Things to do in Tampa Bay this weekend: NCAA Women's Final Four, Fred Armisen and more
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🎤 Catch comedian and former SNL cast member Fred Armisen live at the Tampa Theatre on Friday at 7pm as part of his "Comedy for Musicians But Everyone is Welcome tour."
Tickets start at $35.
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Yahoo
19 hours ago
- Yahoo
Billy Crystal on His Late Manager, David Steinberg: 'He Was One of a Kind'
If an experienced writer of obituaries would write the story of David Steinberg's life and career, it would be impossible for him to capture the total portrait of one of the most unique people I have ever known. If this feels like a speech at a memorial, chances are you won't be there, so here goes. For 48 years, this hilarious, outrageous (and pardon me, David), sensitive man who never wore socks was my manager, confidant, friend and ultimately family member. More from The Hollywood Reporter Edgar Wright, Guy Pearce, Keith Richards, Gale Anne Hurd, Stephen Elliott Pay Tribute to "Truly Iconic" Terence Stamp: "The Most Mesmerizing Eyes" Joe Caroff, Designer of the James Bond 007 Logo, Dies at 103 Terence Stamp, Brooding Legend of British Cinema, Dies at 87 David came to L.A. from Milwaukee, where he was born in 1943. After an academic career second to everyone and with his natural sense of humor, big personality and ability to bullshit with the best of them, he began a successful career in public relations. He would represent Peter Sellers, Sammy Davis Jr. and many others before I hired him to do my publicity when I started on Soap back in 1977. After getting to know my managers, who were considered the gold standard for comedy management — Jack Rollins, Charlie Joffe, Buddy Morra and Larry Brezner, whom I had signed with back in 1974 — he was asked to join the firm and leave behind the PR world. He was a natural fit and soon was sharing the workload for not only my career but also for my great friend Robin Williams. He was so sharp and quick. When I started to play around with an imitation of Fernando Lamas, I would call David in his office as Fernando and we'd have a conversation about Esther Williams and everyone else in show business. This is where 'You Look Mahvelous' started, and it ultimately became a popular character and catch phrase when I was on SNL in 1984-85. When Buddy retired and Larry focused solely on producing films, David protected Robin and me like one of those dogs in The Omen. His great sense of humor had us on an equal playing field at times. He would go on the road with us, watching our shows, taking notes, writing jokes (without our asking most times), but he was essential to our well-being on and off the stage. We'd overlook it when he'd have eaten the food in our dressing rooms before we arrived, and then not complain when he cleared a table of the plates, glasses and silverware before we were done eating the few scraps that were left. In 1989, he traveled to Moscow with me when I became the first American comedian to perform in the then Soviet Union for HBO's Midnight Train to Moscow. He had to deal with the KGB every day and constantly negotiated with the Russian liaisons who didn't live up to the things we had agreed to. Sound familiar? We were shooting a night scene in front of the Kremlin and the lights that we had paid for to be on, weren't. I saw David talking with a scary looking man, and suddenly the lights came on. I asked him what did he say to the man? He replied, 'I asked what would it take to turn them on? And he told me, so I gave him $500 and a dual cassette boom box.' We had to bring a food truck from England to the USSR stocked with a cook and good food for two weeks as the Chernobyl disaster had tainted much of the food supply, and the disappearance of the horse population made us wary of the New York Strip. So there was David, in the truck making spaghetti sauce and pasta for our Russian crew, who looked at David with amazement while he was feeding them food they had never seen before. We visited Lenin's tomb together, and with a stern Russian security guard watching us, he whispered loud enough for him to hear, 'His foot moved.' We were encouraged to make a hasty exit. He made trips to Afghanistan and Iraq with Robin to entertain the troops, frightened by the dangerous landing approach and takeoffs the plane had to make but joyous in the reaction of the troops to Robin. He didn't just watch, he also had many a great conversation with the soldiers himself. He put together the writing staffs for all nine of my Oscar hosting appearances and was in the wings with me and Bruce Vilanch and Robert Wuhl and later the great Jon Macks to monitor the show and hopefully come up with new lines if the opportunity presented