Tag: HollywoodReporter

Claim:

Director Ron Howard authored a letter starting, “I’m a liberal, but that doesn’t mean what a lot of you apparently think it does.”

Rating:

In summer 2026, an old claim that director Ron Howard wrote an open letter about what it supposedly means to be a liberal resurfaced.

The letter, which is around 1,300 words, began as follows:

I’m a liberal, but that doesn’t mean what a lot of you apparently think it does. Let’s break it down, shall we? Because quite frankly, I’m getting a little tired of being told what I believe and what I stand for. Spoiler alert: not every liberal is the same, though the majority of liberals I know think along roughly these same lines:

The remainder of the letter consists of 16 numbered points describing the author’s beliefs.

In August 2026, the claim appeared in multiple posts on Facebook and numerous Snopes readers searched our site for information about it.

(Facebook user Christina Tann)

As we reported when we first looked into the text’s origins in 2020, Howard was not the real author of the letter. Instead, the words were the work of novelist Lori Gallagher Witt. As a result, we rated the letter as misattributed.

Witt first posted the letter on her Facebook (archived) and Tumblr (archived) accounts on Jan. 7, 2018. A screenshot of her original Facebook post is below. (Due to the letter’s length, we split the screenshot into two roughly equal halves that appear side by side.)

(Lori Gallagher Witt)

Witt’s original letter included a longer introduction than the version that circulated in 2025. The original version opened as follows:

The Facebook post’s edit history showed that on Feb. 2, 2018, around a month after she originally published the letter, Witt added a notice reading “(c) 2018 Lori Gallagher Witt. Feel free to share, but please give me credit, and if you add or change anything, please note accordingly.” A similar notice also appeared at the bottom of her Tumblr post.

In an email to Snopes in February 2025, Witt said she was inspired to write the letter not because of a single event but because she believed her social circle did not understand her beliefs. She said:

It had been brewing in my head for a while, especially because I have/had a lot of conservative friends and relatives who would often parrot things about “those liberals.” There was a lot of comments about how we “hate America,” we’re communists, we want to destroy everything, etc. It was this really vile and disingenuous picture of who and what we are, and I felt the need to set the record straight. I genuinely had no idea it would resonate with that many people or that it would go viral.

How the misattribution spread

The letter’s misattribution to Howard began in 2020, when, as Witt explained in a Facebook post, someone named Ron Howard — no relation to the director — shared her post without attribution. That person eventually corrected his post to note Witt as the text’s author after she reached out to him. But by that point, other internet users had already begun sharing the letter with the name “Ron Howard” attached.

Since then, Witt has posted numerous times about her frustration with the persistence of the misattribution, which she has dubbed “the Howarding.” 

In 2025, Witt posted a photo of Howard holding a poster with images of social media posts containing the letter and a line reading “I didn’t write this” with a checkmark and Howard’s signature next to it. Witt said over email that the photo was from Howard’s April 2025 appearance at Pittsburgh’s Steel City Con, and that her husband had brought the poster for Howard to sign and pose with.

As of this writing, readers have shared Witt’s original 2018 Facebook post around 30,000 times. By contrast, a Feb. 9, 2025, post that incorrectly attributed the words to Howard amassed more than 100,000 shares — more than three times as many as Witt’s original post — in just a few days.

Witt said although Howard was by far the person she’s most frequently seen miscredited with the letter’s authorship, she’s experienced other people attempting to take credit for — and even make money off — her words in the past. “I could live with a post going viral and getting separated from my name, but I draw the line when people try to monetize it or otherwise use it to elevate themselves,” she said.

Witt also said she believed a connection between Howard and U.S. Vice President JD Vance may have spurred renewed interest in the misattributed letter. In 2020, Howard directed and produced the film adaptation of “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance’s 2016 memoir. 

We’ve previously looked into other claims involving Howard. They included a rumor that a clip from the television show “Arrested Development” in which he appeared was proof the 1969 moon landing was fake.

A comeback for Los Angeles’ iconic 88-year-old Bruin Theatre in Westwood is now in doubt. Information about its new operator, Canadian exhibitor Rui Pereira, may kill the revival.

