What he found changed his life.

“It was kind of like a musical bomb,” Souther says from his home in New Mexico, describing the night he stumbled onto Sill performing to a dozen or so people at Artie Fatbuckle’s Cellar in Hollywood in 1971. “I expected her to be good because David Geffen said she was great, and he has great taste.

“I did not expect her to be an absolute original,” he continues. “Because she was really unlike anything any of us had ever seen at that moment when we were all just starting out and just being signed to (Geffen’s) Asylum Records.”

For singer-songwriter Shawn Colvin, while the setting was different, the epiphany was much the same.

“I was 17 and I was scooping ice cream in Baskin-Robbins in Carbondale, Illinois,” Colvin says from her home in Austin, Texas. “We were listening to our college radio station, WTAO, and this woman comes on and it was … I was kind of like pushed back and nailed to the wall. I was like, ‘Who’s that?!’

“It was ‘There’s a Rugged Road,’ which is the first song on ‘Heart Food,’” she says of the 1973 album that had just come out when Colvin heard Sill for the first time. “The guitar playing was superb. Nobody before or since, to me, has ever sounded like Judee Sill as a singer and as a writer. So it was totally unique, but in a genre that was close to my heart.

“And that was it. I just went to the record store and got ‘Heart Food.’ The record probably cost $3.99. And fell in love with it.”

Souther and Colvin are not alone in their love of the singer-songwriter whose hard life has often overshaded the genius of the two albums she made for Asylum in the early ’70s, where she was the first artist signed after Geffen launched the label.

They, along with artists including Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, Linda Ronstadt, Big Thief, Weyes Blood and Fleet Foxes, all appear in “Lost Angel: The Genius of Judee Sill,” a new documentary that opens Friday, April 12 in theaters and on streaming services.

Through the testimony of musicians, friends, writers and more, the film seeks to restore Sill to her rightful place in music history, say co-directors Andy Brown and Brian Lindstrom, who worked more than a decade to bring the project to the screen. (Full disclosure: Lindstrom and I were college classmates.)

“We were very lucky to have such enthusiasm,” Lindstrom says of the response from those they approached to participate in “Lost Angel.” “The feeling was like, ‘Wow, this is about time. People need to know about her. How can we help?’”

A life revealed

Sill never shied from sharing the basic facts about her life before she made her first record.

As a teenager, she was arrested for a string of robberies in the San Fernando Valley and sent to reform school where she developed her musical skills by playing gospel songs on the organ for chapel services. After her release, she fell into drug addiction, sometimes working as a prostitute for money to buy heroin.

But that’s not the story Lindstrom and Brown wanted to tell, and to those who knew her, it never defined or confined her as an artist.

“What was striking about the interviews was, each of the people we talked to just said how much fun Judee was,” Lindstrom says. “How lovely she was. What a light she was. It completely blew away that kind of Wikipedia doom and gloom, the female Nick Drake depiction of her.

“One thing that’s really notable is the circle of love that she built in her life as an adult,” he says.

“She was, as far as her friend group, their dearest friend,” Brown adds. “The funniest person they ever knew. The one who would organize all the holiday gatherings and gave presents on their birthdays.”

Sill released her self-titled debut in 1971 and the sophomore release, “Heart Food,” in 1973. The first sold about 40,000 but failed to break through commercially. The second sold less and Sill was dropped by the label, a huge blow to a singer-songwriter who wanted not only to be famous, but also to heal the world with her music, as she says through interviews and journal entries in “Lost Angel.”

The filmmakers were limited to the decades-old footage of Sill in performance, but even in a video recorded by a friend at a performance at the University of Southern California, her talent shines through in the grainy images.

Other sources provided more context. An audiotape of an extensive interview she gave a journalist for the L.A. Free Press covered much of the same ground as the cover story that Rolling Stone published. Her niece had kept many of Sill’s journals, which through the narration of a voice actor and animation of Sill’s drawings, provided more of her voice for the film. The multitrack tapes of “Heart Food” allowed Sill’s music to serve as the film score.

“Our goal was to have Judee tell the story, but we didn’t have the archive to do that,” Brown says. “That’s partly why it took 10 years to make the film, because we were accumulating these things as we went along.”

J.D. and Judee

After that first night in the folk club on Melrose, Souther was completely taken by Sill.

He was already deeply enmeshed in the growing country rock scene in Los Angeles, writing and performing with friends such as Glenn Frey and Don Henley, soon to become the Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, and Warren Zevon.

Yet in Sill, Souther says he saw things that none of them were doing yet.

“None of us – even Jackson, who was at that point far better than Glenn or Don or Zevon or I – had the kind of detail and the sort of admixture of the numinous and the absolute earthiness,” he says. “It was just great. She was great.

“She was by far the best writer of any of us,” Souther says. “If you asked her what musicians she liked, she would say Ray Charles and Bach. And she kind of liked the Sons of the Pioneers, which you can hear in some of her stuff that’s kind of cowboy country. Her craftsmanship was just elegant, well-formed, and deep. It had a point of view without judgment, but it also had great detail, great specificity.”

Souther and Sill became an on-and-off couple. It ended for good when Souther left to tour with Ronstadt and came home in a relationship with her.

The breakup inspired one of Sill’s greatest songs, “Jesus Was a Cross-Maker,” which mixes holy metaphors with earthly sorrows as it takes Souther down a peg or two for how he broke her heart. Famously, she showed up at his house before breakfast one day to let him hear it straight from her.

“Oh yeah, she threw it right in my face,” Souther says, laughing. ” “Here’s how I feel about you, you unrepentant bastard.’

“I think I said, ‘Wow. Well, let’s go to Lucy’s and get some huevos rancheros,’” he says. “So we went to El Adobe and had some some huevos rancheros. She had spoken her piece, you know. And then we got close again after that. Even when Linda and I were together, and we were in the studio singing, Judee was there a couple of times.”

One of the greats

After Sill lost her record deal, she struggled. Her new boyfriend at the time wasn’t good for her, Souther and other friends say in the film.  A car crash in Souther’s borrowed VW Beetle left her with long-term back pain, which soon led her back into a drug habit.

