Haim have figured out how to put on a good late-night TV performance during quarantine, as they demonstrated on The Late Show last month. Now they have brought their video chat act back to network TV with a performance of “Don’t Wanna” on The Late Late Show last night. The sisters played the song from their individual spaces and put on their own light shows towards the end of the groovy song.

Before performing, the group took a few minutes to chat with Corden, and Alana spoke about the live ambitions the group had for their new album, saying, “I miss [playing live] so much. Funny enough, when we were making this record, we honestly envisioned it being played live. We were like, ‘This is our most live-sounding album, we’re gonna play this album so much, we’re going to go on tour for years.’ And now we can’t do that. But when it’s safe, we will do that.

Este also revealed that of the Haim sisters, she is handling quarantining the worst. She said, “I’m really bad at being alone. First of all, I spend like every waking hour with Danielle and Alana normally, and then during quar’, I spent a month not seeing them. At first, it was me talking to myself, which is totally normal. But then I started answering myself, and then that is when I said, to myself, ‘Este, you have a problem.’”

Watch Haim’s Late Late Show appearance above.

I recently wrote about Road House, the greatest and only piece of culture my hometown ever produced. It was fun, writing a love letter to a favorite movie and small towns in general, but there were a lot of great stories from my interview with Road House director Rowdy Herrington that didn’t fit into my story. And how could I rob you of those?

Herrington, who got his nickname not because he was particularly Rowdy but because it was a garbled take on his actual real name, Howard, had gotten some buzz on the strength of his first film, Jack’s Back, a riff on Jack the Ripper starring James Spader. That got him the meeting with Joel Silver for Road House, and the rest, as they say, is history. He made seven movies between 1988 and 2004, including the not-Ridley Scott version of Gladiator (his was a boxing movie co-starring Cuba Gooding Jr.).

He taught in the film department at USC for a time and these days lives mostly in Montana, where he still writes for various creative endeavors (when we spoke he was working on an interactive, choose-your-own-adventure style feature). But of course he’ll probably always be best known for Road House, a movie that began its life as a five-Razzie-nominated punchline and eventually morphed into one of the most celebrated cult classics of all time. Herrington told me all about it, from Patrick Swayze’s bum knee to Ben Gazzara’s titanic appetite for eggs benedict to his later work with the notoriously difficult Bruce Willis (“I didn’t enjoy it at all, and that’s putting it nicely.”).

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So tell me how Road House first came about.

I got a call from Joel Silver, the producer. I had directed one film and I was signed with the agency that represented Patrick Swayze. Because Patrick was already attached to the script, they submitted my name. They watched my film (Jack’s Back, with James Spader) and decided they would like to work with me. When I first read the script, I wasn’t very happy. I thought it was too broad. Joel actually called me because I was going to pass and said, “Would you come down and meet me? Even if you don’t do this, I think you’re talented. I have other things going on.” So I said, okay.

He set up a meeting at midnight. They were shooting Die Hard on a lot at Fox. I met the whole bunch of guys, Bruce Willis and everybody and McTiernan. Anyway, Joel and I talked about it and he said he understood my concerns about the material and that’s why he wanted me to do it. I told him what I would do to it and he said, let’s go.

What did you tell them you would do differently?

It was too broad and that I felt like Patrick coming off of Dirty Dancing was going to have a large female audience. And as it turned out in the end, Joel put a lot of the stuff back in that I cut out. As he told me, “I make movies for 13-year-old boys.” That was the mentality. We had a disagreement about that. But otherwise, he’s a really smart producer and he made it easy for me.

We needed somebody to play Wade and we wanted Sam Elliott and Sam looked at the material and said no. I had learned from Joel. So I called up his agent and I said, “Listen, I’m a big fan of Sam’s and he may not want to do this, but I’d like to meet him because I have other things going on.” He agreed to meet me and so we sat down in the commissary at Sony and we got to know each other a little bit and he saw I wasn’t crazy. At the end of this meeting I told him, “Look, I’m working on the script and I’m going to make it a little smarter.” And I said, “Sam, if you don’t do this movie, I’m fucked.” And I told him to ask for more money.
And he got it?

He ended up doing it and then we got Kelly [Lynch], she already had a deal in place with United Artists because she was supposed to go do a Sam Kinison film. We got lucky there. And we got Jimmy Iovine as our music supervisor. Jimmy read the script and said, “Oh my God,” he said, “I know who this blind guitar player is.” It turns out the original writer of the script had seen Jeff Healey in a bar and wrote him into the script.

That would have been a hell of a coincidence otherwise, that you just found this guy.

Right. Anyway, we got Jeff and I cast a whole bunch of guys that were martial artists and so that the fighting would be really great. And fortunately, we got Benny The Jet Urquidez to work with our stunt coordinator, Charlie Picerni. My production designer, I asked him to do a lot of stuff in with primary colors because I felt like it was kind of a cartoon.

You said you initially cut some stuff out that Joel Silver put back in.

Well, there’s some stuff I cut out that never made it back in. There was a castration in the script. Pat takes one of his men who’s skimming, out into the woods and they chop it off. I refused to shoot it. And Joel did some second unit stuff, but we didn’t put it in and I think he understood that it went too far. And well, I’ll give you one example. There’s a scene at the bar where Julie Michaels comes up to Patrick and she says, “Why don’t we go to my house and f*ck.” And then Jimmy jerks her arm around and walks her out of there. The way I cut it was, she says, “Why don’t we go to my house and–” and that’s when Jimmy jerks her around. But, of course, Joel put it back in.

