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bowtiesnmusicals · 2 years ago

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Here is my recap of the "Legendary" (Furt) episode of the podcast.

Welcome to...and that's what you really missed...Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1.

Kevin said that's what I wish we were recapping. Jenna said why don't we have a Harry Potter podcast. Kevin said we probably know more about Harry Potter then we do about Glee. We would probably be better at that.

Welcome to our first Glee wedding. Jenna said it feels like we have done a ton of weddings already but we haven't. Kevin said, this is our first right, first and second because there are two in this episode. Jenna said first and a half. Kevin said 1.5.

This episode originally aired November 23, 2010. This was around Thanksgiving time in the US.

The #1 song was Like a G6.

The #1 movie was Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows part 1.

Jenna asked Kevin if he remembers when they went to see this movie. Kevin said no, oh wait, and asked if they sat it at Arch Light at midnight and they dressed up a little bit. He has pictures from that night. This was the first Harry Potter movie that Jenna has ever seen. Kevin said what a weird movie to come in on. It's Kevin's favorite Harry Potter movie. Jenna said it's her husbands favorite as well. Jenna said he puts it on all the time and she is like why this one. Kevin said in terms of ones he watches the most, not because it's his favorite, but because he feels like it's easiest to watch. Jenna said, this one, you crazy girlfriend, I'm talking about Goblet, like that is easy. Kevin said he's seen Goble of Fire too many times. Jenna said she's seen them all too many times. The reason Kevin likes this movie is, because you asked, he thinks this section of the book is not great and this is the only movie that improves upon what is written in the book. Jenna said fair enough, she has to agree, they really did do something with it. She doesn't love it but they did do something with it. Kevin said he thinks it is the best acting in the entire film. Jenna said it is like watching an indie film. Jenna said this was the first movie she came into and was kind of confused but she was excited that everyone else was excited so she was into it. This is when Kevin lent her all the books and she got into the movies a little later. She refused to watch the rest of the movies until she finished the books. Kevin said good for you. Kevin said he is glad they have that time of Harry Potter being untainted by the terfness. Jenna said such a pure more innocent time.

Also this week in Glee news. The American Music Awards happened. Darren met Katy Perry. The other boys had already met Katy Perry because they had hosted the Teen Choice Awards with her. Shortly after they will be in her music video for Last Friday Night. Kevin said he had to run out of a gay club because they started playing that song and he was really embarrassed so he walked out. Jenna asked why was he embarrassed it's such a great video. Kevin said it is a great video but friends and people started to look at him and he was like I've got to go. Jenna said yeah I hear that, very exciting though, and they will have to talk about that when we get there.

This episode was directed by Carol Banker. She was a new director but she had worked on Glee since season 1 as the script supervisor. Their is a script supervisor every day on set and they take copious notes on continuity. The wardrobe people turn to them and are like what day is this. They also have photos they refer to as well. Jenna said she didn't explain it very well. Kevin said even within a scene it's like if there is a take and you turn your head and let's say Jenna your hair is down and half of it moves from behind your shoulder to in front of your shoulder then that's what you need to do to match that every single time now. Because they had so many people on the show the script supervisor is paying attention that many actors all at once. They are also making sure you saying all the correct dialogue, if drop a word, if you add a word, if you are improving, that person is going to come in and be like so here is the actual line and you do need to do it as written. They do this for all the characters in every scene, in every take, all the time. They also are taking the notes because they sit with the director and the DP and watch the takes and sometimes the director will be like that is the take I want. So they can also mark those things down that this is the directors preferred take in the moment for the edit. So it is a huge job and responsibility. They see everything because they are at the epicenter where all the departments are talking to the director and DP and going to the little area where the script supervisor sits. So Carol Banker got to step on up and went on to direct all kinds of series. Jenna said thank you for that much better explanation. Kevin said nonsense. This is one of many episodes that Carol will direct for Glee.

We have some special guest stars. We have the one and only Carol Burnett. So two Carols. Kevin said he watched this episode last night and watched the series finale of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel right after not realizing there is someone playing a young Carol Burnett in the episode. Then he woke up today and Carol Burnett was trending and its a lot of Carol Burnett because she is an icon.

Jenna said there are also a lot of Carols. We have Carol Bander, Carol Burnett, and Carole Hudson-Hummel. Kevin said she becomes Hudson-Hummel in this episode. Kevin said it was really special to talk to Jane when she was on about getting to work with Carol Burnett, how crazy and very surreal. Also talking to Jane about marrying herself which Jenna did not think came so quickly. Kevin said he did not think it was in this episode. Jenna said she thought it was in season 6. Kevin said it sounds like a season 6 move.

They talked about the songs in this episode. Kevin said it is like a mini early Bruno Mars tribute episode.

The overview is that Burt and Carole announced they got in engaged and Kurt takes on all the wedding planning. He hires the New Directions to perform at the wedding. Finn is a little hesitant obviously for personal reasons. Sue also decides that she is going to get married but she is going to marry herself. Her mom comes to town, the one and only Carol Burnett. Sue is still principal and she is actually going to advocate for Kurt.

Kevin said the real big star of this episode really is Carol Burnett. They have had a lot of really famous people, legends, but he feels like Carol Burnett is TV Legend/Icon. He said what was wild about watching this was knowing how much Jane admires her and the whole time he was watching Jane interact with Carol in character he was thinking how much fun and also how hard it must be to stay in character. He said he knows when you are in scenes with a legendary sometimes you are also sometimes aware of I am watching this this really famous incredibly talented person in front of me right now. He said obviously if you are really talented like Jane you are probably just in it and you are doing the job but it was so weird to see Jane play Sue Sylvester next to Carol Burnett. He just wanted her to just be Jane and just fawn all over her. Jenna said right, and she was not doing that, it's not the character at all. She said she can only imagine it is very out of body. Kevin said their number together was phenomenal.

Kevin said lets talk about this storyline real quick because this is the smaller storyline but they do it in a bigger way. Carol Burnett shows up in Principal Sylvester's office and we learn that she is Sue's mother and that she is a famous nazi hunter. Jenna said we really love the nazi hunters on Glee. Kevin said it's quite funny. The sort of go at it. Sue has a complicated relationship with her mother. Her mother has overheard that Sue is going to marry herself because Rod Remington is getting married and she is really embarrassed and furious about it. No one can lover her like herself. Mama Sylvester comes in and is like this is really sad and pathetic and has all these insults. There is a lot of you abandoned us, you abandoned your daughters, you abandoned me. I've been taking care us and where have you been. Mama Sylvester is like I've been off killing nazis but she is so funny. Jenna said she is so funny. Kevin said it's zero percent surprising that Carol Burnett is funny but way to sell a crazy storyline. A wild storyline. Jenna said at the root of it, and she doesn't know if it's the magic of them or a combination of the writing and the magic of them, but it really comes back to a mother and daughter. At the end, in the auditorium, the foundation of it is a broken family. Jenna said this is crazy and she is glad that Doris(Carol Burnett) is like this is kind of crazy but even more so its funny because Doris is like I can't believe you are not letting me be a more central part of your wedding. The age old mother/parents involved in weddings.

Kevin asked Jenna if she love this number they did together. Jenna said when she opened her mouth she was like right, right. right, that's Carol Burnett. Kevin was like yeah. Jenna said its wonderful, it's really really wonderful. So simple. Kevin said he forgot Carol Burnett can sing, she can do everything. Jenna said its simple, just let them do their thing. Kevin said it's not like everyone can pull off the dialogue in the middle of the song. They are both comedic geniuses and toe the line of what Jenna said of identifying and representing the storyline of the mother/daughter relationship that is serious but also in the context of the absurdity of what is going on and the situation around them and it's just so beautifully done and puts the rest of us to absolute shame. Jenna said she forgot how good that number was and when she watched she was like oh right, this number. Kevin said he didn't remember it. Jenna said it was probably because they were like this didn't include us, let's just go, back in the day. Kevin said this was one of those things too that they got to have some of those amazing people on but if they didn't interact with them, and they read the scripts, they weren't skipping them, they were probably in dance rehearsal or recording or something. Jenna said she didn't meet Carol. Kevin said he thinks he did or he saw her or they had a conversation as a group on the New York backlot which is where their stages were. He said he thinks he did see her for a second but he doesn't think he spoke because he was in awe. Jenna said what do you say to the queen.

So Sue decides to marry herself and she is officiating it herself. The wedding happens at Jean's home. Kevin said Jean is also so talented as well, the three of them together are really tremendous. Jenna said Robin. They really sold a very kind of broken family and it was really heartbreaking. Kevin said as crazy as it is the Adidas wedding dress was phenomenal. Carol Burnett's reaction to it was also phenomenal. Kevin she was all of us. This is ridiculous, absolutely crazy. Jenna said Lou Eyrich at her crazy, wonderful, genius again. Doris says she still thinks this whole thing is absolutely crazy and she's said she is not more a part of the wedding. Then Sue gives it to her mom and says she is a bully. Then you are like oh I see where Sue got it from and I see why she is the way she is and then it is just her and Jean. Sue says you know when I finally began to like who I am, when I stopped trying to please you. Burn, burn, burn, burn. Kevin said damn. Jenna said it's the most profound thing she has heard Sue say. Doris is uninvited to the wedding, good-bye. That is a wrap on Doris. That's a wrap on Carol Burnett and a wrap on Sue marrying Sue.

The real meat of the episode is the wedding that happens in record time. Jenna was like I know, I was like already. Kevin said we didn't want to drag this wedding preperation out for a couple episodes. Jenna said Kurt is just a magician, that's all. Kevin that isn't the Ryan Murphy style. We want to introduce it and wrap it up in 42 minutes.

Burt and Carole surprise Kurt and Finn at school and tell them they got engaged. Kurt is so excited, he's got the wedding plans under control from the trunk full of wedding magazines under his bed instead of all the other things boys have under their bed. Finn is seemingly not so excited. He is a bit shocked. It probably feels a bit soon. Burt and Carole are going to Waikiki for their honeymoon. Jenna said take me with you. Burt wants a really good band so Kurt is going to enlist New Directions. Jenna said because we are a really good band. Kevin said we are a great band. Jenna said a wedding band. Kevin said we have a band that plays with us. Jenna said that is a really good band. Kevin said that is actually a band. Glee Wedding.

Simultaneously what is going on with Kurt is that he is getting bullied by Karofsky still and there is this power dynamic and shift where Finn is feeling pushed aside because he felt like he was blindsides by this whole wedding. Kurt is taking the lead, I'm going to take it over. At the same time Kurt is being bullied and shoved aside and Finn is not stepping up to the plate as now about to be his step brother. Everyone wants Finn to be the leader and Kurt is like you are the leader, you need to step up. I am going to teach you a dance for the wedding and you are going to give your mom away and all these things. Finn is sort of resistant to all of it but eventually is like you are right I can be a leader if I step up and learn to dance but then when push comes to shove when it's time for the Glee club to enlist him because the girls have this great scene. All the girls who have boyfriends who have boyfriends on the football team and they enlist their help to go after Karosfky. When Finn is approached about it he says he can't because it will jeopardize my future but at the same time Sam is trying to get his spot back as quarterback. When the time comes and they do approach Karofsky about it, Sam steps up in a big way and gets into that fight. Jenna said the locker room scene was really great. When the girls enlist the boys to do it they go and they really do confront Karofsky and he is kind of cornered. Kevin said he was proud of the boys, for all the stupid things they do, this is good. Jenna said she was too. It gave the storyline some more gravity that people were actually taking it more seriously or giving it more notice and attention. Jenna said, okay finally we aren't just saying there's nothing we can do which is a whole other thing in the principal's office. Kevin said it did make up for a couple of episodes ago when Kurt really was getting the shit beat out of him by Karofsky Jenna said right and no one was doing anything. Kevin said Schue was like I know you aren't happy. Where at least they took Kurt into the principal's office and Sue really grounded was explaining that no one saw it and you weren't hurt this time. He doesn't reveal yet that his life was threatened and nothing really happens so boys go after Karofsky.

Jenna asks if they had to have a stunt double for when Kevin fell out of the wheelchair. Kevin said that's not him and that they wouldn't any stunts. Jenna said she was impressed because she thought it was Kevin that went down. Kevin said if they even suggested anything they said nope and he said that's fine there are incredibly talented stunt people and that's their profession, leave it to the professionals. Well except when Kevin was pushed into the pool but that wasn't planned. Kevin said they had an incredible stunt team.

Sam really takes a beating for Kurt and really goes to the mat, no pun intended, with Karofsky for Kurt. That gave the whole thing a little more gravity. Jenna said it was frustrating when Sue took them into the office, even though she is advocating for him and is actually taking this seriously and not just kind of being Sue, it's was upsetting because that's crazy that all of that, that happened still wasn't enough to get Karofsky suspended. Kevin said it wasn't like every time it happened he was in a hallway full of kids so it's not like there are not witnesses to any of this happening. Better late then never that its finally being addresses because we need it for another plot point that happens at the end.

So then this wedding happens. Santana approaches Finn (Frankenteen which was Cory's twitter handle for a long time) and was like look if you want to be a leader and get your cool status back then we should maybe tell everyone we did it last year. He's like I can't. Kevin said this is sweet, this is the finchel relationship that we all know and love, he is like I can't tell her because I love her and I don't want to break her heart and it's going to break her heart. Kevin said their scene was so great together. Jenna said she likes Santana and Finn together. Kevin said they were very good together. He said it was sort of similar also in real life where they are obviously very different people but to him they filled similar roles amongst their friend group. They were very good at getting them all together, they were all about the comradery and making sure they stayed together and stayed friends whether it was events or house parites whatever it was. They were also just two of the nicest and funniest people. Kevin said they were mirrors of each other. He said they are so different but their dynamics amongst their ranks was similar. They operated two different ways but what they were trying to accomplish was the same. He asked if that makes sense. Jenna said yeah not totally but she never saw it that way before. Kevin said they are both very very talented and getting to watch them play is wild and the best.

We get to the church and they get married. Kevin asked if Jenna knew the song Marry You before this. Jenna said yeah, definitely. Kevin said he had never heard it before and it was still fairly new at the time. Jenna said she was running that album into the ground at that point and that was why she knew it and was very excited for it. Kevin said how fun were these two days at this church. Jenna said the most fun. First of all that number, Marry You, was ridiculous and she doesn't remember rehearsing it, it was such a great time. Kevin said he thinks they barely rehearsed it. Jenna said it was Zach and Brooke running down the aisle like do this or have fun and be stupid and go for it. Kevin said it was really sweet all the pairing and groupings. Jenna said she had a great time filming this.

Romy, which they hadn't really worked with Romy all that much yet as a group. They love Romy and they loved watching her doing her thing with Finn. It was a lot of Romy and Cory. So when Romy came to this wonderful wedding she was like what are we doing here. She came with a duffle bag to their trailers and pulls out a bottle of patron. She literally brought the kids patron. Kevin said she didn't tell them she had patron until they got to the reception when they weren't really doing anything. They had to really perform Marry You and do that emotional scene. Jenna said they weren't drinking tequila at that point. Kevin said there were a lot of hours and hours of them sitting at those tables in the reception room. Jenna said she blocked it from her memory. Kevin said he didn't remember performing at the reception at all, zero recollection, he just remembers sitting at those tables for hours. Jenna said it was because it was really quick, the shot that really quickly. They spent a lot of time on Sway. Kevin said Sway took a long very long time. They ate up the time.

Jenna said lets talk about what they teased. Dianna, Lea, and Jenna were pescatarians at the time. Dianna was like I having been craving meet and Jenna was like me too. Dianna was like can we just have some meat. Jenna was like yeah. And then came Wendy’s. Jenna said who got the Wendy’s. Kevin said transpo Seth. Jenna said it was close by. Kevin said it was and maybe they were running to get lunch for themselves and they were like can you get it for us too. Kevin said he thinks it was just the three of them. Jenna said that spicy chicken sandwich man. He said he remembers sitting on the floor of his trailer and watched the two of them break that pescatarianism before his eyes and they were both worried they would get sick. He said neither of them did probably because it’s not real chicken. Jenna said it probably wasn’t, it’s probably rubber but it was delicious. Kevin it’s so good. They barely ever got to shoot on location. They were on the stages of Paramount all the time. So they were somewhere at a church, it felt like kids house, they were out, there was patron and chicken sandwiches. They had a great time. Jenna said we really did. Kevin said he thinks there were paparazzi shots as well because they were always on the lot so this was an early time for them having to experience paparazzi in that way while they were shooting. Jenna said when they shot sectionals and regionals last time there wasn’t a lot of paparazzi but as they get to these bigger locations and people found out they would have to put base camp behind fences or gates or put walls for them because it got a little crazy starting probably now. She said you are right there are a lot of paparazzi shots. Jenna asked Kevin if he remembered they went to that park. Kevin said yes and we got on the swings. Jenna said they found a park at lunch and walked to it and they got on the swings. They were in their red dresses with flowers in their hair and sweat pants underneath swinging on the swings. Jenna said we were really living our lives. They were like we are free. Kevin said it was os much fun. It felt like they didn’t have a lot to do. There was a lot of setup. A lot of Romy, a lot of extras, a lot of Mike, a lot of Kurt and Finn. Jenna said she feels like they were just having a ball.

Kevin said he would like to point out two serious. The Burt and Carole vows…just kill me now. Kevin said he has goosebumps now. Jenna said they know how to deliver us a monologue. Kevin said those two, he wants them to be in everything everywhere all at once. He said he loves them so much and they are so good together. They were so lucky they were surrounded by so many talented actors. Jenna joked, to lift us up. Kevin said growing up Mike was the host of that show. Jenna said Guts and Global Guts. Kevin said he had no idea just how good of an actor and a good man and just a good person. Jenna said sometimes you’ve just got to pay the bills. Kevin said I get it, I’ve hosted shows myself since. Jenna said no, he really is such a wonderful man. What a talented bunch. Kevin said the other aspect of this, when the Glee club boys, minus Finn, confronted Karofsky. Tina really went hard on him saying that everyone was there except Finn and he was feeling it. He said he thinks during the wedding ceremony he realized he messed up and some things are more important, we are now family. He does this whole number to surprise Kurt and it’s so sweet, those two together. Jenna said she cried. Kevin said oh my god, Mike O’Malley’s face, when he realized what is going on on, you have to look at his face right before Kurt and Finn go and get Carole and Burt from the table to join them, he is just on the verge of breaking into tears. Kevins said he has full goosebumps right now. It was so, you know when you see a parent cry. It was just so sweet. Jenna said now it’s really, Cory too knows how to give a good monologue, he knows how to deliver. Kevin said they had so much tequila by that point. Jenna said yeah, no probably, they were exhausted. Kevin said all those reactions of Sway he was like do we look drunk. Jenna said probably drunk or tired. Kevin said for the record they didn’t get drunk, he doesn’t think any of them drunk, they just like took a shot. Jenna said not this time. Kevin said they were scared and Romy was not trying to get anyone or herself in trouble. Kevin said they took one little shot. Jenna said one little snippy for good measure. Kevin said maybe this was the beginning of what caused Blame It On The Alcohol. So lets just mark this and see the progression. Jenna joked that its Romy’s fault.

Finn redeems himself. Carole and Burt are married. There is a new union and we get into this much more serious deeper storyline. We’ve mentioned Karofksy is still tormenting Kurt. Karofsky really gets in Kurt’s face this time around. Kurt says he feels like he is in a horror movie where he just never knows what is going to happen. He doesn’t know what Karofsky is capable of after his life has been threatened. To wrap it all up Sue has really advocated for Kurt and says there is not a lot I can do but if I see if myself I will come fo him and get him out. Kurt admits to Finn that his life was threatened and then we go into a whole other gear. Sue is like no, no, no we aren’t doing this, you are expelled, you are out. Kevin said he appreciated how they portrayed Karofksy’s dad, because he didn’t believe his son and he knows something is up. They bring Kurt back in and are like look because there are now witnesses to any of this we can’t expel him and he’s coming back to school. Sue says Figgins is coming back. I can’t help you from this office but if I am in the hallways I can be another set of eyes and I can help you.

To rewriting a bit Burt is being helped by Kurt and Finn with his dancing. He sees Karofsky and by this point Finn knows about the threat. Burt is like what was that and Karofsky is walking by in the hallway. Finn is like if you don’t tell him I will. Kurt has to tell Burt what happened and Burt comes charging out, as a father should and would do. Again another wonderful performance by Mike O’Malley taking Karofsky down as much as any grown man can take down a teen. So that what kickstarts Burt finding out.

