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asktherejectsau · 2 years ago

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💥🔪Exclusive interview with actor, temporary Gorillaz band member, and current bassist for the Rejects — Ace D. Copular🔪💥

Ace: Ayeee!

Interviewer: Oh! Hello there, Mr. Copular. [shakes his hand]

A: Ah, no need to call me ”Mister.” [sits down promptly] Just call me Ace, man.

I: Alright then, Ace. Before we get to talking about The Rejects, I think everyone wants to know, what was it like being the temporary bassist for Gorillaz?

A: I still can’t believe half the stuff I went through was even real… It all feels like I’ve been stuck in a dream and haven’t woken up since. [laughs] Seriously though, it was really fun! Everybody was super nice and welcoming and gettin’ to perform with ‘em was whole ’nother thing. Truly one of the best experiences of my life.

I: How did you first meet Gorillaz?

A: Well, me and Murdoc go way back, since the start of film production for the Powerpuff Girls movie. I knew he had a band but, to tell ya the truth, I had no idea about Gorillaz. Didn’t even realize they made Clint Eastwood and I love that song. But when he called me from prison, telling me I should try and audition to be his replacement for his band, I took it in a heartbeat. Once I got accepted, I had to fly from California to Kentucky in order to meet ‘em at the Derby and… yeah! The rest is history.

I: Now where do you know Murdoc from?

A: Uhh… I’m not gonna go too deep into that as there’s some personal stuff in there, and I’d expect Murdoc wouldn’t want me blabbin’ on about it. But what I will say is that we’ve known each other for a long time. About 18 years now, I’d say. We have a good rapport, y’know? We can relate to a lot of things. We both have screwed up childhoods and we managed to make the best of it through our stardom. We used to write letters to one another but we kinda lost connection back in ’06. I mean, he got back to me eventually. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have helped his band out while he was in prison, amirite? [chuckles awkwardly]

I: Hmm… alright. How did you first get into music? A: It was a little after I finished working on the Powerpuff Girls movie. I was supposed to get more screen time on there, but I got injured during filmin’ so neither me or the Gang could continue bein’ on set. I don’t blame ‘em though. I mean, ya can’t have the Gangreen Gang without Ace, right? So while I was in the hospital for recovery, I started playin’ guitar but I didn’t start playin’ bass until Mudz waltzed into my life. I only started taking music seriously because of him actually. [chuckles to himself, bouncing his leg] Ooo boy, that’s embarrassing to admit, saying that out loud… I probably sound like some hyper fan or somethin’. I: Oh, there’s nothing to be embarrassed about. I think it’s rather sweet! It sounds like he meant a lot to you. A: Yeah… he did. [rubs the back of his neck, deep in thought] I: Now, how did your friends and family react when they found out you got into the band?

A: [perks up] I don’t got much family anymore but the Gangreen Gang? They’re the only family I’ve ever known aside from ol Muddy Duddy. When I got the email from Gorillaz’s business manager, Jamie Hewlett (real nice fella by the way) that I was in the band, I showed it to the boys and they all freaked when they saw it. Jumping up and down, screaming and yelling with all of us in a group hug. We hadn’t hung out together in a really long time since we all moved on and had our own lives after the OG Powerpuff Girls ended. I mean, the only other times was for filming in the reboot but that was just work, y’know? Although, when I got back to Townsville, it was surprising to see the amount of people who came to congratulate me. I guess kinda became a local legend since I joined the band. Even the Powerpuff Girls came by to say how proud they were. The OG girls not the reboot ones, they were still busy filming. I: What’s it like filming for the 2016 reboot anyway? A: I don’t wanna talk about it. I: I see, you can’t talk about it due to an NDA? A: Um, sure. Yeah, let’s call it that.

I: Oh, uh, okay… Umm, how have you been since leaving Gorillaz?

A: Thanks to them, I’ve been able to actually live a life for once. Like, since I left… I’ve been to Mexico with fellow bassist, Seye Adelekan, I got to write some memoirs, performed many-a-gig since then, and have even been able to get my own place aside from living in a shitty studio apartment. Not rent it, but actually buy it. I not only could afford a new place for me, but I had enough cash to buy places for the rest of the Gang too! Gorillaz has forever changed my life for the better and I couldn’t be more grateful.

I: Speaking of the Gangreen Gang, what are they up to these days?

A: Well, they certainly ain’t kids no more. [laughs] Big Billy owns his own tattoo parlor while his wife is a vet tech. Heard they’re expecting their first kid soon, in which whoof! God, I feel old. I didn’t think I’d live long enough to see my friends have kids. Grubber went on to be a lawyer. Dunno what kind, I wanna say he works civil suits? Arturo is working 9 to 5 at a Seven Eleven up in Townsville City Square with Snake but he’s trying to start up a music career on Soundcloud. Snake, aside from working with Lil Arturo at the gas station, also is an entertainer at a nightclub downtown that goes by the stage name, Ivy. I’ve been to a couple of their shows actually, real top notch stuff! They told me they’re trying to save money to go to art school so they can become a stop motion animator. I have high hopes for them, I just know they’ll make it far someday. I have high hopes for the whole gang actually. I just hope they know how much I still think about ’em. If they’re reading this though, I miss you guys!

(Picture of Ace and the Gangreen Gang after he was accepted into Gorillaz. April 20th, 2018 from Lil Arturo’s Snapchat)

I: Have you been in contact with any of the other Gorillaz members?

A: A little bit, mostly to Noodle though. Haven’t heard much from Russ but we’ve said hello once or twice while I was on the phone with her. Strangely enough, Murdoc’s been calling me a lot more than normal. Mainly to ask about 2-D. I dunno if it’s some midlife crisis thing, just to make up for lost time, or what but I don’t mind it. I like talkin’ to him! Always comes with lot of stories. Although sometimes when he calls me I can’t help but worry about him. I dunno why, but sometimes I get this gut feelin’ like he’s not tellin’ me something or that something’s wrong. But that might be me worrying too much about it. I mean, he just got outta prison and the band’s all on their own separate vacations right now, much like how 2-D is. They deserve the break anyways with all the tourin’ they’ve been doin’. Yeah, it’s probably just me bein’ too wound up.

I: I heard from Gorillaz lead singer and now the Rejects’ co-producer, 2-D that you two were in a relationship. How’s that working out for the both of you?

A: W-Wait, he said that? To you?

I: Yes… Is something wrong with what I said?

A: [starts to get flustered] Oh no, no! Not at all. There’s nothin’ wrong. I-I’m just happy he’s finally mentionin’ that publicly, that’s all. [covers his face with his hands] Sorry. Ahh! I’m blushing so bad… [giggles] I probably look ridiculous right about now. [laughs loudly]

I: Oh, it’s okay! Is this your first time in a relationship like this?

A: Not my first time with a guy, if that’s what you’re askin’. Now first time with a celebrity? Yes. And lemme tell you, it is amazing so far. I’ve had many different partners in my lifetime but him? He’s somethin’ else. He’s the only one who’s managed to capture my attention immediately. I thought that whole ”love at first sight” thing was nothin’ but a hoax but then he came around and changed my whole worldview. Now, it was a bit rocky at first but we managed to patch things up. [sighs] I’m so glad that he said that we’re dating. Oh, I feel like I’m 16 again with how happy he makes me!

I: What do you mean by that? “Patch things up?”

