#i wonder if terry had listened to midnights and what was his favorite song

[mastcomm]

‘Before Sunrise’: The Making of an Indie Classic

No one knew how “Before Sunrise” would end. In addition to leaving the audience on a cliffhanger — would the visiting American Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and the French student Céline (Julie Delpy) meet again after one night of passionate conversation on the streets of Vienna? — the filmmakers themselves were at a loss until the last minute.

“We shot in chronological order and worked on the script every weekend throughout the shoot,” the director and co-writer Richard Linklater said. “We went pretty far into this thinking they weren’t going to plan to meet again, and the night before, we were up until 3 in the morning rewriting the final scene.”

Made for just $2.5 million, “Before Sunrise” opened the 1995 Sundance Film Festival and formed a collaborative partnership between Linklater, Hawke and Delpy that led to two sequels, “Before Sunset” (2004) and “Before Midnight” (2013), and decades of friendship.

In honor of the first film’s 25th anniversary, I interviewed the stars and creators about making the unconventional indie romance. Here are edited excerpts from those conversations.

The idea for the movie came to Linklater during a night spent with a woman he met in a Philadelphia toy store in 1989. Years later, he would learn she had died in a motorcycle accident just before “Before Sunrise” began filming.

RICHARD LINKLATER This girl was flirting with me while I waited for my sister [to finish shopping], so I wrote a little note like, “Hey, I’m in town for one night if you want to hang out.” Somewhere in the night I said to her, “I want to make a film about this. Just this feeling.” That’s really all it was trying to ever capture — that rush of meeting someone and that undercurrent of flirtation and romance.

In 1993, he asked the actress Kim Krizan, who had appeared in his Texas-set films “Slacker” and “Dazed and Confused,” if she would help write the screenplay.

KIM KRIZAN (co-writer) I’d never written a script before, but he’d read my master’s thesis on Anaïs Nin and thought I could write.

LINKLATER In my previous films, I felt the male view overwhelmed. So my absolute goal was to have a strong female perspective. Kim was the kind of person you’d run into and within 30 seconds you’re talking about something substantial. I liked that.

KRIZAN We were thinking about the direction it could go, and I said, Well, I’ve met really interesting people traveling on trains in Europe. I’d had fantastic conversations where I knew I’d never see them again. Things tend to happen in the space of a day in Linklater stories, so that instantly created a structure.

LINKLATER It was a wonderful collaboration over an intense 11 days, but I always knew the process would eventually include the two actors. So I was upfront that this was a template of a script, and it was going to be deepened later.

Linklater considered a version set in America, but funding and an interest from Castle Rock Entertainment allowed them to shoot abroad.

LINKLATER On one hand, the movie could be set anywhere. I thought, if I don’t have any money, there’s a train station in San Antonio and we could do this close to home. But I ended up going to the Vienna film festival with “Dazed” and found out they had some European subsidy money. And then Martin Shafer read the script and was like, “Hey, this could be good.”

MARTIN SHAFER (a co-founder of Castle Rock Entertainment) The script came to me and it was very short. I think only about 35 pages. It had a lot of dialogue but was more of a blueprint. It was so different from the so-called romantic comedies of the time, which were often very contrived, and it had such a naturalistic feel to it.

It took a bicoastal casting call and more than six months to find the perfect leads.

LINKLATER That was the biggest casting choice imaginable. It wasn’t clear if it was going to be a European male and American female [or vice versa]. In the first draft, we named the characters Chris and Terry because both are kind of genderless. It was that open.

JUDY HENDERSON (casting director) I kept all the Polaroids because so many of the people who auditioned are superstars today. We saw Gwyneth Paltrow and Jennifer Aniston, before she was on “Friends.”

LINKLATER Anthony Rapp invited me to see a play he was in with Ethan Hawke in New York. I had never met Ethan, but at that moment, he was the biggest star in his age range. I ended up at a bar with him after the play.

ETHAN HAWKE (Jesse) We hung out until 4 a.m. After that, Rick sent me the script, and I thought he was offering me the part. I was really excited and had all these questions, and I realized after talking to my agents that he was not offering — he was asking me to audition with about 10,000 other people.

LINKLATER Julie was the second actor I met on the first day of our big L.A. casting session. I remember liking her, and her résumé was impressive. She’d worked all over Europe. She was just getting started in the U.S., but she immediately went to the top of the list.

JULIE DELPY (Céline) I like the idea of people meeting over one night and falling in love. Linklater clearly stated that he wanted the actors involved in the writing, and I liked that. It wasn’t just a part.

HENDERSON In the end, it came down to two women and two men: Ethan, Julie, Michael Vartan [“Never Been Kissed”] and Sadie Frost [“Bram Stoker’s Dracula”]. I think they went with Julie because she was wonderful, and they thought the French accent gave a definite feeling that Jesse was meeting someone who was not from his world. And with Michael and Ethan, it was a tough choice because they were both really good. You could almost toss a coin.

