Category: Entertainment

Paul Williams, a Songwriters Hall of Famer and an Oscar and three-time Grammy winner, is being honored at the TCM Classic Film Festival, where he’ll attend screenings of two films for which he wrote tunes, 1979’s The Muppet Movie and 1987’s Ishtar. The 85-year-old spoke with THR from a convention, where many of his fans had not yet been born when he wrote “We’ve Only Just Begun” and “The Rainbow Connection” but may know him for his Daft Punk collaborations “Touch” and “Beyond.”

How did you learn about your TCM tribute? Were you involved in selecting the films they’ll show?

I got an email and was told that they had run out of people. (Laughs.) No, it’s wonderful, and TCM is such a great channel. The older I get, the more I appreciate classic films — my favorites include A Place in the Sun and Paths of Glory — and they are kept alive by TCM. At any rate, they picked the films for my tribute, and I was thrilled with the choices. Ishtar, to me, was one of my greatest challenges — being hired to write “bad songs” [for characters who are bad songwriters] was really interesting. As for The Muppet Movie, it started when I was a guest on The Muppet Show and met Jim Henson and all the Muppet performers, and we formed almost a blood brotherhood.

How did you get started in the business?

I’ve described myself as an out-of-work actor who got really lucky. I did a movie called The Loved One [1965] and had a nice part in it. Then I worked for several months on a picture called The Chase [1966] with Marlon Brando and Robert Redford, but I was inches away from being an extra in that. And then I started writing songs. I think I write songs with my instincts as an actor — I try to crawl inside the characters and write like they would. The longest partnership of my life was with Roger Nichols, who was at A&M Records when I was signed there. They were looking for a lyricist for Roger. He would present me a finished melody. We wrote songs together like “We’ve Only Just Begun” and “Rainy Days and Mondays.”

With “Evergreen,” my understanding is Barbra Streisand wrote the melody and you wrote the lyrics.

I was hired [to write the songs for 1976’s A Star Is Born] by Barbra and [producer] Jon Peters. There was a song that I’d written with Kenny Ascher that she loved called “You and Me Against the World,” and she said, “There’s a scene after [Kris Kristofferson’s character is] killed where I find a song that he’s written, and I’d like to have something like ‘You and Me Against the World.’ “

At one of my first meetings with Barbra, she sat down and took out a guitar, which she was just learning to play, and she went, “Could you do anything with this?” It was such a beautiful melody, but she was very shy and demure as she was offering it. I went, “Are you joking? I think that’s your love theme!” The shooting schedule was such that the song came very late in the shoot. I worked on Kris’ songs first, and I heard again and again from Barbra, “Where’s my lyric?” Eventually I wrote “Evergreen.”

You were omnipresent as a public figure for many years — performing, acting, appearing on TV game shows, etc. — but then you sort of disappeared for a while. What was that about?

I was a major cocaine addict and alcoholic, and for 10 years I was missing in action — it was as if somebody else was using my body. You know you’re an alcoholic when you misplace a decade. For me, the ’80s were essentially gone. But I just celebrated 36 years of sobriety. I went to treatment, and I loved it — I felt a connection to the world around me, I felt safe, and I felt unashamed. I felt like Lazarus, and I began to rebuild my life. Then I went to UCLA, got my certification as a drug and alcohol counselor and focused on that instead of music. The phone was not ringing, I was not the new kid in town, and I had a reputation that was not the best. But then a wonderful thing happened. The phone rang and it was Brian Henson [Jim’s son], who was doing The Muppet Christmas Carol [1992], and he asked if I would write the songs for it. It was the toe-in-the-water experience that gave me my musical career back.

This story appeared in the April 8 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.

Saturday Night Live is set to leave longtime Canadian home Global Television for rival CTV and the Crave streamer, starting with the 52nd season later this year.

The deal between CTV-parent Bell Media and NBCUniversal Global TV Distribution will see the NBC sketch comedy series shift to CTV and Crave, which already has library SNL episodes on its platform. A change of Canadian rights holders also follows NBCU’s Peacock as a direct-to-consumer streaming platform continuing to focus on the U.S. market and doing deals for its studio programming with Canadian broadcasters.

