#scruffy dylan

[three-headed-monster]

dylan cozens for tva sports ahead of game 5

[etapereine]

📸 naikefotosport

[in-tua-deep]

had a dream where the main character was named dylan, and dylan was a wizard. magic in this world was a very stable give-and-take system

so there was this investigator, right, who was OBSESSED with figuring out how the fuck dylan was doing half the shit he was getting away with. because it was impossible!!

anyway the funniest possible thing was this detective and his frustration, right? because he was trying to figure out what was going on. and he was like "magic can't just DO this because it's stable"

anyway dylan's entire build was called "the unstable magician"

so, dylan's signature thing was time magic which reversed time by like, fifteen seconds. actually he also had a teenage apprentice/adopted daughter who he taught the same thing, so their signature thing was "if one of us gets exploded and killed just reverse time don't worry about it"

[keen2meecha]

need more scruffy women STAT

[dcangel]

Shitting bricks rn

Dylan O’Brien behind the scenes on the set of "Infinite". (2019)

📷©: harrietmakeup on Instagram

[cranberrymoons]

anyway. at some point in the future on a happier day, buck will fold himself down into the space on the floor under his ugly midcentury modern wayfair millennial dining table and eddie will be wearing boxers and a hoodie and he'll have a scruffy chin because they're on hour 78 of a 96 off. and everything will be warm and full of sunshine coming in from that big bay window and there will be a song playing crackling from the record player like maybe girl from the north country by bob dylan (specifically the version with johnny cash because eddie found an old copy of Nashville Skyline at the rose bowl flea market last month). and anyway. the song will be playing and the air will smell like good strong coffee, and buck will get down on the floor under that table and eddie's hand will reach down to scratch through the soft unstyled curly hair that has dried kind of wild and crazy on top of his head from last night's shower. and he'll lean back in his chair and smile down at him like :) and he'll say 'hey bud, what do you think you're doing?' and buck will give him this face 😊 and he'll say 'oh nothing just thought i'd say hi. and thanks for breakfast. and i love you.' while his hands push up the outsides of eddie's big meaty thighs. and eddie will say 'oh well if this is what i get for making scrambled eggs, I'm going to start doing it more often. who cares if eggs cost $11 right now' and buck will just laugh and say 'well that's my job actually. the egg making. I only let you do it this one time because I like you so much. but you'd better watch it mister.' as he's reaching into eddie's boxers to pull him out. he's only half hard because it's morning and nothing's happened yet, but buck goes in anyway, likes how he can feel eddie coming alive against his tongue and filling up all his senses at once. and the hand on the back of his head, and his grip going a little tight, and eddie still drinking his coffee where he's sitting in his chair. and when he comes buck will try to get up to climb in his lap but he will forget how big he is and bonk his head on the underside of the table and they'll spend the next ten minutes running around with the first aid kit to bandage up the frankly not that big cut on his forehead. and then buck (sitting on the edge of the bathtub by now with eddie perched on the closed lid of the toilet so he can finish dressing the wound) will say hey :) I love you. and Eddie will say I love you too! please keep your head in one piece though. and buck will say okay. next time I'll make you push your chair back a little more. also 🫶 your dick is still out. and then they'll have stupid sweet giggly laughing sex on the bathroom floor. which is kind of gross, but they don't really care.

[wolvesofinnistrad]

Thinking today about how sad it is we'll never see Dylan as Stiles again because like... boy has GROWN UP. Imagine the buffer, taller, scruffy bearded Dylan thats a better actor and open to doing gay roles playing our beloved Stiles now? I weep for the missed opportunity.

[invisibleicewands]

‘I wanted to be seen as the greatest actor of all time. Then I realised that was nonsense’: Michael Sheen on pride, parenting and paying it forward

He’s the feted star who cracked Hollywood, but it was only when he swapped LA for his home town in Wales that he was able to do his most meaningful work yet

By Simon Hattenstone

Michael Sheen has been fabulous in so many TV dramas and movies, it’s hard to know where to start. But perhaps his most memorable appearance came earlier this year in a TV show that didn’t require him to do any acting at all. The Assembly was a Q&A session in which he took questions from a group of young neurodiverse people. Sheen didn’t have a clue what would be asked, and no subject was off limits. It made for life-affirming telly. The 55-year-old Welsh actor was so natural, warm and encouraging as he answered a series of nosy, surprising and inspired questions. I watched it thinking what a brilliant community worker Sheen would be. And, in a way, that’s what he has become in recent years.

“The Assembly’s had more response than anything else I’ve ever done,” Sheen tells me. “Almost every day someone will come up to me and mention it, particularly people who have children with autism. They say it was just so lovely to see something where the interviewers were empowered. I had a fantastic time.” He replays some of his favourite moments: the young man Leo who took an age to start talking, and then delivered the most beautifully phrased question about the influence of Dylan Thomas on Sheen’s life; the woman who asked what it was like to be married to a woman only five years older than his daughter; and the question that came at the end: “What’s your name, again?” He smiles: “And Harry with the trilby on. Just the nicest man ever.” You came across as an incredibly nice man, too, I say. “Aw well, it’s hard not to be when you’re among all those amazing people, innit.”

Today we meet in London, ostensibly to talk about A Very Royal Scandal, a gripping mini-series about Prince Andrew’s infamous Newsnight interview with Emily Maitlis – the disastrous attempt to defend his honour that sealed his fall from grace. But we don’t get to the show till it’s almost going home time. Sheen’s too busy discussing all the other stuff that matters to him, away from business.

Six years ago, he swapped life in Los Angeles for Port Talbot, the steel town where he grew up. These days he calls himself a not-for-profit actor – a term he happily admits he’s invented. “It means that I try to use as much of the money I earn as I can to go towards developing projects and supporting various things. Having had some experiences of not-for-profit organisations and social enterprises, I realised that’s what I want to do with my business. And my business is me.” He grins. There was a suggestion that he might stop acting in order to do good works, but he says that never made sense; only by getting decent gigs can he earn money to put back into the community.

It has to be said he’s got the air of a not-for-profit actor today – scruffy black top, sloppy black pants, black trainers. With a bird’s-nest beard and a thicket of greying curls, he looks nicely crumpled. But give him a shave and a trim, allow him a flash of that electric smile, and he could still pass as a thirtysomething superstar.

Sheen is best known for transforming into household names – Brian Clough in The Damned United; Chris Tarrant in Quiz; David Frost in Frost/Nixon; a trio of films as Tony Blair (The Deal, The Queen, and The Special Relationship); Kenneth Williams in Fantabulosa. His Prince Andrew is compelling; by turns petulant, pathetic, monstrous and poignant. He has a gift for inhabiting famous people – voice, body, soul, the works. He’s equally adept as a regular character actor – the dapper angel Aziraphale in Good Omens, pale and pinched as spurned suitor William Boldwood in the 2015 film of Far From the Madding Crowd, the tortured father of a daughter with muscular dystrophy in last year’s BBC drama Best Interests. He even plays a winning version of himself alongside David Tennant (and their respective partners Anna Lundberg and Georgia Tennant) in the lockdown hit TV series Staged.

But the work that changed his life was his 2011 epic three-day reimagining of The Passion on the streets of Port Talbot, involving more than 1,000 people from the local community. It was years in the making, and during that time he decided he would leave Los Angeles to come home. Initially, home just meant Britain, probably London. But the longer he spent with his people, the more it became apparent to him that home could only mean one thing – returning to Port Talbot, and helping the disadvantaged town in whatever way he could.

He admits that for many years he didn’t have a clue about the reality of life in Port Talbot. He had always lived in one bubble or another. His parents were hardly flush, but they had decent jobs – his mother was a secretary, his father a personnel manager at British Steel, and both were active in amateur dramatics. Sheen was academically gifted (he considered studying English at Oxford University before winning a place at Rada), a talented footballer (he had trials with Cardiff and Swansea) and an exceptional young actor. Then came the bubble of Rada and London, followed by the bubble of LA.

