#Ferrari fan has given up weeks ago

[not-that-syndrigast]

On the upside, I've managed to get everyone in my vicinity to also be interested in Formula 1.

On the downside, I did it by introducing everyone to the driver/team fitting them best, which will maybe destroy my friendgroup/family

[lorarri]

★ . . . 𝐃𝐀𝐃𝐃𝐘 𝐁𝐎𝐔𝐆𝐇𝐓 𝐇𝐈𝐌 𝐀 𝐆𝐈𝐑𝐋𝐅𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐍𝐃 , 𝐋𝐒𝟏𝟖

summary , ferrari's team owners son is exposed for having a fan account for there number one driver and some how they end up fake dating for six months

pairing , heir! lance stroll x fem! f1 driver! reader

series masterlist | main masterlist | sol’s masterlist | f1 masterlist

yourinstagram

liked by carlossainz55 lance_stroll 79,479,480 others

yourinstagram a car launch and charity gala like no other 🥂✨

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user the way lance was trying to outbid Y/N the whole charity live stream was so funny to me

user the fact that Y/N and Lance sat at the same table doesn't sit right with me

user okay can we stop talking about the fan boy and talk about MOTHER

user the fact that lance's fan account is still posting about Y/N is WILDDDD

user okay enough of simp boy Y/N ate and left nothing

user the way Carlos and Y/N were side eyeing Lance the whole time was so funny

user I bet Lance was posting on his fan account during his event

user okay but the new car looks sexy af

user okay but imagine if they ended up dating

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MANAGER LUCY

I need you to date Lance Stroll

Y/N

who???

MANAGER LUCY

Lawrance's kid

he got exposed for having a fan account about you

and now he looks like a love sick idiot

and he has apprently been begged his father to get a date with you since you joined the team

but he has only now just given in to giving it to him

Y/N

so I have to go on a date with someone who I have only ever met for less than a day

cuz he got exposed for thirsting over me

and now he wants to date me

MANAGER LUCY

yup

they have sent a contract though

basically be with him for six months

and if you aren't happy by the end of it you can 'break up'

but your main job is to make this overgrown fan boys dream come true

also he is willing to pay alot of money

and you will get a better contact next year

Y/N

okay okay okay

fine

but six months and then I'm done

MANAGER LUCY

good to hear it

I'll send the paper work though in a bit

Y/N

great

also I just stalked his fan account it's actually quite in a weird kinda way

yourinstagram . 2hrs ago

seen by carlossainz55 landonorris 76,379,279 others

SIR LANCE-LOT

last week of dating....

LADY Y/N-INNGTON

yeah...

SIR LANCE-LOT

I don’t want this to end

LADY Y/N-INNGTON

me neither....

SIR LANCE-LOT

wanna go skiing

LADY Y/N-INNGTON

sure

but if this is gonna work plz stop with the fan account

I don’t need to lose even more privacy 

SIR LANCE-LOT

but i have 700k followers :(((

LADY Y/N-INNGTON

I’ll buy you a ferrari to make up for it bae and I’ll let you inroduce me as your wifey to people

SIR LANCE-LOT

deal!!!!

no take backies 

lance_stroll

liked by carlossainz55 lewishamilton 87,480,297 others

lance_stroll look mom I'm a house husband for real now

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user rip YNhusband_real you shall be missed

user bro is really living my dream huh

user nah him in his wag era fr now

user ICONIC

user ugh I don't know who I want more Y/N or Lance

user haters must be salty rn

user this is everything to me

user ferrari better not fuck Y/N strategy or else lance is gonna get them all fired

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[twobluejeans]

HEARTBREAK ON TOUR!

charles leclerc x famous!reader

summary: in which the lavender haze has been lifted. or in which america’s it couple splits.

part 11: 1997 y/n’s version promo series masterlist

faceclaim: madison beer

ally’s radio 📻: PART 11! i’m sorry for starving y’all, hope this makes up 💀💗.

july 22, 2023

By Glamour

july 22, 2023 8:16AM

Just a few weeks ago, Charles Leclerc seemed to be shimmering with joy about his relationship with Lola Ransdell. “He’s happier than he’s been in a long time,” one insider told Us Weekly. Friends of Leclerc and Ransdell were texting a New Yorker writer who profiled Ransdell to say, off the record, that “this time, it’s real.” 

Close insiders  were reporting that the Ferrari driver and Youtuber were even planning to share Leclerc’s estate in Monaco, a house he once shared with singing scarlet ex, Y/n L/n.  In a recent youtube video, Ransdell herself told her fanbase, “I’ve just never been this happy in my life, in all aspects of my life, ever before.” 

Just weeks later, Leclerc’s and Ransdell’s relationship is over. So how did things go from sparks flying to their last kiss so quickly? Let’s hear from the sources.

Shortly after TMZ first reported the breakup, without a reason, a source had more for Entertainment Tonight. “They are both extremely busy and realized they’re not really compatible with each other,” they said.

That checks out — Leclerc had been off the road when their relationship went public, but the summer season of formula one recently kicked off a marathon in Britain, early July, leaving little time for their rendezvous between Ransdell’s own schedule. 

But immediately, Leclerc’s split looked and sounded like a bit of image rehabilitation given the multiple controversies following Ransdell. Their relationship became controversial as soon as it began, as fans were quick to note that Randell shared uncanny similarities to ex, Y/n L/n.

Left to right: Ransdell, L/n via instagram

As more insider comments poured in post-split, a narrative seemed to form that their relationship was just a low-key rebound all along.

“It was always casual,” a source told People. “It was never serious,” another told Us. And in an instantly memed quote, another insider told People, “They were never boyfriend-girlfriend or exclusive.” If you read between the lines of the reporting during their relationship, though, this doesn’t seem too far off. 

That source who told Us how much “happier” Leclerc was with Ransdell did go on to add, “It’s hard to tell if they’ll go the distance.” And another seemed to tell People that Ransdell was just Leclerc’s sidepiece while he was away from his main squeeze, the Hungary Grand Prix  itself. “He’s very focused on his job but is enjoying hanging out with Ransdell when he is off,” they said.

Sure, not all the insiders saw things that way. The source who initially confirmed their relationship to the The Sun said Leclerc and Ransdell were “madly in love” at the time. (Maybe they even said as much themselves.) Another had told Us that the couple was “moving fast,” adding, “They really enjoy each other’s company and want to spend as much time together as possible.” And even we saw the public kissing, cuddling, and late nights at Leclerc’s apartment.

Leclerc and Ransdell spotted at a beach in Malibu last week via@tmz

Nearly every source who confirmed Leclerc’s breakup added that he was just having “fun” with Ransdell. “He wasn’t ready for another serious relationship just yet,” a source told Us, after his previous split from six-year girlfriend Y/n L/n. 

Leclerc and L/n spotted at the same beach in malibu, just a year before Leclerc revisited the spot with the Australian Influencer via@tmz

Crucially, that source added that his friends weren’t surprised by the split, echoing a detail from that initial ET report. “Charles’s friends want what’s best for him and aren’t shocked that their relationship fizzled out,” the ET source said. “In fact, some of them even encouraged him to break up with her—his family included.”

So, the classic case of friends and family supporting a relationship in the moment even though they can already see the end. Take it from a “Page Six” source: “Everyone who really knows him has been saying all along that this was a fun, good-time thing that would last as long as it lasted and would be no big deal once it was done.”

 That insider went on to call the relationship “a summertime thing,” comparing it to his 2015 fling with Charlotte Siné.

Leclerc and Sine back in 2015, via @charlottesiine on instagram in now deleted posts.

To this unusually chatty and surprisingly profound insider, this wasn’t even a proper breakup. “It’s a natural evolution of a fun little thing whose moment is over,” they said.

Or, at least, whose moment is over for now. As one of People’s sources added after the split, “Who knows what could happen again.”

SEE MORE RELATED POSTS:

• Lola Ransdell seen leaving Charles Leclerc’s Home crying moments before news of breakup.

• Charles Leclerc and Lola Ransdell have unfollowed each other on instagram

• A look back at Charles Leclerc’s Relationships..so far

TWITTER, july 22

INSTAGRAM, july 22

liked by sabrinacarpenter, aarontaylorjohnson, gigihadid, and 8,829,184 others

yourinstagram good in goodbye. single & music video out 7/28. meet me behind the mall.

View all 17,828 comments

y/nserastour GIRL WHAT THE FUCK

lovinghimwasred i understood that reference ☝️

peteparkerml WHAT IS DREW STARKEY DOING HERE???

madisonbaileybabe my favs in one room omg

obxstarkey it’s just a music video 😀 it’s just a music video 😀 it’s just a music video 😀

obxscenes the devil (and kris jenner) work hard but y/n l/n works harder.

drewstarkey so much for summer love

y/nswizzle i just know this song is abt charles..

charlesleclercfan11 y/nswizzle she needs to leave him alone atp like it’s so obvious and embarrassing. she’s just so obsessed and using his name to stay relevant.

yourinstagram charlesleclercfan11 if you listened closely, you'd know my music's about my life, not a single person. but hey, i guess 'obsession' sells records, right?

madelyncline lowkey offended u didn’t chose me as your love interest

yourinstagram madelyncline dw babe you can be it in the next one 💘

libray/n yourinstagram WHAT DO U MEAN NEXT ONE???

TWITTER, july 22

INSTAGRAM, july 22

liked by landonorris, bejeweledleclerc, and 789,174 others

tmz_tv #Y/nL/n appears to have confirmed the dating rumors about her and #AaronTaylorJohnson! See video of Y/n and Aaron driving the getaway car from dior’s backstage after party to a private dinner near the singer scarlet’s manhattan apartment.

view all 137,929 comments

landonorris OH SHIT

szasbutterfly the 1997 y/n’s version promo is insane

kardashianclips I dont understand why it's a big thing ...like she's always dating somebody

kanye_ontop she wrote 10 songs that night

goatwest kanye_ontop 1. "London Love Story" 2. "Stage Lights and Tea" 3. "Theatrical Love Affair" 4. "Leading Man" 5. "Behind the Scenes" 6. "Silver Screen Across the Sea" 7. "Cinema Nights" 8. "West End Serenade" 9. "Take One" 10. "Scene Stealer"

salvatoredelrey this relationship is so 2010s coded

bellyxconrad the beginning of another beautiful song for us #your/fandoms/name

user31 maybe y/n should focus on her music and less on her love life. It's getting old 😒

TWITTER, july 22

ally's radio 📻 : HI GUYS IM BACK! sorry for the two month hiatus 💀 anywyas, SECRETS OUT ATJ IS THE NEW LOVERRR (bless up) (henry was so, so close) drew isn’t going to interfere w the story, just thought it’d be fun to throw him in there bc he’s hot😍. what do we think? also what do we think charles’s reaction is gonna be? lmk bc i’m so curious how y’all think this is gonna play out. i have an idea, but i’m welcome to others ofc.

taglist:@incoherenciass@dakotali@405rry@topaz125@sassyheroneckgiant@hevburn@itsmytimetoodream@ivegotparticulartaste@crowdedimagines @asterianax @haydee5010@scenesofobx@christinabae@magical-spit@dessxoxsworld@myareadsbooks@honethatty12@hopefulinlove@diasnohibng@gentlemonsterjennie1@hummusxx@eugene-emt-roe@taestrwbrry @perjarma @cxcewg@chimchimjiminie16@glow-ish@allywthsr @millyswife@mrsmaybank13@black-swan-blog27 @stargaryenx@lilsiz@ohthemisssery@leclerclvr

[nico-di-genova]

“I think I’m in love with you and I’m terrified.”

or

“You need to wake up because I can’t do this without you.”

(for lestappen please, you can choose whichever one you prefer (or both, I would not mind both)) have a great day <3

32. “I think I’m in love with you and I’m terrified.”

“You’re ignoring me,” Max states when he manages to get Charles alone for the first time in nearly a week. It is a feat accomplished only by knocking on his hotel room door until the Monegasque either grows tired of the noise or fearful of the attention it will bring. Charles Leclerc does not do anything he does not want to do, and it is clear at the moment he does not want to see Max. Even if he says otherwise.

“I am not.”

“Liar.”

“I am not lying.”

It’s clear he is, from the tension in his shoulders to the set of his jaw, to the way he keep glancing between Max’s feet, the door behind him, the blood red sleeve of a Ferrari hoodie that’s been thrown across his bed. Anywhere other than Max’s steel-eyed gaze and the hurt that must be obvious there.

Max knows how to read him, he’s had years of practice by now and the drive to study. Charles is far too expressive for his own good, his eyes betraying him when he does briefly glance at Max and there’s mirrored pain there. He looks away quickly, knows Max will see it, bites his bottom lip and curls tighter in on himself against the dresser he’s propped back on.

“Why are you avoiding me?” Max asks, calm, because he knows that raised voices accomplish nothing. His parents taught him that.

“I don’t know what I did wrong, Charles. You have to tell me, please, because I cannot read your mind.”

Not for lack of trying, not for lack of want. He’s spent countless nights studying Charles’ face in his sleep, the curve of his lips, the mole where his jaw meets his ear, another next to his nose, the way his eyelashes fan across his cheeks in a way that makes Max’s stomach do summersaults. He’s tried cataloging every expression Charles has ever given him simply for the pure organization of it. Like understanding Charles was a sport and he was going for the title, but it is the one game he cannot seem to win. The one where Charles always finds a way to throw him for a loop right as Max thinks he’s finally putting together the pieces.

Charles shifts against the dresser, uncomfortable under the pure weight of Max’s gaze. He swallows and Max watches as his adams apple bobs. A week ago he was pressing kisses there. A week ago Charles let him.

“Whatever I did, I’m sorry.”

Charles shakes his head, “You did not do anything.”

His voice is thick with tears, the way he gets after a particularly rough quali, or a DNF where he comes out with bruised ribs and fractured confidence. Max steps forward, the urge to comfort, soothe, fix overriding him, but forces himself to pause. His reaching hand drops back limply to his side, spasms with the memory of Charles’ shoulder beneath his palm.

Charles’ hands fist tighter around the fabric of his shirt, where he’s attempting to comfort himself.

“Then what is going on?”

“I-,” he shakes his head like he’s clearing away a memory, clenches his eyes closed until Max can see the tears beading at the corners, “I think I am in love with you.”

He opens his eyes and Max is confronted with the glassy shine of unshed tears.

“And I am terrified.”

If there was air in the room before it quickly evacuates, sucking Max’s ability to speak right out with it. He thinks of a week ago, the way the confession had fallen so easily from his lips while it looks like it is ripped from Charles now – carved  from his chest and placed before Max bloody and still beating with the truth of it.

He opens his mouth, he closes it.

Charles tries to wipe away the tears with the back of his shaking hand and it only spurs them into falling, trailing down his sunburned cheeks and dripping in splotches onto the fabric of his white shirt. Max watches them spread across the cotton.

“Charles.” He forces out around the lump in his throat, the only word he can manage because it is a name he would know even if all others left him. He speaks it like a prayer, like a promise, like there is nothing else.

Charles sobs, chokes, and then he’s stumbling forward as Max catches him with the ease of someone who would never let him fall.

‘This sport. It takes from you...It is like this.’ Charles had once whispered to him in the dim light of another hotel room in Japan. When Max had heard him muffling his sobs in the bathroom and knew not to press against a wound that was raw. He’d let him cry, let him pretend Max hadn’t heard, and held him that night until Charles fell asleep against him with his head tucked beneath Max’s chin.

When he woke the next morning, Charles was gone. They didn’t speak of it again.

“I’m here,” Max promises now, the same way he had whispered it into the dark of that hotel room, against the soft tufts of Charles' hair as he slept. “I’m right here.”

Max can feel Charles' fingers digging into the fabric of his shirt along his back, pressing deep enough he scratches along skin.

“I love you. And I’m right here.”

And he’s terrified too. Terrified of the way Charles makes him feel a way he’s never felt before. Max hates the feeling of unpredictability, hates that he’s come to frequently feel it with Charles. With racing, it is simple. He puts his helmet on, he drives, he takes corners that he’s practiced on the sim so many times that he can see them in his sleep. He knows how the car should feel beneath him, and he trusts his team to fix it when he tells them what is wrong. Charles is not a car. Charles cries easy, laughs easy, speaks easy, changes between moods with a frequency Max often cannot predict. He is the boy that would send Max into the barriers if pressed to, and the man who can dance along the track with him tire to tire until the end. He is perhaps the only person Max could know, truly know, down to the core of him, and the enigma who Max will never be able to solve.

He's fucking terrified of loving him. But he holds Charles anyway.

“You will leave,” Charles whispers against Max’s neck, muffled and so quiet Max knows Charles is hoping he does not hear.

Max hates to be told what he will do. He and Charles share the same stubborn drive to ignore whatever predestined path they were set on. Charles drives for Ferrari because he wants to. Max wins championships because he can. They aren’t doing it because the universe told them it was what they were meant to do, or because Max’s dad kept his hands taped to that steering wheel and pushed him into this. Charles could leave, he’s got a contract that is firmly under his own control, and Max could quit tomorrow simply because he got bored of it all. They could both fuck off to the middle of nowhere and sell ice cream from a hut simply because they had the money and means to do so. So maybe Max will leave, and maybe he won’t, and maybe he'll crash his car and maybe he’ll make it safely back to his and Charles’ bed. Who knows. He certainly doesn’t

“I might,” he says, in the same easy tone he tells GP that the car is handling like shit, feeling the way Charles freezes at the statement, “I might do a lot of things. But I will still love you in the end of it.”

He traces a finger along Charles' spine, from the notch in his neck to the dip of his back. Charles shudders, sniffles, buries himself closer to Max like he’s trying to mold them into one. He’s still crying, Max can feel the fresh tears warm against his carotid, spilling down to his collarbone and collecting at the hem of his shirt.

“Will you love me?” he asks, raw and honest, letting the ache of it fill his voice so Charles knows the truth of it, of him. Max does not ask for much, he’s learned to be content with what he has, but he’s asking now. Hoping in a way that is unfamiliar to him.

When Charles nods, it is like air returning to his lungs, like crossing the finish line and hearing GP’s voice tell him he’s won his third title. Victory, and euphoria, and the rush of adrenaline hitting him all in one fell swoop.

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. I love you,” Charles pulls away from him so he can meet Max’s gaze. His eyes are red-rimmed, bloodshot to shit, there’s snot beneath his nose. Max thinks he’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. He lifts a hand to cup Charles’ cheek and the man leans into the touch, slots perfectly against his palm that splays along his jaw. He brushes a stray tear away with his thumb and Charles’ eyes flutter closed at the touch before blinking open to meet his once more - wide, and green, and so honest - so familiar.

Max leans forward to press their foreheads together, warm breath mingling between them.

“I am terrified, but I love you,” Charles whispers, “and I’m sorry for pushing you away. It hurts too much sometimes.”

“It hurts to not know what I did wrong,” Max counters, continuing to stroke his thumb along Charles’ cheekbone, to comfort the part of him that thought he might have been losing this.

“Sorry.”

“No- Charlie, no. Don’t be sorry, just- just trust me next time, okay? Or try. I’m not going anywhere right now. You have me.”

I’m yours, he wants to say, always yours. He thinks he maybe always has been, been chasing the boy with stubborn resilience and cutting resolve for his whole life. Instead he holds Charles until the tears stop falling and their breaths come easier and the world stops feeling like it’s falling out from beneath both of them.  

I love you, and it is fucking terrifying he thinks, but god is it worth it.

When Charles looks up at him, with the quirk of his lips, the tear tracks drying on his cheeks, and the vulnerability in his eyes Max knows he feels the same.

He’s been studying, after all.

[embrosegraves]

𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝔾𝕦𝕚𝕕𝕠 𝕋𝕠 𝕄𝕪 𝕃𝕦𝕚𝕘𝕚

Alessandro Fusaro x Fem!Reader (she/her) Where taking your niece to a race has an unexpected, very stressful (but eventually very welcome) outcome.

Warnings: None! Maybe some brief talks of the dreaded emotions!! (also probably some bad Italian translations 😅)

Ember's Notes: I really hope you like this one @pear-1206 because I actually loved writing it so much oml 🫶🫶

(I left it kind of open ended so if there’s a decent demand for it, I can write a part two that focuses mainly on the pairing)

For as long as you could remember, your family had been staunch Ferrari supporters. You had been part of the Tifosi for your whole life. It was something that you had found so much joy in, being able to cheer and root for the same team as the rest of your family. Which is why you had asked your younger brother if you could take your 7 year old niece, Gianna, to the Imola Grand Prix. He had told you a few months ago that he was trying to get Gianna to be a Ferrari fan (a fan of motorsport in general) but it was turning out to be tough work.

