#TOUGH YOUNG HERO! UNSENTIMENTAL

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NOT YET CALLED MÓR THEN!!!!!

[mistikfir]

The Irish Times Magazine -  August 1, 2009

Character BUILDING

Hugh Dancy’s latest role is moving but refreshingly unsentimental. Showing how difficult Asberger’s syndrome can be, both for those who have it and their families, was part of what attracted him to the part, he tells Anna Carey

N A VERY nice suite in a very nice hotel in Soho, a group of journalists are waiting to meet Hugh Dancy. We’ve been sitting around for about half an hour, eating croissants and checking the batteries on our dictaphones, when a press person comes in and announces that Hugh is ready to talk to The Irish Times. It turns out that all the other waiting journos are going to do a group interview. “You've got him on your Own?” says one woman, as everyone stares at me with the sort of envy that would surely only be justified if I were running away with Mr Dancy for a weekend in Paris instead of having a friendly chat about his new film in the room next door. But there’s something about Hugh Dancy, the 33-year-old star of such diverse projects as Confessions of a Shopaholic, Elizabeth I, Shooting Dogs and Ella Enchanted, that has a strange effect on people. The man has charm to spare. This charm is evident in his new film, Adam, written and directed by newcomer Max Mayer. It’s the moving but refreshingly unsentimental story of a solitary young man who develops a relationship with his new neighbour Beth (the excellent Rose Byrne), a primary school teacher. The relationship, however, is complicated by the fact that, as is only made explicit about a third of the way through the film, Adam has Asperger’s Syndrome, a Autism-related condition that can make social interaction difficult. Dancy admits he knew “nothing about Asperger’s” before taking on the role. Preparing inevitably meant a lot of research. “It’s a really complicated and very specific condition that brings with it a lot of secondary conditions, and it’s not something you can just wrap your head around in a day because it involves a different sort of wiring altogether. I think if I had sat down without taking a lot of that in and immediately meta room of 20 people with Asperger’s - as I later did - I would have just been blown away.” When he did meet with people with Asberger’s, he found they were enthusiastic about the project. “The guys I met watch a lot of TV and movies, and they knew my whole career by the time I came in - they’d googled me,” he says. “It was daunting — I’ve never been ina room with so many people with such attention to detail! They really wanted me to do a good job, but they also really wanted to see the movie, and they wanted to meet someone who was making a movie that they could watch and feel a connection to the whole process. So that was wonderful.” Dancy is aware of the responsibilities involved in portraying a member of a group who are not usually depicted on screen. “I always knew there were a lot of ways I could screw this up, but the worst thing I could possibly have done was to misrepresent people. And I’m glad to say that now I feel like I haven’t.” So far, feedback from people with Asberger’s and their families has been “overwhelmingly positive, which is almost unique”. What’s particularly impressive about the film is that, unlike the syrupy likes of Forrest Gump, Adam doesn’t sentimentalise its hero. Mayer shows how difficult Asberger’s can be, both for those who have it and their families - which was part of what appealed to Dancy. “In some depictions of people who are not neurotypical, it’s very much about the idea of the Holy Fool: they are Other, and isn’t that wonderful, because they teach us things,” he says. “As opposed to the fact that actually, it’s really fucking tough.” In one of the film’s best scenes, Beth apologises to Adam after a fight by giving him a box of chocolates. His response? “I’m not Forrest Gump.” It’s one of Dancy’s favourite scenes. “What’s so fun about that scene is not just the line but the fact that Adam’s telling a joke, and Beth’s almost more taken aback by that than the actual line,” he says. “I thought that was a really important moment. The one thing I learned talking to these guys is that they do have a sense of a humour. That doesn’t mean they’re necessarily the best joke tellers, there’s a lot of exposition. But it’s there.” Adam is a long