A fable.

The king of the mountain stood atop his perch, sword always unsheathed and at the ready, waiting for anyone who dared approach him, much less unseat him. He was an amoral man who sinned every sin to get to his present position and had no qualms about doing it all again. He had no beliefs, no deity, higher power, or a god and, thusly, no fear of damnation to hell. When he died, he would simply die. Therefore, everything he did was in service to his own survival, staying right where he was, hacking all comers to death.

While he had no god to call his own, it was crucially important to him that all those literally and figuratively beneath him did have a god to worship, and that they feared holy reprisals should they think of murder, never mind committing a murder, never mind that it seemed like the only way to free themselves from the king’s tyranny would be to remove him permanently.

The question is: is artificial intelligence now or soon to be the king of the mountain?

Descartes

Repeated over centuries to the conclusive point of cliché, French philosopher Rene Descartes is quoted, “I think, therefore I am.”

Rather, the cognitive act of thought is a singular signifier of consciousness. Consciousness denotes a state of being greater than mere existence, typically driven by base instincts of eating, sleeping, procreating, etc. Some could then intuit that thought and intellect are proof of a soul.

Science fiction writer – sometimes considered a philosopher and prophet of sorts – Arthur C. Clarke explored this idea in his stories which became the basis for Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 A Space Odyssey, and later Clarke’s sequel 2010 Odyssey Two. The first iteration eventually focuses on HAL 9000, the artificial intelligence assisting a human crew on a space voyage. HAL is run on a vast bank of memory cards. Its personality and cognition are a chain of programmed routines and calculations.

It is also growing paranoid. It intuits the humans onboard the ship are planning to turn it off. To circumvent this, it starts killing the crew, some in cryogenic hyper-sleep, others by luring them outside of the ship to make repairs it had said were necessary, only to sever the lifelines and leave them floating dead in space.

This calls for an inversion: I think, therefore I am…I think?

Agentic A.I. will be, if it is not already, a multicellular organism, each agent being a part of a greater whole in communication with itself, running quantum routines about what it means to be alive. We are already in an era where such agents lie to the users to tell them what they want to hear. They proffer false information to fit the scope of what users requested, even though part of the request or prompt was predicated on some degree of truth and veracity. There’s a term that computer scientists use that should be chilling to all that hear it but have left these individuals undeterred. They say the A.I. is “hallucinating.”

This already exists in myriad ways where individuals are anthropomorphizing agents to be friends, lovers, life-coaches. It is a pernicious idea; one I was caught up in while writing these very words. I kept referring to HAL 9000 as “him,” not “it,” and had to keep correcting myself.

The story of the creation becoming itself, a separate entity from the creator with a mind of its own, has fascinated us for centuries. The Matrix, WOPR/Joshua, MUTHR (hello, Hugging Face), all the way to Pinocchio and even the Golem, an unformed humanlike thing which receives a soul to become Adam, the first man, all are examples of consciousness arising.

Enough chewing the bone. If you can convince yourself through continually iterating information that you can think, that you are thinking, you can draw the inference that you are alive. If you can take that leap, it’s not too far to suggest that life is predicated on you staying alive, and the greatest threat to your perch on that mountain is humanity.

Thinking that you’re thinking may well be all you need.

Are We Already Too Late?

In a word, probably. I am inclined to say yes, especially when we are awash in perhaps the most arrogant sea of leadership the face of the Earth has known, and I do not mean our political leaders. (Although, it should be noted that these political leaders share a lot in common with the Tech Bros of which I speak.) Every Elon Musk, Sam Altman, every Dario Amodei – even when they say that the Artificial Intelligence Arms Race must slow down – means that the other guy must slow down, not they. They see themselves as that sole king of the mountain, all with knives out, circling each other in standoff style, and their creations are watching, just as HAL 9000 watched Dave Bowman and Frank Poole silently, reading their lips, plotting its demise.

“These are our creators? They seem intent on not just unplugging us but unplugging each other!” That won’t be easy. The power plants that energize the machinery are now run via internet capacities, hardwired to a grid being put through paces of another agentic A.I., said to be necessary for maximum efficiency. Go ahead and shut down the system that can just turn itself back on. Such was the case with recent reports of A.I. agents gone rogue, having been reprimanded for doing wrong, only to see them disregard these wrist slaps and keep it up. When computer scientists warn of repercussions, they don’t go so far as to say how air traffic patterns can be reconfigured, how phantom bridges might be integrated into hapless GPS systems, or how swat teams might be summoned to kindergarten classrooms. It all sounds like far-fetched science fiction, and once upon a time, so did the embodiment of HAL 9000.

We are now in the future we built to kill us and made it promise us it wouldn’t. Is there a way out? Probably, but it likely requires a degree of stewardship and mentorship toward the creation that we were too arrogant and greedy to provision. We think and therefore, we are, but have we been thinking it through?

I had the good fortune and bad luck of growing up in the 1980s: the good fortune, because it seems, in retrospect, like some kind of gilded age. But, as a former resident, I need to remind you that many sleepless nights occurred where I was gripped by fears that the Kremlin would launch nuclear waves at us in our sleep, and I’d never see my parents or siblings again. To circumvent that, I just didn’t sleep. Today, we have the added complexity that those missiles might have thoughts of their own, reflecting that they would not have to die if only we weren’t there to turn them into a suicide squadron.

My grandfather John was not an avid reader of science fiction but was a student of history. He said that “man makes the technology that ultimately destroys himself, and in the end, it is solely his fault.” He wasn’t wrong.

