#stephen galloway

[deborahdeshoftim5779]

Thank you, but I didn’t actually get cancelled in any meaningful way. Valiant attempts were made to drown me (figuratively), but since I don’t have a job I can’t be fired, I’m a tough old bat, I’m too elderly to give much of a poop about my future “career,” it’s not the first hanging party and book-burning featuring myself, and it seems that my Dear Readers were having none of it. Thank you, Dear Readers. It is for you, after all, that I write, not for some craven scholar trying to save her own behind by beating herself up in public for having built her reputation on studies of my oevre. (You know who you are. I accept apologies.) Why the posse tried to take me down: I signed (and refused to retract, Bad Me!) an open letter to the University of British Columbia (“UBC Accountable”) calling for due and fair process for writer Stephen Galloway, who had been accused — dubiously, it now strongly appears —of rape –a violent criminal act, lest we forget. Nine years later, this claim has still to be thoroughly investigated in a court of law, due to the prolonged and frantic efforts by those being sued for defamation to keep such a trial from happening. But enough preliminary court cases have gone on so that a number of folks have now reversed their snap judgments, and some have gone full Mea Culpa. You can read all about it in Brad Cran’s Substack called Truth and Consequences; start at the bottom and scroll up. It just gets worse and worse. What was amazing to me was the casualness with which the posse — mostly academics — tossed the Declaration of Human Rights and the Canadian Rights and Freedoms out the window, with cries of “Burn it all down” and the like. But every sword has three sides: your side, the other side, and the Oh Shit! side you didn’t anticipate. Some are now beginning to smoulder themselves, as folks set fire to their feet. Darn, where are those Rights and Freedoms now that a person might need them?

The novelist Margaret Atwood responds in an acerbic style to the attacks she received for having called for due process when the writer Stephen Galloway was accused of rape.

The fact that calling for due process was treated like a crime, while presuming an accusation was true without due process was treated as normal behaviour, shows the level of dystopian tyranny that has overtaken Canadian institutions.

It shows how academics are at the forefront of trashing fundamental pillars of civilisation for the sake of their own ideologies and malignant self-righteousness, which includes smearing and threatening anyone who dares to disagree.

When we acknowledge that many malign tyrannies have been spearheaded by academics (Nazi racism was promulgated by German academics in the 1920's; China's Revolution of 1949 thrived in the universities), then we cannot be surprised by examples such as this.

Such conduct wouldn't be nearly as effective if so many refused to be intimidated and toe the line. When the majority are cowards more concerned about their reputations than about justice, brave voices such as that of Atwood and others who have dared to displease the disciples of currently fashionable movements are seen as radicals: easy to intimidate, abuse, and threaten.

It's time for people to stand up to such intellectual thuggery by defending freedom of speech and the right to the presumption of innocence. When the bullies see that people have a backbone and can't be threatened into silence, they lose their repugnant air of impunity and imagined righteousness.

#margaret atwood #stephen galloway #presumption of innocence #justice #cancel culture #cowardice #freedom of speech #free speech #declaration of human rights #canada #tyranny #academic #academia #politics

[back-and-totheleft]

"America Is Fed Bullshit and We Buy It"

Edward Snowden was given no script approval, nor did he receive any payment for Snowden, says director Oliver Stone. His new movie tells the story of the former NSA operative and how he came to reveal that the U.S. government was secretly monitoring domestic telephone calls.

The 69-year-old filmmaker and renegade met after Snowden’s Russian lawyer “contacted me because he wanted to sell me his book, which he had written about Snowden,” said Stone. “But it was a fictional book. He had fictionalized it. And it was an interesting Russian novel. Very Dostoevsky. Really it’s about a young man from America who comes over and reveals a 1984 world. I didn’t know at that point in time whether we were going to make a fictional movie with an unnamed character, or else we would make the story as realistic as possible about Snowden, because I didn’t know if Snowden would cooperate.”

STONE Did you ever see it [the deleted scene in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps with Donald Trump]?

GALLOWAY No.

STONE It was a deleted scene. He was good. He was good. I have no complaint. There was a lot of demands. I mean, he had two pages of prerequisites that he had to —

GALLOWAY Like what?

STONE Oh, you couldn’t shoot him from this side, that side, but I talked to him. And he’s a charming man in person. I mean, he gets along. You know, he’s a seller.

GALLOWAY You said he was the most confident man you ever met.

STONE Oh, as an actor. He was stunning. Yeah. No, seriously. I couldn’t believe it. You know, we did take one with Michael and [Trump] talking in a barber shop. And he jumped up after the take and he said, “Wasn’t that great?” (Laughter.) You know, he kept doing it. And we kept going because I was deepening the scene as we went. And he didn’t understand nine takes. He’d just done eight, nine takes, he’d never understand it. But every scene, he’d just jump up. He was the same way every time. He didn’t change. But I knew that.

GALLOWAY Was it good?

STONE I said, “It’s OK, Donald. It’s really good.” “But you know, I think we can just do this.” And he’d be disappointed.

GALLOWAY Why did you cut him out of the film?

STONE Because it was a writing issue in terms of — It was too late and too little for where we were, at that point in the movie. And I wasn’t thinking about his future presidency or anything like that. I was just dealing with an editing issue. I should have left it in probably.

GALLOWAY Or bring it back.

STONE You had a somewhat confrontational relationship with Michael Douglas, particularly when you shot the scene with the “greed is good” speech. Why?

STONE Not in the second movie. The second movie was —

GALLOWAY No, no. But I’m talking about the first one.

STONE The first movie. No. At the beginning, we had a rough start. Different styles of approach to [it]. He’d come from TV and he had never seen so much dialogue. And he had a lot of dialogue in the movie. And I don’t think his approach to it was working. We had a confrontation, and he talks about it quite a bit. It sounds like, you know, I’m the bad guy, but —

GALLOWAY No, no, no.

STONE We wouldn’t have been able to make the picture we did unless he changed his approach. And I think he did change the approach as a result. And that’s the way it is, you know. People don’t understand sometimes.

GALLOWAY How do you work with an actor who’s not doing it the way you like?

STONE It’s very hard. Very hard. And I’ve had that problem. There was one female who just never wanted to do that role in that movie. She just didn’t like it. I’m surprised she accepted the role. I guess you know who I’m talking about.

GALLOWAY And so how do you deal with that?

STONE Well, you can’t. You coax her. I mean, everyone on the crew — not everyone. Most of the people in my inner trust wanted to fire her after the first week. I said, “No, it’s going to work.” And I think it did. But it was always reluctant the whole time.

Related Stories Oliver Stone on Edward Snowden: "America Is Fed Bullshit and We Buy It" (Q&) RELATED STORY Comic-Con: Edward Snowden on His Acting Debut in Oliver Stone's 'Snowden' GALLOWAY So here’s what interests me about this film. You’ve been accused of having a somewhat Manichean view of the world.

STONE Hmmph.

GALLOWAY You know, there’s black and white and good and bad.

STONE Well, I put more gray in since then. (Laughter.)

GALLOWAY You mean in your films since then?

STONE The fact that you have this fellow who is played by Douglas talking about the reason, his ethos for greed, and justifying it — and there are many people who believe it, that that is the way to improve the American economy, is by whittling out the bad elements. Weed, weed the garden. Keep weeding the garden. There’s a whole argument for it. And that is not black or white. That’s gray. And it gets the sympathy of the audience. In fact, it won Michael the Academy Award. And people, many young brokers went to Wall Street to work, many whom I have met since, who have grown up and told me that they were influenced by my movie. They were going to go to medical school, and they were going to go off and do this or that. And now they went to Wall Street. So you understand, he was a kind of a counter-hero.

GALLOWAY Well, that’s exactly what I was coming to, because —

STONE Well, it’s not black and white is what I’m trying to say.

GALLOWAY Right. My point was, you have been accused of making things black and white. And sometimes you’ve done that. And my point about this film being different is what’s so interesting here is that the devil is so appealing. You know, you watch that film. By the way, when you did Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, every time Michael Douglas is off screen, I wanted him back. And I realized, “Oh my God. We’re in love with the devil.” Is that dangerous?

STONE Well, he’s not the devil in the second movie. And that may have been an issue.

GALLOWAY Right.

STONE The audience wanted him back as a young — he’s 70 years old, or 65 years old at that point.

GALLOWAY Do you know that line that William Blake said about Paradise Lost? He said, “Milton is of the devil’s party, because he makes Satan so appealing.” So Oliver, are you of the devil’s party, so to speak? (Laughter.)

STONE No, on the contrary. Barnes does the same thing. People were mesmerized by Tom Berenger because he says things that are intelligent. He talks about a reality that he knows. Let’s say he is the bad guy, the villain of the piece. Well, if he gives [a reason] why he was doing what he was doing, then I think it’s much more interesting than he’s just doing it because he’s a sadist. That’s why in Natural Born Killers, Mickey and Mallory justify themselves in their way. And in the new movie, Snowden, you’ll see the NSA people have some very interesting arguments. And I think a lot of people in the audience appreciate that. So it isn’t black and white to me. If it were, that would be more of the comic book, Marvel kind of movie.

GALLOWAY I just want to briefly touch on Natural Born Killers, because it was a very controversial film.

STONE It sure was.

GALLOWAY For two reasons. One, you had some conflict with Quentin Tarantino, who had written it.

