#david byrne went off with psycho killer | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

hearts-hunger · 5 years

Text

Funny How Love Is || bxjxg

Summary: After a long day of failed auditions, Joe can’t stop thinking how he’s never quite good enough. Funny how love is always there to drown out doubt and remind him of how loved he is, especially by his two boyfriends.

Pairings: Ben Hardy x Joe Mazzello x Gwilym Lee || poly!borhap boys

Genre: Fluff, slight angst

Word Count: 4k

Warnings: None!

A/N: Hello lovelies!! I promised I’d give you some fluffy bxjxg by the end of the day, so here it is! That pic of Ben and Gwil on Gwil’s insta got me so soft that it actually kickstarted my dumb brain into writing for them again, and of course I had to write Joe in too. I hope you like it! ♡

Joe didn’t know exactly what it was that had made his day so horrible. Maybe it was the traffic, which he despised but usually tuned out of by calling one of his boyfriends. Maybe it was the fact that his phone had died just as he tried to call, leaving him stuck in the motionless car with no distractions. Maybe it was the same five songs that every radio station seemed to play, those top hits that he liked to dance to when he was tipsy but really would be happy never to hear while sober. Maybe it was the words of the casting director that kept echoing in his head without anything to drown it out, repeating over and over choice phrases that he’d been no stranger to in his acting career. We just don’t think you’re right for the part. You’ve got some good ideas but we’re going in a different direction. Sorry, Mr. Mazzello. We’ll give you a call when we decide.

Yeah, he knew what that meant. He’d get no such call, he could guarantee. Maybe it was arrogant on his part, but he’d thought that after landing Bohemian Rhapsody, casting directors everywhere would be begging for him to come audition for them. He’d found it was kind of the opposite; no matter how much money Borhap had made, Joseph Mazzello still wasn’t a big name in Hollywood, and people were looking for big names. Names that had made it onto more than one A-list movie in the past two decades.

He gripped the steering wheel a little tighter than necessary - really, traffic was crawling, so he could have put the car in park - and took a steadying breath. One rejected audition didn’t mean his whole career was coming to an end. He needed to be patient. He needed to keep trying.

He needed to stop hearing that damn casting director’s voice on repeat, is what he needed.

He fiddled with the radio again, tuning it to the station that played oldies and actually played Queen pretty consistently. No such luck this time, though - David Byrne’s voice crooned out through the speakers in its clipped way, oddly grating to Joe at the moment.

He turned the radio off with a huff. “Yeah, I’m about to be a psycho killer if this traffic doesn’t start moving.”

He was ready to be home. It had been a long and disheartening day, and he was just ready to be home and lay on the couch in sweatpants and watch reruns of X-Files on Fox. Maybe have some wine, possibly take a long and boiling hot shower. Anything to self-soothe from having to submit to the mortifying ordeal of giving his all to an audition only to be rejected, yet again.

“Finally,” he muttered to himself as traffic began to move. He eased the car up to the speed limit after inching forward for nearly half an hour and felt some of the tension in his shoulders ease.

He got home over an hour after he said he’d be back, night starting to fall over Belgravia and easing the temperature down with a cool breeze through the darkening sky. Looking up at the second floor windows of the brownstone, he couldn’t help but feel comforted at the warm light spilling between the sheer curtains and onto the street below. Double checking the car was locked, he headed up the steps to the front door, straightening his shoulders so as not to immediately give away how tired he felt.

The sound of “Funny How Love Is” greeted him as he closed the front door behind him, drifting in from where it was playing softly in the living room. He put his keys and his wallet on the little catch-all table in the foyer as he closed the door behind him.

“Honey, I’m home,” he called.

“Oh, fuck you!” came Ben’s voice from the living room.

Joe gave a surprised laugh at the reply, a smile crossing his face for the first time all day as kicked off his shoes. He made his way into the living room and found Ben on the couch, intently playing Mario Kart.

“That’s one hell of a way to greet your boyfriend,” Joe teased.

Ben gestured hopelessly to the screen. “I was in first place and Toad ran me right off.”

Joe saw Ben was playing Rainbow Road, and he could understand his boyfriend’s frustration. “So, that wasn’t directed at me?”

Ben looked mildly panicked. “God, no, sorry.” He gave Joe a smile. “Hi, honey. I’m glad you’re home. Come here.”

Joe sat next to Ben on the couch as he paused the game, tossing the controller aside in favor of taking Joe’s face in his hands and giving him a few gentle kisses.

“There,” he said. “Better?”

Joe couldn’t help but smile. “Much better, thank you.”

He propped his feet on the coffee table and leaned his head on Ben’s shoulder, enjoying the closeness. “You can keep playing if you want. Gotta show Toad who’s boss.”

Ben laughed, a warm and comforting sound, taking the controller in hand again as he started another race.

“And if you can’t beat Toad on Peach Beach, I’m officially disowning you,” Joe added.

Ben snorted. “Okay, dad, thanks.”

Joe was content to sit in silence and watch Ben play, listening as he sang along with Queen in his warm voice.

“Funny how love is everywhere, just look and see,” he sang almost out of habit. “Funny how love is anywhere you’re bound to be.”

Joe closed his eyes and breathed a sigh of relief, sinking into the sound of Ben’s voice and the feel of his warmth. Ben was practically a furnace; he usually wore his dozens of soft hoodies not because he was cold but because he was a very tactile person, enjoying physical touch and substituting with sweatshirts when he couldn’t have any.

“So… how did your audition go?” Ben asked as the track switched to “Seven Seas of Rhye”, distracted by the video game but still wanting to engage with him.

Joe started to say that he didn’t want to talk about it, but he was saved from answering Ben as Gwil appeared on the stairs. Gwil smiled as he came down to the living room with a hoodie in hand, the corners of his eyes crinkling behind his round glasses.

“Thought I heard you come in,” he said. “How was your day, love?”

“Fine,” Joe said, trying for nonchalance. “Do you have a headache?”

While Gwil usually wore his glasses closer to bedtime and both Ben and Joe adored it, thinking it made Gwil’s sharp-featured beauty look a bit softer, they’d also learned that he wore them when he got headaches.

“No, thankfully,” Gwil said. “But my contacts were bothering me a bit.” He tossed the hoodie to Ben, who paused his game to pull it on.

“I couldn’t find the one you asked for,” Gwil said. “So I just grabbed one of mine.”

Ben gave him a smile. “‘S perfect, love, thanks.”

Gwil watched Ben go back to the game with a gentle smile on his face. That was Joe’s favorite part of being in a relationship with the two of them, seeing how they looked at each other like they hung the moon.

Joe warmed as that same gentle affection was turned on him, Gwil studying his face with a shadow of concern in his own before holding his hand out to Joe.

“Come on into the kitchen with me, Joey.”

Joe sighed and took Gwil’s hand, standing from his spot next to Ben on the couch. He almost wanted to stay with the blonde, knowing that Ben wouldn’t ask him questions about his day while he was focusing on the game. Gwil, though, had no such distractions, and Joe felt the weight of his admittedly vague answer between them.

“Tea?” Gwil asked, filling the kettle at the sink.

Joe took a seat at the bar. “Sure. Thanks.”

“There’s dinner leftover if you want some,” Gwil said, setting the kettle to heat on the stove. “I wasn’t sure if you’d eaten, since you came home later than you said. I tried to call but it went straight to voicemail.”

Joe ran a hand over his face. “Yeah, my phone died right as I left and I got caught in traffic. What’d you make?”

“It was Ben, actually,” Gwil said with a smile. “Chicken parmesan. I can heat some up for you if you want.”

“That’s ok,” Joe said. “I might have some later.”

