Category Archives: Culture

‘He was a handful’ – Hunter S Thompson’s PA and photographer relives her wild job

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She cooked his weird dinners, dealt with his volcanic rants, and read his prose back to him from dark till dawn. As Chloe Sells’ photographs of the gonzo writer’s chaotic Colorado cabin are published, she remembers an invigorating, inspirational figure

One evening towards the end of 2003, Chloe Sells was entering the J-Bar in Aspen, Colorado, in search of a late night drink, when an older woman approached her. As Sells recalls in her new photobook, Hot Damn!: “She looked me up and down and said, ‘We’re looking for some help for Hunter. Are you a night owl? Would you be interested?’”

Hunter, as every local knew, was Hunter S Thompson, the celebrated creator of “gonzo” journalism, and the town’s most infamous resident. The woman was his wife, Anita. “It took me only a moment,” Sells says, “to answer ‘Yes’ to everything.”

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How we made: Big Country on Chance

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‘The idea of wearing checked shirts came from Bruce Springsteen – plus you could buy them cheap at Millets!’

I knew [singer/guitarist] Stuart Adamson when he was in Skids and I was in the Delinquents and all the bands in Dunfermline used to rehearse in stables next to each other. When Skids were doing their third album he said to me: “Wouldn’t it be great to do a twin guitar thing?” I thought he was just being nice. Then after Skids split he knocked on my door and said: “Remember that conversation? Do you still want to do it?”

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Lost footage of Rolling Stones at notorious Altamont festival uncovered

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Carlos Santana, Jefferson Airplane, the Flying Burrito Brothers and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young also appear in 26 minutes of home video at event that marked end of hippy dream

Twenty-six minutes of unseen footage of the vast and notoriously violent Altamont music festival held in northern California in 1969 have been unexpectedly uncovered.

The home-movie footage – which is vividly shot on 8mm film, but frustratingly silent – has been published by the Library of Congress on its website.

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The Power of the Dog among worthy winners as disgraced Golden Globes plays it safe

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Jane Campion’s colossal western and Steven Spielberg’s passionate West Side Story revival head up a list that snubs more transgressive offerings

So the much-disgraced Golden Globes, derided for a lack of diversity and transparency in the voting membership, lucrative TV coverage cancelled, gravy-train derailed and the awards ceremony dwindled to a virtual event on social media, carries paradoxically on with delivering a set of awards that are in perfectly plausible good taste and not very much different from all the other un-disgraced awards ceremonies. However, it was sad to see Paul Thomas Anderson’s dazzling comedy of transgression Licorice Pizza overlooked, of which more in a moment.

Jane Campion’s handsome, complex and brilliant western drama The Power of the Dog gets best picture (drama) and best director, along with best supporting actor for the excellent Kodi Smit-McPhee, while Steven Spielberg’s glorious, passionately respectful revival of West Side Story wins best picture in the musical or comedy section, along with its breakout player Ariana DeBose for best supporting actress and newcomer Rachel Zegler for best actress in musical/comedy.

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Painting a bigger picture: Senegal’s pioneering ‘first lady’ of graffiti

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Artist, poet and singer, Dieynaba Sidibé, AKA Zeinixx, has made her way to the top of the country’s male-dominated hip-hop scene and wants her messages of hope to inspire young women

When Dieynaba Sidibé discovered graffiti, it was love at first sight. She was 17 and had already begun experimenting with painting and drawing.

“​​It was on TV. I was sitting in my living room and I saw people doing big walls and I thought, ‘This is what I need’,” the Senegalese artist says, one hoop earring shaking as she laughs. “I don’t like small things. I was doing big canvases, and I said to myself: ‘A wall is a bigger surface for expression’.”

