#if he doesn’t get a bunch of award nominations for this role I’m going to be PISSED

[kang-yo-han]

So I had a sudden idea where I was like “Oh, hey, I should compare the Jingoo characters I’ve seen with guns” and it led to me staring at this and going (not for the first time) “How the FUCK are these the same person”

[denimbex1986]

'I’m genuinely curious about and a little afraid of what is going to happen to a certain kind of film lover when All of Us Strangers comes out in late December. If the reaction to the press tour so far is any indication, expect mass fainting spells and/or riots. There are a bunch of reasons I have pegged this movie—a gay romance from director Andrew Haigh—to bring the Letterboxd crowd, me included, to our knees, but the chief one is that it stars not one but two certified internet darlings: Andrew Scott, best known as Fleabag’s Hot Priest, and Paul Mescal, who rocketed to fame via Normal People early on in the pandemic and has been an object of ardent fan obsession ever since.

Despite the movie’s English director and setting, the other thing Scott and Mescal have in common is that they’re Irish, which you’d think would make their coming together to maximize their joint slay a shoo-in for Irish movie moment of the year. But it turns out competition for that title is pretty stiff in 2023. In November alone, audiences saw Barry Keoghan make his mark on an English country estate in Saltburn and Michael Fassbender scoot through Paris in The Killer, the latter’s first major acting job in three years. This is after a summer absolutely dominated by Cork’s own Cillian Murphy, who played a Jewish American scientist in Oppenheimer with so much conviction that it matters not a whit that no one in history has ever looked more Irish. All of this came in what is still the same year that The Banshees of Inisherin, starring Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, and Keoghan, was nominated for nine Academy Awards, and Mescal was up for best actor for Aftersun.

They didn’t actually win any of those Oscars, but that doesn’t change a growing body of evidence proving that these days, some of the buzziest stars hail from the Emerald Isle. Ask any film fan whom they’re excited about, and you’re likely to get an earful of Mescal, Keoghan, Saoirse Ronan, and so on. I’m not the first to point this out—in August, Elle declared that it was “hot Irish guy” summer. But summer has turned into fall, and the hot Irish guys (and gals) remain with us. During awards season, Mashable made a guide to the Irish “it” boys of the Oscars. Several months later, they’re still “it.” So, what’s the craic with this Irish invasion?

“Irish people tend to be very good-looking and charming,” Rachel Connolly, a novelist and critic who has written about Irish culture’s place in the world, told me via email. “That would have to have something to do with it I’d imagine.”

True, but why are they so good-looking and charming, and so many of them at once? When I asked Ruth Barton, a critic and film studies professor at Trinity College Dublin, what unites performers like Mescal, Scott, and Keoghan, she posited that they all embody “a kind of soft masculinity.”

This wasn’t always the case. In earlier eras of Hollywood, Irishmen played priests and cops, not romantic leads. “Irish actors and Irish identity, particularly Irish masculinity, got sexier around the turn of the century,” Barton said. “The Troubles ended in 1998. You get this new image of Ireland coming through, with the Celtic Tiger, with the boy bands, with the chick lit, with U2, with Bono and all that kind of thing, which changes the image of the Irish male in particular.”

Barton cited Chris O’Dowd’s performance in Bridesmaids—as a cop, which is a typical Irish role, but a sexy one—as a key turning point that paved the way for the ascendance of the Irishman as soulful and sexy male lead. This also then makes room for weirder actors like Keoghan to become fan favorites. “He’s the underdog,” Barton said of Keoghan in Banshees. “He’s not good-looking. He’s not tall. He’s none of those things. But he’s really heartfelt. That’s what he brings to these roles.” (And some people would beg to differ about the good-looking part, I imagine.)

It helps that Ireland is also in the midst of a “huge literary moment,” Barton said. “Sally Rooney is only one of the generation of incredible young women writers coming through.” Rooney, the 32-year-old author of Normal People, is known for portraying “[her] generation’s anomie and discontent” in a way that can also be “viscerally sexy,” Barton said.

And again, this is still kind of a new thing! “Ireland used to be this repressed Roman Catholic country,” Barton said. “We abandoned Catholicism, and then we really let rip.”

Saoirse Ronan notwithstanding, it’s true that the viral “internet boyfriend” phenomenon that so benefits people like Mescal and Scott doesn’t quite have a female equivalent. Still, Irish actresses have been able to take advantage of the spotlight too: Kerry Condon received praise and award nominations for Banshees, Sharon Horgan’s Bad Sisters featured five plum roles for Irish actresses in 2022, with a second season on the way, and we’re still not that far out from the end of Derry Girls, the Netflix show set in Northern Ireland in the ’90s. Irish actress Nicola Coughlan parlayed her role in that show into work on Bridgerton—she will be the lead of an upcoming season—as well as a spot in one of 2023’s most enviable ensembles, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. (She fittingly played Diplomat Barbie.) Otherwise, Barton cited Jessie Buckley in particular, of last year’s Women Talking, as an Irish actress on the rise.

In a larger sense, for millennials and Gen Z audiences who care about such things, Ireland’s politics seem refreshingly unproblematic: “Ireland stands for nothing on the world stage,” Barton said. “We’re not an aggressor. We’re not a colonizer. The Troubles are over. We actually live in one of a few countries with a fairly stable democracy. We don’t have crazy leaders. It’s a benign kind of identity, Irishness.” In other words, the Irish have all the charm Americans find in a British accent, maybe more—Barton cited a certain richness to “Hiberno-English”—with none of the baggage of the Brits.

Ireland’s history, of course, has trickle-down effects on the national character. According to Michael Patrick Gillespie, a professor at Florida International University who has studied Irish film, Ireland’s past is infused into the whole country’s sense of humor. “They have a great sense of irony,” he said. “I mean, they were an English colony for 750 years. I think that would certainly give anyone a bit of cynicism. There’s a great deal of value placed on wit and on repartee and being able to think on your feet, to think quickly and to deal with ambiguity.”

ADVERTISEMENT That may account partly for why such a small country—it has a population of 5 million—continues to leave such an outsize cultural impression. “There’s a tremendous creative vitality in Ireland, and that fosters a wide range of artistic projects,” Gillespie said. “It also builds up a callus and a stamina because there’s just not a lot of money. There’s never money in the film industry. There’s not a lot to support Irish films. And so to make it, to be successful, you really have to endure.”

Things may be improving on the money front: In February, the Hollywood Reporter published a piece on why the Irish film industry lately seems to be punching above its weight. Some Irish filmmakers pointed to specific funds that have been set up to encourage homegrown talent, leading to projects like Normal People and The Quiet Girl, which was a Best International Feature Film nominee at this year’s Oscars. Barton, meanwhile, pointed out that Ireland also offers quite a bit of state-subsidized theater, so much so that there’s now a fairly well-established trajectory for young actors to follow: After making a name for themselves in theater, they usually move into Irish TV, then parlay that into work elsewhere. When Hollywood productions cast Irish actors, “they’re getting pretty accomplished actors coming in who know what to do, who speak English, and who don’t have to deal with the kind of cultural adjustment either because, you know, we can see American TV here,” Barton said.

And it’s also easier now than ever before to work in Hollywood but stay Irish. “Before, you had to really move to America to work, whereas now people go backwards and forwards very, very easily,” Barton said. “Somebody like Cillian Murphy is very, very insistent that this is where he lives, this is where his children are being brought up, they are being brought up with Irish values, not with American values, etc.” For some American fans, this only makes this class of actors more swoon-worthy for how “not Hollywood” they are.

Still, Gillespie worries that American audiences are at risk of over-romanticizing the simple, quaint Irish life. “I think that Americans have a very naïve sense of Ireland,” he said, a sense that is sometimes amplified by movies like Banshees, in Gillespie’s view. “There’s almost a patronizing view of the Irish that that I think causes many Americans to underestimate their complexity.” In other words, Ireland and Irish actors are more than a vision of a sensitive man who reads poetry in bars or, say, really loves his donkey. “I think American audiences are more than capable of seeing the complexity that is there in Irish films and appreciating the complexities that Irish actors can convey,” Gillespie added. Something to keep in mind while you’re watching Mescal and Scott smooch next month at a theater near you.'

[watchmegetobsessed]

Never Have I Ever - Harry Styles (part 8)

a/n: oh my! we have finally reached the end of this story and I never thought it would turn out to be this long but im happy it did! thank you for reading and loving it, and now, enjoy the last part!

pairing: Harry x actress!reader

word count: 4k

warning: just pure fluff

SERIES MASTERPOST

masterlist

“Girl, even if you don’t win, you’ll surely take the title of the hottest woman on the red carpet tonight.”

Florence’s words make you chuckle, but you try not to move your lips too much as the makeup artist finishes up the last touches on them, using a nude shade.

“Stop, my head is big enough already,” you tell her, giving her a look through the mirror. She is standing a few feet behind you, already wearing her beautiful, golden Versace gown that hugs her perfectly. Her hair is up in a neat bun so her back can be on full display and the diamonds in her ears can also shine brightly. She looks amazing while she is the opposite of what you’ll look like tonight.

Rhonda, the makeup artist has an amazing notion about your look when you showed her the gown you’d be wearing tonight and since the dress is not the sparkly kind, like Florence’s, she went a little heavier with the glitter on your eyes, using mostly whitish-silver colors, creating rosy cheeks and topping it with nude, glossy lips. Your hair is in loose curls with a bunch of extension, creating the illusion that you might as well be Rapunzel herself tonight. But you are the most excited about the gown that’s already waiting for you to be finally put on.

“What time is it?” you ask Florence as you don’t have your phone on you, but she has hers in her hands already.

“We still have half an hour before we have to leave. Dude, I can’t believe you are an Oscar nominee and might turn into a winner tonight!” she sighs, eyes shining bright with excitement. She hasn’t come off of this high for days, so over the Moon that you get to walk the red carpet tonight as a nominee.

“Don’t jinx it, Flo,” you warn her.

There’s a knock on the door of the hotel suit you’ve occupied for the glamming and Florence is quick to rush to it answering, but you both know who it is. As she throws the door open Harry comes to your sight, looking  as handsome as ever, wearing his custom made Gucci suit with a pink dress shirt underneath that matches your gown perfectly.

“Florence, you look wonderful!” his british accent fills the room, making you smile. Rhonda sets your makeup with some spray and you’re finally done. Standing up you move your legs around a bit as they went a little numb from all the sitting.

“Thank you! Pink suits you well, Harry,” your friend compliments your man and you watch them smiling.

When Harry’s eyes set on you, the light up, his smile widening from ear to ear. He looks spotless, freshly shaved, his hair recently cut and combed into place for a change. Not that you don’t like it when it’s all tousled and messy, especially when it’s because of your fingers.

“Angel, wow!” he breathes out as he walks up to you, taking your hands in his. You know he wants to kiss you, but doesn’t want to risk messing your lips up, so he is left with admiring you with only his eyes.

“Just wait until you see her in the dress!” Florence chimes in making you chuckle. You kept your dress a secret, wanting to surprise him with the first look. You gave out only the most necessary details for Lambert so the two of you could match.

“You’d be great like this too,” he teases, taking a look at your fluffy robe.

“I’m not going to the Oscars in a robe,” you tell him with a narrow-eyed look.

“I know, I’m just saying that you’d still be stunning,” he mumbles with a boyish smirk.

“Y/N? Time to choose a necklace!” Your stylist, Rupert appears from the room where your gown is hanging. He has a few jewelry boxes in his hands and he sets them all to the coffee table, opening up you are met with four breathtakingly beautiful diamond necklaces, each of them different yet so magical looking, you can’t decide which one you like the most.

“Harry, which one do you like the most?” you ask, kneeling down next to the table, mesmerized by the jewelries in front of you. Harry leans down and inspects them one by one before poking on the last one in the row. It has three rows of diamonds, not too big, the stones in the last row are shaped like water droplets, it’s such an elegant looking piece, it surely caught your eyes as well and you think it would be perfect with the dress.

“This one,” he tells you and you nod, shutting the other boxes, satisfied with the choice.

“Alright, time to get you into the gown, girl,” Rupert winks, gesturing at you to follow him into the room.

“I’ll be right back,” you tell Harry, risking a quick peck on his lips before you disappear in your temporary dressing room.

You fell in love with the gown on the first fitting when Rupert pulled it out, still in the finishing phase. It still has pins in it, but it already took your breath away. It has a massive A-line skirt and a tight upper part that hugs your body perfectly, a row of buttons running down the middle of it. The sleeves are puffy, but then end in a tight run from a little above your wrists, the same set of buttons appearing like on your chest. It’s giving out some Victorian style vibes in a more sophisticated and simpler way, but it’s by far your favorite dress you’ve ever worn to any event.

It surely needs the extra pair of hands from Rupert to put it on, but once you are secured in it, you feel like a princess straight out of a fairytale and surely, your prince is standing on the other side of the double doors.

“Alright! Everyone get ready for the big reveal!” Rupert announces, sneaking out the room so he can open the door for you. He waits a few moments as you hear everyone shuffle around outside, probably lining up to see you walk out in your finished state. “Okay, three! Two! One! Welcome our Oscar nominee!” he cheers, a round of applause is heard before you even appear, but it’s quickly replaced with gasps when Rupert pulls the doors open and they get the first glimpse of you in your gown.

“Holy fuck!” Florence gasps, mouth hanging open as she keeps raking your form up and down. Your eyes find Harry’s gaze and you see him in a state you haven’t often found him in the past almost two years you’ve been dating. He is completely speechless, eyes glued to you in awe as if he just saw an angel in real life.

“Y/N, I—wow,” he breathes out, still at a loss of words.

“You like it?” you ask with a shy smile.

“I fucking love it, baby. You look… You really are an angel,” he tells you, making you chuckle at his words.

“Would you please help me put on the necklace?” you ask him and he nods eagerly, carefully taking the jewelry out of its box and walking behind you, he brings it around your neck, his fingers delicately working on the clasp. Once it’s all set, you step to the floor to ceiling mirror, taking in the final look.

“There won’t be a straight woman left on Earth once you step on the red carpet,” Florence bluntly comments, making everyone in the room laugh.

“Let’s take some photos, I need to immortalize this masterpiece,” Rupert gestures around, already grabbing his camera.

The next ten minutes you take hundreds of photos, alone, with Florence and then with Harry. He still seems a little stunned by your look, feeling shy when he circles his arm around your waist, but it’s cute that you can still have such an effect on him after being together for almost two years.

Florence snaps some with your phone as well, your favorite is when he held your waist and leant you back, making you arch backwards as your noses touched since he couldn’t kiss you. You already know it’ll end up as your lockscreen, replacing the selfie the two of you took on your latest trip to Hawaii.

When it’s time to leave you grab your little purse with your phone and other necessities and the three of you pile up in a minivan, since your dress needs all the space so it doesn’t get wrinkled before you step out to the red carpet.

As you sit in the car and watch the buildings pass by, your nerves start to rise in you. When the nominations came out a month ago it seemed so far, you couldn’t imagine yourself actually attending the Academy Awards, but now here you are, on your way to find out if you’ve been good enough to be the best.

Your role in Sinful Heaven has brought a lot to your life aside from the nomination. The three months of filming was one of the hardest times in your life you’ve ever worked through and at some points, you didn’t even think you’d get through it. Working so closely with Levi took a toll on you while you were trying to prove in such a heavy and serious role. It was a mess especially at the beginning when you and Harry were still in this weird phase, but that eventually turned right when he literally punched Levi in the face and ten minutes later asked you to be his girlfriend. It’s a badass way to start a relationship and you wouldn’t trade it for anything, especially because it put Levi into place or at least scared him enough to get off your back for the rest of the filming.

When Harry left following that visit, you couldn’t see each other until filming wrapped and you flew straight to him and travelled with him for the next two weeks, hopping from one city to the other, watching him perform every other night and spending all your time with him.

When the movie premiered eight months later, you didn’t appear with Harry by your side, Maya was your date for the evening, but by that time everyone knew you and Harry are an official couple. Neither of you felt like hiding it or caring about what others would think and you were able to focus on each other and rely on the strong foundation you’ve built for your relationship.

He was there with you when the nominations came out and probably screamed louder when your name appeared in the list. With tearing eyes and choked out sobs you jumped into his arms as he mumbled into your ear.

“I’m so proud of you, Angel. So, so proud!”

And now you are on your way to the show, only hours away from finding out if your dreams will come true tonight. Harry squeezes your hand and you turn to face him, his soft eyes meeting yours.

“Nervous?” he asks with a small smile.

“Very,” you admit with an airy chuckle.

“Whatever happens tonight, I’m very proud of you. Don’t forget that.”

“Thank you,” you whisper, giving his hand a squeeze back.

Since it’s the first time you and Harry appear on the red carpet as a couple, once you set your feet out of the car, everyone goes nuts. He helps you out and even fixes your dress so it falls just perfectly around your frame before he offers his arm. You link your through it, taking a deep breath as the two of you start walking down the carpet, posing for the photographers.

You feel powerful and strong, like it’s the peak of your career, but you also feel that it wouldn’t be the same without Harry by your side even though he is making sure to let you shine tonight. At one point he even steps back for a moment so photographers can snap you alone and you think it’s such a caring move from him.

You feel a little dizzy from all the flashlights by the time you walk into the theater, Harry holding your hand tightly as he leads you to your seats.

You’ve been to plenty award shows and it’s not even your first Academy Awards appearance either, but for obvious reasons, it’s the most important. Sitting in your plush chair, you can barely stop yourself from continuously fidgeting as one category follows the other and it’s still not yours.

Then following a jaw-dropping performance from Dua Lipa, Chris Evans walks out with a golden statue and an envelope in his hands and your heart skips a beat, but not because of the man himself, but because you know he is the presenter of the Best Actress category.

Your hold on Harry’s hand on your lap tightens and you glue your eyes to the big screens behind Chris as he smiles around.

“Good evening. It’s a pleasure to be here and to present the award for Best Actress. The theater tonight is filled with exceptional talents, but let’s see the nominees,” he speaks into the microphone and then he starts listing the names.

Emma Stone, Anne Hathaway, Margot Robbie and Rooney Mara are called and a camera fixates on each of them when Chris says their names, all smiling brightly and waving around before your name is called at the end. Taking a deep breath you plaster your most wonderful smile across your face, waving around like the other nominees did before the big screen splits, showing the five of you simultaneously.

“We’ve seen some spectacular performances from these ladies and now let’s see who proved herself to be the best this year.”

Chris flips the envelope open and pulls the little paper out that has the winner’s name written on it and for a moment you’re convinced you’ll pass out. You’ve never felt this anxious before and you’re gripping Harry’s hand so tightly you’re surprised he hasn’t pulled it back, but he is patiently putting up with your nerves, his eyes glued to the man on the stage as well.

“And the Academy Award for Best Actress goes to…” Chris starts with a charming smile, holding a short pause before he finally says the name. “Y/N Y/L/N for her role as Marie Davidson in Sinful Heaven!”

Your mouth hangs open, ears ringing as you process that your name was called. Everyone around you jumps up, including Harry, who is screaming just like when the nominations came out, while you are completely blank. It takes you a couple of moments to realize that you in fact just won your first Oscar and everyone is waiting for you to go and get your little statue.

“Baby! Baby you won!” Harry cheers as he helps you up from your seat and you throw yourself into his arms as reality sets in. “I fucking love you, Angel. Go and get your Oscar!” he laughs, pride all over his face as he urges you to walk up to the stage.

“Walk me up, please!” you stammer, not trusting yourself with walking in this fragile state. He offers his hand without a second thought, walking you to the stage where Chris is politely waiting for you to help you up on the stairs.

“Thank you,” you breathe out once you’re finally up on the stage, every set of eyes on you as Chris hands you the little statue.

“Congratulations,” he smiles as the two of you exchange two kisses on the cheeks before he steps aside and lets you give a speech.

You thought about writing a few words beforehand, but you figured if you end up being the winner you’d forget the whole thing, so there would be no use and that’s the case. Your mind is still blank as you look down at the award in your hands, the crowd still cheering on you, giving you a few extra moments to figure out what to say.

“I uhh—I don’t even know what to say, this feels like a dream,” you admit talking into the microphone, the clapping dying down so that everyone can hear your words. “I want to thank to everyone who worked on Sinful Heaven, because I wouldn’t be here without them. To my wonderful director and amazing costars, it’s been such a wonderful journey with you all. Thank you to my friends and family who were there with me from the very start, believing in me when I was losing faith in myself, thank you for never giving up on me. To my parents who I assume are now crying in front of the TV,” you add chuckling softly, imagining your mom and dad in tears as they listen to your words. “This is a wonderful sign to me that I am where I need to be and that I’m on the right path, so thank you for giving me even more motivation to keep me going on my way.”

Your eyes roam around all the guests until they fall on one proud man staring at you in his Gucci suit and pink dress shirt, his green eyes looking glossy as he listens to your words.

“And last but not least, thank you to one special person, because I’m convinced I wouldn’t be here tonight without him. I have one thing to tell you.” Forgetting about everyone in the theater you hold up the Oscar in your hand as you finish your speech: “Never have I ever loved someone like I love you.”

The crowd starts cheering again as you step away from the microphone and Chris is quick to jog up to you and help you down the stairs, Harry rushing back to take your hand once Chris lets go of it.

