#Seems like some of the directors who worked for CBS felt the same way.

[fyperrymason]

“I remember hearing two directors at NBC discussing you (Raymond) one time, and one director said to the other one ‘Whenever you get stuck for a shot, just go in on Raymond Burr’s eyes.’” - Bobbie Wygant

#oldhollywoodedit #Perry Mason #raymond burr #tvedit #The Case of the Lucky Legs #gif #bobbie wygant #3.10 #1959 #1950s #close up #Seems like some of the directors who worked for CBS felt the same way. #There's a scene in an episode where Perry talks to a client in jail & there's a barrier between them that hides the bottom half of his face. #I can't remember what episode it's from...it's not in Season 1 or 2.

[literateleah]

the paradox of emily prentiss’ audience perception and character design

some of y’all about to be real mad at me, but it must be said:

emily prentiss’ character design makes no sense: my personal opinion + an objective analysis

i think it can be challenging to separate the versions of characters we have in our little brains from actual canon content, but doing so is important for understanding what those characters are truly like, especially within the context of their environment and in contrast to others around them. plus developing a deeper understanding of the media we consume is super fun and interesting! with that being said: emily prentiss should not work for the fbi and here’s why (in three parts regarding who’s responsible: cbs, paget, and fans) (sit down and grab a snack i promise this is over 3k words)

quick disclaimer: i don’t dislike emily at all! that’s my girl, i just looked closer and realized some funky things the writers did and felt the need to analyze her of course: so let’s get into it

part one: what cbs did

cbs set the stage for emily’s introduction on the heels of the departure of lola glaudini as elle greenaway! lola has clarified that she decided to leave the show because filming in los angeles was not the best environment for her personally, and after one successful season on a major network (but not much established long term plot or drama beyond elle’s departure as a character) a consistent ensemble cast was required- particularly because the bau had been criticized for being predominantly male in the first few episodes of the show and not much development was given to penelope or jj yet. enter emily prentiss.

for the duration of seasons 2-3ish, emily was framed as a chip off the block that was elle greenaway, just slightly…richer? in her first few episodes emily was hesitantly polite but ambitious, clean cut, intellectually concise and held her own within the team. she seemed equal parts intimidated and frustrated by her male superiors (gideon, hotch) but certainly proves herself among other profilers. her childhood was explored only within reference to her strained relationship with her mother (which was only ever referenced once more after the fact) and we received a short overview of her educational and career history in her first few episodes. emily fit right into the hole elle had left, and didn’t have many major storylines yet.

seasons 4-6 brought a bit more development and depth to emily’s character! she begins dropping more snarky remarks, one liners, and socially deepening her relationships with the other team members. this seems more within the lines of elle’s design, but emily arguably took more time to grow into her place within the team. during the foyet arc she was vulnerable and supportive, and the doyle arc gave her some independence and agency she didn’t have previously. this era also solidified her appearance and persona as more edgy, which falls in line with general fanon perception of her character (especially when compared to jj or penelope). i can’t address this era or season 7 without mentioning that cbs was actively trying to remove paget from the cast, similar to how they did to aj cook as well. paget has spoken about this instance before, and i believe it slightly affected her portrayal of her character, and “lauren” was somewhat of a goodbye for both paget and emily (thus why she wished for mgg to direct since they were best friends).

season 7: in my opinion, one of the best seasons for emily. she was wisened and deeply wounded by her experiences with doyle, which was understandable of course. she returned to the team she loved and learned to appreciate life in a different way, remaining mature during this time period as well! though her departure was a bit less than graceful and sudden at the end of this season, it made sense compared to some other exits the team had seen.

now *sigh* all the rest.

paget as emily appears in two separate guest appearances (once in s9 and once in s11, and she is referenced offscreen as well) before permanently reprising her role as unit chief of the bau. these appearances were most likely to boost ratings and get the team back together (i.e. 200) or just to pepper in international cases (tribute). emily’s personality remains pretty consistent here, just more mature and comfortable in leadership positions (seeing as she is running an entire branch of an international law enforcement organization). then season 12 hit.

upon the departure of thomas gibson as hotch, cbs reached out to paget to see if she would be interested in fulfilling her role as emily within a longer term unit chief position. i’ll get into why this is wack in a few paragraphs, but the remainder of her time on the show is spent on a mature portrayal that seems very distant from her previous versions. emily is more authoritative, gives orders with ease, and has no qualms about leading a team of agents or even receiving promotion offers as director of the entire bureau.

thus concludes a general summary of the canon content cbs gave us as viewers. now let's talk about what they didn’t give us, regrettably

the primary aspect of emily’s design that comes to mind for many is her queer coding. though not much was to be expected from cbs, a prime time cable tv network, each of her relationships on the show (all with men) seemed oddly forced, and without much chemistry as compared to the SOs of other main characters. rumors of scrapped plotlines have floated around about what may have been, but the ultimate lack of acknowledgement of any queer characters in the main ensemble still leaves a feeling of disappointment to audiences, and leaves more to be desired as for how emily navigates social bonds.

part two (sidebar): what paget did

i think it could be agreed within audiences that paget brewster’s portrayal of emily made the role what it was! her dry witty delivery and emotional prowess combined with sitcom acting experience made her performance a mainstay for years. i think she did the best she could with a confusing and at times flat characterization, and brought the role to life.

paget also heavily contributes to fanon indirectly with her comments outside of the show (press, cameos, twitter etc). her general continued interest and fondness for the role post production affects fan perception, particularly in what she chooses to elevate and comment on. she and aj have both spoken about viewing jemily content, and paget and thomas have both also commented on hotchniss. most cast members feel free to comment on their characters in the appropriate timing, and seem open to discussing fanon ships and theories outside of canon!

part three: what fanon did

as we can tell from this fan space as well as the presence on insta, tik tok and twitter, fans LATCHED onto emily super quickly. she’s remained a favorite over the years, and this fan persistence is what brought her back so many times after leaving (so many times). in my opinion, queer coding and a bolder female trope (in contrast to her female counterparts) are the main pulls because they resonated with so many fans- new and old. with that being said, newer fans of the show in the past year in particular have been heavily influential in fanon, solely because of the large influx of fan content and popularity of it.

fan content began to take coding and bite size moments and snippets from the show as canon, and cemented it into much of the content and discourse they created. these small pieces of emily’s character are significant, but have become magnified by how easily they are to share and edit. for example, a collection of catchy one liners from emily over the seasons makes for a great video edit intro, or gifset! there’s absolutely no problem with this content, it just all combines to create a certain fanon perception no character escapes (this isn’t a phenomenon limited to emily or the cm fandom!)

these droves of content also solidified emily’s personality as much more defined, but at the same time, simplified it in a way that’s slightly harder to explain.

fanon: more emo/goth than canon basis

fanon: more introverted/anti social than canon basis

fanon: more violent/chaotic when canon emily is relatively well mannered and doesn’t start many conflicts (particularly in the workspace)

fanon: much less maternal when canon emily displays desire on multiple occasions (even crossing professional borders) for children, particularly teenage girls (possibly projection)

(again, nothing wrong with this interpretation at all and it still varies! This is just a generalization based on most of the popular content i have seen)

part 4: why it doesn’t work

let me start with this: emily prentiss does not like her job.

we don’t receive much in depth information about emily’s internal feelings and thoughts towards her mother beyond resentment. this stems from wanting to make it on her own, as a professional and as an individual (cough cough college deposits). this makes emily’s insistence on proving herself to authority figures in her earlier seasons is interesting to watch in different circumstances. she cites her experience and denies help from her mother when justifying her placement in the bau to hotch, she is extra vigilant about being helpful on her first case with gideon, etc. nevertheless, emily forges her own path outside of diplomacy and becomes a successful profiler and agent, with the help of her privilege, wealth and name whether she likes it or not. but if we read between the lines and fill in the blanks cbs neglected, these ambitions may subconsciously be oriented towards pleasing her mother.

example one: emily’s authority issues go further than just “rebellion” or “anarchy”, she frequently questions the ethics and sustainability of the work that the bau does. every team member does this, but emily much more so than anybody else.

in “amplification”, emily almost breaks federal protocol to inform civilians of anthrax threats. she butts heads with both hotch and rossi on this front, and ends the episode with having a conversation with rossi about the ethics of lying in their line of work. emily resigns to a solemn “it be like that” and moves along, accepting this reality.

on multiple different occasions emily laments to derek about the darkness she sees on the job, and it’s shown that this gets to her quickly on particularly bad cases. this is another contradiction of the design that she can supposedly “compartmentalize” better than others on the team, when she cannot unless the lives of others are at risk (doyle arc, s7 finale).

emily also responds in this way to many cases involving children, a similarity to jj many don’t notice upon first watching the series. “seven seconds” and “children of the dark” come to mind, during the latter in which emily is prepared to cross multiple professional lines to adopt a teenage girl left orphaned by the case, until hotch stops her and establishes that her emotions can’t rule her judgement on the job. regardless of hotch’s thoughts about her attempted caretaking abilities, these actions and impulses deeply contradict the typical bureaucratic pathways of the work the bau does.

the looming reputation of her mother’s diplomatic history hangs over emily, and after going to law school and working for the cia, she most likely did want to forge her own path as far away from being a socialite: being a spy. her inner nature doesn’t always reflect this profession, and leads me to believe that with her knowledge of psychology, law procedure and care for children: emily prentiss might be more inclined to working in social work, placing suffering children and teenagers in homes they deserve.

and finally, the hill i will die on: emily prentiss was an bad unit chief

this wonderful post touches on my general sentiment, but there were many reasons as to why emily prentiss’ career arc makes little to no sense (plot holes included).

first: her background. emily attended chesapeake bay university as well as yale and achieved a ba in criminal justice. keep in mind that though timelines evidently don’t exist in the cm universe, emily prentiss is ONE YEAR older than aaron hotchner (for context). in her first episode, she professes that she has worked for the bureau for a little under ten years in midwestern offices- something the audience laters knows to not be true. emily worked with the cia and interpol as a part of a profiling team and undercover agent up until roughly TWO YEARS before her canon introduction. plot holes and time gaps aside, this makes me wonder, why didn’t she just say the cia was a backstop without revealing the highly confidential nature of her work with doyle (similar to jj’s state department backstop and cover story)? penelope or hotch could have easily accessed her file and seen that she did not in fact have experience with the bureau in midwestern offices recently, and given the fact that erin strauss set up her bau placement, i’m presuming these formalities or references were overlooked.

second: her experience within the team. emily worked as a part of the bau with the bureau for roughly 6 or 7 years. after this, she is invited to run the entire london branch of interpol, one of the most renowned international law enforcement organizations. i’m surely not the most knowledgeable on requirements or standard timelines for such matters, but with the fact that emily had never led a team in her life (not in the bau or interpol previously) and had roughly 10 years of field experience, i don’t believe she would have ever realistically been considered eligible to run the whole london department.

third: her return to the bureau. fanon depiction of their relationship aside, if you believe aaron hotchner’s last wish before going into witsec was to entrust his team to emily prentiss, you’re dead mistaken. bringing emily back was clearly a pull for ratings after the loss of two main characters (hotch and derek), but logistically a bad decision. let’s suppose emily has had 4 or 5 years of experience in london now, this established authority position would be unlikely to change at the drop of a hat, even for old teammates or friends. also considering how close they were after a decade of working closely in bureaucratic and field contexts, i firmly believe hotch would have referred jj for the job of unit chief but that’s another discussion for another time.

emily’s reign as unit chief is odd, because of the many chaotic storylines crammed into it. but amidst bad writing and viewings plummeting, emily’s character is completely flattened. completely. emily is unrecognizable, both in appearance (that god awful wig) and personality. at times she acts as a complete wise authority, giving orders and delegating local authorities as hotch did. but at other times she makes multiple illegal, emotional, and incorrect judgement calls based on personal circumstances that lead to further chaos (deleting the recording of her and reid’s mexico conversation and reprimanding luke in “luke” for the exact same thing she did in season 6 even though she enabled her to do so come to mind).

i’m not sure if this is due to paget trying to find her footing in the role again, or the writer’s bad decisions towards the end of the show wrecking any previous design for their ensemble. then, there’s the infamous “wheels up” scene in s13e1. notoriously cringey, this seems like a vague caricature of something rossi would say many years in the past (the same goes for her pep talk in “red light” in the hunt for diana reid). these moments are meant to mature emily in the audience’s eye, but instead completely removed her from who we understood her to be, and made her an unreliable leader.

part five: and why it does

in theory, emily was a bolder foil to jj, similar to elle who she arguably replaced at first. she came into her own, and stands as a more uniquely developed character than almost any other in the main ensemble. she isn’t as maternal or domestically inspiring as canon jj, less bright and sunny than penelope, not quite as stoic or intimidating as derek or hotch. And yet at the same time, she’s a fairly blank slate. stripping fanon content away entirely, canon emily has few defining traits (all of which are constantly changing), and that may be the key to why we love her so much.

#long post #emily prentiss #ITS HERE #and its a doozy #read if you'd like #leah writes #if there's typos i apologize #this was a fever dream

[papermoonloveslucy]

TIME: A CLOWN WITH GLAMOUR

May 26, 1952

TIME: The Weekly News Magazine ~ Lucille Ball: Prescription for TV; a clown with glamour.  May 26, 1952.  

On Monday evenings, more than 30 million Americans do the same thing at the same time: they tune in ‘I Love Lucy’ (9 p.m. E.D.T., CBS-TV), to get a look at a round-eyed, pink-haired comedienne named Lucille Ball.

An ex-model and longtime movie star (54 films in the past 20 years), Lucille Ball is currently the biggest success in television. In six months her low-comedy antics, ranging from mild mugging to baggy-pants clowning, have dethroned such veteran TV headliners as Milton Berle and Arthur Godfrey. One of the first to see the handwriting on the TV screen was funnyman Red Skelton, himself risen to TV's top ten. Last February, when he got the award from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences as the top comic of the year, Skelton walked to the microphone and said flatly: "I don't deserve this. It should go to Lucille Ball."

By this week, the four national TV rating services (Nielsen, Trendex, American Research Bureau and Videodex) were in unaccustomed agreement: each of them rated ‘I Love Lucy’ as the nation's No. 1 TV show.

Lumps & Pratfalls. The television industry is not quite sure how it happened. When Lucy went on the air last October, it seemed to be just another series devoted to family comedy, not much better or much worse than ‘Burns and Allen’, ‘The Goldbergs’, ‘The Aldrich Family’ or ‘Mama’. Like its competitors, Lucy holds a somewhat grotesque mirror up to middle-class life, and finds its humor in exaggerating the commonplace incidents of marriage, business and the home. Lucille's Cuba-born husband, Desi Arnaz, is cast as the vain, easily flattered leader of an obscure rumba band. Lucille plays his ambitious wife, bubbling with elaborate and mostly ineffectual schemes to advance his career.

But what televiewers see on their screens is the sort of cheerful rowdiness that has been rare in the U.S. since the days of the silent movies' Keystone Comedies. Lucille submits enthusiastically to being hit with pies; she falls over furniture, gets locked in home freezers, is chased by knife-wielding fanatics. Tricked out as a ballerina or a Hindu maharanee or a toothless hillbilly, she takes her assorted lumps and pratfalls with unflagging zest and good humor. Her mobile, rubbery face reflects a limitless variety of emotions, from maniacal pleasure to sepulchral gloom. Even on a flickering, pallid TV screen, her wide-set saucer eyes beam with the massed candlepower of a lighthouse on a dark night.

What is her special talent? TV men credit Lucille with an unfailing instinct for timing. Producer-Writer Jess Oppenheimer says: "For every word you write in this business, you figure you're lucky to get back 70-80% from a performer. With Lucille, you get back 140%." Broadway's Oscar (’South Pacific’) Hammerstein II, hailing Lucille's control, calls her a "broad comedienne, but one who never goes over the line." To her manager, Don Sharpe, Lucille is "close to the Chaplin school of comedy—she's got warmth and sympathy, and people believe in her, even while they're laughing at her."

Western Mirage. Lucille explains that the TV show is important because "I'm a real ham and so is Desi. We like to have an audience. We like being up on our toes." But the show also allows her some time with her ten-month-old daughter, Lucie Desirée, and for the first time in eleven years of trouping, gives her a home life with husband Desi. Says she: "I look like everybody's idea of an actress, but I feel like a housewife. I think that's what my trouble was in movies."

Actress Ball was a long time arriving at the calm waters of motherhood and housewifery. The daughter of Henry and Desirée Hunt Ball, she was born in Jamestown, N.Y. (near Buffalo) at what she calls "an early age." Pressed, she will concede that it was quite a while ago: she admits to being 40. Her father was an electrician whose job of stringing telephone wires carried him around the country. When Lucille was four, he died of typhoid in Wyandotte, Mich.

Lucille spent her childhood in Jamestown (1920 pop. 38,917), but managed to see very little of it. Mostly, she inhabited a dream world peopled by glamorous alter egos. Sometimes she imagined herself to be a young lady of great poise named Sassafrassa, who combined the best features of Pearl White, Mabel Normand and Pola Negri. Another make-believe identity was Madeline, a beauteous cowgirl who emerged from the pages of Zane Grey's melodramatic novel, ‘The Light of Western Stars’. To get authentic background for Madeline, young Lucille corresponded with the chambers of commerce of Butte and Anaconda, Mont. She read and reread their publicity handouts until she felt she knew more about Montana than the people who lived there. It was the powerful spirit of Madeline that caused her for many years to claim Butte, Mont., as her birthplace. Only in the most recent edition of Who's Who did she finally, grudgingly admit to being born in Jamestown, N.Y.

Horrses to Warter. While she lived there, Lucille did her best to rid Jamestown of dullness. Sometimes she gilded reality by imagining that the family chicken coop was her palace ("The chickens would become my armies"). She remembers that she was always unmanageable in the spring. "I'd leave the classroom for a drink of water and never come back. I'd start walking toward what I thought was New York City and keep going until someone brought me home."

By the time she left high school at 14, she had staged virtually a one-man performance of ‘Charley's Aunt’ ("I played the lead, directed it, cast it, sold the tickets, printed the posters, and hauled furniture to the school for scenery and props"). In a Masonic musical revue, she put so much passion into an Apache dance that she threw one arm out of its socket. Jamestown citizens still remember her explosive personality with wonder: it took quite a while for the dust to settle in Jamestown when Lucille finally left for Manhattan at the age of 15.

Probably because of the dreamy mental state induced by Sassafrassa and Madeline, Lucille is not too clear about dates, events and people. In New York,

she headed straight for John Murray Anderson's dramatic school. At the sound of her voice ("I used to say 'horrses' and 'warter' "), her teacher clapped hands to his forehead. Anderson tactfully told Lucille's mother that her daughter should try another line of work. Lucille made a stab at being a secretary and a drugstore soda jerk, but found both occupations dull. She answered chorus calls for Broadway musicals with a marked lack of success. When she even lost a job in the chorus of the third road company of ‘Rio Rita’, a Ziegfeld aide told her: "It's no use, Montana. You're not meant for show business. Go home."

Periodically, Lucille did go home to Jamestown. But she returned again and again to the assault on New York. She managed to get into the chorus of ‘Stepping Stones’, and held on until the choreographer announced that she wanted only girls who could do toe work ("I couldn't even do heel work"). Lucille turned to modeling, progressed from the wholesale garment houses through department stores to the comparative eminence of Hattie Carnegie. She still has a warm feeling for people in the garment trade, because "they're the nearest thing to show business in the outside world. They're temperamental and jealous. I like them." She had a great many admirers. One of them, Britain's actor Hugh Sinclair, says: "She disarmed you. You saw this wonderful, glamorous creature, and in five minutes she had you roaring with laughter. She was gay, warmhearted and absolutely genuine."

As a model, Lucille called herself Diane Belmont, choosing her name in honor of Belmont Park Race Track, where fashion shows are sometimes staged. But it was another few years before Lucille finally got her break. She was walking up Broadway past the Palace Theater when she met agent Sylvia Hahlo coming down from the Goldwyn office. Sylvia grabbed her and cried breathlessly: "How would you like to go to California? They're sending a bunch of poster girls there for six weeks for a picture. One of the girls' mothers has refused to let her go."

$50 to $ 1,500. The movie was ‘Roman Scandals’, starring Eddie Cantor, and it was six months instead of six weeks in the making. Lucille was grimly determined to keep her foot in the Hollywood door. She got a succession of bit parts in such movies as ‘Moulin Rouge’ and ‘The Affairs of Cellini’, worked for three months with the roughhouse comics known as The Three Stooges ("It was one continuous bath of Vichy water and lemon meringue pie").

When RKO picked up her contract, she gradually emerged as a queen of B pictures, then began making program movies with comics Jack Oakie, Joe Penner and the Marx Brothers (’Room Service’). Her salary rose from $50 a week to $1,500 and her hair, already turned blonde from its original brown, now became a brilliant but indescribable shade that has been variously called ‘shocking pink' and 'strawberry orange.' While she was in ‘Dance, Girl, Dance’, and being hailed by Director Erich Pommer as a new 'find' (by then,

she had been playing in movies for six years), she met a brash, boyish young Cuban named Desi Arnaz.

