The Rushfield Lunch
Mike De Luca & Pam Abdy on Making Box Office History in the Face of ‘Surreal’ Criticism
No studio has ever accomplished the sustained run of hits in a single year that Warner Bros. achieved in 2025.
Rushfield Lunch: Kristen Stewart on the ‘Crock of Sh—’ Fed Female Directors
Count Kristen Stewart among those shocked by the grim statistics around female directors in Hollywood, almost a decade after #MeToo. During my conversation with Stewart on this week’s Rushfield Lunch, the Oscar-nominated actress said she found the fact that only four of this year’s top 100 movies at the North American box office were directed by women t…
Jane Fonda’s Free Speech Warning: ‘They Come for One of Us, They Come for All of Us’
For weeks, I’ve been shouting into the void, urging the most influential people in Hollywood to stand up against authoritarianism. Today, Jane Fonda answered the call (or maybe I answered hers).
Rushfield Lunch: Delia Cai Tries to Explain Today’s Internet to a Gen Xer
I’ve been calling Delia Cai one of the final bright lights on the internet, and our conversation this week only confirmed my priors. Born in 1993, Delia is among the last of the millennials and, as such, has found kinship and understanding not just with her peers but also with her Gen Z comrades-in-arms. Her newsletter,
Rushfield Lunch: Garry Kasparov Sounds the Hollywood Alarm
REMINDER: You’re all welcome to TODAY’s free, open-to-all Town Hall Zoom meeting I’m hosting at 12:30 p.m. PT/3:30 p.m. ET. On the docket: What a Paramount-Warner merger means for you, the actual facts about mergers — and how you can fight back.
The Rushfield Lunch: First, They Came for Kimmel, with Jonathan V. Last
Every week on The Rushfield Lunch, I chat with some of the era’s greatest thinkers, gadflies and artists in an effort to answer the critical question: “What the hell is wrong with everybody?”
The Rushfield Lunch: Nicholas Stoller & Francesca Delbanco
Each week on The Rushfield Lunch, I chat with the industry’s best and brightest minds, the people who can try to help me answer a simple question that rattles around my brain in perpetuity: What the hell is everyone doing?
The Rushfield Lunch: Ted Gioia on What the Media Doesn't Understand
This week on The Rushfield Lunch — my series of live video conversations with the most interesting thinkers and doers of these tumultuous days — I was joined by Ted Gioia, the man who has become the crucial voice for navigating these times, a cultural critic and omnivore par excellence. Gioia’s Substack newsletter,
The Rushfield Lunch: Lauren Greenfield
Every week on The Rushfield Lunch, I am joined by some of the most interesting artists, thinkers, muckety-mucks and personalities of our times for a live chat where we try to unravel what the hell is going on around here.
The Rushfield Lunch: Joshuah Bearman
Every week on The Rushfield Lunch, I have a live and unfiltered conversation with the most important thought leaders in this industry — people like Lena Dunham, Priyanka Mattoo, Franklin Leonard and several other elite industry minds. (Check out the complete list of my lunch guests
The Rushfield Lunch: Franklin Leonard
Any gathering of the most interesting, stimulating thinkers in Hollywood would include my guest this week: Franklin Leonard, the founder and CEO of The Black List, which started in 2005 as an annual survey of Hollywood’s best unproduced scripts and has grown into a “comprehensive resource for the creative industries,” according to its
The Rushfield Lunch: Priyanka Mattoo
Each week on The Rushfield Lunch, I have a live conversation with the most interesting people in my world, which is to say, the most interesting people in the world. People from all walks of life: thinkers, doers, gallivanders, gadflies, muckety-mucks — you name it.
The Rushfield Lunch: Claire Zulkey on the Kids' Screen Time Debate
This week on The Rushfield Lunch — my series of live conversations with the most interesting thinkers and doers of these tumultuous days — I was joined by noted writer and literati Claire Zulkey, whose Evil Witches newsletter has become the hub for moms who’ve had just about enough of the advice-o-sphere.
The Rushfield Lunch: Talking Young Hollywood with Tepper
This week, I welcomed one of the leading lights of Filmstack and a representative of Young Hollywood into the crusty, hidebound sanctum of The Rushfield Lunch. Tepper, whose Tepper Talks Substack newsletter has become an indispensable industry read, joined me to discuss the current state of affairs in Hollywood for her and her peers. Tepper works as a w…
The Rushfield Lunch: Tom Segura & Jeremy Konner on the State of Comedy
This week, on The Rushfield Lunch, I was joined by Tom Segura and Jeremy Konner, the mad geniuses behind Netflix’s totally inappropriate sketch comedy show, Bad Thoughts. Watch above and relive our wide-ranging conversation about how a show this boundary-pushing comes together and the state of comedy in general — and R-rated comedy in particular. We als…
The Rushfield Lunch: Sonny Bunch on Critics & the State of Studio Films
This week on The Rushfield Lunch, I was joined by the great film critic and cultural commentator, Sonny Bunch of The Bulwark. We considered the state of the critical establishment, its herd mentality — and whether it was still serving a real purpose. We also tackled whether these are truly the worst of times in pop culture, where the Trump movie tariff …