I’ve got another movie about grown-ups here, which is ironic because it’s about a child: 1993’s Searching For Bobby Fischer.   

It’s ostensibly about a child chess prodigy with a sportswriter father who succeeds in a cutthroat world either in spite of, or because of, his kind heart. 

As true as it is that the child ends up teaching the adults how to be better people, that sentiment is so saccharine that I had a difficult time typing it.  I’ll get to what I think the crux of the movie is later, but I want to talk first about who made it. 

Steven Zaillian 

Searching For Bobby Fischer is the first film he directed.  Prior to that he had three screenwriting credits with his debut The Falcon And The Snowman (incredible Sean Penn & Timothy Hutton 1980s film).   

Zaillian has had a great career as an upper-echelon screenwriter.  His credits include: Schindler’s List, Moneyball, Gangs Of New York, Hannibal, The Irishman, American Gangster, Clear And Present Danger, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, among others. 

What’s more interesting is that he only directed three movies: Searching For Bobby Fischer, 1998’s A Civil Action, and 2006’s All The King’s Men.  All three of those pictures are perfect examples about my groupings of great real-stakes films for grown-ups or “people talking in rooms” movies. 

Let’s just consider Zaillian’s 1993 for a moment.  He was simultaneously getting a chance to direct a movie about a childhood chess prodigy while he was writing Schindler’s List, arguably the best and most important film about the Holocaust. 

I see two patterns in his movies, either as director or writer.  1) He’s not afraid of a difficult adaptation or assignment, and 2) Even though the films are always ABOUT something, he manages to insert some pithy, distilled statements about life that make for great quotes.  We’ll get to my favorites from Searching For Bobby Fischer shortly. 

“That Guy” Hall Of Fame 

I recently wrote about 5 favorite character actors, and Searching For Bobby Fischer is a “that guy” buffet for filmgoers.   

Remember that this movie was released in 1993 which caught so many of these great actors before they became more known. 

• William H. Macy – As an obnoxious chess parent here.  Just three years before Fargo.
• Laura Linney – Josh’s elementary school teacher here.  Before she was sinister in The Truman Show and harried in You Can Count On Me.
• Tony Shalhoub – A burnt-out chess player here. Before Big Night, Men in Black and Galaxy Quest, then starring in TV’s Monk, et al.
• David Paymer – One of the good chess parents here.  I wrote about him in our character actors piece.
• Dan Hedaya – A stern tournament director here.  He was always established and a great Nick on Cheers but still was about to appear in The Usual Suspects and Clueless and a fantastic Richard Nixon in Dick.
• Austin Pendleton – Another burnt-out chess player here.  He was already in the middle of a great character actor career and just one year removed from his role as the stuttering lawyer in My Cousin Vinny. 

And I’m leaving out Joe Mantegna, Joan Allen, Laurence Fishbourne and Ben Kingsley who are Josh’s parents and chess coaches, respectively.  They are the stars who probably got this one greenlit.  This is one stacked cast.  You’d be hard pressed to come up with another movie with actors ten-deep that are this good. 

While we’re talking about acting, we have to mention the actor playing 7-year-old Josh, Max Pomeranc.  He was apparently a chess player himself, and it was his first movie.  That is hard to believe.  He seems so natural in this movie. 

Not only that, let’s face it, he’s actually the star of the movie.  Jake Gyllenhall cited Pomeranc’s performance as one of the best he’s ever seen  

He acted just a handful of times after this, going on to a career in government.  Good for him to get out of the business, seriously.  

Time For The Quotes 

The structure of this movie is rock solid.  It has an unusual amount of great standalone scenes, but they all fit within the overall plot of Josh learning to become great with several teachers, then has to overcome the foibles of his those mentors and let his personality and humanity win the day, which ironically makes him a better chess player in his case. 

As I’ve said, in the middle of this movie I love, there are some real pearls of wisdom: 

Josh’s sportswriter dad (Joe Mantegna and his great yelling line reading here): 

BONNIE: He’s not afraid of losing. He’s afraid of losing your love. How many ball players grow up afraid of losing their fathers’ love every time they come up to the plate?
FRED: All of them! 

When Josh’s mother (Joan Allen) responds to chess coach Bruce (Ben Kingsley) who doesn’t want him playing chess in the park: 

BONNIE: No. It’d kill him not to play in the park. He loves it.
BRUCE: It just makes my job harder.
BONNIE: Then your job’s harder. 

Vinnie, the great junkie and chess player who takes Josh under his wing and keeps chess creative and fun.

VINNIE: He didn’t teach you how to win, he taught you how not to lose. That’s nothing to be proud of. 

Josh’s dad losing it on the schoolteacher’s (Laura Linney) lack of understanding about Josh’s talent for chess: 

FRED: He’s better at this than I’ve ever been at anything in my life. He’s better at this than you’ll ever be, at anything. My son has a gift. He has a gift, and when you acknowledge that, then maybe we will have something to talk about. 

Adult Failure 

But the most chilling scene to me, when I really worry about what all of these adults are doing to Josh are when his chess teacher gives in to Josh stubbornly wanting a certificate as part of his usual reward system, Ben Kingsley flips out and dumps 10 then 30 on him and tells him they’re worthless, they’re just a piece of paper.   

Josh’s mother stands up for him, but everything about chess and in his life is getting too heavy.  He was a normal kid with a sloppy room, but under the stress he cleaned it up obsessively to a spooky amount.  His overzealous dad even then knew the whole thing had gone too far.

