#and i just worry like what if hbo’s version he’s slightly more talkative or what if

[chelseasdagger]

womp womp

[charliethomascoxuniverse]

He who Dares: Marvel star Charlie Cox on moving to Dublin, gangland crime, and perfecting the accent

The Kin and Daredevil star has played alongside greats such as Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, but he says as an actor you never presume you’ve ‘arrived’

By Niamh Donnelly  March 24, 2023  (X) (X)

Charlie Cox is on the move. When I Zoom-call the British actor to talk about his role in the latest series of RTÉ drama Kin, he’s in the back of a car, phone camera swaying slightly from the movement of the vehicle. More precisely, he’s in New York being ferried to and from meetings for what he calls “this new show”.

Cryptic. Might he be referring to the much-anticipated Disney+ Marvel series Daredevil: Born Again in which he plays the title role? He might. “We start shooting next week.”

In the run-up, the 40-year-old has been doing “gym work, and stunt work, and accent work, and just brushing up on a lot of the stuff I would have done before,” he says. “It’s been a while since I’ve played the character in his own show, as it were.”

Indeed, Cox played Daredevil in a Netflix series of the same name from 2015 to 2018. But given the licensing saga that followed, he’d be forgiven for thinking he had long since hung up his superhero suit.

Briefly, a clash of contracts between streaming platforms Disney+ and Netflix left some characters caught in the crossfire. Netflix lost the rights to air anything Marvel-related, while Disney was pumping resources into new Marvel projects and pretending the Netflix version of that world and its characters didn’t exist. Daredevil was one such character. Fans were so miffed that their favourite blind New York lawyer turned vigilante crime-fighter was stuck in no man’s land, they launched a #SaveDaredevil campaign.

Whether for this or reasons pertaining to complex contracts and their expiry, Cox’s hero eventually became the first lead character to cross the threshold from Netflix to Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). He made a cameo in Spider-Man: No Way Home, guest starred in She-Hulk and is soon to be “born again” in his new show.

It must be an extraordinary feeling when people campaign to see you on screen. Did Cox’s world change when he became a Marvel star, and was exposed to its fandom?

“When you play a Marvel character, you do immediately become more recognisable, and the fan base is incredibly enthusiastic and passionate,” he says. “It’s great when the fans feel like what you’re doing is good and they appreciate the character that you’ve created, and the show is successful and well regarded. But equally if that wasn’t to be the case, I’m sure it feels pretty lonely.”

Cox hardly need worry about such things: YouTube is chock-full of glowing reaction videos to Daredevil’s appearance in Spider-Man and the buzz around his new show is strong. But even aside from his Marvel chops, Cox has an impressive CV. From his early appearance in the 2007 fantasy film Stardust to starring in two seasons of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire and his leading part in the Netflix spy miniseries Treason, he’s amassed a stellar list of acting credits.

His role as Michael Kinsella in Kin might never have come about were it not for his wife, Samantha Thomas, and her role as executive vice president at Bron Studios which produced the drama along with RTÉ. When Thomas first got Peter McKenna’s script, she showed it to her husband.

“Initially, she just thought I should read it because she was interested to hear what my opinion would be,” he says. “And I read it and I immediately fell in love with it.”

Because a Covid lockdown had hit, the prospect of keeping their family together while the pair worked on the same project made perfect sense. Along with their son and daughter, they set up camp in Dublin.

“And it ended up being a really fantastic decision. We had such a great time. We’ve now spent two seasons in Dublin making the show. [During] the first one, we didn’t get to see much of the city because obviously everyone was in lockdown, and it was all just about working. But this past summer, I really got to experience Dublin in its full glory.”

This included partaking in what now seems a rite of passage for Hollywood stars who come to Dublin: jumping in the Irish Sea.

“I did it almost every day. I absolutely loved it. In fact, during the second season of the show, I actually chose living accommodation near Vico [Baths in Dalkey], so I could walk down every day. And for me, the colder the better. I couldn’t have been happier, waking up and getting in the sea before work.”

Whatever was in the water, it must have worked. The first season of Kin, which saw Cox’s character return from jail and attempt to get his daughter back while becoming embroiled in his family’s gangland feud, broke RTÉ drama streaming records with 2.1 million views.

Peter McKenna, Kin’s co-creator and showrunner has remarked that the cast is “probably the strongest thing about [it].” Cox’s co-stars include Clare Dunne (The Last Duel), Aiden Gillen (Game of Thrones, Love/Hate), Emmet J Scanlan (The Fall) and Maria Doyle Kennedy (The Commitments).

What drew him immediately to his role, he says, was the contrast between what we know of Michael and how we perceive him as we follow his story.

“When we meet Michael at the beginning of season one, he’s just coming out of prison. And I felt like it was pretty clear that the man we were meeting was very different from how the family members described or remembered him.

“As an acting exercise, I found that to be quite an interesting challenge: to play someone who has a reputation of being someone you absolutely do not want to cross. There’s a side to him that’s incredibly scary and violent and dangerous, but the man we’re meeting for various reasons is actually in a very vulnerable place and trying to hide that vulnerability from the world.”

Indeed, this sense of vulnerability or morality is something often Cox brings to his more cut-throat roles, be they an MI6 agent (Treason), an ex-IRA enforcer (Boardwalk Empire), a vigilante crime fighter (Daredevil), or a gangland criminal (Kin).

“I always try to approach any character as if it’s a clean slate. So I’m not knowingly trying to do things in a similar fashion. But I always think that there must be more to [people] than meets the eye. And so often when you’re playing, a ‘good guy’, I think it’s important to make sure that you focus on the qualities he has that aren’t maybe so righteous.

“Similarly, if you’re playing someone who’s got a pretty violent history, it’s also important to see the sides of them that an audience might identify with, where you could easily be friends with one of these guys and not know what they get up to in their business life.”

Cox wasn’t familiar with the Dublin gangland scene before Kin, but as research he listened to episodes of Eamon Dunphy’s podcast The Stand with journalist Nicola Tallant.

“I was kind of blown away,” he says. “What I was reading – what our show is loosely based on – is happening right now. It’s current. It’s not in the past. It’s a real thing. You know, that was a little disconcerting to me at first. I was like, wow, I can’t believe [it] . . . this is ballsy.”

Similarly, Cox didn’t have any particular connection with Dublin before signing up to Kin. All the more impressive, then, that he manages to produce a pitch-perfect accent. How did he master such a notoriously difficult task?

“I have an amazing accent coach – two really fantastic accent coaches, actually,” he says.

The first is Poll Moussoulides, a dialect expert who had worked on Normal People with Daisy Edgar-Jones. The second is Emmet Kirwan, the Irish actor.

“I got in touch with him – I’d seen one of his movies, and I felt like his accent was really good. So, I copied [it]. I had him record a lot of my lines.”

Along with Kirwan, the voice of ex-footballer Shane Supple provided inspiration for Cox.

“Poll found this interview with him, and there was a quality in his voice that I thought would be kind of right for Michael. I would listen to that and try and learn [it] by rote. And then once we started filming, I’d stay in the accent all day while I [was] at work.”

The on-screen Cox might make a convincing Dubliner, but the off-screen one hails from East Sussex. He is the son of Trisha and Andrew (a publisher) and the youngest of five, with one older brother and three much older half-siblings. Acting was something he always enjoyed as an extracurricular activity, but it wasn’t until the end of his schooling that he began to take it more seriously.

“I was doing lead parts in plays and enjoying it more and more. It was during the production of one of those plays when an audience member who worked at LAMDA [The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art] came up to me and suggested I might want to audition for drama school.”

Cox took this advice and tried out for some of Britain’s most prestigious acting courses. He ended up at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, but just a year into his studies was offered a role alongside Al Pacino in the 2004 film adaptation of The Merchant of Venice. Because the school had a policy of not letting students take part in outside productions, he decided to leave and make a start on his career.

Cue a succession of screen and theatre roles alongside the likes of Claire Danes, Steve Buscemi, Michael Caine, Robert De Niro and many more. Were there moments along the way when he really felt he had made it as an actor?

“You know, it’s funny because in retrospect, there have been moments where it just feels like everything’s clicking and you’re getting a lot of the jobs you’re going for, and you’re working back-to-back. But in the moment that it’s happening, I have never really felt that way,” he says.

“On paper, you go on IMDB and you see [Stardust and Boardwalk Empire], and that looks like a really clear trajectory. But in reality, I shot Stardust in 2006. Boardwalk Empire was in 2011.”

He also points out that his Boardwalk Empire role got bigger as the series continued.

“When I got it, it was a small part. They only offered me three episodes. And if you think about it, I’d been the lead in Stardust which was a big Hollywood movie. And then in 2011, five years later, I’m taking a three-episode arc on a TV show because things had not escalated in the way that I’d hoped they would from being in a movie with Robert De Niro.”

Perhaps owing to this early wobble, or perhaps because of the insecure nature of acting as a career in general, Cox has always had the feeling of “staring down the barrel of looming unemployment – not knowing where the next pay cheque’s going to come from”.

“I have been very fortunate. The phone has always rung, and I’ve always gone back to work. But there have been, you know, long periods in between. I’ve never felt completely confident in the idea that the work will continue to present itself.”

Cox does however, say that he’s learnt a lot from the uncertainty of his career. “It’s a great discipline, because it really [teaches] you – and it took me quite a long time to learn this – [that] you have to really learn to love the job you’re doing in the moment that you’re doing it. And try not to project too far into the future about where you’re going to be this time six months, a year. Because you can ruin the experience of a really amazing job by worrying about what’s coming next.”

Being in the moment is also key to how Cox approaches acting. “A lot of it is instinct, and a lot of it should be instinct, but for your instinct to be well informed is a really good thing. My experience has taught me that you do as much homework as you possibly can, so that when you’re on set you don’t have to think about it. It’s a bit like sports: an athlete [or] a tennis player. You drill, and drill, and drill all your shots so that when you’re in the game, you don’t think about it, you just play them.”

On the topic of sports, Cox is a devoted Arsenal fan. Will his beloved team, now seated at the top of the Premier League table, pull off the win this season?

“I can’t answer that question. It’s too fraught with emotion for me at the moment. All I’ll say it’s a very exciting time, and I hope we can maintain the standard. I believe it’s possible. I’m starting to believe it’s possible.”

Besides, Cox’s busy life doesn’t allow a whole lot of time for fretting over league tables.

“I have a young family. So right now, whenever I’m not working, it’s spending time with my kids and my wife. That’s my priority. I’m really conscious that when I do work, I work really hard. And I love my work. I’m very grateful to have work. But when you are filming something it’s a huge commitment. So it’s really important to me that I don’t want to blink and my kids are going off to college . . . that’s my whole world. They’re my whole world right now.”

~*~

[sunflowerhae]

I’m not in love 🎆🌌

Collegeboy!haechan x female!reader

->A.

⚠️Warnings *PLEASE READ!⚠️

->this story contains heavy themes including drug abuse, alcohol, drug overdose, blood, self hate, character death, and a funeral. There is also strong language used by both major characters. Please continue with these in mind.

⚠️I will put an astric (*) when shit starts getting real.

“So what, do you not love me anymore?”

If it wasn’t the deep blue and dark red lighting illuminating the hallway full of drunk teenagers and one second love stories that made y/n feel claustrophobic, it was the fact that she was currently questioning the past two and a half years of her love life with Haechan, the guilty looking boy in front of her.

This party was supposed to be good for them.

It was supposed to be a chance to temporarily escape the struggles of their everyday lives as juniors in college, and give them an opportunity to actually see each other longer than an hour or two - something that was rare for them, what with y/n’s intense school and work schedule, and Haechans priorities in his fraternity, Nu Cappa Ti, and as the tailback of the schools football team.

Y/n and Haechan met the first week of college. Haechan was rushing for NCT, and y/n’s roommate just so happened to be fucking NCT’s president. When Haechan got a cut from being punched by a guy with a ring in front of a crowd of drunk college students, y/n was there to happily clean the beautiful boy’s - that had caught her eye from across the room, not even one hour before - face. From then on, y/n let herself fall for this boy that she knew was destined to break her heart, and haechan let himself become dependent on this beautiful girl that he knew would hurt him eventually.

But, for the past two and a half years, things had been going pretty okay. I mean, as okay as it can go for two twenty year olds in love, but no time to show it. That’s why this party was supposed to be a thing good for them.

And for a while, it was.

Until the clock hit 12am, and Haechan downed his fifth shot, while y/n sat in the corner of the room, looking pissed and feeling too sober for this shit.

She didn’t understand. She looked hot, the vibe was hot, and Haechan was looking fine, like always. She didn’t understand why he wasn’t talking to her. She didn’t usually go to these parties. She had had a problem with drinking and drugs when she was in high school, and had tried to steer clear of them since coming to college. She thought Haechan understood. And he did. Y/n told him about her past when they first started dating. Haechan never pressured her to join him at the mandatory parties his frat hosted that he had to attend, once every other week or so. He never forced her to drink with him and his friends during his birthdays, or any holidays. He loved her, and he genuinely wanted the best for her.