LINKLATER I was looking for two creative partners. I wasn’t looking for just two pretty faces.

HENDERSON Ethan and Julie had a chemistry that was electric and charming at the same time.

HAWKE Meeting Julie was like meeting a character from a novel, like Anna Karenina or something. She’s a very deep person. I’d never felt so American and so dumb in my life.

DELPY He was like a puppy, so young and sweet. He hates that, but really he had a beautiful naïve quality about him. I mean naïve in a good way, naïve but very smart at the same time.

Delpy, Hawke and Linklater headed to Vienna for a three-week intensive workshop ahead of the summer 1994 shoot and continued revising the script throughout 25 days of filming.

HAWKE Revising is way too mild of a word. Rick wanted to make a movie about living in the moment. And to do that we were all going to have to live in the moment together to create the movie. For every scene in there, we wrote, like, 17 that didn’t make the cut.

DELPY It was intense, and a lot of my personal feelings went into it. I was an extremely romantic person, very pure and full of dreams. The writing was very organic. The guys would listen to me as I was really the only woman in the room, especially when we got to Vienna.

LINKLATER To this day, they don’t really get the credit as actors because everybody thinks they’re improvising.

HAWKE It didn’t piss me off [that there wasn’t a discussion to credit them as writers]. It felt like such a grand adventure. I used to joke there were times when Julie and I didn’t want credit because we were so sure it was going to be so bad.

Regular trains were used to film Jesse and Céline’s meet-cute, as well as Céline’s send-off in the closing scene.

LINKLATER It was hell. We rode the trains from Vienna to Salzburg and back for three days to get the beginning scene and the shots out the windows. You’re good when the train reaches a certain speed, but if it’s jumping around, you’re screwed.

HAWKE My stepfather had given me this burgundy turtleneck, and I was in love with it. I don’t know why. And then I just immediately regretted it because it was really hot. What idiot thinks they look good in a turtleneck in summer in Vienna?

LINKLATER The very last shot of the movie, when Julie walks onto the train, we had that timed to the second and we got one chance to do it. It was like, the train’s going to leave here at 8:37:30. I’m going to say action at 8:20. She’s going to get on a non-moving train. And then when she gets to her seat, the train is going to be moving. It was tense, but we rehearsed the hell out of it and it worked.

DELPY It was insanely hot. I had not slept in days because we shot [mostly] at night. I remember being miserable. It was the end of the shoot, and I felt I was never going to see Rick and Ethan again.

When the pair almost kiss while listening to Kath Bloom’s “Come Here” in the record store booth, Delpy and Hawke’s reactions were authentic.

LINKLATER That’s the only time I withheld anything from the cast. The lyrics were in the script, but they had never actually heard the song. So you can see them really listening because they’d never heard that yearning, creaky thing in Kath Bloom’s voice that’s so moving.

HAWKE It’s probably my single favorite take of anything I’ve been involved with.

DELPY That was really special. It was like magic — each time I felt Ethan looking away, I would look at him and vice versa. I almost fell in love with him right there, but then Rick said cut.

Jesse and Céline’s first kiss takes place on Vienna’s Prater Ferris wheel at sunset, but was difficult in more ways than one.

LINKLATER We tried to shoot it at sunset, but they would only stop the Ferris wheel for 10 minutes, and then we’d have to go around and do it again. We had three different light levels by the time we finished. So we went back a week later and reshot that in the morning when they let us stop it for an hour. When you see their first kiss, that was shot in the a.m.

HAWKE Julie is afraid of heights. Try making out with somebody who’s absolutely petrified. It was challenging, and I don’t think she was terribly impressed — she’d been with a lot more interesting men than me.

DELPY I’ve never been on [a Ferris wheel] since. When you act, you have to get over your fears constantly. I’m also shy with men, and I had to kiss someone who was a friend at this point. It was scary.

HAWKE I remember laughing a lot because Julie just kept making fun of me, “That’s the look you give girls? You’ve got to do better than that!”

Linklater intentionally left several elements of the film up to the audience’s imagination, namely did Jesse and Céline have sex?

LINKLATER Technically, you could see it any way you want. If you look closely, she’s dressed a little differently. So if you really do the math, you go O.K., that dress had to come off to get that shirt off. Something happened. I think all the hints are there.

“Before Sunrise” made only $5.9 million worldwide, but they had created something that would outweigh the box-office receipts.

LINKLATER Ethan was the Gen X actor after “Reality Bites” and I was the Gen X director, and we didn’t really deliver a Gen X film. There’s no pop-culture references, no hipster types. You pay the price at the time, but now I’m kind of proud you can go to Vienna and have a “Before Sunrise” walking tour right next to a “Third Man” walking tour.