On Aug. 26, IndieWire published an investigation highlighting claims of a checkered history with previous endeavors in Toronto’s film community. Among the accusations are nonpayment and unlicensed screenings at another independent venue. Most notably, the outlet — which, like The Hollywood Reporter, is owned by Penske Media — highlighted Pereira’s history of making racist and antisemitic remarks on his theaters’ social media accounts. These included references to “fake Jews,” “sub human devils,” “zionazis” and “murderous filthy vile hasbara fake Jew scumbags.” After another user referred to him as antisemitic, he responded on a Bruin Theatre-branded account: “You mean anti-septic?”

In an interview with THR, Pereira, 60, described any focus on his rhetoric as “nonsense” and “bullshit,” explaining, “whatever is there [online] doesn’t have to do with what I’m doing [at the Bruin]. This is a contrived situation that exists in the false fantasyland of the Internet.” He argued he’s not a public figure. “I’m just a guy, a working person. My business is selling popcorn and pop and making sure the film is on the screen.”

Still, Pereira — who says he has no investors or partners in either his Toronto venues or his Bruin endeavor (he signed the lease in July) — believes that the highlighting of his comments may be blowback for his prior hosting of screenings of the recent Israel-critical films No Other Land and Palestine 36 in Canada. “I’m sympathetic to the Palestinians and to humanity,” he says.

Pereira sought out the Bruin after he learned that a previous deal for it had collapsed. The earlier effort involved the director Jason Reitman, who has taken over the Westwood Village Theater across the street. The Bruin’s owners are descendants of Spyros Skouras, once the president of 20th Century Fox. The family could not be reached for comment.

Pereira, who contends he isn’t “anti-Jewish,” asserts, “Zionism has now been conflated with genocide and ethnic cleansing.” (Both charges are subject to significant dispute among scholars of the Israel-Palestine conflict.) He tells THR, “everyone is welcome at the [Bruin] theater, including Zionists. I’ve come to open the theater for everybody.”

The Bruin is located at the heart of one of the most demographically Jewish areas of the Los Angeles region, which features the third-largest concentration of Jews in the world after New York City and Tel Aviv. According to a recent survey, 88 percent of Jews believe that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish, Democratic state — the historically accepted definition of Zionism.

The venue is among a group of local exhibition landmarks, including Hollywood’s Cinerama Dome, Glendale’s Alex and Westwood’s Village, whose resurrections as first-run movie houses has generated a surge of civic optimism. In recent years, the Bruin has repeatedly played itself on screen, first in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, when Sharon Tate watches herself in The Wrecking Crew, and again earlier this month in FX’s The Shards, when Bret Easton Ellis visits to see The Shining.   

Pereira tells THR that he doesn’t believe his rhetoric will jeopardize the Bruin’s ability to operate, including working with major studios to secure prints and premieres, as well as attracting prominent filmmakers to participate in post-screening talks. But a group of local Jewish organizations object to his stewardship of a key cultural venue in the city.

“Hate has no place in Los Angeles,” says Anti-Defamation League Los Angeles senior regional director David Englin. “Moviegoers, employees, production staff, and anyone involved in any theater have a right to be free from antisemitism, racism, and other forms of bigotry and discrimination.” Rabbi Noah Farkas, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation Los Angeles, says: “The Bruin’s reopening should be a bright spot for Hollywood. It is a signal of the industry’s resurgence and a moviegoing home that is open to everyone. There is no context in which calling Jews ‘sub human devils’ or celebrating a swastika outside a Jewish family’s home is anything but naked antisemitism, and anyone entrusted with a theater this central to the business must reject that hatred unequivocally.”