I read the original cut was three hours long. Is that true?

Yeah. I mean, the script was long. It was like 140 pages or something. And my first meeting with United Artists, I went in with Joel and Tony Thomopoulos is sitting at one end of this long conference table. We’re at the other, and he’s got his people on each side of him. And I was totally unprepared for this because Joel didn’t give me a clue what was going to happen in this meeting. We go in and sit down and he said, “Tell him what you’re going to do.” I was like, oh fuck.

Anyway, I did a couple of minutes on what I was going to do with the script and the stuff that I thought was really going to be hit scenes, why this picture should get made. And Tony Thomopoulos just said “The script’s too long.” And of course I agree. And I told Joel, I wanted to cut scenes and he said, “No, just shoot everything. You don’t know what’s going to work and what’s not going to work until the end, just shoot it all.” And anyway, Tony said, the script’s too long and Joel slid it all the way across this long table that Tony had, and he said, “Take anything out you want, but when it’s a bomb, it’s your fault.” Joel said, “What do you want, a hit or a bomb? Choose now.” Well, we didn’t cut anything out of the script.

It sounds like that negotiating tactic worked.

Yeah. And we had, I don’t know, I think over nine major fights, we cut an entire sequence out with Keith David, who plays the black bartender. There was a whole sequence where he comes in to hear the music with his wife and some rednecks get after him and then Patrick joins in a fight with him and it was a big brawl and Patrick ends up hiring him as a bartender. That just went in the dump. I think the one scene Keith is in, he’s just seen behind the bar, he’s there…

Yeah. He just sort of shows up.

Yeah. We realized as we were cutting that that whole sequence could be lifted and it didn’t change anything. And then we just tightened things. Frank Urioste was the editor and he’s a genius. We had another guy, I don’t remember the other, there were two Franks. I don’t remember what the other Frank’s name is. I have to think about it. But I had Frank Urioste recut everything. He was just really smart. And we whittled it down and whittled it down and that was the final picture.

Part of the reason I wanted to write about it was, I grew up in Reedley, California where part of it is shot. And I was just wondering if you remembered anything about the location and why you chose it and if you had any memories of that.

Which location?

Reedley, where like the Kings River is, between the…

Oh yeah. Well, we went around looking for a river because it was in the script and we went out to Austin and scouted there and then we went up to Northern California and we found that house, it’s on the Kings Ranch and they built the barn and loft and the facade for Emma’s place on the other side of the river because there was plenty of open space there. That worked out really well. And I think, trying to remember, I guess we did the exterior drive up there with the clock, the shot where we crane off the clock.

Right. That’s the main street, G Street, in downtown Reedley.

Yeah. We had Patrick’s motor home, which was parked on the street and I was waiting for him to come out with Tim Moore, who was an executive producer. And when Patrick came up, this mob of girls came and they were trying to rip his clothes off. I mean it was like Elvis. we really had to shove them away, it was like a physical deal. He was a little freaked out. He was like, this fame, this is crazy. He’s married to a beautiful woman, Lisa, and it’s crazy.

You brought up Julie Michaels. I was going to ask you about her. I know she became a stunt woman. Was she a stunt person at that time? Where did she come from?

No, she came in and auditioned and she did a very clever thing dealing with Joel Silver. She lifted up her dress and on her thigh was written “Property of Joel Silver.”

That sounds like it would work.

Yeah. That sealed the deal.

No one else tried anything crazy like that?

Not that I know of. I mean we had some Playboy bunnies and a lot of really pretty girls in the Double Deuce. As Joel said early on, “See a girl? See a pretty girl.” He had a lot of really great one-liners. (Editor’s note: The character of Les Grossman played by Tom Cruise in ‘Tropic Thunder’ is a parody of Joel Silver.)

Was there a boob quota?

Not per se, just “see a girl, see a pretty girl.”

Did you think of it as a martial arts movie when you were making it?

I only thought of the fact that there were so many fights in it that they needed to be really realistic. That’s why I wanted to make sure that the guys that were playing the henchman could [do the stunts]. I mean, even the guy who played Tinker [John William Young, who was portly and bearded], he could move. It was just about making it as realistic as possible.

Is it a Western?

Oh yeah. It’s a modern version of a Western. When you think about it, there’s a bad guy running the town and the new sheriff comes in. Or like Shane, just this gunslinger, that’s tougher than the rest. Structurally it’s totally a Western, there’s just no horses.

And then the idea that there are these bouncers that are one-name famous, I like that idea. What were you going for there?

Well, that was in the script. I mean, the name Dalton, everybody knew it. First of all, it’s an unusual name. It was in the script that his reputation preceded him and Sam [Elliot’s character] was his mentor. At some point they had come up together and Sam, Wade Garrett, was famous, I mean, all the guys knew who he was.

Is the idea that Dalton is kind of like a monk?

Well, he sort of is for sure. We had him doing Tai Chi. My wife is a Tai Chi teacher and of course Patrick is a dancer. He did it beautifully, we gave him that beat, but he is sort of this Zen bouncer, I mean, kind of a Buddhist. Supposedly had a degree in philosophy. I mean, it was all pretty broad.

I’m trying to remember if we ever see him eat. I know in the beginning he turns his nose up at breakfast and I don’t remember if he ever eats in the rest movie.

Yeah. No, he turns down eggs benedict with Ben Gazzara. We went through about five plates of that.

