Broadway and film star Joel Grey and John Kander, composer of Cabaret, Chicago and more, will receive the 2023 Special Tony Awards for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre.

Grey was the original Amos Hart in the 1996 Chicago and the original Emcee in Cabaret on Broadway, for which he won a Tony Award. He later received an Academy Award, Golden Globe and BAFTA for his performance in the film adaptation. Kander, who co-wrote those legendary musicals with the late lyricist Fred Ebb, is currently represented on Broadway with the musical New York, New York.

“We are immensely thrilled to honor two legends in their own rights. John Kander has composed the soundtrack to all of our lives – meeting us in every decade – creating unforgettable scores for Cabaret, Chicago, Kiss of the Spider Woman, and his current Broadway hit New York, New York,” said Charlotte St. Martin, president of the Broadway League.

“As a legendary actor and director,...

Culture Shift is THR‘s new newsletter dedicated to exploring and examining the current frontiers of inclusion in the media and entertainment industry. Each bimonthly edition will give subscribers the first look at stories centering the experiences of people from historically excluded backgrounds, as well as a compendium of other inclusion-themed coverage you might have missed. Expect a mix of reported features, Q&As and op-eds from both THR staffers and guest writers, and subscribe here.

To this day, I still have never seen Breathing Lessons, but I’ll always know that it won the Academy Award for best documentary short, and that it was directed by a woman named Jessica Yu.

I know this because Yu ascending the stage in her black-and-gold evening gown at the 1997 ceremony is my first memory of seeing an Asian person win an Oscar. I was a first-generation Chinese American in high school, light...

Folks, a short list has emerged for Academy Award nominating consideration. Yes, we have AMPAS announcing that they’ve pared down the list of films hoping to be nominated for Best Documentary Short Subject rather considerably. There were initially far more entries vying for one of the five available slots, but not it’s just down to ten. Obviously, only half will be among the final five receiving spots in the Oscar race, though that’s pretty good odds, all things considered. This can be a hard category to figure out as I’ve mentioned in prior years, but I can at least try and set the stage for you a bit now. It’s the least I can do, right? As always, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that this is one of the least seen categories at the Academy Awards, if not the absolute least seen.

Another day, another new list emerges to show us what titles are in contention for certain Academy Awards. Yes, today we have AMPAS announcing that they’ve pared down the list of films hoping to be nominated for Best Documentary Short Subject rather considerably. There were initially 74 entries vying for one of the five available slots, but not it’s just down to ten. Obviously, only half will be among the final five receiving spots in the Oscar race, though that’s pretty good odds, all things considered. This can be a hard category to figure out, but I can at least try and set the stage for you a bit now… It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that this is one of the least seen categories at the Academy Awards, if not the absolute least seen. Not only is it the red headed stepchild of the...

©2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved

Oscar-nominated actor James Garner has passed away at the age of 86.

From AP:

Garner, whose whimsical style in the 1950s TV Western “Maverick” led to a stellar career in TV and films such as “The Rockford Files” and his Oscar-nominated “Murphy’s Romance,” was found dead of natural causes at his home in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles Saturday evening, Los Angeles police officer Alonzo Iniquez said early Sunday.

Police responded to a call around 8 p.m. Pdt and confirmed Garner’s identity from family members, Iniquez told The Associated Press.

There was no immediate word on a more specific cause of death. Garner had suffered a stroke in May 2008, just weeks after his 80th birthday.

Although he was adept at drama and action, Garner was best known for his low-key, wisecracking style, especially with his hit TV series, “Maverick” and “The Rockford Files.

Chicago – It’s a shame how box office numbers play such a large factor in Oscar votes. Just imagine if “The Blind Side” was a flop. Sandra Bullock wouldn’t have been allowed within a billion miles of the Oscar podium. If Ben Lewin’s “The Sessions” was given a fair shot with audiences, it would’ve easily brought its star, John Hawkes, an Oscar nomination.

As Mark O’Brien, a Polio-stricken writer confined to an iron lung, Hawkes delivers the sort of transcendently brilliant work that ranks right alongside Joaquin Phoenix’s phenomenal intensity in “The Master” and Daniel Day-Lewis’s astonishing transformation in “Lincoln.” The painstaking research he conducted, including several viewings of Jessica Yu’s Oscar-winning 1996 documentary short, “Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O’Brien,” is apparent in every frame of Hawkes’s sublime portrayal. He resists sentiment even when Lewin’s script succumbs to it.

