title: Paige VanZant

text: VanZant was scheduled to face Amanda Ribas on March 14, 2020, at UFC Fight Night 170. However, VanZant was forced to pull out of the fight due to fracturing her right arm again (third such time for VanZant). She stated the injury was small and only needed 6–8 weeks to heal. VanZant requested to reschedule the bout one month later but Ribas decided to remain at the event and Randa Markos stepped in as the replacement. The bout with Ribas was rescheduled and eventually took place on July 12, 2020, at UFC 251. VanZant lost the fight via a submission in round one.


title: Paige VanZant

text: In August 2020, VanZant signed a four-bout contract to fight exclusively in the Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship reportedly worth over $1 million.


title: Paige VanZant

text: VanZant made her debut for the promotion on February 5, 2021, against Britain Hart in the main event of in Tampa, Florida. She lost the fight via unanimous decision.


title: Paige VanZant

text: VanZant faced Rachael Ostovich – whom she defeated in mixed martial arts at – at BKFC 19 on July 23, 2021. She lost the bout via unanimous decision. Following the loss, VanZant indicated her interest to resume MMA competition, speaking of her openness to join Bellator MMA.


title: Paige VanZant

text: VanZant was scheduled to face Charisa Sigala at on August 20, 2022. However the fight was postponed to October 15, but was ultimately cancelled a week before the event.


title: Paige VanZant

text: VanZant typically attacks with aggressive grappling, then seeks to finish the fight with strikes. Her style includes ground-and-pound, dirty boxing, and a wide variety of clinch striking. While standing, she will often move the fight toward the fence and utilize knees, elbows, forearms, punches, and throws.


title: Paige VanZant

text: VanZant is noted for the constant pressure she applies while grappling. If an opponent escapes her clinch, she will usually look to close the distance again within moments. At UFC Fight Night 57, Kailin Curran struggled to establish range against VanZant. During their three-round bout, Felice Herrig was repeatedly held down by VanZant's grappling. The first fighter to defeat VanZant, Tecia Torres, largely avoided her clinch while attacking with strikes near the center of the cage. While fighting from a distance, she typically attacks with high kicks and punches. She credits her past experiences dancing with her ability to perform flexible and agile movements in her fights; she demonstrated this when she knocked out Bec Rawlings with a jumping switch kick which earned her a "Performance of the Night" bonus.


title: Paige VanZant

text: On September 15, 2021, VanZant made her first professional wrestling appearance, appearing for All Elite Wrestling (AEW) on their "Dynamite" program with fighters from American Top Team. The following week on "Rampage": Grand Slam, VanZant attacked Chris Jericho.


title: Paige VanZant

text: On the February 2, 2022 episode of "Dynamite", American Top Team's Dan Lambert introduced VanZant to Brandi Rhodes, with VanZant later attacking Rhodes at his behest. The angle between VanZant and Rhodes was dropped after Brandi and her husband Cody announced that they were leaving AEW. On March 4, AEW founder Tony Khan tweeted that VanZant would sign with the promotion. VanZant appeared alongside her husband Austin Vanderford in the audience on the March 9 episode of "Dynamite". During the main event, she attacked Tay Conti at ringside, distracting Sammy Guevara and assisting Scorpio Sky to win the TNT Championship. After the match, VanZant signed her AEW contract on top of Tay's body. On the May 27 episode of "Rampage", it was announced that VanZant would make her in-ring debut at Double or Nothing, teaming with Ethan Page and Scorpio Sky to face Conti, Guevara, and Frankie Kazarian. At the event, VanZant's team was victorious.


title: Paige VanZant

text: On March 8, 2016, VanZant was announced as one of the celebrities who would compete on season 22 of "Dancing with the Stars". She partnered with professional dancer Mark Ballas. The couple reached the finals of the show and finished in second place behind model Nyle DiMarco and his partner Peta Murgatroyd.


title: Paige VanZant

text: On March 3, 2017, VanZant was announced as one of 16 celebrities taking part in a celebrity cooking competition on the Food Network TV series "Chopped". She was featured in the "Star Power: Culinary Muscle" episode, alongside former NFL player LaMarr Woodley, female Olympic gold medalist fencer Mariel Zagunis, and former Olympic gold medalist figure skater Dorothy Hamill. VanZant made it through the appetizer, and entree rounds to compete in the dessert round against Hamill. She then edged out Hamill in the dessert round to become the Chopped winner.


title: Paige VanZant

text: VanZant released her biography, "Rise: Surviving the Fight of My Life" on April 10, 2018. The book details her rise to fame, including her UFC battles, personal battles and appearances on "Dancing with the Stars".


title: Paige VanZant

text: In May 2018, VanZant confirmed that she had a breast augmentation, saying: "I'm a girl and always wanted my own boobs. They never came so I bought them."


title: Paige VanZant

text: In September 2018, VanZant married Austin Vanderford, a professional MMA fighter and a two-time NAIA All-American and national champion wrestler. The couple began dating the previous year, and Vanderford proposed to VanZant in January 2018.


title: Boyhood (2014 film)

text: Boyhood is a 2014 American epic coming-of-age drama film written and directed by Richard Linklater, and starring Patricia Arquette, Ellar Coltrane, Lorelei Linklater, and Ethan Hawke. Filmed from 2002 to 2013, "Boyhood" depicts the childhood and adolescence of Mason Evans Jr. (Coltrane) from ages six to eighteen as he grows up in Texas with divorced parents (Arquette and Hawke). Richard Linklater's daughter Lorelei plays Mason's sister, Samantha.


title: Boyhood (2014 film)

text: Production began in 2002 and finished in 2013, with Linklater's goal to make a film about growing up. The project began without a completed script, with only basic plot points and the ending written initially. Linklater developed the script throughout production, writing the next year's portion of the film after rewatching the previous year's footage. He incorporated changes he saw in each actor into the script, while also allowing all major actors to participate in the writing process by incorporating their life experiences into their characters' stories.


title: Boyhood (2014 film)

text: "Boyhood" premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival and was released theatrically on July 11, 2014. The film competed in the main competition section of the 64th Berlin International Film Festival, where Linklater won the Silver Bear for Best Director. It received universal acclaim from critics, with praise for its performances, Linklater's screenplay and direction, and subject matter. It has been featured in several listings as one of the greatest films ever made. It was also nominated for five Golden Globe Awards, winning Best Motion Picture – Drama, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actress for Arquette; five BAFTA awards, winning for Best Director and Best Film; and six Academy Awards, winning Best Supporting Actress for Arquette. On Metacritic, it is the best-reviewed film released in 2014, the 2010s, and the 21st century thus far, and is currently the most recent film to receive a rare score of 100 out of 100 on the same website.


title: Boyhood (2014 film)

text: In 2002, six-year-old Mason Evans Jr. and his older sister Samantha live with their divorced mother, Olivia, in a small town in Texas. Mason overhears Olivia arguing with her boyfriend, saying she has no free time due to parenting. In 2003, Olivia moves the family to Houston so she can attend the University of Houston and get a better job. In 2004, Mason's father, Mason Sr., visits Houston and takes Mason and Samantha bowling. When he drops the children off at home, he argues with Olivia while Mason and Samantha watch from a window. Olivia takes Mason to one of her classes, introducing him to her professor, Bill Welbrock; Mason sees them flirt.


title: Boyhood (2014 film)

text: In 2005, Olivia and Bill have married and blended their two families. They share experiences such as playing video games and attending a midnight release of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince". Mason and Samantha are enrolled in the same school as their step-siblings, where Mason befriends Nicole, who has a crush on him. In 2006, Mason and Samantha bond with Mason Sr. as he takes them out for a day in Houston, culminating in a Houston Astros game and a sleepover at his house. Olivia continues her education and is initially supportive of Bill's strict parenting style, which includes many chores for the children and an enforced cutting of Mason's long hair. In 2007, Bill gradually becomes abusive and violent towards Olivia and the children due to his alcoholism. After he assaults Olivia, she moves out with Mason and Samantha to a friend's house and files for divorce while her step children stay with their father, facing an uncertain future.


title: Boyhood (2014 film)

text: In 2008, Mason Sr. learns that Samantha has a boyfriend and talks to her and Mason about contraception. Mason Sr. and Mason go camping and connect through music, film, and Mason's blossoming interest in girls. Mason and Samantha have grown into their lives in San Marcos, a town close to Austin. In 2009, Mason is bullied at school and playfully teased on a camping trip but starts receiving attention from girls. Olivia takes a job in teaching psychology at college and moves in with Jim, a student and Iraq War veteran.


title: Boyhood (2014 film)

text: In 2010, Mason has started high school and experimented with marijuana and alcohol. Mason Sr., who has remarried and has a baby, takes Mason and Samantha to visit his wife's parents. For his birthday, Mason Sr. gives Mason a suit and CDs; Mason's step-grandparents give him a Bible and a shotgun. In 2011, Mason is lectured by his photography teacher, who sees his potential but is disappointed in his lack of ambition. Mason attends a party and meets Sheena, who becomes his girlfriend. After Mason arrives home late one night from a party, a drunk Jim confronts him about his late hours. Olivia and Jim subsequently break up, and the family's financial situation worsens.


title: Boyhood (2014 film)

text: In 2012, Mason and Sheena visit Samantha, who is attending the University of Texas at Austin, where they share their hopes and fears about college. Samantha's roommate discovers them asleep together in her dormitory. In May 2013, during the end of Mason's senior year in high school, he has a painful breakup with Sheena, wins the second place silver medal in a state photography contest, and is awarded college scholarship money. Mason's family throws him a graduation party and toasts his success. Mason Sr. gives him advice about his breakup. Planning to sell the house and downsize, Olivia meets Samantha and Mason for lunch and asks them to sort through their possessions. Later that year, as Mason prepares to leave for college, Olivia breaks down, disillusioned by how quickly life has passed. At Sul Ross State University in Alpine, Mason moves into his dorm and meets his new roommate Dalton, Dalton's girlfriend Barb, and Barb's roommate, Nicole. Mason takes drugs given to him by Barb and the group goes hiking at Big Bend Ranch State Park. Nicole shares with Mason her belief that, rather than people seizing moments, moments seize people; Mason agrees.


title: Boyhood (2014 film)

text: In May 2002, Linklater said that he would begin shooting an untitled film in his home city of Houston that summer. He planned to assemble the cast and crew for a few weeks' filming annually for 12 years. He said: "I've long wanted to tell the story of a parent–child relationship that follows a boy from the first through the 12th grade and ends with him going off to college. But the dilemma is that kids change so much that it is impossible to cover that much ground. And I am totally ready to adapt the story to whatever he is going through." IFC, the film's distributor, committed to a film budget of US$200,000 per year, or $2.4 million over the 12-year shooting period.


