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industryhbo · 6 years

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notes: all the things she said

Table of Contents

Inspiration & Overview

Things this fic includes

Chapter Summaries

‘I thought this was about Buzzfeed!’

Anxiety

The Bold Type

“All the Things She Said”

“Moving Parts” and One Stone

Socialist Flower Power: Soviet Hippie Culture

Fashion References

Anxiety (spoilers)

“Moving Parts” (spoilers)

Read all the things she said here!

Inspiration & Overview

My philosophy about media and art and comedy is that everything is a product of everything that came before it, so I could literally list every Trixya fic I've read as inspiration for this. I do subconsciously pull elements from other people's stories, but I think everyone does. Consciously and unconsciously, this combined a whole bunch of things: wanting Katya to be the one with a dude who doesn’t know she’s gay, wanting Katya to be a nerd about Russian gymnasts, listening to One Stone on repeat, The Bold Type, my own struggles with anxiety and sexuality. I also sort of see this as a love letter to myself about listening to your body, connecting with the people around you, and not settling.

I’m just going to say it: this is not that good. I don’t know anything about L.A.. But it has a beginning (which I love) a middle and an end, three (3) whole smut scenes, jokes, gay shit, the works. If I was writing a novel to be published, I would make the themes and structure so much more consistent and yada yada yada… I love writing and a lot of this was hard to write but it’s also been very rewarding. So thank you for reading it!

Things this fic includes

(some elements of real life & some fun fanfic things)

Digital news outlet Everything.com (because i am what? creative)

Bob the music column editor

Alyssa Edwards and Blair St. Clair

Brianna Cracker liking baseball

Minimal Violet Chachki and Pearl, mentions of them together

Mentions of Kim Chi the beauty vlogger

Editor in chief RuPaul

Mentions of Ross Matthews the sports writer

'honey' unironically being Trixie's go-to pet name

Gratuitous explanations of things that aren't that important to the plot, just because I write like I'm transcribing a movie and I'm obsessed with operations & how things work

Katya's love for Russian gymnasts and studying video in college

Trixie's music, country music, current music likes, hippie fashion sense

Thorough depictions of anxiety and panic attacks

Throwaway original characters

Chapter Summaries

I wanted the chapter titles to be a line of dialogue that Trixie says when the chapter is written from Katya’s POV, and vice versa, to reflect the idea of “all the things she said,” but I couldn’t get some of them short enough to make sense. So I gave up and stuck them in the chapter summaries.

‘I thought this was about Buzzfeed!’

I did describe this as a 'Buzzfeed AU' occasionally without thinking too much about how people would interpret that. They're all writers for a digital news site—think less ‘Unsolved’ and more The Bold Type. If you want Trixie and Katya goofing off on camera UNHhhh style, there might be something in the works. The mores kudos and comments you leave, the more I write :) And that’s not a challenge! Just psychology!

Anxiety

The only other thing i’ll say about anxiety here is that it manifests in a way that people perhaps don’t usually associate with anxiety, but it makes sense to me, and I’ve tried to show how it works.

This section is continued with more detail below, but it does contain spoilers for the plot.

The Bold Type

I love this show! It’s about people who work at magazines and digital news outlets, so I took a lot of the operations of Everything.com from that.

“All the Things She Said”

“Ya Soshla S Uma” (or “All the Things She Said” in English) is a song by Russian pop duo t.A.T.u. about a gay awakening. The music video features the two women of the duo, who have never been in a relationship together and are not gay, dressed in schoolgirl uniforms and making out. The song has been released in Russian and English. You can see Katya recreate the video here and lipsync to it solo here (both with the Russian lyrics). Here is the English lyric video (that I used to jam to in 2012).

When I wanted to write Katya not knowing she was gay, I liked the idea of her obsessing over things that friendly neighbourhood lesbian Trixie Mattel said to her. All the things [Trixie] said, running through [Katya’s] head, as the song says. I ran with it.

“Moving Parts” and One Stone

I absolutely love “Moving Parts” and the idea behind it. Trixie presents it in a karmic way, that good and bad things literally move in and out of our lives. I think there are many real-life experiences that could be explained by this idea. I also believe it in more of a psychological sense that has to do with perception. I think we will always perceive good and bad, no matter how good our lives gets. We will always find something to complain about.

This section is continued with more detail below, but it does contain spoilers for the plot.

“Soldier”: I love this song. While writing the later chapters, I had to skip this song when it came on shuffle because I kept getting distracted by my emotions. This song is used in this fic, in exactly the way you would expect it to be used.

“Red Side of the Moon”: I love this song, and how similar the lyrics are to “Soldier” 👀 Anyways, I talk about Dolly Parton and Judy Ogle in the fic, only because I listened to this song and wanted to know what it was about.

Socialist Flower Power: Soviet Hippie Culture

This is a real exhibit at a real museum in LA right now. I described it as true to the real thing as I could. I think it works.

Fashion References

You probably know the outfits I’m referring to, but here they are anyways, in order of appearance. I literally spent two hours just looking at Trixie’s instagram for fun, and then another two hours trying to find these links for no reason at all, and I regret all of that equally. It was also so worth it.

Katya’s hair (atomic bland / this)

long-sleeved jumpsuit in a purple 70s print, with a matching strip of fabric

red dress, a knee-length corduroy thing with long sleeves (not exactly what I dreamed up in my mind, but close)

short, yellow and pink paisley print dress with poofy sleeves that gathered in elastics at her wrists

four large pink flowers crowned her brow

white shirt wrinkled underneath sleek black dress...thick-soled combat boots

short, silk dress with long sleeves and peplums in a soft blush (my absolute favourite trixie look now) (it’s actually a shirt that she wears the pink pencil skirt under but my dream is that it’s a slim dress with like 4 peplums)

flowy blouse and pencil skirt

short dress in a busy red flower print

short-sleeved white cotton “dress”: i literally can’t find what I mean but you know how trixie wears just nightgowns all the time

NYE Party: Katya Alyssa Brianna (1) (2) Bob RuPaul Trixie (below, just easier to upload this one) (there are spoilers below this picture!)

Anxiety (spoilers)

I am going to try and warn you against romanticizing the role of anxiety in this story. I put a similar warning on my other fic ‘Soldier’ and people still missed the point, but here goes nothing. This is NOT a story about how a declaration of love cures someone's anxiety, and I did my best to depict that. This is a story about a romance, and how one person's journey with an anxiety disorder affects and is affected by that romance. The romance ultimately sees a happy ending because Katya eventually treats and manages her anxiety, made possible through medication, psychiatrists, immense personal effort on Katya's part, and ongoing support from Katya's friends and loved ones, including Trixie, her parents, her work friends, etc.

“Moving Parts” (spoilers)

I absolutely love “Moving Parts” and the idea behind it. Trixie presents it in a karmic way, that good and bad things literally move in and out of our lives. I have deliberately employed this in a very literal sense in this story. When Katya realizes she’s falling in love with Trixie and attempts to pursue a relationship with her, her anxiety begins to negatively and drastically affect her everyday life. This is a major part of the plot because I want story to explicitly reflect the song, NOT because I want to conflate suffering with being bisexual/being gay/falling in love with a woman. On that note, I have personally experienced a lot of anxiety trying to figure out and navigate my sexuality and gender.

#notes

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therapyswords · 6 years

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Harvey Milk Day - May 22, 2018

ATTENTION! (especially Californians!) On Tuesday, the state of California will observe Harvey Milk Day in remembrance of the gay civil rights activist assassinated by one of his peers.

Some basic info:

He was the first openly gay official ever elected in the United States as a San Francisco city supervisor.

He sponsored and passed a gay civil rights ordinance in San Francisco, which made it illegal to discriminate on the grounds of sexual orientation.

He was a key opponent to Proposition 6 (the Briggs Initiative), which would have made it illegal for openly gay individuals to teach in Californian schools, which was shot down by over 1 million votes.

In 1978, he gave his “Hope Speech”, now considered to be one of the most influential speeches of the LGBT civil rights movement. It is transcribed in its entirety below, and I urge you to read and/or listen to it.

The Hope Speech

My name is Harvey Milk and I'm here to recruit you.

I've been saying this one for years. It's a political joke. I can't help it--I've got to tell it. I've never been able to talk to this many political people before, so if I tell you nothing else you may be able to go home laughing a bit.

This ocean liner was going across the ocean and it sank. And there was one little piece of wood floating and three people swam to it and they realized only one person could hold on to it. So they had a little debate about which was the person. It so happened that the three people were the Pope, the President, and Mayor Daley. The Pope said he was titular head of one of the greatest religions of the world and he was spiritual adviser to many, many millions and he went on and pontificated and they thought it was a good argument. Then the President said he was leader of the largest and most powerful nation of the world. What takes place in this country affects the whole world and they thought that was a good argument. And Mayor Daley said he was mayor of the backbone of the Untied States and what took place in Chicago affected the world, and what took place in the archdiocese of Chicago affected Catholicism. And they thought that was a good argument. So they did it the democratic way and voted. And Daley won, seven to two.

About six months ago, Anita Bryant in her speaking to God said that the drought in California was because of the gay people. On November 9, the day after I got elected, it started to rain. On the day I got sworn in, we walked to City Hall and it was kinda nice, and as soon as I said the word "I do," it started to rain again. It's been raining since then and the people of San Francisco figure the only way to stop it is to do a recall petition. That's the local joke.

So much for that. Why are we here? Why are gay people here? And what's happening? What's happening to me is the antithesis of what you read about in the papers and what you hear about on the radio. You hear about and read about this movement to the right. That we must band together and fight back this movement to the right. And I'm here to go ahead and say that what you hear and read is what they want you to think because it's not happening. The major media in this country has talked about the movement to the right so the legislators think that there is indeed a movement to the right and that the Congress and the legislators and the city councils will start to move to the right the way the major media want them. So they keep on talking about this move to the right.

So let's look at 1977 and see if there was indeed a move to the right. In 1977, gay people had their rights taken away from them in Miami. But you must remember that in the week before Miami and the week after that, the word homosexual or gay appeared in every single newspaper in this nation in articles both pro and con. In every radio station, in every TV station and every household. For the first time in the history of the world, everybody was talking about it, good or bad. Unless you have dialogue, unless you open the walls of dialogue, you can never reach to change people's opinion. In those two weeks, more good and bad, but more about the word homosexual and gay was written than probably in the history of mankind. Once you have dialogue starting, you know you can break down prejudice. In 1977 we saw a dialogue start. In 1977, we saw a gay person elected in San Francisco. In 1977 we saw the state of Mississippi decriminalize marijuana. In 1977, we saw the convention of conventions in Houston. And I want to know where the movement to the right is happening.