In all honesty he felt kind of queasy at the thought of admitting that he hadn’t gotten the job. He stared blankly at the kettle on the stove, the casting director’s voice kept ringing in his ears. You’re just not what we’re looking for.

“Joe,” Gwil said.

He looked up to see Gwil taking three mugs down from the cabinet. “Hm?”

Gwil’s smile was colored with a bit of sadness. “I asked you what kind of tea you wanted.”

“Oh, sorry. Um, whatever you’re having. I don’t care.”

That wasn’t necessarily true; Ben and Gwil both knew Joe’s favorite tea was Darjeeling, and Gwil fixed it for him despite his answer. Joe felt a strange kind of ache as he watched Gwil make tea for the three of them, humming softly to himself, wiping up a spilled drop of water with the sleeve of his cozy black sweater. It was the same kind of ache he’d felt before they were together, when he’d found himself wanting to be held and comforted by the tall Welshman but not knowing how to ask.

“Where’d you go?” Gwil asked, giving him his tea.

Joe drew his mug close. “What do you mean?”

“You were miles away just then,” Gwil said. He smiled. “Just wanted to see where you’d got off to.”

“Nowhere,” he lied, running a hand over his face. “Just tired, that’s all.”

Gwil looked like he was about to say something, probably pushing back on the “just tired” excuse, but Ben’s voice cut him off from the living room.

“Did you make tea?” he asked.

“Yes, love,” Gwil called back. “Yours is ready if you want it.”

A moment later, Ben came into the kitchen; he took a seat next to Joe at the bar, pulling the sleeves of Gwil’s hoodie over his hands.

“Thanks,” he said as Gwil handed him a mug.

“My pleasure,” Gwil said, leaning on his elbows on the counter close to them. He bobbed his tea bag a few times, the water turning a honey color as the herbal tea he always drank seeped in.

“Say, you didn’t ever tell me how your audition went,” Ben said, nudging his shoulder lightly against Joe’s.

“You were a little distracted,” Joe said, trying for a joke and also trying to avoid the question again.

Ben smiled. “Yeah, but now I’m all yours. How was it?”

Joe wrapped his hands around the mug, feeling the warmth of it against the sudden chill of anxiety that made its way through him. “Um...” He felt a vague fight-or-flight feeling kick in, and searched for a way to get out from under the question without it being woefully obvious.

“Yeah, I’ll tell you all about it in a minute,” he said, standing. “I’m just gonna… go to the bathroom real quick.”

Oh, good job, Joe. He mentally kicked himself as his boyfriends gave him looks that mixed confusion and concern.

“Is everything ok?” Gwil asked.

Joe rubbed the back of his neck like he did when he was nervous, immediately making himself stop as soon as he noticed he was doing it. It was his biggest tell when he was lying or upset, and if they hadn’t already seen right through him like he was sure they had, his hand on the back of his neck was a dead giveaway.

“Yeah, fine.” Again, he tried for a joke. “I had to pee before I left, and sitting in traffic didn’t do me any favors. I’ll be right back.”

Before either of them could say anything or he could embarrass himself further, he made his escape up the stairs to the master bathroom. He could have gone to the guest bathroom downstairs, but he wanted a whole floor’s difference between him and his boyfriends who were surely talking about him now that they were alone. He splashed cool water on his face, glancing up at his reflection; he was red-cheeked with embarrassment, and he only flushed deeper when he thought of going back downstairs again. They’d probably take the hint and not ask him about it again - doubtless they’d guessed he didn’t get the part - but he’d still made such a huge deal about it that they were sure to walk on eggshells around him.

As he turned off the faucet and buried his face in a towel, he heard quiet bickering coming from the other side of the bathroom door.

“He obviously doesn’t want to talk about it,” Gwil was saying in a hushed voice. “Maybe we should just let it drop.”

“Maybe something’s really wrong,” Ben insisted, his tone matching his boyfriend’s. “Maybe it hasn’t got to do with the audition at all.”

Gwil was quiet for a moment. “You don’t think he’d hide something important, do you?”

Joe could picture Ben shrugging in response.

“He’s been like this since he walked through the door,” Ben said. “I’m worried, Gwil. This seems like a lot of fuss for one silly audition.”

“I agree,” Gwil said. “But maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s something different.”

Joe sighed. Why couldn’t he have just admitted he didn’t get the part and gotten it over with? He felt bad that he’d whipped his boyfriends up into a state of panic with his behavior; he knew it was childish. To have to go and tell them that it was indeed just the failed audition that had gotten him this upset, and not some life-threatening news worthy of a whole charade like the one he’d put on, was nearly too much to bear. He couldn’t hide in the bathroom forever, though, and after a few steadying breaths he went out into their bedroom.

Ben and Gwil broke apart from where they’d been talking closely together on the foot of the bed, trying to act as if they hadn’t just been in intent conversation about him. He almost smiled as he shrugged off his jacket and went to hang it in the closet; it was a small comfort that they were as bad as he was at acting like everything was fine. He stayed in the closet longer than he needed to, trying to buy himself some time or wait for them to say something.

Their hushed voices started up again, and Joe heard Ben say he was going to ask.

Gwil took Ben’s hand as he stood, trying to get him to sit back down. “Wait, Ben, just - ”

“Joey,” Ben said in his regular speaking voice, the baritone colored with concern. He gave Gwil’s hand a reassuring squeeze before letting it go and coming over to the closet.

“Please tell us what’s wrong,” he said.

Joe brushed past him and went to take off his watch, setting it on top of the dresser. “Nothing’s wrong,” he said, feeling a flare of frustration. Why couldn’t they have just let it go?

“Come on, sweetheart, you’ve been acting out of sorts since you came in the door,” Ben said. “We’re just worried about you.”

Joe huffed and carded his hand through his hair. “Fine,” he said. “I didn’t get the part, but you already knew that. That’s what’s wrong. Now can we please not talk about it any more?”

The words tasted bitter on his mouth, and now that he’d said them instead of just implied them, they couldn't be taken back.

“So…” Gwil ventured, “it is just the audition?”

“What, that’s not enough?” Joe snapped. He didn’t like that he was talking to his boyfriends like this, but he couldn’t seem to get a hold of his frustration and shame.

“No,” Gwil said, a bit surprised at Joe’s tone. “I mean, not getting a part is never fun, sure. But you’re not usually like this about it.”

Joe gave a derisive laugh. “Yeah, because I’ve had so many failed auditions that we know how I’m going to react to them.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Gwil said, pained that he’d wounded his boyfriend further. “We’ve all had plenty of failed auditions before. What I meant was that even out of the three of us, you’re usually the one who takes it best.”

That was true, and it was probably most of the reason why they were pressing him so hard about it this time. Gwil would brood and mull over his audition for hours on end if he didn’t get one, trying to see what he’d done wrong; Ben could get downright sulky if he got turned down. Joe, though, was always the one to crack a joke, to say that he hadn’t wanted the part anyways, to say they were probably going to go with someone else because the industry had a thing against redheads. He’d rarely taken a loss like he had this one, and he didn’t blame his boyfriends for being overly concerned.

Joe ran a hand over his face, annoyed at the sting of tears he felt.

“What was it about this one that made it so hard, Joe?” Gwil asked. “I don’t remember you saying you wanted it that badly, but I’m sorry if you did and I forgot.”

“No, it’s ok,” Joe said tiredly. Truth be told he hadn’t been very excited about this part, but at this point he figured he’d take what he could get.

He almost laughed. Of course, he’d been scraping the bottom of the barrel and had still come up empty. That was par for the course, wasn’t it?

“I just…” He shook his head. “Maybe it’s time to throw in the towel, you know?”