When she died in 1979 of a drug overdose, she left behind two albums, both of them filled with beautiful music, but outside of her friends few noticed her passing. Her dream to succeed ended unrealized by commercial measures, but that’s not the only way to judge an artist’s life.

“My first instinct is to just prompt us all to kind of re-evaluate what it means to make it,” Lindstrom says. “Can anyone listen to ‘The Kiss’ and think that Judee, in any way, did not make it?

“I think she kind of helps us understand her story with her last words in ‘Lopin’ Along Through the Cosmos,’” he says. “‘However we are is OK.’ I think that can sometimes be used as a kind of meaningless phrase, but in Judee’s case, it’s quite the opposite. I think of it as a kind of hard-won depth and acceptance and grit and perseverance to it.”

Unlike Souther, Colvin never knew Sill through anything but her records. She recorded that first song she heard on the radio at the Baskin-Robbins on her 1994 album “Cover Girl,” and has performed other Sill songs including “The Phoenix,” which appears in “Lost Angel,” over the years. But the most common response to her mention of Sill’s name has been the blank expressions of those for whom it isn’t known.

“That’s why this movie is so important,” Colvin says. “I liken her to Van Gogh or something. It’s like you’re gonna know about her long after she’s gone, and hopefully this is the start of that, because she really should be.

“I just think it’s one of those cases where I have to believe that she just wasn’t meant to blow up while she was alive,” she says. “And who knows how long it’s going to take. But she belongs among the greats. Because she is one of the greats.”

New York — Disney is curbing password sharing for its Disney+ streaming service as part of a larger effort to boost signups and revenue.

CEO Bob Iger, in a CNBC interview on Thursday, said its popular Disney+ streaming service will start cracking down on password sharing in June in some countries and more broadly in September. Although Disney+ and Disney’s other streaming services’ terms of service explicitly prevent customers from impersonating someone else by using their username or password, it hasn’t been broadly enforcing its policy.

Hulu, one of Disney’s other streaming services, began limiting how often customers can share account login information outside their households starting on March 14.

The crackdown comes as its rival Netflix has attributed a jump in signups from its recent crackdown on password sharing. Shortly after the crackdown went into effect last May, Netflix added 100,000 new accounts on the following two days, according to data from Antenna. Netflix had also achieved a more than 100% increase in sign-ups from the prior 60-day average.

A similar boost at Disney could help move the company’s streaming platform toward profitability. Disney+ continues to lose money, although the company said it expects to turn a profit soon.

“Netflix is the gold standard in streaming,” Iger said in the interview. “They’ve done a phenomenal job and a lot of different directions. I actually have very, very high regard for what they’ve accomplished. If we can only accomplish what they’ve accomplished, that would be great.”

The password crackdown had been expected for months. On an earnings call with investors last year, Iger said a looming crackdown would help Disney grow.

“We certainly have established this as a real priority,” Iger said on Disney’s fiscal third-quarter earnings call. “We actually think that there’s an opportunity here to help us grow our business.”

The-CNN-Wire & © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

This poignant and emotionally astute film begins with Ella (Anna Paquin) having cratered. She’s newly sober, but also bitter and bereft, spending her days bickering with her concerned but helpless dad (Ray Winstone) and sitting and stewing at the playground where she used to take her daughters.

Ella’s mother died of cancer and her father drank. And Ella grew up angry, drank too much would lose control, taking it out on her young daughters – until she handed custody over to her ex-husband. 

It’s at the playground that she meets Neil (Luca Hogan, in a memorable debut), a quirky and precocious adolescent boy, who restores Ella’s hope. 

“A Bit of Light” is adapted from a play by Rebecca Callard. The director, Stephen Moyer, first met Paquin when they starred on the Showtime vampire hit “True Blood.” Their characters fell in love, and so did they, marrying in 2010. Moyer did his first directing work on that show and has since directed a feature, the well-received ensemble film, “The Parting Glass,” which also featured Paquin. 

Paquin and Moyer spoke to us about the new film, which arrives in theaters and on streaming April 5, and the conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Q. What appealed to you about the play and the role? 

Moyer: I like that we are coming in after the fireworks have happened. We meet Ella at that moment where it’s the mundane: “Every day, I’ve got to go to fucking meetings that I loathe and I don’t want to be in this room. I don’t want to be with my dad. I don’t want to be any of this.”

I’m sober. I haven’t had a drink in like 23 years. And there are times early on when one is doing that where you think, “Oh my God, it’s only 11:00 a.m. and I’m still sober and that is so boring.”

Paquin: I love how raw and unapologetic and completely broken she is and it’s not dressing up this ugly and sad moment in her life. We allow her to be all the things she is trying to not be but that she is perpetuating because she’s just so full of self-loathing. 

Moyer: This idea of Ella going to the playground where she used to take her children to torture herself, by watching other children play was just such a rock-bottom moment. And it was such a beautiful idea, the story of a person at their lowest ebb, who’s invisible and broken, but who gets seen by this boy who decides to try and put her back together again. I loved this idea that even at your lowest ebb, there is somebody there to help you if you allow them in. Ella tries very hard to try him and make him go away, but he’s relentless.

The irony is that when I read the play Rebecca had sold the rights, but a couple of years later when we actually got the rights Anna – who Rebecca had thought of as too young for the role – had reached 39. And Ray Winstone has a daughter called Ellie, who he calls Els and he has another daughter who is the same age as Anna. It was weird how it all came together at the right time. 

Q. Anna, did you like being told you finally look old enough for this part? 

Paquin: I am so bored of playing significantly younger people than my numerical age. I know you are not ever supposed to complain about looking young in my line of work, but I have absolutely no desire to redo my younger years. It doesn’t necessarily fascinate you when you get older and your priorities and life change. I’ve always been waiting to age into the roles that I want. 

Q. Meanwhile, the youngest character, Neil, is probably the most mature despite his own difficulties in life. 

Moyer: I loved the fact that he speaks plainly and speaks like an adult but he says the things that nobody else will say – he’s the voice of conscience, if you like, of the whole piece, so he’s not a normal 13-year-old boy. 