DELPY After the third film, now people think of me as Céline, and it’s sometimes hard to get out of this “ideal” woman role. Some people hate me for even trying to do anything different. It’s a bit frustrating.

Last year, Delpy said she was paid about a tenth of what Hawke made on “Before Sunrise” and didn’t achieve equal pay until “Before Midnight.” (She wouldn’t comment on the subject in our interview.) Linklater issued a lengthy statement in response, noting that “nobody was getting paid much at all.”

LINKLATER I got paid a lot less than I had on [“Dazed”]. Ethan, at the height of his popularity, took a huge pay cut. I won’t go as far as to say the film would not have happened without him, but it wouldn’t have happened in the same way.

HAWKE It was kind of a wake-up call for me after “Before Sunrise.” When it’s a young man who’s got ideas and wants to be a filmmaker and write — [people] find that really interesting. But a lot of men are really intimidated when that’s coming from a young female voice. Julie has always been one of the most remarkable film minds I’ve ever come in contact with, bar none. It’s amazing how much I just learned about how gender has played a part in defining and limiting her experience. The “Before” trilogy is a bad example of pay gap because nobody got paid. I have no idea what Julie got paid or what I got paid. On those movies none of us were doing it for the money.

After 25 years, the bygone era of “Before Sunrise” has taken on new meaning for the actors.

DELPY I was so young and vulnerable. I wish I could travel in time and tell Julie then to not self-destruct so much with anxiety and insecurity. Tell her to take care of herself. “Before Sunrise” is a very romantic film, and somehow I never had that romantic, dreamy encounter in my life. Movies are magic a bit, life isn’t.

HAWKE My daughter [the actress Maya Hawke] decided to watch the movie with some of her friends, and there was a certain envy they had for a time where you didn’t have email. Life insisted that you live in the moment more. There’s something about always being digitally present that allows you to not be present, and part of what Jesse and Céline try to do in that movie is actually be present with each other.

Every nine years, there’s been a sequel. But it’s unlikely a fourth film, if it happens, would arrive on schedule.

HAWKE There was a feeling I had in my gut when we finished “Before Midnight” that I’d never had before, which was that we were done. “Sunrise, “Sunset,” “Midnight” is one work in its own strange way. That doesn’t mean there won’t be another work, like an epilogue. I would be curious about an “After” series, about something where you really deal with the second half of your life.

LINKLATER Maybe we’ll wait until they’re in their 80s and do a comic remake of “Amour,” where one euthanizes the other in old age. I’m not ruling that out.

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[biofunmy]

‘Before Sunrise’: The Making of an Indie Classic

No one knew how “Before Sunrise” would end. In addition to leaving the audience on a cliffhanger — would the visiting American Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and the French student Céline (Julie Delpy) meet again after one night of passionate conversation on the streets of Vienna? — the filmmakers themselves were at a loss until the last minute.

“We shot in chronological order and worked on the script every weekend throughout the shoot,” the director and co-writer Richard Linklater said. “We went pretty far into this thinking they weren’t going to plan to meet again, and the night before, we were up until 3 in the morning rewriting the final scene.”

Made for just $2.5 million, “Before Sunrise” opened the 1995 Sundance Film Festival and formed a collaborative partnership between Linklater, Hawke and Delpy that led to two sequels, “Before Sunset” (2004) and “Before Midnight” (2013), and decades of friendship.

In honor of the first film’s 25th anniversary, I interviewed the stars and creators about making the unconventional indie romance. Here are edited excerpts from those conversations.

The idea for the movie came to Linklater during a night spent with a woman he met in a Philadelphia toy store in 1989. Years later, he would learn she had died in a motorcycle accident just before “Before Sunrise” began filming.

RICHARD LINKLATER This girl was flirting with me while I waited for my sister [to finish shopping], so I wrote a little note like, “Hey, I’m in town for one night if you want to hang out.” Somewhere in the night I said to her, “I want to make a film about this. Just this feeling.” That’s really all it was trying to ever capture — that rush of meeting someone and that undercurrent of flirtation and romance.

In 1993, he asked the actress Kim Krizan, who had appeared in his Texas-set films “Slacker” and “Dazed and Confused,” if she would help write the screenplay.

KIM KRIZAN (co-writer) I’d never written a script before, but he’d read my master’s thesis on Anaïs Nin and thought I could write.

LINKLATER In my previous films, I felt the male view overwhelmed. So my absolute goal was to have a strong female perspective. Kim was the kind of person you’d run into and within 30 seconds you’re talking about something substantial. I liked that.

KRIZAN We were thinking about the direction it could go, and I said, Well, I’ve met really interesting people traveling on trains in Europe. I’d had fantastic conversations where I knew I’d never see them again. Things tend to happen in the space of a day in Linklater stories, so that instantly created a structure.