“A proven hit for over 50 years, the series has always been at the vanguard of pop culture, setting the tone for modern humor. We will be enjoying alongside viewers when the new season premieres on Crave and CTV,” Justin Stockman, vp of global content at Bell Media said in a statement on Monday.

The Canadian rights to SNL shifting north of the U.S. border from longtime Corus Entertainment comes as local media giants continue to play musical chairs with major U.S. TV brands amid streaming competition. In May 2025,  Warner Bros. Discovery did deals to move popular lifestyle and entertainment brands like HGTV, Food Network, Cooking Channel, Magnolia Network and OWN from Corus Entertainment to rival Rogers Sports and Media.

WBD also switched other entertainment brands like Discovery, Motor Trend, Science, Animal Planet and I.D. from longtime homes at Bell Media to Rogers. The realignment of top American channels and series aims to allow local broadcasters to continue following TV viewers online, and targeting where possible Canadians increasingly favoring U.S. streaming platforms Netflix and Prime Video.

The big loser in that Canadian TV horse race is Corus, a major buyer of American series from major Hollywood studio suppliers, but which has been hobbled by a recapitalization plan to stay in business that has yet to receive final approval from the CRTC, the country’s TV watchdog. Corus draws Canadian primetime TV viewers with American series like the Survivor and NCIS franchises, the FBI,CIA and 9-1-1 series, but has now given up SNL as it deals with a continuing decline in linear TV advertising in Canada.

The New York Times is making some significant changes to its executive ranks, The Hollywood Reporter has learned, promoting a pair of executives as its CTO is set to depart in the coming months, underscoring the news company’s business focus on subscriptions, data and technology under CEO Meredith Kopit Levien.

Levien revealed the changes in a memo to staff Monday morning.

The changes will see New York Times CTO Jason Sobel exiting the company, with Levien telling staff that he informed her of his decision to leave the role late last year. The Times is beginning the search for a successor, with Sobel sticking around until they find one.

Sobel joined the Times in 2021, and is based in California. Levien wrote that “he believes, and I agree, that The Times would be best served in this next chapter by a ranking tech executive who can be present very regularly in our NYC headquarters.”

Alex Hardiman and Hannah Yang will also be promoted to executive VP, with Hardiman adding oversight of engineering and overseeing product and Yang overseeing data at the company. Both executives have also been closely involved in growing the Times‘ subscription business, with Hardiman already overseeing cooking and games and Yang overseeing marketing and customer service.

“Alex and Hannah have proven themselves as leaders, collaborators, and executives at The Times,” Levien tells THR in a statement. “Alex is a gifted product and operational leader who helped shape the essential subscription strategy that has driven much of the Times‘ recent commercial success. She’s also been a key leader in our continued embrace of technology to make our journalism and products more engaging and accessible. Hannah embodies mission-driven leadership in a way that has inspired the whole company to keep our subscription business growing and thriving. I couldn’t be more optimistic about what they’ll accomplish with expanded responsibilities from here.”

Hardiman, notably, is also the executive tasked with “working with leaders across the enterprise to use AI ambitiously and responsibly to enhance our human-made journalism, make our products more accessible and useful, and better enable our colleagues in their day to day work,’ Levien wrote to staff.

“As part of that accountability, Alex is marshalling our efforts to develop a cross-company AI product vision, which she’s facilitating on behalf of AG [Times publisher AG Sulzberger], Joe [Times editor Joe Kahn] and me, and with leaders in news and within each of the products in our portfolio,” she added.

Whomever the Times hires as its next CTO will report jointly to Hardiman and Levien, with Levien and Yang jointly overseeing data. The thinking is that by promoting the pair to EVP and giving them key responsibilities alongside the CEO decision-making will be sped up in the company.

