#if they ever make a biopic about me I want it edited like this

[imagitory]

Review: Wicked (Part One)

Fellow Ozians...I am happy to report that as of five hours ago (yeah, it took me over four hours to write and edit this!!), my mother and I have seen the film adaptation of the first act of the Broadway musical Wicked! I have been both so excited and anxious anticipating this movie ever since it was first announced -- that excitement rose to a fever pitch seeing the footage released to the public, and at long last, I've finally seen the full movie!!

For those of you who wish a spoiler-free review, I will just say this film surpassed all of my expectations. And my expectations almost had to be high for something inspired by a beloved film like The Wizard of Oz, let alone for a musical that is so dear to my heart. This movie celebrated and embraced all of what Oz is -- not just the Schwartz musical, but the original book, the Maguire novel, and the 1939 classic -- while still bringing a fresh, new, and different kind of color to the material that makes it stand apart on its own merits. Its messages were timely, its visuals were incredible, and the level of talent in every conceivable area from casting to costume and scenic design is in the stratosphere. This film truly defied gravity...and everyone, theater fan or not, needs to see this.

For those of you who want to read a more comprehensive, spoilerific review, check under the cut! 💚

The Good!

+Maybe it's appropriate that we start the "good" section with our Good Witch, Ariana Grande as Glinda. I have to admit, I was initially skeptical when I heard she'd been cast, as I was afraid that she -- like Emma Watson, Pierce Brosnan, and Russell Crowe before her -- had been chosen for the part for her fame and not for her appropriateness for the role. After all, my main frame of reference for Ariana Grande was as a very talented mezzo-range pop singer with a great belt who often didn't enunciate her words very well. I had no idea if she could play a role that was designed for Kristen Chenoweth, the quintessential over-the-top, comedic first soprano. Thankfully after seeing the released clip of What is This Feeling?, all of my worries were laid to rest, and after seeing this film? Quite frankly, Ariana ate and left no crumbs with this performance. Her vocal range was only matched by both her comedic timing and sympathetic performance. Throw verbal slings and arrows at me if you want, but I actually think Ariana even did better than Kristen Chenoweth did in making Glinda a relatable character, rather than just a punchline. Glinda's resentment of Elphaba's relationship with Madame Morrible and longing to prove herself to the sorceress was really well accented here, and the instant regret Glinda feels upon learning Elphaba stuck her neck out for her with Madame Morrible and yet was just about to enter the Ozdust dressed in the "ugly" hat Glinda gave her was palpable. More excellent acting from Ariana came in the opening scene where Glinda returns to Munchkinland, and you can see the visible flickers of pain in her expression seeing everyone rant about how no one will mourn "the Wicked Witch" and the Munchkins pulling the wooden witch set to be burned into the town square. I always felt this subtext before while listening to the song and seeing the musical, but I felt Ariana embraced the interpretation I'd always had in my head that when Glinda sings of how "the Wicked's lives are lonely" and when the Munchkins sing that "the Wicked cry alone," Glinda envisioned herself as the truly wicked one...because now, in this moment, the two most important people in her life are gone, and she's left to mourn them alone, with no one else likely ever to know her suffering.

+Ah, but yes, I can't talk about our Good Witch without bringing up our "Bad Witch," Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba. I never had any doubts about Cynthia's casting after seeing her performance in the biopic Harriet and hearing her sing in the revival cast for The Color Purple, and as I knew she would be, she was absolutely fan-friggin'-tastic. Elphaba has been one of my favorite Broadway musical characters from the time I was in middle school, and Cynthia just brought so much passion, courage, sass, and compassion out of her. It just made me fall in love with Elphie all over again. When I was young, there was a period where I stopped singing solos in public -- it was right around the time when my voice changed, and to top it off, I'd had my self-confidence completely eroded by a Severus-Snape-esque Drama teacher, so I really wasn't up for putting myself out there for people to judge me. Point being, the very first song I sang at an audition in high school after this stretch was The Wizard and I, which was the one song that I identified with more than any other at that particular time in my life. Cynthia's performance of The Wizard and I brought all of those wonderful, soaring feelings rushing back to me -- I wanted to just throw my arms out and sing along with her at the top of my lungs. And yet no matter how good that performance was, it paled in the face of her finale, Defying Gravity. My GOD, GIRL!! Admittedly half of what made it so strong was Cynthia's heartbreaking performance as Elphaba realizing her whole image of the Wizard was a lie and that powerful righteous anger that bubbled up in response to it, but her vocal performance cannot be understated. I've listened to the CD track of Cynthia singing Defying Gravity a good five times just while typing this out, and I swear, my heart takes flight every time I reach the end.

+I have to put a separate bullet point attached to both of the prior ones just to point and scream at the amazing chemistry these two actresses had throughout the entire film. The casting of Elphaba and Glinda in particular is so crucial that anything wrong with their performers, either as individuals or as a pair, would've sunk the entire project. But in every single scene these two women were in, they both stole the show. They were peers and equals in every sense of the word. I never once felt like Cynthia was overshadowing Ariana or vice-versa -- they both shone like stars, separately AND together, and their rivalry-turned-friendship came across so believably. One of the single biggest changes I loved was in the Ozdust Ballroom scene when Elphaba starts dancing. In the show, it's oddly silent and uncomfortable, with Elphaba just looking weird as everyone stares at her, but in the movie, there's much more of a hostile, bullying air to how everyone surrounds her. There's actual mocking in their body language and lines, and yet Elphaba knows she can't run off crying: she's fenced in by this bubble her classmates have formed around her. So she just grits her teeth and dances to no music, pretending she doesn't care -- and so Glinda, rather than just stepping in and acting weird herself so as to show support, is also standing up to the others bullying her. Her "friends" even tell Glinda to stop and she says no. She isn't just using her own popularity as a shield around Elphaba -- she's really sticking her neck out, potentially sacrificing her own dignity and respect from everyone in the future, the way Elphaba stuck her neck out for her with Madame Morrible. Glinda had always envied Elphaba for being in the sorcerer's seminar, but Elphaba was willing to put that on the line for Glinda's sake -- now Glinda is willing to give up the social acceptance Elphaba had always envied on the line for Elphaba's sake. I believed that Elphaba and Glinda truly loved each other in this film. Without that, this film would never have succeeded.

+I have to give a nod to Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero too. Fiyero quite frankly is a character that I feel needs a really good actor to play him, because truthfully he gets much, MUCH less development than either of his female co-stars. In the wrong hands, Fiyero can come across as too much of a "boy toy" that Glinda and Elphaba fight over and that Elphaba gets as a "prize" over the more popular and traditionally feminine Glinda because she's "not like other girls." But in this film, Jonathan and the screenwriters did a nice job accenting how Fiyero -- unlike a lot of the student body of Shiz -- approaches Elphaba with no preconceptions. Elphaba's immediately defensive about her "verdigris" when meeting Fiyero, and he's just like "*shrug*" Later on, after Elphaba is "Galindafied," Fiyero tells her she doesn't have to act like that. And finally, when Elphaba puts everyone to sleep with the poppies (BEST! CHANGE! EVER, OH MY FRIGGIN' GOD, THAT IS GENIUS, WHAT AN AMAZING HOMAGE TO THE ORIGINAL BOOK AND FILM, WHY THE HELL DIDN'T THE OG MUSICAL DO THAT?!), Fiyero is the one who immediately busts out the lion cub and proposes setting him free. Yeah -- FIYERO does it! NOT Elphaba! AND THAT IS PERFECTION! Why? Because Fiyero is the rule breaker. He's the one who's been kicked out of multiple schools, the one who thinks nothing matters. Elphaba is the one -- at this point anyway -- who has always tried to color inside the lines: to be the dutiful older sister, to be the star student, to prove herself as worthy to Madame Morrible and the Wizard. And all of this is why Elphaba finds Fiyero attractive!! In the musical, this element can so often get lost -- oftentimes there's so much focus on why Fiyero chooses Elphaba over Glinda, but not nearly enough on why Elphaba loves Fiyero. And to soften this love triangle's edges further, Fiyero honestly never acts likes he's that romantically into Glinda. He doesn't actually act that romantically interested in anyone besides Elphaba, because in the beginning, he's so locked in his "nothing matters but knowing nothing matters" chain of thinking that he's sort of just breezing through and flirting casually with everyone. (As a side, Fiyero may have never been straight in either the musical or book, but here? This boy is a pansexual icon and I stan him so hard.) But yeah, Fiyero is kind of taken out of his laidback, playfully nihilist fog by Elphaba, and that's ultimately why he becomes smitten with her. He's not choosing Elphaba over Glinda, because truly, Fiyero never actively chose Glinda. He was kind of just shrugging through the whole "You're perfect; you're perfect; so we're perfect together" bit. But with Elphaba, she got him to care. She got him to engage, and think, and feel things strongly, and honestly give a damn about both himself and the real world for once. And Fiyero's display of this by wearing a poppy in remembrance of both Dr. Dillamond and the memory of bonding with Elphaba and then giving it to her before she left was really tactfully done.

+I bet you're thinking I'm going to talk about the Wizard or Madame Morrible next, but you're wrong! I'm actually going to talk about Dr. Dillamond. I completely forgot that Dillamond was voiced by Peter Dinklage until I saw the credits, but DAMN, were Dillamond's scenes powerful in this. Obviously Dinklage is a talented actor, and that helps, but there were also some really good new additions to the script in his scenes that just put them over the top. The first big change that I really like is that the song Something Bad -- a song I quite honestly never liked that much, compared to the rest of the soundtrack -- had its context changed from Dillamond talking to Elphaba alone in his classroom to a private meeting in his home with other Animals. To be honest, the original scene in the musical always felt a bit forced since I had trouble seeing a stately, sophisticated professor and mentor like Dr. Dillamond talking to Elphaba like she was a peer and confiding his fears about the growing fascistic state to one of his students. In this case, though, Elphaba merely overhears him talking with other adult Animals and then talks to Dillamond about it afterward, which makes much more sense. The song was also changed so that Dillamond now only lets out a "baa" by accident at the end, rather than twice, which makes it much more chilling, whereas in the original musical, it's played as both eerie and a little bit funny. But yeah, other additions include one of the Animals talking about leaving now while they still have a voice and Elphaba getting angry at her fellow classmates when they're not even going to say anything after Dillamond got ushered out...even earlier, near the very beginning of the movie, we see after Elphaba loses control of her powers that the carved image of the Wizard was put up to cover a collection of scholarly-looking Animals...and yeah, considering our current political climate, this couldn't be more relevant. I'm so friggin' delighted that a movie musical has decided to lampshade its relevant messages and themes for a change, rather than blatantly ignore them. *side-eyes the HELL out of Beauty and the Beast (2017)*

+Okay, okay, NOW I'll talk about the Wizard. I immediately loved the casting of Jeff Goldblum in the part, given that he does have that kind of approachable, adorkable quality despite being an older man, and given how many Apartments.Com commercials I've seen him in, I knew he could play a salesman, which is exactly what the Wizard is at his core. Goldblum did such a great job playacting as this artsy, paternal "Uncle Walt" showman-type who's become so eccentric and lonely because of the role he's placed himself in, but (unlike Elphaba) is not willing to sacrifice that role and the worship and acclaim he receives through it, even if it means he'll never be truly himself or loved for who he is. If anything, he's willing to double-down on that role and tell even bigger and more damaging lies just to hold onto the conditional "love" of Oz's people. His little replica of Oz with the TBD-colored brick road leading to the Emerald City was such a cool idea, as was his little replica of both himself and Elphaba, which I really hope will be played up for angst in the second part. >D Another great element of the Wizard in this film -- that yes, was largely from the stage musical but was plused so much here -- is that the Wizard's "magic" is in truth very mechanical. His mask is controlled by levers and gears; his model is full of electric lights; his entire Emerald City, in fact, is filled with electric lights. In truth the Wizard's "magic" is only a cold imitation, his servile monkey soldiers are all identical in appearance, and all of this comes from the mind of a man from a patriarchal, colorless world that's nothing like our beautiful, untamed Oz. This makes a perfect contrast for Elphaba, whose magic is borne of her intense compassion and righteous anger on behalf of the Animals of Oz. It is truly nature and traditional femininity at war with machinery and toxic masculinity.

+The supporting cast all around was pretty damn good. I might have one nitpick below, but acting-wise, everyone had amazing chemistry, and the script really did its best to add more material for all of the major relationships that still felt very true to the original musical. We see more of Elphaba and Nessarose's childhood, building up that there were good times and that some of Elphaba's "outbursts" were in defense of Nessa (which is something great to accent in Elphaba's character!! That her power often comes from righteous anger not for her own sake, but others!). We see Elphaba helping Dr. Dillamond pick up a broken vase of poppies and replant them after his interrupted lesson, touching both on why Dillamond takes a liking to her enough to trust her with his worries about Oz and on Elphaba's inherent compassion for the struggles of Animals. We see Morrible and Elphaba practicing magic together, with Morrible deliberately trying to encourage Elphaba's righteous anger, which ends up being the key to unlocking her powers. We see Boq not being the least bit uncomfortable about or coddling around Nessarose despite her being in a wheelchair, even while he's so clearly just spending time with her because Glinda asked him to, which explains part of why Nessa takes to Boq so much.

+On that note, I L-O-V-E how the filmmakers depicted Nessarose!! One of the aspects of this musical that has not held up over time is their rather ableist depiction of Elphaba's younger sister. In the original musical, Nessa's frailty and helplessness is emphasized just about every time she appears, from Elphaba originally being ordered to board with Nessa like a servant so she can tend to her to Boq just twirling her around to simulate dancing with her at the Ozdust. But here, Nessa has agency -- she wanted to "start over" at Shiz without Elphaba or her father around, and she starts up a conversation with some other students immediately after arriving. Elphaba's outburst in the musical was initially a bout of over-protectiveness in response to Nessa being taken out of her care, but here, it's Elphaba standing up for her sister after the headmistress tries to wheel her chair away without Nessa's consent and despite Nessa's objections. Sure, there's some tension between Nessa and Elphaba, and obviously there's a lot of favoritism by their father toward Nessa, but the film accents how sympathetic Nessa is, rather than how fragile she is. And to top it all off, they cast Marissa Bode, an actress who actually uses a wheelchair in real life, to play Nessa!! In just about all productions of the original musical, Nessa has been played by abled actresses who used a wheelchair as a prop, rather than as a real mobility aid, and this change is so beyond refreshing.

+The design of the practical sets in this film is -- for lack of a better word -- breathtaking. The level of detail, the mix of influences, the use of color and texture...all of this could only come from people at the absolute top of their field. And yet these choices were not skin-deep -- sure, it looked pretty, but there was function and feeling to every visual. From the stained glass reflecting different colors onto Elphaba's face when she dreamed over the Wizard "degreenifying" her to the old world influences in Shiz University's architecture emphasizing its age and elegance to the little circular window in the cafeteria door creating a "halo" around Glinda's head in What is This Feeling? to the swanky, illicit Ozdust ballroom being literally "underground" by being hidden under a lake full of fish...this all took a lot of vision and thought, and the finished result tickles both the creative and intellectual side of one's brain. I honestly can't wait to listen to audio commentaries from the scenic and costume designers about their creative processes for this film.

+Oh yeah, and can we talk about the costumes?! Obviously yeah, they look really pretty and it's clear that a lot of good materials and a healthy budget went into their creation (which is so refreshing *eyes TF out of Disney again because seriously WTF is up with the new live-action Snow White's cheap-ass Halloween costumes?*), but there's also so much character put into the costume design, even in the most minor, bit-part characters. One of my favorite aspects is how the Shiz students have a standard color palette (blue/gold/gray), but they can mix and match costume pieces to make everyone more of an individual. There are skirts, pants, shorts, pants with a half-skirt on the side, skirts with pants underneath, skirts with tights, sweaters, jackets, vests, hats, scarves, glasses, colorful socks, trainers, heels, Mary Janes...everyone can be comfortable and make their own statement about the character they play, even if they have no real lines, and I just LOVE that!! It accents all the more how Oz should be a very diverse and colorful place, and yet it's currently persecuting and marginalizing the Animals that once helped make it so diverse and colorful.

+The DANCING, HOLY FRIGGIN' SHEEZ. What is This Feeling? is where it shone the most, but I still have to scream about it, because the whole sequence is just so unbelievably good. The integration of step dance gave the whole number such an amazing rhythmic quality, almost making the ensemble the glue that sews Glinda and Elphaba's rivalry together. And yeah, from an allegorical sense, that's ingenious! Because think about it -- Elphaba wouldn't resent Glinda so much if she wasn't so universally praised and beloved by the public at large, while Glinda wouldn't feel she has so much to prove and feel like Elphaba is stealing her thunder and spotlight if it weren't for society's expectations. I was actually really bummed to find out the step dance rhythm isn't in the recording found on the Wicked film CD, because that element added so much to my love of the sequence. The dance choreography in the other scenes was impressive too, I just really had to gush about that main one.