What that is is a record of what happened last year. What we must do is make sure that 1978 continues the movement that is really happening that the media don't want you to know about. That is the movement to the left. It's up to CDC to put the pressures on Sacramento--but to break down the walls and the barriers so the movement to the left continues and progress continues in the nation. We have before us coming up several issues we must speak out on. Probably the most important issue outside the Briggs--which we will come to--but we do know what will take place this June. We know there's an issue on the ballot called Jarvis-Gann. We hear the taxpayers talk about it on both sides. But what you don't hear is that it's probably the most racist issue on the ballot in a long time. In the city and county of San Francisco, if it passes and we indeed have to lay off people, who will they be? The last in, and the first in, and who are the last in but the minorities? Jarvis-Gann is a racist issue. We must address that issue. We must not talk away from it. We must not allow them to talk about the money it's going to save, because look at who's going to save the money and who's going to get hurt.

We also have another issue that we've started in some of the north counties and I hope in some of the south counties it continues. In San Francisco elections we're asking--at least we hope to ask-- that the U.S. government put pressure on the closing of the South African consulate. That must happen. There is a major difference between an embassy in Washington which is a diplomatic bureau. and a consulate in major cities. A consulate is there for one reason only -- to promote business, economic gains, tourism, investment. And every time you have business going to South Africa, you're promoting a regime that's offensive.

In the city of San Francisco, if everyone of 51 percent of that city were to go to South Africa, they would be treated as second-class citizens. That is an offense to the people of San Francisco and I hope all my colleagues up there will take every step we can to close down that consulate and hope that people in other parts of the state follow us in that lead. The battles must be started some place and CDC is the greatest place to start the battles. I know we are pressed for time so I'm going to cover just one more little point. That is to understand why it is important that gay people run for office and that gay people get elected. I know there are many people in this room who are running for central committee who are gay. I encourage you. There's a major reason why. If my non-gay friends and supporters in this room understand it, they'll probably understand why I've run so often before I finally made it. Y'see right now, there's a controversy going on in this convention about the gay governor. Is he speaking out enough? Is he strong enough for gay rights? And there is controversy and for us to say it is not would be foolish. Some people are satisfied and some people are not.

You see there is a major difference – and it remains a vital difference – between a friend and a gay person, a friend in office and a gay person in office. Gay people have been slandered nationwide. We've been tarred and we've been brushed with the picture of pornography. In Dade County, we were accused of child molestation. It's not enough anymore just to have friends represent us. No matter how good that friend may be.

The black community made up its mind to that a long time ago. That the myths against blacks can only be dispelled by electing black leaders, so the black community could be judged by the leaders and not by the myths or black criminals. The Spanish community must not be judged by Latin criminals or myths. The Asian community must not be judged by Asian criminals or myths. The Italian community must not be judged by the mafia, myths. And the time has come when the gay community must not be judged by our criminals and myths.

Like every other group, we must be judged by our leaders and by those who are themselves gay, those who are visible. For invisible, we remain in limbo – a myth, a person with no parents, no brothers, no sisters, no friends who are straight, no important positions in employment. A tenth of the nation supposedly composed of stereotypes and would-be seducers of children – and no offense meant to the stereotypes. But today, the black community is not judged by its friends, but by its black legislators and leaders. And we must give people the chance to judge us by our leaders and legislators. A gay person in office can set a tone, con command respect not only from the larger community, but from the young people in our own community who need both examples and hope.

The first gay people we elect must be strong. They must not be content to sit in the back of the bus. They must not be content to accept pablum. They must be above wheeling and dealing. They must be – for the good of all of us – independent, unbought. The anger and the frustrations that some of us feel is because we are misunderstood, and friends can't feel the anger and frustration. They can sense it in us, but they can't feel it. Because a friend has never gone through what is known as coming out. I will never forget what it was like coming out and having nobody to look up toward. I remember the lack of hope – and our friends can't fulfill it.

I can't forget the looks on faces of people who've lost hope. Be they gay, be they seniors, be they blacks looking for an almost-impossible job, be they Latins trying to explain their problems and aspirations in a tongue that's foreign to them. I personally will never forget that people are more important than buildings. I use the word "I" because I'm proud. I stand here tonight in front of my gay sisters, brothers and friends because I'm proud of you. I think it's time that we have many legislators who are gay and proud of that fact and do not have to remain in the closet. I think that a gay person, up-front, will not walk away from a responsibility and be afraid of being tossed out of office. After Dade County, I walked among the angry and the frustrated night after night and I looked at their faces. And in San Francisco, three days before Gay Pride Day, a person was killed just because he was gay. And that night, I walked among the sad and the frustrated at City Hall in San Francisco and later that night as they lit candles on Castro Street and stood in silence, reaching out for some symbolic thing that would give them hope. These were strong people, whose faces I knew from the shop, the streets, meetings and people who I never saw before but I knew. They were strong, but even they needed hope.

And the young gay people in the Altoona, Pennsylvanias, and the Richmond, Minnesotas, who are coming out and hear Anita Bryant on television and her story. The only thing they have to look forward to is hope. And you have to give them hope. Hope for a better world, hope for a better tomorrow, hope for a better place to come to if the pressures at home are too great. Hope that all will be all right. Without hope, not only gays, but the blacks, the seniors, the handicapped, the us'es, the us'es will give up. And if you help elect to the central committee and other offices, more gay people, that gives a green light to all who feel disenfranchised, a green light to move forward. It means hope to a nation that has given up, because if a gay person makes it, the doors are open to everyone.

So if there is a message I have to give, it is that I've found one overriding thing about my personal election, it's the fact that if a gay person can be elected, it's a green light. And you and you and you, you have to give people hope. Thank you very much.

If there was one thing Milk felt the LGBTQ community could do to self-advocate immediately, it was to be proud of our identities.

It is on this day of remembrance that we should assess our progress. In the time of Milk, he was fighting legislation that would destroy the careers of gay Americans and sponsoring anti-discrimination bills.

In the last 40 years, we have made immense progress, but let us not forget the 28 trans Americans killed in hate crimes last year, states lacking adequate LGBTQ civil rights protections, and the looming trans military ban.

Take a moment this week to be proud of American progress and changing opinions regarding LGBTQ issues, but consider what still has to be changed.

Happy Harvey Milk Day!

#harvey milk #lgbtq rights #lgbtqa #lgbtq community #civil rights

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i-am-very-very-tired · 7 years