Q. Like Ella, and also Alan, he’s invisible in his own world. 

Moyer: Exactly. I love the idea of Broken Dad also being put back together. The “bit of light” in the title could be the fact that there is just this tiny, tiny piece of hope that Ella has. But it also could be that wherever Neil, this odd spectral character, travels, he’s the bit of light. Whatever other people he runs into, he helps them cope with the moment that they’re in. He made it his quest to put Ella back together, but in doing so, he affects everybody else around her as well. 

Q. Ella is in constant emotional turmoil. Was that draining and hard to shake off at the end of the day?

Paquin: I don’t know how to do that. I just give it my absolute all and leave absolutely all of it on the floor and walk away. I like that drained feeling. That makes me feel like I’ve done my job well. But to go to emotionally scary or intense places and really open up, you need to feel safe in your surroundings. And I feel really safe with my husband as the director. I know that he’s got my back. We met doing a chemistry read and we were very comfortable with each other from the get-go. 

Q. Is your dynamic the same at home as it is on the set? 

Moyer: On the set I’m lovely, but I’m a monster at home.

Paquin: No, he’s so nice. 

His daughter Gudrun said Tuesday that Flaherty died Monday following a brief illness.

Flaherty, who was born in Pittsburgh, spent seven years at The Second City in Chicago before moving north of the border to help establish the theater’s Toronto outpost.

He went on to star alongside John Candy and Catherine O’Hara in “SCTV,″ about a fictional TV station known as Second City Television that was stacked with buffoons in front of and behind the cameras. Flaherty’s characters included network boss Guy Caballero and the vampiric TV host Count Floyd.

Former castmates also included Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas and Andrea Martin.

He won Emmys in 1982 and 1983 for his writing on “SCTV” and continued to work in TV and film for decades.

He was introduced to later generations through memorable turns as a jeering heckler in the 1996 film “Happy Gilmore” and as an old fashioned dad in the TV comedy “Freaks and Geeks,” which ran from 1999 to 2000.

“Oh man. Worshipped Joe growing up,” comedian Adam Sandler said on X. “Always had me and my brother laughing. Count Floyd, Guy Caballero. Any move he made.”

Flaherty maintained deep ties to Toronto, serving as an artist-in-residence at Humber College.

“Dad was an extraordinary man, known for his boundless heart and an unwavering passion for movies from the ’40s and ’50s,” his daughter wrote in Tuesday’s statement. “Cinema wasn’t merely a hobby for him; it profoundly influenced his career, particularly his unforgettable time with ‘SCTV.’ He cherished every moment spent on the show, so proud of its success and so proud to be part of an amazing cast.”

For Lopez, comedy became an outlet for exploring the Mexican-American experience with humor, which served as a pivotal stepping stone to launch his acting career and become the first Mexican-American to host an English-language late night show, “Lopez Tonight.”

“When you can do stand-up on a level that very few comedians have done (then go into) the sitcom, the talk show and now the show with my daughter, all things that are going good, why would you want to change anything in the mix,” Lopez said during a recent phone interview.

He’s getting back to his stand-up roots and hitting the stage at Fantasy Springs Resort Casino in Indio on Saturday, April 6, where his show will focus on his aging and some of the baggage that comes with it.

“I think (my show) has always been kind of reminiscent of the backyard cookout,” he said. “Now that I’m getting older and viejito (little old man), I talk about not being able to see with my mouth closed, the medicine, looking at everything that you eat, carrying an EpiPen and all those things that were so foreign, but that’s the how life is lived now.”

Although Lopez’s material has often utilized his Latino identity with a comedic undertone, in his early days, his jokes didn’t have the personal touch that has become a staple of his work.

“In the early ’90s, somebody said to me, ‘If I watched you, there’s nothing really about what you’re talking about that actually tells me anything about your personal life; if you’re married, I don’t know if you have a mom and dad, what your politics are,’ and I thought that was a pretty good constructive criticism of my stand-up at that time,” he said.

To answer that criticism, Lopez began looking for comical figures within his family, which brought him to his grandmother, who had a funny and adversarial personality. She’d often joke with Lopez about being funnier than him and skipping weddings if she had already gone to the first one of the spouses. The advice helped Lopez look at his family and the funny elements in Latino culture he could make light of, such as drinking 7-Up as a medical remedy or the makeshift extension cord leashes he’d see on dogs.

“I started to look at all the stuff that was in my world, and it just became the stuff that people gravitated toward,” Lopez said.

Latino representation has been a mission of Lopez’s work throughout his career, despite a media landscape that’s struggled to tell those stories and underrepresents Latinos more broadly.

A University of California, Los Angeles study by the Entertainment & Media Research Initiative released a study last year titled “Hollywood Diversity Report 2023: Exclusivity in Progress,” which examined diverse casting in 521 live-action, scripted television shows during the 2021-2022 season.

The study found that Latinos made up 6.1 percent of leads in broadcast shows, 3.6 percent of leads in cable shows, and 4.3 percent of leads in digital shows despite Latinos making up 19% of the population in the U.S. While the numbers aren’t anywhere near where Lopez would like to see them, he said that some progress has been made throughout the years.

“When I started my first show in 2002, Eva Longoria and America Ferrera were just starting, and there was no Eva Mendes or Gina Rodriguez, and directors like Robert Rodriguez were also just starting,” he said. “I see it getting better. Is it ever going to be a level playing field? No, but in 20 years, you do want to see it getting better than it is now, but it’s also hard for everybody. When you don’t come from a theatre or comedic background, you have to scrape and find stuff, so it’s so difficult to make it that many people just stopped (trying) it.”

Lopez encountered some of those obstacles early on when trying to pitch his first television show, “George Lopez,” which eventually got picked up by the ABC network and ran for 120 episodes over six seasons. In a 2006 People Magazine interview, he praised actress and longtime friend Sandra Bullock for helping make his show a reality when his pitches weren’t getting anywhere in Hollywood. Bullock would later join the series as an executive producer.

