Tag: Entertainment-Variety

“Heat is like a death sentence.”

The line, spoken by a Kuwait-based meteorologist in Jacqueline Zünd’s “Heat,” anchors a film that examines global warming not through explanation but through what the Swiss filmmaker describes as “a sensory experience.”

Premiering in the main competition at Visions du Réel, Switzerland’s leading documentary film festival, “Heat” immerses the viewer in environments where extreme temperatures are entirely reshaping the way people live and work, exposing stark inequalities as the wealthy retreat into air-conditioned worlds, leaving those who serve them to endure the extremes.

Shot across the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Egypt, the film shifts between a handful of characters, including a delivery driver on 12-hour shifts in scorching urban landscapes, a Kenyan woman working in a Dubai ice lounge, a real estate agent who brings ice and food to stray cats, and the meteorologist who reflects on how daily life has changed as temperatures rise.

The film grew out of Zünd’s fiction feature “Don’t Let the Sun,” which premiered at the Locarno Film Festival last year. The two were developed in parallel, each feeding into the other.

“While researching my fiction film, I found so many interesting details about the subject that it felt like an invitation to make a documentary,” she tells Variety.

In “Don’t Let the Sun,” entire societies shift to living at night – an idea inspired by real working conditions in the Persian Gulf. “There are construction workers who already live at night because it’s too hot during the day,” she explains. “I pushed that idea further in my fiction work: what if our entire lives were reversed?”

Making the documentary, she says, she found that this imagined future is already taking shape. “I was writing about a dystopia,” she adds. “And then I found this dystopia in real life.”

Gaining access to these environments proved challenging, says Zünd, not only due to temperatures sometimes exceeding 50 degrees Celsius, but also because companies were reluctant to participate and filming conditions in the region are tightly controlled.

Filming was done with a minimal crew, sometimes without formal authorization, particularly when shooting inside the delivery driver’s shared accommodation.

This scene offers only a partial view, Zünd notes. “This one was actually a nice camp compared to the others – some are horrible places, where you have 10 to 15 men in one room without proper air.”

The shoot also drew attention from authorities. While filming in Dubai, members of the crew were briefly detained and questioned before being released. Zünd says they were not given any explanation for the questioning, which was treated as routine.

The film’s striking, highly stylized visual language was developed in collaboration with longtime collaborator, cinematographer Nicolai von Graevenitz. The goal, says Zünd, was for the viewer to “feel” the unbearable heat.

“I always want to translate states visually,” she says. “Not through text or dialogue, but through something physical with images and sound – like a cinematic mirage.”

Early footage shot in extreme temperatures failed to convey the sensation Zünd had experienced on location. “We were filming in 50 degrees, but it didn’t look hot at all,” she recalls.

That realization led her to focus more on sound early on in the edit. “The editor was working a lot on levels, on winds – ‘Does this sound hot or not?,’” she explains. “There are a lot of uncomfortable sounds and we had to make sure they were not too uncomfortable and wouldn’t drive the viewers out of the cinema theater,” she jokes.

Visual strategies also play a key role. The film opens with real mirages filmed near Aswan in Egypt, where atmospheric conditions produce optical distortions. Zünd sought out the location specifically. “I wanted to translate heat visually for the opening of the film – I wanted something powerful,” she says.

Later in the film, sequences shot on Super 8 introduce what she describes as a temporal shift. “It’s a nostalgia of the present,” she explains. “As if we are remembering today from the future.”

For Zünd, the decision to focus on sensation reflects her wish to engage with audiences suffering from climate fatigue. “People are tired of being told what’s happening,” she says. “So I wanted to approach it in a different way.”

“Heat” will premiere in the international competition at Visions du Réel on April 20. Produced by Louis Mataré for Lomotion AG in co-production with Zünd’s Real Film, the documentary is backed by ARTE and SFR (Swiss Radio and Television). Sales are handled by Taskovski Films.

