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hammondcast · 7 years

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Harry Shearer Interview With Jon Hammond

#WATCHMOVIE HERE: Harry Shearer Interview With Jon Hammond Jon's archive https://archive.org/details/HarryShearerInterviewWithJonHammond Youtube https://youtu.be/MByRDtzWZB4 Vimeo https://vimeo.com/231223997 Nashville Tennessee -- Harry Shearer Interview with Jon Hammond just before Harry accepted the American Eagle Award along with Crystal Gayle and Patti Smith from the US National Music Council during Summer NAMM Show - for broadcast on Jon Hammond Show on MNN TV Channel 1 in Manhattan - Harry's Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Shearer "Harry Julius Shearer (born December 23, 1943) is an American actor, voice actor, comedian, writer, musician, author, radio host, director and producer. He is known for his long-running roles on The Simpsons, his work on Saturday Night Live, the comedy band Spinal Tap and his radio program Le Show. Born in Los Angeles, California, Shearer began his career as a child actor. From 1969 to 1976, Shearer was a member of The Credibility Gap, a radio comedy group. Following the breakup of the group, Shearer co-wrote the film Real Life with Albert Brooks and started writing for Martin Mull's television series Fernwood 2 Night. He was a cast member on Saturday Night Live on two occasions, between 1979–80, and 1984–85. Shearer co-created, co-wrote and co-starred in the 1984 film This Is Spinal Tap, a satirical rockumentary, which became a cult hit. In 1989, Shearer joined the cast of The Simpsons; he provides voices for numerous characters, including Mr. Burns, Waylon Smithers, Principal Skinner, Ned Flanders, Reverend Lovejoy, Kent Brockman, Dr. Hibbert and more. Shearer has appeared in several films, including A Mighty Wind and The Truman Show, has directed two, Teddy Bears' Picnic and The Big Uneasy, and has written three books. Since 1983, Shearer has been the host of the public radio comedy/music program Le Show, a hodgepodge of satirical news commentary, music, and sketch comedy. Shearer has won a Primetime Emmy Award, has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in the radio category, and has received several other Emmy and Grammy Award nominations. He has been married to singer-songwriter Judith Owen since 1993. He is currently "artist in residence" at Loyola University, New Orleans. Shearer was born December 23, 1943 in Los Angeles, the son of Dora Warren (née Kohn) (d. 2008), a bookkeeper, and Mack Shearer.[2] His parents were Jewish immigrants from Austria and Poland.[3][4] Starting when Shearer was four years old, he had a piano teacher whose daughter worked as a child actress. The piano teacher later decided to make a career change and become a children's agent, as she knew people in the business through her daughter's work. The teacher asked Shearer's parents for permission to take him to an audition. Several months later, she called Shearer's parents and told them that she had gotten Shearer an audition for the radio show The Jack Benny Program. Shearer received the role when he was seven years old.[5] He described Jack Benny as "very warm and approachable [...] He was a guy who dug the idea of other people on the show getting laughs, which sort of spoiled me for other people in comedy."[6] Shearer said in an interview that one person who "took him under his wing" and was one of his best friends during his early days in show business was voice actor Mel Blanc, who voiced many animated characters, including Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Barney Rubble.[7] Shearer made his film debut in the 1953 film Abbott and Costello Go to Mars, in which he only had a small part. Later that year, he made his first big film performance in The Robe.[6] Throughout his childhood and teenage years he worked in television, film, and radio.[6] In 1957, Shearer played the precursor to the Eddie Haskell character in the pilot episode of the television series Leave It to Beaver. After the filming, Shearer's parents said they did not want him to be a regular in a series. Instead they wanted him to just do occasional work so that he could have a normal childhood. Shearer and his parents made the decision not to accept the role in the series if it was picked up by a television network.[6] Shearer attended UCLA as a political science major in the early 1960s and decided to quit show business to become a "serious person".[5] However, he says this lasted approximately a month, and he joined the staff of the Daily Bruin, UCLA's school newspaper, during his first year.[5] and as editor of the college humor magazine (Satyr) including the June 1964 parody, Preyboy [8] He also worked as a newscaster at KRLA, a top 40 radio station in Pasadena, during this period. According to Shearer, after graduating, he had "a very serious agenda going on, and it was 'Stay Out of the Draft'."[5] He attended graduate school at Harvard University for one year and worked at the state legislature in Sacramento. In 1967 and 1968, he was a high school teacher, teaching English and social studies. He left teaching following "disagreements with the administration."[5] From 1969 to 1976, Shearer was a member of The Credibility Gap, a radio comedy group that included David Lander, Richard Beebe and Michael McKean.[9] The group consisted of "a bunch of newsmen" at KRLA 1110, "the number two station" in Los Angeles.[6] They wanted to do more than just straight news, so they hired comedians who were talented vocalists. Shearer heard about it from a friend so he brought over a tape to the station and nervously gave it to the receptionist. By the time he got home, there was a message on his answering machine asking, "Can you come to work tomorrow?"[6] The group's radio show was canceled in 1970 by KRLA and in 1971 by KPPC-FM, so they started performing in various clubs and concert venues.[5] While at KRLA, Shearer also interviewed Creedence Clearwater Revival for the Pop Chronicles music documentary.[10] In 1973, Shearer appeared as Jim Houseafire on How Time Flys, an album by The Firesign Theatre's David Ossman. The Credibility Gap broke up 1976 when Lander and McKean left to perform in the sitcom Laverne & Shirley.[5] Shearer started working with Albert Brooks, producing one of Brooks' albums and co-writing the film Real Life. Shearer also started writing for Martin Mull's television series Fernwood 2 Night.[5] In the mid-1970s, he started working with Rob Reiner on a pilot for ABC. The show, which starred Christopher Guest, Tom Leopold and McKean, was not picked up.[5] Career[edit] Saturday Night Live[edit] In August 1979, Shearer was hired as a writer and cast member on Saturday Night Live, one of the first additions to the cast,[6] and an unofficial replacement for John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, who were both leaving the show.[11] Al Franken recommended Shearer to Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels.[12] Shearer describes his experience on the show as a "living hell" and "not a real pleasant place to work."[11] He did not get along well with the other writers and cast members and states that he was not included with the cast in the opening montage (although he was added to the montage for latter episodes of the 1979-80 season) and that Lorne Michaels had told the rest of the cast that he was just a writer.[13] Michaels left Saturday Night Live at the end of the fifth season, taking the entire cast with him.[14] Shearer told new executive producer Jean Doumanian that he was "not a fan of Lorne's" and offered to stay with the show if he was given the chance to overhaul the program and bring in experienced comedians, like Christopher Guest. However, Doumanian turned him down, so he decided to leave with the rest of the cast.[15] When I left, Dick [Ebersol] issued a press release, saying "creative differences." And the first person who called me for a comment on it read me that and I blurted out, "Yeah, I was creative and they were different." —Harry Shearer[16] In 1984, while promoting the film This Is Spinal Tap, Shearer, Christopher Guest and Michael McKean had a performance on Saturday Night Live. All three members were offered the chance to join to the show in the 1984–1985 season. Shearer accepted because he was treated well by the producers and he thought the backstage environment had improved[11] but later stated that he "didn't realize that guests are treated better than the regulars."[17] Guest also accepted the offer while McKean rejected it, although he would join the cast in 1994. Dick Ebersol, who replaced Lorne Michaels as the show's producer, said that Shearer was "a gifted performer but a pain in the butt. He's just so demanding on the preciseness of things and he's very, very hard on the working people. He's just a nightmare-to-deal-with person."