#i’d love to write now but i’ve watched too much british television today

[malewifegradyruewen]

the feminine urge to delete a fic because i think its bad and needs to be rewritten

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #423

“i won’t think about you when i’m older  /  ‘cuz we never really had our closure”

Are you better at cooking dinners or making cakes/biscuits/sweets? Neither. Have you ever cut someone else’s hair? No. Who was the last guest in your house and what were they staying for? My late grandmother's husband stayed overnight when he was driving from New York to Florida or the other way around, idr. How many long term relationships have you been in? Two. Do you sleep with all the lights out, or do you leave a lamp or even the television on? My snake's heat lamp stays on. Who is one person you have forgiven, but still have not “forgotten” what they have done? My dad. Are you a fan of Lana Del Rey? I don't think I've even heard one of her songs. Do you know your blood type? A-. Do you know your mother’s birthday? Yes. Have you got your period at the moment? I haven't had my period since I started TMS. It's honestly so fucking frustrating that it obviously had an effect on my body, but not my depression. I've officially finished TMS as of a few days ago and now I just feel so void of hope. Have you ever been pregnant? No. How old were you when you first went on a plane? Idr, I was a little kid. Have you ever had to take out a loan for anything? Not me personally, but my parents have for my education that I threw away. Are both of your blood parents still in your life? Yes. I don't see my dad a lot, but he's still in my life regardless. When was the last time you went apple picking? I’ve never been. Someone asked you what you wanted, what would you say? Happiness. Have you ever been drunk at school or work? I have not. How many bedrooms are in your house? Three. Are you smart about computers? Not really, no. Have you ever played Just Dance for Wii? Yes. My sister loved them, so we have a few. Do you own a Xbox 360? No. I'm a PlayStation girl. Would you ever do a sex tape for a million dollars? No. I'd be mortified. So, do you need a nap? I really should take one. I slept like... maybe three hours last night. I was up most of the night having a fucking life crisis. What would you rather be doing? Something fun. What sport are you the best at? I haven't touched any sort of sport since I was a teenager. Do you have a little sister? What’s her name? Yeah, Nicole. Do you complain a lot? Kind of, but I generally try to keep it in surveys nowadays. I'm just tired of shit. Would you rather go to an authentic haunted house or an ancient temple? Ohhh, tough pick, but I've gotta say the ancient temple. Do you like fruity or minty gum? Both, really. Are you looking forward to any day of this month? Well July is practically over, so I'll answer for August. I'm looking forward to my nephew's birthday. Have you ever gotten detention? A few times for getting too many morning tardies in high school. Is there a traumatic event that you’ve experienced that’s changed your life? Definitely. Do you buy a majority of your clothes from a certain store, or do you just pick out items of clothing you could see yourself wearing, not caring about the store it came from? The latter. Have any of the artists you’re fond of released new albums recently? Powerwolf did recently. Would you ever keep your favorite animal as a pet? I could write a college-length essay on why meerkats do not make good pets whatsoever. Do fucking not get one. I can barely fathom how it's legal in some countries. Ever cried so much you threw up? No, but I've gagged. Who is your best guy friend? Girt. What do you two do when you hang out? Mostly just watch TV and play board games. What is a movie that you thought you would hate but you ended up loving? I dunno, really. Do you even like horror movies? I love horror movies. Do you live in the country? I wish I still did. :/ Me and Mom hate hate hate living in these suburbs. What is your favorite accent? British. Have you ever had a boyfriend your parents didn’t like? No. Do you drink Pepsi or Coke? Coke. Pepsi is gross. What do you plan to do on your 21st birthday? I was literally in the psych hospital for my 21st birthday lmao. It's kind of a painful memory, but I also won't forget the love and kindness people showed me. I especially remember the friend I made there getting the lunch lady to literally go and buy me a slice of cake. Everyone also sang happy birthday to me and gaaaah I'm getting emotional. Do you have any person in your family with an addiction to beer? That was my dad's drink of choice when he drank. Do you take a lot of pictures? Unless I have my camera and am somewhere pretty, no. What kind of face wash do you use? Water, lol. Does drama always seem to follow you? Nah. Does anybody in your family race? No. Are you closer to your mom or dad? My mom. How much money did you used to get from the ”tooth fairy?” Uhhh... I want to say $2 or something? I might be way off, idr. How long do you want to live with your parents? I WISH I could have moved out with an s/o already, but that's just not how life's worked out. Do you have a laptop or desktop? I have a laptop. Do you like your parents? I love them. Do you secretly like someone? It's not a secret, no. Would you ever date your best male friend? Tried that once and it didn't work out. I liked him more as like a brother. What are you currently listening to? "Better Than Me" by Hinder. I really need to turn it off, but I can't make myself. Do you want to be single? I really wish I had a partner to love and motivate me to strive to do better, but I know it's better I'm single right now. I'd just relive the Jason situation, I'm sure. I'd just drag the person down and lose them. Did you go out or stay in last night? I'm almost always at my fucking house not doing shit, so. Have you pretended to like someone? No, that sounds pretty stupid... How is your heart lately? Hurting. A lot. Are you wearing socks? I hate wearing socks and I'm in bed anyway, so no. What do people call you? Britt, mostly. Do you get stressed out easily? VERY. Have you ever been taken to the emergency room in an ambulance? No. What is wrong with you right now? Where the hell to begin. Do you own something from Hot Topic? A lot. Would you rather sleep with someone else or alone? With someone, so long as the bed is big enough to comfortably fit two of us. Do you still talk to the person you last made out with? No. I'm certain he wants nothing to do with me. Have you ever seen your best friend cry? Sadly. Did you get any compliments today? Definitely not. I look and feel like a wreck right about now. There's nothing to praise me about. Have you ever gone to a beach? Many times. What would you say if someone asked you to get high right now? Unless it was an edible, no. I'd do almost anything to try and make me feel better right now, even if just for a little while, but I'm unwilling to smoke anything. Do you believe that everything happens for a reason? HELL no. Have you ever done volunteer work just because you wanted to? Honestly, no. Do you have long nails? No; I never do because I have an awful habit of picking at them. Do you like the gender you are? I don't like or dislike it, honestly. I'm just neutral. Do you generally look nice in photos? HA. Have you ever had a stick insect as a pet? No. What colour are your father’s eyes? They're dark brown. If I handed you a concert ticket right now, who would you want to be the performer? Ozzy, duh. Name three facts about your family? We're very, very spread out geographically, some of us (in other words, me) are emotionally distant, and uh... idk. Would you ever get into a long distance relationship? Only if it was a certain person, our lives were more on track, and we were making plans for either of us to move soon. What’s the most thoughtful present you’ve ever received? Probably this really long letter my mom wrote for me on my bday a couple years ago. What’s your favorite hot beverage? Hot chocolate. Did you ever play an instrument? If so what? I played the flute for many years, all through middle school and through much of high school. Would you rather carve pumpkins or wrap presents? Carve pumpkins, for sure. Do you think you’re important? I don't fucking know. Probably not. What’s the best compliment you’ve ever received? Idk. Have you been diagnosed with any mental disorders? *hands over thick book* Have you ever moved to another state or country? If so, how did it feel to be new? No. Do you know how to properly eat food with chopsticks? No. My hands are way, way too shaky to ever accomplish that. Are you more of a leader or a follower? Definitely a follower, but I can step up in certain situations. What was the first thing you ate today? Well, I was seriously depression-eating last night, way past midnight, and had a peanut butter sandwich. If you could spend the day, doing absolutely anything, with anyone, anywhere, what would it be like? LET'S NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT RIGHT NOW. If I were to ask you how you are doing, and you were only able to answer completely honestly, what would come out? "Falling apart." I've lost direction, motivation, strength, hope, just everything. What is the one thing that you have been avoiding that you should do? I need a fucking shower so bad that it's embarrassing. I just can't move. I have no energy, emotionally or physically. I just can't make myself do it. Is there anything that you wish you could take back? So, so badly. What, in your mind, could make you truly happy? Actually reaching goals. Losing weight. Healing my legs. Knowing with certainty that I wasn't emotionally abusive to Jason. Moving out of this town and back into the country. Financial stability. A job I thoroughly enjoy. I could go on, but let's not. If you could change one conversation in your life, what would you say differently? Would it have REALLY made any difference? God, let me take back shit I said in that fucking letter to you-know-who. It's so hard to believe I once thought it perfectly justified and realistic. When is the next time you’ll change your hairstyle? Will you color it? I don't have any plans of changing the style in the foreseeable future. I want to color it BADLY. To just SOMETHING. Do people normally say you’re a fast typist, or are you rather slow? I'm like, a lightning-fast typist. Have you ever been considered the ‘smartest person in school?’ No; my best friend in HS was, though. Her GPA was fucking insane. I was in the top percentile, though, so I was up there. What the hell happened to that girl. How many drugs are in your system? If we're including prescriptions, a whole hell of a lot. What’s on your schedule for tomorrow? Jack shit. Like usual. Do you currently have any bite marks/hickeys on your body? No. Do you call anyone baby? Excluding my pets, no. What’s your current mood? lol if you've gotten this far reading, you can make an educated guess. Do you think you are a good person? Bro I just don't know. What were you doing before filling out this survey? I was playing WoW. How late did you stay up last night? Like, 4:30 or so. When was the last time you cried really hard? I wanna say like a week ago? Is your hair longer than your shoulders? No. It still badly needs a trim, though.

[papermoonloveslucy]

LOOK! TV: TURN ON OR TURN OFF?

September 7, 1971

The September 7, 1971 issue of LOOK Magazine (volume 35, number 18) dedicated their entire issue to the medium of television. Inside, there is a feature titled “Lucille Ball, the Star That Never Sets...” by Laura Bergquist on page 54. 

The photograph on the cover is slightly distorted to give it the look of an image through a TV screen.  The shot was taken by Douglas Bergquist in January 1971. 

The issue presents a variety of viewpoints about the state of television. Is it ‘tired’ or is there an infusion of new energy to take it into the new decade? John Kronenberger writes an article that asks if cable television is the future. Hindsight tells us that it was not only the future, but is now the past. 

“Lucille Ball, the Star That Never Sets...” by Laura Bergquist. 

Bergquist first interviewed Lucille Ball in 1956 for the Christmas issue of Look. 

The photograph is by Douglas Kirkland, a Canadian-born photographer, who not coincidentally, also took the photograph used on the cover. This shot was taken in the garden of Ball’s home in June 1971.  At age 24, Kirkland was hired as a staff photographer for Look magazine and became famous for his 1961 photos of Marilyn Monroe taken for Look's 25th anniversary issue. He later joined the staff of Life magazine.

Bergquist launches the article talking about her friend Sally, who is besot with watching Lucille Ball reruns, preferring Lucy over the news. Under the headline, she sums up the purpose of her interview: “Sorry, Sally. But Lucy is a serious, unfunny lady. So how come she’s a top clown of the fickle tube for twenty years, seen at home 11 times weekly and in 77 countries?”  

LUCILLE BALL: THE STAR THAT NEVER SETS...

(Lucille Ball’s quotes are in BOLD. Footnote numbers are in parentheses.)

My neighbor Sally, nine, turns out to be a real Lucy freak. Though she likes vintage-house-wife I Love Lucy best, she'll watch Lucille Ball 11 times a week, if permitted. That's how often Madame Comedy Champ of the Tube, come 20 years this October, can be caught on my local box. Ten reruns, plus the current Here's Lucy on Monday night, CBS prime time. Friends, that's 330 weekly minutes of Lucy, which should be rank overexposure. Did you know that even the U.S. man-on-the-moon walkers slipped in ratings, second time around?

Quel mystery. Variety last fall announced that old-fashioned sitcoms and broad slapstick comedy are passé, given today's hip audiences. With one big exception - Lucy. When the third Lucy format went on in '68, reincarnating Miss Ball as a widowed secretary (with her real-life son, Desi Jr., now 18, and Lucie Jr., 20), Women's Wear Daily said not only were the kids no talent, but the show was "treacle." "One giant marshmallow," quoth the Hollywood Reporter, "impeccably professional, violence-free, non-controversial . . . 100% escapism." 

Miss Ball: "Listen, that's a good review. I usually get OK personal notices, but the show gets knocked regular."

So why does Sally, like all the kids on my block, love slapstick, non-relevant Lucy? "Because she's always scheming and getting into trouble like I do, and then wriggling her way out of it." A 44-year-old Long Island housewife: "Of course I watch. I should watch the news?" When the British Royal Family finally unbent for a TV documentary, what was the tribe watching come box-time? Lucy, over protests from Prince Philip. (1)

"I've been a baby-sitter for three generations," says Miss Ball briskly. "Kids watch me during the day [she outpulls most kiddy shows]. Women and older men at night. Teen-agers, no. They look at Mod Squad. Intellectuals, they read books or listen to records.... You know I even get fan mail from China?" MAINLAND CHINA? "Hong Kong, isn't that China?" No. "Where is it anyway?"

The Statistics on the Lucy Industry are numbing. In recent years, she has run in 77 countries abroad, including the rich sheikhdom of Kuwait, and Japan, where, dubbed in Japanese yet, she's been a long-distance runner for 12 years. Where are all those funny people of yesteryear - Jackie Gleason, the Smothers Brothers, Sid Caesar, the Beverly Hillbillies - old reliables like Ed Sullivan, Red Skelton? Gone, all gone, form the live tube - except for reruns dumped by sponsors, out of fashion, murdered in the ratings.

Even this interview is a rerun. Fifteen years ago, I sat in Miss Ball's old-timey movie-star mansion in Beverly Hills, wondering how much longer, oh Lord, could Lucy last? She has a different husband, a genial stand-up comic of the fast-gag Milton Berle school, Bronx-born Gary Morton, 49. He replaced Desi Arnaz, her volatile Cuban spouse (and costar and partner) of 20 years, who lives quietly in Mexico's Baja California, alongside a pool shaped like a guitar, with a second redhead wife. "Ever been here before?" asks Gary, now her executive producer, who's brightened the house decor. "Used to be funeral-parlor gray, right?"

Otherwise, the lady, like her show, seems preserved in amber. Though newly 60, she could be Sally's great-grandmother. Of a Saturday, she's unwinding from a murderous four-day workweek. Her pink-orange-fireball hair is up in rollers. Her black-and-blue Rolls-Royce, inherited from her friend, the late Hedda Hopper, is parked in the driveway. But in attitude and opinion, she comes across Madame Middle America, despite the shrewd show-biz exterior. Good egg. Believer in hard work, discipline, Norman Vincent Peale. Deadeye Dickstraight, she talks astonishingly unfunny - about Vietnam, Women's Lib, about which she feels dimly, marriage to Latins, books she toted up to her new condominium hideaway in Snowmass, Colo. "Snow" is her new-old passion, a throwback to her small-town Eastern childhood. For the first time in family memory, this lifelong workhorse actually relaxed in that 9,700-foot altitude for four months this year, learning to ski, reading Pepys, Thoreau, Shirley MacLaine's autobiography, "37 goddamned scripts, and all those Irvings" (Stone, Wallace, etc.). She had scouted for a mountain retreat far away from any gambling. Why? Is she against gambling? "No, I'm a sucker. I can't stay away from the tables."

From yellowing notes, I reel off an analysis by an early scriptwriter. Perhaps she comes by her comic genius because of some "early maladjustment in life, so you see commonplace things as unusual? To get even, to cover the hurt, you play back the unhappy as funny?"

Forget any deep-dish theorizing. "Listen, honey," says Miss B, drilling me with those big blue peepers, "you've been talking to me for four, five hours. Have you heard me say anything funny? I tell you I don't think funny. That's the difference between a wit and a comedian. My daughter Lucie thinks funny. So does Steve Allen, Buddy Hackett, Betty Grable."

BETTY GRABLE THINKS FUNNY? "Yeah. Dean Martin has a curly mind. oh, I can tell a funny story about something that happened to me. But I'm more of a hardworking hack with an instinct for timing, who knows the mechanics of comedy. I picked it up by osmosis, on radio and movie lots [she made 75 flicks] working with Bob Hope, Bert Lahr, the Marx Brothers, the Three Stooges - didn't learn a thing from them except when to duck. Buster Keaton taught me about props. OK, I'm waiting."

Well, I hedge, I caught Miss Ball in a few funny capers on the Universal lot this week. Like one day, in her star bungalow, she throws a quick-energy lunch in the blender - four almonds, wild honey, water, six-year-old Korean ginseng roots, plus her own medicine, liver extract. "AAAGH," she gags, then peers in the mirror at her hair, which is a normal working fright wig, "Gawd," she moans, "it looks as if I'd poked my finger into an electric-light socket!" No boffo line, but her pantomimed horror makes me laugh out loud. Working, she is fearless - dangling from high wires, coping with wild beasts. She talks of animals she's worked with, chimps, bears, lions, tigers. "I love 'em all, especially the chimps, but you can't trust their fright or panic. Like that baby elephant who gave a press job to a guest actress." (2) What's a press job? "Honey, once an elephant puts his head down, he keeps marching, right through walls." Miss Ball puts her own head down, crooks an arm for a trunk, and voila, is an elephant. Funny as hell. So off-camera she's no great wit, but then is Chaplin?

Four days a week, through the Thursday night filming before a live audience, she labors like some hungry Depression starlet. Monday a.m., she sits at the head of a conference table, lined by 12 staffers, editing the script. Madame Executive Tycoon in charge of everything, overseeing things Desi used to do. Also the haus-frau, constantly opening windows for fresh air and emptying ashtrays. She wears black horn-rims, three packs of ciggies are at the ready. "Do I have to ask for a raise again?" she impatiently drills the writers, "I've done that 400 times." "QUIET!" she yells during rehearsal, perching in a high director's chair, a la Cecil B. DeMille. "Isn't somebody around here supposed to yell quiet?" She frets about the new set. "Those aisles - they're a mile and a half wide. What for?" The audience is too far away, she won't get the feedback from their laughs are her life's blood. (Once I hear Gary Morton on the phone, in his British-antiqued executive office, saying: "We need your laugh, honey. Go down to the set and laugh; that's an order.")

That physical quality about her comedy, a la the old silent movies or vaudeville - which were the big amusements of her youth - seems to transcend any language. (A Moscow acting school, I was told, shows old Lucy clips as lessons in comic timing.) So what did she learn from that great Buster Keaton?

"At Metro, I kept being held back by show-girl-glamour typing. I always wanted to do comedy. Buster Keaton, a friend of director Eddy Sedgwick, spotted something in me when I was doing a movie called DuBarry - what the hell was the name? - and kept nagging the moguls about what I could do. Now a great forte of mine is props. He taught me all about 'em. Attention to detail, that's all it is. He was around when I went out on a vaudeville tour with Desi with a loaded prop." What's that? "Real Rube Goldberg stuff. A cello loaded with the whole act - a seat to perch on, a violin bow, a plunger, a whistle, a horn. Honey, if you noodge it, you've lost the act. Keaton taught me your prop is your jewel case. Never entrust it to a stagehand. Never let it out of your sight when you travel, rehearse with it all week." Ever noodge it? "Gawd, yes. Happened at the old Roxy in New York. I was supposed to run down that seven-mile aisle when some maniac sprang my prop by leaping out and yelling 'I'm that woman's mother! She's letting me starve.'" What did you do? "Ad-libbed it, and I am one lousy ad-libber."

After 20 years, isn't she weary of playing the Lucy character? "No, I'm a rooter, I look for ruts. My cousin Cleo [now producer of Here's Lucy] is always prodding me to move. She once said Lucy was my security blanket. Maybe. I'm not erudite in any way, like Cleo. But why should I change? Last year was big TV relevant year, and I made sure my show wasn't relevant. Lucy deals in fundamental, everyday things exaggerated, with a happy ending. She has a basic childishness that hopefully most of us never lose. That's why she cries a lot like a kid - the WAAH act - instead of getting drunk."

Aha! Is Lucy the guileful child-woman, conniving forever against male authority - whether husband or nagging boss - particularly FEMALE? ("None of us watch the show," sniffed a Women's Libber I know, "but she must be an Aunt Tom." Still, I ponder, hasn't that always been the essence of comedy, the little poor-soul man - or woman - up against the biggies?)

"I certainly hope so. You trying to con me into talking about Women's Lib? I don't know the meaning of it. I never had anything to squawk about. I don't know what they're asking for that I don't have already. Equal pay for equal work, that's OK. The suffragettes rightly pressed a hard case - and when roles like Carry Nation come along, they ask me to play them, perhaps because I have the physical vitality. But they're kind of a laughingstock, aren't they? Like that girl who gave her parents 40 whacks with an ax? Didn't Carry Nation ax things, was she a Prohibitionist or what?" (3)

She'd just said nix to playing Sabina, in the movie of Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth. Why? "I didn't understand it." She turned down The Manchurian Candidate for the same reason. "Got that Oh Dad, Poor Dad script the same week and thought I'd gone loony." If she makes another movie, she'll play Lillian Russell in Diamond Jim with Jackie Gleason, "a nice, nostalgic courtship story that won't tax anyone's nerves." (4) 

Is Miss Ball warmed by the comeback of old stars in non-taxing Broadway nostalgia shows like No, No, Nanette? (5)

"Listen, I studied that audience. I saw people in their 60's and 70's enjoying themselves. That had to be nostalgia. The 30's and 40's smiled indulgently, that Ruby Keeler is up there on the stage alive, not dead. For the below 30's, it's pure camp. I don't put it down, but it’s not warm, working nostalgia, but the feeling 'Ye gods, anything but today'

"Maybe I'm more concerned about things that I realize. I told you politics is definitely not on my agenda - I got burned bad, back in the '40's signing a damned petition as a favor. (6) Just say the word 'politician,' and I think of chicanery. Too many subversive angles today. But I must be one of millions who are so fed up, depressed, sobbing inside, about the news...the atrocities, the dead, the running down of America. You can't obliterate the news, but the baddest dream is that you feels so helpless.

"I was sitting in this very chair one night, flipping the dial, and came to Combat! There were soldiers crouching in bushes, a helicopter hovering overhead. Nothing happening, so I make like a director, yelling, 'Move it! This take is too LONG!' It turned out to be a news show from Vietnam. That shook me. There I was criticizing the director, and real blood was dripping off my screen... That drug scene bugs me. It's ridiculous, self-indulgent. We're supposed to be grateful if the kids aren't on drugs. They're destroying us from within, getting at our youth in the colleges. OK, kids have to protest, but how can they accomplish anything if they're physically shot?

"One of the reasons I'm still working is that people seem grateful that Lucy is there, the same character and unchanging view. There's so much chaos in this world, that's important. Many people, not only shut-ins, depend on the tube, too much so - they look for favorites they can count on. Older people loved Lawrence Welk. They associated his music with their youth. Now he's gone. It's not fair. (7) They shouldn't have taken off those bucolic comedies; that left a big dent in some folks' lives. Maybe we're not getting messages anymore from the clergy, the politicians, so TV does the preaching. But as an entertainer, I don't believe in messages.

"Some Mr. Jones is always asking why am I still working - as if it were some crime or neurotic. OK, I'll say it's for my kids. But I like a routine life, I like to work. I come from an old New England family in which everyone worked. My grandparents were homesteaders in New York and Ohio. My mother worked all her life - during the Depression in a factory."

What does she think of the new "relevant" comedy like All in the Family? "I don't know... It's good to bring prejudice out in the open. People do think that way, but why glorify it? Those not necessarily young may not catch the moral. That show doesn't go full circle for me."

Full circle?

"You have to suffer a little when you do wrong. That prejudiced character doesn't pay a penance. Does he ever reverse a feeling? I'm for believability, but I'm tired of hearing 'pig,' 'wop,' 'Polack' said unkindly. Me, I have to have an on-the-nose moral. Years ago, the Romans let humans be eaten by lions, while they laughed and drank - that was entertainment. But I’m tired of the ugly. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing, that's my idea of entertainment. Anything Richard Burton does is heaven. Easy Rider scared me at first because I knew how it could influence kids. But at least that movie came full circle. They led a life of nothing and they got nothing. Doris Day, I believe in her. Elaine May? A kook, but a great talent. Barbra Streisand? A brilliant technician."

On her old ten-minute daily interview radio show, (8) she once asked Barbra, like any star-struck civilian: How does it feel to be only 21, a big recording artist and star of the Broadway hit Funny Girl? "Not much," said Barbra. "That cool really flustered Lucille. It violated everything she believes in," says cousin Cleo Smith, who grew up with Miss B in small-town Celoron, N.Y. "For her, nothing ever came easy. She didn't marry until she was 30, or become a really big star until she was 40. She's still so hard on herself, sets such rigorous standards for herself as an actress and parent. She honestly believes in all the old maxims, that a stitch in time saves nine, etc. She's literal-minded, a bit like Scarlett O'Hara. Does what needs doing today, and to hell with tomorrow."

Her self-made wealth a few years ago was reckoned at $50 to $100 million. After her divorce, she reluctantly took over the presidency of the Desilu studio and sold it six years later to the conglomerate Gulf & Western for nearly $18 million. Does that make her the biggest lady tycoon in Hollywood? (The 179 original I Love Lucy reruns now belong, incidentally, to a CBS syndicate; her second Lucy Show, to Paramount. She owns only the current Here's Lucy - OK, go that straight?)

"Hah! Like Sinatra, I owe about three and a half million bucks all the time. That figure is ridiculous. All my money is working. I lost a helluva lot in the stock market last year and haven't recouped it. It's an illusion that people in show biz are really rich. The really filthy rich are the little old ladies in Boston, the old folks in Pasadena, who've had dough for years and haven't been seen since."

The divorce from Desi Arnaz can still set her brooding. "It was the worst period of my life. I really hit the bottom of despair - anything form there on had to be up. Neither Desi nor I has been the same since, physically or mentally, though we're very friendly, ridiculously so. Nobody knows how hard I tried to make that marriage work, thinking all the trouble must be my fault. I did everything I could to right that ship, trotting to psychiatrists. I hate failure, and that divorce was a Number One failure in my eyes... Anything in excess drives me crazy. He'd build a home anyplace he was, and then never be around to enjoy it. I was so idealistic, I thought that with two beautiful babies, and a beautiful business, what more could any man want? Freedom, he said, but he had that. People don't know what a job he did building that Desilu empire, what a great director and brilliant executive he was yet he let it all go....Maybe Latins have an instinct for self-destruction..."

Was that the conflict, a Latin temperament married to an old-fashioned American female? "It has a helluva lot to do with getting into it and getting out. The charm. But they keep up a big facade and don't follow through. No, the machismo didn't bother me, I like to play games too.

"Desi and I had made an agreement that if either of us wanted to pull out of Desilu, the other could buy. I wanted to go to Switzerland with the kids, anywhere to run away, but he wanted out. The I found out that for five years, our empire had taken a nose dive, and if I wanted to get my money back, I had to rebuild it first. For the first time in my life, I was absolutely terrified - I'd never run any show or a big studio. When I came back from doing the musical Wildcat on Broadway, I was so sick, so beat, I just sat in that backyard, numb, for a year. I'd had pneumonia, mononucleosis, staph, osteomyletis. Lost 22 pounds. Friends told me the best thing I could do physically, psychologically, was go back to work, but could I revive Lucy without Desi, my old writers, the old crew?"

