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kellyvela · 2 years

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Grrm: Joffery is partly based on my childhood bullies. Antis: Sansa is the biggest bully I have ever seen.

There's none so blind as those who will not see.

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GRRM'S BULLIES:

Q: Can I talk to you about Joffrey? I have never been so moved and aggravated by a body on television in my entire life. He's unsettling and hateable on so many different levels. So you've got this tiny psychopath born of incest, with a tendency for woman beaten and sexually perverted malice, and worse probably, in my opinion on all of this, he was responsible for the death of one of the direwolves in the first series. My theory, is he somebody that you went to school with? A: You know, there might be something to that. I think he’s about five or six people I went to school with. Joffrey is a classic bully in many ways, and he's very full of himself, and he's incredibly spoiled, I mean, he was raised without limits, and he's got two fathers, neither of which has ever really give him much of what you would call fatherly attention or discipline. I think in some sense he's still trying to impress his fathers. —Game Of Thrones - Interview with George R.R. Martin [June 12, 2012]

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At the same time, in the moments leading up to that, you seem to really enjoy giving him this grand sendoff by having all these moments during his wedding where he demonstrates the character traits that make us so dislike him. The wedding is self-aggrandizing — he throws his money around, he chops up Tyrion’s present, he orders that offensive dwarf joust. He gets to display all of the reasons why we want him to die just before he dies. Martin: Yeah. I think Joffrey is a classic 13-year-old bully. Do you know many 13-year-old kids you’d like to give absolute power to? There’s a cruelty in children, especially children of a certain age, that you see in junior high and middle school. We don’t want 13-year-old bullies to be put to death. We probably do when we’re their 13-year-old victims, but they grow up and most of them grow out of it, and sometimes people do regret their actions. But Joffrey will never get that chance, so we don’t know what he would have become. Probably nothing good, but still… —George R.R. Martin on why Joffrey died THAT way - April 13, 2014

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Q: When you look back to George as a little boy, looking out on Staten Island, did you know little King Joffrey on the street? Was there a little punk? A: Oh there were a number of them, yeah. I was the shy kid, I was, you know, I was the smart kid. There were also always bullies in school. People made life miserable for the smart kids and the shy kids. So I think Joffrey was partly made up of all the bullies I’ve ever knew in my life. —Game of Thrones’ Author George R.R. Martin - ABC News [April, 18 - 2014]

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GRRM HIMSELF:

Firstly, thanks for that very thorough response on the tournaments and knighthood. Fascinating. In particular given the notes about _Ivanhoe_ and its influence – I’ve only witnessed the A&E production of it, although maybe about time I read it. Seems it might be ripe for ideas.

IVANHOE is well worth a read, although the style is very old fashioned, of course. Still it has some fabulous characters and scenes, and so far as I know the definitive portrayal of a medieval tournament, both melee and joust.

It has been filmed three times that I know of. The recent A&E production had some good moments, as did the older Sam Neill version… the CLASSIC version, however, is still MGM’s 50s version, starring Robert Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor, and George Sanders. The jousts are wonderful, Liz is radiant, and George Sanders steals the film as Bois-Gilbert. You should definitely rent that one and have a look.

—GRRM - 1999

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He was asked or mentioned most of the stuff that’s already been covered, but one thing he talked about that I found particularly interesting was Romanticism. He said that he is a romantic, in the classical sense. He said the trouble with being a romantic is that from a very early age you keep having your face smashed into the harshness of reality. That things aren’t always fair, bad things happen to good people, etc. He said it’s a realists world, so romantics are burned quite often. This theme of romantic idealism conflicting with harsh reality is something he finds very dramatic and compelling, and he weaves it into his work. Specifically he mentioned that the Knight exemplifies this, as the chivalric code is one of the most idealistic out there, protection of the weak, paragon of all that is good, fighting for truth and justice. The reality was that they were people, and therefore could do horrible cruel things, rape, pillage, wanton killing, made all the more striking or horrifying because it was in complete opposition to what they were “supposed” to be. Really interesting stuff.

—US SIGNING TOUR (SEATTLE, WA) - NOVEMBER 21, 2005

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How did you end up writing fantasy?

[...] The great romantic tradition as opposed to realistic tradition in literature. My father called it all ‘weird stuff.’ He said I liked weird stuff. He liked Westerns. So his taste was more grounded, at least in his view. I was always fighting a dragon or going off to the stars or something like that.

—A Dance With Dragons: George R. R. Martin - July 12, 2011

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There’s something about the castles, and the knights, and the age of heroes, that has always appealed to me, particularly about knighthood, I mean, I always thought that was an interesting issue to explore, I talk a lot about it in these books. If you look at human history, the code of chivalry, as was promulgated in the middle ages, is one of the most idealistic codes ever, ever put forward for a warrior. The whole idea of that using your might to defend the weak and protect the innocent, you were more, supposedly, in theory, you were more than just a soldier, you were a champion, but that was a theory, in practice of course, knights were bloodthirsty killers, and they were the great warrior in their age, and in the contradiction between the ideals and the reality, I think there’s immense drama, and that’s one of the things that drove me through it.

—A Dance With Dragons: George R. R. Martin - July 12, 2011

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“Tolkien imitators who came after him, a lot of them created a sort of Disneyland Middle Ages, you know, a sort of Middle Ages like you might see at a Renaissance Faire, but you don’t have the dysentery, or the torture, or the leprosy, or the innate sexism, or classism, or racism that was so built into so much of that world for so many centuries, you really have to take, you know, I like the knights in shinning armor, the heraldry and pageantry as much as anyone, but you also have to include the fleas.”

— Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival - NIFFF 2014

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The novelist is midway through something of a European tour. After his trip to Switzerland, he is due in Scotland for the Edinburgh book festival. It has often been suggested that Ivanhoe (by the Scottish 19th-century novelist Walter Scott) was, alongside the War of the Roses, a major influence on A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones.

Martin was first turned on to Ivanhoe by the 1952 MGM movie starring Robert Taylor, George Sanders and a young Elizabeth Taylor. "I think it was Elizabeth Taylor at the peak of her…,” his voice tails off before he clarifies. “She was the most beautiful woman in the world. I think I was nine years old when I saw that movie. How could you not fall in love with her? But the jousting and the pageantry of it made me love that story. Later, in high school, I did read that book. For a modern reader, it’s a little tough to get through. The prose is very Victorian and thick but if you fight your way through it, the story is there. It has everything the movie has and more – the heraldry and jousting and the insight into the times. It was an influence in that sense.”

—GRRM - Independent - 2014

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“That whole story (The Hedge Knight) is built around a tournament. I love medieval tournaments, reading about them, writing about them. There’s of course some of them in the main books, but this was an opportunity in a time of peace, not war, to look at a medieval tournament with all its pageantry and the jousting and the combat and reveal a little of Westerosi History”.

—In conversation: George R.R. Martin with Dan Jones FULL EVENT- August 2019

SOUNDS FAMILIAR???

#grrm #sansa stark #joffrey baratheon #joffrey is truly a little shit

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gffa · 4 years

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OKAY, IF I’M GONNA DO THIS, I’M GONNA DO IT PROPERLY. WHICH MEANS YEAH IT’S GONNA GET REALLY LONG. A couple of things to say ahead of time: Lucasfilm’s Story Group has always said CANON > WORD OF GOD when it comes to these matters, so when I quote canon examples from supplementary materials that contradict what he says, that’s LF’s official position, but that doesn’t mean that an influential person like Dave’s views couldn’t affect how things will be shaped in the future, like Deborah Chow listening to this may be influenced by it on the Obi-Wan show, despite that Master & Apprentice contradicts him. It’s an incredibly murky area! Mileages are going to vary. Another thing to keep in mind is that Dave Filoni never worked on The Phantom Menace, that was long, long before his time at Lucasfilm (which I think he joined sometime around 2007? and TPM was released in 1999), that he has worked with George more than probably anyone else, but we cannot and should not treat him as infallible or the True Authority on things, because even Dave himself has said things like: “I mean, I know why I did that and what it means, but I don't like to explain too much. I love for the viewers to watch stuff and come up with their own theories -- and they frankly come up with better things that I intended.” --Dave Filoni, Entertainment Tonight 2020 interview Or, in the same episode as the above Qui-Gon interpretation:

So, when I dig into this, I’m not doing this out of a sense of malice or even that I suddenly hate Dave or don’t appreciate all the incredible things he’s brought to SW, but in that I disagree with his take, Dave understands that he doesn’t always get it right, that he enjoys that fans come up with different things than he does and sometimes he likes those even more. There’s room for both of us and, for all that Dave mentions George a lot (and, hey, fair enough, the guy worked with George and I’m just quoting what George Lucas has said) doesn’t mean that this is straight from George, especially because I have never seen George Lucas utter so much as a peep about how the Jedi were responsible for Anakin’s fall. He has explicitly and frequently talked about how Anakin’s fall was his own choice, as well as I’ve never seen him say anything Jedi-critical beyond “they were kind of arrogant about themselves”. I have read and watched every George Lucas interview I could get my hands on and maybe I’m still missing something, but that’s literally the extent of him criticizing the Jedi I have EVER seen. (It’s from the commentary on AOTC where he put in the scene with Jocasta to show they were full of themselves, but I also think it’s fair to point out that Obi-Wan immediately contradicts this by going to Dex for help, showing that it’s not necessarily a Jedi-wide thing.) Before I go further, I want to say: this is not a post meant to tear down Qui-Gon, he is a character I actually really do love, but the focus is on showing why the above interpretation of him is wrong, which means focusing on Qui-Gon’s flaws. He has many wonderful qualities, he is someone who cared deeply and was a good person, I think things would have been better had he lived! But Anakin’s choices did not hinge on him, because Anakin’s choices were Anakin’s, that has always been the consistent theme of how George talks about him, the way he talks about the story is always in terms of “Anakin did this” or “Anakin chose that”, and the Jedi are very consistently shown as caring, they believed very much in love and Dave’s own show (well, I say “his own show”, but honestly TCW was George’s baby primarily and he had a lot of direct, hands-on say in crafting it, through at least the first five seasons) is plenty of evidence of that. I’m not going to quote the full thing because this is already a monster post, I’m just going to focus on the Jedi stuff, because I like the other points a lot, but if you want the full text, it’s here. The relevant part is: “In Phantom Menace, you’re watching these two Jedi in their prime fight this evil villain. Maul couldn’t be more obviously the villain. He’s designed to look evil, and he is evil, and he just expresses that from his face all the way out to the type of lightsaber he fights with. What’s at stake is really how Anakin is going to turn out. Because Qui-Gon is different than the rest of the Jedi and you get that in the movie; and Qui-Gon is fighting because he knows he’s the father that Anakin needs. Because Qui-Gon hasn’t given up on the fact that the Jedi are supposed to actually care and love and that’s not a bad thing. The rest of the Jedi are so detached and they become so political that they’ve really lost their way and Yoda starts to see that in the second film. But Qui-Gon is ahead of them all and that’s why he’s not part of the council. So he’s fighting for Anakin and that’s why it’s the ‘Duel of the Fates’ – it’s the fate of this child. And depending on how this fight goes, Anakin, his life is going to be dramatically different. “So Qui-Gon loses, of course. So the father figure, he knew what it meant to take this kid away from his mother when he had an attachment, and he’s left with Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan trains Anakin at first out of a promise he makes to Qui-Gon, not because he cares about him. When they get Anakin, they find him on Tatooine, he says “Why do I feel like we’ve found another useless lifeform?” He’s comparing Anakin to Jar Jar and he’s saying “this is a waste of our time, why are we doing this, why do you see importance in these creatures like Jar Jar Binks and this ten-year-old boy? This is useless.” “So, he’s a brother to Anakin eventually but he’s not a father figure. That’s a failing for Anakin. He doesn’t have the family that he needs. He loses his mother in the next film. He fails on this promise that he made, “mother, I’m going to come back and save you”. So he’s left completely vulnerable and Star Wars is ultimately about family. So that moment in that movie which a lot of people I think diminish, “oh there’s a cool lightsaber fight”, but it’s everything that the entire three films of the prequels hangs on, is that one particular fight. And Maul serves his purpose and at that point died before George made me bring him back, but he died.“ --Dave Filoni I’m going to take this a piece at a time to show why I really disagree with the content of both the movies and The Clone Wars supporting what Dave says and, instead, contradicts it a lot. The rest of the Jedi are so detached and they become so political that they’ve really lost their way and Yoda starts to see that in the second film. He doesn’t explain what this means, but I’m pretty sure that he’s referring to this conversation: OBI-WAN: “I am concerned for my Padawan. He is not ready to be given this assignment on his own yet.” YODA: “The Council is confident in its decision, Obi-Wan.” MACE WINDU: “The boy has exceptional skills.” OBI-WAN: “But he still has much to learn, Master. His abilities have made him... well.... arrogant.” YODA: “Yes, yes. A flaw more and more common among Jedi. Hmm... too sure of themselves they are. Even the older, more experienced ones.” MACE WINDU: “Remember, Obi-Wan, if the prophecy is true, your apprentice is the only one who can bring the Force back into balance.” OBI-WAN: "If he follows the right path.” None of that has anything to do with being “detached” and, further, I think this is something that’s come up with Dave’s view of Luminara a lot, because he’s described her (re: the Geonosis arc): “We were trying to illustrate the difference between the way Anakin is raising his Padawan, and how much he cares about her, and the way Luminara raises her Padawan. Not that Luminara is indifferent, but that Luminara is detached. It’s not that she doesn’t care, but she’s not attached to her emotionally.” Here, he says that the Jedi care, in the above, he says that the Jedi don’t care, which makes me think there’s a lot of characterization drift as time goes on, especially when fandom bombards everyone with the idea that the Jedi were cold, emotionless, and didn’t care. However, look at Luminara’s face in that arc, when she’s talking with Anakin:

That is not the face of someone who doesn’t care. She even smiles brightly in relief when Barriss is shown to be okay, that this really doesn’t convey “detached” in an unloving or uncaring way. (We’ll get to attachment later, that’s definitely coming.) (I’m also mostly skipping the political thing, because I think that’s just a fundamental disagreement of whether Jedi should or should not lean into politics. My view basically boils down to that I think ALL OF US should be leaning more into politics because we are citizens who live in the world and are responsible for it, and the Jedi are no different. This is evidenced by: - M&A’s storyline has Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan saving the day specifically because they play politics, that’s how they manage to free the slaves, through playing politics and being part of the Republic/having Senate backing. - The Clone Wars has shown that the Jedi believe “lasting change can only come from within” and “it’s every citizen’s duty to hold their leaders accountable” when Ahsoka teaches the cadets on Mandalore, as well as that politics are not inherently bad, given that Padme and Bail are working to make the system better or “create lasting change from within [the system]” - "Trying to serve the greater good does not always make you popular” says Padme Amidala in a very caring speech - Star Wars Propaganda makes the case that the Jedi might have won the war had they leaned more into politics. - Sometimes the Jedi get unfairly accused of playing politics when there’s just no good choice and they still have to choose one or the other.) But Qui-Gon is ahead of them [re: caring and loving] all and that’s why he’s not part of the council. This is flat-out wrong in regards to canon. Mileages are going to vary, of course, on how much one takes a novel into consideration, but Dave Filoni is not a fan with the luxury of deciding what is or isn’t canon, he works on Star Wars where canon is canon. Now, does that mean canon will never contradict itself, especially if Dave gets to write something for Qui-Gon? Of course not, SW isn’t immune to continuity errors and they themselves have never said otherwise, even when fans want to hold them to that standard. However, this is still pretty much a big “that’s not what happened” instance. In Master & Apprentice, the Jedi Council offer a seat to Qui-Gon on the Council, specifically BECAUSE he has different opinions from them and they welcome that. (Excerpt here.) “We hope it will also be our gain,” Mace replied. “Qui-Gon Jinn, we hereby offer you a seat on the Jedi Council.” Had he misheard? No, he hadn’t. Qui-Gon slowly gazed around the circle, taking in the expressions of each Council member in turn. Some of them looked amused, others pleased. A few of them, Yoda included, appeared more rueful than not. But they were serious. “I admit—you’ve surprised me,” Qui-Gon finally said.“I imagine so,” Mace said drily. “A few years ago, we would’ve been astonished to learn we would ever consider this. But in the time since, we’ve all changed. We’ve grown. Which means the possibilities have changed as well.” Qui-Gon took a moment to collect himself. Without any warning, one of the turning points of his life had arrived. Everything he said and did in the next days would be of great consequence. “You’ve argued with my methods often as not, or perhaps you’d say I’ve argued with yours.” “Truth, this is,” Yoda said. Depa Billaba gave Yoda a look Qui-Gon couldn’t interpret. “It’s also true that the Jedi Council needs more perspectives.” Ultimately, Qui-Gon is the who turns them down and gives up a chance to shape the Jedi Council because he doesn’t like the shape they’re taking. That he does become less political, but this is after he’s argued that the Jedi should be working to push the Senate harder, so when he has a chance to help with that, he turns it down. It has nothing to do with caring and loving, it’s about Qui-Gon’s desire to not have to deal with the work himself, when he wants to be more of a hippie Jedi. (I’ve written a lot about Qui-Gon in M&A, why I actually think it’s really spot-on to someone who can be both really kind and really kind of a dick, but it’s not the most flattering portrayal, even if narrative intention likely didn’t mean what came across to me. I think this post and this post are probably the most salient ones, but if you want something of an index of the web that’s being woven with all the various media, this one is good, too.) So he’s fighting for Anakin and that’s why it’s the ‘Duel of the Fates’ – it’s the fate of this child. And depending on how this fight goes, Anakin, his life is going to be dramatically different. I have only ever seen George Lucas talk about Anakin’s fate in one instance and it’s this: “It’s fear of losing somebody he loves, which is the flipside of greed. Greed, in terms of the Emperor, it’s the greed for power, absolute power, over everything. With Anakin, really it’s the power to save the one he loves, but it’s basically going against the Fates and what is natural.“ –George Lucas, Revenge of the Sith commentary I’ve made my case about why I think Anakin’s fate is about that moment in Palpatine’s office, and so I’m not fundamentally opposed that “Duel of the Fates” is about Anakin’s fate, but here’s what George has provably said about the “Duel of the Fates” part of the story: - In the commentary for The Phantom Menace during “Duel of the Fates” and none of Dave’s speculation is even hinted at, there’s more focus on the technical side of things and the most George talks about is that it’s Obi-Wan who parallels Luke in going over the edge during the fight, except that instead of a Sith cutting off a Jedi’s hand, it’s a Jedi cutting a Sith in half, drawing the parallels between them. - He does say of the funeral scene that this is where Obi-Wan commits to training Anakin and how everything is going to go (though, in canon we see that Obi-Wan still struggles with this a bit, but Yoda is there to support him and nudge him into committing even more to Anakin, because the Jedi are a supportive community to each other). This is some solid evidence for that Obi-Wan is already caring about Anakin beyond just Qui-Gon. - Then here’s what he says about the “Duel of the Fates” fights and themes of them in "All Films Are Personal": George Lucas: “I wanted to come up with an apprentice for the Emperor who was striking and tough. We hadn’t seen a Sith Lord before, except for Vader, of course. I wanted to convey the idea that Jedi are all very powerful, but they’re also vulnerable — which is why I wanted to kill Qui-Gon. That is to say, “Hey, these guys aren’t Superman.” These guys are people who are vulnerable, just like every other person. “We needed to establish that, but at the same time, we wanted the ultimate sword fight, because they were all very good. It sort of predisposes the sword fight between Anakin and Obi-Wan later on. There’s real purpose to it. You have to establish the rules and then stick with them. The scene illustrates just how Jedi and Sith fight and use lightsabers.” “So Qui-Gon loses, of course. So the father figure, he knew what it meant to take this kid away from his mother when he had an attachment, and he’s left with Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan trains Anakin at first out of a promise he makes to Qui-Gon, not because he cares about him. We’ll get to the “attachment to his mother” thing in a bit--but, for now, let’s just say, George Lucas’ words on this are not that attachment to her was a good thing. Fair enough that “not because he cares about him” is up to personal interpretation, but canon has also addressed the topic of Obi-Wan’s treatment of Anakin and Obi-Wan stepped up to the plate on this. In addition to how we see Obi-Wan REPEATEDLY being there for Anakin and being concerned and caring about him, they specifically talk about Qui-Gon and overcome this hurdle.

No, Obi-Wan is not Anakin’s father figure, on that we definitely agree. Anakin never really even treats Obi-Wan like a father--he says “you’re the closest thing I have to a father” in Attack of the Clones, as well as he says Obi-Wan practically raised him in The Clone Wars “Crystal Crisis” story reels, but Anakin has never actually acted like Obi-Wan is his father--”then why don’t you listen to me?” Obi-Wan points out in AOTC--as well as Obi-Wan glides past those remarks, which I’ve always taken that he doesn’t want to reject Anakin’s feelings, knowing that Anakin can be sensitive about them, but neither does he want to confirm them. This does not mean Obi-Wan was not supportive, caring, and loving. He says, “I loved you!” to Anakin in Revenge of the Sith, he asks after him and if he’s sleeping well in Attack of the Clones, and even George Lucas himself said that the elevator scene was set up TO SHOW OBI-WAN AND ANAKIN CARE FOR EACH OTHER:

PUTTING THE REST UNDER A READ MORE FOR A BETTER LENGTH REBLOGGABLE VERSION, IF YOU WANT.