title: Boyhood (2014 film)

text: Linklater hired the six-year-old Coltrane to play the boy. The cast could not sign contracts for the film due to the De Havilland Law, which makes it illegal to contract someone for more than seven years of work. Linklater told Hawke that he would have to finish the film if Linklater died.


title: Boyhood (2014 film)

text: "Boyhood" began filming without a completed script. Linklater had prepared each character's basic plot points, and the ending—including the final shot—but otherwise wrote the script for the next year's filming after rewatching the previous year's footage, incorporating the changes he saw in each actor. All major actors participated in the writing process, contributing their life experiences; for example, Hawke's character is based on his and Linklater's fathers—both Texan insurance agents who divorced and remarried—and Arquette's character is based on her mother, who resumed her education later in life and became a psychotherapist.


title: Boyhood (2014 film)

text: Despite the unconventional screenwriting process, Linklater stated that he had a general storyline in mind, and that the actors did not change the general direction of the story:


title: Boyhood (2014 film)

text: People think I asked Ellar, "What did you do in school the other day? Let's make a scene about that!" That never happened. The time we spent together was me just gauging where he was at in his life—what his concerns were and what he was doing. Then I would think, maybe we could move the camping trip up, and we can do this or that.


title: Boyhood (2014 film)

text: Scripts for certain scenes were sometimes finished the night prior to shooting. According to Hawke, the discussion about the possibility of additional "Star Wars" films is "the only honest-to-god improvised moment in the movie". The cast and crew gathered once or twice each year, on varying dates, to film for three or four days. The production team spent approximately two months in pre-production, and one month in post-production each year. When Arquette became the lead on the TV series "Medium", she filmed her scenes over weekends.


title: Boyhood (2014 film)

text: Although Linklater had referred to the project as "Boyhood" during the early years of production, in 2013 he settled on the title "12 Years", but was forced to rename it due to the release of "12 Years a Slave" the year prior. In consideration of the possibility that the actors' circumstances or availability might change over the extended period of production, Linklater also had observed that the film potentially could also have been named "Motherhood", "Fatherhood", etc. Hawke was amazed that the producers "still had their job" at the film's completion, despite "(having) to hide a couple hundred thousand dollars a year for over a decade while we slowly made this movie". Despite the risks, Linklater was allowed an unusual level of freedom with the production, never having to show IFC the work as it progressed.


title: Boyhood (2014 film)

text: Costume designer Kari Perkins had to review each year's footage to ensure there were no accidental repetitions and to create a "flow" to the costumes.


title: Boyhood (2014 film)

text: When discussing shooting format in an interview, Linklater discussed how insistent he was on shooting 35mm film:


title: Boyhood (2014 film)

text: We very intentionally shot in the same way throughout, just to get a unified look. 35mm negative is about the most stable thing you could shoot on. We kinda had that from the beginning. I remember it not even being a question. You know the HD formats, I didn't really like them very much at all. I'm just not warming up to them. But they change a lot. The film would have six different looks if we tried to keep up.


title: Boyhood (2014 film)

text: "Boyhood" premiered theatrically on July 11, 2014, in a limited release in four theaters in North America and grossed $387,618, with an average of $77,524 per theater, ranking number 19 at the box office. The film expanded the next week to 34 theaters and grossed $1.2 million, with an average of $34,418 per theater. The film's wide release occurred on August 15, opening in 771 theaters and grossing $2 million, with an average of $2,584 per theater and ranking number 11. The film's widest release in the U.S. was 775 theaters. The film ultimately earned $25.4 million domestically and $32 million internationally for a total of $57.3 million, against a $4 million production budget.


title: Boyhood (2014 film)

text: "Boyhood" has an approval rating of based on professional reviews on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of . Its critical consensus reads, "Epic in technical scale but breathlessly intimate in narrative scope, "Boyhood" is a sprawling investigation of the human condition." Metacritic (which uses a weighted average) assigned "Boyhood" a score of 100 out of 100 based on 50 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". It is the highest rated of all films reviewed upon their original release on the site, and one of only eight films in the site's history to achieve a perfect aggregate score. It also holds the highest number of reviews for a film with a score of 100.


title: Boyhood (2014 film)

text: A collection of 25 French critiques on AlloCiné, including those from "Le Monde" and "Cahiers du cinéma", indicates wide approval, with an average score of 4.0 out of 5.


title: Boyhood (2014 film)

text: In her review for "The New York Times", Manohla Dargis stated that the film's realism was "jolting" and "so brilliantly realized and understated that it would be easy to overlook". A. O. Scott, also writing for "The New York Times", called "Boyhood" the best film of 2014, saying that he could not think of any film that had affected him the way "Boyhood" had in his 15 years as a professional film critic. Peter Travers of "Rolling Stone" also named "Boyhood" the best movie of the year, calling it the year's "biggest emotional powerhouse". Peter Bradshaw of "The Guardian" called it "one of the greatest films of the decade". Richard Roeper gave the film an A+, calling it one of the greatest films he had ever seen. Wai Chee Dimock, writing in the "Los Angeles Review of Books", compared Linklater's film with Nobel laureate J. M. Coetzee's memoir, "".


title: Boyhood (2014 film)

text: Many critics singled out Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke's performances for praise. Mick LaSalle of the "San Francisco Chronicle" said that watching Arquette was "like watching a generation's hopes and struggles, presented by an actress with a fullness of emotion, and yet with utter matter-of-factness". Michael Phillips, writing for the "Chicago Tribune", lauded Arquette's "lack of pretense or affectation as a performer". Dana Stevens of Slate called Hawke's performance "Superb". Indiewire, while ranking Ethan Hawke's best performances, felt that "Ethan swerves away from that easy route and instead digs down deep to create this portrait of a man who’s flawed but committed to growing, or at the very least doing the best he can today and hoping he’ll be able to do so again tomorrow".


title: Boyhood (2014 film)

text: "Boyhood" also earned the admiration of other filmmakers and artists. Director Christopher Nolan named "Boyhood" as his favorite film of 2014, calling it "extraordinary". Writer-director Mike Leigh, while accepting a fellowship from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in 2015, called it "the definitive independent film". Writer Joyce Carol Oates tweeted her support, saying: "It is rare that a film so mimics the rhythms and texture of actual life as "Boyhood". Such seeming spontaneity is a very high art." Poet and critic Dan Chiasson wrote in a contribution to "The New York Review of Books": "This is a great film, the greatest American movie I have ever seen in a theater. It is great for what we see, but it is even greater for its way of making real what we cannot see, or for suggesting that what we cannot yet see we might one day see." According to Canadian philosopher Howard Adelman, "["Boyhood"] is Huckleberry Finn for the twenty-first century, for it is only Mason Jr. who retains his honesty, integrity and sense of decency throughout ... a masterful movie not to be missed." Alejandro González Iñárritu, winner of the Academy Award for Best Director in 2015 and Linklater's fellow nominee, said that when he watched "Boyhood", he sent an email to Linklater and thanked him for giving "this incredible gift".


title: Boyhood (2014 film)

text: Other critics reacted less positively to the film. "Los Angeles Times" critic Kenneth Turan described it as "at best, OK" and one whose "animating idea is more interesting than its actual satisfactions". Sam Adams of IndieWire argued that the unanimous praise for "Boyhood" is bad for film criticism, as it tends to marginalize the analysis of critics who disagree with the majority; Adams further elaborated that masterpieces are not made "by unanimous praise, but by careful scrutiny". Richard Brody of "The New Yorker" listed the film at the top of a year-end list he called "The Negative Ten", a list of films with "significant merit", but that also "occluded the view toward the year's most accomplished and daringly original work".


title: Boyhood (2014 film)

text: Several reviewers questioned the film's underlying racial assumptions. Writing for "The Atlantic", Imran Siddiquee noted: “While Linklater and the character of Mason can choose not to see it, dialogue about race is happening all around them and affecting their lives and experiences.” Siddiquee also took issue with the apparent absence of non-white characters, particularly Latinos: “In this tale of a white family living in a state that borders Mexico, isn’t it strange that the only time they’re shown truly interacting with a Spanish-speaking non-white individual is when they are saving them from a life of manual labor?” Teo Bugbee, of "The Daily Beast" asserted: “As a treatise on the essential vacuity of the white liberal male, Boyhood is a staggering achievement. As a portrait of childhood in America, it is incomplete enough to be irresponsible.” Jaime Woo, of "The Daily Dot", took issue with critics who identified the film as a portrait of “normal” Americans, asking: “More than one reviewer noted how impressive it was to capture these “ordinary” Americans: In fact, Salon's Andrew O’Hehir used the word three times in his review. So what does it mean when “ordinary” in 2014 still passes as the white experience? When the questionable treatment of ethnic minorities as props for the white characters nary raises a flag?”


title: Boyhood (2014 film)

text: The international film magazine "Sight & Sound" named it the best film of 2014 after polling an international group of 112 film critics. Both Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes listed "Boyhood" as the best-reviewed film of 2014. Village Voice Film Poll voted "Boyhood" as the best film of the year.


title: Boyhood (2014 film)

text: "Boyhood" appeared on more critics' annual "best-of" lists in 2014 than any other film, including the most first-place votes. According to CriticsTop10.com, it was included on 536 lists and topped 189 of them—with the latter being a record by that site's count.


title: Boyhood (2014 film)

text: In a 2016 poll by BBC Culture, critics ranked "Boyhood" as the fifth greatest film since 2000. The film was also named the eighth "Best Film of the 21st Century So Far" in 2017 by "The New York Times". In 2019, "The Guardian" ranked the film 3rd in its 100 best films of the 21st century list. In 2021, the film was ranked at No. 91 on Time Out magazine's list of "The 100 best movies of all time".


title: Boyhood (2014 film)

text: Linklater told "Hypable" in July 2014 that he was planning a DVD/Blu-ray release through The Criterion Collection:


title: Boyhood (2014 film)

text: On August 21, "Variety" reported that Paramount Home Media Distribution had acquired the U.S. home entertainment rights for DVD, Blu-ray and digital distribution. IFC Films will retain VOD and EST sales as part of the deal. The film became available on Digital HD on December 9, 2014, and was released on Blu-ray and DVD on January 6, 2015. The Criterion Collection released a special edition of the film on Blu-ray and DVD on October 18, 2016.