Ben and Gwil both frowned, surprise and confusion warring for dominance in their expressions. Ben sat at the foot of the bed again next to Gwil, both of them waiting patiently to hear what Joe meant even as they worried over him. Gwil put his hand over Ben’s to let the younger man know that it had been good to get Joe talking about this.

Joe sighed. “It’s been months since awards season, and I haven’t gotten any jobs.”

“That’s nothing to worry about, though,” Gwil said. He gave a wry smile. “You don’t get jobs lined up like that unless you work for Marvel or something.”

“You did,” Joe protested. “Both of you got jobs as soon as you got off Borhap.”

“Not big ones, though,” Gwil said. “Top End’s only playing in Australia, for god’s sake.”

“And I’ll only be in Six Underground for ten minutes, tops,” Ben agreed. “It’s not like I’m headlining my own box-office hit.”

“Still,” Joe said, unconsoled. “They’re still jobs. You’re still actors that people want to cast. I’m just…”

You’re just not what we’re looking for, the casting director’s voice filled in for him. That had been the constant, through all of it - everybody else could get a job, but Joe was never what anybody was looking for.

He hung his head. “Maybe I’m just not good enough.”

If he’d expected wild protest from his boyfriends, he didn’t get it. For a split second he had the dreadful feeling their silence was agreement, but no sooner had the thought crossed his mind than he felt Ben’s arms around him, pulling him close. He let himself be held, burying his face in Ben’s hoodie.

“Oh, Joey,” Gwil said, running a hand over his back and gently kissing the parts of his face that weren’t hidden against Ben’s chest. “That’s not true and you know it.”

“Why can’t I get a part, then?” he asked, his voice muffled by the fabric of Ben’s hoodie.

Gwil sighed. “I dunno, love. All I know is that every one of those movies would have been lucky to have you. You’re incredibly talented, Joe. You just haven’t found the right part yet.”

“And everybody who said no to you has no idea what they’re missing,” Ben agreed. He pulled back to look at Joe’s face, brushing away the few tears that Joe hadn’t managed to keep at bay. “Okay?”

Joe nodded. “Okay.” He knew he wouldn’t be fully convinced until he landed another job, but for now it was enough to lean on his boyfriends’ confidence in him.

“Sorry about…” He sighed. “Everything. I should have just told you.”

“That’s ok, love,” Gwil said. He brushed back Joe’s slightly mussed hair. “Why don’t you have a bath, hm? Wind down a bit before bed, how does that sound?”

“Only if you two join me,” he said.

Smiles surfaced on both of their faces.

“I think that can be arranged,” Gwil said, at the same time Ben said “do you even have to ask?”

Ben and Joe got comfy pajamas laid out for the three of them while Gwil drew the bath, leaving the bathroom lights off. They came into the bathroom greeted by the scent of rose bath salts and the warm glow of the candles they’d bought for just this purpose. Joe wasn’t even in the bath before he felt the tension leave his tired body, his boyfriend’s gentle hands helping him out of his clothes and into the warm water enough to erase a lifetime’s worth of worry. Gwil got in behind him and Ben across from them, their legs tangled together in the middle. Joe leaned back against Gwil’s chest as Gwil comfortably wrapped his arms around him. Ben traced up and down Joe’s thigh with a gentle touch.

“Okay, Benny?” Gwil asked.

Ben smiled. “Perfect. Though you both owe me lots of cuddles when we get in bed.”

Both Gwil and Joe gave a soft laugh.

“Come here, you,” Joe said, leaning forward to kiss Ben. The feel of Ben’s mouth on his and Gwil’s warm hand on his back made Joe almost lightheaded with happiness. He rested his forehead against Ben’s for a minute, drinking in the closeness of the two people he loved most in the world, the two people who showed him tirelessly that he was good enough, even when everything else was telling him he wasn’t.

He leaned back against Gwil and kissed his scruffy jaw, feeling Gwil’s smile.

“Thank you,” Joe said. “Both of you. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Gwil twined his fingers with Joe’s. “Lucky for you, you’re stuck with us.”

Ben took their entwined fingers in his hands and brought them to his lips, peppering them with gentle kisses and tracing circles over their knuckles with the pad of his thumb.

“Gwil and I love you so much, Joey,” Ben said against their hands. “You’re perfect, you know? Absolutely perfect.”

Joe’s cheeks pinked and he turned his face to hide against Gwil. Gwil chuckled and kissed his temple.

“It’s true, love,” Gwil said. “You are perfect. And pretty soon some casting director’s going to see that as plainly as we do, I promise.”

“I love you,” Joe said. That one was just for Gwil, and he knew it; he drew Joe closer and gave a sigh of contentment.

“I love you too, sweetheart.”

Joe lightly nudged Ben in the ribs with his heel, drawing a giggle from the blonde as Joe had hoped it would. Ben was very ticklish, and his innocent laughter was one of the most beautiful sounds Joe had ever heard.

“I love you,” Joe told him. He couldn’t help but smile at Ben’s grin.

“I love you too, Joey,” he said. “Even more than Mario Kart.”

Gwil gave a huff of a laugh. “Charming.”

“It’s okay, Gwil,” Ben said. “I love you more than Mario Kart too.”

“Did I ever mention how irresistible your skills for romance were?” Gwil asked.

They all laughed and settled closer to each other, limbs tangled in the warm water, Ben’s skin fairly shimmering in the gold light, Gwil’s big hands belying their true softness as they traced over whichever parts of his boyfriends he could reach. Ben hummed “Funny How Love Is” in the companionable stillness, and Joe felt it was rather appropriate. Funny how love is everywhere, just look and see. Funny how love is anywhere you’re bound to be.

Even if he never got cast again in his life, he’d still gotten Borhap, and that was the only that mattered because it was what brought him to Ben and Gwil. Tomorrow brings love in the shape of things. Even if tomorrow brought audition after failed audition, it would still bring him another day with the two loves of his life. It would still bring him to loving and being loved in a hundred different ways by the two people who made everything right in the world, no matter what.

story taglist: @sunflower-borhap-boys @mimibarnes

forever taglist: @tv-saved-the-teenage-girl @dashlilymark @hazah

#me delivering on a fic promise in a timely manner?#less likely than you think but wow i did it today!!#i hope you guys like this one!!#ben x joe x gwilym #bxjxg #ben hardy x joe mazzello x gwilym lee #ben hardy x gwilym lee x joe mazzello #poly!borhap boys #borhap boys fluff #borhap boys fanfiction #polyamory #ben x joe #ben x gwilym #gwilym x joe #hardzellee #harlee #hardzello #maddie writes stuff!

95 notes · View notes

douxreviews · 5 years

Text

Travelers - Season Three Review

Season one was good; season two was better. Season three was terrific, definitely the best so far. If you haven't tried Travelers yet, you might want to give it another shot.

Travelers is about people from a far flung, terrible future who have transferred their consciousness into the bodies of people from our time who were about to die. Working in teams of five, Travelers carry out missions given to them by the Director, an AI in their own time, saving lives and changing key events in order to "fix" their own future, even if it leads to their own nonexistence.

Although there was still a lot of action centered on lifesaving events and efforts to fight the lawless anti-Director operatives called "The Faction," season three was a lot more personal, more about the Travelers themselves.

And here is where I'm going to insert an adorable spoiler kitten! If you haven't seen season three and you plan to, I'm going to spoil everything! Come back and read this review later!

The season two finale in which David, Kat and Jeff learned the truth about the Travelers program at first appeared to be a nonevent when the three of them (and the befuddled Ray) received a 24-hour memory inhibitor that Grant had used on Kat once before. The kidnappees were told that they had been taken prisoner and drugged by a psycho serial killer, Vincent Ingram.

