#i want to make the 1950s look like what today looks like in terms of union membership

[uncanny-tranny]

I always find it funny when USAmericans whinge about how unions are "un-american." Like unions are about as American as you can get, be real and unionize already!

[jbaileyfansite]

Interview with NBC News (2024)

Jonathan Bailey admits he’s still grieving the loss of Tim Laughlin, the wide-eyed congressional staffer turned fervent gay rights activist he played in Showtime’s groundbreaking limited series “Fellow Travelers.”

“Playing a character who is always searching for truth and has something to fight for that is meaningful and important made me really think, ‘How do you want to leave the world behind?’” Bailey told NBC News. “It’s a tiring thing for everyone to be like, ‘I want to make the world a better place.’ But Tim is an example of someone who’s a normal guy. He didn’t come from wealth, and he lived life to its fullest, including loving in a way that was just spellbinding.”

That love is the animating force of “Fellow Travelers,” which chronicles the decades-spanning romance between Bailey’s Tim and Matt Bomer’s Hawkins “Hawk” Fuller against the backdrop of key moments in queer history. After falling in love at the height of the Lavender Scare in 1950s Washington, D.C., Hawk and Tim weave in and out of each other’s lives for years at a time, unable to sever their bond. But after learning of Tim’s terminal AIDS diagnosis in the ’80s, Hawk drops everything to take care of Tim in San Francisco, where the former lovers are forced to address the true nature of their volatile relationship.

“Fellow Travelers” was nominated for three Emmys in limited series categories last month: Bailey (who also won a Critics Choice Award) for supporting actor, Bomer for lead actor and creator Ron Nyswaner for writing.

Following the success of Netflix’s romantic drama “Bridgerton,” in which he played a rakish viscount looking for his viscountess, Bailey expressed a desire to tell a sweeping gay love story. He booked the coveted role in “Fellow Travelers” six weeks before the start of filming in Toronto, following an electric Zoom chemistry read with Bomer — one of the most prominent openly gay actors working today — that even brought one of the executives to tears.

While he said he inherited the “inherent shame” of the AIDS crisis as a gay man who came of age in the early aughts, Bailey, who is English, knew very little about the Lavender Scare. He credited the writing of Nyswaner for helping him capture the spirit of Tim, a devout Catholic struggling to reconcile his faith with his growing infatuation with the emotionally unavailable Hawk, who is adept at playing the system to avoid getting outed.

“There’s something so childlike and full of wonder and unadulterated kindness about Tim that never leaves him,” Bailey noted. “When you see the huge effects of the societal pressure and control on gay people and how it affects Tim, I thought, ‘How do you tell a story of someone who’s bruised, battered and frayed by relentless, unforgiving control?’ I think the older he gets, the more painful it is for him.”

Bailey, like many queer people, has had a complicated relationship with religion. He attended a Church of England school and, at 11, was a scholarship student at his local Catholic school, where he “was completely aware of the lack of education around sexuality and gender identity.” Like Tim, he began to question his own “inherited beliefs” in his 20s, when he came to terms with his own identity.

While Tim’s religion makes him believe that something is innately wrong with him, it also gives him the capacity to believe in a love that he has felt but cannot always see with Hawk, who complements him in a way that is both “beautiful” and “painful,” Bailey said. “I think to say that they broke up a few times somehow assimilates it to a heteronormative relationship — they were completely not afforded that.”

“What Tim realizes is that the act of loving is the thing that you want to survive with and live alongside and to die with, and to be the more loving one is sometimes easier,” added Bailey, who thinks “there was no other” man whom Tim loved as deeply as Hawk. “I think the power of their dynamic — the brilliance — is that they met at that time, and it’s just a genius way of discovering and exploring how political and social attitudes really can’t kill love.”

Bailey and Bomer, who have both acknowledged that a show like this might not have even been made a few years ago, see “Fellow Travelers” as a kind of love letter to the queer actors who came before them.

“The way we look at each other is also about the opportunity that we’ve got that wasn’t there before,” Bailey said of his and Bomer’s palpable on-screen connection, which has evolved into a close off-screen friendship. “There’s a weight that comes to telling your own story or other people’s story that are similar or shares elements of your identity.”

On the day of the Emmy nominations, Bailey was in Malta — where he has been shooting the new “Jurassic World” film — with one of his best friends. They had already planned to find somewhere to grab a celebratory drink together in the late afternoon. But by the time they had settled in and tuned in to the livestream announcing the nominees, Bailey’s phone began to ring off the hook.

“The thing that was special, if a little ridiculous, is that we took a little selfie, and I realized there was just a pride flag that was in the distance,” Bailey recalled. “Having now spent a lot of time in Malta, you realize there’s only a few.”

Now on the precipice of superstardom with his roles in “Wicked” and “Jurassic World,” Bailey is redefining what is possible for an out gay actor in Hollywood, becoming a heartthrob to male and female audiences alike — even if he doesn’t often think about that label. “I’m excited to play more roles the older I get, and we will see what the heartthrob status is when I’m in my 50s,” he said cheekily.

As his profile has risen, Bailey has wrestled with which parts of himself he is willing to share publicly. His Olivier Award-winning turn in a gender-swapped West End revival of “Company” gave him an opportunity to speak openly about his sexuality — something he didn’t feel the need to reveal unless it was tied to his work. Now, he feels much more confident in interviews to volunteer certain stories about himself, including a harrowing experience in which a Pennsylvania man called him an anti-gay slur and threatened his life in a Washington, D.C., coffee shop.

For Bailey, who is still adjusting to the privilege of being able to choose his next projects, the company he keeps going forward is just as important as the material he is given to work with. He will return to the stage next year in Nicholas Hytner’s London production of “Richard II” and will reprise his role as eldest sibling Anthony in the next season of “Bridgerton.” He will next be seen as Jack Maddox, a charming academic and celebrity crush of protagonist Charlie Spring (Joe Locke), in the sixth episode of the third season of “Heartstopper,” which premieres in October.

“I recognized in the show something that I obviously didn’t have growing up, which is aspirational, generous storytelling about queer identity and gender identity that wasn’t necessarily a gay [show],” Bailey said of his initial reaction to watching “Heartstopper,” which, like many older queer viewers, made him feel slightly melancholic. “There’s so many people of that generation who just love it, because it’s brilliant and so well-performed by such an incredibly talented young cast.”

But truth be told, Bailey doesn’t think he will ever be able to let go of Tim Laughlin, who he likes to believe had “a very happy end of his life” fighting for AIDS awareness with the ACT UP movement without Hawk by his side. After having spent a year unpacking the life-changing experience of playing the character in post-screening Q&As and media interviews, Bailey has grown to feel the power of his work “more than [he’d] ever known.”

When playing a character who is confronting his own mortality, “you just think about how life is futile and quick,” Bailey said, “and if I can live a life as front-footed and as curious as Tim, then I’ll be a lucky man.”

Source

[violetrainbow412-blog]

Devil's night [S. R.]

Spencer Reid x fem!reader

word count: 4k

summary: Spencer is excited about his Halloween plans and you join him.

Directly based on episode 6x06, because I felt so bad about how the team behaves with Spencer that I needed to do something

“I see someone’s feeling spooky today,” Morgan smiled, looking you up and down.

You were wearing a cardigan knitted with various prints related to the time of year; pumpkins, ghosts, black cats, and candy corn, over a bright purple skirt and tall boots. Normally you would dress more formally due to the implied dress code the FBI operated under, but it was the weekend and Halloween was around the corner, so you could skip a suit day to wear one of those many scary-related items you had. After all, Halloween was your favorite holiday of the year. It was fun for everyone when you were a child, but as you grew up, your love for said celebration became a little weirder for others, so when you became an adult, you didn't think anyone shared such excitement about the date. Well, that is until you met Spencer Reid.

“It became a little more commercialized in the 1950s with trick-or-treating, and today it rivals only Christmas in terms of popularity” you heard him say, as he walked in with an already quite annoyed Emily Prentiss.

You knew that sometimes Spencer talked too much, but you hated that the rest of your coworkers got upset like that when he was talking about something that he was passionate about. Now the subject was, clearly, the next date.

"All I asked was what he was doing this weekend" she complained to Rossi. Spencer ignored her and continued with his cathedra as he settled into the empty space next to you.

“I'm toying with the notion of either going to the Edgar Allan Poe Shadow Puppet theater or the re-enactment of the XIX century Phantasmagoria,” he said and your heart did a little skip. You and Reid had argued on a few occasions, outside of work, about Poe’s works and although you didn't know what the second thing he had mentioned was, it sounded very interesting.

“What is a Phantasmagoria?” you asked nicely and when your partner noticed your presence he smiled widely, as if he was just noticing you in the room. The others all pouted in anticipation of the explanation to come and you hoped Spencer hadn't noticed.

“Phantasmagorias are these amazing pre-cinema projected ghost shows invented in France, where the showman attempted to spook the audience using science magic” he explained to you, while he took a seat and waved his hands from side to side. You were completely unaware of the term so you slightly parted your lips in astonishment.

"Sounds interesting"

"I have an extra ticket, do you want to come with me?" he asked you, almost immediately, with the biggest smile of all. Honestly, the invitation took you by surprise, especially who was asking, and Spencer seemed to see it on your face. “I mean, if you don't have plans this weekend. You can say no if you want."

“I'd really love to,” you exclaimed, so he wouldn't get the wrong idea, and watched his eyes sparkle with joy as he nodded.

The others wanted to make fun of it a bit, but Garcia didn't give them time to when she handed you the case files. When Hotch told you that you were going to fly to Detroit, your partner complained loudly and his gaze inevitably went to you, since you were supposed to have made plans together literally three minutes ago, but knowing that the unsub only attacked during these three days of the year. You had no choice but to accept your fate. You have never gone from feeling completely happy to being so disappointed in such a short time.

"I guess you better forget what I just told you," Reid sighed, as you left the conference room.

"Maybe we'll make it on time, when is the show?"

"This Sunday. The puppet theater is at 9:00 pm, the last Phantasmagoria show is at 11:00 pm. None are sold out yet"

"If we get back in time enough, I'll accompany you both, what do you say?" you muttered, trying to be as positive as possible, as you took your friend's arm with both hands and gave it a friendly squeeze. Spencer was taller than you, but thanks to the boots you were wearing and the extra inches they gave you, your eyes were almost at the level of his “Don't be discouraged.”

"I like your clothes today," he suddenly murmured. Sometimes he would give you those kinds of sweet compliments, perhaps as thanks for the kindness with which you always treated him, and you would almost always blush "The drawings are beautiful. Do you know why pumpkins became so representative?"

"Jack-o'-lantern," you replied, rather proud of yourself for knowing the answer.

"But did you know that in the original story it wasn't a pumpkin but a turnip?" he said and you were silent. But he didn't make fun of you for it, instead he saw a new opportunity to impress you "Yeah, you see, in the original legend Stingy Jack..."

The rest of the team, who was in front of you, shared knowing looks as if they were pitying you for having activated the doctor's rambling mode, but the truth was that you were fascinated with every word that came out of his mouth. Sometimes you couldn't believe how there was someone as intelligent in the world as your cute companion and as he spoke you prayed, perhaps with all your might, that you could catch the unsub in time to be able to fulfill the plans in the ones he had included for the weekend.

Almost as if by divine handiwork, the case was solved just in time for the plane to land and you two to rush home to get dressed for the theater. Hotch was even sympathetic to you and told you that the paperwork could wait for Monday just because he had heard of your plans, which you were immensely grateful for.

Spencer was happy that you agreed to go out with him, especially since the idea of asking you out was completely impulsive. It was true that he had an extra ticket but he never thought of having the courage to ask you to accompany him, much less did he think that you would be interested in it, since he was regularly ignored by his colleagues at work. It was something he had never discussed with anyone, only his beloved and gone Elle, but it haunted him almost every day.

Luckily for him, Spencer had prepared the wardrobe he wanted to wear in advance, and all he had to do was take a warm shower, shave, and put on some cream and cologne to get ready. In addition to, of course, styling his short hair as best he could.

He felt particularly concerned by his appearance that night and he pondered whether you would think he looked silly wearing a 19th century French suit. He had bought it last month and it was stored with his costume collection, which no one on the team knew about yet and he didn't intend for that to change.

He had offered to pick you up and when he got to your building, he felt strangely nervous. The doorman was a kind older man that he had seen a couple of times, so when he said that he was looking for you, the man called you on the phone to let you know.

They were silent for a few moments and he began to rock on his heels to kill some time.

“Will you take her trick-or-treating?” the doorman, Tony, joked. Spencer didn't take it the wrong way, instead he laughed it off.

"It's not the plan, but if someone takes pity on us and gives us some I won't complain" he replied and now it was the employee's turn to laugh.

"I've seen you before, are you her boyfriend?"

“Coworkers,” Spencer clarified, with a smile.

"Ah, so you're also a policeman?" although it wasn't the proper term, Spencer didn't know if you had hidden your real job for personal reasons, so he held back from explaining to the man that you were actually a profiler.

"Yes, something like that"

Tony wanted to ask more questions, but the sound of the elevator caught the attention of both men and revealed your figure.

"No fucking way," you breathed, looking your friend up and down and if he hadn't gone dumbfounded, he probably would have said the same thing "Look at you!"

"Where did you get that?" he asked in amazement. Although Spencer had thought that you would show up in a costume, he hadn't expected to see you like this. 

