The Gay Porn Industry is Still Super Racist

Adult film star Hugh Hunter was having a good week.

On November 22, nominations for the GayVN awards, a prominent gay erotica industry honor, were announced after a seven year hiatus. Hunter was nominated in three major categories, a highlight after another busy year in the competitive world of gay porn.

But the next day, Hunter publicly turned down his nominations and denounced the awards show on Twitter, due to the inclusion of a “Best Ethnic Scene” category, made up exclusively of minority performers. A handful of actors of color were nominated in other categories, but sparingly so. He used his public statement to ask a barrage of incisive questions, both of the GayVN Awards and the industry more widely, continuing an ongoing conversation about the gay porn industry’s often-blatant racism.

He said he had been warned before that such concerns “fall on deaf ears in this industry.” Fortunately, this time, he was wrong. His message provoked media coverage and debate, leading to other performers declining their nominations in turn. In response, the GayVN awards removed the category completely, explained it was intended to “provide a platform for smaller producers to receive more attention,” merged the listed nominees with Best Duo Scene, and issued an apology from their parent company, Adult Video News.

Whether Hunter’s impact will spark broader change within the industry remains to be seen, but it's a promising sign from a business long plagued with issues when handling race. VICE spoke with Hunter about GayVN's response, the murky nature of gay porn categorization, and the most surprising reactions he's seen to his letter.

VICE: When did you find out about the nominations? And what did you think when you read everything, including your own name?
Hugh Hunter: I saw the nominations the day after they were posted. I knew that the GayVN awards were coming back, but I'd be lying if I said I paid a lot of attention to award shows. I kind of perused them and wasn't even looking for my name, just at what the categories were.

I ran across that particular category and it really made me feel ill at ease. I just couldn't fathom why, in 2017, they would even think to have this.

I had to do a little research to see—is this an old category that maybe just got carried over from prior AVN award shows? I found out that it was a new category, one GAYVN admitted they had just created.

I wanted to decline my nomination because I don't want my name associated with racial bias, and maybe I can start a conversation if I present something articulate and thoughtful.

No Best Actor or Supporting Actor was a person of color, and only three of the Performers of the Year, out of 15, were men of color. Yet they found some 20 scenes to nominate for Best Ethnic Scene. Why couldn't they have just nominated everybody in Best Scene? It doesn't make a difference. If they're good enough to be nominated, they're good enough to be nominated.

What is your opinion of how they've handled all of this since?
I appreciate the removal of the category, and maintaining all of those nominees. And I do appreciate that they apologized.

However, my issue is that they provided reasoning for why this category was created. And the methodology used in creating that category still smacks of a racial bias. They never seemed to apologize for this and that doesn't sit well with me, but I don't know that's a fight that I can take up again.

Now I want people to take it up and run with it back to their studios and directors and casting directors and distributors and really try to make some changes at that level. I, as one white performer, can only make so much noise before it feels like I’m being the token white guy outraged over inequality. Unfortunately, a few people have already tried to say that. That was not my intent. I'm not trying to be the angry white man for the men of color, I'm not trying to represent them. I don't understand the prejudices that they've experienced. I don't know their stories.

The proverbial white knight.
And truthfully, I never thought of it that way. My thought process was, people will pay attention because I was going after AVN. Not because I was a white person talking about race. That was never on my radar.

You've mentioned there has been positive reinforcement from your colleagues and people in the industry. Have you had any negative reactions from friends?
There have been a few defensive statements. I reached out to a personal friend who has a lot of clout, and when I have asked for help in getting this message up, I was told that they couldn't. They thought it was commendable and that they were well aware of the problem, but they couldn't help because they had to think of their clients, and it would be bad for their business.

I also had another veteran director, two or three decades in the industry, tell me that I should not tag them in anything I post, because they don't want to be dragged into this on social media and they considered what I was doing unnecessary drama in an already drama-filled business.

Another very well-known performer who has transitioned to somewhat of a content-side mogul said that all of this fighting is nonsense, that studios are making more films than ever and people should just be happy they're working.

There were a number of people who supported what I did. However, I’ve yet to see a studio, director, casting director, producer or a major VOD site say a word about it. And those are who really need to be part of the conversation, because they influence how people are represented in films and can bring on more diversity and inclusion.

Do you plan to keep this going?
I'm always willing to lend my input, but I can't share experiences that people of color can share. And not being on the other side of the camera, I can't influence the casting people. I'd be happy to sit at the table. I do want to be an ally and an advocate for a more inclusive environment.

Do you think the way porn is classified by genre now—with divisions between “fetish” or “daddies,” where actors are often white, versus separate genres with performers of certain ethnicities—is necessarily evil?
Yes, unfortunately. The debate of preference versus prejudice isn’t going to be solved any time soon. Have I ever shopped for porn and looked up “black” or “Latino”? Yes, I have. But it's such a muddy gray area.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

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We Were Wrongfully Convicted of Killing Cops and Now We're Married

This article was published in collaboration with the Marshall Project.

In many ways, Peter Pringle and Sunny Jacobs were destined for each other.

The two experienced a bizarrely similar injustice: Both were convicted of murdering police officers and sentenced to death; he in Ireland, she in Florida. Both maintained their innocence and were ultimately freed, but only after spending years behind bars; 15 for him, 17 for her.

So perhaps it’s no surprise that when fate—with the help of a famous American singer-songwriter—brought Pringle and Jacobs together about 20 years ago, they hit it off. They got married (the New York Times covered their wedding), they both wrote books, and Jacobs’ story was featured in a film and an Off-Broadway play.

The happy couple’s story is far from typical for exonerees, who often struggle to re-enter society after incarceration. Now Pringle and Jacobs are focused on helping others adjust to life on the outside. The Sunny Center, which they founded at their home in Galway, Ireland, provides a “sanctuary” where exonerated people, most of whom come from the United States, can receive spiritual, emotional, and physical support.

Here, the couple describes how they met, fell in love, and devoted their lives to the wrongfully convicted. The interviews have been condensed and edited for clarity.

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Sunny Jacobs: Do you know the singer Steve Earle? He was our cupid.

I was marching through Texas in the late 90s with Journey of Hope, a group that organizes speaking tours against the death penalty. I had been sentenced to death in 1976 for the murder of two police officers. But I was innocent. In 1992, I was released from prison.

An Irish woman from Amnesty International saw my speech and invited me to speak in Ireland. Then I met Steve through the anti-death penalty community. When I told him about the Ireland invitation, he said, "Well, you’ve got to meet Peter Pringle!" But he didn’t tell me anything about Peter.

Peter Pringle: I knew Steve because he frequented a cafe in Ireland owned by a friend of mine. We talked about how years earlier, he had communicated with a man on Texas death row and witnessed his execution. It traumatized him.

Sunny: When I got to Ireland, someone else said, "Oh, have you met Peter Pringle?" I said, "No, give me his number! Everyone thinks I should talk to him!"

Peter: Sunny called and invited me to come along.

Sunny: When we got to Galway, I was preparing for my speech in a room above a pub. A big man comes up to me and says, "Oh, you must be Sunny Jacobs!"

And I say, "You must be Peter Pringle!"

Then he says, "I’ll sit in the front of the room so you’ll have a friendly face to look at."

During my talk, every time I looked over, this big, strong man is crying. I thought, I must have really touched a nerve.

Afterwards, he’s waiting by the door, and I say, "I’d love to talk more, but they told me we’re leaving soon." He says, "Well, you can stay with me! I’ll get you to your next talk tomorrow."

Here I am in a strange country, and I am contemplating going away with a stranger. My luck with men—picking them—has never been great. But the woman who had been driving me knew and liked him, too, so I went.

Peter: She stayed at my house that night.

Sunny: I remember asking him, "What’s your interest in all this?" Men don’t usually cry at my lectures. That’s when he tells me: He had been wrongly convicted, too. And he’d been sentenced to death. What were you convicted of? I ask. Killing two policemen, he says.

Oh wow, this is getting weird—4,000 miles apart, we had the same wrong thing happen to us for the same wrong reason? Then I ask, How did you get through your ordeal? He says, yoga and meditation.

I had done yoga and meditation, too! Now, my head is going: bing, bing, bing. I hear the little spirit guides saying, Do you get it yet? This is a set-up! He had four kids when he went in, I had two kids. It felt like the universe had put us together.