Gold Initials. Desi had come to Hollywood to make the movie version of the Broadway hit, Too Many Girls. Taking one look at luscious (5 ft. 7 in., 130 Ibs.) Lucille, who was wearing a sweater and skirt, he cried: "Thass a honk o' woman!" and asked: "How would you like to learn the rumba, baby?" He took her for a ride in his blue convertible, with the gold initials on the door, and she shudderingly recalls that the only time the speedometer dipped below 100 m.p.h. was when he rounded a curve. On the way home, Desi hit a bump and, as Lucille tells it, a fender flew off. He simply flicked the ash from his Cuban cigarillo and sped on.

Lucille was as dazzled by his full name (Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y De Acha III) as by his history. The only child of a prosperous Cuban politician who had been mayor of Santiago and a member of the Cuban Senate, Desi had fled to Miami with his mother during the revolution of 1933. His father, a supporter of President Machado, was put in jail, and the Arnaz possessions disappeared in the revolution.

After six months, Desi's father was released from jail and rejoined his family in Miami, where he went into the export-import business. Desi, who was 16, enrolled in St. Patrick's High School (his closest friend was Al Capone's son Albert), and got a part-time job cleaning canary cages for a firm which sold birds to local drugstores. He soon found steadier work as a guitarist in a four-piece band incongruously called the Siboney Sextette. The critics agreed on Desi's meager musical gifts. "He was always off-beat," says theater owner Carlos Montalban. "But he's an awfully nice guy—a clean-cut Latin."

Conga Line. Whatever Desi had, it was something the public liked. He began beating a conga drum in Miami and soon nightclub audiences, from Florida to New York, were forming conga lines behind him. His good looks and unquenchable good humor interested producer George Abbott, who was searching for a Latin type to play a leading role in ‘Too Many Girls’. "Can you act?" asked Abbott. "Act?" answered Desi, expansively. "All my life, I act."

The courtship of Desi and Lucille was predictably stormy. Says a friend: "He's very jealous. She's very jealous—they're both very jealous." They were married in 1940, while Desi was leading his orchestra at the Roxy in New York and Lucille was between pictures in Hollywood. She flew in from the coast; they got up at 5 a.m. and drove to Connecticut, where they were married by a justice of the peace. Since they had no apartment, Desi compromised by carrying his bride across the threshold of his dressing room at the Roxy. Hollywood offered odds that the marriage would not last six weeks.

The marriage lasted better than six weeks, but after four years trouble blew. Desi kept moving about the country with his band, and Lucille, when not making pictures, mostly sat home alone. Their marriage was drifting on the rocks, and only World War II averted immediate shipwreck. Desi refused a commission in the Cuban army and was drafted into the U.S. infantry. He was moved on to Special Services, and spent much of the war shepherding USO troupes from one base to another.

In 1944, Lucille filed suit for divorce. She won an interlocutory decree but never got around to filing for her final papers. The reason: she and Desi were in the midst of a new reconciliation. But all the old difficulties remained. Lucille would sit night after night at the clubs where Desi's band was playing, but that resulted in rings under her eyes rather than a new intimacy. She tried cutting down on her movie work by starring in a CBS radio show called ‘My Favorite Husband’, and Desi also took a flyer at radio. They worked out a vaudeville act and toured U.S. theaters with their new routines.

Lucille credits Desi with being the one who was willing to take a chance on TV. "He's a Cuban," she says, "and all Cubans gamble. They'll bet you which way the tide is going and give you first pick." But it was a real gamble. Movie exhibitors do not look kindly upon movie stars who desert to the enemy. If the show flopped, Lucille would have no place to crawl back to. They told CBS that they would give television a try only if both of them could be on the same show. At first, they wanted to play themselves. They compromised by turning Desi into Ricky Ricardo, a struggling young bandleader, and letting Lucille fulfill her lifelong ambition of playing a housewife.

The decision to film the show also made CBS bigwigs uneasy. It would cost four times as much as a live show, and the only interested sponsor, Philip Morris, wasn't prepared to go that high. Again there was a compromise. Desi and Lucille agreed to take a smaller salary in return for producing the show and keeping title to the films.

Real Plumbing. Long years in the practical business of orchestra leading had given Desi considerable organizing ability and business sense. He set up Desilu Productions (Desi president, Lucille vice president), and leased a sound stage from an independent Los Angeles studio. Because Lucille was ‘dead' without an audience, a side wall of the studio was knocked out to make a street entrance, and seats installed for an audience of 300. When a show is ready for the cameras, the audience laughter is picked up on overhead microphones and used in the final print.

Though ‘I Love Lucy’ is filmed, it is more like a play than a movie. All of the lines and action are memorized and, whenever possible, the show is played straight through from beginning to end, and not shot in a number of unrelated scenes. The action takes place on four sets; two of them represent the Ricardos' Manhattan apartment, a third shows the nightclub where Ricky's band plays and the fourth is used for any other scenes called for by the script. Says Desi proudly: "We have real furniture, real plumbing, and a real kitchen where we serve real food. Even the plants are really growing; they're not phony."

Desilu Productions hired a pair of veteran troupers, William Frawley and Vivian Vance, to play the family next door and serve as foils and friends for Desi and Lucille. Academy Award-winning Karl (’The Good Earth’) Freund supervises the three cameras, and Director Marc Daniels (soon to be replaced by Bill Asher) gives Lucy its rattling pace. The writers—Jess Oppenheimer, Bill Carroll and Madalyn Pugh—turn out scripts that do not impose too much on the audience's credulity and are reasonably free of clichés. The writers are held in an esteem not common in TV. Lucille bombards Jess Oppenheimer with photographs flatteringly inscribed to "the Boss Man," and Desi has presented him with a statuette of a baseball player and a punning tribute, "To the man behind the ball."

"Wanta Play Cards?" Desi and Lucille live an unpretentious life on a five-acre ranch in the San Fernando Valley. The only Hollywood note is a kidney-shaped swimming pool, and the most recent addition to the house (a wing devoted to daughter Lucie and her nurse) cost $22,000—more than the house and land cost originally. Neither Desi nor Lucille has ever been socially ambitious, and their friends are the same ones they have known for years. Both Desi's mother (now divorced from Arnaz Sr., who still lives in Miami) and Lucille's Mom live nearby.

At home, Lucille, who collects stray cats and dogs, is an amateur painter ("I use oils because it's easier to correct mistakes than with water colors"), and generally considers herself a lazy, lounging homebody. She is fascinated by Desi's boundless energy.' He spends weekends fishing on his 34-foot cabin cruiser, Desilu; plays violent tennis; likes to cook elaborate dishes. Says Lucille: "Everything is fine with him all the time. Wanta play cards? Fine. Play games? Fine. go for a swim? Great." There's only one problem: "Desi is a great thermostat sneaker-upper and I'm a thermostat sneaker-downer. Cold is the one thing that isn't great with him."

Sex & Chic. Though life has grown noticeably more placid for Desi and Lucille, it promises more money than they ever made before. Desilu Productions has already branched out beyond ‘I Love Lucy’. It is filming TV commercials for Red Skelton, and is at work on a new TV series, ‘Our Miss Brooks’, starring Eve Arden. Three of the best 30-minute Lucy shows are being put together in a package and will be experimentally released to movie theaters in the U.S. and Latin America. This year, ‘I Love Lucy’ has grossed about $1,000,000, and sponsor Philip Morris has signed a contract for 39 more shows beginning this fall. All of the old Lucy films can be sold again as new TV stations go on the air (eventually there will be 2,053 TV transmitters in the U.S., compared to today's 108).

In reaching the TV top, Lucille's telegenic good looks may be almost as important as her talent for comedy. She is sultry-voiced, sexy, and wears chic clothes with all the aplomb of a trained model and showgirl. Letters from her feminine fans show as much interest in Lucille's fashions as in her slapstick. Most successful comediennes (e.g., Imogene Coca, Fanny Brice, Beatrice Lillie) have made comic capital out of their physical appearance. Lucille belongs to a rare comic aristocracy: the clown with glamour.

#Time Magazine #Lucille Ball #Time #Lucy #1952 #Desilu #Desi Arnaz #I Love Lucy #TV

[propensityforthemature44]

Texas Triangle

For most of my forties, I worked as the assistant news director for CBS News, based in Manhattan.    The position came with a number of perks, most notably salary and benefits greater than I would have earned back in my hometown on California’s Central Coast, where my career began.  Within mere walking distance, so many of New York’s great museums, concert halls, restaurants, etc. were right there to explore during the little free time allowed by a demanding career.  It was a spectacular time, the dynamics of television journalism in the twenty-first century, always learning something new, and the great people with whom I worked, the latter being perhaps one of the greatest benefits.  This was especially true regarding one particular co-worker: legendary anchorman Bob Schieffer.

Arguably one of the more recognizable reporters of our time with an impressive CV, Bob commanded the respect of everyone at Black Rock, as the New York headquarters of CBS is known, not just because of his professional accomplishments, but because of how well he interacted with others.  Whether you were network top brass or a member of the cleaning crew, he treated everyone with a sincere compassion.  It was quite common on a Monday morning for Bob to pass through the halls and ask other employees how their kids performed at a piano recital or baseball game over the weekend.  His affable nature allowed for bridge-building and ease of relationship maintenance between management and on-air talent, which made my life easier. This was a sharp contrast to the environment during the time of his friend and predecessor, Dan Rather, with whom I was acquainted and got on well, but the mention of whose name still drew eye-rolls on the property.  Our professional dealings were so excellent, that they eventually led to a friendship outside of work.

After a couple of years on the job, Bob and I became such good friends, we were frequent guests at one another’s home for dinner parties.  In fact, I had even been to his home for Christmas Eve dinner on consecutive years.  His wife was a wonderful, gracious woman, and the same could be said for the rest of the family whom I had the opportunity to meet.  It was a friendship based on trust in a professional situation, but had blossomed into what I considered to be a very rewarding relationship.  

Due to our difference in ages, he was in many ways a role model given his life experiences.  Also, I found myself very attracted to him, and why not?  He was a handsome, well-dressed, intelligent mature gentleman with a wonderful personality, in other words, exactly my type.  The exceptions being that he was straight, a colleague, and a friend.

One spring, I had planned to return to California, where I kept a home for visits and eventual retirement, for a couple of weeks to attend a family wedding and also to take some time to wind down by travelling along the coast.  A few days before I was scheduled to head west, my boss summoned me to his office one afternoon.  He requested that I schedule some time to speak with Bob about a personnel matter involving the research department.  When I reminded him that I would not be back in New York for two weeks, he expressed a desire for the matter to be concluded quickly.  So, I mentioned that I would be seeing Bob in Austin at the end of the week, and could discuss then.  He was a great boss, but I knew that he was aware that as a friend, I would be attending the awarding of an honorary doctorate to Bob by the University of Texas on my way back to the West Coast.  A crafty move on his part, but I would have tried the same.

A few days later, I traveled to Austin for a night, and checked into the Four Seasons downtown, where Bob was staying.  Upon checking in, the clerk informed me that he had passed to the front desk a message asking me to visit his suite.  I thanked her, and headed to my own room to drop-off my luggage, and do some minimal unpacking.  It was already 2:30 in Austin, and I was flying to SFO to get a connecting flight the next afternoon following the award and luncheon.

Upon settling, I headed to Bob’s suite on the top floor. I knocked on the door, and then heard, “I’ll be right there, John,” in his familiar Texas drawl.  When he opened the door, we shook hands, and then embraced in a more familiar hug of close friends.  He showed me around, a rather impressive room of no less than 1800 square feet overlooking the river.  “Where is Patricia?” I asked.  Bob replied, “Well, change of plans.”  He explained that his wife had gone to visit her sister in Dallas, whose husband was recovering from a recent procedure.  I asked him to pass along my regards.

We made our way into the living room to take care of business, which concluded rather quickly to my delight, and from there began to just be ourselves.  I congratulated him on the honor, and Bob being Bob, became flushed and modest.  He then arose, and asked if I wanted a drink, and he poured me a vodka on the rocks.  From there, we began to get caught up on a number of personal matters.

At one point he asked, “So, did you ever fill in that plus one on the wedding invitation?”  Even though we were close, I was taken by surprise, forgetting that Bob had been in my office when the invite arrived several months prior.  “No,” I said.  “I’ll be attending solo.  This way, I can focus on visiting with people at the events.  I only get back to the Coast a few times a year.”

This seemed to draw a rather puzzled look on Bob’s face, as I could clearly see the eyebrows pointed upward through the lenses of his reading glasses.  “Come on, John.  Are you trying to tell me that you can’t get a date for this wedding? You’re in your prime.  Forty-five years old, handsome, well-educated, well-traveled, great career, and you spend most of your time in California when not in New York.  I’m sure there are plenty of eligible gentlemen in both places who would love to accompany you.”

I was shocked, to say the least.  On the one hand, flattered, on the other, feeling as if I’d been drawn out of the closet, even though my being gay was not a secret at headquarters.  Before I could respond, Bob asked, “Did you think I did not know?  You know it doesn’t matter, right?”  The answer of course being, I knew, despite the whole TCU connection he had, that he did not care about ethnicity, orientation, race, religion, etc., with regard to how he viewed people.  

“I suppose that it’s just never come up in conversation between us over the years,” I said.  Thinking about it, I supposed it was true, despite my occasional lusts for him.  

“Well, no pressure, but I would just like to see you with someone.  This isn’t the 1950’s, a couple of 40’s/50’s something guys like you should be enjoying the time together”, Bob said with a smile.

I answered, “That could be an issue.  You see, I have a type, and what you describe, doesn’t match.”  

“Well then, what is your type of man?” Bob inquired.  

In a matter of seemingly no time, I found myself pouring out the details of my ideal man: mature, handsome, worldly, cultured, gentile.  He laughed, “Why on Earth would you want to be with an old man?”  “Not just any old man, the right sort of older man.  Truth be told, he would be a man, like you, Bob, in many respects.”

He looked a little taken aback, so I said that I would head back to my room, and see him at the ceremony.  As I made my way for the front door, I felt a tug on my right arm, and when I turned around, Bob embraced me in a hug and said, “Don’t leave just yet.  You just surprised me is all.  You know that there is no problem for us, right?”  

“Yes,” I said.  

“You know that I love my wife, don’t you, John?”

“Of course, Bob.”

With that, he moved his arms down, and then up along my jacket, caressing my back and chest as he pulled me closer, pulling off his glasses before passionately and firmly pressing his lips to mine.  Not exactly the first time kissing a man significantly older than myself, but this was certainly unchartered territory.  I was so turned on, it felt as if I were high, and wow, could he kiss.  It was a perfect example of why older men are better: they know things.  Even more, I was beginning to realize this was not his first time with another man, certainly not when he began to move his hand over my crotch, focusing on my now fully erect manhood.

“What do we have here?” he asked slyly, as he bent down to unbuckle and open my slacks.  From there, he took me across his lips, and then along his tongue, taking my entirety within his mouth, moving me back and forth.  The sensation was so pleasing, I felt as if I was going to pass out in the middle of the suite.  Hearing his moans and seeing the look upon his face, Bob was enjoying the act at least as much.

After a couple of minutes, he stood and pressed himself against me, with me now feeling the full excitement coming from Bob’s side. We embraced in a kiss for minutes, not wanting to separate.  Toward the end, he was undoing my tie, and I his, after I removed my jacket, and then unzipped his fly, as I had imagined doing so many times over the years. Feeling a drop of pre-cum, I spread it along his tip, then began to move my hand back and forth, reveling in his moans and breathing, until he pulled himself closer and whispered, “Let’s go to the bedroom.”

Within a matter of seconds, we had completely undressed and were embraced near the foot of the bed, and engaged in a complete lip-lock. As I saw it, there was certainly no reason to separate now.  He tasted so good, and I knew he felt the same.  In addition, we had established that he loved his wife, I had no intention of getting in the way, and my attraction to him had clearly taken over after settling those details.

We separated for a moment, as Bob walked over to the side of the bed.  He pulled back the covers and climbed inside.  Leaning on his side he patted his hand on the opposite side of the bed and said, “Come on, don’t be shy,” grinning from ear to ear.  It was all the invitation needed for me to get under the covers and wrap my arms around his beautiful, smooth body.  I wasted no time before reuniting with his lips and playing with his wonderful tongue.  I moved my hands up and down his torso, finally settling down on his firm and gorgeous ass, adjusting to move my head down to focus on his nipples with my tongue and using my right hand to stroke him.  

I could not believe that this was happening.  This was a good friend, a colleague, and although this had been a fantasy for a few years, I could never have imagined that he would be so receptive and then some.  I had every intention of making the most of the opportunity, and thus moved further down to take him in my mouth, and give him his medicine.

“Oh my god,” he exclaimed.  “That is so wonderful.  Please don’t stop.”

I moved up and down along his shaft, wrapping my tongue around the head, and after a couple of minutes, began to really work the head with my mouth while using my hand to pleasure his shaft.  In doing so, I really began to get turned on by his moaning. After a few minutes, he placed his hand on my chest, as if to pause, but then pushed down until I lay flat on my back. Now, Bob was in charge, cleaning my testicles with his tongue, before focusing down on my cock. He moved up and down, closing his eyes, then opening them so that he could see the look of joy upon my face, and he certainly knew how to put in there with years of practice.  

What seemed like hours of pure delight had passed when he let up and pulled himself back up to cuddle and kiss deeply and passionately. He was so close to having me reach the limit, but suddenly pulled back from the act, held me close and whispered into my ear, “Please enter me, darlin’.  I want you to, it will be okay.”  Then, Bob, pulled away and reached into the night stand drawer, and to my surprise, produced a bottle of lube.

“Now, you what to do, don’t you?” Bob asked rhetorically, as he kissed me on the forehead.  So, I felt compelled to prove him right, and lubed my right index finger, and moved it slowly across his rosebud.  This made him twitch and tickle at first, but he knew he was in good company, and I would never let him feel discomfort.  So, as he loosened up after a minute, I lubed my middle finger as well, and began to slowly move them back and forth until I eventually reached his prostate.  Now, he was putty in my hands.  

Once my cock was sufficiently lubricated, I placed myself upon his precipice, slowly waiting for the right time, as I lay with my head upon his stomach. After a minute or two, I lifted my head toward his to embrace in a passionate kiss, after which he said, “I’m ready.”

I began to move ever so slowly back and forth, Bob in the missionary position, resting his heels on my shoulders, facing one another.  It was so hot with the pleasure being split equally.  Every time I thrust forward, I would make eye contact so as to see how much he was enjoying the penetration.  He was giddy like a schoolboy, but more appropriately as an adult, panting and moaning.  After several minutes, neither of us could handle any more, and I thrust against his prostate and ejected a stream within Bob, and then he let out a sigh, “Ohhh, god,” and shot a river of cum across my chest.  Once concluded, we wrapped one another in hugs and kisses, and cuddled. It had been a couple of months since my last experience, but would easily say it was the best sex I had at that point in my life.

Eventually, the silence was broken by the ring of the room’s landline.  Bob answered, “Hello.  Come on now, of course I didn’t forget about you.  Drop by when you’re ready,” he chuckled.

I looked over at the clock, and a couple of hours had since passed.  Then I looked at Bob, and said, “Well, if you’re having a visitor, perhaps it’s best if I move to my room.”  

Bob winked at me and said, “Don’t worry, sweetheart.  You may want to put this on, however,” as he passed me a robe, along with a pair of slippers.

After a few minutes, there was a knock at the door.  Bob went out to the hallway to answer, and I could hear the faint echo of what appeared to be excited conversation between old friends. In the moment, it occurred to me that Bob felt comfortable enough with me to have me here in a robe, while inviting someone else inside, but I still had a tinge of awkwardness about the room. This was originally supposed to be just a stop on the way back west, but had taken a fantastic detour.

Then, a minute later, Bob came walking around the corner, also robed. Then, he asked, “You met John back at one of the holiday parties, didn’t you?”  A moment later around the corner stepped James “Jim” Baker III, former Secretary of Treasury, White House Chief of Staff, to name just a few posts. Being a double-major political science/journalism as an undergraduate, of course he was a familiar figure, in addition to being introduced at Bob’s house.

“Of course.  Nice to see you again, John.”  He smiled, but you could tell from the expression on his face, that this, by no means, was the encounter he had expected.  It was known that although there had been many interviews over the years, they had developed a friendship off-camera.  So, while a stately, respectful man, he did seem somewhat put off that there was an extra man in the room, and reported, “Well, I won’t stay too long.”

The phone rang once more, and Bob said, “I’ll need to take this.  Can you two make yourselves comfortable?”  

“Sure,” we replied in unison.