“George Lopez” is a sitcom where he stars as a fictionalized version of himself raising a family in Los Angeles and touches on themes of class and race. Some featured aspects from his real life included his best friend Ernie (same name in the show) and even some places he worked and was fired from.

“I used to work at this place called Powers Book Publishing, run by this guy named Melvin Powers, who used to think he was a big shot. I even used his name (in the show), and one day, they come in with a client, and he said, ‘Hey, how’s it going George?’ and I said, ‘Pretty good Melvin.’ I didn’t call him Mr. Powers, and the way he looked at me, I thought, ‘Oh man, he’s going to fire me,’ and he did that day,” Lopez said. “I found success in not trying to be an astronaut, but in trying just to keep the show grounded, and there’s really nobody that says ‘I don’t get what they’re saying,’ and that is as big an accomplishment.”

The comedian’s latest television venture is the NBC network sitcom, “Lopez vs. Lopez,” about a blue-collar family featuring his real-life daughter, Mayan Lopez. Season two will premiere on Tuesday, April 2. He said that although there may be some slight overlaps with his previous sitcom, this one delves into more contemporary topics, such as millennial life decisions and other generational aspects that his daughter’s character explores.

“Mayan Lopez has been funny her whole life,” he said. “Every day, I look at her at some point when we’re working. I see her as a five-year-old girl, a seven-year-old girl, and a 10-year-old girl because that’s just the way my mind works. It’s hard for me sometimes to believe that the little girl who I cut her cord over in the hospital is that young lady who’s on the television show and posters with me. It’s really beyond my imagination.”

While his previous sitcom and new one seek to represent a Latino experience, other aspects are universally appealing to audiences no matter their background, which Lopez attributes to the talent of the writers’ room.

“On the show that we have right now, we have a lot of Latina writers; they’re younger, we have people who are gay, and from every facet of everyday life,” he said. “They can write on all the shows and not just the ones that have to do with an alternate life. These stories are everybody’s story. The friction between parents and their kids and getting older hasn’t changed. I’m not trying to make everybody happy, and I’m not even worried about who’s laughing. I’ve just had a long enough career where those are the things that I shouldn’t have to worry about anymore.”

George Lopez

When: 8 p.m. Saturday, April 6

Where: Fantasy Springs Resort Casino, 84-245 Indio Springs Parkway, Indio

Tickets: $69-$129 at fantasyspringsresort.com

Krofft, with his younger brother Marty Krofft, made a LOT of children’s TV shows at the end of the ’60s into the ’70s.

And Sid Krofft is happy to share those stories with you when he comes to events such as WonderCon in Anaheim, where he’ll have his own booth from Friday, March 29 into the early part of Sunday, March 31. But, oh, there is so much more he can tell you about if you’ll listen – like the decades he spent working before his TV career.

“There’s 30 years before ‘Pufnstuf’ and all that other stuff, the 26 television series that we did,” Krofft says on a recent video call from his Los Angeles home.

“The fans, they grew up with ‘Pufnstuf,’ but they don’t know the story on how that all happened, or of me as a performer,” he continues. “You know, the way I started, I was a street performer at 10 years old.”

Let’s pause to note that Krofft is 94 today, which means it was around 1939 when he set up on the sidewalks of Providence, Rhode Island with his puppet and a wind-up Victrola, performing to help his family get by during the Depression.

“I was in vaudeville and burlesque, too,” Krofft says of his career as a teenage puppeteer in New York City in the ’40s. “I was too young to be in burlesque, so they didn’t let me take a bow because, you know, they would raid the joint. I was in Minsky’s and all those crazy burlesque theaters.

“Two weeks ago, I went (to Kansas City) for the first time since I’d been there in the Ringling Brothers Circus in 1947,” he adds of the two seasons he spent, still a teenager, traveling across the country as a sideshow performer.

“Maybe you’ve heard little bits and pieces,” Krofft says of his life as a renowned nightclub puppeteer. “You know, Judy Garland and Liberace and Sinatra and all those people that I worked with. But to me, this is like the best thing for me. I’m 94 years old. I’ll be 95. I don’t feel it. My brain is still working.”

So in a conversation that ran more than 90 minutes, Krofft talked about the life he led before he and Marty Krofft, who died in November at 86, came to Hollywood.

And don’t worry: We’re gonna get around to “H.R. Pufnstuf,” too.

The kid with a dream

Krofft was born in Montreal, where his parents had immigrated from Eastern Europe, on July 30, 1929, practically the eve of the Great Depression. A decade later they followed family to Providence, Rhode Island, where an Irish couple in the apartment above their]s took a shine to young Sid.

“He was a stagehand that opened and closed the curtains at the Majestic Theatre,” Krofft says. “They would give us hand-me-downs and leftover food. We were really, really poor. And they loved me, because even at 10 years old I lived in a world of fantasy.”

The stagehand, after getting approval from Sid’s father, loaned the kid his trolley pass and snuck him into the premiere of a new movie that had come to town.

“It was ‘The Wizard of Oz,’” Krofft says. “I was actually a shy kid. I knew I didn’t want to be one of the characters, and I was too tall at that time to be a munchkin. But I knew that was the world that I wanted to be in.”

A week later, the stagehand came up with a ticket for Sid to see his first vaudeville show, the Meglin Kiddies, a troupe of child actors, singers and dancers, whose ranks at times included such future child stars as Shirley Temple, Mickey Rooney, Jackie Cooper and Judy Garland.

Krofft says he was dazzled by the opening number, a tap dance number in which the kids set off sparks from their toes as they descended a long staircase to the stage. And then:

“All the lights went out and there was a suitcase in the middle of the stage,” Krofft says. “I could just see the outline, it was a puppeteer but it was a kid. And the suitcase opened up and a little clown peeked out. I couldn’t see the strings; I thought it was a little person.”

Music played, the clown climbed out of the suitcase and blew up a balloon. The balloon burst and the clown became oh-so sad.

“I started to cry,” Krofft said. “And the audience was saying, ‘Shut up! Shut up!’ the whole audience. I couldn’t stop. The ushers came down and said, ‘Is this your kid?’ ‘No, no.’ And they threw me out. I never saw the ending of the act.”