It was only when he started to work on The Passion that he began to understand his home town. One day he was rehearsing with a group in a community hall when he was approached by a woman. “She told me she was the mother of this boy who’d been in my class at school called Nigel. When I was 11, he fell off a cliff in an accident and died. It was the first time I’d known someone to die. She said, ‘I’ve started up a grief counselling group here. I have a little bit of money from the council because there is no grief counselling in this area.’” She’d had no counselling when Nigel died, nor in the 31 years since. “And all these years later, she’d set up a little grief counselling thing with a bit of money, so that was extraordinary to hear.” Next time he returned he discovered that the group no longer existed because of council cuts.

Every time he went back he discovered something new. He met a group that supported young carers. Sheen doesn’t try to disguise how ignorant he was. “I said, ‘All right, what are young carers?’ And they said, ‘They’re children who are supporting a family member.’ And I’m like, ‘OK, this is a profession, they get paid, right?’ And I was told, ‘No, they don’t get paid and our little organisation gives them a bit of respite – once a week we take them bowling or to the cinema.’ I went bowling with them one night and there were eight-year-old kids looking after their mother and bringing up the younger kids. This one organisation was trying to take these kids bowling one night a week, and then that went. No funding for that, either. That kind of stuff was shocking.”

As a child, SHEEN says he was oblivious to struggle because he was so driven by his own dreams. First, it was football. By his mid-teens it was acting. West Glamorgan Youth Theatre, which he calls “one of the best youth theatres in the world”, was on his doorstep. “The miners’ strike was on when I was 15 in Port Talbot and I wasn’t really aware of it at the time. That’s how blinkered I was, because I was so obsessed by acting at that point.” Acting wasn’t regarded as a lofty fantasy in Port Talbot as it may have been in many working-class communities. After all, the town had produced Richard Burton and Anthony Hopkins.

In his late teens, heading off for Rada, Sheen feared he would be surrounded by giant talents who would dwarf his. When he discovered that wasn’t the case, he suffered delusions of grandeur. “I wanted to be recognised as the greatest actor in the world,” he says bluntly. In the second year, the students did their first public production: Oedipus Rex. “I thought, well obviously I’ll be cast as Oedipus, then we’ll perform Oedipus to the public and when the world sees me for the first time I’ll be carried shoulder-high through the streets of London and hailed as the greatest actor of all time.” I look for an ironic wink or nod, but none is forthcoming.

Sure enough, he was cast in the lead role. “We did our first public production and I thought I was brilliant.” But nothing changed. It didn’t bring him instant acclaim. By the third night, he could barely get through the performance.

Were you a bit of a cock back then, I ask. He shakes his head. “No, I was having a breakdown. I was crying most of the time. I just fell apart. I spoke to the principal of Rada and I said, ‘I can’t continue at drama school, I have to leave.’ And he said just take some time off, which I did, and two or three weeks later I slowly came back and then completely changed the way I acted.”

Until then he believed acting was just about what he did. “I thought you just worked out how to say the lines as cleverly as you could; it had nothing to do with responding to other people or being in the moment. It was showing off, essentially. And there’s a ceiling to where you can get with that. That breakdown I had was because I’d reached the ceiling and didn’t know how to go any further. That’s why I fell apart.”

He gradually put himself and his technique back together. Was he left with the same ambition? “No. The idea of being considered the best actor of all time becomes nonsense.” In 1991, Sheen left Rada early, because he’d been offered a job he couldn’t turn down. He made his professional debut opposite Vanessa Redgrave in a West End production of Martin Sherman’s When She Danced. Theatre was Sheen’s first love, and his rise was meteoric. From the off, he was cast as the lead in the classics (Romeo and Juliet, Peer Gynt, Henry V, The Seagull) and the 20th-century masterpieces (Norman in The Dresser, Salieri and Mozart in Amadeus, Jimmy Porter in Look Back In Anger).

Sheen was doing exceptionally well when he and his then partner Kate Beckinsale moved to LA for her work in the early 2000s. She was four years younger than him, and already a movie star. Their daughter Lily, now an actor, was a toddler. He assumed that his transition to stardom in LA would be as seamless as it had been in Britain. But it wasn’t. His theatrical acclaim counted for nothing. In 2003, he and Beckinsale split up, but he stayed in LA to be close to Lily.

The first few years, he says, were so lonely and dispiriting. “I found myself living in Los Angeles, there to be with my daughter but just seeing her once a week. I had no career there – it was essentially like starting again. I had no friends and spent a lot of time on my own. It was tough. Slowly I realised how it was affecting me.” In what way? “I remember coming out of an audition for Alien vs Predator, to play a tech geek computer guy with five lines and really caring about it, and then thinking: ‘I can be playing fucking Hamlet at home, what am I doing, what’s this all about?’” He says he’d been so lucky – always working, never having to audition, getting the prize jobs. And suddenly in LA he was an outsider; a nobody.

He and Beckinsale are often cited as role models for joint parenting by ex-couples. In 2016, Beckinsale, Lily and Sheen staged a hilarious photo for James Corden’s The Late, Late Show, recreating the moment of giving birth 17 years earlier. Beckinsale reclines on a kitchen table with Lily sitting between her legs, as an alarmed-looking Sheen stands to the side. Have they always got on well since splitting up? “We’ve had our ups and downs, but we’re very important in each other’s lives. It would be really sad if we weren’t – like cutting off a whole part of your life. I’m not saying it doesn’t have its challenges, and I’m sure it’s been harder for her than for me.” Why? “Because … ” He pauses and smiles. “Because I’m more of a twat!” In what way? Another smile. “I’m not going to tell you that, am I?”

Sheen’s break in America came when he was spotted by a casting director who told him he would be perfect for a new project. Ironically, it was to play former British prime minister Tony Blair in a British TV drama called The Deal, directed by British film-maker Stephen Frears and shot in Britain. The Deal led to Frears’s The Queen, about Elizabeth II’s frigid response to the death of Diana, Princess of Wales leading to a crisis for the monarchy. Again he played Blair, this time riding to the rescue of the royals. The movie was nominated for six Oscars (Helen Mirren won best actress) and he never struggled in America again.

The longer he lived in LA, however, the more rooted he felt to Port Talbot. And the further he travelled, around the world or just in Britain, the better he understood how disadvantaged it was. “If you’re in Port Talbot one day and then the next you’re in a little town in Oxfordshire where David Cameron is the MP, it’s fairly obvious there are very different setups there. And that was connected to a political awakening.” He started to read up on Welsh history. In 2017, he returned his OBE because he thought it would be hypocritical to hold on to an honour celebrating empire when he was giving a Raymond Williams lecture on the “tortured history” of the relationship between Wales and the British state.

He began to reassess his past. “I became more aware of the opportunity I’d had in an area where there wasn’t much opportunity. At a certain point you go, Oh, people are having to volunteer to make that youth theatre happen that I’m a product of.” You’d taken it for granted? “Completely. I was happy to think everything I was doing was because of my own talent and I was making my own opportunities, and as I got older I thought maybe that’s not the whole story.”

In 2016, the long-running American TV series Masters of Sex, in which Sheen starred as the pioneering sex researcher William Masters, came to an end. Lily was now 17 and preparing for college. “I suddenly thought, Oh, I can go home now.” And six years ago he finally did – to Baglan, a village adjoining Port Talbot. Since then he has been involved in loads of community projects.