You catch him wipe a tear off his cheek as the two of you walk back to your seats hand in hand. Once you are settled, you take a deep breath and turn to Harry who is already looking at you, the same proud smile you saw from the stage still on his handsome face.

“I have never,” he tells you as his answer to the last line of your speech and you chuckle as your free hand finds the back of his neck, pulling him close. The lipstick on your lips long forgotten as you finally kiss him for the first time tonight.

“I have never either,” you whisper against his lips before kissing him again and again.

***

  Smiling around you wait for the audience to quiet down as you make yourself comfortable in the familiar armchair. It’s such a nostalgic feeling to sit here again.

“Y/N, it’s so nice to have you here again,” Ellen greets you once the clapping has stopped.

“Thank you for inviting me.”

“Of course. A lot has happened since the last time you were here, you won an Oscar just a few weeks ago, congratulations!”

The cheering starts again as a picture of you appears on the screen behind you, wearing your iconic pink gown, holding your Oscar in your hands.

“Thank you,” you shyly smile, still not entirely in peace with the fact that you are now an Oscar winning actress.

“Such a major thing, congrats.”

“Thank you, it is a huge thing, yes.”

“Do you already have a spot for the award? Does it have a designated place?”

“Well, for now it is in my study along with some more mementos, but I’m planning to have a little stand made in the living room,” you share your plans.

“Surely, I would want to show it off if I had an Oscar,” Ellen chuckles. “You have such a busy time behind you, have you been up to something new lately?”

“We finished filming the third season of The Umbrella Academy, so now I’m having a little break before I jump into anything new.”

“Sounds nice, you deserve all the relaxing. Anything planned while you’re on a break? A new book to read, or maybe a concert to go to?” she asks and you already know where this is heading.

“You know you can just ask if I’m planning to attend a Harry Styles concert,” you bluntly tell her, making the audience and Ellen laugh.

“Well, I was just asking around about your plans, but I’m happy you plan to visit Harry’s concert! It’s also good to know that the situation has changed since the last time you were here, you definitely have been to one of his concerts since then.”

“I have been, yes,” you admit smirking.

“And I assume the two of you are now very close, am I right?” she asks and suddenly a paparazzi photo of the two of you appears where you’re walking down the street hand in hand just a couple of weeks ago.

“You could say that,” you nod, biting into your bottom lip.

“Amazing, because he is going to join us now. Everyone, please welcome Harry Styles!” Ellen announces and turning around you spot Harry walking out from backstage, the audience screaming for him. He shyly waves around walking up to the center, greeting Ellen with a kiss on the cheek before he turns to you, pecking your lips shortly as he sits down next to you.

“Harry, so good to see you again,” Ellen smiles at him.

“Good t’ see you as well,” he nods.

“So, the last time you two were sitting here, you—it was the first time you ever met, right?”

“Right,” you nod with Harry.

“And now you are…” she gestures at the two of you, not finishing the sentence, but everyone knows what she meant by that.

“And now we are… not strangers anymore,” Harry says chuckling, making everyone in the studio laugh.

“Certainly,” Ellen nods. “Alright, I thought that we could play another game, just to bring back some nice memories,” she explains, reaching behind her armchair, grabbing the familiar board from her, flipping it in your hands with a nostalgic smile.

“Can we keep it PG rated though?” Harry asks, examining his board before looking up at Ellen.

“No,” she simply answers, reaching for her cards as the audience starts laughing. “Okay, you know how to play it, no need for explanation. Here is the first one: Never have I ever used my fame to get in somewhere.”

Ellen is quick to show the I HAVE side of her board and you slowly do the same while Harry thinks to himself.

“Oh come on, you surely have,” you elbow him playfully as he smirks in your way, holding up the same side as you and Ellen.

“We all have, it’s not a shame,” Ellen shrugs. “Next one. Never have I ever forgotten the name of someone right after they introduced themselves.”

Ellen holds up the I HAVE side and you do the same again while this time Harry flips it over to I HAVE NEVER confidently.

“Really?” Ellen asks him, surprised at his answer.

“I’m good with names,” he simply shrugs.

“That’s a good trait. Alright, let’s move on. Never have I ever punched someone in the face.”

It’s a sneaky and very shady statement. Just a few days after the incident with Levi, word got out that he was punched, a few blurry pictures floating around the internet of his bruise, then fans figured out it had to happen around the time Harry visited set and people were quick to put the picture together and assume that Harry was the one who hit Levi, but it was never confirmed.

Glancing at your boyfriend you are fighting your smile back, holding up the I HAVE NEVER side as he is looking back at you slyly, continuously flipping his board before it finally lands on I HAVE, the audience immediately rumbling at the partial confirmation and seemingly Ellen is also amazed by Harry’s honesty.

“Alright, interesting. Love that for you, Harry,” he comments making everyone laugh as you reach over and give Harry’s hand a squeeze. “Last one,” Ellen announces, reading the last statement from her cards. “Never have I ever fallen in love with someone I played never have I ever with.”

Ellen quickly shows her I HAVE NEVER side as you suck your lips into your mouth, glancing at Harry again. You share a look before you both slowly raise your boards, both reading the same sign on them: I HAVE.

[lord-explosion-baku]

Lying Is A Formal Pleasure

Yandere!Hawks x Pro Hero!Reader

Forced into a “relationship” to better your image, you agonize through the night as you pretend to be head over you heels in love with a douchebag. 

warnings: non consensual touching, light violence

A/N: I posted this a few months ago, but after a bad mental health night, I deleted it like a day later. But now I’m screaming over my oneshot inactivity and the 80 WIPs that remain unfinished, so I figured I’d post something that’s done fhjfv. :’D

Blinking flashbulbs and whispering onlookers flood your audio and visual spaces, forcing you to pause while you take a moment to gather yourself, swaying uneasily in the too-high heels you’ve been forced into. You’re close to being overwhelmed when Hawks places a smooth hand on the small of your exposed back, ushering you closer to his side. He waves to a camera flickering with a red dot, the one that tells the two of you that you’re live on air. The warm impression of his fingers on your skin offers you an insincere sense of security. You’re not as used to being on screen as your ‘lover,’ so you let him take the lead. It’s easier this way, as resentful as you are to admit it.

A thin woman in a red dress holds a microphone up between the two of you and asks if the happy couple has high hopes in regards to their award nominations. Hawks, always quick to flash a charming grin, leans into the mic and says, “we’re both just very honored to be here.”

It’s not like him to be so humble, especially not when he has an audience, but your publicist recently advised you that although his pride is fitting for his singular image, nobody quite likes a power couple who, in her words, “thinks they’re the shit.” People want to see bashful, blossoming love. They want to see you be together, grow together, and develop together. You have to be shy—show that you’re excited to be by his side, and he has to be supportive—happy to introduce you to the sensational side of being a hero. It’s all a facade, even your relationship, but if you stay true to your new role, your popularity will see a serious incline.

Hawks runs his hand up your spine and you get a chill when you realize that the reporter asked you a question: how long have the two of you been together?

“Oh-” you start, shifting to look up at your partner. Amber eyes bare down on you and you swallow dryly, trusting that you look enchanted, rather than sick to your stomach. If you were to be honest with her, you’d say, ‘too long,’ but it’s not your job to be honest tonight. You have to be delightful and charming, cute and coy. So instead, you timidly blink up at Hawks, cover your shy grin with your elegantly gloved hand while leaning into him, and say, “nearly two months.”

The number two hero chuckles, moving his hand over to your side to squeeze it a little harder than necessary. He’s telling you one thing: wrong answer.

“Well, she says two months, while I say three.” Hawks is all confidence and little to no self-doubt. In a way, he’s everything you want to be, and every time you think about it in that light, the more you seem to detest him. You hate that you virtually need him in this respect to get you where you want to be in your career. You hate that he’s living this farce up. “It took my little angel a while to finally agree to go on a date with me. Even then, I knew that we were meant to be together.” His eyes slide back to you, and his tone takes a dark edge that nobody besides you will be able to pick up on. “From the very first moment I laid my eyes on her.”

It’s not entirely a lie. Hawks had barrated you to go out with him for about a month before your publicist told you it would be good for your public image to have a pro—the number two pro—by your side. Apparently, you and him work well because of your quirk: siren. Her reasoning is that you sing just like birds sing. Hawks is a bird. Therefore, you and him should go hand-in-hand. The public aptly named your relationship birdsong and you’ve already done a photoshoot where you had to pose behind a golden birdcage where Hawks sat inside, gripping onto the cage’s bars, staring up at you while you had your lips pursed subtly, pantamiming a song. The irony of your situation is that there is a metaphorical prison in your fake relationship, but it’s not Hawks who sits in the cage. The second irony of your situation is that hawks don’t sing at all; they prey.

“Awwww,” the reporter whines in a shrill, albeit melodramatic voice, looking adoringly from you to Hawks, “I couldn’t imagine how anybody could ever say no to you! That must’ve put a damper on your ego! Poor thing.”

Hawks shrugs like he does—another thing you despise. You can smell the smugness wafting off his chest that seems to puff up as he speaks. “I knew she was just playing hard to get.” He winks at you, sliding his hand down to sit not so obediently at your hip. You feel him drifting towards your ass cheek, and you struggle to not change your fraudulent smile into a full on sneer. “And she knew I liked the challenge.”

The reporter’s eyes aren’t even on you when she asks, “really, how could you say no to this dreamboat? I certainly wouldn’t be able to!”

If you want him, you can take him, you think tartly as you maneuver your arm around Hawks. He makes a sort of low, sort of grunting noise when you lace your fingers through his heavy feathers, and you realize that this might be the first time you’ve actually touched his wings. You’re bitter to admit that the feel of them in your hands are soft to the touch—enjoyable, almost. They might be the most redeeming thing about him.

You tighten your hand into a fist and tug, softly at first, but when you feel him tense next to you, you pull a little tighter, enjoying the brief sadism break you allow yourself.

“I must have been too darn shy at first!” Your words are syrup dribbling over glass. You wrench your hand, twisting into Hawks’ wings. He clears his throat in an attempt to cover up a groan, his hold on your side worsening infinitesimally. “Or maybe I just couldn’t believe that the number two hero was actually interested in me. Honestly? I was starstruck! I thought I was being used for some kind of joke!”

“Hah…” Hawks’ thumb rubs circles in your back when you guide your hand along the stream of his wings and grab at a different bunch of feathers. He whispers, “take it easy, chickadee…’

But you don’t want to take it easy. Hawks’ cheeks redden a bit more every time you move your fingers through his wings. He must be incredibly uncomfortable and you take pride in the fact that, for once, it’s not you who’s suffering. You lean into his shoulder, offer the reporter woman a smile so sickly sweet, you can practically feel sugar coating your gums when you say, “now every day I get to spend with him is a dream come true!!”

One of Hawks’ eyes twitches when you give the tuft of feathers in your hold a final twist. He spreads his palms wide on your back, and slowly curls his fingers inward, pulling on your skin.

After a few more questions, the reporter notices Hawks glancing down to the large hall being used as the ceremony venue, and thanks the both of you for indulging the public with information about your relationship. Sending a final wink to the camera, Hawks guides you through arched doors and nods at a few other well-known heroes attending the ceremony. You sneak away when you think Hawks is about to get lost in another conversation, but when you slip into an empty lounge reserved for award nominees, he’s right on your heels.

Ignoring his presence completely, you fix yourself a drink at an unattended minibar. You swirl the ice around in your glass and finally turn to scowl at your partner. He looks off, or not very present, still smirking, but dazed. Maybe he tied his tie too tightly, and he’s blocking the blood flow to his brain. You grin at the thought of choking him out while you sip on your beverage. Hawks grins back.

Engulfing and consuming the space around you, he takes a confident step towards you. You feel nothing short of a shadow to a tree with his wings puffed out and spread proudly like they are.

“Nervous?” He asks, placing a hand on the bar as he leans closer to you. You give him a half-hearted shrug, trying to be nonchalant. Even if Hawks knows you're uncomfortable, you aren’t willing to show him an inch of fear.

“You shouldn’t be,” he goes on, staring at your lips. He watches you suck down your drink and clears his throat. “You were great out there.”

“Believable?” You ask sarcastically, licking your bottom lip. You reach out to stroke the inside of his wings, running your hands along his feathers teasingly slow, enjoying the sight of each row of his crimson plume twitch down along with your touch.

“Believable,” he chuckles. “I had no idea that I was your dream come true.”

You scoff and place your empty glass down. “Mhm, my everlasting, waking nightmare.” You bring your arm back to your hip. “I’m truthful when I can be.”

The corner of his mouth quirks up into a goofy half-grin. It’s off-putting. He isn’t any less sharp than usual, but there’s something about him right now that has goosebumps raising on your arms.

“C’mere,” he coaxes, grabbing your wrist. You snap it back immediately.

“Oh, please.” You push past him, intentionally brushing into his wings, and begin strutting away.

“You’re such a goddamn tease,” he rasps, hooking you sideways. Both of his hands curl around your hips, and you’re immediately pulled back against him. “Have I ever told you how sexy your back is?”

“Get off of me,” you say without enthusiasm, because it’s not the first time he’s gotten handsy with you in closed spaces. Call yourself jaded, but it’s something that you’re semi-used to. So, when he doesn’t let up, all you can do is roll your eyes and fetch your compact mirror out of your clutch. While you fix your lips, Hawks lays his chin on your shoulder. His eyes find yours, and though they’re looking straight at you, they are, at once, incredibly ambiguous and eerily hyperfocused. He squeezes his arms around your torso, then brushes his lips across your cheek. Against your stubborn will, your stomach flips when he plants kisses on your jaw and trails down to your neck. The scruff of his beard tickles your skin, making your shift around in his embrace. That's when you feel a stiffening behind you.

“Hawks, what the hell are you doing?”

“Shame on you-“ his breath is hot on your ear- “touching me like that on camera, baby? Who knew my angel could be so naughty…”

You jerk your elbow back into his gut.

“I never touched you,” you seethe, ready to actually throw hands, when he rushes you forward, pushing you against the bar so that you’re lodged between it and him. Hot blood floods your face when you feel him pulse against your ass, and it doesn’t help when he snakes a hand through the back opening of your dress, sliding around to cup your stomach. He pulls you back so his bulge rubs between your cheeks.

“You’re seriously crossing the line right now!” You push against the bar, trying to bump him back, but he crowds you with his wings, shrouding you just like the metaphorical birdcage you’ve been stuck in for two—three months. You grasp a fistful of his feathers and yank on them hard, but he only snickers in response.

“Oh, little dove,” he groans, rocking his pelvis against your ass. It’s like he doesn’t even hear your protests. “Fuck. How’d you know I like it rough?” He kisses the hollow of your throat and hums appreciatively when you reluctantly shudder in response. “You have no idea how badly I wanna slip my cock into you right now. Finally wipe that sour look off your face as I drive myself in, inch by inch.” His fingers move down to pet your pubic bone. You want to scream in defiance when you feel a flash of liquid heat pool between your thighs. He dips in between your folds and he croons. “Bet you’d hug me nice and tight too. You don’t spread your legs for just anybody, do you babygirl?”

“Certainly not for you,” you rebuke. You grasp your abandoned glass, smash it against the bar, and spin yourself around, swiping your makeshift weapon across the number two hero’s face.

There’s a moment of shocked silence that falls between you two. A streak of red falls from the cut on Hawks’ cheeks and falls in spots on the whites in between his tuxedo coat. He dabs at the wound and examines the blood on his fingers, then his chest.

He snickers.

“Oh man, I wonder what they’ll think about this.” He shakes his head, grinning. “What do I tell ‘em: we were getting a little too frisky in the lounge, or do I lie and say it was an accident?”

“You can tell whoever, whatever you want,” you mumble. You know you should apologize for the sanctity of your status, but seeing his blood is cathartic to you, in a way. At least, until he speaks again.

With a clever fox smile, smug as the king of hell, Hawks drawls out, “the rising hero, Siren, is unstable and shouldn’t be trusted by the public.”

Your eyebrows pinch together. Hawks’ grin crawls wider, contented by your reaction to his threat.

“I was telling her not to get her hopes up about the awards ceremony. ‘There are a lot of other promising heroes gunning for The Best New Hero award,’ is what I told her, and she lost it…”

“Hawks—“

“She came at me with a glass she broke on the bar. Honestly, I’ve been worried about her drinking habits since day one, but I didn’t do enough to help her with the issue. In a way, it’s my fault this happened.”

“It is your fault!” You stomp your heel and throw an accusatory finger into his chest. “You attacked me!”

“Who do you think they’ll believe, sweetheart?” Hawks takes your hand in his, brings the back of your wrist up to his mouth, and kisses it. “The new hero with a pretty face, pretty voice, but is otherwise unknown, or me? Hero numero dos: Japan’s most trusted.”

You glare at him and he loves it. He enjoys every minute he puts you through mental turmoil.

“I could tell them it was an accident,” he sings, looping an arm around your waist to briskly pull flush up against him. You let him, but keep your head turned so you don’t meet his gaze. He continues—“but you’d have to make it up to me, little dove.”

His wings fall over you, shrouding you closer to him. He presses his lips to your temple, but doesn’t kiss you—doesn’t even speak again. He’s waiting for you to ask how.

“I’m not going to sleep with you,” you say into his shoulder.

“You don’t have to,” he hums, the vibration of his voice buzzing down your neck, “we can just end your career tonight.”

“Hawks.”

“Don’t act like you’re not soaking wet right now. I felt that cunt, babe. Turns out, I’m not the only one who likes it rough.” He turns your head to face him. “You want me-“ he sneers-“and I didn’t even have to stroke your feathers to get you there.”

You close your eyes when his lips greet yours. The kiss is quick, but it lingers like old faith. If you let him in, he’ll stay there. You know that. But he’s backed you into a corner.

“You’re my girl,” he coos, “and I wanna be civil—I do, baby. You know I only want what’s best for us. But you’re gonna have to meet me halfway in order to get us where we need to be. Do you understand?”

Us...we…He throws those words around as if they matter. Then again, they do matter. They must, to him at least, but not to you. The only thing you really care about is me. Still, you nod.

“I’m gonna need you to say it, Siren.”

You sigh. “Yes, Hawks. I understand.”

“Good!” He chirps enthusiastically, any dark tone he previously took vanished. He spins you around to face the door that leads back to the hall. At first, you think he’s going to continue where he left off, but his hand finds its place at the small of your back, and he guides you forward.

“Now, let's go win us some awards,” Hawks says, bringing his hand down to pat your ass, “then we can make sure both of our dreams come true.”

[akfanficlove]

Seblaine Week 2021 Day 2: Part of your world (10 years later)

Sort of in the same univserse as Double Feature and I only shine when I look at you from Seblaine Week 2020. Blaine being nominated for his first Academy Award for his role as Eric in the life action movie "The Little Mermaid" - and Sebastian is late to the party. Literally.

“It’s gonna be fine, Blaine”, Alyssa, his stylist, says as she reaches over to squeeze his fumbling hands. “I’m sure he’s gonna be there.” She smiles encouragingly and he tries to smile when deep inside, he’s not too convinced of her words. He turns his head and looks out of the car window, sending a silent prayer into the universe to please let Sebastian be on time. Tonight is an important night for him, his first Oscar nomination for his role of Prince Eric in the life action remake of “The Little Mermaid” and he really, really wants his boyfriend to walk the red carpet with him.

What actually bothers him about all that is not that he is a bundle of nerves and Sebastian’s really good at calming him down, no – actually,  yes, that too, but he could bear that. What’s bothering him way more is that he is a planner – and that. Was not. The plan!

The plan was to spend the day getting ready (together!), drive to the location in time (together!), enjoy the glitz and glamour of an Academy Award ceremony (together!) and then hope for the best even though Blaine doesn’t really believe he will win. That was the plan.

Not an 911-call from Hunter while they were having breakfast because something came up in their advertisement agency that – apparently – needed Sebastian’s immediate attention. Not a call from Sebastian two hours later, asking Alyssa to send him his suit to the office because – apparently – the problem was bigger than they thought and he wanted to have his outfit “just in case I’m running a little late”. Not a text message half an hour before they needed to leave simply stating “Won’t make it home, meet you at the theater”.

By then, Blaine was literally bouncing off the walls, trying to get a hold of Sebastian to find out where and when and how exactly he planned on meeting him. He still doesn’t know, just hopes for the best because they needed to leave and – apparently – Sebastian’s phone battery was low.

"Blaine, we need to get moving." Alyssa handed him his jacket. "You okay?"

"I'm good." I hope I am, he thought. Then they went out of the door.

Blaine sighs deeply and resists the urge to run his fingers through his hair. The hairdresser had done an awesome job shaping his curls into a form that could be called messy elegance and he doesn’t want to turn it into a more or less elegant mess instead. Blaine looks through the front shield from his seat in the back. It’s stop-and-go as they arrive in line for the red carpet in front of the theater. Alyssa squeezes his hand again as they slowly creep closer and closer until he can see the red carpet, a bunch of fans and some journalists talking to other actors and actresses. He closes his eyes and mentally prepares himself to stop worrying and get ready to smile. The car door opens and he’s hit with loud noise, shouting and cheering, opens his eyes again and steps out of the car. Showtime…

(pictures: Vogue Hommes)

He's just about to put on a forced smile besides his worries when a smug voice murmurs into his ear: “Hey, Killer. Told you I’ll make it in time.”

