Bruckheimer to End Deal With Disney

LOS ANGELES â€" The Walt Disney Company and Jerry Bruckheimer said on Thursday they would end a movie deal under which Mr. Bruckheimer has produced hits like the “Pirates of the Caribbean” series, and a notable flop in “The Lone Ranger.”

Mr. Bruckheimer, one of Hollywood’s most respected senior producers, has been making movies with Disney since the early 1990’s, when he was executive producer of “The Ref.”

In a statement, Disney and Mr. Bruckheimer said they would end their existing deal when it expires next year. The statement said Mr. Bruckheimer intends to produce “more mature films” than those for which he has been known at Disney, while the studio plans to focus on pictures from its Pixar, Marvel, LucasFilm, and Walt Disney units.

In the Thursday evening announcement, Mr. Bruckheimer said he planned to continue working with Disney on future “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “National Treasure” films. Though he has become known for his work on television series like the “CSI” crime dramas, Mr. Bruckheimer made his mark in the 1980s as a prolific producer, who worked in partnership with Don Simpson, now deceased, on films like “Days of Thunder” and the “Beverly Hills Cop” series.

In Auction of Koch’s Possessions, a Trove of Letters

Courtesy of Doyle New York A collection of correspondence between former Mayor Edward I. Koch and various political and cultural figures will be auctioned off in November.

For those who couldn’t get enough of former Mayor Edward I. Koch while he was alive, Doyle Galleries will hold an auction on not one, but two days for those interested in his possessions, including letters, books, ephemera and furniture from his Greenwich Village apartment.

Among the items to be auctioned off on Nov. 18 and 25 is a note in which Jacqueline Onassis graciously declines the job of cultural affairs commissioner.

Many letters in the estate sale are from presidents and famous public officials, celebrities, and literary and entertainment figures. Most asking prices for groups of letters range from about $200 to $900.

The trove includes the 1983 typed letter signed in ink as both “Jackie” and “Jacqueline Onassis” declining the cultural affairs job, though she added that “it would have been an exciting challenge and a wonderful experience.”

“I shall always regret that I could not take on this responsibility,” she wrote. The job ultimately went to Bess Myerson.

Also being auctioned are letters from Clare Booth Luce, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Edward M. Kennedy, Henry Kissinger, Mario M. Cuomo, Rudolph W. Giuliani, Yitzhak Rabin, Jacques Chirac, Boutros Boutros Ghali, Margaret Thatcher, Anwar Sadat, Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell, Bob Dole, Janet Reno and Robert Kennedy Jr.

Geraldine A. Ferraro, the former Queens congresswoman and candidate for vice president, writes tartly, “During the campaign of 1984 when my world was falling down around me and you took a couple of gratuitous slaps at me, I don’t remember you calling to explain.”

Helen Hayes comments on a photograph sent by Mr. Koch: “We look like a couple of movie lovers playing our big scene.” Katharine Hepburn, turning down an award, writes, “This to me is a terrible burden … trying to be as fascinating, thrilling and brilliant as I’m supposed to be.”

Fred Friendly, describing a particular reporter as a reliable journalist, writes that “if she says I called you a buffoon, I’m sure she’s accurate.” And Elizabeth Taylor, in a telegram declining to attend an event at the Brooklyn Bridge, writes: “I wasn’t born in Brooklyn, but rather in London, where there once was a bridge, too… London’s bridge wound up being transported to America. And so did I.”

About 65 letters from Cardinal John O’Connor include one that the cardinal wrote during the municipal corruption scandals in 1986: “You are prayed for far more than you realize. I don’t call a man a ‘friend’ lightly. These are heartbreaking days for you. I’m here!”

In a handwritten note after Mr. Koch lost the 1989 election, the cardinal writes, “I hope you know you don’t have to be mayor for us to be friends.”

Besides the correspondence, the gallery will be auctioning a few copies of books he wrote, including one signed by Mr. Koch and Cardinal O’Connor, a Haggadah he owned and a portrait of him by the English photographer Norman Parkinson.

A sample of the correspondence, courtesy of Doyle New York, can be viewed below.

New Getty Atlas to Preserve Data on Nondigital Photography

Monica Almeida/The New York Times Dusan Stulik at the Getty Conservation Institute in 2007.