[18] In January 1985, Shearer left the show for good,[11] partially because he felt he was not being used enough.[16] Martin Short said Shearer "wanted to be creative and Dick [Ebersol] wanted something else. [...] I think he felt his voice wasn't getting represented on the show. When he wouldn't get that chance, it made him very upset."[19] Spinal Tap[edit] Shearer co-created, co-wrote and co-starred in Rob Reiner's 1984 film This Is Spinal Tap.[6] Shearer, Reiner, Michael McKean and Christopher Guest received a deal to write a first draft of a screenplay for a company called Marble Arch. They decided that the film could not be written and instead filmed a 20-minute demo of what they wanted to do.[11] It was eventually greenlighted by Norman Lear and Jerry Perenchio at Embassy Pictures.[11] The film satirizes the wild personal behavior and musical pretensions of hard rock and heavy metal bands, as well as the hagiographic tendencies of rockumentaries of the time. The three core members of the band Spinal Tap—David St. Hubbins, Derek Smalls and Nigel Tufnel—were portrayed by McKean, Shearer and Guest respectively. The three actors play their musical instruments and speak with mock English accents throughout the film. There was no script, although there was a written breakdown of most of the scenes, and many of the lines were ad-libbed.[11] It was filmed in 25 days.[11] Shearer said in an interview that "The animating impulse was to do rock 'n' roll right. The four of us had been around rock 'n' roll and we were just amazed by how relentlessly the movies got it wrong. Because we were funny people it was going to be a funny film, but we wanted to get it right."[2] When they tried to sell it to various Hollywood studios, they were told that the film would not work. The group kept saying, "No, this is a story that's pretty familiar to people. We're not introducing them to anything they don't really know," so Shearer thought it would at least have some resonance with the public.[6] The film was only a modest success upon its initial release but found greater success, and a cult following, after its video release. In 2000, the film was ranked 29th on the American Film Institute's list of the top 100 comedy movies in American cinema[20] and it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[21] Shearer, Guest and McKean have since worked on several projects as their Spinal Tap characters. They released three albums: This Is Spinal Tap (1984), Break Like the Wind (1992) and Back From The Dead (2009).[22] In 1992, Spinal Tap appeared in an episode of The Simpsons called "The Otto Show".[23] The band has played several concerts, including at Live Earth in London on July 7, 2007. In anticipation of the show, Rob Reiner directed a short film entitled Spinal Tap.[24] In 2009, the band released Back from the Dead to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the release of the film.[25] The album features re-recorded versions of songs featured in This Is Spinal Tap and its soundtrack, and five new songs.[26][27] The band performed a one date "world tour" at London's Wembley Arena on June 30, 2009. The Folksmen, a mock band featured in the film A Mighty Wind that is also made up of characters played by Shearer, McKean and Guest – was the opening act for the show.[28] The Simpsons[edit] Shearer is also known for his prolific work as a voice actor on The Simpsons. Matt Groening, the creator of the show, was a fan of Shearer's work, while Shearer was a fan of a column Groening used to write.[29] Shearer was asked if he wanted to be in the series, but he was initially reluctant because he thought the recording sessions would be too much trouble.[29] He felt voice acting was "not a lot of fun" because traditionally, voice actors record their parts separately.[7] He was told that the actors would record their lines together[7] and after three calls, executive producer James L. Brooks managed to convince Shearer to join the cast.[2] Shearer's first impression of The Simpsons was that it was funny. Shearer, who thought it was a "pretty cool" way to work, found it peculiar that the members of the cast were adamant about not being known to the public as the people behind the voices.[6] Shearer provides voices for Principal Skinner, Kent Brockman, Mr. Burns, Waylon Smithers, Ned Flanders, Reverend Lovejoy, Dr. Hibbert, Lenny Leonard, Otto Mann, Rainier Wolfcastle, Scratchy, Kang, Dr. Marvin Monroe, Judge Snyder and many others.[30] He has described all of his regular characters' voices as "easy to slip into. [...] I wouldn't do them if they weren't easy."[29] Shearer modeled Mr. Burns's voice on the two actors Lionel Barrymore and Ronald Reagan.[31] Shearer says that Burns is the most difficult character for him to voice because it is rough on his vocal cords and he often needs to drink tea and honey to soothe his voice.[32] He describes Burns as his favorite character, saying he "like[s] Mr. Burns because he is pure evil. A lot of evil people make the mistake of diluting it. Never adulterate your evil."[33] Shearer is also the voice of Burns' assistant Smithers, and is able to perform dialogue between the two characters in one take. In the episode "Bart's Inner Child", Harry Shearer said "wow" in the voice of Otto, which was then used when Otto was seen jumping on a trampoline.[34] Ned Flanders had been meant to be just a neighbor that Homer was jealous of, but because Shearer used "such a sweet voice" for him, Flanders was broadened to become a Christian and a sweet guy that someone would prefer to live next to over Homer.[35] Dr. Marvin Monroe's voice was based on psychiatrist David Viscott.[36] Monroe has been retired since the seventh season because voicing the character strained Shearer's throat.[37] In 2004, Shearer criticized what he perceived as the show's declining quality: "I rate the last three seasons as among the worst, so season four looks very good to me now."[38] Shearer has also been vocal about "The Principal and the Pauper" (season nine, 1997) one of the most controversial episodes of The Simpsons. Many fans and critics reacted negatively to the revelation that Principal Seymour Skinner, a recurring character since the first season, was an impostor. The episode has been criticized by both Shearer and Groening. In a 2001 interview, Shearer recalled that after reading the script, he told the writers, "That's so wrong. You're taking something that an audience has built eight years or nine years of investment in and just tossed it in the trash can for no good reason, for a story we've done before with other characters. It's so arbitrary and gratuitous, and it's disrespectful to the audience."[39] Due to scheduling and availability conflicts, Shearer decided not to participate in The Simpsons Ride, which opened in 2008, so none of his characters have vocal parts and many do not appear in the ride at all.[40] In a 2010 interview on The Howard Stern Show, Shearer alluded that the reason he was not part of the ride was because he would not be getting paid for it.[41] Until 1998, Shearer was paid $30,000 per episode. During a pay dispute in 1998, Fox threatened to replace the six main voice actors with new actors, going as far as preparing for casting of new voices.[42] The dispute, however, was resolved and Shearer received $125,000 per episode until 2004, when the voice actors demanded that they be paid $360,000 an episode.[42] The dispute was resolved a month later,[43] and Shearer's pay rose to $250,000 per episode.[44] After salary re-negotiations in 2008, the voice actors received $400,000 per episode.[45] Three years later, with Fox threatening to cancel the series unless production costs were cut, Shearer and the other cast members accepted a 30 percent pay cut, down to just over $300,000 per episode.[46] On May 13, 2015, Shearer announced he was leaving the show. After the other voice actors signed a contract for the same pay, Shearer refused, stating it was not enough. Al Jean made a statement from the producers saying "the show must go on," but did not elaborate on what might happen to the characters Shearer voiced.[47] On July 7, 2015, Shearer agreed to continue with the show, on the same terms as the other voice actors.