And that’s not saying that y/n didn’t sometimes engage in a shot or two, or that she didn’t sometimes do a line of coke when she had done particularly bad on a chem test. She didn’t see anything wrong with testing the waters of relapsing, as long as she didn’t go overboard.

As long as she didn’t overdose.

But this party was feeling pretty fucking dry to her, as she watched Haechan slam another empty shot glass on the table tennis top. She saw the eyes that the other girls at the party gave him, and she didn’t miss the smirks and eyefucks he gave them back. Yeah, y/n was feeling pretty upset.

And for once, she wanted Haechan to know.

The only logical thing she could think to do was storm over to him, grab his arm, and drag him away from his dumb friends and their dumb faces and the dumb whores at this dumb party that she stupidly attended because her dumb boyfriend asked her too, and she - like a dumbass - loved him, and would therefore walk off a bridge if he asked her to.

Haechan really wanted to forget that y/n was there.

He loved her, and he was aware that he was the one that asked her to come. But she could feel pretty suffocating when she sat in the corner, with crossed arms while glaring at anyone who caught her eye. Haechan wanted to have fun with her, but y/n didn’t want to be at the party - she wanted to be in her boyfriends arms while binge watching the HBO show “Euphoria” that everyone raved about. That was her version of fun.

However, neither of them would describe fun as yelling at each other in a darkly lit hallway of a smelly frat house at 1 am. One was too drunk, one was too sober; both were extremely pissed. Haechan would have said anything to get away from her at that moment, and y/n would have said anything to get him to stay.

“Look y/n, I think we might need a break.” In retrospect, Haechan was right. They did need a break from each other. Time to re-evaluate their relationship; their needs. But unfortunately for everyone, y/n had very easily replaced the emptiness in her heart from drugs and alcohol with her love for Haechan; and addiction is unhealthy- no matter what it is you’re addicted to.

“Why do we need a break? Why, do you not want to be around me?”

“Maybe not! I don’t know, y/n!”

“Well fuck you! I’m your fucking girlfriend-“

“-fuck you too! You’re fucking obsessed with me-“

“-I’m not obsessed with you, I just love you! I just want to be with you! Hang out with you, not this drunk half assed excuse of a man-“

“-oh what? And you’re such a woman? It’s not my fault you replaced drugs with me, y/n! That’s not my fucking fault-“

“-oh that’s rich coming from you! You’re fucking drunk right now, haechan! You’re a fucking hypocrite-“

“-I don’t want to be with you-“

“-what?” The silence between the two felt so suffocating and intense and loud, y/n couldn’t help but wonder if everyone else in the room was choking like her. The music was loud, and everyone around her was in their own worlds, but y/n and Haechan were dead silent, and that felt suffocating.

“You don’t wanna- you don’t wanna be with me?”

Haechan looked down at the ground, and scratched his neck. “Fuck, I don’t know y/n. I don’t know-“

“So what, do you not love me anymore?”

Haechan didn’t say anything.

The blue lights suddenly reminded y/n of a time in her life when she would wake up feeling like she was being choked every morning. and she wondered if she had just died, and this was her own, personal hell as the choking feeling comes back up into her chest. She could feel herself walk away from him, into the kitchen, where she immediately turned on the sink and splashed cold water in her face. She could see Haechan shake his head and walk away from their spot in the hallway, and she could hear a boy who she had Environmental science with ask her if she’s okay. She could see herself ask him to hand her the fireball bottle on his right, she could see herself drink the whole thing, then do some coke, then take some pills she didn’t even know the name of. She could see herself walk through the party with hazed eyes and focused gaze on the colored walls that seemed to be moving. She could hear her friends asking her where she had been in her ear, she could feel her feet moving around the living room, dancing with her friends to the music she’s never heard before. And when she paid just enough attention and sat just still enough on the couch with the almost empty liquor bottle cold against her thigh, she could feel her heart turning into liquid itself, and falling into her acidic stomach; never to be seen again. She looked around the room, trying to find the eyes of someone - anyone - who could comfort her; hold her. But all she got for comfort and affection were the hot tears that rolled down her face and the inability to stop her chin from wobbling as she broke down on the couch of a frat house at 3am, while the purple and red lights warped her vision to picture a happy life for herself, with Haechan, that she could see dripping down the drain.

Having just enough consciousness to know she had to find her boyfriend, she used the bottle to push herself off the couch, where she then threw the bottle back down and started shuffling around the still crowded party.

She eventually did find Haechan. He was sitting in the corner of a different room, surrounded by a couple of his frat brothers, a couple other friends of his, and a couple girls that were ready to step in and take your place in Haechan’s life at the drop of a hat - or better yet, at the drop of you. He was laughing at something Renjun - a good friend of yours, as well as Haechans - said, when you shuffled up to him and put your hands on his thighs, almost falling in the process.

“Haechan, haechan, I need help. I don’t feel good.” You looked like a crazy lady. You were looking at Haechan with wide eyes, and were repeatingly smacking his thighs with every word.

Haechan was more drunk that he was earlier, and he had had a bit of Jaemin’s coke at this point. He didn’t think you were being that serious, and he figured you were being helpless for no other reason other than you didn’t know what else to do to get him back. Also, he couldn’t help but let the poison from his frat brothers mouths - directed at you - earlier get to him.

“Get off.” Haechan took your hands off his thighs and threw them by your side. Everyone who was sitting around Haechan and his friends were looking on in interest, and as you looked around, you saw that only Renjun looked worried for you in the least bit.

“Haechan, please my stomach feels really fucked up and my head-“

“Just go to my room and clean yourself up. God you’re a fucking embarrassment, y/n.” Haechan hadn’t even looked at you yet, except for when you surprised and slightly scared him earlier when you walked up. He just rolled his eyes, and started whispering in the girl sitting to his lefts ear, something funny, seeing as she giggled and started giving you slide glances. You didn’t have to ask to know that you were the punch-line.

You gave Haechan one more look of surprise, and stumbled away from the group of 20 year olds with shaky hands and bugged eyes.

(*) Something Haechan thinks about a lot, later in life, is this moment, as he finally looks up and sees your back as you stumbled out of the room and to the stairs. He thinks about what he would have said to you, if he knew it was the last time he would ever talk to you. He had eventually come to the conclusion that he would take your warm hands in his, and just hug you. Just to feel your hot breathe on his neck, and your hands in his, one last time. He would have said he loved you, just to hear you say it back once more. He would apologize for the careless words before, and he would give you all the comfort you deserved, and then some.

Sometimes, on the random nights where he isn’t having a nightmare about you, he dreams of this moment. He dreams that he got up, ran to your figure already halfway up the stairs, and pulled you into his arms. He would run his hands down your hair, and drag you to the closest bathroom, where he would shove his fingers down your throat until you threw up into the toilet all the toxins in your system. He would be crying, and mumbling, “please survive this, please survive this, please survive this...” until you were no longer throwing up. He would dial 911, and force you to down a bunch of water bottles, before you were taken to the hospital, and saved. But everytime, before he got the chance to kiss you again, he’d wake up, and he’d be alone in the dark, like always.

You had stumbled up to Haechan’s room, and slammed the door closed with all the power you had in you, not forgetting to lock the door behind you.

You’re body felt like it was on fire. It felt like the acid in your stomach had expanded, and was spreading to every part of your skin, and burning you from the inside-out. You wanted to throw up, run to the bathroom, and faint all at once. You were trying your hardest - and failing - to cool yourself down by fanning you face with your hands. You looked into Haechans mirror on his dresser, and saw that you were not only sweating like a spy being interrogated, but your face was extremely red, and your makeup was running down your face. You pulled your hair into a makeshift ponytail, and ripped your shirt off as fast as you could.

You were surprised nobody could hear your moaning and whimpering from out in the hallway. You felt like screaming, felt like calling for help, but you couldn’t open your mouth without a groan coming out. You put your hands above your head and looked for something - anything - to focus your attention on. Your eyes locked on a photo of you and haechan that was taped to the corner of his mirror. It was taken over the summer before your sophomore year of college - although you remember it like it was yesterday. Haechan and your’s close friend group had a tradition of going up to Santa Cruz on the last week of summer, and staying at a friends beach house for a couple days. The photo was taken on the first night. You were all sitting on the beach at night; the bonfire you all wrapped around lit your faces. Haechan had only had one drink, and you opted for a coke. You were both extremely happy, as shown in the photo by both of yours large smiles. You remember that around an hour before the photo had been taken, you had given yourself to Haechan for the first time. You had been dating him for almost a year at this point, and you both felt like it was time. In the photo, haechan had his arm wrapped around you, and you had your head on his right shoulder. Your eyes were bright red due to the cameras shitty quality. Haechan had complained at the time about why Jaemin felt the need to bring not one, not two, not even four, but FIVE disposable cameras; but when the time came to look through the printed pictures, Haechan had a smile on his face and stole every single one with your face in it, par like four or five due to Jaemin’s yelling at him.

“We need y/n to be represented!”

“She can be represented by being here, though!”

“Haechan, she might not be here, ya know. You can’t tell the future.”

“Shut up. I’m going to marry her one day.”

You had never had a bigger smile on your face then that moment. Sure, Haechan had told you before that he wanted to marry you one day. But hearing him so willingly say to your friends that he was; that was big.

Now, you couldn’t help but fear that that would never happen.

You tore the photo off the wall, and started staring at it with tears running down your face. You were sobbing at this point. Sobbing so bad that you thought snot started coming out of your nose, yet when you went to wipe it and return your hand to the side of the photo, the blood trail on your hand let you know that it was indeed not snot.

“Shit shit shit,” you whimpered out.

You knew the signs of an overdose. You had to go to rehab when you were 17, and it was pretty fucking traumatizing. The worst part was when they filed you all into another white brick room with shitty lighting and flies buzzing around the tv, and taught you all the tell tale signs of an OD. You had nightmares after that for weeks. It was the only thing that got into your head enough to make you want to be sober. Just so that you wouldn’t have to experience that.

Looks like that plan was flawed.

You wanted Haechan. You needed him. You needed to get to him and tell him you needed a hospital. Yet, when your legs went to take a step towards the door, you finally felt it. You could feel your brain just, die. You fell to the floor - almost like fainting - and started convulsing. The last thing you felt was foom pooling out of your mouth, and the last thing you saw was the photo of you and Haechan, that day at the beach. Haechan’s wide smile brought you to a blissful sleep with open eyes.

(Please take a second to collect yourself before you continue reading. Thank you.)

Haechan was getting really fucking bored of this party. He had stopped drinking once you walked away, and that had been maybe three hours ago, so he was feeling way more sober. The sun was glaring at the mountains now, and peaking through on the town below. Upon looking at the time on his almost dead phone with a deep sigh, he saw it was nearing 6am.

Haechan regretted what he said to you. He hadn’t seen you since you walked away, and he didn’t know if you had left, or fallen asleep on his bed. He hoped it was the latter, that way he could cuddle up to you and silently beg your forgiveness for his drunken and harsh words. He finally started walking up the stairs after saying goodnight - or, good morning - to his friends; Renjun’s final words to him actually kind of scaring him.

“Dude, y/n didn’t look so good.”

“Eh, I’m sure she was fine. Probably tripping or something.” Haechan shrugged off Renjuns fear as he took another swig from his water bottle.

“Nah, man. She looked, like, really fucked up.”

When Haechan got to his door, he turned the knob, only to find that it was locked. Figuring you were asleep, he gave a couple hard knocks, so that it could jolt you awake. “Y/n, baby. Open the door. I wanna go to bed.”

You didn’t answer.

Haechan knocked a couple more times. “Y/nnnnn, wake up!”

You didn’t answer. It was quiet. Eerily quiet, actually. You were a light sleeper, and you couldn’t have been drunk, right?

Haechans knocks were a little louder, and a little faster. “Y/n!”

Haechan kept knocking for what felt like forever. He was slightly panicking at this point.

What was wrong?

“Y/n, this isn’t funny. Open the fucking door!” He was full on pounding now.

“Fuck this.” He mumbled, before turning around and walking through the party, which had significantly less people, but still quite a lot. Finally, he set his eyes on who he was looking for.

“Johnny!” He sternly called, while walking up to the drunken giant.

“Yyyahhhh?” Johnny laughed. He was surrounded by Doyoung, Taeyong, and Jaehyun, who were all older members of the frat; Taeyong being the president.

“Y/n locked herself in my room, and she’s not answering. Can you help me break down the door?” Johnny always saw y/n as his little sister. Haechan was the youngest member of the frat with a steady girlfriend, making y/n the youngest of the girls intertwined with the boys. Johnny, being the oldest member, always took a kind of protective role over her. He himself had a younger sister, and she was just a bit younger than y/n; therefore he had a small soft spot for her. At the sound of y/n possibly being in trouble, Johnny sobered up quite a bit, and gave Haechan a curt nod, before following him upstairs; the rest of the boys who were aware of the situation following him.

At the sight of the white door, Haechan’s stomach dropped like a rollercoaster dip.

What if y/n really was in trouble?

Johnny took a place on the right side of the door, while Haechan took the left. While he wasn’t the strongest out of the current men there, he wanted to be the first one in the door.