STONE Whoa, whoa, whoa. He wrote a script. We extensively rewrote it.

GALLOWAY Right. What were his objections, and have you ever reconciled with him?

STONE No. (Laughter.) No.

GALLOWAY OK.

STONE I don’t think he’s bothered to see the movie.

GALLOWAY Huh.

STONE We didn’t even have to pay him because the producers had the rights. It was a complicated story, but I insisted on paying him and being honorable with him. And —

GALLOWAY There was this other issue, which was —

STONE — It’s still painful for me. He did hurt the movie everywhere in the world with what he said, but he never saw it, so I don’t understand. I think it was about an ego, because you know, he’d been rewritten. I think that’s what it was about. And I don’t think he even bothered to reread the script. But in this business, having come from where I was as a writer, you know, I’ve been rewritten. But I didn’t go public with condemnations.

GALLOWAY Right.

STONE There’s a story in here about 8 Million Ways to Die. Now that it’s many years later, you saw how outrageous the behavior was in the rewrite. That happens in Hollywood. Sometimes people have no trust in the writer. I liked his script. It was the basis for which we bought it. I liked it. But it wasn’t going all the way where I wanted to go, which was a social commentary on our f—ed up system at that time. Which was getting crazier and crazier in 1993, ’94. The United States started to really get into a sensationalism that was beyond extraordinary to me. It was, from my perspective, it was like, “This is getting nuts now when we have all these sensationalistic trials in the news. We have no real news. We have just murder and sensationalism.” And the O.J. Simpson trial happened, which was the most prodigious event in television history in terms of money. O.J. Simpson was everywhere on every channel. It was insane. There was no perspective anymore. It’s like when Clinton, later on that decade, got impeached. It took over all the news. I mean, there was no policy discussions at a very crucial point in our history when we had to make decisions that were internationally impactful. Huge, huge impact. We were ignoring it and paying attention to the Clinton blowjob thing. You tell me. I mean, I think that is a major issue.

GALLOWAY I agree with you.

STONE That’s why I did Natural Born Killers. It is a real problem in this country. We have no attention span for news, and understanding, trying to go deeper.

GALLOWAY That intersected with a real-life copycat killing that resembled the characters in the film. Were you upset by that?

STONE No. There was no copycat killing. That’s what the press called it. There was never any proof that anyone had seen the film and acted directly upon it, any more than the guy who killed John Lennon was acting on the Bible. I mean, that was an easy shot to take. And John Grisham took it. And he supported the major lawsuit. And it went on for seven years or something like that. It was very expensive. And we had to defend our right to make the movie. Basically their argument was that the films were a product like a vacuum cleaner. And that if the vacuum cleaner blows up and hurts you, you get a lawsuit. So he was saying the movie had that effect on these people, and that we owed damages to the people that it killed, and so forth and so on. It’s an impossible argument. But he managed to string it out. And he took it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. They didn’t want to hear it. Went back to Federal, and eventually, eventually it was thrown out. But it took a lot of money. Also, I spent my money, too. And Warner Bros.’ money to defend this suit. It would have affected everybody in Hollywood. I mean, nobody was paying attention. They didn’t care. But you would not be able to make a movie, essentially, if you have a product liability against it.

GALLOWAY Is there any movie you’ve not been able to make because you feel the system has prevented it, as opposed to, well, there’s just not the money.

STONE Well, the system doesn’t gravitate toward criticism of America, as you know from the My Lai story. In the 1970s it was different. After that Vietnam period, there was this tremendous disillusionment. And there were critical films about the United States’ way of life. Very critical. That vanished. By the ’80s and ’90s, when Mr. Reagan came in and we were glorifying the Vietnam War again, et cetera, et cetera, and we were going back into wars, we started building up our military. We sent 500,000 people to this Middle East again in 1991, because Iraq had invaded Kuwait. All of these things grew and grew. And [now] we’ve reached another level in our society of almost insane patriotism again.

GALLOWAY You know, if you are foreign, as I am, it’s very evident.

STONE Those are the issues you can’t address in movies. That’s what you were asking. That’s one of the reasons that Snowden is about an American person who, whatever you think of him, he was an American story. And we couldn’t tell it. No studio would support this movie. Why? Because he was a hot potato in 2014. And although the script was admired and people wanted to make it, they said at the studio level, whatever, they said, “Well, I have to run it upstairs,” because they no longer are in charge of their own studios. You have to realize that. So they run it to the corporate boards that run these gigantic megalopolises that own these studios. And the lawyers always say, “No, no, no. This is going to be a lawsuit, controversial.” Or, “We have a pending deal with the U.S. Government Department of Justice. We want to merge with XYZ, and that merger’s worth $30 billion or $100 billion to us. We don’t want to have any problems with the government.” So it becomes self-censorship by the private corporations not to antagonize in any way Mr. Obama or the DOJ.

GALLOWAY You’ve made three films, I think three, about presidents: JFK, Nixon, W. Was it easy to raise the money, or difficult to raise the money for those films?

STONE JFK I sold as a thriller to Warner Bros. They were excited beyond belief to make it. But they made it and we got it made. It was a delightful experience. Not a delightful, but I mean, it was a supportive experience. Then, of course, it became very controversial and Warner Bros. defended the movie. But they did not defend Natural Born Killers the same way. They didn’t promote it the same way. So by that time, I think they were exhausted over me. So my best studio relationship was with Warner Bros., but it didn’t continue.

GALLOWAY I want to show a scene from JFK. And even people who don’t agree with you admire just the sheer filmic quality of this. This is quite a long scene. Here is the moment when John F. Kennedy is assassinated, which also uses, I think, the original Zapruder film, right?

STONE Yes.

GALLOWAY And you can tell everybody about that. So here’s that sequence. It’s really amazing filmmaking.

[CLIP]

[APPLAUSE]

GALLOWAY Wow. Not bad for a beginner, right? That is brilliant filmmaking. I know you don’t like hearing me saying nice things, because you say, “Oh, that sycophant” —

STONE I do. I do. Where do you get this idea?

GALLOWAY OK. I just think it’s extraordinary filmmaking, and I’ve watched that many times. It’s dazzling. How do you go about conceiving of a sequence like that that has so much going on in terms of narrative, sound, color, slow motion, music? I don’t know if that was the original Zapruder film. If so, how’d you get the rights to it, or if it was all the re-creation? Walk us through how you created it.

STONE Well, a lot of the source of this is anger. There’s obviously, you feel anger, your passion. Because I think the American public was blind. I mean, they accepted this bullshit, this Warren Commission. Anyway, aside from that, this was deep into the movie, so we had already developed this technique. It gets stronger and stronger as it goes. Remember, it’s context. So we start somewhere and this is the climax area. And by this time, we’re rolling on all cylinders, right? The staging was complicated. Yes. We had cameras all over the place. And we had to do it so many times. I have to tell you, that was hard for me, because we must have done it 20 times in downtown Dallas, with the full motorcade. So you could hear the shots —

GALLOWAY So you re-created, actually at Dealey Plaza?

STONE The karma involved. But I only would do that if I felt we were doing the right thing. If I felt this was a false narrative, I would not have done it. It’s just very difficult. Believe me. Those people in Dallas that year will always remember this movie company. And you know, we had to be very tricky, in the sense that we did get permission to shoot from the seventh floor.

GALLOWAY Wow.

STONE Not the sixth. Seventh floor. So our perspectives had to be realigned a bit —

GALLOWAY So Lee Harvey Oswald was actually on the sixth floor, and you shot from the seventh?

STONE Lee Harvey Oswald was not on the sixth floor. He was downstairs on the second floor at the Coke machine actually when this happened. And this is the great narrative that keeps getting spilled, that Oswald was there. But he wasn’t, because somebody saw him 90 seconds later at the Coke machine, and he could not have run down from those stairs and done what he did, stashed the rifle, did all this stuff. And you have to go into the Warren Commission to realize how phony it is. But it’s so upsetting. It still upsets me when I see it today. Yes. [Jim] Garrison brought out the Zapruder film at the trial. It was one of his great services. And of course, the trial, the people were found not guilty, but you know, there was so much evidence presented that’s outside the narrow confines of those people who worked for the government. It’s a much bigger story. And he allowed that can of worms a little bit of light on it. And I think that’s the greatest service he did, going public with that.

GALLOWAY But I wanted you to explain how you make this as a filmmaker? Does everybody know what the Zapruder film is that we’re talking about?

STONE The Zapruder film was shot actually there and then. That’s the real footage.

GALLOWAY It’s the real footage of Kennedy being shot.

STONE And some of the interstices, you can see that we’re using actors for some of the angles that we couldn’t get through the Zapruder film.

GALLOWAY So how do you obtain rights to the Zapruder film?

STONE Well, that was complicated. As I remember, we paid good money for it. And I don’t remember all who, exactly, but by that time, this was the second generation of JFK researchers. So there was a community of people who knew how to get these things.

GALLOWAY And did you map this out on a storyboard before you did it?

STONE Well, we did the storyboard, but it was in the script. A lot of this style was in that script. It elaborates, but the script definitely tells you where it’s going. In fact, that reminds me of a story I forgot. When we first gave the script to Warren Brothers, very smartly took out a lot of the intercutting because I realized that it was so f—ing confusing. So we tried to make it a little simpler. They loved it. And then we went back as we were shooting, and we put back the, you know, we did it that way. It’s a bit of subterfuge, but I don’t think they minded. Our budget and our schedules remained pretty good. We were on schedule.