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Oscar-winning Iranian director Asghar Farhadi: ‘Global recognition is double-edged’

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He has been detained at airports and told never to return to Iran. But the director, who could be about to win his third Oscar, refuses to be silenced about outrages in his own country – and in the west

Withdrawing your film from the Oscars would be career suicide for most directors, but in November Asghar Farhadi appeared to do precisely that. Shortly after Iran’s state-controlled film board put his movie, A Hero, up for the best international feature Oscar, Farhadi released a statement on Instagram saying he was “fed up” with suggestions in Iranian media that he was sympathetic to the country’s hardline government. “If your introduction of my film for the Oscars has led you to the conclusion that I am in your debt,” he wrote, “I am explicitly declaring now that I have no problem with you reversing this decision.”

Farhadi, it could be argued, can afford to make such a gesture. He has already won two international feature Oscars – for A Separation in 2012 and The Salesman in 2017 – and many more awards besides (A Hero won the Grand Prix at Cannes last year). Such achievements inevitably convey national hero status. At the same time, he seems to have trodden a careful line when it comes to his country’s oppressive regime. Other Iranian film-makers, such as Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof, have paid a heavy price for criticising aspects of Iranian society, from prison sentences and house arrests to travel bans. Farhadi seems to have been spared similar treatment. Hence the accusations that he was “pro- government”.

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Golden Globes: The Power of the Dog and Succession win at celebrity-free ceremony

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Jane Campion’s Netflix drama and HBO hit triumph as stars distance themselves from Hollywood Foreign Press Association

The Power of the Dog and Succession were the big winners at an unusual, stripped-back Golden Globes.

Traditionally, the ceremony is a glitzy telecast with A-listers in attendance but after a year of controversies surrounding diversity and amoral practices, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association lost its footing in the industry, with publicity firms, studios and celebrities choosing to distance themselves.

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Bob Saget, Full House actor and comedian, dies aged 65

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Saget was found unresponsive in an Orlando hotel room on Sunday

Bob Saget, the actor and comedian most famous for his role in the much-loved 80s sitcom Full House, has died at the age of 65.

The Orange County sheriff’s office confirmed Saget’s death on Twitter on Monday, saying he had been found unresponsive in his hotel room at the Ritz-Carlton in Orlando, Florida on Sunday. The sheriff’s office confirmed that no cause of death had been determined, saying in a statement there were no signs of foul play or drug use.

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Helen Mirren: is the Israeli icon Golda Meir a role too far for the dame who does it all?

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She has played the Queen and a gangster’s moll but her latest casting has sparked controversy

Nobody is quite what they seem. And actors? Well, for actors that’s the job. Dame Helen Mirren, as well as being herself for 76 years, has by now notably been Lady Macbeth, a London gangster’s moll, a thief’s wife, an alcoholic cop, an action hero, Prospero and also a British monarch at least four times. Now she takes on Golda Meir, the late prime minister of Israel, in a new biopic, and the casting has caused controversy.

The choice of a non-Jewish actor to star as a woman with such a prominent place in the history of Israel has prompted irritation on both sides of the argument. Another illustrious dame, Maureen Lipman, was first to raise the issue – or “blast” Mirren, according to some reports last week – and then Dame Esther Rantzen defended the director’s choice. It is the latest instance of a ‘Jewface’ row, a backlash to the assignment of a major Jewish role to someone not from that minority background.

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Mystery of the second world war ‘trophy’ and the Royal Court founder

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When George Devine’s family discovered a Japanese battle flag among his belongings, it led to a three-year quest for answers

“I am not a man for soldiering, although I do tolerably well at it in a very minor role. But there is nothing about it that pleases me, and much that offends … It is a corrupter of morals in the widest sense and a gross waste of man’s time and effort.”

These words were written by George Devine, the actor and founding artistic director of the Royal Court theatre, in a letter to his wife from Burma, where he served in the second world war. The views he expressed reflected what his family – and many in the arts world – regarded as his essential humanity and compassion.