Jim made his way around to sit on one of the sofas.  He was, I think, a rather handsome man in his own right.  Nicely cut head of white hair, beautiful navy blue suit with a red and blue striped tie, it was as if he’d just stepped out of a Brooks Brothers ad.                                                       

We attempted the task of small talk, although there was a bit of discomfort in the air.  The conversation shifted to the next day’s event for Bob, which brought us both to Austin in the first place, then moved to an overview of each of our schedules for the week. Eventually, I noticed him wince a little, and asked if he was okay.  

“Oh sure, I’m fine.  Just paying the price for a round of golf this past weekend.  No carts, all walking, so my feet are a little tender,” he chuckled.

 I’m not sure what came over me, but I stood up and moved an ottoman closer to Jim, and sat down.  Then, one-by one, I extended each of his legs and removed his cordovan Alden tassel loafers and began to massage his dress-socked feet.  

“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” he said.  

“I’m sorry, I just thought you were having discomfort.  I’ll stop.”

“Well, it certainly is improving things,” Jim said, laughing a little.

I continued doing so for a couple of minutes, enjoying his pleasure.

Then, Bob returned and leaned over Jim to ask, “Do you still want to leave, Bake? They have such great service here.”

Bob then reached over and removed Jim’s suit jacket, as I continued to massage his tired feet.  After hanging his jacket, Bob returned, and from behind, planted a deep kiss on Jim’s lips, that seemed to go on for minutes.  It would have become obvious to an outside observer why Jim seemed edgy at first; he had planned on meeting Bob all by himself, and the way they were going at it, it was not the first or even fifth time, this had been an arrangement for a while.

While they were still kissing, I placed Jim’s feet on the floor, and made my way to his chair.  I moved my hand up and down each of his corresponding legs, and then focused on the midsection.  I caressed his torso, and transferred to his belt, which I unbuckled, then unzipped his fly and opened his slacks, and reaching inside the front hole of his boxers to release him.  Now, he was mine, all 7 inches of engorgement that had developed in the past few minutes, and I wrapped my mouth around the head of his beautiful cock and began working my way up and down.  I could feel the vein along the side, as it met my tongue, and could feel his excitement as he wriggled while still kissing Bob.  

Bob untied Jim’s tie, and I began to move my hand inside of his shirt to feel his amazing chest.  Not smooth like Bob’s, but just the right amount of hair, and light-colored.  In a few minutes, we moved to the bedroom.

We placed Jim back on the bed, and then proceeded to fully undress him.  I moved my way up the bed to kiss him, and again, older men know things.  He was a master kisser, and we worked on one another while Bob serviced Jim below the deck. After a minute or two, I extended my right hand upward and began playing with his nipple.  It seemed to be going well, so I released myself from his lips, and re-focused my mouth on his left nipple, while using my hand to play with his right.

To my delight, he was enthused, evidenced by his moaning of satisfaction.  In fact, he must have been so appreciative, because without notice, he eventually maneuvered so that he could take me into his mouth, and did he ever do so.  He had me in sheer ecstasy for several minutes, moving up and down on my head and shaft, completely reviving me for another performance.

At one point, he changed gears, shifting to Bob.  After all, Bob had been hard at work for some time, and it was his turn to receive the delights he deserved.  In doing so, he placed his hands on each side of Bob’s torso and pulled him up further on the bed.  Then, he got between Bob’s legs and lowered his head, lips first.  As he did, Bob’s patented grin returned to his face as he moved his head back and forth on the pillow.

It’s often said when a threesome occurs, that one person can find himself left out of the equation.  I did not find this to be the case, but rather an opportunity. Specifically, Jim’s spectacular ass was now staring me right in the face.  I extended my hands outward, massaging his buttocks.  It was wonderful, so smooth and tight, you could just feel that he worked out 3-4 times per week.  I could also feel that he was enjoying the chain of stimulation, as on the front end, his mouth and hand were now bringing Bob to new heights of joy.  So, I reached over to the bedside table and retrieved the bottle of lube from earlier.  One by one, I lubed my fingers, and began to finger Jim.  He wriggled a little at first, but began to relax and loosen up, so a couple of minutes later, I spread a generous amount of lube on my cock, and then inserted myself into the former Secretary of Treasury.

As I stated before, this is not anything like I had imagined this trip unfolding.  I wanted it to last as long as possible, so I slowly slid in and out.  He was so moist, and I was so turned by watching him blow Bob and all of the moaning coming from both of them.  I knew it would be only a few minutes at the most until I released myself within Jim.

“Jim,” Bob panted a few minutes later.  “I can’t hang on much longer.”

Jim pulled Bob out of his mouth and began to quickly jerk him off before replying, “Come on, honey.”

Bob threw his head back and said, “Oh my god,” and then proceeded to cum right into Jim’s mouth, which he took like a pro and countered, “Umhm.”

I couldn’t take any more myself, and then pushed further into Jim before shooting a load.

Bob put his head back on the pillow.  His expression was one of satisfaction and exhaustion.  He was spent.

Jim leaned over and covered Bob with the sheet.  Then, he kissed him deeply and passionately on the lips, then gently on the forehead.

I was now lying flat on my back, and Jim cuddled up next to me. He extended both hands, placed them on either side of my face, and pulled me in for a wonderful kiss that made me melt away, and we held in the embrace for several minutes.

“Doesn’t he look cute when he’s sleeping?” he asked me while looking over at Bob.

“As for you, you are every bit as good as I thought you’d be.  Mmm, mmm, mmm.  I knew the first time I laid eyes on you.”  With that, he maneuvered so that he was right on top of me, and as he did, his cock rubbed up against my leg, just dripping with pre-cum.  

Jim pressed his manhood right up against my balls and said, “There just one thing, son.  The next time you’re in Texas, I get Bobby first.  Understood?”

“Understood,” I said.

He then smiled at me, and lifted my legs upward so that my feet were now resting on his shoulders.  With his right hand, he grabbed the lube and squirted several drops on my anus and a plentiful amount over his cock, and moved it up and down his shaft.  Then, he got closer, and pushed himself gently up against my opening.  His cock was just the right size, not too thick, not too thin, that with the lube, he slid right into me.

 “Oh my,” he muttered, as he began to move back and forth.

It was heavenly, as he moved in and out, building up his pace over a few minutes.  Eventually, he unloaded what felt like a gallon of cum all over my insides, falling forward and resting his head on my chest for several minutes before he went limp and released himself from me.  

I must have dozed off because after a while, I felt a hand upon my chin.  I looked up to find Bob smiling as he asked, “Hello, darlin’.  Are you ready for another go?”

What transpired then is between the three of us. That said, it would not be my final encounter with either Bob or Jim.

[blazehedgehog]

Abby Russel is leaving Giant Bomb end of November. Feels like they can't keep the New York team staffed.

I imagine it’s a very stressful job and not everyone is cut out for it. When you sign on to be a video producer at Giantbomb, you aren’t just in the control room, cutting or editing video. You have to be a personality.

Some people start out slowly. Drew and Jan, as I recall, were way more “behind the scenes” at first, and then slowly became more and more on-camera personalities. It used to be that you’d only hear from Jan sometimes but now he carries whole entire streams by himself. Instead of being a silent podcast director, he’s an active chair.

Dan, for his part, from what I’ve heard, sounded like he was getting bored. Jeff has complained over the years that getting anything approved with CBS was a very slow process because it sounds like GiantBomb sort of ran itself, and thus, CBS felt like they didn’t need to spend extra money on special projects. Dan apparently liked to be spontaneous, but that would get dragged down in the bureaucracy of getting corporate approval. So, he moved on to a job where he wouldn’t have to worry about that, while still being able to do spontaneous stuff on his own time through Twitch.

Now, Abby was, specifically, someone they hired because they wanted her both on camera and behind the scenes. They hired a comedian. At the same time, I sort of feel bad for Abby because she was very often out of her depth in the games most of Giantbomb would be interested in. There are a lot of group streams where Abby comes off as confused, disconnected, and a little upset. I grew to like Abby a lot, and I appreciated the different perspectives she brought to Giantbomb, but she always felt a little out of place, and I’ve always wondered how long it would take before she dipped out.

And the way she makes it sound, she had been planning on leaving for a while and was looking for the right time to make her exit. With CBS selling off CNET (and by extension Gamespot and GiantBomb), she apparently said that transition period seemed like as good a time as any to make her exit. A new corporation would mean signing new contracts, which would potentially lock her in to working at Giantbomb even longer than she wanted.

It’s also not hard to pick up on some of the weirdness I think she experienced being the only woman at Giantbomb. She built her own streaming room in her apartment, but I’ve heard rumors that people started “getting weird” about that, like maybe trying to figure out where she lived or something, and that’s why she ended up renting a tiny office to stream from these last couple months -- she wanted somewhere discreet and private, where nobody could stalk her or make creepy comments about her living space. Sadly, she’s not the only video personality in the games media who eventually stepped out of the spotlight because of creepers.

I think this stuff would also feel less weird if it wasn’t in the middle of the worst pandemic in over a hundred years. In better times, Dan’s empty seat would have been filled within a month or two, as would Abby’s. Now, who even knows when that’s going to happen. I don’t know if GiantBomb even has an office anymore. GB East certainly doesn’t, because that tiny studio they broadcast from was on the CBS lot.

It’s a strange time for everything and everyone. I wouldn’t blame anyone too much, it’s just circumstances.

#questions #giantbomb #cbs #cnet #gamespot #abby russell #Anonymous #dan ryckert

[solacekames]

What Caused The Mass Panic At Newark Airport? Racism.

Buzzfeed - Amber Jamieson - Posted on September 6, 2019, at 4:29 p.m. ET

When an Alaska Airlines employee yelled "evacuate" at a major New York–area airport on Labor Day, one of the busiest travel days of the year, it sent 200 panicked people fleeing amid fears of a mass shooting attack.

Dozens of Port Authority police responded to Newark Liberty Airport in New Jersey on Monday night around 8.30 p.m. after the female airline employee yelled for people to evacuate before setting off an emergency alarm. Initial reports said she believed two male passengers were acting suspiciously, and when she approached them they started running.

But the two Chinese-born men at the center of the incident told BuzzFeed News it all began as a case of racial profiling. In their first media interview, the men said they did not know each other, did not run away, and that it was the airline employee who had been acting erratically.

"It was a very shocking experience," said Han Han Xue.

Xue, 29, had spent the holiday weekend visiting friends in New York City and was waiting at Gate 30 to board his delayed Alaska Airlines flight home to San Francisco. As he stood "minding [his] own business," he said the Alaska Airlines employee in uniform walked into him from behind, pushing past. He brushed it off but moments later she returned, circling around where he was standing.

She then approached Chunyi Luo, a 20-year-old student standing near him. "Are you scared? Are you nervous?" Luo said she asked him.

Luo, who moved from Shanghai two years ago to study finance at a San Francisco college, said he told her he was feeling nervous because the flight was late. He said she told him that flights in the US were often delayed, but she stood "too close" to him so he stepped a few feet away.

Then she began asking Xue questions. She asked if he knew Luo (the two were strangers) and what his itinerary was. She then asked, "Why are you acting suspiciously?"

Xue said he struggled to know how to respond as the questions from the employee became more bizarre. "How much are they paying you?" he said she asked him, not clarifying who "they" were. "Did they give you a visa? Did they give your family a visa? Do you make a lot of money? Do you work on Wall Street? Are you on an American visa?" Xue said she asked him.

Born in China, Xue grew up in Canada, where he is a citizen, and works as a product designer at Lyft in California.

Luo said he could hear the woman asking Xue why he was acting suspiciously and heard her say the word "Asian."

Xue said at this point he felt like he was being racially targeted and harassed, so he walked about 6 feet away to join the passengers boarding the flight, hoping she'd bother someone else.

But she followed him, saying, "I'm onto you guys. The cops are already called."

"I couldn’t believe this was happening," said Xue.

He then watched the employee walk into the jet bridge at Gate 30, before emerging and starting to speak with gate agents. A gate agent then announced that boarding would be paused as there was an issue. Immediately afterward, the Alaska Airlines employee suddenly yelled, "Evacuate, evacuate!" and pressed an emergency alarm, said Xue.

"The moment it happened is really hard to describe," he said. "Everybody started running. It was the most insane scene I've ever been in or ever seen."

He said hundreds of people were tripping over each other, crying and screaming as they tried to flee. One man screamed at his female partner to drop her luggage so they could run faster. Xue ran with the crowd to another gate and escaped onto the tarmac.

Video posted on social media shows the chaos.

Michael Wolfmuller, 38, was walking toward the gate to board his flight home to San Francisco when he heard "evacuate" and saw people screaming and running in his direction.

"I heard the word 'shooter' when we were running," said Wolfmuller. He said he even heard glass breaking.

After the recent mass shootings in West Texas, in El Paso, and in Dayton, Ohio, Wolfmuller assumed he was next. "I thought I was going to get shot in the back," he told BuzzFeed News. "With everything that's been happening the last few months, that's pretty much what I was waiting for."

Luo didn't realize he had anything to do with the situation, and also believed there was a shooter. "I thought somebody had a gun," he told BuzzFeed News. "Everyone is running. I just followed them and escaped."

But once police arrived within a minute and started scanning the crowd, Xue said he felt compelled to come forward and identify himself. "I'm like, So, 90% chance I have something to do with this and it's escalated way too fast," said Xue.

"Intellectually, I know I didn't do anything wrong and that I can explain my way out of the situation," said Xue. "But the only time I was really anxious was when the cops first showed up."

He approached an officer and said that an Alaska Airlines employee told him she was calling police. Xue said the officer looked him up and down and then said "OK, we got the guy," into his two-way radio.

He said officers quickly surrounded him, and took him away from the crowd, asking him questions. One asked, "Where is your friend?" and Xue explained that he was traveling alone, but that the airline employee seemed to think he knew the young man standing next to him.

Police found Luo in the crowd and also started questioning him. Both Luo and Xue said police were calm and courteous to them. "Why do you think she thought you were suspicious?" asked one officer.

Xue replied that he didn't know "other than the fact we are both East Asian."

At one point, the Alaska Airlines employee came out of the jetway bridge and looked down below, where both men were speaking to police. "We got them motherfuckers,” she yelled, according to Xue.

Wolfmuller, who was busy helping a mother find her daughters on the tarmac, said he saw the employee return. "I heard the F-word and some screaming directed definitely at them," he said.

Once it was clear no one was in immediate danger and it seemed to be a misunderstanding, police let Luo and Xue go. All affected passengers had to be rescreened through security.

After several more hours waiting for their flight to San Francisco to take off, it was canceled and rescheduled for the following day, with passengers put up in a nearby hotel. Xue and Luo met for the first time at the hotel and shared their stories with each other and other passengers (the group even took a photo together).

An Alaska Airlines spokesperson told BuzzFeed News in an emailed statement they were investigating what had happened. "We understand the Newark issue was alarming and distressing for our guests and other flyers, and for that we are deeply sorry," said Oriana Branon. "We are conducting a thorough investigation of the incident and gathering witness statements to understand what exactly took place and why this happened."

No one from Alaska Airlines directly contacted Luo or Xue until after BuzzFeed News reached out to the airline on Thursday. Within hours, the airline emailed Xue. "I just found out who you are today," wrote the director of customer advocacy, which was seen by BuzzFeed News. "Mainly I wanted to check in with you and see what I can [do] to help." (Xue noted that he had left his name and contact information with an Alaska Airlines manager at the gate after the incident when he asked for an explanation.)

Alaska Airlines did not answer any questions about the employee who caused the commotion, saying it does not comment on personnel. CBS 2 reported that a source told them the woman has bipolar disorder and had missed her medication.

Lenis Rodrigues from Port Authority said the employee was questioned and released by Port Authority police, but would not comment on health issues. The Union County Prosecutor's Office said their office is aware of the incident and is in touch with authorities but that no decision had been made yet if any charges will be filed.

Xue said any health problems do not excuse the racism he experienced. "If she does have issues, it's on Alaska to make sure she's not placed in a position where she is responsible for the safety of others," he said.

He noted that East Asians aren't usually profiled in shooting or terror situations, but said he feared that "maybe there is a shift in Trump's America and all this [Chinese] trade war situation."

For both Xue and Luo, the situation was a horrible and stressful incident, compounded by Alaska Airlines refusing to even explain to them what had happened as media reports spread saying they'd been acting suspiciously and had run away.

"I'm so angry about that," said Luo. "I'm just so scared... it's horrible, it's awful."

"It's very uncharacteristic of me to go public like this about anything and it's causing me anxiety," said Xue.

But Xue's frustration at Alaska Airlines made him feel like he had no option. "At this point for all I know she still works at Alaska in the same position, and that alone is worrying," he said. "I don't want to perpetuate this idea that you can just throw this under the rug and that’s it."

#newark #antiasian racism

[findmyrupertfriend]

BY CHRISTINA RADISH      AUGUST 18, 2018

From creator  Mark Heyman and based on the book of the same name,  the drama series Strange Angel is inspired by the real life story of Jack Parsons (Jack Reynor), an ambitious blue-collar worker in 1930s Los Angeles who helps to pioneer the unknown discipline of rocket science, as he dreams of building rockets that will take mankind to the moon. After meeting his eccentric neighbor, Ernest Donovan (Rupert Friend), he finds himself pulled into a new occult religion, created by Aleister Crowley, that performs sex magick rituals meant to turn fantastical dreams into reality.

Collider recently got the opportunity to chat 1-on-1 with actor Rupert Friend about the series, for which the full 10-episode season is available to stream at CBS All Access. During the interview, he talked about why he initially hesitated about signing on for the project, what appealed to him about playing Ernest Donovan, having one of the most memorable character introductions ever, being bummed about the things he wasn’t allowed to do himself, getting a custom-made wardrobe, working with such a talented line-up of directors, and the future plan for the series. He also talked about playing Theo Van Gogh and working with director Julian Schnabel for At Eternity’s Gate, along with playing a fun cameo in Paul Feig’s upcoming movie A Simple Favor, opposite Blake Lively.

Collider:  I know that when you were sent the synopsis for Strange Angel, you initially resisted signing on for it. What was it that made you hesitate about the project, initially?

RUPERT FRIEND:  The thing was that I didn’t have a huge amount of time to consider it. I was getting on a plane to go to the Antarctic, where there’s, thankfully, no phone signal or wi-fi, or anything. The script landed – or all of the scripts landed – with, “You need to decide now because we don’t have time for you to take a couple of weeks to read it. We start shooting in a couple weeks.” I was like, “Oh, hell, okay.” The synopsis that they sent was very, very interesting, apropos Jack Parsons. I didn’t know about him, and he is just an endlessly fascinating figure. I thought that was a pretty damn good basis to begin a television show with. But the guy they wanted me to play, they had likened to a Kenneth Anger figure. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with that guy, but he’s a filmmaker and has been involved with various cults, at various points in his life. I just had this sinking feeling that I would be sacrificing virgins under a full moon, or something, and I didn’t really fancy that. But then, I read the first script and met Ernest Donovan, as we all have, those of us that have seen it now, and just was completely charmed and bewildered by this man, answering the door with a goat in his arms. Every episode that I read, the more sucked in I was, and the more I found him to be completely compelling and fascinating, if a little perplexing, at times.

I think Ernest really has one of the most amazing introductions of a character, ever, coming to the door holding a goat with no explanation, and it just kind of is. What was it like to have to pull that off? Was that a weird scene to film, having a goat that you have to carry around?

FRIEND:  Yeah. It was actually one of the first scenes that we did. No one had been forewarned about anything, particularly. It was great, because as you very rightly said, it just is. It’s incredibly surreal, but a brilliant bit of writing by the guys because all of your antennae are just freaked out. You’ve met this quite suburban, domesticated couple, Jack and Susan Parsons, and then their neighbor couldn’t be more different. That, of course, is the beginning of Jack’s pull to exploring his spiritual and sensual side. But practically speaking, obviously, it’s a real goat and it was adorable. He peed on me, quite a lot. There was one take where he got a bit bored and did a big old wriggle in my arms. They weigh like a big dog. They’re not nothing. He just gave this almighty kick, and he kicked the screen clear off the door. It was really brilliant. I don’t think they used that take, in the end, probably because Bella [Heathcote] laughed because it was all getting so ridiculous.

It seems like it would have been hard not to have a little bit of a laugh when someone is trying to get through a scene while holding a goat.

FRIEND:  Oh, yeah. Every take, the main problem was more about Jack [Reynor] and Bella not laughing.

This is a character that really has allowed for the opportunity to do a lot of different things that you wouldn’t typically get to do, especially with one character. What’s been the most fun aspect of that, and was there anything that was particularly challenging or difficult to do?