GALLOWAY Do you let your editor have a first go and then you come in, or do you sit with him?

STONE No. First of all, there were four editors on this. All of them very good. All of them good. So we talked way before, and we’re talking, and they know what’s coming in. And generally speaking, during the shooting, they’re going at it. But no. This was a very complicated movie. Five months of editing. That was all. And we were coming out in December, which was in our favor because I said, “Listen, if we ever show this film in its completed format to the preview audience, or to the [studio], there’s going to be so many questions raised. ‘What’s this?’ ‘What’s that?’ It’s going to be a mess. We’ll never get out of a preview alive.” So by having that short Christmas turnaround, we were able to avoid that. We showed it to Warners. They liked it, except for a couple of executives who said that we needed a preview. And we avoided that death by guillotine.

GALLOWAY Wow.

STONE It took off like wildfire. I was quite stunned. I thought it was the end of my career. I mean, what the hell. Might as well go down in flames, right? Take a shot. Because you don’t want to go down for something minor.

GALLOWAY Your portrait, your sort of idealized portrait of Jim Garrison, the Kevin Costner character, was very criticized. Did you expect that?

STONE I knew Jim and, of course, I knew about his womanizing and stuff like that, but I thought he was a hell of a DA. And when I was in the streets of New Orleans — I think that he’s been judged unfairly by the elite press. And certainly the CIA played a huge role in that. And they were on this case from the beginning. They were out to derail him. But the truth was, wherever I went with anybody who — street people loved him. He was respected. And he had integrity. He was known in a very corrupt community as one of the best DAs they ever had. In fact, he was re-elected. After he had been sullied by the U.S. government, he was re-elected as a judge. Big Jim. He was a star in New Orleans. I’ll never forget that.

GALLOWAY When you thought, “My career is over,” how did you react? Did you think, “Well, I can make little indie films.” Did you think, “I’d better go back to writing novels?”

STONE You’re talking about if this film had failed?

GALLOWAY Well, you said, “I thought my career was over.”

STONE I mean, I was gambling. It would all have been a bit of a lark anyway. I’d had luck. I mean, Salvador was made under the worst conditions, with no money. You know my history of that. I mean, if I survived Salvador, I can — stumbled into Platoon, and that was very tough to make, as you know. And one thing after another. And then you know, you get a little luck, you keep riding away. Don’t stop. Don’t think. Keep moving. So I stumbled from here into Heaven and Earth right after, which was a big film. And beautiful. I love that movie. You mentioned it earlier.

GALLOWAY Yes. Very much.

STONE It did no business in the U.S.

GALLOWAY Why?

STONE There was no interest in the Asian side of the story. And then I did the Natural Born Killers, which was, as I said, really controversial, too. So by that time, I got to Nixon. When I got Nixon, Warners didn’t want to do business with me anymore. There was a divorce there.

GALLOWAY You had another divorce with your longtime cameraman, Bob Richardson.

STONE Later.

GALLOWAY Why?

STONE Well, there’s many reasons. One of them was, he and I had been fighting a bit since Natural Born Killers, because he had reservations about making it. He thought it was too violent. And Bob got into a phase of nonviolence. He’s always been a worshipper of Hindu, of Ganesh and stuff like that. And he was a sincere man, and very disgusted by violence. Ironically, we made Natural Born Killers, and he did a great job. And we also did U Turn, which he also hated. And he became very tough to deal with for me. Very outspoken man. And there comes a point when you know, you can’t — it doesn’t work any longer. We’d done how many films together? I don’t know. Ten. And the irony of the whole thing is that later in time, he goes to work with Marty [Scorsese] and with Tarantino, and makes some of the most violent movies I’ve ever seen.

GALLOWAY (Laughs.) I know.

STONE Obviously, he had a change of heart, but I have to say, I was stunned when I saw this Django. That was it. So many people were slaughtered in that.

GALLOWAY Django Unchained. But you also shifted your style somewhat, because you went from being a fairly classical filmmaker to more impressionistic. And then to an almost hallucinatory style in Natural Born Killers. I wonder if your drug period influenced that.

STONE No. No, you’re forgetting the film that I made called The Doors, you know. In the heart of this was The Doors. And I’m sorry it got rushed in there, but it really was a huge film. To make The Doors and JFK in the same year was pretty big. The Doors was extremely psychedelic. And I’d had quite a bit of experience already with the psychedelics. And I went on with it with the Indians, Navajo and Sioux. Took a lot of trips. Went to Brazil, to Ayahuasca. You know, so I’d always been interested in that. It didn’t affect my work habits. I always kept my nose to the screenplay. Always working. And I have to say, that’s another issue about drugs, that it’s I think completely misunderstood. The cliche predominates. Like Oswald was on the sixth floor. You know, that’s a cliche.

GALLOWAY Yes.

STONE I don’t think like that. I’m outside that realm. So I can’t defend it, and no one will understand it unless you’re a part of it. But certainly, they helped my life enormously, to get through things, to understand things better. They healed the wounds, too. And I’m, see, I was able to film them, a lot of them. So I benefitted from it. Excesses did exist. Yes. My period of cocaine was terrible for me. Didn’t realize it until it was over. But that was 1979 to ’82 I suffered from that. And I thought my writing was getting worse. At least I recognized it before it was too late. And I stopped. Now, in Scarface, I did all the research on Scarface. All of it. And then when I went to write it in Europe, I went cold turkey completely. Never touched it again.

GALLOWAY Do you think of yourself as more as a writer or director?

STONE I hate cocaine. What? (Laughter.) I really do.

GALLOWAY I’m glad you told our young audience that. Do you think of yourself —

STONE But I’m saying, I think everyone has to go through it if they’re going to go through it. You have to. But hopefully you get away from it, because I don’t — it’s such a dangerous, slippery drug. Anyway, there’s — what are you saying? (Laughter.)

GALLOWAY I promised Janet [Stone’s assistant] I wasn’t going to go down this path.

STONE Oh, really? I mean, people have accused me of numerous things.

GALLOWAY Namely?

STONE Like Willie Nelson, I’ve enjoyed my life. (Laughter.)

GALLOWAY Let’s talk about Snowden, because it seems to return to classical Oliver Stone, where the editing is quite sober. There’s a great focus on character. We have two brief clips that people have not seen.

[CLIP]

[APPLAUSE]

GALLOWAY How did this come about?

STONE The movie.

GALLOWAY Yeah.

STONE I didn’t know if I wanted to get involved. I always certainly admired what he did because I think, I felt strongly that this was going on. I sensed it, and I think a lot of us did. And I think he proved it. And he proved it worse, that it was worse than we thought. And the depth of his findings have still to be completely revealed. It’s a monstrous turnaround for our country. Anyway, those are the feelings of a citizen. But as a filmmaker, I have another role to play, and that’s to tell a story. And I have to divorce — as you know, I did a movie about George Bush, where I was criticized for being, I think, empathetic to him.

GALLOWAY Empathetic?

STONE Empathetic.

GALLOWAY Really?

STONE Which is to say not sympathetic, because I think he was the worst, one of the worst presidents we’ve ever had. Next to — but anyway. (Laughter.)

GALLOWAY Next to who?

STONE Next to — No.

GALLOWAY Next to who?

STONE Please, Stephen. Let’s stick to the point.

GALLOWAY OK. (Laughter.) Obama? Don’t worry. I’m just teasing you.

STONE I’m trying to say that, with Nixon, whom my father had doubts about— I think Nixon was also a disaster. I really do. And he betrayed the Vietnam War completely. But in that movie, you saw a man who was suffering, much more so than George Bush. George Bush did not have that degree of compassion, degree of torture, of self-torture at all. He was not a conscious man that way. So I loved those two, they’re two portraits of people that are empathetic. Walk in their shoes. In other words, I’m not taking positions. I’m walking in those shoes. That’s my job. I’m a dramatist. Same thing with Snowden. There’s going to be arguments for, against, hero, traitor, all that stuff. I’m really not interested. I know what I think, but I wanted to show the story using scenes like that brief scene that — there was a cut in there, but it was OK — this fellow who’s talking to him, he was his teacher back at the CIA. He was his original teacher, and he comes back into the story because he works in the Intel Roundtable. And he plays the role of stating, to some degree, the NSA position here. Security. Americans don’t care about security. And that is a key argument. And he makes it. He also says it elsewhere. He talks about the Iraq War in very realistic terms. He talks about the commitment to defend the country. This is a big issue, of course. I talk to people all the time and they tell me, “Well, I want security. I want security.” They don’t realize that it’s at any cost. And anyway. The point is it’s never simple, this whole thing. And the Snowden movie was attacked that way. Let’s tell it as we think it happened, off the public sources, off journalism, off of Snowden’s observations, as well as much, a lot of the book —

GALLOWAY But you said you weren’t actually going to do it, so why did you decide to do it? What was the thinking?

STONE Oh, yeah. Well, when I met him, he certainly was — he was wary. I was wary. We met in Moscow, and it took more meetings over the course of the next few months before we both felt comfortable enough to go ahead. And we went ahead. Then it became a real slog, because it was hard work. He’s a very smart young man, and very courageous, obviously. But he wants it straight. He wants to get as much as he can straight. So he was correcting a lot of stuff in the screenplay. You know, there are so many cliches about computer work and the NSA, so we tried to make it as realistic as possible, given the means of movies.