This is further evidenced by how the Jedi do see themselves as family, they just don’t need to put it into strict nuclear family dynamics: - “You were my brother, Anakin! I loved you!” [–Obi-Wan Kenobi, Revenge of the Sith] - “We are brothers, Master Dibs.” [–Mace Windu, Jedi of the Republic - Mace Windu] - “Did your parents bicker?” she asked. “The adoptive ones, I mean.” A slow smile broke across Ashla’s face, curling first one side of her mouth and then the other. Whatever she was remembering, Kaeden could tell it was good. "All the time,“ Ashla said, almost as if she were talking to herself. [–Kaeden Larte, Ahsoka Tano, Ahsoka] - Vos, brought to the Temple even younger than most, felt that he had hundreds of brothers and sisters, and it seemed that whenever he went into the dining hall he ran into at least half of them. [Dark Disciple] - “It was not his birthplace, exactly, but the Jedi Temple was where Quinlan Vos had grown up. He’d raced through its corridors, hidden behind its massive pillars, found peace in its meditation hall, ended-and started-fights in rooms intended for striking blows and some that weren’t, and sneaked naps in its library. All Jedi came here, at some point in their lives; for Quinlan, it always felt like coming home when he ran lightly up the stairs and entered the massive building as he did now.” [Dark Disciple] Brothers, sisters, and other more non-traditional kinds of family are not lesser and Obi-Wan and Anakin absolutely were family, just as the Jedi are all family to each other, so, no, there was no “failing” Anakin, except in Anakin’s mind, perhaps. (In that, I can agree. But not on a narratively approved level, canon too thoroughly refutes that for me.) Rebels as well pretty thoroughly shows that non-traditional families are meaningful and just as important--we may joke that Hera is “space mom”, but she’s not actually Ezra or Sabine’s mother, Kanan is not actually their father, and even if they sometimes stray into aspects of those roles (as the Jedi do as well in the movies and TCW), that they don’t need that traditional nuclear family structure. Mentor figures--and Kanan is Ezra’s mentor--are just as meaningful and needful as a “dad”. And I’m kind of :/ at the implication that anyone without a dad/father figure or mom/mother figure is being “failed”. When they get Anakin, they find him on Tatooine, he says “Why do I feel like we’ve found another useless lifeform?” He’s comparing Anakin to Jar Jar and he’s saying “this is a waste of our time, why are we doing this, why do you see importance in these creatures like Jar Jar Binks and this ten-year-old boy? This is useless.” Whether or not Obi-Wan is being genuinely dismissive in this movie (I think you could make a case either way), the idea that Qui-Gon is better than Obi-Wan about this, as shown through Jar Jar isn’t exactly very supported given how Qui-Gon and Jar Jar first exchange words:

QUI-GON: “You almost got us killed. Are you brainless?” JAR JAR: “I spake.” QUI-GON: “The ability to speak does not make you intelligent.” Qui-Gon is just as bad as everyone else to Jar Jar, he’s not somehow elevated above them. It’s also baffling because, Dave, I have watched your show. The Jedi are specifically shown to be kind to people and creatures, not considering them “useless”. Henry Gilroy (who was the co-writer for The Clone Wars and frequently appeared in featurettes on the same level as Dave Filoni) explicitly draws this to The Jedi Way, that “life is everything to the Jedi“, when he said this about the Ryloth episodes:

(Caps cribbed from Pan’s blog, because I cannot make another gif, save me, please.) Henry Gilroy in an Aggressive Negotiations Interview: "Obi-Wan truly is a Jedi in that he’s like, ‘Okay, I’m not going to murder these creatures [in the Ryloth arc of The Clone Wars]. They’re starving to death. They’ve basically been unleashed against these people as a weapon, but it’s not their fault. They’re just doing what they do. They’re just animals who wanna eat.’ "So the idea was–and I think there was an early talk about how, 'Oh, yeah, he’ll go running through them and slicing and dicing them and chop them all up or whatever, and save his guys. And I’m like, 'Yeah, but that’s not really the Jedi way. He’s not just gonna murder these creatures.’ "And I know the threat is [there], to save one life you have to take one, but the idea of him [is]: why can’t Obi-Wan just be more clever? He basically draws them in and then traps them. "It says something about who the Jedi are, they don’t just waste life arbitrarily. And someone could have gone, 'Oh, yeah, but it would have been badass if he’d just ran in there with his lightsaber spinning and stabbed them all in the head!’ And 'Yeah, you’re right, I guess he could be that, but he’s trying to teach his clones a lesson right then, about the sanctity of life.’ "That is the underlying theme of that entire episode. Which is: A tactical droid is using the people as living shields. Life means nothing to the Separatists. The droids. But life is everything to the Jedi. And even though he doesn’t have to say that, it’s all through the episode thematically.“ It’s also Obi-Wan who teaches Anakin about kindness to mindless creatures in the Obi-Wan & Anakin comic:

"These beasts are nearly mindless, Anakin. I can feel it. They are merely following their nature, they should not die simply because they crossed our path. Use the Force to send them on their way.” Now, fair enough if you want to say Obi-Wan was taught by Qui-Gon, but also Qui-Gon is dead by that point and Obi-Wan growing into being more mature is his own accomplishment, not Qui-Gon’s, especially given that we see Qui-Gon himself being pretty dismissive to Jar Jar in TPM. This isn’t unique thing either, Padme is incredibly condescending to Jar Jar in “Bombad Jedi” and expresses clear annoyance with him to C-3PO when sighing over him. Jar Jar is a character you kind of have to warm up to, pretty much the only one we’ve seen consistently being favorable to him is Yoda (and maybe Anakin, though, Anakin doesn’t really interact with him a ton) and Mace Windu warms up to him considerably in “The Disappeared” and even specifically is shown to be teaching him and helping him, which is a huge theme of the Jedi and how much they care.

So, ultimately, the point I’m winding my way towards is--the other Jedi do show kindness and consideration to Jar Jar Binks, including characters like Mace Windu, so if you’re judging the Jedi based on that, the conclusion of Qui-Gon somehow being more compassionate and loving is really pretty thoroughly disproved by The Phantom Menace and The Clone Wars themselves. So, he’s a brother to Anakin eventually but he’s not a father figure. That’s a failing for Anakin. He doesn’t have the family that he needs. He loses his mother in the next film. He fails on this promise that he made, “mother, I’m going to come back and save you”. So he’s left completely vulnerable and Star Wars is ultimately about family. You could be charitable and say this is just from Anakin’s point of view that it’s a “failing”, but within the context of what Dave’s saying, it’s clearly meant as a more narratively approved take, not just Anakin’s point of view, and I really, really dislike the idea that Anakin--or anyone, really--needs a traditional nuclear family, ie a “mom” and/or a “dad”, or else it’s a “failing” for them. Setting aside that the idea that Qui-Gon would need to be Anakin’s dad to be kind to hi (which is ?????) is contradicted by The Clone Wars as well. Yes, Qui-Gon is warm with Anakin in several scenes, which is what Dave is presumably drawing on to show that Qui-Gon believed the Jedi should be caring and loving, but you know who else is warm to younglings? OTHER JEDI COUNCIL MEMBERS.

Those two scenes have the exact same kind of warmth to them. Ie, THE JEDI ALL BELIEVED IN BEING LOVING AND KIND, NOT JUST QUI-GON. The things evidenced to show Qui-Gon was loving and kind are evidenced just as much in other Council members, in Dave’s own show. As a bonus--have Mace Windu, known Jedi Council member, being super kind and loving towards a young Twi’lek girl he just met in a canon comic:

But I know that this is about the way the Council treated Anakin in The Phantom Menace testing scene, but here’s the thing--when I go back and I watch that scene and the Jedi aren’t ever mean to him, they’re neutral in an official testing situation, where they are trying to determine if he’s able to adapt to the Jedi ways. They never once say he’s bad for holding onto his fear, only that he does--which Anakin digs his heels in and gets angry about, he can’t really even admit that he’s afraid and that’s a huge deal for the Jedi. I’ve made a longer post about it here (and here), but the basic gist is: - That scene has Yoda giving the famous “Fear leads to the dark side” speech which is almost word for word how George Lucas describes how the Force works, showing the Jedi are narratively correct - “Confronting fear is the destiny of a Jedi” may be from the sequels, but it is thoroughly supported by the movies and TCW and Rebels and even supplementary canon material, including that the Jedi literally design their tests around both Masters and Padawans for it (Ilum, the Jedi Temple on Lothal, etc. - Anakin cannot admit to his fears in that TPM scene - We have examples of Jedi younglings do admit to their fears and the point isn’t not to have them, but to face them--the younglings in “The Gathering” are the most blatant example of this, but it’s also pretty much the entire theme of Jedi: Fallen Order, especially when Cal goes to Ilum to face his fears and get another kyber crystal. The point isn’t that Anakin--who has very good reasons to be afraid! nothing in the story or the Jedi have said he didn’t!--is wrong or bad, but that he’s not a great fit for the Jedi life because he is “unwilling to accept [Jedi philosophy] emotionally”. And they’re right about this, because this is how George Lucas describes Anakin in commentary: “The fact that everything must change and that things come and go through his life and that he can’t hold onto things, which is a basic Jedi philosophy that he isn’t willing to accept emotionally and the reason that is because he was raised by his mother rather than the Jedi. If he’d have been taken in his first year and started to study to be a Jedi, he wouldn’t have this particular connection as strong as it is and he’d have been trained to love people but not to become attached to them.” --George Lucas, Attack of the Clones commentary And so this brings us to A T T A C H M E N T, which, yeah, we’ve been having this discussion forever, but I’m going to state it again: Within Star Wars, ATTACHMENT IS NARRATIVELY A BAD THING. It is consistently tied to possessive, obsessive relationships, to greed and an unwillingness to let things go when it’s time (letting go is a huge theme in Star Wars) and equating love with attachment is fundamentally wrong according to George Lucas’ Star Wars worldbuilding: “The Jedi are trained to let go. They’re trained from birth,” he continues, “They’re not supposed to form attachments. They can love people-- in fact, they should love everybody. They should love their enemies; they should love the Sith. But they can’t form attachments. So what all these movies are about is: greed. Greed is a source of pain and suffering for everybody. And the ultimate state of greed is the desire to cheat death.” --George Lucas, The Making of Revenge of the Sith If attachment and love were the same thing, then he would be saying, “They should love their enemies, they should love the Sith. But they can’t love.” The way George makes the distinction shows that, no, attachment and love aren’t the same thing at all, attachment is not caring. Further, there’s another instance of him showing there’s an important distinction between relationships and attachment and the association of attachmets with possession: "Jedi Knights aren’t celibate - the thing that is forbidden is attachments - and possessive relationships.” --George Lucas, BBC News interview So, yes, when Anakin is attached to people, it is directly tied to obsession, possession, and greed, all things of the dark side: “He turns into Darth Vader because he gets attached to things. He can’t let go of his mother; he can’t let go of his girlfriend. He can’t let go of things. It makes you greedy. And when you’re greedy, you are on the path to the dark side, because you fear you’re going to lose things, that you’re not going to have the power you need.” --George Lucas, Time Magazine “But he has become attached to his mother and he will become attached to Padme and these things are, for a Jedi, who needs to have a clear mind and not be influenced by threats to their attachments, a dangerous situation. And it feeds into fear of losing things, which feeds into greed, wanting to keep things, wanting to keep his possessions and things that he should be letting go of. His fear of losing her turns to anger at losing her, which ultimately turns to revenge in wiping out the village. The scene with the Tusken Raiders is the first scene that ultimately takes him on the road to the dark side. I mean he’s been prepping for this, but that’s the one where he’s sort of doing something that is completely inappropriate.“ --George Lucas, Attack of the Clones commentary ATTACHMENT IS BAD IN STAR WARS AS THEY DEFINE IT. Finally, I’m going to circle back to: Because Qui-Gon is different than the rest of the Jedi and you get that in the movie; and Qui-Gon is fighting because he knows he’s the father that Anakin needs. Because Qui-Gon hasn’t given up on the fact that the Jedi are supposed to actually care and love and that’s not a bad thing. Here’s the thing about this: You know who else, by this logic, Qui-Gon should have been a father to? OBI-WAN KENOBI. This isn’t said as “Anakin specifically needs a father” (which I think would be an interesting idea to bandy about and I’m not disagreeing, though, it’s complicated because of what Anakin refuses to accept emotionally), it’s said in a bigger context, that Qui-Gon is better than the other Jedi because he understands the need for fathers (and thus this ties into Return of the Jedi) and he’s ahead of the other Jedi, who apparently think loving and caring about people are bad things, but Qui-Gon does not treat Obi-Wan like his son. Or, if he does, he’s not exactly a stellar dad about it. Within Master & Apprentice, there’s an incredibly consistent theme of how Qui-Gon thinks supportive things about Obi-Wan, but never says them aloud. He thinks he should talk to Obi-Wan about the upcoming decision to be on the Council and then never does. He could have explained why he kept Obi-Wan training the basics but he never does. There are multiple instances showing that Qui-Gon is actually really, really bad at actually handling a young apprentice who needs him to talk to them about important things. Qui-Gon continues this in From a Certain Point of View where he still never talked to Obi-Wan about everything that happened, even after he became a Force Ghost. Damn, damn, damn. Qui-Gon closed his eyes for one moment. It blocked nothing; the wave of shock that went through Obi-Wan was so great it could be felt through the Force. Qui-Gon hadn’t thought Kirames Kaj would mention the Jedi Council invitation. It seemed possible the soon-retiring chancellor of the Republic might not even have taken much note of information about a new Council member. --Master & Apprentice That comment finally pierced Qui-Gon’s damnable calm. There was an edge to his voice as he said, “I suspected you would be too upset to discuss this rationally. Apparently I was correct.” “I thought you said my reaction was understandable,” Obi-Wan shot back. “So why does it disqualify me from hearing the truth?” Qui-Gon put his hands on his broad belt, the way he did when he was beginning to withdraw into himself. “…we should discuss this at another time. Neither of us is his best self at the present.” --Master & Apprentice Obi-Wan walked toward the door, obviously outdone. “At the beginning of my apprenticeship, I couldn’t understand you,” he said. “Unfortunately, that’s just as true here at the end.” Only yesterday they had worked together as never before. How did Qui-Gon manage to get closer to Obi-Wan at the same time he was moving further away? Just before Obi-Wan would leave the room, Qui-Gon said, “Once, you asked me about the basic lightsaber cadences. Why I’d kept you there, instead of training you in more advanced forms of combat.” Obi-Wan turned reluctantly to face him again. “I suppose you thought I wasn’t ready for more. The same way I’m not ready to believe in all this mystical—” “That’s not why.” After a long pause, Obi-Wan calmed to the point where he would listen. “Then why, Qui-Gon?” “Because many Padawans—and full Jedi Knights, for that matter—forget that the most basic technique is the most important technique. The purest. The most likely to protect you in battle, and the foundation of all knowledge that is to come,” Qui-Gon said. “Most apprentices want to rush ahead to styles of fighting that are flashier or more esoteric. Most Masters let them, because we must all find our preferred form eventually. But I wanted you to be grounded in your technique. I wanted you to understand the basic cadences so well that they would become instinct, so that you would be almost untouchable. Above all, I wanted to give you the training you needed to accomplish anything you set your mind to later on.” Obi-Wan remained quiet for so long that Qui-Gon wondered if he were too angry to really hear any of what he’d said. But finally, his Padawan nodded. “Thank you, Qui-Gon. I appreciate that. But—” “But what?” “You could’ve said so,” Obi-Wan replied, and then he left. --Master & Apprentice "I owe you that. After all, I’m the one who failed you.“ "Failed me?” They have never spoken of this, not once in all Qui-Gon’s journeys into the mortal realm to commune with him. This is primarily because Qui-Gon thought his mistakes so wretched, so obvious, that Obi-Wan had wanted to spare him any discussion of it. Yet here, too, he has failed to do his Padawan justice. --From a Certain Point of View, “Master and Apprentice” (Further, in Master & Apprentice, Qui-Gon thinks that the Jedi give Rael Averross--who is HUGELY paralleled to Anakin--too many exceptions, were too soft on him because he came to the Jedi later than most and has trouble thinking of them as his family, and he thinks they should have been stricter with him.) It’s also readily apparent within The Phantom Menace itself:

You can take some charitable views of this scene, that Qui-Gon was pushed into a corner where he had few other options (and this is the view I generally take even!), but this is after the entire movie where he’s never once indicated that Obi-Wan was ready, has instead indicated that he still has much to learn (not just of the Living Force, but in general), as well as made it clear that he’s still teaching Obi-Wan, like on the Trade Federation ship. And I do think Obi-Wan got over this because he understood, because Obi-Wan actually is a very selfless person, he clearly cares (which is furthered by how we see him warm up to Anakin very quickly), but look at their faces. This was not a good moment, and they do somewhat make up, where Qui-Gon says that Obi-Wan has been a good apprentice, that he’s wiser than Qui-Gon and he’ll be a great Jedi--but if we’re counting that as Qui-Gon being this great Jedi, then you can’t say Obi-Wan failed Anakin, given that we show him doing the exact same thing, except better. He tells Anakin, “You are strong and wise and will become a far greater Jedi than I could ever hope to be.”, echoing Qui-Gon’s words, but also he never threw Anakin aside for someone else. This is kind of a major undercurrent throughout The Clone Wars, where Obi-Wan never takes another apprentice, where he continues to teach Anakin, to support him, even to the point of occasionally co-Mastering Ahsoka with him. “This has been quite a journey for our Padawan.” Qui-Gon’s treatment of Obi-Wan in this scene isn’t the worst, he’s kind about it later (though, he never actually specifically apologizes for this), but we can see that this is a moment where Qui-Gon hurts Obi-Wan and knows it. And you know what George Lucas has to say about Qui-Gon? This: “So here we’re having Qui-Gon wanting to skip the early training and jump right to taking him on as his Padawan learner, which is controversial, and ultimately, the source of much of the problems that develop later on.” –George Lucas, The Phantom Menace commentary There’s nothing about Qui-Gon being right or better than the other Jedi, but instead that Qui-Gon’s actions here are a source of much of the problems that develop later on. So, ultimately, I liked some points Dave made in that speech, it’s a beautiful and eloquent one, but I thoroughly disagree with his interpretation of George’s intentions for Qui-Gon and I thoroughly disagree that that’s what the movies, The Clone Wars (DAVE’S OWN SHOW), and the supplementary canon show about Qui-Gon and the other Jedi. I still stand by my appreciation of Dave’s contributions to SW as a whole, I think he does a really good job at making Star Wars, but he doesn’t always get everything right and this is one thing where I think the canon and George’s commentary show otherwise, as much as I love his desire to defend the prequels’ importance in the story. Because, my friend, I have felt that every single day of my SW life.

#anakin skywalker #qui gon jinn #jedi order #george lucas #dave filoni #meta #long post #really long post

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allaboutve · 3 years

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FAVORITE MOVIE REVIEWS: #9 THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR, John McTiernan

My ninth favorite movie is perhaps my most embarrassing. The Thomas Crown Affair is fundamentally a date movie that happens to be about a heist. And call me a liberal fruit bat, but the film articulates some very problematic values.

However, The Thomas Crown Affair benefits from being one of my favorite movies from my adolescence and does a lot of things right. One of these is its representation of New York City, which is not accurate in detail as much as in spirit.

As an adult I appreciate the relationship between Thomas Crown, played by Pierce Brosnan, and Catherine Banning, played by Rene Russo. There are no easy answers in the movie or in their fun yet troubled romance.

Although The Thomas Crown Affair is shamelessly materialistic its moral strength is its honest amorality. It never mistakes its main characters’ drives with a higher sense of right and wrong, which is sadly becoming the norm in today’s media.

Thomas Crown is a Wall Street Mergers and Acquisitions giant with a fondness for one particular painting--Noon - Rest from Work by Vincent Van Gogh. He affectionately calls it “Haystacks.”

Late for work and stuck in traffic, he leaves his personal chauffeur in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art to view the painting from a bench the impressionist wing. It should be mentioned that Crown brings a briefcase containing his lunch, which he eats in the museum.

He shows up later in the day at the Wall Street headquarters of his company Crown Acquisitions, having accidentally left his briefcase in the museum. Crown spends the rest of a busy day looking at his watch, waiting for the day to finally end. Crown finally leaves the office with another briefcase and returns to the Met.

I should mention that over the course of the day, a foursome of Eastern European thieves smuggle themselves into the museum hidden inside a Greco-Roman Horse (“Trojan Horse”) preparing to heist the very same wing Crown frequents. Their heist is unrealistically complex--involving crawling through air ducts, sabotaging the air conditioning and an airlift via helicopter.

When Crown arrives, he discovers the nefarious goings on and draws museum security to it. Security thwarts the art thieves before anything is stolen. But not quite.

1999 audiences knew from the trailer that Thomas Crown would steal one of the paintings. But in fact, the entire heist was orchestrated by Crown. While the impressionist wing is sealed and the thieves apprehended, Crown slides under the closing gate, steals one painting off the wall and stashes it in a briefcase hidden under a museum bench. He left the briefcase in the Museum intentionally!