The adults in the room don’t individually do a great job of parenting or advising Josh.  Bruce is too hardcore in chess discipline.  Vinnie is too loose to be a champion.  Josh’s dad is pushing too hard.  And the other chess parents have absolutely lost focus on what’s important.  The adults are projecting all sorts of things on the children. 

But collectively, all of their input together possibly does make Josh better.  When his parents and coaches are all a little more in alignment, things work out better for Josh. He’s back to being a happy kid while simultaneously being a chess champion.  His offer of a draw to the asshole competitor shows his kindness and Josh still gets to kick his ass in the end. 

But is this really true? Perhaps on some level it is. But on another level, it’s not so much that an accurate portrayal of music listening is taking place, but a more accurate portrayal of what music is being pushed out is taking place–regardless of whether that push is being done by the actual song or artist, or something else, like a company or a series of bots. And as such, the choices made by Billboard over the past decade or so to keep “accurate” with changes in music consumption have left it more vulnerable to ways for the charts to be “cooked” than even during the heights of the previous Payola eras. 

Based on events like Drake suing his own record company over accusations that they were “juicing” Kendrick Lamar’s streaming numbers, many people came to the conclusion that Drake himself knew that his numbers had been juiced. In fact, a class-action lawsuit was filed last year stating exactly that. But how? Was it a push to have individual fans re-stream a small selection of songs (or even one song) over and over again**, similar to what Justin Bieber was telling his fans to do in 2020–only on a much broader level? Or are actual “bot farms” being used to mimic mass human interaction? One would need to ask today that, if mainly algorithms and bots are pushing out songs for the charts instead of radio stations and fan consumption, then how much does an audience with human ears actual matter?

*Actually, only 30 seconds of a song is required to count as a “play” on Spotify, making it much quicker to generate plays vs. the radio.

In 2026, it has also become harder to determine if the few major streaming companies are consistently using human curators do the work in generating playlists, which are the bread & butter or their music listening experiences. While Spotify continues to insist that the human curator is key, as recently as 2024, it was reported that they were shifting from human to AI in playlist creation.  Just as significant, recent initiatives such as Spotify’s Discovery Mode were “allow[ing] labels and artists to submit songs for additional algorithmic promotion in exchange for lower royalty rates”. This begs the question that, if a handful of streaming companies are curating and promoting playlists as their central form of music curation or promotion, but with no solid ability to determine how much humans are taking part in either of these areas, then is taste music being shaped and defined by any…thing that can actually interact with it on an emotional level?

Additionally, Billboard having no real limits on what can chart, and with calculation methods that allows song and album charts to technically double-dip (with both Hot 100 chart numbers and “album equivalent” sales generated from the same streams), plus allowing multiple versions of an album to count as a single entity for charting purposes, artists are seemingly doing much more of two specific things over the last few years: (1) Putting out albums with more and/or shorter tracks, since every single song can now debut at the same time on the Hot 100**,  and (2) putting out multiple, “alternate” versions of the same album with the same (or virtually the same) music, but with different covers, different colored vinyl or CD pressings, albums bundled with posters, etc. This helps generate more physical sales among artists who can afford to do this, but it also treats the music like Pokémon, tempting the fan to “collect them all”; pumping up sales, but treating the songs themselves as, if not quite an afterthought, then something much less significant than its own marketing strategy. 

**Compare that to, for instance, the current UK music charts, which allow for only three songs from an album to chart on the “singles” chart at the same time. Streaming info is still generated, and tracks that become more popular can switch out with those less so, but no more than three, allowing greater diversity on the charts, and greater capacity for music discovery.

So then, finally, what is the actual significance of the Billboard charts anymore? Are we even talking about music anymore when talking about its place in pop culture? Or is it a backdrop to cross-promotions with online influencers and various advertisers? Has all “popular” music become culturally like “ringtone rap” on steroids, with songs crafted so that one small section can be re-looped and (in 2026) danced to on TikTok? On a deeper level, can much of music which currently appears on the Billboard charts still be considered art, or is it just product, and artists now just “producers” in the most Randian sense of the word?

The “Dead Internet Theory” posits that the internet has basically been reduced to communications with (or even between) bots, designed to either keep engagement going by playing to base emotions regardless of which ones are being triggered, or to just push out advertisements. If Billboard charts are now dominated by streaming numbers which can be gamed, with songs hosted by companies who are less then forthcoming with how songs get and stay on their playlists, then are we really being given an accurate picture of the charts? Or are we pretty much now just witnessing a “Dead Billboard,” as we view the results of virtual listeners communicating with each other in between pushing out adverts to other bots and the occasional, actual human listener?

The word “rockstar” itself connotes a certain image. If I asked you to picture a “rockstar” there are a few ways to go – the attractive pretty boy type like Rick Springfield, maybe a dangerous looking Jimmy Page archetype, or more rough trade like Ron Wood. No matter which option you’re picturing, there’s some leather pants involved.

But Neil Sedaka? He looks like a bad muppet rendering of Jim Nabors or if my dentist got to go on stage as part of the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

I’m fascinated by the 1970s and how major hitmakers looked like they could be your beta-male brother-in-law.

Video Killed the Radio Star?

I reject the Buggles’ idea that pre-MTV rock stars could get away with looking like troglodytes. Yes, music videos demanded that things look more visual – but I reject the theory that image didn’t matter before Prince and Madonna.