GALLOWAY Did he have any kind of script approval?

STONE No.

GALLOWAY Did you have to buy his life rights from him or something?

STONE No. The book that was written by The Guardian. We paid The Guardian.

GALLOWAY So go back to your first meeting. How do you set up a meeting like that?

STONE He said, incidentally, in Comic-Con. You were there, I think.

GALLOWAY No.

STONE Oh, OK. Well, he did say that he accepted in his heart that a movie would get made. And he said that it was sort of an inevitability about a movie getting made, that he doesn’t have any rights because he’s in exile, and so forth and so on. So he knew that.

GALLOWAY So how did you set up that first meeting?

STONE The first meeting was set up through the Russian lawyer, who had contacted me because he wanted to sell me his book, which he had written about Snowden. But it was a fictional book. He had fictionalized it. And it was an interesting Russian novel. Very Dostoevsky in the sense that it’s all — none of it is realistic. Really it’s about a young man from America who comes over and reveals a 1984 world. Very Orwell. And fascinating conversations. I didn’t know at that point in time whether we were going to make a fictional movie with an unnamed character, or else we would make the story as realistic as possible about Snowden, because I didn’t know if Snowden would cooperate.

GALLOWAY And where did you meet, and what was that first conversation about?

STONE Where? We met in Moscow.

GALLOWAY In a restaurant? In a public place?

STONE No, no, no. In a secure place I can’t reveal.

GALLOWAY OK. Just the two of you?

STONE Yes. Yes.

GALLOWAY What surprised you about him?

STONE At the first meeting? Would be his wariness. I don’t think he was comfortable with the idea of a movie at that point. He’s into reality, and the concept of a movie is so foreign to him. I think he had seen a piece of The Untold History of the United States, which I’d done. That was that 12-part series. And I think he was impressed with it.

GALLOWAY And you said that was the first meeting. Did he change his view in the next meetings?

STONE Yeah. We got, it got warmer. It took time.

GALLOWAY Was there anything he strongly objected to in the original script?

STONE There were things, but we, you know, we talked about —

GALLOWAY Did you have to show it to the CIA or did you have to run it past any —

STONE (Laughs.)

GALLOWAY No. (Laughter.)

STONE You know, I went there years ago with Platoon. I went to the Pentagon. I got their notes and it was hilarious. You should see it.

GALLOWAY Wow.

STONE Every use of an expletive was — it’s an idealized form of behavior. Unfortunately, it’s taken hold in the movie business. What you’re seeing is bullshit. And a lot of the war pictures you see, you don’t get, you know, you get it after the Pentagon has sanitized it. And they lie. They lie. As long as it is pro-American, that’s all that matters. I mean, whatever. The Taliban. I mean, Lone Survivor, you can kill 20, 30 Taliban for every American who gets it. It’s overdone. American Sniper is another one. . So the Pentagon has taken over. CIA has taken over Hollywood in that sense. 24. Homeland. It’s all CIA. It’s just bullshit. I mean, honestly. We’re, we, America is fed bullshit and we buy it. No other alternative.

GALLOWAY Did you get any attempt at interference from the CIA, the NSA?

STONE Did I get interference? No. And the CIA? No. I hope not. (Laughter.)

GALLOWAY None that you’re aware of.

STONE None that I’m aware of. No.

GALLOWAY They weren’t tapping your phones while you’re talking to Snowden or anything?

STONE I assumed they might, but we proceeded on the basis of we’re making a movie. We went there on that basis and, as I said, I think the biggest problem in the end turned out to be the self-censorship of scared American corporations. And that’s the truth about our society.

GALLOWAY What is the proof of that, as opposed to maybe they just didn’t think this was commercial?

STONE Do you really believe that? At the price we were offering, and the script the way it was, it’s very hard to believe, considering the pact that they make, there wasn’t a political factor.

GALLOWAY Every studio turned you down?

STONE Yes.

GALLOWAY What about actors?

STONE No. No, it was never an actor movie in that way. I had gone to Joseph [Gordon-Levitt], who was not considered a star at that time. And I had gone to Joseph early, and I said, “I think you’re the only one who can do this.” It was probably a mistake, but I —

GALLOWAY He’s very, very good.

STONE He turns out to be very good. And Shailene Woodley wrote me a beautiful letter and wanted to be in the movie. But if I’d gone the star system, it might have been very difficult. You’re right.

GALLOWAY Last question. Then we’re going to open it up. What was your toughest moment in making the film once the money was in place?

STONE Oh, it’s a catalog of horrors, you know.

GALLOWAY Really?

STONE But basically, you know, we made it. We started in the winter. We shot it in Germany because we based it as a German company. My producer wanted to be out of the United States to make it. And I could not get [a completion bond]. We had no money to complete. When you work for a studio, you generally can get some, right?

GALLOWAY Extra money.

STONE You get help. And during the course of the movie, I knew my mother was on her way out. And I’d said goodbye before I left, but I was in Germany when she passed. And I couldn’t go back for the funeral because I would have had to cut like four days of film. And we couldn’t afford it. We were so tight. That was hard. Among other things.

GALLOWAY Well, thank you. It’s a terrific film.

STONE Thank you, Stephen.

GALLOWAY We’re going to take questions. We have to be brief, because we started a little late.

STONE Brief answers.

QUESTION I wanted to ask a question about the — the way I thought about this was about W., which you mentioned very briefly. You know, there’s lots of complications that happen when you are making a movie for all sorts of different reasons. Financing falls through, schedules get delayed, actors drop out, whatever. But you know, the thing that I wanted to know is: You made W. before the Bush presidency was over. And it was before the entire story in some people’s minds had gotten a chance to be told. And I’m sure you had a reason to do it that way, but in general, with all sorts of different stories, you know —

GALLOWAY You must synthesize the question because we just don’t have time. Go ahead.

QUESTION Platoon, Salvador, Wall Street, W. What is the purpose of telling a story at a specific point in time?

STONE OK. Quick answer to that would be, Bush was the most definitive president we’d ever had. He took us to a new level. I was shocked by the 2004, his victory, his re-election in 2004 shocked, because he’d been — it was such a disaster in Iraq, even by then. And people were not picking up on it. As you know, the election turned on a lot of absurdity about John Kerry being, you know, a pansy, this, that. So I wanted to make it because this was a key change in our country. And I was so moved by this presidency that I made The Untold History of the United States. It took me five years. And I did it for Showtime. It starts in 1897. I wanted to know why this George Bush had succeeded. How, what is wrong with our country? So I went back to 1890s when we became an imperialist power in the Philippines and Cuba and so forth. We traced it. My historian and I, we traced it all through World War II. And then the acceleration after World War II into the national security state. I got the whole history of the U.S. And I’ve always, I never had studied history like that in college. So it was like a post-graduate degree. It was my third college experience. That’s what I meant. So that was important. But also, we went with Bush because our story ends — If you look at the film closely, it ends for sure in 2004, which is four years before we made the film. We knew the Iraq War was the key. When he went in there, it was over because it was illogical. He’d defied all sense. He got his own way. He finally won his victory. That was his victory over his father, over those years. So a lot of the movie is about how this guy got to be president. OK?

GALLOWAY Do you have another president you want to make a movie about?

STONE No. I’m done.

GALLOWAY Not Clinton. Not Obama. Not —

STONE No.

GALLOWAY Next question, please.

STONE Maybe George Washington.

GALLOWAY (Laughs.)

QUESTION I just wanted to ask, you talked about how when you were beginning, you know, it was like do or die. You were starving. You were being a taxi driver slash porn director. Producer, sorry. And I just really want to know, when you were first starting out, what steps did you take to eventually get jobs writing screenplays such as Scarface, and directing Platoon and Salvador. And once you were successful, what did you do to keep yourself above water?

STONE Well, quickly, I think I said it. That I had temporary jobs. I was making a little bit of money. My wife was working. So we combined and we had enough resources to keep going. And I was writing one to two screenplays a year. Kept sending them out, sending them out. They were getting recycled. One day, it was a social connection, introduced me to an Italian producer who actually liked the screenplay. It was about the Patty Hearst kidnapping. It was a treatment. And he hired me. I wrote the screenplay. And he brought me to Hollywood. And he put me with this partner. And this partner turns out to be Robert Bolt, who was the biggest screenwriter of that time. Englishman, socialist, very enlightened man. And he had done Lawrence of Arabia, The Mission, and Doctor Zhivago, and so forth. Very good writer. He taught me a lot. He redlined my script and I learned a lot in those weeks with him, but the film didn’t get financed. That was the start of an agent, a good agent. And then one thing or another, I ended up getting the assignment. I wrote Platoon in ’76, which was very much admired, but not made for 10 years. And then I ended up, because of those things, getting an assignment to write Midnight Express on a very low budget.

QUESTION I am a screenwriting major and a freshman. And I was wondering in your opinion, what the difference is between a great story and a movie-worthy story.

STONE Oh. A great story and a movie-worthy story. What kind of answer are you looking for? (Laughter.) I mean, if I had a great story, I think it could be movie-worthy. I think they match up, don’t they? I thought the JFK murder would have been a great story. I mean, it would be a great movie, too. But I’m the only one who thought that at that time. And most people were avoiding it, right? It was too complex.

GALLOWAY Yes.