“Okay, after three. Ready? 1, 2, 3!”

Both bodies slammed into the door. It didn’t budge.

“One more.

1

2

3”

“Fuck! Y/n?”

“Baby! Baby can you hear me? FUCK! SOMEONE CALL 911!

Baby! Hey! DON’T YOU FUCKING DIE ON ME!” Haechan tried shoving his hands down your throat, he tried to give you CPR, - which he didn’t even know - but nothing worked. You had foam laying out of your open mouth, and your eyes were wide open, with your hands laying outward. Haechan caught site of the picture in your hand, and moved it out of the way, before grabbing your hand and bring it up to kiss it.

“Please. Please survive this.” He sobbed, while placing his forehead on your chest.

“Time of Death, 3:46am.” The words echoed in Haechans ears like a gunshot. He couldn’t help but hate himself. If he had actually taken her concerned words seriously, would she be alive right now? She was dead long before he got there, around two and a half hours, to be specific.

The words still echoed in his head while he stood in a bright graveyard in your hometown on a sunny spring day, your favorite season. The black suit he wore made him feel hot, but it didn’t matter to him. The huge bouquet of roses in his hands were heavy, but he didn’t care. Nothing mattered. Not when he couldn’t stop staring at your parents broken frames. Not when your older brother and sisters couldn’t stop crying and holding their loved ones, having just lost their baby sister. Not when Johnny couldn’t keep the tears in his eyes as he grabbed Taeyongs hand. Not when the weight of Renjun’s hand on his shoulder felt heavier than any bouquet Haechan would ever carry. Not when Haechan felt like the air in his lungs left, and wouldn’t return again. Not when he refused to cry until he was alone, because if he did, he wouldn’t know if he could stop.

Not when he felt like he just lost his soulmate.

He silently placed the roses next to your grave when the ceremony was done. He didn’t want to say much. He knew he’d be back here soon, anyway. He finally snapped out of his daze when he felt a soft hand being placed on his shoulder, and turned to come face to face with the lady that raised you.

“She loved you so much. She talked about you all the time. I was always worried about her when she left for college, but then she started talking about this boy she met who changed how she thought of the world, and then I met you, and I knew she was in safe hands. Thank you, Donghyuck. For giving my daughter a reason to live.” Your mom brought her handkerchief back up to her eyes, and wiped more tears that refused to stop falling. Your father, who was standing behind your mom, stepped forward and hugged Haechan, while mumbling in his ear “don’t be a stranger, please,” before grabbing his wife’s hand and walking towards the car. Haechan wanted to take their words to heart, really. But he couldn’t get the thoughts out of his head. When he had focused his attention on your moms tears, did you cry? When he couldn’t stop looking at your parents holding hands as they walked away, he would never be able to hold your hand again. When he was your father place a kiss to his moms forehead before opening her door for her, you died alone.

Haechan turned to hear his name being called by Taeil, a graduated member of NCT who drove him to the funeral, and shuffled to the car with his head down.

When they got back to the dorm, Haechan did what he had been doing for the past two weeks since your passing. He kept his eyes on the floor as he walked to his room, not being able to look at the door without going back to the last moment of blissful ignorance he had; yet he looked up when he went into his room, not being able to look at the last spot he saw you in. He flopped onto his bed with a sigh, and picked up the picture of himself and you on the beach, it being the last thing you consciously touched. He plugged in his AirPods, and put on the playlist you had made for him a year ago, that you added to whenever you wanted, like he did with yours. The intro for “Exist for Love” by AURORA came in, and Haechan finally let himself cry for the first time that day. He turned over, and inhaled the scent of your pillow on his bed. Haechan didn’t want to live this life anymore. He didn’t know what life he wanted, but this wasn’t it. He couldn’t stop thinking about it as he heard the door creak open. He knew who it was without having to look up. Wordlessly, Renjun, Jaemin, and Jeno all climbed in to the bed. There was literally no room for the four boys to comfortably lay down, but they liked it like that. It meant they had to hold and hug each other, which made the pain numb just a bit.

Haechan took a deep breath. He didn’t want to exist, but he would. He would continue to exist, because you didn’t get to.

Fin.

[coraxaviary]

Spier(s)

Summary: A discussion about the name Speirs, and what it implies.

Word Count: 1.5K

Author’s Note: At end

Warnings: Basically none.

Taglist: I don’t think this kind of fic is what taglists are for

.

“So uh, you ever wonder why his name is Speirs?” Skip says from one of the barn beams, far above. He has a single straw of hay between his teeth, and he talks around it, slurring slightly.

“Whatcha mean?” responds Malarkey, who lazily cranes to look up at Skip, whose legs are dangling so he can’t see his face. Malarkey absently worries his rifle strap between his fingers, and lays farther back into the hay. “You mean his first name?”

“Nah, his name. Speirs,” says Skip back with overly hollowed-out vowels, and he spits out the hay. “Like, why?”

“Don’t think it does good to wonder anything ‘bout him,” says Penkala, sitting against the wall, fiddling with a field ration package. The sky is darkening outside, and there are only a few rays of sunlight that slip through the cracks between the wooden slats in the barn. Soon there would be none. Penkala moves into the spotlight of one last white streak of light, and makes small foil crunching sounds until the bag opens.

“His name is Speirs. But, like,” says Skip, echoing from above. “Two of ‘em. Two Speirs.”

“It’s not spelled the same,” says Malarkey. The barn door creaks open, and the three men see a pair of silhouettes slip inside and close the door.

“Hey fellas,” says a strange voice. It’s not exactly deep, but it is familiar.

“Sir?” says Penkala, straightening in sudden fear.

“Hell naw,” says Luz, bursting out in laughter. The other tall man -- Toye, it seems -- laughs quietly behind Luz. “It was that good?”

“Yeah,” says Penkala shortly, and he goes to sit back down in the hay.

“Hear y’all talking about Speirs,” says Luz loudly, and all the other men shush him. “Not like he’s gonna appear if ya say his name.”

“Don’t tempt fate,” says Skip.

“How’d ya get up there?” asks Toye, looking up at Skip, who is swinging his legs but not really able to do anything but sit.

“Ova there,” says Skip, pointing to a ladder that leads to a shallow loft. “Climbed on the beam.” Skip looks down at the ground, a long distance away. “Maybe I should get back, huh. Should get some sleep.”

Toye doesn’t say anything, just hums in passive agreement. Penkala eats his rations, staring somewhere distant.

“So, whatcha think, Luz?” says Skip, voice moving back eerily in the barn as he scoots along the beam back to the loft. “Why ‘Speirs?’ Why ain’t he named ‘Speir?’“

Malarkey snorts. Penkala chews. Toye moves around fluffing up hay to find a good place to sleep, and Luz shuffles.

“Ain’t names just... passed down?” says Luz. Malarkey mm-hmms in agreement.

“I guess,” says Skip, who is now trying to dismount from the beam and get into the loft, hanging awkwardly with one leg and both arms hooked over the beam, and his other leg -- too short -- scooping for purchase, inches away from the loft floor. He untangles himself, hangs by only his arms, and makes it onto the loft with a hollow bang and a cloud of dust. “But his name. Implies there may be a Speir. A single Speir.”

There’s silence, broken at this point only by Skip thumping down the creaking ladder and Penkala spooning more rations into his mouth with a clack of teeth on metal.

Luz makes a sound of revelation. “I got a story.”

“Thought you were gonna answer my question, Luz, but okay--”

“It’s the answer.”

“Oh, alright,” says Skip, finally on the floor, and he crashes down next to Malarkey, sending flicks of hay into the air. Malarkey coughs, waving a hand uselessly through the dust.

“So, uh,” says Luz. “I read somewhere in an article or something--”

“Didn’t know you read, Luz,” interrupts Malarkey.

Luz continues, unperturbed. “That sometimes you got siblings, like twins or something. But one’a them doesn’t make it. Dies, I think. Can’t exactly remember.”

Penkala shifts uncomfortably, and shoots a glance out a crack in the wooden panels to look in the general direction of Dog Company.

“So, like, inside the mom, like... the womb,” says Luz, “One’a them eats the other. And they become, like, uh, one kid.”

There is silence for a few beats.

“You’re saying his name is Speirs because he ate his twin in the womb,” Malarkey says sarcastically, not so much a question as a sarcastic statement of conformation.

Luz nods uselessly in the darkness. “Yeah.”

Malarkey turns to Skip. “Ask dumb questions, get dumb answers,” he says.

Penkala suddenly laughs through a mouthful of food. “So there were two’a them Speirs and then he ate one? He’s actually two combined separate Speirses?”

“Well, where else would he get his creepy personality?” says Luz.

“Hey, he’s not creepy,” interjects Toye. “Just got some dark rumors around him.”

“Rumors which are based on reality,” says Malarkey. “Remember I told you, when I was walkin’ away after he handed ‘em all--”

“Yeah, yeah, you told us this story a thousand times, Malark,” says Skip. “But I mean, it would explain some things if he did eat a twin in the womb--”

“Wait, wait,” says Penkala. “You got this all wrong. For Speirs to have his name, it got passed down by his dad, right?”

The men chorus a series of mm-hmms, except for Malarkey, who sighs.

“So it was someone way before his dad. The original Speirs. The original Speirs started out a Speir, and it was him who ate his twin.”

“Hey, this is all based on an assumption,” Malarkey begins, sitting up straight with his M-1 in his lap. “I’m sure Luz isn’t even right about eating babies. It sounds like bullshit news to me--”

The barn door creaks, and all the men go quiet, eyeing the door with trepidation. It’s someone tall and straight-backed, an officer. Toye stands up, and all the others do too, until a voice from the door tells them to go back to whatever they were doing.

“Just checking up,” says Winters with a comforting nod that is lost in the dark to half of the men. He gives no sign that he had heard their conversation, except perhaps a slightly raised eyebrow. The men who notice tell themselves that they are overreacting. Winters wouldn’t believe they were seriously discussing the eating of babies, would he? He drums on the door with his fingers, and starts to close it. “Goodnight, boys.”

“ ‘Night, sir,” the enlisted men say, and the door shuts with a creak and a small thud. The men stay in silence for a while, thinking, and the sound of crickets rises in the distance. Someone shifts against the hay, and Penkala rustles with the last of his ration pack, and clangs around with his spoon.

“Hey, guys?” says the voice of Skip into the silence. Malarkey groans, already thinking he knows what Skip is going to say. If it isn’t what he predicts, it would probably still be a brain-dead statement anyway. “If Speirs ate the other Speir and that’s why his name is Speirs, then did Winters eat a Winter?”

The silence that follows is short and shocked. Penkala and Luz gasp momentarily, and Toye sputters out a sound of indignance.

“Oh my God,” said Malarkey, and he settles back deeper into the piles of hay, trying to close his eyes and drift off to sleep.

The sounds of argument drift far over the barn and out past the thin wood slats, carried by the cold French wind eastwards over Dog Company. Ronald Speirs, at the edge of his company, sitting by himself with a can of rations, wonders what the men in the barn are talking about.

He lights a cigarette for himself, and takes a drag, feeling the burn in his lungs and the smoke going down and then circling in his sinuses when he blows it out through his nose. Someone on the border of Easy stumbles by in the deep, murky darkness, and he swears to himself, kicking at the rock in his path. Speirs can’t tell who it is, but he still keeps his cigarette case in his hand, knowing the low flame-colored glow of his lit one will illuminate a small area in the relative dark.

“Cigarette?” asks Speirs into the impenetrable black of night.

“N-no, sir,” gets out the man, who lingers for a second before absconding westwards into the safety of his company and the seeing eyes of the watchers stationed around the border.

Speirs almost smiles to himself, tucking the case back into his pocket, and he enjoys the cigarette while it lasts. It doesn’t last long, like most things, and he drops it onto the ground and watches it sputter before grinding it into the dirt with the heel of his boot.

He listens to the drifting conversation of the East men in the barn until it becomes wavering static, and the sky and its stars become too bright.

And he thinks briefly of his family -- Mother, Father, and the four others. He lays down in the grass and dirt, and then thinks of the one who had been.

It is not now, and yet a part of him. He smiles, eyes sparkling and teeth gleaming, and he lets himself dig deep, for a millisecond, for the other.

And then they sleep.

.

Hi, this is a 2:00 am random idea that me and my sister were scream-laughing about: Why is Speirs plural? And what do the men think about it?

I don’t usually write in present tense, but today it kind of came out and I think it lends the prose a kinda weird, immediate, present feel, kinda like you enter the void of starless night where you encounter Keter-class abominations and eldritch terrors for one dream a day and then this strange universe that contains a nightmare Speirs is what plays in your head lol

As always, this is not meant to reference the real historical soldiers. This is based on the fictionalized HBO versions.

I made art for this, by the way.

.

[order-of-river-phoenix]

Could you possibly write some jealous Chuckler 👀 I don’t think I’ve ever read a jealous Chuckler fic! No worries if not ♥️♥️

Save Your Love; Lew “Chuckler” Juergens

Fandom: HBO War; The Pacific

A/N: oh boy. You literally caught me in the most opportune (?) time for this. I’ve listened to “Susie Save Your Love” like a bajillion times in the past 2-3 days. And it was rlly good inspiration. However, I must apologize that it’s so fricking short. Thank you for requesting this bc I was so excited to write it! 💕

Warnings: a little bit of hurting?

