Good morning,

It was another amazing week: Bill Cohan checked in with Marc Rowan en route to Mar-a-Lago; Matt Belloni charted the industry impact of Comcast’s big cable spinoff announcement while Dylan Byers peered into the MSNBC crying rooms in response to the news; Lauren Sherman pondered Sabato De Sarno’s future at Gucci; Rachel Strugatz broke the news of another Estée Lauder headache; Marion Maneker gathered all the intel from night one of the New York fall auctions; and Eriq Gardner examined a Netflix paternity suit while John Ourand double-checked the streamer’s eye-popping Tyson-Paul numbers.

Meanwhile, Tara Palmeri offered a talmudic reading of Gaetz-gate; Abby Livingston weighed Tulsi Gabbard’s confirmation chances; Peter Hamby shared some proprietary data elucidating the Dems’ deepest issues; and John Heilemann chatted with rising Democratic stars Ritchie Torres and Seth Moulton.

Check out these stories, and others, via the links below. And stick around for the backstory on how it all came together.

ART MARKET:
Marion Maneker measures the deal heat at the November sales.

HOLLYWOOD:
Matt Belloni reflects on Donna Langley’s latest ascent.
and…
Eriq Gardner sorts through a persnickety new Netflix lawsuit.
Meanwhile…
Scott Mendelson runs the numbers on the Red One flop.

WALL STREET:
Bill Cohan delivers a Marc Rowan bildungsroman.

MEDIA:
Dylan Byers reveals the ulterior motives behind Joe and Mika’s trip to Mar-a-Lago and the second-order effects of Comcast’s cable disrobement on MSNBC and CNBC.
and…
John Ourand picks over the Pitaro-Silberwasser NBA trade and surveys the growing beef over Netflix’s Friday fight night numbers.

WASHINGTON:
Peter Hamby unpacks Harris’s media handicap.
and…
Tara Palmeri penetrates the chaos of Trump’s transition while Abby Livingston gets the readout on Tulsi from Elissa Slotkin.

PODCASTS:
🎧 Dylan and I chat about the future of the Comcast cable assets on The Grill Room.
and…
Ourand and ESPN star Mike Greenberg discuss the network’s changing economics on The Varsity.
and…
Heilemann wades into the Democratic Party reboot with Reps. Moulton and Torres on Impolitic.
and…
Matt and Anora star Mikey Madison talk about the evolution of her career on The Town.
and…
Tara plays cabinet roulette with The Bulwark’s Marc Caputo and Politico’s Meridith McGraw on Somebody’s Gotta Win.
and…
Lauren and Shop Rat author Emilia Petrarca evaluate Taylor Swift’s watch game.
and…
Peter and Lauren dig into Condé Nast’s economic issues on The Powers That Be.

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Matt’s vision came to life on Friday evening at The Brownstone, a beautifully rendered space off Cahuenga, a stone’s throw in either direction from the Hollywood Bowl and the Griffith Park Observatory. The peerless Lauren Sherman interviewed some of the industry’s top costume designers—including Loewe’s Jonathan Anderson, the stylist visionary behind the looks in Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers and Queer—about the precision and intellect that goes into the aesthetic tapestry of filmmaking. The great Baratunde Thurston chatted with the season’s top documentarians about the backstories undergirding their work. (I was particularly interested in the commentary from Morgan Neville, whose Piece by Piece I had just watched with my family a few nights earlier, and Matt Tyrnauer, the acclaimed director behind Carville: Winning Is Everything, Stupid. More than 20 years ago, Matt was my boss when I interned at Vanity Fair.)

Meanwhile, Peter Hamby helmed a starry panel featuring Zoe Saldaña, Peter Sarsgaard, and Jeremy Strong, three leading acting-awards contenders this season. Strong, who stars as a young Roy Cohn in The Apprentice, was particularly poignant onstage. And I was thrilled to hear him explain his process while standing beside Gabe Sherman, my old friend and the film’s screenwriter and producer. I fondly remembered Gabe’s attempt to get the film made, years and years ago, and it was deeply moving to bask in his accomplishments with him.

The marquee event, of course, featured a twin bill starring Matt, himself. First, Matt held a deeply introspective conversation with Mikey Madison, the breakout star of Anora, who spoke candidly and evocatively about everything from her early experience working under Tarantino to her remarkably brave portrayal of Ani Mikheeva, the exotic dancer at the center of Sean Baker’s film. (If you haven’t seen Anora, please remedy the situation promptly.) Afterward, Matt welcomed Dune helmerfilmmaker Denis Villeneuve for a riveting exchange about his filmmaking journey, his directorial influences, and his own inspirations. Matt’s conversation with Mikey is available now on The Town, his excellent podcast. The Denis interview will land on the feed this Wednesday.

After the event, I huddled with Dylan Byers and Ben Landy, Puck’s executive editor, to watch the remainder of the much-ballyhooed but utterly depressing Mike Tyson-Jake Paul boxing match. By that point, the narrative had coalesced not around the depressing stunt of a former champ, four decades past his prime, squaring off against a YouTube star. Instead, the internet was aghast over Netflix’s inability to maintain the stream. Viewers were experiencing outages—a sign, perhaps, of both Netflix’s inexperience in live event production, but also the infrastructure-buckling demand of its global audience.

If you only have time to read one article this weekend, I’d turn your attention to John Ourand’s delightful piece on the contretemps stemming from the fight. About That Tyson-Paul Netflix Number… homes in on the streamer’s triumphant post-fight brag stats. But the piece also explains how ratings, themselves, have turned into a war zone between legacy media and the well-capitalized streamers who have come for their supper. The numbers surrounding the Tyson-Paul fight suggest that these forces will be competing over everything in the coming years—the rights to distribute these events, of course, but also the new metrics for success. Indeed, it’s going to be one of the great and roiling debates of our time, and precisely what you should expect to read about in Puck.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving,
Jon