"You don’t like it?"

"No, I love it" he hastened to say, when he heard the insecurity in your voice "It's just… I didn't expect to see you as a 19th-century French lady"

You were wearing a beautiful black dress with lace details that obviously alluded to the fashion of the time, black satin gloves, plus a discreet hat on your well-groomed hair and boots that Reid had seen before, but they made a great combination with the outfit. The man's surprise was because he had invited you with such short notice and yet you had gotten the perfect costume and not only that, but one that conveniently matched his.

“And I didn't expect to see you as a French gentleman either” you laughed, as you reached out to wrap him in a hug "I guess it was pure fate"

“Or the fact that we are going to see a recreation of a 19th-century show. Our brains thought the same thing.”

“It doesn't sound so charming when you say it like that" you complained amused and he realized it was true "Shall we go? I don’t want to be late"

Spencer nodded and immediately offered you his arm to hold onto as you walked, a gesture that made you believe you were really entering a time tunnel.

“Enjoy your night”

"Thanks, Tony! Don't scare too many kids and don't eat too much candy,” you waved, blowing him a kiss as you followed Spencer out the door.

He guided you to his car and opened the passenger door for you and then he got in himself to start the engine and get going.

"I really can't believe that we got a couple's costume by pure coincidence"

“Couple costume?”

“Yes, they are those costumes of the same theme that you use with a couple. You know, like the people who dress up as Fred and Daphne or Morticia and Gomez”

Spencer didn't know the last couple, but he did have a vague recollection that the first ones mentioned were from Scooby Doo due to the cartoons he came from as a child.

"Oh" he sighed "Yes, get it”

“Honestly this was a last-minute thing. My downstairs neighbor studies theater and we are good friends, so I asked her if she had anything in her curiosities bag that could help me and she pulled out this dress. It was enough to adjust it a little" you told him, putting both hands on the neck of your dress and smiling from ear to ear "I couldn't believe it, it was really a stroke of luck”

"It looks so pretty on you," he said suddenly, looking away from the road just for a moment to check that you had heard him. "I don't think I told you when I saw you, but that's what I thought."

"Thank you then," you smiled, feeling your cheeks warm a little.

Spencer started talking to you about the creation of puppet theaters and, of course, the Poe stories you were going to witness, with you interrupting him only to point out some decoration along the way that you thought was cute. On Halloween you almost always preferred to stay at home to watch horror movies or go down to the hall to distribute candy to the youngest children, with very discreet costumes to avoid the evil looks of adults. But now you were excited to be doing this with Spencer, who was maybe the only person you knew who wouldn't make fun of you under any circumstances. Your relationship was based on a certain complicity, perhaps more than you had with any member of your unit.

Arriving at the site, he reopened your door and offered you his hand to help you down, which you took without complaining. Once you were outside, he repeated the gesture from when he picked you up from your building and in this way you walked to the entrance, where a woman disguised as who you assumed was Berenice (a Poe character) sold you a couple of tickets.

It was a lovely show and when you weren't looking at the puppets you took the time to admire your companion, whose eyes revealed the emotion of a child. You never thought the doctor was fond of a thing like this and now that you had discovered it you found it quite adorable. As you left you asked him if he was a Muppets fan by any chance and, to your surprise, he was. Spencer even told you that he had a couple of Kermit the Frog items that his mom bought him when he was little, but he also told you not to tell anyone or he'd be embarrassed and you pinky promised him.

You still had an hour between the two shows so you decided to go to a nearby park where there were lots of food stalls: candy apples, popcorn, candy, lemonade, and you even got to one where a Hispanic woman offered you pieces of candied pumpkin. You had to take off your gloves (which he kept carefully in his jacket) when you bought a few pieces of this last one for the two of you and when you tried it you agreed that it was delicious. The woman told you that in Mexico, her country of origin, she always served them to her children with a glass of milk.

Spencer spared no expense just to fulfill all your cravings, even though you refused, so when you got in the car to go to the Phantasmagoria your stomach was pretty full. The place where it would take place was a gray tent in the open air, with a dais in front and several wooden benches arranged so that enough people could fit in. As you had arrived with some time, you took a seat on a bench in the second row and waited patiently for the show to start.

Suddenly all the lights around you went out, leaving only the ones pointing to the front of the stage, and a presenter dressed as a magician appeared.

“For many centuries, wandering spirits have inhabited the world unseen by the human eye, always confined to the world of shadows…” his voice was mesmerizing and kept you on the edge of your seat, watching him carefully “but for a certain time of the year, their magic grows and they are able to cross the barrier that separates us…”

The entire tent was filled with smoke and the audience, including you, looked around trying to figure out what would happen. The presenter continued giving his gloomy monologue and, although you didn’t imagine how, you even felt that the temperature decreased a little with each word he said. Suddenly even the lights that were pointed at him began to dim and by the time he finished explaining to you the whole place was in complete darkness.

There was silence for a moment to build tension and then there was an explosion that made you jump in place. To tell you the truth, you didn't expect much from the show, you thought that being a recreation it would have many shortcomings, but when the first figure appeared on the roof your heart skipped a beat.

You weren't a scared person under normal circumstances and your resistance to the horrifying images you saw at work on a daily basis shows this, but this time perhaps all the environmental components of that night were what made you feel that way. A loud laugh resounded and then another pair of specters appeared, this time flying at the height of the audience and even passing through some of you.

Spencer's reaction was nothing like the rest. Despite his fear of the dark he was totally fascinated by all the images, his mind already working to decipher the magic trick that was being performed. What finally got his breath caught was the feel of your hand searching his. He was still shielding your gloves so he could feel the cool temperature of your fingers, as opposed to how warm he was in comparison. Even knowing that doing that was a reflex act due to fear, he stopped paying attention to the show to look at your hand on top of his, with that noticeable difference in size.

Just as you had admired him during the puppet show, he took the time to observe your expressions now. Your face lit up from time to time by the illusions around you and every time you startled you squeezed his hand harder, in addition to adjusting your body against his as if you were looking for some kind of protection. Spencer had gone out with friends many times and of course with the rest of his female colleagues at work, however none of them had behaved like you were doing. He wasn’t bothered by your behavior, but rather intrigued, since you seemed quite comfortable taking refuge in him to feel safe. Although he knew how to identify qualities in people, he sometimes had a hard time crossing the line of identifying them to really admire them. When he thought of JJ, he thought of a charismatic woman. When he thought of Emily, he thought of intelligence. And when he thought of Penelope, he always saw joy and optimism. But when he thought of you, there were too many qualities to focus on just one: he thought of kindness, calmness, creativity, wit, beauty, empathy... what a big heart you had and how at the end of the day you were perhaps the only one who could make him smile. When he invited you to join him, he did it because he knew you had the same feeling towards scary things, but now that you were there, looking so pretty and holding his hand tightly, he thought maybe there was something else going on between you. You were the closest thing he had to a best friend, though he had never said so verbally, and that night he wanted to be nowhere else but by your side.

Only when the lights came back on did he realize that the spectacle had been forgotten to him, since the whole time he had been looking at you.

“That was all for today, my friends. Thank you for these wonderful performances and remember to recommend us to your friends the next time we're in town. Have a spooky night, all of you."

“I can't believe it, did you see all that? It was just awesome! I didn't think it was going to be this good” you said, completely excited, as you turned in his direction. Apparently you weren't even aware that your hands were clasped until he got up from the seat and helped you imitate him with that grip. Though you thought of apologizing for that, you didn't, fearing to embarrass yourself further.

“It was amazing, even for me it was hard to figure out the trick”

“Why do you want to figure it out? admit it's only magic, doctor. Sometimes life is” you laughed, grabbing his arm for the third time like a happy wife would her husband.

You are something magical, he thought, with the words on the tip of his tongue, but not daring to say them to you. 

Although the night was late, the movement in the streets was still the same and Spencer considered asking if you wanted to go somewhere else, but the yawn that escaped you made him think that the best thing for both of us would be to go home to rest. After all, the case had exhausted you.

"Back to your house, right?" he asked, just to be sure and you nodded with a smile.

The road wasn’t long, you only had to take care of the naughty at night so as not to receive any damage, so when you least expected it, you were already in front of your building. Although you intended to say goodbye, Spencer told you that he would accompany you to the door of your apartment just to make sure that you arrived completely safely, because he knew better than anyone how much could happen to a woman alone, even if it was such a short journey, and he didn't want to risk you. Tony was still awake and greeted you nicely as you walked in, so you could then get on the elevator and press the necessary button.

“I seriously have no words to thank you for today, Spencer. Except for that one time I ended up in the hospital for eating so much candy, this has been my best Halloween ever,” you admitted with a laugh, as you leaned in for a big hug.

"Thank you for accompanying me. I'm really glad you had fun, because I had a great time too”

There was a dead space between you, in which you just looked at each other with a smile. It wasn't an exaggeration to say that the night had been wonderful and maybe it was just that you two were trying to drag it out as long as possible.

“Spencer”

"Yeah?"

"Before you go, can I ask you something?"

"Whatever" he responded immediately. He got a little nervous thinking that he wouldn't be able to satisfy your curiosity by ignoring the topic you were going to ask him about and hoped that wasn't the case.

You waited another second before speaking.

"How frowned upon do you think it was for 1800s society for a woman to steal a kiss from her companion?"

Spencer's eyes danced a little in his sockets and you thought he was processing your request in disguise, until he looked at you again and spoke with complete assurance:

“Very frowned upon, surely. At that time, it was usual for men to court women, who were very repressed from making their own decisions or living their sexuality as they pleased. A woman who kissed a man was considered indecent."

You wanted to correct him, tease him or, as a last resort, simply pull him by his shirt and plant the kiss you had wanted to give him all the way. But you didn't do any of that, you just laughed softly and enjoyed his smirk for telling you the right answer.

“I was afraid of that. It's good to know” said this, you carefully approached him and placed a small kiss on his cheek, seeing him slightly surprised by the act “See you tomorrow at work. Call me when you get home”

"I will do that. Rest and see you later"

"Bye”

Just as he said, he called you a few minutes later to announce that he had arrived at his destination so you could sleep peacefully.

Spencer didn't realize that you had explicitly asked for a kiss until Morgan told him and while his friend laughed, he felt like the luckiest guy of all and, at the same time, the dumbest.

taglist: @navs-bhat @reidwritings @tricia-shifting14

[dallasgallant]

Time period post: Terminology and technology

This started as quick and easy smaller one but it’s sort of diverged into subsections, anyways… this’ll be on some of the existing technology and terminology of them time. There was actually a far bit more than you’d assume.

Let’s start terminology wise. “Refrigerated air” is still one of my favorites that I’ve discovered, it basically means that a building is air conditioned! HUGE! NEW THING! It was being added to motels, businesses - homes eventually etc. so a motel being “Refrigerated air, color Tv, swimming pool” is a really damn nice place. Now days motels seem to be looked down upon but they’ve always been a huge part of the culture, especially when cars were new and big and the height of road trips back in the 1950s-60s. (Howard Johnsons , holiday inn etc) this was also the height of roadside attractions/tourist traps think ‘worlds largest’ anything, Route 66 (before it crumped into the remains of today)

~

Another terminology heavy thing is Schooling,

Back in the day it was much more common to hear “Primary school” in America than it is now an alternative is Grammar school - both of which being daycare-Elementary. Then “junior high” was more common than Middle school

But in a smaller town it’s also common to have more than one if not all of these schools and grade levels shoved into one huge building.

Corporal punishment- hitting students, was still a thing. (Also the argument of basically student rights/are people when it came to anti war protest in high schools)

Desegregation of schools began.

Schools also started later in the morning but still got out at a decent time; this changed in the 1980s

~

As for general terminology a lot of slang is still used today that was introduced in the 60s, I’d recommend looking it up but for JD specific stuff I do have a post up!

It’s also important to recognize some of their language would be outdated… not actively out to harm but they wouldn’t have knowledge of language 50+ years in the future etc. (like how a lot of older phrases or words have become offensive etc)

~

As for technology, a lot was changing too. The computer was still new and huge— spanning rooms as this huge mechanical thing that was going to get man to the moon. Still far from being in homes. However, still a lot of neat stuff and gadgets for people to play with.

The 60s are really the height of what we’d now consider “Retrofuturism” with how maybe one day they’ll be huge video screens and transporters and video watches and world peace etc. there was a obsession with progress and innovation in a very optimistic way.

Though if you wanted to transport your music (and weren’t going to carry a huge ass record player around) you have small portable radios but also hand/shirt pocket ones as well. I can’t speak to sound quality …

Phones were still on the wall or on the table. Color tv was slowly being adopted in households across the country— but still pretty $$$ a lot of people would be sticking with B&W even if tv and movies were making the more permanent switch.

So uh fun fact about cars. It wasn’t until 1968 models came out that seatbelts were standard and required. It’s more than likely the boys cars don’t have seatbelts. (They were invented in the late 50s and it sort of depended)

Bench seats were also super common so it didn’t matter which side of a car you got into as you could just slide across. You can see where this only adds to teen car culture- make out points, drive ins with some uh backseat bingo (actual term! Lmao)

[wanderersrest]

An Abbreviated History of Mecha Part 1: The Mighty Atomic Prelude (The 50's and 60's)

Welcome to An Abbreviated History of Mecha anime. Today, we're starting at, as Fraulein Maria would say, at the very beginning. We're taking a quick peak at the beginning of the canon, which means that we're starting back in 1950 (specifically 1952). I should also confess right now: there are two series on here that are demonstrably NOT mecha shows. However, due to their sheer influence on Japanese media as a whole, I feel it is important to bring them up as being honorary mecha shows due to their sheer influence pop culture.