We fast forward wot where we just left off where Karofsky is coming back to school. Carole and Burt, as the parents and voice of reason should and the people in control, tell Kurt they will take their honeymoon money and will give to him for Dalton. Kurt walks into the choir room and Mr. Schue is all excited to give him a solo for regionals which was probably a lie anyways, you know Rachel is going to get it. Kurt says he leaving. Everyone has taken it seriously but not this seriously up until this point, serious enough that they are going to lose Kurt. Everyone was devastated. Jenna said she understood, zero tolerance and she wouldn’t feel safe there. Good for Kurt. Kevin said he loves how upset everyone is because again this show being on a network in 2010 and you have the gay character that is arguably one of the biggest characters on the show and beloved by all the other characters on the show and to see how that affects them where he has become so popular and so vital to their friend group in glee club. Kevin said it was really profound and moving to him in that way. He said Amber getting up and just saying Kurt and no other line just broke his heart. Jenna said he is one of us and he’s also gong to be competing against one of us. Of course Rachel points that out immediately but fair because next episode is Special Education.

The other thing that happens is Sam and Quinn. Sam is fully obsessed with Quinn and basically proposes and was like here is a promise ring. Quinn is like no you are crazy but after watching how he stuck up for Kurt by the end of the episode she is like you didn’t even notice I am wearing your ring. Kevin said it was a really sweet little like sub storyline that was woven in there and they are really sweet together. He is making her feel comfortable after having a terrible previous year. Jenna said they are just really cute together too.

Tartie Takes:

Cringe/Ouchies - Kevin’s was Sue marrying herself and kissing her own hand. Jenna said it made her really uncomfortable that she doesn’t want to talk about it and will take that one too.

Best Dance Move - Marry You…so cute.

Best Song - Kevin said Marry You and Jenna said Just The Way You Are. They are both great. You can’t go wrong.

Best Performance by a Prop - Kevin said his ribbons were really great. Jenna said the tequila.

Best Lines - Kevins aid the vows. Jenna said she really loved Jane’s performance. She played the seriousness of Kurt being bullied, harassed, and threatened so beautifully with the comedy of Sue Sylvester. When she was so serious about him being arrayed and there wasn’t a lot she could do and she is calling him lady and Kurt was like you know that’s bullying. She was like okay noted and then the turn around is so fast but its so serious in the delivery and says I will allow you to choose from the following nicknames then gelfling, porcelain, and tickle me dough face. Kurt says I guess I will go with porcelain and Sue was like ugh I was really hoping for tickle me dough face.

Shit We Found on TikTok:

Someone posted a Sesame Street parody of Glee and said never forget the most accurate parody of Glee ever. They talk about the letter G. It’s called G. Jenna keeps saying no, stop, no. It’s a full recreation of the set and characters all in Sesame Street form. It’s not regionals its g-gionals. Jenna said is it real, this is really, Sesame Street did this. Kevin said yes. Jenna said WHAT!?!? Kevin said it’s absolutely incredible. Find a song with the letter G. There is Sue Sylvester, there is everybody. Kevin said it is so crazily good and he doesn’t understand how these things happen. Jenna said what, this is amazing. Kevin said there is a song. Jenna said she is shocked. Kevin said everyone go look at that because it phenom. Jenna said the puppets look really similar. Kevin said it’s it really crazy. Kevins said he could go on but he won’t keep you any longer you can go check it out for yourself.

Next episode is Special Education….it is some competition as Kevin said.

#and that's what you really missed #atwyrm #jenna ushkowitz #kevin mchale #glee #podcast #furt

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new-sandrafilter · 2 years ago

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Timothée Chalamet and Taylor Russell Will Eat You Alive: How ‘Bones and All’ Became the Year’s Sexiest Cannibal Love Story

By Nick Vivarelli Photographs by Jason Hetherington

Timothée Chalamet has been on a wilder world tour than most rock stars.

Between shooting “Dune: Part Two” in Budapest and “Wonka” in London and the cannibal romance “Bones and All” in Ohio, he’s hardly had time to sleep in his own bed. “We did the ‘French Dispatch’ premiere in Cannes,” he says about the debut of the Wes Anderson comedy in the south of France two summers ago, where he walked the red carpet in a silver suit. “And then I was immediately doing the vocal and dance training at Leavesden” — to take on the role of Roald Dahl’s Willy Wonka — “which was wonderful, because I went from playing a disenfranchised cannibal on the outskirts of American society in the ’80s to a gifted young chocolatier and now a space prophet.”

On this afternoon, 26-year-old Chalamet is taking a break from inhabiting the dangerous planet Arrakis in “Dune: Part Two” to attend the London premiere of “Bones and All.” The drama, which premiered to a 10-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival in early September reteams Chalamet with Luca Guadagnino, the Italian director who turned him into a movie star with 2017’s Sundance darling “Call Me by Your Name.” That gay romance, in which Chalamet plays Elio, an American teenager who falls in love with an older man, not only made Chalamet, then 22, the second-youngest best actor Oscar nominee in history, it gave peach emojis a whole new reason for existing.

If “Bones and All” could be just as culturally relevant, Hollywood would breathe a sigh of relief — because the world of indie cinema could use a jolt. Some 20 years ago, a generation of movie lovers funded art-house theaters by supporting “Boogie Nights,” “Memento” and “The Virgin Suicides.” Now, the 2022 equivalent of storytelling like that is HBO’s “Euphoria.” Post-pandemic box office numbers are sharply down, particularly for smaller movies, which is why United Artists Releasing has given “Bones and All” a Nov. 18 theatrical release: It’s the same window in which almost all installments of the “Twilight” saga dropped, setting multiplexes on fire as teen girls showed up in droves for Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson.

When I meet Chalamet in a hotel room in London, the young actor offers to pour me a glass of sparkling water as we sit down for a conversation with Guadagnino and Chalamet’s co-star, Taylor Russell. Hollywood has had a deficit of movie stars lately, particularly in the 20-something age bracket. Chalamet’s superstar appeal has always been in his “soft boy” aesthetic (which was famously parodied in a hilarious “Saturday Night Live” skit by Chloe Fineman). His fans like that he’s approachable, but he can also turn it up like royalty on a carpet — as he did at the Venice premiere of “Bones and All” in a red jumpsuit with a bare back that created a commotion on the Lido. Chalamet was showered with more cheers than even Harry Styles, who touched down in Italy at the start of awards season for “Don’t Worry Darling.” (Despite speculation on Twitter, Styles didn’t spit on Chris Pine.)

At Venice, Chalamet made headlines when he proclaimed that it’s “tough to be alive” in the age of social media, adding, “I think societal collapse is in the air.” When asked to elaborate on this assertion in London, he backpedals: “I think what I was saying was really, ‘What would it be like to grow up now?’” he says. “I guess I’m still growing up. Especially in the context of my career, I’m still growing. But I think Taylor and my generation was really the level-one social media — Vine, MySpace. And I think now it’s just more ingrained. But I’m definitely not the authority on the subject. And, equally, it could be a great space to find your people.”

I’d taken my 14-year-old daughter with me to the premiere of “Bones and All,” and we watched the screaming hysteria around Chalamet. When the movie premiered six weeks later in Milan, hundreds of Chalamet’s devotees — his followers are known as the “Chalamaniacs” — swarmed the venue, forcing police to close down the red carpet due to safety concerns. Such fandom harks back to the early days of Leo, Matt, George and Brad.

“Venice — that was fun,” Chalamet says, though “fame,” to people of his generation, is a dirty word, and Chalamet clearly wants to be seen as a regular guy (for instance, he continued to ride the subway in New York after “Call Me by Your Name” premiered). “I enjoy those moments,” he says, “and have a lot of gratitude for them. And I definitely never want to be expectant about it.” Abruptly switching subjects, he adds, “And, I must say, I get very excited about the lens we made this movie through — that there’s a fable and a metaphor at the heart of it, not some massive corporate interest.”

An arty New York City kid at heart, Chalamet chooses his own looks, including the black leather Celine jacket he wears at our photo shoot. As for his thoughts on cinema, he has a soft spot for indie films. “Those are the kind of projects that I grew up loving,” he says. “Even just on the music side, those are the kind of artists that inspire me — not because there’s a beat per minute that places well in the Top 40, but because they’re just putting their artistic ethos on something.”

Chalamet knows a little something about music. At the famed LaGuardia High School, he had the rap moniker Lil Timmy Tim. An uncovered video of him rapping about statistics class while wearing a backward baseball cap has been watched 10 million times on YouTube. Soon, he’ll be returning to those roots (sort of) by channeling a young Bob Dylan in “Going Electric,” a biopic directed by James Mangold.

Although there have been starts and stops with “Going Electric” since it was first announced two years ago, Chalamet confirms that he’s still attached. “I haven’t stopped preparing, which has been one of the greatest gifts for me,” he says. “It’s been a wonderful experience getting to dive into that world, whether we get to make it or not. But without giving anything away — because I don’t want to beat anyone to the punch, and obviously things have to come together officially — the winds that are blowing are blowing in a very positive direction.”

Before that, fans will get a taste of Chalamet’s musical gifts in “Wonka,” which is set to open in theaters around Christmas 2023. Chalamet trained hard for the movie’s seven musical numbers. “That was something I was very excited to jump into right away,” he says. Director Paul King “built a literal dance studio in one of the lots at Leavesden in London at Warner Bros.,” he adds.

The actor’s career blossomed after “Call Me by Your Name,” with two dramas directed by Greta Gerwig — “Lady Bird” and “Little Women.” And then he landed the lead as Paul Atreides in the “Dune” franchise, his biggest hit to date.

“Dune: Part Two,” which he’s filming now, reunites him with “Little Women” co-star Florence Pugh. “We were joking on set that we keep doing these movies, and we end up together even though we should be ending up with different people,” he says. “Florence is really special. She’s an incredible actor. She was incredible in ‘Dune’ — seriously incredible. She brought a gravitas to the role. And I can’t believe my good fortune at this young age … between Taylor Russell in ‘Bones and All’ and Zendaya in ‘Dune.’ And Austin Butler’s in that movie too.”

Zendaya will have a larger role in the second “Dune,” reprising her part as the warrior Chani. “She hasn’t wrapped yet,” he says, “and it’s amazing. She’s bringing exactly what she brought to the first one — which was incredible — but in greater abundance. And she’s really become a sister. I’m so grateful to count her as a partner and a sister and a friend” — he looks over at Guadagnino — “and also to share stories about how amazing it is to work with Luca, because we worked with him back to back on wildly different projects.” He’s referencing the fact that Zendaya collaborated with Guadagnino on “Challengers,” a romantic comedy set in the tennis world, which is in postproduction.

“He saw the movie,” Guadagnino teases, goading Chalamet to comment.

Chalamet hesitates, not wanting to give away anything about the film. “Loved it,” he finally says. His smile lights up the room.

If we’re being honest, this Oscar season has been a bit boring. Between the period pieces and the dramas made from memoirs, most directors aren’t cutting too deep. So perhaps we shouldn’t count out a love story about two cannibals who eat their way through the back roads of America.

The conventional wisdom is that blood and guts is too much for most Academy voters, but Guadagnino is here to tell you that’s not always the case. “In the history of the Oscars, cannibalism has been a gigantic plus,” he says. He then lists the five Academy Awards handed to the greatest flesh-eating masterpiece of all time, “The Silence of the Lambs.” “There’s a very tough novel, the talented script and Sir Anthony Hopkins as the unforgettable cannibal.” He cites the film’s director, Jonathan Demme, as a strong influence on his own career.

“I’m not comparing myself or us to that masterpiece,” he says. (OK, maybe he is, just a little.) “But that was a love story like ‘Bones and All.’ It was a fun, twisted love story between a cannibal psychoanalyst and a very stern woman who wants to save herself by saving this other girl from the lair of a serial killer.”

If you’re raising your eyebrows at someone describing “Silence of the Lambs” as “fun,” you haven’t met Guadagnino. The tall, chatty Italian director has spent his entire life obsessing over Dario Argento’s horror classic “Suspiria.” Following “Call Me by Your Name,” Guadagnino directed an elegant remake, in which flesh is ripped and heads explode.

Now, he’s reunited with Chalamet on “Bones and All, which is not quite the next “Silence of the Lambs” but more along the lines of Terrence Malick’s “Badlands” or Baz Luhrmann’s “Romeo + Juliet.” In “Bones,” Chalamet and Russell play Lee and Maren, teenage misfits in the 1980s, who find each other in a roadside convenience store as they’re both drifting across the Midwest. As they travel together, they feed on strangers they meet along the way.

But just don’t compare cannibals to vampires with this crew. “I love the ‘Twilight’ movies so much,” says Russell, who broke out in 2019 with a heart-wrenching performance in Trey Edward Shults’ family drama “Waves” and now could have a shot at some awards-season gold playing Maren. “But this is different. They both deal with blood and people who are not normal, but ‘Twilight’ has vampires and this movie has cannibals.”

For many years, Guadagnino — the director of “The Protagonists,” “I Am Love” and “A Bigger Splash” (all starring his muse, Tilda Swinton) — was either detested or ignored within Italy’s insular film milieu, and the feeling was mutual. So it’s not surprising that the first time I met him, in 2009, he told me his goal was to become “a Hollywood insider.” Surely, “Call Me by Your Name” brought him a step closer to that dream. And now his association with Chalamet has potentially clinched the deal.

When asked how “Bones and All” made it to the big screen, Guadagnino says, “The honest, direct and completely unapologetic answer is Timothée.”

Chalamet was in Rome doing reshoots for the first “Dune,” stuck in Europe during the pandemic, when Guadagnino sent him the “Bones and All” screenplay. They talked at length, and the actor realized that this could be the first project in which he might have a hand in shaping his character.

“It excited me, because it felt like it was very different than the first project we had done together,” Chalamet says. “It excited me, too, because I felt the bones of Lee — no pun intended — were there, but there was a lack of direction.” Guadagnino encouraged Chalamet to fill out the character by working with the screenwriter, David Kajganich, an experience he’d never had before.

“When Luca said I should get on the phone with David, and that process started, I was seriously warming to the idea that — without sounding pretentious — we would be going to the middle of America with Luca to shoot his first American film.” He adds, “And because a couple projects I’d done were of such a size, I felt like I really wanted the challenge of going back in a more ‘indie environment.’” He uses his fingers as quotation marks.

Kajganich, with whom Guadagnino collaborated on “Suspiria,” had originally adapted the YA novel “Bones & All” by Camille DeAngelis for “The Devil All the Time” director Antonio Campos. When Campos backed out, the writer asked Guadagnino to read it.

“When Lee shows up on the page,” says Guadagnino, “I found Timmy.”

Despite having a big star attached, the cannibal romancer was not an easy sell to investors. Guadagnino and Chalamet, both producers on the film, didn’t want a studio on board, so they sought out Italian financiers. The fact that they and all the other actors were willing to defer their fees “really helped with investors,” says producer Francesco Melzi d’Eril.

Once the $35 million film was completed, it was immediately snapped up, sight unseen, by MGM.

Taylor Russell could see her character clearly when she first read the script for “Bones and All.” “What struck me about her initially is that she’s this kind of creature who feels like there’s something off with her, like a picture frame that’s slanted,” Russell says. “And I wanted to work through that exercise of ‘If there is something inherently wrong with me, is there a way to break through that?’”

Guadagnino told Russell and Chalamet that they had to sink their teeth into the role of real cannibals. “The intention was always that we were hopefully doing justice to the reality of these people’s lives,” says Russell.

Guadagnino calls “Bones” “a fairy tale.” “It’s about two young people — a girl, in particular — roaming this world of darkness and dealing with the challenges within and without, finding love in the gaze of one another and trying to overcome impossibility.”

Still, the outcast lovers feast on human body parts, a butchery the film does not shy away from. Guadagnino says quickly that he and his editor, Marco Costa, made a point of cutting away from gratuitous gore. He was not interested in shock value but rather an intensity of desire.

Russell and Chalamet, for their part, wanted to explore the emotional relationship more than the cannibalism. But, Russell says, they also “talked about eating somebody, eating anything, using your body, your hands, your mouth — it’s so tactile, so physical, that, in some ways, it’s simple.”

Guadagnino and his team thought about the consequences of a precarious life led roaming through cornfields and along back roads in the 1980s Midwest, “dealing with violence and the unexpected.”

“We came up with a lot of very subtle ideas about wearing the fatigue of being an eater on their faces and bodies — like scars in unpredictable places because of the reactions of the victims, who wounded them.”

One of Chalamet’s first lines in the film is “If you weigh 140 pounds wet, you got to have an attitude — a big attitude.” Asked whether he lost weight for the role, Chalamet answers, “Yeah,” without elaborating on how many pounds he’d dropped. Then he says, “That look that Maren and Lee have, I think it feeds the fablelike quality of the story, and of people that are living in extremes. As opposed to what the reality would be, perhaps: If you were consistently devouring entire human bodies, it would probably leave you with a bigger figure than they have.”

Chalamet worked with costume designer Giulia Piersanti on Lee’s look, riffing off the grunge aesthetic of 1980s punk rock. “Lee would want to express himself through his clothes,” Chalamet says. To help with this mix of big attitude and skinny body, they decided to dye his hair with sun-bleached streaks of pinkish reds, chop off some curls on the sides, and give Lee tattoos on his arms and hand.

Of course, everyone wants to know if Chalamet and Guadagnino are planning a sequel to “Call Me by Your Name.” Guadagnino floated the idea almost as soon as he debuted the original at Sundance, while he was doing press with Chalamet and Armie Hammer, who played Chalamet’s older lover, Oliver. But the project’s chances of making it to the screen have dwindled in the wake of allegations against Hammer in early 2021 for being physically and emotionally abusive to women, including suggesting that he eat their flesh. (Despite speculation in the tabloids, these cannibal exchanges had nothing to do with the inspiration for “Bones and All.”)

“I would love to make a second and third and fourth chapter of all my movies,” Guadagnino says. “Why? Because I truly love the actors I work with, so I want to repeat the joy of doing what we did together.”

However, when it comes to “Call Me by Your Name,” Guadagnino says, “there is no hypothesis, so there is no movie. It’s a wish and a desire, and I have not made up my mind about what would be the story.” When asked if the film could still include Hammer’s character, he says, “Yeah, of course.” Then he presents another potential storyline for a sequel — following Mafalda, the housekeeper, played by Vanda Capriolo, who resides in Elio’s family’s summer home. “Which is divine,” he says. “I would be very interested in seeing what is the life of Mafalda when she’s not around the family.”

After our group conversation, I meet with Guadagnino again in a bare, neon-lit room that seems better suited to a police interrogation than an interview. He is walking on crutches, one leg in a short fracture boot, due to his tripping on the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures stage after presenting a Visionary Award to Tilda Swinton in L.A. a few days earlier.

On the red carpet, before the Academy Museum ceremony, Guadagnino teased “Challengers,” his first U.S. studio film, which is being produced for MGM by Amy Pascal. To get Guadagnino on board, Pascal had sent him the “Challengers” script and pushed him to read it that same afternoon. She called him every half hour “until I surrendered and I read it.”

So does Guadagnino finally feel he has become a Hollywood insider?

“No,” he says, “not yet. But I can fall from the stage of the Academy Museum and be helped by many Hollywood insiders.” Among those who came to his aid were Adrien Brody, Alicia Vikander and his longtime agent, Bryan Lourd. “That was a good feeling. A lot of Hollywood insiders love me very much.”

#timmy #timothee chalamet #bones andl all

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annethepancake · 3 years ago

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Sherlock rant

I recently rewatched BBC Sherlock for Rupert Graves, and aside from the lack of Lestrade appreciation I have a lot of problems with this series. Here are my thoughts:

1. It was all a blur

My second first impression of the show: I don't remember anything but the characters. And some characters I just blatantly forgot, like Mary. And I loved Mary on my second watch! I really forgot that at one point John actually got married and I don't even remember when I watched the show for the first time. I can still recall most of HIMYM's events and I hated that series.

2. It’s overall not a detective/crime show

Watching Sherlock for the second time, I mostly turned off my brain and just let it play in the background because (1) there's hardly anything for me to solve with the characters, most clues are taken by Sherlock off-screen anyway (especially after season 2), (2) they focus way too much on the quirks of the characters that make it almost like a sitcom that got dragged on for way too long. A crime/detective show shouldn't allow me to turn off my brain.

