#harry's house also won for best engineering

[larrylimericks]

5Feb23

Our hearts raced, our palms — they were clammy; The card then got handed to Granny. The night’s biggest honor And all eyes were on her ... Well, shit! Harry took home THE Grammy!

[imagine-perfect-life-with-him]

Grammy’s 2023

A/N: So I’m no writer and haven’t written anything in years. I had this tumblr though at one point where I was trying to write out the perfect love story. Somewhere along the way I have lost inspiration to write it out although I’ve been living it out in my dreams all this time. I love Harry with all my heart to the point where it sometimes scares me how much you can adore someone you’ve never met and probably never will.

Anyway Grammy’s inspired me again and put such a story in my head that I knew I had to write down. It took me some time and it’s not perfectly written but here it is. So I hope somebody will enjoy it.

Also I decided to write is as a continuation of the story I have started here all those years ago so that’s why it has a name of Harry’s partner rather than Y/N. 

 Grammy's 2023

I woke up to the bell ringing, followed by my two daughters' excited screams saying hi to their grandma.

It must be so late since Harry's mum is already here and I'm just waking up. I rolled on the side and grabbed my phone from the bedside table to check the time, finding out that it was indeed already noon.

Harry must have woken up before the girls since I wasn't woken by one of them slipping into our bed like they usually do.

I got up, wrapped myself in my favorite silk robe and went downstairs, where I was met with Ellie, Daisy and Anne sitting by the dining table making plans for their evening together.

'Mommy' Ellie our oldest exclaimed. ' Nana's here and she said we can have ice cream when we watch daddy on TV'

'Yeah ay cream' the 2 year old baby joined in excitement

'Oh she did? ' I made a surprised face before adding ' Good thing I bought your favorite then' I winked at Anne while girls were jumping to the news.

'Hello darling' Anne greeted me and came up for a hug

'Hi' I smiled wrapping her in my arms ' Do you happen to know where Harry is? ' I asked but before she could answer two strong hands wrapped around my waist.

'Morning Sleepyhead' Harry said into my ear 'You ready for a big day? '

'Morning ' I said turning around to leave a quick kiss on his lips 'can't wait'

'Good cuz everyone is going to be here soon and the chaos will begin' he smirked

We were supposed to be getting ready at a hotel way closer to where the ceremony is taking place but the girls were so bummed they couldn't go to watch daddy perform that we decided to at least have them around for getting ready so they could see our outfits and all.

Just as Harry said not longer than 20 minutes later people started showing up at our doorstep. A make-up artist mostly for me but to touch up my husband as well, Lambert with his whole crew who brought all of our outfits for tonight, Sigourney to do both our nails, caters with ton of food, Anthony to photograph the getting ready part and so many more people that I didn't even know what exactly their part in all of this was.

'Daddy! Daddy! ' both girls run to Harry who was having his nails done while my hair was being done. 'Can Sig do our nails to with your purple polish? Pretty please' Ellie looked up at him with her infamous puppy eyes.

'I don't know if there will be time bugs' he said and put frowns on their faces

' I don't mind doing it' Sigourney said looking at me ' if that's okay with you guys'

'Sure' I said ' let them have their fun babe' I told to Harry

' But nails only, don't even think about make up' he chuckled trying to hold a serious face so they knew he wasn't joking which only made me laugh.

‘Guys! Announcement!’ Jeff says excitedly ‘Harry’s House just won its first Grammy! Best Engineered Album! Congrats man!’ he adds coming up to Harry to give him a hug while everybody cheers

‘Congratulations babe!’ I yell from across the room, not being able to get up from make-up chair. 

Jeff decides it calls for celebration and pours everyone some Champaign.

It was 2 hours later, everyone almost ready, Harry is downstairs getting dressed with his stylist's help and Anne is helping me in our bedroom while Ellie and Daisy watch.

It wasn't easy picking my outfit, I wanted to match with Harry but at the same time it was hard not to clash with him since he is wearing such a colorful and sparkly at the same time jumpsuit. In the end I decided to eliminate color but match by also going sparkly.

'You look stunning sweetie' Anne compliments me when I'm all dressed.

'Sooo pleety' Daisy joins her Nana while Ellie just holds her tiny hand over her mouth in shock.

'I want to be as pretty as you mummy when I'm big' she finally exclaims making my heart so full.

'You're already even prettier now' I tell her while leaning down to hug her. 'Okay. Are you ladies ready to see what your dad is wearing? '

'S he dressed funny again? ' Ellie asks making Anne and me erupt in laughter.

'You'll have to judge on your own bug'

We make our way down and as if he had been waiting for us Harry is looking directly in our direction.

'Oh my! ' he says looking me up and down and gesturing for me to spin around ' aren't you looking breathtaking my love'

'Not so bad yourself ' I smirk coming up to him and stealing a quick kiss. 'However you have to wait for the big judges verdict ' I laugh looking at out babies.

Daisy runs up to us and starts touching Harry's outfit, examining all the crystals. Ellie though taps her tiny lip and acts like she's thinking really hard about what she thinks of his outfit choice.

'Ells what do you think? ' Harry finally asks her

' A little funny' she decides and everyone in the room starts laughing. ' but I like' she adds

‘Thank goodness. ' Harry acts relieved ' we're safe Lambert' he jokes ' you got me worried there darling, thought I would have to change. '

'Can stay like that ' she says with a serious look on her face.

'Guys we should be leaving' Jeff comes into the room with a phone to his ear. ' the driver is pulling up '

'Anthony! Could you please snap a photo of me and my girls? ' Harry asks his photographer before calling the little ones and me to take place next to him.

We take a few photos, Anne also joins in for a few and then it's really time to leave. But not before some really hurt looks from our babies who don't want us to leave.

' Be good for grandma. ' I kneel to look at my babies ' And go on wish your daddy good luck and tell him you love him ' I whisper to them which makes them spring across the room to Harry latching onto his legs

'Good luck daddy!’

‘Oh thank you my loves’ Harry kneels down to them and gives them both a kiss. ‘Be good for grandma and watch out for daddy on TV’  

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Red carpet was crazy as always. I have so much respect for all those celebrities that do this all the time. You would think that doing it with my husband by my side would be easier but he gets yelled at so badly. It’s like the photographers can’t get a picture of him without screaming his name on top of their lungs first.

Since Harry is not the biggest fan of red carpets as well, after like 2 minutes of having our pictures taken separately he waits up for me and takes my hand to guide us inside after a few shots of us side by side.

Straight from the carpet we go to our backstage room, where the band is chilling as well as some more of our friends. We say hi to everyone and Harry changes into his second outfit. 

‘Don’t you look good Mister’ I wrap my arms around his neck and say directly into his lips before going in for a kiss. He slides his arms around my waist, pulling me as close as possible to his body.

‘Thank you darling’

‘Okay lovebirds, let’s go’ Jeff calls for us. 

We untangle from each other but Harry keeps my hand in his as we make our way to our table. 

We say hello to a few people, including Lizzo and Adele who happen to sit at the table next to ours.

The ceremony starts with Bad Bunny performance to which Harry and I dance in our seats like almost everyone since his music makes it impossible to sit still. After that Trevor Noah starts his monologue while walking across the tables and surely at one point he stops by ours and talks about Harry.

‘Harry Styles is here tonight everybody!’ he announces which makes everyone from the upper seats cheer and Harry gives a quick wave at the camera. ‘ I mean what can you say about this man that hasn’t been said huh?’ he continues ‘Incredible album, mind blowing tour. 15 night run at MSG and the Forum. Woman throw their panties at this man, then he puts them on and he looks better in them than they do’ that makes me cringe and I see Harry shaking his head too. ‘Easily the worlds sexiest man! Are you kidding me?! There’s no competition! Sex symbol of the globe! Especially now since they killed the green M&M!’ he adds before walking away to find his next victim.

‘So much more than just a great body love’ I lean into Harry and whisper into his ear, knowing how uncomfortable Trevor’s comments made him feel.

‘Thank you. Love ya’ he smiles at me and gives me a quick kiss.

The first category that is announced is the Best Pop Vocal Album, in which Harry’s House is actually nominated. Jenifer Lopez comes on stage to announce the winner. Harry squeezes my hand in his and keeps them in his lap as we impatiently wait to find out who won.

‘And the Grammy goes to... Harry’s House Harry Styles!!’ she reads out. 

Without dropping my hand Harry covers his face, shocked at what has just happened. Tom, Tyler and Jeff all go crazy, as well as Lizzo at the next table.

‘You won babe!’ I finally exclaim looking at Harry who uncovers his face and looks at me with pure happiness in his eyes. ‘You got it!’ I add when he cups my face in his hands and kisses me passionately. ‘I love you so much,  go on collect your prize’ I tell him once we separate. Unable to say anything he lets go of me and goes to the stage  with Tom and Tyler to get his award and I go to hug Jeff as we both say how fucking great it is.

‘Thank you so much.’ Harry starts his speech ‘This album from start to finish has been one of the greatest experiences in my life. From making it with two of my  best friends to playing it to people has been the greatest joy I could ask for. So I wanna thank Rob, Jeffery, Tommy, Tom, Tom and Tyler and everyone who inspired this album, everyone, my friends who supported me through it. And most importantly I want to thank my incredible wife, Rosalie and our amazing daughters, Eliie, Daisy I love you! Thank you so much, I wouldn’t be there without you.’

My eyes water listening to him talk and I know our babies are going crazy at home hearing their dad talk about them on TV. 

Harry comes back only after his performance, he has lost in some categories but the biggest one Album of the Year is still to be announced.

He keeps repeating how he’s already so happy to have won even one but I know how much it would mean to him to be distinguished like that.

So when Trevor comes up on stage to announce the winner of this category, I can see Harry tense up and feel him squeeze my thigh tighter. And the moment the host walks up to Rhina, Harry’s fun, I exchange knowing look with Jeff just as the lady reads out ‘Harry! Harry Styles’.

‘Oh my god!! Babe you did it! You did it!’ I scream on top of my lungs, getting up from my seat and almost shaking Harry as he has his head in between his hands. ‘You won!’ I say one more time when he gets up and wraps his arms around me. ‘I am so incredibly proud of you’ I add.

‘Thank you for everything’ he says looking deeply into my eyes before going for a kiss. Too soon for my liking I have to let go of him and watch as he goes on stage. 

The first thing he does is give his fan such a tight hug I worry he might crush her. And then he gives the most beautiful speech that leaves me crying my eyes out.

‘Shit...shit! Man!... I’ve been so inspired by every artist in this category with me. A lot of different times in my life I listened to everyone in this category. I think that on nights like that it’s obviously so important to remember that there is no such thing as best in music. i don’t think any of us sits in the studio thinking, making decisions based on what is gonna get us one of these. This is really, really kind. I’m so so grateful. I would also like to take a moment to thank one more time my wife. Rose I wouldn’t be standing there if it wasn’t for you. I couldn’t do it if it wasn’t for your constant support. I know life with me, especially during periods when I’m working on new music and touring with it, is very demanding and so I’m so grateful for your understanding and patience. Also thank you for being the best mom to our daughters, for taking the best care of them when I have to be away from you and for always making sure they know how much I love them even when I’m not there to tell them myself. As well as for packing them up and jumping on a plane with them to meet me on the other side of the world when you notice how much I miss my babies. I couldn’t wish for a better partner to walk through life with and share those one in a lifetime moments with. So this award is for You. I love you. ‘

I was not kidding when I said I was bawling my eyes out listing to Harry speak. Jeff had to hold me up when we were walking backstage because I was so emotional. And as soon as I walked through the door that had “Harry Styles” written on them I run straight into Harry’s arms.

‘Love? What happened? Why are you covered in tears?’ Harry asked pulling me slightly away from himself to get a better look at me.

‘Why?! It’s your fault! What were you expecting saying all those beautiful words up there?’

‘Ohh... that’s what got you so emotional.’ he pulled me closer to him again ‘Well I meant every single thing that I said. I don’t tell you often enough how much I appreciate you.’

‘I love you’ I whispered ‘And now kiss me before someone steals you from me because I can already see a line of people wanting to congratulate you’ I asked him and he did just that before allowing other people in the room to have his attention.

I took this opportunity to text Anne and get started with our secret plan. Well almost secret as I had to include several people to help me pull it off.

To Anne:

He did it!!! Did the girls see his speech?

From Anne:

I knew he would!! They did! Got so excited too! I filmed it , I'll send it to you.

To Anne :

send it to Harry. I don't want him looking at my messages with you to not ruin the surprise

To Anne:

Btw the plan is on, you can start getting them ready, I'm calling the driver now so he should pick you guys up in like half an hour.

From Anne:

sounds great! See you soon!

Just as I put my phone away, Harry's that has been in my purse signaled incoming text, I checked it and it was in fact video from Anne of Ellie and Daisy watching Harry's win announced.

'Babe, your mum texted you girls reaction to your speech. ' I told Harry handing him his phone. 

He took it and straight away played the recording in which Ellie was telling her younger sister to keep her fingers crossed so daddy wins this big award, Daisy screaming 'Daddy! Mummy! ' when Harry and I were shown on TV and then, them jumping up and down while saying that they daddy won and that he is the bestest.

I looked over at my husband who had tears in his eyes. Oh he has no idea what's coming, I smirk to myself.

Harry is soon taken to do a few interviews and have some photos, with his trophies, taken. All while I'm constantly texting Anne to know where they are. Just as Harry sits down for more pictures I hear Anne trying to talk as quiet as possible, telling the girls to not talk so they can surprise their daddy. They are very good at being silent up to the point when they notice me and they can't stop themselves from calling for me. I quickly bring my forefinger to my lips showing them to be really quiet. However when they bring those tiny baby hands to cover their mouths I almost burst out laughing.

I make sure Harry is to busy to notice what's going on and walk up to my babies. I give them the biggest hug and kisses before taking them to follow me and go up to Harry when I tell them. We make our way to stand almost behind the photographer, from the corner of my eye I see Jeff giving Anthony a sign to get ready to snap some shots to get Harry's reaction to seeing his daughters.

'Okay girls, you can go up to daddy and surprise him' I smile at Ellie and Daisy.

They have the biggest smiles on their faces and their eyes sparkle with excitement as they pass the photographer and get in his way.

Harry notices them straight away and gasps in disbelief.

'What?! What are you doing here my loves?! ' he embraces them with his arms, leaving two statues he's been holding on the bench.

‘You win! ' our younger screams and claps her hands. 'And we saw you sing on TV with granny, and you and mummy' Ellie says excited 'And uncle Jeff and Tom... And, and aunt Lizz' Daisy adds

'Oh my goodness. You saw everyone babies' Harry laughs.

'You! ' he points a finger at me 'You cheeky minx. I don't even imagine how you managed to sneak them into freaking Grammy's. '

'Well I did have a lot of people involved into making that happen. ' I answer ' And it was only possible because you have so many people who love you and wanted to help make you happy'

'Get over here' he orders and as soon as I'm within his reach he wraps his arms around me, brings his lips to my ear and says 'I'm soo very happy. Thank you. You're the best I love you' he kisses me passionately.

Anthony takes some pictures of the four of us and two Grammy statues, of Harry and the girls, us four and Anne and just Harry and Anne.

‘So I promised Ellie and Daisy that they will come with us to get some dinner but then your mum is taking them back home so we can go to the after party.’ I tell Harry when we are in a bathroom together changing into our after party outfits.

‘Sounds like a plan’ he says ‘However I would be just as happy if we went back home with them and ordered some takeaway’

‘Oh I know you would but that’s not gonna happen.’ I tell him as I come closer to him. wrap my arms around his neck and look into his eyes before continuing ‘And I’ve got another surprise... after the after party we will go to the hotel where I have booked a room for us so we can celebrate my three times Grammy winner husband.’

‘Is that so?’ he smirks

‘Mhmm... You most certainly deserve a proper celebration’

‘Tell me more and we’ll be skipping the after party and going straight to that hotel’ he says before kissing me hard.

Before we can get too into the kiss we hear a knock on the door followed by Daisy’s voice asking for her parents. 

We finish getting dressed before coming out and following everyone to the cars that are waiting to take us to Harry’s favorite Italian restaurant.

The entire way to the restaurant Ellie and Daisy are talking nonstop, telling Harry how they were watching him in TV, that they saw mommy and daddy kiss and heard him saying that he loves them. How much they liked his performance and assure him that no one could tell when he tells them about the turn table incident. They also don’t forget to mention how granny was crying when he was saying how much he loves mommy. 

‘By the way how much they talk it’s very obvious that they are your kids Harry’ Jeff laughs at some point from the front seat. 

Once in the restaurant we order more food that we could possibly eat and celebrate Harry in a small circle of his closest people. 

Daisy and Ellie devour their favorite margarita pizzas and beg us to have some dessert. Obviously Harry could not say no to his girls so they finish the meal with a big portion of chocolate cake.

After finishing dinner it’s time to head to the party and for girls to go back home.

‘Mommy! Daddy not leave’ Daisy tears up as we begin to put them in a car with Anne. ‘want cuddle in bed’ she says with those damn puppy eyes 

‘Babe, how about we drop by home on our way, put girls to sleep and then head out?’ Harry asks looking at me with pleading eyes

‘It’s your night Harr, we can do whatever you want’ I lean into him and give him a peck on the cheek. ‘As long as I get you to myself at the end of the night’

‘Someone is very eager to get me out of my clothes. Aren’t you?’ he whispers into my ear with a smirk

‘You look so hot in them that you could very well stay in them while you fuck me’ I reply

‘Damn! You weren’t joking when you said how much you love me in suits.’  he almost moans. ‘As much as I can’t wait for that, let’s go home and put our ladybugs to sleep.’ he adds and guides me back to the car where our daughters are already strapped in their car seats.

‘Okay lovies. How about mommy and daddy go home with you and put you to sleep and then go to their party?’ he asks them ‘Does that sound like a good plan?’

‘Yes! Yes!’ they exclaim and we get in the car with them after informing Jeff that we will join him and the rest in about 2 hours.

When at home Anne insists she gives Ells and Daisy a bath so Harry and I don’t mess up our outfits. Soon they emerge from their en suit bathroom and join us in their bedroom. We give them each a kiss before I slip into Ellie’s bed with her and Harry cuddles with Daisy. They insist on reading their favorite princess book to which their father happily obliges. 

Not later than half an hour later both our angels are peacefully asleep. Carefully not to wake them we sneak out but have to admire them a little before we leave the room for good.

We go downstairs to where Anne is sitting on the couch in the living room.

‘They’re down already?’ she asks and I nod ‘All the emotions of the day must’ve tired them out pretty badly then’

‘Good it went this way cuz I was scared they wouldn’t be able to fall asleep, going through all the events of their night’ I chuckle

‘True’ she agrees ‘Now you go out, enjoy the rest of the night and I will take care of my grandbabies’

‘Thank you Mum for staying with them’ Harry comes up to her and gives her a kiss on the cheek. ‘We’ll try to be back as early as possible tomorrow’

‘Oh don’t you rush, we will be fine here and I’ll most certainly enjoy some more alone time with them.’

‘Okay we will be in touch then’

‘Great. Have fun you two!’

‘Thank you Anne’ I smile at her and we leave the house, get into the car that has been waiting for us and get to the after party.

I don’t even know who is hosting this party but it’s packed with A-listed celebrities. That being the reason why my husband is very quickly stolen from me to get introduced to many people and have pictures with them taken. I thankfully run into Claudia Sulewski who I met at Coachella last year and hung out with a few times ever since.

We catch up, chat and have a drink until I see Harry approaching us.

‘There you are!’ he says standing behind me and embracing me with his arms. ‘Hi Claudia’ he greets her

‘Hi Harry! Congrats on your big win! Well deserved’ she praises

‘Thank you!’

‘Okay I gotta go find Fineas but it was lovely to see you again and catch up!’

‘Yeah! Say hi to Fineas and Billy from us! I tell her and she walks away

‘So are you done with official part of this party?’ I turn to look at Harry. ‘Met everyone you had to meet? Had all the pictures taken?’ I smirk

‘I guess’ he confirms. ‘Why? You ready to ditch and get naked?’ I burst out in laughter 

‘Not yet Mister’ I put my arms around his neck ‘First we will party properly since I don’t even remember when we last had a night out like that’ I tell him ‘I want to dance until my legs can’t hold me up anymore!’ I exclaim

‘Sounds like a plan’ he chuckles ‘Also heard there is going to be karaoke at some point’

‘You’ve got to be kiddin. We are so singing something!’ I beam. 

We both love karaoke. Harry for an obvious reason and me well I think almost every little girl wanted to be a singer at some point. I cannot sing for a life of god though however it never stops me from having lots of fun doing it.

We do exactly as we said. Dance, sing our usual “Time of my life” together and then Harry sings more with some other people while I dance some more. There is a lot of alcohol involved but not to the point where any of us is drunk unconscious.

It’s around 3 am as we arrive at the hotel that I booked us so we could have some time just the two of us because that was something we didn’t do in a long time with Harry’s crazy schedule and probably won’t be getting again soon considering that the tour will continue in like 2 weeks.

The suite is amazing with huge bed and a big bathroom in front of it separated only by a see through glass wall. There is a huge shower as well as a humongous bath with Jacuzzi settings.