LINKLATER It was a wonderful collaboration over an intense 11 days, but I always knew the process would eventually include the two actors. So I was upfront that this was a template of a script, and it was going to be deepened later.

Linklater considered a version set in America, but funding and an interest from Castle Rock Entertainment allowed them to shoot abroad.

LINKLATER On one hand, the movie could be set anywhere. I thought, if I don’t have any money, there’s a train station in San Antonio and we could do this close to home. But I ended up going to the Vienna film festival with “Dazed” and found out they had some European subsidy money. And then Martin Shafer read the script and was like, “Hey, this could be good.”

MARTIN SHAFER (a co-founder of Castle Rock Entertainment) The script came to me and it was very short. I think only about 35 pages. It had a lot of dialogue but was more of a blueprint. It was so different from the so-called romantic comedies of the time, which were often very contrived, and it had such a naturalistic feel to it.

It took a bicoastal casting call and more than six months to find the perfect leads.

LINKLATER That was the biggest casting choice imaginable. It wasn’t clear if it was going to be a European male and American female [or vice versa]. In the first draft, we named the characters Chris and Terry because both are kind of genderless. It was that open.

JUDY HENDERSON (casting director) I kept all the Polaroids because so many of the people who auditioned are superstars today. We saw Gwyneth Paltrow and Jennifer Aniston, before she was on “Friends.”

LINKLATER Anthony Rapp invited me to see a play he was in with Ethan Hawke in New York. I had never met Ethan, but at that moment, he was the biggest star in his age range. I ended up at a bar with him after the play.

ETHAN HAWKE (Jesse) We hung out until 4 a.m. After that, Rick sent me the script, and I thought he was offering me the part. I was really excited and had all these questions, and I realized after talking to my agents that he was not offering — he was asking me to audition with about 10,000 other people.

LINKLATER Julie was the second actor I met on the first day of our big L.A. casting session. I remember liking her, and her résumé was impressive. She’d worked all over Europe. She was just getting started in the U.S., but she immediately went to the top of the list.

JULIE DELPY (Céline) I like the idea of people meeting over one night and falling in love. Linklater clearly stated that he wanted the actors involved in the writing, and I liked that. It wasn’t just a part.

HENDERSON In the end, it came down to two women and two men: Ethan, Julie, Michael Vartan [“Never Been Kissed”] and Sadie Frost [“Bram Stoker’s Dracula”]. I think they went with Julie because she was wonderful, and they thought the French accent gave a definite feeling that Jesse was meeting someone who was not from his world. And with Michael and Ethan, it was a tough choice because they were both really good. You could almost toss a coin.

LINKLATER I was looking for two creative partners. I wasn’t looking for just two pretty faces.

HENDERSON Ethan and Julie had a chemistry that was electric and charming at the same time.

HAWKE Meeting Julie was like meeting a character from a novel, like Anna Karenina or something. She’s a very deep person. I’d never felt so American and so dumb in my life.

DELPY He was like a puppy, so young and sweet. He hates that, but really he had a beautiful naïve quality about him. I mean naïve in a good way, naïve but very smart at the same time.

Delpy, Hawke and Linklater headed to Vienna for a three-week intensive workshop ahead of the summer 1994 shoot and continued revising the script throughout 25 days of filming.

HAWKE Revising is way too mild of a word. Rick wanted to make a movie about living in the moment. And to do that we were all going to have to live in the moment together to create the movie. For every scene in there, we wrote, like, 17 that didn’t make the cut.

DELPY It was intense, and a lot of my personal feelings went into it. I was an extremely romantic person, very pure and full of dreams. The writing was very organic. The guys would listen to me as I was really the only woman in the room, especially when we got to Vienna.

LINKLATER To this day, they don’t really get the credit as actors because everybody thinks they’re improvising.

HAWKE It didn’t piss me off [that there wasn’t a discussion to credit them as writers]. It felt like such a grand adventure. I used to joke there were times when Julie and I didn’t want credit because we were so sure it was going to be so bad.

Regular trains were used to film Jesse and Céline’s meet-cute, as well as Céline’s send-off in the closing scene.

LINKLATER It was hell. We rode the trains from Vienna to Salzburg and back for three days to get the beginning scene and the shots out the windows. You’re good when the train reaches a certain speed, but if it’s jumping around, you’re screwed.

HAWKE My stepfather had given me this burgundy turtleneck, and I was in love with it. I don’t know why. And then I just immediately regretted it because it was really hot. What idiot thinks they look good in a turtleneck in summer in Vienna?

LINKLATER The very last shot of the movie, when Julie walks onto the train, we had that timed to the second and we got one chance to do it. It was like, the train’s going to leave here at 8:37:30. I’m going to say action at 8:20. She’s going to get on a non-moving train. And then when she gets to her seat, the train is going to be moving. It was tense, but we rehearsed the hell out of it and it worked.