[48] Le Show and radio work[edit] "Because I don't do stand-up, radio has always been my equivalent, a place to stay in connection with the public and force myself to write every week and come up with new characters. Plus it's a medium that – having grown up with it and putting myself to sleep with a radio under my pillow [as a kid] – I love. No matter what picture you want to create in the listener's mind, a few minutes of work gets it done." —Harry Shearer[49] Since 1983, Shearer has been the host of the public radio comedy/music program Le Show. The program is a hodgepodge of satirical news commentary, music, and sketch comedy that takes aim at the "mega morons of the mighty media".[50] It is carried on many National Public Radio and other public radio stations throughout the United States.[51] Since the merger of SIRIUS and XM satellite radio services the program is no longer available on either.[52] The show has also been made available as a podcast on iTunes[53] and by WWNO. On the weekly program Shearer alternates between DJing, reading and commenting on the news of the day after the manner of Mort Sahl, and performing original (mostly political) comedy sketches and songs. In 2008, Shearer released a music CD called Songs of the Bushmen, consisting of his satirical numbers about former President George W. Bush on Le Show.[2] Shearer says he criticizes both Republicans and Democrats equally, and also says that "the iron law of doing comedy about politics is you make fun of whoever is running the place"[54] and that "everyone else is just running around talking. They are the ones who are actually doing something, changing people's lives for better or for worse. Other people the media calls 'satirists' don't work that way."[55] Since encountering satellite news feeds when he worked on Saturday Night Live, Shearer has been fascinated with the contents of the video that does not air. Shearer refers to these clips as found objects. "I thought, wow, there is just an unending supply of this material, and it's wonderful and fascinating and funny and sometimes haunting – but it's always good," said Shearer.[56] He collects this material and uses it on Le Show[57][58] and on his website.[59] In 2008, he assembled video clips of newsmakers from this collection into an art installation titled "The Silent Echo Chamber" which was exhibited at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut.[56] The exhibit was also displayed in 2009 at Institut Valencià d'Art Modern (IVAM) in Valencia, Spain[60][61] and in 2010 at the New Orleans Contemporary Arts Center.[62] In 2006 Shearer appeared with Brian Hayes in four episodes of the BBC Radio 4 sitcom Not Today, Thank You, playing Nostrils, a man so ugly he cannot stand to be in his own presence.[63] He was originally scheduled to appear in all six episodes but had to withdraw from recording two due to a problem with his work permit.[64] On June 19, 2008, it was announced that Shearer would receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in the radio category.[65] The date of the ceremony where his star will be put in place has yet to be announced.[66] Further career[edit] Shearer performing in April 2009 In 2002, Shearer directed his first feature film Teddy Bears' Picnic, which he also wrote. The plot is based on Bohemian Grove, which hosts a three-week encampment of some of the most powerful men in the world. The film was not well received by critics. It garnered a 0% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with all 19 reviews being determined as negative[67] and received a rating of 32 out of 100 (signifying "generally negative reviews") on Metacritic from 10 reviews.[68] In 2003, he co-wrote J. Edgar! The Musical with Tom Leopold, which spoofed J. Edgar Hoover's relationship with Clyde Tolson.[69] It premiered at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado and starred Kelsey Grammer and John Goodman.[70] In 2003, Shearer, Guest and McKean starred in the folk music mockumentary A Mighty Wind, portraying a band called The Folksmen. The film was written by Guest and Eugene Levy, and directed by Guest.[6] Shearer had a major role in the Guest-directed parody of Oscar politicking For Your Consideration in 2006. He played Victor Allan Miller, a veteran actor who is convinced that he is going to be nominated for an Academy Award.[71] He also appeared as a news anchor in Godzilla with fellow The Simpsons cast members Hank Azaria and Nancy Cartwright.[72] His other film appearances include The Right Stuff, Portrait of a White Marriage, The Fisher King, The Truman Show, EdTV and Small Soldiers.[73] Shearer has also worked as a columnist for the Los Angeles Times Magazine, but decided that it "became such a waste of time to bother with it."[55] His columns have also been published in Slate and Newsweek.[74] Since May 2005 he has been a contributing blogger at The Huffington Post.[73] Shearer has written three books. Man Bites Town, published in 1993, is a collection of columns that he wrote for The Los Angeles Times between 1989 and 1992.[39] Published in 1999, It's the Stupidity, Stupid analyzed the hatred some people had for then-President Bill Clinton.[75] Shearer believes that Clinton became disliked because he had an affair with "the least powerful, least credentialed women cleared into his official compound."[39] His most recent book is Not Enough Indians, his first novel. Published in 2006, it is a comic novel about Native Americans and gambling.[73] Without the "pleasures of collaboration" and "spontaneity and improvisation which characterize his other projects", Not Enough Indians was a "struggle" for Shearer to write. He said that "the only fun thing about it was having written it. It was lonely, I had no deal for it and it took six years to do. It was a profoundly disturbing act of self-discipline."[2] Shearer has released five solo comedy albums: It Must Have Been Something I Said (1994), Dropping Anchors (2006), Songs Pointed and Pointless (2007), Songs of the Bushmen (2008) and Greed and Fear (2010).[76] His most recent CD, Greed and Fear is mainly about Wall Street economic issues, rather than politics like his previous albums. Shearer decided to make the album when he"started getting amused by the language of the economic meltdown – when 'toxic assets' suddenly became 'troubled assets,' going from something poisoning the system to just a bunch of delinquent youth with dirty faces that needed not removal from the system but just...understanding."[77] In May 2006, Shearer received an honorary doctorate from Goucher College.[78] #HarryShearer #ThisIsSpinalTap #JonHammond #Nashville #TVShow The Big Uneasy[edit] Shearer is the director of The Big Uneasy (2010), a documentary film about the impacts of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans. Narrated by actor John Goodman, the film describes levee failures and catastrophic flooding in the New Orleans metropolitan area, and includes extended interviews with former LSU professor Ivor Van Heerden, Robert Bea, an engineering professor at the University of California at Berkeley, and Maria Garzino, an engineer and contract specialist for the Los Angeles district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The film is critical of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and its management of flood protection projects in Southern Louisiana.[79][80][81][82][83] Shearer draws on numerous technical experts to maintain that Hurricane Katrina's "...tragic floods creating widespread damage were caused by manmade errors in engineering and judgment."[84] Shearer's film currently has a 74% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on twenty-three reviews by approved critics.[83] Personal life[edit] Shearer married Penelope Nichols in 1974. They divorced in 1977. He has been married to singer-songwriter Judith Owen since 1993.[2] In 2005, the couple launched their own record label called Courgette Records.[85] Shearer has homes in Santa Monica, California, the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana, and London. He first went to New Orleans in 1988 and has attended every edition of New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival since.[86] Shearer often speaks and writes about the failure of the Federal levee system which flooded New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, belittling the coverage of it in the mainstream media[87] and criticizing the role of the United States Army Corps of Engineers.[88][89] Prior to the DVD release of his film, The Big Uneasy, Shearer would hold screenings of the film at different venues and take questions from audience members " Identifier HarryShearerInterviewWithJonHammond Scanner Internet Archive HTML5 Uploader 1.6.3 Language English Publication date 2017-08-26 Usage Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Topics Harry Shearer, Nashville, New Orleans, NAMM Show, This is Spinal Tap, Podcast, Jack Benny, The Simpsons, Rock Band, Jon Hammond, Cable Access TV, MNN TV, Channel 1, #HarryShearer #HammondOrgan #Rocker