Tetsuwan Atom/Mighty Atom/Astro Boy (1952)

Starting us off is Osamu Tezuka's seminal manga series, Mighty Atom. Known over here in the west as Astro Boy, this series would be what kickstarts a lot of the modern anime and manga industry due to its sheer popularity. Astro Boy would also be one of two series that would be emblematic of how Japanese pop culture would portray the recent use of atomic energy. It should also be worth noting that realizing that Astro technically is a mecha is what got me to start using a broader definition of mecha instead of the classic giant robot definition.

Due to its fame, Mighty Atom has receive multiple adaptations throughout the years. Of note are:

The original 1963 anime.

New Mighty Atom (1980) which updates the series to 1980's animation standards.

The 2003 anime, which does the same, but to the standards of early 2000's anime.

The 2009 CGI movie.

Gojira/Godzilla (1954, honorary mecha series 1)

1954 would also give us Ishiro Honda's Godzilla, the movie that would make tokusatsu-styled live action stories in Japan. Godzilla, alongside RKO's King Kong, would play a large part in popularizing the concept of kaiju. And boy will kaiju play a big part in the history of the mecha canon. As we'll see soon enough, the history of tokusatsu heroes, kaiju, and robots are all intertwined with one another.

Godzilla has starred in numerous movies since the original, but for stories based off of the original there are:

Godzilla Raids Again (1955), a direct sequel.

Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: All Out Monsters Attack (2001), a Heisei-era production that uses the original '54 Godzilla as a manifestation of the horrors of World War II.

Shin Godzilla (2016), a re-imagining of the original movie set in contemporary times directed by Hideakki Anno.

Godzilla Minus One (2023), the most recent outing inspired in part by GMK.

Tetsujin 28-go/Gigantor (1956)

(Oh hey, this gif again!)

Tetsujin 28-go is the creation of one Mitsuteru Yokoyama and is generally regarded as the grandfather of the giant robot style of mecha. Tetsujin is unique amongst mecha in that it is controlled not by a pilot riding inside of it, but by a little kid with a controller. Tetsujin 28, alongside Mazinger Z, would help to codify a lot of the tropes common to the classic superhero mecha anime that would be prevalent in the 70's. Like Mighty Atom, Tetsujin would receive multiple adaptations throughout the decades.

Shin Tetsujin 28-Go/The New Adventures of Gigantor (1980), which updates Tetsujin's design to look more in line with something like Mazniger Z.

Tetsujin 28-go FX (1992), sporting a radically different look that's more akin to something out of the Brave Franchise.

Tetsujin 28 (2004), a faithful adaptation of the original manga (at least I think it is) directed by Yasuhiro Imagawa.

Cyborg 009 (1964)

Created by Shotaro Ishinomori in 1964, Cyborg 009 is another classic human-sized mecha series. Cyborg 009 would be the first of many hits for Ishinomori, and he will be mentioned again later in this series.

Oh boy... I am not a Cyborg 009 nut, but in terms of adaptations, Cyborg 009 has:

The 1966 Film

The 1980 Film

009 Re:Cyborg (2012)

The Call For Justice Trilogy (2016)

The 1968 Anime

The 1979-1980 Anime

The 2001-2002 Anime (I actually remember when Toonami aired this series!)

Cyborg 009 vs Devilman (2015 OVA)

If you want to follow someone who follows a lot of Shotaro Ishinomori's works, I'd recommend checking out YouTuber Mercury Falcon for more info about Ishinomori.

Ultra Q and Ultraman (1966, honorary mecha series 2)

(The urge to use a gif of Ingraman is strong)

Ultra Q and Ultraman are the first two entries of Tsuburaya's legendary Ultra franchise, with the latter in particular being one of the most famous pop culture icons of all time. Ultraman's influence on Japanese media is so large, that I'll be mentioning it at least once in relation to other series later on.

Ultraman, like Godzilla before him, would get the Hideaki Anno treatment with Shin Ultraman in 2022.

Giant Robo/Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot (1967)

Another one of Mitsuteru Yokoyama's classic manga series, Giant Robo deserves a mention due to its influence on tokusatsu. Giant Robo would usher in an era of tokusatsu that would rely on using giant robots as the main protagonist.

In terms of adaptations, there are two animated adaptations, but only one will be listed here:

GR: Giant Robo (2007)

If you want to learn a little bit more about the history behind Giant Robo, I'd recommend checking out blunova's video on Giant Robo for more info on this important series.

Conclusion

As the 60's would lead way into the 70's, we would see a lot more live action tokusatsu series involving giant robots. Of course, this would be untenable due to how expensive it was to do tokusatsu effects for television. However, one robot would appear in animation that would change everything.

(Read in the voice of Tessho Genda) AND ITS NAME IS...!!!!

[beardedmrbean]

Zoomer Huey, I tend to see people saying why Gen z don’t have sex much.

Holy

Fucking

Shits

These journalists surprisedly have WORSE self awareness than there boomer relatives

Here a hint https://x.com/swannmarcus89/status/1762582001507323991?s=46

And gender dynamics are…nuked in the fields they are surveying. Women and girls are told that all men are predators and misandry is left unchecked

Also, why Hollywood act surprised about the sex abuse?

We all heard about the casting coach, and how suspiciously people from working class backgrounds like Micheal Jackson (yes his dad had his music connections. But essentially mj was a slave and was arguably was the first black child star unless I’m missing someone) and Walt Disney (though not as bad) are painted as monsters while the actual monsters are protected for decades

I mean look at Judy Garland, she was a sweet person and she did help the LBGT in Hollywood and supported the civil rights movement

But her “crazy” behavior makes more sense because she was sexually abused at a extremely young age

And she not the only one, Shirley Temple, the boy who played at the first LA Dennis the Manis

Oh and the Peter Pan actor (a lot of people leave out the part where ALL of Hollywood basically says he can choke and die because he was “too” Disney)

But sorry about the Gen stuff, but the false rape accusations, maybe if you guys didn’t view men (especially white ones) the same way Nazis viewed the Jews while saying all the working class men were Weinstein.

My Gen would have more sex

Entertainment industry has been like that since the beginning of forever, probably less so when women weren't allowed to participate but still a thing I'm sure.

As for Judy Garland it was nice to see people come out swinging in her defense when someone tried to start shit over well

She was not in control of her carer, saying no was not an option for her with this, but dumbasses that can only think in terms of today's standards never think about that.

Jay North (Dennis the Menace) did ok, so did Shirley Temple, plenty of others not so much, more recently we can look at Drew Barrymore and RDJ who both had fairly public meltdowns and problems.

Drew was ruined since her first film was ET and Spielberg takes care of the kids on set, going beyond the legal requirements.

Bobby Driscol was the Peter Pan VA top of his Wiki article.

Robert "Bobby" Cletus Driscoll (March 3, 1937 – c. March 30, 1968) was an American actor who performed on film and television from 1943 to 1960. He starred in some of the Walt Disney Studios' best-known live-action pictures of that period: Song of the South (1946), So Dear to My Heart (1949), and Treasure Island (1950), as well as RKO's The Window (1949). He served as the animation model and provided the voice for the title role in Peter Pan (1953). He received an Academy Juvenile Award for outstanding performances in So Dear to My Heart and The Window.

He just fell into the child actor pit, where he wasn't "cute" anymore couldn't get gigs and couldn't adjust to not being in the spotlight, the way he went and nobody knowing is awful to think about still.

Jackie Coogan, on the other hand was a different story.

His parents sucked and as a result there's a series of laws named after him California's Coogan Law all about protecting the earnings of child actors from their parents. % goes into a trust iirc.

He ended up OK in the end though

The false accusation thing, #me too hurt women because #believe women was taken advantage of to such a degree that even this coming out to light

has still probably not cleared up for the trooper, and men are opting to not mentor women because of not wanting to risk a false accusation, everyone screams about how rare they are, to which I say so what, why should they assume the risk even if it's minor

Former VP Mike Pence came out and said he won't be alone with a woman that's not his wife in order to ensure that there is no possibility of someone making a claim of impropriety.

And he got this response

Why is anyone going to put their neck on the line when something like what he said is going to get this kind of response.

Maybe instead of crying about how rare false accusations are they should focus on shaming the people making them and coming up with solutions to keep them from happening.

You know instead of blaming the victims of the false accusations.

All this and so much more going on that isn't in this ask goes to the I don't blame people for not having as much sex, it's actually kinda nice too, fewer std's this way.

I went on a couple tangents, hope that's ok

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

New Rule: Bring Back Trad Dads | Real Time with Bill Maher

And finally, New Rule: this Father's Day, if you really want to give your father something he'll treasure forever, give him permission to be a dad like dads used to be.

And before you start in with, "But Bill, what do you know about it? You're not a parent." Yeah, I don't give blowjobs either, but I can tell when someone is doing it wrong. How about that? So, no, I don't have kids, but I sit next to yours at restaurants.

I see parents in stores kowtowing to brats like they're congressmen groveling before Trump. I've seen a seven-year-old ram a shopping cart into someone's coccyx and the parent just shrugs and gives a look like, kids… what are you gonna do? Raise them right. That's what you can do.

For as long as I've had a television show, the issue of parents overindulging their children has been a topic of discussion. So, it's not like it's new, but it hasn't gotten better either. We were talking about trophy syndrome in 1993, and then it was helicopter parenting, and then bulldozer parenting. And now we have gentle parenting, or as it used to be known, negotiating with terrorists.

British author Sarah Ockwell Smith, who coined the term, said, "The key here really is thinking, 'Would I like it if someone did this to me?' If the answer is 'no,' then why would you do it to your child?" Because they're a child? Would I like it if someone stripped me naked and plopped me down in a tub of water? No, but with a kid, that's just bath time.

I keep hearing how parenting is so hard these days. Yeah, because you're making it hard. Gentle parenting. It's like a Taco Bell breakfast. The reason it feels wrong is because it is. And it's ruining lives on both sides of the equation. Parents, it's ruining your lives because you've made yourselves a butler to a five-year-old.

And the kids, because the results are in. And all this letting the kids run the show, path of least resistance, child rearing, is harming them. The average high school kid today has the same level of anxiety as the average psychiatric patient in the early 1950s. A recent survey of employers found that about one in five recent college graduates brought their parents with them to a job interview. Our kids are crippled with anxiety because they haven't been properly prepared for a world that doesn't revolve around them.

Almost ten percent of college students claim to have PTSD. From college? The cradle of safetyism? The home of safe spaces and trigger warnings and policing offensive words? You're not supposed to get PTSD in college. You're supposed to get an STD.

The National Institutes of Health says that roughly half of teenagers now have a mental health disorder at some point in their lives. Which tells me one thing, the National Institutes of Health is also part of the problem.

The mental health disorder is on the part of the adults, not the children, the adults, who forgot that to a child, discipline is love, and that kids need structure and authority. Of course, they think they have traumatic stress disorder when they get to college, if before they left the house, they never heard the word "No." Never heard, "You're wrong." Never heard, "Wait, wait."

A lot of life is waiting, yeah. Waiting for your boss to recognize your worth. Waiting for love to bloom. Waiting for your career to take off. Waiting for your partner to be finished in the bathroom. Waiting for your porn to download, for your vape to charge. For the drugs to kick in. For your eyebrows to grow back after you do something stupid on drugs. It's vital you learn as a kid how much of life is going to be waiting.

And boundaries. Jesus, yes, boundaries. Sex dolls set more boundaries than today's parents. This is why the traditional dad, the trad dad, needs to make a comeback. Not all the way back to the 1950s psychopath who never said he loved you and hit you with a belt, no. But just back to the dad who believes that "Because I said so" is a perfectly legitimate answer to any question a child may have. Just back to the dad who would never say anything as stupid as, "My kid is my hero." Or, "Where do you want to eat dinner?" Or, "One more story and then we really have to start thinking about going to bed, okay?"

Trad dads don't negotiate. They say, "You will apologize to your mother, don't make me turn this car around, some things just happen because life is unfair, clean your room, be quiet, the adults are talking, and it's not all about you." Mostly, a trad dad knows he's your parent, not your friend. "Hey, buddy" isn't in his vocabulary. He isn't your emotional support animal. He's simply a guy who understands the job to raise an adult who can survive in the wild.

There's a long-running TV show in Japan called Old Enough, where parents send children as young as two on errands by themselves. Sometimes the kids cry, and sometimes they come home with the wrong stuff, but that's okay. That's how you learn. Meanwhile, in this country, parents strap leashes to their kids like they're escorting a serial killer on Con Air. And children are constantly tracked like they're the last surviving albino tiger instead of just another white kid named Liam.

But what happens, what always happens when uber-liberal bullshit goes too far, is it produces a far more damaging counter-reaction. In the absence of traditional fathers, teenage boys these days are turning to meathead misogynist influencers like Andrew Tate. Ever heard of him? Well, your kid has. He's popular with teenage boys because when we don't give them a masculine male role model they look up to, they go out and find one. And being teenage boys, of course, it's going to be the worst possible one.