Visions du Réel runs in Nyon until April 26.

The local horror-thriller “Salmokji : Whispering Water” retained its position at the top of the South Korean box office during the weekend of Apr. 17–19.

According to data from KOBIS, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council, the film earned $3.3 million from 472,121 admissions, maintaining a commanding 50% share of the weekend revenue. Directed by Lee Sang-min and starring Kim Hye-yoon and Lee Jong-won, the film follows a road-view camera crew that encounters terrifying supernatural events at a remote reservoir. Since its launch, the Showbox-distributed title has reached a cumulative gross of $10.2 million from 1,461,849 admissions.

“Project Hail Mary” held steady in second place, earning $1.3 million over the weekend. Starring Ryan Gosling, the film has now reached a cumulative gross of $17.5 million from 2,298,106 admissions since its Mar. 18 opening.

In third place, “The King’s Warden” added $712,905 to its record-breaking total. With 104,955 admissions over the three-day period, the film’s cumulative attendance now stands at 16.5 million. While it has slowed significantly in its eleventh week, the historical drama continues to extend its record as the second most-watched film in Korean history, trailing only “The Admiral: Roaring Currents” (17.61 million). Its cumulative revenue has reached $108.6 million.

The identity drama “My Name” debuted in fourth place, earning $380,515 from 60,953 admissions. Directed by veteran filmmaker Chung Ji-young and starring Yeom Hye-ran and Shin Woo-bin, the film is set in 1998 and follows a boy named Young-oak who struggles with his feminine name and complex identity at a testosterone-heavy boys’ school, while his mother Jeong-sun (Yeom) begins to confront long-repressed memories of the 1948 Jeju April 3 Uprising. As Young-oak navigates school violence, his mother’s trauma regarding the historic massacre and state crackdown resurfaces, forcing both to find their place in a society still reckoning with its violent past. Since its Apr. 15 release, the film has grossed $611,162. The film played at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year.

Animation “Goat” debuted in fifth place, earning $114,641 and its cumulative gross stands at $115,563.

Miyazaki Hayao classic “Kiki’s Delivery Service” re-entered the charts in sixth place following a specialty re-release, earning $140,117. It was followed by the action-thriller “Shelter” in seventh place, which grossed $41,752. Since its Apr. 15 debut, it has earned $71,594. American action-thriller “Normal” opened in eighth place with $34,259.

Rounding out the top 10 were a re-release of “The Truman Show” in ninth place with $48,875, and the Japanese sports anime “Haikyu!!: The Dumpster Battle” in tenth with $47,969.

The overall market collective gross for the weekend was $6.6 million, down from last week’s $8.01 million.

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With its popular $25/month “Essential” package, Philo has long been one of the best values in streaming, when it comes to OTT television. Subscribers get access to more than 70 live TV channels and 130+ on-demand streaming channels for the under-$30 price point, with the ability to livestream shows and movies on up to three devices.

Now, the San Francisco-based streamer is pitching a new “Bundle+” package that adds HBO Max and Discovery+ to the lineup for a new price of $33 monthly.

The expanded offerings launched last fall, and was formerly known as “Philo Core.” Current Philo subscribers automatically had HBO Max and Discovery+ added to their accounts. New users, meantime, can snag the deal at Philo.com.

The $33 price point includes access to 70+ live TV channels including A&E, AMC, Comedy Central, Food Network, HGTV, Lifetime and MTV, plus access to the ad-supported tiers of HBO Max and Discovery+ for on-demand content. Philo already offers AMC+ at no additional charge.

On their own, an HBO Max subscription starts at $10.99 and Discovery+ starts at $5.99, so you’re saving yourself a few bucks by getting them as part of the Philo bundle.

You can use Philo to stream shows like “Euphoria” and “Hacks” on HBO Max, along with “RuPaul’s Drag Race” on MTV, the new season of “Dr. Pimple Popper” on TLC, “Love & Hip-Hop: Atlanta” on VH1 and more.