He mentions a few in passing, but he doesn’t tell me he sold his two homes (one in America, the other in Wales) to ensure the 2019 Homeless World Cup went ahead as planned in Cardiff. Nor does he mention that a couple of years ago he started Mab Gwalia (translating to “Son of Wales”), which proudly labels itself a “resistance movement”. On its website, it states: “Mab Gwalia believes that opportunity should not only be available to those who can afford it. The ambition is to build a movement that makes change.” Its projects have supported homeless people, veterans, preschool children on the autism spectrum, kids in care, victims of high-cost credit, and local journalism, which is a particular passion. “In the early 1970s in Port Talbot, there was something like 12 different newspapers. There are none now. None. Communities don’t feel represented, don’t feel their voice is heard and don’t know if the information they’re getting about what’s going on in the community is correct or not. Those are terrifying things, and without local journalism that’s what happens.”

Perhaps surprisingly, he’s even found time for the day job. Earlier this year, he played Nye Bevan in Tim Pryce’s new play about the founding father of the NHS. He also made his directing debut with The Way, a dystopian, and prophetic, three-part TV drama about the closure of the Port Talbot steelworks that results in local riots spreading across the country. How does he feel about the rioting that has scarred the country in recent weeks? “I feel the same way I think most people do. It was awful and terrifying. I worry about how much a hard-right agenda that has been growing for a long time has moved further and further into the mainstream and has clearly got more connected. It’s frightening.” Does he think the new Labour government can deliver the positive change it promises? “Pppfft.”He exhales heavily. “More optimistic than the Conservatives being in power.” Who did he vote for? “That’s my God-given right to remain a secret, isn’t it? It wasn’t the Tories!”

I ask if he’s in favour of Welsh independence. “I don’t know how I feel about it one way or the other, but I would like there to be an open discussion about everything that entails. The problem is when it gets shut down and you don’t get to talk about it.”

Would he ever go into politics? He looks appalled at the idea. “Oh God, no. No! I’d beawful.”Why?“Because I don’t want to say what other people are telling me to say if I don’t agree with it. Look at all those people who voted against the two-child benefit cap and had the whip taken away from them. That’s bollocks. People say I should go into politics because I’m passionate about things and I speak my mind. But then you get into politics and you’re not allowed to do that any more. I’ve got far more of a platform as myself. I can say what I want to say.”

Fair enough. I’ve got another idea. A couple of years ago he gave an inspired motivational speech for the Wales football team before the 2022 men’s World Cup, on the TV show A League of Their Own. Would he take the job as Wales manager if offered it? He looks just as horrified as the idea of a life in politics. “No!” Why not? “Because it’s a completely different profession. You need to know about football. I played football when I was younger, but I wouldn’t have a clue. Wouldn’t. Have. A. Clue. Just because you can make a speech doesn’t mean you’d be any good at that sort of stuff.” He says he was embarrassed about the speech initially, but now feels proud of it. “Schools get in touch and say, ‘We’ve been studying it with the class.’ I put hidden things in. There are rabbit holes you can go down.” He quotes the line, “You sons of Speed” and tells me that’s a reference to the idolised former manager and player Gary Speed who took his life in 2011. You can hear the emotion in his voice.

I’ve been waiting for Sheen to mention the new TV drama about Prince Andrew. Most actors direct you to the project they’re promoting as soon as you sit down with them. Let’s talk about the new show, I  eventually say.

This is already the second drama about the Andrew interview. Did he know that Scoop, which came out earlier this year, was already in the works? “Yes, I knew before I agreed to do this.” Was it a race to see which would get out first? “There was no race, no. We always knew ours would come out after.” What would he say to people who think it’s pointless watching another film on the same subject? “Ours is a three-part story, so it’s able to breathe a lot more. There’s a lot more to it. In our story, Andrew and Emily are the main characters whereas they were very much the supporting ones in the other one.”

Did it change his opinion of Andrew? “No. It showed the dangers of being in a bubble, having talked about being in a bubble myself! The dangers of privilege.” He talks with sensitivity about Andrew’s downfall. “The thing that really struck me was when Andrew came back from the Falklands there was no one more revered, in a way. I didn’t realise his job was to fly helicopters to draw enemy fire away from the ships. I couldn’t believe they would put a royal in that position, so he was genuinely courageous. He was good-looking, a prince, and had everything going for him. Since then everything has just gone down and down and down.” He’s had so little control over his life, Sheen says. Take his relationships. “He was told he couldn’t be with [American actor] Koo Stark any more because of the controversy. He was essentially told he had to divorce Sarah Ferguson because the royal family, particularly Philip allegedly, was concerned that she would bring the family into disrepute.”

Did he end up feeling more empathetic towards him? “No!” he says sharply. Then he softens slightly. “Well, empathy? I felt I understood a bit more – because that’s my job – about what was going on. But he’s incredibly privileged and has exploited that. It seems like he has a lot taken away from him but probably rightfully so.”

A Very Royal Scandal is like The Crown in that it’s great drama but you’re never sure what’s real. Are Andrew’s lines simply made up? “It’s a combination of research and stories out there, and little snippets and invention.” While Emily Maitlis is an executive producer, Andrew most certainly is not. “Well, that’s the real difficulty for our story,” Sheen says. “On the one hand, you’ve got Emily as an exec, so you know everything to do with her is coming from the horse’s mouth. But everything to do with Andrew, not only is it really difficult to get the actual stuff, also we don’t know what he did.” He pauses. “Or didn’t do.” He’s talking about Virginia Giuffre’s allegation that Andrew raped her, which he denied. In the end, Giuffre’s civil case was dropped after an out-of-court settlement was reached on no admission of liability by Prince Andrew, with Giuffre reportedly paid around £12m.

I had assumed Sheen would be a staunch republican, but he doesn’t feel strongly either way. “There are lots of positives about royals, and lots of negatives.” His bugbear is that the heir to the throne gets to be Prince of Wales. “Personally, I would want the title of Prince of Wales to be given back to Wales to decide what to do with it, and I definitely think there’s a lot of wealth that could be used better.”

The biggest change for Sheen since returning to Wales is his family life. In 2019, he revealed that he had a new partner, the Swedish actor Anna Lundberg, that she was 25 years younger than him, and that she was pregnant. They now have two daughters – Lyra who is coming up to five, and two-year-old Mabli. As well as Staged, the couple have also appeared together on Gogglebox. They look so happy, nestling into each other, laughing at the same funnies, tearing up over the same heartbreakers. She also seems naturally funny. Given that two of his former partners (Sarah Silverman and Aisling Bea) are comedians, have all his exes had a good sense of humour? He thinks about it. “Yes. Yeah, you’ve got to have a laugh, haven’t you?” And he’s always got on well with them after splitting up? “Yeah, pretty much.”

When asked about the age difference between Lundberg and him on The Assembly, he acknowledged that they were surprised when they got together. “We were both aware it would be difficult and challenging. Ultimately, we felt it was worth it because of how we felt about each other, and now we have two beautiful children together.” He also said that being an older father worried him at times. “It makes me sad, thinking about the time I won’t have with them.”

Does being a dad of such tiny kids make him feel young or old? “Both,” he says. “My body feels very old. But everything else feels much younger. I’m 55 and it’s knackering running around after little kids. Just physically, it’s very demanding. And I’m at a point in my life where I’m aware of my physical limitations now. But in other ways it’s completely liberating, and I’m able to appreciate it more now.”

Has he learned about fatherhood from the first time round? “Yeah, I think so. I’m around more now. That’s a big part of it. When Lily was young, I was in my early 30s and doing films for the first time, so Kate would stay in Los Angeles with Lily and I would go off and do whatever.” Did Beckinsale resent that? “I don’t know that she resented it. Kate was doing better than me in terms of profile at the time, so it was different. Given that we then split up and I saw Lily even less, I very much regretted being away as much. So this time I wanted to make sure that wasn’t the case. That’s partly why I’ve set up a Welsh production company. I don’t want to work away from them as much.”

Talking of which, he says, what’s the time? “I’ve got to get back to my kids.”

