Monthly Archives: June 2017

USA Today Network Mike Davis, Asbury Park (N.J.) Press Published 7:24 a.m. ET June 21, 2017 | Updated 21 hours ago

Grant Berardo, a Wall High School junior, saw his image digitally altered with a plain black T-shirt in his yearbook. Mike Davis

Grant Berardo's T-shirt was digitally altered in the Wall (N.J.) High School yearbook. He wore a Donald Trump campaign shirt for his portrait. On Thursday, June 15, 2017, the school district superintendent said the yearbooks will be reissued.(Photo: Provided by Joseph Berardo Jr. via Asbury Park (N.J.) Press)

WALL, N.J. The scandal over censorship of merchandise and quotes from President Trump in a New Jersey high school yearbook has reached the White House.

President Trump and the director of his campaign thanked Wall High School students Montana and Wyatt Dobrovich-Fago, who reported a quote and logo featuring Trump's name removed from their class yearbooks.

The campaign also sent the teenagers a care package with shirts, hats, pins and patches.

More: Trump shirt censored, now school has to re-issue yearbook for everyone

"Thank you Wyatt and Montana two young Americans who arent afraid to stand up for what they believe in. Our movement to #MAGA is working because of great people like you!," Trump posted on Facebook.

In a letter, campaign executive director Michael Glassner commended the students for "voicing their support" for Trump.

"It is more important than ever that we, as Americans, stand up for our beliefs and hopes for a better country," Glassner wrote. "And, as you know, it takes courage to do so. But freedom of expression should never go out of style let's not forget that!"

Wyatt, a junior at the school, wore a sweater vest featuring a Trump campaign logo on the school's picture day. But in the yearbook, his photo was cropped and the logo was barely visible an act Superintendent Cheryl Dyer has ruled was not intentional.

More: N.J. teacher suspended over Trump yearbook censorship

His sister, Montana, picked a quote from Trump to run alongside her freshman class president photo: "I like thinking big. If you are going to be thinking anything, you might as well think big," Trump's quote read.

Traditionally, all Wall class presidents can pick a quote. Montana's was submitted before the deadline and it's not yet clear whether it was purposely excluded, Dyer said last week.

Another student, junior Grant Berardo, saw his picture digitally altered before being published in the yearbook. Instead of the navy blue Trump campaign shirt he wore during the photo shoot, his yearbook photo featured a nondescript black T-shirt an "intentional" alteration, Dyer ruled.

The school board Tuesday voted to formalize a suspension handed down to digital media teacher Susan Parsons, who Dyer suspended through the end of the school year last week.

The board is expected to continue discussing the case in executive session at future meetings, board attorney Michael Gross said.

Parsons, 62, was included on a list of re-hired teachers for the 2017-18 school year with a $92,000 salary, but that list was finalized before the yearbook censorship came to light.

More: Teen's Trump T-shirt censored in yearbook photo

She has not returned multiple calls to her home seeking comment.

In response to the censorship scandal, Dyer last week ordered new yearbooks to be printed and reissued. Private, anonymous donors have contributed "at least $10,000" to cover the cost, Dyer said after Tuesday's board meeting.

But some members of the Wall school community have said it's not enough. Dyer has come under fire for handling the investigation despite last year posting a New York Times opinion article about "bullying in the age of Trump" on the school website.

Wyatt also criticized Dyer for the "blatant anti-Trump stuff that's caused concern" for him.

"I feel like there's something else to the story. One person wouldn't just do this," Wyatt said. "There needs to be a proper investigation into this."

School Board President Allison Connolly disagreed, applauding Dyer and district administrators for "facing this situation head-on."

"We find the allegations of censorship disturbing and are taking the charges that students have had their rights compromised seriously," she said.

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Trump thanks teens for 'standing up' to yearbook censorship - USA TODAY

The show must not go on.

So sayeth some of President Trumps most ardent fans, who spent the past week and a half attempting to shut down a production of Julius Caesar with a Trump-like character in the title role.

These Trumpkins part of a bloc known for mocking political correctness, safe spaces and undue efforts to avoid offending the pwecious feewings of others deemed the show politically incorrect, unsafe and offensive.

Peaceful protest would be well within their rights. But these illiberal cultural illiterates instead wanted curtains for the offending Elizabethan play.

They stormed the stage at multiple shows, including Sunday evenings closing performance. They yelled and screamed inside and outside the open-air production part of the Public Theaters annual Shakespeare in the Park series to drown out dialogue they disliked. They threatened violence, sometimes quite graphically.

Some even sent death threats to other productions of Shakespeare and other plays in other parks.

In this, they are more like Caesars plebeian partisans than they may realize: It is no matter, his names Cinna, a member of a murderous mob cries in Act III, Scene 3 of the play, before tearing apart an innocent poet with the bad fortune to bear the same name as a perceived enemy of the state.

The justification for these present-day disruptions and threats is that, at least according to (wrong) right-wing media reports, the production advocates assassination of a Trump-like Roman tyrant. But the only people lately threatening political violence in the name of Julius Caesar are those who wanted to shut this play down.