Subscribers also get access to more than 130 free streaming channels, and more than 75,000 on-demand TV shows and movies to watch online on your computer, tablet, phone or smart TV (via the Philo app).

Philo’s plans include unlimited DVR so you can record content to watch back later, and you can stream on three devices at a time (note: Philo lets you create up to ten profiles per account though you can only have three simultaneous streams).

Philo is one of the few streamers that offers both live TV and on-demand content in one package, with the company hailing it as “an integrated, unified experience” (while Hulu + Live TV also offers live TV streaming and Hulu’s on-demand library, their monthly price is increasing to $90/month). Philo adds that the “HBO Max library brings appointment viewing and cultural moments, while Discovery+ delivers the deep catalog engagement that complements our audience preferences perfectly.”

Sign up for Philo’s new package here for just $33. You can also test out the $25 “Essential” service with a seven-day free trial here.

SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers from “America My Dream,” Season 3, Episode 2 of “Euphoria,” now streaming on HBO Max.

A funny thing has happened to Sydney Sweeney since the second season of “Euphoria” aired. She became one of the biggest stars in the world.

She’s not alone in that, among her HBO castmates. Since 2022, when the teen drama signed off for what would become a four-year hiatus, Zendaya has proven herself a reliable anchor for both sophisticated dark comedies like “Challengers” and “The Drama” and blockbusters such as “Dune” and the upcoming “Spider-Man: Brand New Day.” Jacob Elordi, meanwhile, has just this year been nominated for an Oscar for “Frankenstein” and led “Wuthering Heights.” But Sweeney’s fame has had a bit of an edge. And “Euphoria,” now back on the air, isn’t merely allowing the actress to do her best work in years; it’s playing off of the by-now familiar Sweeney image in sharp and intriguing ways.

In the time-jumped third season, Sweeney’s Cassie has gotten what she always wanted. Elordi’s Nate has chosen her, and the two are engaged. Her happily-ever-after, though, comes with complications: In order to finance the dream wedding she believes she deserves — and, possibly, for reasons lying closer to kink than to pragmatism — Cassie has taken up a sideline as an OnlyFans model. Performing for her unseen audience in states of undress and role-playing characters including a subservient dog, Cassie seems, for once, as if she has never, ever been happier. 

All of which exists in counterpoint to the past few years of Sweeney’s life in public. Sweeney is unabashed about leveraging her appearance and form both in art and in advertisements; her much-discussed “good jeans” campaign for American Eagle played off of the idea that the viewer is ogling Sweeney, while her deal with soapmaker Dr. Squatch to sell soap purportedly containing her bathwater took the same premise to a certain endpoint. Seizing the means of production for herself and making, rather than merely pitching, a product, Sweeney came up with a line of lingerie — a brand that she wears in her puppy play scene on “Euphoria.” 

Observing Sweeney’s career and interviewing her, I’ve been consistently struck by her frank understanding of what Hollywood wants of her, and her ability to deliver it. (In her 2023 Variety cover story, Sweeney said that she asks “Euphoria” creator Sam Levinson to amp up Cassie’s mania: “Give me more. I’m going to show you what I have. There’s so much to this girl.”) Up to this point, though, Sweeney’s recent career has been operating on two tracks. In ads, she contorts herself into an object of fantasy; in movies, she’s often disarmingly low-key, particularly in her 2025 offerings. In “The Housemaid,” which turned into a zeitgeist smash over the holidays last year, Sweeney plays a woman who is tamped-down by the script’s design. Her Millie is a meek service employee in the home of two vastly more emotionally labile creatures (played by Amanda Seyfried and Brandon Sklenar); when Sweeney finally gets to blow up, late in the film, it’s cathartic, and a reminder of just how much she’s been holding in reserve. 

