• /Film RIP Peter Mayhew, Chewbacca actor in the original Star Wars films
• Film Comment a wonderful anecdote-filled interview with the legendary casting director Juliet Taylor Dangerous Liaisons, The Exorcist, Close Encounters, Schindler's List, and Broadway Danny Rose are among her many classics.
• Deadline It's official: Michelle Pfeiffer, Lucas Hedges and Tracy Letts to headline French Exit...
• TFE ...our earlier report about Michelle's interest in doing this movie
• Slate thinks the romcom Long Shot is actually pretty feminist (though it's initially strange to hear that claim about yet another movie where the schlubby guy gets the hot girl)
More after the jump including Lucy Liu, an 80s singer coming out, the Karate Kid, the German Oscars, upcoming stage musicals based on movies, and more...
• My New Plaid Pants Chang Chen seven times (posing for GQ China)
• Vanity Fair yes, it's true. They wanted Charlize Theron to play Gal Gadot's mom in Wonder Woman in yet another example of Hollywood being horrible to actresses over 40.
• NewNowNext the Paley Center will honor some of TV's most groundbreaking LGBT shows at a gala on May 15th including Soap and Will & Grace
• Lifehacker YouTube will start allowing regular users to watch their premium comment (with commercial interruptions) later this summer (on a rotating basis) including their Karate Kid themed series Cobra Kai
• Vanity Fair insane as it is to read Lucy Liu just became only the second Asian American woman with a star on the Walk of Fame. She paid tribute to Anna May Wong in her speech.
• THR Gundermann was the big winner at the German Oscars
• Boy Culture Madonna's second song from "Madame X" release. It's called "I Rise"
• Kenneth in the (212) the amazing singer Maria McKee (of Lone Justice / 80s fame) has come out as gay. Love this bit:
In keeping with the theme of being a late dyke, I am a day late with my #lesbiandayofvisibility post. I suppose because there is a part of me that feels like an interloper. A pansexual identified divorcée plunging headlong into the chapter marked “femme for femme”. But I will say this. If being Queer is about solidarity and community, stretching back beyond 25 years to canvassing the streets for AIDS charities, picking up the slack for friends dying alone when their families abandoned them, extending my family circle to my gay fans above all others and being Queer not being about who you fuck, then I have been and, and always will be, Queer as fuck.
Screen to Stage and Back Again
• NYT Current Broadway shows grappling with the sexism of their source material in modern revivals -- Really great piece except for the weird snipe at Tootsie (1982) which the author claims is not beloved; we beg to differ! It's only one of the best films of its entire decade.
• THR The animated film The Prince of Egypt is getting the stage musical treatment with Stephen Schwartz (Wicked) adding 10 new songs to the handful in the film.
• THR Sideways is in development as a Broadway musical. Quick what rhymes with "merlot"?
• Broadway World The Prom and Boys in the Band, both up for Tony Awards are coming to Netflix. (And other stage shows soon to be adapted for streamed)