#and i love that some strangers on castro were trying to prove their place as native bay areans until we brought up loving street bacon dogs

[theglasscat]

i think there would be a really easy way to combine the first oz books wherein dorothy aids in the discovery of ozma and in learning of the wizard's misdeeds against a land not his own she would have a firmer compassion to the place she was trying to escape from and we could feel satisfied when she returns to kansas

[letterboxd]

Grand Gestures.

Casually breaking new ground for the rom-com genre, writer-director Natalie Krinsky tells Dominic Corry about creating her quietly revolutionary new film The Broken Hearts Gallery—while leading man Dacre Montgomery reveals his Letterboxd habits.

“Good, bad, ugly. The whole lot. I love reading the bad reviews. I’m all about it.” —Dacre Montgomery

An antidote to 2020 malaise if ever there was one, the upbeat, emotionally frank and unapologetically sentimental new big-screen romantic comedy The Broken Hearts Gallery is here to lift your spirits and mend your broken heart.

Blockers and Bad Education star Geraldine Viswanathan leads the film as Lucy, a New York art gallery assistant prone to hoarding physical memorabilia from past relationships. After being dumped and fired in quick succession, Lucy meet-cutes Nick (Stranger Things break-out Dacre Montgomery), an aspiring hotelier with a large empty space on his hands, in which Lucy decides to stage the titular pop-up exhibition, filled with objects representing lost loves.

Proving there are still plenty of new places to go in the well-worn rom-com genre, Krinsky’s film is generating passionate responses on Letterboxd, where fans are celebrating its contemporary sensibility. “Refreshingly modern,” writes Anne. “Diversity is easily achieved and there’s really no heteronormativity. People are just people, love is just love, and that’s what wins me over.”

“Definitely a very 2020 film,” writes Jovi. “It couldn’t have been written in the same way even ten years ago. It captures being in your twenties in the modern day perfectly.” “Bloody loved the female empowerment and the unconventional narrative and characters,” enthuses Meg.

Geraldine Viswanathan and Dacre Montgomery in ‘The Broken Hearts Gallery’.

Reading through the reviews, the most common reaction is praise for how unapologetically inclusive the film is, in a way that feels appallingly novel for a mainstream film. As Krinsky explains it, “I wanted to make a film that was reflective of the world that I see around me and the world that these characters would inhabit if they lived amongst us mortals.” Or, as Montgomery casually states, “I think it’s where we’re at in 2020 with casting and stuff.” The ease with which the film does this indicts most of modern cinema for its lack of representation.

Krinsky’s inclusive casting and characterization decisions stretch across the entire cast, encompassing that essential feature of modern rom-coms: the quirky ‘best friend’. As well as lending authenticity and personality to the leading characters’ lives, the bestie is often where the ‘com’ in rom-com comes in. The Broken Hearts Gallery has an abundance of quirksters, from Lucy’s roommates (who include Hamilton’s Phillipa Soo as saucy, serial heartbreaker Nadine) to Nick’s straight-talking BFF Marcos (a very funny Arturo Castro).

But the chemistry between the central couple is everything in romantic comedies, and The Broken Hearts Gallery benefits greatly from its fresh-faced, emerging-star leads, both of whom are Australian. “We had a rapport with each other much faster maybe than usual,” Montgomery says of his and Viswanathan’s shared background. “I haven't worked with an Australian actor or actress overseas so that was really nice. She’s a wildly talented, comedic actress. It was my first foray into this sort of genre. I was sort of shit-scared and she’s really held my hand through it.”

Geraldine Viswanathan and director Natalie Krinsky.

Krinksy, likewise, was blown away by Viswanathan’s talents, having seen her work in Blockers and Hala. “She does this great physical comedy in Blockers, and then in Hala, she plays this really vulnerable, dramatic teenage role. I was so taken by her ability to pull both of those completely different parts off. I just immediately had this feeling, which I hadn’t ever had before, of: ‘this is Lucy’. She’s got this comedic timing that is very much like Lucille Ball, it’s got this effervescence to it. She’s able to do so much without saying a word. And then she opens her mouth and it’s a gift.”

It’s no small thing for Viswanathan to have been cast as Lucy. Many an actor’s career has been made by a leading role in a romantic comedy, and—current industry upheaval notwithstanding—Viswanathan looks set to break out even further with her performance here. Montgomery’s and Krinsky’s enthusiasm for her work echoes a central theme in The Broken Hearts Gallery: when Montgomery first met with writer-director Krinsky about the film, she told him the story was somewhat inspired by the idea of seeing men support women in their careers, as Nick does with Lucy. “That was a big thing for me,” he explains, “because I have a lot of really strong women in my life that have supported me—my partner, my mum, my grandmother, so on and so forth.”

Those who know Montgomery from Stranger Things will be interested to learn why he pivoted to romantic comedy. He tells us he was looking for something diametrically opposed to his break-out performance in that show. “As a viewer, I love comedy. As an actor, can’t think of anything scarier. I function in this realm of ‘plan, prepare, do everything the way I know’. The great thing about this was it was ever-evolving. It really did force me to come out of my comfort zone.” (Montgomery will pivot again for his next role, which he says is “kind of a dream role. I can’t speak about it now… Again, it’s 180 degrees in the other direction, so it is a wild ride.”)

Krinsky is also switching things up, career-wise. The Broken Hearts Gallery is her first feature film, after cutting her teeth in television writers’ rooms (Gossip Girl, Grey’s Anatomy, 90210). She credits that environment for training her to fix storytelling problems on the fly. A story a decade in the making, Broken Hearts came from her own romantic aspirations and fears. “I had had many conversations like [the one Lucy has early in the film with Max (Utkarsh Ambudkar), where he dumps her after telling her she’s ‘a blast’]. So that certainly came from my life. I’d been fired from my job. I was moving apartments and I was going through the detritus of these past relationships and kind of trying to figure out what I was going to keep and what I was going to hold on to. You kind of pepper in those things [that are] reflective of relationships in your twenties.”