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The trouble with Roblox, the video game empire built on child labour

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Young developers on the platform used by many millions of children claim they have been financially exploited, threatened with dismissal and sexually harassed

Anna* was 10 when she built her first video game on Roblox, a digital platform where young people can make, share and play games together. She used Roblox much like a child from a previous generation might have used cardboard boxes, marker pens and stuffed toys to build a castle or a spaceship and fill it with characters and story. There was one alluring difference: Roblox hosted Anna’s tiny world online, enabling children she had never met and who maybe lived thousands of miles away from her home in Utah to visit and play. Using Roblox’s in-built tools – child-friendly versions of professional software – Anna began to learn the rudiments of music composition, computer programming and 3D modelling. Game-making became an obsession. When she wasn’t at school Anna was rarely off her computer.

As she became more proficient, Anna’s work caught the attention of some experienced users on Roblox, game-makers in their 20s who messaged her with a proposition to collaborate on a more ambitious project. Flattered by their interest, Anna became the fifth member of the nascent team, contributing art, design and programming to the game. She did not sign up to make money, but during a Skype call the game-makers offered the teenager 10% of any profits the game made in the future. It turned out to be a generous offer. Within a few months, the game had become one of the most played on Roblox. For Anna, success had an unfathomable, life-changing impact. At 16 her monthly income somehow exceeded her parents’ combined salaries. She calculated that she was on course to earn $300,000 in a year, a salary equivalent to that of a highly experienced Google programmer. Anna cancelled her plans to go to college.

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PEN prize-winning Ugandan novelist Kakwenza Rukirabashaija illegally detained and tortured

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The author is being held after tweets criticising President Yoweri Museveni and his son

Ugandan satirical novelist Kakwenza Rukirabashaija, who was named International Writer of Courage by PEN last year, has been illegally detained and tortured for criticising the president and his son, his lawyer said.

Gunmen came to the writer’s house on 28 December after a series of tweets about the country’s president, Yoweri Museveni, including one calling him a thief and his son and presumed successor “an incompetent pig-headed curmudgeon”.

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Hanya Yanagihara: ‘I have the right to write about whatever I want’

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To Paradise, the new novel from the writer of A Little Life, has been widely hailed as a masterpiece. But where did she get the unflinching eye she turns on America’s idea of itself?

Hanya Yanagihara’s debut novel taught her not to give up her day job as a travel writer and editor. The People in the Trees was the story of a scientist jailed for sexually abusing children he adopted during his Nobel-winning research on a Pacific island. It impressed reviewers with its exhaustive inventiveness and its refusal to offer redemption or solace, but sold only a few thousand copies when it was published in 2013.

Two years later, the Manhattan-based writer released a novel that was twice as long and even less forgiving. It was about the fallout, among four college friends, from the appalling childhood sexual abuse of one of their group, and it hit the jackpot, becoming one of those vanishingly rare literary break-outs. Victoria Beckham and Dua Lipa declared themselves fans, while an equally passionate group of readers condemned it as gratuitous, even “evil”. A Little Life sold a quarter of a million print copies in the UK alone, where it was shortlisted for the Booker and the Women’s prize for fiction. But far from giving up her day job, Yanagihara took on a bigger one, as editor-in-chief of T, the New York Times style magazine.

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Art historian discovers that £65 painting on his wall is work of Flemish master

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Picture of Isabella Clara Eugenia, Infanta of Spain, is likely to be by Sir Anthony van Dyck, finds Courtauld’s report

As a leading art historian, Christopher Wright has uncovered several old master paintings in public and private collections over five decades. Now he has discovered that a copy of a painting by Sir Anthony van Dyck, which he bought for himself for £65 in 1970, may actually be an original by the 17th-century Flemish court painter to King Charles I.

“I bought it from a jobbing dealer in west London,” he said. “I was buying it as a copy, as an art historian. I took no notice of it, in a strange way. The syndrome is the cobbler’s children are the worst shod. So the art historian’s collection is the least looked at.” Wright estimated the painting might be worth around £40,000, although some Van Dycks have fetched seven-figure sums.