way from Dancy’s last big role as Luke, the hero of frothy romcom Confessions of A Shopaholic. Dancy seems aware of the silliness of that project, but says he likes to mix things up by doing big mainstream films such as Shopaholic and King Arthur as well as smaller projects. “I like both. I essentially want to have my cake and eat it. | want to continue to work in the theatre as well, and I consider myself very lucky to be able to work here and in the States; I don’t feel the need to pick sides, really.” Dancy credits his old public school, Winchester College, with giving him a good introduction to the acting world. “I think I got more out of what I did at school than what I did later at university. I was lucky because my school physically had a great theatre. So I had the experience of being on a proper stage, which some people don’t get even if they go to drama school.” After Winchester, Dancy studied English at Saint Peter’s College, Oxford. His father, Jonathan, is a celebrated professor of Moral Philosophy and his mother Sarah works in academic publishing. Did he ever feel any pressure to follow in their footsteps? Was he nudged towards doing a postgrad? He laughs. “Oh, God, no. I felt that by going to Oxford and studying an actual subject I had gone far beyond the call of duty. Although of course, I didn’t really do that out of a sense of duty, it was for myself. I never wanted to go to drama school, I knew I wanted to study English at university.” Dancy says his parents have always been totally supportive of his choices. “The only time I ever remember them slightly clenching was when they asked me, when I was still at school, if I was thinking of going straight to drama school, and I could see them holding their breath.” When he reassured them that he didn’t plan on heading off to RADA, “they did sort of collapse with relief”. These days, he says, he thinks that he and his father’s choices have something in common. “For all of the distinctions between that world and what I do is, both are vocational. I mean, my dad isn’t just an academic, he’s a moral philosopher. You don’t just go into these things because you're thinking ‘what the hell, why not?’ It’s not a box you just tick. You do it because you really feel drawn towards it.” And while he is the first actor in the family, it seems he’s not the only showman. “I think no family is without theatricality in one guise or another. You just have to scratch the surface.” These days, home for Dancy is both London, where he has a flat, and New York, where his fiancé Claire Danes is based. They met on the set of Evening, the 2007 film whose starry cast also included Meryl Streep, Glenn Close and Vanessa Redgrave. He was, he admits, initially a bit intimidated by his co-stars. “I’m as starstruck as anybody, but as soon as you're actually working, that all goes rapidly right out the window.” In Adam, he shares scenes with Frankie Faison, best known for playing Commissioner Burrell in The Wire. Was he a fan of David Simon’s celebrated show? “It is, for me, hands down, the best television series ever made - there’s no competition. I’ve still got three episodes left of the fifth season - don’t say a damn thing! It can’t be spoiled! We've been watching them at home pretty much back to back like so many other people.” He was thrilled when he realised he’d be acting with Faison. “I tried to contain my excitement so I could retain some scrap of dignity, but actually I overdid it because I never, in the course of the shoot, said to Frankie, ‘look, I worship that show’. And a few months later, I told him that I really loved The Wire, and he was, like, ‘why didn’t you tell me, man?’ Fortunately I'm still in touch with him so one day I'll sit him down and totally pick his brains about it.” Dancy’s next project, The Art of Deception, will see him playing Dutch forger Han Van Meegeren, whose fake Vermeers fooled the Nazis and led to his subsequent post-war trial for treason. It’s not an immediately sympathetic role, but Dancy relishes a challenge. “In Adam, there was a challenge about taking on the character, and I realised the best place to be is one where you're slightly terrified. In fact, just before I did Evening I rang my dad and said “There’s a lot of really good actors who I look up to, and a character I feel is great, and I really don’t want to mess it up’ and he said ‘But isn’t that exactly where you want to be?’ And it is.”

