Hollywood on the Potomac - March 2016

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POLLYWOOD

HOLLYWOOD ON THE POTOMAC

A NEW KIND OF NEWS MAGAZINE Amazon’s ‘The New Yorker Presents’ brings the iconic magazine’s stories to life B Y J A N E T D O N O VA N

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’m genetically incredibly anxious,” Amazon’s head of half-hour programming Joe Lewis told several small audiences at the new Landmark Theaters on V Street in adjoining screening rooms. The occasion was “The New Yorker Presents,” a joint production of Alex Gibney’s Jigsaw Productions, Conde Nast Entertainment and Amazon Prime Video. The ser ies br ings the Joe Lewis, Jane Mayer and Shayne Cooperman at the Washington premiere of the “The New Yorker Presents.’ written pieces to the big screen. “When I think of The New Yorker, We wanted to know words come to mind like intelligence and more about the art of making sophistication and wit and artistry and “shorts,” a film format that timeliness. All of those adjectives scared me at is becoming increasingly first because I make television. Most television popular, so we talked to doesn’t even come close.” Shayne Cooperman, the “The New Yorker has been incredibly series “showrunner,”about influential,” Lewis added. “It was founded the phenomena. as a home for sophisticated humor which “Short form is having a real heyday right was much different from the broader now.The challenge is, because they’re all shorts, comedy magazines that were available some are one minute, some are 15 minutes, but at the time. That’s part of the reason I they’re all shorts and they’re all so different; and think it makes sense to have the show on even the connective tissue in between them Amazon alongside shows like, “Mozart in are really short films,” she told us. “I look at the Jungle,” and “Transparent,” and Woody them all as shorts. I think it’s about how you Allen’s upcoming series. I was scared the package them. This is one way of packaging whole time, but Alex was very calm. I think them, but it’s not the only way. The really that lack of fear just speaks to his wont and great thing about shorts is that I think they ability to make noise and expose truth and used to be made as a calling card, so that you get inside worlds that most of us can only could have the opportunity to do something imagine. Lewis said Gibney was instrumental ... like a teaser or a trailer … like this is what in picking the film makers, picking the I can do, and I want to do something longer.” source material and contributing to the Cooperman said today, the shorts are no longer overall aesthetic. “He also directed one of just a calling card, they actually can be what the centerpiece documentaries which is you need to establish yourself and your vision. incredibly enlightening and incredibly scary She added that people who were known for at the exact same time,” continued Lewis. long foreign films are also coming to shorts That segment was called The Agent. as another way of story-telling and expressing

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themselves. “The other thing is that not every story out there needs to be really long to tell it. You can be much more effective in a shorter version, so I think that you combine a story that works well in a short format, with a master story-teller.” To get a take on how the guests related to the format, we asked Steve Clemons, editor-at-large at The Atlantic, what he thought. “We’re all in a big research and d eve l o p m e n t p h a s e,” he r e p l i e d . “ We don’t know what works and what’s going to hit. This is an interesting concept.We have to ask though, is there really an audience for this? Maybe there is. There’s an audience for good, high quality, long form journalism, we know that, but this is long form journalism in video clips. I’m interested in the broader side of how they’re covering important current events like what happened with 9/11. From a journalistic standpoint, you bring in the different voices. That’s something that this video didn’t do as much; so it’s an interesting question editorially out there.” We suspect he was referring to “The Agent. “ Jane Mayer, both a journalist for The New Yorker and author of books about, as she calls it — the dark side — was also curious. “In some ways, I wondered,” Mayer said about “The Agent” segment, noting that “if the audience found it more powerful because you see these faces that we as writers get to see. Maybe it is more powerful that way.”

WA S H I N G T O N L I F E

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