Wow, so he was just eating?

He’s a consummate actor. He is unfortunately no longer with us. That’s another story. Joel said, “We’ve got to get somebody to play our villain.” And so he said, “We’re going to go see James Garner.” And we went to James Garner’s house in Beverly Hills and set up by the pool. And Joel did, I don’t know, five minutes on all the success he’d had, and was like, “$100 million on this picture, did $200 million in that picture. I got $100 million in this picture…” And finally James Garner just looked at him and said, “Success don’t interest me.”

He said, “If I was going to play a villain it wouldn’t be this guy.” And at the time I was 35, I probably looked 30, and we had a writer with us and he was younger than me. And James looked over and he said, “Who’s directing this?” And I said, “I am,” and he’s just staring at me. At the end of the meeting I just said, Mr. Garner, I just want to tell you The Americanization of Emily is one of my favorite films. And he gave me a nod and said “Me too.”

Well, you got something out of it, I guess.

Yeah, no, it was a nice meeting. And Red West, Red did a great job. Red was Elvis Presley’s bodyguard. We were sitting out on the curb just before we’re going to blow up the auto parts store and our guys were rigging the explosives and all that, and we were pretty well into the movie at that point. And I hadn’t asked him anything about Elvis, but finally we were just sitting there and I said, “Red, what was it like?” And he knew exactly what I was asking. He said, “Rowdy, you wouldn’t have believed it.” He said, “We walked into this theater, we came on stage in Atlanta.” He said, “The whole building shook.” He said, “Don’t let anybody ever tell you he wasn’t a wonderful man. Most generous man I ever knew,” he said.

How was Patrick at doing all the martial arts stuff? Was that sort of new for him?

Not at all. No, he’s a martial artist. I mean, he was absolutely brilliant at it. The toughest thing for Patrick was that he quit ballet dancing because he had blown out his knee. He blew it up playing football and then he continued to dance. And I mean, literally every few days he had to have his knee drained. Marshall Teague who played Jimmy, Marshall, of course, wasn’t in every scene like Patrick was. Benny The Jet worked with Marshall on the choreography for the big fight at the river. And then Benny and Marshall had to teach it to Patrick. Well, the things that they were in together, they both were sort of method actors. There just were some hard stares at each other. At lunch, they would not talk, they would walk past each other and they just kept that whole thing going the whole time.

And then Marshall had to teach Patrick a lot of the choreography and it was fits and starts when we’d get Patrick away to learn this stuff because this is a huge fight. And periodically, Patrick would make a mistake and whack him because Marshall knew to duck here but Patrick threw the punch there and that kind of stuff. And anyway, they worked their asses off and we shot over the course of two nights to finish that fight. At the end, they were brothers and they were best friends until Patrick died.

When it came out, what was the reception like and what was your reaction as that was going down?

Well the reception was, we open number one. But I think it was not as big an opening is Joel was hoping for. It was nothing like Die Hard or anything. And of course the reviews for the most part, I would say probably universally they panned it. And I know that, what was his name? The CBS guy with the big hair…

Gene Shalit?

Yeah. Gene Shalit called it “Out House.”

(Laughs). I mean, funny at least.

[Not laughing] I was kind of mortified, to be honest. Because it’s like my worst nightmare about some of the things that I thought at the very beginning. It was very difficult to turn down a studio movie when your whole goal is to get into that system, and with the agency telling you, “Look, this is really big payday and after this, you’re on the A-list directing movie stars.” But that does not mean that it doesn’t hurt when the chickens come home to roost. The real surprise about Road House is its longevity. That people actually appreciate it for what it is, which is broad as hell. I was very surprised by it after our opening and having the literati essentially say, “don’t waste your time.” It’s just ultimately entertaining. And we’ve broken the record for the number of screenings on television. It’s number one of all time of any movie, which is remarkable. [Ed note: I can’t find a source for this claim, but I do see a Wall Street Journal report that says Road House aired 65 times between 1994-2002, which it uses as an example of a movie that airs a lot on cable].

When you say broad, to me, it somehow feels like it takes place in an alternate universe. But then it’s also really familiar in some ways. It’s like I’m completely in a different world where bouncers are one name famous and… I don’t know, I like that idea. It’s fun.

Well, it’s not like we didn’t know what we were doing. We had our tongue planted firmly in our cheeks. I knew what the script was, and like I said, I wanted it to be in primary colors, and it was a bit cartoony in some ways, but we played it straight. And it is remarkable the life that it’s had. I never would have thought that, especially after it came out. I mean, while we were making it, we just had a lot of fun. It was a great set and at lunchtime Jeff Healey would rock the house. John Doe was on the cast and I was a fan of X, so it was great just to hang out with him. Patrick is a gentlemen and so talented, he wanted to do every stunt.

The only stunt I wouldn’t let him do was what they call a bulldog, where he tackles Jimmy off the motorcycle right before the big fight in the river. That was the stunt man that tackled him. I said, “No, I can’t afford to have you hurt. You got this big fight coming up, forget it.” He was mad at me.

In the aftermath of Road House, do you think it helped or hurt future projects that you were trying to get made?