itself. He, Bruce and Robert were with me in 1992 when Jack Palance did the one-armed pushups and we abandoned our plans and came up with jokes the rest of the evening. That team, David included, earned an Emmy for that show. We toured the States and Australia together twice, once with 700 Sundays, my Broadway show, and the other a 35-city concert performance tour. No job was too small, no job too big. It was David who delivered good news, and it was David who had to tell me that Robin and Larry Brezner, people we both loved, had passed away. He was one of a kind. As Whoopi Goldberg said about David, 'There was nobody more pointed, more funny and more loving than David. Through all my years watching Billy and Robin and David interact at Comic Relief, I recognized what he meant to their careers and more importantly, to them personally.' For Janice and I, he was a trusted relative. To my daughters, he was a beloved uncle. His talents were enviable to our fellow artists. No manager had the 'chops' that Steinberg had. Today there are management firms with big staffs and divisions for personal appearances, books, movies, social media, etc. David, to his last days, was a one-man band. He learned every day how to keep up with the new demands of the business even though he never quite mastered how to use his cell phone. He was joyous and proud when good things happened. He was caring and soothing and honest when things went the wrong way, and like a manager yelling at an umpire who didn't get the call right, he'd know how much arguing and cursing he could get away with before he would get tossed. He represented the great Bette Midler, who said, 'I adored him. He was wry, cynical and hilarious, yet pretty much a gentleman, all things considered. I looked forward to every meeting because I knew I was going to laugh my head off, although he was a terrific hand holder, too. He'd seen it all, at least twice, and was completely unfazed by anything that the business threw at him. The end of an era.' Bette summed it up so perfectly. My 'OG' managers, Jack Rollins, Charlie Joffe, Buddy Morra and Larry Brezner, are all gone, and now David is, too. They represented an era in comedy, from Woody Allen to Nichols & May, Dick Cavett, Tom Poston, Robert Klein, Martin Mull, Paula Poundstone, Martin Short, David Letterman, Robin and myself, and now for me there is a black hole, a space that will never be filled. He died after a long and difficult negotiation with cancer early Saturday morning. If I was able to tell him it was also the day Babe Ruth passed away, I know he'd say, 'So I get second billing?' He had a beautiful family. His wife, Brynn Thayer, is a fine actress and now a playwright, strong and hilarious herself, she was the perfect match for his personality and sometimes inappropriate jokes. She fought endlessly for him as his health declined, and her love for him was unparalleled. His son Mason, now a terrific comedy writer and producer, learned from his dad the art of writing a joke with a purpose, and I'm sure that kind of warm irreverence will be passed down to his son, Owen, David's only grandchild whom he loved more than he could ever say. His sister, Sari, and his goddaughter, Molly, were also great loves of his life. There are countless stories and anecdotes I could choose from to end this, but I decided to paraphrase what the great writer John O'Hara said about his friend George Gershwin upon his passing. 'George Gershwin died on July 11, 1937, but I don't have to believe it if I don't want to.' David Steinberg, my manager my friend, died on Aug. 16, 2025, but I don't have to believe it if I don't want to.' Reader, I'm sorry if you never got to meet him or know him, and to those of you who did … well, all you can say is this really stinks. Best of The Hollywood Reporter How the Warner Brothers Got Their Film Business Started Meet the World Builders: Hollywood's Top Physical Production Executives of 2023 Men in Blazers, Hollywood's Favorite Soccer Podcast, Aims for a Global Empire Solve the daily Crossword
New York Post
3 days ago
- New York Post
Pete Davidson didn't know 'SNL' was still on before he auditioned
