Latest news with #TheCalifornians
Buzz Feed
06-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Buzz Feed
"I Don't Think I've Ever Laughed So Hard": People Are Sharing Their Favorite SNL Skits Of The Last 50 Years, And It's Just What I Needed Today
Hot Topic 🔥 Full coverage and conversation on Taylor Swift 7. "Hard to pick a fave, but one from the recent past is a Please Don't Destroy video, when Rami Malek hosted and Travis Scott was the musical guest. They did a video about getting too high, and it was so spot on I don't think I've ever laughed so hard. If you've ever experienced being too high, you have to check it out." 23. "No one ever really talks about this, but Melissa McCarthy as Jason Sudeikis' inappropriate coworker is hysterical. The things she does to those balloons!" View this video on YouTube 30. "It's not hard to find. You just go up San Vicente, then turn onto Sunset, and then make a right on PCH. It's The Californians, of course."
Washington Post
11-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
Book Review: Brian Castleberry aims for a Jonathan Franzen-style saga with 'The Californians'
Like its characters, Brian Castleberry's second novel, 'The Californians,' is full of ambition. It spans eras of American history, diving into everything from the heyday of silent cinema to the Reagan administration to the rise of cryptocurrency. Threading through it all are the intersected stories of two families, the Stiegls and the Harlans.
Associated Press
11-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Associated Press
Book Review: Brian Castleberry aims for a Jonathan Franzen-style saga with ‘The Californians'
Like its characters, Brian Castleberry's second novel, 'The Californians,' is full of ambition. It spans eras of American history, diving into everything from the heyday of silent cinema to the Reagan administration to the rise of cryptocurrency. Threading through it all are the intersected stories of two families, the Stiegls and the Harlans. There's a helpful family tree in the preface that readers will find themselves referring to multiple times until they understand who is related to whom and how. The plot starts in the current day, with the ripped-from-the-headlines destruction of Tinsley, California, by a wildfire. The novel's opening sentence foreshadows what's to come as a young man flees the devastation: 'In a couple of days, Tobey Harlan will steal from the walls of his father's home three large paintings by Di Stiegl… valued in the tens of millions.' It's a strong start, but the novel's structure makes it hard to deliver on that promise. After Tobey makes it safely to a neighbor's daughter's house in Stockton, we're treated to a Variety article from 1928 about the end of silent cinema, and then we zoom back in time to 1925 and meet Klaus von Stiegl, nee Klaus Aaronsohn, a German who loves movies and basically invents himself as a film director and makes his way from Queens to Hollywood. Then it's on to 1979, when Klaus' granddaughter Diane ('Di' for short) drops out of NYU and starts a career as an avant-garde artist, employing a photo-realist style to capture the gritty city. Between chapters there are also snippets from letters, text messages, and more news stories and reviews, all designed to establish the time period and fill in plot details before we return to the story's characters. It can be overwhelming at times. The connecting tissue between Klaus and Di — art — is the most resonant theme of the novel. Those two main characters, often in crisis, are always creating, leaving something behind to be appreciated or ignored. There's a great scene toward the end of the book featuring Klaus and Di, in 1971, when he tells her: 'In America, art is always paid for by somebody and griped about by somebody else. … Occasionally something breaks through, people see it, people like it, their lives are changed by an infinitesimal degree.' That's as good a summary of 'The Californians' as any, and readers will have to decide if the novel does indeed break through for them. For this reader, it did not, but Klaus has some words of wisdom for critics like me: 'If you make things for a living, total strangers will show up in your life to tell you how you did it wrong.'