On his way out, I ask what advice he would give his younger self. He says he was asked that recently and gave a glib answer. “I said buy stock in Apple.” What should he have said? He thinks about it, and finally says he’d have no advice for his younger self. He’d rather reverse the question, and think what his younger self would say to him if he tried to advise him.

“I saw an amazing clip of Stephen Colbert saying your life is an accumulation of every bad choice you’ve made and every good choice you’ve made, and the great challenge of life is to say yes to it. To say, ‘I love living, I embrace living.’ And in order to do that you have to embrace all the pain, all the grief, all the sadness, all the fucking mistakes because without that you don’t have all the other stuff.” He’s on a roll now, louder and more passionate by the word. “And I’d hate it if someone came and went, ‘Don’t do this, no do that.’ Then you just sail through your life. It would be death, wouldn’t it? So I’d tell my older self to go fuck himself.”

[pupsmailbox]

DOG︰WOLF ID PACK

NAMES︰ ace. affen. affie. aidi. airendale. akita. aksaray. alano. alex. alfie. amarok. amaruq. annie. apollo. archie. arianell. aries. armant. artemis. artois. ash. asher. aurora. badulf. bailey. bandit. barbet. bardou. barkley. basenji. bear. beau. bella. beowulf. biewer. blue. bluey. bolt. boris. boxer. brad. brenard. brittany. brutus. bud. buddie. buddy. buster. buttercup. buzz. cailean. cain. cairn. caleb. canaan. cane. canid. canis. carlo. carol. catellus. celeste. charles. charlie. chase. chewie. chip. cliff. clifford. coco. collie. conall. conan. conell. cooper. daciana. daisy. dale. darwin. dash. daxie. dexter. diana. dire. dixie. duke. dylan. echo. emory. eros. eskie. ester. fang. fenrir. fido. finn. ford. fox. frankie. ghan. glen. gold. gordon. gray. grey. griffon. grim. grimmwolf. hamilton. harley. havana. hero. hound. howl. hunter. indie. indy. jack. joey. kai. kaleb. kalev. kelpie. ken. kerry. kibble. kibs. kit. lady. leo. leon. llewelyn. lola. lowell. lucine. lucy. luna. lupin. lyall. lyca. lycro. lycus. mace. maisie. mal. malinois. marley. max. mia. miles. milo. mingan. mob. molly. mudd. mutt. nala. night. noire. noiresse. noirette. nova. nugget. nyx. oliver. ollie. orion. oscar. paxton. peach. pebble. phoebe. picard. pila. pluto. poppy. puff. pup. ralph. randelle. randy. red. redd. reika. remus. rex. rhys. riley. rocky. rolfo. roman. romulus. rosie. rover. rowdy. roxie. roxy. ruby. rudy. ruff. rufus. ruppell. russel. russell. sadie. scottie. scout. scruff. scruffy. selena. shep. shepard. shepherd. silver. sophie. spike. spitz. spot. stafford. star. stella. stick. storm. stormy. suki. teddy. terry. tiger. tosa. venerie. walker. will. wolf. wolfgang. zev. zip. zoey.

PRONOUNS︰ arf/arf. awoo/awoo. ba/ball. ba/bark. bark/bark. bite/bite. ble/blep. bo/bone. bo/bork. bork/bork. cae/canine. can/cani. cani/cani. canid/canidae. canin/canine. canine/canine. cha/chase. chew/chew. claw/claw. co/collar. coll/collar. cute/cute. dig/dig. dog/dog. drool/drool. en/energy. fang/fang. fe/fetch. floof/floof. fluff/fluff. fluff/fluffy. fur/fur. fur/furry. ga/game. grey/grey. grim/grim. gro/growl. growl/growl. grr/grr. guard/guard. ho/howl. houn/hound. hound/hound. howl/howl. hunt/hunt. jump/jump. lea/leash. leash/leash. lo/loyal. loyal/loyal. lu/lupi. lup/lup. moon/moon. mutt/mutt. muz/muzzle. night/night. pa/paw. paw/paw. pawprint/pawprit. pet/pet. pla/play. pla/playful. play/play. pooch/pooch. predator/predator. pro/protect. pup/pup. puppy/puppy. ri/rir. ri/ruff. roll/roll. rough/rough. ru/run. ruff/ruff. run/run. silv/silver. slob/slober. snap/snap. snarl/snarl. sni/sniff. snout/snout. soft/soft. squi/squirrel. star/star. star/starry. sti/stick. tai/tail. tail/tail. teeth/teeth. teeth/teething. tre/treat. tre/tree. wa/wag. wa/walk. wag/wag. walk/walk. wolf/wolf. wolf/wolve. wolv/wolve. woof/woof. yap/yap. yip/yip. 🌳. 🎾. 🐕. 🐕‍🦺. 🐩. 🐶. 🐺. 🐾. 🐿. 🔆. 🥎. 🦮. 🦴. 🧸.

[theinternetisfulloftrash]

Of course, Dylan attracts a hot girl in a black corset on the subway 😂

It tracks, yeah!

Annoyingly hot little fucker is a human magnet, ngl (for those with discerning and refined taste anyway) ;)

anon is referring to THIS post.

[loveothislife]

Timothée Chalamet: ‘Young Dylan was a contrarian. I was so obedient!’

Bob Dylan’s love of films has always inspired his work – but playing him in one is a another matter, reveals the star of A Complete Unknown

The Telegraph | January 17, 2025

The first time we glimpse Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan in the new biopic A Complete Unknown, he appears as a scruffy urchin in a Huck Finn cap and battered jacket, hunching his wiry shoulders as if steeling himself against bitter winds, or perhaps building his nerve to take on the world. It is 1961 and we are meeting Dylan as he arrives in New York, all of 19-years-old, shedding his given name of Robert Zimmerman, and every bit as anonymous as the title proclaims.

Key to the success of any biopic is the audience’s willingness to accept an actor inhabiting a familiar physical presence. In this respect, the 29-year-old modern heartthrob might seem odd casting. Physically, the leonine Chalamet doesn’t bear more than superficial resemblance to Dylan, lacking his prominent nose, baggy eyes or jowly features.

Yet speaking to Chalamet at a preview of the film in London, he made an interesting observation about Dylan’s presence. “You know, you have these names like Elvis Presley or Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, all these gods of culture, and you can easily associate a face with them, because there’s so much media on them,” said Chalamet. “But the truly elusive figure Bob is, it’s sort of harder to pin a face to him.”

What unfolds across the film’s two hours and 20 minutes is an act of self-transformation – the spectacle of a great actor playing a real person whose own character is a kind of act.

A key scene, appropriately, takes place inside a cinema, where Dylan and his girlfriend (Elle Fanning playing Sylvie Russo, a lightly fictionalised version of Dylan’s real-life paramour Suze Rotolo) are watching Bette Davis in Now, Voyager. Russo comments on Davis’s character being on a journey to find herself. “She didn’t find herself,” Dylan notes. “She just made herself into something different.”

It is something Dylan has been doing all his life. I once asked Joan Baez (elegantly portrayed in the film by Monica Barbaro as his lover, singing partner and early champion) how well she felt she knew Dylan. She smiled and said, quite seriously, “Bobby’s unknowable.”

If that’s what Baez thinks – a woman who has known him most of his adult life – what chance is there for any film-maker or actor to get under his skin? Writer and director James Mangold’s thoughtful movie doesn’t really attempt to solve Dylan the enigma as much as Dylan’s multifariousness. “You’re kind of an asshole, Bob,” Baez’s character notes at one point, which Dylan seems to accept as fair comment, an interesting aside being that both Baez and Dylan approved the script.

“Dylan was really helpful,” according to Mangold, who also spoke to me at the screening. “He shared a lot of stuff from the inside about what he felt about so many people wanting things from him at such a young age.”