Blaine whirls around and breathes a sigh of relief. Sebastian stands next to the car and holds the door, impeccably dressed in a suit, a bowtie and a smirk. Tension leaves his body as he takes a step closer and wraps his arms around Sebastian’s middle.

“I’m so glad you’re here…”, he mumbles into his boyfriend’s chest. Sebastian presses a kiss to his forehead. “Everything okay with Hunter?”

Sebastian wrinkles his nose in annoyance. “Yeah, it’s gonna be fine.” His face relaxes and he smiles down at Blaine. “Let’s not talk about that, tonight is about you. Do you know where you’ll put that golden man yet?”

Blaine lets go of Sebastian and rolls his eyes. “I haven’t even won yet and I really doubt I will. It’s just an honor to be nominated.”

Sebastian laughs and grabs his hand as they are urged along to stand and pose for the photographers. He leans down and whispers in his ear: “Sure, tell that the reporters, I know you better.”

Blaine smiles cheekily and looks up at him. “I mean… he would look nice in our living room, don’t you think?” Sebastian huffs a laugh and shakes his head before he bends down and kisses Blaine on the lips. He hears the clicking of the photographers’ camera triggers and can practically feel the popping of lightbulbs. When they part, though, Blaine feels calmer that he has all day. Yeah, Sebastian has that kind of effect on him…

“They would have to be nuts not to give it to you. I’ve never been hotter for Prince Eric than I was while watching that movie”, he smirks and Blaine blushes a little before he playfully slaps his arm.

“It’s supposed to be a movie for children, Sebastian, so your arousal is actually not speaking for me and my acting.”

Sebastian just huffs a quick “Nonsense” before they move further along.

Posing for pictures on red carpet events is actually something Sebastian hates, Blaine knows that. He hates to be under hundreds of camera lenses, scrutinizing each and every facial expression he makes, detests how some people make assumptions about their relationship by the way he does or does not hold Blaine’s hand. It’s different with the few model-gigs he had, the focus of the camera on the clothes he wears (or not wears for that one Gucci ad Blaine still is not over yet) rather than on his private life. He has way less problems with giving interviews, though, likes to be asked questions directly and to verbalize his opinion but posing for pictures he’s not getting paid for? Not his thing.

Yet, he knows it’s part of Blaine’s life as an actor and musician and he also knows that Blaine would do it alone and just meet him inside later if he told him he doesn’t feel like it. But secretly, Blaine likes having him there, feels less alone and exposed with him by his side, especially for award shows where he is nominated. So, instead of complaining, Sebastian goes with him and gets a kick out of trying to cop a feel on Blaine’s ass without anyone noticing. Sometimes he steps away and lets the photographers picture Blaine by himself. It also gives him the opportunity to appreciate the way Blaine's suit clings to him in just the right places. He can't really blame the journalists for wanting a ton of pictures, Blaine is a sight to be seen.

(picture: Just Jared/ Vogue Hommes)

Inside, they bump into a hundred and one people Blaine knows, has worked with or really wants to work with. It’s weird how Blaine still feels like the nerd who got invited to the cool kids’ parties even after years of doing it. It takes a good 40 minutes until they arrive at their seats where they meet the rest of Blaine’s crew.

“Blaine!”, a shrill voice yells from behind them and Blaine sees how Sebastian flinches. He turns around and Rachel throws herself into his arms. “I’m so excited for you, an Oscar, my God! Can you believe it? I can’t believe it!”

She lets go of him and he smiles at her. “Yeah, I’m pretty nervous.” She nods and only then does she take notice of Sebastian.

“Hello, Sebastian.”

“Rachel.”

It’s not exactly unfriendly but it’s neither warm nor kind. Sometimes Blaine wishes they would get along better, High School has been such a long time ago, but he knows, they are trying. And its way better than the temper tantrum Rachel threw a few years ago when he first told her that he started dating Sebastian Smythe. Baby steps…

Sebastian, though, doesn’t help the matter sometimes. Like today. “I’m kind of surprised to see you here since your Ariel wasn’t even nominated. I thought you would be sulking in your apartment.”

“Seb….”, Blaine frowns. And to Rachel: “He doesn’t mean that, he’s just messing with you.”

Rachel’s smile is tight when she says: “Sure he is. However, Sebastian, I was Blaine’s Ariel and I am here support him. He’s my friend. Nominated or not, I’m very proud of the movie and I would be thrilled if Blaine would be honored for his outstanding performance.” Blaine recognizes that as the answer she probably gave the journalists outside who – maybe not so rudely – asked the same question. However, Blaine smiles and squeezes her hand. “Thank you, Rach, I appreciate it. I'm sure I couldn't have done it without my Maria by my side."

"Thank you", Rachel says, "it really was an honor to bring that iconic role to life."

Sebastian fake-coughs but before he could say something, a loud bell announces that the show is about to start in a few minutes and with a last “Good luck, Blaine” and a condemning look at Sebastian Rachel leaves to sit next to her husband, Jesse St. James, a few rows behind them.

Blaine sits down and pulls Sebastian with him. His boyfriend looks way too smug. “Hope you’re proud of yourself”, he mutters in Sebastian’s ear. Sebastian’s grin only widens. “She is really upset that she wasn’t nominated but I was. You didn’t have to go and rub salt into her wound.”

Sebastian rolls his eyes. “Rachel Berry needs to get her head out of her ass and realize that humility is a virtue.” Blaine snorts and grins at him. “Says probably the least humble person in this room full of self-centered actors and actresses.” Sebastian grins back and leans down to kiss Blaine. “Probably. That’s why I keep you around. You’re humble and grateful enough for the both of us, so I don’t have to be.” Blaine pouts playfully. “And I thought you’re still with me because of my ass.” Sebastian laughs whole-heartedly and throws his arm around Blaine’s shoulder to tuck him closer. “True. It’s three reasons actually: Your ass, the humble-thing and”, now he whispers, “that thing you do with your tongue when you – “

“Sebastian!”, Blaine gasps and blushes ferociously. Sebastian just chuckles as the lights go out and the intro-music starts.

“And this year’s nominees for ‘Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role’ are…”

Blaine is squirming in his seat and he reaches for Sebastian’s hand. His palms are sweaty, his breathing ragged and he bites his tongue. There’s a camera in his face as they say his name and the picture is transmitted to the huge screen in the front. He doesn’t know what to feel. He’s torn between the realistic approach that he probably won’t win against phenomenal actors like Leonardi DiCaprio and Tom Hanks who are also nominated in his category. Still, there’s a glimmer of hope he can’t extinguish that maybe – maybe – he stands a chance.

“And the Oscar goes to…”

Sebastian squeezes his hand, Blaine breathes out.

“Blaine Anderson for his role as Prince Eric in ‘The Little Mermaid’!”

His face falls as everyone around him erupts in cheer. What? This can’t be happening. He feels Sebastian pull him up by his hand before he grabs him by his neck and kisses him hard. Blaine is even too stunned to properly kiss back, just suddenly gets pushed away by Sebastian in the direction of the stage. The sounds around him only reach him through a thick cloud of numbness and he stumbles up the stairs leading to the stage where Anne Hathaway grins at him, presenting the golden statue.

“Congratulations”, she whispers in his ear when she hugs him and thrusts the award in his hands.

“Thank you”, he barely manages to answer, still in a haze and not entirely sure if he’s just having a stroke or a fever dream. He takes two steps to the microphone. Then, he looks around the room, so full of people he admires as the look back at him expectantly.

“Oh, right, the speech”, he laughs, “sorry, umm, I’m still… wow, I… I never imagined that. I mean, I… I was up against so many other talented actors… sorry, I’m usually much more eloquent, this is my first Oscar, so bear with me while I’m freaking out inside, please.”

The audience chuckles. It’s true, he didn’t really believe he’d win but he still prepared a speech – just in case, like the planner he is – but the words are wiped out of his brain. He starts to panic, how on earth can he make such a fool of himself in front of not only the people he looks up to in this industry but the entire world in front of their TV and laptop screens. Then he finds Sebastian’s eyes, looking so proud and so affectionate. He smiles at him and suddenly, he knows exactly what to say.

“If you told me a few years ago when I was still in High School that I would be standing here today, I probably would’ve blushed and shook my head. I know that because there is one person in this audience today who did exactly that and this was my reaction. I owe this award to Jordan and Lionel, to Maxine, Leona and Katy who made this movie as wonderful as it is and gave me this amazing role. I owe it to my beautiful co-stars and friends, to Rachel – my Ariel and my Maria, always –, to Rod as King Triton and all the amazing cast who helped me push myself.”

He takes a deep breath and looks at row 13, seat 4.

��But more than anything I owe it to my boyfriend, Sebastian, who would always say ‘You’re a star’ when I told him about my dreams of acting and Broadway during our late night calls back in High School when I wasn’t ready to hear it. The day you waltzed into my life and turned everything upside down, I wasn’t ready for you. You weren’t ready for me. But I know now that it was the day everything changed. And I don’t regret anything.”

He blinks away tears that are forming in his eyes.

“I love you. You drive me nuts and you calm me down like no one else. Right from the start it was as if there was no one else in the world for you when we talked. I once called you a stupid brat in an interview – what you still are sometimes – and you’re shattering my nerves on a daily basis… but I miss you like crazy when you’re not around.”

He looks at the trophy in his hand and smiles. “And I hate that you were apparently right – and I kind of don’t hate it because it means I got an Oscar, baby! Thank you very much!”, he laughs and the audience laughs with him, clapping along as he makes his way down the stage.

Blaine runs to his seat and throws himself in Sebastian’s arms. Over all the noise around him, he hears him whisper “I always knew it” in his ear. And after he put Blaine down again a soft “I love you, too” follows and the tears Blaine tried to hold back slowly slip out.

Life has never felt so perfect.

END.

Thank you @seblaineaffairs for organizing #seblaineweek and giving us all the time to celebrate those characters we adore. <3

[adamwatchesmovies]

Adam Watches the 92nd Academy Awards

The 92nd Academy Awards have come and gone. As always, there’s plenty to be happy about and plenty that’ll make you wonder what the heck the voters were thinking. I watched the ceremony and while I may say that I don’t care… I do. Those awards are a big deal. Legions of people who would’ve otherwise dismissed Parasite as some movie that requires them to read subtitles saw it because it was nominated. One of those golden statues can make a career and let’s face it, you like to hear your love for something validated by people who have even the semblance of authority on the subject.

But here’s what you may not know: most of the voters really don’t know what they’re doing. While cinematographers NOMINATE what films are up for that Best Cinematography Award, EVERYONE in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gets to vote for the winner and there’s no guarantee they’ve actually seen every nominee, know what the technical terms mean or are voting because what they saw is what they actually believe was “the best”. Once you take into account the dollars required to produce a nomination campaign, the stigma many genre films face, the prejudices against certain types of roles and/or actors, and how popularity influences votes, a win hardly means more than a bunch of people you don’t know saying they liked a movie.

If you want a better idea of which of 2019’s films were “the best”, you’re better off asking someone you know and trust, someone who can prove they’ve done their homework and aren’t just voting for their friends, the one they’ve heard is good from their kid, or got a special gift basket from. I may not be a paid professional, but I have put in the time and effort to see EVERYTHING nominated (with a few exceptions I’ll detail below). Reviews for some of these (The Irishman, Judy) are coming to the blog in a couple of days. If it were up to me the list of nominees would be different but we’ll get to that later. Without further ado, here’s who SHOULD’VE won. 

Best Visual Effects

1917 – Guillaume Rocheron, Greg Butler, and Dominic Tuohy The best special effects are the kind you don’t even notice. I couldn’t tell you where the explosions, sets, and actors in 1917 begin, and where the computer-generated imagery takes over. It’s seamless.

Best Film Editing

Parasite – Yang Jin-mo Got to hand it to Parasite for its amazing use of montage and the way it stitched its footage together. Some shots I initially thought initially were one take I realized under carefully scrutiny - and by that I mean frame-by-frame examination - were actually two melded together. The scenes showing how the Kim family infiltrate the Park’s household should be shown in film class to demonstrate how the art of montage is at its best should be done to maximum effect.

Best Costume Design

Little Women – Jacqueline Durran Funny how every single film nominated at the 92nd Academy Awards was a period piece. My vote goes to Little Women not because it was necessarily the most accurate (I couldn’t tell you what people wore in 1868) but because of the way the costumes were used. You can tell a lot about the characters from the multiple outfits they wear throughout the film - check out that purple bonnet adorned by Aunt Marsh (Meryl Streep).

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

Bombshell – Kazu Hiro, Anne Morgan, and Vivian Baker I called it when I reviewed the film. The makeup used to transform John Lithgow was nothing short of incredible. It was an easy pick.

Best Cinematography

1917 – Roger Deakins I’m glad to see The Lighthouse on this list but I have to hand it to 1917. The one-shot motif adds so much to the story. Then, there are the individual shots I remember so vividly. The quiet meadow just outside of No Man’s Land, the raging inferno Schofield sees when he wakes up, the trench he must run in front of to reach the Colonel are all shots that permanently imprint themselves into your memory.

Best Production Design

1917 – Production Design: Dennis Gassner; Set Decoration: Lee Sandales Tempted to hand it to Parasite for the house they constructed for the movie but I’m give it to 1917. The trenches, the blasted landscape of No Man’s Land still haunt me. When you see the craters, it’s jarring. Then, as your eyes become adjusted, you notice the rats. Then, the chunks of bone and charred meat that have now become part of the landscape. It’s horrific.

Best Sound Mixing

Ford v Ferrari – Paul Massey, David Giammarco, and Steven A. Morrow What you remember most from Ford v Ferrari is that big race at the end. The climax wouldn’t have been the same without the sounds we heard. The roar of the engines, the clacking and grinding as the pedals are pushed and gears are switched… the air rushing by. Out of the nominees, it’s the one whose sounds I most remember.

Best Sound Editing

Ford v Ferrari – Donald Sylvester This year, the Best Sound Editing award goes hand-in-hand with the sound mixing. Obviously, the actors were never moving at the kind of speeds depicted in Ford v Ferrari but you wouldn’t be able to tell because of the foley and sound design.

Best Original Song

Stand Up from Harriet – Music and Lyrics by Joshuah Brian Campbell and Cynthia Erivo Stand Up plays during the end credits of Harriet and it perfectly caps the film. Whenever I hear its lyrics, I’m transported back to that moment. It’s the most memorable and emotional song on this list.

Best Original Score

Joker – Hildur Guðnadóttir I chose the best song for its ability to stand out. In this category, Joker wins because its music doesn’t stand out… at least not at first. While you’re watching, those notes don’t draw attention to themselves. They subconsciously build the mood, augmenting the performance by Joaquin Phoenix, the visuals, and the story. You don’t notice how much of an effect it has on you until you see isolated clips. When you do, it’s shocking.

Best Animated Short Film

Abstaining (I’ve only seen Hair Love)

Best Live Action Short Film

Abstaining

Best Documentary Short Subject

Abstaining

Best Documentary Feature

Abstaining

Best International Feature Film

Abstaining, as I’ve only seen 2 films (Pain and Glory and Parasite)

Best Animated Feature Film

I Lost My Body – Jérémy Clapin and Marc du Pontavice I Lost My Body is the most audacious and inspired of the animated films nominated. The only movie among these to be aimed at adults, it often tells its story through visuals alone but when you get to the end, you realize it’s about more than just what was on-screen.

Best Adapted Screenplay

Little Women – Greta Gerwig based on the novel by Louisa May Alcott Greta Gerwig does more than merely adapt the classic novel, she breathes new life into it, makes it her own, makes it feel wholly new and modern. This version of the film surpasses all others we’ve seen before because of the changes she’s made to the story’s structure. 

Best Original Screenplay

Knives Out – Rian Johnson What a ride Knives Out was. It’s got so many twists and turns, so many delightful characters you want to re-watch it the second it’s over so that you are no longer distracted by its central mystery and can simply step back and admire the handiwork by Rian Johnson. A sequel’s been announced and I can’t wait to see it.

Best Supporting Actress

Laura Dern – Marriage Story as Nora Fanshaw Laura Dern was also in Little Women and her two roles couldn’t be more different. Here, she’s loathsome and captivating. As soon as I saw Nora take off her shoes before she kneeled down on the couch to console Nicole, I knew there was a whole lot more to her character than what we were told. The more you see her, the more you want.

Best Supporting Actor

Al Pacino – The Irishman as Jimmy Hoffa Al Pacino has the advantage of getting A LOT of screen time as Jimmy Hoffa. The Irishman clocks in at over 3,5 hours and he isn’t in the whole movie but when he is, the seasoned performer gives us so much. At different periods of the story, you’ll feel differently about him. There’s no point comparing him to the real-life person. He takes the meaty role and makes it his own. His voice, his mannerisms, I can’t think of anyone who could’ve done it better.

Best Actress

Renée Zellweger – Judy as Judy Garland Judy was the very last movie on my list to watch, having missed it when it came to theatres. When I think back to Zellweger’s performance, I don’t see her. All I see is her character, a rich, complex person you sometimes hate, sometimes love and feel sorry for. The movie is not going to be on my “Best of” list but she is.

Best Actor

Joaquin Phoenix – Joker as Arthur Fleck / Joker To me, there was no question Joaquin Phoenix would take this one. I saw Joker three times and each time, I found something new in his performance.

Best Director

Sam Mendes – 1917 With this award, I’m awarding Sam Mendes for the craft he displayed in 1917. It’s such a visceral experience that when people asked me how it compared to Dunkirk, it felt weird to lump both together. This is coming from someone who gave both pictures a 5-star review, who put both on their respective “best of the year” lists. It’s a movie I’m going to go back to and wondering “how did they do that?!

Best Picture

Little Women – Amy Pascal It’s a tough call for me this year, partially because I loved Parasite, 1917, Joker, and others so much. I’m planning on adding those three films to my collection so I can pop them into my Blu-ray player any times I feel like it. That said, I would’ve given the Best Picture Award to Little Women. You’re so emotionally invested in this little story that telling you why with merely words is impossible. You fall in love over and over. It made me cry and every time I think back to that scene at Christmas, I tear up again. I’m choosing it because of all the things it does differently from the other films. At the end of the day, it isn’t a big story. It isn’t about people with guns, corruption, war, a turning point in history or even necessarily the biggest event in the lives of the characters but it feels like it is. That’s exactly why it’s so good. 

Disagree with my choices? I don’t blame you. What kind of idiot finds a way to leave out Marriage Story from their list? You let me know where it should’ve gone. Hopefully, commenting keep you warm until MY Best of 2019 list gets posted in the next few days.

[keepingupwithlinmanuel]

Lin-Manuel Miranda interview: from Hamilton to His Dark Materials

I know Hamilton remains wildly popular more than four years after it premiered on Broadway because of the intense response to my Instagram post boasting I have tickets to watch it the evening before meeting its creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda. "It's one of my absolute favourite things in the world ever!" raves one correspondent. "It's WONDERFUL and I defy you not to download the soundtrack afterwards," adds another. "I went last night! Second time. You're gonna love it."

The problem, however, is that I'm not sure I will love it. When theatre is great, it's the best thing on the planet, but when it is bad, as I have learnt from the bitter experience of watching three-hour open-air adaptations of Dickens' novels, it is the worst. Musicals are especially challenging: in my experience, you either like them or you don't, and given one of the few I have enjoyed was Avenue Q, which subverted the form, I'm in the latter camp.

Then, on top of this, there is the pressure of hype (and Hamilton has been more hyped than anything this side of the moon landings), and the challenge of taking hip-hop, which I love, out of an urban setting. It can easily go a bit Wham Rap!, or even worse, if you've seen the video, Michael Gove performing Wham Rap!.

It is, however, pretty good. The last thing the world needs is another long review of Hamilton, and I can't say I downloaded the soundtrack afterwards or that I didn't look at my watch occasionally, but using rap to retell the dry story of the founding fathers is inspired, and I'm so relieved that I blurt out my review to the 39-year-old writer and performer when I meet him in a restaurant in Fitzrovia. "I do find that with both Hamilton and In the Heights, my first show," responds the award-winning composer, lyricist and actor, "I get a lot of people who say to me, 'I don't really like musicals, but I loved this.' I attribute that to a very simple thing: my wife, who doesn't really like musicals. She didn't grow up going to see them, or doing theatre. She's a lawyer; when we met, she was a scientist. I have a higher bar to clear than most composers, because my first audience is my wife, and it can't just be a pretty tune."

You might recognise his wife, Vanessa Nadal, whom he met at high school, from the video of the couple's wedding reception in 2010, which like everything Miranda touches, went viral, and shows him performing the Fiddler on the Roof song To Life to his beloved.