Peter: My sentence was commuted less than two weeks before my execution date, to 40 years penal servitude with no possibility of parole. I needed to prove my innocence, and to do so, I needed to study law in a prison with no law library. When I was finally able to get law books, I couldn’t study because I was so angry, and I knew I needed to learn how to relax.

Sunny: When they first locked me in my cell, I felt so alone. Six steps, door to toilet, and you could touch the walls. A metal shelf on one side with a thin mattress and a pillow. I was in a building alone since I was the only woman on death row in Florida at that time. I realized I needed to take care of myself. If they released me someday, I didn’t want to bring such negativity home to my children—to be a bitter, angry person. So I did yoga and meditation as a way to open myself up to positivity.

Peter: I got a friend to lend me a book on yoga and taught myself yoga in my cell alone, trying to get my body into those strange positions.

Sunny: I came to see my surroundings in a new way. I thought: Well, I have servants for the first time in my life, feeding me, doing my dishes, my laundry. I have no work, no bills, and free electricity. Isn’t that nice? I turned my cell into a sanctuary. I tore a newspaper into strips and wove it into a mat and covered the toilet, and then I made another mat and set it by the door as a special eating area.

Peter: After she gave her next evening lecture, we went to a hotel. We sat on separate beds and talked about forgiveness. It turned out that when each of us had been released, we had decided we would not engage in bitterness or recrimination, that we would try to live a life of healing and positivity.

I came to the conclusion that the person who perjured himself to get me convicted, a police officer, thought he was doing the right thing, and I couldn’t judge him because that’s not my place. It’s not necessary to forgive him, but I have to be in the spirit of forgiveness.

Sunny: Me? I’m not so worried about judging them. For me, forgiveness is a selfish act that I do for myself, to free myself from the negativity, to make room for joy and happiness and health.

What I often say is: Your past is like your ass. It’s with you all the time, right behind you. The best you can do is learn to sit comfortably on it.

Peter: After we talked for three and a half hours, we said goodnight and went to our separate rooms.

Sunny: He was a complete gentleman.

Peter: The next morning, I said I didn’t want her to think I wasn’t attracted to her, but I was in a relationship still. After she went back to the United States, we kept in touch.

Sunny: I became one of the only people he could talk to. We got closer.

Peter: After meeting her I watched “In the Blink of an Eye,” a movie about Sunny’s ordeal, and it triggered a grief that I had been suppressing, a grief over the life I hadn’t had. The woman I was living with then came home and heard wailing and found me curled up in a fetal position. When she tried to console me, I pushed her away. Intuitively, I knew that I had to go through this myself. I called Sunny, and she listened. Just knowing somebody understood was incredibly important.

I wanted more people to hear Sunny’s story, so I arranged for a concert where she would speak, and Steve Earle offered to perform. It became three concerts in three cities, so she came back for several days. By that time, I had ended my relationship.

Sunny: When I was back in Ireland, he very politely said that if I wanted to I could sleep in his room with him, but if I didn’t that was ok too. I decided, well, let’s give it a try. We had a long distance relationship for three years, then I moved to Ireland.

We knew we were blessed and decided to share that with others. A lawyer who had helped someone innocent get out of prison came to us and said her client was having trouble with drugs and alcohol. He stayed with us for a month, and he did well. We started hosting more exonerees, and The Sunny Center grew from there.

Out here, we don’t need much money to support people. We grow our own food, we have goats we milk and make cheese, we have chickens that give us eggs, we trade for fish or apples.

Peter: Exonerees usually come for two weeks, or even a month. The only rules are: no drugs, no alcohol, no violence. We’ve learned to just listen to them first. Then we share how we dealt with our own troubles, how grief can be unresolved and how you have to be prepared to confront the grief when it arrives.

Sunny: One of the biggest problems we encounter is when people feel they have no identity except for having been a wrongfully convicted person. That’ll get you a couple speaking engagements, but where does it leave you? It doesn’t do much for your healing if you’re constantly identifying with the worst thing that happened in your life. We try to help them to see that you can find a new persona: an artist, a musician, a jewelry maker, a dog trainer, a goat milker.

Peter: One exoneree had been wrongfully imprisoned for rape and murder as a teenager. When he left prison after many years, he was terrified of women. He didn’t articulate that to us—he didn’t have a vocabulary to explain how he felt—but we could see his body language. He didn’t look women in the eye. So we took him out and introduced him to women, not as an exoneree but just as our friend visiting from America. They greeted him openly, and gradually he learned to respond and feel comfortable. It was an amazing thing to observe. He went back to the U.S. with confidence.

Sunny: Part of what we do is share the magic and beauty and love that Peter and I found together. Our pasts were completely different, and yet on the level where it really counts, we were very much alike. And I think that’s why our relationship has lasted so long. It was about the deep stuff—the important stuff.

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The Tax Bill Is a Fucking Disaster

In an alternate universe, one where you stick to your diet and the trains run on time and politics is as shiny and earnest as an episode of The West Wing, there is a tax reform debate going on where all the sides are respectful and intelligent. Republicans, in that universe as well as this one, want to reduce taxes, especially taxes on corporations, allegedly on the grounds that it will grow the economy. There is discussion of cutting some of the inefficient loopholes in the tax code primarily benefitting rich homeowners. Everyone agrees that obviously the IRS should use the information it already has to do most people's taxes for them. There are ideological disagreements between the parties, but both sides agree that if the deficit is going to be blown up, there should be good reason for it, and the primary purpose of any tax reform project should be to make life easier for as many Americans as possible.

In our universe, alas, things are different. Congressional Republicans are advancing a pair of tax bills—one passed in the House already and one could pass the Senate in a matter of hours—as quickly as they can, with seemingly little regard for the impact they might have on the economy. Principally, the goal of this round of tax reform seems to be to reduce taxes on corporations and wealthy heirs (the Trump family alone would save over $1 billion, according to one analysis). Middle-class people get tax cuts too, but those cuts, unlike the giveaways to the wealthy, are set to expire as time goes on. Most people making under $75,000 will see their taxes rise by 2027 under the Senate bill because the elimination of the Affordable Care Act's mandate means a lot of them won't buy health insurance and therefore won't get subsidies and tax credits to pay for it. Thanks to a set of deduction eliminations, some middle-class households could get a tax hike next year, according to a New York Times breakdown. And selected groups, like grad students and people living in California and New York, seem to have been singled out for punishment.

Even that summary glosses over many elements of the two bills. Yet this complicated legislation is being rushed through at breakneck speed. The Trump administration's Treasury department promised it would come up with a model showing that though the plan costs $1.5 trillion in revenue over ten years it would pay for itself by growing the economy. But that model hasn't appeared, and even the rosiest expert estimates say it won't come close to being revenue-neutral. On Thursday, the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation released an assessment of the bill that factored in growth effects and found the Senate version would still jack up the deficit to the tune of $1 trillion over ten years.

A Republican spokesperson for the Senate Finance Committee immediately responded to that assessment by saying, "An analysis of tax provisions that do not reflect the final outcome of the evolving Senate tax bill—which will be amended on the floor this week—is incomplete." In other words, it's impossible to judge the bill because it's still being written. And indeed it still is: After plans for a "trigger" that would raise taxes if certain revenue targets weren't hit got scrapped Thursday evening, Republicans were considering reducing some tax cuts in order to lower the bill's cost, though which taxes and how big the cuts would be was totally unclear.

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But if key elements of the bill are still undecided, voting on it seems like trying to build an airplane and fly it at the same time. And with the economy looking pretty good on paper right now (as Donald Trump loves to remind us), there's little reason to rush it through rather than, just for example, reauthorizing the Children's Health Insurance Program, which is getting closer to running out of money every day. Large companies have plenty of money and borrowing is relatively easy, meaning that a big corporate tax cut is unlikely to do much to boost hiring or wages. Instead, that extra cash will likely trickle down only as far as shareholders and trust funds. Does that sound like it should be an urgent Congressional priority to you?