FRIEND:  You’re quite right, every script was just a complete adventure playground of wonderful, zany, out-there things that Ernest decides to do. The only bummer for me, to be perfectly honest, were the things that I wasn’t allowed to do. I ride a motorcycle, in real life, but wasn’t allowed to do the motorcycling, even at one or two miles per hour, because they didn’t wear helmets back then. I get that it’s for safety, but that was a bummer. And then, with flying the plane, which was an original ‘30s biplane and a thing of absolute beauty, the original idea was that this very, very accomplished pilot would fly with each of us, in the different seats, and the cameras moved around, so that we actually would go up with the plane. On the day, it was too windy. I was like a kid at Christmas who had his toys taken away. I was so upset. I was like, “This is proper flying.” It’s not like getting into a modern jet. It’s basically like sitting in a taxi or something. It was a fiberglass, wood and canvas thing, and it felt visceral and alive, in a way that I’d never felt in a conventional, modern aircraft. I definitely got bitten by that bug. One of my resolutions, post doing Strange Angel, is definitely to try to get up in some of those older aircraft again.

The surroundings on set seem like they must have been so beautiful that it was just a giant distracting playground with so many things to look at and play with and do, and then there’s the wardrobe. Was this just a really cool set to be on?

FRIEND:  Yeah. Good spot on the wardrobe because J.R. Hawbaker, who designed the costumes, and I were allowed to really go to town and reference everyone from [Willem] de Kooning to Norman Mailer to E.E. Cummings to Jack Kerouac. All of those people were in our sphere, when we were building Ernest. She just let it fly with a lot of beautiful custom-made pieces, just for me. She did such an incredible job. Then, there were the cars and the motorbikes. It really is a postcard to California and the beauty of California that people were discovering in the ‘30s, and that’s still the same. There orange orchards where the plane flies is all the same as it was, and just as beautiful.

This is a show that’s definitely very hard to describe and explain to people because there are so many elements to it. Was that part of the appeal of it for you? Do you like the fact that this is a show that can’t be pinned down, as one thing?

FRIEND:  Take a wild guess. I love it! There are plenty of shows about doctors and nurses, and about cops and robbers. This is a show, as you rightly said, that you can’t really describe, which probably makes it very hard to market. But I think the rewards are in the watching because it’s a rich, layered story, 98% of which is completely true. It’s written brilliantly, and I think it’s a world where, once you delve into it, you’re excited to see where it will take you. I’m glad that it’s undefinable.

I think these characters are all so interesting. I wonder about what each of them are up to when we’re not seeing them.

FRIEND:  Well, that’s a great compliment to the writing. There’s that iceberg philosophy of writing, where you don’t see the iceberg, but you know it’s there. That was a Hemingway trope. It’s the idea that all of these people are obviously living lives, it’s just that the filmmakers have decided which chunks we’re going to get to see of those lives.

You had some pretty great directors on this, throughout the season. Were there any directors that you particularly liked working with, that you’d like to work with again?

FRIEND:  Yeah, David Lowery, who directed the first two. I just adored working with him. Pretty much the moment we finished the season, he and I began talking about doing a film together. And Ben Wheatley is a rare talent, too. Kate Dennis, who did the finale, was a blast. There wasn’t any bad one. Ernest Dickerson is great. There were no bad apples in the barrel.

By the end of the season, it’s clear that this story definitely isn’t finished being told. Have you heard anything about a second season, or where things could go for your character? Is this someone you’d like to keep playing?

FRIEND:  I know that, when Mark Heyman conceived of this, he conceived of the story as a five-year arc. Obviously, Jack Parsons was a real person. He was working for the American government in the war effort. He got involved with L. Ron Hubbard, who eventually ran off with his first wife. There are some pretty major American figures that feature in the Jack Parsons story, and there’s definitely more to be told. Ernest is a made-up character. In a way, I find that even more exciting. One of the things we explored a lot is that, yeah, he’s a bit wild and all the rest of it, but there’s something really spiritual going on, in terms of him trying to find a sense of self and trying to find who he is. It’s not a new search, but in that time, reflection and self-reflection like that wasn’t really in the cards. People just got married, got mortgages, got lawn mowers, and then died. They didn’t do spiritual self-analysis. One of the things that I know the team wants to explore with the character is, what happens if you push that to the nth degree? In the way that we’ve seen how Ernest tends to push everything to its limits, what happens if you push that search to its conclusion and come out the other side? I know that there’s plenty of very, very exciting stuff to build on. I haven’t seen the episodes, but I read them, obviously, and at that the end of Episode 10, there’s something of a cliffhanger.

Ernest is such an unpredictable character. He’s this free-wheeling guy, who’s wild and reckless, but he also has a pain to him and a curiosity. There are so many things at work with him that it makes him fascinating to watch, and I would imagine really interesting to explore.

FRIEND:  Well, thank you, and yeah, it is. Just when you think he’s the macho guy, there he is, broken and beaten and wounded, in every way. Just when you think he’s turned his back on someone, he’s doing something incredibly selfless. He’s constantly surprising, for sure. There’s something very freeing about playing somebody who is, if not made up, definitely an amalgam of themes and ideas and feelings while Jack is a real character and there’s a bible of his life that we can follow. Playing the two against each other leads for a pretty fascinating study of some early bromance, I guess.

You’ve also played Theo Van Gogh, opposite Willem Dafoe and for director Julian Schnabel, in At Eternity’s Gate, which seems amazing. How did you find the experience of making that film, working with those people, and playing that character?

FRIEND:  It was an incredible part, and it’s full of actors that I would have been lucky to be in a film with, and they’re all in the same film, like Mads Mikkelsen, Oscar Isaac, Emmanuelle Seigner, Mathieu Amalric and, obviously, the great Willem Dafoe. We actually just found out that the film will close the New York Film Festival in October, which is a great bit of news. And working with Willem is wonderful because he is 100% in every moment, which sounds like a bit actor hippy-dippy, but he really is one of the best living actors. I was very, very fortunate to play most of my scenes with him. Julian is a wonderfully esoteric filmmaker who trusts his actors absolutely, and he looks at what he’s looking at with the eye of an artist. To make a film about such a brilliant artist as Van Gogh, it really had to be an artist making the film. Van Gogh was anything but traditional. I think that’s why Schnabel is the perfect guy to make that film. I think that film is coming out in the fall, so you won’t have to wait too long to see it.

Is it odd to switch gears and go do a Paul Feig movie and make something like A Simple Favor, which seems again to be very different from what we’ve seen you do?

FRIEND:  I basically play a cameo in that one. It’s a noir, but there’s an element of comedy. Anna [Kendrick] is so talented at that, and Paul is obviously a master at comedy. I’m playing Blake Lively’s boss, who is a fashion designer, so it’s something completely different and I hope sort of silly. I thought it was hilarious. It’s a little part, but I just thought it was a very funny part. We’ll see.

Do you find that it’s hard to come across the kind of roles that attract you, as an actor?

FRIEND:  It’s difficult because everyone in our business, whether you’re an agent, an actor, producer, or whatever you are, is trying to look for a formula. The truth is, you don’t know until you read it. When you read something that appeals to you, for me, it’s like when you’re at a party and you see someone and you think, “Oh, I’d really like to get to know them. They seem interesting. They seem like they have a different world view than me. Maybe we would make each other laugh.” Sometimes you meet them, and then people get in the way of your view and they’re not where they were and you don’t get to talk to them. That feeling is a bit like when you’re reading a script. It’s not about going, “Oh, look, this is the biggest part,” or “This is the one with the most lines.” As you can probably tell from what I’ve done, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. It’s more like, “Yeah, I only saw him in two scenes, but I think that they’re the most fun two scenes in the movie.”

The characters you play are all so interesting and so different that I like to check out what you’re doing because I know that it will at least be unexpected and that I’ll most likely really enjoy myself.

FRIEND:  That’s a great compliment. Thank you very, very much. You’re my perfect audience. It might not work, but you’re like, “Well it’s not going to be dull, and I’m going to be intrigued by why would you do that.” Well, there’s one more in the menagerie of last year’s work that is coming out. I did the second season of a crazy little show on Adult Swim, called Dream Corp LLC. It’s on at midnight, and each episode is quite short. It’s a very insane and wonderfully wacky comedy where people come into this laboratory and let a doctor go inside their dreams to fix a neurosis or a problem, and the dreams are all rotoscopes. When you’re in the dreamworld, it’s all beautifully animated. For the second season, they got a bunch of different guest stars. It’s me, Liam Neeson did one, and Jimmi [Simpson] from Westworld did one. We’re all half in the real world and half in the animated world. I spent my episode with a real tarantula on my face for a lot of it, which was something that was completely different. That may or may not be your thing, but it definitely won’t be boring.

#words with friend #rupert friend #strange angel #collider #august 2018

[elizadushkudaily]

“The year has been in some ways just extraordinary in a beautiful way and it’s been in some ways extraordinary in a really challenging way,” proclaims Mapplethorpe producer Eliza Dushku.

From almost any perspective, that seems like an understatement from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer alum

Married last summer and expecting her first child this summer, Dushku has seen her more than a decade-long endeavor on the Ondi Timoner-directed film about the controversial and hyper-stylized photographer successfully make it to the big screen. After a premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival last year, the Samuel Goldwyn Film distributed-picture, with former Dr. Who and The Crown star Matt Smith in the title role, made a leap today with openings in NYC, LA, Atlanta, Boston, Philadelphia, the nation’s capital and more.

At the same time, Dollhouse star Dushku was thrust into a controversial spotlight of her own as it was revealed that the actor was paid $9.5 million to settle sexual harassment claims on the set of CBS’ Bull concerning star Michael Weatherly. Coming less than a year after Dushku herself spoke out about being sexually assaulted by a stuntman on True Lies when she was 12, the Bull situation originated from The New York Times publishing information from a leaked probe of ex-CBS boss Les Moonves’ behavior and the overall culture at the company.

Restrained by a non-disclosure agreement as a part of her settlement, Dushku nonetheless penned an op-ed in her hometown paper the Boston Globe in December 2018 delivering her side of the story. “I didn’t leak the story, but I was not comfortable with the false narrative that had been propagated, as I wrote about in theGlobe piece,” Dushku told me this week.

Walking a legal line, the op-ed laid out as much as Dushku could what really happened with Weatherly. The actor also detailed why as a once expected series regular, she suddenly was written out of the Amblin Television-produced series after just a few episodes in its first season after presenting her concerns to the network.

I sat down with the frank Dushku recently to talk about the making of Mapplethorpe, where she’s at now and how the current Boston-based Lesley University student got there this year.

DEADLINE: So, as Mapplethorpe is about to open in L.A. and expand across the country, and after a year of, well, a hell of a lot, how are you?

DUSHKU: I am well, thank you. I’ve become good at sort of compartmentalizing even if some people see that as a good thing, some people see that as a bad thing. The year has been in some ways just extraordinary in a beautiful way and it’s been in some ways extraordinary in a really challenging way. However, I feel like this field that I’m studying now, holistic psychology, is about combining all of these — you know, your mind body and spirit — and it’s exactly what I’ve needed and where I’ve needed to be.

So I feel like the universe was looking out for me in that. And in another sense, everything was supposed to happen for us to get to Matt Smith playing Robert Mapplethorpe. He is so good in the movie. Even people that don’t love the movie, they love Matt Smith in the movie.

DEADLINE: In that vein, I know Mapplethorpe was not a film that came together quickly, but how did you get involved in your first run as a feature producer?

DUSHKU: Well, the first time my brother brought me the script from the original writer was 14 years ago. We partnered with Ondi Timoner, the director and co-writer, and optioned the material from Mapplethorpe’s foundation, and it was a long, rough ride.

DEADLINE: How so? I mean, I’d assume one of the hardest parts would be getting the foundation on board.

DUSHKU: For us, there were a number of challenging factors. We had different other cast involved at different times. We worked on the script with the help of the Sundance Institute. We had taken the script to the producer/writer/director labs and wanted to do it right.

DEADLINE: Was Sundance helpful?

DUSHKU: Yeah, it’s a tremendous resource. They do exactly what I was talking about. They bring incredible mentors, and [Robert] Redford himself is up there. They’re giving filmmakers the tools to shoot scenes and then they critique them, and we were really lucky to have some Sundance love.

DEADLINE: So, talking about that rough ride, where was the love harder to find, so to speak?

DUSHKU: (Laughs) Look, this is a business, and as we all know these art movies — whether it’s Frida or Basquiat — they’re not typically a Marvel movie in terms of the return. So you have to sort of find the right financiers for a movie that want to tell a story that’s important.

DEADLINE: Did you think of packing it in by, say Year 10?

DUSHKU: Honestly, sometimes, sometimes. I remember reading about Frida and Salma Hayek, talking about how she’d worked for 12 or 14 years on that movie. This was like just a few years into Mapplethorpe and I thought, “What, that’s insane, how could anyone spend that much time?” But every time it felt like the movie had fallen apart, and there’s no way to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, the sky would open up and a glimmer of light would come through and we would sort of like chase that light. We found ourselves like hopping on a flight or going and meeting this person or chasing every leaf, turning over every stone.

We came so close to missing the window and I think you do, you get a real sense as a producer that’s invested in it that long that you’re leaving something behind, and it really has your sort of print on it and this one makes me really proud.

DEADLINE: Besides actually getting it made, which is a massive accomplishment, what makes you so proud of Mapplethorpe?

DUSHKU: When my brother Nate first brought me that script, I wasn’t familiar really with much of Mapplethorpe’s work. I mean, I knew he took some dirty pictures and I knew that he also took some flower pictures and I knew a little bit about his relationship with Patti [Smith] probably, but nothing substantial.

It wasn’t until we really did a deep dive into his work and met with his foundation and we ended up traveling to Florence for a day to see an exhibit where they had surrounded the David statue with his photographs and I started to realize what an international impact this artist had. What a great American artist he was. The guy was a trailblazer, he was a cultural lightning rod. He was so really brave and imperfect, but we also explored his complicated relationship with his family, his relationship with his religion, and with his peers.

We tried to get to the why and the what drove him. You see his journey and where he began to sort of reconcile in himself that “I am an artist and I have something to say that’s very different than what anyone has ever said.” I thought that was extraordinary, and that was where I saw so much courage in him. I mean, you think about being homosexual and doing what he did in today’s day and age would be challenging. Think about it 30 years ago.

DEADLINE: I do, and I think about it in the context of today’s day and age, as you said, and, to be honest, some of what you gone through …

DUSHKU: Yes, I mean, it’s terrifying. In many ways, we’ve regressed so much when we had made so many strides.

When you talk about Mapplethorpe and back in the ’80s and you’re talking about censorship and First Amendment rights. Yes, of course, there’s the irony of the year that I’ve experienced in terms of silencing people and big corporations. The silencing people in this day and age.

DEADLINE: You mean like NDAs and legal threats?

DUSHKU: To some degree. It’s scary, and I think, frankly, people need to be outspoken and say “We’re not accepting that.” That’s not who we are, that’s not what our democracy is based on. We have our First Amendment rights, and we intend to use them and not have people strip them from us.

So, to go back to Mapplethorpe, it’s extremely relevant right now. Also, in some ways, it’s wild because of the amount of time that it took to make this movie and yet the way that everything has lined up and the timing feeling so important and relevant. The anniversary of Mapplethorpe’s death was 30 years ago last week. The movie is now out across the country and expanding, and he has this beautiful exhibit in the Guggenheim in New York right now. It’s sort of this time of all things Mapplethorpe, so we have to believe that there’s something kismet in that.

DEADLINE: To shift gears, obviously the sexual harassment that happened to you on Bull and the millions CBS paid out in the hopes it and you would go away put a different spotlight on you last year when a copy of the internal investigations over Les Moonves and the overall culture there was leaked to The New York Times. Even with the NDA you signed, you not long after penned an op-ed in the Boston Globe on some of your side of the story, and people should read that, can read that if they want to get your POV. But in terms of NDAs, you recently said you believe that they re-victimize, what did you mean by that?

DUSHKU: As we just talked about in terms or our rights as Americans, and to be able to be complete people, we need the right to stand in our power and in our truth. When you rob somebody of that or when you threaten somebody, it’s really damaging. It’s damaging beyond my business or it’s damaging to a person’s personhood and that is what I’ve really struggled with and realized over the last year.

DEADLINE: How?

DUSHKU: As I’m studying trauma and addiction and holistic psychology and the way we store things in our bodies, I’ve also watched this year and I’ve talked to other women who have been part of the #MeToo and Time’s Up movement, and it’s been a year of reckoning.

It’s time for us to be open about that and say, “No, we’re going to stand in our truth, we’re going to stand in our power.”

DEADLINE: Do you think that #MeToo and Time’s Up can really work, or do you think that Hollywood eventually will revert to its tried and true and bad ways when it comes to sexual harassment, sexual assault and the culture of complacency?

DUSHKU: I’ll say this: In my case, what made me feel a responsibility was the fact that I had been around for so many years. I have been around for almost 30 years. I had worked and built myself up to a place where you know I wasn’t off the bus and yet on a set, I didn’t have a voice. After all those years, to find myself feeling powerless and feeling victimized was not — it was more important to me to tell the truth and face the consequences.

I didn’t leak the story, but I was not comfortable with the false narrative that had been propagated, as I wrote about in the Globe piece. That’s what I’ve been trying to do. But, as you said, I took the opportunity to fully respond to the leak in the CBS case. I responded very deliberately and very intentionally with my Globe piece in many ways in hopes that then I would be able to go on and celebrate the things that I have worked so hard for and on, and not have the bad behavior of men and others define my life going forward.

DEADLINE: Clearly, that’s not where your head is at…

DUSHKU: This year did shake me, you know — didn’t break me, that’s for sure. Like, this is one of my first trips back to LA in a little while, and I actually spent the morning with the three heads of the Time’s Up organization and Mr. Steven Spielberg.

DEADLINE: What was that discussion like with them and the man who, among other things, is the boss of Bull producers Amblin TV?

DUSHKU: Good. We sat and brainstormed and discussed possible solutions for this systemic imbalance of power, the abuse and harassment that we’ve been seeing and hearing and experiencing and both in our industry and beyond. That’s something that you know that I can and will continue to contribute to and I want to look at it from my own experience.

DEADLINE: Do you think others, at that meeting today and otherwise, get that?

DUSHKU: Yes, I think this is a movement. This is not a fad and that’s one thing that was really clear in talking with these women this morning. We need strength in numbers. We need allies like Steven Spielberg, and of course, we do need the media to tell the stories and to help lay responsibility and accountability where it needs to be.

DEADLINE: And for you?

DUSHKU: I want to look at it from a holistic healing perspective and the work I hope to do there. You know, I wouldn’t sit here and say it’s all very exciting, but I think we all at a certain point realize in our lives that as everything starts to intersect you do start to figure out sort of who you are and what you’re here for. I think one of the hardest parts when we’re all facing the different forms of adversity in our lives, is that we do end up carrying a lot of shame. We do end up covering things up and hiding things and then if you come out with things then you have to face the sort of backlash or the opinions of everybody sort of looking at you and judging you. It can all be really overwhelming and you can feel like you just want to numb out and escape. Now, I’m learning to transform that into something that might help someone else.

Of course, I understand that journalists have their job and that they have to ask, but I also would hope that that’s something that people pay attention to. That part of my being able to heal and to move on is to be able to stand in the power that I produced this movie for 14 years and it’s doing incredibly well and we’re expanding this week. It’s an accomplishment having been an actor for so long, as my first feature as a producer and yeah, I’m really, I’m really psyched about that.

DEADLINE: No argument there…

DUSHKU: Yeah. I’m not only in service of Mapplethorpe, I’m in service of everyone that came together to make this movie. While my story is important, I’ve talked about it, I’ve written about it. Now I want to be in service of this movie and this story and everyone that worked on it.

DEADLINE: So what’s next?

DUSHKU: (Laughs and points at her pregnant belly) Well, my next major production will be this summer in July and that’s right here. Other than that, I mean, god, to look back at almost 30 years in this business I feel like I’m just so grateful, I’m proud of so many of the things that I’ve done as a producer. You know, I was a producer on Dollhouse and that was an incredible experience. My brother and I also had produced a documentary about Albania with PBS, and it’s on Amazon now called Dear Albania.

So what’s next is just having that freedom to tell any kinds of stories that I want to tell that are important to me.

#eliza dushku #sorry i'm late with the updating! #interview

[douxreviews]

Supergirl - ‘Stand and Deliver' Review

Alex: "How can I, with a clear conscience, protect a man who is causing so much pain in the world?"

An episode in which many of our favorite characters stand up for their consciences, and in which the writers find a way out of the apparent impasse.

Ben Lockwood, as the president's new director of the Bureau of Alien Affairs, gets attacked by the Elite very early on in the episode. Because of the attack, Lockwood is assigned a new security detail, with Alex Danvers in charge - another move made by the president. As Alex loathes the man, this does not please her, but both her boss, Colonel Haley, and her adopted sister, Kara, give her the same advice: that by doing her job she will protect lives. (Supergirl, of course, has rescued many humans who she dislikes. I bet Colonel Haley has as well.)

As soon as Lockwood can speak without getting attacked, he announces his intention to repeal the Alien Amnesty Act, which, fortunately he cannot do by fiat, as this was apparently an act approved by Congress and Lockwood, a director in the executive branch, cannot unmake a law. However, Lockwood is in a position of influence, and by lobbying could get the act repealed. The announcement sends a chill through aliens and their friends, and they have to do something about it.