Very few winners let alone nominees in the Best Documentary Short category are remembered after the Academy Awards ceremony is over. Can you recall even a single winner in the honor’s more than 70 years? Maybe you’ve at least heard of Jessica Yu’s 1997 winner, Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O’Brien, since it led to the making of The Sessions, a drama about O’Brien nominated for an Oscar this year in the Best Supporting Actress category. You also ought to know that there are often returning nominees in this niche arena, including multiple winner Walt Disney and now five more filmmakers representing three of the current contenders. One of those five Academy Award veterans even won in her previous race, and while that can often work against a nominee in other categories, here it shouldn’t at all. Even ignoring all the wins for the U.S...

At first, it seems like this is an odd year for Best Documentary Feature. A lot of the early favorites weren’t nominated, and some of them didn’t even make the shortlist. I’m thinking of Central Park Five and Bully, and to an extent The House I Live In. However, in spite of how unexpected it feels, that almost always happens. If anything, this is a strange but predictable year for the category. We have a front-runner, even if the list appears to be diverse in content and full of impressively affecting films. Incidentally, watch the winner. This year’s fiction nominees include two films based on prior documentary Oscar-winners. Kon-Tiki in Best Foreign Language Film is based on the journey of Thor Heyerdahl to Polynesia, the documentary of which won in 1952. The Sessions, meanwhile, is based on Jessica Yu’s short doc winner Breathing Lessons. Could we see another Oscar-nominated adaptation from this list...

The Sessions, a movie about a severely disabled man trying to lose his virginity, may be the hardest sell of award season. How do you get people to give a movie a try when the very premise is squirm-inducing?

Funnily enough, describing The Sessions is also a little like trying to be intimate. If you come on too strong, too direct or blunt, all you’ll do is turn the person off. (Case in point: the way I described the movie above.)

But once you’ve actually seen The Sessions, you know there’s a lot more to it. For one,...

When writer-director Ben Lewin was looking for an actor to play Mark O’Brien in “The Sessions,” he knew he was in for a challenge. The role of the poet and journalist, previously profiled in the Oscar-winning short “Breathing Lessons,” was unable to move his body from the head down due to a childhood bout with polio. In addition to the physical demands, the role of O’Brien was a challenging one; unlike many films that portray the disabled as saints, O’Brien is a complicated character, often charming but also prone to bouts of anger and self-loathing. Casting director Ronnie Yeskel first brought up the name John Hawkes, then fresh off his Oscar nomination for “Winter’s Bone.” Recalls Lewin, “She told me, ‘This is your man.’ So I watched ‘Winter’s Bone’ and thought, ‘What? This creepy old guy?’ ” But as Lewin watched more of Hawkes’ work, he...

Short films are an often underappreciated art form. The ability to tell an effective story within “40 minutes or less”, as defined by the Academy, is certainly a talent, and can often be a medium for aspiring filmmakers to prove their chops and transition into feature length productions. The same principle holds true for aspiring actors as well, with many big screen stars honing their craft on smaller movies. Thus, every sunday, we will highlight one such film, to give our readers a look at how directors, writers, and actors perform with time limitations.

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Today’s film is the 1997 short Breathing Lessons. A documentary written and directed by Jessica Yu, this short tells the story of Mark O’Brien, who was afflicted with polio at a young age that left him unable to operate without an iron lung. O’Brien’s story was made into a feature film titled The Sessions,...

Chicago – Sure to be one of the best performances of 2012 is John Hawkes as Mark O’Brien, a polio victim who lived on his own and was a poet, despite no movement from his neck down, and confined for most of the day in an iron lung. Ben Lewin wrote the screenplay and directed the extraordinary story of “The Sessions.”

John Hawkes had been a journeyman actor since the late 1980s, when he began to break out starting with a role in HBO’s “Deadwood,” as Sol Star. During that period, he was noticed in the film “You and Me and Everyone We Know” (2005), but came out in a major way with “Winter’s Bone” (2010), for which he was nominated for an Oscar. “Martha Marcy May Marlene” followed a year afterward, and a notable role in “Eastbound and Down” on HBO. “The Sessions” is a film that he has to carry,...

In The Sessions, John Hawkes plays true character Mark O’Brien, a man with polio who spends much of his life isolated from human touch in his iron lung. In hopes of feeling something remarkable, he hires a sex surrogate (played by Helen Hunt) to help him lose his virginity. William H. Macy plays Father Brendan, a spiritual consultant for Mark during this life-changing event.

For the role, Hawkes spent the entire time laid on his back, barely moving his head. Hawkes’ work in the film was informed by the Oscar-winning documentary about the man he plays entitled Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O’Brien.

While this performance has Hawkes buzzed for an Academy Award nomination, it wouldn’t be his first time in the Oscar rodeo. In 2010, Hawkes was nominated for his supporting role in Winter’s Bone, playing opposite Jennifer Lawrence. In recent years,...

