#and then from then on the two dramas went off in radically different directions | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

drabbles-mc · 4 years ago

Text

Protective Detail (3/?)

Nestor Oceteva x Reader

Warnings: language, falling more in love with Nestor than we already were originally (if that’s even possible)

Word Count: 2.7k

A/N: I’m a sucker for characters building relationships. Humans slowly getting to know each other and get more comfortable with each other??? Friendships and feelings developing?? Sign me the fuck up lmao. As always, hope y’all enjoy xoxo

Chapter Index

Protective Detail Taglist: @masterlistforimagines @sillygoose6969 @mydaiilyescape @lovebennycolon @the-radical-venus @gemini0410 @garbinge (If you want to be tagged in this fic or any of my other writing let me know!)

A few days into the new arrangement, you and Nestor had started figuring out a little bit of a routine. There were a lot of quiet moments between the two of you—you realized that he wasn’t much of a talker and you were still trying to figure out how to get him to say more than two sentences at a time about anything. It was like your new mission.

He was adamant about doing dishes. He couldn’t stand letting them sit in the sink overnight, so they were always clean first thing in the morning when you came out into the kitchen. He’d shake his head at you before you could even try to tell him that it wasn’t necessary. You wanted to be motivated enough to clean them before you went to bed, but by the time the end of the day rolled around all you wanted to do was crawl under the covers and pass out, so that was usually what you ended up doing.

“I’ll do dishes but I draw the line at combining our laundry,” he said as he carried his small hamper of dirty clothes to the basement where the washer and dryer were.

You laughed, calling after him, “Oh darn. How am I supposed to snoop through your stuff, then?” you felt your phone vibrating in your pocket and you took it out to see who was calling, smiling to yourself when you saw your father’s contact photo on your phone screen, “You’re calling early.”

“You’re awake early,” you could hear the smile in his voice, “Was just calling to check in and see how things are going.”

“I haven’t succeeded in driving him away yet, unfortunately.”

Nestor’s voice came from downstairs, “I can hear you!”

“Good!” you called back with a laugh before returning your attention to your phone call.

Your father sighed, “So things are going well, I see.”

“It’s really not bad at all, Papi. Nestor is alright. It’s just weird living with someone that you don’t know,” you paced the floor of your kitchen, “You know how long he’s gonna have to stay with me?”

“Until I feel that things have been properly handled.”

“You sure Miguel doesn’t need him back?”

“Even if he did, he would never ask me,” you knew your father well enough to know that there was a light smugness to his voice as he said that, “But you’ve been alright? You’re safe?”

“Yes, I’m safe,” you heard Nestor’s footsteps coming back up the stairs and you turned to face him, a childish smirk on your face, “Nestor is doing a fabulous job protecting me.” You chuckled as he pressed his lips into a thin line and made his way to the guest room without a word.

Your father laughed, knowing that you were giving your protective detail a run for his money, “Don’t be too hard on him, mija.”

You laughed, “No promises. I’ll talk to you soon, okay? Love you.”

“Love you too,” he let out a soft chuckle before hanging up the call.

Morning faded into the afternoon and you hadn’t seen Nestor since he disappeared after he brought laundry downstairs. Some moments you wondered if your father’s concern about him being annoyed enough to quit were valid, but you also figured that Nestor was too proud and stubborn to bail. You walked down the hall and knocked on the open door to what you now considered his room. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, tying his shoes. You smiled slightly as he looked over at you, eyebrows raised.

“You almost ready to go?” you asked, “Ready for another very boring night sitting at the bar watching me like a creep?”

He stood up and walked over to you, and for a moment you were reminded of the size difference between the two of you. he glanced down at you, making you feel very small as your face instantly got hot, “Ready to watch me watch you? Like an even bigger creep?” You chuckled, mostly to try and relieve the tension that was bubbling up inside your body. He brushed past you and went to grab his keys, “My turn to drive.”

You followed his path and opened your mouth to argue, but you knew it was useless. With a sigh you grabbed your purse and followed him out the door to his SUV. He’d driven you a couple places in it, and you had to admit it had way more room than your car when it came to grocery shopping. You still weren’t ready to accept it as your main mode of transportation, though. You could’ve had your own nice car, and your father would’ve preferred it, but you didn’t like feeling so obvious. And, in the case of Nestor’s car, you hated feeling like you were constantly fighting to not touch anything in his pristine vehicle.

“You really don’t need to stay for my whole shift, Nestor,” you said as the two of you walked in the front door, “I’m sure there are more important things you could spend a couple hours doing and then just come pick me up afterwards.”

He shook his head, opening the door for you, “Can’t do it.”

It was a busier shift—Saturday’s always were. You almost felt bad for Nestor, but at least there were enough people to keep him occupied and have him feeling like he was actually serving a purpose by being there with you. He never said anything, but you knew that things had been so quiet lately and it was probably a big change of pace from whatever he was usually doing for the Galindos. Any time you tried to ask or allude to it, though, he went silent.

You finally had a moment to pause and catch your breath for a second when you saw Nestor waving you over. You leaned over the bar so he wouldn’t have to shout whatever it was that he had to say to you, sporting your best Customer Service Smile so the people around you wouldn’t get clued in on anything.

“Guy over in that booth has been eyeing you for the last fifteen minutes.”

You were about to tell him that there were always creeps leering at you while you were working, but when you saw who he was talking about, your facial expression dropped. You saw Nestor’s whole body tense up and he went to stand, but you put your hands over his to stop him. He turned to you, clearly confused and on-edge.

“He’s not a problem. Just a shitty ex-boyfriend. He’s annoying, but not a security concern. You can sit, it’s fine,” you nodded to him to reassure him before plastering a smile back on your face and getting back to your other patrons.

Nestor didn’t like the fact that the man kept staring at you. And despite the fact that you had explicitly told him that he wasn’t an issue, there was still a very strong urge to get up and physically throw him out of the building. For the sake of your job, though, Nestor kept himself seated, keeping an eye on everyone else while paying special attention to the man in the booth.

You don’t know how you missed him coming in, but you almost wished that Nestor hadn’t said anything. Now you couldn’t help but to feel him staring at you and it was a difficult feeling to ignore. It would have been a total abuse of power to ask Nestor to go over and get in his face, and you knew it, but the option was still tempting nonetheless. You were glad that he was at least keeping to himself.

That luck ran out too, though. You were looking across the expanse of the bar to see if anyone needed anything, and sure enough he was standing at the far end, a smug grin on his face because he knew that you were going to have to come over and talk to him. Jade saw the look on your face and was about to intervene but you politely waved her off, knowing that it wasn’t her drama to deal with.

“What can I get you, Marco?” your voice wasn’t nasty, but it wasn’t laden with the typical sweetness you used on other customers.

“Whatever’s good on tap tonight, sweetheart.”

“Don’t call me that,” you didn’t look at him as you grabbed a glass and picked a beer out of the tap lineup.

“That your new boyfriend?” he nodded towards Nestor as you handed him the glass.

“And if he is?” this conversation wasn’t going in a good direction, but you were trapped in it regardless.

“I was just wondering, because he’s spent an awful lot of the evening staring at you.”

“Could say the same about you,” you scoffed.

You went to walk away when he reached over the bar and grabbed your arm. His grip wasn’t tight, and you knew that the intention wasn’t to hurt you, just to get your attention, but you still had the overwhelming urge to bust his nose. You ripped your arm from his grip, taking a deep breath as you suppressed the desire to cause a scene.

You almost had no say in the matter, though, as Nestor materialized, placing his hands down hard on Marco’s shoulders, “Everything alright over here?”

Your eyes grew wide, not sure at all how this was going to play out. You could see the fear on Marco’s face, but you also knew that he was too proud and too stupid to back down from a fight, even if it was one he would definitely lose. He shrugged in an attempt to get Nestor’s hands off of his shoulders, “We’re fine.”

Nestor’s eyes zeroed in on you, practically begging you to give him the okay to do some damage, “All good, Y/N?”

Before you could answer, Marco spoke up again, “I said we’re fine.”

“I wasn’t fucking asking you,” Nestor’s voice was low but you could tell by the grimace on Marco’s face that he was definitely digging his fingers into his shoulders.

You nodded, “We’re good.”

Nestor released his grip and you could see Marco’s entire body relax. His gaze lingered on you for a moment and you nodded again to let him know that you could handle it. He didn’t say anything else as he made his way back down to where he had originally been sitting at the bar. His eyes never left the two of you though—you could feel his stare even though your back was to him.

“I figured you would’ve gone for a more warm and fuzzy type,” he tried to play it confidently but you could tell that he was shaken up.

You scoffed, “I’d leave while you still can. He decides to come back over again I won’t tell him to let you go.”

The color drained from Marco’s face, but he just couldn’t make himself smart enough to walk away, “Didn’t think you liked pushy guys.”

You braced your hands on your side of the bar and leaned forward slightly, “I don’t like guys who are pushy with me. Now, get the fuck out before you see how pushy he can really be.”

The second threat was enough to get through. He dropped money on the surface of the bar and left, leaving a full glass of beer behind. You chuckled to yourself as you brought the glass down and set it in front of Nestor. The two of you locked eyes for a moment but didn’t say anything about what had happened as you went about the rest of your evening.

You were cleaning up after your shift, once again it was just you, Jade, and Nestor. You and Jade were going back and forth about some of the ridiculous things that you had heard that night as you wiped down counters and tabletops. Nestor scrolled on his phone, a smile tugging at the edges of his mouth as he listened to the two of you.

When there was a lull in the conversation, he looked up and at you, “So, who was your friend that was here tonight?”

“Ah, he got to meet Marco,” Jade chuckled, shaking her head knowingly.

“Marco?” he raised his eyebrows.

You huffed, rolling your eyes, “Yea, Marco. With a capital M for mierda,” you let out a humorless laugh, “We dated a couple years back.”

“Still not over you?”

Jade interjected before you could, “Can you blame him?”

You smiled and shook your head, “I haven’t heard from him in a while. He pops up every now and then to see if he still has a shot. He never does. I turn him down, send him away, and the cycle repeats itself.”

“Too bad you didn’t have a Nestor sooner,” Jade was stacking glasses with a smug grin on her face, “Could’ve gotten rid of him a long time ago.”

“Nestor is not a bouncer for ex-boyfriends,” you laughed.

She laughed and shrugged, “It is a bonus though.”

You shook your head as the two of you finished up closing down the bar. While it was hectic sometimes when it was only the two of you, those were some of your favorite nights. You’d come to think of Jade more as an aunt or a second mother rather than your boss, and you liked the time you got to spend with her.

After getting home and letting Nestor check the house, the two of you took turns showering off the day. You were trying to figure out if Nestor just had multiple of the same sets of sweatpants and lounge shirts, or if he just washed the same set over and over again. You grabbed a fresh pint of ice cream out of the freezer and grabbed one for him too without bothering to ask, knowing that if you gave him the option he would always say no.

You set his down on the coffee table in front of him before taking a seat on the opposite end of the couch from him, giving him a little space. He looked back and forth between you and the ice cream with a slightly confused expression.

“A thank you for scaring off Marco,” you said with a smile as you scooped out a spoonful of your own.

“It’s my job.”

You raised an eyebrow, “That is not in your job description. He is not a threat to my father’s way of life, or mine for that matter. Now just eat the damn ice cream before I add doesn’t eat dessert to my Nestor Notes.”

He let himself smile as he picked up the pint of ice cream, “Thank you,” he took a spoonful, “And for future reference, my favorite flavor is mint chip.”

Your eyes grew wide, mostly because he actually offered up a piece of personal information, but also at the fact that that was his favorite flavor, “Really? I don’t think I’ve ever met someone with that as their favorite.”

“Now you have,” he nodded before reaching for the controller to turn the TV on.

You chuckled to yourself as you settled back against the couch, pulling your legs up underneath you. You looked over at Nestor, who was slightly hunched over with his elbows resting on his knees. He had the controller in one hand, scrolling through shows, and his ice cream in the other. For a man who didn’t like music while he was driving in the car, he certainly did seem to see eye-to-eye with you when it came to always having the television on in the house for a light layer of background noise. Most of the time neither of you were paying super close attention to what was on, but it was just nice to break up the silence. In that moment, though, both of you felt extremely present.

“I’m one hundred percent eating this whole thing tonight,” you laughed, “It’s counting as dinner and dessert.”

He chuckled, “Sounds good.”

“We can go grocery shopping tomorrow and get real food,” you smiled as you kept your eyes glued to the container in your hands, “I’ll make sure to get you some mint chip.”

He nodded, smiling despite the fact that he wasn’t looking over at you, “I’d appreciate that.”

#mayans mc #mayansmc #mayans fx #mayans mc imagine #nestor oceteva #nestor oceteva x reader #nestor oceteva x you #nestor oceteva imagine #my writing #nestor oceteva fanfic #drabblesmc #protective detail #multichapter #chapter 3

204 notes · View notes

steven-falls · 4 years ago

Text

The Strengths of serialization: A Disenchantment analysis

Note: this is a script for a video I’m making. There are some generalised statements in this script, that will be accompanied with visuals in the final video to help specify what I am referring to.

So, Netflix just dropped part 3 of disenchantment, and with the new batch of episodes came a slew of worldbuilding, lore, characterization, laughs, adventures, and Elfo abuse. But, instead of giving an overview of everything that happened in the season (or part) I want to focus on one specific aspect of part 3 and compare this to parts 1 and 2 and that is, the serialisation of Disenchantment.

In television shows, there are two main formats a show can take: A serialized format and an episodic format. A serialized format has continuing storylines that span over the course of the entire season. Think of pretty much every drama show. By contrast, an episodic TV show presents each episode as a self contained story. Meaning you could jump in at any point in the series without needing much prior knowledge to understand what’s happening. This is the format that most animated sitcoms, such as Disenchantment’s contemporaries, The Simpsons and Futurama, went for.

Disenchantment was an interesting case as it seemed to be going for a mix of both serialization and self contained episodes throughout its first two parts, which made up season 1. The first few and last few episodes of both parts 1 and 2 had a serialized format, where the cliffhanger ending of one episode would lead directly into the opening of the next. For example part 2’s opening episode ‘The disenchantress’ ends with Bean walking down a staircase to hell, which is picked straight back up on again in the next episode, aptly titled ‘Staircase to hell’. It’s required that an audience member watches these two episodes in order, otherwise they would be confused by the opening of the latter.

But then the middle episodes of parts 1 and 2 were stand alone episodic adventures, that didn’t always directly tie into each other. For instance, the heist plot of ‘the Dreamland job’ has little to nothing to do with Derrik’s character journey in the following episode, ‘Love’s Slimy Embrace’. So not much would be lost on an audience member who watched these two episodes out of order. The main throughline between them is Lucie buying and owning the bar. But that’s a rather minor element of ‘Love's Slimby embrace’, it’s not like you need an explanation of why Lucie owns the bar to understand what’s happening in that episode.

Where Part 3 really differs from the previous two parts, is that it sticks to a more serilized format for most of its run. Pretty much every episode develops on something meaningful established in prior episodes. For instance, In the first episode of part 3 it’s revealed that Pendegast has been murdered, so the third episode ‘Beanie get your gun’ is spent investigating what happened to him. They find out it’s the priestess, and chase her down in the next episode, which naturally leads into the steam land sega covered in episodes 4 and 5, and then the boat trip back to Dreamland in episode 6. Even when an episode doesn’t end in a cliffhanger, the events that occurred in the previous episode will still be playing on the character’s mind in the next, keeping a constant narrative flow throughout part 3.

Now, I do not believe that serialized Television is inherently better than episodic Television. There are shows that owe their success to their episodic format.

But I think in Disenchantment’s case, serialization fits the tone and scope it’s going for.

Disenchantment is basically a mystery show, Part 3 opens with several overarching mysteries that are investigated over the course of the season, and Bean literally plays detective in two episodes.

Part 2 also presented several mysteries in its opening episodes, like Bean’s heritage and the secret treasure the elfs are looking for. But this became a frustration I had with part 2, as it felt like it was presenting the audience with several tantalising mysteries, but then avoided expanding on them, in favour of more non sequitur adventures. Take the episode ‘the lonely heart is a hunter’ for example. That episode has a subplot about Bean investigating some old runes that are hinted to have a connection to her mother. But this basically leads nowhere as Bean gets scared and gives up on investigating them. We don’t find out anything about them for the rest of part 2, halting that story in its tracks. What the episode chooses to develop instead is the relationship between Zogg and a bear woman named Ursula, a character who has only appeared in this single episode to date. I do actually enjoy this plot line, I think it’s funny and gives Zogg some decent character development. But when the episode prioritises a somewhat frivolous love affair over expanding on the mysteries it’s already set up, it can be frustrating to sit through, because I’m just waiting for them to get back to that mystery.

There are still some instances in part 3 where they bring up an unresolved mystery or plot line but don’t follow up on it straight away. Like it should annoy me that they mention Leaveos quest early in the season, only for it to not develop any further until the last episode.

But it doesn’t, because there’s a narrative excuse for the other character’s to abandon Leaveo and his plot line. They have the more pressing issue of Dagmar to deal with in that moment, and after that I’m so swept up in the murder and betrayl stuff that I don’t mind them leaving Leavo’s plot thread for a little longer.

Another result of part 3 taking a more serialised approach is that it makes meaningful changes to the Disenchantments status quo

After part 1 ended with several series altering cliffhangers, that seemed like it was taking the show in a radically different direction, I was disappointed by how in part 2 everything reverted back to normal by the end of episode 3. Sure, there were a few status quo changes, but for the most part, part 2 still followed Bean, Elfo and Lucie’s shenanigans around Dreamland, not that fundamentally different from part 1.

But this isn’t a criticism I can level at part 3. For one thing there are no episodes of Bean just goofing around drinking, she’s always trying to get somewhere, figure something out, or face some threat to the kingdom. The constant rising urgency prevents the show from feeling as if it’s in some stagnant status quo.

The only time I was in fear of Disenchantment resetting to a status quo was at the beginning of episode 3, ‘Beanie get your gun’, when Derrik reinstates power to Zogg, the towns people don’t care about Bean supposedly being a witch, and Zogg’s forgotten about Odvals and the priestess’s coup attempt

The characters even comment on how weird the situation is.

With Bean and Zogg being reinstated it almost seemed like the whole coup subplot had been entirely pointless, especially as the opening of the episode hinted that Pendergast might not actually have been killed.

But the episode’s ending underlines the lasting impact this coup had, by confirming Pendergast’s death and having the priestess become a fugitive from the kingdom, basically writing out two major supporting characters.