A: Well, back in September last year when Murdoc came back and I left to take the subway back to the airport, Stu had um… given me something to take on the way home. At first, I thought maybe it was just some European thing but nah, he… he kissed me. Like really kissed me. I think some kid captured it on camera too but me and ’D just told ‘em to keep it outta the press and that was that. The problem was he didn’t talk to me for two whole months later when we ended up bumping into each other in Townsville. I was just… I dunno, confused? Like, I couldn’t tell if he liked me or not and I was too embarrassed to ask, which was kinda stupid the more I think about it. But by the time ‘D came to Townsville and we hung out at my place, he said he wanted to maybe start somethin’ with me. Not fully dating just yet but umm… y’know… [clears throat, blushing] “experimenting.” I was really excited cuz like ”holy shit, a singer from a Grammy nominated band is in love with me” but then he was actin’ so distant. Like, he’s more open with me now but before he used to be so nervous about us doing anything normal things couples tend to do, like kissing or holding hands. He even flinched whenever I’d touch him like he thought I was gonna hit him, which really hurt me cuz I didn’t know why he was seemed so afraid of me. I thought, “Why does this guy wanna be in a relationship with me if he doesn’t even want me near him?” But after we talked about it, he finally admitted to me that he had some pretty bad relationships in the past. One cheated on him, the other left him, and his last one was a douchebag who not only beat him for years but told him to stay in the closet for “the sake of his career.” Now that pissed me off cuz I’ve been told that by other agents before when I was tryin’ to come out as bi. That last one really stuck with him though and he became so afraid that our relationship could possibly turn something like that, that he thought maybe keepin’ some distance between us was the better option. Needless to say, I completely understood what he was goin’ through and I know now he wasn’t tryin’ to hurt me by doin’ that. I love him and I wanna make sure he knows that. So we went slow, felt the waters for a bit, and here we are. I know I’m not gonna fix him overnight but I swear, if I ever find that fucker who hurt him, I’m gonna make sure he’s in for a world of pain when I’m done with him. People who hurt their partners like that deserve to be thrown under the jail.

I: Where did you two first meet?

A: We actually met at the Kentucky Derby. I’m not too big on fancy shmancy events like that plus I couldn’t drink at the bar due to my contract, so I walked around the venue for a bit. We bumped into each other, I fell to the floor, didn’t know who he was so I was gonna yell at him to watch where he was goin’ but then I met his eyes. And just… wow. What an image. For a second I thought I must’ve stumbled onto Olympus cuz there was no way this guy wasn’t some sort of god with how pretty he was. As fans swarmed around him like bees to honey, he just took me by the hand, ran with me to a secret spot outside the venue, and we talked. As we were waiting for the race to end, I realized that he was just a normal guy. Well, as normal as a singer in a famous band would be. Sure he was a bit… off but he was sweet and kind and clearly passionate. He’d get excitable whenever he talked about his favorite horror movies and it was fun to be with someone so… I dunno, filled with life, I guess. We ended up talking that entire day. He even gave me a handful of several month old Lucky Charm marshmallows he found from his pocket when he led me to my hotel room. [sighs] He was so adorable… Still is too.

(Picture of 2-D and Ace at the London Underground on Sept. 25th, 2018)

I: Aww, how sweet. How would you describe 2-D as a partner?

A: Since we’ve started dating, he’s grown to be pretty affectionate. He’s not as physically affectionate as I am, but he always makes sure to tell me that he loves me. He’s still getting used to saying it out loud, but every time he does, he gets real stoked about it. It’s almost like when a little kid starts learning a new word and gets all happy when they say it right. He’ll say it at the most random times too. Like, he’ll look at me while I’m working and just go. “Did I tell you I love you today? No? Well, I do. I love you. I love you a whole lot.” and I… oh, it just makes me melt, man…Sometimes, he forgets that he already asked me so then he asks me multiple times a day if he said that he loved me or not and it just makes me so giddy every time he does it. He also likes to tell me he loves me in his own unique way too. Like, he’ll make me a cup of coffee or he’ll sit down to watch me work while he spitballs song ideas. Then, he’ll just give me knick knacks he found from some store he was shopping at. He used to do in order to celebrate some small milestone in our relationship but now he just does it to say he loves me in the corniest ways possible. One time, he slapped down a pack of blunt shaped birthday candles on the table and straight up asked me, “Are you made of weed? Cuz I think I’m getting high off you.” It wasn’t even my birthday. Like, how the hell am I supposed to respond to that? How can I not smooch the guy all day long? I mean, c’mon! That’s just too much for one guy to handle. I swear to god, at this rate, Stuart’s gonna end up givin’ me both diabetes and a coronary with how sweet he fuckin’ is. Ugh… I can’t stand it!

I: Well, it seems like the two of you are very happy together.

A: [hums happily] Never been happier with anyone else…

I: Now, onto talking about the band you’re currently in. How did you come across the Rejects?

A: Well, it’s kinda embarrassing. About a month after I left Gorillaz, I went on this huge spending spree. [scratches his chin, laughing nervously] I admit, the popularity went to my head a lil bit. I mean, back in the ‘90s, I was a teen star from some popular reality TV show. I’d never seen that much money before in my life! Mainly cuz my ma kept it all until I turned 18 but that’s besides the point, this is about how I met the band. Thankfully I wasn’t too broke yet so I started going to all kinds of concerts that month. One day, I went to this one event Snake really wanted to go to. We went together and that’s when I met the Rejects. They were initially supposed to perform at Demon Dayz LA but I heard from somewhere their performance got cancelled due to tech issues and instead they performed at this festival to fill in an open slot. They turned out to be fuckin’ sick! I loved their punk rock, indie rock vibe and I later met up with the robot girl afterwards. She and her bandmate turned out to be pretty cool. We found out we both like the same indie musicians like Little Dragon, Jack Stauber, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, even Florence and the Machine. We partied with them all night long but as they were about to leave, I found out that they were living from their van in order to make ends meet. I felt band cuz I knew what that life was like in my 20s. Now I couldn’t exactly afford two roommates at the time with all the spendin’ I was doin’ but I knew at least by next month I would’ve been fine as long as I didn’t go overboard. So I invited them to my place as my roommates. They refused at first but after a few days they took up my offer and we’ve been roomies ever since. I: How did you end up becoming the bassist for them? A: When they were just staying at my place, I kinda became their business manager. Not on purpose, just mainly out of knowing my way around Townsville and some of the more popular spots in LA so it just kinda happened…? I don’t remember when exactly I later became their bassist officially but there was this one time I performed at Townsville Park’s open mic night and performed with my friend Archie Sutton and his band, Some Other Guys and they flipped out. Cynthia especially was freakin’ out cuz she so hyped to know that I could play bass when she struggled for years to do it. She asked me to play on a few their songs and that’s how I became their bassist. I: How would you describe your experience with the Rejects so far? A: It’s been really fun so far! I glad that I’m playing music again with the people I care about the most. I can’t wait for people to hear our stuff once the EP comes out. I: What is your favorite track from the EP by the way? A: Definitely “runaway.” Has probably one of the best bass lines I’ve ever done aside from Sorcererz on the Now Now. The track has this very ethereal sound to it that just ties the whole thing together, in my opinion. It’s eerie but soothing, y’know? Cynthia and Lenny told me that the track was inspired by the Satoshi Kon film, Perfect Blue while thematically, it’s all about finding yourself and the fear of not knowing if someone will still love you in the end of this long, hard journey. Although I feel like that message is only heightened thanks to 2-D’s synth work and all the little flairs he put into it. I think the way did it turned this song into a… horrifyingly beautiful lullaby. I’m just more amazed by how well it turned out in the end.

(runaway. Promo Cover)

I: Well we’ll certainly check it out once it’s released. Now I’ve asked this before with some of the others but how would you describe your bandmates? A: They’re cool. I: …Um, i-is that it? A: Well, I dunno what else to say other than that… they’re cool. I think… I: Right… Well if that’s all then I guess we’re— A: Actually, no. Sorry, that’s a lie. I guess, if I could go on a bit of a tangent it’d be that Cynthia kinda reminds me a lot like Buttercup. The OG one not the reboot clone. I: I’m sorry, the what-? A: I know that’s a weird thing to say but really, she does. She’s spunky, outspoken, and has absolutely no filter. We’re probably the only two band members that butt heads. It’s all in good sport though, nothin’ truly hateful or anything. Although she does smack me with a stray cable from time to time. Also, was no one gonna tell me that she was cyborg version of Noodle? Noodle? Like, how much more badass could you get? With a mouth gun, that’s how! Also, Lenny’s pretty chill. He’s kinda like Russel but instead of giving infinite words of wisdom, he’s the whole mom friend package. He makes sure we always stay on schedule, he packs us snacks occasionally during practice… He also has a pretty good sense of hearing too. It’s insane what kind of tones he’s able to pick up just from listening to me play. He’ll give me pointers on what notes would help improve the song and even encourages me to riff more which I was never confident in doin’ before. Overall, pretty swell guy. I: Okay then, I think that’s all we have for today. Is there anything else you’d like to add? A: Umm… nope. Not really but thanks for having me! [shakes interviewer’s hand, door heard opening] Hmm? Oh, hey ‘D. Ready to go? 2-D: Yep. I found a new skatepark we can go to if you wanna try out rollerblading with me. A: Eh, I’ll try. Can’t make promises that I’ll be any good though. 2-D: Oh don’t worry about that, Ace. You’re still learning! You’ll get the hang of it someday. Now let’s get going. Cuz I dunno about you, love, but I’m famished. A: [laughs] Okay, ‘D. Shouldn’t you tie your shoes first? I don’t want you trippin’ over yourself aga— Hey, wait a minute are those the new slip ons I gave you? 2-D: Yeah! You were right, they are pretty comfy. I Thank you, I like ‘em a lot. A: [gets flustered] Uhh, good! Yep! I’m glad. Mmm-hmm, that’s great. 2-D: Oh no, you’re gettin’ all pink again. Need me to get you some sunscreen? I: Tune in next time where we’ll be interviewing the forth and final member of the Rejects, “Lenny.” What are his origins, who is he really? See you soon!