And the core of the show is when several of the characters take stands and deliver. The first to take a stand is Brainy, who, despite working at the DEO decides to organize a counter rally to the one being done by Lockwood (we all knew Brainy was behind it). The second is when James decides to go out – not as Guardian – but as a photographer to help the press show to the people what is really going on. The third is when Kara, originally hovering over the rally as Supergirl in order to protect everyone, staying above the fray, drapes herself in a Kryptonian robe (or perhaps just a blue blanket) and joins the pro-alien rally. The fourth is my favorite. Lockwood is getting the humans to shout, “Us or Them! Us or Them!” He’s egging on an attack. And then we have the wonderful:

Alex: You need to get off the stage now. Lockwood: Where’s the threat? Alex: You are the threat.

She hustles him off the stage. Pandemonium still breaks out, but the conflict would have been much worse if he had remained, and because she took him away, the brawling dies down, and people start helping one another (and her action even wins praise from Colonel Haley).

Olsen proves he deserves the position of photographer by taking a great shot of a human helping an alien, and that becomes the moment, the picture worth a thousand words, which defuses the anger being felt by so many. I was very impressed by this turn in the series, because I have been wondering how the writers could get them out of this jam – and they found a way that was fairly credible. Lockwood (pressured by President Baker, who we know cares a lot about the polls) says that they will hold Congressional hearings, which is a huge step forward.

Of course, the factions are not vanquished. Lockwood’s celebrity is based on hating aliens, so he’s got reason to try to come back. Some of the Elite are locked up. The writers can choose to return to this arc or not, but I am happy where it is for the moment.

For what I assume is a future part of the story: James is worried about the black budget at L-Corp and because he and Lena are on the outs, he can't really ask her. Instead he pumps Eve Tessmacher, his former employee, for information. Tessmacher actually has scenes that Lena would usually have more of a say in. Lena’s scenes are short and she appears overworked, which make me wonder if the actress was tired and overworked during the filming.

The episode ends with a great teaser: Who shot J.O.? (For those who are too young to know the phrase, “Who shot JR?” was the CBS hook for the show Dallas in the 1980s. Even though I never watched Dallas, I recall the phrase.) James Olsen, fresh from delivering the hearts-and-minds-changing photograph, is working late at CatCo, just the way a good boss should. Just as he is finally leaving the office, a gun is seen and a shot is fired. The last shot (camera shot) is of James Olsen lying on the floor, bleeding out. Will Olsen die? I hope not, even when they don’t give Mehcad Brooks enough to do, he is so easy on the eyes – besides, they cannot kill James Olsen, who is such a big part of the Supercousin world. So, who shot him? One of the Children of Liberty, out of resentment for that photograph? Or someone who doesn’t want him doing an expose on L-Corp finances?

Title musings: “Stand and Deliver” is the title of a 1988 documentary about a high school teacher who inspired his drop-out-prone students to master calculus. The word stand also evokes the “stand your ground” laws in various states, which have been used for the shoot first ask questions later and let Trayvon Martin’s murderer go unpunished. But it also serves the actions of at least four characters in this episode, and so I think the title works really well. All four of them made a difference by standing up when needed, and their actions together - even though not by design - had a great impact.

Bits and pieces

The Elite has a group of four, but as one of them is invisible most of the time, that’s good for the budget.

Some actual conversation for Eve Tessmacher!

Finally giving Nia Nal a more individualistic personality, and she seems to be into the meta awareness of the series, saying that’s a superhero speech or a classic bad guy move. Maybe this is a characteristic of a Dreamer. Or perhaps it is a characteristic of a superhero in training (which is rather cute).

I don’t recall Manchester Black having purple hair before this, but that’s in line with the comics. Very nice.

Loved the scrimmage between Brainy and Hat. Very artistic; they must have worked hard on the choreography.

Loved the super-heavy key for getting into the Fortress of Solitude and how the Elite looked under the mat for it.

Quotes

Lockwood: I know you think I’m a monster. But half of England said the same thing about Winston Churchill before World War II.

Nia Nal: Returning to the scene of the crime is a classic bad guy move.

Brainy: Well, whoever this American Alien is, their website superbly protected. He or she must be a highly intelligent cryptophile. Translating. This may take some time. Editor translation: You’re asking me to research myself. Haley: Just do it, Dox.

Hat: We’re supposed to be changing the world. Not acting suicidal to settle old scores.

James: You fight injustice with your fists, you can help one, maybe a dozen people. But good journalism – that can impact millions.

Brainy: Supergirl may be a symbol, but more importantly, she’s a citizen of Earth. Just like the rest of us.

Nia Nal: It always amazes me how much one photo can change the conversation.

Haley: Lockwood is a bureaucrat with power he doesn’t understand. Not only does that make things dangerous it makes our job difficult. Note that I disagree; I think Lockwood understands the power very well. Still, it's an interesting perspective.

Overall Rating

I can tell that I really enjoyed this episode, as I am still writing about it something like 1300+ words later (the word count may shrink when I edit). Three and a half out of four superheavy Fortress of Solitude keys.

Victoria Grossack loves math, Greek mythology, Jane Austen and great storytelling in many forms.

#Supergirl #Kara Danvers #Kara Zor-El #Lena Luthor #Alex Danvers #J'onn J'onzz #DC Comics #Arrowverse #Supergirl Reviews #Doux Reviews #TV Reviews

[calzona-ga]

In her first interview since being let go from the ABC medical drama, the actress talks with THR about how the Emmy nomination for shortform series 'B-Team' is opening new doors as Drew plots her next chapter.

For Sarah Drew, the Emmy nomination for Grey's Anatomy's shortform series B-Team — which she directed — was profound to say the least. The nomination came nearly two months after she was let go from the ABC medical drama after a nine-season run.

"My confidence had gotten a bit shaken in the wake of being let go and the nomination after the fact made me go, 'I don't need to be worried about anything or have my confidence shaken,'" Drew tells The Hollywood Reporter.

The six-episode web series, which focused on the ABC medical drama's latest intern class, served as Drew's directorial debut and, to hear her tell it, a new chapter in her career. "I'm not only pursuing my career as an actor but now I'm walking into this world as a director and producer. The world is so wide open," says Drew, who called the nom part of her "rebirth."

Here, in her first interview since wrapping her run as April on Shondaland's Grey's Anatomy, Drew opens up about the impact the Emmy nomination has had on her, how April's journey ended and what's next.  

Did you know that ABC was submitting the web series for Emmy consideration?’ I knew when we started putting the whole series together because there were certain rules we had to follow in order to be eligible for a nomination. I've been submitted as an actor for an Emmy every year but that didn't mean anything. [Laughs.] It was a great, huge, wonderful surprise to get that nomination. The whole "B-Team," we were just out of our minds. I'm still pinching myself over the whole thing.

What was your reaction to the nomination coming after you'd been let go from Grey's and after you'd already completed production and your last episodes had already aired? It was a bolt of good news. [Laughs.] My confidence had gotten a bit shaken in the wake of being let go and the nomination after the fact made me go, 'I don't need to be worried about anything or have my confidence shaken.' I'm not only pursuing my career as an actor but I'm now also walking into this world as a director and as a producer and the world is so wide open. More than anything else, the last few weeks after my final episodes have been a really beautiful rebirth and a really exciting time. I'm running around, meeting everybody and talking to producers and talking to heads of casting at all the networks and the studios and I'm finding that the landscape is so different. There's so much more content, it's a totally different world for television. The nomination in the midst of walking out into the world and feeling like I'm engaging in this beautiful rebirth was more affirmation that this is a good space in my life right now; that I don't need to be sad and I don't need to be mourning and I don't need to be in grief over the end of something that was so beautiful. I can just rise from the ashes in a more brilliant way. The nomination was such a profound affirmation.

Take me back to the day that you found out that you would not be returning to Grey's. I was let go during an episode where I was shadowing Kevin McKidd [who stars as Owen and regularly directs episodes]. It was in the afternoon and I went back to my trailer and I did my crying and called my people. A whole bunch of people came into my trailer to give me hugs and cry with me and tell me they were so sad I was leaving. I was supposed to be shadowing Kevin this whole episode with the hope that I would get to direct an episode of Grey's but [after being let go] it seemed like wasn't a possibility anymore. I wondered if I should keep shadowing Kevin. My husband was like, "Of course you go." I had this incredible opportunity to grow as a director and as an artist with a director that I respect so much. I had nothing to be ashamed of and didn't need to hide. So that's what I did: I showed up the next morning at 6 a.m. and shadowed Kevin until I got cast as Cagney and had to leave to go shoot CBS' Cagney and Lacey.

What a profound experience. I'm a believer in things happening for a reason and finding beauty in the midst of grief. I don't regret or begrudge anybody this season of my life. I'm embracing it. I had a profound and incredible season of my life on Grey's Anatomy. I got to tell stories I believed in. I got to work with Shonda Rhimes and Betsy Beers and learn from the best. I got to work with an incredible community of people that I will have lifelong friendships with. I got to build a platform and have my children in an environment where I was cared for because of who Shonda is and how she takes care of her mamas and her women. It's hard for me to come up with anything I could be angry about.

What do you think about now that you've had some distance from the show? [Being let go] was painful when it happened but, in retrospect, I think it would have been hard for me to walk away from that job. I was on it for nine years. It feels right and it feels like a good time to move onto something else with all the great love in my heart that I have for everybody and respect and gratitude for what that experience was. Playing a character for nine years is a long haul.

Are you taking more meetings for directing after the nomination? Yes! I'm certainly keeping that in the forefront of a lot of my conversations. I want to do all of it: produce, direct and I want to dig into another really fun character. I got bit by the directing bug because I produced my first film — Indivisible — during our last hiatus and it's coming out in theaters on Oct. 26. I realized on that film that I was scared of directing because I thought maybe I couldn't keep all the different things in my head all at once: everybody's journey, props, costume, wardrobe, shot lists, visuals, etc. I found that it came quite naturally to me and I got excited about it. I called [Grey's Anatomy's producing director] Debbie Allen from that set and asked her to shadow and learn how to direct. That's when she told me about B-Team and that they wanted to have a director who was in the [Grey's] family do it. I shadowed Chandra Wilson (who plays Bailey and regularly directs) to prep for those webisodes. I was terrified in the prep and so afraid of completely failing.

Would you return to Grey's Anatomy as a director? Maybe.

When news that you and Jessica Capshaw initially broke, there was an uproar on social media of people who assumed that the show could not afford to keep both of you after paying Ellen Pompeo $20 million a year. How was the decision explained to you? I was told that the show had too many characters and that they needed to downsize because they couldn't service all of the characters effectively. They didn't want any of us to be left in the background and not getting much of a story. Because there were so many series regulars, they needed to downsize and to find some characters that they felt like they could tie up their stories well. [Showrunner] Krista Vernoff said that she felt like April had been through so much and had come out the other side and that she didn't know what she could put her through again. It was really hard to hear that. But Krista had a lot of very complimentary things to say about the work that I had done — especially this past season — and that April was going to have her happy ending.

April winds up quitting her job to do, as she called it, "God's work," and winds up getting married to Matthew (Justin Bruening). If that is the last viewers see of April, what do you think about how her journey ended? In the midst of it, I was devastated that Jackson (Jesse Williams) and April wasn't an end game. I thought Jackson and April were meant to get back together and they were going to get married again and realize they'd been crazy and it was just going to be this long, slow burn. But after thinking about it, there's a real sweetness to that story of April's faith. She ran off with Jackson and loved him and wouldn't regret a single second of that relationship because it made her heart grow and she got a beautiful daughter out of it. She grew as a woman and as a person of faith. All of that had to happen. But there was something beautiful about the redemption story between April and Matthew. She hurt him worse than anybody had ever hurt him by walking away from him [at their wedding]. For there to be reconciliation from that scenario? That's a really beautiful redemption story that there could be forgiveness there. He lost his wife and then find his first love again. It's lovely.

Yet at the same time, viewers didn't really get to see that journey between April and Matthew. I wish that we had gotten to see more of their journey before they got married. I would've liked to play those scenes and I would've liked to have told that story in a more full way. I can see the beauty in it. But part of me will always be a little heartbroken that April and Jackson were not end game.

April is one of a small handful of Grey's characters to exit the show alive. Have there been any conversations about having you back at all as a guest star, especially since April and Jackson share custody of their daughter? I have not heard anything about that.

Would you be open to doing that? Maybe.

ABC has Grey's spinoff Station 19, and Matthew works as a paramedic — which would make sense to see in that world. Last summer, I wrote to [Station 19 showrunner and Grey's alum] Stacy McKee and told her that Justin Bruening has to be on your firefighter show. But who knows? I think he'd be an awesome addition to that cast. It would be fun to play in the world of Shondaland. But at the same time, I have said goodbye to April and put her to rest. I would be perfectly happy not being April again. I don't feel a particular urge to play her any time soon. I love that character.

Will you keep watching Grey's? There is something about watching your family go on without you that's a bit painful. I'm not sure I need to put myself through that. I love them and I'm sure it's going to be a great season but I think it might be challenging for me to tune in.

Looking back, what would you say April's impact on Grey's was? So many of April's stories were about resilience in the face of pain and rising above in the midst of sorrow and grief. That's what I want people to remember about her. April's story throughout the whole nine years on the show was a story about someone going through pain and emerging in a more beautiful, more glorified state of hope and of gratitude and of resilience and of strength. That's what I hope people take away from April.

What was it like moving from April to an iconic character like Cagney? I didn't have time to process what I was doing when I walked into Cagney. I got let go on a Tuesday, the news broke on a Thursday, I had five test offers in front of me on that Thursday and I chose to pursue Cagney. I tested on Saturday, got the offer on Monday and was shooting Cagney at 7 a.m. Tuesday. I had been given the role at 3 p.m. on Monday when I was on set shooting Grey's and I had to finish my day with Kevin directing. [on Cagney and Lacey] I had to cuff somebody on day one and our technical advisers had to show me how to do it and I had to figure out how to pull a gun on somebody! It was such a different energy than April. We were heartbroken that that didn't get picked up.

What did you hear about why CBS didn't pick it up? Everybody loved it and it was just one of those, "I don't know what happened" kind of things. It's certainly heartbreaking in the moment but I know that there's something around the corner for all of us that's meant to be even better.

What's next for you? I'm reviewing options. I'm currently dipping my toes in a couple different development things. I haven't officially signed on anywhere but I've got three or four different potential projects that I'm interested in potentially producing and acting in and maybe directing episodes of.

Will you go back to 24-episode broadcast shows? Not right now. I'm thinking more about 10- to 13-episode things. The things that I'm thinking about developing all feel like streaming and not broadcast network stuff. We'll see! It's all very open and exciting right now.  

#Sarah Drew #grey's anatomy #THR #news

[jonathangroffcentral]

The Mindhunter Cast Knows How to Spot a Sociopath

By Abraham Riesman -  August 22, 2018 (x) 

Photo: Maya Robinson/Vulture and Photo by Getty Images

Despite being a 1970s period piece, Mindhunter feels eminently of the present moment. We’re living in the midst of a true-crime renaissance, and the David Fincher–helmed Netflix series stands out not only as a (heavily fictionalized) example of the genre, but as a critique of it. As FBI agents Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff) and Bill Tench (Holt McCallany) and psychologist Wendy Carr (Anna Torv) delve into the brains and motivations of serial killers — especially real-life murderer Ed Kemper (Emmy nominee Cameron Britton) — we’re given a window into why humans have such a fascination with individuals who engage in death and destruction. But just as interesting as the tales on the screen are the tales of what it takes to tell them, as an audience learned during a panel discussion with Groff, McCallany, Torv, and Britton at this year’s Vulture Festival. Over the course of the conversation, the actors talked about Fincher’s notorious obsessiveness, whether Ford is a sociopath, and how Britton learned to play Kemper partially thanks to his own time as a schoolteacher.

So first off, before the show started, for each of you, how big a true-crime fan were you, if at all? Why don’t we start with you Jonathan.

Jonathan Groff: Me personally, not at all. Not a serial-killer person.

I should hope, yes.

JG: That’s the weird thing, though, is that people keep coming up to us and saying “I am so obsessed with serial killers.” And people are obviously fascinated by the mind and the way the mind works, and what they do, and how someone could possibly do what they’ve done, and whatever, but that was not my jam. What drew me to the show initially was obviously the opportunity to work with David Fincher. And also, the scenes. The scenes with the four of us, and the scenes with the serial killers, they’re almost like play scenes. And so getting the opportunity to act that out and do such psychological work was what drew me to it.

Were any of you true-crime fans?

Holt McCallany: I was a big fan of some of David’s earlier films, like Seven. Which obviously, there’s a serial killer. Zodiac. So the opportunity to work with him, a great director like David in a genre that he is such a master of was very exciting also.

Cameron Britton: Well, I’ve always been fascinated with serial killers. I find it to be an incredible enigma, and [Edmund] Kemper is a great example. I’m very confused as to how you can have no remorse to take a human’s life, especially often a young girl and do it so intimately. So you have no remorse for human life, but you care about what we think of you. It’s so confusing to me that serial killers, many of them, they’re really keen on being liked or being justified through us giving them attention.

Anna Torv: But isn’t that because that’s the point, that’s the narcissist in you, is that you only care about what people think of you, or you only care if someone’s talking to you. So therefore, the empathy thing is connected to another person. And so anything to do with the world is absolutely not important. But as soon as you’re involved in it, then that’s what they feed on.

CB: That’s a good point. Mystery solved. I don’t need to do it anymore.

HM: Anna makes a great point. That’s one of the fundamental themes of the show, narcissism. And this is why you see so many of these serial killers communicating directly with the press. David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam, the Zodiac Killer, Dennis Rader, the Bind, Torture Kill [killer]. These guys all wrote letters to the press and they wanted that adulation, they wanted that notoriety.

CB: They wanna feel special.

AT: Or they wanna take credit.

Tell me about the casting process? How did this go for each of you? Did you do sides? What scenes did you do? What made you wanna actually do the show? Why don’t we start over with Cameron.

CB: The first thing I read when I pulled up the sides is that little speech Ed gives when Holden says it’s hard to square you with what you’re in here for. You seem very nice. And Ed says something like, “I’ve been a regular guy most of my life. Nice home, nice suburbs, but at the same time, I was living a vile, deprived, entirely parallel other life filled debased violence, mayhem, fear, and death.” That was the first thing I read.

AT: He was like, “I want it.”

CB: I just need to know more. And there were something about the sides that were like …

HM: I’m perfect for this.

CB: Yeah. That’s me.

AT: Who is this guy?

CB: There was something about them, I just could tell it was a real person. So I looked up the name and then just went down a rabbit hole, it was all those YouTube … serial killers on YouTube, it’s a perfect example. It’s what the show feels like. It’s not terrifying to watch Mindhunter, necessarily, but it’s just unsettling. You can find Aileen Wuornos just talking to a camera. It’s hard to watch. Her eyeballs, they are just terrifying. I probably spent … I was up past midnight working on that self tape. I can do it better, I can get it, I can get the eyes right.

HM: And boy, did he nail it.

Anna, how about you? What was your audition process like?

AT: It was pretty smooth and simple, actually. I, again, got the pages. And often, you go in for an audition and you’re lucky if you get two pages. And it’s like, “Hey.” And it was a good 15. And then I knew what the show was, and so I read the book then, though, before I went to audition for it. And the character that I’m playing isn’t in the book, and I worked out who she was. But she’s a completely different person to the one that we’ve created in the show, to Wendy. And then I went in and tested with beautiful Laray, who casts the show.

HM: A round of applause for Laray Mayfield.

AT: Then I think I met with David and did them again. And then got the call. And I was beyond ecstatic, like beyond.

HM: I had worked with David a couple of times previously. I was in his first film, a film called Alien 3, and then I was in Fight Club. But they were smaller parts, I had never been in a lead. And so when I realized that Bill Tench was gonna be one of the really integral parts of the show, it was wonderful. Because in a certain way, it felt like I was getting a promotion.

JG: I had met Laray eight years ago when I auditioned and did not get TheSocial Network. And then I was in New York and I put myself on tape with the New York casting director Julie Schubert here. And for anyone that has an audition for Mindhunter, she gave me these tips before I was going, just general David Fincher tips. She said don’t move your forehead.

Don’t move your forehead?

JG: Don’t act with your forehead. Don’t blink, don’t up at the end like this, which I do all the time.

HM: Don’t segment the lines, no segmentation.

JG: Yes, and don’t be …

HM: Get to the end of the thought.

JG: Yeah, don’t be musical. And so I applied that.

HM: And be prepared to do a lot of takes.

JG: Be prepared to do a lot of takes, yeah. And so I applied that to the audition and then flew out to New York on a Monday on a day off and met with David. I had a feeling when I was sitting with him, this feeling of depression sometimes you get when something is really great. I don’t know if you’ve ever felt this before when something really great is happening, something that you’ve dreamt about. And it’s almost like this feeling of sadness, because I felt like this is everything I’ve wanted and now I feel really depressed. Where this is too good to be true, I don’t believe this is happening. I’m in a room with David Fincher, he’s talking about this TV show.

