Ava DuVernay joins academy board
Filmmaker Ava DuVernay has been elected to the film academy’s Board of Governors for the first time.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced its new members Wednesday, which include the “Selma” filmmaker and “A Star is Born” producer Lynette Howell Taylor and casting director Debra Zane.
Incumbent governors reelected include Whoopi Goldberg, “Dolemite Is My Name” screenwriter Larry Karaszewski and Participant Media CEO David Linde.
The organization that puts on the Oscars said the number of women on the board has gone from 25 to 26 and people of color from 11 to 12. The Board of Governors works to set the organization’s strategy, finances and “fulfillment of its mission.”
DuVernay, nominated for her documentary “13th,” has been an active and vocal member of the film academy for years.
4 ‘Vanderpump’ regulars ousted: Four cast members are not returning for another season of Bravo’s “Vanderpump Rules” — two over their racist social media posts, and the others after they racially profiled a co-worker.
Bravo released a statement Tuesday confirming that Stassi Schroeder, Kristen Doute, Max Boyens and Brett Caprioni would not return to the reality series. The show follows the personal lives of current and former employees of former “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star Lisa Vanderpump’s Los Angeles restaurants.
It was revealed last week on a podcast that Schroeder and Doute had reported a former African American co-worker, Faith Stowers, for a crime she had nothing to do with. Boyens and Caprioni were let go over past tweets that contained racial slurs.
Schroeder and Doute have apologized on social media. Boyens and Caprioni apologized on last week’s reunion episode.
HBO Max removes ‘Gone
With the Wind’: HBO Max has temporarily removed “Gone With the Wind” from its streaming library in order to add historical context to the 1939 film long criticized for romanticizing slavery and the Civil War-era South.
In an op-ed Monday, filmmaker John Ridley urged WarnerMedia to take down “Gone With the Wind,” arguing that it “romanticizes the Confederacy in a way that continues to give legitimacy to the notion that the secessionist movement was something more, or better, or more noble than what it was — a bloody insurrection to maintain the ‘right’ to own, sell and buy human beings.”
In a statement, AT&Towned WarnerMedia, which owns HBO Max, called “Gone With the Wind” “a product of its time” that depicts racial prejudices.
The company said that when “Gone With the Wind” returns, it will include “historical context and a denouncement of those very depictions, but will be presented as it was originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed.”
June 11 birthdays: Comedian Johnny Brown is 83. Singer Joey Dee is 80. Actor Roscoe Orman is 76. Drummer Frank Beard is
71. Singer Graham Russell is 70. Actor Peter Bergman is 67. Actor Hugh Laurie is
61. Talk show host Dr. Mehmet Oz is 60. Actor Peter Dinklage is 51. Actor Joshua Jackson is 42. Actor Shia LaBeouf is 34.