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In early 1937, director Gregory La Cava sent an assistant named Winfrid Thackrey to embed herself in a home for aspiring actresses, the Hollywood Studio Club, to gather material for a movie about theater life. He told Thackrey: Find me some dialogue that’s alive—get some case histories. Who are these kids? Why do they want to be in pictures? Where do they come from? What was their home life? Small town? Why did they leave home to come here? Are they having any success? Have they been to the “casting couch”? Was it worth it? Thackrey moved into the Club posing as an actress who, realistic about her chances, was also trying to learn shorthand. She spent her days eavesdropping on the young women around her, compiling notes which helped give the resulting film, Stage Door, some of the richest dialogue of any classic Hollywood production. It also presents the era’s most compelling treatment of the deeply engrained sexual harassment women have faced in the entertainment industry, depicting the “casting couch” not as the popular myth used to malign female entertainers, but as a very real predatory tool of men in power over them. THE CASTING COUCH IS OFTEN CALLED AN “OPEN SECRET,” AND THE STORY OF STAGE DOOR IS A STUDY IN THE KIND OF WILLFUL IGNORANCE REQUIRED TO KEEP SOMETHING SO WIDELY KNOWN FROM ENDANGERING THOSE IN POWER. The eighty-year-old Best Picture Academy Award nominee stars Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers as actresses who confront a producer who treats sex as the price of fame. It’s an eerily timely movie to encounter in the wake of the allegations against Harvey Weinstein, James Toback, and so many others. The casting couch is often called an “open secret,” and the story of Stage Door is a study in the kind of willful ignorance required to keep something so widely known from endangering those in power. It was just one movie, both at odds with widespread messages covering up the entertainment world’s harassment problem, and compromised by those messages to the point that its testimony could not even be heard. Article preview thumbnail The Invention of The 'Casting Couch' “I’m angry, not just at him and the conspiracy of silence around his actions, but also that the… Read more Stage Door was not the first film to mention the casting couch, but others tended to bring it up only to exonerate those who wielded it. The 1923 film Souls for Sale was written as a rejoinder to the criticism the industry sustained in the wake of Fatty Arbuckle’s relentlessly publicized 1921 trial for the manslaughter of Virginia Rappe; though he was ultimately acquitted, it was suggested he’d sexually assaulted and accidentally killed her at a wild party. The movie presents a Hollywood where stars work tirelessly, have strong morals, and don’t even make that much money. And they keep their souls intact—never stooping to the casting couch. Early on, the naïve heroine enters a crowded casting office and desperately flutters her lashes at the desk clerk. Educated by anti-Hollywood gossip, she assumes “the only way to succeed in the movies is to sell your soul.” On the contrary, an intertitle notes, “Beautiful women are no luxury to the poor casting director. He has about two jobs a day to give out and endures more wiles than King Solomon.” She waits outside the director’s office and watches as a young vamp looks deep into the director’s eyes, puts her arms around him, and says, “I must have work. I know that I must pay ‘the price.’” The man is repulsed, casting her out and insisting neither he, the producer, nor the director would dream of touching her. “It’s the public you’ve got to sell yourself to—not to us.” Thus the notion of the casting couch is dismissed. The heroine avoids making the same mistake and instead finds stardom the “honorable” way. Even her anti-Hollywood preacher father comes to recognize the fundamental decency of the industry. Later films such as They Call It Sin (1932) and Myrt and Marge (1933), are more honest about powerful men, the latter featuring one sneaking into an actress’s room wearing a robe, but usually the victim is presented as taking a foolish risk. In the Best Picture winner The Broadway Melody (1929), a woman is warned not to date one of her show’s funders, but she does so anyway, only to regret it when he demands favors. In Show Girl in Hollywood (1930), an actress’s boyfriend says of a producer across the nightclub floor, “I know the type: the minute he meets a girl, he starts feeling her ribs and talking about screen tests.” But she heads right over to him nonetheless. In All About Eve (1950), Marilyn Monroe does not enjoy courting producers, but she’s the one on the hunt. The industry doesn’t look good, but its victims don’t look any better. When the woman is rescued in The Broadway Melody, the rescuer chastises her before getting to the producer who has just been holding her captive. USUALLY CASTING COUCH REFERENCES ARE FLEETING, RELYING ON A SAVVY AUDIENCE. Usually casting couch references are fleeting, relying on a savvy audience. In King Kong (1933), a director offers Fay Wray a job and she stammers an uncertain response before being assured, “You’ve got me wrong. This is strictly business.” In The Stand-In (1937), Leslie Howard instructs Joan Blondell to shut a pair of doors, and she says, “My my, you talk like a producer, but I can scream so you can hear it through more closed doors than this.” In A Star Is Born (1937), Adolphe Menjou tells Janet Gaynor, “I think I’m going to like you,” as he comes around his desk toward her, and Gaynor looks warily and shifts away in her chair, only to sigh in relief when it’s clear Menjou’s intentions are pure. Maybe the filmmakers wanted to gesture to the truths they knew of Hollywood, or perhaps they sought, like Souls for Sale, to render the casting couch myth. Six months later, Menjou would again play a producer in Stage Door. However, this time he wouldn’t be helping Hollywood deny the performing world’s dirty secret, but laying it bare. The Hollywood Studio Club was created in 1916 to be a home for the young women then flooding Hollywood, whose lack of money or connections put them at the mercy of unseemly men. It didn’t solve the problem, but it offered positive public relations, assuring the public that Hollywood had sincere concern for vulnerable women. By the mid-thirties, 150 were living there. In March of 1937, Thackrey consulted with the Club’s director, Marjorie Williams, who allowed her to pose as an aspiring actress. While the girls would chat in the large social room after dinner, she would sit on a couch with her back to them and take careful notes, listening in as they detailed their daily efforts to get parts. During the days, she went with actresses to studios, or ventured elsewhere in Los Angeles: “I loitered in pick-up bars evenings, filing my nails or seeming to practice shorthand outside the girls’ room, waiting for two girls to come in together—one to the toilet, one to powder her nose at the mirror—their voices loud, their comments colorful, often hilarious.” She spoke with others on set, or at a bus stop, or working a soda fountain. “I never relied on my memory,” she wrote in her 2001 memoir. “Lines were exactly as spoken, colloquial, slang ridden, all faithfully recorded in shorthand and transcribed the following morning. The girls probably thought I was a bit cracked, and certainly snoopy, but my interest in them as persons was genuine.” She adds: Much of the dialogue was used in the picture. Much of it was not. Some of the case histories found their way into the picture. Many did not, but the whole project established a mood that worked and that did carry over to the film itself. Conversations, comments, opinions were interrupted, questions were overlapped with other questions and never answered: my notes recorded faithfully the way people actually talk. The 1936 play the movie was based on, by Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman, was largely jettisoned, as were scripts by Morrie Ryskind and Tony Veiller, but, as Thackrey says, many of her gathered bits of dialogue survived. When the actresses arrived on set in June of 1937, La Cava had them sit around and talk to see how they interacted and to develop more natural dialogue. Rogers’ ad-libs were so good she later received a telegram from the producer suggesting she work as a gag writer. In addition to the stars and up-and-comers like Lucille Ball were five girls from the Studio Club, picked by La Cava after they performed the play for him in the Club theater. Each night after shooting, the writers would craft the next day’s script and then they’d encourage improvisation around it on set in the morning, not coming up with a final draft until the lunch break. That free-flowing spirit is evident in the opening scene as the camera roams across the parlor of the “Footlights Club,” picking up on a fight between Rogers and her roommate Gail Patrick over borrowed stockings, and then a phone call from some Seattle lumbermen asking Ball out for a date, and then the Club manager emerging from the hall to exert order. All the while, a dozen young ladies lurk in the background, pursuing their own conversations or tossing in wisecracks. It all flows so effortlessly, with each character’s dialogue as enticing as the next, that you hardly notice the whole course of the movie is being set up. Rogers finds herself standing next to Ball, who asks if she wants to double date. Remembering how the oafish Northwesterners stepped on her feet last time, Rogers refuses and Ball responds, “Alright, you can stay here and gorge yourself on lamb stew again.” This changes everything. The mere mention of a chance at a decent meal has Rogers on board. Then Hepburn arrives. She’s obscenely rich and obnoxiously out-of-touch, and the ladies let her know it. As she waits for the manager who will soon assign her to be Rogers’ new roommate, the old one comes downstairs. A car has arrived for Patrick, sent by an important producer, and on her way out the door she has some parting shots for Rogers. Patrick: You know, I think I could fix you up with Mr. Powell’s chauffeur. The chauffeur has a very nice car too. Rogers: Yes, but I understand Mr. Powell’s chauffeur doesn’t go as far in his car as Mr. Powell does. Patrick: Even a chauffeur has to have an incentive. Rogers: Well, you should know. Patrick: I hope you enjoy your lamb stew again tonight. I’ll be thinking of you while I’m dining on pheasant bordelaise. Food preoccupies the women of the Club. There’s endless lamb stew, flavorless vegetable soup, and meatloaf the cook “must have gotten…from the Smithsonian Institute.” Ball’s not excited about her dates, but says, “To me, they’re meat and potatoes.” Unable to find work as an actress, Andrea Leeds is starving herself to save money. To all of them, the producer is a “meal ticket,” gateway to elegant eating like “bordelaise,” a word the women like the sound of even if they don’t know its meaning. The association of men and meals goes further when a butcher arrives for a date with the house cook and Ball flirts aggressively with him, trying to convince him to sneak some chicken in with their lamb. The women are in love with the theater, but that love is qualified by baser needs. Their hunger makes them vulnerable. TO CRITICS, THIS WAS NOT A STORY OF WOMEN SUBJECTED TO PREDATORY MEN. MANY OF THE REVIEWS DON’T EVEN MENTION THE PRODUCER, FOCUSING INSTEAD ON THE RIVALRY BETWEEN ROGERS AND HEPBURN. The next day, Rogers and Ann Miller are at dancing school when the producer, Adolphe Menjou, arrives, leering at all the dancers before settling on the pair. Miller hopes he’s eyeing her, but Rogers is disgusted with him. When he comes over, she serves up some insults and then hurries away. Alone with the much older man as he looks her over, Miller loses her enthusiasm and makes a hasty exit too. But then back at the Club she criticizes Rogers for blowing an opportunity. Her vacillations suggest the predicament of all these women, both repelled by the men in their lives and beholden to them in order to get work, or simply eat. Moments later, a phone call comes in offering Rogers and Miller jobs dancing at a nightclub. It would seem Rogers did the right thing, eschewing the sleazy road to success, being rewarded for her merits. But then after her first performance Menjou enters her dressing room. He has a stake in the nightclub, she realizes: he got her the gig and expects a reward. Menjou sits behind her and describes the woman of his dreams, one just like Rogers, and she ridicules his come-ons. But then, once more, she changes her attitude upon hearing a single word: “dinner.” When Menjou offers to take her out the next night, she responds, “I’m very fond of dinner.” In moments they have a date, but Rogers has little appetite for it. Her face drops as Menjou steps out the door. She’s spent the first act mocking Patrick for trading her affections for this guy’s wealth, and now she finds her only hope of success lies down the same path. In his omnipresence in Rogers’ life, and in the way the women fixate on this single producer, Menjou seems to epitomize the predatory men keeping the gates throughout the industry. In the next scene, the other women wait outside his office, hoping in vain to be seen. Soon half-starved Leeds arrives. Menjou has ignored her since he last gave her a part; perhaps she’s another conquest he’s cast aside. As she begs for an entrance, she faints, leading an outraged Hepburn to burst into Menjou’s office. There, she berates him and he answers in kind. Then she departs just as his lawyer arrives. It seems Hepburn’s wealthy father will bankroll the play if she gets a starring role. Hepburn, who has hitherto suggested the ladies’ lack of roles stems from laziness, remains tin-eared as she returns home. “It’s so silly of her to have gone without food,” she says of Leeds. When she hears Rogers discussing her date with Menjou, she tells her, “Why don’t you stick to your ideals? They’re rather crude, but they’re alright.” Rogers doesn’t answer, just points to the photo of the rich grandfather Hepburn keeps on her dresser. Ad in Altoona Tribune, Nov. 15, 1937. Hepburn can’t see how her privilege insulates her from the dilemma Rogers faces. For Hepburn, acting seems like a lark, something she tries out secure in the knowledge her family riches await if she fails. She won’t have to pay for her part because her father already did, but if Rogers spurns Menjou, she’ll lose not only her chance on stage but also her dancing job. Before her date, Rogers awkwardly tells her sometime boyfriend that she has to stop seeing him, but without giving any reasons. Then we cut to Menjou’s apartment where he and a drunken Rogers have just finished dinner, a meal