HM: He’s probably gonna hire Justin Timberlake.

JG: Exactly. Exactly.

Tell me about your early interactions with David Fincher and Joe Penhall? What did they say they wanted the show to be and what did they want your performance to be?

CB: Well, David said something that I hoped he’d say, where he wasn’t looking for an impression. I mean, there’s hints of Ed there, there’s more his vibe I was going for and some of his voice. And he said he wasn’t looking for the genius Hannibal Lecter serial killer because it’s not all too accurate. The cinematic one, the sexy one. He couldn’t have got the sexy one out of me.

JG: That is so not true.

CB: Although, there have been some strange fans, I will … One person just wrote, a private message, “You’re a very hot bear.” What a takeaway. They’re watching this show Mindhunter and they’re like, “Yeah, this is …”

Anyway, the importance of this being a regular person, and honestly, the evil, the violent, the monster side of it wasn’t this pretty straightforward stuff. I agreed with him, my focus was more on making him a human being. I think that should be the takeaway from these people. My aunt doesn’t want her daughter to see it because she’s only 14. But at the same time, one of Kemper’s victims was 14. There’s something to be said … I don’t like to put that fear out there, but there’s something to be said about the assumptions we make on someone just because they’re nice, or well-spoken. Of course, we don’t do hitchhiking much anymore. You certainly don’t here anyway. So yeah, that was a lot of the talk, and then after that, there was an incredible amount of freedom that David gave me. He’d have notes on a thought, like this line, “I’d like it to be backed up with arrogance,” or something. But there were no overall notes. “I need Ed to be more this or that.” He just let me play, which it’s what’s so impressive about him. That he’s so in charge and yet you still feel so free.

AT: We were talking about that last night about the idea of when you say no broad strokes, no overall notes. That he’s got such an incredibly clean mind, that when he gives you a note, it’s so unbelievably specific. And then even the eyebrows and everything, all of that, that’s him going, “I don’t want a distraction until I want it.” I want the story and the people, I wanna be able to see that. And it changes the way, we would say, it’s changed the way I watch things.

HM: And that’s what watching David direct is really like. It’s like watching the director of a symphony orchestra. He’s literally making adjustments to every department simultaneously. Not just the actors, but the camera department is changing, the lights, it’s all moving all simultaneously. And he likes to move at a fast pace. And so you’ve got to commit to that, to that pace, and to that energy, and to that way of working. And be able to make very small adjustments because we’ll do many, many takes. And sometimes, he’ll give a piece of direction which is very precise. And he wants to see the same thing he did last time, except with this precise adjustment. So it does require a lot of concentration.

AT: And every frame, you can pause, you can just stop every frame and it’s just so beautiful. It’s a portrait every time.

HM: And that’s really one of the most exciting things about the project because there’s a lot of television out there right now, but there’s not a lot of television that’s being produced at this level with an extraordinary filmmaker like David at the helm. And just to give credit to all of our friends at Netflix, they’ve been very supportive of the project and of him. And giving him the kind of freedom to create his vision. And I think that’s part of what makes it so good, is it’s not the kind of television by committee that you often see at the networks. This is one filmmaker’s vision. And it’s a very different way of working. And of course, most television is writer-producer-driven. And this is television that is director-driven. And that is also fundamental difference that can’t be ignored.

Jonathan, I’m curious, what were the conversations that you had with David about Holden? What did he say he wanted it to be and where did you then take it from there?

JG: He said this thing also last night at dinner when he was talking to Anna and I about directing: “I’m in a plane looking down at you and you’re in a cornfield and I’m telling you where to walk.” So he likes us to lose ourselves in the moment of the scene, know the lines really well, don’t move your forehead, don’t blink, don’t go up at the end.

HM: No smiling.

AT: He didn’t say I’m telling you how to walk, he said, “And I’m gonna tell you if you’re getting too close to the rocks.”

JG: Right. Yeah. They direct you.

AT: We need to get back into this.

JG: Yeah, that’s wet over there. I see you moving in that direction, but that’s actually an unsafe area to be, why don’t you move over here? And we find the way together. Yeah, actually one of the things that he said to me in the beginning was “Holden has no charm and no self-awareness whatsoever …”

AT: That is so brilliant.

JG: “… And you as Jonathan are a very smiley … You’re an actor, so you’re always trying to desperately be charming. And you have that needy thing that we all have for people to love us. And Holden doesn’t have that, he’s nerdy.” And so he said this thing to me at the very beginning that is a very small technical thing but has completely changed the way I am even in certain ways. He said, “You smile. Even when you don’t think you’re smiling, you’re smiling.” And I was like, “What? Am I smiling right now?”

And so it took a long time, but he does this with all of us. He finds these little technical things. That’s why one of the reasons working with him is such a life-changing experience where we would be about to roll on the scene or we’d be about to start shooting the scene and be like, “Okay, and we’re rolling. And Jonathan stop smiling, and you’re still smiling, and you’re still smiling, and okay, action.” And then I would eventually get there. But when I watch the show back, I did not recognize myself. And I saw how, via him and the plane looking down at me in the cornfield, I saw how he calibrated so expertly every one of our performances. I mean, we give him everything we can give him on the day, and then he goes into the editing room and makes these subtle adjustments. And ultimately, it’s him who’s picking the coverage, and who we’re watching, and whatever. It was a master class being on set, and acting, and being pushed in the way that he pushes you, and doing the amazing material with these guys. And then it was a master class watching it and going, “Wow, that is how he put it together and that is the piece of art he created in the end.”

CB: I don’t know if it was intentional or what, I didn’t know I was doing it, but I recently watched, someone sent me something. You’re gotta see this, someone put together the editing of Mindhunter, this cool link. And it covered how they edited it and what story you’re telling by cutting to this person. And the person narrating said every time that Kemper mentions his mother, his mouth tightens. I had no idea I was doing that, I don’t know if David knew I was doing that or if …

AT: He would’ve seen it.

CB: It was something else.

Tell me about shooting the interview scenes with Ed. Was there some kind of guiding philosophy when you were going into those scenes, how you were gonna make them interesting, how you were gonna make sure they don’t get redundant? How were you approaching it?

CB: I don’t remember too much conversation outside of the cool structure … Usually before we were even dressed up, done our hair and makeup or anything, we’d come in in the morning and run the scene until Fincher felt it was where it needed to be. And then we get to process those notes while we go get hair and makeup done and they set up the cameras and everything. They were very private rehearsals, but I’m sorry, I don’t really remember …

HM: Well, the key to what Cameron just said is the word rehearsal. We do a lot of it, and we did a lot of it before we ever began filming. We would do private rehearsals with David in which we just go through the scripts. Every new episode. We sit around a long table, we go line by line through the script, talk about whether the line is necessary, how can it be improved, what does the scene mean in different terms of the overall journey of the character, what’s going on … And then, when we get on set, then we do an hour’s rehearsal just with David, and our DP, and the actors, until we all really feel … So this is something that’s a lot more rare than it should be in television. Normally, in TV, they just don’t give you any rehearsal. Not simply an insufficient amount of rehearsal, they don’t even put it into the schedule. Everything is about shoot time, and sadly, mostly directors aren’t really empowered on TV sets. They wanna shoot the call sheet, they wanna get the day, they don’t wanna go over schedule, they wanna get invited back. And so to have somebody who says, “No, we’re gonna take our time here. As long as we need until the scene is as good as it can possibly be, and then we’ll shoot it.

CB: And I doubt I will ever see a quicker turnaround between cut and action. It’s cut, and then there’s a little note thrown in from video village, and then rolling, and then action. You are in it all day. And especially in a scene where you’re just sitting in a chair. I remember the prop master trying to put my shackles on to start the scene over and Fincher would say, “Rolling” and he’d go, “Rolling. Fucking rolling?” And then dive out of the way of the shot. I’ve never done that in my life, I’ve never just woken up, had breakfast and then acted until I went to sleep.

HM: Right. And my character smokes in the show. Even the time to reset the cigarette. It has to be the same length as in the previous take because we move really, really fast. But that’s why we’re able to do so many takes and that’s why when he gets into the editing room he has so many choices. And then the other part of that is working on the interview scenes specifically, is that they’re very long scenes. Some of them are 10-, 12-page scenes or longer. And that’s so rare that that’s when it begins to feel like theater, when you’re doing these long scenes. And he’ll let them run all the way through. And then it’ll be another setup, a new angle, and maybe takes. So you get so comfortable in them, you do them so many times you start to make discoveries. And the thing just starts to improve, and gel, and come together until he finally gets what he wants.

Jonathan, how did you approach doing the interview scenes? You have to really be a key component of that over, and over, and over again throughout the series.

JG: It was different with every one. And I remember with the Ed Kemper scene, one of the things that I heard David say … Because the first interview with Ed Kemper happens almost halfway through the second episode. And in most TV shows, it would happen in halfway through the first episode. This is the show where they interview serial killers, but it was really important to them to slowly build the story. And you see how the term “serial killer,” the idea of talking to serial killers, the behavioral science unit at the FBI, it’s a huge thing that happens, a huge journey that happens throughout the course of the first season. And so when they were tracking that journey and Ed is the first person they talk to, I remember David, first of all, wanting to have that full, long setup where we meet [points to McCallany], the road school … And then we get to Ed Kemper and it’s like beginner’s luck. We meet a guy who’s a serial killer who’s dying to talk about everything he did, and his motivations, and his mother, and his backstory, and everything. So the Ed Kemper interview was all about the absolute perfect person at the absolute perfect time for the characters to go, “Whoa, this is actually really worthwhile.”

And then we give the transcript to her [points to Torv], and he [points to McCallany] gets convinced, and then it starts to build. And then from there, each interview is slightly different. So Jerry Brudos, he’s a total asshole and won’t talk to us. And so we have to figure out a way to get him to talk, and we end up going to him and talking to him in the third person. And that’s how we get him to open up. And then you’ve got Richard Speck, who’s surly and crazy. And so then suddenly I’m talking to him about words that I promised I wouldn’t say on this panel.

But I remember in the sides, because the ten scripts were written, basically. They changed a lot, but they were written before we started. So [then there’s] that fun element of the character of Holden [starting to mirror] the serial killers to get them to open up. And so then each interview starts to become about, “Okay, they’re not all Ed Kemper, so how do we get them to open up and when does Tench have more of an impact on opening up with Monte Rissell. Being tough on him is actually the thing that gets him to open up because he fights back. And then the scene with Gene Devier, who is the guy that kills the 14-year-old majorette girl in Georgia. With him, it’s putting the rock in front of him, which is based on John Douglas’s real story, the idea of putting the rock … So then every interview becomes about a totally different way of getting someone to open up, and the staging of the interview, and the way we act is different in every one because it’s a different psychology in each scene.

Cameron, I heard that you used to be a preschool teacher.

CB: Yeah, for eight years, I taught special-needs preschool for 18 months to 3-year-olds. It’s what I was gonna do with my career for a while, and then I got a little burnt out. I probably did it as long as anyone. I’ve seen a lot of teachers come and go and you do three or four years and it’s exhausting. I realized I was just supplementing entertaining kids for entertaining audiences, so I had to be honest with myself and get back into acting outside of just doing theater with my friends. I can tell you something very strange. Part of teaching preschool helped me with Ed, to be honest.

So you have 15 kids a day, and some days are blessings, and they’re just the joy of life because it’s a preschool, like you’d imagine. But there are days with children with autism where it just breaks down and their impulses can get really intense. And everyone’s looking to you as the teacher. You can’t break or you lose the room. So I started slowly learning how to train myself to just cut all emotions out and just get rid of them entirely so I could be this serene, pleasant … Some days were pretty wild, but everyone had to look to you. And that was interesting because it wasn’t like I was sad or anything, but after three hours of that, class would end. And I’d go into the bathroom or something and tears would just well, because you let your emotions come back. And now, they’re flooding out because they’ve been blocked. And that started becoming a mechanism, almost a physical thing to be able to cut your emotions out. So when it came to playing Ed, it was actually really helpful. I would never have thought that those two things would complement the other.

Have you heard from any parents of kids that have seen the show?

CB: Yeah. I’ll have friends who work there and they say new teachers go, “The guy who played Ed Kemper was a teacher here.” They do not believe it, they go, “I actually don’t believe you. I don’t see how that works.” The other parents, I tried not to be Facebook friends with parents, but a few of them, you get an attachment to. There’s one girl who I was still babysitting while we were working on Kemper. So that mom was an industry type, so she wasn’t creeped out or anything. But I do like to think about one day these kids will grow up and their parents go, “You see that guy? That was your babysitter. That was your preschool teacher.”

For all of you, do you find after having working on the show, do you find yourself profiling people? Do you break people down in a way now because you’ve had to think about that and get in that mindset so much?

JG: My thing was everyone said to me after they’d watch the show that they thought my character was a sociopath. And I had no idea. And people would say … and so many of my friends were texting me, “So when are you gonna start killing people?” I was like, “I thought I was playing an everyman.” I was playing a sociopath.

I think that the thing that they’re aligning when they think that Holden is a sociopath, that I think is very similar between … That we start to see more and more in our characters is this characteristic of narcissism and becoming self-obsessed. And it was one of the things about the serial killers sitting there and waxing philosophical about they’d done. And that need to have credit, and be in the press, and all of that. And that starts to find its way into us at the FBI. It’s my favorite character turns for the three of us, at the end of the season when it starts to get a little tense at the unit and you start to see the narcissists come out, particularly in my character, but it starts to come out in the three of us. “Who invented this, who’s taking credit for what?” And that idea of we were all in the room when “serial killer” was invented, but I’m gonna take credit for it. I was the one that did this, and I was the one that brought that. And I think it’s that quality of narcissism that we’re seeing in Holden that makes an appearance that he is a sociopath. Or maybe I’m just a sociopath and I have no idea.

That’s exactly what a sociopath would say.

AT: But that’s the bit that I think is interesting, we talk about that then start to look at the line that not everyone’s into Ed Kemper. You can still have the personality bias. And it effects you in your workplace, and so with that, the statistics are … There’s a book called The Sociopath Next Door, and it was written not that long ago, and I think it was something like 25 out of every 100 Americans are.

Wow, you really did a lot of reading up for the part. You’d be surprised, I interview a lot of actors, and sometimes they’ll walk into something and just go, “Yeah, I memorized my lines, I did it, whatever. I got out.” But it sounds like you really went the extra mile to try and …

HM: Well, it’s a fascinating subject.

It is. It’s hard to live with, though.

AT: This is really weird because I read that after the show, after I finished filming. When I did it, there was this disconnect we’ve talked about. I felt it was too much. I remember getting cast and then having a bit of panic, going, “What is this? Do I wanna look at this?” And then I looked up some of the real people, and it was truly … I get sweaty palms even thinking about, if I’m honest. And then I went, “I’m not gonna think about this when I’m not on set.” And set’s a different thing because you do it so much that there’s a desensitization that comes to it. And then when the show finished, I don’t know why, I got fascinated with the disorders in normal people. And I read The Sociopath Next Door. I read The Puzzling Mind of a Psychopath, which is really, really interesting.

HM: There’s always a lot of research to do also because it’s a period piece. So we’re set in the late 1970s, it’s a different political context. You also have the fact that criminal profiling was really in its infancy and trying to figure out exactly how these guys do what they do. And then each of the killers is very different and they’re each fascinating in different ways. And so you wanna research who they are, how they committed their crimes, what makes them different from previous killers that we’ve interviewed. And it never stops. Every new episode, we have new characters and we use the real killers. We use the real stories of the real killers, and the real crimes. So it’s a lot of research.

I’m curious, why do you think Tench sticks with Holden? Holden’s such a difficult person to work with. It’s just fascinating to watch their dynamic. Why do you think he sticks with him?

HM: When I first got offered the role, I remember getting an email from David in which he shared with me some of his thoughts about my character, and where he was in his life. He’s a guy that had a failing marriage, that had a lot of problems raising his adopted son who’s troubled. He was a guy who’s not really interested in the politics of the FBI and the brown nosing that you have to do in order to get promoted. He didn’t want to engage in any of that and so he had run away. He teaches road school, gives classes to local law enforcement about the latest FBI investigative techniques, plays golf. And then he gets assigned a new partner. And what he comes to understand is that this young man has really hit upon an innovation that could be very useful to law enforcement.

Even though a behavioral science was in its infancy in the period that we discussed in the show, it has now become the biggest part of what the bureau does. So that’s why, because I often thought of Bill as a guy who was floundering in a certain way because he had forgotten why it was important to him to be an FBI agent. And he was going through the motions, and then when Holden comes into his life, he rekindles my excitement for the work and reminds me why it was that I always wanted to do this job.

Jonathan, I’m curious, there was more sex in the show than I was expecting. And we see a lot of Holden’s love life. I’m not saying this to be prurient or anything, but I’m curious. How did you think about Holden’s approach to sex, and intimacy and relationships?

JG: It was one of the things I was most excited about exploring on the show because it was interesting to me that this guy who is kind of buttoned-up, conservative, Mormon-like, very inexperienced, maybe a virgin, maybe not. It’s hard to tell, he seems like a virgin even though he says he’s not and he has his coming of age talking to psychosexual sadists and killers. And the sexual component of their murders is such a huge part of it. And at the same time, or even before that, he meets this girl that kind of blows his mind sexually and in a way that he never knew about before or anticipated. And there’s even that scene where I go to the FBI, because it is the late ‘70s, and blow jobs and oral sex are on the deviant list of words that shouldn’t be allowed. And I go on and I’m like, “I think we should take some of these off the bad word list because this girl’s gonna blow my mind. It’s actually really great.”

While at the same time, talking to these men who do these horrible things to get off. Ultimately, for a lot of them, it’s about ejaculation and … putting your desire to get off over someone’s heart beating is such a chilling and horrifying thing. And so he’s having this sexual excitement while he’s talking to this girl. So that dynamic was really interesting to me and the development of that. There’s this scene with Debbie where she’s filing her nails in the bathroom and we come out, and she does this thing. And that dynamic of sexual play between a man and women was really interesting to me. And then at the same time, in the eighth episode, it’s Jerry Brudos and he masturbates into shoes. And she sees Holden eyeing up these shoes at this store and she thinks, “He really wants me to wear these shoes.” And so I’m thinking of Jerry Brudos, how we’re gonna get him to open up, and she’s thinking, “I’m gonna really blow his mind tonight when he gets home when I’m wearing these shoes.” And she surprises me by wearing these shoes. And it’s the first time, the character has been so good at compartmentalizing everything and whatever. And that is the first time, suddenly Jerry Brudos has been brought into his personal sex life.

And that’s the first moment it starts to wear on him. And so the sexual component of his relationship was happening at the same time of the sexual exploration of these killers. And I was really excited to explore those things. And I was happy with how it came out at the end of the show as part of the character arc.

I wanna turn it over to the audience for some Q&A.

Audience member 1: When is season two happening?

HM: I don’t think that season two will be on until sometime in 2019. We’re actually in the process of shooting it right now, but we’re still in episode one.

Audience member 2: What did you think of the cold opens with the mysterious man?

HM: Are you talking about the scenes with BTK? To be honest, I think that this was an idea that came to David later in the season when we were shooting. And he decided to add that. And the actor who plays Dennis Rader, Sonny Valicenti. He’s a really, really talented guy and has really captured the attention of the audience much in the way that our good friend Cameron Britton did. Rader is a really complex character, too, and a guy that eluded authorities for 30 years, and committed his first murder in ‘74 and wasn’t arrested until 2005. So it was the longest period that a guy was ever at large, and huge breaks in between when he would commit murders. So fascinating character. I think we may see more of him. I don’t know.

Audience member 3: Jonathon and Holt, I’m just wondering, your characters’ relationship is one of the weirdest things I’ve seen. And it’s like this twilight zone between buddy and enemy. And I’m just wondering how you get to that place?

HM: We’ve seen in a lot of movies, this older cop, younger cop dynamic. It’s an archetype in Hollywood, even in a move like Seven, which is one of David’s movies also dealing with this genre. You saw Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt. In Dennis Hopper’s movie Colors, it’s Robert Duvall and Sean Penn; or in Training Day, it’s Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke. But the trick in my opinion is to not to try to borrow anything from a previous incarnations of this dynamic and to find what’s real, and natural and organic in this relationship. And even though Jonathan and I are very different, we found that we had tremendous chemistry as actors. And he’s a superbly talented actor, so we played off each other in a wonderful way. And what we found was humor. And I thought that that was really something that was important to mine because it’s a nice juxtaposition with the scenes with the serial killers, which are so dark, and grizzly, and graphic, and in many ways unsettling, as Cameron said. So to find some humor in the relationship between the two agents I thought was a nice counterbalance to that. So we looked for those moments.

Audience member 4: My question is for Anna because one of the things I think is really interesting about the show … and we were talking about sexuality and stuff before. One of the things that I think is interesting that goes unspoken is that a gay person probably wouldn’t have gotten security clearance in the 1970s from the FBI.

