Category: Новини

Hollywood actors walked off the job Friday, striking for higher pay, an improved residuals policy and protections against the use of artificial intelligence. Hollywood writers have been on strike since May. Genia Dulot has the report.
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Under the tall prairie grass outside this southwestern Minnesota town lies a precious seam of dark red pipestone that, for thousands of years, Native Americans have quarried and carved into pipes essential to prayer and communication with the Creator.

Only a dozen Dakota carvers remain in the predominantly agricultural area bordering South Dakota. While tensions have flared periodically over how broadly to produce and share the rare artifacts, many Dakota today are focusing on how to pass on to future generations a difficult skillset that’s inextricably linked to spiritual practice.

“I’d be very happy to teach anyone … and the Spirit will be with you if you’re meant to do that,” said Cindy Pederson, who started learning how to carve from her grandparents six decades ago.

Enrolled in the Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota Nation, she regularly holds carving demonstrations at Pipestone National Monument, a small park that encompasses the quarries.

In the worldview of the Dakota peoples, sometimes referred to as Sioux, “the sacred is woven in” the land where the Creator placed them, said Iyekiyapiwin Darlene St. Clair, a professor at St. Cloud State University in central Minnesota.

But some places have a special relevance, because of events that occurred there, a sense of stronger spiritual power, or their importance in origin stories, she added.

These quarries of a unique variety of red pipestone check all three – starting with a history of enemy tribes laying down arms to allow for quarrying, with several stories warning that if fights broke out over the rare resource, it would make itself unavailable to all.

The colorful prayer ties and flags hung from trees alongside the trails that lead around the pink and red rocks testify to the continued sacredness of the space.

“It was always a place to go pray,” said Gabrielle Drapeau, a cultural resource specialist and park ranger at the monument who started coming here as a child.

From her elders in the Yankton Sioux Tribe of South Dakota, Drapeau grew up hearing one of many origin stories for the pipestone: In time immemorial, a great flood killed most people in the area, their blood seeping into the stone and turning it red. But the Creator came, pronounced it a place of peace, and smoked a pipe, adding this is how people could reach him.

“It’s like a tangible representation of how we can connect with Creator,” Drapeau said. “All people before you are represented in the stone itself. It’s not just willy-nilly stone.”

Pipes are widely used by Indigenous people across the Great Plains and beyond, either by spiritual leaders or individuals for personal prayer for healing and thanksgiving, as well as to mark rites of passage like vision quests and the solemnity of ceremonies and gatherings.

“Pipestone has a particular relationship to our spiritual practice – praying with pipes, we take very seriously,” St. Clair said.

The pipe itself is thought to become sacred when the pipestone bowl and the wooden stem are joined. The smoke, from tobacco or prairie plants, then carries the prayer from a person’s heart to the Creator.

Because of that crucial spiritual connection, only people enrolled in federally recognized tribes can obtain permits to quarry at the monument, some traveling from as far as Montana and Nebraska. Within tribes, there’s disagreement over whether pipes should be sold, especially to non-Natives, and the pipestone used to make other art objects like carved animal figures.

“Sacredness is going to be defined by you — that’s between you and the Creator,” said Travis Erickson, a fourth-generation carver who’s worked pipestone in the area for more than two decades and embraces a less restrictive view. “Everything on this Earth is spiritual.”

His first job in the quarries, at age 10, was to break through and remove the layers of harder-than-steel quartzite covering the pipestone seam – then about six feet down, now more than 18 feet into the quarry, so the process can take months. Only hand tools can be used to avoid damaging the pipestone.

Taken out in sheets only about a couple of inches thick, it is then carved using flint and files.

“The stone talks to me,” added Erickson, who has fashioned pipe bowls in different shapes, such as horses. “Most of those pipes showed what they wanted to be.”

Growing up in the 1960s, Erickson recalled making pipes as a family affair where the day often ended with a festive grilling. He taught his children, but laments that few younger people want to take up the arduous job.

So does Pederson, some of whose younger family members have shown interest, including a granddaughter who would hang out in her workshop starting when she was 3 and emerge “pink from head to toe” from the stone dust.

But they believe the tradition will continue as long as they can share it with Native youth who might have their first encounter with this deep history on field trips to the monument.