You didn't like being a woman executive? "I hated it. I used to cry so much - and I'm not a crier - because I had to let someone go or make decisions I didn't understand. There were always two sides to every question, and trouble was I could see both sides. No one realizes how run-down Desilu was. The finks and sycophants making $70,000 a year, they were easy to clean out. Then during the CBS Jim Aubrey regime, I couldn't sell the new pilots we made - Dan Dailey, Donald O'Connor, Ethel Merman. I couldn't sell anything but me." (9)

Was it tough to be a woman bossing men? "Yeah. It puts men in a bad spot. I could read their minds, unfortunately, wondering who is this female making this decision, not realizing that maybe I'd consulted six experts first. I'm all wrong as an executive, I feel out of place. I have too many antennae out, I'm too easily hurt and intimidated. But I can make quick surgical incisions. I've learned that much about authority - give people enough rope to hand themselves, stand back, let them work, but warm them first. Creative people you have to give special leeway to, and often it doesn't pay off. Me, I'm workative, not creative. I can fix - what I call 'naturalize.' I'm a good editor, I can naturalize dialogue, find an easier way to do a show mechanically.

But I didn't make the same marriage mistake twice. Gary digs what my life is, why I have to work. We have tranquility. We want the same things, take care of what we have."

She shows me Gary's dressing room, closets hung with shirts and jackets - by the dozen. "My husband is a clothes and car nut, but it's a harmless vice. Better than booze or chasing women, right?" (His cars include a 1927 Model T Ford, a Mercedes-Benz 300 SL, an Astin Martin, a Rolls-Royce convertible.)

"Anyone married to me has an uphill climb. Gary and I coped by anticipating. We knew we should be separated eight, nine months a year, so he tapered off his act, found other thing to do - making investments, building things. He plays the golf circuit, Palm Springs, Pebble Beach, and tolerantly lets me stay at Snowmass for weeks. Sun just doesn't agree with me. He didn't come into the business for five years. I didn't want to put him in a position in which he would be ridiculed. I could tell that he was grasping things - casting, story line. I said, 'You've been a big help to me. You should be paid for it.' "

On a Friday night, I dine with the Mortons. Dinner is served around 6:30, just like in my Midwest hometown. Lucille is still fretting about this week's show - "over-rehearsed; because there were so many props, the fun had gone out of it." Gary, just home from unwinding his own way - golfing with Milton Berle, Joey Bishop - asks if I'd like something to drink with dinner? Coke or ginger ale? "No? I think we have wine." No high living in this house, but the spareribs are superb. "Laura asked me an interesting question," he tells his wife. "Like isn't there a conflict when a husband in the same business - comedy - marries a superstar? I told her I'd never thought of it before."

They met the summer when Lucille was rehearsing Wildcat, and he was a stand-up comic at Radio City Music Hall, seven days a week. "We both came up the hard way," he says. "I got started in World War II, clowning for USO shows. I've been in show biz for 30 years and can appreciate what she goes through. Lucy can't run company by herself. Maybe with me around, when she walks on the set, her mind is at peace. I pop in from time to time, on conferences, rehearsals. I can tell from her if things are going well, if the laughter is there. She's a thoroughbred, very honest with me, a friend to whom I can talk about anything. She never leaves me out of her life; that's important for a man. Do you know how many bets were lost about our marriage lasting? It's been nearly ten years now, and I've slept on the couch only once."

Past dinner, we adjourn promptly to the living room, and a private showing of Little Murders. It's not a pretty movie of urban American life, and Lucy talks back indignantly to the screen. (10) The flick she rally like was George Plimpton's Paper Lion, with the Detroit Lions, which she booked under the illusion it was an animal picture. "At the end, 12 of us here stood up and cheered, and I wrote every last Lion a fan note. You know that picture hardly made a dime?"

On a house tout, I'd noted the Norman Rockwell and Andrew Wyeth albums in the living room, and a memo scotch-taped to her bathroom wall: "Get Smart with N.V.P."

N.V.P. Is that Norman Vincent Peale, her old friend and spiritual mentor? "Yes. He marred me and Gary. I still adhere to his way of thinking because he preaches a day-to-day religion that I can understand. Something workable, not allegory. Like how do you get up in the morning and just get through the day?

"Dr. Peale taught me the art of selfishness. All it means is doing what's right for you, not being a burden to others. When I was in Wildcat, he dropped around one night saying, 'I hear you're very ill, and working too hard.' 'Work never hurt anybody,' I protested. But he reminded me I had two beautiful children to bring up, and if I was in bad shape, how could I do it? I've learned you don't rake more leaves than you can get into the wheelbarrow. I've always been moderate, but I was too spread around, trying to please too many people. You don't become callous, but you conserve your energies."

What about her kids? Passing a newsstand, I'd noted a rash of fan mags blazoned with headlines about Desi Jr., something of a teen-age idol, and at 18 a spitting image of old pop. (A rock star at 12, he'd recently garnered very good notices indeed for a movie role in Red Sky at Morning.) "Why Lucille Ball's Son Is So Bitter About His Own Mother," read the El Trasho covers. "Patty Duke Begs Desi Jr. To Believe Her: 'You Made Me Pregnant.' " Does the imbroglio bother this on-the-nose moralist?

"I worked for years for a quiet personal life and to have to personally impinged on, with no recourse, is hard. I brought Patty to the house, feeling very maternal about her, saying look at this clever girl, what a big talent she is. Now, I can thank her for useless notoriety. She's living in some fantastic dreamworld, and we're the victims of it. Desi being the tender age of 17 when they met, she used him. She hasn't proved or asked for anything. I asked Desi if he wanted to marry her and he said no. My daughter helped outfit the baby, which Patty brought to the house, but did she ever say thank you?

"Desi's going to CIA this fall." Not the CIA? No, the new California Institute of the Arts, where he'll study music. "Yes, he's very much like his father, too much sometimes - I just hope he has Desi's business acumen. I'm glad he didn't choose UCLA or Berkeley or a school full of nonconformists. Lucie just now wants marriage and babies - maybe she'll go on to college later.

"I took the kids out of school deliberately. Desi was at Beverly Hills High, Lucie at Immaculate Heart."

Why? "I didn't like the scene - it was the usual - pregnant girls, drugs." That goes on at Immaculate Heart? Sure. "A lot of girls who boarded there were unhappy misfits, and Lucie was already working in the nunnery. All the friends she brought home were the rejected. I'm that way myself."

Did they mind, well, your stage-managing their lives? "No, they were as sick of that weird high school scene as I was. I made them a proposition - told them to think it over for a month, while I was in Monaco. Do you want to be on the show? I told them the salary would be scale, that most would be put in trust. They'd be tutored and not able to graduate with their classes. They both thought they were going to the coast, but working with a tutor, they really got turned on by books for the first time. They wanted to be in show business, and I wanted to keep an eye on them."

Of course her show is nepotism, she grants. "Cleo thought a long time before becoming the producer, wondering if it wasn’t overdoing family. Nobody seems to be suffering from it, I told her." Thursday night show time is like a tense Broadway opening night. Gary Morton, in stylish crested blazer, warms up the audience, heavy with out-of-town tourists. "Lucy started out with another fellow, can't remember his name.... What is home without a mother? A place to bring girls." Lucille bursts out onstage, exuding the old MGM glamour, fireball hair ablaze, eyelashes inches long, in aquamarine-cum-rhinestone kaftan. "For God's sake," she implores, "laugh it up! We want to hear from you... Gary, have you introduced my mom?" Indeed he has. Loyal, durable, 79-year-old Desiree "DeDe" Ball, her hair pink as Lucille's, has missed few of the 409 Lucy shows filmed to date, and is on hand as usual with 19 personal guests. Gary also asks for big hands for Cleo, and her husband Cecil Smith, TV critic for the LA Times, who has also appeared on the show. (11) 

One day Desi Jr. wanders on the set, just back from visiting his father in Mexico. He'd gone with Patty Duke and the baby. The young man does have Latin charm, and apparently talent. I ask him a fan-mag query: Is it rough to be the spin-off of such famous show-biz parents?

"Well, I grew up with kids like Dean Martin, Jr., and Tony Martin, Jr., and we had a lot in common." What? "We all had houses in Palm Springs." Any generational problem with Mom? "She's found the thing she's best at, and sticks to it. As long as she has Snowmass, she has an escape, some reality. I realize she lives half in a man's world, and that must be tough on a woman. My father - he worked hard for years, and then he'd had it. This is silly, weird, he felt. He aged more in ten years than he had in 40. I'm like him. I feel life is very short. He's had major operations recently, and he's changed a lot."

Patty Duke is six years older than Desi Jr., paralleling the six-year age gap that separated parents Lucy and Desi. "Patty is a lot like my mother, the same drive, and strong will, a perfectionist...But I'm never going to get married. Marriage is unrealistic, expecting you to devote a whole life unselfishly to just one person. Do you know people age unbelievably when they marry? From what I've seen, 85 percent of married couples are miserable; 14 percent, just average; one percent, happy." (12) 

His mother's own childhood, in little Celoron, an outspring of Jamestown, N.Y., was oh-so-different from her kids'. "She was always a wild, tempestuous, exciting child," say Cleo, "doing things that worried people, plotting and scheming, though she knew she'd get in trouble." Interesting, because that's one basic of the Lucy format, Miss B forever finagling second bananas like Vivian Vance into co-trouble. "One summer, she conned me into running away. It was only to nearby Fredonia, but in her sneaky way she really wanted to catch up to a groovy high school principal who was teaching there. He played it very cool, calling Mom and telling her we were staying overnight in a boarding house. On his advice, when we got home, DeDe acted as if we hadn't been away. That devastated Lucille, no reaction, nothing."

The classic Lucy story line also has her conniving against male authority, whether husband or boss, now played by Gale Gordon. "I need a strong father or husband figure as catalyst. I have to be an inadequate somebody, because I don't want the authority for Lucy. Every damned movie script sent me seems to cast me as a lady with authority, like Eve Arden or Roz Russell, but that's not me.

"No, I don't remember my own father," says Miss Ball. "He was a telephone lineman who died of typhoid at 25, when I was about three. I do remember everything that day, though. Hanging out the window, begging to play with the kids next door who had measles... The doctor coming, my mother weeping. I remember a bird that flew in the window, a picture that fell off the wall.

"My brother Fred [who was born after her father's death] was always very, very good. He never did anything wrong - he was too much to bear. I was always in trouble, a real pain in the ass. I suppose I wasn't much fun to be around." To this day, says Cleo, Lucille suspects Fred is her mother's favorite, even though DeDe has devoted her whole life to this daughter.

Family ties were always fierce-strong. After her father's death, "We lived with my mother's parents, for a while. Grandpa Hunt was a marvelous jack-of-all-trades, a woodturner, eye doctor, mailman, bon vivant, hotel owner. [And also an old-fashioned Populist-Socialist.] He met my grandmother, Flora Belle, a real pioneer woman and pillar of the family, when she was a maid in his hotel. She was a nurse and midwife, an orphan who brought up four pairs of twin sisters and brothers all by herself. He took us to vaudeville every Saturday and to the local amusement park. When Grandma died at 51, all us kids had to pitch in, making beds, cooking.

"Yeah, I guess I am real mid-America, growing up as a mix of French-Scotch-Irish-English, living on credit like everyone else, paying $1.25 a week to the insurance man, buying furniture on time. But it was a good, full life. Grandpa took us camping, fishing, picking mushrooms, made us bobsleds. We always had goodies. I had the first boyish bob in town and the first open galoshes.

"My mother then married Ed Peterson, a handsome-ugly man, very well-read. He was good to me and Freddy but he drank too much. He was the first to point out the magic of the stage. A monologist came to town on the Chautauqua circuit. He just sat onstage with a pitcher of water and light bulb and made us laugh and cry for two hours. For me, this was pure magic. When I was about seven, Ed and mother moved to Detroit, leaving me with his old-fashioned Swedish parents, who were very strict. I had to be in bed at 6:30, hearing all the other kids playing outside in the summer daylight. Maybe it wasn't that traumatic, but I realize now it was a bad time for me. I felt as if I'd been deserted. I got my imagination to working, and read trillions of books."

The adult Lucille, talking to interviewers, used to go on and on about her "unhappy" childhood, little realizing that she was reflecting on her mother, to whom she is passionately devoted. "Just how long do you think you lived with the Petersons?" asked DeDe one day in a confrontation. "Three YEARS? Well I tell you it was more like three weeks."

"I left home at 15, much too early, desperate to break into the big wide world. Looking for work in New York show biz was ugly, without any leads or friends or training other than high school operettas and plays and Sunday school pageants. I was very shy and reticent, believe it or not, and I kept running home every five minutes. I got thrown in with older Shubert and Ziegfeld dollies and, believe me, they were a mean, closed corporation. I don't understand kids today who get easily discouraged and yap about doing their own thing. Don't they know what hard work is? Where are their morals? I always knew when I did wrong, and paid penance."

Yet she was venturesome enough to sit in on some recent Synanon group-therapy sessions for drug addicts. "They wanted me to raise some money, and I wanted to find out what it was about. The games were fascinating, wonderful, until I couldn't take it any more. The other participants kept bugging me: What are you here for? Are your children drug addicts? I had to start making up problems."

For two decades, she's been risking her neck in those murderous ratings, outlasting long-ago competitors like Fulton Sheen, and now up against such pleasers as pro football and Rowan and Martin. (13) 

Suppose the ratings drop, what would she do?

No idea. "Might take a trip on the Inland Waterway form Boston to Florida. In my deal with Universal, I can make specials, other movies, TV pilots. I wouldn't have to ski 'spooked' at Snowmass." What's that? "Honey, I have to be careful. If I break a leg 500 people are out of work. (14) I'd be happy in some branch of acting with some modicum of appreciation. Listen, it never occurred to me, in life that I'd fail ever, because I always appreciated small successes. I never had a big fixed goal. When I was running Desilu, it drove me wild when people asked, 'Aren't you proud to own the old RKO studio where you once worked as a starlet?' What $50-a-week starlet ever walked around a lot saying, 'I want to own this studio'?

"I don't know what you've been driving at, what's your story line? But it's been interesting, talking."

FOOTNOTES: HINDSIGHT IS 20/20

(1) This refers to a rare 1969 BBC documentary about Britain’s royal family that gave the public an inside look at the life of the Windsors. In one scene, the family was watching television, and on the screen was “I Love Lucy”, much to the chagrin of Prince Philip. Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip were mentioned on the series, especially in the episode “Lucy Meets the Queen” (ILL S5;E15).  

(2) Lucy is referring to a 1967 episode of “The Lucy Show” titled “Lucy The Babysitter” (TLS S5;E16) in which Lucy Carmichael babysits three rambunctious chimps for their parents, played by Jonathan Hole and Mary Wickes. In the final moments of the show, Wickes reveals a fourth sibling - a baby elephant!  The animal went wild and pushed Wickes (what Ball described as a “press job”) into one of the prop trees. The trainer had to physically subdue the elephant to get it away from Wickes, who injured her arm. The final cut ends with the entrance of the baby elephant.

(3) Lucy is conflating (probably intentionally) the stories of real-life prohibitionist Carrie Nation (1846-1911), who famously hacked up bars and whisky barrels with an axe, and Lizzie Bordon (1860-1927), who famously hacked up her parents with an axe. (Photo from the 1962 TV special “The Good Years” starring Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda.) 

(4) There was never a film version of Thornton Wilder’s play Skin Of Our Teeth which was on Broadway in 1942 starring Tallulah Bankhead as Sabina, the role offered to Ball.  There were several television adaptations; one in Australia in 1959; one in England the same year starring Vivian Leigh as Sabina;  one in the USA in 1955 starring Mary Martin (above) as Sabina; and a filmed version of a stage production starring Blair Brown as Sabina in 1983. Although it is possible that Lucille Ball might have been considered for the role of the sexy housemaid Sabina in 1955, the article says that the role was “just” offered to her, so it probably refers to a 1971 project that never materialized. Wilder’s story tracks a typical American family from New Jersey from the ice age through the apocalypse. 

(5) In 1971, there was a popular revival of the 1925 musical comedy No, No, Nanette on Broadway. The cast featured veteran screen star Ruby Keeler and included Helen Gallagher (playing a character named Lucille, coincidentally), Bobby Van, Jack Gilford, Patsy Kelly and Susan Watson. Busby Berkeley, nearing the end of his career, was credited as supervising the production, although his name was his primary contribution to the show. The 1971 production was well-reviewed and ran for 861 performances. It sparked interest in the revival of similar musicals from the 1920s and 1930s. The original 1925 cast featured Charles Winninger, who played Barney Kurtz, Fred’s old vaudeville partner on “I Love Lucy.” In that same episode (above), they sing a song from the musical, "Peach on the Beach” by Vincent Youmans and Otto Harbach. Like the revue in the episode, the musical is set in Atlantic City, New Jersey.  

(6) Lucy is referring to her 1936 affidavit of registration to join the Communist Party.  Lucille said she signed it to appease her elderly grandfather. The cavalier act caught up with Ball in 1953, when zealous red-hunting Senator Joe McCarthy tried to purge America of suspected Communists. Although many careers were ruined, Ball escaped virtually unscathed.  

(7) The popular big band music series “The Lawrence Welk Show” (1955) was unceremoniously canceled in 1971 by ABC, in an attempt to attract younger audiences. What Lucy doesn’t mention is that four days after this magazine was published, the show began running brand new shows in syndication, which continued until 1982. Welk, despite not being much of an actor, played himself on “Here’s Lucy” (above) in January 1970. 

(8) “Let’s Talk To Lucy” was a short daily radio program aired on CBS Radio from September 1964 to June 1964. Most interviews (including Streisand’s) were spread over multiple installments.  

(9)  To showcase possible new series (pilots) Desilu and CBS aired “Vacation Playhouse” (1963-67) during the summer when “The Lucy Show” was on hiatus.  This would often be the only airing of Lucy’s passion projects. “Papa GI” with Dan Dailey as an army sergeant in Korea who has his hands full with two orphans who want him to adopt them. The pilot was aired in June 1964 but it was not picked up for production. “Maggie Brown” had Ethel Merman playing a widow trying to raise a daughter and run a nightclub which is next to a Marine Corps base. The pilot aired in September 1963, but went unsold. “The Hoofer” starring Donald O’Connor and Soupy Sales as former vaudevillians aired its pilot in August 1966. No sale! 

(10) Little Murders (1971) was a black comedy based on the play of the same name by Jules Feiffer. The film is about a young nihilistic New Yorker (Elliott Gould) coping with pervasive urban violence, obscene phone calls, rusty water pipes, electrical blackouts, paranoia and ethnic-racial conflict during a typical summer of the 1970s. Definitely not Lucille Ball’s style of comedy!  Paper Lion (1968) was a sports comedy about George Plimpton (Alan Alda) pretending to be a member of the Detroit Lions football team for a Sports Illustrated article. 

(11) Cecil Smith appeared in “Lucy Meets the Burtons” (HL S3;E1) in 1970 playing himself, a member of the Hollywood Press with a dozen other real-life writers. The casting was a way to get better coverage of the episode (featuring power couple Dick Burton, Liz Taylor, and her remarkable diamond ring). The gambit worked and the episode was the most viewed of the entire series. 

(12) Desi Jr.’s 1971 views on marriage did not last. He married actress Linda Purl in 1980, but they divorced in 1981. In October 1987, Arnaz married dancer Amy Laura Bargiel. Ten years later they purchased the Boulder Theatre in Boulder City, Nevada and restored it. They lived in Boulder with their daughter, Haley. Amy died of cancer in 2015, at the age of 63.   

(13) From 1952 to 1957, Catholic Bishop Fulton J. Sheen hosted the inspirational program “Life Is Worth Living”, winning an Emmy Award in 1953, alongside winners Lucille Ball and “I Love Lucy.”  “Here’s Lucy” was programmed up against “Monday Night Football” on ABC and “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In” on NBC.  Instead of ignoring her competition, Ball embraced them by featuring stories about football and incorporating many of the catch phrases and guest stars from “Laugh-In.” 

(14) Lucy spoke too soon!  Just a few months after this interview was published Ball did indeed have a skiing accident in Snowmass and broke her leg. With season five’s first shooting date approaching, Ball was faced with either ending the series or re-write the scripts so that Lucy Carter would be in a leg cast.  She chose the latter, even incorporating actual footage of herself on the Snowmass  slopes (above) into "Lucy’s Big Break” (HL S5;E1). 

Elsewhere in the Issue...

“This Was Our Life” by Gene Shalit includes images of Lucille Ball in the collage illustration. 

A week after this issue of Look hit the stands, the fourth season of “Here’s Lucy” kicked off with guest star Flip Wilson and a parody of Gone With the Wind.  Three days later, Ball guest-starred on his show. 

Not to be outdone, LOOK’s rival LIFE also devoted an entire issue to television, on news stands just three days later.  

Naturally, “I Love Lucy” didn’t escape mention!  I’m not sure why the show’s run is bifurcated: 1952-55, 1956-57.  Actually, the show began in 1951 and ran continually until 1957. 

Click here for more about Look, Life and Time! 

[letterboxd]

Horse Power.

The Nest’s writer-director Sean Durkin talks about creating atmosphere, watching films without judgment, and the best movies of 1986.

Downfalls in Hollywood movies tend to be chaotic, dramatic and a lot of fun along the way. From Citizen Kane to The Wolf of Wall Street, outsized ambitions are realized on screen in castles, exotic holidays, wild parties, sweeping us up in the extravagance of it all, before the inevitable crash. The Nest takes a slower, far more British view of ambition and its effects on family—or, as Charlie writes, “this movie is a reminder that people who call themselves entrepreneurs should instead be stay-at-home dads”.

The new film from writer-director Sean Durkin, the brain behind cult-survivor slow-burn Martha Marcy May Marlene, is less “strap in and enjoy the ride”, more “slow disintegration of all sense of sanity”—a tense psychological drama focused on the person who usually gets hurt the most: the wife. And that horse-lovin’ dream wife Allison, as played by Carrie Coon, is a character to behold (and the subject of many obsessive The Nest reviews on Letterboxd).

Just as Durkin takes time to carefully explore Martha’s vulnerability in his earlier film, in The Nest, he closes in on Allison, as she and their children adjust to 1980s life in an English manor, far from the comfort of Allison’s American home, while wheeler-dealer husband Rory (Jude Law) chases a new opportunity.

There are thematic similarities in both films; a case to be made that ambitious men wreak a comparable mental destruction on their families as cult leaders do on their followers, breaking them down with charm, persuasion, false promises. There’s also something about the juxtaposition of periods in the film—the fifteenth-century manor vs the ’80s bangers on the soundtrack—that adds to The Nest’s unnerving atmosphere (other parts of the soundtrack are composed by Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry in his first film-score credit).

Keen to understand more about Durkin’s influences and memories, Jack Moulton put him through the Letterboxd Life in Film interrogation.

Carrie Coon as Allison O’Hara in ‘The Nest’.

The Nest feels like a very personal film. In what ways are the emotions of the premise personal to you? When I was making Southcliffe in 2012, I was back in England where I spent my childhood and I hadn’t been back in close to twenty years. It really struck me how London and New York felt very similar now but they didn’t when I was a kid. I thought maybe I wanted to make a film about a family that moves in that time and how a move can affect a family. As I wrote the script, I became a parent, so it became as much a reflection of modern adulthood as it did about my childhood in the ’80s. Although it’s a period piece, I wanted to make it feel very close to today to look at the celebrated values of the time and how those are still very relevant.

The mansion the family moves into is the titular ‘nest’, and the use of space and atmosphere contribute so much to the film’s subtext. What were you looking for when location scouting for the house? Was it an easy or difficult process? Yeah, it was difficult. It was like doing an open casting call. I had a very specific idea in my head but [my production designer] was able to put it into actual architectural terms so we were able to find a house that a successful commodities broker would live and commute from in Surrey. We needed something beyond that, but if you go too far, you get small castles. Once we located the right exterior, there were a bunch of [houses] that would’ve been great, but when we got inside, there were no open spaces. I wanted to have long hallways to be able to see through multiple rooms to create that isolation—the opposite of the cozy American house that they were living in before, to really highlight the good life they left behind.

Carrie Coon and Jude Law in ‘The Nest’.

We love the soundtrack; not just the choice of songs but the way that they’re mixed. Can you give us some insight into the song selection? When writing, I build a playlist that I write to. This one was a mix of personal memories from childhood—like Simply Red, which takes me back to falling asleep in the back of my dad’s car—so there’s a way into writing there on a sensory level, and then I build upon it with songs that I love from the time. I was listening to Richard Reed Parry’s Music for Heart and Breath album a lot and he ended up being the composer of the film, so his music was always part of the heart of the movie as I was writing it.

I would spend my drives to set with my assistant talking about music and he would turn me onto some stuff that would make it into the movie. It was a mix of a long-running preparation and things that I pick up in the moment then making that all work at the right level so it feels of the world. Like with The Cure, we actually played that off a tape cassette when Allison walks into the room.

Since your debut feature in 2011, you’ve had a prolific career in television and as a film producer; you’re a founding member of Borderline Films with fellow directors Antonio Campos and Josh Mond. Do you see yourself more as a producer who only occasionally directs films yourself? No, I don’t really consider myself a producer. I’ve produced movies for filmmakers and friends and I help people where I can. I’m not someone who’s out getting properties and thinking about how to put together a film, I’m only thinking about my own work as a writer and a director. Between finishing Southcliffe in 2013 and The Nest in 2018, I had a five-year gap where I was developing lots of projects one after the other—two features and a television show—that were both so close to [being greenlit] but something fell through, which was really bad luck.

What film made you want to become a filmmaker? The Goonies and Back to the Future were those movies as a kid that first made me want to make movies and tell stories, but the moment where I realized what filmmaking is was seeing The Shining. I saw it for the first time when I was eleven or twelve and a friend showed it to me because his older brother had the VHS. It was my first time understanding atmosphere and direction and I just had a sense that I could do it too. It was a really crucial moment, and I kept that thought to myself for a very long time.

Cinematographer Mátyás Erdély shoots Carrie Coon in Soho.

What’s your scariest film that is not technically horror? AKA, your area of expertise. Oh man, scariest? Something I’ve watched recently is The Vanishing and it’s probably one of the most unsettling films I’ve ever seen. It was incredible to rewatch it because I’d last seen it when I was in college—I watched everything back then—and I’d also seen the American remake, so when I watched it this time, I was trying to remember things [that were different] from the remake. I was like “he’s gonna get out, right?—oh no, that’s in the American version!” I find it an astonishing movie. There’s a real human element to the pain of the killer.

Let’s nerd out: what’s your top film of 1986, the year that The Nest is set? [Laughs] I’ve no idea what came out in 1986. Can I look up a list and I’ll tell you? Let’s see, films of 1986… This is fun! Alright, “popular films of 1986” I’m seeing: Blue Velvet, Short Circuit, Stand by Me, Platoon, The Color of Money, what else have we got here? River’s Edge… Pretty in Pink… Ferris Bueller’s Day Off—Ferris Bueller’s gotta be up there. Big Trouble in Little China! That’s it! I’m sure there’s other things, but from my quick search, I’d say Big Trouble in Little China. That was a movie that was always on in my house because it was one of my dad’s all-time favorites.

Which is Jude Law’s best performance? I love The Talented Mr. Ripley so much. I constantly rewatch that movie—it’s perfect. I also loved him in Vox Lux recently.

Sean Durkin and Jude Law on the set of ‘The Nest’.

What is the best film about marriage and why does it resonate with you? Shoot the Moon was really influential for me. I’d say it’s a bit more about divorce and family than it is about marriage but [it depends on] if you take the ending to mean that they’re going to stay together—I kind of do. You could say a separation is part of a marriage. I love that movie for how it finds light in humor. Albert Finney is struggling with his masculinity where, even though he’s the one who left, he still thinks he owns it all, and Diane Keaton is quite liberated by this scenario. It’s like their journey to find language again. I find it very beautiful.