Sweeney similarly cedes the fireworks to basically every other member of the ensemble of last year’s undersung survival drama “Eden”; Ana de Armas and Jude Law get to play grand and operatic emotions while Sweeney’s Margret, a mild-mannered woman of faith, grits her teeth. And Sweeney’s bid for awards attention with the boxing drama “Christy” forewent “Rocky”-style inspiration in favor of a sort of haunted naturalism. Festival-goers responded, but the film proved perhaps too dour for audiences, and for the Academy. Its great triumph may have been as a calling card for the future: Working as an executive producer and freed from the demand to make a crowd-pleaser, this was the kind of work Sweeney wanted to do. The ads, for months prior to “Christy” the headline about Sweeney, were in service of a more interesting project.

That project continues with a role that, now, brings together Sweeney’s two disparate personas, as actress and as object. And the show that brought Sweeney to fame continues to know just how to use her. Sweeney’s ability to inhabit flatness and quiet, so present in all of her work last year, is a part of the “Euphoria” palette, too: People forget that, after fantasizing about screaming at her friends in the Euphoria High bathroom, Cassie goes eerily silent. It’s this studied blandness that makes Cassie’s emotional eruptions all the more pronounced.

But “Euphoria,” too, is archly aware of Sweeney’s past few years. On the most literal of levels, a woman known for pitching herself as the product playing a camgirl is a joke that lands. But it’s the joy and brio that Sweeney brings to Cassie that bring it to the next level. Cassie struggled through high school with trying to identify her real self; to return once more to the bathroom scene, perhaps the show’s most famous sequence, it’s why she dressed up like an extra from “Oklahoma!” Maybe that could have been the real her — or it was, for a day. Cassie, like so many of us, ultimately defines herself by the way that she is seen. 

Sometimes, that definition happens by identifying what Cassie doesn’t want. In the season’s second episode, when her beloved fiancé insists she shut down her OnlyFans, Cassie’s eyes flare with a barely controlled anger, before she catches herself. And earlier in the episode, Cassie’s conversation with Maddy (Alexa Demie) has an explosive charge. Cassie and Maddy had, earlier in the series, been opposing sides of a love triangle, competing for the attentions of Nate; Cassie has notionally won, and is choosing, in conversation with her former friend and rival, to be as magnanimous as she can. She ought to have asked for Maddy’s blessing, Cassie declares, and she regrets it, although her romance was unstoppable. “What Nate and I were feeling for each other was obviously real,” she says over a poolside Aperol spritz. “Otherwise we wouldn’t be getting married.” 

Sweeney delivers the line with the kind of naiveté only a shrewd performer can deploy: One can see that Cassie is willing herself to believe this, and casting herself in a grand drama of love and friendship. “I feel like I found the love of my life, at the expense of the other love of my life,” she declares, trailing off theatrically. Yes, Cassie wants to be seen as hot by men who are willing to pay for the privilege; she also wants to be seen as lovable by Maddy. Does Cassie truly believe that she ought to have asked for Maddy’s permission to get married? Well, she wants to be the kind of person who would believe that — and that’s good enough. 

This is high-wire acting of a sort that’s less noisy than some of Sweeney’s past “Euphoria” work, although Sweeney and Demie get to some kooky places as their time together on screen goes on. (Cassie, pleading for Maddy’s help to improve her OnlyFans, bugs her eyes as she declares she might be able to become “a big fish in a big pond.”) But it’s crafty and resourceful work by a performer who — unlike the character she’s playing — seems truly to know herself. And it unites, at last, all the ways we see Sweeney into one complicated, compelling package. 

Vertical drama is entering Australia’s mainstream screen industry conversation, with Cairns Crocodiles set to host a dedicated microdrama panel that brings together platform executives, broadcasters and content creators at the annual APAC creativity festival.

Tim Oh, general manager of leader microdrama company COL Group International, is scheduled to appear at the Queensland event alongside Nikyah Hutchings, executive producer of commercial and partnerships at NITV, in a session titled The Maestros of Microdramas. The panel will examine how the format is reshaping storytelling habits, brand integration and creative opportunity across the region.

