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calzona-ga · 3 years

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In her unauthorized book, Lynette Rice explores the stories behind some of the ABC drama's biggest moments, including — in this exclusive excerpt — the factors that led to McDreamy's shocking death.

In How to Save a Life: The Inside Story of Grey’s Anatomy, author Lynette Rice recounts the ABC medical drama’s eventful 16-year history, revealing new details behind some of the show’s biggest departures. Included in the unauthorized, 320-page oral history (St. Martin’s Press, Sept. 21, $29.99) is a chapter that offers new insight into leading man Patrick Dempsey’s shocking exit in season 11 of the Shonda Rhimes-created drama. In the chapter, Rice speaks with Dempsey’s co-stars and exec producers who were present during filming of his final days on Grey’s Anatomy, and reveals claims of ��HR issues” that contributed to the death of his alter-ego, Derek “McDreamy” Shepherd.

“There were HR issues. It wasn’t sexual in any way. He sort of was terrorizing the set. Some cast members had all sorts of PTSD with him,” recalls exec producer James D. Parriott, who was brought back to the series to oversee Dempsey’s exit.

In more than 80 interviews with current and former cast- and crewmembers, Rice, an editor-at-large at Entertainment Weekly, also explores the show’s early days, recounts the thinking behind some of its more polarizing storylines and offers exclusive details about the show’s behind-the-scenes culture.

“After 17 seasons, fans still can’t get enough of Grey’s Anatomy,” Rice tells THR. But what went down behind the scenes was just as dramatic as what viewers saw every Thursday. I’m excited for fans to read what I learned about those early days, along with what it was like to work for Shonda Rhimes, and why the drama was so freakin’ headline-prone.”

Below, The Hollywood Reporter shares an excerpt — the full eighth chapter — from How to Save a Life, and tune in Friday to TV’s Top 5 for an interview with Rice about her book and the other big reveals she uncovered in her reporting for it.

(Reps for ABC, ABC Signature, Shondaland, and Dempsey declined comment on the reveals in Rice’s book.)

“He’s Very Dreamy, but He’s Not the Sun,” Or, How Grey’s Anatomy Loved — Then Learned to Live Without — Patrick Dempsey Ellen Pompeo may have played the titular role, but for many fans over many years, Patrick Dempsey was the real draw to Grey’s Anatomy. Some of it had to do with his celebrity: Dempsey was the most famous member of the original cast at the time of the pilot and brought with him quite a cult following from his 1987 movie Can’t Buy Me Love. But a lot of it was due to the way Rhimes wrote her McDreamy and how Dempsey depicted him. James D. Parriott I would say, “The guy would never say that,” and Shonda would say, “He’s McDreamy. He’s the perfect man. He would say that.” I’d say, “Okay. It’s your show.” Eric Buchman Shonda had a very clear idea of how important it was to keep Derek as this almost idealized love interest, not just for Meredith but for the audience. Naturally, the writers—especially writers who had been working on one-hour dramas for a while—were like, “Well, maybe have McDreamy make a big mistake in surgery and kill somebody. Or he develops an addiction of some kind. What is his deep, dark secret?” Shonda was very insistent: that’s not the character we do that with. Even when you find out he’s married, that was done in a very sympathetic way that kept him being a hero. He was wronged by his spouse and in spite of it all he was still gonna give his marriage a second chance. Stacy McKee Shonda was protective of McDreamy, but it was really with an eye toward being protective of Meredith. I don’t think the two were separate from one another. I don’t think she wanted to put something out there that maybe on the surface might seem a little frivolous. At its core, there was something really substantial that she wanted to say. She wanted to be very specific about the type of relationship values that she put out there. Tony Phelan I was in editing with Shonda once, and it was the scene where Meredith and Derek had broken up. He comes over and she’s like, “I can’t remember the last time we kissed.” And he says, “I remember. You were wearing this and you smelled of this …”

Joan Rater “Your shampoo smelled like flowers, you had that sweater on …” He described their last kiss. Tony Phelan Typically in editing you start on Derek, then you cut to Meredith for a reaction, and then you’ll go back to him. I noticed that we weren’t ever cutting back to Meredith. I asked why. Shonda said, “Because the woman in Iowa who’s watching this show wants to believe that Patrick is talking to her, and if you cut back to Meredith, it pushes them out of it.” In those special moments, we would just lock into Derek and let him do his thing. Joan Rater And he was a master at it. Patrick Dempsey He’s the ideal man, and that’s what Shonda constructed. There’s a projection [of him] onto me when you come in contact with fans, certainly with the younger and older fans. There is a certain amount of expectation. There is a responsibility to it. It made me grow, too. There were good qualities [of his] that you work on to obtain. Off camera, Dempsey was equally as charismatic to his fellow actors, crew members, and anyone who would come to visit the set. Lauren Stamile I was going in to meet him, and I remember I had this little cardigan sweater on and I took it off before I got into the room. Dempsey is one of those people—it’s almost like there’s a light shining around his body, and you feel like you’re the only person in the room. I got so hot and I remember saying, “Gosh, I would take off my sweater if I had one on because I’m so hot, but I took it off.” I was just babbling. He said, “You look nice,” and I said, “You look nicer.” I felt so awkward and he was so gracious and lovely. I was having a nervous breakdown. It’s like this “it” factor. I was like, God, whatever he has, I wish I had. I think it was very obvious how nervous I was, and he went out of his way to make sure he introduced me to everybody and made sure I felt comfortable, which he certainly didn’t have to do. But he did. Joan Rater He knew I had a giant crush on him, and he loved it. And when we’d go to table reads—I was an actress at one point in my life—they would always give me Meredith if Ellen wasn’t there. And I’d be getting my chicken tenders at craft services before the table read and he’d come up behind me and say, “Are you reading Meredith?” in my ear, like, so sexy. I’d be like, Oh my God. I mean, I could barely … I could not look at him. Tina Majorino I worked with Patrick a ton. I love him so much. We had a really great time working together. I think he’s such a great actor and he really made me laugh a lot. I feel like we had a good dynamic in scenes together, and it was always fun to play opposite him. Yes, he’s that charismatic in real life. Yes, his hair is that awesome. Yes, he is dreamy up close.

Chandra Wilson Patrick Dempsey will forever be known as Grey’s Anatomy’s McDreamy. Derek Shepherd is a permanent part of television history.

Norman Leavitt He is a big, personable guy.

Jeannine Renshaw We all love Patrick. Patrick is a sweetheart. If I saw him on the street, I’d give him a hug. I love the guy.

Mark Wilding I’ve always had a soft spot for Patrick. He really does try to do the right thing. Brooke Smith, who played Dr. Erica Hahn, remembers how Dempsey defended her when the decision was made to fire her from the show in 2008. Brooke Smith I remember calling him and saying, “Oh my God, they said they can’t write for me anymore, so I guess I’m leaving.” And he was like, “What are you talking about? You’re the only one they’re writing for.” Which at that time, it kind of did feel that way. But I guess someone didn’t like that. They gave me a statement [to release, about her departure] and I never said it. Patrick said that he actually took it out of his jacket on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and read the statement. He won’t let me forget it. He was like, “I defended you, see?” And it was true.

By season eleven, however, fans saw a disturbing break in MerDer’s once unbreakable bond. Six episodes had gone by without a peep from Derek, who was supposedly in Washington, D.C., where he had apparently made out with a research fellow. Fans began threatening to bolt if their hero didn’t return soon to Seattle. “I have never missed one episode,” wrote a fan on Dempsey’s Facebook page. “But I swear if [Rhimes] kills you off I’m done.” But there was a critical reason for Derek’s strange absence: behind the scenes, there was talk of Dempsey’s diva-like fits and tension between him and Pompeo. To help manage the explosive situation, executive producer James D. Parriott was brought back in to serve as a veritable Dempsey whisperer.

Patrick Dempsey [That] was the first year that I haven’t been in every episode. I [was] in every episode since the pilot— close to 250 episodes. That [was a] huge run. James D. Parriott Shonda needed an OG to come in as sort of a showrunner for fourteen episodes. There were HR issues. It wasn’t sexual in any way. He sort of was terrorizing the set. Some cast members had all sorts of PTSD with him. He had this hold on the set where he knew he could stop production and scare people. The network and studio came down and we had sessions with them. I think he was just done with the show. He didn’t like the inconvenience of coming in every day and working. He and Shonda were at each other’s throats.

Jeannine Renshaw There were times where Ellen was frustrated with Patrick and she would get angry that he wasn’t working as much. She was very big on having things be fair. She just didn’t like that Patrick would complain that “I’m here too late” or “I’ve been here too long” when she had twice as many scenes in the episode as he did. When I brought it up to Patrick, I would say, “Look around you. These people have been here since six thirty a.m.” He would go, “Oh, yeah.” He would get it. It’s just that actors tend to see things from their own perspective. He’s like a kid. He’s so high energy and would go, “What’s happening next?” He literally goes out of his skin, sitting and waiting. He wants to be out driving his race car or doing something fun. He’s the kid in class who wants to go to recess.

Patrick Dempsey It’s ten months, fifteen hours a day. You never know your schedule, so your kid asks you, “What are you doing on Monday?” And you go, “I don’t know,” because I don’t know my schedule. Doing that for eleven years is challenging. But you have to be grateful, because you’re well compensated, so you can’t really complain because you don’t really have a right. You don’t have control over your schedule. So, you have to just be flexible.

Longtime Crew Member Poor Patrick. I’m not defending his schtick. I like him, but he was the Lone Ranger. All of these actresses were getting all this power. All the rogue actresses would go running to Shonda and say, “Hey, Patrick’s doing this. Patrick’s late for work. He’s a nightmare.” He was just shut out in the cold. His behavior wasn’t the greatest, but he had nowhere to go. He was so miserable. He had no one to talk to. When Sandra left, I remember him telling me, “I should’ve left then, but I stayed on because they showed me all this money. They just were dumping money on me.”

Patrick Dempsey It [was] hard to say no to that kind of money. How do you say no to that? It’s remarkable to be a working actor, and then on top of that to be on a show that’s visible. And then on top of that to be on a phenomenal show that’s known around the world, and play a character who is beloved around the world. It’s very heady. It [was] a lot to process, and not wanting to let that go, because you never know whether you will work again and have success again.

Jeannine Renshaw A lot of the complaining … I think Shonda finally witnessed it herself, and that was the final straw. Shonda had to say to the network, “If he doesn’t go, I go.” Nobody wanted him to leave, because he was the show. Him and Ellen. Patrick is a sweetheart. It messes you up, this business.

James D. Parriott I vaguely recall something like that, but I can’t be sure. It would have happened right toward the end, because I know they were negotiating and negotiating, trying to figure out what to do. We had three different scenarios that we actually had to break because we didn’t know until I think about three days before he came back to set which one we were going to go with. We didn’t know if he was going to be able to negotiate his way out of it. We had a whole story line where we were going to keep him in Washington, D.C., so we could separate him from the rest of the show. He would not have to work with Ellen again. Then we had the one where he comes back, doesn’t die, and we figure out what Derek’s relationship with Meredith would be. Then there was the one we did. It was kind of crazy. We didn’t know if he was going to be able to negotiate his way out of it. It was ultimately decided that just bringing him back was going to be too hard on the other actors. The studio just said it was going to be more trouble than it was worth and decided to move on.

Stacy McKee I don’t think there was any way to exit him without him dying. He and Meredith were such an incredibly bonded couple at that point. It would be completely out of character if he left his kids. There was no exit that would honor that character other than if he were to die. Patrick Dempsey I don’t remember the date [I got the news]. It was not in the fall. Maybe February or March. It was just a natural progression. And the way everything was unfolding in a very organic way, it was like, “Okay! This is obviously the right time.” Things happened very quickly. We were like, “Oh, this is where it’s going to go.”

So that was that: McDreamy would die in episode twenty-one of season eleven, even though Dempsey was in year one of his recently signed two-year contract extension. Rhimes wrote a script that was befitting of her lead’s heroic persona: she began “How to Save a Life” by having Derek witness a car crash and helping the injured. Once it appeared everyone was out of harm’s way, Derek continues on his road trip but is suddenly broadsided by a truck.

Rob Hardy (Director) The paramedics leave. He’s there by himself. He’s having a moment. The nice music is playing, and all of a sudden, bang. It comes out of nowhere, which, you know, is how accidents happen. So as opposed to watching it as a viewer, we saw the accident happen through Derek’s perspective. Derek ends up at Dillard Medical Center, a hospital far from Grey Sloan and the talented doctors who work there. His eyes are open, but his brain is severely damaged. No one hears his plea for a CT scan; he can’t speak. To help keep the episode a secret, the scenes were shot in an abandoned hospital in Hawthorne, California, about twenty-two miles from the show’s home studio in Los Feliz.

Mimi Melgaard It was really hard on all of us because it was so secretive and we had so many different locations. We shot at this closed-down hospital that was absolutely creepy haunted. All the scenes there were so sad anyway, and in this yucky-feeling haunted hospital? It was really weird. His whole last episode was really tough. Patrick Dempsey It was like any other day. It was just another workday. There was still too much going on. You’re in the midst of it—you’re not really processing it. Rob Hardy Here’s a guy who’s immobile. Now you’re inside of his head. We were trying to make that feel scary from the perspective of a person who’s used to being in control, from a person who usually has the power of life and death in his own hands. But now he doesn’t have the ability to speak on his own behalf.

Samantha Sloyan When I went to audition, I didn’t recognize any of these doctors’ names. I assumed they were just dummy sides so people wouldn’t ruin the story line or anything like that. All we knew is that we were dealing with a man who’s been in a car accident. I had no idea that it was going to be Derek. I just figured I was going to be a guest doctor and that whoever this person was who was injured, was going to be just a character on the show. Once it became clear what we were working on, I was like, Oh, my gosh. I can’t believe this is the episode I’m on.

Mike McColl (Dr. Paul Castello) I signed an NDA before they would release the script to me. I was reading it in my house, and I was like, “Oh, my God.” I didn’t tell anyone, including my agents. I just said, “This is a really great booking. It’s a great role on Grey’s.” And they didn’t know anything until it aired.

Savannah Paige Rae (Winnie) The first scene I shot was actually the sentimental scene when I’m saying, “It’s a beautiful day to save lives, right?” I’m in the hospital room with Derek and talking to him. Even though I never watched the show, I recognized the value of the episode I was in and just really took it to heart. It was so special that I got to be a part of it.

Rob Hardy [Patrick] had a lot of emotions during the whole shoot, which evolved. I think when we first started, he was very calm and cool … the same Patrick that I remembered when I worked on the show a year or so before. With each passing day, he was a lot more emotional. A lot more was on his mind, and that would show itself in different ways. The finality of the episode and for his character was setting in. You’ve become a global icon on this show and then in five, four, three, two, a day … it’s over.

James D. Parriott Patrick was very cooperative and good.

Mike McColl When I met Patrick, he’s lying on a stretcher and we’re rushing him into the ER. I just introduced myself, shook his hand, and was like, “Man, I cannot tell you what an honor it is to be the guy to take you down.” He loved it. He could not have been nicer to me and was funny through the whole shoot. He was on the table in front of me there when I cut his chest open and all that stuff. He gave me a hug at the end. It was a real privilege to be a part of TV history in that way.

Samantha Sloyan I remember him being incredibly kind. They had his neck in a brace, and he’s strapped down to the board, so there wasn’t a ton of chatting. I remember him being really kind, but it was clearly intense for him.

Stacy McKee It was such a beautiful piece of storytelling. I knew this event was going to be a really sad, horrible event for Meredith, but I also knew it was going to be the beginning of such an incredible chapter for Meredith.

Dempsey completed his final hours of shooting on a rainy night. There was no goodbye party, no goodbye cake. Maybe that’s because some cast members were left out of the loop. James Pickens, Jr., told ABC News that the cast “didn’t know a whole lot. It was kind of on the fly. So whatever information we got, we pretty much got it kind of right before it happened.”

Caterina Scorsone (Dr. Amelia Shepherd) I didn’t get to say goodbye to Patrick when he left. I do think that helped, because I’ve been using the character of Derek in my internal landscape since Private Practice. Derek was the stability in Amelia’s life. He became a father figure after they watched robbers shoot their father. When he was suddenly gone from the show, we didn’t have that closure, so I got to play it out. She’s about to use drugs again before Owen confronts her in a way that she finally talks about her feelings about losing Derek. She doesn’t end up using.

James D. Parriott The day he left, that was my last day. There was a certain sadness to it, but I think he was relieved. I mean, I think it took a toll on him, too.