Originally your father had planned to take you with him, but given the circumstances, he had told you to take Gianna. So you brought it up to your brother and his wife. Your sister-in-law had been worried that something might happen to Gianna (and you of course) but she swiftly agreed to let you take her daughter when you promised to facetime every morning and every night that you were away. All that was left to do was to tell Gianna that she would get to spend a whole weekend with her Zia Y/n. [Auntie]

A few weeks have gone by and it was finally time for you to introduce your niece to the world of Formula One. You hoped that she would have fun, especially given just how excited she was when her parents told her about the trip. You desperately didn’t want that excitement to have been for nothing.

“How long will we take this weekend, Zia?” You heard her ask from the backseat of your car, your beloved 1959 Fiat 500. Your car had been another thing that Gianna was excited about for the weekend, as you usually only drove it around on special occasions.

“We’re going to be here all weekend, Bambina. Nonno was kind enough to get us passes into the garage for the whole weekend.” You told her. [Baby] [Grandpa]

“Are we going to meet important people?” She asked, twiddling with her thumbs timidly. You became worried as this was so far away from how she usually was.

“Mmm, I’m not sure Fiore. Why? Are you nervous?” [Flower]

“Un po’” [A little bit]

Your heart melted and seized simultaneously. You reassured her that being nervous was normal, because she had never gone to a race weekend before. Wanting to see her smile again, you offered to teach her about who was who in the paddock as soon as you settled into your hotel room. Gianna quickly agreed and was back to her vibrant, excited self in no time.

Walking into the paddock on Friday morning was a feeling that you would happily get used to. Gianna had asked if you could try and get there earlier than all the drivers. When you asked, she told you that she still wasn’t 100% confident about who was who, despite spending well over an hour the night before looking up pictures and matching them to names. Gianna said that by getting there earlier than the others, the two of you could find a nice spot somewhere near the entrance where you could point and tell her who was walking through.

Thinking about it, you couldn’t fault her logic. So here you were bright and early. You had arrived with enough time to buy some breakfast and find a nicely shaded spot where you could settle in while you waited. Gianna had insisted that you both sit at a table that was both directly opposite the paddock entrance and under a rather large tree. Sitting down you gave Gianna her breakfast, a freshly toasted bacon and egg croissant, and made sure that she was drinking enough water from her Cars themed bottle. Similarly you also began to eat your own croissant while you sipped your scalding hot coffee.

Gianna spoke to you about what she was most excited for this weekend while you both ate. Occasionally someone would walk through the entrance that she recognised. You were surprised just how often she had noticed someone that you mentioned the previous night. So far she had pointed out some drivers, a few of the team principals and the occasional mechanic or engineer.

When Hannah Schmidt had walked through though, Gianna had nearly fallen off her seat as she pointed and told you that she had recognised and remembered the iconic woman. Said woman had heard Gianna excitedly cry and she had smiled and waved at your niece as she walked to the Red Bull garage.

You smiled when you noticed that Hannah had waved at Gianna. Happy that this trip was definitely living up to what you had promised your niece. Seeing that the two of you had long since stopped eating, you packed away your rubbish and cleaned up the area you had been sitting.

“Should we walk around for a bit, Gigi? Stretch our legs a little?”

“Yes please, Zia.”

So you packed away your things and threw away your rubbish in a nearby bin. You held Gianna’s hand and walked around for a bit as you didn’t need to be in the garage for a little while still.

Walking around the paddock with your niece made sure to point out all the things she thought were interesting. You were giving her little tidbits of information throughout the whole walk, about a bunch of things that had to do with motorsport. Granted most of the information was directly about Ferrari but hey, you were trying to induct a brand new member of the Tifosi.

Unbeknownst to you, just as you were starting to tell Gianna about the extensive history of Ferrari, a member of the Scuderia Ferrari media team had strolled past you and had heard you speaking about Enzo Ferrari. They had quickly turned around and you found yourself being approached by a small media team no less than 2 minutes later.

“Hi, I’m Sophia. I’m part of Ferrari’s media team, I was just wondering if we could film you answering some Ferrari related questions for a youtube video?”

Having not expected this change of events at all, but also knowing you wouldn’t get another chance, you agreed to let them film you. So long, of course, that they didn’t get Gianna’s face in the shot. As they started to set their equipment, you gently kneeled next to your niece and asked her to stay within a few metres of you so that she wouldn’t get lost.

“Te lo prometto Zia!” [I promise Auntie!]

“Bene.” [Good.]

As you stood up they told you that they were ready to film when you were. Giving them the go ahead they pressed record and started asking you questions. First general questions about Formula One but soon they started to ask more obscure questions about Ferrari specifically. You smiled and gave as many answers as you could. Which was a lot. Later when the video would come out, a lot of people would comment that had you not introduced yourself at the beginning they’d’ve thought you were related to Enzo himself.

The questions had ended after almost twenty minutes. Sophia had apologised because she wasn’t aware how long that would take but you assured her it was no problem at all. You readjusted your shoulder bag and went to grab Gianna’s hand, only to not see her where she was supposed to be standing.

“Gianna?” you called, trying not to panic. She was right beside you, where could she have gone?

“Gigi?! Fiore, this isn’t funny!” you tried to call out again. “Zia’s getting really worried!”

Having already excused yourself from the media team next to you, disregarding their shocked and worried looks, you quickly started walking around trying to find your niece. Walking towards the end of the paddock you kept calling out for her, hoping that someone would take pity on you and help you look. Thankfully you had taken a “fit check” photo with her this morning, meaning that when you went up to people asking if they’d seen her, you could show them a picture of what she was wearing that day.

Too many people had said they’d not seen her at all for you to be comfortable. You were starting to get frantic when another 10 minutes had gone by. There was no way you were returning home without your niece. You’d turn into Liam Neeson if you found out that someone had taken her. Speed walking past the Ferrari garage, you finally heard the sound you had needed to hear.

Gianna’s giggles.

Letting her giggling lead you to her, you ended up in the garage where you needed to be for the beginning of the practise sessions. Looking around for Gianna, you noticed that one of the mechanics was crouching down but not facing the car at all. Walking closer you finally saw that the mechanic was entertaining you niece, whose face was lit up with the biggest smile you had ever seen.

Emotions washed over you like a tsunami. She hadn’t been taken. Tears welled up in your eyes at the utter relief you felt finally knowing that she had been safe the whole time.

Rushing over to her, you quickly scooped her up into a hug, wrapping your arms around her tightly.

“Gianna! Mia cara ragazza, non hai idea di quanto fossi preoccupato! I thought someone had taken you away and you were lost forever! Sono così felice che tu stia bene!” By now your tears had begun falling down your face. [My darling girl, you have no idea how worried I was!] [I’m so glad you’re okay!]

“Zia! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to break my promise but someone pushed into me and I fell and when I got up again I couldn’t see you and then I bumped into Alessandro and he asked me why I was crying and so I told him that I couldn’t see you and that we were supposed to go to the Ferrari garage for practise so he made sure I got here without anyone else pushing me!” She rushed to tell you everything that had led to this moment. You finally let go of her, moving your hands to stroke the hair away from her face. In the back of your mind you noted that she had bumped into Charles Leclerc’s head mechanic, but that could be focussed on later.

“It’s okay Principessa. You found help, I’m proud of you. I was just worried when I couldn’t see you, that's all.” You said, finally able to wipe your own tears off of your face. “Did you say thank you to Mr. Fusaro?”

Alessandro decided to cut in before Gianna could tell you that she had indeed said thank you. “Please, there’s no need for thank you’s. I didn’t want her to get more lost or upset.”

Standing up, you gently placed a hand on Gianna’s shoulder as you faced the man in front of you. “I must insist, you just saved me from a horrible phone call with my sister-in-law.”

You both chuckled a little as you spoke. He brushed you off again saying he loved hanging out with Ferrari’s biggest little fan.

“Zia, he has a tattoo! It’s so cool!” Seeing Alessandro get a bit bashful when your niece spoke made you curious, but you decided to not bring a lot of attention to that.

“Does he?” You said. Of course you already knew. Being part of the Tifosi for as long as you had, Alessandro’s Guido tattoo was common knowledge. Funnily enough it was one of the questions Sophia had asked you. Which ferrari mechanic has an iconic tattoo and what is the tattoo? It was your favourite question to answer as it allowed you to bring up your precious Fiat 500 that you had named Luigi after the Fiat from the Cars movie. It technically also allowed you to bring up your own tattoo which was, again, based on Luigi from Cars. Not that you did bring it up. You’d never hear the end of it from your father.

“Uhuh! It’s a red Guido from the same movie as yours!” Trust your innocent niece to blurt to all Ferrari that you also had a Cars themed tattoo.

Alessandro was now less bashful and more intrigued about your tattoo.

“The same movie as yours?” He asked.

You chuckled and continued to smooth out Gianna’s hair as you faced Alessandro. “Yeah, a few years ago, maybe a month before Gianna was born, I got a tattoo of Luigi from Cars. In a pale red instead of the usual yellow.”

Gianna nodded her head quickly and began to excitedly tell him all about how the first movie she had ever watched with you was Cars and how it had become your thing together.

All too quickly time caught up and it was soon time for Alessandro to go back to work. Gianna had deflated a little at the knowledge but she perked up again when Alessandro had said that he would try and talk to them again after both practise sessions had finished.

“After all,” he said, kneeling in front of her but looking up at you, “I’d love to get to know you better.”

I actually love this so much (When I get back home, I'll be making a new masterlist for the non-drivers that I'm gonna be writing for) ((also, while i’m away from my computer i’m gonna be typing up some dusty requests and maybe some drafts as well on my phone so please excuse any irregular formatting i’ll try and fix them before i post them))

this is also being posted a lot later than i initially thought it would be. i had planned for it to be posted before Monaco but 😅 (also something will be coming for the monaco race but i want it to be perfect so it might be a while before that comes to light)

[valyrfia]

I’m not as delulu (but still delulu nonetheless) about Charles potentially joining a different team (khmm Red Bull khmmm), but it’s odd how much Charles content we’ve been given this weekend by said energy drink team. His presence almost seems more pronounced than Checo’s?? Who’s your other driver, RBR?

The Max-Charles thumbs up photo. Which Horner himself also shared on his own Insta! The last time he posted a pic of another team’s driver was during Monza. We also have the Lestappen name drop (not once, but several times???). The “post sprint talk”, the post-sprint moment of Max and Charles’ handshake and “race-plaining”. And it’s also funny that their pre-drivers parade video opens with Charles’ arrival. Yep, other drivers are also in it because they arrive after Max but before Checo, but why not crop Charles out and start the video with Max’s arrival? Oh, and also don’t forget the “Lecstappen alert” post from a few weeks ago.

And yes, I’m aware they also posted about Hamilton because ofc the podium sharers are likely to make an appearance, but it bore a more “sportmanship” kind of message. And it was one post, not several.

At first I was sure it was damage control because Max received some slander for forcing Charles wide into turn one, but why would they need it so desperately when Charles himself defended Max’s move?

I’m not implying this is more than just the admins milking the cow that is a popular driver duo for “the clicks” as Max would put it, but it’s still interesting. I know they wouldn’t have paid this much attention to Charles had he not been performing this well on the… sadly only first part of the weekend, but again, interesting.

I agree, some of it is damage control with the Checo rumours and Max running Charles off going into turn 1, but the last time Red Bull posted this much Charles content was May, which we later learned was when Charles and RBR had possible contract talks. I don’t think we’ll get a Charles to RBR move next year (I think especially after fan support in US and Mexico, Checo will see out his contract), but it’s all to play for for a 2025 seat. Again, I think Charles has given Ferrari an ultimatum: build a car and a team to suit me in 2024 or I’m leaving, and I think ongoing talks might be happening between Charles and Red Bull to put more pressure on Ferrari to keep their promises.

[slow-button-off]

Shit is now properly kicking off on twitter so I am ranting here

this is v ranty and probably makes no sense because I am having a real hard time articulating my thoughts in a coherent manner. but the men are being so shit I had to rant.

I am really happy that Ferrari social media and marketing have realised that we are in the 21st century. I like that they have realised that they have two very attractive drivers and that creating the right kind of content with them can allow them to reach a "new" demographic.

I also have to be honest and say that originally the shirtless and suggestive content with Charles felt a little bit exploitative but he himself is leaning into it on his own socials so he clearly has no issue with it. And good on him! He is hot and him and the team know it so why not use it as long as he is ok with it which he very much seems to be!

The correlation between thirst trap and shit race is a little worrying but besides the point.

I personally find it a little bit much sometimes but I am also someone who kinda enjoys being subtly marketed towards. I like the more "organic" feel. So I personally would prefer the content in "real time" so like Singapore ice bath content is a given so post it when it happens and not the Charles was in an ice bath three weeks ago content to warm us up for the new ice bath content.

But that is a to each their own thing. And I do wonder how much of that is my own internalised misogyny and need for male validation.

What really pisses me off is the reactions it's getting rn from men. Because the men have picked up on it and some are flinging misogyny at everyone including Charles. As if shirtless pictures somehow undermine his talent as an athlete.

The complete lack of understanding that not everything is marketed towards them and that it being marketed towards women doesn't make it bad pisses me off.

So much of the objection comes from a deeply misogynistic and gate keepy place. They don't like that F1 and teams are marketing towards women in order to increase their audiences because they don't want us to join.

The funniest thing is tho when they cry about sexualisation. This is a sport that used to employ women for the sole purpose of standing around and being hot. That was their job. These drivers that are now being "sexualised" just happen to be hot and are using it to their advantage but that isn't their primary purpose in F1. Also drivers have "sexualised" themselves and used their appearances to sell themselves and various other things for as long as F1 has existed. It's just now that the men are seeing that it works via social media.

I don't know quite how much of that sorta reaction from men other drivers are getting, but it does feel like it's more intense with Charles. He is leaning into it a little bit more than some others but nobody cries on twitter about pandering to female fans when Carlos posts himself cycling shirtless in a Sauna.

What also pisses me off is the infantilization of women. They love to talk about how it's all for the 13/14 year olds and how it's bad for the sport and whatever. But I'm sorry from what I have seen the women lusting after Charles the most are from 18 upwards to probably 90.

It's such a weird combination of not wanting women to join their favourite sports fandom, standard misogyny but also massive jealousy because they themselves will never get the same amount of female attention as these drivers are getting.

edit: I forgot to add that the fact that they too find Charles attractive definitely plays into it. Because Georges shirtless content isn't getting quite the same reaction from these men.

[formula365]

Proving them wrong - Italian Grand Prix review

A week ago, at the end of the Belgian Grand Prix, I couldn’t help but wonder to myself why does motorsport get me so worked up. I had just witnessed what must have been one of the most boring races at Spa, a track that fans love because racing there is usually a notch above most tracks, and yet, this time it had utterly failed to deliver. There were mitigating circumstances for that, sure, but after losing 2 hours waiting for something interesting to happen, I felt that maybe I was dedicating too much love to F1.

And then, this happened. The 2020 Italian Grand Prix wasn’t particularly remarkable in terms of racing. In fact, it was quite similar to Spa, in that, apart from some minor changes in the first few laps, and again some more in the re-start, most drivers held station. Outside of a charging Lewis Hamilton, overtaking was at a premium. There was some chasing here and there, but most cars couldn’t get close enough to the car in front to even threaten to pass, and that tension (even without conversion) is needed to create memorable racing. It was very representative of where we stand in the sport today, and the problems that the current generation of cars present.

But that was all irrelevant. What mattered - the only thing that mattered - was that the field had been mixed up by a series of circumstances that meant that for the first time in a year we were going to have a first-time winner, and for the first time in almost 8 (eight!) years we were going to have a winner from outside of Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari. With 10 laps to go, it became clear that bar a disaster for one of them, the podium would consist of Gasly, Sainz and Stroll. The order was the only thing to be defined.

In the end, we had the most emotional of wins for the Frenchman. Someone tweeted that if God liked F1, then Gasly surely had to win; perhaps He does. Pierre has gone through the most intense of rollercoasters in the last 18 months; the series of events - losing his dream job, then witnessing Hubert, one of his best friends, die in an F2 crash - that brought us here today would have crushed a lesser man. Last summer was a particularly tough moment, but he picked himself up and before the end of the year he had been on an F1 podium. Now, a week after the remembrance of Hubert’s death, he is a Grand Prix winner.

The way he climbed back up is a sign of his incredible resilience and maturity, traits that were again visible today, as he calmly took second place at the restart and then opened up a gap while others squabbled behind him and, finally, kept it cool under pressure when Sainz was closing in. The pressure must have been tremendous, but he did not succumb to it and scored the most unlikely of wins. Hubert had sent him a message after his demotion to Toro Rosso in which he urged his friend to prove them wrong; consider it proven.

And this is why we love motorsports, and keep coming back to it. The emotional highs of moments like this, witnessed live, as they unfold, is exhilarating to watch. The unscripted nature of live sports is what makes it brilliant, and every so often we get a story so well tied up that it feels like the best author in the world penned it. Today was one of those days, and it was mighty satisfying.

Talking points * I confess that I had tears in my eyes for Gasly, but also for Frank and Claire Williams. Latifi almost managed to pull off a goodbye gift, finishing P11, just one place off the points. It would not have been the send-off they would have wanted anyway, but given the current situation of the team it would have been a small tribute to their work. The radio messages from both drivers at the end were lovely, though, and reflect what pretty much anyone in F1 feel about the Williams’ family. * McLaren, on the other hadn, had another great weekend. This was their 3rd podium in the last 10 races, and this time a P2. Given that Sainz closed in on the lead in the final laps and finished 0.4s behind Gasly, this might feel like a missed opportunity right now, but in a few days’ time they will reflect that it’s a really good result and that they should feel pretty good about their weekend, specially since Norris added a P4 to it. With a Mercedes engine and Daniel Ricciardo in the team for 2021, the sight of a blue and papaya jumpsuit on the podium might become a lot more common. * Lance Stroll will also feel disappointed with himself, but this feeling might linger for longer than with McLaren. The Canadian driver had everything to win this race at the restart, benefitting from the red flag to change tyres; he was the only one yet to pit at that point. In P2 behind a Hamilton doomed by his penalty, the race was, as he himself admitted, his to lose. And lose it he did, with a terrible restart. He ended up on the podium, the first for Racing Point under this name, so not all was lost, but he will surely feel he could have done better. * Gasly and AlphaTauri missed out on what would have been a mega podium with thousands of fans lining the pit straight, but Ferrari were certainly glad the fans were nowhere to be seen. It wasn’t just that their pace was horrible, it was that they had a second consecutive non-scoring race, and a spectacular double DNF as well, with Vettel suffering brake failure and Leclerc shunting into the tyre barrier in the Parabolica. They are having a torrid time, which makes the Mugello 1000th Grand Prix celebrations even more awkward. This is definitely not where they wanted to be to celebrate such a historic milestone. * Speaking of awkward, Mercedes’ failure to realise the pitlane was closed when they ordered Hamilton to come for his stop was something we are just not used to seeing from that mean winning machine, specially when the other half of the garage realised that and didn’t call Bottas in. Given the lack of pressure on Hamilton they can afford a mistake or two, though, and the reigning champion ended up just 2 positions behind his team mate. With the extra point for fastest lap, that meant Bottas only cut his deficit by 3 points. * It wasn’t just Ferrari that ended pointless from the front teams: Red Bull also failed to score, with Verstappen retiring with engine problems and Albon down in P15. He had issues with his car and was unable to compete with anyone even at the back, but regardless of the reasons, his result only brought further into the light not only the contrast with Gasly but also the way that Red Bull handle their drivers. Surely at some point they will have to realise that perhaps the struggles with their second driver are maybe down to them as well?

[dailrpwmf-blog]

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[dicloniusgames]

LEGO’s Price Increases & My Response To It

It’s no secret the global economy has felt the pressure of not only the pandemic but also the rising costs of the essentials such as gas & food. While LEGO has eaten the costs of raw materials to keep the consumers happy, they too are being forced to up their prices on sets due to the costs of raw materials and operations. 

In a press release reported by Brickset, LEGO stated that while they’ve managed to absorb these rising costs, they’re making the decision to raise prices on already existing sets (and even some new releases coming later in the year) while some may not see any increase in price. This increase will be based on a percentage basis. (I’ll link the full article below at the end as well if you want the full statement). 

So what does this mean not only for collectors, builders, but even me? Well these price increases won’t take effect until August & September, region dependent so should that mean you go rush out and buy the sets you want before they increase in price? 

That is a choice and not a bad one, but remember, only selected sets are seeing an increase which I’ll list an article below of what some of those are. 

Now how do I take news like this that a hobby I’ve gotten back into six months ago is now feeling the effects of the inflation of pricing? And what will be my plan going forward? While I’m not a huge fan, I’ll take away a couple points from LEGO’s official statement to observe. 