But the wipe wasn't entirely effective, since the kidnapping had lasted longer than a day. Jeff, an alcoholic, was able to partially resist its effects, and he remembered that Carly wasn't Carly. While David resisted a similar realization about Marcy because he loves her, he was frightened enough by what he remembered to buy a gun and start taking lessons in self-defense. And Kat kept getting memory flashes of Grant lying to her and planning to hurt her.

Interestingly, the real FBI became involved in Traveler operations when the FBI director (David Cubitt) was cleverly brought onboard. Grant got a new, reluctant partner, non-Traveler Agent Yates (Kimberley Sustad). And a 21st century artificial intelligence called Ilsa began to channel information from the Director, who was finally able to communicate directly with Traveler teams.

Season three got stronger as it went, with increasingly serious episodes and a blow-out shocker of a two-part ending.

3.3 "Protocol 3"

If you don't remember, I'll remind you what Protocol 3 is: "Don't take a life, don't save a life, unless otherwise directed." In this episode, Grant woke up mindwiped and was compelled to backtrack his own actions and find out why, even though there was clearly a very good reason why his own team was keeping the truth from him. Grant discovered that he had received orders from the Director to execute Aleksander, the Romanian child that the team saved back in season one, because Aleksander would grow up to do terrible things. (It wasn't stated outright, but he was already killing animals, suggesting that he would become a serial killer.)

This episode featured a depth of tragedy as well as ambiguity that ended up playing out through the entire season. The team managed to convince Grant that the time he had spent with Aleksander that day had changed the boy's future and that they had placed Aleksander in another, more successful foster home. But there was major subtext implying that Grant did indeed execute the boy and couldn't live with what he had done, so the team had wiped his memory and had come up with a convincing lie that Grant would probably believe. I was impressed.

3.6 "Philip"

Philip and other historians were kidnapped by the Faction, who wanted their knowledge of the timeline. We learned that the updates Philip was enduring would eventually kill him. !!! After the kidnapping, Philip decided to stop taking the yellow pills that kept him from seeing multiple timelines.

While I like Philip and this was a strong episode for actor Reilly Dolman, the real standout in this episode was Louis Ferreira as Rick Hall, who was shot and lying on Marcy's table at the garage as the team tried to retrieve Hall's knowledge about what had happened to Philip. Hall's final moments hallucinating that he was lying in a sunny field of flowers absolutely got to me; I cried for him. Ferreira did such a good job of making Hall a memorable character, considering that he was only in four episodes of the entire series.

In this episode, it was finally stated aloud that the Traveler program didn't appear to be working. Even with all of the lifesaving, positive changes, the horrible future was still basically unchanged.

3.7 "Trevor"

Trevor (Jared Abrahamson) has always been a favorite character of mine. There's something about the contrast of a teenage body housing the mind of an extremely elderly man that I've always found appealing, and the actor really made it work. In this episode, Trevor developed "temporal aphasia," a condition in which he checked out of consciousness for increasingly long periods of time, making him useless as an agent. (Sadly, we learned that the only other person who died of temporal aphasia was Trevor's late and much loved wife.)

Grace, who has a thing for Trevor, decided to save him before the Director overwrote his healthy young body with a new Traveler, and she succeeded in regulating his aphasia with a device that made his body unusable by any other Traveler. I found this denouement bittersweet since Trevor, who is extremely old, was clearly ready to die but resigned to continue doing his duty.

The B plot was actually even more moving than the A plot when David's very first client, played by the wonderful Jim Byrnes from Highlander, died and at his funeral, David gave him a beautiful, heartfelt eulogy that emphasized the worth of every human being. This homeless man's influence was what made David choose social work in the first place, and that choice in turn had a beneficial effect on everyone David has helped. This was another episode that made me cry.

In this episode's coda, Kat decided to test Grant by taking him to the place where they met, seventeen years ago. When he had no idea why they were there, Kat finally knew for certain that Grant was not the man she married.

3.9 "David" and 3.10 "Protocol Omega" (finale)

The Faction set off three nuclear devices in countries around the world, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths. David was dragged into carrying out a critical Traveler mission and had to disarm the fourth nuke alone, absorbing a lethal dose of radiation.

Key government figures all over the world were taken over by Faction travelers, and our team was clearly falling apart. Trevor's aphasia returned; Philip was hallucinating so many timeline variations that he couldn't so much as cross a street; Kat threw Grant out and their marriage was over. David's painful death was the last straw – I found it practically unbearable. His last words came from the Director: "Protocol Omega," meaning the Traveler program was over. Later, Marcy committed suicide in order to keep the Faction from the backdoor-to-the-Director knowledge she had in her head.

I'm sure it won't be a surprise that I cried through these two final episodes, too. I even yelled "Nooooooo!" out loud. Marcy and David falling in love despite the terrible problems they had to overcome was the heart of this series. I can't imagine it continuing without it.

In the end, Grant used Traveler 001's consciousness transfer device to go back to his host's body the moment Grant met Kat, seventeen years ago – and then he let her go to live her life without him. On September 11, Grant was in the Tower before Traveler 001 arrived. Grant was the one to send a different message to the Director, telling It that the Traveler program was a failure.

So many questions!

Did Grant prevent the entire series from happening at all? Or are there multiple timelines where it did? They did give us a lovely alternate moment where David and the original Marcy met on the bus before her mind was destroyed by Traveler 001. And thank you so much for that. (Of course, in this timeline, there would be no Ingram to destroy her mind in the first place.)

After stopping the Traveler program from ever happening, Grant was checking his watch, waiting for the Tower to get hit by the plane – but there was no plane. Did it ever come? And why didn't the original Vincent Ingram arrive in that office to fix the computer? If 9/11 never happened, that would be really, really interesting. What could we infer from that?

The Director abandoned "version 1" of the Traveler program, and started "version 2." Is this the end of the series? Was it all a paradox? Was it the Traveler program that brought about the original future dystopia in the first place?

I should be bummed that the series might end like this, but instead, I find it fascinating. It's an excellent ending for the series, but it's also a surprisingly cool launching point for a fourth season, if they get one. Bravo.

Bits and pieces:

— The first two seasons consisted of twelve episodes each, and there are only ten in season three. But I'm okay with that; they certainly got the job done.

— Although... the introduction of Agent Yates, Ilsa the AI and Dr. Teslia seemed a little pointless. I thought more was going to happen there.

— Carly's ex Jeff had an interesting storyline this season when Carly deliberately set up a situation where Jeff would kill her, knowing that the Director would probably overwrite Jeff first. Which It did. Jeff later being taken over by Traveler 001 didn't work as well for me, although having himself chained to a wheelchair and bricked up behind a wall was gutsy.

— Gold acting stars for Jennifer Spence as Grace, especially in the episode "Trevor." Such a droll character.

— Honorable mention for Christopher Heyerdahl, who played a serial killer for five minutes in "Archive" and then played the Traveler who took over his body and had to face a lifetime in prison or possibly even the death penalty for something he didn't do.

— And a special grossout award for Heyerdahl's character vomiting up an eyeball. Bleeechhh.

— There were many shots throughout the season of only half of each character's face. I'm sure it was this season's Most Obvious Symbolism.

I thought this season was excellent. Four out of four pair of ducks.

Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.