Even my withered heart may have been momentarily lifted by it. She has accompanied her husband with their two young sons, aged one and four, to Britain, where he is filming a part in the BBC's slick new adaptation of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, though the reason he is in London today is that he has just been the subject of an episode of Desert Island Discs. The New Yorker takes a takes a swig of his coffee, which he tells me he chose as his luxury on his island ("I'm so basic"), adjusts his yellow baseball cap and asks me a question about the unsolicited review: "Why did you feel the need to say it?" There follows the most painful recording I've ever had to listen back to, as I make a bunch of ludicrous generalisations about musicals, speculating that perhaps they divide men from women, or the working classes from the middle classes, or straight people from gay people, or white people from brown people. It only strikes me a few minutes in that not only is Miranda living proof that the generalisations are nonsense, but I am essentially explaining musicals to a world expert in the form - a man who, before the age of 40, has a Pulitzer prize, three Tony awards, three Grammys, an Emmy, a MacArthur Fellowship, a Kennedy Center Honor, two Olivier awards, one Academy award nomination and two Golden Globe nominations to his name.

"Where do you want to start?" he responds with what is, in retrospect, startling patience. "You brought in all this cultural baggage and you're laying it at my feet and I don't know which bag to open." Another swig of coffee. "I think with musicals, it has to do with the way in which you interact with music in your own life. I grew up in a culture where dancing and singing at weddings was supercommon. So, if that's corny to you growing up, or you're taught to believe that's corny or unbelievable, then of course you're not going to like musicals."

...

He spent much of those years doing a bunch of badly paid, disparate jobs, which, given his nature, he nevertheless enjoyed. They included working as an English teacher at his former high school. ("I loved my curriculum. The class was exhilarating once I realised the less I talked, the more they learnt. I saw a future in which I taught at my old high school for 30 years and was very happy.") He wrote for a local paper as a columnist and restaurant reviewer. ("What kind of restaurant reviewer was I? Not very discriminating. If a new restaurant opened, I would go and eat some stuff and say, 'Hey, we have a Thai restaurant. I get to eat first at it. This is great!' ") And he made guest appearances on a number of TV shows including The Sopranos and House. What kind of roles was he being offered at the time? "I wasn't getting any roles! I was always the Latino friend of the white guy in the lead. And so centring ourselves in the drama, telling our own stories, is a big part of In the Heights, my first musical."

An unexpected thing about meeting Miranda is how instinctively he turns to the topic of his first musical, In the Heights, rather than Hamilton - not least when he talks about how he spent one month each year as a child with his grandparents in Vega Alta, Puerto Rico, and was inspired by the gap between his worlds. "In Puerto Rico we were doctors and lawyers. And we're cabbies in New York; we're for the most part the poorer segment of society, and on TV we were always thieves and we were always the Sharks. In the Heights was a response to that. It was, 'Are we allowed to be on stage without having a knife in our hands?' " But then he has spent part of the summer filming a movie version of that musical, which is set over the course of three days, involving characters in the largely Hispanic-American neighbourhood. It is also the project that changed his life most dramatically. The more recent success of Hamilton rather eclipses the fact that his first show, which he began writing in the late Nineties when he was still a student at Wesleyan University, Connecticut, was also wildly successful. After success off-Broadway, the musical went to Broadway, opening in March 2008 and ending up being nominated for 13 Tony awards, winning four, including best musical and best original score.

...

Miranda, described as "a fantasy of the Obama era", has since been active in politics, lobbying and fundraising for Puerto Rico and performing with Ben Platt at the March for Our Lives anti-gun-violence rally in Washington DC on March 24, 2018. Does he feel demoralised by the drift of politics to the far right? "The thing about us all being connected online is that you can read all of the worst news from all over the world and be overwhelmed. You can't let it all in; just act on what you can act on." Should Trump be ignored or fought every step of the way? "It's hard to even discuss it, right, because Trump will have outraged us on two new things in the next [few hours], as soon as he wakes up, and it won't be relevant by the time we're having this conversation. And the same with Brexit, which is just as uncertain."

What did he make of Trump's revival of the phrase "Get back to where you came from" in relation to Democrat politicians? "It's unacceptable. Just because he said it doesn't mean it's acceptable." He leans back in his seat. "Here's my fear of getting into this with you: every time I've done a UK interview, I've said incredible shit and Trump's always the headline, even if I've only said two lines about it. So I'm happy to talk about it, but I'm really scared it's going to be the headline."

I risk another question. Would Miranda ever run for office? "It's funny - I remember when I was a teenager, my dad got approached by pretty serious people about running for a state Senate seat, and he said no. I asked, 'Why?' He said, 'I don't want to have to watch my mouth.' And for me, it's similar. I also have seen in my life, first-hand, the people who get addicted to running, and it's like their moment passed, but they're still running for something, because they're chasing that thrill of winning, and it's about much more than representing the constituents. I would never want to get stuck in that cycle or that pattern. It's more fun writing songs than doing any of that."

Read the rest here behind the Times paywall.

[cosmicpopcorn]

Captain Marvel (2019): Feminism, Diversity, and the 90s, oh my!

Warning: Spoilers, possibly. I always like to warn a nigga just in case.

Note to Readers: Yes, Cosmic Popcorn is back up and running! Last year, I went on an impromptu hiatus due to life being...well, life. Now I’m back and determined to pick back up where I left off on my journey of providing informal movie and TV reviews and discussions on astrology and all things cosmic. 

Without further ado, let’s get into Captain Marvel. 

If ya’ll remember the post credits scene from Avengers: Infinity War, Nick Fury sends one last message to someone, somewhere on an old ass looking communication device right before he turns to dust...and we see a star-shaped logo confirming that his message has been sent. 

He was sending that message off to good ol’ Captain Marvel aka Carol Danvers. Captain Marvel has a very diverse, interesting history in the comics...in fact, Carol Danvers is the 7th Captain Marvel in the comics. To read more about that dope history, check out this article here: The Weird and Diverse Comic Book History of Captain Marvel. 

Now, the movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) do divert from the comics in a lot of ways. So MCU Carol Danvers is a former air force officer who was under the mentorship of physicist Dr. Wendy Lawson, who was actually a Kree scientist who disagreed with the Kree’s war with the Skrulls and had fled to Earth. Dr. Wendy Lawson (her alias) aka Mar-Vell (her real name) was using the Tesseract (Space Stone) to create an engine that would have helped the Skrulls to live beyond the reach of the Kree empire and she had enlisted Danvers’ help in this mission. But they are discovered by Yon-Rogg, a Kree commander who is the leader of Starforce (a Kree military task-force). During the fight between Mar-Vell and Yon-Rogg, Carol shoots the engine in an attempt to prevent Yon-Rogg from getting it and it explodes in her face, causing her to absorb the Tesseract’s energy/powers, thus making her Captain Marvel. Her memories of who she is and her life on Earth are mostly altered/erased and she becomes one of the members of the Starforce, under Yon-Rogg’s direction and mentorship. 

The movie was directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck. Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel is played by actress Brie Larson. I first remember seeing her in United States of Tara and really enjoying watching her character on screen. She has also played in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Community, and Room (which she won an Oscar for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role). Obviously, she’s been in a ton of other shit, won a bunch of awards and been nominated for others but I am not about to lay this woman’s resume out for y’all - just know she’s been here for awhile and she’s accomplished. Lol.

Nick Fury is obviously played by the wonderful Samuel L. Jackson, and y’all should damn well know who he is. He’s one of our national treasures in my opinion, right along with Terry Crews. Not to mention he’s already been present in the other MCU movies. He’s the character with the second most screen time in the movie outside of the obvious Captain Marvel. 

Other actors worth mentioning: Talos/Keller is played by Ben Mendelsohn, Jude Law is Yon-Rogg, Annette Bening is Dr. Wendy Lawson, and we have Lashana Lynch as Maria Rambeau, with Akira Akbar as her daughter Monica Rambeau. The cast overall is very diverse - comprised of people of color and women in starring roles. And based on what I’ve personally read on Captain Marvel’s comic book history, this is the essence of her story - breaking through barriers and giving power to a range of different people who may not have had it before, who were not usually represented in certain roles and positions of power.

I’ll be honest, it’s difficult for me to review and critique Marvel movies because the quality of their movies these days is usually pretty high...even the mediocre or bad ones are significantly better than other mediocre/bad non-superhero movies. I go into these movies with a bias towards them and it’s hard for me to see flaws unless they’re extremely obvious and detract from the overall quality of the movie in a major way. I will always try to be honest about a movie...but how I feel is how I feel and I feel Marvel movies are usually pretty great. So when it comes to these movies, I’ll present my thoughts on various aspects of them instead of the usual pros vs. cons approach unless it calls for it. 

I basically really liked and enjoyed Captain Marvel. I don’t regret the experience at all and feel it’s worth the movie ticket. Here are some thoughts on the movie: 

Brie Larson was a good choice for Captain Marvel: I’ve heard people complain about the decision for Brie Larson to play Carol Danvers aka Captain Marvel, with some of the main reasons for their complaints being that she appeared to be too stoic, didn’t smile or laugh enough and that her portrayal of Captain Marvel was bland. I felt that she expressed the appropriate amount of emotion for the character and for the scenes she had. We must also keep in mind that Carol Danvers was an air force officer on Earth, a member of Starforce on Hala while being with the Kree, and also had been taught to not be emotional and that her emotionality was a weakness. So...why the fuck would she be super emotional and expressional?! I’m not sure what was expected - did they want lots of crying and giggles? We don’t ask for Captain America, Iron Man or the Hulk to be more emotional or smile more and this specific critique reeks of sexist undertones to me.

Captain Marvel was portrayed well in this origin movie and Brie Larson did a fine job. Yes, I am saying this as someone who did not grow up reading the comics. We are discussing the MCU Captain Marvel, not the comics. And we already know that when converting books or comics to movies, shit gets changed. They have the same source, but they are still different.

As a 90s baby, I enjoyed the blast from the past: This origin movie is set in 1995 and has things like pay phones, Blockbuster, slow ass internet, internet cafes and the music, oh my, the music. I loved it all. I don’t miss any of that, except maybe the music, but it’s nice to wax nostalgic sometimes. 

Nick Fury and Captain Marvel are cute AF: I loved watching Samuel L. Jackson and Brie Larson on screen as Fury and Marvel. They had just the right amount of chemistry and played off of each other very well. I know Fury has gone to dust, but maybe we’ll get to see a nice, cute reunion in Endgame? One can only hope. 

They did well at helping Samuel L. Jackson go back in time as Fury: I was pleasantly surprised how good Sam looked as young Fury - usually aging actors and actresses, whether younger or older is something that has a high possibility of not being done well and they did a fantastic job here. My man looked good!

I loved that Nick Fury got a lot of screen time: We got to learn a lot more about the character, his past, and really see his personality shine here. We also learned about how he lost his eye. Once again, I really do hope to see more of Fury in Endgame. And with Fury and his eye in mind, shoutout to Goose the cat, that’s my nigga. 

Captain Marvel doesn’t have a strong villain and it doesn’t need it: One of the complaints about the movie was the lack of a strong villain like Killmonger or Thanos. However, with this being an origin movie, I see it being more focused on how Captain Marvel comes to being and how she becomes a hero, any villain present is only there to showcase her powers and as a plot device. That’s not how it is in all origin movies - Black Panther had a very strong, well-developed villain, but here, it appears the villain almost takes a backseat to other aspects of the movie. Her “villains” are more of society’s sexism, her own self-doubt, identity struggles, and her rejection of the emotional parts of herself. The people around her either enforce, support and/or represent those “villains” (e.g. Yon-Rogg) or push her to break against those barriers and embrace her power (e.g. Nick Fury). 

Captain Marvel has a diverse cast and clearly wants to empower young women and girls: I loved the fact that our main character was a woman, her main supporting character was a black man, and the other important supporting characters were a black woman and a beautiful black girl. Yes, there were white men and other white people all around, lol, but a good amount of the ones with a lot of screen time were not. The movie also rejected sexist ideas such as: emotionality and being emotionally expressive being a negative trait, women having to smile for men and always appear pleasant or pretty, women not being capable of being in traditionally male-dominated fields and not being capable participating in male-dominated or traditionally male activities. It says a giant FUCK YOU to all these things. It also hints towards Marvel’s first African-American female superhero, Photon. 

Brie Larson was right in her Crystal Award for Excellence in Film acceptance speech: In her speech, she presents statistics regarding movie critics - bringing to light that a large, overwhelming amount of movie critics were older, white men and that white women, women of color and men of color are largely unrepresented when it comes to movie critiques. She explains the importance of reviews and the impact it has on what movies can be bought and seen, how much money a movie grosses and what movies are nominated for awards. Overall, she encourages more inclusivity and for critiques of movies to be done by a more diverse group of people - a group that includes more white women, women of color and men of color, especially since some movies are, let’s face, simply not made for white men or with white men in mind. Not mention, as she said, people other than older white men also like Star Wars. You can hear that speech here.

She ain’t say anything wrong and anyone who has a problem with this speech obviously has some unaddressed sexism they need to tend to. Because, I mean...are you saying only older white men like these types of movies? Are we saying their opinions on media are the most important? Do we not want to hear from white women, women of color and men of color...since we are, you know, also part of this world and consume this media? And considering the diversity present in Marvel comics and films, considering the messages about sexism, racism, feminism, etc. that are present in the stories of heroes like Black Panther and Captain Marvel...are you really trying to tell me these were only made for and primarily focused only on older white men? Get the fuck outta here. I don’t care what a 40-year-old white dude has to say about what he doesn’t like about A Wrinkle in Time either. 

All in all, I enjoyed this movie and it got me hype of Avengers: Endgame. Instinctually and based on conversations with others and hearing about flaws they felt were present such as pacing issues, actress choice, etc., I feel these flaws were mostly based on opinion (opinions that I don’t agree with) and in my opinion either are subtle (such as pacing issues) and/or simply don’t exist (such as actress choice being a problem). However, this isn’t Black Panther and while it doesn’t really have any cons (major or minor) that come to mind, it does lack the aspects of Black Panther that earned it a 5 Caramel Popcorn Pieces rating. With that in mind, I give it 5 Butter Popcorn Pieces. 

Rating: 5 Butter Popcorn Pieces

[wendynerdwrites]

Guess who got a big chunk of writing done for the first time in months? This gal!

Okay, so here is a rough first chapter of a Metalocalypse fanfic, Dethcomics:

"Gentleman… It seems Dethklok is looking into joining the world of comic books. A call has gone out seeking artists and writers to create a Dethklok graphic novel."

"This could be catastrophic! Every new Dethklok industry venture manages to upset the balance of trade, but a band-sponsored book spreading their messages further?!"

"At least with their music no one can tell what Nathan Explosion is saying. But written in black and white?!"

"Exactly. To elaborate, I have called in expert in comics, Professor Varveil Molfirbygai."

The Professor, skinny and acne-ridden, comes forward, pushing his square-framed glasses up  the bridge of his nose. "Gentlemen, Dethklok have already rejected the proposals by Brian Posehn, Brian Piludo, and Grant Morrison for their books and are tearing through artists one at a time. At this rate, no one in the industry will be left but Rob Liefeld and Devin Grayson. Apparently their contradictory demands and unrealistic expectations have even been characterized by Alan Moore as 'too far out'. Marvel, DC, Image, and Dark Horse have all blacklisted them, leading to the band to launch their own independent publishing house. This could potentially upset the delicate balance of power within the industry. And God help us if the title is snatched up for screen adaptation by Sony or - ugh - Hulu."

"What can we do to nip this in the bud?"

"It seems that Nathan Explosion's new wife, Abigail Remeltindtdrinc and Charles Offdensen have taken a more direct role in monitoring the project. They may prove a stabilizing influence…"

~_~_~

"Ugh, Dildos!" William Murderface hurls his whiskey bottle to the corner of the game room. "These artsy-fartsy types are a bunch of egotistical, emotional dildos!"

"Ja, likes how obsessives and arrogants can yous gets?" Skwissgaar adds, shredding silently on his Gibson. "And sos delicate!"

Toki, leaning back from the Mortal Kombat machine, sniffs. "I's kinds of liked that Yoorerd Way fellows…"

"HE DIDN'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT ROCK!" Nathan roars from the foosball table, engaging in a fierce battle with Pickles.

"Maybe we should just write it ourselves, y'know." Pickles suggests, "And get, I don't know… Toki, you draw things, right?"

Toki brightens. "I'S DO!"

Skisgaar scoffs, "All's he's draws is girly, fluffy tings like happy bunnies and womens withts de tits covered."

"Toki is even less metal than that Brenden Smalls douchebag! Heh, Brenden Smalls, what did he ever create for anyone?" Murderface adds.

"I cans draw brutal!"

"I'm sure you can, Toki, but I'm afraid that still isn't happening," a firm, female voice calls out.

The room falls silent as Charles and Abigail enter the room. 

"Guys, Abigail may have found someone to write and draw the book," Charles announces.

Abigail blanches slightly, somewhat uncomfortable. "Maybe, if I can convince her."

"Her?" Murderface asks, somehow sounding simultaneously dismissive and aroused. "We can't let ladies make stuff for us!"

Abigail cradles her temple. "See?" She says to Offdensen, "I told you!"

"Why would we wants chicks arounds us?" Skwisgaar asks.

"Guys, we already put out the announcement. You've blown through nearly every acclaimed graphic novel creator in the business. Fans are getting impatient. So if we can get Abigail's friend to do this for us, you will be on your best behavior!"

"Maybe we should give this chick a chance, you know?" Nathan offers, offering his wife a sympathetic look.

"Oh, you're only saying that because your lady suggested it!" Murderface howls, taking a new bottle of alcohol from a Klokateer with a tray. "You're totally whipped, Man!"

Abigail's eyes burn. She smarches over to the couch and yanks the bassist by the ear. He cries out.

"Listen, you talentless sack of piss, this whole project has been taking time away from recording. And you know how I feel about that. You're going to be a good little boy and do as I say, understand?!"

"YES, MA'AM!"

Abigail releases him, leans back, clears her throat, and smooths her blazer. "I apologize for that. I am… not feeling like myself lately. Like I said, I haven't even convinced my friend to do this, I am not even sure I can. But you can all be sure of her qualifications. Her name is Sofia Maldonado, she's been creating comics since she was fifteen. She has worked on titles like The Boys, Swamp Thing, Ms. Marvel, Deadpool, Nightwing, and Batman. She has her own book, The Emerald Pixie, that has been a hit with both critics and readers and has been nominated for four Eisner Awards, winning two."

The band looks at her as if she is speaking Chinese. She sighs.

" Uh, 'Emerald Pixie'?" Nathan inquires, "No offense, Honey, but that doesn't sound very metal."

"The Pixie has retractable ten inch fangs."

"Oh, uh, that's cool, I guess."

"I mean, it can't hurt, I guess." Pickles adds.

"Is she hot?" Murderface asks.

"Yeahs, is she hot?" Skwisgaar asks.

Abigail turns to Charles. "Why am I doing this again?"

Offdensen pats the producer on the arm. "Guys, please, that is irrelevant. And you will keep things professional, or I am cancelling your vacation to Pornfest this year, understand?"

"What?! Can you even do that?!" Pickles cries out.

"As per my new contract with the five of you, I most certainly can." 

The band all grumbles, except for Toki.

"Cans I's shows her my drawings?"

"I'm sure that will be fine."

Abigail sighs. "Look, guys, this woman is a friend of mine, she is good at what she does, and she does not put up with crap. I am going out on a limb for you with this. One wrong move and she bolts. Understand?"

They all grumble again, but answer in the affirmative.

"Excellent." Charles straightens his tie and clears his throat. "Abigail will call up Ms. Maldonado and see if she is willing."

~_~_~_~

"No."

"Just lis-"

"No, Abby, and also: No. Nope. Negative. Nuh-uh. Nein. Not happening. They've run through almost everyone. Do you know how fucked up you have to be to weird out Alan Moore?! The man worships a Roman Snake God, for fucks sake. I am not descending into that pit of testosterone and excess."

"I will keep them in line, I promise. I managed to get them through six albums in as many years. Now that I'm involved, it will be different, I promise."

"Didn't William Murderface once refer to women as 'Serpents with tits'? Abby, I have reached a point in my career where I am through putting up with shit like this. I have had to collaborate with Garth Ennis and Frank Miller. I even spent an entire hour of my life in the presence of Dave Sims. I have done my time."

Abigail groans. "Sof, Charles Offdensen is offering enough for you to put Eddie through preschool, K-12 private, college and grad school someday."

"Emerald Pixie is selling like crazy and Paramount and Universal have approached me for the rights."

"I'll get you an interview for Collegiate."

There's a long pause. 

"...Really? How?"

"I'm an alum, remember? And the Headmistress owes me, like, seven favors. Your son will be playing in the sandbox with the children of Governors and hedge fund owners.”

There’s another pause. Abigail smiles. For all that Sofia has gone on about hating capitalism and her passion for Leftist politics, since her son was born she’d grown a little hypocritical on that front. Not that Abby could blame her. Sofia didn’t have a lot of support, being a single mom. 

“Maybe I’ll consider a meaning.”

Abigail tries a different tactic. “Please do. To be honest, I could really use a friend around here at the moment.”

It’s not something she’d normally say, as independent as she is. But as she makes the statement, she realizes that it’s true. 

Sofia’s voice becomes gentler. “What’s up?” 

Abigail tells her.