#Harry Shearer #This is Spinal Tap #Nashville #HammondCast

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drink-n-watch · 4 years

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When I was a kid my favourite poet was Jean Arthur Rimbaud. I still like him a lot. There’s something about French poetry that appeals to me in an ineffable way. It’s a bit savage and the way the language bends and contorts to create so many homophones allows on to play with the rhythm and flow of sentences. In general, I’m not a huge fan of French as a language. But for poetry, it works. Or maybe it’s just nostalgia speaking. Rimbaud wrote in a surreal stye with heavy symbolism. Some have called him the first naturalist poet which sounds odd but actually works well. He is also considered a precursor to modernist poetry.

Rimbaud was a bit of a rock star to me. He started writing very young and a lot of his best pieces were written between the ages of 15 and 20 or so. He was also living the fast life surrounded by superstar poets of the time (it was a pretty sexy profession back then if you could make it!), making trouble (he was once almost shot by Verlaine who was rumored to be his jealous lover at the time) and being an all around… rock star… at 15. I remember learning that Rimbaud died in his 30s of what eventually turned out to be bone cancer and I was so sad. This happened roughly a century before I was born mind you. I just thought how unfortunate it was for the word to be robbed of a talent at such a young age. I myself was a teenager at the time and I realize now, probably suffocatingly pretentious. Still those were my honest thoughts at the time. All things considered, and when I think about how events often play out for kids who gain notoriety and fame very young with little to no supervision. Rimbaud actually made it out pretty good.

Takuboku Ishikawa was only a few years old when Rimbaud died. He would also become a poet far from the bustle of 1800s Paris. By the time Ishikawa’s career was started the naturalist movement was fairly established and that was his preferred style. He was influenced by the political strife in Japan at the time and wrote symbolic works yearning for the liberation of Japan. He was married and had friends. He seemed much more respectable from what I’ve read. Yet he was only 26 when tuberculosis struck him.

I haven’t been a teenager in a while but it still makes me sad when I learn of a life apparently unfinished. I supposed it alway will.

There are people who are likely to consider the above paragraphs a complete waste of time. Meandering and barely related to what I’m supposed to be talking about. General information aout famous poets that can be found in about a minute of googling if one is actually interested, mixed with utterly useless information about a stranger that is never going to be needed. I figure those type of people will have hated episode 10 of the Woodpecker Detective’s Agency. Who am I kidding, they dropped the show long ago, if they ever picked it up in the first place.

But there are also people that don’t mind detours. That can find a word or two in that hodgepodge that they like and build on that. I’m not sure myself where I’m going with this.

I’m sad for Ishikawa again. I thought his obvious struggle with grief was pretty difficult to watch. The self harming bit was also a bit much, what with the heavy handed red colour wash and harsh shadows. It really cheapened the moment, and for me almost of betrayed all the pain and angst the episode was building up. Had it been even a few seconds longer I would have rolled my eyes. Oh well.

I don’t like being sad. And yet, didn’t dislike this episode and I’m really trying to figure out why so that I can tell you. Kindaichi’s kindness has been bordering on stupidity or masochism for a while but the revelation that e is in fact completely self-aware changes it all for. It makes him interesting and possibly a bit twisted instead of pathetic. So I liked Kyosuke this week. Possibly more that I ever have before.

There was also that thin thread that related back to a lot of Ishikawa’s (the real one) themes. This notion of social responsibility. That writing is worthless unless it can change society. Unless it’s talked about and has an impact. And that’s why a man cannot be a poet. That’s not a worthy venture. This sort of existential crisis was established by Tamaki in bunt exposition and has been repeated ever since.

And between the tears and the crashing and the speedy unraveling of Ishikawa’s character, that’s sort of what this episode of Woodpecker Detective’s Agency was about. Ishikawa is mourning the loss of a loved one but as everyone else pointed out, he hardly knew Tamaki. Beyond the pain of the immediate loss, Ishikawa is grieving for his own sense of worth and accomplishment. The idea of leaving the world without leaving behind anything that will be talked about, anything that is a proper instrument of societal change, is devastating to him. And it’s a pain he has no idea how to deal with. So he lashes ut, lie a child.

Maybe I didn’t dislike this episode because it tried to face something very adult. Or maybe I didn’t dislike it because there was an unmistakable sense of hope radiating from those clear bleu skies and delicate pink cherry blossoms.

Or maybe I’m just the type of person who reads three unrelated paragraphs about a bloggers fondness of a random 19th century poet and imbues it with whatever meaning suits me, regardless of what was actually there.

Or maybe ‘m just glad I got Monday over? I tend to be real generous with shows that air on Mondays…

Woodpecker Detective’s Office Ep.10 – A Very Kind Friend When I was a kid my favourite poet was Jean Arthur Rimbaud. I still like him a lot.

#anime #episodic #historical #Mystery #Woodpecker Detective&039;s Office

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chestnutpost · 6 years

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Inside ‘Climax,’ An Acid Trip That Goes From Dance Party To Bloody Nightmare

This post was originally published on this site

Some two dozen dancers gather at a remote schoolhouse in France. Outside, snowfall casts an apocalyptic chill; inside, sweat is dripping and bodies are convulsing to a throbbing disco surge. “God is with us,” the troupe’s choreographer howls as they engage in an orgy of the senses. It’s their last rehearsal before touring the United States and beyond — if, that is, they survive the night. The sangria they down after finishing the run-through is spiked with LSD, much to everyone’s shock, and what began as a free-spirited celebration ends with blood, blame, battery, incest and other hallucinatory hazards.

So it goes in “Climax,” the 95-minute horror bacchanalia that exists in the hallowed space between must-see and can’t-watch. That’s familiar territory for director Gaspar Noé (“Irréversible,” “Enter the Void”), an extremist whose work flirts with nihilism. Here, he serves up maybe 40 minutes of ecstasy, duping us into thinking he’s made something joyful before swerving to a fevered agony that’s as exhilarating as it is disturbing. This is not a film for everyone, and that’s precisely why it’s incredible. When I saw it for a third time in Brooklyn last week, the woman sitting next to me was holding her head and moaning during the final half hour.