[themillenialfalcon]

Han Solo and “Bad” Parenting

I want to talk about a piece of fan discourse that has been bothering me pretty much since TFA came out regarding the relationship dynamic between Han Solo and Kylo Ren. 

There seems to be this contingent of fans that think that Han (and Leia) were abusive parents and that influence is what turned Ben Solo to the dark side. I, personally, think that idea is horseshit.... to put it lightly I guess. But that isn’t to say that I don’t think that Han and Leia are inadvertently responsible for some of the psychological problems that Kylo has. It’s actually inescapable and inevitable that they would be, if you take a Freudian approach to psychology. 

But the counterargument to this sort of head canon is also very strange to me. Because people who disagree that Han could have potentially been an abusive father typically take the stance that Han could have only been a great father to Ben. That he is a good person and a hero and he clearly loved him based on what we saw in the movie and, therefore, his parenting was %100 on point and every issue Kylo has is directly his own. 

Why is everyone so polarized on this issue? Why does everything suddenly come down to pure and flawless choices or malicious and premeditated abuse?

You can be a less than perfect father without abusing your child. You can love your children more than anything in the world and still make choices that, retrospectively, were not the best choices to make regarding their psychological and sometimes physical well-being. Failed parenting does not always equal abuse. Failed parenting is most often something that you don’t even see until your children are grown adults and you have the ability for hindsight. 

Children - yes, even some teenagers - do not have the language tools or the emotional maturity to flat out tell their parents what they need. All parents have are their best-educated guesses and their own personal childhood experiences to draw from in order to determine what to do in any given situation. And sometimes that isn’t enough - especially when their own childhood experiences were laden with turmoil.

Han Solo was a war orphan with a criminal past, issues with commitment, a low threshold for patience, and a quick temper. He was also notoriously aloof - which, yes, makes him very sexy but doesn’t exactly make it likely that he would be the most nurturing father figure. That, however, does not mean that he wasn’t a loving father figure. 

Han Solo is the kind of person who loves very deeply. He is not the kind of character who would ever intentionally hurt anyone that he loves. But I think he has some deeply rooted psychological issues of his own that make it difficult for him to demonstrably show affection and open up himself up to other people - as evidenced by his refusal to admit to Leia that he has feelings for her before she admitted the same to him. And also the infamous “I know,” rather than “I love you, too.” 

Han is very self-reliant. And although he loves very deeply, he is presentationally unsentimental. But these are two qualities that he does not view as faults. On the contrary, I think he contributes them to his survival as an orphan and a smuggler in the criminal underworld. I think he believes that these qualities made him the successful and powerful person he became. So naturally, it follows that he would want to instill those qualities in his own son.

What he probably didn’t count on (and didn’t realize until it was too late) was that he wasn’t dealing with a mini-Han Solo. He was dealing with a mini-Anakin Skywalker. And his methods of instilling those virtues - while beneficial to a child with a psyche similar to his own, were probably detrimental to a child with a more sensitive and emotional psyche like Anakin’s and Ben’s. 

Han was probably a little too tough and gruff for fear of coddling his son. And potentially too strict and/or withholding for fear of spoiling him. He probably took a “rub some dirt in it” approach to cuts and scrapes when what Ben needed was a healing kiss. It’s likely that he was not always present in Ben’s life given his love of flying and his issues with being tied down to anything. And all of these elements to Han’s parenting probably did play a role in contributing to the growth young Ben Solo’s already psychologically unstable personality traits.

But these approaches to parenthood are not inherently wrong or abusive. Plenty of people grow up with fathers like this and become completely functioning and healthy adults - with healthy parental/adult child relationships to boot. Knowing where to draw the line between teaching your children to be strong and independent and giving them space and time to just cry it out is a very difficult thing to measure. 

Clearly, Han felt as if he failed as a father and would have done things differently given the chance. But people can stop calling him abusive asap. 

[mercerislandbooks]

Fall Book Preview 2018

It was a tough year for journalists with the rise of fake news, presidential name-calling, layoffs, and increasing threats worldwide. Authors, on the other hand, wrote from a safer position. They had the luxury of hiding longer in their offices. Writers and editors had a better chance of stepping back from the brutal news cycle and taking the longer view. 

That time to breathe was a good thing. The book publishing industry’s deeper immersion in its work will be on full display this fall, which promises to be a good one for book junkies. From political exposés to psychological suspense to locally-inspired cookbooks to iconic memoirs, I’m not exaggerating when I tell you our fall tables will be a reader’s feast. Here’s a small sliver of what’s coming, and a few special preorder perks you’ll want to know about.