Well, first of all, I got the nickname Rowdy. My name is Howard and I’m named after my uncle. And so when I was a boy, because Howard was the one who already existed, I was Howdy. And I made the wrestling team in ninth grade, the varsity, and they bust me up to the high school and the captain of the wrestling team said, “What’s your name?” And I said, Howdy. And he said, “No, your name is Rowdy.” People thought I was a stunt man or I came out of that world. I came up in a really weird way. I started in television, I got into the director’s guild just as associate director at NBC in Washington. And when I came out to Los Angeles, I couldn’t work as an AD because, when they allowed television people into the director’s guild, the rule was the associate directors couldn’t become ADs until they had lived there six years.

They were afraid that you’re going to come out there and take all the AD’s jobs. I started out at WQED in Pittsburgh, working on the crew. Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and all that. We did lighting and I do some lighting. I got on as an electrician and eventually became a gaffer. And I wrote my first script that sold, Jack’s Back, that’s the James Spader film. But after Road House, I got offered lots and lots of action stuff. Most of which I didn’t think was very good. I decided I was going to write my own script and I wrote a script called Three Rivers, which we sold to Columbia Pictures, and that ended up being called Striking Distance. We got Bruce Willis attached. First it was Robert De Niro and I worked for three months on the script with him, but he didn’t want to do any of the jokes. And the action. He told me Midnight Run would have been a great film if they had cut all that action out of it.

So anyway, I mean I was dealing with Robert Fucking De Niro, man. I did what he asked me to do and I cut a bunch of this stuff out and the studio hated the script. It became a drama about a family of alcoholic cops and one of them became a killer. And they said, no no, this not the script we bought. So Bob passed and he said, get Mel (Gibson). And Mel was busy. We ended up making an offer to Michael Douglas and Michael Douglas passed. He said, “No, I just did this guy, in Black Rain.” So, my agent also represented Bruce Willis and Bruce got the script and the rest is history.

Later on, there were stories about Bruce Willis being difficult. Did you find that at all?

Yeah, he’s very difficult. I didn’t enjoy it at all. And that’s putting it nicely. Well, he got the De Niro script and that’s the script he wanted to do. He kept bringing scenes that I had written for De Niro in to plug into this picture. And at the same time, Frank Price, who had bought the screenplay, got fired and Mark Canton came in. And Mark Canton, this was his first studio head job. He was scared to death. He saw me coming down the hall in the Thalberg building and he ducked back in his office like he’s afraid of me. I was like, “You’re the head of the studio, what the fuck are you afraid of?”

Anyway, he was very upset because Bruce was calling him and complaining about what I was doing, and I was doing what the studio asked me to do, which was just try to make an action picture with humor. And Bruce had done it and he was over it, so he was miserable. He shouldn’t have taken the job. But it was $13 million. I tried being nice and it was the biggest lesson I ever learned in the business. You have to win the first one. Because otherwise they start walking on you. I was trying to be nice, and make it work. And about halfway through I just said fuck it. I just put my foot down. “No, I’m not doing that. Fuck you.” And then that studio came in and we had the meeting and anyway, it was just kind of fucked up and it’s my least favorite film actually, I think we ended up with a feathered fish. You know, it was neither fish nor fowl.

Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can read more retrospectives here.

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The 1975’s long-awaited new album Notes On A Conditional Form is out today, and alongside its release, they’ve shared a video for “Tonight (I Wish I Was Your Boy).” The clip follows the exploits of a teddy bear who, like many folks right now, spends his time seated in front of his computer.

Healy told Apple Music of the song:

“This is the anomaly on the record for me. I don’t know where it came from. That was me f*cking around when the record was feeling really, really relaxed. It reminds me of all the kind of proper pop music that I grew up listening to, like Backstreet Boys. And it’s like an ode to early Max Martin, late-‘90s pop. I don’t think we ever do anything retro. We never do anything pastiche-y. But there’s definitely a reflection on a certain time of our musical upbringing. And that was very much part of that. And it’s got a great Temptations sample at the beginning, and kind of reminds me of Kanye or something.”

Speaking of Apple Music, the band also teamed up with them to share a behind-the-scenes video about the making of Notes On A Conditional Form.

Watch the “Tonight (I Wish I Was Your Boy)” video above and read our review of Notes On A Conditional Form here.

Notes On A Conditional Form is out now via Dirty Hit. Get it here.

The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.

ITEM NUMBER ONE — Come on

There was some exciting news floating around this week. More of a rumor than news, I suppose. Rumblings in the Hollywood trades indicated three interesting developments: One, there’s a Mad Max prequel idea in the air that is becoming more real with every day; two, the prequel would focus on Furiosa, the character made famous in Fury Road by Charlize Theron; and three, Jodie Comer is apparently in the running for the role. This last part is very important. It is time for us — all of us — to make Jodie Comer a huge freaking star.

There’s an argument to be made that Jodie Comer is already kind of a star. She’s won multiple prestigious awards, including an Emmy, for the role of Villanelle in Killing Eve, all of them deserved. She is so good as that character, in a way that makes it look much easier than it is. Villanelle is a sociopath and a killer who flips back and forth between dead-eyed menace and childlike glee. She struts around in designer clothes like a composed adult and flops on couches like an overwhelmed teen. There is range on display every episode, and that’s before you get to the accents. She’s an English actress who plays a Russian assassin who must occasionally pretend to be a person from somewhere else. She spent multiple episodes of the second season as a bratty American heiress. It’s almost like the show is just challenging her for fun. I fully expect her to do a deep Swedish accent before the season three finale.