#gorillaz #gorillaz fanart #2d gorillaz #ace d copular #ace ppg #ggg #gangreen gang #murdoc niccals #2dace #fanmade interview #the rejects #rejects au #ace gorillaz

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daleisgreat · 4 years ago

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Inglourious Basterds

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I am jumping out of order with the third Quentin Tarantino film I am covering here is not QT’s third film, Jackie Brown, but instead for his 2009 alternate take on World War II, Inglourious Basterds (trailer). Click or press here for my article on Reservoir Dogs, and click or press here for my entry on Pulp Fiction. I have owned the BluRay since it first released well over a decade ago, and it is a shame yet another QT gem has sat in my backlog for so long. This takes place in occupied France with a riveting opening scene where German Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) conducts an interview with a local dairy farmer which eventually leads to questioning about missing Jews. This being a QT film, the dialog is intentionally drawn out, with Hans pausing the interview for a refreshing glass of milk, and digressing on other tangents before eventually getting to the burning question. Once again, QT absolutely nails the art of conversation like very few of his peers can. Every subtle body language flinch and pivot throughout their verbal exchange is not wasted, and it ultimately pays off with a unforgettable impact to close the scene. If it was almost any other filmmaker, my tolerance would have surely been tested, but there is something to QT’s scripts that without fail have me 100% invested in their surplus of verbiage as much as a climactic action scene in the latest summer blockbuster.

Be prepared for some vintage-QT dialog-heavy scenes...I wouldn't want it any other way from him! This being a WWII film, one would think it would be safe to presume there is a fair amount of military combat scenes. While there is a significant body count by the end of the film, the firefights are not of the typical Hollywood WWII fare, so do not expect any all-out tanks, war planes, and massive artillery skirmishes. Most of the action that transpires here involves a team of Jewish American soldiers headed up by Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt). After the absurd fallout from their latest mission in a basement tavern, they receive intel from undercover operative Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) that Nazi leadership including Hitler (Martin Wuttke) himself will be at the grand opening of the latest military propaganda film, Nation’s Pride.

The theater owner where Nation’s Pride will be premiering, Shosanna (Mélanie Laurent), has an intriguing arc on how she is roped into debuting the film at her cinema which is caused by the relentless intimate pursuit of German soldier, Frederick Zoller (Daniel Brühl). Without giving too much away, Shosanna has her own agenda too, and everything builds up splendidly to the big premiere night of Nation’s Pride. I vividly remember going into the theater not clued into the ending which I will not spoil here, and I was instantly stunned at the direction QT went for the final act. There is nearly an hour and a half of bonus material on the BluRay. The standout bonus is a half hour interview with Brad Pitt and QT, conducted by Elvis Mitchell with some highlights of their conversation being how energetic the overall shoot was, and what it was like premiering the film in Germany. Other extra features worth checking out is the full six minute cut of Nation’s Pride, a quick look back with interviews of the cast and crew from the original 1978 Inglorious Bastards, and a pair of interviews with Rod Taylor who has some fun behind-the-scenes stories with QT on how the two have the utmost respect for each other.

Inglourious Basterds did not disappoint with a highly entertaining second viewing where nearly the entire ensemble cast excelled in their performances! For a film that is two and a half hours long, it proved to be a swift viewing after being so engrossed with all the aforementioned dialog-dense scenes. I cannot fairly rank this among QT’s movies as I nearly love them all equally, but it goes without saying if you have made it this far then you know I am giving this the highest of recommendations! Other Random Backlog Movie Blogs 3 12 Angry Men (1957) 12 Rounds 3: Lockdown 21 Jump Street The Accountant Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie Atari: Game Over The Avengers: Age of Ultron The Avengers: Endgame The Avengers: Infinity War Batman: The Dark Knight Rises Batman: The Killing Joke Batman: Mask of the Phantasm Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice Bounty Hunters Cabin in the Woods Captain America: Civil War Captain America: The First Avenger Captain America: The Winter Soldier Christmas Eve The Clapper Clash of the Titans (1981) Clint Eastwood 11-pack Special The Condemned 2 Countdown Creed I & II Deck the Halls Detroit Rock City Die Hard Dredd The Eliminators The Equalizer Dirty Work Faster Fast and Furious I-VIII Field of Dreams Fight Club The Fighter For Love of the Game Good Will Hunting Gravity Grunt: The Wrestling Movie Guardians of the Galaxy Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 Hell Comes to Frogtown Hercules: Reborn Hitman I Like to Hurt People Indiana Jones 1-4 Ink The Interrogation Interstellar Jay and Silent Bob Reboot Jobs Joy Ride 1-3 Justice League (2017 Whedon Cut) Last Action Hero Major League Man of Steel Man on the Moon Man vs Snake Marine 3-6 Merry Friggin Christmas Metallica: Some Kind of Monster Mortal Kombat Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpions Revenge National Treasure National Treasure: Book of Secrets Nintendo Quest Not for Resale Payback (Director’s Cut) Pulp Fiction The Punisher (1989) The Ref The Replacements Reservoir Dogs Rocky I-VIII Running Films Part 1 Running Films Part 2 San Andreas ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery Scott Pilgrim vs the World The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Shoot em Up Slacker Skyscraper Small Town Santa Steve Jobs Source Code Star Trek I-XIII Sully Take Me Home Tonight TMNT Trauma Center The Tooth Fairy 1 & 2 UHF Veronica Mars Vision Quest The War Wild The Wizard Wonder Woman The Wrestler (2008) X-Men: Apocalypse X-Men: Days of Future Past

#random movie #brad pitt #Diane Kruger #Quentin Tarantino #inglourious basterds #christoph waltz #daniel brühl #mélanie laurent #rod taylor

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aion-rsa · 3 years ago

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The Town: Ben Affleck’s Heist Movie Love Letter to Boston

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It’s not wedding bells which break up the old gang in Ben Affleck’s The Town, it’s witness protection. The romance in the middle of the film is only there to delineate the boundaries between heist film and crime procedural. The movie’s center is Charlestown, right across the bridge from the rest of Boston, a legend in illicit locales. The blue-collar neighborhood “produced more bank robbers and armored car thieves than anywhere else in the world,” according to the movie’s prologue. Affleck’s second film as a director charts the fall of a mythic heist gang and the streets which made them.

The Boston area was prime cinematic crime fields during the early 2000s. In Black Mass, Johnny Depp plays South Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger, an Irish gangster who informed on the Italian mob to the FBI. Some of the scenes were shot on the real crime locations depicted. Martin Scorsese’s The Departed cast Jack Nicholson as Frank Costello, who was loosely based on Bulger. The city also set the scene for Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River, and Affleck’s directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone, both based on books by local crime novelist Dennis Lehane.

But one of the greatest films about Boston goes back to 1973. The Friends of Eddie Coyle starred Robert Mitchum in the title role and Peter Boyle as a hitman who ran a bar. It is sloppy, sleazy, quickie. And it’s absolutely authentic. The car chases get stuck in traffic, and the dialogue comes directly from testimony.

Real Life Crime Inspiration

The Town is loosely based on Chuck Hogan’s novel Prince of Thieves. The 1995 article in The Boston Globe, which inspired the film’s prologue, actually noted “more armored car robbers are traced” to Charlestown than any other neighborhood in the country. This is based on FBI statistics at the time. This isn’t because those criminals made the sloppiest getaways. It is because the small community adheres to omerta, silence unto death. If they get popped, they do the time. They don’t squeal. They don’t rat. They don’t fink.