Mangold made the Oscar-winning 2005 Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line starring Joaquin Phoenix, which took a conventional narrative form, locating the roots of Cash’s complexity in childhood trauma. Adapting Elijah Wald’s 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric!, Mangold decided that he needed a different strategy for Dylan. “There was no real way to unlock Bob that was going to satisfy the kind of standard movie unlocking – like, Oh my God, he’s been hiding that secret, and now he’s spoken it, he’s released!,” Mangold says.

“I think if there is any real secret, it is the burden and joy of something none of us can completely understand: how a young man can write so many of the greatest songs of all time, and become one of the greatest artists of the last 100 years, and secure that position before his 24th birthday. I don’t even know if Bob can explain it, and do we have to? Sometimes people are born with something, and there is no specific Freudian event of their genius that somehow is the cost. It’s actually that they’re touched in some ways.”

Chalamet is not the first actor to play this mercurial character. In Todd Haynes’s brilliant, experimental drama I’m Not There, he was portrayed by six actors, including Christian Bale, Heath Ledger and Richard Gere. Ben Whishaw played Dylan as a rebellious poet channelling Arthur Rimbaud, black teenager Marcus Carl Franklin was cast as a young homeless busker and Cate Blanchett memorably evoked the lean, druggy, androgynous rocker who is effectively emerging as A Complete Unknown ends. Blanchett’s performance has become a fan favourite, partly because it has an element of comedically edgy impersonation whilst embracing an androgyny that reflects Dylan’s near universal appeal.

A 1978 review in The New York Times pertinently noted that “as an actor, Mr Dylan specializes in giving the simultaneous impressions that he isn’t really interested in acting, and that he is always acting anyway.” For a songwriter who opens up vast interior worlds in his work, Dylan never appears sincere on screen. He is a very flimsy presence in Sam Peckinpah’s elegiac Western Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, for which he at least provided a classic soundtrack. He appears to be drunk all the way through abysmal 80s rock romance Hearts of Fire.

Dylan’s love for movies permeates his work, even if his awkward screen presence suggests movies don’t always love him back. His accomplished amateur oil paintings often feature lovingly recreated scenes from old movies, whilst actors, film characters and whole lines of borrowed dialogue flicker through his songs, from name-checking Bette Davis in 1965’s Desolation Row to setting 1986 epic Brownsville Girl at a screening of Gregory Peck’s classic Western The Gunfighter.

Anita Ekberg, Brigitte Bardot, Sophia Loren, Peter O’Toole, Al Pacino and Marlon Brando are amongst the actors to have walk-on parts in Dylan lyrics, whilst Leonardo DiCaprio makes an incongruous appearance in Dylan’s fanciful 2012 retelling of Titanic, Tempest. A fan website compiles 61 movies quoted in Dylan songs, a favourite apparently being The Maltese Falcon starring Humphrey Bogart, from which Dylan appropriated lines for three songs on 1985’s Empire Burlesque.

The Dylan portrayed by Chalamet in A Complete Unknown is at the start of his musical journey, but already a trickster and a fabulist. He drew heavily on Dylan’s 1960s press conferences. “He’s so confrontational in his attitude, sort of a wise-ass. When my own career took off, I was so obedient! Just to see how contrarian Dylan was at that age was so appealing to me.”

Dylan has offered words of encouragement, albeit via a typically ambiguous message on social media platform X. “Timmy’s a brilliant actor, so I’m sure he’s going to be completely believable as me. Or a younger me. Or some other me.”

“That was hugely affirming,” admitted Chalamet, who learnt to perform 30 Dylan songs for the role. Despite Dylan requesting a script and agreeing to personal meetings, Mangold seems equally uncertain of the extent of his real interest, noting that the first thing Dylan asked him was “so what’s this movie about?” Making his own enquiries, Elijah Wald, author of the source material, was told “Dylan doesn’t read about Dylan.”

For Mangold, it was vital that Chalamet and all his actors playing real people should have the freedom to bring their own characters to the role. “Timothée’s exceptionally bright, exceptionally logical, focused and verbal and articulate. There’s a lot I felt he could burrow into with this character. You’re playing a real person but if you want a perfect representation, we can actually watch footage of the real person...”

A Complete Unknown succeeds because it offers a visceral, entertaining glimpse into another side of Bob Dylan, rather than attempting a definitive portrait. “Who’s Bob Dylan?” as the man himself said at a press conference in 1986. “I’m only Bob Dylan when I have to be Bob Dylan. Most of the time I can just be myself.” Whoever that is.

Text: Neil McCormick, Chief Music Critic 📸: Macall Polay/Searchlight Pictures; Rowland Scherman/Hulton Archive; Michael Ochs Archives

[lulu2992]

Uncovering the unreleased Far Cry 5 in-game Encyclopedia

The almost complete but unused in-game encyclopedia, reconstructed thanks to the oasisstrings file.

Please note that it’s still cut content, so some information might not be relevant anymore.

You can read the oasisstrings file here. Pictures from this encyclopedia were also extracted and posted by @xbaebsae here.

Part 6: Characters

Aaron "Tweak" Kirby

Uppers, downers, sideway-ers... Tweak is all about pushing the limits of the human condition.

Adelaide Drubman

A confident go-getter with deep pockets to do whatever she wants, like living with booze, bazookas, and boy toy Xander Flynn.

Bo Adams

A hardcore survivalist that chooses to live out in the woods and off the grid.

Boomer

A scruffy pal with unparalleled loyalty.

Cameron Burke

A U.S. Marshal with an agenda. The only thing standing between him and his political aspirations is the Project at Eden's Gate.

Casey Fixman

A grill cook with a classified past. Most locals don’t believe his outrageous war stories or the wisdom he serves up with every order.

Chad Wolanski

A self-styled prepper chef who sells food out of his food truck since his restaurant "The Grill Streak" burned down.

Dr. Charles Lindsey

A veterinarian drafted into service as a medic. There's no one else to do it, and aren't we all animals?

Cheeseburger

Orphaned as a cub and raised by Wade Fowler, he's the star attraction at the F.A.N.G. Center. He loves eating cheeseburgers.

Clutch Nixon

A legendary stuntman who left this world the way he entered it: Face first onto a pile of rocks.

Dave Fowler

Wade Fowler's brother, he runs the business end of the F.A.N.G. Center.

Richard "Dutch" Roosevelt

An old prepper who'd worked himself to the bone and lost everything even before Eden's Gate came to town. Same shit, different horse.

Dylan

(no description found)

Eli Palmer

A bonafide prepper and the leader of the Whitetail Militia. He helped Eden's Gate design their survival bunkers before he wised up.

Faith Seed

The Siren in the East. The youngest in the Seed family pacifies unruly followers to make way for the Collapse. Some believe she's only an illusion.

George Wilson

George is a Whitetail Militia and baseball enthusiast, but spends most of this time as a lookout because of his age.

Grace Armstrong

A medal-winning shooter and army sniper with a vendetta against Eden’s Gate.

Guy Marvel

A genius movie director envisioning a masterpiece of anarchy and gold statue wins. Even an auteur needs help to make movie magic.

Deputy Joey Hudson

One of your fellow Hope County Deputies who has absolutely no time for bullshit and has the fists to back herself up.

Hurk Drubman Jr.

His wit and intellect may have been blunted by paint huffing, but that hasn't stopped him from living a life of adventure.

Hurk Drubman Sr.

A retired oil baron who is the undisputed master of his domain... what's left of it after the divorce.

Jacob Seed

The Soldier in the North. The eldest Seed brother serves Joseph by creating the army that will defend the Project with their lives.

Pastor Jerome Jeffries

The local man of God who will do whatever it takes to protect the people of Hope County – even if it costs him his soul.

Jess Black

Dutch’s niece. Jess is a loner who nearly lost her life in Jacob's camps, only to discover a new talent in the process: killing Peggies.

John Seed

The Baptist in the West. The youngest of the Seed brothers, John is in charge of reaping the land of supplies that will help the Project survive.