+I knew this film wanted to do justice to the original musical, but I had no concept of just how much it would pay loving homage to the 1939 film and the Oz books too!! This film leans into the dark tone of Maguire's original novel more than the original musical ever did, especially in its political messaging -- I'm sorry, I don't see the musical ever having the Munchkins haul out a wooden witch figure to burn in effigy, and not just because doing so on stage would be dangerous. Besides that, though, we have some of the credits using the same font as the original Wizard of Oz's title screen; Glinda at one point yanking out some "ruby slippers" for Elphaba to try on in the Popular sequence; Elphaba smuggling the lion cub out of school on a bike that looks suspiciously like Miss Gulch's; and at the end of The Wizard and I, we see the Deadly Desert that surrounds Oz (referenced in the books), as well as a rainbow in the far-off distance! Oh, yeah, and did I mention that Kristen Chenoweth and Idina Menzel have cameos during One Short Day and they actually take a moment to embrace the girls playing their respective parts?! My heart!!

The Not-So-Good...

+There were a few points where I felt the music was stretched out a bit too much, just for the sake of either showing off the singer's voice and/or sets and costumes or for the sake of being different. I get changing the end of What is This Feeling? because you're trying to surprise your audience and any fans of Wicked will know how the original song goes, but there was no need to stretch out Popular with two extra "la la la la"s before the grand ending. I also feel the break in One Short Day with Kristen and Idina did go on too long -- as happy as I was to see them, that kind of cameo is best done in moderation, especially when one considers anyone watching this either now or in the future who don't know who the hell either woman is.

+Compared to their co-stars, Michelle Yeoh as Madame Morrible was the weak link singing-wise. She played the role superlatively from an acting perspective, and to be fair Madame Morrible is more of an acting part than a singing part in the musical, but compared to Cynthia, Ariana, Peter Dinklage or even Jeff Goldblum, her singing voice just wasn't on pier with her acting.

+Although the film decided to show Elphaba's childhood, which was yet another great idea, it missed out on the opportunity presented to them to introduce the Wizard supposedly being able to read the Grimmerie and being the Chosen One of the narrative earlier on. As devastating as it was for Elphaba to learn the truth about the Wizard not being able to cast magic or read the Grimmerie in the film, it would've been so much worse if the film established that this narrative was such a lucrative and prevalent lie that even children were indoctrinated in it.

Yeah, that's really all I can conjure up in regards to critiques! This film truly was an amazing, beautimous ride, and I loved every minute of it! Please, do yourself a favor and go watch this film! Watch it multiple times! I sure intend to! We need films like this -- ones with powerful, timely themes, chock-full of talented performers, and meticulously crafted by passionate artists that aren't afraid to buck convention. We don't have to accept limits because someone says they're so, and this film knows that. Big-budget movie musicals rarely make bank and almost never live up to their source material, and yet this film is proving this preconception wrong. That deserves to be celebrated! Celebrate it with your money at the box office, and let's shake things up in Hollywood! Let's prove that we don't want an artificial imitation of magic, but something real. Something with real sets, real vision, and real talent -- like this film. Jon M. Chu, I look forward to seeing the second part of this masterpiece next November, but in the meantime, I hope you know your future is unlimited! And to all of you, "thank goodness" you stuck with me this long to read all this...now please, fly off to your closest theater and watch Wicked! You won't regret it!!

Overall Grade: A+

[keldjinfae]

I was tagged by my musical doppleganger @oldefashioned to list my top ten recent(ish) movies, but my memory is absolute shit and what feels like was "just last year" was probably back in 2017. I also can't remember if I've already responded to this one. Thankfully it's not a coffee pot or the house'd probably have burned down by now.

Edit: Thanks to an artwork reblog, I remembered that 1) my sister and I also saw Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, and 2) it was released in 2019. We enjoyed the hell out of it, and it's a shame that there likely won't be a sequel.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - I went to see this one with my sister right before the pandemic shut-ins, and we loved the hell out of it. We expected to because it was a Tarantino movie, but both DiCaprio and Pitt were brilliant in it, and were each given the opportunity to stretch their comedic muscles in a way that the '90s and early '00s didn't really allow for because they had to be Hollywood's ideal of "leading men." They're both just dudes in this movie--totally relatable dudes.

Bullet Train - I actually went to see this with my sister right after the pandemic shut-ins, and we thought it was poetic to be bookending the experience with Brad Pitt in another oft-times comical role. The whole thing is a very black comedy, but it's so damn good. The timing is perfect, the acting from everyone is spot-on, and Pitt is only arguably the main character in a brilliant ensemble cast, because he often just sits back and lets everyone else steal the show. Also, there's something about Michael Shannon that draws me into every single thing he's ever been in, so...

John Wick Chapter 4 - also went to see it with my sister, but this was the one that we finally managed to get my brother-in-law to go see as well and thereby pulled him into the John Wick 'verse. Sis and I also flailed around like idiots over the reference to The Warriors, and I'm never going to dismiss a chance to see something with any of the Skarsgards.

Love and Monsters - I put off watching this one for a while because of the marketing for it, actually. I thought it was going to be another movie about a protagonist who was the butt of everyone's joke, and I eventually "went in" prepared to cringe hard and take frequent pause breaks... only to be very pleasantly surprised when this wasn't the case at all.

Red, White, and Royal Blue - again, one that I put off for a bit partly because of aversion to secondhand embarrassment, but also because I'd been in the middle of writing a Sterek fic with an approaching deadline. Still, I was also once again pleasantly surprised.

Joker - yet another one I went to see with my sister. Appropriately twisted, had Joaquin Phoenix, and we both walked away wanting to get our hands on the soundtrack.

Bohemian Rhapsody - I know this one was pre-pandemic, but 2020 was also the year that my back gave out and I've more or less been struggling just to get by ever since, so "recent" is going to have a somewhat warped definition. It wasn't "the perfect biopic," but it was still enjoyable, and my sister and I went to see it with our mom and her best friend, who've both been die-hard Queen fans since they were twelve. We couldn't afford to take Mom to see Queen in-concert, so we took her to see their movie instead.

Deadpool 2 - loved it just as much as the first Deadpool, though I do wish that the movies would just let Vanessa be Copycat already instead of making her a damsel in distress/killing her off every time.

Infinity War - I honestly preferred Civil War and Guardians of the Galaxy, vol. 2, but there were plenty of moments in this movie that either hit hard or hit right.

End Game - I saw it, though I don't remember a lot of it. Not because it was a terrible movie or anything, it just came out less than two weeks after my father passed away, so my sister and I basically went to see it because he didn't get to see the last two movies of the series. Well, before they went ahead with Phase Four, that is. Dad, Sis, and I were all die-hard Captain America: Winter Soldier fans and we'd loved the hell out of Civil War, too, so Dad would've wanted to see how everything resolved. More no pressure whatsoever tags for people who have hopefully been able/willing to see more movies than me in the past few years: @vmures @nerdherderette @ice-mage @dear-massacre @renmackree

[adultswim2021]

Tim And Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! #27: “Jazz” | September 8, 2008 - 12:30AM | S03E07

Hey, this is a good one. Alright? Perhaps less-than-classic. This one has a runner where Tim & Eric are Jazz musicians who smugly tell meandering stories that make them sound like a coupla stupid dopes. I like these segments mostly! Ending the show with the smug delivery of “online? What like WAITING online at the BANK??” is just great. To me. I keep forgetting to say “to me” after all my opinions, sorry! There are a handful more segments in the deleted scenes of these two funny funny jazz men. 

The cold open is James Quall doing Ronald Regan, probably originally shot as part of the season two sketch. This seems slightly like they are scraping the bottom of the barrel, but it turns out they’re setting up a strong sketch in the middle of the episode. More on that… LATER!! Anyway, this sketch references David Stockman, which is an ancient reference. He worked for Regan and may or may not have tried to list ketchup as a vegetable in some school lunch legislation. It is hilarious that this is where his mind goes. Tim & Eric sorta acknowledge the weirdness of the reference by putting up a bogus, likely unrelated portrait of the supposed David Stockman as if it explains anything.

Maria Bamford! For some reason I fail to think of her as a member of the Tim & Eric family even though she is maybe one of the best guests ever. That is not a dig on Maria, Maria is such a singular entity that it’s hard to think of her being part of anything else. Even me periodically thinking about how she’s the funniest person in the world, possibly, is to vastly underrate her. She fits in with the Tim & Eric universe really well, I THINK, TO ME. Here she’s a host of a show about cleaning up after your cat. The little belly crawl towards the litter box in the opening makes me laugh, and I realized that this imagery used to pop into my head everytime I had to scoop my cat’s litter. Lucy. Her name was Lucy. She has passed.

There’s a fairly good Doug animation in this one, too featuring funny guys and their funny hats. This leads into a Beaver Boys sketch that is exceptionally brainless. The Beaver Boys are up to their old tricks!! They are on a sex-having date with freaking TWINS, but they blow it by not being able to control themselves and gorging themselves on shrimp and white wine being served at the table next to theirs. It’s very stupid, but I see the Beaver Boys as some kind of meta commentary on the nature of very specifically-premised one-note recurring characters in various forms of media, especially on sketch comedy shows. Their return is the joke. I also just like this sketch, despite there not being much to it. There is something funny about the stereotypical way the girls get up and leave, angry, as though what they are doing is typical guy behavior and not the product of a serious brain disease, which is what these boys must have.

Probably the best sketch is a fake trailer for a James Quall biopic where Quall is portrayed by Saturday Night Live’s Bill Hader. His impression is immaculate, and he’s very funny as Quall. There are some charming outtakes from this one, including one where David Liebe Hart (who shines as himself) ruins a take with indigestion, and one where we see the real James Quall watching Hader work his magic and laughing like crazy.

Everything outside of the Quall trailer feels a little dashed off, but I found most of it funny and the episode worked for me as a whole. I think a lot of what made this episode great is the editing, which I think this show should have won an Emmy for. 

I forgot to mention the guy who wants to make sure his condo has enough room for his boys. Dang it. I love that guy.

EPHEMERA CORNER

Space Ghost Coast to Coast: From the Kentucky Nightmare DVD (aka Volume 5) (September 11, 2008)

The final DVD release of Space Ghost Coast to Coast… EVER! This was a two-disc set that included the final Cartoon Network season and the first Adult Swim season. This was the first time I ever saw the uncut Fire Ant. The extras included the colonial man ending of Snatch, which before I’d only seen in a very low-quality internet vid, Table Read Extra, the Conan and Busta Rhymes Raw Interviews, and two nice videos of George Lowe and, C. Martin Croker’s audio recording session for “Kentucky Nightmare”. George’s in particular is fun to watch, because he loves to josh between takes. There’s also easter eggs, but I forget what they are. 

This is a GREAT release and like Volume 4, it was only available through the Adult Swim online store, and is considered very rare. At one point, it sold out and they repressed it and put it on the store for $15 and you could get a copy of Volume 4 for $5. Imagine! Paying a combined $20 for volumes 4 & 5 of Space Ghost Coast to Coast! I came perilously close to selling both my volume 4 and 5 DVDs when I was jobless, but was able to pull them off eBay when I made some money sucking dick.

[denimbex1986]

'With the biopic Oppenheimer, writer-director Christopher Nolan, known for brain twisting films like Interstellar and Inception, addresses an old childhood dread — one based not on science fiction but on real science, namely the threat of thermonuclear war and human annihilation.

The film follows the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the cerebral, charismatic and tortured physicist who was tapped to lead the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, New Mexico, to build the atomic bomb during World War II.

The subsequent bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war against Japan in 1945 and Oppenheimer was hailed as a hero. But only a few years later, in 1954, his security clearance was revoked in an infamous hearing of advisers to the Atomic Energy Commission that declared him a security threat based on leftist ties at the University of California, Berkeley, US, and his opposition to building an even bigger bomb, the “Super” or hydrogen bomb espoused by his colleague Edward Teller.

That was the end of Oppenheimer’s career in government circles and of his ability to influence the future of atomic energy in the Cold War. As a result, he became a martyr to the scientific community. Many physicists, including Albert Einstein, were disappointed that the United States had dropped the bomb without warning on an enemy that was already defeated, while Oppenheimer hoped that the advent of the bomb would make war unthinkable and lead to international control on such weapons. Once the Russians had the bomb, however, that dream had no chance with hard-liners like the president at the time, Harry S. Truman, who called Oppenheimer a “crybaby”.

Over tea at his office in Los Angeles, US, Nolan discussed why he thought Oppenheimer was the most important person who ever lived, choosing between myths and the record, and how he came to make this movie. These are edited excerpts from our conversation.

q. In the production notes you say, “Like it or not, J. Robert Oppenheimer is the most important person who ever lived.” Why?

In Hollywood, we’re not afraid of a little hype. Do I genuinely believe it? Absolutely. Because if my worst fears are true, he’ll be the man who destroyed the world. Who’s more important than that?... I think it’s very easy to make the case for Oppenheimer as the most important person who ever lived, because he is the person who facilitated and achieved atomic weapons and indeed the hydrogen bomb, because he let Teller work on it…

q. Why Oppenheimer now? I mean, this is a story I’ve grown up with my whole life as a child of the nuclear age.

There are certain stories that you want to kind of wait until you feel ready to tell them. (This) story is one that I’ve known about since I was a kid growing up in the shadow of nuclear weapons in the early ’80s in the United Kingdom. It was very much in pop culture… For me, it’s always seemed one of those stories that I don’t think it’s been told in any definitive movie sense. And yet it’s one of the most important and dramatic stories there are. So reading American Prometheus — it’s such a well-researched and well-told book — gave me confidence. That could be the basis, you know, of a film or a screenplay.

q. Truman called him a crybaby. Doesn’t seem very presidential, does it?

Given recent history it sounds very presidential to me. That was an enormous dramatic point in the film for me because it just made it so completely clear how badly Oppenheimer had misled himself.

q. That’s a good way of putting it. There are different accounts of that meeting, but these are things that Truman recollected.

I feel it’s only fair to present things the way he saw them. Because in that moment, you’re looking for a huge shift in perception about the reality of Oppenheimer’s situation. Those two men come into that room with completely different expectations about what that meeting is. And I think that was a massive moment of disillusion, a huge turning point — for Oppenheimer — in his approach to trying to deal with the consequences of what he’d been involved with.

q. Oppenheimer does come across in the movie as a tremendously tortured person, and sparks always seem to be going off in his head.

Well look, the film is my interpretation of his life. I wanted it to be a strong interpretation, a very personal interpretation. I didn’t want to make a documentary. As far as the adherence to the historical record, I think the film is much more accurate than people will imagine. A lot of the things that potentially seem like contrivances turn out to be true.

q. A quick question about the Trinity test, when Oppenheimer, Groves, the physicists and engineers set off the first nuclear bomb. How did you get that shot? Was some of it old footage from the test itself?

The way we approached (the) Trinity test was to forgo computer graphic imagery because I think computer graphics are inherently a bit safe, a bit anodyne, so I challenged my effects crew to come up with analogue, real-world types of imagery that we could use to pull this off because we knew the Trinity test had to be a showstopper in the film. Some of the things they came up with were extremely small and microscopic that play as bigger. Some were absolutely massive and required all kinds of complicated safety protocols and involved the actors in some very small version of what it must have been like to be there out in the desert at night in those bunkers waiting to detonate that device.'

[birdsongvelvet]

I've watched the Golden Globes every year since I was six years old (other than the year #MeToo happened when I just didn't want to watch because everyone was staging a protest and I knew that would be the content of every speech) and I'm trying to watch it this year and it's just depressing the hell out of me because it feels palpable that our old mass pop culture where a wider audience actually cared about these movies and wanted to enjoy things together is dead. It feels so different from ten years ago when I remember being on here or Twitter and everyone was just having a ball making jokes or fanning over their favourite celebrities. Now all the chatter is either very serious or very ironic and then your average person doesn't care whatsoever. Everyone say they're sick of the concept of celebrities looking fancy and patting each other on the back but fuck it, I still like watching these things, it doesn't have to be that deep. I preferred that to the parasocial celebrity in your pocket at all times thing, anyway.

We don't have movies that are both creatively interesting and big hits anymore (aside from Everything Everywhere All At Once, I guess, but even that hasn't approached the audience of, just looking at 10 years ago, Les Miserables, Django Unchained, Life of Pi, Argo (god, imagine a political drama making $200 million+ today???), Silver Linings Playbook or Lincoln were. (edit - I guess Elvis sort of fits that, but it's one of those jukebox musician biopic movies with a built in audience so ehhhh???) It's like, you either have "arthouse" stuff (most of which wouldn't have even been considered arthouse 10 years ago - we spent 30 years getting independent films an audience and it all fell apart over 2 years), or you have M*rvel, and that's it.

With that in mind, upon seeing RRR win Best Song I kind of hope RRR sweeps award season because if the US doesn't give a shit about cinema anymore then maybe a hit film from a country that actually still does should win.

Maybe I should get into sports, that can't ever shift to a solitary hyperironic scattered across 20 streaming services so nobody cares online thing, right?

[sleeper9]

Okay this is the last update.

We get a touch of Brian protecting John but I wish there was way way more of these moments with all of them and with John.

Word for word recreation of the Jesus apology but honestly wish they just showed John breaking down and crying because Brian was hounding him with what if something happens to one of the others because of you.. I’ve always thought that would be way more interesting to portray.

(Does it feel slightly ridiculous to anyone else that Brian would’ve ever let his bf be in the same realm as his boys? I mean I know he got blackmailed a bunch of times but like.. idk)

Actual love nat, get him nat!!