The crew at the center of The Town resembles a gang of five masked robbers who pulled holdups from 1990 to 1995. After a seven-day trial, they were convicted on 54 of 55 counts of robbery, including one which resulted in the death of two armored car guards. They went to jail because there were cracks on the pavement, leaks on the street.

“Numerous career bank robbers threw in the towel and testified in this trial,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Connolly said at a news conference at the time. “So many broke the code, shattered the code. Many of them testified that they had grown tired of a life of stealing, of drugs, of broken relationships.”

Affleck gives the gang its last hurrah on-screen. Something the character of James (Jeremy Renner), aka Jem, could appreciate. Jem would rather battle it out with the law than go back to prison. Affleck’s Doug MacRay, the leader of the gang, is the one who’s gotten tired of the life. He’d be happy to settle down with his former hostage, Claire Keesey (Rebecca Hall). He loves her enough not to kill her, but not enough to testify.

Planning and Manning the Job

Heist movies are filled with criminals who want to pull one last big job and settle down. Al Pacino’s Sonny in Dog Day Afternoon wants enough money to give a better life to his wives. In Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing (1956), a marriage-minded Sterling Hayden leads a crew to take down one last racetrack for $2 million. Affleck’s big killing in The Town is Fenway Park, and over 60 years later, the take is the same. But it still has to be divvied up among the team.

In the history of crime, the best crew was headed by John Dillinger. He robbed banks but let the civilians in the banks keep their money. Dillinger assembled a crack team and he himself would hop over the bank booths like a jack-rabbit, hence his nickname. He’s been played by Johnny Depp, Warren Oates, and Lawrence Tierney.

Ocean’s Eleven set the cinematic standard for a heist team. It included a mastermind, a distraction, a partner, a coordinator, a backer, hacker, con man, and gadget guy. It also had a scheme so ingenious that Frank Sinatra supposedly considered pulling the job over doing the film. In Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs (1991), the crew had color-coded names; in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid they wore 10-gallon hats. Every large theft needs an inside man, but Inside Man (2006), directed by Spike Lee, had Clive Owen as a bona fide genius.

By contrast, Affleck’s Doug MacRay heads a four-man gang. While they don’t have a street name, FBI Special Agent Adam Frawley (Jon Hamm) calls them “The-Not-Fucking-Around-Crew.” They plan their jobs meticulously, bleaching crime scenes to eradicate DNA traces, and nuking the security tapes in the bank’s own microwave. The gang torches their escape cars and their transfer vehicles. They’re locked, loaded, and trained in automatic weapons, and launder their take immediately. They get their tips and kick up to local crime lord Fergus ‘Fergie’ Colm, played by veteran character actor Pete Postlethwaite. He poses as a florist, just like Dean O’Banion, the Irish gang leader who celebrated St. Valentine’s Day with Al Capone in Prohibition Chicago.

Affleck’s Doug almost got out of his predetermined life. He was a local hockey star who got drafted by the NHL, but started beating on his own teammates and got sent back home. He goes into the family business. His father, Stephen MacRay (Chris Cooper) was a thief, just like his father, and all of Doug’s friends were thick with thievery.

Jem is his right hand muscle, and unquestioning backup. When Doug wakes Jem up in the middle of the night to do some damage and ask no questions, the only thing his friend wants to know is which car they should take. Jem spent nine years in prison for killing a local thug who was planning to kill Doug.

Starting Out Like Romeo and Julie, Ending in Real Tragedy

Jem is also Riff to Doug’s Tony in West Side Story. They have an allegiance which goes “from womb to tomb,” and “sperm to worm.” Jem’s family took Doug in after his mom deserted him, and his father fell apart for a little while. Jem is furious when he finds Doug cozying up to Claire, the bank manager who could finger them to the Feds. His first reaction is to “take her out of the equation.”

The film makes Jem out to be the loose cannon in the arsenal, but he makes criminal sense. MacRay, who is a recovering addict with mommy issues, is more of a sociopath than Jem, who is only living the way the streets taught him. MacRay is a narcissist who uses Jem’s sister Krista (Blake Lively) for bathroom quickies, and Claire as a loophole.

Claire represents the real problem at the center of the proceedings. Besides being the lovable and erudite wrinkle in the scheme, she is not a “townie,” someone who was raised in the neighborhood. She is the interloping gentry and renovates Doug’s headspace. Claire foretells the doom of Charlestown’s criminal culture. The Town was originally set to be a three-and-a-half-hour-long epic directed by Fatal Attraction’s Adrian Lyne. Affleck turns it into a redemption story which beats the bank alarm at under two hours.

Affleck was born in Berkeley, California but grew up in Cambridge, also across the Charles River from Boston but far removed from the inner-city neighborhood of the film. He heard stories about Charlestown’s reputation for bank robberies and its strict code of silence. For the film, Affleck talked to locals, visited the maximum-security prison MCI—Cedar Junction, and consulted with the FBI Violent Crimes Task Force in Boston. He also ran afoul of the law himself, recruiting real ex-cons as extras and giving them guns. Ex-felons are not allowed to hold even fake weapons. Affleck had a personal stake in the film that went beyond proving himself as a sophomore director.

The Town captures the locale expertly, and the atmosphere masterfully. Even with the shorter length he’s afforded, Affleck tells multiple stories. It has a failed romance, a foiled heist, an unsolved crime, enough car chases for three movies, and yet is a coming-of-age film and a portrait of an era’s end. It is also quirkily structured, vaguely biographical and personal. This makes it a mini-epic. It’s not The Godfather of caper films, but it is a heist movie must-see.

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weekendwarriorblog · 3 years ago

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The Weekend Warrior 10/1/21: VENOM: LET THERE BE CARNAGE, THE ADDAMS FAMILY II, THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK, TITANE, MAYDAY, THE JESUS MUSIC

Yeah, so I haven’t had the time over the past couple weeks to write a column, and I kind of hate that fact, especially since I’m coming up on a pretty major milestone for me writing a weekly box office column and reviewing movies. In fact, that milestone comes next week! And once again, I’m struggling to get through the movies I was hoping to watch and write about this week, because I’ve been out of town and once again, very busy over the weekend. Let’s see how far I get...

Before we get to this week’s wide releases, I’m excited to say that my local arthouse movie theater, The Metrograph, is finally reopening for in-person screenings, and they’re kicking things off with a 4k restoration of Andrez Zulawski’s 1981 thriller, Possession, starring Sam Neill and Isabell Adjani, who won a Best Actress prize at Cannes for her performance in the film. I actually saw this at the Metrograph a few years back, and Metrograph Pictures, the distribution arm of the company is now distributing the 4k restoration. There’s a lot of exciting things ahead at Metrograph, including an upcoming four-film Clint Eastwood retrospective, including White Hunter, Black Heart (1990) and A Perfect World (1991) this Friday. Also, Lingua Franca director Isabel Sandoval will be showing her fantastic film from 2020 (a rare chance to see it in a theater and I’ll be there!) as well as program a number of other favorites of hers. Sunday will have screenings of Ingmar Berman’s Scenes from a Marriage (1973) in its full four plus hour glory, Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993) and John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness (1994).. In other words, the Metrograph is back!

Moving over to the weekend’s three wide releases, the first one up being Sony’s VENOM: LET THERE BE CARNAGE (Sony Pictures) with Tom Hardy returning as Eddie Brock aka Venom, joined by Woody Harrelson as the psychotic symbiote, Carnage. Taking over the directing reins is Andy Serkis, who has only directed two other movies, Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle and Breathe, but as an actor, he’s been heavily involved with the CG VFX (and performance capture) needed to bring the characters in this Marvel anti-hero movie to life.

Venom has been one of Spider-Man’s most popular villains and sometimes allies for quite a few decades now, starting out life as a cool black costume Spider-Man found on a strange planet during the first “Secret Wars,” which turned out to be an alien symbiote that had malicious intentions. Spider-Man got the costume off of him but it then linked up with Eddie Brock, a sad-sack journalist whose emotions drove the alien symbiote to become the Venom we known and (mostly) love, thanks to one Todd McFarlane. Venom continued to play a large part in the Spider-Man books before getting his own comics, and not before a super-villain was created for him in Cletus Kasady, a vicious serial killer whose infection by the symbiote turns him into Carnage. And that’s who Harrelson is playing.

