City Provincetown Showbiz Latest News and Updates

John Waters looks positive giddy as he perches on the edge of his chair at the Provincetown Film Festival, chuckling as he recalls the bad reviews Variety gave him back in the day. I recall one from the 1974 write-up for “Female Trouble” — “‘Camp’ is too elegant a word to describe it all” — and he rolls his eyes at the word “camp.” “No one says that word anymore,” he laughs.

Brent Lang Executive Editor Cartilage Films has acquired worldwide rights to “Summer Solstice,” a new comedy that marks the feature debut of its writer and director Noah Schamus. The movie boasts an ensemble cast led by breakout performances from Bobbi Salvör Menuez (“Under the Silver Lake”) and Marianne Rendón (“Charlie Says”). The producers are billing Schamus’s film as a modern twist on the buddy comedy, with this one told from a queer and trans perspective.

Siddhant Adlakha A scattered but intimate drama about a queer immigrant left adrift, Marco Calvani’s “High Tide” boasts an impeccable leading performance that buoys the movie even at its weakest. Strung together by gentle moments, it follows Brazilian émigré Lourenço (Marco Pigossi) as he anticipates the return of his American lover in Provincetown — Massachusetts’ gay promised land — while running out the clock on his visa.

Naman Ramachandran Montreal-based distributor and sales agent Filmoption International has acquired world rights to Nick Butler’s feature directorial debut, “The Legacy of Cloudy Falls.” Filmoption will launch the film at the upcoming Berlin European Film Market. Set in the Cloudy Falls residence, a run-down apartment complex in Niagara Falls that seems destined to be torn down, the film tells the story of a handful of its tenants, chosen at random by the narrator, Rita (Susan Berger), the building’s glib superintendent.

Travel blog by Travels of Adam (Hipster Blog) – Travels of Adam (Hipster Blog) - Travel & Lifestyle Hipster Blog One of the best small towns in America, Provincetown has a rich history and culture as an LGBTQ hotspot and artist community. Discover the best of Ptown in this guide for first travel travelers. What to expect, and special travel tips and highlights to make the most of your trip! We couldn’t stop smiling.

Actor-director Julio Torres didn’t appear in-person at the Outfest screening of his upcoming comedy Problemista, but he did send a message to the audience.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic A distressingly large number of first-time American indie films focus on coming-of-age stories. In cases where the director is gay, there’s a good chance said that first feature will be a coming-of-age/coming-out story. What else should we expect? The directors haven’t been on earth all that long, and they write what they know, or else, what they’ve seen in other movies. That said, “Big Boys” surprised me. Corey Sherman’s deliciously uncomfortable debut features a lot of the usual ingredients: a misfit teenage protagonist, a transformative couple days (in this case, a “cousins’ camping trip” to Lake Arrowhead), a series of embarrassing but life-altering experiences. But I hadn’t seen anyone like his main character at the center of a movie before and loved how awkwardly this kid navigates trying to figure himself out.

“I like when I’m working on something that I don’t understand,” says 7x Oscar nominated filmmaker Wes Anderson on how he cracked his new off-kilter comedic period opus, Asteroid City, which hits theaters in New York and LA this Friday. The Focus Features release goes wide on Friday, June 23.

Newly minted Oscar winner Ed Berger, director, co-writer and producer of All Quiet On the Western Front, which was named Best International Film last night, is set to direct and executive produce Helltown, an eight-episode crime thriller in development at Amazon Studios from Mohamad El Masri (Severance), Robert Downey Jr., Susan Downey’s Team Downey. Oscar Isaac (Moon Knight) is in discussions to star in and executive produce the project, based on the book of the same name by Casey Sherman.

BreAnna Bell Oscar Isaac is in discussions to lead “Helltown,” sources say. The series is currently in development at Amazon. According to the logline, the hour-long, 8-episode crime thriller follows the life of Kurt Vonnegut before he became known to the world as a renowned author. Per Amazon, “In 1969 Kurt was a struggling novelist and car salesman living life with his wife and five children on Cape Cod. When two women disappear and are later discovered murdered underneath the sand dunes on the outskirts of Provincetown, Kurt becomes obsessed and embroiled in the chilling hunt for a serial killer and forms a dangerous bond with the prime suspect.”

Live & Livid Tour, stays connected to younger perspectives, even if she’s just watching other people play. “I’m like, ‘How do you even figure this out?'” she says.

The struggle to find oneself — and one’s chosen family — hits hard in the trailer for “Lonesome,” the latest film from Australian writer-director Craig Boreham, which hits theaters in the U.S. Feb.

EXCLUSIVE: Jason Moring’s Double Dutch International will launch worldwide sales at AFM for Midday Black Midnight Blue — a feature drama marking the feature directorial debut of The Queen’s Gambit actress Samantha Soule and The Conners scribe Daniel Talbott.