Rob Hardy I didn’t see other actors showing up and saying, “Hey, it’s the last day! Wanted to come and wish you well.” I didn’t get that. It was more the Patrick show. We were in the Patrick world, and then Ellen came, and there was definitely a lot of emotion that both of them had individually … not necessarily together. It was more so her being there on the day that he died. He had his own way of being with that, and the same thing with her. It was like two people who grew up together and … here we are. They had their own way of reflecting.

Patrick Dempsey I very quietly left. It was beautiful. It was raining, which was really touching. I got in my Panamera, got in rush-hour traffic, and two hours later I was home. Big news like this doesn’t stay quiet for long. Both Michael Ausiello—who left EW in 2010 to launch the news site TVLine—and Lesley Goldberg of The Hollywood Reporter learned two weeks prior to Dempsey’s final episode that he would be leaving the show. No reporter worth their salt wants to sit on a scoop—least of all one as huge as this—but Ausiello and Goldberg didn’t want to spoil the outcome for fans, so they agreed to hold the story until after the episode aired. I eventually found out, too, but in the nuttiest way imaginable: I was standing on the set of CSI: Cyber, watching Patricia Arquette talk about some droll techno-criminal. Unfortunately, the publicist also cc’d Dempsey’s manager and ABC publicist while trying to give me a major story, so I couldn’t immediately report the scoop. But I did use the information to successfully negotiate the one and only exit interview with Dempsey. Two weeks before his final episode, I met him and his publicist at Feed Body & Soul in Venice, California, for a story that would hit newsstands on April 24. He seemed a little shell-shocked and at one point choked up, but at the time he said nothing about how his on-set behavior may have contributed to his ouster. My editor, Henry Goldblatt, wanted to put him on the cover of Entertainment Weekly, but he couldn’t guarantee to ABC that no one would see it before the episode aired. Good thing we didn’t: some subscribers got the issue on the morning of Dempsey’s final episode— and one actually tweeted the story. Our PR department tried to get the tweets removed, but the cat was out of the bag: some fans found out early that McDreamy was about to be McHistory. Outlets like Variety reported how the story got out early, while our PR department released this statement: “We are surprised that an EW subscriber may have received their issue a day earlier than planned. We always try our best to bring readers exclusive news first. We would like to apologize to fans of the show that learned the news ahead of time.” Dempsey’s final episode was watched by 8.83 million viewers—the show’s largest audience since the premiere that season. Variety even pontificated whether the ratings boost was due to my exclusive with Dempsey.

Lesley Goldberg (The Hollywood Reporter) I’m used to working with networks to hold news as part of their efforts to guard against plot spoilers. But the way Patrick Dempsey’s exit was handled involved a layer of paranoia and secrecy that has been unlike anything I’ve seen in my reporting career. News that he was leaving, and his character being killed off, would have been a major story considering how big the show is domestically and internationally. However, it also would have meant spoiling the episode and, more important, damaging key relationships I’ve worked hard to build. At some point, publishing the news of Dempsey’s exit before the episode aired became an ethical question of what was more important—a big story and its subsequent traffic, which would have come no matter what, or the relationships and trust that it took years to craft. Ultimately, I still published early because EW subscribers received the issue with Lynette’s Dempsey interview before the episode aired.

Mike McColl The morning after Derek’s last episode aired, my daughter sent me a link that was on YouTube or Facebook or something. I actually pulled it up to look at it, and it was a Grey’s Anatomy showbiz cheat sheet. It asked the question “Who is the attending doctor who killed Derek ‘McDreamy’ Shepherd?” It included a photo that I posted from the set. I had on a bloody rubber glove and was in my scrubs and mask. I never obviously would have posted this before it aired. I posted it well after the episode aired, and I [captioned it] “McDeadly.” This writer said something like, “Kill McDeadly.” Maybe that’s why the producer didn’t choose a big-name actor to be the one who killed our beloved McDreamy! I want to be ultrasensitive to these hard-core fans because it means so much to them, and I certainly didn’t mean in that case to make light of it. It’s just, I’m an actor, and I recognize it for what it is. Is everybody clear on the fact that this is just pretend and Patrick knew he was going to be leaving the show? It was just like, “God. He’s okay. He really is okay.”

Peter Horton Derek was going to be there forever with Meredith because you went through a whole journey with them. That was incredibly fulfilling. So even if he’s not there, he’s there. I don’t think any of us really worried about that going away because by then you were so invested in it. The show can last as it has for years.

Patrick Dempsey Lots of people [miss him]. “It’s good to see you alive” is the comment I get. I’m like, “Yes, I’m very much alive in reruns.” People were really invested in that relationship. I knew it would be heavy. Very happy to have moved on with a different chapter in my life.

Samantha Sloyan The montage just killed me, when Meredith says, “It’s okay, you can go.” God, I’m getting choked up just thinking about it. The chemistry they have as a pair and the way they were able to build that and sustain it! So many of these relationships are, like, “Will they, won’t they,” and then it wears thin. They sustained it for the duration of their relationship on the show, and it’s just, I think, a testament to what those two created. It was just unbelievable.

Pompeo addressed Dempsey’s departure with a tweet that focused solely on his character, not on how she spent eleven years working side by side with him: “There are so many people out there who have suffered tremendous loss and tragedy. Husbands and wives of soldiers, victims of senseless violence, and parents who have lost children. People who get up every day and do what feels like is the impossible. So it is for these people and in the spirit of resilance [sic] I am honored and excited to tell the story of how Meredith goes on in the face of what feels like the impossible.” Meanwhile, fans futilely created a Change.org petition to reinstate McDempsey, while other, more desperate ones simply tweeted “We Hate You” to Rhimes.

Shonda Rhimes Derek Shepherd is and will always be an incredibly important character—for Meredith, for me, and for the fans. I absolutely never imagined saying goodbye to our McDreamy. Patrick Dempsey’s performance shaped Derek in a way that I know we both hope became a meaningful example— happy, sad, romantic, painful, and always true—of what young women should demand from modern love. His loss will be felt by all.

Talk about the mother (father?) of all postscripts: In November of 2020 Dempsey reprised his role as McDreamy in the season opener—but only in Meredith’s dreams. Stricken with COVID-19, an unconscious Meredith “imagined” reuniting with her husband on the beach. After talking exclusively to Deadline and saying how it was “really a very healing process, and really rewarding,” Dempsey would return for more beach-based episodes that would ultimately stand out as the best moments of season seventeen. “It was a second chance thing,” one ABC executive told me at the time. “Shonda likes a comeback. Also, they wanted him in their last season.”

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wenellyb · 3 years

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Yeah, Kari really used the word couple. Someone on Twitter made a "this you, Kari?" In reply to the Variety article and posted an excerpt where she was talking about Sebastian's acting and how "he and Anthony together are amazing as a..." and she started stuttering until she said "couple" all quietly. It was a bit weird. MarySue pointed that excerpt out saying since Kari herself called them a couple it shouldn't be a problem if viewers see them as such given how they are depicted in the show.

Thanks for sharing this! This is really great and cute!

Poor Kari, she's obviously doing her best, but we know that even if she wanted to she wouldn't be able to say much. First, because that's how Marvel operates, even for straight relationships, but in this case it's even more delicate because it's about two men.

Personally, even though I think that the romantic scenes were put there intentionnally, I never thought that they would acknowledge it in an interview or something, at least not right away (maybe in an interview in a few years hahaha).

I don't think it's queerbaiting or anything, more like their hands are tied.

(Side note: As a general rule I feel like queerbaiting discussions should always be taken outside of shipping fandoms because shippers are rarely objective. )

Whether Kari and Malcom envisionned a love story in their heads, I'm almost sure they wouldn't have been able to put more explicit content than what they already put in the show (a kiss, Sam or Bucky saying they're bi,...)

In the particular case of TFATWS, I personally never felt it was queerbaiting, but something else, I don't know if it has a name or not.

It felt to me like they were trying to incorporate a love story but couldn't, because they knew it wouldn't get approved by the higher ups! I don't know if it's just plain homophobia from the producers/execs , if they didn't want to drive away their homophobic viewers, if they were afraid of the public's reaction about two masculine superhero dating eachother, if they were just testing the waters for later,...

It's not censorship of course, at least I don't think so, but it's something similar to that. Or some kind of auto-censorship, or implied censorship: like the execs would day outright say don't put any LGBT characters in your show, but it's heavily implied... I really don't know.

But to me it really felt like they were trying to tell a love story, but had to make it as subtle as possible, but if they had made it more obvious, they would have had trouble... That's the way I read it (I insist on I, because I could be wrong, of course)

It's the same feeling I had when when I was watching a Chinese drama, telling a story between two men, it was adapted from a book about a love stoy between 2 men but in the movie it ended up being a story about two guy becoming best friends, because of the censorship laws. They couldn't show any kiss or anything. If I find the name of the drama, I'll add it here.

I'm not saying that's what happened here, I'm just saying that that's how I felt while watching some scenes in TFATWS.

Like they wanted to show us a love story but just couldn't go all the way. Maybe it's because they wanted to leave the story open for new possibilities in the movie.

That's why I think people should cut Kari some slack, she's doing her best with what she has.

It's obvious she cares about the characters, it's obvious she worked on those scenes very carefully, and paid attention to a lot of details for Sambucky scenes (the car Bucky was driving being the same as the one the car Sam was driving at the beginning) and for other scenes as well.

Whatever is happening or not is clearly not Kari's fault. I can imagine she would like to say more if she could but she can't. You can tell a lot of her comments about Sambucky in interviews are confused and confusing.

When I read an article about how Malcom Spellman didn't even know what happened to Steve but somehow had to incorporate it in the story... I understood that some of the decisions are just not in their hands.

They do their best, but in some ways their hands are tied.

Unfortunately, I'm not an expert on this so I can only share my perception. But here's what I think about the whole Kari thing, I love the way she brings out some cute comments though: "They love eachother", "They're amazing as a couple".

I hope that at least in 5 of 10 years we'll start having some answers to these mysteries hahaha!!!

#sambucky #tfatws #sam wilson #bucky barnes #kari skogland #anon asks

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stina-is-a-punk-rocker · 3 years

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jacqueline wilson’s ‘love lessons’

tw: abuse, pedophilia, characters making Bad Decisions, long unnecessary spiel about my childhood like I’m running a recipe blog

It’s funny how loads of the authors who helped shaped me into the vaguely humanoid being I am today have names beginning with the letter ‘J’; Judy Blume, Jeff Kinney, John Green, J.K. Rowling (yikes, I know) … and Jacqueline Wilson.

I’ve never owned a Jacqueline Wilson book of my own; they were always borrowed from a friend, or from a friend of a friend, or from a friend of a cousin- you get the gist. Her books, for me, come with an entire aesthetic: something reminiscent of yard sales, and reading under the covers with a flashlight, and being lulled into a false sense of security by the deceptively innocent Nick Sharratt illustration on the cover until someone’s best friend gets mowed over.

So I knew what I was getting into when I picked up Love Lessons. I knew this was going to be Fucked Up; and boy, was I right.

(Here’s the part where I warn you about spoilers.)

From an abusive dad to creepy child predator teachers to slut-shaming and victim blaming, this book has it all.

The main character is Prudence ‘Prue’ King, who is homeschooled at the beginning of the book, along with her sister, Grace. Their parents remain rooted in the early twentieth century, and are very strict about- well, everything. No TV, no computers, not a single mobile phone in the house; their clothing worse than the orphans’ from Annie; and their father remains distinctly distrustful of modern institutions like the school and the hospital; and so on, and so forth.

Daddy King suffers a stroke, and has to be taken to the hospital. Meanwhile, Mrs. King (a floppy, spineless woman who lives in fear and awe of her, frankly horrid, husband) sends the girls to school, behind the then invalid Mr. King’s back. Cue Prue and Grace being the freakshows of the school, with their strange clothing and overbearing mother.

Grace manages to make friends, but Prue remains alone. The kids are dicks, the teachers are dicks… well, all of them but one. And that’s the art teacher, Mr. Raxberry (I just couldn’t get over that name; it seems like something you’d name a mythical plant from Pixie Hollow or some shit. I’m assuming it isn’t an actual name, since the spelling & grammar check on my computer doesn’t seem to recognize it), or Rax, as he’s called.

Oh, yeah; Prudence’s favorite subject in school is art, and she’s a whiz at it. This is relevant, because reasons.

And here’s where stuff gets murky. Prue develops a crush on Rax- which is perfectly normal. I’m definitely no stranger to it; I’ve had crushes on my teachers, my mum admitted she used to think one of her professors was cute. And yeah, as I grew older, I grew out of those crushes and now have a markedly more refined taste in men (unless he’s 5’ 7’’, born in ’97 and named Bang Chan, I don’t want him); and my mum married my dad, so I’m assuming she did, too. Admittedly, now that my dad teaches at a university, it’s icky to think that there might be students who have crushes on him- but I digress.

My point is, loads of us have liked our teachers. But I doubt the majority of us have acted on it.

And Prue actively showing her interest in Rax isn’t the worst part. That’s a spot reserved for Rax reciprocating her feelings.

Guess Ezra Fitz and Ms. Grundy (yes, I watched Riverdale; please don’t cancel me) have a new addition to the Creep Club.

The age of consent in the UK is 16, if I’m not mistaken. Prue is 14. She’s just barely become a teenager, and she’s being preyed upon.

Because that is what Rax is. He’s a predator; he preys upon this vulnerable girl who’s never been in a relationship before- hell, she’s never even had friends- her father’s abusive, so she obviously doesn’t have the best experience when it comes to men- she’s unpopular at school, with the students and staff alike- and he lures her in. I don’t care how bloody nice he is to Sarah, or what a good dad he is (well, he’s really not, seeing as he cheated on the mother of his children WITH A BLOODY FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD CHILD)- the guy’s a fucking pedophile.

I was staunchly stuck at a yellow light with him; like, sure, maybe Prue thinks he’s flirting with her- maybe she’s looking at this all wrong, she doesn’t know how relationships work- see, he drew a picture of Sarah, too, in his secret notebook- Prue’s just reading into this too much- up until he says he loves her.

Dude. Humbert fucking Humbert. She’s fourteen, for Christ’s sake, and you’re married. You have two children. She’s a child. She’s probably closer to your son’s age than she is to yours.

(This is the part where I bury my head in my pillow. And scream. Extensively, and with passion.)

The book does make some genuinely good commentary on slut-shaming and victim blaming and abusive parenting. And on one hand, I can see why so many people find issue with the romanticization of the when I kissed the teacher trope- but I can defend it, too.

The book is in Prue’s perspective. She thinks she’s in love with Rax, so obviously, she’s not going to throw in some valuable moral at the end- because she’s too young and inexperienced to think otherwise. And sadly, there are loads of instances of child abuse that go unreported because the victims just don’t know better.

What I have issue with is how the school dealt with it, ultimately. Prudence, a child, has to deal with the consequences of the actions of a literal child predator. Sure, Rax ‘clears his name’ by cooking up some bullshit story about how it was only a crush and he didn’t encourage it, but you’d think other adults would know better and, oh, I dunno- dig deeper into it, instead of blaming it on a child?

“She says you told Mr. Raxberry you loved him and he held you in his arms and fondled you.”

Which Prudence denies, because, again, she doesn’t know better. She then goes on to say that they did nothing wrong. To which the adult speaking to her, in this case, the principal, Miss Wilmott, goes on to say:

“I’m not sure that’s entirely true… I feel that there are some aspects of your friendship that could be considered inappropriate.”

FYI, lady, he kissed her- multiple times (not that kissing her once makes him any more redeemable), and told her he loved her, and admitted to fantasizing about running away with her and leaving his family behind. Fun fact: do you know Prudence is underage?

You’d think that Miss Wilmott would maybe give this whole fiasco a favorable ending, but it turns out she listens to school gossip;

“I haven’t been at all happy with your attitude. You don’t seem to understand how to behave in school. I’ve heard tales of unsuitable underwear and then a silly romance with one of the boys in your class. I feel that in the space of a few short weeks you’ve made rather a bad name for yourself… I don’t know whether you intend to be deliberately insolent but you certainly come across as an unpleasantly opinionated and arrogant girl… I can’t help feeling that you’ll be much better off elsewhere. I shall try hard to engineer a suitable transfer to another school.”

And then she comes out with this gem:

“If you won’t leave, then I shall have to ensure that Mr. Raxberry finds another position.”

“No, you can’t do that! He’s a brilliant teacher.”