3. The characters just kinda fall flat

Exploring the depth of human emotions is not a bad approach to a modernized version of anything, I’m not trying to pretend I’m better than someone who gets sentimental over fictional character (if you know my blog at all, you know I am not), but at least write good characters. Sherlock is hardly a multi-faceted person; in fact, he’s kinda like the Wattpad teen fic main character sometimes. He physically fights off some terrorists with a machete to save the damsel in distress? He gets high off his tits but still got everything right all the time? John is just kinda there for most of the cases. Jim is a poorly written antagonist. Irene is a lesbian but gets the hot for our main character, surprise surprise. The only interesting characters to me are the ones who act like normal people: Molly, Greg and Mary. They are the multi-faceted characters, ones who I can actually relate to without feeling inferior to them in any way. Write characters like them, stop trying to be smart about it and stop writing Wattpad fanfictions for Sir Conan Doyle’s original works.

I get that they try to make Sherlock more like a human with emotions, making him quirky and arrogant, then make him quirky and more likable. It’s hardly a convincing character development though. He’s given over-powered deduction skills, so edgy, so high and mighty all the time. When he is finally written as vulnerable, turns out he has plans for that too. I would love to see him get it wrong once and maybe get humbled by that mistake, but getting Mary shot and killed is hardly even his fault, he is only doing his job. And killing off Mary is overall a bad idea anyway.

4. They treated the fandom like shit

I was absolutely disgusted at the start of season 3 when the showrunners just straight up shat on their fans. I wasn't there with the fandom during the wait between season 2 and 3, but I believe it was a pretty long wait (2 years, I could barely wait 2 years for my comfort series, and they have like 10 episodes per season), and they were presented with the first actual mystery of the series: How did Sherlock survive the fall? After years of waiting and having fun theorizing, they were met with a mockumentary about them, starring the most hated character of the protagonist and the fans. Those are the people who actually cared about the show for god's sake. The fact that the showrunners treated fans like crap and there's still an active fandom for the show appalled me.

Now not only The Empty Hearse bugs me, but the entire show does as well.

Allow me to digress.

Doki Doki Literature Club is a great example of audience engagement done right (Sorry for using this example I’m not actually that invested in the other franchises). After the success of the first game, the story provoked so many fans into solving the mysteries of the characters, some of them went really, really far. And that’s because of the actual mysteries that the development team took effort to plant into the plot. There is actual pay-off for painstakingly following the clues; as far as I know, only two (2!) people in the world have come close to solving the mystery of the first game (or they actually did). The game developers value their fans and their intelligence enough to have planted those clues where they did, and it’s a genuine exchange between the fans and the creators. Now even though you haven’t actually played the game, when you hear of the name and you’re only kinda familiar with gaming (like me), you’ll probably know what it is. What started as a mere open-source game by an indie developer became a sensation which left millions of fans begging for more.

Looking back at Sherlock, there are tons of logical flaws for a self-proclaimed crime series, virtually no clues for the audience to solve crimes along with their favorite detective, and when there was actually a mystery (Sherlock jumped off the building), they plainly showed him alive and well minutes later. Do we really need to see things spelled on screen to know what’s going on? Are we supposed to accept that Sherlock Holmes is an all-knowing future-predicting genius now too? Not a great sign of respecting the audience there.

So far, the only thing left that’s interesting about this series is the characters’ dynamic. Which brings me to the next criticism I have for the show.

5. The plague that infested mainstream media

Why is there still an active fandom? Queerbaiting and targeted marketing.

Community marketing is proven to be one of the best marketing methods there is, if not the best, to lengthen the lifespan of a product or service. The way they do that for shows and films and video games is usually by planting seeds of possible lores and history inside the content. Look at Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings, they are franchises that ran for multiple years with a ton of history and world building that provokes fans’ imagination.

Sherlock - well, Sherlock has sexually ambiguous men.

Sherlock has a formula for success. It was an adaptation of the most iconic detective novel in the world, funded by one of the biggest TV networks in the UK and possibly the world (don’t quote me on this). Making this series means you can appeal to such a wide group of audience even before airing. Adding in the quirky smart men who live together, you’ve basically guaranteed a prime-time show with millions of loyal fans all over the world.

Fans are not stupid, and queer people don't just find queerness everywhere they go. They know a gay subtext when they see one. Sherlock came back from the literal death for John, pretty gay if you ask me.

This show is very much not just about some guys being dudes solving crimes, they have relationship that’s deeper than friendship, and definitely not platonic. They deliberately wrote a sexually ambiguous Sherlock Holmes from the get-go - literally from the very first episode, then capitalized off of the targeted demographic, never a pay-off for their anticipation. Martin Freeman said in interviews that he could recognize Sherlock fans, them being generally women from 16 - 25. No shit Sherlock, this show targets them and capitalizes off of them, being quirky and gay as hell, of course the fanbase is generally 16 - 25 and female.

Sherlock queerbaited the fandom for years for the sake of marketing and there’s never a pay-off, nor was there any recognition to the community, and to add to all that bigotry, queercoding pretty much all of the villains? Why was a show aired in the 2010′s allowed to do this? Why did Mark Gatiss, an openly gay man, a writer of the show, allow this to happen? Why are millions of fans all over the world allowing all this to go on?!

6. Conclusion

Now I haven’t read the books yet, so I’m not at all qualified to criticize the adaptation quality of the TV series; I’m just talking about the TV series on its own. Despite my criticism, I think the first two seasons did quite okay. There are quite a few nice cases there, I like The Blind Banker and The Hound of Baskerville. They did those well because the focus was on the cases themselves, and the connection between John and Sherlock was only in the background. I, like many other fans, like to figure things out on my own, to read between the lines, and to not have things spelled out for me. With the next seasons bombarded with Sherlock and John bonding it seriously felt like mere fan service for me and even though I wasn’t there when the show was on, I still felt like I was robbed and my interest in the show was abused.

Sherlock is undoubtedly super influential in pop culture even now. It has to have done something right to be in that spot (capitalizing off loyal fans?). I’m not writing this rant to change someone’s mind about the series, by all means, I’m still gonna love the hell out of Gavin Lestrade, and absolutely lose my mind over Mary Watson. So do take my words with a grain of salt, I’m just disappointed that one of the most influential shows there is is just short of my expectations.

#sherlock #bbc sherlock #rant #criticism

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lokiondisneyplus · 4 years ago

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For his entire tenure as an Avenger, Anthony Mackie had never been the first name on the call sheet.

In a galaxy of stars populated by Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson, the actor was aware of his place in the on-set pecking order, but would never miss an opportunity to make his presence felt.

“Number six on the call sheet has arrived!” Mackie would routinely shout on films like “Captain America: Civil War” and the box office-busting “Infinity Saga” sequels, according to Marvel chief creative officer Kevin Feige.

It exemplifies the sort of winning tone that the 42-year-old actor has brought to his superhero character the Falcon, aka Sam Wilson, for six movies from the top-earning studio — wry and collegial humor, with the potential to turn explosive at any moment. Both Mackie and his character are set to burn brighter than ever when the Disney Plus series “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” lands on March 18.

On that call sheet, “Anthony is No. 1,” Feige is happy to report, “but it still says ‘No. 6.’ He kept it because he didn’t want it to go to his head.” The series is essentially a two-hander with his friend and longtime co-star Sebastian Stan, the titular soldier. All six episodes were produced and directed by Emmy winner Kari Skogland (“The Handmaid’s Tale,” “The Loudest Voice”). The series, for which combined Super Bowl TV spot and trailer viewership earned a record-breaking 125 million views this year, is reported to have cost $150 million in total.

For Mackie, though, the show comes at a critical time for both his career and for representation in the MCU. Sam Wilson is graduating from handy wingman (Falcon literally gets his job done with the use of mechanical wings), having been handed the Captain America shield by Evans in the last “Avengers” film. While it’s unclear if he will formally don the superhero’s star-spangled uniform moving forward (as the character did in a 2015 comic series), global fandoms and the overall industry are still reeling from the loss of Chadwick Boseman, who portrayed Marvel’s Black Panther to culture-defining effect. With this new story, Mackie will become the most visible African American hero in the franchise. And when asked whether he’ll be taking the mantle of one of its most iconic characters, he doesn’t exactly say no.

“I was really surprised and affected by the idea of possibly getting the shield and becoming Captain America. I’ve been in this business a long time, and I did it the way they said you’re supposed to do it. I didn’t go to L.A. and say, ‘Make me famous.’ I went to theater school, did Off Broadway, did indie movies and worked my way through the ranks. It took a long time for this shit to manifest itself the way it has, and I’m extremely happy about that,” Mackie says.

Feige says that, especially with the advent of Disney Plus and the freedom afforded long-form storytelling, the moment was right to give the Falcon his due.

“Suddenly, what had been a classic passing of the torch from one hero to another at the end of ‘Endgame’ became an opening up of our potential to tell an entire story about that. What does it really mean for somebody to step into those shoes, and not just somebody but a Black man in the present day?” says Feige.

Like many comic book heroes, Mackie has an origin story marked by tragedy at a young age — specifically around the loss of a parental figure. The New Orleans native is the youngest of six children from a tight-knit middle-class family, whose trajectory was spun into chaos when his mother was stricken with a terminal illness.

“It was unexpected and very untimely. I was 15 when she was diagnosed with cancer, and a few months later, she was gone. She passed the day before my ninth-grade graduation,” Mackie recalls. “If my mom wouldn’t have passed away when I was so young, I wouldn’t be where I am today.”

Mackie had already gravitated toward the performing arts before the loss of his mother, having enrolled at the pre-professional school New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. Like many young people grappling with trauma, Mackie says he began to act out. A core group of teachers helped get him out of trouble. Ray Vrazel, still an instructor at the school, personally drove the student to a Houston-based audition for the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, where he was accepted for his senior year of high school.

“Everything I did, I did for my mama. The idea of leaving home at 17 to go away to school would have never been an option if she was still around. She was my best friend. Losing her gave me a kind of strength, and a desire to succeed,” Mackie says.

Succeed he did. Spending that formative year as a minor on a college campus helped Mackie find his “tribe,” a misfit crew of artists and performers, which propelled him to acceptance at New York’s prestigious Juilliard School in 1997. There he was part of the breakthrough class of students of color to be chosen for the notoriously selective drama program, which Mackie says was liberating given the institution’s track record.

“Our year was a huge transition. There were hardly any Asian people in the drama program, maybe one or two Black people and hardly any Black women. In our class, we had three black women, two black men, one Native American, one Asian female, out of 20 people. Ever since then, the classes have been wildly diverse,” says Mackie, whose fellow students included stage and film star Tracie Thoms and actor Lee Pace.

Following his training, Mackie launched a staggeringly versatile career. He has played Tupac Shakur and Martin Luther King Jr. to similar acclaim, a juicehead bodybuilder in “Pain & Gain” and a homeless gay teen in the Sundance player “Brother to Brother.” He has exhibited remarkable staying power in an industry that often pigeonholes actors and has a pockmarked soul when it comes to inclusion.

“I was drawn to Anthony because of his electrifying ability to combine intensity with sensitivity, courage with compassion, and all of it comes across as inevitable, as if it could be no other way,” says Kathryn Bigelow, who directed him in the 2009 best picture Oscar winner “The Hurt Locker.”

Samuel L. Jackson, whom Mackie calls a mentor and has played alongside in several films, says he has “an innate quality that first and foremost makes everyone want to cast him.” On a recent idle Netflix search, Jackson came across Mackie’s latest sci-fi film, “Outside the Wire,” and it triggered a memory of sitting in the audience for his performance in the 2010 Broadway production of Martin McDonagh’s play “A Behanding in Spokane.”

“Watching him onstage, I thought, he’s a very adroit actor capable of putting on many hats. He’s fearless and will try to be anybody. Then, on my TV, he’s playing a nanobyte soldier or some shit,” Jackson says.

Though always humble about getting the next job, pre-Marvel Mackie was rarely offered pole position.

“There were certain pegs. My first was ‘8 Mile.’ It was a monumental step at the beginning of my career,” Mackie says of the 2002 Curtis Hanson film that elevated rapper Eminem to multi-hyphenate stardom.

“After that it was ‘Half Nelson.’ It blew up Ryan Gosling, so I was there to ride the wave. Then ‘The Hurt Locker,’ and it blew up Jeremy Renner. It was the joke for a long time — if you’re a white dude and you want to get nominated for an Oscar, play opposite me. I bring the business for white dudes,” says Mackie.

He remembers the sensation “Hurt Locker” caused during its awards season. It was a moment he thought would change everything as he stood on the stage of the Dolby Theatre with the cast and filmmakers, having just sipped from George Clooney’s flask while Halle Berry radiated a few rows away.

“I thought I would be able to move forward in my career and not have to jostle and position myself for work. To get into rooms with certain people. I thought my work would speak for itself. I didn’t feel a huge shift,” he says, “but I 100% think that ‘The Hurt Locker’ is the reason I got ‘Captain America.’”

He’s referring to “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” the 2014 Marvel film that was the first to be directed by Joe and Anthony Russo (the current title holders for the highest-grossing film of all time with “Avenges: Endgame”). Mackie says that blockbuster not only gave him his largest platform to date but changed expectations of superhero movies forever.

“It was the first of the espionage, Jason Bourne-esque action movies at Marvel. After that, the movies shifted and had different themes and were more in touch with the world we live in, more grounded,” he says.

Bolstered by the words of another mentor, Morgan Freeman, Mackie feels no bitterness about his path.

“We did ‘Million Dollar Baby’ together, and when we were shooting this movie, I got offered a play. When you do Off Broadway, it’s $425 a week. In New York, that’s really $75 per week. I got a movie offer at the same time, and it was buckets of money. Three Home Depot buckets of money were going to be dropped off at my door,” Mackie says. “The script was awful; the whole thing was slimy. I went to Morgan’s trailer and asked him what he would do. He took a second and said, ‘Do the play. When Hollywood wants you, they’ll come get you. And when they come get you, they’ll pay for it.’ That blew my mind, and I left him that day with such a massive amount of confidence. He’s been a huge influence on me.”

He used the currency of that first Russo Brothers film and five subsequent ones to do what many creators and performers in Hollywood have done in recent years to help balance the scales of profit and representation in content: make things on his own.

Last year, Mackie produced and starred in “The Banker” — what would be Apple Studios’ first foray into original streaming film distribution and the awards landscape — through his banner Make It With Gravy. The film follows the true story of America’s first Black bankers and the white frontman they deployed to acquire the institution, all while supporting Black-owned businesses and communities in the process. A late-breaking scandal over sexual misconduct accusations involving the real-life family members of the film’s subjects delayed the release, overshooting awards-season deadlines and entangling the fledgling producer.

“It was a good lesson, and gave me a new perspective on the world around us. It’s very important to me that the women by my side are treated equally. It was a valuable lesson learned. I was very humbled by my sisters, for once not being mean to me,” he says.

Mackie is in development on the film “Signal Hill,” about the early days of lawyer Johnnie Cochran and the theater he brought to courtrooms long before the O.J. Simpson trial, and is hoping to secure the life story of civil rights pioneer Claudette Colvin as a vehicle for his directorial debut. Raising four sons of his own now, Mackie wants his off-screen work to make them well-rounded men.

“Look at Robin Williams,” he says. “He used to be crass and funny, and then he had kids, and he started doing all these family-friendly movies. Same thing with Eddie Murphy. I’m trying to curate my children’s experience with the things that I’ll be producing, rather than starring in. That’s what is most important. They know my job is my job; they know who I am. I’ve given up the idea of them ever thinking that I’m cool,” he says.

Jokes about the call sheet are among many of Mackie’s filming quirks. Jackson says that sets are often littered with hidden cigar stubs, to be fired up between takes or after long days. Bigelow says his rapport with crew has led to nights where the “clock was ticking but it was impossible to regain composure enough to shoot.” But according to Evans, no Mackie-ism is more famous than the phrase he bellows whenever his directors cut a scene: “Cut the check!”

Evans says this “will be forever associated with Mackie. I find myself saying it on sets all the time. I love it. But I’ll never be able to say it as well as him.”

As the man handing Mackie his armor, Evan says the Falcon’s “role within the Marvel universe has answered the call to action time and time again. He’s proven his courage, loyalty and reliability over multiple films. Sam has given so much, and he’s also lost a lot too. He believes in something bigger than himself, and that type of humility is necessary to carry the shield.”

The question of Sam Wilson’s humanity will be explored at length in “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” what Mackie calls a deeper showcase for both himself and Stan and their characters. It was a prospect that at first confused and frightened him.

“I didn’t think we could do on the television what we’d been doing on the big screen. I didn’t want to be the face of the first Marvel franchise to fail. Like, ‘See? We cast the Black dude, and now this shit is awful.’ That was a huge fear of mine, and also a huge responsibility with playing a Marvel character,” Mackie says.

He was quickly assuaged by the level of depth in the scripts from head writer Malcolm Spellman (“Empire,” “Truth Be Told”), especially when it came to the nuances of Wilson — a Black American man with no powers beyond his badass wings.

“Sam Wilson as played by Mackie is different than a Thor or a Black Panther, because he’s not from another planet or a king from another country,” Feige says. “He’s an African American man. He’s got experience in the military and doing grief counseling with soldiers who have PTSD. But where did he grow up? Who is his family? Mackie was excited to dig into it as this man, this Black man in particular, in the Marvel version of the world outside our window.”

Mackie celebrates Sam’s relatability in a universe full of mythological gods and lab-made enforcers. “I’m basically the eyes and ears of the audience, if you were put in that position where you could go out and fight alongside superheroes. It adds a really nice quality to him, that he’s a regular guy who can go out there and do special things,” Mackie says.

While bound by standard Marvel-grade secrecy, the actor confirms there have been no discussions of a second season for “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.” As the majority of domestic movie theaters remain closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, he is equally unaware of the theatrical prospects for his Falcon character — or the Captain he may become by the end of this Disney Plus run. For now, he’s content to take up the mantle left by Boseman, a quietly understood pact of responsibility to Marvel-loving kids the world over.

“For Chad and I, [representation] was never a conversation that needed to be had because of our backgrounds. There was a hinted-at understanding between the two of us, because we’re both from humble beginnings in the South; we have very similar backgrounds. We knew what the game was. We knew going into it,” he says.

Outside comic book movies, Mackie is not done searching as a performer. There is a particular genre he would very much like to cut him a check.

“My team gets mad at me for saying this, but I would love to do a cheesy old-school ‘When Harry Met Sally’-type of project,” he says. “One of those movies where I’m working outside and have to take my shirt off because it’s too hot. I want a romantic comedy. I want to do every movie written for Matthew McConaughey that he passed on.”

#Anthony Mackie #The Falcon and the Winter Soldier #Disney+#interview

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gleeandshame · 4 years ago

Text

Semi-liveblogging

A New York Christmas Wedding, indie Netflix movie... All I know is it’s on Netflix, there’s not a trailer, and uh, it’s wlw??? SPOILERS below!

WTF did they say “you’re not my girlfriend”

“She can’t know you like me” and then immediate fornication, I Do Not Want

Okay, we’re expecting like Lifetime or Hallmark Channel levels of writing on this I see...

Wait did she say her best friend died? Or I wasn’t paying attention. From watching later uh, maybe she said they lost touch, i mean, a BFF would be like the person Who you would think it would be but...

Asian wlw extras!!! intimacy :’)

(Wonder if she’ll be bi or gay)

Blah blah, mom is insufferable

Oh but so... is this a called off wedding then, I guess it’s her wedding, like that’s what the signs point to... huuuh.... Like, I hope there’s not cheating involved or I’ll be very :/

Wow, sassy BFF gay angel, lol

“You shouldn’t under estimate love during Christmas”

Here comes gay supernatural sh*t (at least I hope)

Gay angel, is she just gonna see 1000 gay signs tomorrow? Lol

I sincerely forgot his name, like Abziel or something, I’m sorry gay angel

oh right, i kept thinking they would be cold, but this is 6 mo before Christmas. today is a really chilly night for me

Azrael, I was close. I only remember it because it’s marked by the captions

Her fiance does have a nice back though

hate when there’s unnecessary flashback v.o. in stuff, just have a thoughtful look, feel okay with being quiet!!!

OH MY GOSH TRANSPORTED TO A GAY LIFE, I f*cking love it!!!

the light pouring in from the window and it’s looking all foggy.

They have a dog named Smudge :’)

Oh my gosh they’re having a meeting with a reverand or something for their gay wedding???

her tentativly grabbing the leash, i’m hear for this, thank you gay angel, there are endless amount of signs!!! lol.

I love smudges eyebrows!!!!

Oh thank you A... Azrael, i forgot Jennifer’s name for the whole movie (okay i took a couple hour break but still)

OKAY, the best friend is dead, or WAS dead. i was like how is this gonna work out, oooh.

This is rated MA and I think maybe just from cussing? We’ll see. So far she has said f*ck, lol

Those Christmas pajamas were corny, but it’s a family so that’s allowed. Bye David.

