#douglas interview

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS S2 BTS VIDEO! :)❤ 🐍😊

David: Good Omens 2 will be once more unto the breach...

Michael: The kind of world that Neil and Terry Pratchett created here. It's... it seems to be expanding out into the world in all kinds of unexpected and and truly joyful ways.

Douglas Mackinnon (the directior): If Season one was a comedy about the End of the World, Season Two is a comedy about the beginning of everything else.

Miranda Richardson (demon Shax): The Bromance is continuing.

Doon Mackichan (Archangel Michael): What a cast, is all I can say, incredible, incredible cast.

Liz Carr (angel Saraqael): But of course a script of Good Omens is a whole different thing because anything can happen.

Shelley Con (Prince of Hell Beelzebub): There's always a smirk somewhere around the corner in a Good Omens script.

Quelin Sepulveda (angel Muriel): I had no idea what to expect, where this character was gonna go...

Liz: I feel quite honored that when they were thinking of the realms of sarcasm they thought of me.

Gloria Obianyo (angel Uriel): Seven-year-old me is like, 'Oh my God! This is the stuff of dreams!'

Maggie Service (human Maggie): A whole Fantastical Universe of joy that we just get to playing and you'll get to watch.

Tim Downie (Mr Brown): I am immeasurably, immeasurably excited.

Jon Hamm (Archangel Gabriel / Jim): You know I was very pleased when when I was brought back to be a part of that story.

Neil Gaiman: Ppeople are excited and I'm working so hard to tell them absolutely nothing. I'm very lucky because Michael Sheen and David Tennant love Crowley and Aziraphale. I think the first moment that I saw David and Michael acting together... all of a sudden there was Crowley and there was Aziraphale, it was like seeing two friends who I hadn't seen for years.

David: There's something about the way Neil sees the mundane that is extraordinary and there's something about the way things filter through his imagination and of course in this world it also sprinkled with the imagination of Terry Pratchett and those two together created this cocktail that is it's unlike anything you've seen anywhere else and yet it feels utterly familiar.

Michael: And they both have a sense of the absurdity of what it is to be a human.

Rob Wilkins: When you've got David and Michael in front of the camera David and Michael evaporate and you have Crowley in Aziraphale and that relationship it needed it needed interrogating more and of course we all know that Terry and Neil had conversations about what the sequel would be and Neil has taken that and he's blown it up in a way that the viewers are just going to love so what would Terry think? Terry would pat Neil on the back and he would push Good Omens forward, he would break a bottle of champagne over its bows and be absolutely delighted and I know that, I'm the one person on Earth who's been entrusted to know that for certain and I promise you Terry would be absolutely delighted.

David: We've got some cast members coming back, returning but playing different parts which is a lovely little addition to things isn't it, so Miranda Richardson is back not playing the same role as Season One, she's now Shax, my replacement - Crowley's replacement on Earth.

Neil: Shelley Conn came in as Beelzebub and it feels in a weird way kind of like a Doctor Who Regeneration. We have a new demon called Furfur played by Rheece Shearsmith who was our Shakespeare in Season One.

David: Nina and Maggie were two of the Sisters in Season One, The nunnery of Doom, and now they are two characters imaginatively called Nina and Maggie.

Maggie: In season one really it was just me and the nuns, it was the nun gang, so to actually get to meet Aziraphale and Crowley... I hadn't been prepared for how delightful Aziraphale is.

Neil: Season Two begins about threem four years after the events of Season One.

Michael: Aziraphale and Crowley now are, you know, out on their own, they're.. they're a team to themselves.

Neil: Everything changes when Aziraphale gets an unexpected visitor.

Michael: A familiar face comes along with a mystery that needs solving and as Aziraphale and Crowley attempt to solve that mystery they realize that there are much more terrifying things ahead than they've had to deal with in the past. That involves having to go back through history as well to get clues as to what might be going on.

David: When we go back into these stories set within Aziraphale and Crowley's personal history there are moments within those stories where where their relationships sort of pivots or develops in some way. Himself and Aziraphale I think rely on each other even more in season two than they did in Season One because they are by necessity and by circumstance they're a they're a double act that nobody else can join.

Michael: It's extraordinary to see how important these characters and this story have become to a lot of people and how much people enjoy expressing themselves through art, through fan fiction.

David: I went to a Comic-Con and the amount of Crowleys and Aziraphales that I saw everywhere, the cosplaying just took off, and always in twos, which was joyous because of course the characters in my mind only exist in relation to each other. They are the Ying and the Yang.