“You should have thought of that before you started acting in this ridiculous and precocious manner. If I were another kind of headteacher, I would have Mr. Raxberry instantly suspended. There could even be a court case. He would not only lose his job, he could find himself in very serious trouble. Did you ever stop to think about that?”

Girlboss, gaslight and gatekeep. The fucking trifecta.

Also, by ‘another kind of headteacher’, does she mean the kind of headteacher WHO DOESN’T LET CHILD PREDATORS ROAM FREELY WITHIN THEIR HALLS?

This bitch is out here blaming a child, a literal child, for the crimes of an adult man.

The only time Prue seems aware of the fact that Mr. Raxberry is actually a very shit person is her immediate thoughts that follow after she tells Miss Wilmott she’ll take the fall;

I so wanted to save darling Rax- and yet why hadn’t he wanted to save me? Had he told Miss Wilmott it was all my fault, that I’d got a ridiculous crush on him, that I’d made ludicrous advances to him? … I wanted to tell this horrible, patronizing woman how hungrily he’d kissed me, but I couldn’t do it. I loved him. I had to help him.

NO, SWEETHEART; YOU MOST DEFINITELY DO NOT.

And maybe I’m going overboard with all these excerpts, but here’s what Rax has to tell Prue, after school, following her expulsion:

“I let her think the worst of you, the best of me, just to save my skin. I said it was ridiculous talking about a love affair between us. I said you simply had a crush on me, and that I was just trying to be kind… You were brave enough to stand up to me and force me to acknowledge the truth… I love you… That’s why I had to take a risk and see you this one last time. I didn’t want you to think I didn’t care… Every night when I close my eyes, I’ll think of us together in this car and how badly I wanted to drive off with you. I’ll imagine us walking hand in hand at the water’s edge… I wish I wasn’t such a coward.”

(I burrow into the pillow further. I’m trying to suffocate myself.)

And that’s where I think Wilson went wrong. Sure, Prudence getting expelled for something that was completely out of her hands is unfair, and horrible, but it’s real. That shit can happen.

What’s bad is showing Rax in a positive light after all that. If only Wilson had written Rax to not be the Romeo he thinks he is. Make him ignore Prudence, throw her under the bus in front of her face, instead of this star-crossed lovers bullshit it’s made out to be. Show your younger audience that Rax is not a good man. I’ve got a little over two weeks left for my twentieth; I can see why this is unacceptable. But I was a little younger than Prue when I watched Pretty Little Liars, and my only gripe with Aria dating Ezra was that Noel Kahn was so much cuter.

It shows when you scroll down the Goodreads reviews; you’ve got adults giving it one or two stars, and teenagers giving it four or five, with their biggest complaints being, “but Toby was cuter!!!”

Other non-pedophilia related complaints regarding the book include: Prudence being unlikable- which I didn’t really notice, considering she reacted to some people way better than I would’ve, even at 19 (which probably says a lot more about me than it does about Prue, but oh well). Still, Prudence obviously isn’t the most prudent of people- and again, she’s fourteen. Look me in eye and tell me you weren’t an arsehole at that age (unless you’re fourteen now, in which case, I assure you that you’ll look back on yourself someday and go ‘wtf was I thinking’). Bringing up Toby’s dyslexia in an argument was low, though.

There were people who thought the Kings’ almost-Amish lifestyle was exaggerated and unrealistic, but I assure you, it may very well be real. There are 8 billion people on the world- it’s fair to assume that several of them are complete weirdos.

Grace was a sweet character, and I adored her with every fiber of my being. As were her friends Iggy and Figgy. Honestly, I would’ve loved a book about Iggy, Figgy and Piggy’s (mis)adventures too.

#love lessons #jacqueline wilson #teacher #teacher crush #teacher x student #anti ezria #ezria #pretty little liars #aria montgomery #ezra fitz #when i kissed the teacher #book review #books

85 notes · View notes

purple-fireflies · 3 years

Text

try to slip past his defense (without granting innocence)

A/N: Soy Luna Grey’s Anatomy au -- some plot devices will be the same, others may differ. (This is just an excerpt, I'll post the full chapter on ao3 & tumblr when I'm done with it!)

Other notes:

The title is from The Fray’s “How To Save A Life” which is basically the show’s anthem song (that and chasing cars)

Sometimes, certain dialogue may be verbatim from the show (this is only for medical-related plot devices, ie meeting patients, assigning lab reports, establishing exposition, etc) so I’m stating here right now that that specific dialogue belongs to Grey’s Anatomy, and the characters belong to Soy Luna, but everything else belongs to me

Juliana never had the last name given in the show, so for story’s sake, it’s Bahiense.

She’s referred to as “The Nazi” but that’s not meant to offend anyone at all, it was the nickname given in the show, so I’m transferring it here.

In Soy Luna, Ámbar is one year older than Luna, but here she’s the same age as her

In Grey’s Anatomy, there are only 5 people in each group of interns, but for plot’s sake, there are 7 each

In the show, Benicio’s name was never mentioned, so for writing purposes, his last name is going to be Calisto

Luna sits up quickly—bad idea.

She winces at the light coming in through the window and groans at her headache.

And someone stirs next to her.

Exactly how much did she drink?

Enough so she doesn’t remember the name of the smirky boy staring at her, pulling on his boxers.

She is never drinking again.

And he needs to leave.

“You are?” He asks, grinning the grin that probably got Luna into this mess.

“Humiliated on so many levels,” She mutters, “And I’m late, as well. So if you could just, I dunno, leave, that would be perfect,”

“Or we could pick up where we left off?” He asks, with a grin that tells Luna he isn’t used to being rejected.

“No, seriously. I’m late. Which I shouldn’t be on my first day of work, so?”

Take the hint.

“Wait, so you live here?”

Jesus Christ, she’s going to be late.

“Huh? Oh yeah, it was my aunt’s house, but I’m selling it so technically, not for long.” She rushes out.

“I’m sorry,” He replies, actual emotion in his eyes.

“My aunt is still ali—you know, we don’t have to do the thing,”

“We can do whatever you want,”

Really?

“No, the thing. Where you pretend you care or ask me nice questions or whatever. Listen. I’m going to go upstairs and shower, and when I get back, you’re not going to be here, uh…”

What was his name?

He laughs softly, “Matteo.”

“Luna,” She replies, shaking his hand.

“Bye, Luna,” He says winking at her.

She smiles in response and jerks her head towards the door.

“Bye, Matteo,”

And that’s the last she has to see of him.

𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅘𝅥𝅮

“Each of you comes here hopeful. Wanting in on the game. A month ago you were in med school being taught by doctors. Today, you are the doctors. The seven years you spend here as a surgical resident will be the best and worst of your life. You will be pushed to the breaking point. Look around you. Say hello to your competition. Eight of you will switch to an easier specialty. Five of you will crack under the pressure. Two of you will be asked to leave. This is your starting line. This is your arena. How well you play? That's up to you,” The chief, Tamara Rios, says as Luna stumbles into the room, causing everyone to stare at her.

Great job, Valente.

Luna walks around the room. She sees Ámbar, avoiding her gaze as if it was poisonous. She sees another girl, a brunette, looking around the room with wide eyes. She sees Simón, looking back at her, and resists waving at him as a kindergartner would. She walks around the OR a little more and sees two girls so close they might as well be stuck together, one a blonde and the other a redhead. She bumps into another boy, who just huffs softly and brushes her off.

Rude.

𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅘𝅥𝅮

The resident takes 3 more interns, leaving Luna with the brunette she saw at the orientation.

“Only 6 women out of 20,” She says, sighing, as if mad at the statistic itself.

“And I think one of them’s a model. As if that would’ve helped with the whole respect thing,” The redhead interjects.

Luna and Ámbar share a look.

Luna turns to the brunette.

“You’re Nina, right?” She says, smiling.

Nina nods, “Which resident did you get assigned to? I got Bahiense.”

“The Nazi? Me too,” Luna replies.

The guy who bumped into her says, “You got the Nazi? So did I. At least we’ll be tortured together,” He says, trying to lean into Luna’s space.

Luna and Nina exchange a quick look saying, God, can you believe him?

A doctor comes up and calls out “Smith, Valente, Ponce, Simonetti, Medina, Sánchez, Álvarez,”

Ámbar walks up to the guy and asks, “Bahiense?”

He points down the hall.

The seven look down to see who he’s pointing at. It’s a woman slightly shorter than them, using a cane to stand up, ordering some other resident around.

The guy who bumped into her says, “I thought the Nazi would be a guy,”

Sexist much?

“I thought the Nazi would be...you know, the Nazi,” Luna mutters.

“Guys seriously? Maybe it’s just professional jealousy. You know, maybe she’s just brilliant and they’re so jealous so they call her the Nazi. Maybe she’s nice.” The redhead says, and Luna sees her nametag saying Jimena Medina.

The blonde next to her, Yamila Sánchez, Luna supposes, nods.

Which means the only one left that she doesn’t know would be...Luna cranes her neck to see his nametag.

Ramiro Ponce. Who is currently staring wistfully at Yamila.

Please.

“Let me guess, you still have hope left in your heart,” Ámbar says to Jimena, rolling her eyes as if it’s what she was born to do.

Jimena shoots Ámbar a dirty look (wow, Luna wishes her luck with that can of worms) and proceeds to try to shake Dr. Bahiense’s hand when she walks over.

Dr. Bahiense looks at her hand as if it’s infectious.

Jimena, undeterred, continues to say, “Right, well. I’m Jimena Medina, but you can call me Jim if it’s easier,”

Yamila, who seemed to jump out of thin air, says, “And you can call me Yam,”

Bahiense looks so unimpressed Luna thinks that if contempt alone was enough to murder someone, Bahiense would be a serial killer.

Luna shares a quick look with Simón, who gives her a reassuring nod.

Bahiense looks them all up and down, evidently annoyed with being stuck with their group (ouch).

"I have five rules. Memorize them. Rule number one, don't bother sucking up, I already hate you, that's not gonna change,” She starts, then moves to a bench, filled with different objects, “Trauma protocol, phone lists, pagers. Nurses will page you, you answer every page at a run. A run, that's rule number two. Your first shift starts now and lasts forty-eight hours,”

Everyone rushes to grab their pagers, studying them before Bahiense starts talking again.

“You’re interns, grunts, nobodies, bottom of the surgical food chain, you run labs, write orders, work every second night till you drop, and don't complain!”

Bahiense opens what Luna supposes is an on-call room, “On-call rooms. Attendings hog them, sleep when you can, where you can, which brings me to rule number three, if I'm sleeping, don't wake me, unless your patient is actually dying. Rule number four, the dying patient better not be dead when I get there, not only would you have killed someone, you would have also woken me for no good reason, we clear?”

Luna rushes to nod, writing furiously on her notepad, and then goes, oh.

She raises her hand.

Dr. Bahiense looks extremely pissed at Luna for having the audacity to have a question.

“Yes?”

“You said five rules. Those were only four.” Luna says, trying not to wilt against Dr. Bahiense’s gaze.

“Rule number five. When I move, you move,” She says after her pager beeps.

That’s some TV show shit right there.

They break into a run and watch as Dr. Bahiense runs down a couple of doctors.

𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅘𝅥𝅮

The helicopter—yes, a helicopter—lands, and a doctor pulls out a teenager on a stretcher.

This is way too much for Luna on her first day.

“What do we got?” Bahiense asks, and Luna hears Nina correct the grammar under her breath.

As the paramedic puts the girl on the stretcher (while she’s seizing) he says, “Katie Bryce, fifteen-year-old female, new-onset seizures, intermittent for the past week, ID lost en route, started grand mal seizing as we descended,”

Bahiense stops, leaning on her cane for a second, and then it’s all business.

“All right. Yam, put her on the side, 10 milligrams diazepam,” Bahiense groans when Yam does it incorrectly, “No, no, the white lead is on the right, righty whitey, smoke over fire, a large-bore I.V. don't let the blood haemolyse, let's go!”

Yam injects the diazepam and Katie stops seizing.

Luna releases the breath that she wasn’t aware she was holding.

Another doctor, in dark blue scrubs, another doctor comes up in stark contrast to what she and the other interns are wearing. Luna catches his name very quickly. Gastón Perida.

Nina sucks in a breath as he walks past them, Luna realizes with a start.

“So I heard we got a wet fish on dry land?” Dr. Perida says, and Luna catches how Nina stares at him with intent.

Dr. Bahiense, her sudden brashness gone, replaced with respect as she says, “Absolutely Dr. Perida,”

Dr. Perida nods, his eyes brushing over the intern group, stopping at Nina, and he then continues.

“All right, Dr. Bahiense, I’m gonna shotgun her,”

“That means every test in the book, CT, CBC, chem. seven, a tox screen, Nina and Ámbar, you're on labs, Ramiro and Yam, patient workups, Luna, get Katie for a CT, she's your responsibility now,”

Wonderful. Her first day and she gets the really hard patient.

“What about me and Simón?” Jim asks.

Bahiense looks so tired when she stares at Jim, “Right, you two, uh. You get to do rectal exams. Okay?”

Jim and Simón have faces that say no, not okay.

Luna makes a face gloating at Simón and he just glares at her in return.

𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅘𝅥𝅮

Ámbar peeks into the OR where Dr. Bahiense is. Bahiense comes out and looks at her expectantly.

“Um, Katie Bryce's labs came out clear, there's nothing in the results that explain her seizures,” She says, hoping to catch Dr. Bahiense to ask her what she really wants to ask her.

“And…?”

“ I heard every year the attending on-call picks the best intern and, and lets them perform a procedure, during the first shift?” Ámbar asks, glaring back at Dr. Bahiense when she tries to stare her down.

Ámbar Smith does not get stared down.

“Go away. Now.” Dr. Bahiense says, and Ámbar groans internally.

𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅘𝅥𝅮

Yam sighs at yet another ill-tried joke Ramiro attempts.

Flirty in med school and flirty now.

Why should she even bother?

“We have one more patient to work up,” She mumbles and he nods, walking slower to keep up with her pace.

She places her stethoscope and hears for a heartbeat. “Everything seems to be in order,”

“So he’ll be fine?” The woman next to him—presumably his wife—asks.

“If you don’t count that my bacon days are over, sure,” The patient replies.

Yam shares a smirk with Ramiro.

“You'll have surgery tomorrow with Dr. Perida, I hear he's good, and after that, you can have all of the bacon-flavored soy product you can eat,” Ramiro interjects, speaking easily with the patients.

“Please, kill me now,” the patient jokes.

“Wish I could, but I took the Hippocratic Oath for a reason,” Yam replies absently, going over and signing his charts.

She blushes at the weird looks she gets and rolls her eyes at Ramiro’s never-ending smirk.

𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅘𝅥𝅮

Katie. Won’t. Stop. Talking. Which isn’t helping Luna find her way through these halls.

Did she just miss the last turn?

“You’re lost,” the kid says, grumbling.

What do you think I’m trying to fix right now? Luna thinks to herself and just about stops herself from saying.

“I’m not lost.” Luna insists, then remembers she’s a doctor, “How’re you feeling?”

“I’m missing my pageant. How do you think I feel?”

“Right. You’re missing your pageant.”

This poor girl is in the hospital with seizures and the only thing that she can think about is her pageant.

Luna feels sorry for her.

“The Spokane Teen Miss? I was in the top ten after the first two rounds. This is my year. I could've won,”

Luna absently hums and realizes that they’re going the wrong way. Again.

She turns around and pushes Katie back the same way.

“You are so lost. What are you, new?”

Luna chokes back a laugh. Yeah, something like that.

𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅘𝅥𝅮

Yam watches Ramiro try to give their patient a central line. It’s not working.

And it’s visibly hurting the patient.

She groans and pushes past him, about to put the line in when Dr. Perida waltzes into their room and raises his eyebrows.

“Out.” He says, his nice demeanor replaced with annoyance.

Do all of the residents and attendings just hate interns on principle?

Yam glares at Ramiro and pulls him out, watching from the window as Perida puts the line in perfectly.

“Bet you used to mess up a lot when you started out,” Ramiro tries to joke with Perida.

Yam just winces and nods at Dr. Perida as she leaves.

Ramiro at least has the decency to look sheepish.

This is going to be a long shift.

𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅘𝅥𝅮

Luna sits, taking Katie’s patient history and generally listening to her incessant babbling.

“I twisted my ankle. I do rhythmic gymnastics, which is like, really cool. Nobody else does it. And I tripped over my ribbon, and I didn't get stuck with someone this clueless. And that was like, a nurse,” Katie says.

Luna bites back a retort.

𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅘𝅥𝅮

Simón groans at the plate of food in front of him. The number of rectal exams he and Jim had to do was enough to take the appetite away from anyone.