Taglist: @liebegott @stressedinadress @hellitwasyoufirstsergeant @floydtab @hbohmygodx @meteora-fc @alienoresimagines

__________

The second he saw you smile, Lew knew he was in deep. You were with the other medics, going over supplies, when someone cracked a joke, and he saw you from nearly 20 feet away, but you were all he could see. He couldn't explain why you stuck out to him, but something about that smile. God.

"What brought you out here?" had been the first thing he asked when he finally caught you by yourself.

You had to keep yourself from snorting. "A boat, same as you."

Scratching the back of his neck, he let out a laugh. "Alright. Let me rephrase: what made you decide to join?"

"Everyone's doing their part," you shrugged. "Working in a factory wasn't what I wanted my part to be."

He only nodded, taking in your words.

"What about you?" Small talk was never your strong suit, but he was a good sport about your previous smartass answer, so he deserved it. "No, let me guess, you're here for the all-expenses-paid, tropical vacation."

"How'd you know?" He stuck out his hand, a gesture you weren't used to from men. "My name's Lew, but my buddies call me Chuckler."

"Do I have the honor of being one of your buddies?"

"We'll see."

You had to hand it to him, he could give it about as well as he could take it.

This first interaction only resulted in you developing a second shadow. Any spare time he had, Chuckler was following you around, asking questions and falling for you, one sarcastic remark at a time.

It had been movie night, and he went looking for you the second the screen went black. He found you alone in your bunk, just sitting there.

"I lied before. You know, when we first met, and you asked why I came. Sure, a little bit was the cause. The pride in knowing I helped, but I followed a boy here," you admitted, unprompted. "My boyfriend from back home. I saw him today." You looked up at him, tears welling up. "He didn't look twice. Like he didn't even know me. Like I wasn't the last person he saw before he left town."

He'd never felt so sick. The pain he could see in your face was only part of it. The other half came from his more selfish self. He had thought- God.

No one empathized with you more right now than he did.

Knowing that your heart was in the —dirty, rotten, manhandling—hands of another when he knew how good he could take care of it, it was all almost too much too bear. He wasn't an angry man, by any means, but Lord help the fool that hurt someone he loved. Was his anger fueled by his love for you or by his jealousy of this asshole, he couldn't tell. He didn't care anyway.

"What's his name?"

"What?" When you looked at him, you saw something in him you had yet to see before. You couldn't place it, but it scared you a little. "Why?"

He clenched his jaw slightly before softening up again at the sight of your concern. "Just curious." Whatever he had planned on doing to What's-his-name had dissipated from his mind, for now.

You weren't sure what he wanted with the information, but you told him the name. The name that had once tasted so sweet when you whispered it to yourself at night now left a bitter numbness.

He nodded and sat down next to you. His arm found its way around you, swallowing you into a hug. He almost couldn't help the action. It was his knee-jerk reaction.

And you weren't about to object. With your face pressed against his chest, you closed your eyes and just let him hold you.

"I know this sounds so stupid," you mumbled into his shirt. "But I just can't believe I've wasted so much on him. I just want to take it all back and give it to someone else."

"Save your love," he whispered. For someone like me. He gave you one last squeeze before loosening his hold on you.

You almost always had a response, but the words weren't coming to you now.

"You need some rest," he told you gently.

"But-" You stopped yourself and nodded. “Okay.”

He gave you the best smile he could muster, which was never difficult for him, and he felt his heart melt like a popsicle when you returned it.

“I’ll see you tomorrow.” With that, he got up and let himself out. He had some things to take care of. Maybe you’d be mad when you found out and never speak to him again, but he’d fallen in love in the worst place imaginable. This was for his own satisfaction. What’s-his-face was about to meet a less-gentle version of the hands that wanted to hold your heart.

[whereisten]

[12:46 A.M]

You’re huddled up on your couch, slightly terrified by the horror movie playing on HBO. You shouldn’t have been watching The Nun at home by yourself on a Saturday night, but here you were, somewhat sweaty and ears perked for any weird sounds in your apartment. Your friends left you to go the club, and now there was a terrible thunderstorm outside so you were happy you dodged the bullet on that one. Every time lightning lit up your living room, you’d look around for any suspicious shadows, only to remind yourself that they were just flower vases or coats. The thunder was loud enough to drown out the whispers of the actors on the tv so you turned the volume up.

A hard bang hits your door and you jump up, spilling some of the hot Cheetos in your bowl onto the couch and floor.

“Ah shit,” you say to yourself as you start to pick up the fallen delicacies.

Who could be at your door at this time? All of your friends has tucked their keys into their bras or their boots.

You were hesitant to go to the door, but you took a deep breath and paused the movie.

“You’re not gonna die. You’re not gonna die.” You whispered to yourself as you walked over.

You looked through the peephole to see a lonely Taeyong. You two were friends with benefits, nothing more. But why was he outside of your door without texting you first? This was unlike him. Still, you trusted him enough to open the door.

You opened it and as soon as you did Taeyong fell on you.

“Woah woah there buddy” you stumbled as you tried to hold him up.

Your face scrunched when you smelled the Hennessy on his breath and really, his entire body. The irony was that you were trying to avoid dangerously handsome men that reeked of alcohol tonight.

“Oh shit, I’m so sorry, I just had to see you.” Taeyong managed to mumble out as you dragged his body to the couch, luckily he was pretty light. His bicep tightened around your neck when he spoke though, threatening to choke you and to be honest, while he knew you liked that, you weren’t really in the mood for it. He was wet and dripping all over your floor.

“Alright, take a seat Mr. Lee.” You pushed him down on the couch, frustrated by how the night was turning out.

“How can I help you?” You stood in front of him with your hands on your hips. Luckily, you decided not to walk around naked like you usually did when you were home alone, instead you wore an oversized t-shirt and shorts. You watched as he drank the sight of you in with glossy and dark eyes. He bit his lips as he spread both arms out across the couch. You loved when he looked at you with hungry eyes, but you honestly just wanted to get back to your movie. Plus you two already did it earlier that day and you were tired.

“I’ve been thinking about you and me..” Taeyong started.

He reached out for your hand and tried to bring you down to the couch. You pulled away and shook your hand.

“Yong, you and I both know things don’t work out too well when men do the “thinking.” You turned to grab the remote and resume the movie.

You heard drunk Taeyong give a chuckle.

“I want you” He slurred out. You stopped before you pressed the play button.

“you already have me Yong, we have an agreement. Meet when we both feel like it and do what we have to do to release stress” You exhaled and rolled your eyes.

“As for tonight, you’re way too drunk to want me.”

“no-“ he laughed, motioning for you to come to him with his soft hands.

He smirked when you walked away.

“I want all of you, not just your body.” He said out in a more serious tone. Was he playing up his drunkness as an excuse for his blunt confession?

“Taeyong, we cant do that” you said while pouring a glass of water for the wasted mess in your living room.

“You don’t know what you’re saying”

“But I do, I like you, really like you” he smiled and you couldn’t help but feel like a miniature version of Thor’s hammer was frantically running around your chest, looking for a way out.

“that’s the alcohol talking” you rolled your eyes and sat down beside him, handing him a towel that you grabbed from your bathroom.

“Drink this” you handed him the glass.

“I can’t stop thinking about you” he tilted his head to look at your eyes and then to your lips. He used his right hand to hold your face. You melted in his hand. “I know you feel the same way,”

You closed your eyes and took his hand away from your face. “Yong, this isn’t what we agreed on and you’re drunk, I don’t wanna talk about this”

The truth was you did love him. Whenever you were together, you adored the way he chewed, the way his eyes grew when he loved the flavor of a new dish. You two had been stretching the terms of the agreement when you would go out to the movies after having sex or go to watch a new band in town. These things usually only happened when you were bored or lonely, but now they happened because really, you both wanted to be together, there was no one else you’d want to have these experiences with. And so, the attachment grew, you started to fall in love. The little expressions, the little touches, the soft and quick glances of admiration, not hunger, it all became more frequent.

Now, Taeyong was confessing to you with fresh alcohol on his tongue, and as much as you wanted to drink it in and say yes, your pride wouldn’t allow you to. They say drunk thoughts are our real thoughts, but knowing Taeyong and how strict he was about your fwb “relationship” in the beginning, you knew he’d come up with an excuse for his confession in the morning. You stood up again, too intoxicated by his close and hot presence.

“Do you remember the first time we walked in the park together?” Taeyong asked as he put a hand through his black hair.

“I remember barely being able to walk, you murdered my vagina because you were particularly frustrated that day” you put a finger to your chin and pretended to think.

He laughed, his beautiful eyes squinted and his nose crinkled.

“I remember the bright sun and the trees, it was fall and the orange and yellow leaves fell. One fell in your hair and I grabbed it for you” he continued.

You smiled as you remembered being attacked by the large leaf.

“I remember feeling like..I had seen the most beautiful thing. Not the trees or the waterfalls, no, it was you” He said softly.

“I’m not drunk, baby, I just needed an excuse to see you.”

You turned to him and looked in disbelief.

“Ah, you sweet-talking asshole, you interrupted my movie!” You started to walk away but felt Taeyong jump up from the couch and quickly wrap the towel around your waist to spin you to face him.

“I’m serious, I need you” He said, lips just centimeters from yours.

“I knew that I didn’t want anyone else to have that moment, to have you.”

You were worried. You were looking at his lips and how genuine he seemed, he still held you close with the towel.

“I wanna be your friend..what if it doesn’t work out?” You swallowed hard and looked into the deep eyes that watched you carefully.

“It will. I promise. I’d never hurt you.” Taeyong said.

He slowly pulled you down onto the couch. He sat down and held your hips as he looked up at you. You were sitting on his lap now, his hands ran down your back soothingly.

“you’re the only one I want” He leaned forward and whispered into your ear.

You held his face and pulled him in for kiss; his lips were so soft, you melted at the thought of them being all over your body. You grind down on his lap, you knew that drove him crazy. But you had to be careful or you could say goodbye to those shorts.

You pulled away to catch your breath, you felt his hands massage your thighs, you knew where he was going with his seductive hands. You stopped them.

“Okay, but only if you make it through this movie without screaming or flinching” you smirked, knowing that Taeyong was the biggest scaredy-cat you’d ever met. You would end up with him as your boyfriend either way, but wanted to see him panic. His eyes widened and he bit his lips before nodding.

“That’s what you get for pretending to be drunk.” You pouted as he laughed.

You gave him a light punch before climbing off his lap and grabbing the remote.

[popculturebuffet]

Jake Reviews Stuff: Close Enough: Logans Run’d and Room Parents

IT’S FINALLY HERE, PERFORMING FOR YOU. Seriously I have waited 3 years for this. And while yes thanks to a combination of a french animation festival and HBO’s own oopsie doodle I was able to watch 3 episodes already, and review them, it dosen’t make this any less sweet.  The fandom can finally come togehter as a whole and enjoy the hell out of the series. And doubling my excitment is the fact that HBO Max dropped 15 episodes! 14 episodes bundled into half hours and one extra long episode that seems to feature one of the greatest musicans and comedians of all-time, a man who needs no introduction but hell if i’m not giving him one. WEIRD, AL, YANKOVIC!

I could not be more excited if I tried. And yes that’s with full awarness my pre-amphibia and owl house workload just became at LEAST 4 times what I expected and this may be all there is. Having to review 12 episodes still means getting to WATCH 12 episodes of a show I truly adore. It’s an easy trade off. So with that out of the way, we can dig into close enough’s second two episodes and see if the show can keep the momentum from the first pair! Door’s open, let’s do this! The full review and spoilers under the cut. 

Logans Run’d   With Candace having her first sleepover Josh and Emily (Who apparently aren’t on good enough terms with their parents to have them watch her something I hope they explore later in the series), have their first Candace free evening and spend it as you’d expect for a 35 year old couple: Pelvic thrusting to turn down to what while doing general errrands then planning to have a nice night in of tea and the great british baking show, which continues this show’s hard to get used to trend of using actual brand names.  The two invite Bridgette to join them which she scoffs at saying the pair, and Alex who is not only delighted to join them but is in an old timey sleeping costume with listening horn which, no joke, is his profile picture on the show’s website, which feels perfect honestly and I love everything about that. 