First and foremost, the global economy is seeing a major uptick in a lot of essential and even non-essential items so having to increase prices on sets to keep up with the ever rising prices of the raw materials LEGO uses to make these sets for us fans is costly for the consumer, especially when LEGO stated they at their heart put consumers first. I get trying to keep the consumers in mind when having to make a choice like this but this just doesn’t affect resellers & investors, it also affects the average consumer who can maybe afford one or two sets per year. So if LEGO wants to put the consumer first, then why are we going to be the most affected by these price changes? Heck, some people around various parts of the world pay even more for LEGO due to currency conversions so something priced at $200 in the U.S. isn’t going to be equal in another part of the world like Australia, New Zealand or Canada who pay more. 

Secondly, why are the most demanding and/or expensive and even newly released sets seeing these price changes? Sets like the Optimus Prime or the Dagobah Jedi Training that just released within the past month or two are seeing increases while some released years ago and still in rotation might not see any change? The most affected section of LEGO seeing this change set-wise is the Technic theme as those are some of the most expensive sets on the market, especially given the Lamborghini Sian & Ferrari Daytona SP3 are the two most expensive Technic sets out there and they’re seeing some of the biggest percentage increases. Possibly, this change could be only majorly targeting the AFOL (Adult Fan Of LEGO) Community but only time will tell. 

Finally, what’s my plan going forward and how to combat these price changes? Firstly, my hope is to get the sets I really want before the price changes occur then take a break to see how much change happens and what sets see the full effect of it as well as the full list of sets increasing in price. Thankfully with 2X points week occurring at the end of the month, it gives me an opportunity to hop on and stack a major amount of VIP points to rake in towards the bigger rewards like $50 and $100 off purchases respectively. Mostly after, I’ll take a bit of a hiatus until around the holiday season when I do Christmas shopping for others but buying for myself will occur again after the holidays, which is also dependent on space. 

Anyway, what do you think of these price changes and are you outraged by LEGO saying they put customers first but expect them to eat the brunt of the price changes or are you more understanding of why LEGO has to do this? Sound off...

Stone Wars article: (https://www.stonewars.de/news/lego-preiserhoehung-september-2022/)

Brickset article: (https://brickset.com/article/77383/lego-announces-price-increases-from-august) 

[thecostumeplot]

Episode 21: Walk the Line & The Impossible

Both  

Welcome to The Costume Plot.

Jojo

I'm Jojo Siu.

Sarah  

And I’m Sarah Timm. We're professional designers with a passion for costume design and the performing arts. Our podcast does contain spoilers. Accompanying slideshows for each movie are linked in the episode description.

Jojo

We hope you'll join us every other week as we delve into the wonderful world of costume design in The Costume Plot. [music]

Sarah  

Hello!

Jojo  

Hello, welcome back.

Sarah  

How's it going?

Jojo  

Yay. We actually recorded more often this month, and I still feel like it's been forever. [both laugh]

Sarah  

I know! We're curring it fine again, too, where we're not that long from release. But that's okay. We have time. It's great. Here we are. We made it.

Jojo  

Sorry. It's been a busy month.

Sarah  

Jojo's had a lot going on. But we're glad. I'm glad you've made it. Here you are.

Jojo  

Thanks. Still surviving somehow. [laughs]

Sarah  

Yeah. So I have a thing that I want to talk about at the top of the show today. It's a little bit of self promotion. So I hope our listeners are okay with that. I am competing in the Her Universe Fashion Show, as you guys might know. And it's virtual this year, and there is an audience vote. [editor's note: Votes are now closed! I didn't win!] So I'm campaigning for votes right now! I need your vote. [laughs]

Jojo  

Yay!

Sarah  

If I win, if I win, I get the chance to design a line with Her Universe that gets sold in Hot Topic. So it's a really big deal. My look is "Hamilton"-inspired. And if you listen to the show, you know I am a big fan of "Hamilton".

Jojo  

Yes.

Sarah  

I'm really proud of it. And I got to shoot in a theater, like an abandoned theater, from the 20s. So like, I'm just so excited. So all the links that I have so far will be in the description of this episode. We haven't given been giving a lot information. It's on... I'll back up. It's on July 23. [laughs] At 5pm pacific time.

Jojo  

Very important.

Sarah  

Yeah, that's the important information. And it's part of Comic-Con@Home, San Diego Comic Con. And so we don't have any specific links for where to watch it yet. But I do have a link that will hopefully be updated as the info gets released. And then that will hopefully also have voting stuff. But yes, please watch. And then please vote for me, if you like my look.

Jojo  

Yay! Definitely vote for Sarah.

Sarah  

Thank you so much.

Jojo  

I'm so excited to see it in person.

Sarah  

I'm so excited too.

Jojo  

I've only been seeing snippets of it.

Sarah  

I know. If you follow me on social media, I've been trying my best to kind of like build some suspense. I made a little trailer in iMovie. I'm doing the thing.

Jojo  

I saw that. I love it.

Sarah  

I'm working hard on trying to get people interested, because I mean... more power to them, but I'm competing against some people who have multiple thousands of followers. Like, 25-100k. So I gotta find a way to stand out, you know, when I don't have that big of a fan base.

Jojo  

Mmhmm. Right.

Sarah  

Which, like, I'm excited for them that they have that. I just don't.

Jojo  

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Sarah  

So.

Jojo  

We'll get there eventually.

Sarah  

I mean, maybe I'll win and then I'll be... my followers will just "whoosh!"... through the roof.

Jojo  

That would be great.

Sarah  

So then I'm Instagram famous. [both laugh] Okay. Yeah.

Jojo  

Perfect. Onto our theme!

Sarah  

Our theme this week! I'm going first this week, our theme is... are we calling this "based on real life events"? Is that what we're...?

Jojo  

I think so. I think that's what we ended up deciding, like, based on true events.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

And however loosely that is, that is true.

Sarah  

Yeah. So real people or real historical events. So I chose "Walk the Line". Because I'm not usually a biopic person. I often find them to be a little bit... I don't wanna say "heavy handed," but it's sort of like they're always sort of Oscar-bait movies. And they're really melodramatic sometimes, but I really like "Walk the Line". And I'm not even a giant Johnny Cash fan. I just love this movie.

Jojo  

Yeah.

Sarah  

I think I also just really love Reese Witherspoon. So that helps a lot. She's...

Jojo  

She's pretty great.

Sarah  

...one of my faves. Okay, so I'll just dive in. It was released in 2005. So I was like, you know... it still feels like a very current movie to me, but it's very much not. Because that was...

Jojo  

I know, I forget how far away 2005 was. Like, that really wasn't that long ago, but...

Sarah  

Once again, just facing our own mortality on this show. Going, "What? ...Okay."

Jojo  

How have we passed this many years already?

Sarah  

[laughs] Exactly. It was directed by James Mangold, who is a very prolific director. He's done "Logan," "Ford v. Ferrari," "3:10 to Yuma," "Girl, Interrupted," and he's also a producer. So he produced "Greatest Showman," lots of blockbuster movies. And the costumes were designed by Arianne Phillips, who works a lot with James Mangold. So she designed a lot of those movies that I just mentioned, in addition to "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," "Kingsman: The Golden Circle," "Nocturnal Animals," which I heard is not a very good movie, but the costumes are great. [laughs]

Jojo  

Yeah.

Sarah  

And then she also has a really long-standing working relationship with Madonna. So she has styled basically everything Madonna has done, like in the last...

Jojo  

That's amazing.

Sarah  

...decade, at least. So, good for her. That's great.

Jojo  

Yeah, exactly.

Sarah  

Oh, and she also did a couple of really iconic movies that I haven't even seen. But if I can... I can imagine the looks from them. So those are "Tank Girl" and "The Crow". And I'm like...

Jojo  

[gasps] Ooooh.

Sarah  

...I know both of those visually, even though I haven't seen them.

Jojo  

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sarah  

So she's done a lot of great work.

Jojo  

Mmhmm.

Sarah  

She has been nominated for three Oscars, one for "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," one for "W.E.,", which makes sense, because didn't Madonna direct that?

Jojo  

I think so.

Sarah  

And then this movie. And she has not won an Oscar yet, but she probably will eventually.

Jojo  

Mmhmm.

Sarah  

And she has been nominated for a lot of Costume Designers' Guild Awards, and she won one for "W.E.". And then she also has a Tony for "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" on Broadway, because I think she did the movie as well.

Jojo  

Oh yeah, I forgot she did that one. Yeah.

Sarah  

Yeah. So it's cool... I like when-- it happened with my movie last week, too, where the designers also got to design the stage adaptation of the movie that they designed. I think that's cool. Okay, so the movie itself was in part based on two autobiographies, "Man in Black" from 1975, and "Cash: the Autobiography" from 1997. Although they say that the film goes deeper into some painful sort of subjects that Johnny Cash himself didn't really dive into in those books.

Jojo  

Mmhmm.

Sarah  

I don't really have any other like background on the movie itself. I think they were trying to get it made for a really long time. And it just like, finally happened in 2005. So let me share my screen. I have a lot of pictures this week. So I think that, you know, I'll obviously put all of them on Pinterest, but I might have to weed out a few for Instagram, or I might have to do two posts, we'll kind of see how I feel.

Jojo  

Mmhmm.

Sarah  

Partly because I have some real life pictures, as you can see, to compare to the movie.

Jojo  

Yeah.

Sarah  

And then also because we go through, like, three decades. We go from the 40s through to the late 60s. So there's a lot of periods being represented.

Jojo  

A lot of period wear.

Sarah  

I don't know why put this one first. That doesn't go first. That's not it. [both laugh] That one's first. Okay, so we open in 1944. I mean, basically, the story of this movie is Johnny Cash's life, which is... he starts growing up in rural Arkansas. And he loses his older brother very young, in a tablesaw accident, which is really sad. And it seems like it informs a lot of his life, and his trauma, throughout the movie.

Jojo  

Mmhmm.

Sarah  

And then he joins the military and gets married. And then he kind of hits it big in music. And then it's basically just about his musical career, and also his struggle with drugs and alcohol. And then also his eventual relationship with June Carter, who he falls in love with when he's already married to his first wife. And he doesn't exactly stay faithful to her. But then he and June...

Jojo  

[laughs] As we well know.

Sarah  

[laughs] Yeah. He and June eventually do get married. And, you know, after the events of this movie, they were married for like 35 years. Until they both passed away. So that's the story. It's Johnny Cash's life. Okay. So here we are in 1940s Arkansas, and I like these sort of first scenes, they're very warm in color, I feel like. Everything looks kind of dusty, but also really hot, you know, and it kind of sets the mood of this. They're very poor. So this is him and his brother, he... Johnny is on the left. And when he's young, he goes by the name JR. And he has a lot of guilt because his brother, he says, is the good son. Basically, his brother wants to be a preacher and is really good at minding his parents and is really helpful, and JR just feels lesser-than, like he's not as good as his brother. So.... Oh, also his dad is abusive. And his dad even says, after his brother dies, he says,  "God took the wrong son," basically.

Jojo  

Mmhmm. Yeah.

Sarah  

So that's gonna really impart some trauma on your child, to say something like that.

Jojo  

Just a little bit.

Sarah  

Just a little bit. Yeah, so this is them going fishing. And their little relationship is so cute, they're clearly very close. And so it's even more heartbreaking that one of them dies. And then this is his mom, who is the one who teaches him to sing and stuff. And this is... oh, I have this, and I was thinking about cutting it, but I have a picture of her later in the movie. So I wanted to compare, you know, her. Because she's not in a lot in the movie. But we see her go through a big change, you know, after Johnny is successful and is probably like, paying for her to have a happy life. A happy, comfortable life later in life.

Jojo  

Right.

Sarah  

So, yeah... oh... yeah, I put these in a dumb order. Okay, this one. [both laugh] Sometimes I label them wrong.

Jojo  

I do the same thing.

Sarah  

So this is Johnny thing after he goes and serves in Germany. And that's kind of like... not really focused on in the movie. But... this is... he has a job, basically, as a door to door salesman, and he's not doing a very good job at it. So this outfit really says to me a real lack of personality, because he hasn't really found who he is yet. He hasn't found his own identity. He hasn't found even-- he knows that he likes to sing. But he hasn't really let himself think that maybe he could be a successful music artist.

Jojo  

Mmhmm.

Sarah  

And also, when he first tries, when he first starts a band, they do exclusively gospel music. And the radio guy who they meet with is like, "Gospel music doesn't sell anymore. What do you have?" And so he like, on a whim, plays him... the famous song about shooting man in Reno. Can't remember what it's called. [editor's note: "Folsom Prison Blues"]

Jojo  

You're asking the wrong person, I'm so bad with names. [laughs]

Sarah  

I don't know.

Jojo  

I know what you're talking about, though.

Sarah  

I honestly... "I hear a train a-comin'." I don't know. Anyway, I really liked this soundtrack in high school when it came out.

Jojo  

Yeah.

Sarah  

I just don't remember the names of the songs. So this is them playing for that radio guy.

Jojo  

Mmm.

Sarah  

And it's not really communicated why he chose black. But black becomes, obviously, his signature color. Maybe it's just like, they all had black in their wardrobe. So they were like, "let's all just wear black."

Jojo  

Right. Pretty standard color.

Sarah  

Yeah. And his wife says, "It looks like you're going to a funeral." And throughout the movie, people tell him that. And he's like, "maybe I am."

Jojo  

[laughs] "Maybe that's exactly what I'm doing."

Sarah  

Let's see. So there's an LA Times article that's an interview with Arianne Phillips, and she says, "You can read a lot into it. Black is a very humble color, and Cash was a working man's man. He was also an outsider who didn't belong to the rock world, or the country world. And there was something shocking at the time about wearing all black. It's what you wore to funerals. So it worked for him on many levels." So he just becomes... he becomes the man in black, you know.

Jojo  

Yeah.

Sarah  

This is his wife, Vivian. And I have a lot to say about her.

Jojo  

[laughs]

Sarah  

Because... so she's played by Ginnifer Goodwin, who we can see here, I like this. I really like this pattern of this gingham with the stripe, with the cardigan on top.

Jojo  

Mmhmm.

Sarah  

I pulled it because it's like my favorite look of hers. But I want to talk about stuff that isn't even costume related when it comes to her character. So his wife, Vivian, let's get into it. She was...

Jojo  

[laughs] Let's dive deep.

Sarah  

I'm ready. She was a mixed race woman. And I found this out because a Twitter thread came across my page recently where it was like, "can't believe they cast Ginnifer Goodwin to play a black woman," basically. And I was like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, what are we talking about here?" So I did some research. Her grandparents were from Italy. And then Vivian, according to her at the time, her grandmother--I mean, her mother's family--was like, German and Irish.

Jojo  

Mmhmm.

Sarah  

So in real life, Vivian was photographed at a court hearing with Johnny when he was arrested for drug possession. And in the photo, she looks darker skinned than him. And so at the time, I found an article... oh, in the Washington Post, and it said, "at the time in the eyes of most Americans, you were either black or you weren't." And interracial marriage would not become legal until 1967. So leaders of the racist National State's Rights Party in Alabama ran an article in their newspaper "exposing" Johnny for having a "Negro" wife, basically being like, "they're trying to hide the fact that she's black."

Jojo  

Ahh. Right.

Sarah  

And they were connected to the KKK, this organization was, and they boycotted him for like a year. So he had to basically file a counter attack and sue them for this, because Vivian at the time thought that she was white. She had gone to all white schools, and on her birth certificate, marriage certificate, it says Caucasian, because...

Jojo  

Ah, right.

Sarah  

That's what their whole family thought they were. So in THIS year, February of 2021, Roseanne Cash--Johnny's daughter, who is also a country star in her own right--went on the show "Finding Your Roots". Which is about genealogy and DNA tracing.

Jojo  

Right.

Sarah  

And they found that Vivian Cash's--so Vivian, the wife's--maternal great great grandmother was an enslaved black woman named Sarah Shields, whose white Father, in 1848, had "granted her and her eight siblings their freedom and their passage into whiteness." So she married a white man. And by the time Jim Crow arrived in the 1930s, all of her children and their descendants were listed as white. So...

Jojo  

Wow.

Sarah  

...she had basically erased her own blackness, Sarah Shields did, from her descendants.

Jojo  

Right.

Sarah  

So Vivian Cash did not even know that she had a black ancestor.

Jojo  

Right.

Sarah  

So, I was ready to come on the podcast and be like, "Can you believe they whitewashed this character?" But in 2005...

Jojo  

Right.

Sarah  

...we were still taking Vivian's word for it--and her whole family's word for it--that she didn't have any black relatives.

Jojo  

Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah  

So isn't that interesting? [laughs]

Jojo  

That's so crazy. Like to, I mean, to not know that, too. I feel like...

Sarah  

I know.

Jojo  

...that's such a huge part of your identity, to not know for your entire-- I mean, for your adult life too, not even... like, it's one thing if you didn't know as a kid, because you just didn't know any better. But to have have that all throughout your adulthood, like, that's crazy.

Sarah  

Yeah, it probably made the real Vivian's life easier that she had been passing, you know?

Jojo  

Oh, yeah. Right.

Sarah  

But it is kind of heartbreaking to know that, like, this enslaved woman's story wasn't known until now.

Jojo  

Yeah. Until many, many, many years later.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

That's crazy!

Sarah  

I know! So I just thought it was really interesting. The other thing I'll say about this character is that... this is the thing I don't like about biopics. It's that there's often, in the stories of great men--like, genius men--there's often a first wife or a first girlfriend who is just seen as a long-suffering wife, who has his children. But basically, the audience is kind of meant to see her as a complainer who's holding him back from achieving his destiny.

Jojo  

Right.

Sarah  

And I definitely think that she serves that role in this movie. And it kind of is a disservice to her, because they were married for like 12 years.

Jojo  

Yeah.

Sarah  

And probably a lot of those years were really difficult for her. So I think it sucks for her to just be portrayed as like, she's holding him back from being the real Johnny Cash, and also holding him back from his relationship with June, which is also problematic.

Jojo  

Right, right. I think that's a lot of biopics, too, it's like, you know.... Oh, you're right. She definitely... she definitely looks like she has some sort of Black in her history.

Sarah  

Yeah, she looks darker skinned. And like, you know, at the time, she was probably just like, "Oh, I have olive tone. I have Italian, you know, Mediterranean DNA."

Jojo  

Right, right. Right.

Sarah  

Yeah. So that's the real life Vivian and Johnny. Okay.

Jojo  

So interesting.

Sarah  

I know, right? So I... that just kind of gave me the lesson of, like: don't get mad about things you see on Twitter without actually reading what they're about. [laughs]

Jojo  

Do the research first.

Sarah  

Yeah. All right. Moving on. Moving on. So this is Jerry Lee Lewis, and I love him. He's sort of... he has a more flamboyant style, obviously. My brother was watching this movie with me and said he looked really 70s, and I could agree with that.

Jojo  

Yeah.

Sarah  

Even though this is the 50s at this point. He has sort of, like, unbuttoned... very rakish hair. And then this is him in real life. So I feel like it's a pretty good job casting.

Jojo  

Ohh. Yeah.

Sarah  

Okay, let's talk about June because let's get to the main event, honestly.

Jojo  

Yeah!

Sarah  

This is a picture of Reese on set. So her hair is not... like, I think her hair is in rollers.

Jojo  

Yeah.

Sarah  

And she's just walking to or from. But this is the best picture I could find of this whole dress. There's not a lot of really good high quality pictures out there.

Jojo  

Right.

Sarah  

And Arianne talks about this costume. So she says for June Carter Cash, she referenced 1950s Howdy Doody culture and Minnie Pearl, who... I don't know really who that is. Didn't Google it. "She found her talisman for the character at the Santa Monica Vintage Expo, a ruffled red organza dress with a sweetheart neckline and Swiss dot overlay," that she wears in basically her first scene. And they had to rework it, and redo it, because it was rotting, apparently.

Jojo  

Ohh.

Sarah  

So I wonder if that means that they replaced the whole lining, or did they take a pattern off it and basically make a replica? Unclear. Yeah. And she says, "the dress summed up for me the place that June Carter comes from as a child performer, as this comedic character at the Grand Ole Opry. I knew we would see her transform into a woman but the starting point was this cartoonish country girl." So June says in the movie that her sisters are the pretty ones and the talented ones, and that she had to learn to be funny.

Jojo  

Mmhmm.

Sarah  

And so we can see, sort of, it's a little immature and young-looking, and definitely sort of cartoony.

Jojo  

Mmhmm. Very comedic.

Sarah  

Yes, exactly. Here is that dress onstage. And they said... I watched an interview with her on YouTube as well. She said that they did a screen test in this video.