On a recent trip, Pederson’s brother, Mark Pederson, who also holds demonstrations at the visitor center, took several young visitors into the quarries and taught them how to swing sledgehammers — and many asked to return, she said.

Teaching the techniques of quarrying and carving is crucially important, and so is helping youth develop a relationship with the pipestone and its place in the Native worldview.

“We have to be concerned with that as Dakota people – all cultural messages young people get draw away from our traditional lifeways,” St. Clair said. “We need to hold on to the teachings, prayers, songs that make pipes be.”

From new exhibits to tailored school field trips, recent initiatives at the monument — undertaken in consultation between tribal leaders and the National Park Service — are trying to foster that awareness for Native youth.

“I remind them they have every right to come here and pray,” Drapeau said — a crucial point since many Native spiritual practices were systematically repressed for decades past 1937, when the monument was created to preserve the quarries from land encroachment.

Some areas of the park are open only for ceremonial use; the 75,000 yearly visitors are asked not to interfere with the quarriers.

“The National Park Service is the newcomer here — for 3,000 years, different tribal nations have come to quarry here and developed different protocols to protect the site,” said park superintendent Lauren Blacik.

One change brought through extensive consultations with tribal leaders is the park’s decision to no longer sell pipes at the visitor center, though other pipestone objects are — like small carved turtles or owls. Pipes are available at stores a few miles away in Pipestone’s downtown.

Tensions over the use of sacred pipes by non-Natives long predates the United States, when French and English explorers traded them, said Greg Gagnon, a scholar of Indian Studies and author of a textbook on Dakota culture.

“Nobody wants to have their world appropriated. The more you open it up, the more legitimate a fear of watering it down,” he said. But there’s also a danger in becoming entrenched in dogmatic ways of understanding traditions, Gagnon added.

For carvers like Pederson, good intentions and the Spirit at work in both those practicing the craft as well as those receiving the pipestone are reasons to be optimistic about the future.

“Grandma and Grandpa always said the stone takes care of itself, knows what’s in a person’s heart,” she said.
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After a globe-trotting publicity blitz by star Tom Cruise, “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” launched with a franchise-best $80 million over five days, though it came in shy of industry expectations with a $56.2 million haul over the three-day weekend, according to studio estimates.

The Paramount Pictures’ debut was boosted by strong overseas sales of $155 million from 70 markets. But while a $235 million worldwide launch marked one of the best global openings of the year, “Dead Reckoning” couldn’t approach the high-speed velocity of last summer’s top film, “Top Gun: Maverick.”

“Dead Reckoning Part One,” the seventh film in the 27-year-old series, had been forecast to better the franchise high of the previous installment, “Fallout,” which opened with $61 million domestically in 2018. Instead, it also fell short of the $57.8 million “Mission: Impossible II” debuted with in 2000.

That puts the film’s opening-weekend tally very close to the tepid launch of Disney’s “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” which opened in U.S. and Canadian theaters with $82 million over five days and $60 million over the three-day weekend. Paramount and Skydance had higher hopes for the action extravaganza of “Dead Reckoning,” which cost $290 million to make, not counting marketing expenses.

Those costs were inflated, in part, by the pandemic. “Dead Reckoning,” directed by Christopher McQuarrie, was among the first major productions shut down by COVID-19. It was preparing to shoot in Italy in March 2020. When the film got back on track, McQuarrie and Cruise helped lead the industry-wide recovery back to film sets – albeit with some well-publicized friction over protocols along the way.

Still, “Dead Reckoning” was hailed as a high point in the franchise. Critics (96% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) and fans (an “A” on CinemaScore) alike came away awed by the stunts and chases of the latest “Mission: Impossible” film. Though the coming competition of “Barbenheimer” — the much-anticipated debuts of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” — looms, “Mission: Impossible” should play well for weeks to come.

“This is a global franchise. It’s going gangbusters and it’s going to play for a long time. Quality always wins in the end,” said Chris Aronson, distribution chief for Paramount.

“Dead Reckoning,” Aronson said, met or exceeded the studio’s expectations.

“In international markets, in like-for-like markets, we’re 15% ahead of ‘Fallout,’ and that’s taking China out,” added Aronson. “Domestically, we’re over 3% ahead of ‘Fallout’ for the first five days. To beat its predecessor is phenomenal, especially in this environment.”