If the Senate passes its bill, the House and Senate will need to conference in order to sort out the substantial differences between the two versions. Democrats will likely be frozen out of the process as they have been throughout this year's debates over taxes and healthcare. As the Times noted Thursday, the decisions made by Republicans in the next few days could reshape more than just taxes. Churches might have fewer constraints on political activism. States and cities could be pressured to cut their own taxes or slash services. And if the federal deficit grows, as it almost certainly will, Republicans could suddenly rediscover their deficit-hawk ways and call for reductions in government programs that provide benefits to the poor and elderly.

The accelerated process seems designed to evade public scrutiny of any kind; the sad thing is, it might work. Even nominally anti-Trump Senate Republicans like Bob Corker, John McCain, and Jeff Flake are backing this bill—tax cuts for the wealthy remain a cause that unites the GOP. If the tax reform package does become law, Republicans will have gotten what they wanted: dump-trucks of money delivered to their wealthy donors' doorsteps, a set of fuck-you provisions that make life harder for Democratic constituents like student debtors, and a deficit spike that younger people, whom the GOP manifestly does not give a shit about, will have to eventually deal with.

It's a cynical piece of legislation written by cynical people and endorsed by a cynical president who forgot about his populist campaign promises the same way he seems to forget about lots of things these days. The tax bill is complicated, but really it's simple—the people in charge do not care about the consequences of their actions. They also don't care about you.

Follow Harry Cheadle on Twitter.

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Why I Risked My Life Making a Movie in Afghanistan

Matty Matheson Makes Meatballs on the Premiere of 'IT'S SUPPERTIME!'

On Thursday, VICELAND is debuting IT'S SUPPERTIME!with Matty Matheson, a cooking show unlike any other—aside from the fact that you'll learn how to make badass dishes, from comfort food to gourmet masterpieces. Matty's kicking off the series with an Italian classic: spaghetti and meatballs, paired with a crisp Caesar salad and cheesy garlic bread.

IT'S SUPPERTIME! airs Thursdays at 10 PM on VICELAND. Find out how to tune in here.

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The Best Movies of 1997 Were Hella Emotional

The fall of 1997 was, simply put, one of the most remarkable movie-going seasons of our time: Boogie Nights. Jackie Brown. The Sweet Hereafter. Wag The Dog. Eve's Bayou. Good Will Hunting. The Ice Storm. Amistad. As Good as It Gets. Gattaca. And so many more, culminating with what became the highest-grossing movie of all time: the long-delayed, oft-trashed, yet eventually unstoppable Titanic . Each week yielded another remarkable motion picture—sometimes two or more, taking bold risks, telling powerful stories, introducing formidable new talents, and reaffirming the gifts of master filmmakers. This series looks back at those movies, examining not only the particular merits of each, but what they told us about where movies were that fall 20 years ago, and about where movies were going.

“You here about the accident?” Wendell asks him. Mitchell Stevens nods: Yes, he’s here about the accident. That’s how everyone in the town refers to him—Mitchell Stevens, full name—and that’s what everyone calls the reason he’s there, “the accident.” No one knows the lawyer’s name, but everyone knows what happened out on the lake that day—that is, except the viewer. Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter operates under a non-linear, shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later structure, which asks (nay, requires) the viewer to piece the events together themselves.

In that way, we’re not unlike Mitchell Stevens. He’s a lawyer, not literally an ambulance chaser, but close; he’s arrived in the small Canadian town as it’s still nursing an open wound from the horrible day when an icy road sent a school bus into a highway guard rail, which quickly crumpled and sent most of the town’s schoolchildren onto the thin ice. There were a few survivors, but not many.

Mitchell Stevens’ face is solemn and his voice is flat and matter-of-fact. But he can be calculating, choosing his plantiffs carefully (“That’s good, judges like adopted Indian boys”) and putting on the anger and emotion when the time comes for a hard sell. But The Sweet Hereafter, based on Russell Banks’ novel, is not just about the accident or its aftermath—which is clear early on via the key image of a couple and baby asleep together, a visual first revealed without explanation before being given weighty context.

“I remember the summer we almost lost her,” Stevens says of the baby who's now a grown woman, in a monologue staggering in its emotional depth and complexity. He tells the story years later, on a plane where he finds himself seated next to a barely-remembered acquaintance; he talks and talks, offloading all his pain and grief—and she listens, but it’s such an unburdening for him that her attentiveness and her very presence almost doesn’t matter. (Stevens is played by Ian Holm, in a performance that’s all the more astonishing when put next to his appearance in one of the biggest movies of 1997: The Fifth Element.)

Egoyan’s screenplay snakes through time, gracefully juggling four frames: the accident, the days just before it, the days just after it, and that plane ride years later. It’s not just narrative gimmickry, however; he ends up capturing the way the time around a tragedy can become a blur, a hazy smear in which everything runs together, both for those who survived and those who lost.

One of the survivors is the bus driver, Dolores (Gabrielle Rose), who lives in a state of perpetual sorrow and anguish, even though it’s clear it really was an accident. There’s an incredible moment early on when she’s telling Mitchell Stevens about one of the kids, where she escapes from the crushing overwhelmingness of this event, if only briefly. You see in her eyes as that momentary flight away from her reality is brought to a crashing halt, and in that moment Egoyan and his actor capture the way a tragedy can overwhelm an entire existence.

That’s what it does for Dolores—and for Billy (Bruce Greenwood), the father who was driving behind the bus and saw it all, and for Nicole (Sarah Polley), who was on board and survived. All of them have that trauma bearing down on them, and they have to find ways to manage it—none of them productive.

“We’re all citizens of a different town now,” Nicole says in the film’s final voice-over, and that’s the true power of Egoyan’s film; how in shuffling the chronological deck, we see what once was in this town, both in its light and its darkness, and how none of it will ever be the same, no matter what Mitchell Stevens says.

Good Will Hunting was released two weeks after The Sweet Hereafter, and it's a far more mainstream drama with its own potent story of overcoming the traumas of the past. It sneaks up on you, to some extent; director Gus Van Sant gives it the crisp, autumnal photography of the prestige picture it would become, but he throws in flourishes of experimentation and stylization. I’m thinking particularly of Will and his crew’s ugly, slow-motion street brawl (scored, with admirable incongruity, to Gerry Rafferty’s “Baker Street”). But our protagonist isn’t just some hood; a few scenes later, hard on the heels of that street fight, he proves equally adept (and no less brutal) at an intellectual bar fight.

Yes, Will Hunting—as everyone must know by now—is a working-class genius, and Good Will Hunting (I’ll yield little to the film’s many detractors, but will admit that Good Will Hunting is a terrible title) is the story of how this janitor-cum-Southie prodigy is saved from a life of grunt work when he casually decodes an “unsolvable” proof on a hallway chalkboard at MIT. The man who put the proof up is Professor Gerald Lambeau (Stellan Skarsgård), who gets Will out of an assault charge by putting him to work in the math department and putting him into therapy. It turns out the only therapist who can handle him is Lambeau’s old friend Sean (Robin Williams).

“It’s a poker game with this kid,” Lambeau warns him, but their inaugural session is more like a street corner encounter between two barely-leashed dogs: sniffing and circling each other, until Will growls, and Sean bites. There’s this little light in Will’s eyes when he sees that he pushed one of Sean’s buttons—he loves doing that—but to his shock, Sean doesn’t give up. In their next session, he takes him to a park bench and explains to him, in terms he hasn’t quite considered, that he may be a genius but he doesn’t know shit, and that he doesn’t know anything he hasn’t read about in a book.

Good Will Hunting was, famously, the breakthrough film for Damon and co-star Ben Affleck, who struggled as actors for years and figured they’d write it mainly to create work for themselves (a la Stallone and Rocky). And Damon is tremendous in the role—watch the lack of affect in his acting in the park bench scene; he’s barely “doing” anything there, just listening. But it’s riveting.

Of course, Damon also wrote himself a few showcase scenes. He falls in love with a brilliant Harvard girl (Minnie Driver), and it’s so intense that within a few weeks, she’s asking Will to come with her to graduate school in California; in a bleary-eyed, early morning argument, he pushes her away. It escalates from modesty and fear to pure confession, as he tells her about the stabs and cigarette burns on his body before pulling back: “YOU DON’T WANNA HEAR THAT SHIT, SKYLAR!” When she challenges him with a daring, “I wanna hear you say that you don’t love me,” he gives her what she’s asking for, because that’s easier. (Minnie Driver was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her work here, and deserved it; watch the way she crumples after he leaves, or how she barely keeps it together when he calls her a few days later.)