Jojo  

Mmhmm.

Sarah  

And the... not the network. The... the studio! That's the word I'm looking for. [both laugh] The studio got worried because the sleeves were really poofy. And it was just this sort of... it was more cartoony than they were originally... thinking.

Jojo  

...Expecting. Yeah.

Sarah  

Yeah. And when you book a name as big as Reese Witherspoon, the studio definitely wants Reese Witherspoon's fans to come to the movie and see Reese Witherspoon.

Jojo  

Right.

Sarah  

Like, people are expecting to recognize her. So they don't want the costume to swallow her and be all that people can focus on. So...

Jojo  

Right.

Sarah  

...studio notes are often like, "Oh, make the lead sexier," or "tone this down."

Jojo  

Yeah.

Sarah  

And I think that they took some extra ruffles off the sleeves from what it originally looked like. But it looks pretty-- they showed some footage of the screen test and it looks pretty much the same.

Jojo  

Mmhmm. I mean, they still kept that poof sleeve too. I feel like there's still that. It doesn't take away enough from her, that you're not like, "oh, who is that?" Or like, "I'm so distracted."

Sarah  

Yeah. Exactly. Agreed. So this is Johnny onstage. And he goes... we see a few of his sort of onstage outfits before he starts only wearing black. It seems like he started wearing exclusively black on stage in the 60s. So this is him in the 50s, it's this lovely red- burgundy.

Jojo  

Yeah. Oooh.

Sarah  

I like that.

Jojo  

Does he have a design on his lapel too?

Sarah  

Oh, it... does it say JC?

Jojo  

Or J... oh yeah, that's pretty cool.

Sarah  

It's hard to find pictures of this movie, which is surprising.

Jojo  

Yeah.

Sarah  

Like, I always expect, if it was nominated for costumes, that I'll be able to find really good pictures of the costumes.

Jojo  

That's what you would think!

Sarah  

Not so much.

Jojo  

Nope.

Sarah  

So this is June later on when they're on tour. And they're kind of just walking through town, having some time off. And so we see this in contrast to her stage persona, her real life wardrobe is a lot more subdued. It's still very sweet and feminine, but it's definitely more grown up, and as she goes through the movie, it definitely gets more and more grown up as she evolves and comes into her own. Oh... do have a picture? I don't think I do. So in the interview Arianne said she found an orange and green flowered dress, a vintage one, because apparently the budget was pretty small for this.

Jojo  

Yeah.

Sarah  

So she used a lot of actual vintage, borrowed... you know, found for cheap. And one of them she found, she found an actual picture of June Carter Cash in that exact same dress! Like, she found the actual dress.

Jojo  

Oooh. Yeah.

Sarah  

But I couldn't figure out which dress it was, because she wears two that are orange and green floral. [laughs]

Jojo  

"Which one?!"

Sarah  

And it's not this one, but they're later in the movie. So I think I got rid of the pictures because I was like, "I don't know which one it is." So I can't really hold this up and be like, "See?"

Jojo  

[laughs] Right. Right.

Sarah  

So that was frustrating.

Jojo  

I do love the floral motif that she has on a lot of her stuff.

Sarah  

Yeah, I like the colors that she wears too. She doesn't stick to certain colors.

Jojo  

Right. Right.

Sarah  

I would say generally it's pretty warm. She does wear a little bit of blue. But yeah, it's just like a nice... you know, wardrobe.

Jojo  

Fun. I would wear this skirt.

Sarah  

Yeah, it's cute.

Jojo  

If I wore skirts more often. [laughs]

Sarah  

I wear too many skirts. Like, when I go to thrift stores I go to the skirts first and I ended up with... I have so many of them, and I keep buying them because I love them. Anyway.

Jojo  

[laughs] They're great.

Sarah  

So this is her onstage singing later in the movie. I think we might be moving into late 50s at this point. And then I have a full body shot of this. So once again with a floral motif.

Jojo  

So cute!

Sarah  

I know, right? She's got a little bit of a bouffant happening.

Jojo  

Mmhmm.

Sarah  

And this is definitely more streamlined in silhouette than that frilly one was at the beginning. So she's moving away from her cartoony image and into more of a serious singer.

Jojo  

Mmhmm.

Sarah  

This is her onstage again. Once again, could not find great picture. I found some on a mannequin.

Jojo  

So sad!

Sarah  

I think it was auctioned, so here's this.

Jojo  

So cute.

Sarah  

And I thought, looking at this picture of her onstage, that it was beaded.

Jojo  

Yeah, I was gonna say that's what I thought too.

Sarah  

Yeah, cuz it's sparkly. But I found this, and you can see that it's like a metallic embroidery?

Jojo  

Oh, yeah. It's almost like a trim.

Sarah  

Yeah, it's very sparkly, but it's not actually beads. It's the fabric.

Jojo  

I wonder if it's real metal, because you know how they used to have that on some of the trims?

Sarah  

Right.

Jojo  

That's probably what's creating that extra sparkle

Sarah  

Could totally be. Okay, so what's next? We're moving into.... Okay, I have this picture, it's called "John is a mess."

Jojo  

[laughs]

Sarah  

Because he's a mess. This is when he basically has lost everything, he had a breakdown on stage. He's drinking too much. He's doing drugs. Vivian has left him at this point. So he's living in this nasty apartment.

Jojo  

Mmhmm.

Sarah  

And he's wearing this, it looks like a tux shirt, because of the pleats.

Jojo  

Oh, yeah.

Sarah  

But it's clearly very... he hasn't showered, it's very yellowed. Looking pretty gross. And then... oh, I liked this. Because we got to see some period children's wear. This is an upsetting scene, as you can see, the children are crying. [laughs] But...

Jojo  

It's so funny to me, because it's always those little scenes of children that we're always like, "Okay, we HAVE to get these images." Because you just don't see them very often.

Sarah  

I love period children's wear!

Jojo  

I know. It's great.

Sarah  

Children look so cute in vintage clothes.

Jojo  

So cute. I can't wait.

Sarah  

I was at a party the other day and one of the kids running around was wearing... it looked like a little Oktoberfest dirndl, but it was vintage.

Jojo  

Yes!

Sarah  

It was like a three year old girl wearing a vintage dress.

Jojo  

Love that.

Sarah  

And I was like, "that girl looks so good."

Jojo  

On point, mom! On point.

Sarah  

I know. I was like, "you're doing it correctly." I love that. Yeah, I mean... I haven't anything to say about them. They're just cute. And I like seeing period kid's clothes.

Jojo  

Yeah. Yep. Agreed.

Sarah  

Okay, how am I doing on time? I'm doing great on time! Yay.

Jojo  

Woohoo!

Sarah  

This is Thanksgiving, later when Johnny is starting to get his act together, but hasn't quite. But he invites basically his parents and then June and her parents, and it ends up getting very awkward because his dad is very... his dad sucks, basically, his dad is really mean. But this is in the 60s, as you can see from the hair, and such. [laughs]

Jojo  

Yep.

Sarah  

And on the left here, this is Johnny's mom. So she's gone through a big transformation since we saw her in the 40s, of course. She has money. She's hopefully happier, even though her husband sucks.

Jojo  

Yeah.

Sarah  

And then June in the middle is... oh, I have this dress. Here it is.

Jojo  

So beautiful.

Sarah  

It's pretty.

Jojo  

It's that lantern sleeve that I love again!

Sarah  

I know, we love a lantern sleeve.

Jojo  

So funny. I keep seeing that everywhere. I'm like, "just looks good every time I see it."

Sarah  

It does. And also, in my opinion, it's timeless.

Jojo  

Yeah, I agree. It's a really elegant look.

Sarah  

Yes.

Jojo  

Especially, I mean, most of the ones I've seen happen to be transparent or some kind of see-through material. So maybe I'm just a little more biased, but I just think it looks really nice. And it's just, I don't know, it's kind of secretive and seductive while also being classy.

Sarah  

Yeah, you're covered up, but you're not.

Jojo  

Right, exactly.

Sarah  

Totally. So this dress is, I think it's probably chiffon. It's this gorgeous burgundy. It looks so good with her brown hair.

Jojo  

Yeah.

Sarah  

And it's totally free of surface decoration, you know? So it's like her final sort of evolution into a more mature adult woman. And then, I would say, we talk a lot about how in period movies you can kind of tell what era they're made in, because they don't quite go all the way to the period.

Jojo  

Mmhmm.

Sarah  

And I think that we can see that in Reese's hair for a lot of the movie, and probably a little bit in the makeup too, because her makeup looks pretty modern for the time in a lot of the shots, like this one right here. I mean, she has a maybe a little liquid eyeliner on. And the lipstick is definitely pink. You know, that's definitely a 50s/60s color. But...

Jojo  

Right.

Sarah  

I think the way she's styled, they clearly wanted to make sure ...like I said, the studio wanted to make sure that people saw her.

Jojo  

...It was a good enough balance that it still felt like it could relate to contemporary audience.

Sarah  

Exactly. They don't want to make... they don't want to alienate her from her audience by making her look too removed from the Reese that we know and love. So I think that that's a pretty good balance, actually, that they struck, because this hairstyle is pretty period looking. But it's also... it also looks kind of 2005, so there's that.

Jojo  

Yeah, seriously.

Sarah  

All right. Oh, I was close to cutting this picture. But I was like, "couldn't possibly do it." This coat.

Jojo  

I love it. Love it so much.

Sarah  

So good.

Jojo  

I do love a good pea coat. in general.

Sarah  

It's... I love all coats. I love codes from all periods. I think everybody looks good in coats. I like summer a lot, but I will say some of my best outfits involve a jacket, because I love jackets and coats.

Jojo  

Yeah. That's why I miss fall so much. All the pea coats you can wear.

Sarah  

This is when she she takes him to... she's basically helping him get his his life together. And she takes him to church. So here they are going to church. And he's kind of like, I don't know... I like a lot of his offstage wear and I would have pulled some of it but this movie stays really tight on like, heads and shoulders. So there weren't any good screencaps I could find of most of the stuff he wears offstage. So, you'll just have to trust me that a lot of it's really cute. [laughs]

Jojo  

I trust you, Sarah.

Sarah  

All right. And here is his freakin'... like, he's back. He's at the record label being like, "guess what? I'm gonna play a show at Folsom Prison." And they're like, "Say what?" And actually, I enjoyed this because there was a scene of him getting dressed. So... ta-da. Close up on that fabric. I love it.

Jojo  

Mmhmm.  Ooh, yeah.

Sarah  

Arianne said that while they had a small budget, the money they did spend was getting a lot of his stuff custom made. So...

Jojo  

Yeah.

Sarah  

...you can kind of tell, you know, it looks great, especially this outfit.

Jojo  

That's usually how we prioritize, you know. The lead character usually is who gets kind of the more custom made items, or at least the ones that are... a little more focus are put on them.

Sarah  

Exactly. And I think she probably saved a lot of money on shoes, because like I said, hardly any shots of anybody's full body in this movie. [laughs]

Jojo  

Mmhmm.

Sarah  

Okay, and then here's him performing at Folsom. And I like this because of the the stark visual contrast between all of the inmates in blue, and then him in black in the middle. I just think it's a really effective picture.

Jojo  

Mmhmm. Yeah.

Sarah  

And then I have one last one. This is when they're performing on stage. And he proposes her onstage, which is a very sweet scene. But she also had said no to him so many times. Like, obviously, he knew that she was in love with him. And he could feel that and probably could feel that she wanted to marry him. But he also... it's also just a little bit like he pressures her into it. Just a tiny... it's still very sweet, though.

Jojo  

Juuust a little bit.

Sarah  

It's... Yeah.

Jojo  

I mean, anytime you do something that public.

Sarah  

Right, you're like...

Jojo  

They don't really have another option.

Sarah  

Exactly. You're like, "Oh, so you won't say yes on the tour bus. So you'll say yes onstage in front of hundreds of people." [both laugh] I like this outfit on June. I think it looks a little bit 2000s-y. But I wonder if it is vintage. And it just kind of happens to look contemporary?

Jojo  

Yeah, like maybe a repeated silhouette or something.

Sarah  

Yeah, exactly. But it's very nice. Oh, and then this is when we come to this picture, because this is them onstage in the 60s.

Jojo  

Oh, cute.

Sarah  

I know. As we can see, the hair; very different. They did not go for a full 60s bouffant on her.

Jojo  

Right.

Sarah  

For reasons as we have discussed. But I love this little dress. Look at this kicky little skirt. So cute!

Jojo  

Very cute.

Sarah  

Okay, so the thing I just wanted to finish up saying, is I watched... like I said, I watched an interview with her. It was at a film festival of some kind, and it was her and James Mangold.

Jojo  

Right.

Sarah  

The director. And she just brought up a couple points. And I was like, "let's chat about that a little bit." She talked a lot about how the wardrobe department is an actor's, basically, first foray into their character.

Jojo  

Mmhmm.

Sarah  

It's often the first thing they do on the movie, having a costume fitting and meeting with the costume designer.

Jojo  

Yeah.

Sarah  

So lots of times, the movie actor is coming from another project, they're really busy. You know, this is the first chance they've had to kind of stand there and be like, "oh, who is this character? What did they look like? How do they stand?"

Jojo  

Right.

Sarah  

So I just thought that was really interesting, that costumes are often their first chance to see themselves as the character.

Jojo  

Yeah.

Sarah  

And they also they find a lot of their physicality in costume fittings, how are they going to stand? How are they going to walk?

Jojo  

Yeah.

Sarah  

So I just thought that was a really good point. And probably something that average people don't necessarily know, is that like, the first thing is not a rehearsal, sometimes. Sometimes the first thing is costumes.

Jojo  

Yeah. And that happens often very late in the game, especially for theatre. So it's like, sometimes... I mean, they have been doing their own research into the character, but once they actually see themselves. And I had that conversation with a few actors too, where they're like, "I was getting into my character, and I was understanding them a little bit. But it wasn't until I got into the costume that I fully embodied, like, who this character was." So that's always a kind of rewarding moment, I feel like, for designers. Because it really does mean you've thought about it... I mean, you both have thought about it. And you've clearly made those choices very intentionally. But to see the actor really get into the character that you've created for them too is a really nice part of the collaboration, I think.

Sarah  

Totally. And things can change, obviously, that's what fittings are for.

Jojo  

Yeah, absolutely.

Sarah  

And so something that you as a designer might think was perfect for the character, the actor might be like, "Well, I'm not sure, you know, if this is right, because of these reasons," and then you find, and you explore it together. And that's how it should be. It should be a dialogue and a relationship between you--the designer--the actor, and the director. It should be a collaboration and that's what I love about it.

Jojo  

Right. And that's what makes it so collaborative, is that you are having an open dialogue about it, and that it's not just "you just do whatever I want." Although that sometimes may be the case, if you've had a really extensive conversation with a director. But yeah, I think that's very important. So that's cool.

Sarah  

Yeah. And then the other thing she talks about is like, she said that she specializes in distracting actors during fittings. And I was like, "that's interesting." Because actors can often feel really objectified.

Jojo  

Yeah.

Sarah  

And I think it can be dehumanizing, especially, to be in a costume fitting when people are staring at your body, talking about your body, like you aren't in the room.

Jojo  

Right?

Sarah  

So it can be really hard when you make your living off of partially how you look.

Jojo  

Mmhmm.

Sarah  

So she said she likes to just chat with them and get them out of their head and get them out of focusing on the flaws they see in the mirror and just really work on her relationship with them in the fitting. And I was like, "yeah, that's a good thing to do." Because you don't want them to feel like they're just a mannequin being dressed.

Jojo  

Yeah. Yeah, I feel like sometimes those are the most.... Well, I guess I'm a little more biased, because most of the costume designers that I know, that I think are really successful, are the ones that do build that rapport with their actors, and sometimes become friends with their actors, because they've built up that relationship. And they've built that trust. And that's also-- I mean, you never know, an actor sometimes can be the one getting you the next job, too.

Sarah  

Mmhmm.

Jojo  

Even though people don't necessarily think about it that way. But you know, it's such a small industry, you really don't ever know who's going to get you your next job.

Sarah  

Totally.

Jojo  

So I think building that relationship with whoever you're working with, and in this case with actors, it's the most intimate relationship that you can have. It really does go a long way, when you're able to build that trust. I mean, you know, Arianne is the perfect example with Madonna, building up that trust and being that person that becomes her go-to. That's how she got a lot of her other work.

Sarah  

Mmhmm.

Jojo  

So it's kind of a cool... like, you get to see sort of how the relationship changes and shifts and builds and still kind of benefits both parties, because of that trust. So that's always important.

Sarah  

Totally. Yeah. Yeah.

Jojo  

So excitiing.

Sarah  

So that's "Walk the Line". And those are my little side tangents that I was like, "let's chat about this, this will be fun."

Jojo  

Good sidewalk conversations. [both laugh]

Sarah  

Yeah. We like sort of diving into stuff that, you know, average, people who don't necessarily work in the industry might not think about or know. And it's all about shedding light and opening people up to what they might not know about.

Jojo  

Yeah. And hopefully that's, you know, that's what makes our podcast interesting, too, is...

Sarah  

I hope so too. [laughs]

Jojo  

... hearing more of that stuff. And even though it is costume related, but yeah.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

Opening it up to other things, because we don't just live in a vacuum of costume.

Sarah  

Totally, it's not just about the pretty dresses, even though it we like those too.

Jojo  

Yeah, very true.

Sarah  

All right.

Jojo  

Okay, let me...

Sarah  

Are you ready? What's your movie?

Jojo  

I'm doing "The Impossible," which... I'm just trying to get my stuff loaded up. So I can see my notes, as well as my pictures.

Sarah  

Yeah, no problem.

Jojo  

And I don't have a ton of pictures for this. Because again, very similar to Sarah, even though this movie actually got quite a few nominations, and Oscar wins, there were just really not a ton of pictures of this. And I mean, some of it is kind of understandable. Because it is a movie that is about a natural disaster. And so, you know, a lot of the costumes are naturally very, very distressed.

Sarah  

Mmhmm.

Jojo  

And it's not like it's some beautiful thing that you see on a mannequin that you can put on afterwards. It's really more about kind of seeing the realistic, I guess, and natural way that costumes can break down over time. So I kind of wanted to choose it for that reason, because as many of you know, I am really into distressing costumes. And I've talked about this in the past. So this, unfortunately... there were not a lot of pictures of all kind of the step by steps, which I wish that I could have gotten. But I'm going to try and at least get some kind of important beats throughout the movie, where we can actually see how the costume kind of changed, at least. And sort of how the the costume designer-- it was actually multiple--how they were sort of coming up with, you know, where these outfits came from and that kind of thing.

Sarah  

Mmhmm.

Jojo  

Okay, so really quick, just talking about some of the background for "The Impossible". The director is J.A. Bay... Bayona? I think that's how you say his name. I believe he's actually a Spanish--like, from Spain--director. I don't know exactly what his ethnicity is, but he did projects like "The Orphanage," which was his directorial debut. He also did "A Monster Calls," which I've never...

Sarah  

Oh yeah.

Jojo  

...I've never actually seen the movie but I have a whole book on all of the the creative visual effects that they did for that movie, which is phenomenal.

Sarah  

I've read the book that that's based on, but I have not seen the movie.

Jojo  

Okay. Yeah. And then he also did "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom". So one of the newer ones.

Sarah  

Okay! Wow.

Jojo  

So his choices of what he directs is very, very eclectic and very versatile. So that was kind of interesting. But his directorial resume actually is not super long. But the fact is, even though he hasn't done a ton of projects, they've all been pretty big and well recognized at least. And then in terms of the costume designer, it was actually three people. And again, they're all... none of them are very big designers. Anne Bingeman, I think is how you say her name. She did "Deception". And she also did the the comedy "Bachelorette".

Sarah  

Oh yeah, I've seen that.

Jojo  

Yeah. Which I was like, "Oh, that's interesting." Very different movies.

Sarah  

Did we watch that together?

Jojo  

We might have! I feel like we did.

Sarah  

With Jessica?

Jojo  

Oh yeah, I think we did.

Sarah  

[both laugh] I think we did!

Jojo  

That's so funny, because I was like, "I know I watched it with somebody."

Sarah  

That's really funny.

Jojo  

And then Sparka Lee, which I thought was a very interesting name, literally spelled "spark" with an A at the end. She's mostly a costume supervisor and assistant. And I think that was kind of her role in this as well.

Sarah  

Mmhmm.

Jojo  

But she did "The Constant Gardener". She was an assistant, I believe, for "Resident Evil," "Speed Racer," "The Reader," and then she was a supervisor for a lot of "The Queen's Gambit".

Sarah  

Oh, nice.