she professes she didn’t dare enjoy because it would make it too tough to return to lamb stew. From there, things play out as Patrick predicted in an earlier scene—Menjou encouraging her to keep drinking champagne, dimming the lights, dropping to his knees and declaring himself a little boy in love. It’s all aided by an assistant, Harcourt the butler. “He’s very discreet though. You know, one of those butlers that tiptoes backwards,” Patrick had said. “And he’s very deaf. You really won’t have to bother to scream for help.” It’s a sinister note, a gesture to the reality of the casting couch experience that the film isn’t willing to represent. After explaining he can introduce Rogers to the right people, put her name up in lights, and ensure she never has to eat lamb stew again, Menjou clutches her hands and promises to be the Pygmalion to her Galatea. Drunk, Rogers fixates on the comparison, asking whether Pygmalion and Galatea ever married, getting weepy over it. Menjou tries to talk her back into romance, but—frightened by discussion of marriage—he soon ushers her out of his apartment. He shuts the door and pulls out his little black book to find a replacement. It all ends too quickly, Menjou’s sudden decency matching neither his eagerness to get her drunk, nor the ideas conjured by the mention of screams. VIEWERS OF THE FILM WERE ACCUSTOMED TO SEEING WOMEN NOT ONLY IN CHARGE OF THE COUCH, BUT ALSO OF THEIR OWN VICTIMIZATION. The same routine plays out the next night with Hepburn. Her father has bought her the part already, but Menjou seems intent on exacting payment from her, too. It doesn’t work, as she mocks his every ploy. Then Rogers bursts in angrily. Whether she’s decided she likes Menjou or is upset over the loss of opportunity isn’t clear, but her anger is exacerbated by Hepburn, who has uncoiled herself on the floor like an eager lover. “What is this?” Menjou asks “A frame up?” The question is another hint of something sinister in Menjou’s life. The previous night, when trying to get Rogers to quiet down, he blurted out the non sequitur, “My lawyer will straighten the whole thing out.” Earlier, on seeing his lawyer, he lowered his voice and asked, “I hope this has nothing to do with that other matter; I thought that was all settled.” We don’t know what he could mean, but we’re continually reminded of a darker underbelly. But it recedes from view in the final act. Hepburn proves a wooden actor in her new part, but just before she is to perform, Leeds takes her own life. Filled with grief, acquiring in an instant all the depth of feeling her fellow actresses develop through years of struggle, Hepburn gives a star-turning performance. The film ends at the Footlights Club. The ladies welcome a new girl, congratulate another on a part, and say goodbye to a morose Ball, who has traded the excitement of the Club for the security of one of those Seattle lumbermen. Rogers is conflicted. Critics have often said the movie lacks a love interest, but in fact, there’s that guy she dismissed before meeting Menjou, and now, in the final seconds, she thinks of him. No longer courting a producer, genuine romance is available to her again, and watching Ball depart she wonders if the chance at “a couple of kids to keep her company in her old age” is better than a future of fruitless striving and “broken-down memories.” An earlier montage of theater marquees and newspaper headlines has assured us Hepburn has stardom in her future, but it’s not clear what to expect for Rogers, nor what to hope for. One of those newspapers describes Hepburn as Menjou’s “latest discovery,” reminding us that he and men like him stand in the way of success for any woman, and yet the sad look on Ball’s face has made it clear respectable marriage can also mean trading dreams for the certainty of a “meal ticket.” IN 2017, STAGE DOOR IS THE STORY OF THE HORRORS WOMEN ENCOUNTER WHILE TRYING TO PURSUE A CAREER IN ACTING. As Rogers talks to her beau over the phone, Hepburn leans over the stair-rail to try to keep her priorities straight: “Don’t be sentimental. Remember, you’re a ham at heart.” She’s speaking from privilege again—the privilege of a steady career, and of her father’s money having preserved her from the casting couch. Passing her on the stairs is Patrick, out for a date with Menjou, dressed in finery but without a career. We’ve barely seen the guy Rogers is talking to, have no idea whether he’s an oaf, a wolf, or worthy of Rogers’ heart. And the fact that we don’t get to meet him means less that the film has no use for romance than that these characters exist in a world in which romantic and career aspirations are at odds, and doubly so because so often the men in a woman’s career demand roles in her private life too. Stage Door leaves us pleased at the knowledge the effervescent life of the Footlights Club will continue, but also a little disheartened, knowing that supportive cocoon only exists because of the threats that continue to reign outside. I first happened to watch Stage Door with my mom the day after the LA Times published its report on director James Toback, and we exchanged knowing looks at every expression of Menjou’s lechery. From the characters’ references to the dangers the producer presents, to the way he looks the actresses over, to the assistant who aids his maneuvers, it felt like what we’d been reading. Then I read the original reviews of the movie and began to doubt my understanding of what I’d seen. To critics at outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Christian Science Monitor, this was not a story of women subjected to predatory men. Many of the reviews don’t even mention the producer, focusing instead on the rivalry between Rogers and Hepburn, the remarkable dialogue, and the superiority to the play. When Menjou comes up, it is quite briefly, as though he barely figured in the plot. Even stranger is how he’s described. The character is said to be “suave,” “amorous,” and “gay.” He “has a way with the ladies,” and “a weakness for dimples and knees.” He “changes his affections with bewildering rapidity but is always polite and always ready with his little book of telephone numbers.” THE CRITICS MISSED WHAT WAS RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM BECAUSE THEY HAD CONTINUALLY BEEN TRAINED TO DIRECT THEIR ATTENTION ELSEWHERE, ONSCREEN AND OFF. Some descriptors are more negative, including “sly and wily fellow,” “roué,” and “lowlife producer.” The most common label is “philanderer.” None of it suffices. Reviewers simply didn’t see how pernicious the character is. The Christian Science Monitor calls him a “semi-villain.” The New York Times review calls him a “villain” but for the wrong reasons, saying, “the villain of all serious acting fledglings is the Broadway producer who is too busy to look and listen.” But it’s his attentions that are the bigger problem. A piece in the trade journal Hollywood Spectator gets at why they all so eagerly miss the mark. In praising Menjou’s performance, the piece says, “There is no hero in Stage Door, no romance, and Adolphe is the nearest approach to a villain it has. The real villain is life, fate, the refusal of the wheel of fortune to stop at the right number; but Adolphe, who plays a theatrical producer, controls a spoke or two in the wheel, so to him the blame for its heartless stoppings.” The reviewer casts Menjou as another kind of victim, as though, once placed in his position of power, he has no control over how he operates—as though there is no other way to operate in that position. The critics would have the movie as a fable of the human condition, of how we all suffer under the vicissitudes of fortune. They take the casting couch as understood, not a scourge but a spoke in the wheel of fate, an open secret but only in the way that death is an open secret—something we abhor but must nobly accept as inevitable. It’s a painfully wrong reading, but not necessarily unintended. The film’s censorship records reveal changes seeking to obscure the theater world’s sordid undercurrent. Head censor Joseph Breen demanded Patrick’s character be presented as “a golddigger rather than a ‘kept woman’.” The latter puts a degree of moral opprobrium on the man, the former all on the woman. A corrupt woman is more palatable than a corrupt system. The earlier scripts were less vague about Menjou’s dark past too, with references to a diary he sought to suppress, an allusion to the previous year’s scandal entangling Stage Door co-writer George S. Kaufman. Finding the fruits of Thackrey’s excursions into the Studio Club “replete with loose, and suggestive, dialogue” the censors demanded heavy changes. A complaint about a handsy date had to go, along with phrases like “on the make,” “facts of life,” and “nuts to you.” So did a reference to mirrors above the producer’s bed and anything else that hinted at the casting couch. Menjou’s declaration, “It’s guys like me that make dames like you” was rejected, along with repeated references to actresses who only perform offstage: “Did you say producers?” “They produce taxi fare and dinner—and the girls produce as little as possible.” “Officially, she’s an artist’s model. But all her posing is done in apartments.” Over fifty “unacceptably suggestive” lines were cut, rendering the film a bit too equivocal. Some critics weren’t even sure whether they were supposed to read between the lines and assume Rogers slept with Menjou. The producer was not fully the villain in earlier scripts, but in removing the debauched atmosphere surrounding him his menace is further obscured. To contemporary viewers, the film was less in dialogue with the history of monstrous men of the entertainment world than with movies like Souls for Sale, where women are as dangerous as men. The critics missed what was right in front of them because they had continually been trained to direct their attention elsewhere, onscreen and off. Consider the 1934 Hollywood fan magazine article, “Are Pretty Girls Safe in Hollywood?” The title promises a direct engagement with a serious—if poorly framed—question. The subheading makes it clear such a question would not be seriously pondered for long: Hollywood, May 1934. Hollywood, May 1934. The question is deemed “moot” because it’s misdirected. If anyone is a victim, according to the experts in this article, it’s the poor producers. “The men who make pictures are human, just as other men are,” says a woman working in central casting, an office invented to forestall predatory behavior. “If a pretty girl shows a willingness to dally along the primrose path with them, they won’t refuse.” That is, the casting couch exists, but it’s actresses who control it. So while it is possible to trade sex for roles, the article insists it’s rare and unnecessary: “the girl who wants to travel straight will find her virtue as much respected and her person as safe in Hollywood as in any other city in the world.” In fact, the story insists, “Hollywood is the most sexless town in the world,” with movie people working too long or being too caught up in outdoor pastimes to bother with lascivious encounters. The piece quotes a “famous musical picture director” accused of leering at dancers and answering, “To me a leg is merely something to stand on.” It was surely hard to believe even then, but the idea still sows doubt, shifts one’s moral focus. Encouraged to see producers as mere men and Hollywood women as temptresses, why should Menjou be any more than a “half-villain”? Seen through this lens, Menjou is relentlessly pursued—by Leeds, by Patrick, and by Rogers, who only requires mention of “dinner” to drop all sense of being harassed. Rogers becomes a seducer. The moral choice is all hers. The viewer readily agrees with Hepburn that she’s making a big mistake and never considers the bind that puts Rogers in the producer’s apartment. IT’S TAKING SOMETHING EVERYONE IN BOTH ERAS IS WELL AWARE OF—AN OPEN SECRET—AND TREATING IT AS A PROBLEM TO BE REMEDIED, NOT A FACT OF LIFE TO LOOK PAST. Focusing on the women as pursuers, it’s easy to miss Menjou’s subtle predations, the power he wields behind the scenes so that he doesn’t need to stoop to aggressive actions. He instead becomes a decent romantic prospect, not a cretin but a suave philanderer. Indeed, in discarded scripts, Rogers ended up with him. Lacking a script during shooting, everyone on set assumed one of the two leads would get him, and it became a point of rivalry between Hepburn and Rogers. That was the Hollywood they’d worked in, the Hollywood they’d been subjected to, the Hollywood they’d sold. Some critics thought Rogers’ character genuinely wants to marry Menjou, and her drunken fixation on marriage could support the interpretation. Likewise in other movies that mention the casting couch, there’s an uncertainty about whether the women would prefer a domestic role to a stage one. Young women in Broadway Melody, They Call It Sin, and Stage Mother (1933) pursue dalliances with lecherous producers as surrogates for the unavailable men they really desire. It’s easy to see Menjou not as the man standing in the way of Rogers’ career, but a welcome alternative to having one. Viewers of the film were accustomed to seeing women not only in charge of the couch, but also of their own victimization. As Joan Blondell sings of a wealthy man in Gold Diggers of 1937: I’d encourage his bold advances. And if he got reckless, I’d get a necklace. … A sudden love attack, and I’d have all his jack For love is just like war. Agency is off-loaded onto women precisely where men find their own power at its most self-destructive. Every misdeed of a character like Menjou’s can be re-framed as some woman’s secret design. Every truth has a counter-narrative. Everything was conspiring to keep audiences from seeing on that screen what is now so frightfully clear. In 2017, Stage Door is the story of the horrors women encounter while trying to pursue a career in acting. In 1937, it’s the story of the whims of fate, or the wiles of women. It’s the same awful events, just a difference in context and sympathies, in what we’re prepared to see and be appalled by. It’s taking something everyone in both eras is well aware of—an open secret—and treating it as a problem to be remedied, not a fact of life to look past. It’s taking women’s claims seriously, not assuming unscrupulous motives. “Are Pretty Girls Safe?” concludes with the perspective of Marjorie Williams, the head of the Hollywood Studio Club who let Thackrey in to gather material. “We have 150 of the nicest girls you ever saw in the club,” she said, “and they never complain about their virtue being menaced.” Perhaps had she listened in, listened when they weren’t talking on screen, but quietly among themselves, or in their jokes, their banter, their asides, she’d have heard their screams.