Which film was your entry-point into international cinema? I’m trying to think back to what I would’ve seen, there certainly wasn’t a lot growing up. In college I really discovered Michael Haneke and Michelangelo Antonioni. L’Avventura made a huge impact on me. I think [because of the way] the mystery kind of dissolves and it’s about the journey, not the solution.

What film do you wish you’d made? I don’t. Filmmaking is personal and it’s so much an expression of perspective when done with care and love—though obviously, there’s stuff that’s just churned out. I never see something and say “I wish I made that”. One of the things I find hard is when people critique films and say they would’ve done this differently. I’ve become very sensitive to that over time because every choice you make as a filmmaker is so specific and thought out. I try to consume movies without knowing anything about them or making any kind of judgment. I just let them be what they are and wash over me.

Which newcomer director should we all keep our eyes on? I don’t think I’m looking out for new stuff necessarily. Once I get to see something, everyone else already knows about it. One person I would say is Dave Franco, who I just worked with on The Rental. I was an executive producer and I was a creative bounce-board for Dave through the process. It’s his first film and it’s astonishingly directed. We were getting dailies from the first week and we were like, “This is his first movie? This is insane!” I think he will do some exciting things.

Finally, what’s your favorite film of 2020 so far? I was absolutely blown away by Eliza Hittman’s film Never Rarely Sometimes Always. I miss having retrospectives at local theaters, which I’m always keyed into no matter the city I’m living in. I’ve started watching a lot of Criterion Channel and I watched a movie recently that’s taken over my brain: Variety, by Bette Gordon, from 1983. It’s set in New York City around Times Square, and it’s this incredible journey that this woman goes on that captured my mind.

Related content

Sean Durkin’s Life in Film list

Sean Durkin’s Sight & Sound Top 10

Clarissa’s list of films that burn slowly

Everything Carrie Coon watched during quarantine (and the best of that huge list)

Tracy Letts and Carrie Coon’s 24-Hour Movie Marathon

Follow Jack on Letterboxd

[wistfulcynic]

The Ballad of Emma and Killian

This began life as a little drabble of rockstar!Emma and actor!Killian--not my favourite trope but I thought I’d give it a try. And then @thisonesatellite FORCED me to actually like it and once I did it kept getting bigger and bigger until it became DRABZILLA and had to go in Secret Things instead. SO. 

Part 8 of Secret Things. This one is really very sweet. Struggling young artists in love stick together through the hard times until the good ones come. A little slice of life with just the teensiest little bit of Neal being an asshole and getting what-for. 

Summary: They aren’t famous when they meet, or when they fall in love. As the years go by and their careers flourish along with their fame, their love endures. 

Words: 2.2k Rating: T Tags: actor au, rockstar au, fluff, secret relationships

On AO3

Importing the tag list from Drabbles, apologies if you didn’t want a tag here: 

@thisonesatellite @kmomof4 @teamhook @courtorderedcake @jonirobinson64 @tiganasummertree @stahlop@mariakov81@facesiousbutton82

The Ballad of Emma and Killian: 

They’re not famous when they meet. Her band is still playing bars and clubs and he’s barely managed to scrape a few minor roles in local theatre. They’re not famous, but they see the potential in each other. 

“You’re brilliant with that,” he tells her, nodding at the guitar she’s slung over her shoulder. He’s had just enough to drink to give him the confidence to speak to her but not so much that he’s going to tell her he came here tonight expressly to see her play. 

“Oh yeah?” She has her eyes on the barman mixing her drink, doesn’t look at him until she’s got it in her hand. “Do you—” Her eyes widen when she turns towards him, and a smile tugs the corner of her mouth as she slowly takes him in. “—play?” she finishes finally. 

He’s grinning wide, flattered and more than a little turned on by her bold appraisal. “Only a few chords,” he says. “I’m an actor mostly.” 

“Of course you are.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just that you’re really pretty. I bet those eyes show up well on camera.” 

“I wouldn’t know, love, I’ve not managed to land anything that requires a camera quite yet.” 

“You will.” 

They end up in her hotel room, a nondescript place on the Lambeth Road. She shrugs and says she’s got far better things to spend her money on than somewhere to sleep, then proceeds to make that dingy room the most memorable place he’s ever been. 

The next morning she has to head off early, to Manchester for her next gig. He walks her to the tube station and  kisses her in front of it, then pulls back, memorising her face. 

“Nice to meet you, Emma Swan,” he says. 

She smiles. “And you, Killian Jones.” 

—

Emma plays a dozen gigs in Manchester and word begins to get out. On the band’s last night in town an A&R rep is in the audience, and when she wakes up the next morning she has a record deal. She should be happy, she knows; she is happy, thrilled in fact, but she can’t get those blue eyes out of her head, or the wistful note in his voice when he said her name. 

She goes back to London, back to the pub where they met. She goes with no hope or expectation, and when she sees Killian there at the bar her heart leaps and when she sits beside him and he grins in delight she feels like she’s come home.  

—

“I have a record deal,” she tells him, after. 

His whole face lights up. “That’s brilliant!” he says. “You’re brilliant.” 

She flushes at the praise and he takes her hand, twining his fingers with hers. “Emma,” he says, looking around the bland room they’re in. “Nothing against your taste in hotels, love, but I wonder if you would care to see my flat. It’s not much but it’s better than here.” 

It is. He lives in the attic of an old house, fitted with a tiny kitchen and tinier bathroom, and a bed that folds out from the faded sofa. 

“A garret!” She laughs. “Perfect for a starving actor.” 

“That’s exactly the aesthetic I was going for,” he says, laughing with her. He wraps an arm around her shoulders. “It suits an emerging musician as well.” 

She snuggles into his side. It does. 

—

They get married in a simple ceremony at the Southwark registry office; far too soon, his brother says with frowning disapproval and her parents Skype them from Maine to say the same, but they don’t care and they don’t listen. They are sure of each other, and deeply in love. 

The first few years are hard. Emma has to tour to promote her album and Killian takes every acting job he can, always hoping the next one will be his big break. The album is a huge success and the tour is extended; she is exhausted and burnt out and misses her husband, but she loves her music and the thrill of performing for the huge crowds, and they call each other every day, no matter what. His unwavering support keeps her going.  

—

Her fame grows and she begins to do interviews, answering probing questions about her music and her life. The interviewers don’t ask her if she’s married and she doesn’t volunteer the information. She doesn’t wear her wedding ring onstage —she doesn’t like anything on her fingers when she plays— and she allows people to keep the conclusions they draw. The interviews appear online and on television, and soon Killian starts to hear people talking about her. He beams with pride whenever someone says they like her music, and when the remarks touch on the personal he simply shrugs them off. People can be assholes, but he knows his wife. 

When her tour finally finishes they take a vacation— a month in the Seychelles, just the two of them in a beach hut with crystal blue water stretching out to the horizon. It is pure bliss; she unwinds for the first time in more than a year, and by the time they’re back in London the two of them are expecting a third. She tells her manager she’s taking a break to write some new songs and spends the next year in their tiny attic flat, playing her guitar and growing her baby, and watching her husband perform in his first lead role on the West End. People keep to themselves in the neighbourhood where they live, and if anyone recognises ‘the cultural heir of Nancy Wilson crossed with Jack White’ or ‘British theatre’s fastest-rising star’ the tabloids are not informed. 

They have never been happier. 

—

They’ve been married nearly five years when Killian’s big break finally comes. He lands a role in an American TV show and brings his family with him when he moves to Boston for filming. Emma’s on tour again but she Skypes him and the kids —they have two of them now— in their new place and tells them she can’t wait to be there. She tells him in private that his eyes look great on camera, as she always knew they would.

His new costars know he’s married, of course, he talks about his wife a lot but refers to her only as ‘Emma,’ a common enough name that no one thinks anything of it. The show is a breakaway hit and he finds himself suddenly famous, suddenly the focus of more female attention than even his handsome self is accustomed to, and fielding interview questions more probing than any he’s encountered before. He doesn’t hide his wedding ring but he also doesn’t mention who his wife is. His marriage is private, and there’s enough scrutiny on his personal life as it is. 

—

“You know who I’d really like for this role?” the lead showrunner says to Killian one day, discussing a new character being introduced in the show’s third season. “Emma Swan. Do you think she’d be interested in getting into acting?” 

He chokes on his coffee. “How would I know?” he asks cautiously. 

The showrunner shrugs. “I know you’re a fan of hers,” he says. “I’ve seen your Spotify. Anyway, it’s pure speculation. I think she has the perfect look for the character, but I’ve got no idea if she can act.” 

“Well, I’d love to work with Emma Swan,” says Neal Cassidy, the show’s secondary male lead. “Whether she can act or not, she’s a hell of a piece of ass. Nothing hotter than a chick who plays guitar.” 

Killian concentrates hard on not punching the man in his leering face. He’s had to listen to a lot of people talk about how hot his wife is over the years and most of the time it doesn’t bother him, even when the remarks veer into the lewd. But he’s never really clicked with Cassidy, and the idea of the smug arsehole trying it on with Emma makes his blood boil. 

“If she does join the show, I’m sure one way she’ll act is professionally,” he says stiffly. “And I’d hope the rest of us would too.” 

“Oooh hooo,” says Neal in a taunting singsong. “Someone’s got a little crush.” 

Killian gets up from the table and tosses his coffee cup in the trash with deliberate control. “If anyone needs me I’ll be in my trailer,” he says. 

—

“I had an interesting call from my manager today,” says Emma over dinner that night. “Apparently I’ve had an offer to read for a part on your show.” 

“Yeah,” Killian replies. “Bob was telling me he thinks you’d be perfect for the role. What do you think?” 

She shrugs. “Acting’s really your thing. I wouldn’t want to step on your toes.” He’s sure she means this, but there’s a wistfulness in her voice and he knows she’s getting tired of all the touring and would love something more stable that didn’t take her away from their kids. 

He reaches across the table to take her hand. “You wouldn’t be, love, you know that,” he says, smiling at her. “If this is something you really want to try, you should try it.” 

She smiles back, warm and soft. Her smile will be great on camera. “I think I will then,” she says. 

“Good.” 

She squeezes his hand. “I love you, Killian Jones.” 

“And I you, Emma Swan.” 

—

“Hey, hey, did you see her?” Neal elbows him in the ribs and once again Killian has to suppress the desire to respond with his fist. 

“Who?” he asks, though he knows the answer. 

“Emma Swan, bruh. She’s meeting with Bob right now. She walked right by me on the way to his office and lemme tell you, she’s even hotter in person, if you can believe it.” 

He thinks of his wife as he saw her that morning, all messy hair and tired eyes, cradling their youngest in her arms and singing softly to her as she nursed. “I can believe it,” he says. 

“Hair like that, man, you just wanna wrap it around your fist and pull—” Killian turns his back and stalks away before he can hear what Neal wants to pull, reminding himself firmly that beating up a costar is frowned upon in the industry, and he would like to work again once this show ends. 

He goes to his trailer and waits for Emma to finish her audition. Ten minutes later she slips through the door, flushed and glowing, and walks straight into his arms.  

“How did it go?” he asks, as if he can’t read the answer on her face. 

“They want me to start filming next week,” she replies, and her smile is radiant.  

“That’s brilliant!” He hugs her close, grinning into her hair. “You’re brilliant.” 

She leans back, studies his face. “And you’re sure you don’t mind, babe? I can still say no—” 

“Absolutely not, you’ve earned this and Bob’s right, the character is perfect for you. Though it does mean we’ll probably have to tell people we’re married.” 

She laughs. “Well, it’s been eight years now, I guess it’s about time we came clean. Plus it’s not like it’s a secret as such, it’s just something we’ve never told anyone before.” 

He joins in her laughter and then he kisses her, a sweet, soft kiss that soon turns hot. She’s never visited him on set before, of course, and he finds himself overwhelmed by the desire to make love to her here, in this place where he has spent long days of filming sitting alone and missing her.  

He lifts her onto the back of his armchair, pushing her skirt up her thighs so he can stand between them. She wraps her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck and grinds against him. They are lost in each other —this is how it’s always been between them— and neither of them hears the door to the trailer open or senses Neal’s slack-jawed presence until he manages to close his mouth and find his voice. 

“Son of a bitch!” he yells. 

Emma and Killian break apart and turn to glare at the intruder. 

“What the fuck, man?” shouts Neal. “Aren’t you married?”

“Aye, mate.” Killian is fuming, his jaw clenched and his eyes like shards of ice. “Allow me to introduce you to my wife. This is Emma.” 

Neal chokes and his eyes go wide as he clearly tries to remember just how disgustingly offensive he’s been about Emma Swan. 

“Look, man,” he stutters. “I’m sorry—” 

“No you’re not,” says Killian coldly. “But you are unwelcome. Kindly fuck yourself off now so my beautiful wife can fuck me.” He turns back to Emma, who pulls him in and resumes their kiss. 

Neal stumbles and nearly falls as he backs out of the trailer, still stuttering apologies, but they are too busy tearing off each other’s clothes to notice. 

—

They weren’t famous when they met, or when they married. But they are when they announce their relationship to a press and a public that goes mad over it. They’re at the top of every gossip site and trending on every social media network. Offers of joint interviews come pouring in, all of which they decline, which —people and the internet being what they are and what it is— only adds to their mystique. They are the story of the decade— for nearly an entire week, until Neal gets caught soliciting a prostitute who turns out to be an undercover cop, and everyone forgets about Emma Swan and Killian Jones. 

Which is just the way they like it. 

[aion-rsa]

The Teleprompter Interview: Katy Wix ‘My First Screen Crush was King Kong’

https://ift.tt/33I5zd9

“Anchors, rigging, shackles,” lists Katy Wix down the phone, “poop deck, wheelhouse, three sheets to the wind…” The comedian and writer has had a productive year. Filming wrapped on Ghosts series two just as UK lockdown began. Since then, she’s finished one book – Delicacy: A Memoir – due out next April, is pitching another, writing a TV show, and thanks to a new-found obsession with Netflix yacht-based reality show Below Deck, has also managed to acquire an enviable grasp of nautical terminology. 

Wix is an established UK comic actor, with credits across the board, starting with cult hit Time Trumpet and going mainstream as witless, lovable Daisy in BBC mega-sitcom Not Going Out. She’s currently part of Channel 4’s Stath Lets Flats, the hottest comedy around, fresh from multiple Bafta wins. She plays Fergie in royal satire The Windsors, and was among the comedian-contestants in series nine of Taskmaster. In BBC One sitcom Ghosts, Wix plays Mary, a 17th century yokel burned as a witch and now part of the motley group haunting a modern-day stately home. Mary’s distinctive west country accent “just came out”, says Wix. “It’s an insult really, because I can’t claim to do that accent well. It’s sort of a stock noise. The more I do it, the more I think it sounds like Nanny from Count Duckula. Ducky!”

Ghosts series two, which lands as a boxset on BBC iPlayer on Monday September 21st , will give fans more about Mary’s background, says Wix. “I think people will really love it, and then there’ll be another series next year, depending on the big C. Not cancer. The other big C.”

From superyachts to Alan Partridge, The Day Today to Ghostwatch, Anna from This Life to formative sexual fantasies about prehistoric apes… here’s the Katy Wix Teleprompter interview.

Your parents were quite arty, working in dance companies and the theatre. Did your childhood allow for much TV watching?

Oh my god, yes! My routine was: come home from school, watch the tail-end of Fifteen to One, and when I was really young, repeats of The Oprah Winfrey Show. Then it would be The Broom Cupboard, something like Round the Twist, then the sound of the Six O’Clock News and turning over to The Simpsons. I still do it now, if I’m at home and it’s five to six, I’m going to watch The Simpsons, it’s a tradition.

Welsh telly was slightly different to the rest of the country. We have S4C rather than Channel 4. I remember going through the TV listings and seeing what was on normal Channel 4, like The Word, then I’d look at Welsh Channel 4 and it would just be something boring in Welsh at the same time.

Was there a TV show that inspired you to start acting and comedy?

The one I remember the most is Abigail’s Party. Seeing Alison Steadman’s performance made me want to do character acting. It was just a phenomenal, convincing, detailed performance. Years later, I wrote a radio sitcom that she was in. It was one of those absurd moments where you just have to leave your body and look down on yourself to be able to handle it. 

That must happen a lot, you’ve been part of a lot of great comedy casts…

What got me into comedy was Brass Eye and The Day Today. When I was about 15, that’s what changed my brain. It was the first time I’d seen adults being silly and coming up with absurd situations that were my sense of humour. Before that, comedy on TV would always feel like just something your parents would watch but this really felt like it was for us, for me and my friends. It was the same with The Office.

And then you were in This Time with Alan Partridge with Steve Coogan last year.

I was in sixth form when Knowing Me, Knowing You came out and I had it on VHS. Watching people like Rebecca Front and Doon Mackichan… anytime Alan had a guest on the sofa, the level of detail and all the reactions and the tiny little social awkward moments, that made me think I want to do that type of performing. So then, when I got to be in the last Partridge, it was mad. It was phenomenal to be that near to the character and all his tiny micro-expressions. Even the colour of his socks – this weird salmon pink – that was so perfect. Tim [Key] was there as well and we’re old pals, so that made it feel more like, well if Tim can deal with it. But I think even Tim now says he still has times where he has to go into the loo and give himself a moment.

Who or what was your first TV love?

This will sound like a joke, but I swear to God it’s true. It was a running joke in our family that my first crush when I was about four, was King Kong [laughs]. My mum used to tease me about it all the time. It was the combination of brute strength and these massive, soulful, pained eyes – which I still look for in men – that absolutely got me. It was an erotic connection for me. When I look back on it in a Freudian way, it feels like a really obvious, very heterosexual image for a little girl to have, because I wanted to be that woman in the nightie in his massive hairy hand. 

Unusual, yes, but then a lot of people our age cite the fox in the Robin Hood Disney film as their first screen crush.

I do get that. I do get that. What was it about that fox?

He’s rakish. And politically, he was sound too – rob from the rich, give to the poor.

You’re right. And he was really confident too. 

Growing up, which TV character did you idolise?

There are two, a younger one and a slightly later one. When I was 11 or 12, I wanted to be a fashion designer. I would draw outfits all the time in my school books and I had the Usborne Book of Fashion Design and spend hours on it. So I wanted to be Hilary Banks from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air because she just had incredible fashion. She always got boys and she was really cool and confident and wore amazing clothes. She was everything I wanted to be.

Then a little bit later, maybe sixth form or in my early 20s. I wanted to be Anna from This Life, so much and I kind of still do. Because she was tall and really cool and had dark hair and a lot of attitude and wore black a lot and smoked a lot and didn’t give a shit. That was my vibe at university. 

Is there a TV character you’d like to be now? 

Probably still Anna? 

Which TV show gave you nightmares?

The massive one for me, when I was about 11 or 12: Ghostwatch. I went to a friend’s house to watch it and I remember being a bit like ‘yeah right’ watching it, and then when I got home that night, I just cried. I was in the bath, hysterical and my mum had to come in and calm me down. It was horrendous. 

Everyone totally swallowed it at the time, because we were less TV-savvy in 1992. I remember they had a phone-in and someone called in to say ‘There’s a shape in the curtains’, which really fucked me up. The whole Pipes thing. I remember being in my bedroom and seeing a shape of an old man in the curtain all the time. I’ve got really vague memories of Craig Charles being in a park, saying that someone had killed a Labrador. I was thinking about watching it again. I actually don’t know if I dare. 

Read more

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50 best British comedy TV shows on Netflix UK, BBC iPlayer, Amazon Prime, NOW TV, Britbox, All4, UKTV Play

By Louisa Mellor

TV

Not Going Out: the top 10 episodes

By Philip Lickley

When did you last cry watching television?

Last night. Have you ever seen the show Below Deck? I’m obsessed with it. I’m not massively into reality TV but it’s an American reality show all filmed on superyachts that rich people charter. It’s almost like a perfect sitcom family – you have a different captain every time and the deckhands and then the interior, who do the hotel stuff, and then you have the chef, who’s always a temperamental big personality and then each episode has a different group of insanely rich, usually quite horrible, sexist people with loads of money who get really drunk, that’s the premise. It’s non-stop drama. You’re just watching people fall off boats and have arguments. 

How did it make you cry?

In this episode, there was a girl who’d been really quiet and grumpy and everyone was slagging her off, and then she revealed that she’d got a text that morning saying her estranged father had died, so that’s what set me off. It’s got me through lockdown, it’s so addictive. 

When did you last laugh out loud watching television?

Below Deck, same episode!

All human life is there!

I think it was someone’s malapropism, that’s my favourite thing about reality TV, the way people talk in a kind of Stath-like way and get it wrong.

What was the last TV show you recommended to a friend? 

Below Deck! [Laughs] I’ve just got Lolly [Adefope] onto it, and Adam Drake – he’s a comedian in a sketch show called Goose and does Capital, a podcast with Liam Williams – he’s now devoted. One of my best mates was bemoaning that her boyfriend’s not into reality TV, but boys can watch Below Deck too. It’s got loads of boat stuff in it. Chains and anchors. I’m learning all these terms, like shackles, poop deck, wheelhouse, three sheets to the wind… That’s where the expression ‘in my wheelhouse’ comes from. Three sheets to the wind means you’re sailing off course. 

Which TV show would you bring back from the dead?

Changing Rooms. 

Good call.

I also loved The Late Review. I really loved that.

What’s a TV show you wish more people would watch?

Do you know Iyanla Vanzant? She started off on The Oprah Winfrey Show – I love Oprah so much – and she’s a TV therapist/healer/spiritual. She’s got a show you can only get on American TV called Iyanla: Fix My Life. She just speaks so much wisdom. She spends a week with people who are really traumatised and it’s their healing journey. It’s so moving, it’s so profound. She’s doing incredible work for the human race.

She did an amazing show called, I think, ‘The Myth of the Angry Black Woman’ with a house full of women of colour who all got to talk about this trope that they were angry and how they felt unable to speak without being silenced. She did a show that was rehabilitating people that had come out of prison and women that had been sex workers all their loves, just amazing. 

Which current TV show do you never miss an episode of?

In lockdown, what kept me going was I May Destroy you, obviously, Below Deck, obviously. I also became obsessed with the Japanese Big Brother Terrace House, but it just got pulled because there was a suicide. It was so, so awful. I read an article saying the producers didn’t behave well, so I feel like I can’t like it any more. I love Succession too. I started watching this show on Netflix called Intervention and got totally obsessed with it. Again, it’s maybe ethically a bit dubious. It’s American, obviously, and they’ll film an addict who’s in a really desperate state and then the family kind of trick them, or persuade them to go into a room and then the intervention therapist is there and they’re like ‘Guess what, you’re going to rehab now!’ Anything that’s got human suffering, and then a redemption story in it, I’ll watch. 

Given the power, which TV show would you commission?

I think about this a lot – what if I had a channel? I’d commission the sketch group Sheeps to make tons of series. That’s Liam Williams, Al Roberts and Daran Johnson, and so far they’ve only done live shows, but I would commission them for hours of TV. Colin Hoult doing his character Anna Mann, I’d commission hours of that. Everyone involved in Stath Lets Flats, I’d just say ‘Turn up, pitch and we’ll make it’. There’s a documentary from the 70s that I adore, that I would like to show again, which is John Berger’s Ways of Seeing. It’s one of the most beautiful, gentle documentaries. I feel like that should be on TV. And just whatever Gemma Collins is doing, commission that. 

Also, you know in the 90s, late at night you’d get some weird, bizarre performance art happening on BBC Two? I miss that. The sort of stuff that was on after The Word. And then finally, maybe just all of Peep Show again? 

What’s the most fun you’ve had making television?

Ghosts is where I probably laugh the most because of Lolly [Adefope]. We make each other laugh all the time. When me and Anna [Crilly] did our sketch show on Channel 4, it was incredible. It was stressful but exciting. It was such a nice atmosphere to be with all these gorgeous people that you find funny. 

Stath Lets Flats is like that, because we’re all genuine mates. When people take comedy so seriously I really love it. I love that attention to detail. Jamie [Demetriou] and everyone involved really cares. There’s no ‘that’ll do’ attitude, everyone wants it to be the best it can be. Why not treat comedy as a science that you have to absolutely get right?

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Ghosts series two starts on Monday the 21st of September on BBC One at 8.30pm. All six episodes will be available to stream on BBC iPlayer from then. 

Delicacy: A Memoir by Katy Wix, published by Headline, is available to pre-order now.

The post The Teleprompter Interview: Katy Wix ‘My First Screen Crush was King Kong’ appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/32GM7ya

[saintheartwing]

Invader Zim: The Pigshit Troll, Part Three

"So it's coming from Dad's lab?"

Gaz was now very intrigued indeed. She sat across from Dib in the living room as he pulled open his laptop, Gaz pulling open a can of "Mountain Spew" and drinking away. Dib glanced over at the black can, raising an eyebrow. "Yeah…but why are you drinking that new flavor? Aren't you more into the original?"

"Yeah, but I wanna give the new flavor a try and I gotta be honest, it ain't bad for a zero calorie soda. It tastes like the way Mountain Spew used to way back in the day. A LOT better than their diet one, I'll tell ya that." Gaz remarked. "And it ain't given me diarrhea yet, so that's a plus."

Dib did the very best he could to suppress his laughter. When it came to Gaz's diet, her constantly going to Bloaty's Pizza Hog had real consequences. The cheese round the clock was getting her blocked, but when the levee finally broke, well…frankly, so did the toilet. Many, many times. And she would make him clean it.

There had been a positive to this though. Dib was now amazingly good at plumbing and mechanical engineering and he was actually picking up some decent money loaning his services out to the neighborhood as a plumber…provided nobody told the local trade unions about what he was up to, because compared to them, he was real cheap. So now he could afford a VERY nice laptop with all the bells and whistles as he showed it off to Gaz.

"Yeah, the IP address was traced back to Dad's lab. Unfortunately, I can't track it down to the very computer, Dad does have enough security in place to keep me from seeing that and no way am I risking jail time by cracking that open. They almost busted me last month when Dad tried to install the "Parental Controls" on our new television and I don't want Officer Krupke giving me that lecture again."

Indeed, in one of the very few times Dib and Gaz had been bound by common strife and pledged to work together for a common good, Professor Matthew Membrane had installed parental controls on their television because he was concerned about the damage being done to them from exposure to new Netflix series. Especially with all the brand new true crime dramas popping up all the time, it turned out to be something both Dib AND Gaz positively loved, the chase, the investigation, the grisly details, it was so engaging. They would watch together on the couch, eyes glued to the screen, binge-watching for hours and hours and then eagerly chatting about ALL they'd seen at dinner.

Well, Membrane had been determined to stop them from having their minds all twisted up by violence and at first it worked really well.

"C'mon! I wanna watch "The Ken and Barbie Killers!"

"Fat chance. You're gonna watch Cupcake Wars and you're gonna like it."

"Damn it, lemme watch Don't F—k with Cats, it's a classic!"

"No way. You're going to watch "Masterpiece Theatre"."

"Well…if it's got Patrick Stewart in it that might not be so-"

"Featuring Brian Blessed in the star role of Macbeth!"

"OH GOD NO!"

"Hey, what gives?!"

"That's enough cartoons for you today. You're gonna watch some Animal Planet…no, wait. Better. C-Span. It's good to be involved in politics these days."

"Oh c'mon, it's just hearings on air traffic controllers! You fiend!"

So finally, Gaz had insisted Dib get rid of the thing.

"I'd be risking major jail time!"