The three soon realize to their horror through flashback that they indeed are old (Hilariously alex’s is literally just his introduction in this episode), and beg Bridgette to take them along to a club, Logan’s Run’d. What follows is the three of them getting hard core drunk all the way to 9PM while  Bridgette flirts with a younger guy and youtube sensation and who looks like the earth 3 version of hank venture.. until it turns out he’s actually a toddler wearing some sort of robot suit because of course.  Things go south however both as our heroes realize their running out of steam.. and as another 30 something is made VIP>.. which in this club is being murdered to death by a giant fan. With blood which I”m sure JG was giddy to do first chance it was approriate given he did 8 years of a show on a children’s network and children’s networks hate blood as much as they hate actually letting shows mention the concept of death directly by name.  Naturally the four of them want to book it out of there: While Bridgette , if she wasn’t lying about her age to the toddler, isn’t in the danger zone, she still just hit on a toddler and is naturally afraid of going to prison, but get stopped by the bar guy. Alex, in a supremeley sad yet badass moment, pulls out his blockbuster card and prepares to sacrifice himself for his friend’s sake: Partly because he cares about them and candace and partly because he’s worried he has nothing left to live for now he’s old, something I myself worry about going into my 30′s next year. Josh (Emily takes a second to join in) rushes to save his best bud and the two reassure Alex he has a future, a future of not having to get new music, of having nights of just relaxing and watching tv and getting pepper in your beard for , as Alex puts it “That george clooney look” Bridgette was the last one and guards her friends from being murdered for obvious reasons before breaking the fan.  Our heroes are saved, alex and me honestly as all of that sounds really appealing to be honest and I live 2/3 of it already, are convinced that growing old is pretty sweet. Oh and the owner turns out to be an old guy, as Alex realizes when he refrences logans run and is murdered by the crowd. Our heroes enjoy pancakes, Bridgette still finds the guy cute which.. no no bridgette just no, and Alex muses about them having seen a man die.  Final Thoughts: A decent episode.. while not as good as 100% no stress day ahead of it or the previous episode, i’ts a simple episode with good gags, an utterly great character moment for Alex which shows that despite his weirdo exterior he’s a damn good guy and he has something to live for. Also the toddler subplot was stupid and kinda creepy. A decent gag filled episode withs ome great ones and some really good animation. Also the opening is utterly iconic, easily one of the shows best jokes so far and probably in total and still works despite the use of turn down for what being slightly dated, but it works because it’s just really damn funny. Not the series best thus far but it’s still okay if a standard episode is this enjoyable. 

Room Parents: Now this is the good shit. It’s parent meeting time at Candace’s school with Me Daughter Teacher having one last announcment while Josh is about to pass out from having to hold in 3 powerades... dude should’ve gone for gatorade.. it still goes through you it just tastes objectivley better. Anyways me Daughter Teacher locks the room for the announcment because he needs a room parent and things quickly turn to purge as everyone is either fleeing or trying to murder each other to avoid it. While i’m not a parent, I can at leat understand not wanting to give time to do this when your schedule is likely already a hellscape. Josh (Who wonders if they got a purge going, got a good laugh out of me. ), being basically what if Mr. Peanutbutter had an illigitmate son he dind’t know about, and i’m still not convinced he’s not his dad until the show proves otherwise, happily volunteers to Emily’s horror.  Josh however.. is entirely game. He even makes a dad joke calling it a “Fun Raiser” to emily’s annoyance. It’s a nice show of just HOW opposite the two are: Emily being more stressed, as 100% stress day proved/will prove given it’s after this episode even though i’ve already seen it but it’s set later but...

The point is she’s a ball of stress while he’s a ball of enthusasim just like his dad, who i’m now just.. 100% convinced is his dad and dosen’t know it. Prove me wrong. Anyways Josh meets Nikki another parent whose own son is ominously framed in shadow because of course something weird about her who offers to pitch in.. and is also transparently intrested in josh.  The next day Josh and nikki talk on the phone and Bridgette and Alex instantly pick up that she’s into him and that josh is the kind of guy every girl wants, with Bridgette sighting the look when he inhales mustard and Alex, being the objectivley best, citing his thin papery jack of clubs body type. I’m now 100% convinced they all had a foursome at some point before the divorce which Emily tries not to think about and Emily isn’t convinced.. until Josh, in another great gag, says Nikki said “wash your balls, so random”.  Emily, now panicked, enlists Pearle who gladly volunteers her spy van, because Pearle is also objectivity the best, to go spy on alex in a montage set to heart’s crazy on you were we get our image for this episode which is a great gag.. especailly Emily mouthing “Wait afterwords’ and it being followed by them going to the sex hotel.. which is actually the essex hotel.. which is for affairs as it’s sign says. It’s hard not to just list gags for this show because it’s damn good but i’ll try.  Emily then confronts Josh that night (doing the dramatic light turning on thing by holding the lamp another great gag), and Josh explains no he’s not cheating on her because he’s a pure boy, and he aquises to her, also finally realizing Nikki’s been transparently trying to seduce him.  Naturally their attempt to uncoroomparenther before the Fundraiser goes pear shaped as it turns out Nikki is a con artist who pulls what professionals call a josh , scam a stressed parent, tie him up or kill him and then steal the fundraiser money for a school, for a living (She has another one cooking at the moment) and leaves them. Emily orders a knife via a delivery service, while a waiting Pearle wonders where they are.. which raises a lot of questions. WHy pearle is there is easy, she’s supporting Candace and her friends/tennants. That part is easy. Why she brought Randy, who at least at this point is objectively useless and why Alex and BRidgette AREN’T there I can’t explain. Maybe mecha pope garfield rose from the grave. Maybe Bridgette’s fucking that clown again. Maybe Alex has more garifled theroies to bust out. Actually those last two answer my question for me.. I mean someome’s gotta reveal Garfield was a founding member of the Justice Society of America. 

Our heroes arrive however to Foil Nikki , who thent ries to escape on a children’s train.. which being a children’s train Josh and Emily just hop on and in a hilarious bit slowly remove the kids before ending up with Candace, who says “daddy’s girlfriend is getting away”. Jessica DiCiccio is a delight as Candace and her delivery is impecable here. However Nikki switches tracks and cranks up the speed. Thankfully while Emily and Candace fall off the train pearle and Randy, who I STILL don’t know why he’s in this episode he has no lines and does nothing, catch them, leaving it to Josh to fix his mess. After a breif fight and a nut shot Josh sucesfully swaps the money for Nikki’s fake son/dummy who she chokes bart style before both explodes when they hit a thermometor factory.  Our heroes win, the fundraiser is a sucess and the teachers have elected Josh room parent for life (”That can’t be legally binding” “IT’S LEGALLY BINDING!”)  Final Thoughts: A great , really damn funny episode with a great premise. While Emily being worried Josh would cheat seems weird given he’s a nice enough guy, it’s sometimes understandable to be panicky about that sort of thing and her worry is warnated given one party is trying to seduce her husband, josh is just too stupid to realize, which makes for a lot of great gags. It’s a really tighly done episode that like the above is more pure comedy and just hilarious, but has even better jokes and a much better executed premise to work with. And no weird toddler things. So overally a slam dunk.  I have more close enough reviews coming today, obviously though i’d rather watch the rest before reviewing them, but while I do you can shoot me an ask to talk more close enough, and in more serious matters... One of my best friend’s cat’s cancer has come back and being out of work and just having moved into a new appartment, he needs help paying for it. You can find the go fund me here.  And as always until we meet again, later days. 

[sanrionharbor-blog]

For Everybody Still Worried About the Leaks

Clues from the Cast Interviews, GRRM Hints, and My Own Gut Feelings

Disclaimer: Hey, nobody knows nothing, but life’s too short to stress about things we can’t control, and stories are supposed to be maps to help us learn more about ourselves and about life in general–not hair-pulling inducements.  So I’m going to enjoy all the speculating that I can regarding the GOT season finale, and want to share some thoughts on why I think certain “leaks” are most likely bunk.

I’m mostly focusing on the pervasive “Does Tyrion die by trial?” leak, and everything that links to that, including any betrayals or major deaths.

Tyrion’s Ending and The Ending, In General

First, let’s quote Peter Dinklage himself:

I had all these ideas in my head and a version of one of them is how it ends up [for Tyrion]. David and Dan have a brilliant version of what I had. If I use any adjectives it will give it away. But I love how it ended up. And how it ends up for everybody. They had a beautiful gentle touch with some, and a hard touch with others.

But that’s just on Tyrion’s ending. Before I get into what that quote tells us, let me quote what other people have said about the Overall Ending of Game of Thrones:

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau:

I’ve never read anyone who got the whole thing. And when I read it the first time, I was blown away.

George R.R. Martin:

So many readers were reading the books with so much attention that they were throwing up some theories, and while some of those theories were amusing bulls*** and creative, some of the theories are right…At least one or two readers had put together the extremely subtle and obscure clues that I’d planted in the books and came to the right solution.

What the above quotes tell me is:

No one has guessed the ending completely–but parts of the ending? Yeah, they’ve been guessed. Which just goes to show how much this show and its themes have resonated not only with GRRM, but with his audience. Because,as a writer, I can tell you that no storyteller tells a story alone. There’s something guiding us and we can’t put a finger on it but it’s often the source of our best ideas. And it’s the same ineffable something that stirs all of us when we’re creating, sharing, and participating in stories. It’s the reason you see the same patterns in stories over and over. In short, the fact that part of the ending CAN be guessed is NOT a bad thing. It’s natural. Some postmodern storytelling theories have taught us that tricks and surprises are where it’s at–but a story isn’t true unless it can surprise us and, in retrospect, give us the only answer that makes any sense. You can see a pithier version of this kind of storytelling in Ye Olde Riddle–for example, the Sphinx in Oedipus Rex could tell us the answer to her riddle is orange, and that would throw us for a loop, but it would tell us nothing and mean nothing and add nothing to the story and thus would be forgotten. Surprise doesn’t count unless it has a ripple effect. So, about-face turns and OOC arcs may shock and subvert, but they’ll ultimately end up as dross and not as gold. (But hey, more on my thoughts on what can and can be accepted as canon in the last blurb below!).

Now, has anybody assumed that Tyrion would betray Daenerys and end up dead simply for 1) loyalty to the Lannisters, 2) suddenly losing faith in humanity?, or 3) suddenly wanting to usurp power himself? No. This is not a popular theory by a longshot. Tyrion dying? Sure. Somebody betraying Daenerys? Sure. Tyrion as a ruler? Sure. But this very specific, shoehorned version of the story is simply too contrived to have been picked up by fans organically.

The leaks so far have painted nothing but harsh endings for ALL the characters. Don’t tell me those leaks are pro-Stark. Those leaks point out backstabbing, loneliness, and emotional stagnation–forget what characters live, think about what these leaks have said about these characters. Not only does this not jive with the “bittersweet” aspect of the ending, it doesn’t jive with Dinklage’s assertion that, while some characters will go down harshly (R.I.P. Missandei especially–at least Edd and Jorah and Beric got heroic deaths and funerals), others will be treated gently. A heartbroken Brienne? A cold, lonely, manipulative Sansa? A suddenly hopeless, headless Tyrion? I don’t think so. (I also don’t think that means that Brienne and Jaime will necessarily ride into the sunset–but I do think we’ll have Jaime’s feelings for her confirmed, along with the completion of his redemption arc. I also don’t think that means Tyrion definitely won’t die–but I don’t think he’ll be character assassination, either. And I also don’t think that Sansa WILL end up in a canon relationship–but, logically, they can’t leave all the Stark’s COMPLETELY UNABLE TO LOVE, and um, somebody has to be willing to have legitimate heirs to the Stark House. Ok, just to continue this aside, but it seems theoretically impossible to me that the Stark House, which is all about the continuation of the Starks and the independence of the North, would not be given any canon marriages/alliances at the end of their arc. Arya’s already rejected marriage, Bran drove Meera away, and Sansa’s always wanted a happy marriage, even if she’s got very understandable trust issues right now. Anyhow–).

Peter Dinklage was able to guess how his character arc ended. What are the odds that Betraying Somebody He Cares About Without Good Reason (Daenerys–I could see him betraying her reluctantly, but not easily)/Being Betrayed By Somebody He Cares About (Sansa)/Dying Guilty After All The False Trials His Character Has Been THrough were in the mix? I don’t think so. Dinklage has gone on record multiple times to say how much he admires Tyrion and thinks he’s a good person. He’s also gone on record stating that Sansa and Tyrion’s relationship is full of true affection. Even if Tyrion dies and/or he and Sansa don’t end up as a couple, betrayal just seems so far out of the scope of what these characters’ storylines have been building to. And again, I can’t see that being even one version of one of Dinklage’s headcanons. What I think is most likely? A) Hand to the Ruler, B) Part of a new council that replaces or supplements the King/Queen, C) the King himself, or D) a heroic death.

How Long They’ve Planned the Ending:

They had talks with GRRM in 2014

They’ve been planning the ending for five years

They’ve known it was Arya who would take out the NK for three years

So some decisions weren’t set in stone, even by GRRM (such as who would take out the NK…an interesting thing not to know, actually, but that just points out how inflated the importance of the Others/White Walkers was–do I still think it will be handled better by GRRM, yes, but that’s another story), and even if D&D’s execution feels more like “here’s an outline of what’s happening” rather than “here’s the organic progression of that storyline,” I can only imagine that if core pieces were given by GRRM AND they’re not completely winging it, then there will be a certain amount of narrative cohesion once this comes full-circle.

Let’s not forget, we still have a third WTFudge moment that was came straight from GRRM himself, with the other two shockers being Hodor’s origin and Shireen Baratheon’s death. Could this third twist be Dany going completely mad? Maybe, though it doesn’t fall into the same category of completely-unexpected-but-honestly-possible, like Shireen and Hodor. Only because the foreshadowing for Dany’s madness was heavy-handed in the last few seasons (taking away the ‘unexpected’ bit), and is now quite uneven here in Season 8.