If these reactionaries had actually thought about the play, theyd realize its portrayal of the aftermath of assassination offers the opposite lesson: that those who attempt to defend democracy by undemocratic means pay a terrible price and destroy the very thing they are fighting to save, as the Public Theater put it in a statement to theatergoers.

Theres a part of me that wants to rejoice that, 168 years after New Yorks Astor Place riots (also inspired by a contentious interpretation of the Bard), the theater can still be a source of so much controversy. In recent months not just Julius Caesar but also Hamilton has brought a raucous and artistically challenging rialto to the center of national social discourse.

Still, needless to say, death threats are not the type of intellectual engagement and social validation that most theater nerds were looking for.

The violent rhetoric of recent days is certainly no fault of the Public, even if, in choosing to portray Caesar with blondish hair, an ultra-long tie and a Slovenian-accented paramour, it clearly intended to provoke. But then, last years Taming of the Shrew production also had a Trumpian character portrayed by a woman, no less and earned no incendiary Fox News coverage.

Nor is this debacle the fault of a few misguided protesters alone.

After all, they were just firing the latest salvo in the ongoing war against the free exchange of ideas, that most precious and endangered of liberal democratic values.

Plenty of conservatives like to believe that illiberalism is confined to liberal college students. Certainly there is evidence that millennials are at the vanguard of hostility to free speech. But as I have written time and again, attempts to stamp out speech are not confined to young or old, or left or right.

Instead, End of History be damned, there is a growing sense on both sides of the aisle, and among all generations, that the free marketplace of ideas is broken. Everyone seems to believe that the inferior and dangerous ideas of their enemies are unfairly gaining ground; therefore, the words and beliefs of those enemies must be fair game for suppression.

And yes, attempts to shut down Julius Caesar like attempts to shut down conservative campus speakers are about objections to words and beliefs. They are not about protecting politicians or vulnerable minority groups from physical harm, despite the claims of would-be censors.

If this were really about blocking public entertainment that put lives at risk, youd find more Trump fans and college students alike disrupting football games.

In Julius Caesar, Shakespeare hinted that he expected his play to offer lessons for generations to come, though perhaps not the ones his characters believe they are offering.

How many ages hence/Shall this our lofty scene be acted over/In states unborn and accents yet unknown! declaims Cassius, after proudly smearing himself with the slain Caesars blood.

Censors willing, lets hope Cassius prediction continues to hold true.

Catherine Rampell (crampell@washpost.com) was a reporter for The New York Times and The Chronicle of Higher Education before joining The Washington Post as a columnist.

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Disrupting 'Caesar' play mostly about censorship - The Register-Guard

John Boone , ET 10:00 AM. MDT June 21, 2017

Mentorship is not a new hat for Judd Apatow -- after all, he's the guy who helped guide a then-unknown Lena Dunham and Girls to success. Lately though, he's only increased his efforts, with Pete Holmes on Crashing, Paul Rust on Love and now Kumail Nanjiani's first feature film, The Big Sick.

"I think it's among the best movies we've ever been a part of," Apatow says of The Big Sick, out June 23. "It's scary to come out in the summer against all these behemoths, but there's always room for one movie that people go see just because it's awesome. We're hoping that there's a little sleeper appeal."

I sat down with Apatow at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills, along with fellow producer Barry Mendel (who produced Apatow's Funny People, This Is 40 and Trainwreck, as well as Oscar-nominated films The Sixth Sense and Munich), to discuss their movie and Sony's now-scuttled "clean" movies initiative, which Apatow denounced on Twitter, saying, "Shove the clean versions up your a**es!"

RELATED: How Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon Turned Their Heartbreak and Happiness Into 'The Big Sick'

ET: You both have had long careers, including numerous movies you've worked on together. In terms of looking for projects, what do you find inspires you these days?

Judd Apatow: I like human comedies -- or dramedies. More than anything, I'm interested in people just dealing with everyday things that are difficult, and there is more than enough comedy and drama in that. Every once in a while it's fun to do something big and silly, so I also really enjoy when I get a chance to work with Will Ferrell and Adam McKay or with the Lonely Island guys. But I'm always fascinated by people dealing with the everyday difficult stuff in life.

Barry Mendel: For me, it's like, I forgot who said it -- it was maybe Jesse Helms? -- about pornography: "I don't how I describe it, but I know it when I see it." [Laughs] I'm more that way. I don't really have a philosophy about it. In this case, when Kumail came in and told us the story of what happened with Emily, it was just like, "Wow." Just, like, the light goes on.

Do you think a project can ever be too autobiographical?

Apatow: I think the key is that you have to always be aware that it's a movie. The audience doesn't care that most of this happened. They just want a good movie. During development, we definitely said, "Well, that's what happened, but it's kind of boring. So, maybe we could spice that up a little bit." [Laughs] We're not presenting this as an 100 percent accurate story. It's just the inspiration for our movie.

Many of your movies also draw inspiration from your life. Is that something you had to wrestle with in your writing, writing what you know but not being confined by the historical details?

Apatow: I just never thought anything about me was interesting, so I didn't think about writing from my personal experience.