Jim Berk, CEO of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, explains, “The comments attributed to Rui Pereira, whose entity operates the Bruin Theatre, are not just disturbing; they echo a script Jews have heard before. To dehumanize Jews, invoke Goebbels and Nazi imagery, tell Jews to ‘go back to Poland,’ and describe a swastika painted outside a Jewish family’s home as an appropriate symbol for ‘zionazis’ is not criticism of Israel. These are old hatreds, rehearsed in new costume.” He adds, “Antisemitic hatred and the dehumanization of Jews cannot be dismissed as political discourse simply because Israel is invoked,” and notes, “the community deserves an artistic venue operator to operate without bias towards any group, irrespective of their religion or race and expects the controlling ownership of the Bruin to make this commitment without delay.”

Ari Ingel, executive director of Creative Community for Peace, a non-profit which seeks to counter anti-Israeli sentiment in Hollywood, called Pereira’s remarks “appalling and completely unacceptable,” explaining, “at a time when Canada’s Jewish community is confronting record levels of antisemitism, this is one Canadian export Los Angeles can do without.”

After hearing of the Jewish organizations’ response to his rhetoric, Pereira acknowledged it was “offensive” and he “must take responsibility.” However, he also characterized the broader conversation about his conduct as “distractions from reopening the Bruin and the excitement and positive energy it has generated.”

It’s all about the money in writer-director Jérôme Pierrat’s fiction feature directorial debut Moolah (La Moula), in which he also stars.

The crime drama, also featuring Kader Benchoudar, Jean Ruimi, Jean-Michel Correia, Thierry Coignard, Patrice Kouyoumdjian, Jean-Mathieu Frattaci, Fethi Makdoudi, Michel Ucciani and Jacques Sordi, will world premiere on Wednesday, Sept. 9 in the Horizons section of the 83rd edition of the Venice International Film Festival. And it takes us on an 82-minute cinematic trip into a world that we – or at least most of us – don’t know up close.

After all, Pierrat has made a name for himself as a journalist investigating organized crime in France. And now that you know that, a description of the movie’s plot will surprise you much less. Keep in mind: it is not a documentary, but a fiction feature, for which the filmmaker draws from his real-life experiences and expertise.

“Thanks to Charlie, a cocaine trafficker, and his gangster associates, Jérôme, a struggling organized crime reporter, sees an opportunity to reboot his career,” reads a synopsis. “While waiting for a drug shipment near Marseille, the possible presence of a cop puts them all in danger…”

Yes, Moolah explores drug trafficking in the port of Marseille. Iconoclast Films, Shotinmars, Fatalitas Productions are the production companies behind the movie. Iconoclast Films is handling world sales.

THR can now premiere two exclusive clips for Moolah, which will give you a first brief taste for the look, the feel and the vibe of the Venice-premiering film.

In the first clip for the movie, we see Pierrat talking straight to the camera. And he witnesses something… well, unbelievable. Check out the first clip right here.

The second exclusive clip from the Venice-premiering film shows us more of Pierrat – and a shaky camera. Oh yeah, and there is talk about footage that he has gathered. But see for yourself! Here is a second exclusive clip from Pierrat’s Moolah.

Irish-language feature thriller Aontas is Ireland’s submission for the best international feature film category at the Oscars 2027. The Irish Film & Television Academy (IFTA) unveiled the selection for the 99th Academy Awards on Friday.

“The film follows in the footsteps of Oscar-nominated An Cailín Ciúin (The Quiet Girl) (2023) and Oscar-shortlisted Kneecap (2024),” IFTA said.

Directed by Damian McCann, Aontas is a heist thriller starring Carrie Crowley (The Quiet Girl/An Cailín Ciúin), Bríd Brennan, Eva-Jane Gaffney, Seán T. Ó Meallaigh, Marcus Lamb and Art Parkinson. Told in reverse chronology, the film follows three unlikely thieves, led by a woman on the verge of a breakdown, who rob a rural Irish Credit Union, opening with “the tragic aftermath of the heist-gone-wrong,” reads a synopsis. “What starts as a poorly executed robbery becomes a portrait of a wilful woman trapped in her own past.”

“Aontas” means “union.”

Written by Sarah Gordon and Damian McCann, the movie was produced by Órfhlaith Ní Chearnaigh and Christopher Myers for Púca Pictures, with funding from TG4, BBC Gaeilge and Northern Ireland Screen’s Irish Language Broadcast Fund, plus support from Yellowmoon.