Jojo  

So she's probably had a little bit more of a recognizable career than the other two. And then the third costume designer was Maria Reyes. And she does a lot more foreign TV shows. So I don't think... there was a lot of stuff that I didn't recognize, I wrote them down. But they're not things-- they're not titles that I recognize. They're "Merli," "Oh Happy Day," which is also a TV show. And then "La torre de Suso," which I think is also a movie. But again, all titles that I was like, "I've never heard of any of these things." But maybe it's just because it's in a different country. And I've just haven't seen them.

Sarah  

Mmhmm.

Jojo  

So yeah, so that's just a little bit of background. Just to tell you a little bit more about the actual event that this was based on... it follows a tourist family who ends up heading to Thailand, and this was back in like 2004. So there was a huge tsunami, which is actually... it said that it was one of the largest tsunamis in record, even to today. And that occurred in the Indian Ocean. So basically it pretty much wiped out the entire coast of Thailand in 2004. So there were, let's see, what were the statistics that I wrote down? It was considered the deadliest tsunami in recorded history. It was a 200 foot wave. It wiped away entire towns and the lives of over 200,000 people across 14 countries.

Sarah  

Oh my god.

Jojo  

So this thing was huge. And it was traveling from Indonesia. But this this particular movie focuses mostly on Thailand. And then the death toll in Thailand was nearly 5400, including 2000 foreign tourists.

Sarah  

Wow.

Jojo  

So this focuses on one specific tourist family who, miraculously, all five of the family members ended up surviving. But there were obviously a lot of other tourist deaths that were also happening at this time.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

So just to give you a little bit more background, because again, I don't have a ton of pictures. But I was curious how well they translated, I guess, what happened in real life versus what happened to this family, because it is a very isolated event. And actually, it only took place over about two days.

Sarah  

Oh, wow.

Jojo  

But of course, the entire time during the movie, you're just like... I was like crying and tense and all these other emotions, just because I was like, "I don't know what's going to happen to these people, even though I kind of do."

Sarah  

Mmhmm.

Jojo  

And also you're just watching them almost drown multiple times. And I think he spends a lot of time focusing on them underwater, getting hit and all this debris and everything. So of course, all those moments, you're kind of just sitting in tension, waiting, and hoping that they're going to resurface and and be able to breathe and survive. But the original family... and this is what I wanted to kind of touch base on, because I was a little confused. And there is a lot of critiquing about how they portrayed this movie, because the original family that survived was actually Spanish.

Sarah  

Oh.

Jojo  

And of course, all the actors that they cast for this were all well known white actors. And I think there was a back and forth of like, well, they chose these white actors. And there's a lot of white savior complex in there, even though there is you know, obviously they were in Thailand, and so they took a lot of the locals to portray, you know, the hospitals and the nurses and all the people that ended up helping. But the big critique was that it was essentially at the very end of it, the white family that survived while they didn't really focus on how much it actually affected the Thai people in the aftermath.

Sarah  

Do you know if if the family, the original family, was Spanish from Spain? Or were they Hispanic?

Jojo  

I believe they were from Spain. So yeah, not Hispanic, sorry.

Sarah  

There are white people in Spain but like...

Jojo  

Correct.

Sarah  

...it still would have been better to cast actual Spanish people.

Jojo  

Yeah. And I mean, it's very clear, the original lady was named Maria Belón. She was a physician. And then her husband's name is Enrique Álvarez. So you know, it's interesting the choices that they made. And you know, in justification, they actually did have the original Maria Belón come back, and literally be an advisor on--and guider on--the entire film.

Sarah  

That's good.

Jojo  

So she had a lot of, like... she was telling a lot of her own experience. And they said that their first interview with her... because I think she was also trying to figure out if these filmmakers were the right people to tell her story. Her first interview with them was actually five hours long, just her telling what happened.

Sarah  

Wow.

Jojo  

And I was like, "five hours?" Like, I can't even imagine. So a lot of, actually, what happened to Naomi Watts in the movie did in fact happen to Maria, in very much the same way. Even the way that the tsunami originally, or initially, approached them or attacked them. Like, they said that they actually had the family members standing in the same exact spot at that resort, where their family was. And I was like, "yikes." Like, I don't-- as an actor...

Sarah  

Wow.

Jojo  

...I don't know that I would.... Like, that would have been so mentally like... I'm not ready for this.

Sarah  

That's a... that's heavy. That's like...

Jojo  

It is.

Sarah  

...that's a lot.

Jojo  

Definitely. And they actually, so they were from Japan originally. Sorry-- they lived in Japan for Álvarez's job. And then they ended up going to Thailand for Christmas. So they were actually there for holiday.

Sarah  

It was Christmas time?

Jojo  

Yeah. So crazy.

Sarah  

That is heartbreaking.

Jojo  

And then they said that in terms of the actual injuries that she suffered--because I was also curious about how much of that they translated--Belón apparently suffered severe thigh and chest injuries, which is also what they did in the movie for Naomi Watts. So like, very, very much exactly like what she experienced was what they kind of recreated.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

Both parents ended up being separated from their children. So they had three sons, Lucas, Simón, and Tomás were the original names. They changed them to very white names of Lucas, Simon and Thomas.

Sarah  

Ooh.

Jojo  

And then even Enrique, they changed to Henry. Maria, they kept as Maria. But their last name was actually Bennett instead of, you know, Maria Belón and Álvarez.

Sarah  

That's...

Jojo  

So like that part of it, I was a little bit like, "uhhhh..."

Sarah  

How do you excuse that? Like, how do you... we wanted to get the movie made, and we didn't think that they would fund a movie with no white people in it?

Both  

[editor's note: our apologies, we do know that Spain is primarily Caucasian. Our use of "white people" in these exchanges is incorrect. We meant that instead of casting people who looked like the familiy--dark hair and olive skin--they cast very fair people and Anglicized their names, essentially changing the fact that the family is Spanish.]

Jojo  

Right. And I think that was the one person that critiqued it. They were like, "why did they choose not to use a, you know, a more well known celebrity that was from Spain?"

Sarah  

There are a lot, yeah.

Jojo  

Like, I think they had mentioned Penélope Cruz as an option, you know, things like that. And it was interesting because Maria, the original lady, actually said that when she talked to Naomi Watts, she felt the most... like she could relate to her the most when they were talking about the role.

Sarah  

Okay.

Jojo  

So I was like, "Oh, that's interesting that she connected the most with a white lady to represent her." Like...

Sarah  

Yeah, I'm glad that basically she gave her blessing on it.

Jojo  

Right.

Sarah  

Like, I'm glad she's not upset by the decision. Yeah, but it is kind of bad optics, you know?

Jojo  

Very much so, especially now. I mean, this was created a couple years ago, but like...

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

...you know, it's just weird to think about it now, when everything is so much more sensitive about that.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

Okay. So let's see. One thing that I did want to mention, Naomi Watts quoted Belón when they spoke, she said, "Belón felt completely sure of her instinct." And this was like, during the time of the tsunami, everything that happened. She said, "Nothing got in the way of her instinct, and she'd never had that feeling before." So I think that was something that really helped Naomi kind of get into her character as well. Which you definitely do see that, like they make Naomi a little bit more fearful, I think, in the movie. Like she... when they start off on the plane flying to Thailand. She's already nervous about all the bumpiness on the plane.

Sarah  

Hmm.

Jojo  

And then when she goes into the actual... when she actually has to save her son, or try to reach her son, there's a little bit more of a jump of her anxiety, becoming a mother and trying to save her children. So moving on to costumes.

Sarah  

Costumes!

Jojo  

Sorry, I spent way too long talking about that, but I figured I would at least show some background. [laughs]

Sarah  

Yeah, it's good to have that information.

Jojo  

Before we talked about it.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

So I wanted to show you the original family. And you can tell they're... they look very Spanish, like from Spain. Like, all their features are very "from Spain." And then you have the white family that represents them. So... so yeah, it's quite a big difference. Ewan McGregor plays Henry.

Sarah  

[laughs] I'm sorry.

Jojo  

Naomi Watts plays Maria, obviously... I know.

Sarah  

We couldn't even put them in dark hair? Like, we couldn't even dye their hair? Okay. All right.

Jojo  

Yeah, yeah.

Sarah  

They had to be blonde.

Jojo  

And then we had, interestingly enough, this is actually Tom Holland.

Sarah  

Oh my god!

Jojo  

So funny, because I was like, "Oh, yeah, I forgot he was in this movie!"

Sarah  

Little baby.

Jojo  

He's so, so young in this movie. And he plays our oldest child, Lucas. And then we have our middle child, our little blond, blue eyed kid, who I believe is Simon. And then our youngest is Thomas. So I kind of wanted to pull this picture out, just because throughout the movie, the designers actually kept a really, really tight palette for them. So it was a lot of really nice earth tones. They're mostly in... like, if it's white, it's a kind of cream. I mean, this is probably the lightest white, and it's only the mom.

Sarah  

Mmhmm.

Jojo  

The rest of the time, most of the guys are either in blues or greens, you'll see a lot of kind of deep grays, or kind of cooler tone grays. So I think they really did a good job of kind of sticking to that.

Sarah  

Mmhmm.

Jojo  

And then... and this is all, of course, before everything happens.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

This is a little out of order. But this was the original outfit that Maria is in. And this is pretty much the outfit she's in the entire time she's suffering through this tsunami. So she starts off, obviously, in this white tank top and the blue shorts. And of course, throughout the movie, there's so much that's happened. She's like, drowning in muddy water. So this totally looks like a completely different outfit by the end of this.

Sarah  

Right.

Jojo  

But this is sort of where she starts.

Sarah  

Mmhmm.

Jojo  

Okay, and then... so this was actually supposed to be before the other one. But this was basically one of the nights before the tsunami hits. They actually have a little lantern, which is very famous in Thailand, they do the lantern release.

Sarah  

Oh yeah. Mmhmm.

Jojo  

Where they're seeing the lanterns fly into the sky. And this is kind of their last calm and nice moment as a family. So I love that, again, it's still earth tones, but these beautiful greens that the costume designers decided to use here really kind of ties them into the the natural setting of Thailand as well.

Sarah  

Mmhmm.

Jojo  

She actually ends up putting these kind of tropical flowers in her hair. So it's this very tropical feeling, you know, they are on vacation.

Sarah  

Mmhmm.

Jojo  

So I did love that they kind of tied everyone together very tightly, in terms of color. Alright, so...

Sarah  

Oh boy. Here we go.

Jojo  

...after the tsunami hits, you can already see her white tank top has turned yellow.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

She's already covered in mud. And even her blue shorts have kind of turned sort of a gray. It looks like they've kind of given her some... almost like salt stains.

Sarah  

Mmhmm.

Jojo  

Because this is after the water has kind of died down. But she's sort of still... kind of trying to find her way to help. They end up picking up this kid, which apparently this also happened in real life. They actually found a stray kid that they helped for a little while named Daniel.

Sarah  

Oh my gosh.

Jojo  

And in the movie they totally just make it a happy ending where he finds his dad, and they see him reunite with his dad. In the real situation, apparently Daniel was never found again. Like, somehow he got separated from them a second time and they never found out what happened to him.

Sarah  

Oh, no.

Jojo  

So it's like... it's just this really heartbreaking moment.

Sarah  

That's too dark, too dark for the movie, I guess.

Jojo  

It really is, it really is.

Sarah  

Oh, that's so sad.

Jojo  

And you can kind of see even with Lucas, he, you know, he's still got that kind of blue swimming shorts. I mean, like I said, there's not a ton of costume, interesting things here because they're in swimwear.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

They're at the pool when the tsunami hits. So it's like, very kind of bare minimum clothing.

Sarah  

Mmhmm.

Jojo  

But you do start seeing how much this kind of changes, even just seeing all of the different details of what water does to our clothes, after being in a muddy tsunami. And the other thing, too, that's interesting is she was wearing a swimming suit under this when everything happened, and somehow the swimsuit has just sort of disappeared.

Sarah  

Oh!

Jojo  

Because during this time, she actually... underwater, gets stabbed in this, in the rib cage. And also a whole chunk of her back thigh is just missing. So there's a scene where-- I didn't want to show it because it was just very, very graphic.

Sarah  

That's fine. [laughs]

Jojo  

But you see the kid walking behind her, and he just sees a chunk of her leg just flapping down and he's like, "I can't."

Sarah  

Ugh!

Jojo  

He's like, "I can look at you right now," and so she makes him walk in front of her, so he doesn't have to look at it. And that's why she has this little thing tied around her leg, to like, keep the skin up. And I'm like, "oh my god."

Sarah  

Oh god. [laughs]

Jojo  

But yes, it's a lot of... and again, this is where it kind of gets down to the nitty gritty of like, this costume crafts person had to understand what each of these steps were. Like, everything that hits her has to somehow show up on her clothes.

Sarah  

Yes.

Jojo  

So you know, you start seeing the blood kind of dripping and staining from the side-- the side injury, but then you also see the blood kind of getting on some of her pants.

Sarah  

Mmhmm.

Jojo  

It's just like, I don't know, it's so much to think about. Especially in a natural disaster, this where literally everything is making you dirty. [laughs]

Sarah  

Yes, that's the daunting part of distressing, I think. Like, you must have to completely storyboard it.

Jojo  

Yeah.

Sarah  

And then that's how you figure out how many duplicates you need. And you must have to like, just lay it all out.

Jojo  

Yeah. And I... you know, even in this, it's like, they must have had to have, you know, 15 or 16 copies of this shirt alone.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

Like, even just for a 20 minute segment, just because she goes through so much trauma, and she's still wading through water even after it kind of subsides. So like, there's still things that are happening, because she's still trudging through terrain, so...

Sarah  

Well, and then you're like, "Okay, so how many times does she have to do to the take," you know.

Jojo  

Right.

Sarah  

"Do we need a fresh one at the beginning of every take, so that she can get wet?"

Jojo  

Right, exactly.

Sarah  

So yeah, it's so much to think about.

Jojo  

And that also makes me wonder why we have, you know... it's probably why they had three costume people.

Sarah  

Mmhmm.

Jojo  

And also why they had a supervisor in addition to, you know, maybe a more seasoned designer, because someone who's a supervisor understands more of that craft stuff. And usually, they'll either at least have someone on hand that they know who can do that, or they're often the ones doing some of the craft stuff.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

So it's, you know, it's sort of interesting how they pulled together their team. Like, it makes a lot more sense when you're looking at the amount of craziness that has to happen to these costumes in terms of breaking them down.

Sarah  

Yeah. And you need people on set who know exactly what is supposed to be happening when.

Jojo  

Right.

Sarah  

So I think that is... that's kind of probably what a supervisor would do too, right? Is be, like...

Jojo  

Yeah.

Sarah  

...in charge of knowing which one is for which scene.

Jojo  

Right, right, and making sure everything is organized in such a way that they don't get those mixed up.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

But yeah. Okay.

Sarah  

Wow, oh no.

Jojo  

So this is the next stage. She gets basically dragged through... I mean, there's quite a few things that happen in between this, of course, but a big part of this--the original story, too--was that a Thai man actually ended up dragging her through the mud. And like, this is so hard to watch, because she's just screaming in pain the entire time. And they just-- they're just dragging her through grass, and like...

Sarah  

Ohh.

Jojo  

...mud and all these other things. And she... you know, it's the back of her leg. So it's just getting ripped up even more. But that's his only way of trying to get her to a hospital and get her to somewhere safe.

Sarah  

Mmhmm.

Jojo  

And you see her son in the front. Like, it's interesting, because clearly the people making this movie did not want to hurt children or make them look hurt. So like, the two youngest kids, don't look distressed or dirty or anything at all.

Sarah  

[laughs] Not bloody.

Jojo  

You see maybe one or two scenes where Tom Holland gets kind of beat up under the water, but you know, in terms of the amount of pain and injury that he sustained, it's much, much less than...

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

...what Naomi Watts goes through.

Sarah  

People don't want to see kids getting hurt.

Jojo  

It's so true. So yeah, they definitely kept them pretty clean in general. But she, again, she gets stabbed right in the side. And then it's really gross. Like, they actually show her boob all sliced up underneath. And so, you know, her son's obviously freaking out because she's like, falling apart in front of him.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

And so she ends up having to tie one of her tank top straps to the other side, just to, like, cover herself.

Sarah  

Uh huh.

Jojo  

So yeah, it's just, you know, this looks so horrible here. But again, it just shows you this is sort of the next few steps that our craftsperson had to pay attention to.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

She's getting dragged through the mud. She's also got all the blood on top, she's probably bleeding more because she's being dragged through other stuff. So it's just all those things that you have to pay attention to. Because as humans, that's what would happen in real life.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

So yes, so she ends up wearing pretty much this outfit for the rest of the time until she's she's able to get to the hospital.

Sarah  

Wow.

Jojo  

Okay, so Tom Holland. Obviously when he gets to the hospital, somehow he finds a shirt. Or like, they end up... so when they get to the actual Thai village, where it's a little safer, they actually have a-- it's basically like all the local people end up coming and, you know, putting... they end up giving her a shirt. They end up, you know, giving Lucas another shirt. But one of the reasons I wanted to pull this image is not just because it's like, "Okay, great, now we have a costume change." But it kind of also goes to show the kind of clothes that are overseas. Because a lot of times, overseas countries do end up just getting, essentially, the waste that America gets rid of.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

So it's interesting that we're looking at graphics that look a little bit more American, but it's almost like it's faded out, or it's not quite there anymore.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

Like these are old clothes that have been discarded from elsewhere.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

So I kinda want to just pull that in. Because I mean, it just says... even with how kind of dingy it looks, it tells you a lot about what's actually in the rest of the world, and how other people manufacture clothing, or even get clothing from other places. Or wealthier places.

Sarah  

Yeah, I think, you know, Americans at large don't necessarily think about what happens to our clothes when...

Jojo  

Mmhmm.

Sarah  

...you know, they can't even be sold in Goodwill or whatever.

Jojo  

Right.

Sarah  

That's what happens, is that we ship them to other countries and just... make it their problem instead of ours.

Jojo  

Yeah. Yeah. And like, he gets this as a new shirt, but you can see how torn up the collar is, and how the sleeves are all torn up.

Sarah  

Yeah. And the graphic is faded.

Jojo  

So yes, I just thought that was a really interesting way to kind of introduce that.

Sarah  

Mmhmm.

Jojo  

Okay, so then the second half of the movie, they kind of go... I mean, because the first half of the movie you're really focusing on how Naomi is able to find her son, and they stay together, and how they're able to get to the hospital.

Sarah  

Mmhmm.

Jojo  

And hers is probably the much more traumatic experience, because I think she obviously went through a lot more injuries. Somehow, Ewan McGregor stays fairly intact and untouched through all of this. Which is weird. But he's also in the pool with his kids when he starts.

Sarah  

Oh.

Jojo  

And I wanted to pull this image, even though it's the dirty version of this, because he has these pretty standard Hawaiian blue swimming trunks. But in the beginning, his kids are just making fun of how ugly they are. [laughs] And so it's just funny that, you know, it... obviously, it's not a huge thing, but then they just get so dirty and ripped up by the time he gets through the tsunami. And yet, somehow, the only injuries he sustains are maybe a few scars here and there on his face.

Sarah  

Wow.

Jojo  

And when they find him, or when he starts his kind of portion of the story, he's still back at the resort. So somehow, he's survived enough after the water has kind of subsided, to still remain at the resort. And he's somehow found his two kids. So like, apparently, they were also clinging to a tree. And that's how he found both of them. Like, they were both, you know, just holding on.

Sarah  

Mmhmm.

Jojo  

And so at this point, the water has subsided. The rest of the movie, his goal is to just basically find his wife and his kids, because he feels like they're alive, even though no one else seems to think so. So I just wanted to pull that image really quick, because that's mostly what he's in until he's able to find a shirt.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

Later on, this is still him looking for his wife, he's kind of talking to his kids and trying to convince his middle child that he has to take care of Thomas, because you know, they're going to go somewhere safe to the top of the mountain so that it's far away from the water. And then he's going to keep looking for his wife. So basically, this is sort of like a "grow up, you gotta man up and take care of your younger brother."

Sarah  

Mmhmm.

Jojo  

Because he's also the kid that's afraid of everything at the beginning of the movie.

Sarah  

Aww. I relate to that.

Jojo  

Okay, so moving on. This is actually... I believe this is one of my last ones. I wanted to pull this because she's one of the few characters that kind of gets a little bit more screen time, other than the guy that drags Naomi Watts through the mud. And she actually does speak pretty fluent English, because she's one of the ones that finally kind of is able to converse with Lucas when he's trying to find... at a certain point in the hospital, he loses his mom temporarily. So she finally is able to converse with him and calm him down and try to help him find his mom again. And so she's kind of... it's still a really, really small role. And again, another big critique is that the local people just aren't given much of a character in this movie. But she ends up kind of having this big long conversation with him and she ends up kind of being his trustworthy, like, go-to nurse.