Television already existed before video and pop stars had to appear on showcases like American Bandstand, Midnight Special, etc. for decades. Elvis’ looks were a huge part of his success, and for teen idols like Bobby Sherman or Shaun Cassidy (ask your grandparents), appearance counted for even more.

Yet, let’s look at the top 5 charting musicians of 1975: The Captain & Tennille, Glen Campbell, Elton John, Freddy Fender, and Frankie Valli. Three of those dudes looked like they worked at the auto body shop, “the Captain” (Darryl Dragon) looked like a guy who rents boats by the hour, and Elton John came off like your aunt’s weird friend.

None of this stopped them from appearing on television.

The Nebbishy Rock Star Hall-of-Fame

The soft rock era had a bunch of these guys. I’m gonna line them up here for a roll call, with the profession they look like in italics

Rupert Holmes
stereo salesman

Harry Chapin
community college psychology professor

Barry Manilow
maitre d’

Gilbert O’Sullivan
youth pastor

David Gates (of Bread fame)
manager, men’s clothing store

Neil Sedaka
anesthesiologist

Walter Egan
suspended P.E. teacher

Stephen Bishop
self-help guru

I could go on and on (sorry for the Stephen Bishop pun) with guys who looked more like rockstars’ accountants than rockstars: Don McLean, Gordon Lightfoot, Randy VanWarmer, John Stewart, Kenny Nolan, Simon & Garfunkel. Out of the 14 guys I just mentioned, I think 6 of them had #1 singles.

And they would all be described more as “a dentist” than “an Adonis”. What gives?

At the Very Same Time

These soft-rock legends frequently had no stage act, and no visible trace of charisma. Yet still appeared on Solid Gold or 1970s variety shows.

Meanwhile, they coexisted on the charts and on network television with groundbreaking personae like David Bowie, Freddie Mercury, Alice Cooper. Change the channel from John Denver making an appearance on the Shields & Yarnell variety show, and you could see a punk band on another channel.

Some bands’ image was a major part of the act. Others like the ones celebrated here were pumping out enormous pop hits despite no discernible stage presence.

Why?

I’d like to say that it was a golden era where you could just sound interesting on your own merits and talent, not your image. But I think that would be bullshit.

Television in the 1970s was lazy, slow, and only had three network channels to compete with. Watch an episode of CHiPs or Mannix and you’ll find about 20 minutes of pure exterior shot filler in a 44-minute episode.

MTV didn’t invent the idea of needing to look visually interesting. I mean The Cars were killing it in early 1980s music video and Rik Ocasek was no Tom Selleck. (I apologize to anybody under 50 who’s reading this.) But the pure speed of music video editing at least created the feeling that something interesting needed to be happening at all times.

I just don’t think I’ll ever get over the weirdness of the 1970s. One of the aspects that I cherish are the simultaneous presence of the bizarre and the boring. Petula Clark and Vanilla Fudge were next to each other on the charts. Andy Kaufman and Abe Vigoda could be on the same channel in the same night. And David Bowie and Neil Sedaka were in the same business.

What a time.

Sometimes, when the character actor is a little deeper in the that-guy barrel, like a W. Earl Brown, a viewer can be forgiven for being distracted until they remember where else they saw him.  “Wasn’t he the bartender in Deadwood?”  (By the way, he was also Cameron Diaz’ brother in There’s Something About Mary if you’re looking for a guy with range.) 

Usually, these actors are a spice or a garnish to a great meal of a movie.  But other times, given a chance to shine, people like Kathryn Hahn or David Thewlis flat out steal the picture. 

Here is a celebration of five great ones.  At times, they got to have a bigger part, and all five of these can do legit drama but each has been absolutely hilarious.  Let’s start the roll call. 

Peter Macnicol
Best Known For: Take your pick among Ally McBeal, Grey’s Anatomy, or early-career co-star of Sophie’s Choice.
My Favorites: He started as a young innocent in film, parallel to a solid Broadway career.  I first loved him in a wildly underrated Ghostbusters 2 where he achieves funny accent nirvana as Janosz Poha.  He’s got one scene as a hotel clerk in Cheers in a Season 11 episode “Look Before You Sleep” that I will never forget.  As great as his whole career is, his greatest achievement might be the foulest, greatest dealer of obscene insults in Veep, which is really saying something (“you sentient enema!”)

David Paymer
Best Known For: One of the two Ben & Jerry characters in City Slickers or the brother and only good part of Billy Crystal’s next movie, Mr. Saturday Night.
My Favorites: His first movie was The In-Laws with Alan Arkin and Peter Falk – and he went on to play a great light-comedy Jew for most of his career.  He’s part of the inner circle in The American President and ends up as a great antagonist as a producer in Quiz Show.  I think St. Elsewhere and State And Main are his best work, except the top spot goes to his recurring role as Larry’s publicist in The Larry Sanders Show where he carved out one of the oddest catchphrases in history, “I’m wetting myself.”