“This shift is 80 hours long, you have to eat, Simón,” Ámbar mutters, her gaze hardening after leaving Simón’s eyes.

“I can’t.”

“Eat.” Ámbar insists, pushing Simón’s plate towards him.

“You try eating after performing 17 rectal exams. The Nazi hates me. I want to puke.” Simón says, his face contorting.

“Just don’t puke near me,” Ámbar mutters.

“The Nazi’s just a resident. Attendings hate me,” Ramiro replies.

“Did you know Luna is inbred?” Nina asks, and all heads whip to her immediately.

Partly because no one expected the shy ingenue to say anything.

And partly because Luna being inbred is very surprising.

Simón hurries to say “It’s not uncommon to be the kid of a doctor,”

“I mean royally inbred. Her mother is Lili Benson.”

“Shut up. The Lili Benson?” Jim asks.

Nina nods.

“Who’s Lili Benson?” Ramiro asks.

“The Benson method? Where’d you go to med school, Antarctica?” Yam says incredulously.

No one notices how Simón and Ámbar tense up as Yam continues talking. “She was one of the biggest women surgeons. She practically invented th—”

“She won the Harper Avery. Twice.” Jim says, rolling her eyes at Ramiro.

“So I didn’t know one thing.”

“I would kill to have Lili Benson as my mother. Scratch that, I’d kill to be Lili Benson.” Nina says, her eyes alight.

“Katie Bryce is a pain in the ass. I swear if it wouldn’t get me fired, I’d strangle her with my bare hands.” Luna says, walking over to their table, sitting next to Nina.

She seems to miss the wistful glance Simón throws her way.

She does seem to notice the way everyone’s staring at her.

“What?”

Nina opens her mouth to say something but stops immediately when Dr. Perida walks over.

“Good afternoon interns. It's posted, but I thought I'd share the good news personally. As you know, the honor of performing the first surgery is reserved for the intern that shows the most promise. As I'm running the OR today, I get to make that choice,” Dr. Perida says, and Luna feels a rush of hope.

Or. Felt. Seeing as Dr. Perida is clapping Ramiro on his back (it was kind of worth it to see him choke a little on his salad) and saying, “Ramiro Ponce. You’ll be scrubbing in on an appendectomy this afternoon. Congrats.”

Luna deflates.

She wanted that surgery.

She wanted it really badly.

“Me?” Ramiro asks, not quite believing it. Or maybe he’s just wilting under Yam’s intense glare.

“Enjoy.” Dr. Perida says, nodding to everyone.

Luna doesn’t fail to notice that he’s staring at Nina while he says that.

Nina doesn’t fail to notice either, if the blush on her cheeks has anything to say about it.

Ramiro looks like he’s still in shock.

𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅘𝅥𝅮

“I’ve seen his file. Ramiro Ponce barely even made the cut to get into the program. He’s not your guy.” Juliana says to Gastón, raising her eyebrows.

“Oh, he’s my guy alright,” Gastón responds, absently checking the labs.

Juliana sighs, “Every year you pick your guy, and every year your guy suffers most.”

Gastón smiles. Everyone who knows him knows his easy nature, his inclination to being on the side of less serious.

Unless of course, it has to do with work.

“Terrorize one, and the rest fall in line, Bahiense.”

“I get it. I respect it. But Ramiro? Ponce is a puppy. A cute little puppy that is waiting to be killed. He can’t take the pressure. Think about it, Perida.” Juliana says, walking away.

𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅘𝅥𝅮

Luna watches as Katie’s parents stumble into Katie’s room.

The look of pure worry and fear on their faces makes Luna warm to them immediately.

A couple of hours ago, their kid was supposed to go on stage and wear a sash and be a kid.

Now they’re scared that their kid could be dying.

“Katie?” The mom asks, trying to hold her hand.

Luna falters, not wanting to break their little window.

“They gave her a sedative for the CT scan, so she’s just a tad groggy,” Luna says, standing up.

“Will she be okay?”

“Does she need surgery?” The parents ask at the same time.

Their urging faces make Luna wish she had an answer.

“Uh. You know, I’m not her doctor, I am a doctor, just not hers. Anyway, I’m not Katie’s doctor. I’ll go find him.” Luna rambles.

Luna finds Bahiense, “Katie’s parents have questions. Should I get Dr. Perida to answer them?”

“What? No. Perida’s off the case. The case is the new neuro attending’s case, Dr. Balsano. He’s over there.” Bahiense says, pointing to…

Oh god.

Please.

Not today.

This is not happening.

Matteo turns and stops dead in his tracks, his eyes clicking in recognition.

This is not happening.

Luna is not dealing with this.

She turns away from his gaze and walks away. What is she going to do?

She walks towards the stairwell and gets grabbed in.

She stumbles and Matteo catches her, running a hand through his hair, which Luna grudgingly admits looks not bad.

No. Luna. Stop it. Luna. No.

“Dr. Balsano. Did you need anything?” Luna asks, trying to not look at flustered as she is.

Matteo looks positively ecstatic at this turn of events. “Dr. Balsano? This morning it was Matteo. Now it’s Dr. Balsano.”

Luna dearly wants to slap that smirk off of his face.

“Dr. Balsano, we should pretend this never happened,”

“What never happened? You sleeping with me last night or kicking me out this morning because I don’t know about you, but both are memories I’d dearly love to keep.”

This guy really can’t take a hint.

“No. No. No. This is not happening. There are no memories of anything. I’m not the girl in the bar and you’re not the guy in the bar. I am your intern, Dr. Balsano.”

“I see how it is. You took advantage of me last night and now you want to forget about it.” He says, smirking incessantly.

“I most certainly did not,”

“I was drunk and vulnerable. Not to mention, insanely good-looking,”

“You’re not that good-looking,” Luna says, while her traitorous brain says Liar over and over.

“Sure I’m not. But last night, I was wearing my red shirt and I was extremely good-looking and you took advantage,”

He’s not entirely wrong about the red shirt.

“I didn—”

“Want to take advantage again? Say, Friday night?”

He’s smiling again, only this time it’s a smile, not a smirk.

Maybe Luna wouldn’t have said no if he wasn’t an attending.

“No. You’re an attending. I’m your intern. And I would seriously appreciate it if you stopped looking at me like that,” Luna says, glaring at him. It doesn’t seem to deter him.

“Like what?” He asks innocently as if he has no idea what he’s doing right now.

“Like you’ve slept with me,”

Matteo smirks.

“Dr. Balsano. Have you ever considered the fact that this is inappropriate?” Luna breathes.

He doesn’t say anything.

Luna sighs and leaves, the door slamming behind her.

𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅘𝅥𝅮

“Open. Identify. Irrigate. Close.” Jim instructs, and Yam sighs.

“Jim, I think he’d know,”

“He looks like he’s going to puke,” Jim shoots back.

Yam looks at Ramiro and says, “We have to go to the gallery now. Don’t screw it up.”

They walk up and take a seat behind Luna and Nina.

The intern above them says, “He’s going to faint. He’s a fainter.”

Yam fights back a if you only knew.

“Nah, I’m guessing code brown. Right in his pants,” another intern snickers.

Yam and Jim share a look.

Sure, she’s not a huge fan of Ramiro but he helped her a lot in med school. He helped Jim a lot in med school.

This is just savage.

“He’s going to sweat himself unsterile,”

“10 bucks he’s messing up the McBird,” someone says.

Oh god, they’re betting on Ramiro.

“20 says he cries,” Ámbar says, and sends an apologetic look at Luna.

“I’ll put 20 on him melting down completely,”

“50 says he pulls the whole thing off.” Yam hears herself say.

Luna grins at her, “That’s one of us down there. The first one of us. Where the hell is your loyalty?”

Yam breathes out.

The entire gallery, while it was buzzing before, is now silent.

“75 he can’t even ID the appendix,” Ámbar says again.

This time it’s Simón shooting her the look.

“I’ll take that action,” someone says.

Eric, Yam realizes.

The idiot from their bio class.

Nina elbows Luna when Dr. Perida says, “Okay, Ponce, let’s see what you can do,”

Jim breathes in quickly and Yam also holds her breath.

Do it right do it right please do it right.

“Here it comes,” Simón says.

“Scalpel,” Ramiro says and the nurse hands it to him, echoing the word.

Ramiro takes it and everyone cheers.

Perida motions for them to shut up as Nina says, “God, he’s quite a bit of trouble,”

Ramiro gets ready to cut as Perida instructs, “More pressure.”

Ramiro manages to do it without any mishaps and then proceeds to say, “Pickups.”

The scrub nurse echoes the command and hands him the instrument.

They go on for a little bit, and Yam thinks he might actually pull it off.

Until it goes downhill after Ramiro takes out the appendix.

Perida mutters an angry remark as all the interns in the gallery call him Double O’7.

Jim shares a worried look with Yam and asks Luna, “What does 007 mean?”

Luna sends them an apologetic look.

“License to Kill.”

𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅘𝅥𝅮

The cool air rushes into the basement that Bahiense’s interns have settled into.

The majority of them pile onto the gurney as Nina goes to the vending machine looking for some chocolate.

Luna winces at the whine that Ramiro makes as he walks into their “hideout”.

“They’re calling me 007 aren’t they?”

Luna groans and shoves Simón’s head off of Ámbar’s lap so she can fall asleep in it.

She’s too tired to deal with any human interaction that requires her to, you know, have any sort of emotional security.

“No one’s calling you 007,” Jim and Yam lie (but they do it in unison so like, props).

Ramiro shoots Yam an annoyed look, “I was on an elevator and Eric whispered 007,”

Ámbar pushes Luna’s head off of her lap and glares at Ramiro, “How many times do we have to go through with this? 5, 10, 15? Please tell me soon or I’m going to rim your head off.”

Ramiro sits on the gurney and groans “Eric whispered 007 in the elevator and everyone laughed,”

Luna picks her head up from where she’s trying (unsuccessfully) to fall asleep and actually feels sorry for the guy for a second but the aching limbs and pounding migraine make it kind of hard to console the poor guy.

“They weren’t laughing at you,” Jim says.

“You sure?”

“Would we lie to you?” Jim asks.

“Yes,” Ramiro, Ámbar, Simon and Luna say.

“007 is a state of mind,” Nina yells from the vending machine and throws a packet of chips at Luna as she walks back.

“Says the girl who finished first at freaking Stanford,” Simón yells at her.

Nina just rolls her eyes in response.

Just as Luna finally feels the call of sleep, her pager beeps.

She just wanted 5 minutes.

“It’s 911. Damn. I gotta go,” and Luna takes off at a sprint.

“I should’ve gone into geriatrics. No one cares if you kill an old person.” Ramiro continues after Luna leaves.

“Yes. Yes, they do care if you kill an old person. Plus. Surgery is hot. Geriatrics is… Well, it’s for freaks who live in the basement with their mom,” Simón replies.

“I have got to move out of my mom’s,” Ramiro mutters.

Nina and Ámbar share a grin.

𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅘𝅥𝅮

Luna’s out of breath by the time she gets to Katie’s room.

She really has to go to the gym more.

“Finally,” Katie mutters.

Luna looks around, seeing if anything’s wrong.

Oh god, please tell me she has a good reason for this. She has a good reason. Maybe. Hopefully.

“Are you alright?” The nurse paged me 911.”

“Ha, it took me forever to get her to even pick up the phone. I had to go full Hulk.”

“Wait. So there’s nothing wrong? Nothing medically wrong?”

“I’m bored.” Katie shrugs.

Luna likes to think she’s a nice person. A little absentminded at times, but a nice person nonetheless.

Katie, however, is really testing the whole “do no harm” thing.

“I am not your babysitter. I am not your cruise director. You can’t just page me for anything.”

“Don’t be so overdramatic. My pageant is supposed to be on cable, but it’s like this hospital lives in the ’90s. I can’t find anything. If someone who’s not me gets the crown, I should at least get to see it.”

Luna takes a deep breath. She’s a teenager. You were also stupid as a teenager.

“Okay. This is a hospital. There are sick people here. Go to sleep and stop wasting my time.”

“I can’t sleep, my head’s all full.”

“Those are called thoughts. Run with them.” Luna says in a fit of anger.

She’s been working for almost 24 hours and she just wanted 2 minutes of rest.

But maybe she shouldn’t have snapped at a patient.

But that’s a lesson for another day.

𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅘𝅥𝅮

Luna and Nina are in the ER when they hear a loud voice.

“4B has post-op pneumonia. Let’s get her started on antibiotics, okay?” An intern says to a nurse.

Someone didn’t tell the newbie not to piss off the nurses.

“Are you sure it’s the right diagnosis?”

“Oh gee, I don’t know. I’m only an intern. But here’s an idea. You go and spend 4 years in med school and then talk to me. She’s got shortness of breath and fever. It’s post-op pneumonia. Start antibiotics.” He sneers.

Luna rolls her eyes.

The same guy walks over to her and Nina, “God, I hate nurses. I’m Benicio. I’m with Jeremy. You guys are with the Nazi, right?”

“You know it doesn’t have to be pneumonia, right? It could be splinting. Or she could have aPE.”

He sneers again (does it ever leave his face?), “As I said, I hate nurses.” and walks away.

“Well, he’s an absolute idiot,” Nina says, shooting daggers towards Benicios across the room.

Luna’s about to respond, but her pager beeps again.

“Dammit, Katie.”

This time she walks.

𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅘𝅥𝅮

#soy luna #soy luna fic #lutteo #soy luna grey's au #simbar #yamiro #gastina #hope you guys enjoy it!

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marumafan · 4 years

Text

A Guide For Yuuram Fans

Hello fellow yuuram fan! Have you ever caught yourself thinking:

- Does Yuuri like Wolf? - No, but I mean like "Does he REALLY like Wolf?" - Am I getting invested just to find out it's clickbait? - Is Yuuri ever going to accept Wolf's feelings? - Does Yuuri like guys? - Will they get married or not?

You have questions? I have source material-backed answers!

The Basics

First, you need to understand that there's a variety of so-called canons. There's an anime canon, a manga canon, a drama cd canon, a musical canon, and then some other random things that you can't really call canon but exist: such as games, radio shows, tv stuff not written by the author, etc.

All of these canons and non-canon stuff are fine, and you can enjoy them as much as you want, but they're NOT the source material. Source material are only the novels and stories that have been written by Takabayashi-sensei (anything in written form and some dramas also written by her according to interviews).

Takabayashi-sensei is the author of the novels (the source material out of which everything else is derived), and her word is "god's word". By the way, she used this term to refer to herself in regards to the maruma series, I'm not fangirling, but using terminology she herself used.

Please understand that most of the material that isn't 'source material' has been altered in many ways to appeal to a 'larger audience' (manga and drama cds), or to make it palatable to the more homophobic society of the 2000s (in the case of the anime). When the anime began social media didn't exist. And when the anime ended (in 2009), social media was in its infancy. That's how long ago these media were adapted from source material.

The Fandom

The fandom has influenced the source material itself at times (such as Conrad fans throwing a hissy fit when he died in novel 5 to the point that Takabayashi-sensei had to resurrect him and change who the key was and many other plot points since then). Certain shippers still force sensei's hand to write fanservice here and there, and despite that, one thing has been clear from the beginning:

Takabayashi-sensei's 'main couple' is the one she got engaged back in novel 1: Yuuri and Wolf, the royal couple.

The Bias

Before we get into the thick of this, let's take a moment to understand bias. I'm sure that if you're reading this far into this you really like yuuram and don't have a problem with homosexuality, boys love, etc. (I use yuuram to mean the royal couple: Yuuri and Wolf, nothing to do with 'who's on top' or anything like that, just a name for the ship with these two characters).

Despite that, anyone reading this has been born and raised in a highly hetero-normative society where if a girl so much looks at a boy she must be into him, and vice-versa.

Who can forget the "He was a boy, She was a girl, Can I make it any more obvious" lyrics of the 2000s? Same applies to 'ships' all across the board.

If any, and I mean any 'boy-girl' relationship was 10% of what the yuuram relationship is, there wouldn't be a single doubt that those two are in love, dating, married, and living happily ever after.

But when it comes to Yuuri and Wolf it feels like pulling teeth to get people to accept that they’re in a relationship. I blame mostly the anime for including weird non-canon ideas into fans minds, as well as heteronormative societies.

Please don’t be this person:

Finally, please take a moment to read THIS as an introduction to my next section.

The Royal Couple

Begin by forgetting everything you consumed from other canons (TV, manga, fanfics) if you truly want to appreciate the Royal Couple in its source material form.