And Crown is only able to make his escape because one of the gates is wedged open by the second briefcase he brought work. We later learn the briefcase was loaded with titanium.

Crown does not steal his “Haystacks.” Instead, he steals a painting by Claude Monet San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk. The movie sets up the painting early on as the watershed painting by Claude Monet that founded the Impressionist movement, worth $100 Million.

(It should be mentioned that this backstory is made up for the movie. The Claude Monet painting that founded the Impressionist movement is named Impression, Sunrise. It is actually housed in Paris and its subject matter is superficially similar to San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk, though less dramatic.)

This is our first insight into Crown’s personality. Crown spends the early part of the movie fantasizing of an easier life, like the man enjoying a siesta in Noon - Rest from Work. But it is a facade. Crown is after the drama, dynamism and richness embodied in San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk.

The above synopsis is only approximately the first twenty minutes of the film. The rest of the movie focuses on the investigation of the robbery. On the case are two NYPD detectives (“Michael”) McCann and Paretti--played by Denis Leary and Frankie Faison.

Having four thieves in custody, they want to treat the case textbook and overlook some of the unusual details. But they are joined within the first hour of their investigation by a Private Investigator named Catherine Banning, played by Rene Russo.

Her job “is the painting.” Already a nuisance to the detectives, she sits in on the Witness ID of the thieves, in which Thomas Crown is the witness. Banning gives Crown several suspicious glances, the gears in her mind turning.

After doing some research Banning discovers Crown has a habit of bidding on paintings by Claude Monet at auctions. She becomes certain that he stole the missing Monet, and after she resolves other details of the robbery McCann and Paretti believe her.

The rest of The Thomas Crown Affair involves Banning’s attempt to retrieve the missing Monet by seducing Crown--who also appears to be seducing her. While the plot develops it becomes unclear to both whether Banning is after the painting or Crown.

Whether or not The Thomas Crown Affair lands depends on its execution of the romance between Thomas Crown and Catherine Banning. More than half of the movie conforms to the plot structure of any modern romantic film. However, The Thomas Crown Affair deviates from romance tropes in several ways that give the film life where another film’s story and characters would drag.

(SPOILERS BELOW)

This is not to say that there are not several romance tropes littered throughout the movie. For instance, two love triangles are forced throughout the movie--involving Detective McCann and a young woman seen dancing early in the film with Crown. One of these love triangles even leads to a misunderstanding that makes Banning betray Crown to the police in the film’s climax.

Banning is also led astray by Crown’s wealth and privilege--a tropey characteristic of female romantic leads all the way into the 21st Century. This would not be distracting except that it occurs during a sequence in the Caribbean island Martinique where the film’s pace otherwise grinds to a halt.

For reasons to be discussed, these appear to be problems with the script from its most early drafts. But The Thomas Crown Affair starts to circumvent romance tropes with its first shot. If there is a theme in The Thomas Crown Affair I have come to respect, it is the couple’s incongruent needs. Thomas Crown is attracted to Catherine Banning because of personal insecurity. On the other hand, Banning is attracted to Crown because he is handsome, receptive and fun to be with.

Crown’s insecurities regarding his love life are first stirred up in his first scene when his therapist questions in session whether a woman could ever trust him. In Crown’s relationship with Catherine Banning, he tries to prove that he trusts her as opposed to earning her trust.

From this context, Crown cannot resolve by himself his insecurity about whether a woman can trust. He is going about it wrong. What’s more, trust issues are only Crown’s hangup, not necessarily Banning’s.

Crown’s insecurity is not resolved at the end of the film. At a height of tension in their relationship, Crown promises Banning he will return the stolen Monet to prove that he trusts her. Instead she passes the information to the police.

This turn of events is perhaps the strength of The Thomas Crown Affair as a romance film. It is true that Banning sides with the police in part because of a misunderstanding about Crown’s relationship with another woman. This sort of misunderstanding is typical of Hollywood romance films.

On the other hand, the film avoids a more problematic romance trope by not stating whether Banning should choose Crown or the police. Romance films are typically coded so that a couple, especially the female-gendered half, should choose their romantic interest over their other values or responsibilities. But The Thomas Crown Affair does not even make the case that Banning should side with Crown over the police.

A climactic chase follows between Crown and the police inside the Met. Crown not only returns the painting while evading the police, he steals another--The Banks of the Seine at Argenteuil by Édouard Manet. The painting by Manet is what Banning points to on their first date, saying she would steal that one if given the choice.

Banning goes to the Wall Street Heliport where Crown asks her to meet him. But he has already left and his associate gives her the painting instead. A generous gesture, but Banning does not keep the painting. She returns it to the police instead.

In that entire sequence, Crown shows that he did not fully trust her. And Banning does not reciprocate Crown’s further doting on her.

Catherine Banning’s attraction to Crown is based less on her emotional needs than for the thrill. As Crown says on their first date, “You like the chase.” This aspect is consistent with Banning’s counterpart in the 1968 film, Vicki Anderson as played by Faye Dunaway.

However, one of the major deviations between the 1999 movie and the original 1968 The Thomas Crown Affair is the remake’s “happy” ending. Crown arranges to sit behind Banning on her flight back to Europe and draws her attention by speaking in a Scottish accent.

The scene is ambiguous as to the couple’s future. The fact that Crown speaks in a Scottish brogue for his last line is a callback to the couple’s first date, when he says the hardest part of attending Oxford University was “learning to talk.” Crown finally feels free of the pretensions of English and American culture.

At the same time, Crown and Banning’s needs in the relationship are so different that it is foreseeable they are not a long term match.

As a film romance, The Thomas Crown Affair is refreshing because its romantic leads are not necessarily perfect for each other. They have their own motivations that are never completely reconciled or resolved. And that is more true to life than most Hollywood romances.

The Thomas Crown Affair’s script is written with a curious indifference to materialism. In today’s world, its tone may come off as dissonant. But understanding its perspective requires consideration of not only the era when it was written but the people involved in making the film.

The Thomas Crown Affair was one of the first films produced by Irish DreamTime, a production company founded by Pierce Brosnan and Producer Beau Sinclair. By the time a Director was signed, at least one version of the script was already being drafted. The best explanation why the film conforms to romantic comedy schlock is that its first draft was written to do so.

The early version of the script appears to have remained intact, since writing credits were still retained by Leslie Dixon and Kurt Wimmer. And since Pierce Brosnan was a producer, this means that The Thomas Crown Affair was intended as a vehicle for Brosnan. This is made apparent in the Martinique sequence, which is also where the film’s perspective on materialism is its most loud.

In the exact middle of the film, Crown takes a holiday with Catherine Banning in his island estate. As intimate and seductive as the setting is, Crown also advertises his lavish lifestyle to Banning. His seduction of Banning becomes more obvious when he offers her even more money than her commission to run away with him.

This sequence was likely included at the behest of Actor-Producer Brosnan himself. The actor has a well known attraction to tropical locales and even maintains a home in the Hawaiian Islands today. The ambiguities regarding Crown’s criminality or immorality would then be the product of indifference by the Writers and production staff.

This part of the film stands out in the 21st Century because of several scandalous stories involving Caribbean criminal havens, including the Paradise Papers and Jeffrey Epstein’s estate on Little Saint James in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Obviously these scandals were not in the mind of the Producers when the movie was shot in the late 1990s.

But Thomas Crown is also represented ambiguously throughout the film. He is a remorseless criminal who has his hands dirtied by other schemes--bribery and offshore banking. This is consistent with the original 1968 film where Crown was more a villain than antihero. But more than the 1968 film, Thomas Crown is humanized as a protagonist and romantic lead. By association his values are also normalized.

Director John McTiernan’s similarities to Thomas Crown make the film’s perspective on materialism and white collar crime suspicious. McTiernan did more than direct. He also (uncredited) rewrote the script and used his own property and vehicles in the film.

McTiernan’s biography is also suspect. In 2000 McTiernan wiretapped a film Producer and later lied to Federal Investigators twice. Prosecution would drag until 2013 when McTiernan was finally sentenced to twelve months in prison.

During McTiernan’s first sentencing in 2006, the presiding judge publicly stated John McTiernan thought he was “above the law,” and “lived a privileged life and simply wanted to continue.”

There is reason to believe that McTiernan based Thomas Crown on himself during his rewrite. Thomas Crown is shown not to be attracted to fame or a cushy lifestyle. Instead, he is a thrill-seeker with a death wish.

But Crown’s motives are never stated explicitly in The Thomas Crown Affair. Furthermore, they are muddied by the existence of a forged Monet in Crown’s possession. The forged painting is eventually discovered by Catherine Banning. Although Crown needed the real Monet to commission the forged Monet, we learn by the end that Crown no longer had the stolen painting when he first met Banning.

Although the forged Monet tricks Banning, this could not have been Crown’s intent when he commissioned it. The best explanation is that Crown intended to trick the police.

More than that, it means Crown committed his theft intent on being found out. This is curiously similar to the judge’s description of Director John McTiernan--that he thought he was “above the law.” McTiernan’s detachment from the consequences of lying to Federal Investigators twice also echoes Crown’s arrogant disrespect for the police.

There are also sociological reasons The Thomas Crown Affair is ambivalent about wealth and materialism. Public opinion about Wall Street and the U.S. financial industry was not as negative in 1999 as it is in 2021. This is partly a result of politics changing in response to current events.

At the same time, the Wall Street boom of the 1980s and how it changed New York City were still fresh in the public consciousness of 1999. Especially in 1999, where big business was not yet politically divisive prior to the Dot-Com Bust.

The indifference the public had for big business is embodied by Detective McCann. By the end of the movie, although Thomas Crown has outsmarted the police and museum security, McCann admits to Catherine Banning that he does not really care about catching Crown.

McCann implies that compared to cases of domestic violence and human exploitation he usually investigates, the art heist by Crown is a victimless crime. The stolen paintings only matter to “very silly rich people.”

Detective McCann is held up throughout the film as its moral center. He has legitimate care and respect for Catherine Banning--even though it is shamelessly teased as a love triangle. He is motivated to solve the case from a sense of professional responsibility. In his last scene Banning even tells him, “You’re a good man, Michael.”

But McCann’s indifference to Crown’s crimes is The Thomas Crown Affair’s moral failure. The victims of art theft are not just the owners but the public itself. Pop culture pre-Enron was similarly indifferent about fraud and white collar crime, believing the victims were only the rich and wealthy.

This indifference is a product of the era. The world would learn very shortly that costs of financial fraud and white collar crime are felt more by society than by the financial industry itself. But to Hollywood and audiences in 1999, Thomas Crown’s art theft and financial crimes were all victimless crimes.

An aspect of The Thomas Crown Affair that deserves credit is its representation of New York City. The city depicted in the film is different from the experiences of most New Yorkers, even in 1999.

Although the film is not always shot in the correct location, the city is represented well in spirit. Early in the movie, a truck driver making a delivery to the Met gripes when Thomas Crown crosses into his lane. Detective McCann similarly expresses contempt for New York City’s social circuit in a manner often overhears. “I love this neighborhood, some of these broads are wearing my salary.”

An AIDS Research Ball hosted by BVLGARI is another realistic part of New York City culture in that AIDS activism had become mainstream by the late 1990s.

The Thomas Crown Affair is shot in a part of New York City that is inaccessible to most people, yet widely advertised. And it is represented in film authentically and amorally--if for no other reason than because the film was shot almost entirely within the city.

Perhaps the most widely entertaining aspect of The Thomas Crown Affair is its contribution to the heist film genre. Heist films are different from other crime movies in that the narrative usually follows the criminal’s or robber’s perspective.

Heist films are also preoccupied with how the criminal will pull off the caper. They differ from detective films where catching and identifying the criminal are the lingering mysteries.

But The Thomas Crown Affair is different from other heist movies in that the finer details of Thomas Crown’s capers are never shared with the audience. For instance, when Crown steals the Monet we are left to wonder how he evaded museum surveillance. Catherine Banning offers an explanation, but the question is never answered for certain.

Another mystery lingers when Thomas Crown steals the Manet at the end of the film. Absolutely no hints are offered as to how he managed to steal it. Part of the attraction of films like these is they leave audiences to guess how certain events occurred.

My favorite explanation for the stolen Manet is that Crown had a mole working at the Met steal the painting beforehand. That also explains how Crown obtained the information necessary to steal the first painting.

Catherine Banning’s explanation for why museum security failed to capture the first theft is that a heater was left in front of the painting. That is because museum surveillance used infrared cameras that responded to temperature, and a heater would have been just enough to interfere with the infrared camera. I should mention now that this feature of museum surveillance is one of the more far-fetched details in The Thomas Crown Affair. Especially today, since face recognition software is in such demand in cyber security.

Lack of realism in films about art or jewel theft is common within the genre, and especially true of the era’s other films--Mission: Impossible, Entrapment and Ocean’s Eleven.

The purpose of heist movies like this is wonder more than realism. And prior films have been similarly tongue-in-cheek about painting and jewel theft--such including the Blake Edwards comedy The Pink Panther.

Films like The Thomas Crown Affair are not intended to be a blueprint for future criminals. Ironically, The Thomas Crown Affair did inspire one bank robber who got away with the loot using the same costumed diversionary tactic as Thomas Crown in the film’s climactic chase scene.

Even though I have said a lot about The Thomas Crown Affair, there are simple reasons why I am fond of the movie. It is a well-made movie, beautifully shot and secretly intelligent. It is a decent representation of New York City, despite complications in the script and budget.

The movie itself is light and entertaining and leaves it up to the viewer to make up their mind. Yes, it requires some suspension of disbelief. Yet even in that way, it treats its audience as mature adults. A quality rare in action or romantic films of any era.

-ve

NEXT POST--#8 LET THE BULLETS FLY (dir. Jiang Wen)

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danieyells · 3 years

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Hey Danie! I was wondering if you had any thoughts on Nyarlathotep in TAS; I was playing through the segments where he's relevant in the story and I find it really difficult to understand a lot of what he's saying xD I'm sure that's the point, but I wondered if you had any ideas about breaking down how he talks, cause he seems almost normal when you meet him and then rapidly becomes more and more difficult to parse? And his description says that he does a lot of dipping into multiple guilds and implies that he has an insane amount of influence on things, so I'm curious as to what your opinions on him are, if you have any!

Hello hello 'u' I love Nyarl lol he's. He's silly--but also has his own things going on. I wanna see more of him, and I imagine we have to eventually--maybe when we get together with the Missionaries and take on some of the Rule Makers.

(Somehoe this got long lmao. . .i've been eriting it on and off for a few hours, erased like all of it ay one point. . .i ended up going through all of his main story dialogue lol but i feel like i've explained nothing ay all. Here's a readmore)

Nyarl is "Crawling Chaos" for a reason--a lot of what he says and does has little to no sense or has real 'reason' beyond advancing the story or making things exciting/active. It's not supposed to, he's largely contradictory and he serves only himself, so he's just trying to have a good time and make interesting things happen. As he said, he wants to make reality into "mind-bending fiction"--his motivation is 'make everything as fun and wild as possible' basically.

But there's 1000 Nyarlathoteps. So part of the reason he's somewhat all over the place in terms of speech patterns and actions is possibly that, at any given point in time, you're not dealing with the same Nyarl you saw last time. Thus why he says things like "We Nyarlathoteps" when referring to himself. He also says at some point that he's collectively lived many lifetimes--so Nyarl is all at once a hivemind and not. His Aoyama Guild aligned iteration said the other 999 Nyarls don't care about the Missionaries, but he calls them his friends and helps them(though, only after he makes a mess of things because he wanted to see an exception--he also, through provocation, helps Ryota to learn to use and strengthen hos artifact). So it's important to understand that he's supposed to be contradictory and he's supposed to be hard to understand. He's honest and dishonest all at once because there are multiple Nyarls and not everything is true for all of them--except, perhaps, their love/admiration for Azathoth and their misery at being abandoned by him. Even their heights and weights are inconsistent.

But they do have feelings and they do live a lonely existence because the father/world they love has no mind for them and no future. So when Maria basically says "I forgive you and I love you and I understand and don't hold any of this against you because to act on love is the way of the Missionaries no matter how that action may be" he seems to have had felt. . .seen? Heard? Loved for the first time. And while the other 999 Nyarls don't care for the Aoyama Guild, they all love Azathoth and know the emptiness of his lack of feelings towards them. So with their hivemind, they were willing to defend Maria and the Guild for being the ones who care about them when no one else did, even though he's also the one who instigated the attack in the first place. Ultimately it fell in line with his will anyway--it'd be less interesting to act because of his love than to change sides in the middle of the war.

(For the most part Tsathoggua and Dagon are the only like. Idk. Decently mentally together Old Ones. Nodens apparently used to be sane but he's changed.)

Uuuh as for parsing together what he says. . .idk i guess it depends on what he's saying that's throwing you off? Were there any lines in particular? He mostly speaks in slang, jargon, and references. If there's any part in particular you're confused about I can see if I understand it myself and try and explain! I assume you mean his exchange with Maria where he talks about his love for Azathoth?

Re: his introduction. Something that doesn't translate at all is that. Nyarl speaks English. A lot. Especially in his first scene, he speaks almost entirely in English, a language MC and the others are implied not to understand well. On top of that he still speaks in a lot of modern English slang(reminder: this Tokyo was cut off from the rest of the world starting from 1999.)--so even if they do understand English, they're probably even more confused because he's speaking in colloquialisms beyond their grasp.

But that's really hard to translate to English because English is taught in most Japanese schools afair--so Japanese speakers have a decent chance of understanding some English. And even without that comprehension, the English is in rubytext/furigana while the Japanese is on the main line--so they have a sort of translation key that we haven't been given. He could have spoke in another language but there's no language that most English speakers would probably know the way that most Japanese speakers know a certain amount of English. (And they could've given us rubytext but it wouldn't make much sense to most English speakers nor really work/come across the same way and it'd look out of place.) So Nyarl speaking normally in that scene is actually like.

You may or may not know another language very well (for all i know you're ESL)--so imagine you're lost and ask someone for directions. They speak to you in a language you barely know, although they seem to understand what you're saying even if you don't understand them super well. That's what that scene was.

Basically there was no way to get across that part of what makes him incomprehensible is literally a language barrier. Maria says "I don't understand him most of the time" because she doesn't understand English as he speaks it.

SO THAT'S WHY THAT SCENE IS SENSIBLE COMPARED TO THE REST.

He speaks in Japanese much more after introducing himself to Ryota(after the "Yeah, baby! The Nyarlathoteps are at your service, yeah?" line he speaks in more Japanese--so that's where his dialogue starts getting a bit more wild, since they're no longer just giving him most of the same lines as the Japanese version.)

There are a lot of things I don't get either tbh. For example "heroic band of Mr. Carters"--I assumed it was the character from a story of some sort. He says "Mister Carters" in Japanese in the furigana and the regular text says "物語の主人公気取りたち" something like "the ones we'll call/claiming to be the heroes of the story". It's possibly a reference to the Lil Wayne song "Mr. Carter" which would make sense since Nyarl's a DJ????

So a lot of what he does is make references(mythology ones, for example calling Azazel 'Mr. Scapegoat' because the 'scapegoat' tradition originated with Yom Kippur and throwing goats off a cliff 'for Azazel'--to send away their sins; and he also calls Azazel 'Shub-Niggurath', the name of an Old One who's i think described as "The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young"--so because he has a friend who's a goat, he calls him the name of a goat he knows from home) speak in other languages(calling Hati 'Loup-garou', french for 'werewolf',) and says contradictory things or the opposite of what's 'normal.'

So just remember, as 1000 separate beings, you're supposed to see contradictions in most everything he does and says. So if you're struggling to understand then in a sense you're understanding perfectly lol

As for his influence on multiple guids, again, there are 1000 Nyarls. Each one may be part of another Guild, thus at their disposal should that Nyarl want to help--but usually they just wanna cause chaos, except now that Aoyama Nyarl's seemingly come to be attached to the Missionaries he seems protective of them(and the others will follow him when he calls for them). All of the Big Three Guilds as well as the Wisemen and Creators have a transient from Old Ones at their disposal.

So basically Nyarl can turn the tide but usually he doesn't care to help out that much because he has his own agenda. (He's also probably aware that the other guilds would sic their Old Ones on him if he attacked himself and it'd be a stalemate(and thus boring!) so he hangs out in other ways.

I feel like i definitely didn't say anything cohesive lol I REALLY LIKE NYARL he's just a very funny and interesting guy with no real barriers and he doesn't wanna admit he's jealous of Arc and he's just. Chaotic.

#danie yells answers #danie yells with anons #danie yells at tokyo afterschool summoners #long post #i canct decide if i wanna go to bed or not like #i'm sldepy but not tired i probably wouldn't get anywhere #i'll get something to eat and decide when i've had food lol

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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A Clockwork Orange at 50: Malcolm McDowell Revisits Kubrick’s Film

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“I think I’ve always been my own kind of person, and you know sometimes to my detriment,” says Malcolm McDowell, chatting to Den of Geek via Zoom, 50 years after the release of A Clockwork Orange.

“I’ve never really played the Hollywood card, I’m not really an insider, that’s just not my thing. And I like to be able to say no. And that’s it.That’s not probably a politically correct thing to do. However, too bad. I’m still here 50 years later.”