AT: We’re set in ‘79 and it was only a couple of year before that it was taken off the mental illness list.

Audience member 4: So I’m interested in your take on what the fact that she’s keeping this secret, in a sense, about her sexuality. Even if it’s just a secret of ommission, and how that relates to her attachment to her work?

AT: I think completely and then also not all. At the same time because that’s just the way of life, that’s how it was. But I loved that it was not spoken and I loved that the only little mention of it you get is when she’s talking to her girlfriend. And she’s like, “What? You’ve told them?” And she said, “Of course I haven’t told. It’s not even a discussion.” But it’s that and there’s little moments of it which she reacts quite strongly to the Brudos stuff. And there was one little line that you don’t know that she’s a lesbian at that point, I don’t think. But there’s one little thing where they’re talking about cross-dressing and Holden’s gone in with the shoe.

And she’s like, “That is not an antecedent to criminal behavior. It has been happening in every culture, in every city since the dawn of time and it does not make it deviant. We need to absolutely have a distinction.” And I remember doing that and going, “I don’t know if people will remember,” because I certainly knew why I was saying it, but I think it’s not for another couple of episodes that you [make the connection].

Audience member 4: There’s a lot of [true] crime shows [right now]. I was wondering as a part of this genre if you guys had any musings as to why they’re so popular?

JG: The month that our show came out in October of last year, that horrible Vegas shooting happened.

HM: Stephen Paddock, right? Killed all those people in Las Vegas.

JG: And it was just such a horrifying and chilling thing to see how relevant it is, to try and explore the idea of why. And I don’t think they ever have figured out why, with him in particular, the motivation. What is that? Why did that person do that? But I think with our show, I can’t speak for the other crime shows, but certainly, that’s the question we’re asking in this. And can you have empathy for people that are so below our contempt, you shouldn’t have time for them because they’re deplorable human beings and what they’ve done is unforgivable. But the idea of asking the question of why and using empathy as a tool to perhaps, in some way, understand why, or in some way to prevent it from happening again I think is just a noble human idea. Something that we’re all striving for.

HM: When that incident happened, the one that Jonathan is referencing, I called John Douglas who wrote the book Mindhunter. And I said to him, “John, if you were on the ground in Las Vegas right now and investigating this case, what were the questions that you would be asking?” And he had some interesting things to say. He said first of all, why did he choose those people? What did that group of people represent to him? What were the things that were going on in his life that led him to this moment where he stopped fantasizing about this kind of an act and actually committed it. Usually there’s a trigger. There’s something specific that happened that set him off. What was that? It might’ve been a fight with his wife, maybe he got fired from work. But generally, there is a triggering event. So trying to find that series of things that takes a guy from being … Because he was a man in his 60s. So why does a guy all of a sudden at that age wake up and decide to commit mass murder? And I think that’s why audiences find it so fascinating. It’s because they wanna know, too. Those people are so different than us, how did they become the way they are.

JG: And I think the bleak message of the show is that we’ll never really know. And we can try to understand and try to prevent things from happening, but evil just exists.

#jonathan groff #holt mccallany #anna torv #cameron britton #mindhunter #vulture festival #interview

[aion-rsa]

Star Trek: Enterprise – An Oral History of Starfleet’s First Adventure

https://ift.tt/3C98oDS

Before Discovery or Strange New Worlds, the early days of the future as postulated by Star Trek were explored in the television series Star Trek: Enterprise. Celebrating its 20th anniversary at the end of the month, it was set roughly 75 years prior to The Original Series, during the fledgling days of Starfleet, when humanity was first venturing out into the cosmos. 

Scott Bakula as Jonathan Archer captained the first starship given the name Enterprise, leading a team consisting of humans, a Vulcan, and a Denobulan. The voyage wasn’t always a smooth one, but certainly an important part of the canon. What follows, presented in oral history format, is a look back at the show’s formative days.  

BRANNON BRAGA (executive producer/co-creator): Star Trek always needs fresh blood. I left the franchise before Enterprise; I just said, “I can’t do this anymore.” I remember where I was and what I was working on and where I was standing and at what point in time when I officially burnt out on Star Trek. I decided not to do the seventh season of Voyager and then I was asked to create Enterprise. Rick Berman had a really cool idea for it and I said, “You know what? I’m going to do this one more time.” One could argue maybe I shouldn’t have. Rick was a really good overlord, but even he needed fresh writers. One could argue maybe we both should have left earlier. 

RICK BERMAN (executive producer/co-creator): As Voyager was ending, the studio came and said, “Let’s get another one up and going.” I begged them to let the franchise have a few years’ rest. In fact, they wanted it to start before Voyager ended and I managed to get them to at least wait until Voyager went off the air. The question was, what could we do that was different? I’d been working a great deal with Brannon, and so I asked him to work with me on creating a new series. Our decision, and I still think it was a good one, was to change the time period. We had done three shows that took place in the 24th century, and I thought it was time to go to another century. To go forward meant spacesuits that were a little sleeker and ships that were a little shinier, but it wasn’t that much to invent what had come before. 

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By Kayti Burt

BRANNON BRAGA: Rick called me and said, “What do you think about setting it between the film First Contact and Kirk’s time?” And I said I thought that was a great idea. We started talking about it and considered what it would give us, and it evolved from there. We never considered another concept. We thought that First Contact seemed to be more of a relatable film somehow, because it had characters from the near future versus the distant future, and it allowed a more non–Star Trek audience to embrace Star Trek. You didn’t really have to know much to enjoy that movie. 

RICK BERMAN: There was no Star Trek canon to respond to how Earth got from being in this post-apocalyptic nightmare to being in the world of Kirk and Spock with Starfleet Academy. So our feeling was to pick a time somewhere within that, when the first humans are going into space on warp-capable vessels, and they’re not as sure of themselves as Kirk or Picard were. They’re taking baby steps. We knew, with Enterprise, that we wanted to turn the ship [the franchise] around. We were dealing with the time when the first warp-drive ship was being developed for a crew of humans. There were no holodecks and people didn’t beam themselves anywhere, they just beamed cargo. It just seemed to be the right idea, so it’s the one we pursued. 

BRANNON BRAGA: The biggest challenge was that the studio wanted something, but they were dubious about the prequel idea when we went in to pitch it. I don’t think they liked it very much. They thought Star Trek should be about moving forward and not moving backward. We were asking questions like, “How did we end up building the first warp ship? What was it like to meet a Klingon for the first time?” People had ball caps and walked dogs and wore tennis shoes and are more identifiable as people than, say, a Captain Picard, who is more of an idyllic man of the future that you probably wouldn’t recognize as a person that you could ever meet today. 

RICK BERMAN: From the point of view of some fans, there’s the great sense of continuity that the shows have had, and they’re very, very particular about that. A lot of them were not happy about things that they felt were outside the canon of Star Trek. A lot of them felt that Brannon and I ignored that, which we absolutely didn’t. We tried to pay great attention to it and we had people who knew Star Trek backward and forward that helped us, but obviously there were things that had to be dealt with and adjusted.

SCOTT BAKULA (actor, “Captain Jonathan Archer”): Enterprise is The Right Stuff. That kind of energy of being the first ones out there and being a little scared sometimes and being a little overwhelmed by the experience, which I think is a great emotion to have to play with. Americans have explored our planet in a variety of different ways. Some successfully, some not. We have a wide history of exploration in this country. Certainly different experiences in Vietnam and places like that where we tried to impose our ideas or philosophies on different cultures, and still are in many places around this planet. Making it more about the experience and less about planting the flag. In other words, enjoying the experience and learning from it, rather than saying, “Now we’re here and we’re going to tell you how to do it. We’ve got good ideas and can do things better than you.” So if you’re someone out there looking to do good, and looking to explore in a healthy way, there’s a great responsibility to that. As well as a great temptation to change and alter and fix. Which became this very wonderful kind of play within the show, which is, how are we all going to deal with not only being out there, but the choices we make? 

BRANNON BRAGA: Archer is something between Chuck Yeager and Kirk. He’s anything but the fully enlightened man that Picard is.

RICK BERMAN: It was very important for us to have a captain who was not necessarily that sure of himself, because we wanted him to be different from all the other captains. The other captains got on a spaceship at warp five or warp seven, they never thought twice about it. They ran into aliens every week and they never thought twice about it. We wanted a captain who was taking those first steps out into the galaxy; we wanted him to be a little green, a leader of men and at the same time, somebody who was in awe of everything he saw. With Scott, it just seemed like the perfect fit. 

JAMES L. CONWAY (director, Enterprise pilot): Scott Bakula was the only actor ever discussed for Archer. Problem was, his deal wasn’t closed until the table read of the script three days before production began. In fact, there were rumors he was going to a CBS comedy pilot and we got very worried. We had never met him, talked to him, or heard him do the material. All during the casting process the casting director was the only one to read Archer’s dialogue. So it was a relief and pleasure to hear Scott brilliantly bring Archer to life at the table read. 

SCOTT BAKULA: I responded to the idea of it and this character, and then I got the script for the pilot and everything just fell into place. I liked the character and it was really a return, in many ways, to what the original Star Trek was all about.

JAMES L. CONWAY: Scott brought a humanity to Archer that’s hard to put on the printed page. Also, as an actor and star of the show, Scott brought a top-notch work ethic and professionalism to the production. As star of the show, he set a great example for everyone. 

BRANNON BRAGA: The funny thing about Scott’s take on the character was he spoke in kind of an unusual cadence when he was Archer and I could never figure it out. Someone told me he was a huge John Wayne fan. I’ve never talked to Scott about it, but I think he may have been doing a little bit of a John Wayne thing. He was our only choice. 

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SCOTT BAKULA: We had a different dynamic on our show, and I’ve thought about it since then, because basically I was the older captain compared to the younger guys on the crew. John Billingsley’s in the middle there somewhere. That’s why I think the stuff between him and me was always special, even though he was nonhuman. There was a different kind of distance between characters created by the casting. We were building those relationships, but it was still from a different place. 

RICK BERMAN: John Billingsley is a character actor and somebody else who’s in tremendous demand. He’s just a wonderful guy. We wanted sort of a wise, quirky alien to play that role of Phlox. Somebody who would be our doctor, and he did a marvelous job. He’s another actor I would do anything to work with again. 

JAMES L. CONWAY: We were having trouble finding an actress for T’Pol. We read a lot of actresses, looked at a lot of names on a wish list, but couldn’t find anyone we liked. The role was critical, because she was a Vulcan and had to be able to “be” a Vulcan, yet still have sex appeal. Thankfully we saw a demo of Jolene’s work, loved it, and then met and read and loved her. 

JOLENE BLALOCK (actress, “T’Pol”): I grew up on Star Trek. My favorite was Spock. I would sit there with my dad and my brother just watching the show, watching the relationship between Captain Kirk, Bones, and Spock. My favorite relationship was between Bones and Spock, because it was just this animosity and this love-hate relationship. But overall there was such utter loyalty between all three of them. I love the way they worked together, just the way Bones would be, like, “You green-blooded fool.” Somewhere in The Next Generation, I got lost. 

BRANNON BRAGA: We wanted a Vulcan babe like Saavik, and wanted a Vulcan on board because the Vulcans were very antagonistic toward humans and she was essentially a chaperone, which really rankled Archer. Their relationship worked kind of nicely, and we saw T’Pol, Archer, and Trip as our triumvirate of characters. 

JOLENE BLALOCK: I personally believed that T’Pol should have more of her Vulcan culture. I didn’t believe she should be so desperate to be like everyone else, because the original Star Trek, which I grew up with, had a very simple message that I took from it, and that is that not everyone is like me, and I’m not perfect, and nobody’s perfect, and that’s okay. That really helped me.

RICK BERMAN: Connor was the only actor in four television series that I had to fight for. I just love this guy. I think he’s a remarkable actor, and I saw four pieces of tape on various things that he had done, and there was just something about him; that this character, Trip, that we had written, he was just made for. 

CONNOR TRINNEER (actor, “Charles ‘Trip’ Tucker III”): I wanted this job a lot. It was a good, time-tested franchise with a good audience. It had so many different things happening in it and it gave me the opportunity to play kind of a space cowboy—it was a dream job. Plus, you got to use your imagination as you’re meeting new species and races. Since this was our first time out, everything was new and we weren’t used to anything. You, as the actor, got to take in something as the audience did for the very first time, which was my experience as both an actor and a character. 

ANTHONY MONTGOMERY: It was incredible. There was an electricity that just ran to my core, and it was because I was sitting at the helm of a show, being a part of a franchise that I grew up with and knew about. I’m not a Trekkie by any stretch of the imagination, but I still understand enough about the franchise that it made me say, “Wow, this is real!” That was even more exciting and intense than when I got the call saying I got the part. 

RICK BERMAN: We were looking for an African American actor. We wanted someone young—we wanted this whole cast to be a lot more approachable, in a way; we wanted the audience to be able to relate to them more than they could other shows. Anthony was gorgeous, a terrific actor, and pretty much talked himself into the role the first day we saw him. We also wanted an Asian actor to play the role of communications officer and go back to a little listening device like Uhura had had in The Original Series. We also wanted her to be a translator of almost magical abilities. And Linda nailed it. We wanted somebody very vulnerable and someone who was not into flying on spaceships. In the first audition she completely got it and did very well. 

LINDA PARK (actor, “Hoshi Sato”): There’s a lot of growth that happened for me, not only as an actor in front of the camera, but as a businesswoman. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that part of being an actor is that you are your own business, especially when you become successful at any level; you see how you work as a business and you can’t say, “I’m just an artist, and I don’t need to concern myself with the practical,” because it’s just as important to keep your artistic tools as sharp as your business tool. That’s the biggest thing I learned. In the end, it is my career and my life that these decisions are being made about. 

RICK BERMAN: I had met Dominic on the first day of the last season of Voyager. He had the role of an English character. We were still a year away from going into production on the new series, but we were already starting to write it. He came in and I said to him, “We’ve got a role for you in a series that we’re creating that’s not going to be going on the air for eight or nine months, whatever it is, but I don’t want to use you up here.” This guy looked at me and said, “You’re right.” 

DOMINIC KEATING: I had a chat with Brannon and Rick where I said, “I’m quite excited, and honestly, I’ll say whatever you put in front of me, but I would like it that he isn’t just the talking head Brit on an American spaceship.” Brannon said, “You won’t be saying lines like ‘My dear old mum.’” When I read the breakdown, he’s described as “buttoned-down, by the book, wry, dry, shy around women.” I’m like, “Oh, crap, I’ve got to act this.” 

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JAMES L. CONWAY: The pilot of Enterprise was terrific. But then the first season was very repetitive and it felt like it was written by people who were burned out. And Brannon copped to this, saying he had made some bad choices in hiring staff and he was burned out from finishing up on Voyager. So I think that first season suffered and it took him awhile to re-steer that ship.

BRANNON BRAGA: When we were shooting the pilot and it was time for me to start writing episodes, I had a lot of things that I wanted to do. But once the ship officially set sail, I felt constrained. I felt, “Here we go again,” and I felt very challenged. Also, it was the first time I wasn’t working with people I’d worked with before. It was a large staff of ten people, and Star Trek was notoriously difficult to find writers for, because it was a hard show to write. I don’t even want to say hard; it’s unique. It just had a specific voice, and I had this writing staff that was new to the genre. Out of ten people, I think just a couple survived that first year. 

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The post Star Trek: Enterprise – An Oral History of Starfleet’s First Adventure appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[tylerhoechlin]

Back from the brink, Dylan O'Brien is ready to prove he's an action hero

or the past year, Dylan O’Brien has been in hiding. He spent most of his time inside his home in Sherman Oaks, wondering if he’d ever be the same person he was before the accident. Not just emotionally, but physically too: After major reconstructive surgery that left him with four metal plates holding one side of his face together, he feared he’d never look the same again.

“It’s a miracle, what they’ve done,” O’Brien says, placing his hand on his cheek. Indeed, the actor’s team of doctors must have done some incredible work, given the fact that he looks almost exactly as he always has — the boyish teen heartthrob who has amassed an army of young female fans since he began working on MTV’s “Teen Wolf” at age 18.

Of course, he’s 26 now, so he’s filled out a bit, and there’s also a hint of patchy scruff on his face. He had enough gravitas to him that the producers of “American Assassin,” which opens nationwide Friday, felt confident casting him as the grizzled action-hero Mitch Rapp — even though the character in Vince Flynn’s bestselling books was widely believed by readers to be in his 40s.

“American Assassin” is the reason O’Brien emerged from his self-imposed exile. He’d signed onto the film just a few weeks before he began work on “Maze Runner: The Death Cure,” the third and final installment in 20th Century Fox’s post-apocalyptic young-adult franchise. He was hoping “Assassin” would mark the beginning of a new period in his career. In 2017, after six seasons, “Teen Wolf” would come to an end, as would the “Maze Runner” series.

“I’ve never looked at myself as this pop candy type,” O’Brien says, peppering his speech with more colorful language. “I felt like I was more real than that, so I would get mad when someone would say [I was a teen heartthrob]. I’d be like, ‘I’m 19! I’m a stoner!’ I really resented that.”

He was so excited to begin work on “Assassin” that he fielded calls from director Michael Cuesta just as production began in Vancouver, Canada, on the final “Maze Runner” film. Together, they discussed how O’Brien would approach the character, a 23-year-old who is recruited by the CIA to hunt down terrorists after he witnesses his girlfriend’s murder at the hands of Muslim radicals.

“I spoke with him on a Saturday when he had just started ‘Maze Runner,’ addressing his notes and concerns about the character,” Cuesta recalls. “He was really excited and seemed like, ‘Yeah, I’m ready to do this.’ I was like, ‘Pace yourself, dude. Take it slow. We’ll talk when you’re off this project.’ That was Saturday, and on Wednesday, I got a text from my agent telling me that this awful thing had happened to him.”

On the third day of production in Canada, O’Brien was performing a stunt that required him to be harnessed to the top of a moving vehicle; reports claim he was accidentally pulled off that vehicle midstunt and hit by another vehicle. As a result, he suffered “a concussion, facial fracture and lacerations,” according to a report from WorkSafeBC.

Fox put production on hold in March 2016, and O'Brien ultimately returned to set a year later — after he'd shot "Assassin." “Death Cure,” which was originally scheduled to open in February of this year, is now set for release Jan. 26, 2018.

“I didn’t really wake up or become cognizant, in a way, for a good six-to-eight weeks after it happened,” O’Brien explains. “And then I entered a really difficult phase. I just wasn’t the same person. Things happen to you after something like that that you just don’t have any control of. Your body is designed to react in a way to protect itself if you have a severe trauma to your brain.”

The actor is sitting at a hotel bar in late August, publicly discussing his accident for the first time. He’s been anticipating this day for months. He knew how it would go, meeting reporters at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills, where he’s done press a handful of times before. Even though he was supposed to be talking about “American Assassin,” he’d also have to talk about what had happened to him.

“I hid for a long time, obviously. I was going through a lot and didn’t want anybody to see me going through that, I guess,” he explains. “But I’ve gotten to an OK place of talking about it all. I’ve had to come to terms with people asking me about what happened.”

In a way, he admits, he regrets being so private about what happened to him, given the rash of recent on-set stunt-related injuries and deaths. Last month, stuntwoman Joi Harris was killed while riding a motorcycle on the set of “Deadpool 2.” In July, a stuntman on AMC’s “The Walking Dead” died after falling and suffering massive head injuries. And actors have been harmed too: Tom Cruise broke his ankle while attempting a jump from one building to another on the set of “Mission: Impossible 6,” and filming had to be halted in August. And on the sets of two different comedies this summer, Rebel Wilson suffered a concussion and Ike Barinholtz fell from a high platform, fracturing two cervical vertebrae in his neck.

“It’s really disappointing, and I think things like that should really wake the industry up,” says O’Brien. “It’s really easy, sometimes, to get comfortable on a set and get into the groove and think it’s all make-believe so nothing bad can happen. As an actor, you blindly put your trust in experts — and if they tell you something’s safe, you don’t fully vet it yourself. If you’re young and inexperienced, that’s just what you’re taught to do.”

While he never felt like a “gun was to [his] head,” O’Brien admits he always felt responsible for performing his own stunts. He’d get upset any time he had to be replaced by a stuntman. When he’d watch one of the first two “Maze Runner” films and catch a shot of his double, he was irritated.

“It bugs you,” he explains. “You see it and you’re like, ‘Ugh, what the [heck]? How do people not notice that’s not me?’”

But if he knew if he was going to move forward with “American Assassin,” he’d have to approach his action sequences with far more caution than he ever had before. Once he decided to stay with the project — and CBS Films, the production company behind the movie, agreed to wait for him to fully recover — he began working extensively with action coordinator Roger Yuan to ready himself for the movie’s hand-to-hand combat scenes.

Not surprisingly, O’Brien says, there were strict parameters set in place by the film’s insurance company that dictated just how much he could do himself in the wake of his accident. But he was still eager to do the fight scenes himself, so he rehearsed them extensively — to the point, he says, where he literally could do the choreography blindfolded.