title: Boyhood (2014 film)

text: "Boyhood" earned dozens of accolades, including top prizes from the New York Film Critics Circle, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the Chicago Film Critics Association, the Broadcast Film Critics Association, and the London Film Critics' Circle. It received both the Golden Globe Award and the British Academy Film Award for Best Film. At the 87th Academy Awards, it received its sole Oscar for Supporting Actress, losing the other nominations to "Birdman" and "Whiplash".


title: Tommy Mottola

text: Thomas Daniel Mottola (born July 14, 1948) is an American music executive, producer and author. Mottola is currently the Chairman of Mottola Media Group and was previously the Chairman and CEO of Sony Music Entertainment, parent of the Columbia label, for nearly 15 years. Since 2000, he has been married to Mexican actress and singer Thalía.


title: Tommy Mottola

text: Mottola was born in The Bronx to a middle-class Italian-American family. He graduated from Iona Grammar School in 1962 and Iona Prep in 1966. He attended military school for a time, and then high school. After dropping out of Hofstra University on Long Island, he pursued a music career as a guitarist and singer with The Exotics, an R&B cover band.


title: Tommy Mottola

text: Mottola entered in the music scene in the mid-1960s as a recording artist for CBS Records, under the name "T.D. Valentine". After his attempt to become a recording star himself failed, Mottola started working for publishing powerhouse Chappell Publishing and started his own management company, Champion Entertainment Organization. His role at Chappell put him in touch with many artists, and soon he signed his first successful management clients, Daryl Hall & John Oates. Mottola helped Hall and Oates land a record deal and several high-profile endorsements.


title: Tommy Mottola

text: Mottola was also recognized for managing the black rock group Xavion successfully using new media for promotion, such as music videos and corporate sponsorship for music tours.


title: Tommy Mottola

text: In 1988, Mottola was hired by Sony Music (then known as CBS Records) by Walter Yetnikoff to run its U.S. operations. In 1990, he replaced Yetnikoff as Chairman CEO of the newly named Sony Music. During his tenure, he transformed Sony into one of the most successful global music companies, expanding its businesses into over 60 countries, while creating one of the strongest management teams in the music industry. He revitalized Sony Music's publishing division by making such acquisitions as the Beatles catalogue and enabled Sony to become the first major music company to make commercial digital downloads available. During his 15-year career, Mottola built Sony up from a company with revenues of $800 million a year to one with over $6 billion of annual revenue by 2000.


title: Tommy Mottola

text: He is widely well known for signing Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, Gloria Estefan, Destiny's Child, Jessica Simpson, Anastacia, Shakira, the Dixie Chicks, as well as for releasing digitally remastered compact discs of older recordings made by Barbra Streisand, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Andy Williams, Pink Floyd among others. In the late 1990s, Mottola contributed to the popularity of such Sony artists as Ricky Martin, Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony.


title: Tommy Mottola

text: He also worked with Michael Jackson from the time he began recording his "Dangerous" album. During the promotion of Jackson's album "Invincible" in 2001, Jackson later stated that his relationship with Mottola dissolved based on corruption in Mottola's working practices, and accused him of being a "racist who exploited black talent". Jackson stated later on that "The recording companies really, really do conspire against the artists." Later, Jackson, who an advisor said could be paranoid, reportedly kept an “enemy list” on which Mottola appeared, along with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, illusionist Uri Geller, attorney Gloria Allred, DA Tom Sneddon, and Janet Arvizo, mother of a Jackson accuser. Al Sharpton told the "New York Post" shortly after that, "I have known Tommy for 15 or 20 years, and never once have I known him to say or do anything that would be considered racist". He admitted he was "taken aback and surprised" by Jackson's remarks. "In fact, he's always been supportive of the black music industry," Sharpton said. "He was the first record executive to step up and offer to help us with respect to corporate accountability, when it comes to black music issues."


title: Tommy Mottola

text: Mottola was the head of Sony Music Entertainment until January 2003. Since leaving his post as chief of Sony Music, Mottola has been building a new entertainment company, complete with recorded music, television production, theater, and fashion, alongside a branding and management company that had recently launched. He was instrumental in re-launching the various careers of such artists as Marc Anthony and Lindsay Lohan. Later signings included Cassie Ventura and Mika.


title: Tommy Mottola

text: Mottola bought out the rights to Casablanca Records (a then-diminished imprint of Polygram), and resurrected it, signing Lohan and Mika.


title: Tommy Mottola

text: Mottola published a book titled "Hitmaker" in January 2013, written alongside Cal Fussman. He details his successes and the drive that propelled him to the top of the business, but also talks at length about the downtimes.


title: Tommy Mottola

text: Mottola produced the recent musical adaptation of Chazz Palminteri's "A Bronx Tale". Palminteri credits Mottola with the realization of the new project, developed over the past two years. Mottola brought the idea for "A Bronx Tale" musical to producer group Dodger Properties and "put the musical on his back". The show started previews at Paper Mill Playhouse on February 4, 2016, opened on February 14, 2016, and closed on March 6, 2016. The show officially opened on Broadway in December 2016 and after 29 previews and over 700 regular performances closed on August 5, 2018. A national tour will begin in October opening in Los Angeles at the Pantages Theatre.


title: Tommy Mottola

text: In 2018, Mottola's Mottola Media signed a multi year first look deal with eOne to develop scripted and unscripted TV.


title: Tommy Mottola

text: In March, 2021, Mottola, along with Neon16 CEO and Co-founder Lex Borrero and representation firm Range Media Partners formed NTERTAIN – an entertainment and media company that creates, develops and produces content across multiple mediums, highlighting Latino stories and representing Latino talent, brands and culture.


title: Tommy Mottola

text: The idea for NTERTAIN came about when Borrero, Mottola and Iván Rodríguez, NEON16's Head of Creative, determined there wasn't enough quality content that truly represented the culture and Latin experience in the United States and globally.


title: Tommy Mottola

text: NTERTAIN is based in Miami with Mottola and Borrero heading the company in partnership with Peter Micelli, CEO of Range Media Partners.


title: Tommy Mottola

text: Mottola has been married three times. He converted to Judaism to marry his first wife, Lisa Clark, daughter of ABC Records head Sam Clark, in 1971. The couple divorced in 1990, after having two children.


title: Tommy Mottola

text: On June 5, 1993, Mottola married his second wife, Mariah Carey. They announced their separation on May 30, 1997, and later divorced on March 5, 1998.


title: Tommy Mottola

text: He married his third wife, Thalía, on December 2, 2000, at New York City's St. Patrick's Cathedral. Their daughter was born in October 2007, and their son was born in June 2011.


title: Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart

text: Elizabeth Ann Smart was kidnapped at age fourteen on June 5, 2002, by Brian David Mitchell from her home in the Federal Heights neighborhood of Salt Lake City, Utah. She was held captive by Mitchell and his wife, Wanda Barzee, on the outskirts of Salt Lake City, and later, in San Diego County, California. Her captivity lasted approximately nine months before she was discovered in Sandy, Utah, approximately from her home.


title: Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart

text: Smart was abducted from her home at knife-point by Mitchell, while her younger sister, Mary Katherine, pretended to be asleep. Mitchell, who claimed to be a religious preacher, held Smart at a camp in the woods with Barzee, where he repeatedly raped her. During her captivity, Smart accompanied her captors in public on various occasions dressed head-to-toe in white robes and went largely unrecognized by those she came in contact with.


title: Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart

text: Since her abduction and rescue, Smart has become an advocate for missing persons and victims of sexual assault. Barzee was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison in 2010 for her role in the kidnapping and abduction, although she was granted early release on September 19, 2018 for previously uncredited time served. Mitchell was diagnosed by forensic psychologists as having antisocial and narcissistic personality disorder. Extensive disputes over his competence to stand trial lasted several years before he was deemed mentally capable in 2010. Mitchell was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in 2011.


title: Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart

text: One of Smart's abductors, Brian David Mitchell, was born on October 18, 1953, in Salt Lake City, Utah, the third of six children in a Mormon family. His mother was a teacher and his father was a social worker. In order to teach Mitchell about sex, his father reportedly showed his adolescent son explicit photos from a medical journal, and, in order to teach him about independence, he would drive Mitchell to unfamiliar parts of Salt Lake City, and drop him off, leaving him to find his way home.


title: Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart

text: At age 16, Mitchell showed himself to a child, and was sent to a juvenile hall. At nineteen, he married and had two children with Karen Minor, who was three years younger than he, making her 16 years old at the time of their marriage. After their divorce, Minor was awarded custody of both children, after which Mitchell temporarily fled with the children to New Hampshire. He resided in New Hampshire for two years, where he joined a Hare Krishna commune. Mitchell had a history of drug and alcohol abuse in his adult life; upon returning to Salt Lake City, he was inspired to seek sobriety by his brother, who had recently returned from a mission. In Salt Lake City, Mitchell had two additional children with his second wife, Debbie, who herself had three children from a previous marriage. Debbie alleged that Mitchell was abusive during their marriage, and they divorced in 1984. After their separation, Debbie alleged that Mitchell had sexually abused their three-year-old son; the claim could not be medically confirmed, but Mitchell's future visitations with his children were ordered to be supervised by the Division of Child and Family Services. One of Debbie's daughters from her previous marriage would later claim that Mitchell had sexually abused her for four years.


title: Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart

text: On the day Mitchell and Debbie's divorce was finalized, he married Wanda Elaine Barzee ( November 6, 1945, in Salt Lake City), a then-forty-year-old divorcee with six children. Barzee had a troubled relationship with her children; one of her daughters would later refer to her as a "monster," and she also claimed that when she was a child, Wanda fed her pet rabbit to her for dinner. Together, Mitchell and Barzee were actively involved in the LDS Church. Eventually Mitchell began going by the name "Immanuel," claiming to be a prophet of God who experienced prophetic visions. For this, he was excommunicated from the church. Barzee began going by the name "Hephzibah," and the two would panhandle and preach in downtown Salt Lake City. Mitchell presented himself in an image that was akin to the image of Jesus, dressing in white robes and tunics, and growing a beard.


title: Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart

text: In the early hours of June 5, 2002, Mitchell broke into the home of Edward and Lois Smart in the Federal Heights neighborhood of Salt Lake City, where they lived with their six children. He abducted 14-year-old Elizabeth from the bedroom she shared with her nine-year-old sister, Mary Katherine, who was awakened but pretended to be asleep, and later reported that:


title: Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart

text: When she thought Elizabeth and the abductor had gone, Mary Katherine attempted to go to her parents' bedroom, but only narrowly avoided being seen by Mitchell and Elizabeth, who were outside the bedroom of the family's boys. She crept back into her bed, where she hid for an undetermined time—possibly over two hours.


title: Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart

text: Just before 4 a.m., Mary Katherine woke her parents and told them what had happened; thinking she had been dreaming, they did not believe her until they found a window screen that had been cut with a knife.