A/N: There might be a part two but I just needed to get this out for now.

Let me know what you thought!

[ohstylesno]

To me Harry winning AOTY makes perfect sense. He won the best engineered album and also best pop vocal album so why people are when it also wins aoty?? Beyonce won best dance/electronic album which she definitely deserves also. 30 didn’t deserve aoty this year. Harry’s house makes perfect sense to me. (Also just saw another angle of harry being announced as the winner and adele was like the only one who didn’t stand up and just looks aroınd and beyonce was clapping and smiling so hard!!! And H.E.R got up so fast and looked at Harry with a smile it made me so happy. People were actually very happy that he won ❤️)

30 was NOT aotm worthy, no. Neither was Renaissance imo. I thought Lemonade maybe deserved the award when it was nominated, but not Renaissance.

Yeah so many artists looked so happy for him, that was nice to see 🥰

Insane that a a couple of years ago we were disappointed he wasn't nominated and this year he won the most prestigious award of the night. crazy

[pritishsblog]

BEST DIRECTORS IN CINEMA- 7

Hi everyone! This blog is going to be the 7th part of 8 part series of who I think is the Best Directors Cinema has ever seen

And today I will be talking about

ALFRED HITCHCOCK

Alfred Hitchcock (born August 13, 1899, London, England died April 29, 1980, Bel Air, California, U.S.) was an English-born American motion-picture director whose suspenseful films and television programs won immense popularity and critical acclaim over a long and tremendously productive career. His films are marked by a macabre sense of humour and a somewhat bleak view of the human condition.

(Early Life)

Hitchcock grew up in London’s East End in a milieu once haunted by the notorious serial killer known as Jack the Ripper, talk of whom was still current in Hitchcock’s youth two decades later. Although he had two siblings, he recalled his youth as a lonely one, with a father who was a stern disciplinarian; it is said that he once ordered Alfred to appear at the local police station with a note saying that he had been misbehaving, whereupon the sergeant on duty (at the request of Hitchcock’s father) locked him up for a few minutes, a sufficient length of time to give Alfred a fear of enclosed spaces and a strong concern for wrongful imprisonment, both of which would figure in his later work. When he was not being disciplined, he was cosseted by an overly watchful mother, who used food as a balm—to which he would later trace his trademark paunch.Hitchcock went to St. Ignatius College before attending the London County Council School of Marine Engineering and Navigation in 1913–14. He worked in the sales department at W.T. Henley’s Telegraph Works Company until 1918, when he moved to the advertising department. Giving in to his artistic side, Hitchcock enrolled at the University of London in 1916 to take drawing and design classes.

(His Famous Works)

A string of successful films followed, including Rebecca (1940), Foreign Correspondent (1940), Suspicion (1941), Shadow of a Doubt (1943) and Notorious (1946). Rebecca won the Academy Award for Best Picture, with Hitchcock nominated as Best Director.He also received Oscar nominations for Lifeboat (1944), Spellbound (1945), Rear Window (1954) and Psycho (1960). Hitchcock's other notable films include Rope (1948), Strangers on a Train (1951), Dial M for Murder (1954), To Catch a Thief (1955), The Trouble with Harry (1955), Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959), The Birds (1963) and Marnie (1964), all of which were also financially successful and are highly regarded by film historians

(Filmmaking Style)

The "Hitchcockian" style includes the use of editing and camera movement to mimic a person's gaze, thereby turning viewers into voyeurs, and framing shots to maximise anxiety and fear. The film critic Robin Wood wrote that the meaning of a Hitchcock film 'is there in the method, in the progression from shot to shot. A Hitchcock film is an organism, with the whole implied in every detail and every detail related to the whole.'

(His Filmography)

Hitchcock made his directorial debut with a silent movie named Number 13 which is rumored to be lost. He has made more than 20 silent movies including Number 13 (1922),Always Tell Your Wife (1923),The Pleasure Garden (1925) and etc.

He has made more than 40 sound films including Blackmail (1929),An Elastic Affair (1930),Juno and Peacock (1930),Murder (1930). Some of his most famous movies which are still praised are Vertigo (1958),Psycho (1960),The Birds (1963). The last movie which he directed before his death was Family Plot (1976)

Hitchcock's star on Hollywood Walk of Fame

English Heritage Plague at 153 Cromwell Road, London

(Awards & Honors)

His movies have won 2 Golden Globe Awards, 8 Laurel Awards, 5 Lifetime Achievement Awards. His movie Rebecca was also nominated for 11 Academy Awards winning the Best Picture Award. His movies are now housed in Academy Film Archive in Hollywood,California. 9 of his films have selected for preservation by the US National Film Registry.

(Sources)

And that's it for this part folks, I'll meet you with the last and final part of this series. Until then

CIAO

[harrytheehottie]

I do think the whole Beyonce VS Adele round 2 the media wouldn't shut up about didn't benefit either of them. Still, I also think the Voting Academy really did love Harry’s House because it also won Best Engineering, and that is a category with a committee still.

they obviously loved it, he won? lol I’m not denying that I’m literally so happy he won because to me, Harry’s house is his best album. I’m just noting that he was in at a very heavy hitter season but it worked out in his favor because of splitting votes and how the voting structure works. I know you’re being nice but it’s patronizing lol

[joelroadie]

Billy Hayes, Brian Anderson - From Midnight Express to Spinal Tap!

Billy Hayes is a writer, actor, & film director. He is best known as the author of Midnight Express. Since that book was published, he has written Riding the Midnight Express, the Midnight Express Letters, & Midnight Return. He currently performs a one man show about his life. A little background: The film Midnight Express was written by Oliver Stone. It won a ton of awards including 2 Oscars. A bit of fun… after the initial success of the movie Billy drove band equipment. He’s worked for Heart, Avril Lavigne, Nickelback, Sum41, Bare Naked Ladies, Train, & Good Charlotte.

My second guest is Brian Anderson. He is a front of house engineer and tour manager. He has worked for KISS, Julio Iglesias Jr., Blues Traveler, Hoobastank, Harry Shearer, Natasha Bedingfield, & the Heavy. He is also the CEO of Band Production Services. Not so much fun in my experience Brian has quite simply moved more band crap than anyone I’ve ever met.

Check out this episode!

[authorangelita]

S01E04 Wire Cutter - Meta Thoughts About Mac's Living Room

Friends, I'm super bored at work today. Let's discuss Mac's living room for a minute. I took this screenshot for my missing scenes post about S01E04 Wire Cutter.

Starting on the left, there's an entire 5 gallon bucket of softballs and a bat. It's the bat that, to me, implies he's playing the game instead of using the balls for an experiment of some kind. We know Phoenix has a softball team from S01E20 Hole Puncher, but we didn't know that when episode 4 aired. Now I want to know the Phoenix team stats – how many games won, lost, and forfeited for mission-related reasons. Who's the best hitter? It's Jack, isn't it?

Thornton's expression in this screenshot is a third of the reason I chose this one. (Another third is Jack's hands thrown up in the air, and the other third is that it was the only one that didn't have a credit name on it.). She looks like a disapproving mother about to wag her finger.

I just noticed that Mac's fireplace doesn't have a mantel. I'm from the east coast where all fireplaces have mantels, but now that I think about it, I don't remember seeing many, if any, mantels when I lived in LA.

I also love that the bike is sitting there, and no one seems to care. I mean, they've all been there a while, obviously, so they could have already discussed the oddity of it. Or they are just used to Mac's quirks. Also, Mac packed his tools up in the toolbox.

Actually, it just occurred to me how neat and clean the house is. Do we think it's Mac that needs to have everything neat and orderly? Or is it Bozer? I'm leaning toward Mac on this one. I just don't see Bozer picking up Mac's tools unless there's some urgent need to do so.

That rug looks like a hazard. The edge near Mac is curled up, which means I would trip on it every single time.

The TV is way too small for that size room, but we'll let it go. Mac has probably engineered a projector and screen for when they have Bruce Willis movie nights.

Is Riley holding one of the softballs? She doesn't seem like a fidgeter, but this room is full of nervous energy.

Jack's hands thrown up crack me up for some reason. He's all 'WTF dude?' back there.

I'm not sure what the art is behind Jack. It looks like a distressed American flag painted on reclaimed wood. In the second screenshot below, you can see that it's the US. Not something I really see Mac or Bozer picking out for the house. Maybe it was a gift? I know Mac is a vet, but the distressed nature of it makes me think it's not something he would choose.

I'm not sure what's on top of that gray cabinet. I couldn't find a better shot of it. At first, I thought it was oversized chess pieces, but there aren't enough of them.

There appears to be a pokemon ball on the coffee table – ha! I took a better screenshot of the coffee table (Old trunk? Foot locker?), and I still have no idea what that is. I also don't know what the other doodads are. Maybe something for the bike? It's definitely a Mac project of some sort.

You can't really see it in the wider screenshot, so I took a better one of this area. There's an electric guitar beside Jack and some stereo equipment, including a turntable, hidden behind Bozer. There's also a ton of vinyl back there. My guess is that Mac inherited those from Harry.

Back to the guitar, I get the feeling that it's Mac who plays it. Playing guitar has a lot of mathematics to it, and Mac can distract himself from thoughts about Nikki or failed missions or whatever craziness by losing himself in playing the guitar and determining the mathematics behind the melody.

On a side note, the couch looks like the most uncomfortable couch ever. It just doesn't seem to have much padding. It's also leather, which is a very noisy material. (It must have given the sound department fits when they shot in here.)

The right side is washed out by the sunlight but there's plenty of space back there for Mac to put his bike where it's not right in front of the TV. Right? Also, the fake missile prop is back there, meaning that Bozer has not returned it to Penny yet. I don't think he ever does.

Bonus! There's a pink teddy bear on the table across from the front door. My best guess is that Bozer's side gig is babysitting kids in the neighborhood – Boze has to be great with kids! – and one of the girls left it behind. Also, there's a coin-operated horse ride kinda hidden over there that I never noticed before. Mac's house has the oddest and most interesting things in it!

[fruitcoops]

I don't know if you are taking asks anymore, so if you are not you can ignore this or put it to the very end of your list. But I was hoping you could write something angsty for coops but with a happy ending. Maybe one of them is having a bad mental health day? I've been struggling so I'd really like to read something sad but also comforting. Thank you so much!

Lovely anon, I hope you are doing better <3 It’s been a few days since this ask came in (sorry) but it was really cathartic to write and I hope it is a good balance of sad and comforting. I combined it with two similar asks, which are listed below:

Coops/ SW credit goes to @lumosinlove!

Prompt 26: “I don’t know what’s wrong, okay? I’m just…really tired.”

Prompt 30: “You’re not okay.”

“Sirius. Sirius.”

He blinked and shook his head, clearly trying to come back to reality. “What?”

“I asked if you were okay.”

“Yeah, I’m good.”

“You’re scowling.”

“I’m fine.” The resignation and frustrated confusion in his voice worried Remus. He almost sounded like when he got heatstroke, just…different. Angry.

“Are you ready to head out?”

“I’m going to tap a puck around for a bit, I think.”

Remus frowned. That superstition only came out after bad games, when Sirius’ pent-up energy twisted around and burrowed into him rather than overflowing in tangible waves that boosted everyone around them. A remnant of years spent blaming himself for not being the absolute best, Remus supposed. “You don’t want to do that at home?”

“Not really,” Sirius said harshly. Not shouting, not snapping—harsh. Harsh in a way he never was with Remus. Talker, the only other person left in the locker room, picked up his bag and left silently with a final glance between them.

“Talk to me, baby,” Remus tried again, softening his voice. Making Sirius feel pressured was the worst way to go about this.

As expected, the frown slipped slightly. “I don’t know what’s wrong, okay? I’m just…really tired.”

“Okay. Ten minutes?”

Sirius sighed and scrubbed his hand through his hair without looking up. His skates were still laced up tight. “Ten minutes.”

Twenty minutes later, they were on the road heading home. The car was uncomfortably quiet, as if they were both waiting to say something, but Remus refrained from making any comments until Sirius opened up. Poking and prodding was never a productive method, and he was exhausted from the game, which had been far too close for a team like the Ravens.

“I’m not mad at you.”

“Good.”

“I think I just need some food.”

“And sleep.”

“And sleep,” Sirius added as an afterthought. “You’re quiet tonight.”

“I’m always quiet,” Remus said with a light laugh.

“Not around me, you’re not.” A smile tugged at the edges of Sirius’ lips when he glanced over, then faded into the troubled darkness from the locker room. Few members of the team had swung by for fist bumps or postgame chatter with him once the interviews were done; any reporters who approached were met with a cold stare.

“I was thinking about asking Reg to come over for Christmas, too.” Remus looked back out the passenger window. “Jules misses him and it’s been a while since we all had dinner together.”

“D’accord.”

“We might need to convince Dumo to let him go, but—”

“I said that sounds fine,” Sirius huffed, turning onto the road that led to their house.

Remus looked at him, eyebrows raised. “I know. I heard you. I figured I’d ask for your opinion on getting him to come over, considering he’s your brother, but if you really don’t care then I’ll just call in the morning.”

“That works.” The engine turned off and Remus locked the doors. Sirius unlocked them, only for Remus to click his key again.

“What happened? You’re not okay.”

Sirius blew out a long breath and let his head fall back for a moment. “I told you, I’m just tired.”

“You get cuddly or grumbly when you’re tired. You shut down when you’re upset. What did the reporters say?”

“Can I at least take a shower before you start interrogating me?”

Ouch. Okay. Remus tucked his key into his pocket and grabbed his duffel from the backseat. “Go for it. I’ll be in the bedroom when you’re ready to talk.”

It felt weird entering the house alone after winning a game. Sure, it had been close, but they still won and Sirius generally went into Hockey Obsession Mode after skin-of-their-teeth victories. The last time Remus had seen him like this was when a rude reporter asked whether he had spoken to his parents since the All-Stars and Sirius silenced him with a thunderstorm glare.

The pasta he reheated tasted like sawdust, but it cleared his head a bit and stopped the growling in his stomach. Sirius was still in the shower when he went upstairs; leaning against the tile while steam practically suffocates him, I bet, he thought as he changed into his softest pajama pants and tossed his postgame clothes into the hamper.

Sirius looked everywhere but at him when he came out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist and began digging through the dresser. “Your sweatpants are over here,” Remus reminded him. He didn’t respond. “Ignoring me is a dick move. I know you’re upset but that’s not cool.”

His broad shoulders slumped and he paused his search. “I’m sorry.”

“Apology accepted. What are you looking for?”

“Manches longues.” With a low hum, Sirius pulled on his most beat-up long sleeve shirt and slipped into bed, then immediately turned on his side, facing away from Remus. “Bonne nuit, mon amour.”

“Are you sure you’re not mad at me?”

“Very sure.”

Remus settled onto his side as well and, after a moment’s hesitation, reached out and touched the back of Sirius’ shoulder. He flinched slightly. “Sirius.”

“Don’t say my name like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like—” He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling with an angry huff, waving one hand around. “Like it’s so soft. It’s not. I’m not.”

“You are.”

“No, I’m not.” The corners of his eye glimmered in the low light of the full moon.

Remus shifted closer, just enough that he could feel the heat radiating from his skin. “Yes, you are. With Harry, with the team, with me. You’re allowed to be soft, honey.”

“I don’t want to be,” Sirius said angrily.

“I think you do.”

“I hate it when I feel like this.” His voice broke and he inhaled shakily. Remus hummed his agreement, resting one hand a few inches from Sirius’. “All those reporters—they think I’m like that all the time. That I’m aggressive and untouchable and perfect, even off the ice.”

“But you’re not.”

“But I’m not. I’m not, and I don’t want to be, but I don’t want to let them down.”

“The reporters don’t matter.”

Sirius shook his head as the first tear slid down his cheek, toward his ear. “I don’t give a shit about them. I don’t want to let the fans down. It would be so much easier if I could be the captain all the time, but I can’t. They ask about the youngest captain and I always forget that it’s me. They ask about Regulus and I have to remember if they know he spent last week snarking at me about vacuuming or if they think we still fight. They ask about you and—and I’m tired of it. I love you, but sometimes I just want to talk about hockey. I play hockey and I have a life that is separate, but they don’t seem to understand that.”

Remus brushed away the tear tracks with his thumb and Sirius closed his eyes, tangling their hands together. “I’m sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“I’m sorry you feel like that,” he rephrased. “It’s a lot of pressure for one person.”

Sirius half-smiled. “You make it better.”

“Can I hold you?”

His smile wobbled. “Please do.”

Remus wrapped one arm around his waist and drew him close against his chest, threading his other hand through his hair as he placed gentle kisses to the top of his head. He had washed his hair in the shower—the minty scent was calming, and the slowly-drying curls were soft. “You don’t have to be perfect all the time,” he murmured. Sirius’ palms pressed into his bare back. “You can just be you and that’s more than enough. If they don’t see that, it’s their problem.”

Sirius hooked their ankles together and pulled the blankets up over their shoulders with a trembling sigh. They fell asleep soon after, lulled by two hearts beating in tandem.

[victoriareyloficlists]

There Was Only One Bed

Updated 7 November 2021

Rest of the Masterlist.