Andrew Tate is a man who answers the question, "What if Axe Body Spray could talk?" He's so anti-woman, I don't think he even has a mother. I think he was born when lightning struck a jug of protein powder. And now he's your teenage son's favorite thinker. Did I mention he's a big Trump fan?

So, this Father's Day, let's give dear old dad the gift of being dear old dad. And also, shut up. He's trying to watch the game.

[linesonscreens]

Let's Read Peanuts (Only 45 more years to go!) – December 1955

There are lots of great strips I just don't have room to comment on. I strongly encourage everybody to read the full month at the official GoComics page. Today's month starts HERE.

December 2 1955

Linus, that’s what we like to call “noclipping”. It just means that you live in a simulation and everyone and everything you’ve ever known or loved is a lie generated by an unfeeling algorithm. Once the novelty wears off though it’s really nothing to write home about.

December 5, 1955

Hey man, I get it. We’ve all fallen down the Wikipedia rabbit hole at some point.

December 8, 1955

Wait are those terms like, dog slurs? Am I going to wake up someday to find my inbox flooded with very angry call-out messages about my past usage of the M-word?

Look, I didn’t know OK!? That’s just how everybody used to talk!

December 17, 1955

Seems a bit mean, but I imagine you can only hear this speech so many times before you get numb to it and start thinking up zingers.

December 18, 1955

Oh. Good. The religion stuff is finally starting to work it’s way into the strip.

Yaaaaaaay.

December 20, 1955

Santa being a tragic figure with a checkered past is hilarious and I’m going to start telling this version to small children.

December 25, 1955

Oh piss off you two. Even if Snoopy was just a normal dog this would be an exceptionally cool thing to do.

Thoughts:

Sorry for the delay! I recently moved and it’s made doing anything beyond opening boxes a challenge. Let’s do our customary look at how the art has changed, shall we?

Charlie Brown

(October) 1950

(December) 1950

1951

1952

1953

1954

1955

Linus

(September) 1952

(December) 1952

1953

1954

1955

Snoopy

(October) 1950

(December) 1950

1951

1952

1953

1954

1955

At some point (I think around March) something I can't quite put my finger on shifted and the strip has felt a bit different ever since. I think a big part of it is how he draws his characters with the heads getting smaller and rounder while character's faces get much more tiny. It's not necessarily a bad thing but it does make them look a bit less cutesy and approachable in exchange for them feeling a bit more grounded. I'll let you decide if that's a good, bad, or lateral move.

Meanwhile, certain individual characters have evolved a LOT this year independent of everything else. The changes around Linus are the most obvious what with him growing up and becoming a proper character, now capable of walking, talking and constantly imagining the violent demise of his many enemies (#relatable). Visually, he's still got a big head and stubby appendages but he’s starting to reach a point where his look is more or less in-line the rest of the main cast.

Snoopy on the other hand is going through a much more interesting change where we’re seeing the entire visual aesthetic shift dramatically. He started as a stylized but fairly grounded depiction of a real world dog but over the course of this year he's transformed into some kind of Looney Tunes character. I suspect that this was because Schulz wanted to draw Snoopy doing goofy faces/impressions but his old design just just wasn't very flexible due to how blocky it was. Again, it’s not ~bad~ really, but I miss the cute simplicity of the original look.

Meanwhile, Charlie Brown’s changes are more subtle but in some ways more profound. While Snoopy has gotten more animated and expressive, Charlie Brown is actually a lot more deadpan with a tiny face on a smaller, now almost perfectly circular head and a more stocky frame that gives him a much more “neutral” or "static" feel (for lack of a better word). He's also almost completely lost that goofy edge he had early on in favor of an early version of the constantly depressed and put-upon personality he will have for the rest of the strip. Personally, I think it's a bit of a downgrade but considering how successful this version became that's probably just a me thing.

Finally, the background art continues to become more loose and less complex. Schulz is still capable of some incredible compositions, but intricate backgrounds are becoming rarer now in favor of minimalist options like using few lines to indicate grass. I don’t really blame him for that one though. That’s a LOT of saved time which is important in a daily comic strip where you constantly have another deadline looming. Still kind of sad to see it happen though.

Overall, this feels like the awkward early middle school years of the strip. It's a transitory period where Schulz is trying new things and figuring out a more sustainable long-term workflow. It's no longer the Peantus of 1953 but it's also not the "classic" Peanuts of the 1960s we're all familiar with yet either. Which is interesting in and of itself, I think.

-------

Thanks again to everybody for reading! It's been very heartening to see that I'm not the only one who finds digging through the archives of this silly strip interesting. I'll see you all in 1956!

[headfullofpresley]

I was wondering how would you describe Elvis and his personality and differences, romantically/sexually, across his different eras? it's an interesting topic and I'd like to understand more about him from a fact-based perspective. thank you!

hi nonnieeee! i love this question and i love talking about elvis, so thank you sm for this. 💕

this got wayyy longer than expected, so check under the cut!

soooo, let's start off with elvis in the 1950s.

we all know elvis loved women and in my opinion, he was a cheeky bastard (lovingly). when elvis had his sights set on someone, he got them- simple as that. except for brigitte bardot, sorry el 👀. anyways, he was flirtyyyy as hell. the part in good rockin' tonight where he goes "why don't you come to my house and i'll give it to you?" actually came out of his own mouth irl (and i will never get over it). also, when he told june he was crazy about her ass and was shamelessly looking at her ass. and remember the letters he sent to anita when he was in germany?

"every time i lay in my bunk and i see your little eyes and your little nose and it's almost like you're here, like you're pressed up close to me. i can feel your little hair on the side of my face and sometimes i get so excited and want you so bad, i start sweating"

i think he definitely had his fun in germany. this shouldn't be a surprise.

i mean, he was a young male in his twenties and got the attention from girls left and right- and he liked it. he definitely was not shy and when it comes to sex, i don't think he was either. he told larry that he screwed pretty much anything in sight a week before he had to report in 1958 and i believe it. he later learned that there was more to it than only the physical act, but i mean... if i was a male in my 20s and looked like elvis, i would've done the same. 👀

if you want to use the term sub or dom, i think he was a dom but not in the way we know it today??? i was obv not there, but i can't be convinced he was a big sub or sub at all (even though i love subby men🥴). i just think he was in that standard "man role" if you know what i mean- and i believe this goes for all era's, tbh. he was also pretty jealous at times which honestly makes me giggle sometimes but also makes me want to slap his face a lil bit. anyways, in my opinion; he was at that age where you're exploring things in your sex life and finding out what you do and don't like and just like any other human being, he did just that. with... a lot.. of different.. girls. good for him. 💁🏼‍♀️

anyways, elvis in the 50s was a menace. and that's a hill i will die on.

nowwww elvis in the 1960s? on a whole 'nother level. i feel like he was still at that stage of exploring at the beginning of the 60s, but he certainly knew what he liked. he had girls who'd make videos of themselves and watch them on the tv/video set ups he brought into hotel rooms. i believe he even had a girl fly over when he stopped at a motel once? and i mean... work. priscilla and him used to roleplay a lil, so i think he enjoyed that along with taking videos and pictures.

i don't think he had any extreme kinks. feet? white underwear? liking girls to be virgins? hardly extreme. he wasn't too fond of women who gave birth though and did not have sex with them if they did, which honestly... sucks for the women that had children and for cilla (i would simply fight his ass, anywaaaayyyy). i also read that he didn't believe in mixed race marriage/couples in the early 60s, but his view on that changed in the 70s. i can't tell you how true this is, so take this as you will. considering how different times were back then, i don't think it's entirely impossible.

emphasizing here that i do not think elvis was racist in any way possible, but life and the way people thought about certain things were very different back then!!

anyways, i don't think elvis was a selfish lover, he strikes me as the kind of person who likes giving as much as receiving and again, i don't see him being submissive at all though also not extremely dominant. elvis was a dominant person in general, but i feel like he was a gentle lover and wouldn't force anyone to do something they don't want. he'd kind of ease the girls into what he likes, but he would also make himself very clear on things he doesn't like.

i think he was big on the touchy touchy and foreplay, but i do believe him and cilla had, or were close to having, sex. as in penetration, not feeling each other up only- which imo is normal, but for a lot of people it's a touchy subject bc of their age difference. despite sleeping with others also, he considered cilla to be the steady woman in his life and love and sex go hand in hand for most people, doesn't it?

also him and ann-margret? freaky deaky in the sheets, i can't be convinced otherwise. but i also believed they genuinely loved each other and had a connection and that's what elvis preferred over simple one night stands. he wanted someone to both talk to and make love with and i think because ann was closer to him in age and so free spirited, he was drawn to that. also the fact that she got married a week after he did in the same city breaks my HEART- but that's a whole different conversation.

AND i do think him and nancy had a thing going on. even though nancy always said it was platonic between them... one can dream, right? they looked cute together.

the 1970s, baby! who doesn't love the 70s? we all do. when it comes to elvis, a lot of people see him as the "daddy" and "big daddy elvis" persona but in my opinion, that's nothing but fictional.

elvis was big on the baby talk and used the term "mommy" for linda, but i highly doubt it was in a sexual manner. sure, none of us were actually there, but here we have a man that craved for deep human connections and love in several different girls, rather than just having a quick fuck and leave it at that. he liked to take care of his girls, but he also liked to be taken care of. i don't think elvis ever lost his interest in sex and liked sex throughout his entire life, but i do feel like things slowed down a little in the mid 70s. don't get me wrong- he was still definitely having sex, just not in the same way as when he was in his 20s, ya know? keep in mind he was not 100% healthy, as sad as that is.

elvis liked his girls petite and still, virgins. he gained a lot of experience through the years and i feel like he liked showing that experience to the younger females he dated. he liked to be The Man in relationships. the story about linda losing her virginity to him was honestly really sweet, he was extremely gentle with her, as it should be. and sure, elvis could be shy sometimes but imo not to an extreme- he was more so gentle and let's be honest, he knew just what the ladies liked. he knew how to sweep 'em off their feet. i think he was confident in his love making skills, but would elvis liked to have been called daddy? no. i don't think so. despite being a dominant man, he liked to be babied.

mirrors, man. mirrors. we've all seen his room. i think he liked seeing himself and his partner get it on, and i also think he liked watching other people (i don't believe he never had 2 girls in his bed at the same time and i definitely don't believe he never watched them).

above i stated about elvis possibly being prejudiced, but also that his views changed in the 70s. sexually, i do think he experimented with women from different races etc in these times.

jealousy. j e a l o u s y. he cares deeply, and it makes his jealous streak come out to play along the way. this was the man that had red west call "a guy" so he could get rid off mike stone, but eventually chickened out. i believe elvis to be a person with a lot of layers- and yes, maybe some of it has to do with the medicine abuse etc, but it was also who he was as a person. he could be unreasonable at times, in both friendships and relationships, but it doesn't take away that his heart was in the right place. elvis loved deeply, so he also hurt deeply.

writing about elvis and his life from a fan's perspective, especially one that was not alive at the same time as he was, is an extremely difficult thing to do. i don't agree with some of the things he did and said, but who am i to judge? elvis presley was a human made out of flesh, blood and bones. one that was on a forever search to find himself, to be comfortable in the vessel god gifted him. he made mistakes, did some shitty things, but he was also very kind and did very good things that changed people's lives for the better. it's said he could bring you to tears, but he also was a gentle, generous soul who could make you feel good about yourself, like you belonged. but doesn't that count for all of us? maybe not in the exact same way, but we're all just trying to find our path in this strange and sometimes cruel world. we sometimes say mean things that we regret and then we learn from it. we're all looking for that big, fat "why?" in life- we might never find the answer, but that doesn't mean we'll give up trying to find it.

i didn't mean to end in on a note like this, but i guess what i'm trying to say is that we should start treating elvis as a human being and not as the man we create in our heads and fanfictions. he wasn't perfect- but if he was, where would the fun be in that?

(i'm obsessed with ginger's coat in this pic lol.)

Thanks for coming to my TedTalk.

jk jk. no but seriously- these are my opinions on the topic. if yours are different, that's okay too and i would love to hear your take on it. 💗

[featherlesswings]

I turned 39 today, and I’m feeling like I should share some wisdom.

Be silly. Don’t let the brain worms win: you are allowed to be silly and enjoy yourself. Probably nobody will laugh maliciously, if you’re not still in school, but if they do - that’s on them. They are jealous that you are free.

Wear what makes you happy (as long as it’s weather appropriate and covers what’s necessary for the venue.) Don’t let yourself get stuck in a “same outfit every day because if I change my style, someone will NOTICE and they will SAY SO,” loop. Also don’t let the old rules about these bodies being allowed to wear this kind of clothes and those bodies under no circumstances being allowed to wear that kind of clothes rule your life. Wear. What. You. Like. The worst that can happen is someone will be rude (and that just means they’re not worthy of your awesomeness,) and the best thing that can happen is someone who IS stuck in the old rules will see you looking amazing in the body you have, and think, “oh, I can do that too!”

Likewise with hair. If you’re not in some situation that restricts what your hair looks like, like a religion or a branch of military or some fancy office job where they have super strict dress codes : don’t be afraid to try something daring with your hair. Dye it the color you’ve always dreamed of. Grow it long, if you want. Cut it short, and discover your real face. If you wear your hair in a ponytail all day every day because you don’t like it to be down, but you’re afraid it won’t look good short : just get it cut! You can ask a stylist what they think would look good on you. It grows back, and it’s just hair! Hair is like fingernails. It’s not that big a deal.