1) Romantic interest

The source material has made Yuuri very interested in Wolfram since the very beginning. Of course, at first, he was only interested in Wolfram's physical appearance. But the more he got to know Wolfram the more he cared about him and the less he cared about his physical appearance.

To get a full picture of how madly he falls for Wolf, you need to read the novels, but here are some excerpts to illustrate my point:

How it started:

Source: Novel 1-Chapter 1

"Even if our bodies are evenly matched, when I just glanced up, I've already been defeated. How can he be this beautiful! (どうよ、この美しさ！) At the same time, his head is emitting an aura. Although it's likely that it seemed that way because of his dazzling blond hair. His looks and voice are like an older Vienna chorus boy. His white skin seems transparent, and his irises are an emerald green that make me think of the bottom of a lake, and furthermore he doesn't have a split chin. He's an angel, definitely an angry angel. However, because he's in this place, he's probably a beautiful demon."

-> Yuuri writes a fucking sonnet in his head about Wolf's beauty when they meet.

Source: Novel 1-Chapter 10

From the far side of the corridor, the blond with wavy hair comes running. The intense navy blue uniform suits him; the mazoku Prince Wolfram. I muttered in a sigh 'Although he's a man, he's this beautiful, Günter'.

-> Yuuri complains to Gunter that Wolf is too beautiful.

How it's going:

Source: Novel 17, Chapter 7

"Those words hurt me deeply inside my heart, a pain as though I was burnt in an instant. Because I had an experience like that, in which I nearly lost the most important person to me, just because he was wearing someone else’s clothes."

-> Yuuri calling Wolfram his most important person, code in the maruma series for person you're in love with.

Source: Do you want an exorcism? 2 (post novel 17)

"And because of that rich VARIETY in the configuration, mazoku is more an ethnicity than a race.

You have from kotsuhizoku, kotsuchizoku, and bone fish who are living creatures, even though they are just bones, to the seasonal migrating tribe of half-humanoid, half-fish maidmer princesses. As for the humanoid ones, there are regular looking ones like me or Conrad, but there are also some who are super beautiful like Günter or Wolfram............. as for the last one, this is just a little bit of my own personal bias, but it makes no difference if he's beautiful or not."

-> Yuuri saying that the beauty he went head over heals in novel 1 for, doesn't matter to him anymore because of his 'personal bias'

Source: Misepan 2: (post novel 17, arguably the last story written near the release of the novels)

"If I was in trouble, and I was missing something important. And you had one that was exactly the same ...."

"I'd lend it to you, of course"

I thought about this, literally with my hands on his chest. In fact, with my hand, that was pressed against his chest, I could feel that the speed of my partner's and my heartbeat was the same. Anyone would get blood rushing to their brains when they're seriously thinking about something. When I could calm down a little, I let out a small sigh.

"Or rather, when it comes to things that I can give you, I would give you anything, Wolf."

-> Yuuri tells Wolfram he would give him anything in the world.

2) Sexual interest:

-There are several times when the source material implies that Yuuri and Wolf don't just sleep at night.

Again, please remember that in the novels Greta does not sleep with Yuuri and Wolfram. This was a TV addition to appease homophobic minds. In fact, in the novels, Yuuri forbade Greta from sleeping with them because she's 'too old'. Also source material Greta is rarely in Shin Makoku as she's studying abroad half the time.

Source: Novel 2- Chapter10

"If I leave it up to you, it will never get settled."

"So, what kind of settlement do you want...?" My voice trails off as he sways his hips closer.

The former mazoku prince's face brightens and he pulls me down by the arm.

"Wah!"

"So you finally feel like settling things!?"

"I don't ~"

I'm scared to think about what sort of settlement this is. I'm not going to lose my life or anything, but I do feel like there's something else I'm going to lose. I desperately extract myself, fly into the bathroom and lock the door.

"Yuuri!"

"Wait wait wait! I gotta take a bath first, okay!? You don't wanna do it with a sweaty guy, right!?"

Do it...? I blanch at my own words.

-> Yuuri's subconscious is clearly working against him.XD It looks like Yuuri doesn't want to lose the v-card yet (he barely knows Wolf at this point), but he still says to Wolf he should take a bath before they do it. Gambare, Yu-chan

Source: Novel 4 - Chapter 1

-> Yuuri and Wolfram have been sleeping together for 3 months at the beginning of novel 4! Please! If this was a guy and girl you wouldn't be wondering what they're doing! He has a lock on the door! He can keep Wolf out , order him out, but he never does. Don’t be the gray haired lady!

Source: Never Ending Poison Lady 1

- "As a measure against Wolfram, who somehow even on our trips sleeps in the same bed as I do, I made a wall with three pillows which also had cute egg shaped buttons. I tucked my shirt into my pants, so that my stomach wouldn't get cold. After all, in the mornings when I woke up, both my clothes and my sleeping posture were always preposterous."

-> Yuuri says he puts some pillows to avoid getting into the weird sleeping postures and getting his clothes messed up and shirt untucked, but he never thinks of 'not sleeping with Wolf'~

Source: Never Ending Poison Lady 1 (same book as last)

- "While watching Wolfram's cheeks get red in excitement, a surprised Josak swallowed the question" You even sleep together when you're out on a trip?".

-> Even Jozak (the spy who's supposed to know everything) seems surprised that they're "sleeping together all the time". They're clearly hiding it from people.

Source: Maru maru maruMA- (book with series info and interviews)

Takabayashi-sensei replied to a question about Yuuri and Wolfram and what would happen once they get married... and she said it clearly: They'll have sex.

("Please answer my maruma question", maru maru maruMA)

Source: SS: Murakenzu 2018-11-13 (Paper 1 accompanying cd72) "Yeah, my father was talking about it, and she's still being called 'Gokumi', huh? At any rate, even if he was smiling way too much, his footsteps started to sound louder and faster as he got farther away. In that moment we thought: Eh? Is it that bad? Maybe they saw something while we were sleeping, or rather, maybe they took peeping photographs and want to do something bad with them."

"Rather than while you were sleeping, before going to sleep?"

"You mean like, when I do practice baseball swings naked or something?"

"Yeah, naked practice."

"Or maybe like, a picture of Wolf's butt when he's wearing his sexy negligee or something?"

"Ah! If a picture of it peeking out is released it would be bad, huh?"

"Then, I suddenly realized that "secret" might just be a hook. In other words, those trick titles that often appear in sports newspapers."

"Yes, yes."

-> Yuuri talks about Wolfram's butt showing as a common place and about himself being completely naked doing 'baseball practice' in the room with Wolf, whatever that may mean.

3) Illustrations

The 4 wedding pictures. Yuuri and Wolfram have been illustrated as married four times by the series' illustrator:

1 | 2 | 3 | 4

And I like to add this fifth one (used in There's Valentine's Day in Shin Makoku!? DVD special), since in the black and white version, there's a comment by Takabayashi-sensei that says: "With this we've finally won against the anime team! ", meaning they beat them to the wedding.

4) Terminology

Yuuri and Wolf are referred to in tweets by Takabayashi-sensei, GEG-san and Temari-sensei as the Royal Couple (ロイカプ). The author, editor and illustrator all know already what they are and that's why they call them that.

More information:

Please, please read the source material. But if you won't, at least read some of the analyses I've made to find out more about yuuram. Yuuram is here, it’s canon, and their ship has sailed a long time ago, in novel 1. They were always meant to end up together and they have. (”The dream ending” was how the author wanted yuuram to end, happily married). This isn't clickbait, or fanwork. The author likes the Royal couple and will see that they end up together no matter what.

Additional information:

Yuuram in novel: 1 |2 |3 |4 |5 |6 |7 |8 |9 |10 |11 |12 |13 |14 |15 |16 |17

* Novel Analysis: Crossheart and Love Letter

* Novel Analysis: Misepan2

* Novel Analysis: Do you want an exorcism?

* Bias in KKM: English version of KKM

* Novel Analysis: Yuuri confessing to Wolf (w/quotes)

* Novel Analysis: Physical and mental development in mazoku

* Novel Analysis: Yuuri and Wolfram’s daily routine (with quotes)

* Novel facts: No mpreg in Shin Makoku (I get asked a lot)

#kyou kara maou #kkm #maruma #yuuram #guide

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littlewalken · 4 years

Text

TZN Exclusive Interview: Andy Robinson

On Garak, "Star Trek", "Dirty Harry" & Sci-Fi Idealism

TrekZone Network sat down with Andrew Robinson, who played the Cardassian Garak in "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine", in Hamburg prior to the "Evening with Andrew Robinson", organized by FKM Events. We talked about Garak's past and future, Robinson's current projects and the idealism of science fiction fans.

TrekZone Network: Is this the first time you are in Hamburg?

Andrew Robinson: No, I was here 12 years ago for a convention with another organizer. So this is my first time back in 12 years, I believe.

Andy Robinson at the FKM Evening in Hamburg

TZN: Long time.

Robinson: It has been a long time. And as they say, a lot of water under the bridge...

TZN: You have been to Germany in the meantime?

Robinson: Yeah, I've been here several times. For one reason or another and in several different places. I have come here for a whole bunch of reasons. Even just as a tourist. But I have never made a film here or anything.

TZN: Your first stint as Garak was in the third episode of "Deep Space Nine". When you first got that role, did you anticipate or did you know that it was going to be a recurring role?

Robinson: No, not at all. Originally, the role of Odo, that Rene Auberjonois played, came down to three of us. Myself, another actor and obviously Rene. Then Rene got the role. Then they asked me to come in a few weeks later to read for this other role, which I thought was just going to be one episode. But it turned out that they were looking for a way to get the character of Doctor Bashir more involved with the show and so they, they were testing a storyline for Doctor Bashir and obviously the storyline was: he meets this older Cardassian, presumably tailor. Is he a spy? Who is he? This very mysterious person, the last Cardassian left on the station.

They wanted to see if there was any chemistry between Siddig and myself as actors. And of course we hit it off immediately. We had a great time with each other. And so it was based on that when they saw that episode, I think it was "Past Prologue", and they saw that we were working well together then they decided to add more episodes of Garak. Which I am eternally grateful for.

TZN: Do you regret that you were not cast as Odo?

Robinson: No, no, no, no. Not at all. As an actor, and an actor of a certain age, after a while you become very philosophical about these things. And genuinely so. Whoever gets the role, that was their role, you cannot feel remorse or try to second-guess or be bitter. And it always is the right actor as far as I am concerned and certainly with Rene it was the right actor. He was wonderful as Odo.

TZN: The part as Garak turned out to be rather substantial as well, of course.

Robinson: O, Garak was one of the best characters, I mean this, he was one of the most enjoyable, fully satisfying characters I have ever played in my life. And the fact that it is the only time in my life, too, as an actor, that I was able to develop a character over a seven-year period, and not be overused. By that I mean often if you are a regular on a series, they run out of things for a character to say and to do, and so the character just ends up repeating himself/herself, and the actions and the plotlines and after a while it becomes what they call the law of diminishing returns. The character becomes reduced. With Garak, because I was not a regular character, I appeared occasionally, I think I was in 39 episodes, and when I appeared, it was for a reason. Almost always it was for a reason, There are a few episodes when I wondered what I was doing there... But that always happens and at least they paid me, so that was fine.

TZN: Is there anything you would have liked to do as Garak on screen? Or any aspect of his character, his personality, that you would have liked to develop?

Robinson as Cardassian Elim Garak

Robinson: They did start this love story. But then they could not find the right actress. And so they had this one actress playing Ziyal and they did not like her, so they had another actress playing Ziyal who looked like my granddaughter, so that made me feel a little perverse. Then they just decided to forget about it. But it would have been wonderful to have had a bittersweet love story, someone who breaks Garak's heart, who tries to unlock the mystery romantically and cannot do it.

It is one of the reasons I wrote the book, to explore that part of Garak, Garak's heart. Because as an actor, you fall in love, well you do not always fall in love with your characters but the ones that you do fall in love with, it is a very deep relationship that you have with the character, and the character does take on a life on its own. Because as an actor, that is what you try to do. You try to transform yourself into this character's life. Obviously, I am not Garak, I am not Hamlet, but you find those places within yourself that can make that transformation.

I was not a "Star Trek" fan when they hired me. I had no idea what the "Star Trek" universe was, who Cardassians were, who Klingons, Romulans, I had no idea about any of that.

TZN: You had never seen anything, never heard about it?

Robinson: I had heard about it but never saw a thing. And a Cardassian? I had no idea what that was.

TZN: Then the makeup was applied...

Robinson: Yeah, right. But they did show me the episode, in "Next Generation", I think David Warner was the first Cardassian or was Marc Alaimo the first?

TZN: Marc Alaimo.

Robinson: Yeah, but it was that two-parter where David Warner's Cardassian character is torturing Picard and I thought, well, that is a really interesting-looking guy. That was the first episodes that peaked my interest. I thought, they deal with substantial things. And the acting was wonderful. Of course, David Warner has always been one of my favorite actors.

So I started writing a diary. As if Garak had a diary and I would write things, and I would make up things about him. And it is what you do, it is what an actor does sometimes for any character. You try to create a story, a life for this character. And when the series was over, I realized there were still things I would have loved to say about Garak and that is why I wrote the book "A Stitch in Time".

TZN: Did you start with the diary when you recognized that Garak would not be a one- or two-episode thing but a recurring role?

Robinson: Yeah, exactly, I think I started in the second year. I also started it when I started being invited to conventions and I realized, after two or three conventions, there were four or five questions people who would always ask me. How long does it take, your makeup... But I thought, would it not be interesting if I if at the conventions did something different. And so what I would do is that I would get up and I would read excerpts from these diaries. It became enormously popular, and that in a sense spawned a lot of things, then as actors we all started saying, well, maybe there is something that we can do rather than just get up and talk about our makeup and so forth. And that unleashed a whole bunch of stuff. Even Siddig and I wrote a play together that we did at several conventions and it was really a rather challenging play, dealing with string theory...

TZN: What was it about? I read just before this interview that you had this play...

Andy Robinson in Hamburg in June 2008 (Photo credit: Klaus Wittmack)

Robinson: Well, basically Garak and Bashir meet up in this place and it is like, nobody knows, but it looks like a convention with "Star Trek" fans there. And so they had to conduct this very tricky business in front of these people sitting at tables and sitting in chairs watching them. It was very, very, very postmodern. (laughs)

And there was a time when we were working on the play in front of an audience, too. Towards the end, when we finally got it written and got it right, that was when it was at its best but while we were experimenting with it, I think a lot of people fell asleep. (laughs)

Getting back to those diaries, [Michael Scott] co-wrote a book with Armin Shimerman ["The Merchant Prince"] and he said to me, "You should turn this into a book!" and that was when I did. And it was actually the first "Star Trek" book that was written without what they call a ghostwriter.

TZN: Are you thinking of writing another novel about Garak?

Robinson: No. I actually have said everything I could possibly say about Garak. I really have. Plus, if I did, I would then because of the corporate nature of Pocket Books, the Simon and Schuster division that does the "Star Trek" books, I would then have to follow all these other books that have been written about Garak and that does not interest me at all. Because the story I came up with was actually, oddly enough close my story, especially when Garak was a young man.

TZN: You did write another short story though, right? Set after the book.

Robinson: Right.

TZN: That was the last thing we have heard from Garak. In that story, he is not in a very positive state of mind and not in a good place.

Robinson: No.

TZN: So if we could jump forward in time, to a time and place after that, where would we find Garak?

Robinson: Dead. Honestly, because when I wrote that novella, first I was interested in putting - because I live part of the year in Paris -

I was interested in having Garak in Paris and see what that was like. Paris is like a museum now, and I thought that they would have really preserved it in 400 years and it would have become the museum of the world. But when I got Garak to Paris, it became very depressing. That is why I think he was not in a great state. I realized that if I had have written much more about Garak, he probably would have had to die. I do not want to go into why because it is all political and you are not here about politics. (laughs)

TZN: When did the producers tell you about who Garak's parents were?

Robinson: The big reveal was of course with Enabran Tain, who was the head of the Obsidian Order. I know that the mother appeared at one point when they were on Cardassia in that last series of episodes that I was in and that they ended up at Garak's mother's house, hiding. But the story of Garak and his parents really is what I myself put together, in terms of the relationships.

TZN: Did you have a hunch though that the storyline could develop into the direction of Enabran Tain being revealed as Garak's father?

Robinson: O, no! It was a big surprise to me. It was great!

TZN: Just like for the viewers.