Analog photography may be going the way of the dinosaurs. But for the museums, archives, galleries and collectors who own and care for millions of pictorial artifacts bequeathed by more than 150 years of pre-digital photography, information about how film, paper, chemicals and metals worked to create pictures for all those years remains extraordinarily valuable.

As it turns out, it is also surprisingly hard to come by, more so as traditional film and camera companies have gone out of business and taken their trade secrets into oblivion with them, creating what many experts see as a looming crisis in photographic conservation and authentication.

After almost a decade of research, the Getty Conservation Institute in Los Angeles, is now beginning to rectify that situation. The institute announced Thursday that is releasing online “The Atlas of Analytical Signatures of Photographic Processes,” the first installment of a vast atlas of scientific data about pre-digital photography - including processes developed more than a century ago, like albumen, carbon and salt prints - that will be updated continually as new information is discovered.

“The ‘Atlas’ is the first photograph conservation research publication that integrates historical information and ‘inside the darkroom’ techniques of practicing photographers with modern scientific and analytical technology,” said Dusan Stulik, a senior scientist at the institute who has been working on the project with a researcher, Art Kaplan.

Grant Romer, a photo conservation expert for many years at the George Eastman House in Rochester, N.Y., said at the time the Getty project was getting underway: “In essence this can start to rewrite the history of photography. It’s already provoked a sort of crisis in the understanding of what we think we know about some photographs.”

Sting’s Musical To Open on Broadway After Chicago Tryout

“The Last Ship,” a new musical from Sting about family and labor strife in working-class Britain, will come to Broadway in the fall of 2014, after a tryout run in Chicago next summer, the producers announced on Thursday.

Set in an English shipbuilding town, “The Last Ship” includes an original score by Sting, whose life story is echoed in the characters. Music from the show is featured in a new album of the same name, Sting’s first collection of original material since 2003.

While the show marks Sting’s debut as a Broadway songwriter, it features a high-powered team of veterans alongside him. Joe Mantello (“Wicked”) is directing and John Logan (“Red”) and Brian Yorkey (“Next to Normal”) have written the book.

“The Last Ship” will have its premiere from June 10 to July 13 at the Bank of America theater in Chicago. Specific Broadway dates have yet to be announced.

A New Seat for Oxford Bottoms

The elite posteriors at the University of Oxford will soon get a new resting place, thanks to the Bodleian Libraries Chair Competition, which has just announced its winner.

The victorious oak seat, designed Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby with the manufacturer Isokon Plus, features “a strong vertical timber, echoing the spines of the books on shelves,” attached to a sled base, according to a news release, which also noted the chair’s suitability to “complex reader requirements.” It will be installed in the newly refurbished Weston Library (formerly the New Bodleian, built in the 1930s), when it reopens in October 2014.

The design, chosen from more than 60 entries, is only the third new chair developed specifically for the Bodleian since 1756, when it acquired three dozen Windsor chairs to supplement its raised reading lecterns and low wooden benches attached to bookshelves, to which books were chained, according to an article about the competition in The Guardian.

And the first students at the university, whose origins date back at least to the 11th century, probably wouldn’t have sat reading in book-lined rooms at all.

“In medieval times, you would have had a book room, and then you would take the book out to the cloister to read,” Chris Fletcher, the Bodleian’s keeper of special collections, told The Guardian. “It’s only in the post-medieval period that people started to read while sitting in the book rooms.”

The Storm Before the Calm: Strange Sounds Emerge From ‘Monotone-Silence Symphony’

I thought I heard bagpipes. I thought I heard snippets of Philip Glass’s “1000 Airplanes on the Roof.” Toward the end, I could have sworn I heard someone near me crying. But I didn’t really hear any of those things, because the only music filling the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church was a D major chord, sustained with great effort for precisely 20 minutes by a group of almost 70 singers and instrumentalists.

The performance, of the French artist Yves Klein’s “Monotone-Silence Symphony,” a work he conceived in the late 1940s consisting of 20 minutes of unchanging sound followed by 20 minutes of motionless silence, drew a rapt and mostly reverent crowd on Wednesday night. The symphony, organized as part of the inaugural exhibition, “Audible Presence: Lucio Fontana, Yves Klein, Cy Twombly,” at the new Dominique Lévy Gallery on Madison Avenue and 73rd Street, has been realized several times around the world since Klein died in 1962 but this was the first time it had ever been heard (and not heard) in New York.