‘The Broken Hearts Gallery’ director Natalie Krinsky.

Going into the film, Krinsky was very conscious of trying to set it apart from rom-coms that have come before. “Making a good romantic comedy is actually quite difficult because it’s so well-trodden, and because there are beats that we want. We want to cheer for two people falling in love. Because of that, my philosophy going into this was very much centered around Lucy. We’ve seen a lot of romantic comedies in the past where we see a woman trying to fit herself into a mold in order to be with someone and ultimately realizing, ‘Oh, that mold isn’t who I am’. Lucy is a character who certainly has her foibles and has her anxieties and has her eccentricities, but she consistently asks the world to love her because she is weird, not despite the fact that she is weird. That messaging was really important to me.”

In another case of the film gently nudging the rom-com genre forward, it acknowledges how ridiculous grand romantic gestures can be, but still manages to include a few. Krinsky believes there is room for grand gestures in real life. “I certainly hope so. I would like a grand gesture every once in a while—wouldn’t we all? We deserve it. I’m a little bit hopelessly romantic in that way. And I will say I like the surprise. To be able to just, show up home and say, ‘I was walking around today and I saw this cactus. And I thought of you. And here it is.’ Maybe that’s not so grand, but it’s the gesture at least.”

We note that another unique aspect of The Broken Hearts Gallery is the feeling that it doesn’t seem like it’s going to live or die on whether or not the two main characters end up together. “I think they both needed to confront a little bit of who they were,” Krinksy agrees. “Which I always think is the truth about really falling in love, is that in order to have a good relationship, you need to have a good one with yourself first.”

Clearly a huge fan of the genre, we ask Krinsky to recommend her favorites from the canon. “I love some of our recent classics. When Harry Met Sally is a perfect romantic comedy. Bridget Jones’s Diary is a perfect romantic comedy. I love Clueless—even though it’s more com than rom. And then I really love some of the older ones. Broadcast News is one of my all time favorites. Going back even further two of my go-tos that hold up today are His Girl Friday and It Happened One Night. Those two, especially if you’re talking about the ‘strong female lead’, they held them in spades and that fast quippy dialogue I just really live for.”

Montgomery, meanwhile, turns out to be somewhat of a cinephile, something he cultivated as a teenager in the Australian suburbs. “I worked at McDonald’s and I spent all my money on going to [electronics and DVD store] JB Hi-Fi. That’s my childhood in a nutshell. Growing up, I was either at the cinema or in my room and spending all my money on DVDs. All my friends worked at video stores. That was kind of my jam.”

And then—mic drop—Montgomery casually shares the news that he has a secret Letterboxd account. Yes, dear reader, it appears that Dacre is a full-on ’boxd-head. “Oh yeah. I mean, that’s why I was so happy that this [interview] was coordinated. Other than obviously having a chance to talk to you just in general to chat about the platform, it’s a combination of a couple of things that I’m going to put quickly in a couple of words: obviously you can create watchlists on Disney+, Netflix and so on. But then you’ve got so many bloody platforms, all of your lists are in different spaces and all of your movies are spread out on different platforms.

“For me, the biggest role for [Letterboxd] is I can formulate everything in one place, on one platform and look at it. It’s just got so … much … stuff. If I’m up for a horror movie, but I want it set in the snow, I can log on there and it’s, like, The Thing, Hold The Dark. All these great movies. Which I love. And I can read reviews of them before or after.”

Montgomery’s partner is also on Letterboxd, as is his childhood best friend. “Every time we leave the cinema, he gets on Letterboxd and writes a review—his honest, immediate reaction to what he’s just seen. It’s the first thing he does. It’s a great outlet for him. He’s had filmmakers reach out to him, which is another lovely thing. I think a lot of the arts and creative community is actually active on that platform. My buddy just spent the $20 for the year thing and now he can see what his top actors are that he watches, what’s his most-watched decade. I love that sort of stuff. I’m such a cinephile, to be able to collate everything into one sort of succinct thing—that’s my dream.”

Naturally, we ask Montgomery to represent his home country and name-check some Aussie films and filmmakers. “Obviously I’m still quite young, but a lot of cinema like Felony, The Rover, Animal Kingdom, that whole sort of genre, like all the David Michôd films. That sort of realm, I loved growing up. Baz Luhrmann’s films, obviously. Don McAlpine, Australian cinematographer. Bruce Beresford. There’s such an amazing pedigree of actors as well, most recently, obviously the Edgertons [Joel and Nash], Ben Mendelsohn, Heath, obviously, and Naomi Watts and Nicole Kidman.”

Curious to learn more about why a bona-fide star would lurk on Letterboxd where his own performances are ranked, rated and reviewed, we ask Montgomery: what does he get out of it? “I don't have this in-built bias or expectation, even though you’d think I would to kind of go, ‘Why didn’t they like that?’ I love reading the bad reviews. I’m all about it. I’m just interested to see what they engaged with. I think that’s the great thing about Letterboxd as opposed to any other platform is that I can just kind of log in under my alias and read everyone’s uninhibited dialogue that’s come out just after they’ve seen the film. And I love that. Good, bad, ugly. The whole lot. I think it’s the coolest thing ever.”

So then, the final, obvious question: has he been reading the Broken Hearts reviews? “I love to look up the Broken Hearts Gallery page. I think people are just enjoying this level of escapism. If they had the ability to go to a drive-in or to the cinema, wherever they are, people are just kind of going ‘it was so nice to get out of my house and out of my head’. It’s what any cinema tries to do, that level of escapism. I think it couldn’t have come at a better time. Once it’s done its cinematic release, it’ll be on streamers and then people can have that level of escapism who weren’t able to go to the cinema, so that’s really nice.”

Prepare yourself for The Broken Hearts Gallery by checking out this extremely thorough Letterboxd list of romantic comedies, expand your romantic comedy horizons with this list of South Korean rom-coms, and get a feel for where Letterboxd members are at, rom-com-wise, with this romantic comedy showdown.

