architects — Fisher, Mayne, Moss and Hodgetts — recreating that seminal photograph for Pildas and sitting down for an interview. (Howard was interviewed separately, Gehry declined and Mangurian died in 2023.) The group dissects the photo's cinematic, informal composition, in which Pildas aims down from a berm, the neglected buildings behind the eclectic crew shrinking into the horizon, merging with the sand. And they remember a time in which the city's messy urban forms and perceived cultural inferiority provided endless creative fuel, and liberation. Pildas recalls how the original shoot came together at the request of British design editor Beverly Russell, who was looking to capture 'Frank Gehry and some of his Turks.' (The international design press was gaga for L.A. at the time. Anderton notes that her move from the U.K. resulted from a similar assignment, on the 'subversive architects of the West Coast,' for the publication Architectural Review in 1987.) At the time, most of the architects were working in garages and warehouses, forming their studios and collaborating with equally norm-busting and (relatively) unheralded artists in the scrappy, dangerous, forgotten, yet exploding Venice scene. In a later episode, the architects start listing the art talents they would run into, or befriend, including Larry Bell, James Turrell, Ed Ruscha, Fred Eversley, Robert Irwin, Robert Rauschenberg and Jean-Michel Basquiat, to name a few. Basquiat was then living and working in Hodgetts' building. 'It was a spectacular fusion of all this creative energy,' Hodgetts remembers. 'There was no audience, there were no guardrails, and one did not feel constrained.' He adds, later: 'We all felt like we were marooned on a desert island.' Pildas, who had studied architecture before switching to design and, eventually, photography, was uniquely suited to capture the group. He had shot some of the small, quirky experiments of Mangurian and Mayne, and knew most of the others through social and professional circles. (He even knew Hodgetts from high school back in Cincinnati.) The first attempt at the photo seemed stiff, says Pildas, so he took out a joint, which all except Hodgetts accepted, he says. The icebreaker worked. In a later image, says Pildas, Fisher is hugging Gehry's leg, the others huddled around. 'It got pretty friendly in the end,' he jokes. Pildas argues that the photo is much more layered with meaning (not to mention nostalgia) now than it was at the time. 'Back then, it was just another magazine shoot. Now, it's history,' he says. Adds Moss: 'Its relevancy, or not, is confirmed by the following years. Otherwise it's gone.' Each episode explores the image's layers, and the unfolding stories that followed — the challenges of maintaining originality; crucial role of journalists in promoting their work; maddening disconnect between L.A.'s talent and its clients, along with the mercurial, ever-evolving identity of Los Angeles. The tone, like the photo, is unpretentious and playful, heavy on character and story, not theory. This was not always an easy task with a group that can get esoteric quite quickly, adds Anderton. 'I was trying to keep it light,' she laughs. 'I don't think I even have the ability to talk in the language of the academy.' 'They're cracking jokes, interrupting each other, reminiscing about teaching gigs and design arguments,' says Brown. 'There's real affection, but also a sense of rivalry that never fully went away.' Hodgetts doesn't see it that way, however. 'It was really about the joy of creating things. We wanted to jam a bit, perform together; that's really life-affirming,' he says. There are some revealing moments. Mayne, whose firm Morphosis is known for bold, city-altering buildings such as Caltrans HQ in downtown L.A., reflects on teaching as a way of 'being the father I never had.' (His father left his family when he was a young boy.) He tenderly discusses the seminal role that his wife Blythe — a co-owner of Morphosis — has played in his career. Fisher reveals that Gehry was the chief reason he dropped everything to come out to L.A. (At the time, he was working as a display designer at a department store in Cincinnati.) 'I remember seeing this architect jumping up and down on cardboard furniture. I could see there was something going on here. Something percolating,' he says. Moss opens up about his struggles to negotiate the demands of the practical world, while Hodgetts performs brilliant critiques of the others' work, sometimes to broad smiles, others to cringes. Notably absent from the reunion is Gehry himself, who is now 96. 'He's at a point in his life where trudging through sand for a photo wasn't going to happen,' says Brown. 'But his presence is everywhere. He's still the elephant in the room.' One episode explores how Gehry, about a decade older than the others, both profoundly influenced and often overshadowed the group — a reality that was perhaps reinforced by his nonchalant dominance in the photo itself. 'Frank takes up a lot of oxygen,' Mayne quips. Still, all admire Gehry's unwillingness to compromise creatively, despite often heavy criticism. Another prevailing theme is the bittersweet loss of that early sense of freedom, and the Venice of the 1970s, with its breathtakingly low rents and abandoned charm. Today's architects — wherever they are — face higher stakes, infinitely higher costs and tighter regulations. 'The Venice we grew up with is completely gone,' says Fisher. 'But maybe it's just moved,' noted Moss. Distinguishing L.A. as a place whose energy and attention is constantly shifting, he wonders if creative ferment might now be happening in faraway places like Tehachapi — 'wherever land is cheap and ambition is high,' he says. While Pildas was capturing the seven architects 45 years ago, he was also busy chronicling the city's street culture — jazz clubs, boulevard eccentrics, decaying movie palaces and bohemian artists. All were featured in the 2023 documentary 'Ave's America' (streaming on Prime Video) directed by his former student, Patrick Taulère, exploring his six decades of humbly perceptive, deeply human work. After reviewing the recreation of the photo — the architects are still smiling this time, but their scrappy overconfidence feels eons away — Pildas wonders who the next generation will be, and how they will rise. 'Maybe it'll happen that they'll have another picture someday with a bunch of new architects, right?' he says. 'This is a fertile ground for architecture anyway, and always has been.' Exposing that 'fertile ground' to Angelenos of all kinds is FORT: LA's overarching goal. Founded in 2020, it offers architecture trails, fellowships and a surprising variety of programming, from design competitions to architecture-themed wine tastings. All, says Brown, is delivered, like 'Rebel Architects,' with a sense of accessible joy and exploration — an especially useful gift in a turbulent, insecure time for the city. 'Suddenly, you kind of think about the city in a different way and feel it in a different way,' says Brown. 'This is a place that allows this kind of vision to come to life.'
