Waxword
Sharon Waxman On the Business of Entertainment
The founder and editor of TheWrap’s take on life on the left coast, high culture, low culture and the business of entertainment and media. Waxman writes frequently on the inside doings of Hollywood, and is is also the author of two books, Rebels on the Back Lot and Loot
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Tomb Raiders
This is a rare photograph, taken inside the tomb of Amenophis III in Luxor’s Valley of the Kings this week. The tomb is not excavated and as such is closed to the public; and photos are not permitted in any tombs at all. (Also, the tomb is pitch black, so I am amazed it came…
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Luxor
Well, I’ve definitely got that I-should-be-blogging feeling, it must be bred by this form of media. I am in Luxor, the modern-day city that was once Thebes, capital of pharaohs, and a stone’s throw from their tombs in Valley of the Kings. I am technologically not able to share from here the amazing images I…
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Dinner with a Baghdad Band
A word about a languid dinner on a Cairo rooftop with a group of journalists last night, badly in need of a beer and a break. Most of them are denizens of the Iraq war — Jill Carroll, the kidnapped journalist, now in Cairo for the Christian Science Monitor, Ellen Knickmeyer of the Washington Post,…
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Encouragement
Wow, a tsunami of support and encouragement from out there across the world. I sent the blog link out to most of my address book (half of it, anyway), and many of you shouted back. Fantastic! You are all readers, writers, otherwise sophisticates to whom I don’t need to show Cairo on the map. Excellent.…
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Zahi today
Here we are in Zahi’s office. (My new camera! Nice, right?) I sat for no fewer than six hours watching him work, an unbroken stream of letters, calls, signatures, meetings, convocations. No lunch break. One bathroom break. He called it the calmest day he knew in his office yet. I wanted a medal by the…
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Cairo Calls
I’m sitting in the office of Zahi Hawass, chief of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, in Cairo. His office, in the SCA headquarters on the island of Zamalek, is a garden variety Egyptian bureaucrat’s bland mix of tan walls and oversized stuffed furniture. (Happily, the wireless Internet works.) But there’s a curious thing in the…
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On the Road
And I’m off, July 1 to the end of the year, on book leave. Most exciting, I head for a month to the Middle East to investigate what is real and what is lip service in the debate over where antiquities most properly belong. I will be sharing some of my findings on this blog,…
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Long in the Tooth
Our friend Zahi Hawass’s mug was on the front page of the Times again today. What is it this time? A landmark discovery of the mummy of Queen Hatshepsut, based on the surprising, unexpected find of a tooth in her long-familiar sarcophagus. The exciting news was ably chronicled by John Noble Wilford. But the key…
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She’s Pretty Hot
Editor-turned-writer Tina Brown gathered with a few friends — David Geffen, Michael Eisner, Martin Landau, Steve Martin – for a little lunch at the Bel-Air Hotel today, to celebrate her new book, "The Diana Chronicles." They served Diana’s favorite dish — fish and chips — which was a little crazy. Who on the West Side…
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Hollywood Perils
Just a word to note that "Evan Almighty," that hulking, $175 million comedy behemoth, sank like a stone this weekend, taking in just $31 million in this country. That is very disappointing news for Universal, which tried hard to make this laugh-challenged story appeal to the Christian audience (where were they when they’re needed?) when…
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Sword of Intolerance
The L.A. Film Festival is heating up. Author and journalist and fallen Roman Catholic priest James Carroll came to the world premiere on Sunday night in Westwood of the new documentary, "Constantine’ Sword," based on his book of the same title. The film, by Oren Jacoby, takes the viewer on a 2,000-year trip through the…
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Is Marvel Marvel-ous?
David Maisel is a new player on the Hollywood scene, though he’s been here for more than a decade. Now at the helm of Marvel Studios, I take a look at his business plan and the impression he has made on others in today’s Business section. Both have their critics. "Until recently a little-known deal…
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Rehab Rates
I’ve often wondered whether rehab really works. Is it worth all the money and effort expended? I took a look at that this weekend in Sunday Styles and learned the following: "Optimism, it turns out, is one of the main things offered at rehabilitation centers like Promises, the luxurious Malibu retreat for patients suffering from…
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Lord Almighty
A little late, yes, but we’re busy. We attended the premiere of "Evan Almighty" a week ago, a modest but sprawling affair at Universal Studios (one might have expected live elephants; there were none). Meantime, Universal has good cause to be nervous about the opening of this $175 million behemoth, directed by the single-minded Tom…
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A Fun Group, but Foul-Mouthed
This adorable group of guys, friends from community college in tiny Walnut, California who transfered to UCLA together, are now performing a play they co-wrote about race and the destructive power of language. In a story about them in today’s paper, I write: "Lest anyone think that a play with three ethnic slurs in its…