On the subject, Pendergast’s death is the first one in Disenchantment that I was genuinely shocked by. Just because of the show’s willingness to kill off a recurring character without going back on it. They have done similar deaths before, like when Jerry was killed. But Jerry was divorced enough from the main cast and the setting of Dreamland that his absence didn’t feel as noticeable. It’s not like his death bared any repercussions on how Dreamland functioned as a kingdom for example. But Pendergast’s death does, you’re reminded of his absence any time you watch a scene with Zogg losing his mind, or see turbish and Mertz without their commander. Even if Pendergast is somehow brought back later, his death was still felt throughout the whole of this season.

Part 3 of Disenchantment managed to capture my intrigue, by taking its story and characters to interesting new places. My hope for part 4 is that everything part 3 built toward gets a decent payoff. By the end of part 3 most of the plotlines have still been left open ended, with even more opening up and others being teased at. In one case it looks like they might be rehashing an older plotline.

My fear for part 4 is that all these storylines are going to trip over each other. That part four has to juggle so many different plotlines that it’s not going to be able to devote enough time to each of them, making their resolutions feel rushed and underdeveloped.

I think its on part 4 to intertwine all these plot threads, so everything comes together to form one satisfying conclusion. Unless they’re planning on continuing the show after part 4, in which case I hope part 4 is a more streamlined and focused version of part 3.

Speaking of satisfying conclusions… I couldn’t think of one for this video! So let’s end off by discussing three times Disenchantment part 3 referenced 3 other Matt Greoning cartoons.

Starting with the most obvious, the ‘Trip to the moon’ rollercoaster seen in the episode ‘Freak out’ is a reference to the second Futurama episode ‘’The series has landed’, where the planet express crew visit a theme park on the moon. In particular the rollercoaster’s moon face bares resemblance to the mascot crater face. Look, it even has part of the rollercoaster going through its eye, just like how craterface always has a beer bottle shoved through their eye. Which itself is a reference to a silent film from 1920 called ‘A Trip to the moon’. Wait actually maybe the rollercoaster is just supposed to be a reference to that.

Seconally, the joke about the kings servants Vip and Vap living in unlawful cohabitation is a reference to the characters Arkbah and Jeff, who are a gay couple from Matt Groening’s comic, Life in Hell. They also share similar character designs.

And finally, I don’t think this was intentional, but Elfo skating on Dagmars oily back reminded me of Bart Simpson skateboarding. Now try and get that image out of your mind! Good night everybody.

#just posting this to prove this script exists #I’ll post a link to the video on this blog when it’s done #But my YouTube channel is Mac Monkeyhat if you want to look me up in the mean time!#disenchantment

12 notes · View notes

missmonsters2 · 5 years ago

Text

The Color of You || Part II

PAIRING: Natasha Romanoff x Fem!Reader/OFC

Summary: It was another mission Natasha was assigned to. Nothing she hasn’t done before. Same mission, different people. Sent undercover to investigate William Cain, suspect to funding terrorism and smuggling weaponry. Under the disguise of Natanya Rovinski, Natasha is ready for another routine mission. Until she met you, William’s fiancé.

Warnings: There are dark elements to this series. Also, smut later on.

Genre: Angst, Romance, Drama, Action

NOTE: I’ve been aggressively reading on color therapy & the psychology of color LOL You’re more than welcome to comment/reply to this post if you would like to be added to a tag list.

PART I

PART II of X

Count: 3715

⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷⋆⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷

Natasha was in the middle of her living room, looking over William’s profile again.

She spread out the photos provided to her before leaning back with her fingers holding her chin.

Natasha was still working on her plan.

Maria had helped her set up dedicated funds to her mission to use as his investor, but she needed more than that.

She needed more than just being a sponsor to him.

She needed to get into his inner circle.

Idly tapping her chin, Natasha’s thoughts wandered to you from the other night. The sight of you tucking your hair behind your ear and demure smile wouldn’t leave her mind.

How did someone like you end up with someone like William?

The sound of her phone vibrating brought her out of her thoughts.

Clint: How’s it going over there?

It was Clint texting her to check in on her. Again.

Nat: It’s fine. Stop texting me unless you’re dying.

Clint: ...Rude...

Natasha rolled her eyes with a light smile before looking at the clock. Sighing, she stood up to get prepared for tonight’s events.

William was hosting another event, but this time as part of his political campaign. He was hosting it in his home, so it was a big opportunity for Natasha to look around.

Her goal of the night was still to obviously information gather but to also take a look around in his home, and secure a personal invite over where there would be more one-on-one time.

It would also give her an opportunity to get to know you better as well. That night when she caught your eye from across the room, it was like an electrical bolt hitting her that you were more than just a trophy wife to William.

And when Natasha got that feeling, she was certainly always right.

⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷⋆⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷

“You know, this wouldn’t be so bad if you just imagine that you’re on fire and the building is collapsing.”

Natasha snorted as David took a sip from his drink.

“Tell us how you really feel,” she replied with a smirk.

Though she couldn’t blame him. God, she was bored out of her mind. The amount of old white men she had spoken to already this evening was already numbing her mind.

Natasha had arrived at an appropriate time, neither early nor too late. William had approached her within minutes of her arriving, driving her into a conversation about his campaign, and her thoughts. She had merely nodded her head at the time about his interesting policies, occasionally saying something that would suggest to him that she agreed or shared the same ideology.

When more guests started to pour in, William regarded her with his own smile, asking if she would be free sometime in the next couple of days to have lunch with him.

It was secured and almost entirely too easy.

Just as the right amount of guests came to keep William busy, she disappeared off to snoop around.

She checked the place from head to toe, every nook and cranny.

But she didn’t find anything suspicious, not even a book out of place. Everything was where it was meant to be.

And that was off to Natasha. It was like everything was staged to show what William wanted people to see, but Natasha saw that whatever William was hiding, she wouldn’t find it here.

“So,” David said, breaking Natasha out of her thoughts. “What did you think of William’s fiancé?”

“Have you met her?” Natasha asked in return, watching as David nodded once.

“Yes, I kind of want to ask her to blink twice if she’s being held against her will because there’s no way William managed to woo a girl like that.”

Natasha chuckled throatily, trying to contain the full burst of laughter that truly wanted to come out. She was coming to appreciate her time spent with David, a man who clearly shared many similar thoughts to her and had no problem saying them out loud.

“This party is as riveting as watching paint dry, and I think I’ve stayed my obligatory time, I’m going to head out? Are you staying?” David asked as he put his drink down against the bar, dusting his hands off.

“Just a little longer,” Natasha answered. It didn’t feel like she had gotten enough intel on anything other than whatever William was hiding was most likely off base. Not to even mention she hadn’t seen you tonight either.

“Alright,” David said, taking a step forward before turning to her. “If you’re not doing anything tomorrow, come to my estate and have lunch with me.”

Natasha raised her brow at David but nodded, bidding him goodbye as he left. For another 45 minutes, she made an effort to talk to more people at the party, easily being able to identify who would be sponsoring and donating to William’s campaign. There were a couple of men and women she made a mental note to look into more as they were clearly radicals.

After Natasha felt like she had done enough for the night, she made a move to leave. As she passed the balcony though, she caught a similar silhouette. She opened the door quietly, pushing through the thick red curtain to find you standing out there alone against the railing. You were wearing another long-sleeved dress that revealed nothing but your curves.

Natasha closed the door softly, content that it shut out the unintelligible noises from inside.

“Are you not enjoying the party?”

You whipped around, body tensed with a sharp turn of your head at Natasha’s presence.

“I--”

You coughed lightly, a blush dusting your cheeks as you admitted slowly, “I don’t fit in well with this type of crowd.”

That was interesting, Natasha thought.

From what Natasha knew, you were from an affluential family, although you did just make it out of bankruptcy.

This was supposed to be your crowd.

“That’s alright. You’re all the better for not fitting in.” Natasha walked up to the ledge next to you, resting her elbow up before propping her chin on it. There was a slight breeze that brushed against Natasha’s fingers.

She looked over subtly to you, her eyes drawing down to your neatly trimmed nails, spotting a small line of paint just on the side of your ring finger. Natasha ran her tongue along the inside of her mouth at the sight.

You had your head tilted downwards and slightly to the side, it gave a great view of your slender neck and defined collarbone as you had a soft smile to what Natasha had said.

It was the small things like this that caused the confusion in Natasha.

You had chosen a man like William Cain to be your husband, and for some reason, Natasha couldn’t ignore that.

But Natasha could feel that a direct approach with you would cause you to close yourself off. She needed to be careful.

“And what about you, Miss Rovinski? Are you someone who fits in?” You asked quietly in return.

It was quiet for a moment, and Natasha licked her bottom lip slowly.

“I guess you can say I fit in anywhere but belong nowhere,” Natasha admitted quietly, and when she went to see your expression, it was as if you were not surprised by the answer.

Perhaps seeing that quality in Natasha.

“Do you want to know something interesting?” Natasha asked, and it seemed the question surprised you, but you nodded, albeit a little hesitantly.

“A few days ago I went to a local café in the morning, and I had overheard a conversation between two men who couldn’t understand how society, women, in particular, were so invested in art and fashion. There was too much emphasis on art, and it was overrated.”

Natasha caught your nervousness at the statement and quirked her lips.

“I didn’t agree with the sentiment as they commented on how the café looked bare and too plain--a problem only art could solve, isn’t that right?”

You hadn’t quite reacted to Natasha’s story, unsure where she was really going with this.

“I went to an artist’s gallery opening a couple months ago, and it featured a painting of a local village she had experienced in her travels. It was filled with such vibrant colors, sharp and soft. No words had accompanied the painting, yet people crowded around it, overwhelmed with emotion. Some people cried, some laughed loudly, and some were echoed by the image--are you understanding me?”

You nodded slowly.

“So, I’ve decided that sometimes art is the only thing that can draw out what people may truly be feeling, leaves a mark that words cannot reach,” Natasha said as she looked up at the starry sky.

Natasha turned back and gave you a quiet, warm smile. “That’s why I envy artists sometimes for being able to reach people in a different light.”

The hesitance and stiffness in you melted away with Natasha’s words, a rare genuine smile gracing your lips for her.

Natasha pulled back her arms, looking towards the door.

This was enough for tonight.

Natasha was leaving before your voice stopped her.

“Thank you...your words have reached me...and they make me incredibly happy.”

⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷⋆⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷

Natasha stood in front of two large mahogany doors before they opened to reveal Davidl standing there.

“Natanya, you made it! Did you find it okay?” He greeted her, pulling her into a slight hug and kisses on either side of her cheeks.

“Yes, my driver seemed to know exactly where he was going.” It seemed like all luxurious private drivers knew where the big players were.

“Come on in, I’ve got someone preparing us tea and lunch. Are you allergic to anything or any preferences?” David asked as he ushered her in. It was quite a walk to his patio outside. A full garden with a pond and fountain that was well maintained was the view.

“No, anything will be fine,” Natasha said as she took her seat, placing her small purse onto the table.

David sat across from her, crossing his legs so that his ankle rested against his thigh, and temple resting against his knuckles.

“Someone else will be coming too,” David said with a casual smile. “My boyfriend.”

Natasha raised her brow. That had explained some things.

“Why tell me that? What if I was extremely homophobic?” Natasha asked, only to see what David would say.

David let out a genuine laughter.

“Please,” he said after his laugh. “We flock together like birds. I’ve seen you eyeing various women throughout the parties--and men, although it looked like you were eyeing them begrudgingly.”

Natasha wasn’t sure if David had a better eye than she thought or if his gaydar was just that good, either way, she did feel a little exposed.

“What’s your boyfriend like?” Natasha asked, changing the topic from her.

David smiled softly, “Liam’s a photographer. He doesn’t come from money which I like. He’ll call me out on my shit if he thinks I’m being a dickhead. You should see him when I try to do extravagant things.”

David was chuckling by the end of it, the softness bringing a small smile to Natasha’s lips.

“Do your parents know?” Natasha asked.

“Yep,” David sighs. “They think it’s just a phase, but Liam is the one for me, I’m pretty sure. Since I’m the only child, my parents haven’t cut me off yet because they want me to take over the business. Once they see how serious I am, I have no idea how they’ll react. I’m fully prepared to be cut off, but Liam’s been teaching me about putting money away in case that happens.”

Natasha couldn’t help but smile at how endearing this all sounded, a rich man with learning how to save and budget from his financially average boyfriend.

The rest of the afternoon, they had made small idle chat until Liam arrived. He was a pretty athletically fit man, taller than David and nearly hovering over him. He had a boyish soft charm, yet intensity to him that made Natasha see why David was so enamored.

“I saw William today leaving from my photoshoot,” Liam commented as he finished up his meal.

“Oh?” David commented, disinterestedly.

“Yeah,” Liam continued. “He was standing outside a café with someone I haven’t recognized from any of the parties or his campaign. He seemed pretty angry with whoever he was talking to since he was shouting and flailing his arms.”

That piqued Natasha’s attention.

“Oh, wow,” Natasha commented. “What café was it?”

“The one on 18th. There’s a whole bunch of cafés down that street.”

Natasha hummed, storing that information for later.

The rest of the lunch went smooth, and eventually, David took them inside to his living area.

Natasha looked at the photos around the room, a lot of it being childhood photos of David. She was intrigued to see so many pictures of him and another boy. It wasn’t until she found a high school photo of David and the man next to him a younger version of William.

“Wow, you guys really were family friends,” Natasha commented as she took the photo from the ledge to look at it closer.

David hummed.

“Yeah,” he sighed. “We were actually pretty close back in high school and a little through university.”

“What changed?” Natasha asked because it was clear now that David hated the other man.

David leaned his head on his fist against the chair as Liam sat next to him. “He was always arrogant, don’t get me wrong. But you could tell he cared about things, I guess. I think it all started to change after his dad died midway the first year of university.”

“Oh, it was a car accident, right?” Natasha inquired. That was what was on his file.

David pursed his lip, looking around his home as if to see if anyone else was there.

“That’s what his family wanted officially published. But the truth is, we don’t really know for sure.”

That was interesting, Natasha thought. Her file should’ve had that. Why was his father’s death so tight-lipped?

She would have to do more digging on that because whatever it was, it was clearly a changing point for William.

The subject dropped, and they chatted for about another hour before Natasha decided that it was time to go.

“Oh!” David exclaimed before she was leaving. “Before you go, my parents are hosting their 40th anniversary next weekend. Here’s your invitation. I know you’re going to see William and his fiancé...please give this to them.”

“I swear you rich people have a party every week,” Liam mumbled.

Natasha took the invitations, raising her brow at David. Clearly, the man just didn’t want to see William. He smiled widely at her trying to look innocent, and Natasha could only roll her eyes.

David gave her a parting hug while Liam shook her hand.

This afternoon turned out to be more fulfilling than she thought it was going to be.

She had some useful information to work with.

⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷⋆⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷

Maria: Sorry, there’s nothing on his father’s death other than it being a car accident. We’ve even got all the records pulled for the coroner's report and the police records. All points to a car accident. I sent you the photos too.

Natasha sighed frustratedly as she threw her phone next to her on the couch.

Fuck, she thought. How could that be? It was evident that within the inner circle, that wasn’t how the man died.

Why could they pull nothing?

She supposed she wouldn’t find out unless she got into the inner circle.

On the bright side, Natasha managed to find who William was talking to at the café by hacking into the street cameras to find the photos of them.

It was a rather rugged-looking man, definitely not someone who belongs in the affluent circle. She had sent the photos off to see what they could come up with when she got back from lunch that day.

Her phone dinged again, this time with information sent to her.

The man’s name was Emilio Vartez. Nothing out of the usual other than petty crimes, but the fact that William was associating himself with someone like that was already telling.

She needed to see if she could find this Emilio Vartez.

Her phone dinged again, but this time to remind her that she needed to stop by The Cain estates. She had scheduled her meeting with William today, and it would be a chance to drop off David’s invitations as well.

⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷⋆⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷

“I’m so sorry, Miss Rovinski. Mr. Cain had a sudden work emergency that just came up. He had to leave right away. I’m not too sure when he’ll be back, but he will be reaching back out to you to reschedule.”

William’s assistant was near bowing at Natasha who had simply raised her hand to show it was a no big deal.

“That’s fine,” Natasha told the assistant to stop her from apologizing. “Actually is the soon-to-be Mrs. Cain here? I need to drop off an invitation.”

The assistant actually looked hesitant to tell Natasha where you were, but it was like she reminded herself that you were now public.

“Oh, yes,” the assistant coughed after a moment. “She’s in her art studio. It’s on the second level, the farthest room in the back. I’m sorry, I would walk you, but I really have to meet up with one of the campaign managers right now.”

Natasha shook her head, “That’s fine, really. I’m sure I will find her. If not, I’ll play Marco-Polo with her.”

The assistant let out a burst of loud laughter that made Natasha internally jump.

The assistant laughed the entire way out, and Natasha stood there blinking until she was gone.

After that, Natasha followed the assistant’s directions. She would’ve taken longer to snoop around, but since she already knew she wouldn’t find anything, she went straight to her destination.

Natasha could see you through the clear window on the door. The studio was large in size, blank canvases and easels lined up on one side. You had your back turned to Natasha in a large men’s dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up in front of a canvas, various paint tubes everywhere.

Natasha entered the room quietly, just observing you. You head was tilted with your thumb in the middle of the canvas, your paintbrush delicately held between your lips.

“What are you drawing?”

You jumped as you turned around, paintbrush falling from your mouth. The brush rolled until it hit Natasha’s foot.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” Natasha said as she picked up the brush to hand it to you.

You had your hair in a bun, strands have fallen out. Demurely, you brushed a strand behind your ear as you regarded Natasha.

“I’m here to give you an invitation to the King’s party next week.”

“I suppose David didn’t want to see William?” You asked with a little mirth in your tone that made Natasha quirk her lips.

“You know about David’s...feelings?”

“He doesn’t exactly keep it a secret,” you say, delicately opening the envelope.

“It doesn’t bother you that he feels that way about your husband?”

You merely smiled lopsidedly.

“My fiancé,” you corrected subtly, “is a politician.”

That’s all you said to explain, but Natasha understood the unsaid words. She eyed your canvas again and looked at your prep work.

“Watercolor?”

To her surprise, a light blush dusted your cheeks.

“It’s my favorite,” you quietly admitted.

“Why?” Natasha pried.

You looked at your easel, the faint pencil sketches on your canvas.

“I like that it’s transparent,” you said so faintly that Natasha almost didn’t catch it.

