- Tribeca 2026: The Documentaries (June 23, 2026)
To mark its 25th anniversary, the 2026 iteration of New York’s Tribeca Film Festival presented no fewer than 118 feature films—103 of them world premieres—over the course of 12 days, coming from all parts of the world and covering an astonishing array of genres.
Tribeca has, of course, always been a festival that relies on a heavy star contingent to draw a large turnout. That has been particularly true for the documentary section, which has always been celebrity-driven. As has been the case for the last few years, it has placed particular emphasis on music-related projects that will hopefully inspire fans to come out in droves (and perhaps get the subjects to do a song or two for the crowd).
Indeed, the festival’s three Gala presentations all fell along these lines, starting with the Opening Night presentation of “Earth, Wind & Fire (To Be Celestial VS That’s the Weight of the World”), a fun but standard documentary from Questlove charting the rise, fall and return of the seminal R&B/funk group and its leader, the late, great Maurice White, through tons of archival footage and interviews with everyone from surviving members of the group to such notable fans as Lionel Richie and Barack and Michelle Obama.
Likewise, the Closing Night presentation, One 9’s “Alicia Keys: Girl from Hell’s Kitchen,” finds the singer recounting the undeniably impressive, though by now familiar, story of her rise from the rough streets of Hell’s Kitchen to musical superstardom. But it gets more interesting in the sections that focus on the lengthy development process of her semi-autobiographical stage musical “Hell’s Kitchen.”
Somewhat more interesting is Josh Alexander’s “Sara Bareilles: Good Grief,” which follows the singer over the course of six days as she records her first album in seven years, a gap in time that saw her dealing with both COVID-19 and the loss of a couple of close friends. Although the film will appeal mostly to Bareilles’ fan base, the way in which it charts the development of the album (which is due to be released in late August) offers an intriguing look into the creative process that feels a little rawer and less sanitized than the kind of purely promotional item that this could have been.
In a similar vein, Sam Jones’s “Mumford & Sons: The House Band” captures the British folk-rock group as they set off on a tour that found them traveling by train from city to city with an eclectic array of guest artists—including Lainey Wilson, Darius Rucker, Noah Kahan and Maggie Rogers—joining them along the way, requiring all involved to learn dozens of new songs in a very short amount of time. While I cannot say that I am much of a fan of the group in general, I did enjoy watching the sense of communal spirit develop between the artists as they set about this mad task and found it especially interesting when capturing the moments when some were finding it harder to get that spirit to properly gel than others.
While there were other music-related docs on display, including Rob Arthur’s “Frampton” and the concert film “Katy Perry: The Lifetimes Tour—Live from Paris,” it was the one with the least star power that proved the most riveting. That would be “Jail Time Records,” an absolutely fascinating film from Dione Roach and Steve Happi that takes a look at Cameroon’s New Bell Prison, which is one of the most overcrowded in the continent—almost 6000 men in a facility built for only 800–but which also contain a music studio that allows the prisoners to record songs that serve as a creative outlet for their tensions and frustrations.
This is an eye-opening and toe-tapping look at the therapeutic value of art that is both thought-provoking and life-affirming. Indeed, it would go on to win the Best Feature and Cinematography prizes in the festival’s documentary competition as well as the Albert Maysles Award for Best New Documentary Director for Roach and Happi.
There were plenty of documentaries featuring less musically inclined famous faces as well, and perhaps the oddest of the bunch was Michael LaHaie’s “Bob and David Climb Manchu Pichu,” in which comedian David Cross pitches to his longtime friend and collaborator Bob Odenkirk the idea of the two of them heading to the Andes and hiking up Machu Pichu not long after the latter suffered a near-fatal heart attack.
This may sound like a particularly strange “Mr. Show” bit—sort of a hybrid of “My Dinner with Andre” and “K2”—but the two decide that it is a good idea. The film follows them on their journey, observing them as they riff along the way while contemplating their partnership and the odd ways their careers have developed, before ruminating on their lives and what it all means. Not surprisingly, the film is often quite funny, but as the trip progresses and they near the end, watching the take-no-prisoners humorists examine both their friendship and their lives leads to some unexpectedly moving moments as well.
Comedians are also at the center of Josh Greenbaum’s “Playing POTUS,” which focuses on the various ways humorists have portrayed presidents over the years and how those performances have, for better and worse, helped shape the public perception of their subjects. The idea sounds fascinating, I suppose, but after a beginning section looking at Vaughn Meader, whose impersonation of John F. Kennedy was the first widely successful spoof of a president, it becomes yet another unquestioning celebration of the legacy of “Saturday Night Live” in which they fawn over virtually every POTUS take over the years in obsequious detail. (The only break comes when the film shifts focus to Key & Peele for the Obama years, presumably as a tacit admission of how “SNL” never quite figured out how to approach him during his years in office.)
If the film had broadened its net a little more, it might have yielded some interesting results. But as is, it just feels like yet another ultimately unnecessary veneration of “SNL,” seemingly meant only to provide more programming fodder for Peacock.
The lineup even included a couple of films focused on well-known members of the New York media world. Alison Chernick’s “House of Criticism” takes a look at Jerry Saltz and Roberta Smith, the chief art critics at New York Magazine and The New York Times, who happen to be competitors in their professional lives while happily married to each other. It sounds like the pitch for an exceedingly mid-90s-era romcom, but they manage to make it all work to an enviable degree. The two are charming enough to watch as they go about their lives, but the film is a little on the slight side. It does, at times, serve as a gentle but potent reminder of the importance of serious arts criticism in general, at a time when such things have all but disappeared from the pages of most newspapers and magazines.