Sarah  

Mmhmm.

Jojo  

So she has a very small part, but you do see her represented a little bit more. And I kind of just wanted to show, again, their uniform is clearly not pristine, like we are used to seeing in the States.

Sarah  

Right.

Jojo  

It's clearly like, this is the shirt that she got. And it's probably whatever "Goodwill" version that she got out of wherever she could find. And that's their uniform for the hospital.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

So I just thought that was interesting, to sort of represent kind of what the local people were wearing. And I didn't do enough research to find out how accurate this actually was.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

Or if this is just something she wore on her own, versus an actual, you know, hospital issued uniform.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

And then last one.. they talked about-- like, I just kind of pulled this image because again, they haven't really changed. But this is sort of where they finally find each other. And this is after a very long like hour and a half of the movie. So within that last half hour, Lucas finally finds his two brothers, and then they finally find their dad.

Sarah  

Aww.

Jojo  

So there was this really heartwarming moment. And again, it's sort of like a double edged sword, right? There's so many other people that die during the tsunami that aren't focused on in this movie. And yet, the white family is the one that survives. So I think that was one of the biggest critiques of this movie, of how whitewashed everything was.

Sarah  

Mmhmm.

Jojo  

But you know, it's at the end of it, it's still a very heartwarming happy ending, I think. Unfortunately, audiences don't... well, I shouldn't say "unfortunately," but audiences don't really like to see a sad ending for things like this, where it is a natural disaster that's totally out of your control.

Sarah  

Right.

Jojo  

But it is also one of those things where, you know, it makes you wonder, what about all those other families that didn't make it? So... Yeah, anyways, that was the last thing I had for this movie. Again, a really hard thing to watch.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

But I did like that they at least brought the original survivor into the discussion and didn't just try and like, fake it or make something happen that wasn't really happening.

Sarah  

I feel like if I was making this movie, which... I don't make movies, so whatever. But I would probably try to tell a bunch of family's stories, you know?

Jojo  

Yeah.

Sarah  

Instead of... you can get the real life testimony from the survivors and try to do justice to their actual story.

Jojo  

Right.

Sarah  

But you could also add in some side characters who are on their own sort of struggle and journey, and maybe not all of them have happy endings, you know?

Jojo  

Yeah.

Sarah  

Like, you could tell the story in a way that was sensitive to the actual family who survived this. And then... but also sensitive to everybody else who didn't find their family.

Jojo  

Right. Which... I think, you know, they did do a little bit of that.

Sarah  

Yeah?

Jojo  

When Lucas is running through the hospital. Because while his mom is laying kind of in the hospital ready for surgery, he ends up... just because he doesn't know what to do with himself. So he ends up running around the hospital, and all these people end up reaching out to him and being like, you know, "have you seen this person?"

Sarah  

Mmm.

Jojo  

Like, most of them are parents asking for their sons, or their kids.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

And so he starts going around, he starts taking their names down, and walking around the hospital and just yelling out names, being like, "anybody recognize this name?" So there is a little bit of that, that I think they tried to throw in there to like, redeem some of it.

Sarah  

[laughs] Yeah.

Jojo  

But yeah, you know, it is one of those things where I think you see maybe two families reunite-- including that kid Daniel, who in real life, we never find out what actually happens to him. But there is another family who... the son and the father get reunited, because Lucas ends up finding him.

Sarah  

Mmhmm.

Jojo  

And then there's another mom who also goes, like... she has a similar situation and ends up having to go into surgery kind of right next to Maria's character. And you never find out what happens to her. Like, she goes into surgery. And she, I think she writes her name on Maria's arm, so that she won't forget her name, because she was like, "I have a family too. And I just want to say bye to them one last time before... I don't know if I'm going to survive this surgery," kind of thing.

Sarah  

Oh, wow.

Jojo  

And then she goes into surgery, and you never see her come back out. So you know, there's a lot of unfinished stories, which, you know, I think they tried to do that. Which is probably why this movie lasted two hours. Like, I forgot that that was long it was. [laughs] And I was like, "how are they going to make a movie about a tsunami last two hours?" [both laugh] But you know, they did it. So... so yes, it was interesting to see how they were able to kind of translate some of that. And like, show all of it. I think, you know, again, at the end of the day, I'm kind of like, "what was the reasoning behind switching to a white family when it didn't have to be done that way?"

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

Like, you know, it's one thing if you're resonating with that particular actress. But like, they could have even kept her husband, you know, Spanish. Or... I don't know, something like that.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

I'm not a filmmaker. So who knows? But...

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

...but yes, it does make me wonder what their choices are, what their motivations behind those choices were.

Sarah  

It's hard to justify that, you know, in a way that really makes a lot of sense. Other than...

Jojo  

Right.

Sarah  

"...we were worried about money. We were worried that people wouldn't pay to see a movie about people who weren't white," which is like... [grimace sound] [laughs]

Jojo  

Right. And then last fun fact I wanted to share was when they did the tsunami, apparently he built a water tank. And that's how they filmed the whole movie. I think it was very similar... I can't remember the other movie you said that they did that for. But there was another one.

Sarah  

"Parasite"?

Jojo  

Yes. Yeah.

Sarah  

Yeah, I just transcribed that one.

Jojo  

They built a water tank. And like, they just... you know, they kind of just did most of their swimming in there.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

And then they just added some digital, you know, extra effects or visual effects afterwards for the extra stuff. But I was like, "That's so crazy," because I can't imagine trying to film. He tried to use as much real water as possible, though.

Sarah  

Oh, wow.

Jojo  

He was like, "I wanted it to be as authentic as possible." So a lot of the tidal waves that come in, and things like that, all of that happened for real. And I was like, "yikes," that's... that's so crazy and scary. Like, I can't imagine.

Sarah  

Yes, I feel like that would be very hard. But also I think about actors and I'm like, "a movie where you're wet the whole time?" That just has to suck to shoot.

Jojo  

Yeah. [laughs] Yeah.

Sarah  

Just wet for two months.

Jojo  

And where you have to constantly change costumes, just to make sure you're continuous. Like...

Sarah  

They're like, dumping buckets on you before they start. Ugh.

Jojo  

Yep, yep. So yeah, must have been a very grueling process. For sure.

Sarah  

Yeah. Yeah.

Jojo  

But yeah, that's my coverage of "The Impossible."

Sarah  

Great job.

Jojo  

Thanks, Sarah.

Sarah  

I'm glad you covered that, because I am glad I know about that movie now. But that's the kind of movie that would stress me out deeply to watch. So now I got the experience of watching it without having to actually watch it. [both laugh]

Jojo  

So funny. Yeah, I'm not gonna lie. I will definitely say, the scene where she reunites with her son--and she's trying to get back to him because they're so far apart--and they see each other and they're both screaming for each other, but they can't get close enough to each other. And there's a whole scene where they're reaching across a mattress, but they can't touch hands, because it's too far away. And they're still also trying to avoid debris under the water that they can't see. And I'm just like, "this is so stressful!" And I feel like I don't know what I'd do if this was me, and my parents. Or like, me and a child that I cared about. [laughs]

Sarah  

I hope we never have to find out what that's like.

Jojo  

Agreed. Agreed. [both laugh]

Sarah  

Oh, man.

Jojo  

But yes. So yeah, that's our coverage of true event movies.

Sarah  

Very different films we picked, from each other. [laughs]

Jojo  

Absolutely.

Sarah  

That's good. We like to keep it spicy. Keep it fresh.

Jojo  

That's true. It's very true.

Sarah  

Yeah.

Jojo  

Keep your interest peaked.

Sarah  

Exactly. [both laugh]

Jojo  

Oh, man. Well.

Sarah  

Okay.

Jojo  

Thank you so much, Sarah, that was so much fun.

Sarah  

Thank you, JoJo.

Jojo  

Thank you guys for joining us. And again, if you have any comments or questions or just other things you want to add, maybe more information about either of our movies that maybe we didn't cover, please feel free to add or comment on Instagram.

Sarah  

Yes! Totally.

Jojo  

We are behind on YouTube. So I will get back on that this week. Sorry. It's been a crazy month. But thank you for being patient with us.

Sarah  

Yes.

Jojo  

And we look forward to hearing all of your comments and notes and questions and everything else.

Sarah  

Yes, we appreciate your patience as we, you know, try to fit doing this podcast around our regular lives. [laughs]

Jojo  

So true. Well, thanks again and we'll see you on the next one.

Sarah  

See ya. Bye.

Jojo  

Bye!

[OUTRO]

Jojo

Thank you for listening to The Costume Plot! You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram at @thecostumeplot. If you have a question, comment, or movie suggestion you can email us at thecostumeplot@gmail.com.

Sarah

Our theme music is by Jesse Timm, and our artwork is by Jojo Siu. Please rate and review us wherever you listen to your podcasts.

[deadcactuswalking]

REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 10/04/2021 (Olivia Rodrigo, Demi Lovato)

Well, I guess it’s a pretty slow week – at least more than I had predicted – given that I thought Demi Lovato and Olivia Rodrigo would make a lot more of a genuine impact high up in the chart than they actually did. I can’t really predict the chart accurately at all in those conclusion segments considering I write and release these episodes even before first-day streaming numbers are released, but I at least expected Rodrigo to debut in the top 10. Alas, we have kind of an unexpected filler week, before Taylor Swift impacts the charts next week – I think that prediction’s enough of a safe bet to be right, right? Anyways, Lil Nas X’s “MONTERO (Call Me by Your Name)” stays at #1 for a second week that I didn’t see coming, and let’s just start REVIEWING THE CHARTS.

Rundown

Now I talk about music that is purposefully out of my comfort zone on this series – the music is accessible, sure, because it’s charting music but not all of it is in genres and scenes or by artists I know a hell of a lot about or have listened to repeatedly. Hence, I don’t tend to talk about my own music taste often on here, because of two reasons: one being that I’m unsure it even exists and can be summed up in a sentence, and two being, well... according to Spotify’s “On Repeat” playlist, I’ve been listening to “Paralyzer” by Finger Eleven an obscene amount this past week – if you had to make a Cactus Chart, it would probably debut at #1 15 years after the fact. Now, ignoring the fact that I kind of do want to make that chart, which I probably can with last.fm, I’m sure that will quell any need to talk about my own deeply embarrassing musical habits on this page ever again. Now, moving from the Cactus Single Charts to the UK Top 75, which is what I cover, we can see that there’s been some minimal action on all fronts.

In terms of our drop-outs, we do have a couple notable ones, including both of Fredo’s songs as ACR cuts their streaming numbers and hence, rather unfairly and inaccurately, “Money Talks” with Dave and “Ready” featuring Summer Walker both exit the top 75. I guess they were on their way out eventually, and some ACR-affected songs have indeed survived this week, but it’s still annoying to see for songs that are contemporary and still popular. Otherwise, we have “Wants and Needs” by Drake featuring Lil Baby exiting, as well as some genuinely big hits from this Winter, those being “Good Days” by SZA, “Whoopty” by CJ – finally – and “you broke me first” by Tate McRae after 35 long weeks. Now the charts are no longer addicted to blue cheese, what’s filling in the gaps?

Well, we only have one returning entry, that being “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac, a song that seemingly cannot stay dead, not that I’m complaining. What’s more interesting is what’s on the chart itself, as we do have some notable climbers and fallers. For the notable losses, we have “Good Without” by Mimi Webb at #23 off of the debut, “Patience” by KSI, YUNGBLUD and Polo G at #24, “Anyone” by Justin Bieber at #31, “6 for 6” by Central Cee at #37, “Blinding Lights” by the Weeknd still here at #38, HVME’s remix of Travis Scott’s “Goosebumps” at #39, “Head & Heart” by Joel Corry and MNEK finally dropping out of the top 40 at #41, “What’s Next” by Drake continuing to collapse at #49, taking “Lemon Pepper Freestyle” with Rick Ross at #51 along with it, “telepatía” by Kali Uchis at #56, “Mood” by 24kGoldn and iann dior at #62, “Sweet Melody” by Little Mix at #66, “Someone You Loved” by Lewis Capaldi finally making way for an exit at #68, “Bringing it Back” by Digga D and AJ Tracey at #69, “Cloud 9” by Beach Bunny sadly at #70 off of the debut and finally, “You’re Mines Still” by Yung Bleu featuring Drake at #72.

What’s shocking to me is the little impact that both Demi Lovato and Lil Tjay had, showing that people might just not care about these artists past their singles. Sure, we got some tracks from both of them – that are already being pushed as singles – but on Lovato’s side, “What Other People Say” didn’t move an inch and we only got minimal gains for Lil Tjay’s “Headshot” and “Calling My Phone”, which I expected to go back into the top 40 and top 10 respectively. In terms of our actually notable climbers, well, we have “Mr. Brightside” by the Killers going for a fiftieth chart run at #67, “Beautiful Mistakes” by Maroon 5 featuring Megan Thee Stallion at #60, “Don’t You Worry About Me” by Bad Boy Chiller Crew surging up to #53, Tom Zanetti getting his first top 40 hit with the garbage “Didn’t Know” at #40, “Black Hole” by Griff at #33, Majestic’s remix of Boney M.’s “Rasputin” at #29, “Ferrari Horses” by D-Block Europe and RAYE at #22, and that’s about it other than our single notable change in the top 20, that being “Millions” by Russ Millions and Tion Wayne up to #13 off of the debut, despite being an absolutely worthless song. In fact, it’s looking pretty dire in the top 20 in general, I’m starting to hope that my Cactus Charts actually had any impact. Regardless, we still have eight new arrivals to discuss, so let’s start right at the bottom.

NEW ARRIVALS

#73 – “Film out” – BTS

Produced by UTA and back number

Now, BTS occasionally releases songs for the Japanese market, a common practice for K-pop bands – as far as I know – and this one in particular was marketed only in Japan for a Japanese film. Therefore, I think I was pretty reasonable in thinking this wouldn’t even get close to charting, but I should never underestimate the power of BTS fans buying digital singles. After all, that’s what kept “Dynamite” on the chart for as long as it had its run. Now, I’m not well-versed in J-pop at all other than some brief dives into city pop and picopop – both of which I enjoyed thoroughly – so I didn’t really know what to expect but it does make perfect sense to me that the boys are crooning over a cleanly-produced, theatrical piano-lead instrumental. Given that there’s a post-chorus consisting almost entirely of “ooh-ooh, la-la-la-la” about 45 seconds in, I gave up entirely in terms of lyrical content, although reading some of RM’s translated lyrics in particular makes it seem oddly poetic. How does it sound? Well, exactly as I’d described it: the boys are reigning themselves into to a more subtle instrumental and whilst some of the multi-tracking is distracting and each of the parts don’t really flow as well as they wanted it to, especially due to the loud vocal mixing which definitely overshadows the impact of the wonderful string swells in the final chorus and gives you enough audio-wise to completely ignore the trap-adjacent percussion. The song’s fine and I do like the inflections of acoustic guitar especially, but I’m not really impressed by this, not that I was supposed to – it’s a Japanese soundtrack song, it’ll be gone tomorrow and I’m sure the audience there is enjoying it more than I can.

#64 – “Summer 91 (Looking Back)” – Noizu

Produced by Noizu

Now if you don’t know how Noizu is, I can’t blame you as neither did I. I quickly found out he was another house producer and this track that had been released in January had just gained enough steam to debut this week. The guy has been in EDM production for a while and was immediately cosigned by people like Skrillex and Diplo, and he seems to hide behind this cartoon character for branding and anonymity’s sake, which I can’t blame him for when I consider the public images of both Skrillex and Diplo. The song, originally just called “Summer 91”, was remixed for a major-label release on RCA, and it’s about what you’d expect. It’s a deep house track with a driving 90s MIDI piano melody, uncredited female vocals that can’t even get close to the power of those diva house vocals from decades before and a anti-climactic drop with some cheap percussion. The chorus actually sounds a lot like “Body” by Loud Luxury and brando from one or two years ago, so it’s not even that original in its main hook, though I can give it credit for the synth-work being more sci-fi and kind of interesting, and its song structure being increasingly disjointed, even moreso than the typical house-pop track that debuts low on these charts, which means a lot less when the song has so little tricks up its sleeve. And no, the 220 KID remix isn’t any good either, in fact, it’s a lot worse.

#63 – “Run it Up” – Lil Tjay featuring Offset and Moneybagg Yo

Produced by Josh Petruccio

I tried to listen to that Lil Tjay record and within five tracks decided it was absolutely not worth my time, so I’m glad we only have a single song from the album debuting, though I am surprised that it seems to be the borderline posse cut that runs for nearly four minutes and I’m immediately disappointed. I know how all three of these guys can flow and how fast and high-energy all of they can be, as well as how smooth Offset always is, so why is this beat such a dull, piano-lead sludge with gross bass mixing? Why is Lil Tjay wasting my time both content- and delivery-wise, flubbing rhymes to the point where he doesn’t even bother finishing the line, even when he cops Roddy Ricch’s “The Box” flow in the middle of his verse? Why is the chorus just “Run it up” repeated ad infinitum with no energy? Okay, so it’s not all bad – Offset impresses flow-wise as he always does, trying his hardest to inject some energy into this with his ad-libs and constantly changing flow, because at least he has a personality and some charisma, but even he stops trying by the end of his verse. Moneybagg Yo channels 2 Chainz but without anything that makes 2 Chainz a worthwhile presence for a verse that somehow ends up as the best, most consistent here, and, yeah, I now know me skipping the majority of this record was a good choice.

#59 – “Runaway” – AURORA

Produced by Odd Martin and Magnus Skylstad

I know nothing about AURORA, and I was pretty confident I wouldn’t need to past her John Lewis advert success and her part on the Frozen II soundtrack of all places, but alas, she’s charting again with no kind of visual phenomenon attached to it. AURORA is a Norwegian singer-songwriter on the same wavelength as Bjork and hence the eye of a lot of critical success that doesn’t necessarily translate always into album sales. She has seen intermittent success with singles so I assumed this had just been somewhat of a breakout single from her newest record... but no, it’s from her first album and the single was released all the way back in February of 2015. So, naturally, you’ve got to assume TikTok and you would be correct, but is the song good? Well, the vocal loop double-tracked to act as a synth melody and eventually a choir is kind of a cool idea, and AURORA herself has this frail, accented delivery that’s definitely endearing. The song itself is about escapism and running away from confronting your emotions and the writing is good, even if it tends to be a bit messy if more attention is placed onto it, particularly in the verses. That’s not to distract from the fact that this is absolutely a song from 2015 as if you couldn’t tell from the percussion you can tell from the future bass-esque that’s almost cringeworthy in its anti-climactic entrance and doesn’t even really work at all, especially when it just disappears prematurely. I get going for a glitch-pop thing but it just does not make sense in a ballad like this, in fact, I’m finding it hard to find a part that could be used in a TikTok. The second drop works a little better because AURORA has more conviction in her desperate vocal delivery that sounds legitimately great, but I still think there’s such little impact in the percussion that the blend of synths and strings becomes ultimately just a distraction from what could have been a decent piano ballad. It makes it more interesting, for sure, but also more frustrating. Much like Ryn Weaver’s “Pierre”, also a 2015 indie-pop track suddenly charting six years after the fact a couple weeks ago, there’s a good song hidden somewhere in shoddy and awkward production. I really wish I could have liked this more.

#50 – “Dancing with the Devil” – Demi Lovato

Produced by Mitch Allan

Okay, so our next two songs are both from Demi Lovato’s comeback album, Dancing with the Devil...the Art of Starting Over, an album that if anything I am glad exists as it is a catharsis for Demi Lovato that needed to be released as it discusses her overdose, rehab, last relationship and everything both leading up to those events and the aftermath of them. The album isn’t perfect but feels open, revealing and most importantly an honest release for Demi Lovato and I think that’s worthy of praise in itself. As a 19-track album, it is bloated but does have enough sonic experimentation in the pop sphere for it not to grow stale, and I think there are great songs in there – it’s a good album – but you can already tell it’ll be dated soon enough, not that that’s really a problem now in 2021, but might hurt future revisits, especially with some of the production that already sounds awkward. Thankfully, we get two pretty down-beat and dark tracks from the record, which is where it usually shines, the first being the (half-)title track, released just a week before, and it’s pretty excellent. This soulful track builds itself on echoed percussion, subtle piano and Demi stumbling purposefully through verses detailing her mindset when she drinks alcohol and soon enough ends up “dancing with the Devil” and taking harder drugs like cocaine and heroin in the second verse. Musically, the chorus does struggle with some awkward mixing that makes the strings and instrumentation kind of pile up in a blend that sounds a lot louder than it should be, especially when everything is layered up to make each instrument indistinguishable and unrecognisable, pushing Demi’s vocals to the middle and forcing each multi-tracked ad-lib and vocal run to barely fit in the mix. I love this song from a songwriting standpoint even if it tends to be a bit blunt, but it definitely suffers from this production, which is mostly fixed in...