title: Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart

text: On June 6, 2002, Ed and Lois went on television and pleaded for the kidnapper to return their daughter.


title: Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart

text: A massive regional search effort, organized by the Laura Recovery Center, involved up to 2,000 volunteers each day, as well as dogs and planes. Various websites carried flyers that could be printed or circulated via internet. After many days of intensive searching, the community-led search was ended and efforts were directed to other means of finding Elizabeth.


title: Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart

text: Mary Katherine's observations were of little use, and there was little usable evidence found at the scene such as fingerprints or DNA. A search using bloodhounds was unsuccessful. Police questioned and interviewed hundreds of potential suspects including a 26-year-old who was cleared after being located in a West Virginia hospital. The investigation had the side effect of returning several at-large criminals to prison, but Elizabeth was not found.


title: Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart

text: The Salt Lake City police considered Richard Ricci a person of interest early in the investigation. Ricci was a handyman with a history of drug abuse who had worked for the Smarts; he had been jailed on an unrelated parole violation prior. Ricci died of a brain hemorrhage in August 2002. To keep Elizabeth's name in the press, her family used a variety of strategies, including making a website about her abduction and providing home videos.


title: Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart

text: After her kidnapping, Smart was taken by Mitchell into the woods to an encampment outside of Salt Lake City, where she was met by Wanda Barzee. According to Smart's testimony, Barzee "eventually just proceeded to wash my feet and told me to change out of my pajamas into a robe type of garment. And when I refused, she said if I didn't, she would have Brian Mitchell come rip my pajamas off. I put the robe on. He came and performed a ceremony, which was to marry me to him. After that, he proceeded to rape me." Mitchell claimed to be an angel and he also told Smart that he was a Davidic King who would "emerge in seven years, be stoned by a mob, lie dead in the streets for three days and then rise up and kill the Antichrist." Smart, he insisted, was the first of many virgin brides he planned to kidnap, each of whom would accompany him as he battled the Antichrist.


title: Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart

text: To keep Smart from escaping, she was shackled to a tree with a metal cable, which allowed her limited mobility outside of the tent she occupied. During her captivity, she was forced to take a new name, and she chose the name Esther, after Esther of the Old Testament (Brian David Mitchell also called her Shearjashub). It was later revealed during court testimony that Mitchell repeatedly raped Smart, sometimes multiple times a day, forced her to look at pornographic magazines, and regularly threatened to kill her. He often forced her to drink alcohol and take drugs to lower her resistance, and both starved her and fed her garbage. Smart's abuse was facilitated with the assistance of Barzee, whom Smart would later refer to as the "most evil woman" she had ever met.


title: Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart

text: Smart accompanied Mitchell and Barzee in public on numerous occasions, but her presence was either obscured or unnoticed via various methods of concealment, which often consisted of her wearing a headscarf and a face veil. In August 2002, around two months after Smart's kidnapping, Mitchell devised a plan to leave Salt Lake City with Barzee and Smart, possibly to Boston or New York City. To research potential places to relocate, Mitchell and Barzee visited the Salt Lake City Public Library with Smart. There, they were noticed by a library patron due to their unusual styles of dress; each wore full-length robes with veils which concealed most of their faces. The patron was convinced to call police after looking closely at Smart's eyes. A police detective arrived at the library and confronted Mitchell, Barzee, and Smart; however, he was deterred by Mitchell, who claimed that Smart was his daughter (named Augustine Marshall), and they were unable to remove their veils or garb on religious grounds. When questioned by the detective, neither Barzee nor Smart spoke, and Mitchell stated that their religion prohibited women from speaking in public. Smart would later say that Barzee signaled her not to move, and she gripped her legs under the table. She later recalled the incident: "I felt like hope was walking out the door. I was mad at myself that I didn't say anything, mad at myself for not taking the chance. So close. I felt terrible that the detective hadn't pushed harder. He just walked away."


title: Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart

text: Smart also visited grocery stores and a restaurant but went unnoticed. In the fall of 2002, she attended a party with Mitchell and Barzee and was photographed wearing a veil and robe with Mitchell and another party guest.


title: Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart

text: In September 2002, Mitchell and Barzee left Salt Lake City with Smart, relocating to San Diego County, California, where they held Smart in an encampment in a dry creek bed in Lakeside. Mitchell and Barzee relocated with Smart several times to different encampments in San Diego County, often moving in the middle of the night. On February 12, 2003, Mitchell was arrested in El Cajon for breaking into a church and spent several days in jail over the incident.


title: Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart

text: In October 2002, Smart's sister Mary Katherine suddenly realized that the abductor's voice was that of an unemployed man the family knew as Immanuel, whom the family had hired for a day to work on the roof and rake leaves.


title: Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart

text: The police were skeptical because of the short time "Immanuel" had worked for the family, the long time that elapsed, and the short time Mary Katherine had heard the abductor's voice; however, the family had a sketch artist draw "Immanuel's" face from their descriptions, and in February this drawing was released to the media; it was shown on "Larry King Live" and "America's Most Wanted". The drawing was recognized by relatives of Mitchell, who gave police contemporary photographs of him.


title: Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart

text: On March 12, 2003, Mitchell was spotted with a woman and a girl in Sandy, Utah, by two separate couples who had seen photos of Mitchell on the news. The woman was Wanda Barzee, and the girl was Elizabeth Smart—disguised in a gray wig, sunglasses, and veil. Both couples reported their recognition of Mitchell to the Sandy Police Department, which immediately dispatched police officers to the location. Smart was recognized during questioning by the officers, who then rescued her and arrested Mitchell and Barzee.


title: Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart

text: One month after the recovery of Elizabeth Smart, the state of Utah superseded the then-existing Rachael Alert with the nationwide AMBER alert child abduction alert system—in part to conform with recently implemented nationwide procedures. Although the Rachael Alert was superseded, this system had seen a success in the two years of its existence.


title: Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart

text: The court requested that Mitchell undergo a competency evaluation, based on his claims of being a religious prophet. While awaiting the evaluation, Mitchell was incarcerated at the Utah State Hospital. Stephen Golding, a psychologist hired by the defense, distinguished between zealous belief and delusion, and concluded that Mitchell's beliefs transcended zeal and were in fact delusional. It was Golding's opinion that Mitchell was not competent to stand trial as a result of his delusions. The court, however, overruled Golding's opinion and found Mitchell to be competent in 2004. Plea negotiations subsequently began between the defense and the prosecution. The defendant was willing to plead guilty to kidnapping and burglary for a 10- to 15-year sentence on condition that Smart should not testify. The prosecution refused to drop sexual assault charges against Mitchell, and no agreement was reached.


title: Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart

text: On October 15, 2004, plea negotiations had still not determined an agreement. The defense appealed as late as October 21, asking the prosecution to rethink their position in terms of what they were offering Mitchell. Up until this point the defense did not highlight breakdown in competence as a contributing factor to the deterioration of plea negotiations; they cited the lack of a coming to an agreement as being the result of the sole discretion of their client. The appeal was subsequently rejected.


title: Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart

text: Jennifer Skeem, a psychologist who initially stated that Mitchell was competent, interviewed Mitchell again per the defense's request in February 2005. After this interview, Heidi Buchi, Mitchell's attorney, filed a brief stating that Mitchell was no longer competent to stand trial. Mitchell subsequently began to act out in court, while jail staff observed no change in his behavior and thought process. Ultimately, Judge Judy Atherton agreed with the defense, asserting that Mitchell's behavior reflected psychosis. The defendant re-entered Utah State hospital on August 11, 2005, and remained there until 2008. While he was in the hospital, no staff members observed Mitchell being paranoid in a pathological sense.


title: Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart

text: In February 2006, a bill went before the Utah legislature to allow prosecutors to apply for forcible medication on defendants to restore their competence to face trial. Permission to forcibly medicate Wanda Barzee was also sought, relying upon the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in "Sell v. United States" (2003), which permits compulsory medication when the state can demonstrate a compelling interest is served by restoring a person's competence and that medication would not harm the person or prevent him from defending himself. In June 2006, a Utah judge approved the forcible medication of Barzee so that she could stand trial.


title: Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart

text: On December 18, 2006, Mitchell was again declared unfit to stand trial in the Utah state courts after screaming at a judge during a hearing to "forsake those robes and kneel in the dust." Doctors had been trying to treat Mitchell without drugs, but prosecutor Kent Morgan said after the scene in court that a request was likely to be made for permission to forcibly administer drugs. On December 12, 2008, it was reported that Mitchell could not legally be forcibly medicated by the State of Utah to attempt to restore his mental competency, also claiming that it is "unnecessary and needlessly harsh," and therefore a violation of the Utah state constitution, to prolong trial proceedings to this length.


title: Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart

text: The case was eventually transferred to Federal court on October 10, 2008. Issues of competency proved to be the crux of the case, and the court held an evidentiary hearing on Mitchell's competency on October 1, 2009, and November 30 through December 11, 2009. On one occasion during a hearing in October, it was reported that Mitchell burst out singing hymns in court. During one of these hearings, Smart described Mitchell as "smart, articulate, evil, wicked, manipulative, sneaky, slimy, selfish, greedy, not spiritual, not religious, not close to God."


title: Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart

text: Competency evaluations conducted by Noel Gardner, Michael Welner and Richart DeMier were presented at the hearing. Gardner maintained that he believed Mitchell was fully aware of his actions and was attempting to deceive the court. Welner, another witness in the case, reviewed 210 sources and 57 separate interviews including Mitchell, his wife Wanda Barzee, his family, and Elizabeth Smart. The Court credited Welner with presenting a 206-page report. Welner opined that Mitchell was competent to stand trial, and diagnosed him with non-exclusive pedophilia, antisocial personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, malingering and alcohol abuse in a controlled environment. Welner believed that Mitchell was highly manipulative and used his religious expression as a way to coax people into overlooking his high function and dismissing him as delusional. Experts for the defense including Dr. DeMier, a clinical psychologist, did not dispute these diagnoses; they maintained he had a concurrent fixed delusional disorder, believing that Mitchell was mentally ill at the time of the crime, and this greatly impaired his judgment. Mitchell was deemed competent to stand trial on March 1, 2010.


title: Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart

text: Wanda Barzee eventually pleaded guilty and was sentenced to concurrent terms of 15 years in state and federal prison. However, due to the delays and mental evaluations, it took Mitchell's case almost eight years to come to court.