Being a sequel, we do have some basis to go on, although the original Venom movie, released in early October 2018, also arrived at a time when it was only the second time the character of Venom was brought to the big screen -- the first time being Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3, in which the character was received without much love as Ryan Reynold’s Deadpool in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. And yet, Venom did great, opening with $80.2 million and grossing $213 million domestically, which is more than enough to greenlight a sequel. (It made over double that amount overseas, too.) For comparison, the Wolverine prequel opened with $85 million but at the beginning of summer, so it quickly tailed away with other movies coming out after it. Venom: Let There Be Carnage has to worry about the new James Bond opening a week later, so it very likely could be a one-and-done, opening decently but quickly dropping down as other big movies are released in October (basically one a week).

I’ve already seen the movie, and by the time you read this, reviews will already be up --including my own at Below the Line. Social media reactions seem to not be so bad though, so maybe it’ll get better reviews than its predecessor, which was trashed by critics, receiving only a 30% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. But if you look at the fan ratings, they’re higher with 81%, although it’s hard not to be

I’m thinking that bearing COVID in mind and the law of depreciation since the previous movie, Venom: Let There Be Carnage will probably be good for around $50 million this weekend, maybe a little more, but however it’s received, I expect it to drop significantly next week, though a total domestic gross of $135 to 140 million seems reasonable.

Another strong sequel to kick off October is the animated THE ADDAMS FAMILY II (MGM), which is following up the 2019 hit for MGM/UA Releasing with most of the voice cast returning, including Oscar Isaac, Charlize Theron, Chloe Grace Moretz, and Finn Wolfhard, as well as Nick Kroll, Snoop Dogg, Martin Short, Catherine O’Hara, and Bette Midler voicing the popular characters from the New Yorker cartoons, a popular ‘60s TV series, and two Barry Sonnenfeld movies from the ‘90s.

The 2019 animated film was a pretty solid hit for the newly-launched UA Releasing, grossing $100 million domestic after a $30.3 million opening, making it one of MGM’s biggest hits since it was restructured under UA and became its own distributor again. Who knows what’s going to happen with Amazon’s plans on buying MGM and whether the latter will remain a distribution wing, but MGM still has a number of movies out this year that likely will be awards contenders. But that doesn’t mean much for The Addams Family II, which will try to get some of those people who paid to see the original movie in theaters back to see the sequel… and if they’re not going to theaters, MGM is once again offering the movie day-and-date on VOD much like they did with last year’s Bill and Ted Face the Music, which opened much earlier in the pandemic (late august, 2020), so it far fewer options to see it in theaters compared to this animated sequel.

It’s highly doubtful that The Addams Family II was going to open anywhere near to $30 million even if there wasn’t a pandemic, and it wasn’t on VOD just because MGM just doesn’t seem to be marketing the movie as well as its predecessor. You can blame COVID if you want, but it’s also the fact they’re distributing the company’s first James Bond movie in six years, No Time To Die, on their own vs. through another distributor, ala the last few Daniel Craig Bonds. But we’ll talk more about that next week, since that’s going to be an important movie to help cover MGM’s expenses for the rest of 2021. (I haven’t had a chance to see this yet, but it’s embargoed until Friday, so wouldn’t be able to get a review into the column regardless.)

We’ve seen quite a few family hits over the past few months even when the movies were already on streaming/VOD, but parents are probably being a bit more careful with kids back in school, many younger kids still not vaccinated, and the Delta variant still not quite under control. Because of those factors, I think The Addams Family II is more likely to do somewhere between $15 and 18 million its opening weekend, maybe more on the lower side.

Third up is THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK (New Line/WB), David Chase’s prequel to his hit HBO series, The Sopranos, which went off the air in 2004 but still finds fans on the new HBO Max streamer. Ironically, this prequel will air on the streamer at the same time as it's getting a theatrical release, which probably won't be a very tough choice for fans.

Chase has reunited with director Alan Taylor, who won a Primetime Emmy for his work on the show in 2007 before moving onto other popular shows like HBO's Game of Thrones. Taylor has had a bit of a rough career in film, though, having directed Marvel Studios’ sequel, Thor: The Dark World, a movie that wasn't received very well although there were rumors that Taylor butted heads with the producers and maybe didn't even finish the movie. He went on to direct Terminator Genesys, which honestly, I can't remember if it was the worst Terminator movie, but it was pretty bad.

What's interesting is that because this is a prequel set in the '70s and '80s, none of the actors from the show appear on it, but it does star Alessandro Nivola, a great actor in one of his meatiest roles for a studio movie. It also introduces Michael Gandolfini, son of the late James Gandolfini (who played Tony Soprano, if you didn't know), playing the teenage Tony, plus it has great roles for the likes of Jon Bernthal (as Tony's father), Vera Farmiga (playing Tony's mother), Corey Stoll (playing the younger "Junior” Soprano), and Lesile Odom Jr, as the Sopranos key adversary, even though he ends up coming across like the good guy of the movie. It also stars Billy Magnussen, who oddly, also has a key role in next week's No Time to Die.

I'm sure there's quite a bit of interest in seeing where Tony came from and to learn more about his family, many who were dead long before the events of the HBO show, but will that be enough to get them into theaters when they already have HBO? I already reviewed the movie for Below the Line, and reviews are generally positive, which might get people more interested in this prequel.

As with most of Warner Bros’ movies this year, Many Saints will also debut on HBO Max and unlike some of the studio’s other 2021 offerings, it will actually make more sense to watch this one on the streamer since that’s how most people watched The Sopranos. That seems like a killer for Many Saints, and it’s likely to keep it opening under $10 million, where it might have done better on a different weekend (like sometime over the last two weeks).

This is what I have this weekend’s top 10 looking like:

1. Venom: Let There Be Carnage (Sony) - $50.4 million N/A

2. The Addams Family II (MGM/UA Releasing) - $16.5 million N/A

3. The Many Saints of Newark (New Line/WB) - $9 million N/A

4. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (Marvel/Disney) - $7.5 million -44%

5. Dear Evan Hansen (Universal) - $4.1 million -45%

6. Free Guy (20th Century/Disney) - $3.3 million -30%

7. Jungle Cruise (Disney) - $1.1 million -35%

8. Candyman (Universal) - $1.3 million -48%

9. Cry Macho (Warner Bros.) - $1 million -52%

10. Malignant (Warner Bros.) - .7 million -53%

Opening in select cities is French filmmaker Julia (Raw) Ducournau’s TITANE (Neon), the genre thriller that won this year’s coveted Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. It stars Agathe Rouselle as a young woman who has an interesting relationship with automobiles, but she also has psychotic tendencies that leaves a trail of bodies behind her. On the run, she decides to pretend she’s the missing son of a fireman (Vincent Lindon), who has been missing for 10 years, and things just get weirder from there.

I honestly wasen’t sure what to expect from this although I do remember walking out of Ducournau’s cannibal movie, Raw, just because it was so gross, even though so many of my colleagues and friends swear by the movie, and this one, for that matter. Sure, there’s a certain “prove it” factor to me watching a movie that wins the Palme D’Or, because it’s very rare that I like the movies that do win that benchmark cinema award.

After a flashback to Agathe’s character Alexia when she was an obstinate young girl kicking the back seat of her father as he’s driving. They crash and she’s forced to get surgery that puts an odd looking piece of metal in her head. Decades later, she seems to be a pseudo-stripper at weird punk rock car show -- I guess they do those things different in France -- and hooking up with a fellow “model” afterwards. Agathe is actually a very popular model/dancer but when one fan gets too grabby, she pulls a knitting needle out of her hair and stabs it through his ear, killing him. Oh, yeah, she then has sex with a car and seemingly gets pregnant, but that only happens later. First, she goes on a bit of a killing spree and then goes on a run and decides that by strapping up her breasts and breaking her nose, she can pass off this fire captain’s son… and it works!

So the second half deals with acting great Vincent Lindon’s absolutely bonkers steroid-addicted man who seems to be sexually attracted to his own son, and most of his fellow firefighters knows that he’s gay but in the closet, but I’m honestly not sure what that matters. He’s a pretty disgusting character whose 70-year-old ass we see way too much of, and even those who might find Rouselle to be quite fetching, there’s a certain point where her nudity is not alluring but quite horrifying.