“Australia has been quietly outperforming every other market on [microdrama platform] FlareFlow for some time now, in revenue per user, in audience depth, and in how quickly new users convert,” Oh said. “To give you a sense of the scale, Australia’s new user payment rate is close to 20%, more than double what we see in most other developed markets.”

“Vertical is not coming to Australia,” Oh added. “It is already here, and it is working better here than almost anywhere else in the world. The question now is how we build on that together.”

Hutchings recently claimed the Grand Prix at the B&T 30 Under 30 awards after winning the media sales and account management category. She oversees NITV’s commercial content slate and contributes to SBS’s “Australia Explained” series. “Microdramas are changing how culture shows up on our phones and is this exciting meeting point of culture, tech and money,” she said. “I’m looking forward to sitting down with Tim Oh in Cairns about how vertical storytelling can open up new opportunities and make space for more voices, and what they really mean for creators, broadcasters and brands.”

The format has tended to be discussed in Australian industry circles as a mobile or platform phenomenon rather than a storytelling one. “Disruption is happening and the future is not yet written,” said Catherine de Clare, co-curator of the film and screen track at Cairns Crocodiles. “We want creatives and business leaders to start thinking about what opportunities are out there and what kind of world we want to build.”

The panel will also address the question of brands moving into microdrama, as the format is projected by some analysts to reach box office parity with Hollywood releases this year. Cairns Crocodiles, which positions itself at the intersection of Australian and Asian media markets, has expanded in recent years as a site for cross-regional deal-making and format development.

There’s a bit of acting advice that’s often ascribed to Noël Coward: “Speak clearly and don’t bump into the furniture.”

But if you’re Kelli O’Hara and Rose Byrne, by all means, slide down the staircase, nosedive over the settee and slur your words while tossing back two strong martinis and a case of Dom Pérignon. The actors check every one of those boxes during the drunken high point of “Fallen Angels,” the revival of a nearly forgotten Coward play that’s being performed on Broadway for the first time in 70 years.

The show follows two upper-crust friends, Julia (O’Hara) and Jane (Byrne), who discover their former lover Maurice (Mark Consuelos) has touched down in London while their husbands are on a golf trip. Excited, yet anxious, over the prospect of reconnecting with the man that got away, the pair fortifies themselves with cocktails and bubbly during a boozy dinner. “Champagne is a great strengthener,” Julia assures Jane, who is worried that the two will “go down like ninepins” if Maurice is as “attractive and glamorous as ever.”

But instead of paving the way for some good ol’ fashioned infidelity, the liquid courage causes the women to turn on each other, with the evening devolving into inebriated insults and recriminations. And the two stars, who at first seem to be playing in different registers with O’Hara launching her punchlines towards the balcony and Byrne aiming for the second row, harmonize to deliver a master class in physical comedy. It’s demented, hilarious fun to see Byrne kick off her heels and rappel down her chair or witness O’Hara dipping her after-dinner strawberries into her Cordial Medoc as though dunking shrimp into cocktail sauce. The two are so silly, so loopily in synch, that the scene, which occurs halfway through the second act, lifts the entire show, giving it a buoyancy that has been lacking during its exposition-heavy beginning.

So what to make of “Fallen Angels”? First produced in 1925 when Coward was just 24, it was an attempt to put a stiff upper lip spin on French farce. Although scandalous in its day for its frank depiction of female desire and open discussion of infidelity and premarital sex (Maurice “had” Julia in Pisa and Jane in Venice and “Florence and Florence”), the show seems positively tame post-“Sex and the City,” “Bottoms” and “Booksmart.” When it premiered it was nearly banned by the censors, and Coward had to tone things down to get the Lord Chamberlain’s seal of approval. He added the naughty bits back in during a 1958 revision, but the show could have benefitted from a full rewrite, not just a polish.