McDowell is talking to us from LA, his accent a soft mix of Yorkshire, where he grew up, and California where he has resided for much of his professional life. He is funny and charismatic, with a hint of the mischievous, he says people still find him “a little intimidating” – traits which he brought out in spades for his breakout roles, first as rebellious school boy Mick Travis in Lindsay Anderson’s If… and then as violent delinquent Alex Delarge in Stanley Kubrick’s bold, blistering and controversial satire A Clockwork Orange.

Watching it today it seems hard to believe the movie is 50 years old – it’s lost none of its power. Set in a futuristic dystopian Britain, McDowell plays gang leader Alex, who with his band of ‘droogs’, gets high on ‘milk plus’ and commits a horrible home invasion and rape, and later a murder. Apprehended by the police, Alex agrees to participate in a new kind of aversion therapy which makes him physically unable to commit crimes, causing pain and nausea at the very thought, in exchange for a reduced sentence.

Alex is robbed of freewill, becoming the Clockwork Orange – an organic thing with a machine inside – of the title. It’s a movie of big themes, of totalitarian governments controlling citizens and left wing dissidents exploiting individuals, it’s a discussion of goodness and evil, of youth and authority, which is visually striking and often shockingly so. And to many it’s a masterpiece.

Kubrick’s film is an adaptation of the novel by Anthony Burgess, which like the movie uses a language Burgess called Nadsat (from the Russian suffix meaning ‘teen’) – a mix of Russian, English and Cockney rhyming slang.

McDowell recalls his first meeting with Kubrick which took place at Kubrick’s house in Boreham Wood, during McDowell’s lunch hour filming Bryan Forbes’ Long Ago, Tomorrow. Kubrick said he’d seen If.. four or five times and it had made a big impression on him.

“We had a very nice chat but he didn’t mention anything and at the end I said ‘Well, I’ve got to get back to work. Was there anything you wanted to talk to me about in particular?’ And I could see his discomfort, at having to actually tell me that, yeah, he was thinking of making this book into a movie. And anyway, he begrudgingly gave me the title, gave me a copy of the book and told me to read it and call him,” McDowell smiles.

He describes the book as “a damn difficult read on the first go” but by the third go he was convinced. “I read it and I went, Holy crap, what a part! Oh geez!”

No kidding. Alex is front and centre of the entire film, he’s the narrator and charged with delivering difficult lines about ‘ultraviolence’, ‘weepy young devotchkas’ and how the treatment is affecting his ‘gulliver’.

Burgess was a linguist and his decision to make a new hybrid youth slang was a practical one. He wanted the youths in this world to feel ‘other’ and separate from the grown ups but felt if he’d chosen to use contemporary slang that the book would date quickly. It was a shrewd move that Kubrick stuck to, helping the film have a sense of timelessness.

Then there were the iconic costumes worn by Alex and his droogs – removed from any particular era of fashion they were simple but immediately intimidating. The look came about via a moment of serendipity between McDowell and Kubrick when Kubrick asked his star what he had in mind for the costume himself.

“I said ‘Futuristic, I don’t know!’” McDowell laughs. “He goes, ‘What have you got?’ I went ‘What have I got? I mean I’ve got jeans and a T-shirt and I’ve got my cricket gear in the car’. He goes, ‘We’ll put it on. And then ‘What’s this?’ I went, ‘Well, that’s the protector’. He said ‘Wear it on the outside’. And that’s the iconic costume, right there, boom.”

McDowell says he had around six months of prep time where he got to know Kubrick really well, where Kubrick grew to trust him which he describes as being really fun. That trust between the two was important – McDowell had heavy lifting to do physically, including the indelible scenes of the ‘Ludovico technique’ which saw his eyelids pinned back (he scratched a cornea) and the humiliation scene, after his conversion, (he cracked several ribs). McDowell plays this down, “Most of the time it was fun to do. I had a couple of injuries but they weren’t life threatening. They were fairly painful, but it was really a small price to pay.”

On a rewatch these moments still standout, though there are others too – an extended sequence where Alex is being drowned in a trough by his former friends knocks the breath out of you.

“To be honest with you, it’s a complete cheat,” says McDowell of the scene. “There’s one cut right at the beginning. That water was cold and they coloured it with Bovril. I mean can you imagine beef extract? It stank to high heaven, it was absolutely like shit! And it was cold because we shot it I think in November. So they couldn’t heat the water because it steamed. I could only literally last three to five seconds before I had to come up for air. And so he put a tank of oxygen in there with a mouthpiece, and I spent my time trying to find the mouthpiece, which was bobbing around. It was harrowing.”

Not to mention he was being beaten with a billy club at the same time.

“Admittedly, it’s rubber, but it still hurts,” McDowell recalls. “You can still feel it, and you feel like you’re in a nether world, you’re underwater, you’re sort of like drowning, but not quite. It’s a pretty good shot though.”

As well as the language, the soundtrack, the costumes and McDowell’s performance, the movie is also remembered for the controversy surrounding it. Allegations of copycat crimes as well as death threats sent to the director prompted Kubrick to pull the film from UK distribution in 1973, making it difficult to see in Britain until after Kubrick’s death in 1999. McDowell says the withdrawal didn’t especially affect him at the time, since he was in another country filming, and the movie had already been shown for a year. “It wasn’t like he pulled it at the height of its success so people couldn’t see it.”

Though it remains tough to watch in part, McDowell says younger audiences seem more comfortable with the comedy and satire elements of the film, a strand that was always intended.

“It is a black comedy and that’s how it was made. And I would have to say that that element of it has caught up, and kids when they see the movie now just roar with laughter and that makes my heart sing because that’s what I thought when I made it,” he says. “When it first came out, my god! It was total silence in the cinema, nobody moved out of their seats.”

When we ask McDowell what he hopes new viewers coming to the film today might take from it he’s typically candid: “I really have nothing to say about that. You know they can take whatever they want.” Though he says he thinks it’s amazing that the film is still relevant which he attributes to Burgess’s book even more than Kubrick’s adaptation.

Then after a beat he follows up with an anecdote.

“Well, actually I did go to a screening for the 40th anniversary at the Egyptian, I also gave a bit of a talk. At the end I was walking towards the bathroom and a young kid passed me, and goes ‘Oh my god! Clockwork right?’ I went, ‘Yeah!’ he goes, ‘Which part?’ I went, ‘The old guy’. He goes, ‘The old guy! Oh!’ I went, ‘No! the young guy! It’s 40 years old!’ he went, ‘Oh!’ he didn’t even connect,” McDowell chuckles. “I don’t know what he was smoking.”

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

To mark its 50th anniversary, A Clockwork Orange Ultimate Collector’s Edition is now available to own here and includes the feature film on a Ultra HD Blu-ray™ disc in 4K with HDR and a Blu-ray™ disc with the feature film and special features. Fans can also own A Clockwork Orange in 4K Ultra HD via purchase from select digital retailers.

The post A Clockwork Orange at 50: Malcolm McDowell Revisits Kubrick’s Film appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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ourimpavidheroine · 3 years

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You've given us your favorite records, so how about your favorite movies?

Okay, sure! Under a cut though, because it’s long.

In no particular order!

Strictly Ballroom (1992)

Oh my god, one of the funniest movies ever made. Every single thing about this movie makes me laugh out loud - in fact, I laughed so loud in the theater when I saw it the first time I’m surprised they didn’t kick my ass out. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched and re-watched it. My late wife and I used to quote this film back and forth to each other all the time.

“Arms, Clary!”

“That was unexpected.”

“I’ve got my happy face on today!”

There’s a lovely little romance going on and a quote that I live by:

A life lived in fear is a life half lived.

Thank you, Baz Luhrmann.

Bringing Up Baby (1938)

Screwball comedy romance with Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. Still funny, over 80 years later. Mistaken identities, a harrassed archeologist and a clueless rich girl, so on and so forth. If you watch it, you will see shades of Wu and Sayuri in Susan, for sure. (And some Zu in David.) The comedic timing of this movie is sheer and utter perfection. Not a single beat wasted. Brilliant, the entire thing.

Moonstruck (1987)

God, what isn’t there to love about this movie? CHER. A woman coming up on middle age who has settled into widowhood without a whimper decides to marry a man she’s fond of for no other reason than she thinks she should meets the fiance’s younger brother and her entire life goes, as her Italian Catholic mother says in the middle of church, “...down the toilet.” This movie was handled with so much love and care, it deserved its Oscars. If you’ve never seen it, you should.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)

I saw this movie the one and only time I visited the States after I moved to Finland. I had left my wife here in Finland but had my 20 month old autistic twins along and my mother was being beyond horrible to me and I was exhausted and just wanted to go home. There was one afternoon where my favorite uncle came to me, gave me his car, and told me he was going to watch the kids and for me to go out and have a breather. I decided to see a movie - I can’t remember which one - but the paper had gotten the time wrong and it had already started by the time I got there. I asked the woman selling tickets what she recommended that was coming up and she very fervently told me to go and see this one.

Still one of the best movies I have ever seen. The acting is so subtle, so beautiful, and the scenery! The ending broke me, just shattered me into a million pieces. Years later, when my wife died, I knew exactly that feeling of desperately wanting to go back in time and somehow do it all right and all I can say is, both Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi get all of my love forever for doing it the way they did.

I bought it when it finally came out on DVD with English subtitles and I made my late wife watch it with me and she sobbed at the end and told me I was cruel for making her watch it. (Guess what, babe? You were crueler for making me live it.)

The Handmaiden (2016)

Normally I am not all that keen on books being made into movies. I fucking loved Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith and wasn’t sure about it being taken out of its Victorian England setting into 1930′s Korea but oh my god I have never been happier to have been proved wrong in my life. THIS FILM. Listen, it is one of those rare times when a book and an adaptation can stand next to each other, equally as good, equally as strong, despite the differences. There is so much to unpack about women’s experiences with sex and how that compares to how men dictate those experiences to them and the movie never drops the ball with this. Frankly, I had seen Oldboy and Snowpiercer (among others) and I really did not think Park Chan-wook had it in him and shame on me for that.

Warning: this movie is HOT.

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

This is a damn good movie. Charlize Theron elevates anything she is in, and as Furiosa - dirty, grim, disabled, clinging on to tattered hope with desperation - she just takes this film to another level. Plenty of other good performances - including Tom Hardy, who’s never afraid to drop himself into a role - and some frankly astonishing editing work by Margaret Sixel as well as a male director who understands, deeply, how to film women without subjecting them to the male gaze. This is not a schlock film, despite the franchise it belongs in. It’s good.

I saw this film the night before my wife died; the last time I spoke to her on the phone I told her that I’d take her with me to see it again, I knew she’d like it. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to separate this film from that loss, but that’s how it goes sometimes. Still wish you could have seen it, babe. You would have loved it.

The Great Race (1965)

Is this a great movie? Not critically speaking, although Jack Lemmon is brilliant, as he almost always is. Rather, it was a movie my father and I loved together, and I have so many good memories of watching it with him whenever it would play on TV (these were the years before VHS even, never mind Netflix) and eating popcorn and laughing together.

We loved the huge pie fight scene so much that on my 16th birthday my father bought 3 dozen store bought pies, defrosted them and/or baked them (with the help of our neighbor, who was in on the secret) and he woke me up that morning, told me to get dressed and come outside, and he got me with a pie to the face right as I walked out the door and the two of us chased each other, throwing and dodging pies, making an unholy mess, slipping and sliding all over our deck and driveway, stumbling and laughing hysterically.

It is one of the best memories in my life. How many other girls can say their fathers gave them a pie fight for their sweet sixteen? This movie makes me laugh and, more importantly, remember my father with so much love.

The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

I did love all three of these films. Were they perfect? No. (I am still salty about Faramir’s entire movie arc and the fact that Merry was just Pippin 2.0 instead of the distinct character he was in the books.) But they were made with so much love and heart by people who loved and cared deeply for the source material. And they were astonishing in scope as well. Just glorious to see in the theater.

I first read those books when my father lent me his copies when I was eight and they were a vital part of my growing up; to see Peter Jackson and his entire cast and crew love them as much as I did was genuinely special for me.

The other two films are just as good with some astonishing moments (Billy Boy’s last minute song in The Return of the King still gives me goosebumps) but this was the first one, and just remembering holding my wife’s hand as we both gasped together over the scope of it was a memory I will keep with me always.

When my wife and I went to see this one here in Finland I was pregnant with my twins and I was like, oh my god, please die already Boromir because were twins on my bladder and I knew if I didn’t get to a toilet soon it was going to be all over. (It was a long movie without a pee break for a pregnant person, let me just say.) I was never happier for a tragic end to a movie in my life, LOL.

The Matrix (1999)

Dude. Dude. Just the concept of this movie. The Wachowski sisters have never limited themselves and that’s what makes them so different and so exciting. One of the greats of Sci Fi and, as far as I am concerned, one of the greats bar none. Yeah sure, I know it isn’t a critical darling but lord, I am not a film critic, just someone who loves movies. And I love this one.

(And excuse you, Elon and the rest of you alt-right men’s groups, you dicks, for appropriating the whole blue/red pill thing: it’s a concept from two trans sisters, so fuck right off with that.)

My best friend, who saw it with me the first time (I took my late wife to see it later in the year when she arrived in the States) laughed at the whole little kid with spoon scene. That’s like listening to you, she said. I never know what is going to come out of your mouth or whether I’ll understand it in the moment but it will eventually make sense to me. Which pretty well sums me up, I think. And this movie as well.

The Piano (1993)

There is a moment, in this gorgeous, deeply beautiful, aching film, where Harvey Keitel fingers a small hole in Holly Hunter’s stocking and it is the most erotic heterosexual thing I have ever seen. Trust a woman director to understand why women would love this. There’s Harvey Keitel’s character: older, soft around the middle, barely literate, covered with traditional facial tattoos. He’s nobody’s idea of hot. But he understands what this woman in particular needs, understands what she is telling him without words, and that’s what he gives her and it is erotic beyond measure. It’s not about what he looks like; it’s about how he understands her.

Holly Hunter does this movie without speaking a single word or getting any subtitles and short of a few brief translations by Anna Paquin playing her young daughter still manages to express herself. It’s brilliant acting. (And look, I know - today we’d look for an actress who was mute to play the role, and rightfully so. It still doesn’t take away from Hunter’s performance.)

Ada drowned in the original script but Jane Campion changed it at the last minute when filming and it was the right choice. The absolute right choice. Ada deserves her freedom and her chance to pursue her own happiness.

#my favorite movies #personal #Anonymous

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duhragonball · 4 years

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Yamcha if you're still doing the character meme?

I am still doing these, and I’m enjoying it, so keep ‘em coming. Before I start, let me promote the original post, in case anyone else wants to start their own thing. I’d link to the OP, but I guess they deleted this from their blog, probably because their notifications went nuts.

Give me a character and I will answer:

Why I like them: Let’s be honest, Yamcha doesn’t get a lot of big “hero moments” in Dragon Ball. Or Dragon Ball Z, or Dragon Ball GT, or Dragon Ball Su-- Look, you get the idea. In most arcs, he’s the first one to get benched. In tournaments, he always loses in the first round. He spent the King Piccolo Saga recovering from a broken leg. Against the Saiyans, he was the first one to die. Against the Androids, he was nearly killed and had to sit out the rest of that arc. In the Buu Sagas he was retired. In a number of major storylines, he just isn’t there, because no one called him.

But he remains a fixture in the franchise anyway, because he’s always showing up for more. Let’s take the Buu Saga as an example. It didn’t surprise me to find out he had retired, mainly from a dramatic standpoint. There’s a lot of new characters in the Buu arc, and it made sense for some of the older characters to step aside and make room for them. But he’s still there, because he wants to see Goku one last time, and he wants to hang out with his friends and watch some of them kick the crap out of each other. It was kind of sad to see him stay behind while the others rushed off to follow the Supreme Kai, but he’s retired, after all. Also, they didn’t stop to fill him in on what was happening. I suspect he might have tagged along if they asked.

As it was, he still ended up getting involved, and he was with the Dragon Team right up until Super Buu cornered them on the Lookout. And the next time we see him, he’s on the Grand Kai Planet with Krillin, and King Kai seriously considers sending them in to take on Buu in case Goku and Vegeta can’t get the job done.

And that’s a big deal, because it even comes up in the anime. King Kai tells them that he arranged for them to keep their bodies as a precaution, but he’s totally in favor of letting them remain on the Grand Kai Planet with all of the other honored warriors, like Goku. So you start with this desert bandit, a highwayman without a highway, probably because he’s afraid of all the women that use the interstate. But he gradually overcomes his fears and insecurities, never completely, but just enough to put one foot in front of the other and become a better man. And finally he ends up receiving a place among the great heroes of old.

So why doesn’t that get more attention? You could make a whole epic story out of that, except it’s not Yamcha’s story. He’s a supporting character. So the franchise itself tends to play it down. Even Yamcha doesn’t really take it all that seriously. I don’t know if that’s modesty or cluelessness or Big Himbo Energy or what, but that’s why it’s so easy for everyone to write him off as a loser or a failure. They’re overlooking the bigger picture.

youtube

The best way to illustrate this is with this TFS short that serves as an epilogue to their DBZ Abridged series. Yamcha goes back to playing baseball for the Taitans, only to get fired, because he’s so talented that he’s literally broken the game, and no one buys tickets anymore. But he gets a gigantic severance package, and he still goes down in history as the greatest ballplayer in history. What always gets to me is that they have to explain to him that this is actually a win. As his coach puts it, “you do nothing but win.”

Like Yamcha himself, we often see him from the lens of these insane Dragon Ball adventures, where you have to have glowy hair and a hot cyborg wife to be considered a success. But to the rest of the world, he’s a jacked up millionaire with fantastic hair, and he’s a real sweetheart. Who couldn’t like this dude?

Why I don’t: As you may have noticed, I tend to only use this section to talk about why I disliked the characters initially. I have to think back to 1999 when I was still having trouble keeping track of who’s who. In particular, I found Yamcha’s presence frustrating because he looked and dressed almost exactly like Goku, but not quite, which seemed bizarre. Later, I picked up on the context, and it didn’t bother me as much.

Yamcha does have a bit of an overconfident streak in some situations, which might look like unfounded arrogance, but I think it’s really just his carefree nature and enthusiastic can-do spirit. He was confident about their chances against the Saiyans, but I don’t think that was him being cocky. He just knew they had all trained hard and he was stronger than he’d ever been. But that’s easy for people to jump on as a reason to hate the guy.

Future Trunks claimed that he fooled around while he was involved with Bulma, but come on. Does anyone really buy that? Besides, at best, that would only apply to Future Yamcha, the one who died in the other timeline. Once Trunks changed the past, all bets were off.

Favorite episode (scene if movie): I’m gonna get a little nuts here and go with TFS’s playthrough of Legacy of Goku I, where they decided to level up Yamcha and have him solo Broly.

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Basically, in an RPG game like this, Wolf Fang Fist can do monster damage, so they maxed out Yamcha’s stats to wreck the game’s hidden superboss. You have to skip to 1:40:00 or so to see the successful attempt, but I loved this video. This is where I learned to respect the utterance of “Roga... fufuken!” Broly probably would have respected it, too, except he died from all those hits he took.

Favorite season/movie: You know, that fight with Tien was a classic. Not sure it’s in my top ten, but it’s on a lot of people’s lists, and I absolutely get that.

Dumb as it may sound, I enjoyed seeing Yamcha in the hospital, wrestling with his own despair as he recuperated from his broken leg. And when he shows up at the end to congratulate Tien and accepts Tien’s apology, well, like I said, Yamcha has this great character arc, but it’s easy to overlook with everything else that goes on.

Favorite line: I forget which game it was in, maybe Budokai 3, but one of his pre-fight taunts is “Watch this, Puar! I’m gonna win!”, which always makes me think of Puar sitting just off-camera, watching the action from a little lawn chair.

Favorite outfit:

I may take some heat for this, but I like the Androids/Cell Saga version of Yamcha, with the short, spiky hair. This dude’s long, luxurious rockstar ‘do is a national treasure, sure, but I dig this look more.

Also, I consider Yamcha to be the only guy from the Turtle School who pulls off the slippers and no-blue-undershirt look. It looks off when I see it on Krillin and Goku, but with Yamcha it just feels right.

OTP: This guy gets shipped with a lot of people, probably because he’s one of the major characters without an established love interest. Folks still carry a torch for Bulma, some people ship him with Tien, Frieza hit on him in FighterZ, and I’m still trying to make sense of that. He flirts with your character in the Xenoverse games. Years ago, I considered doing something with that, but I’ve fleshed out my OC enough to where I don’t think that fits.

At the end of the day, I can only see Yamcha getting together with @cozymochi ‘s OC, Marzi.

Brotp: Tien, Krillin, Goku. Hell, I always figured Yamcha was one of the few people Vegeta could get along with to some extent.

I mean, Tien couldn’t stand to be one the same planet as Vegeta, but Yamcha keeps coming over to have hot dogs at Bulma’s place, long after the Namekians have left.

Head Canon: He’s Luffa’s type, don’t get me wrong. I just don’t see any room in my fic for a whirlwind courtship. The stars just don’t align.