DELPY It was insanely hot. I had not slept in days because we shot [mostly] at night. I remember being miserable. It was the end of the shoot, and I felt I was never going to see Rick and Ethan again.

When the pair almost kiss while listening to Kath Bloom’s “Come Here” in the record store booth, Delpy and Hawke’s reactions were authentic.

LINKLATER That’s the only time I withheld anything from the cast. The lyrics were in the script, but they had never actually heard the song. So you can see them really listening because they’d never heard that yearning, creaky thing in Kath Bloom’s voice that’s so moving.

HAWKE It’s probably my single favorite take of anything I’ve been involved with.

DELPY That was really special. It was like magic — each time I felt Ethan looking away, I would look at him and vice versa. I almost fell in love with him right there, but then Rick said cut.

Jesse and Céline’s first kiss takes place on Vienna’s Prater Ferris wheel at sunset, but was difficult in more ways than one.

LINKLATER We tried to shoot it at sunset, but they would only stop the Ferris wheel for 10 minutes, and then we’d have to go around and do it again. We had three different light levels by the time we finished. So we went back a week later and reshot that in the morning when they let us stop it for an hour. When you see their first kiss, that was shot in the a.m.

HAWKE Julie is afraid of heights. Try making out with somebody who’s absolutely petrified. It was challenging, and I don’t think she was terribly impressed — she’d been with a lot more interesting men than me.

DELPY I’ve never been on [a Ferris wheel] since. When you act, you have to get over your fears constantly. I’m also shy with men, and I had to kiss someone who was a friend at this point. It was scary.

HAWKE I remember laughing a lot because Julie just kept making fun of me, “That’s the look you give girls? You’ve got to do better than that!”

Linklater intentionally left several elements of the film up to the audience’s imagination, namely did Jesse and Céline have sex?

LINKLATER Technically, you could see it any way you want. If you look closely, she’s dressed a little differently. So if you really do the math, you go O.K., that dress had to come off to get that shirt off. Something happened. I think all the hints are there.

“Before Sunrise” made only $5.9 million worldwide, but they had created something that would outweigh the box-office receipts.

LINKLATER Ethan was the Gen X actor after “Reality Bites” and I was the Gen X director, and we didn’t really deliver a Gen X film. There’s no pop-culture references, no hipster types. You pay the price at the time, but now I’m kind of proud you can go to Vienna and have a “Before Sunrise” walking tour right next to a “Third Man” walking tour.

DELPY After the third film, now people think of me as Céline, and it’s sometimes hard to get out of this “ideal” woman role. Some people hate me for even trying to do anything different. It’s a bit frustrating.

Last year, Delpy said she was paid about a tenth of what Hawke made on “Before Sunrise” and didn’t achieve equal pay until “Before Midnight.” (She wouldn’t comment on the subject in our interview.) Linklater issued a lengthy statement in response, noting that “nobody was getting paid much at all.”

LINKLATER I got paid a lot less than I had on [“Dazed”]. Ethan, at the height of his popularity, took a huge pay cut. I won’t go as far as to say the film would not have happened without him, but it wouldn’t have happened in the same way.

HAWKE It was kind of a wake-up call for me after “Before Sunrise.” When it’s a young man who’s got ideas and wants to be a filmmaker and write — [people] find that really interesting. But a lot of men are really intimidated when that’s coming from a young female voice. Julie has always been one of the most remarkable film minds I’ve ever come in contact with, bar none. It’s amazing how much I just learned about how gender has played a part in defining and limiting her experience. The “Before” trilogy is a bad example of pay gap because nobody got paid. I have no idea what Julie got paid or what I got paid. On those movies none of us were doing it for the money.

After 25 years, the bygone era of “Before Sunrise” has taken on new meaning for the actors.

DELPY I was so young and vulnerable. I wish I could travel in time and tell Julie then to not self-destruct so much with anxiety and insecurity. Tell her to take care of herself. “Before Sunrise” is a very romantic film, and somehow I never had that romantic, dreamy encounter in my life. Movies are magic a bit, life isn’t.

HAWKE My daughter [the actress Maya Hawke] decided to watch the movie with some of her friends, and there was a certain envy they had for a time where you didn’t have email. Life insisted that you live in the moment more. There’s something about always being digitally present that allows you to not be present, and part of what Jesse and Céline try to do in that movie is actually be present with each other.

Every nine years, there’s been a sequel. But it’s unlikely a fourth film, if it happens, would arrive on schedule.

HAWKE There was a feeling I had in my gut when we finished “Before Midnight” that I’d never had before, which was that we were done. “Sunrise, “Sunset,” “Midnight” is one work in its own strange way. That doesn’t mean there won’t be another work, like an epilogue. I would be curious about an “After” series, about something where you really deal with the second half of your life.