title: Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart

text: Mitchell's trial began on November 8, 2010. The defense acknowledged that Mitchell was responsible for the crimes, but contended that he was legally insane at the time of the crime, and should therefore be found not guilty by reason of insanity. The insanity defense for Mitchell was rejected on December 11, 2010, when the jury found him guilty of kidnapping and transporting a minor across state lines with intent to engage in sexual activity. U.S. District Judge Dale A. Kimball sentenced Mitchell to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Mitchell is currently serving his sentence at U.S. Penitentiary, Terre Haute, a high-security federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana.


title: Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart

text: In 2016, Barzee's federal imprisonment was terminated and she was transferred from the Federal Medical Center, Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas, to the Utah State Prison in Draper, Utah, to begin serving her state prison sentence. She was released in September 2018, which Smart protested.


title: Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart

text: In October 2003, Elizabeth Smart and her parents were interviewed for a special segment of "Dateline NBC." The interview, conducted by the "Today" show's Katie Couric, featured Elizabeth's first interview with any media outlet. Couric questioned Elizabeth's parents about their experiences while Elizabeth was missing, including the Smarts' personal opinions concerning Elizabeth's captors. Couric then interviewed Elizabeth about school and her life following her kidnapping.


title: Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart

text: Shortly after the "Dateline" interview, Elizabeth Smart and her family were featured on "The Oprah Winfrey Show", where Winfrey questioned the Smarts about the kidnapping.


title: Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart

text: In July 2006, legal commentator and television personality Nancy Grace interviewed Elizabeth Smart, purportedly to talk about pending legislation on sex-offender registration, but repeatedly asked her for information about her experience. In response to the questioning, Elizabeth told Grace, "I really am here to support the bill and not to go into what, you know, what happened to me." When Grace persisted, asking Elizabeth what it was like to see out of a niqab her abductors forced her to wear, Elizabeth stated: "I'm really not going to talk about this at this time ... and to be frankly honest I really don't appreciate you bringing all this up." Grace did not pursue further questioning about the abduction.


title: Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart

text: The Smart family published a book, "Bringing Elizabeth Home" (). Elizabeth's uncle Tom Smart co-authored a book with "Deseret News" journalist Lee Benson, titled "In Plain Sight: The Startling Truth Behind the Elizabeth Smart Investigation" (), which criticized the investigation process by the Salt Lake City Police Department, as well as noting the media influences that led to her successful recovery.


title: Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart

text: The kidnapping was depicted in the 2003 television film "The Elizabeth Smart Story", which was directed by Bobby Roth, and based on the book "Bringing Elizabeth Home". It starred Amber Marshall as Elizabeth Smart, Dylan Baker and Lindsay Frost as her parents, and Tom Everett as Brian David Mitchell. It was nominated for three Young Artist Awards in 2004. The film first aired on CBS on November 9, 2003, eight months after Elizabeth was found.


title: Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart

text: In 2017 on the 15th anniversary of her abduction, Lifetime aired the made-for-TV film titled "I Am Elizabeth Smart", narrated and produced by Smart, which tells the story of her kidnapping from her own perspective. The film starred Alana Boden as Elizabeth Smart, Skeet Ulrich as Brian David Mitchell, and Deirdre Lovejoy as Wanda Ileen Barzee. Also airing in 2017 is "" from Biography, a two-hour telefilm.


title: Kevin Richardson (musician)

text: Kevin Scott Richardson (born October 3, 1971) is an American singer, best known as a member of the vocal group the Backstreet Boys. Richardson was inducted into the Kentucky Music Hall of Fame with his cousin and bandmate Brian Littrell in 2015.


title: Kevin Richardson (musician)

text: Kevin Scott Richardson was born on October 3, 1971, in Lexington, Kentucky, the son of Ann (née Littrell) (1943-2022), homemaker, and Jerald Richardson Sr., an outdoorsman, military veteran, a construction worker, a fireman, a camp manager and handyman.


title: Kevin Richardson (musician)

text: Growing up, Kevin lived on a 10-acre farm with his parents and two older brothers (Jerald Wayne Jr. and Tim), one of whom is a model, for 9 years, and later lived in a log cabin at Cathedral Domain Camp, a church-owned youth camp which his father ran, where he worked as a camp counselor, met his best friend Keith, singer and now bodyguard, and was a regular at the camp talent shows until he was 18. In school he played little league baseball and football, which led him to play football in high school and being captain of his team called the Estill Engineers. He also got the nickname Train because he ran through guys on the team like a train. Along with the other Backstreet Boys, Richardson took a DNA test which revealed that he is 44.1% English, 36.2% North and West European, and 19.7% Irish, Scottish and Welsh.


title: Kevin Richardson (musician)

text: At a young age, Richardson loved music and started learning how to play the piano by ear when he was nine years old. He sang in his church's choir since he was a child and was a part of his community and high school theater. He got his first keyboard when he was a high school freshman. It was just a short time before he was entertaining in restaurants and at weddings in a band called Paradise, which did covers of Bobby Brown and Journey. He also adored performing, participating in the school theater, was a member of the school's drama club, and sang in the chorus. The latter ultimately won out of his two loves, acting and music. He was also a member of the chess club, Spanish club and participated in various school plays such as "Bye Bye Birdie" and "Barefoot in the Park" at Estill County High School in Kentucky, where he was voted "Most Popular", "Best Dressed", "Best Dancer", "Best Look" and "Best Looking". He also was in a lot of talent shows, one where he sang a duet with a female classmate and played in a band where he was on the drums and another where he sang a song he wrote with Keith called As Time Goes By. His father Jerald Wayne Richardson died on August 26, 1991, after a two-year battle with cancer, when Kevin was 19.


title: Kevin Richardson (musician)

text: After graduating high school in 1989, Richardson spent the summer working at a Pizza Hut and tobacco farms, while helping out at the cathedral domain and was torn between entering the Air Force to join the Air Force band, or following the lure of performing by attending the New York American Music and Dramatic Academy in Manhattan. With encouragement from his father in 1990, Richardson quit his job, packed up and drove to Orlando, Florida with his best friend Jimmy, where he got a job as a cast member and performer at Walt Disney World. He played various characters, including Aladdin, one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Prince Eric, Tigger, and Sebastian the Crab in the Little Mermaid show. He was also a backstage tour guide at MGM studios. At night, he did dinner theater, playing an Italian gangster in a musical review performing various songs from the musical "Chicago," "Guys and Dolls," and "Cabaret."


title: Kevin Richardson (musician)

text: In June 1991, Richardson got a call from his mother, telling him that his father had taken a turn for the worse with his colon cancer. Richardson's father was diagnosed in October 1990, but his family did not tell Richardson so that he would not worry. After the phone call, Richardson moved back home to Kentucky and stayed with his family. On August 26, 1991, Richardson's father died. Richardson stayed in Kentucky for almost a year, then after encouragement from his mother, he went back to Florida to follow his dreams of a music career. He continued to work at Disney while also earning a living as a model, writing music, performing in dinner clubs, teaching ballroom dancing as a certified Latin and ballroom dance instructor, and was an extra for the film "My Girl."<ref name= "BoxTree/Macmillan Publishers"></ref> In Florida, He got a job with a friend who had written a musical, he gave him a part and helped him get back on his feet again.


title: Kevin Richardson (musician)

text: In March 1993, Richardson was going to auditions at MGM Studios when a friend told him about "Three guys who sang a capella all the time." Around the same time, he was working at a convention as an atmosphere dancer when he met a woman named Lisa Fischetti, whose husband was Lou Pearlman's right-hand man for 12 years. After seeing an ad about the vocal group, called the Backstreet Boys, he went to check them out, auditioned, and joined the group. However, after joining, the group was still looking for one more member, so Richardson called Brian Littrell, who is Richardson's first cousin (Littrell's father and Richardson's mother are siblings), to ask him to audition for the group. Littrell was immediately accepted, and the next day, he joined the group.


title: Kevin Richardson (musician)

text: Richardson is the oldest member and is often known as the big brother of the group. In November 1999, he was named "People Magazine" s Sexiest Pop Star, and the band signed a new $60 million deal with Jive Records. Richardson was a part of the group until June 2006, when he announced his departure from the group to pursue other projects and to start a family and "move on with the next chapter of [his] life." He recorded five albums with the group in 13 years. On June 23, 2006, he issued the following statement on the band's official website:


title: Kevin Richardson (musician)

text: After 13 years of what can only be described as a dream come true, I have decided that it is time to leave the Backstreet Boys. It was a very tough decision for me, but one that was necessary in order to move on with the next chapter of my life. Howie, Brian, A.J., and Nick will always be my little brothers and have my utmost love and support. I would like to thank the Backstreet fans for all the beautiful memories we have shared together and look forward to including you in the next phase of my life. I wish my brothers continued success and look forward to their new album.


title: Kevin Richardson (musician)

text: On November 23, 2008, for the first time since leaving the group, Richardson rejoined his former bandmates on stage in Hollywood Palladium, Los Angeles, performing the encore, "Shape of My Heart" with the group.


title: Kevin Richardson (musician)

text: The Backstreet Boys, including Richardson, appeared on the November 4, 2010, episode of "The Oprah Winfrey Show." Richardson first appeared in a pre-taped segment in which they surprised a fan who thought she was merely being flown in to participate in a "Backstreet Boys' Biggest Fan" contest. Moments later, Richardson joined the group in the show's studio and performed "I Want It That Way" live with them.


title: Kevin Richardson (musician)

text: On July 1, 2011, Richardson again joined the Backstreet Boys on stage at the Staples Center, Los Angeles, as part of the NKOTBSB Tour, performing "I Want It That Way" with the group and the mash-up at the end of the show along with NKOTB members.


title: Kevin Richardson (musician)

text: On October 25, 2011, episode of "On Air with Ryan Seacrest," Richardson stated that he was going to be at a Backstreet Boys beach party in Nassau, Bahamas on December 3, 2011. The party is part of the group's second annual cruise. He also appeared during the group's annual cruise in December 2011. He attended the beach party and the cruise concert. In addition to being at the party, Richardson performed several songs with the group on the boat in the evening ("Drowning" and "I Still..."). In the announcement, he also stated that he would love to perform with the group again regularly. The group had hinted at a possible return for Richardson during the beach party, but nothing was confirmed.


title: Kevin Richardson (musician)

text: Several months later, before the group's European tour with New Kids on the Block, Richardson had flown out to London with Nick and AJ in April 2012. Fans at the airport asked if he was back with the group and why he was with them. Richardson stated that he was only there to hang out with them. On April 29, 2012, during a live show in London, England, Backstreet Boys confirmed that Richardson was back permanently with the group and would be recording a new album with them in July 2012. Richardson also appeared along with the group on "Good Morning America" on July 17, 2012, announcing his return, their new album, and their first performance as a five-piece group for the first time together since 2006 at the morning show's Summer Concert Series on August 31, 2012. It was also his first TV appearance with the group since he returned. Regarding his return, Richardson gave the following statement about why he had left the group: "I'm a person that always follows my heart and follows my gut, and my heart said now's the time. It just felt right. I feel inspired to make music again with these guys, and you know, when I left, it had nothing at all to do with our relationship. It just had to do with me just needing to be inspired, so I had to step away for a while."