Unpopular opinion: I’m not really behind this notion that they should give the humans more stuff to do in future series. When it comes to supporting characters, sometimes they get phased out, and there’s no point in phasing them back in unless there’s a compelling story idea for them.

I think it’s dumb how they teased Yamcha in the Tournament of Power prelude, only to leave him out of the tournament itself. On the other hand, they put Tien on the team and barely used him, which tells me that even if they’d put Yamcha on the team, it wouldn’t have amounted to anything.

I get it, people love these characters and want to see them used more, but I’d rather have one strong Yamcha story than a hundred non-starters. And at this point, I think the only thing anyone can do is rely on fan-created content. Be the change you want to see in the world.

A wish: Crap, it’s after ten pm. I dunno, I wish Marzi was canon.

An oh-god-please-dont-ever-happen: I feel like the character’s already been through worse than I could come up with for him.

5 words to best describe them: Cat loves food, yeah yeah yeah. That’s six, but who cares?

My nickname for them: Yeah, I don’t have one.

#ask duhragonball #dragon ball #yamcha #yamucha #Anonymous

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irenereru · 4 years

Note

For the Daft Punk asks: 1993-2021.

Yes, Irene. I want you to answer all of them (except the ones you don’t want to answer, of course ❤️).

/2B

Well well well, this is gonna take a while! I already answered 2011 to 2013 in this ask right here, so I’ll be skipping those!

1993: When did you first hear about Daft Punk? That’s an odd question, and hard to answer.

During my childhood I KNOW I heard songs like Around The World, Music Sounds Better With You, One More Time, Harder Better Faster Stronger, and Technologic later on.

It wasn’t until around 2011 when I had my first contact with Daft Punk, when on a restaurant, on a TV in the background, One More Time was playing. I could not hear the song, but the visuals catched my attention and I became fascinated. Sadly, I did not catch who’s song was that, nor the title.

It wasn’t until Get Lucky and RAM released that I FINALLY figured out who Daft Punk were. The moment I saw the robots, when I rediscovered and watched Interstella 5555 in it’s entirety in one setting, then, was when i got hooked up to them, forever.

1994: What do you find most striking about the band? THE ROBOTS! I love the dessigns, they have SO MUC PERSONALITY. But other things I love are, obviously, their music, the “not giving a shit” actitude, and the way they worked. That’s something I admire a lot, keeping control of your works. As an artist myself, it’s something that can be really important and can help you out in the future.

1995: Do you have any favorite music videos? I love Interstella 5555 with my whole heart. The Homework MVs, specially Burnin’, hold a special place in my heart. I love that in Burnin’ the boys make a cameo for a split second, wearing odd costumes and wigs.

1996: What do you think about the Homework album? Pretty good! I love house music, and it’s certainly the album that introduced me to the genre, so... Da Funk, Around The World, they’re just absolute BANGERS. The “harder” songs on the album aren’t really my thing, tho...

1997: What do you think about Alive 1997? A bit bare-bones, not gonna lie. It’s like 45 minutes long. That’s not a lot. It certainly is something of it’s time. What I love the most are the scarce pictures and videos of that era of them playing live. You can REALLY tell they’re having a blast, specially Thomas.

1998: Do you have any favorite remixes/mash-ups? Their remix of Chord Memory is certainly one of my favorites. It really gives you a... Something. It feels like it’s telling a story, with it’s change of tone later on and then mashing both. Also, that WDPK 83.7 reference!

1999: Has your opinion of the band changed over time? Not really. It just started high and they stay high as my favorite band/musicians. They’re extremely inspiring, specially for the fact they did so many different things, but all feeling so unique to them at the same time. Them also being nice people and supporting of social rights and the LGBT community is certainly a great plus!

2000: Do you have a favorite ‘era’ of Daft Punk? Discovery. It’s the most fun, colorfull, and the one they seemed more “silly”. The robots appeared in their rainbowy marvel and odd/oversized clothes.

2001: What do you think about the Discovery album? It’s My FAVORITE! There are barely no songs I dislike. It have so many different vibes, feelings, you have vocal tracks and instrumental tracks, all with the same quality... And my favorite song from them, Something About Us, is from that album.

2002: Has Daft Punk inspired you creatively? Absolutely. Like, 100%.

2003: What do you think about Interstella 5555? They could’ve worked on that lip-sink a bit better, it’s something that ALWAYS pulls me off. But aside from that, it’s a great concept, and a very special animated film. You can tell there was a lot of care put on it.

2004: Are there any lyrics in particular that stuck with you? Within. That song just, resonates so much with me. Check out my other post with answers, I talk in depth about it!

2005: What do you think about the Human After All album? You can tell it was made in 2 weeks. They were angry, frustrated. And you get a lot of “Thomas Vibe” in that. It feels like it wasn’t a good time for them and it’s reflected in the album.

2006: What do you think about the Musique album? The only good thing from it is that they FINALLY re-released Musique and those remixes! Also, in the special version, you get the Interstella 5555 DVD, which is how I got the movie myself physically!

2007: What do you think about Alive 2007? It’s just great. I wish there was an official version of the entire concert edited by them, where you could see the visuals, the vibes, and the boys all in one enjoying themselves. I’m sad I couldn’t go see them, but at the time I just did not know who they were, and I was only 11. I remember seeing their pyramid on TV when they came to Spain in 2006! I thought it looked really extra, and it really is.

2008: What do you think about Electroma? It’s heartcrushing. I have the feeling they could’ve cutted the ending a little, and I don’t really get why of the dunes looking like a woman and going like, inside the vagina... But still. Also, I can not laugh when they wear the human masks. They’re so ugly x’D Is that how they see themselves?

The bathroom scene ALWAYS gets me. GM08 getting extremely mad and frustrated, while TB3 tries to hold on to what’s left until it can’t be recovered... That says SO MUCH about them, about the robots, as characters and people. You can really get what they’re feeling.

The ending, though... That ending. My god. Everyone always talks about TB3′s death, but the one that really got me the most is GM08′s. It seemed like he wanted to keep going, but finding himself alone ends up being his demise. They need each other. And when he tries to reach to his self-destruct button but cannot, and he just stares in the distance... I really, REALLY felt that.

2009: Do you have a favorite Daft Punk cameo/reference? I talked about the Burnin’ video before, but if I have to think of something else... I think their cameos in different productions are great. Like Sebastien Tellier’s videos of the songs he made with Guy-Man, one with magazines with drawing of GM08, while on the other he appears as a background guy, face partially covered... Also Thomas’ cameo in the movie Realité, where his wife is one of the secondary characters, where he just, again, appears for a split second. I find those really funny.

2010: What do you think about TRON: Legacy? It had a lot going on, but it’s story just... Was bad. The effects are cool (except for the guy they tried to make look younger), and I love that Daft Punk just kept vibing when the fight breaks out at the club. Aside from that, that’s all.

2014: What’s your favorite moment of Daft Punk at the GRAMMYs? The hug. Come on, that’s like, the loveliest thing ever. You can tell how happy and emotional they were. They even had to hold Thomas’ hand because his helmet fogged on the inside.

2015: Do you have friends who like Daft Punk? Hmm... Does all the cool people I’ve met in the fandom count? ;D Specially @edbangingrobot and @invader-777 they’re the coolest people ever <3

2016: What Daft Punk collaborations stood out to you? Probably the one with The Weeknd, but only because of their AMAZINGLY COOL COSTUMES, more than anything. Those have to be my all-time favorite looks for the robots.

2017: Did you get to see Daft Punk live? No :(

2018: How does Daft Punk fit into your taste in music? They have that disco-electro-house vibe I LOVE so much. Why do you think Discovery is my favorite? x’D Tho my tastes go all over the place, if I’m honest. You just have to take a look around my Spotify playlist to see what I’m talking about.

2019: What Daft Punk song makes you smile? One More Time, Digital Love, Voyager and Give Life Back To Music. If you wanna make me get in a good mood, play those.

2020: Did Daft Punk help you get through tough times? They certainly helped me focus on something. I found them in one of the toughest, darkest times of my life. Just had to drop out of school due to my mental illness, only to be abandoned by my old friends, while my family did not listen to me about my depression, anxiety and agoraphobia. Not only that, but we also moved for the third time in a decade, and it wasn’t for fun reasons. Having Daft Punk’s music there as a new discovery to me certainly helped, with their cheerfull, thoughtless songs for a time where everything felt too much.

2021: How are you “holding on” after the split? I am extremely sad we will never get to see the robots again. They’re a really important part of my life. Just like their music. All I hope is that they’re in good therms, and that they’ll be happy for now on. We do not know the reason, but there surely was one behind their decission. If any of them does make something new in the future, I’ll make sure to check it out. It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve done things aside from Daft Punk.

#ask #well that was long #you could say it was #too long

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cyberbirdunknown · 3 years

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Hi Mike, thank you so much for taking some time out for us today. Hope you’re doing well?

Hi James, happy to be speaking with Kung Fu Kingdom. I’m doing great, thanks!

Fantastic! Well, let’s kick off with some basics, like where you were born?

I was born in Brooklyn, New York.

Your height and weight?

I’m 6’ 2” (1.88m) tall and weigh 16 stone (102kg).

So, what can you share about your beginnings in martial arts; how old were you and what different disciplines have you studied?

My first style was Japanese Jujutsu, I was about seven when I first started. After that, I went into Shotokan, and later on into Kyokushin karate. All told, I hold eight black belts, but Kyokushin is really the one that I’ve had as my basis for many, many years.

Solid start! So, who would you say are some of your biggest heroes or mentors in martial arts?

My biggest mentors personally are definitely Joe Lewis and Bill “Superfoot” Wallace! They’re the two fighters I’ve always patterned myself after, and I’ve been very fortunate to not only train with both of them, but also do seminars with them all over the world.

Such an honour I’m sure. Looking ahead at your career now, one of your big breaks came in 1997 when you portrayed the title character in “Spawn”, what interesting stories can you share about the experience of making the film, and of the extensive make-up process to play the character?

The thing I liked about doing “Spawn” was that it was an acting role for me. I wanted to establish myself as an actor before I started doing a lot of martial arts roles, because I thought people might have a hard time looking past that if I did it the other way around.

The makeup was pretty harsh. The first time we put that face on, it took four hours to apply, but we were eventually able to get it down to about two hours. When I was in the makeup chair, I’d put in a movie and by the time it was over, they were pretty much done with the make-up. The suit didn’t take that long, but it was hard to get into, so what we did was I would hang onto a bar, and they’d put the suit under me and basically feed me into it. We did the same thing to take it off, as well. It was pretty harsh, and it was REALLY hot! John Leguizamo didn’t have quite as long a sit in the make-up chair, but he was breaking out like crazy from his make-up. He also had to squat down to make himself shorter for the Clown, so that was pretty intense on him, but he was a trooper.

No doubt about that. One of your next big films was 1999’s “Universal Soldier: The Return”, in which you appeared alongside Jean-Claude Van Damme and Bill Goldberg. What can you share about making the film alongside them and the amazing shape you got into to portray the villain, S.E.T.H?

I was actually in the first “Universal Soldier”, as well, in the Vietnam flashback, but you need the pause button to see me! Jean-Claude and I trained a lot together during the making of the first one, and I was just starting out at that point, but he was really gracious and we got along really well. Then, a few years had passed when I was the antagonist in “Universal Soldier: The Return”, so Jean-Claude had seen me in “Tyson” and “Spawn” and was really surprised to learn that I was the same guy from the first movie. Bill Goldberg was also a great guy to hang around with on the set, and he’s a really strong dude!

As for the shape I got into for the film, there’s actually a bit of a misconception about that. I was about 208 pounds for the film, which is about the lightest I’ve ever gotten for a movie. I really tried to trim down and get ripped for it, and that’s usually what I do for most movies as opposed to beefing up. I’d liken it to a fighter making weight before an upcoming fight, it’s about chiselling in, losing weight and exposing the muscles.

Nice bit of trivia there! On that note, one of your next big roles was in the Hong Kong film “Silver Hawk” with Michelle Yeoh in 2004. How was the experience making the film in Hong Kong with her?

I’d always wanted to work in Hong Kong films, because I really felt that they understand the art of a fight scene in all aspects, so “Silver Hawk” was kind of like my crash course in learning how they did it. When I started directing movies in particular, I really drew off of that experience and everything I learned about how they shoot action in China. There’s no waste and they trim the fat out of everything. Michelle Yeoh was like my big sister on the film, she was inspirational and so humble, she was just great.

Nice to know! Speaking of shooting in China, you also filmed a fight sequence with the late David Carradine (RIP) for “Kill Bill: Volume Two”, which was deleted from the film but was featured on the DVD release. What can you share about working with Mr. Carradine and Quentin Tarantino on that scene?

That was a great movie especially for me as martial art practitioner .

#for educational purposes

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admiralty-xfd · 5 years

Text

the whole truth

Mulder and Scully at The Falls in Arcadia. Diana witnesses an intimate moment. Mulder and Scully reinforce their bond to each other.

This is chapter 13, to start at the beginning click here.

Chapter 13: The Ascent

She thinks about this more than she’s comfortable; the images pouring forth like scenes from a favorite movie, or one of Mulder’s oft-visited porn tapes. She’s thought about it since it nearly happened: in dreams, in waking.

“I don’t want to do this alone.”

He inches towards her so slowly the anticipation is intoxicating, the sound of approaching truth deafening. She can smell him, he’s so close. Only this time, there is no interruption. There is no bee.

He comes to her with no hesitation or uncertainty. He grasps her face between his hands and kisses her the way she’s wanted him to for so long: with passion and fire, and the love she feels so desperately for him is reciprocated with intensity.

At first they know nothing, tongues gliding over lips and teeth, and noses bumping together as if they’ve never kissed another soul. As if this is the very first time for either of them. But then, as dreams go, everything becomes mind blowingly perfect. His lips are supple, wet and smooth. Perfection. She combs her fingers through his hair and her own lips part, letting him inside.

She wants to smile with utter relief but she does not, because she still doesn’t believe it. How can she believe this is finally, finally real? She is Dana Scully, she is his Dana Scully. She sees things with her own eyes, touches things with her very fingers and cannot believe.

But it’s the reason he loves her.

“I owe you everything.”

She allows her smile to show now, no longer thinking, no longer worrying. He smiles in return and carries her back inside his apartment, lays her down on a bed she’s never laid eyes on like she belongs there, like she’s always belonged there, and they start to tear each other’s clothes off. Yearning washes over her, engulfing her; a savage appetite. His hand slips beneath her shirt with ease and familiarity, skilled fingers that know exactly how to please her, and she gasps and arches into his welcoming touch.

Why can’t this be so easy in real life? Somehow she knows this is all a dream, it can’t be real, it’s much too good to be true.

But she wants to believe.

His lips travel along her neck, across every surface of her body until she is quaking with anticipation. She doesn’t have to wait long, because that’s how dreams work, and soon he is parting her legs and she arches again, guiding him inside her. She doesn’t see him but rather feels him as he makes her whole.

“You made me a whole person.”

He moves within her; warmth and comfort and desire that can only be described as the physical manifestation of their trust and it feels so perfect, so good, so right.

The only thing that feels right.

"Scully... I love you,” Mulder says; the three words she hasn’t stopped thinking about since he’d uttered them months ago, as her memories blur together with fantasy. “I only love you. There could never be another.”

She’s so desperate to know this, to hear him say it.

She doesn’t want to stop. She never, ever wants to wake up. And he is relentless. He will not stop either, not until she sees stars, and soon she does; soon she is coming so hard, her hands on his face, their foreheads locked together, as it should be.

As it always should have been.

1450 AUTUMN TERRACE

ARCADIA, CA

FEBRUARY 26, 1999

7:46 AM

Scully woke tangled in sheets, cresting. Her hand went to her mouth in surprise as she rode out a much needed orgasm, induced by merely a dream.

A dream. This had never happened to her before.

Her eyelids grew heavy as she finished, and she rolled over, recalling to her great horror that she was actually sharing a bed with the very man she’d been fantasizing about.

Mulder had finagled his way into her room last night claiming an inability to sleep on an uncomfortable mattress, but she knew he just wanted to be close to her. She wanted to be close to him too, so she’d let him.

The sheets were tangled around his own body as well, and demonstrating her complete lack of self control in such a vulnerable moment, her eyes landed on his crotch. It was clear that, indeed, he’d been quite comfortable on her mattress. The size of his bulge shocked her, and for a brief moment she wanted to laugh; between the sharing of the bed, his erection, and her orgasm, they’d practically had sex. Too bad they’d both slept through it.

By the grace of God he was sleeping soundly and hadn’t noticed her embarrassing infraction. She felt her body relax, coming down from before, and it was a strange but wonderful sensation to be looking at his face in real life during such a moment, rather than only in her mind. She had an urge to leave the bed but she stayed, watching him sleep, allowing herself this indulgence. She’d never been able to do this before, so close, his face so beautiful, his breathing slow and steady.

"You made me a whole person,” he’d said in her dream.

He’d said it in real life, she corrected herself.

She should have said it back. She should have told him the truth. She should have told him “I could never be whole without you, either.” Then maybe they wouldn’t be in this mess right now.

After the distraction of El Rico they hadn’t revisited their fight at The Lone Gunman. She felt better than she had before, however; their conversation in the train yard had been a long time coming. And now that Diana Fowley had disappeared and it was just the two of them on the X-Files again, she felt more secure in her role as his partner.

Although now, that role had switched to ‘fake wife’ literally overnight.

His left hand laid on his chest and she stared at the gold wedding band on his finger. For a moment she let her mind wander to what that might be like: Mulder as a husband, as a lover.

Or even a father.

She hadn’t seen any children around this suburban community, which she’d noted as odd. It made a strange kind of sense, as kids certainly would be a threat to the strict rules and regulations that were enforced. But the environment alone had gotten her thinking, and longing for something she knew she could never have.

As she watched him, she wondered what he was dreaming about. Who he was dreaming about, really. Either of the two scenarios she pictured were scary, and rather than let her mind linger on one in particular, she rolled out of bed and headed downstairs on shaky post-orgasmic legs to the kitchen. Surely the awkwardness of Mulder waking in his condition with her in the room would push their already glacial progress back another couple of years.

She leaned against the counter and waited for the coffee to brew. She’d forgotten to throw on her robe in her distraction and suddenly realized when he did come downstairs he’d see more of her than she was comfortable with. He’d already seen enough of her in a decontamination shower, courtesy of Diana Fowley, thank you very much. But there was really nothing to be done about it; she wasn’t about to go back upstairs and risk waking him.

After a few minutes of sipping her coffee and reading reports, she heard the shower turn on. She tried to focus on reading but it was hard not to think of Mulder, naked in the shower, an image she now knew by memory rather than simply imagination. She pictured steam swirling, water dripping down his body as he surely moved his hands down south to take care of his morning situation--

Stop it, she scolded herself. Then, almost as abruptly, oh, fuck it. She censored her feelings enough for Mulder. She was tired of censoring them for herself.

She let her thoughts wander where they wanted, and her legs closed involuntarily to keep her arousal at bay. She was wearing shorts and a camisole, a far cry from the nightgown ensemble she’d sported before to keep all this from becoming too… intense. Apparently it hadn’t worked out the way she’d expected.

Eventually he appeared, wearing sweatpants and a white T-shirt. She felt immediately exposed, having far less on than him, but from the way his glance roamed over what she knew was a pair of extremely pert nipples she figured it was worth it. He was surprised, having never seen her in quite this state of undress before.

“Morning,” he said, trying gallantly to keep his eyes off her chest and failing miserably. She raised an eyebrow as she sipped her coffee, but was smiling on the inside. Eat your heart out, Spooky.

“Morning. Sleep well?” she asked knowingly.

“Um. Yeah, your mattress is much better than mine. Thanks.”

He avoided eye contact as he went to the fridge and pulled out some orange juice, sipping it directly from the carton.

“That’s all yours now, you know,” she said with veiled irritation.

“Sorry,” he mumbled with his mouth full of orange juice. He pulled a glass out of the cabinet anyway and poured himself some. “You got in kind of late last night.”

It sounded harmless but she could tell he was fishing. She had gotten in rather late, and had missed the creature Mulder saw attacking the Schroeders because of it.

“Traffic,” was all she said. Her response was so clipped that she could tell he knew she was lying.

“Scully. What took you so long?”

She looked him in the eye, unsure of how to proceed. There was virtually no reason for him to be upset at her revelation except for the very huge and obvious reason before them. But deep down she wanted to see how he’d react.

“I bumped into Detective Kresge,” she said. “He happened to be at the San Diego field office working on a case.”

He looked confused, but she could pinpoint the moment recognition crossed his face. “Oh.”

The truth was, she’d been about to head back to Arcadia early in the afternoon when Kresge had asked her out to dinner and she’d accepted. They’d eaten, they’d laughed, and he hadn’t once asked her about Emily Sim, which she was grateful for. But when he’d tried to kiss her at her car she’d gently pushed on his chest, knowing it wasn’t going to lead anywhere. She was in way too deep with her feelings for Mulder. She didn’t want Ed Jerse, the sequel.

“How’s Detective Kresge doing?” Mulder asked, enunciating each syllable of the name.

“He’s doing well. Promoted to superintendent, actually.”

“Mm-hm,” Mulder nodded. “Good for him.”