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Who is he really? Interview attempts with Robert De Niro in 1977

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Paul Gardner recounts his mostly unsuccessful efforts to get to know the star

Paul Gardner bagged himself a rare interview with Robert De Niro for the Observer Magazine of 7 August 1977 (‘Making It – the man from Mean Streets’).

Gardner had met De Niro in Rome for the filming of Bertolucci’s 1900 – ‘an extravagant tapestry of Italian history’ – but was rebuffed. Then three years later he caught up with him in Hollywood, De Niro having spent five months on Martin Scorsese’s film musical New York, New York.

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Harlan Coben: ‘I used to write in the back of Ubers’

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The writer, 59, on working in a disco, being an introvert and growing up Jewish

In college I worked as a tour guide on the Costa del Sol. It was a weird scene. I saw some wild stuff; some violence I’d like to forget. I lived in one hotel room with four or five people for a while. I worked in a discotheque. But it inspired my first attempt at really writing. I needed to get it all down.

I think most writers have impostor syndrome. On the one hand you think, “I suck, I’ve got nothing to say, this isn’t working at all,” and the next moment you have the hubris to say, “I’m going to write 500 pages and people are going to pay me to read it.”

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First, a pickled shark. Next up for Damien Hirst, his ‘white elephant’ manor house

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The artist’s £3m Cotswolds pile, which has remained empty and unrenovated since 2005, has been described as an ‘eyesore’

When Damien Hirst bought a historic manor in the Cotswolds he had grand plans. The crumbling 19th-century Toddington Manor, which the world’s richest artist bought for £3m in 2005, would be restored to its former glory, turned into his family home and be a spectacular gallery for his personal art collection.

But years 17 years after its purchase, the property remains uninhabited and covered in scaffolding and tarpaulin. Locals have branded it an “eyesore,” a “white blob” and “a blight on the countryside”.

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Justin and Dan Hawkins of the Darkness look back: ‘People are terrified of us. And rightly so’

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The brothers recreate a family photo and talk about how they came back from a huge fallout – and a best man’s speech starring a puppet testicle

Justin and Dan Hawkins are the Lowestoft brothers behind rock band the Darkness. Puncturing the genteel Dido and Keane-era mainstream of the early noughties with their stadium rock and low-cut catsuits, their music had a short-lived period of ridicule before their debut album Permission to Land went on to sell 3.5m copies. At the peak of their commercial powers they won three Brit awards, an Ivor Novello, and penned the modern Christmas classic, 2003’s Christmas Time (Don’t Let the Bells End). The band split in 2006 after the release of their second album, but they’ve since reformed and released five more records. They are currently on tour.

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Don’t Look Up: four climate experts on the polarising disaster film

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Critics haven’t been kind to Adam McKay’s eco-satire, but many climate experts are lauding it. Here four give their views

Rarely has a film been as divisive as Adam McKay’s climate satire Don’t Look Up. Although it has been watched by millions, and is already Netflix’s third most watched film ever, the response from critics was largely negative. Many found its story of scientists who discover an asteroid heading for Earth a clumsy allegory for the climate crisis, while others just found it boring. But many in the climate movement have praised the film, and audience reviews have been generally positive.

We asked four climate experts to give their views on the film. Warning: spoilers ahead.

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Gemma Chan on the truth about her father’s life at sea: ‘He knew what it was like to have nothing’

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The actor knew her father had served in the merchant navy, but it wasn’t until she read about Britain’s mistreatment of Chinese seamen in the 40s that she understood just how much his experiences had shaped her family

“Take the rest of the noodles and the pak choi and you can have it for your lunch tomorrow.” My dad pushed the takeaway containers and their remaining contents across the table towards me.

“I’ve got loads of food at mine, why don’t you and Mum keep it?” I protested. I knew he’d insist I take the leftovers with me. This routine would always play out at the end of family dinners once I’d left home and, this time around, it felt both familiar and oddly comforting – because it had been a while since our last dinner.

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