I hope I have a gay guardian angel

He said others are alive. is she gonna see her dad?

ghost of gays past

gosh dang it a flashback... it’s okay, it’s hopefully you know an inexperienced writer or filmmakers and they can get better.

I hope her dad is there

Oh but I forgot to mention since i wasn’t liveblogging from the start, uuuuuhhhh, why did she throw the cookies away, she was still there and her dad. Teens are so dramatic

where’s the dog? did she return the dog and go to her dads... wait, no he’s driving her home, Did they not want a dog in the car... lol

smudge? Smudge??? Lol. okay, i’ll ignore the filmmaking and continuity aspect.

Slide show interesting

Oh really noticing the handheld shakiness right now though

did that girl really sing it? doesn’t look like that voice comes out of that body

gays in a church, i’m feeling emotional (I know they’re not necessarily gay I’m using it as an umbrella term)

“you are my queen and I am your peasant” - this is like who’s the handmaiden and who’s the feudal lord meme, lol

why would a pastor.... whatever they’re call had a picture of just two church goers... parishioners? (can you tell I’m not catholic, are they catholic?)

Dang, they gonna fight to have a wedding here? Like personally if he said sh*t I would want to be married by him, but I guess the location does mean a lot to them.

They really be throwing Jennifer into this talk with no clue. Azrael give a girl some hints!!

Did the priest tell her to get an abortion? That’s the implication right? He wouldn’t say it though. Dang.

Eeesh, is this the f*ckboy that was with ... Gabby in the beginning? Never heard a boy trying to be a unicorn in a wlw relationship. Yike....

lol, yeah she told him to f*ck himself. and punched him in the face, LOOOOL

Awww, she told her dad about her crush on her BFF???

Lol, Jennifer getting excited about talking to her dad, and Gabby is like, babe, u see him everyday

Aw, a song in spanish

i didn’t mention earlier but afro-latinx yaaa. Noice

hmmm, yeah i mean it would be a little awkward bringing up a childhood/teenage fight

being forced to read the note by gabby and saying “out loud” nice device to make it natural to the audience

smudge is my favorite character

lol sorry, but if it’s christmas, is it christmas christmas, i don’t want this to be over. can she at least make out with her wife! is this day one or day two :/ okay i’ll just watch and see

DANG THAT WOULD BE INTIMATE ARM TOUCHES FOR A BFF

i only snuggled like once on a bed with one of mine.

O Christmas Tree playing during this make out is killing me

that was soft. just making out and some but rubbing but all just in undies, that’s nice

ok i think father is gonna do the old switcheroo on us. but this verse is engaging my fight or flight

Entertaining how neutral all these ppl’s faces are during this sermon, like realistic, lol....

okay there’s like one smile. there’s nodding now

(i know ppl would be upset realistically too)

Oh snap a man is walking out, okay yeah. There’s maybe three

LOL. I really did walk out once during a slippery slope sermon. Hate that white man took over one of my churches and he wasn’t even certified. I just sat on the curb until closing worship.... mmmm

did this man just invite all the lgbtq ppl up??

I wouldn’t want that attention, LOOOL........ i get it’s supposed to be a nice moment but, what?

They all have partners? Dang, where’s my partner at church (lol, church is hardly a thing anymore right now anyway :’) )

I DON”T want no SURPRISE WEDDING THAT IS JUST IN FORNT OF CHURCH PPL

glad they acknowledged that looong pause in a natural way

Imagine trying to attnd christmas service, and then it’s a secret wlw wedding

One of the gay couples, I”M SCREAMING, looks like a married couple at my current church, lol. I mean not like exactly, but same essense and energies

That SLITTTT, what a power move for a wedding dress / reception dress

Very weird lighting but i’ll ignore it

u don’t need to applaud the priest...

“to the day i die” (to the day i die) echo, echo... , that’s some corny audio

OH my goshhh??? is he the aborted BABY, whaiuhufheruahcyuahdsbhabshdfbahsbdfa

or their dead baby, whatever it was unclear on purpose. oh myy gosh????

what the f*ck david coming to get Jennifer like a horror movie

“what’s a smudge”

hmm i wonder how this can conclude

that map i huge on the console??? i don’t know modern cars

Gabrielle and I were mar-- we were baptized. LOLL, why woudl they just give away info about a parishioner

David must just be like, wtf is she on

oh okay, no abortion, just miscarriage

What, huhhh. this lady is same sex married too??? but the priest was kicked out?

is david gonna be biphobic

oh i guess not, that’s good

sliding doors? by Gbby’s son, Jennifer needs to get her girl

Me saying this show needs to let there be silence vs me almost falling asleep while she makes a decision. I MEAN, to be fair it’s almost 6am and i haven’t slept yet, lol

okay, but we didn’t spend enough time with Azrael for me to be sad that he’ll be gone, sorry not sorry

“it can wait” ... i.e. love can wait, be careful, i.e. use a condom

that’s entirely too many candy canes

i wonder if these kids are gonna have to carry the rest of the film?

these kids are the most chill! good they both like women and each other

they 3d printed a man just so he could be a gay angel

OH NO I watchd to the end of the credits and the guy on piano died this year

okay, so overall, p cute. Cute enough. It probably satisfied only about 33% of my cute wlw quota though. Corny and a bit awkward, but, i think gays deserve not high quality cinema as well. Lol. i half recommmend it, but it’s not costing you antyhing but time on Netflix.

okay, I sleep

#a new york christmas wedding #a new york christmas wedding spoilers #spoilers #...#mmmmmm

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smokeybrandreviews · 5 years ago

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Smokey brand Movie Reviews: I’m In Lesbians With You

It occurs to me that i don’t have a proper review of Scott Pilgrim on here. I really should work through the current backlog of films that i still need to watch; Uncut Gems, The Lighthouse, Parasite, Ready or Not, but i f*cking love Scott and his shenanigans so... Scott Pilgrim it is! Considering how much i love this film and the fact that I’m just going to be gushing about it for however long this review is, let’s just get this out of the way immediately: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is an excellent movie and you should go watch it right now!

The Outstanding

Yo, before anything, can i just express how much i adore this f*cking soundtrack? My taste in music is varies wildly but, at it’s core, my heart beats for the Indie and the New Wave and the Post Punk. For this soundtrack to be packed with so much excellent, underground, indie fair? Oh, my goodness! It’s musical sex to me. Shout out to Nigel Godrich. Motherf*cker did the best of jobs on this one!

Even more than that, the way all of this music is integrated in each scene s absolutely brilliant. There’s not one note out of place or out of line. It’s rare that happens, so deftly that i actually recognize it. Usually, it’s all background noise to accentuate whatever scene but i legit took in everything.

While on the subject of music, i want to take a minute to acknowledge the sound design as a whole. Scott Pilgrim is based on a graphic novel, which i also love, so there is a rather kinetic energy that needs to be conveyed. It’s chock full of all the spastic nonsense us Millennials grew up with like Mario token sound effects and obscure cartoon references. Integrating certain sound effects like the random game noises here or there is absolute brilliance. It lends an air of authenticity to this adaption.

While i can gush about all of the audible genius for years, i would be remiss if i didn’t speak on the goddamn eye candy of this film. Holy sh*t is thing gorgeous! And not just the Evil Ex set pieces, even though those are absolute chaotic bad-assery, this entire film is a work of art. It really is. You can frame almost every shot in this thing, it’s that gorgeous.

Speaking of gorgeous, these costumes are amazing. A lot of them are ripped right out of the comic but they’re like, real clothes. Nothing feels cartoony or comic book-ish, it all feels organic to the tone of film and characters therein. Like, i wear the same kind of sh*t Scott wears. It’s all graphic tees and jeans with me, much to the chagrin of my darling missus.

The writing in this flick is absolutely brilliant. Like, seriously, nothing feels out of place, the dialogue feels organic, and the plot is a pretty decent condensing of the graphic novels original six volumes. I have interactions like these with my friends. I legitimately talk like this. Of course, there is a little polish on some of these line but, overall, it’s pretty on point.

All of this standout awesome can be traced back to the vision of it’s director, Edgar Wright. No one believed in this little experiment so he had carte blanche to create whatever he wanted and he did just that. You can tell there was a real love for this material and while not everything from the books made it into the movie, he did an excellent job of capturing the major beats and important aspects with his absolute mad style of movie making.

The cast in this thing is weirdly perfect. All of them. Every one of them. Seriously, it’s like a who’s who of young Hollywood from way back when, almost all of whom have grown into proper A-list talent and i love it! Alison Pill, Anna Kendrick, Jason Schwartzmen, Ellen Wong, Brandon Routh, and Mae Whitman are all excellent in their respective roles. There are, of course, standouts but before i get to them, i just what to acknowledge how great the casting is, overall, in this movie. You can feel the comradery onset and it’s reflected in the fact that there are no weak performances, at all, in this flick. F*ck, dude, there’s even a Thomas Jane and Clifton Collins cameo in this thing that feels absolutely at home!

This film would be nothing without the right person in the lead. Scott Pilgrim is a neuritic, self-centered, anxiety ridden, asshole of person but still lovable in a very dry and sarcastic kind of way. There are very few that can capture that energy so when i found out Michael Cera as cast in the lead, i knew this movie was in good hands. Every movie i have ever seen him in, Cera carries that energy expertly. He is he living embodiment of Scott Pilgrim. Like, this is MCU levels of casting, for real.

The second role you had to nail to make this work was definitely Ramona Flowers. You had a little more leeway with this one but i think they still nailed it with Mary Elizabeth Winstead. I’ve been a fan of hers since way back when she was in Sky High (I actually love that movie SO much) and even further back with The Ring Two, but that’s more a deep cut than anything. Anyway, Mary is perfect as Ramona and one of the best things about this movie.

So the performances of the Evil Exes are spectacular, Particularly Schwartzman’s. His Gideon Graves was just so smarmy and condescending and disingenuous you couldn’t help but hate his guts. Dude was awesome, no doubt, but he was outshined by what Chris Evan was able to create with Lucas Lee. That’s right, Captain America himself was in Scott Pilgrim as the first Evil Ex and he f*cking killed it! I’ve loved Evans for years. Not Another Teen Movie is actual one of my favorites and he was easily the best thing about those first two Fantastic Four films but you can see him shine in this role, even if it was only a few minutes.

It’s no secret i love Brie Larson. I’ve raved about her performances in the past but it was this movie that made me take notice. Her interpretation of Envy Adams was pitch perfect. It’s melodramatic and over-the-top but at the same time, incredibly vulnerable. Natalie has one hell of an arc in the book and it’s a little short-changed in the movie, but Larson makes gold with what she has to work with. Plus, she actually performs the cover to Metric’s Black Sheep. Those are her vocals and i find that to be absolutely dope.

Of course, you can’t talk about Scott Pilgrim without talking about his gay roommate, Wallace Wells. Dude is one of the best characters in the book and is an absolute scene stealer n this film, thanks to the deft hand of Kieran Culkin. It’s hard for me to praise gay character in cinema because cats always right them as caricature but Culkin’s Wells feels real and grounded, none of that Hollywood gay bullsh*t. Dude is a person that just happens to be gay and i love that.

And last but not least, Aubrey Plaza. There’s a little picture of Julie Powers that is the spitting image of Plaza. Like, her casting is as perfect as Scott’s casting. Seriously, she is what Michael Cera is to Pilgrim. It’s rare a cast in a film is so goddamn perfect. Even the MCU has had some missed but literally every one in this film is absolutely prefect and Plaza might be best of all.

Also, all of the LGBT representation. While the movie didn’t capture all of the many, many, sexual presentations, they didn’t shy away from some of the most prominent. Pilgrim’s roommate Wallace Wells, is extra gay and he has a myriad of boyfriends throughout both the book and film. Nothing too graphic, but there are scenes with them in bed and one pretty heavy make-out sessions early in the film. Hell, they even included Ramona’s one female Ex, Roxy Richter, in one of the best Evil Ex fights of the entire movie. Bravo film, bravo.

The Verdict

I said this in the beginning and just in case the previous gushing didn’t give you a clue, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is a f*cking great film, man. It stands on it’s own as a wonderful coming of age story but it’s so much more than that. It’s a love story to music. It’s one of the best comic adaptions i have ever seen. It’s an ode to the Millennial coming-of-age journey. It’s a nostalgia bomb for kids my age, who did sh*t like play video games all day then spend all night in coffee shops that had live music and f*cking waffles. It’s an amazing representation, and unique presentation, of those early twenties when you aren’t sure of yourself or your direction or anything and you just want to drift through life for as long as possible. It’s heartbreak and new love and learning about who you are, deep down, not some shallow representation or facade. I love Scott Pilgrim because it tells a great story. It tells MY story. And it does it with a banging ass soundtrack, too.

#Scott Pilgrim vs The World #Scott Pilgrim #Smokey brand Movie Reviews

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robronsecretsanta · 6 years ago

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a madness to the method

(AO3)

Rating: E

For @notforonesecond . Merry Christmas! From your Secret Santa. May this bring you as much joy as your presence on here brings me.

:::::

He stands there, script page in hand and a growing pit in his stomach, as Robert Sugden walks up to him with a grin.

“What you waiting for? Get your kit off.”

:::::

It’s his third big role, but the first one that actually means something, Aaron having acted in a couple of big-budget blockbuster films to date; the last two even giving him some lines and some stunts, the latter of which he’d done himself. But so far most of his career has involved plenty of little-known stage work and a few well-received indies, as well as a particularly popular episode of Black Mirror.

He’s fairly certain that’s what landed him this script, his wide body of emotionally driven work. Not every day a Frank Clayton production sends a part your way. Not every day Harriet Finch is attached to direct. (Aaron’s pretty sure he’s one of the few people who’s seen the entirety of her oeuvre, even purchased some of the early stuff on DVD, forcing his best mate Adam to sit through whole movie marathons of her work, dissecting every shot inch by inch.)

The film’s a period piece about two young men who fall in love as a war looms over them; two lovers star-crossed in one of the worst ways possible. Both stuck going to war terrified the other won’t come home. Only they do, if not a little emotionally scarred and a little physically injured. The reunion is emotionally sweet and full of hope — exactly the kind of story Aaron wishes he could have grown up with. Because sometimes a happy ending really makes a difference. He’d almost learned that hard way.

“You sure you want to do this?” His mother asks, curled up on his sofa in his flat in North London and peaking up at him with big brown eyes through dark, bit-too-long bangs. “People might start asking whether you’re gay, love.”

Aaron understands her concerns and where she’s coming from. Doesn’t stop him from shrugging them off and holding firm to the feeling in his gut.

“Let them,” he says, lips downturned at the corners as he paces across the living room determinedly. “Not got anything to hide, have I?”

Despite all his bravado, there’s a flicker of doubt. If this somewhat calculated risk doesn’t pan out, it could be the end of the upward trajectory of his acting career. For all it’s progress on the LGBTQIA-depiction front, Hollywood itself isn’t as accepting of openly queer actors. And while Aaron won’t miss the perks of rising fame at all, he will miss getting to work on more interesting projects or movies, like this one.

Still, Aaron Dingle has never been a liar, and he’s not going to start now. Especially when it comes to his sexuality.

:::::

His agent, a no-nonsense woman named Priya, approves of his decision immediately. She knows he’s gay, has known from the start. But it’s never affected her decision to take him on as a client. (It’s one of the reasons Aaron’s stuck with her so long; tying his rising star to her job.)

“You’ve certainly got the talent and the range to pull this off,” she states and it feels less like a dream and more like reality. “With Finch directing it, this could become potential Oscar material. This part’ll definitely get you noticed.”

Aaron smiles and nods along, because that is nice he supposes. He’s just glad the production company don’t want yet another audition, or even a chemistry read with his yet-to-be-announced co-star. He’s sick of them at this point.

“Who’s the other lead?” He asks, fingers picking at each other, left knee bouncing in the chair. He’s about ready to leave Priya’s office. But the second he hears her answer, he’s stuck bolted to his seat. His mind reeling with the news of it.

Robert Sugden.

:::::

To say he’s heard of Robert Sugden is the understatement of the century. If anything, he’s the one responsible for Aaron’s sexual awakening.

Like most teenage boys his age, he’d been obsessed with the Transformers movies. Only unlike his best mate Adam, he didn’t fall asleep and wake up hard to thoughts of the hot female lead. No, despite his best attempts at the time, his mind always drifted to the slightly older but also teenaged Robert Sugden; the son of a famous actor who’d also made it big quite young, starring in at least two popular TV series. (In hindsight, Aaron’s desire to purchase and put up a shirtless poster of Robert on his bedroom wall should have been a big hint as to his nascent gayness. But like all sexually confused teenagers he’d managed to convince himself he was more into the trucks instead; that he wanted to be Robert Sugden, not be with him.)

He’d spent a full summer when he was 15 watching his way through Robert’s early work, bingeing that one popular science fiction series where he and a group of teens investigated strange paranormal phenomena at their English boarding school. A part of him had come alive when a body-swap episode had caused Robert’s character’s body to be a possessed by a female friend’s, resulting in him kissing and making out with her boyfriend who’d been played by Pete Barton. (Aaron had spent the ensuing weeks reading and rewatching everything to with those few minutes of airtime, refusing to let anyone play over his recording. He’d worn out the tape till it could play no longer.)

The first time he’d come was a few weeks later, Robert’s name on his lips as he’d pictured being kissed by him, his hand moving up and down the length of his naked shaft faster and faster; rock hard and aching at just the thought of him.

Robert. Fucking. Sugden.

What are the odds?

He doesn’t know whether to quit the project or just die of mortification. How is he supposed to act against someone he’s had those kinds of thoughts about? (He’s never had limits for who you should love and be with. After all, that would be a tad hypocritical of him. But some lines shouldn’t be crossed, no matter the project, and he’s fairly convinced this is one of them.)

He mentions this to Adam when he comes over to play FIFA on the PS4 later, only his best mate doesn’t quite seem to get it. Though to be fair, he’s never really had to deal with this, has he?

“So what? You used to jerk off to him. Big deal!” Adam shrugs, cycling through the options and picking his players. “If I said I’d avoid every female celeb I did that with, I wouldn’t be able to work with any of them.”

Aaron makes a face, even if he does concede that Adam has a point — not that he’s out there having to act against… (He’s actually not sure who this week’s flavour of the month is. Adam’s feelings of attraction waxing and waning like the moon.)

“Though,” Adam says, turning to look at him when he’s satisfied with his choices. “His sister Victoria is pretty fit. Do you think you could get her number?”

Aaron tosses a cushion at his face. Leave it to Adam to miss the point completely.

It bounces off and falls onto Adam’s lap, he picks it up and places it beside him.

When he turns toward Aaron this time, he looks a lot more serious, an earnestness in his gaze that wasn’t there before.

“Listen,” he says, voice soft yet firm. “You’ve wanted to be in one of Finch’s movies ever since I’ve known ya. Don’t back out now just because of Sugden.”

Aaron nods, though he’s still not convinced. Adam must see it because he then adds, “You’ll do fine. You’re an amazing actor. That’s why they wanted you for this part, you know, instead of me.”

Aaron shoots him a look and Adam just shrugs. Turns his attention back to the TV screen as he says, “What? I’m a scene stealer. Everyone knows that.”

That triggers a laugh and when it’s over, Aaron feels a lot lighter. But even as they both accept their team and kit selections and start the game, his mind drifts back to a young, shirtless Robert…

:::::

He keeps the part after all, the announcement making some waves in the press. However, any intrusiveness into his personal life is circumvented by the latest news about Robert. Rumour has it that he’s up for consideration as the new James Bond. Aaron had laughed when he’d first read the news. But laying in bed, later that night, he can’t help but picture Robert in a trademark suit, smirking down the barrel of a gun, the way he’s become known for.

It’s enough to make him shaken and stirred — not that he lifts a finger to relieve himself of the dull, building throb. (If there’s one thing Aaron Dingle’s sure about, it’s that it’s impolite to pleasure oneself to the thoughts of an upcoming co-star. Even if they were the starring role in his teenage fantasies.)

He ends up taking a cold shower instead.

:::::

Meeting Harriet Finch is everything like he’d imagined, and yet nothing like it at all.

Aaron spends all morning practicing what he wants to say to her, pacing back and forth in his newly assigned trailer — which happens to be both bigger and more luxurious than he’d expected. None of the words of praise he’s wanted to lavish her with seeming right for the moment, or even worthy of her, but he keeps practicing all the same.

That’s why he’s thrown when she comes to see him, telling him how much she’d enjoyed his turn in a small play he’d done last summer as a favour to an old friend (and ex-boyfriend), Ed.

She smiles at him with kind, dark eyes and outlines the many ways in which he’d knocked that role out of the park, followed by his performance in those few movies and, of course, Black Mirror.