Suddenly, you turned back to face Natasha, eyeing her.

“Do you like the color black?” You asked as you caught onto her black cashmere turtleneck.

“I do,” Natasha admitted.

“Would you like to hear something interesting about it?” You were looking at Natasha so calmly, it was bringing something out in her.

“Yes.”

“People think that the color black only symbolizes unhappiness, grief, and misery, but studies show that people who are powerful wear the color black--lawyers, judges, Steve Jobs.”

Natasha laughed a little at the last one.

“Want to hear more?” You said, smiling as Natasha nodded.

“They say people who like the color black are mysterious and like to keep a certain boundary between them and the outside world.”

Natasha tilted her head. “Do you think that of me?”

“I believe only time will let me know.”

You stood up, walking by Natasha before she reached out and grabbed your wrist softly. The action seemed to surprise you as your arm pressed against the sleeve of her shirt.

“Do you like the color green?” Natasha asked as you had shades of green painted across your arm.

“At the moment, yes,” you replied.

“Would you like to know something interesting about it?” Natasha asked, repeating you. You smiled in response.

“Doctors use the color green to help relieve the fatigue in their eyes from the blood during operations, it helps them focus on examining wounds in better detail.”

You tilted your head at the fact, intrigued.

“Want to hear more?” Natasha asked, smiling herself when you nodded.

“They say kind, loyal, and compassionate people pick green as their favorite color.”

You swallowed at the words, overwhelmed by it, but Natasha could tell you were grateful nonetheless. When she released your wrist, your eyes were drawn to the streak of green smudged on her sweater.

“Oh god, I’m sorry, let me get that fo--”

“It’s alright,” Natasha interrupted you, looking at the splash of color on her sleeve. “I think your green goes well against my black.”

When she looked up, you swallowed deeply at her emerald eyes that just peered into you. Natasha was already walking towards the door before she looked back at you, bidding you goodbye for now with a definitive voice.

“I’ll see you soon.”

When Natasha walked out the front door, she clenched her jaw.

It was only a second, but it made all the difference to Natasha.

You had jumped before she spoke.

You weren’t surprised--or scared.

You expected her to be there.

PART III

689 notes · View notes

jgroffdaily · 5 years ago

Link

Jonathan Groff is not, he says, “a serial killer sort of person”, which will probably come as a relief to the millions of adoring families who know him best in wholesome animated form, as the voice of mountain-dwelling ice harvester Kristoff in Disney’s Frozen.

What drew the 34-year-old actor – nominated for a Tony for his Broadway performance as Melchior Gabor in Spring Awakening and his scene-stealing turn as King George III in Hamilton – to the dark, murder-heavy Netflix drama Mindhunter was, he says, precisely what a radical departure it was from his previous roles.

His FBI profiler Holden Ford is, as he puts it: “This corn-fed, all-American, earnest Midwestern guy, having an existential crisis, finding meaning and purpose while talking to incarcerated sociopathic murderers.” Groff tells me all this, it should be noted, with an enormous grin. Apparently, the only major note that David Fincher, Mindhunter’s director, ever has for his leading man is to stop smiling so much. “[Fincher] would be like, ‘We’re rolling, and, Jonathan, stop smiling. And you’re still smiling, you’re still smiling, and… action.’”

Television, of course, hardly needs another FBI drama, but what elevates Mindhunter above the procedural is not only Fincher’s precision direction, but also the tension inherent in Ford’s mission. Set in the late Seventies and based on the career of real-life FBI profiler and “serial killer whisperer” John Douglas, “Holden is pushing for understanding and curiosity, rather than simply dismissing these killers as crazy,” says Groff. Using the emerging social sciences of criminology and psychology, he hopes to gain some understanding of what motivates these apparent monsters.

The first series saw Ford interviewing notorious murderers Richard Speck, Ed Kemper and Jerry Brudos; season two, which begins this week, will delve into the Atlanta Child Murders (in which an estimated 28 children were killed between 1979 and 1981), and see the protagonist land an interview with “the rock star of the serial killer world”, Charles Manson.

There is also the added layer of Ford’s personal development; over the first season, he grew from a buttoned-up boy scout (literally drinking milk from the bottle in an early episode) into a skilful manipulator of his subjects; some critics have gone further and accused him of sociopathy.

“I never saw Holden as a sociopathic character, but he definitely wants to win,” says Groff. I agree about the sociopathy but, I suggest, Holden is perhaps guilty of wielding empathy as a weapon. “Yeah, I love that – weaponising empathy!” Groff cries, excitedly. “That might be the title of my autobiography.”

It’s early on a Friday morning in Los Angeles and, in spite of the unusually anti-social call time, Groff, boyishly handsome and sipping on a Diet Coke, is infectiously bouncy and Tiggerish. During the filming of Mindhunter, he has, he tells me, been listening to the audiobook of Fosse, Sam Wasson’s bestselling biography of the legendary Broadway choreographer and film director, on which the current show Fosse/Verdon was initially based. After finishing the book, he went back and watched all of Fosse’s films.

“He does such a good job of capturing that drug of being on stage, and the sadness that you get when you come off stage,” he says. “The huge rush of performing and the let-down afterwards. I get both happy and depressed about it. I don’t want to love it this much, but then I do, but I want also to have perspective.” He waves his hands in the air as if to bat away his only apparent torture: loving this job, which he is incredibly good at, a little too much.

Groff grew up in Pennsylvania, in a conservative, Methodist family, but his parents encouraged his theatrical ambitions, driving him several hours each way to audition for musicals in New York City. He won a place in a touring performance of The Sound of Music and deferred his spot at Carnegie Mellon University. At 20, he was cast in Spring Awakening, earning his first Tony nomination at 21, in 2007.

Television roles followed in Glee, The Normal Heart and Looking, the critically acclaimed but short-lived HBO drama about the lives of gay men in San Francisco. His parents, he tells me, “didn’t watch that one”.

Openly gay himself, in Mindhunter Groff is playing straight, in a role that features a solid amount of sex scenes as well as psychosexual content. Ryan Murphy, his former showrunner at Glee, and the creator of Pose and The People vs OJ Simpson, was so moved to see this, Groff tells me, that he rang to congratulate him.

“He got really emotional about it, partly, I think, because when he first met me [Groff made a pilot with him during Spring Awakening, which was never picked up] I was still in the closet. Then I came out, owned my identity and, thankfully, still get to play all different kinds of parts. Ryan said: ‘I know that it was something you were scared about, but you worked through your fear, and now here you are, getting to do this amazing show, and not being defined by your sexual orientation.’”

Did he really worry that if he came out he’d never be given a “straight” role again? “Totally,” Groff cries, slapping his thighs. “No agents or producers had ever said: ‘Don’t come out of the closet, it will ruin your career,’ but it was an unspoken thing. And there were no out gay movie stars as examples. But then I fell in love, at 23. And I thought, ‘OK, if I come out, and I only do off-Broadway plays for the rest of my life, I am totally happy with that – that’s what I moved to New York for. So maybe I won’t be a romantic lead in a movie – who cares? I would rather be doing cool stuff with people who don’t give a f--- than pretend to be someone I am not.’”

Happily, that couldn’t be further from the case. While filming the second season of Mindhunter in Pittsburgh, he’s been simultaneously reprising his role as Kristoff for Frozen 2, due out in November. “It was the dream,” he beams. “To be able to sit with Charles Manson, and then drive to New York to pretend to be in a blizzard, singing a Disney song.”

But, in truth, he’s never really stopped being Kristoff. “I make Voice Memos for kids,” he reveals. “I sing for them and do the reindeer voice, which they get really excited about. I do a lot of King George Voice Memos too, actually.”

He was in Hamilton for only two months, in the spring of 2015, but made enough of an impact with his campy, knowing performance, to earn another Tony nomination.

“It was like being in the eye of the storm,” he says of his spell in the Broadway phenomenon. “I listened to the Bill Gates Desert Island Discs the other day; he has My Shot from Hamilton as his final song. And I thought, ‘Oh my god, that’s right, I met Bill Gates – he came to the show.’ You really can’t take it in, in the moment, but looking back, I’m like, ‘Wow, I really met Beyoncé?’”

Given his experience in voicing Frozen, one might assume Groff would be a dab hand at recording audiobooks. Not so, he says. When he was asked to record the audio for John Douglas’s latest non-fiction book (his 13th), The Killer Across the Table, “it was SO hard,” he says. “So much harder than I thought it was going to be. I never made it through one page without f------ up.” It did mean, however, that he finally got to meet the legendary FBI agent in person. “We’d emailed before, but getting to meet him was a great moment. He loves the show, and even talks about it in the book that I recorded.”

This second series is launching at a moment of renewed obsession with Manson, thanks to the 50th anniversary of the murder of Sharon Tate, and the release of Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I wonder out loud whether the period that Mindhunter explores, when serial killers began to be studied seriously, was also the moment that they also began to be glamorised in popular culture.

“Yes, David and the writers try to address that question. You have Holden, who is a sycophant and obsessed with Manson, and you have the Bill Tench character [Ford’s FBI colleague, played by Holt McCallany], who is like: ‘Dude, these people are disgusting and deplorable.’

“David is uninterested in creating conversation in which any one person is right and any one person is wrong,” says Groff. “He likes to hold a bunch of different perspectives at the same time. That’s what makes it worth working on, that’s what makes it worth watching.”

Mindhunter, series one  and two, are available  on Netflix

#jonathan groff #interview #press #!

25 notes · View notes

flexiblefish · 6 years ago

Photo

Source:[X]

by Gavanndra Hodge 12 JANUARY 2019

Gillian Anderson is hard to pin down. Is she American or English? (Her accent slips between the two, depending on who she is talking to.) Guarded or warm? (She can be either, based on her mood.) Tough or vulnerable? (Or both?)

'‘Because my parents were American and we lived here in the UK, there was always a sense of not quite fitting in. Because of that I’ve always felt a bit of an outsider. I have perpetuated that because that is what feels familiar to me, it is what feels comfortable,’ she explains. When we meet Anderson is English and warm, talking about the birthday parties she has to organise (she has three children, Piper, 24, Oscar, 12, and Felix, 10); and although she is very petite, wearing white patent stiletto boots and slender black trousers, she exudes the commanding charisma that makes her perfect for her imminent roles. Rumour has it that she will be playing Margaret Thatcher in an upcoming series of The Crown, the Netflix series created and co-written by her partner, Peter Morgan. No one is confirming this, but no one is denying it either. Meanwhile, this month she stars in a new Netflix series, Sex Education, in which she plays a sex therapist who lives with her teenage son (Asa Butterfield). And in February Anderson has another plum role: Margo Channing in Belgian theatre director Ivo van Hove’s much-anticipated adaptation of All About Eve, also starring Lily James as Eve, with music by PJ Harvey. The play – a modern reinterpretation of the 1950 film, which starred Bette Davis as Channing, a blazing Broadway star who is gradually supplanted by a younger rival – is about ambition and betrayal, femininity and anger, stardom and personal sacrifice. Anderson’s is a bravura role, one that requires not just the cool intensity that we have come to expect from her, but also humour. Channing is deliciously droll, delivering endlessly quotable lines with comic precision (‘I’ll admit I may have seen better days, but I’m still not to be had for the price of a cocktail, like a salted peanut’). ‘A couple of years ago my boyfriend Pete said to me, “You know what would be a great role for you? Margo Channing,”’ Anderson says. ‘So I rewatched the film and I thought, “Oh my God, how much fun would that be!”’ Anderson, not one to wait for opportunity, discovered that theatre producer Sonia Friedman had the rights to the script and was working on it with van Hove – Cate Blanchett was set to be Channing. ‘So I thought, “Ah OK, I’ll just slink into the background.” Then my agents got a call to say that she [Blanchett] had backed out due to scheduling conflicts, and there was interest, and was I interested? So I was like, “Yes! When’s the meeting? Now?”’ Van Hove, on the phone from New York, is equally excited to be working with Anderson. ‘Margo needs someone who understands what the theatre is all about, someone who can carry a play, who can occupy the whole stage, and Gillian can do that; she is a fabulous theatre actress. Although, of course, she became iconic for me in the 1990s when she was in The X-Files.’ There is something a little surprising about Ivo van Hove, an avant-garde director celebrated for his reinterpretations of plays and operas such as Hedda Gabler, Antigone and Lulu, professing fandom for a mid-’90s sci-fi series; but that is to forget the huge cultural impact of The X-Files, its quality and its ingenuity. The series was about two FBI agents, played by Anderson and David Duchovny, who attempt to unravel various natural and supernatural mysteries. No one expected it to become such a success, least of all Anderson, who was 24 when she was cast in the show. It was her first major role and it made her a star. She won multiple awards for her portrayal of the sceptical Dr Dana Scully, including an Emmy and a Golden Globe. But such stardom often involves sacrifice and Anderson was suffering. The production schedule for The X-Files was brutal, involving 16-hour days for nine months of the year. Furthermore, in 1994, aged 25, Anderson married Clyde Klotz, assistant art director on the series, and nine months later she gave birth to their daughter, Piper. After three years she and Klotz divorced. It was while she was pregnant that Anderson started having severe panic attacks. ‘I was having them daily,’ she explains, experiencing palpitations, numbness, ‘hallucinations, all of it’. Things didn’t get better once Piper was born. ‘I was a young mother, and shortly after that we were separating, and I was working these crazy hours. I remember periods of time when I was just crying, my make-up was being done over and over again and I was not able to stop crying.’ Anderson sought solace in meditation. ‘I went to somebody and there was a meditation we did together. We went to some quite dark places and I got to see that I could still survive those dark places, I was stronger than they were, and after that the panic attacks stopped.’ Anderson had been having panic attacks, on and off, ‘since high school’. As a teenager she was a daydreamer and a troublemaker who felt different from her peers in Michigan because of her childhood in Harringay, having left the ‘incy-bincy flat with a bathroom outside’ that she and her parents lived in when she was 11 years old, when her family moved back to the US. ‘I started falling in with groups and trying to fit in, until it got to the point when it was like, “I don’t f—ing want to fit in. I want to look completely different to all of you, and stop staring at me because I have a mohawk.” I’d shave the sides of my head with a razor blade and dye my hair different colours.’ Anderson’s parents, Rosemary and Ed, were living in Chicago and were both just 26 when she was born. Soon afterwards the family moved to London so Ed could attend film school, while Rosemary worked as a computer programmer. ‘My parents were working very hard and would often work late. I have lots of memories of playing by myself in the back garden and searching for friends in the neighbourhood because I didn’t have siblings.’ After moving back to America, Rosemary and Ed had two more children, a son and a daughter. Anderson admits that her adolescent waywardness might have been related to the arrival of two new babies in the house. ‘I made trouble and I got attention that way.’ Acting is another way to get attention, something Anderson learnt early on. ‘I remember being in a play when I was in primary school. I was meant to be a Chelsea fan. I started chewing gum on stage and blowing bubbles and got all the attention. I thought, “This is all right, everybody is watching me!”’ But when she reached 16 and started doing more professional productions in America, performing became fundamentally important to her. ‘I enjoyed the connection between performer and audience, the control. And I remember thinking, “I can do this. They are showing me I can do this.” 'It changed everything in my life, knowing I could do something. Prior to that there hadn’t been that moment yet when I found purpose and direction.’ Anderson decided that she wanted to pursue acting as a career and was accepted at The Theatre School at DePaul University in Chicago. ‘From the very start of school I didn’t go into the dorms, instead I found an apartment with a roommate in a funky neighbourhood. I was the only one who was living out of school. That is my pattern, carving my own thing. 'All through [theatre] school I dressed like I was a member of The Cure. That was how I was in the world, grungy, not considered, not mature. I was forthright and gutsy – I drove myself to Chicago in my dad’s VW van – but slightly falling apart.’ She always knew she would return to England. ‘My childhood here, the smell of north London, it has such a massive tug on me. I really felt, when we moved to the States, that I would eventually have a life back here.’ She and Piper moved to the city after The X-Files ended its original run, and she went on to have two more children, Oscar and Felix, with her now ex-boyfriend, businessman Mark Griffiths (there was also a marriage to British documentary maker Julian Ozanne, which lasted for two years, with the couple separating in 2006).

In the UK Anderson’s career developed in a way that might not have been expected for the golden girl of ’90s sci-fi. She took juicy roles in big-budget period dramas – Lady Dedlock in Bleak House, Miss Havisham in Great Expectations – and appeared on stage, at the Royal Court and the Donmar Warehouse. But it was her performance in the BBC detective drama The Fall, starting in 2013, that solidified her reputation as the go-to actor for female characters who are charismatic and powerful. Anderson, as DSI Stella Gibson, was imperious in her white silk shirts and high heels, unwavering in her pursuit of the serial killer played by Jamie Dornan. The screenwriter Allan Cubitt created the role of Gibson with Anderson in mind. ‘I wanted Gibson to be an enigmatic figure. Gillian is a riveting actress, but there is an aloofness to her as well. Also I was attempting to reclaim the idea of the powerful femme fatale, without the fatale; someone who is aware that her beauty can be used to help her ends. That she is unafraid of that was radical.’ Anderson was deeply involved in the creation of Gibson’s look, altering the way she thought about herself in the process. ‘What fascinated me about her, and I feel that we were able to find that in the costume design, was that the way she dressed never felt like it was for anyone else but her. I don’t think I have necessarily changed the way I dress since her, but I feel like I am certainly more conscious of what I wear and what it says.’ As a younger woman her style was ‘messy, like a discarded urchin’. She would wear oversized suits and ‘floppy dresses that I had probably stolen from the thrift store’. Whereas now her look is sleek, and she favours brands like Jil Sander, Prada and Dries Van Noten. The Fall was about gender, power and desire; and it was while filming it in Belfast that Anderson began thinking more about the struggles that women face in the 21st century. ‘I was reading all these statistics about young girls being suicidal and having such low self-esteem and I thought, “Surely, given everything that we know, and the fact we are all having these feelings, can we not start a conversation about whether we want this and how to deal with it?”’ This morphed into her writing a book, We: A Manifesto for Women Everywhere, with her friend, the writer and activist Jennifer Nadel, in 2017. Alternating between pieces by Anderson and Nadel, it details their own personal struggles, and includes practical sections on how to deal with issues such as anxiety and low self-esteem using practices such as meditation, affirmations and gratitude lists. ‘We both know how it feels to be in emotional pain,’ says Nadel. ‘Both of us have felt lost, and found a spiritual way out. Both of us have experienced radical transformation as a result of the things that we wrote about in that book.’ Cubitt and Nadel each say that among the most impressive things about Anderson, as a collaborator, are her focus and drive. ‘I have never met anyone with Gillian’s ability to focus. And she has a certainty about things, she is not mired in indecision,’ says Nadel. What this means is not just an incredibly long CV, but numerous satellite projects. Anderson has a line of smart, grown-up clothes that she has developed with the brand Winser London (‘I didn’t realise I was so opinionated about buttons!’). She also works for numerous charities, focusing especially on women’s rights and environmental issues. ‘Because of my work ethic and also having had such high expectations, both of myself and other people’s of me, at such a young age, I think it became near to impossible for me to relax at all, to do anything that wasn’t work-related, so a lot of my later adult life has been trying to force myself to do that, and I struggle so hard, and sometimes I lose sight of it. So there is a part of me that wonders if I am slightly addicted [to work], I learnt it so young.’ The scant spare time that Anderson allows herself is spent ‘going to the cinema, to the theatre, watching documentaries’. Piper, who has just completed a degree in production and costume design, is now living in her mother’s basement, and the two of them recently went on a trip to Amsterdam to see van Hove’s four-hour stage adaptation of the Hanya Yanagihara novel A Little Life. That might not sound like everyone’s cup of tea, but Anderson loved it. And despite all the seriousness and the self-examination (or perhaps because of it), she is good company, thoughtful and witty. She has, she says, got happier as she has got older, less self-critical, more self-accepting. ‘I am constantly reminded of the fact that I am not normal. But fortunately I have enough abnormal people around me to help me feel that it is actually OK.’