“It’s like you start with a roller coaster going up, up, up, and suddenly the roller coaster starts going down,” Noé said by phone last week. “Any spectator that sees the movie knows it’s just an imitation of life.”

However bleak, he’s not wrong. As the opening credits imply, Noé based “Climax” on a news story from the ’90s in which French dancers found their drinks laced with acid. He wouldn’t tell me whether things ended as brutally for them as they do for his characters, but there’s a certain catharsis in seeing such highs ― pun intended ― butt up against such diabolical lows.

A24 Sofia Boutella in “Climax.”

What’s most impressive about “Climax” is how it was made. In December 2017, Noé attended a voguing ball where he was inspired to pursue a project about dancers of varying races, nationalities and sexual identities who come together with a carnal, catty joie de vivre. In lieu of a proper script, he wrote a short treatment that introduced the characters and outlined the story in only the broadest strokes. Everything else was fleshed out during the shoot, which spanned a quick 15 days, with Noé operating the camera himself. By the following May, “Climax” was already premiering at the Cannes Film Festival.

Initially, Noé envisioned the movie as two halves: before the acid and after the acid ― both shot to look like continuous 40-minute takes, with the credits sandwiched in the middle. That’s what Sofia Boutella signed on for when Noé sent her an Instagram message asking if she’d play the choreographer, Selva, who doubles as the de facto protagonist.

Casting Boutella, who toured with Madonna before starring in “The Mummy” and “Atomic Bonde,” changed the game. Noé wasn’t planning to hire an actual choreographer to put together the vibrant dance number that opens “Climax,” but Boutella insisted he’d need a professional to wrangle 20-some performers. She recommended Nina McNeely, who has worked with Christina Aguilera, Rihanna and Banks. By then, everything was moving quickly: After deciding on the song ― Cerrone’s “Supernature” ― McNeely had only one day to prep and two days to rehearse the complex ensemble, whose free-flowing buffet of styles create what she calls “structured improvisation.”

Foc Kan via Getty Images Gaspar Noé and Boutella at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2018.

On the next day, Noé brought her a few more dancers to add in and shot the scene as one roving take, the camera floating around and drifting overhead: Busby Berkeley on shrooms. There are voguers and krumpers and waackers and duck-walkers and electro hoofers and Shiva arms and catwalking, all bobbing around one other in a hodgepodge of ’90s euphoria. McNeely took inspiration from “A Chorus Line,” “Sweet Charity” (and all things Bob Fosse), Pina Bausch and Federico Fellini. It’s enough to make you assume the rest of “Climax” will be festive too.

“They are very charismatic, very sexy, very young, and especially their dancing skills and the language they invent with their bodies is so incredible that as a spectator you are envious of them,” Noé said. “You are curious about being part of that group because they kind of celebrate life in a conscious way. I could have done a whole movie like that, but I don’t think that happy endings make happy spectators.”

So Noé and company turned the back half of “Climax” into a nightmare. The after-party starts off pleasantly enough, with petty jealousies and horny desires undergirding the dancers’ boozy interactions. Noé beaks up the two halves with mini-conversations about marriage, sex, cocaine and other indiscretions, all shot in close-up and spliced together in rapid succession with music throbbing in the background. But when the LSD kicks in, the pulse shifts to a minor key and Selva becomes a tour guide for the frenzy. The camera follows her through a neon-green hallway, in and out of rooms where people fight or hook up or freak out. Eventually, she wanders back to the cavernous rehearsal den, where a mother tends to her preschooler, a pregnant woman wields a knife, a suspected traitor gets tossed into the snowstorm, and others become hypnotized by their own movements.

McNeely was key during that long sequence, too. She would follow Noé and Boutella, hollering “obscenities” (read: stage directions). “I’d be like, ‘Look at the curtain! Throw your body on the floor! Kick the wall screaming,’” McNeely explained. “Sofia only did some of the things I said, so it’s really funny because I just seem like a fucking insane person screaming random things.”

A24 Romain Guillermic and Sofia Boutella in “Climax.”

It worked, though. We can see the experience mounting in Boutella’s eyes, and the way Noé’s camera swirls in relation to the proceedings makes us feel like ghosts following her into hell. That long green hallway? There might as well be a sign that reads “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” Or, as the Yeah Yeah Yeahs once sang, “Dance, dance, dance till you’re dead.”

Boutella based her performance in part off Andrzej Żuławski’s psychological thriller “Possession,” specifically a scene in which the main character, played by Isabelle Adjani, flails her body around during a manic meltdown in a subway station. Boutella had never taken hallucinogens, and in fact McNeely became a sort of acid muse for most of the actors on the set, dictating how the drug would affect each person differently.

Because she didn’t know what a physical experience LSD is, Boutella underestimated how demanding the film would be. She shot eight- to 10-minute chunks at a time, over and over, wailing and writhing in an abandoned boys’ school outside Paris. At one point, Selva thrusts her hands into her tights, only to peer down and think they’re stuck there permanently, after which she thrashes around like a dervish. It’s at once hilarious and unsettling, and a master class in acting.

“I knew at the moment he gave me the role of the choreographer, he wanted this choreographer [to be someone who] who never got the chance to dance the way she probably wanted to,” Boutella said. “She got to this point and she’s older than everybody, and she’s trying to unify and bring everybody together. I wanted to find some color because the moment I’m completely high I wanted the worst part of her to come out. It’s the true part of her that she never shows to anybody, some sort of darkness.”

By the time “Climax” ends, that darkness is king. There’s no going back, as if everyone involved has reached some sort of feral nadir. It recalls the gruesome opera that closed last year’s “Suspiria” remake, which is fitting because the original “Suspiria” is name-checked in “Climax.” Some of the final moments are filmed upside down in a haze of reds and blacks that offer an unintelligible violence, leaving audiences gasping for air.

Of course, Noé thinks the whole descent is hilarious. At times, he’s right, as when Selva sees herself in a mirror and leaps back in horror. But there’s also a prevailing sense of despair, scored by the likes of Giorgio Moroder and Aphex Twin. Life, “Climax” seems to say, opens the door for infinite possibilities, only to reveal crushing terrors, sometimes in the same night. One can only hope that, when all is said and done, you’ll still be dancing.

“It is, in many ways, a positive movie,” Noé said. “It’s dark in an educational way, but the more you think about it, the more you have a kind of vision for what human cruelty is. We are talking about some subjects that make you see the shadow; it shows cruelty out of the light of the sun. You are happy to see these horrors onscreen that you haven’t seen in real like, like when you have a nightmare. … It is helpful to see all those fears inside your mind while you’re sleeping or when you enter a movie theater. People still, at the end of the movie, keep their joy of the first part of the movie. Many people say, ‘Oh, this was a ride, but I enjoyed it.’”

“Climax” is now in theaters.