On the other hand, Meanwhile, Adam Paul Verity’s “Whipple’s World” introduces the world outside of New York to George Whipple III, a man who has spent the last three decades working days as a respected attorney and his nights as an entertainment reporter for NY1, hobnobbing with celebrities at one red carpet event after another like a particularly bizarre Eugene Levy character come to life, right down to the prominent eyebrows. While Whipple (whose name does share a connection with a certain television toilet paper pitchman) is undeniably a character, to put it mildly, he isn’t quite enough of one to sustain an entire film, particularly one that eventually takes on the form of an elaborate home movie and which pads itself out with tons of old footage, much of it shot in and around past editions of the Tribeca festival. (Robert DeNiro may turn up more in archival material here than he does in some of his actual acting gigs.)
As is the case with pretty much any contemporary film festival, there was also a handful of documentaries about the movie industry. Directed by Barbara Attie, Janet Goldwater and Mike Attie, “Hollywood Does Abortion” uses a controversial 1972 episode of “Maude” as a leaping-off point to examine how the American entertainment industry has approached the topic of reproductive rights and how it changed and evolved over time from the relatively progressive takes on the subject presented in such films as “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” and “Dirty Dancing” to more contemporary presentations that, out of fear of offending advertisers and anti-abortion groups, have been all but neutered in the name of “balance.” (After this film, you may never watch “Law & Order: SVU” in quite the same way.)
The film could use a little tightening here and there; it offers viewers a number of eye-opening reflections from an array of filmmakers and actors who discuss how these films helped shape their views on the topic and what they mean when viewed now through the lens of the post-Roe era.
Once so controversial that it was the focus of protests while it was still filming on the streets of New York, William Friedkin’s “Cruising,” his 1980 thriller with Al Pacino as a cop going undercover to investigate a series of brutal murders in the gay community, has seen its reputation shift in recent years from homophobic embarrassment to a classic of gay cinema. The story of the film and its still-discomfiting legacy is covered in Jeffrey Schwarz’s “Mineshaft: The Cruising Murders,” which tackles not only the various controversies surrounding it and its current-day reconsiderations but also the 1977 murder of journalist Addison Verrill, which helped inspire Friedkin to make it in the first place.
It may not be enough to persuade those who still find “Cruising” to be nothing more than exploitative trash, but the results are undeniably fascinating. Much like the upcoming “Exorcist II” reappraisal, “Boorman and the Devil,” it may well inspire those who know it only by its admittedly questionable reputation to give it a chance.
Another controversial production gets a reexamination in “Humpty Dumpty X,” in which British filmmaker Tony Kaye looks back on the post-production battle that erupted between him and New Line Pictures over the editing of his 1998 debut feature, “American History X,” which at one point saw him attempt to take his name off of the film and have it credited to “Humpty Dumpty”—even offering to change his name to that in order to make it happen.
As it turns out, while Kaye was engaging in his ultimately quixotic battle, he was evidently filming everything and this film consists of footage of him arguing with studio executives and even with friends who think that he is taking things too far (with even Marlon Brando appearing at one point to suggest that Kaye exercise restraint) along with new material in which Kaye reflects—occasionally through song, I fear—on what he was thinking.
The film is too unfocused at times, and even those predisposed to side with Kaye may find him somewhat grating. Still, the best moments do provide an up-close and undeniably compelling examination of the age-old Hollywood conflict between art and commerce.
One of the most affecting docs in the entire lineup was Allison Berg’s “Time Warp,” a film which, as the title suggests, revolves around the legendary cult classic “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” Admittedly, there have been so many films tackling that particular subject over the years that even the most devoted members of its still-devoted fan base might question the need for yet another.
Happily, this one has actually found a new angle by focusing on a drag theatre company as it plans to stage a shadow-cast presentation of the film in Rock Springs, Wyoming, a once-prosperous mining town that would not seem to be a particularly receptive locale for the show. The film follows the performers as they hold auditions, rehearse tirelessly, and stand firm in the face of opposition from some locals, all leading up to opening night. It’s entertaining enough from a let’s-put-on-a-show perspective, but what really comes through here is the fact that even after a half-century, “Rocky Horror” is still as vital and important as ever, helping to give those who feel marginalized a voice and a real sense of community.
There were also a number of films dealing with technology and the perils hidden beneath their glittery surfaces. Nick Holt’s “AI: Probably Nothing to Worry About” takes a broad and somewhat overlong look at the origins of artificial intelligence, the powers behind the scenes who helped bring it to the forefront, and the warnings that were sounded along the way and often ignored in the race to be the first to make it happen. Hao Wu’s “TikTok Never Dies” recounts the bizarre tale of the phone app that started out as a way of sharing dance videos and eventually became a political football whose very existence eventually became a case heard before the Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, Gar O’Rourke’s drolly funny and quietly incisive “The Siege of Paradise” turned its cameras to Cinque Terre, a picturesque coastal town on the Italian Riviera that is seeing its tranquil nature and singular identity threatened each tourist season by an onslaught of visitors (up to 3.5 million in a town with only 4000 regular residents), including a number of content creators who end up adding to the problem by filming and posting every moment of their visits and encouraging others to come.