‘The Broken Hearts Gallery’ is in theaters where possible. Dacre Montgomery’s first book of poetry will be released in October. Comments have been edited for clarity and length.

[elizadoolittlethings]

Graves is a prime example of the coda “action is character.”

Rupert Graves as Harold Guppy in Philip Doodhue’s Intimate Relations. Photo by Sally Miles. Courtesy of Fox Searchlight Pictures. [x]

Rupert Graves  by

Nicole Burdette

BOMB 61Fall 1997

full interview

[MORE]

Whether he’s sucking on hard candy, contemplating suicide, or limping slightly in boots two sizes too big, Rupert Graves is ever graceful. At once a mixture of the violent and the poetic, Graves’ film characters are compared to the kings of the tortured handsome, Montgomery Clift and John Keats. It’s an odd and wonderful thing to spend the afternoon with a stranger speaking of the near obscurity and perfection of Robert Donat, Che Guevara’s hands, and what exactly it is to be brave.

Graves is a prime example of the coda “action is character.” He, like all great actors, is highly physical. We can see his characters—literally we recognize them. In Intimate Relations, Rupert as Harold Guppy clings to Julie Walters, feeding himself sugar cubes like a child. In Mrs. Dalloway, his Septimus Warren Smith stumbles through life; again, literally and emotionally. It is all the way Rupert Graves turns his characters inside out, so what you see is what you get. He manages to become Virginia Woolf’s subconscious—he materializes the description of his character, Septimus: “…with hazel eyes which had that look of apprehension in them which makes complete strangers apprehensive too.” Graves has five films coming out this fall: Mrs. Dalloway with Vanessa Redgrave, Different For Girls, The Revengers’ Comedies with Kristen Scott Thomas and Helena Bonham Carter, Bent, and Intimate Relations with Julie Walters, for which Graves was awarded the Best Actor Award at the 1996 Montreal Film Festival. But that is just this year, his other credits include extensive work on British television and other films: Louis Malle’s Damage, Nick Hytner’s The Madness Of King George; and Merchant Ivory’s Maurice and A Room With A View. In addition to his film work, Graves has consistently worked on the London stage, where he is returning this fall to do Hurly Burly.

Nicole Burdette Now, how did you grow up?

Rupert Graves I grew up in a little English town in a poor-ish family. I went to a comprehensive school which is the same as public school here, I think. My father was a bit posher than my mum, who was a working-class girl from Wales. He’s a pianist.

NB How did they meet?

RG My mum used to sing in amateur shows. They met at a choral society that my dad used to conduct. She saw him, and she can’t have thought, “What a beauty,” so it must have been, “What a genius,” because she loved the music.

NB Were you musical as a kid?

RG No, no. I was brought up quite religiously Catholic and was a choir boy and an acolyte. I used to sing, but it’s a horrible sound.

NB I read that you were in the circus.

RG Yes, I joined when I was 15. I had just left school.

NB How did that idea come to you?

RG It didn’t. It came through the city employment bureau. I knew a girl whose mum used to work there—it was a small town I come from—and she knew I liked acting. And so when the circus came into town and their clown disappeared, I became a trainee. A trainee clown through the job center.

NB Were you a good clown?

RG No, not really.

NB Could you do flips and jump off high things and do daredevil stuff?

RG I didn’t jump. I did slackwire. Do you know slackwire?

NB Tightrope?

RG It’s lower than most tightropes and it’s not tight. It’s very loose, about 15 feet high, and it’s harder to do. It’s like walking across a chain.

NB And you were good at it?

RG I was a clown. I would practice in the ring during the performances, and everyone would laugh because I fell off—but I was actually seriously trying to get across.

NB I ask because I got to see three of your movies in one week, and I noticed that in each one you have a different walk. Your body changed completely. But it wasn’t like method acting where one, say, gains fifty pounds and obviously one’s walk changes. With you it’s subtle. There are an actor’s usual bag of tricks—beards, haircuts, accents… Yet, in all three movies your voice, your haircut are all intact, but you are completely unrecognizable—that’s quite an accomplishment. You don’t rely on the visual—you actually act, imagine that!

RG You do have to understand what your part is, and it’s difficult to intellectualize that. But you can feel it and you know it the moment you see it. It’s accessing some part of your own. I’m completely uneducated, untrained, as an actor, but I do have a fundamental belief that one is capable of pretty much anything. That’s a first principle: One is anything. So I kind of feel that I’ve got George Bush and Che Guevara in me.

NB I’ve been thinking about Che Guevara, just so you know.

RG Are you into The Motorcycle Diaries? They’re great. Guevara went around South America and up to Mexico on this terrible old Enfield motorbike with this other doctor, they were specializing in leprosy. And you know, Castro has Guevara’s hands in his house. They found his body in Bolivia just in the last few months, and it’s gone home to Cuba. But it was handless. The story goes Guevara’s hands were sent to Castro to prove it was him, and Castro kept them. Anyway, that gets back to “One is anything.”

NB So that’s your theory for acting?

RG I think you access different parts of the brain. It’s slightly different for different things. For example, for Intimate Relations I wore shoes that were two sizes too big. I wanted to feel clumsy.

NB I read that in explaining your role (Harold Guppy in Intimate Relations) you said, “I think it’s dangerous as an actor to ever judge a character as stupid.” It seemed to me, watching you in the film, that you played against Harold’s violent tendencies—constantly trying to play down his destiny. You are so powerful at this that even though we can see this story (based on a true murder case) turning dark and darker, we still are hoping that tea and sympathy will win out for Harold—which of course it doesn’t. How did you create such a layered portrait of a possibly less layered person?