The audience leaned more toward the visual-art world than the music world - the Whitney Museum curator Chrissie Iles; RoseLee Goldberg, the founder of Performa; Alice M. Tisch, a trustee of the Museum of Modern Art. At 8:11, by my watch, the Swiss composer and conductor Roland Dahinden, who has conducted the symphony four times in Europe, took the podium in front of the tightly assembled, black-clad group of musicians. When he raised his hands, the chord began cleanly, as if someone had turned on a radio. It sounded softer than I had imagined, like the gentle final note of a song that decided not to end. It sounded fragile at first, as if the voices and hands might not be able to keep it aloft.

But about a dozen minutes in, it began to sound strangely electronic (hence Philip Glass), like something that humans could not possibly be producing. Mr. Dahinden moved his body and hands sinuously, striving to keep the chord unbroken and consistent, listening intently for flagging energy attention until, at 8:31 on the dot, he brought his hands up and together and ended the sound as abruptly as it had begun.

In the audience some people closed their eyes, as if meditating or praying. Others read their programs or held phones and iPads aloft to record the moment. Five minutes into the chord the man to my immediate right, who looked a little like the actor John Slattery, except with a beard, fell asleep and snored softly until the silence began and he woke up.

The silence was about as absolute (and enjoyable) as any I’ve ever experienced in a crowded place in New York City, punctuated only by occasional, distant car horns, a handful of coughs and softly gurgling predinner stomachs. David H. Heiss, a cellist with the Metropolitan Opera who heard about the performance and asked to be a part of it, told me later that the sound half of the symphony felt surprisingly short. “When he stopped it, it seemed me like we had only been going for 9 or 10 minutes,” said Mr. Heiss, a longtime Klein fan. “But the silence felt like half an hour. It was harder than I thought it would be. We were told not to move a muscle.”

After the performance Mr. Dahinden was beaming. I asked him where he kept his stopwatch. “On the music stand in front of me,” he said. “But it’s not just one. I always have two stopwatches, just to be sure, in case one breaks. It’s very difficult to count to 20 minutes in your head.”

She Can See Clearly Now

April Anderson

Dear Diary:

The windows outside my fourth-floor office on West 58th Street had not been cleaned in probably 11 or 12 years, and a fine patina of dirt had collected.

In early August, the building began a construction contract, and there were motorized scaffolding platforms cruising up and down past my window all day, with various workers on them who would wave and subsequently push off of my window with their hands, leaving what was beginning to look like an art project of dirt finger-painting.

At one point in the afternoon, I suddenly had a light-bulb epiphany and popped my head out the window on one of their fly-bys (probably scaring the heck out of them). I told them I’d give them $20 if they’d clean my windows while they were at it.

Some Windex, a roll of paper towels and said money later, et voilà! Sparkly windows that should keep me for another 12 years.

Read all recent entries and our updated submissions guidelines. Reach us via e-mail diary@nytimes.com or follow @NYTMetro on Twitter using the hashtag #MetDiary.

Emmys Watch: Jim Carter on ‘Downton Abbey’

Jeeves in P.G. Wodehouse books. Hobson in “Arthur.” Hudson in “Upstairs, Downstairs.”

But is Carson in “Downton Abbey” the most beloved butler of all?

“People do seem to take to Carson â€" because an English butler is an iconic role, isn’t it?” Jim Carter said in his sonorous baritone, musing with requisite British modesty on his character’s popularity.

With his upper lip as stiff as his starched collar, Carson stands watch over the Crawley family with a mix of hauteur and humility: meeting the gaze of his employer, Lord Grantham, square on, while accepting his place in the hierarchy.

The role has earned Mr. Carter, 65, two Emmy nominations for supporting actor in a drama series. He will attend Sunday’s ceremony with his wife, Imelda Staunton, who is nominated for supporting actress in a mini-series or a movie for her portrayal of Alfred Hitchcock’s wife in “The Girl” on HBO.

In a phone interview, Mr. Carterâ€" whose substantial resume includes productions at the National Theater and the Royal Shakespeare Company and films like “Shakespeare in Love” and “My Week With Marilyn” â€" unleashed the occasional un-Carson-like guffaw as he spoke about the man inside the tailcoat; the series’s popularity; and what excites him at this point in his career. These are edited excerpts from the conversation:

Q.

How’s the weather in London today?

A.