Mendel: It's almost like the opposite journey, of writing about things that were fantastical and moving towards the personal.

Apatow: Yeah, and I think a lot of people do that! It's why people like Louis [C.K.], after decades of work as he got more and more personal, people connected with it more. It's always a big mix between fabricated and real things, as it should be. I mean, it's the only fodder you have to create with.

You are both known for nurturing young talent. And obviously that talent is what catches your eye, but what does someone like Kumail do to keep you invested?

Apatow: I think that he works so hard. I like working with people on their first movies. I think that you never get that level of effort again. And I think that most people only have a couple of amazing stories from their lives, so you're getting the best of them. And I like the passion that people have when they're trying to prove they can make a movie or be a movie star. Later in your career, you just get offered a script and maybe you get a week or two to punch it up, and maybe they rehearse it for a day before they shoot, and that's why a lot of movies don't come out well. But when you do something like this, where we developed it for three or four years before we shoot it, there's so much love and care that goes into it. That's what I like! I like being at the moment of inception for people.

Mendel: I would say Kristen [Wiig on Bridesmaids], Amy [Schumer] and Kumail had never written a script before, so they're panicked every night. They're waking up in the middle of the night with ideas and writing them down. It's like they can't believe they're getting paid to do it. It's not a job. It's the greatest thing that ever happened to them. So, it's so great for us to get to work with people who have that vibe about what we're doing. It refreshes our experience of what we do.

Apatow: Because when you're making your 20th movie, it might be the 20th most incredible thing that's ever happened to you! [Laughs]

Judd, how do you balance producing those projects with writing and directing your own?

Apatow: It always energizes me with my own work. It's always a reminder how much I should care and how truthful I can be. I think in the last few years, I haven't been able to write as much, because I've been working on the TV show with Pete Holmes, Crashing, and Love on Netflix. But that's OK, because I think the world is changing and all that matters is that I'm creating things.

Mendel: You're also working on your third documentary.

Apatow: Yes. I'm working on a documentary about Garry Shandling right now and we have a documentary about the Avett Brothers that's going to be on HBO in January. So, I've been enjoying that format. I'm just happy to make stuff. Ultimately, I don't think it matters what the frequency is of me writing or directing a movie. It doesn't really matter to anybody else. I'm just trying to put good things out there.

You recently called Sony Pictures' clean movies initiative "absolute bullsh*t." What would something like that mean for your movies? [Two films that Apatow produced, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby and Step Brothers, were of the first films Sony made clean versions of.]

Apatow: Well, it goes against everything you want in your relationship with a studio. The most important agreement you have is that they will not f**k with your movie once it's done. And so it's pretty sleazy to say, "We're going to take the version of the movie you like the least and try to distribute it to even more people." When you edit a movie for television or for an airline, you're doing it very reluctantly. And you don't want people to watch it that way! But it is part of the business that you can't prevent. It preceded you. But they're trying to create a new initiative, and we're allowed to say, "No. We've agreed to ruin our movies for television and airlines and we're hopeful that due to streaming, most people aren't watching it in those formats. We do not want to spread it." And our movies were not built to be made for children. That's the other weird part about it is, Now I can show it to six year olds! Well, even the essence of it isn't meant for six year olds, or whoever you're marketing it to. But it's a real violation of the spirit of our creative relationship, and I'm assuming that they will quickly realize it and not do it.

That basically answers my last question, which was you have the theatrical release and then sometimes an extended or unrated cut. Is there a way to make a PG or PG-13 version of your movie that you'd be happy with?

Apatow: That's not even the question. The question is, Whose decision is it? I could edit it to, like, a six minute short if I want to! But that becomes the decision of the filmmaker. If Martin Scorsese wants to do a 14-minute, clean Wolf of Wall Street for kindergarteners, I guess he should be allowed to do it. But certainly the head of the studio shouldn't be allowed to do that without his approval. That's the issue. And I do think it will get quickly resolved.

Mendel: In France they call it, Le Droit Moral.

Apatow: What does that mean?

Mendel: The moral rights. Of the artist. The artist is implied in the French version.

I kind of want to see that Wolf of Wall Street for kindergarteners. I think if you edited out any scene with swearing or nudity, it would only be 14 minutes anyway.

Apatow: [Laughs] Exactly. I remember watching Goodfellas on a plane once, and every time they said the C-word, instead they would say "Bundt cake." And you could tell it was kind of an eff you from someone in the Scorsese world. Actually, you know what it was? It was Glengarry Glen Ross. [Directed by James Foley.]

Mendel: We did it on Rushmore, too. We did "foot rub" for "handjob." Every time it said "handjob," we just said "foot rub."

Apatow: I think we had one where we were trying to replace every curse in the entire movie with the word "tomato."

[Note: As Apatow predicted, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment soon after announced they would no longer release the "clean version" of a film if the director objected, claiming, "We believed we had obtained approvals from the filmmakers involved for use of their previously supervised television versions as a value added extra on sales of the full version."]

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EXCLUSIVE: Judd Apatow on 'The Big Sick' and Clean Movies Censorship: 'It's Pretty Sleazy' - 9NEWS.com