RG My starting point with Harold was a lack of will. What happens when your will is taken from you, when you become quite suggestible? It’s not that he’s very innocent. I don’t think he’s an innocent person, but I do think he was institutionalized and his will was taken. He had this blood-sugar problem and when the levels went down he would get violent; but he hadn’t really done anything, it was just a behavioral problem. So I imagine from an early age he didn’t have much love or comfort. Nobody would want to hug a child who would head-butt you. His mum threw him out because she couldn’t cope with it. So he’s been in this kid’s prison—not like a home, a prison for bad children.

NB A reform school.

RG Yeah.

Rupert Graves and Steven Mackintosh in Richard Spence’s Different for Girls. Photos by Luis Lazo. Courtesy of First Look Pictures. image not loading :(

NB What was it like working with Julie Walters in the film?

RG Fan-fucking-tastic. She’s a genius. She’s a very working class girl, and she used to work as a nurse and now owns a hog farm down in the south of England. But anyway, she’s a really lovely lady, deeply, all the way from her toes to her head, and she has a great facility at getting the saucy aspects of people. She’s kind of naughty, so mischievous. At the time of Intimate Relations, I had been doing a lot of work and I was getting a tiny bit cynical as an affectation. I thought the more films you did, the more you had to pretend it was boring. And I kind of started to believe it. But she came along and she was like this gremlin, a little troll living under the bridge. Any cynicism that comes over the bridge, she’ll get it. It’s so infectious. She completely gave me my love for doing stuff back.

NB She gave it back to you?

RG Well, only by example, because she’s no time for any of that cynicism.

NB Would you say she’s your favorite person to work with so far?

RG Yeah. She’s great. She really is, she’s so lovely. That’s my Julie Walters rant.

NB If you were for example—and this is hypothetical, obviously—given you as a character, you the man, not the actor, how would you prepare? What qualities would you consider important to examine under the surface?

RG God knows. I’d look at the environment of myself.

NB Which is?

RG Which is London theatricality. Psychologically I would look into background, and try and determine what he was missing or wasn’t missing.

NB Would you want to play you? Would it be interesting?

RG I don’t know. Everyone is interesting in their own funny way.

NB What I noticed in these three characters, and this really sounds corny, but you seem to love these people. It’s old fashioned, to love your characters; Michael Redgrave, the sort of actors I really love, they loved their characters. Did you ever see The Browning Version?Michael Redgrave plays this really tortured, almost bad person, but you can tell Redgrave loves this man and it is the most bizarre thing to watch because he loves this person who is ruining everything. You also give your characters the benefit of the doubt, and you give them nobility. Is that something that just comes to you?

RG I find it difficult playing a part that I don’t have any empathy with at all.

NB Is there such a part?

RG Well, I played a Nazi in Bent. It was a very, very small part but I researched like fuck, because I couldn’t understand. I couldn’t get my head round what it meant to be a Nazi. Here’s a guy taking Jews and homosexuals in the trains to Dachau, the camps. They were just brutal. How do you get to that place? So I researched, what does Nazism mean to Germany, and what state was Germany in that a leader like that could take them in? Not all Germans were bad, but a collected evil gathered speed. And when I played that character, I realized that for him it was just efficiency, that this was the practical thing to do. And somewhere in my soul I had to find something that could understand that.

NB If you were to play Richard III, which you very well might do in your lifetime, what then? That’s pure evil, from beginning to end. Would that be the ultimate challenge?

RG Certainly, with Richard III, there’s an awful lot more context and more individual motivations and desires. Rather than just here’s a nasty guy who’s killing somebody, whacking them up and beating them. The part’s so damn small in Bent, there’s not much actually in there. Whereas Richard III is very articulate about what he’s doing and why he’s doing it. You’ve got to have a reason to be the character. I like mess. That’s why people become so intellectual, because it’s all a damn mess.

I did a funny thing the other day. I’ve got a friend in England who’s an actor and he bought a new house in the countryside, right on the foot of this steep hill which is made of slate and flint, so the ground is really hard. It’s got this path which is almost vertical coming down and which is covered by trees so there is no moon at night. We went to the top and got absolutely stoned out of our faces—and it’s darn hard getting up there, and if you fall the flints can rip you open—and then he said, “Come on, we’ve got to go back, we’ve got to be really careful.” And I said, “No, let’s just run. Let’s just close our eyes and run down this path as fast as we can. Just trust that we can do it.” He said, “No, no, no,” and I said, “Come on.” We were all right, but it was just this moment of going, “Waaa!” into this sheet, which was quite dangerous. I know it’s quite a mild story really, but I’m not really given to wild things.

NB You’re not?

RG No, normally I’m not. But it’s an interesting thing to me, to just trust it. To just go with the message that if you fall over and you cut your hand you’re not going to die. If you cut your fucking hand, so what? Be brave. It’s like in Mrs. Dalloway — the young clerk who says, “Take the plunge.”

NB Are you brave?

RG I can be, and I can be hugely cowardly. But if I’m deeply pissed off or deeply offended I can be brave.

NB Sometimes it’s the opposite with people. When they’re relaxed they can be brave, and when they’re upset that’s when they find that they’re cowardly.

RG That’s true of me too. Maybe I was being disingenuous there.

NB No, I think you’re better off if you’re brave when you’re angry.

RG Yeah, but now I don’t know if that’s true.

NB It’s complex. But you have some braveness in you.

RG Yeah, some. I break things. I’m a good breaker of things.

NB Do you feel better?

RG No, because I only break my things, which pisses me off. Sometimes, I think I do it because I get tongue tied. When I was a kid I used to have a bad stammer, it’s probably one of the reasons I went into acting, because I had to go to elocution lessons to get over going, “Uh-uh-uh.”

NB And that’s how you got into acting?

RG Do you know an actor called Robert Donat?

NB Oh my God! One of my favorites.

RG What strikes me about him is a kind of grace.

NB The Winslow Boy.

RG Isn’t that the most beautiful portrayal of any character ever?