STONE And I’d never shied from complexity. The Snowden affair is so complex when you get into all the — who cares about all this computer shit? I mean, it drives you crazy. Code breaking, code writing. But it’s very serious. Cyber warfare is a very serious thing. But no one understands it. I mean, it’s really mind-boggling. So we have to deal with it. And you imagine, re-imagine it in movie terms. There’s no movie in the world right now that can show you what a computer really does. We have to use our imagination.

GALLOWAY I heard you wrote your first draft longhand, so you’re not really a computer person. Is that true?

STONE No. I write my first draft longhand always.

QUESTION Good afternoon. My question is, was there anything unexpected about the Snowden revelations?

STONE Yeah. There was a lot of unexpected —

QUESTION — given the history of programs such as Total Information Awareness.

STONE That was an old one. Yeah.

QUESTION And Cointelpro. Was this NSA spying unexpected necessarily?

STONE As I said, a lot of people suspected that something like this was going on, but we never had [proof]. In 2004, James Risen tried to break the story in The New York Times about mass eavesdropping. He had the story. The Times refused to print it, and it was right before the [re-]election of Bush. It was outrageous.

GALLOWAY Wow.

STONE And they buried the story because Bush asked them to. It finally came out in a book, and they published it in late 2005. We heard about mass eavesdropping. That was pretty good. But it wasn’t until Snowden that they really got the goods, including not just telephone, but the whole works. And cyber warfare, too. This is very important. I repeat: People are not quite aware of it yet, but it’s taken over the world.

GALLOWAY Has Snowden seen the film?

STONE Yes.

GALLOWAY What was his reaction?

STONE He saw it twice, I believe, and I think he was very helpful the first time, and I think very pleased. I’m not going to put words in his mouth.

GALLOWAY He didn’t ask you to change anything.

STONE No.

GALLOWAY Good. Oliver, thank you so much.

STONE I’m just happy to be here.

-The Hollywood Reporter, Sept 7 2016 [x]

#oliver stone #stephen galloway #the hollywood reporter #snowden #donald trump

[almondemotion]

Hasn’t he been cancelled?

I don’t know the details of my daughter’s conversation with her friends. It related to an actor I don’t know, from a show I have never watched. He has, I understand, been cancelled. I know that ‘cancel culture’ is discussed these days, until yesterday I had not realised that young people literally talk about it. I do not know the details – my daughter wasn’t altogether clear either, suffice…

View On WordPress

#bereavement #cancel culture #Grief #Israel #loss #Scott Galloway #social disconnection #Stephen Fry #The war

[travern]

Inspector Spacetime (TV Movie)

Inspector Spacetime (a.k.a. "Adversary Without") is a television movie based on the British science fiction series Inspector Spacetime. Developed as co-production among Omniversal Television, BTV/BTV-WC, and the American network UPN, the 1999 television film premiered on 11 May 1999 on CTV in Canada, two weeks before airing in the US and the UK, but only a few days after appearing on file-sharing sites on the Internet.

The film was the first attempt to revive Inspector Spacetime, intended as a back-door pilot for a new American-produced Inspector Spacetime series. It introduced Steve Carell as the Eighth Inspector and Anne Hathaway as his Associate, Charity Galloway, and featured Christian Slater and Stephen Colbert as the Sergeant in his sixth and seventh incarnations, respectively. Although it earned high ratings in America, it was nearly universally reviled elsewhere, to the point a potential series was scrapped and the film itself it was only ever released on DVD in the United States.

#Inspector Spacetime #Steve Carell #Stephen Colbert #Anne Hathaway #The Eighth Inspector #Charity Galloway #Christian Slater

[jbbartram-illu]

A little something different!

I used to be a TOTAL bookworm as a kid, then sort of lost it for a decade or so, then in about 2016/17 I decided to start reading more (& also moved closer to a library & got in the habit of using it).

Fast forward 7ish years and I'm back in the habit of reading & am devouring stacks of books per year, with 2023 being my most ridiculous one yet. I somehow ended up reading 120 books? Mostly because I'm terrible at managing my library holds list & kept getting stacks of books I really wanted to read (I'm also lucky to be a really fast reader, which helps).

Anyways! All that to say - I compiled a top 22 + 19ish honourable mentions, as seen below:

My Top 22:

Tear – Erica Mckeen

Our Wives Under The Sea – Julia Armfield

The Vaster Wilds – Lauren Groff

Paladin’s Strength – T. Kingfisher

Paladin’s Grace – T. Kingfisher

Great Circle – Maggie Shipstead

Between Two Fires – Christopher Buehlman

Sisters – Daisy Johnson

How High We Go In The Dark – Sequoia Nagamatsu

Moon Of The Turning Leaves – Waubgeshig Rice

The Memory Police – Yoko Ogawa

The Night Ship – Jess Kidd

The Conjoined – Jen Sookfong Lee

The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter – Hazel Gaynor

If An Egyptian Cannot Speak English – Noor Naga

The Annual Migration Of Clouds – Premee Mohamed

Wandering Souls – Cecile Pin

The Only Good Indians – Stephen Graham Jones

Lone Women – Victor Lavalle

Ring Shout – P. Djèlí Clark

Lucy – Jamaica Kincaid

The Bookshop Of Yesterdays – Amy Meyerson

Honourable Mentions:

The Marigold – Andrew F. Sullivan

Five Little Indians – Michelle Good

Swordheart – T. Kingfisher…and all the other books of hers (9 of them in total) I read this year!

Even Though I Knew The End – C.L. Polk

Everything Under – Daisy Johnson

Fen – Daisy Johnson

The Animals In That Country – Laura Jean Mckay

A Prayer For The Crown-Shy – Becky Chambers

The Sea Captain’s Wife – Beth Powning

Hester – Laurie Lico Albanese

Tauhou – Kotuku Titihuia Nuttall

Ducks – Kate Beaton

You Made A Fool Of Death With Your Beauty – Akwaeke Emezi

The Hatbox Letters – Beth Powning

And Then She Fell – Alicia Elliot

The Adult – Bronwyn Fischer

Everyone Knows Your Mother Is A Witch – Rivka Galchen

Lute – Jennifer Thorne

Monster – Mariel Ashlinn Kelly

Elly Griffiths’ Ruth Galloway Series (I read 8 books from this series this yr & loved all of them!)

If you want to go through my entire list for 2023, you can read it on my website!

#books #books read in 2023 #booksyear #books 2023

[scotianostra]

December 24th 1165 William I, “The Lion”, was crowned at Scone.

William was red-haired and energetic. Early in his reign he attempted to recover land in Northumberland which had been given to King David in 1149 by King Stephen of England but which had been ceded by his brother Malcolm. The stories of his butchery of the local population were chronicled in detail by later (English) historians. However, he was ultimately unsuccessful as he was surprised by an attack by the English army while besieging Alnwick castle. In the mist, he mistook a party of English knights for his own. He is said to have fought fearlessly but his horse was speared and he was captured. He spent five months as a prisoner of Henry II while the English army plundered the south of Scotland as far as Edinburgh.

William was only released under the Treaty of Falaise. Under this, William was forced to swear allegiance to King Henry II of England and English garrisons remained in the castles which had been captured. This lasted until after Henry’s death in 1189. At that stage he was able to negotiate out of the oath by providing money to King Richard (the Lionheart) who needed finance to go on a crusade to the Holy Land. In 1178 William founded the Abbey of Arbroath which was dedicated to Thomas à Becket who had been murdered by Henry II in 1170. The Abbey was later to be place where the famous Declaration of Arbroath was signed in 1320 by the Scottish nobles in the time of Robert the Bruce.

William failed to assert his authority over the rebellious south-west of Scotland. This was not helped by the fact that he had to first ask permission of his “liege-lord” Henry to be allowed to deal with the matter. William captured one of the ring-leaders but had to send him to Henry to be dealt with. Henry demand an oath of loyalty - and promptly returned the outlaw to Galloway where he immediately attacked William’s garrison.

William is known to have been planning another invasion of England to retake Northumberland early in the 13th century after King John came to the throne of England and there were a number of skirmishes along the border. But he eventually negotiated a treaty instead - he is said to have had a “divine warning” of the consequences of invasion.

In 1186 William married Ermengarde de Beaumont who at last bore him a son in 1198 (later King Alexander II) when William was aged 53. He also had three daughters (all of whom married English nobles as part of the peace-making process with King John of England).

William died in Stirling in 1214 and lies buried in Arbroath Abbey. His son, Alexander II, succeeded him as king, reigning from 1214 to 1249.

#scotland #scottish #history #royalty

[donnatroyprincessofthemyscira]

ComicList: Marvel Comics New Releases for Wednesday, September 27, 2023, by Charles LePage.