LINKLATER Maybe we’ll wait until they’re in their 80s and do a comic remake of “Amour,” where one euthanizes the other in old age. I’m not ruling that out.

Sahred From Source link Arts

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[fixations-and-infatuations]

feel free to skip, just wanted to do this for fun:

1. “Duet” from the Flash or “Mayhem of the Music Meister” from Batman the Brave and the Bold?

I haven’t caught up to that episode of Flash yet, but I also really love most of the songs from “Mayhem of the Music Meister”

2. Do you like the arrow verse? If so, what’s your favorite show?

I used to! I haven’t had the chance to keep up, but back than my favorite show was definitely Flash. I haven’t seen Black Lightning yet though, and I’ve heard it’s THE BEST amazing.

3. First comic read? 

I think “Red Hood and the Outlaws.” I got into comics from more external sources, like shows and video games, and just caught up through Wikipedia and YouTube.

4. What introduced you to the DC universe? Was it a show, comic or movie?

Oh wow, it was either Justice League or Teen Titans. Those are the shows that got me into superheroes in general. 

5. Favorite character?

Definitely Tim Drake / Red Robin, for too many reasons than I can list here, but mainly just his sense of determination and I also maybe relate to him.

6. Favorite canon ship?

Uhhhhh, probably either Dick/Babs or Dick/Kori.

7. Favorite non-canon ship?

Definitely Bruce/Clark, although I also just love their platonic friendship.

8. Pre-N52 or N52?

I didn’t read much of Pre-52 but from what I know of it, I probably would have preferred it.  

9. Rebirth or N52?

I actually am really enjoying Rebirth right now! Only complaints are the absence of Connor Kent (which I can sort of forgive because I love Jon) but mainly the ending of the BatCat wedding which was frankly ridiculous and annoying.

10. “Death in the Family” or “Death of Superman?”

“Death in the Family,” I am definitely a Batfamily fan before any other DC character.

11. Favorite live action movie?

Wonder Woman.  

12. Favorite animated movie?

Honestly! The Death of Superman (the most recent DCAU movie) is so good! Everyone should try it.

13. DCEU or DCAU?

Ummm, as of RIGHT NOW, DCAU. But I have a feeling in a year or two, DCEU (now Worlds of DC which is much better).

14. Favorite member of the trinity?

Bruce Wayne / Batman.

15. Dark trinity or trinity?

Trinity.

16. Outsiders or Titans?

Titans, all the way.

17. Teen Titans or Young Just Us?

Teen Titans.

18. Favorite animated show?

Definitely Young Justice!  

19. Favorite superhero family?

Two words: Bat. Family.

20. Young Justice (show) or Teen Titans (show)?

Wow, this one is hard. I think Young Justice solely because of the number of favorite characters. Both shows are really spectacular and I feel so blessed to be getting more Young Justice and possibly more Teen Titans.

21. Do you watch Teen Titans Go?

Sometimes, to listen to something in the background. It’s nothing in comparison to the original, but it’s a cute satirical show.

22. Favorite Robin?

Tim Drake, the one who chose to become Robin.

23. So you prefer Superman and Wonder Woman, Batman and Wonder Woman, Steve Trevor and Wonder Woman or does it even matter?

I just hate the idea of Clark/Diana. Anyone else paired with her is great, I just have an knee jerk reaction to not like SuperWonder sorry.  

24. If you had total control, what would you change?

I would make Barbara Oracle again. I hate that the N52 made her Batgirl again just to have a reboot of some kind.

25. Batgirl or Oracle?

For Barbara? Always Oracle. I enjoyed her time as Batgirl, but I think she’s a much stronger character as Oracle.

26. Who’s your favorite Batgirl?

Wow, Cassandra Cain closely followed by Stephanie Brown.

27. Batgirl and the Birds of Prey or Red Hood and the Outlaws?

Uh, probably Red Hood and the Outlaws. I love Jason’s friendships with Kori, Roy, Artemis and Bizarro.

28. Favorite comic run?

Marcus To’s “Red Robin.”

29. Favorite comic artist?

Wow, um, there’s Kevin Wada, Adam Hughes, Marcus To, Dexter Soy...

30. Favorite comic writer?

Don’t read enough comics to have one.

31. Do you like the Joker?

As a villain, sure. As a person, no. As a couple with Bruce Wayne, NO.

32. Who do you think is the most overused or overrated characters?

I don’t really think anyone is that overrated, DC has a great track record when it comes to their characters (classic and new). I really don’t think there’s any one character I dislike (as a character, not a person, because fuck the Joker).

33. Batman: TAS or Superman: TAS?

Batman: TAS is one of the best television shows ever, even compared to live action. It gave so much depth to every character (Harley Quinn, Mr. Freeze, etc.)