“I knew you were the right man for the part the moment I saw you,” she says, voice like a warm woollen blanket, the words wrapping him up in a cocoon of comfort. “You’ll make a marvellous ‘Thomas.’ I just know it. I’m glad to have you on this project.”

But just as he’s basking in the glow of her reassurance, she asks the dreaded question.

“Have you met Robert Sugden?”

:::::

If first meetings dictate how the rest of a working relationship might go, Robert and Aaron’s is already off to a really bad start.

He’d shown up to Robert’s trailer and gone in after knocking a few times, only to find him in the throes of being orally pleasured.

Aaron hadn’t recognised the woman, just seen the back of her head, as she’d kneeled in front of Robert and blown him. Robert was sitting on the edge of his trailer’s bed and leaning back, both arms supporting his weight across the still-made comforter. His shirt was unbuttoned and he’d got his leather jacket on, neck exposed as he half lay there jerking and groaning.

He’d seemed to sense Aaron because Robert had looked up at once, locking eyes across the short distance. He’d given him a long hard look, then flashed him a wink and a smile, before closing his eyes and coming into the woman’s mouth not very long after.

Cheeks reddening and more than a little shocked, Aaron had turned and bolted. He’d wanted to spare that poor woman the embarrassment of knowing he’d seen this happening, but more importantly, process it all himself.

Standing in his own trailer he wants to kick himself for being such a goddamn fool. The tabloids had been reporting this side of Robert Sugden for years on end. But Aaron had ignored them because that’s what you were supposed to do. (And maybe, he tries not to acknowledge as his heart continues to pound, because it had ruined his fantasy of Robert and his younger self.)

But for all his talent — and he has plenty of it — Robert Sugden has always been a bit of a playboy; has the ex-wife and half a dozen ex-girlfriends to prove it. The result of this is a respectable body of work, but no one noticing because of all the gossip. (Aaron had once suspected this was Robert trying to undersell himself, maybe a bit nervous of all the extended limelight. He’d grown up Jack Sugden’s son, had had to bear that mantle, while also carving a name for himself, with not much room for error.)

Any sympathy he’d once felt though, has now been stripped away, replaced with cold, hard knowledge. Robert Sugden actually enjoys behaving like this, and Aaron can’t believe he’d liked him.

As he starts pacing, his heart still racing, Aaron gets madder and madder. They’ve both been given a golden opportunity being cast in these roles, and it’s something Robert wants to squander?

He’d wanted to walk away from this project because he’d been worried about his own personal hang-ups. Not wanting any former feelings for Robert to affect his performance. But now all he can think about is Robert’s smile and his wink, as if showing off his sexual prowess to Aaron.

This feels good, and I made that happen. Maybe I can do that for you as well?

Aaron growls, feels like punching something nearby, hating the small part of him that had kind of enjoyed it; that place deep within himself that still tends a tiny flame devoted to Robert Sugden; that place that had enjoyed watching him come.

It’s not your fault, Aaron tells himself, trying to banish the recent memory from his mind — though he’d spent years picturing and imaging exactly that. Him blowing Robert and feeling him coming under him, his palms flat against his thighs. (Sometimes he’d imagine the flip of it too. Him coming apart in Robert’s hands, his mouth smirking as Aaron comes right into it.)

He’s just managed to get rid of it, when he hears a dry chuckle, spins around to find Robert standing in his trailer, blue shirt all buttoned and jeans up and belted, like that midday blowjob hadn’t happened.

He smiles at him, blue-green eyes glittering, “So I take it you’re Aaron Dingle.”

It sends a thrill up his neck, short hairs lightly lifting, at the prospect of Robert Sugden saying his name. But then annoyance sets in as that memory comes back and Aaron grunts his affirmation.

“What do you want?”

Robert doesn’t seem deterred, doesn’t even seem to clock his rudeness. Just smiles at him like he said something funny. “To apologise. That wasn’t how I’d pictured our first meeting.”

“Why? You plan on having your cock in someone else’s mouth?” Aaron fires back, a little shocked that Robert had ever given meeting him any thought.

Robert’s eyes widen at the accusation, but whatever it is that came over him passes because he laughs and clears his throat. “No. Wasn’t planning to, actually. Just wanted to tell you what a big fan I am.”

His eyes flit away, and his smile kind of softens. Robert looks back at Aaron. “And that I’m looking forward to us working together.”

If Aaron hadn’t seen what he’d seen, he’d believe every word of this, Robert coming across well-meaning and earnest. But then he remembers just how good of an actor his co-star-to-be really is and snorts. “Nice try. Hope you’re better on camera.”

Robert winces at that, but his smile remains, even if it’s starting to look a little brittle.

“I’m sorry about what happened, alright?” Robert says, frustration colouring his voice at the edges. Aaron can see that this really is paining him; Robert not that good of an actor. “Let’s start over.”

He takes a step forward and holds out his hand. “Hi. I’m Robert Sugden.”

Aaron ignores it, crosses his arms across his chest.

“I know who you are,” he spits out.

Robert looks confused, studies him further before withdrawing his hand and eventually letting it drop. He puts it in his jacket pocket and renews his smile at Aaron. It’s just as small and soft as earlier.

“I’m trying, you know,” he says and Aaron can feel himself willing to give him that inch, to soften and forgive Robert so they can start over. But then he thinks about how smug and cocky he’d been just before he’d come right in front of him, and a wave of pulsing, hot annoyance shoots right through him.

“Then try harder,” Aaron half-growls, taking a small step further. And then, “And maybe try keepin’ your dick to yourself.”

:::::

Production kicks off without any further hitches, and he quickly gets to know the rest of their cast and crew — even becoming friends with a production assistant named Ellis.

Though most of the time Aaron just stays put in his trailer, constantly rehearsing and working on his character.

Harriet seems happy with his performance so far, giving him any extra takes he wants to do. But Aaron hasn’t been able to get in a groove that makes him truly happy; where he has an understanding of his character inside and out.

From the script, his own chat with Harriet, and the homework he’s done, he knows “Thomas James” to be a straightforward fellow, a little tentative, but earnest with his feelings.

He’s a farmer who owns and works his own farm, before one day he runs into Felix, his new and struggling neighbour. Felix’s family has lost most of their estate; bad debts and investments before the beginnings of the war hit. All they have now, is this one farm to their name, and Felix, a city boy — or rather, man — through and through has no clue how to run it.

Unable to stand it, Thomas steps in to help him, and Felix promises to do his accounts in trade. Thomas agrees, the spark between them growing and burning brighter.

Robert and he have played and shot a handful of those initial scenes, mostly set up for the rest of the story. But as their characters have seemed to find an easy camaraderie, there barely exists one between them.

For his part, Robert hasn’t really paused his efforts to win Aaron over, always making jokes and trying to give him an opening. Internally, Aaron struggles not to let go and give in, not having run into Robert with his cock down someone else’s throat since.

He doesn’t understand how Robert can just switch into his role and then right out of it, a slippery fish if there ever was one. He throws on Felix’s skin like it’s one of those button-up shirts he so favours, constantly remaining in costume longer than needed. (Aaron actually doesn’t mind that because it’s easy on the eyes and for their characters, Robert wearing 1920 period garb like he was born for it.)

Felix is smart and inept, but also charming and funny, a gay man in his shell, with no real interest in marriage. Just a blushing eye turned towards Thomas.

And that’s the part that kind of stings in their scenes, because it’s in those moments that Aaron feels he can really see the Robert he once had a crush on; a hint of him shining through.

It’s in Robert’s small smiles and the soft in his eyes, the blue-green of them a warm summer ocean.

But then Harriet says, “Cut” and it all disappears, Robert’s eyes growing cooler, his body more indifferent; tensed and held in a way he doesn’t when he’s Felix, like he’s holding a deep breath in.

That’s the first thing Aaron notices as they take a break before they shoot their first big scene, a first kiss where both men realise their mutual attraction.

They’re standing in a field, where Felix’s tractor has broken down, and Thomas has ridden up in his horse to help fix it.

As Aaron walks through the wet grass, his period accurate boots and jeans sinking into the mud a little, he gets his first glimpse of Robert.

His shirt sleeves are rolled back and his brow is plastered with sweat. He’s clearly been out in a full afternoon of labour.

They go through the dialogue, Felix directing Thomas to the back of the tractor, some kind of malfunction trapped within it. Thomas gives it a look, and Aaron produces a short grunt of surveyance, really giving it a decent study.

Then exhaling slowly he offers Thomas’ suggestion, that sometimes you just need to push it. He does as he says, and gives the tractor a shove, before letting his knees soften and himself fall forward in the muck.

Above him, he can hear Robert’s laughter bursting forth loud and clear, and he knows instantly it’s not his acting as Felix. He turns to his side and shoots Robert a dirty look, but in his chest his heart skips a beat at it.

Finally springing into action Felix leans forward and offers Thomas a hand, Robert bending and extending his hand out. The laughter still shines in his eyes, even if it’s not coming out his lips, his breath still short and him still panting.

Something surges in Aaron and he feels Thomas’ quiet sense of humour, reaches up and pulls Robert down towards him.

Robert captures all of Felix’ (and probably some of his own) surprise, his own knees bending as he falls atop Aaron; the hard firmness of his limbs utterly unexpected, and yet fitting against him perfectly.

He’s now laying on his back in the mud, feeling the cold soak into his tough warm denim, the flannel of his shirt doing little to protect him. But none of that matters as Robert gazes down at him, both their chests pressed together.

The script says this is where Felix kisses Thomas, too physically close for any more doubted restraint. Only Robert hasn’t moved, just keeps on laying there, mere centimetres away, his eyes trained down on Aaron’s lips, as if frozen by disbelief and nervousness.

Probably just nervous about kissing another man, Aaron thinks, flashing back to Robert kissing Pete Barton, and the way his hands had cupped his face. Probably worried that this time someone might think he’s gay.

Deep inside Aaron, something aches. He lets out a small, frustrated huff, his head relaxing back into the wet dirt, resigning himself to a long wait.

And then it’s like something snaps, because Robert leans forward, lunging for his lips with everything he has; his tongue barely waiting as Aaron’s lips part. (They hadn’t rehearsed this, or even really discussed it. Aaron not wanting to spend more time around Robert than entirely necessary.)

But as he lays here now, Aaron can’t help but give himself over to it, letting Robert’s fingers skim his sides before they bunch up in the warmth of his flannel shirt, his hands finding their way onto Robert’s lower back and his hair. He holds Robert’s head firm as he deepens the kiss. His co-star isn’t the only one who can improvise.

He doesn’t feel the lack of oxygen until the tail end of a groan, too deep into it to know if it’s from him or Robert.

When they pull apart both of them are panting. Robert’s gaze comes back up and they lock eyes again, a lock of his blonde hair dropping onto Aaron’s forehead, as his breath continues to tickle his lips; both wet and a little blitzed.

Deep in the depths of Robert’s green and blues, Aaron sees a spark of searching nervousness and hesitation. He brushes that bit of hair back almost without thinking; an unconscious act of soothing.

He can hear Robert’s breath hitch at the feel of his thumb pad on his skin, sees the way his eyes drop back down to Aaron’s lips. No longer nervous, and still barely thinking, Aaron leans up and presses another kiss to his lips, this time a more sweet and chaste one.

When he pulls back, Robert still has his eyes closed, almost cute in his stunned still surprise. Aaron finds himself smiling and recording this picture mentally; filled with the desire to go back in time and tell himself, “We kissed Robert Sugden!”

Robert opens his eyes and a second later Harriet yells, “Cut!” Aaron can’t help but feel interrupted.

What did you want to say? He wants to ask, as they both get to their feet. Aaron barely makes an attempt to clean himself off. He knows he needs a good shower.

Next to him, Robert seems to be avoiding his eyes, focusing a little too hard on dusting his pants off. Aaron tries not to spend too much time admiring his bum in the process.

They’re walking off set, when Robert makes the joke, voice flippant and tone just insulting.

“Feel like hitting a strip club, eh?” He says with what is meant to be a playful nudge. “Need to see some naked tits, pronto.”

It shouldn’t hurt as much as it does, this being a movie and all, but it still stings hard and deep all the same.

Aaron feels hot anger come over him without much warning, and he explodes back at Robert in a rage.

“All of this is just one big joke to ya, isn’t it?” He practically spits out the words in a low, angry growl as he shoves Robert backwards into a nearby trailer.

He doesn’t care if anyone’s nearby, or if they even see him. All he can see and hear is Robert.

“These are people’s lives,” he continues, the line of his right forearm held against Robert’s chest, constricting the way he breathes slightly. “Do you even get that?”

“It’s just a joke,” Robert answers, sounding both defensive and soft.

Aaron couldn’t give a toss about it.

“Excuse me if I don’t think bein’ gay is funny,” he fires back, leans in a little and lets the anger radiate off his face, hoping Robert gets the message.

Apparently, he does, because his eyes just widen, and then he’s saying, “Aaron, I’m sorry. I didn’t-“

He knows he’s not exactly hiding his sexuality, but Aaron isn’t really advertising it either, so it sends him reeling back the second he realises Robert has figured out he’s gay.

He stands there panting, anger being replaced by panic, the air evacuating his lungs just as his heart takes residence in his ears.

He turns and walks away before his balance decides to go, can feel his knees weakening with each step he takes; thinks he hears Robert calling at him in the distance.

Calling him because he knows this thing about him.

Calling him because he knows he’s gay.

Shit.

:::::

He’s exiting his trailer when he runs into Robert again. Aaron almost bolts the instant he sees him — only to realise he’s blocking his way.

“Aaron, wait,” Robert pleads, looking up at him from the bottom of those short metal stairs. Aaron almost turns around and goes back inside.

But then he notices that Robert is still in his costume — which is not too much of a surprise — but it’s a sign that he’s been waiting outside this entire time. As much as he doesn’t want to, Aaron knows he must honour that. From what he’s seen, Robert Sugden does that for no one.

“You going to invite me inside?” Robert asks when he sees Aaron willingly to stick around in his trailer doorway.. His attempt at a teasing smile fades when he gets Aaron’s answer.

“Whatever you want to say in there, you can say out here.” Aaron crosses his hoodie-covered arms across his chest, retaining the warmth within it.

Robert nods, and takes one step higher, making this whole conversation a little more private. Aaron can smell him, even standing a few inches away; the intermingled scent of mud and sweat and Robert. (The note is slightly floral but kind of muted like Lavender, but Aaron can’t be sure because he doesn’t know flowers.)

“Sorry I made those jokes earlier,” Robert says softly, and Aaron can see that he’s being absolutely serious. “I don’t think being gay is funny…”

Aaron doesn’t say anything, just keeps on watching. He can see that Robert is on the edge of something.

After what feels likes very long pause, it finally drops. “… because I’m actually bisexual.”

He can’t seem to meet Aaron’s eyes as he says that, his cheeks going pink as he looks away and to the left. Standing this close Aaron can feel the tension radiating off of him in waves, coming over him in rapid succession.

Aaron swallows, not sure what exactly to make of it; his teenage dreams all coming true in an instant. So he bites his tongue and holds back his first three replies, and then offers the one he feels is most supportive.

“Thanks for telling me,” he says and he finds that he means it. He’s actually a little touched by Robert’s choice to trust him.

“Figured it was the least I owe you,” Robert says with a shy smile, and for a second Aaron really feels like he’s looking at Felix.

His inner Thomas makes him return it.

“That why you wanted to do this movie?” Aaron asks when the moment eventually passes. It’s a big question he knows, but he needs an answer.

“No, actually,” Robert explains with a chuckle, something raw and unguarded about him now. Like he’s been acting this entire time Aaron has known him.

“I’m a big fan of hers,” Robert says with an excited smile. “She was my mum’s favourite director.”

Aaron gets it and gives him a nod. “Yeah, I’m a big fan myself.”

Robert grins at this little piece of information, a bigger reward than he was expecting.

“Guess this means we should definitely be friends,” Robert suggests, shyness still lacing his voice. “Don’t know many people who’ve even heard of Harriet.”

Aaron studies Robert, takes the entirety of him in, considers it and then shrugs. “Guess you’re not a complete idiot.”

Robert’s smile when he says that is radiant.

:::::

That night he dreams of Robert, the same one he’d had when he was fifteen. Only this time his brain fills in all the missing details.

He needs another shower in the morning.

:::::

Things improve on set by a thousandfold. Robert’s one-sided jibes giving way to Aaron returning them, both of them ribbing and teasing each other between takes. Robert somehow becomes a mainstay on his trailer’s sofa, as they hang out a lot more between scenes, running lines and even whole scenes together.

They seem to have found a quiet understanding when it comes to each other and their space.. (Though, coming out to each other does that, Aaron supposes.)

It’s crazy, but he genuinely thinks it makes both of their scenes better. Both of them now freer with how they move and touch each other. Aaron had once read somewhere that it has to do with the language of how queer people sometimes act and speak; a quiet understanding of how love can be writ across their bodies. He doesn’t know how much he agrees with that exactly. But he does feel it when Robert hugs him as Felix.

It’s a gentle gesture, Robert coming from behind and embracing him around the waist, one hand coming up to rest over Aaron’s heart. Aaron presses those fingers close to his chest, letting Robert feel the steady rise of his heartbeat as he sinks back into him; Thomas leaning into Felix.

They stand like that in silence for a moment longer, Robert’s chin on Aaron’s shoulder, both of them

bathing in the pale sunlight of a cool autumn morning, as filtered through the dusty windows of Thomas’ work shed.

It’s as they’re standing, silently breathing and hearts quickly beating that Aaron is seized by a sudden urge. Following the wave of it, he brings Robert’s fingers up to his lips, gently pressing a kiss on each knuckle as if soothing away newly-formed blisters — the results of Felix’ recent hard labour.

The moment his lips touch skin he hears Robert’s breath hitch, but it only guides him forward. He holds that last kiss longest, before pulling away and spinning them around, Robert’s back now pressing into the edge of Thomas’ workstation, their hands caught between them; Aaron’s fingers wrapped around Robert’s wrist, his thumb resting on his speeding pulse.

Robert for his part, seems to be trusting Aaron implicitly as he gazes down at Aaron first with surprise and then excitement. He smiles softly, clearly anticipating a kiss. Aaron smiles back and obliges him.

It’s completely unscripted and wholly them and yet none of it feels any bit of wrong. Aaron leans forward, slowly edging closer, his eyes locked into Robert’s. He hovers for a second, feels his breath bounce off Robert’s lips, then dips forward and claims them.

This kiss doesn’t progress as quickly as the first one did, Robert letting Aaron set the pace by which they go by. So he takes his time, focuses on nipping at Robert’s bottom lip; gentle kisses that should convey Thomas’ affections.

But then Robert’s hands start to slide across his back, pulling and holding him closer — only nothing about the gesture feels overtly sexual. It’s just two men standing and savouring the act of kissing, two men revelling in their affections.

They kiss a little longer, the pace still languid, Robert letting him take his sweet time, before Aaron decides to pause and not take it any further.

He pulls away, lets out his own small exhale — the matching one to Robert’s. He smiles at him, Robert returns it. Then with another small breath he leans his forehead against the other man’s; shuts his eyes and feels the feel of his skin against his own.

A few seconds pass, Robert still holding him close, Aaron feeling like he’s just survived a continuous free fall.

It’s in the middle of this that he hears Harriet’s quietly spoken words, “And that’s a wrap. Not going to get a better take than that one.”

:::::

He’s on his way off set when Robert catches up with him, grabbing his elbow to still him.

He doesn’t let go even when Aaron stops in place, only does when Aaron looks at him questioningly, despite the whole thing feeling natural.

“You doing anything later?” Robert asks, both hands in his leather jacket pockets, a leather messenger bag slung across his chest and shoulders. “Thought you might like to come over for a drink.”

Aaron considers it, gives it a long hard thought, but it must make Robert panic because he blurts out, “We can run lines or something.”

“Yeah, okay,” Aaron tells him, giving him a nod. And then, because he thinks Robert might have the wrong impression of him and he doesn’t at all like that.

“We don’t always have to work, you know. I do have other interests..”

Robert grins and nudges him in the side. Then he goes into an impression of Aaron.

“I’m Aaron Dingle and I think work is fun. If you don’t, then you’re a right idiot.”

Aaron tries not to, but he can’t stop himself chuckling, a little charmed by Robert’s intonation.

:::::

He finds that Robert’s home is nothing like he’d imagined, more lived in and comfortable than overly posh — though he has all sorts of shiny appliances in the kitchen. A mark of either a man who cooks, or just someone who likes the aesthetic. (Aaron is willing to bet it’s the first one.)