“You just want to know it to that extent so that everybody knows what they’re doing on that day,” he says. “And then when you get to that day and somebody says, ‘Wait, can we just change this?’ You say ‘No.’ Things like that, you’ve gotta stand up for. I’ve understood more of where my voice can exist. When I was younger, I used to just want to please everybody and not want to be an issue or not be considered a diva. I’ve just grown up and realized you have to look out for yourself and stick up for yourself and there’s nothing wrong with that.”

Other protections were built into the production to make O’Brien feel more at ease too: His father, a veteran below-the-line staffer, was hired as a camera operator so he could be there if needed for his son. And “on the days we were putting Dylan in a situation that might make him uncomfortable, we took longer than we might normally take because we didn’t want to rush it,” says producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura. “We were acutely conscious of not putting him in a situation where he could have an adverse reaction — a stunt that might rekindle something.”

O’Brien had also spent time readying himself mentally for the return to set even before production began, visiting with a therapist two times a week. It was there that he realized the similarities he now shared with Mitch Rapp, a character struggling to contain his anger in the wake of a serious trauma.

“It felt like this version of me at the time, always trying to hide from people,” he says. “I was in a really dark place. Obviously, I didn’t experience what he goes through, but that summer when I was in recovery, I was going through a lot. Funny enough, I felt so deeply connected to the dude, and I don’t think I would have known how to play him if this hadn’t happened.”

Meanwhile, it remains to be seen whether “American Assassin” will be the role to catapult O’Brien into adult leading-man territory. His young female fans are still ravenous, anyway: On set in Rome, they once became so intense that the actor was forced to move to a different hotel.

“I saw some fans outside afterward, and three of their moms gave me the finger,” says Cuesta with a laugh. “They hated me because I was keeping Dylan from them.”

The producers of “Assassin” are hoping the film does well enough at the box office this weekend to launch a new action franchise. O’Brien knew that was a possibility, and says he’d be happy to play Mitch Rapp again. But he’s also looking forward to doing something smaller — “finding the new generation of filmmakers and taking risks on guys who don’t have a 25-year résumé.” The idea of acting in a Marvel superhero film, he says, makes him shudder.

“It just seems like too much,” he says. “I don’t think I’m a person who could handle being that face, that star who has to be on every talk show every year. It gives you a lot of flexibility and freedom in things that you do want to do, but it also takes a lot of your time away. And just artistically, it must be hard to keep suiting up and be the same character again over and over all year long in a bunch of different movies. I would like to have a lower profile and career, in a way, but still do things that mean something to me.”

He’s proud of his work in “Assassin,” he says, but he almost doesn’t look at it as a movie.

“It was everything but, in a way,” he acknowledges. “Look, I was angry for a long time. But at this point, that’s not going to do anything. I have to process what happened and move beyond it, and I have. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me, but it’s provided me with a lot of growth and insight that I wouldn’t have had otherwise.”

[source: LA Times]

#dylan o'brien #mitch rapp #american assassin #amas #article #la times #accident #recovery #scruffysterekposts

[gothify1]

In John Green’s seminal work of sad teen fiction The Fault in Our Stars , he writes a particularly apt description of the onset of young love: “I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.” Cutesy? Yes. Realistic? Also yes, but so too is the reverse, the erosion of love that slowly eats away at you over time without you really even noticing. Imagine going to yet another weekly brunch with your S.O. and inquiring about their huevos rancheros, only to be met with an abrupt and devastating declaration: “I don’t love you anymore!” (Talk about all at once.) This earthquake of a wake-up call hits Jules, Kat Dennings’s character in the new Margot Robbie –helmed Hulu comedy Dollface , within the first 30 seconds of the pilot. It’s clear from the get-go that she’s going to be in for a bumpy ride of finding herself and her place among her friends post-breakup. Dollface is the endlessly amusing gift that results when Haruki Murakami–style magical realism meets the Millennial Pink, Goop-ed world of today. (The first person Jules encounters after her brunchtime breakup is a literal Cat Lady—Beth Grant in CGI cat face, whom Dennings calls “an absolute legend.”) Think a more bubblegum Sex and the City but 10 years younger and in L.A.—with cats, dreamlike interludes, a Gucci belt in a silverware drawer, and, of course, a formidable girl gang: Dennings, the heartbroken-ish leading lady, alongside her estranged besties, played by Shay Mitchell and Brenda Song, and a co-worker turned confidant, portrayed by Esther Povitsky. All of them are scene stealers at one point or another. While looking for a unique project, Dennings got the Dollface script from LuckyChap, Margot Robbie’s production company. Naturally, “If Robbie gives you something, you just say yes to it,” she confesses, so she signed up to star and be an executive producer. Plus, Dennings saw the potential in the show, which gave her a chance to play a character different from herself and the previous roles she’s had (notably, as Max in CBS’s 2 Broke Girls ). Post-breakup, her character, Jules, struggles with finding her way back to her friend group, which she neglected during her relationship with her ex. Losing touch with friends is a universal result of aging and occasionally an unfortunate side effect of being in a relationship—people get married , move away, have kids, become vegan; it’s something Dennings relates to on a personal level. “I’ve been a career girl and been really focused, and all of a sudden I’m like Where did everybody go? ” she says. “My closest friends are all over the map. My best pal has two kids now and is married. And it’s still the same person, the same love, but you just stand there and you’re like Did I just miss all the things? ” On the flip side, friendship was easy to come by on the set of the show, and Dennings had no trouble establishing a rapport with the rest of the cast. “There’s no better friendship environment than working on a set together because you’re basically at sleepaway camp,” she tells me. “You start at the crack of dawn, you get ready together, you get coffee together, you eat your breakfast together, you huddle in your little set, you find your little space. It was kind of magical in that way because the four of us got very close.” That closeness supports the characters in their various struggles—Jules’s struggle to show her friends she appreciates them, the group’s struggle to find its footing, everyone’s struggle to identify what feminism means in 2019. (Keep your eyes peeled for episode nine; it’s special.) According to Dennings, “It felt very emotional because there’s so much love there. I think viewers will feel that.” Throughout the series, Jules’s particular struggle gets lessened somewhat by her fairy cat mother, the Cat Lady, who takes a staid old stereotype and flips it on its reductive head. Benevolent and hilarious, the Cat Lady magically pops up to zap Jules out of many an inward spiral, dispensing advice and necessary reality checks along the way.  “I really liked calling her the Cat Lady because what it begins as is a culmination of Jules’s worst fears, which is like ‘Oh, society says if I don’t do this and this by this time, I’m going to be an old crazy cat lady,’” Dennings says. “We’re all told this, and it’s so ridiculous when you think about it. I don’t know, I have a cat, and she’s the best. What’s wrong with being a lady who has a cat?” (For the record, Dennings’s cat, Millie , is adorable.) “It starts there, but it becomes more of a symbol of strength and independence,” she continues. The Cat Lady is something Dennings would like to explore more in the show, and as executive producer—aka she has a hand in casting, show notes, and production meetings—she has the power to help steer the show in that direction. “I had a decent amount to contribute from my experience,” Dennings says of her EP role, “but then I enjoyed sitting back and learning from other departments when I hadn’t dealt with something before. I also wanted to be an ally for the actors, to make sure they knew they could come to me with anything and everything.” She also literally gave the show its name. An ex used to call her dollface, which she never liked, but she did think it could make for a punchy title for the series. Clearly, she’s got good instincts. Dennings was also heavily involved in her wardrobe and collaborated with Costume Director Ernesto Martinez on paring back Jules’s looks. “I had to kind of fight against the fashion aspect for Jules a little bit,” she says. “The temptation with a show with four female leads is to really have fun with it, which is so great and definitely works for Brenda’s character and Shay’s character, but for Jules, I didn’t want her to seem extremely confident at work and at life.” However , there is a monochromatic maroon moment in episode three (above) where Jules is in head-to-toe Norma Kamali that’s very F/W 19 , and we should all take notes—just saying. And she may or may not have also worn a dangerously sheer floral D&G top that I wanted to snatch right off the screen. Day to day, Dennings herself is more of a black-Amazon-leggings kind of girl—aren’t we all? “I really honestly wear black leggings from Amazon every single day,” she confesses. “I got inspired by that fashion lady with the glasses—Jenna Lyons. She’s a fantastic woman who wears black leggings and a blazer and her glasses and loafers, and she always wears some version of it and looks amazing. I was like, I’m going to be like that. ” Maybe one day she’ll wear one of the hats she’s knitted lately too; it’s a hobby that doubles as stress relief (one she and Song share; they used to be neighbors and go to yarn shops together). “Knitting is one of those things where it keeps my hands busy and my mind busy, so it’s definitely a calming thing for me. At times I just need to make a scarf that just has one kind of a stitch so I can zone out,” Dennings confides. She gets way more into beauty, to tell you the truth, and couldn’t say enough good things about the makeup looks Dollface makeup artist Mary Klimek created for her. “We had a lot of really exciting lip looks in the show,” Dennings exclaims. “One was Lime Crime in Red Velvet. That was one I wore in the Christmas episode; it’s a great red liquid lipstick. Then we mixed a lot of Rituelle de Fille. We used Rituelle de Fille in almost every single episode. My makeup artist, Mary Klimek , loves to combine shades. It was two to three per look, but we used pretty much any Rituelle de Fille. The brand is pretty awesome. I’m going to preach for it all day. It also has a balmy hydrator that we used every episode as well.” Personally, I can’t wait for season two of Dollface —the more explorations of female friendships the better, I say. Dennings is hopeful too, but for now, she’s concentrating on her next project for Disney+, WandaVision . “I am not allowed to say a damn thing—I signed 700 NDAs,” she laughs. “But I’m very excited!” Same, girl. Dollface premieres on Hulu on Friday, November 15. Next up: Kat Dennings’s Dollface co-star Shay Mitchell is a master traveler and shares her packing tips .

[wittypenguin]

Blade Runner (1982)

This review is based on the 2007 “Final Cut” (which runs 1:57:36 according to the counter on my player), which followed 1992’s “Director’s Cut,” which was a fair bit different from the original 1982 theatrical release, not to mention the CBS network TV debut version of 1986.

Apparently, director Ridley Scott is done with this film now. He would also like you to stop asking if Deckard and / or Rachael are androids.*

Ridley Scott had a devil of a time getting this thing made, and it must have seemed that, what with all the different versions, once begun he couldn’t stop making it. If I remember how things finally happened, the final money that got this film made came from Sir Run Run Shaw, who is best identified as “crazy rich Asian who needed to sink some money into something as a tax haven.” That last part is mine, and I’m old, so don’t @ me.

The opening is all real model work. The flares are rotoscoped in, I believe, but this scene is something which we haven’t seen since. Lucas Films was already transitioning to augmentation of models with computer animations, with mixed results, but putting that time and effort into creating the models and then shooting them very slowly overnight was one of James Cameron’s last jobs for someone else before going out on his own as a director. 

The story is set in the future of the early-21st Century, in a town apparently based on Vancouver: there’s a bustling Asian population, tons of neon signs, and a relentless rain. Personally, I don’t see it. 

The outset is basic noire. Cops, detectives, night, fans and booze in airless offices, cafe operators acting as interpreters, the local police forcing the protagonist to take a case against his wishes, short sentences punctuated by slang and insider jargon all delivered in short bursts nearly overlapping with the other person’s, all the while the plaintive slow notes of a jazz trumpet replaced by the synthesizer of Vangelis.

As in most Micky Spillane novels, we visit one of The Powerful and Rich in their palaces; here they are Dr Eldon Tyrell. People are merely toys for these folk, in this case the toys are replicants. If the replicants do not know they are replicants, Mr Tyrell does not care, for it is only an experiment to him. He is not callous about that, he would say, he is merely practical about his business matters. 

Mr Deckard does some analysis with a photo using his usual method of “Enhance 224 to 176. Enhance. Stop. Move in. Stop. Pull out, track right. Stop.” and learns that all is not what it seems. He’s been told to do something that sounds simple, but involves all sorts of complexities and the Great and the Good. Principles of Right and Wrong and Protecting Yourself are at play here. 

The thing is seductive; the look of it, the soundtrack, the shots which linger on intriguing props or reactions. And there is so much to look at here: all sorts of props and bits of broken machinery, steam escaping from the street, textures in cabinetry and railings, costume details, the ever-present video advertisements; this is how every SF post-apocalyptic world now looks, all because of this film, the same way every war room in a movie looks like the one in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove.

That said, I’ve never felt it was the incredible masterpiece some purport it to be. It’s well-done, with its spooky creation of neo-noire as a genre, but that’s all I can feel for it. There’s more in the film that’s the sets and art direction, than in the story or performances, and that’s always what I look for. It lacks big questions about humanity and morality, which is a shame. 

★★★☆☆

* Yes, they totally are, now can you all just pay attention to the movie and what’s in it and stop trying to over-analyze stuff and pretend there’s meanings which aren’t in it, FOR CHRIST’S SAKE…‽

[ramajmedia]

10 Animated Spin-Offs As Good As The Movies They’re Based On

We’re going to be totally blunt here: most cartoon shows based off hit movies are terrible. A quick online search will return numerous examples of this dubious phenomenon, including poorly conceived animated outings from franchises like Star Wars, RoboCop, Planet of the Apes and more.

But not all cartoon series inspired by live-action films are a bust. On the contrary, a select few even live up to the high standard set by their source material – which is especially impressive when you remember that many have been retooled to appeal to a much younger audience! With this in mind, here’s a list of 10 Animated Spin-Offs As Good As The Movies They’re Based On.

RELATED: The 10 Best Animated Series To Binge-Watch, Ranked

10 Star Wars: The Clone Wars

Star Wars fans had been fantasizing about the Clone Wars ever since the legendary conflict was namechecked way back in 1977. However, we only get to witness the beginning and end of the Clone Wars in the prequel trilogy – and it fell to director Dave Filoni and his team to fill in the blanks on the small screen.

Inspired by the wildly popular Clone Wars 2D animated shorts, Star Wars: The Clone Wars got off to a rocky start. Indeed, audiences and critics alike responded negatively to Lucasfilm’s ill-advised decision to repackage the first few episodes as a less-than-stellar theatrical release.

However, those viewers who stuck with The Clone Wars were richly rewarded with an uncommonly sophisticated, surprisingly dark all-ages expansion of the saga’s mythos, which paved the way for equally well-received follow-up Star Wars Rebels.

9 The Real Ghostbusters

Ask anyone who grew up in the late 1980s/early 1990s about The Real Ghostbusters, and chances are they will have very fond memories of this cartoon continuation of the beloved comedy franchise. Despite its more junior target demographic, The Real Ghostbusters perfectly captured the general tone of the movies, and even did a decent job of referencing their continuity – which is rare for animated adaptations then and now.

Sure, the later seasons are a bit too kiddie-oriented (even for a program aimed at children), soft-pedalling the already-restrained spooky elements, while its Slimer-centric sister series is best avoided entirely. But in its prime, The Real Ghostbusters was a top-shelf effort that broadened Ghostbusters’ following – as evidenced by its toy line and tie-in comic book series!

8 Clerks: The Animated Series

When you think of films that would translate well to an animated TV show, Kevin Smith’s black and white indie comedy Clerks isn’t likely to be the first movie that springs to mind. Yet not only did Clerks: The Animated Series happen, it lived up to its critically acclaimed counterpart (and then some!).

Taking advantage of the growing market for “adults only” animation in the early 2000s, Clerks: The Animated Series retains the same raunchy, profanity-laden wit that made the film a surprise hit. At the same time, it also takes advantage of the possibilities provided by animation, weaving in surreal gags that would be near-impossible to pull off in a live-action joint, so it’s a real shame the show was cancelled after one season.

RELATED: 15 Animated Show Episodes Pulled From TV

7 Beetlejuice

On the face of it, Beetlejuice isn’t in the same league as the comedy/horror flick it’s loosely based on. After all, the scares are virtually non-existent, the humor less risqué, and the overall vibe decidedly more mainstream. But what saves this animated series is that, unlike every other entry on this list – with the exception of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which had input from Star Wars creator George Lucas – Beetlejuice was developed by director Tim Burton himself.

This means that the above changes – along with other major alterations, like reworking the titular poltergeist as a loveable prankster rather than a malevolent pest – were overseen by Burton. As a result, Beetlejuice overcomes its watered-down nature by virtue of being unusually well-thought out, and the cartoon (particularly early in its run) stands out as one of the most delightfully inventive and offbeat kids’ programs of its day.

6 Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventures

 A recurring theme between the animated series featured on this list is that they tend to go off the rails even quicker than regular TV shows – and Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventures is no exception. Things started out well enough; aside from the odd curse word or mature reference, the Bill & Ted movies are almost tailor made for young audiences, so Hanna-Barbera and CBS didn’t need to tinker with the formula for the small screen. But best of all, Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter and George Carlin reprised their big screen roles, adding an extra layer of authenticity to proceedings.

But then Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventures jumped ship to Fox, and everything went terribly, terribly wrong. Sure, the scripts – which leaned into the fun (and educational value) of the franchise’s time travel mechanic – were still solid. But network executives demanded that Reeves, Winter and Carlin be replaced by the cast of its then-upcoming live-action adaptation (which, incidentally, flopped), and without its original stars, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventures soon fizzled out.

5 Jumanji: The Animated Series

Jumanji: The Animated Series serves as a great reminder that animated spin-offs don’t need to be 100% faithful to their source material to work. And make no mistake: the show deviates drastically from the continuity established in Jumanji in several respects. Indeed, Jumanji: The Animated Series’ basic premise – Alan Parrish is trapped within the eponymous boardgame’s fantasy jungle environment, and siblings Judy and Peter try to rescue him each week – flies in the face of the 1995 blockbuster’s ending.

Yet it’s thanks to these differences that the cartoon manages to live up to (and even outdo) its live-action progenitor, as they make it possible for the creative team to set the show largely inside Jumanji itself. The upshot of this is an increased emphasis on exploration and world-building – which is probably why Jumanji’s two theatrical sequels wound up going down a similar route when re-launching the property!

RELATED: 15 Great Movies That Should Be Turned Into Animated TV Series

4 The Mask

We don’t think we’re saying anything controversial when we argue that The Mask owes more to Tex Avery’s Looney Tunes animated shorts than it does to the Dark Horse Comics series it’s based on. So really, when a tie-in cartoon dropped in 1995, it felt like a logical progression for the franchise – so much so that the Mask’s madcap antics actually seemed better suited to the medium.

Voice artist Rob Paulson deserves a shout-out for his performance in the lead role, as he – alongside the show’s talented team of artists – handles the unenviable task of standing in for comedy icon Jim Carrey about as well as anyone could. Duane Capizzi , the mastermind behind the adaptation, also deserves kudos for preserving as much of the film’s bawdy humor as possible – an episode was even pulled for being too rude for a show aimed at kids!

3 Men In Black: The Series

As much as we all love the Men in Black movies, a large part of their appeal can be attributed solely to Will Smith’s near-superhuman charisma. Strip that away, and all you’re left with is a clever premise and memorable visual effects, both of which are increasingly let down by shoddy screenwriting (seriously: did anyone really enjoy the sequels?).

And yet Smith’s absence is ironically the reason why Men in Black: The Series is such a satisfying animated spin-off. Without the mega-star to rely on, the creative team is forced to focus more on smart scripting, and over the course of MIB: The Series’ four season run, Agents K and J embark on some genuinely mind-bending missions that put much of what we see on the big screen to shame!

2 Ace Ventura: Pet Detective

The Ace Ventura flicks haven’t aged particularly well since arriving in theatres in the mid-90s – and they weren’t exactly masterpieces to begin with. As such, the animated spin-off Ace Venture: Pet Detective didn’t have a high bar to clear in terms of equalling what had come before it.

But credit where credit is due, the Ace Ventura cartoon does a decent job of aping the Jim Carrey comedy vehicles upon which it’s based, despite its younger target demographic. Otherwise, the main reason to revisit the series is to lay eyes on some of Seth MacFarlane’s earliest writing efforts – the Family Guy creator penned a handful of scripts while still a freelance scribe.

1 Star Wars Resistance

Much like Star Wars: The Clone Wars before it, Star Wars Resistance faced an uphill battle for acceptance early on…and depending on who you talk to, it’s a battle the show never fully won. After growing accustomed to the stylized CGI and more mature storytelling that characterized both Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels, older fans weren’t exactly thrilled with Resistance’s cel-shaded aesthetic and more simplistic plotting.

Still, the series – the first to be set during the Star Wars sequel trilogy – went on to garner positive reviews for its smart approach to all-ages fare and won over more than a few doubters along the way. Further bolstering the revised opinion of Resistance among hardcore devotees is the presence of actors Oscar Isaac and Gwendoline Christie, reprising the roles they originated on the big screen.

NEXT: 10 Best Raunchy Animated Series (According To IMDb)

source https://screenrant.com/animated-spin-offs-good-movies-theyre-based/

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