Lake Success by Gary Shteyngart (Sept 4): Narcissistic, hilariously self-deluded, and divorced from the real world as most of us know it, hedge-fund manager Barry Cohen oversees $2.4 billion in assets. Deeply stressed by an SEC investigation and by his three-year-old son’s diagnosis of autism, he flees New York on a Greyhound bus in search of a simpler, more romantic life with his old college sweetheart. Meanwhile, his super-smart wife, Seema—a driven first-generation American who craved the picture-perfect life that comes with wealth—has her own demons to face. How these two flawed characters navigate the Shteyngartian chaos of their own making is at the heart of this piercing exploration of the 0.1 Percent, a poignant tale of familial longing and an unsentimental ode to what really makes America great.

Fear: Trump in the White House by Bob Woodward (Sept 11): With authoritative reporting honed through eight presidencies from Nixon to Obama, author Bob Woodward reveals in unprecedented detail the harrowing life inside President Donald Trump’s White House and precisely how he makes decisions on major foreign and domestic policies. Woodward draws from hundreds of hours of interviews with firsthand sources, meeting notes, personal diaries, files and documents. The focus is on the explosive debates and the decision-making in the Oval Office, the Situation Room, Air Force One and the White House residence.

Cooking from Scratch: 120 Recipes for Colorful, Seasonal Food from PCC Community Markets by PCC Community Markets (Sept 18): Eating healthy, local food prepared from scratch is at the heart of this cookbook from PCC Community Markets. Going strong for sixty-five years, they are respected and appreciated throughout our area for their commitment to local producers, sustainable food practices, and healthful, organic seasonal foods. You will find 120 recipes organized for every meal of the day, including many of PCC's most popular dishes, such as their treasured Emerald City Salad. The book also includes cooking, storing, and shopping tips—everything you need to know to make the most of the local bounty.

Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth by Sarah Smarsh (Sept 18): During Sarah Smarsh’s turbulent childhood in Kansas in the 1980s and 1990s, the forces of cyclical poverty and the country’s changing economic policies solidified her family’s place among the working poor. By telling the story of her life and the lives of the people she loves, Smarsh challenges us to look more closely at the class divide in our country and examine the myths about people thought to be less because they earn less. Combining memoir with powerful analysis and cultural commentary, Heartland is an uncompromising look at class, identity, and the particular perils of having less in a country known for its excess.

An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green (Sept 25): In his much-anticipated debut novel, Hank Green spins a sweeping, cinematic tale about a young woman who becomes an overnight YouTube celebrity before realizing she's part of something bigger, and stranger, than anyone could have possibly imagined. Both entertaining and relevant, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing grapples with big themes, including how the social internet is changing fame, rhetoric, and radicalization; how our culture deals with fear and uncertainty; and how vilification and adoration spring from the same dehumanization that follows a life in the public eye.

***If you preorder An Absolutely Remarkable Thing from us before September 24th, you’ll receive an exclusive enamel pin as long as supplies last.

Transcription by Kate Atkinson (Sept 25): In a dramatic story of WWII betrayal and loyalty, eighteen-year old Juliet Armstrong is reluctantly recruited into the world of espionage. Sent to an obscure department of MI5 tasked with monitoring the comings and goings of British Fascist sympathizers, she discovers the work to be by turns both tedious and terrifying. But after the war has ended, she presumes the events of those years have been relegated to the past forever. Ten years later, now a radio producer at the BBC, Juliet is unexpectedly confronted by figures from her past. A different war is being fought now, on a different battleground, but Juliet finds herself once more under threat. 