Cruise, the so-called savior of movie theaters last year, traveled tirelessly to again pump life back into a summer box office that’s been sluggish. After a splashy world premiere in Rome with a red-carpet on the Spanish Steps, Cruise and McQuarrie surprised theaters in Atlanta, Miami, Toronto and Washington D.C. in the days ahead of opening.

“Dead Reckoning” hit theaters at a crucial mid-summer period for Hollywood, and not just because of the SAG-AFTRA strike which began Thursday. “Mission: Impossible” launched a week before one of the biggest box-office showdowns of the year.

Though “Dead Reckoning” and “Oppenheimer” have vied for some of the same IMAX screens, each film has publicly endorsed the idea that a rising tide lifts all blockbusters. Cruise and McQuarrie in early July even bought opening-weekend tickets to both “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer.” “Barbie” director Greta Gerwig and “Oppenheimer” filmmaker Christopher Nolan reciprocated with their own gestures of support.

However, that trio of films performs over the next few weeks will do a lot to determine the fate of the summer box office.

“These are a crucial couple of weeks for the industry starting this weekend,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for data firm Comscore. “I think it’s going to be a fun reinvigoration of the box office because we have had a few films underperforming. Really, the summer movie season restarts this week with ‘Mission’ leading into ‘Barbenheimer.'”

No other new wide release challenged “Mission: Impossible” over the weekend. Second place went to Angel Studios’ faith-based political thriller “Sound of Freedom” which increased 37% in its second with $27 million. Jim Caviezel stars in the child trafficking drama.

Last week’s top film, “Insidious: The Red Door” slid to third with $13 million in its second weekend. “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” dropped quickly with $12 million for its third weekend, with a domestic total so far of $145.4 million.

In limited release, the Searchlight Pictures’ mockumentary “Theater Camp” opened to $270,000 from six theaters in New York and Los Angeles.

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.

1. “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One,” $56.2 million.

2. “Sound of Freedom,” $27 million.

3. “Insidious: The Red Door,” $13 million.

4. “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” $12 million.

5. “Elemental,” $8.7 million.

6. “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” $6.1 million.

7. “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts,” $3.4 million.

8. “No Hard Feelings,” $3.3 million.

9. “Joy Ride,” $2.6 million.

10. “The Little Mermaid,” $2.4 million.
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British-born actress and singer Jane Birkin, a 1960s wildchild who became a beloved figure in France, has died in Paris aged 76.

The French Culture Ministry said the country had lost a “timeless Francophone icon.”

Local media reported she had been found dead at her home, citing people close to her. Birkin had a mild stroke in 2021 after suffering heart problems in previous years.

Birkin was best known overseas for her 1969 hit in which she and her then-lover, the late French singer and songwriter Serge Gainsbourg, sang the sexually explicit “Je t’aime…moi non plus”.

She had lived in her adopted France since the late 1960s and apart from her singing and roles in dozens of films, she was a popular figure for her warm nature, stalwart fight for women’s and LGBT rights.

The “most Parisian of the English has left us,” said Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo. “We will never forget her songs, her laughs and her incomparable accent which always accompanied us.”

Jane Mallory Birkin was born in London in December 1946, daughter of British actress Judy Campbell and Royal Navy commander David Birkin.

She first took to the stage aged 17 and went on to appear in the 1965 musical “Passion Flower Hotel” by conductor and composer John Barry, whom she married shortly after. The marriage ended in the late 1960s.

Before venturing across the Channel aged 22, she achieved notoriety in the controversial 1966 Michelangelo Antonioni film “Blow-Up,” appearing naked in a threesome sex scene.

But it was in France that she truly shot to fame, as much for her love affair with tormented national star Gainsbourg, as for her tomboyish style and endearing British accent when speaking French, which some said she cultivated deliberately.

Following the breakup of that relationship in 1981, she continued her career as a singer and actress, appearing on stage and releasing albums such as “Baby Alone in Babylone” in 1983, and “Amour des Feintes” in 1990, both with words and music by Gainsbourg.

She wrote her own album “Arabesque” in 2002, and in 2009 released a collection of live recordings, “Jane at the Palace.”