as luck would have it by prncesselene (AO3 2020  Rated E Complete, 16 Chapters, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: When a case of violent food poisoning ruins Rose and Hux’s honeymoon plans, who better to take their place at a pre-paid Hawaiian beach resort than the Maid of Honor and Best Man? Sure, it’ll take some maneuvering, but a free vacation is a free vacation. They just have to pretend to be devoted newlyweds for a bit to enjoy it. There’s only one glaring issue, really: they can’t stand each other.) Crisis: Girlfriend by perperuna (AO3 2018  Rated G Complete, One-Shot, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: Ben had been in love with Rey for over a year when he asked her to go with him to his ex’s wedding as his date and ‘girlfriend’.) Deceit, Delusion, and Desire by AttackoftheDarkCurses, thebuildingsnotonfire (AO3 2018  Rated E Complete, 16 Chapters, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: When Rey realizes her student visa is about to expire, she struggles to find a way to stay in the country legally. Her roommate has a terrible idea, and it's just risky enough to work.) Fireproof by SpaceWaffleHouseTM (AO3 2020  Rated M Complete, 7 Chapters, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: When Rey's home is overrun by a wildfire, she has to evacuate with little time and no warning. Then she saves the life of Ben Solo, the neighbor she barely knows, on the road and he offers her a place to stay in the aftermath.) Gimme Shelter by JaneNightwork (AO3 2018  Rated T Complete, 14 Chapters, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: Ben Solo meets Rey Niima when his mother asks him to drop off a few boxes of old sheets and towels at the animal shelter. He is immediately charmed by her and decides to volunteer at the shelter to get to know her better. In the process of building his relationship with Rey and learning to take care of the animals, Ben learns new ways to heal old hurts.) Happy to Help by SuchaPrettyPoison (AO3 2020  Rated E Incomplete, 13 Chapters, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: Sometimes you just need your neighbor to pretend to be in a relationship with you. Repeatedly.) Home for the Holidays by LarirenShadow (AO3 2016  Rated T Complete, 5 Chapters, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: Kylo Ren, in a moment of weakness, tells his mother he'll be home for Christmas and will bring his girlfriend. Problem is he doesn't have one. Enter Rey, his grad assistant. He makes a deal with her so she'll be his girlfriend for the trip home.) In the Woods Somewhere by Verdantsolstice (AO3 2020  Rated T Complete, 5 Chapters, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: Hikers Ben & Rey meet on the trail when they’re both lost. Hours of walking lead them to a convent in the woods. The sisters are very friendly, but refuse to let them both stay unless they’re married. TW: Mentions of ICE and immigration.) Laid Between Words by jeeno2 (AO3 2019  Rated E Complete, 15 Chapters, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: Rey is nearing the end of her temporary work Visa. Her friend Ben offers to marry her so she can stay in the U.S. She says yes.) Let me Dream, Let me Stay by Melusine11 (AO3 2018  Rated E Complete, 12 Chapters, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: Rey has kept up a charade of a non-existant boyfriend for two years and now that Rose and Finn are getting married, she needs someone to pretend to be said boyfriend, enter her coworker Ben.) Look No Further by thewayofthetrashcompactor (BriarLily) (AO3 2019  Rated T Complete, 9 Chapters, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: Rey is spending Thanksgiving alone but a late-night Craigslist ad ends up with her agreeing to crash some asshole's family dinner. At the very least, she's curious what kind of people name their son "Kylo Ren" anyway.) Lucky Number Seven by Pearl Gatsby (DrPearlGatsby) (AO3 2019  Rated T Complete, 3 Chapters, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: Number seven on First and Order orders pizza again. Rey groans when she sees the address, remembering how they didn't bother to tip; but that's nothing compared to how she feels when she's been standing outside the door for two solid minutes, knocking and calling the cell number she has. Nobody answers. :: pizza delivery/college AU) Merry Christmas, I'm Yours by captain_staryeyed (AO3 2018  Rated T Complete, One-Shot, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: After finding out that Rey has nowhere to go for Christmas, Ben invites her to spend Christmas at his parents’ house. During the time spent together, they are forced to confront their growing feelings toward each other.) miles from where you are by Mooncactus (AO3 2018  Rated T Complete, One-Shot, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: After an argument over Star Wars fandom with a "gatekeeping, entitled monster" with the cryptic username of KyloRen, Rey finds herself stuck in a series of unavoidable video calls.) Miss Johnson & the Professor by ElegyGoldsmith (AO3 2020  Rated E Complete, One-Shot, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: Professor Ben has his TA Rey accompany him to a conference in Japan but she accidentally booked a single room.) mountain at my gates by KyloTrashForever (AO3 2020  Rated E Complete, 7 Chapters, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: Hard Outside/Soft Inside Lumberjack Alpha Ben Solo and Horny Engineer Omega Rey Johnson featuring Explicit Hand Holding, ABO, and Mutual Masturbation. (Ft. Snowed In and Bed Sharing for funnies.)) My Whole Life by AttackoftheDarkCurses, thebuildingsnotonfire (AO3 2018  Rated E Complete, 13 Chapters, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: The "Without a Hitch" high school sweethearts, fake-dating rom-com AU.) Needing A Teacher by Twisted_Mirror (AO3 2020  Rated E Complete, 4 Chapters, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: When Rey tells her roommate, Ben, that she has only had sex in missionary position, he offers to let her use him to see what she likes. He vows to himself it's all for her pleasure, he has no idea that Rey is trying to drive him crazy.) Nominis by Oh_Snapcrackle (AO3 2019  Rated E Complete, 8 Chapters, Harry Potter AU, Quick Synopsis: When Professor Skywalker partners Rey with the notorious Ben Solo for occulmency lessons, something goes wrong (or very right) and now their minds are bridged. Between sharing thoughts, inconvenient astral projections, and bedsharing Rey starts to learn that while Ben Solo deserves the reputation he has built, he also deserves the opportunity to change.) Off the cuff by Blueyedgurl (AO3 2020  Rated E Complete, 4 Chapters, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: Poe gets Ben a stripper for closing a business deal. Ben reluctantly takes part to not waste Poe's money. The stripper hand cuffs him and robs him of clothes and money. Rey heads back to the office late night and finds her hot boss cuffed to the office chair in nothing but his tie.) Only Make-Believe by Hartmannclan (AO3 2020  Rated T Complete, One-Shot, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: Rey is in a car accident, so best friend Ben races to the hospital to be with her. What happens when she wakes up with amnesia and believes they are married?) Peacock by AttackoftheDarkCurses (AO3 2019  Rated E Complete, 22 Chapters, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: Thanks to a series of misunderstandings, failed attempts at flirting, and loud Katy Perry music, Ben grows to hate his new neighbor. Proposing to her wasn't the best solution to his problems.) Plus Won by AmberDread, DarkMage13, Erulisse17, Trish47, venetum (AO3 2020  Rated T Complete, 5 Chapters, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: After a drunken night of complaining at a bar, Rey and Ben agree to be each other's plus-ones for a variety of events. As friends and family continue to invite them to things, they discover that they really enjoy spending time together. And holding hands. And... kissing. What happens when their relationship starts to feel a lot more real than fake?) Saving What We Love by naboojakku (AO3 2020  Rated E Complete, 18 Chapters, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: In which Ben and Rey are voluntarily quarantined together for two weeks. Includes: copious amounts of fluff, discussion of mental illness, and way too many hours of Animal Crossing. Feel-good read during these batshit crazy times.) Say it With Sugar by fettuccine_alfreylo (AO3 2016  Rated E Complete, 20 Chapters, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: Ben Solo is the owner of his family’s small chocolate shop. Rey Kenobi is a talented chocolate maker he hires. They both share the same passion for chocolate. Unfortunately, they share the same kind of anxiety, too.) Snow Sparkles Like Stars by raptorginger (AO3 2018  Rated E Complete, 9 Chapters, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: A blizzard forces Professor (of mythology and cosmology) Kylo Ren, aka Ben Solo, off the road while on his way to his parents’ house in Seattle for the holidays. Luckily, the woman who owns the house he’s stranded at is well prepared for a snow-in and (as a bonus) is adorable. Unluckily, she’s the owner of eight mischievous Alaskan Malamutes, who may or may not be the physical manifestations of the old gods of Norse myth.) Someone to Watch Over Me by AttackoftheDarkCurses (AO3 2019  Rated E Complete, 6 chapters, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: When Rey is gifted a state-of-the-art all-house AI to beta-test, she never expected "Kylo" to become her best friend, and she never expected him do anything within his power to give her the winter holiday she's always wanted.) Someone You Love(d) by AttackoftheDarkCurses (AO3 2020  Rated E Complete, 7 Chapters, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: A misunderstanding leads to a lot of hate sex between roommates Ben and Rey. But when Rey ends up joining him on his trip to visit his family, the truth comes out.) Stone Hollow by violethoure666 (AO3 2018  Rated E Complete, One-Shot, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: Ben and Rey have been tasked with convincing a very grumpy old man to let them use his private road for a bus route. They’re stuck in the middle of nowhere and there’s only one room at the inn *smirk emoji*) Sugar and Spice by Rebel_Scum1221 (AO3 2019  Rated E Complete, 6 Chapters, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: Rey bakes when she's stressed, but unfortunately never has enough room to finish all of her baked goods. Thus leading her to give her neighbor- who she may or may not have the hots for- her leftovers. Shenanigans ensue.) Sweet Home by Violetwilson (AO3 2018  Rated E Complete, One-Shot, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: Honestly, she only came to Waffle House at two AM to pick up Finn and Poe and maybe order some pancakes. Maybe. But what was she supposed to do when she found a hot businessman with a broken car in the parking lot? Not invite him to sleep over at her place until the town's only mechanic sobered up?) the man, the stallion, and the wind by voicedimplosives (AO3 2018  Rated E Complete, One-Shot, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: Weary and alone, Rey barrels west on the Trans-Canada Hwy in her old pickup truck. Weary and in need of a lift, Ben Solo stands by the side of the road with his thumb out, in the hopes of hitching a ride. One hell of a winter storm’s about to roll in, leaving them stranded. What ever shall they do?) The Trial of Naboo: Fall of a Duke by Twin_Kitten (AO3 2020  Rated E Complete, 2 Chapters, Historical AU, Quick Synopsis: Ben and Rey are engaged to be married, but after several attempts on her life, he takes personal responsibility for her safety, including keeping her in his bed at night. Problem? Ben is extremely attracted to his bride but the MUST wait until marriage. ) Trapped by spacey_gracie (AO3 2019  Rated E Complete, 5 Chapters, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: Rey and Ben have been sworn enemies since they were eight years old. When their best friends Rose and Hux start dating, they decide they're sick of the fighting, and force the pair together to work out their issues once and for all.) under thy own life's key by galvanator (AO3 2020  Rated E Complete, 7 Chapters, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: Ben and Rey share a bed on a trip and everything is totally normal and nothing is weird.) variations on a theme of you by diasterisms (AO3 2017  Rated E Complete, 7 Chapters, Canon AU, Quick Synopsis: "Who knows?" Luke darted a faint smile at Ben and Rey as they stewed in silence and disbelief. "The two of you might even learn to get along. Right, Leia?" "Like a house on fire," the General deadpanned. "Complete with screams, flames, and people running for safety." "Indeed." Luke's blue eyes twinkled. "There may be no survivors.") What if I want to kiss you tomorrow? by Hellyjellybean (AO3 2020  Rated T Complete, One-Shot, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: Ben needs to share Rey's bed for the night, but does he want to share more than a bed with her? ) what you take with you by irridesca (AO3 2021  Rated E Complete, 16 Chapters, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: When Rey's former boss, heartless defense attorney Kylo Ren, is shot in the head, she's asked to return to her position as his assistant to oversee his recovery. The only problem? When he wakes up two days later, he has no idea who Kylo Ren is. According to him, his name is Ben Solo.) When the party ends by Blueyedgurl (AO3 2021  Rated E Complete, One-Shot, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: Rey gets wasted at a frat party. Ben finds her, puts her in his room, where she's safe. Rey wakes in the morning after Ben comes out of the shower and nakedness ensues.) would you be so kind? by youcarrymeaway (AO3 2020  Rated E Complete, 3 Chapters, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: An au where Ben accidentally hits Rey with his car, and also falls in love with her a little.)

[addictedtoeddie]

The full Esquire Spain interview translated from Spanish:  

Eddie Redmayne trial: guilty of being the most talented (and stylish) actor of his generation

The Oscar winner talks about what it means to premiere a film with Aaron Sorkin (The Chicago 7th Trial on Netflix) and filming the new part of the most famous saga of all time under the watchful eye of its author, J.K. Rowling.

By Alba Díaz (text) / JUANKR (photos and video) / Álvaro de Juan (styling) 10/23/2020  

At the Kettle’s Yard Gallery in Cambridge, stands alone and leaning on a piano Prometheus, a marble head made by Constantin Brâncusi, and the only piece of art that Eddie Redmayne (London, 1982) would save from possible massive destruction. He tells me about it as he leaves the filming set of the third installment of Fantastic Beasts in the early days of an autumn that, we suspect, we will never forget. It begins to get dark as the actor nods seriously: "I promise to do my best in this interview."

Eddie Redmayne made himself in the theater despite some voices warning him that he could not survive in it. "Many people were in charge to tell me that it would never work, that only extraordinary cases make it and that I would not be able to live from this professionally." Even his father came home one day with a list of statistics on unemployed young actors. Redmayne, who is extremely modest, polite and funny, adds: “But I enjoyed theater so much that I got to the point of thinking that if I could only do one play a year for the rest of my life… I would do it. And that would fill me completely.

Spoiler: since then until today he has participated in many more. He set his first foot in the industry when he debuted at the Shakespeare’s Globe Theater and won over critics and audiences. He then landed his first major role in My Week with Marilyn opposite Michelle Williams. And then came one of the roles of his life, the character he wanted to become an actor for, Marius. With him he sang, led a revolution and broke Cosette's heart in Les Miserables. “I found out about the Les Misérables auditions when I was shooting a movie in Illinois. Dressed like a cowboy. I picked up the iPhone and videotaped myself singing the Marius song. I always wanted to be him ”.

Now Redmayne is an Oscar winner - thanks to his portrayal of Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything - and the protagonist of one of the most important sagas in history, Fantastic Beasts. He plays the magizoologist Newt Scamander in it. When I ask him what it means to him to be the protagonist of a magical world that is so important to millions of people, Eddie sighs and takes a few seconds to answer. “I have always loved the Harry Potter universe. Some people like The Lord of the Rings or Star Wars ... But, for me, the idea that there is a magical world that happens right in front of you, that happens without going any further on the streets of London, that. .. That exploded my imagination in another way.

During the quarantine, J. K. Rowling, who has been in charge of the script of the film, sparked a controversy through a series of tweets about transgender women. Redmayne assures that he does not agree with these statements but that it does not approve of the attacks of some people through social networks. The actor was one of the first to position himself against Rowling alongside Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and other protagonists of her films. "Trans women are women, trans men are men, and non-binary identities are valid."

After having spent a while talking, Redmayne confesses to me that he has never been a big dreamer not to maintain certain aspirations that ended up disappointing him. So he has always kept a handful of dreams to himself. One of them was fulfilled just a few weeks ago with the premiere of The Trial of the Chicago 7, a film written and directed by Aaron Sorkin that can already be seen on Netflix and in some - few - cinemas. “I was on vacation with my wife in Morocco and the script arrived. I think I called my agent before I even read it and said yes, I would. She probably thought the obvious, that I'm stupid. After that, of course I read the script, which is about a specific moment in history that I knew very little about. I found it exciting and a very relevant drama in today's times. "

And it is that having a script by Aaron Sorkin in your hands is no small thing. Eddie Redmayne has been a fan of his work ever since he saw The West Wing of the White House. “His scripts have delicious language and dialogue. As an actor, it's fun to play characters that are much smarter than you are in real life. That virtuosity is hard to come by. I really hope that audiences enjoy this movie and feel that there is always hope. " He remembers that since he released The Theory of Everything he has recorded, to a large extent, English period dramas, “and although the new Aaron Sorkin is not strictly contemporary,” says Redmayne, “to be able to wear jeans and shirts and sweaters instead of so much tweed is great ”.

Besides acting, art was the only thing the actor was interested in, so he ended up studying Art History at Cambridge University. “My parents are quite traditional and when I told them I wanted to act they gave me free rein but on the condition that I study a career. And I'm very grateful for that because ... Look, beyond that, when I play a real character I usually go to the National Portrait Gallery in London quite often. There I lock myself up. Now, for Sorkin's film, I went through a lot of photographs and videotapes. Art helps me to be more creative, to get into paper ”. If he were not an actor, he would be, he says decidedly, a historian or perhaps a curator. "Although I think he would be a very bad art curator."

Against all logic, Eddie Redmayne is color blind. But there is a color that you can distinguish anywhere and on any surface: klein blue. He wrote his thesis on the French artist Yves Klein and the only shade of blue he used in his works. He wrote up to 30,000 words talking about that color with which he became obsessed. “It is surprising that a color can be so emotional. One can only hope to achieve that intensity in acting. "

Like his taste for art, which encompasses the refined and compact, Redmayne seems to be in the same balance when it comes to the roles he chooses. When I ask him what aspects a character he wants to play should have, he takes a few seconds again before answering: “I wish I had a more ingenious answer but I will tell you that I know when my belly hurts. It's that feeling that I trust. In my mind I transport him to imagine myself playing that character. When I read a script I have to really enjoy it. You never fully regret those instincts. It's like when you connect with something emotionally. "

So we come to the conclusion that all his characters have some traits in common. "You know what? I never look back, and this is something personal, but I do believe that there is a parallel between Marius in Les Misérables trying to be a revolutionary, someone who is quite prone to being distracted by love but at the same time is willing to die for his cause, and Tom Hayden from The Chicago Trial of the 7 who was a man who had integrity and was passionate and fought for the things he believed in. So I suppose there may also be similarities between a young Stephen Hawking and Newt Scamander. There are traits in common in all of them that I don't really know where they come from ”.

When we talk about the year we are living in, in which it is increasingly difficult to find hope, we both let out a nervous laugh. "There must be," Redmayne says. “There is something very nice that Tom Hayden, the character I play in Sorkin's film, said to his former wife, actress Jane Fonda, just the day before she passed away. He told her that watching people die for their beliefs changed his life forever. In that sense, I also think about what Kennedy Jr. wrote about how democracy is messy, tough and never easy ... As is believing in something to fight for. I look at history and how they were willing to live their lives with that integrity to change the world and I realize that somehow that spirit still remains with us. " We fell silent thinking about it. "There must be hope."

I tell him about my love for Nick Cave's blog, The Red Hand, and one of the posts that I have liked the most in recent weeks. In it, the singer affirms that his response to a crisis has always been to create, an impulse that has saved him many times. For Redmayne there are two activities that can silence noise: drawing and playing the piano. “When you play the piano your concentration is so consumed by trying to hit that note that you can't think of anything else. Similarly, when you draw something, the focus is between the paper and what you are trying to recreate ... There I try to calm my mind.

Before saying goodbye, I drop a question that I thought I knew the answer to, but failed. What work of art would you save from mass destruction? "How difficult! I could name my favorite artists but still couldn't choose a work. Only one piece? Let me think. I am very obsessed with Yves Klein, but I would stick with a work by Brancusi. There is a sculpture of him, a small head called Prometheus, in Cambridge's Kettle’s Yard, on a dark mahogany piano. The truth is that I find it very ... beautiful ”.

Before leaving, he confesses to me - with a childish and slow voice - that he would like to direct something one day. We said goodbye, saying that we will talk about his next project. Next, the first thing I do is open the Google search engine. "P-r-o-m-e-t-h-e-u-s". Although Eddie Redmayne has trouble distinguishing violet from blue, he doesn't have them when choosing a good piece. He's right, that work deserves to be saved.

* This article appears in the November 2020 issue of Esquire magazine

Source: esquire.com/es/actualidad/cine/a34434114/eddie-redmayne-juicio-7-chicago-netflix-entrevista/

[quentinblack]

Smoke and Mirrors

Chapter 5: Andromeda II - Wotcher! (link to fully story on FF.net)

Featuring: Andromeda Tonks, Teddy Lupin, Bobby Tonks.

Word Count: 2.4K words

Warnings: References to Alzheimer's

Andromeda shuffled down the street with Teddy as quickly as she could.

It had started spitting, which was something she hadn’t counted on when she’d left the house just ten minutes ago. It looked like it was going to be a nice spring day, with the sun shining and barely a cloud in the sky, but then the sun had cowered behind one of those clouds and now it looked as though the heavens may open.

This was the trouble with travelling the muggle way. You didn’t have to worry about taking an extra coat or umbrella if you were using the Floo network or apparating. Andromeda couldn’t fathom how the muggles managed to cope with the unpredictability of the weather. You’d probably be alright if you lived in a place that was perpetually cold or hot, but not in Britain where the weather seemed to change on a complete whim whenever it fancied it.

Andromeda couldn’t see much of the pavement that she was walking on as Teddy was held tight to her waist in his blue baby sling, which meant he took up most of her peripheral vision. This was a particularly large risk as they were walking the streets of Fratton, which quite possibly has the largest ratio of dog-shit to pavement in all of England.

If avoiding dog-poo wasn’t enough of a challenge in itself – Andromeda also had to navigate the absolutely bewildering road system. There were some stretches of pavement on the way to Fratton Station where when crossing a road, or merely just from pavement to pavement - you would have four different directions of oncoming traffic potentially coming at you!

Andromeda struggled to understand the way muggle roads worked at the best of times, but Portsmouth was by far and away the most difficult. Ted had always said that if you could learn to drive in Fratton you could work out how to drive anywhere. Nymphadora had never had the patience for it and had much preferred apparating everywhere once she was of age.  

Andromeda caught a slight glimpse of the train approaching in the distance. The platform was pretty busy with lots of families bustling here, there and everywhere. The red and blue train sauntering into the station almost resembled a sliced-open Battenberg, with the front of it dead flat and the rest of it sort of curving out.

Ted always said the modern electric locomotive trains were a wonderful feat of British engineering, but looking at the industrial, ugly train as it approached the platform – well, it certainly lacked the glamour and pizzazz of the Hogwarts Express.  

The journey that they’d be taking would probably take them the best part of four hours, with their initial train to Waterloo clocking in half of that time. There was something about being on muggle trains that Andromeda found quite relaxing and enjoyable, perhaps it was just the nostalgia of those long journeys to school when she was younger.

In truth, Andromeda was just glad to be out of the house. It was a chance to get some fresh air and to be around lots of people, even if those people were only there for a passing moment. She’d been cooped up in that house for almost a year in hiding and barely seen more than a handful of people in that time – and half of the people she had seen had been there solely to torture her.  

The time on the London bound train flew by and before she knew it they’d gone right through the Hampshire countryside and into Guildford, before eventually docking into Waterloo. The station was absolutely heaving with people and Andromeda struggled to work out where exactly they were meant to be going, but eventually a kind station guard directed her to the Jubilee underground line, which would take them to West Ham where they could make their connecting train.

It wasn’t her first foray on the London underground as she’d travelled on it many times with her late husband, but it was her first time along and she felt quite uncomfortable. The tube was jam-packed with foreign tourists and Andromeda could barely even fit on the carriage when she first got on.

The one silver lining of travelling with Teddy was that almost immediately a tall, bald man wearing a white t-shirt that read “ATLANTA 96” offered his seat to her. Andromeda thanked the man and noticed that the 5 multi-coloured rings on his shirt very much looked like Quidditch hoops, but she quickly learned that he was definitely a muggle when she saw him reach for his portable telephone and start talking into it.

It took a lot of sweat and a few tears from Teddy, but it wasn’t too long before they found themselves on the C2C train heading to Southend. Andromeda was very thankful when a dark skinned man offered up his seat to her and she stared out of the window as the train departed the East-London platform. It had been an early start for the both of them and Teddy soon nodded off in her lap – and it wasn’t long before Andromeda herself followed suit.

~ ~ ~ 

Andromeda’s eyes shot open as Ted’s cry gradually shifted into that of her grandson’s. She looked down into her lap and saw little Teddy’s tears dry up slightly when he noticed that she was awake again.

She shifted uncomfortably on her seat and as she saw the sea outside her window noted that they were almost there now. Andromeda felt her bum and back ache a little as she moved. Their carriage was now virtually empty, with only a mother and small son a few seats down and a greasy looking teenager in the corner for company.

The lad in the corner had short, spikey gelled hair and was wearing a black t-shirt with ‘Austin 3:16’ in block caps on it. Andromeda assumed his t-shirt must be some sort of religious reference – he didn’t particularly personify what she’d come to think of as the Christian-type, but she still struggled to get her head around muggle customs despite being married to Ted for the best part of 25 years.

The little boy a few seats down was fully engrossed in playing with his spaceman plastic action-figure, whilst his Mother read a book called Bridget Jones. This thankfully left Andromeda free to daydream outside the window as she stared into the sea and Teddy rested his eyes again in her lap.

This is the LTS Rail Service to Shoeburyness. The next station is… Westcliff. Please ensure you take all of your belongings with you when alighting the train.

“That’s our stop Mummy, isn’t it?!”