Pete Davidson didn't realize 'Saturday Night Live' was still airing when he auditioned for the popular sketch show more than 10 years ago. During an appearance on 'The Breakfast Club' radio show earlier this week, the 31-year-old comedian opened up about his experience joining 'SNL' back in 2014. 'I was so lucky,' he said Wednesday. 'I was so young. I was super naive. So I just was like, I'm just going to smoke weed and talk about, you know, what's going on in my life.' 8 Pete Davidson stopped by 'The Breakfast Club' radio show on Wednesday, Aug. 11. Breakfast Club Power 105.1 FM/Youtube 8 Pete Davidson on 'The Breakfast Club' on Wednesday, Aug. 11. The Breakfast Club/YouTube However, the 'King of Staten Island' star did not regularly watch the Lorne Michaels-created show, which made it difficult for him to answer questions about his favorite sketches and cast members. 'I was like, 'I like the Californians or whatever,'' Davidson, who rushed to the bathroom to look at older 'SNL' clips on YouTube at the time, said. 'But I had no idea what I was talking about.' The 'Bodies Bodies Bodies' actor also admitted that it was hard for him to connect with his fellow cast members, particularly because of the significant age gap between him and 'SNL' stalwarts like Colin Jost, 43, Michael Che, 42, and Kate McKinnon, 41. 8 Pete Davidson and Colin Jost on 'Saturday Night Live' in November 2017. NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images 8 Pete Davidson during the Weekend Update segment of 'SNL' after joining the show in 2014. 'Not saying I didn't work hard, but I was only doing comedy, like, three, four years,' Davidson, who revealed in July that he's expecting his first child with girlfriend Elsie Hewitt, explained. 'And a lot of what people liked about me was like, 'Oh, this is, like, a kid from Staten Island that's just talking s–t.'' 'So you got to remember all of these people are 10, 15 years older than me working so hard,' he added. Although Davidson ultimately departed 'SNL' in 2022 after eight seasons, he returned for the show's 50th anniversary special back in February. 8 Pete Davidson on 'SNL' in November 208. 8 Pete Davidson, Norman Reedus, Colin Jost and Michael Che on 'SNL' in April 2015. NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images He opened up about the 'terrible' event during an appearance on 'Late Night With Seth Meyers' earlier this week. 'It's a terrible audience,' Davidson said. 'It's just famous people, and famous people only like themselves.' But not all of the star-studded guests at the 50th anniversary special were that bad, according to the 'Meet Cute' comedian, because Meryl Streep was also in the audience. 8 Pete Davidson and Colin Jost at the Empire Hotel Rooftop in New York City on May 19, 2015. Getty Images 8 The 'SNL' alum on 'The Breakfast Club' radio show on Wednesday, Aug. 11. Breakfast Club Power 105.1 FM/Youtube 'Meryl rules,' Davidson said of the 76-year-old Oscar winner. 'I get to my seat and I just look and I'm like, 'This can't be right.' And it was Meryl Streep and I just sat down and I was like, 'I'm so sorry that I'm sitting next to you. You're the best.' And she was very nice.' But despite Davidson's remark that the crowd at the anniversary special was 'terrible,' he admitted that it provided him with some newfound respect for the comedy 'institution' that 'SNL' is. 'This is like, you know, the Harvard of comedy,' he concluded.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Yahoo
Bob Odenkirk Talks Potential ‘Nobody' Quadrilogy, ‘Pluribus' Hype and Not Missing Saul Goodman
Nobody has had a career quite like Bob Odenkirk. It was one thing to go from a comedy writer and performer on SNL in the late '80s to his own beloved HBO sketch comedy series, Mr. Show with Bob and David, in the mid-'90s. But to reinvent himself as an equally effective comedic and dramatic actor in his late 40s and 50s — largely due to his roles as Saul Goodman and Jimmy McGill on Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul — is something nobody saw coming. The later career twists and turns for the 7-time-Emmy-nominated actor weren't over yet, as Odenkirk took on yet another challenge that nobody anticipated: action franchise star. More from The Hollywood Reporter Sharon Stone Has a "Moral Code" When Playing Bad Guys: "Villains Really F*** Up Your Life" 'Nobody 2' Review: Bob Odenkirk Faces Off Against a Scenery-Chomping Sharon Stone in Entertaining Sequel After Crediting 'Nobody' Workouts for Saving His Life, Bob Odenkirk "Never Stopped Training" for Sequel In 2019, Odenkirk starred in and produced Ilya Naishuller's Nobody right before his 57th birthday, and the actioner about long-retired assassin (aka 'auditor') Hutch Mansell released to strong reviews during COVID in March 2021. The action-thriller took in a box office haul of $57.5 million against a $16 million budget, which was music to the pandemic-stricken industry's ears at the time. Odenkirk spent years training for the action role, utilizing the same program that John Wick co-directors David Leitch and Chad Stahelski designed in order to turn Keanu Reeves into John Wick. Thankfully, Odenkirk's fitness regimen helped save his life when he suffered a near-fatal heart incident on the set of Better Call Saul's final season in July 2021. Once he received a clean bill of health, he recommitted himself to his rigorous Nobody workouts regardless of his and Universal's interest in a Nobody 2. 