The Beatles don’t feel like real people in this movie they come in like cartoons

Ringos voice is actually very good

The way they really avoid doing a lot of close ups on the Beatles they straight up use the masters most of the time you barely ever see them move their mouths… adr magic patchwork editing??

John saying I do! And eppy saying finally! Wish we got they liked each other in any particular way, it’s not actually controversial when John and many others have literally said multiple times eppy loved him?? Like they don’t have to be sleeping with each other for love to be there c’mon idk why it feels so scared of their relationship

What movie are they talking about? Yellow submarine? Or mmt??? I’m confused? MMT was Paul’s idea but then George says don’t make us cartoons? Did I miss something

Did eppy really have a gay butler? Okay big ole the Beatles are your family punctuation and yet they’re hardly together or intimate!! But we’ll hug and say all you need is love is for you… I could actually believe that if they had John come around on his own to the hospital or afterwards and be like eppy you know I love you (to represent the note) and actually express concern (would’ve loved to see Paul actually try and talk to him to represent his letter but have it go just as well as the letter went lmao)

Very funny to end on kind of a happy note? But then it’s like oh Brian died two months later… okay… sometimes I wish people actually showed the tragic death they love to just leave it there but I know lots of people don’t feel that way so it’s whatever but I would’ve like to see the Beatles be like wtf are we gonna do now .. I hope that’s in the Beatles biopic

Anyway let’s get to some final thoughts :

Obviously there would be something of a question of why directors kept leaving this production or getting fired who knows and I heard somewhere that they simply blamed covid for all the issues but there’s plenty of movies that finished amidst covid so I find it slightly hard to believe that’s the only reason. My feeling is it might have come down to how exactly they wanted to portray Brian/the Beatles. Mostly it reminds me of bohemian rhapsody where I know some people wanted to sanitize Freddy’s life and some didn’t (which lead to the previous actor leaving) and I can’t help but think there’s something similar here too. Idk what per se might have been the issue. Cause we see little moments of like slightly controversial lore being touched on (but not exploring) and then we see big chunks of things being completely skipped through which just makes you wonder… like there’s obviously some confrontation with the darkness in Brian’s life but then also this skating around kind of feeling i think that’s the biggest tell for the multiple directors thing and there’s just a weird middle ground left over thing happening (you also cannot convince me they were just afraid of getting sued because a movie was just made fully showing trump SA-ing his wife. And it’s not like they’re using their music so there’s no reason to be overtly concerned about anything they could show in the movie, i think this is simply an ideology thing. Someone was just touchy about something imo)

Honestly this reminded me the most of birth of the Beatles weirdly and part of me would just rather watch that cause at least there’s that one scene where John really shows care towards eppy.

Midas Man opening up with “Ninth of November”

Me: THATS MY BIRTHDAY

[akajustmerry]

i've always wanted to know who first came up with the idea to start gayv club! also maybe this is like picking your favorite child or something but what was your favorite episode to make? i listen to the podcast all the time, love you both <3

omg thank you so so much🥰

and honestly, it's tricky to say whose idea it initially was now (also my memory for these sorta things is notoriously bad, deah is always correcting me on things as simple as the year we met, when i last saw them, etc). but i definitely remember it as something we joked about doing at first! for a long while we were gonna jokingly start a youtube channel dedicated to VERY seriously unpacking why all keanu reeves' and keira knightly's filmography is queer cinema or something. then we often had convos about queer media culture where we would just bitch about how we didn't like popular discourse around queer media was very much dominated by white cis Christian adjacent people, and eventually, the idea to be the conversations we weren't seeing grew. I distinctly remember coming up with the name gayv club while walking home from uni and telling deah the name! but its hard to say who first said "lets do a podcast." I do remember a big reason we wanted to do a pod and not youtube was because i hated editing my own youtube content back when i was making it and a podcast seemed less finicky!

my personal favourite episode to make was the 'star wars' one featuring my friend, Will as a guest! and its for the very selfish reason that I very much enjoyed forcing my two best friends in the world come and talk about star wars with me. it was a deliriously fun day where we talked star wars and ate burgers and laughed! I also loveeeed researching our 'let bi-gones be bygones' because i myself learned much about bisexuality and bi rep! also our biopic eps are ones we're both super proud of and have often spoke of flipping them into video essays when we ever get time! x

[bewitching-elizabeth-olsen]

Press/Gallery: How Elizabeth Olsen Brought Marvel From Mainstream to Prestige

“The thing I love about being an actor is to fully work with someone and try so hard to be at every level with them, chasing whatever it is you need or want from them.”

  GALLERY LINKS

Studio Photoshoots > 2021 > Session 008 Magazine Scans > 2021 > Backstage (August 19)

Backstage: Elizabeth Olsen grins widely over video chat when recalling many such moments on set with her co-stars. Yet, she can’t bring herself to divorce such a lofty vision of film acting from the technical multitasking it requires. The camera sees all.

“But then you move your hair, and you’re in your brain, like: OK, remember that! Because I don’t want to edit myself out of a shot. I know some actors are like, ‘Continuity, shmontinuity!’ But the good thing about continuity is, if you remember it, you’re actually providing yourself with more options for the edit.”

That need to balance being both inside the scene and outside of it, fully living it and yet constantly visualizing it on a screen, feels particularly apt in light of Olsen’s most recent project, “WandaVision.”

The mysteries at the heart of the show grow with every episode, each fast-forwarding to a different decade: Could this 1950s, black-and-white, “filmed in front of a studio audience” newlyweds bit be a grief-stricken dream? Might this ’70s spoof be a powerful spell gone awry? Could this meta take on mockumentary comedies be proof that the multiverse is finally coming to the Marvel Cinematic Universe?

The series’ structure, which branches out to include government agents intent on finding out why Westview has seemingly disappeared, calls for the entire cast to play with a mix of genres, balancing a shape-shifting tone that culminates in an epic, MCU-style conclusion. What’s key—and why the show struck a chord with audiences during its nine-episode run—is the miniseries’ commitment to grounding its initial kooky setups and its later special effects-driven spectacle in heartbreaking emotional truths. It’s no small feat, though it’s one that can often be taken for granted.

“I was thinking how hard it would have been to have shot the first ‘Lord of the Rings,’ ” Olsen muses. “Like, you’re putting all these actors [into the frame] later and at all these different levels. All the eyelines are completely unnatural. And yet the performances are fantastic! And technically, they are so hard. People forget sometimes that these things are really technically hard to shoot. And if you are moved by their performance, that took a lot of multitasking.”

As someone who has learned plenty about harnesses, wirework, fight choreography, and green screens (she’s starred in four Marvel movies, including the box office megahit “Avengers: Endgame,” after all), Olsen knows how hard it can be to wrap one’s brain around the work needed to pull off those big, splashy scenes.

“​​If you think about it, it’s, like, the biggest stakes in the entire world—every time. And that feels silly to act over and over again, especially when people are in silly costumes and the love of your life is purple and sparkly, and every time you kiss them, you have to worry about getting it on your hands. Those things are ridiculous. You feel ridiculous. So there is a part of your brain that has to shovel that away and just look into someone’s eyeballs—and sometimes, they don’t even have eyeballs!”

The ability to spend so much time with Wanda, albeit in the guise of sitcom parodies, was a welcome opportunity for Olsen. Not only did it allow the actor to really wrestle with the traumatic backstory that has long defined the character in the MCU, but having the chance to calibrate a performance that functions on so many different levels was a thrilling challenge.

“It was such an amazing work experience,” she says. “Kathryn [Hahn] uses the word ‘profound’—which is so sweet, because it is Marvel, and people, you know, don’t think of those experiences as profound when they watch them. But it really was such a special crew that [director] Matt Shakman and [creator] Jac Schaeffer created. It was a really healthy working environment.”

Related‘WandaVision’ Star Kathryn Hahn’s Secret to Building a Scene-Stealing Performance ‘WandaVision’ Star Kathryn Hahn’s Secret to Building a Scene-Stealing Performance Considering that the miniseries spans several sitcom iterations, various layers of televisual reality, and a number of character reveals that needed to feel truthful and impactful in equal measure, Shakman’s decision to work closely with his actors ahead of shooting was key.

“We truly had a gorgeous amount of time together before we started filming,” Olsen remembers. “Our goal was—which is controversial in TV land—that if you wanted to change [anything], like dialogue in a scene, you had to give those notes a week before we even got there. Because sometimes you get to set, and someone had a brilliant idea while they were sleeping, and you’re like, ‘We don’t have an hour to talk about this. We have seven pages to shoot.’ And so, we were all on the same page with one another, knowing what we were shooting ahead of time.

“Matt just treated us like a troupe of actors who were about to do some regional theater shit,” she adds with a smile.

That spirit of camaraderie was, not coincidentally, at the heart of Olsen’s breakout project, Sean Durkin’s 2011 indie sensation “Martha Marcy May Marlene.” As an introduction to the process of filmmaking to a young stage-trained actor, Durkin’s quietly devastating drama was a dream—and an invaluable learning opportunity.

“It was truly just a bunch of people who loved the script, who just were doing the work. I didn’t understand lenses, so I just did the same thing all the time. I never knew if the camera would be on me or not. There was just so much purity in that experience, and you only have that once.”

The film announced Olsen as a talent to watch: a keen-eyed performer capable of deploying a stilted physicality and clipped delivery, which she used to conjure up a wounded girl learning how to shake off her time spent in a cult in upstate New York. But Olsen admits that it took her a while to figure out how to navigate her career choices afterward. In the years following “Martha,” she felt compelled to try on everything: a horror flick here, a high-profile remake there, a period piece here, an action movie there. It wasn’t until she starred in neo-Western thriller “Wind River” (alongside fellow Marvel regular Jeremy Renner) and the dark comedy “Ingrid Goes West” (opposite a deliciously deranged Aubrey Plaza) that Olsen found her groove.

“It was at that point, when I was five years into working, where I was like, Ah, I know how I want it. I know what I need from these people—from who’s involved, from producers, from directors, from the character, from the script—in order to trust that it’s going to be a fruitful experience.”

As Olsen looks back on her first decade as a working actor, she points out how far removed she is from that young girl who broke out in “Martha Marcy May Marlene.”

“I feel like a totally different person. I don’t know if everyone who’s in their early 30s feels like their early 20s self is a totally different human. But when I think about that version of myself, it feels like a long time ago; there’s a lot learned in a decade.”

Those early years were marked by a self-effacing humility that often led Olsen to defer to others when it came to key decisions about the characters she was playing. But she now feels emboldened to not only stand up for herself and her choices but for others on her sets as well.

“[Facebook Watch series] ‘Sorry for Your Loss’ I got to produce, and I really found my voice in a collaborative leadership way. And with ‘WandaVision,’ Paul [Bettany] and I really took on that feeling, as well—especially since we were introducing new characters to Marvel and wanted [those actors] to feel protected and helped,” she says. “They could ask questions and make sure they felt like they had all the things they needed because sometimes you don’t even know what you need to ask.”

It’s a lesson she learned working with filmmaker Marc Abraham on the Hank Williams biopic “I Saw the Light,” and she’s carried it with her ever since. “I really want it to feel like we’re all in this together, as a team,” Olsen says. “That was part of ‘Sorry for Your Loss’ and it was part of ‘WandaVision,’ and I hope to continue that kind of energy because those have been some of the healthiest work experiences I’ve had.”

If Olsen sounds particularly zealous about the importance of a comfortable, working set, it is because she’s well aware that therein lies an integral part of the work and the process. As an actor, she wants to feel protected and nurtured by those around her, whether she’s reacting to a telling, quiet line of dialogue about grief or donning her iconic Scarlet Witch outfit during a magic-filled mid-air action sequence.

“Sometimes you’re going to be foolish, you know? And [you need to] feel brave to be foolish. Sometimes people feel embarrassed on set and snap. But if you’re in a place where people feel like they’re allowed to be an idiot,” she says, “you’re going to feel better about being an idiot.”

This story originally appeared in the Aug. 19 issue of Backstage Magazine. Subscribe here.

Press/Gallery: How Elizabeth Olsen Brought Marvel From Mainstream to Prestige was originally published on Elizabeth Olsen Source • Your source for everything Elizabeth Olsen

[curious-minx]

Notable 2020 Video Game Soundtracks That Can Be Enjoyed As Standalone Experiences

Video Game Music is gaining recognition, with many soundtracks receiving vinyl pressings, orchestral concert reviews, and an increasing presence on music streaming platforms such as bandcamp and Spotify. We’re also witnessing the uprise of indie video game development teams where games are being made by the sort of passionate type of game designer that takes soundtracks seriously.  Soundtracks by small teams of developers such as Celeste, Undertale, Disco Elysium, Hollow Knight, RuneScape, and Lisa: The Joyful are titles with soundtracks that easily stand up against the likes of bigger budget productions made by reliable sources of video game music like Square-Enix and Nintendo.

2020 is no exception in terms of having one of the biggest budget soundtracks around with Final Fantasy 7 Remake, which builds upon a legacy of industry-standard-creating soundtrack work. Taken as a whole, Final Fantasy 7 Remake’s soundtrack is clocking in at over 8 and half hours of music. The soundtrack has three composers with the Beethoven of video game music, Nobuo Uematsu, most notably coming out of retirement to get the job done.  Here are some other amazing 2020 video game soundtracks more conducive for standalone background listening:

TETRIS EFFECT by HYDELIC 

Genres: EDM, Ambient Pop and straight up Ambient 

Describing this album makes me feel like I’m some sort of burnt out fanciful raver, head permanently lodged in the clouds. The level of giddy technicolor enthusiasm rivals that of Icelandic Sigur Ros frontman Jonsi, but if he wanted to keep his post-rock firmly planted in the outdoor music festival on Mars territory. Despite the album’s notable two hours runtime, each and every song feels like its own uniquely crafted composition, no repetitive motifs or nostalgia-baiting.

There is unfortunately still a Tetris movie in some sort of shaggy state of development in Hollywood right now. The movie is being billed as a dull biopic about the creator of the Tetris game. Whereas listening to Tetris Effect you imagine a Tetris movie directed by someone more fitting like the Wakowskis. Tetris Effect’s opening song “Connected (Yours Forever)” is a bonafide vocal pop song, like a more sugary CVRCHES-style cooing of the lyrics:

“I’m Yours Forever

There is No End in Sights For Us,

Nothing Can Measure the Kind of Strength Inside Our Hearts,

It’s all connected we’re all together in this life, don’t you forget it

We’re all connected in this”

Try your best not to imagine a cast of Hollywood’s most beautiful plucky orphan mutant misfit youths using the power of Tetris to heal a broken and dying planet!

Notable Track: Next Chapter

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HADES by DARREN KORB

Genres: Progressive Metal, Folktronica, Folk Metal, Dimotika, Greek Folk Music

Darren Korb has become one of the most notable video game composers of the past decade. Korb, an integral member of the Supergiant family, continues to outdo himself with each and every soundtrack. Bastion and Transistor originally found Korb creating a niche for himself with downtempo folk-infused electronic soundscapes and even some vocal pop with collaborator Ashley Barrett. Hades is an altogether different beast for Korb, who much like the developers of Hades, have found themselves at the height of their powers.

Korb also contributes vocals on this album, and I can say without hesitation that these are some of the nicest vocals I’ve ever heard from a video game music designer, because video game musicians are bonafide musicians.The album clocks in at two and half hours and separate from its game is still an absolute thrill ride.

Notable Track: In The Blood

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DEFECTIVE HOLIDAY by MECHATOK

 Genres: Ambient Trance, Balearic Beat, Progressive Electronic, Nature Recordings, Spoken Word, New Age

One glance at the album artwork is all it took for me to know that I must listen to this album. Defective Holiday is an indie walking simulator that is explicit about its intentions: a lightly interactive one hour experience. This soundtrack clocks in at only 31 minutes and it is purely the most conventional album in terms of length.

Last week in late November, Mechatok announced a collaboration with one of the leading zoomer Swedish cloud rap mavericks Bladee, the cofounder of the Drain Gang. Last month gives a pretty clear picture of what kind of circles Mechatok is floating in on. Highly online gonzo vaporwave maestro James Ferraro is another apparent influence on this soundtrack, especially regarding the way the sinister mundane dialogue is woven into the soundscape. There’s one particular track on the Defective Holiday OST, “Rescue Shot Buibo”, that is adorned with standard trap-style drum fills that give the album a shot of energy before wandering back off into the haze. This soundtrack and video game is all about the pure vibe and aesthetic nature that are currently trending in these extremely stressful times.  In a time where all of our holidays were defective from the very start, I think the casual walking simulator will remain a genre high in demand. I have a feeling we’re going to hear a lot more from this empathetic young German.

Notable Track: Valley

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Last of Us II by Gustavo Santaolalla, Mac Quayle (and Ashley Johnson)

Genres: Ambient, Cinematic Classical, Dark Ambient, Spanish Folk Music 

L

The Last Of Us is a horror game where the music itself is arguably playing a critical character role, which can only be expected billing two titans of audio visual soundtracks. Of course Academy Award winner Santaolalla knows his way around a soundtrack. Wielding a resume of astonishing versatility in various TV and film projects, he might have found his higher calling in not only video games but in the horror music canon. Last of Us is an extremely emotional series, and with the wrong soundtrack, the experience could become insufferably bleak. The occasional  splashes of color and light are what make this soundtrack so unsettling and eerie. Not since Silent Hill 2’s Akira Yamaoka has there been such an effective standalone horror video game soundtrack experience. No wonder Gustavo Santaolalla is one of the only video game composers integral enough to the game to warrant a cameo banjo-playing character model based off of him.