Her friend takes a deep breath. “Okay, then. I’ll take the meeting. But I mean it, Abby, one shitty comment---”

“---I know. But hey, look, you’ve met Nathan, and he’s not so bad, right?”

Technically, Sofia had encountered the entire band to varying extents at the wedding. She’d really only spoken to Nathan, and stared, mouth agape, at Pickles’s bender and slurred Best Man’s toast.

“He’s not too bad, I guess. But the rest? Bunch of crazy gringos.”

“Toki is sweet. Pickles actually isn’t bad when he’s not blackout drunk. Skwisgaar can be decent, aside from the arrogance. And Murderface… Don’t worry, I’ll keep my boot to his neck. I’ll keep my boots to all of their necks. I swear. Please, Sof, do this for me.”

Sofia takes yet another deep breath. “Alright. I’ll be available in a couple of weeks. Book me a flight. And I want my Collegiate interview before then.”

“Done. Thank you so much.”

They say their good-byes. Abigail hangs up and leans back against the pillows of her bed, rubbing her temple. Nathan enters the bedroom, looking a little sheepish. 

“Look, uh, I had another talk with the guys. Murderface is in debt again, so I offered to pay it off, if you don’t, uh, mind. That should help keep him… you know… less Murderface.” He sits down on the edge of the bed and takes her hand. “Did she say yes?”

  “We have a single meeting in two weeks. I’m pretty sure I’m going to draw up a list with Charles about things they are not allowed to bring up.”

“You’re sure this is a good idea, right?”

Abigail smiles ruefully. “No, not at all. But it’s the only idea I have.”

“I hope the guys don’t, well, uh, you know…”

“Sofia talks a big game, but she’s tough and willing to put up with more than she lets on. She wouldn’t be where she is if it were otherwise. If we keep them reined in enough, I think we might make this work.”

~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~

“Hey, I’s remembers her!”

“Shut up, Toki! Don’t be weird!” Pickles snaps as they watch their prospective new artist drop her bags in the middle of the Mordhouse entry hall and look up at the gargantuan ceiling. 

She is tall and athletic, with bronzed skin, blue eyes, and dark brown hair. She wears boot-cut black pants, a red graphic tee, and a black jacket with pins on the lapel. The band all peers at her curiously as Abigail rushes forward to greet her, ask after her son, and re-introduce Charles.

Handshakes are exchanged, and Abigail ushers the band over.

“Sofia, you of course remember my husband Nathan. This is Pickles, the drummer. Skwisgaar Skwigelf, lead guitar.”

“Hi’s.” Skwisgaar offers, obviously trying not to stare at her tits.

“Toki Wartooth, rhythm guitar.”

“Hello’s artist-lady!” Toki bounces on his heels, clutching sheets of paper. “I’s have some drawings, I hopes you like them!” He thrusts them towards her.

The artist smiles kindly and takes them. “I’ll give them a look. Thank you, Mr. Wartooth.”

“Calls me Toki!”

“Thank you, Toki.”

“And finally, William Murderface, bass.”

“Greetings and salutations, Senoriiiiiita!” Murderface grabs the woman’s hand and presses a wet kiss to it before smirking up at her. “Ole.”

Sofia snatches her hand back and glances at Abigail, who glowers at the bassist. “Knock it off, Murderface, or I’ll have you neutered.”

He squeals and jumps back. “S-Sorry.”

"So's, tells me, comics-lady. Cans we's makes dis comic book a pops-ups book and can we's makes the pop-up dragons breathes fire?"

Sofia takes one look at Toki, then another at Abigail. "I'm so glad to be here!"

[letterboxd]

Endgame.

“I think audiences are so smart now, so they require to not be fed the same drivel as even 20 minutes ago.” —Robert Downey Jr.

The cast and filmmakers behind the most anticipated release of the year talk to Letterboxd, without actually saying anything specific about the film. (But we don’t mind.) This article contains mild Infinity War spoilers.

Although there are going to be many, many more of them, Avengers: Endgame can’t help but feel like the climax of the grand Marvel movie experiment; the culmination of the shared universe first suggested by a delightful post-credits teaser in 2008’s Iron Man.

Since then, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has come to dominate the modern blockbuster with hit after hit, year after year. Then came last year’s Avengers: Infinity War, with its devastating cliffhanger in which many Marvel protagonists evaporated into dust. That epic act of character disintegration built an anticipation for the follow-up that allowed the filmmakers to apply incredible restraint in the film’s marketing. Indeed, all we really know about Avengers: Endgame is that we don’t know anything.

Marvel head honcho Kevin Feige announced that there would be nothing in the trailers from beyond the first twenty minutes of the film. That is unprecedented in modern blockbusters, which center their campaigns around the major action set-pieces, usually dutifully showcased in teasers and trailers to the point where we complain we’ve already seen the film.

In the modern marketing-saturated film-going environment, to go into a film of this size and not be aware of which direction the story is heading, or what the major action scenes will be, is an almost impossible task.

Feige and co-directors Joe and Anthony Russo are to be commended for using their accumulated powers for good in this regard—not since Gone Girl has a major studio film shown such restraint. Heck, they didn’t even let press see the movie before we sat down with Feige, both Russos and the (currently officially alive) cast members of the film (pretty much the original Avengers team) in downtown Los Angeles this week.

Read on for the low-down on the Avengers’ best Boggle player, Natasha Romanoff’s evolution from “sexy secretary”, and the scene that had Robert Downey Jr. “more shredded than a julienne salad”.

Front row, left to right: Danai Gurira, Jeremy Renner, co-director Anthony Russo, Chris Evans, co-director Joe Russo, Brie Larson and Mark Ruffalo. Back row, left to right: Karen Gillan, Paul Rudd, Scarlett Johansson, Marvel Studios president/producer Kevin Feige, Robert Downey Jr., Don Cheadle and Chris Hemsworth during Marvel Studios’ ‘Avengers: Endgame’ press conference in Los Angeles.

Letterboxd: Filmmakers are known to tinker with blockbusters until the very last minute, honing in on what audiences respond to in the teaser material. That’s obviously not the case here, since you held back so much in the film’s trailers. How did this lack of advance audience feedback impact the filmmaking process, if at all? Anthony Russo (co-director, the taller brother): Look, at the end of the day, my brother and I, we came to this material because we’re fans. We grew up loving the comics. We came to the MCU already fans of the MCU. So the energy we move on is our own passion and our own excitement, and that’s how we tell stories. We learned long ago that you have to tell stories for yourself. You can’t be thinking about how others might receive them.

So for Joe and me, because we have such an intimate relationship with the material, because we have so many amazing collaborators—starting with Kevin [Feige, producer]—we are able to really fashion the story around what we want to see as fans. How do we surprise ourselves. How do we excite ourselves? How do we challenge ourselves? How do we force ourselves to keep digging deeper and keep exploring this narrative and these characters in ways we never imagined? That’s sort of how we guide ourselves through the process.

And once the film is complete and we put it out into the world, we really have no idea how it is going to be received. Once that complete film is experienced and digested and responded to, I think that’s the moment where we are then filled up with a reaction. But as we’re executing, once we conceive the film and start executing, we’re not really second-guessing what we’re doing. We’re really focused on chasing the initial vision that we had for it.

On how the Russo brothers are feeling now that they are near the end of the journey: Joe Russo (co-director): This is, I think, a really unique experiment in movies, this grand mosaic. Depending on how you count it up, eleven franchises… have been interwoven into one big narrative, and I think a lot of people have invested a lot of heart and soul into the characters. When we take these movies around the world, it’s really heartwarming to see people come up to you and say “hey, I started watching this with my classmates when I was ten years old—now we’re all 21 and we’re all going to go see this together” or “my parents have taken me to every movie” or “my grandfather has taken me to every film”. It’s a real sense of community and sharing in these stories and believing in them. And I think with Endgame, we get the opportunity to finish off one of the grandest experiments in movie history and bring it to, as Kevin said, an epic conclusion. So what we’re hoping for is that people feel satisfied with the conclusion.

‘Avengers: Endgame’ co-directors Joe Russo and Anthony Russo.

On what it’s like to join the Marvel Cinematic Universe at this critical moment: Brie Larson (Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel): I mean, stressful, now that you put it like that. I’ve felt kind of chill. But now I’m scared. So I hope you guys did a good job. I came at just the most magical time I think. To come exactly at this ten-year anniversary, and really, my first introduction to everyone was the ten-year photo, which was a really remarkable and special day. And super surreal and also like not allowed to [be talked about]. So the whole thing has always felt like a dream.

This film will always be personally dear to me because it was my first time playing Captain Marvel. We shot this first. So I had to stumble and try to figure out who this character was with no script for this and no script for Captain Marvel either—and perform for the first time in front of legends. But it was incredible.

As big as it is, it still feels like a bunch of kids. Just like what I was doing over summer break, making movies in my garage. There is still this sense of wonder and play and encouragement—and of course this film deals with some heavy subject matter. So you’re bouncing in between things that feel very deep and serious, and then we’re going off and playing Boggle. Which I am very good at. Just to be clear.

There is no other word I can describe it as other than surreal. And I’m super excited for this to come out. Mostly just so that I can talk about it. I want to be able to talk about my experience, which I haven’t been able to do for a very long time.

On connection to his fellow Avengers: Mark Ruffalo (Bruce Banner/Hulk): It doesn’t feel like family to me because we all really get along well. There’s not that much drama. It does feel like family. It’s a family that you wish you had in a way. I don’t know if you could tell, but it’s a little bit different press conference than the last time. It has a little bit sort of sadness to it. We’re all talking about like we’re dead. I loved working with these guys. It was great knowing them. They were great Boggle players.

There is something very bittersweet about this moment, because as actors, we’re like vagabonds. We kind of bounce around. We have these intense relationships. And then you don’t see anybody until you get nominated for something or you’re nominated in something and you end up in an award ceremony.

Chris Evans (Steve Rogers/Captain America): What’s that like? Speak for yourself.

MR: Well. But like, this is the closest thing that any of us really have to—unless you’re in several franchises—it’s the closest thing you have to continuity and friendships and watching people grow up and have children and get married and then get divorced and then get remarried.

On how Captain America’s leadership role is affected by the presence of other leaders like Black Panther and Captain Marvel: CE: I think he tends to lean on those people who are of like mind and nature, who kind of are intrinsically selfless. I mean, all the heroes up here have their baked-in-the-cake flaws. And I think a lot of that makes for really good conflict in storytelling. That’s why my favorite stuff in this arc has been my stuff with Downey, because [there is] such a dichotomy between how we approach things. But at the end of the day, our hearts are both in the right places. It provides a lot of great friction. By introducing characters like Captain Marvel and Black Panther, people who also align very similarly to Cap’s nature, it reinforces Cap’s sense of purpose and home. It’s an environment that… feels more natural for him. It’s nice to see the certain pockets where he feels at peace and the certain pockets where he feels his buttons might be getting pushed.

On the evolution of the franchise’s female roles: Scarlett Johansson (Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow): Initially, the character really started as a sort of sexy secretary with a skill-set on the side. Posing as. And we didn’t know, or I certainly didn’t know how the audience would react to the character, my interpretation of the character. And obviously a very beloved character for a long time. Then the next time that we saw her in Avengers, she was sort of one of the boys for better or worse. And that made sense then.

I think the fans and the audiences have really pushed, certainly Marvel, but pushed all the studios and filmmakers to really throw up on the screen what represents what’s going on in the zeitgeist and wanting to see diverse films and casts that represent their own aspirations and how they feel. I feel the character has sort of grown in reaction to that. And the movies have really grown in reaction to that kind of fan encouragement.

I remember when Lizzie [Olsen, Scarlet Witch] signed on. Cobie [Smulders, Agent Maria Hill] was there. We were all clinging to each other… I felt like I had been in this testosterone fest for such a long time, it was so nice to see other female cast members. And then with Brie [Larson] coming on and Karen [Gillan, Nebula from Guardians of the Galaxy] and Danai [Gurira, Okoye from Black Panther]. I’m amongst so many wonderful actors, so many strong actors, and it’s just grown beyond my wildest dreams. I could never have imagined where this would take us. And all of us. It’s been quite a journey.

On how Robert Downey Jr. felt while filming the now-iconic scene in which Spider-Man (Tom Holland) fades away at the end of Infinity War (“Mr Stark, I don’t feel so good”): Robert Downey Jr. (Tony Stark/Iron Man): I just love the lighting in that scene. I look so shredded. I was more shredded than a julienne salad, man. No. I make a lot of faces. I need some help in the editing. It was one of those moments. “This is the most serious thing that’s happened since you were nine. Now don’t F this up.” And I remember the brothers were there. I think we re-staged it once or twice. Anyway. It was crazy to shoot it. But it was just another day. But then I think seeing it—I happened to see it with this amazing kid, this Scottish kid who couldn’t go to a theater—I saw it with him and his reaction really f’ed me up.

So I think what a lot of us are looking forward to—like Kevin always says—is that it’s a surprising, delightful experience with Endgame. It’s one of those things where you go “Wow, I think we just made a pretty serious choice here”. But I think audiences liked that. I think audiences are so smart now so they require to not be fed the same drivel as even 20 minutes ago. It’s like we need novelty. And I think that what the Russos and Kevin have been able to do that is provide that in spades.

On what’s been special about Chris Hemsworth’s journey with these films: Chris Hemsworth (Thor): Well, just to echo something you were saying before, Anthony, about the first time that the Marvel Universe came into my universe back in Australia: I was sitting there, and I would have been just straight out of high school and watching Iron Man and thinking the same thing. Thinking “Oh my god, imagine. I wish I could be a part of that world”. And then a few years on, getting cast in it as Thor and having the opportunity to embark on this thing, and at the time I thought, was this film even going to make it past DVD? Or make to the cinemas? Or was I going to be re-cast and all those sort of questions.

I think the answer to the question, what made it so special for me was just the different people I was able to work with. From Kenneth Brannagh—that first film was really sort of completely in his hands, and he was basically willing to do whatever it takes and wherever he needed me to go for the character—and then through the films with each director and each different cast member, I would learn something different from them.

And by Ragnarok, I felt like I finally had enough sort of confidence to go “Okay, what is it that I could possibly bring to this?” And then have this great collaboration with Taika [Waititi, director]. We really decided to do something different to see how we could make it unexpected and unique. And then I had been calling Joe and Anthony and saying look, I’ve got this new version of Thor that we’ve just shot. And I want to continue that version. I don’t want to do the old version. And they said we’ve got an even newer version for you.

It’s just about the people that’s made it so special and I think unique each time with any of our characters. The fact that we’re all willing to be open to what new possibilities lie ahead of these franchises and these characters. It’s been a pretty remarkable journey.

‘Avengers: Endgame’ opens in Australia and New Zealand on 24 April, and in UK, US and other regions from 25 April. Reporting by Letterboxd West Coast editor Dominic Corry.

[tinamrazik]

Revisited: My Interview with Lily Tomlin

  The Wit, The Wisdom, The Wonderful Lily Tomlin

 Lily Tomlin is more than a legend in the Entertainment business.  She is living proof that with talent and perseverance, a long and successful career is not only possible but it’s inevitable.  Comedian, actress, writer, producer, recording artist, activist, multiple award winner; there is nothing Tomlin can’t do.  Many of us remember first seeing her in the 60’s show Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In.  Her cast of characters is still as relevant today as they were then.  Like us, they have changed with the times, matured (except for Edith Ann, she’s still 5 ½ years old), and developed a wisdom and insight that comes with age and time, much like Tomlin herself.  Her films have also spanned the spectrum in regards to comedy vs. drama and the varied women she has played. Comedy classics “9 To 5,” “All Of Me,” and “The Incredible Shrinking Woman,”; dramas “Nashville,” (in which she made her film debut in 1975 and was nominated for an Academy Award), “A Prairie Home Companion,” “Tea With Mussolini,” and “Moment By Moment.”  First appearing on Broadway in 1977 her one-woman shows have also been memorable and that of which a legend is made. “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe,” was made into a feature film in 1991.  She has made guest appearances in such critically acclaimed television shows as “Murphy Brown,” “Will & Grace,” “The West Wing,” and “Damages.”  Her latest endeavor on the small screen now filming is “Malibu Country,” with Reba McEntire.  At age 72 she is once again embarking on the road with a few scheduled stops with her one-woman show.  She was called by Time Magazine “the woman with the kaleidoscope face.”  There is no doubt she has been an inspiration to hundreds of comedians who have followed after her.  A civil and gay rights activist she has been with her life partner Jane Wagner for over 40 years; a personal accomplishment almost unheard of not only in the Entertainment industry but the real world as well.  Lily Tomlin is truly an artist in every sense of the word and a woman for all seasons.  

May 6, 2012 is South Florida’s time in the sun with Ms. Tomlin; but on this day I had the distinct pleasure of speaking with her one on one. I found her to be extremely personable, funny, thought provoking, and completely in tune with the world we all share.   This certainly isn’t the fluff piece I was expecting to write and you may be expecting to read.  She was open, willing, and able to talk about everything under the sun, I felt as if I were catching up with an old friend. 

Tina Mrazik: Hi, how are you? Lily Tomlin:  I’m good.   Okay so, I’m coming to Miami. TM: Yes, to the Adrienne Arsht Center on May. 6th. How many dates are on your current tour? LT:  I do dates every year, I don’t do a tour.  I do what I can do in between other stuff.   I think there’s an advantage there.  Last week, I would have had to move a bunch of dates. TM:  Has "Malibu Country" been picked up for the season? LT:  No, I don’t know if it’s been picked up yet or not.  We shot it on Tuesday night, a week ago.  