Jump in puddles! Preferably with rain boots on, because I’m terrified of nematodes, but barefoot every once in a while is okay too. Doesn’t matter your age. Especially if you have kids, jump in puddles with them! I made one of the best friends I’ve ever had because she saw me jumping in puddles with my babies.

Trust your own instincts. Even if your whole life, you’ve been told not to believe what you see, not to trust your own mind. If something feels wrong, act accordingly. Don’t let the rules of polite society keep you from protecting yourself or pulling out of an uncomfortable situation. Trust yourself.

If you can, if it’s available to you, take care of your mental health. Whether it be therapy, meds, reading texts about similar experiences, meditation, whatever. Praying doesn’t count, I’m sorry.

Ask for help. If you have social anxiety or feel yourself getting overstimulated or know your own limits - tell a friend, ask them to help. I’m terrified of restaurants with overhead menu boards. My husband knows what I like, so when it’s too much, I have him order something he thinks I would enjoy. Don’t be ashamed to look up specifics online before you go somewhere you’re unfamiliar with, so you can have a plan.

Before making a decision that makes a big impact on your future, think about the long term. Don’t get a pet or conceive a child on a whim.

Tell your friends you love them, often. Show them, in whatever way is your way.

You will lose friends, over the years. It’s going to be okay. Some people are only meant to share a part of your life, not see it to the end.

If it’s available to you, get out in nature from time to time. Unplugged. This one is hard for me, because I’ve got to have headphones stimulating my brain all the time, but it’s important to let your mind loose from time to time, and being outside and being quiet can help with that.

Eat before you go shopping. Sounds simple, but it will save you money and frustration. Trust me. Honestly, eat before you leave home whenever possible, unless you’re going out to eat.

I know most Gen Z and Alpha folks already have this worked out, but you do not owe the world your immediate assimilation into the 1950s cardboard cutout life. My young women & AFABs : you do not have to get married and start having kids to be taken seriously as an adult. Those of you raised evangelical will know exactly what I mean. Take your time exploring who you are, who you want to be, and what you want out of life, before tying yourself to someone who might ask you to make yourself smaller and put aside your dreams to make room for theirs.

Do art! Even if it’s bad! Especially if it’s bad! Draw on envelopes & napkins! Get cheap paints and go wild! Water color sets & watercolor paper are not expensive. Doesn’t matter if it’s dollar store stuff, or even thrift store craft supplies. Make something with glitter. It doesn’t have to be something someone would buy. Art for the fun of making art, in my opinion, is just as important as moving your body every day if you can.

I will end with my favorite quote from Space Mom, may she rest in moonlight.

“Stay afraid, but do it anyway. What’s important is the action. You don’t have to wait to be confident. Just do and eventually the confidence will follow.”

- Carrie Fisher

[back-and-totheleft]

INTERVIEW: OLIVER & SEAN STONE (ALEXANDER REVISITED)

Q: When we talked to you during the junket for the theatrical release of Alexander, you weren’t a fan of the DVD format. Have your feelings changed now that DVD has allowed you to do several cuts of your movie?

Oliver Stone: Yes. DVD gave me a creative freedom I’ve never had before. This was an unrated three-hour-forty-five-minute cut, which would’ve been unacceptable in theatrical exhibition terms. They just don’t do it anymore. I grew up in the 1950s, and we had roadshows all the time. And the intermission aspect of it was like theater today; if you have an Act One, Two and Three, you can get out in the middle, take a breather, and think about what you’ve seen. That was the right length to this movie. It always was. It was in the script. Unfortunately, I didn’t [initially] see it quite that way; I was arbitrarily trying to make this movie three hours or less. So, as you know, I made two cuts of it. About two-and-a-half years after the film was released was when I worked on this – during the editing of World Trade Center. And I was finally able to come to peace with myself, letting the whole script express itself. It has a different pace, this film; the emotions come out differently. And the intermission comes at the right spot: it comes when Ptolemy and Alexander are in the mountains and deciding to go into India, and Alexander says, "We must make an end; we must find an end." It just has the right feel for me.

Q: Is this really the "Final Cut"?

Oliver: Yeah, I can’t do anything more. This is it. (Laughter)

Q: It’s just that you didn’t refer to this as your cut.

Oliver: I didn’t even bother. I called the second one the "Director’s Cut" because I thought that would be the end, but, in fact, two-and-a-half years later, I would call this "Revisited". But this is it. I promise you I won’t be back. (Laughter) All the footage is here, and this is the film I’m happiest with. DVD does give you that, and although I may have disparaged the idea that people are looking at films on smaller and smaller screens… it’s a shame that people have to watch DVDs with the lights on in a television-type situation where people are wandering in and out of the room. Movies are different from television, and you cannot watch movies like television. It distorts it.

Q: You mentioned the old road shows, and the way that these films used to play – like David Lean films. And in the documentary, Sean mentions that you had to pull Alexander together in less than ninety days. I know David Lean had a lot longer to make Lawrence of Arabia, and, yet, this film strives for that scale. When you have that limited amount of time, how do you bring all of these elements together to make something that is as big, hopefully, as Lawrence of Arabia?

Oliver: You can’t do it anymore. I think Ridley Scott is the perfect example, with Kingdom of Heaven and Blade Runner. He wanted to make more ambitious films, and he finally got the chance with DVD. I don’t know how, because exhibitors have cut it off. They have to make so many shows a day, it’s impossible to sell a three-hour forty-minute movie. I could never have gotten this through the system; it would’ve been a scandal. I have thought of alternative scenarios. Since you guys are mostly buffs, I would say to you that if I had had the guts, which I don’t think I had, I would’ve released a three-hour forty-five-minute cut in Europe. They probably would’ve done it. Remember, we were truly an independent film; we were financed essentially from Europe, an English-French co-production. I probably would’ve released this version in Europe and given it Warner Brothers, and they would’ve probably cut it. It would’ve been the typical Sergio Leone scandal, and I don’t think I’d be here right now. (Laughter) It’s just this system. You live in this system.

Q: Since this is an art form that costs millions and millions of dollars, what does an artist do?

Oliver: You can’t make big movies. You have to make smaller movies. You can’t take on Alexander unless you figure out a way to do it for less than three hours – which is possible. I couldn’t do it that way. Honestly, it does cut down your ambitions. Because some movies do take longer. There is a breadth to them.

Q: Does that mean that in the future you would won’t go for that kind of scale, or that you’ll look for other options?

Oliver: If seventy–five percent of the revenue is coming through DVD, you have to assume that there is a possibility of doing this, but you have to do it for DVD – unless an occasional theatrical would break through. But I don’t see that happening because who would put up the money for these kinds of things unless DVD becomes highly profitable?

Q: Would you be able to live with compromising for the theatrical release knowing that you’ll get your Director’s Cut somewhere down the line?

Oliver: That’s a very good question. You don’t set out to do a DVD cut and a theatrical cut, but perhaps because of the nature of circumstances, now we have to think that way. But, no, I would go for the best on theatrical.

I had a very short [production period on Alexander]. There are two versions of this story, but David Lean [said] he did not start cutting [Lawrence of Arabia] until it was over. In other versions, it was cut during. But, honestly, when we finished this thing, we had four or five months to get ready for mix, and that was too short a time. And it was my fault. I thought I could pull it off, but I just couldn’t. I mean, I was happy with the film theatrically; I wouldn’t have released it otherwise. But it would’ve been a huge scandal to pull out [of the release date]. Marty Scorsese had done it two years before with Gangs of New York. He did take that extra year, but that was a different situation; we didn’t have the money to do that because of the interest rate. It would’ve been an enormous problem for us, so we had to get it out.

Q: Did you see Sean’s documentary before it was approved for the DVD? At times, it’s not a flattering picture of what filmmaking is like.

Oliver: Sean was courteous enough to show it to me before, and I made some suggestions, but only for filmmaking reasons. I was embarrassed about some things in it, but I said, "Fuck it! I’m going down anyway with this movie. I might as well tape the whole thing." (Laughter) It wasn’t very flattering at times, but there was a special moment in our relationship because he was coming of age. And it was the first time we really had truly spent time together in a working environment over a long period of time, which was very good for him to see and for me to bond with him. He was shooting at weird times, but he was my son. Had it been a documentary crew, it would’ve been more difficult for me. He was in the hotel room, and on the way to the set, on the way back from the set… I mean, these are key moments for a director to say things they wouldn’t normally say.

Sean: I’m curious as to what you’re thinking of when you say "more embarrassing" or "private" things. There’s the aspect of the budget and producers, but from [Oliver’s] point of view I don’t see why that would hurt at all, because it only helps the audience understand what kind of pressure the director is under. That was the intention behind most of that: understanding what this project means, how big it is, how much money, how many people are working on it, and what’s on the line. You can understand the process better by this.

Then there was the personal aspect, which is the father-son relationship, which is what we were exploring towards the end. Actually, he incited it; he was the one who encouraged me to put the camera more on myself and introduce myself as a character. Initially, it was just going to be about him, purely as a portrait of a director.

Q: Oliver, there are some scenes with you going back and forth with the producers over money. Is that a variation of a conversation that happens on every movie?

Oliver: Oh, definitely. I would say it’s even more intense. I’m glad he caught that scene because we’ve had several conversations like that. I happened to have a great producer on this show: Moritz Borman. He was truly an independent. And the fact that we had French and German partners gave me… when Warners saw the first and second [theatrical] cuts, they would’ve cut all references to sexuality and all of the gorier stuff. All of the primitive warfare that you just saw, they would’ve cut that. They would’ve probably simplified the story enormously; the eunuch would’ve been gone. It was a very tough one to get through.

Q: Those cuts would be for getting the proper rating?

Oliver: No, we knew we were in for an R-rating. It was just to avoid an NC-17, but I think we got through that, Rosario Dawson withstanding. (Laughs) The eunuch was the biggest problem, I think, in terms of sexuality; the fact that he was a military commander who had Greek proclivities was not easy, because that’s not the way Americans like to think of military people. But the eunuch was a real hang-up. He was chopped out of the theatrical version. And I’m glad he’s back because he brings a humanity to Alexander when he’s dying; you see the emotions in the eunuch’s face. That’s part of allowing the emotions to play themselves out.

Q: Do you think production documentaries take on the face of the film that they’re talking about naturally? Or was that something created in the editing room?

Sean: The only thing I had as a model was the Apocalypse Now piece, Hearts of Darkness, which was very well done. It really gives you a sense of what that shoot must’ve been like, how hellish it was. And then, of course, I liked Lost in La Mancha. But, when I went into it, there wasn’t much that I was working with as a model; it was something where I shot everything over eighty-something days with 100 hours of material. I didn’t really know what I was doing. (Laughs) I didn’t catalogue it, so at the end I come back to it and I start working with an editor, and we just had to go through it. We had to watch and categorize all the interviews we had, and the material we had. Out of that, you kind of start to build a story. He often was saying, "Why don’t you shoot the clock, and pay attention to the time, and do a day in the life of a filmmaker and how stressful that is?" Well, I didn’t want to do just one day. I had so much material, and nothing that just added up to one day. So it was trying to do a metaphor by using three or four different locations, and giving you an impression of arriving on the set in the morning time, the slow build-up. And then how you get through one day, and then will be in the editing room until ten or eleven at night. You really don’t sleep much. You get home for like six or seven hours, and then you’re back out to the set. Some of those days you really did finish at five in the morning. It was insane.

Q: How inviting was the cast and crew to your filming? We see one moment where Colin says, "Fuck off with your documentary bollocks!"

Sean: Colin was great, actually. That was a joke for him. It wasn’t intended to be nasty. That’s just his humor. But when [Oliver] was dealing with actors, I didn’t want to intertwine into that relationship that he had going, so I would try to stand back and get some audio bytes if I could. But mostly I respected that distance. I would take the actors separately, approach them, start a conversation, and just deal with them independently. Angelina, for example, made sure I made an appointment for the interview with her because she has her own PR people and a lot of security. Val Kilmer I’ve known since I was seven, with The Doors, and he was just great joking around all the time. But because I was [Oliver’s] son, and I was there every day, you do break down the barriers.

Q: Oliver, is it difficult to direct when you have cameras lingering around? It was obviously more impersonal when you had to contend with EPK (Electronic Press Kit) crews.

Oliver: It’s very difficult, talking to actors especially. It’s the most personal stuff. Each actor requires a different language. It’s very personal. It’s like sex; sometimes you don’t want to be filmed doing that. But if anybody is going to do it, I think your son… and I had committed to the idea that he was going to work with me. He started as a soldier in the phalanx, actually, and after doing that for a few days, he switched over. Then he was behind camera. As I said, I committed to being honest. He may have cut out some stuff that may have embarrassed me.

Q: Was the presence of the cameras ever irritating?

Oliver: There were times I was irritated, yes. Things would not go well, you know. But, as I said, it was a warts-and-all kind of thing. I knew this project was going to be a tough one, and that the chances of its success would be very tough. So if you’re going to sink, you might as well go down in all its glory.

Q: How do you split your time between the tent (Stone sets up his video village, a bank of monitors where the director watches each take via video, under a big black tarp) and talking to the actors?