There are some lines that have Coward’s trademark sparkle (“I have heard that the worst part of parenting is the children”), while others feel like the product of a young playwright still trying to find his voice. And the main characters are little more than soused ciphers, whose one defining trait is their barely contained horniness. They lack the shading — the pathos hiding behind elegantly crafted quips — that Coward brought to the protagonists of his masterpieces, “Private Lives” and “Design for Living.”

Roundabout Theater Company’s Interim Director Scott Ellis directs “Fallen Angels” with screwball flair, staging the crossed-wire mishaps, bedroom hijinks and tipsy pratfalls like a Jazz Age “Noises Off.” He also wisely encourages O’Hara and Byrne to go-for-broke and milk every punchline, but Ellis has less success coaxing memorable performances from the show’s supporting players. Aasif Mandvi and Christopher Fitzgerald barely register as Jane and Julia’s oblivious husbands, while Consuelos, who plays Maurice as a suave cuckolder with a dodgy European accent, should probably stick to daytime TV. But Tracee Chimo, who plays a bubbly, know-it-all maid, is a standout. Likewise, David Rockwell’s set, an elegant Art Deco dining and drawing room where much of the action unfolds, provides a stylish backdrop to the proceedings, while the chandelier that soars over the stage also serves as a sight gag that ends the show on a slyly subversive note.

If only the 90 minutes that preceded that killer capper had more fizz to them. O’Hara and Byrne may be bleeding for every laugh, but you can’t ignore the fact that “Fallen Angels” is one of Coward’s lesser works. The play proves that even in his twenties, he was already perfecting his transgressive wit.

However, the other elements of Coward’s genius, that alchemy of humor and humanity that made him one of the last century’s greatest playwrights, would come with age.

Ted Danson recalled an intimidating first encounter with former President Bill Clinton and his Secret Service detail during an early date with his now-wife, Mary Steenburgen.

Moderating a panel with Bill and Hillary Clinton at History Talks in Philadelphia on Saturday, Danson started off by telling the audience that his wife has been close with the Clintons “since the early days” — and that she used her friends in high places to test his character on one of their first dates.

“One of the first things she did was take me to meet her dear friends in the White House,” Danson said. “Bill — Mr. President — took me around the corner, and there were three Secret Service agents behind him, all of them looking at me. The president asked me what my intentions were.”

The “Cheers“ star then turned to Bill and asked, “My first question is to you, Mr. President: Do you think that was fair?”

“No, but it was effective. And I didn’t think I had to be fair,” Clinton replied after a brief silence. “As it turned out, you became the best thing that ever happened to her.”

Staying on topic about the Clintons’ early days in the White House, Hillary described the jarring transition from Arkansas to presidential life. After attending the presidential inaugural parade and a dozen balls, the exhausted couple “collapsed into bed” around 3:30 a.m. — only to be awakened two hours later by staff.

“At 5:30 a.m., the doors opens with a White House butler,” Hillary recalled. “He walks in with a silver tray and two cups of coffee because that’s how the Bushes — George H.W. and Margaret Bush — liked to woken up.”

Even basic tasks became an ordeal. Hillary recalled one instance when her staff spiraled after she asked for two eggs, a pan and butter to whip up a quick breakfast for Chelsea when she fell sick.

“You would’ve thought I’d asked for the nuclear codes,” she quipped. “If you said, ‘Can I have a banana?’ and they didn’t have one, then everywhere you went for a week, there’d be bunches of bananas.”

Parenting, childhood upbringings and creating a better world for their grandchildren anchored the Clintons’ conversation, largely steering clear of Trump and other partisan topics. This tone echoed across the four presidential panels, which promoted bipartisanship and the values of the nation’s Founding Fathers (the term “working towards a more perfect union” was heard repeatedly throughout the day).

Beyond politics, History Talks drew a range of entertainment figures, including Nicole Kidman, NFL icons Tom Brady and Jason Kelce, country singer Garth Brooks and comedians Tina Fey and Colin Jost.