Hunting also finds Affleck in his best kind of role—the big lug with a good heart. His Big Scene comes at the end of a work day over smokes and beers, in which he lays out exactly why he won’t accept Will’s plan to be another grinder. “Fuck you, you don’t owe it to yourself,” he tells his friend. “You owe it to me.” There’s a self-awareness to that monologue that’s sort of heartbreaking—a knowledge that Will is going places and he’s not, underscored by his (still!) goosebump-raising description of “the best part of my day.” This is some of the best acting Affleck’s done—both when he makes that confession and when it crosses his face in the film’s closing moments that his wish has finally come true.

Williams won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his work here (dodgy Boston accent notwithstanding), and it is a supporting role; he doesn’t show up until 30 minutes in. At first, it seems like nothing special, since we glimpse him doing his usual stand-up-lite schtick in the classroom—but watch how he immediately loses his bravado when his old pal “Gerry” appears at his door. One of the keener qualities of Damon and Affleck’s script is how it parallels the dynamics between its two key friendships, underscored by how closely Affleck’s tender speech is followed by Sean’s explosion. It's a moment of shared sentiments, packaged differently. “You think I’m a failure!” he tells his friend, but he isn’t: “I know who I am, I take pride in what I do.”

And perhaps it’s only because Sean feels so vulnerable at that moment (“A lot of that stuff goes back a long way between me and him,” he confesses to Will) that he feels ready to take his patient where he needs to go. Perhaps the film’s best-remembered scene, it's a therapeutic breakthrough that may be too clean, but lands like an emotional haymaker nonetheless. Everybody quotes his incantation to Will, “It’s not your fault,” but no one remembers the line that comes after it: “Look at me, son.” That last word, the tenderness implicit in it, “son,” is hair-raising, and watching Will break is genuinely shattering; this is their version of the kitchen scene in Boogie Nights, a moment in which a tough kid lets the “tough” part fall away.

That’s all of a piece with the emotional urgency of Good Will Hunting, a film in which a young person’s future genuinely matters, to many, many people. It’s a movie that captures – in a way that perhaps an older, jaded screenwriter could not convey – the limitless possibilities of youth, a movie in which a character can tell another, without cynicism, “You could do anything you want. You are bound by nothing.”

That may be why Good Will Hunting maintains its sway over this viewer, as the bloom seems to have gone off its rose for many others; I was 22 when it came out, about to graduate from college, and certain that it was speaking to me, offering counsel and inspiration. And in all fairness, its negative reputation as a calculated tearjerker strikes me as disingenuous. It’s a film where it always feels like real relationships are bleeding in—not just in the hang-out scenes between friends, but the flashes of blossoming romance (Driver and Damon began dating during the production, and there are moments between them where the freshness and authenticity betray their real spark.) I’d imagine that for those involved, watching it now is like watching old home movies. And it’s like that for much of its original audience as well.

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Yet Another Woman Has Accused Al Franken of Sexual Misconduct

On Thursday, a New England woman came forward to accuse Senator Al Franken of trying to forcibly kiss her when she was serving as an elected official, bringing the total number of allegations against the Minnesota Democrat to six.

The latest allegation followed Army veteran Stephanie Kemplin's accusation that Franken groped her breast during a USO tour photo op. Minutes after CNN published Keplin's account, Jezebel reported Franken allegedly tried to give an unnamed former elected official a "wet, open-mouthed kiss" during an event in 2006. Franken, a host on radio station Air America at the time, reportedly invited the official to a live taping of his show in front of an audience at a large theater. Franken allegedly tried to kiss her in front of the audience after the interview.

“I reached out my hand to shake his. He took it and leaned toward me with his mouth open. I turned my head away from him and he landed a wet, open-mouthed kiss awkwardly on my cheek," she told Jezebel. "It was onstage in front of a full theater... It was insidious. It was in plain sight and yet nobody saw it."

The woman told Jezebel she was left "stunned and incredulous" at what went down, and felt "demeaned" and "put in my place." Franken hasn't publicly addressed the allegation.

The latest accusation echoes similar behavior five other women claim they've witnessed from the former comedian over the years. Franken has been accused of groping multiple women during photo ops and trying to kiss radio host Leeann Tweeden without her permission. Although he apologized to Tweeden for the 2006 incident, he said he didn't remember forcibly kissing her, and his apologies to the additional accusers have grown increasingly lukewarm since. He's gone on to ask for an ethics investigation into his own alleged sexual impropriety.

On Monday, Franken returned to the Senate after a brief leave, saying he has "been trying to take responsibility by apologizing" to his accusers. According to NPR, Franken said he's not considering to step down from congress, despite calls for his resignation by President Trump and a prominent member of his own party.

The announcement came as pressure mounts from within congress for Democratic representative John Conyers to resign over allegations he sexually harassed several of his staffers. Meanwhile, Republican representative Joe Barton just announced he'd be retiring following reports that he sent nude photos to women, and Republican lawmakers have threatened to oust Alabama Republican Roy Moore from the Senate if he's elected in December. Moore, who's currently leading in the polls, has been accused of molesting a 14-year-old and preying on several other teenage girls.

The recent allegations follow CNN's report of a congressional "creep list" that women who work on the Hill have compiled of men who are known for inappropriate sexual behavior, adding further proof that becoming a top lawmaker seems like a sexual predator's dream job.

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'The Givinger Tree,' Today's Comic by Robin Vehrs

Being a Member of Congress Is a Sexual Predator's Dream Job

Paige Wagers was nervous. After all, it wasn't typical for the mail clerk working on Capitol Hill to be summoned directly into a United States senator's office. But that's what happened one day in 1975, when her intercom buzzed, and Bob Packwood was on other line. The moment the 21-year-old went to see what the veteran Ohio lawmaker wanted, her trepidation turned to terror. According to testimony later provided to the Senate's Select Committee on Ethics, Packwood closed the door of his office, shoved her up against a wall, and forcibly kissed her with tongue. She returned to her desk shaking and crying.

"I lost all confidence in myself," she said. "I was afraid to be around men. Emotionally, financially, and intellectually, I remained frozen in time."

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In September 1995, the committee submitted what amounted to an indictment concluding she—along with more than a dozen other women who came forward about Packwood—was telling the truth. According to their testimony, the Oregon Republican kissed supporters, former staffers, National Abortion Rights Action League workers, hotel desk clerks, elevator operators, and women applying to be his speech writer; he also chased another staffer around a desk, grabbed a dining-room hostess by the crotch, and touched the leg of another senator's staffer who had offered to babysit his kids. In 1981, when Wagers was working for the Department of Labor, Packwood forcibly kissed her again, she said. Ultimately, the Senate found he had acted inappropriately with at least 17 women and unanimously recommended Packwood's expulsion. Instead of being forced out, he resigned in disgrace.

This kind of behavior—and the astonishingly long gap between the misconduct and anything resembling accountability—is a now-familiar narrative to anyone who's been following the news in America lately. But despite the proximity of literally hundreds of people responsible for crafting the country's laws, matters haven't improved much for women working on the Hill since Packwood's behavior led to the passage of the unfortunately named Congressional Accountability Act in 1995. In fact, as a recent BuzzFeed exposé on Democratic representative John Conyers's repeated sexual advances toward staff members showed, accusers often get funneled through a byzantine process that ultimately leads to private settlements reminiscent of the ones that kept Harvey Weinstein's victims in the dark for decades. That system, coupled with the fact that elected officials in DC are often sleeping on cots away from their families, interacting with much younger staffers, and working in an environment that lacks a true Human Resources department and revolves around cocktail hours, together make for a perfect storm of enablement for would-be predators.

DC might sound like the worst summer camp ever, but it's actually not that different from industries like the media, which has its own gender imbalances and alcohol-fueled culture. The key difference seems to be that, as America just saw with the ouster of NBC's erstwhile star Matt Lauer, bad male journalists don't tend to last very long once they're publicly outed as predators. Al Franken, on the other hand, still has his job almost two weeks after the first of several women came forward to accuse him of groping and other sexual misconduct. Other media stars like Garrison Keillor and Charlie Rose were also quickly fired after their behavior came under public scrutiny.