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lunarmadison · 8 years

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para: you got to help me out | (1/16)

Who: Madison McCarthy, Dustin Goolsby, and Dmitri. When: Monday, January 16; noon Where: NYADA Main Building, security office What: Madison is interviewed by Dustin Goolsby regarding the attack made on Elliott Gilbert. Warnings: Descriptions of violence, hospitals, blood.

Dustin Goolsby disliked setting up appointments at the Main Building for what he perceived should have been an interrogation located at the nearest Cardine holding cell, but ever since the namby pambies ten years ago brought in a citation, the NYADA Security Offices had to make sure that all pre-criminal charges were to be executed on NYADA campus with the presence of a watch eye. "Frickin' delightful, ain't it," Dustin said to his daytime secretary, Dmitri. The other man shrugged his shoulders, knowing well enough that it was better not to cross Dustin. "We finally have the knife, after all these months. Better have known that even kids nowadays are stealing from the Nurse's Office. Who knows how many healing poultices have been pilfered these last few months. Frickin' delightful." Dustin leaned back in his leather chair, scowling at everything and everyone.

Madison stood outside the NYADA Main Building looking up at it, and sighed. 'This interview is mandatory,' the ae-mail had said, although she'd just as soon have ignored it completely. Shouldering her bag, she entered the building and made her way up to the secretarial office on the second floor, where the questioning was due to take place. This was not something she was looking forward to, but she didn't have a choice, so she figured she may as well bite the bullet and head on in. "Hello, I have an appointment," she said levelly upon entering. "My name is Madison McCarthy."

Dustin Goolsby had already pulled out the notes to the investigation. First was the tip from a NYADA student, second the knife... third the indiscriminate evidence of Madison McCarthy's magic circle. "Dmitri, take notes." Dustin didn't want to leave behind any single excuse as to why the heir to the McCarthy slaying clan had the knife. As much as Prof. St. Pierre had boasted about his slaying course, Dustin had a sense of pride that the cardine training that he received was more befitting of protecting the nation. As Dustin continued his moments of pride and plotting, in the booth left to the meeting room, the office clerk pressed a button, unlocking the door and notifying Dustin and Dmitri of their visitor. "We're aware, Miss Madison McCarthy." Dustin said, his smile now gone. "Please, take a seat. We want to start as soon as we can to review this deplorable case." The director's tone was even and stony. Dmitri feared that the most. While his boss was known for his smarmy face and his everlasting smirks, his seriousness when it came to his work was what made Dmitri freeze. He quietly hoped the student, whoever she was, had great evidence to back up her claims. Or at least be cooperative with the Security Director.

Madison tried to keep her expression neutral as she sat in the indicated chair. She glanced from one man to the other, sizing them up quietly, but it seemed there was little to glean from either one's expression. "Of course," she replied. "How can I help you, sir?"

Dustin Goolsby started out easy. "Just trying to get a picture of this nasty situation. Are you aware of the November 30, 2016 incident in which a Shedim student was attacked? Dmitri over here will show you some additional photos. If you're uncomfortable, you may look away, of course." Dustin nodded to his secretary, who quietly called forth from his tablet, an e-Grimoire. A manila folder materialized on top of his device and opening it, Dmitri showed Madison some photographs that the security office had taken. The area where Elliott had been stabbed, with police tape and chalk circles around noticeable blood spots; a few clinical renderings of the muscle damage given to the hospital, and pictures of the bloodied knife before and after it had been cleaned by forensics. "Does this help with recollection, Miss McCarthy?" Dustin asked.

Madison frowned at the pictures, and tried to ignore the way her heart was racing. Who could have done this to Elliott? Who would be horrible enough to inflict this kind of damage on another person -- and for what? To what end? She resisted the urge to ball her hand into a fist at her side, resisted the anger that threatened to well up inside her. Now was not the time for emotions. "I'm aware of the incident, sir, but only inasmuch as the shedim student who was attacked told me that he was attacked. I wasn't present at the time it happened."

Dustin Goolsby kept his gaze unflinching but Dmitri's eyebrows rose. So this student was in talks with the victim? He tried to look at the Director's way but Dustin was already on it. "The shedim student told you that you were attacked? Do you have a prior relationship to Mr. Elliott Gilbert prior to this incident or is this the first time have you seen the victim."

Madison stated simply, "He's my friend, sir." There was no point in elaborating on it further than that, unless they asked for more.

Dustin Goolsby had his reply already locked and loaded. He shot. "Have you heard about Mr. Gilbert being controlled by whom others perceived as his friend? I think that case didn't happen too long ago. Back in August, I think, with a bloodline student..." Dustin let the train of thought sink in for Madison as well as whoever would be reviewing the interview later. After that brief time to absorb the information, he went on. "Miss McCarthy, while I have you here, I'd to like to ask: are you not trained to perform the special kneeling spell used to control shedim?"

Madison kept her gaze level. It didn't matter whether he was talking about her or Coleman -- or, she realized, recalling the hearing, Blaine. But that didn't have anything to do with her, or this incident. "I am," she replied. "I received this training in order to free shedim who are being controlled against their will." The explanation probably wasn't necessary, but it was clear that Mr. Goolsby considered her a suspect. That meant there were circumstances he needed to be aware of.

Dustin Goolsby looked at Dmitri, who was writing down the notes with his left hand, while his other hand was on his tablet, magic circle humming, as the tablet began to transcribe the verbal dialogue into a script format. Dustin then resumed his inspection over Madison. "It is under our judgment that certain people would covet this knife, one of the few weapons that can harm a shedim. While the kneeling spell was placed eons ago by a very strong witch for the protection of witchkind and the bans on demonic magic has prevented shedim from harnessing their true natural power, many have forgotten the spell or have never been taught in it. Definitely witches of your generation and the one before." Dustin honed in, "Our hypothesis, most likely true, have shown us therefore that many would covet a quick way to subdue a shedim, one that is not as exhaustive as the current mode of displacing those lusus naturae. And the people who would want to use such a weapon the most would be slayers."

Madison listened intently, continuing to keep her expression as level and neutral as possible. He didn't just consider her a suspect. He was practically accusing her of committing the act itself. "Mr. Goolsby," she started, "with all due respect, your hypothesis relies on too many prejudices, rather than looking at the concrete facts. It rests on the assumption that witches of my generation don't, generally, know the Kneeling spell, when I can tell you that's incorrect -- Josh Coleman has also demonstrated that he knows it, and I would venture a guess that other Bloodline students whose families employ shedim are also aware of, and trained in, its use. Second, it rests on assumptions and prejudices about slayers. You'll find, if you look at the legacy of the McCarthy family, specifically the acts of my mother, Margaret Willow McCarthy, that we are champions of L.Naturae rights, and insist upon humane treatment of any L.Naturae who are captured and contained by the Guild. Many of us are also trained in the Kneeling spell, as a means of 'subduing' a shedim, and I assure you, should I find myself in a position where I would need to do that, I would have no use for a knife that would intentionally harm one." She took a breath, but a short one; she had a lot more to say. "So, here is the extent of my involvement in this ... incident. Elliott Gilbert told me that he was attacked. He asked me to free him if he was ever in another incident in which he was under another Witch's control. I agreed. I asked him for any details about the attack, because we've had dealings with the other witch I noted who could perform the spell, Josh Coleman, and I wanted to make sure that he wasn't behind this attack. Mr. Coleman, as I'm sure you know from the hearing related to AAA House, is no friend to L.Naturae, and certainly has motive. However, Mr. Gilbert couldn't identify his attacker, and said that the attacker was in possession of a knife that could harm him. On my own volition, I took the knife from the hospital, with the intent to Divine its owner or place of origin. Again, it led me to AAA House, though the results were not specific. I retained possession of the knife because, quite frankly, I don't trust anyone else to have it. I know I'm committed to the protection of not only witchkind, but the humane treatment and civil rights of L.Naturae. I can't say the same for the entire student body."

Dustin Goolsby allowed her to talk, noting her points in his head. He was well aware of the Coleman kid, and truth be told, hated his guts. But the evidence didn't suggest that kid's involvement with the shedim student. Madison was. "I'm glad you mentioned the knife, Miss McCarthy," Dustin said, "the attacker was in possession of the knife. And then you said you took the knife from the hospital?" Dustin looked at her, chastising with no outburst. McCarthy children, from what the rumors went, didn't get much parental support. Perhaps this was the reason for her rebellious act. "I don't trust you to have it, Miss McCarthy. While the knife was on transfer from the hospital to our security offices, you admit that you came in and stole it. An evidence that was going to be used for investigation. If Nurse Penny wasn't so adamant about our presence stressing out students, we would have quarantined Mr. Gilbert to a different facility outside of NYADA campus effectively. Your meddling didn't only cost us a valuable resource but it cost us time. Do you honestly think you could have divined better than the Security Office at NYADA? I can't say that you're committed to protection when you clearly do not work with us, the Security Office. Don't even try to lie about hiding the knife, either. We found your magic circle prints around the dirt where you buried it, a little away from your dorm. Do you think that was protecting Mr. Gilbert? Who knows who else could have dug it up to hurt him again. Face it, you ditched the knife so that you could protect your own damn self." Dustin felt actual disdain. Did this kid actually know what she was doing in pursuit of her brand of justice? "Your vigilantism was noted by an anonymous tip. We have additional records of your involvement, so I rather you don't waste my time. Where were you on November 30, 2016? Who helped you steal the knife. We know you couldn't have done it alone."