“No, no, Harry, Southend is one more after this one sweetheart”

Andromeda couldn’t stop herself looking over at the excited little muggle boy and his mother a few seats down from them.

“Mummy?! Mummy?!”

“Yes, Harry?”

“Are me and Buzz allowed to get some sweets when we’re out in town? We promise we’ll be good!”

“What do you say, Harry?”

“PLEASE!”

“That’s better! Now if you promise you’ll be a good little boy and are on your best behaviour whilst Mummy gets her eyes tested and pops into Boots for her prescription, then I’ll let you get some pick and mix in Woolies.”

“YAY!! Thanks Mummy! You’re the best!”

Andromeda almost allowed a slight smile to escape her permanent poker face. It did warm her heart to see the little boy’s face filled with such joy as he embraced his mother, but unfortunately it also served to remind her that Teddy would never experience such joy with his own mother, which made her feel very dejected as she glanced down at him.

She supposed at least in his Godfather he would have a positive male role model – and someone who actually understood what it was like to have no parents.

~ ~ ~ 

Teddy stirred slightly at the sound of the seagulls scuffling over some discarded vinegar-soaked chips on the pavement. The sudden movement from her grandson caught Andromeda by surprise and she instinctively reached out to grab him, forgetting that he was tightly secured in the muggle baby-carrier that Ted had originally bought for Nymphadora.

The mini panic caused her to momentarily stop in her stride, but Teddy didn’t notice as he was already back to sleep. He wasn’t as light as he once was. It was only really that he’d been such a tiny new-born to begin with that meant she was still able to carry him when walking in the first place.

Andromeda found the turning she was looking for and headed down it. Their destination wasn’t far now and she’d soon be able to have a nice sit down and a cup of tea. She saw the giant cherry tree in the distance and headed towards it, quickening her stride and walking into the road momentarily to avoid the litter on the pavement.

It looked like a fox had a fight with a black sack full of rubbish the night before – and the fox had won, quite comfortably, as the street was littered with empty juice cartons, crisp packets and banana skins. The middle aged-witch had to double take, as she could’ve sworn that one of the crisp packets proclaimed to contain Vanilla Ice Cream flavour crisps. It must be a strange muggle thing, she thought.

The tree came fully into view and shaded them from the sun, as Andromeda walked up the path towards the big red front door of Stapleton House. She pulled the door-knocker back a few times and after a few moments the door made a buzzing noise, indicating it was now unlocked.

A slightly tanned lady with a friendly smile on her face greeted them at the door.

“Oh hello,” she said in that very distinctive voice adults only ever use when talking to babies. “And what lucky person are you here to see today?” she asked Teddy warmly, although of course she was really addressing Andromeda.

“Robert Tonks,” Andromeda said.

“Robert Tonks…err… Robert… OH! You mean Bobby!”

“Yes.”

“Oh that’s fantastic! It’s been a little while since he’s had any visitors. I’m sure it will make his day to see you both. He’s down in room 14. Follow the hallway all the way down, take the first left, then right and he’ll be in the room next to the garden.”

“Thank you,” Andromeda replied courteously, not wanting to make too much of an impression on the nurse in-case she started asking any questions.

Andromeda opened the door to room 14 and saw Robert Tonks sitting in a brown armchair facing away from the door. He was staring at the television that was bizarrely not actually showing anything on it at all. It was just a black screen, with lots of yellow and blue writing on it.

She looked over at his bed frame which read:

ROBERT “BOBBY” TONKS.

ALZHEIMER’S.

DOUBLE INCONTINENT.

“Hello Robert,” Andromeda said warmly. The elderly man, now in his 70s with not a spot of hair on his head turned around instantly and looked at her curiously through his glasses.

“Hello,” he said blankly. “Who are you?”

“It’s me, Robert, Andromeda. Ted’s wife,” she said calmly. He had been losing his memory for the best part of three years now, so she was used to having to be patient with him.

“Andromeda…Ted’s wife… Ted. Ted…” he pondered to himself. It was evident that he was trying very hard, but could not quite put it together in his mind.

“Your son, Ted,” she prompted.

“My son…Ted…Ted…Ted! My son Ted! Yes. Yes of course. Chip off the old block, just like his old man. Kind and loving like his mother, too. Are they here too? Ted and Agata”

“No… no not today Robert. They’re busy today, but I am sure they’ll be here tomorrow,” she lied.

It was much easier that way.

Ted’s mother had died of cancer about five years ago, long before Robert had started losing his memory and had to be put in a care home. But he often forgot. The first few times her and Ted had taken the painstaking trouble of telling him that she wouldn’t be visiting him that day, or ever again, because she was dead – and it was horrible. It was like he had to go through the whole grieving process all over again.

The least they could do was spare him from that, although now it wasn’t just Agata who was dead. It was his son and granddaughter too. But Andromeda had barely been able to grieve properly for either of them herself yet. She was hardly about to stroll on in and announce to him that they were dead.  

“Oh. Well, at least you made the trip ehh, Andromeda? And wow… my goodness. Is that? Is that little Nymphadora? Haven’t you grown sweetheart?” he said in amazement at Teddy.

“No, Robert. This is Nymphadora’s son, Teddy. He’s your great-grandson,” she said smiling and lifting Teddy up and taking him over to meet Robert.

“Great? Great-grandson?” Robert uttered in disbelief, as he took Teddy into his arms.

“You see that, lad,” he said, pointing to the television screen with lots of writing on it. “That’s the Premier League table. The 20 best football teams in England play each other twice, then whoever gets the most points at the end wins the title. And look at that. It’s the last day of the season and look who sits at the top…The Arsenal! That crazy French fella Arsene Wenger has only gone and won it for us hasn’t he?!”

“I said to Ted we were mad to hire him. Should have gone for Johan Cruyff. But look at that – he was right. Said all along Wenger would win us the league!” Robert mused to nobody in particular.

Andromeda was always amazed at how no matter how badly Robert’s memory deteriorated – he would never forget anything to do with football, or conversations he’d had with Ted in relation to it.

Robert suddenly looked over at Andromeda in slight panic and fear. He ushered for her so he could hand Teddy back.

“Are you okay, Robert?” she asked worriedly.

His face was fluxed with shame and anguish.

“I’m sorry Andromeda. I think you’ll have to call for a nurse…I’ve messed myself.”

[aion-rsa]

Dennis ‘Des’ Nilsen is Far From David Tennant’s First Psychopath Role

https://ift.tt/2RNJXa5

David Tennant’s transformation into serial killer Dennis Nilsen for ITV’s Des was unsettlingly convincing. It wasn’t just the physical resemblance, though under that hairstyle and behind those 1980s glasses frames, the similarity was remarkable. It was also the posture, the unwavering eye contact, and the voice; mumbling and unconcerned, listing the terrible details of Nilsen’s crimes as if reciting a recipe instead of multiple brutal murders. 

As Nilsen, Tennant pulled off what every actor hopes to in a real-life role – a disappearing trick. He slid clean inside the role, leaving no trace of The Doctor, or Simon from There She Goes, or the demon Crowley, or Alec Hardy, or his funny, self-deprecating public persona. For those three hours on screen, he was nothing but Nilsen.   

The role is one in a long line of on-screen psychopaths for Tennant. He might be best loved around these parts as excitable, convivial romantic hero the Tenth Doctor (who, as noted below, also had his villainous moments), but David Tennant has been playing bad guys for decades, starting with a 1995 episode of ITV police procedural The Bill…

Steven Clemens in The Bill, ‘Deadline’ (1995)

In his early 20s, David Tennant went through a rite of passage for the UK acting profession: he landed a part in The Bill.  And not just any old part on The Bill, this one was a peach. Tennant wasn’t cast as some kid DC Carver caught snatching a granny’s handbag – he played psychopathic kidnapper and murderer Steven Clemens.

When 15-year-old schoolgirl Lucy Dean (an early role for Honeysuckle Weeks) was abducted after receiving threatening phone calls, the caretaker from her school was brought in for questioning. What followed was a high-stakes game of Blink between Tennant’s character and Sun Hill Station’s finest. Clemens toyed with the police, first denying responsibility and then refusing to tell them where he’d stashed Lucy. It’s a big performance, as suits the soap-like context, but even then Tennant made a good villain, revelling in his evildoing. Clemens came a cropper eventually when Lucy was found alive and the investigation linked him to the kidnap and murder of another schoolgirl. Watch the whole episode here. 

Barty Crouch Jr. in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)

Skipping forward a decade, Tennant’s most mainstream cinematic baddie to date is Death Eater Barty Crouch Jr. in the fourth Harry Potter film. Crouch Jr. was the Voldemort supporter who engineered Harry’s entry into the Triwizard Tournament, and turned the winning trophy into a portkey that delivered Potter straight into Voldemort’s waiting arms (well, Voldemort was sort of soup at that point, but bit of magic and voila – arms!).

Crouch Jr. did all this while magically disguised as Brendan Gleeson’s character Mad-Eye Moody, so Tennant’s actual screen time in the film is pretty limited. In his few short appearances though – in a flashback to his Ministry of Magic trial and after his disguise is rumbled – Tennant makes a real impression as the unhinged, tongue-flicking baddie.

The Time Lord Victorious in Doctor Who ‘Waters of Mars’ (2009)

The majority of the time, the Tenth Doctor was a sweetie – big grin, lots of enthusiasm, two hearts full of frivolity and love. Every so often though, Ten’s genocidal, survivor-guilt past rose to the surface. Never cruel, never cowardly, no, but sometimes a bit… murdery and drunk on power. 

One such occasion was his brutal extermination of the Racnoss children in Christmas special ‘The Runaway Bride’, and another was his Time Lord Victorious trip at the end of ‘Waters of Mars’. In the special, Ten changes the events of a fixed point in time to save the lives of Captain Adelaide Brooke (Lindsay Duncan) and her surviving crew, bringing them back to Earth in the TARDIS instead of leaving them to die. Realising the serious ramifications of his timeline meddling, Brooke confronts the Doctor about his arrogance, and puts the mistake right. It doesn’t take Ten long to come back to his senses, drop the god act, and realise he’s gone too far, and it’s David Tennant’s ability to convincingly play both the power-crazed god and the devastated man that makes him one of the best in the business. 

Kilgrave in Jessica Jones (2015)

David Tennant played a bonafide demon from actual hell in Good Omens, the TV adaptation of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s 1990 novel, but Crowley still had nothing on his Jessica Jones character.

The first series of Marvel’s Jessica Jones on Netflix won acclaim for its depiction of a coercive, abusive relationship through a comic book fantasy lens. David Tennant was Kilgrave, a villain with the power of mind control following experiments conducted during his childhood. Instead of using his power for good (convincing people to pick up litter, be kind to animals, etc.), Kilgrave exerted his will on the world at large, bending those around him to his sick desires. When he stumbled upon super-powered private investigator Jones, he didn’t stop at using her super-strength for his own ends. Kilgrave also used his powers to keep Jones hostage and manipulate her into coerced sex. Jones’ battle to escape Kilgrave was powerfully acted by Krysten Ritter and David Tennant, who had the range to show Kilgrave’s ‘charm’ as well as his chilling megalomania. 

Read more

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Staged: BBC Comedy Confirms Sheen & Tennant’s Double-Act Greatness

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Doctor Who: David Tennant reflects on his final line

By Kayti Burt

Cale Erendreich in Bad Samaritan (2018)

Director Dean Devlin followed up weather-disaster flick Geostorm with Bad Samaritan, a dark psychological thriller about a small-time crook who gets into the bad books of a wealthy sicko when he stumbles upon his dark secrets while burgling his house. Misfits’ Robert Sheehan plays the burglar, and David Tennant plays the loaded psycho whose obsession with technology earned him the nickname ‘Evil Bruce Wayne’. Cale Erendreich is a Patrick Bateman-like moneybags psycho with a sick taste in torture. Overall, the film itself isn’t a huge amount of cop, but boy, does Tennant commit.

Dr Edgar Fallon in Criminal ‘Edgar’ (2019)

Netflix’s multi-lingual European series Criminal takes the best bit of Line of Duty – the police interview scenes – and strips away everything else. Every episode has a new case, a new interviewee, a new lead actor, and a team of cops trying to break them within a limited time frame. 

Kicking it all off with the first UK episode of series one (a second run is available to stream now) was David Tennant as Dr Edgar Fallon. You’ll have to watch the 42-minute episode to know whether or not Fallon is guilty of the crime about which he’s being interviewed (the rape and murder of his 14-year-old step-daughter), but Tennant is chilling and magnetic enough as the well-spoken English doctor to keep you guessing.

Dr Tom Kendrick in Deadwater Fell (2020)

When a tragedy occurs in a Scottish village, suspicion falls on those closest to the victims. David Tennant plays local GP Tom in Channel 4 drama Deadwater Fell, a four-part series available to stream on All 4, about how a small community responds to a terrible event. Is Tom really the perfect family man he appears to be, or is there something else under the surface? Without giving anything away in terms of plot, Tennant moves fluently between the roles of victim and villain in the audience’s mind as this empathetic, clever miniseries twists and turns. 

Dennis Nilsen in Des (2020)

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This starring role is the culmination of years spent clocking up experience on how to unsettle on screen. As real-life Scottish serial killer Dennis Nilsen, David Tennant is chillingly perfect. It’s both an on-point impersonation and a disquieting performance that conjures up this peculiarly banal killer. Tennant is ably aided by co-stars Daniel Mays and Jason Watkins as, respectively, Nilsen’s arresting officer DCI Peter Jay and biographer Brian Masters. It’s a triangle of excellent actors at their best, making for a compelling three-parter. 

The post Dennis ‘Des’ Nilsen is Far From David Tennant’s First Psychopath Role appeared first on Den of Geek.

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

[hlupdate]

Harry Styles isn’t exactly dressed down for lunch. He’s got a white floppy hat that Diana Ross might have won from Elton in a poker game at Cher’s mansion circa 1974, plus Gucci shades, a cashmere sweater, and blue denim bell-bottoms. His nail polish is pink and mint green. He’s also carrying his purse — no other word for it — a yellow patent-canvas bag with the logo “Chateau Marmont.” The tough old ladies who work at this Beverly Hills deli know him well. Gloria and Raisa dote on him, calling him “my love” and bringing him his usual tuna salad and iced coffee. He turns heads, to put it mildly, but nobody comes near because the waitresses hover around the booth protectively.

He was just a small-town English lad of 16 when he became his generation’s pop idol with One Direction. When the group went on hiatus, he struck out on his own with his brash 2017 solo debut, whose lead single was the magnificently over-the-top six-minute piano ballad “Sign of the Times.” Even people who missed out on One Direction were shocked to learn the truth: This pinup boy was a rock star at heart.

A quick highlight reel of Harry’s 2019 so far: He hosted the Met Gala with Lady Gaga, Serena Williams, Alessandro Michele, and Anna Wintour serving an eyebrow-raising black lace red-carpet look. He is the official face of a designer genderless fragrance, Gucci’s Mémoire d’une Odeur. When James Corden had an all-star dodgeball match on The Late Late Show, Harry got spiked by a hard serve from Michelle Obama, making him perhaps the first Englishman ever hit in the nads on TV by a First Lady.

Closer to his heart, he brought down the house at this year’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ceremony with his tribute to his friend and idol Stevie Nicks. “She’s always there for you,” Harry said in his speech. “She knows what you need: advice, a little wisdom, a blouse, a shawl.” He added, “She’s responsible for more running mascara — including my own — than all the bad dates in history.” (Backstage, Nicks accidentally referred to Harry’s former band as “’NSync.” Hey, a goddess can get away with that sort of thing.)

Harry has been the world’s It boy for nearly a decade now. The weirdest thing about him? He loves being this guy. In a style of fast-lane celebrity that takes a ruthless toll on the artist’s personality, creativity, sanity, Harry is almost freakishly at ease. He has managed to grow up in public with all his boyish enthusiasm intact, not to mention his manners. He’s dated a string of high-profile women — but he never gets caught uttering any of their names in public, much less shading any of them. Instead of going the usual superstar-pop route — en vogue producers, celebrity duets, glitzy club beats — he’s gone his own way, and gotten more popular than ever. He’s putting the finishing touches on his new album, full of the toughest, most soulful songs he’s written yet. As he explains, “It’s all about having sex and feeling sad.”

The Harry Charm is a force of nature, and it can be almost frightening to witness in action. The most startling example might be a backstage photo from February taken with one of his heroes, Van Morrison. You have never seen a Van picture like this one. He’s been posing for photos for 50 years, and he’s been refusing to crack a smile in nearly all of them. Until he met Harry — for some reason, Van beams like a giddy schoolgirl. What did Harry do to him? “I was tickling him behind his back,” Harry confides. “Somebody sent me that photo — I think his tour manager took it. When I saw it, I felt like John Travolta in Pulp Fiction opening the case with the gold light shining. I was like, ‘Fuck, maybe I shouldn’t show this to anyone.’”

In interviews, Harry has always tended to coast on that charm, simply because he can. In his teens, he was in public every minute and became adept at guarding every scrap of his privacy. But these days, he’s finding out he has things he wants to say. He’s more confident about thinking out loud and seeing what happens. “Looser” is how he puts it. “More open. I’m discovering how much better it makes me feel to be open with friends. Feeling that vulnerability, rather than holding everything in.”

Like a lot of people his age, he’s asking questions about culture, gender, identity, new ideas about masculinity and sexuality. “I feel pretty lucky to have a group of friends who are guys who would talk about their emotions and be really open,” he says. “My friend’s dad said to me, ‘You guys are so much better at it than we are. I never had friends I could really talk to. It’s good that you guys have each other because you talk about real shit. We just didn’t.’”

It’s changed how he approaches his songs. “For me, it doesn’t mean I’ll sit down and be like, ‘This is what I have for dinner, and this is where I eat every day, and this is what I do before I go to bed,’” he says. “But I will tell you that I can be really pathetic when I’m jealous. Feeling happier than I’ve ever been, sadder than I’ve ever been, feeling sorry for myself, being mad at myself, being petty and pitiful — it feels really different to share that.”

At times, Harry sounds like an ordinary 25-year-old figuring his shit out, which, of course, he is. (Harry and I got to know each other last year, when he got in touch after reading one of my books, though I’d already been writing about his music for years.) It’s strange to hear him talk about shedding his anxieties and doubts, since he’s always come across as one of the planet’s most confident people. “While I was in the band,” he says, “I was constantly scared I might sing a wrong note. I felt so much weight in terms of not getting things wrong. I remember when I signed my record deal and I asked my manager, ‘What happens if I get arrested? Does it mean the contract is null and void?’ Now, I feel like the fans have given me an environment to be myself and grow up and create this safe space to learn and make mistakes.”

We slip out the back and spend a Saturday afternoon cruising L.A. in his 1972 silver Jaguar E-type. The radio doesn’t work, so we just sing “Old Town Road.” He marvels, “‘Bull riding and boobies’ — that is potentially the greatest lyric in any song ever.” Harry used to be pop’s mystery boy, so diplomatic and tight-lipped. But as he opens up over time, telling his story, he reaches the point where he’s pitching possible headlines for this profile. His best: “Soup, Sex, and Sun Salutations.”

How did he get to this new place? As it turns out, the journey involves some heartbreak. Some guidance from David Bowie. Some Transcendental Meditation. And more than a handful of magic mushrooms. But mostly, it comes down to a curious kid who can’t decide whether to be the world’s most ardently adored pop star, or a freaky artiste. So he decides to be both.

Two things about English rock stars never change: They love Southern California, and they love cars. A few days after Harry proclaimed the genius of “Old Town Road,” we’re in a different ride — a Tesla — cruising the Pacific Coast Highway while Harry sings along to the radio. “Californiaaaaaa!” he yells from behind the wheel as we whip past Zuma Beach. “It sucks!” There’s a surprising number of couples along the beach who seem to be arguing. We speculate on which ones are breaking up and which are merely having the talk. “Ah, yes, the talk,” Harry says dreamily. “Ye olde chat.”

Harry is feeling the smooth Seventies yacht-rock grooves today, blasting Gerry Rafferty, Pablo Cruise, Hall and Oates. When I mention that Nina Simone once did a version of “Rich Girl,” he needs to hear it right away. He counters by blowing my mind with Donny Hathaway’s version of John Lennon’s “Jealous Guy.”

Harry raves about a quintessential SoCal trip he just tried: a “cold sauna,” a process that involves getting locked in an ice chamber. His eyelashes froze. We stop for a smoothie (“It’s basically ice cream”) and his favorite pepper-intensive wheatgrass shot. It goes down like a dose of battery acid. “That’ll add years to your life,” he assures me.

We’re on our way to Shangri-La studios in Malibu, founded by the Band back in the 1970s, now owned by Rick Rubin. It’s where Harry made some of the upcoming album, and as we walk in, he grins at the memory. “Ah, yes,” he says. “Did a lot of mushrooms in here.”

Psychedelics have started to play a key role in his creative process. “We’d do mushrooms, lie down on the grass, and listen to Paul McCartney’s Ram in the sunshine,” he says. “We’d just turn the speakers into the yard.” The chocolate edibles were kept in the studio fridge, right next to the blender. “You’d hear the blender going, and think, ‘So we’re all having frozen margaritas at 10 a.m. this morning.’” He points to a corner: “This is where I was standing when we were doing mushrooms and I bit off the tip of my tongue. So I was trying to sing with all this blood gushing out of my mouth. So many fond memories, this place.”

