Take a moment to appreciate the uniqueness of Steve Martin. A new two-part documentary from director Morgan Neville does just that. The first movie focuses on how the young comedy writer pushed past early struggles to become the white suit-wearing wild and crazy guy who reinvigorated stand-up in the mid-1970s and paved the way for his up-and-down 1980s movie career. The second installment focuses on today's Martin, surprised to be so happy and still relevant, exercising multiple talents, including steering a current hit TV series. Friday, March 29, Apple TV+.

by Percival Everett

Percival Everett's latest novel, a "majestic" reworking of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, "tears down and rebuilds a cultural landmark," said Dwight Garner in The New York Times. The prolific author, whose 2001 satire of the publishing industry was turned into the Oscar-winning film American Fiction, pays sly homage to Twain's tale while utterly recasting it. Huck's enslaved sidekick, Jim — or "James," as he prefers — is this book's narrator, and for him, a runaway determined not to be sold away from his wife and children, the Mississippi journey he embarks on with Huck is no lark. "From James' point of view, nearly every second is deadly serious." But Everett isn't scoring easy points here. "He is evoking and critiquing the American experiment, circa the middle of the 19th century, from a wised-up slave's point of view." 

Twain's version of Jim remains "the ur-Magical Negro" — a figure in fiction and film who exists to lead a white character to enlightenment, said Tyler Austin Harper in The Atlantic. Everett's novel, meanwhile, is "best understood as a systematic dismantling of that shopworn staple." James is a man who wears a mask, playing the role of kindly, illiterate Jim for white folks even though he is a voracious self-taught reader who speaks perfect English with other Black people. And though he finds humor in the ways of white Americans, his rage about the terror he lives with every day grows as he wends downriver. Everett doesn't repeat every event in Twain's novel, said Ron Charles in The Washington Post. He skips some while adding "evocative" new ones, including a "shocking and exhilarating" ending that's far superior to Twain's. 

"I almost cannot imagine a future where teachers assign The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn without also assigning James," said John Warner in the Chicago Tribune. A masterpiece in its own right, James also "fundamentally transforms" the way we think about an American classic and reaffirms that Everett, now with roughly two dozen wry, challenging works to his name, is "our current Great American Novelist." Because Everett is Everett, you also have to wonder if James isn't a put-on itself — a means of needling white readers for celebrating Black writers only when they're writing about the suffering of Black Americans in a distant-enough past, said Laura Miller in Slate. And yet, "if he's mocking us, he's earned that right. Maybe he'll even win a Pulitzer."

The CEO who brokered the worst deal in history

In January 2000, Gerald Levin was riding a winning streak. In the 1970s, he'd helped turn a fledgling cable channel called Home Box Office into a pay-per-view giant. At Time Inc., the so-called resident genius had overseen a 1990 merger with Warner Communications to make the world's largest entertainment company. As Time Warner CEO, he'd bought Turner Broadcasting, acquiring CNN. Now he was spearheading the biggest deal in history: a $165 billion merger of Time Warner and America Online. Joining the old-media juggernaut to the world's top internet company would build a media colossus for "the internet century," he said. Instead, it was the biggest flop in corporate history. The internet bubble burst, AOL's pokey dial-up service was eclipsed by broadband, and AOL was charged with wildly inflating its premerger profits. In 2002, AOL Time Warner lost nearly $100 billion, still a record. "I'm very sorry about the pain and suffering and loss that was caused," Levin said in 2010. "I presided over the worst deal of the century, apparently." 

Levin was born in Philadelphia, where his father ran a grocery business, said The Washington Post. He studied biblical literature and philosophy at Haverford College, then earned a law degree at the University of Pennsylvania. After doing development work in Iran and Colombia, he took a job at a New York cable company developing "a pay-for-programming concept for movies and sports," soon named Home Box Office. His seminal moment came when he persuaded parent company Time to transmit HBO's signal by satellite, an industry first. "His gamble paid off spectacularly," said the Financial Times, when the new network delivered the legendary "Thrilla in Manila" prize-fight between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier live to subscribers — a success that paved the way for the cable revolution. With that triumph, Levin found his "career transformed overnight." 

Amid "plummeting internet stock values" after his record loss, Levin left Time Warner, said Bloomberg. Marrying his third wife in 2003, he helped her open an upscale holistic health center in Santa Monica, Calif. After he was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 2006, the pair opened a center to help patients with the condition. He made no excuses for the merger debacle, acknowledging his culpability as CEO. "It's just a stunning piece of history," he said. "I invite business schools to continue to study it."