It’s cold, and I’m sorely exhausted because I run the Hampstead Cricket Club, and I had a big event yesterday. I’m just lying around the house absolutely useless today.

Q.

Your Emmy submission, Episode 8, is centered on Downton Abbey’s annual cricket match with the village. How are you as a player?

A.

Oh, rubbish. Absolutely rubbish. But you wouldn’t expect the chairman of American Airlines to fly the plane, would you? It’s an amateur cricket club, but we play at a very high level, just one level under the professional level. So as chairman I do all the behind-the-scenes stuff and I let the players play. But it’s a great antidote, a bit of real life. And we’ve won the league for the first time in our history, so we’re very pleased with ourselves.

Episode 8 was lovely partly because it was cricket, of course, and also one of my lads from the cricket club came down and doubled up for one of the actors because he’s a good cricketer and the actor wasn’t. And it was the first time in three series that I’d been able to dress myself because, with all those studs and shirtfronts and stiff collars and bow ties, I always have someone help me get dressed.

Q.

Season 4 is about to be broadcast in Britain. What are we going to look forward to?

A.

I can’t tell you anything. [laughs] More of the same. Romance â€" will she? Won’t she? Will they fall in love? The whole point is not knowing. Well, of course, it’s no surprise that we start at a fairly low point, with the death of Matthew, which was very shocking in England because that episode was shown on Christmas Day. People were furious and poor old Julian Fellowes got hate mail because he ruined their Christmas, all because of Dan Stevens [wanting to pursue a film career]. Then, as he said, perhaps Dan did him a favor in a funny way because it’s quite difficult to dramatize happiness. It’s much easier to dramatize tragedy and conflict, isn’t it? So there’s where start from, with the mourning for Matthew, and the whole house is obviously affected by that. And then we pick up the pace and romance comes along possibly, he said.

Q.

For you?

A.

Not for me. Carson’s too old. Mind you, I think everybody wants Carson and Mrs. Hughes to â€" yeah, it’s got to happen, hasn’t it, really?

Q.

Has there been a discussion of it?

A.

Well, we don’t get to discuss much of it. We sort of get presented with the scripts. I have dropped very, very heavy-handed hints that Carson and Mrs. Hughes should ride off into the sunset together. But that’s the kind of thing we’ll save for the very end of the whole thing. Because in real life the butler and the housekeeper were always unmarried. So we’ll have to wait until we’re ready to retire.

It boggles the imagination, doesn’t it? Because ideally, my fantasy â€" Jim Carter’s fantasy â€" is that Carson and Mrs. Hughes would sedately get married and have a little cottage on the estate. But could you imagine what it’s like? He’d still call her Mrs. Hughes, because Carson’s so English. And what kind of husband would he be? He knows how to decant wine, but I can’t imagine that he knows how to do anything else very practical around the house. But maybe he’d be perfect. I don’t know.

Q.

Don’t you think that underneath all that formality is kind of a lion?

A. Hmm. A pussycat, I think. We do hear in this series that once upon a time did beat a romantic heart in Carson’s chest. A figure comes up from his past and there was a little romance way back, but it’s deeply buried now. Mrs. Hughes is very sweet. She tries to remind him of it, and she encourages him to remember it and talk about it. Have you seen any of Series 4? Oh, you’ve got an exclusive!

I don’t know if you remember back in Series 1 there was a chap turned up, who â€" Carson to his shame had been in a music hall dancing and singing act called the Cheerful Charlies way, way back. And his old partner re-emerges in very bad times, just bringing back memories of Carson’s younger self. And after that my lips are sealed. [laughs]

Q.

I understand that in the first episode Carson comforts Mary to the point of overstepping.

A.

Carson is sort of like a second father to Mary. That’s how he sees himself, anyway. And I loved that moment in Series 3 when Mary came down the stairs in her wedding dress, and her father and Carson were waiting at the bottom and both looking at her so fondly. And this is not giving anything away at all, but Mary is in deep mourning, and Carson is sort of persuaded to probably overstep the mark by saying it’s time for her to pull herself together. And initially she tells him, “That’s too personal, you’ve gone too far.” But then she listens to what he said. And it’s funny because those little intimate moments are very precious because everybody was so formal and so aware of boundaries.

Q.

I imagine Carson is the role with which you’re most identified. I’ve read that Chinese state TV is now broadcasting the series.

A.