John Hawkes has emerged as one of the finest chameleon-like character actors of our time, in films like Winter’s Bone, Martha Marcy May Marlene, and Higher Ground. With his performance in The Sessions he reaches a new plateau, transforming himself into the wry, self-deprecating journalist Mark O’Brien, a polio victim who spends most of his time in an iron lung, tended to by a succession of caregivers. (To see the real O’Brien, check out Jessica Yu’s documentary Breathing Lessons.) At the age of 38 O’Brien, a practicing Catholic, decides that he wants to experience sex for the first time, and receives the (reluctant) approval of his hip parish priest,...

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Inspired by the life and writings of Mark O'Brien -- a polio-stricken but determined journalist and poet confined to an iron lung since age six -- "The Sessions" offers a less comprehensive look at O'Brien's life than Jessica Yu's excellent documentary "Breathing Lessons," but instead focuses on a small sliver of his life and living. In 1988, O'Brien, then 38, made a decision to explore his own sexuality -- despite his paralysis -- in part inspired by his research into a story on sex and disability. Unsure about his ability to forge a relationship -- and concerned, as he puts it to his Catholic Priest and confessor, that he's "approaching his use-by date," O'Brien looks into hiring a sex surrogate. The surrogate, Cheryl Cohen Greene, explains that she's not a prostitute, but a therapist -- she and Mark will have six sessions, and then terminate their relationship. It sounds complex. It gets more so.

John Hawkes, the 53-year-old star of Fox Searchlight’s sadly sweet film The Sessions, relied on his emotional eyes and voice to play possibly the most difficult role of his decades-long career — real-life poet and writer Mark O’Brien, who is paralyzed from the neck down due to polio.

In the movie, directed and written by Ben Lewin, Hawkes’ O’Brien seeks the help of a sex surrogate, played by Helen Hunt, who literally bares all to help him lose his virginity. William H. Macy is bone dry and hilarious as O’Brien’s long-haired Catholic priest and confidant. The...

The production company that brought us An Inconvenient Truth, about global climate change, and Food, Inc., about the American food industry, now tackles the international water crisis with this thoroughly researched, cleverly presented, awfully depressing documentary by Jessica Yu. Since winning an Oscar for her documentary short Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O’Brien, Yu has carved out an eclectic career of esoteric documentaries (In the Realms of the Unreal, Protagonist) and popular television (The West Wing, Grey’s Anatomy). Here, she builds what she calls a “structured mosaic” of startling statistics and memorable personalities that leave a distressing...

The Surrogate

Directed by Ben Lewin

Screenplay by Ben Lewin

2012, USA

John Hawkes (of Deadwood and from last year’s Martha Marcy May Marlene) portrays Mark O’Brien, a real life poet and advocate for the physically disabled who decides at age 38 to lose his virginity. O’Brien spends his life in an iron lung, paralyzed from the neck down. The catalyst for The Surrogate is that while researching a book on sex in the disabled community, he discovers sex surrogacy- a step that people who are in some way impaired can take to fulfill their needs. Mark comes to feel as though sex surrogacy is his only recourse to know pleasure as he has fallen in love before but sadly never with anyone who wanted to reciprocate sexually. The subject matter alone might be enough to scare off those who would hate this movie. If you’ve made it...

In The Surrogate, a 38-year-year-old man named Mark O’Brien hires a woman to relieve him of his virginity. But wait, there’s more: Because of childhood polio, the man can’t move his body below his neck, and when he isn’t spending hours in the iron lung that helps him breathe, he’s lying flat on a gurney, cared for by a rotation of attendants. Also there’s this: The woman he hires isn’t a prostitute but a surrogate partner, trained as a sex therapist and experienced at working with disabled clients. The real O’Brien, a poet and journalist,...

"The Surrogate," a drama based on the (sex) life of poet, journalist and polio victim Mark O'Brien, is already deemed one of Sundance's breakout hits, with Fox Searchlight reportedly paying $6 million for worldwide rights and holding hopes for awards this time next year. However, it's not the first time that O'Brien's life has been made into a movie -- and the Oscars are already familiar territory. Jessica Yu won the Academy Award for best documentary short in 1997 with "Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O'Brien," a 35-minute film comprised almost entirely of O'Brien talking to the camera from inside his iron lung. (At one point, Yu hoped to turn "Breathing Lessons" into a feature and was developing it with Oliver Stone.) In a voice that sounds much like that of "The Surrogate" star John Hawkes, O'Brien details his history, his current life and his future. Shot in 1994, his life.