Madison remained as calm as possible, given the circumstances. "I'm sorry for impeding the investigation, sir," she said. "I haven't known security to be kind to L.Naturae students, but I admit that it doesn't excuse my behavior. I won't interfere with any further investigations." If that was what they wanted, fine. She would find other ways to help. But she thought back to what Mason had said -- this wasn't them. "I buried the knife so that others wouldn't have it. I didn't think about the potential consequences of that action, or ... any of my actions. I'm sorry. I just ..." She took another breath, one that came out in a low shudder, and she tried to steel herself. "I wanted to help Elliott. I wanted to protect him, and that was the only way I knew how. I couldn't just sit back and do nothing, and ... I didn't know how else to help. I didn't know what to do. So, yes, I took the knife. I took it, I kept it, and then I hid it."

Madison added, "And on November 30th, I was getting over breaking up with my boyfriend, which had happened on the 29th, so I was with my brother all night. You'll forgive me if I spare you the messy, emotional details."

Dustin Goolsby glanced to his side when Dmitri stopped writing with his left hand. "We understand the wanting to help, we really do," Dmitri said kindly to the student, "But you have to understand our reasoning when you hid the knife from us for a length of time. No one is guilty before they are innocent, Miss McCarthy." Dustin rolled his eyes at the kid's reply in lieu of a emotional connect. Oh, Dim, Dim, Dmitri. "You haven't known Security to be kind to L. Naturae students? On what grounds do you make such a claim about my department. I'll say this clear, we don't move nothing 'til people -- staff, student -- come to us and give us missing information. You think I like ordering Dmitri here to make those security announcement for bureaucracy's sakes? When we actually have people coming forward and telling us what happens then we can actually do something. You know what, I want to hear about your 30th. Distraught emotional time? We've had crimes of passion before." Dmitri turned to look at Dustin. "Director Goolsby--" Dustin gave Dmitri a sharp glare. "You, just write."

Madison sighed. "I understand -- again, I'm sorry. But this wasn't a crime of passion, sir. I didn't commit any crime at all, other than the theft of the knife and the subsequent obstruction of justice. I spent the morning in my dorm room, which my roommate Quinn Fabray can corroborate. I went to Undique to practice archery in the afternoon. I spent the afternoon at Coughing Coffee studying and texting my brother and another friend." She thought back to the rest of that day, and -- aether. There had been a crime of passion, alright, but it hadn't had a single thing to do with Elliott Gilbert. How could she absolve herself of one crime without admitting to another? She'd have to tell the truth. "I went to the boat house on campus that night as a favor to Hunter Clarington. He asked me and my brother to place protective sigils on his boat for the winter."

Dustin Goolsby 's interest was piqued. "Hunter Clarington? There have been noted talks about his quarrels with the victim, Mr. Gilbert. Furthermore Mr. Clarington has a record with us for being the, at times unwilling, target of indecent acts on campus. Was it the Clarington Clangirls, again? Dmitri, write that down." Dmitri dutifully wrote down clarington clangirls???? sp?? in his notes. "Continue, Miss McCarthy. And note that everything you give as testimony will determine your status here as a student at NYADA."

Madison steadied herself, confused. "I don't know anything about ... Clarington ... clangirls, sir. And I don't know much about Mr. Clarington's relationship with Elliott. Mason -- that's my brother -- offered to place some protective sigils on Mr. Clarington's boat, and I went there that night to recharge them. You'd have to ask my brother about the initial reason for making the offer in the first place." She paused. "Sir ... if it's all the same, I'd like to be judged based on the merits of my own actions, not on the actions of those whom I associate with. I'm well aware that Mr. Clarington is also not much of a friend to L.Naturae students, but I don't believe in judging people's character before getting to know them personally." Another pause. "May I ask how this relates to the investigation of the attack on Elliott Gilbert?"

Dustin Goolsby returned the question, "You were the one who mentioned the boat, Miss McCarthy." He ignored the other bits of her answer, they weren't important to the case at hand. He would be judging Madison and her actions had said it all. It was now the finding of an accomplice that Dustin was after. "Tell me about your brother, Miss McCarthy, was he ever present in any of the incidents you have mentioned? The stealing or the burial of the knife? Are you forgetting anything that would help clear suspicion? For the record, we have you confessing to breaking and entering a school hospital and stealing evidence. I don't want to expell you or have the Cardines, who will be reviewing this later, push for a criminal offense."

Madison closed her eyes. Those aetherdamned Cardines. The more she heard about them, the more she didn't want the Guild to have anything to do with them. "There is one thing," she said slowly. "I received a message last week from an unknown individual who said they knew about the knife and wanted it returned. I didn't return the knife to them, because they offered no identifying information nor did they say what they wanted the knife for. They communicated with emojis in their message, disguised their voice when I spoke with them, and wore a hood that obscured their face. Based on observations of their magic I'd say they're a tech witch of some kind." She glanced to the e-grimoire that Mr. Goolsby's assistant was using. Could it be...? No, there were so many tech witches. It could be anyone. "Mason was aware of my plan to take the knife from the hospital. It should be noted that he disagreed with the plan and tried to talk me out of it. I convinced him to stand watch while I took the evidence. He was neither present for, nor knew about, me burying it."

Dustin Goolsby "Do you still have this message?" Dustin circled a note he had written which was confiscate personal belongings?. Dmitri looked over, pretending to regard the window and then frowned. Director Goolsby had to let things go, he wasn't an active Cardine anymore. "And you actually spoke to this person? Do you believe it to be the same perp who attacked the victim on the 30th?" Dustin kept on writing, getting it all down as she talked but then frowned as Madison finished her speech. "You know that he's then obstructing justice in a way, Miss McCarthy. If he's standing watch, it's still being complicit in the offense."

Madison nodded. "I have it in my dorm room," she said. "I can bring it to you. I have no evidence that it is or isn't the same person who attacked Elliott on the 30th. Elliott said he didn't recognize his attacker or their voice, but that could just mean that the person was unknown to him. I don't know whether his attacker was obstructing their face or voice." She pressed her lips together, eyes closed for a moment. "I understand that, sir. It's my intention to cooperate with the investigation. Failing to tell you about his role in my actions would not be cooperating. But it really should be noted that he did protest."

Dustin Goolsby threaded his fingers together as he began to think of all the different scenarios. All of them led to a new threat point: someone completely unrelated might also be interested in the knife. Dustin straightened up. "We will need access to your phone to do some location and recovery magic. We'll need your permission. As the Director of the Security Council, we must comply with NYADA's Code of Conduct, however. We will have to contact your parents. This will be part of your permanent record." Dmitri kept on tapping on his tablet with one hand as he transcribed the verdict.

Madison nodded again, soberly. She'd done the crime, which meant she would do the time, so to speak. She hecked up, big time, so it was on her to pay for it. "I understand. And I intend to comply, but ... may I ask what exactly you'll be doing with my phone?" She glanced at the assistant again, unsure about this whole thing.

Dustin Goolsby said, "We will only attempt to get a trace on the unknown number. Anything beyond that is classified information, Miss McCarthy. For this breach of security, we will be implementing Watch Eyes on both yourself and your brother for the next three months."

Madison 's heart sank, eyes hardening, but the protest died on her lips. Fighting it wouldn't earn her any points with the security office. But she'd fought so hard to differentiate herself from Puckerman -- she'd done everything she could to show everyone that they weren't the same, and yet here they were, suffering the same fate. She knew of no other students who had been saddled with a watch eye, and -- Aether, this would seriously impede her ability to actually do anything about the Samhain incident. She couldn't talk to anyone about it, with some stupid eye watching her at all times. She couldn't perform the investigations that she knew she had to, couldn't even come up with a plan the way that she had promised. She had to find a way out of this. "Sir ..." she started, "I understand, but -- I've confessed. I'm truly sorry for what happened and I can assure you that it won't happen again. I'll comply with any and all investigations from here on out, and I won't go looking for any trouble. You have my word. I'll swear on my magic circle. I don't -- I know it's not my place to determine, but -- I don't understand the reasoning behind putting watch eyes on us."

Dustin Goolsby sighed and leaned forward in his seat. The Director had words to say, Dmitri could tell. Dustin was never the patient type, and before this became a full-blown Goolsby Rant, Dmitri stepped in. Verbally. He smiled at Madison but also gave her a semblance of seriousness and gravity. Dmitri said, "We will see if we can reduce the time frame but as of this moment, it is your alibi against substantial evidence and a confession. We can't believe on reform from words alone, Miss McCarthy. The Watch Eyes will be deterrents for both yourself and your brother from taking matters into both of your hands. You're capable. But capability can lead to culpability depending on how your talents are used. We thank you for your cooperation, but for the safety of all students, including yourselves, we will implement Watch Eyes."

Madison watched the assistant come forward and speak to her. He'd been patient throughout all of this, but she didn't trust him either, not as far as she could throw him. "Put it on me," she said, "but not Mason. He didn't have -- he's only involved in this because I dragged him into it. Talk to him, and determine from his testimony what punishment he deserves. Please, just -- take it into advisement. There's no reason he should suffer the same fate when I'm the one to blame, if there's any blame to be had." She pressed her lips together, and retrieved her phone from her bag, which she then handed over. "I'd like to be present while you do what you need to."

Dustin Goolsby shook his head. "If two people had worked together in a crime, then there's two criminals." Dustin's brow creased as he downright chuckled. "You should have thought about it before you dragged family into it, Miss McCarthy. We will arrange to speak with him, no doubt about it now. I suppose you didn't coach him on how to talk to us? I would love to reduce the number of charges before I file my report." Dmitri received the phone from Madison and swiped a hand across his tablet, creating a dark blue interface. He placed Madison's phone on top and in a matter of moments, her phone was floating, suspended in a beam of dark blue light. << Let's run an analysis. >> The phone spun slowly before the light flashed in a lighter shade of blue and a paragraph of data trickled in from the top. Dmitri remarked, "Alright, we have enough battery on your phone so it won't die on us while we do a preliminary scope. But Miss McCarthy, you would do better with servicing your phone. The level of aether energy residue on your phone is quite high, most likely reactions from your bloodline magic..." Dmitri moved his hand up in a flicking motion as he cast, << Unlock. Check Unknown Number. Copy data files. >> The tablet underneath Madison's phone lit up and in seconds again it copied Madison's phone screen down to the last pixel. The light began to die out and Madison's phone gently landed back onto the tablet. Dmitri handed the phone to Madison. "Your phone."