I’ve told this story before but last winter I went cycling in Cambodia, in the temple of Angkor Wat, in the jungle, in my unpleasant cycling gear, and I was recognized by a group of Chinese tourists. I thought, “That’s very odd.”

Q.

You’re married to Imelda Staunton. Do you perform together often?

A.

We met in “Guys and Dolls” way back in ’82. Because we had a daughter [Bessie] 19 years ago who started at drama school today â€" it’s her first day today, isn’t that lovely? We’re dying to find out how she’s doing. And so because we had a daughter and we really didn’t want to have child care, we’ve always juggled work around each other. We take work on its own merits, really. And we both have slightly different agendas as actors.

Q.

Do you feel competitive with your wife?

A.

Not in the slightest. We’re both very supportive of each other. Of course, Imelda’s so much better than me that I’d be in a very bad place if I felt competitive.

Q.

It’s your second nomination. Is it still exciting for you?

A.

Uh, Kathryn, I’ve been acting for 40-odd years. I get excited about cricket and gardening.

New York Today: Back to the Polls

Left, Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times; right, Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times The candidates in the runoff for public advocate, Daniel L. Squadron and Letitia James. Some people wonder why we have runoff elections at all.

There might not be a runoff in the mayoral primary. But if you can’t wait until November to vote again, your chance may come in just 12 days, in the Democratic runoff for public advocate.

It is between City Councilwoman Letitia James and State Senator Daniel L. Squadron, who received 36 and 33 percent of the vote on primary day.

There’s no Republican candidate, so the winner of the runoff effectively wins the election.

But some people wonder why we have runoffs at all. They are a hassle for candidates. Turnout tends to be depressingly light.

And they are expensive. The Oct. 1 runoff will cost $13 million, the city’s Board of Elections said.

The office of the public advocate, who is second in line to the mayor, has an annual budget of only $2.3 million â€" for $13 million you could operate the office for five years.

(Runoffs can also be pointless. In the mayoral race, if Bill de Blasio falls below 40 percent when all the votes are counted, the law requires a runoff, even though William C. Thompson Jr. has already conceded.)

One councilman, Brad Lander of Brooklyn, has introduced a bill to do away with runoffs.

Instead, on primary day, voters would rank the candidates to pick a winner should no candidate get more than 50 percent.

“It gives you the benefit of a more majoritiarian election without the time and expense,” Mr. Lander said.

The current electronic voting machines have the technology to do it.

Here’s what else you need to know for Thursday.

WEATHER

Still sunny, and warmer, with a high of 77.

TRANSIT & TRAFFIC

- Mass Transit: Click for latest M.T.A. status.

- Roads: Click for traffic map or radio report on the 1s.

Alternate-side parking is suspended today and Friday for Sukkot.

COMING UP TODAY

- The Food Tank, a food research organization, hosts a sold-out conference bringing together some of the leading thinkers in the fun-sounding food-waste movement leading up to food waste awareness week across the city.

- John Ashbery, Timothy Donnelly and Adam Fitzgerald, three accomplished poets, come together to discuss the arc of modern poetry at the New York Public Library. [$25, 7 p.m.]

- Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg speaks at the opening of the New York Genome Center in Manhattan.

- Nicholas Sparks, author of “The Notebook,” discusses his most recent novel, “The Longest Ride,” at Barnes & Noble in Union Square. [Free, 7 p.m.]

- The Bronx Music Heritage Center kicks off a weekend of the arts with a musical performance by Jaqueline Flowers. [Free, 8 p.m.]

- For more events, see The New York Times’s Arts & Entertainment guide.

IN THE NEWS

- Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton formally endorsed Bill de Blasio for mayor. [New York Times]

- Mayor Bloomberg is hoping to restrict large-scale food producers from sending their leftovers to landfills and incinerators. [Crain's New York]

- Times Square’s insult-me-Elmo, Dan Sandler, admitted he tried to extort $2 million from the Girl Scouts. [Daily News]

- A Staten Island man is accused of trying to frame a rival by planting a series of bomb-like devices in the borough this month. [Staten Island Advance]

- John Catsimatidis pulled a John Keats and wrote an epic poem about his loss in the Republican mayoral primary. [Daily Intelligencer]

- Four of America’s tallest towers are under construction or expected to be along or adjacent to 57th Street in the coming years. [Gizmodo]

Joseph Burgess contributed reporting.

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