#Travelers #Grant MacLaren #Marcy Warton #Carly Shannon #Philip Pearson #Trevor Holden #David Mailer #Travelers Reviews #Doux Reviews #TV Reviews #something from the archive

26 notes · View notes

strangledeggs · 7 years

Text

Fables Of The Deconstruction: Post-punk, Hip-hop And The Avant-Garde

Nowadays, it’s old hat to refute the claims of older generations that modern pop music “just sounds like noise”. In some circles, it’s even old hat to bolster such refutations with arguments as to why those older generations aren’t entirely wrong, and that’s not a bad thing. Culturally, it would appear that noise, dissonance, abrasiveness are frequently accepted as a fact of the modern musical landscape to some degree. What might still be interesting to some is a historical explanation as to how pop music got to this point, tracing a path back to shared sensibilities between early hip-hop and post-punk. In some ways, one might be able to argue that Beyonce, Kanye and Young Thug are the heirs to the legacy of more avant-garde groups like Joy Division and the Talking Heads.

Maybe this sounds far-fetched, but bear with me for a moment: punk, in its initial form, was more of a reaction than a real set of ideals, and its reaction was primarily musical in response to a musical phenomenon. Punk was effectively the antithesis of the grandiose, semi-classical, technically-masterful stylings of progressive rock in the late 60s and 70s. This reaction at first manifested itself in what you might call a kind of primitivism: if prog-rockers wanted to play complicated music in the hopes of establishing themselves as the “high art” crowd, punk rockers ignored both any need for technical skill and any distinctions between “high” and “low” art, writing simple songs about deliberately stupid topics and often playing them badly.

Of course, primitivism can only take you so far, and by the end of the 70s many groups associated with the movement began to branch out, finding new ways to distinguish themselves not only from prog, but from the sudden indistinguishable wave of punk bands. This meant finding new approaches to music not often considered commercially viable or important, the underappreciated elements of music overlooked by the mainstream. Johnny Rotten (or John Lydon, as he went by then) may not have been any more of a talented singer for his post-Sex Pistols band Public Image Ltd., but his rhythm section developed a uniquely-warped sounding disco beat, and his guitarists used unconventional materials for eerie timbre and tone.

Though comparable to the former sworn-enemy-of-punk, disco this was not (or at least not yet – groups like New Order and ABC would later make this distinction trickier, but that’s a topic for another essay); this new “post-punk” rarely had the lush arrangements and melodic/harmonic fullness commonly heard on the dancefloor. A kind of minimalism became popular, while bands began making use of the same kinds of short, choppy polyrhythmic fragments James Brown’s bands played while they were inventing funk. Joy Division and the Talking Heads featured singers who brought technically-questionable but distinctly memorable vocal performances to the table. Texture became important, as bands began to experiment with synthesizer tones as well as exploring the full range of noises an instrument could make beyond the commonly-accepted 12 tones.

From this movement emerged a stark, harsh, challenging genre that was at times only barely pop music in its adherence to structure. Songs were constructed less for coherency or “beauty” and more for freedom of personal expression regardless of ability. But post-punk was not the only genre to embrace these sensibilities; at the very same moment in history, another new genre was finding its feet through live shows at which a new kind of performer would “rap” over loops of old funk records…

In many ways, the early days of hip-hop sounded a lot like post-punk: the music was minimalistic and repetitive, the harmonic sense was often dissonant and unsettling and the vocal performances were simultaneously abrasive and spontaneously creative. The genre seemed to function on a similar ethic to post-punk, that of a “cleaning-out” of old sensibilities, a violent destruction of an old sound (represented by appropriately harsh techniques) in order to shift the focus to a different set of musical elements that would inform the new sound. In this light, it should be no surprise that the genres actually experienced a fair amount of crossover. The Clash’s excellent “Magnificent Seven” and “Lightning Strikes” were both inspired by hip-hop, as was Blondie’s less-excellent “Rapture”. John Lydon even “rapped” on a collaboration with hip-hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa on Time Zone’s “World Destruction”.

Though both genres have been through a lot in the decades since and have seen returns to more conventional notions of talent and skill, these underlying avant-garde tendencies have remained and surface every now and then in mainstream pop music production. One of my favourite examples of this might be Pusha T’s unrelenting “Numbers On The Boards”, a demonstration of the sublime power of minimalist aesthetics in hip-hop. Kanye’s production on the track practically suffocates listeners with its lack of discernible melody. Starved for some kind of melodic/harmonic sense, we are drawn to the set of three, maybe four tones from a percussion sample anchored by a single rumbling bass note that together create an oppressive atmosphere for Pusha T’s virtuosic articulations. His first words alone seem to carry so much power in their forcefully ejaculated consonants (as opposed to consonance) so as to temporarily silence the beat. Partway through the song, a sample of a Jay Z song plays for a single bar; it feels like the first breath of fresh air drawn by the lungs of a drowning victim as the comparatively lush production throws into contrast the abstract noise you realize you’ve been listening to. But it’s only a brief moment, as the next measure plunges the listener’s head back into the murky depths of the original beat’s hollow, almost-skeletal groove.

Young Thug’s beats may not always feel quite as powerful as that behind “Numbers On The Boards”, but his vocal delivery more than makes up for it in strangeness. There’s been enough commentary on his vocal technique and innovation that I don’t feel the need to do much explanation here, but I thought it might be interesting to compare him to another odd and innovative vocalist from the realm of post-punk: David Byrne. Both build their reputations on a unique, “quirky” style rather than technical competence and both are surprisingly expressive in their tendencies to come completely unhinged at points. Even on the Talking Heads’ debut on which the music and melodies stayed, for the most part, relatively conventional, Byrne’s delivery made something sound decidedly “off” – the easiest example is his famous wordless wail during the chorus of “Psycho Killer”, but the album is full of similar moments. What’s so interesting about Byrne is how he forgoes the sort of emoting characteristic of “raw” soul vocals that tried to express an intense emotion by pushing voices to their limits (interestingly enough, something that even most punk singers couldn’t resist); he’s still set on exploring limits, but does so by stretching his voice into strange tones, making “ugly” sonic shapes that wouldn’t normally be considered “good” singing. Young Thug mirrors this; inevitably, hip-hop’s strong ties to R&B mean his vocals draw a little more influence from “soulful” styles, but tracks like “Harambe” also showcase a desire to drop the singing pretenses and outright howl as his already-barely-discernible lyrics become completely subservient to his delivery. As the old cliché goes, it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.

“Sure,” you might be saying, “I see the parallels. But Kanye and Young Thug already make ‘weird’ music that is barely-mainstream and fully outside of it, respectively. You still haven’t shown me a connection between post-punk and modern-day radio pop!” Perhaps the final and most prominent example will help clarify: Beyoncé’s own “Formation”. Despite being known primarily as a conventionally-talented singer, Beyoncé opts to “not sing” much of this song, instead reciting lyrics in a chillingly raspy drone. While this does eventually give way to a melody (and a strong one at that), the track begins with this disquieting, unmelodic delivery, with only a creeping chromatic synth line for a beat to back it. The result is jarringly tense, keeping listeners on edge in a way not dissimilar to that of “Numbers On The Boards”. Of course, “Formation” is a slow build to exuberance rather than an outright aural assault; this is a pop song, after all. But just what it builds to is intriguing. Instead of breaking into a lush, bombastic chorus typical of radio-ready pop, Beyoncé’s voice is doubled on the refrain by a horn line of unconventional harmonic composition. It matches her vocal tones, but seems to clash with the beat heard during the verse. And somehow the whole thing works; it’s dissonant, but colossal-sounding and remarkably catchy. Note, finally, that the song ends just as it began, with the receding of its pop elements giving way once more to bare chromaticism and breathy vocals. Truly, avant-pop.