“What an intriguing and clever twist on the classic bank heist narrative, with powerful female performances at its core by Carrie Crowley, Bríd Brennan and Eva-Jane Gaffney,” said IFTA CEO Áine Moriarty. “This wonderful Irish-language film is resonating with audiences worldwide.”

Director McCann added: “I was bringing some soggy washing in out of the rain when the news arrived – what a turnaround of a day! We’ve been overwhelmed by the film’s journey so far.”

He added: “My co-writer Sarah Gordon and I wrote the script in the attic of our house and we shot over 18 rainy days in the Glens of Antrim. We could never have imagined that this is where the journey might take us, but it’s a testament to the staggering graft and boundless optimism of our cast and crew.”

The Quiet Girl (An Cailín Ciúin) is so far the only Irish-language film to secure a nomination in the international Oscar category.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will unveil the 15 films on the best international feature film shortlist on Dec. 15. The five nominees will be announced Jan. 21, 2027. The 99th Academy Awards ceremony will take place on March 14, 2027.

Strange Neighbors, an art-house nature documentary with no narration, no interviews and no human protagonists will open this year’s Oldenburg Internationales Film Festival, the first time a doc has launched the German indie fest.

The directorial debut of cinematographer Mi Steinbach, Strange Neighbors was shot over three years on Schwarztonnensand, an island and nature preserve on the German Elbe river, smack in the middle of one of Europe’s busiest waterways.

The island, just over 2 miles long, was created in the late 1960s from sand dredged during the deepening of the Elbe shipping channel that serves the port of Hamburg, then left to itself and gradually planted over. It lies directly on the fairway line, closer to the shipping lane than any other land on the river, so container vessels pass within meters of it.

It is a protected area. Humans are banned on the island, and Steinbach has banned them from her film. Strange Neighbors has no commentary track and no dialogue, though it features a soundtrack and sound design from Robert Nacken.

“It was never my idea to make a natural history film,” Steinbach tells THR. “I wanted to make a film that doesn’t just tell you something about animal behavior or about the animals, but that tells you something about this place and above all about us, about human beings.”

Among the habitats Steinbach filmed are tidal floodplain forests, a landscape type that has largely disappeared in Europe. White-tailed eagles, geese and roe deer live wild on the island, along with ground-nesting bird species and predators, including foxes and raccoon dogs. Across the narrow water, the surrounding region, which includes factories from chemical giant Dow and aerospace conglomerate Airbus, is one of the most industrialized regions of Europe. The area is also home to large-scale industrial agriculture, with the resulting effluents triggering oxygen depletion and massive fish death annually.

Steinbach shot the documentary herself over three years and multiple visits to the island. She often stayed for several weeks, living in a wooden hut built on stilts to protect it from the tides.

Strange Neighbors was produced by Earth Cut Filmproduktion and funded by Film- und Medienstiftung NRW. It comes to Oldenburg without a sales agent or theatrical distributor. Steinbach is hoping the world premiere will spark interest from buyers, in Germany and abroad. “This film was made for cinemas,” she says.

Steinbach will attend the Oldenburg festival, which runs Sept. 16-20.

The producing muscle of Anthony and Joe Russo likely played a part in the recruitment of such an accomplished cast for Netflix’s The Whisper Man. James Ashcroft’s thriller may feel more driven by content than craft, but this adaptation of the bestselling novel by British crime author Alex North is solidly entertaining, if not quite as bone-chilling as its plot about a copycat serial killer preying on preteen boys suggests. In that sense, it doesn’t approach the accelerating visceral intensity of the New Zealander director’s 2021 debut Coming Home in the Dark, but as streaming fodder, it gets the job done.

Adapted by Ben Jacoby and It co-screenwriter Chase Palmer, the movie jumps right in with a police search through a semi-rural New Jersey area led by Detective Amanda Beck (Michelle Monaghan), looking for Neil Spencer, a boy abducted from his home the night before. No trace of Neil is found, but the dead body of another missing boy turns up.