The bookshelves — of which there are two big ones — are stuffed to the gills, brimming with books threatening to fall off them. The walls, a nice calming shade of blue, are covered in posters paying homage to some of his favourite works of science fiction.

“Didn’t know you were such a nerd,” Aaron says when he’s got a drink in hand, as he looks up at a poster of The Xavier Files, the show he’d been more than a little obsessed with. Robert is standing front and centre as the star, his boarding school uniform fitting him flatteringly. (Aaron swallows, his blood growing warmer as he understands where certain fantasies might have originated from. He tries not to think about it in case he’ll need another cold shower. He’s already taken one before coming to this place.)

“You just don’t understand art,” Robert retorts, coming over to join him. He looks at the poster for a good second and then adds, “Or quality science fiction.”

Aaron snorts at that, unable to contain himself. “Think you’re using the term rather loosely. The ‘Gavoorians’? Come on.”

Robert looks at him in surprise, and maybe a hint of pleasure, as he says, “Don’t tell me youwatched it?”

Aaron goes red, feels his mouth turn dry, so he answers as honestly as he can, trying not to let the truth of the matter slip out even as he looks Robert in the eye.

“Might have caught an episode or two one summer,” he says, voice straining to remain casual. Then he adds, because he can’t help himself, “Saw the one where you kissed Pete Barton.”

Robert’s face goes from surprise to embarrassment to all-out amusement, barking a laugh with his neck tipped back, his shoulders relaxing and also dipping down. Aaron’s never seen him this joyful.

“What?” Robert says, growing suddenly conscious, his laughter fading and his body going still. His cheeks are pink as he studies Aaron.

“Nothing,” Aaron shrugs, voice above a whisper. His ears are hot, his pulse pounding. “Just wasn’t expecting this reaction, is all.”

“Well, it’s a bit of a surprise,” Robert explains, as if it all makes sense. “Didn’t think you’d have even heard of it, let alone watched it.”

“Why not? Because I don’t understand ‘science fiction’?” Aaron teases, oddly thrilled at subverting Robert’s expectations like this. “Don’t have to watch a lot to understand quality.”

“So you agree,” Robert smirks, nudging him with his elbow, a twinkle in his eye. “It is science fiction.”

Aaron snorts, nudges him back. “I suppose. But you’re really stretching the definition.”

They smile at each other, then go back to sipping their drinks, settling comfortably in the silence.

“I loved working on that show,” Robert says after quite a long beat, his voice holding a note of pride. But it’s quiet and with absolutely no hint of preening. “And kissing Pete wasn’t half bad either.”

Aaron feels his cheeks redden as he pictures it again, teenage Pete and Robert going at it.

“Did you have a crush on him, or something?” He looks down at the glass in his hand. He’d never thought he’d be having this conversation with Robert Sugden.

“God, no.” Robert shakes his head beside him. “Pete was pretty fit, but he’s pretty much as straight as they come.”

He waits a beat and then adds, “Decent kisser though.”

How about me? Am I decent too? Aaron wants to ask. But he just chuckles in amusement, enjoying this behind the scenes glimpse into one of his favourite episodes of television ever.

“But what about you?” Robert asks, turning his attention to Aaron. He finishes the last of his drink and asks, “Did you fancy him?”

His smile is conspiratorial and all kinds of knowing. His eyes are dark but inscrutable. Aaron’s cheeks redden despite himself, as he struggles not to blurt out, No. I fancied you, you idiot.

What he does manage to say, after a long moment of waiting, is, “Well, I wasn’t watching for the plot. Was I?”

It doesn’t feel like lying, because it is completely true. Though he does see the flash of something in Robert’s eyes. It disappears behind a laugh a moment later.

“No, I guess not,” Robert concedes, turning and walking over to the sofa. When he takes his seat, it’s with his legs spread wide, all the focus on his crotch. Aaron struggles to not let his gaze drift downward, keeping it trained on Robert’s face instead. And honestly, it’s worth it.

Robert’s smiling up at Aaron, buzzing with excitement. Aaron smiles back because it’s infectious.

“If you liked The Xavier Files, there’s a film you should check out,” he says, switching on his TV, Aaron no longer the focus of his attention. He pulls up Netflix, slowly searches through it, before he asks, “Have you seen The Cabin in the Woods?”

The way he’s looking at Aaron now is just pulling at all his heartstrings, an element of youth befalling all of Robert’s features. His eyes are sparkling, his smile is crooked, and his excitement is radiating off of him.

Robert Sugden: Horror fan.

“Uh, no, I haven’t,” Aaron says shaking his head to clear it. It wouldn’t do to fall for Robert Sugden again. Not when he’s a full-fledged adult. Not when he could accidentally act on it. (Aaron’s always has a rule against dating fellow co-stars or crew members. But no one’s been openly queer enough to test that — or even simply Robert Sugden.)

“Oh, you’re in for a treat,” Robert says patting the sofa seat beside him. Aaron glances at the screen where the movie is waiting, already cued up, then goes ahead and joins him. “Joss Whedon wrote and directed it.”

Even sitting next to Robert makes his heart rate spike, as does the warmth he feels from his proximity. Robert’s choice to sit in the middle of the sofa and almost spread himself out means he’s just a few fingers far away from Aaron, their hands centimetres apart on the same cushion; the dip caused by Aaron sitting causing Robert’s hand to slide a little closer to him.

He barely manages a nod when he hears Robert talk to him, asking him if he can start the movie. (He would have said yes, but his tongue has ceased to work. Another symptom of sitting next to Robert.)

The film begins and Robert reaches forward and places the remote on the coffee table and suddenly Aaron can focus once more; the thought of Robert accidentally touching him no longer playing on his mind, now free to enjoy the movie.

But as he watches the story of a group of friends — one played by Chris Hemsworth — who decide to spend a weekend in a cabin in the woods, there’s a growing sense of disappointment.

He quickly looks over to Robert’s hands in his lap, and starts to wish they were once again closer.

:::::

He doesn’t have to worry for very much longer, Robert reaching out and grabbing his forearm, when the movie presents its first real scare. Aaron isn’t expecting it, the move causing his heart rate to surge for the monster on screen itself, the feeling of warm, solid fingers clutching him clear even through thick fabric.

As it turns out Robert’s not a very passive watcher, constantly leaning over to make asides or jokes. But mostly it’s all facts he finds fun about the movie. (Aaron agrees. They’re actually quite interesting.)

It’s sweet, Aaron thinks, as he gets more and more invested, both fretting for the imperilled college students and watching Robert.

Gone is the tall and handsome actor who practically grew up in the limelight. In his stead sits a tall, handsome, and surprisingly knowledgeable genre film buff. He’s on the edge of his seat and mostly turned toward Aaron, a bit of a contrasting match to his own seating. (Aaron’s sat back, leaning on the right arm of the sofa, a little too tired to really make himself sit up properly.)

There’s another scare. Robert’s grip tightens. Aaron hides a chuckle at Robert’s expression, the shock of fear stealing the words out of his mouth. He’s left eyes wide, mouth open, and gaping. It’s almost as if this is his first time watching the movie.

Robert doesn’t seem to notice himself holding Aaron’s arm as the movie ticks on, and for his part, Aaron doesn’t alert him.

:::::

He’s enjoying the movie well enough when Robert excitedly tugs at his arm.

“This is my favourite part,” he says, before turning to look at Aaron, eyes crinkling in delight at the edges.

He’s not sure what it is in that moment — the steady warmth of Robert’s grip, the pinks of his cheeks undercutting his freckles, or the reminder of how much he used to want him — but there’s a swell in his chest and Aaron leans forward and steals a kiss from Robert.

His lips feel just like they have every other time, soft, firm, and tender. But unlike all those times they’ve kissed on camera, his co-star isn’t responding.

Panic sets in and Aaron instantly pulls back. He sees that Robert is frozen in surprise; lips barely puckered. Instantly, he realises he got carried away by his feelings, and so backtracks as quickly as possible.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, getting to his feet, Robert’s hand falling away in the process. The loss of warmth immediately starts to smart, Aaron already having gotten used to the feel of it.

“Aaron,” Robert starts, but he just cuts him off.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” Aaron swallows roughly unable to look at Robert again, his embarrassment turning his stomach. He feels like he might throw up. “Better go home now. Early call time tomorrow.”

With that, Aaron bolts out of the room and then out the front door all without waiting for another word from Robert.

:::::

He doesn’t sleep a wink that night, just replays the moment in his mind.

Each time it gets worse than before, Robert looking at him in shock bordering on disgust, green-blue eyes flashing. (Aaron knows objectively that Robert didn’t actually sneer at him, but emotionally he might as well have.)

This is what happens when you let your feelings get confused, Aaron chides himself, tossing and turning, his sheets all a tangle. This is why you can’t fall for your co-star.

By the time it’s morning he’s tenser than before. But at least he knows what to say to him.

:::::

He goes to Robert’s trailer before he goes to his own, knocking on the door once and then going right in.

Immediately he’s faced with an eyeful of half-naked Robert in snug boxer-briefs, pacing the space and going over his lines by himself.

Aaron loses his voice, his throat going dry. He just stands there in stunned silence. (He has actually seen Robert without a top on a few times before this, courtesy of a few of his movies. But like with all things, real life is proving better. He’d forgotten just how many freckles he has — and how much he used to want to count them.)

Robert notices him ogling him a few seconds later, and he pauses mid-pace. Just stands there frozen, script page in hand.

“Hi,” Aaron says, for lack of anything better. He smiles nervously, both his hands tucked in his coat pockets, watching Robert quietly.

“Hey,” Robert greets back, sounding almost relieved to see him. He doesn’t look like he’s slept either — probably trying to come up with ways with which to let Aaron down gently. Aaron swallows nervously.

At least you don’t have your cock out again, he wants to joke. But now hardly feels like the time for that.

“About yesterday,” Robert begins, taking a step forward, his tone already sounding apologetic.

Aaron takes that as his cue to take over, and so springs into action.

“It was a mistake,” he says matter-of-factly, having practiced this a few times coming in. “I got carried away. Forgot we’re not Felix and Thomas. Don’t worry it won’t happen again.”

Learned my lesson the hard way.

Robert’s brow is furrowing and he doesn’t seem too pleased. Probably because Aaron is issuing a gentle let down for him. He’d figured this was the easiest way to save face: to acknowledge his crime and issue an apology, save Robert the trouble of having to do any heavy lifting.

“Besides,” Aaron says, trying to lighten the mood, even though it’s absolutely twisting him inside. “Wouldn’t want any rumours ruinin’ ya chances, eh Mr. Bond?”

He offers him a smile, but it feels too watery and shallow. He’s barely able to keep his lips turned upward for long.

Robert’s expression doesn’t soften even a bit, just grows more dark and displeasured. He opens his mouth to say something, but before he can the trailer door swings open.

“Oh excellent,” Harriet states, coming in with a smile, happy to see both of them. “This should save me some time.”

She must sense the tension in the air, the trailer now thick with the smell of it. Her smile fades and she looks between them, then asks, “Everything alright?”

Aaron chances a glance at Robert and finds him looking almost inscrutable. (Though to be fair, his mind hasn’t moved on from the fact that he’s practically naked.)

“Just fine,” Aaron says, with another thin smile, this one a little easier than that first one.

He’s not sure if she believes him, but she does nod anyway, so he finds that to be heartening.

“There’s been a bit of a change in the shooting schedule, seeing as the weather forecast for today is a bit unexpected,” Harriet tells them, looking from Aaron over to Robert. “So we’re going to try and do today’s scenes tomorrow, and tomorrow’s stuff today. You fine with that?”

Aaron thinks real fast, runs through his memory, trying to figure out what tomorrow brings. He realises it a second later, his stomach sinking quickly, filled with dread about how they’re going to do this.

“Yeah, sure,” Robert replies, sounding quite casual, like what’s about to happen isn’t a big deal to him.

Aaron doesn’t know whether to be hurt or happy, so he just files it as a temporary win. He nods his acceptance when Harriet looks at him questioningly, then follows it up with a, “Should be fine.”

“Perfect! I’ll let the rest of the cast know, and I’ll get makeup in here first thing,” Harriet says, smiling in relief. “Why don’t you two work on any blocking you feel you might need? Especially since all of this is short notice.”

She turns and leaves, the door slamming shut behind her. Leaving nothing but aching silence.

When Aaron finally hazards a glance, he sees that Robert’s staring down at his script page, all focused like if he stares hard enough he can change what just happened.

“So do you want to…” Aaron starts, gesturing between them, unsure what else to say. He kicks himself mentally once again, for ruining any progress in the working relationship between them.

Robert sighs, long and deep, then says, “Suppose we can just figure it out when we both get there.”

He only looks at Aaron when he’s done talking, like he can’t bear to look at him.

Aaron nods his agreement. “Cool. Better get going then. Get into today’s ‘costume.’”

It’s meant to be a joke but Robert doesn’t respond. Just nods back at him pensively.

Aaron desperately wants to ask if everything’s alright between them, but he doesn’t want to make the situation any worse than it seems to be already.

“Yeah, great. See you on set,” Robert finally says, turning away, and walking towards the opposite end of his trailer. A non-verbal dismissal.

Aaron exits, then shuts the door, letting out a sigh as he leans back against it.

It was every bit as awkward as he’d expected — only now it’s been ratcheted up to a million. They’re going to need every single bit of their acting skills if they’re going to sell what’s about to happen. Because Aaron’s not sure how else he and Robert are going to get through the rest of this day, when they’ll both be shooting Thomas and Felix’ first sex scene.

:::::

He stands there, script page in hand and a growing pit in his stomach, as Robert Sugden walks up to him with a grin.

“What you waiting for? Get your kit off.”

The words hit him before the tone does, Robert’s voice sounding teasing but brittle. Aaron’s eyes shoot up towards him, and he sees that the smile on his face is nowhere near his eyes and he’s clearly keeping up pretences.

Right, of course, Aaron tells himself, after getting over the initial surprise of it. We’re all actors here. No point pretending.

It’s silly and it shouldn’t sting as much as it does but Aaron’s still aches at Robert’s reaction. It’s one thing to not be interested in his romantic advances, but it’s another thing to pretend they completely didn’t happen. (He knows it’s hypocritical to feel this way, seeing as he’d actually prayed they could do this last night. But now that he’s living the exact reality he’d hoped for, he knows to be careful what you wish for.)

Still, he smiles right back, feels it hurt to even do so, as he lobs back a response of his own. Both of them standing there in bathrobes.

“Why don’t you get yours off first?”

Robert’s eyes widen, but his smile never falters. Instead, he winks and says, loud enough for anyone standing close by to hear, “Looks like you’ll be getting your wish soon enough.”

Aaron rolls his eyes, but his cheeks are still blushing, Robert having hit upon a wish from his youth.

Thankfully, Robert doesn’t see it, Harriet having arrived on the closed, private set, the number of people limited to just her, the two of them, and a small team of production people.

When she gives them a nod, they both strip out of their robes, both of them left standing naked, except for their actors’ modesty socks hiding their cocks and balls. Aaron does his best to keep his gaze level and facing forward, as he goes and finds his mark. The scene involves Felix making love to Thomas, on the floor of the latter’s barn.

The wooden floorboards are tad bit cool and just a little prickly — stray stalks of hay strewn across them — Aaron discovers as his bare back and arse come to rest against them, the sensation causing his skin to stand on end and his back wanting to arch off of it.

Aaron doesn��t have much time to process it, because now Robert’s crawling into his position, slowly lowering himself across Aaron and coming to rest on both his forearms. Aaron keeps his eyes pointed towards the barn ceiling and the rig of artificial lighting, hoping to make things as less awkward as possible.

He can feel Robert’s breath against his cheek, and the heat of him on his arms and chest as they silently hold these poses for the lighting check; Robert is now laying between Aaron’s spread and bent thighs, his arse exposed for everyone to see — not that he seems to care or even looks embarrassed. Instead, Aaron can feel him looking down at him, pinning him to the ground where he’s laying. Still, he refuses to look back at him, his heart furiously beating, as he refuses to make even a hint of eye contact; his last vestige of privacy.

“This isn’t going to work,” Robert says with a sigh after what feels like a day and an age, and Aaron feels his stomach clench, preparing for Robert to clamber off him, already missing him despite no part of them really touching at the moment. “Not if you don’t look at me.”

That gets Aaron’s attention and he looks up into Robert’s eyes, where he finds nothing but calm and watchful understanding.

“What?” He whispers, not meaning to come off so rude, but he’s nervous about what Robert might say and this is a pre-emptive strike — a test to see if he can handle it.

“About yesterday-” Robert begins, and Aaron immediately protests.

“I thought we were done talking about it.”

“No,” Robert insists, voice firm and kind of steely. “You talked about it. I just listened.”

Aaron swallows and lays there, his heart in his ears, as he wishes himself anywhere but here.

But then without warning, Robert dips down and kisses him, a firm press across his lips before a tongue swipes against the bottom one. Aaron grants him eager entry.

Robert pulls back, a half a moment later, remains naked and panting over Aaron.

“What was that?” Aaron asks, body locked in surprise, though his cock is already having a bit of a reaction. He tries his hardest not to think about it.

“What I wish I’d done last night,” Robert replies, speaking softly, as he shoots Aaron a tentative smile. “What I wish I’d done this morning.”

“You mean…” Aaron trails off, struggling to compute, still feeling like this puzzle is missing a few pieces. Any thoughts about his dick fall by the wayside.

“I like you, Aaron,” Robert says like it’s a well known fact, and not something he just demonstrated with his tongue down Aaron’s throat. “And as you can see, I don’t really care who knows it.”

Aaron glances around and sees that no one’s really paying them much attention, Harriet studying the film monitors in front of her from the director’s seat, the sound guys standing and chatting in the corner.

“Guess that’s a relief,” Aaron finally sighs, when he comes back to look up at Robert’s face. “Seein’ as I like you too.”

It’s like a wave ripples between them because suddenly they’re both touching in millions of tiny ways. Robert’s arms move a little closer, Aaron’s a little wider, both their limbs now settling together. Robert’s planking position lowers, causing him to actually lay across Aaron, their chests just centimetres apart, even as their belly buttons touch, and their cocks, swaddled in their actors’ modesty socks now rest against each other; both steadily hardening. (Aaron smiles as he realises that, flushed with pride that Robert Sugden wants him.)

“So, you going to kiss me back or what?” Robert then asks, smiling down at Aaron, his arms framing either side of his face.

Aaron shakes his head, grinning back cheekily. “Thought we’d save it for the camera.”

:::::

When Harriet yells, “Action,” Robert’s focused and gazing into his eyes. But he doesn’t lunge forward like Aaron expects him to.

Instead, he slowly comes forward, nudges his nose against Aaron’s, before touching their lips together and letting them hover that way for a second, before increasing the pressure, one hand coming to holding the side of Aaron’s face.

Slowly, Aaron’s waiting lips part, as he opens his mouth and lets his tongue curl and slide against Robert’s; allowing him to steal the breath right out of him.

They kiss like that for a couple of minutes, Aaron’s hands sliding up Robert’s back to wrap around the balls of his shoulders, half holding, half gently kneading.

Slowly and gently, Robert starts to rock in place, dragging his thick and hard cock against Aaron’s. He may be simulating sex, but the feelings are all real, as Aaron feels his own shaft throbbing and aching harder.

Robert kisses his way down his jaw, and then his neck and then his chest, Aaron’s back arching unconsciously against him.

Robert comes back up kiss at his lips, the movement of his hips growing faster.

Aaron closes his eyes and pictures his teenage self and all his exploration of sexuality with another boy in his class in the local village pavilion. None of that compares to Felix and Thomas’ first time, none of that compares to this moment with Robert.

Another wave comes over him and he gives himself into it, rolling them over so Robert is now under him; shaggy hair blending with the straw on the wooden floorboards. Aaron takes his lips in his and resumes their kissing.

He continues to grind, increasing the pressure and speed just a little, chasing that spark that shoots through him when their cocks touch through their socks at just the right spot. He can feels his balls tighten and Robert groan into his mouth, the sound of it soaked with wanting. His own cock feels swollen, now more than thick and leaking, the leaking come making the fabric stick to him and his erect shaft more than sensitive.

Aaron can see his climax rising on the horizon, can feel it gathering at the base of his spine, the pressure building to a tall cresting wave, threatening to crash down over him. Under him, Robert continues softly groaning, loose hands scoring up and down Aaron’s back; the movements causing a little thrill of pleasure.

Then just when his orgasm starts to move towards his peak, pushed onward by the friction between their penises, he hears a sound that causes him to stop almost instantly, and Robert to whine under him.

Aaron lays there panting, cock now more than aching, he curses the gods and this particular profession. He brings his forehead to rest against Robert’s. The sweat on both their brows mingling as the chill in the barn begins to set in.