But I’m not talking about “breakout performer in a buzzy cable drama” star here. That’s a launching point, not a destination. I’m talking about appearing in major movie franchises. I’m talking about toplining a big-budget movie. I’m talking about doing a comedy at some point and some people being all “But why is she doing a comedy?” and then nailing the role in a scene-stealing display of hidden talent, kind of like when Jason Statham was in Spy. The kind of star your parents know by name. The kind of star where people say “You wanna check out that new Jodie Comer movie?” instead of saying the movie’s actual title. That kind of star.

You know who else is on this trajectory, admittedly a step or two ahead of Comer? Another British actress: Vanessa Kirby, who made a huge splash as wild child Princess Margaret on The Crown and spun that into substantial roles in both Mission: Impossible — Fallout and Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw. There is a truly staggering array of punctuation in these titles, but that’s because they’re two of the world’s longest-running and most successful franchises. She’s in both of them now, in potentially important ways. The next step from here is a starring role in her own project. That’s the path I’m talking about.

In fact, maybe we handle this all at once. Maybe we cast both Comer and Kirby in a fun action-y movie together. Maybe they’re both cops. Maybe they’re both crooks. Maybe one of them is a notorious international jewel thief and the other is the Interpol agent tasked with tracking her down, sort of like Heat but with two very talented British actresses instead of two iconic Italian-American actors. I would watch that movie. I would watch that movie today, right now. I would be late filing this column, but it would be worth it.

Unless… I don’t actually know if Jodie Comer wants to star in big fun action movies. Maybe I’m projecting here. I’m known to do that. Maybe she wants to take challenging roles in awards-y dramas. Maybe she has her sights set on an Oscar. I would argue there’s both room and time for both things, and I would also argue that starring in a prequel as a character made famous by Charlize Theron — an actress who has done Oscar movies and also kickass action movies like Atomic Blonde — would be a pretty decent start.

Let’s get to work on this. Again, all of us. I just did my part. Now it’s your turn.

ITEM NUMBER TWO — Fred Willard was the greatest

Fred Willard passed away earlier this week, which stinks. Fred Willard was the best. He was one of those actors who never headlined a project but still made every project he appeared in a little bit better. Sometimes a lot better. Most of the characters he played appeared at first to be these square or aggressively normal guys who then revealed themselves to be complete maniacs. A substantial number of them should have been in prison. He was an assassin, a wild card who looked like a straight man, a guy you knew even if you didn’t know his name, one of those actors who, as soon as you saw their face pop up on the screen, made you lean forward a little bit and say “Oooo, I bet this part is gonna be good.” I don’t think I ever saw him miss.

You could pick any of a zillion examples to back up these assertions: his long history with the Guest-Levy mockumentaries, his dozens of nutty appearances on Kimmel, the list goes on. I’ll always remember his appearance on Review, the Comedy Central series that starred Andy Daly, himself another wolf in sheep’s clothing, comedically. I won’t try to explain the whole thing. You can — and should — watch it on Comedy Central’s website. The short version is something like this: Andy Daly’s character has a television show where he reviews life experiences submitted by viewers. In this one, he is tasked with reviewing “space,” and decides to bring his sweet 75-year-old ex-father-in-law to Space Camp for the thrill of a lifetime. Everything goes pretty well. Until… well, watch that clip.

It is so dark and so outrageously funny. The shock of it startled me into what I can only describe as a violent outburst of laughter the first time I saw it. It wasn’t even a laugh, I think, at least not in the way Webster would define it. It was more of a staccato series of mini-shouts. And it only worked because Willard played it so nice and sweet for every moment up until it happened. The man was a genius. The world is a little less funny without him in it, which is a bummer of intergalactic proportions. Add to that the fact that coworkers came out of the woodwork to say how nice and genuine he was and, man, yeah, just a bummer.

That said, if you’re looking for a legacy, you could do a lot worse than “somebody who was nice to people and beloved by huge groups of people and made friends and total strangers laugh for over 50 years,” so maybe it’s not as big a bummer as it appears on its face. That’s a good life. We would all do pretty well to shoot for that ourselves. Rest in peace, you wonderful goofball.

ITEM NUMBER THREE — Let’s check in with quarantined celebr-…

… aaaaaaand David Lynch is doing the weather. From a bunker. Every day. The Twin Peaks creator and delightful weirdo is posting very straightforward weather reports on his YouTube channel every morning. I’m not kidding when I say they are very straightforward. Each video is under one minute in length and features Lynch reciting the date, temperature in both Fahrenheit and Celcius, and your basic cloud/precipitation situation as he observes it by looking out his window in that moment. He’s been doing it since the 11th of this month. It’s oddly mesmerizing. Some of them are tinted blue for unexplained reasons. Maybe he just watched Ozark and wanted to try it. No one knows. I’m not going to question David Lynch.

Here are a bunch more. They’re soothing, in a way. I do not live in Los Angeles and therefore care very little about the weather there and I’m still watching them every day. It’s the most useless thing possible in an age when I can find out the weather in two clicks on a smartphone or one command shouted in the general direction of my Alexa. I hope he does them forever.

As The Verge notes, this is not Lynch’s first run as an amateur meteorologist. He did this before, decades ago, and is picking it back up again. A big part of me hopes he’s playing a long game here, like after 40-50 normal weather reports he pops up on screen and starts pretending like a volcano erupted and then does the rest of them as a basement-dwelling survivor of a massive natural disaster. Or maybe the long game is to play it straight forever while rubes like me look on waiting for the break.

Either way, useful service.

ITEM NUMBER FOUR — This is Squiggle erasure

Good news and bad news.