Around the same time, widowed crime writer Tom Kennedy (Adam Scott) relocates from the Jersey shore to the small town where he and his late wife grew up, hoping the change of environment will benefit his traumatized eight-year-old son Jake (Acston Luca Porto). But Jake seems ill at ease in the spacious old home his dad rented (sharp work from production designer Anastasia White), seeking comfort in the presence of an imaginary friend he brought along in the move.

Meanwhile, Det. Beck finds eerie similarities between the recently discovered corpse and those of victims in a trail of killings from some 25 years earlier, committed by a murderer who became known as the Whisper Man for the way he beckoned his prey through their windows at night. The creepy nursery rhyme associated with those crimes has lingered in gruesome local folklore. But the culprit, Frank Carter — Netflix has requested that reviews not reveal the name of the unbilled actor playing him — remains behind bars, serving a life sentence.

Carter was apprehended by Det. Pete Willis (Robert De Niro), who retired soon after but has quietly continued obsessing over a sixth victim whose body was never found. When Jake is abducted, it emerges that Pete is Tom’s estranged father and has never even seen his grandson. The only clues come in the familiar form of a child’s drawing, accompanied by a cassette with a voice recording of the missing boy, mimicking the methods of Carter a quarter-century before.

The writers show a deft sense of economy in going light on the details of Tom’s cold distance from his father, aside from a mention of Pete’s drinking. But it’s easy to imagine the absentee parenting of a man likely married to his job and consumed by one case in particular.

The bitterness Tom feels toward his father surfaces as a torrent of contempt when they meet at a diner, where the novelist demands that Pete get involved in the investigation, despite repeated assertions that he has left detective work behind. Beck also asks for the veteran cop’s help; she has a hunch that Carter might hold the key to finding both Neil Spencer and Jake, but the convicted killer has only ever consented to be questioned by Pete.

This is a good role for De Niro, remorse, fatigue and solitude written all over his face as Pete attempts to extend an olive branch to the stubbornly indifferent Tom. The psychological gamesmanship between Pete and Carter when the former detective comes around to cooperating brings a bristling sense of his long and frustrating history of being toyed with by the killer. 

One person of interest in the case is Norman Collins (Hamish Linklater), an elegant sicko with a large collection of murder memorabilia, who twice in recent months visited the prison where Carter is incarcerated. But other possibilities also surface, pointing to a more direct connection between the present-day horrors and those of the Whisper Man, while building to explosions of violence and tragedy in the concluding stretch.

Ashcroft directs with a sure hand even if some developments late in the action clearly owe more to pulpy crime fiction than psychological verisimilitude and he doesn’t quite stick the landing. But the actors keep it compelling enough even when the pace threatens to lag here and there, adding emotional texture through the script’s contemplation of difficult father-son dynamics. Colin Stetson’s score helps maintain the unsettling atmosphere. 

The Whisper Man is not going to challenge The Silence of the Lambs as the high-water mark of this genre, nor does it have the benefit of a menacingly unhinged Nicolas Cage performance, like the one that made Longlegs turn heads. (Or for that matter like John Lithgow’s malevolent turn in Ashcroft’s mixed-bag second feature, The Rule of Jenny Pen.) But the movie has enough strengths to earn traction in the Netflix algorithm.

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J.Crew is giving one of its longtime wardrobe staples a fresh perspective for fall, with Emma Chamberlain (who founded Chamberlain Coffee at the ripe age of 18) leading the charge.

The retailer has tapped the Gen Z fashion fixture to front its latest campaign, which introduces the Tiny Rollneck, a shrunken take on the cotton sweater J.Crew first introduced in 1988. The new style just dropped on J.Crew.com, featuring a slightly cropped length and closer fit, swapping the roomier proportions of the original for a silhouette that feels more in line with today’s fitted fall dressing.

The Tiny Rollneck comes in bright, graphic colors, adding a more playful take to one of J.Crew’s signature preppy staples. The accompanying campaign, shot and directed by Ian Markell, puts Chamberlain in a candy-colored, retro-futuristic setting inspired by early-aughts fashion imagery and video-game character-selection screens. Her longtime stylist, Jared Ellner, worked with J.Crew creative director Olympia Gayot on the looks.