But the kid was hooked. A friend on his street had a copy of Action Comics No. 1 in which Superman was introduced to the world. Sid and his pal would read it regularly, and one day Krofft says he noticed an advertisement in the back pages for a Hazelle marionette.

“I went to my dad and I said, ‘This is what I want to do for the rest of my life,’” Krofft says. “And he said to me, ‘Three dollars’ – he never hit me, but he almost did – ‘and 95 cents? That would feed your family for a month.’ And, he said, ‘You’re a boy and you want a dolly.’ I never forgot those words.”

The ads in the back of the comic books came through again. He ordered boxes of Christmas cards to sell for 50 cents, with one nickel of profit from each sale that was his to keep. By Christmas that year, he had enough to buy his marionette. With the old Victrola the upstairs couple gave him and a record swiped from his mother’s collection, Krofft went out to do puppetry on the pavement.

From the circus to the ice rink

At one point in our conversation, Krofft pauses to ask if he’s talking too much. “I’m trying to get 10 pounds in a 5-pound sack,” he says by way of unnecessary apology. But we do need to streamline the next chapter, so let’s go to the highlights.

At 15, he joined the Ringling Brothers Circus, which provided a great salary – $50 a week – though Krofft remembers his two seasons with the show as a dark and scary time.

“It was frightening to a 15-year-old boy,” he says. “I cried every day. My dad said, ‘$50 a week? That’s $200 a month, we’re millionaires.’ I wanted to come home. My dad said, ‘No, no. You need to support the family.’

In 1949, still a teenager, he bluffed his way into a Broadway ice show starring skating legend turned actress Sonja Henie – even though he didn’t know how to skate.

“I thought I blew it,” he says of his audition. “Later, I got a call. They said, ‘You’re opening on Friday night. So then I spent hours at the rink at Madison Square Garden, all the day and through the night. I couldn’t stop and I couldn’t go backwards but I could skate.”

Through the ’50s, he performed with his puppets in ice shows at Hilton hotels around the country. He played nightclubs in the United States and Europe. While opening for Judy Garland at the Fontainebleau in Miami at the end of the ’50s, his assistant quit, which resulted in younger brother Marty Krofft taking over the job. Their partnership – Sid on the creative side, Marty handling the business – was set.

At the start of the ’60s, Sid Krofft created an adults-only music puppetry revue called Les Poupées de Paris, a show that mixed topless puppets modeled on French cabaret dancers with others modeled on celebrities.

“When we were in the New York World’s Fair, the president of the fair said, ‘You’ve got to put the bras on until five o’clock.’ And, of course, publicity-wise, it couldn’t have been a better thing to happen for us,” he says.

It was such a hit that it played through much of the decade, and in a roundabout way, got Sid Krofft hired by the founder of the Six Flags amusement park chain first for puppet shows, and then as creative director for the parks.

And that’s what going to get us to “H.R. Pufnstuf.”

‘Pufnstuf’ ‘n puffin’ stuff

Sid and Marty Krofft assembled a company that occupied a city block near the Burbank Airport to create rides and designs for the Six Flags parks. When that work was done, Krofft says he wanted to keep his employees on board and got the OK from Six Flags to work for other clients there, too.

First, Hanna-Barbera hired the Kroffts to design characters and sets for the live-action parts of the TV series “The Banana Splits.”

“NBC came in every day to watch us build because, they said, they were making a big investment for a Saturday morning show,” Krofft says. “The head of programming said to me, ‘You know, you need a straightjacket. This place, I’ve never seen anything like it. You’re nuts.’  And then he said to me, ‘If you come up with an idea for a show, we’ll buy it.’”

“Pufnstuf was the main character in a show at the San Antonio World’s Fair for Coca-Cola,” he says. “He didn’t have arms, he wasn’t called Pufnstuf, but all the characters that ended up in ‘H.R. Pufnstuf’ were in that puppet show.

“It was called ‘H.R. Pufnstuf’ because ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’ was the big song. That’s where I got that from. He was the mayor (on the show) so the Royal Highness I spun around to be ‘H.R.’ Originally, Freddy the Flute was a harmonica because when I was in the circus, that was my pal, because nobody would talk to me. And then I thought it’s a little old-fashioned, and this kid is the Pied Piper, so I’m gonna give him a talking flute.”

“Sundays with Sid,” the livestream he does on Instagram at 3 p.m. Sundays, finds Krofft sharing stories like these with guests that have included everyone from Dita Von Teese and Corey Feldman to Pat Boone and Charo. It came about as an outlet for Krofft to tell stories about his life before his television work began.

“You know, Marty, he was a trip,” Krofft says of the brother he always loved but didn’t always like. “We didn’t get along at all. It’s the only person on the planet, you know? So I’ll tell you what happened.

“I really hated doing interviews because Marty never allowed me to tell stories,” he says. “So at our last Comic-Con, it was packed, they were against the walls.

“I said, ‘You’ve asked me and Marty all these years, were we on drugs?’” Krofft says of the very popular fan theory that to make television as trippy as many of their shows were there had to have been something going on. “Marty, I could see him through the corner of my eye, and he went [throat-clearing sound]. He didn’t know what I was going to say.

“I said, ‘Well, today you’re going to hear it from the horse’s mouth,’” he continues. “Everybody sat forward because they’re all fans. I said, ‘You know, three presidents say they did not inhale. I did.’

“Well, I became the champion of the world,” Krofft says. “They gave me a standing ovation. And Marty was furious, just furious with me for saying that. We give them autographs or whatever, but we gave them a gift. I always hear incredible stories, and what blows me away, it’s 50-some years later and they still remember the characters, the songs.

“So I want to tell my life, because maybe there’s something they can use for their travels. I haven’t made any money off Instagram but I love the hell out of it, and I look forward to it every week.”