Good news first. The cringe-y, terrible, borderline-perfect song “L to the OG,” from Succession, is now available on Spotify. You know the song. The rap that hopeless failson Kendall Roy performed at the fancy celebration to honor his father, miserable old lion Logan Roy. It’s not the most important musical moment to come from the show or anything (that is and always will be the theme song and its cascading tinkly pianos), but it is very notable for being a moment of television so awkward that I simultaneously could not stop watching and wanted to escape by burying myself under the floor of my living room. The chorus, the baseball jersey, the salute. My heavens, the salute.

The people responsible for the performance, actor Jeremy Strong and composer Nicholas Brittell, sat down with Variety to discuss the song’s official release. Turns out the song has celebrity fans, too.

It became apparent when people were dressed for this thing as Halloween and I did get a text from Frank Ocean that said, “L to the OG” with a crying face emoji. I took it as the highest possible compliment because he’s one of my heroes. It was small props but it meant the world.

So there’s that. But there’s also this, the bad news: The official recording, while still containing a spoken intro, cut probably my favorite part of the whole performance. There is no mention of DJ Squiggle.

This is very upsetting. And disrespectful to DJ Squiggle. The man cooked up the beat for you, Kendall. He flew to Scotland to help you perform it. And now you just cut him out of the official recording? This is why no one likes you. Well, this and a few other things. You did kind of kill a guy. But I would argue that both of these offenses are the fruit of the same poisonous tree. It’s not how a true Techno Gatsby behaves, I’ll tell you that. Or maybe it is. I’m still a little unclear on what exactly a Techno Gatsby is and/or does.

I miss Succession.

ITEM NUMBER FIVE — Help

I watched Burn After Reading recently. It was a good decision because Burn After Reading is a great movie. It’s so powerfully stupid and yet kind of smart and the performances are all so great. Clooney, McDormand, Malkovich, all of them. But especially Brad Pitt. Especially Brad Pitt. His performance as a trainer and world-class doofus is something to behold. Every second he’s on-screen is a treat. It’s a masterclass in physical comedy, which is actually a little upsetting because no one that good looking should be that funny. It’s like how I get upset when I find out a famous person is also great at an impossible hobby, like golf. You don’t need that, too. It’s not fair.

I bring this up now for one simple reason: since I watched this movie, I have been unable to stop replying to things with the exact delivery of “Awwwhhhh, that’s cooool” that he does in the above clip. Not even out loud. Just in my head. I’ll see a headline and do it. Someone will let me pull out in traffic ahead of them and I’ll do it. It’s been almost a week and it’s showing no sign of slowing down. This will not do. Please, send help.

READER MAIL

If you have questions about television, movies, food, local news, weather, or whatever you want, shoot them to me on Twitter or at brian.grubb@uproxx.com (put “RUNDOWN” in the subject line). I am the first writer to ever answer reader mail in a column. Do not look up this last part.

Lisa:

Brian, please tell me you’ve seen the news about the upcoming movie Moonfall. I assume you have seen it but I don’t want to take the chance that you missed it. It is a Roland Emmerich movie about the moon crashing into earth. The movie about the moon falling into the earth is called “Moonfall.” It stars Halle Berry as an astronaut and Josh Gad as “a scientific genius.” I just about shouted when I saw the news. It looks so strange and so, so bad. I’m so happy for you.

Lisa, I am very aware of this and very excited about it for all the reasons you laid out. I’m getting very strong Geostorm vibes from this, which is a compliment I don’t throw around willy nilly. I love how literal the title is. I hope the character names are just as literal. I hope Halle’s astronaut character is named Veronica Cosmos. I hope Josh Gad’s scientific genius is named Ned Proctrator. I hope they blow up the moon with a big laser. I don’t ask for much.

AND NOW, THE NEWS

To Florida!

Residents of a Florida neighborhood are complaining about a loud and messy flock of peacocks that has taken up residence in the area.

I imagine you think you grasp how many peacocks we’re talking about here. “How bad can it be?” you’re probably saying. “Six or seven beautiful peacocks strutting around your neighborhood. It sounds lovely to me.”

Well, a couple of things. First of all, it’s not six or seven peacocks. It is fifty. Fifty peacocks. That is, in my opinion, too many peacocks. And it leads us to the second thing…

The peacocks are currently in their mating season, which residents said involves noise keeping them up all night and increased messes outside their homes.

Fifty horny peacocks screeching and pooping all night long. Technicolor feathers everywhere. This sounds like hell. It sounds like actual hell. And it gets worse, because…

Hillsborough County officials said the peacocks aren’t regulated as pets because no one has claimed ownership of them, but the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said the birds also aren’t considered wildlife, so the agency doesn’t have jurisdiction over them.

It probably says a lot about me that the instant I read that paragraph, literally as soon as I reached the final period at the end, I muttered “diplomatic immunity” in a terrible South African accent like the bad guy from Lethal Weapon 2. I don’t know. I feel okay about it. Better than I would if I had 50 lawless peacocks engaging in nightly midnight orgies in my backyard, at least.

Admittedly a low hurdle to clear, but still.

Tove Lo’s Sunshine Kitty was one of last year’s more fun pop albums, and now she has brought it into 2020. Today, she releases a deluxe version of the album — dubbed the “Paw Prints Edition” — and shares her new album-opener, “Sadder Badder Cooler.”