  TM:  How did you get the role starring alongside Reba McEntire in the upcoming ABC TV comedy “Malibu Country”? LT:  They had that part and asked me to do it.  I know Reba and I like Reba.  It was a funny script so I agreed to it.  I think it went pretty well.   TM: Do you enjoy working again network television? LT:  Oh yeah, I like to do a bit of it all.  I’ve done a lot of TV this past year.   TM:  Indeed, you’ve made several appearances on TV including Damages, in which you earned an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress for your role as Marilyn Tobin. LT:  Yes, I did.  Web Therapy starts airing on Showtime in July. TM:  You’ve also participated in several projects for cable networks including HBO and Showtime.  Do you find there’s a lot more freedom on cable verses commercial network? LT:    Of course there is, absolutely.  You get to step out a bit.  And I like all of them.  As long as the material is interesting, something exciting to play.  I especially love Web Therapy and I did Eastbound and Down too.  I had a lot of fun doing that.  You know what show Eastbound? TM: Yes, it’s a very funny show. LT:  I loved playing Danny McBride’s character, Tammy Powers.  It all has a different kind of feel to it.  And Reba’s show too.  This pilot was interesting too.  They let me name the character after my own mother. So I named her Lily May and that was sort of the attraction too.   TM:  There are many women of this generation that are working in comedy.  With the material they’re doing and the way they’re presenting it, do you think women are finally able to keep up with the boys when it comes to edgy material. LT:  Yeah, I think there is that youth audience.  Yeah, I do.  I think it’s expected.  Just like on cable, the language is expected too.  The sensibility, just being more ostentatious.   TM:  Do you believe this evolution in popular culture is going in more positive or negative direction?   LT:  Well, I don’t know.  I think the culture has a tendency to become a little coarser in general.  Maybe it’s good though.  Maybe it’s flattened boundaries.  It all depends on how it’s used.  I remember on Deadwood, the show on HBO, they said ‘c***sucker’ about every other word.  Then they had that woman, that nice woman in the first season that she was sort of gentile and became kind of rough.  Her husband, I can’t remember the exact, I didn’t watch it every week.  I hardly have time to watch anything every week including myself.  She was sort of a gentle woman you know.    Educated or married or something; and then she sat out awhile and then she (laughing) began out talking the guy who ran the saloon or whatever he did.  But yeah, I wonder all the people talking; probably they used a lot language at that time.  You know on Laugh-In we had The Flying Fickle Finger of Fate and the Farkel Family.  Everybody was always trying to push the barriers. TM:  With Laugh-In there was more innuendo, now everything is in your face. LT:  As I recall you couldn’t even say the word ‘ass.’  I remember I was an usher at the movies, movie house.  The first movie that ever used the word ‘virgin’ on screen was a big deal.   TM:  Do you think in some instances, we've become too politically correct when news anchors and TV personalities are having to apologize because they offended certain groups of people with words that most Americans hear everyday? LT:  Well some of those just happened recently.   It’s part of their vocabulary now.  If you do it what’s the point of apologizing you should just own it.  But I guess people, the group that’s offended, I don’t know, I’d have to be in their shoes.  It does seem a little over the top but it came from a desire to change the vocabulary and the culture, you know? Like calling women employees ‘girls’; "my girl".  "My girl will call your girl."  Stuff like that- that’s the feminist era.  But I remember concepts that were accepted, you know.  Even myself, I had begun working on a character and the result was an old person. I had a line in there that goes back to the very earliest 70’s.  And I had a line in it which became really foolish; the character was supposed to be like an old woman, ��90 years old and she’s saying, “Drop kick those grandbabies up against a wall.”  And it seemed funny to me at the time but it was a stupid thing to say.  So that kind of stuff when you first hear it, and yet you can do it, the pendulum swings the other way gets deeper and heavier.  Because behavior is sometimes imitated is just like children grow up in a white supremacist group.  They’re totally programmed to be racist and hateful.  They know nothing else.  They just repeat the language.  So I don’t know where it stops and where it starts.   I would be the last one to try and censor someone.  And when you judge something, the idea of not apologizing is just immature.  I don’t know anyone who’s had to do it besides Tracy (Morgan).  Do newscasters do it a lot, commentators?  I doubt anybody at Fox does it. TM: Sometimes I think they go a little bit overboard as far as apologizing. Perhaps America has become too sensitive. I remember when we used to be a lot tougher. LT:  I think a lot of stuff is accepted, really.  There was a time when a certain amount of hatred, not even hatred, I don’t even want to use the word.  But you had people thinking Jews or blacks or whatever.  Women, gay people, whatever - they’re just going to have an attack mode for those people.  They don’t want to have to hear them, hear about them.  I think there are a lot of weird points of view in the world. I mean look, I grew up in Detroit, the inner city in a black neighborhood.  My mother and dad are both Southern, I went to Kentucky every summer on the farm.  I lived in an old apartment house; I grew up with all kinds of people.  And I’ve been exposed to a lot of different human beings and weren’t so different.  They may appear different on the surface. So again you have to have respect for other people’s feelings, you just do.  But if you’re not stupid and somewhat educated or sensitive or have a feeling, then you have room for other people too.  To say we’re too sensitive you’re talking about which group is offended; me, I don’t know.  I really don’t know where to draw the line. You have to draw it on your own sensibility.  TM:  You’ve been with Jane (Wagner) for over 40 years, correct? LT: 41. TM:  Congratulations. LT:  Thank you.  She thanks you too.  (Laughing) TM:  Is she there? LT:  No, no.  She doesn’t go on the road with me.  I love to perform a certain number of dates a year so she doesn’t go out too often.   TM: In my opinion, Hollywood is doing something that I’m not really crazy about. They’re doing too many remakes of classic films or turning TV shows into movies.  From your and Jane’s perspective as writers, is there a lack of originality in Hollywood? LT.  Well, we’ve talked about it sometimes just because we, yeah that has come up with us, you’re right.  The idea of remaking something and not doing something that’s original or not perusing something that’s original; we do comment on that.  But I can’t say we’ve started a movement in the organization; down with remakes.   TM:  They’ve put “9 to 5” on Broadway. LT.  That’s right, they’ve done that.   “ TM: How would you feel about a remake of “9 To 5”? What if it was completely different than the original?  Like what if it was remade into a raunchy sort of “American Pie”-type comedy, would that bother you?   LT:  Well, it wouldn’t bother me, I mean gosh, what bothers me is if we get into a nuclear war.  I’d be disappointed probably for a minute the fact that they would do that but I wouldn’t dwell on it.  There was the intention of Jane, Dolly and me to do a sequel to it, not a remake but a sequel.   And a sequel might have worked closer to the time the original appeared but nothing ever worked out; no script was ever acceptable all around the block.  And I know Jada Pinkett Smith had the rights and was going to do an African American version.  Now what form that would have taken I don’t know.  If it would have been a redo of the original or a completely different invention.  I just don’t know.  I mean I heard that Queen Latifah was going to redo “All of Me.”  So I don’t quite know what it means.  Or how far they’d go or don’t go or how far they’d corrupt it.  I would see it.  Maybe if I were the producer or the director had written “9 to 5” maybe I’d feel more possessive.  In the musical they used the actors to look and move just like us from the stage. Even Mr. Hart looked like Dabney; I can’t remember the actor’s name.  He was good in the musical.  Allison (Janney) looks enough like me from the stage.  I mean she’s tall and lankly.  Meg Hilty is very stocked and big busted like Dolly (Parton) and a little blonde you know.  And then the Jane (Fonda) character, anyway, they were enough like us; in a sense it looked like the movie. For us at that time, I don’t know about Fonda because she produced it originally but all of us felt it looked kind of eerie, surreal.  The three of us went to the opening because of Dolly in LA and New York. And sitting there watching those three people (laughing) and they were sitting there almost, because Pat Resnick wrote the book for the musical, and she had written the screenplay.  She took very much from herself and the original, even the costumes were similar to what Ann Roth had designed in the movie.  And anyway, so that’s the effect it had on me at the time.  It was kind of surreal.  And I wasn’t sure it was live, maybe it was us up there. (Laughing) TM:  Now that you have my number will you give it to Cher? LT:  If I run into her I will.  (Laughing)  Oh, my gosh, you’d get a kick out of her. TM:  I’ve actually met her. LT:  Yes, she fun and interesting. TM:  This is one of the great things about meeting people in the entertainment business and getting to talk to you.  Everyone that I’ve met has basically been very down to earth.  When I can go on record and say that I made Cher, Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin laugh, that’s pretty good. LT:  Okay, (laughing) maybe we should do “9 To 5”?  Bette, Cher and I - they’re 24/7...

[popcorn-for-dinner]

Predictions for the 90th Academy Awards

Nothing takes the sting out of these tough economic times like watching a bunch of millionaires giving golden statues to each other"- Billy Crystal, 2012 host

The Oscars are an enigmatic ceremony. In its simplest form, it’s a group of celebrities all patting themselves on the back for their various film achievements during the year. The majority of these celebrated films are often movies that mainstream audiences have neither watched (certainly not watched at the time of the Oscars) nor have any intention of watching. This, coupled with the derision usually aimed at the perceived self importance of the awards, makes it quite surprising how much attention is still paid to the ceremony. People still care who wins, people still want to know what happened during the almost 3-hour ceremony. The term “Academy Award winner” still commands a level of widespread respect, even to the person who has “Transformers: The Last Knight” as his best film of 2017.

So in anticipation of this year’s 90th Academy awards, I assembled a panel of other like-minded weirdos, Afolabi Adekaiyaoja, Chika Akachukwu and Obiora Ifeacho (all my female friends have lives so won’t waste their time watching the Oscars at 3a.m),and we discussed our reactions to this year’s nominees, who we want to win and who we believe will eventually take home the awards come March 4th.

POPCORN FOR DINNER: OKAY, LET’S START OFF WITH THE BIG ONE. THE “DRUMROLL AWARD”. WHO WINS BEST PICTURE?

Bankole Imoukhuede: This is the only category I will comment on. I think it’s such a shame Get Out isn’t the frontrunner at the moment. I do think it was the best movie this year and it’s a shame it doesn’t look like winning.

SHOULD WIN: Get Out

WILL WIN: The Shape of Water

Afolabi Adekaiyaoja: It is in years like this that I wish the Academy had stuck to their 5 nominees for this category. In that scenario, we don’t get so many filler movies. I think it is down to The Shape Of Water or Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri. I prefer Three Billboards for its storytelling and simple character tales.

SHOULD WIN: Get Out

WILL WIN: Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri

Obiora Ifeacho: I’m hoping that the Academy bucks its trend of being unfavourable to horror and comedy films, and gives Get Out the win. Don’t think it will though.

SHOULD WIN: Get Out

WILL WIN: The Shape of Water

Chika Akachukwu: I was actually (pleasantly) surprised Get Out got nominated. It might have just been a peace offering from the Academy though, to show they aren’t prejudiced. *insert relevant Sunken Place joke*

SHOULD WIN: The Shape of Water (despite its weak attempt to pass off bestiality as cool and romantic)

WILL WIN:  Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri

POPCORN FOR DINNER: THE ACTING CATEGORIES ALL SEEM PRETTY STRAIGHT FORWARD. RAPID FIRE. LEAD ACTOR

O.I: Gary Oldman (The Darkest Hour)

C.A: Yep, same

A.A: Yep, Oldman. Although I think Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out) should win it.

POPCORN FOR DINNER: LEAD ACTRESS

O.I: Frances McDormand (Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri)

C.A: I really want Sally Hawkins (The Shape of Water) to win it but I think Frances McDormand wins it

A.A: Same. I think Sally Hawkins deserves to win it but its most likely going to Frances.

POPCORN FOR DINNER: SUPPORTING ACTOR

O.I: As Bill Simmons puts it, a “that guy” actor is an actor who you see everywhere but you don’t actually know his name and he never really has leading roles in successful films but you know him and appreciate his efforts knowing his time will soon come. Sam Rockwell (Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri) was probably the greatest “that guy” actor of his generation. The award is firmly his. Sorry, that wasn’t quick fire lol.

C.A: Ditto. Loved Sam since Seven Psychopaths (Also written and directed by Martin McDonagh)

A.A: Willem Dafoe (The Florida Project) started off as the favourite, Christopher Plummer (All The Money in the World) is a big middle finger at Kevin Spacey, Richard Jenkins (The Shape of Water) is conveniently riding the wave of The Shape of Water (apologies for the pun), even though Michael Shannon (The Shape of Water) turns in a far better performance and Woody Harrelson (Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri) is on for a little while but is naturally amazing. The only one left (Sam Rockwell) is the actor who really does make magic happen on screen and is just a delight to see.

POPCORN FOR DINNER: SUPPORTING ACTRESS

O.I: While I think Laurie Metcalf (Lady Bird) should win this, it seems to be another foregone conclusion. Allison Janney (I, Tonya)

C.A: She’s won every other award. Imagine if she didn’t win this one?

A.A: Allison Janney, although I would have preferred a debut win for Mary J. Blige (Mudbound)

POPCORN FOR DINNER: BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY.

O.I: This really comes down to Get Out, Lady Bird and The Shape of Water, in my opinion. I think The Shape of Water wins it but I’ll be rooting for Get Out or Lady Bird.

A.A: I think Get Out should and will win it.

POPCORN FOR DINNER: FINAL CATEGORY. DIRECTOR.

Bankole Imoukhuede: Okay, I know I said that Best Picture was the only category I would give an input in but I am so annoyed Christopher Nolan (Dunkirk) isn’t winning this. Dunkirk in the cinema, in IMAX, was such an experience. I have absolutely nothing against Guillermo Del Toro (The Shape of Water) but I really wish Nolan was winning this.

A.A: Same. I think Nolan should win this. None of the other nominees, in my opinion, pushed the limits of the cinema experience while combining all the other aspects of moviemaking into a truly riveting and remarkable production, like he did with Dunkirk. It’s probably going to Del Toro though.

O.I: Christopher Nolan has found a way for production companies to fund his movies without relying on previous original material which is great. Very difficult to be commercially and critically successful in this day and age. Proper visual storytelling masterpiece. Del Toro wins it though.

C.A: Christopher Nolan could make a movie about anything and I’ll be game for it. The man gave us The Dark Knight. Not to mention, Bane impressions.

POPCORN FOR DINNER: OKAY, A COUPLE MORE QUESTIONS TO ROUND THIS OUT. WHAT WERE YOUR SNUBS AND OSCAR BAIT FLOPS THIS YEAR?

B.I: Snubs. Probably Franco (The Disaster Artist) (although with good reason). Oscar bait flop of the year would have to be Surburbicon. A period piece written by the Coen Brothers and George Clooney, including a true story subplot that reflects our current societal issues, directed by Clooney and starring Matt Damon, Julianne Moore and Oscar Isaacs doesn’t get a single nomination? Has to be the flop of the year.

C.A: There’s nothing I love more than simplicity and nothing I hate more than overcrowded stuffed casts. Hence, my vote has to be The Post. Sure, it got an obligatory Oscar nomination for Meryl Streep and a consolation best picture nomination but it was definitely shooting for bigger targets. I don’t want to see that many stars in one movie. It just screamed “Oscars” to me.

A.A: That’s funny because Tom Hanks (The Post) is one of my snubs, the other being Martin McDonagh (Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri). My Oscar bait flop has to be The Greatest Showman. It was a musical written by Oscar-winning songwriters (check), had a big name star (check) and a romantic subplot (check). I’m pretty sure someone expected this to be the next Chicago. It sucks because I really love Hugh Jackman and think the basis- PT Barnum is a riveting tale. Still, it got nearly shut out.

O.I: My big snub is Armie Hammer (Call Me by Your Name). Others were Robert Pattinson (Good Time), Michael Stuhlbarg (Call Me by Your Name and The Shape of Water) and Tifanny Haddish (Girls Trip). I have to go for The Post for my flop too. Was never a fan from the moment it was announced last year

POPCORN FOR DINNER: WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE OSCARS’ MOMENT

O.I: Roberto Benigni winning Best Foreign Language film. How can you not be happy for Roberto Benigni when the Italian actor-director stood on top of his chair, waving at anybody and everybody, as he was walking across the seats to accept his award for Life is Beautiful? I mean, even Steven Spielberg was helping him on his way!

A.A: Knowing that everyone on my TL and circle expected Boyhood to win, hearing Sean Penn remark about a guy’s green card and realising it was Birdman in the split second before he confirmed it…amazing. It was a great reward for an amazing movie, great concept and wonderful execution.

B.I: Mine has to be Lupita’s acceptance speech for Best Actress in a Supporting role for 12 years a Slave. “No matter where you are from, your dreams are valid”. If that ain’t a clarion call to get creative, I don’t know what is.  

C.A: “Hold on imma let you finish but Moonlight had the best picture award this year, La La Land”. (This is how it played out in my head last year)

POPCORN FOR DINNER: Parting words?

A.A.: And the nominees for now overdue Oscar win are: Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper, Michael Shannon, Joaquin Phoenix and Jessica Chastain…and the next one off is…

B.I: In a world where Logan got a (deserved) adapted screenplay nomination, I’m speaking it into existence that I believe, with the right campaign, Black Panther can nab at least one of a Supporting Actor, Director, Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture nomination.

O.I: GIVE ROGER DEAKINS HIS FUCKING OSCAR ALREADY

Bankole Imoukhuede

@banky_I

[supertam87]

Preface,happy for Caitriona. She absolutely deserves it. I will not be one of those people who on a congratulatory tweet goes, but what about Sam? Her nom is hers. By now, I truly think Sam isn't ever going to be nominated for Outlander. Voters aren't going to look beyond the swoon to see what the role actually is, which is raw, vulnerable, dark, powerful, beautifully nuanced. FINE. I'm just going to sit and wait for Sam's Oscar nom and congratulate myself on my prescience.

Hey Lady, thanks for the ask! Yes, I agree with you. Caitriona is 100% deserving of her nomination and I am thrilled for her. She works hard, is talented and earned it. 

As to the second part of your ask, Sam, Sam, Sam. What will we ever do about Sam? My heart hurts and I, quite frankly, am mad. I know, I KNOW that these awards are nothing more than a popularity contest, but it still burns. I believe Sam is the very best actor on the show, and has been since day one. I believe he has a subtly and nuance that no other Outlander actor has, and I believe he leads the show with that subtly and nuance. I think he is a generous and giving acting partner to anyone with whom he shares a scene and that makes them both better. I also believe he is a gentle soul with a self-deprecating, deflecting demeanor, who does not seek that kind of attention. Maybe he shoots himself in the foot by always praising his co-stars rather than accept praise for himself? I don’t know. In the end, it doesn’t matter. He has received critical acclaim for his acting and I believe that he has a long and fulfilling career ahead of him. The day he does finally get his major award I will squee and scream and jump up and down and we can all get together and celebrate, because we’ve always KNOWN that he deserves it. 

As a quick follow-up, please, people of tumblr, don’t send me a bunch of nonsense about why can’t Caitriona just have her moment and why do we always have to make it about Sam, too. My answer to that is that Caitriona will have her moment - at the Golden Globes, and she deserves it. But I think of Sam and Caitriona as a pair - and I rarely think of one without the other. I can absolutely be happy for Caitriona and sad for Sam and I don’t need anyone coming to my blog telling me I’m wrong, because I’m not - they’re my feelings and it’s my blog and I’m not in the mood. Happy for Caitriona, Sad for Sam. It’s where I’m sitting for now. 

Thanks again for the ask, Sweetie. Have a great day!!

[back-and-totheleft]

Rider on the Storm

Oliver Stone--Hollywood outlaw, cinematic high priest of the lost generation, America’s reigning Angry Young Man--has dismissed the haplessly out-of-touch: those within earshot as well as those not in sync with his favorite decade.

“Get out there! Take a chance! That’s what the ‘60s were--the cutting edge! Ride the snake! Now! Now ! Remember that? Go to the limits! Challenge authority! Challenge your parents! See for yourself! Get in touch with your senses!”

That fusillade is being delivered by arguably Hollywood’s most successful protester. Yale dropout, drug-taking, decorated Vietnam vet turned auteur , Stone has delivered take after take on the ‘60s and their children--"Salvador,” “Platoon,” “Wall Street,” “Talk Radio,” “Born on the Fourth of July"--coming at his theme every which way. Drugs! War! Money! Politics! Stone has made movies to exorcise his and his generation’s demons, annoying the industry with his excesses, filmic and personal, earning a round of grudging respect for ballyhooing a 20-year-old Zeitgeist all the way to the bank. He is even a producer these days, taking home a nice percentage of the gross. The Outsider has become Establishment. Hey, Oliver, what’s that sound, everything going round and round?

After nearly two decades in the business--writing or directing about a dozen films, earning five Oscar nominations, including two awards for Best Director--Stone has mastered the art of turning the counterculture into a mainstream, bankable product. Today he is Hollywood’s most consistent practitioner of point-of-view filmmaking, yet one who just as consistently falls on his own sword.

His films, lofty in their intent to capture the New Left values of the ‘60s, frequently come up short with undistinguished if competent craftsmanship and an in-your-face moralizing. Critics regularly fault his work. The New Yorker’s Pauline Kael wondered in a review of “Platoon” whether Stone was “using filmmaking as a substitute for drugs. . . . There are too many scenes,” she went on to write, “where you think, It’s a bit much. The movie crowds you; it doesn’t give you room to have an honest emotion.” If Stone disdains such caviling as aesthetic elitism--"Critics say that; audiences don’t. I won’t ever make boring movies, ever!"--he nonetheless has his sharpshooter’s eye trained on his place in American film history. Stone still hungers for the imprimatur of artist.

“We don’t practice repression in this country, we practice triviality,” the director says, standing in a Hollywood sound stage on an early winter afternoon. “I try to make films that are bold and on the cutting edge, with ideas that are greater than me--and I try to serve those ideas.”

Now, Stone is set to unveil his latest homage to his generation--"The Doors,” the much-anticipated movie about the legendary ‘60s band, starring Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison, the band’s charismatic lead singer and lyricist. It is Stone’s first film since “Born on the Fourth of July” won him his third Oscar three years ago, and at $30 million it’s his most expensive production to date. It is also his least overtly political--something of a first for this filmmaker who is regularly accused of being anti-American--but one that is not without risks.

With few exceptions--such as “The Buddy Holly Story"--movies about the music industry are notoriously poor box office. And with “The Doors,” Stone is bringing to market a glossy tale of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll come round again in a new age of conservatism. It is a film for the ‘90s, with a controversial protagonist who practiced a particularly lethal brand of hedonistic nihilism; Morrison died of an apparent heart attack in Paris 20 years ago at the age of 27. Stone has taken a calculated risk in opening “The Doors” in today’s sexually nervous and unexpectedly jingoistic climate--the AIDS crisis and the country embroiled in its first real war since Vietnam. “I think we all feel on the edge of imminent disaster,” says Stone about his film’s upcoming release. “One always has that feeling.”

Even by the ‘60s’ break-the-mold musical standards, the Doors were considered sui generis--a home-grown Los Angeles band whose organ-rich, Eastern-sounding melodies, combined with Morrison’s vicious but poetic lyrics and undeniable stage presence, captured the growing alienation of an entire generation. From their first album--"The Doors” in 1967--to their last--"L.A. Woman” four years later--the band’s raspy mysticism and intellectual lyricism embodied the dark side of the ‘60s.

At the center of the band’s appeal was Morrison, the pouty, drug-ingesting “Lizard King” who became something of the Prince of Darkness in an era that did not lack for antiheroes--a figure extolling themes of undeniable attraction for Stone. “Look, I’m in my 40s,” the director says. “So I suppose this film is about the formation of our generation--the values we shared. People were out there, experiencing things, changing things. There were no limits, no laws. . . .”

Brian Grazer, an executive producer of “The Doors,” perceived two outlaws well-matched. “Oliver was my first choice as the director,” Grazer says. “He does what nobody else does--he takes dark, difficult subjects and turns them into hits.”

But hit making, as Stone likes to maintain, is not his goal. Rather, he single-mindedly goes after what he thinks of as the truths of his generation, wherever that search takes him: Vietnam, Wall Street, rock ‘n’ roll, even the Kennedy assassination. He describes the J.F.K. murder, the subject of his next film, which he will begin shooting this spring, as “the most covered-up crime of our era.” Although risk-taking and possibly radical in their intent, Stone’s films are increasingly mainstream, made with ever-larger budgets and more prestigious producers--Hemdale, Carolco and now, with the Kennedy film, Warner Bros. Success, for Stone, is a double-edged sword.

“Success?” asks the director, slightly startled. “That didn’t become popular as a concept until the ‘70s. Yeah, I have much more freedom to make the subjects that I want, but I don’t see myself as Darryl Zanuck. I would feel bad if I got indulgent. All good films come from people with an independent spirit, those who push. But the power of perception in the world is such that fringe ideas, when they are accepted, become mainstream--that because of their success they become a cliche.