WonderCon 2024

When: Friday through Sunday, March 29-31

Where: Anaheim Convention Center, 800 W. Katella Ave., Anaheim

How much: Friday badges are $47 for adults, $24 for active-duty military, juniors 13- to 17 years old, and seniors 60 and up. Friday badges are $57 for adults, $29 for military, juniors and seniors. Sunday badges are $40 for adults, $20 for military, juniors and seniors.

For more: Comic-con.org/wc for details on purchasing badges, programs, panels and guests, and more.

Steve Martin has long marveled at the many phases of his life. There’s his youth as a Disneyland performer, surrounded by vaudeville performers and magicians. A decade as a stand-up before the sudden onset of stadium-sized popularity. An abrupt shift to movies. Later, a new chapter as a banjo player, a father and, a comedy act, once again, with Martin Short.

It’s such a confounding string of chapters that Martin has typically only approached his life piecemeal or schizophrenically. He titled an audiobook “So Many Steves.” His memoir, “Born Standing Up,” covered only his stand-up years. In it, he wrote that it was really a biography “because I am writing about someone I used to know.”

“My life has many octopus arms,” Martin says, speaking from his New York apartment.

People participate in documentaries for all kinds of reasons. But Martin may be unique in making a film about his life with the instruction of: “See if you can make sense of all THAT.” Morgan Neville, the documentary filmmaker of the Fred Rogers film “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” and the posthumous Anthony Bourdain portrait “Roadrunner,” took up the challenge.

Yet Neville, too, was hesitant about any holistic view of Martin. The resulting film is really two. “STEVE! (martin) a documentary in 2 pieces,” premiering Friday on Apple TV+, splits Martin’s story in two halves. One depicts Martin’s stand-up as it unfolded, with copious contributions from journal entries and old photographs. The other captures Martin’s life as it is today — riding electric bikes with Short, practicing the banjo — with reflections on the career that followed.

It’s an attempt to synthesize all the Steve Martins, or at least line them up next to each other. The “King Tut” guy with the arrow through his head. The “wild and crazy guy.” The “Jerk.” The Grammy-winner. The novel writer. And the self-lacerating comic who says in the film: “I guarantee I had no talent. None.”

“I’m going to say something very immodest: I have a modesty about my career,” Martin says, chuckling. “Just because you do a lot of things doesn’t mean they’re good. I know that time evaluates things. So there’s nothing for me to stand on to evaluate my efforts. But an outsider can make sense of it.”

Neville, who joined the video call from his home in Pasadena, California, didn’t set out to make two films about Martin. But six months into the process, it crystalized for him as the right structure. Through lines emerged.

“When I look at the things Steve’s done in his life — playing banjo, magic, stand-up — these are things that take great effort to master,” Neville says. “But in a way, it’s the constant working at it. Even seeing Steve pick up a banjo, it’s never, ‘I nailed it.’ It’s always: ‘I could do that a little better.’”

Looking back hasn’t come naturally to Martin. He’s long resisted the kind of life-story treatment of a film like “STEVE!” But Martin, 78, grants he’s now at that time of life where you can’t help it. Even if reliving some things smarts.

“The first part, that’s what I really have a hard time watching,” Martin says. “When I’m on black-and-white homemade video being so not funny.”

Martin grew up in Orange County in awe of Jerry Lewis, Laurel and Hardy and Nichols and May. His first job, as an 11-year-old, was selling guidebooks at Disneyland. He drifted toward the Main Street Magic Shop. Stage performers like Wally Boag became his idols.

When Martin, after studying philosophy in college and writing for “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,” began stand-up, he drew copiously from Boag and others, filtering the showmanship of vaudeville into an avantgarde act, just with balloon animals and an arrow through his head. Donning the persona of, as he says in the film, “a comedian who thinks he’s funny but isn’t,” his routine moved away from punchlines and toward an absurd irony with “free-form laughter.”

Martin’s act was groundbreaking and, in the 1970s, when most comics were doing political material, it became wildly popular. “He’s up there with the most idolized comedians ever,” Jerry Seinfeld says in the film. Now, Martin doesn’t see much from those years that makes him laugh.

“Then there are these moments that I think of as performance glory, but they last a minute or two minutes. It was all so new. It was exciting because it was new to the audience and to me.”

Martin tends to be hard on himself. In one late scene in “STEVE!” he and Short are going over possible jokes, but most don’t make the cut for Martin.

It’s tempting to assign some of this nature to Martin’s famously critical father, Glenn, a real-estate salesman who had his own unrealized ambitions in show business. At dinner after the premiere of “The Jerk,” he pronounced his son “no Charlie Chaplin.” But Martin disagrees.

“I don’t think so,” says Martin. “It’s good to be hard on yourself. It’s just the way I do it. I just want to go over it and go over it. I realize it’s all in the details. It’s all in the timing.”

That makes Martin think of a joke that he and Short have considered for their act but thus far deemed too esoteric.

“I say, ‘You know, Marty, some comedians say funny things. And some comedians say things funny. And you just say … things,’” says Martin, laughing. “But there’s a truth in saying funny things and saying things funny. You walk the line. Our lives now are saying funny things and it used to be saying things funny.”

It’s a line, typically exact in its wording, that perfectly represents the irony of Martin’s own life. In 1981, Martin quit stand-up, he thought for good. The act had run its course and he was happy to transition to movies. It wasn’t until decades later, when Martin prepared to tour as a banjo player, that a friend convinced him audiences were going to want a little banter in between songs.

“So I had this terror and I started working on material,” Martin says. “Eventually I became what I grew up with, which is a folk music act with a funny monologist, making funny intros to songs.”

That’s bled into Martin’s unexpected return to stand-up. Martin and Short, friends since the 1986 comedy “Three Amigos!” have become the premier double act of today, starring on the acclaimed Hulu series “Only Murders in the Building” and performing on the road. They cuttingly but affectionately volley quip after quip with the finesse of Grand Slam champions.

The irony isn’t lost on Martin. The no-punchline comedian has become a lover of punchlines.

“I’ve morphed into a person who really appreciates the joy of telling jokes,” shrugs Martin. “Marty and I in our show is joke after joke after joke.”