NB That’s what I was trying to explain to you about the love of the character, and that is the most beautiful…

RG His mood is so moving. You can watch him doing Goodbye, Mr. Chips, The Thirty-Nine Steps… He has such deep grace. Even The Winslow Boy, that is such a hard part. But there’s this absolute nobility, and it’s not to do with class, but with human nobility.

NB It’s so funny that you bring up that actor. As I was watching your movies I was thinking: Robert Donat. That’s my favorite era of films, English films of the ’30s and ’40s, and you hearken back to that.

RG He was my hero. I’ve always thought, if I could tune into that, if I could take whatever that man was taking, I’d be a happy boy.

NB But that’s a different legacy. It’s just a different kind of acting.

RG Yeah, it is. I did a very bad film called Damage, which Louis Malle directed. And Louis Malle, who was a lovely man and has made some great films, was always going on about grace. You know, (imitating a French accent) “Rupert, there is something of a big grace in you, something that is very beautiful.” But at other times he’d say, “You can’t do acting, forget it!” I looked at his old films and you can see that sensibility, that grace, in some of his really early films.

NB Absolutely, he had a wonderful sense of grace.

RG It’s an overworked word now, grace.

NB No, it’s not. It’s an underworked word.

RG Is it? I’ll fight you for it. (laughter)

NB Let’s get back to Robert Donat. It’s very important.

RG It is, because it’s like having a bag full of nudie magazines in England. You can’t refer to him, because it’s old-fashioned.

NB But old-fashioned is where it’s at.

RG But England is very admiring of American, brash acting.

NB If you could play anybody, or a couple of people, who would it be? This is not an acting question. For instance, I asked a jazz musician what he would be, and he said, Abraham Lincoln, Bobby Fischer, the chess player, and Seymour Glass, a Salinger character.

RG I would like to play Caligula, in Camus’ version. Do you know the Camus version?

NB No.

RG It’s interesting. It’s not a great play, but you can do it if you open it up. You have to really put a bomb under that thing. There’s a lot of existentialist “yadda-yadda-yadda.” It’s about corruption, I suppose, the corruption of a soul.

NB And who else?

RG That’s it. I’d like to play a great sports person. With a kind of absolute grace and ease. (laughter)

NB If you were to come back as an inanimate object, what would you be? You have to say what came to your mind instantly.

RG A stone.

NB A stone? Why a stone?

RG I don’t know, you said whatever came into my head. I don’t know why I said a stone…

NB What does it look like?

RG It’s smooth…

NB What color?

RG I don’t know, do you need me to define it?

NB Yeah.

RG A large pebble.

NB A large pebble. What color?

RG It’s a bit blondish, kind of ash colored, beech-wood color.

NB And where was it, was it alone?

RG It was on a dusty road. On a road with smaller little pebbles around, but it was…

NB You knew that was you?

RG Yeah.

Rupert Graves as Septimus Warren Smith in Marleen Gorris’ Mrs. Dalloway. Photo by Roberta Parkin. Courtesy of First Look Pictures. pic not loading :(

NB What about your work in the theater?

RG I’ve never trained at all. I mean, I did things like ‘Tis Pity, She’s a Whore at the National Theatre in The Olivier when I was 21. Which is a fucking hard play to do. It’s a lovely, hard play, but it’s a really tricky one. And I really fucked up on that. I didn’t know about Jacobean drama, I didn’t know how to speak. I don’t know if you’ve been to The Olivier in London, but it’s massive, an open theater in the round. It’s huge, like three thousand people, and I just ran down this corridor onto the stage and thought, “Ahhh…,” and forgot my lines. I wanted to say, “Come back in five years.”

NB And then what happened?

RG I fell over. I started shaking and then fell over. I got the first word, and then I just stood up and shrieked. (shrieking) I did the play like that.

NB But you got through it?

RG I got through it, but…

NB What did your other actors think? Were they mad?

RG They were just like, “Rupert, what are you doing? Hello!!??”

NB Well, there comes the bravery thing again. That was brave at least.

RG No, that was ignorant, that wasn’t brave. Brave is different, brave is trying to push as many different things, take risks, being open.

NB Playing Septimus in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, what was that like?

RG It was great. I read the script and I didn’t know what the hell it was about. Septimus suffers from a lot of abstracted neuroses, and I needed to find out what that was about. I went to speak to a lady at the Hospital for Psychological Disease. She worked with people who were in the Gulf War and had post-traumatic stress. But it didn’t really help, in that I knew you could be brave with shell shock or post-traumatic stress disorders, it’s not an internal thing. PTSD is actually a physical manifestation. So I wasn’t lacking in confidence, but I didn’t understand what the dialogue meant, things like, “The birds, they’re speaking in Greek to me.” So I looked at everything that Virginia Woolf wrote. Her letters, and biography, and I realized that a lot of her personal trauma had been put into her male characters. That kind of threw me a bit, as she’s acknowledged as a feminine, or feminist writer.

NB As a female writer I do it all the time.

RG But interestingly, I do it as a male. When I used to write songs, and I still do write sometimes, I often have a female character, and put my truth into a female. Woolf puts it into male characters. Things that Septimus says connect very directly to things in Woolf’s life. For example, “The birds are speaking Greek to me.” She was abused when she was a girl during Greek lessons. And when she had a breakdown when she was older she used to hear Greek birds talking to her, or birds talking in Greek. Finding out about those pieces of her life gave me the emotional plane to work on. So it didn’t have to just be, you know, jabber.

NB Actors rarely realize that the playwright or the writer is in all of the characters.

RG Yeah, the most honest stuff and her most personal stuff went into her male characters. Because Septimus is the other side of what Mrs. Dalloway would have been if she’d taken the plunge, like what she said she should have done when she was 17…

NB And married Peter? He would have been the brave choice.

RG Yeah. She took the easy route and married Dalloway. And the day in which the story takes place is her looking back, and thinking, “Am I where I had hoped to be when I was seventeen? Was I brave, or did I do the easy thing?”

NB How do you relate to that? In your life?