“Alright,” says Harriet from somewhere behind them. Her voice is firm and brooks no questions. So they know better than to protest it. “This was great. But let’s try that again.”

Aaron drops his head into Robert’s neck and groans.

:::::

An hour later he starts to wonder if Harriet is doing this intentionally; guiding them close to the edge with her takes and directions, only to cause them to pull back again, just adding to their rising frustrations.

His only solace is the presence of Robert, who moves from over to under — and even one time, beside — him, as they keep kissing and grinding against each other for the camera; both more sensitive than ever.

“Come back to mine after,” Aaron grunts softly in the middle of one take, too soft for the boom controller to hear him. Robert’s mouth nipping at his shoulder.

“And do what?” Robert whispers, when Aaron rolls them over. It’s clear that he’s a little beyond thinking.

Aaron gets it, biting his tongue as a wave of pleasure sweeps through him.

“What do you think?” He asks, through gritted teeth, as his hips begin simulating trusting. Then he grins slyly as he looks down into Robert’s unfocused eyes.

“Reckon we could run lines or something.”

:::::

They bolt off set before Harriet can even declare it a wrap — or pull either one aside to talk to them — neither of them able to keep the smile off their faces. Aaron tries not to speed, or run a red light, but it’s a struggle with Robert’s right hand on his thigh, slowly inching higher and higher the entire time.

He manages to still his breathing — and his body’s tetchy reaction — as they exit the vehicle and later enter his building. In fact, they make it all the way up and into his flat, without him making even a single move to try and tear Robert’s clothes off.

“Nice place,” Robert says, as Aaron shuts and locks the door behind. Aaron glances around at the classic film posters on his own living room walls and the lived-in state of his sofa; the prime location for all his movie marathons between projects.

“Thought you might want to see it,” Aaron says coming up to stand in front of him, his hands coming to rest on Robert’s lips.

“You were right about that,” Robert says, though his focus is on him. He smiles and adds, “I’m a big fan of Aaron Dingle.”

Aaron smiles back. There’s a flutter in his chest, like a flock of birds flying back after winter. He swallows roughly and gives his answer, his voice coming out rougher as his gaze drops to Rober’s lips, “I’m right about a lot of things. Guess you’re going to have to remind me.”

That’s all it takes because Robert’s lips are on his, with all the urgency of a man drowning.

Aaron grabs at his jacket and starts pushing it off him, as he also walks him to the bedroom.

They stumble a little, the room still a mess from this morning, Robert grabbing Aaron’s biceps so as to not trip backwards over a pair of kicked trainers lying in the middle of the floor.

“You know, a little tidying never hurt anyone,” Robert says coming back in for a kiss.

“Do you want to talk cleaning, or do you want to fuck?” Aaron growls back, still very frustrated from this morning.

Robert stripping him of his hoodie is his answer.

Grinning into the kiss, Aaron tugs Robert’s shirt up and out of his jeans and then makes quick work of the buttons up front — not caring if he loses one. He pushes it off him, and trails kisses down his neck, before pausing to nip once at his collarbone.

Robert inhales sharply, pressing closer into him. So Aaron does it again, just a little bit harder, earning him a groaned, Aaron.

Smiling again, he licks the same area once, then kisses it as if to make it better. Then he turns his attention to Robert’s jeans, his dick already bulging in the front of it.

Robert’s hands are once again moving, pushing Aaron’s own jeans down to pool against his feet. He tries to step out of them, while undoing Robert’s belt buckle, only to feel one of Robert cup his cock through the fabric of his boxers, the pressure firm but gentle.

Aaron lets out a gasp as Robert just chuckles, “Well, hello there Mr. Dingle.”

“Do you ever shut up?” Aaron asks, as he tried to focus on the jeans button in front of him, Robert’s cock already straining against his zipper, as his hand slips from outside Aaron’s boxers into them, drawing out a shuddered gasp as he squeezes his erection.

“Make me,” Robert says with a smug little grin, the words a low purr that goes straight to Aaron’s eardrum.

Aaron takes him up on his offer, kissing him thoroughly, before pushing him back against his mattress.

A thrill runs up his back as he sees a mostly naked Robert Sugden, resting on his elbows and across the unmade purple sheets of his bed. He kneels down at the base of his bed, then reaches up and pulls the hem of Robert’s underwear down. His cock springs out, already wet and leaking, and every bit as long and thick as Aaron had expected.

He runs a hand up it, giving it a test of a stroke, in front of him Robert twitches.

Pleased with the response, Aaron leans forward and hovers over it, feeling Robert’s eyes watching carefully. Then he smiles up at him, before dropping his head down as he sets up about fulfilling a fantasy.

On either side of his head, Robert’s thighs jerking and flexing — just like that first day in the trailer. Only this time it’s Aaron with his mouth on his cock, him being the one to draw the groans out of Robert.

Down between his own legs, his cock is once again aching, having been denied release too many times in one day. Aaron wraps a hand around it, smearing his own pre-come over his head and down around it, his thumb flicking the edge of his frenulum and causing a thrill of excitement. He keeps on steadily stroking.

When he feels Robert nearing the edge — now more than well-versed in his body — Aaron pulls off and hears the expected moan of disappointment. He gives him a kiss as he reaches for the lube, eager to avoid a painful experience.

He slides two fingers in, gently twisting and scissoring, Robert groaning and pushing down into it.

When he feels he’s ready, Aaron slides his now slick dick into Robert and gets a satisfied sigh for his efforts.

He waits a second for Robert to adjust to the discomfort, but all he gets is grunted, “Hurry up and fuck me.”

Doing as he says, Aaron sets up a punishing pace, the front of his thighs smacking against the back of Robert’s in a satisfying rhythm.

It’s not too long before he feels his climax once again approaching, having been at the edge of his fingertips all day. Below him, Robert’s busy stroking himself as he keeps on moaning Aaron’s name, punctuated by a gasp every time Aaron hits that special spot.

His neck is tipped back and his eyes are tight shut, his hand is rapidly pumping, Robert lost to the build of his own orgasm.

With his own edge within sight, Aaron makes a quick decision, he leans down, hips still rolling as he positions himself right beside Robert’s ear, and then whispers, “It was you I liked, not Pete Barton.”

He hears Robert’s strangled cry and his come hit his chest. It’s enough to make him come inside him.

:::::

He wakes up a few hours later to Robert on his phone, just laying next to him naked. The white light from the small iPhone screen illuminates the side profile of his face in a strong but gentle white glow; his features looking like he was sculpted from marble.

There’s a fondness in his eyes and a glow in his cheeks as he lays on his back, biting his bottom lip, staring at the screen intently, probably skimming the news on a gossip news site. (Aaron actually reads a few of them himself, a couple proving quite reliable in terms of casting news and breakdowns.)

“Anything good?” He asks, when he’s drunk his fill — though he’s finding that his thirst for Robert might be bottomless.

Robert doesn’t startle or even really flinch, just looks over at him like he was gently awakened. His smile is radiant — but more so in this light, white teeth flashing in the phone light, which also renders his freckles a little paler.

“Nothing as good as what’s right here,” Robert says, affection coming through loud and clear. He then lifts his right arm above his head, an open invitation.

Aaron accepts it, shuffling in closer, and bringing the covers with him. He snuggles in closer until his head is resting on the ball of Robert’s shoulder as he turns himself sideways on his left side. Robert’s arm comes back down, wrapping around his back and resting on the curve of his arse.

When Aaron turns towards the phone screen he sees instead that it’s a book, Robert’s attention instead captured by some kind of video.

It takes him a second to clock what’s happening on screen, because then he gasps in disbelief.

“Are you watching my episode of Black Mirror?” He shifts to gaze up at him, searching Robert’s face for any detail of an answer.

“Why?” He asks, horrified.

Robert turns from the phone to look down at him, and then says without any embarrassment or shame. “The first time I ever saw this, I knew I had to meet you.”

“You’re joking me,” Aaron barks a laugh. “My character was mental.”

“Yeah,” Robert agrees, his index finger now rubbing a lazy circle into Aaron’s hip, the feel and motion of it deeply soothing. “But you played him with such intensity.”

“Probably just thought I was fit, or something,” Aaron protests, rolling his eyes at Robert. “I spent half the episode naked.”

“Well, obviously there was that,” Robert concedes, but even with his playful tone, Aaron can tell he still means it. That he’d actually been attracted to Aaron’s acting.

“Does this mean you fantasized about me?” Aaron asks cheekily, even though he’s nervous about the answer.

“If I didn’t, I’d be mental,” Robert says with all the confidence in the world, like this is an undisputed fact.

He’d wanted to hear it, but it still makes him blush. Aaron rolls inward towards Robert’s shoulder. Robert’s hand and finger don’t stop their circling.

“Shut up,” he chides him gently.

“It’s true though,” Robert admits, voice quiet in the night, his face growing ever more thoughtful. “It’s why I wanted to do this project. Figure at least this way I’d get a chance to work with you.”

“More like, hoped you’d get a chance to shag me,” Aaron retorts, but there’s nothing in his voice but affectionate lightness.

“Not going to lie and say I didn’t dream about that,” Robert chuckles. “Though I did really hope you might be bisexual as well.”

“Worked out in the end, I suppose,” Aaron says quietly.

Robert hums his agreement. On his phone screen a younger version of Aaron fights against a male co-star.

Time passes, a few more moments go by, then Aaron says, trying not to keep the worry from creeping into his voice too much, “You know, if people find out about us, we might have to come out publicly.”

He doesn’t want to say it, but he feels like he has to, not wanting to cost Robert his career. “You could lose the Bond role.”

“I told you, Aaron, I don’t care who finds out.” It doesn’t sound flippant, and it doesn’t sound thrown away. It sounds sure as can be and confident. “Didn’t exactly take this job to prove I could do my own stunts. Though I think we both did well on that front.”

Robert pinches his hip as if to underscore the point, sending a spark of shock right through him. Aaron startles and arches his back closer, his bare chest now snug into Robert’s side.

“You’re an idiot, you know that?” Aaron grumbles poking his chest. Under his left ear, Robert shakes with quiet laughter.

“Yes, but an idiot you like,” Robert says when he can finally answer. “And an idiot you had a crush on.”

Aaron rubs his hip sorely. “I can still kick you out of bed, you know.”

“You wouldn’t do that to a poor, defenceless, idiot,” Robert offers in his defence. Aaron just rolls his eyes at it.

“Do you seriously ever shut up?” He questions, not really annoyed.

Robert’s voice is low when he replies, “Like I said. Go ahead and make me.”

Aaron comes up for a kiss.

:::::

They do come out eventually, when doing the rounds to promote the movie, and all their fears are brushed aside as it makes their stock rise even higher. Suddenly they have interviews scheduled with all the top publications, with joint profiles in both The Guardian and Variety. (Aaron asks his mum to go buy extras of both, his idea to have them framed as an eventual moving-in present.)

The movie’s a success as it starts to do the circuit, opening first in limited release and then going wider and wider. It garners great reviews, most of it focusing on Aaron and Robert’s performance, with plenty of mentions of their chemistry. (Robert particularly likes reading those aloud in bed, pulling them up on his phone not long after Aaron awakens.)

Amongst all the furor and the immense fan support, the good news start to trickle in. George Miller wants to meet Aaron to discuss a possible part in Mad Max, while Robert has a meeting about playing Bond after all. As it turns out, times are very definitely changing, and the minds in charge of the franchise have decided they’d quite like to adapt along with it. Neither of them expect anything to actually come of it. But they still joke about Robert wearing that suit and celebrate.

A few months after that, Harriet calls waking them both up, the film — as well as both their performances and her direction — having been nominated for an Oscar. They lay there together, Robert’s phone on speaker on Aaron’s bare chest, his cheek close beside it, neither of them daring to breathe in their shocked silence.

Aaron cracks first, a long and loud laugh, seconds later Robert starts to join him.

“Can you believe it?” Robert asks, lifting his head. The diffused sunlight from the hotel room balcony window backlights him, showing off his bedhead in all its glory.

“Sure I can,” Aaron shrugs easily, taking in the high cheekbones and the freckles dotting them, the unexpected pinkness of Robert’s lips. Then he looks into Robert’s eager eyes, letting the now-alert green and blue wash over him. “Harriet Finch, innit?”

“But you and me, nominated for an Oscar…” Robert quietly marvels. “Do you think we could win?”

Aaron just watches him, memorising this face, already planning their celebration. He brings a hand up, and cups Robert’s cheek, stroking a thumb across a warm cheekbone. Then he leans up, gives him a soft kiss, then lies back, his head hitting the pillow.

Robert’s eyes open slowly, and his smile grows softer; a small one that he reserves for Aaron.

“Reckon we could,” Aaron says, feeling himself return it. “Who doesn’t love a good love story?”

#robron #long post #robron secret santa #robron fanfiction #notforonesecond

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pop-punklouis · 6 years ago

Note

hey hope!! i’ve completely run out of things to watch recently and was wonderinf if you had any recs of movies and tv shows??

HI!

It’s your lucky day because I have found myself in a hole of watching many new things lately that I’ve more or less found enjoyable so hopefully you will too? lol

1. Russian Doll: Nadia, a young woman who is on a journey to be the guest of honor at a party in New York City. But she gets caught in a mysterious loop as she repeatedly attends the same event and dies at the end of the night each time – only to awaken the next day unharmed as if nothing had happened.

(I know I’m late to the party with that one, but it is quite literally one of the best comedy-dramas I’ve seen in a long while, not to mention Natasha Lyonne, the ultimate babe, stars in it. It is, blatantly, obvious that the script was written by women (thank god) and it has a cool, mind-trip twist at the end that’ll have you guessing what actually was happening the entire time. Super easy to binge!! 10/10)

2. Perfume: When a woman is found murdered with scent glands excised from her body, a detective probes a group of friends who attended boarding school with her.

(A German mystery-crime-thriller that is way too convoluted and intertwined to know the real culprit of the grisly yet complex murders until the few minutes of the last episode. It has an incredibly intriguing script with intricate details and dialogue. Pleasantly surprised by how solid the entire storyline and characters were. TW though!! There are scenes of obscene sex, implied rape, domestic abuse, and sexual assault. So be careful if those things trigger you. Watching it in German with English subtitles is the way to go, though. Trust me.)

3. Handsome Devil: Two opposites, a loner and the top athlete become friends at a rugby-obsessed boarding school, and the authorities test their friendship.

(An irish coming-of-age LGBT film that, again, pleasantly surprised me with how well it was executed underneath the guise of an overly cliche storyline. It’s winning, compelling, and quite moving with how it tackles individuality in teens. It’s just a great film that takes tropes and turns them on their head by transforming the characters in their own way. Not to give too much away but the talk one of the boys have with the English professor on the rugby field at night is so, so important as an open dialogue.)

4. Dumplin’: The plus-size, teenage daughter of a former beauty queen signs up for her mum’s pageant as a protest that escalates when other contestants follow in her footsteps, revolutionising the pageant and their small Texas town.

(As you can probably guess this film is an emotionally-impactful conversation about self-acceptance that rides on the back of societal expectations of young women all tied together in a very heart-warming coming-of-age drama. Also there’s loads of Dolly Parton music. What else is there to say)

5. The Lobster: In a dystopian society, single people must find a mate within 45 days or be transformed into an animal of their choice.

(Isn’t a new watch, but I was reminded of it recently. Just an extended Black Mirror episode, pretty much. It’s odd. It’s bizarre. It’s engaging. It’s a lot of things, and they are great.)

6. Shirkers: In 1992 teenager Sandi Tan shoots Singapore’s first road movie with her enigmatic American mentor, Georges, who then absconded with all of the footage. The 16 mm film is recovered 20 years later, sending Tan, who is now a novelist living in Los Angeles, on a personal odyssey in search of Georges’ footprints.

(One of my favorite documentaries I’ve seen in a while, mainly because it doesn’t exactly feel like a documentary. It feels like you’re privvy to the incredibly frustrating, disheartening, and determined story of friendship, women-bound creativity, youth, and dishonesty when it comes to the mystery of where and why Georges disappeared. It’s also empowering in a way to see the transition of these young women reclaiming their lives after such betrayal.)

7. Grace & Frankie: For as long as they can recall, Grace and Frankie have been rivals. Their one-upmanship comes crashing to a halt, however, when they learn that their husbands have fallen in love with each other and want to get married. As everything around the ladies is coming apart, the only thing they can really rely on is each other.

(I’ve been living under a rock, sue me. This show is fanfuckingtastic. Just watch it. Just binge it. Just do it.)

8. Voyeur: Gay Talese investigates Gerald Foos, a Colorado motel owner who spies on his guests. Using a carefully constructed platform in the motel’s attic, Foos documents his guests most private moments, from the mundane to the shocking.

(Just a frustratingly and horrifyingly sad and strange recollection of two men who act as an incredibly interesting character study if nothing else. Recommend)

9. Some Freaks: A charming romance develops between a boy with one eye and an overweight girl, though when she loses her weight after going to college, their relationship is tested in devastating ways they never dreamed would happen.

(….. I still don’t know how I feel about this movie. I’ve watched it twice, once alone and once with a friend, and I’m still conflicted on my lasting thoughts about the film and its message. It’s definitely something I suggest watching, at least, to come to your own conclusions about how it made you feel. It’s just. uncomfortable in the strangest of ways, and I just need more people to converse about it with lmao)

10. The Kindergarten Teacher: A teacher sees such great promise in her 5-year-old student that she goes to unreasonable lengths to protect his talent.

(I watched this film on a whim one day while off from work, and I was pleasantly surprised by its depth and heartbreaking tendencies. This film does not evoke anything but unsettled feelings and yearning for both the young boy and the teacher. Many people tend to gloss over the fact that this film does so much more than its superficial narrative. it opens such a bigger conversation into what absence and neglect of personal creativity and art through someone’s marriage and family can cause them to in-turn have an unhealthy obsession with wanting to keep a child’s love/talent for art alive. Haunting but great film.)

11. Mr. Roosevelt: A struggling LA-based comedian goes home to Austin, Texas, when a family member becomes ill and finds herself in the awkward position of staying with her ex and his amazing new girlfriend.

(Friend found this hidden-gem on Netflix, and it’s such a quirky, comforting, easy-watch that I miss a lot in indie films. It’s progressive and weird in all the right ways, and it leaves you with a cozy feeling inside once the film reaches its end.)

12. Queer Eye Season 3

(You know the drill just more feel-good reality-television makeover that makes all of us a little bit happier about humanity’s ability to be kind)

13. Happy Anniversary: On their three-year anniversary, Molly and Sam are at a crossroads and need to decide whether to move forward or call it quits.

(Another hidden gem found on Netflix that I ended up thoroughly enjoying. It comes across as a real, genuine, non-exaggerated look at the inside of a couple’s relationship. It’s candid, fun, witty in dialogue, and heartwarming towards the end. I’ll admit I got a bit misty eyed at 1 AM lol also the dude who plays jean-ralphio is one of the mains so c’mon.)

14. Class Rank: When her class rank threatens her college plans, an ambitious teen convinces a nerdy peer to run for the school board to abolish the ranking system.

(Listen up, I watched this film because I was under the impression that it was going to be a b-rated teen film I could be amused by, but it ended up being a sorta cute story that I enjoyed a lot more than I probably should’ve RIP. Give it a shot).

15. Cam: A camgirl has her principles, until a mysterious woman who looks just like her takes over her channel.

(Don’t take the general critic review to heart and watch the film, yourself. It’s. a ride. It definitely gave me chills as much as it made me uncomfortable. A thriller with twists and uneasiness at every corner. Just a real creepy look into AI, especially in industries like the camgirl industry. I do want the girl’s play dungeon tho rip)

#hope you like at least a few of these!!#grey

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hornyliverpudlianputz · 6 years ago

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Hi! Do you have any movie recs?

Hooo boy. Yes? I do? I have a lot. I will try to do a wide approach, depending on what you’re interested in. I’ve tried to break it up into categories but there is obviously some overlap. If you have a more specific “type” or genre please let me know!

Comedies -

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975): I’ve talked about this before, a movie by the British comedy troupe Monty Python spoofing the legend of the Grail Quest. Extremely quotable, I have accidentally memorized entire scenes of this because it sticks in my brain so well.

Pop Star: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016): A spoof of “live tour” documentaries done of musicians put together by The Lonely Island (famous for their SNL parodies such as “Dick in a Box” and “I’m on a Boat”). It is absolutely hysterical and contains some ridiculously good bops as well.