I also enjoyed “Stealing Magic,” in which filmmaker Matthew Testa follows a group of magicians as they attempt to track down and apprehend internet pirates who have been stealing the secrets behind their illusions and selling them on black-market websites.
Some of the most affecting documentaries in this year’s festival were a group of films that found their subjects looking back at places and moments of infamy and grappling with the ensuing legacies. Based on the book by Witold Szablowski, Andrew Neel’s disturbing and timely “How to Feed a Dictator” brings together the former private chefs for Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Augusto Pinochet and Kim Jong-il to recount what it was like to work for such people, whether they did so willingly or not, and help illustrate the sharp contrast between the brutal living conditions just outside of their kitchens and the opulent meals that they would prepare on a daily basis. (Yes, the question of whether Idi Amin ever actually ate human flesh, as was the rumor at the time, and no, I will not tell you how it is answered.)
In “The Lorraine,” Sam Pollard uses a wide range of archival materials as well as engrossing contemporary interviews to explore the full history and ongoing legacy of The Lorraine Motel, an establishment that was begun by owners Walter and Loree Bailey to provide safe and comfortable lodging to Black travelers and became a genuine cultural institution that attracted rising political figures and musical talents alike, only to fall into infamy as the place where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968.
In a similar vein, “The Haunting of Pennhurst” takes an alternately disturbing and oddly inspiring look at Pennhurst, a notorious state-run institution for people with disabilities in Pennsylvania that subjected its inmates to decades of neglect and abuse before finally being shut down in 1987 that has been revived as a haunted house that not only firmly leans into its infamous past but utilizes people with the very same disabilities that might have once consigned them to a life in such a place as the performers.
Maybe the most unnerving of all the documentaries I saw at Tribeca this year was “American Zoo,” a film by Tim Travers Hawkins that tells a story so disturbing and bizarre that it makes most straightforward horror films seem tame by comparison. The subject is The Catskill Game Farm, which was established in 1933 by German immigrant Roland Lindermann as America’s first and largest privately owned zoo, and it operated for 73 years before finally closing in 2006. As it happens, in 1959, he brought in Dr. Heinz Heck, a biologist and former head of Munich’s Hellabrun Zoo, to serve as his zoo’s director. As we learn through materials uncovered after the zoo’s closing and interviews with the daughters of Lindermann and Heck as well as former zoo employees, Heck was a leading voice in the Nazi eugenics movement who was obsessed with conducting cruel experiments on animals in the hopes of artificially reviving extinct species—experiments that he continued to conduct after relocating in the U.S. under the auspices of a zoo in an area with a heavily Jewish population.
A bleak observation of both the darkness that often resides beneath the seemingly sunniest of surfaces and the myriad ways in which the most idealistic of ventures can curdle into something unfathomably awful when placed in the wrong hands, “American Zoo” makes for uncommonly compelling viewing.
- Satirizing and Saluting: Mel Brooks’ “Silent Movie” At 50 (June 23, 2026)
Mel Brooks’ “Silent Movie,” released 50 years ago this week, is a beautiful beast of a film. It’s about a director named Mel Funn (Brooks in his first leading role) who, alongside his two faithful friends Marty Eggs (Marty Feldman) and Dom Bell (Dom DeLuise) embark on an ambitious project: to make a film that will, by making so much money at the box office, save their home studio Big Pictures from being gobbled up by a commercial company called Engulf and Devour.
The rub is that Funn, a recovering alcoholic, wants to make a true, “old-fashioned silent movie” in the ‘70s. When pragmatic studio head Studio Chief (Sid Caesar) nearly shuts the idea down—who would ever watch a silent movie in the ‘70s!—Mel Funn says that if they hire big stars to play themselves in the film, each star’s devoted audience will watch the film, ultimately yielding a big payout for Chief. Chief agrees, and Mel, Marty, and Dom go on their merry way to sign the likes of Burt Reynolds, James Caan, Anne Bancroft, Liza Minnelli, Marcel Marceau, and Paul Newman. It’s not a smooth ride, though, for Engulf and Devour tries, up until premiere night, to foil Mel Funn’s plans, all in an effort to engulf and devour Big Pictures.
Brooks wrote the film alongside Ron Clark, Rudy De Luca, and Barry Levinson. Clark approached Brooks with the idea, and together, like Mel Funn, the two went to Alan Ladd Jr., the then-head of Twentieth Century Fox. According to Brooks in the autobiography All About Me!, Ladd responded like the studio chief in “Silent Movie.” At the time, Brooks had just completed “Young Frankenstein” for Fox—a film he was allowed to shoot in rich black-and-white, itself a radical act in 1974. “So with ‘Young Frankenstein’ you take away color, and now you’re coming to me, and you say you want to make a movie that takes away sound?” Ladd told Brooks. “What else are you gonna take away? If I let you go unrestrained, you’re liable to turn Twentieth Century Fox into a vaudeville house!”
But Brooks was determined. He wanted to craft a “tribute to Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Mabel Normand, Fatty Arbuckle, Mack Sennett, and the Keystone Kops,” all performers he adored during the course of his Brooklyn childhood. “Here was another genre that I dearly loved, and I knew I could have so much fun both satirizing and saluting it at the same time.” Brooks finally persuaded Ladd by promising him that if he was allowed to make a silent movie, “it will be the end. After that, I promise I will make regular movies like everybody else.” Ladd agreed and Brooks, of course, went on to break his promise many times over.