Maybe you think it’s dubious of me to define a largely-black musical style in terms of a largely-white one. Indeed, it must be admitted that post-punk is vastly a “white” genre while hip-hop is undisputedly a “black” one. To this I can only respond that I don’t view the two this way and see them more in dialogue with each other rather than one exerting more influence over the other (after all, I have mentioned that James Brown’s funk was a huge influence on post-punk, and this is not the only thing the genre borrowed from black musicians). I framed this piece the way I did mainly because it’s the way I personally experienced the discovery I made, having taken a strong interest in post-punk before I started listening more carefully to hip-hop. Seeing as such, the comparison could probably have gone the other way as well – though I still think it’s more interesting to position modern pop and hip-hop in terms of its avant-garde inheritance (including that of early hip-hop), as the genealogy, if not the characteristics, seems often to be forgotten in a torrent of backlash against an older generation that misses the music’s subtleties.

All of this aside, I want to end this by proposing a possible theory that is likely incorrect, but interesting to consider all the same: this movement and interaction between post-punk and hip-hop leading up to present-day pop music could potentially be stretched into a longer historical narrative to explain the driving force that shapes pop music over time. Both genres involved a process of scrapping a previous musical method in favour of a new set of musical tools, so to speak. We might see this approach as a kind of “deconstructive” one, and thus extend it back further into pop music history. In theory, pop music is always becoming more formal as it gains in reputation, but moments of deconstruction are necessary to keep it from becoming too formulaic. Chuck Berry’s rock guitar could be seen a deconstruction of blues-based pop music (or “rhythm and blues”), something ragged and harsh-sounding built around a simple scale from which elaborate (even “elegant”) pop songs had previously been constructed. Deconstruction involves an initial simplification, but it almost always builds that simplification into a new skill previously unrecognized in pop music; hence why Berry’s guitar sounds primitive in the wake of Hendrix’s later innovations with the instrument, and why early rapping sounds like nursery rhymes compared to, say, Kendrick Lamar.

As these innovations become formalized, new ones have to take their place to prevent over-familiarization and automatization [for a more in-depth discussion of this process in art in general, see Shklovsky on formalism]. These are the points of deconstruction. Post-punk and hip-hop were each a form of this and it seems likely that they will be replaced one day by further deconstructions in pop music, possibly resulting in the formation (ha) of new genres we can’t possibly imagine yet. Such is at least one theory of how pop music could progress and develop in a sort of cyclical manner.

#Music #Pop music #Post-punk #Hip-hop #Music criticism

2 notes · View notes

nathancone · 5 years

Text

True Stories, From Stephen Tobolowsky

Next week, David Byrne will be in attendance for a Q&A at two screenings of his film TRUE STORIES, on March 13 at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, and the following day, March 14, at the Angelika Film Center in Dallas, sponsored by the USA Film Festival. To get the straight dope on the film’s creation, I spoke to Stephen Tobolowsky, co-screenwriter along with Bryne and Beth Henley. He can be found online at stephentobolowsky.com.

"True Stories" was also recently released on Blu-ray by The Criterion Collection in a package that also includes, for the first time ever, the film's complete soundtrack.

Below is a transcript of our interview, which also includes a great story about the time Tobolowsky wrote a song for Willie Nelson.

Nathan Cone: I want to thank you in advance here for just taking a little bit of time to talk to me about this particular picture. I remember listening to the podcast episode on it long ago and there's great stories in there, and I just want to kind of dig a little bit deeper into this movie and talk a little bit about it especially since you know we here at Texas Public Radio have that connection to that time and that place and... So thank you for....

Stephen Tobolowsky: Yes. My pleasure.

Going back to when I remember listening to that podcast, you mentioned in first meeting the Talking Heads that you knew very little about them at the time that you went to the screening of “Stop Making Sense.” Just first off, what was your impression of the band, and of David Byrne after seeing and hearing their music for the first time?

Well it was kind of it was kind of mind blowing, not knowing any [of them]… just Jonathan Demme was kind of our friend at the time, because he wanted to do a project with Beth [Henley], some sort of writing project with Beth, and she had just won the Pulitzer. So she had that cache and you have to imagine going into the Academy theater, which I think is 9500 seats.

Yeah.

Perfect, perfect screen, perfect stereo, knew nothing about the talking heads. Beth and I are sitting kind of in the middle back of the theater with Jonathan his ex-wife Evelyn and with David Byrne. So the five of us are sitting back there together and the rest of the Talking Heads, Tina and Chris and Jerry, they're up front. They're sitting up front, so all I see is the back of their heads, and the rest of the place is absolutely empty deserted. And then the movie starts. And it was my introduction to the Talking Heads sitting next to David Byrne! It was almost an out of body experience. To hear that music for the first time from Psycho Killer to Life During Wartime. Take Me To The River. All those songs with David sitting next to me. And the in my curious life, the only other time that happened was when Beth and I went to see the Brad Dourff…Walter Houston directed me…. John Houston directed it�� where he's the kind of crazy preacher?

I don't remember.

It was one of John Houston's later films. I think after “Chinatown,” and we went, Beth and I, went to see an afternoon feature of that and John Houston came and sat down a seat away from us and was eyeballing us the whole time. But I lived in Los Angeles so freaky things like that could happen. But David was kind of eyeballing us the whole time. And I had the "watched" feeling, like I was being watched, watching this movie. And so I was so delighted with the music overwhelmed me and I just fell from "watched" into pure joy. And I think Beth and I could have been the greatest audiences for that film ever, in that theater because afterwards all we could do-- we went out to eat with David and with Jonathan-- and all we could do was just scream basically in the restaurant about how great the movie was! And David, of course, I think I mentioned in the podcast all David wanted to do was wanted criticism.

Yeah he wanted the real feedback!

He wanted criticism. Don't say--you know after I said "oh this is great!" He said, "What do you think of the big suit?" "Oh, the big suit is fantastic." That's the center of the film. That's the you know the whole film changes after that because the sound becomes more intense and it was coming out of different speakers in the theater so that the orchestration of that film, when you're in a big theater with a real sound system is incredible. So by the time you get to Take Me To The River, that film is blasting. Did I answer your original question?

You did!

It was an out of body experience. That's as close as I could say, sitting next to him and knowing I was being watched every second. And the moments of transcendence that came with the film overcame my feelings of being watched were frequent and more frequent as the film went on.

Fantastic, fantastic! Well when it came time for you and when Byrne and you had connected and he had started coming up with this idea for the film that would become True Stories you've related how he did the series of drawings that he thought would make great visuals I guess in the movie? And as you two were examining these drawings did he ever, ever say anything about what was happening in the drawings or was that left for you to interpret?

Yeah. First of all when I came over to David's house the drawings were already done. There was no script but there were maybe a hundred-plus drawings on the wall. Just pinned to the wall. Pencil sketches, and drawings of frames. No script, but just drawings. And David asked "Can you turn these pictures into a screenplay?" And I said, "Well, let me look at them." And then I went. And it was like being at the Museum of Modern Art. We were silent. And I want to say for like two hours. I met him at noon and I started looking at the pictures at about 12:15, and I finished looking at them at 2 o'clock, and for that period of time I don't remember a word being spoken. David stood with me looking picture to picture, examining me as I was examining the pictures. And I took notes, and again, nothing was really exchanged except I said, "I'll tell you what. I'll go home. Let me work on an outline based on these pictures. I'll work on maybe some dialogue from some scenes and give it to you tomorrow. And if you like it you can hire me to do the screenplay, and if you don't like it the outline is yours, you can keep what you want or not want, it's free, no problem, I'll do it for free. And so I went home and I did about 35 pages of outlined and then with scenes a few scenes sketched with dialogue and character kind of portraits of people. And David came over to my house and I gave him the outline and I said just look at over let me know what you think. And then I gave him a general impression of how I saw the movie and that was the music is going to be the star of this movie. So all the screenplay has to be is an open enough structure for the music to exist. And I think David and I agreed with that point and I think what David ended up doing he felt that my script-- or my take on it-- had much through line too much connection, too much character development. He wanted it more to be, I think, iconography, very much like the original pictures. He wanted there to be something like hieroglyphics about it. And I recently saw the film a couple of times one at a film festival in San Francisco, one at the Walker Center in Minnesota, and it holds up so well and I think one of the reasons it holds up so well of course is the music, and that it is so curiously out of time. I think David's approach to it was perfect because nothing is really connected to a time or a place, and especially him in that cowboy outfit with phony cars. And the fashion show, oh my god!