Don Schlitz, one of the most widely revered names in the history of country music songwriting, died April 16 in a Nashville hospital after what was described as a sudden illness. He was 73.

A member of the Country Music Hall of Fame, Schlitz may be best recognized by the public as the sole author of one of country’s most iconic singles, and possibly the genre’s most quoted song ever: “The Gambler,” a country-pop crossover smash for Kenny Rogers in 1978. It was the first song he ever had recorded by someone, but it was not all downhill from there.

Most of his other hits were co-writes, many of them with fellow songwriting legends like Paul Overstreet. The collaborations with Overstreet include “Forever and Ever, Amen,” an 1987 smash in the hands of Randy Travis; other songs for Travis that included “On the Other Hand,” from 1986, and “Deeper Than the Holler,” in 1988; and “When You Say Nothing at All,” made into a country No. 1 by Keith Whitley in 1992 (and also successfully recorded by Alison Krauss & Union Station, plus Ronan Keating, who had a U.K. No. 1 with it in 1999).

Sometimes Schlitz co-wrote with a recording artist, as with “I Feel Lucky,” a smash he co-wrote with its singer, Mary Chapin Carpenter, in 1992, and “He Thinks He’ll Keep Her,” which Carpenter turned into another hit the following year.

He had several enduring hits with the Judds, co-written with their producer, Brett Maher, including “Turn It Loose,” “Rockin’ With the Rhythm of the Rain” and “I Know Where I’m Going,” each of them a No. 1 country hit in the late ’80s for the mother/daughter duo.

Others who recorded his material included Alabama, Sara Evans, Waylon Jennings, George Strait, Ronnie Milsap, Reba McEntire, the Bellamy Brothers, Tanya Tucker, Garth Brooks, Pam Tillis, Sweethearts of the Rodeo, Kathy Mattea, the Oak Ridge Boys and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.

Schlitz’s many honors include his inductions into the Nashville Songwriters Association Hall of Fame in 1993, the (New York-based) Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2012, the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2017 and the Grand Ole Opry in 2022.

The Country Hall of Fame is especially notable because Schlitz was only the sixth songwriter to be inducted, at that time. The Opry’s recognization is similarly noteworthy because he was the only non-performing songwriter to be so inducted in the Opry’s history — although he certainly became a performer for his many regular appearances there, as he had in many songwriters’ round appearances at the Bluebird Cafe.

Awards-wise, “The Gambler” won him the Grammy for best country song in 1978, and it became the CMAs’ song of the year the following year. Ultimately he won two Grammys, three CMA song of the year prizes and two ACM song of the year awards. He also was named ASCAP Country Songwriter of the Year for four consecutive years, from 1988-91.

His prowess extended to Broadway, when he wrote both music and lyrics for the 1999 musical “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.”

Schlitz often told the story of how he wrote “The Gambler” when he was 23, working at Vanderbilt University as a computer operator, aspiring to be a writer. One day, without a car, he walked 2-3 miles home from work and wrote the entirety of the song in his head along the way, except for the kicker. “I’m just making up this story song; I’m good at rhymes and meter, so I’m putting that in to it…. When I made it back to my efficiency apartment, I sat down at my dad’s old Smith-Corona typewriter — I’m a pretty good typist — and wrote it start to finish…without a last verse. When I was done, I knew it was too long and it didn’t have a love angle, and it wasn’t up-tempo, and it was a pretty linear melody,” he told the Library of Congress in a 2018 interview.

One solution for the song was to have no solution. “At that time, I didn’t have the last verse, though I wrote 50 or 60 options. One version of it had 50 lines, another had another 50 lines. I didn’t know how to end it, how to get out of the song, and finally I just decided to leave it open-ended, let the listener decide what happens in the end, like an O. Henry finish.”

Bobby Bare recorded it, but his record company didn’t think it was worthy of releasing. Three other versions came out, including one recorded by Schlitz himself, which he recalled peaking at No. 61. Then an ASCAP exec took to it and got it recorded by both Johnny Cash and Rogers, and the latter singer’s version was the one to make it to the starting gate.