Robinson: O, yeah, absolutely! But that is how I felt every time I would get a new script from the writers because the writers loved writing for Garak, that was the pleasure. It was evident that they liked writing for Garak because of the language, the dialogue that they would give him which was so delicious and so much fun and very ironic. One of the things you certainly know is that in America irony is not at the top of our list. As a people we do not really appreciate ironic humor. I think that one of the things that made Garak popular is the fact that he did have a sense of irony. That to everything he said there was a twist and there was always a subtext. And indeed probably he was lying but enjoying it and enjoying the fact that he was lying and seeing how far he could get away with it and who was gullible and who was smart.

Andy Robinson in Hamburg in June 2008 (Photo credit: Klaus Wittmack)

TZN: There was this one episode with the implant, "The Wire". That embodies everything you just said.

Robinson: Yeah, and that is by far my favorite episode.

TZN: We asked our readers to hand in some questions for you beforehand. One of them is: how long did it take to apply the makeup?

Robinson: At the beginning, it took about four hours, I would say. And then they got it down to about two hours. Towards the end they got more dexterous, thank God, because sitting in the chair for four hours meant that I would have to come in long before dawn and it was just excruciating, it was horrible. Even two hours was bad enough. It is the only thing about Garak that I do not miss at all.

TZN: Did the makeup inhibit you in the way you could express yourself?

Robinson: Well, that is the great, mysterious thing about working with a mask like that. For one thing the technology is very good, there were I think seven prosthetic pieces and they were all very flexible, very pliable and so you put it on and you think, my God, it is like this corpus, you're encased in it. But then you were fine, you could move. You were not, you were not limited the way Rene was limited with Odo because he could not eat, he lost a lot of weight. That is something I should have done!

But he had to take his lunch through a straw and so he could not move much at all because it was a mess. If he marled just a little bit, then he would have to sit in a chair and have to go through a whole process to get it back to that smoothness. That obviously was not my problem. My problem was the claustrophobia that I have, which I experienced actually last night. I went to a bar in Paris with some friends to watch the French lose to the Dutch. (laughter) Really lose. And deservedly so, I mean it. The French should get rid of that coach of theirs because he is awful.

I was at the bar and everybody was crowding in around me, I had to leave at the interval, go home and watch it on my own television. That was the thing about the Garak makeup. That was one thing but then this heavy wig that they put on top of me and then, because they wanted Cardassians to look big, they made the costumes out of the material that you make furniture pads, furniture textiles, and so all the costumes were very heavy and once you zipped them up it was like you were in a sauna, literally.

Actually that is where I lost a little weight, a lot of water weight anyway. When you get under the lights, underneath the makeup and the wig and the costume, there were rivers of sweat, I was soaked underneath. Not very glamorous (laughter) and I certainly did not smell like a flower.

TZN: I have got another reader question here, that touches a different subject. Did you know that there is speculation about Garak's sexuality?

Robinson: Oh, yeah. I started it.

TZN: Really? Then this might be interesting to this reader. He calls himself your gay fan Dominion and he asks a lot of questions like: Why haven't we seen a gay character in "Star Trek"? Have gays become extinct in the 24th century? Do you think there will ever be a gay character in "Star Trek"? Do gays not belong in "Star Trek's" future?

Robinson: O, yeah. There will be gay characters. Certainly now there will be, for one thing, America is still very puritan, we are very squeamish when it comes to sexuality. I remember when I very first played Garak, I played him gay! I thought this would be great! He sees this young man, this young, very attractive doctor on the station, he is lonely, he is the only Cardassian there, this doctor is curious about him, and if you remember, this was a great moment because Sid totally went with it! When he comes up and he puts his hand on his shoulder, Sid did this great thing, it was this sort of an electrical charge that went through him and so I played him totally gay in that episode.

Garak's First Scene

Of course the producers did not actually tell me not to play him gay but then they started writing him a little more macho and more like a Cardassian. But I said, "Listen, one of the great things about Garak is that he is not Gul Dukat, he is not one of those macho, militaristic guys, he is your finesse Cardassian." So we struck a compromise but I was always very clear. I did not get into it in the book. Quite frankly, I was going to go in that direction. I had written a whole thing about Garak's sexuality because I felt that Garak was sort of - talk about bisexual, I think that he was multisexual, essentially that anything that moves is fair game for Garak. He has a voracious sexual appetite.

But as I say, especially on American television you have the odd gay character now but it is all going to be just cosmetic. In terms of commercial television ever getting into real sexuality, that is not going to happen. "Star Trek" is very conservative, there is a conservatism about "Star Trek" that I think "Deep Space Nine" in a sense went against. It defied that conservatism. "Deep Space Nine" was not as black and white as the other "Star Trek" shows. It was different. It was not people in a rocket ship doing one-night stands on a planet to planet to planet, coming in and battling the evil aliens or some kind of monster or whatever. It was a community unto itself on the edge and this is what I loved about the show, every one of the characters on "Deep Space Nine" had a moral dimension about them. Each one of them was in touch with their dark side.

That episode "In the Pale Moonlight", when Garak introduces Captain Sisko to the concept of realpolitik, that okay, if you want to get rid of the Romulan threat, what you do is, you kill them. And you kill them in a not very nice way. So you just eliminate your enemy. Of course that is not fair play, that is not the American way. I was surprised, I loved that episode because it was very mature in that sense. It said you have to grow up, this is the world you live in now. And of course the world we live in now is very morally ambiguous to say the least.

I rambled, I am sorry. We went away from sexuality but I think there has to be more gay characters. I do not know what this movie is going to be like but this movie I believe is about Starfleet academy?

A gay Sulu? According to Robinson an interesting idea

TZN:It is a prequel. It is not entirely set on Starfleet academy but shows the young crew in their early years getting together.

Robinson: Right. For instance, I wonder, George Takei, who has come out, who is an openly gay man, and actually now I think he and his partner are going to get married since the California Supreme Court has now finally legalized gay marriage. But I wonder where they are going to go with his character in this prequel. It would be very interesting.

TZN: You did some work behind the camera as well. You directed I believe an episode of DS9. How was that for you, the experience to suddenly tell your colleagues what to do?

Robinson: Yes, right. It is funny, it was very different getting on the other side of the camera and not just working with the other actors, I mean they were fine. But it was the first episode I really had a lot of trouble with because it was my first episode ever directing something. And of course when you are directing "Star Trek" you have the added dimension, the added complication of the special effects. Although they have great special-effects people and you just get out of the way and let them do their work but still you are always trying to visualize what the picture looks like as a director.

But I must say that directing the "Star Trek" episodes really in a sense changed my life because it was the first time I started directing. From there I went on to a lot more directing, mainly theater because I have always been more of a theater person than a film person. And that really gave me the courage to continue in that direction as a director which I have and which has actually led to my current position. I am a fulltime teacher now. I run an acting program at the University of Southern California. And that all came out of directing.

TZN: You have been an actor, you have been a director, you have written a book, actually is there anything artistic you would still like to do? Singing maybe?

Robinson: No, I do not think so. Actually, it is true, it is interesting you should say that. I would actually love to do a musical. I really would love to do a musical, you are absolutely right. I would love to do one of these great musicals. But I still go back and forth. I am going to do a play this summer in San Francisco as an actor. I will continue to direct. I do not know how much longer I will run this program because I created this actor-training program and that was exciting.

I am going to be actually talking about that today. I work with young actors in terms of how does one train to be an actor, what is it that one does? I am being able to put some of my own ideas and thoughts about what actor training is into a coherent program that goes over three years, that trains professional actors. That has been very exciting. That is part of who I am but I think the territory of being an actor is that you do reinvent yourself from time to time. You have to reinvent yourself from time to time. Not to change, you really have to transform because that is the business.

TZN: In your career, you played many roles, and you guest starred in "Bonanza".

Robinson: No, you could not possibly remember! That is incredible. No, o my God, how could you... That is amazing. Yeah, that was the very last season of "Bonanza", too. And I think it was my first work in television.

TZN: How was it to play with such very famous actors like Lorne Greene?

Robinson: Well, see, it was very nice. They are household names but I had just come off from doing my first film with Clint Eastwood. So playing with Clint Eastwood was like playing with God. And then everyone else, they are wonderful actors, but still, my first film experience was the "Dirty Harry" film and that was extraordinary. I must say I enjoyed doing "Bonanza" because it was a show that had gone on forever. I helped kill it because that was the last season... Having the experience of doing "Dirty Harry" which was a feature film, that interested me a lot more than doing television.

Andy Robinson in "Dirty Harry"

TZN: You did very many TV series. The list of your guest appearances just goes on and on and on.

Robinson: Yeah, I did and most of the time I was the villain. That was courtesy of "Dirty Harry". After I did "Dirty Harry" nobody could see me as playing anything but the villain.

TZN: Is there any of these series that you would have liked to be on as one of the lead actors or main cast?

Robinson: In America, there is a series that just ended. I do not know if it is here, I do not know if it has come here. They did five years of it. HBO has these. I do not know if you know Home Box Office? It is a cable network in America. They had these series, "The Sopranos" was their flagship, their famous series. But they had another series called "The Wire". Have you ever heard of "The Wire"?

TZN: The title sounds familiar but that is all.

Robinson: It is interesting because you had me talking about that episode of "Deep Space Nine" that is called "The Wire", that was my favorite episode. Well, this series, "The Wire", is probably the best television series I have ever seen in my life. It was a brilliant series that took the city of Baltimore and it investigated the city of Baltimore in a dramatic series format on every level from drug dealers to police to schools to unions and it was an amazing series. I do not know how it got done because in America we are not big on socially-relevant thematic. We want our entertainment to be pure and uncluttered with things we have to think about. But this was a brilliant series and I, every time I watched the series, thought, o my God, I would love to be on that series! That was one of the few things I ever watched where I felt that way. I hope it comes here, I am sure it will come here. It has to. If it does, you must watch it because it is extraordinary.

TZN: I am afraid we have to wrap up already. One last question: Is there any question that you would really particularly badly like to answer but have never been asked?

Robinson: Wow. I have to say I think I have been asked every question that I can possibly imagine. Short of questions that I would prefer not to get into. No, I do not think that there is. I do not think that there is at all. I find that "Star Trek" fans for the most part, especially in Europe, are relatively sophisticated. I think that there is an idealism about following a series like "Star Trek", especially in this world.

Can we imagine ourselves projected into 24th or 25th century or wherever and still functioning. Obviously, it is weird. As you said earlier, here we are, four- five hundred years later and where have all the gay people gone? Where have all the people of color gone in a sense. That has always been something. What has indeed happened to poverty and what has happened to racism and fundamentalism and terrorism and all the things that bedevil us. I really do hope that science fiction continues to evolve and the way certain writers have challenged themselves to think about what happens to all of these social issues in the future and how we project solutions for them or perhaps not solutions but perhaps just accommodations, how do we learn to live with each other because in the end I think that that is what the "Star Trek" series perhaps offers its best insights about. Then I think that it is also great dramatic material which is the great question how do we learn how to live with each other without violence and without predatory behavior.

TZN: That ends this interview on a very thoughtful note, I think. Thank you very much.

Robinson: It was a pleasure, thank you, it has been great.

#garak #star trek deep space 9 #andrew j robinson

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jerrylevitch · 3 years

Text

Jane McCormick on her experiences with Jerry Lewis

Here’s her excerpts on Jerry Lewis from both books she authored, but first background info on her:

“I was beaten, raped, my leg has been broke, my neck has been broke, I’ve been shot at twice and left in the desert,” McCormick said in a recent interview. “I was like a freelancer in the casinos. I was introduced by the owners and pit bosses of the casinos. After being in Las Vegas for three months, everyone knew me.”

Being a pretty blonde with an outgoing personality and quick wit put her in the top 2% of prostitutes in Vegas, the ones who didn’t ever have to walk the streets.

She had champagne blonde hair, a knock-out figure, and a vivacious smile. But the glamour was all for show. But life as one of Las Vegas; top call girls was lonely, sad and marked by abuse. “The men always went home to their wives, to their homes, their families–and you are left alone.”.

She was 29 when she left the life and has had a lot of ups and downs since. She admitted it was a hard life to walk away from because of the money. For someone like her who never graduated high school, being a prostitute was a way to survive and support her 2 little girls.

She ALWAYS talks about Jerry in articles and interviews that she does, with nothing but good things to say about him.

And she points out some of his quirky beliefs on “cheating”…Apparently, Jerry believed that if he pulled out before he climaxed, no matter what type of relations he had with her~ he felt he wasn’t cheating. That was during his trying to be a better man for Patti phase that happened during the 60′s. Definitely he didn’t always do this while cheating.

Anyway here’s the chapter:

“Back at my apartment, I lay on my bed and cried. Every day I asked God to help me get out of this life. But then I stopped crying, took a shower, swallowed some pills, and went back to the casinos. My first stop was the Sands. I stood and talked a few minutes to Bucky Harris, a pit boss there.

‘You know who’s here in the hotel’ Bucky asked.

‘I didn’t notice the billboard who is it’

‘Jerry Lewis’

‘Oh that crazy guy? He’s so funny!’

‘He is a fun guy. He’s in his room now. Why don’t you go surprise him? He starts his show tomorrow night, so he might have time for a pretty little thing like you. Let me call and see if he wants me to send you to the cottage.’

Bucky went to call Jerry’s room from the house phone in the pit, the place where the bosses stand to watch the transactions of money and gambling. He came back saying ‘Go on over there.’

I was a little nervous. I had always thought Jerry Lewis was a great entertainer, never dreaming I would meet him, much less turn a trick with him. He opened the door to his suite.

‘Well, come on in sweetie. What’s your name?’

‘Jane Harvey’

‘That’s a pretty name. It fits that pretty face, Jerry said. ‘Sit down. Let’s have a drink.’

We sat there about two hours, laughing and telling jokes. I said I had always wanted to meet him, that I thought he was one of the greatest comedians in the world.

‘Do you like it when I do this?’ he asked. He stood then, stumbling around the room, being clumsy, feet and legs of jelly, doing his nerd routine. He cracked me up.

Jerry said I reminded him of someone he had noticed among the fans hanging around after his shows in New York. On his way from the building was a staircase where the fans gathered to get his autograph. In the crowd, over a period of time, was a girl with a beautiful face, blonde hair, and green eyes. Jerry said he had never met her or talked with her, but she had always stuck in his mind.

‘And you, my dear, have that same face,’ he said. Then he did a little song and dance routine: ‘That face, that fabulous face…’ he chortled, doing a soft shoe shuffle across the carpet.

By this time, we’d had a few drinks and I’d noticed how soft-spoken he was, how serious he was off stage. He wasn’t at all the zany, crazy guy I’d thought. He told me how much he loved his family, and how hard he worked for the causes he promoted. He said he felt lonely on the road, and he was glad to meet such a sweet girl. Maybe, for a few moments, I could take some of the loneliness away. I was thinking about how handsome he was when he was serious, how sincere. I wished he weren’t attached because I felt attracted to him. I just loved him then, and I do to this day.

Jerry was almost bashful when it came to having sex, but he thoroughly enjoyed it. Still, he had a quirky way of dealing with his loyalty to his wife. He would not climax inside me, no matter what kind of sex we had.

Afterward, we had drinks, and Jerry took me to his car, a Lincoln, I think, and we went for a drive downtown. He showed me the recording equipment he had installed in his car. He said he practiced many of his routines using that tape recorder, and played them back when he was driving. As we head back on Las Vegas Boulevard toward the Sands, we saw the sun coming up over Sunrise Mountain.

It was breathtaking! Jerry pulled his car to the side of the street, and we simply watched. Jerry said he loved the morning hours more than any part of the day. I told him I did too, but that I never got to see much of morning because I was just going to bed. He laughed. I think he liked my sense of humor.

‘I wish I had my airplane here. I love to go flying in the morning. It’s the most beautiful time of the day,’ he said.

At the Sands, Jerry drove into the circle drive in the wrong direction. He was still pretty drunk, and he was being crazy. He headed the Lincoln toward the curb, and drove up onto the sidewalk near the entrance of the casino.

‘I think we’ve landed,’ he screamed in his crazy, nerdy voice. Laughing like crazy, we jumped out of the car, ran into the casino, and out the side door by the pool. We both ran around the pool twice, yelling, before heading back to our room. We fell onto the bed in stitches. We had another drink. The Jerry said we’d better eat something, and sent for some sandwiches. I could tell he was tired, and I said I had to leave, that I had some important things to do.

Jerry invited me to his show that night. I accepted and really enjoyed it. He saw me in the crowd, and looked right down at me. He directed of the lines and antics in his routine straight at me. He was one of the nicest men I’d ever met.

