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Thanks to his hit sitcom Diff’rent Strokes, Gary Coleman was the biggest child star in the world. Unfortunately, that was a title Coleman held for many more years than he’d intended.

Coleman was 10 when he was cast as Arnold Jackson, one of two orphans taken in by the wealthy Mr. Drummond. Arnold’s older brother Willis, played by Todd Bridges, grew into a young man over the course of the show’s run from 1978 to 1986. But while Willis was dating Janet Jackson, getting into trouble and planning a move out of the Drummonds’ deluxe condo, Arnold seemed perpetually stuck in the fourth grade.

That was largely due to Coleman’s physical appearance. He suffered from a kidney condition and the medication used to treat his ailment stalled his growth, leaving him 4-foot-8 even as he approached 18 years old. He still looked like a cute, chubby-faced kid but he didn’t feel like one.

Cullen Bunn Returns to the Deepest Catacombs: "In 2020, author Cullen Bunn released The Deepest Catacombs, a serialized comic inspired by vintage advertisements for the Dungeons And Dragons role-playing game. The story, told in 25 single-page installments, featured a different artist on every page. It was released for free for fans of comics, fantasy, and role-playing games. Now, Bunn is returning to the world of The Deepest Catacombs with an all-new 22-page comic that will be released in a serialized format.

“When I finished releasing the initial run of The Deepest Catacombs,” says Bunn, “I knew I would return to that world. I just loved the characters and the nostalgia, the magic and the monsters. And I loved working with so many talented artists! This was, of course, a labor of love, so it has taken me a bit of time to get the ball rolling again, but the story is...

Exclusive: Briarcliff Entertainment has acquired The Lost Weekend: A Love Story, the documentary feature in which May Pang discusses her whirlwind love affair with singer John Lennon, when she was just 23 years old and his assistant. The film, which premiered at Tribeca, is directed by Eve Brandstein, Richard Kaufman, and Stuart Samuels. The tale is told through May’s inside perspective, capturing a love affair that shaped a prolific period for Lennon post-Beatles.

Briarcliff will premiere the docu on digital and Blu-ray on October 13, 2023, the week of John Lennon’s birthday, from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment.

A lesser known chapter in the life of the late Beatles singer Lennon, it took 50 years for Pang to tell her story on film. She recounts her 18-month relationship with John—a relationship orchestrated by Yoko Ono herself. During this period, May helped John reunite with his son Julian Lennon, and participated firsthand in his most productive period post-Beatles.

Solaris Entertainment is developing a documentary about groundbreaking comedy writer Anne Beatts, her former business partner Eve Brandstein and Solaris managing partner Michael Bloom announced exclusively to TheWrap on Friday.

Beatts, who died in 2021, was the first woman to write for “Saturday Night Live” and helped pave the way for more women to enter the comedy field, Brandstein, who co-directed and produced the 2022 John Lennon documentary “The Lost Weekend: A Love Story,” said.

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Brandstein and Beatts first worked together on the beloved 1982 series “Square Pegs” starring Sarah Jessica Parker. “[Anne] came from New York and the whole ‘SNL’ scene. I was a little in awe of her comedy credentials at that point,” Brandstein said. She teamed again with Beatts on “Just Say Julie,” starring “Earth Girls Are Easy” writer Julie Brown.

“There weren’t...

Chicago – One of the closest persons to John Lennon in the decade between the break up of The Beatles and his untimely death was May Pang … his lover from 1973 to 1975 … a time in Lennon’s life often called the “Lost Weekend.” Pang narrates a new documentary that sets their record straight, aptly titled “The Lost Weekend A Love Story.”

May Pang is a Manhattan-born daughter of Chinese immigrants and ardent music fan, who became the 19-year-old personal assistant to John Lennon and Yoko Ono beginning in December of 1970, shortly after The Beatles broke up. So when the couple resettled in New York City, she was indispensable to Lennon and Ono’s many wacky projects, In 1973. John began the infamous “Lost Weekend,” which included an intimate relationship with Pang, with Yoko’s blessing, and that level of connection lasted until John and Yoko reconciled in 1975. The film is a comprehensive overview...

Chicago – Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com audio film review for the newly released documentary “The Lost Weekend A Love Story,” which is a chronicle of May Pang and John Lennon’s brief but historically important love affair. Currently in theaters, since April 14th.

Rating: 5.0/5.0

May Pang is a Manhattan-born daughter of Chinese immigrants and ardent music fan, who became the 19-year-old personal assistant to John Lennon and Yoko Ono beginning in December of 1970, shortly after The Beatles broke up. So when the couple resettled in New York City, she was indispensable to Lennon and Ono’s many wacky projects, In 1973. John began the infamous “Lost Weekend” the same year, which included an intimate relationship with Pang, with Yoko’s blessing, and that level of connection lasted until John and Yoko reconciled in 1975.