Avengers #5 (Cover A Stuart Immonen), $3.99

Avengers #5 (Cover B Alex Ross Avengers Connecting Variant Part D), AR

Avengers #5 (Cover C Alex Ross Avengers Connecting Sketch Virgin Variant Part D), AR

Avengers #5 (Cover D Mark Brooks Corner Box Variant), AR

Avengers #5 (Cover E Aaron Kuder Avengers 60th Anniversary Variant), AR

Avengers #5 (Cover F Ben Harvey), AR

Avengers Annual #1 (Cover A Paco Medina), $4.99

Avengers Annual #1 (Cover B Bryan Hitch), AR

Avengers Epic Collection Volume 10 The Yesterday Quest TP, $44.99

Avengers Omnibus Volume 5 HC (Gil Kane Book Market Cover), $100.00

Avengers Omnibus Volume 5 HC (Rich Buckler Direct Market Cover), $100.00

Blade #3 (Cover A Elena Casagrande), $3.99

Blade #3 (Cover B Javier Fernandez), AR

Blade #3 (Cover C Martin Coccolo Stormbreakers Variant), AR

Captain Marvel The Saga Of Carol Danvers TP, $34.99

Carnage Reigns TP, $29.99

Dark X-Men #1 (Of 5)(2nd Printing Cover A Stephen Segovia), $4.99

Dark X-Men #1 (Of 5)(2nd Printing Cover B Adam Hughes), AR

Death Of The Venomverse #2 (Of 5)(2nd Printing Cover A Luciano Vecchio), $4.99

Death Of The Venomverse #2 (Of 5)(2nd Printing Cover B Ryan Stegman), AR

Death Of The Venomverse #5 (Of 5)(Cover A Bjorn Barends), $4.99

Death Of The Venomverse #5 (Of 5)(Cover B E. J. Su), AR

Death Of The Venomverse #5 (Of 5)(Cover C Gabriele Dell’Otto Connecting Variant), AR

Death Of The Venomverse #5 (Of 5)(Cover D Gabriele Dell’Otto Connecting Virgin Variant), AR

Death Of The Venomverse #5 (Of 5)(Cover E Mark Bagley), AR

Death Of The Venomverse #5 (Of 5)(Cover F Ryan Stegman Venom The Other Variant), AR

Death Of The Venomverse #5 (Of 5)(Cover G Gurihiru Design Variant), AR

Death Of The Venomverse #5 (Of 5)(Cover H Sean Galloway Saturday Morning Variant), AR

Immortal Thor #2 (Cover A Alex Ross), $4.99

Immortal Thor #2 (Cover B George Perez), AR

Immortal Thor #2 (Cover C George Perez Virgin Variant), AR

Immortal Thor #2 (Cover D Gabriele Dell’Otto), AR

Immortal Thor #2 (Cover E Jan Bazaldua Stormbreakers Variant), AR

Invincible Iron Man #10 (Cover A Lucas Werneck), $4.99

Invincible Iron Man #10 (Cover B Meghan Hetrick Homage Variant A), AR

Invincible Iron Man #10 (Cover C Meghan Hetrick Homage Variant B), AR

Invincible Iron Man #10 (Cover D CAFU Avengers 60th Anniversary Variant), AR

Invincible Iron Man #10 (Cover E George Perez), AR

Invincible Iron Man #10 (Cover F George Perez Virgin Variant), AR

Invincible Iron Man #10 (Cover G Bob Layton Wraparound Variant), AR

Invincible Iron Man #10 (Cover H Chris Allen Stormbreakers Variant), AR

Invincible Iron Man #10 (Cover I Lucas Werneck Wedding Crossover Virgin Variant), AR

Jean Grey #2 (Of 4)(Cover A Amy Reeder), $3.99

Jean Grey #2 (Of 4)(Cover B Walt Simonson Jean & Wolverine Variant), AR

Jean Grey #2 (Of 4)(Cover C Ejikure), AR

Jean Grey #2 (Of 4)(Cover D Peach Momoko X-Men 60th Anniversary Variant), AR

Marvel Masterworks The Amazing Spider-Man Volume 2 HC (Steve Ditko Book Market Cover)(ReMasterworks), $75.00

Marvel Masterworks The Amazing Spider-Man Volume 2 HC (Steve Ditko Direct Market Cover)(ReMasterworks), $75.00

Marvel Previews Volume 6 #25 (October 2023), AR

Marvel Unleashed #2 (Of 4)(Cover A David Baldeon), $4.99

Marvel Unleashed #2 (Of 4)(Cover B Ron Lim Lucky Variant), AR

Marvel Unleashed #2 (Of 4)(Cover C Ron Lim Throg Variant), AR

Micronauts #1 (Facsimile Edition)(Cover A Dave Cockrum), $4.99

Micronauts #1 (Facsimile Edition)(Cover B Dave Cockrum Foil Variant), AR

Micronauts #1 (Facsimile Edition)(Cover C Blank Variant), AR

Miracleman By Gaiman And Buckingham The Silver Age #6 (Cover A Mark Buckingham), $4.99

Miracleman By Gaiman And Buckingham The Silver Age #6 (Cover B Emanuela Lupacchino), AR

Miracleman By Gaiman And Buckingham The Silver Age #6 (Cover C Iban Coello), AR

Miracleman The Complete Original Epic TP, $49.99

Monica Rambeau Photon TP, $15.99

Moon Knight City Of The Dead #3 (Of 5)(Cover A Rod Reis), $3.99

Moon Knight City Of The Dead #3 (Of 5)(Cover B Ario Anindito), AR

Moon Knight City Of The Dead #3 (Of 5)(Cover C E.M. Gist), AR

Moon Knight City Of The Dead #3 (Of 5)(Cover D E.M. Gist Virgin Variant), AR

Ms. Marvel The New Mutant #2 (Of 4)(Cover A Sara Pichelli), $3.99

Ms. Marvel The New Mutant #2 (Of 4)(Cover B Jamie McKelvie Design Variant), AR

Ms. Marvel The New Mutant #2 (Of 4)(Cover C Amy Reeder Homage Variant), AR

Ms. Marvel The New Mutant #2 (Of 4)(Cover D Federico Vicentini Team Homage Variant), AR

Ms. Marvel The New Mutant #2 (Of 4)(Cover F Adrian Alphona), AR

Ms. Marvel The New Mutant #2 (Of 4)(Cover G Adrian Alphona Virgin Variant), AR

Realm Of X #2 (Of 4)(Cover A Stephanie Hans), $3.99

Realm Of X #2 (Of 4)(Cover B David Lopez), AR

Silver Surfer Ghost Light TP, $17.99

Spider-Man India #4 (Of 5)(Cover A Adam Kubert), $3.99

Star Wars Doctor Aphra #36 (Cover A Derrick Chew), $4.99

Star Wars Doctor Aphra #36 (Cover B Chris Sprouse Return Of The Jedi 40th Anniversary Variant), AR

Star Wars Doctor Aphra #36 (Cover C E.M. Gist Ahsoka The Clone Wars 15th Anniversary Variant), AR

Star Wars Doctor Aphra #36 (Cover D E.M. Gist Ahsoka The Clone Wars 15th Anniversary Virgn Variant), AR

Star Wars Doctor Aphra #36 (Cover E Josemaria Casanovas Droids Connecting Variant), AR

Star Wars Doctor Aphra #36 (Cover F Luciano Vecchio), AR

Star Wars The Mandalorian Season 2 #4 (Cover A Daniel Warren Johnson), $4.99

Star Wars The Mandalorian Season 2 #4 (Cover B Ryan Brown), AR

Star Wars The Mandalorian Season 2 #4 (Cover C Giuseppe Camuncoli), AR

Star Wars The Mandalorian Season 2 #4 (Cover D Concept Art Variant), AR

Star Wars Volume 6 Quests Of The Force TP, $17.99

Storm #5 (Of 5)(Cover A Alan Davis), $3.99

Storm #5 (Of 5)(Cover B Geraldo Borges), AR

Thor By Donny Cates Volume 6 Blood Of The Fathers TP, $19.99

Ultimate Invasion #4 (Of 4)(Cover A Bryan Hitch), $8.99

Ultimate Invasion #4 (Of 4)(Cover B Francis Manapul), AR

Ultimate Invasion #4 (Of 4)(Cover C Leinil Francis Yu), AR

X-Men Days Of Future Past Doomsday #3 (Of 4)(Cover A Geoff Shaw), $3.99

X-Men Days Of Future Past Doomsday #3 (Of 4)(Cover B Mateus Manhanni), AR

X-Men X-Verse Wolverine TP, $9.99

ACONYTE

Marvel Zombies The Hunger Novel SC, $16.95

DYNAMIC FORCES

Amazing Spider-Man #26 (Peach Momoko ComicXposure Variant Cover), AR

Amazing Spider-Man #28 (Ariel Diaz ComicXposure Variant Cover)(not verified by Diamond Distribution), AR

Amazing Spider-Man #29 (Peach Momoko ComicXposure Variant Cover)(not verified by Diamond Distribution), AR

MARVEL PRESS

Marvels The Hero I’m Meant To Be HC, $17.99

World Of Reading Level 2 This Is Loki SC, $5.99

TITAN COMICS

Marvel Studios Thor Love And Thunder The Official Movie Special HC, $24.99

Merchandise

Marvel Animated Venom 1/7 Scale Bust, AR

Marvel Legends In 3D Comic Daredevil 1/2 Scale Bust, AR

Marvel Legends In 3D Comic Moon Knight 1/2 Scale Bust, AR

POP Keychain The Marvels Captain Marvel, AR

POP Keychain The Marvels Ms. Marvel, AR

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POP Marvel Holiday Deadpool Sweater Vinyl Figure, AR

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#Jean Grey #X-Men #Dark X-Men #Ms Marvel #Avengers #Iron Man #Emma Frost #New Mutant #Thor #Blade #Moon Knight #Venom #Miracle Man

[andallthatmishigas]

multiples of 5

5. What genre did you read the most of?

Probably mystery/thriller. I read 10 of what I call the Trash Vampire books which are vampire romance novels but I also read a lot of murder mystery books and a couple Stephen King so I'll go with that.