It’s not mere rock-star debauchery — it’s emblematic of his new state of mind. You get the feeling this is why he enjoys studios so much. After so many years making One Direction albums while touring, always on the run, he finally gets to take his time and embrace the insanity of it all. “We were here for six weeks in Malibu, without going into the city,” he says. “People would bring their dogs and kids. We’d take a break to play cornhole tournaments. Family values!” But it’s also the place where he has proudly bled for his art. “Mushrooms and Blood. Now there’s an album title.”

Some of the engineers come over to catch up on gossip. Harry gestures out the window to the Pacific waves, where the occasional nude revelry might have happened, and where the occasional pair of pants got lost. “There was one night where we’d been partying a bit and ended up going down to the beach and I lost all my stuff, basically,” he says. “I lost all my clothes. I lost my wallet. Maybe a month later, somebody found my wallet and mailed it back, anonymously. I guess it just popped out of the sand. But what’s sad is, I lost my favorite mustard corduroy flares.” A moment of silence is held for the corduroy flares.

Recording in the studio today is Brockhampton, the self-proclaimed “world’s greatest boy band.” Harry says hi to all the Brockhampton guys, which takes a while since there seem to be a few dozen of them. “We’re together all the time,” one tells Harry out in the yard. “We see each other all day, every day.” He pauses. “You know how it is.”

Harry breaks into a dry grin. “Yes, I know how it is.”

One Direction made three of this century’s biggest and best pop albums in a rush — Midnight Memories, Four and Made in the A.M. Yet they cut those records on tour, ducking into the nearest studio when they had a day off. 1D were a unique mix of five different musical personalities: Harry, Niall Horan, Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik, and Liam Payne. But the pace took its toll. Malik quit in the middle of a tour, immediately after a show in Hong Kong. The band announced its hiatus in August 2015.

It’s traditional for boy-band singers, as they go solo and grow up, to renounce their pop past. Everybody remembers George Michael setting his leather jacket on fire, or Sting quitting the Police to make jazz records. This isn’t really Harry Styles’ mentality. “I know it’s the thing that always happens. When somebody gets out of a band, they go, ‘That wasn’t me. I was held back.’ But it was me. And I don’t feel like I was held back at all. It was so much fun. If I didn’t enjoy it, I wouldn’t have done it. It’s not like I was tied to a radiator.”

Whenever Harry mentions One Direction — never by name, always “the band” or “the band I was in” — he uses the past tense. It is my unpleasant duty to ask: Does he see 1D as over? “I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t think I’d ever say I’d never do it again, because I don’t feel that way. If there’s a time when we all really want to do it, that’s the only time for us to do it, because I don’t think it should be about anything else other than the fact that we’re all like, ‘Hey, this was really fun. We should do this again.’ But until that time, I feel like I’m really enjoying making music and experimenting. I enjoy making music this way too much to see myself doing a full switch, to go back and do that again. Because I also think if we went back to doing things the same way, it wouldn’t be the same, anyway.”

When the band stopped, did he take those friendships with him? “Yeah, I think so,” he says. “Definitely. Because above all else, we’re the people who went through that. We’re always going to have that, even if we’re not the closest. And the fact is, just because you’re in a band with someone doesn’t mean you have to be best friends. That’s not always how it works. Just because Fleetwood Mac fight, that doesn’t mean they’re not amazing. I think even in the disagreements, there’s always a mutual respect for each other — we did this really cool thing together, and we’ll always have that. It’s too important to me to ever be like, ‘Oh, that’s done.’ But if it happens, it will happen for the right reasons.”

If the intensity of the Harry fandom ever seems mysterious to you, there’s a live clip you might want to investigate, from the summer of 2018. Just search the phrase “Tina, she’s gay.” In San Jose, on one of the final nights of his tour, Harry spots a fan with a homemade sign: “I’m Gonna Come Out to My Parents Because of You!” He asks the fan her name (she says it’s Grace) and her mother’s name (Tina). He asks the audience for silence because he has an important announcement to make: “Tina! She’s gaaaaay!” Then he has the entire crowd say it together. Thousands of strangers start yelling “Tina, she’s gay,” and every one of them clearly means it — it’s a heavy moment, definitely not a sound you forget after you hear it. Then Harry sings “What Makes You Beautiful.” (Of course, the way things work now, the clip went viral within minutes. So did Grace’s photo of Tina giving a loving thumbs-up to her now-out teenage daughter. Grace and Tina attended Harry’s next show together.)

Harry likes to cultivate an aura of sexual ambiguity, as overt as the pink polish on his nails. He’s dated women throughout his life as a public figure, yet he has consistently refused to put any kind of label on his sexuality. On his first solo tour, he frequently waved the pride, bi, and trans flags, along with the Black Lives Matter flag. In Philly, he waved a rainbow flag he borrowed from a fan up front: “Make America Gay Again.” One of the live fan favorites: “Medicine,” a guitar jam that sounds a bit like the Grateful Dead circa Europe ’72, but with a flamboyantly pansexual hook: “The boys and girls are in/I mess around with them/And I’m OK with it.”

He’s always had a flair for flourishes like this, since the 1D days. An iconic clip from November 2014: Harry and Liam are on a U.K. chat show. The host asks the oldest boy-band fan-bait question in the book: What do they look for in a date? “Female,” Liam quips. “That’s a good trait.” Harry shrugs. “Not that important.” Liam is taken aback. The host is in shock. On tour in the U.S. that year, he wore a Michael Sam football jersey, in support of the first openly gay player drafted by an NFL team. He’s blown up previously unknown queer artists like King Princess and Muna.

What do those flags onstage mean to him? “I want to make people feel comfortable being whatever they want to be,” he says. “Maybe at a show you can have a moment of knowing that you’re not alone. I’m aware that as a white male, I don’t go through the same things as a lot of the people that come to the shows. I can’t claim that I know what it’s like, because I don’t. So I’m not trying to say, ‘I understand what it’s like.’ I’m just trying to make people feel included and seen.”

On tour, he had an End Gun Violence sticker on his guitar; he added a Black Lives Matter sticker, as well as the flag. “It’s not about me trying to champion the cause, because I’m not the person to do that,” he says. “It’s just about not ignoring it, I guess. I was a little nervous to do that because the last thing I wanted was for it to feel like I was saying, ‘Look at me! I’m the good guy!’ I didn’t want anyone who was really involved in the movement to think, ‘What the fuck do you know?’ But then when I did it, I realized people got it. Everyone in that room is on the same page and everyone knows what I stand for. I’m not saying I understand how it feels. I’m just trying to say, ‘I see you.’”

At one of his earliest solo shows, in Stockholm, he announced, “If you are black, if you are white, if you are gay, if you are straight, if you are transgender — whoever you are, whoever you want to be, I support you. I love every single one of you.” “It’s a room full of accepting people.… If you’re someone who feels like an outsider, you’re not always in a big crowd like that,” he says. “It’s not about, ‘Oh, I get what it’s like,’ because I don’t. For example, I go walking at night before bed most of the time. I was talking about that with a female friend and she said, ‘Do you feel safe doing that?’ And I do. But when I walk, I’m more aware that I feel OK to walk at night, and some of my friends wouldn’t. I’m not saying I know what it feels like to go through that. It’s just being aware.”

‘Man cannot live by coffee alone,” Harry says. “But he will give it a damn good try.” He sips his iced Americano — not his first today, or his last. He’s back behind the wheel, on a mission to yet another studio — but this time for actual work. Today it’s string overdubs. Harry is dressed in Gucci from head to toe, except for one item of clothing: a ratty Seventies rock T-shirt he proudly scavenged from a vintage shop. It says “Commander Quaalude.”

On the drive over, he puts on the jazz pianist Bill Evans — “Peace Piece,” from 1959, which is the wake-up tone on his phone. He just got into jazz during a long sojourn in Japan. He likes to find places to hide out and be anonymous: For his first album, he decamped to Jamaica. Over the past year, he spent months roaming Japan.

In February, he spent his 25th birthday sitting by himself in a Tokyo cafe, reading Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. “I love Murakami,” he says. “He’s one of my favorites. Reading didn’t really used to be my thing. I had such a short attention span. But I was dating someone who gave me some books; I felt like I had to read them because she’d think I was a dummy if I didn’t read them.”

A friend gave him Murakami’s Norwegian Wood. “It was the first book, maybe ever, where all I wanted to do all day was read this,” he says. “I had a very Murakami birthday because I ended up staying in Tokyo on my own. I had grilled fish and miso soup for breakfast, then I went to this cafe. I sat and drank tea and read for five hours.”

In the studio, he’s overseeing the string quartet. He has the engineers play T. Rex’s “Cosmic Dancer” for them, to illustrate the vibe he’s going for. You can see he enjoys being on this side of the glass, sitting at the Neve board, giving his instructions to the musicians. After a few run-throughs, he presses the intercom button to say, “Yeah, it’s pretty T. Rex. Best damn strings I ever heard.” He buzzes again to add, “And you’re all wonderful people.”

He’s curated his own weird enclave of kindred spirits to collaborate with, like producers Jeff Bhasker and Tyler Johnson. His guitarist Mitch Rowland was working at an L.A. pizza shop when Harry met him. They started writing songs for the debut; Rowland didn’t quit his job until two weeks into the sessions. One of his closest collaborators is also one of his best friends: Tom Hull, a.k.a. Kid Harpoon, a longtime cohort of Florence and the Machine. Hull is an effusive Brit with a heart-on-sleeve personality. Harry calls him “my emotional rock.” Hull calls him “Gary.”

Hull was the one who talked him into taking a course on Transcendental Meditation at David Lynch’s institute — beginning each day with 20 minutes of silence, which doesn’t always come naturally to either of them. “He’s got this wise-beyond-his-years timelessness about him,” Hull says. “That’s why he went on a whole emotional exploration with these songs.” He’s 12 years older, with a wife and kids in Scotland, and talks about Harry like an irreverent but doting big brother.

Last year, Harry was in the gossip columns dating the French model Camille Rowe; they split up last summer after a year together. “He went through this breakup that had a big impact on him,” Hull says. “I turned up on Day One in the studio, and I had these really nice slippers on. His ex-girlfriend that he was really cut up about, she gave them to me as a present — she bought slippers for my whole family. We’re still close friends with her. I thought, ‘I like these slippers. Can I wear them — is that weird?’

“So I turn up at Shangri-La the first day and literally within the first half-hour, he looks at me and says, ‘Where’d you get those slippers? They’re nice.’ I had to say, ‘Oh, um, your ex-girlfriend got them for me.’ He said, ‘Whaaaat? How could you wear those?’ He had a whole emotional journey about her, this whole relationship. But I kept saying, ‘The best way of dealing with it is to put it in these songs you’re writing.’”

True to his code of gallant discretion, Harry doesn’t say her name at any point. But he admits the songs are coming from personal heartbreak. “It’s not like I’ve ever sat and done an interview and said, ‘So I was in a relationship, and this is what happened,’” he says. “Because, for me, music is where I let that cross over. It’s the only place, strangely, where it feels right to let that cross over.”

The new songs are certainly charged with pain. “The stars didn’t align for them to be a forever thing,” Hull says. “But I told him that famous Iggy Pop quote where he says, ‘I only ever date women who are going to fuck me up, because that’s where the songs are.’ I said, ‘You’re 24, 25 years old, you’re in the eligible-bachelor category. Just date amazing women, or men, or whatever, who are going to fuck you up, and explore and have an adventure and let it affect you and write songs about it.’”

His band is full of indie rockers who’ve gotten swept up in Hurricane Harry. Before becoming his iconic drum goddess, Sarah Jones played in New Young Pony Club, a London band fondly remembered by a few dozen of us. Rowland and Jones barely knew anything about One Direction before they met Harry — the first time they heard “Story of My Life” was when he asked them to play it. Their conversation is full of references to Big Star or Guided by Voices or the Nils Lofgren guitar solo in Neil Young’s “Speakin’ Out.” This is a band full of shameless rock geeks, untainted by industry professionalism.

In the studio, while making the album, Harry kept watching a vintage Bowie clip on his phone — a late-Nineties TV interview I’d never seen. As he plays it for me, he recites along — he’s got the rap memorized. “Never play to the gallery,” Bowie advises. “Never work for other people in what you do.” For Harry, this was an inspiring pep talk — a reminder not to play it safe. As Bowie says, “If you feel safe in the area that you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you are capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth. And when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting.”

He got so obsessive about Joni Mitchell and her 1971 classic Blue, he went on a quest. “I was in a big Joni hole,” he says. “I kept hearing the dulcimer all over Blue. So I tracked down the lady who built Joni’s dulcimers in the Sixties.” He found her living in Culver City. “She said, ‘Come and see me,’” Hull says. “We turn up at her house and he said, ‘How do you even play a dulcimer?’ She gave us a lesson. Then she got a bongo and we were all jamming with these big Cheshire Cat grins.” She built the dulcimer Harry plays on the new album. “Joni Mitchell and Van Morrison, those are my two favorites,” he says. “Blue and Astral Weeks are just the ultimate in terms of songwriting. Melody-wise, they’re in their own lane.”

He’s always been the type to go overboard with his fanboy enthusiasms, ever since he was a kid and got his mind blown by Pulp Fiction. “I watched it when I was probably too young,” he admits. “But when I was 13, I saved up money from my paper route to buy a ‘Bad Motherfucker’ wallet. Just a stupid white kid in the English countryside with that wallet.” While in Japan, he got obsessively into Paul McCartney and Wings, especially London Town and Back to the Egg. “In Tokyo I used to go to a vinyl bar, but the bartender didn’t have Wings records. So I brought him Back to the Egg. ‘Arrow Through Me,’ that was the song I had to hear every day when I was in Japan.”

He credits meditation for helping to loosen him up. “I was such a skeptic going in,” he says. “But I think meditation has helped with worrying about the future less, and the past less. I feel like I take a lot more in—things that used to pass by me because I was always rushing around. It’s part of being more open and talking with friends. It’s not always the easiest to go in a room and say, ‘I made a mistake and it made me feel like this, and then I cried a bunch.’ But that moment where you really let yourself be in that zone of being vulnerable, you reach this feeling of openness. That’s when you feel like, ‘Oh, I’m fucking living, man.’”

After quite a few hours of recording the string quartet, a bottle of Casamigos tequila is opened. Commander Quaalude pours the drinks, then decides what the song needs now is a gaggle of nonsingers bellowing the chorus. “Muppet vocals” is how he describes it. He drags everyone in sight to crowd around the mics. Between takes, he wanders over to the piano to play Harry Nilsson’s “Gotta Get Up.” One of the choir members, creative director Molly Hawkins, is the friend who gave him the Murakami novel. “I think every man should read Norwegian Wood,” she says. “Harry’s the only man I’ve given it to who actually read it.”

It’s been a hard day’s night in the studio, but after hours, everyone heads to a dive bar on the other side of town to see Rowland play a gig. He’s sitting in with a local bar band, playing bass. Harry drives around looking for the place, taking in the sights of downtown L.A. (“Only a city as narcissistic as L.A. would have a street called Los Angeles Street,” he says.) He strolls in and leans against the bar in the back of the room. It’s an older crowd, and nobody here has any clue who he is. He’s entirely comfortable lurking incognito in a dim gin joint. After the gig, as the band toasts with PBRs, an old guy in a ball cap strolls over and gives Rowland a proud bear hug. It’s his boss from the pizza shop.

In the wee hours, Harry drives down a deserted Sunset Boulevard, his favorite time of night to explore the city streets, arguing over which is the best Steely Dan album. He insists that Can’t Buy a Thrill is better than Countdown to Ecstasy (wrongly), and seals his case by turning it up and belting “Midnight Cruiser” with truly appalling gusto. Tonight Hollywood is full of bright lights, glitzy clubs, red carpets, but the prettiest pop star in town is behind the wheel, singing along with every note of the sax solo from “Dirty Work.”

A few days later, on the other side of the world: Harry’s pad in London is lavish, yet very much a young single dude’s lair. Over here: a wall-size framed Sex Pistols album cover. Over there: a vinyl copy of Stevie Nicks’ The Other Side of the Mirror, casually resting on the floor. He’s having a cup of tea with his mum, Anne, the spitting image of her son, all grace and poise. “We’re off to the pub,” he tells her. “We’re going to talk some shop.” She smiles sweetly. “Talk some shit, probably,” says Anne.

We head off to his local, sloshing through the rain. He’s wearing a Spice World hoodie and savoring the soggy London-osity of the day. “Ah, Londres!” he says grandly. “I missed this place.” He wants to sit at a table outside, even though it’s pouring, and we chat away the afternoon over a pot of mint tea and a massive plate of fish and chips. When I ask for toast, the waitress brings out a loaf of bread roughly the size of a wheelbarrow. “Welcome to England,” Harry says.

He’s always had a fervent female fandom, and, admirably, he’s never felt a need to pretend he doesn’t love it that way. “They’re the most honest — especially if you’re talking about teenage girls, but older as well,” he says. “They have that bullshit detector. You want honest people as your audience. We’re so past that dumb outdated narrative of ‘Oh, these people are girls, so they don’t know what they’re talking about.’ They’re the ones who know what they’re talking about. They’re the people who listen obsessively. They fucking own this shit. They’re running it.”

He doesn’t have the uptightness some people have about sexual politics, or about identifying as a feminist. “I think ultimately feminism is thinking that men and women should be equal, right? People think that if you say ‘I’m a feminist,’ it means you think men should burn in hell and women should trample on their necks. No, you think women should be equal. That doesn’t feel like a crazy thing to me. I grew up with my mum and my sister — when you grow up around women, your female influence is just bigger. Of course men and women should be equal. I don’t want a lot of credit for being a feminist. It’s pretty simple. I think the ideals of feminism are pretty straightforward.”

His audience has a reputation for ferocity, and the reputation is totally justified. At last summer’s show at Madison Square Garden, the floor was wobbling during “Kiwi” — I’ve been seeing shows there since the 1980s, but I’d never seen that happen before. (The only other time? His second night.) His bandmates admit they feared for their lives, but Harry relished it. “To me, the greatest thing about the tour was that the room became the show,” he says. “It’s not just me.” He sips his tea. “I’m just a boy, standing in front of a room, asking them to bear with him.”

That evening, Fleetwood Mac take the stage in London — a sold-out homecoming gig at Wembley Stadium, the last U.K. show of their tour. Needless to say, their most devoted fan is in the house. Harry has brought a date: his mother, her first Fleetwood Mac show. He’s also with his big sister Gemma, bandmates Rowland and Jones, a couple of friends.

He’s in hyperactive-host mode, buzzing around his cozy VIP box, making sure everyone’s champagne glass is topped off at all times. As soon as the show begins, Harry’s up on his feet, singing along (“Tell me, tell me liiiiies!”) and cracking jokes. You can tell he feels free — as if his radar is telling him there aren’t snoopers or paparazzi watching. (He’s correct. This is a rare public appearance where nobody spots him and no photos leak online.) It’s family night. His friend Mick Fleetwood wilds out on the drum solo. “Imagine being that cool,” Gemma says.

Midway through the show, Harry’s demeanor suddenly changes. He gets uncharacteristically solemn and quiet, sitting down by himself and focusing intently on the stage. It’s the first time all night he’s taken a seat. He’s in a different zone than he was in a few minutes ago. But he’s seen many Fleetwood Mac shows, and he knows where they are in the set. It’s time for “Landslide.” He sits with his chin in hand, his eyes zeroing in on Stevie Nicks. As usual, she introduces her most famous song with the story of how she wrote it when she was just a lass of 27.

But Stevie has something else she wants to share. She tells the stadium crowd, “I’d like to dedicate this to my little muse, Harry Styles, who brought his mother tonight. Her name is Anne. And I think you did a really good job raising Harry, Anne. Because he’s really a gentleman, sweet and talented, and, boy, that appeals to me. So all of you, this is for you.”

As Stevie starts to sing “Landslide” — “I’ve been afraid of changing, because I built my life around youuuu” — Anne walks over to where Harry sits. She crouches down behind him, reaches her arms around him tightly. Neither of them says a word. They listen together and hold each other close to the very end of the song. Everybody in Wembley is singing along with Stevie, but these two are in a world of their own.

[stenbrozier]

Modern Losers’ Club Headcanons

Plot: Individual headcanons of the modern Loser’ about different things they’d do and love (mostly during high school)

Warnings: slight Reddie, shit ton of Stenburough, drug use + mentions of sex + swearing

——————————————————————————

Bill Denbrough:

~ He’s the artist, everyone knew that.

~Typical art kid who won all the awards and participated in every art class his school offered.

~ He just didn’t take choir or band because we know this boy has no musical abilities at all.

~ Bill would save up all his allowance and holiday money so that he could buy that really good drawing app that he could use on his IPad.

~ After he got it, there was no way to get him to look up at you for more than ten seconds. He would fall in love with digital art.

~ Remember he took all of the art classes? Well, creative writing and poetry we’re considered arts at Derry High School, so that’s where he fell in love with writing.