On the track, Tove Lo is done with a former lover, singing in the chorus, “I’m sadder, I’m badder, I’m cooler, yeah / than I was when I met you.” Elsewhere on the track, she sings about how she is over her past relationship: “You toast your friends ’cause I left / But you know I’m never coming back in / Once I walk out the door / Screw all loose ends in this war / It was all about the power play, babe / And I can’t do it no more.”

The “Paw Prints Edition” of Sunshine Kitty adds eight new tracks to the album, including remixes, live versions, and an English-language cover of Veronica Maggio’s Swedish single “Jag kommer” (now titled “I’m Coming”), which was released on Spotify back in March. She previously said of the song, “It’s the soundtrack to so many of my memories. I’ve always been so impressed with Veronica’s way with words. I could never write in swedish the way she can. It’s the perfect mix of poetic, ‘everyday romance’ and making the Swedish summer time feel epic and melancholic all at once.”

Listen to “Sadder Badder Cooler” above.

Sunshine Kitty (Paw Prints Edition) is out now via Universal. Get it here.

Get ready to dance this weekend!

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Did you know we’ve made it to Memorial Day weekend? No? Yeah, us either. Still, while we might not be celebrating with big barbecues and crowded beach days, there’s plenty on Netflix to keep up entertained indoors, at a safe social distance. Paramount’s The Lovebirds arrives to give us a fun rom-com murder mystery, along with a new reality competition series that should please any Great British Bakeoff fans.

For everything coming to (and leaving) Netflix this week of May 22, check out the listings below.

The Lovebirds (film streaming 5/22)

Issa Rae and Kumail Nanjiani star in this wild rom-com from The Big Sick director Michael Showalter. Originally, this thing was slated to premiere at SXSW before hitting theaters in April but since the COVID-19 pandemic has taken everything that brings us joy and made sitting in a crowded movie theater a deadly activity, Paramount shipped it over to Netflix. We’re not complaining, especially since this means we get to watch Rae and Nanjiani play a couple on the brink of a breakup who inadvertently get pulled into a messy murder mystery.

The Big Flower Fight (Netflix series streaming 5/18)

Speaking of joy, Netflix is giving us another palate-cleansing show a la The Great British Bakeoff with it’s floral cousin, The Big Flower Fight. If watching unnaturally nice Brits fret over the stiffness of their meringue peaks is your brand of ASMR TV viewing, then watching these English artists mold three-foot-tall orangutans out of wildflowers should also lull you into a false sense of normalcy.

Here’s a full list of what’s been added in the last week:

Avail. 5/16
La reina de Indias y el conquistador
Public Enemies
United 93

Avail. 5/17
Soul Surfer

Avail. 5/18
The Big Flower Fight

Avail. 5/19
Patton Oswalt: I Love Everything
Sweet Magnolias
Trumbo

Avail. 5/20
Ben Platt Live From Radio City Music Hall
The Flash: Season 6
Rebelión de los Godinez

Avail. 5/22
Control Z
History 101
Just Go With It
The Lovebirds
Selling Sunset: Season 2
Trailer Park Boys: The Animated Series: Season 2

And here’s what’s leaving next week, so it’s your last chance:

Leaving 5/25
Bitten: Season 1-3

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Honestly, I didn’t really think I wanted to watch a documentary about Lance Armstrong. But, now that we live in a world with no sports and The Last Dance was over I did find myself at least more open to the thought of watching a Lance Armstrong documentary. And then I watched it and, yes, apparently I really did want to watch a documentary about Lance Armstrong because I was riveted. In Lance, Armstrong is at times charming, and at other times a raging asshole. Which creates a portrait that is insanely complicated and takes the viewer on quite an emotional ride in how we feel about this guy. Yeah, he was doping. But literally everyone was. But the way he threw people under the bus is unforgivable. But, then again, he did amazing work for cancer patients who, as we see in the film, explain how much good Armstrong really did for them.

In Marina Zenovich’s past films – which feature subjects like Roman Polanski, Richard Pryor, and Robin Williams – she had to create a film by talking to other people who were around them. This time, for te first time, she has the subject at hand ready and waiting. And it’s fascinating. And, yes, Armstrong has his version of events practiced enough that they feel like talking points at times, but Zenovich’s persistence with her questions breaks through that, often resulting in the two openly sparring over questions like, “What’s the worst thing you’ve done?”

Ahead, Zenovich takes us through what it’s like to get into Lance Armstrong’s head. And tells about the debate she had with her team about keeping in a scene in which Armstrong, talking about his darkest moments, in one of those “how can it get worse for him” moments, then on camera accidentally slices off a part of his finger with a potato peeler. Yes, the scene made the film.

First of all, I didn’t know I wanted to watch a three-hour documentary about Lance Armstrong. But I certainly did want that.

Oh, I love that.

As opposed to some of your prior films on Roman Polanski, Robin Williams, and Richard Pryor, this time you had the subject of the film willing and ready to talk.

Well, it’s funny you say that because it is really kind of like the first time. I’m always chasing people. Or they’re no longer around. So I think maybe that’s what spoke to me so much was having the ability to ask him. And he was very clear with me, “Ask me anything. Anything you want.” And I’m just like a kid in the candy store, surrounded by cinnamon bears, you know? I’m so excited because I get to be blunt, and I get to cuss, and I get to put him on the spot. It’s like, it’s a documentarian’s dream. And I guess you’re making me realize it, because I haven’t had that opportunity before. I do it with other people, but you always have to be somewhat careful. And with Lance, I was able to just kind of go for it. So it was a lot of fun for me.