Michael: It's such a... I think it's such a compliment and I think Neil feels the same way as well.

Maggie: Always clever Neil Gaiman, isn't he?

Nina: Yeah yeah, you'd have to sort of admit that at some point, yeah-

Maggie: He's quite good at his job.

[jimhowickfan1]

[mauricedelafalaise]

Keanu Reeves

by Douglas Keeve for Interview Magazine, 1987

[jamcoffee]

a friend sent this to me and it reminded me of a few Men

[reluctantjoe]

‘After rehearsal, my face hurts from laughing!’ The Ghosts cast on fun, fame and their festive farewell

One of the UK’s most cherished comedies is bowing out for ever. The stars talk about nicking things from the set – and being called ‘outrageous and shameful’ by Piers Morgan

Thanks, I tell the creators of Ghosts sarcastically, for making my daughter cry. The evening before, my family watched the supernatural sitcom’s final episode, and the only dry eyes in the house were mine.

This reaction, I tell Martha Howe-Douglas, Laurence Rickard, Jim Howick and Mathew Baynton over Zoom call, is going to be replicated across Britain. Did you think about how you were going to ruin everybody’s Christmas when you wrote this tearjerker? “Ah, you can but dream,” says Baynton, who plays the Romantic poet Thomas, wistfully.

The Ghosts team implore me not to reveal plot twists from the last episode, but there are some tantalising details I can share without spoiling the viewing experience. First, this is the episode where the final secret about the ghosts is revealed, namely how the Captain died. Second, there is a flash-forward to Alison and Mike in their dotage. But most of all, this is where we learn the fates of everybody, living and dead. I’d like to reveal more about whether Alison and Mike do sell land from the estate to build a golf course, or if any ghost is going to emulate Katy Wix’s character Mary and be sucked off (their words) into the spirit realm, but if I did it’s quite possible the cast would hunt me down and chop off my head. Or maybe they’d just haunt me for ever which, to be honest, doesn’t sound so bad.

The show’s premise – that the ghosts can never leave the grounds of the house – is a tragicomic trope of Britcoms, ie that the protagonists can’t escape their fate. It was Harold’s psychic wound in Steptoe and Son, and now in Ghosts all the spirits are stuck in each others’ company for good as if Button House is a home counties Hotel California. Or if you prefer, the Horrible Histories team have made a funny Uncle Vanya.

Four talking heads nod on their respective Zoom screens.

“I always think Chekhov is funnier than it’s usually done,” says Rickard – who plays two parts, Humphrey the headless and Robin the caveman. “They’re fixed somewhere and also utterly baffled as to why they’re there. So you have these existential crises going on with people who are already dead.” “I was in a production of Vanya once,” says Howick, who plays Scout leader Pat. “It was nothing like this.”

Baynton says: “On the face of it, it’s about ghosts, but it’s really just a metaphor for what it’s like to be a person. You’re born into the world and everyone’s got different opinions about what everything means. To do that in a family sitcom always felt like an amazing trick to me. It kind of is Beckett, but it’s um ... silly Beckett.”

Cast your mind back to April 2019, when the team behind Horrible Histories unveiled a new comedy. Did your careers ever recover from Horrible Histories being endorsed by Michael Gove as a tool for teaching? “I think that was nicely ballasted by James Cleverly or Piers Morgan a few years later around Brexit saying that it was a waste of licence fee,” says Baynton. It was actually Morgan who, with his unerring grasp of the national mood, in 2020 tweeted that the show was “an outrageous, shameful abuse of public money”.

At the outset, Ghosts seemed like a spin-off from Horrible Histories’ Stupid Deaths segment, in which the team recreated a laughable demise (King Harold shot in the eye at Hastings, self-styled gong farmer Richard the Raker drowning in his own poo, Aeschylus killed by an eagle dropping a tortoise on his head). The eponymous Ghosts often died similarly stupidly: Howick’s Scout leader Pat died in an archery accident and wears an arrow through his neck for all eternity; Lolly Adefope’s Georgian noblewoman Kitty was slain by a spider bite from a transatlantically imported pineapple.

In episode one, thirtysomething herberts Alison and Mike move into an ancestral pile that she’s inherited, only to find that it’s haunted. After she falls through a window and cracks her head open, Alison can see the ghosts but Mike can’t – though if he could he would probably put out the lights of the dead Romantic poet who keeps putting the moves on his wife.