Joseph Seed

The Father. The middle Seed brother heard a Voice that told him to initiate a great Project, to prepare for the Collapse of everything. And so he has.

Kim Rye

A world traveler who chose Hope County to put down roots, and those roots are on the way - she's in her third trimester.

Larry Parker

Genius or crackpot? Science will decide.

Mary May Fairgrave

The tough-as-nails barkeep who blames Eden's Gate for the death of her parents.

Merle Briggs

A local prepper. Merle could talk your ears off about his dream bunker, or the shelf life of canned goods.

Wilhelmina Mable

Wilhelmina Maybelline, big cat whisperer and taxidermist. The well-being of Peaches the cougar is her top priority.

Nadine Abercrombie

The last living member of a family of hoarders, though she considers herself a collector. Much classier than simply hoarding. And more selective.

Nancy

(no description found)

Nick Rye

The best dang pilot in Hope County. Give him a chance and he'll put on a show.

Peaches

The long-time pet of Miss Mable. Probably named for the color of her fur and not the sweet disposition she lacks.

Deputy Stacy Pratt (yes, his first name is actually spelled Stacy in the files)

One of your fellow Hope County Deputies who’s a good cop when his ego doesn't get in the way.

Dr. Sarah Perkins

A lone biologist determined to unravel the mysteries of how Jacob's Judge wolves are created.

Sharky Boshaw

A wanted arsonist, Charlemange Victor Boshaw IV hides out where he can live his fire-blazing, rockstar fantasies.

Sherri Woodhouse

She gave up city life, opened a fishing store, and began the hunt for her family’s missing legendary whiskey.

Skylar Kohrs

A high-powered expert fly fisher hell-bent on landing a legendary fish.

Tammy Barnes

Once a homemaker, now the chief interrogator for the Whitetail Militia. They say her marshmallow blondies are to die for.

Tracey Lader

A woman determined to bring down Eden's Gate, especially Faith. They used to be friends and the sting of betrayal fuels her wrath.

Virgil Minkler

A trusted mayor for the past 7 terms, now hell-bent on stopping the production of Bliss after it took the life of his son.

Wade Fowler

The co-owner of the F.A.N.G. Center, an animal rescue facility that takes in orphaned wild animals.

Walker

A member of Eli's Whitetail Militia.

Wendell Redler

He made it through Nam with his buddies. Now he’s an old man, his buddies are gone, and this is not the America he fought for in his youth.

Wheaty

The smart-ass quartermaster for the Whitetail Militia who also has a radio broadcast to counter the Father's propaganda.

Earl Whitehorse

The devoted sheriff of Hope County. He believes delivering justice with a gun should be a last resort. On the eve of his retirement, duty calls.

Willis Huntley

Just a man in love with the good ol' US of A.

Xander Flynn

Left California for Hope County to detox from the city life. Ended up finding "modeling" gigs at the Drubman Marina, and a cult cramping his style.

Zip Kupka

A self-proclaimed conspiracy "realist" who finds a new reason to hate the government with each passing day.

There were three more:

Coyote Nelson

Fishing is life.

In the files, Coyote Nelson is the name of the fisherman you meet at fishing spots.

Morris

A bright kid of Blackfoot heritage and the go-to person for all things computers and arcade machines. He keeps it on the down low.

The character’s full name apparently is Morris Aubrey. He’s the person who’s always near Far Cry Arcade machines and telling you how “awesome” the game is.

Scooter

A supply runner for the Whitetail Militia.

All I know about Scooter is that, according to a deleted mission objective, this character (who was also cut) was supposed to be escorted to the Wolf’s Den at some point.

[haven-of-dusk]

So I know we all miss Long Hair Liam because...well look at his beauty:

But, it also should be noted that Dylan Sprayberry is stunning with a Buzzcut (or at the very least a slightly grown out one)

I'll give you a second to pick your jaws up off the floor because holy hell is that picture marvelous, his blue eyes popping perfectly, the stubble, etc, but I think we agree, this is perfection too, right?

So really, the failing with the Teen Wolf Movie is doing neither and just leaving him to look kind of...scruffy.

Dylan's obviously still attractive, but they didn't do him any favors with the hairstyling and drenching him in rain for half the movie.

My point is he deserved better. (He also deserved way more screentime and to have his husband in the movie, but those are stories for other days).

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk on Liam Dunbar's hair.

[invisibleicewands]

Is actor Michael Sheen the right person to rescue Welsh theatre?

Can one star save Welsh theatre? On a spring morning in Cardiff’s Wales Millennium Centre (WMC), 180 people are thronging for the answers. We’re in the Awen bar next to the gorgeous 1,900-capacity Donald Gordon theatre, which last summer staged the hit play Nye, about NHS founder Aneurin Bevan. This experience inspired its lead actor, Michael Sheen, to set up the new Welsh National Theatre (WNT), as he tells us today, scruffy-bearded and check-shirted, bouncing around a much smaller, makeshift stage. “Listen,” he says, responding to an apology for this stage’s minuteness, “I’ve acted in Aberavon shopping centre, so I’m used to being on anything.”

Sheen’s latest venture arrives after a hell of a few months, as we Welsh people say, for English-language theatre in Wales.In December, the Cardiff-based National Theatre Wales (NTW – a separate organisation, founded in 2009) closed down, stripped of all Arts Council funding. In January came a cross-party Welsh Senedd report, A Decade of Cuts, revealing Wales ranked second to bottom for cultural spending in Europe (at £69 per person, above only Greece; by comparison, the UK received £91, neighbouring Ireland £149 and poll-toppers Iceland £691).

Creu Cymru, a body representing performing-arts organisationsacross Wales, published an even gloomier sector snapshot, underlining “the consistent devaluing of arts and culture through cuts to public funding, and the absence of obvious advocacy at a public and political level.” The Arts Council of Wales has since announced an extra £4.4m for arts and culture in the country, but redundancies and threats of closure to venues remain rife. Which raises the question: is Sheen’s advocacy enough?

In 2016, I moved back to my native Wales, where Sheen is embraced like a national hero. Today, his energetic persona – part everyman poet, part political orator next door – is undeniably infectious. He announces the theatre’s programme: a Wales-set, touring co-production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, which inspired Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood; and Owain & Henry, a WMC-staged epic about Owain Glyndŵr’s battles with Henry IV. But do his plans help or hinder other theatre-makers in a bold, diverse, modern Wales? And can the WNT quieten murmurings of concern among some figures in the industry?

To begin at the beginning: English language theatre in Wales doesn’t just happen in Cardiff, a city only two hours from London (although though it also hosts the award-winning Sherman theatre, acclaimed pub venue The Other Room, and dynamic companies such as Hijinx, Taking Flight and Theatr Iolo). In the south Wales valleys are the RCT Theatres, and going west, there’s Milford Haven’s producing theatre, the Torch, Neath’s innovative company Theatr na nÓg and busy hubs such as the Aberystwyth Arts Centre, whose summer season attracts 6,000 people every year.

Heading north, there’s Bangor’s Pontio, and one of Wales’s premiere producing theatres Theatr Clwyd in Mold, which reopens this summer after three years, following a £50m capital development project part-funded by the Welsh government. Recent successes include Laura Wade’s Olivier award-winning play Home, I’m Darling (starring Katherine Parkinson) and 2019’s rapturously received community production The Mold Riots.

For full disclosure, I’ve been working with Theatr Clwyd this year, interviewing staff, volunteers, locals, actors and directors about its profound legacy within the small town. One retired brickmaker, Philip Jones, brought me all his 1980s programmes and told me how he fell in love with new storytelling. “The theatre stopped me being a bigot, it stopped me being a racist – it changed my life.”