Oh, and at this time, Alexia (or Adrien, as she’s now going) has also gotten significantly pregnant, but it’s not a normal pregnancy because what should be milk from her breasts seems to some sort of motor oil. That’s because she FUCKED A CAR earlier in the movie!!! What do you expect when you fuck a car and don’t use protection, girlie? The fact Alexia/Adrien is trying to hide the fact she’s a pregnant woman from a station full of men isn’t even particularly disturbing. The part that really got me was when she broke her own nose to pass off as this guy’s son -- I actually had to look away for that part.

Listen I’m no prude, and I think I can handle most things in terms of horror and gore, but Titane just annoyed me, because it felt like Ms Ducournau was doing a lot of what we see more for shock value than to actually drive the story forward. There just doesn’t seem to be much point to any of it, and once the movie gets to the firehouse, and we see her interaction (as a young man) with her “father” and his colleagues, it just gets more grueling.

It’s as if Ducournau had watched a lot of movies by the likes of Cronenberg or David Lynch, or more likely Nicolas Refn or Lars von Trier, and thought, “I could be just as strange and horrific as those men… let’s see what people think of this.” And way too many people fell for it, including the Cannes jury. While I normally would approve of any good body horror movie, especially one with cinematography, score and musical selections as good as this one, I doubt I’d ever want to watch this movie again. And therefore, I don’t think I can recommend this movie to anyone either, at least no one I want to remain my friend.

As far as the movie’s box office, NEON is opening the movie in 562 theaters to build on buzz from various film festivals, including the New York Film Festival earlier this week. I think it should be good for half a million this weekend, although maybe it'll surprise me like NEON's release of Parasite a few years back. I just don't see this getting into the top 10 but maybe just outside it.

And then we have a few more movies that I got screeners for but just couldn’t find the time to watch, but might do so once I finish this verdammt column.

The faith-based doc THE JESUS MUSIC (Lionsgate) by the Erwin Brothers (I Can Only Imagine, I Still Believe) takes a look at the rise of Christian Contemporary Music through artists like Amy Grant and Stryper and everything in between, featuring lots of interviews of the artists’ trials and triumphs. Even though there isn’t much CCM I ever listen to, I’m still kind of curious about this one, since I generally like music docs and this is guaranteed not to be the sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll of most of them. I have no idea how wide Lionsgate intends to release this but it certainly can be fairly wide, because the Erwins have delivered at least one giant hit for Lionsgate, and I Still Believe may have been another one if not for the pandemic. It actually opened on March 13, just days before movie theaters shut down across the country, so it's little surprise it only made $7 million domestic. That said, the acts in this one have a lot of fans, and if Lionsgate does release The Jesus Music into 1,000 theaters or so (which is very doable), then I would expect it would make between $1 and 2 million, which would be enough to break into the Top 10.

I haven't seen any of the movies based on Anna Todd's YA romance novels but the third of them, AFTER WE FELL, will play in about 1,311 theaters on Thursday i.e. tonight through Fathom Events, and may or may not continue through the weekend. These movies just kind of show up, and again, having not seen any of them, I'm not sure what kind of audience they have, but this one stars Josephine Langford and Hero Fiennes, as well as Stephen Moyer, Mira Sorvino and Arielle Kebbel with Castille Landon directing.

Grace Van Patten (Under the Silver Lake) stars in Karen Cinorre’s action-fantasy film MAYDAY (Magnolia), playing Ana, a young woman who is transported to a “dreamlike and dangerous” coastline where she joins a female army in a never-ending war where women lure men to their deaths. It also stars Mia Goth, Havana Rose Liu, Soko, Théodore Pellerin and Juliette Lewis. It will be in theaters and On Demand this Friday.

The great Tim Blake Nelson stars in Potsy Ponciroli’s action-Western OLD HENRY (Shout! Studios/Hideout) about a widowed farmer and son who take in an injured man with a satchel full of cash only to have to fend off a posse who come after the man, claiming to be the law. Not sure who to trust, the farmer has to use his gun skills to defend his home and the stranger.

The romantic-comedy FALLING FOR FIGARO (IFC Films) is the new movie from Australian filmmaker Ben Lewin (The Sessions), who I’ve interviewed a few times, and he’s a really nice chap. This one stars Danielle Macdonald, Hugh Skinner, and Joanna Lumley, and it will be in theaters and On Demand this Friday. This rom-com is set in the world of opera singing competitions with Macdonald playing Millie, a brilliant young fund manager who decides to chase her dream of being an opera singer in the Scottish Highlands. She begins vocal training lessons with a former opera diva, played by Lumley, where she meets Max, a young man also training for that competition. Could love blossom? This actually sounds like my kind of movie, so I’ll definitely try to watch soon.

The second season of “Welcome to Blumhouse” the horror movie anthology kicks off on Amazon Prime Video on Friday with the first two movies, Maritte Lee Go’s Black as Night (which I’ve seen) and Gigi Saul Guerrero’s Bingo Night (which I haven’t), and actually I’ll have an interview with Ms. Go over at Below the Line possibly later this week. The former stars Ashja Cooper as a teen girl living in Louisiana who has a bad experience with homeless vampires, along with her best friend (Fabrizio Guido).

Also, Antoine Fuqua and Jake Gyllenhaal’s remake of the Danish film THE GUILTY will begin streaming on Netflix starting Friday after premiering at TIFF a few weeks back. I never got around to reviewing it, but it’s pretty good, maybe a little better than the original movie but essentially the same. I’d definitely recommend it if you like Jake, because he’s definitely terrific in it.

Also hitting Netflix this week is Juana Macias' SOUNDS LIKE LOVE (Netflix), a Spanish language romance movie that (guess) I haven't seen!

A few other movies I didn’t get to this week, include:

STOP AND GO (Decal) VAL (Dread) BLUSH (UA Releasing) RUNT (1091 Pictures)

Next week, it’s not time for James Bond, it’s time for James Bond to die… no, wait… there is NO TIME TO DIE! Also, a very, very special anniversary for the Weekend Warrior….

#The Weekend Warrior #Venom: Let There Be Carnage #Many Saints of Newark #Addams Family II #movies #review #box office #reviews #The Jesus Music #Titane

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roy-the-dork · 2 years ago

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Some silly traditional doodles based on @fiddlstyx’s local legend au :)

Basically what people think of local legend Clint Eastwood vs …actual Marty. I’d like to think he would become this mysterious brooding cowboy archetype that gets aged up significantly. Bonus points if actual Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name is based on the legend in the Back to the Future universe, lol.

#back to the future #bttf #roysart #this au doesn’t belong to me!#but it definitely has wormed its way into my brain!#local legend clint eastwood

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styxbugg · 2 years ago

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i realize there are many aus ive mentioned that ive described in detail on discord but have said close to nothing about on here so.. if there are any questions send em my way!

im in a describey mood and have a week free, but also have no idea what exactly to explain so…

most aus i have are either mentioned in the january posts but ill list some i can remember now:

citizen valley/martin (bttf)

what i left behind (bttf)

spider man au (bttf)

local legend clint eastwood (bttf)

zomartbie/zombie apocalypse (bttf)

alien marty (bttf)

groundhog day au (bttf)

cinderbug au (starship)

any ive forgotten here are good too :)

#back to the future #starship #ask bait #all my au ideas go straight to the discord and then i forget to put them here too #realizing just how many bttf aus i have wow #i really want to info dump about these #not an april fools post #martin au #what i left behind #local legend clint eastwood #zomartbie au #alien marty au #cinderbug au #the ones i haven’t tagged have absolutely no information lol

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bg-sparrow · 6 months ago

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mcfly july 2024 || 🌲🌲 || day 20 Local Legend

The Hill Valley librarian prides herself in knowing the people of her community by their checkout histories, how fast books are returned, how many they check out at a time.

Some books she hasn’t reshelved in months because the same person keeps renewing their loan with no other readers in the wings.

Hill Valley Hero: The Enduring Mystery of the Real Clint Eastwood

Marty McFly, who hasn’t checked a book out in over a year for more than a school project, suddenly can’t put this one down.

“Keep it.”

Marty takes the book back. “You’re sure?”

“I’ll get another. Enjoy.”

#mcflyjuly #mcfly July 2024 #mcfly july #back to the future #bttf #marty mcfly #fanfic #Drabble #100 words #BttF aesthetics #BttF mood boards #the boy who leapt through time (and time again)

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ericdeggans · 4 years ago

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How My Love for Sean Connery and Bond Led to a Serious Case of White Guy Hero Infatuation Syndrome

Like a lot of people all over the world, I have long considered myself a stone Sean Connery fan.

