Lights! Camera! Magic!

Industrial Light & Magic’s employees crafted otherworldly stories like Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. But as the new docuseries Light & Magicreveals, in real life, they were a lot more like characters from Meatballs, Animal House, and Caddyshack. And if anything, that freewheeling mindset was essential to their work. “It was absolutely fundamental,” Light & Magic director Lawrence Kasdan tells Anthony Breznican. “That original group, those people who are now my age, they were crazy and fun. These people came out of the ’60s, and that spirit you’re talking about would be very foreign in a business today.” 

Elsewhere in HWD, Richard Lawson reviews a pair of new releases: the tart social-media-shaming comedy Not Okay and the Neil Patrick Harris–starring Uncoupled; Natalie Jarveyreports on a surprising reversal from Hulu; and Karyn Kusama opens up about her work and perseverance to Rebecca Ford.

The Force Was With Them

Light & Magic explores the hard-partying innovators who made Star Wars—and changed moviemaking.

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Gay Sex, in the City

Darren Star’s new series Uncoupled harkens back to a classic, with a new spin.

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About-Face

Under pressure from the Democratic Party for rejecting ads about abortion and guns, Hulu has revised its policy.

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Can’t Even

Zoey Deutch tells a very bad lie in a comedy that could use a little more bite.

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War Stories

“I often romanticize this idea that we are just left to fend for ourselves as women,” says Karyn Kusama, who earned her first Emmy nomination for directing the pilot of Yellowjackets.

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