title: Kevin Richardson (musician)

text: In an interview with "On Air with Ryan Seacrest" on July 24, 2012, Richardson explained that he returned to the group because he realized how much joy singing and music gave him. He cited his holiday show with Rob Gonzalez called "Home for the Holidays" (December 18, 2011, in Los Angeles), which helped him rediscover his love of music and how much he missed it.


title: Kevin Richardson (musician)

text: Outside the group, Richardson completed various projects. He composed the soundtrack to the animated film "The Spirit Bear" in 2003, which was set to be released in 2010 after several years of delay.


title: Kevin Richardson (musician)

text: In August 2003, Kevin joined forces with longtime friend Keith McGuffey and opened a Music Academy called The Music Workshop in Louisville, Kentucky. The academy opened to help others learn the 'tricks of the trade' of the music industry – studio technology, songwriting, and contract negotiations.


title: Kevin Richardson (musician)

text: On December 18, 2011, Richardson headlined a Christmas concert titled "Home for the Holidays" with Rob Gonzalez. The concert was hosted by Montage Beverly Hills luxury hotel, benefiting the Angeles Clinic Foundation of Los Angeles.


title: Kevin Richardson (musician)

text: In 2012, Richardson began working on his first solo album. During the 2013 Backstreet Boys cruise, when each member had their events, Richardson performed an event called Cover Story, where he performed various covers of songs. He had mentioned that he would release an album called "Cover Story." The album would include songs that have influenced him over the years. The album was supposed to be released in 2012 but was delayed as he returned as an active member of the Backstreet Boys the same year. On May 9, 2015, he posted on YouTube a new track he recorded from his "Cover Story" album that he planned to release in 2015. The song was "She's Got a Way," a cover of the Billy Joel song. As of 2022, the album has not been released.


title: Kevin Richardson (musician)

text: Richardson has been a model for Versace. He also modeled for Vogue and is a brand ambassador for TAG Heuer.


title: Kevin Richardson (musician)

text: Along with the rest of the Backstreet Boys, Richardson has made appearances on "Arthur", "Sesame Street", "Sabrina the Teenage Witch", and "This Is the End".


title: Kevin Richardson (musician)

text: During the Backstreet Boys' hiatus in 2003, Richardson went into acting. He played the role of smooth-talking lawyer Billy Flynn in the Broadway production of "Chicago." He was a part of the show in New York City (January 20 – March 9), Pittsburgh (July 26–27), San Francisco (August 6–24), and the West End of London (September 22 – November 1). In 2003, he made an appearance on "Punk'd" where he got punk'd by Ashton Kutcher.


title: Kevin Richardson (musician)

text: Richardson, along with Howie D., appeared in Krystal Harris 's music video "Supergirl!", from "The Princess Diaries" soundtrack.


title: Kevin Richardson (musician)

text: After leaving the group, he returned to performing in "Chicago." On November 14, 2006, he returned to New York City with many "Chicago" alumni for the 10th anniversary of the show. From late November to December 3, 2006, Richardson played the role of Billy Flynn in Toronto, and in Japan in February 2007. He returned to Japan with the show in September 2009 through early October and then in Louisville, Kentucky, from October 29 to November 1, 2009.


title: Kevin Richardson (musician)

text: Richardson also filmed some movies during his time away from the group. His first film was the 2009 Christian drama "Love Takes Wing", based on a book by Janette Oke, playing the part of Cyrus in 2009.


title: Kevin Richardson (musician)

text: Richardson filmed some small independent movies in 2010. He starred in "The Bloody Indulgent", a vampire-themed musical film, also starred opposite Susan Traylor, Daniela Sea, Pleasant Gehman, Garrett Swann and Michael Maize in Steve Balderson's feature film drama "The Casserole Club". Richardson had won an Independent Vision Award for Best Actor in the film at Vision Fest in New York City in 2011. and a short film "Unwound" in 2011. It is an entry for Producers Guild of America premiere Weekend Shorts Event contest to benefit the Debra Hill Foundation. The short film only took 51 hours from script to final cut.


title: Kevin Richardson (musician)

text: In 2013, Richardson and the other Backstreet Boys appeared as fictional versions of themselves in the comedy film "This Is the End."


title: Kevin Richardson (musician)

text: In 2015, Richardson filmed an independent film called "If I Could Tell You," a short movie about infertility, which was released in 2016, where he also talked about his struggle with having children.


title: Kevin Richardson (musician)

text: Just Within Reach (JWR) was formed by Richardson and started in honor of his father, Jerald Wayne Richardson. Richardson wanted to name the foundation after his father, whom he lost to cancer. Richardson formed the JWR foundation to provide environmental education and promote personal responsibility and accountability concerning the health of the Earth. The foundation was founded in January 2001. He also ran with the Olympic torch for the foundation in Los Angeles, California, on January 15, 2001, and did various events for the foundation. It has been many years since he has done anything with the foundation and reportedly closed it.


title: Kevin Richardson (musician)

text: Richardson is a first cousin of fellow Backstreet Boys member Brian Littrell and first cousin once removed of Baylee Littrell, son of Brian.


title: Kevin Richardson (musician)

text: Richardson has been married to Kristin Kay Willits, a dancer, actress, photographer, and model, since 2000. They met when they both worked together at Disney World in June 1992. Kristin was dancing in "Beauty and the Beast" as a jello-mold and a maid while playing the character of Snow White in "The Lion King" Show. She was also part of Radio City Rockettes in 1994. Kristin was also featured in one of the Backstreet Boys' earliest videos, "I'll Never Break Your Heart", and as one of the dancers at the American Music Awards in 1999. they dated on and off for 7–8 years on the down low, breaking up in 1996 and getting back together in late 1997/early 1998. He proposed to her over the holidays at the same place where they said "I love you," and their engagement, along with bandmate and cousin Brian Littrell's to Leighanne Wallace, was announced on MTV on February 15, 2000. The couple married on June 17, 2000, at the Cathedral Domain Camp and Conference Center in rural Lee County in eastern Kentucky. Together they have two sons. Kristin was later in the 2015 documentary Pushing Motherhood, in which she speaks openly about her and Kevin's struggles with fertility.


title: Typhon

text: Typhon (; , ), also Typhoeus (; ), Typhaon () or Typhos (), was a monstrous serpentine giant and one of the deadliest creatures in Greek mythology. According to Hesiod, Typhon was the son of Gaia and Tartarus. However, one source has Typhon as the son of Hera alone, while another makes Typhon the offspring of Cronus. Typhon and his mate Echidna were the progenitors of many famous monsters.


title: Typhon

text: Typhon attempted to overthrow Zeus for the supremacy of the cosmos. The two fought a cataclysmic battle, which Zeus finally won with the aid of his thunderbolts. Defeated, Typhon was cast into Tartarus, or buried underneath Mount Etna, or in later accounts, the island of Ischia.


title: Typhon

text: Typhon mythology is part of the Greek succession myth, which explained how Zeus came to rule the gods. Typhon's story is also connected with that of Python (the serpent killed by Apollo), and both stories probably derived from several Near Eastern antecedents. Typhon was (from c. 500 BC) also identified with the Egyptian god of destruction Set. In later accounts, Typhon was often confused with the Giants.


title: Typhon

text: According to Hesiod's "Theogony" (c. 8th – 7th century BC), Typhon was the son of Gaia (Earth) and Tartarus: "when Zeus had driven the Titans from heaven, huge Earth bore her youngest child Typhoeus of the love of Tartarus, by the aid of golden Aphrodite". The mythographer Apollodorus (1st or 2nd century AD) adds that Gaia bore Typhon in anger at the gods for their destruction of her offspring the Giants.


title: Typhon

text: Numerous other sources mention Typhon as being the offspring of Gaia, or simply "earth-born", with no mention of Tartarus. However, according to the "Homeric Hymn to Apollo" (6th century BC), Typhon was the child of Hera alone. Hera, angry at Zeus for having given birth to Athena by himself, prayed to Gaia, Uranus, and the Titans, to give her a son stronger than Zeus, then slapped the ground and became pregnant. Hera gave the infant Typhon to the serpent Python to raise, and Typhon grew up to become a great bane to mortals.


title: Typhon

text: Several sources locate Typhon's birth and dwelling place in Cilicia, and in particular the region in the vicinity of the ancient Cilician coastal city of Corycus (modern Kızkalesi, Turkey). The poet Pindar (c. 470 BC) calls Typhon "Cilician", and says that Typhon was born in Cilicia and nurtured in "the famous Cilician cave", an apparent allusion to the Corycian cave in Turkey. In Aeschylus' "Prometheus Bound", Typhon is called the "dweller of the Cilician caves", and both Apollodorus and the poet Nonnus (4th or 5th century AD) have Typhon born in Cilicia.


title: Typhon

text: The b scholia to "Iliad" 2.783, preserving a possibly Orphic tradition, has Typhon born in Cilicia, as the offspring of Cronus. Gaia, angry at the destruction of the Giants, slanders Zeus to Hera. So Hera goes to Cronus, her and Zeus' father (whom Zeus had overthrown), and Cronus gives Hera two eggs smeared with his own semen, telling her to bury them underground, and that from them would be born one who would overthrow Zeus. Hera, angry at Zeus, buries the eggs in Cilicia "under Arimon", but when Typhon is born, Hera, now reconciled with Zeus, informs him.


title: Typhon

text: According to Hesiod, Typhon was "terrible, outrageous and lawless", immensely powerful, and on his shoulders were one hundred snake heads, that emitted fire and every kind of noise:


title: Typhon

text: Strength was with his hands in all that he did and the feet of the strong god were untiring. From his shoulders grew a hundred heads of a snake, a fearful dragon, with dark, flickering tongues, and from under the brows of his eyes in his marvelous heads flashed fire, and fire burned from his heads as he glared. And there were voices in all his dreadful heads which uttered every kind of sound unspeakable; for at one time they made sounds such that the gods understood, but at another, the noise of a bull bellowing aloud in proud ungovernable fury; and at another, the sound of a lion, relentless of heart; and at another, sounds like whelps, wonderful to hear; and again, at another, he would hiss, so that the high mountains re-echoed.