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The post Inside ‘Climax,’ An Acid Trip That Goes From Dance Party To Bloody Nightmare appeared first on The Chestnut Post.

from The Chestnut Post https://thechestnutpost.com/news/inside-climax-an-acid-trip-that-goes-from-dance-party-to-bloody-nightmare/

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theworstbob · 7 years

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the thing journal, 5.14.2017-5.27.2017

the pop culture things i took in over the last week, and also the week before that this week because last week i couldn’t make a post. last week: american ultra, take this waltz, freddie gibbs, direct hit!, the wild reeds, jackie kashian, rory scovel, sam outlaw. this week: mary j. blige, diet cig, smino, shalewa sharpe, bad suns, room, groundhog day (the musical), brooklyn nine-nine s3, in transit, interstellar

1) American Ultra, dir. Nima Nourizadeh: This film wanted to be like five things all at once. It wanted to be a stoner comedy, it wanted to be a send-up of action thrillers, it wanted to be just a straight-up action thriller, it wanted to be an epic romance, it wanted to be an indictment of the surveillance state. I don't think it was any of those things. It was a largely enjoyable hodgepodge of ideas. There were moments it took seriously that could have been served with some comedy, there were moments it seemed like it was making fun of the stupid idiot characters when it needed to be there with them, like, I'm not gonna call it a failure because I never felt like it was wasting my time or like it was aggressively awful, but I couldn't get a handle on what I was supposed to be getting out of this film. It tried to be so many things and ended up feeling like nothing. If it had stuck with one idea -- if it were JUST a movie about this stoner idiot who suddenly sees everyday objects as instruments of death, and it was just about him and his idiot girlfriend running from the CIA and there wasn't this whole other plotline involving drama at the CIA, if it could have just been THAT, they might've had something, but they had this, which was fine, but it wasn't something.

2) Take This Waltz, dir. Sarah Polley: I discussed this on the Fall Out Boy blog, but that scene on the ride at the theme park is such a cool scene. I can see how an older Bob or a younger Bob might think this movie's kinda bullshit, it is very much a Pretty White People with Problems movie, but it's also a movie about being in your late 20s and only just realizing, oh shit, I HAVE to be an adult now, the things I do today might be the things I do forever, I need to figure out what I really want while it's still permissible for me to figure things out, and it really speaks to me. Sarah Polley's a rather dope director! Let's see if sh -- oh okay cool one more movie, wellllllllllp.

3) You Only Live 2wice, by Freddie Gibbs: Y'know what if this gets billed as an album, I'm gonna treat it like an album, length be damned. Eight songs is enough to be considered a thing IT WORKED FOR KENDRICK AND CARLY RAE DAMNIT. The opening track has maybe my favorite lyric ever: "No sleep, bags under my eyes are designer." I am going to remember that lyric for the rest of my life. It seems like a fine enough intro to Freddie Gibbs, who is a thing I am given to understand I would enjoy, and I'm excited to get into his meatier offerings.

4) Wasted Mind, by Direct Hit!: ...So remember how my computer got partially zapped last week and I lost Internet access and thus the motivation to do Internet-related things such as write my assigned blogs? Yeah so I completely forgot about this. I vaguely recall it being fine. I sort of recall it dealing with alcoholism, or lyrics relating to alcoholism, and wanting to structure this capsule around how this songwriter is recounting his pain and struggle through the thing he is best at doing, and my reaction to it is "You get a B!" but, like, I listened to this on a bus ride home ten days ago, and I wasn't too into it as I was listening to it. Only so much room, ya know? If I remembered every (pop/)punk album I ever listened to, I wouldn't remember all the tennis fun facts. And those are much more valuable. Tennis fun facts could conceivably be answers to bar trivia questions. No one was asking for this capsule.

5) The World We Built, by The Wild Reeds: The harmonies on this album are fucking nuts. This is an album I've listened to three times in the last couple weeks, and I liked it more with each listen, found new things to dig with each spin, some music thing I'm not smart enough to relay, some lyrical twist I was too preoccupied to notice. I'm sitting down with all these capsules on a Saturday night, trying to hammer a bunch of these out so I can get this sweet hot content to y'all as promised, but I kinda wanna shove this deep inside my wormholes again Sunday morning just so I have it fresh in my mind what makes this album so awesome. If you're reading these words, then of course I said "nah" and wrote my Saturday night post, which is "dope af country girl group plays songs that are hella good," and while I think the statement itself has merit, it could use a few more points of support.

6) I'm Not the Hero of This Story, by Jackie Kashian: Definitely my favorite unit of comedy released in 2017 so far. Like, the beginning, "I'm not a political comedian, but uh, I guess I have to be now?" is among the best opening bits I've ever heard. And the political comedy doesn’t feel forced, feels of a whole with the material prepared before we all went to hell. Like, the joke about being told by a minority friend trying to assuage her post-election fears, “Jesus, have you never been disappointed before?” is as much about her Midwestern emotional unavailability as the jokes about visiting her father in the hospital. (I might be over-analyzing this. Everything is either over-analyzed or under-analyzed here. ONE DAY I’LL ACHIEVE BALANCE.) It’s a strong album.

7) Dilation, by Rory Scovel: I think this was fine! As far as something I listened to because I recognized the name from Competitive Erotic Fan-Fiction goes, it was greatly enjoyable. I'm not sure how much value can be derived from a deep critical look at a six-year-old album by a dude who may or may not still be active, but if you need 40 minutes of comedy, and you've exhausted all the known brands and don't wanna revisit something you've already heard, this will provide adequate amusement.

8) Tenderheart, by Sam Outlaw: Definitely more Tender than Outlaw. I sort of shied away from Sam Outlaw for a little while because he has a stupid fucking name, but I always knew him as a dude I'd like if I gave him a chance, so I gave him a chance. My instinct was right. It's not a bad album? It's just, I dunno, soft. And that's OK. I can see it was intended to be soft, and it is not its fault I prefer to be hit with a sledgehammer than with a pillow. It did its thing, and it's a mostly good thing, and it's a thing better than 99% of the country music offerings. It just didn't do my thing.

9) Strength of a Woman, by Mary J. Blige: I think in YAS I mentioned that I appreciated Shakira's latest thing because it was specifically Shakira on the track; it was a Latin pop music veteran making a Latin pop song, and the floor on that sort of thing is insanely high. I got a similar sort of vibe from this album. I knew going in that this wouldn't get anything lower than a B+ from me, because the name attached to this album is such a strong name that it would have to take an extremely weird departure for me not to be into this, like a Metal Machine Music-level noise experiment for me to go "enh, I don't know." This kinda sounds backhanded, I think sometimes I use high floor when I mean low ceiling, but trust I loved every second I spent with this album, like this album is legit great, I listened to it twice over the Internetless weekend, I guess I just took 100 words or whatever to tell you that this thing you can tell is great from the artist turned out to be great.