Ghosts has been a lovely antidote to our times. For the cast too, making it has been a joy. “We’re very different people,” says Rickard, “but the thing we’ve got in common is a sense of humour. And if you can have one thing in common, that is the best thing, because it’s a light, fun, nice thing you want to keep returning to.

“At the end of rehearsal day, my face hurts from laughing. It’s a really unusual feeling that you’re giving yourself a headache from having a good time, without being horribly drunk.”

A few days later, I interview Charlotte Ritchie and Kiell Smith-Bynoe, who play Alison and Mike. “I think it has real kindness at the heart of it,” says Ritchie. “The core of the show, I think, is that all these people you might label as different are navigating things together.”

That said, Ghosts also manages to tackle some pretty important social issues. The second world war army veteran Captain, whose love for a junior officer dare not speak its name, is fondly imagined. More significant yet is the representation of people of colour. Smith-Bynoe says he was especially delighted when last year’s Christmas special depicted something he’d never seen on TV before: a Black family having Christmas dinner. “I’ve had couples come up to me and, them being an interracial couple, say that it means a lot to them to see that at the forefront. It’s not talked about, just there.”

Ghosts has made the pair famous. “If I wear Alison’s jumpers when I go out, I get recognised,” says Ritchie. Or misrecognised: “I was out the other day and this woman came up to me and said: ‘Liked you in Fleabag.’ So I went with it.” “Why not?” laughs Smith-Bynoe. “I had a thing where somebody was convinced I did a warm-up for Mo Gilligan.” But you never have done? “Of course not! But it was hard to convince them I knew better.”

Both Ritchie and Smith-Bynoe would like to have a word with the writers. They’re not happy the show has come to an end. “I’ve got nothing in January,” she says. “Me neither.” They have a point. They are unemployed in a cost of living crisis while several of the writer-actors on the show have parlayed their fame into work on other lucrative franchises. Baynton can now be seen as Fickelgruber opposite Timothée Chalamet as the eponymous Wonka, while Simon Farnaby co-wrote Wonka, Paddington 2 and the forthcoming Paddington in Peru.

In theory, Ghosts need never end: spirits are eternal, so shouldn’t a sitcom about them be, too? Perhaps the Ghosts team should consider making a spin-off. What would be the Frasier to Ghosts’ Cheers, I ask. “Mick,” says Baynton. He means the ghost who shares the cellar of Button House with other plague victims, each one played by a member of the main cast. “It’d be called Mick with an exclamation mark. And it’d have a live audience. I’d come on and say: ‘Hello everyone! Hiya! I’m home!’ Like Happy Days. Don’t even bother with the makeup, the lights aren’t on.” It sounds terrible, to be fair.

Perhaps we have to accept that Ghosts is dead. Certainly, the cast have plundered the set for memorabilia. Ritchie has snaffled Alison’s jumpers, Smith-Bynoe took Mike’s monocle, Howe-Douglas has Lady Button’s rings and Ben Willbond has taken the Captain’s stick. Rickard proudly holds up Humphrey’s severed head to camera.

All that remains now are the repeats. “I think, more so than drama, people will go back to comedies they love and want to experience them again and find more in them,” says Baynton. “There are plenty of shows that are comfort. Sometimes you put them on so you can have a nap.” He seems to be suggesting that Ghosts is part of that soporific canon. I look at the four screens, each interviewee giggling happily at the thought of Britain not sobbing over the last episode, but dozing through repeats. It may be ending with a Christmas special, but Ghosts will be haunting us for many years to come.

[helloparkerrose]

[archtroop]

[disaster-with-a-hat]

Recently finished "Mostly harmless" by Douglas Adams and I have a question. Is this really how it ended or are my eyes just fucking with me?

[crudetautology]

A Fanny Discussion (for series 4) in two parts, Part I:

Justin (the interviewer): And I noticed that despite the fact that you've kind of not promised, but you sort of said that the Fanny jokes were gonna become a little bit, sort of less, perhaps? I feel like. Mat: No, No. Martha: I don't think we've ever said that. Mat: We never said less. Justin: They're certainly more inventive this time around.

(Part II)

[theheadlessgroom]

@beatingheart-bride

On the one hand, Wilhelm understood this response: He supposed, being what so many people would consider a monster, a child of the night who lived on blood, being immediately feared upon revealing oneself as a vampire was to be expected, and in that regard, she didn't hold it against him and June, for reacting the way they did. They did it out of a desire to protect their son from what they thought was a threat...