'It was more that you've got to exercise when you get older,' Odenkirk tells The Hollywood Reporter. '[David Leitch's] 87North and [Chad Stahelski's] 87eleven are two different concerns now, but they lift from every kind of fight tradition, so there will be people at their gyms who do jiu-jitsu, karate, judo and boxing. It just makes for a more entertaining workout.' In the first Nobody, Odenkirk's Hutch has to reignite the sleeping assassin within himself after his family was frightened by a botched home invasion. This story point was inspired by a couple break-ins that Odenkirk's own nuclear family endured over the years. In the now well-received Nobody 2, Hutch, his wife Becca (Connie Nielsen) and their two kids are all leading separate lives and sorely need a vacation to reestablish their familial bond. So Odenkirk once again channeled his real life by having the Mansells travel to a waterpark-centric town à la the Wisconsin Dells that his family of origin twice went to in the '70s. 'The family I grew up in, we went on two vacations in my life. There were seven kids in my family, and we didn't have enough money to go to Hawaii or Disneyland,' Odenkirk recalls. 'So we went to the Wisconsin Dells in a station wagon, and the kids were in the back, sweating and complaining. Of course, the Dells was not as impressive as it is now.' As a result, Nobody 2 director Timo Tjahjanto combined the thrilling mechanics of Naishuller's Nobody with elements of National Lampoon's Vacation. However, the fun and games on the screen had a brief period of concern behind the scenes due to Odenkirk's various responsibilities as a leading man, uncredited writer and producer. 'There was a point where I was losing a lot of weight. I could tell people were worried, but I feel fine. When you get closer to filming, you do two workouts a day, and when you're doing that, you're stressing as well,' Odenkirk says of his then 62-year-old self. 'I don't have a writer's credit, but I was deep into the writing on these films, especially the second film. So I didn't go home and have a massage and go to sleep. I went home and worked on the next day's screenplay.' At this past Monday's red carpet premiere, Odenkirk was joined by his Better Call Saul partner in crime, Rhea Seehorn. The dear friends remain supportive of each other's work, including Seehorn's highly anticipated upcoming series, Pluribus. Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan, along with co-EP Peter Gould, once took Odenkirk aside on the Bad set to gauge his interest in a spinoff series that would eventually become Better Call Saul. Gilligan then gave Seehorn the same treatment on the Saul set by offering her the chance to lead his very secretive new sci-fi endeavor for Apple TV+. As expected, Odenkirk is hyped to see his friends' creation. 'I know it's going to be massive. Massive! It's going to be the biggest thing, well, since sliced bread, but really since Game of Thrones. I can't wait,' Odenkirk shares. As for Better Call Saul, Odenkirk doesn't exactly miss playing his triple role of Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman/Gene Takavic. He devoted 14 years of his life to his complicated, multifaceted character, and the slippery sad-clown lawyer was a lot to handle throughout Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. The same goes for Hutch Mansell, but Odenkirk is still keen to make a couple more Nobody films so that he can keep developing the Mansell family's dynamics. 'Both Hutch Mansell in Nobody and Saul Goodman in Better Call Saul have a lot of impacted frustration inside them. They're guys who, for different reasons, have pretty big chips on their shoulders, and that's hard to play after a while,' Odenkirk admits. 'You can't just carry that guy around all the time. So I'm fine with moving on from them both, although I would do more Hutch. I would do a third or fourth [Nobody] film.' Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Odenkirk also discusses the reason why he had to pump the brakes on Nobody 2, as well as the unsung hero behind his transformation into an action star. *** The first came out in March 2021 during COVID, and it did very well by pandemic standards. Did you still have to twist some arms to get the sequel greenlit? No, not at all. The biggest challenge was finding the right story. (Odenkirk apologetically asks for a brief pause.) My wife had some furniture redone and it weighs a lot. So I didn't want to watch this guy try to carry it on his own; he could have hurt himself. So thank you for waiting. Oh, don't mention it. We played around with different stories for Nobody 2, and it was hard to find a story that felt right. I kept asking myself, 'What is the real reason people liked the first