Getty Actor John Hawkes attends ‘The Surrogate’ premiere during the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

Actor John Hawkes, known for his roles in the HBO drama “Deadwood,” and indie darlings “Winter’s Bone” and “Martha, Marcy, May, Marlene,” generated a standing ovation at the Sundance Film Festival this week, following the premiere of his latest movie, “The Surrogate.”

The film tells the story of Mark O’Brien, a writer confined to an iron lung, who decides at the age of 38 that he...

Inspired by the life and writings of Mark O'Brien -- a polio-stricken but determined journalist and poet confined to an iron lung since age six -- "The Surrogate" offers a less comprehensive look at O'Brien's life than Jessica Yu's excellent documentary "Breathing Lessons," but instead focuses on a small sliver of O'Brien's life and living. In 1988, O'Brien, then 38, made a decision to explore his own sexuality -- despite his paralysis - in part inspired by his own research into a story on sex and disability. Unsure about his ability to forge a relationship -- and concerned, as he puts it to his Catholic Priest and confessor, that he's "approaching his use-by date," O'Brien looks into hiring a sex surrogate. The surrogate, Cheryl Cohen Greene, explains that she's not a prostitute, but a therapist -- she and Mark will have six sessions, and then terminate their relationship. It sounds complex.

Fox Searchlight officially made a pair of acquisitions today at the Sundance Film Festival, picking up both "Beasts of the Southern Wild", a fantastical drama from first time director Benh Zeitlin that's being described as the biggest hit of the Park city fest so far, and "The Surrogate" helmed by Ben Lewin, who began working as a director over 30 years ago but may have just scored his big breakthrough. The latter film stars John Hawkes ("Martha Marcy May Marlene") as Mark O'Brien, the late poet and journalist who was the subject of the Oscar-winning 1997 documentary "Breathing Lessons: The Life...

The new film “Last Call at the Oasis” — which premieres on Friday at the Toronto International Film Festival — aims to make drinking water the hottest environmental topic since global warming. From the producers of “An Inconvenient Truth,” “Food, Inc.” and “Waiting for Superman,” the documentary draws upon the research of scientists and includes diverse voices, from Erin Brockovich to actor Jack Black, to raise alarm bells about the state of the earth’s water supply.

Directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Jessica Yu...

Inspired by the book The Ripple Effect by Alex Prud’homme, Last Call at the Oasis, is directed by Jessica Lingman Yu who won the Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject in 1996 for Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O’Brien. Her new film which comes from Participant Media, the company that brought you Page One, Waiting for Superman, An Inconvenient Truth and Food, Inc. documents the world’s water crisis, drawing upon the work of various scientists and activists. Last call at the Oasis will world premiere at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival. Here is the trailer.

The Toronto International Film Festival runs from Sept. 8 to 18.

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This year at the Oscar’s a little-known character actor, who had been creating strong performances in independent films and television for years, finally got some well-deserved recognition when he was nominated alongside some major stars in the Best Supporting Actor category. John Hawkes, nominated for the gritty Ozarks noir Winter’s Bone, was the category’s clear underdog, running against academy favorite Geoffrey Rush and a trio of famous leading men, Mark Ruffalo, Jeremy Renner, and Christian Bale. And while Hawkes (my personal pick for the award) did not win the Oscar, his deliciously menacing performance has earned accolades and taken Hawkes to a new level of fame. The kind of fame that has Variety reporting on his next move.

The perennial supporting player is set to star in an upcoming independent about heralded poet and journalist Mark O’Brien, a man whose brush with polio left him to...

Even if Winter's Bone wasn't seen by a huge audience outside the indie world, the film's four Oscar nominations have meant big things for everyone involved in the film-- star Jennifer Lawrence is moving on to X-Men: First Class and maybe The Hunger Games, and co-star and fellow Oscar nominee John Hawkes isn't far behind. No, he's not toplining any blockbusters yet, but the stalwart character actor is in two Sundance favorites, Martha Marcy May Marlene and Higher Ground, that will likely see release this year. Now he's adding another film to his slate, and this time it's a starring role. According to Variety he's attached to the drama Surrogate, about real-life poet, journalist and activist Mark O'Brien, who lived his entire 50-year life inside an iron lung after contracting polio as a child. He was already the subject of an Oscar-winning documentary short, Jessica Yu's Breathing Lessons:...

Oscar-nominated John Hawkes is attached to star in Ben Lewin’s indie drama Surrogate for Rhino Films. Lewin is also on board to write the pic, with Stephen Nemeth producing.

