TCB Debriefing 11/7 & 11/8/23: Leah Rudick, Mean Girls, Gary Gulman, Longest Yard, White Lotus, Vista Theatre
1. The first time we saw Leah Rudick on stage, she was in character as someone going to a high school reunion after having married a boat. It was a sweet strangeness that was undeniably engrossing and absurdly joyful. That show was years and years ago in the back room of a Russian bar in WeHo, a far cry from the theaters that Leah plays nowadays as a stand-up, but Leah taps the same sort of beautiful weirdness for her new hour special, Spiraling. Going on flights of anxiety fueled imagination, Rudick starts from a relative point of relatable normalcy, but simmers her way to as ridiculous a conclusion to a bit as she can conjure (hence the name of the special). The journey in this hour, richly colored by her unconscious, is akin to tasting your new favorite sweet treats in that you might be unsure what’s happening at first, but get obsessed with the longer you savor it. Go taste it for yourself as Spiraling is streaming on select streaming platform near you.
2. Peep the very first trailer for Mean Girls: The Musical: The Movie: Based on The Movie (though it’s maybe-maybe not going to be so meta?) where Reneé Rapp will have an even more breakout moment than she has already been having as a bisexual icon/pop star.
3. Praise anything and everything that another Gary Gulman special is on the way. Born on 3rd Base will debut on Max (intriguingly there instead of HBO) this December (Deadline). So, how do we feel about a “Max Special” being the goal in stand-up comedy?
4. The Longest Yard is being remade yet (Deadline). This will be the third time for the sports comedy classic to see the big screen (presumably) after the Burt Reynolds original in 1974, then an Adam Sandler remake in 2005. Pretty sure no audiences were asking for this, but, then again, IP remains the emperor of entertainment.
5. Mike White says the 3rd season of his hit series White Lotus will be “…longer, bigger, crazier” (Deadline). Considering everything that happened in the first two seasons, Vegas should star taking bets at to what is hell White has in store for this round of hapless, overprivileged tourists on this go-around in Thailand.
6. One of the last remaining old school movie palaces in LA, The Vista Theatre, is finally going to reopen soon, under the guiding hand of pioneering auteur Quentin Tarantino (Variety). While we’re pretty sure that Quentin will do justice to a LA landmark, there’s no word on whether the manager will be dressing up in costume on a movie’s debut (no matter what movie it was).
7. We’ll leave you with this: the strike took this long to end because studios, we guess, can’t own their inner shadow of wanting all the monies.