"Dib…it's recording the best of Fuller House."

"…I'll go get my screwdriver."

Dib had indeed almost got caught and had to listen to a very irritating lecture from the police. It was rather astounding they got to the house so quick over that, but whenever Dib tried to let them know Zim was up to something, it was "Yeah, we'll get to you when we can".

The good news was the parental controls issue got solved soon enough. Professor Membrane himself decided to get rid of it, saying that though he was worried about the things they were watching, it was his job, not some machine's, to judge and curate what his children saw.

Translation: the parental controls wouldn't let him watch "The Mandalorian" because it was too violent.

"Well can we look up who's working at Dad's laboratory who might have a grudge against you?" Gaz asked as Dib grinned.

"Luckily, that's not protected health information, Dad lists all the employees on the website and under "Contact Us"!" He remarked as his fingers flew across the keyboard and he then turned the laptop to fully show Gaz the list. "Look at who's listed? Keef, of all people is one of the assistants, he's an intern!"

"Hmm. I've always thought there's something off about him…and his stories, well…" Dib cringed.

Keef was definitely, one hundred percent not allowed to write anything even remotely close to sexual. The school had no problem with stories about, say…Zim skinning people alive in one of HIS work. For some reason, that was just fine. Oh, but a bit of soft sex, nakedness? No no no no no! Bad!

But Keef had found a way around that and did stories with lots of innuendo, and a ton…a ton of stories involving Dib, Gaz, Zim…and romance. He called the ones between Zim and Dib "ZADR" and with Gaz and Zim "ZAGR". You could find them cute if you were into that sort of thing, after all, many were astoundingly well written, lovingly detailed, and your heart would begin racing as you kept reading his creative writing tales.

But Dib didn't much like the idea. For one, Zim was over 150, he was waaaaay too old for either him…or Gaz. Two, EW. Three, a lot of the stories had Dib's own personality being ignored just so he could smooch it up with Zim! It didn't come across as a natural evolution or a progression or character development that made sense, it was just "I want this person here, so I'm just going to force them to be there, even if it makes no sense, because the plot is pretty much porn".

Gaz, however, kinda thought it was cute in a funny sort of way. She also knew it wasn't like Dib had never thought about kissing Zim, Dib was still discovering himself, after all, and he had had dreams about…that sort of thing.

"And there's Mr. Elliot!" Dib added. "Wow, why did he decide to work there?"

Gaz smirked and chuckled inwardly. Nobody would EVER know how she got rid of him, and she wasn't gonna tell anyone. And if she wanted you out of your job at the school, it would happen. Now, there were three ways to stop her from doing what she do.

…what? You think imma TELL you?

"He could have finally snapped." Gaz mused aloud. "I mean, when the nice ones snap…they really, really go wild. It's the nice guys you need to watch out for, you can trust a jerk to always be a jerk. But when a decent person goes bad, they go baaaaaad."

"Yeah, that's possible." Dib confessed. "Hmm. Look, our janitor works there too." He murmured. "Johnny."

…Johnny. The one and only Johnny. A slim, slender man, messy black hair that was just downright ugly and grimy. A pale body, sunken eyes, and he smelled strange too, like meat that had been left out on the counter for far too long. He liked making little snappy remarks at people too.

"Did you wash the bathrooms like we asked?"

"I'll wash the walls with your blood!"

"Well before you do that, wash the bathrooms."

On top of that, there were rumors that he caked blood on the walls of his janitorial closet to feed a monster that laid within. He was always seen sinisterly smoking at the very edge of school property at night, an anti-social, creepy figure indeed. Him being the actual troll…it wasn't unreasonable to think of Johnny, curled up in his closet, hunched over his laptop, spewing hate out into the world.

"Wait. Wait, wait, wait, look!" Gaz pointed at one of the names. "…Tassirak. That girl's name's Tassirak Doe."

Dib frowned, and he examined the photo that went with the name. "Doe" was a common name for a dead body you hadn't identified and-wait. Wait. Those eyes. The facial structure. The hair may have been different, the skin tone less pale, but Dib recognized those eyes instantly, and that faint Mona Lisa smile too.

And he knew that name, because Tak, Irken Invader, had divulged that to him.

Dib had gotten really close to Tak when she'd first arrived, the purple-haired British-accented girl had been charming, intelligent and clever, and they'd had similar interests. He'd soon spent weeks with her, the two just…talking. Making fun of Zim, chatting about their favorite books and movies they'd read, sharing stories about adventures out in the wild…

And of course, that Valentine's Day dance. "No, no. One-two-three, swing! One-two-three, swing!" Tak had insisted to him.

"Ouch! Don't drag me!"

Her lessons on dancing were harsh but in truth, that time spent with Tak had probably been the happiest he'd ever been.

And that's how he should have known it was a lie. Because Dib knew he wasn't meant to be happy. He'd known that…for a long time.

She'd revealed her real name. They'd eaten lunches and even a dinner or two together. Seen movies and he'd walked her home. And then, just a few days later, she'd turned out to be an Irken invader.

It had hurt. A lot. He'd lost a friend. And maybe someone more. It had really…really hurt.

"Does SHE have an account on the website?" Dib murmured as he examined the school's creative writing website. "…oh wow, yeah, she does, she's using her old username and password she got when she first enrolled, there's not much, but they're there. Wow." He examined them. "She wields metaphors like blunt instruments. You can feel Tak in every single sentence, so much of it is in first person and there is a lot of really biting, cynical wit in here. It feels almost nihilistic. And it's super petty, too. A lot of really nasty stuff happening to folks she doesn't like."

"Wow, one story has her as the Tallest." Gaz remarked. "…damn, she cooked and ate the last ones. That's hardcore scary."

"It's beautifully written though, I'd like to shake her hand than recommend her to therapy." Dib admitted. "I mean, she's going into really grisly detail on every minute they die. She must be super bitter. I don't even wanna imagine what happens to Zim when she updates this story, she just finished catching him and she's got him tied up in…Japanese rope bondage? She's into BDSM?"

"The safe word is "eine kleine nachtmusik"." Wow, somebody's letting their inner Hannibal Lecter out, alright." Gaz said with a whistle. "…still, I kinda WANT her to update just to see what happens. It's like watching a train wreck, you kinda can't look away."

"It could definitely be here. We need to go to the lab and sneak onto those computers. If they saved their work on them at any point, I could prove they were behind it." Dib reasoned.

"I dunno, Dib. Not sure I wanna help you with this. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's not really fun anymore watching you get dragged again and again for what the troll's doing, but…" She shrugged. "I mean, it's not my problem."

"What if I paid you?" Dib offered as Gaz rubbed her chin.

"…keep talking, Mr. Moneybags."

"My new job is paying me verrrrry well. To plant roses, I've shoveled a lot of manure, as it were." Dib remarked. "So how about it? Is there a new game you want me to buy?" He offered as Gaz thought to herself.

"Hmm. Well…now that you mention it, there is one game that's coming out that I really want. It's Sekiro: Shadows Die Thrice. Comes out in a week. You buy me that, I'll come with you."

"Deal." Dib insisted.

And so, Dib and Gaz made their way to Professor Membrane's lab that weekend as a quilt of dark clouds obscured their stealthy approach. Slinking on inside through the ventilation shaft as Dib temporarily looped the footage of the nearby camera watching the southern side of the laboratory, they crept through the vents and finally deposited themselves in, of all places, Johnny's closet in the lab.

There was a laptop there, hidden by a bucket. Gaz picked it up, gazing through it as she nodded over at Dib. "I'll look over this one, you go look for Keef's. Then we'll meet back here in…half an hour and go look for Mr. Elliot and Tak's."

"Deal." Dib said with a nod, quickly exiting the closet, getting his camera-hacking tool ready as it was clasped tight around his wrist. The lab was almost utterly closed for the moment, most people were heading home, there was just a skeleton crew left over. This meant it was easy for Dib to sneak around, avoiding spots in the security camera's vision and using his hacking tool to loop footage when he couldn't.

At long last, he reached a work station, the same station Keef had been said to be working at, since the website had said he was paired with a "Dr. Jones". Dib looked about, listening intently. No cameras here, and nobody was inside or anywhere nearby. So he slunk over to the computer and booted it up.

Ha! Keef had been the last one to use the PC, his username was on display. And Dib had a feeling he could guess the password.

Yep! Sure enough, it was "ZADRZAGR". "Oh, Keef…ya basic." Dib chuckled as he looked over Keef's internet history and-

"…hoooooo boy."

Well, Keef definitely, one hundred percent was not the one who sent the reviews. But now Dib knew where Keef got so much help in…inspiration…for his work. He had no idea Keef swung that way!...and that way, AND that way and THAT way.

"Well, um…whatever does it for you, Keef." Dib decided, quickly deciding to erase the internet history and log off, shaking his head. Meanwhile, Gaz had finally guessed Johnny's password. She'd had a feeling it was "Mammon" and yep…it was Mammon. Johnny may have been a loyal, devoted Satan-worshipping weirdo…but he wasn't very smart. He'd left a post it note reminding himself to change his last password since it was too easy to guess, and he needed a better one, and to pick a better demon lord. Unluckily for him, not only had he tossed that post it note in the trash can in the very closet Gaz was in, she'd realized the password hint immediately. "Greed is Good". Well, there were a few Demon lords best known for Greed and one of the best had been what she'd picked.

PING! She was in. And my oh my, Johnny had been a naughty boy. He'd taken selfies to share on the Internet of him and the bloody wall he caked gore on, selfies he was sharing on the Dark Web. Nasty stuff indeed. One particularly "funny" one showed him making a kind of macabre "snowman" on the wall with some exposed ribs and a bashed in nose and two eyes burned up like coals!

And then there were his uploads to "Bestgore". Yeccchhh. Gaz was fine with dooming the deserving wretches, but Johnny was just an outright creep about this-

Wait.

Wait, was that a cat?

He wouldn't.

…he WOULDN'T-

Gaz's mouth fell open and then she darkly glowered, shutting the video off and going through the rest of the janitor's internet history. No, he wasn't the one leaving those reviews. But he was guilty, alright. Just not of the sin Dib thought he was guilty of.

A few minutes later, Dib knocked on the closet door and she exited it, giving Dib a solemn look. "He's not the one. He's a piece of shit, but he's not the one."

Dib could see something was very, very wrong, Gaz had a look on her face he'd only seen when she'd seen crime specials on killers who hurt animals. He thought it best not to ask about it. "I understand. It isn't Keef, either. He's into a lot…but not into that sort of thing."

So now it came time to check the other computer stations. Luckily for them, both Mr. Elliot and Tak were working in the same wing.

Unluckily for them, they were still there. A fact the two found out when they opened the door…

Just in time to see Mr. Elliot AND Tak currently hunched over a computer screen. "What the?!" Dib gasped out as the two wheeled around, seeing Dib and Gaz, staring in surprise as Dib and Gaz looked behind them and-

…Jackass? They were watching Jackass videos?

"You're into those stupid stunt videos where the guys get, like, basketballs bounced onto their balls after they're launched onto trampolines?" Gaz inquired as Tak and Mr. Elliot deeply blushed, Dib racing over to the computer, gaping at the sight before his eyes. He couldn't believe it.

"But it's so…lowbrow! So…STUPID!" He remarked aloud.

"But it's funny." Mr. Elliot said with a shrug. "I can't help it, I find it funny."

"Yeah, something about it simply clicked with me." Tak admitted. "I mean, I do enjoy watching stupid humans suffering for my amusement."

"Yeah, the Germans have a term for it. Schadenfreude." Mr. Elliot confessed. "Happiness at the misfortune of others." He added as Dib looked through their internet history. Yeah, they'd hadn't left the reviews either. All that work, all that effort for…nothing! Except now he knew stuff about his classmates he really, REALLY wish he could unlearn.

"It's not that funny." Gaz said, though she chuckled as she saw a video of Johnny Knoxville soaring off a motorcycle and into a ball pit, groaning loudly…because he was butt naked when he did it. "Okay, maybe a LITTLE funny."

"Sometimes you just wanna indulge in something nice, simple and a bit stupid. Not everything has to be Shakespeare, after all. It fills a need and it doesn't really harm anyone." Tak remarked. "Well, except them, but they get paid for it, so…" She shrugged.

Dib moaned. "Damn it. Damn it, damn it, damn it. I thought for SURE…"

"You're really not that Pig Shit troll, huh?" Tak wondered aloud. "I thought maybe you were doing some kind of false flag, Dib, but…no, it really isn't you." She commented dryly. "Hmm. Well, best of luck with that. Unless another classmate of yours, like, pees their pants or something in front of everyone in school, nobody's going to forget this anytime soon. The good news is that people have short memories. A month or two passes by, and you'll be fine. Folks are like GOLDFISH. Best and worst thing about them!" She laughed.

"…yeah, maybe if I slip Zim some ex-lax under the guise of it being a candy bar I can trick him into taking from me…" Dib mumbled as he slunk out of the room. "This sucks. This totally sucks."

"Cheer up, tomorrow Dad's going to treat us to breakfast, remember?" Gaz offered. "You always like that." She told him as they headed out the office door and down the hall to exit out of the building.

"Yeah, him making his pancake and eggs combo with bacon always-"

Dib stopped. Wait.

…wait.

Could it be?

"…I need to check one more computer." He quietly muttered at Gaz, his voice sounding cold and dead.

…

…

…

… "You liking your delicious breakfast, son?" Professor Membrane asked as Gaz stared at Dib, waiting for the other shoe to drop. He'd said absolutely nothing since their Dad had begun making breakfast and now he was halfway through his meal when he slowly finished chewing and looked up.

"…it's really nice." Dib remarked. "Can I ask you something, Dad?" Dib wanted to know, as he put the fork down and folded his hands in his lap.

"Of course, son! Anything!" Professor Membrane said as Dib took in a long, deep breath.

"Why did you do it? Why did you do those reviews?"

Professor Membrane dropped the plate of bacon he had in his black-gloved hands, looking astounded. Dib went on, speaking quietly. Softly. Soft…but with an edge.

"I thought about it, long and hard. I remembered you were the one who encouraged me to come see you if I kept having problems. The IP address was also traced back to your lab. And then I thought about how…ridiculous the reviews were. They were so badly written but…not badly written enough for someone in my class to have done it. I mean, even a 9 year old knows not to write in all caps. It had to be somebody older, trying to be over the top. And then when I checked your computer, just to be sure…I found out…yes. It was you." He remarked. "…so Dad…why'd you do it?"

Professor Membrane sighed as he sat down at the table, and held his head in his hands. "I…I did want to try and…push you into my arms, as it were. That if I put a little pressure on you in your school setting, you'd keep coming back to me to talk about how you felt. It allowed me to feel like I was the only person you could truly trust, and that felt good. But it wasn't just that, I…" He took a deep breath. "It was…funny to write those reviews. Sometimes it just feels good to be…so lowbrow and coarse and nasty." He admitted. "It was like I tapped into some dark, twisted part of me that'd I'd been ignoring for so long, and when I finally got a chance to let it run wild, it felt amazing!"

He rose up a little and went on. "I have the weight of the world on my shoulders. I need ways to unwind myself. I didn't really think I was actually doing any harm. Or maybe…I didn't want to believe it, because I didn't really mean all the things I said, so how could it be anything that bad?" He murmured as Dib took off his glasses, Gaz taking in a short, sharp breath.

Dib never…ever did that. Him doing that meant he must have been really furious.

"…I don't think I want to talk to you for a while, Dad." He quietly muttered.

"…I thought as much." His father sighed as they sat across from one another in silence at the breakfast table, and Gaz quietly sipped on her orange juice.

Come the next day, it was a school day again, and Dib was making his way down the hallway before he overheard a rather familiar accusation.

"I'm telling you, he's writing about your fic in his fic. He's trashing your fic and making fun of it and you as a writer. He's a troll but pretends he isn't and just blames it on another troll when he keeps trolling."

Dib turned around, seeing Zita talking to the Letter M and he frowned a bit as he stared at the girl and the African American boy she was talking to.

"You know, you're just plain wrong." He said aloud, as other kids began to look at him. "It was my dad all this time. Not me. And I don't really care if you don't believe me. I've said my piece. You don't like it, tough." He told her, walking off.

"You think that'll convince us?"

"No. But maybe there's no point in casting pearls before swine." Dib said with a shrug as he walked off. "And people like you who just plug their ears and won't listen to any counterarguments are real pigs indeed." He remarked as he walked off, Gaz walking alongside him.

"Pearls before swine, huh? Nice Bible quote." She remarked. "But I wouldn't be too worried. Tak was right. Just wait a month or so, folks will forget."

"Oh, I don't doubt it. I thought about sneaking Ex-Lax to Zim but…I'm not going to lower myself to that." Dib insisted. "Even if it would be really funny."

"Well, I've got something that'll cheer you up." Gaz offered. "I copied the videos Johnny the Homicidal Maniac did for the dark web and I sent it to the police and now he's in jail! So we're gonna need a new janitor."

Dib stopped in the hall. "…wait, is this because of how good I am at plumbing now? Look, there's no way I can be the new janitor. I'll be a laughingstock! Dib, the janitor!"

"Yeah…but you will get keys to every single room in the school." Gaz added. "And paid twice what those neighbors pay you."

Dib chewed his lip. "…well…when you put it like that…I mean, it would be nice to be able to literally go anywhere I want in the school at any time…and I could use the dough…"

"You could rig the toileeeeets so that they always act uuuuuup whenever Zim goes to use iiiiiit." Gaz added in a faint, singsong voice.

"…I KNEW there was a reason I respected you." Dib said with a big grin.

[drlauralwalsh]

The Lusty World of Lesbian Widows

I’m really frustrated that COVID has gotten in the way of my grief achievements.  I figured 3 months in, I’d be doing the television talk show circuit, sold my book, and set up a non-profit foundation.  If only this pandemic hadn’t gotten in my way.

In my life before, if I spent too much time alone (like, over 4 hours), I’d start texting my sister-in-law that I was unsupervised and feral.  Uh oh.  I’d start going down rabbit holes and come up with weird stuff like how buff male kangaroos get.  Or questioning if my parents were really married since I couldn’t find a record of their union in the limited online databases. I could have paid for real records but I’m cheap.  I know, sounds crazy.  

But now, I’m alone for long stretches of time.  I’ve managed to channel some of this agitated energy into writing essays that speak to weirdos like me (shout out to my fellow weirdos!).  I spend hours researching (me-searching as we said in grad school) and discovering overachieving methods to dam the waters of my new spouse-less life.

I’m not just your average widow.  Oh no no no.  Of course, I have to be special so allow me to tack on some extra layers - lesbian, stepmom, and young (-ish, right?).  At 45, I have finally found a way to inch back towards the youth and relevance lost as you enter the fourth decade of life.  Today, I’d like to let you into the wonders of lesbianism.

I’m going to assume you’re not submerged in this subculture so I’ll tell you some secrets.  People are fascinated by lesbians.  To be fair, we live pretty mysterious lives.  We leave you hanging on profound questions like who takes out the trash and how do they have sex without a woody woodpecker? Sometimes, other communities get lumped in with us but they are actually quite different.  Of these witches, spinsters, and women who wear comfortable shoes, I only belong to only one of those so far.  I’m working on my stovetop skills and hope to someday conjure a penis.  Not a real one; that would be weird.

Amazon’s book market best represents the variable interests of our fan club members.  Right after my wife died, I launched a search for books on “lesbian widows.”  You’d think the algorithms would have pegged me by now (ha ha).  I was dismayed yet amused by the grand interpretation of what Amazon thought I meant.  The following is an unedited list of the top books recommended for me to purchase under these auspicious terms:

Lesbian Widows: Invisible Grief

by Victoria Whipple (Kindle $25.98, Paperback $46.95, Hardcover $907.71)

I’m impressed that the first one actually included my search terms but dang, it’s expensive to be a lesbian widow.  To be fair, you can rent it for $9.21 a month.  It’s also terribly niche within an already  small niche - invisible lesbian widows?  Published in 2014, you’d think it would be a little more hip.  Maybe it’s because I live in Chicago but even as an introvert, I’m decently visible.  Still, glad it exists and appeals to all eight people who each gave it a 5-star rating.

The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows: Feminine Pursuits

by Olivia Waite (Kindle $3.99, Paperback $6.99)

I must quote the basic plot description for you to get the full impact of this novel: “The last thing the widow wants is to be the victim of a thousand bees. But when a beautiful beekeeper arrives to take care of the pests, Agatha may be in danger of being stung by something far more dangerous…”  The cover depicts said wapish widow sit/leaning against her handsome, pants suit-clad beekeeper.  At the much less expensive price for kindle and paperback, I’m only slightly put off by labeling bees as pests.

Odd women?: Spinsters, lesbians and widows in British women's fiction, 1850s–1930s

by Emma Liggins (Kindle $73.24, Hardcover $95.00)

The period is a little off but at least it includes diverse, international women.  I was looking for a self help book but this seems slightly more academic.  Not sure why there’s a question mark in the title as there’s no question about our oddity.  The description reads, “Women outside heterosexual marriage in this period were seen as abnormal, superfluous, incomplete and threatening, yet were also hailed as ‘women of the future’.”  Aw shucks, I *am* ahead of my time.  Dang that price tag!  No renting option for this one.

The Grass Widow

by Nanci Little (Kindle $0.00, Paperback $14.95)

It’s unclear where we’ll find the lesbian widow in this 2010 novel but the description yields some mild foreshadowing: “As a familiar civilization fades into the distance, she is nineteen, unmarried and pregnant, and has no reason to think that the year 1876 won't be her last...Joss, in her brother's clothes and severely lacking in social graces, has no time to mollycoddle a pampered, pregnant New England lady. It's work or starve, literally. There are no servants, no laborers - just a failing farm, impending winter and the two of them to face it together.”  It sounds like the shameless Joss needs her own dose of mollycoddling (wink, wink) to get through the chilly nights.

Her Widow

by Joan Alden (Paperback $18.00)

More popular with 10 people giving it an almost stellar rating, this tomb’s immodest summary insists it belongs on every bookshelf.  YOU WILL PAY ATTENTION TO US!  That’s how I read it.  Seriously, of all the books this one comes the closest to what I actually wanted.  Waiting for the kindle unlimited edition….(having no man money makes us frugal).

Made For You 3

by K. Shantel (Kindle $4.99)

Apparently, Made For You 1 and 2 were not as popular. Despite the fair price, this tale omits widows opting for the groundbreaking combination of lesbian romance and football.  While tragedy surely threads through this plot, it falls short of crossing the threshold from football to death (it probably does).  Shocker, I defy the sporty lesbian trope and instead prefer to spend time among my vast, treasured collection of power tools.  Just to be clear, I mean the ones for home repair (get your mind out of the gutter!)  If the lady protagonists of this book had been thrown together building a Habitat for Humanity house with their 10 dogs using only their Subaru to transport lumber, I might be more captivated.

The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics, Book 1 of 1: Feminine Pursuits Series

by Olivia Waite (Kindle $3.99, Paperback $6.99)

I’ll give the author the benefit of believing there are more to come in the series. The title of this one intrigues me (I may steal it later) but sadly, it also defaults to worn stereotypes.  This collection of lesbian tropes finds my kin scoring yet another toaster for the conversion of a hapless straight lady.  Lesbians for the win!  Lady Reads-A-Lot gave it 5 stars and commented, “This was poetic and lovely, full of beautiful descriptions that knew exactly how to leave you breathless and then stop just before tipping into tedious.”  I’m guessing she means the sex scenes?  If you’ve ever watched any real lesbian porn, you know that it’s far better for the participants than the viewers.

Erotica: The Forbidden Adventures Of A Grieving Widow (Seduction, Lust, Lesbian Sex, Interracial Sex, Bondage and More)

by Amy King (Kindle $0.00)

This one is hands down, my favorite title and you can’t beat the price.  The author keeps the marketing short to sell you her novel: “All Ava wanted was to erase the memory of her recently departed husband. Little did she know that in trying to do so, she would experience mind-blowing adventures and lust across the globe. Ava would never be the same again as she ravenously eats up whatever adventure blows her way.”  Even though it’s another toaster novel, as a grieving widow ‘ravenously eats up’ does resonate.  I don’t think she means jars of cookie butter.

Of the eight masterpieces on the list, five are romance novels, one is academic, and two are in the ballpark (excuse the sports metaphor).  Scrolling further only yields more erotica including another novel titled, “Football Widows (lesbian)” by Amanda Mann and Deadlier Than the Male Publications.  Now I get it that we make up a small percentage of the population but this is some seriously messed up shit.  

Removing the lesbian and searching only for ‘widow’ yields twenty pages of books. I know what you’re thinking - “C’mon Laura, what’s the big deal?  Just get the standard widow book.”  And believe me, I’ve amassed quite the collection and am waiting for just the right intersection of not too devastated but ready to sob.  Bear with me for a sec - think about how we just want to be seen when we’re at our lowest.  When I first typed those words into the search bar, I just wanted something that used wife instead of husband.  

Every grief has specific salient elements and it’s too super niche to touch on all at the same time.  It would be weird and/or maybe nice to find another lesbian widow stepmom psychologist who lost her cop wife of almost 5 years to a PTSD-induced psychotic break and suicide.  That’s a Subaru full of identities.  If this person did exist, I’d be suspicious we’re the target on Incel trolls, longing to read the words of more seductive, witchy lesbians.  Instead, I plan on taking the high road.  I’ll get my knowledge and support from those who accept me by the category.  Obviously, one out of one lezzies agree there’s a market for lesbian widow self help guides - at the right price.  I may still write that book but if I want to get rich, I’ll definitely have to add more sex scenes.

[purplesurveys]

714

Do you have anyone you fully trust? Yeah, mostly my friends. I wouldn’t befriend them if I knew from the get-go they couldn’t keep a secret or be reliable. What kind of pants did you wear today? I usually wear shorts to keep myself comfortable during the warm April days. How old is your television? Our TVs in the living and dining rooms have been around since we moved in so that’s 12 years. My parents’ TV is around 8-9 years old, I’m not very sure. I don’t have my own TV in my room – I used to, but it got moved to my brother’s room when we realized he’d use it more since he has a PS3/PS4. That one is around 6 years old. Do you have a laptop or desktop? Laptop.  When did you last talk on the phone with someone? Not so sure. I think it was a couple of nights ago.

Are you currently sleepy? A little bit, which is why I have a cup of coffee beside me right now. ;) Have you ever deleted Facebook friends for a significant other? No, that’s so childish and obviously possessive eugh. I don’t like some of Gab’s friends but at the end of the day they’re still her friends, so I never feel the need to tell her to delete them. Have you ever had bad trust issues with someone? Yep. That’s why to make things easier for me I just stop talking to them entirely. What accent do you think is the most attractive? There’s a certain kind of British accent that I find very pleasurable to listen to... think the cast of Love Actually and how everyone there talked, haha. Do you own any television series box sets? I have an unofficial box set to the 1980s show Perfect Strangers that my dad bought for me. Other than that, no – I do have copies of some of my favorite shows like Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead, but they’re all kept in a hard drive.

Have you ever been in a fight with your best friend? I’ve been in numerous fights with Gab. My last fight with Angela was back in the 5th grade probs. Do you have high standards? Eh, for certain things but not everything. I have high standards for group projects and papers – my groupmates don’t just get away with writing in whatever style they wish or designing our Powerpoint however way they want if they’re grouped with me; I’m a bit of a control freak when it comes to that. Which for me is an ok trait to have since more often than not I WILL see a grammar error or a haphazardly-made slide in a Powerpoint.