Ladd and Studio Chief had a reason to be apprehensive about greenlighting a silent picture. By the ‘70s, young audiences wouldn’t have been very conversant in the forms and rigors of the silent film. The last time a silent film was in theatres was before WWII, in the ‘30s, meaning that by 1976, most of the people who would’ve seen a silent movie in theatres would have been in their 40s or 50s. These films would still run on TV because stations could air them cheaply, but, by and large, they wouldn’t have been as intuitively familiar as mainstream contemporary films.
Brooks maintained the silent film’s vocabulary—intertitles instead of dialogue, a swelling and sensitive score by frequent Brooks collaborator John Morris, elastic slapstick, and endless car chases — but also added his own acumen. He kept what continues to make people laugh, and added what couldn’t be said in the past.
Ever since the enormous success of “Blazing Saddles” and “Young Frankenstein”—in the same year, 1974—one of Brooks’ major goals has been to serve two kinds of audiences simultaneously: the one that gets every film reference and all of the subtext, and the one that hasn’t seen or heard of any of the material being spoofed.
So Brooks built the story around the battle between art and money, an eternal conflict familiar to everyone. In the ‘70s, corporations with no moviemaking experience and who saw cinema mainly as a gateway to hang out with film stars, attend awards ceremonies, and claim credit for awards won by actual filmmakers were buying movie studios. Gulf + Western, for example, had recently gotten hold of Paramount, which is why the studio in “Silent Movie” is a subsidiary of Engulf & Devour. “The bottom line was that they had no regard for what kind of movies they were making as long as they brought in money,” Brooks later wrote.
Of course, even in Buster Keaton’s day, studios had the last word on what got made and what didn’t, but it wasn’t the kind of single-minded, vigor-sapping oversight represented by companies like Coca-Cola, whose aim in buying Columbia Pictures six years after “Silent Movie” was pure unadulterated profit. Engulf and Devour is ridiculed for its lavishness (their bathrooms are nicer than most people’s homes!) as well as the incompetence of its executives (one of whom can’t even put a coat on without help).
The studios themselves aren’t immune to criticism, either. In Mel Funn’s world, studio chiefs facilitate art by giving artists money, but they are not artists. The studio chief doesn’t know what kind of art speaks to people. Moments after Brooks has earned belly laughs from us by having a car buck under the weight of a very pregnant woman, the studio chief insists that slapstick is dead and greenlights a clearly unfunny and nonsensical project. The studio chief doesn’t know how to separate good work from bad, working as he does for a studio whose motto is “Ars Est Pecunia”: art is money. Like most Brooks films, this one ridicules power, portraying it as hypocritical, out of touch, and absurd.
And so, in the same breath that Brooks pays homage to the classics through cameos by performers like Fritz Feld, Henny Youngman, and Harry Ritz, he also delivers us a story with heart. Even if audiences aren’t familiar with Youngman or any of the Ritz Brothers, the jokes land because they are silly, conveyed visually, and play on irony and our expectations.
Later in his autobiography, when talking about “History of the World, Part I,” Brooks says that “we all know a lot more about human nature than history books tell us,” which is why some of Brooks’ liberties with historical figures and events are still able to get his moral point across. I would argue that the same holds true for comedy—we still laugh at the same jokes because if they are good, they will transcend culture, language, and time. Mel Funn looking into a liquor shop window at a display featuring a cartoonishly large bottle of whiskey surrounded by normal-sized bottles, then walking out with the cartoonishly large bottle, will not be funny.
His tumbling around while struggling to get a Murphy bed to work will never not bring tears of joy to my eyes. Marcel Marceau, the mime, uttering the film’s only line of dialogue, will always be uproarious.
And because many of society’s problems seem to be repeating themselves and even getting worse, “Silent Movie”’s heart continues to thrum under our floorboards. What Brooks communicates about the soullessness of commercial entities and about how money and power are antithetical to good art holds true. Much of the world is controlled by a handful of people who have too much money to remain truly human, too much to keep them connected with the life coursing through our veins. These powerful people control where the money goes, the kind of art that is allowed to become visible, and what we can see and think. Shades of Engulf and Devour endanger our humanity to this day.
That’s why “Silent Movie” far surpassed the expectations of studio bosses, both real and fictional, earning $36.1 million in its initial release, nine times its budget. And it’s why, even though Brooks’ greatest films are decades old, they are as alive to me as silent movies were alive for Brooks in 1976.
- Golf is a Great Metaphor: Edward Burns and Brian d’Arcy James on “Finnegan’s Foursome” (June 23, 2026)
“Finnegan’s Foursome” is the fifth re-teaming of writer/director/star Edward Burns and co-star Brian d’Arcy James. They play brothers whose father was a golf pro who delighted in beating them in their cutthroat annual family golf tournament. In his will, he asked them to maintain the tradition and to spread his ashes in four meaningful locations. So, the two men bring one’s son and the other’s daughter to Ireland to play some very competitive golf and sort through some family conflicts.
In an interview with RogerEbert.com, Burns and James talk about their real-life friendship, why stories about siblings are so meaningful, and how Broadway musical star and five-time Tony nominee James prepared himself for one of the film’s highlights, a gorgeous performance of the bittersweet Irish folk ballad “Parting Glass.”