A musical, a community-created play and a debut by Welsh writer Chris Ashworth-Bennion all feature in Theatr Clwyd’s opening season under new artistic director Kate Wasserberg. Sheen spoke to her in March. “He was very curious, wanting to help,” she says, “and refreshingly honest about his using his fame for good, going, ‘Would it be helpful if I was in that play?’” He is also excited by artists that he discovers, she adds. “But, of course, it’s early days, so getting to know each other is really important.”

Projects running in partnership already thrive across the country, according to an Arts Council of Wales report published last week. These include Craidd (meaning “core” or “heart”), a project bringing theatre to deaf, disabled and neurodivergent people, and Open Book, offering theatre freelancers fully paid shadowing work. NTW’s community-focused project Team also continues as a stand-alone entity – and despite being criticised for staging too few productions, and using non-Welsh writers and directors to make plays about Wales, NTW did have some notable successes, including 2011’s three-day epic The Passion, starring Sheen.

On the day of the WNT launch, Sheen announces they are receiving £200,000 from the Arts Council of Wales, transition funding from the closure of NTW. Later, I speak to the council chair, Maggie Russell. “The Welsh National Theatre is a bold new initiative and an exciting addition to Wales,” she says. “Michael has stated he’s looking for a wide variety of funding sources, and we’re really excited about him working in partnership.”

On with the show. Sheen introduces his new company in turn, including Nye writer Tim Price and TV producer Russell T Davies, who directed Sheen in a production of David Copperfield at the West Glamorgan Youth Theatre in 1987. (“That was a real turning point for me,” Sheen says, “when I started to take it seriously.”)

Four new plays have also been commissioned from emerging writers from diverse backgrounds. They include Francesca Goodridge, a working-class director from Swansea, who studied acting at Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts after working in a call centre for six years. Frustrated by the lack of good parts for young women, she created the musical Shout!. Azuka Oforka, an alumna of the Sherman theatre’s Unheard Voices programme, is also a recent signing. Her hit play The Women of Llanrumney, a drama set on a Welsh-run Jamaican sugar plantation, is currently receiving rave reviews at the Theatre Royal Stratford East.

Down the corridor in a separate studio, I chat to Owain & Henry playwright Gary Owen about the historic lack of opportunities to present Welsh stories on a large scale. (Owen talks about the volume of Welsh monodramas, such as the recently revived Iphigenia in Splott, “Because monologues are cheap!”) People wonder why there’s never been “a Braveheart for Wales”, he says. “We need to fill that gap.”

Then I get my five minutes with Sheen – under spotlights, after he’s done the rounds for TV. I ask him if he’s been concerned that the WNT might be seen as a vanity project. He begins, carefully: “It’s a balance at first to use whatever resources we have now. One of the resources I have is a celebrity profile, to bring all these people here today to listen and set up co-productions.” He smiles his megawatt smile. “Although the co-production model is also useful because we haven’t got any money!”

He talks passionately about his youth theatre days. After that came Rada, West End theatre, films including The Queen and Frost/Nixon, and TV roles in Masters of Sex, Good Omens and Quiz – not bad work for a boy from Port Talbot. He took that free training for granted, he says: “My pathway has disappeared, but I want people to have even more opportunities.” He also talks about the importance of connecting Wales geographically (“touring is a big priority … we must remember mid Wales and west Wales”) and confirms that his theatre won’t be bilingual. He says that his first chat was with Steffan Donnelly, artistic director of the Welsh-language national theatre, Theatr Cymru (Theatr Cymru, the Welsh language national theatre, already exists.), adding: “There’s already fantastic work going on in Wales on a small and mid-scale. We want to be able to support and work in collaboration with that.”

A day after the launch, I’m contacted by a seasoned theatre professional who wishes to remain anonymous. Creu Cymru, the performing arts body whose gloomy snapshot of the industry I mentioned earlier, began its annual conference in the WMC corridors an hour after the WNT launch ended, they say. What did the WNT contribute, I ask? “Nobody from it turned up,” they reply.

This professional doesn’t doubt the “right intentions” behind Sheen’s project, and “the brilliant theatre-makers” within it, but also worries there’s “a lack of awareness” of the mentoring and development going on “every single day” across Wales. “And a new entity has just landed, with a Hollywood star fronting it, bestowing a national name upon themselves – and they’re asking for money. That’s a real worry.”

They also make another intriguing point: “If the theatre had called itself the Michael Sheen theatre, no one would mind.” It’s early days, but Sheen’s status as a national lodestar will be monitored closely, not least by the many creatives who make Welsh theatre thrive.

[boxoftheskyking]

Ooh Dylan is scruffy and also v angry

[saltlickmp3]

BOB DYLAN LYRIcS AND CRAZY NOVEL LIKE RELATIONSHIP WITH JOAn bAEZ

okay i'm gonna answer this cos i was listening to joan earlier SO (and no i dont know why this is in greentext format just roll with it i'm so sorry) (this is uhh veeeeery very long too)

>1962/3

>some scruffy loser calling himself bob dylan shows up in new york with a guitar and pretty much cosplays as woody guthrie for a bit

>joan baez, who is the same age, made her debut self-titled album at nineteen years old and is well liked by everyone, her music is generally appreciated by everyone on the scene, she has a beautiful voice and strong vibrato and really good at guitar, involved in activism stuff, played with lost of older respected musicians, the whole folksinger package

>but she doesnt really write her own stuff

>bob dylan write copious volumes of material but his performance is uhhhh less than amazing and technical ability has uhm room for improvement

>his debut self titled album flops hard

>scene is pretty small so they inevitably meet

>joan is like lol look at this loser isnt he cute hehe--his songs are pretty good too huh

>she invites him to play with her, they do a bunch of shows together etc and eventually get romantically involved. joan introduces him to civil rights stuff & anti-war stuff & anti nuclear and all that stuff

>bobs stuff was already political but in a sort of abstract way, his work gets a lot more specifically activist-ey in a very powerful way

>they're still doing a lot of shows together-bob is pretty famous on the folk scene at this point, largely because of joan endorsing him pretty much lol, still romantically involved. music press starts paying attention to bob dylan and he releases quite a few albums with famous songs on them. people kinda shit on him for his voice its a whole thing but i really like his voice so whateverr

>but by 1965 music is starting to get Weird, beatles are happening etc, lots of new styles of music, new youth culture, drugs are also happening

>bob releases bringing it all back home - some of these songs have electric band backing, where previous All Bar One of his songs were solo acoustic guitar, vocals, maybe some harmonica. some people are vaguely put out by this but i think most people find it pretty cool

>20th july 1965 bob releases Like A Rolling Stone, arguably his most famous song. it is very electric and a banger and much Much more rock (it was pop then but yknow) than folk. young people go YAY YIPPEE

>newport folk festival 25th 1965 (five days later) bob plays with an electric band (later to be known as The Band) to Outrage from folk purists who thought he was their god etc. someone shouts 'judas' at the stage implying he was betraying folk music by going electric and that guy must absolutely shit himself every time he remember that he did that because goddamn. pretentious twenty-somethings who hadnt even liked folk music before bob dylan get mad at him, old folk singers are mad at him, popular myth says the famously pacifist pete seeger threatened to cut the power cable with an axe. everyone is Big Mad except like a rolling stone goes hard and people who care a bit less about Proper Folk Music think its a banger

>highway 61 revisted comes out and bob dylan is now a major sensation amongst music enjoyer everywhere, like his stuff is really really cool, new and exciting, also decidely Not Folk but like really very cool. bob also starts smoking weed and taking speed b/c ofc he does & if you look him up he looks like twelfth doctor with the sunglasses and the hair and i'm right on that

>joan is still doing traditional folk music mostly. she is less than amused at bob going electric but iirc mostly polite about it. later that year she released 'farewell, angelina' an album of covers of bob's songs. a lot of them are Very Good, all sung with much more skill than bob could ever hope for sorry bob. which is like. Damn Okay Joan Thats A Move but it was probably finished before newport.... idk..........