"The structure is different," Marianne Cooper, a Stanford sociologist who was the lead researcher for Lean In, told me of the difference between the media world and the one in Washington. "The CEO of a company can decide to terminate someone in a top-talent role. There's no one like that in Congress."

"[The Hill] is also weird because it's essentially a large entity that functions like a bunch of small businesses," added Emily Martin, the vice president for workplace justice at the National Women's Law Center. "You get the worst side of a close, informal office where there's no one whose job it is to help you negotiate something like sexual harassment."

Melanie Sloan made her name as an ethics watchdog in DC, but more recently she's emerged as another prominent critic of the HR disaster that is the United States Congress—with her own experience to boot. When she got a job on the Hill working for Congressman John Conyers in 1995, she'd heard there was a lot of sexual harassment taking place there, she recalled. Still, given that she was a respected lawyer at the time—and joining his staff as a minority counsel to the House Judiciary Committee—she thought it would be fine.

She was wrong. Although Sloan does not think she was sexually harassed, she said her three years at that job were characterized by verbal abuse and punctuated with bizarre incidents, like one in which she walked into her boss's office and found him in his underwear. Without an HR department, she struggled to figure out what she was supposed to do.

"I did everything I could," she told me. "I talked to my supervisor. I talked to [then] Minority Leader [Richard] Gephardt. Externally, I talked to a women's group and a reporter. I told the reporter what happened, and he called a woman colleague of mine to check my story. She told him I was mentally unstable, and even though I'd worked with this reporter before, he told me, 'Well, maybe you are mentally unstable.'"

Reporters' attitudes are obviously changing; on November 22, Sloan was the first person to go on the record with the Washington Post about Conyers' alleged misconduct toward staffers, which she said included verbal abuse in her case but appears to have centered on unwanted touching and requests for sexual acts in others. So are societal attitudes: Sloan said she recently heard from friends of her's from the 90s—one who worked on the Hill and another in a big DC law firm—who shared stories of harassment for the first time. But it might take members of Congress longer to get it together than the average person who watches the Today show. The average age of Congresspeople is 57; in the Senate specifically, it is 61.

"I think that when you've been serving in a bubble with no accountability for 20 to 30 years, you're out of step not just with the times but with reality," said Morra Aarons-Mele, a podcaster and activist for women in politics. "I think that's why the system is set up to protect harassers—these people have been at the highest level of power for so long. They don't even drive."

Take Nancy Pelosi, who is now in favor of Conyers's resignation, but initially made a cringe-worthy appearance on Meet the Press in which she defended the congressman as a civil rights icon. There's also James Clyburn, the legendary House Democrat who bizarrely suggested the standards of behavior for elected officials were more lenient than for other people—and that Conyers's accusers were racist, before finally getting it right by joining Pelosi in calling for his resignation Thursday.

On the other hand, two Democrats, Representative Jackie Speier of California and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, introduced legislation earlier this month intended to reform how sexual harassment complaints are filed and dealt with for Capitol Hill employees. The ME TOO Congress Act, which was in the works before the Buzzfeed story about Conyers even came out, would eliminate waiting periods for accusers who want to file complaints and provide legal resources to victims, as well as make defendants pay their legal fees out of pocket (instead of taxpayers, as is the case now, somehow). Perhaps most crucially, it would let the public know when settlements had been paid out. That bill still has to make it through the legislative process, but a good sign came when the both houses passed a resolution requiring all members and their staffs to go through sexual harassment training.

Aarons-Mele doesn't think the resolution will do enough, however, and will remain skeptical until a law forcing transparency is actually in effect. She mentioned Today co-host Matt Lauer's rapid-fire termination as an example of how, when high-profile men are finally, publicly held accountable, the culture is forced into motion. And although changing attitudes can take a generation, the infrastructure needed to provide transparency about sexual misconduct in Congress can be assembled pretty quickly.

"If training was gonna solve anything, we would have 75 percent less sexual harassment in the workplace than we do," she told me. "I think sunlight is the best disinfectant. As long as Congress remains a closed system, where there's no incentive for change, there will be none."

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

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Theresa May's Condemnation of Trump's Far-Right Tweets Is Embarrassingly Weak

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

On Thursday morning Donald Trump laid into Theresa May on Twitter, after she said it was wrong for him to retweet Britain First.

A spokesperson for the prime minister said it was “wrong for the president to have done this,” referring to him re-tweeting fake news peddled by far-right propagandists Britain First. Trump @ed her, saying, “don’t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We are doing just fine!”

Is she going to take that? Well, yes.

To any normal person, this would be a fantastic moment of affirmation. It’s like being called a dickhead by Satan himself. Unfortunately, May can’t even turn getting insulted by the world’s most powerful dotard into a win. At a press conference in Jordan—where she was visiting on a pre-Brexit tour before heading to the UK's trade partners in Saudi Arabia—May was looking about as comfortable as a vampire in sunlight.

When asked if she was going to ask Trump to stop sending such tweets, she simply repeated her previous criticism of the tweet—it was “the wrong thing to do.” When asked whether Trump had behaved appropriately for a supposed ally, May gave platitudes about, “a long-term, special relationship that we have, an enduring relationship…” When asked whether it was still appropriate to invite Trump for a state visit, she simply said, “The invitation for a state visit has been extended and accepted. We have yet to set a date.” Nothing has changed. The President is free to publicly tell the prime minister to shut up and her comeback is to reaffirm that they are the best of friends. He’s free to re-tweet fake news from the far-right and still be invited to have tea with the Queen.

This situation has been pretty embarrassing for May, and it's just another example of how thanks to Brexit, we have to cravenly cling on to the evil empire no matter what.

But perhaps the real story is how Trump's weird stupidity continues to place him outside the bounds of acceptable behavior. The president came in for unprecedented criticism in the House of Commons today, where MPs called him “fascist” and “stupid,” and said he was “either racist, incompetent, or unthinking or all three.” It would be cool if they regularly applied the same level of critique to British policy. After all, while Trump retweeted Britain First, as Home Secretary Theresa May sent out vans telling migrants to “go home,” a slogan reminiscent of the 1970s National Front.

Recently, it was revealed that a pregnant woman who went to the police to report being kidnapped and raped over a six-month period was arrested and interrogated over her immigration status. This comes as a result of May’s “hostile environment,” a policy which ensures that Britain rivals Trump’s America in the hatred-of-the-other stakes.

If only stories like that caused May to sweat as much as Trump's twitter feed does.

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It's Time for Nancy Pelosi to Go

On Sunday House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who was once the highest-ranking woman in government in American history, appeared on Meet the Press and was asked about the sexual harassment allegations against Michigan Congressman John Conyers. She blew it.

“We are strengthened by due process,” the House minority leader told Chuck Todd days after Conyers himself confirmed that his office had paid a settlement in response to a 2105 sexual harassment complaint. “Just because someone is accused, and was it one accusation? Is it two? I think there has to be—John Conyers is an icon in our country.” After an uproar and Conyers’s resignation from the House Ethics Committee, she quickly backtracked, issuing a statement that said, “No matter how great an individual’s legacy, it is not a license for harassment.” On Tuesday, the Detroit News reported that another former Conyers staffer had come forward to allege harassment by the longtime Congressman, and on Thursday Pelosi said Conyers should resign.

Still, Pelosi’s fumble is just the latest example of why she’s no longer the best person to lead House Democrats. The Democrats have many problems, but they can’t solve them with an aging leadership that has led to them being stuck in the minority for four House election cycles. Republicans have no problem switching leaders even when they’re in power—a hard-right caucus forced House Speaker John Boehner to step down in 2015—but Democrats have stuck with Pelosi since 2003. That’s too long.

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When Pelosi came to lead the House Democrats back then, after Minority Leader Dick Gephardt stepped down to run for president, the party was at a low point. It had lost seats in the 2002 midterms, just the third time since the 1930s that the party controlling the White House had picked up seats in the House during a midterm. A year later, President George W. Bush won re-election and picked up seats in the Senate and House along with it.

But surfing on an anti-war, anti-Bush wave in 2006, Democrats snatched 31 House spots and Pelosi became Speaker, the first woman to ever reach that height. In 2008, Democrats rode the coattails of Barack Obama to pick up even more seats, before the Tea Party backlash knocked them out of the majority in the House.