“It’s unimaginable to live in a world without you,” said French singer Etienne Daho, who produced and composed Birkin’s last album in 2020.

It was on the set of the film “Slogan” in 1969 that Birkin first met Gainsbourg, who was recovering from a break-up with Brigitte Bardot, and the two quickly began a love affair that captivated the nation.

That same year they released “Je T’Aime… Moi Non Plus” (“I Love You… Me Neither”), a song about physical love originally written for Bardot in which Gainsbourg’s explicit lyrics are punctuated with breathy moans and cries from Birkin.

The song was banned by the BBC and condemned by the Vatican.

Gainsbourg’s drinking eventually got the better of the relationship, and Birkin left him in 1981 to live with film director Jacques Doillon. However she remained close to the troubled singer until his death in March 1991.

It was around this time that she inspired the famous Birkin bag by French luxury house Hermes, after chief executive Jean-Louis Dumas saw her struggling with her straw bag on a flight to London, spilling the contents over the floor.

She is survived by two daughters the singer and actress Charlotte, born in 1971, and Lou Doillon, also an actress, born in 1982. She also had a daughter, Kate, who was born in 1967 and died in 2013.
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Pianist André Watts, whose televised debut with the New York Philharmonic as a 16-year-old in 1963 launched an international career of more than a half-century, has died. He was 77.

Watts died Wednesday at his home in Bloomington of prostate cancer, his manager, Linda Marder, said Friday. Watts joined the faculty of the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in 2004. He said in 2016 that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer.

Watts won a Philadelphia Orchestra student competition and debuted when he was 10 in a children’s concert on Jan. 12, 1957, performing the first movement of Haydn’s Concerto in D major.

He studied under Genia Robinor and made his New York Philharmonic debut in a Young People’s Concert led by music director Leonard Bernstein on Jan. 12, 1963, a program televised three days later on CBS.

“Now we come to a young man who is so remarkable that I am tempted to give him a tremendous buildup, but I’d almost rather not so that you might have the same unexpected shock of pleasure and wonderment that I had when I first him play,” Bernstein told the audience. “He was just another in a long procession of pianists who were auditioning for us one afternoon and out he came, a sensitive-faced 16-year-old boy from Philadelphia … who sat down at the piano and tore into the opening bars of a Liszt concerto in such a way that we simply flipped.”

Bernstein conducted Watts and the orchestra in Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1.

“What Mr. Watts had that was exceptional was a delicacy of attack that allowed the piano to sing,” Raymond Ericson wrote in The New York Times.

Watts so impressed Bernstein that the conductor chose him to replace an indisposed Glenn Gould and play the Liszt concerto twice at Philharmonic Hall a few weeks later. Within months, he had earned a recording contract and became among the most prominent pianists.

“When I’m feeling unhappy, going to the piano and just playing gently and listening to sounds makes everything slowly seem all right,” he said on a 1987 episode of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.”

Born in Nuremberg, Germany, on June 20, 1946, to a Hungarian mother and a Black father who was in the U.S. Army, Watts moved with his family to Philadelphia.

“When I was young, I was in the peculiar position with my school chums of not being white and not being Black, either,” Watts told The Christian Science Monitor in 1982. “Somehow I didn’t fit in very well at all. My mom said two things, ‘If you really think that you have to play 125% to a white’s 100% for equal treatment, it’s too bad. But fighting will not alter it.’ And, ‘If someone is not nice to you, it doesn’t have to be automatically because of your color.’

“(That advice) taught me that when I’m in a complex personal situation, I don’t have to conclude it is a racial thing. Therefore, I think I have encountered fewer problems all along the way.”

Watts’ career was interrupted on Nov. 14, 2002, when he was stricken by a subdural hematoma before a scheduled performance with the Pacific Symphony at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa, California. He had surgery in Newport Beach.

Watts then had surgery in 2004 to repair a herniated disk that caused nerve damage in his left hand. He made the last of more than 40 Carnegie Hall appearances with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra in 2017. He had been scheduled to appear at the New York Philharmonic this November to mark the centennial of “Young People’s Concerts.”

