Karen Bass’ Bad Travel Choices. Maybe Next Time Try Economy Plus?

Note to Mayors: Next Time, Maybe Try Economy Plus?

What is it with big-city mayors and ill-advised air travel decisions these days? Before Trump’s Justice Department abruptly dropped its charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams — who, completely coincidentally, is now super concerned about undocumented migrants in Manhattan — federal investigators were looking into illegal campaign contributions in the form of luxury travel perks, like $15,000 business class seats that Turkish Airlines was offering Adams for all of $50. Now, it’s Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’ turn in the hot seat — or, rather, the fully reclinable, 70-inch pitch, first class private suite. Bass’ political foes, pointing to published reports and flight tracking data, have been pushing a story on local reporters about how the mayor flew on a U.S. Air Force Gulfstream C-37B during her recent (and obviously ill-timed) trip to Africa to attend the inauguration of Ghana President John Mahama — right around when the Palisades and Eaton fires broke out — rather than booking a much less expensive commercial flight. According to the Defense Department, the hourly rate for an Air Force C-37 is $11,200, making

the cost of a nearly 10-hour flight more than $100,000. Even a first class ticket on a commercial airline would be a fraction of that cost. “It sends a horrible tone-deaf signal,” says one critic, “and hints at a culture of really bad decision-making.” Still, according to other sources, it’s not uncommon — and definitely not illegal — for politicians to hitch rides on government planes, especially presidentially-approved occasions. Indeed, members of the Cabinet and Congress, the attorney general and scores of other federal figures are all frequent government flyers, which is why the Air Force operates a small fleet of luxury planes for just such purposes. How a local official like, say, L.A.’s mayor got a ticket, though, is still something of a mystery. Bass’ office would only say that she flew on a military jet just for the return journey, flying commercial on the way to Africa, but declined to provide further details. — PETER KIEFER

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Guess Who Went to School With Slain Insurance CEO Brian Thompson?

The next Saw movie seems to be stuck in development hell. Sources tell Rambling Reporter that dithering at the upper echelons of Lionsgate has held up the 11th installment of the billion-dollar-grossing horror franchise and that there’s been “zero progress” toward production since longtime writing partners Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan turned in a draft nearly a year ago. But there has been some shocking news regarding Saw VI. You remember that 2009 sequel, the one in which Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) tortures the CEO of Umbrella Health, a predatory medical insurance company that denies pretty much everybody’s claims? That film’s prescient plot caught a lot of folks’ attention in December, when real-life United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson was slain on a New York City sidewalk, allegedly by 26-year-old Jigsaw wannabe Luigi Mangione. But here’s the irony on top of the irony: Turns out Melton, who co-wrote Saw VI, went to college with Thompson. “We were at [the University of] Iowa at the same time, so we graduated the same year, in 1997,” Melton tells THR. “I can tell you, Brian was pretty normal at school. He drank Bud Light and was a good guy.” Melton won’t say much about the plot of the next Saw movie, if it ever gets made, except to reveal that “we have a very timely story in it. It taps into the same themes as Saw VI, where you’re a citizen, you feel angry and frustrated, you feel like you can’t do anything.” — RYAN GAJEWSKI

Kevin Spacey’s Latest Comeback … at an Obscure Portuguese Film Festival

Yes, it’s been available on Prime Video for a year already, and no, it’s not very good (“train wreck” seems to be the consensus among Reddit reviewers), but Kevin Spacey is still peddling Peter Five Eight as his big comeback vehicle. The low-budget thriller — which Spacey, in a self-made promotional video, has compared to noir classics like The Big Sleep and Double Indemnity — made its “debut” at a “festival” in Portugal earlier this month, when its two screenings unspooled before a crowd of what we’d generously guess to be at most 100 viewers. Still, the Fantasporto event, however tiny and obscure, was Spacey’s first festival invitation since his acquittal in 2023 in England of nine charges of sexual misconduct, and is indeed something of a comeback breakthrough for the disgraced 65-year-old actor, at least according to the film’s director, former effects artist Michael Zaiko Hall, who claims there’s been an “unofficial ban” on the movie because of Spacey’s involvement. “I couldn’t be more pleased that Fantasporto, a festival I greatly admire, has chosen to play Peter Five Eight,” he said in a statement to THR. The trip to Portugal also couldn’t have come at a more opportune time for Spacey. Days earlier, he’d found himself embroiled in yet another controversy, ranting online that actor Guy Pearce needed to “grow up” after Pearce accused Spacey (in a THR interview) of “targeting” him on the set of the 1997 Curtis Hanson film L.A. Confidential — which, by the way, could actually be considered a noir classic. — ETAN VLESSING

This story appeared in the March 19 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.

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