34. Legion of Superheros or Batman Beyond?

Batman Beyond (THE SHOW) was the best, I still love my boy Terry. The comic verse of Batman Beyond is literally the worst.

36. Justice League or Justice League Unlimited?

Love both equally.

37. The Batman or Beware the Bat?

Both were good, but I preferred The Batman a bit more.

38. Who do you think is the most overlooked or underused character?

Timothy. Jackson. Drake. Wayne. There are several others but I’m biased.

39. Do you watch Gotham?

Have to catch up!

40. Do you like Marvel?

...I like Marvel characters. I hate what the MCU has become and the characterization of characters (I could rant for a while). Also not a fan of Marvel comics, especially after their stunt with Hydra Cap.

41. Jon Kent or Damian Wayne?

Damian Wayne.

42. Renee Montoya or Vic Sage?

Renee Montoya. 

43. Kate Kane and Renee Montoya or Apollo and Midnighter?

God. Uh, Kate Kane and Renee Montoya, by a slight margin.

44. Barry Allen or Wally West?

Barry Allen.

45. Kara Zor-El, Stephanie Brown or Cassie Sandsmark?

Can’t pick and don’t want to. I love all of my girls with all of my heart. I will say that I’m most like Stephanie Brown.

46. Kord Industries, Wayne Tech or Lex Corp?

Wayne Tech, but Kord Industries is pretty good too.

47. If you could have any character’s powers who’s would you have?

Zatanna. An underrated character, especially her power set. Very powerful.

48. Favorite villain?

God, I really love all of them. Maybe Poison Ivy? Especially with her latest run.

49. “DC Bombshells,” “Injustice” or “Kingdom Come?”

Did not like “Kingdom Come.” Both “Bombshells” and “Injustice” are amazing, and I wish a lot of both of their canon became actual canon.

50. Injustice or Arkham series?

Another toughie. I think Arkham, just because of the Batfamily in the latest one.

51. Justice League or League of Assassins? 

Justice League, obviously.

52. Are you excited about the upcoming Titans show? What about Young Justice?

Very excited for both! I am not picky with my mediums, and as long as no major changes are made to canon cough Dick Grayson being the dead Robin in Worlds of DC than I’m happy. Besides, I like to stay optimistic until I personally try something.

[travelinglifeshighways]

Appomattox, Virginia Where our Nation Reunited

Appomattox, Virginia – Where our Nation Reunited

Sunday April 15, 2018

As a Civil War history person I have always been fascinated with how the war played out on so many fronts throughout the South.  There were different campaigns with General Sherman’s “March to the Sea” from Chattanooga to Savannah including the Battle of Atlanta where I searched out the different markers or monuments in my youth learning their history then going to the old Cyclorama then in Grant Park to see where different battles were fought then going out in the city to explore the area depicted in the diorama inside the Cyclorama.  The battles of Kennesaw Mountain and Peachtree Creek were my favorites but the story of “The lone confederate soldier” in the Battle of Stone Mountain still gives me great laughs. (Lewis Grizzard – look it up on YouTube).

Arriving in the general area of Appomattox, Virginia you can start to sense the history there.  The many open rolling hill fields where battles were fought give the impression of horses, cannons, and troops from both sides being in these fields.  The actual site of the Appomattox Courthouse was a mini-village with a handful of houses scattered about the grounds.  There was a small general store, lawyer’s office and a tavern making it the county seat.  General Grant took made his headquarters to the west about a mile up the road next to a stand of trees.

General Robert E. Lee’s surrender bringing an end to the Civil War on April 9, 1865 including his Farewell Address, also known as General Order No. 9 to his Army of Northern Virginia.  The day after he surrendered the Confederate army to Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, Lee's surrender was instrumental in bringing about the end of the American Civil War. The text of the order, which were written and drafted by Col. Charles Marshall, edited and finalized by Lee, was issued as follows:

Headquarters, Army of Northern Virginia, 10th April 1865.

My friend Terry Edwards recites this speech in the band Cullowhee’s song American Trilogy, a touching and moving piece of American history.

General Order No. 9

“After four years of arduous service marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude, the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources.

I need not tell the survivors of so many hard fought battles, who have remained steadfast to the last, that I have consented to the result from no distrust of them.

But feeling that valor and devotion could accomplish nothing that could compensate for the loss that must have attended the continuance of the contest, I have determined to avoid the useless sacrifice of those whose past services have endeared them to their countrymen.

By the terms of the agreement, officers and men can return to their homes and remain until exchanged. You will take with you the satisfaction that proceeds from the consciousness of duty faithfully performed, and I earnestly pray that a merciful God will extend to you his blessing and protection.