...but at the same time, the guilt nagged him, even with her understanding. Maybe it was because it just wasn't like him to jump to conclusions about people and assume the worst, and he hated to think that he'd done it now (granted, he'd never thought he'd ever meet a supernatural being, but even so...). Maybe it was because he knew what it was like to have people judge him without hearing him out-even though he'd been sober for decades, there were still some who assumed the worst of him, thought he'd fall off the wagon at any given moment. It lost him a lot of job opportunities, people thinking that of him.

Maybe because he'd so forcibly kept Randall away from the woman he loved, he rebelled, trying to see her night after night, despite what might be out there in the darkness. There were things more fearful than Emily lurking in the dark-muggers, clearly. Maybe if he hadn't been so quick on the draw like that, trying to keep the two apart, his boy wouldn't be laid up the way he was now...

The thought continued to gnaw at Wilhelm as he knelt beside June, who seemed similarly distressed at the thought of being the indirect cause of her son's injuries, though she didn't say so as she sighed, "I just...thank God you were there, Emily. You watched over him, and you protected him when he needed it the most. That...that means the world to us. Thank God for you.

Is...is there anyway we can...repay you? Or, better yet...make it up to you, for everything?"

[jamesginortonblog]

A Little Life Opening night interviews - A video by WhatsOnStage

[jimhowickfan1]

[lostnfounder]

The following is a transcript of the interview that took place between Lostfield Gazette journalist Ruth Shirbon and a new Lostfield resident, Mari. 

R: So I work for the Lostfield Gazette, the town's favorite, and, uh, only newspaper. And I just wanted to know if I could ask you a few questions about the break-in?

M: Sure! Just, y'know, don't post my face, it's a long story.

R: Oh, of course! This is an entirely audio-only recording, anyway, hence the uh, tape recorder. Anyways. What were you doing before the break-in occured? Oh, and, what approximate time was it?

M: It was the sixth, at about 11:00 PM, and I was playing the new Pokemon game, because I was bored.

R: Alright. And how did you notice the intruder was, uh, intruding?

M: She broke into my house through the window--singing Banana Man by Tally Hall, I think.

R: Ooh, I still need to listen to that one, actually... Wait. Right. Interview. Uhm. And did you catch any details of the intruder? Like, uh, general height, hair color, hopefully some sort of easily-identifiable tattoo or birthmark somewhere visibly on them??

M: One of her eyes was missing, she was I think 5’7, maybe 5’8--and she was missing a leg, I think she was using a stick to walk.

R: Jesus Christ. I mean- [loud cough]- Sounds like... an intimidating figure- Wait. Was there anything else irregular about this person's appearance? Potentially, I don't know, unnatural skin color? Scales? Horns, maybe?

M: I mean, she had leaves in her hair that looked kinda like horns, but besides that no- Oh, wait, she kinda smelled of iron, almost like she was coughing blood--she was coughing, actually, so, y'know.

R: Oh, well that's... very interesting. [She scribbles something down in their notebook.] I'll make sure to include your description in my article so that more people can effectively avoid this, ha, hooligan, as one of our previous interview-ees put it. Thank you for your time, Ms. Mari.

M: Of course!

[weclassybouquetfun]

The Dead and UnDead are bidding adieu -

GHOSTS (original flavour) will no longer haunt our televisions after the upcoming fifth season.

The series stars/co-creators Mathew Baynton, Jim Howick, Martha Howe-Douglas, Simon Farnaby, Laurence Rickard, and Bill Willbond made the announcement on Twitter.

A few of the U.S. GHOSTS actors saluted their counterparts/executive producers.

CROSSING STREAMS

They even had a holiday special like the UK does.

After series four's departure of one of the core cast members, I felt that the show was winding down so, while disappointing, but not surprising.

Well done, ya six idiots.

-What is both surprising and disappointing is the departure of Bailey Bass from INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE.

More shocking than Lestat's crazy a** laughter when Louis asked, "Aren't I enough?"

Some fans of Bass are hoping that the departure is because she will be too busy with the next AVATAR, but AVATAR 3 was filmed  simultaneously (as James Cameron said, he didn't want to run into a STRANGER THINGS situation where the kids appeared significantly older)

I mean: Jack Campion filming AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER

NOW

And while the first act of AVATAR 4 has been filmed along with the other two sequels, there isn't word on when it will go back into production.

While it sucks (heh) to lose Bailey, we have Ben Daniels to look forward to.

[get-back-homeward]

Brian Epstein’s first visit to the Cavern

[O]n Thursday, November 9, 1961, at the Cavern lunchtime session, the tracks that had been running in parallel for so long finally converged.