When it comes to food and vacations I also tend to be a bit uppity since both my parents have worked in the hotel industry for almost 30 years, so over time I’ve learned to identify which accommodations are good and which aren’t. When did you last receive a hug and who was it from? I haven’t received a hug in more than a month. I’m rottinggggggg. Do you take any advanced classes? No. I don’t think we can do that here, or if we even have that concept. What is your lucky number? I don’t have one. Do you own a book bag? If so, what color is it? No I don’t, I only have large backpacks since I tend to carry a lot of stuff for school. Was the last movie you watched a horror film? I didn’t watch it in full, but yeah The Shining is very much a horror flick. Do you own a lot of tee shirts? Yeah, both for outside and for home wear. They’re just comfortable and convenient to have lol. Do you plan your outfits ahead of time? Not always. I plan my outfits mostly if I’m going to be seeing my girlfriend the next day since I always want to look nice for her, and to look cute if we’re gonna go to the mall hahaha. Have you ever spent the night in jail? I have not. I’ve read Chris Jericho’s account of having to stay the night in a cell for a DUI and it sounds like a nightmare, though. Would you say you're a bad influence on others? No. If I do act like a bad influence it’ll always be jokingly - like telling my friends to cut class so we can have lunch together - but in the end I’ll tell them to go to their class, or at least to make their own decision. Describe your favorite jacket? It’s a UP-themed varsity jacket, and it’s maroon and has the name of the school in big letters at the back. Are you a colorful person or quite bland? I always try to be colorful, of course. I would hate to have to describe myself as bland. List one word to describe your significant other? Right now, annoying. In general, she’s understanding. Do you handle pain well? It’s one of the few things that I don’t. I can’t handle pricks to the skin, gashes, paper cuts, etc. Have you ever been so nervous you threw up? No, I find myself feeling barf-y only if I have a bad headache or, more predictably, if I’ve had too much to drink. Where is your favorite place to go when you're depressed? I like going to Skywalk because I can always count on the fact that at least one orgmate will be there at any time of the day, and my orgmates are my family and make me forget about my problems instantly. If Skywalk doesn’t help, I go to my car and cry as much as I need to.

If I’m not at the university I like going to our couch in the living room, because my bedroom only makes me more depressed and I have had particularly bad episodes when I had willingly stayed there in the past. Do you remember the first survey you took? I’ve always recorded my surveys on Tumblr so the first one is on my first survey blog, the one I got locked out of last 2016 haha. How many friends do you have on Facebook? I don’t feel like checking exactly how many but it’s in the 660s or 670s. Have you ever watched fight videos for amusement? No thanks, any video involving any kind of conflict stresses me out. In high school, were you in trouble a lot? Nah. My friend group were mild troublemakers but we all performed well in school, had good grades, and respected teachers at the end of the day so they didn’t really have a reason to penalize us. Do you enjoy your hairstyle? I like it a lot better than my boring straight hair, but with the lockdown making all salons close for the meantime, I have no idea what to do with my bangs that are growing too long now D:

Do you have long hair or short hair? It’s a lot shorter than before. How much make up do you wear on a daily basis? Zero. I only wear makeup for parties or formal events. What is your favorite television show? Breaking Bad and Friends. Do you have a leather jacket? No. I don’t really need that here either... I can’t imagine how hot I’d feel wearing that. Do you think anyone dislikes you for no reason? Sure. Don’t most people have one person they feel this way towards lmaoooo Do you have any children? Nope. Have you ever been interviewed on television before? Nah but we’ve had media crews visit our school before to look for interviewees for segments in news programs. I’ve always just said no and watched my friends from behind the camera. Do you have weak upper body strength? A little but it’s improved a whole lot from my fitness class last sem. What is the worst insult someone can call you? A failure.  Do you write on your hands a lot? Only back in high school. I have no idea what made me stop as soon as I started college but thank fuck I did because it was such a poor habit to have. Are you good at sketching? I’m no good at any kind of drawing or creating images. Do you think hugs are awkward? If it’s not with the right person or if I hugged someone who wasn’t a hugger then yeah, they can be awkward. Do you think facial hair is gross? No unless it’s neglected and has like gunk or food bits in it. But I don’t mind hair in general. Would you ever dye your hair an unnatural color? Sure. What color was the last cup you drank from? My coffee mug :) It has a black decor on the outside that turns bright blue when the liquid inside is hot, so that I know to be careful with it. Ever play Angry Birds? I did play it back in 2010 but I was already pretty old then (at least for those kinds of games) so I didn’t really enjoy it. We had it on the family iPad for a while though because my brother, who was 6-7 at the time, liked the game. Did you think it was annoying, like I did? The sounds were a bit annoying, sure. Have you ever been to the zoo before? No, but close. My old school has its own eco-park that we used to visit every now and then. What instruments do you know how to play? Just the recorder, which really shouldn’t count lol. How late did you stay up last night? Till 4 AM, I think. How late do you plan on staying up tonight? I have no idea. Definitely not now, though.

[nicolemagolan]

Two Cities, One Galaxy: How Star Wars Connects And Divides Us

Early in 2019, I wrote a personal essay about Star Wars. It centered around SWCC (Star Wars Celebration Chicago) and my experience of watching the live stream in my living room at 4am, when the episode IX teaser and title was unveiled. 

It’s about fandom, the internet, and isolation. It’s about how Star Wars impacted my life, and about my relationship with my brother.

It also, eerily, foreshadows the disappointment I would eventually feel about The Rise of Skywalker. So here it is, under the cut. Please give it a read, and let me know your thoughts!

***

My phone blinks 3:30am, April 13th, 2019. In Chicago it’s 10:30am, yesterday. I should be asleep. I should stay present in Auckland, where no one else is awake except the moths gathering on the kitchen window.

My brother is slumped beside me, eyes closed, lost somewhere between sleep and boredom. We sit in the darkness of our living room, outlined by the grey glaze of the television. I’m wearing pyjama pants and yesterday’s T-shirt. An empty bag of chips is screwed up on the carpet, a half-drunk can of Lift Plus sits on the mantelpiece.

I stare at the TV. Waiting. My knee bobs up and down. I glance at my phone, and refresh Twitter. The tweets are coming in a blur: people yelling in caps lock, streaming without punctuation, some of it indecipherable, some of it from me. It’s happening kids / MERRY IXMAS, EVERYONE / I'm trying to remember it's called Star Wars Celebration not Star Wars oh my god I'm so stressed-ebration / I AM READY TO BE EPISODE IXed. The world around me is asleep, but the world under my thumb has never been more alive.

I take another sip of Lift Plus and feel its energy tingle through my bloodstream. Or maybe that sensation is the force.

When I was in class earlier in the day, wearing a Star Wars tee, writing in a Star Wars notebook and drinking from a Star Wars bottle, I was already stewing in anticipation. My mind was in another galaxy; speculation ran through me like shooting stars. My dedication to the Star Wars universe is fuelled not by the incessant marketing or the cheap merchandise, but by the passion I have for stories, space wizards, and the cute-yet-creepy alien bird race known as the Porgs.

 Star Wars Celebration Chicago is set to begin livestreaming on YouTube in just a few minutes. A countdown slowly ticks on screen. This will be the first big panel of Celebration, and the one I am most eager to see. The panel is for Star Wars: Episode IX, consisting of a Q&A session with cast members. Our first real, palpable look at the film, at beloved returning characters, and the new additions, to hear from returning Director J.J. Abrams what his vision for IX is.

But the real reason anyone is staying up all night to watch the livestream isn’t to see Abrams dodge spoilery questions. It’s to be amongst the first to witness the Episode IX trailer. The very first teaser trailer. Imagine a choir singing angelic sounds behind that one word and maybe you’ll begin to understand. What I really want is to catch a glimpse of the upcoming film, to learn the title—oh my goodness, the title—along with thousands of far, far away fans; some watching live in the dead of night or crack of dawn. The lucky few are crowded into the panel room itself. I swipe through pixelated and blurry selfies posted with #SWCC. It’s a big auditorium, packed with media, families, and cosplayers, and many are swinging lightsabers above the crowd’s heads. Purple, blue, green, and red beams of light. The stage itself is lit up with a bright blue backdrop.

 When I told my parents I was going to camp out in the living room to watch the livestream of Star Wars Celebration, they rolled their eyes. When I asked my brother if he wanted to join me, he cried, ‘Whyyy,’ before revealing his true colours when he showed up on the couch at 2am.

He was all too keen to eat my snacks, but now as time crawls forward, he seems to have come to the conclusion that it is ridiculous to stay up for something you can watch on your phone, from your bed, when you wake up. I have come to the conclusion that he is lying to himself. On the path to the dark side, perhaps.

He’s always joined me on my silly adventures, making fun of me along the way. But the fact that he’s willing to be there is enough, as he is now. Star Wars has been a part of his life as much as mine; we grew up roaring Chewbacca impressions and fighting with cardboard lightsabers; He’d be Darth Maul and I’d be Obi-Wan (so I got to chop him in half every time). Kids would tell me I was a weirdo for liking Star Wars, for playing with Barbies and Darth Vader figurines, blurring the lines between allocated girls’ or boys’ toys. But my brother and I knew: Star Wars is a fun space adventure for whoever wants to enjoy it.

We got older and the movies lost a touch of their magic: the internet revealed the intense hatred shovelled at the prequel trilogy. Little-me had loved the ridiculous Jar Jar Binks, but the middle-aged fans who grew up with the original trilogy saw him as an offence to their childhood obsession. (JUSTICE FOR JAR JAR is the hill I will die on.)

Then Disney bought Lucasfilm and ushered in a new era. I have a series of selfies from midnight premieres—me grinning from ear to ear, my brother with eyes closed and discontented frown (his go-to photo pose)—in the blurry light of the Imax screen on Queen Street. But one glance at his smiling face during the film and you know he loves this galaxy as much as the next fan.

Sometimes that’s the problem: our love for this story is so great and so ingrained, that it can bubble over into endless online debates. Debates become heated, become personal, become hateful. In this era of social media, everyone has a voice, but the ones who spit poison are the loudest. We struggle to find common ground sometimes. But it’s always there, beneath out feet and on our TV screens. We love Star Wars. We love to watch it, re-enact it, dissect it, wear it, read it, and write about it. Whether the common ground we stand on looks like the sands of Tatooine or the lake country of Naboo, it’s all the same galaxy. Even though the galaxy-shattering film The Last Jedi threatened to destroy us, we can find a way to stand together. Because when the fans unite, at movie premieres, or conventions, the fandom can become something worth celebrating.

Like today, right now, 3:59am in my living room.

I look up from my phone. The countdown reaches zero. I hold my breath. A soft echo of music trickles through the speakers, and John Williams’ familiar score wraps around me like a blanket. Goose bumps pop up on my skin.

The Star Wars logo vanishes and the screen cuts to black. I snap up and nudge my sleeping brother’s arm with my toe. He jolts awake, looks at the black screen and scowls.

‘Nothing’s hap—’

He’s cut off by a roaring applause as the blue-lit panel stage lights up the screen. The room around me fades. I’m in Auckland with my brain fuzzy, and I’m transported to Chicago with heart thumping.

My brother jumps up and stands in front of the screen. ‘I’m going to the bathroom.’

I babble, ‘butthepanelisabouttostart,’ craning my neck around his legs.

‘Oh well,’ he says. He walks off.

Stephen Colbert is pacing around the stage, babbling on about Dagobah and S-foils, trying to work the crowd up—unnecessary, since we are all waiting for the cast and crew.

I’m leaning forward, straining my eyes, and wondering if anyone actually finds his ‘jokes’ funny. Twitter tells me, yes, they do. The excitement level is high, making everything fresh and exciting, even if it’s a Star Wars pun heard years ago. I almost feel like I could twist my neck and hear people whispering behind me, instead of tweeting alongside me.

 The closest thing to this feeling in my own city is Armageddon Expo, the annual convention at the ASB Showgrounds in Greenlane. Nerds I’ve never met become my best friends. We jam the halls like squashed-up skittles. I don’t know their names but I know who they are. When I’m dressed in Rey’s dusty scavenger outfit, with staff in hand and hair bunched in three bobbles, young girls point and giggle. I wave at them, their eyes wide with wonder, and my heart is full.

The internet fandom space is a mix of tweet-before-thinking garbage and fun bite-sized meta. The real-world fandom spaces, such as Armageddon, are a big geeky party; no one hiding behind an anonymous wall, and no one left out.

This livestream is somewhere in between. I am connected online from where I sit in Auckland. Reading tweets and writing tweets and liking gifs. Yet I am in Chicago, oblivious to the sleeping city around me.

Stephen Colbert brings out Director J.J. Abrams and head of Lucasfilm Kathleen Kennedy, and the content we’re all waiting for finally begins. I take in every detail, every non-answer. I enjoy it. I loathe it. Stephen Colbert asks unanswerable questions, like the fate of Daisy Ridley’s character, or how the relationships develop. No word is uttered more than ‘spoilers’.

The cast members are introduced onto the stage; first is Anthony Daniels who plays C-3PO—one of the remaining few original cast members from 1977. He waves hello to the crowd before looking for the cameras. In his charming British accent, he says, ‘On tweets today people were, all over the world, saying “wish I could be here”. And I know we’re on camera, so I don’t know where the camera is, but whoever is in Australia or…’ He pauses for a flicker of a second, ‘…all the other countries around the planet; I wanna give you a big wave, and you are here in spirit. Okay?’

I grin a little wider. Of course he would mention our neighbour, Australia. So close, and yet so far.

 In New Zealand, despite the growing connections through social media, I feel isolated. Even in the vast Auckland city, where I easily get lost in the busy roads and busy people. New Zealand is separate. And that’s part of what makes it special.

But the isolation is also part of what makes being part the Star Wars fandom special.

It’s a larger world. Out there in space; out there in the world wide web. Legendary or anonymous, you can be a part of something. You can tell your story; you can make one up. After movie premieres, there is a sense of privilege and power in that none of my fellow fans in America have yet seen the movie. The Last Jedi came here a few days early, and I knew all the things before anyone else. We were isolated again. And it felt so good.

Did I go and post spoilers? No, because I’m not an asshole (you know who you are). But I told people they’re gonna love it. I told them the film is exciting and unexpected and dabbles deliciously in subtext in a way that’s fresh for Star Wars. I sign off with eagerness for the upcoming dissection and discussion of the film.

 The next day I’m shocked to learn that many many many people felt it was a ‘betrayal’ of Star Wars. A disaster of a movie. A cluttered mess of a story, an anti-climactic sequel that instead of building on what came before, tore the past to shreds. My brother is one of them.

And the fandom split in two.

But not today. Not tonight. I refuse, and so does everyone on my Twitter feed, because we’re tired of defending Rey, who is not a Mary Sue; and Vice Admiral Holdo, whose purple hair does not make her a lesser fighter; and Rose Tico, who fell victim to dude-bros saying she’s the worst character ever, she ruined their childhood, and Asians don’t belong in Star Wars; until eventually the actress, Kelly Marie Tran, deleted all her social media.

When Kelly walks onto the panel stage, she gets a standing ovation. There are tears in her eyes, and there are tears in mine.

 They introduce the new cast members, and display behind the scenes photos, and babble on about the brilliant practical effects. There’s a touching tribute to Carrie Fisher, an awkward bit about Adam Driver’s chest, and the introduction of new droid D-O. When the duck-inspired droid rolls onto the stage, you can hear cash registers ring.

My brother comes back in the room as the panel is winding up. He flops into the chair and sighs. ‘So, did I miss anything?’

‘You missed everything.’

‘So I didn’t miss anything then,’ he smirks.

Stephen Colbert asks J.J. Abrams if there’s anything he wants to leave with the fans. I lean forward. ‘This is it,’ I screech.

This is it. It boils down to this simple, repeated moment in time: the day, or night, or very-early-morning that a Star Wars trailer is about to debut. I am alone, and yet so very not alone, united in a nerdy passion that doesn’t call for such depth of devotion. But here we all are. Here I am. And here’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (omg).

 I switch off the TV. The darkness eats my eyeballs.

‘How am I supposed to sleep after that!?’ I yell. ‘Palpatine. Freaking Pal-pa-tine! NO! YES! Why?!’

Silence.

My brother is asleep.

I throw a pillow at him. ‘DUDE! Palpatine is back!’

He mumbles, ‘Haha, lame.’ His eyes don’t open.

I slide down the couch until I hit the hard floor. The Rise of Skywalker. Doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. I sit there in the lonely living room, and let my thoughts trail off into the dark.

[your-write-or-die-blog]

It had been a while since my last casting call. Looking around me now at the que of girls wearing 90’s style windbreakers, crisp new vans, and highlight on the tips of their noses, I felt as though I had been thrust into a world of Instagram models and I’d received an invite on accident. The open call was massive, for a pop band music video coming out in the summer. The line of girls snaked halfway around the Hollywood studio lot, adjacent one set comprised of six or seven fake houses that looked vaguely like something I’d seen on television. I squinted at them for a moment and racked my brains. Dexter, maybe? The girl in line behind me caught my eye and craned her neck in the same direction, eager energy exuding from her. I turned a little bit to smile at her, but couldn’t tell if she’d noticed behind her dark aviators. Maybe she was as nervous as I was. Maybe she was just so flat out gorgeous and cool that she didn’t think I was worth her acknowledgement. I knew from past experience how ruthless Hollywood was. Even though this was my fifth casting call this month, and even though I’d been working to put some weight off and had even gotten up early to do my hair, I began to feel more and more unprepared and out of place in my plain black jeans, doc martens and casual spaghetti strap top. I realized I hadn’t even taken time to read the email from the casting company. Convinced I wasn’t going to make any friends in line, I pulled it up on my smartphone. My stomach sank a bit. The company was looking for a “love interest” role, and warned that actors should be prepared for the audition to include “physical touch” and other possible “romantic gestures”. The coffee on my breath became brutally apparent and I considered ditching the audition entirely. How and why did I not stop to read the stupid email before driving here and freaking out over the lack of parking for almost an hour? My mind began to race. What if the lead singer was gross? “Romance” wasn’t exactly my forte either – I had never gone out for a “love interest” role. This is why I needed an agent. After a few deep breaths, I found a stick of gum in the bottom of my purse along with my resolve. I was already here and I needed the money, I thought. Waiting tables at the Mel’s on Sunset simply wasn’t cutting it, and if this band was as big as this massive turn out led me to believe, I knew it would mean a nice chunk of cash if I somehow landed the part. Plus, music was a huge part of my life – I’d been writing songs on piano since I was 12. To help make someone’s music come to life on screen would be an absolute pleasure of mine… I just hoped their music was good. The sun began to set and the temperature dropped a bit, a refreshing and welcomed change that seemed to help calm my nerves. To help pass the time I put on my headphones and cranked up my favorite 80’s music: Depeche Mode, Oingo Boingo and Fleetwood Mac. Before too long I found my way to the front of the line. The clipboard lady gestured for me to pause as she held her ear to a mess of static through her walkie. She eyed me and my plain face and smiled patiently, then sighed and shook her head. “I’ve got no clue what he just said,” she admitted. “You’re adorable honey, you’re gonna do great,” she said as she checked my ID’s. She looked like she’d been on her feet for hours now, but the sentiment seemed genuine and I smiled back appreciatively. She handed me a ticket. “You’re number 412,” she said, “don’t lose that ticket.” My stomach sank again. 412, I thought. There’s no way I’m getting this part. The next clipboard-person was a tall gay man, head bald as a bowling ball. He singled me out as I walked by and asked if I had my portfolio. I handed it over and he flipped through it, looked at me somewhat indifferently and then directed me to a room off to the left. My palms were sweating. What if I didn’t fit the part and this was the end? The situation became more and more real. I jumped when he began instructing us, not realizing that he had followed along behind me. “Okay, ladies, watch your step - NICE shoes, file in loves, careful now” he said in a thick British accent, ushering myself and a few other girls into a dark, cool room.  The entrance to this stage had a little sitting area – I found a seat and stuck my hands between my legs, praying that they dry before something important started happening. I looked up – the ceiling was very high like a warehouse, the lights along it stark and expensive-looking. To break the silence I leaned over to the girl on my left, who had waist length blonde hair that looked incredible with her yellow corduroy miniskirt: “With the lights and stuff, it’s sort of like Costco in here, isn’t it?” She looked back at me confused and I decided I wasn’t going to speak anymore. The first part of the audition was more of a group interview – the bald clipboard guy picked me out with three other girls and I felt a surge of relief. I’d experienced auditions like this before – it was a great way for casting to get through more people more quickly. This casting team in particular thankfully seemed a lot friendlier than most I’d encountered, casual even. They only asked us our names and to tell them about ourselves – the blonde girl laid it on thick, charisma oozing out of every hand motion and inflection. The second girl seemed almost disinterested, explaining that she went to school in the area and that her friend had told her to come. Finally, they got around to me. A kind-eyed but important looking woman dressed in linen asked what had inspired me to audition. “I love music and I love to create,” I answered easily. She straightened a little bit and asked me to talk a little more about that. I suddenly felt very honest. "Music is such an important part of my life...and of society, it allows us to communicate what could otherwise be lost in a boring old conversation. People talk too much, I think..." I trailed off and became very aware that everyone's eyes were fixed on me now. I felt like I had somehow answered... correctly? She nodded agreeably and motioned for me to go on. "Well I like to write my own songs and I perform open mics sometimes when I'm feeling brave," I continued, "It's hard for me to bear my soul like that...working with someone who is brave for a living would be incredible."  The woman looked up from her notes and leaned over the table, smiling ear to ear. "Anything else, darling?" This audition was suddenly much different than any I had gone to before. My ears were burning. I untucked my curls to cover them.  "No," I laughed. "I guess that's it." The three directors laughed along with me, which felt amazing. The woman in linens stood up suddenly and removed her glasses so that they hung down on her neck. "And," she started, raising her eyebrows, "what do you think of Matty Healy?" The atmosphere in the room shifted at the name. The director lady smirked knowingly as the girl next to me melted just a little bit into her boots. I realized they all knew something that I didn't. Before I could embarrass myself by asking who Matty Healy was, suddenly he was there.  "Did I hear my name?" He was holding a cup of coffee without a lid, a large plastic clip holding his dark curls away from his face, which was scrunched up into a cheesy grin that sent butterflies rippling through my stomach. To complete the actor-on-set look he wore a gray sort of bathrobe over his wardrobe, charmingly mismatched with a beautiful pair of shiny black shoes.  The girls on either side of me unabashedly began to squeal. The directors smiled patiently as he came over to greet us. I watched three girls fall in love with the same man at the same time. "We're taking five," he said in a beautiful accent, taking the blonde girl's hand and kissing it very lightly.  "God, it's cold in here when you're not dancing about like a lunatic, innit?" he murmured to the group of us, explaining the bathrobe. He was so adorable that I couldn't help but hold the back of my hand over my mouth. He caught the motion and looked over at me now.  "Hi," he said, nodding to me as our eyes met. His were warm even in the harsh warehouse lighting.  He introduced himself: "I'm Matthew." Embarrassment froze me for a moment. Oh God, I thought. How long had he been standing around that corner?  He had probably heard the whole audition. But those eyes were so reassuring. Despite not knowing his name a mere ten seconds ago, I felt immediately comfortable with him. "Hi," I replied quietly with a laugh, surprising myself by leaning in to politely hug him around the shoulders. Matty did not seem surprised as all; catching my arms for a moment and holding them there. He smelled like hair product and cigarettes.  "Thank you," he hummed warmly near my neck so that only I could hear. "I needed that today." He sounded sincere. When he pulled away, I was grinning like an idiot.  "Erm," he started, tearing his eyes from me. "This project is very important to me and I've very grateful to you all for coming out and being a part of it. We're having a bit of a party for the next part of the audition so I hope to see you girls there," he smiled again and waved sweetly to everyone, murmuring something quickly to the director before shuffling back around the corner.  I continued desperately to try and calm the redness in my face as the rest of the models openly fan-girled to one another, glancing over at me with a mix of delight and envy.  "Okay, ladies," the woman with the glasses chuckled, waiting for us to settle. "Like Matt said, this next part of the audition we're going to have a sort of mock-shoot just to test if you're compatible - " The bald man threw his hands up in exasperation. "Nora means we want to see some chemistry, duh." Nora rolled her eyes good-naturedly as we all turned to "ooh" at each other, "right, exactly, so there's going to be some dancing involved, we're going to play a little clip of music and we just want to see you interact with Matty and have a good time. As specified in the email if you're not comfortable with this we thank you for coming out anyway. Go ahead and have a seat in the waiting area and we'll come grab you when we're ready for you, there should be water and snacks in a couple minutes." Out of 412 girls auditioning, the waiting area only had a couple dozen. The vibe was different from before, the ice had been broken and all the models chatted excitedly, sipping water, munching grapes and crackers. Not all of them had been there to meet Matty, and they teemed up around me after hearing that we'd had a little moment. Thirty minutes went by and only one girl had been asked to the set. Nora popped in and my heart sank. An extra-cautious layer of professionalism coated her voice this time.  "Hello ladies, just a reminder that we had a massive turn out today and unfortunately we can only consider a few of you. We really are grateful to you for showing up but Matty and the team are looking for someone pretty," she paused, "specific ... when it comes to this video in particular and we are doing our best today. Thanks again for your patience." She smiled dryly and dipped out, hateful eyes amounting on her back. I swallowed dryly.  Another ten minutes went by and two models had already given up, packing up their things with heels clack-clacking through the stage door. The quintessential Hollywood phrase was "hurry up and wait", but forty minutes had never felt quite so long to me. Finally, Nora reappeared and pointed at me with that knowing smile. It was only then that I realized I'd been holding my breath - I sighed out in relief and hurriedly grabbed my jacket, ignoring the stares behind me.  While it was small, the set was much less "mock" than I anticipated: full lights and camera surrounding a simple white backdrop where a crew member sat in behind the drum set. A few other crew members were buzzing about, setting marks with tape on the floor, discussing angles, scrutinizing their notes. Matty sat on a director's chair behind the mic stand without his bathrobe this time, legs crossed. Before I could catch his eye I had a round brush in my face.  "Just a little shiny there," the makeup artist said to me, motioning my chin up to her. "God, you've got great skin... how old are you?"  I stumbled over my words, still getting my bearings. She waved in a "never-mind" motion. "You're over 18 though, right?" I nodded carefully as she dabbed rouge along my cheekbones with her ring finger. "There... just so these lights don't wash you out too much." She smiled and gave the hair around my face a couple twists and a spray. "Beautiful. Good luck!" Someone clapped their hands a couple times to get everyone's attention. "Alright, welcome Miss..?" I squinted past the lights and called out my name to who I assumed was the video director.  "Very nice, hi, yes," he sighed in the exasperated sort of way that directors do, "Okay! So - we're going to play some music and have you sort of perform with Matty here - dance, flirt, pull his hair, whatever you want, ok? Are you ready?" I nodded and a surge of confidence shot through me as Matty looked up with that smile, scooting the chair out of the shot and putting his hand on my shoulder as if we'd known each other for years.  "I do hope you don't pull my hair," he joked, "it took an awful long time to fix."  "I mean it's your video, Healy," I shrugged. My God, I thought. What a face.  The audition had already started and I didn't even realize. The audio was much less professional, a boom box off to the side started playing a song that I immediately recognized from the radio and I realized that the man who had decided just now to dip me was probably worth millions. I recovered from the dip and followed his lead as he whipped the mic around and began sort of half-singing, half mouthing along to the lyrics. Although the mic was off, up this close I could tell that his voice was absolutely lovely.  As he made his way behind the stand-in drummer he eyed me, still gauging. I took half a second to collect myself and followed the vibe of the song, deciding the sort of alt rock guitar riffs called for some hair shaking and punk-posing.  He took my hand and spun me into him as he propped one shiny shoe up onto one of the toms. I slid my hands along his shoulders and came up behind him; making eyes at camera 3 as he sang directly to it. Before the verse was over, I decided i couldn't help myself: I tugged his curls lightly and he sang the remainder of the verse directly to my face before making some sort of explosion noise and racing around me to get back to the mic stand for the guitar solo.  I was in awe of him. Once we made it back to the front I felt him switch to full-on performance mode, trusting that I could keep up with him now. And I could. Before long I realized we had gone through almost the entire song like this and the director looked significantly less bored than he did when I first walked in. The music stopped and the crew applauded us.  Matty tucked me under his arm and whisked us away from the lights for a moment. I was still catching my breath, yet he had barely broke a sweat. "That was, you were -!" "That was so fun!" I finished for him. He laughed and my heart melted.  "Really though, like -" He had the cutest way of tripping over his words. "Ugh," he gave up, hugging me instead. His face was so close to mine I felt his breath.  "And I heard what you said earlier in the group about music and, and erm - that was you right?" I nodded and he lit up like a little kid for a second. Seeing him happy like this was well worth the impossible parking, the waiting and the hours of nerves. He went on: "So, right, listen - I think we're doing a couple quick little callbacks but, dude." Matty Healy had just called me dude.  He fumbled in his trouser pockets for something and then motioned for me to wait, jogging over to behind the set. The crew members were all in a bunch now, reviewing the footage and speaking excitedly. When he returned he handed me a pen and a scrap of paper. "I've lost my - bleeding - phone again but please, would you write your number for me?"

to be continued

[bbclesmis]

Exclusive Track & Interview: 28 Days Later composer John Murphy’s “Les Misérables”

Check out this exclusive premiere of John Murphy's "Les Misérables" from the BBC/PBS's Masterpiece Les Misérables now. This version is very close to Victor Hugo's original novel, and hence is not a musical. The soundtrack will be available May 3.' Murphy also dishes on the challenges of scoring such a huge, epic, and sweeping story (and a lot more) in the interview below.