10) Swear I'm Good at This, by Diet Cig: I thought this was nice? It's a nice indie/punk album about being young in 2017. I think, when I mention the floor of a Mary J. Blige album, I'm discussing the floor as it relates to the general population; there isn't a soul alive who'd come away from a Mary J. Blige album and not give it a B+. (Well, OK, there are, it's called Strength of a Woman for a reason.) For me, the floor for this sort of album is a B+, and it rests comfortably on that floor, sprawled out under a sunbeam like an adorable kitty cat. I love this! I can understand for a lot of people this would be nothing. It's slight, a little wispy punk thing, not the statement of purpose provided by The Bombpops or Bad Cop/Bad Cop, but by gum, if Amazon is going to tell me I'll like something because I enjoyed Paramore, by gum, I'm going to enjoy it.

11) blkswn, by Smino: This dude can do some crazy things with his voice. I usually check my phone to see what the song title is when I listen to an album (I like to know where I am), but I had to turn the screen on multiple times during each of this dude's songs just to make sure there weren't any features. I don't know about his range, I'm not here to discuss the technical aspect of singing, but he has this wide array of voices he can channel, so you never know quite what you're gonna get from song to song apart from a surprise. This is a talented kid. I'm excited to see him harness that.

12) Stay Eating Cookies, Shalewa Sharpe: So, I was raised on Comedy Central Presents specials, right? So many of the big names in comedy, I became first acquainted with via their half hours on Comedy Central. Does this mean there was a time when I thought Mitch Hedberg and Dane Cook were equally funny? Of course. But it also means I forged a deep enough love for the medium that I could eventually suss out who was Good and who was Bad. And this is what I love about 2 Dope Queens: it's positioned to be Comedy Central for a generation that has little use for cable, to fill for dorky kids the same role Comedy Central filled for me, except better, because they're going to be a tad more diverse. There's so many cool comics I might not have heard about without 2 Dope Queens; I think I listened to the Michelle Buteau album after I started the thing journal and loved it, and I haven't been able to get Kevin Yee's "I Fucked Your Dad" out of my head since I heard it. But this. Holy shit. Shalewa Sharpe is the best comic so far I've come to by way of 2 Dope Queens. I'm legitimately angry this woman's outlook has only been in my life for six days. Like, she has one line, one throwaway line, that elicited a noise from me I legit have never made in fifteen+ years of being aware I enjoyed comedy. This is the best unit of stand-up I've taken in this year, and y'all need to get up on it.

13) Disappear Here, Bad Suns: It makes me happy to know there's always going to be dudes making music like this. This sounds like someone gave Jimmy Eat World a more adventurous rhythm section. So like, my usual mode of consumption when I listen to music on the bus is, I'll queue up an album, and when that album finishes, I'll look for something else. I try not to have anything queued up, because I don't want to spend time with the thing I'm currently listening to wondering what I'll listen to next. (I think this was something they discussed on my beloved, departed Nothing to Write Home About, how from the second you purchase/add an album online, your preferred streaming service is already telling you to move on and buy the next thing, and I try to catch myself in those moments where I'm a distracted listener. Everything deserves my attention, and for the most part, everything gets it, even if half these capsules are more about how I take in pop culture than about the actual item of pop culture.) I put this album on repeat, because I wanted to spend another 50 minutes with these songs. It's not the same reaction I had to The World We Built, where I wanted to catch all the things I missed. I knew what in this album worked for me, it was emo-tinged post/punk about depression that absolutely grooved, I just wanted to be with this album longer.

14) Room, dir. Lenny Abrahamson: I was a little uncomfortable with this movie, because while I think they coaxed a great performance out of the kid, I don't know how aware the kid was of what he was doing? Like, when a horse wins the Kentucky Derby, the horse has no fucking clue it won the Kentucky Derby, it's just a fucking horse standing there, and it makes me uncomfortable to watch an event where the principal players aren't aware of what they're doing. The kid is more aware of his surroundings than the average horse, I'm sure, but is he going to watch this movie in 11 years and be proud of what he did? I dunno, I think every film should be animated, I'm going to mention this again when we get to Interstellar, THIS MOVIE WAS GOOD NONETHELESS. As someone who didn't have the greatest childhood, this movie was dealing with parenthood in a way I thought was powerful: it was asking, "How does a parent justify to their child the decisions they made when raising them?" It's a question the mom is asking herself all throughout the movie, and she's so lost in looking for the answer that when other people ask her questions along those lines she hits her low point, but it also asks, "How do kids accept the decisions their parents made?" The kid is obviously five years old and isn't totally aware of his surroundings, but he does have some vague cognizance that his situation prior to the events of the film was pretty fucked up; the film never jumps forward in time to when the kid is an angtsy goth looking for pot outside the mall, so we don't see how he deals with the full realization of his parentage and his upbringing, but he has some clue, and the film shows that kid accepting his situation as best he can while learning earlier than most of us that his mom is a flawed person. I loved a ton about this film, though, real talk, if I had known my computer could stream movies in 1080p without ever buffering, I might have picked a more technically impressive feature. "Wow, first time watching a film in HD, let's see this indie drama about familial relationships! You can see every detail in the shed!" (Also, that scene where the best cop in the world figures out how to extricate Ma from the shed with like seven words from the kid was so well done.)

15) Groundhog Day, from Tim Minchin et a;: This didn't land for me. It's more than the fact they wrote out Ned Ryerson, though OBVIOUSLY that didn't help. I think Groundhog Day is just... Like, that's a hard film to write, and in film, you get the luxury of being able to cast a Bill Murray as an irascible gentleman. You can't be irascible on Broadway. It's hard to be sarcastic when you're projecting. I think they did an admirable job of trying to adapt the film, which truly does not lend itself to a musical, into a musical, but they shouldn't have been asked to do that very stupid job. Of all the films. There's barely music in it.

16) Brooklyn Nine-Nine s3, cr. Michael Schur & Dan Goor: For 3/4 or so of this season, I was having a chill time, if not a great one. I thought it had set their sights on "enjoyable cop hang-out sitcom," and I can get behind that, if not necessarily be stoked on a potential s4. And then they added the Jason Mantzoukas character, and the show found a gear I would never have guessed it had. The mob storyline is EXACTLY WHAT THIS SHOW SHOULD HAVE BEEN DOING THIS WHOLE TIME, a Hot Fuzz-esque parody of cop movies/shows told with love for both the genre and the characters. It let the characters be good cops, like in the final two episodes where they have to foil the mafia and the FBI, but it allowed just enough room for them to be adorable dum-dums, like in "Cheddar," easily my favorite episode in the series to date. ("Cheddar" had so much, not the least of which was Boyle finding his home as an actual Mr. Magoo for 20 hot minutes.) Plus, at one point, Andre Braugher says "I can't even," and he manages to find the exact syllables in that phrase on which to put these subtle but undeniably incorrect inflections. Like, even when the show was settling for B-s, it was worth sticking with just for Andre Braugher (and Terry Crews and Stephanie Beatriz). The end to s3 was so strong, I'm psyched to see how they take s4.