Oliver: I balance it out. When the take is done, I’m out there mixing it up. I keep a hands-on relationship. I don’t want to make it remote. If anything, it’s very touch-and-feel, like looking in the face of the actor. But the tent is crucial because it’s an objective perception. And I had many cameras, too, so I had to look at various cameras. But it’s a way to really concentrate because the one thing you lose on the set is the script. The script is the bible. What is your original intention in this chaos, this puree, this noise, this money, all of the thousands of issues of everyday. You often lose sight of what was the original intention. And having worked on the script so hard… every time we would roll, I would basically have the script in front of me. And when I was in doubt, I would look at the line and try to remember the moment of the writing. That helps to balance out the madness. That’s why [the tent] exists: you need a sacred place. If you’re out there all the time in the noise with horses and elephants and dust, you become so externalized that you lose your internal.

Q: When do you feel you’re at your best on set, and when do you feel you’re at your worst?

Oliver: I’m at my most when I arrive. (Laughs) It’s hardest when you arrive because so much has to happen. And I think I’m at my best towards the end as I’m getting it. When you’re getting it, you really feel it. Sometimes you get the essence of the day in the late morning, and sometimes you don’t get it until after lunch. But the important thing is to get it. If you feel you don’t get it, that’s really frustrating.

Q: At the beginning of the documentary, Sean talks about how you were so prolific as a director during his childhood. You were making films at a year clip. In 1991, you had two films come out: The Doors and JFK. You were a machine in the sense that you were really locked-in. And with every film, there was a certain expectation: when you went to see an Oliver Stone film, you knew you were getting a certain kind of experience, what with Robert Richardson as your cinematographer, and the use of different film stocks and so on. Finally, in 1997, with U-Turn, you shifted gears. Was it that you got bored, or that you had exhausted that style of working and that you had to pull back?

Oliver: I think the latter would be the case. U-Turn was the eleventh film in twelve years. But it was ten films in ten years [from Salvador to Nixon]. We had worked at a pace that was incredible. I mean, one film a year of that size, that energy – and you can imagine the details that went into those films. They were huge films. They were muscular and big. And I do think we reached a natural exhaustion point. And then, in 1996, I edited a novel I had written earlier [A Child’s Night Dream]. I really worked on the novel; I went back to writing. U-Turn was a smaller film done with a smaller budget; it was done quicker. So I was tired. Then, when I did Any Given Sunday, I re-exhausted myself again, because that was probably one of the most difficult experiences, having to stage those football games. And then Alexander, with the documentaries in between. The pace has let up, but the intensity has not. And, actually, World Trade Center was exhausting. There was so much dust, and to shoot in those conditions, that was physically exhausting to all of us. So I’d love to do a little drawing room drama. I’d love to do Gosford Park. (Laughter)

Q: Around the time JFK came out, you became the go-to guy for conspiracy theories. I’m sure you must have some opinions about what’s going on now. (There’s laughter, as well as an audible groan from one of the publicists.)

Oliver: Listen, I think the obvious has been missed, which is that the conspiracy these days has been so overt. You don’t need to hide it. There’s no need for covertness. If the President of the United States has been caught leading us into a war under false circumstances and everyone knows about it, that is a conspiracy. And no one seems to have impeached him for it.

Q: But we really need our agitators at this point. I think it’s interesting that you’re going to do Pinkville next, which is about the My Lai Massacre, and here we have another filmmaker of your generation, Brian De Palma, who’s doing a film about Iraq [Redacted]. I think it’s interesting that… it seems like you might want to attack what’s going on right now by going back to what you know best and what you’ve done best. Is that what you’re doing with Pinkville?

Oliver: I’m not going back to Vietnam per se; I’m going back because it’s a hell of a script [written by Mikko Alanne]. In 2001, it came in, and we worked on it. It’s more like JFK in that it’s an investigation of how things get covered up. I think that’s an old fashioned genre. In a sense, it’s a crime thriller, because a crime happens but it’s covered up, and it takes the tenacity and the veracity of two, three, four… actually, more men, but two main men to really uncover this crime. Because it was buried. People forget that My Lai did not come out for a year-and-a-half, and it was only in dribbles and drabbles. I didn’t even know as a soldier what exactly had happened until I read Alanne’s script in 2001. So the full implications of it, people still don’t remember. And certainly the new generation doesn’t remember. I think there is an historical obligation to remember. If we don’t remember, we’re really fucked.

Q: You still bounce back-and-forth between directing other peoples’ work and writing your own scripts. How does that work?

Oliver: When I’m working with another writer, I tend to make a lot of effort. When I collaborate with a writer, I’m not interested in credit, but I’m feeding him stuff all the time that I feel is important to shaping the script. We’ve been working very hard on Pinkville. We’ve had about eight drafts since 2001.

Q: Many people stop being writer-directors at a certain point and just become directors. Could you see yourself doing that?

Oliver: No. I love the act of writing. I like the quiet, internal aspect of it. If I lost track of that, I couldn’t direct the same way. I couldn’t be a director for-hire; it’s just not my nature. (Pause) I take that back, because you’re going to catch me one day. (Laughter) If there was a script that fit my sensibility to a T, I would take it and I wouldn’t change a word. But that hasn’t happened yet.

Q: We talked to Shekhar Kapur yesterday for Elizabeth: The Golden Age, and he was asked if there were parallels to contemporary issues. He said, "Of course, there is. Otherwise, what’s the point of making the movie?" Do you agree with that?

Oliver: I think we can only see the past through the conditions we live in in the present. Therefore, we’re conditioned. The past assumes the nature of the present. Certainly, Elizabeth means something to Shekhar Kapur in terms of today. We’ll see what it means when I see the movie. I’m a history person; I love history, so I don’t look for that necessarily. But I am conditioned by the present.

Q: Have you every thought about looking forward? Have you ever thought about doing a film depicting where you think society is headed?

Oliver: I’ve tried. I’ve developed several sci-fi projects over the years. I wrote The Demolished Man years ago. I wrote Conan the Barbarian as a sci-fi. But I’ve never been happy enough to make [that kind of] film. It’s a high-level field; you’re going into Kubrick-land, Ridley Scott… there have been some great sci-fi films, and I don’t want to make a half-assed film. It’s not my area of expertise. But that’s not to say it won’t change. I will say, in answer to your question, that the reason for Alexander… is that Alexander is one of the greatest inspirations. He’s an example to the youth of today – of leadership, of guts, of bravery, of following your dream. True, at the same time, with inspiration there is also misery and suffering and burden that he had from his youth. But I wanted to show the young generation that there are heroes; there are people who can change the course of history – for better or for worse. In Alexander’s case, it’s one of the greatest models, and I think we’ve forgotten that – especially in America. They know Alexander much better abroad. We did much better in Japan. (Laughs)

Q: Looking at the full range of your films, all of your protagonists have something in common with Alexander, whether they’re charismatic and self-destructive, or going up against impossible odds. Do you think this is an outgrowth of your interest in Alexander, or is he just another character in that line?

Oliver: I would say that Alexander was in that line of people; otherwise, I wouldn’t have focused my life around Alexander. As a young man, I read Mary Renault’s books, and they much moved me. And then I read Robin Lane Fox’s great biography from 1972, which gives you a very Western-oriented overview of it. Alexander is a prototype. You realize that when he went to the East with this size Army, no one had done that. All the Greek mythic heroes had gone east, but they were myths. Achilles was a myth. Perseus, Theseus, Hercules… they probably existed in some form. But they all went east. That’s where a Greek went to make his bones so to speak. And Alexander was the first man who actually went east not to plunder, not to loot and come back to Greece – which is where the Macedonians wanted to go back with the money. He stayed. And he became half-Eastern. That was the interesting thing about his journey. It wasn’t like "Let’s get out of Iraq." He went over there to stay. He probably didn’t know that at the beginning, but there was something that chased him out of Greece. I hypothesized some of it had to do with his mother. Why didn’t he ever bring his mother out to see him? It beats me. But I’m fascinated by the idea of this man. He did something that no one’s ever really done before. Even the Mongols went home.

Q: There’s a quote in the documentary: "Perfection is the enemy of good." I’m wondering if you can elaborate on that. And did you always feel that way, or did it take you some time to come to that conclusion?

Oliver: That’s my personal idiosyncrasy. It’s a French expression. Perfection is the enemy of good. You do hear of these cases of the Kubricks of the world who do take after take in search of perfection, but I think that’s an illusion. I really do think that it’s subjective. The kinds of films I’m making, which are fairly large and ambitious… and they’re controversial, and you can’t get a lot of money to make them. I say you have to settle. Get the overall. Some of my films may have been crude at times, or tough, or missed the points, but I’ve tried to get the overall in. I think that’s more important. You may miss a thing or two, but you move faster. If you can do it in three takes, do it in three takes.

There’s the great story with John Huston and Jack Nicholson, where he said to Nicholson, "You got one take." And he didn’t believe him. But he actually did have one take, and he got it right. I’ve been on sets as a writer before where actors would warm up with the first take. I don’t believe that. I think you should do rehearsal and work at it, but when the camera rolls, you should be ready. I think Clint Eastwood would agree. Try to make it good the first time.

Q: The Hand is coming out on DVD in a couple of weeks. Have you looked at it? Is there anything different about it?

Oliver: No. That was an early work. It’s flawed. But the last time I saw it a year-and-a-half ago, I thought some of the dialogue was really good. And the story is based on a good thriller. Michael Caine’s performance in interesting. It’s a strange movie; it’s an uncomfortable blend between the psychological and the horror. I was pressed to put more horror in there. I was a young filmmaker, and I had a good dose of studio pressure there.

Q: As an experienced filmmaker, do you think, "Hey, there’s some good stuff in there," or do you obsess on the mistakes?

Oliver: I see the mistakes, yeah. But I think there’s some very good stuff. It did take a beating. I did not work as a director for four or five years until Salvador, and I had to do that off-lot with British [producers]. I suffered for that film. But it did make money, ultimately, for Warners.

Q: You talk about how you knew you were going down with Alexander. At what point of the production did you feel that, and how did you then rear your shoulders up and keep going?

Oliver: You know, I felt the same thing on JFK: that this was going to be the end of me. I really did. It was another three hour-plus movie, the dialogue was cerebral, there was enormous amounts of difficulty, it was a complex screenplay and a very complex edit. I didn’t think it would make it, and I was amazed when it did. It resounded as it went around the world. JFK was a huge hit. So I guess that emboldened me to keep going, but I knew that one day I would come to this point that I would make something so outrageous and so ambitious that… it’d be that Don Quixote feeling, that I’d have to tilt at a windmill. Sometimes you’ve got to do it. That’s the only way you can do things.

Nixon was a setback for me financially, far worse than Alexander. Alexander did well abroad, and will make money for its participants. Warner Brothers is doing well with it on DVD. But Nixon was the biggest setback; we spent $42 million, I think, and we grossed $13 million. I love that movie; it’s one of the most ambitious I’ve made on the political scene. But it just did not take. I guess the character of Nixon was not attractive to American people or foreign people. That was the worst setback. But people who write about the setback of Alexander are wrong. My worst period was Nixon, Heaven and Earth and U-Turn. Those were the three least performing pictures I directed.

Q: Sean, my favorite part of the documentary is when you confront your father with what the critics have said about him – in particular, the charge of heavy-handedness. How did you work up to that? Was there some trepidation there?

Sean: No, I think that was one of the first questions I asked. (Laughter) It’s important to have a good ongoing dialogue, and [Oliver’s] never been shy about hiding things from me or talking to me about those things. Honestly, I think it was one of the first things we were talking about. It’s one of the things critics do reference: heavy-handedness. Aside from the conspiracy theorist thing, which sort of gets thrown as a jab.

Q: Oliver, how do you draw the line between being an artist and a businessman?

Oliver: I think you can maintain two tracks. I think you have to. That’s what this kind of filmmaking is about. If you’re not aware of the limitations of what you’re up against… it’s like a general: you have to know your artillery and you have to know your infantry. You have to know what you have. You have to marshal your forces and use them well. It comes down to the personal and the intimate, but at the same time you have to have the big picture.

Q: Given the television landscape today, is there anything you’ve thought about developing for maybe HBO or F/X?

Oliver: I produced films for television, including Wild Palms for ABC back in 1993, which was pretty advanced for its age. But I would work in television if I had no choice. It’s not a hot medium. It’s a cool medium: people walking out of the room, the lights are on, your wife or husband is talking, your kid is talking. It’s mind-boggling. It’s a medium in which you can miss something and come back to it. But film… I make my films like you’re going to die if you miss the next minute. You better not go get popcorn. (Laughter)

Q: Don’t you think shows like Heroes and Lost have afforded people the opportunity to bring a more film-like attitude toward television.

Oliver: Well, they have. Television has usurped everybody from film. And so have commercials, by the way. In a sense, we’ve democratized the image. If you look at the techniques of JFK and Natural Born Killers, they’re all over commercials now, all over TV, all over the place. I see them so constantly that I feel that it’s a degeneration; there’s no point or purpose for it. To the contrary, stylistically, I would go the other way like with World Trade Center, where you’re really concentrating on the acting, the lighting and the story. This is what we are: we’re storytellers. There are reasons for stylization, but let’s do it better than television. The stock is great, and they have access to digital. Everyone has DI [Digital Intermediate] now, and they can make their films look great. But, for some reason, television still bores me. Even the best shows. I’m not a Sopranos fan, I hate to tell you.

Q: You talked about how your aesthetic was appropriated by commercial directors. They took the look of your films to sell product, and now there’s no meaning to it.