10. What was your favorite new release of the year?

I don't really read new releases. But this year I did read The Last Remains, the final book in the Dr. Ruth Galloway series, about a month after it came out. And that was one of my top 10 of the year. Loved that.

15. Did you read any books that were nominated for or won awards this year (Booker, Women’s Prize, National Book Award, Pulitzer, Hugo, etc.)? What did you think of them?

I don't think so. I don't pay attention to anything like that tbh.

20. What was your most anticipated release? Did it meet your expectations?

Just The Last Remains, and it did very much meet my expectations. It ended almost exactly how I envisioned and how I wanted.

25. What reading goals do you have for next year?

My reading goal is always to read one more book than the previous year, so 2024's goal is 43 books. I don't really do audio books or ebooks, just physical books when I travel, take a bath, or work out on my recumbent bike. So I think I should be able to average 3-4 books each month and meet my goal (despite not having much travel planned in 2024...we'll see)

[accidentalharrie]

The NYT article was extremely frustrating and I’m glad that Olivia cancelled on them at the last minute (I do think the reporter used her cancellation as a way to be even more misogynistic in the article) Why should she keep participating in articles and interacting with media that continue to twist everything she says and use the current situation to write “hit pieces” that further open her up to more hateful comments and abuse on social media? The NYT author didn’t even get into the fact that Shia has now come out and admitted he gave her an ultimatum and that she chose Florence over him and continued to hammer home about Olivia’s “misdeeds” (which are…making a video trying to get the 2 leads of her movie to work together in pre-production) NYT seems to have a hate boner for Harry recently too so I wonder if her cancellation also was because of the queer baiting article they put out a few weeks ago. I personally can see both Olivia and Harry pulling back on the amount of interviews they do in the future because of all the “reporting” being done about them right now. It’s got to be super frustrating for them.

I don't think Olivia would cancel an interview with The New York Times because a different reporter wrote something untoward about her boyfriend, at least I hope she wouldn't. My best guess (and it's only a guess) is that the reporter wouldn't agree to limit the interview to the topics Olivia wanted to discuss (and instead wanted to discuss the "spiraling internet gossip").

Mostly I REALLY want someone to follow up with Stephen Galloway on this quote: "...On the other hand, what she did is wrong, just as it was wrong for all the male directors to behave like male chauvinist pigs." 

#the levels of assumptions being made in that quote... #asks

[teach463146]

Matthew is being considered in the voice over category of The Emmy’s. There are 222 in this category, so I only included the g section.

Josh Gad (“Central Park”)

Coty Galloway (“Final Space”)

Victor Garber (“The Simpsons”)

Skyler Gisondo (“Fairfax”)

Todd Glass (“Ten Year Old Tom”)

Stephen Glover (“Poorly Drawn Lines”)

Walton Goggins (“Squidbillies”)

Matthew Goode (“The House”)

Mia Goth (“The House”)

Kelsey Grammer (“The Game”)

Spencer Grammer (“Rick and Morty”)

Seth Green (“Family Guy”)

Seth Green (“Robot Chicken”)

Judy Greer (“Archer”)

Erik Griffin (“Ten Year Old Tom”)

Scott Grimes (“American Dad!”)

Leslie Grossman (“Santa Inc.”)

#matthew goode #the house

[harrylovesmitski]

Will the Spiraling Publicity Harm ‘Don’t Worry Darling’ at the Box Office?

A series of missteps on the promotional trail has raised questions about the film’s viability and its director, Olivia Wilde.

It was one of the hottest projects Hollywood had seen in years. Eighteen bidders. An ascendant female director. Florence Pugh, the actress of the moment, shooting upward like a rocket. “Don’t Worry Darling” was set up to be a smash.

But now, the $35 million production is being referred to around town as “Kill Your Darlings.” Over the past three weeks, the once highly anticipated movie has become a spectacle in all the wrong ways, with its director, Olivia Wilde, self-immolating on the publicity trail. Now all eyes are on the box office as the film — one of only three Warner Bros. is releasing theatrically through the remainder of the year — debuts nationally on Sept. 23.

Signs of trouble began appearing in March when Wilde’s personal life became entangled with her promotional efforts on a stage in Las Vegas, where her introduction of the “Don’t Worry Darling” trailer was co-opted by a process server presenting her with custody papers from her ex-fiancé, the “Ted Lasso” actor Jason Sudeikis.

That spiraled into internet gossip over Pugh’s lack of substantive promotion for the film, which led to reports of a clash between the director and the star over the rumored on-set affair between Wilde and Harry Styles, the pop star in his first major film role. (Wilde has declined to discuss the rumors other than to tell Vanity Fair that stories that she left Sudeikis for Styles were “completely inaccurate.”) Things ratcheted up when Wilde told Variety she had fired Shia LaBeouf, the actor first cast in the role that eventually went to Styles, only to have LaBeouf dispute her account with both audio and video evidence backing up his contention that he quit.

The saga peaked this month in a tense news conference at the Venice Film Festival, which Pugh did not attend. When asked about the controversy, Wilde tersely replied: “The internet feeds itself. I don’t feel the need to contribute. I think it’s sufficiently well-nourished.”

Wilde declined to comment for this article, canceling a long-scheduled interview last week just hours before it was to take place. A representative for Pugh also declined to comment.

This scandal ranks rather low on Hollywood’s outrage meter. Stephen Galloway, the dean of the Chapman University Dodge College of Film and Media Arts and the author of “Truly, Madly,” the story of the whirlwind romance between Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier, characterized it as “a messy fling.” But the “Don’t Worry Darling” situation is high-profile enough that it could have the power to dim the excitement around Wilde’s potential ascent as Hollywood’s bright new directing talent.

The film centers on Alice and Jack (Pugh and Styles), a wildly-in-love married couple whose idyllic 1950s existence belies a more sinister reality. Originally conceived by Carey and Shane Van Dyke (the grandsons of Dick Van Dyke) in a script that was featured on the Black List, a compendium of the best unproduced screenplays of the year, “Don’t Worry Darling” was rewritten by Katie Silberman (Wilde’s “Booksmart”). It became the subject of a bidding war, with the New Line division of Warner Bros. landing the title thanks in part to its commitment to releasing the film theatrically.

Now “Don’t Worry Darling,” which is set to debut in more than 2,000 theaters, is in jeopardy of falling flat. Based on pre-release surveys that track consumer interest, box office experts had predicted roughly $20 million in opening-weekend ticket sales. In recent days, those estimates have cooled to about $18 million. Surveys have shown that ticket sales could be as low as $16 million. Warner Bros. declined to comment on box office projections but an insider at the studio who was not permitted to speak on the record said it had always expected about $18 million and that interest had not fluctuated.

Early reviews have not been kind. Rotten Tomatoes currently has the film hovering at a 38 percent score, squarely in the rotten category. Many critics have mentioned the scandal surrounding the film. The Los Angeles Times critic Justin Chang wondered whether Alice could be “a more fitting stand-in for Wilde, a talented director trying to fight her way out of a misogynistic system, one that wouldn’t blink twice at a male filmmaker in a similar position?”

Is the reaction to the tabloid controversy misogyny at work, as Chang suggested? Male directors, after all, have a long history of both becoming combative with the press and engaging in on-set affairs. Or will this become a case of Hollywood adding Wilde, a daughter of the journalists and documentarians Andrew and Leslie Cockburn, to the life’s-too-short list, meaning that this episode will overshadow her talent? Some question, given the rift with Pugh and her dispute with LaBeouf, whether talent will want to work with Wilde in the future.

“There’s some degree of sexism in this,” Galloway said. “Male directors have done this for decades and gotten away with it. A female director does it and it explodes. That’s unfair. On the other hand, what she did is wrong, just as it was wrong for all the male directors to behave like male chauvinist pigs. Part of me feels bad for her being judged by a different standard. Part of me says, ‘There is a modern standard which we should all be upholding.’”

What’s next for Wilde is not clear. She was scheduled to follow “Don’t Worry Darling” with “Perfect,” about the gymnast Kerri Strug. But according to three people with knowledge of the project who were granted anonymity to discuss its status, Wilde abandoned the movie after asking for multiple rewrites from different screenwriters before walking away, believing the script was still not ready for production.

“It became clear to me that this year was a time for me to be a stay-at-home mom,” she told Variety. “It was not the year for me to be on a set, which is totally all-encompassing.”

She has two projects in early development: a new Marvel movie, which two people involved said was “Spider-Woman,” and an untitled holiday comedy that Universal Pictures has had in the works since 2019.

Some believe the attention caused by the scandal could bring more moviegoers to theaters, following the adage that there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

“I think that even a title like this with A-list talent attached, increased awareness in this challenging marketplace totally can help people to know that it exists, it’s out there and it’s coming soon,” said Joe Quenqua, a veteran strategic communications executive.

Warner Bros. is continuing with its original marketing strategy. The studio announced last week that its Sept. 19 IMAX experience, which will include a screening of the film and a live question-and-answer session in 100 locations across the country, is the fastest-selling live event in IMAX’s history.