As if having one major composer from prestigious TV and movies wasn’t enough, Mac Quayle, composer of the whole Mr. Robot series, contrasts against Santaolalla’s acoustic contributions. The soundtrack itself is sequenced in a way that switches between the two composers. “The Cycle of Violence” composed by Quayle, a track that more than lives up to its name, is immediately followed by Santaolalla’s somber “Reclaimed Memories.” This dance between violence and heart is what the Last of Us excels at as a franchise, and that is why this soundtrack is an effective stand-alone experience.

The only disappointing part of the soundtrack is that Ashley Johnson, voice actor of Ellie’ three songs, is not included in the game’s official tracklist. Ellie’s “Take On Me” a-ha and “Future Days” Pearl Jam covers have made a little history by being the most powerful songs sung by a video game character. When Ellie sings and plays on her guitar they aren’t some little Easter egg idling moments to provide levity for this heavy revenge horror story. These songs are used to make some of the strongest character development choices made by a video game character seen in recent years. Ellie is joining a small club of singing video game characters alongside Parapa the Rapper and  maybe the cast of obscure Atlus title Rhapsody: Musical Adventure.

Notable Track: Unbroken

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Persona 5 Royal Straight Flush Edition by Shoji Meguro 

Genre: Acid Jazz, Alternative Rock, Alternative Metal, Lounge, Jazz-Funk 

This is one of those soundtracks that, much like Nobuo Uematsu’s work in Final Fantasy, is really the heart and soul of the entire Persona franchise (and his work in the adjacent Shin Megami Tensei universe is equally as noteworthy). Persona 5 Royal finds Meguro making his most complete, funky, and otherworldly opus that sounds like no one else in the biz.

You will find many people online scouring message boards, subreddits, bandcamp features, and Yahoo Answers looking for more music like Persona 5. Outside of Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater, how many other games are packed to the brim with truly foxy songs!? Persona 5 could not predict how badly the title “Throw Away Your Mask” would age, despite the game being more than ahead of its time with the majority of NPCs wearing PPE. Be a good Joker, put on your mask and keep chasing Meguro’s acid jazz-infused dragon through many more semesters to come.

Notable Track: I Imagine

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Streets of Rage 4 by Olivier Deriviere & Various

Genres: Electro House, Nu Jazz, Synth Funk, Acid House 

Composer Olivier Deriviere is a living definition of a video game soundtrack journeyman. He has a career stretching back to the early 2000s working on notable big budget titles like the divisive 2008 Atari fifth Alone in the Dark installment and Remember Me, an unsung buried gem from the PS3/360 era Capcom title. Remember Me is where Deriviere’s electronic leanings started becoming especially prominent in his sound. On the Streets of Rage 4 soundtrack Deriviere has completely come into his own element, developing a whole new sense of campy playfulness.

Electronic French House music can be a divisive genre. For every Daft Punk commercial success there is a band that ruffles feathers like Justice. I sense a strong presence of late departed French House titan Philippe Zdar of Cassius as well. If you’d played this soundtrack for me out of context, I would have guessed an obscure voguing tape from the 80s or a really talented mysterious DJ set. Instead, this is a sequel to a classic beat em up franchise that left a portion of players disappointed by the game’s four hour playtime. The soundtrack is over an hour and fifty minutes long of high octane House music bliss. Much like the Tetris Effect soundtrack, it is truly impressive how much depth these tracks have when they could have easily been nostalgic recycled beats. Sometimes a game’s soundtrack can offer more post game enjoyment than an actual game.

Notable Track: Chill Or Don’t

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Hylics 2 by Chuck Salamone & Mason Lindroth 

Genres: Experimental Rock, Neo-Psychedelia, Hypagogic Pop, Stoner Rock, Jazz-Rock

A soundtrack that comes closest to capturing the experience of hearing the Earthbound or Katamari Damacy soundtracks for the first time. The Hylic indie RPG series is a wonderful and strange beast that is ready to frolic and show its playful side. Hylics is a part of a recent uprising of indie games being developed on the RPG Maker software. 2020 year has left us all with variations of the same stressed out adjectives: Weird. Messed Up. Surreal.

Why not listen to an album from a game that is the perfect embodiment of that surreal mantra? Step away from your computer, draw a bath, and put this album on. Thank me later!

Notable  track: Xeno Arcadia

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Ultrakill: Infinite Hyperdeath (Act I Soundtrack) by Heaven Pierce Her aka game developer Arsi “Hakita” Patala 

Genres: Drum and Bass, Industrial Metal, Ambient, Progressive Metal, Acidcore 

Nothing says “modern indie game development” more than a game built completely from the ground up by one person. Ultrakill’s developer “Hakita” is one of those kindly folkloric DIY figures that make video games such an extensive art form. The game is a painstaking gloriously bloody ode to Dooms of yesteryear but with plenty of its own fine tuned style. The perfect soundtrack for when you’re painting your personal Hell a darker shade of gore, but also would really like to kick your ass into shape if you need an adrenaline boost to your Quarantine blues.

Notable Track: Panic Betrayer 

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Risk of Rain 2 by Chris Christodoulou

Genres: Progressive Rock, Space Rock, Space Ambient,  Post-Rock

Something about the country of Greece brings the best kind of futurism out of the country’s composers. Christodoulou’s Risk of Rain 2 soundtrack is no Bladerunner knock off. This soundtrack for the colorful sci-fi indie rougelike is punchier and less nocturnal than your typical synth-heavy sci-fi soundtrack. Risk of Rain is one of the more successful Kickstarter series around and has the best quality an indie game can have: it feels like a labor of love on all fronts. There’s no reason a rougelike like Rain of Ruin or Hades needs a soundtrack this good, but Christodoulou casts a spell with his electronic-driven prog rock that makes you want to keep respawning. A huge missed opportunity if Christodoulou does not get to soundtrack an earnest sci-fi action-adventure for even big screens. Oh! This soundtrack also features some spoken word segments from Werner Herzog; what more do you need to know?

Notable Track: The Rain Formerly Known As Purple

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Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus by Guillaume David

A big debut project from an up-and-coming composer Guillaume David. Prior to the making of this soundtrack, David was a video game voice actor who worked on a Resident Evil Devil May Cry crossover voicing the character of “Hunk.” Warhammer 40K might become a franchise that more people will care about solely based on the quality of this installment’s soundtrack. When you see the title Warhammer 40,000, what sort of sounds come to mind? If you guessed “Neo gothic cyber Gregorian chants that seamlessly melds the ancient and futuristic”, you would be correct. A turn-based action game could possibly fall into dull territory, but with a visual identity as strong as Warhammer 40K  melded with a suitable musical atmosphere, the action and world becomes irresistible. This soundtrack is a brisk 56 minutes and the other soundtrack on this list with a more conventional runtime. Not a second is wasted on this dynamic and fantastical soundtrack. Prior to hearing this soundtrack I had no intention of ever looking into playing a game based off of something as convoluted as Warhammer 40K, but now I very much want to know what these robot priests are about. That’s the magic of a quality soundtrack.

Notable track: Millenial Rage

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Honorable Mentions:

Happy Listening! 

[isalabells]

@mallrat-trudy

[agentnico]

Top 20 Best Movies of the Decade (2010′s)

Now that we have entered the 2020s, it’s time to look back on a decade of movie magic. To emphasise the importance of each year, I’ll balance things out by including two films from each year for my Top 20 list. I’ve tried to pick films that both defined this decade as well as appealed to me personally, so my list will of course, as always, be different from yours, but hopefully, I won’t totally irritate you with my humble choice, which I deem worthy to post online for the public eye to witness.

2010:

INCEPTION - “You’re waiting for a train...” Christopher Nolan unarguably is the most exciting and original directors working today. Each time he releases a movie, its an event. A literal must-see at the cinema. Which is why this isn’t the only film of his you will find on this list. With Inception, Nolan gives us a movie that is both enjoyable and imaginative, rewarding the audience for the attention that it demands. Filled with so much detail that if you miss certain shots, you will completely get lost in confusion of the narrative (as confusing as it already is). It’s intense and complex, with great performances from the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy, this movie will leave you lingering for more even after that mysterious ending.

SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD -  “You cocky cock! You'll pay for your crimes against humanity!” Once again, another exciting director on this list (oh there are so so many!). Ever since Edgar Wright emerged from the British isles, he’s given us some of the funniest films of the past decade and onwards. His Cornetto Trilogy is a blast, Baby Driver is a blast, Ant-Man was going to be even more of a blast if Marvel allowed Wright to do his magical shenanigans his way, and the upcoming Last Night in Soho will surely be a blast also. With Scott Pilgrim vs. The World Wright creates a meta-clever universe taking inspiration from comic books and video games and filled to the brink with wink-wink-nudge-nudge humour, this is an exciting and very sarcastic over the top endeavor. Also, Brie Larson in this movie.....phew!! And unsurprisingly, its all a blast!

2011:

DRIVE - “I just wanted you to know, just getting to be around you, that was the best thing that ever happened to me.” Drive is more of an elegant exercise in style, and its emotions may be hidden but they run deep. A shamelessly disreputable, stylish, stoic, ultra-violent thriller with amazing stunt work, one of the best opening sequences of any movie this decade and a neon-pumped soundtrack that’s a must-own for all vinyl users, if you still haven’t seen Drive, there’s only one thing you can do. Clue: it’s to go watch Drive.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - GHOST PROTOCOL - “Your mission, should you choose to accept it...” Tom Cruise’s deal with the devil allows him to do some literally impossible stuff, and though I don’t condone his Scientology ways, the man’s stunt work and efforts in his area of expertise are worth all the praise and respect. To be honest, I’m commemorating all three of the Mission Impossible flicks that graced our screen this year (Ghost Protocol, Rogue Nation and Fallout). This franchise is like a game of dodgeball, except that Tom Cruise is the dodgeBALL, being thrown and thrust left and right like nobody cares. Also, with me being Russian, the fact that a movie manages to destroy the Kremlin and then have me not hate the film in the aftermath shows that this film is way too fun to hate.

2012:

DJANGO UNCHAINED - “Gentlemen, you had my curiosity, but now you have my attention.” Quentin Tarantino is one of my favourite directors working today. And Django Unchained happens to be my favourite film of his. The writing for this film is orgasmic (I went there!). The way the actors deliver the lines and the lines of dialogue themselves sound almost poetic to my ears. I can quote so many lines from this darn thing. The cinematography is immaculate. The soundtrack choice is great. The performances, my goodness, the PERFORMANCES!! Jamie Foxx does arguably his career-best work here, but also we have Christoph Waltz and Leonardo DiCaprio both chewing up the scenery, and I’m sure everyone has heard the story involving DiCaprio and the broken glass. Django Unchained is an easy choice on this list for me, and possibly in my Top 10 of all time.

LES MISERABLES - “Do you hear the people sing?” The film that is based on a musical that is based on a book that is based on certain true events. Tom Hooper did an interesting choice of having actors sing live in front of the camera during filming rather than pre-record their voices, and it works to grand effect, though Russell Crowe should have probably been given more singing lessons. The movie is one hell of a way to adapt such a popular stage musical. With an opening shot that emphasises the scale of this picture with a zoom-in towards this big ship during a storm being pulled by these poor prisoners, we are plunged into the despair and conflicts of various characters with adroit narrative thrust so that not a moment feels wasted or redundant. You’d think that a film with hardly any dialogue and an overall reliance on singing wouldn’t be so emotional. Yet, somehow, it works. Also props to Anne Hathaway for winning an Academy Award for being in a film for only 5 MINUTES!!

2013:

THE WOLF OF WALL STREET - “Sell me this pen.” Martin Scorsese’s mad look into Wall Street life is a bombastic caper and running at nearly 3 hours, Scorsese and his editing team manage to keep an astoundingly intoxicating pace that keeps you enthralled and engaged throughout. This one is definitely not for the families, as this R-rated fest is filled with drugs, money, sex and everything you can possibly imagine and paints quite the picture of the rich folks of Wall Street. And the middle of it all a bravura performance from Leonardo DiCaprio. Someone needs to give DiCaprio’s agent a raise, this is Leo’s third appearance on this list and we’re only in 2013!

THE WAY WAY BACK - “I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave. You're having way too much fun, it's making everyone uncomfortable.” Sometimes a little indie flick is enough to lift a human spirit. Real, fun, uplifting and innocent, The Way Way Back dedicated to anyone who felt awkward or out of place at some point in their life, which, let’s be honest, counts all of us. I’m not afraid to admit that. So stop being a b*** and reveal your sensitive side too! Yes, you, the person reading this. Who else could I possibly be talking to? Myself? Maybe. The Way Way Back though is one of the best feel-good indie films of this decade, with the loveable Steve Carell acting very unloveable and Sam Rockwell Rockwelling himself to charm city! If you’ve missed this one, treat yo’self and check it out.

2014:

THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL - “And?? Where is it? What's it all about dammit don't keep us in suspense this has been a complete f***ing nightmare! Just tell us what the f*** is going on!!!” Easily Wes Anderson’s best in my opinion (I have a friend who would argue Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums has the better hand but I think my opinion is more valid because it's me), this movie is a glossy, colorful, whimsical deadpan affair with an energetic turn from Ralph Fiennes as the hotel concierge M. Gustave H. as he and his lobby boy run into various Wes Anderson regulars and deal with murderers, stolen paintings, love affairs, prison breaks, and all kinds of crazy shindigs, but all shown in such a casual Wes Anderson way. This movie is like a slice of cherry pie - damn fine!

INTERSTELLAR - “Murphy’s Law doesn’t mean that something bad will happen. It means that whatever can happen, will happen.” As promised, Christopher Nolan makes another appearance on this list, now with his space time-traveling epic Interstellar, where he takes inspiration from the likes of Kubrick and Tarkovsky to give us, as always, a tad bit confusing adventure with great visuals and an interesting narrative (though it does sometimes get lost in its own way), however, the key thing holding this piece together is the father-daughter relationship with Matthew McConaughey and Mackenzie Foy (and Jessica Chastain) managing to bring so much raw emotion to their respective roles that you can’t help but want to shed a tear. I mean, I haven’t cried for over 14 years, but I remember when I first watched this film, the audience around me was sobbing quite a few times during the duration of this movie. Give it to Nolan to give us the emotional moments!

2015:

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD - “Oh what a day! What a lovely day!!” Easily the best action movie of this decade. Sorry John Wick, neither you or Tom Cruise could defeat this beast. The sheer, limitless invention behind this movie's exhilarating, preposterous chase scenes highlights action filmmaking at its finest. With big monster trucks and a random guitarist rocking-it in the middle of all the action, it’s like a nihilistic version of a Cirque du Soleil show! And it makes Tom Hardy the calmest person on-screen; no idea how it managed that.

STEVE JOBS - “I sat in a garage and invented the future because artists lead and hacks ask for show of hands.” If there is anyone who can make formulaic, mathematical or technological sound fun and exciting, its Aaron Sorkin. The man has a talent for writing screenplays about difficult and complicated topics yet turning them approachable for the casual moviegoer. Pair him with director Danny Boyle, and the result is Steve Jobs, a look at the man behind the phone. Narratively set during three important product launches of Jobs’, we get to see the behind-the-scenes of his relationships with his colleagues and family members, and this character study is one that could have easily fallen into generic biopic tropes, but it holds it’s own right till the credits roll. Also props for showing that Seth Rogen can actually do a serious role. Who would’ve thought that pot-smoking fella had dramatic chops in him?

2016:

NOCTURNAL ANIMALS - “Susan, enjoy the absurdity of our world. It’s a lot less painful. Believe me, our world is a lot less painful than the real world.” Fashion designer Tom Ford does sew his suits well. Apparently, he can also make great films too, with 2009′s A Single Man and with said Nocturnal Animals. This movie is truly incredible and I remember it taking me and my friend by surprise when we first watched it at the cinema. It’s shocking. Horrifying. Depressing. Upsetting. Altogether exhilarating. Being of a fashion background, Tom Ford directs the hell out of this movie, with gorgeous shots and great use of colour as well as managing to masterfully create tension and suspense when necessary. Honestly, I know Tom Ford is probably busy at a department store somewhere, but the guy needs to make another movie. The man has a talent.

LA LA LAND - “Here’s to the ones who dream, foolish as they may seem. Here’s to the hearts that ache; here’s to the mess we make.” Oh, La La Land. Damien Chazelle’s follow-up to the also excellent Whiplash. People who know me well know how much I love this movie. An old-school tour-de-force musical that’s a love letter to jazz and the golden age of Hollywood. The city of stars never looked so good. Featuring catchy original songs, excellent dance choreography (the sequence to the song “Lovely Night” is especially memorable) and a romance tale ten times better than the forsaken The Notebook, La La Land is one special movie. I know many are put off by the film’s not so happy ending, however for me it was the only way this narrative could have ended. 