RG I don’t know, I’ve never had a plan. I mean, I wanted to act and I’ve done that. And I’ve gotten better as I’ve gotten older, so I’m progressing. I don’t feel I’m getting worse. Sometimes I do, sometimes I think my experience has overcome my naiveté and my naiveté is interesting in a certain way. Do you know what I mean?

NB Yes, I do.

RG You want to know what you’re gaining and what you’re losing, don’t you? Every time you take a step somewhere. That’s what I do anyway. Maybe that’s why running down the hill was so important, because normally I’m looking at stuff pretty carefully. And sometimes you just need something like that. And you can do that onstage sometimes, you can just dive—Bang! it might be into a nest of snakes or it might be a lovely work. It’s essential. I did one play which I loved doing. And the reviews came out, and I’d meet people after the play, and it was like the embodiment of everything that I’ve wanted to do with acting. It was really intense. They were going, “That was the most fucking intense thing. I never had that feeling before.” And then the reviews came out saying, “What a crock of shit.” And in one way it seemed like people were saying, “Oh, I’m so sorry about the reviews.” I was saying, “No, honestly, I don’t know what’s happened, but it’s just fantastic. People love it. People fucking love it.” You would go through the bar, and people were actually shaking sometimes, and that was so wild. It was the wildest thing I’d ever seen.

NB Sure, and the opposite happens too.

RG Yeah, absolutely, all the time. Unnervingly often, too often.

Nicole Burdette is a writer and an actress based in New York. This fall her short stories will appear in Jane magazine and the QPB Literary Review; as an actress she appears in the upcoming Digging to China directed by Timothy Hutton.

source:  bombmagazine [x]

[hikariobsessions]

IkeSen Custom MC/OC Meme

Hello there, time-traveler/feudal heroine/warlord! What’s your name?

OC: Akari (朙) de Castro | Time-traveling  Scholar & War Veteran

Age? Height?

I’m a 5ft2, 24-year-old Latina woman ^^ 

What’s your fashion like? [Time travelers – pre & post-wormhole!]

[Pre-wormhole] Loose and Comfortable; I have the whatever-the-hell-I-find-in-my-closet attitude; I like anything that isn’t too restricting of movement. Honourable Mentions: oversized shirts, rompers, halter-necks, and combat/military attire. Also anything green :D

[Post-wormhole] Having to get accustomed to the everyday kimono; I hate the fact that it restricts movement in some places but it’s bearable. I often sneak back into my preferred clothing whenever I’m at home and/or alone

Where are you from?

From the Modern Era; adopted by a well-travelled Japanese scholar from an orphanage in Colombia. (I have my own complicated backstory ^^;)

Feudal era – pros and/ or cons?

Pros: New culture, prospect of finding some ‘lost/unknown history’, experiencing history re-write itself first-hand, the unexpectedly hot men in power (the traditional paintings/drawing really don’t do them justice 0.0) and their suprisingly progressive values.

Cons: Standard clothing I need to wear to ‘fit in’, cultural differences, archaic living standards, I’m a foreigner - so getting stared at unabashedly by townspeople, passer-bys etc.

Also, conformity, at times. It’s ironic to think that there’s something humble about seeing the roots of what’s still known today as a highly homogenous society; whilst also being well-aware of its dangers.

If you’re not in your homeland/time, do you want to go home?

Home, to me, is with the people that make me happy.This includes my adopted family (who are time-travelers as well, spread out over different historical periods; again a lot of backstory). Whether we’re in the modern world or the Sengoku, or some other place; that comes secondary. I care more about the people I surround myself with.

What’s your home life like?

Sometimes loud and rowdy, sometimes relaxing and homey. But never boring. 

You just got your dream job! What is it? / Or, what’s your line of work?

Besides being a full-time scholar/soldier/time-traveler, I’m really into the Arts in general, particularly Film and Photography (this is totally my creator projecting :p). I want to become some form of storyteller (i.e. writer, filmmaker) once I’m done with my travels.

Any other hobbies or skills? Do you use them / how do you use them in the Sengoku period?

I do a lot of performing arts, particularly acting, dancing and music. Helps as a coping mechanism whenever I get a chance to have a break. But acting helps me with espionage missions, infiltration and reconnaissance while in a different time period as well. 

I’m, in my own way, a sociology/history geek and love learning about different cultures. I usually have some preparatory knowledge to help navigate through different time periods including the Sengoku Jidai.

Horse-riding has also been a big part of my life ever since I came back from the American frontier in the 1860s. It helped me in more ways than I can ever imagine in other time periods, but nothing beats the feeling of just running across an open field, almost as if you’re flying.

Where is your base of operations? Azuchi Castle? Kasugayama Castle? A pirate ship? Running all over the woods or in a secret monastery? Some other cool place?

I hop from place to place, depending on where the wind takes me ^^. Or where I’m needed for jobs. But I do have a small cottage with a ranch in a forest, somewhere between the Uesugi and Oda territories. I found it abandoned while scouting, and it’s become my temporary home where I can be myself without worry.

How do you feel about killing and violence?

I’m no stranger to violence. But killing I have a complicated relationship with. If I have time to be merciful, then I will be. 

For something like war, in my experience, it’s a lot harder to choose not to kill. Your survival intincts raise every hair in your body, and a part of you knows that if you leave things to chance, you could wind up dead. There are consequences for every action you take, whether you decide to kill or not. You can only hope that you don’t end up regretting it.

It’s one of the reasons I prefer to stay within the medical unit as a nurse/vet. I only go into combat if I have no other choice. Nurses and medics, though, still need to know how to fight. If I end up dead, who’s going to take care of the wounded?

Have you learned to fight? If so, what’s your weapon and/or fighting style of choice?

Yes. I’m trained in various combat styles to fit whatever era/historical period I’m going to. I’m fair at martial arts and know my way around a sword. But I prefer long-range weapons combined with horse-back riding i.e. bow and arrow, throwing daggers and guns/rifles.