#gillian anderson #all about eve #nice article #a little more depth than usual

77 notes · View notes

heresince93 · 6 years ago

Text

Full transcript of Gillian’s Telegraph interview

When we meet Anderson is English and warm, talking about the birthday parties she has to organise (she has three children, Piper, 24, Oscar, 12, and Felix, 10); and although she is very petite, wearing white patent stiletto boots and slender black trousers, she exudes the commanding charisma that makes her perfect for her imminent roles.

Rumour has it that she will be playing Margaret Thatcher in an upcoming series of The Crown, the Netflix series created and co-written by her partner, Peter Morgan. No one is confirming this, but no one is denying it either.

Meanwhile, this month she stars in a new Netflix series, Sex Education, in which she plays a sex therapist who lives with her teenage son (Asa Butterfield). And in February Anderson has another plum role: Margo Channing in Belgian theatre director Ivo van Hove’s much-anticipated adaptation of All About Eve, also starring Lily James as Eve, with music by PJ Harvey.

The play – a modern reinterpretation of the 1950 film, which starred Bette Davis as Channing, a blazing Broadway star who is gradually supplanted by a younger rival – is about ambition and betrayal, femininity and anger, stardom and personal sacrifice.

Anderson’s is a bravura role, one that requires not just the cool intensity that we have come to expect from her, but also humour. Channing is deliciously droll, delivering endlessly quotable lines with comic precision (‘I’ll admit I may have seen better days, but I’m still not to be had for the price of a cocktail, like a salted peanut’).

‘A couple of years ago my boyfriend Pete said to me, “You know what would be a great role for you? Margo Channing,”’ Anderson says. ‘So I rewatched the film and I thought, “Oh my God, how much fun would that be!”’

Anderson, not one to wait for opportunity, discovered that theatre producer Sonia Friedman had the rights to the script and was working on it with van Hove – Cate Blanchett was set to be Channing. ‘So I thought, “Ah OK, I’ll just slink into the background.” Then my agents got a call to say that she [Blanchett] had backed out due to scheduling conflicts, and there was interest, and was I interested? So I was like, “Yes! When’s the meeting? Now?”’

Van Hove, on the phone from New York, is equally excited to be working with Anderson. ‘Margo needs someone who understands what the theatre is all about, someone who can carry a play, who can occupy the whole stage, and Gillian can do that; she is a fabulous theatre actress. Although, of course, she became iconic for me in the 1990s when she was in The X-Files.’

There is something a little surprising about Ivo van Hove, an avant-garde director celebrated for his reinterpretations of plays and operas such as Hedda Gabler, Antigone and Lulu, professing fandom for a mid-’90s sci-fi series; but that is to forget the huge cultural impact of The X-Files, its quality and its ingenuity.

The series was about two FBI agents, played by Anderson and David Duchovny, who attempt to unravel various natural and supernatural mysteries. No one expected it to become such a success, least of all Anderson, who was 24 when she was cast in the show. It was her first major role and it made her a star.

She won multiple awards for her portrayal of the sceptical Dr Dana Scully, including an Emmy and a Golden Globe. But such stardom often involves sacrifice and Anderson was suffering.

The production schedule for The X-Files was brutal, involving 16-hour days for nine months of the year. Furthermore, in 1994, aged 25, Anderson married Clyde Klotz, assistant art director on the series, and nine months later she gave birth to their daughter, Piper. After three years she and Klotz divorced. It was while she was pregnant that Anderson started having severe panic attacks.

‘I was having them daily,’ she explains, experiencing palpitations, numbness, ‘hallucinations, all of it’. Things didn’t get better once Piper was born. ‘I was a young mother, and shortly after that we were separating, and I was working these crazy hours. I remember periods of time when I was just crying, my make-up was being done over and over again and I was not able to stop crying.’

Anderson sought solace in meditation. ‘I went to somebody and there was a meditation we did together. We went to some quite dark places and I got to see that I could still survive those dark places, I was stronger than they were, and after that the panic attacks stopped.’

Anderson had been having panic attacks, on and off, ‘since high school’. As a teenager she was a daydreamer and a troublemaker who felt different from her peers in Michigan because of her childhood in Harringay, having left the ‘incy-bincy flat with a bathroom outside’ that she and her parents lived in when she was 11 years old, when her family moved back to the US.

‘I started falling in with groups and trying to fit in, until it got to the point when it was like, “I don’t f—ing want to fit in. I want to look completely different to all of you, and stop staring at me because I have a mohawk.” I’d shave the sides of my head with a razor blade and dye my hair different colours.’

Anderson’s parents, Rosemary and Ed, were living in Chicago and were both just 26 when she was born. Soon afterwards the family moved to London so Ed could attend film school, while Rosemary worked as a computer programmer.

‘My parents were working very hard and would often work late. I have lots of memories of playing by myself in the back garden and searching for friends in the neighbourhood because I didn’t have siblings.’

After moving back to America, Rosemary and Ed had two more children, a son and a daughter. Anderson admits that her adolescent waywardness might have been related to the arrival of two new babies in the house. ‘I made trouble and I got attention that way.’

Acting is another way to get attention, something Anderson learnt early on. ‘I remember being in a play when I was in primary school. I was meant to be a Chelsea fan. I started chewing gum on stage and blowing bubbles and got all the attention. I thought, “This is all right, everybody is watching me!”’

But when she reached 16 and started doing more professional productions in America, performing became fundamentally important to her. ‘I enjoyed the connection between performer and audience, the control. And I remember thinking, “I can do this. They are showing me I can do this.”

'It changed everything in my life, knowing I could do something. Prior to that there hadn’t been that moment yet when I found purpose and direction.’

Anderson decided that she wanted to pursue acting as a career and was accepted at The Theatre School at DePaul University in Chicago. ‘From the very start of school I didn’t go into the dorms, instead I found an apartment with a roommate in a funky neighbourhood. I was the only one who was living out of school. That is my pattern, carving my own thing.

'All through [theatre] school I dressed like I was a member of The Cure. That was how I was in the world, grungy, not considered, not mature. I was forthright and gutsy – I drove myself to Chicago in my dad’s VW van – but slightly falling apart.’

She always knew she would return to England. ‘My childhood here, the smell of north London, it has such a massive tug on me. I really felt, when we moved to the States, that I would eventually have a life back here.’

She and Piper moved to the city after The X-Files ended its original run, and she went on to have two more children, Oscar and Felix, with her now ex-boyfriend, businessman Mark Griffiths (there was also a marriage to British documentary maker Julian Ozanne, which lasted for two years, with the couple separating in 2006).

Anderson, as DSI Stella Gibson, was imperious in her white silk shirts and high heels, unwavering in her pursuit of the serial killer played by Jamie Dornan. The screenwriter Allan Cubitt created the role of Gibson with Anderson in mind. ‘I wanted Gibson to be an enigmatic figure. Gillian is a riveting actress, but there is an aloofness to her as well. Also I was attempting to reclaim the idea of the powerful femme fatale, without the fatale; someone who is aware that her beauty can be used to help her ends. That she is unafraid of that was radical.’

Anderson was deeply involved in the creation of Gibson’s look, altering the way she thought about herself in the process. ‘What fascinated me about her, and I feel that we were able to find that in the costume design, was that the way she dressed never felt like it was for anyone else but her. I don’t think I have necessarily changed the way I dress since her, but I feel like I am certainly more conscious of what I wear and what it says.’

As a younger woman her style was ‘messy, like a discarded urchin’. She would wear oversized suits and ‘floppy dresses that I had probably stolen from the thrift store’. Whereas now her look is sleek, and she favours brands like Jil Sander, Prada and Dries Van Noten.

The Fall was about gender, power and desire; and it was while filming it in Belfast that Anderson began thinking more about the struggles that women face in the 21st century. ‘I was reading all these statistics about young girls being suicidal and having such low self-esteem and I thought, “Surely, given everything that we know, and the fact we are all having these feelings, can we not start a conversation about whether we want this and how to deal with it?”’

This morphed into her writing a book, We: A Manifesto for Women Everywhere, with her friend, the writer and activist Jennifer Nadel, in 2017. Alternating between pieces by Anderson and Nadel, it details their own personal struggles, and includes practical sections on how to deal with issues such as anxiety and low self-esteem using practices such as meditation, affirmations and gratitude lists.

‘We both know how it feels to be in emotional pain,’ says Nadel. ‘Both of us have felt lost, and found a spiritual way out. Both of us have experienced radical transformation as a result of the things that we wrote about in that book.’

Cubitt and Nadel each say that among the most impressive things about Anderson, as a collaborator, are her focus and drive.

‘I have never met anyone with Gillian’s ability to focus. And she has a certainty about things, she is not mired in indecision,’ says Nadel. What this means is not just an incredibly long CV, but numerous satellite projects. Anderson has a line of smart, grown-up clothes that she has developed with the brand Winser London (‘I didn’t realise I was so opinionated about buttons!’).

She also works for numerous charities, focusing especially on women’s rights and environmental issues. ‘Because of my work ethic and also having had such high expectations, both of myself and other people’s of me, at such a young age, I think it became near to impossible for me to relax at all, to do anything that wasn’t work-related, so a lot of my later adult life has been trying to force myself to do that, and I struggle so hard, and sometimes I lose sight of it. So there is a part of me that wonders if I am slightly addicted [to work], I learnt it so young.’

The scant spare time that Anderson allows herself is spent ‘going to the cinema, to the theatre, watching documentaries’.

Piper, who has just completed a degree in production and costume design, is now living in her mother’s basement, and the two of them recently went on a trip to Amsterdam to see van Hove’s four-hour stage adaptation of the Hanya Yanagihara novel A Little Life. That might not sound like everyone’s cup of tea, but Anderson loved it.

And despite all the seriousness and the self-examination (or perhaps because of it), she is good company, thoughtful and witty. She has, she says, got happier as she has got older, less self-critical, more self-accepting.

‘I am constantly reminded of the fact that I am not normal. But fortunately I have enough abnormal people around me to help me feel that it is actually OK.’

All About Eve is running at the Noël Coward Theatre from 2 February to 11 May 2019

#gillian anderson

94 notes · View notes

omninocte · 5 years ago

Link

Tom Hiddleston was posing for a portrait, and the face he showed the camera wasn’t entirely his own.

“I’m protective about my internal world now in probably a different way,” says the actor Tom Hiddleston, making his Broadway debut in “Betrayal.” Credit: Devin Yalkin for The New York Times

That had been his idea, to slip for a few moments into the character he’s playing on Broadway, in Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal”: Robert, the cheated-on husband and backstabbed best friend whose coolly proper facade is the carapace containing a crumbling man. And when Mr. Hiddleston became him, the change was instantaneous: the guarded stillness of his body, the chill reserve in his gray-blue eyes.

“It’s interesting,” Mr. Hiddleston said after a while, analyzing Robert’s expression from the inside. “It gives less away.” A pause, and then his own smile flickered back, its pleasure undisguised. “O.K.,” Mr. Hiddleston announced, himself again, “it’s not Robert anymore.”

It was late on a muggy August morning, one day before the show’s first preview at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater, and Mr. Hiddleston — the classically trained British actor best known for playing the winsomely chaotic villain Loki, god of mischief and brother of Thor, in the Marvel film franchise — had been in New York for less than a week.

Mr. Hiddleston as Loki in “Thor: Ragnarok.” Credit: Marvel Studios/Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

He’ll be here all autumn for the limited run of the production, a hit in London earlier this year, but he wasn’t going to pretend that he’d settled in. “I literally have never sat in this room before,” he’d said at the top of the photo shoot, in his cramped auxiliary dressing room, next door to the similarly tiny one he had been occupying.

He’d had nothing to do with the space’s camera-ready décor. So there was no use making a metaphor of the handsome clock with its hands stopped at 12 (“Betrayal” is famous for its reverse chronology; far more apt if the clock had run backward), or of the compact stack of pristine books that looked like journals, with pretty covers and presumably empty pages: a bit off-brand for Mr. Hiddleston, who at 38 has a model-perfect exterior with quite a lot inscribed inside.

Take the matter-of-fact way he said, in explaining that he’d first encountered Pinter’s work when he studied for his A-levels in English literature, theater, Latin and Greek: “It was a real tossup between French and Spanish or Latin and Greek. I thought, I can always speak French and Spanish, I can’t always read Latin and Greek, so I’ll study that and I’ll speak the other two.”

From a one-night reading to Broadway

Mr. Hiddleston and Zawe Ashton portray a married couple in Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal” Credit: Marc Brenner

In this country, Mr. Hiddleston is mainly a screen star, known also for playing Jonathan Pine in the John le Carré series “The Night Manager” on AMC. There are plans, too, for him to bring Loki to Disney’s streaming service in a stand-alone series.

But at home in London, he has amassed some impressive Shakespearean credits, including the title roles in Kenneth Branagh’s “Hamlet” and Josie Rourke’s “Coriolanus,” and a turn as Cassio in Michael Grandage’s “Othello” — a production that Pinter, saw some months before he died in 2008. That was the year Mr. Hiddleston won a best newcomer Olivier Award for Cheek by Jowl’s “Cymbeline.”

Jamie Lloyd’s “Betrayal,” which has a staging to match the spareness of Pinter’s language and a roiling well of squelched emotion to feed its comedy, is Mr. Hiddleston’s Broadway debut. Likewise for his co-stars, Zawe Ashton (of Netflix’s “Velvet Buzzsaw”), who plays Emma, Robert’s wife; and Charlie Cox (of Netflix’s “Daredevil”), who plays Emma’s lover, Jerry, Robert’s oldest friend.

Beginning at what appears to be the end of Robert and Emma’s marriage, after her yearslong affair with Jerry has sputtered to a stop, it’s a drama of cascading double-crosses. First staged by Peter Hall in London in 1978 — and in 1980 on Broadway, where it starred Roy Scheider, Blythe Danner and Raul Julia — it rewinds through time to the sozzled evening when Emma and Jerry overstep the line.

The most recent Broadway revival was just six years ago, directed by Mike Nichols and starring Daniel Craig as Robert, Rachel Weisz as Emma and Rafe Spall as Jerry. It might seem too soon for another, let alone one with sexiness to spare — except that Mr. Lloyd’s production is also marked by a palpable hauntedness and a profound sense of loss.

Reviewing the London staging in The New York Times, Matt Wolf called it “a benchmark achievement for everyone involved,” showing the play “in a revealing, even radical, new light.” Michael Billington, in The Guardian, called Mr. Hiddleston’s performance “superb.”

What’s curious is that Mr. Hiddleston, so good at bad boys, isn’t playing Jerry, the more glamorous role: the cad, the pursuer, the best man who goes after the bride. But Mr. Lloyd said that casting him that way was never part of their discussions.

Last fall, when Mr. Lloyd persuaded Mr. Hiddleston to read a scene with Ms. Ashton for a one-night gala celebration of Pinter in London, part of the season-long Pinter at the Pinter series, there was no grand plan. Having asked Mr. Hiddleston about a possible collaboration for years, since “just before he became ridiculously famous,” Mr. Lloyd said, this was the first time he got a yes.

“I just really admired his craft of acting, the precision of his acting, as well as his real emotional depth and his real wit,” Mr. Lloyd said. “And he’s turned into what I think is the epitome of a great Pinter actor. Because if you’re in a Pinter play, you have to dig really deep and connect to terrible loss or excruciating pain, often massive volcanic emotion, and then you have to bottle it all up. You have to suppress it all.”

This, he added, is what Mr. Hiddleston does in “Betrayal,” where characters’ meaning is found between and behind the words, not inside them.

“Some of the pain that he’s created in Robert, it’s just unbearable, and yet he always keeps a lid on it,” Mr. Lloyd said.

The scene Mr. Hiddleston and Ms. Ashton read at the gala appears at the midpoint of “Betrayal”: Robert and Emma on vacation in Venice, at a moment that leaves their marriage with permanent damage. Within days, Mr. Hiddleston told Mr. Lloyd that he was on board for a full production.

Mr. Hiddleston at the Jacobs Theater, where “Betrayal” opens on Sept 5. Credit: Devin Yalkin for The New York Times

‘What remains private’

Photos taken, back in the faintly more lived-in of his Broadway dressing rooms, Mr. Hiddleston opened the window to let in some Midtown air — and when you’re as tall as he is, 6 feet 2 inches, opening it from the top of the window frame is easy enough to do. Then, making himself an espresso with his countertop machine, he sat down to talk at length.

“I’m always curious about the presentation of a character’s external persona versus the interior,“ he said. “What remains private, hidden, concealed, protected, and what does the character allow to be seen? We all have a very complex internal world, and not all of that is on display in our external reality.”

He can tick off the ways that various characters of his conceal what’s inside: Loki, with all that rage and vulnerability “tucked away”; the ultra-proper spy Jonathan Pine, in “The Night Manager,” “hiding behind his politeness”; Robert, a lonely man wearing “a mask of control” that renders him “confident, powerful, polished,” at least as far as any onlookers can tell.