He was nominated for five Grammy Awards and won Most Promising New Classical Recording Artist in 1964 for the Liszt concerto with Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic. He was nominated for a 1995 Emmy Award for Outstanding Cultural Program and received a 2011 National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal from then-President Barack Obama.

Watts is survived by his wife Joan Brand Watts, stepson William Dalton, stepdaughter Amanda Rees and seven step-grandchildren. There were no immediate funeral plans.
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Thousands of actors, from A-list celebrities to those struggling to break into the entertainment industry, voted to go on strike this week, plunging Hollywood and the broader film and television industry into what seems likely to be a lengthy work stoppage.

The board of the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) ordered the strike Thursday, demanding a new contract that takes into account the new technologies — particularly video streaming and artificial intelligence — that have already transformed the industry and appear likely to drive even more change in the future.  Previously, 98% of the union’s members had voted in favor of authorizing the strike if negotiators could not reach a deal.

The members of SAG-AFTRA join the members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA), who have been on strike since May, with similar demands for an updated contract. The last time writers and actors went on strike at the same time was in 1960, when actor and future U.S. President Ronald Reagan was president of the Screen Actors Guild.

On the other side of the dispute is the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), representing major film studios, streaming services, and other outlets, including Amazon, Apple, Disney, NBCUniversal, Netflix, Paramount, Sony and Warner Bros Discovery. Negotiations between the alliance and SAG-AFTRA broke down this week.

Battle lines drawn 

While there are a number of issues the two sides need to resolve, two of the largest are residual payments and the use of generative artificial intelligence.

The term “residuals” refers to payments that actors receive when a production they took part in is broadcast again. The current system does not account well for the phenomenon of on-demand streaming of films and television shows, and does not include enhancements for movies and shows that become very popular. Actors want a “success metric” that raises the payout for popular content.

Additionally, actors want compensation and protections surrounding the use of generative artificial intelligence. For example, if footage of their performances is used to train AI systems, which can then artificially produce new content using an actor’s image and voice, they want to be paid for that content.

Structural problems 

James McMahon, a professor at the University of Toronto and the author of The Political Economy of Hollywood: Capitalist Power and Cultural Production, told VOA in an email exchange that the sticking points between actors and the studios are structural and will be difficult to overcome.

“The decline of box-office receipts and the rise of video streaming are, I believe, two sides of the same problem,” he wrote. “The major studios have (a) struggled to get more people to watch more movies, especially in theaters; and (b) have struggled to produce filmed entertainment profits that are competitive to the profits of other large multinational firms. Video streaming seemingly comes to the rescue of declining box-office receipts. However, user growth in streaming is not infinite, and when growth slows, firms will find additional profit from streaming by raising prices and cutting costs.”

He said that studios have been able to extract more revenue by raising the price of streaming services, keeping residuals low, and hiring fewer writers.

“[T]hese are the ways, up until these strikes, the major studios have found additional opportunities to cut costs. These strikes feel ‘existential’ because the WGA and SAG-AFTRA are saying that these cost-cutting benefits have not been sufficiently negotiated, particularly for the welfare of the average actor or writer.” 

Claims of greed 

Fran Drescher, best known as the star of the 1990s television show “The Nanny,” delivered a fiery speech Thursday in her capacity as current president of SAG-AFTRA, slamming the studios as greedy and selfish. She criticized the studios for resisting calls to raise actors’ pay at the same time that studio executives, like Disney CEO Bob Iger, are paid tens of millions of dollars per year.

“We are the victims here. We are being victimized by a very greedy entity. I am shocked by the way the people that we have been in business with are treating us,” she said.

“I cannot believe it, quite frankly, how far apart we are on so many things,” Drescher added. “How they plead poverty, that they’re losing money left and right when giving hundreds of millions of dollars to their CEOs. It is disgusting. Shame on them. They stand on the wrong side of history.”

In a press release responding to the strike, the AMPTP said, “A strike is certainly not the outcome we hoped for as studios cannot operate without the performers that bring our TV shows and films to life. The Union has regrettably chosen a path that will lead to financial hardship for countless thousands of people who depend on the industry.”

Huge impact 

The combined effect of the two strikes will be to stop  production of most feature films and scripted television programs. The writers’ strike had already forced many productions to close down, but now even films and shows with completed scripts will be affected.