“Kenny’s version was really special and fit his persona. Then they did this amazing album cover. He changed a couple of words, he modulated after the first chorus. His version was more up-tempo. … The song became ubiquitous. It was everywhere. … Actually, I think it was a hit because it was a story, somewhat linear, and, it had no ‘finished’ ending! It allowed the listener to be involved. It respected the intelligence of the listener. And I say this with humility, or as much as I can muster, it wasn’t dumb. (Bob) McDill once told me, ‘You can’t write country music, looking down your nose at it.’ You have to respect your listener. Listeners are smart people. And it was a good time for a story song…

“I can’t tell you enough about what Kenny did, for the song, for me, and for country music. Kenny has always been loyal, kind, generous with his praise. The power of Kenny Rogers, and Larry Butler — a genius producer. The right people at the right time.”

He added, ” if it’s become an American folk song, I’m good with that. You know, I’m not a card player, not a gambler. I don’t do that. Besides, that’s not what the song’s about anyway. If it is, to some people, that’s great. But [the song’s] really about discretion. It’s about choices and the choices you make. Very simply — but very directly. I think when you hear the song, you hear the meaning of the story in Kenny’s voice. He put the wisdom in there.”

Schlitz had only been performing on the Opry on a few occasions when Vince Gill formally invited him to become a member. Soon, he became a favorite of Opry audiences, regaling them with stories from his songwriting career after bluntly beginning with: “You have no idea who I am.”

“I remember whispering to Vince onstage, ‘Don’t leave me here alone,’” Schlitz recalled of his first Opry appearance to American Songwriter in 2022. “I went out and played ‘The Gambler’ and everyone applauded. As we were driving home, we were quiet like old friends can be. I asked him, ‘Does it ever get old?’ He told me ‘Nope,’ and that has turned out to be true.”

He had officially quit songwriting some time ago, saying the constant sense of inner mental research had wearied him. ““I woke up and looked at my wife and said, ‘I want to stop. I want to stop thinking about it all the time.’ That was my process. I listened to people talk. I read. I wanted to write songs that I wanted to hear. Most importantly, I wanted to find an honest way of saying something that came from my heart.”

He still marveled at the unpredictable magic that makes for a hit, saying, “You never know what song is going to be the song, You’re going to tell me that a song that is too long about a guy talking to an older guy who is either drunk or doesn’t have any cigarettes of his own is something that needs to be written? Yeah, I wanted to hear that story.”

Schlitz added, ““I’m not gonna think about my legacy yet. But I get to share Kenny Rogers’ legacy. Keith Whitley’s legacy. Randy Travis’ legacy. These are songs that they know from their heroes.”

Schlitz is survived by his wife, Stacey; his daughter Cory Dixon and her husband Matt Dixon; his son Pete Schlitz and his wife Christian Webb Schlitz; his grandchildren Roman, Gia, Isla, and Lilah; his brother Brad Schlitz; and his sister Kathy Hinkley. Service plans are pending.

“We are heartbroken by the news of the passing of Don Schlitz,” said Country Music Association CEO Sarah Trahern. “Don loved his family, his home state of North Carolina, and above all, songs and songwriters. He carried that love into every room, every stage and every lyric he ever wrote. His work, including timeless classics like ‘The Gambler,’ helped shape our genre and rightfully earned him some of its highest honors.

“In recent years, he found great joy performing at the Grand Ole Opry, mentoring the next generation of songwriters, and sharing his music at Room In The Inn, giving back to the community he helped build. Wayne and I send our love to Stacey and the entire family. Not long ago, we shared a dinner, and as we were leaving, Don picked up a guitar and began to play. That is how I will always remember him, smiling and with a guitar in his hand. His legacy lives on through his music and the many artists and writers he inspired. He will be deeply missed.”