In “Betrayal,” each of the three principals has an enormous amount to hide from the people who are meant to be their closest intimates. It’s a play about power and manipulation, duplicity and misplaced trust, and what’s so threatening about it is the very ordinariness of its privileged milieu. This snug little world that once seemed so safe and ideal — the happiest of families, the oldest of friends — has long since fallen apart.

But to Mr. Hiddleston, Pinter’s drama contains two themes just as significant as betrayal: isolation and loneliness.

“The sadness in the play — it’s not only sadness; because it’s Pinter, there’s wit and levity as well — but if there is sadness in the play,” he said, “I think it comes from the fact that these betrayals render Robert, Emma and Jerry more alone than they were before.”

Trust and self-protection

One-on-one, Mr. Hiddleston was more cautious than he’d been during the photo shoot, surrounded then by a gaggle of people affiliated with the show. Still, when I asked him about betrayal, lowercase, he went straight to the condition it violates.

“To trust is a profound commitment, and to trust is to make oneself vulnerable,” he said, fidgeting with a red rubber band and choosing his words with care. “It’s such an optimistic act, because you’re putting your faith in the hands of someone or something which you expect to remain constant, even if the circumstances change.”

“I’m disappearing down a rabbit hole here,” he said, “but I think about it a lot. I think about certainty and uncertainty. Trust is a way of managing uncertainty. It’s a way of finding security in saying, ‘Perhaps all of this is uncertain, but I trust you.’ Or, ‘I trust this.’ And there’s a lot of uncertainty in the world at the moment, so it becomes harder to trust, I suppose.”

An interview itself is an act of trust, albeit often a wary one. And there was one stipulated no-go zone in this encounter, a condition mentioned by a publicist only after I’d arrived: No talk of Taylor Swift, with whom Mr. Hiddleston had a brief, intense, headline-generating romance that, post-breakup, she evidently spun into song lyrics.

That was three years ago, and I hadn’t been planning to bring her up; given the context of the play, though, make of that prohibition what you will. Mr. Hiddleston, who once had a tendency to pour his heart out to reporters, knows that he can’t stop you.

“It’s not possible, and nor should it be possible, to control what anyone thinks about you,” he said. “Especially if it’s not based in any, um —” he gave a soft, joyless laugh — “if it’s not based in any reality.”

The actor’s Shakspearean roles include“Hamlet” and “Coriolanus.” Credit: Devin Yalkin for The New York Times

That’s something he’s learned about navigating fame — about being put on a pedestal that’s then kicked out from under him. He knows now “to let go of the energy that comes toward me, be it good or bad,” he said. “Because naturally in the early days I took responsibility for it.”

“And yes, I’m protective about my internal world now in probably a different way,” he added, his tone as restrained as his words. He took a beat, and so much went unsaid in what he said next: “That’s because I didn’t realize it needed protecting before.”

Even so, he doesn’t give the impression of having closed himself off. When something genuinely made him laugh, he smiled a smile that cracked his face wide open.

And the way he treated the people around him at work — with a fundamental respect, regardless of rank, and no whiff of flattery — made him seem sincere about what he called “staying true to the part of myself that’s quite simple, that’s quite ordinary.”

That investment in his ordinariness, as he put it, is a hedge against the destabilizing trappings of fame, but it doubles as a way of protecting his craft.

It’s also of a piece with his insistence that vulnerability is a necessary risk to take, at least sometimes.

“If you go through life without connecting to people,” he asked, “how much could you call that a life?”

#betrayal (play)#broadway #tom hiddleston

1 note · View note

letterboxd · 6 years ago

Photo

McCarthy.

“Give me a real character like Lee who’s complicated and irritating and smart.” Melissa McCarthy talks about her Oscar-nominated performance in the acclaimed true story Can You Ever Forgive Me?

In the media discussion building up to this year’s Academy Awards, the talking points have principally concerned decisions regarding the ceremony itself, leaving many of the nominated films somewhat overlooked in the conversation.

One triple-nominee very much worthy of discussion is Marielle Heller’s Can You Ever Forgive Me?, which received nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay (Nicole Holofcener & Jeff Whitty), Best Supporting Actor (the great Richard E. Grant) and Best Actress for Melissa McCarthy’s caustic and hilarious performance as real-life literary forger Lee Israel.

Based upon Israel’s memoir of the same title, Can You Ever Forgive Me? chronicles how the writer (of biographies of Estée Lauder and Tallulah Bankhead, among others) found herself out of favor and out of work in the ’90s New York literary world.

After discovering that letters by famous writers could be highly valuable to certain collectors, Israel took to forging correspondence by people like Dorothy Parker and Noël Coward, and selling the results via rare book stores.

In addition to profiting from the deception, the acerbic Israel also took considerable pride in her ability to capture her subjects’ trademark wit.

There aren’t many movies made about people like Lee Israel, and that’s what makes Can You Ever Forgive Me? so fascinating. The character fails all the obvious (and idiotic) “likability” standards that afflict many mainstream films: she’s an alcoholic misanthrope who lashes out at everyone around her. Yet she’s impossible to look away from, and we remain wholly invested in her throughout every bad decision.

Richard E. Grant co-stars in the film as Jack Hock, an acquaintance who becomes Lee’s friend, and eventually her collaborator, via their mutual affection for booze. More than one person has accurately observed that if you dim your eyes, Hock could easily be Withnail, thirty years later. His Oscar campaign has been one of the most gleeful joys of awards season, and a pleasing reward for an actor who was “told right from the get-go that I looked like a tombstone”.

Mostly taking place in a Manhattan of wood-lined taverns and fusty bookstores, and quietly celebrating some of the city’s longest lasting icons including Julius, the city’s oldest gay bar, Can You Ever Forgive Me? is a minor miracle of a film that represents a new level of achievement for McCarthy.

The Oscar nomination is not her first (she received a Best Supporting nod for Bridesmaids in 2012), but there’s a complexity to her performance here that makes it undeniably special.

Director Heller (The Diary of a Teenage Girl, and currently in production on the Tom Hanks biopic about Mr Rogers) joined McCarthy to discuss the film at a recent AFI event in Hollywood.

On what made Heller want to direct the film: Marielle Heller: I found Lee really refreshing. I feel like we have male [lead] characters who are assholes all the time and we find them to be the most interesting characters, and you never get to see women like that. And so there was something about her I just immediately went, ‘Yeah, we need more women like Lee’. Also, middle-aged women who kind of don’t fit into society’s norms. Childless, lesbian. She didn’t fit into the model of what we make movies about, and so I just thought there was something nice and radical to me about that. It shouldn’t be radical, but it felt really radical. There was something about the fact that her intellect and her work is so much more important than her appearance, that I loved. And that she’s genuinely the smartest person in every room, but no one gives her that credit.

Marielle Heller directs Melissa McCarthy on the set of ‘Can You Ever Forgive Me?’

On how McCarthy heard about the role: Melissa McCarthy: I had a very quick introduction to Lee. I heard about it first from my husband [Ben Falcone]. There was an earlier incarnation of the movie—movies fall apart all the time for a million different reasons—and my husband had a part in it, the part he ended up playing in this one [of a rare book dealer], and that’s how I read it. We read each other’s scripts and talked about it and after I read it I was like, ‘This is incredible, this is so good and why on earth don’t I know who Lee Israel is?’. I was disappointed with myself that I didn’t know about her.

On McCarthy’s response to the character as written: MM: I had a very strong reaction. I was at page twenty and I thought, ‘Oh I like her so much’. And then I had to stop and I went back through the first twenty pages, because I couldn’t figure out why. It was intangible. There’s no moment, there’s no speech. I started to fall in love with her, and that to me was the most exciting thing. I find her intriguing, challenging. I loved that she didn’t need someone else to validate who she was. Even when she is difficult, which is often. I respected her.

It also just made me think about being so talented at something and being told at 52, ‘You know, we don’t need you to do that anymore. You’re now obsolete.’ So as someone gets better and better and more experienced, the average thing is ‘Now you’re obsolete’. I just found that whole way of thinking so insane, that I thought, what would any of us do if we were pushed to that point? So the more she kind of conned and grifted, I found myself rooting for her.

On how she got into Lee’s headspace: MM: I read everything she wrote. I also listened to stories from people who actually knew Lee, and then there is a bit of conjuring. You just wanna do right by the people. The costume and wardrobe department were very important because I had no interest in looking like myself. I think it’s really freeing to get to walk around in other people’s shoes and I think that allows you to be braver and more vulnerable. It’s a very fantastic part of what I do, I think you get to be steadier or more empowered because it’s happening through someone else. It takes the pressure off of me.

I have a real fascination in what drives us all. What our quirks are. I don’t know any perfect woman, I don’t know how to play pleasant or blonde. Give me a real character like Lee who’s complicated and irritating and smart and all these things that when I look at someone, it makes you kinda fall in love with them. All my friends are nuts. They always need a qualifier like, ‘They’re actually great, just get to know them’. That’s why we love people. You don’t love people because they’re pleasant, you love them because they’ll talk too much or say the wrong thing, but they’ll show up at 3 o’clock when you don’t feel well and help you. It’s so rare that you get to play a woman like that. Those are the women that I know. They’re complicated and challenging.

On Jack and Lee’s friendship: MM: They were both so lonely. And it’s such a universal thing. I don’t know a human that hasn’t felt incredibly lonely and undervalued. We are all so lonely. I think everyone can feel that tether to those characters, and it’s why even though they shouldn’t have been friends, they needed each other.

On Melissa and Richard’s friendship: MH: Those two loved each other from the day they met in a way that was like, every director’s dream, because they showed up and immediately got along. Richard would show up on days he wasn’t filming and take Melissa to lunch. It was amazing because they were truly becoming friends on this movie and when we got to the scene where they were essentially breaking up, they had to hug each other afterwards because it was so painful.

On working alongside Richard E. Grant: MM: He’s so completely present as a person, and that certainly translates into his beautiful acting because he is 1,000% there. If you go this way, he goes with you. There’s just an ease to it. And we do sometimes these incredibly difficult scenes that were just heartbreaking, and then when we finished, we’d both become very silly and throwaway, which is really important sometimes when you’re shooting something that’s difficult. And then we’d go right back to it. I had such an ease working with him. I think we work in a very similar way. I think we fully commit, right or wrong, and trusted that Marielle is at the helm of a ship and she did it with complete authority and a complete lightness at the same time.

Richard E. Grant and Melissa McCarthy in ‘Can You Ever Forgive Me?’

On the benefits of having a female director: MM: Hands down it was fantastic. And I’ve been very fortunate to work a lot of wonderful male directors [who] also have a quote-unquote ‘feminine side’, my husband, Paul Feig, Ted Melfi, they all have a capacity to listen and be collaborative. I think with Mari, what always sticks in my head, there was never a moment where you didn’t feel completely guided. And the crew, you could see it, really felt like they were all part of this, we knew exactly what Mari’s vision is. And working in this kind of time frame, you need that cohesiveness, and you need someone—I think it’s more likely to happen with a female director—you need someone to do the right thing for the movie, instead of proving that they’re right. And there’s a big difference there. And when you get someone like Mari doing that, the world just falls into place.

On approaching a dramatic role versus a comedic role: MM: There’s absolutely no difference to me. If it’s comedy or drama, it doesn’t change for me at all, I think if it’s a straight comedy, I still try to find, or I’m least very interested in, like, what’s tragic about that person. Like, if they’re so overly pleasant and happy, why? What pain are they hiding? So I do the same thing, if someone’s really aggressive, what’s behind that? So I change nothing. Maybe you’re supposed to, but I don’t.

‘Can You Ever Forgive Me?’ is currently available on all the major streaming services. Reporting by West Coast Editor Dominic Corry.

#can you ever forgive me #melissa mccarthy #marielle heller #directed by women #female directors #richard e. grant #lee israel #biopic #new york #julius #letterboxd

6 notes · View notes

statetalks · 3 years ago

Text

How Did President Clinton’s Impeachment Affect Republicans

Overview: Clintons International Policy

Watch: Republicans Demand More Impeachment Witnesses, When Clinton Was On Trial | MSNBC

For decades, the contours of the Cold War had largely determined U.S. action abroad. Strategists saw each coup, revolution, and civil war as part of the larger struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union. With the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, however, President Clinton was faced with international crises in the Middle East, the Balkans, Africa, and Haiti, on their own terms. He envisioned a post-Cold War role in which the United States used its overwhelming military superiority, and its influence as global police, to preserve the peace. This foreign policy strategy had both success and failure.

The Impeachment Was Delayed Due To Air Strikes Against Iraq

An impeachment vote was due for December 17 but was abruptly canceled after the U.S. launched airstrikes against Saddam Husseins Iraq. On December 19, the House approved two articles of impeachment against Clinton. The minor conflict with Iraq began due to Husseins reluctance to comply with United Nations weapons inspectors. It was known as Operation Desert Fox. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said in response to allegations that the bombing was a distraction, I dont think were pretending that we can get everything, so this is I think we are being very honest about what our ability is. We are lessening, degrading his ability to use this. The weapons of mass destruction are the threat of the future.

A similar allegation surrounded Clintons bombing of terrorist bases in Sudan and Afghanistan in August 1998, around the time the president was due to appear before a grand jury. That operation was known as Infinite Reach.

But News Of Clinton’s Affair With Lewinsky Got Out

In July 1998, Clinton testified over the allegations that he’d committed perjury by lying about his affair with Lewinsky. And by August, he’d admitted to having an affair with Lewinsky.

Lewinsky had also recorded conversations of her talking about the affair, and the transcripts of the conversation went public in October 1998.

Read Also: Who Supported The Republicans In The Spanish Civil War

Comparing Impeachments Across Us History

Note: This lesson is

Note: This lesson is adapted from materials contained in the Bill of Rights Institutes forthcoming U.S. History resource entitled Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness: A History of the American Experiment. This free online resource covers 1491 to the present day, is aligned to the College Boards AP U.S. history framework, and will be available for use in the 2020 school year. To learn more and to receive updates, visit our website. Lesson Objectives:

Students will review the Founders intentions for the practice of impeachment using excerpts from Madisons Notes on the Debates of the Federal Convention;and the Constitution.

Students will compare the contexts for the impeachment proceedings of Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump.

Students will evaluate the significance of the process of impeachment as a component of the system of checks and balances.

Resources:

Handout A: The Constitutional Provisions on Impeachment

Handout B: Impeachment in U.S. History

The president receives gifts from a foreign power without the approval of Congress. The president orders detention of a racial or ethnic group for national security reasons. The president refuses to enforce laws passed by Congress. The president participates in a conspiracy to conceal evidence that his associates have committed a burglary. In a sexual harassment lawsuit, the president lies under oath.

On February 5 The Senate Acquitted Trump On Both Charges

For the abuse of power charge, 48 senators voted to convict Trump, including Republican Sen. Mitt Romney, who was the first senator to ever vote for the removal of a president in their own party. The other 52 Republican senators voted to acquit him.

“Corrupting an election to keep oneself in office is perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of one’s oath of office that I can imagine,” Romney said in a speech announcing his decision.

Romney joined the Republicans to vote to acquit in the obstruction of Congress charge, which passed on a 53-47 vote.

Don’t Miss: What News Channel Do Republicans Watch

Impeachment And Public Opinion: Three Key Indicators To Watch

There have been two serious efforts in the past half-century to impeach and remove a U.S. president from office. The first, which ended in 1974, led to the resignation of its targetPresident Richard Nixon. The second, which began in 1998 against President Bill Clinton, led to the resignation of the man who had orchestrated the effortHouse Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Now we have entered the early phase of a third impeachment and removal effort, this time directed against President Donald Trump. Will it lead to triumph or disaster for Democrats? Will it lead to the end of Mr. Trumps presidency or pave the way for his reelection? We do not know. But history gives us clues about what to watch for along the way.

First, a presidents standing with the American people as the impeachment inquiry proceeds makes a big difference. As the Watergate hearings unfolded in the summer of 1973, soon followed by the infamous Saturday night massacre in the fall, President Nixons job approval fell steadily from 50% in the late spring of 1973 to just 24% at the beginning of 1974. During the next eight months, culminating in Mr. Nixons resignation, it barely budged. In short, Nixon was gravely damaged politically long before the House of Representatives voted to impeach him on three counts in July.

What Were The Consequences

According to some accounts, Johnson wept at the news of his acquittal, vowing to devote himself to restoring his reputation.

It didn’t work.

He served out the rest of his presidential term, but his final months in office were beset with the same power struggles that warped his tenure prior to impeachment.

And in 1869, Democrats lost the White House to Republican candidate General Ulysses S Grant, who allowed his party’s plan for Radical Reconstruction to continue.

And buying Alaska in 1867 for a cool $7.2m.

Johnson was also one of the poorest presidents. He never went to school.

Recommended Reading: Who’s Winning The Democrats Or The Republicans

From The Washington Post Archive

President Bill Clinton was impeached on Dec. 19, 1998.

Over what? Clinton was impeached for lying under oath and obstructing justice to cover up an Oval Office affair with Monica Lewinsky, an intern. Clintons affair and its cover-up was investigated as part of a four-year probe led by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr.

Here is complete coverage of Clintons impeachment from The Washington Post archive.

The House of Representatives impeached the president of the United States yesterday for only the second time in American history, charging William Jefferson Clinton with high crimes and misdemeanors for lying under oath and obstructing justice to cover up an Oval Office affair with a young intern.

At 1:25 p.m. on a day of constitutional drama and personal trauma, the Republican-led House voted 228 to 206 largely along party lines to approve the first article of impeachment accusing the Democratic president of perjury before a grand jury. Within the hour, lawmakers went on to pass another article alleging he tampered with witnesses and helped hide evidence, but rejected two other articles on perjury and abuse of power.

Emerging from the Oval Office with first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton on his arm and Vice President Gore at his side, the president stood with his Democratic defenders and decried the partisan vote against him. Brushing aside calls for resignation, Clinton vowed to serve “until the last hour of the last day of my term.”

The Clinton Impeachment And Its Fallout

House of Representatives impeached US President Donald Trump

America was captivated by the story, especially;as it played out in;televised hearings, often with graphic detail

By Russell Riley

The next seven months found the American public consumed by the Lewinsky affair, following every nuance of the investigation by Starr and debating the merits of the case. Nothing like this had so captured the attention of the American public since Watergate and Nixon’s resignation from office. Startling revelations came out, including taped interviews in which Lewinsky described details of the affair as well as a dress that contained samples of the President’s DNA. On August 17, 1998, following his testimony before a federal grand jury on the matter, Clinton acknowledged in a televised address to the nation his “inappropriate” conduct with Lewinsky and admitted that he had misled the nation and embarrassed his family. But he did not admit to having lied, having instructed anyone else to lie, or orchestrating a cover-up involving anyone else.