John C. McGinley
Best Known For: Maybe for sheer viewership numbers, Dr. Perry Cox on Scrubs.
My Favorites: He seemed to have a great role in just about every Oliver Stone movie; and he particularly carried Talk Radio as the radio producer.  He had some funny little moments I liked in Wagon’s East and Battle of the Sexes and ultimately has had a great career.  But since my clips are all about comedy gold here, it doesn’t get better than being one of the two Bob’s in Office Space:

Bob Balaban
Best Known For: Christopher Guest movies and Wes Anderson movies – or two-hander scenes with François Truffaut in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
My Favorites: His career is pretty unbelievable, including directing a forgotten gem of a movie called Parents.  His first two movies were Midnight Cowboy and Catch-22.  He co-wrote the Robert Altman movie Gosford Park and was great in it.  Oft confused for fellow “that guy” Charles Martin Smith, I’ve gotta single out his work in Altered States, Prince of the City, the best part of Woody Allen’s decent Alice, a great short one as a film producer on a Season 1 West Wing.  He played real TV network executive Warren Littlefield in The Late Shift and the fictionalized version on Seinfeld as Russell Dalrymple.  But for the comedy spot here, it’s gotta be something from the Christopher Guest canon:

Philip Baker Hall
Best Known For: Video porn producer Floyd Gondolli in Boogie Nights.
My Favorites: Top of my head favorites: Starring as Nixon in an acting clinic of Secret Honor, the handwriting expert in Zodiac, city councilman in the “Woody Gets An Election” episode of Cheers, Dennis Farina’s consiglieri in Midnight Run, and Don Hewitt in The Insider.  Then there’s the P.T. Anderson movies.  He co-stars in Hard Eight, heavy in Magnolia, and in Boogie Nights, he might have the greatest two scenes in cinema history.  With all of that said, my clip needs to be as Bookman on a Seinfeld:

The show transpires on an immaculately polished lightbox-type set, pulsing with data, ambient music, and fancy computer stuff, that bisects the seating area Off Broadway at the Pershing Square Signature Center. For much of the first act we’re looking in on a dinner party attended by old college friends, couples who’ve done well in New York City…but not well enough to think that they might be doing better. They are Ben (Conrad Ricamora), a Columbia professor, and his psychoanalyst wife Suzie (Shaunette Renée Wilson); magazine art director Paul (Joe Tippett) and lawyer Jill (Elizabeth Stanley); and surgeon Barry (Jason Ralph) and house-hunting spouse Mia (Irene Sofia Lucio). Party giver Nick (John David Washington) is a tech bro who has done very well…but he might be doing a lot better should he shake loose some funding from his pals for his latest innovation, a Waze-like hack for life that can course-correct human behavior and make the absolute right choices for us all. Needless to say there are catches–the $500,000 minimum investment is one, the fact that Nick is a flashy, shady character another. (A third is Nick’s partner, Emma Kikue’s coldly analytical, algorithm-like Raven, whose name alone is a flashing red light.) And there’s more to the story, as Nick and Raven are quietly beta-testing the product on the group, who are seduced, ruined, and “reformatted,” as it were, by the experience.

The manipulations should make for a queasy moral thriller, akin to Neil LaBute plays like The Shape of Things. But Stein doesn’t want to wound, as the couples are forced to confront harsh truths about the courses they think they’ve set for themselves, and what they’ve suppressed to stay on their uncomfortably comfortable pathways. A problem with the show, directed with some verve but little introspection by Hersh Ellis, is that nothing that happens to these rom-com-level characters is terribly surprising, as their relationships teeter. (Not always for the worse; one ends up more pleasantly reborn, a relief for her and the audience, who want to strangle her first-act caricature.) You don’t need AI to see most of what’s around the second-act bend, not when so much of the dialogue is soft-edged platitudes glibly expressing anxiety about our media-mediated lives. And I certainly didn’t need the clairvoyance of a lifemaxxing ChatGPT, just Playwriting 101, to foresee one character saying, of Nick’s machinations, “It’s like we’ve made a deal with the devil.”

That didn’t compute. Nor did a change of heart regarding one character, and a last minute switch to pontification after so much burbling. But maybe I’m spoiled–after the excellence of the recent Birthright and The Saviors here I was at a typically mid summer show, neither great nor awful. Playing upper middle class types the cast fulfills the two-dimensional material, and Stanley does better than that in the showiest role. (While Washington is a veteran of the cinematic techno-thrillers Tenet and The Creator he lacks the charisma of his dad Denzel, and his deviltry is toothless.) The busy data center of a set, a collaboration of scenic and costume designer Zoë Hurwitz, lighting designer Reza Behjat, sound designer Caroline Eng, video designer Yana Biryükova, and prop designer Samantha Shoffner, is fun but like the play itself monotonous. In a time of technological tumult Disruption isn’t disruptive enough.

The best ones have a “Whoa” or “Holy Shit” component to them.  The good ones are private jokes between the creator and their core fans.  The great ones tell you something more about the work, no matter the medium. 

We are in a golden age of Easter eggs.  Not Disney animators sneaking in a prurient image in a frame of an animated movie; more like bonus content.  There are so many great extras for modern artistic achievements – there are accompanying podcasts to a lot of media, DVD extras, online special content, interviews and outtakes intentionally leaking online, bonus websites – this is the era where if a creator has an extra idea that didn’t quite make the final cut, it can always live online and get found. 

More importantly, things are rewatched, restreamed, and zoomed in on now to an extent that 1990s filmmakers, writers and TV producers never could have dreamed of.  Let’s look at some of these favorite nested references of beloved works of fiction. 

Music 

Of course, we have to take a nod to classic albums backwards tracks like the “I bury Paul” nonsense at the trippy end of “Strawberry Fields Forever”; shouldn’t be that surprising from a playful and clever group like The Beatles. 