Exclusive premiere: John Murphy's "Les Misérables" from Masterpiece's Les Misérables Lakeshore Records is set to release the original soundtrack to the critically-acclaimed BBC/PBS Masterpiece mini-series Les Misérables, written by composer John Murphy (28 Days Later, Sunshine, Kick-Ass). Check out our interview with Murphy and the exclusive song directly below this article. Les Mis the album will be released digitally on May 3 with CD and vinyl versions forthcoming.

This Les Mis is NOT a musical; in fact, it is relatively faithful to the source novel. It premiered April 14 on PBS, but all episodes can be watched with PBS Passport.

Les Misérables is a six-part drama adaptation starring Dominic West (The Affair) as Jean Valjean, and David Oyelowo (Selma) as Javert in this landmark take on a classic, timeless, and sweeping story. They are joined by Lily Collins (Rules Don’t Apply), in the role of Fantine.

With a striking intensity and relevance to us today, Victor Hugo's novel is a testimony to the struggles of France’s underclass and how far they must go to survive. The six-part television adaptation of the renowned book vividly and faithfully brings to life the vibrant and engaging characters, the spectacular and authentic imagery and, above all, the incredible yet accessible story that was Hugo’s lifework.

The distinguished British cast includes Adeel Akhtar (The Night Manager) and Academy Award winner Olivia Colman (The Favourite) as Monsieur and Madame Thénardier, Ellie Bamber (Nocturnal Animals) as Cosette, Josh O'Connor (The Durrells in Corfu) as Marius and Erin Kellyman (Raised By Wolves) as Éponine.

Liverpool born John Murphy began scoring movies at the age of 25. In 2001, following the success of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, he moved to Los Angeles.

Since then he has worked with some of the industry's most respected and luminary filmmakers, including Danny Boyle, Guy Ritchie, Stephen Frears, Matthew Vaughn and Michael Mann, producing film scores as prominent and diverse as Sunshine, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Miami Vice, Snatch, Kick-Ass, and the seminal 28 Days Later.

Murphy's movie trailers include: Captain America: Winter Soldier, Gravity, X-Men: Origins, Cloverfield, War of the Worlds, Cowboys and Aliens, Blindness, Ex Machina, Southpaw, X-Men: Days of Future Past, and Avatar. His music has been featured in advertising campaigns for Nike, Audi, Microsoft, Louis Vuitton, Samsung, Google, and Apple.

After Kick-Ass, Murphy set up the record label Taped Noise and began work on several non-movie projects. BBC/PBS Masterpiece Theatre's Les Misérables is his latest project.

Les Misérables director Tom Shankland wanted John to tell a fresh musical story and to ultimately create a raw and uncompromising score to reflect the trials and misery of "Les Misérables." John describes the scoring process as an "experimental journey."

Initially, Tom wanted a gritty, folk-oriented score, but as they began the process, he and John quickly realized that the story would need a broader musical palette. John ended up incorporating less obvious elements such as bowed electric guitar, analog synths, experimental viola, and backwards loops, with a nod to the classic French romantic scoring of the '60s. Despite mixing instrumentation, the elements fused and the sensibility stayed true throughout.

John described the scoring process further:

"My original idea for the score to Les Mis was '1816 Velvet Underground meets '60s French film music.' While director Tom [Shankland] was thinking 'gnarly, down in the dirt, French folk music.' Producer Chris Carey suggested, 'let's do both, but throw in some vintage analog synths.' I then gleefully tried all of these elements, often at the same time. And we discovered that you can actually mix a hurdy gurdy with a Moog Sub Phatty, and we loved it. And what started out as a musical standoff, became our score for Les Misérables."

Interview: John Murphy

Hello John and welcome!

Hey Wess. Good to talk with you!

Likewise. To start things off, what attracted you to this telling of Les Mis as a project? I really appreciated how it was based on Hugo's novel, and not a musical. The novel, in my opinion, does not get enough praise.

Yeah, sadly the musical has pretty much hijacked this great novel. I read it in my early twenties. I was a session player back then and I spent a lot of time on tour buses, so I got through a lot of reading. Aside from all the ideas and themes, it's a great story – hope, despair, sacrifice, redemption, all the good stuff. I loved it.

I read it when I was in my twenties as well. Such a great novel.

So when the call came in, I did some Skype meetings with the director Tom Shankland and producer Chris Carey, and they were so passionate about it, and so hell-bent on going back to the source, the book I loved. I knew I had to do it.

That's fantastic. I was hoping we could get an idea of your overall creative process on the project. It really is very sweeping in the emotions of the story and the history it covers.

Well I've really only ever done movies so I knew the production process would be different. For example, before they started shooting I had to write a lot of the in-camera music they needed to shoot to; the scene with the band in the pimp's den, Cosette's piano pieces, Gavroche's song when he runs out to collect the bullets, that kind of thing.

Oh wow.

Which was cool because I'd never done that before. And then there was a big break while they filmed and put together the episodes. So rather than sit around and wait, I started sketching out themes and ideas from the script, which is actually way more creative than writing to picture. But having this pot of ideas was a life saver because, when the episodes finally did come, they came thick and fast.

But the actual creative process wasn't too different from scoring a film. I always write the themes first, and I try to write them away from picture. And then I'll work to picture and write the featured cues, the montages, the chases, that kind of thing. And then you're down to the underscore cues and you're just connecting the dots really.

Interesting process John. What were the challenges like?

I think the biggest challenge was time. Even though I had ideas sketched out for most of the themes, there's only so much you can do until they give you locked picture. And when the final locked cuts started coming, I had about 20 days per episode from start to delivery. And this is when I would score everything in, write the underscore, record the soloists, and mix the tracks ready for the dub. There was usually about forty cues and forty minutes of music per episode. So there were a few long nights!

Were there huge differences between Les Mis as a project and working on your more conventional titles like 28 Days Later? You've scored quite a bit in the horror realm.

I've actually only scored a few horror films. They just tend to be the ones people remember!

[Laughs] good point. I was thinking just relative to other composers I've talked to…

Because of the musical, there's kind of a skewed perception of Les Miserables. But a lot of the book is actually very dark. And, for whatever reason, I find it much easier to work with darker material.

I find myself attracted to darker art as well; not just film.

For me, it's just a deeper well to draw from. So even though it's based upon an historic work I never felt like I was writing outside of my own instincts. At the end of the day, whatever the scale, it all comes down to ideas, story and characters.

Absolutely. Any memorable or funny moments that stick out from that behind the scenes process of scoring the series?

There were, but none I could mention! [Laughs]

[Laughs] fair enough. A question I ask most everybody: what scores and films have molded you most as an artist?

I think the first time I became aware that movies used music was in A Fistful of Dollars. I must have been six or seven and it was on TV one night. I remember thinking why is there music playing? Where is it coming from? After that I started listening for it when I watched movies. So, I think my love for [Ennio] Morricone started there. And after that it was the James Bond movies, and the great John Barry themes. Another film composer I love to this day. I was just a kid, but I remember getting hyped up whenever I heard that guitar riff. A few years later, when I started to play a few things, I discovered Bernard Herrmann.

Psycho always stands out for me when I think of a great score. It may be cliché to say but it is true.

I couldn't fathom how he could make music that was so dark and so beautiful at the same time. I'd never heard anything like it and it blew me away. It was like magic.

So, those three made more of an impression on me than any specific movies. Thinking about it now it's probably why I'm so theme-heavy today. Because those guys definitely knew how to write a theme.

That they did. One other big question which is sort of related, what makes a great score?

That's such a difficult question and I don't think there's a definitive answer. But if it truly moves you and takes you somewhere else, then it's doing something right.

Well said. Last, what's next for you?

Well, Les Mis was like doing six movies back to back, so I won't be jumping into another big project just yet! I'm going to mess around with one of my own projects for a few months and then see what's around. Maybe a cool little indie where I get to play everything myself!

https://www.thefourohfive.com/film/article/exclusive-track-interview-28-days-later-composer-john-murphy-s-les-miserables-155

[let-it-raines]

Second in Command (Ch. 17)

Summary: Life as the "spare to the heir" isn't all that it's cracked up to be when you're the supposed screw-up of the family, but people don't know what really happens behind closed doors.

Rating: Mature

A/N: Anybody like St. Patrick’s Day in November? 

On a side note, if you’ve sent me a prompt today, I’ve gotten it! And as soon as I write it, I’ll post for your reading pleasure :D

Entire story available on AO3 | HERE |

Tag list: @nikkiemms @resident-of-storybrooke @kmomof4 @wellhellotragic @profdanglaisstuff @ekr032-blog-blog @bmbbcs4evr @onceuponaprincessworld @jennjenn615 @a-faekindagirl @mayquita @captainsjedi @captswanis4vr @teamhook @skyewardolicitycloisdelena91 @branlovesouat @dreadpirateemma @alys07

Emma has allergies. She has allergies, and every year as winter blossoms into spring, flowers blooming into a myriad of vibrant shades and grass becoming green again making things seem a little less dreary, she spends day after day sneezing with her eyes slightly swollen and her nose flushed as red as a rose. She texted him last night to let him know that if he comes over today to bring her medicine and tissues so that she can be a human being when he sees her. Apparently her parents haven’t had the chance to run around the corner to the pharmacy, or she’s been too stubborn to let them know that she’s suffering. He would bet on the latter. So not wanting to anger the red-nosed beast, he shuffles through his medicine cabinet and pulls a box of tissues out of his storage closet before climbing into his car and driving to the pub in the early afternoon.

It’s about an hour before opening, and when he slips in the door to the pub they’ve left unlocked for him today, he finds David and Mary Margaret setting down chairs off of the tables. He goes to help them, flipping chairs as he asks them how their week has gone and if they’ve been enjoying the nicer temperatures outside now that it’s March unlike their twenty-five year old daughter upstairs who seems to not be able to function. They both laugh at that before telling him good luck before he heads upstairs to greet Emma, who’s sitting on the couch watching the television, her skin pale with the expected prominent red nose.

“Hello, Rudolph.”

“I will hurt you,” she threatens, her voice congested and hoarse, and he’s not entirely sure that she’s only been afflicted with allergies and not a cold. She’s never been the best at handling sickness, always leaning toward the dramatics more when her head isn’t totally clear and her body aches at the feeling of being dragged around without its full capabilities. It’s one of the few times when she’s not the invincible Emma Nolan and instead a regular person with a beating heart.

She’s vulnerable, and he’s thrilled he’s been able to see that vulnerability over the past five years of knowing her. It makes his heart swell, blood pumping through him and heating his body in happiness while Emma threatens him for joking with her.

He laughs, possibly speeding up his own demise with the sound, before leaning down to kiss her temple. “I love you, even if you’re not in the mood for any reindeer games.”

“We’re breaking up if you make one more reindeer joke.”

“Aren’t you a scrooge?”

She grumbles something under her breath, but he doesn’t bother listening to it because he’s sure it’s something very unpleasant about his Christmas jokes, instead handing her the medicine and tissues before going to fix her a mug of hot chocolate, only joining her in the living room when he has a steaming mug of the chocolate with cinnamon and whipped cream, draping a blanket over her on the couch while he settles in the recliner he bought David for Christmas a few month prior.

Emma’s apparently been binging the Great British Bake-Off, and he somehow gets sucked into it as well, watching these poor people stress over their creations and do things such as forget to turn the oven on or undercooking their bread. It’s all fun and games until the next episode comes on, and it’s themed around his family, all of the hosts wearing costume crowns as they introduce the episode and tell the remaining contestants that they have to bake a cake fit for a royal wedding and tailor it to the family member of their choice.

He groans in frustration at how ridiculous that is as Emma snorts, quickly looking over at him before burying her face under her second mug of hot chocolate. More people choose him than anyone else as he’s the most prominent unmarried family member, and while some of the cakes look damn good, he’s a bit uncomfortable with the fact that these bakers are making cakes for his fake wedding, several of them commenting on how they hope he finds love soon as he’s been quiet on the romance front for quite some time now and it’s upsetting that such a “handsome and bright young man cannot find love with a nice, proper girl.”

“I know they shot this months ago, but if I call the show and tell them I’ve solved your ‘loveless’ situation, do you think they’ll let me eat some of those cakes?”

“Hell, I could make one instead of you blowing our cover, Nolan.”

Her eyes light up at that, a true smile forming on her dull pink lips and brightening her skin with the glow of it. “Would you really?”

He shrugs. “I’ve got to do something to get you to take me back after you broke up with me for my reindeer jokes.”

“You bake me a cake, and I’ll take you back with open arms, babe.”

It turns out that the Nolans haven’t gone to buy their groceries for the week, and all that they have that even resembles a cake or the ingredients to bake a cake is a package of snack cakes that he knows for a fact Emma and Mary Margaret hate while David loves. He’d give anything to just be able to go to the grocery and do their shopping for them to help them out and to make Emma’s day better, but he can’t do that. Once he’s in the apartment, he can’t really go anywhere except for the pub, and even then, it has to be incredibly discreet and only when it’s pretty much empty down there and the lights are dimmed.

He sighs before walking the few feet to the couch and plopping down next to Emma and resting his head on her shoulder, screw her possible cold. “You’re out of luck, love. You guys don’t even have eggs.”

“It’s fine. I’m just going to pretend I’m eating the food they cook on the show. It’s not like I can taste anything anyways.”

He chuckles before wrapping his arm around the back of the couch and her shoulder, kissing her temple again while she continues to watch the frantic bakers as he responds to emails and texts about the St. Patrick’s Day celebrations for tomorrow. It’s his mother’s last year of handing out the Shamrocks to the Irish Guard, and the entire family is set to join her and speak with some of the Guard before enjoying a Guinness with all of them at the base. This year he’s being appointed with the honorary rank of Colonel of the Irish guards. He’d never done military service like Liam had after University, instead choosing to serve his family and his country through working with patronages and charities at home instead. He’d thought about it, really and truly had as he knew how great it is to honor and serve one’s country, but something was holding him back. He just didn’t know what at the time.

“What are you doing?” Emma inquires as she takes his phone out of his hand to look at what he’s reading over before handing it back to him after skimming through the words. “Is this your thing for tomorrow?”

“Yes, it’s my thing. I’m sorry I can’t be here with you tomorrow, my little miserable love.”

She turns to face him, her nose still so red, but some of the color is returning to her face. “Babe,” she reassures, “it’s fine. This is your job, and just like mine, sometimes it keeps us working crazy different hours, but we’ve figured out how to deal with it. Plus, aren’t you supposed to get to wear that fancy new uniform? The one that makes you look like you’re out of a Disney movie?”

He groans, throwing his head back because as honored as he is by this distinction, tomorrow, he’s not the most fond of the red jacket and blue sash with all of the gold tapestry. Plus, there’s a hat and gloves, and he feels a bit like he should be arriving in a horse-drawn carriage instead of a car…not that he hasn’t done the horse-drawn carriage thing before.

“Yes, that’s the one.”

“Do you have a picture of you in it?”

He does, and even if he told her no, she’d request one tomorrow. So he slides through his pictures until he finds the one his mother had taken when he’d been getting it fitted at the Palace.

“Oh, Killian,” she sighs, looking at the photo before looking back at him, her hand tracing against his jawline, “I know I poked fun, but you look so handsome like this.”

Maybe the uniform isn’t too bad if Emma likes him in it.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, I’m going to have to watch the news coverage of tomorrow just to get to see you in this since I won’t see it in person.”

“Maybe one day, love.”

The next day as he gets dressed, making sure that all of the strappings of his uniform are in the right place, he takes a picture of himself with his best smolder on his face and sends it to Emma. He can’t keep his phone with him during the event, and he’s going to be in the car with his mum so he doesn’t need to be texting Emma while his mother can see his face or possibly read his texts in such close quarters.

“Do you know who’s going to take over for you next year, Mum?”

“Not yet, darling,” she admits, softly smiling at him as she straightens her skirt. “I’d thought maybe Abigail, but I’m not sure. A part of me wants to keep doing it. I’ve always loved it, but I don’t think I’m the right person to be doing this particular one after so many years. I’m sure they want to meet someone new.”

“I’m sure you’ll find the right person, Mum.”

It’s warmer than they expected today, the spring sun feeling more like summer than something that’s melting away the last vestiges of fallen snow on tree tops and rural streets. His entire family is dressed in their military uniforms while his mother and Abigail wear winter green dress coats with tights to keep themselves warm despite the surprisingly warm weather. It’s always quite difficult to predict the weather for St. Patrick’s Day, even when they check it the morning of to make sure pre-planned outfits are suitable.

He’s stuck standing between his father and Liam while his mother hands out the sprigs of Shamrock, and while they make polite conversation with each other and the people around them, it’s all a bit stilted. He’s ready to go home the longer he stands there, but he knows that this day isn’t about him. It’s about honoring his mother and all of the members of the Irish Guard as they celebrate this festive day, his awkwardness with his family being pushed behind him for the sake of others.

Hours later when all of the shamrocks have been handed out and the pints of Guinness have been consumed, he’s back in his apartment, the lights dull as he’s reminded of the absolute stillness of his home, nothing out of place because if he doesn’t clean up after himself, a member of the staff will while he’s gone. His phone vibrates in his pocket to let him know an email came in, but he also sees several messages from Emma that she’s sent throughout the day.

Emma: Hot damn. My boyfriend is a smoking Prince Charming…or Prince Devilishly Handsome, which is much better than the Disney movies.

Emma: But seriously, you look just as handsome as I thought you would.

Emma: I know you don’t have your phone with you because you’re currently on my television, but I wanted to let you know that your medicine and doctoring yesterday has cured most of my ills and I’m more Frosty the Snow Man than Rudolph.

Emma: I think it’s three months too late to be making so many Christmas references.

Emma: Who am I kidding? It’s never too late.

Emma: Oh, also, Happy St. Patrick’s Day, babe. Love you to pieces.

Attached to the last text is a picture of her with a sparkly green headband on, two four-leaf clovers springing off the top of her head as she smiles at him. She’s got on a t-shirt that says “pinch me and I’ll punch you” and he loves her more than anything in the world, even if there’s still that slight redness at the tip of her nose. Maybe because of it.

Killian: Hey, darling. Sorry I couldn’t get back to you earlier, and I know you’re working now but I just wanted to let you know I missed you today and am glad you’re feeling better. I’ve been told that I have incredible…touch…so it’s not surprising I’ve cured your ills.

Killian: Also, I think pinching you might be worth the resulting punch. Love you, too.

“Okay,” Emma mumbles, pining her hat to her head before adjusting her curls underneath so that they fall in waves across the dark green coat gracing her shoulders and falling just above her knees, “so all I’m doing is handing out sprigs of Shamrock and chatting a bit, right? Nothing I can really screw up.”

He knows she’s more talking to herself than she’s talking to him. They’ve gone over this several times with their aides and public relation specialists, and Emma could probably recite the day in extreme detail for all of the times she’s read through her preparation packet, like she does every time she attends an event with him.

“Right.” He fixes a stray hair caught in her collar before running his thumb over the apple of her cheek, lingering there a bit longer than usual just so she knows he’s here. “I’m going to by right by you the entire time, so if you somehow don’t know what to say or do, just follow my lead, yeah?”

She nods her head before her lips slightly tick up on the sides, and he knows she’d pull her lip between her teeth if it wouldn’t mess with her lipstick.

“You’re going to do great, darling. I know it, and obviously mum and dad know it for entrusting you with this task. Plus, we’re going to your parents’ pub to drink a Guinness with some of the Guard after. How great is that for you and me to get to go back to our beginnings?”

She finally fully smiles, even if it’s just a soft little thing, but the green of her outfit brings out the green in her eyes so that she looks to be absolutely glowing even in her timid state, especially as the light from the window makes her golden hair almost glow white.

“It’s pretty great.”

The two of them head to the car where they’re driven to the Irish base in West London with their aides and their security detail going over last minute details. These are all things that he knows, but he listens and asks the questions he can tell Emma is hesitant to ask so that there’s nothing she’s unsure of, especially since he knows they’re greeting crowds outside of the base before going in and handing out the shamrock and watching the parade put on by the Guard.

His mother had given up her position at this particular engagement the year before when he’d been granted his honorary position as Colonel of the Irish Guard, and while she hadn’t known who was going to be her replacement at the time, she’d almost immediately given Emma to honor after the two of them became engaged.

“I’m kind of sad you’re not wearing the uniform you wore to this last year,” Emma sighs as they get a bit closer to the base. “I’d like to see that in person.”

“Well, my darling, this is only because that’s what I’m wearing on our wedding day, as per your request when we were going through the options. Can’t have everyone seeing me in my wedding outfit while yours is such a big secret.”

She nudges his shoulder even as she shakes her head at his cheekiness. “You’re still not seeing the dress, my man.”

He and Emma go along to greet the crowds, making sure to stop to talk to those who are particularly enthusiastic or have brought a sign for the two of them, along with special greetings for the children and elderly. He sees Emma squatting down talking to a young child with blonde hair similar to Emma, and he’s just about to go join when he hears his name.

“Prince Killian, your lady is so beautiful.”

He smiles before going over to the older woman who’s talking to him from her position in her wheelchair, stopping and shaking her hand as a wind chill gusts through the crowd.

“Thank you, ma’am. What’s your name?”

“Susan Thomason, your Highness.”

“Tell you what, Susan,” he winks, “you can just call me Killian, and it’ll be our little secret since you’ve been so kind about Emma.”

Susan blushes as he still holds her hand, and he swears she might flutter her eyelashes. It’s endearing, and this is one of his favorite things about being who he is.

“We’ve all just waited so long for you to be happy, and I can just see it all over your face now. A man can’t hide when he’s in love.”

Well, he did for a long while, but it’s always nice to get to show his true feelings after so many years of hiding them.

“Well, I’ve been happy for a long time, but thank you, Susan. I hope you have a wonderful holiday.”

He squeezes her hand before moving on to greet other people, having to wave and not shake hands in order to catch up with Emma who seems to be in a lively conversation across the street with a group of young men. He comes up behind her and wraps his arm around her waist to pull her closer to him to help keep the chill away from her as she’s only in the wool coat dress and tights.

She turns to him and smiles when his hand rests on her side, his thumb running up and down to feel the dip of her waist above her hip while she fills him in on what they’ve been talking about to cause such jubilation.  

“So these wonderful men have been letting me know that they were part of an Emma Nolan look-a-like party at Halloween last year,” she looks over to him with this brilliant smile on her face while very obviously trying to hold in her laughter.

“Do you all have pictures?” he questions because oh boy does he want to see this.

One of the young men slaps another before saying, “I told you they’d be cool about this. They’re the cool royals.”

Emma’s cheeks flush, and there’s no way for her to hide it. He’s had some hysterical conversations before, but this one is a personal favorite now. The men show them a series of pictures from Halloween, and nearly every one of them is in a blonde wig with skinny jeans and some type of plaid shirt or sweater like Emma was favoring during the fall of last year when she could still dress exactly how she pleased. None of them look anything like her, but Emma cannot contain her laughter anymore at the entire ordeal now that she’s seen proof of their story.

“Can I take a picture with them?” she turns to ask him. They’re not technically supposed to take selfies, but Killian has done it in the past when the time calls for it. What the hell? One time won’t hurt, especially because these will probably be the last people they talk to before they have to go inside the base.

“Of course, darling. Do you guys want me to use this phone?”

They all nod their heads before arranging for the picture, Emma leaning against the barrier with all of the guys surrounding her and smiling as Killian takes a few shots of the five of them before handing the phone back and guiding Emma away to where their security is waiting for them.

“None of them look like me, right?”

“Not in the slightest.”

The wind seems to pick up when they walk into the gates of the base, and he really hopes that it calms down because if he’s chilled, he cannot imagine how Emma is suffering at the impact. They’ve got to hand out sprigs to over three hundred Guards as well as having a bit of a chat with all of them thanking them for their service and wishing them a happy St. Patrick’s Day. Emma does swimmingly, as he knew that she would, and between the two of them it only takes an hour until they’re finished and sitting in a covered partition to watch the Guards march in their parade, the mascot of the Guard, an Irish Wolfhound leading the pack.

He notices Emma shivering, and wraps his arm around her shoulder to pull her closer into his side after placing a kiss on her forehead.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, I just wasn’t expecting it to be this cold. I can’t remember the last time it was this bad in mid-March. Usually I’m holed up right now with some kind of cold, so I’m thinking that’s coming after today if we stay out here much longer.”

“Just a few more minutes, and we’ll be back in the car, okay?”

He was wrong in thinking they’d only be out there for little while longer because it’s another two hours before they’re walking into the familiar walls of the pub and its heating system, Emma practically sighing in relief before immediately moving to hug her parents as he does the same, holding on a little bit tighter at being back in this place for the first time in over half of a year.

It doesn’t seem to have changed except for the obvious security cameras in the corners and an upgraded flat screen on the wall, and he’s glad to see that it’s still so familiar. Just being here brings back so many memories, and when this is all over he and Emma are going upstairs to have dinner with David and Mary Margaret like his life is a little more normal.

The Guard members begin to shuffle into the pub, all of them stopping to greet Killian and Emma even if they’ve already spoken with them, and while he’s used to greeting people, it’s odd greeting them while inside of this building where he was no one but a patron. It’s also odd that he’s in here without a cap in the middle of the day with all of the lights turned on.

The two of them are really only supposed to drink a pint and pose for some photos, but that plan is pretty much nixed the moment Will and the Nolans get behind on serving the pints. Emma immediately gets up and goes behind the bar to help out, handing out glasses and chatting with everyone while still in her dress and heels from earlier.