This is your fifth film together. What keeps you coming back to each other?
BRIAN D’ARCY JAMES: When “The Brothers McMullen” came out, that was right when I started my New York time here. So, I’ve been a fan of Ed Burns from the beginning. And then to get to know him and to see his dedication to the thing that he loves, which is making movies, and his kind of relentless effort to tell the stories that he wants to tell, is very inspiring. I have learned from him to appreciate pursuing one’s own goals, which Eddie does beautifully.
One of the consequences of working together is getting to know someone, and I’m happy to report that I would love to spend all the time with Eddie Burns. It’s a nice combination of things, the friendship and also the work that gets this done.
EDWARD BURNS: So much so that we’re playing golf together on Thursday.
Are you as good at golf in real life as you are in the movie?
EB: Absolutely not, no. Editing works wonders.
But I want to tell you about Brian. I met Brian when I was making a micro-budget feature. We shot a film in twelve days with no money, and Brian was friends with another actor in the cast, and she said she’s got somebody great for the part.
Bd’AJ: Shout out to Marcia Bennett.
EB: Brian drove himself out to Long Island. He had five scenes to shoot in one day, and he did it all in one day. Was the greatest guy, and we became friends ever since. When you’re an actor who will show up and do that on a film with that tiny budget, you’re there for all the right reasons, like you love what you do and you kind of appreciate the kind of movies that I’ve been trying to make for such a long time.
So, this is our fifth film together. I think part of why I was so excited to have Brian in the film and so thankful when he said, “Yes,” was that we became very good friends and have, like, a very easy way with one another. And I knew it was going to give me, as an actor, the freedom to feel comfortable playing the horse’s ass that I play in this movie. I knew I was in good, safe hands with my dancing partner, if you will. And then, as a filmmaker, I just knew Brian’s understanding of tone. This movie’s got a tricky tone because we’re playing with real emotions and grief, yet we’re letting ourselves get a little big at times with our comedy. That’s a tricky balance, so for all of those reasons, I knew Brian had to play this part.
Why do so many of your films explore sibling relationships? Why is that endlessly appealing to you?
The movies that I fell in love with as a young kid in film school were character-driven drama comedies, right? Many of those are films that revolve around families and family dynamics. Even when I think about the literature that I love, that’s what I like to read.
People say, “Write what you know.” I’ve almost never written anything that’s autobiographical, other than a novel that I wrote that came out last year, A Kid from Albemarle Road. This movie was inspired by an experience we had after my mom died during COVID. We couldn’t have a proper burial till like a year later. We ended up taking her ashes and distributing them all over New York City to the places that were important to her: her high school, the church where she was baptized, and the church where my parents were married. This movie is not autobiographical, but it was certainly inspired by real events in my life.
Brian, I was so happy that you got a chance to sing “The Parting Glass” in the film, and it is just beautiful.
BdAJ: I’d never heard that song, which is kind of sacrilegious to admit as an Irish American. It’s a beautiful song. And of course, the way it relates in the film to the passing of our father, to the grandchildren’s grandfather, and to having them sing it as well. It’s a great story point, but it’s also a nod to the pub culture in Ireland, where it’s not unusual for people to get up and sing a song, which I think is a beautiful, beautiful thing. When people sing, they’re most in touch with their vulnerabilities. And it’s really a unique view of a human being when all defenses are down, and you’re doing something as vulnerable as singing a song. There’s something inherently dramatic about that.
It was an interesting calibration of how to express a song on film rather than on stage. Being in a pub obviously is a more intimate gathering. But, also, you want to be mindful of how the song is coming across, not only as a tune, but also what the character is going through. It was super exciting to try to figure that out and deliver it in a way that would be helpful to the story.
Another stunning moment in the film is the murmuration. How did that come about?
EB: A friend of mine is Irish and lives just outside of Dublin. I was telling her about the screenplay I was writing, playing with ideas about an American family that is going to take their deceased father’s ashes back to Ireland. And she’s the one who said, “Oh, well, you’ve got to include a murmuration.” And I was unfamiliar with the murmurations. She explained it to me, and I said, “Oh, I love that.“ And then she explained to me that some people think it’s a sign from the other side. And I was like, “Oh, well, that is beautiful. Okay, so we’ll write that into the script.”
Your two characters are very competitive, and they really needle each other. Is that as hostile as it appears, or do they see it as affection?
EB: I don’t think there’s a genuine hostility at all, at least in my experience coming from an Irish-American family with a lot of sort of Irish-American friends. The way I tell Brian’s character in the film that I love him is to make fun of him and give him a hard time. To actually be upfront and honest with your emotions, like the father in the film says, “Like some Yank,” just isn’t something that we do. I say “I love you, Teddy” by insulting him.
BdAJ: The thing about siblings is that you can’t hide. All of your warts and all of your foibles and all of your misdeeds are in my head as well as his. So it’s fun to reveal those, especially to the next generation. If you’re putting on airs, if you’re trying to be something that you’re not, the sibling’s going to be the first one to say, “What are you doing? I know who you are.” I don’t think there’s true hostility. I think it’s just baked into their DNA. This is their love language.
What does this movie mean to you?
EB: I like the way Brian says it.