“ ‘Platoon’ was a major innovation in our perception of what that war was. I thought ‘Born’ was a fairly radical statement; it took 10 years to make that picture--everybody passed on it. Once it was made and got eight Oscar nominations, it became a successful Hollywood movie. If it had not been successful, it would have been considered an outlaw film. Now, with the Kennedy film--why haven’t they made that already? Because people were fearful that it was uncommercial. I hope I was destined to make that picture.”

Those who know him suggest that Stone is indeed struggling to reconcile his renegade past with his current role as emerging power broker. “Oliver is conflicted about his success,” says one industry executive. “He hasn’t allowed his political sensibilities to get in the way of taking large amounts of money, and he struggles with that.”

“It isn’t about getting successful and having a career,” Stone says. “Going against success as a formula and embracing failure, like Morrison, where death becomes the last limit. . . . You mustn’t let money or power corrupt. I don’t feel in any way that I have compromised. I want to stay truthful to my era.”

STANDING HERE IN THE CAVERNOUS SOUND STAGE, Stone is putting the finishing touches on “The Doors.” While ostensibly another ‘60s film, “The Doors,” colleagues say, is actually a further cinematic echo of the director’s own persona as self-exiled prodigal son. As one actor puts it, “Although Oliver’s films seem to be about social issues, they are really about him.”

In conversation, Stone is by turns boyish, combative, thoughtful and overheated, one who seems to delight in spewing hyperbole as much in person as he does in his films. A husband and a father, he insists that his one regret is, “I didn’t sleep with all the women I could have.” A former drug user once busted in Mexico, he now calls cocaine “the biggest killer I know” but still salutes hallucinogenics as “fascinating.” A relentless advocate of the ‘60s, he disparages Woodstock as “a bunch of Boy Scouts getting together.” A most famous veteran, he is nonetheless disdained by some members of his old unit as a self-righteous blowhard with little sense of humor and a skewed perspective. (“He is very opinionated, over-generalizes the facts and bad-mouths people who have different points of view,” says Monte Newcombe, who served with Stone in Vietnam.)

As is well known, Stone made his mark as a movie maker five years ago when he turned his own life into film--"Platoon,” the 1986 Oscar-winning Vietnam War film that chronicled the director’s 1967-68 tour of duty. The movie won Best Picture and Best Director and grossed more than $160 million. Stone has made similar connections in his other less overtly biographical films. James Woods in “Salvador,” Charlie Sheen in “Wall Street,” Eric Bogosian in “Talk Radio,” Tom Cruise in “Born on the Fourth of July,” all played characters close to the director’s “male, Type-A personality,” says Bogosian. “Oliver makes movies about men under pressure.”

In “The Doors,” Stone evinces a similar fealty to Morrison, a contemporary of the director’s and a man also known for not tempering his excesses. “Jim had a thing where he went to the limits--women, drugs, alcohol, the law,” says Stone, who plays down some of Morrison’s excesses and recut parts of the film to make Kilmer’s character more likable. “His lyrics were earthy--snakes, fire, earth, death, fear, eros, sexuality. But he was also close to the French symbolist poets--Apollinaire, Rimbaud and a little Dylan Thomas. That combination--the high end and low end, black and white, vulgar and refined--I liked that contrast.”

It is a marriage of opposites that also fits Stone, who is described by those who know him as intense, passionate and smart, a prodigious director and writer whose early reputation for womanizing and drug taking never hindered an equally relentless work ethic. “He has the curiosity of a child and an incredible drive,” says Kenneth Lipper, an investment banker, author and consultant on “Wall Street.” “Oliver uses his films as an excuse to search out the facts--the truth--of a situation.”

Others who have worked for him say Stone is a masterful taskmaster who will manipulate, taunt and pressure cast and crew into sharing his commitment to the subject at hand. “He likes to do a lot of sparring to challenge you,” says actor Willem Dafoe, who starred in “Platoon” and “Born on the Fourth of July.” Adds Bogosian: “He expects you to be a self-starter and thick-skinned when it comes to criticism. And if he senses you can’t take it, he will move away from you fast. Being on a set with him can be very punishing. But at the end of the day, everyone wants to be around him.” Kyle MacLachlan, an actor best known as FBI man Dale Cooper in television’s “Twin Peaks,” who co-stars in “The Doors,” says simply, “I miss working with Oliver.”

With so many of the director’s oft-related demons so readily on the surface, so out there, it is a challenge to sift through the rhetoric. Ask Stone what he is looking for in his self-inflicted Sturm und Drang , and he scorns the question as “so obvious. OK, the 49ers to win.” But in the next breath he turns philosophical, cribbing from Milan Kundera, the celebrated Czech novelist: “the ‘Lightness of Being.’ We’re all looking for equanimity of our souls.”

HE IS TALL, ABOUT 6 FEET AND JUST SHORT OF formidable, with an arresting collision of cultures--French-American, Jewish-Roman Catholic--etched into a face that is all but haggard from years of hard living and late hours. Bleary-eyed, dressed totally in black, Stone is sandwiching in an interview in the midst of back-to-back editing sessions for Friday’s release of “The Doors.”

Surrounded by his editing crew, he holds court in a room that seems the extension of himself as both polemical filmmaker and erstwhile Peck’s Bad Boy--everything state-of-the-art and bigger-than-life. Extra-large leather sofas, screen the size of a football field, giant neon clock ticking off the frames. The sequence being edited this day is quintessential Stone. On screen, Morrison, played by Kilmer, heaves a television set at the head of Doors’ keyboardist Ray Manzarek: MacLachlan in flowing locks. The result--exploding glass and screamed epithets.

Stone flashes his signature gap-toothed grin. “There was a sound vacuum, and it’s making me crazy,” he says about the morning spent laying down extra decibels of breaking glass. “Sound abuse. I’m accused of that all the time,” he says. “But this is the noisiest film I’ve ever made. I have to gauge how much the audience can take after two hours and 15 minutes.” In Stone’s hands, “The Doors” is less an illustrated history of the band’s genesis or Morrison’s peculiarly tortured life than a visceral recreation of the world of ‘60s music. The approach is similar to the sensuous verisimilitude the director achieved in “Platoon,” the first Vietnam War film made by someone who had served. “I don’t want to reduce the ‘60s to a formula or say this is all-inclusive,” Stone says, “but it is about the texture of the ‘60s . . . how music was the big common denominator.”

Producer Grazer says the film is less linear and narrative than “a film made from a real rock-music point of view. Oliver has made a movie that shows that world as dangerous and erotic. It has a real feel for the period.”

Much of that feel comes from the director’s personal affinity for The Doors’ music, which he first encountered in Vietnam. He found the band “visceral and mystical,” Stone says. “The Doors were not a mainstream band like the Beatles or the Rolling Stones. Jim hated that whole teeny-bopper thing. There were decency rallies held against him.”

That Morrison’s grave site in Paris still has the faithful trekking to touch the headstone has only burnished the mystique of the tortured songwriter with the Kennedyesque jaw and the black leather pants that would, on occasion, not stay zipped. A well-known abuser of alcohol, drugs and women, Morrison was arrested in 1969 on obscenity charges after exposing himself during a Miami concert. “He was a pirate, a free soul, an anarchist,” Stone says. “I loved his spirit--a combination of James Dean and Brando, sexiness combined with sensitivity and rawness.”

Morrison’s persona transcended not only his performances but also his death in 1971, which Stone recalls as “like the day Kennedy died.” The revival of so-called Doorsmania, as Rolling Stone magazine referred to it, began 12 years ago when director Francis Ford Coppola used the band’s Oedipal song, “The End,” in his 1979 Vietnam film, “Apocalypse Now.” In 1981, the lurid, controversial Morrison biography, “No One Here Gets Out Alive” by Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman, the singer’s manager, was published. That same year, “The Doors’ Greatest Hits” was released and made it into Billboard’s Top 10. By 1981, Rolling Stone had Morrison on its cover with the headline, “He’s Hot, He’s Sexy . . . He’s Dead.”

Hollywood chased the Morrison story for nearly a decade while the Morrison estate and the surviving members of the band battled over the movie rights. Eventually, Grazer’s Imagine Productions held all the cards--a hefty $2-million development package--largely through the assistance of veteran rock producer Bill Graham, who shares production credit on the film. Grazer took the project to Stone--who had just passed on the on-again, off-again “Evita"--and Mario Kossar’s Carolco Productions, which had signed the director to a two-picture deal.

For Stone, directing “The Doors” brought several new challenges. “It was a very complicated screenplay to write,” says Stone, who shares screenwriting credit with J. Randal Johnson, who had done an earlier draft. Using his usual reporter’s approach, Stone plowed through “250 transcripts from people who had known Jim. It was like ‘Citizen Kane’ in a way--everyone had a different point of view.” Stone shot the film last spring with 30,000 extras for concert scenes in San Francisco, New York, Paris and Los Angeles, including the L. A. clubs Whisky a Go-Go and The Central, which doubled as the old London Fog.

Recreating The Doors’ sound on film proved more difficult. Kilmer, a baritone like Morrison, was cast after Stone interviewed hundreds of actors. Perhaps best known as Ice Man, Tom Cruise’s nemesis in the film “Top Gun,” Kilmer had been so eager to land the role that he recorded an entire Doors album, substituting his own vocals for Morrison’s. In a similar move, Stone decided to obtain the rights to The Doors’ master tapes minus Morrison’s lead vocals. He then spliced the original soundtracks with performances by the actors--Kilmer, MacLachlan, Kevin Dillon and Frank Whaley, who learned to play instruments for the film. The film’s final cut contains 25 Doors songs, including such classic hits as “L. A. Woman,” “Crystal Ship,” “Light My Fire” and “The End.” The music was recorded with “a little bit of Jim Morrison’s vocals--and in the concert scenes I have mixed in the actors’ voices, and I defy you to find the difference,” Stone says.

Kilmer describes Stone as “a person of vision and integrity. He has lived triumph and horrors. And I can tell you his life does not pass unexamined. Look at his body of work. It pulls from his introspection, knowledge and vast intuition.”

Indeed, ask Stone what he hopes the reception for his film will be, and he launches into another paternalistic eulogy for the ‘60s. “A lot of people will want to see this the way they wanted to see Tom Cruise in ‘Born,’ so they can be given an alternative way of looking at things,” he says. “These kids have grown up with Travolta and disco, the high-tech world of the ‘80s, and maybe they have never even seen that there is a different, an alternative, lifestyle, a world we’ve lost touch with.”

“WHAT WAS YOUR FAVORITE BAND OF THE ‘60s?”

Stone is asking this over lunch of Thai soup--hot as napalm--set out for him and his guest in an upstairs conference room. With Stone, that isn’t an idle question; it’s a password, a test of character, sort of like the soup he’s ordered--beyond an ordinary mortal’s standards. “Come on, it’s good for you,” he says laughing at his guest’s discomfort. “It puts hair on your chest.”

Shying away from risks is the ultimate sin with Stone, the only child of a privileged Manhattan couple, a stockbroker father and socialite mother. Stone wore a coat and tie every day to prep school, wrote weekly essays for his father--who paid him 25 cents each--and embarked on his well-documented fall from grace as soon as he was able. Says one old friend: “Oliver grew up with a lot of contradictions in his life--Jewish father, French Roman Catholic mother who was this semi-Regine-type character. Oliver led this sort of Eurotrash jet-setter’s life--even after his parents were divorced--where nothing was normal.”

“My mother was never in bed before 3 in the morning,” Stone recalls. “She used to take me to France in the summers, and she was a great fan of movies, took me out of school to go to double and triple features. She was this kind of Auntie Mame person. ‘Evita’ would have been my homage to her.”

His parents’ divorce when he was 16 years old, Stone says, “was like parting the curtains of a stage play and seeing what was really there. I found out about a whole lot of things--affairs--I had been blind to. After that, I felt I was really on my own.”

The divorce also coincided with a larger rupture--Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, the de facto starting gun of the ‘60s. “I had no faith in my parents’ generation after that,” Stone says. “By 1965, I was in Vietnam"--first as a teacher and a merchant marine, later as an Army enlistee.

He briefly attended Yale University, his father’s alma mater, which he says he “hated, especially since it was before women were admitted.” Stone dropped out and headed for Vietnam.

He was wounded twice and earned a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart in a tour of duty that was later chronicled in “Platoon.” “He was never a regular GI Joe,” recalls Crutcher Patterson, a former member of Stone’s platoon. “He was pretty green, a loner and moody, always writing things. Whenever we got a break, he would stop and write a little descriptive story about it.”

During his brief Army career, Stone abandoned the idea of being a writer--he had written a novel at 18--to become a filmmaker. “Being there was a very sensual experience, and I started thinking in visual terms,” Stone says. “In Vietnam, all your senses were awakened. You had to see better, smell better, hear better. It was very sensual, with the jungle six inches in front of your face. You couldn’t think along abstract lines--you had to become more animalistic or you wouldn’t survive.”

He bought a still camera and started taking pictures even before he left for home. Once Stone returned to New York, “I got a super-8 right away and started making home movies.” He enrolled at New York University’s film school, where he studied under director Martin Scorsese, drove a cab, married Najwa Sarkis--an official at the Moroccan mission to the United Nations--and made “short, crude 16-millimeter films that were really screwed up,” Stone says. “They were arty, kind of abstract poems with a touch of Orson Welles and the French New Wave filmmakers--Goddard, Resnais, Bunuel. I was trying to get away from a normal narrative line.”

He was also pursuing a similar line in his personal life. Arrested for marijuana possession in Mexico 10 days after his return from Vietnam, Stone became well known for using drugs, an experience that later informed his screenplay for Brian DePalma’s “Scarface.”

“I started smoking cigarettes on the plane going over to Vietnam,” says Stone. “Once I got there, the guys I liked best had been around drugs for ages, and I started doing acid and marijuana. I also got into the music. I had never heard Motown before then. Jefferson Airplane and the Doors. Jim was the acid king. It was all part of the Zeitgeist. “

It was a taste for substance abuse, topped off with an appetite for pursuing women, that Stone, newly divorced, took with him to Los Angeles in the mid-1970s as an aspiring screenwriter. He soon had a reputation notable even by Hollywood’s standards. “He always had a million women in his life,” says one female former friend. “I don’t think he missed too many.”

In Hollywood, Stone wrote “Platoon,” and although it would be more than 10 years before he would get it made, the script earned him attention as a writer of unusual force.

“I was looking for a writer for ‘Conan’ ” recalls Ed Pressman, an independent film producer who worked with Stone on “Conan the Barbarian” and several films since, including “Born.” “His agent showed me ‘Platoon,’ and I was very taken with it. His script for ‘Conan’ was a great screenplay. Like Dante’s ‘Inferno.’ ”

The success of that film led to other screenwriting assignments--"Midnight Express,” “Scarface,” “Year of the Dragon” among others--all white-hot, unsubtle stories, the type that increasingly became Stone’s signature. He won his first Oscar for “Midnight Express,” which led to his first directing opportunity--"The Hand,” a marginal thriller starring Michael Caine that failed at the box office and temporarily stalled Stone’s directing career. Eventually, he was able to make the low-budget “Salvador” through Hemdale Productions, followed by “Platoon,” a $6-million film that Orion picked up from Hemdale and that saw grosses in the hundreds of millions. After that, Stone was admitted to the big leagues--directing Michael Douglas in “Wall Street” and Tom Cruise in “Born on the Fourth of July.” The latter film, based on Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic’s life story, won Stone his second Best Director award but lost out for Best Picture to the crowd pleaser “Driving Miss Daisy"--a loss that Stone took particularly hard. “We made over $60 million with that film--an incredible success. I guess it was just not meant to be.”

Today, Stone has remarried and divides his time among homes in Santa Monica, Montecito and Colorado with his wife, Elizabeth, a former nurse, and their 6-year-old son, Sean, who plays young Morrison in “The Doors.” Stone hasn’t lost his concern for current events: “I’m praying for our soldiers, who are making the ultimate sacrifice in the Gulf War, but I don’t think Bush ever intended to negotiate. There was a military-industrial complex that pushed us into this.” Friends add that the director’s only real interest these days, in addition to making films, “is trying to set up other films.”

Have Stone’s demons finally gone AWOL? “I didn’t say I didn’t miss my old life,” he says with a half-smile. “I love the concept of suburbia, but I also love going to New York and Europe and Asia, meeting new people. My wife and I are different that way. I have a restlessness that never stops.”

Indeed, as soon as “The Doors” opens, Stone is off to Dallas to begin shooting his version of the Kennedy assassination, a film that Stone describes as “the untold story of a murder that occurred at the dawn of our adulthood. It’s a bit like ‘Hamlet.’ You know, the real king was killed, and a fake king put on the throne.” Suggest to Stone that some of Camelot’s luster has tarnished since 1963, and the director says quietly, “There has been an incredible disinformation campaign put out about him. A lot of misinformation. I am using everything I have to get this film made.”

Ask Stone if he likes where he is positioned now in the industry and he laughs. “Oh, this is the part where you’re going to quote me, right? The outlaw director.”

If Stone is cagey about self-definition these days, friends seem equally divided. Some, such as Pressman, who produced “Blue Steel” and “Reversal of Fortune” with Stone, say the director “is at the top of his game. I was always mesmerized and excited by his personality, but now he is much more comfortable with himself and a lot easier to work with.”

But another Hollywood executive suggests that “Oliver has not changed much. He really hasn’t mellowed. He is conflicted about his ‘financial’ success. But that’s how Hollywood respects you--they pay for what they respect, and his movies now make money.”

Stone does seem to be a man with his eye fixed perpetually over his shoulder, one who keeps a daily diary and who describes the art of filmmaking as giving vent to “that other person that is in you. The shadow self, the one that is always walking behind you. The real you, the deeper you.

“I’m not going to say I’m a lone soul here, wandering through my own soundtrack,” he says. “I enjoy the community of people who love movies. And I like using the power that I have to make things happen. But will I be doing this forever? Maybe I’ll be working in Eritrea or the Sudan, or maybe I’ll become a journalist for Rolling Stone.”

Stone has spent several hours over lunch, repeatedly waving off his crew, but now his impatience is tangible. “I still don’t like the answer I gave you about the ‘60s, how this film relates to this current generation. I felt stupid. I was doing a lot of ‘ums’ and ‘ahs,’ ” he says, suddenly obsessed with his image.

“I don’t want to believe in generation conflict, but it’s there. I feel distant from my own generation, out of step with the people my age who went to college. I always identified more with the Charlie Sheen generation, that younger group who came up, because it gave me new life. I was able to act out my own history through them, skip a generation and go back to it again. Believe me, that’s exciting, and I’m grateful for that chance because our tribal rituals are the same. It doesn’t have to be Jim Morrison or Vietnam; it’s about going out there and finding yourself.”

-Hilary de Vries, “RIDER ON THE STORM : With ‘The Doors,’ Director Oliver Stone Exhumes the ‘60s in All Their Lurid Excess,” Los Angeles Times, Feb 24 1991 [x]

[chiseler]

SYLVIA SIDNEY: Jailhouse Blues

“She always looked like she was gonna cry!” my grandmother would exclaim whenever Sylvia Sidney came up. In her 1930s heyday, Sidney was constantly cast as the victim of circumstance, hovering at the very bottom of the economic ladder, mixed up in crime and usually winding up in or near jail. “I was paid by the tear,” Sidney joked later, and that knowing comment is a measure of just how different she was from her on-screen persona. “My mother and I adored her and her films,” said Tennessee Williams. “She was always so fragile and plaintive. She appeared to need protection. Let me tell you: Sylvia needs no protection. She may look frail, but look in that exquisite purse she carries with her: it contains the balls of thousands of men who annoyed her; the hearts of those who crossed her; and the locations of those who betrayed her.”

Sidney was born Sophia Kosow in 1910 in the Bronx to a Russian-Romanian Jewish family. She studied at the Theatre Guild School as a teenager and was acting on Broadway at age 17. Sidney was unhappy with her screen debut, Thru Different Eyes (1929), a film made at Fox where she played a murderess, and she returned to the stage. While acting in the play Bad Girl, she was spotted by Paramount head of production B.P. Schulberg, who promised that if she signed with his studio that she would play in an adaptation of Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy. Tempted by that, and by Schulberg himself, she signed with Paramount and was soon rushed into the lead role in Rouben Mammalian’s City Streets (1931), replacing Clara Bow, who had had a breakdown.

Sidney gets quite an entrance in the arty City Streets, winking at a criminal accomplice before being seen in a screen-filling close-up where she is closing one eye to fire a gun in a shooting gallery. Her heart-shaped face looks vulnerable, but when she talks in this movie, the toughness of the Bronx comes through: “You oughten to be wastin’ yer dough in these joints,” she tells Gary Cooper, as they wander through a carnival and start to fall for each other. On a beach with Cooper, Sidney treats us to one of her secret weapons, a sunburst of a smile that transforms her face, puffing out her cheeks and nearly shutting her eyes with pure joy. Such joy never lasts long for Sidney on screen, however. She gets sent to jail here and then suffers some more and tears up most fetchingly when she realizes Cooper has joined her father’s criminal underworld. Sidney rarely played smart women in her youth. The girls she pretended to be were always a little dim so that fate could sock it to them as hard as possible. “I didn’t mind playing unhappy characters,” she said later. “Every young actress thinks she’s a tragedian—the more tragic the roles, the more you cry, the more you suffer, the better an actress you are.”