“Your Highness,” their new joint assistant Isabelle whispers into his ear, “Ms. Nolan really shouldn’t be seen serving beer.”

“Why not?”

“It may be seen as her cheapening the monarchy.”

“No offense, Isabelle, but that’s a load of bullocks. She’s happy and in her element, and if you want my opinion…it’s that I don’t care about the opinions of others.”

Isabelle nods before backing away and going to stand in the corner with the photographers while Emma continues to stand behind the bar serving. She is indeed in her element, smiling and laughing as she talks to the service men and women, and he’d like to join in, walking around the side of the bar and going to stand behind the counter with Emma.

“Your Highness, I’d never thought I’d see the day where you’re serving me beer.”

He peers over to see the man’s full name on his uniform. “Well, Ross, I can only say that I never thought Emma here would allow me behind the bar.”

Ross raises his eyebrow at the two of them, and Emma laughs beside him. “I couldn’t have him knocking over all of the alcohol. You see,” she leans over the counter to get a bit closer to Ross and stage whispers, “I make him a little nervous, and he could be a liability with all of that flustering while he was trying to flirt with me.”

Ross as well as some of the other men and women at the bar laugh at Emma teasing him, and she just wraps her arm around his back and rubs circles there while he laughs along at the truth behind her statement. She’s always made him a bumbling fool.

“Funny and beautiful. No wonder you got swept off your feet by a prince.”

“Oh, Ross,” Emma chuckles, “I was the one doing the sweeping.”

The entire event ends up lasting for two hours, and by the end of it this has to be the most genuine, simple fun he’s ever had at an engagement as he and Emma sit in their booth at the back of the pub and talk to all of the guards and members of their families before everyone is shuffled out of the pub and all he has to do for the rest of the day is approve the media coverage he wants released from his official accounts before going to eat dinner with the Nolans.

“So that was insane,” David sighs as he sits down in the living room while Mary Margaret puts the lasagna they’re eating for dinner in the oven. “Did any of you bother to look outside? Because the streets were packed.”

“No, I didn’t look outside. I was too busy picking up your slack, Dave.”

Killian settles down onto the couch, Emma sitting at the opposite end and settling her feet in his lap with her heels still on. She did so well today. She is really a natural at this, but he knows that all of the attention is hard on her. It’s culture shock, and she’s being fully submerged in a short time. She wiggles her feet in his lap, and when he looks over at her, she smiles before nodding at her feet, silently asking for him to rub her feet through her tights.

“I was not slacking,” David protests and oh has Killian missed being in this apartment and teasing David even if he knows that he should be nothing but cordial to the man. “I was simply overwhelmed by my daughter’s Grinch costume.”

“Hey,” Emma whines, pulling a pillow out from underneath her to toss at her dad. “I think this looks nice. I’m not quite used to the hat thing all the time, but I think this was a nice outfit. I’m festive.”

“You looked beautiful, love.”

“See,” she looks at her dad before pointing at him, “that’s how you’re supposed to treat me, Dad.”

“Killian is marrying you. He’s going to be much kinder than I am.”

“I am your daughter. I feel like you should also be nice.”

David shrugs, Emma rolls her eyes at her dad, and this entire thing is perfect.

The four of them sit down to dinner a little over an hour later, formal clothes long since discarded as he and Emma get to eat for the first time since that morning. Emma speaks to her parents every day, but he doesn’t so it’s nice to be able to catch up with them and how they’re doing. They’re still looking for a new home, and his face goes red when they say they’re trying to find a place fit for watching grandchildren. It’s a casual comment and good reasoning for their search in a home, but Mary Margaret gives Emma a very pointed look. She might as well tap her watch and tell the two of them that she’s waiting.

The pub is still open for the rest of the evening, St. Patrick’s Day too big of a day for them to close down, so David and Mary Margaret do eventually have to go downstairs to help Will, leaving he and Emma to be guided out by their body guards and walked to the car until they’re safely on their way home.

“You did fantastic today, you know that?”

Emma reaches over to tap his knee, running her thumb against the material of his slacks. “Thank you. I liked today. It was fun. Tiring but fun. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to all of this, though.”

“Most likely not, but it gets easier the more you do it, love.” He leans over to whisper in her ear so that everyone else in the car cannot hear. “You want to go get luckywhen we get home?”

She snickers at his come on, and harshly pinches his thigh, causing him to flinch back from her ear.

“Bloody hell. What was that for?”

“You’re not wearing green.”

The next Saturday is the Kidding A Goal opening, and this is the most nervous he’s been about an event in a long time. He knows it’s because this is his own personal charity instead of it being a patronage he supports, and he simply wants things to go right. He wants everything to run smoothly, the kids to have a good time, and he mostly wants it to be successful in the long run and to make some kind of difference for these kids.

“You’re pacing, babe.”

“I’m not pacing.”

“Okay,” Emma exaggerates, bending down to tie her sneakers, “then you’re walking back and forth over the same section of hardwood flooring. I think that’s called pacing, but sure. Whatever you say.”

His shoulders sag forward because she’s right. She’s always damn right, reading him even when he’s only giving the most subtle of signs to his true feelings. Of course, he most definitely is pacing, so it’s not like this is a subtle sign. Even people who don’t know him could tell that he’s nervous.

Emma stands after tying her shoes, and the both of them are in athletic clothes instead of dressing up so she looks much smaller than she usually is when they go out and she’s stuck in heels. The thought sobers him just a bit, reminding him that today isn’t like most of his other days. Of course there’s pressure from all sides, but it’s about everyone having fun. He’s going to be playing with the children more than anything else, and he can do that without a problem.

“I’m a little nervous,” he admits, tugging Emma into his side and kissing her temple. “I just want things to go well.”

She stands on her toes to press her lips against his jaw, nosing at him so that he looks down at her. “This is years in the making, Killian, and it’s a brilliant idea. The only thing that’s possibly going to go wrong is that I’m going to kick your ass today when we play the games.”

“In you dreams, Nolan.”

By the time the two of them get there, all of the kids and families are already inside, sitting in chairs in the auditorium of the facility as the concert they arranged for the children begins to wind down, the music dying until he walks out on the makeshift stage filled with all kinds of banners with their logo. He’s got to read a speech off the teleprompter, going on and on about the power of sport and teamwork, especially at young ages, before he smiles and yells, “let the games begin.”

For awhile he simply makes the rounds with all of the coaches, administrators, and wonderful people who have made his vision a reality, thanking them for their hard work and dedication not just for making today possible but for all of the days in the future. Emma does the same even if she’s never met most of them like he has, and after they’re through with their official duties, they can move on to talking to the children who are taking part today.

There’s a group of kids doing some sort of relay, running around cones and then hula hooping before having to pass the baton off to their teammate to continue the course. He doesn’t want to do it, but Emma’s got this glint in her eyes that basically says “game on.” She wasn’t kidding earlier when she told him she was going to outdo him today for the sake of competitiveness.

He and Emma get in line so that they’re paired up with each other before the next section of children start the race. When they’re told to go, he and Emma both take off, but he’s the slightest bit faster than her, always has been when not running on the beach, so as he jumps through the tires and runs around the cones, Emma lags just enough behind so that he can hand his baton off before she does. It’s not about winning, but he’s most definitely going to tease Emma about this later just because he can.

After the relay they go about talking to all of the kids on their teams, and after he finds himself finished with his team, Emma is still talking. One thing he’s noticed as they do engagements, despite her hesitancy toward a public persona, is that she is incredibly comfortable talking to people, particularly those who are not public officials or diplomats. So it’s really no surprise to him that she’s talking to a little girl as he walks over to join her.

“Do you play sports, Emma?”

“I run, and I play tennis sometimes but I think you’re already much better than I am when it comes to running obstacle courses.”

“Yeah, I am pretty good, aren’t I?”

He and Emma both try to contain their laughter, but Emma fails, her giggles passing through her lips even as she covers her mouth because this little girl is confident. He likes it.

“You know, Laura,” he begins, squatting down next to Emma, placing his hand against her back as she holds Laura’s hand, “my family plays a football match every Christmas, and Emma was on the wining team this year.”

She doesn’t seem to be too interested in what he has to say, but she appeases him anyways. “What about you?”

“Oh, I lost,” he chuckles, and Emma looks back at him and smiles, “but I tried my best and had a fun time. That’s what I want you to do today, okay? Try your best and have a good time.”

After all of the children have had time to take part in the opening day activities, more fun and games than actual sport just for today as the real coaching and practicing will start to take place on Monday, he and Emma are set to play a few strokes of tennis against each other. He’d foolishly let Emma pick the sport they were going to play when Isabelle encouraged the two of them to do a bit of an official exhibition of some sort, and she’d picked the one thing where she excelled and he floundered.

He would have expected nothing less.

It’s much warmer today than it was at the St. Patrick’s Day celebrations last week, and as they’re led to the courts outside, he wants to take his pullover off but he can’t as it has the charity’s logo and the video of this match will be used as promotion. Emma doesn’t seem to be affected by the heat at all, though, breezily chatting with one of their coaches and swinging her racket around as they walk.

They have it set up as an entire event, temporary stands constructed around the court so that as many kids as possible can watch them play. He and Emma are equipped with headsets with microphones, as Emma very kindly reminds him to watch his language for when he inevitably gets a little frustrated. Yeah, they’re trying to teach the children all about the power of sport and having a good time while trying your best, but that doesn’t mean he’s not competitive, especially when competing against a woman like Emma.

“Heads or tails,” their umpire says after the two of them stand at the net for pictures like they do in real matches.

“Heads,” Emma answers for him as she hops on her feet to warm herself up, and he already knows she’s going to be cheeky during this entire thing.

The coin lands on heads, and Emma elects to serve before taking two fingers and pointing at her eyes before pointing at him. “Don’t think I’m taking my eyes off of you for a second.”

“I would despair if you did.”

Killian insisted that this entire day is casual, so much so that no one refer to him as Prince or His Royal Highness once everything has begun. He’s simply Killian, while Emma is Emma, not going by the formality of Ms. Nolan as she’s gotten used to in the past month or so. This has kind of backfired a bit, however, because Emma seems to be much more fun for the children to chant as he and Emma rally, the yellow ball gently being passed back and forth on the blue court. Every time she gets a point on him, especially if it’s a winner, all of the kids break out into cheers that have Emma absolutely beaming across the net.

“You hear that, babe,” she teases through her microphone, probably not even realizing that she called him by her endearment for him in front of all of the people watching here and on the live stream, “I think all of your charms have gone away because it seems that I’ve got an absolutely fantastic cheering section.”

She gently hits the ball at him then, setting it up to his forehand and leaving a section of the court wide open so that he has no choice but to hit a winner, and he does, the yellow ball of fuzz passing Emma so that she doesn’t even attempt to get her racket on it. The crowd cheers, chanting for him a bit as they probably haven’t realized Emma totally let him have that, and then he hears Emma’s voice over the microphone leading the chant. When he looks over to her, she’s absolutely radiating happiness, and when he over exaggerates a fist pump, she throws her head back in laughter while all of the children do the same.

After their “match” they do a friendly handshake at the net, and when Emma pulls him in for a hug, kissing his slightly sweaty cheek, he hugs her a bit tighter before joking that she’s a regular Andy Murray.

The event winds down after that, the children tiring after eating the snacks they’ve provided, and he and Emma have to do their mini closing ceremony, giving a speech telling everyone that they hope that they had a great day and sign up forms for each individual sport or activity are at the booths in the back of the auditorium or online on their newly launched website.

When they get home, he practically collapses on the bed, not necessarily tired but relieved that the entire thing is over and that it went better than he could have ever dreamed. He just hopes that the actual organization runs that smoothly.

“That was fantastic,” Emma compliments before joining him on the bed, her head flopping down next to his as she accidentally knees his stomach, and she’s really beating up on him today, isn’t she?

“Yeah?”

The mattress squeaks the slightest bit as she turns her body to face him, soft smile on her face that makes all of his insecurities about that day fade away for at least the moment. “Absolutely. Everything about it was perfect, and some of those kids’ lives are going to change because of you. You know that?”

He does. He finally feels like he’s making an actual difference, even if it may just be a small one.  “I do. Thank you for being so great today.”

Emma reaches up to caress his face, her fingers running through his hair and pushing it back so that it doesn’t fall to his forehead anymore. God, he could fall asleep with her playing with his hair, and he almost does until Emma speaks.

“You’re going to be the best dad when the time comes. You know that, right?”

His eyelids flutter open to find her still hovering above him, hands running through his hair in a soothing motion.

“You’re sweet, love. What’s brought this on?”

“Just watching you with all of those kids today. I know as much as we talk about it and then don’t talk about it, as much as you want them, you’ve always been nervous that you couldn’t be a good dad because of your relationship with your family and the lifestyle you’d be bringing kids into, but Killian, none of that matters with how wonderful you just instinctively are.”

He reaches his hand out to cup the back of Emma’s head, threading his hands through her hair before bringing her down to intermingle their lips in a soft, slow kiss that has no purpose other than to show his affection for her.

“You’ve changed my whole world, Emma.”

[lovemesomesurveys]

Do you have anyone you fully trust? Yeah. What kind of pants did you wear today? Leggings of course. How old is your television? Maybe 3 or 4 years. Do you have a laptop or desktop? Laptop. When did you last talk on the phone with someone? The other day.

Are you currently sleepy? Yep. Shocker. Have you ever deleted Facebook friends for a significant other? No. Have you ever had bad trust issues with someone? Yes. What accent do you think is the most attractive? Certain southern and British ones. Are you hot or cold natured? Hot. D: Do you own any television series box sets? Yes. Have you ever been in a fight with your best friend? Yes. Do you have high standards? Not for myself anymore it would seem. When did you last receive a hug and who was it from? From my mom the other day. Do you take any advanced classes? I’m done with school. What is your lucky number? I don’t have a lucky number, but my favorite number is 8. Do you own a book bag? If so, what color is it? No. Was the last movie you watched a horror film? No. Do you own a lot of tee shirts? Yes. I have too many. Do you plan your outfits ahead of time? No, but it’s always gonna be leggings, sometimes sweats, and a shirt. Have you ever spent the night in jail? No. Describe your favorite jacket? I have a few jackets, hoodies, and sweatshirts and they’re all my favorite. Are you a colorful person or quite bland? Well, my leggings are all either black or gray and I do have a lot of black shirts as well. List one word to describe your significant other? Non-existent. Do you handle pain well? No. Have you ever been so nervous you threw up? No, but I’ve definitely felt nauseous and on the verge. Where is your favorite place to go when you’re depressed? So where am I all the time? My bed. Do you remember the first survey you took? Noo. That was over 10 years ago. How many friends do you have on Facebook? 100 and something. Have you ever watched fight videos for amusement? No. I don’t find that kind of thing amusing or entertaining at all. In high school, were you in trouble a lot? I was never in trouble. Do you enjoy your hairstyle? No. I really need to get my hair dyed and trimmed. Do you have long hair or short hair? Long. How much make up do you wear on a daily basis? None on a daily basis. I very rarely wear makeup. What is your favorite television show? I have a few. Do you have a leather jacket? Faux leather, yes. I have 2. Do you think anyone dislikes you for no reason? They’d have reason. I don’t like me either. Do you have any children? My doggo. Have you ever been interviewed on television before? Yes. Do you have weak upper body strength? I used to have great upper body strength and my arms were toned. Now I’m thin and underweight. My arms lost the muscle mass I used to have. I feel weak compared to what I once was. What is the worst insult someone can call you? I don’t know, honestly. I’m mean enough and insulting to myself. Do you write on your hands a lot? I don’t write on my hands. Are you good at sketching? No. Do you think hugs are awkward? Yeah, they kinda are. Do you think facial hair is gross? Not gross, but I don’t like a lot of facial hair on guys. That’s just a personal preference. Obviously guys, do what you want. Would you ever dye your hair an unnatural color? I dye my hair red. Have you ever paid your way on a date? No. What color was the last cup you drank from? White. Ever play Angry Birds? Nope. I never got into that whole craze. Did you think it was annoying, like I did? Yes. And that Farmville game, too. It was so annoying getting those game requests on Facebook all the time before Facebook made an option to block them. Have you ever been to the zoo before? Yeah, several times. What instruments do you know how to play? I used to play some piano. It’s been over 10 years now; though, I’d be very rusty. I regret not keeping up with it and not taking it seriously. How late did you stay up last night? Until 4ish. How late do you plan on staying up tonight? Lately it’s been around 3 or 4ish in the morning, so tonight will probably be the same. Whose wall did you post on last? One of aunt’s for their birthday. Are you a mostly blunt person? No. Have you ever done hard drugs before? I’ve only done weed. Has anyone ever been weirdly obsessed with you? No. Do you own a Snuggie? Yes. What is your favorite band of all time? Linkin Park will always be one of them. We go way back to my middle school days. Do you consider yourself a good kisser? No. Would you consider getting a tattoo any time soon? I’ve wanted one for years, but I’m a big baby. Are you afraid someone might steal your identity someday? No. No one wants to be me. Are there any paintings on your wall? Yes, a few. Speaking of which, what color are your walls painted? White. Do you have any talents that come naturally? I don’t feel I have any. I’m a very average person just barely getting by in life. Do you have any piercings? My ears. What is your favorite piece of jewelry? The necklaces and rings I have with my birthstone. Is there a place you’d rather live right now? Yes. Do you change your bed sheets often? Like a couple times a month. What movie did you last watch with someone? My mom, brother, and I rewatched The Avengers: Infinity War recently to get ready for Engame. Do you go out often? Nope. Have you ever had plastic surgery before? I’ve had plastic reconstructive surgery for something. Are you afraid of airplane rides? Yes. I’ve only flown a total of 2 times, and that was back in 2006. I’d be all anxious again as if it were my first time the next time, whenever that’ll be, that I fly. How many times a day do you brush your teeth? Once. Do you consider yourself a sensitive person? Yeah, I’m very sensitive. Some days it’s more so than others. I really, really hate it. What’s the best Valentine’s Day gift you’ve gotten? My mom gets my brother and I candy and a little gift for Valentine’s Day. Is there anyone who is overly nice to you? Not overly so, no. What do you think is the best smell in the world? Ooh. I love the ocean/beachy air, but I also love the smell of coffee. If you’re reading a book, what page are you currently on? I don’t feel like checking. Do you think people are intimidated by you? Ha, no. Do you have a job you like? I don’t have a job. Do you know how to do your own laundry? My mom does that for me. Have you ever lived with a roommate before? No. What song is your favorite right now? I don’t have a particular current favorite at the moment. Have you ever had a surprise at your doorstep? Just when something I’ve ordered online arrived. Do you like candles? Yeah. Would you prefer internet or television? Internet. I can watch my shows that way, too. What is something you lose often? Patience. I get very irritated and frustrated quite easily. Do you have any classes with friends? I’m done with school. Do you enter a lot of sweepstakes? I don’t enter any. What is your favorite possession in your room? Everything. What will you be doing in the next ten minutes? I’m going to make some coffee after this. How old is your oldest sibling? 34. Do you consider yourself physically active? No. How many scarves do you own, if any at all? None. I don’t like to wear them. Do you have any cuts or scratches as of now? No. Where did you last sleep? My bed. Do you have Netflix? Yeah. Are you colorblind? No. Do you know anyone personally who is colorblind? I had a teacher in high school that was colorblind. Still is, I assume. Favorite salad dressing? Ranch, Caesar, Italian, or a vinaigrette. Do you enjoy dancing? I don’t dance apart for maybe a head bob or a little movement of my arms. lol. Have you ever considered writing a novel? I actually have considered that at one time.

[jccamus]

The Outer Fringes of Our Language: A Conversation with Werner Herzog

The Outer Fringes of Our Language: A Conversation with Werner Herzog https://ift.tt/3668v3o

DECEMBER 30, 2019

I INVITED WERNER HERZOG to Stanford to discuss a relatively unknown masterpiece published in 1967 called The Peregrine, by an obscure British writer named J. A. Baker. We hardly know anything about him, except that he authored one of the most extraordinary pieces of nature writing of the 20th century. The Peregrine is one of Herzog’s favorite books, and it’s one of mine as well.

Herzog ended up speaking mostly about his devotion to books in general, and his belief that reading is the best, and perhaps even only, way to take possession of the world.

Our conversation took place on February 2, 2016, at Dinkelspiel Auditorium as part of Stanford’s Another Look book events. This transcript is excerpted from that interview.

You can listen to the audio of the conversation here.

¤

Legendary film director Werner Herzog discusses J.A. Baker’s book The Peregrine with Robert Pogue Harrison, a Stanford professor of Italian literature, at the Feb. 2 Another Look book club event.

ROBERT POGUE HARRISON: In your conversation with Paul Cronin in 2014, you say, “Read, read, read, read, read. Those who read own the world; those who immerse themselves in the internet or watch too much television lose it. […] Our civilization is suffering profound wounds because of the wholesale abandonment of reading by contemporary society.” Could you share with us some of your thoughts about your relationship to reading books and the value of the literary?

WERNER HERZOG: In a way, it has been something that is guiding me throughout my life. Beyond this auditorium, there are many more students at Stanford University, and many of them do not really read — including film students. They read a book about editing, but they haven’t read, let’s say, the dramas of Greek antiquity. And I keep saying to them you have to read. Read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read. If you do not read, you will become a mediocre filmmaker at best, but you will never make a really good film. And almost everyone that I know who has made very strong, very good substantial films are people who are reading all the time. I see three, four films a year, maybe sometimes a little bit more during a festival, but I do read.

And of course, I’ve written prose and some poetry. I am fairly certain that my written work will outlive my films.

Is that right?

It’s very, very clear. There’s no doubt whatsoever in me.

Why is that?

When you make a film, you have cameras and production money and actors, a lab or a post-production editing. Many, many layers of very vulnerable elements. When you write, you just write and there’s nothing else. It’s a completely direct form of expressing something.

I’m curious about the books that have become a part of you and your psyche. You mentioned, in A Guide for the Perplexed, that whenever you go on a film set, you bring two books with you, in particular. One is Luther’s translation of the Bible. You have to read the Book of Job for consolation —

It’s a 1546 edition in the original Lutheran language, which was an enormous cultural event. The German language somehow started with Martin Luther — the common language, Hochdeutsch, high German. Before that, there were only dialects. But Luther, yes, the Book of Job for consolation. Or the Psalms sometimes. I have it with me. I love to read it.

The other book that intrigued me greatly is Livy’s The Second Punic War. It’s the story of Hannibal’s invasion [of Rome] and the war with Carthage. Fabius Maximus, who is the Roman general, refused to engage Hannibal directly and was derided by his fellow generals — even accused of cowardice. And you say that he saved Rome.

History derided him, yes. Until today.

But you think that we still owe a huge debt to that man because he’s the one who saved Rome?

Exactly. And not only Rome, the Occident. The Western world was at stake. Rome was in a very, very deep crisis. Hannibal was coming across the Alps with a motley army and elephants. He defeated Rome twice at the Trasimene Lake and Cannae. They were the most devastating defeats Rome ever suffered. Rome was on the verge of collapse. And they voted in Quintus Fabius Maximus Cunctator. “Cunctator” is his cognomen, a deriding attribute — the cowardly, hesitant one. Cunctatore means to hesitate, to not be bold enough to take steps, because he said to everyone, “If Rome continues to encounter Hannibal in open field combat, we will perish completely and we will be extinguished.”

He started a war of attrition, always moving away, always retreating, always being hesitant, never offering an open field battle and attacking the retro guard or the foraging parties. He was the one who saved Rome. Our civilization would otherwise have been dominated by the North African Punic ideas and culture. He was derided and solitary — the solitude of the man is totally intriguing for me.

And you read Livy in Latin?

Yes, I do. I had to learn Latin and ancient Greek in school. I hated it. Only now, much later, I started to appreciate it.

And another classic that you read in Latin and love dearly is Virgil’s Georgics.

Yes. I run my own film school, the so-called Rogue Film School. It’s really wild stuff. In Guide for the Perplexed, there’s some summing up of advice. “Guerrilla tactics are best. Take revenge if need be. Get used to the bear behind you.” Actually, there’s a photo with a bear right behind me. It is not photoshopped. My wife made it, and there was a real bear. But it was a setup. The bear was not completely docile, but it didn’t do any harm. It was habituated to humans. A few things I teach students: breaking safety locks or forging documents and doing criminal things for the sake of making a film.

The film school has a mandatory reading list. On it is Virgil’s Georgics. It’s more than programmatic writing, it’s celebrating the achievements of the Augustan Rome. There’s a clear ideology and a sheer celebration of Rome.

Virgil grew up as a farm boy near Mantova, in northern Italy. He observed it all. Of course there’s also some program in it — half of it is about the world of gods who somehow interfere in things. But what’s really incredible is his knowledge about what he is writing, the precision of observation. In a way, that’s quite close to J. A. Baker. I’d like to read one brief passage, “Death of a horse, how a plague invades the stables.” It’s totally illuminating in the caliber of language. The caliber of observation is unbelievable. I love his writing. Here it is:

Then everywhere in the joyous burgeoning fields, the young cows die; in their pens, in the very presence of their mangers full of food, give up sweet life. Fawning dogs go mad. The sick swine seized with retching, coughing, choke on their own swollen throats. The horse that was once victorious, now miserably sinks as he tries to arise, forgetting what he has been, forgetting his pasture with its lush green grass, averting his face from the waters of the trough, over and over again pounding the earth with a disconsolate hoof, his ears laid back, fitfully sweating. The sweat turns cold as death draws near. His skin is dry and hard, insensible to the touch of the stroking hand.

These are the signs you witness in the first days of the coming of the death. But as the suffering moves into its final phase, his eyes glare bright, with a brightness of the fever. The horse’s groaning breathing drags itself forth from deep inside, and the whole length of the body labors and strains with drawn-out shattering sobbing. Black blood pours out from the nose and the creature’s throat is utterly blocked up and choked by its tongue. There are those who have thought the only possible hope was to use a funnel to pour in a little wine. But this itself facilitated death. Revived, they raged with weird, new, desperate strength. And in the final crisis — god grant such madness not to ourselves, but to our enemies — they tore at their own flesh with their own bad teeth.

The difference between the Georgics and the Aeneid, both by Virgil, is that the Aeneid is about history, the founding of Rome, whereas the Georgics is about the earth, the cultivating of the earth, the care for the earth. This might be an occasion for one of the questions from the audience — Valerie Kinsey asks the following question: “Based upon your documentary films like Happy People, Grizzly Man, Encounters, and your admiration for The Peregrine, you seem to have a deep interest in exploring the need of some individuals, mainly men, to reconnect with the earth in a primordial way. Where does this interest come from? Is it an elegiac homage to an interconnection between man and earth that has all but disappeared among suburban contemporary populations? Or is it a diagnostic of our present alienation from the status quo?”

Well, that sounds … complicated … but I understand the core of the question.

There seems to be an interest, on your part, in people who have this nostalgia to reconnect with the earth. Is that correct?

No, I have no nostalgia. I’m not a nostalgic person.

I grew up in the very secluded in the mountains of Bavaria, with no real technology around. Of course, I was connected to the mountains. And then, more than anything else, traveling on foot. I would walk 1,000 kilometers for very existentially important reasons. I would travel on foot, not with a backpack — not with my household, a tent, and a sleeping bag on my back. I have understood, first, that it’s a solitude that is unimaginable for anyone who hasn’t done it. And second, a dictum: the world reveals itself to those who travel on foot.

