Vice Media has appointed Nancy Dubuc, the former head of the A&E Networks, to be its chief executive as the company tries to rebound from sexual misconduct allegations.
Dubuc had stepped down Monday at A&E. She’s been a Vice board member and worked with the company to develop the Viceland cable network. Shane Smith, the company’s co-founder, said that he’ll let Dubuc run the company as he concentrates on making deals and creating content.
Vice has grown exponentially since its founding as a rock fan magazine in Canada in the early 1990s. It produces news and lifestyle material over a variety of platforms and is especially popular among young consumers.
Smith said he will become the company’s executive chairman.
“I get to work with one of my best friends and media heroes,” he said. “We are a modern day Bonnie and Clyde and we are going to take all of your money.”
Dubuc called it one of the rare moments in a career to work with the creative people at Vice.
Vice has apologized for a “boy’s club” culture at Vice that was uncovered in an investigation by The New York Times, which said it had talked to more than two dozen women who had experienced or witnessed sexual misconduct there. Vice suspended its president, Andrew Creighton, and chief digital officer, Mike Germano, in January as it investigated allegations against them. The Times said it had found four settlements involving harassment or defamation accusations.
Vice promised to make half of its workplace female by the year 2020 and have pay parity by the end of this year.
Review: Writer-Director Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance”
In its first two hours, "The Substance" is a well-made, entertaining movie. Writer-director Coralie Fargeat treats audiences to a heavy dose of biting social commentary on ageism and sexism in Hollywood, with a spoonful of sugar- and sparkle-doused body horror.
But the film's deliciously unhinged, blood-soaked and inevitably polarizing third act is what makes it unforgettable.
What begins as a dread-inducing but still relatively palatable sci-fi flick spirals deeper into absurdism and violence, eventually erupting — quite literally — into a full-blown monster movie. Let the viewer decide who the monster is.
Fargeat — who won best screenplay at this year's Cannes Film Festival — has been vocal about her reverence for "The Fly" director David Cronenberg, and fans of the godfather of body horror will see his unmistakable influence. But "The Substance" is also wholly unique and benefits from Fargeat's perspective, which, according to the French filmmaker, has involved extensive grappling with her own relationship to her body and society's scrutiny.
"The Substance" tells the story of Elisabeth Sparkle, a famed aerobics instructor with a televised show, played by a powerfully vulnerable Demi Moore. Sparkle is fired on her 50th birthday by a ruthless executive — a perfectly cast Dennis Quaid, who nails sleazy and gross.
Feeling rejected by a town that once loved her and despairing over her bygone star power, Sparkle learns from a handsome young nurse about a black-market drug that promises to create a "younger, more beautiful, more perfect" version of its user. Though she initially tosses the phone number in the trash, she soon fishes it out in a desperate panic and places an order.
The one rule to follow is that... Read More