Oliver: It’s not just me. They’ve taken from all of us. A lot of the good cameraman who we used are doing television work; they’re doing commercials for a lot of money. And the commercials look incredible. But what’s it about? I made three major commercial campaigns. I enjoyed it, I experimented with it, and at the end of the day I felt no satisfaction. It was like having a fast food lunch.

Q: But when you consider how people have gotten used to your aesthetic in the hands of other people, did it force you to completely change? And was that frustrating?

Oliver: I would never go back to the style of Natural Born Killers. You always try to find the right style for the movie. That’s the key. Every movie requires its own style. Just be honest to the story. Tell the story in the best possible way that is different, exciting and original. But with television, the image has been degenerated, no question. With the internet, commercials… people are much too cynical about image. It’s stale. And all over the world, not just America. I was on a plane two days ago from Asia, and you can’t believe the flatscreen images on the plane. So what can you do? You have to find another way.

Q: With movies becoming more television-like, especially with the glut of ads and previews beforehand-

Oliver: Oh, god.

Q: -how do you make sure that film stays unique?

Oliver: It’s very difficult. When I go to the movies, and I have to sit through ten previews of films that look [alike] and tell the whole story, you know that we’ve reached an age of consensus. And consensus is the worst thing for us. We all agree to agree. That’s where we lose it as a culture. We have to move away from that. That’s what I’m trying for, and what I hope [Sean] is trying for. I would like to see originality. It’s so difficult.

Q: Sean, what are your ambitions as a filmmaker, and does it help that your father’s an established filmmaker?

Sean: I’m not sure yet. (Laughter) I wouldn’t have been able to get this documentary done if that weren’t the case. This was a unique circumstance. But on the other hand, I’m proud of the work. And I’m now doing a documentary for the Nixon DVD release from Disney next year. It’s a featurette about Nixon; we did about eighteen interviews with people from that time period – historians, politicians, law professors. Beyond that, we may be able to take that material and do a feature documentary with it. Long term, I love writing and I’d like to direct ultimately. But in the meantime you have to do what is available to you, and documentary is what I can do now.

Oliver: I just want to say that he’s a little modest. He’s cut a a thirty-four minute documentary called "Beyond Nixon". Nixon is very specific to our age because we have another president who’s gone way beyond Nixon. So what he’s done is remind us of who Nixon was, what he did, and it’s a very succinct documentary – very good writing and especially writing. The interviews he did with people from Gore Vidal to John Dean to reposition Nixon in this era to remember who he was for young people.

Q: With that in mind, a natural fit for you would be George [W. Bush]. With the father, the son, the war and conversations with God, it sounds like something right out of a movie. Is that something that might interest you?

Oliver: (Big smile) Yes, very much so. (Laughter and applause.)

Q: When?

Oliver: Soon.

Q: How soon?

Oliver: Soon, soon.

Q: Sean, what did you learn about your father as a filmmaker from doing this documentary?

Sean: I mean, he’s one of the masters as far as I’m concerned. What I saw from filming him actually made me much more aware of why he is such a great director. Direction is a thousand choices, a thousand decisions a day. And having a vision of what you want, and then knowing what you want frame-by-frame, second-by-second… if you don’t have it laid out in the design and in the way the actor performs it, it’s not going to happen. So for somebody to craft that mentally, it gives him the opportunity to develop the story over time. And he always chooses the right people to work with; he always has a great sense of who would be right for what role in terms of actors, but also for the crew – what kind of DP, art director, set designer, costume designer. He knows every aspect of the filming process. Then, of course, the editing process… he’s there every day. Shooting all day, going into the editing room at night, looking at the material, covering it, working with the editors hands-on. That’s a total filmmaking process, and I don’t know what to compare it to because I’ve never seen other directors work. But you can see that in the output: this is someone’s vision. When you see so many films [that are a] consensus form of cinema, where they have a certain look because the studio or producers or director are limiting themselves, saying "It has to look this way, and this is the standard form of performance"… then, when you see a film like Alexander, it does challenged the audience. And it’s something that has to be done. You have to challenge people to reconsider what is art, what is taste. Because it’s someone’s point-of-view. I think that’s the strongest thing he offers: you’re going in to see an Oliver Stone film, and you’ll know it’s an Oliver Stone film. You may not like it, and you may disagree with things, but you get art.

Q: I remember reading your script for Nixon, and it was like 300 pages. What is your writing process like? Do you edit yourself when you’re writing, or is the script the bible and we’ll worry about how long it’s going to be later?

Oliver: I’ve fallen into that trap. My scripts do tend to be long. I wrote Nixon with two other young men, Chris Wilkinson and Steve Rivele, and they really did a great job. Nixon was a mind-twister, but it’s a wonderfully structured script. I love the way it’s structured about that life. It is a story of his life, but it’s unlike other biopics I’ve seen because of that structure. The structure was very important, and the length was three hours and ten minutes. (Sighs) What do you do about it? You cut the script as much as you can to get to the essence. But some lives take time. I don’t know what the answer is, except DVD. (Laughter)

Q: You’ve done a lot of Director’s Cuts of your films. Is there a particular film you’d like to revisit like you’ve done with Alexander?

Oliver: No, I’ve done what I’ve wanted to do. There’s an unrated cut of Natural Born Killers which I prefer; it was released briefly by Lionsgate. And there is a director’s cut of JFK where I’ve added some scenes to make it longer. Nixon‘s got a director’s cut, which is longer.

Q: Is that the version you’re doing for Disney? Will it have new footage?

Oliver: No. It’s the director’s cut with additional scenes, but they’re more integrated. Before, we didn’t have the technology to integrate that. Right now, it’s the best looking cut, but it’s the same cut.

Q: Forgive me if this is a touchy subject, but what’s your relationship with Quentin Tarantino? We understood that there was a great falling out over Natural Born Killers over what you did to his script. Do you guys talk?

Oliver: I’ve talked to him many times since then. We do get along. He was upset at the time; he was a young filmmaker, and he was upset that we changed… not his story, but the screenplay quite a bit. We put more emphasis on other things. He was upset, and he came out publicly.

Q: By that same token, when you were a younger writer, you had your screenplays turned into very notorious films – in particular, Scarface. It’s an indelible work. It’s really impacted the culture in a huge way and, some might say, in a pernicious way, because some people misinterpreted the meaning of that film. How do you now view the film and the reaction to it.

Oliver: I always thought it was a satire. I never saw it as threatening to be reality. It never sought to be The Godfather. I think Brian was the right director for it because he has the necessary sarcasm. There is a lot of humor in the film, but it was sort of lost at the time because of the bloodbath, the violence and the viciousness of the characters. My model with it was twofold: one was Bertolt Brecht’s Arturo Ui and the other one was Richard III. Those were the models, and they were not exactly reality models. But the film was attacked for being literal. Natural Born Killers was attacked for being literal, and it wasn’t. As you know, with Wall Street they took the Michael Douglas character and made him into a role model, which was not intended. You can never judge how the film will be taken; you can only make your best effort, and put out what you feel. How it’s read, you never can tell. Or remembered for that matter.

Q: Could you ever see yourself working in another medium? Opera seems like it might suit you.

Oliver: For length purposes? (Laughter)

-Jeremy Smith, CHUD.com, Sept 19 2007

[stasiaardn632]

the 50's and pop art

A relevant time period for my ideas is the 50s, as I'm drawing upon the 1950s housewife stereotype. It was also in this time period that Pop Art emerged as an art movement. This movement came as a rebuttal to the Abstract Expressionist art styles that had gained popularity in this same time period, favouring the depiction of common household objects, pop culture, and consumer products instead. Pop Art can be characterized by its use of bright colours and easily recognisable, mundane imagery which aims to poke fun at consumerism and challenge the status quo.

Richard Hamilton, Just What is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, so Appealing?, 1956, collage, 26 cm × 24.8 cm (Kunsthalle Tübingen, Tübingen)

This collage by Richard Hamilton is considered the first British Pop Art piece to achieve iconic status, and I find the use of manipulation in this context really interesting. Pop art bridges the gap between fine art and daily life, challenging the elitist manner in which fine art often operates. Manipulation is a really effective way of doing this because it opens up an entirely new realm of possibilities for the maker. Anyone can create artwork of anything they want when manipulating imagery and using a variety of sources, whether that's in the form of collage or through more recent digital means. I think Pop Art is a great space for manipulation to be utilized because it doesn't favour realism, often containing humour and a sense of detachment to fully reject the notion of 'high art'. In terms of manipulation, this creates honesty due to the manipulations being visually apparent, contributing to the meaning as it subverts ideas of artistic originality and value by re-purposing source imagery.

I think the work I've been making shares common ground with Pop Art due to the saturated colours, everyday/mundane subject matter, and its almost collage-looking aesthetic. I've been advised to consider adding more shadows to my works and add details that would make it look more realistic, but this link to Pop Art is the main thing holding me back. I like that my manipulations aren't fooling anyone; they're not supposed to and want them to look detached from reality. Furthermore, I think the Pop Art movement has great links with the ideas I'm exploring such as domesticity, due to the mundane nature of the home as a subject matter.

Sothebys, "Pop Art", accessed 11/10/23, https://www.sothebys.com/en/art-movements-pop-art#:~:text=In%201957%2C%20Richard%20Hamilton%20described,and%20mass%20production%20to%20subvert

Wikipedia, "Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?" accessed 11/10/23, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_what_is_it_that_makes_today%27s_homes_so_different,_so_appealing%3F#:~:text=Article%20Talk-,Just%20what%20is%20it%20that%20makes%20today's%20homes%20so%20different,art%20to%20achieve%20iconic%20status.

[lgbtq-history-museum-cfl-intern]

Teen Lit Boom: Did the 50s Change Everything?

To keep things a little interesting, I want to share a bit about what I’ve been reading this week.

As I’m putting together a timeline from literature I’ve reviewed so far for the exhibit, I stumbled across the topic of teenagers, specifically the social construction of that category, and how that affected literature in the decades following the 1950s.

Before I came across a Smithsonian Magazine article today (Monday, September, 4th), the topic had come up in a random discussion with my husband about my thoughts on another work I was reading for the exhibit’s research.

The gist was that I had just read about a rise in complaints about books in schools in the 1970’s while another piece talked about the rise of Young Adult (YA) literature around the same period. I said something like, “It makes sense that it would be around that time because around the 50s is when modern teenage-hood was normalized.”

By this, I meant things like social hierarchies and milestones that US American culture is familiar with – love, sex, school, social pressures, substance use, and thoughts of rebellion. How that manifested decade to decade is beside the point.

And I should clarify, I made this statement on the assumption that the 50s was a decade of all sorts of socially constructed norms that would define US “American” culture; That the children and teens of these times would go on to write the YA novels that would deeply identify with the real-life challenges experienced by teenagers.

The Smithsonian article sort of confirmed this assumption for me, but here’s what they traced:

The “teenager” demographic arose around “… the late 1930s to early 1940s…”  after “…first appear[ing] in print in… September 1941…”. And the social as well as consumer class was pretty much solidified throughout the 40s as all sorts of entertainment outlets began to cater to them.

It’s important to note that around the same time, librarians were starting to use the term “young adult”, paving the way for the genre to boom in the 70s.

The author of the article, Michael Cart, points to the fact that there could not be a “young adult” genre were the distinction not made.

So, thinking about what happens in 2-3 decades (40s, 50s, 60s) and the development of the teenage sub-culture, it would make sense that by the 70s there would be writers with enough relatable content and understanding of the evolution of teenage-hood by then to translate it into intimately accurate novel depictions.

Cart argues that YA books before the late 1960s were unrealistic and sanitized, even “formulaic” tales of teenage-hood; That what emerged throughout the 70s was “real”; what opponents would call “obscene”.

Let’s look at two pioneers of the YA genre, before its official emergence as a category, Judy Blume and S.E. Hinton. Cart credits Hinton as being one of the first two authors to initiate the pivot toward more realistic teen experiences with her novel, The Outsiders. She was born in 1948, making her a 60s teen. 10 years before that, Judy Blume, one of the most well-known and contested YA authors, specifically “chic lit.” writers, was a 50s teen, placing them both within that era of constructing modern teenage norms.

Why do I say, “the 50s”? Why did I single out that decade? Because it follows the end of the 2nd World War, marking the return to a sense of normalcy and stability, giving society the chance to find its rhythm. Not that everything had suddenly settled because part of that national identity construction was shaped by the ongoing fight against communism both overseas and domestically.

The push to form an ideal society in the midst of fighting against real and at times imagined communist threats made conformists and rebels of everyone. From this, I believe the modern teenager was born. Instead of worrying about a draft or working to help their family make ends meet, more young people were going to school, molding the teen culture we see replicated in popular culture.

The type of YA novels that started coming out after S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders depicted the at times graphic realities of teenage life in a way that they had not until then. They met readers where they were and didn’t idealize or sugarcoat their experiences.

I think this is because life had changed. Expectations had changed. So, the way to write about it needed to change, too.

If you have another take on this, please feel free to respond to this and teach me something new!

Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed it 😊

Below is a link to the article I referenced throughout this post:

[bejeweled-13]

(It’s time for quirky questions with Julie!) what’s your favorite decade? How to you feel about your birthday? If someone offered to run a presidential campaign for you today would you run?