2017:

BLADE RUNNER 2049 - “We’re all just looking out for something real.” Similarly to Nolan, Denis Villeneuve is proving to be one of the most exciting directors working today. He’s the man behind such films as *deep breath* Prisoners, Enemy, Sicario, Arrival and Blade Runner 2049. And those have all been done within the last decade. The man constantly makes quality movies of various genres, though lately, he has been leaning more towards science fiction, which is a-okay in my books, since as Blade Runner 2049 proves, he can turn science into fiction like butter on bread. A sequel made 30 years after Ridley Scott’s classic, this visually breathtaking piece is arguably even better than its predecessor with many moments giving you the “wow wow wow wow wow WOW!” factor, and when Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford are both on-screen they are dynamite. Forget the new Star Wars film (that’s right, I'm throwing shade there), Blade Runner is where it’s at!

PHANTOM THREAD - “The tea is going out. The interruption is staying right here with me.” The supposed last Daniel Day-Lewis film, as he has now apparently retired from acting, but let’s be honest, nothing stops him from simply unretiring at any point. Exhibit A - Joe Pesci. However, like Pesci, if he comes back I’ll only be happy. He’s one of acting greats of our time, and his collaborations will director Paul Thomas Anderson bring out some of his best roles. Phantom Thread is a marvel of a movie. No, I don’t mean that’s its part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I mean as in it can fill one with wonder and astonishment. Phantom Thread is PTA’s Gothic dark fairy-tale romance film, which expertly planned shots and scenes where every word of the dialogue counts. There is no wasted moment. And as the film transpires to its dark and unsettling climax, one begins to realize that this, THIS, is what filmmaking is about. Telling an engrossing story in an interesting way with crisp-clear shots and off-the-chart acting at play, with great costume design on display, although the latter is unsurprising due to a major aspect of the movie revolving around fashion.

2018:

MANDY -  “You ripped ma shirt!! You ripped maaa shiirrt!!” An acquired taste for sure, however, Mandy is indeed something truly special. From first glance, this film might seem like nothing out of the ordinary, especially from the point of view of the plot. Its the usual revenge flick. However director Panos Cosmatos’ vision and how he presents it is so much more unique. And what’s not love in this film? There’s something for everyone! It’s artsy and slow enough for the critics, hip and metal for the nonchalant, gory and violent for the hardcore genre fanatics and of course the Nic-Cage-rage factor is present for the fans of the actor. Alright, it may not be a family film, but this one is worth a watch. The whole thing is bound together by this psychedelic otherworldly environment, with the whole movie conceived in this dark, unsettlingly beautiful yet horror-filled aura that might stray people away, as it might be just too different for them, however, if you are looking for something different to watch, take mandy. I mean, watch Mandy!

A STAR IS BORN - “Music is essentially 12 notes between any octave. Twelve notes and the octave repeats. It’s the same story told over and over. All the artist can offer the world is how they see those 12 notes.” The film that began all the rumours surrounding Bradley Cooper’s and Lady Gaga’s affair. People, heads up, they are actors! They were putting on a performance! Jeez. That being said, I totally ship them. Nuff’ said. The film though? Yes, it’s good. Some country-style music, romance blooming, Gaga can apparently act, people sing about shallows for some reason...all together works for a pretty decent motion picture. Also, the fact that Bradley Cooper wrote, directed, produced and starred in this gives me so much respect for the guy. He poured his heart and soul into this. And Lady Gaga absolutely shines!

2019:

PAIN & GLORY -  “Writing is like drawing but with letters.” Director Pedro Almodovar semi-autobiographical film takes a close look at how one deals with acceptance, being forgotten, symptoms of depression and generally all fairly negative attributes, but delivered in such an honest and profound way that there is a strange lightness that emerges from it all. Antonio Banderas is uncannily vulnerable in the lead role, delivering such an earnest performance that shows a man that is filled with melancholic regret who seeks his own form of redemption. This movie is a thing of beauty.

PARASITE - “You know what kind of plan never fails? No plan at all. If you make a plan, life never works out that way.” Parasite is easily the most original and surprising films of 2019, and possibly the decade, managing to subvert expectations and blend together so many different genres so naturally. To spoil any narrative element of this movie would be a sin, like this one in particular works best when not knowing anything about it. This movie comes to us from Bong Joon-Ho, a South Korean director behind such films as The Host, Memories of Murder, Okja, and Snowpiercer. It’s nice to see the awards ceremonies giving him the proper recognition finally. He deserves it.

That sums up my Top 20 Best Movies of the Decade list. Of course, there are so many other great films that came out in these 10 years, such as Whiplash, When Marnie Was There, Paterson, Silence, Kubo and the Two Strings, The Nice Guys...I can go on forever. Cinema is a constant ever-growing medium, and it is fascinating to see how it changes through the years, in some ways improving and in some parts not so much. In any case, I look forward towards a new decade of, hopefully, great movies, however, let’s be honest, for all these great films there’s always a Norm of the North, a Scout’s Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse or frickin’ Cats. But let’s hope those will be kept to a minimum. In any case, bring on the 2020s!

[angrylizardjacket]

mouth full of white lies {Machine Gun Kelly} 1

1. you look like my next mistake

Summary: You’re Douglas Booth’s adopted little sister, a YouTuber moonlighting as an assistant on The Dirt. The fact that your brother’s the lead is a happy accident. Another happy accident? Getting drunk with MGK and becoming fast friends with him. Until, of course, everyone assumes you’re together. What better way to make everyone shut up then by agreeing. Sort of. Okay so you’re not really dating but you’ve got to convince your respective fans that you are. And the rest of the cast and crew. It’s okay, flirting is totally harmless. The feelings? Everything else that comes after? Less harmless.

A/N: we meant to be a much different, much shorter fic for @kellysimagines, but i hope you like it!! fake dating AU. reader is adopted, not blood related!! warnings for drunken-ness.

the brainstrust: @sataninsatin @silvertonguedserpent @juliarose21 @kellysimagines @estxxbritt @machine-gun-casie @siriuslymooned @harringtonstudios @misscharlottelee @narcvissa @hiworlditishumbleme @angelwarner28 @nevilles-insinuations @rumoured-whispers @mgkobsessed @edwardtriggerhandzz @suckerforbarnes @wastelcve @bakerkells @local-troubled-writer @freddiessmallnipples

----

The fact that you and your brother ended up working on the same project was purely coincidence, and that actually wasn’t a lie. Douglas had landed the role of a lifetime, Nikki Sixx in The Dirt, and was immediately up to his eyes in nondisclosure agreements. You, on the other hand, had been scrolling through Facebook when a friend of yours, Josy, who happened to be an assistant director who had been talking about a ‘huge project for Netflix she wasn’t allowed to discuss’ asked if you wanted to come onboard as her assistant, since you’d proven to be good under pressure and fast on your feet when she had still been filming student projects only a few years ago.

“Hello! Hello and welcome back, ducklings! Today is a ‘Get Ready With Me’ for my flight to New Orleans! Can you believe it? I’m working on a big project and I have to travel - they’re paying for my travel! I’m so excited! This is going to be such a fun project, even though I can’t tell you too much about it just yet. So to start with, I’m going to run you through my every-day shower routing.”

You hadn’t been at the table read, but you had been at rehearsals, had turned up on the first day looking all done up, excited and professional, only to be met with your brother in eyeliner. 

“Duck!” Of course he was elated to see you, grin splitting his face from ear to ear. He calls you by your childhood nickname, he always has, and already you can feel every pair of eyes on you, but you don’t care. The nickname had followed you through life, of course less than a day in the project and it was already spreading. 

Everything making sense after you mention Josy had gotten you the job. She was a mutual friend, had always been fond of the two of you.

“This,” you enthuse, clutching your clipboard to your chest, “this is what you’re doing? You’re doing the Motley Crue biopic?” You’re looking at him with stars in your eyes, your talented big brother, who seemed to bring you along for the ride in one way or another. 

And finally he can tell you about it, because damn it had felt like forever since the two of you had spoken simply because he’d been hiding the biggest news in his life from you. 

“Oi, Booths!” You hear Josy’s distinct voice the moment she steps in the rehearsal room, though she’s clearly smiling, “good to see you both, but Doug, I need you up and in the space; I’m running warm ups before we get started. Duck, could you go on a coffee run for me?” She asks it sweetly; she’d picked up the nickname for you years ago from Douglas, and of course it had stuck, not that you minded. With that you’re both off. 

You’d been so distracted by getting to talk to your brother, who had been early just as you had been - there’s something to be said for nature versus nurture, despite not sharing genetics, you certainly shared a sense of punctuality - that you hadn’t even seemed to notice the rest of the cast getting in. But they’re not your job; you just have to keep Josy happy, get her food and drinks when she requested it, and type out emails she dictates. Easy. 

Of course this isn’t how things stay; you’re in close proximity to the cast for at least five hours a day, in a corner somewhere working on your own emails or scrolling through Twitter when you weren’t needed, but always around. For the first few days, no-one pays you much attention. 

“Hello! Hello and welcome back, ducklings! It’s my first week with The Project, and I’ve finally got a day off; it’s Sunday so I’m dragging my brother to a whole bunch of places you lovely people have recommended for me! Wish us luck!”

You’ve been in front of a camera for about as long as Douglas has, though never quite in the same way. You’d tried your hand at all sorts of jobs, both in the entertainment industry, and not, and while you enjoyed the entertainment industry well enough, you found that you had a passion for making your own videos. Your YouTube channel, which was almost at a million followers, had been going strong for almost four years, as you made videos about the lesser known roles in the industry. Sometimes your brother was in your videos, but often he wasn’t, and you felt lucky that you never really needed to use him for clout. He was just Doug, and your followers knew that if he was in a video, it’s because he wanted to be, but he wasn’t the reason the video was being made.

Douglas was nothing if not supportive, and when Sunday rolls around and when production gave you and the main cast the day off, while the second unit team worked with some of the secondary characters, you were both more than happy to take advantage of the freedom.

“Dude I have such a long list of places we could go, I don’t even know where to begin - haven’t you been here before?” You pressed the phone to your ear, frowning at the two outfits you had laid out on the bed before you.

“Yeah, for like,” Douglas hums at the other end of the line, “like press things, and like a week and a half for some Jupiter Ascending stuff-”

“Did that even make it -?”

“No, it got cut -” somewhere behind him, the milk frother of a coffee machine squeals, and someone’s indistinct name is called.

“Get me a drink,” you tell him, instinctively.

“Get one yourself!” He half laughs, and you hear him cover the receiver and muffle his thanks as he presumably picks up his drink.

“Who are you talking to?” When he uncovers the phone, you can hear another familiar voice; it’s Colson, you’re pretty sure. You know him from rehearsals, and a bit from his music, but not much beyond that.

“My sister,” Douglas offers, flatly, to which you make a noise of indignance. 

“Ask him if he’s ever been to New Orleans -” you instruct, putting the phone on speaker and opting to change into your more practical jeans and sweater option.

“She wants to know if you’ve ever been to New Orleans -” He relays easily, and you hear a snort of laughter.

“Of course I have.” You hear Colson say.

“Of course he has -” Douglas tells you, as if worried that you hadn’t heard.

“Ask him -” You begin, but you’re cut off.

“We’re across the road,” Douglas tells you, and you know without having to see him that he’s rolling his eyes at you. Audi ambassador, philanthropist, movie star, and occasional model Douglas Booth had the composure of a saint for everyone but you, though neither of you would have it any other way, “just come over here yourself.”

“Get me a drink?” You asked hopefully, and you heard him sigh, knowing you’d already won.

Your favourite drink is waiting for you when you arrive, as are both Douglas, and Colson, sitting hunched over in a booth with dark glasses. You can’t help but chuckle.

“Booths in a booth.” You mutter, and at least that gets their attention. Sliding in next to Douglas, you make eye contact with Colson as he lowers his glasses and frowns at you, just a little, as you sip your drink.

He looks between the two of you for a moment; you don’t share a whole heap of similarities with him, but after a beat, he nods, and gives you a curious look.

“Alright, good to meet you,” he paused, narrowed his eyes for a moment, “you’re part of the crew, aren’t you?” Is what he focuses on.

“Assistant to the AD,” you nod, before adding, “Duck, you might know me as Duck,” and that he seems to recognise at least. Colson hums thoughtfully, nodding and sliding his glasses back up his nose as he leans back against the seat. Drinking your drink with a surprising focus, you hand over your list of recommended places to Douglas, who nods approvingly, but quickly turns it over to Colson. He makes short work of it, crosses quite a few spots off, adds a few of his own, and takes pause to look up from it.

“Why are we going all over town? Why not just like... chill and maybe go over lines and shit? Isn’t that what we’re meant to do?”

“Didn’t take you for the cautious type,” you tell him with a teasing edge to your voice. Colson fixes you with a half-smile, handing the phone back pointedly.

“I’m not, I just don’t want you to narc on me if we start at bourbon street and spend our precious Sunday getting drunk in The Big Easy,” he matches your tone, sitting back with a posture so relaxed it’s almost scripted, and you’re pretty sure you like his nerve. 

“I’m...” you hesitate a little, “a YouTuber,” and though Colson winces a little, it still stings. With so much stigma surrounding your profession, even in 2018, it’s hard to explain to people what you do for a living and not receive criticism.

“So you’re gonna catch all the stupid shit we do on camera?” He asks, and oh, so that’s what he’s worried about. You let out a breath you hadn’t realised you’d been holding.

“If you don’t wanna be in it, then you don’t have to be; anyways, I’ll edit out all the bits that break our NDAs,” shrugging, you shoot for casual, and Colson looks like he’s actually weighing up his options. 

“You still haven’t told him you’re not a narc,” Douglas stage whispers to you, which makes your expression sour and Colson laugh.

“You’re a narc,” you hiss back, reflexively. 

“We’re method acting,” Douglas offers, aiming for that same casual confidence that Colson was exuding, but not quite getting there.

“Fuck yeah, dude, that’s the spirit,” Colson’s expression breaks out into a grin, and he offers Douglas a fist bump, which your brother gladly returns. Then Colson’s looking back at you, bright and excited rather than judgmental; “you in?”

“We’ve gained a newcomer! A tour guide, if you will, Mister-” and you turn where you’re filming yourself and the two men beside you, the camera shaking in your grip as you head down the street, and your voice lowers, “what do you want me to introduce you as-” but he buts you off, moves around Douglas, who’s laughing quietly to himself, and grabs the camera.

“It’s MGK, motherfuckers! We ‘bout to hit Bourbon Street - we’ll bookend this shit; open with it and close with it, we’ll be back here tonight!” He sticks his tongue out, and throws out the devil sign with his hands, before turning the camera to catch Douglas laughing, and you looking both excited and concerned.

“We will?” 

When you ask about Daniel and Iwan, the other two members of the film’s Motley Crue, all you get is vague answers; in time, they’ll all come to be good friends, but it’s their first Sunday off, and no-one begrudges them for them choosing to take time for themselves. Douglas and Colson, however, had decided early on to try and make their friendship both on and off screen as authentic as possible. 

“Fuck, man, Tommy’s like, opening line in the book is that he and Nikki were like an old married couple, for like twenty years, dude, that kind of connection is insane!” Colson is nothing if not good casting, waxing poetic at a diner he’d spotted around midday, your little group already tipsy and hungry since your less than substantial cafe breakfast.

“I give this bacon and egg roll,” Douglas is in his own little world, only aware that you had your camera pointing at him as he devoured his lunch with a surprisingly messy gusto, “four-and-a-half out of five cups.” He announced with a mouth full of food, using the rating system you’d devised earlier in the day. After a moment, he swallowed, before turning to Colson, expression serious, “I’ve known you for about a week, and as much as I like you, I don’t think I want to marry you.” 

“No, that’s the thing, man, twenty years is a long-ass time to know someone; I just, man, by the end of this, we are gonna be tight, okay? That’s all I want. Bros, you know?” And he wrapped his arms around Douglas, pulling him in for a hug, and your brother nodded seriously, wrapping his arm around Colson in return.

“Bros.” He confirmed, giving the camera a very pointed look. You make sure the camera catches when you flip him off. All it does is set off all three of you laughing.

It’s an incredibly fun day, the three of you traipsing around, visiting sound studios and memorials and sites that paid homage to the great city you found yourselves in. You know you shouldn’t be surprised, but Colson’s rather reverential when it comes to the history of music, and when you look back at your list, you see the sites he’s added all have to do with it. Honestly, you’re a little endeared. It’s also a fun night, the parts of it you can remember, stumbling, leaning on one another. There’s bound to be something about it in the gossip rags in the following days, not that the three of you were badly behaved, just that they had both stopped caring about avoiding paparazzi, and, alright, being a little bit raucous. 

In bed by two, you know you’re gonna have a killer hang over for your nine-am start, but it was a fun night, and you’re looking forward to reviewing your footage.

“I give this bourbon from - hey, where’s this bourbon from?” You turn to look over your shoulder, and the cup in your hand slops over with drink, splashing out onto the street, not that you notice. Douglas is talking to someone running a stall, but Colson joins you, wrapping an arm around you.

“We give this bourbon a cup out of cup,” he announces, and you nod seriously.

“Cup out of cup.” You agree, and lift up the cup, before an idea lights up your face. “Drink it with me, like same cup, try and drink it with me.” It’s a terrible idea, your cheeks pressed together, tongues out as if it would help you drink better -

“You guys look like incredibly stupid,” Douglas calls out from out of frame, finally noticing the two of you. You go to respond, but that’s when Colson tips up the cup and it manages to hit neither of your mouths, instead it splashes against where your cheeks were pressed together, and all down your clothes. “Told you.” Douglas adds. 