In those two years when Democrats had a unified government, Pelosi shepherded several pieces of landmark legislation through the House, including the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and Dodd-Frank financial industry reform, despite presiding over a chamber full of conservative Democrats. She also helped get the Affordable Care Act passed, first with a public option and then, after right-leaning Senate Democrats blocked that version, in its final form.

The six years since have not been as kind. After her term as Speaker ended when Republicans stormed to a House majority in 2010, Pelosi stayed on as minority leader, even though losing a majority is usually seen as a failure for which the leader should be held accountable. Before Pelosi, the last former Speaker to take the minority leader seat after losing a majority was Joseph William Martin Jr. of Massachusetts, who was the Republican House leader from 1939 to 1959 and served two nonconsecutive terms as Speaker. (In the Senate, Democrat Harry Reid stayed on as Minority Leader for two years following the 2014 elections, but announced his retirement early in 2015.)

Pelosi and the rest of the aging House leadership have made it impossible for younger members of the party to take over, which has no doubt contributed to the perception that the party is out of touch. Pelosi, Minority Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland, and assistant Democratic Leader Jim Clyburn of South Carolina are all in their late 70s, but more importantly have all been in the leadership for at least a decade.

There are two reasons why Pelosi has held on for so long. One is that though some Democrats oppose her, they can’t put together a credible challenge. When Democrats lost the majority in 2010, North Carolina Congressman Heath Shuler, a former NFL quarterback, won just 43 votes in his bid to replace her. (Shuler retired from Congress a few years later.) After the top-to-bottom failure of the 2016 election, Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan ran against her on a quasi-populist platform. Ryan, who voted for an anti-abortion amendment during the 2009 debate over the Affordable Care Act, implied that the party focused too much on social issues. He got a bigger share of votes than Shuler did, but Pelosi won the election handily after finally promising positions of power be handed to more junior Democrats.

The second reason, which also partially answers why no prominent House Democrat has ever stepped up to take on Pelosi, is that she’s a very good fundraiser. Pelosi has raised almost $600 million since 2002, and has raised more than $25 million alone this year, most of which she gave to the House Democrats’ campaign arm.

“She is a great fundraiser, but if the money we’re raising through her leadership is not helping us win elections, then we have to have this conversation now,” Democratic Congresswoman Kathleen Rice of New York said in a June interview. (On Wednesday, Rice sharply criticized Pelosi for her handling of the Conyers’s harassment scandal, saying Pelosi’s comments on Sunday “set women back and—quite frankly, our party back—decades.”)

What’s more is that there’s now a roadmap for making huge fundraising gains that doesn’t run through the pockets of the ultra-wealthy. The Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, running explicitly against the idea of super PACs, broke fundraising records for numbers of contributions on the back of small dollar donations. “If the party can honestly and authentically change its message and actions, Democratic activists would embrace it with incredible enthusiasm,” former Sanders fundraising manager Michael Whitney wrote in a Politico op-ed in August. “Grass-roots donors would jump to help tilt the balance of financial power and to shape the party's vision for future elections.”

Pelosi, on the other hand, seems perfectly content to anger the Democrats’ grassroots over and over again, from her too-slow response to the Conyers allegations to her skepticism of a young socialist’s question about the party’s undying embrace of capitalism to her willingness to bring pro-lifers back into the mainstream of the party. If Pelosi’s political instincts served her well in the mid-2000s, they seem to be failing her now that the base of the party is pissed off and shifting to the left.

This is not an endorsement of Tim Ryan, who has the same bad electoral strategy as Pelosi. Democrats’ success won’t be found in making the party more appealing to moderates. It’ll be found in making the party more appealing to marginalized voters by forcefully fighting for criminal justice reform and abortion rights, to working-class voters, and to left-leaning independent voters who are frustrated that our two choices are both parties of capital. It’ll be found in making itself the clearest possible departure from the Republican Party. If the Democrats are serious about change—and they should be, given their last few years of losses—they need to start at the top.

Paul Blest is a contributing writer for the Outline and Facing South. He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.

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The Days of New York’s 24/7 Subway May be Numbered

In brief, New York’s subways are in no short supply of two things: deep-seated, systemic problems and people who propose ways to fix them. Almost every day, a solution is put forth to unwind decades worth of deferred maintenance, bad political decisions, and infrastructure that ages by the minute. We look for answers abroad, nationwide, and often, here at home. In fact, there’s a vast community of NYC-based transit thinkers and tinkerers who have dedicated their lives to devising ideas on how our commutes can be a little less shitty.

However, most of the time ambitions fall upon deaf bureaucratic ears: after being asked at a recent board meeting about making the system more handicap-accessible, Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) Chairman Joe Lhota was reportedly overheard on a hot mic muttering, “Like I don’t have enough fucking problems.”

With that said, the Regional Plan Association’s (RPA) Fourth Regional Plan couldn’t have arrived at a better time.

Amongst critics, the 95-year-old urban research nonprofit—the oldest of its kind in America—is seen as a sort of master of ceremonies, crystal-balling development issues, and mega-projects in the tri-state region of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut years in advance. In its time, RPA has released three such plans: in 1929, as the region was urbanizing; in 1968, during the great suburban sprawl; and in 1996, as the region recovered from two decades of decline. Then, the group called for, and ultimately influenced the creation of, transit improvements like the Second Avenue Subway and the East Side Access for the Long Island Rail Road.

The fourth plan, released on Thursday after five years of research, comes at a time when the transit landscape appears grimmer than ever, with delays and breakdowns now daily occurrences, and short- and long-term improvements measured both in years and billions of dollars. RPA argues that, although the economic picture now may look rosy for the region, dismal transit networks could hamper growth going forward. As we already know, New Yorkers are losing jobs and money due to subway woes.

The 25-year plan touches upon a number of issues and ultimately offers 61 recommendations to amend areas like housing, affordability, and the growing spectre of climate change. But since Tunnel Vision is a blog about subways, we’ll keep it to just transit. And to get the subways up and running again, RPA’s plan offers two major pathways forward.

The first would be, perhaps, the most shocking to New Yorkers: switching the subway system over to a ‘24/3’ model, where New York’s subways would shut down from 12:30 AM to 5 AM on weeknights, but stay open entirely from Friday to Sunday. As it stands, New York’s metro is known internationally for being the subway that doesn’t sleep. “But that’s why the stations look like they do,” said Rich Barone, RPA’s VP of transportation.

Shutting down the subways overnight would allow for more routine maintenance, which other cities that do close temporarily are better able to complete, Barone argued. The report found that only 1.5 percent of total daily ridership actually occurs during those hours, and asserts that the population can instead be serviced by overnight buses. The idea here is that buses would be able to better move people at that time, with less-congested streets. But few things piss off New Yorkers more than hearing that a shuttle bus is running in lieu of a subway.

Secondly, the plan asks New Yorkers to improve their tolerance for—or, really, get used to—12-18 month-long shutdowns like the one that inspired this blog. Using the L train shutdown in 2019 as an example, RPA says that wholesale closures of entire lines are really what’s needed to make them palatable to the modern age. (It was RPA that told VICE in April that the L train shutdown could be an “opportunity.”)

In order to do this, the report calls on New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo to create a ‘Subway Reconstruction Public Benefit Corporation,’ an independent entity, separate from the much-maligned MTA, whose single task would be to overhaul the city’s subway system in 15 years flat. This would include speeding up the modernization of the much-decried signal system (critics say it’d take 50 years at the current pace), and switching to a universal payment system, à la London (which is in the works). The latter would be beneficial for the myriad of transit projects—new and expanded subway lines; regional light rails; reactivated railroads on former freight lines; tunnels; etc.—that the report puts forward to keep up with the region’s rapid growth.

In terms of actual stations, RPA officials point to the Second Avenue Subway platforms—which are notably wide, and well-lit—as the modus operandi going forward, as opposed to the cramped, decrepit platforms that the system is largely composed of now. It also calls for platform doors, for safety and comfort; something that the MTA recently announced it would pilot at the 3rd Avenue station along the L.

By now, you’re probably anxiously awaiting the opportunity to blurt out, “But how would we pay for all of this?!” Knowing their audience, RPA ends each recommendation with a payment plan, consisting of a number of alternate funding streams. Like a cap-and-trade pricing model for greenhouse gas emissions, similar to California’s, which, the plan says, could raise $3 billion annually for the region. It also advocates for more highway tolls, mechanisms to capture real estate value, and a system of congestion pricing, which New York is currently looking into.