It's like a Texas of your fantasy. You know, his outfit? Were things in that early stage, were things like the sesquicentennial or the celebration of "specialness…" or even Texas part of what you were giving him, or did that come later on, like after he went to Texas and you famously took him to visit your parents and your mom offered him too many soft drinks…

Haha! The sesquicentennial was probably my first idea in that I was thinking, “OK right there is a perfect Talking Heads talking point.” It is a weird word, sesquicentennial. It sounds like a celebration, nobody knows what the hell it is, and it is enough of a structure-- an open structure to put the music in. With the sesquicentennial I said you could have the time capsule, you could have the Shriners and the little cars, you can have a parade. You could have a fashion show, a talent show, you could do all these things linked to the sesquicentennial. So that's first, that was the primary idea I had when I looked at the pictures, and that idea David loved. And I think he loved "sesquicentennial!" I think where I went with that is making relationships between the mayor and the Lying Woman that, you know, to give them rationales for jobs involved with the sesquicentennial and I think David didn't care for that. You know I think he thought that wasn't necessary. That was too conventional. And the I guess the order of things is... (I) wrote the script, gave it to David... I'm trying to think when we toured Texas together with that with the drinks, you know with mom and the drinks. And it was, because I know it was about a year later after--we had to deliver that script in something like.... 19 days is what they asked for Beth and I to-- Beth went over and met with David first. She was the primary point person David wanted to see, and then she called me. This is before the age of real cell phone use. So I think she called me from David's house and said "Sweetie, I can't make heads or tails of these drawings. I think, I think they need somebody who's good at structure. You know, I'm better with character, why don't you come over here and take a look?”

So Beth came home and I went over to David's, and that's when I looked at the stuff. And then after I gave David the outline, the next day he offered Beth and I to co-write the first draft but he had to have it in 19 days. Something crazy. And so it's... it's David Byrne You know it's Talking Heads. We're like nobodies. It's like, "hell yes." And so we jumped at it and we finished it. And the way we did it is Beth and I alternated scenes, she would take certain scenes, and I would take other scenes, and then we put it together and hoped it made sense! And we gave it to David. And I don't think that's when we went to Texas. I think we went to Texas when the film was getting more to where he was looking at locations. And so it was David taking that script at that point in time, and we didn't see him for months afterwards. And it was after that, you know we didn't hear anything about the project. We didn't know that went into a black hole of space. It's when I'm driving in the Hollywood Hills and that's when there's a knock on my car window and it's David Byrne on a bicycle, and he's going like "roll your window down." He says, "Sorry I haven't gotten in touch with you we went on tour and I've been rewriting the script. There's something I need you to hear." And that's when we went back to we're better not lived up in the hills. And David said he added the character that could hear tones.

Yeah.

From my ESP story, and wrote the song "Radio Head," and he played me "Radio Head" in the living room which was… you want to talk about... there is the public mind-blowing experience of being introduced to the Talking Heads at the Academy, in the Academy theatre with David Byrne sitting next to you. But then there is the private mind-blowing experience, when David has taken part of your life... pretty much the courtship of Beth and myself... and turned it into a classic rock'n'roll song. And hearing that in my living room… I mean, I still get weak in the knees when I think of that moment and that how great that song is. I think David is just such a genius and it we were lucky that way.

See what's interesting about that song, and that experience that you describe, and about the backstory behind it, about the fact that you had this psychic experience that was happening during college where you were able to hear tones and delve information about other people from them and that became the song "Radio Head," but you also talk about in your podcast about that being kind of a negative experience for you, and that you shut the door on it.

Yes.

So how did you reconcile both the song being written about that and also the, probably the conflicted feelings you were probably having about that being a part of your life where you said "you know what. That's just something that happened to me and I clearly don't want it to happen again."

Yeah but it is that old mistress, time, and it happens all the time when you think about it. Side event: I was in a hit play on Broadway, "Morning's at Seven." We were nominated for something like 13 Tony Awards 13 or 14 more Tony Awards than any straight play history of Broadway. This was in 2002. We were playing to 95 percent capacity. Uh, Lincoln Center had extended the show once, was ready to extend it again. We had been performing pretty much for nine months straight, and we all got together, the cast got together and said, "No. We want to go home. We want to quit." And you go like, "oh wait a minute." Everybody's heard the story of actors who struggle and struggle and struggle never succeed. But you don't hear the story of actors in a runaway success on Broadway, the dream you want, acclaimed by critics, who say, "we've had enough. We need to go home. We can't do this. It's too hard." And kind of the... hearing the tones. There was the exuberance. First of all, there was the scariness of it happening. So terror is compelling... of what happened and the fact that all those things, as my teacher said, were true that I was able to read about his life. Then it expanded to Beth and I got together because of it and her charging 25 cents to a dollar for me to read people's tones. And then we were gonna collect the money!

I just picture like Charlie Brown, the Charlie Brown thing in front of you.

Yes! It's the lemonade stand. It's hysterical. And so our living together and our romance blossomed from this, and that was all good. But the more I did it the more it intruded into my life, and I couldn't stop it. And it became incredibly creepy and scary, and I had no peace. I had no peace of mind. So I tried to stop it. And so I quit doing that. Yet at the same time, you know, I've had unexplainable events that happened since then, that kind of fall in the same category. And my explanation of it is that it's not extra sensory experience, it's just sensory experience. It's things that probably happen to all of us, to one degree or other, and maybe we're aware of it, maybe we're not aware of it. So, I don't think it is any kind of form of magic, but just something that has not been really subtly explained.

Yeah. Most people haven't been able to pick up on so to speak.

I think... I don't know if I have told you the last time [my wife] Ann was going to do a surprise for me for my birthday. And this was not long ago. And she's always asking me if I'm using my ESP and I'll go, "I don't know, baby I don't do that anymore." So you know she was jesting me that she had something really special planned for my birthday. And so I said, "You know, I'll tell you what, we'll finish this in one swoop here. I'm going to write down on a piece of paper, seal the envelope, put it on your desk, of what we're doing for my birthday. And you know, we'll see that ESP is phony and we'll go have a great time." So I wrote down on the piece of paper "going to Disney Hall downtown Los Angeles to play on the grand piano onstage." And I put it in an envelope, put it on a desk, and she said, “well, dress up nicely like you're going to have lunch with the president or something like that.” She said, "Well the restaurant we're going to is kind of snazzy." I'm going, "All right...." So I put on a suit. She said "It's downtown. Why don't you head off kind of... It's right across the street from Disney Hall. So just drive down toward there and we could probably park in the parking lot under the symphony hall. And all of a sudden I have the sickest feeling in my stomach.