Impeachment Fallout

In the process of pursuing an impeachment of the president, the Republicans had seriously overplayed their hand. An indication of what lay ahead came when the party actually lost five seats in the House while gaining no Senate seats in the November 1998 elections conducted just prior to the impeachment vote. Traditionally, the opposition party registers significant gains in the off-year elections of a President’s second term, and so the Republican loss was virtually unprecedented.

Recommended Reading: What Are The Main Differences Between Democrats And Republicans

Republican Who ‘wanted To Destroy’ Bill Clinton During 1998 Impeachment Has Regrets

A former Republican congressman who led the charge to impeach Bill Clinton in 1998 said he paid a visit to the former Democratic president a few years ago to ask forgiveness for his role in the affair.

I hated Bill Clinton, wanted to destroy him, asked to be on Judiciary Committee so that I could impeach him, said Bob Inglis, R-S.C., in an interview on The Long Game, a Yahoo News podcast.

Inglis visited Clinton a few years ago at the former presidents office in Harlem, he said, in what he described as a very interesting meeting. Inglis informed Clinton that he joined the Judiciary Committee as soon as he was elected to Congress in 1992, the same year Clinton was elected president, with the intent of impeaching him.

I hated you so much that I wanted to impeach you, Inglis told Clinton.

Clinton sort of flinched, Inglis said. I said, Yeah, I know you hadnt done anything yet, but so much did I hate you.

I told him that it wasnt good for my soul, it wasnt good for the country, for me to have that level of animosity toward him, Inglis said. He didnt say the words that you would hope to hear, which is, Youre forgiven. But in every way he has expressed that to me. Hes been very kind to accept the apology for sure.

Inglis left his seat in Congress in 1998, the same year the Republican-controlled House impeached Clinton, to run for the U.S. Senate. He narrowly lost to Democratic incumbent Sen. Fritz Hollings, who had held the seat since 1966.

_____

Clinton Was Popular Impeachment Wasnt

By the time the House of Representatives voted to open an impeachment inquiry against Clinton in October 1998, the allegations against the president had been in the news for months. Clinton had publicly confessed to the affair in August, and in mid-September, Starr delivered his lengthy and salacious report which included a case for impeaching Clinton to Congress.

At that moment, support for impeachment seemed like it might be on the upswing. A Gallup poll conducted in mid-October, just after the House voted to formally open an impeachment inquiry, found that 48 percent of the public supported the decision to hold hearings. But as the chart below shows, support for impeachment didnt continue to tick upward. In mid-December, when the House voted to impeach Clinton on two counts of perjury and obstruction of justice, just about 40 percent of the public continued to think he should be impeached and the same was true in February, when the Senate voted to acquit him.

There were other signs, too, that the public didnt think Clinton should be removed from office. Republicans efforts to impeach Clinton appeared to be dramatically backfiring in real time after running a slew of ads attacking Clinton in the lead-up to the midterms, they lost seats and House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who had been one of Clintons loudest critics, resigned the speakership.

Recommended Reading: How Often Does Joe Manchin Vote With Republicans

What Did He Do

In the shadow of the Civil War, President Andrew Johnson – a Democrat – sparred constantly with the Republican-held Congress over how to rebuild the defeated US South.

The “Radical Republicans” of this period pushed for legislation to punish former Confederate leaders and protect the rights of freed slaves. Johnson used his presidential veto to block the Republican efforts at every turn.

In March, Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act, crafted to curtail the president’s ability to fire members of his cabinet without approval from the Senate. In defiance, Johnson suspended a cabinet member and political rival, Edwin Stanton, while Congress was in recess.

If today’s proceedings seem like a lot of political theatrics, it is in keeping with impeachment tradition: Stanton responded to his firing by locking himself in his office and refusing to leave.

Stanton’s removal proved to be the final straw – the House Republicans rushed to draft 11 articles of impeachment.

After a vote along party lines the articles were presented to the Senate, where he was acquitted, but only just. It was a single vote short of the two-thirds majority needed to convict.

Clinton Impeachment Process Began On October 5 1998

In September 1998, the House Judiciary Committee announced that an impeachment resolution would be brought to a vote on October 5. On that day, the committee voted 21-16 to move forward with a full impeachment inquiry. At the time, the New York Times described it as a party-line vote, with Democrats voting in favor of Clinton and Republicans voting in favor of impeachment.

You May Like: How Did The Republicans Take Control Of Congress

Bill Clinton Impeachment: 5 Fast Facts You Need To Know

Getty

Bill Clintons impeachment process lasted for four months between 1998 and 1999. Clinton, the 42nd president of the United States, was accused of lying under oath and of obstruction of justice in relation to a sexual harassment lawsuit that had been brought by Paula Jones. That lawsuit led to an independent inquiry from Counsel Ken Starr for the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee.

On September 24, 2019, the House Democrats announced that they had opened an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in announcing the beginning of the inquiry, No one is above the law.

Heres what you need to know:

The Criminal Justice System

The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 was an Act of Congress dealing with crime and law enforcement. It is the largest crime bill in the history of the United States, and consisted of 356 pages that provided for 100,000 new police officers, $9.7 billion in funding for prisons, and $6.1 billion in funding for prevention programs, which were designed with significant input from experienced police officers. Sponsored by Representative Jack Brooks of Texas, the bill was originally written by Senator Joe Biden of Delaware, and then was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Clinton.

Following the 101 California Street shooting, the 1993 Waco Siege, and other high-profile instances of violent crime, the Act expanded federal law in several ways. One of the most noted sections was the Federal Assault Weapons Ban. Other parts of the Act provided for a greatly expanded federal death penalty, new classes of individuals banned from possessing firearms, the elimination of higher education for inmates, and a variety of new crimes defined in statutes relating to immigration law, hate crimes, sex crimes, and gang-related crime. The bill also required states to establish registries for sexual offenders by September 1997.

Read Also: Why Is The Media Against Republicans

Impeachment By House Of Representatives

On December 11, 1998, the House Judiciary Committee agreed to send three articles of impeachment to the full House for consideration. The vote on two articles, grand juryperjury and obstruction of justice, was 2117, both along party lines. On the third, perjury in the Paula Jones case, the committee voted 2018, with Republican Lindsey Graham joining with Democrats, in order to give President Clinton “the legal benefit of the doubt”. The next day, December 12, the committee agreed to send a fourth and final article, for abuse of power, to the full House by a 2117 vote, again, along party lines.

Although proceedings were delayed due to the bombing of Iraq, on the passage of H. Res. 611, Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives on December 19, 1998, on grounds of perjury to a grand jury and obstruction of justice . The two other articles were rejected, the count of perjury in the Jones case and abuse of power . Clinton thus became the second U.S. president to be impeached; the first, Andrew Johnson, was impeached in 1868. The only other previous U.S. president to be the subject of formal House impeachment proceedings was Richard Nixon in 197374. The Judiciary Committee agreed to a resolution containing three articles of impeachment in July 1974, but Nixon resigned from office soon thereafter, before the House took up the resolution.

The Republican Impeachment Push

Rep. Biggs’ advice to Republicans battling impeachment

Republicans distilled those down into four articles of impeachment. Two of them for perjury in depositions other than the grand jury and for obstructing Congress didnt make it out of the House of Representatives. But Clinton was impeached for perjury after he lied to the grand jury in the Jones case, and also for obstruction of justice.

Clinton wasnt the only one whose private failings were revealed. Rep. Bob Livingston, a Republican who supported impeachment and was in line to be speaker of the House, abruptly withdrew his name from running for that leadership position and admitted his own infidelity. He had been snared by a public call from Larry Flynt, publisher of the pornographic Hustler magazine, for proof of sexual hypocrisy.

The Senate trial of Clinton was a spectacle that featured videotaped testimony from Lewinsky and the embarrassing questions from Clintons grand jury testimony played back on the Senate floor.

The entire scandal consumed the country for a year. News of the affair leaked into the press in January of 1998. Clinton talked to a grand jury about the meaning of the word is in August. Starr released his infamous report with its prurient details in September. The House voted to impeach in December. Clintons trial in the Senate took place in February 1999.

Read Also: What Republicans Are Voting Against Trump

source https://www.patriotsnet.com/how-did-president-clintons-impeachment-affect-republicans/

0 notes

patriotsnet · 3 years ago

Text

How Did President Clinton's Impeachment Affect Republicans

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/how-did-president-clintons-impeachment-affect-republicans/

How Did President Clinton's Impeachment Affect Republicans

Overview: Clintons International Policy

Watch: Republicans Demand More Impeachment Witnesses, When Clinton Was On Trial | MSNBC

The Impeachment Was Delayed Due To Air Strikes Against Iraq

But News Of Clinton’s Affair With Lewinsky Got Out

In July 1998, Clinton testified over the allegations that he’d committed perjury by lying about his affair with Lewinsky. And by August, he’d admitted to having an affair with Lewinsky.

Lewinsky had also recorded conversations of her talking about the affair, and the transcripts of the conversation went public in October 1998.

Read Also: Who Supported The Republicans In The Spanish Civil War

Comparing Impeachments Across Us History

Note: This lesson is

Students will review the Founders intentions for the practice of impeachment using excerpts from Madisons Notes on the Debates of the Federal Convention;and the Constitution.

Students will compare the contexts for the impeachment proceedings of Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump.

Students will evaluate the significance of the process of impeachment as a component of the system of checks and balances.

Resources:

Handout A: The Constitutional Provisions on Impeachment

Handout B: Impeachment in U.S. History

The president receives gifts from a foreign power without the approval of Congress.

The president orders detention of a racial or ethnic group for national security reasons.

The president refuses to enforce laws passed by Congress.

The president participates in a conspiracy to conceal evidence that his associates have committed a burglary.

In a sexual harassment lawsuit, the president lies under oath.

On February 5 The Senate Acquitted Trump On Both Charges

Romney joined the Republicans to vote to acquit in the obstruction of Congress charge, which passed on a 53-47 vote.

Don’t Miss: What News Channel Do Republicans Watch

Impeachment And Public Opinion: Three Key Indicators To Watch

What Were The Consequences

According to some accounts, Johnson wept at the news of his acquittal, vowing to devote himself to restoring his reputation.

It didn’t work.

He served out the rest of his presidential term, but his final months in office were beset with the same power struggles that warped his tenure prior to impeachment.

And in 1869, Democrats lost the White House to Republican candidate General Ulysses S Grant, who allowed his party’s plan for Radical Reconstruction to continue.

And buying Alaska in 1867 for a cool $7.2m.

Johnson was also one of the poorest presidents. He never went to school.

Recommended Reading: Who’s Winning The Democrats Or The Republicans

From The Washington Post Archive

President Bill Clinton was impeached on Dec. 19, 1998.

Here is complete coverage of Clintons impeachment from The Washington Post archive.

The Clinton Impeachment And Its Fallout

House of Representatives impeached US President Donald Trump

America was captivated by the story, especially;as it played out in;televised hearings, often with graphic detail

By Russell Riley

Impeachment Fallout

Recommended Reading: What Are The Main Differences Between Democrats And Republicans

Republican Who ‘wanted To Destroy’ Bill Clinton During 1998 Impeachment Has Regrets

I hated Bill Clinton, wanted to destroy him, asked to be on Judiciary Committee so that I could impeach him, said Bob Inglis, R-S.C., in an interview on The Long Game, a Yahoo News podcast.

I hated you so much that I wanted to impeach you, Inglis told Clinton.

Clinton sort of flinched, Inglis said. I said, Yeah, I know you hadnt done anything yet, but so much did I hate you.

_____

Clinton Was Popular Impeachment Wasnt

Recommended Reading: How Often Does Joe Manchin Vote With Republicans

What Did He Do

In the shadow of the Civil War, President Andrew Johnson – a Democrat – sparred constantly with the Republican-held Congress over how to rebuild the defeated US South.

If today’s proceedings seem like a lot of political theatrics, it is in keeping with impeachment tradition: Stanton responded to his firing by locking himself in his office and refusing to leave.

Stanton’s removal proved to be the final straw – the House Republicans rushed to draft 11 articles of impeachment.

After a vote along party lines the articles were presented to the Senate, where he was acquitted, but only just. It was a single vote short of the two-thirds majority needed to convict.

Clinton Impeachment Process Began On October 5 1998

You May Like: How Did The Republicans Take Control Of Congress

Bill Clinton Impeachment: 5 Fast Facts You Need To Know

Getty

Heres what you need to know:

The Criminal Justice System

Read Also: Why Is The Media Against Republicans

Impeachment By House Of Representatives

The Republican Impeachment Push

Rep. Biggs’ advice to Republicans battling impeachment

The Senate trial of Clinton was a spectacle that featured videotaped testimony from Lewinsky and the embarrassing questions from Clintons grand jury testimony played back on the Senate floor.

Read Also: What Republicans Are Voting Against Trump

0 notes

aion-rsa · 4 years ago

Text

Malcolm & Marie and the Rise of Quarantine Filmmaking in COVID

https://ift.tt/3p29Il0

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, a time when accomplishing even the simplest tasks had taken on the burden of the impossible, Netflix’s “secret pandemic movie,” Malcolm & Marie, became a way to process a year of stalled projects and compromised creative control. A Deadline feature retraced how Zendaya, one half of the two-hander’s cast, reached out to Euphoria creator Sam Levinson with the plea for a self-contained project when COVID delayed the HBO drama’s new season.

As Levinson rushed to write a script based loosely on his own experiences of failing to thank his wife at a movie premiere, he and Zendaya brought on Tenet star John David Washington for a movie at the complete opposite end of the spectrum from Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster; the Euphoria crew, in a COVID bubble in California, were able to keep working for a few weeks in June 2020 when so many others were laid off. What they created was a passionate, claustrophobic black-and-white relationship drama that has the rare distinction of being created during a pandemic while its story still reflects life before the virus.

On its own, Malcolm & Marie falls somewhat short of Oscar bait expectations. However, the film takes on greater nuance when considered in the context of the growing subgenre of post-lockdown movies. While this may ultimately prove to be a short-lived category of filmmaking, it already includes four incredibly varied films. Even if they all started with the same universal constraints—COVID tests and social distancing, small casts instead of big—they make for radically different statements about human connection (either during the pandemic or not), futility, about purpose.

In fact, you can plot these four movies over the axes of ignoring COVID versus acknowledging COVID in their actual plots, and closeness versus distance in the execution of said stories.

Malcolm & Marie

Ignoring the Virus and Embracing the Closeness of Quarantine

What’s immediately ironic about Malcolm & Marie is that its setting is anathema to our current situation: The eponymous couple come home from a movie premiere (remember those?), where he (Washington) is being celebrated as a rising Hollywood talent, and she (Zendaya)—an amateur actress, a recovering drug addict, definitely not a model—has been reduced merely to his loyal girlfriend. Their feature film-length fight might take place within the bounds of their spacious rented house, but every source of conflict and sticking point exists out in a non-pandemic world.

At the same time, the viewer is tangentially aware of the real-world limitations in filming this movie, i.e. the need to stay in one setting with only two players. The inability to leave that house–except for Marie’s desperate little steps of leaning out the window to smoke or of that ambiguous ending–is authentic to anyone who has been stuck in a relationship-defining fight: There are no shortcuts, no escapes; the only option is to see it through to the ugly end, only to watch the toxic cycle start all over again.

The actors’ close attention and shaping of their roles lends Malcolm and Marie’s relationship real intimacy, but it also contributes to the sheer exhaustion of watching these young lovers metaphorically eat their own tails without getting anywhere. Despite Malcolm’s appalling outbursts and Marie’s stunning monologues, nothing really changes; even his quiet “I’m sorry” at the end is a puny concession after all that emotional effort.

In fact, this ouroboros feels most like a reflection of the endlessly unfruitful fights that many a couple has experienced since lockdown began.

Locked Down

Acknowledging the Virus and Embracing the Closeness of Quarantine

By contrast, Mr. & Mrs. Smith director Doug Liman’s Locked Down casts its marquee stars (Anne Hathaway and Chiwetel Ejiofor) as ordinary people in the extraordinary circumstances of early 2020, when a pandemic that people still didn’t fully understand reshaped their home into a workspace, and work into a prison rather than an outlet. Steven Knight’s script—written in July 2020, on a dare—carries so many authentic field notes that it’s almost difficult to watch. You feel it from Zoom fatigue, with wine o’clock creeping up into the AM, to people talking over one another on video calls where they’re ostensibly checking in on each other.

Liman also employed the same amusing device used by the Parks and Recreation COVID special, in which real-life couples had to explain why their characters happened to be inhabiting the same physical space during this era of highly negotiating personal contact. In Locked Down, it’s Psych star Dulé Hill and his costar (and real-life wife) Jazmyn Simon as the sympathetic American counterparts to Linda (Hathaway) and Paxton (Ejiofor), an American and a Brit who are not holding up well enough in quarantine. (A bevy of cameos, including Mark Gatiss, Mindy Kaling, Ben Kingsley, and more also scratches that itch of wondering what celebrities’ homes might look like.)

Paxton and Linda’s marriage seems to have ended around Christmas 2019, but being stuck in their flat just as the pandemic hit—he’s a driver unable to work while she’s a CEO who has the excruciating duty of firing her “family” of coworkers over Zoom—has beaten their senses of purpose to a pulp. Paxton attempts to make up for that by making the masked grocery runs and trying to connect with his neighbors through shouted evening poetry, but he’s suffering the all-too-familiar depression of the furloughed. Linda isn’t far behind when she finally confronts the soullessness of her corporate job.

When fate delivers the incredible coincidence of Linda overseeing the load-out of a priceless diamond from Harrods—with Paxton assigned to transport the goods—the estranged couple decide to embark on a heist, because truly what else are you going to do during a pandemic? Ultimately, Locked Down does a better job with the romantic dramedy aspect than the heist, yet its use of the iconic London department store is as ambitious as Ocean’s 8 with the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Though there are more twists to the movie’s character studies than the logistics of nicking the diamond, the scenes in which Linda and Paxton stroll through the deserted Harrods food court—which arguably carries just as many culinary treasures—provide that same breathless sense of getting away with something.

Both films were made with unprecedented levels of safety and sacrifice, which regardless of the final products’ quality will always set them apart from pre-COVID entertainment as successes in filmmaking. But then there are the COVID films that have embraced social distancing, building it into a plot point or stylistic device rather than employing movie magic to obscure it.