There are scenes in the movie of people warning you Lance Armstrong would try to manipulate the narrative. Were you actually concerned about that? That he could somehow do that?

I wasn’t worried because I had final cut. So it’s like, that’s what it comes down to. But, I mean, he has a strong personality, but so do I. So I think both of us appreciated kind of going toe-to-toe. So I didn’t think he was going to try to manipulate, but having read books and having been told by people – and then having talked to people who were really burned by him – you can’t help but be a little wary. That’s kind of the push-pull of it. Because the thing is, he’s incredibly charming, and incredibly likable, and a lot of fun, and very funny, and incredibly light on his feet. And you get kind of caught up in his bubbling charisma. And so I could have that experience in the field, but then I’d come back to the editing room and be with people who hadn’t had that experience. Like my editor, like my co-producer, and assistant editor, who would call it as it was. Because part of my job is to play along and get sucked in, but be genuine and get what I want from him, but push him further. I mean, it’s an elaborate thinking match. But I appreciate what you said — I didn’t know that I wanted to watch something about Lance Armstrong.” I love that. It’s so compelling, isn’t it?

It is compelling because I had so many emotions I was not expecting. Because there are times where I felt he did get a little railroaded. Everyone was doping. And then there’s the time when he insinuated someone is a “whore” to get out of trouble, which is pretty unforgivable.

Well, we just kind of wanted to show his truth – but everyone else’s, too, like from Bobby Julich and Jonathan Vaughters when they meet him as a teenager, and Lance is a bit of a dick. But yet, what’s so fascinating about that is you’ve come up with people, and then that’s who you’re kind of stuck with. And I think I try to do this in all my movies: make people decide for themselves how they feel, and let them go on the journey that you’ve gone through as the filmmaker where you are going back and forth. Like, how can you make peace with this guy? He bullied people, but yet did so much for cancer. It’s complicated.

That was a remarkable part of your film. When you show cancer survivors who are saying he changed everything for them. And that’s what I meant. You think you made up your mind he’s a dick and then it’s like, well, okay, it’s hard to deny he did a lot of good there. Do you think if he would have been a nicer person in general throughout his championships that maybe he wouldn’t have faced the repercussions that he did?

Totally. But I don’t think he could have been the champion if he wasn’t that person that he was.

A lot of us have Michael Jordan on our minds right now because of The Last Dance. Watching your film felt like watching another ultra-competitive guy who could be tough on people – only it would be if Michael Jordan had his titles stripped away and had nothing to show for it. But in your film Armstrong swears he’s happy it turned out this way, though I’m not sure I buy that…

I believe it for his personal life. I don’t know if I believe it for his professional life, but I think that he really needed to kind of come clean to have a healthy life with his children and his fiance. But I think it’s been really hard for him, but I think he spent a lot of time in therapy with his family and by himself. You’ll appreciate this: he was willing to let me interview his therapist.

Oh wow.

Which I thought I’d won the lottery

Did that happen?

And she ended up not wanting to be interviewed, but he let me talk to her. And it was really, I just kind of imagined myself somewhat of a bit of a therapist myself. I felt like our sessions were like therapy sessions. And Lance told me the last day that I interviewed him. He was like, “You think I don’t like this, but I really like it.” And I think probably because he spent a lot of time in the last six, seven years, going through a lot of stuff. And it’s not like you go into therapy and it happens overnight. I mean, it takes fucking years, right? However he’s viewed, however people see him, I kind of give him credit for trying to process all of this and trying to come to terms with who he is and what he’s done and live his life. Has he completely come to terms with all of that? I think it’s in process.

What do you think his expectations were of doing this? Does he want to get back in people’s good graces? Because, like you said, he is this charming guy. And people love forgiving people once they admit to mistakes. Do you think that’s in his head? Why he’d agree to do this?

Maybe. I mean, when it’s describe in the film how he lost all his sponsorship, all that stuff, and then when Live Strong walked away from him? And it’s just, to think how low he went, and how he’s tried little by little. I remember when we were editing and we were looking for photos from, I called it the dark period – between everything happening and him going on Oprah to now – and there were a couple of years there where he didn’t really do anything. And it’s just kind of like, what do you do with yourself? How do you come back, even for yourself? And I think little by little he’s been doing that. I don’t know if he agreed to do this because he thought it would help. I don’t know. I mean, we never had that conversation. But I feel like he wants to come back. He’s doing his podcast. It’s very popular. But I was just very interested in the struggle of this man who did some good things, did some bad things, and let him try to come to terms with all of it.

There’s a crazy part in this where he’s talking about the lowest points of his life, then he starts peeling a potato and cuts part of his finger off and he’s bleeding profusely. I’m sure you felt bad that he did that, but at the same time you had to be like, well, this is going to make an interesting part of the documentary.

Well, it’s funny because we had debates about that scene. And some people in the office thought it should be cut. And I was like, “Are you kidding me? People want to see Lance Armstrong bleed! They want him to bleed!” Right?

I suspect that’s true.

And I mean, it spoke to so much. It spoke to him not knowing how to use that thing and pretending like he did. I mean, the guy was an athlete from the beginning. He didn’t know how to do any of that shit. It was all done for him by his mother, or by his coaches, or whatever. So, just to me, it spoke to so much. So we kept it in.

‘Lance’ debuts this Sunday night at 9pm EST on ESPN. You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.