Los Angeles Times
06-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Art, commerce, Hollywood and family drama collide in ‘The Californians'
'When did everything turn into a grift?' asks a young man named Tobey midway through Brian Castleberry's 'The Californians,' an ambitious, widescreen novel about the ugliness that often ensues when art and commerce collide. In 2024 Tobey is a down-on-his-luck college dropout who's been chased out of his Northern California apartment building by wildfires. Hurting for cash, he signs on to a scheme his brother has concocted to steal three valuable paintings from his father's home in Palm Springs. What's supposed to happen after the theft is hazy to him — something NFT, something crypto — but he's desperate. In this way, Tobey answers his own question: The grift happens when we don't pay attention to what we're destroying for the sake of a dollar. To explain how that happens, Castleberry covers about a century's worth of activity between two families whose fortunes and failures are intertwined. Tobey is the grandson of Frank Harlan, a stone-faced TV and film actor best known for playing the lead role in a '60s detective show, 'Brackett.' The Columbo-esque character was conceived by Klaus von Stiegl, a filmmaker who came to America from Germany and enjoyed acclaim as a silent-film director. His granddaughter, Di Stiegl, painted the artworks that Tobey is stealing, made during her '80s heyday of putting a spotlight on AIDS and the moral bankruptcy of the go-go '80s. All of which is to say there's a lot going on, and a lot of it catches fire, literally or metaphorically. The family tree that opens the book covers family relationships, but nearly everyone is estranged or strained in some way. Given that, many of the Harlan and Stiegl lineages replace affection with money, who wants what from it, and what they embrace or forsake for it. The fickle way time treats art has an impact as well. Klaus was a pioneer in the silent days — think Lubitsch or Lang — but he can't successfully make the transition to talkies and relies on the largesse of his heiress wife. Di's paintings were acclaimed by New York's downtown set, but shifting times plus a debilitating cocaine habit took a toll. 'He'd come west dreaming that he was an artist, and immediately been made a cog in someone else's machine,' Klaus thinks, but he's not the only one suffering that fate. Much of the action takes place in Palm Springs. It's where Klaus films an alleged masterpiece on his own back lot, an artsy 'Hansel and Gretel' allegory that MGM refused to release, and then attempts to burn down in a fury. It's where Di as a child developed her shimmering photorealistic style, and where the Harlan clan pursued property development when art didn't quite pan out or turned into hackery. 'Maybe art didn't put anything into order,' Di thinks, rightly, at one point. 'Maybe it reflected back the chaos, the ambiguity, the vertigo of living.' To that point, Castleberry has pursued the tricky task of creating an orderly novel whose theme is chaos. There are places where he's not quite up to the task, where the various lines that stretch through and across the family trees can feel like tripwires for the reader. A mother's disappearance comes into the narrative, then fades; a money-grubbing son arrives, then steps off the stage. Castleberry means to frame Klaus as hard-hearted to the point of cruelty. One woman in his life, a prized silent actress, is driven to kill herself by jumping off the Hollywood sign — a tragedy that, in addition to being a bit on the nose, is softened by more compelling narratives about Klaus' late-career revival via 'Brackett,' his selling out a writer during the Red Scare, and genius granddaughter. Castleberry can make you wonder which reprobate to care about most, which sin causes the most harm. But the flaws in 'The Californians' reflect ambition and overexertion, not slackness. Castleberry strives to realistically capture the way money shores up or permeates all sorts of creative endeavors: Hollywood, TV, fine art and more. The realism is bolstered by interstitial chapters featuring news stories, blog posts, term papers and other ephemera that address the characters' lives, while also suggesting that the official story these pieces help create always gets things somewhat wrong. He makes you desperately wish you could see the fourth season of 'Brackett,' where the lead goes dark and rogue in a way that anticipates 'The Sopranos' by decades. 'In America, art is always paid for by somebody and griped about by somebody else,' Klaus opines late in the novel to Di. 'Occasionally something breaks through, people see it, people like it, their lives are changed by an infinitesimal degree. … If you're really lucky you can make a living looking at all this and making some sense of it and communicating it to others.' In the context of the story, he's inspiring a young Di to pursue a painting career. But in the world of the novel, Castleberry is trying to honor art-making — including novel-writing — to a world that wants to reduce it to matters of profit and loss. Art often is just a business, but a dangerous one: Changing people by an infinitesimal degree, Castleberry knows, has a way of thoroughly warping and wrecking human lives. Athitakis is a writer in Phoenix and author of 'The New Midwest.'
Yahoo
18-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Why Bill Hader wasn't at the ‘SNL' 50th anniversary special
'Saturday Night Live' brought some their most notable players back for its 50th anniversary special. But fans noticed some comedians missed the big night in Studio 8H — Bill Hader being one of them. So, why wasn't Hader, who was a cast member between 2005 and 2013, part of the "SNL" special on Sunday, Feb. 16? A representative for Hader told that the comedian had "a longstanding schedule conflict," which is why he could not attend. Fans noticed Hader's absence from the three-hour special, and took to social media to express their thoughts. 'This show had everything. Except Bill Hader's Stefon,' one person wrote on X, referring to one of Hader's most memorable 'SNL' characters who appeared on "Weekend Update." 'Nah, how are you going to celebrate SNL 50 weekend update without Stefon. That's a crime. Where tf is Bill Hader,' another wrote. One X user made a photo edit with missing signs calling for Hader, writing, "BILL HADER COME HOME." "Ok not gonna lie, it feels wrong watching the SNL 50th anniversary without Bill Hader," another person wrote. Another unforgettable "SNL" sketch that he appeared in is "The Californians," where Hader, Kristen Wiig and Fred Armisen do a soap opera spoof with over-the-top California accents. Online, fans missed the sketch at 'SNL50,' writing, 'Where's Bill Hader? Where's The Californians?!?' Though the Californians trio didn't make it to the big anniversary show, Hader, Wiig and Armisen reprised their characters, Devin, Karina and Stuart, for a Volkswagen commercial that aired a few days before "SNL50." Along with the commercial, Hader was also involved in the documentary, 'Ladies & Gentlemen... 50 Years of SNL Music,' which aired in January. Hader was featured in several one-on-one interviews reminiscing on specific music memories from 'SNL' over the years. Dana Carvey, Dan Aykroyd and Colin Quinn — three more 'Saturday Night Live' legends — also didn't appear to be at 'SNL50,' among other comedians. reached out to their representatives and "SNL," but have not heard back. This article was originally published on