The YouTuber, podcaster and fashion fixture has become a familiar face at fashion month and the Met Gala, further cementing her place in the fashion and entertainment worlds. Her Gen Z influence has helped make her one of the most recognizable style voices of her generation.

The campaign also leans into the return of collegiate-inspired dressing, styling the Tiny Rollneck with pleated skirts, tailored trousers, loafers, argyle socks and slim rectangular glasses. The overall effect is part ’90s prep, part early-aughts nostalgia, with a distinctly more modern design.

The Tiny Rollneck is the latest chapter in J.Crew’s ongoing Rollneck revival. The original sweater debuted in the brand’s 1988 catalog and was known for its heavyweight cotton knit, raglan sleeves and loosely curled neckline.

Last fall, the retailer launched its “Next Rollneck Generation” campaign, featuring Benito Skinner, Molly Gordon, Maggie Rogers, Dominic Sessa, Lukita Maxwell, Rome Flynn and Taylour Paige-Angulo in new and archival-inspired versions of the sweater.

J.Crew continued reworking the style this spring with “Rollneck Remix,” a New York Fashion Week project that invited Buci, Collina Strada, Eckhaus Latta, Patrick Taylor and Tanner Fletcher to reinterpret the sweater through lace, colorblocking, unconventional knit techniques and nautical details.

Now, J.Crew is making the Rollneck smaller (and cuter) for fall. The Tiny Rollneck launched Aug. 26 on J.Crew.com, just in time to infuse the season’s preppy wardrobe with a little of the social media star’s signature whimsy.

Related: Parke’s Viral Sweatshirt Gets a Dose of School Spirit in Brand’s Debut Collegiate Collection

Tough break, Big Break x Good Good winner.

Golf Channel has canceled its fully filmed 2026 season of Big Break, the Versant-owned cable network’s signature reality competition series. It sort of had no choice — or at least no ultimate purpose for airing the season as planned.

“Following recent developments involving Good Good, and including the fact that the intended outcome of the series can no longer be fulfilled, Golf Channel will not be able to complete this season of Big Break as planned,” Golf Channel said in a statement. “While we are disappointed for the 12 competitors, our production team that worked tirelessly on the season, and the show’s passionate fans, we look forward to Big Break’s return to Golf Channel in 2027.”

Big Break aired on Golf Channel from 2003-2015. This was set to be its big comeback.

Big Break x Good Good, a collaboration with the popular group of YouTube Golf young stars, was supposed to debut on Tuesday evening. Mere hours before its scheduled airtime, however Golf Channel announced it was pushing the premiere by a week — the drastic decision came in reaction to the series’ presenting sponsor Golf Galaxy (owned by Dick’s Sporting Goods) abandoning its endorsement. But now, Big Break x Good Good is dead entirely, as are its winner’s dreams of playing professionally.

The winner of Big Break x Good Good was supposed to receive a sponsorship exemption into the November 12-15 Good Good Championship, a sanctioned PGA Tour event. On Thursday, in the latest — and largest — fallout from a controversial Good Good/Callaway Golf advertisement, the PGA Tour removed Good Good as title sponsor of the event. The event will go on, just without Good Good branding and the Big Break x Good Good winner in the field of 120 golfers.

Golf Channel has not revealed who that winner was. Good Good makes most of its money from merchandise sales. Golf Galaxy and Callaway have distanced themselves from the brand.

In the ad, Good Good golfer Alexis Miestowski reaches for Good Good co-founder Garrett Clark’s Callaway driver with Good Good cobranding. Clark rushes her, knocks her down, stands over her and warns: “Do not touch my new driver.”

It was … not a good good look. Clark and Good Good CEO Matt Kendrick have both stated the spot was intended to be a parody of the 2026 breakout film Obsession. Everyone involved has since apologized for the ad, but it was not enough to salvage the Good Good Championship or Big Break x Good Good.

Golf Channel and Good Good entered a programming partnership in 2023.