Madison took her phone back and pocketed it. Aether energy residue ... she made a mental note to check into that. It could be her Bloodline magic, or it could be any other number of things. Like maybe Cardines wiping all her data. She didn't like the way that this looked at all, but -- who knew, maybe that was because tech magic was so confusing to her. She still took note of the guy's circle, just in case she saw it somewhere else. Anywhere else. "I haven't coached my brother on anything other than how to fight his way out of a pack of greasy slugworms or get himself un-lost on extended missions. He even dresses himself these days." She gave the pair of them a contrite smile, and stood to leave. "Is there anything else?"

Dustin Goolsby gestured for her to leave with a hand. "Feel free to go, Miss McCarthy. We don't need you here while Dmitri over here will establish connection." He craned his neck over to the clock and then at his secretary. "And how long would that be, Dmitri? Five minutes?" Dmitri had already started opening the text message and said, "Probably two. Is this the unknown message, Miss McCarthy? Something about you being 'brave'?" Dmitri looked at Madison dubiously.

Madison shook her head. "No, sir. I don't know who sent that message either, but the orthography is different from the person who sent the first message. The first message, about the knife, used the pictorial emojis on the keyboard -- this one has, um. It's a different style. I think it's not the same person. And the knife message was printed out and taped to my door."

Dustin Goolsby shared a look with Dmitri. "Please bring that to us when you are able, Miss McCarthy. We will take it as evidence." Dmitri said. Dustin leaned back in his chair. As much as he wanted to trust Madison, the student having the message printed out and taped felt too close to tampered evidence. Perhaps speaking with the brother would lead to clearer answers. "That'll be all, Miss McCarthy. In about five days time, your Watch Eye should be ready. January 20, 2017 is when it'll be deployed. Furthermore, if we need to speak with you again, you will be notified."

Madison nodded again. "Yes, sir. Thank you." She turned to leave, and waited until she was out into the light to send a text to Mason. They needed to talk.

#para: all #para: dustin goolsby #c: dustin goolsby

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lorrainecparker · 7 years

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AOTC with editor of the documentary “KEDI”

Mo Stoebe currently works as freelance editor of both documentaries and narrative films in Los Angeles. He got his start in the industry as motion designer and animator for commercials and music videos, but his love for film eventually brought him to editing long-form content. He’s completed five documentaries and a feature and loves learning something new about the art of editing every day.

Art of the Cut discusses one of his latest project, the documentary Kedi which has received praise form many fronts. It is currently available on Netflix.

HULLFISH: While there are English subtitles, the language spoken in this documentary is Turkish.

STOEBE: Yes, and my Turkish is very bad.

HULLFISH: I’ve edited in other languages myself, Spanish mostly, and I don’t speak much Spanish. But I feel that you can get a sense of the rhythm of the language. I don’t speak Turkish, but I always felt like the rhythm of the language as you edited it was good.

STOEBE: I am from Austria and grew up bilingual as my mother is originally from the Netherlands so I’ve always been interested in different language. In the case of Kedi, the producers had the forty or so interviews and many verité scenes they had captured fully translated and transcribed. That meant that I was able to see the words that were said transcribed as subtitles as well as their English translations in the frame. I tried to string out interview portions I thought were relevant in this way. Of course there was quite a bit of fine-tuning and adjustment required by Ceyda Torun, who is the director of the film and fluent in Turkish.

HULLFISH: So are you saying the actual video files had translations on them?

STOEBE: Yes we had a small army of people going through all of the interviews, and verité scenes, translating and transcribing them. So I would have a subtitle of the transcription of what was being said. And then underneath it a translation of that same text. So I could pinpoint which sentence means what and make selects that way.

HULLFISH: So, it wasn’t just on a text file.

STOEBE: We did have text files but we also had it was on screen which I thought was very useful to be able to get a sense of what was said and see the expression on the subjects face during the interview. There were also quite a few verite scenes that were translated and transcribed in the same way. It must have been about fifty or so hours total which was a considerable amount of work in the overall scope of the post production process.

HULLFISH: And was that something that your Assistant Editors handled?

STOEBE: Yes, that was one of the technical issues to figure out before we could get started with editing. The producers had decided to use a software called InqScribe. It lets you timecode the translation and transcription and turn the finished document into an XML which places the text back into the timeline at the correct positions.

HULLFISH: I’ve used Inqscribe in the past. It’s nice because it allows you to type and control the playback of the media without jumping between two programs, like QuickTime Player to control playback. It makes it very fast and there are shortcuts for jumping backwards 8 seconds, which is a perfect amount when transcribing. Now, for many of these interviews, I’m using a software called Speed Scriber. It actually does the transcription for you and then every word in transcription is linked to the audio so if you look at the reading and decide “That isn’t the right word.” you can click on the word and actually hear it to type the correct word.

STOEBE: Oh, that’s fantastic. I’ll have to look that up!

HULLFISH: So you were saying you cut in Final Cut Pro 7?

STOEBE: Yes.

HULLFISH: Was that your last project on FCP7 before switching to Premiere?

STOEBE: It was the last project in Final Cut 7. I was a big fan of FCP7 and had gotten so used to it that I could really just kind of forget about the software aspect and just focus on editing. When I moved to Premiere about two years ago it took a few months to adjust. I have to admit I still think FCP7 was a fantastic editing system and I miss how fast certain tasks were compared to Premiere. But at this stage I have gotten very comfortable with Premiere.

HULLFISH: Tell me a little bit about temp music. There are extended portions which I think are absolutely lovely where there’s no dialogue at all.

STOEBE: The temp music was split up into three different bins. The first was a bin of several temp music pieces from Kira Fontana, the composer on the project to get a sense what certain parts would feel like. The second was a bin of Jazz and World Music. I had come across a jazz musician called Lloyd Miller during the editing process and I fell in love with his work so it was mostly his tracks in that bin. He is a very interesting musician and scholar who plays Middle Eastern instruments in a jazz tradition, he can play about a hundred of them. One of his tracks on the album titled ‘Oriental Jazz’ felt perfect for Kedi, especially as an introduction to the cat called Psycho which pivots from being poetic and observational into showing the badass nature of the cat.

The third bin contained mostly Turkish pop tracks from the 70s and 80s. The director Ceyda had very specific ideas on how and where to use those tracks as the lyrics complement the story at points.

HULLFISH: I want to talk about the structure of the movie and – I could be wrong about this but – it seemed like to me that the structure was kind of you followed one specific cat for a while and told that one cat’s story and then there was kind of a general cat section and then another specific cat’s story.

STOEBE: That’s exactly how we approached it. The producers had identified about 35 cats and stories they considered capturing. At the beginning of the shoot that number was cut to 19. Out of those we edited about ten stories at the rough cut stage and seven made it into the final film. After we completed rough cuts for individual cat stories we tried to figure out out how they would sequence best and what would be the material linking various stories. We thought of a graphic approach using a ‘red thread’ type of device to link various neighborhoods and creating a journey that way. We considered animation. In the end we decided on aerial photography to give a stronger sense of the city as a character. The edit itself was very much like a sculpting process – we kept reducing the footage further and further trying to identify the core of each story. It’s not the fastest route towards a final result but for a partially observational film like Kedi it is the only way to do the material justice. The emotional peaks and valleys of the film were not very extreme which meant that attention to detail was even more essential. The only way to find brief but fun or charming moments is to go through all the material several times.

HULLFISH: Were you cutting while they were shooting?

STOEBE: Yes and no. The production team returned from Istanbul with about 180 hours of footage shot on various cameras. It was then all organized and transcoded to Apple ProRes HQ which was the format we edited in. Ceyda, the director had to take a break from visiting the editing room as her and her husband Charlie were having a baby daughter. It meant that I would have a good amount of time with the material to get familiar with each story. I used that period to create selects reels for each feature cat which we kept screening to find the core of each story. After that I began assembling rough cuts for each featured feline as well as string-outs of all the interviews. This whole process took about three months from start to finish. Once we had all our elements in place we began thinking about a structure for the overall film. It was a lot of trial and error. Over the following three months or so we worked on 33 different assemblies of these elements and built many, many versions of transitions between them. At this point we had also decided that we wanted to use aerials in addition to material from the random cats and Istanbul bins to connect the individual stories. So over a period of a few months we periodically received aerial footage and cut that into the film.

After the 33 assemblies resulted in a structure we liked, we spent another month or so until we locked picture. So it was a process that took about ten months in total.

HULLFISH: The thing I noticed was there was two cats in restaurant areas and those were very much separated and then there were two kind of artist stories and those were separated from each other and there were kind of let’s feed a million cats stories and those were separated.

STOEBE: (Laughter) Yes that’s very well observed. We knew that certain cats linked really well together but others could be moved around more or less freely. We had a few test screenings with friends and colleagues which also helped us decide on a final order. It became clear as we went on that the transition sections were a lot trickier to get right than the cat stories themselves. In hindsight, I think we spent almost more time working on the transition sections as we did on the cat narratives.

HULLFISH: And what was some of the feedback just from your feel of it, or the director’s or from screening audiences? What were some of the notes that affected that sequence?

STOEBE: For example the first cat – which was called ‘Yellow Shit’ during the edit because that’s what some of the people around her called her, mostly because she was stealing food from them all the time – used to appear at a later point in the film. Eventually we moved her to the front because she was just such a strong introduction to the city and the film in general. We also tightened some sections considerably to keep the film moving along.

This is the cat known as Yellow Sh*t

HULLFISH: That’s a great example that a specific cat with a strong point of view leads off and that we need to pace our introduction of a lot of cats.

STOEBE: Please excuse my answers. English is not my first language. I always claim E.S.L. as my defense. (Laughter)

HULLFISH: Your English is excellent. You are Austrian?

STOEBE: I’m Austrian, yes.