She smiled, kind of enjoying this. It was nice to see the shoe on the other foot for once.

“Did he have any insight on the case at all?” Mulder asked.

“Oh, we didn’t really talk much about the case,” she admitted. “Just, you know. Catching up.” Her eyes flickered up to his and she sensed his distress, although he was trying to remain calm.

“I hope you told him you’re married,” he smirked.

“Must have slipped my mind.”

“So… are you gonna leave me here in this house all by myself again today?” he asked, apparently done talking about her date.

“What will happen if I do?” she asked.

“I don’t know, but my sanity is in jeopardy, Scully. This place is pretty much my worst nightmare.”

“Why does that not surprise me?” she laughed, knowing this to be the case already.

“I wasn’t kidding when I said you fit in here, though,” he added. “I like what you’re doing with your hair. It’s very… suburban.”

Her hand went to the bottom of her hair, where it had been curling up a bit. She actually didn’t like her most recent haircut and was surprised he’d even noticed.

“Suburban? Is that a good thing?”

“It suits you,” he said. “But then again, everything suits you.”

She was taken aback by this overt flirting. She’d noticed it a lot lately and wondered if it was compensatory for everything Diana-related that was still lingering in the air.

“Thanks,” was all she could think to say. She didn’t press the obvious unspoken observation: that she fit in here, and he didn’t.

Picking up her coffee, she moved to the couch. “Is that really what you think of me, Mulder? That I belong in a place like this?”

He looked at her, and she could tell he thought she’d taken offense. “No, not a place like this, exactly. Just… you know. Your normal life.”

“I think that ship has sailed,” she said a bit wistfully. In more ways than one. She tried daily not to think of the children she would never have. She failed daily.

“That’s nonsense,” he said. He grinned at her in a familiar way, and it was nice to feel somewhat normal with him again. “You’re a catch, Scully.”

She looked at him skeptically, questions in her eyes. It was a nice compliment, but all she wanted was for him to want to be the one to catch her.

“Well-” he said, probably to prevent yet another moment from getting too heated. “I guess I’m gonna go and put on a polo shirt or something. Check one of those CC&Rs off the to-do list.” He turned with a smile and headed back upstairs.

She wanted to believe him, that he really thought she was a catch. It was all she wanted. He was her everything, even though she still was too afraid to tell him so.

But it felt like it didn’t matter as long as Diana Fowley was still out there, Diana Fowleying around. She had him in every single area that mattered except one; the area in which Diana Fowley still had her beat.

PARENTI MEDICAL GROUP

ZEUS GENETICS

GERMANTOWN, MARYLAND

JUNE 1999

Diana sat in a parked car, assembling her papers. Zeus Genetics was just one of the many establishments that had been utilizing her research for alien hybrid experiments. This was supposed to be a quick progress meeting with Dr. Lev.

“I’ll wait for you here,” Alex said next to her.

The repercussions of her research over the past several years were only now beginning to come to light. She didn’t want to think about the effect her work had on innocent people. She knew it probably didn’t matter in the end; everyone was headed for Armageddon regardless. But the deeper she went, the worse she got at compartmentalizing, which was something she always thought she’d been pretty good at.

Slowly but surely, she was beginning to feel the noose tightening around her neck, of guilt, of hopelessness. She’d come too far now to ever pay penance for any of the things she’d done. She wanted to be a good person, she always had. But she’d run out of options long ago.

As she prepared to exit the car she noticed a woman with bright red hair emerge from the front door of the facility. She recognized her instantly: Agent Scully. A man came out behind her and took her hand, but she couldn’t pull her eyes away from Agent Scully, and she found herself wondering about her, curious to see that she had some kind of personal life. A life that involved making babies. It wasn’t necessarily odd or unusual; what was odd was that she’d never thought of her in that way before: as a person, a human being. Someone who wanted more out of the life Diana had pigeonholed her into.

Her eyes then drifted to this man Agent Scully was apparently making babies with and as she fully comprehended who she was seeing she swore her heart stopped dead in her chest.

It was Fox.

What are they doing at a fertility clinic?

Her mind raced through the variety of reasons they could be there. Was this an investigation? Or perhaps some other kind of procedure? Why was Fox holding her hand?

She watched them walk to a car in the parking lot, and before Agent Scully could open the door, Fox stopped to face her. Even from a distance of about fifteen yards she could see worry in Agent Scully’s eyes, maybe fear.

But then Fox did something so unfamiliar that it nearly took Diana’s breath away. He reached up to touch Agent Scully’s face, his thumb rubbing gently along her temple. The other woman’s eyes closed and she pulled his hand to her stomach. They stood like that for a good thirty seconds as Diana felt the hope draining away from her; the absolute certainty that Fox did indeed love this other woman crashing into her like a runaway freight train.

He’d never touched Diana like that, ever. Not in their entire time together. The intimacy before her was astonishing. And the way she held his hand against her abdomen was a clear indication of exactly what they’d come here for, together.

She ducked down a bit to keep hidden. She felt invasive watching them in this moment, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away.

“Huh,” Alex muttered from beside her. “Didn’t see that coming.”

“What?” she asked him. She eyed him, taking in his meaning. Was he trying to get a rise out of her? Could he possibly know about her past with Fox? And how could he? “What are you talking about?”

“Oh nothing, just never saw those two as the mommy and daddy type.”

She looked back over to the pair and silently agreed.

Kids? Fox? Not only was the sight before her unusual on its face, she happened to know for a fact that Fox didn’t want children. At least he hadn’t before.

He hadn’t with her, she completed the thought.

The implications of Fox and Agent Scully attempting to make a baby at Zeus Genetics presented a huge dilemma for Diana. She knew exactly what went on at this clinic; what went on at half a dozen fertility clinics in this area alone. The odds of them winding up at one that was involved in Project Crossroads weren’t staggering by any stretch.

But could she warn them somehow? Should she interfere? It was obviously too late to stop it, but if they knew what they were getting themselves into...

“What… should we do, Alex?”

He shrugged. “Not my problem. Not yours, either.” He looked at her. “Is it?”

“Of course not,” she replied, maybe too quickly. Maybe too defensively.

Alex pinned her with a look. “You know him, don’t you?”

“We all know him.”

“No, that’s not what I mean,” he clarified. “You know him, know him.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She wasn’t sure why she cared what Alex thought. Regardless, her skills at being a liar were of little use against a better one.

“Wow,” he said, and she knew there was no use denying it further. She sighed.

“It was a long time ago.”

“Before or after?” he asked.

“What?”

“Before, or after?” he repeated, deliberately.

“Alex, I don’t know what you’re asking,” she responded, confused. She honestly didn’t. “Before or after you? Why do you care?”

“No, Diana. Before or after you got into all of this?” He gestured everywhere, and she knew what he meant.

“Before,” she said hastily. He eyed her suspiciously.

His words, however, made her wonder. Spender had, in fact, approached her shortly after she’d started dating Fox. It never occurred to her at the time to make that connection. Was it mere coincidence? And now, with what she knew about their relationship, how could it be? Even as a strong believer in fate, this seemed far too clean.

She watched Fox leaned in to kiss Agent Scully on the forehead and open her car door. After a few seconds, they were gone.

She tried to imagine Fox as a father. She could picture it in her mind, feel it in her heart. She could almost envision it more clearly than she could envision herself as a mother.

They’d had exactly one conversation about having children and, although she hadn’t thought about it much lately, she’d lied to him when she said she couldn’t imagine it, especially right near the end of their relationship when she’d considered leaving everything behind- leaving the Syndicate behind- to fix what she had with Fox. She wondered what her life would be like if she’d chosen another path.

Her thoughts then turned to Agent Scully, to the two of them holding a baby between them, Fox looking at his partner in a way he’d never, ever looked at Diana. She felt the familiar stirrings of jealousy once again and knew this time they would remain, perhaps forever.

In this moment Diana Fowley fully grasped the grand sum of her life - and she didn’t like what she saw.

#42 HEGAL PLACE

ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA

JULY 1999 10:33 PM

He heard knocking and expected it was Scully. Ever since the IVF procedure had failed, she’d been spending more and more time at his place. Mulder never wanted to see her hurting so he welcomed it, and after their respective recoveries from the man-eating mushroom case at Brown Mountain, she’d kept even closer to his side.

Instead, when he opened the door, he once again saw the most unexpected person he could think of.

“...Diana? What are you doing here? Wh-where have you been?”

He hadn’t seen or heard from her in months, ever since the El Rico incident. When he and Scully were reinstated to the X Files, he assumed she’d gone back to Europe. Hoped, if he was being entirely honest.

“I need to talk to you. Can I come in?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea; I’m expecting company.”

She smirked. “That company wouldn’t happen to be Agent Scully, would it?”

He sighed. “What do you want, Diana?”

“It’ll only take a minute.” She made her way past him and he closed the door behind her. She walked into his living room and spun around, removing her jacket and throwing it on the couch.

“I thought you said a minute,” he said, annoyed. “Don’t get comfortable, please.”

“I’ve always been comfortable here, Fox,” she purred. She crossed her arms over her chest and removed her top in one swift motion. Before he could say anything, do anything, she pounced.

She pushed him back against the wall, kissing him fiercely. His eyes bulged and he tried to remember the last time they’d even spoken. She’d kissed him, he’d told her this wasn’t the time…

He hadn’t been clear enough. As usual.

“Diana-” he began, but she was not in the mood to listen. She reached for the bottom of his shirt and began to lift it over his head.

He panicked, thinking if Scully arrived and found Diana here, surely he wouldn’t get another pass, if he’d ever even had one in the first place.

“Stop, stop,” he mumbled, pushing her away. Thankfully, she obeyed and stepped back, looking at him, face flushed.

“This cannot happen,” he said. “If I gave you the wrong impression before, I didn’t mean to, and I’m sorry.”

“I lied to you,” she suddenly blurted.

He blinked. “What? When?”

“I did want children. I do want children, Fox. I want them with you.”

What the fuck? Where the hell was this coming from?

“What? I- Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you lied to me too, Fox,” she said. He saw tears forming in her eyes and could barely keep up.

“I lied about what?”

“About wanting children,” she said. His confusion was palpable until she uttered her next words. “I saw you, Fox. At the clinic. With her.”

His first thought was absolute confusion at being assaulted with this topic at such a random moment, but he then became extremely protective of Scully. This was her business, their business. What the hell did Diana have to do with any of it? And how did she even know about it?

“What were you doing at a fertility clinic?” he asked.

She waved the question away, and he might have pressed if he weren’t more immediately concerned about this invasion of their privacy.

“I need to know, Fox,” she said. There was ice in her stare. “Did you change your mind about wanting children? Or did you just not want to have them with me?”

He shook his head and opened his mouth to speak. He wasn’t prepared to talk about this. He hadn’t lied to her all those years ago; he hadn’t wanted to have children. Maybe his willingness to participate in this endeavor with Scully meant he’d grown, or more likely Diana was exactly right: he hadn’t wanted them with her.

“I never lied to you. This is something I wanted to do for Scully, as… as a friend.”

He knew the words were weak and untrue the moment he said them. And every time he played down his feelings for Scully he felt shame. It wasn’t the reason and they both knew it. But she charged forth anyway.

“Then it’s not too late, Fox. It’s not too late for us. To start over. To go back to the beginning.” There was desperation in her eyes he was unfamiliar with.

He blinked. “Diana, I… I don’t want to hurt you. That was never my intention. But I don’t know why you came here, why you’d make these overtures out of the blue.”

“Because I want to know, I need to know,” she said. She looked very upset. “Maybe we can work on this, figure it out. We now know the truth, the real truth. We can do this together, be parents together.” She took his hand. “We were great together, don’t you remember, Fox?” She sidled up to him, dragging a finger across his chest. “And that night… the night we spent together all those months ago… wasn’t that great, too?”

He didn’t know what to do to make her understand, to make her stop. Besides the fact that this was all in fact much too late, he did not want to get back together with her, and he had truly never pictured having children with her.

“Diana, I don’t know what you want me to say. You lay all this on me after I sleep with you one time… are you serious? This is crazy!”

She stood there in her bra, uncharacteristically vulnerable, searching his eyes. Maybe she wanted him to have some kind of revelation; admit he’d been wrong this entire time and choose her. But that was never going to happen. He hadn’t been clear and he knew it. If he had, he wouldn’t be in this situation at all, he was certain of that much.

He bent down to pick up her shirt and handed it to her. “I’m sorry if I gave you false hope, I truly am. That was my fault. And I will take responsibility for it. But this is not going to happen, Diana. And it has nothing to do with you, or whether or not I want or wanted kids. Honestly, none of that matters.”

“Then what is it?” She looked so confused and disappointed, and he couldn’t believe they were back here: that he’d made her fall for him again and he was now in the position to crush her like she had done to him all those years ago. “Tell me!”

There was only one thing to say that would make everything clear. She’d asked him already, and now he had an answer.

“Because I’m in love with her!” he exploded.

Saying the words out loud felt so liberating, so right on his lips: truth tumbling out like an inevitability. Silence permeated the apartment as his stark admission hung in the air, bouncing around the walls that had witnessed that very love grow these past six years.

Diana stared, holding her shirt to her chest, probably having expected this. He didn’t know what else to say, so he waited for her to make the next move.

“What is it about her, Fox? Really?” she asked quietly.

He knew she wanted something more out of him, something that wasn’t simply listing all of Scully’s obvious qualities on his fingers. But the truth was far more than that. And far more simple.

“She never stopped believing in me,” he said.

Diana took a long, last look and nodded slowly. She pulled her shirt back over her head, grabbed her jacket, and left his apartment for what he hoped was for good.

***

“Do you remember anything, Scully?”

They sat on his couch, remnants of sushi takeout strewn across the coffee table. The plan had been to watch a movie but he apparently preferred talking to her. She loved that about him.

“What do you mean?”

“Brown Mountain. Before they found us.”

“Oh. That.”

His fish tank gurgled and hummed, spattering aquamarine lights on the walls. She was comfortable in his apartment again, finally; the incident that shall not be named having faded mostly from her memory.

He’d kept true to his word all these weeks and the name “Diana Fowley” hadn’t escaped his lips. Scully wasn’t entirely sure how transparent she’d been, how obvious it was that she was in love with him, but as far as revealing her feelings openly she felt like it was still the wrong time to take that particular plunge. Diana Fowley was still lurking around: a cobra surely awaiting its next opportunity to strike.

“Don’t underestimate a woman,” she’d told Mulder a couple of weeks ago. “They can be tricksters, too.” They’d both known she hadn’t been talking about Karin Berquist.

Scully turned slightly from her position next to him, propping her head up with her elbow, her legs tucked underneath her. “I remember you were dead,” she answered him. “It was awful. I’ve feared the worst about you so many times already, Mulder. It should be second nature to me by now.”

“...But it isn’t?” he pressed.

“No.” She would never stop worrying for his safety, ever. “I remember the feeling more than anything, knowing you were gone. Like in New Mexico… those days that passed, how hopeless I felt. How certain I was that was it. It was loneliness unlike any I’d felt before… it was difficult to comprehend, really.”

Mulder looked at her. “I know exactly what you mean.”

She gave him a small smile, relieved that it felt like the two of them again, somehow. She could still remember being whisked away from Brown Mountain in an emergency vehicle, not knowing which way was up and which way was down and what was real, if anything. It had been terrifying then and, even now, thinking back to the possibility of being stuck inside a hallucination with no escape, it was still terrifying.

But he’d been there, right beside her, and she could feel him reaching for her even with her eyes closed.

In a single moment as their fingers touched, she’d been snapped back to reality.

“It’s disconcerting not knowing what’s real,” she continued. “It’s hard enough trusting anyone, let alone worrying about whether or not I can trust my own eyes.”

He was quiet. She realized she’d implied she didn’t trust him and she didn’t want him to think that.

“Mulder, I-”

“Scully… have you forgiven me? Really?” He looked at her and she saw pain in his eyes.

Things had been much better since their fight in the Gunmen’s basement, but she was now realizing she hadn’t officially accepted his apology. So much had happened since then; it gutted her that this had been weighing so heavily on his heart.

“Of course I have.”

He closed his eyes and as he exhaled his chest visibly deflated. “Good. That’s good.”

She wasn’t angry with him anymore, but even if she wanted to be, she couldn’t. The nature of their lives forced her reliance on him, her trust. She would be eternally entangled with him.

She knew this in her heart as much as she knew anything. She only hoped he knew it, too.

“I accused you of making this personal when I should have seen what you were doing for what it was: searching for the truth,” he continued.

She nodded. Although she couldn’t stand the mere sight of Diana Fowley, and it had definitely become personal, he wasn’t wrong.

“What matters is the truth,” he said. “It’s what we’ve taught each other, what we’ve learned from each other all these years. And I need you to know this, Scully. I’m sorry I behaved in a way that caused you to doubt me, because the truth is…” he swallowed visibly, “...I need you.”

I need you on this, Scully.

Her heart nearly stopped beating. “You do?”

“Yes, I do. Without you, everything I’ve worked for, all of the things I’ve ever searched for… it all just falls apart.”

She smiled at his words, but his real meaning still eluded her. Yes, he was talking about the work, but back in his hallway he’d muddied the lines between professional and personal. He had done that. And now he was leaving her in such a state of confusion she didn’t know when things were personal and when they weren’t anymore.

She wished they could go back in time, get a do-over. A kiss would have been the perfect way to tell each other this was more than just work, this was more than just the quest.

“You said I owe you nothing, but I do,” she said. “You’ve taught me to open my eyes, Mulder. And I’m trying to do that, not only for the X-Files, or for you, but for myself.”

“You’ve taught me the same thing, though, Scully,” he insisted.

“What do you mean?”

“You taught me not to close my own eyes to the truth, to the real answers. When you think you can prove me wrong, you’re not afraid to try.” He smiled. “You’re that last piece of my puzzle, and I need that piece to get the full picture.”

“Even when the picture is something you don’t want to see?”

He shrugged. “The truth may hurt, but it’s all that matters.”

She smiled, at last, and in this moment felt that somehow, some way, they would be okay.

“Arthur Dales was right, you know,” he continued. “About you.”

“Who?” she asked.

“Florida. The hurricane,” he reminded her. “He said I was lucky to have someone as savvy as you by my side.”

Dales had also passed out after a few more glasses of whiskey but it wasn’t his opinion that mattered anyway.

“I am lucky, Scully. Very lucky. And grateful.”

She smiled and her insides felt warm again, the same way they had in his hallway. “Even though I challenge and provoke you incessantly?” she asked.

“Especially because of that.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“I mean it. I will always want you around to prove me wrong, Scully,” he chuckled. “Always.”

She sighed and scooted closer to him, propping her feet up on his coffee table, and rested her head against his shoulder. He mimicked her actions, resting his own head on hers.

“Mulder?”

“Yeah?”

She slid her hand along the couch, the journey seemingly interminable until she found the warmth of his hand. “Do you remember the night they put you in that psych ward… you know, after the VinylRight case? Before the X-Files got shut down?”

Before, before, before. Before Diana Fowley came screaming into our lives.

“Vividly.”

“I never told you this, but…” she gathered herself. This felt important. “I did see it that night, in your room. That… creature. It wasn’t madness. And I wouldn’t have been there at all if I hadn’t believed you in the first place.”

You have to believe me, Scully. No one on this damn planet does or ever will.

He was quiet, maybe processing the weight of this. The trust she felt with Mulder was unlike anything she’d ever experienced and she wanted him to know it, to feel it the same way she did: that even when she didn’t see, when she couldn’t see, she could still see him.

She would always see him.

“I want you to know that I believe in you, Mulder. I always have.”

He tightened his grasp, squeezing her fingers. When he touched her she felt like a whole person.

“I know you do, Scully.”

He didn’t say the words aloud again, not here and now, in this time, this place. But she knew the truth.

You’re my one in five billion.

She’d never forget, because he was hers, too.

#txf #the x files #msr #fanfic #diana fowley #my fic #the whole truth

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harry-lloyd · 4 years

Link

In many ways, the horrible wig was the best thing to happen to Harry Lloyd.

The shock of platinum blonde hair, slashed to a sensible bob at his shoulders like a high-fashion Legolas, was the coif that tied Lloyd’s indelible, insufferable Game of Thrones character together: Viserys Targaryen, the petulant narcissist whose play for the Iron Throne melts along with the rest of him under a pot of molten metal poured over his head, one of the show’s first and most iconic gruesome death scenes.

The splashy HBO production was the biggest job the young actor had ever landed, and as a character with an unmistakable, unforgettable look, to boot— the better to sear into TV fans’ consciousness.

Blessedly, that unmistakable, unforgettable look in no way actually resembled him, a then-27-year-old rising star with short, dark brown hair and alabaster complexion. He played one of the most memorable characters in recent TV history on possibly the last truly massive global TV phenomenon, yet, by the grace of a wig, he was still unrecognizable.

“I kind of loved that,” Lloyd tells The Daily Beast over Zoom from the loft study in his North London home. “And I kind of loved that he died. He had this lovely arc, and he still has his place in this enormous and infamous canon.”

Given how vivid that arc is in Thrones lore, it’s almost startling to remember that he was only on five episodes of the show.

“I had my go,” he says. “I got in early and I got out early. And he didn’t look like me, which, number one, is good because he is a little shit. And so I was happy to not have people throwing stuff at me in the streets. But number two, and I didn’t notice at the time, but it has since become the biggest show on TV. It doesn’t make me worry about being typecast so much.”