#44 – “Met Him Last Night” – Demi Lovato featuring Ariana Grande

Produced by Xavi and TBHits

This is my favourite song on the record by a fairly big margin, as everything seems to work here, in a way that doesn’t happen across the rest of the album. The song goes for a similar metaphor with the Devil being illicit substances, something that’s been done before and will continue to be done for eons, but Demi and the songwriters do go for a more unique take on it, picturing both Demi and Ariana in a bar or some kind of late-night hang-out as they “see the Devil” – really, seeing themselves at a low point partaking in substance abuse, which is a really interesting and potentially heart-wrenching perspective, especially if we’re going to get the duality of the chorus being self-aware of these vices but ultimately indulging in them anyway, compared to the verses and bridge where Ariana acts as Demi’s consciousness, vowing and pleading with her never to let drugs “take advantage of her innocence” again. The bridge is just wonderful in how the interplay between Ariana and Demi leads to Demi confronting these vices and promising that she won’t ever end up this bad again, before the truth is revealed by Ariana twisting the pre-chorus. Originally, it’s a threat to “the Devil” – that she can see right through the initial appeal of taking hard drugs and will try her hardest to dismiss them – but with the added context of that bridge, becomes a pretty telling response to Demi’s confidence, shutting her down by saying she sees through this facade of willpower and that she’ll still resort to substance abuse once again... which is sadly reinforced by that final, striking chorus that doesn’t change at all from the first, constructing a narrative that ends up going full-circle as Demi is back to where she started. It helps that this instrumental is downright demonic as well, with those menacing 80s synths sliding over some gorgeous violins in the intro, before all of that cuts out for the pre-chorus as that leering melody is whispered by both singers, and the chorus continues to rise with the strings, synthesised brass and the sparse percussion, which drops in Ariana’s verse to become a booming, drill-adjacent beat not afraid to cut out for Ariana’s multi-tracked humming. In fact, I love how organically this beat moves despite it being so obviously programmed, with the swelling of those strings before every impact and the intricate vocal sequencing making sure every gorgeous vocal run and ad-lib is heard. I’m almost glad I’m confident in this not becoming a hit because I would have already talked it to death here before it gets a chance to top my best list, as this is one of the most brilliantly-constructed pop songs I’ve ever heard and absolutely deserves your attention.

#43 – “Nice to Meet Ya” – Wes Nelson featuring Yxng Bane

Produced by Ayo Beatz

And now for some guy featuring some other guy produced by another guy. To give full credit, this beat is actually very well-produced, especially with that gorgeous piano lead in before the reggaeton-esque drum rhythm kicks in alongside those squeaky horns. It’s everywhere else where this song collapses in on itself, as Wes Nelson’s voice is drenched in so much Auto-Tune and reverb that it just sounds grossly cheap, with some comical ad-libs and some comically bad lyrics in this chorus, which I’ll repeat to you now. In a rather Shakespearean tone, our lead artist plays poetic word association with the hedonistic lifestyle of one Wes Nelson, excitedly greeting the listener with a “Nice to meet you”, before striking our deserved attention with his simplistic albeit bitingly effective rhymes. “Stepped in froze, freezer. Christian Dior, huh? Christian Dior, Jesus.” I don’t expect Nas from this guy but I at least expect bars that makes some kind of sense and don’t sound like juvenile attempts at early 2010s Drake-esque hashtag-rap. The song continues to waste the potential of its pretty great production as Wes Nelson strains his voice and somehow still ends up mumbling in his off-beat flow and janky cadence. Yxng Bane is, I hate to say it, probably the best part of this track, as at least he can convincingly sing and his detailed description of him messing around with a vegan girl (which has no relation to what he says, but he still says it) is at least more interesting lyrically than whatever Wes Nelson’s saying. “I met her in Victoria’s Secret then she let me into her Victoria’s secrets” is about as awful as a line when sang as it is read, and I mean, Wes Nelson’s falsetto doesn’t do him much justice in the unnecessary third verse either, so, yeah, this is a pretty crap attempt at riding a great beat. Give this to Rema or Burna Boy and something could have been done with this.

#27 – “deja vu” – Olivia Rodrigo

Produced by Dan Nigro

Finally, we have the follow-up single to Olivia Rodrigo’s “drivers license”, a song I liked, and I’m glad I did because so did Olivia herself and her producer Dan Nigro, as here we have essentially a sequel if not a reboot to that song. Here, Rodrigo starts to question the authenticity of Joshua Bassett’s new Disney-ordered relationship with Sarah Carpenter—I mean, her unnamed ex-boyfriend’s new fling with another woman. It’s an interesting take to have Rodrigo in a place where somewhat sympathises and pities the new girlfriend, as she’s not getting anything unique or new from her ex-boyfriend anymore. In fact, a lot of this song is really confrontational as she demands the boyfriend to tell his new girlfriend that all the stuff he’s doing with her is what he did with Rodrigo. That’s all fine and good but how does the song sound? Well, it’s got a bell-based instrumental, almost one that’s childish and intimidating, which is perfect for the petty selfishness of the content. In fact, the song as a whole seems to attempt to go for that, with the hilariously multi-tracked and echoed fake laughter in the first verse, as well as all of the extra inflections and backing vocals throughout. The song builds in a very similar way to “drivers license”, but drops earlier into a killer indie-rock groove with a squealing guitar and incredibly distorted drum pattern, almost reminding me of a Flaming Lips song if that’s not too far-fetched of a comparison. This song ultimately does enough to derive and distinguish itself from “drivers license” and whilst it’s not as smooth of a powerful pop track as that one was, and the mixing here is definitely more awkward, we get a different side to Olivia Rodrigo that we’re not to have as much sympathy for. Sure, we know how tough the feeling of being replaced is, but she’s noticeably pettier and arguably kind of unlikeable especially in that bridge, which is a lot more fast-paced than the rest of the song and also has somewhat gratuitous swearing because this is still a formula. Overall, I think this is a pretty great song and I might ultimately prefer it to “drivers license” just out of how it sounds and I’m always happy to see more genuine rock on the chart, so I’m glad we end on a good note.

Conclusion

And on said note, Olivia Rodrigo cops the Honourable Mention for “deja vu” – not that there was much competition – with the Best of the Week going to “Met Him Last Night” by Demi Lovato featuring Ariana Grande. For Worst of the Week, it’s really not that easy as I thought it would be as not much here is that bad at all. I guess I’ll give it to Lil Tjay once again as “Run it Up” featuring Offset and Moneybagg Yo is just joyless, with a Dishonourable Mention for Wes Nelson and Yxng Bane for just crapping all over a great instrumental on “Nice to Meet Ya”. Anyway, here’s this week’s top 10:

I’m not sure if I can make any confident predictions for tomorrow, other than the impact of Taylor Swift, Twenty One Pilots and, if I’m getting my hopes up, BROCKHAMPTON? Regardless, thank you for reading and I’ll see you next week!

[wsmith215]

Cam Newton’s complicated NFL free agency

There were legitimate reasons for it to happen and all kinds of ways to see it coming, but if you were surprised by the Carolina Panthers’ decision to release longtime franchise quarterback Cam Newton in March, you’re surely surprised that he still hasn’t signed somewhere else.

Newton turned 31 on Monday, which is by no means an advanced age for an NFL quarterback. He’s a former league MVP who has taken a team to the Super Bowl and, just two years ago, was having one of the better seasons of his career before shoulder and foot injuries derailed him. On résumé alone, he’d qualify as an upgrade for at least half of the NFL’s teams at the quarterback position.

But none of those teams has signed him, and there has been no indication of any serious interest by any team in doing so. Jameis Winston, cut loose by the Buccaneers in favor of Tom Brady, signed a bargain deal to back up Drew Brees in New Orleans. Andy Dalton, released by the Bengals in favor of Joe Burrow, signed with the Cowboys to back up Dak Prescott. Brian Hoyer (New England), Nick Foles (Chicago) and Newton’s former Carolina backup Kyle Allen (Washington) are among the quarterbacks who’ve been sought and acquired by teams this offseason.

2 Related

It makes no sense if you just stacked up “QB Ability” next to “Teams That Could Use a Cam Newton.” He is the prom king who all of a sudden can’t get a date. The Ferrari left alone in the garage while everyone’s out driving Fords. How could you, if you’re the Bears, or the Jaguars, or literally any team in the AFC East, look at your quarterback depth chart right now and not think signing Newton would make you better?

The answer, of course, is that it’s more complicated than that.

If the Cam Newton of 2015 had been released by the Panthers this offseason, he’d have been signed in less than a minute, to a record-breaking quarterback contract, by one of 12 or 15 teams. But this isn’t 2015, and the issues keeping Newton from signing with a team range from the frustratingly rigid to those that are uniquely 2020:

A tricky offseason for health concerns

One of the issues teams cite when discussing the prospect of signing Newton is that there’s no way to know what kind of player they’d be signing. This is a player with as many surgeries as games played over the past 16 months. When teams consider players who are coming off recent surgeries, it becomes especially important to give them physicals. In a case like Newton’s, when you’re talking about a quarterback who has taken 317 more hits than any other since 2011, teams aren’t going to be satisfied with workout videos and third-person medical exams. They’re going to want the doctors they trust, the doctors they’re paying, to check him out with their own eyes. And in the current climate, with the NFL imposing pandemic-related restrictions in line with those in place around the country, in-person physicals are still prohibited.

“You’re certainly not going to sign him sight unseen,” an NFL personnel man said of Newton. “This is a quarterback who has a shoulder injury, right?”

Cam Newton played only two games last season because of a foot injury, and the Panthers released him in March. AP Photo/Brian Blanco

Well … maybe. The shoulder surgery he had following the 2018 season was his second in two years, but the Panthers kept telling everyone all through 2019 that the shoulder was fine and it was his left foot — he underwent surgery to repair a Lisfranc injury in December — that cost him pretty much the entire season. Running has always been a vital part of Newton’s game. No quarterback in NFL history has more games with both a rushing touchdown and a passing touchdown than Newton’s 39. If his foot is injured, it stands to reason that he won’t be the same runner he has always been.

“Part of what makes Cam, Cam,” said an official with one NFL team that has been in the veteran quarterback market this offseason, “is that he’s a freak athlete.”

Is he still? And if not, what kind of contract would teams give him? A healthy Newton offers plenty as a passer, but teams are still going to want their own doctors to get a look at that shoulder. And even if the shoulder checks out fine and he can’t run the way he used to run, he’s not “peak” Cam Newton. When you look at it in those terms, it becomes a little bit easier to figure out why a team might prefer a Winston or a Dalton as its backup — especially at the prices for which those two signed.

Which brings us to …

What kind of contract could Newton get?

Newton’s last contract extension with the Panthers, signed in 2015, was a five-year deal worth about $103 million. It sounded big at the time, but by today’s standards, the average of $20.6 million a year is more than reasonable for a starting quarterback — especially one who would win the MVP award a few months after signing it, as Newton did. The reason the Panthers cut him wasn’t purely financial. He’d have cost them $19.1 million in non-guaranteed salary and $21.1 million against their salary cap this year: a bargain for a 31-year-old Newton if he’s healthy. The Panthers moved on because, as we’ve already discussed, they weren’t sure he would be healthy, and because they weren’t planning to extend him as they retool things under new coach Matt Rhule.

Newton’s replacement, Teddy Bridgewater, signed for three years and $63 million with $33 million guaranteed. At this point, though he’s far more accomplished than Bridgewater, Newton would have to count himself extraordinarily lucky to get a similar deal. Given the injury questions, he has no shot at the $25 million-a-year numbers Brady and Philip Rivers received. And forget the $91 million in guarantees the Titans gave Ryan Tannehill. No quarterback who’s signing at this point in the cycle is going to sniff the top of the market.

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There’s a narrative out there that the Panthers did Newton harm by waiting as long as they did to release him — holding onto him through the first wave of free agency and until after the pandemic imposed restrictions on travel and in-person physicals. But league insiders dispute that notion, saying it was easy to figure out that Newton would be available based on the finances, the health questions and the significant coaching staff changes in Carolina. His contract would have been a lot less financially onerous than the Foles contract. There’s no way the Bears traded for Foles and then, a week later, saw that the Panthers cut Newton and said, “Dang it! We should have waited!” Teams knew Newton was an option and they chose different ones, which means he probably was never going to break the bank on this year’s quarterback market.

And the backup QB market, even for veterans, has been all over the map this offseason. Marcus Mariota got $7.5 million guaranteed to back up (compete with?) Derek Carr in Las Vegas. Winston got $1.1 million guaranteed to backup Brees. Dalton got $3 million to back up Prescott. All of those guys can earn more in incentives depending on how much they actually play and how the team performs when they do, but the range of the deals indicates that the appropriate contract for a veteran quarterback looking to build himself back into a starting role is a moving target.

Plus, teams don’t even know how much appetite Newton would even have for a backup job. Which brings us to …

Would Newton accept a backup role?

A large part of Newton’s current problem is that the league is experiencing a bizarre supply-and-demand twist at the quarterback position. It feels as if only a couple of years ago, we were writing stories about a quarterback shortage. Now, after 17 teams have drafted 18 quarterbacks in the first round over the past five years, just about every team feels as if it has its guy. There weren’t a lot of starting quarterback jobs open when this offseason began, and there are fewer now.

There was some industry speculation about Newton to the Chargers, but they like Tyrod Taylor and just drafted Justin Herbert with the sixth pick. Washington made some sense, given that former Panthers coach Ron Rivera is running things there now, but it drafted Dwayne Haskins last year and just signed Allen to back him up. The Patriots say they like Jarrett Stidham and, as of now, don’t have the cap space for Newton. As always, things could change in New England depending on how far Newton’s price drops, but for now, we’re told the Patriots are not planning to go that way. Jacksonville wants to give a real shot to Gardner Minshew, but that’s another team to watch in case things don’t work out with the 2019 sixth-round draft pick.

At this point, there’s no obvious team that would sign Newton and anoint him the starter without conditions. And bringing Newton in as a backup isn’t as easy as it sounds, either, given the way so many NFL teams still view that role.

play

1:51

Stephen A. Smith explains that he would rather see Cam Newton sit out the 2020 season than sign somewhere as a backup.

For example: Newton would fit in Buffalo, where the coach and general manager come from Carolina and starter Josh Allen is a big, mobile quarterback himself. But adding Newton behind a young guy still finding his footing as an NFL starter creates potential issues that organizations and coaching staffs fear. I’m not saying this is specifically the case in Buffalo, but I’m just using the team as a hypothetical example: Bring in Newton as Allen’s backup, and no matter what you say publicly, you’re creating a difficult situation for Allen. Every time he has a bad game, you’ll be dealing with calls from your fan base (and possibly from your own locker room or coaching staff) to start Cam. If you’re developing a young quarterback, teams believe, that’s not necessarily the best way to show you support him.

The same can be said for places like Denver, Cincinnati, Miami, Arizona, both New Yorks and Washington, where teams are trying to build around young guys and want to create as fertile a situation as possible for that young quarterback’s success. Newton, whether you agree or not, is going to be viewed by some teams as a less-than-ideal backup option because of that old NFL buzzword “distraction.” It still exists as an obstacle in situations like this. If Newton’s going to land a backup job right now, it’s probably going to be behind an unassailably secure starter, like the one who’s in front of Winston in New Orleans. So …

What happens now?

The sense among people close to this situation is that Newton is in no rush. His best bet at this point is probably to wait things out and see whether a quarterback situation changes, either because of injury or because Plan A doesn’t appear to be working out. Especially with no in-person practices or minicamps to attend, there’s no compelling rush to get into someone’s facility or program and get a jump on things. Whatever current need there is for backup quarterbacks isn’t going to dry up over the next couple of months, and if he waits, he could find himself with one or more starting opportunities than are currently in front of him.

Where this gets interesting is if the season begins and he still doesn’t have a job. Does Newton, who has made more than $120 million in salary in his career, sit out a portion or all of the regular season while he waits for a team to give him the deal and the role he wants? Does he swallow hard and take a backup job?

All that’s clear is that the landscape for Newton is very different from the one he might have expected when the Panthers first put him on the market. And until that landscape changes, he and the rest of us will continue to marvel at the fact that a quarterback as talented and accomplished as he is can’t find a job.

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[jmenfoot]

Translation of the article under the cut (tw sexual assault)

Things never quiet down around a footballer like Cristiano Ronaldo. The world speaks about his goals, his hairstyle, his tax return. Pictures of him in underwear or of his girlfriend in a bikini emerge on the internet and in newspapers.

It's a permanent background noise. That's why it's that much more disconcerting when a topic is completely silenced.

Eight years ago in Las Vegas Ronaldo met a woman, Susan K. She would later claim to have been raped by him. SPIEGEL wrote in April about the American's claims. The case made a few waves. Then Ronaldo scored five goals in the Champions League quarter final against FC Bayern and later three more in the semi-final against Atlético Madrid. The history of Susan K. was quickly forgotten.

Ronaldo stepped in front of the cameras and microphones of the reporters and spoke about his ambitions for Real Madrid. Nobody asked him about the Las Vegas case. His fans made posts and tweets in which rape emerged like a poisonous stylistic device.

"to watch how Ronaldo rapes the strongest teams in Europe is so Ronaldoesque. "

"Next he'll rape Juve."

Football is an emotionnal theater that can be hard to grasp. Forgiveness, hate, then forgiveness again happen faster than in normal life. A victory, a loss, a goal can change everything.

There is unconditional worship too. Diego Maradona is nut, but he is loved by his fans because he was a genius with the ball. Franz Beckenbauer had his lot of mischiefs in his career, but his supporters stood by him, because he brought the World Cup to Germany both as a player and as a coach.

Ronaldo too  is a fairytale character for his fans. A boy from a simple background. At 17 he debuted in the pro team of Sporting Lisbon. At 18 he moved to Manchester United. At 23 he crashed a Ferrari. Nowadays, Ronaldo is 32 and everything in him seems enormous. He earns almost 40 millions euros a year with Real Madrid and has 119 millions of  Facebook followers.

Ronaldo denies having raped the American in June 2009 in a Palms Place Hotel's suite in Las Vegas. What is sure however is that the two settled out of court. He paid 375.000 dollars, as a countermove to silence the woman for good.

After SPIEGEL reported on the case, the agency of Ronaldo's adviser Jorge Mendes released a statement. It was full of falsehoods. Among other things, it claimed there was no proof that Ronaldo had anything to do with the case. The statement was quoted world-wide. And it quickly seemed as if everything had been solved. See! they say it wasn't him!

SPIEGEL then published a second article and released excerpts of the out of court settlement between Susan K. and Ronaldo, bearing the signature of the footballer. This time there was no statement from Ronaldo's agency. It also wasn't necessary. Since the new facts did not get through to the public anymore, they bounced off of most medias as if there was there an invisible wall. To this day the big Madrid newspaper "El País" did not report on the rape accusations against Ronaldo.

"This silence is odd" says journalist and feminist Shireen Ahmed. For years the canadian activist has been criticaly covering the football business. The media's inertia toward Ronaldo and Susan K.'s case outrages her. "Some people probably think, well, he paid her, it's in the past. But that's not how it works", says Ahmed, "even if the case was settled in private, this doesn't mean that nothing happened or that it isn't relevant anymore".

The Champions League final in Cardiff on saturday will not decide how Cristiano Ronaldo will be rated as a footballer. Wether he wins or loses, he'll be for a long time one of this sport's greatest players. But is he also a big personality? Or is he a liar, a cheat?

Stars like Ronaldo live in a bubble. The Portuguese surrounds himself with an entourage which takes care of his wellbeing and of the dirt that sometimes comes with the business. Finance and marketing experts, lawyers, PR advisers compose the team. They all had work to do during these last months. Last december SPIEGEL published a cover story based on the Football Leaks documents, which made brought to light Ronaldo's tax schemes. Ronaldo's spokesperson reacted by saying that the player hadn't paid all the taxes he should have – but that he had not deliberately frauded. Between 2011 and 2014 he could have avoided 15 million euros of taxes, according to the public prosecutor's office. Should it end up in court, the superstar risks a prison sentence.