I think the third twist will likely be a specific action (a la Shireen’s death) or another origin story-type twist (a la Hodor). Some people have speculated that “Tyrion’s Trial” would make for that final twist, but here’s why I don’t think so:

The Nature of the Leaks

It’s very interesting to me that this leak, supposedly this Huge Most Important Leak, was one of the very first ones released. Like, months ago. While the rest of the leaks, the ones that have actually been accurate, are usually only released at the max a few days before each episode airs.

It’s also interesting to me that HBO has not done more to shut down this particular leak.

And, I would not put it past HBO to have actually filmed one entire fake-out scene. Most of the Dragon Pit/South scenes were filmed after the first three episodes, so they probably knew that they had the time and money to just throw fans for another loop. Sound tinfoily? Perhaps, but the idea that this big twist–and a twist that so far doesn’t make much sense given what we’ve seen in what is now ⅔’s of the season–was such an easy leak just makes me suspect.

Another possibility? Tyrion IS on trial, but is pardoned. Or Tyrion thinks he’s on trial, but it turns out to be somebody else’s funeral (a la that Littlefinger Fake Out 2.0.). I’m not saying any of this makes for the best handling of his character or for a particularly compelling scenario, but considering we haven’t seen it, I can’t say for certain.

GOT’s Recent “Plot Twist” Pattern

D&D have switched to information-withholding tactics in the last few seasons. Just look at Sansa and Arya’s arc and the Littlefinger Fake Out. Were these well-written? Not entirely–but they don’t make for the worst entertainment either. Yeah, we had better quality storytelling in the first four seasons, but soap opera can still be fun.

And how long have they been teasing Dark!Sansa without actually delivering? And let’s not forget–show-Sansa’s arc is still, broadly, based on book-Sansa’s arc. Book-Sansa remains far more in tune to the archetype of the Lady/Maiden, while show-Sansa is slightly blended with Jeyne Poole’s arc (and, unfortunately, a dash of Pop Feminism). But the fact remains that whatever meeting D&D had with GRRM back in 2014 contained information based on the broad trajectory of Sansa’s arc as GRRM has been writing it. (I’m writing a character arc meta on Sansa that’ll be out…soonish).

And let’s just say I don’t see Dark!Sansa hinted very well in the books at all. Sansa learning to pull strings like Littlefinger and Cersei and Margaery? Heck yes. But Sansa will do it Sansa’s way.

So, given that D&D usually try to shock us by hinting at a character’s worst possible tendency AND by withholding information AND by trying to get us to see one scenario while giving us another (another example being Jon Snow vs. Night King actually being Arya vs Night King), I can very well see them turning Sansa into a reluctant last-minute ally of Daenerys, Tyrion being pulled out of hot water at the last minute, Jaime’s running to Cersei being about taking out Cersei not making out with Cersei (yeah sorry/not sorry about that one), and heck, maybe Dany won’t go mad–she’ll just realize she doesn’t want the Iron Throne anymore, or the Iron Throne shouldn’t exist, or she dies tragically but not as a monster. Time will tell.

Who We Haven’t Seen So Far That Can Introduce New Complications

1. Edmure Tully

Tobis Mennzies (Edmure Tully) has been confirmed to return this season. Could it just be a cameo? Maybe. But I wouldn’t put it past Sansa, Arya, and Bran to be planning a back-up plan to help out Jon (and thus Dany). Arya is probably planning on killing Cersei, Sansa can rally what’s left of the Tully’s, and Bran will hopefully do something Three-Eyed Ravenish (or regain some of Bran’s humanity–which would be a twist worth waiting for).

2. Khal Drogo

Motherhood is an important theme in Dany’s life. I think ultimately, book and show wise, it’s what’s truly important to her. She just doesn’t realize it. In this way, Dany is a very interesting parallel with Cersei. Both of these women are tempted to replace their intimate losses with power. They believe power will protect them and their own. And that mentality can slowly shift into the classic Mother Bear conundrum: Us vs. Them.

Now, Khal Drogo not only represents a happy time in Dany’s life where she was both powerful and protected, but where she was a mother. After her losses, she gained her dragons. She truly loves her dragons as children, but they are also a liability to everyone but Dany. Interestingly, Dany’s human child with Khal Drogo was a liability to everyone but the Khalasar. The priestess from season 1 knew this, and so she prevented it. It doesn’t make the loss any less of a tragedy, however.

Will we see the same thing play out here in the final act of Game of Thrones? I’m not sure, but Khal Drogo’s presence will be heavily symbolic. Either Dany will meet him in the afterlife or reject death another time–but perhaps she’ll realize that her true desires were always for belonging and motherhood (just not at the expense of her own free will).

And, as an aside–I’ve really come to see Dany in a different light this season. I’ve always been anti-Daenerys as Ruler, but Daenerys as a character is truly fascinating. So what I see implied in her final arc is truly heartbreaking (and I hope it’s handled better overall than it was, in snapshot, here in 8x04). [Dany’s also my dad’s favorite character, haha, and I respect my dad’s opinion almost more than anyone else’s, so she gets props for that too lol].

3. Robin Arryn

I have a feeling this will be a cameo, but honestly the worst-case scenario for me would be Sansa being engaged to him lol. It would certainly be a Margaery Tyrell move on her part (knowing she won’t have to marry him for some time and he’ll be easy to influence), but the Knights of the Vale are already dedicated to her and I’m a Sanrion shipper so you know where I stand on any other Sansa ship. ;-)

Regardless, the Vale could become an important wrinkle in the plot, and I’m all for us not having a complete Doomsday scenario.

And In The Worst Case Scenario

The worst case scenario is that the leaks are legit. Bran as an emotionless king? The Starks are forever alone? Tyrion’s character assassination? Bleh.

But I’ve already hinted at my philosophy on canon storytelling.

Look, most fanon is crap–but so is most fiction. There are millions of stories out there, but it’s hard to find (and tell) one that resonates across all borders of sex, ethnicity, age, and epoch. You know what CAN exist in both fanon and canon–and what actually matters as canon in the end? The stories that are true.

If characters don’t act true to themselves, if deep-in-the-bones themes suddenly drop off, if crucial scenes that are present in every single successful outline are missing (don’t go postmodern on me–just read The Story Grid), then that story is incomplete. And it’s a lie.

Madeleine L’Engle once said “All truth is God’s truth.” She was trying to make the point that fantasy, and fiction in general, is important because it tells the truth. It’s not about the facts (dragons aren’t real! This is just a TV show! Etc.). It’s about the truth (dragons can be beaten! There is wonder in the world! We are united by our mythologies!).

So no, fanon can be a lot more than making heterosexual characters gay or inserting fluff without dealing with the consequences of character actions or erasing parts of canon. Fanon can be more true than canon when the author is on the tail of the actual Story.

Steven Pressfield does a much better job of explaining this in The War of Art. Madeleine L’Engle does a much better of explaining this in Walking on Water. Shawn Coyne does a much better job of explaining this in The Story Grid.

So don’t just take my word for it.

For me, then, I’m excited to see how the show plays out. And I’m fine if certain things that I only WANT don’t happen–but if the story doesn’t have what NEEDS to happen, then I’ll sadly and reluctantly reject it, and wait for GRRM’s books to come out, or simply contribute to the ASOIAF lore as best as I can. Hopefully not as wish fulfillment, but simply to respect the core of the story itself.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

[aion-rsa]

Does The Many Saints of Newark Begin a New Chapter of The Sopranos?

https://ift.tt/39ZMSFm

This article contains light spoilers for The Many Saints of Newark.

The Sopranos prequel film, The Many Saints of Newark is David Chase’s return to the New Jersey city where his families lived, worked, and occasionally breathed their last. The film focuses on Christopher Moltisanti’s (Michael Imperioli) father Dickie Molitisanti (Alessandro Nivola), and his struggle with doing the right thing against things that have to be done right. He is very supportive of the film’s most important supporting role. Michael Gandolfini, the 22-year-old son of James Gandolfini, plays a young Tony Soprano.

While the film doesn’t explore Christopher’s claim that his father, Tony’s hero, was a junkie, it does fill in many of the plot points which lead to events in the series. But not all. Not even close. The young Tony Soprano is only a pinky swear away from living a legitimate life, varsity sweater or not.

Alan Taylor directed the pilot for The Sopranos and it looks like he’s just helmed the maiden voyage of what we hope will be a series of films bridging The Many Saints of Newark to the influential HBO series. David Case has mentioned in interviews that he’s now open to this line of thinking, 14 years after the series cut to black.

Taylor’s project is directing the pilot of the upcoming Interview with the Vampire series, which will delve deeply into the books of Anne Rice. He also directed the pilot of Mad Men, introduced dragons to Game of Thrones, and framed memorable episodes of Deadwood, Rome, Nurse Jackie, Lost, Sex and the City, and The West Wing. The former history professor might appreciate a revisionist retelling of the responses to Thor: The Dark World (2013) and Terminator Genisys (2015), but plumbed deep, dark street life in Kill the Poor (2003), and commonplace criminals grounded in concrete comedy in Palookaville (1995) which starred gangster genre favorite William Forsythe.

The Many Saints of Newark director Alan Taylor broke bread with Den of Geek, speaking about Tony Soprano’s past, Dickie Moltisanti’s future, and Sylvio Dante’s hair piece.

Den of Geek: The Many Saints of Newark ends on a real mystery. Is there any chance for a sequel to the sequel?

Alan Taylor: Well, it’s funny, I don’t think David will ever make anything where it doesn’t end with, “Okay, what happens or what just happened?” David Chase will always leave things open-ended. So, I think the door will never close. It was funny making this. I thought it was going to be a one-shot thing, but David seems to be thinking about possible sequels. And I do think there’s a “Tony Soprano, the young gangster” movie to be made, that we haven’t made yet because, in ours, we didn’t get there.

Will Michael Gandolfini be able to do that?

It would be really tough to be an actor playing Tony Soprano and not be Michael Gandolfini.

I agreed with David Chase about The Sopranos being a comedy. But did you have that mindset on set?

We’ve all drunk deep at the well of Scorsese, and humor is never absent. When things get to be their most extreme is when humor sort of breaks out, in that tone of that world. That’s partly a Scorsese thing. It’s partly maybe an American thing, inappropriate humor at violent moments. Certainly, humor was all the way through the series and hopefully there’s some of that in the movie as well.

Because we tried to capture the tones of the series and bring them in and the humor of it, but also the off-kilter weirdness. This dreaminess, that slightly surreal quality that sometimes came into the show. I love the fact that we have scenes that may or may not have actually taken place. Who knows whether Dickie Moltisanti actually coached a baseball team or whether that’s just a delusion?

In the series you use malapropisms and you explore comedy more openly. Is it easier to explore on TV than it is in film?

No, humor can be anywhere you want it or not want it to be. I think humor was a sustained, crucial element of the show from the beginning. From the pilot on, you had characters that were almost comic relief, like Ray Abruzzo’s Carmine Jr., the malaprop guy. To me, their humor is a big part of this movie. John Magaro handling his toupee is Sopranos’ humor to me and Paulie being worried about his mustard-colored leisure suit when they’re doing something really shitty to somebody is also the tone of the show. So, to me, it’s there.

I read there was a shot filmed that was not used with Edie Falco. Can you tell me anything else about it?

Read more

Movies

How The Many Saints of Newark Almost Brought Carmela Soprano Back

By Alec Bojalad and 1 other

I’m already starting to think it was not a great idea to, to say that much. It’s one of those things that I mentioned, because I tend to be candid and brutally honest. Movies are made and you’re not quite sure of the shape while you’re making it, sometimes. The beginning we have right now was a stroke of genius that David came up with very late in the game. We had an earlier beginning that we actually had shot, but we replaced it with this opening, and it seemed to shape the movie more and contain the movie more and felt more necessary.

So, sadly Edie doesn’t appear, but it was a great excuse to bring her in. We got to put her through hair and makeup and wardrobe and she became Carmela again for a second. But yeah, it’s just part of the brutal process of finding the movie along the way.

You play a lot with foreshadowing, does Christopher come into the world knowing Tony is going to kill him one day with two fingers?

Well, it depends on if you’re an atheist like me, or that woman sitting at the table with them who tells us something that I’m almost willing to believe: “Sometimes babies, when they come into this world, they know all kinds of stuff on the other side.” I love the fact that she’s talking about the other side, meaning the other side of death. But she’s also talking about the other side of, like: on HBO. You know we’re in the movies now but he knows things from TV that most people don’t know. My favorite foreshadow is less supernatural than that. There’s a scene where young Tony, played by William Ludwig, not by Michael, turns to his uncle and says “I saw a guy get shot in the back. I don’t want that to happen to me.” I don’t know how you read the final scene of The Sopranos series, but I know how I read the final scene. So, to me that’s foreshadowing

I understand you and David Chase disagree on this.