My favorite decade is either the 1950's or the 1980's, but I'm leaning more toward the '80's. The fashion, music, trends, video games, movies, and literally everything in both of those decades are so cool and I would've loved to live through those time periods. I think romanticizing time periods has it's issues (I can't imagine a time when people say that they wish they could've lived through the 2020's lol and I can't imagine why they'd want to) but I think it's cool to look back at the fashion and musical artists of those time periods and really appreciate them in it's fullness.

I love my birthday! I love that my birthday is in October because I love Autumn, plus I love going to my favorite restaurant and getting gifts. I also usually try to buy myself something or do something special for myself to celebrate a little, especially if things didn't go particularly well. For example, my 18th birthday wasn't as great as I had hoped. My parents took me to get fast food and they regifted me something I had gotten the year before. So to make myself feel better, I stole some of my dad's alcohol and drank it that night lol.

I would never run for president. I can't handle backlash or criticism. And even despite that, being in charge of big decisions isn't something I could handle. There are some days where I struggle with trying to figuring out what I want to wear or eat. Making huge decisions for the country is just something I could never do. Plus, I'm not much of a politics person anyway. I don't label myself as Liberal or Republican and so I feel like making those types of decisions would require me to pick a side. I'm just not cut out for that in so many more ways than one. The only reason I could ever think of why I might consider doing it is because of the money, but I feel like happiness and safety is more important to me than getting money. I don't think I'd ever feel safe or happy if I chose that as a job, even if I was tide over in terms of money.

[deviantartdramahub]

It's 2023. We should be out of the same mass hysteria thing we've been going through in the 1600's with witches, the 1950's with the LGBT, and the 1970's with Communists. In the end, we never did catch/kill any witches, we finally gave rights to the LGBT, and the whole red menace hysterics ruined many, many careers.

And then we come to today. We still do this for some reason. I'm tired of people ranting and ranting about, ahem, certain people, whom I will call nonos. I will not specify who I mean by nonos by the fact that I disappoint myself every time I hear about them, and I should clarify that, if you're a nono, society is no place for you, but I am tired of hearing about them and just want to enjoy posting my art, not constantly witness people use a very real term to destroy a man's whole career.

Excuse me if autocorrect puts numbers in automatically, but I am tired of 1) people getting mistaking for nonos all the time 2) people thinking nonos are worse than murderers despite attacks being something people recover from (if they didn't recover from them, we would be opening validation for self-harm, something WE DON'T WANT) 3) people setting the bar for what a nono is low 4) nonos not seeking help out of how utterly stigmatized they are 5) hearing of their association with innocent/vulnerable entities when (and you can look this up on YouTube) most aren't even interested in them 6) people not wanting anything to do with anything a nono even remotely touched, such as when a nono works at a business and people saying it devalues the business and so they won't buy the products 7) lots of leverage because people won't adequately define a nono 8) people commonly making up things about nonos 9) people forgetting nonos cannot help themselves, and most importantly 10) intense worries that nonos might make their own Stonewall protest out of how awfully they're treated, because that's what happens when you stigmatize a group too intensely, even if they deserve it.

This is not the first time these ten points have been brought up, nor will they be the last, they even hold a distinct title, "The Ten Justice Hunters' Tenets" because people fall victim to not being precautionary regarding those ten things all the time. It's the reason I decided to come here to submit things rather than DeviantArtDramaNow even though I would otherwise prefer them. I just want to upload my art, please. Is that so much to ask?

Unfortunately it would seem so. Witches, Communists, and the LGBT are all at the top of their game today, who knowknows what these nonos will bring.

I won’t even assume what you mean by nonos, as in different cultures different things (like drug traders if you’re Southeast Asian) might come to mind, though I have a pretty good idea of what you mean.

[encountersincamperland]

Kartodromo Dream

My father and I built the kartodromo together in 1989, said Gianfranco as we looked out across the snaking concrete racing track from the terrace above the now obsolete grandstand.

These days, since 2019, Kartodromo, on the outskirts of Matera, in Basilicata, southern Italy, is a camping stopover for motor homes and campervans. You have to navigate the race track, at a slow pace, to find a random spot on the inner two straights. Electricity, if you can get it, is supplied to you from sockets found under a bucket in the soggy grass areas the track encloses. We weren’t so lucky, so had two nights off grid. The facilites are two bathrooms each for men and women, with shower, loo and washing machine. A little old fashioned but the privacy was great.

The terrace bar and the terraced stands would one time have been full of formula 3 racing enthusiasts and their families and fans on race days. Today it is all substance but little content - at least in terms of racing. But Gianfranco fills the space, overshadowing his quiet sister/partner, as knowing temporary residents smile indulgently at us newbies’ bemusement at where we find ourselves this evening.

I was a rich man when I was young, said Gianfranco. I raced all over Europe. I won prizes. Then I made a big mistake. I got married. But what can you do? I love my wife.

Gianfranco is quite a character - a showman who speaks at least four languages and loves to hold forth with his temporary guests.

He’s a great salesman for his town too, and Matera is quite a town or city, I should say. As campers pull in seeking a stopover for a night or two, or have been drawn by its ancient history or more recent movie fame, Gianfranco holds court around a map of the town, with pen and highlighter, he marks out the way to walk, the best places for views of the Sassi, Matera’s historic stone heart, plus the must-see ancient water sistern in the main square, where to get the best gelato and which of the town’s 150 churches, are most worth seeing - especially the ones carved out of rocks.

He tells us we must go up to one of several viewing points above the campsite to see the Sassi at night, lit up like a fairy grotto. He shows us his best photo of the scene at sunset, a flaming sky hovering above a twinkling town as if its lights set the sky ablaze. Gianfranco works out who has transport and who he could ferry up to the best viewing point for eight o’clock that night. He is an enabler. Everything is possible and seemingly no trouble. We don’t buy into the offer as we want to settle into the evening in our own way.

Gianfranco provides a shuttle service for campers four times a day into Matera and back. We opt for the 10am the next day and gather five minutes before as instructed. A German couple and French couple with a bichon friese join us. Gianfranco arrives to drive us, clip board in hand and says, Make a wish, to me. I realise he is referring to a time we would like to return. We opt for 6.30pm. With all he has told us about the town, we think we will be well occupied for eight hours or more.

Return times sorted, Gianfranco directs the French couple plus dog into the back seats of his Fiat Scudo. He opens the front passenger door and offers the Germans in then changes his mind. No, he says, I don’t want to speak German today. Today, we speak English. He indicates the middle row of seats for the Germans and points our way into the front. It’s nice to occasionally be the chosen ones.

On the short journey, he told us a little of the town’s association with the film industry since the 1950s up to now and includes Passolini’s The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson’s The Gospel According to St Matthew, and right up to date with the most recent Bond movie - No Time To Die.

Kartodromo, Gianfranco says, was the base for the Bond film crew. He is driving the winding road into town as he reaches into his pocket for his mobile and, one eye on the road, finds a photo of Bond’s silver grey Aston Martin, in fact three of them lined up in a row by the grandstand.

I was their driver, he says, while they were here. A finger in every pie, I thought. The opening sequence of the film is a mad car chase through the narrow streets of the Sassi, typical Bond fare in an untypical setting.

Our first view of this ancient troglodyte city takes my breath away. We had walked down from the shuttle drop off to the large main square where a market of local craft and antiques was happening. We looked for the three arches Gianfranco had drawn on our map like an extended m. You will get your first view of the Sassi from here, he said. I wondered how when we had walked down hill. I had no idea what I was about to see.

There was a small crowd at the balcony under the arches and a busker was singing a contemporary Italian song in its echoey chamber. The crowd moved on and we stepped up to an arch. And there it was - a city within a city built into a vast basin in the rock teetering on the edge of a ravine. We could see a myriad of shiny cobbled lanes falling away below us, and tightly packed and stacked tilted tiled roofs. I could now see how it often substituted for Jerusalem in films. The town climbed up the other side a kilometre away, where a cathedral created its highest point. As my eyes adjusted to its impressive size, I could pick out some of the rock churches and cave dwellings.

The Sassi has a blemished past since the twentieth century. It became one of the most deprived places in Italy by the 1950s. Old black and white photos of large families with haunted faces in one room cave houses, replete with cow or donkey, stare out at us from various points on our perambulations through its lanes. Writer Carlo Levi was exiled here in 1944. Horrified by the poverty and distress of its inhabitants, he wielded his pen and exposed how people were living, writing Christ Stopped at Eboli in 1945. Shamed, the government blustered in and removed the population to new estates and high rises above and beyond - a sad unravelling of a tightly knit community - and the city, inhabited for over 10,000 years was left to the cats and to crumble for a decade and a half.

In the mid 1980s, the government began to give grants to artists and artisans to take over dwellings. A creative community grew and, with further investment, 2nd generation locals returned.

Today, the Sassi is a popular tourist destination with many tightly packed restaurants and hotels, as well as artists studios. There is an evident class divide as you cross from the well heeled south district to the worn down north, where some abandoned houses still gape forlornly at passers by.

What we see is a city carved out of the rock - malleable calcarenite made from sandstone and time-ground fossils - at the edge of a precipitous ravine. As we walk through regular rain showers, I wonder how it all didn’t just wash away, but tufo, as it is more commonly called, for all its sandy texture is as strong as the generations after generations of people who carved out their lives in this rocky cavern.

The Sassi is believed to be the longest inhabited area in Europe, tracing its populations back to pre-historic times. The city’s archeological museum has many artefacts attesting to that from flint spear heads to extraordinarily beautiful Roman ceramics.

It also happens to have some remains of a pre-historic whale, discovered in nearby Lake Giuliano fairly recently. Its gargantuan body washed ashore over a million years ago and was no doubt picked clean by roving carnivores before its skeleton was covered by sand and eventually incarcerated and preserved by layers and layers of sediment hardened to create new land.

We sat and watched a beautifully realised immersive film projected onto two long walls of a darkened gallery, entered by curtain and triggered to run by our arrival. We sat on low seats and were soon submerged in an animated ocean described by a seductive narrative voice, speaking in Italian. English subtitles ran along the bottom of the short wall to our right but we could barely take our eyes off the transformed long wall to read them as we floated in its depths and witnessed the arrival of the giant whale, alive again and swimming right by us, filling the wall screen with its magnificent body, believed to have weighed between 130 and 150 tons. The narrator associated the leviathan with stories we’d know since childhood - Jonah and the Whale, Pinocchio; stories of men swallowed whole and trapped in the belly of a whale; given time to reflect on their mistakes before being belched back onto dry land once more - a second chance to do better this time.

The film ended and we felt a little bereft as we were deposited into the light and the next room - a small space that encased two pieces of the whale - part of its inner ear and a section of skull. The rest of the fossilised remains, including a rib that measures three meters, continue to yield knowledge about the little known Pleistocene era from which it came. Eventually, the Giuliano whale will be displayed in the museum. No doubt suspended in all its one hundred meter skeletal glory, sparking the imaginations of all who see her to write or dream of being swept inside this magnificent creature, and changed forever.

Later, we go into a cave dwelling, dark and organic, itself like the belly of a whale, furnished as it would have been in the early 20th century - a one-roomed home hewn from the stone. Shelved beds for large families each have tufo-carved cats snuggled into wool blankets - some things never change.

A voice rolls out from speakers a narrative in French, then English, then Italian, guiding our eyes to nooks and crannies displaying pieces of social history as tufo-carved members of the family (husband, wife, grandmother and various representative children) stand or sit silently in naive-style sculpted poses that betoken their roles.

The woman is preparing food for her husband who sits straight backed by the fireplace, presumably to ease a spine bent by a day’s labour. She looks at him as he stares ahead, a perpetual gaze that holds her unspoken thoughts and concerns. While grandmother sits at a loom, a young woman cradles a cloth baby: the oldest and youngest siblings most likely. I imagine childhood only lasted to the age of two or so, back then, before small hands and feet could be directed to useful work for the good of the family. The voice tells us that families were large, often as many as ten children but infant mortality was high. Hence the large families, I thought, to ensure enough children would survive to carry on the line and the endless work of subsisting.

Matera gave us so much that day. We walked all over the Sassi, weaving in and out of its lanes, dropping into an art gallery here, a chapel there or grander church. Stopping for coffee on a terrace to wait out a shower, walking the ravine-side path and leaning on its wall to eat a sandwich, taking in the magnificence of the view, watching walkers across the expanse explore the ancient once inhabited caves on that side, imagining nightly echoey calls across the divide from centuries past with news or requests or threats.

And finally finding Angeli’s for the best gelato in town. I had a thyme and mallow ice cream from its spotless stainless steel containers. Delicious.

Gianfranco appeared the next day as we were striking camp to hit the road for Pompeii. He was on a neat scooter, his glasses perched on his nose as he told us to taste the best cheese in Matera before we left. I looked to where he pointed under the scaffold starters gate, its red, amber, green lights recalling engine roars of impatient racing cars, and saw a small white van, it’s side door open displaying its white cheesy wares.

He looked eager, lean; a touch of the boy racer still about him, though he peered over his glasses, in middle-aged fashion. Can I take your picture, I asked? Prego, he said and posed happily, enjoying the limelight one more time.

For so many reasons, Matera is a special place, well worth a visit. But if you get a chance to stay on the Kartodromo site, you will be let into Gianfranco’s dream for a while of racing cars and movie stars and the best of everything Matera has to offer.

Madeleine

(Sassi at night photo by Alamy)