Children in legalese / THU 5-13-21 / Supermodel Holliday / Food staple referred to as gold of the Incas / C.D. holders, maybe / Low pocket pair in Texas hold em

Constructor: ANDY (63A: Woody and Buzz's owner in "Toy Story") Kravis, Natan LAST (31D: Have legs, so to speak), and the J.A.S.A. Crossword Class

Relative difficulty: Easy if you know movie titles, harder if you don't

THEME: "Quiz Show" — Theme Clues = movie titles that are also questions, Theme Answers = other movie titles that sound like appropriate answers to the questions:

Theme answers:

• "SALEM'S LOT" (18A: "Dude, Where's My Car?" [1979])
• "PARASITE" (24A: "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" [2019])
• "THE USUAL SUSPECTS" (38A: "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" [1995])
• "TRUE GRIT" (50A: "How the West Was Won" ([1969, 2010])
• "HOME ALONE" (58A: "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" [1990])

Word of the Day: TESS Holliday (65A: Supermodel Holliday) —

Ryann Maegen Hoven (born July 5, 1985), known professionally as Tess Holliday and formerly known as Tess Munster, is an American plus-size model, blogger, and make-up artist based in Los Angeles. [...] In 2014, Holliday quit her day job at the dental office to pursue her modeling career full-time. In May 2014, a video was uploaded on Vimeo called #everyBODYisflawless, which featured Holliday and fellow plus-size fashion bloggers and models Gabi Gregg and Nadia Aboulhosn lip-synching and dancing to Beyoncé's 2013 song "Flawless". In September of that year, she was interviewed by Jacob Soboroff and Meghan McCain on TakePart Live. In January 2015, London-based modeling agency Milk Model Management announced that they had signed Holliday to their plus-size division, Curves. They declared that Holliday had become the largest plus-size model of her size and height to be signed to a mainstream modeling agency, and the first Curve model above a size 20. In May, she had her first agency shoot

In March 2014, Holliday became the first model over size 18 to model Monif Clarke's clothing line after she was hired as the face of the latest campaign for her swimwear line Sea by Monif C - a line that is specifically designed for women sizes 14–24. In the same month, she modeled for Torrid. She also collaborated with the plus size clothing retailer Yours Clothing for the second time when she was officially announced as the face of their high summer campaign. In May 2015, she was featured on the cover of People. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is cute, though your sense of cuteness may differ based on how much of a movie fan you are. If all the titles are familiar to you, as they were to me, then it was pretty fun. I like remembering movies. But there are three problems with the theme execution. One of those problems is probably my problem—I had no idea "SALEM'S LOT" was a *movie*. I do not think "movie" is what most people think of when they see the title "SALEM'S LOT" (famously, a novel by Stephen King). All the other clue movies and answer movies in the puzzle are very famous As Movies; "SALEM'S LOT" seems to me ... less so. "TRUE GRIT" was also famous first as a book (a much-loved book by Charles Portis), but it wasn't Stephen-King famous, and the "TRUE GRIT" movies were both very popular. When I google "TRUE GRIT," the recent movie comes up, whereas when I google "SALEM'S LOT," the King novel comes up. [Googles some more] Hey ... hey, wait ... wait a minute! "SALEM'S LOT" wasn't a movie at all; it was a TV miniseries! OK, well, my objection here just got a lot bigger, I guess. The theme is clearly movies. Miniseries are not movies. I see that the movie has been retitled "SALEM'S LOT: The Movie," and is now sort of treated like a movie (a vampire classic, I'm told), but it aired on TV and is over three hours long and yeah this isn't a movie like the other movies are movies. It just isn't. Second issue with the theme is that "How the West Was Won" is not a question. The other theme-clue titles, whether they actually contain question marks or not, read as questions. "How was the West won?" is a question. "How the West Was Won" is just a phrase. Lastly, it seems like the puzzle would've been somewhat more elegant if they'd knocked out all the interrogative words: Who what where when why how. But we only get five, which is fine, but it would be finer if they were all different. Instead, we get two "Where"s. Are there no "Why" movies? 'Cause I *know* there's a "When" movie ...

[1985] "AFTER HOURS"

The fill on this one is clean and lively. Sort of surprised that veterans like Natan and Andy would do the whole "let's put our names in the grid" thing (LAST, ANDY). Seems pretty bush-league, but it doesn't hurt the grid any, so I guess it's fine (though tbh POP / PAST > POL / LAST). I didn't really struggle anywhere. Just a bunch of small speed bumps. Didn't know TESS Holliday. Forgot COLBY existed. I never eat (or even see) the stuff. Thought the [Petulant retort] was "CAN DO!", then thought it over and decided it would have to be said *really* sarcastically to be "CAN DO!" ... then realized it was "CAN SO!". We get one of those [Step on it!] clues—this is how I think of all clues that use familiar "it" phrases to clue an answer, where the answer is the "it," though in today's case, the "it" is "this" (29D: Get a load of this! => LAUNDRY). The clue on THREESOME is ... pretty tame (33D: More than a couple), though not, I suppose, inaccurate. I had BEST before BOSS (66A: Top dog), and, in my favorite wrong answer of the day, ICE BOX before ICE AGE (64A: What was cool for a long time?). The "was" took me back in time ... but not nearly far enough back. Interestingly: THREESOME is the name of a movie. ICE AGE, also a movie. TESS, movie. TED, movie. CATS, movie. AMEN ... well, actually, that's a TV show. Kinda like "SALEM'S LOT."

Have a lovely day. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. 41A: C.D. holders, maybe (IRAS) is a financial thing—"C.D." = certificate of deposit (IRA = individual retirement account, but you knew that)

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