Who does he think he is? Yeah, it’s funny. We disagree on that and I think it’s okay to disagree. I’ve spoken to him. He will not commit to what happened in that room. When he tells it, it’s like every possibility is there in Tony’s life, and he just turns the TV off. But to me, I’m committed to the idea that Tony was shot in the back of the head by a guy wearing a Members Only jacket. I’ve got my reasons for thinking that. So, I’m just going to agree to disagree.

Read more

TV

The Sopranos’ Best End Credit Songs

By Shawn Laib

TV

The Sopranos: Explaining the Final Scene

By Jamie Andrew

But there was one line of dialogue in the whole history of Sopranos that was set as dialogue and then repeated as voice over. It’s only happened once, I think. And that was when (Bobby) Bacala says “when the bullet’s got your name on it. You probably don’t hear it coming.” I’m going to go with that and say that’s what happened at Holsten’s.

You’ve directed some of my favorite death scenes. You killed Caesar (in Rome), Ned Stark (in Game of Thrones), Christopher and Dickie, and they’re all stylistically unique.

Don’t forget Wild Bill Hickok (in Deadwood). As an episodic director, you never quite know what you’re going to get when you go in. When you see you’re killing a major character that is like you won the lottery. When I got to do Ned Stark, that was great.

Is there anything different about going into shooting an epic scene like that than the mundane scenes that lead up to it?

Maybe I’m just perverse in my head, but one of the guiding things for doing something like the Ned Stark death was to deliberately shoot it in a kind of mundane way. I wanted the angle that, where his head gets chopped off, to be a coverage angle that we’ve already been using, no special, heightened dramatic angles for the big event. I think a lot of people watched that scene, not ready to believe that he was going to die because knew he was the main character.

Of course, anybody who read the novels knew what was coming at some point, but a lot of people thought, “OK, got it, a big TV show, here is the main character.” So, I was trying not to telegraph the inevitable or to over-dramatize it. In that one, I was actually shooting his coverage almost like it was a conversation.

When I killed Caesar, I just tried to do it with historical accuracy. We did all this research about who stabbed him when and where, and tried to match the reality of that gruesome killing. There are a few ways worse to go than being stabbed to death by a bunch of people you know. Trying to capture that feeling and just be true to it. I probably got stylized with that a bit more. I remember there were top shots and slow motion and things, but every death is different, I guess.

How do you think long-time Anne Rice fans are going to respond to the upcoming Interview with the Vampire?

Boy, that’s a pressing question on my calendar today. I signed up for it because I loved her book so much. I remember I just moved to New York, I read Interview with the Vampire, and it kind of blew my mind. The feeling I got from the book was: “Okay, you’ve seen a bunch of vampire stories, but that’s all bullshit. Here’s the truth. This is the real thing.” She did it amazingly well in that first novel and then built an empire out of it.

I’m hoping people will find things to love in the version we’re going to do. That’s true to that. But also, the writer, Roland Jones, has made some changes that I think deepen and do some very intriguing things with the basic story. We’re working with the Rice estate and they’re on board with it. I think we’re carrying the original appeals of the novel, but I think we’re also making some changes that make it worth exploring again.

The mixture of vampires and gangsters is too rarely explored. I love the movie Innocent Blood.

I’m the guy. Yeah, that should be my next genre would be the vampire gangster movie. I’m sure there’s been a few.

Did you know wise guys growing up?

No, I grew up in small-town Canada, even though it was the capital. I lived in Italy as a child, so I feel like I have a real affection for Italian culture and Italian-American culture that I think comes out of that early period. I was dropped into a school where only Italian was spoken as a kid. I think that’s one of my connections to it, and I live in New York. I live in Brooklyn. I used to live in Soho right next to Little Italy. So, those places were still big social clubs at the time and that’s where I was hanging out. So, at least I brushed up against it.

You directed the pilot where Tony says he’s coming in at the end, and you’re here at the end of this movie. Do you think Tony should have finished college?

Wow, that’s just one of the small questions that raises the big question of: Did Tony have to turn out the way he did? I think the meaning of our movie is that no one is locked in a destiny, but it’s amazing how often we feel that way and how often it turns out that way. Tony should have finished college. Tony should have gotten away from his mother. Tony should have done a lot of things that might have kept his horizons broader than they were. Luckily, he didn’t and we have a great TV show as a result, but I think he could have been a happier person with less blood on his hands.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

The Many Saints of Newark will be released in theaters on October 1, and will be available on HBO Max for 31 days from the theatrical release.

The post Does The Many Saints of Newark Begin a New Chapter of The Sopranos? appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2Y5jECs

[thegloober]

Into the Dark: The Body

The very concept of the “TV Movie” has changed over the last few years as Emmy categories allowed individual episodes of anthology series to qualify. Consequently, episodes of “Sherlock” and “Black Mirror” have won the last several Emmys for TV Movie, replacing the more traditional two-hour offering that we used to get from the networks and still get from places like HBO. I’m not here to argue that something like “Paterno” should be in a different category than something like an episode of “Sherlock” (although it probably should) but only to set the stage for Hulu’s latest interesting venture, “Into the Dark,” which endeavors to deliver an old-fashioned original TV movie every month for horror fans who subscribe to the service. These aren’t episodes—they’re standalone movies, each running the length of an average theatrical with their own casts and crews. The only commonalities they share are Hulu, producer Jason Blum, and that each is based around the holiday in which they premiere.

Advertisement

Which brings us to “The Body,” the Halloween-centric premiere film of “Into the Dark.” While there are a few elements of Paul Davis’ expansion of his short film that stand out as opposed to a lot of straight-to-video horror films, let’s just say that the producers of “Black Mirror” don’t have to worry about anyone stealing their annual Emmy any time soon.

The premise of “The Body” is a clever one, and a concept that very likely worked well in a 17-minute short film but stretches way too thin in an 82-minute one. Tom Bateman plays Wilkes, a suave hitman who has modeled his worldview after Patrick Bateman of “American Psycho” (one has to wonder if the surname led the casting director to Tom). Wilkes likes to wax philosophical about how little human beings matter in the grand scheme of things. On an evolutionary scale, we’re all equal. We only delude ourselves into thinking our individuality matters. And that perceived equality makes it pretty easy for Wilkes to do his job. One thing you have to give “The Body” credit for is that Wilkes is no “hitman with a heart of gold.” He’s a sociopath, who enjoys killing. The death scenes in “The Body” are brutal, reminding one more of the bloodfests of the ’80s before horror films diluted their gore to get a PG-13.

In the opening scene, Wilkes is told that he has to get his latest, already-handled target, who lays dead in his apartment, from point A to point B by a certain time. Given that it’s Halloween, Wilkes correctly presumes that no one will hesitate when they see a man with blood on his face dragging a body wrapped in plastic. In fact, they’ll just presume he’s got a wicked costume. And that’s exactly what happens when Wilkes crosses paths with three young people who convince him to come their party. They want to arrive with the dude in the awesome hitman costume. At the party, Wilkes meets a woman named Maggie (Rebecca Rittenhouse) fascinated by his intensity and adds a few more names to his kill sheet for the evening.

The biggest problem with “The Body” is at its center in Bateman’s flat, emotionless performance. Davis and Bateman were clearly going for a kind of quiet menace, but that doesn’t translate—perhaps diffused by the small screen in ways it wouldn’t be on the big one. Wilkes is straight-up boring. In the second half, he verges on becoming more like classic slasher icons like Mike Myers or Jason Voorhees—in that he’s supposed to be more of a shape than a character—but there’s a much stronger version of “The Body” in which Wilkes is actually as charismatic and interesting as he thinks he is. In this version, he’s a boring black hole and the film drags whenever he’s around.

Advertisement

The supporting cast is slightly more interesting, but Davis doesn’t quite know how to manage the tonal differences among them. The Maggie arc, in which a woman who talks about Marie Antoinette and mansplaining in the first scenes becomes fascinated by a lunatic, could have been its own short film. The trio of friends who end up on the run from Wilkes with the body could have been their own short film. They don’t exactly work together. Having said that, Aurora Perrineau, daughter of Harold, makes a charismatic impression as the only leader in her trio of fleeing friends. She does a lot with very little and I’m eager to see what she does next.

I would say that about Paul Davis and the entire concept of “Into the Dark” too. This one is a tonal mess, but there’s reason to believe that Blum and his team could find a gem in here somewhere. They’ve got 11 more months to dig.  

Source: https://bloghyped.com/into-the-dark-the-body/

[aion-rsa]

Batman v Superman Writer Describes Post-Release “Mood of Fear”

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Now that Warner Bros. has seen consistent success with its line of DC superhero movies, the future of the DCEU seems assured with a healthy slate of films on the horizon, and with the Snyder Cut of Justice League finally released into the wild, you would think it might be time to finally stop worrying about the franchise’s early missteps, notably the difficulty that Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice had getting out of the gate and the subsequent effect it had on Justice League.

But then screenwriter Chris Terrio comes along and delivers a bombshell interview to Vanity Fair that just seems destined to get people relitigating the events surrounding a movie that just recently celebrated its 5th anniversary.

Terrio, who won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for 2012’s Argo, is “happy and relieved” that Zack Snyder’s Justice League has been released, but he has plenty to say about what went into the studio decisions surrounding the making of Batman v Superman and how they changed the direction of Justice League. His frustrations began when 30 minutes of Batman v Superman were removed from the theatrical release, which made the motivations for key characters, including its two title ones, unclear (those missing scenes were subsequently added back for the home release Ultimate Edition of the film and currently on HBO Max). Despite that, Terrio returned to write Justice League, in the hopes of completing the planned redemption arc for Batman, an arc which is much clearer in Zack Snyder’s Justice League.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

“There was a mood of fear at the studio. No doubt,” Terrio said of the climate after Batman v Superman was met with a muted critical reception and relatively modest box office success. “My impression was that people in boardrooms started making the decisions. And they were decisions based on arbitrary metrics that had nothing to do with the stories that were being told.”

While the plan was always for Justice League to be a more hopeful film, Terrio still did a rewrite to reflect the input he was getting.

“I rewrote Justice League to lighten the mood a little bit—which became the Zack Snyder Justice League,” Terrio said. “That’s a slightly lighter, less dense version of the script, which I was fine with.”

But it wasn’t until Zack Snyder had to leave the project after a terrible personal tragedy and was replaced by Joss Whedon that things took a turn on the project.

“When the movie was taken away, that felt like it was some directive that had come from people who are neither filmmakers nor film-friendly,” he said. “The directive to make the movie under two hours, regardless of what the movie needed to do, and to make the colors brighter, and to have funny sitcom jokes in it.”

To complicate matters further, by that point there was a schedule in place for the expanding shared universe of DC superhero movies. This left Terrio working on a team-up film featuring characters whose own worlds were still meant to be fleshed out in future films.

“The Wonder Woman script wasn’t even finished when I wrote Justice League,” Terrio said as an example. “So I had no basis to write Wonder Woman other than Batman/Superman. Themyscira didn’t even exist. I was never shown anything on the page for it. I didn’t know whether people could talk underwater. That was a thing that I had to ask, because I didn’t know if I could do underwater scenes with Aquaman and Atlanteans. It was all just from scratch because there had been no [solo] character films.”

The full interview with Terrio at Vanity Fair is a fascinating read. Go check it out.

The post Batman v Superman Writer Describes Post-Release “Mood of Fear” appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3s3ufqG

[aion-rsa]

The Third Day’s Dennis Kelly: ‘If people are telling you they’re good, you’ve got to be careful’

https://ift.tt/2ZpyH7G

The fascinations of Dennis Kelly are worth paying attention to. A decade ago, the playwright and screenwriter was kept up at night by the looming shadow of overpopulation and global resource scarcity. He channelled that concern into Channel 4’s Utopia, a global pandemic conspiracy thriller that in 2020, could hardly be more timely (serendipitously, Amazon releases the long-gestated US remake this month). 

Before that, Kelly’s plays were preoccupied with the suspicion of outsiders fostered by the so-called War on Terror, from which you might draw a straight line to Brexit and Trump. You could call his work a barometer for crisis, pointing audiences towards the thing we need to worry about next. 

Kelly’s latest project, he tells Den of Geek, was driven by a need to explore the reality-distorting effects of grief, and concern about growing isolationism. The Third Day starts as the story of Sam (Jude Law), a man sucked into the mysterious ways of a strange British island. It’s neither a horror nor an allegory, says Kelly, but it is packed with unsettling images and nightmarish twists. 

The Third Day was created in collaboration with Felix Barrett of the Punchdrunk theatre company. It starts with three-episode TV story Summer directed by Utopia’s Marc Munden, then becomes live immersive theatre event Autumn, both of which star Jude Law. It will conclude with Winter, a three-episode continuation starring Naomie Harris, due to air in October. The show really catches fire in episode two, promises Kelly. “That’s when it starts to go crazy. Episode three is just mental.” 

Kelly tells Den of Geek about the strange real-life island location of Osea, the commonality of pain, his impatience with the rules of genre, and why you should be suspicious of anyone who tries to tell you that they’re a good person.

You’ve said before that you write about things that are bothering you and that you don’t necessarily have an answer for. When you started writing The Third Day, what was bothering you?