Colson licks the bourbon from your cheek with a grin, but moves on quickly. You look around shiftily once the boys had left, still holding the camera with one hand, and you pull the hem of your shirt to your mouth, sucking liquor from it as you follow behind them wearing a pleased little smile.

Honestly, things get more lively in more ways than one, after that. Now that Colson knows you, it seems the rest of the cast do too. Slowly but surely you’re developing a friendship with both Iwan and Daniel, though Colson’s been surprisingly quick to treat you like an old friend.

“Trial by fireball whiskey,” is what he tells you after rehearsals one Saturday night. You’re doing a dinner run, picking up pizzas before the four of them go out, with you as their chaperone, as directed by Josy. 

“Speaking of,” though you can’t help but grin a little at the fact that you’d earned his favour so easily, “I’ve almost finished the video.” 

“Oh God,” he groans, laughs, and covers his face with his hands, “do I even wanna see it?”

“It’s not that damning, I promise, I need to stay monetized, you know?” You laugh, but it’s a sad truth you’ve had to deal with a lot since choosing to become a YouTuber. 

“I’m not exactly PG-13,” Colson’s smirking when you look at him, and his gaze meets yours and what does that tone mean and why are you reading into this all of a sudden.

“So I suppose you were on your best behavior that night?” You ask, voice innocent, though you can feel yourself getting flustered. His smirk grows wider.

“Only for Douglas’ sake.” 

And then your name’s called for the pizzas and the mood vanishes and Colson just asks if you can send him a link when you put up the video; you tell him you can send him it before it’s published, just to make sure he’s happy with it, and he gives you this genuine smile that you feel warm your heart, just a little.

But it’s when you publish the video that all hell breaks loose. 

Having a famous brother is one thing. Having a famous brother is allowed. Knowing someone famous is clout chasing, is gold digging, is not allowed according to the internet. Making someone famous laugh is downright illegal, surely he can do better than you. Because with the views come assumptions, and your burgeoning crush aside, they’re baseless. You’ve known him for three weeks. Twenty one and a half days in total. Flirting aside, the internet doesn’t know shit. 

It still hurts. 

The video kind of blows up, because everyone loves relatively harmless drunk celebrity shenanigans, and Colson’s kind of been blowing up recently between his music, and his upcoming film Bird Box. So now there’s invasive questions and death threats filling up your DMs on every platform, and along with a new influx of followers comes a new wave of toxicity. You know how to deal with people accusing you of using your brother for clout, but this is a whole other level. 

“So you’re with Colson,” Douglas looks smug when you answer your door on the day after the video drops. Though quick to defend yourself, there’s already tears in your eyes having had little sleep from the stress of everything that had happened, his smug aura drops and he wraps you up in a hug. “Hey, I’m kidding, I’m kidding,” his voice is soothing and level as he walks you back into your room, closing your door.

“You’re an ass,” you tell him, sulkily, but you hug him back.

“I’m sorry,” he tells you in earnest.

“I’m gonna get fired-”

“You’re not gonna get fired, Duck, you didn’t break your NDA, you didn’t break YouTube’s terms of service, you bleeped out all the swearing, you had an alcohol disclaimer at the start; this is the fans and the media blowing things way out of proportion.” He assures as you sniffle, still hugging him tightly. 

“They’re gonna fire me,” you murmur, voice a soft, sad whine.

“They’re not.” 

This is the point at which your phone starts to go off; someone’s calling you, and the caller ID says it’s Colson. He must have just woken up.

“He okay-ed the video, didn’t he?” Douglas asks, and you nod. “Then he won’t be mad; he’s dealt with this shit more than us, you know?” He gently pushes you towards the phone where it’s sitting on your bed, and steps back. “I’m gonna give you and your boyfriend some space,” and it’s teasing again, his grin sharp as he ducks out of the way of the pillow you throw.

“Asshole!” You yell after him. Once’s he’s out of the room, however, you take a moment to compose yourself before picking up the phone. 

“Hey, I’m so sorry -” you start, but Colson seems surprised to hear your apology.

“Nah, Ducky, don’t worry about it, I called to apologise to you; if I’m ever seen with a chick everyone thinks I’m dating her, I should have realised, I should have -”

“No, I mean, I can’t post a video with a guy who’s not my brother without five different tea channels claiming I’m in love,” you laugh, trying to hide your distress. An awkward silence follows, in which you sniffle, and reopen your laptop.

“I am really sorry,” Colson says, and there’s regret in his voice that you hadn’t expected. “If I could get them to all shut the fuck up, I would; you shouldn’t be all torn up over my shit.”

Something about what he says plays in your mind over the next few days, watching, subdued in rehearsals. The rest of the cast ask if your alright, sympathizes with you, all of them having had run-ins with the media in one way or another. Josy, in her own way, sympathizes too, in that she doesn’t treat you any differently, she doesn’t pity you. She, like you, like all of you, knows it will blow over. Probably.

“Hello,” your tone is so damn subdued, “hello and welcome back. I’m here today to address some rumours you may have heard. To all my new ducklings, hello. And to all my old, hello again.”

“They’re not gonna believe you if you deny it,” is how you greet Colson, barging into his room after rehearsals on a Wednesday. It had been a good day, things had calmed down somewhat online, but still gossip rags were still going hard, seeing as the paparazzi had managed to spot the two of you together during a break in rehearsals. 

“Yeah, no, they generally don’t,” he says flatly, frowning a little as he closes the door, running with whatever train of thought you were on.

“Then don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Deny it.”

Silence.

“Are you asking me out?” He actually wears a little smile at that, but you fix him with a serious look, not even a hint of a joke in your tone or expression. 

“Yes, because we’re twelve,” you rolled your eyes, tone so flat it’s almost comical, before you snap “- fucking no I’m not asking you out -” the thought had crossed your mind several times before shit had hit the fan, but there was no way in hell he’d genuinely want you now; you both came with a mob of crazed fans, and a sweet, if fake relationship with an amicable end would be far easier to manage than crazed rumors, “I’m fake asking you out. If you’d have me, I want to date you to get our fans to calm down.”

“How?!” He splutters, both confused and overwhelmingly amused. “That’d never work.”

“If we tell them we’re together, and we’re both working on projects, the industry won’t see either of as distracted by outside sources; we talk up how we’re supporting one another through this process, and that if our fans ever wanted what’s best for us, they’d support us too.”

“You’d...” he swallows hard, though he’s certainly contemplating the thought, “you’d still get death threats, you know that-”

“I get death threats when I don’t post feet pics;” you snorted dismissively, and his eyebrows rose, “I can handle them, but if you said this made you happy, well I think a majority of your fans would calm down. Stan-culture is weird and frightening, but a lot of them, most of them,” you corrected yourself, “want what’s best for you.”

“You’ve really thought this through, haven’t you?” And he’s smiling now, watching you with something that almost resembles admiration in his eyes.

“Tell me you haven’t had a hundred tweets yelling about how you’ve corrupted me,” you cock your hip, and he casts a glance to his phone, before admitting he has, “well if I go back to posting non-drunk content with you in it, they’ll die down, I guarantee it.”

“What about your brother?”

“He’ll support me no matter what, it’ll be more believable if he, you know, believes it.” You hold out your hand, waiting. There’s an almost intimidating spark in your eyes, a focus that Colson hasn’t seen before. “Are you in?”

“Yeah, fuck it, why not,” and he shakes your hand, firm, grinning brightly.

“I’m here to address some rumours regarding my...” you took a deep breath, “boyfriend.”

[rosesvioletshardy]

life as we know it - b.h. chapter 8

a/n: i’m posting today because i needed some sort of mental break form everything happening. i was about to go to a blm protest yesterday in my city until i heard what was happening and before it escalated too far and people were running for safety. i’ve been signing petitions and donating as much as i could non-stop and it really got to me. really hope you guys like this chapter

black lives matter

masterlist

summary: when their two best friends die, it’s up to ben and y/n to take care of their goddaughter and face the challenges that come with it

# of words: 3,557

warnings: reader being a dick at one point, FLUFF, panic attack

not edited so i apologize for any mistakes

taglist: @myfatbottomedgirls, @evemarie05, @suckerfor-fanfics

--

(my gif below, please credit if using)

july

a couple of months have passed and  ben and y/n have managed to do everything their way and the way christian and lennon would’ve wanted them to. they had both seen therapists to truly get in touch with the situation and there was no more freaking out and ever since the fiasco about them “dating” and charlie being *their* daughter. sean on the other hand needed his plan to go quick before she understood her real feelings and how she truly felt and broke up with him. a lot of people didn’t believe that what they were saying was true and would rather believe a gossip site rather than the true source itself because they’d think it would be a good way to promote more self image and business. 

when it came out, sean was furious. she knew it would happen and tried to call him to explain the situation that they weren’t together and charlie wasn’t their daughter but he knew that. he wanted her to feel guilty  

flashback

“did you see the news?” he asked 

“yeah listen, ben already talked to his publicist about it and the daily mail is going to post another article about it’s not true, he’s not my boyfriend and charlie is our biological daughter.”

“he better. i swear to god he ruins everything.” he told her gritting his teeth, and grabbing her wrists and throwing them away 

“no he doesn’t.”

“yes he does, but i need to keep making sure he doesn’t touch you in any way possible okay? you’re mine only.”

“i’m yours only.” she told him tears creeping up in her eyes

flashback over

there were some ups and downs like recently charlie decided she needed to go number 2 while they were giving her a bath that turned into a doctor’s visit the next day

“she still has soap on her head.” she told ben 

“yeah i can see” he said as he moved the shower head and covered charlie’s eyes as she played with the rubber duck

before ben could cover her eyes, she saw charlie do her poop face

“she’s making her poop face” y/n voiced

“What?”

“her poop face! that’s the face she makes when she needs to go. she’s going to poop in the tub” she yelled picking charlie up to take her to the toilet

ben started to freak out as he moved out of the way to take the lock off of the toilet that was installed

“hurry up! she’s going to do it any minute!” “‘m trying! i don’t remember how i opened these!” ben panicked

“she’s going to poop on me. here let me try” she panicked giving charlie to ben

y/n then began to struggle like ben did and kept trying to pull the latch before doing the unthinkable and taking ben’s beanie and holding it under the baby

“no, no, no MY HAT! oh my god that’s my hat” 

“i’m so sorry. i’ll buy you a new one. i promise.” she giggled

“oh it’s funny. yeah, laugh it off. that’s real funny” ben said starting to laugh along

“wait what is that?”

“what?” 

“that lump on her stomach”

“‘t’s her belly button. she’s an outie.” ben told her

“No, that was not there yesterday when i changed her.” she told him

“okay. we’ll make a doctor's appointment for tomorrow. let’s just get her cleaned up and ready for bed.”

that was all on her mind throughout the night and before the appointment. she had taken charlie on her break so ben can have some alone time for a while seeing that he’s been busy and wants one day without hearing the wiggles music all day.

here she was, holding charlie and pacing back and forth talking to tyler about an event

“we can’t afford to be snobby. it’s our biggest event. just bring out all the most popular foods, you know? anything that’s sweet and could be counted as finger-food.” she told him before the doctor came in

“sorry to keep you waiting. my mother wouldn’t hang up.” the doctor said

“that’s fine. i know the feeling sometimes”

“so you are charlie’s new guardian, is that correct?” dr. smith asked looking at charlie’s chart

“yes that is correct.”

“i’m really sorry about what happened to her parents and your friends” he said as he gestured for her to sit charlie on the table

“thank you.”

“okay. now, how is she doing? is she sleeping okay? regular bowel movements”

“well not at first but now it’s very regular. but she has this protrusion on her stomach and i don’t know what it is. i don’t know anything about kids. lennon was the first one of my friends to have a baby and she was amazing with charlie. she would be the first person i would call about this. i-i mean, she was the first person i called about everything. and it hurts that i can’t call her and i’d really like to tell her “oh my god what the hell were you thinking? I mean you could’ve left me with your pearls or the YSL clutch. this is just a little too much and hard. i don’t even know what i’m doing even with the help.” oh god i’m ranting. i’m so sorry.” y/n said taking a deep breath

“it’s fine. a lot of parents do that, especially first time parents. so, charlie’s got an umbilical hernia. it’s nothing to be worried about, they mostly go away on their own, but we’ll keep watching it.” dr. smith told her taking out his prescription pad and began to write

“wait, you said it goes away on its own.”

“this is for you.” he finished writing down and giving it to her

she took the paper and began to read it out loud

“one bottle of pinot noir, one to two glasses as needed.”

“or white, same dosage though. look, you and whoever is with you are doing is pretty incredible. but don’t forget to give yourselves a break every now and then. Okay? So i’ll have the nurse set you up in a week? bye charlie, you’re going to be okay. it was nice to meet you.” dr. smith told her shaking her hand

“you too, and thank you.”

y/n left the building with charlie in her stroller and they began their journey back home. on the way, they ended up seeing sean but he wasn’t alone. at first she thought “maybe it’s just a co-worker of his out for lunch or maybe just an old friend.” but then she saw what she thought was the worst thing ever. he was cheating on her. she didn’t know what to feel other than betrayed and she hadn’t felt like this in a way since she found out about the death. wiping the lone tear away, she walked away and straight home and wondered how long it had been going on or if ben knew.

when she got home, she was met with what seemed like drumming. taking charlie out of her stroller and down for a nap, she walked into the family room to find ben sitting at a drum set and looking at music sheets. 

“what the fuck benjamin. what is this?!” y/n exclaimed

“well, as you can see, it is a drum set. they are usually used by drummers for band and are set up in the ba-” ben tried to explain in a sarcastic tone before getting cut off

“i know what a drum is. i mean what is it doing in the room? why do you even have it?” 

“this new role i got involves drumming and i said i could play so here we are now.” 

“but you can’t play.”

“exactly that’s why i’m practicing. why does it look like you were crying?” he asked curiously after seeing her puffy eyes

“um no reason. what is the role that you need to learn drumming so badly?” 

“okay. do you promise not to tell anyone?”

“yeah i promise”

“this is really private and it hasn’t been announced yet so do you really prom-” “yes, ben i fucking promise. Jesus”

“fine. geez. i’m going to be playing roger taylor in the queen biopic” ben told her really excited

this caused her to laugh and she couldn’t understand why. she didn’t mean to be rude it just sort of happened.

“i’m sorry. i didn’t mean to laugh. i just couldn’t get the thought of you playing one of my childhood crushes. oh my. how long have you managed to keep this from me?” 

“can you please leave me alone now? i don’t have that much time to learn a shit ton of songs. and i went to the meeting about it a couple of  months ago, remember when i left in the middle of dinner? then i started lessons after i got the part and somehow managed to pull off one song so far.” ben told her fixing one of the cymbals

that’s why ben was constantly gone for a while and they had to ask charlie’s babysitter because she couldn’t take care of charlie and go to work at the same time

“now can i leave for practice? i can’t believe i’m telling you this, but we shoot the live aid scene soon and joe, rami, and gwilym are still trying to get to know one another?” ben asked

“yeah, sure.” she said before continuing

“why don’t you invite them over? i can make dinner for all of you.” 

“are you sure about that? wouldn’t it be too much?” 

“no, it’s completely fine. have you forgotten how many places i’ve catered? or how many people i serve for a day when i work? it’s practically my specialty.” 

“fine. but you better not tell anything embarrassing that’s happened to us so far.” ben warned

“ooo i’m so scared” y/n exclaimed in a teasing way

“watch it.” ben warned pointing at her with a drumstick

“fine.”

after their exchange, y/n began to look around the kit as ben got ready to leave. walking into the kitchen she began dinner for later in the night and made something that ben could easily heat up later.

“alright, i’m leaving. bye charlie girl.” ben said giving charlie a kiss on her head as she continued to sleep

hours passed and it was now around 8 in the evening and y/n took the doctor's advice and decided to drink some pinot noir. for some reason she managed to handle her alcohol this time and not send anything risky. ben walked in the house to find her giggling as she had managed to drink a little more than usual.

“BEN! oh my god. thank god you’re here. have i told you how much of a great dad you’ll be? i mean i really hate you but you’re like a great dad or “dad” with charlie i guess but still. i’m literally going to be so jealous of whoever gets to have your kids. oh my god i feel so good! but there is one thing i’ve realized the whole time she has been asleep and it’s that i’m never going to take a great bath in this house. this is a shower house. why does it always look like you never brush your hair? that must save a lot of time.” she told him

“how’s that wine treating you? you not going to send anyone anything?”

“no. my phone is in the kitchen so i wouldn’t touch it while i drink. oh. did you want some? because i can definitely share.”  

“nah i’m good.”

“maybe it’s because you don’t worry as much. that’s what lennon told me when they set us up. she said “honey, you just got your ass dumped by your boyfriend of two years and cheated on you, you need a good time.” then you showed up! your charming self shows up at my door and it’s a total asshole at the door. and now i’m about to raise a kid with said asshole.” 

ben didn’t know what to feel but hurt. he really thought that she would come around but clearly she didn’t

“oh god i’m going to regret this huh? i shouldn’t have poured my feelings out to that doctor and just listened to the therapist instead.” she said putting the glass down

“come on. off to bed, i think you’ve had enough.”