Dramas -

The King’s Speech (2010): A British film about King George VI’s struggle to overcome his stutter and gain the confidence to take up the mantel of the crown when his older brother abdicates. Based on real life events, Colin Firth plays the shit out of this role, and so does Helena Bonam Carter as his wife.

The Road Within (2015): An indie “road trip” movie, this follows three teens who all have a disorder of some kind (Tourettes, Anorexia, and OCD) as they go “on the run” from the treatment facility they were all enrolled at. (The facility was not mistreating them, they’re just letting off steam.) I recommend this because from reactions I’ve seen it’s an excellent treatment of all of the respective disorders, and while it has a “happy ending” (mostly), none of them are magically cured by the end.

Brain candy/feel good -

A Knight’s Tale (2001): I’ve also already talked about this, it’s a (very, very) loose adaptation of part of the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (he’s a main character lol.) Fun, great soundtrack, quotable, and refuses to be constrained by things like “historical accuracy.”

Secondhand Lions (2003): A “coming of age” story combined with a “boy and his dog” story, a young man is dropped at the feet of his great uncles and told by his mother she’ll be back at the end of the summer. The three of them then have to learn how to deal with each other. All the feels.

Sci fi -

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986): Ok look. I’m a nerd. Y’all knew this. And yes, I know this is technically in the middle of an arc but this is hands down the best Star Trek movie ever so it gets a special mention. Time travel, save the whales, Spock is trying to remember his human side, and bad disguises. Also they briefly lose Chekov in a highly restricted military area, park their invisible spaceship in public, and handwave “inventing” future technology as “it’ll probably be fine.” We stan disasters.

Starship Troopers (1997): This is not “fun” scifi, fair warning. This is the “scifi is a metaphor for all the world’s problems and nothing is good” type. A really excellent metaphor for military propaganda, I could analyse the shit outta this all day. It’s also somehow cheesy as hell.

Queer -

Victor Victoria (1995): Please note that I am recommending the 90′s musical and not the 80′s comedy. They are the same story but the musical is by far superior. A version of it was filmed live and should be available on DVD. Basically a broke female opera singer in France is convinced by a gay man to become a drag queen because she would make the greatest female impersonator the world has ever known. Hijinks ensue. Gender is fake, sexuality is fluid, and everybody ends up happy. Also Julie Andrews.

I Love You Phillip Morris (2009): A black comedy based on a true story, a gay con artist keeps breaking out of prison to be with his boyfriend. (That is very simplified.) Did you know Jim Carry can play dramatic really fucking well? You will after this movie. Also please watch Ewan McGregor literally melt into a puddle on the floor, you will not regret it.

Shakespeare -

Bill (2015): This is a spoof for Shakespeare nerds done by the same group of people who do Horrible Histories. The concept is to fill in the lost years when Shakespeare was establishing himself in London. It also involves a plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I by Prince Philip of Spain, a royal spymaster trying to sniff out Catholics, and Shakespeare and his wife falling back in love. Gets a shoutout for using Shakespeare quotes out of context to make them work in totally different ways.

Shakespeare in Love (1998): Sigh. Ok, so like, I am not a fan of Romeo and Juliet. But this is basically Shakespeare living out Romeo and Juliet while writing it and I unironically love it. It has a lot of easter eggs for Shakespeare nerds like typical tropes (crossdressing, mistaken identities, ghosts (or are there?), class friction, star crossed romance, etc.) and random quotes. Also during the performance at the end the in-movie audience is literally seeing Romeo and Juiet for the first time. They react appropriately.

#personal #ask and ye shall receive

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t-wanderer · 3 years ago

Text

I posted 928 times in 2021

6 posts created (1%)

922 posts reblogged (99%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 153.7 posts.

I added 10 tags in 2021

#email - 1 posts

#smoke and mirrors - 1 posts

#keytar - 1 posts

#you know how like at a baby shower if they don't know the gender everything is yellow instead of pink or blue? that. that exact yellow. - 1 posts

#theatre - 1 posts

#writing - 1 posts

#drag - 1 posts

#film - 1 posts

#sleepdeprivation - 1 posts

#helpiforgothowtousetags - 1 posts

Longest Tag: 135 characters

#you know how like at a baby shower if they don't know the gender everything is yellow instead of pink or blue? that. that exact yellow.

My Top Posts in 2021

0 notes • Posted 2021-01-20 07:56:08 GMT

0 notes • Posted 2021-01-12 04:02:25 GMT

Tagged by @name-given

Hit shuffle 10 times and record what music comes up. I’m not going to tag anyone, but any of you can play too if you want to. 1. Killed by BR8K Spider!!!!!!!! (Homestuck) 2. Space Suit (They Might Be Giants) 3. The Legendary Hero (Windwaker) 4. Mind Fields (The Prodigy) 5. Sun In My Mouth (Bjork) 6. Violence (Rage Against The Machine) 7. The Real Thing (Lords Of Acid) 8. Stronger Than You (Steven Universe) 9. Heart And Soul (The Monkeys) 10. Es Y’Golonac (HPLHS)

2 notes • Posted 2021-01-02 17:00:44 GMT

So...I wrote a musical with my best friend...

Welp. No putting it off any longer. This is the last place, the last bastion of social media. So, I wrote a musical last year with a dear friend and after months of work, rehearsals, meetings, it’s finally coming out.

It’s a cyberpunk dystopian musical. It’s called Vacant Arcadia. It’s very gay. It’s about hope and choice, about inescapable poverty and gender identity. It’s about four hours long. Over 20 original songs, half of which I wrote.

I have never done anything like this project. I’ve been promoting it everywhere else, but for some reason talking about it here feels more real than anything. I got interviewed for NPR over this.

The premier is this Thursday, March 18th. It’s an online, audio-only musical. Tickets are $15 and help pay the amazing people who helped us make this happen.

You can get tickets here: www.theholophonic.com The Trailer is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jkIP7yWHqo

After the premier, we’ll start releasing them for free in April, one act at a time.

I don’t know. On instagram I have followers, on twitter it’s more like shouting on a street corner, Facebook is like when your mom bumps into a friend at walmart and they catch up while browsing cabbage. But you guys? You guys are my friends. So here it is, what I’ve been working on during the pandemic. There’s no stopping it now. We’re doing this. We’re making it happen.

11 notes • Posted 2021-03-15 18:08:42 GMT

48 Hour Film Project

Between Friday morning and Sunday night I got about 5 hours of sleep. We had 48 hours to write, produce and film a short movie to fit randomly assigned elements.

We had an amazing crew, my writing partner literally carried the team editing for 11 hours straight after everyone else fell asleep.

Our actors were incredible, sleep deprived and a delightful mix of drag queens, college students, teens and a couple members of a local indie band. Almost everyone was queer and amazing. (We also had a Homestuck!)

We finished our movie and got it uploaded with, seriously, 20 seconds to spare.

This has been an amazing experience. I don’t even care if we win. I want to do it again! We get to see our movie at the local music venue this Wednesday. Watch this space! I am so impossible proud and almost equally exhausted.

13 notes • Posted 2021-07-19 11:24:27 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

#my 2021 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

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okiedokievariantloki · 3 years ago

Text

On Continuity, Plot, and Story: Each Thor Movie (including Loki on Disney+) Is Telling A Different Story...Part 1: Thor (2011)

One of the things I hear a lot in fandom is how a lot of characterization in the MCU is inconsistent throughout the movies. This goes especially for a lot of the earlier Marvel movies (Iron Man, X-Men, 2000′s Spiderman) before MCU was even a thing, but all of the films to some extent fall prey to this.

First off, this is not going to be a ship-centric post, so please don’t take it as invalidating or supporting any relationship/romance/pairing. That’s not the point, so if you’re looking for that kind of content, I suggest you look elsewhere.

Secondly, I’m not a hardcore fan of the MCU. I’ve watched all the movies and shows I will be talking about today. In fact, I have watched them in order of release because my beloved is a big comic book fan and I support them even though I’m more of a fan of silver age DC comics, weird science, indie comics, and seinen manga.

Third, I’m not a *huge* fan of how a lot of superhero comic books have characters literally vomit paragraphs of extrapolation in speech bubbles, but I understand the reason for it, and I grew up in the 90′s, when a lot of superhero comics basically decided to fanboy all over Frank Miller’s Sin City aesthetic and so a lot of superhero comics were both super grimdark and really violent, which was not the kind of stories I preferred to read. Add that to the time I watched that truly horrible Captain America movie from the 80′s or something on afternoon broadcast TV where he wears a motorcycle helmet and The Red Skull gave me nightmares for a week because their interpretation of the character is a guy whose face was just...glistening muscles and it was horrifying, and you can see why I might be a bit skeptical of the whole spandex-and-punching-baddies thing.

Anyway, let’s get started or this is going to be a rogue thesis paper.

You might laugh when I say this, but when I first heard about the Thor movies, it was on the back of Dr. Pepper cans. They had cans with images of all the Thor characters on it, and I remember looking at Anthony Hopkins as Odin and wondering why he was such a round butterball. The outfits *were* kind of ridiculous, but they also felt oddly overly shiny if that makes any sense. Like they weren’t wearing clothing that actually made a lot of sense for battle. It felt like they were trying to pull from the comics (which, to be fair, looks like someone decided to combine Conan The Barbarian with psychedelia, so I am fairly certain the costume department was doing their best), but also from the late 2000′s aesthetics popular at the time. I remember there were short “making of” shows on TV, including interviews with the cast, and I was familiar with the director (he also made a film version of Hamlet that he starred as Hamlet in) so from that information alone, I could pretty much guarantee that this movie was going to be like Shakespeare on steroids with a good hint of self-congratulatory auteur nonsense.

And I was not disappointed! The parts on Earth clashed terribly with the parts on Asgard, and I found it really funny because it was kind of like that meme where the detailed horse drawing gets more and more sketchy and terrible.

Like so:

You could really tell that the director just wanted to make an entire movie on Asgard without Thor going to Earth at all. The Earth parts were cringey and made me flash back to the early Iraq War Bush years (if you don’t know what I’m talking about it, it was a Whole Imperialistic Jingoistic Patriotic Bullshit Thing that I don’t want to go into).

The fight scenes were...ok...but they were also just...exhausting. I find this to be pretty much the case in most early to mid 00′s superhero movie. They are so obsessed with having The Big Fight To Make The Hero Look Really Powerful that the destruction ends up going on for so long that I get physically tired (I think I legitimately dozed off when Superman and Zod were fighting in the reboot film). The character development was ok, but once again, every character wasn’t really a character, they were an archetype.

And so, I wanted to stop here for just a second and go into that a bit more.

Thor 1 wasn’t really written as a Thor movie. Remember, the guy who had his fingers in this thing from day 1 is a Big Shakespeare Guy, and it shows. In plays like Hamlet, we don’t look at Hamlet and go “wow, I wanna headcanon Hamlet’s favorite breakfast and what he wears on Tuesdays.” (Though, of course, you are welcome to do so if you like- friendly reminder that Hamlet is in the public domain so go out there and write about him all you want!).

Hamlet isn’t really a “person” so much as an assortment of plot archetypes (prince, coming home after time away, depressed, vengeful, intelligent, calculating) wearing funny shorts. Nobody watches Hamlet because they want to know what Denmark was Like Back Then just like nobody thinks that Romeo And Juliet is a Very Accurate Depiction of Verona in Its Time, Actually. (Also, as an aside, for some reason, I always had this sneaking feeling that Shakespeare “borrowed” tropes from Oedipus and put it into Hamlet, but that’s an essay for another day).

In the movie, Thor isn’t meant to be a person. He’s a list of tropes because he is the Heroic Protagonist Archetype. In a lot of ways Thor’s personality and character (his pride and hubris) are part of the traditional heroic storyline. The hero has to have a fall before he can pick himself back up and reach the climax and resolution of the Hero’s Journey. Having him thrown out of his element and humbled by making him “mortal” (I’m still not sure what that means, but it doesn’t matter! It’s a plot point that serves the story, not the other way around!)

I do think that one of the reasons Loki is set up as a brother instead of as an uncle or older character is because Loki is known in the comics, and the whole “neglected brother who backstabs his golden boy brother to take the throne” thing is definitely a plot point in Hamlet.

I could see where the director and his team were stymied by the rules thrust upon them by the property they were trying to use. The story itself is a pretty standard heroic journey with other stuff sprinkled in. Loki has to be at least slightly villain coded for most of the film to serve the story, and the audience must unquestioningly believe he is “sneaky and devious” because it serves the story of Thor going through the growth he needs in order to be a hero.

BUT ALSO, Loki can’t be made into an irredeemable villain because in the comics as well as movies, these characters have to be allowed to have enough open-ended characterization to allow for them to be slotted into other stories. If Loki is a complete black-hearted monster, then the only part he can play in any heroic journey story is to die definitively at the end. By pulling back before making him go too far, it does weaken the archetype a bit (as absolute evil is a lot more cathartic to dispatch once and for all), but it serves a specific narrative purpose.

Which brings me to character design and how the audience takes it.

I remember when LOTR was first coming out in theaters. You had all the macho dudes going off when Gimley and Aragorn came on screen hacking and slashing, and then Legolas would show up and you’d hear a ton of screams from the teen girls in the audience. Feminine coded male characters are often really popular with with AFAB people, but they’re also popular with queer folks, especially villains due to queer-coding (villains often dress better and there’s a history of effeminate and queer Othering in media and society), so that’s definitely a Thing).

One of the main reasons I think this might be is that most films with a main male lead tend to be really man-character-heavy in general. If there’s a female character, she’s usually cast as the “cis-white-generically attractive love interest archetype” which literally exists specifically because the sausage fest of male friendships with close connection (in spandex) is very, very easy to turn into a gay romance. There is a reason one of the first and enduring fanfic pairings is Spock/Kirk.

A few more archetypes:

Thor’s three friends are basically versions of god Thor:

- A glutton who likes to boast/tell stories

- A battle-lusting solder who refuses to speak while he’s killing.

- A womanizer/narcissist

There’s also Lady Sif, who plays the roll of The Girl, No Homo on Asgard.

Thor’s parents, who are supposed to be incredibly powerful and capable, are basically kneecapped for story purposes as well.

If you want to ask yourself “why is Thor 2011 so irritating” it’s because it’s trying to tell a story despite the characters.

Well, actually...I lied.

It’s trying to tell TWO stories.

Oh yeah, that’s right. This is where the plot thickens.

You see, when this movie came out, people were highly derisive because it was an unknown property. Most people are familiar with Captain America (even if it was only the nightmare fuel movie from the 80′s) and they know who Iron Man is. Even the Hulk is pretty ubiquitous, though the main issues with Hulk are tied to the fact that pretty every superhero film that came out in the early ‘00′s appeared to be contractually obligated to include an hour long origin story because apparently nobody in the history of anyone is familiar with comic books other than a handful of [insert comic book nerd stereotype here] and in order to make a cash cow, the superhero genre needed to be attractive to South-Park-and-Jackass-watching-teens in the mainstream. If I can remember the movie posters and commercials correctly, most of it was being billed as a pure-action flick with clips of the fight scenes and manly men punching faces, because that’s basically the male power fantasy right there.

No think, just rage and beat because he good guy self insert, and that bad guy.

So basically, the whole Asgard part of the movie is a movie in and of itself that’s being rushed through to hit specific plot points- it’s an origin story, telling you who Thor and the Asgardians are so that when they tell the story about Thor on Earth, the entire theater of (and let’s not kid ourselves, this is for an America-centric audience) macho suburbanite young adults who take one look at Thor in his weird costume and weird speech don’t then start making up emasculating terms to refer to him and then walk right out of the theater because the movie is too lame and genuinely nerdy to be comprehended by the apparent dude-bro majority.

This was yet again another example of “We need to make this popular with the wrong demographic for money purposes so we need to spoon-feed them non-threatening hyper masculine narratives so that they don’t take one look at a property that is in effect a magic buff dude with long fabulous hair wearing very little and flying around with a hammer over a rainbow bridge and talking like Errol Flynn while he does it.“

I mean, they tried (insert gold star meme here) by making Jane a scientist (with all the PhDs, because more degree is more smart amirite guyz?), and the meet cutes where she keeps running him over with the car is funny enough, but in the end, she is still falls into the “OMG LOVE INTEREST AFTER LESS THAN 24 HOURS MY HERO” category and that is...annoying.

I mean, it’s better than Lady Sif, who...let’s face it, we don’t care about because she doesn’t matter and I literally had to look up those other guys’ names up on Wikipedia after watching them all get merked in the first five minutes of Ragnarok.

In any case, the movie doesn’t really even end in a satisfying manner because it’s trying to tell two different stories, and the stories themselves don’t really work well with one another. The whole Frost Giant/Loki part of the movie is largely just meant to be a hamfisted way to villain-code him from the beginning (if the blatant feminine coding doesn’t give that away). And the part at the end where he dies is, as far as I can tell, supposed to be a tragic end for Loki.

Of course, though, we all know Loki comes back, and characters in comic books are quite well known for dying and coming back from the dead when conveniently needed for a plot anyway, but you could definitely feel a huge tonal shift from the begining (Asgard/Jotunheim) to the middle (Earth) to the end (Asgard). It’s almost worse than having an Asgard origin story with a focus there and then moving to the superhero story and ending there, but they needed to have an excuse for Thor to be in the Avengers, so...there ya go.

Watching this movie is like watching one movie on one channel, flipping over to find another movie you like better, and then flipping back at the end of the second movie to find yourself in the last fifteen minutes of the first film. It’s jarring and the tonal change reduces the impact of the climax of the film.

In the end, the stories being told here are warring with themselves, which means that there are way too many unanswered questions, and a lot of the characters you’re supposed to hate/dislike (from a dudebro spoonfed perspective) end up becoming interesting and easy to fill in the blanks for. Loki is a prime example of this. His character does have a fair amount of screentime and his backstory has to be at least somewhat developed because it’s a driving force for the story of Thor’s hero journey. Loki provides some of the conflict that keeps the story from stagnating, and his character contrasts well with the hyper-macho, entitled Thor character by having more feminine characteristics, being thoughtful, cunning, and making plans. In a lot of ways, the intense love/hate (but still love one another) relationship between the two (and the “it’s not incest because my sibling’s adopted” porn trope) is one reason why people ship them so hard.

Loki is popular with a lot of AFAB folks because he represents a lot of common AFAB experiences- being smart, trying hard, yet still treated condescendingly and less than worthy by authority figures, and never good enough as The Dude Who Just Showed Up. A lot of people deeply identify with the casually abusive and dismissive way that Loki is treated, as though he is a monster, despite him trying so hard to be accepted. He falls into the abusive family trope under the Scapegoat archetype, but in the movie, there are explicit plot points that try to explain why he “deserves” to be scapegoated (thanks mainstream dude bro movie focus groups!). His character is often treated as sinister and suspicious long before he actually behaves in an antagonistic manner, which doesn’t help things. A lot of how Loki is treated in the film follows very closely to how a misogynist society treats AFAB folks.

Even if we discount the comic books and mythological lore, the bottom line is that this movie is designed to tell a certain story, and in this story, a certain type of person is lauded and shown as the example of Who To Be, and a certain type of person is reviled and minimized and shown as an example of Be Afraid Of This And Don’t Be This Or You Are Evil Garbage. This mirrors how marginalized people are treated in society so heavily that it makes a lot of sense why Loki is so beloved by fandom despite not being the focal character of this film, and why people have often deeply identified with Loki or associated deeply personal things with his character in fanart, fanfiction, and headcanons. A lot of people see his character as an excellent place to do introspective work and to work through personal traumas. I have also seen a fair amount of people look at Loki as a Sad Pale White Boi Who Needs to be Saved, which isn’t exactly true from a canon point of view, but I can see how there’s plenty of reasons to write or imagine the character that way, or to place him in situations where he can be validated or find romantic fulfillment.

Beyond Loki’s role in this film, you can definitely see that most of the characters are victims of the story they find themselves in, and this story is a Shakesperian tragedy coupled with easily digestible Hit Bad Guys With Hammer action segments. In a way, I would almost consider something like the Asgardian parts to have been better suited to a mini series, while the actual superhero movie part would be Thor being sent to Earth and then doing a Thing there. But that wasn’t really a thing back in 2011.

Thor is a very, very long, convoluted film because of the two stories that it is trying to tell while pretending that it’s only one. It’s so long that the novelization actually ends during the fight in the desert on Earth. And, speaking of long, this post is too, so I think I’ll post this now and if there’s interest, I’ll talk about Dark World and Ragnarok in subsequent posts.

Feedback, as always, is appreciated.

#Thor #Thor 2011 #meta #thoughts #loki #characterization #story versus plot #stories can be consistent but characterization is a bitch #characterization is inconstant if the story you're telling serves a different purpose

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