one so much? What is it?' And I didn't mean the obvious stuff like the fights being good and a little more visceral than what you're used to seeing. At the core of Nobody was this guy, his family and the tensions within it that all seemed authentic. You could almost say that everything up to the bus scene is an independent movie or a Richard Linklater film about a couple coming apart because of a stupidly mishandled home break-in. But then it ramps up into this magical world that only exists in movies. So if the couple were somehow chummy and on good terms again at the end of the first film, how are they now feeling tension again? There was a lot of back and forth and a lot of outlines and even a lot of screenplays. [Co-screenwriter] Derek Kolstad and I talked all the way through it, and then all of a sudden, Universal was like, 'Okay, we're going to make it.' And we were actually like, 'Well, we haven't got the script figured out completely.' We definitely had the bones of what you see now, but it wasn't like, 'Ah, now it's done. Can you please make it?' I didn't feel that way. So we had to get to work and really focus on it, and then we arrived at a script that I thought was good. One of my goals in this story was to not have the first bad guy you meet be the actual bad guy. There's this middleman, John Ortiz's Wyatt Martin, who is a mirror of Hutch because Hutch also works for somebody [Colin Salmon's The Barber]. Are you from the Midwest? Have you been to Wisconsin Dells? I'm not from the Midwest, but I lived there for a few years and visited the Dells during that time. The Tommy Bartlett Show, Tommy Bartlett's [Exploratory], Tommy Bartlett's everything. [Writer's Note: Bartlett was a Wisconsin showman whose water-ski show served as a popular tourist attraction at the Dells from 1952 to 2020.] Wyatt Martin is our Tommy Bartlett. He owns the town [and the Tiki Rush waterpark]. He's the bad guy who's sitting behind the sheriff's desk when you meet him, but he's really under the thumb of [Sharon Stone's Lendina]. So the first film's mechanics that I thought really worked for the audience, I wanted to go through a version of those again. [Writer's Note: Odenkirk met Stone at an awards show and eventually wrote her a note to see if she'd play a James Bond-type baddie.] Some Odenkirk family misfortune inspired the aforementioned home invasion in the first film, and you previously told me that you tapped into those negative experiences during Hutch's phenomenal bus fight. Did any Odenkirk family vacation stories work their way into ? Yes, but not my current family. The family I grew up in, we went on two vacations in my life. There were seven kids in my family, and we didn't have enough money to go to Hawaii or Disneyland. So we went to the Wisconsin Dells in a station wagon, and the kids were in the back, sweating and complaining. Of course, the Dells was not as impressive as it is now. It's got six waterparks now that are amazing. So we wanted to have Hutch take his family to a place [called Plummerville], which, in his mind, is the coolest place [from his childhood]. 'You can't believe it, the waterpark is so huge!' And then his kids, who are 13 and 18, get out of the car and go, 'What? This isn't huge.' And he's like, 'Oh, right,. I was nine when I came here.' The fact is [Plummerville] is just a little rinky-dink for his kids' ages, but they're making the best of it. We wanted to have that series of disappointments that can happen when you're a parent and you take your kids on this trip that you're so excited about doing. The unimpressive waterpark is then closed when you get there, and you even booked the wrong hotel rooms. You didn't think twice about putting the two kids in the same room. You just weren't thinking, and you go, 'Shit, this is supposed to be fun. Fuck.' You kept your training going in between films. Was it less about a potential sequel and more about the fact that it was credited with saving your life on the set? No, it was more that you've got to exercise when you get older, and it's a more interesting workout than almost any workout I've ever seen anyone do. It involves boxing, sometimes. It involves yoga, sometimes. It involves all these different disciplines. [David Leitch's] 87North and [Chad Stahelski's] 87eleven are two different concerns now, but [Dave and Chad] were together at the beginning. They've done all the John Wick movies and Deadpool 2. They lift from every kind of fight tradition, so there will be people at their gyms who do jiu-jitsu, karate, judo and boxing. So they steal from all of these different fighting styles, and it just makes for a more entertaining workout. Did anyone ask you to pace yourself or dial yourself back given your health scare between films? Yeah, there was a point where I was losing a lot of weight. And people … I didn't hear about it directly, but I did eventually. I could tell people were worried, but I feel fine. (Laughs.) When you get closer to filming, you do two workouts a day, and when you're doing that, you're stressing as well. Stress drains your brain, it drains your energy and it drains your body of minerals. Did you know that? I did not. It does. 