“i’ve had so many things thought of that i wanted to say but i can’t remember them” 

“‘kay so you’re a horny drunk and a belligerent drunk? That’ll be a fun next 18 years:” ben told her as they started to walk up the stairs

“i’m a fun drunk too. it just depends on what i drink.” she said as they heard the doorbell ring

ben went to the door to see who it was thinking it was one of their neighbors asking for something but it wasn’t

“Hi”

“hi. i’m janine williams. your caseworker from social services?” the woman said shaking ben's hand as y/n creeped up behind him

“you were told that we’d be making a few unannounced visits.”

“yeah. this is definitely unannounced. just give me one minute.” ben told her closing the door

“social services are at the door. so go and wash your face and get your head out of your ass and hope that you’re as good at acting like you are baking. you got like 5 minutes to sober up.” ben whisper yelled at her pointing towards the stairs

“please come in. i’ll show you around” ben said as he opened the door

she tried her best to sober up as much as she could while ben showed janine around the house and making sure that they could do what they needed to do

“are you sure you don’t want to see it again?” 

“nope, twice is usually my limit.” 

“i’m so sorry. i was finishing up cleaning the dishes. i didn’t have time to do them in the morning so with charlie down i got to do them” she said as they saw a few dishes in the sink

“okay. um let’s get started then”

y/n and ben sat next to each other while janine sat opposite of them

“let’s just talk. just get the sense of the both of you, your plans. where do you see yourselves in, say, five years?”

“OH I KNOW!” y/n practically yelled as ben tried to calm her down

“i own a small bakery, hopefully a full restaurant. anyways i hope to own my own frozen food, organic of course. but charlie, i didn’t include her but she is a part of my plan.”

“that’s fine. Thank you. ben? where do you see yourself in five years?” 

“wow, well hopefully i’ll still be acting. um like she said Charlie is a part of my plan to. i want to show her what i do-” ben started before getting cut off

“that’s what i wanted to talk to you about. the acting. i know actors manage to pull it off all the time but can you do it? can you still make sure that charlie will be provided and seen if y/n is needed for something?”

“yes. of course. with my new film i’ll be shooting here in london and around but i won’t be too far away from them.” ben told her

this was a surprise to her but it shouldn’t have been because of what it was about 

“there’s also another thing i’m concerned about. the dog-”

“yes. frankie. don’t worry, she is completely trained and would never harm charlie and pretty much has been like a protector to her. she knows when to listen and what to do.”

“okay, good. one last thing is the relationship between you two. i did read the daily mail and what they have said and didn’t believe them because who would. but i want to make sure that nothing in this relationship could cause any problems for charlie, especially when she gets older.”

“i’m actually in a relationship right now. and let me tell, it’s not so hot right now but he doesn’t know that. i can promise you that the problems between ben and i can be completely totally worked out.” y/n giggled out 

“exactly. if we have any problems i’m sure we would be able to work them out no matter what the situation is in a nice calm matter for charlie.”

“Good, well not with your relationship, hope everything's alright but with you two living together, the only thing we are concerned with is charlie losing more people she’s close too. well i think that’s it. just know we’ll be making a couple more not to many visits by the end of the year and if there’s any problems, just call us.” janine told them standing up shaking their hands 

when ben closed the door, he began to wonder what she was talking about and thought about whether it was a good time to tell her about what he heard sean say at the funeral 2 months before. 

“there’s something i need to tell you. you probably won’t remember because i can tell you’re still a little tipsy but it’s about sean” he started 

“a couple of months ago during the funeral reception, i overheard sean say something. he’s cheating on you and he wants to marry you because he thinks he’ll be able to get your company and expand it to become more rich.” 

“i know he’s cheating on me. i saw him earlier today that’s why it looked like i was crying.” y/n explained as she put her head on the couch pillow 

“we’ve had a rocky relationship from the start but i was too blind and naive to notice.” 

“so are you going to break up with him?”

“no.”

“no? why? he broke your heart, he’s controlling-”

“you think i don’t know that? every guy i have been with has been like that”

“what about me? we didn’t date but you don’t think i’m like that”

“no i don’t but you deserve someone who’s better.” she told him before continuing 

“i’m going to sleep. g’night ben”

“wait.”

ben did the unthinkable and grabbed her hand, turned her around and kissed her. it was too much to process but she kissed him back and put her hand up to his face 

“please break up with him.” ben whispered to her when they pulled away as their forehead touched

“i’ll try. i promise” she whispered back

the both laid in their beds that night and replayed the kiss in their head over and over again. y/n did have a plan to break up with sean. she didn’t know if it would work seeing that there were possibilities of what could happen. ben couldn’t stop smiling and felt like a teenage girl who just had her first kiss by the boy she liked. he never would’ve thought that the woman he took a booty call in front of a year ago would end up living with him and raising a child with him. 

throughout the night, she kept tossing and turning. not being able to sleep, she went downstairs to find ben peacefully asleep on the couch. she always felt guilty that he had to sleep there but he was too stubborn to let her sleep on the couch while he had the bed. ben woke up from noise being made in the kitchen and quickly retreated only to find her drinking some water. putting his slipper down, he walked over to her and put his hand on her shoulder, shocking her

“oh shit you scared me” she said putting the glass down and her other hand over her heart

“yeah sorry. i was just wondering why you were up”

“uh i couldn’t sleep. too much going on. what are you doing up?”

“i heard something, thought it was a burglar”

“and you decided to defend yourself with a shoe?”

“hey shoes can be weapons”

“okay, well i guess we should go back to sleep. i’d also like to apologize for earlier. i know i was drunk but it still doesn’t excuse me and my actions for what i said.”

“it’s fine, i felt the same way in a way i guess at first but i guess i’m over it and yeah we should.” he said as they both awkwardly stood there

as they started to go their separate ways, y/n stopped in her tracks and decided to ask ben something she wouldn’t never thought of 

“hey ben?” 

“yeah?”

“cou-could you stay with me? i don’t know if i’ll be able to sleep, if you don’t that’s okay.” she started to stutter out as her face turned red

“no, no it’s fine. and i’ll stay with you” he told her as he walked over to her and taking her hand

they stepped inside the room and got into the bed. at first they were facing away from each other before they turned around to each other. ben grabbed her waist and pulled her into him. she felt his chest rise and slowly falling back, taking in his scent which consisted of his cologne and cigarettes mixed together. y/n soon felt her eyes close as she felt safe in his arms.

[back-and-totheleft]

“Make it for the soldiers”

The three-time Oscar winner is back with a new book—Chasing the Light: Writing, Directing, and Surviving Platoon, Midnight Express, Scarface, Salvador, and the Movie Game—and turning its pages is like entering a Stone movie. The one-time infantryman had a single condition in granting HUSTLER this Q&A: “Make it for the soldiers. You’ve got to make it interesting to them.” Movie stars are often household names, but Oliver Stone is one of the few screenwriters and directors to have a high public profile. Now he’s released a new book, and it’s a rip-roaring, rollicking read, full of tense drama and trauma. The 342-page memoir focuses on Stone’s life through the age of 40 and sheds light on what forged Hollywood’s movie maverick and makes him tick.

After the Allies liberated Paris, his father—Colonel Louis Stone, who served on General Eisenhower’s staff—met the Parisian Jacqueline Pauline Cezarine Goddet. In December 1945 they married, which Stone wryly writes was “possibly the greatest mistakes of their lives,” and sailed from France to live in New York, where Louis, a Yale graduate, resumed his Wall Street career as a stockbroker. Stone reveals how their divorce affected him and, for the first time ever, describes in detail his combat experiences in Vietnam, where he was awarded the Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. Coming under fire in Indochina’s jungles ignited an intense mistrust of government and hatred of war that actually compelled Stone to become a filmmaker. As the Chasing the Light subtitle indicates, the book zooms in on four movies and provides a behind-the-scenes peek at Stone’s maneuvering through Tinseltown’s machinations. Stone scored his first Hollywood triumphs as the screenwriter of 1978’s Midnight Express, winning an Oscar and a Golden Globe. Like his script for 1983’s Scarface, Midnight Express lampooned the so-called War on Drugs. This set the stage for Stone to tackle President Reagan’s secret war in Central America with 1986’s hard-hitting Salvador, followed later that same year by his grunt’s-eye view on the Vietnam War, the no-holds-barred Platoon. At the 1987 Academy Awards ceremony, Stone was in the rare enviable position of competing against himself in the Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen category for both Salvador and Platoon. Although he won neither, his boyhood idol Elizabeth Taylor did give Stone the Best Director Oscar for Platoon, which also won for Best Picture. The book’s curtain closes as Stone earns his sublime moment in the limelight, emerging as one of the movie industry’s most celebrated writer-directors of all time. His future body of work—1987’s Wall Street, 1991’s The Doors and JFK through 2016’s Snowden—are only mentioned in passing, if at all. An exception is 1989’s Best Picture-nominated Born on the Fourth of July, for which Stone was awarded his second Best Director Oscar, for helming this searing cinematic biopic about maimed Vietnam War vet Ron Kovic, whose relationship with Stone began during the period his memoir covers. HUSTLER interviewed Stone when he returned to Los Angeles in between trips to Europe to promote his book. In this candid conversation Stone opens up about the Vietnam War, drugs, censorship, Edward Snowden, Larry Flynt, Jackie Kennedy, his new Kennedy assassination film and so much more. HUSTLER: How did Chasing the Light come about? Did you write any of it while sheltering in place? OLIVER STONE: No. I was finishing up in that phase. I wrote it over two years. It was final draft, checking things, draft edits, around February, March… I was working on other things, documentaries and so forth. In your memoir you write about your time in Vietnam. Have you recounted those personal experiences extensively before? No. No, I haven’t. In interviews I’ve shared some of it. But no, this is all fresh material. The movies were dramatic presentations. I talk about Born on the Fourth of July and my relationship with Ron Kovic [the paralyzed Vietnam War vet portrayed by Tom Cruise in the 1989 feature]. And a lot about Platoon. Because both were written in 1976 [the year Kovic’s book was published], which falls in the period I’m covering in Chasing the Light, up to 1986. They play a significant role—the failures of those two films to get made haunted me. You were wounded twice in Vietnam—where you served with distinction as an infantryman, winning a Bronze Star and Purple Heart. So what do you think about President Trump allegedly calling dead soldiers “losers” and “suckers” and stating that military parades should exclude wounded vets? It’s a strange statement. I don’t know if he made it, but it sounds very bizarre. Obviously, I don’t agree with it. On the other hand, I don’t believe we should be over-glorifying our veterans either, because that leads to other sets of problems, which we’ve seen in the spate of recent wars. To prepare for this interview, I watched Scarface again. In your book you mention that you were probably conceived in Europe, your mom was an immigrant from France, and it struck me that Scarface is very much an immigrant’s saga. How do you view the Trump/Stephen Miller immigration and refugee policies? I abhor them. I do believe in immigration—it’s what the American way is about. This country has been built on immigration. Even in this lifetime of mine we’ve had such a new spate of immigration from different countries, Third World, Asia. It’s remarkable. In Scarface we talk about Latin Americans who are coming into Miami, some good, some bad. It’s a rich mix, and that’s what had given America its experimental nature. There’s no fixed America in my mind. It’s 250 years—it’s a constantly changing soup. Scarface, like Midnight Express, is drug-themed. Your memoir is quite candid about your own use of substances. What do you think of the War on Drugs? Who won? [Laughs.] It’s a ludicrous objective. It should not be called a “war.” Listen, I partook of drugs. I’ve been very honest about it. It started for me in Vietnam. I smoked it in the base camps, in the rear, when we came back. I smoked it to relax. I go into the reasons for it. It helped me get through that war as a human being. Very important to me. I respect it. I also talk about drug use later on in my life, like cocaine—which I don’t think worked for me at all, and I said why. So I’m on both sides of it. But I do think it’s an individual issue, of individual responsibility and education. The treatment for it is not punishment but hospitalization or medical help or psychiatric help. The War on Drugs is a waste of money, and again, it’s political. I saw that in Scarface, the birth of the Drug Enforcement [Administration]—very political, huge budgets; it’s growing every year. The Reagan war and all that—they call it a war. Everything in America is a war. But we don’t win any one of them. Have you encountered political censorship in Hollywood for your movies’ dissident politics over the years? You posit that Henry Kissinger and Alexander Haig being on MGM’s board may have affected an early effort to make Platoon. Yes. It’s been a long haul. And I emphasize the word may, because you never know when they turn it down. They never tell you, “It’s because of political reasons that we don’t want to make your film.” They never say that. They couch it in economic terms or, “This is too depressing.” “It’s blah-blah A, B or C.” You never know. In this case, it was a very easy deal for them to make. Dino De Laurentiis was behind it—as my producer he was financing the film. MGM had a distribution deal with Mr. De Laurentiis, and they didn’t live up to it. He was making very risky movies at that time, like Blue Velvet. MGM had to make a minimal investment in distribution costs, and they did not do it. Why? Well, I would assume that the president of MGM at the time, Frank Yablans, said that he had gone to the board and they had turned [Platoon] down, but I’m not sure he’s telling the truth. Because they sometimes don’t even bother to go to the board because they don’t want to take any heat. On the board, of course, were two very conservative men on Vietnam who I’d classify as war hawks. So, I mean, it became a political issue. I do believe that; I have no proof. Also, the Pentagon passed on the film, calling it completely unrealistic. This is an important issue because the movie is realistic. I was there, and I saw it on the ground. I was in four different platoons, in four different units, in three combat platoons. I served in the south and in the north and saw quite a bit of action. And I’m telling you, three things I wrote in the book, about the three lies in Vietnam, I believe apply even today to all fought wars. One is friendly fire. American soldiers get killed by their own side, by small arms fire, artillery and bombs. It’s not precision bombing. About 20 percent of the casualties, wounded and dead, comes from friendly fire. This is a very important point, because it is buried over and over again by the Pentagon in their after-action reports. Recently, the Arizona Cardinals’ Pat Tillman was killed in Afghanistan, and there was a whole mess in trying to get to the reasons for his death. Of course, that was a celebrity-type killing, but this goes on all the time in every war. In Vietnam, in the jungle, you can imagine the asymmetric aspect of it. When fire happens, you don’t even know where the fire is coming from. People are firing—you don’t know if it’s coming in or out. And various things like that are happening all the time. I believe my first wound came about through friendly fire. The second lie I talked about was killing civilians, trashing villages. Racism was really a huge factor in that. We treated the civilians mostly as enemies, as people who were supporting the enemy. [Secretary of Defense] Robert McNamara estimated three to four million Vietnamese killed. The third lie, the biggest one of all: “We’re winning the war.” We heard that lie again and again and again. It was fed to the American people. Even from the beginning, we never had a chance. In Neil Sheehan’s book A Bright Shining Lie, [Lieutenant Colonel] John Paul Vann made it really clear, in 1962 this was a hopeless situation, a hopeless war, because true patriotism was to fight for your country. This was a war, as he said, of independence that was fought against us as colonizers in the wake of the French. Inflating body counts, lying about enemy movements, CIA involvement in the war, no question about it. Misguiding the war. Often bad information, among other things, about the My Lai massacre in March 1968, when 500-plus villagers were killed in cold blood by [U.S.] units who were told that the enemy would be in the village. Not a single enemy bullet was fired in that whole day. And this was investigated by the Army itself, by an honest [lieutenant] general named [William Ray] Peers. He didn’t believe it at first. He thought it was bullshit, that the Seymour Hersh revelations were bullshit. He went in there and investigated thoroughly and came up with the conclusion. That’s what my movie I wanted to make on the My Lai massacre is about. He indicted 20-plus officers all the way up to the top of that division. He indicted the general of that division for his negligence. It’s a disgusting story. But it happens all the time in war and is covered up. Covered up for the dignity of the family, for the dignity of the death and so forth and so on. “How can you criticize the military?” You know, that horrible kind of righteousness, which prevents us from seeing what war is. Although you’re a decorated Vietnam veteran, the Pentagon denied you any support for Platoon—and, I assume, for your other Vietnam War-related movies. Yes, that’s correct. But other directors such as, say, Michael Bay, who never served in the military but who make pro-war, pro-military films, are given permission to shoot at U.S. bases, use of armed services personnel, access to high-tech equipment, etc. What do you make of this double standard? Does it violate the First Amendment? I don’t know about that, but it’s certainly a violation of morality. It’s much bigger than Michael Bay—there’s a book that came out in 2017, National Security Cinema: The Shocking New Evidence of Government Control in Hollywood by Matthew Alford and Tom Secker. James DiEugenio, who works with me, has covered this issue separately in another book, Reclaiming Parkland. These two books cover the involvement of the Pentagon in Hollywood. Alford and his coauthor talk about 800-plus films that were made with Pentagon cooperation. You’d be stunned at some of the films made. Among case studies are Pearl Harbor, Black Hawk Down—which is basically a whitewashing of the affair in Somalia—Charlie Wilson’s War, Hotel Rwanda, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Rules of Engagement, The Terminator, 13 Days, United 93, Wag the Dog. Talks about people like Tom Clancy, of course a big military supporter, and the CIA too. TV series such as Alias, Homeland and 24—which had a tremendous effect on the American public in glorifying the CIA, making it seem like it was a backstop for our security, which is a lie too. It undermined our security. All this is much bigger than Michael Bay. In Chasing the Light you mention “surveillance” a number of times, and of course you made 2016’s Snowden. On September 2, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that the NSA’s warrantless mass surveillance—which Edward Snowden exposed—was illegal and possibly unconstitutional. What do you think of that, and what should happen to Snowden now? [Laughs.] It’s obviously correct. Snowden should be brought back to the country. I don’t know if he should be pardoned for his wrongs—because he never did anything wrong. He should be pardoned immediately, as should [WikiLeaks’] Julian Assange. The fact is, the NSA has been breaking the law for so many years. We owe it to George Bush and that administration. That was reported on as early as around 2004, but buried by The New York Times until after the election. The Pentagon Papers was released by The Times because they hated Nixon, but I guess with Bush, they gave him a pass. Terrible. It [NSA’s bulk surveillance] has resulted in this sense of unease—you’re always monitored, we have to check our behavior, we’re under control. This is a disaster for the world. Also, other countries have responded accordingly. The World Wide Web is very dangerous. It goes back to the worst days of J. Edgar Hoover. Free speech is a recurring theme in a number of your films. How were you involved in the making of 1996’s The People vs. Larry Flynt? I was a producer. It was written by Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander. It was their script. Milos Forman developed it with them. I did feel that Larry Flynt had a case—he won the case [against Reverend Jerry Falwell Sr.]. I’m glad. I’m proud of the movie. After Platoon was released, you quote Jacqueline Kennedy, who wrote you and said, “Your film has changed the direction of a country’s thinking.” Your movies presented a counter-narrative to the Reagan regime’s reactionary agenda. Modesty aside, do you think that Salvador, Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July may have helped stop Reagan and Bush from turning their Contra Wars in Central America into full-fledged Vietnam-like invasions? I don’t believe that they did. What happened was the fortuitous fuckup by the CIA when Eugene Hasenfus was captured after his plane was shot down. He was a contractor—he was in Nicaragua supplying [weapons to the U.S.-backed anti-Sandinista Contras]. It leads to the larger story of Oliver North, Reagan, George Herbert [Walker] Bush and the Iran-Contra affair. That’s what stalled them. Not that it was revealed in its entirety—that’s another story, of course, that’s been buried by The Washington Post’s Katharine Graham, who has been lionized in another kind of movie. But basically that scandal at least was enough to stop the momentum of an invasion, and Reagan did not have the power, the ability, the credibility anymore after October ’86. Which of course helped Platoon too, because it came out right in that juncture, and that revived Salvador, which was rereleased. Both films had an impact, but whether that would have changed the course of Reagan without the accident with the CIA—I don’t think so. Tell us about your new film, JFK: Destiny Betrayed. It’s a four-hour documentary, and it has the facts. More facts than ever. We deal with everything that happened after—in terms of documentation—since [JFK] came out in 1991. Very interesting. Because the assassination records review board, which was created from the JFK film with the JFK [Records] Act—although it was stymied by many restrictions, it did manage to release a fair amount of documents. Not all. And in those documents there’s quite a bit of information, including, of course, Operation Northwoods, that the Pentagon was operating to undercut Cuba. What are some of the highlights you learned since 1991 about the liquidation of President Kennedy? Well, I think you have to wait for the movie. [Laughs.] But certainly the ties of [Lee Harvey] Oswald to the CIA. That’s more explicit. Certainly, the evidence. We revisit the original evidence presented by Mark Lane but with new witnesses; new characters have come forward. Many people [didn’t] talk, but they start talking after the movie in the 1990s…People talk. All these informational signals come from all directions. You explain that your book title, Chasing the Light, refers to a moviemaking term. But does it also allude to your personal quest for enlightenment? And if so, have you attained it yet? Well, I’m much older [now] than when the book ends. But certainly that is an important moment, in 1986. After wanting to achieve a dream of writing and directing since I was 22 and being rejected and defeated many times, having some success along the way, and after having almost given up at 30—finally, at the age of 40, I really had a breakthrough of major proportions, with two solid movies back to back that really convinced the world, as well as myself, that I was a writer-director. It was a core victory for me and an important fact. That sets the tone for the foundation of my character. There’s going to be changes, more detours, pushes and turns in the story, but certainly, it’s established in 1986. So your memoir ends in 1987. That means a lot of your other classics are yet to come. So, in that grand Hollywood tradition, will there be a sequel to Chasing the Light? Well, I hope so. I do hope so. I hope the book does well enough to justify it. What’s next for you? I have two documentaries. One is the JFK documentary, four hours long, that won’t be out for a year. Another one is unedited, about the future, the need for clean energy, which includes nuclear energy. It’s based on a book I bought called A Bright Future: How Some Countries Have Solved Climate Change and the Rest Can Follow, by Joshua Goldstein and a Swedish scientist, Staffan A. Qvist. I understand you’re traveling these days. I’m about to promote the book in Paris. I just came back from Italy, France and Germany… It was big in Italy—they loved me. [Laughs.] Much better than in the United States.