For years Ronaldo's defensive chief has been the portuguese jurist Carlos Osório de Castro, a cool headed man who doesn't quickly lose track. He was one of the firsts in july 2009 to hear about Susan K's claims - and he reacted promptly. He contacted experienced lawyers in the USA and set up a chain of legal defense. Ronaldo's troops sometimes acted like characters from a Grisham movie. A private detective was tasked to investigate Susan K. He collected details about her life story, about her parking tickets. The man kept Susan K.'s house under surveillance, sometimes for hours at a time.

Once the detective quoted in a protocol that SPIEGEL was able to read : "Ms K. has left the house yesterday evening shortly before 8 pm, went to the MGM hotel, parked her car and met a young man whom she embraced in the lift." Another day, he observed them in a restaurant : "Susan K. drank red wine. She had more than (3) three glasses of wine." For the detective the job was a lucrative one. Between august and november 2009, he charged sums of 4.881 dollars, 8.079 dollars, 11.152 dollars, 10.000 dollars and in december even 23.668 dollars. However, the results the man made did not seem to satisfy his clients. One of the US lawyers pushed in an email to hire a second detective and disprove the presumed victim's claims of suffering psychological damage following her rape : "hopefully we'll witness moments where she goes out and enjoys the nightlife and men of Las Vegas." Susan K. states that Ronaldo anally raped her in the morning hours of the 13th june 2009. She went home after the alleged act. Then she called the police and was brought by the officers to an hospital. There Susan K.'s "rape kit", a special examination undergone by victim of sexual violence to gather evidences, revealed anal injuries.

It was particularly important for Ronaldo's lawyers to dismiss these findings. SPIEGEL was able to read a legal document in which the jurists planned a mediation meeting in january 2010. In the document, a "medical expert" is quoted stating that K.'s injuries could have been caused by "different objects". Then follows the explanation of a retired investigator who states that K. had enough time to injure herself before the arrival of the police. The document also mentions a sum suggested by the lawyers of Susan K. : 40.000 dollars. "A very generous offer", the jurists thought. They ended up paying almost ten times as much. Why didn't Ronaldo sue the American if he was beyond reproach ? Why did it come to an arrangement out of court? Why did he pay a hush money ?

In the documents SPIEGEL was able to read – part of the Football Leaks data - was an email in which one of Ronaldo's lawyers presents the opinion of a criminal law expert from Las Vegas. The expert has "big concerns" about the case coming to trial. Ronaldo's chances would be "50/50" – with the risk of a prison sentence.

Two weeks after Real Madrid won the Spanish championship, Cristiano Ronaldo gave a short interview. He did not speak directly about the tax case, he did not speak about Susan K. He said there were people, with "stones in their hands" ready to throw them at him. Ronaldo likes to speak in allusions. He is a drama queen. "I am talked about as if I was a criminal", he says. In the end critics will have to be silent. "I'll make things right."

It is difficult to say whether the case of Susan K. even affects him. His entourage, his sponsors ignore the affair. Nike, the nutrition company Herbalife or the watch manufacturer TAG Heuer didn't answer inquiries from SPIEGEL. The media in Spain and Portugal would rather discuss Ronaldo's son talent with a ball or girlfriend's newest wardrobe. Things go on as if nothing had happened.

In the footballer's environment it is rumored that the rape accusations could be less problematic for him than the way Susan K's case was handled financially. At that time the lawyer's expenses amounted to a 6-figure amount. The bills went to the Irish firm MIM, which handles Ronaldo's advertising revenue. To pay the arrangement sum to the presumed victim, Ronaldo's lawyers chose the bank account of an offshore firm in the british Virgin Islands. An inquiry from SPIEGEL on the issue remained unanswered.

Ronaldo hasn't talked so far about the rape accusations. Susan K. also doesn't speak about what happened in the suite of the Palms Place hotel. She firmly respects the silence clause. Her story of what happened that night was written down months after the alleged act in a letter to Ronaldo. K.'s depictions are sharp, she is deeply hurt, her rage is immense. In the out of court arrangement between Susan K. and Ronaldo, it was set that his lawyer Carlos Osório de Castro had to read out the letter to his client. Whether it happened, however, is unclear. When the jurist was reminded of the agreement at the end of September 2010 by one of the US lawyers, Osório de Castro wrote back that he had given the letter to Ronaldo. If this is true, it wasn't an easy moment for Ronaldo. But he might not know to this day what the letter contains. When Osório de Castro confirmed to the US lawyers that he had read out the letter, he sent a copy of the email to a lawyer and colleague in Portugal. The latter responded to Osório de Castro with an email. In it was only a word: "Pinocchio".

[get-the-g-blog]

#MeToo

I originally wrote this specific column a while back when an article had just been published about the kidnapping of a British glamour model sent to Milan for a photoshoot went viral. Unfortunately the magazine didn’t want to publish it at the time so I decided to take my column to it’s own platform (as you see here). After transferring the old content across I’m finally ready for a new article and since this is the week everything has kicked off with Weinstein, #MeToo and Cameron Russell’s instagram full of model abuse, I thought it was time this column saw the light of day.

Before we begin/little disclaimer for you... I’d like to say that I consider myself lucky that the times (plural) I’ve had to deal with some kind of sexual harassment/been put into a compromising position, that it hasn’t been nearly as serious as other stories I’ve heard. I also do not/have never seen myself as a victim in regards to this specific incident nor any of the others. By writing this column I am not looking for sympathy... not even remotely... I just want to stand in solidarity with all the others out there and share a story of a close call that happened to me whilst I living was in Milan. 

When you’re sent “on stay” as a model to another country, it’s not the glamorous experience the media makes out it is...it’s more like being put into a bubble world of relentless castings, promoter parties and model apartments that resemble year 6 camp at best.

For those of you that don’t know, model promoters are people...generally men...who work for a club or restaurant and are paid, per model, to take us out. Models get to eat and drink for free, which can be great...but so long as you know the game... because if you look around the ‘model sections’ there tends to be a few old, grey heads lurking there too... no such thing as a free lunch now.

I was sent to Milan a couple of years ago for two months to try to get work. It was the first place I’d ever lived outside of home, let alone overseas. I was young, open to adventures and fairly naive...basically the perfect prey. I was also scared shitless when I arrived, I felt extremely isolated but luckily I was  bunked in with just one other model, K, who was the bomb! 

The model promoter scene in Milan is massive. Bigger than anywhere else I’ve ever experienced since. It’s pretty much impossible to avoid but when K said she was completely anti-promoters I was happy to just go with the flow... I hadn’t even really worked out wtf a promoter was at this stage so I couldn’t have cared less.

One day at a casting we met a male model called T. T was a fast talking American and I wasn’t really a fan from the get go. He said he wasn’t into the promoter scene either so we should all hang out. We didn’t know many people yet so the more the merrier!

A couple of days later T invited us to a party for the designers DSquared and said we’d be sitting at the table with them for dinner. On the way to the party, it somehow slipped out that the event was actually being run by promoters and yeaaaa we probably wouldn’t be sitting with the designers. K was having none of it. We were nearly there so I wanted to check it out anyway so I somehow managed to calm K down and convince her to go, just for a bit.

The next day T, who seemed quite smitten with K, texted her to apologize and asked if he could make it up to us by taking us to a friends house in Varese (approx 1.5 hour drive outside of Milan) for dinner. New experience...new place...new people... where could I sign up?!

Since T was around our age I naively assumed that his “friends” would be to... I assumed wrong. 

We were greeted by two older men, M (in his 50s) the owner of the huge ass property we found ourselves in...inclusive of it’s own stables, motorbike workshop and a restaurant. And G, an ex model booker (70s..at a guess).

Looking back now, this should have been a little more strange than I found it at the time, but I guess power in numbers... plus G was an ex model booker and T was a model too, so safe...right?!

After dinner and a drive to Lake Maggorie, G started talking about how late it was and that we should just stay the night at a local hotel. That way, in the morning we could ride M’s horses and then go out on the boat. T said he had a casting in the morning so he couldn’t stay but we should (a casting...on a Saturday... in Italy.. who the fuck was he kidding?!).

I don’t remember K or I saying yes but we were driven to the hotel anyway. Whilst G and the hotel manager were deep in discussion that I couldn’t remotely understand K said the hair on the back of her neck stood up and that we had to go home. She couldn’t explain it, just a weird feeling. When we told G that actually we wanted to stay at our place he absolutely lost it. Unreasonably so. He was yelling and screaming, throwing his arms all over the place. It was so outrageous; it made us dig out heels in more. 

We were driven back to Milan on the pretense that we’d be back in the morning with T after his casting. 

To spare everyone the essay that this would be if I gave you an exact play-by-play of what happened next (it’s already long AF I know), I’ll try to break it down for you.

T was being super shifty and aloof in the morning about when he was going to this “casting”. We wanted to wait for him but instead he booked us a cab, told us to get in and he’d be 30 minutes behind.

Once back in Varese K and I were taken with M and G for gelato in a nearby town, given a tour of M’s motorbike workshop, rode horses, witnessed G parading around in his teeny tiny speedos, ready for the boat... and there was still no T.

4 hours later than he’d said, T finally showed his smarmy little face. It seemed weirdly preplanned... just us two pretty young things left alone to be paraded around with these two old men... things were starting to feel off to me (just now... I know)

After the boat ride, back on the pier before dinner, I oversaw G and T exchanging some very terse words. G eventually stormed off, arms flailing in the air again and swearing under his breath (my ex was Italian... I know Italian swear words ;). I’d had a couple of niggling doubts in my mind from earlier in the day and this seemed a little bizarre but I ignored it. I just wanted get to dinner, eat fast and go home.

In the car on the way back to Milan, K sat in the front next to M and I was in the back next to G in the middle and T on his other side. It was late, everyone was falling asleep and that’s when shit got real weird. I was resting my head against the window, nodding off to dream land and that’s when G lay one had on my leg and started grabbing my face and pulling it towards him with the other, whispering “My darling, lie on me, lie on me, it’s much more comfortable”. He was literally pulling my head down on to him, stroking my cheek and pushing his lips towards mine. Every time I’d pull my head up, he’d pull it back down. “You’re tired my darling, don’t fight it, it’s ok baby, just lie on me”. There couldn’t have been creepier words spoken...and I couldn’t have been more awake. This wasn’t good. I knew it. Fuck knows what T was doing at this time. He must have been able to hear what was going on, he was literally on the other side of G but he remained still and silent, didn’t intervene at all. 

I remember pulling out my phone and showing G pictures of my family, hoping to distract him the current head tug of war that was going on. I’m pretty sure my thought process was along the line of “look you motherfucker, I’m loved, people will look for me if i’m missing or kick your ass Liam Neeson style if anything happens to me”.

As we entered Milan I was completely on edge, even more so when they decided to drop T off first. I even mentioned that I recognised where we were (bullshit) in case they had any ideas about taking us somewhere strange. G and T exchanged more terse words as he got out of the car and this time I could make out they were talking about money. Luckily K and I were dropped off at our actual address shortly after, with G giving us too long hugs goodbye. 

In the morning K told me she’d had bad vibes the whole day. I mentioned seeing T and G argue on the pier and she said she’d overheard that conversation, with T said “we should tell the girls, they should know” and G was having none of it. I told her I heard them argue about money outside T’s place and that’s when the penny dropped.

Turned out that T and G were in cahoots with each other running some kind of model escort biz. G would find wealthy older men who would pay the dirty duo to find models to spend time with them...whatever that time involved...as well as paying for all expenses of the day/weekend/week. T, being a male model and therefore ‘safe and trustworthy’ would find the unsuspecting models and bring them to the men. Unaware of what was actually going on, packaging it as a fun time with “a friend” rather than some old man i’m being paid to deliver you to.

K confronted T and he confirmed everything. I have no idea how much M knew about what G and T were doing, I was alone with him several times and was honestly never uncomfortable. Had it been someone else, I’m aware that this story could be very different. I never heard from M again.

G tried to make contact a few more times... messaging me about going for a ride in his Ferrari... like that’s going to do it for me.

T sent a few rounds of apology messages. I basically told him to go fuck himself. One of the final messages was something along the line of “I’m so sorry, let me make it up to you, come to Cannes, I’m staying on a yacht for a week with some friends, join us!”. A week...trapped on a boat with you and your “friends”...yea, that’s a hard no from me.

Looking back I can see how dangerously close we were to getting pimped out or trafficked. Had anything happened, we were millions of miles from home, we didn’t even have the address of the M’s property and we’d been taken away on a Friday so our agency would have been unaware anything was wrong until the Monday.

Hindsight is 20/20 baby.

We got lucky.

x

[thisdaynews]

How Lewis Hamilton remained master to Max Verstappen's apprentice

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How Lewis Hamilton remained master to Max Verstappen's apprentice

Hamilton now has seven victories at the Hungaroring

Formula 1 has been waiting for a full-on battle between Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen for years now. The Hungarian Grand Prix finally delivered it, and what a treat it was.

Verstappen in a slower Red Bull holding off Hamilton in a faster Mercedes, their teams fighting a strategic battle as much as the drivers were scrapping on track – it produced a race that not only thrilled in the moment, but whet the appetite for what might be to come when F1 resumes after the four-week summer break in Belgium on 1 September.

Even Hamilton was excited by the battle – which became a reality as soon as the world champion had passed team-mate Valtteri Bottas by Turn Three on the first lap and settled in behind Verstappen.

“As soon as I got into second,” Hamilton said, “I was like: ‘OK, this whole battle we’ve been talking about me and Max having we are going to have that today.’ And it was really awesome.”

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“I was definitely not thinking: ‘Genius'”

As they slugged it out at the front, the two men were in a separate race from anyone else, Hamilton more than a minute ahead of the Ferrari of third-placed man Sebastian Vettel by the end of the grand prix.

Hamilton always looked quicker, but track position is so important at the Hungaroring, a tight and twisty track in a dusty amphitheatre about 12 miles outside Budapest.

Throughout, Hamilton rarely gave Verstappen any breathing space, and Verstappen defended with maturity and skill.

Never more than about two seconds behind, Hamilton ramped up the pressure on Verstappen as the window for him to make a pit stop and rejoin ahead of the Ferraris, then led by Charles Leclerc approached.

Hamilton closed a 20-second deficit in less than 20 laps to pass Verstappen for the lead

That forced Red Bull to stop Verstappen as early as they could – to protect against Hamilton stopping first and jumping the Dutchman that way.

That early pit stop meant Mercedes could run Hamilton longer, to give him fresher tyres for their fight in the second stint, which at that time was planned to be to the end of the race.

After that first stop, Hamilton was all over Verstappen. But after one breathtaking overtaking attempt around the outside of the super-fast Turn Four just failed to come off, he and Mercedes began to doubt that he would be able to pass.

That was on lap 39, and immediately afterwards the Mercedes strategists began to consider the idea of a second stop. It would lose them 20 seconds, but the idea was that Hamilton would come back at Verstappen like a rocket.

They analysed and discussed it for seven laps and then took the plunge, switching from the hard to the medium tyres for the final 22 laps, in which Hamilton would have to make up 20 seconds and pass arguably the most aggressive and uncompromising driver in the sport.

It was an unusually bold and aggressive strategy from a team that can tend towards the cautious – and impressively so just a week after they came in for criticism for questionable strategy in the rain at Hockenheim, their and Hamilton’s worst race for years.

Hamilton was far from sure it was the right idea.

Wolff said: “I’m happy for the strategy group as in Germany we came under fire for the strategy calls.”

“I definitely was not thinking: ‘Genius,’ he said. “Was I thinking ‘worth a try’? I have a different viewpoint in the car. I came out (from the first pit stop) with six- or seven-lap fresher tyres and at the time I was much quicker and I was like: ‘OK, I just have to keep the pressure on.’

“But then they told me we were going two-stop and I couldn’t compute how it would work.

“I thought I could make the hards go to the end so I knew he would be able to do the same. I thought pitting was going to be difficult and I hadn’t even had the chance to be thinking what tyre.

“They put me on the medium and it didn’t feel great initially and then he started matching my times.”

Over the radio, the doubt in Hamilton’s mind at the wisdom of the strategy was clear. He needed to close at a second a lap, but after cutting the gap to 16 seconds, Verstappen started doing the same lap times. Hamilton was cooling his brakes, which were on the limit, but once they were back in the right temperature window, he cut loose.

“I was thinking: ‘Jeez this is really risky,'” Hamilton said. “In the end you have to just go: ‘Go for it, give it everything. Just don’t worry if you don’t catch him. Just concentrate on putting perfect laps.'”

It was what Mercedes and Hamilton call “hammer time”. From 15.4 seconds, the gap came down to nothing in 10 laps.

“I saw his times rising and I was like: ‘I am going to catch him and as soon as I catch him I am going by, no messing around. And it was such a relief when I got by because it’s your dream.”

The drive and the win clearly made as big an impression on Hamilton as they did on those watching.

“It feels like a first (win),” he said. “I don’t know how. I’ve been doing this a long time but it feels like one of the first.”

Two men in a league of their own

Hamilton may have won in Hungary but fans voted Verstappen driver of the day

According to Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff, Hamilton’s driving was “in a different dimension”.

In reality, there were two men in that dimension. Verstappen was hugely impressive, too. His pole position on Saturday was stunning, and he lost out to a faster car, driven by a great driver at the top of his game, and a bold strategy to which Red Bull could not respond.

“We were just not fast enough,” Verstappen said. “I tried everything I could on that hard tyre to stay alive. Still, second, fastest lap, a good weekend overall. Congrats to Lewis, he was pushing me really hard. I like that. We were just lacking a bit of grip. We tried a one-stop, they had the opportunity for two and that worked out well.”

Hamilton praised Verstappen for the way he had conducted himself in the heat of their battle.

“Strong competitor and great driver at his best,” Hamilton said. “It’s awesome to see the respect between us, really respectful driving and I hope to continue that.

“He put the car in some good places. I gave him space and more. If we were on the same (championship) points he may have been a lot more aggressive but there was no need for that. It was just making sure when I do finally pull off an overtaking manoeuvre it was a full sweep by.”

The respect went both ways. Afterwards, in the news conference, there was a fascinating exchange between the two men when they were asked to give themselves scores out of 10 for the first half of the season.

Verstappen took fastest lap and an extra bonus point which takes him to within seven points of second-placed Bottas in the championship standings

After Vettel had given himself a five, saying he was “not happy with the first half – I can do a better job” – Hamilton gave himself an “8.9/8.8 – if it wasn’t for the last race (in Germany) it would be a little higher.

“It has been the best start of the season we’ve ever had and one of the best starts I’ve ever had but there are areas I can continue to work on. That’s the great thing about this sport, you can always improve.”

Verstappen refused to give himself a number, saying: “I hate putting a number on it because it reminds me of school which is not that long ago. I am always quite critical, it can always be better. I am never satisfied. It has a been very positive and I’ve had good results.”

So Hamilton did it for him, pointing to the two wins Verstappen had in the three races immediately preceding Hungary.

“Last few races it’s high nines,” Hamilton said of Verstappen. “I don’t remember all the races. But he drove exceptionally and if he continues like that it will be high nines.”

Finally, the quality of their race was summed up by their former rival Fernando Alonso, the two-time champion, who retired at the end of last season, watching the race at home.

“Bravo Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen,” Alonso wrote on Twitter. “Pushing 70 laps to the maximum. More than one minute to the third, nearly + one lap and a half to the top five. Both Impressive. Thanks for the show.”

A nervous wait for Bottas

Bottas was taken out of contention by a touch with team-mate Hamilton early in the race

While Hamilton goes into the summer break with his championship lead extended and a sixth title set to be sealed long before the end of the season, his Mercedes team-mate Valtteri Bottas faces a far less comfortable month.

He is out of contract this year and Wolff is going to spend the summer break deciding whether to keep Bottas, or replace him with reserve driver Esteban Ocon.

So it was a bad time for Bottas to have a race like this. Second out of the first corner, he was fourth by the time he was heading into Turn Four on the first lap, and with a broken front wing, after locking his wheels into both the first two corners, being passed by Hamilton, lightly touching his team-mate and then being overtaken by Leclerc, who broke the Mercedes’ front wing in the process.

That led to a difficult afternoon fighting back and an eventual eighth place finish.

Wolff said: “I am so sad for him. He was so pumped since yesterday, his qualifying performance was brilliant and he was in the right frame of mind before the race.

“And then the unfortunate incident in flat-spotting the tyre, touching with Lewis, touching with Leclerc and then suddenly within half a lap all the work is gone and that is just awful for him and I am sorry for him.”

Wolff said Bottas’ future will not turn on this one performance.

“We will not be letting one race result influence our decision,” he said. “It is more about compounding all data and then making a decision on stability and great personality and a very good driver versus giving youth a chance with all the reward and risk it can bring and we haven’t done that yet.

“We will start the process tomorrow and it will not be an easy one.”

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