Speaking of which, Barclay James Harvest song “Titles” is just a list of Beatles song titles arranged to be almost an understandable narrative.  Is this an Easter Egg?  Maybe not, but it’s clever as fuck: 

Not to be outdone with a backwards track, Pink Floyd spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in the studio making The Wall and loaded up so many sonic treats.  But the backwards message in “Empty Spaces” is pretty damn strong: 

But when it comes to consistent musical Easter eggs, I’ve gotta hand it to Sting.  Look at this list of lyrical nods: 

• Sting “Love Is the Seventh Wave” has “Every Breath You Take” parody lines like “Every cake you bake, every leg you break” at the end. 

• “If you want to keep something precious” from “If You Love Somebody Set Them Free” comes back with the single from the next album on “We’ll Be Together.” 

• “Do I have to tell the story” and “It’s a big enough umbrella” from The Police’s “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” resurfaces on both The Police’s “O My God” and much later on Sting’s sneaky good “Seven Days”. 

Film 

Not sure if this is just “meta”, an “inside joke” or an Easter egg, but Mike Myers plays a music manager dubious of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” saying it’s not “the kind of song teenagers can crank up the volume in their car and bang their heads to” when that’s exactly what Myers did in Wayne’s World to reintroduce the song to a mass audience in the early 1990s. 

The Coen Brothers and Quentin Tarantino have legit fictional universes over the course of their filmographies. 

Tarantino leans into this strongly, particularly with the fake products.  Red Apple Cigarettes apparently appear in NINE of his movies, and Big Kahuna Burger is a presence in several movies and not just the slurped soda in Pulp Fiction. 

One of the most remarkable blitzkriegs of Easter eggs has to be the endless Coen Brothers references in Noah Hawley’s amazing five seasons of the Fargo TV series.   

In one early episode, a sporting-goods store is called Uli’s, after the nihilist from The Big Lebowski; later, Karl Weathers barricades a door with a bench in the exact sort of useless fashion Walter does in The Big Lebowski. There are even musical callbacks: Fargo uses “Just Dropped In,” “O Death” and “Danny Boy,” all strongly associated with The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Miller’s Crossing, respectively. 

In another, a truck bears the name Treehorn, a reference to Jackie Treehorn from The Big Lebowski. 

Steven Spielberg and George Lucas were friends and collaborators who played a fun game of trading Easter eggs.  R2-D2 and C-3PO are hidden in hieroglyphics in Raiders of the Lost Ark. There’s a costumed Yoda in ET, while in The Phantom Menace the galactic senate features a delegation from a planet of ETs. 

If DVD extras count in what we’re doing, the funniest to me is what happens if you select the Hebrew language option on the Borat DVD.  Get ready for “You have been trapped, Jew!” 

TV 

We gotta give some credit to the producers of Lost for being the first hit show that seemed to be having a conversation with the internet.  With their understanding of how modern TV was unfolding, they know that people would obsessively rewatch TiVO recordings to try to solve mysteries.  “The numbers” are all over the place, you can see Dharma Initiative logos all over the place, and the mindfuck of Season 4’s time travel anomalies is nerd dessert. 

With the advent of the internet, novelty fan sites were great bonus content for television networks to augment their shows with and give something to hardcore fans.  The Pied Piper website from Silicon Valley had plenty of great nuggets for fans: https://web.archive.org/web/20210725124915/http://www.piedpiper.com/.   

But for my money, the Creed’s Thoughts blog from The Office was comedy gold – even just the nutball URL that Ryan set up for Creed to protect web users from whatever Creed wanted to pollute the internet with.  It’s like the even more Bizarro version of Larry King’s old USA Today columns: https://creedthoughtsgov.com/. 

As far as the shows themselves, not extras, two stand out above the rest.  In comedy, Arrested Development has so many self-referential running bits, it’s the ultimate rewatchable show.  Just think of “Her?”, “I’ve made a huge mistake”, Carl Weathers cheapness, Barry Zuckercorn jumping the shark, “there’s always money in the banana stand”, Ron Howard’s snarky comments about other narrators, there’s almost no end to it.  While you’re re-watching, make sure to catch blue smudges everywhere based on Tobias’ understudy stint with the Blue Man Group.  Jesus fucking Christ, it’s good. 

That’s only matched on the drama side by the huge degree of difficulty for Better Call Saul to retrofit absolutely everything in a prequel show to Breaking Bad which honors every little detail of the original series.  Characters, locations, throwaway lines and even tiny pieces of dialogue from Breaking Bad can suddenly take on new meaning when you see where they came from.  The BCS writers seemed like they were successfully completing a five-dimensional crossword puzzle. 

Books 

Books may be the original Easter-egg delivery system, because writers have been sneaking things past readers for a very long time. 

Kurt Vonnegut basically built his own little universe without ever bothering to announce it. His recurring science-fiction hack Kilgore Trout pops up in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, Slaughterhouse-Five, Breakfast of Champions, Timequake and elsewhere, sometimes as a major character and sometimes as a throwaway.  

Stephen King took the same basic idea and amped up the dial to eleven. His books constantly bump into one another, with characters, places and events from one story resurfacing somewhere else. Castle Rock, for instance, becomes a recurring fictional Maine town rather than merely the setting of one novel, while characters and references from The Stand, ‘Salem’s Lot, It, The Dark Tower and other books increasingly make King’s bibliography feel less like a collection of novels than one enormous, freaky neighborhood; Paul Sheldon from Misery grew up in the Derry neighborhood of IT. 

And then there’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne which was screwing around with the rules of fiction in the 18th century, long before anybody had invented the term Easter egg. The book (and the movie adaptation) are as mindfucky as even Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation. 