BdAJ: What this movie delivers is the idea that when you’re going through something that’s difficult, hopefully, you’re going to be able to lean on the people that you love the most, your family. In this case, you have four people who are literally walking through the past of their father and grandfather and honoring his wishes, but also dealing with their grief. The fact that they have each other is a beautiful thing. It is safe to let your guard slip and show your emotions, and you can heal by being with the people you love. Golf is a great metaphor that wraps all that up in a fun way. But at the end of the day, I think it’s really about a family leaning on each other to deal with something sad.
- The King of TV Comedy: James Burrows (1940-2026) (June 22, 2026)
You can’t write a comprehensive account of the history of television without including James Burrows. If he had only co-created “Cheers,” that would probably be true, or if he had only directed every single episode of “Will & Grace.” He brought new meaning to the word “prolific,” helming over a thousand episodes of comedic television in over five decades of work, appearing just this month in HBO’s “The Comeback,” pictured above.
There was something comforting about seeing the name James Burrows on the opening credits of a sitcom. It meant you were, almost every single time, going to see something that elevated the writing. His direction was never showy, but he knew better than anyone how to block a scene and direct a cast to amplify both the jokes and the characters. Go back and watch an episode of “Cheers” with an eye to how the characters move around the bar in a manner that feels somehow both natural and like a great stage play. Burrows was like a theater director for TV, placing actors on stage in front of a live studio audience as if he were staging a great Broadway show.
He was not quite a household name because his profession didn’t allow it, but those who knew his impact mourned him last week when he passed at the age of 85. Like so many workmanlike creators, he just did the job over and over again. You didn’t notice. You just laughed.
Of course, it makes sense that James Burrows had a theatre education, attending New York’s High School of Music & Art before graduating from Yale School of Drama in 1965. Everything changed when the legendary Grant Tinker hired Burrows to direct episodes of two of his best shows for MTM Enterprises: “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and “The Bob Newhart Show.”
He worked regularly pretty much from that assignment, taking the director’s chair for ‘70s hits like “Laverne & Shirley,” “Rhoda,” “Lou Grant,” and over a dozen more, but his first major gig in this era was “Taxi,” a smash hit for which Burrows directed a stunning 75 episodes. He would land his first two of an eventual 11 Emmys for that show, winning in 1980 and 1981 for Outstanding Directing in a Comedy Series. (He would win six trophies for “Cheers,” one for “Frasier,” one for “Will & Grace,” and a final one for the Outstanding Variety Special “Live in Front of a Studio Audience.” He was nominated every single year but one between 1980 and 2005.)
In 1982, Burrows co-created a little show called “Cheers” with Glen and Les Charles, producers from “Taxi.” Burrows was one of the main creative forces behind one of television’s biggest critical and commercial hits, directing 240 episodes over 11 seasons. When Kelsey Grammer spun off to the hit “Frasier,” Burrows was there, directing 32 episodes of the show.
There was simply no one more coveted by TV producers than James Burrows. Here’s a very partial list of the biggest shows he directed more than once: “Friends” (15 episodes), “NewsRadio” (7), “3rd Rock from the Sun” (2), “Will & Grace” (all of ’em), “Mike & Molly” (48), and “2 Broke Girls” (4). He was the king of the pilot, directing almost 100 first episodes of shows, including “Two and a Half Men,” “The Big Bang Theory, “The Neighborhood,” “Night Court,” “Wings,” “Friends,” “NewsRadio,” “Dharma & Greg,” and so many more.
Think just about that specialty of James Burrows: Pouring the foundation on which future directors would build a comedy hit. So much of a show’s personality is set in its pilot episode. And no one did it as much or as well as James Burrows.
The number of household names who owe at least part of their fame to James Burrows is incredible. The world is funnier today because he was in it.
- Out of the Mouths of Cutlery: Tony Hale on “Toy Story 5” (June 22, 2026)
It’s hard to think of a contemporary actor more attuned to the frequency of the oddball than Tony Hale. The 55-year-old actor has spent decades on both the big and small screens channeling his expressive face and chutes-and-ladders vocal timbre into all manner of awkward, neurotic characters: Think the endlessly infantilized Buster Bluth on “Arrested Development,” or Selina Kyle’s perpetually browbeaten aide Gary Walsh on “Veep,” or even his corporate HR director in Netflix’s recent rom-com “Office Romance.”
But for a generation of kids, now, Hale will always be known as the voice of Forky, the gangly, inquisitive spork introduced in “Toy Story 4” as the latest permutation of that series’ preoccupation with the existential nature of childhood and play. Unlike the factory-pressed plastic of Buzz Lightyear or the exquisitely-sewn felt of Woody or Jessie, Forky is simply willed into existence through the confluence of pipe cleaners, popsicle sticks, and the imagination of a little girl. And Hale’s performance perfectly captures the frenetic mix of terror and curiosity that comes with, well, being born yesterday. (Disney even channeled Forky’s newfound inquisitiveness into a series of Disney+ shorts called “Forky Asks a Question?”)
Six years on, Forky (and Hale) return for the Andrew Stanton-directed “Toy Story 5,” which sees Bonnie’s toys reckoning with the latest danger facing the nature of play: the rise of smart technology. This time, the focus turns to Joan Cusack’s cowgirl Jessie, whose attempts to reassert her and the toys’ place in Bonnie’s life in the face of a new iPad-like device named Lilypad (voiced by Greta Lee) put her face-to-face with her own abandonment issues.