Again, whether or not any of this happens is a different story. But here’s hoping that RPA’s track record—for the subways’ sake, at least—holds up.

Follow John Surico on Twitter.

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'Mindhunter' and That Creepy-Ass ADT Guy Are Coming Back for Another Season

Netflix has picked up the superb crime drama Mindhunter for a second season, the streaming service announced Thursday.

The news doesn't exactly come as a surprise, since the show was met with rave reviews when it first dropped in October, and Netflix was rumored to have signed on for season two before the show even debuted. But now, Netflix has made the news official with a short video announcement on the show's official Twitter and Instagram.

"We need to talk to more subjects," the post reads, though it doesn't make any promises about when we can expect another dose of Ed Kemper. The announcement is also frustratingly void of details about the new season, but we do have some vague ideas of what's to come.

Mindhunter executive producer David Fincher told Billboard last month that the second season would center around "the Atlanta child murders," which took place between 1979 and 1981. It's also likely that we'll get more information on that mysterious ADT guy in Kansas who made periodic appearances throughout season one.

According to Vulture, he is likely real-life serial killer Dennis Rader—the "BTK Killer" named for his habit of binding, torturing, and then killing his victims. If it is Rader, he may also be the answer to Ada Jeffries's unsolved murder all the way back in the pilot episode, since she was tied up and tortured in a similar way.

Rader evaded capture all the way until the 2000s, so it's unlikely we'll see him and Holden in a room together in season two. But if Rader winds up becoming the show's season-spanning villain, his eventual arrest could be the big fifth-season ending that Fincher hinted at during an interview back in October. Plus, the guy who wrote the book Mindhunter is based on also wrote about his decade-spanning hunt for the BTK Killer, so it would make sense that Rader would be a narrative through-line for the series.

If nothing else, hopefully next season will give us an answer to Mindhunter's biggest mystery so far: Is there actually a cat in Carr's basement, or what?

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Ten Questions You've Always Wanted to Ask Someone Who's Been in a Coma

What It Was Like to Interview Jill Stein

On The VICE Guide to Right Now, VICE's new daily podcast, we delve into the biggest news of the day and give you a rundown of the stories we're reading, working on, and fascinated with.

On this episode we discuss the sexual misconduct allegations against NBC's Matt Lauer, North Korea's recent missile launch, and Trump's retweets of a British group's Islamophobic posts. Then we talk with VICE's Eve Peyser about her

, and what it was like to spend two days with the politician.

You can catch The VICE Guide to Right Now Podcast on Acast, Google Play, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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A 13-Year-Old Set His Apartment Building on Fire Trying to Kill a Bedbug

Bedbugs are demonic hell pests that will invade your life and not leave until you trash all your possessions, poison yourself with insecticides, or just give up and move—and even then, the fear of infestation can haunt you long after the blood-sucking bugs are gone.

Sure, one proven way to rid yourself of the pests is cranking up the heat to lethal levels and cooking them out, but it's best to talk to a professional before you try to burn out the bugs, since you could wind up with problems bigger than some bites. According to WCPO, a 13-year-old boy in Ohio caused $300,000-worth of damage to his family's apartment building after he attempted to kill a bedbug by setting it on fire.

According to the local fire department, who responded to the blaze late Tuesday night, the boy had doused the bug in alcohol and lit it with a match, likely hoping that the flame would send the bedbug back to whatever hell it first crawled out of.

Unfortunately, the kid's noble attempt to save his family from a scourge of blood-sucking pests didn't exactly work out. The match caught his bed on fire, which quickly spread throughout the building.

One apartment unit was completely decimated and at least four more sustained damage from smoke and water, forcing three adults and five children from their homes. According to WCPO, no injuries were reported and the Red Cross has stepped in to help the families who have been displaced.

"This was accidental. He wasn't in there just playing with matches," Fire Chief Marc Monahan told Cincinnati.com. "It wasn't the smartest thing, obviously, but he was trying to get rid of a bedbug."

Good intentions aside, the 13-year-old would have been better off just trapping the bug in a jar and saving it for later, since a cup full of bed bugs comes in handy when you're trying to enact a sweet revenge.

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Don't Worry, Kellyanne Conway's Handling the Opioid Crisis

Kellyanne Conway has made a name for herself over at the White House for developing new theories about microwave surveillance, coining the term "alternative facts," and even trying to sell some of Ivanka Trump's merchandise. Now, after not having ever worked in public health, Trump has tapped Conway to tackle a new job helming the administration's response to the opioid epidemic.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Wednesday that Conway would "coordinate and lead the effort from the White House" to combat one of the deadliest drug crises in American history, BuzzFeed News reports. Now Conway will be tasked with figuring out how to curb a public health epidemic that claimed more lives than any other drug among the more than 64,000 overdose deaths last year.

Since declaring the opioid crisis a national public health emergency back in August, Trump has promised he problem is a top priority for his administration, but hasn't really come up with a plan to fight it. According to BuzzFeed, the national public health emergency fund has dwindled down to $66,000, and Trump hasn't asked Congress to help fill it back up.

Now, apparently, Conway will be making the issue her primary concern, though it's not exactly clear how she plans to tackle it. Some think the solution lies in putting someone in charge of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), who could better coordinate the country's response. That spot has remained empty since Republican representative Tom Marino was forced to withdraw his name from consideration in October.

"Stemming overdose deaths will take a broad interagency approach led by someone with a singular focus and extensive knowledge of the drivers of—and solutions to—the epidemic," former ONDCP official Regina LaBelle told BuzzFeed News. "Therefore, a Senate-confirmed Director of National Drug Control Policy should lead this effort."

Instead, Trump has apparently decided to just move an existing advisor into the role, despite her not having any experience in public health whatsoever. For his part, Sessions did say he would put $12 million toward drug enforcement at a state and local level—money that, until Wednesday, was supposed to be used for for police reform.

Follow Drew Schwartz on Twitter.

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Anti-Immigrant Vigilantes Are Rebranding as Free Speech Defenders

When right-wing firebrand Ben Shapiro's speech at UC Berkeley drew hundreds of angry protesters this September, he wasn’t left to fend for himself. According to Jim Gilchrist, co-founder of the Arizona-based Minuteman Project, in addition to campus police and other official personnel, agents allied with his own group’s cause were on hand to quietly assess the scene. Dressing like students and wearing hidden body cameras, they set out to “record any violent thugs as they commit felonies,” Gilchrist told me.

“My wise suggestion to the ANTIFA and Black Lives Matter gangs: Look to your comrade on your left and on your right,” the militia leader wrote in a warning apparently distributed to Berkeley student groups before the rally (and shared with VICE). “Possibly one of them is a Minuteman or Minutewoman just waiting to document your criminal activity.”

The Minutemen and other Arizona-based, militia-style groups are perhaps best known for roving the border region with guns, camouflage uniforms and hiking boots to stalk people they suspect might be undocumented. But since Donald Trump took office, at least some of these activists have taken on a new crusade: shielding white nationalists in the name of free speech, which the militia members believe is more critical than ever. A healthy number of militias appeared at the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville this August, while others—like the Minutemen—find plenty to keep them busy closer to home.

With an administration that has expressed tacit support for white supremacy in Washington, some of the militia movement’s right-wing ire for the government seems to be have shifted from the federal to local level, where alleged threats are easy to come by.

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“Right now, the arrow for the Minutemen Project is to infiltrate hostile operations for the purpose of eliminating people who are viciously hostile to freedom of speech,” Gilchrist, a retired certified public accountant, told me, adding that his members in Berkeley sought to photograph protesters who might commit arson or other crimes. “We’re trying to stop the insult and hijacking of freedom of speech and civil rights.”

The original Minuteman Project largely disintegrated after one of its offshoot groups' leaders, Shawna Forde, was convicted of killing a nine-year-old girl and her father in a 2009 Arizona home invasion. Forde, who was sentenced to death in 2011, plotted the murders in order to steal money from the family to finance minuteman-style border operations.