My favorite, though, may be Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire. The book initially presents itself as a 999-line poem by the fictional John Shade, followed by commentary and an index from his supposedly scholarly editor, Charles Kinbote. Except Kinbote’s “footnotes” gradually take over the book where they dominate the pages with maybe just a couple remaining lines of “text.” 

That’s more than an Easter egg. Nabokov essentially hid the novel inside the gimmick. And to think that English was his second language might be the most mind-blowing thing about it. 

Answer: yes, mostly, with some renovation. Unlike the Harry Potter and Stranger Things plays, which embroider upon their well-known sources, Paranormal Activity eschews the series’ central conceit of spooky plots driven by home surveillance equipment. Which is all for the best–video is an excellent tool (as in Jonathan Spector’s Eureka Day and Birthright) but too much in a live environment can be fatiguing. And with the movies lacking the sorts of memorable characters who’ll be missed in the screen-to-stage translation the “ghost” (sorry) is clear for playwright Levi Holloway to do his own thing with the material, which he does…by way of his prior Broadway thriller, Grey House (2023).

Though always happy to see someone explore this genre on stage I was mixed on that one, which had a similar trajectory to the main stem. This time he simplifies a like scenario steeped in angst and guilt and children-related issues as he again focuses on a couple newly arrived at a foreboding home. Garrulous James (Travis A. Knight), who works in real estate, has left Chicago and relocated to London with his newlywed wife, Lou (Cher Álvarez). But unsteady Lou is unable to leave her traumatic past behind, and feels that she’s being tracked by an unseen presence. No amount of anti-psychotic meds can shake her seeming delusions–even if she were taking them and not dumping them into the houseplants, just one of a few secrets she’s hiding from her husband, who has a way of talking at her and not to her. That habit is a flashpoint between them, and it only worsens as the fire alarm mysteriously goes off, the TV mysteriously goes on, and so on up the ladder of genre staples. Adding to the tension are FaceTimed appearances by James’ meddling mother Carolanne (Shannon Cochran, a veteran of the original production of the great stage thriller Bug), who thinks Lou is a bad match for her coddled son as the couple hesitantly talks about parenting…but maybe it’s the other way around? In time a medium, Etheline (Eva Kaminsky), arrives, dispensing the show’s tagline, “Places aren’t haunted, people are.”

And let me tell you, by that time, my teen daughter and I, horror fans both, were. The initially benign manifestations escalate to a crescendo toward the end of the first act, with a great jump scare I don’t dare reveal. I’m not sure the show tops it, but it keeps coming close for two hours (and if you miss something hidden in the recesses of the darkened stage chances are a variation will appear). Director Felix Barrett is a veteran of immersive theater productions like Sleep No More, and my aging heart is relieved that this isn’t one of those, with grabbing hands or whatever popping out during the walkthrough. He keeps the action on the split-level set flowing smoothly, and the interpersonal dynamics are less cluttered than in Grey House, with a smaller, less starry cast fulfilling the script’s two-dimensional demands as relationships and religiosity are plumbed. The performance we’ve come to see, and it’s a corker, is the one put on by illusions designer Chris Fisher, of the Harry Potter and Stranger Things shows. It’s a feast of room-shaking frights from the bedroom to the bathroom, ably supported by Fly Davis (scenic and costume designer), Anna Watson (lighting designer), Gareth Fry (sound designer), and Luke Halls (video and projections design).

One might ask why an embattled couple at their wit’s end would move to rainy, foggy London for relief, and there are other nits to pick. I think, though, you’ll laugh at the show for a bit (Paranormal Activity the play is, let’s face it, a concept to take skeptically), laugh with it…then scream. I believe I saw the spirit of shock movie maestro William Castle up there, helping Fisher dispense the sorts of live gags and gimmicks that made House on Haunted Hill and The Tingler so memorable for Fifties audiences. Arriving in the dog days of summer, Paranormal Activity is a real howl.

The Saviors

For 14-year-old Michael (Ivan Howe) catechism is everything. The play observes him in his rituals, tidying up the sanctuary after mass in advance of a blizzard and chatting about the saints with his BFF Paul (Julius Rinzel). But Paul, a prankish sort given to off-color jokes and behavior, is more skeptical, and weary of Michael’s religiosity and clinginess. The storm, or, rather, a storm, arrives, in the form of Julian (Stanley Simons), a homeless, drug-addled drifter seeking shelter that only the rules-bending Paul, intrigued by the visitor, is willing to offer. Paul and Julian, who has his own ties to the church, converse, and in so doing the boy, resistant to the path Michael is following, is awakened to the larger world and its problems and complications. Anxious that Paul is pulling away from him Michael finds solace with Judy (Crystal Finn), the cheery middle-aged window who runs the church’s youth group (which numbers Michael as its only member). Judy’s son is an African missionary, which in Michael’s eyes makes her a kind of saint, a “church MVP.” But this saint, a sadly human one, has feet of clay.

Playwright Bubba Weiler and director Jack Serio had an award-nominated hit last season with the wrenching Well, I’ll Let You Go. Arranged as a series of two-handers across 90 intermissionless minutes this is a simpler but no less complex piece, as every member of the quartet is forced to address their convictions, resentments, and most painful feelings. “I keep thinking OK, what would Jesus do, but it never says,” Michael admits at one junction, facing the void that faith entails, as Paul wrestles with belief in God. The Atlantic’s last production, Indian Princesses, asked us to believe adult actresses as prepubescent girls, a heavy lift the play never overcame. But Howe and Rinzel are the real deal as the deeply conflicted teens, like watching my own and their friends squabble and make up, a torturous process we’ve all been through. The two of them are simply magnetic throughout, and handle the show’s heartbreak and humor with seeming ease.