The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis (Oct 2): What are the consequences if the people given control over our government have no idea how it works? "The election happened," remembers Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, then deputy secretary of the Department of Energy. "And then there was radio silence." Across all departments, similar stories were playing out: Trump appointees were few and far between; those that did show up were shockingly uninformed about the functions of their new workplace. Some even threw away the briefing books that had been prepared for them. Michael Lewis’s narrative takes us into the engine rooms of a government under attack by its own leaders. If there are dangerous fools in this book, there are also heroes, unsung, of course. They are the linchpins of the system―those public servants whose knowledge, dedication, and proactivity keep the machinery running. Michael Lewis finds them, and he asks them what keeps them up at night.

Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami (translated by Philip Gabriel and Ted Goossen) (Oct 9): A tour de force of love and loneliness, war and art—as well as a loving homage to The Great Gatsby, Murakami’s latest follows a thirty-something portrait painter in Tokyo abandoned by his wife and holed up in the mountain home of a famous artist. When he discovers a previously unseen painting in the attic, he unintentionally opens a circle of mysterious circumstances. To close it, he must complete a journey that involves a mysterious ringing bell, a two-foot-high physical manifestation of an Idea, a dapper businessman who lives across the valley, a precocious thirteen-year-old girl, a Nazi assassination attempt during World War II in Vienna, a pit in the woods behind the artist’s home, and an underworld haunted by Double Metaphors. 

***If you preorder Killing Commendatore from us by October 8th, you’ll receive a free exclusive tote bag as long as supplies last.

The Witch Elm by Tana French (Oct 9): Toby is a happy-go-lucky charmer who's dodged a scrape at work. He’s out celebrating with friends when the night takes a turn that will change his life—he surprises two burglars who beat him and leave him for dead. Struggling to recover from his injuries, beginning to understand that he might never be the same man again, he takes refuge at his family's ancestral home to care for his dying uncle Hugo. Then a skull is found in the trunk of an elm tree in the garden and as detectives close in, Toby is forced to face the possibility that his past may not be what he’s always believed. 

Almost Everything: Notes on Hope by Anne Lamott (Oct 16): "All truth is paradox," Lamott writes, "and this turns out to be a reason for hope. If you arrive at a place in life that is miserable, it will change. That is the time when we must pledge not to give up but "to do what Wendell Berry wrote: 'Be joyful, though you have considered all the facts.'" In her profound and funny style, Lamott calls for each of us to rediscover the nuggets of hope and wisdom that are buried within us that can make life sweeter than we ever imagined. Divided into short chapters that explore life's essential truths, Almost Everything pinpoints these moments of insight as it shines an encouraging light forward.

Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver (Oct 16): Willa Knox has always prided herself on being the embodiment of responsibility for her family. Which is why it’s so unnerving that she’s arrived at middle age with nothing to show for her hard work but a stack of unpaid bills and an inherited brick home in Vineland, New Jersey, that is literally falling apart. The dilapidated house is also home to her ailing father-in-law and her two grown children: her stubborn, free-spirited daughter, Tig, and her debt-ridden son Zeke, who has arrived with his unplanned baby in the wake of a life-shattering development. In an act of desperation, Willa investigates the history of her home, hoping that the local historical preservation society might fund the direly needed repairs. Through her research, Willa discovers a kindred spirit from the 1880s, Thatcher Greenwood. A science teacher with a lifelong passion for honest investigation, Thatcher finds himself under siege in his community for telling the truth: his employer forbids him to speak of the exciting new theory recently published by Charles Darwin. Unsheltered is the story of two families, in two centuries, who live at the corner of Sixth and Plum, as they navigate the challenges of surviving a world in the throes of major cultural shifts. 

Becoming by Michelle Obama (Nov 13): As First Lady of the United States of America—the first African-American to serve in that role—Michelle Obama helped create a welcoming and inclusive White House, established herself as a powerful advocate for women and girls in the U.S. and around the world, changed the ways that families pursue healthier and more active lives, and stood with her husband as he led America through some of its most harrowing moments. Along the way, she showed us a few dance moves, crushed Carpool Karaoke, and raised two down-to-earth daughters under an unforgiving media glare. In her memoir, Michelle chronicles the experiences that have shaped her, from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work to her time spent at the world’s most famous address. 

–Miriam