It’s not the only reversal Martin never expected. After spending most of his life not wanting children, Martin and his wife of 17 years, Anne Stringfield, have an 11-year-old daughter. She’s seen only as a cartoon in “STEVE!” to protect her privacy.

Even more confounding for Martin: After a life riddled by anxiety he’s strangely content. Maybe even happy. “Yes, I hate to say it,” Martin says shaking his head.

Martin likes to say he has a “relaxed mind” now. He’s peeled away a lot — competitiveness, people or situations who brought him grief — and has narrowed his life down to things that matter most to him.

“I have this thing that I’ve noticed,” Martin says. “As we age, we either become our best selves or our worst selves. I’ve seen people become their worst selves and I’ve seen people who were tough, difficult people early on become better selves.”

In the film, Martin puts it: “I look back and go, ‘What an odd life.’ My whole life was backwards.”

Jenn Tran, a contestant on the latest installment of “The Bachelor,” has been selected as the next star of “The Bachelorette” spin-off.

The 25-year-old Vietnamese-American physician’s assistant student, hailing from Miami, Fla., makes history as the first Asian lead of the long-running ABC dating competition franchise.

“The Bachelor” host Jesse Palmer made the announcement during Monday night’s season 28 “After the Final Rose” that Tran would be the object of affection for season 21 of “The Bachelorette.”

“Growing up, I always wanted to see Asian representation on TV,” she said. “Now, to be here today… being like, ‘I am going to be the main character in my story,’ I can’t help but think of how many people I’m inspiring and how many lives I can impact.”

Tran was eliminated in Week 7 along with Kelsey Toussant on season 28 of “The Bachelor,” where over two dozen women vied to win the final rose from Joey Graziadei. The professional tennis coach, who revealed his Gilbert syndrome diagnosis last month, proposed and got engaged to Kelsey Anderson in the season finale.

Tran is described in her show bio as a “bubbly and compassionate” person who “has dedicated her life to helping others.”

“The Bachelor,” which launched in 2002, has been a ratings leader for the Disney-owned broadcast network ever since.

Throughout the years, the series has embraced some diversity with a few firsts, including Matt James  and Rachel Lindsay becoming the first Black Bachelor and Bachelorette of the franchise, respectively.

In 2013, Venezuelan ex-soccer player Juan Pablo Galavis was chosen as the first Latino star of “The Bachelor” after 17 seasons, while Clare Crawley and Tayshia Adams, who both have Mexican heritage, became the franchise’s first Latina bachelorettes in 2020.

These two characters have only one thing in common: Giancarlo Esposito.

Esposito, 65, has been nominated for Emmys on three shows (“Breaking Bad,” “Better Call Saul” and “The Mandalorian”) and these days is best known for villains and criminals, following “Saul” with “The Boys,” “Kaleidoscope,” “The Gentleman” and now as a leading man in “Parish,” in which he plays a getaway driver gone legit who gets dragged back into the underworld and quickly gets in over his head. The show premieres on AMC March 31.

But even before teaming up with Spike Lee (for whom he also appeared in “School Daze,” “Mo’ Better Blues” and “Malcolm X”), Esposito demonstrated a versatility that would serve him well in decades of supporting roles – he began his career in Broadway musicals at age 10 (in a show called “Maggie Flynn”), appearing on stage regularly for 20 years before his film career took off. 

Like Gray Parish, Esposito is more voluble and animated than Fring but much more in control than Buggin’ Out. He spoke recently about his life and career by video. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Q. Many of your post-Fring projects are crime stories. What is the appeal?

I like to operate in an unpredictable world because our world is unpredictable. We want order and we want to feel like things don’t change, but our world today is the antithesis of that. I’m a fan of old noir movies because it was similar and there’s a desperation within that world so the audience is looking for a way out just as the central character is.

I’m also drawn to the story of origin within whatever world the story is placed in. My story of origin is complicated and convoluted and I’m still trying to find my home. I was born in Copenhagen and initially raised in Rome to an Italian father and a Black mother. Then coming to New York I wondered, “Is this my home? Am I welcome here? Do I see my people here?”

Q. “Parish” is another crime story but the role feels like it gives you a chance to try something new, to carry a show and to show emotional vulnerability, especially in the scenes with his family..

When I saw “The Driver” [the BBC One series this is based on], I recognized the character. I’ve been through bankruptcy and I have a failed marriage and I have four daughters I’m raising along with my former wife. And that was crushing for me when I was going through all this, so the story resounded. But yes, there’s a wider range of emotion – in part, because Parish is the central character – and he’s a character you’ve never seen me play before, a character who’s not in control. 

In my life, I can walk into a room and control the chaos. I have the power of reading people, of getting what I want from people who may not want to give it to me. That’s something I’ve developed in my life, not only through playing the characters I’ve played, but understanding what I have. So I wanted to play someone who walked into a room and was flying by the seat of his pants, who’s unsure of himself. It’s showing another part of myself that hasn’t been seen.

Q. Does your ability to control the chaos and control a room stem from your years of meditation and yoga?

Quite a bit of it. It used to be just false bravado, and my really powerful voice – I did nine Broadway musicals, and my father used his voice to control the situation, but my voice is even more powerful than my father’s. Your voice can control the chaos, put the mannerisms with it and it can be overpowering. 

My father was a bit of a bully. My brother was a bully. I got bullied a lot, so I learned about bullies and probably part of me became a bully myself because how can you help that until you really acknowledge it and then be able to let it go? The yoga and the meditation focused all of my energy inward so that I could be aware.

Q. You were on Broadway as a child and did nine musicals. How did that influence you? 

It made me the actor I am. The musical work was my foundation. But then I made a clear choice in my career – I wanted to be a dramatic actor, and I knew it was a different technique, a different style. I went that route because I wanted to affect more people. I had hung in the Village hearing jazz musicians like Erroll Garner and Miles Davis. They were my color and they were the cool cats so that’s my image of what I wanted to be as an actor, I wanted to bring the cool cat vibe to it.

So I worked diligently at it and started to get really good at it.  My mother always said to me, “No one can take away what’s between your ears.” But they also take away what’s in your heart or your soul. If I had a craft, it would extend beyond the judgment that people might have of me for being Black.