So much, I’m so angry! 

Aren’t we all?!

It’s an angry world we live in! Often these things are a combination of personal and big stuff. In terms of the big stuff, I was bothered by isolationism. We started this probably about eight or nine years ago and at that time, I was very worried about isolationism, and it seems to have got worse since then. This is worldwide, not specifically to do with the UK, although obviously I’m writing from within that plane. 

The other thing on my mind was grief. I’d wanted to write about grief for a long time but to properly deal with it and the idea of how grief can do really strange things to your mind. We all experience it at some time in our lives. When I lost my dad – this is a long time ago now – but I remember that week thinking ‘I could get used to this. This is a strange place. It’s painful and it’s difficult, but there’s something warm about it and it answers all questions’. I think some people don’t ever leave grief. I wanted to write about that.

That’s an idea Emily Watson’s character repeats in The Third Day’s first episode, that pain can have warmth?

That’s where that came from, that line is something like ‘Most people are scared of pain, they don’t know how warm it can be.’ It’s true. 

It reminds me of your stage adaptation of Pinocchio having the idea that pain is the one element shared by all human beings, and only by experiencing that can Pinocchio become a real boy.

That’s right. 

Is that from the original story?

No, that was mine. In the Disney version, when you become true and good, you become a real boy and I just thought that is awful, what an awful message to be sending to kids. When you’re good and when you do what we tell you, then you can be real?! It’s a terrible message for kids and I wanted it to be about something more than that. Pain is… every one of us experiences it, it runs through all of our lives, but we don’t have to be terrified of it.

How did the island of Osea come to you as a location for The Third Day? 

That was Felix [Barrett, Punchdrunk artistic director and The Third Day co-creator]. Initially we thought we would set it in a town but we knew we wanted our character trapped and we realised that a town wasn’t going to work because it’s hard to get trapped in a town in the UK. It’s not like America where you might have one road in and one road out, and if you go out into the wilds, you’re going to die.  You can walk, if you really need to, between most places in the UK, even remote places in Scotland. So we felt like we needed something a lot more remote and then Felix found Osea. Because it’s only available by causeway, you can only get there twice a day. Once the tide comes in, you’re stuck, you’re staying there, you’re not getting back until the next day, 10 hours later. It just was perfect. 

What’s the atmosphere like on the island?

I really like it. It’s a strange thing, some people loved being on Osea. Paul Kaye, who’s in the second block of episodes, absolutely loved it, he couldn’t get enough of it. Naomie Harris, who’s also in the second block, just said she really hated being on the island! She found it really, really difficult. Personally, I really like the feeling of separation. There are no shops. Once you’re there, you’re there. The first time, I remember walking around with Felix and finding all these locations, these things that ended up in the show, just thinking, this is special, this place, but weird. 

Islands are special places, aren’t they? I grew up on the Isle of Wight and there’s a real sense of identity and a connection to tradition I’ve never quite found the equal of on the mainland.

All over the country there are all these weird places. That was something Felix was interested in, that there are all these slightly strange traditions that are still there. I was brought up a Catholic and Catholicism is incredibly Pagan. We eat pieces of someone’s body and it turns into their body while it’s in you. And you’ve got one God, but that God is in three parts. It’s so Pagan. In really Catholic countries – my ex-wife is Italian, so I used to spend a lot of time there – I remember going into churches in Naples and there’s so many bits of dead people in there, preserved, a bit of a dead saint’s toe or a dead saint’s finger or a dead saint’s heart. For me, that’s always there. The image that is over every Catholic is the Sacred Heart, which we used to have in our home, which is Jesus with his ribs torn open, it’s quite a brutal image. 

Have mythology and religion always been an interest of yours?

I have really conflicting views towards religion. I’m not a believer but sometimes I feel like I am because I want to be. I sometimes think I can believe in things that I know aren’t real, but it doesn’t matter as long as it makes me happy. Religion can do amazing things and it also can be incredibly manipulative and destructive in people’s lives and can allow people who are doing really very bad things to continue doing those bad things. These things are very complicated. Any simplistic statements about them are always doomed to make things worse.

What’s the significance of sobriety to The Third Day? How important is the temperance side of Osea to the story?

That came in because we realised that [former 19th century Osea owner] Frederick Nicholas Charrington went there and tried and create this sober community on the island. Osea had a treatment centre – I think Amy Winehouse went there at some point – which was closed down I think. It has a connection to it. 

When I’ve watched it back, I’m surprised at the amount of drunk characters there are in it. There are two or three. There are some plot twists that turn on so-and-so being drunk, so it does become important. Because I had struggles with alcohol and I’ve been sober now for nearly 19 years – 19 years, Jesus Christ, that’s like an entire person – I don’t know how much of that was conscious or whether that was bleeding in there. 

There’s a lot of talk in The Third Day about goodness. There’s a real insistence about the islanders being good people, about so and so being a good man, although their behaviour doesn’t seem to exemplify that?

I think if people are telling you they’re good, you’ve got to be careful! Watch out for them. People who say ‘I’m a really straight person, me’ are the most twisty-turny little fuckers! [Laughs] You’ve always got to be careful. The islanders talk a good game, but their actions show something quite different.

In Utopia, you presented us with this paradox about goodness, how for humans, love is this positive thing that connects us and inspires heroism, but it’s also what makes us do brutal things to other people to protect the ones we love. The same thing inspires both goodness and evil.

I think that’s so right. You’ve sort of nailed what I was trying to write about really. It’s an obsession of mine. You can look at the worst humans who do the most awful things and they think they’re doing it for the right reasons. Dictators don’t sit there thinking how evil they are, they think ‘This needs to be done for the greater good’, and then they do appalling things to huge amounts of people. 

A good example are paedophiles, weirdly. Watching paedophiles being interviewed, they seem to need to think that a kid is culpable in this, often. They totally aren’t, obviously. It’s crazy that they have to bend all of reality to still believe that they’re still a decent person inside. The same is true of violent men who have to believe that they had to beat their wife up, because ‘she pushed him to it’. We need to bend reality to be good, but also the desire to be good is incredibly powerful and it can lead us to do amazing, amazing things. It’s our brains that fuck it all up, because our brains pervert that desire. 

Read more

TV

The Third Day Trailer Previews Dark HBO Mystery Series

By Joseph Baxter

TV

Utopia series 2 episode 6 review

By Louisa Mellor

Tell me about Jude Law’s character Sam in The Third Day, and the grief he’s experiencing.

Sam’s someone who’s gone through something really, really terrible and probably hasn’t processed it, perhaps because it might not be possible to process something that bad. It’s meant that he’s not at all sure of what’s going on, which makes him vulnerable but also makes him fall victim to the island and what it’s doing. The island is a very strange place. There is a belief that runs through it. They believe that Osea is the soul of the world and if you’re on Osea strange and important things can happen. The vulnerable part of Sam becomes attracted to that. 

Sam’s a strange character. I kind of wrote him for Jude. There are some really interesting places in Jude, a lot of versatility. His performance is extraordinary in this. I find him magnetic but at the same time I’m not entirely sure where I stand with him, which is really interesting, because Jude Law is not like that as a person at all, he’s really easy to get on with! 

Episode one has a combination of fairly banal elements, like garden centres and planning officers, alongside some very weird stuff like ritualistic murder and strange creatures snipping evil out of children. Would you say that The Third Day slips between those two worlds of reality and fantasy? 

I think they co-exist in our culture. The snipping is based on a tradition in a German village where people go around on a certain night of the year and look around to see if your house is clean and if it isn’t, they snip you open and put the dust in your belly. Obviously they don’t really snip you open, but it’s based on a real tradition. I remember explaining Bonfire Night to my Italian ex-wife and she was going ‘You burn him?!’ It’s so dark, that we actually burn a man who was burned all those years ago, we keep burning that guy. So I think we already live like that, we just don’t notice it because it’s ours. Catholic traditions, you don’t really notice them because they’re yours, but if you step back from it…

It was important as well that it didn’t feel as though you were stepping into the past. We didn’t want you to think this could be the 1960s, or this could be the 1860s, we didn’t want it to feel like it could be another world, we wanted it to feel very much like this world.

Do you like your audience to be on shifting sands in terms of whether we’re in reality or inside the perspective of a character who might be suffering from grief that distorts reality? 

I think so. Certainly in this. Not for arbitrary ‘I’m going to spook you’ reasons but partly because I think the world is a bit like that, you don’t really know where you stand with people. Drama tends to deal in absolutes. Characters are often written almost like they have a list of attributes and you’ve got to score them by that. Their morality may be 10 and their deviousness may be 2. That’s just not true, the world doesn’t work like that. We’re not Dungeons & Dragons characters. From day to day, we shift and change, because we’re constantly adapting to the world and I like the stuff I write to reflect that. 

What’s your approach to genre? Are there parts of The Third Day that don’t take place on terra firma, that are a fantasy inside Sam’s mind?

Possibly. I’ll be honest, I don’t really understand genre. I think I end up writing within genre a bit, but never really consciously. If someone says ‘what is a horror film?’ I don’t really know. I wrote Matilda The Musical and I didn’t really find out how to write a musical first because I wanted to write a story. So I don’t know what those rules are. I’m never really that interested in finding out what the rules are for writing things, I feel the same with genre. I wouldn’t be bothered about finding out what the rules were for writing a horror film or for writing a fantasy adventure or a sci-fi film, I think what I would do is just write the story.

Are you resistant to interpretation of your work?

Not at all. 

In episode one then, you see an island trying to protect its way of life and a suspicion of outsiders. At one point, Paddy Considine’s character mentions Somalian refugees… it made me think of the refugee boats landing on the Kent coast and the racist opposition to that.

I think that’s there. It’s not an allegory for anything. It’s not like you’d look at The Third Day and think ‘That’s the UK and Paddy represents this element and Jude represents another element’. I did want to prod at that though. I wanted to prod at that in Jude’s character, and it later does, that kind of fear of the other. I think that is in people and we’re really terrified of admitting to those things. If we can’t admit to them, then we can’t fight against them and turn them off. 

Time and again, the world shows us that isolationism is a really bad thing to resort to, in this time in the 21st century and the 20th century. Isolationism might not have been a bad thing in the 18th century, or in many of the centuries that preceded us when the world was a limitless place, but now the world is totally limited, we’re all over it, we know all of it, and we’re not getting off it, so isolating into small pockets is crazy, and the problems that we face are global problems.

You’ve said that a play can ask a question and not know the answer. Would you say the same for television?

I think it can now, because things have opened up and audiences are after much, much more complicated stories and are much braver and more sophisticated and they’re getting more sophisticated all the time. They want stuff that is genuinely challenging. 

Utopia asked a question that it didn’t have an answer for, which is: what do you do about population control? Obviously I wouldn’t advocate what the Network was saying in that but they would turn around and say ‘what do you want to do?’ You want to just sit here and do nothing? They were putting forward a solution that didn’t cause the deaths of millions and millions of people, and they would say if you don’t enact this solution, millions and millions of people will die anyway, because of the way we’re depleting resources on the planet. Utopia did ask a question that probably didn’t have an answer.

I always remember that scene you wrote in the Utopia series two finale, where a member of the Network puts forward a very rational argument for the moral rectitude of slitting a toddler’s throat. I mean, he had a point about overpopulation, and yet…

…and yet he’s totally wrong. I’ve got a one year old now. As far as I’m concerned, if it was a choice of my one year old or the world, I’d say ‘sorry world’. But it’s right as well, if you step back from everything we think and fear, he’s definitely right as well. That stuff is interesting to me because it does put us as an audience in a really difficult position.

Do you like to confront your audience?

I like to be confronted as an audience. I like things that are complicated and difficult, and I think audiences like that as well. I don’t want to preach to an audience, I’ve got no interest in doing that because I don’t know anything more than that audience, but what I like to do, as a member of an audience, is to think and have my notions challenged. 

Have you kept having those conversations with yourself about resource scarcity and overpopulation, since Utopia? Is that stuff still bothering you?

Sometimes. What I’ve found about writing is something really, really bothers me, and then I write about it and I move on. When I started writing, I wrote a lot of plays about the War on Terror and the process of writing about it means you get to a point where you don’t want to write it again. There’s something healthy and unhealthy in that – healthy in that the thing that is bothering you, you put into your work because that’s what you should be writing about, what matters most to you in the world, but also unhealthy that you go ‘oh that’s alright then, I’ll move on.’ 

I still am vexed about overpopulation and I still think it’s something that we’re not addressing. When I wrote Utopia, I remember thinking this will probably come out roughly around the time we hit seven billion. We’re approaching eight billion now, and we will go further. Then we’ve got another problem which is under-population because our population is growing older. There’s not an instant solve for these problems but I think it goes back to the idea of not being isolationist. The only way we can really think about these things is to think about the human race as one whole, as opposed to thinking about it as tiny, tiny pockets. 

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

The Third Day: Summer starts on HBO on Monday the 14th of September and on Sky Atlantic and NOW TV on Tuesday the 15th of September.

The post The Third Day’s Dennis Kelly: ‘If people are telling you they’re good, you’ve got to be careful’ appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3ij5anG