What are you fighting for?

For a future and my family. But also the people I meet that I can’t seem to turn my back on. Because they, for better or worse, have become a part of that family as well.

What are your feelings about authority?

I’m compliant as long as the reigning authority is competent. In other words, I pick my battles. I appreciate big-picture solutions for the world, as well as just/fair governing methods. 

But if you’re a tyrant that blatantly inflicts suffering on people without reason other than personal gain; then you can show yourself out the fucking door. Oh and I hope you trip and break your neck while you’re at it.

How do you handle someone invading your personal space?

 [Not in a relationship] I’m non-confrontational at heart, but if any part of you is too close for comfort well...At first, I’ll tell you to step off in the nicest way possible.

If you’re one of those persistent ones...I’ll just keep distancing myself warily.

If you make a move on me, on the other hand, without constent...there will be physical contact. I suppose it’ll depend on what’s closer. For example:

Your face = I’ll give it a hard high-five (you know, for trying 👍🏼) 

Your torso = a Judo Flip

All-in-all, respect my boundaries please ^_^  OR I will S.I.N.G 

[In a Relationship]  Invade it as much as you want (unless I say no) ^^

…do you invade people’s personal space?

NO. Unless we’re in a relationship, I won’t do that sort of thing. I’m a “treat-people-the-way-you-want-to-be-treated” kind of person, in this regard. I don’t invade your space, you don’t invade mine without my constent.

Are you more open, or more reserved? Are you secretive?

I’m quite independent, reserved and closed-off. I act charming when interacting with other people as a sort of.....misdirection. Or just trying to mingle with their energy so that they feel comfortable when talking to me. 

When most people see me, they usually don’t know I’m playing a part. I’ve heard people who are close to me call me a ‘Method Actor’ at times. It takes time for me to open up, but if you prove yourself to be trusworthy then the walls are probably going to be easier to break down.

I think I’m just very overprotective of my real self.

Is this the first time you’ve been truly in love?

*Okay I’m not gonna ship this one with anyone in particular but if she were to fall in love with someone, this is probs how she would answer the question; warning she’s a romantic at heart, and so am I ^^;*

Well, I haven’t fallen in love before, so perhaps I’m completely in the dark ^^; 

But if a person offers you their everything... and in turn, you want nothing more but to accept every flaw, push through every difference, and in the end, still choose to be with them...Would you call that being ‘truly in love’? 

Then, to answer the question... maybe? (*^^*) 

What’s your style as a lover? (interpret this as innocently or not-innocently as you please ;) )

Hehehe...hehe... 😄😅 😃 😐 😶 how do I answer this question?  😥 😥 

[In everyday life] To be completely honest, I really don’t know. I’ve never thought about it. But there’s no doubt in my mind that I would try my best to make them happy, think of things I can do for them etc. If the person will have me,of course ^^;

[In bed] Okay...well, I imagine if I’m in love with a guy, I wouldn’t mind being completely vulnerable; letting him take the lead, being submissive etc.

BUT I do have a very cheeky side of me that gets triggered if my partner ever gets cocky (no pun intended). If you’re going to show me how much you love me then by all means, do so. But don’t think for one second that I’ll let you have all the fun. 😏

What are your favorite ways for someone to show you love?

I’ve always liked it when a person (in my case, a guy) has ‘good-timing’~ He surprises you by noticing little things about you that you never really took stalk off, and brings them up unexpectedly in small yet adorable gestures. 

Otherwise, just being reminded that he’s there for me when I need him, is a good enough way to show that he loves me~

My Top Love Languages are: Quality time and Physical touch (hugging, cuddling, falling asleep in each other’s arms, kata-zun etc.)

Do you use a pet name or endearments for your lover(s)?

I use endearments when talking with friends/aquaintances, (hun, honey, lovely etc.) but never with a lover 🤔 It might be time to start experimenting...

How do you feel about…

Nobunaga?

*sigh* I can respect him as a leader, and understand his ambition. But if he thinks he can try to “conquer” my foot in a game of Go; the same foot is going to come down hard on his face the moment he tries to eat/kiss it. 

Don’t worry Nobunaga it’s just my foot kissing you back~ ^^

Hideyoshi?

*Ahem* hopefully, he doesn’t read the above statement. Otherwise, he’s someone I could get along with as friends. He’s nice and considerate. The traditional big brother, dependable and mature, compared to my actual big brother who I always end up taking care of. *sighs*  

Me [thinking to myself]: I just wish they both would just stop worrying about me.

Masamune?

Just because you have an eyepatch, cooking skills, that smile, and a goddamn tiger, doesn’t mean I’m going to fall head-over-heels for you. That said, I will promise to keep you on your toes. So let’s just get along, shall we?

Oh, and uh, can I come over to play with the tiger?

Ieyasu?

With great power comes great responsibility. So what the hell do you think you’re doing spreading that chili powder over that watermelon?! 

*slides him some Nachos*

Also, I’d like to exchange some notes about medicine and nursing with you, if you don’t mind~? ^^ Hey. Why are you running?

Mitsunari?

A sweetheart. I wouldn't mind being study-buddies with him. He can teach me a lot about the Sengoku Period; it’s social, cultural and political landscapes, as well as some medieval japanese military arts to survive during these times. The bonus? The fact that he’s literally an angel walking on earth and I think any time spent with him will be enjoyable~ ^^

Mitsuhide?

Wow...it’s me, only slithery and with longer lashes 0.0 

Shingen?

Another me...only flirtatious and more open about my cleavage 0.0

Kenshin?

*SHINNG* What are you doing with that? NO, I AM NOT FIGHTING YOU. PUT THAT SWORD AWAY. RIGHT. NOW. 

AND WIPE THAT SMILE OFF YOUR FACE. I don’t understand you. To me, there are other things more enjoyable than fighting and war. I should know, I spend half my time looking for them. I can understand the need to fight during these times, but I hope you push yourself to find something else that makes you happy.