17) In Transit, by Kristen Anderson-Lopez et al: So here's what's cool about In Transit, right? So like, I was never into Hamilton, but I do love the concept about a hip-hop musical about a Founding Father, because what better way to recount a nation's origin than through a genre of music which originated from the nation? The a capella musical takes a similar tack: it's a musical about a mass of people in New York, being sung by a mass of people. Like, none of the stories are really new: someone has anxiety about the future, other people have anxiety about relationships, this dude needs to come out of the closet but hasn't, it's all been done, but the a capella arrangements seem to indicate that the writers know these are things everyone goes through, so they have everyone sing them. It's not just the lead who's frustrated by the arc of her professional and creative careers, it's everyone in the office lamenting that they work in an office and not where they want to work, and the fact there's a chorus of people having these problems helps make this musical something more than "we're in New York and don't know what we're doing," which isn't my preferred thing to listen to. I don't know if that was the intent, it might not be given that I implied the stories being told were generic and unambitious (like I've said what I wanted about Hamilton, but that's a musical with chutzpah far beyond just the hip-hop influence)? But it feels bigger than it does.

18) Interstellar, dir. Christopher Nolan: I was always gonna watch this film, but no doubt the impetus behind adding this to the end of the week was, OK, NOW let's christen the new computer. Let's get this Christopher Nolan sci-fi epic, and let's see the true power of HD. (HD, surprisingly, looks a lot like regular TV but slightly fancier. I do wanna watch Kubo and the Three Strings again tho.) First of all, this did not need to be three hours long. I did not need to devote three hours of my life to this film. At the same time, though, I'm not sure what you cut from the film; it's over-long, but it never felt bloated, it at least felt like every scene had purpose. And while I'm never THAT into films where actors are acting at things that aren't there, I think there was enough of a human element established that I never felt unmoored from the film's world(s); there was always Matthew McConaughey's relationship with his daughter keeping this film grounded, even in the scenes where the characters recited science at each other. (I do wish the film hadn't asked me to believe Matthew McConaughey and Jessica Chastain were the same age. The age gap is narrower than I would have expected from Hollywood, but eight years is STILL A FUCKING LONG TIME.) And, man, it is rough times watching a movie about the earth beind destroyed and science being devalued in 2017. It's kind of amazing that this dystopian society being imagined in 2014 is, like, today's society, we are ten years away from only eating corn and failing to find new planets because we stopped being curious and started hyper-farming.

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thebeckychronicles · 6 years

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Post 42: being grateful and other things

So it’s been a while. Hello. If anyone is still reading this I am still alive. :)

It’s thanksgiving and while fuck colonization and white supremacy being thankful and stuff is pretty good.

This year has been challenging in a different way than last year was obviously for one I’m in remission. A few updates on the going ons of my life at the moment:

I’ll be 10 months in remission on December 1st!

I graduated in June with my AA- and am currently avoiding my transfer apps by taking long naps after work. :)

I’m working at a high school in SeaTac (who would’ve thought- seriously). It’s through AmeriCorps and while this stipend life and commute ain’t the move I really do love my job.

My hair is almost shoulder length and as curly as it used to be! (I’m amazed on a daily at the snapback T_T)

This was back in April but I got a car- his name is Toothless. :)

That’s pretty much it really.

Onto other things...

I’ve actually wanted to write about a lot of things. My commute makes it pretty easy to get lost in my thoughts and gives me plenty of time to reflect. I’ve probably mentioned this before but I think of my diagnosis and the subsequent year of treatment and surgeries and biopsies a lot throughout my day. I don’t know if this is normal or healthy or pathetic but it is true. I was getting my eyebrows done the other day and thought about how at one point I didn't have eyebrows. Every time I’ve gotten my hair done since it started growing back curly I think about why my hair is the length it is, with some melancholy. This year I’ve seen or heard of people passing away from cancer and it puts an ache in my chest filled with grief. There are many morning I wake up drenched in my own sweat and fear and it feels like being sick all over again. Those mornings are the hardest to move through. Facebook memories is a fun one- and not because I have a lot of posts from last year that pop up, it’s that I mainly have “memories” from two or more years ago come up. For a second I wonder why I don’t have posts from last year and then I remember apart from this blog I didn’t really share on other forms of social media. All this to say, I don’t think there’s many parts of my life that cancer didn’t touch in some way, shape or form. I find myself thinking of the theoretical- where would I be, who would I be, what would I be doing if I hadn’t put my life on pause for this disease. If I hadn’t had to deal with this disease at all. Some days are a lot more difficult to live in than others. In truth, it’s not so much days but weeks really, where it seems like I am in a grief and anxiety filled bubble.

Survivorship is weird y’all. Some days I feel absolutely fearless. Others, it’s one panic attack after another. It’s interesting waking up in a body that at one point tried to kill itself. And I think I’m only getting used to and being okay with my body feeling like a ticking time bomb. There’s so much that still frustrates me. The length of my hair. My inability to go to a doctor’s office without crying. Getting a stupid shot without crying. I can’t Coscto pizza without tasting saline. The heater in my room was beeping as I slept and I woke up in a state of panic and confusion- the IV that administered my chemo drugs would make a similar noise when it was time to switch out the bags of drugs. There are just a lot of things that call forward so many unpleasant memories.

I feel like I became the most depressed after treatment. Like this sadness wasn’t just a sadness but a burden. I felt so burdened and weighed down. And it made me feel frightened and desperate in thinking I’d never escape it. I wanted to die so many days- and then I’d feel guilt. Survivors guilt. How selfish of me because how many people wish they could be survivors? I felt so strangely pressed for time after remission. Like I had to do everything I wanted to do in life RIGHT NOW. Especially felt like I had to prove that I was worth saving. I was worth being one of the lucky ones. I was deserving of this second shot at life.

This life is difficult. Survivorship is difficult. But I am grateful for it. Grateful for so many things- the lesson and blessing of it all.

I’m grateful for:

Learning the art of discretely crying in public.

I’m so grateful for time- the extra time I've been blessed with. More time to spend with my family, more time to spend with my friends. More time to laugh and more time to cry. I have more time to fuck up, do right and learn.

I’m grateful for all the moments that called me to be my bravest and most afraid self.

I’m grateful.

For all the parts of me that demanded my patience, my compassion, my kindness. But most of all my love.

Grateful to the parts of me that are dying and the ones that are thriving.

To those parts of me that are dead and those that are surviving.

I’m so grateful for the unbecoming of who I’m not meant to be. As painful and daunting as it is at times. I am terrified of the person I am now. Probably because knowing my own self seems like such a dichotomy now- both very clear and absolutely confusing.

Sometimes it’s so easy to think of everything I lost in the past year. So much peace and time and contentment. So many things that I just don’t know how to name. So much I know I’ll never get back. It’s frustrating because at times it felt like I watched things slip through my fingers without me making an effort to clench my hand in a fist to stop it.

I’m still here. I am still here. In whatever state that may be I am still here.

And for that I am grateful.

“may I never lose the terror that keeps me brave.”- Audre Lorde

#I wrote this hodgepodge in like 20 minutes #it makes no sense #bye #remission #cancer survivor #grateful

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