Forky’s there, too, mind; he’s a bit more settled than in “4,” integrated into the rest of the gang, but also navigating the anxious early days of his marriage to fellow cutlery companion Karen Beverly (Melissa Villasenor). (You know what they say: Happy knife, happy life.) But despite Forky’s relegation to the background in “5,” he remains a vital part of the toybox, one that Hale keeps finding new angles to appreciate.
With “Toy Story 5” now in theaters, RogerEbert.com caught up with Hale to talk about Forky’s impact on a new generation of kids, the philosophical underpinnings of being a being navigating existence, and how characters like Forky, Buster, and Gary help him process and work through his own struggles with anxiety.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You originated the role of Forky in 2019 when “Toy Story 4” came out. How does it feel to be returning to that 6, 7 years after you took the role?
That’s wild that it’s been 7 years, but if I’m honest, I was so overwhelmed the first time around. I’ve told the story that it wasn’t until I heard my voice in the trailer that I realized they hadn’t replaced me. I was convinced they were gonna replace me with a huge star. I heard my voice, and I was like, “Oh, they kept me.” I was in awe of Pixar, and still am.
So this time around, when I found out Forky was coming back and all this stuff, it was nice. I didn’t have that kind of anxiety attached to it. It was just kind of a fun playtime.
You’re also not as much of a narrative focus in this; you get to be part of the ensemble. In the intervening years, do you feel like you understand Forky better? Does Forky understand himself better?
Oh, I love Forky. Forky is kind of my role model. It’s funny because, even though it’s 2019, Forky has been such a part of my life. When I find out kids are fans, I’ll send them a little voice memo from Forky. I just love how Forky has impacted people. To me, he’s such a curious, open, very to-the-point, real character. I’d like to be a little more like that, you know?
How does it feel to kind of know or suspect that you might be some children’s first experience with existential dread? The question of, Who am I? How was I created?
[Laughs] I know. What I love, though, is that there’s not a darkness to it. He just wants to ask the question. Everybody wants to ask the question, but it doesn’t have to be such a heavy thing. He’s just like, yeah, what is a friend? Where am I, and who am I? What’s going on? The world can obviously be so divisive, and if we just got together and calmly started asking questions, I think we might see a little more unity.
What strikes me about Forky is that when he wants to go to the trash, you can read it as a very nihilistic kind of thing, but he just really wants to be there.
Yeah, he likes the trash. I think that’s another beautiful message of “Toy Story 4,” that there’s a part in all of us that thinks we are in the trash, you know? And it took Woody to say to Forky, “Hey, you’re meant to love and to be loved.” Who doesn’t want to hear that?
It’s kind of the most wholesome version of Frankenstein’s monster. There’s a little bit of Pagliacci in there, too, with Forky.
Dude, somebody needs to teach a class. You should teach a class. You should go to the university and teach a Philosophy on Forky course.
I was gonna ask you if you’ve read or considered any philosophy to get into Forky. Because I envision him as kind of a Buddhist, but, like, an Alan Watts Buddhist.
[Laughs] He’s so comfortable in himself, that would track.
(L-R): Smarty Pants, Atlas, Snappy, Bullseye, and Jessie in Disney and Pixar’s TOY STORY 5. Photo courtesy of Pixar. © 2026 Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved.
The “Toy Story” franchise in general deals with questions of existence long before Forky even enters, and “Toy Story 5” is no different, not just about the nature of your creation, but your sense of usefulness in a world where technology claims to do a better job than you. Obviously, the toys-versus-tech thing is a major component of the plot.
As a parent yourself, I’m curious how those themes resonated with you, reading the script?
What I love about this whole situation is Pixar’s [approach], because they’re not going to do another “Toy Story” if there’s not a story to tell. They’re looking at the landscape of the world, and how technology’s not going away. But what they’re saying is nothing’s gonna replace true connection, true human connection. So even though technology wants to go awry sometimes, let’s always keep that balance.
I say that because, as a parent, I have preached this to my daughter, but I need to point the finger back at myself. I need to watch it, because the little ones, my daughter, they’re watching us. So as long as we can take care of ourselves, and really watch it ourselves, then, you know, hopefully it’ll unfold after that.
All of the toys exist in this spectrum between analog and digital, right? We even have other new characters that have kind of bridged the gap between the analog and the digital, as we’ll see. But Forky is the furthest on the spectrum. He’s not even a manufactured creation in a factory; he is the pure product of a child’s imagination.
You see in this movie a lot of times when you go into Bonnie’s imagination, and the animation changes, it’s super free and full of life. It’s fun to be a toy that was completely born of that wild, cool, free imagination she has.
And, Forky also has his own struggles in this movie: managing a relationship with Karen Beverly. Is Forky’s marriage the healthiest relationship one of your characters has ever had?
That’s a genius question. Okay, let me just track this.
I mean, Forky is kind of overwhelmed by and a little bit scared of Karen Beverly.
But I also love that, because he always keeps it real, and one of his lines is “I love her, but this is gonna be hard.”
Well, you know, they got married so young.
He works fast.
He was literally born yesterday.
And the only other married people he knows are the Potato Heads. And they’ve been around the whole franchise.
You think he asked them for marriage advice?
Oh, yeah. That’s “Toy Story 6,” the Potato Heads giving Forky and Karen Beverly marriage advice.