......What? Stop, looking at me like that. *A FEW DAYS LATER*

*A letter from Akari to her family*

My dear grandfather, I am writing this to you from a cell underneath Kasugayama Castle while being unceremoniously surrounded by an army of rabbits, and a confusing man whose words never quite reflect his actions...don’t worry he actually seems nice on the inside, if not a bit problematic...

Yukimura?

Sir, could you please tell your dad to stop flirting with me? Oh, and while you’re at it, please learn to grow up. 

Me [thinking to myself]: Everything about him screams schoolyard tease who pulls their crush’s hair to get their attention, and I can’t help but role my eyes and shake my head while also chuckling at the thought.

Sasuke?

*Hanging out in the ceiling*

Me [thinking to myself]:  It’s actually not that bad in here. A bit dark though...So, Sasuke, huh? 🤔 Reasonable, level-headed, stoic, a bit on the weird side (but then again who isn’t), not extreme unlike his lord...

I can actually get along with him like I would a normal person! And he also likes history. That’s a plus-- ...wait. What’s that sound? 

[Sasuke runs over] 

Sasuke: My apologies. It seems I accidentally set off a trap I was making. We may need to run. 

[Behind him a boulder is coming right at us; Indiana-Jones-style]

Me: WHAT?! 

Kennyo?

*Feeding a bunch of animals in the forest together, strangely enough*

Kennyo: You shouldn’t be here. I threw away whatever humanity I had years ago. I’m a demon. The only place for me is hell.

Me: Yeah, yeah, I know. Would you pass me some more bread crumbs? Oh, and the horses wanted some apples...

Kennyo: Listen to me!

Me: ...Fine, I’m sorry. *sighs* Well, at least let me do something to repay you (for saving me). [deliberately picks up a duck] ...I’ll cook. Let’s have this guy for dinner. 

[brings out a knife, intending to cut the duck’s throat]

Kennyo: STOP! 

[Kennyo grabs the duck from me; hugging it protectively]

Me: .........

Kennyo: ......

Me: ....Who knew a demon could be so cute?

Motonari?

...You want to cause chaos? Well, we’ll see how you go~ ^^ Please don’t die so soon though, otherwise, it wouldn’t be much of a spectacle.

Me [thinking to myself]: ....also, I understand, sort of. I’m no stranger to trust issues. 

Any other friends/notables?

Closest friends and confidants:

Roe Pryer (fellow OC; adopted brother), 

Gendo-san (fellow OC; adopted grandfather)

Umo (animal OC; Akari’s horse companion)

Freestyle! Tell us anything else you’d like to share!

Canon Things (...warning a lot of backstory angst? also kinda flipping to third person ^^;)

~ Akari’s an experienced time-traveler and was trained from a very young age by her grandfather and his group of misfit scholars/time-travelers/soldiers called ‘The Nomads’, to go on missions throughout different time-periods. 

~ She’s a horrible cook. Can’t fry for shit, without burning anything. One day she tried cooking for her infantry unit during wartime. Everyone threw their food in a dug up ditch behind her back while telling her it was delicious. They ate something else later on. 

~ She has scars on her back. A huge burn scar on her left shoulder and lines/gashes crisscrossing that can only be caused by a whip. She doesn’t seem to mind whether she covers them or not; her comfort in terms of wardrobe comes first. But when she doesn't cover them, she often gets asked how she got them. 

The answer: during her teens, she was sent on a mission during a period where slavery was still accepted. Because of her race and suspected ethnicity, she had been abducted while on her mission and sold into slavery. The burn scar and whippings were punishments for multiple attempted escapes she made from her “masters”. After her punishments, she was often held in a basement where she spent days without food and water and was left in the dark.

Apart from the evident physical damage, this also left a lasting trauma and developed a fear of dark and confined places. It wasn’t ‘til a few weeks later that her grandfather - after looking endlessly for her - finally saved her.

~ She suffers from PTSD from multiple missions (war, slavery, torture, movements); but pushes on, feeling indebted to the family that took her in, especially her grandfather. She became really good at hiding her PTSD in front of other people but often seeks alone time in peaceful settings to calm her heart.

~ She’s hardened but tries hard to enjoy the fun things in life and keeps pursuing to find happiness for herself, even though it can be difficult for her sometimes due to her PTSD.

~ The main objectives of her missions are usually to find ‘lost/unknown’ history, and sometimes even making altercations to fate (i.e. saving unknown soldiers, civilians during wartime). In the Sengoku period, however, she’s been sent there to find some of the groups’ soldiers that have been M.I.A for 6 months, including her grandfather, Gendo-san, and adopted brother, Roe.

Quotes

...by Akari

“People who insist on blinding themselves with their own prejudices and fear, are more crippled than any human who has lost all ability to see. So please...don’t disappoint me.”

“I don’t think you understand how hard it is to turn your back on people once you realize how wonderful they are.”

“Why is it that the kindest people always manage to hurt themselves the most?”

...about Akari said by her family

“Even the most beautiful smile hides its own pain” - Gendo-san

“I couldn’t protect her. Before I knew it she threw herself into the world and saw something I never wanted her to see. Now to her, there’s just too much pain. She hurts herself wanting to look away and now she can’t. How can she? As someone who went through their own suffering and was saved by people who gave her hope; how could she possibly abandon anyone to the same fate?” - Gendo-san

“She’s my sister. She’s family. And there’s nothing I want more than to finally see her smile. No, not the one she plasters on her face to make sure no one worries about her. But the kind that shouldn’t need explaining; the kind that she conjures up on her own accord because she, from the bottom of her heart, knows that everything’s going to be alright.” - Roe Pryer

THANKS FOR READING!!

@nyktoon @nyktoon-ikemenlove AHH, hun, a thousand ‘thank you’s for setting this up ^_^ Had a lot of fun although it did end on a somber note~ LOL, I think I wrote too much as always though ahaha...haha...ha... 😅