In the years since becoming a scalded puddle of boiling jewels and flesh, Lloyd has been able to shapeshift through an impressive résumé of prestige TV series and award-nominated films—Manhattan, Wolf Hall, Counterpart, Legion, The Theory of Everything—relieved of the kind of limitations actors who play little shits in garish white wigs on TV’s biggest show typically shoulder.

The occasion for our conversation is yet another transformation, as Bernard Marx in Brave New World, the splashy adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s 1932 dystopian sci-fi novel. The series is the marquee original offering for Wednesday’s launch of the new Peacock streaming service, casting Downton Abbey alum Jessica Brown Findlay and Han Solo himself, Alden Ehrenreich, alongside Lloyd in an updated take on the classic work.

Brave New World thwarts the idea of a restrictive, Orwellian dystopia with one in which society is instead forced into surrendering their inhibitions. “Welcome to New London,” a prologue explains. “We have three rules. No privacy. No family. No monogamy. Everyone is very happy.”

The new series boasts modernized flourishes when it comes to style—if there had been this much sex in Huxley’s book, we would have paid far more attention to it in high school—and sensibility; some of the problematically racist and misogynistic themes and plot points have been corrected.

Lloyd’s Bernard is an upper echelon member of society, called an Alpha-Plus, whose job is to maintain social order. Throughout the series, he experiences a crisis of conscience, an existential awakening at odds with the blissful stasis he’s meant to both control and enjoy.

If a narrow escape from typecasting and a career playing snooty, megalomaniacal manchildren has meant a diverse array of opportunity for Lloyd, then Brave New World marks more new territory: It’s his first outright leading role.

Lloyd had never read Huxley’s book before being cast, but was impressed by the ambition of the script, “almost like a mega tentpole movie in scale” but esoteric and satirical at the same time. “I was like, this has the whole package if they can shoot this, but I don’t think they can.”

It took one day on set for him to catch wise to the technical prowess at play. “I was like, wow, this really is a brave new world,” he says.

Don’t worry. He promptly scoffed at himself and rolled his eyes.

It is one of the best opening lines to a profile that I’ve read, from a 2011 feature on Lloyd that ran in Britain’s The Independent: “There was a time when Harry Lloyd worried that he was forever going to be typecast—as a woman.”

It was in reference to Lloyd’s days as a student at Eton College, where the young teen’s voice had not yet broken and he was cast as women in a slew of all-male Shakespeare productions.

Here we were prepping to engage with Lloyd about the perils of typecasting following his Thrones stint, ignorant of the fact that he had already confronted the issue decades earlier.

Lloyd laughs good-naturedly when the era of fake bras and bonnets is brought up.

“I hated it,” he says. Just when he had vowed never to agree to it again, in his last year at school he was asked to play Rosalind in As You Like It, by all counts a fantastic leading part. He nailed it, and earned raves. “At an all-boys boarding school, it took balls to put on tights, as it was.” A perfectly-earned smirk at his own joke follows.

The truth is that being typecast or pigeon-holed is a stressor that followed Lloyd, who grew up in London with parents who worked in the book industry. “Sometimes it’s just the face you have at a certain age…” he says.

His first major role came at age 15 in the BBC’s 1999 adaptation of David Copperfield, opposite Daniel Radcliffe. (Adding another fascinating layer to the trivia: Lloyd himself is the great-great-great grandson of Charles Dickens.) One of his first jobs after that was playing a bullying prefect in the series Goodbye, Mr. Chips.

“I guess that’s what I looked like, and I did that a couple of times,” he says. “Then I was like, I don’t really want to just be that guy. He’s a bit of a dick. And then I think next up I played the murderer in some procedural police thing, some young kid that’s gone sideways.”

Each time he felt a box starting to close its sides around him, he actively sought out something different. Having Great Expectations, in which he played Herbert Pocket, “the loveliest, most benign chap you’d ever meet,” air months after his Thrones debut was key. But he can’t refute that, with or without a platinum wig, there’s something about the way he looks that telegraphs a certain kind of sinister character.

“If I turn up in a murder thing, it’s often me who’s done it,” he says, grinning. “I don’t want to give anything away from the stuff I’ve been in. But I don’t know, there’s something about my face that is like, ‘He could do it.’”

After he had finished filming his part on Thrones and the series was about to come out, he was cast in the buzzy West End production of the Tony-winning play The Little Dog Laughed.

If you’re familiar with the work, a satire about Hollywood illusion (and delusion) in which an acerbic, big-wig agent crisis manages her rising-star client’s pesky “recurring case of homosexuality,” you understand why it’s a fairly hilarious, if sobering, project to be involved in just as an actor’s own fame and industry profile is about to skyrocket.

“Because I was about to be on Game of Thrones, I thought, this is the time for me to get an American agent,” he recalls. “And so the American agents, when they were in London, would come and see me in this play, which basically looks at agenting and their ways with quite a big, angry magnifying glass. They would come backstage and say, ‘Look, I am not like that…’” He laughs. “It was always quite a funny way to start the proceedings.”

Having starred in episodes of Dr. Who and played Charles Xavier in Legion, not to mention his connection to Thrones, Lloyd has had his taste of the particular brand of rabid, Comic-Con fandom. Though he prefers to classify himself as “adjacent-adjacent” to that world.

While there are certainly those who will know right away that he was a Targaryen, what he gets more of is a “Wait, how do I know you?” awkward conversation. “Genuinely, people are like, ‘Hey, did I go to school with you?’ I’m at that level of renown. You can’t quite place why you might recognize me.”

Asked how life under the coronavirus shutdown has been, Lloyd is very British about the months spent with his wife and their almost-2-year-old. “We’ve done alright,” he says. “We learned how to finally kind of plan our fridge. And now we know how to do our shopping tactically. We cooked some good stuff.”

For fear of sounding “solipsistic,” to use a word employed often in Brave New World, he identifies the extended time home with typical feelings actors have throughout their career.

“You have accelerated times in your life when things happen like a dream,” he says. “Things are so fast and our whole world’s rebuilt entirely every time you get a job. And then is the come-down and the fallout.”

He remembers that feeling from when he was doing plays: the energy and pace of putting on the show, and then a few weeks after it ends there’s a massive crash.

“It feels a bit like you’re in lockdown. You stare around on a Tuesday afternoon. You don’t want to watch anything. You don’t know what to do or who to call, and you kind of lose your style. There’s been a bit of that.”

Just when things got to the point that he felt like he might lose his mind, he was contracted to record an audiobook. So for a couple of days a week, he would sit up in his “sweatbox made out of duvets” and read Great Expectations aloud for Penguin. “That saved me for sure.”

On the subject of works by his great-great-great grandfather, Lloyd used to be at a loss for what to do when people brought it up. Often they would say, “Congratulations!” on the relation, as if he had accomplished something himself by being born into Charles Dickens’ lineage. “But these days, I’ll take it, I’ve decided. ‘Yeah, thank you so much.’ It’s a nice thing to celebrate.”

The 150th anniversary of Dickens’ death was in June. There had been plans for a commemoration ceremony at Westminster Abbey that, because of the shutdown, became a Zoom event instead.

“I don’t know how many people’s deaths get a 150th anniversary,” he says. “The fact that I have any kind of personal connection with that is very much secondary. But something that I’m very proud of.”

At risk of belaboring the point, we ask if working on any of the Dickens adaptations he’s starred in on TV or recording this audiobook makes Lloyd feel any sort of profound or poignant connection to him.

He laughs. “I can’t point to a physical sensation like hairs in the back of my neck standing. ‘I feel him. It’s me and Chucky D in the room right now.’”

#harry lloyd #interview

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itslula1991 · 5 years

Text

My Jewel (In Corrections)

Hello everyone! I am very sorry for the delay in uploading this chapter but the inspiring muse is failing me lately. Here is the second part, sorry if this is too long. I hope you enjoy ❤️

Genre: Adventure, comedy, romance, fantasy

Summary

An ancient spell causes a millenary young lady to weaken, it is up to Larry and her friends to help her find the key to return her to normal while an unknown woman, along with three known individuals, and in order to proclaim her “how hers,” she try to take over a captive jewel somewhere in Egypt. (The shock of all the chaos in the girl).

Objective? The guard and the exhibits must prevent it from falling into the wrong hands while between Ahkmenrah and the girl, a romance will slowly emerge that will bear fruit over time.

Chapter 2

Nowadays…

After graduation he was able to move to a fabulous place in Queens, without any more instability, without any more worries about unpaid bills and all thanks to his good salary as a teacher when getting the job in the same career in which he was oriented for a better life. However, at night Larry still worked as a nightstand at the New York Museum of Natural History, because after all for his wax, metal and polyurethane friends, he is a hero so to speak.

Larry mentioned: "Follow everything as it was the last time.", walking happily as he toured his workplace.

"Not much has changed, Lawrence. Except for one detail.", Mr. Roosevelt mentioned in his peaceful voice.

Larry frowned in confusion: "I've been out of the museum for over three years due to my studies and I'm not very aware, what is it about?"

The sky razo remained the same, like all the inhabitants, revived by the magic of the table of Ahk, who walked their house going from one place to another, browsing other exhibitions than their own, in themselves continued the consistency of each of the corners of the enclosure in details, also the floating floor of warm color, waxed and always slippery as usual. What could have changed over the years?

Well, Larry's curiosity was answered by Mr. Roosevelt when he pointed to a museum space where a pretty girl with ornaments and Egyptian clothing, she was sitting on the bench in a neutral room conversing animatedly surrounded by four girls from different times, a girl Colonial, an Italian girl, a Greek girl and a Native American girl, sitting on the floor the women listened to her narrate, perhaps a funny story about her because the women laughed along with the young woman.

But not everything ended there, hidden behind a showcase with artifacts from the first African tribes, King Ahkmenrah allowed his striking eyes to be seen above a vessel at the level of his nose, observing the lady in question. It could be seen how the polychromatic orbs radically mutated from a deep tourmaline pigment to a brilliant green-water, and everything indicated that the change was connected according to their mood, making their eyes clearer, denoting joy or darker, showing absolute sadness, and in this case it seemed that the green color exposed light to all its essence.

"She is new, I hadn't seen her before I temporarily retired from here."

"She's a lovely young lady.", Teddy commented with acceptance towards her.

Larry smiled looking at the scene: "So that detail is Ahk and the Egyptian girl."

"This is Larry.", Sacajawea contributed her good eyesight being sweetly taken by the arm by Teddy. "Ahkmenrah has not skipped a day since she appeared. They are the same as two young people from this time playing to fall in love."

Sacajewea was tenderly made by the king to spend hours at random, other times too, choosing the hiding place behind the plants of Africa spying on that particular someone.

"I still remember the day the boy first saw the young woman.", Teddy smiled at the two teenagers.

**** Flash ****

A month ago...

It was night, and there was a little party, maybe it was the one that Larry started attending night classes to get his teaching degree.

Nothing particular happened as King Ahkmenrah came down from that balcony leaving Jed and Octavio in charge of the music.

Since Doctor McPhee already knew everything that was happening with the tablet, it was not surprising to see a figure come to life, so wandering next to one of them was not considered nonsense either.

It turned out that the aforementioned was a beautiful Egyptian girl, with light skin, hazel eyes, long brown hair, sandals, a fine long kalasiri (dress) with two straps that covered her bust made in real white linen with bows gold at his waist. She, too, was wearing a kind of short cape covering her shoulders, a two-piece cylindrical snake bracelet adorning her left arm, a small crown with a baby cobra, and a delicate pendant in the shape of a winged golden and green beetle with an ankh completing the young woman's outfit.

Ahkmenrah's face said it all, it seemed that everything happened in slow motion in his mind.

"Wow...", Ahkmenrah whispered as if he were seeing a wonder of the ancient world. "By Ra and all the gods."

Ahk's face lit up as he was dazzled by the bubbling chestnut. It was as if he were in a dream.

When he saw her speak willingly next to the Museum Director on one of the stairs, he was fascinated. No matter what she was doing, he smiled and his eyes filled with love and wonder. Ahkmenrah did not miss a single movement of the pretty girl, standing next to the desk watching her with a half-twisted smile and her gaze was as if billions of stars lit up within her eyes. The boy was indeed in love, and although not any woman managed to shake his heart as the Sheik of a harem in the past, she instantly shot him or, as the cliché is vulgarly said, love at first sight.

“I had not seen a museum more impressive than this one. It's amazing.”, she was so happy.

“I am extremely pleased that you feel comfortable, Your Highness. I will leave you with the figures of the establishment so that you can get to know the place. Miss.”, Doctor McPhee said goodbye with respect and she made a slight bow allowing her withdrawal.

Like everything an Egyptian goddess, she glamorous went down the stairs, the girl moved exploding sensuality and with a comic touch when everything happened in slow motion to the rhythm of the background music.

youtube

She ran her hair back with one hand, blinking coquettishly looking around while some exhibits threw roses at her, adoring her presence, therefore she greeted with extremely overwhelmed and gratefulness as she slid down the hall, seeming to parade like a 1999 BC model.

And to all this Ahk thought that she addressed him with that hip shake, he enlarged his smile but it was not, she followed long and the comical sound of when one track is run to another, made him raise an eyebrow reflecting a little disappointment. However, he continued absorbed in his thoughts without taking his eyes off each line of the toned and fine female figure, wandering in those curves when Mr. Roosevelt's voice made him come out of that trance.

"I don't want you to be the same as me.", Teddy spoke solemnly.

Ahkmenrah was half foolish trying to spin his answer well: "What do you mean?"

“In the sense that I have spent more than 50 years observing and not daring to say a word to my dear Sacajewea until Larry's arrival prompted me to do so. Do not hesitate or let her escape, Your Majesty.”, Teddy wisely advised as the boy sighed looking at the Egyptian girl.

The young woman with an unknown name detailed every corner and she never realized that those jade eyes did not lose sight of her.

Sac spoke very sweetly: "Teddy?", Appearing on the scene as she wrapped her arms around Mr. Roosevelt and inevitably smiled.

"He knows what he's doing, love."

It seems that the words of Mr. Roosevelt encouraged the king to arm himself with courage, inflate his chest, accommodate his deshret (crown) and approach her to relate, establish a bond, perhaps.

"This is so beautiful.", she whispered fascinated looking at the divine building and how the party continued with its magic.

"Hello.", Ahkmenrah finally said with real elegance behind her.

She gently spun on her axis as she was distracted watching the constellations form mirror balls illuminating the room in soft blue. The pretty girl greeted him with a friendly smile once they were face to face.

"Hello."

"What is your name?"

"I am Larempteh.", she introduced herself with singular elegance.

And Ahkmenrah raised an eyebrow detailing her peculiar appearance at a considerable distance, she had almost no makeup, just a little soft brown shade that accentuated her sweet eyes and bushy lashes, kohl for a discreet black liner and lipstick lipstick, privileged to possess the fleshy. Beautifull.

"High Blue Sapphire of the Nile, fourth queen of the fifth great king and sovereign of the reign of my pharaohs. It is a pleasure.", Larempteh added with graceful finesse in his speech.

She was not conceited, only that the way of presenting herself in the ancient world was that way when you were belonging to the nobility of Upper Egypt, and her voice was a caress with words for him since the girl was cordial, warm and very respectful , in addition to sweet and possessing that mix between shy and intellectual. She illuminated the whole place only with her presence.

"What a beautiful name.", Ahkmenrah recognized and she smiled, she was hypnotic and Ahk's eyes could not detach from the young woman for any reason. "Excuse me, I don't look at girls like that."

Larempteh excused him with a pleasant laugh: "Don't worry, it's fine. For that you have a view, you appreciate what you see."

"Also your English is perfect, you speak divinely, where did you learn?"

"I went to Cambridge University."

Ahkmenrah was amazed with a smile.

"Were you in Cambridge?"

"On display..."

"From the Egyptology Department?", both agreed in the sentence with surprise.

"Yes, that's right! What a coincidence!"

"Have you been there too? Wow, that's great."

"Is this your first night at the museum?"

"No, I came here in 1954 from the Giza expedition.", Larempteh said.

"How come I have never seen you before?"

"Here or Cambridge?"

"Both answers have value."

"Well, I arrived there in 1940 and have spent 14 years in my sarcophagus."

"That explains a lot."

"Yes. And here they kept me away in the warehouse until they created my showroom just around the corner from your showroom. I have had so few visitors interested in the old world that all this time I have been around my exhibition and never dared to abandon it, habit, melancholy perhaps... It is difficult to detach yourself from Cambridge once you belong 14 years."

"Indeed. It feels weird."

"It would also be due to the fame of a little docile nature that was instilled in us and I did not want to be feared by the other exhibitions. Apparently, today I took a lot of courage after 66 years being here and I left tonight finding a beautiful place."

Larempteh apparently hinted at Ahkmenrah, but Pharaoh did not catch that eulogy in the air.

"I understand you."

"I must add that it may be by fate, I would say."

"And why were we in different temples?", Ahkmenrah joked.

Larempteh found a cute shoulder: "Or maybe the gods had prepared our meeting for a suitable moment and I think it worked today."

"It is wonderful and you believe in destiny, that is fabulous."

She gave him a sweet smile with the music still playing in the background and neither she nor he stopped inspecting each other, reviewing his features, the most prestigious in her and manly in him. Larempteh decided to cut the air to get into the conversation a little more.

Larempteh said: "And, you're from around here I guess or..."

"I belonged. I am a limited time conservation."

She was stunned, Larempteh asked, "Limited time conservation?"

Ahkmenrah gave the queen a cute smile.

"Yes, I am a British museum of treasures."

She frowned and asked a little confused: "What?"

That's where the voice came into play in the king's mind.

"Great Ahk, now you will look like a clown from 4000 BC for the rest of your life."

Ahkmenrah was slow to process his own words, what he least wanted was to be an idiot in front of her and accidentally he did, he mentally reprimanded himself for the inconsistency he had just said, feeling ashamed for possibly making a bad impression within minutes of having her known.

The pharaoh spluttered trying to accommodate the correct sentence in her brain while she paid no attention to anything other than the strong blush of shame that formed from her cheeks to the bridge of her nose, therefore Larem smiled attentively at that detail. because it made her feel tender that there was still a young man like him and that she blushed in such a way, and that made him more nervous.

His throat went dry, his usej suffocated him, and Ahk swallowed thickly, omitting such awkwardness.

He adjusted his voice and said: "No, I meant that I am part of the treasures of the British Museum."

"No problem, I understood.", Larempteh laughed lightly. "And what is your name?"

"I am Ahkmenrah, the fourth king of the fourth king, the ruler of the lands of my parents and the pleasure is all mine."

Ahkmenrah showed up bowing in his presence showing Larem cordiality when he kissed the back of the queen's hand, she could not believe that that kind of young man with approximately 18 years of age, a classic conservation of 4000 years, was real. Like the man she dreamed of all her life but hearing the boy's name, she divinely opened her eyes at a certain surprise of having him face to face.

"For Isis! Are you the famous Ahkmenrah?”, Larempteh questioned with deep happiness.

Ahkmenrah frowned in confusion: "Famous?"

"Yes, in Cambridge. All the time the museum figures have talked about you, you are an icon there. By Ra! I can't believe it, I didn't think I had the chance to meet you one day and... Oh, what happiness! What an honor, son of the Sun. You must be considered a legend in the history of Egypt, not many reach one of the most remarkable and visited venues in the world as the British museum. It is a luxury that you are there then, you are very lucky.”

"Yes, I do not know if I am as important a figure in the history of Egyptian humanity as Ramses was, I knew later that he was more important than me."

"But you must have had fabulous feats to have been a part of here in the past as well."

“I suppose, although I don't entirely remember it, my memory has always been blank since I arrived. I mean, I wish they would help me a little more to understand myself and to know who I am apart from my name because all I know is that my determining home is there because my family is there. But sometimes I am only treated as a piece of archaeological piece from my Era.”

The glitter in Ahk's eyes faded slightly.

Larempteh grieved: "Oh what a shame they make you feel like this because you are a very nice boy."

Ahkmenrah analyzed the girl's words, the pharaoh blushed timidly again, his face was a poem and he frowned with a vague smile thinking that she could not not get over you by not resisting her charms.

Larempteh had a blush when reformulating his sayings: “Sorry, I didn't mean it like that, it was not my intention to bother you. I mean, you're cute in the sense of your soul.”

“You don't care, I've never been told before. It is precious that it comes from you. Thank you."

Larempteh smiled at Ahk's intense gaze, wiping a slight perspiration from her dress against her palms.

"You do not have to thank. After all, you do have a splendid shine and impressive eyes, they attract attention, they are very pretty.”

Ahkmenrah did 'the thing' with his smiling mouth, showing off his defined cheekbones.

"And maybe it must be because I just have them in the middle of my face.”, Ahkmenrah built a good sense of humor in which she laughed refinedly. "I also like your eyes, they are very warm and sweet. Since they are conspicuous and shocking to the delight of others, it would be considered a crime not to appreciate them in such a way nor are they how to be wasted.”

Queen Larempteh's eyes sparkled. An action that made her smile.

"Thank you. So your family is in the British museum, huh? It's great to have your parents nearby in one place or someone by your side to remind you of where you came from.”