~ Suprisingly, he would be really into heavy metal. Bands like Bring Me the Horizon and Of Mice and Men would blare in his headphones while he drew in his room late at night.

~ Bill would also really love watching indie movies on Netflix and other platforms. He’s lowkey a movie buff, but he doesn’t tell people too much.

~ His favorite movie from the past decade would probably be Moonrise Kingdom (good movie!!) or The Skeleton Twins (also good movie!!)

~ Bill’s favorite book would 10000% be Turtles All The Way Down by John Green because of the main character and her battle with anxiety.

——————————————————————————

Mike Hanlon:

~ He runs a cooking YouTube channel, you can’t fight me on this one.

~ Mike would definitely have one of those motorized scooters, idk seems like a Mike thing

~ He’s in love with video games but only the ones that are based on a lot of skill. He doesn’t like first person shooters, nor does he like any games with violence at all. Tbh, Papa’s Pizzeria is right up his alley.

~ Mike would be a gym try hard, most definitely. But in every other class he’d just sit on his phone.

~ But he’s so smart that he’d pass all the tests anyway.

~ He’d work a lot just so he could afford the newest phone because he thinks it gives people less of a reason to pick on him and bully him. (News flash: it doesn’t)

~ Whenever Mike isn’t working, he volunteers at the animal shelter in Derry. He runs the Instagram account :)

~ Probably one of the guys who posts shirtless pics on Instagram because he likes the attention the girls give him in the comments.

~ Will answer any of Bill’s texts at 3am when he wants feedback on a new piece of art.

~ A secret theatre kid, no doubt. Not really a musical kid, but he loves acting and just being on stage with everyone’s attention on him.

——————————————————————————

Richie Tozier:

~ Speaking of theatre kids, Richie is the BIGGEST fucking one. He has been in every musical and play that his school has done since 6th grade, and he was one of the best kids they had.

~ He wears Pierce the Veil and Sleeping with Sirens shirts, but Richie mostly listens to softer bands like Arctic Monkeys and The Neighbourhood.

~ He has a bi pride pin on his backpack. Kids will sometimes pull it off and throw it around, but he just pulls another one out of a ziploc bag full of them in the tiny front pouch of his bag and sticks it on there.

~ Richie unapologetically owns a Juul and will sometimes let Bev borrow it as long as she pays him “25 cents a hit”, which she never does.

~ Posts music on SoundCloud. He’s not much of a singer outside of the musicals because he’s mostly shy with his talent; however, he does a lot of instrumentals.

~ Richie shops are thrift stores most of the time. He’ll take Eddie with him and though Eddie won’t touch anything until it’s been washed twice, Richie will buy him anything he likes.

~ He LOVES Harry Potter. He found the first book when he was younger and he just fell in love with the story. He owns all the first editions and all of the movies.

~ Goes to small venues to see bands that no one knows. Richie will go to so many concerts because he likes the escape it brings for him. He’s in his element when he goes to concerts.

~ Despite what many people think, he isn’t a whore :0 He just flirts a lot and he actually didn’t lose his virginity till he was 17 at a party. He regrets it, though, cause he was drunk off his ass.

~ He was also in the color guard for his high school’s marching band. A lot of the girls from the theatre stuff begged him to be apart of it because he could dance really well, and he ended up being in it for both the indoor and outdoor seasons all throughout high school.

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Eddie Kaspbrak:

~ BOOKWORM, BOOKWORM, B O O K W O R M!!! This boy would spend every second he could just browsing the books that his school library had.

~ After he yelled at his mom for his pills, he started to kind of overcome his germaphobe tendencies, but he still was very iffy about touching things in places he’d never been.

~ For example, Richie took him to the park one time and he had never been there before, so the whole time he was holding his noses and steering clear of the snot nosed little kids.

~ Him and Richie definitely dated at some point or another. Whether to get a feel for guys or just for each other, but it did happen. Beverly was the only one who ever knew.

~ Eddie fell in love with engineering at school. He would always call one of the Losers at an ungodly hour in the morning and rant about how all of the buildings in town were built and with what materials. Honestly, Ben was the only one who shared this interest with him.

~ Eddie was the first to get his own car so all of the Losers would pile into his Jeep. Richie always tried to convince him to take off the doors, but Eddie thought that that was the biggest goddamn safety hazard he’d ever heard.

~ As they all got older, obviously him and Richie stayed close, but he also got surprisingly close with Ben and Ben would gush about Beverly to him after Eddie would excitedly explain how a car’s engine works or something like that.

~ Eddie was the one to convince Beverly to go after Ben and stop pining over Bill.

~ Eddie went to concerts with Richie all the time, and even if the sweaty roadies grossed him out, he fell in love with the bass killing his eardrums and the way the mic static could transform someone’s voice.

~ He also joined his school’s marching band (mainly cause Richie begged him) and was fucking AMAZING at playing snare drums.

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Stanley Uris:

~ He was the last one to enter high school, everyone a year ahead of him, but he was ironically the most popular among the lower class men.

~ Stan was a very private person, but his willingness to do other’s homework for $5 a page made him infamous.

~ Because of all this money he’d been making, he’d buy the Losers presents all the time. He would treat them to their favorite snacks whenever they went to Keene’s or to a new shirt whenever they went to the mall over in Bangor. And he never went over budget because he’s a goddamn accountant by nature.

~ He had a massive crush on Bill and asked him to homecoming his freshman year. Yeah, they were bullied, but Stan couldn’t have been more happier.

~ Bill convinced him to tryout for the baseball team. He tried out for pitcher and got it immediately. He was also one of the sports kids who would post on his Snapchat whenever they had a game.

~ Him and Bill ended up dating up until junior year, when Bill admitted that he wanted to date at least one girl before college and Stan wasn’t mad because he honestly wasn’t feeling it anymore. Afterwards, they both started dating cheerleaders.

~ Stan was in Calculus his sophomore year of high school, which was the class that all of the AP seniors took. Many people called him a genius, he just thanked the internet.

~ Stan fell in love with indie bands like R.O.A.R and Florence + The Machines. Richie did, however, convince him to go to concerts with him and Eds. He might’ve not enjoyed the music, but he still loved being with his best friends since diapers.

~ He didn’t like movies too much but would watch them with Bill. He enjoyed TV shows a lot more. He’s definitely a true crime baby.

~ Stan also fell in love with photography because he was forced to take the class. He begged his parents to buy him a camera for his birthday, and his many cork boards were filled with pictures of his friends and birds.

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Ben Hanscom:

~ Was a track start in high school. He ran off all of his fat and just fell in love with the high of running (tbh this is my favorite part about Ben’s character. like such a determined boy 🥺)

~ Ben enjoyed sitting at the library with Eddie and just watching him peruse books, usually pointing a few that he had read and liked. He also just loved the fact that him and Eddie were able to get so close as they got older.

~ Ben was in all the engineering courses his school offered. He was just so happy that he could take classes that pertained to the career path he wanted to go down.

~ He was able to finally get Beverly their senior year. He had been in love with her for the longest time, and she asked him to homecoming.

~ Ben also considered trying out for the football team, but it conflicted with the winter track season so he wasn’t able to; however, him, Mike, and Bill would always play their own small games in the field by Mike’s house.

~ While Stan helped everything with their math homework, Ben helped everyone with their history homework. He was a big history nerd, and everyone knew he paid attention the most.

~ He lost a bet one time and Richie was able to give him a stick and poke tattoo anywhere of his choosing. So now on the inside of his left ring finger he has R.T. written messily.

~ Ben loves pop music. He had always liked it, and some of his favorite artists were Katy Perry and Sia.

~ He rode his bike to school everyday. He was a very big proponent for the environment and hated the idea of driving, so he’d pass up the rides from Eddie or Richie and just bike with his headphones in.

~ Ben was apart of the school’s Green Team and protested climate change and the use of fossil fuels. When he had free time, he’d study ways that he could benefit the environment when he became an architect.

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Beverly Marsh:

~ She was an English wiz. It was her favorite subject, and she fell in love with analyzing poetry and other forms of literary work.

~ Beverly started to let her hair grow out again and she was relieved to see that it started to grow out straight. She hated her curly hair.

~ She bleached her hair a few times throughout high school; she hated the red because it reminded her too much of her mother.

~ Her and Richie’s friendship fell off big time, but she got super close with Bill, Ben, and Mike. Her crush in Bill didn’t deplete for a while, even after him and Stan started dating. She still had hope.

~ Eddie told her about Ben and it really changed her whole perspective on everything. But that wasn’t until junior year.

~ Though she didn’t have too good of a singing voice, she loved being in choir. The angelic reverberations throughout the auditorium whenever they performed always gave her chills and she wanted so desperately to be a part of it.

~ Beverly wrote a lot of poetry. She wrote some to her friends, to her dead mom, to her asshole dad. Just to whoever she was focused on in that moment.

~ She helped Mike after school at the animal shelter and actually ended up adopting a kitten for herself.

~ Luckily, her dad didn’t mind the cat too much as long as Bev took care of it and didn’t bother him for a single thing.

~ Beverly didn’t get her license until she was well into her twenties, but she loved hanging her arm out of the passenger’s side window of Richie’s car and listen to the bands that he’d blast with closed eyes.

[bluewatsons]

Brian Jarvis, Monsters Inc.: Serial killers and consumer culture, 3 Crime Media Cult 326 (2007)

Abstract

Serial killing has become big business. Over the past 15 years, popular culture has been flooded by true-life crime stories, biographies, best-selling fiction, video games and television documentaries devoted to this subject. Cinema is the cultural space in which this phenomenon is perhaps most conspicuous. The Internet Movie Database (imdb.com) lists over 800 films featuring serial killers and most of the contributions to this sub-genre have been made since 1990. This article examines seminal examples of serial killer fiction and film including Thomas Harris’s Hannibal Lecter novels and their cinematic adaptations, Bret Easton Ellis and Mary Harron’s American Psycho (1991 and 2000) and David Fincher’s Se7en (1995). The main contention is that the commodification of violence in popular culture is structurally integrated with the violence of commodification itself. Starting with the rather obvious ways in which violent crime is marketed as a spectacle to be consumed, this article then attempts to uncover less transparent links between the normal desires which circulate within consumer society and monstrous violence. In ‘Monsters Inc.’, the serial killer is unmasked as a gothic double of the serial consumer.

But the notion of the monster is rather difficult to deal with, to get a hold on, to stabilize . . . monstrosity may reveal or make one aware of what normality is. (Derrida, 1995: 386)

In his Theses on the Philosophy of History, Walter Benjamin (1999a) memorably proclaimed that ‘there is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism’ (p. 248). In contemporary US culture Benjamin’s chilling axiom is turned on its head: it seems there is now no act of barbarism which fails to become a document of civilization. Serial killing, to take one important example of this trend, has become big business within the culture industry. In his cult documentary, Collectors (2000), Julian Hobbs both explores and contributes to the explosive proliferation of art and artefacts associated with serial killers. Hobbs investigates the burgeoning market for ‘murderabilia’ and follows enthusiasts in this field who avidly build collections which mirror the serial killer’s own modus operandi of collecting fetish objects.

Murderabilia ranges from serial killer art (paintings, drawings, sculpture, letters, poetry), to body parts (a lock of hair or nail clippings) from crime scene materials to kitsch merchandising that includes serial killer T-Shirts, calendars, trading cards, board games, Halloween masks and even action figures of ‘superstars’ like Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy. Although it might be tempting to dismiss this phenomenon as the sick hobby of a deviant minority, murderabilia is merely the hardcore version of a mainstream obsession with the serial killer. Following negative publicity, trading in murderabilia was banned on eBay in 2001. However, it is still possible to purchase a vast array of legitimate serial killer merchandise online and elsewhere. A keyword search for ‘serial killer’ at Amazon, for example, produces hundreds of links to gruesome biographies, true-life crime stories and best-selling fiction by Thomas Harris, Patricia Cornwall, Caleb Carr and others. A search for ‘Jack the Ripper’ uncovers 248 books, 24 DVDs, 15 links to popular music, a video game and a 10’ action figure. The Jack the Ripper video game invites players to solve the Whitechapel murders, but a large number of its competitors profit by encouraging ‘recreational killing’. In some of the most commercially successful video games, one’s cyber-self may be a detective, a soldier or a Jedi Knight, but the raw materials of fantasy are constant: an endless series of killings.

In Christopher Priest’s novel, The Extremes (1998), FBI agent Teresa Simons becomes dangerously addicted to a Virtual Reality (VR) training programme which recreates infamous serial killings. It might be argued that other elements in Priest’s novel are ‘re- creations’: the focus on a female FBI agent seems indebted to the Silence of the Lambs and the VR game, known as ‘ExEx’ (Extreme Experience), recalls the SID 6.7 software in Virtuosity (1995). In Brett Leonard’s science fiction film, SID 6.7 is a computer pro- gramme which synthesizes the personalities of 183 serial killers and mass murderers including Ted Bundy, Vlad the Impaler, Jeffrey Dahmer, the Marquis de Sade and Adolf Hitler. Somewhat inevitably, SID (short for Sadistic, Intelligent and Dangerous) escapes virtuality and is hunted down by a detective played by Denzel Washington. Shortly after he starred in Virtuosity, Washington appeared in a supernatural serial killer film (Fallen, 1998) and a forensic serial killer film (The Bone Collector, 1999). Three serial killer films in four years is less a signature of Washington’s star persona than a symptom of the recent growth spurt experienced by this sub-genre. The Internet Movie Database (imdb.com) lists over 800 films featuring serial killers and most of them have been made in the past 15 years. Serial killer cinema has many faces: there are serial killer crime dramas (Manhunter, 1986; Se7en, 1995; Hannibal, 2001; Saw, 2004), supernatural serial killers (Halloween, 1978; Friday the 13th, 1980; Nightmare on Elm Street, 1984), serial killer science fiction (Virtuosity, 1995; Jason X, 2001), serial killer road movies (Kalifornia, 1993; Natural Born Killers, 1994), true-life crime dramas (Ted Bundy, 2002; Monster, 2003), documentaries (John Wayne Gacy: Buried Secrets (1996) and Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer (1994)), post-modern pastiche (Scream, 1996; I Know What You Did Last Summer, 1997) and even serial killer comedies (So I Married an Axe Murderer, 1993; Serial Mom, 1994; Scary Movie, 2000). The expansion of this diverse sub-genre is facilitated by the fact that films about serial killing often appear as part of a series (Saw 1, Saw 2, Saw 3). The serial killer has also become a staple ingredient in TV cop shows (like CSI and Law and Order) and cult series (for example, Twin Peaks, The X-Files and Millennium).

According to Robert Conrath (1996: 156), ‘when Jeffrey Dahmer’s house of carnage was discovered in Milwaukee in 1991, television rights to his story were being negotiated within the hour’. Over the next few years, Dahmer was the subject of numerous documentaries (including An American Nightmare (1993) and The Monster Within (1996)), films (The Secret Life (1993) and Dahmer (2002)), several biographies and Joyce Carol Oates’s fictionalized Zombie (1996), a comic strip (by Derf, a cartoonist and coincidentally Dahmer’s childhood acquaintance) and a concept album by a heavy metal band called Macabre. The extensive media coverage of Dahmer’s exploits in 1991 coincided with the release of Jonathan Demme’s Silence of the Lambs (which won the Best Picture Oscar and grossed US$272,700,000 in worldwide box-office) as well as the controversial and commercially successful Bret Easton Ellis novel, American Psycho (1991). Since the early 1990s, the translation of serial killer shock value into surplus value has become an increasingly profitable venture. This market both reflects and produces an apparently insatiable desire for images and stories of serial killing in a gothic hall of mirrors. According to case histories and psychological profiles, serial killers themselves are often avid consumers of films and books about serial killing. At the same time, the fictional monstrous murderers in popular culture, from Norman Bates to Hannibal Lecter, are often modelled on historical figures. In this context, Philip Jenkins (1994) proposes that, at least in the popular imaginary, the distinction between historical serial killers and their cinematic counterparts is dis- solving. In fact, even the label of ‘serial killer’ indirectly belongs to cinema. This term was coined by Robert Ressler, an FBI agent who named the killers he pursued after the ‘serial adventures’ he watched as a child in US cinemas. In his study of serial killers, Mark Seltzer (1998: 129) has offered a compelling critique of the virtualization of violence: ‘fascination with scenes of a spectacularized bodily violence is inseparable from the binding of violence to scene, spectacle, and representation’. The engine which drives this process is primarily economic. The commodification of violence is inseparable from the violence of commodification. In this article I wish to build on the rather obvious ways in which violent crime is marketed as a spectacle to be consumed towards the less transparent links that exist between consumerism itself and violence. A range of serial killer texts will be examined with the aim of uncovering unexpected intimacies between monstrous violence and the normal desires that circulate within consumer society. The serial killer will be unmasked as a gothic double of the serial consumer.

JUST DO IT: Killers, Consumers and Violence

Most people could confidently identify a serial killer, but definitions are more elusive. How many murders does it take to make a serial killer? Do these homicides need to involve a specific MO, in particular locations and within a prescribed time frame? Do serial killers have a characteristic relationship to their victim? Do they have to be motivated by sexual fantasy rather than material gain? And how exactly do serial killers differ from mass murderers and spree killers? There are competing definitions of the serial killer inside and outside the academic world. I have neither the space nor the skill to offer an authoritative classification, and so for the purpose of this article my working definition will of necessity be expansive. My focal point here will be fictional representations of the serial killer in film and fiction, but I will include reference to historical counterparts and supernatural metaphors (specifically, the vampire and zombie as figurative practitioners of serial homicide). The number of murders committed, the individual MOs, the timing and setting of the crimes, the connection to the victim and the motivation will be wildly divergent, but, in each instance, I hope to reveal covert affinities between the ‘monstrous’ serial killer and the ‘normal’ consumer.

While precise defintions prove elusive, the clichés are unavoidable. One of the most conspicuous commonplaces in the popular discourses of serial killing concerns the terrifying normality of the murderer. Rather than appearing monstrously different, the serial killer displays a likeness that disturbs the dominant culture. The violence of consumerism is similarly hidden beneath a façade of healthy normality. The glossy phantasmagoria of youth and beauty, freedom and pleasure, obscures widespread devastation and suffering. Etymology is instructive in this regard: to ‘consume’ is to devour and destroy, to waste and obliterate. With this definition in mind, Baudrillard (1998: 43) has traced a provocative genealogy between contemporary capitalism and tribal potlatch: ‘consumerism may go so far as consumation, pure and simple destruction’. The consumation of contemporary consumer capitalism assumes multiple forms: pollution, waste and the ravaging of non-renewable resources, bio-diversity and endangered species; the slaughter of animals for food, clothing and medicine; countless acts of violence against the consumer’s body that range from spectacular accidents to slow tortures and poisonings. At the national level the consumer economy produces radical inequalities that encourage violent crime. At the international level, consumer capitalism depends heavily on a ‘new slavery’ for millions in the developing world who are incarcerated in dangerous factories and sweatshops and subjected to the repetitive violence of Fordist production. In his autobiography, My Life and Work, Henry Ford calculated that the manufacture of a Model T required 7882 distinct operations but only 949 of these required ‘able-bodied’ workers: ‘670 could be filled by legless men, 2,637 by one-legged men, two by armless men, 715 by one-armed and ten by blind men’ (cited in Seltzer, 1998: 69). Third-world workers trapped in this Fordist fantasy to serve the needs of first-world consumers undergo dismemberments (figurative and sometimes literal) which echo the violent tortures practised by serial killers in post-Fordist cinema. And the violence of consumerism is not restricted to the factories and sweatshops. In The Anatomy of Resource Wars, Michael Renner (2002) explores links between first-world shopping malls and third-world war zones. Insatiable consumer demand fuels conflicts over resources in the developing world – from tropical forests to diamonds and coltan deposits (a mineral used in the manufacture of mobile phones and other electronic devices). Renner estimates that these conflicts have displaced over 20 million people and raised at least US$12 billion per year for rebels, warlords and totalitarian governments: ‘most consumers don’t know that a number of common purchases bear the invisible imprint of violence’ (p. 53). Recent conflicts in the Gulf are fuelled by the needs of western car cultures. In the 20th century the development of a consumer economy was twice kick-started by global war and the roots of 19th-century consumerism were terminally entangled in colonialism and slavery.

The violence of consumerism is structural and universal rather than being an incidental and localized side effect of the system. For many in the over-developed world this violence remains largely unseen, or, when visible, apparently unconnected to consumerism. In cultural representations of the serial killer, however, consumerism and violence are often extravagantly integrated. In fact, the leading ‘brand names’ in the genre are typically depicted as über-consumers. In Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho (1991), the eponymous Patrick Bateman embodies a merger between ultra- violence and compulsive consumerism. A catalogue of obscene and barbaric atrocities (serial murder, rape and torture) is interwoven with endless shopping lists of designer clothes and fashionable furniture, beauty products and audiovisual equipment, videos and CDs alongside multiple purchases at restaurants, gyms, health spas, concerts and clubs. As James Annesley (1998: 16) notes, ‘In American Psycho the word “consume” is used in all of its possible meanings: purchasing, eating and destroying’. Each brand of consumption is described in the same flat, affectless tone to underscore Bateman’s perception of everything in the world as a series of consumables arranged for his delectation.