In Josef Von Sternberg’s version of An American Tragedy (1931), Sidney makes a far more appealing victim than Shelley Winters did in the remake, A Place in the Sun (1951). Her Roberta is an innocent girl, looking wide-eyed with shock when social climber Clyde (Phillips Holmes) first kisses her, but she falls deeply in love with him, pleading soulfully, “Please don’t go,” when he wants to sleep with her. Lovely as she is, Sidney’s Roberta is also a bit of a clinging vine and seems fated to turn slovenly and bitter through lack of money and opportunity. Sidney is alarmingly good at being pitiful here, and she’s particularly pathetic when Von Sternberg actually shows her drowning after a boat tips over, calling out for help several times before finally going under. In King Vidor’s adaptation of Elmer Rice’s play Street Scene (1931), Sidney is a bit of a flirt at first, but she soon suffers to the utmost. These three movies were all carefully made and designed to show off Sidney’s best assets, and together they made her a star.

She was framed for murder and sent to the hoosegow again in Ladies of the Big House (1931). Off screen, Sidney became Schulberg’s mistress, and you’d think that might have won her special privileges, but she started to get a reputation for being difficult when she complained about being stuck in bad movies like The Miracle Man (1932) and Madame Butterfly (1932). “They considered me a bitch,” she said, and the studio loved putting her in punishing positions in films. She wound up in jail once more in Pick-Up (1933), and in the sleazy Good Dame (1934) she is accosted by the infamous Pre-Code sex fiend Jack La Rue, who offers her a part in a girlie show. “I’m not a cooch dancer!” she protests to Fredric March. “I gotta take a job cuz I’m broke!” Thirty Day Princess (1934) was one of her few changes of pace, a bit of froth that might have made a meal for Claudette Colbert or Carole Lombard, but Sidney can’t function in screwball comedy. Her eyes look habitually anxious in Thirty Day Princess, as if she fears she might be thrown in the slammer at any moment.

Her relationship with Schulberg ended in 1934 when he returned to his wife. Sidney signed with independent producer Walter Wanger, who had produced her last credit on her old Paramount contract, an archetypal Sidney film, Mary Burns, Fugitive (1935), where her bad lot boyfriend helps to railroad her into prison for a crime she didn’t commit. At this point on screen, Sidney was starting to seem like a regular paranoid, constantly looking worried and speaking tentatively in her high, strained voice (all traces of the Bronx had been wiped out of it by this point).

While in New York, Sidney entered into a very brief marriage with publisher Bennett Cerf, who advised, “One should never legalize a hot romance.” She looked beautiful in three-strip Technicolor as a mountain girl in The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936) and then followed that film with two masterpieces in a row, Fritz Lang’s Fury (1936) and Alfred Hitchcock’s Sabotage (1936). As Spencer Tracy’s sweet fiancée in Fury, Sidney ably carried her usual load of suffering, believably fleshing out her love for Tracy in the first scenes and then looking memorably stunned in close up as she watches a lynch mob try to burn her man up in a jail.

As Mrs. Verloc in Sabotage, Sidney runs a cinema, and she makes it very clear that this woman, who is only known by her married name, has made a loveless marriage to Mr. Verloc (Oscar Homolka) solely so her charmingly mischievous little brother Stevie (Desmond Tester) can be taken care of. She’s nice but not very bright, and so she doesn’t discern that Mr. Verloc is a terrorist until after her brother has been blown up by one of his bombs. When she realizes what has happened, Sidney faints. After she’s revived, she says, “I want Mr. Verloc, I want to see Mr. Verloc,” in a trance-like voice. This is a truly tragic film that does not let either her or the audience off the hook, and Sidney goes the full distance with it. She has the sort of face that looks like it knows the worst before it happens, and so when the worst does happen, it just confirms the anxiety in her eyes.

Sidney’s Mrs. Verloc sinks down into sheer misery when Mr. Verloc talks to her about her brother’s death in a callous, sociopathic way. She stumbles out into her cinema and hears people laughing at a Disney cartoon. Grateful for any distraction, Mrs. Verloc sits down in the theater herself and laughs a little at the cartoon until a bird is shot and a bass voice sings out, “Who killed Cock Robin? Who killed Cock Robin?” The smile on Sidney’s face dies away instantly—she looks like she’s been stabbed in the back. It’s an unforgettable moment, as is the piercing little cry she lets out when she stabs Mr. Verloc with a carving knife, not vengefully but fearfully, as if she has no control over what she’s doing, and what she’s doing simply needs to be done. “Stevie, Stevie,” she cries, in her high, helpless voice, after executing Mr. Verloc. This is Sidney’s finest hour on the screen, her flair for suffering put at the center of one of Hitchcock’s most unsparing looks at evil and its consequences.

Sidney then entered wholeheartedly into the l’amour fou of Fritz Lang’s You Only Live Once (1937) as a faithful lover of a convict (Henry Fonda) on the run who becomes a criminal herself. In William Wyler’s Dead End (1937), she wears little make-up and is not afraid to appear totally downtrodden, alternating between toughness and tears. Her third outing with the tyrannical Lang was You and Me (1938), a strange movie where yet again she is an ex-convict involved in crime. In …One Third of a Nation (1939), where she plays opposite a very young Sidney Lumet, Sidney looks dead tired of this type of socially conscious leftist ‘30s film. Watching a bunch of Sidney’s 1930s movies in a row, I couldn’t count the number of times I said, “Poor thing, poor thing.”

Nearly ten years of cinematic suffering had taken their toll on Sidney, and she had made many enemies. “I used to fight,” Sidney said later. “Yes, it’s true. I even used to throw telephone books and anything else I could get to at the time. Everything that didn’t go smoothly annoyed me terribly. And I flew off the handle and got myself terribly disliked.” She married the actor Luther Adler and returned to the theater for a number of years, making a brief comeback with James Cagney in Blood on the Sun (1945), where she played a glamorous half-Chinese woman. She was still typecast for suffering as Fanzine in Les Miserables (1952), and this was the beginning of an awkward period where her looks had changed and slightly coarsened so that she couldn’t play leading lady roles anymore but was still too young for character parts.

Sidney survived on stage and on television before making a second and very successful film comeback with a brief but flashy role as Joanne Woodward’s acidic mother in Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams (1973), which won her her only Academy Award nomination. This was followed by a steady stream of parts, some thankless, some juicy, in a variety of films and TV projects. A long-time smoker, Sidney’s high voice had lowered to a gravelly baritone, which was particularly amusing in Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice (1988), where she played a caseworker for the dead who smokes through a long slash in her throat.

Burton used her again for her final film, Mars Attacks! (1996), in which she played a spacey, ill-tempered Grandmother in a wheelchair who foils the alien monsters with her favorite Slim Whitman records. “They blew up Congress!” she cackles at one point, seemingly glad that “the system” which landed her in jail so many times on screen was being destroyed. Off screen, Sidney enjoyed being thoroughly not nice, not the victim anymore but the gleeful victimizer. “She was a bitch on wheels!” says film distributor Gene Stavis, who knew her a bit. “A naturally nasty lady. She could never let an opportunity pass without laying a zinger on someone. I guess she didn’t want to be thought of as a sentimental old lady, so she went wildly in the other direction.”

by Dan Callahan

[taiwanpuppetryproudthunderbolt]

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May 1, 1988

 “Doc” Chamberlain and the Wallenberg challenge

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At the end of the World War Two in 1945, 100,000 people destined to die were still alive thanks to the efforts of one man. In six short months this man achieved a miracle. By a blend of courage, audacity and ingenuity, he was able to save the lives of tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews who had been earmarked for Nazi concentration camps and certain death. Then he disappeared.

This man was Raoul Wallenberg. Until recently his name meant nothing around the world and even today few people have heard of his bravery. But this week a new two-part mini-series on TV, starring Richard Chamberlain, brings to light an extraordinary story. The chance to play Wallenberg was sought avidly by Chamberlain.

As the war progressed Raoul became increasingly alarmed about the persecution of the Jews. At the time the full horror of Nazi policy was not widely known. Rumours and dreadful stories were seeping out of Germany, but the implications were so terrible that many people could not take them seriously. They couldn’t believe that even Hitler would be mad enough to try an exterminate an entire race. However, Raoul Wallenberg was prepared to believe it. In 1944, Wallenberg was given instant diplomatic status by Sweden and dispatched to the Swedish Legion in Budapest with instructions to do whatever he considered necessary to save lives. It was a delicate situation to be launched into. Wallenberg’s mission brough him into direct conflict with the notorious Adolf Eichmann who had already despatched 400,000 Hungarian Jews and was planning to rid himself as quickly as possible of the 230,000 still living in Budapest…

There’s one other person who rubs his hands with glee when Richard Chamberlain chooses a new part. His travel agent. Foreign parts are the ones Chamberlain likes best, and for the past few years his feet have hardly touched the ground in the homes he keeps in Los Angeles, New York and Hawaii.

He has worked in Spain, Italy, Britain, Austrailia, Japan, Canad, Greenland, Yugoslavia and South Africa and holidayed in Greece, North Africa and South America.

He’s filming in Zimbabwe at the moment on a remake of King Solomon’s Mine, and when he comes ‘home’ to California, he’ll go straight to Oregon to start work on a western mini-series. After that he guarantees his itchy feet and tireless travel agent will be sending him off to another far-flung location.

Since last summer, when he started research in New York and Yugoslavia on Wallenberg, Chamberlain has travelled non-stop. It can be a lonely life -not the most gregarious type, he doesn’t socialise night and day with his co-stars- but he has it all worked out to a fine art.

“Because I travel and live in hotels so much, I’ve figured out a way to turn my room into a gym,” he says. “I do pull-ups on the door, lift chairs, and take an exercise mat with me. It’s easy to eat as if you were at home -fruit, vegetables, rice. And everywhere I go I collect things for my homes: paintings, furniture, antiques, sculpture. Sometimes, like the time I was making the Shogun series in Japan, the country and its culture take over. I got back to Los Angeles, tore my house apart and turned it into a Japanese-style house with everything I’d brought back.” It took him so long to do, he had to rent the house next door to live in while work went on at his house.

His fame as television heart-throb Dr Kildare still follows him around the world however hard he tries to shake it off and, 23 years after the series was first seen, it’s now being re-run on British television. Chamberlain cites six weeks in Peru in 1982 as the only time he has been able to enjoy real anonymity. “A bunch of us, about 20 people mostly outside showbusiness, stayed overnight in monasteries and real out-of-the-way places. I was able to enjoy immediately the kind of person-to-person contact that takes longer to establish when you’ve got to get past my public identity.” Only once, in Lima, was he bothered by a photographer chasing him around.

You get the feeling he could do with more holidays like that, for he is polite, shy and earnest, an intensely private man who still finds it difficult living in the public spotlight. Born to a middle-class family in Los Angeles, he was something of a loner and a poor student -art was the only subject he was interested in- and at 16 he was voted the most reserved, courteous and sophisticated person in class. His parents thought he would join the family manufacturing business, like his older brother, Bill. Instead he became an artist and sculptor -his work sold well- and then turned to acting, a decision that surprised everyone, as his only interest in drama had been a brief appearance in a school play.

The Raoul Wallenberg story is one that has fascinated Chamberlain for a long time. An actor who has planned his career as much for challenge and variety as the travel opportunities it offers, he started agitating for the role four years ago. “Sometimes it seems that anything I really want takes three years to come my way,” he said, once he knew he had the part. “I waited that long to get John Blackthorne in Shogun and almost as long for my role in The Thorn Birds.”

This year marks the 40th anniversary of Wallenberg’s disappearance, and Chamberlain says his wildest dream is that the mini-series will provide some sort of answer to the mystery. “My goal is to help influence public opinion, to apply as much diplomatic pressure as possible to find out if Wallenberg is still alive.”

Most of Chamberlain’s TV roles in recent years -like Wallenberg- have been ones that have stretched him. There was Dr. Cook in the 1984 TV movie Cook and Peary: The Race to the Pole, a man who was obsessed with his desire to become first to reach the North Pole; the Elizabethian sea captain who becomes the legendary samurai warrior in Shogun, the complex Father Ralph de Bricassart, torn between his religion and his love for Maggie Cleary, in The Thorn Birds.

Now, Wallenberg -a role well worth the wait. He smiles at his nickname -“king of the mini-series”- but such work has earned him three Emmy nominations in the past nine years. He is proud of that track record -even if he has yet to win. He did allow himself to get excited about his award chance for The Thorn Birds but was beaten by Tommy Lee Jones in The Executioner’s Song.

A confirmed bachelor, he is the first to agree that his work is the most important thing in his life. His mother worries about him being lonely -his father died recently- but he claims it isn’t a problem. “I have a lot of wonderful friends. This is a very heavily populated time in my life.”

“I’m easily amused. I like to go to the movies and to the theatre. I like to spend time with friends. I like to have a few people over for dinner. I like to go out to dinner, to go camping and I love to travel.”

Wallenberg involved him so deeply it took him a long time to recover. He still talks about the chilling research he was involved with.

 “In New York I met a woman who, as a child, was literally snatched from a death march by Wallenberg. Her story was one of the most harrowing things I’ve ever heard.”

“If I can play people like Wallenberg on television, I don’t feel anything is missing from my life. I don’t need anything else.”

   Wallenberg: A Hero’s Story

Directed by

Lamont Johnson

 An Emmy Award-winning drama about Raoul Wallenberg, one of the most exemplary individuals of the twentieth century.   

Wallenberg was born into the wealthiest family in Sweden. He was an aristocrat and a Lutheran. His country had remained neutral throughout World War II, and the fighting would be over within a year. Yet he was willing to leave everything behind and go to the storm center of war-torn Europe on a dangerous and purely humanitarian mission to rescue Hungary’s besieged Jews. He courageously — often individually — confronted the last gasp of Nazi terror.

He is credited with saving nearly 100,000 lives, one-eighth of Hungary’s Jewish community, more people than were rescued by any other individual or institution in Europe. He demonstrated a boundless talent for compassion.

Richard Chamberlain stars as Wallenberg. Others in the outstanding international cast are Bibi Andersson, Alice Krige, Kenneth Colley, Melanie Mayron, and Stuart Wilson. Lamont Johnson, who is the co-producer with Richard Irving, directs from a screenplay by Emmy Award-winner Gerald Green (Holocaust).

The Story

In April 1944, Germany has retreated from Russia. In occupied Hungary, the Nazis plan to complete the “Final Solution,” the extermination of Europe’s Jews. They are supported by the Arrow Cross, a Hungarian fascist and anti-Semitic organization. Within two months, 400,000 Jews are deported from the Hungarian provinces to the Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps.

SS Lt. Col. Adolf Eichmann (Kenneth Colley), chief of the Gestapo’s Jewish section, is supervising the campaign against the Jews of Budapest, one of the largest Jewish communities remaining in Europe. The Nazi bureaucrat attends a party hosted by Admiral Nikolas Horthy (Guy Deghy), the Regent of Hungary, and expresses his displeasure at the Hungarian’s protection of some Jews. Meanwhile in the city, Arrow Cross youth are burning a synagogue. Teicholz (Ralph Arliss) and Nikki Fodor (Mark Rylance), who are active in the Jewish resistance, warn the Jewish musical society, including Hannah (Georgia Slowe) and her father Tibor Moritz (Olaf Pooley), to stay off the streets.

In Sweden, at the country estate of the Wallenbergs, a rich and illustrious banking family, the scene is very different as they celebrate the beginning of spring. Maj von Dardel (Bibi Andersson) is the mother of 32-year-old Raoul Wallenberg (Richard Chamberlain), who has studied architecture in America and is now working in the import-export business. Both she and Uncle Jacob (Keve Hjelm) are embarrassed when Raoul does a satirical impersonation of Hitler in front of a German guest. Raoul’s humor masks a deeply felt anger at the Nazi persecution of the Jews and the indifference of his fellow Swedes to their fate.

When Wallenberg is approached to head a rescue mission for Hungary’s Jews sponsored by America’s War Refugee Board, he immediately realizes it is his opportunity to make a difference. He is given diplomatic rank as a secretary in the Royal Swedish Legation in Budapest. The Swedish Foreign Ministry agrees that he will be free to use unorthodox methods if necessary to save Jews.

Arriving in Budapest in early July 1944, Wallenberg is briefed by Per Anger (David Robb), a Swedish diplomat who has initiated a modest rescue operation by distributing protective passes to Jews who can establish a family or business connection in Sweden. Eichmann has begun mass arrests and deportations in Budapest, and the Embassy is swamped with requests for the passes.

After a meeting in which Eichmann tries to smooth talk the Jewish Council into providing volunteer workers for the German war effort, he is enraged to learn that Horthy, responding to an appeal from Sweden’s King Gustav delivered by Wallenberg, has turned back a train carrying 12,000 Jews to the concentration camps. Later, at a nightclub, Eichmann meets his newly arrived adversary and scoffs at his  humanitarian mission. The Swede realizes why the Nazi has been nicknamed “the Bloodhound.”

Wallenberg sets up headquarters and staffs his operation with Jews,  including Sonya (Melanie Mayron), a former teacher with a young son. The old protective passes are redesigned to look more official and to give the bearer the full protection of the Royal Swedish Legation. Wallenberg convinces Horthy to recognize the validity of 4,500 of these “schutz-passes” for Budapest Jews. Nikki Fodor obtains one pass, and the Jewish resistance begins forging copies.

Wallenberg arranges sanctuary for the protected Jews in “safe houses” flying the Swedish flag. Food and clothing are gathered for the refugees. His example inspires other neutral diplomats from Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, and the Vatican to provide shelter and issue passes of their own. When Eichmann abruptly leaves for Germany in late August, Wallenberg and Anger wonder if they might be making progress in their fight.

All the combined efforts are jeopardized, however, when in October 1944 Horthy is forced to abdicate and the Germans move into Hungary in greater strength. Colonel Ferencz Szalasi (Aubrey Morris), head of the Arrow Cross, assumes power. Members of his party begin executing Jews in the streets. The neutral countries’ protective passes are declared invalid. Eichmann returns and announces to the Jewish Council that Jews are needed in the labor camps and will be marched there.

Wallenberg is undaunted. Armed only with books containing the names of those who have been given Swedish passes, he goes to a work brigade and demands that protected Jews be released to him. As Nikki, Hannah and Tibor Moritz watch, he stares down the SS captain standing in his way.

When the Nazi persecution and Arrow Cross atrocities increase, Wallenberg uses diplomatic ploys, ruses and bluffs to pull Jews out of the work camps. He turns to a new ally, Baroness Liesl Kemeny (Alice Krige), the young Catholic wife of Foreign Minister Baron Gabor Kemeny (Stuart Wilson). She is shocked by his account of the Nazis’ treatment of the Jews and alarmed when he warns that her husband could be executed as a war criminal if he continues to support the Arrow Cross and Nazi policies. She persuades the Baron to have the validity of the protective passes re-established.

In a face-to-face encounter with Eichmann. Wallenberg demands that he stop the deportations. The German is unmoved by appeals or threats. He orders Wallenberg killed, but the attempt fails.

The death marches commence in early November. Thousands of Jews are herded out of the city by SS and Arrow Cross guards. Sonya and her son are among those forced from one of the Swedish safe houses. In a desperate attempt to save them and some 400 other Jews, Wallenberg and Anger drive to the train station. After bribing the guards, they literally pull the Jews off the train. Later, Raoul bids farewell to Baroness Kemeny, who has been exiled to Italy. The Russians are just outside Budapest.

Wallenberg and Eichmann meet again. The Nazi boasts about his accomplishments when asked once again to spare the Jews. He leaves for Vienna after instructing his men to kill the Jews in Budapest’s central ghetto. Wallenberg intervenes and convinces the SS general in charge to countermand the order.

Russian troops enter the city. Wallenberg has designed a relief plan for Budapest and prepares now to take it to the Russian command. On the way to Debrecen, his car is stopped. On January 17, 1945, Raoul Wallenberg is taken into Russian custody. No explanation for this action is given.

Wallenberg’s Legacy

After Wallenberg was taken into what was later termed “protective custody” by the Russians as Budapest was being liberated, he disappeared into the Russian prison system. What happened to him there was never determined to the satisfaction of his family and friends. After repeated requests for information about him, the Soviet Union in 1957 announced that he died in July 1947. No evidence was produced to support the claims, and it was stated that all persons witness to his death were also dead. Nevertheless, reports from prisoners coming out of the Soviet gulag have led some to believe that Wallenberg was alive through the 1970s.

Although his fate is unknown, Wallenberg’s legacy is secure — not only in the lives of those he saved, but also in his example of compassion and courage. On the way to the Holocaust Museum on the western outskirts of Jerusalem is an avenue of trees. Each tree commemorates a Gentile who risked his or her life to save Jews during the Hitler years. The medal identifying each “Righteous Gentile” contains a Talmudic inscription: “Whoever saves a single soul, it is as if he saved the whole world.” One of them is the Raoul Wallenberg tree.

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