Lucy Simon, the Tony Award-nominated composer of Broadway’s 1991 musical The Secret Garden and sister of singer Carly Simon, died of breast cancer Thursday at her home in Piedmont, New York. She was 82.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Billy Eichner’s “Bros” made history as the first gay rom-com to be given a wide theatrical release by a major studio, as well as the first with an all-openly LGBTQ cast. From the nightclub where Eichner’s Bobby meets and falls in love with Luke McFarlane’s buff Aaron, to the LGBTQ+ Museum grand opening, the Big Apple love story features several amazing sets — as well as a carefully curated DVD shelf. While production for “Bros” was originally meant to take place in Buffalo, N.Y, the pandemic thwarted plans, and with a new tax credit incentive, New Jersey became the stand-in for the rom-com (with a few scenes shot on the streets of New York and Provincetown). Sitting down with Variety, writer-director Nicholas Stoller and production designer Lisa Myers share insight into the film’s key sets.

Hallmark Christmas movies, and I’ve always enjoyed Macfarlane’s work as a charming romantic lead in them, but “Bros” offers the kind of complexity and shading (to say nothing of humor) that Hallmark never could. Anyone coming into this film only knowing Macfarlane for his cozy cable movies will leave with a new appreciation of this versatile actor’s wheelhouse.Cinematographer Brandon Trost (“Can You Ever Forgive Me?”) bathes the film in a romantic-comedy glow, whether Bobby and Aaron are falling for each other in Manhattan or in Provincetown, and overall, “Bros” harkens back to old-school rom-coms and their more recent iterations.

EXCLUSIVE: Podcast companies Stitcher, Rococo Punch and Room Tone have teamed up on a new reality podcast that explores the drama and dreams of seven people in an iconic LGBTQ community at the end of the world.

“That was totally by accident and not by design,” he laughs. “I didn’t know what I was doing when I started, and I could never quite do it right. And so I would overdraw because the more you try to get it even, and it’s not quite even, the more you draw.

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle EditorWelcome to this week’s “Just for Variety.”Searchlight Pictures’ “Fire Island” doesn’t come out until June, but Matt Rogers, who plays Luke in the queer rom- com, has high hopes that it launches a big gay franchise.Joel Kim Booster and Bowen Yang star as friends who head to the iconic LGBTQ vacation locale ready to have the best summer of their lives. “‘Provincetown’ should be the sequel,” Rogers told me at the premiere of his Showtime show “I Love That for You.” “Let’s do ‘Palm Springs.’ Let’s do ‘Puerto Vallarta.’ This is going to be the ‘Fast & Furious for queers!”Then Rogers, who co-hosts the “Las Culturistas” podcast with Yang, cracks, “I’m the Michelle Rodriguez of the bunch, baby.” As I was the first to report, “Fire Island” will world premiere on June 2 at NewFest Pride in NYC.

American Horror Story fans can get a taste of the series’ upcoming tenth installment, Double Feature, with a three-part audio drama.

No one is safe in Provincetown! In the first official trailer for season 10 of American Horror Story, a writer’s efforts to find a safe haven to work quickly becomes a living nightmare.

Brent Lang Executive Editor of Film and MediaNew Works Provincetown has commissioned its second and third projects. The developmental theater lab will help support a new play by Kevin Powell (“The Education of Kevin Powell: A Boy’s Journey into Manhood”), developed with and directed by Oliver Butler (“What the Constitution Means to Me”).

The U.S. Coast Guard is scouring the coast of Massachusetts for a Maine fishing boat that sank early Monday. The 82-foot vessel, named the Emmy Rose, disappeared about 20 miles northeast of Provincetown, the Coast Guard reported.

A viral video captured a great white shark making a meal of a seal near a Massachusetts beach.  The shark was spotted in the shallows near the short of Race Point Beach in Provincetown on Thursday.The video served as a good reminder that while summer is over, sharks continue to hunt well into the autumn months.  “This is another good reminder that white sharks hunt in shallow waters off the Cape and, based on tagging data, we know that October is a peak season month for white shark activity off

Antonia Blyth Deputy Editor, AwardsLineHalf crime drama, half character study, Starz new series Hightown takes a dark, morally shaded genre usually populated by men and hands it to a woman.

 is channeling her dark side in Starz's gritty new crime drama, as free-wheeling, drug-addicted, hard-partying investigator Jackie Quinones, whose journey to stay clean is riddled with sharp edges and numerous obstacles. Things take a dramatic turn when she discovers a body on a Provincetown beach, the latest victim of the opioid crisis. As the show unravels over eight episodes, Raymund's Jackie is forced to face her own personal demons — and, as one can imagine, it gets ugly fast.

You're going to see an entirely different Monica Raymund in Starz's new crime drama, Hightown, about the harrowing addiction and opioid crisis plaguing Provincetown, the small town located at the northern tip of Cape Cod.

By Daniel D'Addario

Monica Raymund in Hightown — Photo: STARZ

Add one more film festival to the growing list of events canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic. The Provincetown International Film Festival on Monday confirmed that it will not be moving forward with plans for this year's edition, which was scheduled to run June 17-21.

In today’s film news roundup, Frank Grillo and Luke Wilson join the cast of “Cosmic Sin,” the interrupted Miami Film Festival unveils its winners and the BAMcinemaFest and Provincetown festivals call off their events.