Patrick Bateman thus represents a gothic projection of consumer pathology. In this respect, although his name echoes Norman Bates from Hitchcock’s Psycho, Bateman can be seen as a Yuppie analogue to the aristocratic Hannibal Lecter. Both killers coolly collect and consume body parts and can boast an intimate familiarity with fashionable commodities. In Silence of the Lambs, Red Dragon and Hannibal, Lecter offers a connoisseur’s commentary on designer suits and Gucci shoes (a present for Clarice), handbags, perfume and aftershave. Lecter himself has become a voguish icon in millennial popular culture although his name alludes to mid-19th-century French verse. Baudelaire’s ‘Au Lecteur’ (1998 : 5) concludes with the following apostrophe:

Tu le connais, lecteur, ce monstre délicat, Hypocrite lecteur, – mon semblable, – mon frère!

[You know him, reader, that fastidious monster, You hypocritical reader, – my double, – my brother!]

If we follow Harris’s allusion, Lecter can be read, like Bateman, as the dark double of the monstrous consumer. The serial killer’s perverse charisma might be attributed in part to their function as allegorical embodiments of consumer drives and desires. According to this reading, the serial killer’s cannibalism is less a barbaric transgression of the norm and more a Neitzschean distillation of reification (in its simplest terms the tendency, central to consumerism, to treat people as objects and objects as people).

In Silence of the Lambs, the casting of serial killer as predatory über-consumer is underscored by animal and insect imagery. Clarice Starling is haunted by traumatic childhood memories of witnessing the hidden violence of animal slaughter. Dr Lecter diagnoses her devotion to the law as an attempt to silence the ‘screaming of the lambs’. Perhaps Lecter’s cannibalism might be diagnosed as an alternate response to that ‘screaming’, one which reverses power relations by putting consumers on the menu. Alongside the lambs, moths are a second key symbol that hint at the widespread though often invisible violence of consumerism:

Some [moths] are [destructive], a lot are, but they live in all kinds of ways. Just like we do . . . The old definition of moth was ‘anything that gradually, silently eats, consumes, or wastes any other thing.’ It was a verb for destruction too . . . Is this what you do all the time – hunt Buffalo Bill? . . . Do you ever go out for cheeseburgers and beer or the amusing house wine? (Harris, 1990: 102)

The second serial killer in Silence of the Lambs is similarly doubled with the consumer and associated with animal imagery. While Lecter hunts for food, the predatory Buffalo Bill hunts for clothing. After the chase, Buffalo Bill deprives his prey of subjectivity and treats them like livestock: victims are penned, fed and then flayed for their skins. The nickname given to Jame Gumb by the media is suggestive. As a professional hunter, Buffalo Bill Cody was one of those responsible for reducing the bison population in North America from approximately 60 million to around 300 by 1893. After the near extinction of his prey, Buffalo Bill moved from animal slaughter to entertainment with his travelling ‘Wild West’ show. Thomas Harris’s ‘Buffalo Bill’, with his own serial killer trade marks, combines an identical mixture of hunting, slaughter and flaying with spectacle and entertainment. Buffalo Bill, alongside Francis Dolarhyde (the name of the killer in Harris’s Red Dragon again links money, skins and a doppelganger monster, Stevenson’s Mr Hyde) and above all the iconic Hannibal Lecter, have established Harris as a brand market leader in the commodification of serial killing.

The roots of the brand – the repeated logo or symbol that identifies a product – lie in cattle ranching. At the first crime scene in David Fincher’s Se7en, a morbidly obese murder victim is discovered after being forced to eat himself to death. (This MO is repeated in Brett Leonard’s Feed (2005) when a serial killer force-feeds obese women and broadcasts their demise on the Internet). When the detectives in Se7en investigate the crime scene they discover the word ‘Gluttony’ scrawled in grease behind the victim’s refrigerator beside a neat pile of cans with the ‘Campbell’s Soup’ brand clearly visible. The repetition of the Campbell’s brand of course alludes to Warhol’s series of paintings on the subject of consumer seriality. If, like the detectives in Se7en, we are prepared to ‘look behind’ objects in serial killer texts we may discover further clues to the hidden violence of serial consumerism.

Discover A New You: Killers, Consumers, and the Dream of ‘Becoming’

His product should already have changed its skin and stripped off its original form . . . a capitalist in larval form . . . His emergence as a butterfly must, and yet must not, take place in the sphere of circulation, (Marx, 1990: 204, 269)

Although the serial killer in David Fincher’s Se7en justifies his murders with pseudo-religious rhetoric, the victims he chooses also exemplify some of the capital vices and anxieties exploited by consumerism: the ‘Gluttony’ victim is guilty of over-eating; the ‘Pride’ victim is a fashion model guilty of acute narcissism; the ‘Sloth’ victim, according to Richard Dyer (1999: 40), is a case study in the dangers of under-exercising; the ‘Lust’ victim embodies a hardcore version of mainstream desires and fetishes. By foregrounding ‘sins’ that are central to consumerism and by naming the murderer ‘John Doe’, Se7en hints at the hyper-normality of serial killer pathology. Key aspects of consumer sensibility intersect with the trademark features of serial killer psychology: anxious and aggressive narcissism, the compulsive collection of fetish objects and fantasies of self-transformation.

In Silence of the Lambs, the epiphanic moment in Starling’s search for Jame Gumb comes in the bedroom of the killer’s first victim: Frederika Bimmel. As a Point Of View (POV) shot surveys the dead woman’s possessions the spectator sees the following: a romantic novel (entitled Silken Threads) beside a diet book, wallpaper with a butterfly motif, a tailor’s dummy and paper diamonds in the closet. Starling intuitively connects the paper diamonds to the cuts made by Gumb in the bodies of his victims. The spect- ator, however, might make additional connections. Demme’s mise-en-scene offers a symbolic suturing of the normal girl’s bedroom and the serial killer’s lair. Both spaces house dreams of romantic metamorphosis driven by self-dissatisfaction: the moths in Gumb’s basement are linked to the Silken Threads and butterflies in Bimmel’s bedroom while the diet book suggests the young woman shared the serial killer’s anxiety about body image. Clarice Starling, the young woman figuratively donning the traditional male garb of law enforcement (a woman trying to make it in a man’s world) is perhaps too preoccupied with tracking down a man who wants to wear a ‘woman suit’ to pursue these leads. Silence of the Lambs extravagantly foregrounds the importance of gender to subject formation. At the start of the film we are introduced to Clarice Starling in androgynous sweaty sportswear while training on an obstacle course. When the spectator subsequently arrives at the serial killer’s house, we see Jame Gumb sewing, pampering his poodle and parading before the camera like a catwalk model.

Jame may be symbolically feminized, but in Demme’s film, as in Harris’ novels, Se7en, American Psycho and the vast majority of serial killer texts, the murderer is biologically male. There are variations in the statistics (roughly between 88–95%), but the vast majority of serial killers are male (Vronsky, 2004). From a feminist perspective it could be argued that serial killing is not so much a radical departure from normal codes of civilized behaviour as it is an intensification of hegemonic masculine ideals. For the serial killer the murder is a means to an end and that end intersects in places with socially sanctioned definitions of masculine identity in institutions such as the military, many working places and the sports industry. The serial killer is driven by the desire to achieve mastery, virility and control: his objective is to dominate and possess the body and the mind of his victims. According to the binary logic of patriarchy, the killer/victim dyad produces a polarization of gender norms: the killer embodies an über-masculinity while the victim who is dominated, opened and entered personifies a hyper-femininity (irrespective of biology). The gendered power relations of serial homicide climax but do not end with the act of murder. Post-mortem the murderer will often take fetish objects from his victim. These totems function as testimony to his continuing domination of a dead body which exhibits an extreme form of the passivity which patriarchy seeks to assign to the feminine.

While serial killing is both literally and symbolically a male affair, the paradigmatic consumer is of course female. According to patriarchal folklore men are the primary producers and unenthusiastic shoppers while most women are devoted consumers and typically figure in the family as the person with overall responsibility for decision making with regard to most domestic purchases. Brett Leonard’s Feed (2005) might be mentioned here as a particularly pure example of this stereotypical dichotomy between the male serial murderer and the female consumer (the victims in the film are ‘Gainers’ who are fed to death). However, since the 1980s and throughout the period which has seen a dramatic rise in serial killer art, the consumer sphere has witnessed a withering of gender polarities. From the late 19th and for much of the 20thcentury, women were the primary target of advertising, particularly in the fields of beauty and fashion. The female consumer was relentlessly bombarded by images and messages in magazines, on billboards, and then through radio, cinema and TV, that encouraged physical self-obsession. Beneath the patina of positivity, this bomb- ardment aimed to promote an anxious policing of the female body – how the body looked and felt, what went over, into and came out of it. The covert imperative of this advertising was to manufacture that sense of inadequacy and self-dissatisfaction which is the essential psychological prerequisite for luxury purchases. Since the 1980s, the beauty and fashion industries, recognizing the potential of a relatively untapped market, began to target the male consumer in a similar manner. Subsequently, there has been a massive worldwide increase in sales of male fashion accessories, cosmetics and related products.

In the context of this erosion of gender polarities within consumer culture, it is noticeable that representations of the serial killer often involve androgyny and gender crisis. The killer is typically feminized by association with consumer subjectivity. He is obsessed with different forms of consumption and collecting and driven by dreams of ‘becoming’ (the key phrase in Harris’ Red Dragon), of radically refiguring his appear- ance and thus his identity. The killer’s violence might be read both as complicity with and rebellion against feminization through a reassertion of primitive masculinity. According to Baudrillard (1996: 69), in consumer culture there is a ‘general tendency to feminize objects . . . All objects . . . become women in order to be bought’. The feminization of the commodity is structurally integrated with the commodification of the feminine and the serial killer aims to assert mastery over both spheres. The violence of serial homicide might even be diagnosed as a nostalgic mode of production (of corpses and fetish objects) for the anxious male subject.

In Silence of the Lambs, Lecter offers the following diagnosis of Gumb’s pathology: ‘He’s tried to be a lot of things . . . [But] he’s not anything, really, just a sort of total lack that he wants to fill’ (Harris, 1990: 159, 165). The killer is driven by a profound sense of lack to ‘covet’ (Lecter’s term) what he sees everyday and then to hunt for the new skin that would enable a radical self-transformation. In this respect Gumb constitutes a psychotic off-shoot of normal consumer psychology: his violent response to lack is deviant, but the desires which move him are mainstream. Gumb succumbs to mass media fantasy and advertising which have trained him to feel incomplete and anxious while promising magical metamorphoses on consumption of the ideal (feminized) commodity. The dreams of the serial killer and the serial consumer converge: reinvent- ing the self through bodily transformation and transcendence. Buffalo Bill, we might say, is merely fleshing out the advertising fantasy of a ‘new you’. This is the same dream of ‘becoming’ pursued by Francis Dollarhyde in Red Dragon/Manhunter. It is also the dream of Patrick Bateman, known by his acquaintances as ‘total GQ’ (Ellis, 1991: 90) but who, like Jame Gumb, experiences himself as ‘total lack’: ‘There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman; some kind of abstraction. But there is no real me: only an entity, something illusory . . . I simply am not there’ (pp. 376–7). Bateman attempts to fill the void with an endless procession of commodities and logos: designer clothes and cuisine, male grooming products and technological gadgets, Versace, Manolo Blahnik, Giorgio Armani. Bateman is a cut-up (like his victims) of commodity signs. He talks in the language of advertising and incessantly imagines himself in commercials, sit-coms, chat shows, action movies and porn films. Bateman’s ultra-violence gives physical expression to the acute feelings of anxiety and incompletion which accompany the consumer society’s unachievable fantasy of perfect bodies living perfect lives.

Silence of the Lambs similarly articulates the complex integration of violence, fantasy, gender identity and consumer subjectivity. The first clue that Lecter gives to Starling is the cryptic, ‘Look deep within yourself’. Subsequently, Starling discovers that ‘Your Self’ is in fact a storage facility in downtown Baltimore. Closer investigation uncovers a dead body in a car crammed alongside hoarded possessions. Forcing her way into ‘Your Self’, Starling discovers a decapitated man’s head placed on top of a mannequin wearing a dress. This tableau captures the dark underside of consumer psychology: erotics, fetishism, fantasy and death. The victim’s cross-dressing signifies the same yearning for self-transformation witnessed in Buffalo Bill and Frederika Bimmel. For the killer, the victim and the consumer, fantasy is the exoskeleton of the commodity. The murder, the dressing-up, the purchase; each is driven by dreams of metamorphosis. Consumption, Baudrillard (1998: 31) reminds us, ‘is governed by a form of magical thinking’. Numerous case studies have concluded that serial killers are prone to hyperactive fantasy lives (see Seltzer, 1998; Vronsky, 2004). It would be a mistake to dismiss these fantasies as merely the overture to violence; rather, the violence is a means of sustaining the fantasy. By the same token, the practice and pathology of serial consumerism are driven by fantasies that cannot be fulfilled and so are compulsively repeated. We consume not products, but dream-images from a collective phantasmagoria.

These fantasies are fuelled by capitalism’s official art form: advertising. Perhaps in part the serial killer’s crime is taking the promises of advertising too literally – acting out the fantasy of a world ready-made for our consumption. The serial killer is both a millennial vogue and perhaps the ultimate fashion victim. Every aspect of Patrick Bateman’s lifestyle – clothing, diet, gadgetry, interior design and leisure time – is dictated by fashion. In his basement, Jame Gumb adopts glamour poses before a camera and struts like a catwalk model. The Death’s Head moths in his garment sweatshop symbolically suture the fashion industry with fetishism, hidden suffering and death. In his critique of the French arcades, the first cathedrals of consumer capital and forerunners of the department store and mall, Benjamin (1999b: 62–3) argued that fashion stands in opposition to the organic. It couples the living body to the inorganic world. To the living, it defends the rights of the corpse . . . fashion has opened the business of dialectical exchange between women and ware – between carnal pleasure and corpse . . . For fashion was never anything other than the parody of the motley cadaver, provocation of death through the woman.

EXQUISITE CORPSE: Killers, Consumers, and Mannequins

The sexual impulse-excitations are exceptionally plastic. (Freud, 1981: 389)

According to Benjamin (1999b), a key fetish object in the phantasmagorical arcades was the mannequin:

the fashion mannequin is a token from the realm of the dead . . . the model for imitation . . . Just as the much-admired mannequin has detachable parts, so fashion encourages the fetishist fragmentation of the living body . . . the woman mimics the mannequin and enters history as a dead object. (p. 78)

One of Benjamin’s German contemporaries, Hans Bellmer, explored the deathly sensuality of the mannequin through the lens of surrealist photography. Eroticized dolls were dressed in veils and underwear or covered in flowers. The mannequin was shot both as whole and dismembered, sometimes posed coyly and at other times torturously convoluted and bound in a perverse meeting of the shop window and the S&M dungeon.

In the 80s and 90s, the photographer Cindy Sherman developed a more explicit and grisly mode of mannequin pornography. In her ‘Disaster’, ‘Fairy Tale’ and ‘Sex’ series, Sherman deploys dolls and prosthetic body parts in tableau that combine eroticism, violence and abjection. Sherman’s photographs recall Lacan’s (1989) work on ‘imagos of the fragmented body’:

These are the images of castration, mutilation, dismemberment, dislocation, evisceration, devouring, bursting open of the body . . . One has only to listen to children aged between two and five playing, alone or together, to know that the pulling off of the head and the ripping open of the belly are themes that occur spontaneously to their imagination, and that this is corroborated by the experience of the doll torn to pieces. (p. 179)

Imagos of the deconstructed body are everywhere in the infantile fantasies of consumer culture: perfect legs, perfect breasts, perfect hair, perfect teeth, bodies endlessly dismembered in the ceaseless strafing of advertising imagery. Sherman’s photography foregrounds the rhetoric of advertising: the dissection of the body by fashion, fitness and beauty industries into fragmentary fetishes. At the same time these images stage a spectacular return of the repressed for those anxieties (about filth, aging, illness and death) covertly fuelled by consumerism’s representational regime.

In 1997, Sherman attempted to import her ‘imagos of the fragmented body’ into the mainstream in the film Office Killer. Dorine Douglas, a female serial killer, murders her co-workers at Constant Consumer magazine and takes the corpses home to her cellar where she plays with them as life-size dolls. Douglas’s hobby echoes Jeffrey Dahmer’s confession that his ‘experimentation’ with the human form began with the theft of a mannequin from a store: ‘I just went through various sexual fantasies with it, pretending it was a real person, pretending that I was having sex with it, masturbating, and undressing it’ (cited in Tithecott, 1999: 46). The mannequin enjoys a peculiar prominence in serial killer texts. In Maniac (1980), Frank Zito scalps his victims and places his trophies on the fashion mannequins that decorate his apartment. In Demme’s Silence of the Lambs, Benjamin Raspail’s decapitated head is placed on a shop dummy and mannequins are conspicuous in Jame Gumb’s garment sweatshop. Similarly, in Ed Gein (2000), the eponymous killer’s ‘woman suit’ is draped over a mannequin in his workshop. The climactic scenes in the serial killer road movie Kalifornia (1993) take place in mock suburban dwellings (part of a nuclear test site) occupied exclusively by mannequins. In House of Wax (2005) the serial killer trans- forms his victims into living dolls by encasing them in wax and a similar MO is evident in The Cell where the killer bleaches his female victim’s bodies in imitation of the dolls he played with as a child.

Although mannequins are less conspicuous in Ellis’s American Psycho (1991) than in Glamorama (in which they function as a key motif signifying the millennial merger of fashion with terrorism), they still perform a crucial symbolic function. Mannequins epitomize the ideal of 80s body fascism: tall, youthful, slim, impervious to wrinkles, scars and blemishes, untouched by illness and aging. Bateman’s obsession with the designer clothing worn by others in his social circle underlines their status (and his own) as mobile mannequins. Bateman’s fetishistic fascination with ‘hard bodies’ – both the muscular torso built in the gym and the stiff and frozen body parts he collects – similarly attests to the prevalence of a mannequin ideal in contemporary consumer culture. In ironic affirmation of this aesthetic, the film adaptation of Ellis’s novel was accompanied by the marketing of an ‘American Psycho Action Figure’ – an 18’ inch mini-mannequin equipped with fake Armani suit and knife.

In pursuit of the hegemonic fantasy of the hard body, in the gym and in his daily fitness regime, Bateman remorselessly punishes himself. The über-consumer is narcissistically fixated on his abdominal muscles, his face, his skin tone, how his body is adorned, what goes into it (dietary obsessions) and comes out (especially blood). The violence that Bateman inflicts on his victims appears as an extension of his own masochistic self-objectification:

Shirtless, I scrutinize my image in the mirror above the sinks in the locker room at Xclusive. My arm muscles burn, my stomach is as taut as possible, my chest steel, pectorals granite hard, my eyes white as ice. In my locker in the locker room at Xclusive lie three vaginas I recently sliced out of various women I’ve attacked in the past week. Two are washed off, one isn’t. There’s a barrette clipped to one of them, a blue ribbon from Hermès tied around my favourite. (Ellis, 1991: 370)

In Bateman’s locker we witness the gender confusion of the male killer and the latent violence of consumer body culture writ large. Bateman’s attempt to transform himself into an anthropomorphosized phallus is partly offset by the accessories (a hair clasp and ribbon) and pathologies gendered ‘feminine’ by patriarchy (vanity and masochism). According to Baudrillard (1998: 129), the consumer is ultimately encouraged to consume themselves: ‘in the consumer package, there is one object finer, more precious and more dazzling than any other . . . That object is the BODY’. For Patrick Bateman, serial killing is a mode of extreme make-over: a refashioning of bodies, including his own, into trophies. In Demme’s Se7en, John Doe’s body terrorism (force-feeding a fat man, cutting off a female model’s nose) mirrors, albeit in grotesque distortions, the mania of millennial consumer society. Similarly, the serial killers in Thomas Harris are fixated on bodily transformation: Buffalo Bill attempts to put him- self inside a new body while Lecter puts others’ bodies inside himself. The horrific practices of these fictional killers find their everyday analogue in the slow serial torture of the consumer’s body by capital: the injections and invasions of cosmetic surgery, the poisonings, pollutions and detoxifications, the over-consumption and dieting, the leisure rituals and compulsive exercise.

In an early scene from Mary Harron’s adaptation of American Psycho we witness Patrick Bateman’s morning exercise and beauty regime: crunches and push-ups are followed by ‘deep-pore cleanser lotion . . . water-activated gel cleanser . . . honey- almond body scrub’. As Bateman admires himself in the bathroom mirror his face is sheathed in a ‘herbal mint facial masque’ that lends the skin a mannequin sheen. When Bateman peels off his synthetic second skin the gesture echoes the gothic facials practised in Silence of the Lambs. Lecter, who, at their first meeting, identifies Clarice by her skin cream, escapes his captors by performing an improvised plastic surgery – he removes a guard’s face and places it over his own. This act is the prelude to a subsequent ‘official’ plastic surgery performed to disguise his identity. Jame Gumb’s needlepoint with human flesh might be traced back to Norman Bates’s taxidermy. Robert Bloch’s Psycho (1959) (the inspiration for Hitchcock’s movie) was loosely based on Ed Gein’s flaying and preserving of human flesh. Gein’s ghost also haunts the exploits of the Sawyer family in the series of Texas Chainsaw films: throughout the original (1973), the sequels (1986, 1990), the Next Generation (1994), the remake (2003), and the Beginning (2006) flesh is flayed, cut, tanned, sewed, worn, displayed and consumed. Mark Seltzer (1998) has noted the prevalence of ‘skin games’ in serial killer cinema and fiction. Beneath these ‘games’ we might catch glimpses of a profound skin disease promoted by the mannequin aesthetics of the beauty industry. As Judith Halberstam (1995: 163) has commented, ‘We wear modern monsters like skin, they are us, they are on us and in us’.