We we come up the elevator for Disney Hall and the custodian is there. My friend Robert Brinkman is there with the suitcase filled with my piano music, and the custodian opens the Grand Hall, and there onstage is the grand piano, center stage, and I go up there and I play for about an hour and Brinkman, who filmed the "Stephen Tobolowsky’s Birthday Party" filmed the thing and took pictures of it and all of this, and I got to play Beethoven and Bach and Brahms and Mozart on the grand piano in Disney Hall. And the whole time inside I am feeling, like, "what is going to happen when we get home?" And we got home and Ann was so mad. She thought I'd either been snooping on her computer or spying on something or... and I said, "Listen. You know, it's probably one of these things to where I observed something at home. And it kind of goes in the back of your brain." And it's when they put when forensic psychiatrist give you hypnosis can you recall that the suspect is you may recall these things that you don't consciously remember.

Yeah.

I said, "So it's probably something like that," but we've never quite gotten over that event.

Yeah, wow. Circling back to the movie here and how it how it went. When you first saw it… you've spoken about how it seems about 13 or so of your lines your and Beth's lines made it into the final film. And what. What. What was in your original draft that you think might have been in the film? You know, what would it have looked like it in y'all's original form?

We had lots of jokes in there. You know Beth always writes very macabre things. And so a few of her lines in there that remain in there was, "he had a tattoo of a bulldog on the stomach." I think that was like one of Beth's lines that still was in the film and my stuff was like all the preacher stuff, the church scene with the preachers singing, the old white guy singing the gospel song?

Oh yeah, I love that.

About have you ever figured conspiracy, and how you always run out of toilet paper towels and Kleenex at the same time.

And later on there's the other character who talks about the hot dogs and the buns too!

Yes. So all that stuff was mine. So we have those kind of jokes all the way through the show. And I think for example some of that stuff was a launching pad for Harvey, the Lying Woman who's always lying. Like a lot of Beth's script was a jumping off point for her. But I think she improvised or extrapolated or changed a lot of Beth's lies. But Beth had some pretty hilarious lies for the Lying Woman. So I think those could have remained in the movie but you know you're filming, and a lot of times improvisation feels more vital while you're filming, and so you keep that in. I think I had more Spalding Gray. I think the mayor and the computer guy had more scientific blather that I had put in there, and I think a lot of it was removed for time, and who needs that, and let's get to the next song. And the songs were better than our dialogue or jokes! That was you know, that goes back to the original idea that the songs were going to be stars.

One of the things I really loved about this movie is that it's very gentle in its nature.

Yes.

And that it's really a celebration of people and the creations that they make and how it's just as important as, you know, the hip stuff that's happening in L.A. or New York or wherever and that you know we're kind of smiling at the outrageousness of it all. But, you know, we all have that within us, these elements of outrageousness and quirkiness that I think we can recognize in these characters in the film. Was that part of y'all's original ideas well the kind of gentle celebration of the "specialness" that the word is used?

Yeah, I think I think that has... that I think was just serendipitous if you take a look at the like Tobolowsky Files, and all the stuff I've written since then. There is this kind of celebration of mundane events, and if you take a look at Beth's writing she always has made the ordinary extraordinary. And after listening to David's new music, he always... It's just amazing. He does the same thing in celebrations of making ordinary events absolutely, stratospherically, cosmically unique. That seems what he is about in his new music now. So in a way we were very lucky, because I really hadn't written much except a lot of unproduced screenplays at the time and a couple plays. Beth of course had written about two or three plays and one screenplay, all of which eventually got produced because of the Pulitzer, but she didn't really have a lot of work under her belt either. And it's amazing that we were all sort of psychically on the same page, that we believed that there is miraculous in the everyday and in the average. And that seemed to come through with all of our writing. We ever had to work at reaching the same tone or having the same conclusions. We were like that all along. We were always on the same page with that.

Yeah, nice. Well lastly referring back to "Radio Head" one more time. Have you ever met any of the members? Have you met Thom Yorke or any of the members of the band?

No, never met those guys, but I tell ya, it's on the to do list. It's on the to do list. When I did the event in San Antone, had the had I told you the Willie Nelson story? Did the Willie Nelson story happen yet?

No, you hadn't.

Just just in terms of wildness and the craziness.

Please!

So, in “Adventures With God,” the story I did, but in the "Exodus" section of my life with Beth, there's the fact that T-Bone and Betty and Beth and I, we couldn't get anything going in Los Angeles we couldn't even work for free! And so one night we're all sitting around the table drinking beer and I said "Hey I have a great idea guys, I just heard this 'Red Headed Stranger' thing, and I think this Willie Nelson guy really has talent, you know, I think he's going to go places." And they're all staring at me. "What are you talking about? It's the number one album in the country!" I said, even better. "What if I write a song for Willie Nelson? I will write a song for Willie Nelson. We're from Texas, he's from Texas, and if he buys the song, we'll have money for rent for acting class, and we'll probably be able to parlay it into getting an agent." And T-Bone goes, "Why not?" And so as the story goes in the book I sit down, write a song for Willie Nelson. Betty sings it, we record it on the little cassettes on our phone answering machine. And Beth said when we finished, she said, "Well where are you going to send it?" And I said "Well that's a good question." I said, "What if I send it to," I mean Willie Nelson is kind of like Santa Claus. "What if I just send it to like Willie Nelson. Austin, Texas, I'm sure it'll get there." The Post Office has to deal with this all the time. So the next day I take the cassette down in a padded envelope covered with stamps addressed only to "Willie Nelson, Austin, Texas." And that story is in "My Adventures With God."

So sometime along this book tour, and it was either right before or right after San Antonio, I get a tweet from a young man in Rio de Janeiro. Gabriel Baretto. and he said he remembered me when I did a movie in Rio de Janeiro with his dad Bruno Beretto, which I did! I did "Bossa Nova," and I remember one day shooting the movie and there's this little kid on the set. And he said, "I thought it was really funny when my mama kept punching you and you kept falling on the floor." Which is true. Amy Irving kept punching me in the movie and I kept falling on the floor! He said. "I saw you had this book and I remembered our childhood memories together so I got the book and I loved it, and I have a question. Do you still have the song for Willie Nelson?" And I said, "Well actually I do. I re-recorded it with some friends of mine just so I wouldn't forget it." He said, "Well [if you] have the sound file of it, send it to me because I'm standing next to Willie Nelson right now." And I said, "You've got to be kidding!" He said, "No. I showed Willie the part of the book where you wrote the song addressed to Willie Nelson, Austin, Texas. He thought it was hilarious and he wants to hear the song for Willie Nelson." So I sent him to file. Gabriel Barreta said like, "Willie's listening to it now. He's laughing, he's giving me a thumbs up. Stephen I don't know, he says I've heard the song. I think it's a really good song. I don't know if it's going to be on Willie's the next album, but I wanted you to know that when you sent that cassette to Willie Nelson, Austin, Texas, it was finally delivered. Forty years later." And I'm hoping the same thing happens with Radiohead. I'm hoping that that event will happen. And these things happen, when you do creative things and you put it out in the universe, sometimes you get the strangest answers.

Yeah, and it takes a long time for them to gestate.

You never know. You never know what century it'll come forward!

Well Stephen, man, thanks so much for the time and I'm sorry I've kept you from your oatmeal for 30 some-odd minutes.

No no no, it's going to be so delicious at this point.

All right. Wow well thank you again very much, and thanks for all your wonderful writing. Are there new podcasts coming along in the new year, you think?

Yes, I finished about seven of them now. And I've just been in conversations with Simon and Schuster as of yesterday about a third book.

Excellent.

And so I'm thinking now of releasing the podcasts maybe in terms of anticipation of the book or something like that.

Great. Well, have a wonderful Friday, and thank you. I look forward to hopefully talking to you again sometime soon.

Same here man, love talking to you.

#stephen tobolowsky #true stories #david byrne #talking heads #sesquicentennial

0 notes