(L-R): Bullseye, Jessie, and Lilypad in Disney and Pixar’s TOY STORY 5. Photo courtesy of Pixar. © 2026 Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved.
While Forky doesn’t get much chance to opine on the film’s conflicts, did you give any thought to what he thinks of the situation here and of Lilypad?
I think he would think of Lilypad much like he thought of Gabby Gabby in “Toy Story 4,” because Gabby Gabby was considered the evil doll, right? But he’s like, “I think she’s got pretty hair.” So Forky goes over and starts brushing her hair, and it’s because of that crossing of the line that Gabby Gabby had a redemption story. So, even though everybody’s against Lilypad, I think he’d be kind of like, “Huh. So, these buttons…what is… how do you swipe down? How do you swipe? What’s happening here?” He would just kind of be very curious.
I don’t think Forky would see her as a threat in the same way as the other characters would. And that tracks with a lot of your characters; you have obviously spent a career playing kind of the doe-eyed, innocent, and very cynical worlds: You operate so well in that register. There’s poor, mistreated Buster Bluth. It’s Gary in “Veep” just getting absolutely abused by Selina. They’re just trying to keep up and earn the approval of characters who just won’t give them the time of day. What draws you to those characters? What do you find in those people?
If I’m honest, it doesn’t come out of nowhere. Having done Buster, Gary, and a lot of other beaten-down characters. I grew up around anxiety, and had my own struggles with school and all that kind of stuff. And I grew up also loving Bob Newhart and Tim Conway.
Bob Newhart, specifically, would just stand there in his anxiety, and it was funny. You could see the tension in his face, and I feel like that’s how anxiety lives in our bodies, you know? There’s a war going on inside, but you keep it together on the outside, and it’s peeking through. That, I feel, is a lot of my characters, especially Gary.
In those scenarios, for you as a person, what gets you through those moments of anxiety?
I mean, a lot of therapy. I did a lot of cognitive behavioral therapy. [Laughs] But if I’m honest, most of my growing up, I think I was pretty checked out. I was in my own imagination. In different scenarios, I would escape. Later in life, I started to get a little more present and to activate. This one therapist would tell me to activate the five senses. What are you seeing, smelling, tasting, hearing, and touching? To ground myself.
Cut to, I do “Inside Out 2,” playing Fear, and they actually have this little girl having what’s similar to, like, a panic attack in the end. She wakes up out of it through her senses. It’s pretty cool how art sometimes imitates life.
It is a very interesting matrix of emotions you have to convey purely through your voice, especially because you, in live action, are such an expressive performer. Your face is so much of your instrument. I’m curious how you thrive or work around the limitations of having only one element to work through.
I was very nervous about that when I started doing animation years and years ago. Just the fact that it’s just a mic in front of you. I was so used to being able to use the nonverbal, my physicality, to show the anxiety with my eyes. And then I have to relay that through that microphone. I woke up to the fact that, “Oh, I’m gonna do the same performance in front of this mic as I do in front of the camera.”
I just go crazy in the booth. If anything, I take the performance I do on camera and just put it on steroids. And many times, the voice director would have to be like, “Hey, Tony, you gotta stay close to the mic.” You gotta stay close to the mic.”
It’s unfortunate that we’re not getting a new set of “Forky Asks a Question?” for “Toy Story 5.” But what questions do you think Forky still has to ask?
Many. I mean, what I love about the first set was so simple, and it was so because he might have a lot of questions now about relationships. About technology. The great thing is, Forky can be the tool when we’re sometimes afraid to ask. It’s a bummer that there’s shame attached to asking questions, and thankfully, there’s a character like Forky who just doesn’t have that shame.
Out of the mouths of cutlery, you know?
[Laughs] That’ll be the name of his book.
In addition to Toy Story, I wanted to ask you about another recent film you did that explores a similar sense of play: “Sketch.“
That was a passion project, big time.
What were you working out with that one, in terms of the same instincts of play and things like that?
That took us 8 years to make, and Seth Worley, who directed and wrote it, had just been trying to get it made for so many years. I believed mainly in Seth, just wanting this whole marriage of, like, we described it like “Inside Out” meets “Jurassic Park,” about this girl who draws drawings, and they come to life. What Seth did so beautifully is that it’s this ordinary world, and then the supernatural just bashes into it, you know?
There’s a big grief message in it, and how to grieve. Of the things in my work and my career, that’s very much at the top of the list.
Hopefully, it’s not another 6-7 years before you get to play Forky again, but where would you like to see Forky go in a theoretical follow-up?
Travel him. Just, like, put him on a boat and just travel him around the world and just see where that takes him. I would like some kind of Forky companion to be like, “Hey man, I don’t know if I’m comfortable asking this.” He’d be like, “Yeah, game on. No shame, let’s do it.”
Have people in Europe even seen a spork? I don’t know.
I should get it trending. That has not gotten enough of the spotlight. We need some more sporks.
What else are you working on right now?
I’m about to start this Nancy Meyers project with Jude Law, Owen Wilson, and Penelope Cruz, which is very exciting. I just moved to Alabama. My wife’s family is from there, and we had been in LA for, like, 21 years, and we needed to be closer to family. So, that has been awesome, and a big change.
I mean, if the “Toy Story” movies have taught us anything, it’s how to deal with change.
Yeah, I’m not great at it, but I’m trying to get better.