Host

Acknowledging the Virus and Embracing Social Distancing

Interestingly, one of Levinson’s early pitches to Zendaya was a horror film, although of course they eventually pivoted to relationship drama. Fortunately, another enterprising group of creatives went the horror route, and they managed to fold in a poignant tale of female friendship over digital distances in 2020’s Host.

A British found footage successor to Paranormal Activity told entirely over Zoom, this indie tale has a shockingly reasonable premise: Five girlfriends, bored to tears during lockdown, decide to conduct a séance. (Again, what else are you going to do?) But when sarcastic Jemma (Jemma Moore) fakes a backstory about a suicidal friend and their medium Seylan (Seylan Baxter) mysteriously drops the call, the girls are on their own as a demonic force crosses over into the physical plane… and into each of their flats.

Movies

Upcoming Movies in February 2021: Streaming, VOD, and Theaters

By David Crow

Movies

Jurassic World 3 Photos Released as Production Resumes

By David Crow

In the past year, we’ve all learned that Zoom calls can be awkward, boring, and occasionally revelatory—but this is the first time they’re truly scary. Host utilizes the familiar horror tropes of darkened rooms and whispered panting at the slightest of suspicious noises, but it takes on an utterly disturbing dimension when it’s five young women, in the prime of their lives, are all trapped at home apart from one another—not even that far, as Jemma and séance enthusiast Haley (Haley Bishop) live within walking distance of each other.

In found footage fashion, there are plenty of Paranormal Activity-esque moments of people getting dragged or lifted by otherworldly forces. Kudos to director and co-writer Rob Savage for remotely directing his actors, who had to learn how to do the aforementioned practical effects inside their own homes. But where Host is scariest is when it leans into Zoom technology, from a chilling use of silly facial filters to a sequence that will make you reconsider ever making a custom video background for your future Zooms.

As the demon begins picking them off at random, with the others watching in helpless horror, Jemma’s shift from apathetic nonbeliever to selflessly trying to save Haley is incredibly moving. There’s so much history to this fractured friendship that you’ll be rooting for them to reconcile, even as you realize Host’s final trick: It’s only as long as an unpaid Zoom session.

How It Ends

Ignoring the Virus But Still Embracing Social Distancing

You could make the argument that Daryl Wein and Zoe Lister-Jones’ pre-apocalyptic comedy could be interpreted as taking place during COVID, what with its many comedy stars all acting a conspicuous six or more feet from one another. It’s just that even if that were true, it wouldn’t matter, because there are bigger fish to fry. Specifically, an asteroid en route for Earth, conveniently set to make impact at the end of Liza’s (Lister-Jones) and everyone else’s last day in sunny Los Angeles.

Trying to make it to an end-of-the-world party in LA without her car, which has been stolen, Liza and her younger self (Devs’ Cailee Spaney) wander through the aggressively bright county, populated with other people doing their best to cope. Unlike the other films on this list, How It Ends makes no effort to hide that it was shot with stringent COVID protocols enforcing social distancing: Cameos from the likes of Fred Armisen and Lamorne Morris are shot on different floors of houses while Bradley Whitford is so far removed in his scene that it’s impossible to get him and Lister-Jones in the same shot.

How It Ends is more a series of loosely-connected sketches than a super cohesive narrative, but that’s how the film manages to bring in so many talented stars as kooky strangers whom the two Lizas encounter, from Nick Kroll as the shadiest of drug dealers to Olivia Wilde as Liza’s estranged psychic friend (a scene-stealer) ,to Ayo Edibiri (another absolute delight) as a teacher who decided, hey, why not try her hand at stand-up comedy while she still can? Even with this layer of grim humor, get ready for this movie to spark unexpected pathos in these Decameron-esque encounters between strangers. By leaning into the physical distance between these characters, How It Ends shows how even when faced with the literal apocalypse, humans will still hold themselves apart from one another. While Liza makes peace with a number of key figures from her life, by the time the asteroid is creeping its way to the horizon, she is faced with her most challenging, but also most freeing, task: To accept that it’s okay to just be alone with yourself during a world-changing catastrophe.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

The post Malcolm & Marie and the Rise of Quarantine Filmmaking in COVID appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3rMMkKf

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

0 notes

taiwanpuppetryproudthunderbolt · 5 years ago

Photo

interview 18

(1971)

Dr. Kildare Plays Hamlet

Richard Chamberlain, actor's actor, has finally shaken off the ghost of Dr. Kildare. But now he has another ghost to contend with -Hamlet's daddy. And you know, Richard couldn't be happier.

Birmingham is a grimy British industrial town, famous as the producer of most of the world's bicycles and most of Britain's cars. But famous for culture it isn't. However, it does support one repertory theater, and two years ago they put on a production of Hamlet. And who should be playing the role of Hamlet but an American, and not a Shakespearean actor either, but Richard Chamberlain, the young, blond heartthrob of TV's Dr. Kildare. And he was so good in the part that NBC is putting on a special two-hour Hamlet this winter starring the former M.D.

"Hamlet is the part I wanted almost more than any part I have ever read," Richard said in London, where he now lives most of the year. "When I started rehearsing I was in a state of shock. If the other actors had been beastly, I'd have understood. They'd a right to be upset if someone without their experience came in and played such a role. But amazingly, the company didn't resent me -they were marvelously kind and helpful. By the end, I think I was giving a reasonably straightforward reading. Maybe it's good to come fresh to Shakespeare." This modesty is amazing when you consider that, as Dr. Kildare, Richard was fabulously successful, earned a huge salary and had a fan mail intake which broke all previous studio records.

"I enjoyed that," Richard admitted, "because all actors love to be adored. That's why they do it."

Yet in Birmingham his salary was only $100 a week, and at present, instead of living in his beautiful house high in the hills of Los Angeles, he has a tiny apartment in the middle of London.

"I do miss the sun and I miss my house, which I'm very fond of. It isn't a large house, just two bedrooms, but it's all quite beautiful, with wood beams. And I miss my friends," he admits. But then he adds, "I love England and I love its people. I think the people here live more inside themselves than we do. They're a bit gentler, a bit more vulnerable. But I haven't given up America. My ideal would be to spend half a year in each country."

And how did Richard manage the radical transformation from Dr. Kildare to Hamlet, from being considered a teenage heartthrob to being taken seriously as an actor? "The image of Dr. Kildare is exactly how I was when I began the series," he says. "I was young in years and younger still in personality, and conscious of a certain responsibility to the image -you know, trying to give the picture of a clean-cut, clean-living, rather innocent young American fellow."

"Dr. Kildare was a prig, and it was agony speaking to the press because I always had to say everything was lovely and beautiful and true. As I grew up, he didn't, so I couldn't either, properly, until the series was over."

But after the series was over he really started to take stock of himself and what he wanted from his career. "I had very little experience before Kildare, so I had to do some of my basic training after. Kildare was hard work and marvelous training, but after five years I thought I’d rather exhausted its possibilities for learning."

He began to look around for ways to expand his range as an actor, and not just go on doing television, although he was offered other series and admits that "it would have been very easy to continue on in television." Instead Richard took the difficult step of doing summer stock in the East and Middle West, playing in The Philadelphia Story, Private Lives and West Side Story. He also made his first movie, Petulia, with Julie Christie and George C. Scott. "Petulia was sort of the first step out in a new direction," he recalls. "All relationships in Petulia went wrong because the people weren't able to feel deeply enough to make them work."

But he also recalls that Julie Christie, personally, was a warm and giving person to act with. Richard played her impotent and sadistic husband, a far cry from the priggish Dr. Kildare! After Petulia he made the move to England.

"There were opportunities in other series," Richard admits, "but I felt the need of expanding my experience as an actor and I thought that theater and films were the places to do it. Also, I had heard about England and its repertory companies and that it's easier to get training as an actor there."

So he flew to England. "I seemed to fit in from the start," Richard says. "I’d been here before, staying with friends, and was flattered when one of them told someone, 'We like him because he's a Quiet American.' Well, the first time I came on business I got the part of Ralph in Portrait Of A Lady, and this was a great turning point for me." His taking this part surprised most people since Ralph was not the leading character in the 5-part television serial but the charming, frail cousin of the heroine, who dies before the end of the story. Richard was a great success in it, and he declares, "People saw it and I got offered other things. Before, a lot of people thought I couldn't act."

That television serial started up a whole new romantic image of Richard; no longer as the blond, outdoorsy Dr. Kildare, but as a fragile, sensitive aristocrat. And soon he was being offered the role of Hamlet. "I have had the experience of being very disappointed in relationships, which is inevitably one's own fault -and Hamlet is a disappointed man," he says. "And at times I've felt very vengeful in my life, too, though not to the point of murder. One of my problems in the part is that I'm not actually used to expressing myself in anger. I usually let it pile up and seethe rather than flash out with it as Hamlet does. Mine would come out in some terrible underhanded way."

His success in the repertory version of Hamlet led to the NBC special, which will be the first time Hamlet has ever been played to an audience of around fifty million! And since making that, Richard has also played another Shakespearean role, that of Octavius in the movie Julius Caesar, with Charlton Heston and Sir John Gielgud. He also made the movie The Madwoman Of Chaillot with Katharine Hepburn.

But when I saw Richard in London he had just finished making the movie Tchaikovsky, with the brilliant director Ken Russell, who made Women In Love and several very controversial television dramas.

"To be asked to play Tchaikovsky was easily the biggest challenge of my career," Richard asserts. "He was a man totally involved with himself, a brilliant talent and an unhappy creature."

"Because Tchaikovsky is such an unusual film, one doesn't know the effect it's going to have," Richard continues. "I wonder how it will turn out. I just don't know if I'm any good. It's fascinating -and terrifying- because Ken Russell is so brilliant and you worry about not matching up to his standards. It might be a great, great success and if it is ..."

Does Richard enjoy the thought of becoming a top box-office star all over again, or does he dread the renewed publicity and pressure that that would bring? After all he did say after Kildare, "I had to break loose. That's not to say I didn't enjoy the series or the publicity attached. I'm rather a shy person, but I liked the fame and being noticed. What I'm doing now, though, is much nearer my dreams when I was in college."

College for Richard was Pomona College in California, the state where he was born. His father is a successful manufacturer of furniture, and his elder brother works in the family firm. While Richard was in college he played Blanchley in Shaw's Arms And The Man, and that led to his going to drama school after a two-year hitch in the army. "I was only pursuing acting as a hobby at that time," he confesses. But when he became Dr. Kildare, he began to take the acting profession seriously, particularly as he secretly felt he was not really qualified enough for a leading role.

"Doing Kildare was in fact rather difficult," he smiles. "I think playing a leading man is probably the most difficult for an actor because of making the role interesting. It's easier to play a neurotic or a character role."

Raymond Massey, who also played in the series, has said, "The last two years it began to feel as if it had bogged down -we ran out of diseases." Richard goes on, "It's a waste of time acting in anything but close-ups on TV because that's all TV cares about. Which is a pity because you end up acting from the neck up. In Portrait Of A Lady and Hamlet and Tchaikovsky I have learned much more than I ever learned in school about acting -it couldn't be otherwise. Now I think I have much more freedom as an actor, but I have a long way to go before I am satisfied."

Everybody else who's seen Richard acting lately is more than satisfied however, and Ken Russell, in particular, is known only to work with powerful actors. Richard says the Tchaikovsky role has been one of the hardest for him. "I never worked so hard in my life, weekends and the lot. I was nearly dead with fatigue when we finished. I had no time off at all. But I learned an enormous amount about the making of films."

Obviously, Richard is a very sensitive and introspective actor these days, not at all like the Dr. Kildare image. "I used to do the fresh all-American boy routine because it was easy in America," he laughs. "Here it isn't enough. No one is impressed by the 'Big Star' routine -you have to get down to honest relationships. I like England very much and it always is a great help to get out of context, to uproot yourself and live for a while in a different environment. I found out about myself. We Americans tend to be a bit conformist. In England people are very tolerant of eccentricities and have more respect for personal individuality."

Finding himself seems to have involved living a much less luxurious life, but Richard likes that. "In Los Angeles, especially, there is such opulence of material wealth. It distracts. Encumbered by giant freezers and huge cars, too many things can clutter up your life."

But there is one thing he feels is missing and that is a wife! "Now that I'm past thirty," he confesses, "I am very conscious of time running out. I'd like to get married. I've got a super home in California, but it never looks lived in. It needs a woman. Still, astrologers say it won't happen until I'm thirty-eight or thirty-nine."

And until that time? Well, with this Hamlet, as with every other Hamlet, the play's the thing.

http://www.richard-chamberlain.co.uk/online.htm

0 notes

mdarwin · 5 years ago

Text

’Tis a Gift - Spring 2017

’Tis a Gift

’Tis a gift to be simple, ’tis a gift to be free

’Tis a gift to come down where you want to be

And when you find yourself in the place just right

’Twill be in the valley of love and delight

--Joseph Brackett, 1848

“Hey! Oh my god, it’s so great to see you. How are you? How have you been? You look great!” Tabitha shouted all of this as if through sense memory, and threw her hands up for a hug. Sarah was accustomed to how uncomfortable these questions made her, and steeled herself against Tabitha’s high energy with deliberate, full breathing and a small, consciously fixed smile, just friendly enough to pass without producing a sense of falsehood. She was grateful when the embrace came to an end.

“I’m okay. It’s okay. It’s -- I’m -- things are okay… What have you been up to?”

Tabitha, too, was thrown by the inconvenience of being asked. “Umm…” She stalled with a deep breath and a distracted glance at her phone while Sarah quickly ordered a black-trenta-no-ice.

Sarah took in the Columbus Avenue Starbucks, noticing in small ways that it was one of many settings in which she felt she didn’t quite fit in. It was standardized and digestible, and so were its patrons. Sarah dressed in a normative enough way, if a bit unconcerned with this neighborhood’s value of thinness, and perhaps with a bit more aggression left over from teenage years at Sarah Lawrence than was altogether necessary. Today she was wearing cropped, grey leggings with a soft-black, moth-eaten pullover sweater loose enough to hide the now seventeen pounds of excess belly fat that the waistband of her leggings were cutting into. On her feet were black, flat-soled, cotton mary janes.

By the window sat a very tall, bald man in his seventies at a table with a white tall cup, lid off, and the Times, holding the pages up but falling asleep. A fit blonde with sunglasses kneeled in front of her young son, wiping drips of caramel from the boy’s drink off of his shirt as her own coffee sat, ignored, on the counter. There was a wiry kid in his early twenties whose eyes were glued on Tabitha from above the screen of his gaming laptop, and at the table closest to the restroom was an obese woman in her fifties reading a paperback, making notes both in red pencil on the pages, and under her breath. Sarah felt more confused by her own position in the Starbucks with Tabitha than by the obscure sonder that each customer she laid eyes on might feel the same.

This mid-afternoon meeting with Tabitha was the highlight of Sarah’s social life extending in a few weeks in either direction. She had just come up on the 1 train from her one bedroom on Gramercy Park, which had been passed down to her from her father, Bernard. She had moved into that apartment in September, the day that NASA announced their discovery of water on Mars, and she had spent most of the eight months since going out mostly just to walk Anger, her terrier mix. Sarah felt her psychic floor -- the stability, or, alternatively, the treacherous, shifting instability in the baseline of her thinking -- start to devolve towards a loose netting in her feelings of inadequacy and awareness that spending so much time alone crippled her socially. But Sarah managed to slam her energy at full speed with a thud into radical acceptance: She is only what she is, and she is all that she is. Each moment contains all possibilities, and in its manifestation, is wholly without error. Her psychic floor reformed to a substance both soft and solid, offering the reliance she’d come to depend on of the resolute immovability of own existence, perfect, like all products of reality. She welcomed the relief as her heart rate settled from its brief episode of misbehavior, and she felt the discontentment of the moment before flowing outward from her fingertips, tailbone, and crown, leaving her suspended in reality, and only reality.

This took eight seconds. Then, Tabitha spoke.

“I’m waiting to hear back from this professor whose classes I took a few years ago about a job on a project he’s working on. It’s a documentary on this type of meditation that this woman in Brooklyn teaches, where they do it inside a swimming pool.” Tabitha’s name was called. She picked up the white paper venti from the counter and gave the barista a broad, sweet smile and a “thank you.” That smile shifted back into a straight mouth as she turned to Sarah. “The editing wouldn’t be too tough, but it’s, you know, a real project. It could be a big thing for me. But he keeps saying he doesn’t know, and then, I mean, that won’t pay, so for now I’m doing some editing and design stuff at Mode. You know Mode, right?” She took a tiny sip of her coffee, to gauge its temperature. Sarah nodded. “Mm. So, yeah, Mode is great, but I spend so much time at that office I feel like I haven’t had time to do something like this --” here, Tabitha motioned to the space between Sarah and herself before continuing “ -- in six months. I would rather be putting all of that time into something where I have more creative control.” Sarah got the idea that some of what Tabitha was saying was embarrassing, some was exasperating, and some of it was a humblebrag.

Sarah noticed Tabitha reach into her bag, quickly, twice in a row. “Do you have eggs in baskets right now?” Sarah asked, nodding towards the source of distraction.

“You know it.” Tabitha rolled her eyes. “Kill me.”

The barista called Sarah’s name, and it was he, now, who smiled sweetly, adding a moment of self-conscious eye contact, as they reached towards each other. Sarah catalogued the smile. He had fuzzy hair sticking out a couple of inches from under his cap, and a fleshy, freckled face. He was a moreno with two lip rings and the men’s version of her glasses, the black acrylic in a flatter line across his brow than her subtly angled ones. Sarah was still feeling a bit raw from the onslaught of extroversion since coming inside, but managed to give an economical nod and smile back and allowed the eye contact to linger for a moment, then went to treat her coffee with cream and Splenda.

“Outside, on the bench?” Tabitha asked.

“Yeah, let’s.”

Sarah and Tabitha had gone to Emerson Prep together a few blocks north of this Starbucks. The bench stationed outside had been a favored smoking spot for Emerson students during breaks and after school, but the year that the two girls became close they developed a social authority together, and during afternoons of drama or secrecy would effectively prohibit other students from loitering in the area of the bench, instead using it as a VIP section of 73rd street, inviting only the useful.

They sat down, and Tabitha rearranged a few items in her brown checked Neverfull tote, deliberately placing her phone on top with its screen facing up. The afternoon sun was bright, and the approachable May warmth made Sarah feel carefree.

“Who’s on the docket?” Sarah nodded again to Tabitha’s phone.