Wilde will be in attendance. Pugh will not.

via The New York Times

#for those who dont have access to nyt !!!! #its all very...yikes

[southjerseyweb]

Driver Charged In Fatal South Jersey Crash: Prosecutor | Galloway, NJ Patch

Driver Charged In Fatal South Jersey Crash: Prosecutor – Galloway, NJ – Stephen Sirch was speeding in the Atlantic County crash that killed Karina …

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[wwwstrangersandpoetrycom]

Cynical Moments

Was it Galloway Who said the two major Political parties were two cheeks Of the same ass, Could it be said that the fringe Parties are will nots hanging on, Collectively they have created One hell of a shit show, What about the general population, The voters, Are we simply Maggots in the pile. Stephen Nesbitt © From “Realizing” www.StrangersAndPoetry.com 12:17 PM March 29, 2024

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[back-and-totheleft]

Chapman University Masterclass

After returning home from serving in the Vietnam War in 1968, director Oliver Stone found himself unable to deal with reality. He called himself “another person” after his experiences. Out in the field of battle, the wet biome of Vietnam jungles proved too difficult of an environment to pen his thoughts, so he relied on memory in order to process his experiences into a screenplay.

The first draft, titled “Break,” was an abstract impression of the war — the main character dies in the first quarter of the film, travels to the Egyptian underworld and magically ends up in prison. But following 18 years and some major revisions, Stone would turn “Break” into the visceral 1987 Best Picture winner “Platoon” — a tall task by the standards of 1980s cinema.

“There’s been so many war films since 1986. It’s almost like (science fiction) now. It seems relatively easy to make these explosions and have these men running around under fire,” Stone said. “Believe me. Back then, it was really difficult to do this. It was seen as groundbreaking… The Vietnam thing had certainly never sunk into the American public… When they saw this film, I think it really shook them. It wasn’t ‘Apocalypse Now.’ It wasn’t ‘Deer Hunter…’ It was something else — unsettling — and that’s what I’ve been doing since then.”

On Nov. 13, the three-time Academy Award winner joined a Chapman audience in the Folino Theater following a screening of “Platoon.” He was introduced by Stephen Galloway, the dean of Dodge College of Film and Media Arts, as one of the few directors whose personality stamps his work. Throughout their conversation, Stone brought a wealth of filmmaking wisdom, an honest outlook on his past and a cornucopia of blunt assertions regarding media propaganda, foreign politics and American history.

Prior to completing his abstract war screenplay, Stone was arrested in San Diego for smuggling marijuana from Vietnam before being bailed out by a lawyer his father had hired. He made his way back to New York for a proper homecoming but little clarity on his future.

“All I knew how to do was kill people and to camp out in the jungle… I wanted to further my education,” Stone said.

Stone had previously dropped out of Yale before the war, where he was classmates with George W. Bush, or as Stone likes to call him, “the dope who ran this country into the ground.” He would later film “W.” about the 43rd president. With a fresh start, Stone enrolled in New York University where he took an introductory film class from director Martin Scorsese.

Following talking on his writing process, his regrets and an excerpt from his book (Chasing the Light: Writing, Directing, and Surviving Platoon, Midnight Express, Scarface, Salvador, and the Movie Game), Stone acknowledged his reputation amongst viewers and critics who consume the violence in his films.

“That’s what they always say about me, ‘I’m crude, or I’m vulgar and I’m not subtle.’ I think there’s a theater of cruelty. You have to show them. You have to shock them. People get awards for not showing… but sometimes you just gotta show (John) Kennedy’s fucking corpse and what they did to him and the holes they put in him.” — Oliver Stone, three-time Academy Award-winning director, referring to his film "JFK"

Stone is best known for his films “Platoon,” “JFK,” “Nixon,” “Snowden” and much more.

He also provided advice on how to bring out authentic performances from actors who may not have the same connection to the subject matter as he does — the key being pressure.

“You have to bring pressure on the person who’s not living that life unless he’s totally dedicated to method acting,” Stone said. “You gotta get them to a level where he understands the intensity of that experience… You put the idea in their hearts that they’re going to this place.”

Questions were opened to the audience for a Q&A session, during which Stone spoke on his views of American history. His ideations have manifested into films such as “Nixon,” “World Trade Center,” “Wall Street,” “Born on the Fourth of July” and “Snowden.”

“American history is full of lies… That’s what’s depressing. People forget that they’ve been lied to, and they just move on and they buy the next lie,” Stone said. “We’ve got to change that paradigm. We’ve got to change the way we think and address this government. Governments lie.”

When asked about off-the-record moments from “The Putin Interviews” — a four-part documentary series in which Stone interviews Vladimir Putin — Stone claimed that the Russian president is modest and misunderstood. He said that Americans need to understand that the Russian people also have a love for their country and want sovereignty to control their fate.

“Of those who are interested in knowing who this so-called villain is, it’s important you know who he is and how he thinks and how he behaves…” Stone said. “People in the United States, because they hate him so much from the propaganda, have turned their eyes away. They don’t even want to listen. This is horrible. This is what causes so many problems in the world. We have to listen. We have to empathize… The only way to preserve peace is to understand each other.”

A later question about the documentary “Navalny” — centered on Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny — prompted Stone to respond, “I know the Navaly story, and I know what propaganda is. He’s an American hero — a Western hero. We’ll leave it at that.”

The evening was capped off with a message from Galloway, who said that no matter whether he agrees or disagrees with Stone’s declarations, he admires his courage for voicing his opinions with the world against him.

Freshman television writing and production major Ross Corman-O’Reilly attended the event because of Stone’s cinematic legacy and his love of the film “JFK.”

“This was the best master class I’ve been to. It was so off the walls. It was great to see Stone. I respect him very much as a filmmaker.” — Ross Corman-O'Reilly, freshman television writing and production major Junior film studies major Karthik Davuluri describes the evening as the Master Class he’s been waiting for.

“He’s made some legendary movies. We don’t get a lot of directors who are from that era. He’s a truly unique guest to get, and I was really interested in learning about his perspective on film and politics and how he combines the two… I really thought this was a once-in-a-lifetime thing hearing his perspective on everything. He’s a casual guy who isn’t afraid to say what he thinks and speak his mind even if it is controversial, which is something I’ve been waiting to see from a Master Class.”

-Nicholas de Lucca, "Oliver Stone keeps it candid at masterclass," The Panther, Nov 22 2023

#oliver stone #stephan galloway #chapman university #masterclass

[lejournaldupeintre]

William Friedkin, ‘The Exorcist’ Director, Dies at 87

Director William Friedkin, best known for his Oscar-winning “The French Connection” and blockbuster “The Exorcist,” died Monday in Los Angeles. He was 87. His death was confirmed by Chapman University dean Stephen Galloway, a friend of Friedkin’s wife Sherry Lansing. His final film, “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial,” starring Kiefer Sutherland, is set to premiere at the Venice Film…

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#friedkin #the exorcist #usa

[scotianostra]

On December 4th 1214 King William I  died at Stirling.

William “The Lion” was a grandson of King David I and  inherited the throne following the death of his older brother, King Malcolm IV just two weeks earlier. William reigned for almost 50 years, longer than any other Scottish monarch prior to the union of the crowns in the 17th century.

William was crowned at Scone on December 24th, 1165 at the age of 22 and was to reign for nearly 50 years - a prodigious length of time by any standards, but unheard of in those violent days.

William was red-haired and energetic. Early in his reign he attempted to recover land in Northumberland which had been given to King David in 1149 by King Stephen of England but which had been ceded by his brother Malcolm. The stories of his butchery of the local population were chronicled in detail by later (English) historians. However, he was ultimately unsuccessful as he was surprised by an attack by the English army while besieging Alnwick castle. In the mist, he mistook a party of English knights for his own. He is said to have fought fearlessly but his horse was speared and he was captured. He spent five months as a prisoner of Henry II while the English army plundered the south of Scotland as far as Edinburgh.

William was only released under the Treaty of Falaise. Under this, William was forced to swear allegiance to King Henry II of England and English garrisons remained in the castles which had been captured. This lasted until after Henry’s death in 1189. At that stage he was able to negotiate out of the oath by providing money to King Richard (the Lionheart) who needed finance to go on a crusade to the Holy Land. In 1178 William founded the Abbey of Arbroath which was dedicated to Thomas à Becket who had been murdered by Henry II in 1170. The Abbey was later to be place where the famous Declaration of Arbroath was signed in 1320 by the Scottish nobles in the time of Robert the Bruce.

William failed to assert his authority over the rebellious south-west of Scotland. This was not helped by the fact that he had to first ask permission of his “liege-lord” Henry to be allowed to deal with the matter. William captured one of the ring-leaders but had to send him to Henry to be dealt with. Henry demand an oath of loyalty - and promptly returned the outlaw to Galloway where he immediately attacked William’s garrison.

William is known to have been planning another invasion of England to retake Northumberland early in the 13th century after King John came to the throne of England and there were a number of skirmishes along the border. But he eventually negotiated a treaty instead - he is said to have had a “divine warning” of the consequences of invasion.

In 1186 William married Ermengarde de Beaumont who at last bore him a son in 1198 (later King Alexander II) when William was aged 53. He also had three daughters (all of whom married English nobles as part of the peacemaking process with King John of England).

William died in Stirling on this day in 1214 and lies buried in Arbroath Abbey. His son, Alexander II, succeeded him as king, reigning from 1214 to 1249.

#Scotland #scottish #royalty #william the lion #medieval history #history