Brian Epstein’s “My Bonnie” inquiries had taken him so far but no further. He knew it was a foreign record, probably from Germany, and found it “very significant” that Nems had received three orders for it.23 He knew the Beatles were a Liverpool group and for the first time actively searched Mersey Beat for their name. The current issue (which, also for the first time, had a Nems front-page ad) included Wooler’s report of the Beatmakers’ spectacle, and the Beatles advertised for appearances at Litherland, New Brighton and the Cavern.

They were listed three times at the Cavern. Brian had been here when it was a jazz cellar run by its founder Alan Sytner—they’d grown up together, boys of the same age at the same synagogue.24 Now it was “a teenage venue,” the very thought of which intimidated him … though not enough to squash his interest. He phoned Bill Harry, who made inquiries and found out the Beatles were playing the Thursday lunchtime session; Harry informed Ray McFall that Brian Epstein of Nems would be coming down to speak to the Beatles; doorman Paddy Delaney was told to expect him—he was to be signed in without a membership card, special dispensation. Going to see live rock music wasn’t new to Brian—he’d been to Empire shows and, with his sharp eye for presentation, always found the staging dismal, noticing that few acts projected their personality across the footlights—but going to the Cavern was sure to be a different experience. Brian suggested his PA Alistair Taylor join him: they would go for lunch and drop into the Cavern on the way, to find out more about this “My Bonnie” record.

The club was just a two-hundred-step walk from Nems, but November 9 was one of those smoggy, cold early-winter days in Liverpool, so damp that smuts glued to skin, so dark that the sooty buildings lost detail and car headlights couldn’t put it back. Flights were canceled at the airport and foghorns groaned over the Mersey sound: the cawing seagulls and booming one o’clock cannon. The businessmen picked a path through narrow Mathew Street, between Fruit Exchange lorries and their debris, and at number 10 Paddy Delaney showed them along the dimly lit passage and down the greasy steps.

Bob Wooler was in the bandroom when Delaney ushered in their visitor. Wooler recognized him from Nems, though they’d never met. Brian waited for a pause in that cellarful of noise, then leaned across and asked, impeccably RADA, if that was the Beatles on stage, the group on the “My Bonnie” record. Wooler confirmed it was: “They are they, they’re the ones.”25 The visitor made his way to the back of the center tunnel and watched.

It was pretty much an eye-opener, to go down into this darkened, dank, smoky cellar, in the middle of the day, and to see crowds and crowds of kids watching these four young men on stage. They were rather scruffily dressed—in the nicest possible way, or I should say in the most attractive way: black leather jackets and jeans, long hair of course, and rather untidy stage presentation, not terribly aware and not caring very much what they looked like. I think they cared more, even then, what they sounded like.26

The Beatles had started the second of their two lunchtime spots. As Brian watched, Ray McFall made a point of introducing himself to the man whose elegance instantly impressed him, and Cavernites consuming cheese rolls and soup wondered about the natty feller. Margaret Douglas remembers he was “standing at the back, near the snack bar. He looked so out of place that people were saying ‘What’s ’e doin’ ’ere?’ Ray McFall and Bob Wooler always wore suits and ties but they were nothing like Brian Epstein—he always looked like his mum got him ready.”27

The Beatles were rocking, smoking, eating, joking, drinking, charming, cussing, laughing, taking requests and answering back; they spoke local, looked continental, and played black and white American music with English color; John and Paul vied and gibed for attention, George smiled quietly to the side and sang from time to time, Pete drummed and kept his head down. It was another lunchtime session—and not one of their best. They were jaded, losing interest. But Brian saw enough to see beyond:

Their presentation left a little to be desired as far as I was concerned, because I’d been interested in the theater and acting a long time—but, amongst all that, something tremendous came over, and I was immediately struck by their music, their beat, and their sense of humor on stage. They were very funny; their ad-libbing was excellent. I liked them enormously, I immediately liked the sound that I heard: I heard their sound before I met them. I think actually that that’s important, because it should always be remembered that people hear their sound and like their sound before they meet them. I thought their sound was something that an awful lot of people would like. They were fresh and they were honest and they had what I thought was a sort of presence, and—this is a terrible, vague term—“star quality.” Whatever that is, they had it—or I sensed that they had it.28

From Mark Lewisohn’s Tune In (Ch. 22)

[korusalka]

Interview with the Vampire (2022) 🤝 The War of the Roses (1989) 🤝 iconic black comedies about divorce and rich people wrecking each other