OBEY YOUR THIRST: Compulsive Seriality

The circulation of money is the constant and monotonous repetition of the same process . . . the endless series . . . the series of its [the commodity’s] representations never comes to an end. (Marx, 1990: 156, 210–11)

The structure of repetition which is the economy of death. (Blau, 1987: 70)

Baudrillard (1998) proposes that the models and mannequins conspicuous in consumer culture are ‘simultaneously [a] negation of the flesh and the exaltation of fashion’ (p. 141). Conversely, it might be argued that contemporary consumerism entails a massive extension and eroticisation of epidermises. The bioeconomics of consumerism involves ceaseless and intimate miscegenation between capital, commodity and the corporeal. This results in both an objectification of the body and a somatization of the commodity. In his Critique of Commodity Aesthetics, Haug (1986) explores ‘the generalized sexualization of commodities . . . the commodity’s skin and body’ as it penetrates the ‘pores of human sensuality’ (pp. 42, 76). The passion for commodities, their pursuit and possession by consumers might be diagnosed as a socially-sanctioned fetishism. The collection of shoes and the collection of human feet of course involve radically different fetishistic (not to mention ethical) intensities, but these activities share psychodynamic similarities.

For Baudrillard (1996: 87) there is a ‘manifest connection between collecting and sexuality . . . it constitutes a regression to the anal stage, which is characterised by accumulation, orderliness, aggressive retention’. Case studies suggest that serial killers are often devoted collectors (see Vronsky, 2004). Their histories typically begin with killing and collecting dead animals and when they progress to human prey the murder is accompanied by the taking of a trophy. In Collectors, Julian Hobbs offers an uncomfortable analogy between this trophy-taking, the hoarding practised by the cult followers of serial killers and the collection of images by the documentary film-maker. This practice is similarly conspicuous in fictional representations of the serial killer from Norman Bates’s collection of stuffed birds, to his namesake, Patrick Bateman, who compulsively collects (and seemingly without distinction) clothes, gadgets, music CDs, body parts and serial killer biographies: ‘Bateman reads these biographies all the time: Ted Bundy and Son of Sam and Fatal Vision and Charlie Manson. All of them’ (Ellis, 1991: 92). In Silence of the Lambs, Gumb collects flayed flesh while the more refined (at least while incarcerated) Lecter ‘collect[s] church collapses, recreationally’ alongside fine art prints (Harris, 1990: 21). The killer in Kiss the Girls (1997), like Jame Gumb, collects his victims and hordes them underground. Similarly, in The Cell, the killer locks his victims in underground storage before using them to build a collection of human dolls. Although the killer in The Bone Collector is only interested in accumulating skeletal fragments, his activities similarly require subterranean investigations. Digging beneath the psychological surface of the collector and his system of ‘sequestered objects’, Baudrillard (1996) detects a ‘powerful anal-sadistic impulse’:

The system may even enter a destructive phase, implying the self-destruction of the subject. Maurice Rheims evokes the ritualised ‘execution’ of objects – a kind of suicide based on the impossibility of ever circumscribing death. It is not rare . . . for the subject eventually to destroy the sequestered object or being out of a feeling that he can never completely rid himself of the adversity of the world, and of his own sexuality. (pp. 98–9)

Irrespective of the object, ‘what you really collect is always yourself’ (Baudrillard, 1996: 91). Serial killing, like consumerism, is driven by a sense of lack. Psychological profiles of serial killers typically diagnose the cause of the subject’s compulsive behaviour as a profound sense of incompletion (see Seltzer, 1998). Although of a different order, comparable dynamics are evident in what Haug (1986) calls the ‘commodity-craving’ of consumer sensibility. Estimates vary (from 1 to 25%) but an increasing number of studies agree that compulsive shopping is a recognizable and burgeoning problem (Hartson and Koran, 2002). American Psycho offers an extended parallelism between compulsive consumerism and compulsive violence. Attempting to describe the sensations he experiences after his first documented attack Bateman relies on consumerist tropes: ‘I feel ravenous, pumped up, as if I’d just worked out . . . or just embraced the first line of cocaine, inhaled the first puff of a fine cigar, sipped the first glass of Cristal. I’m starving and need something to eat’ (Ellis, 1991: 132).

Ellis juxtaposes exhaustive catalogues of commodities with exhaustive catalogues of sexual violence and proposes that the frenzy of consumer desire climaxes, for Bateman, not with fulfillment, but increasing boredom and acute anxiety.

In Serial Killers, Mark Seltzer (1998: 64) proposes that

The question of serial killing cannot be separated from the general forms of seriality, collection and counting conspicuous in consumer society . . . and the forms of fetishism – the collecting of things and representations, persons and person-things like bodies – that traverse it.

Every aspect of Bateman’s existence is structured by the compulsively circular logics of capitalist reproduction. Bateman (Norman Bates’s yuppie double) has seen the film Body Double 37 times. When he is not watching Body Double over and over, Bateman compulsively consumes other examples of serialized mass culture: daily episodes and reruns of The Patty Winters Show (a parodic double of the Oprah Winfrey Show); restaurant reviews and fashion tips in weekly magazines; crime stories in the newspapers and on TV, endlessly repeated video footage of plane crashes. On a shopping expedition, Bateman finds himself mesmerized while ‘looking at the rows, the endless rows of ties’ (Ellis, 1991: 296). On the run from the police he is similarly paralysed by rows of luxury cars (BMW 3, 5, 7 series, Jaguar, Lexus) and thus unable to choose a getaway vehicle. Bateman collects clothes in series (matching suits, shirts, shoes), beauty products, music CDs, varieties of mineral water, recipes and menus. Despite the advertising promises of unique purchases that offer instant fulfilment, there are no singular only serial objects in consumer society and ‘each commodity fills one gap while opening up another: each commodity and sale entails a further one’ (Haug, 1986: 91).

The pullulation of serial objects is accompanied by the expansion of serialized spaces. Throughout American Psycho, Bateman is continually lost and unable to distinguish between identical office buildings, restaurants, nightclubs and apartment buildings. This confusing interchangeability extends to people. Although clothing is instantly recognizable (everyone identifies everyone else by labels) people repeatedly misidentify each other. Thus, American Psycho underscores Jeffrey Nealon’s (1998: 112) disturbing contention that, in contemporary consumer society, ‘identity, for both commodity and human, is an effect rather than a cause of serial iteration’. The killer in Se7en, the anonymously named John Doe, attempts to build a distinctive identity by performing a series of grisly murders. At the first crime scene, as noted earlier, Doe’s arrangement of Campbell’s soup cans clearly alludes to Warhol’s work on the seriality and compulsive repetition of consumerism. Manhunter (1986), the first of the Hannibal Lecter films, makes a similar point in more comic fashion. A shot-reverse-shot sequence in a supermarket is littered with glaring continuity errors as father and son remain motionless while the products lined up in neat rows on the shelves behind them change (and the sequence ends with the detective framed by the cereals aisle). In Manhunter, Dollarhyde’s repetitive violence is partly inspired by Hannibal Lecter. This repetition is repeated in Red Dragon, the remake of Manhunter. Serial killers are often copycats and serial killer cinema repeats this trait: in Copycat the killer repeats famous murders and in Virtuosity a virtual criminal is manufactured from a serial killer database. Serial killer films themselves become series, spawning sequel after sequel. Although these narratives typically conclude with the murder of the killer, the audience is reassured that he will return in a vicious circle that begs the question: can seriality itself be killed?

DARK SATANIC MALLS: Killers, Consumers, and the Living Dead

We suffer not only from the living, but the dead. (Marx, 1990: 91)

[Bateman] moved like a zombie towards Bloomingdale’s. (Ellis, 1991: 179)

Serial representations of serial killers are often haunted by suggestions of the supernatural. In Silence of the Lambs, for example, one of Lecter’s guards nervously inquires whether he is ‘some kind of vampire’. This question echoes the nicknames given to serial killer Richard Trenton Chase (‘Dracula’ and the ‘Vampire Killer of Sacramento’). In Psycho Paths, Philip Simpson (2000) tracks the ways in which ‘fictional representations of contemporary serial killers obviously plunder the vampire narratives of the past century and a half’ (p. 4). Simpson also proposes that many of the supernatural monsters that have evolved from folklore (vampires, werewolves, zombies etc.) may have been inspired by historical serial killers avant la lettre. Historical and fictional serial killers are often traced through a supernatural stencil and in this concluding section, I shall consider the supernatural monsters of contemporary popular culture as metaphorical serial killers/consumers.

Since the 80s, cinema and video audiences have consumed a succession of successful horror franchises founded on supernatural serial killers: for example, Freddie in Nightmare on Elm Street (parts 1–8), Jason in Friday the 13th (parts 1–13) and Michael Myers in Halloween (parts 1–8). The popularity of this sub-genre has grown alongside the increased media coverage of serial killing and might be interpreted as a form of displaced engagement with the urgent reality of violent crime. Within this gallery of celebrity monsters the vampire continues to be a conspicuous presence. Dracula, for example, continues to appear in fiction and film, comics and cartoons, children’s culture (Count Quackula) and breakfast cereals (‘Count Chocula’). The publication of Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire in 1976 was the prelude to a renaissance in vampire film and fiction: Rice’s own highly successful Vampire Chronicles (including Tale of the Body Thief in which an angst-ridden vampire assuages his conscience by preying on serial killers) have been augmented by Blade and Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, Underworld and Van Helsing. These gothic incarnations of the predatory serial killer have never been so legion. In criticism of this oeuvre it has become almost compulsory to read vampirism as a metaphor for capitalism. This trend can be traced to Marx’s (1990) own penchant for vampiric tropes: ‘Capital is dead labour which, vampire-like, lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks’ (p. 342). Perhaps Marx, an avid reader of horror fiction, was inspired here by the serialization, in 1847, of James Malcolm Ryner’s Varney the Vampire. Despite his aspirations to scientific objectivity, a gothic lexicon is employed repeatedly in Marx’s work: Capital is crowded with references to vampires, the Wallachian Boyar (a.k.a Vlad Tepes, the historical inspiration for Stoker’s Dracula), werewolves, witchcraft, spells, magic and the occult and Marx claimed repeatedly to have detected ‘necromancy’ at the heart of the commodity form. In the work of Walter Benjamin, similarly packed with gothic tropes, ‘necromancy’ elides with necrophilia. For Benjamin, the sensual engagement between consumers and the products of dead labour blurs the lines between lust (appetites) and leiche (the corpse). Precisely this disturbing entangle- ment of death and eroticism is at the core of the predatory vampire’s charisma. The vampire has fascinated consumers and Marxist critics alike – the latter as an allegorical embodiment of the monstrous and mesmerising energies of capital.

A far less seductive version of the living dead, one who has received relatively little critical attention alongside the aristocratic vampire, is the zombie. The MO of the zombie – cannibalism – is also practised by many historical and fictional serial killers. In fact, the consumption of human flesh, blood and organs is the most transgressive taboo performed by historical and fictional serial killers from Jeffry Dahmner (subject of Joyce Carol Oates’s Zombie) to Hannibal Lecter, from Armin Meiwes to Patrick Bateman and Leatherface. Cannibal studies has become a burgeoning field in contemporary critical theory and one of its most contentious assertions is that modern consumerism constitutes a mode of neocannibalism. For example, Crystal Bartolovich (1998) proposes that consumerism embodies the cultural logic of ‘late cannibalism’, Deborah Root (1996) detects a ‘cannibal culture’ in contemporary consumerism, art, popular culture and tourism while Dean MacCannell (1992) has similarly called for a reinterpretation of western tourism and other aspects of consumerism in terms of cannibalism. In a variety of fields, from ecology and tourism to sexuality and organ transplants, from business take-overs to pop culture intertextuality, critics in various disciplines have uncovered intricate intersections between cannibalist and consumerist modes of incorporation. Although contemporary capitalism is of course founded on a figurative rather than literal practice, with its relentless consumption of land and labour, resources and spectacles, cannibalism without necrophagy still mirrors the modes of desire and domination, the obsessive violence, wastefulness and irrational excesses that under- pinned classical cannibal practices. According to Deborah Root (1996: 3), one might detect in the endless hunger of late capitalism a ‘pervasive cannibal unconscious’.

The past few years have seen a dramatic upsurge in films that focus on flesh-eaters: Land of the Dead (2005) and Return of the Living Dead 5 (2005), Resident Evil (2002) and Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004) (based on a hugely successful survival horror video game franchise), 28 Days Later (2002), Children of the Living Dead (2001) and Shaun of the Dead (2004). US popular culture began its colonization of Haitian folklore in 1932 with Bela Lugosi starring in White Zombie. The setting of Victor Halperin’s film on a Caribbean sugar plantation offered a suggestive analogy between zombification and slavery. Although most see the zombie as sheer superstition others have read it, like vampirism, as political metaphor. In his preface to Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, Jean-Paul Sartre used the metaphor of colonial subjects as zombies. On occasion zombification could be more than mere metaphor. In 1918, in Haiti, newspapers reported that most of the employees of the American sugar corporation who worked on the cane plantations were zombies. Conspiracy theorists proposed that US chemists had finally caught up with voodoo medicine and had started poisoning the workforce to produce docile and submissive labourers.

George Romero’s seminal zombie film, Dawn of the Dead (1978), overturned the tradition of offering zombies as symbols of oppressed colonial labour and instead offered a gothic caricature of consumers as the living dead. Dawn of the Dead is set largely in Monroeville, a shopping mall in Cleveland, some time after a zombie epidemic has swept the nation. Four human survivors seek refuge at the mall but their respite is interrupted by the arrival of hordes of zombies. One of the characters explains their presence thus: ‘some kind of instinct. Memory . . . of what they used to do. This was an important place in their lives . . . It’s not us they’re after, it’s the place. They remember that they want to be here’. The zombies seem like slapstick shoppers: they are hypnotized by the mannequins, they fall over on the escalators or into fountains while looking at glistening coins. Initially, the humans have no trouble in trapping and killing the zombie-shoppers using muzak, PA announcements and by posing in shop windows as consumable bait. Gradually, however, the threat increases and Romero progressively collapses the distance and differences between the human characters and the zombie mob.

How pertinent is Romero’s carnivalesque parody of mindless consumerism? In The Malling of America, William Kowinski (2002) describes the psychology of shopping in malls as a ‘zombie effect’. The architectural design of malls induces consumers to wander for hours in an endless pursuit of goods and services. In ‘Islands of the Living Dead: the Social Geography of McDonaldisation’, George Ritzer (2003) focuses on the devivifying influence of commodification. In accordance with a socioeconomic and psychological design perfected by McDonalds, the landscapes of consumerism are so structured, standardized and disciplined that the subjects moving through them are, he contests, simultaneously alive and dead. Ritzer borrows a phrase from Baudrillard to describe this as a world that resembles ‘the smile of a corpse in a funeral home’ (p. 127). Sometimes shoppers shuffle numbly by instinct between aisles and shops (like Romero zombies), but sometimes they can get nasty (like Romero zombies). Rhonda Lieberman (1993) and other analysts of shopping disorders have commented on increases in violence in consumer spaces: mall hysteria, sales frenzy and even full- blown riots. For example, when IKEA opened a new store in Edmonton, North London, in 2005, a riot involving 7000 people and multiple stabbings ensued (Oliver, 2005). The zombie desires to consume all the time and when it is prevented from consuming it becomes violent. An emergency broadcast in Romero’s Dawn of the Dead explains why the zombie plague has spread so quickly across the country. The living dead only consume around 5 per cent of their victims before moving on in search of the next meal. The violence, wastefulness and instinctive serial consumption of the zombie makes it, like the serial killer, a gothic projection of the commodifying fury of late capitalism. Monsters Inc. is a booming business. The spectacular increase in images and narratives of serial killing in millennial western culture, from the media coverage of historical homicide to the proliferation of fictional and supernatural fantasies of serial homicide, ultimately embodies the consumption of consumption in a necrocapitalist order.

References

Annesley, James (1998) Blank Fictions: Consumerism, Culture and the Contemporary American Novel. London: Pluto.

Bartolovich, Crystal (1998) ‘Consumerism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Cannibalism’, in Barker, Hulme and Iversen (eds) Cannibalism and the Colonial World, 204–37. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Baudelaire, Charles (1998) The Flowers of Evil. Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics. Baudrillard, Jean (1996) The System of Objects. London: Verso.

Baudrillard, Jean (1998) The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures. London: SAGE Publications.

Benjamin, Walter (1999a) Illuminations. London: Pimlico.

Benjamin, Walter (1999b) The Arcades Project. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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[whatthefirefliessaw]

Character Building: Cimone/ “Cinnamon”

Does the character shape her own destiny?  Does she actively try to change her situation and if not, why not?

Yes, Cinnamon has always taken charge of her own life. She went into foster care as an infant and has always felt she's been standing alone in the world. Very early on, she began trying to work out plans on where she wanted to go and what she wanted to do with herself. Being very young, those plans often changed, but they existed and eventually became a hard won reality with the help of her partner, Pumpkin.

Does she have her own goals, beliefs and hobbies?  Did she come up with them on her own?

While some of her general goals are shared with Pumpkin, Cinnamon chose her own branch of magic to study and was the driving force behind the pair continuing to remain in Cerise’s coven. Her beliefs and hobbies are her own, though a few of the hobbies have overlapped with Pumpkin’s (ex: they were major Harry Potter fans as kids). Cinnamon loves tinkering with metalwork and gadgets, alchemy, and building extensive “playgrounds” for the various elementals that help her. These tend to look like excessively complex garden decor. She also values her much needed quiet time.

Is her character consistent? Do her personality or skills change as the plot demands?

Cinnamon has a stable personality. She's a more reserved person, which does not mean that she isn't also very amiable, sympathetic, and helpful as long as it doesn't conflict with what she sees as her obligations. Responsible and reliable, she will never agree to do anything unless she's certain she can keep the bargain. Of the younger witches, she makes the most patient and methodical teacher. 

She is a peacemaker who always tries hard to prevent interpersonal misunderstandings and needless arguments. She doesn’t like seeing people hurt or their feelings invalidated. Because she takes on so much additional emotional stress, Cinnamon needs time to be quiet and to recharge. As a researcher she requires time to follow her studies. Trying to invade what she’s marked out as her personal time or personal space will show there's a bit of fire under the warmth. 

Her skills are in math, chemistry, and engineering. This translates into a study of alchemy, automatons, and a love of experimenting to see what she can create. After a misguided attempt to use them, she creates a working relationship and even friendships among elemental spirits/sprites.

Can you describe her in one short sentence without mentioning her love life, her physical appearance, or the words ‘strong female character’

A friendless orphan grows up to discover her world is full of potential friendship and embraces her inner nerd to become a formidable witch/alchemist.

Does she make decisions that aren’t influenced by her love life?

Because she has a partner, Cinnamon does need to take that into consideration when major life choices are made: housing, finances, etc. However, day to day Cinnamon is typically very independent and her career choices are her own.

Does she develop over the course of the story?

In What the Fireflies Saw, she has already gone through much of her development.

Does she have a weakness?

Cinnamon has issues with tunnel vision and in her efforts to keep the peace she may wear herself down/reach of point of personal neglect that isn’t healthy. She's can be cautious about developing emotional attachments, due to a childhood where she felt very little sense of stability, permanence, or genuine connection with others. 

She also feels a strong need to manage and protect Pumpkin from the emotionally fragile young woman's impulsive behavior and tendency to disconnect from reality, which places stress on herself and can be a little smothering to Pumpkin. She can badly overreact if she feels Pumpkin is in danger. Balancing that aspect of their relationship is a continuous work in progress.

Does she influence the plot without getting captured or killed?

She is never captured or killed.

How does she relate to other female characters?

She has varying relationships with other female characters, but mostly they're positive. She loves her partner and best friend, Pumpkin, who was the first person she ever deliberately approached and formed a close bond with. Although her role can sometimes be a caretaker towards Pumpkin, her partner is aware of how hard Cinnamon pushes herself and steps in if she thinks Cinnamon needs to rest. Cinnamon can allow herself to be vulnerable and coaxed into relaxing around Pumpkin, because her partner is just as fast to defend and comfort her as the other way around.

Cerise is a respected teacher and leader. Cherry is a respected parental figure that, for the first time, Cinnamon feels is safe to care for and rely on if she needs help. She has friends in town and within SteelMoon, such as Candy. Serena is also someone she cares for. Although they were not as close at first, after Serena is caught and her bad choices exposed, Cinnamon steps in as a source of comfort and much needed friendship.