>england is suddenly like OMG BOB DYLAN????????? at around 1964/65 but it takes a long time for music to get over there b/c the british music industry had a thing about only selling uk artists so american records were special import it's a whole thing. so people are just getting his famous folk stuff riiiight as he changes his mind about that and starts doing rock music instead, though still with a very poetic bent

>on a related note uk albums were often released differenet in north america to 'appeal to american audiences'?? so the version of the beatles rubber soul that inspired bob dylan and like lou reed and Everyone is kinda of.... wrong...... its weird

>bob n joan's relationship is kinda strained at this point, due to musical differences and yknow relationship stuff, not helped by the fact that bob could be a bit of a prick and was also quickly accumulating A Legend around him. not helped by his insanely cryptic and often nonsensical interview responses.

>at some point in the middle of all this bob marries Sara Lownds in secret. no one knows. he doesnt tell joan. he's not With with joan anymore but she didnt know he was literally marrying someone else. apparently sara wasnt really a music person and didnt know exactly why he was so famous.

>1966 uk tour (this is filmed in d.a. pennebaker's DONT LOOK BACK (no apostrophe. cos dont & look & back all have four letters so it fits on a poster and the apostrophe would muck up teh symmetry also they were all really fuckin pretentious)). bob is playing mostly electric sets with The Band (known then as the Hawkes) which was A Choice To Be Sure

>some people love it but all the folk purists think he's awful and bad and terrible boo him offstage etc which is pretty terrible

>he starts taking a lot of drugs. music gets Weirder. he's kinda not doing too good

>joan shows up partway through the tour and its......awkward....... to say the least. he'd kind-of-not-really-ish broken up with her & then got married to someone else but she just inserted herself in there. idk why. the whole of dont look back he's kinda dismissive of/rude to her ngl

>meanwhile his Mythos has built to uncontrollable levels. he doesnt exactly help this b/c he's very clever with words so people would obvious find meaning in his lyrics, and when he spit nonsense in interviews people would often find a method in the madnes yknow?? like he's smart. he's also really weird. but people have started reading WAYYYYYYYYYYYYY too much into EVerything he says and does. like everything. like idek what a modern comparison would be. gaylors have nothing on this shit. understandably he gets pissed off at people asking stupid questions

>joan has a girlfriend at this point also. like yeah in a lesbian way. she says she's straight but she did have a girlfriend her name was kimmy

>blonde on blonde comes out in '66. its his most......... 60s album if you know what i mean. like its lots of drugs and lots of instruments and plays on words and its very good, big double album, he's looking super hip on the cover, songs rumoured to be about edie sedgwick, the whole shebang. the lyrics are inspiration for batshit insane theories for decades to come even though a lot of it likely is just in there cos it sounds cool and rhymes.

>includes the song 'sad eyed lady of the lowlands', which is about sara. joan thinks its about her and says so. bit awkward. its a beautiful song and bob never plays it live, it was recored at like three in the morning and the band didnt know how long it was gonna be etc etc lots of myth

>in november 1966 bob dylan has a motorcycle acciedent near his home in woodstock new york state and is in hospital. music enjoyers everywhere Very concerned. he's okay, and after this more or less disapears from public life for a bit. has a bunch of kids. just chilling in the countryside. does a bunch of jamming with The Band, lives of royalities etc. tries to avoid people mostly. this mysterious disapearance combined with blonde on blonde fuels a lot of theorising by fans which he thinks is stupid

>in just five years bob did more musical innovation than most muscians could ever hope to, and he Never WOuld Have been Famou s WIthout Joan.

>joan is getting even more involved in activist work as the vietman war drags on and on. still doing folk music. she has electric instruments in her stuff eventually but still in a definitively Folk Style. she plays at the Woodstock Festival in 1969, she got married too, doing lots of activism stuff, everyone still really likes her music. 1969 bob relases his country album which most people (bob included) think is kinda trash

>1972 joan releases 'to bobby' (she called him bobby a looooong time after everyone just called him bob). which is. Wow. its uhmmm. well. it's a song beseeching bob to come out of retirement and help out with the anti-war cause. lots of musicians though that is he wrote a good new anti-war song it would really help the cause like he used to in the early sixties. bob was pissed at this like relaly annoyed he though she was being far too presumptuous and i really gotta agree with him there like dude's been through enough.

>1975, bob's been back touring for a year -ish. he decide's he gonna put together the ROLLING THUNDER REVUE which is pretty much him & all his friends who are also folk.country.rock whatever you wanna call it musicians and they go arund a whole bunch of little venues and generally have a good time. lineup includes joni mitchell robbie robertson roger mcguinn emmylou harris, a very cool violin player called scarlett (i think) allen ginsberg the poet who had a gay crush on dylan in the sixties, the blonde guitarist from ziggy stardust AND JOAN BAEZ :D there are like ten people on the stage at once and loads of guitars and various string instruments etc and they redo all these dylan songs in new and exciting ways.

>they film some of it to make this move called Renaldo and Clara. i havent seen it (yet) but its like a semi-fiction semi-documentary film about the tour and also some sort of plotline they string together from somewhere idk. joan is in this film too. from what ive seen there are some uhh. some fairly OUGH scenes, on top of bob n joan singing together on stage all the time. there s clip of bob saying that he n joan could sing together in their sleep. she is still a wayyyy better singer than him but his voice is really good these years and they way they do the songs together is veeeeryyyyy cool. theres a scene in the film where bob says (and i quote) 'it really displeases me that you went off and got married' (OUT OF NOWHERE MIGHT I ADD) and joan says 'you went off and got married first and didnt tell me' and he doesnt really have an answer to that. like GODDAMNIT BOY

>there another scene where there was a bit of a script but joan went off and said something like 'do you know why we never couldve got married?' and bob was apparently bad at improv so he wasnt saying anything and so joan just kept talking going through all the reasons why they never got married and all the issues between them. On Camera. like damn.

>also in 1975 joan's album Diamonds & Rust comes out. the title track is one joan wrote herself and it is Very Clearly about bob and its uhhh a little bit scathing. also very very good. generally regarded as one of her best songs. awkward as you can imagine. 'my poetry was lousy you said' 'we both know what memories can bring / they bring diamonds and rust' 'you burst on the scene already a legend'

Now you're telling me You're not nostalgic Then give me another word for it You who are so good with words And at keeping things vague 'Cause I need some of that vagueness now It's all come back too clearly Yes, I loved you dearly And if you're offering me diamonds and rust I've already paid

LIKE GODDAMN JOAN OKAY

>bob gets divorced from sara in 1976? 77? idk that happens too. i think joan gets a divorce too but not sure.

>theres a bit gap in my knowledge here idk what happens to them specifically after that. like i know a bunch about bob but nothing relevant rn. hes christian for a bit. makes some albums that suck and some that are good. joan still does folk music & mostly covers.

>in 2003 bob releases a memoir called Chronicles Vol. I (supposedly of three but theres only one lol). he talks about joan a bit, how could he not, describes how he was so envious of her when he was 21 and saysing 'she looked like a religious icon, like somebody you'd sacrifice yourself for'. super normal thing to say about your ex ahaha.

>2022 the rolling thunder revue film comes out (its a netflix film but also. internet archive) and they're both interviewed for it. some iconic moments. i think most interviewers sort of stopped asking joan about bob out of politness after a while but obviously she talks about him there thats what the films about. yeagh.

>joan baez like hangs out with lana del ray n stuff now & has books out or her little drawings. she also paints. and bob still tours at 82 (almost 83) years old. and still relreases new stuff. yeagh

ANYWAYS the concise history of Joan Baez and Bob Dylan. sources: dude trust me ahahah no but the source is the 2022 rolling thunder film, dylan's chronicles and around a year of being obsessed with bob dylan. he was my real life old guy blorbo fr.