“Three major entries to the spreadsheet. One is definitely going to be my husband. That, or I’ll just stab myself in the fucking neck.” Tabitha settled from a mode of unnecessary exuberance into a soft and self-aware fluidity with Sarah, when they sat down on the bench. Their bench. They hadn’t seen each other for a year, but things were starting to feel like they used to.

Sarah noticed that Tabitha had gotten a blowout recently, the dishwater-brown hair that Sarah knew to be quite lank naturally offering Tabitha’s small face a robust frame of volume and waves. Tabitha was wearing a linen shift dress in off-white, which was loose around the neck and in the bust but strategically taut over her midsection -- a luxury Tabitha had always been afforded, but had only discovered three years ago, at 22 -- and she was shod in camel-colored Toms. Tabitha was tiny and groomed; Sarah was lush, syrupy, and spotted. This had worked small miracles in their friendship over the years when it came to dating, but the real difference between the two was that Tabitha’s appetite consisted of a sweet tooth for fleeting ideals, while Sarah seemed to sleep through relationships, rolling over in the dawn throughout the years and squinting to find herself in subsequent, equally comfortable ones.

“What’s the draw with this one?” Sarah asked, reaching into her white canvas tote printed with Well, you better look good doin’ it! for a glasses case and replacing her black frames with larger, tortoiseshell prescription sunglasses. She drew up her right leg on the bench and hugged her knee.

“Just… too charming. Like, criminally charming. The conversation we had in person on the first date might be one of the best I’ve ever had, and the memory of it is… plaguing me.” She drew out these last words with a hint of irony, but Sarah knew how pervasive this condition really was.

“So, is he not present?” Sarah thought that a more realistic question would probably be, is he not interested?

“I mean, it comes in the smallest doses. I’m --” Tabitha jumped because her screen had lit up, then, a moment later, she slumped back in defeat. “Like that. It’s that whole… thing that happens. This time it’s… an aphorism from Poshmark? Torture. Every time an app wants to sell me something, or when it’s some work email alert, or just other texts coming in, I’m convinced it’s going to be him. Because, then, when he does text, I’m fully, balls-out convinced that my life couldn’t possibly be better than it is, and so I’m going wanga-wanga-wanga between these two opposite states, and the rollercoaster feels like I’m taking drugs and it’s not even fun in any way… more just like I’m going to have an actual heart attack. And I know it’s not really even that good to begin with, but my brain doesn’t. My heart doesn’t. I spin out.”

Sarah took a moment to recognize Tabitha’s disconnectedness with her own psychic floor, and to distance herself from it. “What was your last interaction?” she asked, looking down through the clear plastic lid into her coffee. The sight of the friendly beige comforted her, in its reliable promise of small, solitary pleasures.

“I texted him a few days ago.”

“And nothing since?”

“Just my pal, Poshmark.”

“What did you text him?”

Tabitha unlocked her phone and sheepishly handed it to Sarah with the text open.

“So, what you’re actually saying is that you sexted him… at 9 AM… on a Wednesday?”

Tabitha laughed and buried her face in her hand and groaned. “I know… I know.” Then she straightened herself up and shook her head, focusing on Sarah. “But so, okay, distract me from the prison of this pathetic lack of psychological autonomy. Where are you living?”

Sarah poked at her drink with the long, green straw before answering. “My dad’s place.”

“Oh, how is that sweet old coot?”

“Actually, my dad’s gone.”

“What do you mean?”

“Hospice. In New Jersey. His heart’s not good. And… his thinking is going, too.”

“Jesus. Are you okay?”

“You know what? I am.”

“What happened?”

“Well, he is eighty this year. But he got sick a while back, with pneumonia. He wasn’t taking care of himself. He had been really stressed, because of stuff with my brother.”

“Fucking Zev,” Tabitha exhaled passively, shaking her head slowly at the latent memories.

Sarah fidgeted with the buckle on her shoe. “He came back,” she confessed.

“What?” Tabitha shot forward. “What happened?”

“He’s been out of treatment for years,” Sarah said. “I don’t know how long. You know, this place that my parents got to take him, they could only keep him for the maximum sentence he would have gotten here, which is seven years. And even that was legally difficult, I think, because he turned eighteen so soon after he got there. They were, you know⏤” Sarah air-quoted, “‘doing us a favor.’ He came back east, and just showed up one day at my mom’s door in Fort Greene.” Sarah looked up past the awning of the restaurant next door to the left, away from Tabitha. “She… She let him stay.”

“Oh, Sarah… No…”

Sarah felt unsure about going further, remembering all of the responsibility that Tabitha had generously accepted throughout the years of their friendship. Tabitha had been Sarah’s first stringent ally against Zev’s actions⏤the first friend Sarah had even told about what had happened in 1996. Tabitha had criticized Sarah’s parents for their decision to treat what Zev had done as a medical issue instead of a criminal one, quietly sending him to the discreet Irons Center just outside of San Bernardino instead of jail. But formality and convention in the face of such a problem was never what Sarah needed, and the bemoaning and regretting of what had already come to pass hurt more than it helped. Still, Tabitha had always said all of the things that she was supposed to, as a good friend and a good citizen, while holding a restrained resentment for the Katzes. Sarah tolerated all of it, grateful for Tabitha’s tact in skirting around any actual accusations of the risks implied by the strange privacy that Sarah and Zev’s mother, Rachel, had demanded. Bernard had been, at the time, Sarah’s impotent defender, and had devoted his retirement following the divorce to bringing Sarah joy, which often included spoiling Tabitha with attention and support, too.

But Sarah knew Tabitha had wanted to say it: Rachel’s fear and Bernard’s complacency would eventually hurt someone else. She looked up at Tabitha with a slightly broken spirit and said softly, “T… he did it again. Another girl.”

Tabitha’s hand was limp on her phone, its demands on her psyche forgotten, and her whole body deflated. “How -- how old?” Tabitha choked.

“The same. Five.”

Tabitha sat up and studied Sarah closely. After a minute of consideration, she simply asked, “Sarah, are you going to be okay?”

Sarah looked at a spot on the cement a foot away from the bench. Decade-old, blackened gum was attached to the sidewalk in a flattened, near-perfect circle. Surrounding it were smaller specks, and Sarah noticed that they, too, formed near-perfect circles, spiraling out from the gum. “Something happened around then, when he came back home. Well, actually, it wasn’t a thing that happened, per se. It was… all things,” Sarah struggled to explain. She looked at her knee and scratched at a tiny hole in her leggings, avoiding Tabitha’s gaze in apology for how this was going to come out.

“I was at the aquarium and there was just this… this shattering, like the world was glass. And, like, in the glass breaking, all of this new surface area became available. A baby beluga in a tank came at me, in the window where you look at them from. And it scared me, because just a second before, there was nothing there, and then all of a sudden there was this whole whale bouncing its head into the window, right at me.” Sarah looked up sharply at Tabitha, to see how ludicrous she sounded.

Tabitha looked back at her, eyes incredulous, demanding some meaning to the story. Her shoulders were hunched forward, expectant, her mouth hanging open a little bit, as if just punctuation were falling from her lips, the questions themselves not formed.

“And then, there was this dinging. This high-pitched, sweet dinging, coming from some clock, or something. There was a baby in a stroller eating pink ice cream. I felt like the whole world managed to fit inside that clock’s dinging.” Sarah had been practicing how to make this next part clear. She shifted to face Tabitha more fully, and said the words she had rehearsed the day before, with furrowed brow and mounting ferocity. “And it was just like, ‘how can this be?’ How is it that we get to manifest physically? How, through unimaginable unlikelihood, am I so fucking lucky that I get to lay my eyes on this baby and his ice cream?” A deep breath. Sarah checked Tabitha’s face for a reaction, but it was blank. Tabitha’s mouth was closed. She was still hunched, but not forwards. She had shrunk away from the assault of the frenzy that Sarah’s speech was gaining.

“Everything around me started looking so much bigger than it had a few seconds before,” Sarah continued, “but… the shapes had all changed. The baby… he wasn’t necessarily a baby. He was… he was some congregation of matter that did him the service of letting him think and feel, and against all odds, that baby was going to grow, when, really, time is just a -- an accident,” Sarah laughed, then looked away from Tabitha, and started shaking her head back and forth, as if looking to the pieces of this story, like she could reach out and pick up those pieces and hand them to Tabitha. “But in this extreme unlikelihood that we could even be here, why should I be conceptualizing things that aren’t?” Sarah sighed and released some of the physical tension her body had been gaining, and leaned back into the bench. “I got really dizzy. I felt like I might fall, so I went and sat down, and at first I didn’t want to catch any glimpse back at the whale tank, because, you know, it scared me. My heart had jumped so far out of my chest when that whale came at me. But why challenge some less than desirable state? Why question any part of this? It’s unlikely enough that I have the privilege of feeling anything at all, so why play scorekeeper in regards to the quality? The gratitude is almost too much to bear… So I looked back at the whale.

“My dad is dying, T, and the nails in that coffin have busted out of our family into another one. And maybe we’re fucked for having allowed Zev to end up living where the neighbors had kids. But, what, do I spend my time wishing that what was, wasn’t?” Sarah said, looking straight across Columbus. “Since that day at the aquarium, something’s changed. I’ve felt like this congregation of matter that I am has shot in a billion different directions, and the space that that matter travelled through caught all the meaning I had been missing. And I feel so threadbare sometimes, like some rug that’s lived a thousand lives.” Sarah felt like the wind had been knocked out of her, having finally found the words and the audience to say what had been building inside her for so long, and she took breaths so deep that Tabitha could see her chest rise and fall. “There are these open spaces in me -- newly exposed surfaces -- and I’m a sponge… But not for information or experiences in the way that we’re all so intent on valuing them, but for the experiences for their own sake. For the self-perpetuating value of being conscious. I consent that it’s fucked that things are what they are, but how could it be fucked that they are? And they are, aren’t they? They just are.” Sarah let out a small, manic laugh. “I’m here, and every moment is fact, non-negotiable. But… I don’t see it as just the facts. I see it as exquisite.” Sarah looked Tabitha square in the eyes, and with a trembling, desperate smile said, “And how dare we want for anything?”

Sarah and Tabitha agreed to stay in better touch, and made plans for drinks at Sarah’s place for Thursday night. They walked towards Central Park and parted ways at its edge. Tabitha walked from there to the east sixties, where she would dig in her closet for a box full of notebooks that she and Sarah had filled together while at Emerson. She would spend the night looking for clues that Sarah was going to eventually have a breakdown, but all she found was the quick wit, level head, and unending trust that had convinced her, eleven years ago, to commit to this girl with everything she had. She knelt on her floor surrounded by the notebooks for hours, then went to bed early, accidentally leaving her phone unplugged in the kitchen overnight.

When Tabitha left, Sarah took the C from 72nd to 23rd listening to Geggy Tah on her headphones, then walked east on 21st street to the ambient orchestra of passing voices, menus being recited in the outdoor sections of Park Avenue cafés, and a piano being played determinedly, with consternation, from the open window of a brownstone. The sun twinkled through the trees in Gramercy Park as Sarah walked slowly along its fence, dragging her fingers on the black, rusty bars of the outer perimeter. Inside the park, twin boys in uniforms with huge, light brown afros sat with an iPhone and shouted corrections to each other about a video game, and a young mother rocked a large stroller absentmindedly while reading what looked to Sarah like Hesse’s Siddhartha, but she was sitting too far into the park for Sarah to tell for sure. A tall woman with long locks chased a giggling girl with straight blonde hair in circles, singing “there’s a rat in the kitchen/what you gonna do?/I’m gonna GET that rat/that’s what I’m gonna do!” in a deep Bahamian accent.

Sarah remembered, for one of only a few times in her adulthood, how Bernard used to sing to her while they walked around the city, when she was too small to keep up with him. He sung so that she would spin and dance, turning their pace into a game. Flooded suddenly with the memory of one of the few tunes he could get out in his unsure tenor, Sarah realized why he had chosen it.

“’Tis a gift to be simple, ’tis a gift to be free,” Bernard had sung, and Sarah would let go of his hand and fix her eyes on her own feet as they stepped in trepidatious care to avoid tripping. “’Tis a gift to come down where you want to be.” In size 13 patent mary janes and ankle socks with the frills turned down, she found her footing and took bigger, circular leaps. “And when we find ourselves in a place just right/’twill be in the valley of love and delight.” Here, Sarah would look straight up towards Bernard because the rhythm of the song shifted. It was her favorite part. “When true simplicity is gained/to bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed/to turn and to turn will be our delight,” and Sarah saw the sun through the trees above her and the shoes on her feet below her, and it was the space between the two which was hers, “for by turning and turning we come out right.”

0 notes

theinquisitivej · 7 years ago

Text

‘Baby Driver’ - A Movie Review

‘Baby Driver’ is the latest film from director Edgar Wright, who is most known for the Cornetto Trilogy, which includes ‘Shaun of the Dead’, ‘Hot Fuzz’, and ‘The World’s End’ (the latter two being some of my all-time favourite films). Aside from that, he is also responsible for the classic British comedy series ‘Spaced’, and ‘Scott Pilgrim vs. the World’, which, depending on your disposition, will either sell you on his directing style, or give you something to hold against him. The most recent film he was involved in was ‘Ant-Man’, which he was set to direct until he decided to leave the project because he felt he didn’t have as much control over the writing as he would have liked. I’m always keen for people and companies from different artistic spheres to collaborate and produce exciting new projects. As such, it is sad when a studio like Marvel, which has done a fantastic job organising one of the strongest film series in mainstream cinema, featuring consistent heart and a diverse range of creative talent, runs one film in a manner that doesn’t gel with the work style of someone I respect as much as Edgar Wright. However, this isn’t enough to sour my opinion of either party, or to make me believe that what they went on to produce was significantly compromised. ‘Ant-Man’ is one of the most fun Marvel movies for me to watch, and it has so much more heart and sincerity than you might expect from a movie with a troubled development. And if ‘Baby Driver’ is any indication of Edgar Wright’s creative passion and his drive to keep on making unique movies in his own masterful style, then I’d say he’s doing very well for himself.

The film is similar to the 2011 film ‘Drive’, in that it follows a getaway driver with a withdrawn personality who starts to open up when they bond with someone, only for their work, which they previously had some level of control over, to wind up catching up with them and boiling over. That may sound like an unfair reduction, but ‘Drive’ is an intense film dripping with atmosphere and engaging style, so when I say ‘Baby Driver’ is like this film, but with a twist that injects it with Edgar Wright’s own approach, I mean that as high praise. Although ‘Drive’ wasn’t lacklustre in this department, what distinguishes ‘Baby Driver’ from its comparative counterpart is its emphasis on sound.

Sound and music are both very important to Baby, the getaway driver and titular character of this film. You discover why Baby listens to music for what appears to be every hour of the day, but even before we are given this explanation, the film’s song selection and truly exceptional editing presents the settings as if they are viewed from Baby’s perspective, making for a world that is seemingly shaped by music. Even when there is no music, or we cannot hear it, the film’s sounds have a noticeably deliberate quality to them, like a rhythmic beat. When a film presents the audience with constant noise, it can come across as an obnoxious, uncontrolled cacophony. It’s clear from the word go that this is not the case with ‘Baby Driver’. The film opens with two jaw-dropping sequences that display two different styles of editing, each one being implemented perfectly. One sequence will cut to different camera angles that move smoothly as they dance with Baby and his music, before cutting to a shot that displays an action that is appropriately synchronised to the music or the lyrics. The other sequence will use an extended shot to show an expansive environment which Baby moves through with grace and fluidity while simultaneously stumbling into things as they come his way, demonstrating how this character almost literally navigates this world through his music. The film is filled with outstanding technical accomplishments that serve a clear purpose of expanding upon its characters through every formal tool the movie has available. It’s the best kind of filmmaking, and ‘Baby Driver’ will stay on my list of examples of how to use sound in film to masterful effect for a very long time.

While ‘Baby Driver’ features none of the usual suspects of the cast of a typical Edgar Wright film (at least that I was aware of on a first viewing), the film is certainly not the weaker for it. A lot of Baby’s characterisation may be accomplished through the film’s formal features, but Ansel Elgort is definitely putting the effort in to deliver a performance that carries across Baby’s charismatic energy, as well as his unique vulnerabilities. Lily James (you may know her as Disney’s live-action Cinderella) similarly moves and acts in a way that sells the passion that her character, Debora, has for songs. She is a sweet compliment to Baby’s character, but James manages to play Debora as being more than the support role through her deft mixing of fear and brave resolve once she gets involved in some tense situations, which I feel gives the character a real strength. Kevin Spacey plays the mastermind of these heists with a snappy authority which is somehow mixed with a down-to-earth sarcasm. As you would expect, Spacey pulls this off in a tremendously watchable way. Jamie Foxx, Jon Hamm, and Eiza González play the different members of the heist crew Baby is involved with, and they all do a great job capturing the distinctive quirks that make each character unsettling in their own unique way. It’s appropriate that the cast is so radically different from who you would expect to see in a Cornetto Trilogy film. While each film in that trilogy treats complex themes like struggling to know how to grow up with a level of seriousness, those movies are, at their heart, comedies. ‘Baby Driver’ has some terrific comedic moments, but I would say it’s more of a tense thriller with a sweet heart to it than it is a comedy. Every performance within ‘Baby Driver’ accentuates its tone, leading to a cast which may be different, but nevertheless fits the movie they’re in brilliantly.

I will admit that I think I enjoyed the first half more than I did the second. I adore the ways Baby and some of the other characters are characterised in the earlier parts of the narrative, and while there are still sequences in the second half which are terrifically shot and edited, the earlier sequences are probably my favourite ones in the film. Still, the characterisation in the first half does succeed at making the tense atmosphere as we advance towards the climax that much more nail-biting. You care about the characters and want to see them safe, so the editing and unhinged performances make the danger even more unbearable. The second half isn’t bad by a long shot, and I’m sure I’ll find even more depth to the narrative and the film’s construction when I watch it a second time. I just think that the elements that most interest me about ‘Baby Driver’ are pooled in that first half.

‘Baby Driver’ is another excellent film from Edgar Wright that shows he is just as capable at delivering tense dramas with characters you care about as he is at crafting terrific comedies. His use of sound is masterful, and worth the price of admission alone. The second half might not have been quite as interesting to me, but it’s still leaps and bounds above what many others have released this year, and I can’t wait to see what Edgar Wright does next.

9/10.

A film that managed to make me laugh, got me on the edge of my seat, and had me tapping my foot to its wonderful beat all the way through.

#The Inquisitive J #film reviews #film review #film criticism #film critic #critic #movie critic #edgar wright #baby driver #baby driver review

2 notes · View notes