#motive and the cue

[denimbex1986]

I would recommend that people go and see Motive and the Cue, now showing in cinemas courtesy of National Theatre Live. It's an interesting and entertaining look at one of the most famous productions ever with fantastic performances from #MarkGatiss and #JohnnyFlynn - I'm shocked Johnny isn't up for an Olivier Award.

[bookish-bee]

Thank you @figuringthengsout for tagging me <3333

rules: list ten books that have stayed with you in some way. don’t take but a few minutes, and don’t think too hard - they don’t have to be the “right” or “great” works, just the ones that have touched you

Soo tired it’s very late so I’ll be brief. In order I read them, not in order of importance to me

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - every mother and her daughter should read. My first profound read.

Crime and Punishment - the triumph of my fourteenth year. The Quest for the Perfect Translation pt.1 (it’s Nicolas Slater’s version. You’re welcome)

Ordinary People - found a similar person in Conrad. And cried. A lot.

The Plague - hahaha covid. Incredible. Began my love of Camus and then I got into philosophy and then died a little bit

All Quiet on the Western Front - the most influential a book has been on my life. Started the WWI interest and got me into the trench poets and started my research paper and so much more

The metamorphosis - learned so much about disability and what my family is. Read it so many times.

Inferno - got me through a rough spot. The Quest for the Perfect Translation pt.2 (I SWEAR BY Dorothy L Sayers. She’s incredible)

Patrick Modiano Missing Person - I can’t even talk about this one except to say that it changed me and that I want to write like him

Eichmann in Jerusalem - began my love of nonfiction and journalism and my obsession with the guardian and the Atlantic and the New Yorker, etc and now I spend so much money on newspapers and magazines I blame Arendt and her terrific reporting.

I didn’t include any poetry plays or short fiction because that would be cheating. Would require a whole other list for those.

And, note, these are the books that impacted me profoundly. Not exactly pleasureful books I got into, how it works for me in fandom. That would, again, be another list. (Aftg, sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie)

[devoursjohnlock]

Inside No. 9 | Plodding On (1 of 2)

[locallygrowndaikon]

geuh guh motivation…. give me a few days….

[notfspurejam]

Mark Gatiss attends The Olivier Awards 2024 at The Royal Albert Hall on April 14, 2024

[sakshisahu]

Recent pictures of Mark Gatiss aka our Mycroft Holmes.

Source: National Theatre on FB

Have you seen this?

[kaurwreck]

I don't think any well written work with unreliable narrators can be understood if you're disregarding everything from those narrators— understanding where and why they're unreliable is key. That requires discernment rather than bright line rules.

Otherwise, the narrators wouldn't be unreliable. They'd be reliably dishonest, and that wouldn't make for a compelling or relatable story.

[do-you-know-this-play]

[dennisboobs]

my favourite thing about the always sunny podcast is listening to rcg all say something extremely neurodivergent and then agree amongst themselves and convince themselves its completely normal

[markgatissappreciationsociety]

Mark Gatiss Congratulated by The NY Times

From the article summing up the Olivier Awards, the "British Tonys":

I finally got to see The Motive and the Cue a week ago in the movie theater, and it was, as expected, brilliant. My favorite moments took place between Gielgud (Mark Gatiss) and Taylor (Tuppence Middleton), with this the culmination:

"Can you imagine doing your best work at twenty-five?"

"Can you imagine doing it at twelve?"

[hereforthepotions]

Neurotypical people are really out here expecting you to solve their millennium puzzle and riddles three to decipher how they feel, and then call you 'too much' or 'oversensitive' or 'overbearing' and talk behind your back about how you're weird and talk too much if you ask them to just be upfront with you.

[denimbex1986]

'Johnny Flynn was murdered within a week of stepping onto the set of Ripley.

The British actor plays Dickie Greenleaf in the eight-episode Netflix adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley and while he knew the character would meet an untimely demise in the story, he wasn’t prepared for it to be within days of meeting Andrew Scott, who plays the title character.

“I was just getting to know Andrew and there he is bludgeoning me and cradling my dead body,” Flynn tells Rolling Stone. “It was a good icebreaker. So basically I got to die in the first week and then I could get on with the living bits.”

Flynn initially auditioned to play Dickie—a role made famous onscreen by Jude Law in Anthony Minghella’s 1999 film—prior the the Covid pandemic. He devised an elaborate way to shoot audition tapes in his kitchen, reading all of the parts himself rather than asking someone else for help. Creator Steven Zaillian cast Flynn while he was in the midst of doing press for Autumn de Wilde’s whimsical take on Emma — and the actor still seems perplexed by how he ended up in Italy pretending to die on a boat. “I don’t know why he cast me,” Flynn says, slightly laughing.

While Ripley exists in the shadow of the acclaimed 1999 film, the Netflix series as created, written, and directed by Zaillian, has a different approach to the story. Flynn recalls being initially concerned about the love for the film when he met with Zaillian, especially having not read the novel at the time, but was quickly put at ease.

“It’s a very different tone to the film,” Flynn says. “Which is great because it’s its own thing. In film adaptations they usually have to conflate things and create extra characters to tell part of the story that don’t work unless you have a whole novel to do so. [In the film], they wanted the characters to live together for a lot longer, which made them more interesting. But the brilliance of the book is that Dickie gets killed quite early on and then the jeopardy is that Tom is being tracked and you don’t know if he’s going to be found out. Steve wanted to do something that was true to that aspect of the book in terms of the structure of the story.”

The series, filmed on location around Italy, including in Atrani, Rome, and Capri, and in New York City, was shot entirely in film noir-style black and white. It’s intended to pay homage to the cinema of the novel’s time period, a visual choice that also sets it apart from prior onscreen versions.

