More from Gary Baum
Inside Jonathan Majors’ Scrubbed Army Ad Campaign
Jonathan Majors’ ad campaign for the U.S. Army, pulled after his Saturday arrest for allegedly assaulting a woman during a domestic dispute and since scrubbed from the organization’s official channels, was no ordinary sequence of commercials. The two spots, filmed in the Southern California area in January, were crucial components of a much larger ongoing […]
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Alec Baldwin and ‘Rust’ Producers Release Earlier Film ‘Supercell’
As he weathers his own personal storm over Rust, Alec Baldwin’s disaster film Supercell hit video-on-demand and opened in a smattering of independent cinemas with little fanfare over the March 17-19 weekend. A star like Baldwin can be a distributor’s biggest asset in the cash-strapped indie world where marketing money quickly evaporates. In this case, […]
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CBS Exec Who Helped Les Moonves Counter Misconduct Allegations Is Out
CBS announced that Ian Metrose, its longtime senior vp talent relations and special events, is leaving the network. The executive, who’d spent two decades at the company, has been under scrutiny since a New York Attorney General’s report in November 2022 revealed how he was centrally involved in efforts to counter sexual misconduct allegations against […]
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Report: Feds Grilled Leonardo DiCaprio on Business Relationship With International Fugitive Fraudster
New light has been shed on Leonardo DiCaprio’s relationship with a fugitive Malaysian businessman who’s wanted by international authorities in connection with a multibillion-dollar fraud scheme. Bloomberg Businessweek reviewed previously undisclosed FBI documents detailing its grilling of the actor as the agency sought to understand the nature of his personal and professional partnership with Jho […]
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Need a Black Hawk on Set by Friday? Call This Couple
When producer Jeff Waxman requires military hardware and tactical gear for his movies, he calls Adam and Cat Stone, a long-married couple operating out of the Manhattan Beach home they share with their three kids. In recent years, they’ve secured body armor and motorcycles for John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum, as well as a […]
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New Doc Explores Fatal Danger of Pacific Coast Highway
21 Miles in Malibu, a documentary about traffic, grief and bureaucratic inertia, premieres Feb. 16 at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. It’s produced by and centers on the producer Michel Shane (Catch Me If You Can, I Robot), his wife, Ellen, and their 13-year-old daughter, Emily, who was fatally struck by a driver in […]
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How Les Moonves and His CBS Loyalists Worked to Discredit Accuser: “It Was Sort of a Mafia Culture”
On Nov. 2, 2022, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced that she’d secured a $30.5 million settlement from CBS and its former president and CEO Leslie Moonves for misleading the company’s investors about his misconduct, concealing sexual assault allegations against him and related insider trading by another top CBS executive. Her office also released […]
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New Redstone Tell-All Book: “A Cross Between ‘King Lear’ and ‘Weekend at Bernie’s’”
In Unscripted: The Epic Battle for a Media Empire and the Redstone Family Legacy, the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalists James B. Stewart and Rachel Abrams chart the byzantine corporate maneuvering and salacious personal embroilments that brought disgrace to billionaire Viacom owner Sumner Redstone and longtime CBS head Les Moonves — as well as […]
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Farce on Top of Tragedy: ‘Rust’ Producers Escape Accountability (Column)
It’s one of the darkest tales in Hollywood memory. A group of producers — a few whose track records included opaque financing, withholding payments and dangerous on-set working conditions — mount a Western movie on which their star and fellow producer accidentally shoots to death the cinematographer midway through filming. We’ve learned he will soon […]
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Les Moonves Accuser’s Family Speaks Out About LAPD’s Mishandling of Her Case
The children of the late TV executive Phyllis Golden-Gottlieb, whose claims of sexual misconduct against Les Moonves helped lead to his resignation as CEO of CBS in 2018, spoke out on Jan. 20 about the Los Angeles Police Department’s mishandling of her confidential police report. They and their attorney, Gloria Allred, said they met the […]
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Chateau Marmont Agrees to Landmark Union Contract
It’s over. Four months after unionizing — and three years since a nascent organizing drive quietly began before the pandemic hit — workers at the Chateau Marmont have ratified their first contract following negotiations with owner André Balazs. UNITE HERE Local 11, which represents more than 32,000 hospitality employees, now including those at the legendary […]
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It’s Past Time to Reopen the Ronni Chasen Murder Investigation
Nov. 16 was the 12th anniversary of the murder of renowned film awards publicist Ronni Chasen. Hardly anyone has spoken publicly of it in years, but at the time it was national news. Just about everyone in Hollywood, whether they knew her or not, was vested in what happened — in part because it seemed […]
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