-Ed Rampell, Hustler, Jan 16 2021

[littlelambdrgnfly]

Would you ever do the ultimate beatlemaniac tag? I would LOVE to see your answers!!

Thanks for asking!

How long have you been a fan? Until I was 17, I thought they were good but just not my style, I was much more into punk music!

Favorite Beatle: John, but I adore Paul and George too. John’s just my boy, you know?

Favorite era for music: I’d have to pick mid-to-late Beatles even though I love their early stuff too! In terms of personality, I prefer the early stuff; for the music, the later stuff.

Favorite era for lewks: Teddy boy Beatles, for sure! But I’m a big fan of the moptops and basically 1966 as a whole.

Favorite song: Hey Jude just puts me on another spiritual plane, honestly. But Dear Prudence is a very close second!

Favorite album: Abbey Road. One of my old teachers used to say that Hamlet is as close as you can come to the “perfect” play, I feel that way about albums and Abbey Road. White Album and Rubber Soul are two and three!

Unpopular/Controversial Beatles opinion: They were all bastards! I love them but there’s not a single one of them without a story that makes me cringe.

A song everyone loves but you dislike: I don’t care for The Long and Winding Road, at least the Spector mix. It’s way too sentimental! The stripped version is a lot better. I also don’t really like Imagine.

A song everyone dislikes but you love: Why does everyone hate Wild Honey Pie?? I think it’s such a cute, funny little filler piece.

Your fantasy involving The Beatles: I own a bookstore in Hamburg and become friends with all the Beatles and the Exis. They think I’m super smart and cool, and I get to help them come to terms with their sexual identities, treat women and marginalized communities better, and turn them onto weed before Dylan does, lol.

Tell us about the moment you knew you were a fan: When I heard the Anthology version of “And Your Bird Can Sing” (I don’t know, lmao)

Did you ever have a genuine ‘The Beatles suck!’ phase before becoming a fan? Not really, but the first time I listened to the White Album, the vibes coming from it freaked me out so much that I didn’t listen to it all the way through for years afterward.

Favorite Beatles book: Probably Pete Shotton’s book! I love Mike’s books too, he’s such a funny guy... In terms of more academic titles, I really loved Steven Stark’s book and “You Never Give Me Your Money” by Peter Doggett.

Thoughts on the old generation of fans: I haven’t had much interaction with the older gen(s) but I find the men mostly insufferable. There was this older dude who came into the record store all the time (he bought EVERY single edition of Paul’s last album), and he actively made every Beatles fan who worked there like the band a little less.

If Hollywood were to make a high budget Beatles biopic, what is one thing you desperately hope they include? I don’t like biopics, I hope they don’t make one! If they do, it better just be about John and Paul boning for 90 minutes.

Do you read/write fanfic?: You’re on this blog, so you know this!

Are you the only one in your family/friend group to enjoy them?: My family and a number of my friends like them, but yeah, I like them the most.

Are you a shipper?: Tragically

Favorite movie starring/made by them?: AHDN! I love Yellow Submarine too and I just wish it starred them! It’s very distracting to me that it’s not their voices, lol.

Do you believe in McLennon?:  I’m like 98% positive it’s real

General opinions on McLennon?: I think they were a couple, and if they weren’t, then I think it was because of the general opinion of same-sex couples at the time and fear for their reputation. I hope it was real, but I think I could keep myself together if it wasn’t. It just makes me want to die when shippers ask these kinds of questions to their families though! God, please do NOT.

If you got to change ONE thing about their history, what would it be and why?: Brian shouldn’t have died... But if I had to chose something smaller, then there should have been more of George’s songs on the White Album.

What song has the best vocals?: Christ, I can’t even choose a top 10...

What song do you feel had no effort put into it?: More of their earlier stuff, particularly on Beatles for Sale, but Eight Days a Week really sticks out to me, even though I like that one a lot. It makes me think of that quote, “Let’s sit down and write ourselves a swimming pool!”

What is a well talked about moment in Beatles history you genuinely believe to be false?: When John met Yoko at that art show... We know that’s not real, lol.

What is something you KNOW to be true, but often gets erased in their history?: John and Paul’s whole dynamic, I feel like a lot of people just don’t get it

Least favorite look from a Beatle(s): I hate the collarless suits! I also don’t like John’s mustache.

Favorite look from a Beatle(s): Just all of 1966!!!

[problematicwelshman]

Michael Sheen on Good Omens, sex scenes, and why Brexit led to his break-up

28 NOVEMBER 2018 • 4:18PM

Michael Sheen may be 49, and sporting a grey beard these days, but mention Martians and the actor reverts to a breathless, giddy teenager.

It all stems back to one evening when Sheen was about 12 years old. “It was a significant moment in my life,” he tells me over coffee in a London hotel. “My cousin Hugh was babysitting, and he put on Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds.

“I remember us lying there, listening in bed in the dark. It absolutely terrified me, but I got obsessed with it. I’m worryingly into it. I know every single note, every word.”

Wayne’s 1978 rock opera has had a similar effect on countless fans, even if it prompts a bemused shrug from non-converts. Without ever topping the charts, it has slowly become one of the best-selling British albums of all time, and this Friday begins a stadium tour featuring a 35-foot fire-breathing Martian and a 3D hologram of Liam Neeson. It’s a geeky novelty, but one of epic proportions.

When Wayne asked Sheen if he would star in a new radio drama-style version for the album’s 40th anniversary, alongside Taron Egerton and Ade Edmondson, the Welsh actor “bit his hand off”. It had always been his dream. For decades, whether doing serious political dramas such as Frost/Nixon or the great roles of classical theatre – Hamlet, Henry V – the one part Sheen really wanted involved Martians saying “ulla-ulla”.

“When I was doing Caligula at the Donmar [in 2003], I was filming The Deal during the day – which was the first time I’d played Tony Blair,” he says. “I’d be so tired, to wake myself up [before the play] I would do whole sections of War of the Worlds.” He can even beatbox the sound effects, he adds proudly. “The other guys in the dressing room would all be really pissed off with me - but I was playing Caligula, so they had to put up with it.”

Enthusing about an outtake on a collectors version of the album where you can hear Richard Burton coughing, Sheen briefly slips into an impression of the late actor. It’s eerily spot-on. Burton played the role he takes in the new version, which feels apt; growing up in Port Talbot, Sheen was aware of following in his footsteps.

“Coming from the same town as him really helped,” he says. “It’s place you wouldn’t necessarily think would be very sympathetic to acting – it’s an old steel town, very working class, quite a macho place – but because of Richard Burton, and then Anthony Hopkins, there’s the sense that it’s possible [to be an actor], and people have a respect for it.

“Ultimately, though, we’re very different actors - Burton was very much a charismatic leading man, and I’m probably more of a character actor. He wasn’t known for his versatility.” Sheen, by contrast, is a chameleon, as he proved with a remarkable run of biopics from 2006-9, playing Tony Blair, David Frost, Brian Clough, Kenneth Williams and the Roman emperor Nero on screen in the space of just four years.

He concedes that he may have made a “partly conscious” decision to avoid biopics since then. “I’ve been offered quite a few I didn’t do. I did feel, for a bit, it was probably good for me to move away from it – certainly from playing Blair at least, because that’s the one I became synonymous with. I’d quite happily play real people again, but it’s hard to find good scripts and it takes a lot of homework. With some parts I’ve been offered, you might only have a few weeks to prepare for it - and you can’t do that with Clough or Kenneth Williams.”

Despite his best intentions, Sheen is playing another Blair in his next film – The Voyage of Doctor Doolittle, where he’s the nemesis of Robert Downey Jr’s animal-loving hero. “I don’t know if they did that as a joke or not,” he says. “He’s Blair Müdfly – there’s an umlaut that he is very specific about. He was at college with Doolittle, and hates him, and becomes the antagonist because of his jealousy of Doolittle. Müdfly is employed to try and stop him from finding... what he wants to find.” As the film isn’t out for 13 months, Sheen is tight-lipped about further plot details – but he hints that Müdfly is “a villain in the tradition of Terry-Thomas villains.”

It’s the latest in a series of quirky, eyebrow-raising roles. After playing a vampire in the Twilight films and a werewolf in the Underworld franchise, Sheen says he would often be asked in interviews why a “serious classical actor” was wasting his time on fantasy films.

“There’s a lot of snobbishness about genre,” he says. “I think some of the greatest writing of the 20th and 21st centuries has happened in science fiction and fantasy.” While promoting the films, he would back up that point by citing his favourite authors – Stephen King, Philip K Dick, Neil Gaiman. “Time went on, and then one day my doorbell rang and there was a big box being delivered. I opened the box up and there was a card from Neil saying ‘From one fan to another’, and all these first editions of his books.”

It was the beginning an enduring friendship, which recently became a professional partnership: Sheen stars in Gaiman’s forthcoming TV series Good Omens, based on a 1990 novel he wrote with the late Terry Pratchett. Set in the days before a biblical apocalypse, its sprawling list of characters includes an angel called Aziraphale (Sheen) and a demon called Crowley (David Tennant) who have known each other since the days of Adam and Eve.

“I wanted to play Aziraphel being sort of in love with Crowley,” says Sheen. “They’re both very bonded and connected anyway, because of the two of them having this relationship through history - but also because angels are beings of love, so it’s inevitable that he would love Crowley. It helped that loving David is very easy to do.”

What kind of love - platonic, romantic, erotic? “Oh, those are human, mortal labels!” Sheen laughs. “But that was what I thought would be interesting to play with. There’s a lot of fan fiction where Aziraphale and Crowley get a bit hot and heavy towards each other, so it’ll be interesting to see how an audience reacts to what we’ve done in bringing that to the screen.”

Steamy fan fiction aside, it’s unlikely Good Omens will match the raunch levels of his last major TV series, Masters of Sex (2013-16), a drama about the pioneering sexologists Masters and Johnson. In the wake of the last year’s #MeToo revelations, HBO has introduced “intimacy co-ordinators” for its shows - but, Sheen tells me, Masters of Sex was ahead of the curve in handling sex scenes with caution.

“It was a lot easier for myself and Lizzy [Caplan, his co-star], as we were comfortable in that set-up, because we had status in it. But for people in the background, or doing just one scene, it’s different,” he says. “It became clear very quickly that there needed to be guidelines for people who didn’t have that kind of status, who would probably not speak up. We started talking about that, and decided there need to be clear rules.”

Sex scenes, he continues, “should absolutely be treated the same way as other things where there’s a danger. If you’re doing stage-fighting, or pyrotechnics, there are rules and everyone just sticks to them. Whether it’s physical danger, or emotional, or psychological, it’s just as important.”

Despite having several film and TV parts on the horizon, Sheen says he is still in semi-retirement from acting. In 2016 he hinted that he might be quit for good to campaign against populism. “In the same way as the Nazis had to be stopped in Germany in the Thirties, this thing that is on the rise has to be stopped," he said at the time. But now things are less cut. “I have two jobs now, essentially,” he says. "Acting takes second place."

While many celebrity activists limit their politics to save-the-dolphins posturing, Sheen has been working with a range of unfashionable grassroots groups aiming to combat inequality, support small communities and fight fake news. As well as supporting Welsh credit unions, and sponsoring a women’s football team in the tiny village of Goytre, he tells me that he's been “commissioning research into alternative funding models for local journalism”.

If he returns to the stage any time soon, he says it’s likely to be in a show about “political historical socio-economic stuff, a one-man show with very low production values”. It’s clear he’s not in it for the glamour.

Sheen was inspired to become more politically active by the Brexit referendum – which also indirectly led him to break up with his partner of four years, the comedian Sarah Silverman. At the time, they were living together in the US. “We both had very similar drives, and yet to act on those drives pulled us in different directions – because she is American and I’m Welsh,” he explains.

“After the Brexit vote, and the election where Trump became president, we both felt in different ways we wanted to get more involved. That led to her doing her show I Love You America [in which Silverman interviewed people from across the political spectrum], and it led to me wanting to address the issues that I thought led some people to vote the way they did about Brexit, in the area I come from and others like it.”

They still speak lovingly of each other, which makes their decision to end a happy relationship for the sake of politics look painfully quixotic. Talking about it, Sheen sounds a little wistful, but he’s utterly certain they made the right choice. “I felt a responsibility to do something, but it did mean coming back here – which was difficult for us, because we were very important to each other. But we both acknowledge that each of us had to do what we needed to do.”