But according to Gilchrist and other activists I canvassed, these groups are increasingly focused on espionage activities at liberal rallies. Last month, Gilchrist said, one Minuteman member was on hand to ensure no violence broke out at a news conference about California becoming a “sanctuary state” to protect undocumented immigrants. This ostensibly "free speech” focused project is broadly consistent with concerns laid out by Attorney General Jeff Sessions last month in a diatribe about the excesses of political correctness on college campuses.

“In every rally we have someone there, sometimes it’s a dozen and sometimes just one or two,” added Gilchrist, who claimed his group was evenly balanced between men and women, but that most of his “spies” were men. When pressed for more details on the precise nature of his alleged espionage, Gilchrist said he could not risk jeopardizing their tactics.

The tactical shift is consistent with one being undertaken by other, less immigration-focused militia groups, many of which which don’t have the same image problems that come with a prominent (if disavowed) figure being convicted of double-murder.

]Gerald Rhoades, president of the Arizona state chapter of Oath Keepers, a far-right organization associated with the patriot and militia movements, told me earlier this fall he'd begun receiving requests for protection from groups holding pro-Trump events.

“Certain organizations are worried about being pepper sprayed by people like ANTIFA,” said Rhoades, 52, who works as an avionics technician in Phoenix when he's not running his chapter. “They ask us to help keep the peace.”

The Oath Keepers in Arizona, at least, always conduct their work armed, according to Rhoades, because the state has permit-less carry, allowing anyone who can legally possess a handgun to display one without any type of permit.

“Is it necessary? You never know,” Rhoades said of carrying a gun. “It’s like insurance you hope you never use it but you might have to.”

Oath Keepers, who last year claimed 35,000 members nationally, describe their group as “a non-partisan association of current and formerly serving military, police, and first responders” who pledge “to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Members marched at the infamous rally in Charlottesville, ostensibly a protest against the removal of a Confederate statue—though Rhoades insisted the Oath Keepers were there to protect the First Amendment, not because they shared specific political views.

Historically, Arizona's border-focused militias have stayed away from the white nationalist movement, according to Oren Segal, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. But since President Trump took office, some groups have found a new cause that further muddies the waters between far-right activists, to say the least.

“The militia movement began showing up at events in 2017 alongside the alt-right and other white supremacists particularly in order to be a buffer or to confront the threat they view from ANTIFA,” Segal said. “They try to keep their distance at times from white supremacists by positioning themselves as security.”

Since most militias have traditionally positioned themselves as anti-government, and President Trump has come in as an unconventional outsider figure, impassioned members now find themselves with a new “Trump dilemma,” as Segal put it.

“They need to find other ways to gain attention and have a purpose,” he added.

Still, there are ideological cleavages both within the militia movement and between these groups and the white supremacists they are increasingly appearing alongside.

“Most anti-immigrant groups—and also anti-government groups—aren’t the kind saying America should be a white ethno-state,” Heidi Beirich, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, told me.

Occasionally, militia groups and white supremacists clash at the rallies they attend together. In June, white supremacists and Oath Keepers actually got into a fight at a Texas rally after an Oath Keeper denounced a neo-Nazi and his group was deemed insufficiently racist in response.

“We are opposed to any kind of racism or anti-American activities,” Rhoades told me, determined to walk this ideological tightrope.

But Beirich said militias with a legacy of vigilante-style activity gaining proximity—even if they claim differences—to white supremacist groups had dangerous implications going ahead.

“Seeing militias showing up in places like Charlottesville side by side with white nationalists is a bit of disturbing development,” she said. “They’re working with some of the most extreme [people] in the [far-right] movement.”

Follow Meredith Hoffman on Twitter.

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Murder at America's Border: The Story of an Anti-Immigration Vigilante

In 2009, a brutal home invasion shook a dusty border town in southern Arizona after three people claiming to be US Border Patrol agents busted in and fatally shot a Mexican American father and his nine-year-old daughter. Two years later, a prominent Minutemen leader named Shawna Forde was convicted of orchestrating the murders.

On this installment of Red Right Hand, VICE heads down to Arivaca, Arizona, to learn more about the aftermath that followed Raul and Brisenia Flores's deaths, and the patriotic undercurrents that may have motivated Shawna Forde's cold-blooded crime.

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The VICE Morning Bulletin

Everything you need to know about the world this morning, curated by VICE.

US News

Roy Moore Calls Allegations Against Him a LGBTQ 'Conspiracy'
The GOP Alabama Senate candidate told an audience at a Baptist church Wednesday night that there was a “conspiracy” behind the wave of allegations of sexual misconduct made against him. Moore said “the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender who want to change our culture” were behind the “false and malicious” claims, along with “socialists who want to change our way of life.”—BuzzFeed News

Matt Lauer Hit with More Sexual Misconduct Claims, Apologizes
The former Today show host, fired Wednesday by NBC after a female colleague credibly accused him of sexual harassment, has been accused of serial sexual misconduct at the network. Lauer allegedly bought a female colleague a sex toy as a gift, and exposed himself to another in his office. One former NBC staffer alleged Lauer sexually assaulted her after summoning her there and locking the door. On Thursday, Lauer issued his first apology—VICE News / The New York Times / VICE News

Nikki Haley Threatens North Korea with Destruction
The US ambassador to the UN said North Korea’s latest intercontinental ballistic missile launch “brings us closer to war.” Haley added at an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council that the US did not seek conflict, but if war were to break out, “the North Korean regime will be utterly destroyed.” - AP

Mueller Questions Jared Kushner
President Trump’s son-in-law met members of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team earlier this month to answer questions about former White House national security advisor Michael Flynn. An anonymous source said the inquiry was principally aimed at establishing whether Kushner had information that cleared Flynn of wrongdoing.—CNN

International News

Election Count Becomes a Crisis in Honduras
With ballots still being counted several days after the presidential vote, opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla has backtracked on a promise to respect the outcome, suggesting fraud has taken place. President Juan Orlando Hernández has a narrow lead with about 89 percent of votes counted. Nasralla urged his supporters to protest and said “there are no reliable institutions in Honduras to defend us.”—BBC News

Egyptian Presidential Candidate Says He Is Barred from Leaving UAE
Ahmed Shafiq, Egypt’s former prime minister, has claimed he is being “prevented” from leaving the United Arab Emirates after he announced his candidacy for Egypt’s 2018 presidential election. Shafiq has lived in the UAE since 2012. He said he had “a constitutional right and a holy mission” to stand against President Abdel Fateh el-Sisi.—Al Jazeera

Australia Launches Major Banking Investigation
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced a royal commission will examine wrongdoing in Australia’s financial industry. The country has seen several scandals involving the the financial sector in recent years. Turnbull pledged the inquiry “will not put capitalism on trial.”—AP

Bali Residents Refuse to Leave Volcano Danger Zone
Tens of thousands of people living near erupting Mount Agung volcano on Bali have declined to heed government requests to evacuate. “We cannot force them—but we will be held responsible, so we need to convince them,” the head of Bali’s emergency agency said.—Reuters

Everything Else

Garrison Keillor Fired over Sexual Misconduct Claims
The writer and broadcaster was dismissed by Minnesota Public Radio Wednesday after he was accused of of “inappropriate behavior” by a colleague at the station. Kellior said he had put his hand on a female coworker's bare back.—VICE News

Meek Mill Drops New Video from Behind Bars
The Philadelphia rapper, currently in prison for violating the terms of his probation, released a video for the Wins & Losses track “Fall Thru.” It closes with the hashtag “#JUSTICE4MEEK,”used by fans and supporters to call for his release. —Rolling Stone

JAY-Z Reveals Collaboration with Beyoncé
The rapper said the couple had worked in the studio together “almost like a therapy session.” Although Beyoncé ditched a joint album to work on Lemonade instead, JAY-Z said they “still have a lot of that music.”—The New York Times

N.E.R.D. Drops New Song Featuring Future
The group released “1000” Wednesday, the third single from their upcoming album No_One Ever Really Dies. The uptempo song features Future singing in a different key.—Noisey

Lil Peep’s Family Announce Beach Memorial
In an Instagram post shared by the late artist’s mom, fans were invited to a memorial service to celebrate the life of Gustav Åhr, or Lil Peep, who died earlier this month at the age of 21. The beach gathering takes place on Long Island Saturday.—i-D

Make sure to check out the latest episode of VICE's daily podcast. Today we uncover why everybody seems to hate Jill Stein.

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