Jerry just liked me. He liked to talk, and he felt comfortable with me. I knew that being a celebrity on the road could be hard and lonely. I think guys like Jerry thought of me as a breath of fresh air, because I saw them as the persons they were, and I talked down to earth with them as if we’d known each other for years."

-Breaking My Silence - Jane McCormick

" I was thinking about how handsome Jerry was when he was serious and sincere. He just liked me and my sense of humor. At the Sands, Jerry drove into the circle drive in the wrong direction. He headed the Lincoln toward the curb and drove up onto the sidewalk near the entrance of the casino. Laughing like crazy, we jumped out of the car, ran into the casino, and out the side door by the pool. We both ran yelling around the pool twice before heading back to the room. We fell onto the bed in stitches. We had another drink. Then Jerry sent for sandwiches. When I told him I'd been molested as a little girl, Jerry told me it was the most horrible thing he'd ever heard. He held me in his arms while I cried and he cried with me. I just loved him then, and I do to this day. Jerry was almost bashful when it came to having sex, but he thoroughly enjoyed it. He didn't go all the way, though, to preserve his loyalty to his wife. As we returned to the Sands on Las Vegas Boulevard, we quietly enjoyed the sunrise over Sunrise Mountain. Jerry Lewis was one of the nicest men I have ever met”. —"Rat Pack Party Girl" (2017) by Jane McCormick”

Here is a link of her talking in person. She mentions Frank Sinatra and Jerry in this part and in part 2 she talks about Dean Martin. It’s here that she says she would’ve loved to marry Jerry out of all the men that she had slept with, and apparently she’s slept with a couple of thousand in her estimation.

She mentions Jerry starting at 10:07 in part 1

Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSbPQ4482gE

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDmVyR7Flqg

#Jerry Lewis #Jane McCormick #Jane Harvey #I decided to post this in an actual post instead of the ask it was in and altogether

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maxwell-grant · 3 years

Note

Thoughts on the Shadow's Doppelganger, Lamont Cranston

The funny thing about Cranston in the original stories is that, yeah, one of the most famous scenes across all Shadow media is the “Lamont Cranston Talks to Himself” chapter in The Shadow Laughs, where we learn that The Shadow is not Lamont Cranston, but has usurped his identity, and now shows up at his bedside looking like him, talking like him, knowing more about his own life than he himself does, and ordering him to leave town, effectively blackmailing him into letting him use his face. It’s a very iconic scene that exemplifies a lot of what makes The Shadow unique as a character, and you can imagine why so many adaptations have gone with the idea of Cranston being either a hapless stooge bullied into submission, or an actual villain, because that whole scene is very much a horror movie scenario.

Thing is, none of them seem to remember how Cranston and The Shadow’s relationship developed past this. I’ll post this excerpt from Atoms of Death:

"Good morning, Cranston," came a quiet tone from the foot of the bed.

"Good morning, yourself," returned Cranston, rubbing his eyes without noticing the visitor.

"You should say: Good morning, myself," chuckled The Shadow, dryly.

Cranston was pulling down the sleeves of his pajama jacket. He sat bolt upright, staring. Then a slow smile showed on his lips; one that was almost a replica of The Shadow's.

"So it's you," remarked Cranston, sleepily. "Well, I knew that last night. It was about time we crossed paths again. Well, old man, you landed me in for plenty this trip."

Cranston shoved bedclothes aside and perched on the edge of the bed. He found cigarettes on the telephone table; The Shadow supplied a flame from a lighter before Cranston could ignite a match. The millionaire noted that The Shadow's lighter bore the initials "L. C."

"You handle every detail, don't you?" questioned Cranston in admiration. “Jove! I remember the first time I met you. In this very room. You dropped cloak and hat and left me looking at my own face as plainly as if I had seen it in a mirror. Just as it is today."

"And I advised you," recalled The Shadow, in Cranston's own tone, "to take a trip abroad, while I used your identity. You were a bit exasperated at first."

"I must admit that I was. I threatened to have you arrested, as an impostor, until you proved that you knew more about my affairs than I did. I really believe that if it had come to a showdown, I would have been proven the impostor and you the genuine Lamont Cranston. Jove!"

"Jove," repeated The Shadow, quietly, "You have acquired that expression recently, Cranston. I shall remember it for future reference. You have a penchant for acquiring anglicisms during your sojourns in British colonies. Jove!"

"Bounder and blighter," laughed Cranston. "Don't forget those. I still use them occasionally."

Or this excerpt from The Hydra, which is an incredible book where the chemistry between the two really shines:

Lamont Cranston woke up and wondered why his head still whirled. It took him about half a minute to learn that the motion came from the fact he was riding in his limousine. Someone must have put him back in the limousine and Stanley was driving him home.

He didn't have to guess who had helped him on his way, for at that moment Cranston heard a low-toned laugh beside him. He turned to see the black-cloaked figure of The Shadow.

"What did you hit me with?" asked Cranston. "All four of your automatics?"

"I'm only carrying a pair tonight," replied The Shadow

Look at these two dorks, just palling around and getting into shenanigans and The Shadow outright joking around Cranston, like they are just two old chums having a laugh at the weirdness of their lives. The “real” Cranston didn’t show up very often in the original stories, especially in the last stories when Lamont Cranston essentially became the real identity of The Shadow, but when he did, part of what makes him stand out as his own character is that he’s funny. Gibson gets a lot of mileage out of Cranston as this guy who is completely nonchalant and chill about all the weird shit that happens to him, even in The Hydra after he kills a man with an elephant gun, he’s still more or less the same, he largely just walks out of it with a newfound realization.

Relieving Cranston of the elephant gun, The Shadow steered his friend into the closet. Hauling the big weapon with him, The Shadow opened the door to meet and dismiss arriving servants who had dashed upstairs when they felt the house quake.

"Whenever I see this gun," began Cranston, coming from the closet, "I'll remember what I did with it -"

“Quite right," interposed The Shadow approvingly. "What you did to Mance will make amends for any elephants you may have killed. Too bad Mance didn't bring along a few more Hydra Heads.”

Slowly, understanding dawned on Cranston. He'd never compared his big-game hunts with The Shadow's quests for men of crime. He felt that The Shadow's cause was justified, but it had seemed outside the field of sport. It still was, but Cranston, now that he had dealt with a murderer who deserved to die, was realizing that his game hunts were more deserving of rebuke.

His encounters with The Shadow gradually changed Cranston from a useless millionaire wasting his resources and talents on idle pursuits, to...still largely a useless millionaire, except his resources and talents are no longer wasted and he’s gradually grown into a useful ally and friend to The Shadow. The Shadow tends to have that effect on people who work by his side and even Cranston, the guy whose main role in his organization is to just stay away and be useless somewhere else, can’t help but change a little into a better person when he appears.

There’s an interesting article written by Bob Sampson called “The Third Shadow” which refers to the Bruce Elliot run of The Shadow Magazine, which is incredibly maligned by fans and not without reason, the stories all largely suck and the Shadow bears little resemblance to his former self, instead mostly feeling like a diet take on the radio show Lamont, more of an average detective. The theory Sampson puts out is that, during this period, it was actually Lamont Cranston who became active as The Shadow while Allard was busy overseas, and I definitely like this theory. It makes sense specially considering The Hydra sets up for Cranston to become more pro-active and serious:

While not the towering master-mind of Allard, he does become the next best thing: A post-war sleuth. He even indulges in wearing the cloak and slouch hat from time to time (to varying degrees of effectiveness), while trying to laugh like Allard (also to varying degrees of effectiveness) as if to fulfill that forbidden fantasy until he finally gets it out of his system. After all, The Shadow pretended to be him, why not the other way around?

As Bob Sampson put it: “It is always Cranston who explains all and takes the credit”.

Probably very cathartic for Lamont, who for the last 18 years was relegated to being a distant supporting player in his own life. Cranston is still in contact with the agents however. He even receives "assignments" from Burbank.

This entire arrangement could only be with The Shadow's tacit approval. Let us remember, Cranston was not merely some insipid fop. He certainly had done his own share of exploring and was indeed a hunter. He could handle a variety of firearms, was familiar with exotic peoples and their customs, knew how to stalk dangerous animals through the jungle and veldt, but he was not, nor ever claimed to be, a master secret-agent and soldier.

I think it is fitting that the writing is completely different for this period as well. Not the enigmatic journalistic style of Allards exploits, but the witty, modern champagne fizz of Cranston's odyssey in a Post-War world. He feels a full range of emotions. In the Gibson stories, The Shadow is at arms length. In the Elliott stories, Cranston is sitting right next to you on a train or an airplane or roadster.

It’s also interesting to consider how Lamont Cranston has basically become the true name of The Shadow in pop culture. Often times it’s the name people use when they specifically want to reference The Shadow, the supposed “Ghost of Gay Street” hauntings in Gibson’s former apartment took the form of Lamont Cranston, and even in the stories, more and more people became aware of it as the years went by (which also helps reinforce the idea that the “real” Cranston eventually took to acting as a fill-in for The Shadow, to draw attention away from the real Shadow’s operations), and Gibson even mentioned a few times that Cranston was The Shadow’s “favorite” identity along with Arnaud. Which is kinda fascinating to think about and does hint at some weird underlying aspects of The Shadow’s psyche, that his favorite identity is one not his own.

And at last, there’s these passages from The Whispering Eyes, a book that does not mention Allard once, and the very last Shadow novel:

From beneath the seat he was taking his black garb. Cloaked and hatted as he stepped from the cab, Cranston merged immediately with the darkness. He had become The Shadow.

Cranston's switch to his other self could well be attributed to a hypnotic mood. The mental lapses produced through hypnosis were the sort that would often cause a subject to revert to habit. Now, as The Shadow, Cranston was still in what might be termed a haphazard mood. He was skirting through darkness, pausing, changing direction, behaving generally as though avoiding something that did not exist.

Lang had flung away his glasses; his eyes now showed the shining, hypnotic force that the lenses normally softened. He recognized the eyes that met his above a leveled gun muzzle.

The Shadow's eyes, yet strangely Cranston's, for this was one time The Shadow did not care to disguise them.

Which begs the question: Did Cranston succeed in fully becoming The Shadow? Or did The Shadow succeed in fully becoming Cranston?

#replies tag #pulp heroes #pulp fiction #the shadow #lamont cranston

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thxngam · 3 years

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Do you have any dream prompts or fics you'd love to see written? For me, I have this idea where someone writes a book abt Sam after he gets elected or someone on the Bartlet staff and there's a excerpt that outlines the flashback from ISTOTG where Sam runs off with Josh, except in like, super academic writing. With citations. Like:

It was reported that Seaborn abruptly left with Lyman in the middle of a critical meeting to close a deal with ExxonMobil, and soon resigned with little fanfare within the next three weeks to act as a speechwriter on the 1998 Bartlet for America campaign (Whitney, personal communication, 2007)

I'm thinking TWW, but any fandom is cool.

what’s wild is i was just talking with @tunennbee about this!

it’s less about AUs, and more like I want more backstories lol.

i wanna know how toby and sam met so bad. like u know that toby initially dismissed him (”my deputy looks 12, leo you can’t possibly expect me to work with him”) and I want to know when they became friends/brothers. toby is literally always like that one meme that’s like “i don’t like you, but the thought of anything bad happening to you distresses me”. how the hell did they get there?

also how did cj and toby meet? like...it’s so weird. they have such history and like none of it is ever explained. i bet cj was at andy and toby’s wedding but how did the three of them meet? like...what?

also, i want to know about the whole team! in season 1 the whole bartlet senior staff has such familial relations with each other, i’m curious as to how they got there too, like with the group dynamics. they each have interesting relationships with each other, but how did that team dynamic build?

also I want to know how leo and bartlet met. leo is like ‘when i was facedown in a parking lot i called you’ so how the hell did they meet, what impression did they get, and why did they keep in contact? like leo was in Vietnam and bartlet (though ik he was in congress and stuff) was in academia and he had three kids so what reason would leo, just a guy in democratic politics and the private sector etc, keep in contact with an economics professor?

also i want backstories for fics lol. I wanna know how sam and josh got together in “In Other Salutations” and I wanna know what happens after Jigsaw, i want to know what happened after “You and Me of the 10,000 Wars” i just...ugh.

i just want more, yknow? just like explanations for all the things. i understand why the show didn’t include all these conversations/flashbacks/scenarios but i still want to see these things.

#the west wing #wow i said a lot #i have so many things #also like #this is such a little thing #but in 'dead irish writers' i want to hear each of their internal monologues #like after donna was like 'mrs bartlet don't completely play the victim'#what were they thinking #bc the looks on their faces WERE SO FUNNY

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ourstarscollided · 4 years

Text

jatp fanworks appreciation - day 3 (wips)

wip wednesday - I didn’t think I wanted to join in on this day for my own stuff considering I’ve never posted anything original for this fandom, but I think this might just be the little boost I need from myself to actually finish the wips that I have sitting around. I am peer pressuring myself and holding myself accountable by posting this - or at least that’s what I’m telling myself. Most of the past 6 mths has just been me screaming to no one in a Google Doc, so here are some things I’ve been ruminating about over the last 6 months (and if my secret agenda is to get other people to write about it so I don’t have to? Then that’s between you and me).

Everything’s under a read more because I like giving context and that usually spirals out of control!?!?

If you would like to see more from any of the below, feel free to shoot me an ask/message and I can definitely share some more! (Or you can just come yell at me about JATP in general.)

Strangers Fake Dating AU // Julie x Luke

I’m a simple person. I see a prompt, I latch onto it, and then I completely miss the entire point of the prompt as my imagination goes wild for no real reason. This really was supposed to be a super short drabble, but it manifested into a 3k+ thing that isn’t even finished.

Julie’s not really sure what she’s supposed to do now. Nothing has ever prepared her for a situation in which she’s supposed to pretend to be a stranger’s girlfriend, especially if that situation involves parents. Does she continue this ruse? Can she come up with a quick enough excuse to tell this Luke character that she actually can’t stay? What if this is just all an elaborate plan to kidnap her? Has she been listening to too many true crime podcasts? Why does Luke smell so good? Does he know how to cook? Why does his shirt not have sleeves? What-

“I can hear you thinking from here.” Her head whips up at the sound of Luke’s voice, which is now at a whisper and kind of frantic. “I just- I just really needed to get my mom off my back, so I kinda need you to pretend to be my girlfriend. Just for the night. I swear I’ll make it up to you somehow.”

Julie studies Luke’s face and it’s nearly impossible to not cave under his gaze, which can only be simply described as ‘puppy dog eyes’. She finds herself smiling back, letting out a huff, “I hope you like lasagna.” And the grin that spreads across the boy’s face is enough for her to know that he’s incredibly relieved that she agreed.

“I’m Luke by the way. Luke Patterson.”

(Okay, he’s kinda cute. And no one this cute is a serial killer. Right?)

She gives a small smile back, “I’m Julie.”

5+1 alive!Juke AU // Julie x Luke

Inspired by paper - LANY

This is one of the first things I ever felt the urge to write down back in September because I love exploring the idea of how two people can appear to be the perfect relationship on the outside, but are actually fighting their own demons. Especially when it comes to celebrities and people who are in the spotlight. It’s basically a 5+1 fic about the moments from other people’s perspectives who happen to orbit around Julie/Luke that all revolve around paper. My outline for this is so long because I can’t manage to narrow it down, and there’s zero cohesiveness but I do have little things jotted down.

“Hey little man,” Luke’s knelt down to match his 5 year-old height, and a hand extends out to him for a high five, “What are you doing here?”

His eyes flicker to the left, towards his own apartment door, where his mom is giving him an encouraging nod. “ I- I just wanted to-” he stutters and finds himself looking at his feet as he shuffles back and forth on the spot. “I- I drew you guys something!”

He shoves the paper out towards the older boy in front of him, but doesn’t look up.

Reincarnation AU // Julie x Luke

I had a random thought in December about how magical it is that Julie and Luke are so tied to one another that their love transcends time and space, which will always lead them back to one another. I remember reading a book a long time ago about how the main character is fated to die at a certain age, and that kind of sparked this little idea. I can’t bring myself to actually plot out every single timeline right now, but I did manage to write a little bit.

It will never be as complex as Rosie’s idea and all the wonderful additions in the link here, and I don’t really plan on it being anything more than a small idea. But I really do still think someone should write some sort of reincarnation AU cause I’d hop on that so fast!!

“Okay- that’s not- Luke. You seriously just ran away?”

“What was I supposed to do Alex? We all know how this ends.”

His friend looks at him, face painted in understanding and he sighs, “Yeah. Yeah, we do.”