”The Lost Weekend A Love Story” is currently in theaters, since April 14th. Featuring interviews with May Pang and Julian Lennon,...

Yoko Ono and John Lennon’s marriage may be the stuff of rock ‘n roll history, but new details of an affair are shedding light on the eccentric partnership.

Former employee May Pang exposes her extramarital relationship with late Beatle Lennon, alleging the two dated for 18 months during his marriage to Ono. Documentary “The Lost Weekend: A Love Story” features interviews with Pang, Ono’s son Julian Lennon, and archived footage of Lennon himself calling the idea of his affair with Pang “ridiculous.”

Pang was 19 years old when she began working at Apple Records and soon started an affair with Lennon while employed as his and Ono’s personal assistant. Ono’s rocky marriage to Lennon inspired her to ask Pang to be intimate with her husband. Ono and Lennon were married in 1969, one year before the Beatles disbanded in 1970. Lennon later was shot and killed in 1980.

“Yoko walked into my office and said,...

New York – After the big Red Carpet Opening last Wednesday on June 8th, the Tribeca Film Festival has begun to roll out its diverse and international screenings of narrative films, documentaries and shorts. Film screenings at home are available in this hybrid fest format by clicking TRIBECAatHOME.

The 2022 Tribeca Festival, presented by Crypto Platform Okx, brings artists and diverse audiences together to celebrate storytelling in all its forms, including film, TV, VR, gaming, music, and online work. With strong roots in independent film, Tribeca is a platform for creative expression and immersive entertainment. Throughout the festival, Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago will be reviewing the films of Tribeca.

Still from ‘The Lost Weekend: A Love Story’

Photo credit: TribecaFilm.com

The Tribeca Film Festival was founded in 2002 by Jane Rosenthal, Craig Hatkoff and actor Robert De Niro as a reactive strike back at the September 11th attack in 2001 on New York...

by Jason Adams

Time is a funny thing, slippery. An elastic band behind our eyes that can stretch as far back as we can remember before snapping us back to here and now -- sometimes gentle, sometimes with centrifugal violence like a start. There's no logic to what lingers longer than it lasted, and to what whooshes by -- the best moments a single glance etched in stone, while the worst nightly nestled beside us. To John Lennon his eighteen month romance with his personal assistant May Pang circa a 1973 split with Yoko Ono he called it "a lost weekend" -- meanwhile for Peng here she is fifty years later recounting the experience for the documentary called The Lost Weekend: A Love Story, premiering this weekend at the Tribeca Film Festival.

That slippery sense of time weaves its way through directors Eve Brandstein, Richard Kaufman, and Stuart Samuels' fascinating ninety-seven-minute doc.

The so-called Lost Weekend, when John Lennon, from late 1973 through ’74, separated from Yoko Ono and relocated to Los Angeles, where he became a hard-drinking rock-club night owl while carrying on an affair with the 22-year-old May Pang (who had been John and Yoko’s assistant), has long been part of rock mythology. It’s been covered by everything from E! documentaries to Albert Goldman’s “The Lives of John Lennon.” Like many Lennon observers, I’ve always felt like I knew the basic bones of it.

I knew that John and Yoko, after marrying in 1969 and seeming like inseparable soulmates in art and life, began to have problems as a couple. That Yoko, trying to save the marriage, made the decision to set up John with May Pang, basically instructing the two of them to have a romantic affair. That in L.A., John, for the first time since the...

May Fung Lee Pang will be 72 in October, but was barely out of her teens when she boldly entered Apple’s New York offices, lied about being able to type, and secured a job at the Beatles’ multimedia company. She would soon become famous for a much more intimate tie to the group than that, as her very public 18-month affair with John Lennon in the mid-’70s is still a subject of great fascination to his fans, 50 years later.

“Music was my passion,” explains the Spanish Harlem-born author and subject of the upcoming documentary, “The Lost Weekend: A Love Story,” premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival for a sold-out show on June 10. “It was something I loved. I had no real abilities,” she admits of getting her start at Apple, “but answering the phone was easy enough. My mother used to tell me, ‘You have a mouth. You speak English.

Update, with reactions Anne Beatts, an original Saturday Night Live writer who created some of the show’s earliest breakthrough characters, among them the nerdy high schoolers Todd DILAMuca and Lisa Loopner, died yesterday. She was 74.

Her death was announced in a tweet by SNL original cast member Laraine Newman. A cause of death has not been disclosed.

“Struggling to find adequate and appropriate descriptive words to describe her singular self,” tweeted Sarah Jessica Parker, who starred in the Beatts-created 1982 CBS sitcom Square Pegs. “I need time. Cause I’m coming up short. Gosh, she was really something. Rip Anne. Thank you. For memories very few 17/18 yr olds get to make. X, Sj”

Beatts began her career in comedy writing with a stint at National Lampoon magazine, becoming the Harvard Lampoon spin-off’s first female editor. She wrote one of the magazine’s most notorious spoofs – an ad for the...