The film is based on the true-life story of journalist and poet Mark O’Brien. Suffering from polio he was left paralyzed from the neck down. That did little to stop O’Brien’s aspirations and he going on to become a published journalist and poet. His story was documented in the 1996 Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O’Brien which won an Oscar for documentary short.

This film will center on a more peculiar chapter in O’Brien’s life: his engaging a sex surrogate to help him explore his sexuality. By the way, this practice was introduced by gynecologist Masters and psychologist Johnson. O’Brien, as well, published the essay On Seeing a Sex Surrogate...

John Hawkes is set to star in the indie drama Surrogate for Rhino Films which Ben Lewin is directing from his own script. Stephen Nemeth produces Surrogate which is based on the life of Mark O'Brien, a poet and journalist who has spent his life with an iron lung due to polio. After deciding to explore his sexuality, he hires a sex surrogate and soon sparks a relationship that will change both of their lives. O'Brien's life was also a subject in the Oscar-winning documentary short Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O'Brien by Jessica Yu. Surrogate, however, is not based on Breathing Lessons...

John Hawkes is set to star in the indie drama Surrogate for Rhino Films which Ben Lewin is directing from his own script. Stephen Nemeth produces Surrogate which is based on the life of Mark O'Brien, a poet and journalist who has spent his life with an iron lung due to polio. After deciding to explore his sexuality, he hires a sex surrogate and soon sparks a relationship that will change both of their lives. O'Brien's life was also a subject in the Oscar-winning documentary short Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O'Brien by Jessica Yu. Surrogate, however, is not based on Breathing Lessons...

Emmerdale delivered over 7.1m to ITV on Wednesday night, according to overnight data. Natasha and Faye's fight grabbed the attention of 7.14m (33.9%) for ITV1 and ITV1 HD. Over on BBC One, Waterloo Road picked up 4.62m (19.1%) for an episode centred around Chris's series-long secret, while Doctors took 1.27m (18.3%) for an episode titled 'Breathing Lessons'. Ste and Brendan's kiss in Hollyoaks (more)...

New York -- IFC Films has picked up U.S. theatrical rights to Jessica Yu's Asian American-themed comedy "Ping Pong Playa."

It follows aspiring pro basketball player Christopher "C-dub" Wang (Jimmy Tsai) who is forced to settle for running his mother's ping pong class.

"Playa" is the narrative debut for documentarian Yu ("Protagonist," the Oscar-winning short "Breathing Lessons"), who co-wrote it with Tsai.

It premiered at last fall's Toronto International Film Festival, screened this weekend at New York's Asian-American Film Festival and will hit select theaters Sept. 5.

IFC's Arianna Bocco negotiated the deal with Icm and The Firm.

• Protagonist is the latest documentary by the very talented Jessica Yu. Her short film Breathing Lessons was the winner of the 1997 Oscar and was followed by the wonderfully creative In the Realms Of The Unreal about the mysterious artist Henry Darger. She is a master of exploring the odd and extreme in the everyday world around us. Her latest film is no exception as she opens our eyes to the good intentions of a terrorist and the secret homosexuality of a televangelist.Protagonist inter-cuts pieces of ancient Greek Tragedy with the stories of four redeemed men. Each man tells an incredible story of dysfunction and obsession while the Greek text (performed by wooden puppets) creates a dramatic undercurrent for the true stories. It seems to ask the question: Can real life be as dramatic as classic tales of accidental incest and self inflicted eye-gouging? Yu came to the idea

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In what would be her first screen role in 10 years, Oscar-winning actress Joanne Woodward is expected to co-star opposite husband Paul Newman in HBO's adaptation of Richard Russo's best-selling novel Empire Falls, which Newman is executive producing with Marc Platt and Scott Steindorff, with Fred Schepisi attached to direct. The project, a comedic look at blue-collar life in the depressed Maine mill town of Empire Falls, centers on Miles Roby, a fortysomething decent guy stuck running Empire Grill, the town's most popular eatery, for 20 years. Woodward would play Francine Whiting, a controlling and manipulative widow who owns Empire Grill as well as almost everything else in the dead-end town. Newman has already been attached to play Roby's ne'er-do-well father in the telefilm, which Russo adapted from his novel. Woodward's last onscreen performance was in the 1994 CBS telefilm Breathing Lessons, which earned her Golden Globe and SAG awards, as well as an Emmy nomination. Woodward won an Oscar for her role in the 1957 feature The Three Faces of Eve. Woodward and Newman have appeared together in more than a dozen films, most recently the 1990 feature Mr. & Mrs. Bridge, which landed Woodward Oscar and Golden Globe nominations. Last year, Newman starred in the play Our Town at the Westport (Conn.) Country Playhouse, where Woodward is artistic director. Woodward is repped by ICM.