title: Typhon

text: The "Homeric Hymn to Apollo" describes Typhon as "fell" and "cruel", and like neither gods nor men. Three of Pindar's poems have Typhon as hundred-headed (as in Hesiod), while apparently a fourth gives him only fifty heads, but a hundred heads for Typhon became standard. A Chalcidian hydria (c. 540–530 BC), depicts Typhon as a winged humanoid from the waist up, with two snake tails for legs below. Aeschylus calls Typhon "fire-breathing". For Nicander (2nd century BC), Typhon was a monster of enormous strength, and strange appearance, with many heads, hands, and wings, and with huge snake coils coming from his thighs.


title: Typhon

text: Apollodorus describes Typhon as a huge winged monster, whose head "brushed the stars", human in form above the waist, with snake coils below, and fire flashing from his eyes:


title: Typhon

text: In size and strength he surpassed all the offspring of Earth. As far as the thighs he was of human shape and of such prodigious bulk that he out-topped all the mountains, and his head often brushed the stars. One of his hands reached out to the west and the other to the east, and from them projected a hundred dragons' heads. From the thighs downward he had huge coils of vipers, which when drawn out, reached to his very head and emitted a loud hissing. His body was all winged: unkempt hair streamed on the wind from his head and cheeks; and fire flashed from his eyes.


title: Typhon

text: The most elaborate description of Typhon is found in Nonnus's "Dionysiaca". Nonnus makes numerous references to Typhon's serpentine nature, giving him a "tangled army of snakes", snaky feet, and hair. According to Nonnus, Typhon was a "poison-spitting viper", whose "every hair belched viper-poison", and Typhon "spat out showers of poison from his throat; the mountain torrents were swollen, as the monster showered fountains from the viperish bristles of his high head", and "the water-snakes of the monster's viperish feet crawl into the caverns underground, spitting poison!".


title: Typhon

text: Following Hesiod and others, Nonnus gives Typhon many heads (though untotaled), but in addition to snake heads, Nonnus also gives Typhon many other animal heads, including leopards, lions, bulls, boars, bears, cattle, wolves, and dogs, which combine to make 'the cries of all wild beasts together', and a "babel of screaming sounds". Nonnus also gives Typhon "legions of arms innumerable", and where Nicander had only said that Typhon had "many" hands, and Ovid had given Typhon a hundred hands, Nonnus gives Typhon two hundred.


title: Typhon

text: According to Hesiod's "Theogony", Typhon "was joined in love" to Echidna, a monstrous half-woman and half-snake, who bore Typhon "fierce offspring". First, according to Hesiod, there was Orthrus, the two-headed dog who guarded the Cattle of Geryon, second Cerberus, the multiheaded dog who guarded the gates of Hades, and third the Lernaean Hydra, the many-headed serpent who, when one of its heads was cut off, grew two more. The "Theogony" next mentions an ambiguous "she", which might refer to Echidna, as the mother of the Chimera (a fire-breathing beast that was part lion, part goat, and had a snake-headed tail) with Typhon then being the father.


title: Typhon

text: While mentioning Cerberus and "other monsters" as being the offspring of Echidna and Typhon, the mythographer Acusilaus (6th century BC) adds the Caucasian Eagle that ate the liver of Prometheus. The mythographer Pherecydes of Athens (5th century BC) also names Prometheus' eagle, and adds Ladon (though Pherecydes does not use this name), the dragon that guarded the golden apples in the Garden of the Hesperides (according to Hesiod, the offspring of Ceto and Phorcys). The lyric poet Lasus of Hermione (6th century BC) adds the Sphinx.


title: Typhon

text: Later authors mostly retain these offspring of Typhon by Echidna, while adding others. Apollodorus, in addition to naming as their offspring Orthrus, the Chimera (citing Hesiod as his source) the Caucasian Eagle, Ladon, and the Sphinx, also adds the Nemean lion (no mother is given), and the Crommyonian Sow, killed by the hero Theseus (unmentioned by Hesiod).


title: Typhon

text: Hyginus (1st century BC), in his list of offspring of Typhon (all by Echidna), retains from the above: Cerberus, the Chimera, the Sphinx, the Hydra and Ladon, and adds "Gorgon" (by which Hyginus means the mother of Medusa, whereas Hesiod's three Gorgons, of which Medusa was one, were the daughters of Ceto and Phorcys), the Colchian dragon that guarded the Golden Fleece and Scylla. The Harpies, in Hesiod the daughters of Thaumas and the Oceanid Electra, in one source, are said to be the daughters of Typhon.


title: Typhon

text: The sea serpents which attacked the Trojan priest Laocoön, during the Trojan War, were perhaps supposed to be the progeny of Typhon and Echidna. According to Hesiod, the defeated Typhon is the father of destructive storm winds.


title: Typhon

text: Typhon challenged Zeus for rule of the cosmos. The earliest mention of Typhon, and his only occurrence in Homer, is a passing reference in the "Iliad" to Zeus striking the ground around where Typhon lies defeated. Hesiod's "Theogony" gives the first account of their battle. According to Hesiod, without the quick action of Zeus, Typhon would have "come to reign over mortals and immortals". In the "Theogony" Zeus and Typhon meet in cataclysmic conflict:


title: Typhon

text: [Zeus] thundered hard and mightily: and the earth around resounded terribly and the wide heaven above, and the sea and Ocean's streams and the nether parts of the earth. Great Olympus reeled beneath the divine feet of the king as he arose and earth groaned thereat. And through the two of them heat took hold on the dark-blue sea, through the thunder and lightning, and through the fire from the monster, and the scorching winds and blazing thunderbolt. The whole earth seethed, and sky and sea: and the long waves raged along the beaches round and about at the rush of the deathless gods: and there arose an endless shaking. Hades trembled where he rules over the dead below, and the Titans under Tartarus who live with Cronos, because of the unending clamor and the fearful strife.


title: Typhon

text: So when Zeus had raised up his might and seized his arms, thunder and lightning and lurid thunderbolt, he leaped from Olympus and struck him, and burned all the marvellous heads of the monster about him. But when Zeus had conquered him and lashed him with strokes, Typhoeus was hurled down, a maimed wreck, so that the huge earth groaned. And flame shot forth from the thunderstricken lord in the dim rugged glens of the mount, when he was smitten. A great part of huge earth was scorched by the terrible vapor and melted as tin melts when heated by men's art in channelled crucibles; or as iron, which is hardest of all things, is shortened by glowing fire in mountain glens and melts in the divine earth through the strength of Hephaestus. Even so, then, the earth melted in the glow of the blazing fire.


title: Typhon

text: Epimenides (7th or 6th century BC) seemingly knew a different version of the story, in which Typhon enters Zeus' palace while Zeus is asleep, but Zeus awakes and kills Typhon with a thunderbolt. Pindar apparently knew of a tradition which had the gods, in order to escape from Typhon, transform themselves into animals, and flee to Egypt. Pindar calls Typhon the "enemy of the gods", and says that he was defeated by Zeus' thunderbolt. In one poem Pindar has Typhon being held prisoner by Zeus under Etna, and in another says that Typhon "lies in dread Tartarus", stretched out underground between Mount Etna and Cumae. In Aeschylus' "Prometheus Bound", a "hissing" Typhon, his eyes flashing, "withstood all the gods", but "the unsleeping bolt of Zeus" struck him, and "he was burnt to ashes and his strength blasted from him by the lightning bolt."


title: Typhon

text: According to Pherecydes of Athens, during his battle with Zeus, Typhon first flees to the Caucasus, which begins to burn, then to the volcanic island of Pithecussae (modern Ischia), off the coast of Cumae, where he is buried under the island. Apollonius of Rhodes (3rd century BC), like Pherecydes, presents a multi-stage battle, with Typhon being struck by Zeus' thunderbolt on mount Caucasus, before fleeing to the mountains and plain of Nysa, and ending up (as already mentioned by the fifth-century BC Greek historian Herodotus) buried under Lake Serbonis in Egypt.


title: Typhon

text: Like Pindar, Nicander has all the gods, but Zeus and Athena, transform into animal forms and flee to Egypt: Apollo became a hawk, Hermes an ibis, Ares a fish, Artemis a cat, Dionysus a goat, Heracles a fawn, Hephaestus an ox, and Leto a mouse.


title: Typhon

text: The geographer Strabo (c. 20 AD) gives several locations which were associated with the battle. According to Strabo, Typhon was said to have cut the serpentine channel of the Orontes River, which flowed beneath the Syrian Mount Kasios (modern Jebel Aqra), while fleeing from Zeus, and some placed the battle at Catacecaumene ("Burnt Land"), a volcanic plain, on the upper Gediz River, between the ancient kingdoms of Lydia, Mysia and Phrygia, near Mount Tmolus (modern Bozdağ) and Sardis the ancient capital of Lydia.


title: Typhon

text: In the versions of the battle given by Hesiod, Aeschylus and Pindar, Zeus' defeat of Typhon is straightforward, however a more involved version of the battle is given by Apollodorus. No early source gives any reason for the conflict, but Apollodorus' account seemingly implies that Typhon had been produced by Gaia to avenge the destruction, by Zeus and the other gods, of the Giants, a previous generation of offspring of Gaia. According to Apollodorus, Typhon, "hurling kindled rocks", attacked the gods, "with hissings and shouts, spouting a great jet of fire from his mouth." Seeing this, the gods transformed into animals and fled to Egypt (as in Pindar and Nicander). However "Zeus pelted Typhon at a distance with thunderbolts, and at close quarters struck him down with an adamantine sickle". Wounded, Typhon fled to the Syrian Mount Kasios, where Zeus "grappled" with him. But Typhon, twining his snaky coils around Zeus, was able to wrest away the sickle and cut the sinews from Zeus' hands and feet. Typhon carried the disabled Zeus across the sea to the Corycian cave in Cilicia where he set the she-serpent Delphyne to guard over Zeus and his severed sinews, which Typhon had hidden in a bearskin. But Hermes and Aegipan (possibly another name for Pan) stole the sinews and gave them back to Zeus. His strength restored, Zeus chased Typhon to mount Nysa, where the Moirai tricked Typhon into eating "ephemeral fruits" which weakened him. Typhon then fled to Thrace, where he threw mountains at Zeus, which were turned back on him by Zeus' thunderbolts, and the mountain where Typhon stood, being drenched with Typhon's blood, became known as Mount Haemus (Bloody Mountain). Typhon then fled to Sicily, where Zeus threw Mount Etna on top of Typhon burying him, and so finally defeated him.


title: Typhon

text: Oppian (2nd century AD) says that Pan helped Zeus in the battle by tricking Typhon to come out from his lair, and into the open, by the "promise of a banquet of fish", thus enabling Zeus to defeat Typhon with his thunderbolts.