“If you think about the film, it’s in the summer and everything’s in bright colors,” Flynn says. “Steve wanted us to be the only people on the beach when Tom meets Dickie and Marge.”

This specificity meant that Flynn and Scott, as well as Dakota Fanning, who plays Marge, were called into rehearse scenes sometimes several months before the actual filming would take place. At first, Flynn and Scott tapped into their theater backgrounds and used the rehearsals as an opportunity to explore their characters and to try new things in the scenes. Zaillian quickly put a stop to that.

“He was like, ‘What are you doing?’” Flynn says. “The rehearsal was literally just to figure out where he was going to put the camera. We realized quite quickly that it was not for us. He knew what he wanted to do [and] he was just trying to make a final decision about which angle to shoot from. Steve had it all in his head. And that’s what makes him great. He has the whole universe of the story in his mind before he starts doing anything else and talking to people about it.”

It was a new way of working for Flynn, who deftly balances a career in theater, film and TV, and music. Before Ripley he played George Knightley in Emma and David Bowie in Stardust, an off-kilter biopic about Bowie’s first U.S. tour in 1971. He has an extensive resume on London’s West End, including productions of Jerusalem, True West, Richard III, and Twelfth Night, as does Scott. (Flynn also recently concluded a lengthy stint as Richard Burton in Sam Mendes’ The Motive and the Cue at the Noël Coward Theatre.)

“Steve knew what he wanted, but also he trusted us,” Flynn says. “The piece is framed by the writing and the way it’s shot, and that’s the storytelling device—not a generated performance. So I think the process wouldn’t have suited a lot of actors, who might have to really feel like they’re burning up and creating something new in that moment. But I realized that I could just trust the words and be in the scene and let it be without pushing too hard.”

He adds, “That need to be crazy and spontaneous and do something new and fresh is there on sets, and most projects that I’m a part of, you see actors desperately trying to come up with something new and fresh. What I learned from this is that you can take the pressure off yourself and do something interesting and very nuanced to give the camera a chance to pick up something really deep from within your soul and the subtlety of what you’re saying if you believe the words. And there’s no better actor for that than Andrew.”

The relationship between Dickie and Tom, which is complex and fraught with an undercurrent of sexual tension, and Flynn and Scott wanted to ensure there was a “sensitivity” between the characters, just as a sensitivity existed between the two actors. Flynn describes a softness to himself and Scott—“It’s odd to be talking about myself like this,” he notes—that could be translated onscreen.

“Steve wanted a tenderness that you could believe was interpreted on Tom’s part as something romantic and some kind of soul connection, but it’s a very ambiguous one,” Flynn says. “Andrew and I always said we wanted it to feel like there’s a quiet bond that you understand and that’s not explained too much. Because you’ve got to know why they’re spending that time together. For Dickie, because of where he comes from and the schools he attended, there’s a way to do things. You don’t allow your crush on another boy to actually become anything else in the society he’s part of,” he says. “The fact that Dickie won’t budge on that means there’s only one way forward for Tom. And Tom is like a shark, always moving forward.”

A significant amount of the series’ dialogue occurs in Italian. Thanks to Zaillian’s intense attention to detail, the entire cast learned to speak the language—fluently—before production. Flynn took three to four hours of Italian lessons each week (“I’ve never had anything like it,” he says). The actor did not take painting lessons to prepare for Dickie’s artistic pursuits, which are hilariously depicted in the episodes as poorly-made Picasso knock-offs. The humor of Dickie’s paintings undercut the seriousness of the visual tone, as do many of Scott’s line readings throughout the show.

“The fact that it’s funny is surprising and I loved that,” says Flynn, who remembers him and Scott laughing when they saw the prop paintings. “It’s not billing itself as a comedy. But there’s a dark humor to the books that it reflects. There’s a cruel aspect to her writing that is also very enjoyable.”

Since filming Ripley, Flynn has stayed busy. He played a violent mobster in the 2022 film The Outfit, opposite Mark Rylance, and recently appeared in the 2023 World War II drama One Life, taking on the role of real-life hero Nicholas Winton alongside Anthony Hopkins. Between filming, he’s recorded two albums with collaborator Robert Macfarlane, including last year’s The Moon Also Rises, which marked Flynn’s sixth LP. After a much-needed break, he and Macfarlane will hit the road for a U.K. tour in May.

...But for now, the actor is happy to finally lay Dickie to rest.

“When a film or a TV takes a long time to come out there’s a sense of closure when it finally does,” Flynn says. “Now, my slate is clear and there’s a nice amount of clarity around that. I can’t believe my luck to be pulled in all of these interesting directions and different experiences and different collaborations.”'

[fuckyeahmarkgatiss]

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[devoursjohnlock]

Inside No. 9 | Plodding On (2 of 2)

[cliozaur]

Every time Burton shares an entertaining anecdote about Olivier, he emerges as an unreliable narrator. And Redfield consistently proves to be a meticulous fact-checker. It raises suspicion that Burton might have fabricated some of his other stories about his colleagues. They are still great and amusing even if they are not true.

In "The Motive and the Cue," they incorporated an episode where Burton recounts a tale of Olivier supposedly severing his hand in "Titus Andronicus." However, all the Redfield’s incriminating observations are attributed to Gielgud, who reveals them only when he and Burton are alone. This allows him to expose Burton without undermining his credibility in his colleagues’ eyes:

The reason why you can’t remember the speech is because it isn’t there. Titus doesn’t even chop his own hand, Aaron the Moor does it. […] So I don’t know which speech of Sir Laurence Olivier’s you are remembering, but it was not that one.