However, the strike’s impact will go deeper than halting production. The members of SAG-AFTRA will be barred from promoting any films in which they appear, including campaigning for honors such as the Academy Awards for films and the Emmy Awards for television programs.

On Thursday, the stars of “Oppenheimer” and “Barbie,” two summer blockbusters scheduled for release this month, stopped participating in promotional events hyping the films. In the case of “Oppenheimer,” the lead actors, including Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon and Florence Pugh, walked out in the middle of the film’s London premiere after the strike was announced.

‘Middle class’ actors 

While Hollywood’s megastars may receive most of the media coverage, the vast majority of the roughly 160,000 SAG-AFTRA members are not household names, but people trying to earn a living in an industry that has changed significantly in recent years.

“This isn’t about the big stars — they have their own agents who negotiate contracts above and beyond the SAG contract and earn hundreds of thousands, millions, or even tens of millions of dollars,” Jonathan Handel, a media attorney and journalist, told VOA. “This is about middle-class actors struggling to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table in high-cost cities like Los Angeles and New York.”

Handel, whose book, Hollywood on Strike!: An Industry at War in the Internet Age, chronicled the last strike by actors in 2007, said that the parties could be facing a long road toward any permanent resolution.

“Right now, there is a lot of bitterness in the room,” he said. “A lot of things were said, and there’s no real appetite for anything but striking. Labor is very upset and very unhappy with the way the companies are running things. The companies, for their part, view this as existential also, because filmed entertainment has not seen more rapid, disruptive change in such a short period of time since the period after World War II.” 
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The U.S. national team, like most of the rest of the field, faces a long flight to the Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand. Already seasoned travelers, the American players have strategies for wiling away the time. And they’ll certainly need those tactics: The flight to New Zealand, where they’ll spend the group stage of the tournament, is 12 hours. Midfielder Andi Sullivan plans on napping, while defender Emily Fox intends to keep with a soccer theme and finally watch “Ted Lasso.”

Midfielder Andi Sullivan plans on napping. Defender Emily Fox intends to keep with a soccer theme and finally watch “Ted Lasso.”

The U.S. national team — like most of the rest of the field — faces a long flight to the Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.

Already seasoned travelers, the Americans have strategies for wiling away the time. And they’ll certainly need those tactics: The flight to New Zealand, where they’ll spend the group stage of the tournament, is 12 hours.

“I need suggestions!” midfielder Kristie Mewis exclaimed about the shows she plans to download for the flight. “Honestly, I’m rewatching ‘Suits’ right now. I love ‘Suits.'”

Once they get there, the players will retreat into a self-imposed bubble where they shut out the noise and the distractions for some seven weeks. Most stay off of social media platforms for the duration.

Forward Trinity Rodman, making her World Cup debut, is taking the advice of the veterans. Rodman’s dad is former NBA star Dennis Rodman, so she gets a lot of attention just because of her name.

“They have been very open about making sure you have entertainment and ways to distract yourself outside of your phone and social media, because I do think with social media you can get consumed by it and you can definitely get sucked up in it,” Rodman said. “But I think finding those ways to isolate yourself, finding hobbies in the hotel room: Coloring, journaling, reading, Fortnite. I’m a bit of a gamer so that has definitely helped me to just like relax.”

The United States plays Wales in a send-off match on Sunday in San Jose, California. That same night, they’ll fly to training camp in New Zealand.

The World Cup kicks off July 20. The United States opens with a game against Vietnam on July 22.

 
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The Los Angeles County Medical Examiners’ office says Lisa Marie Presley, the only child of the iconic musician Elvis Presley, died earlier this year as a result of “a small bowel obstruction.”  

Presley, who was also a musician, died January 12th, just two days after she attended the Golden Globes where she saw Austin Butler take home the Best Actor award for his portrayal of her father in the film Elvis.

The obstruction that Presley had “is a known long-term complication” of bariatric weight loss surgery, the medical examiner’s office said. Her surgery was performed “years ago,” according to the report.   

The medical examiner’s report also said Presley had “therapeutic levels” of oxycodone and other medicine in her system but added that they were not seen as contributing factors to her death.

Presley was once married to Michael Jackson, another iconic performer.  
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