title: Typhon

text: The longest and most involved version of the battle appears in Nonnus's "Dionysiaca" (late 4th or early 5th century AD). Zeus hides his thunderbolts in a cave, so that he might seduce the maiden Plouto, and so produce Tantalus. But smoke rising from the thunderbolts, enables Typhon, under the guidance of Gaia, to locate Zeus's weapons, steal them, and hide them in another cave. Immediately Typhon extends "his clambering hands into the upper air" and begins a long and concerted attack upon the heavens. Then "leaving the air" he turns his attack upon the seas. Finally Typhon attempts to wield Zeus' thunderbolts, but they "felt the hands of a novice, and all their manly blaze was unmanned."


title: Typhon

text: Now Zeus' sinews had somehow – Nonnus does not say how or when — fallen to the ground during their battle, and Typhon had taken them also. But Zeus devises a plan with Cadmus and Pan to beguile Typhon. Cadmus, disguised as a shepherd, enchants Typhon by playing the panpipes, and Typhon entrusting the thunderbolts to Gaia, sets out to find the source of the music he hears. Finding Cadmus, he challenges him to a contest, offering Cadmus any goddess as wife, excepting Hera whom Typhon has reserved for himself. Cadmus then tells Typhon that, if he liked the "little tune" of his pipes, then he would love the music of his lyre – if only it could be strung with Zeus' sinews. So Typhon retrieves the sinews and gives them to Cadmus, who hides them in another cave, and again begins to play his bewitching pipes, so that "Typhoeus yielded his whole soul to Cadmos for the melody to charm".


title: Typhon

text: With Typhon distracted, Zeus takes back his thunderbolts. Cadmus stops playing, and Typhon, released from his spell, rushes back to his cave to discover the thunderbolts gone. Incensed Typhon unleashes devastation upon the world: animals are devoured, (Typhon's many animal heads each eat animals of its own kind), rivers turned to dust, seas made dry land, and the land "laid waste".


title: Typhon

text: The day ends with Typhon yet unchallenged, and while the other gods "moved about the cloudless Nile", Zeus waits through the night for the coming dawn. Victory "reproaches" Zeus, urging him to "stand up as champion of your own children!" Dawn comes and Typhon roars out a challenge to Zeus. And a cataclysmic battle for "the sceptre and throne of Zeus" is joined. Typhon piles up mountains as battlements and with his "legions of arms innumerable", showers volley after volley of trees and rocks at Zeus, but all are destroyed, or blown aside, or dodged, or thrown back at Typhon. Typhon throws torrents of water at Zeus' thunderbolts to quench them, but Zeus is able to cut off some of Typhon's hands with "frozen volleys of air as by a knife", and hurling thunderbolts is able to burn more of Typhon's "endless hands", and cut off some of his "countless heads". Typhon is attacked by the four winds, and "frozen volleys of jagged hailstones." Gaia tries to aid her burnt and frozen son. Finally Typhon falls, and Zeus shouts out a long stream of mocking taunts, telling Typhon that he is to be buried under Sicily's hills, with a cenotaph over him which will read "This is the barrow of Typhoeus, son of Earth, who once lashed the sky with stones, and the fire of heaven burnt him up".


title: Typhon

text: Most accounts have the defeated Typhon buried under either Mount Etna in Sicily, or the volcanic island of Ischia, the largest of the Phlegraean Islands off the coast of Naples, with Typhon being the cause of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.


title: Typhon

text: Though Hesiod has Typhon simply cast into Tartarus by Zeus, some have read a reference to Mount Etna in Hesiod's description of Typhon's fall:


title: Typhon

text: And flame shot forth from the thunderstricken lord in the dim rugged glens of the mount when he was smitten. A great part of huge earth was scorched by the terrible vapor and melted as tin melts when heated by men's art in channelled crucibles; or as iron, which is hardest of all things, is shortened by glowing fire in mountain glens and melts in the divine earth through the strength of Hephaestus. Even so, then, the earth melted in the glow of the blazing fire.


title: Typhon

text: The first certain references to Typhon buried under Etna, as well as being the cause of its eruptions, occur in Pindar:


title: Typhon

text: among them is he who lies in dread Tartarus, that enemy of the gods, Typhon with his hundred heads. Once the famous Cilician cave nurtured him, but now the sea-girt cliffs above Cumae, and Sicily too, lie heavy on his shaggy chest. And the pillar of the sky holds him down, snow-covered Aetna, year-round nurse of bitter frost, from whose inmost caves belch forth the purest streams of unapproachable fire. In the daytime her rivers roll out a fiery flood of smoke, while in the darkness of night the crimson flame hurls rocks down to the deep plain of the sea with a crashing roar. That monster shoots up the most terrible jets of fire; it is a marvellous wonder to see, and a marvel even to hear about when men are present. Such a creature is bound beneath the dark and leafy heights of Aetna and beneath the plain, and his bed scratches and goads the whole length of his back stretched out against it.


title: Typhon

text: Thus Pindar has Typhon in Tartarus, and buried under not just Etna, but under a vast volcanic region stretching from Sicily to Cumae (in the vicinity of modern Naples), a region which presumably also included Mount Vesuvius, as well as Ischia.


title: Typhon

text: Many subsequent accounts mention either Etna or Ischia. In "Prometheus Bound", Typhon is imprisoned underneath Etna, while above him Hephaestus "hammers the molten ore", and in his rage, the "charred" Typhon causes "rivers of fire" to pour forth. Ovid has Typhon buried under all of Sicily, with his left and right hands under Pelorus and Pachynus, his feet under Lilybaeus, and his head under Etna; where he "vomits flames from his ferocious mouth". And Valerius Flaccus has Typhon's head under Etna, and all of Sicily shaken when Typhon "struggles". Lycophron has both Typhon and Giants buried under the island of Ischia. Virgil, Silius Italicus and Claudian, all calling the island "Inarime", have Typhon buried there. Strabo, calling Ischia "Pithecussae", reports the "myth" that Typhon lay buried there, and that when he "turns his body the flames and the waters, and sometimes even small islands containing boiling water, spout forth."


title: Typhon

text: In addition to Typhon, other mythological beings were also said to be buried under Mount Etna and the cause of its volcanic activity. Most notably the Giant Enceladus was said to be entombed under Etna, the volcano's eruptions being the breath of Enceladus, and its tremors caused by the Giant rolling over from side to side beneath the mountain. Also said to be buried under Etna were the Hundred-hander Briareus, and Asteropus who was perhaps one of the Cyclopes.


title: Typhon

text: Typhon's final resting place was apparently also said to be in Boeotia. The Hesiodic "Shield of Heracles" names a mountain near Thebes Typhaonium, perhaps reflecting an early tradition which also had Typhon buried under a Boeotian mountain. And some apparently claimed that Typhon was buried beneath a mountain in Boeotia, from which came exhalations of fire.


title: Typhon

text: Homer describes a place he calls the "couch [or bed] of Typhoeus", which he locates in the land of the Arimoi ("εἰν Ἀρίμοις"), where Zeus lashes the land about Typhoeus with his thunderbolts. Presumably this is the same land where, according to Hesiod, Typhon's mate Echidna keeps guard "in Arima" ("εἰν Ἀρίμοισιν").


title: Typhon

text: But neither Homer nor Hesiod say anything more about where these Arimoi or this Arima might be. The question of whether an historical place was meant, and its possible location, has been, since ancient times, the subject of speculation and debate.


title: Typhon

text: Strabo discusses the question in some detail. Several locales, Cilicia, Syria, Lydia, and the island of Ischia, all places associated with Typhon, are given by Strabo as possible locations for Homer's "Arimoi".


title: Typhon

text: Pindar has his Cilician Typhon slain by Zeus "among the Arimoi", and the historian Callisthenes (4th century BC), located the Arimoi and the Arima mountains in Cilicia, near the Calycadnus river, the Corycian cave and the Sarpedon promomtory. The b scholia to "Iliad" 2.783, mentioned above, says Typhon was born in Cilicia "under Arimon", and Nonnus mentions Typhon's "bloodstained cave of Arima" in Cilicia.


title: Typhon

text: Just across the Gulf of Issus from Corycus, in ancient Syria, was Mount Kasios (modern Jebel Aqra) and the Orontes River, sites associated with Typhon's battle with Zeus, and according to Strabo, the historian Posidonius (c. 2nd century BC) identified the Arimoi with the Aramaeans of Syria.


title: Typhon

text: Alternatively, according to Strabo, some placed the Arimoi at Catacecaumene, while Xanthus of Lydia (5th century BC) added that "a certain Arimus" ruled there. Strabo also tells us that for "some" Homer's "couch of Typhon" was located "in a wooded place, in the fertile land of Hyde", with Hyde being another name for Sardis (or its acropolis), and that Demetrius of Scepsis (2nd century BC) thought that the Arimoi were most plausibly located "in the Catacecaumene country in Mysia". The 3rd-century BC poet Lycophron placed the lair of Typhons' mate Echidna in this region.


title: Typhon

text: Another place, mentioned by Strabo, as being associated with Arima, is the island of Ischia, where according to Pherecydes of Athens, Typhon had fled, and in the area where Pindar and others had said Typhon was buried. The connection to Arima, comes from the island's Greek name Pithecussae, which derives from the Greek word for monkey, and according to Strabo, residents of the island said that "arimoi" was also the Etruscan word for monkeys.


title: Typhon

text: Typhon's name has a number of variants. The earliest forms,Typhoeus and Typhaon, occur prior to the 5th century BC. Homer uses Typhoeus, Hesiod and the "Homeric Hymn to Apollo" use both Typhoeus and Typhaon. The later forms Typhos and Typhon occur from the 5th century BC onwards, with Typhon becoming the standard form by the end of that century.


title: Typhon

text: Though several possible derivations of the name Typhon have been suggested, the derivation remains uncertain. Consistent with Hesiod's making storm winds Typhon's offspring, some have supposed that Typhon was originally a wind-god, and ancient sources associated him with the Greek words "tuphon, tuphos" meaning "whirlwind". Other theories include derivation from a Greek root meaning "smoke" (consistent with Typhon's identification with volcanoes), from an Indo-European root (*"dhuH"-) meaning "abyss" (making Typhon a "Serpent of the Deep"), and from Sapõn the Phoenician name for the Ugaritic god Baal's holy mountain Jebel Aqra (the classical Mount Kasios) associated with the epithet Baʿal Sapōn.


title: Typhon

text: The name may have influenced the Persian word "tūfān" which is a source of the meteorological term typhoon.