HULLFISH: But you lived in London

STOEBE: Yes, I spent seven years in London, two years of those to follow a masters program in design and filmmaking. I love the city but eventually I think I wasn’t the right fit so moved back to Los Angeles where I had been living since I was a teenager.

HULLFISH: In your editing, you mixed it up quite a bit, but mostly you did not play the opening lines of a new speaker on the speaker in sync, on camera. You almost always wait sometimes 30 to 40 seconds before you actually see person speaking. Tell me a little bit about that.

STOEBE: The interviews were treated different than in other films, people were very much not the main characters and the interviews needed to feel like they were happening in the moment. Some of the people that speak are never shown on screen so the focus of the film is really on the city and the cats, and people are just on the sidelines. That is also we chose not to include lower thirds. This helps the audience to just kind of take in the atmosphere and stay in a more observational mode.

HULLFISH: One of the things I love is that you get a sense of the journey of these cats and a real story taking place. I’m guessing that the sense of journey or story had to be completely constructed. There is a cat in the restaurant that ends up kind of chasing a rat and I’m assuming the story had to be constructed from non-linear footage… out of sequence and non-chronological.

STOEBE: There is a bit of construction in that but not too much. It’s mostly compressing time and showing something that happened ten times only once. The scene in the sewer that you see in the film is pretty much how things actually happened. One thing I certainly learned about cats during the editing of this film is that they patiently sit around and wait a lot. And observe…or just relax. Then they act quickly… before you know it everything is over again. I’m sure this is quite obvious to anyone who has ever edited nature documentaries but it was new to me.

HULLFISH: There are also other really nice sequences of cats going some place where you get the impression that the cat has this idea to do something then sets off with the camera crew in tow.

STOEBE: That’s pretty much what they did. One of my favorite cat stories is that of Gamsiz, the black and white male cat hanging out at the bakery that fights the ginger cat. He did have this elaborate route which he would embark on multiple times every day. He would climb up on a tree, jump to a ledge and up to a balcony and try to get into an apartment where he would frequently be fed. It took the director and her crew quite a bit of time to figure out where he was going and how he was getting where he did. Once they knew the route they were able to capture events from multiple cameras.

I also think that some of the cats took a liking to the camera and literally performed for it.

HULLFISH: Got it. Talk to me about organizing your footage and what were some of the ways you organized it. I was thinking it would be organized per cat…

STOEBE: That’s exactly right: per cat.

HULLFISH: Then random cats and then you also probably have all this atmospheric footage of the city and then the interviews?

STOEBE: Exactly you are pretty much saying the way I named the bins! We had one bin for the individual ‘star’ cats and then a bin for random cats. Additionally, we had a folder for city shots and a folder for all the slow motion footage which was filmed on the Red Camera. The the organization was pretty much: City, random cats, and individual stories as well as interviews.

HULLFISH: Let’s talk about the decisions of when to have music come in and when to stop it and what to play “dry.”

STOEBE: Basically we were trying to have a signature piece of music to introduce the feature cats and selected a mix of jazz and Turkish hits from the 70s and 80s.

HULLFISH: As a non-Turkish person I liked those, too. I called it “pop” music. I was going to ask you about the pop music.

STOEBE: Yes, it’s Turkish pop from the 70s (laughter) which I really fell in love with too. The lyrics relate to what is happening on screen as well, which is something you will only get if you’re a Turkish speaker unfortunately, because we decided not to translate the lyrics. But to answer your question, yes we very much tried consciously to let the sound of the city come to the foreground at times. For example during the section with the cat at the waterfront restaurant, we wanted create an interaction between the cat and the fishermen through sound. The cat was listening to the sound of fish being gutted which sparks her interest and kicks her into action.

HULLFISH: There is a section about a cat in one of the shopping bazaars and the cat, you almost think it’s dead for a while then you find out it’s just sick. Then you follow that with a sequence in a cemetery. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

STOEBE: They were interviewing this man who was caring for all the cats who live in a neighborhood market. While they were interviewing him, a friend of his came up with a kitten who had been attacked by an older feline and he stopped the interview and rushed this poor little fellow to the vet. We actually don’t know if it lived or died or what happened with it. That was one story. In addition to that, we had a couple of interviews which contained portions that deal with loss. First, a very interesting woman who was basically a kind of hoarder of all kinds of decorations and artifacts. She also hoarded mostly injured or sick cats and she talked about her difficulty dealing with death, not being able to let go of something and the pain and longing it caused. Her interview was very philosophical and kind of pensive. Second, we had an interview with a well known local comic artist who talked about growing up with cats and what it would teach him about death and about loss because the cats would get run over or just die and that was a way of for him to be able to come to terms with that. His energy on screen was very different from the other two, he was very funny and witty. So as we went about sculpting the footage down this sequence materialized: market drama to melancholic woman to quirky artist. This sequence allowed us to bring a balanced approach to a topic like death and loss. I think these sort of discoveries in the editing room are what I like most about working on documentary films. It’s like a puzzle finally coming together and when it falls into place it presents a new image, a new story that you couldn’t really have planned out at the start or thought up while shooting.

HULLFISH: There are also a couple of really nice moments where you really were able to develop some conflict. Especially cats that didn’t like each other or fought and then there was a cat that had a little box where it was keeping kittens. It was protecting its kittens and another cat came up and the momma cat was worried about it, so I liked some of those conflict moments. Talk about creating a conflict with cats.

STOEBE: You probably have heard cats fight but I had never seen what actually happens. There is a lot of screaming and lengthy posturing involved with very short bursts of action. Here again we had to condense time drastically. Some of the conflicts you see played out over a number of days. We had a lot of really great material for the scene at the warehouse so it was possible to illustrate the POV of a cat entering a warehouse through a gap beneath the door and sneaking up to another cat with her kittens. Trying to capture the POV of cats roaming the city, cinematographers Charlie Wupperman and Alp Korfali developed what they called a “cat-cam” which was a rig that allowed them to move the camera close to the ground. They had also experimented with cameras mounted on RC cars, but it wasn’t as effective as the handheld rig because it scared the felines.

HULLFISH: With any documentary with animals you’ve gotta condense time and build a story from disjointed parts – especially with animals.

STOEBE: That’s absolutely true. There is a whole lot of scratching and cleaning and waiting. I think the challenge sometimes is to find key moments when the animal makes a decision to act a certain way. You kind of have to try to start thinking like the animal a bit.

HULLFISH: You ended up with seven “hero” cats in the movie that I saw. How many actual stories did you end up cutting together fairly completely? Just seven? Or more?

STOEBE: I edited ten full stories together and we ended up dropping three of them. There were also many short observational stories that are now part of the transitions.

HULLFISH: And how do you decide how to end it?

STOEBE: As with all documentaries I have worked on so far, editing an opening and an ending are by far the most difficult tasks and usually happen late in the process. It was the same with Kedi, we were struggling with the question for a while, how do we end this film. During one of our discussions about structure, the idea came up to re-visit each cat and take you back to each location and cat you have seen which is the approach we eventually took.

We also worked on various versions of an opening which was quite challenging. What did we want this film to be? Should it provide historical and scientific context about the relationship between people and felines in the region? Should we talk about politics, ruthless urban development and the Ghezi Park protests? We came to the conclusion to create an observational and visual poem interwoven with thoughts and stories about the evolving relationship between cats and humans in this ancient city. A tribute to these incredibly fascinating animals living in Istanbul and to leave politics and science largely out of it. I think once we had tackled the opening and especially the ending we really saw the full shape of the film and it began to make sense as a whole versus a collection of stories.

HULLFISH: I loved it. Was that wrap up with the boat and the final shot of the cat on the roof something that you found in what they had already shot, or something you requested that they go get?

STOEBE: The director and the cinematographer had done a couple of trips to Istanbul. The first was a scout to see what sort of stories they would be able to capture. The shot on the roof was captured during that first trip. I believe that they tried to find the cat again during the main production but that it had disappeared so it didn’t become a full story. As for the shot, it was perfect as it visually sums up the film: the cat overlooking its city at the end of a beautiful day.

HULLFISH: What’s your approach to putting these sections together from the raw footage?

STOEBE: I would have a bin of a specific part of town with random cats, and I would just lay out all the shots in the timeline in sequence and then make selects, pulling up the portions of shots that I like, keeping it in the timeline but just pulling up that little section one track higher. This would allow me to scroll through the entire timeline and the shots would stay in sync. I guess that could be considered somewhat old school but I always like that approach better than using markers. (laughter) After pulling up selects I could easily go back and see where I had chosen things and how long the shots were. I kind of created a star rating system by pulling better shots higher up. So for exmaple V1 would contain all the raw material, V2 one star material and V3 two star material which I considered best.

HULLFISH: That way stuff stays in chronological order no matter its rating.

STOEBE: Exactly. That’s especially important if the cat is moving somewhere, because you know what happened before or after, and also you can see where you chose the bit from and you can quickly go back to find things around there saving you from having to open multiple shots from the browser window.

HULLFISH: I also really loved the sound design.

STOEBE: Istanbul itself is full of amazing sound. We tried add in as many elements as possible during the edit to convey that. After we locked picture, sound designer Paul Hollman added more layers and details. Roaming through Istanbul one experiences this beautiful tapestry of sounds and I hope that we managed to transport some of that into the final film.

HULLFISH: Thank you so much for your time. I really enjoyed finding out more about this documentary.

STOEBE: Thank you so much for including me in your series of interviews. It’s been a pleasure to share a bit more information about how Kedi came together in the editing room.

To read more interviews in the Art of the Cut series, check out THIS LINK and follow me on Twitter @stevehullfish

The first 50 Art of the Cut interviews have been curated into a book, “Art of the Cut: Conversations with Film and TV editors.” The book is not merely a collection of interviews, but was edited into topics that read like a massive, virtual roundtable discussion of some of the most important topics to editors everywhere: storytelling, pacing, rhythm, collaboration with directors, approach to a scene and more. Oscar nominee, Dody Dorn, ACE, said of the book: “Congratulations on putting together such a wonderful book. I can see why so many editors enjoy talking with you. The depth and insightfulness of your questions makes the answers so much more interesting than the garden variety interview. It is truly a wonderful resource for anyone who is in love with or fascinated by the alchemy of editing.”

Thanks to Moviola’s Renard Beavers for transcribing this interview.

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