Q. How did growing up in Harlem and being biracial shape you as a person and an actor?

There are many cultures in Manhattan but most people stay in their neighborhoods. I was shaped by wanting to relate to my Italian heritage and my African American heritage so I floated around. People would tell me, “You look Ethiopian,” or “You look Spanish,” or “You look this,” or “You look that.” I could put on a Spanish accent and go to Spanish Harlem. I morph into different people and take on their idioms to express myself as an actor. Why can’t I do it in life? So that’s what I did, moving in and out of neighborhoods. And it honed my acting skills. 

Q. Now that you’re so well known for serious dramas, do you have any desire to do more comedy?

Without a doubt. I’m looking for a comedy and a rom-com. 

People come up to me in the street and say, “Oh, you’re smiling. I’ve never seen you smile.” People are afraid of me because of the Gustavo Fring persona. But I’m a lot of things. I feel like there’s a really light little boy in here that I’ve never given up, that he’s never been crushed. He wants to have fun. 

“The concrete jungle, the hard-core city life, that’s for when you’re in your 20s,” says Kristen in the opening minute of “The Valley,” the “Vanderpump Rules” spinoff that premiered on Bravo on Tuesday, March 19.

“But I’m 40 now,” she continues. “The Valley is where I need to be.”

And where, pray tell, is this peaceful valley of which Kristen speaks? We’ll give you a hint: It’s not the lost Tibetan paradise of Shangri-La. And it’s not the farm in the country where my dog went to live when I was a kid.

No, this is the Valley of San Fernando. Kristen has settled in a Studio City apartment that’s approximately 6.4 miles north through Laurel Canyon and over Mulholland Drive from the restaurant where she first staked her claim to reality TV fame. She’s not exactly been put out to pasture in other words.

The premise of “The Valley” is simple: A trio of former “Vanderpump Rules” stars and a handful of their friends have decided it’s time to grow up and start families. And the concrete jungle of West Hollywood is just too harsh when compared to the asphalt jungle of Valley Village – where former “Vanderpump Rules” stars Jax Taylor and Brittany Cartwright live with their 2-year-old son.

The cast also includes Danny and Nia Booko, and actor and a past Miss USA winner, who live with their three young kids in Reseda. (That’s 20 miles from SUR and west of the 405, so don’t forget to stock your SUVs with provisions and a barrel or two of water.)

Also in Valley Village, approximately 8.3 miles from SUR, are Jason and Janet Caperna – he’s a lawyer, she’s part of the Greater Vanderpump Universe, a friend of many current and former cast members. (Valley Village probably needs to be on the reality star tour maps – “Vanderpump Rules” stars Tom Sandoval and Ariana Madix bought a home there in 2019, years before their relationship exploded in a supernova of scandal.)

Married real-estate agents Jesse Lally and Michelle Saniei Lally are Hollywood holdouts, living a few streets north of Sunset Boulevard less than 2 miles from SUR – walking distance!

“We don’t live in the Valley,” Lally begins.

“We don’t like the (bleeping) Valley,” Saniei Lally interjects.

“– because the house we have right now, right behind Chateau Marmont, just screams ambition,” he finishes.

And then there are the sassy single friends, Zack Wickham, Brittany’s best friend from back home in Kentucky, and Jasmine Goode, who’s not only a former SUR employee (though she wasn’t on the TV show), but a past contestant on “The Bachelor” and “Bachelor in Paradise.”

In the premiere, Zack and Jasmine seem unconvinced that the Valley wagon train from West Hollywood really knows what it’s doing.

“All these people move to the Valley, get a house, pop out a couple of kids, and then they think they’re so grown up,” Zack says. “But these people don’t grow up.”

Which, you know, he’s got a point.

When we meet Kristen, she’s still unpacking in her new apartment. She, like two of the other couples, once owned a home in Valley Village. But the heart wants what the heart wants – the boyfriend who convinced her to sell and move in with him – even if the heart doesn’t really know what it’s getting itself into.

She and the now-ex-boyfriend lived together for five months, during which they broke up seven times, Kristen says. But never fear, when there’s a wedding to attend!

“Two weeks after my (lousy) breakup, I attended a wedding,” she says. “Luke was one of the groomsmen. I thought, ‘He’s sweet, he’s kind, he’s funny.’

“Then, we had sex behind a tent and the rest is history.”

Luke Broderick is the show’s fish out of water. He traveled to the wedding – the one where Kristen met up with him behind a tent – from his 70 acres in Colorado, which probably has a valley of an entirely different order.

The wedding hook-up stuck, though, and now Kristen and Luke are talking about having a baby. “We pulled the goalie,” he tells the other guys at one point, which they all understand has nothing to do with hockey.

While most of the guys seem bemused at how unlike them Luke is, Jax is openly hostile. “Vanderpump Rules” veterans may remember that Jax and Kristen once hooked up – and if you don’t remember it, there are flashback clips to remind you – though neither of them seemed to really remember it even though it apparently happened twice.

Luke has agreed to stay in the Valley at Kristen’s apartment all summer – the first season was apparently shot in the summer of 2023 – which will surely melt him long before the Rocky Mountain snowpack has even thought of trickling down the towns and cities below.

Jax seems poised to be the bad guy of the series. Not only is he mean to Luke, and in turn, Kristen, at a birthday party thrown for Janet, who is six months pregnant at the time, he decides to pants Danny as he and Nia pose for a photo, not realizing that Danny was in a swimsuit and had nothing on beneath.

“I honestly thought Danny was an underwear guy,” Jax explains. “It’s kind of a hard way to find out he’s not.”

Nia, who had twins six weeks earlier, does not take these shenanigans well. She departs, in tears, to a bedroom where all the women, including current “Vanderpump Rules” cast members Scheana Shay and Lala Kent, console her.

Judging from the previews, these will not be the last dumb things done or tears shed on the first season of “The Valley.” It is, after all, a Bravo unscripted series, and tears and stupid stunts are what make the reality world go ’round.