'And that's why you should take a multivitamin,' said the old man. My dad just got on me about this. I don't have a writer's credit, but I was deep into the writing on these films, especially the second film. So I didn't go home and have a massage and go to sleep. I went home and worked on the next day's screenplay: what we were going to actually say and do, and what changed and what didn't work. It always amuses me how Daniel Bernhardt keeps dying in these 87North and 87eleven movies and returning as new characters. It's a great running gag. Absolutely. There's a lot of conversation about what facial hair he can have to feign towards the idea that he's a different human. I love Daniel, and he is the man who trained me to do this. He's put in so many hours, and I have deep respect and appreciation for his friendship and skills. So I love the guy, and as far as I'm concerned, if I ever get to make another action film, he's in it. He was here yesterday. We did a workout together. Do you have another in you for a proper trilogy? Well, I genuinely like doing action scenes. They're fun to invent. They're actually similar in creative joy to sketch writing. They're three-to-six minute pieces, generally, and if you do them right, they have a story to them. You should be able to describe a fight with a few words; you shouldn't say, 'And then they fight!' Because then you're just making a blah action film. You should say, 'The duck boat fight is a fight where he's trying not to fight. This is a supremely out of control fight. He's lost control, completely. He is genuinely out of energy, and he really won't make it through this.' Each fight should have a character unto itself, and it should have a little bit of a journey, just like a sketch. So I was surprised to find that parallel, and I spent so much of my life writing sketches and loving that form. So I'd do more [Nobody]. I'd love to do more of it, but I don't think I'm going to dig right in. I have another action film called Normal that's coming out [at TIFF 2025], so that's already in the can. But, right now, I think I want to do some comedy if they'll let me. You recently reunited with your collaborators Vince Gilligan and Rhea Seehorn at San Diego Comic-Con. How much have you let them tell you about their new series ? Nothing. I don't know a damn thing. But I know it's going to be massive. Massive! It's going to be the biggest thing, well, since sliced bread, but really since Game of Thrones. You probably know what's biggest [lately], but probably since Severance. I know Severance, in its way, is a big, big effort. So I think that [Pluribus] is going to be the next big show, and I can't wait. comes out three years to the day since went off the air. You played that collective character of Jimmy/Saul for 14 years. Do you miss him at all? No! He was great, and I enjoyed playing him. Both Hutch Mansell in Nobody and Saul Goodman in Better Call Saul have a lot of impacted frustration inside them. They're guys who, for different reasons, have pretty big chips on their shoulders, and that's hard to play after a while. You can't just carry that guy around all the time. So I'm fine with moving on from them both, although I would do more Hutch. I would do a third or fourth [Nobody] film. It would be about the journey of the family and the tensions that change as you move from one chapter to the next. You tell yourself, 'This is going to be it now. I'm going to enjoy this chapter of my life and I'm going to be carefree.' (Laughs.) But then you find that it has just as many frustrations and shortcomings as the last chapter. Earlier this year, you also reunited with your brother, Michael McKean, on Broadway in . Was that new context both strange and interesting after three years together on ? Broadway was a strange experience. It was very unique in its tensions and pressures, but Michael has done it many times. So he was actually a source of calm and confidence and joy because he's a blast. Nobody got more laughs than Michael McKean in that show. He was so funny, and he's one of the funniest and best actors in America. God, what a blast it was to be around him for that. ***Nobody 2 opens Aug. 15 in movie theaters nationwide. Best of The Hollywood Reporter The 25 Best U.S. Film Schools in 2025 The 40 Greatest Needle Drops in Film History The 40 Best Films About the Immigrant Experience Solve the daily Crossword