“Yes, the boys made me stay close to them and it was also to keep my board safe. But don't worry, it's just a long story that I'll tell you already.”

"Okay, no inconvenience.", Larempteh said quietly.

"And where are yours?"

"I do not know. I am adrift just like you with my mind.”

"Oh I'm sorry."

"Do not worry, nothing happens. I suppose it is part of our life as museum exhibits having to find pieces of ourselves at random to feel complete. It's just a matter of divine intersession.”

"We can change the subject if you want."

"As you like."

Ahkmenrah watched her closely: "Dynasty XIX? I suppose."

"Yes, how did you know?", Larempteh cackled with sophistication.

She was charmingly curious to tuck a strand of hair behind her right ear, revealing one of her sparkling triangle-shaped hoops and elegant burgundy nail varnish.

"About the above, it is that you have an unseen face and it is impossible for you to go unnoticed. My guess is that you happen to be an old relative with proximity to Nefertari's family ancestors or perhaps it is because she has reincarnated in you."

Ahkmenrah learned to maintain his cordiality by behaving like a great nobleman, he was taught that his feelings should be fair and necessary before anyone but it seems that Larempteh appeared only to make him break the rules, disobeying his archaic teachings.

Well, Ahk always did, but Larem made it worse, like a fever with no disastrous results.

What he could never hide was a dazzled observing of her tangible beauty, he winked at her giving her a warm smile indirectly telling Larempteh how extremely beautiful she was.

Perhaps the young man hinted that the girl would be a descendant of the most important queen that Egypt had, making her an extremely attractive goddess for her taste and reach.

Larempteh thought, "No, I don't think that's the case either. Well, one knows who it comes from to reincarnate as a living human god on Earth, but one of my parents may have had the honor of belonging to the offspring of the Nefertari's lineage from the many children she had. Perhaps I am some great-granddaughter or great-great-granddaughter, as were the many siblings I had."

"The hundreds of kings who claimed your love should tell you."

Ahkmenrah guessed vehemently. And how not to do it? If she radiated sweetness and owned an exquisite exotic image; how it was not possible that the kings would not argue the hand of that venerable woman.

"No, well, yes, in part, but it was my older sister who received ninety-nine point nine percent of all these courtships.", Larempteh let out a natural laugh.

"Sister.", Ahkmenrah was not interested, rather he was unsuspecting. Shocked by the fact that her beauty is not praised.

"Yes. You see, Dad wanted two male rulers, one who was a strong pharaoh and who knew how to command the kingdom and another who was a champion in battles, especially in Kadesh. As you see, it could not be, he had my sister and me some time after that event. And considering that my father's wish was fulfilled very late, yes, he had more secondary children, but she and I were the eldest daughters of the family and for Real rules we had the privilege of direct access to lead a nation for being of pure lineage. Although something happened along the way and it was damaged or rather someone made history change its course regarding that. A long story that I will tell you.", Larempteh commented with a frown with a smile naturalizing his story.

"And why her and not you, how is that possible?", Ahkmenrah used a tone of Royal disbelief.

"It was just that she was extremely beautiful.", Larempteh just shrugged her shoulder in a cute way continuing the thread of praise. "She was so crazy though."

"I am sure she does not exceed the honey of your voice or your delicate presence.", Ahkmenrah said raising his jaw with elegant bearing.

The young queen did not know where to look, and of course, if Ahk's electric eyes did not dare to detach themselves from his youthful features.

Larempteh was intimidated by these charming courtships and tilted her face to the side a little hiding a faint blush keeping a thin smile as she tilted her head to later observe him.

"Excuse my daring but I couldn't stop watching you since I saw you. It's just that you're more beautiful than the Giza pyramids.", Ahkmenrah complimented her and the girl felt another strong blush take over her face.

In a delicate tone, Larempteh said: "How divine.", stunned with a slightly strange smile wandering her lips for all the praise she got from him.

"I spent 54 years wrapped in dirty linen bandages, locked in a sarcophagus and after waking up 66 consecutive nights to meet you, that's divine. You are a precious, beautiful creature."

Ahkmenrah after that praise, smiled sideways showing his immaculate teeth, without showing lewdness or perversion, it was like a seductive tactic in him.

The queen laughed in elegant confusion as she said: "Thank you?"

Obviously, in her time she was not very familiar with more than 100 compliments in a row due to her real beauty and so many coming from a single pharaoh, it was something intense but that was still a nice touch on her part.

"Don't be thankful since the pharaohs used to have an aggressive and unkind image. You should be suspicious.", Ahkmenrah commented regaining his posture of standing up.

Larempteh said: "I'll be careful then."

And her whispering was a little less than what's called suggestive, perhaps being eerily suggestive was a healthy seduction tactic to start the romance game.

"Although if someone stands between me and your beauty, probably the king of 4000 years ago, perhaps he will make an exception. But as long as none of that happens..."

"I knew what pharaohs were like in our time. Not tolerant, only in tiny exceptions.", Larempteh reaffirmed.

Ahkmenrah leaned down again, bringing the female hand to her lips, placing a kiss on her knuckles.

"I am kind, believe me not unless..."

The pharaoh straightened up, winking at the girl again so she smiled at him causing Ahk to wrap himself in the infinite tenderness of her beautiful grimace and lose herself in the brilliance of her precious eyes.

Maybe it was because of an attraction that burned inside her or an irrepressible instinct to want to touch her, even if it was to take something from her to remember her before returning to the darkness of her sarcophagus, extinguishing that sadness and going to 'sleep' happily and waking up a bit more alive by an obtension, and then the pharaoh felt the need to approach very slowly to Larem's face reviewing his eyes for each of its smooth details directing his lips to hers, who incidentally, looked at that mouth with reverie.

Larempteh for her part closed her eyes at the preamble of the stimulus in which her heart beat a thousand times stronger than before, announcing that perhaps she would have her first kiss under the beautiful blue light of the constellations. How romantic would it be, right?

She stood still with her eyelids hiding her pupils without startling when Ahkmenrah gently cupped a hand on her right cheek, it was such a sweet touch, he transmitted so much peace to her from the first moment.

Ahkmen closed the distance between the two more, and more, and more, and more, and more until Tilly's voice was heard as he ran to Laaa through the hall interrupting the moment.

"Laaa, no! Don't touch that! Those aren't headphones! It's a defibrillator!"

Ahkmenrah and Larempteh suddenly opened their eyes and immediately regretted the situation in which they found themselves and laughed without penalty or glory.

Larempteh said with a laugh: "How pitiful."

The queen touched her own face that burned from the strong blush, but she continued to laugh, being accompanied in good humor by the loud and manly laughter of the pharaoh.

That commotion where Tilly chased Laaa, made Rexy and Trixy freak out and make sounds minimally chasing away the crowd causing Larempteh to dodge the alpacas, the flames, the terracotta soldier and the Vikings fleeing in terror in his direction. .

There was a moment when the girl lost her balance due to their action and it was there when she fell into the arms of Ahk, who reflexively held her tight by the waist like the gentleman she is. That caused her to sink her face into the hollow of the precious and soft neck of the king, thus forming an electricity that was made at the clash of skin against skin and at that moment a spark ignited between the two upon closer inspection.

"Well, I must reaffirm it, now more than before, what divine eyes you have."

Ahkmenrah praised the color of the girl's irises that now mutated to the striking honey pigment, giving Larempteh a soft grimace on her lips as she watched him from behind her thick lashes as she smiled tenderly, with her too, of course losing herself in his eyes.

**** End of Flash ****

@sherlollydramoine @xmxisxforxmaybe @txmel @moon-stars-soul @sunkissedmikky

#ahkmenrah #rami malek #night at the museum #natm #natm ahkmenrah #night at the museum 3

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kevinspaceyarchives · 5 years

Photo

Looking Closer at Kevin Spacey, Star of American Beauty

by MATT MCCORMICK, Texas A&M Battalion Staff writer | November 22, 1999

(photo not included with the original article)

Kevin Spacey established himself as one of Hollywood's most gifted actors with his Oscar-winning role in 1993's The Usual Suspects. Known for his ability to lose himself in a character, Spacey went on to star in such films as Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and The Negotiator.

His new film, American Beauty, has opened to widespread critical acclaim and box office success across the country and has many people saying his name and Academy Award in the same sentence again. The Battalion participated in an interview with the actor as he talked about his latest film and the character he plays, Lester.

Battalion: When you take on a character, you always have a different look. How do you prepare for a character role?

Kevin Spacey: It starts with usually a discussion. Sometimes you might have a notion of how somebody might look, just from reading it. Or, in fact, it might be described by the writer. It usually starts with a discussion with the director. How do you see this character looking? How do you see them dressing? Do they have a particular walk or way of moving that's different? So I usually try to collaborate with the director. Then you have other people come on. You have a production designer who decides how your desk in your office is going to look and a costume designer who may bring in a huge rack of stuff. All of those things go in to make a sort of image and a picture of what someone will look like. Hopefully you do it in connection with all the other departments. You're not showing up in a jacket that, against that wallpaper, looks like hell.

In this movie, there was this transformation that Lester had to go through, and we didn't have the luxury of shooting in sequence. In the morning, we created Lester, and we had his kind of pear-shaped, defeated pasty look with slightly larger costumes and really white, horrible makeup. I slumped a great deal. And then in the afternoon, I'd be shooting the later stuff. I had to be in the best shape possible during the whole shooting of the movie. We just sort of created the earlier stuff in the movie through performance.

Battalion: When you were shooting some of the earlier stuff later in the day, would you go work out?

Kevin Spacey: It's embarrassing to admit, but we had a muscle truck. It was like a roving gym. It was a big moving van, but they made a gym out of it. I'd go in there before a particular scene -- we had target dates for particular scenes -- so we worked toward the target, I and the trainer, knowing I had to have a certain kind of build for that next two weeks. If they needed me to be a little bloated, he would let me go out and eat pizza and banana splits and all sorts of stuff.

Since there was never a moment in the screenplay when there was an epiphany, or a sudden change, we never wanted the audience to see him change. We wanted there to be an almost seamless and organic evolution of who he became.

Battalion: Mentally, what makes you draw into this Lester character?

Kevin Spacey: I just think I understood, maybe like most people do, the feeling of wanting to break out and do new things. I was on that sort of journey for the last couple of years, and this gave me the opportunity to go to a new place. I think everybody understands the feeling of wanting to shake it up and try new things. Who wouldn't want to tell their boss what they're really thinking about them?

Battalion: Lester's transformation was shaped by the music of his youth -- What kind of music shaped your youth?

Kevin Spacey: A lot of that music I loved, and Sam (Mendes, director) was very specific about music very early on about the kind of cuts he was going to try to get. The first issue in movies is "can you get the rights?" Will the songwriter or their estate let you use it? We got very lucky with a lot of cool music. You forget the '70s and the trajectory of what that music was and all the artists. We found something in common. We say "Wow, that's the kind of music I would listen to in my garage." So I listened to a lot of the similar stuff that Lester listened to. He's two years older than me.

Battalion: In the movie, the garage is Lester's personal space. Did you have a choice in the kind of props used in there?

Kevin Spacey: Sam and I started talking about the garage sort of becoming Lester's sanctuary. It clearly had been taken over by just storage, you know. It lost its...whatever a garage might have been in his life earlier. We decided to go back and find all the things Lester would have had if he was still in college. That sort of became his place. He left the cold and rather stark home inside that house and slowly moved his life out into the garage. One of my favorite images is that red car sitting in the driveway. He's just shaking it up.

Battalion: What's your stage background? What was it like having somebody like Sam directing this film?

Kevin Spacey: I've been incredibly fortunate with first-time or second-time directors. I like it a lot because there's no pattern to their way of working. They really are open to almost anything. So you find that they are willing to take more chances. They're not sort of entrenched in their own ideas.

And he kept us informed. He would always show us storyboards and how he wanted a scene to be framed -- what he wanted it to look like, how he wanted us to look in the frame. So I knew all that going in, but I could have never known going in that his use of images, his use of music, his feeling and mood cinematically was startling.

Battalion: I love the narration in the movie. Was it scripted?

Kevin Spacey: All of the narration was there [in the script]. Sam and I, one day, needed a guide track to give the editors and we went up to a small room with a recorder, like these little ones, and we recorded all of Lester’s voice-overs. And I never redid it. There was something about not knowing what those images would be that that dialogue went well with.

Battalion: Your movie shatters the vision of a utopian suburbia. If you had a message you'd like the audience to take away from this, what would it be?

Kevin Spacey: Let me play devil's advocate with the premise of your question because I don't think it reveals anything specifically about suburbia any more than it reveals anything about urban life. I think where this film takes place, the fact that these two very specific families are examined, in no way shape or form means that we're trying to say this is what life is like in suburbia. I think this is what life is like for a lot of people.

Battalion: Tell us about the catchline, "Look Closer".

Kevin Spacey: We actually give our production designer the credit for that. She cut that out of a fashion magazine. She was going through a fashion magazine deciding what should go on certain walls and she decided "look closer" should be on my bulletin board at the office. And that wasn't the campaign, but what happened was, they kept screening the movie and finally the Dreamworks marketing people said "What does that say behind his desk?" So they saved themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars in marketing meetings to find a concept because it actually turns out to be pretty accurate.

Battalion: What would you say to those who are upset that an older man is having a relationship with a teenager?

Kevin Spacey: I think that anybody that feels uneasy about it, it's uneasiness about the subject, not uneasiness with the actual relationship because there isn't one. There's a fantasy life that Lester has. There is no relationship until the very end of the film, where he makes the right decision.

Keep it in the context of the film. Those two people, what they learn from each other, I think is breathtaking. I think its the most uplifting message you could possibly have.

Battalion: The movie is about finding beauty. What things do you find beauty in?

Kevin Spacey: Sometimes the things that are presented as beautiful or the things that we think are beautiful sometimes makes us miss the things that are really truly beautiful, but appear mundane. I think that's true with people, too. People judge people on how they look or how they dress, how they behave and how they act -- I think of the two characters from the film...you first meet them and you think a certain thing about them, And as the film goes on they begin to emerge.

Battalion: You've got the Hollywood star of fame. What is involved with that?

Kevin Spacey: It started with a fan club. They recommended to the Hollywood chamber of commerce that they consider me for that. I didn't think anything happened like that until you were much older. In fact, all of my colleagues who came that day said "we don't know anybody as young as you, that's pretty cool." There's a certain part of that stuff that's a little Hollywood cheesy, but what actually made the day amazing is it actually became a pretty personal thing. I think it meant even more to all the people that have been working with me than it did for me. But I understand already that there's gum on it.

#Kevin Spacey #This Day in Spacey History #American Beauty #Texas A&M Battalion #Texas A&M #interview #interviews #articles #Lester Burnham #Kevin explains Angela and Lester for the woke folks #Walk of Fame #Look Closer #November 22 #1999

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inapat13 · 4 years

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«How would you start this movie?/Well, if I had my choice, it wouldn't start at all. It would already have been. And it wouldn't end either.»

Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond is a documentary by Chris Smith released in 2017. The one and a half hour movie follows the process of Jim Carrey portraying Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon, a big hit from 1999. We can see Carrey during the shooting of the film in 1999, but we are also the witnesses of his testimony years later, for the documentary. Indeed, with the aid of amazing archives, Jim Carrey talks about his state of mind at the time and how this period, this movie, had a big influence on his life and his career afterwards. Jim & Andy is an intense documentary where the viewer has the feeling that the main actor is lost, in his job and life, as much in 1999 as in 2017. The documentary allows reflection on the actor's approach to a role and it questions us: how far can someone go when playing someone else?

I think it's important to talk about the many archives that are in the movie. First of all, we mainly have insane footage from the sets of 1999. Indeed, someone did a making-of of the process, which allows the viewer to discover what was happening behind the scenes. What we know is that Jim Carrey, portraying Andy Kaufman, allowed a video crew to document his performance for Man on the Moon. Carrey kept it for years and nobody had seen it before Chris Smith's documentary. Those images seem to be timeless: they're so real, so much at the heart of the process, that they appear ageless. The public sees everything: Jim Carrey on set, in his trailer, while being made-up... But we also witness his changing personality. It is very clear when he is Jim Carrey or Andy Kaufman or Tony Clifton. Indeed, the real subject of the documentary is the search for identity and the meaning of life for Carrey. Those archives come to highlights the moment of the star's life when all those questioning started. And, if these images shows how Jim Carrey prepared for his rôle and how «crazy» he went, they also shows how it affected the crew, the other actors and the director. The director, Milos Foreman appears to also be one of the heroes of the movie. His patience and his professionalism led him to successfully manage his main actor. In the archives we can see Foreman calling Carrey «Andy» or «Tony» when the actor is portraying each one of them; and if by mistake he called him «Jim», Carrey unleashed his anger saying he didn't know who Jim was. Those archives are incredible because they strengthen the idea of a movie which had its own time frame. Everything was paced by Jim Carrey's preparation and performance; everyone had to know what to call him at what time. And, when he took it too far, everyone had to know how to deal with it. To be able to see such a moment of creation, to witness just how far someone can go when acting makes this footage very precious to my mind. They are a very valuable testimony to the act of creation but also to the quest of identity and the profound uneasiness of Jim Carrey at that time.

However, the excerpts from this making-of aren't the only archives. As said before, this documentary is mainly about identity and the meaning of life and goes as much for Jim Carrey as for Andy Kaufman. Indeed, the movie tries to study the lives of these two men at the same time. Kaufman was a very famous American humourist and actor. A specialist of the absurd, he died in 1984 at only 35 years old but he marked the American public. Thus, Jim and Andy is also composed of archives of Kaufman (sketches, interviews, stand-up shows...) and of Carey (movies, interviews, sketches...). Chris Smith retraces both of their careers to show the similarities and why Jim Carrey really takes playing Kaufman to heart. The use of those archives leads us to understand how Carrey came to such a level of commitment, toying with his own mental health. When we add Carrey's comments in 2017, we clearly understand that Man on the Moon was a turning point in his life, mindset and career. By multiplying archives of Carrey and superposing archives of Kaufman, Chris Smith tries to «explain» these two characters and to highlight that all they wanted was to find what the meaning of life is, something Carrey is still searching for.

The way Jim Carrey has of merging into the Kaufman character is called Method Acting. When we search for a definition of this method we can find this explanation: «Method acting is a range of training and rehearsal techniques that seek to encourage sincere and emotionally expressive performances, as formulated by a number of different theatre practioners. These techniques are built on Stanislavski's system, developed by the Russian actor and director Konstantin Stanislavski and captured in his books An Actor Prepares, Building a Character, and Creating a Role […] Among the concepts and techniques of method acting are substitution, "as if", sense memory, affective memory, and animal work (all of which were first developed by Stanislavski). Contemporary method actors sometimes seek help from psychologists in the development of their roles.» It appears to be a famous method, particularly in the United States. We've heard of Jared Leto's preparation for Suicide Squad where he was sending condoms and other horrors to his fellow cast members, only to portray the Joker in the best way possible (quite a failure by the way). And we also know how Christian Bale can put on or lose a lot of weight to play someone. All of that comes under Method Acting. For Man on the Moon, Jim Carrey disappeared little by little to give space to the ghost of Kaufman. What we see in Chris Smith's documentary is that from the moment Carrey woke up, till he went to bed again, he wasn't Jim Carrey anymore but only Andy Kaufman or Tony Clifton. At one point the actor even explains that Andy has come to play in his own movie; to tell his own story. Looking at this footage, we don't know what to think. It seems more than just preparation. Carrey really appears absent; just as if he didn't exist for the shooting time. There is a particular moment where it's shown. Jim Carrey has to replay the famous altercation between Andy Kaufman and Jerry Lawler, a professional wrestler. Lawler plays himself, and he was a good friend of Kaufman's in real life, even though for the audience they pretended to hate each other. When Lawler met Carrey, it was a disaster. Carrey acts like Andy, even backstage, for the rest of the movie. He's constantly teasing and provoking Lawler, which lead to a hostile relationship where Lawler chases and is violent to Carrey. Jerry Lawler says that his acting is far from what Andy was like and that he isn't «method acting» but that he's just a moron, disrespecting Kaufman's memory. At this point, the viewer can be lost. So, is Jim Carrey really «possessed» by Kaufman's spirit? Or is he just taking the act and the prank too far? Even if I'm usually kind of sceptical about this kind of method, I have to say that it seems really real for me. In my eyes Carrey doesn't seems to have any awareness of himself anymore. This feeling is strengthened by Jim Carrey's interview in the present. He comments on all these moments just as if it wasn't him. He has perspective on his mindset at the time. Indeed, the documentary allows him to express his opinion on life, identity but also the acting profession. It's a moment for him to show the audience how he sees himself and his career. How it affected him, and still is affecting him. Jim Carrey is very calm and clear-headed about all of this, about the making of Man on The Moon, and it allows the viewer to take a compassionate look at him and to compensate for his craziness at the time.

In the end, Jim and Andy: The Great Beyond, is a multifaceted documentary. It takes us into the mind of two great and fragile personalities. By presenting these two men, Chris Smith allows Jim Carrey, and us, to face reality and discover our place in it. And, by offering us these previously unreleased archives, Smith also give us an extraordinary moment of cinema.

Lola Puel.

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