Levien also announced that Rebecca Grossman-Cohen and Anand Venkatesan will join the company’s executive committee, which sets the direction for the company. Grossman-Cohen had been Levien’s chief of staff and had been leading Times partnerships with tech platforms, including AI companies. She will become senior VP of strategic partnerships and executive operations. Venkatesan is senior VP of strategy and corporate development, including oversight of M&A activity. He will add oversight of the Audience Insights Group.

The changes underscore the priorities of the Times‘ business strategy, with a heavy emphasis on product improvements, subscription growth, and technology investment and innovation, including finding the right ways to use AI at the news organization.

In Waves, Phuong Mai Nguyen’s animated adaptation of AJ Dungo’s cult graphic novel, will open the 65th edition of Cannes Critics’ Week, the sidebar that runs alongside the main Cannes festival from May 13 to 21. It was one of the 11 features making up this year’s selection, announced on Monday. (Full Critics’ Week lineup below).

Will Sharpe and Stephanie Hsu head up the voice cast for the English-language version of In Waves. Critics’ Week plans to show both that and the French version, which features voice work from Lyna Khoudri, Rio Vega, Paul Kirscher and Biran Ba.

Inspired by Dungo’s own, real-life love story, In Waves is set in California and follows a skateboarder and a surfer, friends from school who later become lovers and find their relationship tested by illness.

The feature, produced by French group Silex Films together with Charades and Anonymous Content, is the first animated film to open Critics’ Week. Nguyen was Oscar-shortlisted for her short My Home.

In Waves is one of seven features picked for Cannes Critics’ Week competition, which also includes Dua, the new film from Kosovan director Blerta Basholli, who won the Sundance Grand Jury prize with Hive in 2021. The film looks at the lasting impact of the Kosovo War of the 1990s through the story of Dua, a 13-year girl whose family life continues to be shaped by the conflict.

Chinese director Zou Jing’s A Girl Unknown, another competition entry, explores the known exploring the implications of the China’s decades-long one-child policy, which resulted in thousands of baby girls being abandoned across the country. The drama follows a girl who grows up with three different families across her infancy and adolescence.  

Scottish Yemeni director Sara Ishaq made the Critics’ Week cut with The Station, a drama centered on a women-only gas station in a gender-segregated, and war-torn village in Yemen. The only male who is tolerated at the station, which becomes a special meeting place for the women of the villages, is Layal’s 12-year-old brother, who she is determined to keep out of the conflict.

Also in competition are Mexican director Bruno Santamaria Razo’s 6 Meses En El Edificio Rosa Con Azul, a 1990s-set family drama set against the AIDS crisis and French director Marine Atlan’s first feature La Gradiva; and Viva, from Spanish actress-turned-director Aina Clotet.

French Irish director Alexander Murphy’s documentary Tin Castle about an Irish traveller family, Murphy’s follow-up to 2025′ Goodbye Sisters, is also in competition.

The seven competition films are in the running for the Louis Roederer Foundation Rising Star Award and the Le Grand Prix AMI Paris.

Out Of Competition special sceenings include French directors Julien Gaspar-Oliveri’s Stonewall and Pierre Le Gall’s Flesh and Fuel.

The closing night film is French director Félix de Givry’s Adieu Monde Cruel, starring Anatomy of a Fall breakout Milo Machado-Graner as a teenager who, after declaring to family and friends he will commit suicide, fails in the attempt.

Full 2026 Cannes Critics’ Week Lineup below.

Opening Film
In Waves; director: Phuong Mai Nguyen

Competition
The Station (Al Mahattah); director: Blerta Basholli
La Gradiva; director: Marine Atlan
A Girl Unknown (La deuxième fille); director: ZOU Jing
Seis meses en el edificio rosa con azul; director: Bruno Santamaría Razo
Tin Castle (Irish Travellers); director: Alexander Murphy
Viva; director: Aina Clotet
Special Screenings
Flesh and Fuel (Du Fioul dans les artères); director: Pierre Le Gall
Stonewall (La Frappe); director: Julien Gaspar-Oliveri
Closing Film
Adieu monde cruel; director: Felix De Givry