I often recited the juiciest dialogue bits from his Oscar-winning turn as a beat cop-turned crusader in he Untouchables (in addition to the speech everyone quotes, I loved how he told Eliot Ness he knew he was a treasury agent without seeing his badge because “who would claim to be that who was not?”) I watched the painfully clumsy 1986 B-movie Highlander mostly for his charming turn as Egyptian (!) immortal Juan Sánchez-Villalobos Ramírez.

And, of course his work as James Bond always set the ultimate example for urbane cool. Which explains why I often felt the theme song thrumming in my head whenever I wore a stylish suit or hopped off a plane in a cool city. For men from the generation before mine, he practically defined the sophisticated, stylish machismo found in the pages of Esquire and Playboy.

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For these reasons and more, I have always loved the rogueish Scotsman as an actor. And yet, when news of his death at age 90 spread across the world, I couldn’t bear to pay tribute to him on my social media pages, until now.

That’s because his passing highlighted my problem with a particular malady. I call it White Guy Hero Infatuation Syndrome. And I have suffered from it for many years.

Put simply, my fan’s brain knows that Connery’s landmark performances were the stuff of film legend – especially as Bond. Cool, authoritative, suavely menacing and mostly unflappable, his take on a secret agent who knows the best suit designers nearly as well as the best pistol manufacturers set the template for escapist espionage fantasies over the next half century and beyond.

His first line as the character – “Bond. James Bond.” – has become pop culture legend.

But as a media critic, I also have to contend with James Bond’s status as a relentless sexist and a British agent who walked the world as if it was made to be ruled by wealthy, capable white men. Watch him slap the behind of a pretty blonde who was massaging him poolside in 1964’s Goldfinger when CIA agent Felix Leiter turns up for a chat. “Man talk,” he tells her dismissively, sending her out of the scene.

Or check out how he treats Quarrel, the bug-eyed Black man who acts as a “fixer” for him in Jamaica during the first Bond film, 1962’s Dr. No. Scrambling across a beach to avoid the bad guys’ goons, Bond turns to Quarrel and tells him “fetch my shoes” -- as if he were his butler, rather than a local ally helping him avoid thugs with automatic weapons.

And there’s loads of scenes where Bond forces himself on women who quickly succumb to his charms – like Honor Blackman’s character in 1964′s Goldfinger – perpetuating a dangerous myth that a man can earn a woman’s love by pushing her into being romantic with him. (Or that a dismissive, vaguely annoyed tone with women – treating them like impertinent children or misguided simpletons – is also, somehow, irresistible to them.)

When Connery played Bond, he played a character who was the embodiment of white privilege. He made it look sexy, virtuous and necessary – the natural state of things in a 1960s-era world that, outside the comfortable confines of Bond’s make-believe spy games, seemed to be coming apart at the seams. But in the America of 2020, it’s a symbol of how media can teach you to accept a limiting legend.

And this was a fantasy I bought into eagerly. As a kid, my mom and I bonded over the heroic white guys she loved on film and TV, mostly from westerns. Just this past December, as she was fighting cancer and months before she would succumb to an infection, we sat and watched Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, Kevin Costner and Robert Duvall save the day too many times to count.

As I got older, I’d make fun of all the misogyny, racism and white centering going on in these shows – gibes which my mother, a proud Black woman who loved her people and culture, tolerated with a weary smile. “These are my guys,” she’d say playfully, swatting aside any idea that there was a deeper impact from gorging on stories which treated these virtuous white men as the noble, natural center of every story. I wish the issue were that simple; it often isn’t.

For me, it wasn’t just a problem with Connery. As a kid, I loved Eastwood’s 1970s-era Dirty Harry movies, where the taciturn cop with a Magnum pistol cut through all the nonsense to nab the bad guy. Same with Bronson’s Death Wish films, where the solution to rampant street crime wasn’t better policing, but a taciturn, middle class white guy with a gun shooting down street criminals. It’s a potent fantasy, especially if you’ve ever had to deal with the numbing bureaucracy of real-life law enforcement or the brutal violation of being a crime victim.

It wasn’t until I got older that I realized many of those bad guys Harry Callahan was hunting were young hippies and Black people – the kind of folks who, in real life when Dirty Harry was released in 1971, were trying to get America to face how it was chewing up poor, young men in an unwinnable, unnecessary war in Vietnam. It was a prime example of “copaganda” – convincing the audience that the excesses Detective Callahan committed to nail a person the audience already knew was a serial killer, was justified.

Even now, I wonder: Can I watch these movies and appreciate why they are thrilling, while rejecting the tropes that present a white male-centered world as just and appropriate? In my work on race and media, I’m often telling audiences that people who insist they are not affected by media subtexts are often the most affected by them. Couldn’t that be true for me, when it comes to heroes like Eastwood, Bronson and Connery?

(One caveat: Sitting in an arena in Tampa, watching Eastwood give his infamously strange “empty chair” speech at the Republican National Convention in 2012, broke me of my affection for his work. I have avoided watching new Clint Eastwood films since then. Click here to read my report on the empty chair speech for the Tampa Bay Times.)

In his later years, Connery denied or walked back quotes where he seemed to approve of physically hitting women in real life. His roles in films like Highlander, The Untouchables, Hunt for Red October, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen often featured him playing the older mentor to younger white guy heroes portrayed by the likes of Harrison Ford, Alec Baldwin and Kevin Costner.

And so, as the question of Connery’s legacy in show business arises, the fanboy part of me is at war with the media critic. One side of me is lost in the absolute coolness of the suave masculinity he so often symbolized, particularly as the world’s most successful secret agent.

The other is painfully aware of the inequalities and oppression such portrayals enabled, and how much they may feed our real life fantasies for a powerful white male savior to set things right, even now.

Especially now.

And saying these characters were a product of their flawed times somehow doesn’t seem enough.

This is a tough column to write, and not just because there are so many fans who want to focus on the best moments of Sean Connery’s life now that he’s gone. It’s difficult because he was a personal hero of mine for a long while – and remains one of my favorite performers – even as I acknowledge the terribly male-centric and white-superior ethos he embodied in so many roles.

This may sound like disrespectful nitpicking to hardcore fans and family. It’s never easy to sit with the more uncomfortable aspects of a great artist’s legacy. And the time after his death has been filled with heartfelt tributes to Connery, a man of great talent and no-nonsense sensibilities who was respected and loved by a great many people who worked with him.

Sometimes the media critic’s job requires being a buzzkill; insisting the public pay attention to troubling aspects of a film or TV show that we would all just rather sit back and enjoy. Because part of unwinding the effect of past portrayals is acknowledging their power in the present day.

Which means, every time I watch Connery stride to a baccarat table in Goldfinger, Dr. No, or Diamonds Are Forever, archly demanding a precisely constructed alcoholic beverage, I also have to remind myself of the damage done by too many characters like that offering too constricted a vision of what a hero looks and acts like. And I suggest you do the same.

It's the only way to balance a comforting myth with the reality of how that legend can, unwittingly, teach us to cling to ideas that ultimately hold us back.