You see a connection with the German poet Hölderlin, whom I really love more than anyone else. He traveled on foot and actually became insane. He traveled from Bordeaux to Tübingen or Frankfurt and arrived stark mad. He had a premonition of insanity coming at him, creeping up on him. He describes it in some of his poems in a very secretive form. Very, very tragic man. He understood the outer fringes of our language. He understood the essence of being solitary, of solitude.

I keep saying to the Rogue Film School students that The Peregrine is a book that is the absolute must-read piece of literature, because that’s how a filmmaker should see things: in loneliness. He or she or it should see the world with an incredible amount of human pathos and enthusiasm and rapture.

He sees with ecstasy. He has such rapture, such enthusiasm, such passion. That’s the way a filmmaker should see the real world and people and everything around us — with an enormous amount of passion. But that’s not all. Anyone can have this passion, but he writes in a language, with a caliber of prose, that we have not seen since Joseph Conrad’s short stories. That’s why I find this a very, very decisive book for anyone who wants to make films. By the way, for anyone who is becoming a writer, you will have to read it, learn it. Learn the whole book by heart.

I agree. When you open that book, you ask: What is going on? What passion is he bringing to bear? I think he falls in love with a peregrine. He is infatuated. On page 12, when he describes his first encounter with the peregrine, it’s a language of rapture. He says,  

This was my first peregrine. I have seen many since then, but none has excelled it for speed and fire of spirit. For ten years I spent all my winters searching for that restless brilliance, for the sudden passion and violence that peregrines flush from the sky. For ten years I have been looking upward for that cloud-biting anchor shape, that crossbow flinging through the air. The eye becomes insatiable for hawks. It clicks towards them with ecstatic fury …

Yes, it’s ecstasy. And that’s one of the things that really caught my attention because there’s always a question — in filmmaking, particularly in documentary filmmaking — of what constitutes a deeper truth. Sometimes in poetry, you have the instant sense that there’s a deep truth. You don’t have to analyze it and vivisect it in academic terms and with the tools of literary theory. The same thing with films. Because today what you see — and what I hear constantly at any festival, with all colleagues — is they believe wrongfully that facts constitute truth. They do not. At best, facts create norms; they have that power. But only truth is something that illuminates us, that carries us into some sort of an ecstasy. And that is something which I find on every second page in The Peregrine. There is a religious quality of incantation, the invocation of a demon brother, which is a peregrine falcon. It’s like a ritual and the question, of course, is: How much is factual?

I have tried to defend Baker on factual grounds, but I don’t have the competence or authority to do that. The question is: If the book is full of factual inaccuracies …

There may be a few. That’s what I keep saying in moviemaking: “It’s the accountant’s truth you are after. You get a straight A, you idiot!” In [Robert Macfarlane’s] very intelligent, beautiful introduction, he says it’s irrelevant, that The Peregrine is “not a book about watching a bird, it is a book about becoming a bird.” Quite often in the book he writes how the peregrine is soaring higher and higher, and becomes a dot in this incredible sky. Then he writes, “And then we swooped down” — we swooped down — as if he had become a peregrine himself. Sure, that’s a factual inaccuracy.

Let me make a case for facts. A quote from Henry David Thoreau, in one passage from Walden where he says, “If you stand right fronting and face to face to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces, as if it were a cimeter, and feel its sweet edge dividing you through the heart and marrow, and so you will happily conclude your mortal career. Be it life or death, we crave only reality.”

I crave many other things beyond reality. It’s a very impoverished life if we go only for that. Even a good steak is a form of ecstasy sometimes. You shouldn’t dismiss that the primitive things of real, everyday life can acquire different quality.

And facts and ecstasy go together.

No, they do not marry.

They do not?

Truth gives you an illumination and transports you into a state where you step outside of your own existence in an ecstasy. You can, for example, find it in the writings of late medieval mystics — that kind of ecstasy. That’s the beauty of this book.

After the book came out, many people were calling attention to misrepresentations. Baker was asked if he took any poetic license in writing this book — and Baker said none.

Probably all these kinds of reports are made-up things, like on the internet. I believe it wasn’t until recently we even knew who J. A. Baker was or what the J and A stood for — I still do not know. Probably we only know that he may have worked in a library sometime in his life and he may have been carrying some illness. That’s all. I think we do not have a single letter from him. And it’s better that we don’t know.

Well, it doesn’t matter. We have a few letters. But let me quote this to you. Maybe this can shed some light. He says, “Everything I describe took place while I was watching it, but I do not believe that honest observation is enough. The emotions and behavior of the watcher are also facts, and they must be truthfully recorded.”

That’s beautiful. I hope that he really wrote it and not some internet imposter. Yes, it’s strange what happens to us. It’s not happening to the observer alone, it happens to the memory of the observer. I give you a recent example, which is very puzzling for me. I made a film, Lessons of Darkness, about the fires in Kuwait. It’s a film where, for 60 minutes, there’s not a single image that belongs to our planet anymore. You do not recognize our planet anymore. I start the film with a caption and it reads, and it’s a very beautiful two-liner: “The collapse of the stellar universe will occur — like creation — in grandiose splendor. Blaise Pascal.” Some people asked me, “Where can I find this? I can’t find it in his aphorisms. I can’t find it in Pensées.”

Fact is, I invented it. And I put “Pascal” under it. Pascal could not have written it better. But it takes the audience right into a quasi-ecstasy, to a very sublime, elevated position. And then the film begins, and I never let them down from that.

In Lo and Behold, about the internet, there’s one question I’m posing. The Prussian war theoretician Clausewitz, in Napoleonic times, once famously said, “War sometimes dreams of itself.” Does the internet dream of itself? It’s really a deep and a very, very puzzling question for very intelligent people.

Now, what happened? I tried to find this quote in Clausewitz, and I did not find it. So it may happen that in my memory I somehow thought it was Clausewitz — but maybe I made it up myself. I do not know. So it’s a very blurred thing. But the question itself, in the way I quote Clausewitz, has such a formal clarity in it that it doesn’t matter whether it was Clausewitz or me making it up and not remembering whether I made it up. That’s a very disturbing moment.

And that’s why, if it’s true that the emotions and behavior of the watcher are also facts and must be truthfully recorded, then there could be an exact, a very exact truth, that has to do with the subjectivity of the watcher.

And the behavior of the watcher.

Behavior, where he becomes more and more the hawk. It’s quite remarkable. The further Baker gets on in his diary, and he’s inspecting these kills, there’s a suggestion that he ends up also tasting —

He writes:

I found myself crouching over the kill, like a mantling hawk. My eyes turned quickly about, alert for the walking heads of men. Unconsciously I was imitating the movements of a hawk as in some primitive ritual, the hunter becoming the thing he hunts. […] We live, in these days in the open, the same ecstatic fearful life. We shun men.

We. While he writes these five lines, he morphs into a falcon.

A hundred pages later he says, “What was left [of the kill] smelt fresh and sweet, like a mash of raw beef and pineapple. It was an appetizing smell, not the least bit rank or fishy. I could have eaten it myself if I had been hungry.” And one has a sense that he might have, every now and then, even tasted some of these dead birds.

Yes. But I think there wouldn’t be anything wrong to eat a bird or the carcass of a bird raw. Why not?

Perfectly understandable. Let me propose my interpretation: it’s not so much that Baker desires to become the hawk. He does have flight envy and he does have this aerial envy. He wants to fly and —

So do I. I’ve wanted to fly all my life.

— and unfortunately, the only way he can do it is in prose. There are moments in this book where he is soaring as high as any writer can soar in sentences, in the way he’s writing, and in the ecstatic passion that transports him. And therefore, as a writer, he does become like a hawk.

The raptor has another myth associated with it, which goes back to the Greek myth of Ganymede — the young boy, the most beautiful of all mortals whose father was Tros, after whom Troy was named. On Mount Ida, Zeus takes the form of an eagle and seizes him, captures him, “rapes” him in a sense, of rapture, bearing him up into the heavens. He becomes the cup-bearer of the gods and he becomes immortal. There are moments in The Peregrine where one has a sense that Baker is just waiting to be rapt or enraptured by the hawk.

That’s fantastic. Via his own writing and via his own life watching the birds.

Let me see if I can find the passage. On page 154–155:

After two minutes of uneasy glaring, he [the peregrine] flew straight at me as though intending to attack. He swept up into the wind before he reached me, and hovered twenty feet above my head, looking down. I felt as a mouse must feel, crouching unconcealed in shallow grass, cringing and hoping. The hawk’s keen-bladed face seemed horribly close. The glazed inhuman eyes — so foreign and remote […] I could not look away from the crushing light of those eyes, from the impaling horn of that curved bill. Many birds are snared in the tightening loop of his gaze. They turn their heads toward him as they die.

The fantasy is to be borne up into the sky like Ganymede. To call it a Ganymede complex would trivialize everything, but he wants to leave the earth and he can’t leave the earth.

At the same time, he is very warm-hearted, almost humorous. A couple of times he describes wrens. They really touch his heart very deeply: “The flat land was booming void where nothing lived. Under the wind, a wren, in sunlight among fallen leaves in a dry ditch seemed suddenly divine, like a small brown priest in a parish of dead leaves and wintry hedges, devoted till death.” I mean, it can’t get any better. Or he writes another time about a wren: “Turning through a hedge-gap, I surprised a wren. It trembled on its perch in an agony of hesitation, not knowing whether to fly or not, its mind in a stutter, splitting up with fear. I went quickly past, and it relaxed, and sang.” It’s just wonderful.

The elements are very present in this book. There’s the earth, water, air, obviously, and then the circle of fire. Fire is not technically an element, but the sun really represents that fiery element. He speaks of the falcon in terms of fire. He speaks of the heart of fire that it has. He sees it flying, he calls it a burning brand. And yet he is earthbound.

I think he’s not reconciled with the world …

No, he’s not reconciled.

He’s not reconciled with human beings, and he’s not reconciled with creation. Absolutely not. I share this kind of anger against the mess out there. When you look at it, there’s no glorious harmony of the spheres. It’s a stupid concept that still pops up in Walt Disney sorts of movies sometimes.

You read the passage on the wren. With your permission, I’ll read one about the mouse. I think those of you who read the book will have noticed that Baker takes the perspective of a bird’s-eye view. He describes a valley, estuary, sea. It’s from great distances. But all this changes when he’s speaking about a little mouse that is an earthbound creature. I’m reading from page 45. Let me read the whole paragraph:

At the side of the lane to the ford, I found a long-tailed field mouse feeding on a slope of grass. He was eating the grass seeds, holding the blade securely between his skinny white front paws. So small, blown over by the breath of passing cars, felted with a soft moss of green-brown fur; yet his back was hard and solid to the touch. His long, delicate ears were like hands unfolding; his huge, night-seeing eyes were opaque and dark. He was unaware of my touch, of my face a foot above him, as he bend the tree-top grasses down to his nibbling teeth. I was like a galaxy to him, too big to be seen. I could have picked him up but it seemed wrong to separate him now from the surface he would never leave until he died. I gave him an acorn. He carried it up the slope in his mouth, stopped and turned it round against his teeth, flicked it round with his hands, like a potter spinning. His life is eating to live, to catch up, to keep up; never getting ahead, moving always in the narrow way between a death and a death; between stoats and weasels, foxes and owls by night; between cars and kestrels and herons by day.

This is the fate of those who are earthbound. It’s also the fate of Baker himself. He can get that close to the mouse because they share, at least, this earthboundedness. And we know that Baker was in the grip of a very serious illness when he was out there, recording these things that he was seeing. Perhaps there was some kind of promise of transcendence if you could somehow take to the sky and free yourself from living “between a death and a death” on earth.

I think that pervades the whole book. It is not just observations of natural creatures out there, it’s much more.

I traveled on foot to Paris in snowstorms, in rainstorms. You see so many mice. It’s astonishing how many mice there are. In Of Walking in Ice, I write, “Friendship is possible with mice.” It’s very strange. They have something which has a very strong allure to those who are the solitary wanderers out there.

Baker writes that creatures, even when they’re dying in agony, will do anything desperately to get away if a human being approaches them. Their fear and phobia of humans is such that you can never get near them. And yet Baker can actually stroke this mouse.

We have a question from Mark, in the audience: “Part three of The Peregrine begins, ‘Wherever he goes this winter, I will follow him [the peregrine]. I will share the fear, and the exaltation, and the boredom, of the hunting life.’ Do you feel this way as a documentary filmmaker, that you are on a quest without knowing where it will lead you? Or do you have a clearer idea of what you’ll find when you begin?”

That’s a deep question because I do have a focus and I do know basically what I’m out for. Of course, there are surprises en route. I follow the surprises and I follow my instincts. It’s a little bit like hunting. But in documentaries, you should not underestimate the amount of casting that I do. I’m speaking of casting the same way you cast a feature film with actors. And I look around, [and I think] “Who could be really good for introducing me to this or that phenomenon?” Casting somehow narrows the possibilities, of course, but it intensifies the possibilities at the same time. So, yes, it’s wonderful where you are ending up. One signal that I know what I’m doing is that I end up with very little footage.

Yes. For those who have devoted decades of their lives to a kind of scientific study of a bird or some other aspect of nature, and go through the labor and careful analysis to get the facts correct, that’s also a form of devotion. It’s not poetry, but it is a love that takes a different form.

That’s what scientists do. That’s the charm of what they do. Sometimes it takes them to discoveries that decide the shape of our civilization — the tools that we use, the inventions or the insights that they have. We change because of these lonesome insights. That’s the beauty of it. It transforms society, it transforms how we behave as human beings. Our humaneness suddenly changes because we are using cell phones, the internet, Facebook. The idea of self, which is shifting and changing, and the ambiguity of human exchange suddenly becomes so clearly visible.

Legendary film director Werner Herzog discusses J.A. Baker’s book The Peregrine with Robert Pogue Harrison, a Stanford professor of Italian literature, at the Feb. 2 Another Look book club event.

May I ask about some of the other books that you ask your students at the Rogue Film School to read?

Yes. I brought with me the Poetic Edda, but I also, for example, have a very, very fine book by Bernal Díaz del Castillo, The Conquest of New Spain. He was a 19-year-old footman of the conquistador Cortés. Late in his life, he wrote a very, very, very detailed account — much better than any other source at that time. It is a phenomenal book.

I would also recommend you all read the Warren Commission Report on the Assassination of Kennedy. Everybody puts it down, yet nobody has read it. It’s a wonderful, incredible crime story. And it has a logical conclusiveness that is staggering. It’s a truly wonderful, wonderful piece of reading.

Back to the Poetic Edda. I am somebody who has held the Codex Regius in my hands twice in my life already — a little crumpled parchment text which is a little like the Dead Sea Scrolls for Israel. This is a book for Iceland. It goes into the mythological life and description of the creation of the world. It’s very, very strong. I tell people who make documentaries: go read the Edda, read the depth of the myths that can suddenly come out of very simple things that you do not notice — unless you have a sensory organ for the mythological. Here’s Völuspá Edda, the creation of the world:

In earliest times     did Ymir live: was not sea, nor land    nor salty waves, neither Earth was there     nor upper heaven, but a gaping nothing,    and in green things nowhere.

Was the land then lifted aloft     by Bur’s sons who made Mithgarth,    the matchless earth; shown from the south    the sun on dry land, on the ground then grew    The greensward soft.

The “matchless earth” is just very, very beautiful. A few stanzas later in the text — the creation of dwarfs. And all of a sudden, the text about the creation of the world rattles down to 84 names of dwarfs. Idiot scholars believe that it is an interpolation of later times, which probably it was. It doesn’t matter. It is an integral part of the Codex Regius. It’s just really, really beautiful. I’ll read a little bit into it, if I don’t bore you with names of dwarfs:

Then gathered together     the gods for counsel, the holy hosts,     and held converse: who the deep-dwelling     dwarfs was to make of Brimir’s blood      and Bláin’s bones.

Mótsognir rose,      mightiest ruler of the kin of dwarfs,      but Durin next; molded many manlike      bodies the dwarfs under earth,      as Durin bade them.

Nýi and Nithi,     Northri and Suthri, Austri and Vestri,     Althjóf, Dvalin, Nár and Náin,     Níping, Dáin, Bifur, Bofur,     Bombur, Nóri, Án and Onar,     Ái, Mjóthvitnir.

Veig and Gandálf,     Vindálf, Thráin, Thekk and Thorin,    Thrór, Vit, and Lit, Nár and Regin,     Nýráth and Ráthsvith; now is reckoned     the roster of dwarfs.

Those are only the first 40. And you see this kind of love for these things is … I cannot describe it. These things have not changed the course of my life, but they have made it better.

I’ve never made a pilgrimage to a filmmaker, but I did make a pilgrimage to Salt Lake City, to the University of Utah. One of the texts, which is not on my list, is one of the greatest books — one of the most intense and beautiful texts. The Florentine Codex, a collection by monks who accompanied the next wave, the next generation of Conquistadors. They collected voices from Aztecs about child rearing, about botanic knowledge, about military things, about history, about religion, about human sacrifice, and so on.

The text is so stunning because the Aztecs, in the shock of the conquest and utter destruction, tried to regain their speech. They try to describe simple things. “A cave is a place of darkness. It is full of fear. It is dark, yes, very dark. And fear looms there and do we dare to enter because the cave is big and it is dark” — and it continues like this. Somehow trying to grasp the world by newly trying to name it — just name it. The translation was done by some scholars of the University of Utah, because the Mormons believe that the Aztecs were one of the lost tribes of Israel. So they have the probably the best pre-Colombian studies in the world. Two professors translated the text, which is Nahuatl, with Spanish translation in parallel text, in the Codex Florentino. They translated it into English. Over 25 years, they released bit by bit by bit in scholarly editions. Now you can buy it. It’s a book which unfortunately has very few copies. I think I had to pay $1,200 or so for 12 or 14 volumes. The translation has such a power of language. It’s like the Old Testament in the King James Bible translations. Something which happens only once in a few centuries. And it was translated by two wonderful scholars, Professor [Arthur] Anderson and Professor [Charles] Dibble.

Anderson had died. I learned that Professor Dibble was still alive, professor emeritus at the University of Utah. And so I went to Salt Lake. I asked him if I could see him and I made a little pilgrimage to him. He was completely astonished that a filmmaker would come and visit him. Nobody had ever visited him. And he had no real help. I cooked tea for him. He didn’t know how to ignite his gas stove anymore. So he was really a great, wonderful, tragic man who made an incredible achievement in language. And for him, I made a pilgrimage. I visited him. I would never do that for a filmmaker.

So, Werner, to conclude, you’re persuaded that you’ll be remembered more for your books and your films.

Not remembered. I don’t care about being remembered. No, no, no, I mean something different. They will outlive the films, whether anybody cares who the person was, or what my name was. You cannot become completely anonymous in our time, in our century.

Good. But there is another book that maybe you could read from, Conquest of the Useless: Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo.

It was written during the time when I filmed Fitzcarraldo, and of course there were lots of catastrophes. Whenever I had a moment, I would write, and my handwriting shrank to miniature size — I mean, microscopic. It has this kind of strange prose in it, which just comes at me here. I’ll read something from the prologue:

A vision had seized hold of me, like the demented fury of a hound that has sunk its teeth into the leg of a deer carcass and is shaking and tugging at the downed game so frantically that the hunter gives up trying to calm him. It was the vision of a large steamship scaling a hill under its own steam, working its way up a steep slope in the jungle, while above this natural landscape, which shatters the weak and the strong with equal ferocity, soars the voice of Caruso, silencing all the pain and all the voices of the primeval forest and drowning out all birdsong. To be more precise, bird cries, for in this setting, left unfinished and abandoned by God in wrath, the birds do not sing; they shriek in pain, and confused trees tangle with one another like battling Titans, from horizon to horizon, in a steaming creation still being formed. Fog-panting and exhausted they stand in this unreal world, in unreal misery — and I, like a stanza in a a poem written in an unknown foreign tongue, am shaken to the core.

This kind of stuff calms you when you’re battling in the forest. Others would seek consolation or refuge in drugs or in alcohol or in religion or whatever. My last resort is language. It’s a last resort. And it is boiling inside of me and I sometimes, like a tune that you cannot get out of your head for weeks and weeks, words and things are spinning in my head. It was very strange because I later returned to the site where I moved the shape of the mountain, and there was hardly anything that you could see, no trace is left. I noticed the hostility among people in a native village, which I had not really noticed before but it was evidently there. I describe it:

It was midday and very still.

I looked around, because everything was so motionless. I recognized the jungle as something familiar, something I had inside me, and I knew that I loved it: yet against my better judgment. Then words came back to me that had been circling, swirling inside me through all those years: Hearken, heifer, hoarfrost. Denizens of the crag, will-o’-the wisp, hogwash. Uncouth, flotsam, fiend. Only now did it seem as though I could escape from the vortex of words.

Something struck me, a change that actually was no change at all. I had simply not noticed it when I was working there. There had been an odd tension hovering over the huts, a brooding hostility. The native families hardly had any contact with each other, as if a feud reined among them. But I had always overlooked that somehow, or denied it. Only the children had played together. Now, as I made my way past the huts and asked for directions, it was hardly possible to get one family to acknowledge another. The seething hatred was undeniable, as if something like a climate of vengeance prevailed, from hut to hut, from family to family, from clan to can.

I looked around, and there was the jungle, manifesting the same seething hatred, wrathful and steaming, while the river flowed by in majestic indifference and scornful condescension, ignoring everything: the plight of man, the burden of dreams, and the torments of time.

So that’s how I see nature.

¤

Robert Pogue Harrison is the Rosina Pierotti Professor of Italian Literature at Stanford University. He is the author of several books, among them Forests: The Shadow of Civilization (1992), The Dominion of the Dead (2003), and Juvenescence: A Cultural History of Our Age (2014).

  https://ift.tt/39riVwF via Los Angeles Review of Books December 30, 2019 at 10:35PM

[hereisplendorr]

Crowds Make Me Too

“Some of these will not get bigger. Some of these kids will never grow up.” I pick cherry tomatoes from a garden and we choose not to wash them. It’s good to eat a little dirt. Some full, ripe, and red. Some smaller, but still red ripe. Higher up the vine, even smaller tomatoes, yellow and green and still trying their best.

Smoke coming down from the mountains. British Columbia ablaze, California smoldering, Texas draining. Fires on the west coast; floods around the world. Grown-up kids in cartoon costumes avoiding eye contact. Crying in front of a computer game about singing even though you aren’t the hero. It’s what you can do, so you do it.

The buses in Vancouver say, “SORRY NOT IN SERVICE”. In Athens, they don’t say SORRY. I tried to remember if I’d ever seen a bus apologize. If so, I couldn’t remember it. I was struck by decency.

Art on the walls, plants on the ceiling. Music as a matter of course. It can be so nice to be a human, in a safe place, surrounded by accumulated fragments of human kindness. I tried to be especially grateful, because my feet were dry, my legs were dry, and nothing needed to be dragged to the curb in a sopping broken heap.

The U.S. sweats through its shirt, uncomfortable from ambient hate. The countryside seethes shadows; we’ve been made to fear the forest, fear the darkness, fear the strange. We could look out for each other, but instead we do this. There is nothing in the woods except ourselves.

More than once in my life, I’ve felt like my own ghost. I sang in silly voices for my friends, and can’t shake the feeling that the one who truly loved to sing is gone. But it’s still me. Something erected barriers between me, walls of control and containment. I learned to be afraid of myself, or what I might be, or the ways I could explode. I soaked the wood with water so the bridge would never burn. I lost touch with myself. I lost trust in myself. I’m still just testing the footholds, seeing if the wood will bend. If the creaks have something dire to portend.

---

Jace and I traverse Seattle’s heart to find a place to see the end. Twenty-five years later cannot wait another day. A diner promised coffee and pie; we’ll have salads while we wait. Black and white zag electrics on the bathroom floors. But when it starts, we can’t hear Gordon clearly. That's funny. Enormous speakers for pop, timidly tiny for Twin Peaks. So we bail, hit Caffé Vita where there’s one tiny pie awaiting, and walk back to the apartment. We talk about celebrities we’ve met, and the trans-media feeling of a television figure sitting just there, in the bar. Like Panama City, but you can’t escape. We have to call Showtime to ask why we can’t log in; but as soon as we call, we can, and we laugh with the phone tree man, and someone in the background laughs, too.

Like this: I’ve tried to log in for 10 minutes, changed my password twice, and still I can’t connect. Finally we call.   “I’ve never called Showtime before, so let’s do it.”   “I didn’t even know you ~could~ call Showtime.”   We’re waiting, and I click the button again.   “Thanks for calling Showtime, how can I help you?”   And just as he says this, it works. I’m in.   “Well, I wasn’t able to connect for a while, but just as soon as you answered, I could! So I guess it’s all good!”   “Oh! Well, is there anything else I can help you with?”   “No, you’ve been great! You did great.”   He laughs, and so does someone else.   “Well, thanks for calling Showtime. Have a great evening.”   “You, too!”  

And then we go through 2 hours of televisual torment exaltation, in the comfort of a strange apartment, coffee and a pastry, everything resolved and then unresolved, and then we lay on the floor and pace around the place moaning and saying, “God. What?! God.”

We’re happy to be there. Grateful for the strange. Glad we made it this far. Jace says, “I’m grateful to have lived during this period, so I could watch Twin Peaks more or less as it happened. If anything is remembered 500 years from now, I hope it’s this.”

I expect to be dead in a year or five, the way things are going. I don’t expect to be remembered widely or well. Jace says this is okay. That it’s liberating. I don’t know if I feel that way.

I used to want to make meaningful art. I guess I still do. But I want to focus on bringing joy and compassion into the world, in whatever ways I can, even though I’m not always good at it and I don’t always do it right.

---

Walking around PAX for a few days is enough to drive me into despair. Who are all these people? So many faces I’ll never see again. There are too many people to even begin to comprehend. Each of us is living out our tiny piece of human history, in the midst of the massiveness of our personal history. Two people I’ve never seen before take each other’s hands and smile. One man gently rubs the back of the man to his right as they walk past a towering screen showing bullet holes and carnage. Beautiful young people have transformed themselves into well-loved characters; one woman dressed as Mercy is told, “I’m shipping you so hard right now,” and Mercy laughs back, “I’m being shipped a lot today.” I can’t shake the feeling that we are engaged in a form of irresponsible excess. I’m here because friends are here; because I can help them a little; and because I work in this industry and ought to try and meet more people. But why do I work here? Why am I doing any of this? What year is this?

---

The sky is orange with smoke from the north. Does tree smoke turns things red? Was the moon red last night because it shone through the blood of evaporated trees?

---

I stopped being honest with myself. I stopped writing freely. I feared the voice of my father, the eyes of my mother. I was convinced that I was in error, and that the things I wanted were wrong, whatever they might be. I retreated inward, stopped sharing, stopped confessing, stopped communicating. I’ve lived for years in my own shadow. I have not followed my dreams; I have shaken them from my mind upon waking. I have been convinced that every moment mattered too much to take action. I have been convinced that vanishment would be better than punishment. I have learned to hate my own inclinations, because why are they always so wrong, why do the words come out wrong, why has my life come out wrong, why did my dreams die, why can’t I get it right?

Now, I don’t quite think that way. But nothing has quite come in to take its place. There’s still a gap between me and me. A shrinking gap, but one I contemplate before each leap.

I'm told to live in the moment. I don't really know which moment this is.

---

Waking my laptop from sleep. It rushes through messages from recent days; what did I miss? What did we say? Did you see this? Did you see this? Did you see this?

The untethered insecurities of a hundred men will kill us all.