With an unceasing admiration of your constancy and devotion to your Country, and a grateful remembrance of your kind and generous consideration for myself, I bid you an affectionate farewell.” — R. E. Lee, General, General Order No. 9

Skyline Drive – Shenandoah Valley

I am sitting on a mountaintop in Big Meadows campground tonight as a squall line of thunderstorms roll through towards the coast.  This is a no hookup facility so all I have is the battery power in my laptop and a flashlight to write by.  Almost like the olden times.  Driving up the Skyline Drive I would like to say it’s really pretty with many overlooks and stopping points to look off the mountain to either the east or west but about a mile from the southern entrance the road climbed into the clouds and fog so there was no distant vistas to see or standing in awe to look over and see.

It was a pretty drive like driving through an enchanted forest as there were ghost trees on either side with their branches and limps hanging over the roadway.  Visibility was down to just several car lengths as the road made its way up, down, and around the mountaintops.  The fog rolled in over the trees and through the gaps alongside the road racing their way down and vanishing in the mist.

Coming around one curve there was a single red brake light which we discovered was a motorcyclist slowly making his way through the fog on the curvy road.  He was hugging the center-line and wiping his visor every thirty seconds or so trying to maintain his lane in the roadway.  We followed at a distance till there was a passing area and cautiously made our way around him in the fog.

Skyline Drive is the only public road through the Shenandoah National Park, the only national park in Virginia.  The road has a north/south direction and is 105 miles long that stretches from Front Royal on the north end to the Waynesboro-Charlottesville area at the southern termination.  It takes about three hours to travel the entire length of the park on a clear day but with the many overlooks and stopping places I would plan for it to take a little longer.  The maximum speed limit is 35 mph.  There are deer, black bear, wild turkey, and a host of other wildlife that call Shenandoah home and regularly cross Skyline Drive.  Watch carefully for these animals, which may dart across your path without warning.  They were at the edges of the roadway and did not move as the RV drove past.  They were usually in groups of two to four every mile or so until we pulled into the campground since it was almost sundown and in their feeding time.

Mileposts along the side of the road help you find your way through the park and help you locate areas of interest.  The mileposts begin with 0.0 at Front Royal and continue to 105 at the southern end of the park.  These were harder to see than the Blue Ridge Parkway markers so you had to pay attention to not miss them if you needed them.

There are 75 overlooks that offer stunning views of the Shenandoah Valley to the west and the rolling Piedmont to the east.  Wildflowers put on a show all year long - in early spring, look for trillium peeking through the grass.  June’s display of azaleas is spectacular.  Cardinal flowers, black-eyed Susan’s, and goldenrod keep the color vibrant right into fall, when the leaves begin to change and put on their own fall foliage show. 

It was a shame that you couldn’t see anything off the mountainside with the fog but after this front passes and the thunderstorm/tornado warnings are over hopefully the road north tomorrow will be a little more scenic.

Traveling Life’s Highways in northern Virginia, a wet stormy goodnight before my battery runs out.  Goodnight all, I hope it is a wonderful evening for you!  I plan to listen to the sounds of popping corn on the roof of the motor home during this rain.

Monday morning, 4-16-18 – 7:30 am

I got my wish to hear the rain on the roof of the camper as it rolled in strong about sunset but did not gain its full fury until later in the night.  The park ranger knocked on the door just after midnight to alert us there were tornado warnings for this area and the bathroom was the best shelter.  The weather turned pretty nasty for the next several hours as the rain pelted the camper, lighting flashed and the sound of thunder could be heard.  Luckily it was in the distance as the sound was at least eight to ten seconds after the flash of lightning.

The rain continued to four in the morning or so and now a slight foggy mist covers the campground.  The tent campers must have had a pretty miserable night as one close to us moved their tent up by the restrooms while others bailed out of the tent and back into their car. 

There is no cell service here and my laptop battery is almost dead so that is the update until later.

Brennen’s Campground, Pennsylvania – 10:07 pm

The drive finishing the upper half of the Skyline Drive was a crazy mixture of snow, fog, and some rain.  Mainly it was light snow along the crest of the Blue Ridge and quit when we drove off the parkway in Front Royal, Virginia.  As the drive over the many foothills in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania were beginning to wear me down it was punctuated with the hills filled with wind generators spinning away in the blustery afternoon.  It was hard to maintain your driving lane with tractor-trailer trucks speeding past with both of us trying to maintain our lanes in the howling winds.

As we drove down the winding road leading to campground the ice/snow pellets were starting to fall once again.  Started the day snowing and will end it the same way.  What a contrast these last 48 hours from the pleasant heat around 75 degrees to the rainfall, the winds and tornado watch, waking up to it snowing, and then driving in the snow/fog on the mountaintops. 

Drove through the states of Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania today, one does not think of Maryland stretching across west to West Virginia and was surprised to discover that.  One typically thinks of Maryland along the Chesapeake coast or around the Washington DC area not the foothills around West Virginia.

Anxiously awaiting new discoveries tomorrow; from rural Pennsylvania, Goodnight.