#james bond #sean connery #race #pop culture

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OK, January 4

You can buy a copy of this issue for your very own at my eBay store: https://www.ebay.com/str/bradentonbooks

Cover: Ashton Kutcher haunted by his mistakes

Page 2: Contents

Page 4: Jennifer Garner ready for romance -- Jennifer has proven she’s fine on her own but she’s eager for her happy ending and has even set her sights on some of Hollywood’s most eligible hunks like Chris Evans but seems happily single; she binge-watched Outlander and was totally taken with Sam Heughan and she also finds Martin Henderson very sexy but heard he has a girlfriend

Page 6: After a tumultuous few years Hayden Panettiere’s 2021 is looking bright and she’s been working on herself since her split from toxic ex-boyfriend Brian Hickerson -- she’s taken control of her life and is making good choices -- she’s been able to rebuild her life and her relationship with her daughter Kaya who lives in Ukraine with her dad and next on her agenda is reviving her once-hot career

Page 7: Justin Bieber who’s been a devoted member of the controversial celeb-favored Hillsong Church for years is studying to become a minister -- Justin has long credited Hillsong and especially charismatic and recently fired pastor Carl Lentz for saving him from his dark period of drugs, public meltdowns and arrests -- Justin doesn’t plan to give up his music career but he feels there’s a bigger calling out there for him

* Jessica Simpson has signed deals for both a docuseries and a fictionalized series based on her life but not everyone is so pumped about her tell-all tendencies and least of all is her ex-husband Nick Lachey -- for Nick it’s just dredging up a past that’s better left alone and Nick hopes that Jessica goes easy on him in the scripted series but deep down knows there’s precious little chance of that

* Madonna is majorly inserting herself in her daughter Lourdes Leon’s love life and she’s constantly on the phone asking how things are going between Lourdes and her socialite beau of three years Jonathan Puglia and she wants to know when they’re making things official -- Madonna even pushes for double dates so she can bring her 26-year-old boyfriend Ahlamalik Williams -- Lourdes appreciates how much her mom cares but she’s finding all the micromanaging too much to handle

Page 8: Jason Aldean who boasts an $80 million fortune loves splashing his cash around especially when it comes to his children -- the singer who shares son Memphis and daughter Navy with wife Brittany and girls Kendyl and Keeley with his ex likes being seen as the moneybags and leaves tough love to the kids’ moms and he’s always pulling out $100 bills for his teens and buying his little ones new clothes, toys and high-tech gadgets even though they’re so young -- he’s definitely spoiling the kids but nobody complains about it so he just keeps on buying them stuff because nothing makes him happier

* The milestone 6-0 is still months away but George Clooney is planning to do some serious partying for his birthday and he’s sparing no expense -- he’s looking at celebrations across the States and Europe plus a boys-only getaway to Mexico

* Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence are having a blast filming their first movie together so much so that tongues are wagging about the pair’s fiery chemistry on the set -- even though Leo and Jen behave like total pros when the cameras aren’t rolling there’s a running joke among the cast and crew that Jen’s marriage to Cooke Maroney could be in trouble -- of course the reality is that Jen is crazy about her husband and Leo who is dating model Camila Morrone has a strict rule never to get involved with costars but still there’s an attraction that can’t be denied

Page 10: Red Hot on the Red Carpet -- stars get glamorous in glitzy looks -- Alexa Chung, Tiffany Haddish

Page 11: Maya Hawke, Sarah Hyland

Page 12: Who Wore It Better? Yara Shahidi vs. Cindy Bruna, Becky G vs. Sofia Carson

Page 13: Celine Dion vs. Shailene Woodley

Page 14: News in Photos -- Jessie James Decker in a pink bikini in Nashville

Page 15: Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt and their son Gunner doing a Christmas card shoot in L.A., Jessica Alba spent the day handing out Honest goodies at the Baby2Baby Holiday Drive-Thru Distribution in L.A.

Page 16: Gwen Stefani rocked a cat-themed holiday jumpsuit while on the way to the recording studio in Santa Monica, Leighton Meester surfing in Malibu

Page 17: Maria Sharapova brought back the 1970s during a photoshoot in L.A., Pink kept it casual during a coffee run to Starbucks in L.A., Tia Mowry returned home with a full trunk of gifts and goodies in L.A.

Page 18: Nick Jonas and Priyanka Chopra Jonas exploring London

Page 20: Let’s Get Physical -- Robin Wright took her bicycle out for a spin in L.A., Chris Hemsworth shows off his ripped body while lifting a tire, Winnie Harlow in L.A.

Page 22: Deck the Halls -- newly-engaged Jonathan Bennett gushed of spending his first Christmas with fiance Jaymes Vaughan, Jonathan and Drew Scott dressed as elves

Page 23: Jon Bon Jovi and his dog, Selena Gomez with her dog Winnie in front of the Christmas tree, Brooke Burke kicked off the season by signing ornaments that will be auctioned off by Operation Smile

Page 24: Malin Akerman arranged the sheets and blankets and pillows at a Hotel Style Collection from Walmart event in NYC, Jeremy Renner filmed a scene for Hawkeye in NYC, Chrishell Stause stepped out for a morning walk with her rescue pooch Gracie in L.A.

Page 26: Inside My Home -- Marc Anthony’s elegant estate in Coral Gables, Florida

Page 28: Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart are planning to renew their vows on Valentine’s Day which is 12 years to the day after Harrison proposed to Calista on their sprawling Jackson Hole, Wyoming ranch -- Calista is incredibly touched that Harrison is organizing this and he’s thoughtfully arranging to have her favorite flowers to be flown in and has already booked a local band and a caterer and baker

Page 29: Emily Blunt and John Krasinski might be ready for baby No. 3 but friends are encouraging them to get their marriage on track first -- the two have had a tough couple of years and John can be hard to deal with and cranky when he’s working -- while the duo tend to put a super-positive spin on their marriage in public not everyone is convinced things are so rosy at home but Emily wants another child and so does John so they’re willing to take the risk

* Meghan Markle and Prince Harry plan to kick off 2021 with a much-needed tropical vacation -- after an emotionally turbulent year Meghan and Harry are ready for this break -- following a quiet Christmas at home the couple is looking forward to relaxing on a warm beach somewhere, sleeping in, soaking up nature’s beauty and reconnecting as a couple -- they’re considering a private island in Hawaii or off the coast of Fiji

Page 30: Taylor Swift who’s been collecting bridal magazines and wedding ideas since she was a teen will have to adjust to the idea of a small sequestered affair when her boyfriend Joe Alwyn officially pops the question -- the once-outgoing singer has turned into a hermit since hooking up with the British actor who insists on total privacy and loathes attention and now Tay’s inner circle is said to be worried that in Joe’s continued efforts to fly under the radar he’ll ultimately nix the lavish nuptials Taylor’s long envisioned

* Justin Timberlake and Olivia Wilde have a past -- dating briefly in 2011 and costarring in two films but they won’t have a future if Justin’s wife Jessica Biel has any say -- Justin is eager to work with newly single Olivia again but the collab between the old pals is a total no-no as far as Jess is concerned because she’s always seen Olivia as a threat and particularly now that she’s split from Jason Sudeikis

* Love Bites -- Bachelor Nation’s Emily Ferguson and hockey player William Karlsson are engaged, Christina Milian and Matt Pokora have another baby on the way, Gleb Savchenko and Cassie Scerbo dating

Page 32: Cover Story -- Ashton Kutcher haunted by his past -- the actor is wrestling with major demons and regrets -- the grisly murder of his then-girlfriend Ashley Ellerin has stayed with him -- Ashton and wife Mila Kunis have weathered some storms but they’re in a good place now

Page 36: Celebrity Dads and Their Darling Daughters -- Michael and Carys Douglas, John and Ella Bleu Travolta, Lionel and Sofia Richie

Page 37: Don and Dakota Johnson, Phil and Lily Collins

Page 38: Ryan and Ava Phillippe, Mark and Lola Consuelos, Johnny and Lily-Rose Depp

Page 39: Lenny and Zoe Kravitz, Clint and Francesca Eastwood, Alec and Ireland Baldwin, Rod and Ruby Stewart

Page 40: Interview -- Charlize Theron does it all -- the actress, mom and producer talks about taking on projects that are close to her heart

Page 42: New Year, New You -- kick-start a healthy 2021 with these celeb-approved wellness resolutions

Page 46: Style Week -- Good American cofounded by Khloe Kardashian recently launched its first-ever footwear collection

Page 54: Entertainment

Page 55: Q&A with Brian Austin Green

Page 58: Buzz -- Prince George and Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis joined their parents Prince William and Duchess Kate on the red carpet for the very first time and held hands on their way to London’s Palladium to watch the National Lottery’s Pantoland

Page 60: Sound Bites -- Gwyneth Paltrow on getting starstruck, Kurt Russell on wife Goldie Hawn’s penchant for sleeping in total darkness, Jimmy Fallon on which SNL costar he’d want to be stuck on a desert island with (Tina Fey), Chrissy Teigen on being embarrassed

Page 61: Megan Thee Stallion on the guidance she gets from Jay-Z and Beyonce, Frances McDormand on hooking up with husband Joel Coen, Chad Michael Murray on seeing pics from his heartthrob days, Rachel Brosnahan on what the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel fans can look forward to

Page 62: Horoscope -- Capricorn John Legend turned 42 on December 28

Page 64: By the Numbers -- Larry David

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