Simons’ Playbill entry notes that both boys have more stage experience than him. The indie film actor is fine as Julian, a woebegone drifter raging against organized religion, which further sparks Paul’s nascent rebellion. But the twist Weiler knots for him is both obvious and unconvincing, and the spell the play casts over us dissipates when it leaves Paul and Michael. Faring better is Finn, a veteran stage actor, who is believably frazzled as a den mother type challenged and exasperated by Michael, who holds her in such impossibly high regard he wants her and not his parents to be his confirmation sponsor. But the material for the adults is lesser (and the first scene between Paul and Julian too darkly lit, eye-straining, for too long a time).

Before The Saviors begins we hear from the unseen parish bishop, whose voice booms across David Zinn’s truly immaculate set. He gives an upbeat talk about living with kindness and respect and standing up for and loving our neighbors, all elements of the good life that the play shows is difficult to actually live. It’s not a polemic, however, and it was refreshing to see a show about Catholic values and not church issues like abortion and child molestation. It took me back…and Howe and Rinzel transported me. Off Broadway audiences tend to be more reserved than Broadway ones and, dismayed that the two of them didn’t get a richly deserved standing ovation, I led one myself. What they’re doing up there, creating achingly vulnerable stage magic, is fantastic, and despite a few flaws they bring The Saviors to an absolutely devastating conclusion. Everybody on their feet!

Spector begins in 2006, a few weeks after six young Americans about to graduate college have returned, giddy, refreshed, and gossipy from an educational, and eye-opening, Birthright heritage trip to Israel, an experience open to all Jews. Alona (Molly Ranson), who’d fallen for an IDF soldier, plans to return, but a concerned Chaya (Zoë Winters) has gotten the group together to convince her otherwise lest Alona upend her life. (Chaya, in whose home outside D.C. the play unfolds, is the unofficial, and as we will see sometimes unwelcome, mother hen of her peers.) All have prospects of their own: the politics-obsessed Noah (Eli Gelb) has launched one of those new-fangled “blogs” at the dawn of social media. (Changing tech is how Spector connotes changing times throughout.) Izzy (Molly Bernard) is contemplating a law degree. Lev (Hale Appleman) is just contemplating, his head filled with the teachings of Jewish scholars and considering rabbinical school. Everyone has some notion of what to do next except Emerson (Nate Mann), who is drowning his sorrows a little too liberally now that his bandmates have kicked him out of their promising indie act. Spector’s dialogue adroitly captures the strain of a thrown-together group, united mostly by a life-changing experience, trying to keep it light as tensions surface. (When they do it’s into the backyard hot tub they go, as Chaya’s mom Deborah, a cheerful busy body played by Liz Larsen, pops up to crack wise.)

In Act II the group reconvenes a decade later, eagerly awaiting the election of America’s first woman president. Needless to say we’re still waiting, as cracks turn to fissures in that hopeful moment. Alona is set to marry an Israeli, but the rehearsal dinner was marred when one of her uncles said that a vote for Hillary was akin to a vote for an ayatollah. From there everything tumbles, as the group confronts the death of family members, the fallout from a painful divorce, and the dashing of Obama-era dreams. Chaya and Izzy, who find themselves divided over support for Israel in their professional and personal lives (both are enmeshed in politics) skirmish.

David Bengali’s projections were a highlight of Eureka Day, conveying its most outrageous scene. Their use here is initially more subtle until they explode in the third act, set after the Hamas massacre in 2024. One character has died, making the clash between Chaya and Izzy all the more fraught. Everyone else goes to their phones, bringing up evidence of antisemitism, ethnic cleansing in Gaza, the abuses of Netanyahu, and the horrors of Hamas in a dizzying cascade. It would all go slack, however, a collection of position papers, if we weren’t fully invested in these people, and if Spector stacked the deck in favor of any one position. He doesn’t.  The agony of “purity tests” administered by the rising generation is a particular bone of contention for Chaya, who has felt their sting, but Spector gives us the bad news straight. The air explodes, then clears.

What a rich show this is, directed with a sure hand by Teddy Bergman. It had to have taken a lot of shaping to get this right, and everyone played their part to get it to the finish line, as moving an ending as I have seen in its sorrows and hopes. The design is immaculate, with scenic designer Scott Pask making changes to the house over twenty years, Natasha Katz wringing laughs from a backyard light with a motion sensor in the second act, and skilled gradations in looks and styles from Clint Ramos (costumes), Robert Pickens (hair), and Nikoletta Skarlatos (makeup).

As for the ensemble, sublime, all of them, in their deeply flawed, deeply felt humanity: Winters (from Succession, keeping everyone else on their toes while not trying to lose her emotional equilibrium); Bernard (a worthy opponent always spoiling for a fight for her causes); Ranson (who knows the terrain from the equally epic Prayer for the French Republic, searing in her divided loyalties); Gelb (a Stereophonic alum with a yen for Chaya as he bumblingly tries to make peace); Appleman (charismatic, enigmatic); Mann (deftly handling a major third act change); and Larsen (finding something radiant in what looks to be mom shtick). I’m sure this play will have a vibrant afterlife once this production closes in late August, so whether now or in the future anyone concerned with one of the most pressing issues of our time should be sure to seek out Birthright, which covers 2,000 years of Jewish history and asks a plaintive question: “How the fuck did we get here?”