Because it’s true, Alex does know, so does Reggie and Bobby. Most importantly, so does Luke. It’s the exact same tragic love story every time.

Call it a curse or fate or destiny. Maybe it’s because Mercury is in retrograde. Whatever. It always ends the same way - with a heartbreaking goodbye, a whisper of the promise that they’ll find each other again, and the possibility of a happy ending. He’s said the same goodbye at least 734 times, but it’s not like he’s counting or anything. Fuck the universe and its mystical ways.

Competitive Alex // Alex x Willie

No real thoughts or reasons for this other than I just think I self-projected my need to play board games with people in real life into a fic. And maybe a little bit of my competitiveness onto Alex and then threw in Willie because I think he would be able to handle it while also finding it endearing. I also have written nothing about the actual competitiveness, it’s just 2k words of Alex crushing on Willie.

“Wait,” his eyes dart between the three boys, “You both know Willie? How come I’ve never met him?”

His roommates look at each other, and there’s a smirk on Luke’s face when he says, “Actually Alex, I think you have. Remember that time you got really drunk after one of our shows?”

Oh no. He really hopes that it’s not the time he’s thinking of, so he tries to sound nonchalant. “You’re going to have to be more specific, Luke.”

“The night we played at that tiny bar at the edge of the campus! We got paid in those tiny colourful shots?” He doesn’t really know where Luke is going with this, so he’s slowly nodding along. “And you were super upset that the hot dog vendor at the end of the street was closed?”

Dear Julie, Love Mom series

I made myself sad with this thought when I first watched the show and was talking to my friend about how I think that Rose would’ve left messages for the Molina family, especially when we found out that Wake Up was actually from her mom. I wrote a bigger explanation for it here.

Anyways, I started with the one for Julie’s wedding and it kind of became an 8k monster with three different POVs?!? As much as I love how I wrote this, I feel too unsure about my writing to share it in full, so you will get carefully selected looks alkfe. (I’m also kind of stuck on some of the more emotional scenes and I may or may not have procrastinated by photoshopping a moodboard for it.)

Excerpt 1 (Julie POV): A look into where I’m going with this whole letters from Rose thing.

The key clicks into place, and with a turn, the latch falls open. She’s not sure what she wants to find in the box, and she’s too scared to think about it really. All she knows is that this was the sign from her mom that she was waiting for all week, and in true Rose fashion, her mom had managed to give it to her, even if at the last second. Her dad turns the box to face Julie, and gestures to her to open up the lid.

Tucked inside is a VHS tape, the words ‘For Julie, on your wedding day’ written in her mom’s cursive on the cover. Some loose glitter and confetti fall back into the box as she reaches in to pick up the tape and turn it over in her hands. There’s a little purple butterfly etched on the back, the same one that’s been drawn on all the other messages that her mom had left her. Her finger automatically finds its way, tracing the shape of the small doodle.

“Do you want me to leave you alone, mija?”

Excerpt 2 (Julie POV): This part has absolutely nothing to do with the main plot of the story, but it self-inserted itself into this fic after @tangledstarlight and I talked about You’re Still the One by Shania Twain being their first dance. This whole scene came to me at 4am one night and might be the most self-indulgent thing I’ve ever written.

They knew that when they had asked Reggie to be in charge of the first dance performance, that they (and Alex) weren’t allowed to veto any of his ideas. Luke had warned Julie that that would be a mistake, but the giddiness that radiated off of Reggie when she had told him he could have free reign was worth it. She just hadn’t thought that he would actually take it to heart and run with it.

Sure, they had chosen You’re Still the One by Shania Twain as their first dance song, and sure it was more or less a country song, but she didn’t really imagine that she’d be staring at her adoptive brother, Carlos and her Dad wearing cowboy hats and boots at her wedding. They had somehow managed to ditch their Flynn-approved suit jackets and were sporting a taupe-coloured suede-textured vest over their dress shirts. If she looked closely, she could see that they had somehow also found some gaudy looking bolo ties with a matching set of ornamental clasps to wear. When she envisioned her wedding, she really didn’t expect that her first (public) dance as a married couple would be a full-on Western themed occasion. The only exception was Alex, who had settled on his cajon in the back, still in his pink suit, eyes rolling when she met his gaze. But even she knew how there was no real annoyance in the blonde’s reaction or else he wouldn’t also be wearing one of the tacky ties around his neck as well.

“I’m gonna seriously kill him.” She hears Luke grumble under his breath, only low enough for her to hear. But she’s still too busy giggling to actually be mad, and she knows that Luke isn’t really going to kill Reggie. At least she doesn’t think so.

Excerpt 3 (Luke POV): Idk man. My mind went “What about Luke?” and I said “You’re right!! What about him?!?”

He doesn’t realize that he’s just been silently staring at the woman in front of him, until a gentle voice breaks him out of his thoughts. “Why are you looking at me like that?” Julie’s peering at him from under her eyelashes, a curious look on her face.

“You just-” he gives a little shake of his head, trying to come up with the right words. He wants to tell her she’s beautiful. Stunning. A wicked beauty. But she’s more than that - she’s almost angelic. “I can’t believe you’re my wife.”

“Luke, we’ve been legally married for like, a whole year.” Her lips are quirked up in a grin, amusement in her voice. “You’ve only just realized that now?”

“That’s different.”

“Yeah? Different how?”

This feels a little strange to post and a little like my inner self seeking validation but let’s not talk about that.

Kskssj anyways present me @ future me: finish one of these because writing has been really cathartic for you and you didn’t think it would bring you so much joy!!!

#gotta tag this so that it doesnt ever show up in any tags on tumblr.#i like that what got me to post about my writing was a fanworks appreciation week. but i will say that a couple weeks ago when i was feeling #extra good about my writing. i made a promise to myself to post smthg for the 6 mth mark of jatp and that kinda got backtracked because of #my requirements to be an adult and my general insecurities about putting out content that is mine for the works to judge sjsjsj #so this is me making it up to myself by sharing some things.#thank you rosie for indulging me in my ramblings. you’ve really given me confidence in my work even tho you’ve never read anything of mine.#just know I APPRECIATE YOU A LOT!!!!#i hope you dont mind that i tagged you!!!#anyways this is gonna get thrown into my queue for wednesday and whenever it posts is whenever it will post.#i also typed this on my phone (i DO NOT RECOMMEND IT) so sorry if the formatting is janky. i didnt wanna give myself time to second guess #myself and end up not posting it. sjjs #jatp fanworks appreciation week #sometimes i write #personal #<- need to come up with tags for myself welp #sunset queue

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davidcampiti · 3 years

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A SCREENPLAY IS NOT A COMIC BOOK SCRIPT

I'm frustrated by writers who hire a comicbook artist then send a screenplay as their script. My first question to them is, "Are you hiring one of our writers to adapt this into a comic book script?" Usually they'll respond, "No that's the script to work from."

But it's not.

Word balloons aren't broken out or numbered, SFX aren't identified, the pacing is wrong, and most panel descriptions are missing, causing the artist and the editor to do twice as much work without a corresponding increase in pay.

Here's a good article from Nick Macari about the differences --

I think you’d be hard pressed to find some work of fiction, some type of writing, that you could NOT turn into a comic. That is to say, you could create a comic from notes on bar napkins, a published novel, heck I bet you could even create a comic using nothing but a movie as the source material.

If you’re making a comic yourself, like literally by yourself, it doesn’t really matter how you do it… only the final product matters. If you have some crazy process that gets you a beautiful finished product, good on ya mate.

But for those writing spec scripts, trying to write for others, or trying to entice others to their project, it pays to create scripts that open doors instead of closing them.

In 2020, there are a million writers writing screenplays and pawning them off as comic scripts.

If you want to be one of those guys… as you were.

But if you actually want to write comics, if you want to be a comic book writer, you should learn how to write an actual comic book script, not how to sell some other script as one.

There are lot of useful technique comics can borrow from screenplays.

For the innocent novice writer, it’s understandable to see some technical execution confusion. But for working and professional writers, knowing what transfers over and what doesn’t separates the riff from the raff.

Before we get into it, let’s put to bed, once and for all, why a straight screenplay script is not a comic script. Here’s why;

Director Production Designer Art Director Costume Designer Cinematographer … Camera Assistant Director of Photography Scenic Artist Set Decorator Storyboard artist … Makeup artist Wardrobe stylist Assistant Director Production Assistant Production Coordinator Production Designer … Script Supervisor Sound Mixer Special Effects Coordinator

oh yeah, and actors.

These are a few of the people involved in a film.

Individual roles dedicated to a specific area of production. In essence, a screenplay can deliver fairly minimal information and it’s someone’s specific job to interpret that information, its context, and otherwise apply their knowledge, experience and skill, to turn that information into some tangible, successful element.

If you think it’s the artist’s job to fill all these roles, you’re crazy… and mean to artists.

Ok, you still here?

Good.

Let’s showcase some specific examples of why a screenplay doesn’t hold up for comics;

THE FRENCH CONNECTION

Drug Dealer I don’t…

Doyle Ever pick your feet in Poughkeepsie?

Drug Dealer What?

Doyle Did you ever pick your feet in Poughkeepsie?

Drug Dealer I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.

Doyle Were you ever in Poughkeepsie?

Drug Dealer No… yeah…

Doyle Did you ever sit on the edge of a bed, take off your socks and stick your fingers between your toes?

Drug Dealer Man, I’m clean.

Doyle You made three sales to your roaches back there. We had to chase you though all this shit and you tell me you’re clean?

Russo Who stuck up the laundromat?

Doyle How about that time you were picking your feet in Pougheepsie?

The drug dealers’ eyes go to Russo in panic, looking for the relief from the pressure of the inquisition.

Russo (in pain) You better give me the guy who got the old Jew or you better give me something or you’re just a memory in this town.

Drug Dealer That’s a lot o’ shit. I didn’t do nothin’.

14 dialogue exchanges, with for all intents and purposes not a single visual description (one minor one toward the end about the dealer’s eyes.). This is likely at least one page of comic with this volume of exchanges and dialogue, and there is literally, nothing cuing the artist as to how this should go down.

THE FRENCH CONNECTION

Mutchie

That’s right, he couldn’t fight legit. One night at the Garden about 1950, ’51—he fought either Jake LaMotta or Gus Lesnevish, I think it was—he took one o’those cream puff punches in the sixth—the laziest left you ever seen—missed him entirely. Down goes Blackjack without even workin’ up a sweat and the whole Garden gets up on its feet and I swear to Christ, everybody starts singin’ “Dance with Me Henry.”

75 words. Way too much for a single panel.

How many ways can you break the dialogue into how many panels?

Is one way to break it up more effective than the others?

Because if it is, and that’s NOT the method you write up, you’re producing a less effective script.

But ultimately, what works in film as a 30 second monologue (doesn’t work in comics), would be far more effective as caption narration over flashback action.

THE EXORCIST

EXTERIOR – IRAQ- NINEVEH- DAY

The old man arrives back at that dig site in a small jeep. As he pulls up two armed guards rush out. When they see who it is the old man gives them a wave and they slowly walk back to there quarters. The old man walks up the rocky mound and sees a huge statue of the demon Pazuzu, which has the head of the small rock he earlier found. He climbs to a higher point to get a closer look. When he reaches the highest point he looks at the statue dead on. He then turns his head as we hear rocks falling and sees a guard standing behind him. He then turns again when he hears two dogs savagely attacking each other. The noise is something of an evil nature. He looks again at the statue and we are then presented with a classic stand off side view of the old man and the statue as the noises rage on. We then fade to the sun slowly setting as the noises lower in volume.

Hey! this has some nice direction, this screenplay stuff is perfect for a comic.

NO.

Let’s break it down;

This passage is 15 beats, give or take. One beat a panel, 3-5 panels per page, we’ve got 3-5 pages of comic in this passage alone.

Hang on we’re not done.

If you fill your page with this type of description (you shouldn’t, but let’s say you did), you could get almost double that amount of beats. So one page of screenplay delivering nearly 6-10 pages of comic content!

Tell me, when was the last time someone delivering a screenplay “comic script,” delivered a 2 page script for a complete issue? Never says I.

BONUS on this example:

Did y’all notice the soundtrack emphasis in this excerpt from the Exorcist script? Of course you can have sound effects in a comic, but no matter how you crack it, comics DO NOT have soundtracks. Relying on film soundtracks in a comic script is a sure fire way to deliver less effective scripts.

BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA

JACK Alright, where’s my truck, Wang? I’m outta here. And my money, too.

WANG Forget about your truck, Jack. You don’t wanna go back there. You’ll have to go through the Wing Kong to get it. It’s insured, right?

JACK Of course it is. But that’s not the point.

WANG The smart man comes back for it later…

JACK The smart man calls the cops!

WANG Cops have better things to do than get killed.

We showed the typical lack of visual description a screenplay gives in the first example. [Screenplays tend to focus on the scene setup, then briefly hit key actions of the scene.] Here we have another example of missing visual description, but I point it out for something more specific–LACK OF EMOTIONAL context.

As I point out in the Writer’s Guide, Emotional content is one of the essential elements of each and every comic panel. So not only do we not have visual cues to support the action in the screenplay, but how are the characters delivering these lines!?

JACK Alright, where’s my truck, Wang? I’m outta here. And my money, too.

How many ways can you say this line?

I can say it pissed. Irritated. Fearful. Sarcastically. Comically. Those are just a few that pop in my head… and I’m no actor.

Leaving emotional context open to interpretation undermines narrative control–in a big way.

A good, effective scene, could die a horrible misinterpreted death.

For the record, you can use parentheticals in a screenplay. This can give emotional context, like the one from Jack’s first line I omitted to make the example more effective

JACK (pissed off)

But where parentheticals do contain emotional context, you use them in a script sparingly. Just like you don’t tell the director how to do his job filling your screenplay with camera direction, you don’t try to tell the actors how to do theirs. (Remember, the answer to why Screenplays aren’t Comic Scripts, there’s a lot of people, hopefully professionals, bringing their expertise to the table.)

CASABLANCA

Ilsa Your secret will be safe with me. Ferrari is waiting for our answer.

At the bar Ferrari talks to a waiter.

Ferrari Not more than fifty francs though.

Ilsa and Laszlo walk up to him.

Laszlo We’ve decided, Signor Ferrari. For the president we’ll go on looking for two exit visas. Thank you very much.

Ferrari Well, good luck. But be careful. ( a flick of his eyes in the direction of the bazaar) You know you’re being shadowed.

Laszlo glances in the direction of the bazaar.

Screenplays live in movement. Unless you’ve got a static insert of a letter or photo or something, everything is in motion and there is constant change (even if subtle) from micro-second, to micro-second.

While comics work to capture movement (and there are some tricks), it is ultimately a static medium, locked into showcasing moments frozen in time.

What I explain in the “works in movies not in comics article” is that the constant movement and motion, supported (primarily) by actors, but by the lighting people, the art direction people, director, etc. all gives depth and purpose to every single second of a film.

With all these people doing their job, a screenplay can give super general stage direction, like what we see here in this Casablanca excerpt.

At the bar Ferrari talks to a waiter.

Ilsa and Laszlo walk up to him.

Laszlo glances in the direction of the bazaar.

These trivial actions carry no narrative. They work in film because of performance and motion, which steps in to create narrative.Without performance and motion, a single frame captured from core stage direction translates to ineffective comic panels.

By the way, all the examples I’m giving here, are from solid movies. The big pink elephant in the room when writers deliver “comic screenplay scripts,” is that they assume they know how to write a good screenplay in the first place. Trust me, novice writers rarely do.

There’s a lot of technique and skill in writing a solid screenplay. And if you think a good screenplay causes problems converting to a comic, wait till you try it from a shitty screenplay.

Still thinkin’ screenplay is synonymous with comic script? Well you’re wrong sunshine, but what do I know?

I’m just a non-famous full-time mercenary writer, writing almost exclusively in comics and games for a decade or so. :p

I’ve spent a few hours writing this article, but there are plenty of other examples I haven’t touched on.

I’ll come back and add some more as I think of them in my down time. Maybe eventually when the list is so long it takes you a couple hours to read this article, y’all get it through your noggins that comics are there own medium which demand the attention and respect of a unique format and writing approach. Something the comic book writers reading this, already know. #justsayin

About the Author — Nick Macari is a full-time freelance story consultant, developmental editor and writer, working primarily in the independent gaming and comic markets. His first published comic appeared on shelves via Diamond in the late 90’s. Today you can find his comic work on comixology, amazon and in select stores around the U.S. Visit NickMacari.com for social media contacts and news on his latest releases.

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