The Nose Looks at ‘Nightmare Alley’ and ‘The Trojan Horse Affair’

This week’s Nose wants to be found out, same as everybody else.

Guillermo del Toro’s sideshow noir, Nightmare Alley, is nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. It stars Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Toni Collette, Willem Dafoe, and Richard Jenkins, among others. It’s based on the 1946 novel, of which it’s the second film adaptation, after Edmund Goulding’s 1947 version starring Tyrone Power and Joan Blondell.

And The Trojan Horse Affair is the fifth podcast from Serial Productions. It’s hosted by Brian Reed (host of S·Town) and newcomer Hamza Syed, and it’s billed as “a mystery in eight parts.”

Some other stuff that happened this week, give or take:

• A Prominent Regional Theater Will Exit Its Stage to Explore Its City Long Wharf Theater, a regional nonprofit on New Haven’s waterfront, is ending a long, bumpy chapter there, hoping to expand access and reduce costs.
• Hiatus brain: When your favorite show returns, but you can’t remember a thing
• Famous, but wanting to be forgotten
• The Problem With the Pandemic Plot Literary novelists are struggling with whether, and how, to incorporate Covid into their fiction.
• Idris Elba on Plumbing the “Dark Side of Human Beings” and Making Room for Music With a far-reaching slate of movies ahead, including a big-screen adaptation of Luther, the actor is riding high—and ready to take risks.
• Academy Won’t Air All Categories Live for 94th Oscars Telecast
• Jerry Lewis’s Costars Speak Out: “He Grabbed Me. He Began to Fondle Me. I Was Dumbstruck”Women first interviewed by the directors behind Allen v. Farrow say the comedy icon sexually harassed—and in at least one case, sexually assaulted—them with impunity. A special collaboration, including a mini doc, between V.F. and the filmmakers.
• Hugh Jackman’s The Music Man Removes the Classic Show’s Racist Subtext. What’s Left? Harold Hill was a Trumpian figure—but not anymore.
• Self-loathing Will Kill the Oscars
• Have We Forgotten How to Forgive? The internet preserves our worst moments so they can’t be forgotten. Social media’s insatiable appetite for punishment ensures that they can never be forgiven. Is this really what anyone wants?
• Colin Farrell’s Penguin Banned From Smoking in ‘The Batman’: ‘I Fought Valiantly for a Cigar’
• Still Tickets Left For The Louis CK Show In Kyiv [Tonight] Some may call stand-up comedy the biggest security risk of all…

GUESTS:

• Theresa Cramer: A freelance writer and editor and the co-founder of Quiet Corner Communications
• Bill Griffith: Created the syndicated daily comic strip Zippy, and he’s the author of Nobody’s Fool: The Life and Times of Schlitzie the Pinhead
• Irene Papoulis: Teaches writing at Trinity College

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Colin McEnroe and Eugene Amatruda contributed to this show.

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