#tv producer kevin day

[fuzzballsheltiepants]

Chapters: 1/3 Fandom: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard Characters: Andrew Minyard, Neil Josten, Kevin Day, Jeremy Knox, Alvarez (All For The Game), Jean Moreau, David Wymack, Danielle "Dan" Wilds, Abby Winfield, Coach James Rhemann Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Magic, The Minyard-Josten Rivalry (All For The Game), Established Relationship, Secret Relationship, Reality TV, Fluff and Humor, Implied Sexual Content, pure silliness, who let me write this? Summary:

Andrew still isn't sure what possessed him to sign up to compete on The Magic Touch, a reality show competition for people with Magical Energy Processing Disorder. Somehow, he made it to the quarter finals, and this is where it starts getting weird.

A gift for the always incredible @likearecordbb. Read it here!

[rhysstrongforksfagswag]

I need to scream about the brilliant thematic juxtaposition between hbomberguy’s “ROBLOX_OOF.mp3” and Kevin Perjurer/Defunctland’s “Disney Channel’s Theme: A History Mystery”, which came out within 3 days of each other in November 2022 and both concern artistic credit and legacy. Here they are linked for those who haven’t watched one or both:

While both are very different stylistically (with hbomberguy maintaining his signature edge of unhinged video essayist humor while Defunctland is produced in a more traditional documentary style), they are both very well made with a strong narrative through-line— something I consider to be very important in a good documentary. They also have strikingly similar subject matter, but very different “protagonists”, so to speak.

Tommy Tallarico, the center of hbomberguy’s doc, is a well-known and successful video game composer who, over the course of the video, is revealed to be a grifter and seemingly compulsive liar. Perjurer’s doc, by contrast, spends most of its runtime trying to uncover the composer behind Disney Channel’s well known auditory channel theme; eventually this is revealed to be Alex Lasarenko, a composer who wrote a lot of music for brands and sadly passed away in 2020 without much fame to his name. While Lasarenko was obviously unable to be interviewed for the documentary, Perjurer manages to get into contact with many of his collaborators and they have nothing but nice things to say about him. Contrast this with Tallarico, who is far more successful than Lasarenko, but is also a total dick who takes credit for the work of those who work under him (among many many other issues).

To me, the idea at the center of these docs is artistic legacy. When you die, what will you be remembered for? What art that you have created is inherently connected to you as a person? And, does it matter if those who personally know you actually like you as long as your art is loved? Is it better to be famous and despised or unknown and beloved? They also both have commentary to make on media preservation, with Perjurer’s doc being made possible through the tireless work of online archivists who catalog tv bumpers and interstitial content, while hbomberguy’s doc shows how Tallarico actively seeks to rewrite history in service of his own fame.

Basically, I love YouTube documentaries and there were a ton of great ones made in 2022.

[lokiondisneyplus]

How Marvel officially added McDonalds to the MCU

On the very last day of filming on the first season of the Marvel Disney+ TV series Loki, executive producer Kevin Wright sat on the steps of The Citadel at the End of Time with costar Sophia Di Martino (Sylvie), and they started to chat about what might be next for her character. Not in any official script capacity, just as fans of the story they’d just finished filming. 

“This character had been on a decades-long, maybe centuries-long revenge mission, and the classic trope of those stories is that it’s all-consuming and she’s not thinking about what comes next,” says Wright. “Now she has this moment of opportunity, where is she going to go?”

Di Martino thought about it for a moment, and said, “She’d probably be pretty hungry.

There are more than 13,000 McDonald’s across the United States right here in 2023, and untold more across the multiverse. In a new campaign launched this week, the fast-feeder gave Marvel and Loki fans a peek at its own cameo in the series’ upcoming second season, set to launch on October 6.

“As Featured In” is the Golden Arches latest Famous Orders meal campaign and, instead of being tied to a particular artist or character, it celebrates all the instances in TV and movies that McDonald’s has appeared or been mentioned by characters: Friends, The Office, Seinfeld, Space Jam, Coming to America, and many, many more. But at the center of the campaign is Loki, one that hasn’t even happened yet, which is probably appropriate for a show that revolves around the multiverse and many different timelines. 

The meal itself—a choice of a 10-piece Chicken McNuggets, Quarter Pounder with Cheese, or Big Mac, with medium fries, a Loki-branded Sweet ‘N’ Sour Sauce, and a medium soda—is, like the Famous Meals before it, nothing all that special, but that has always been the point. The genius of Famous Orders is that it drives customers to McDonald’s core menu items rather than a limited-time stunt. There is, of course, also a merch collaboration, this time with streetwear darling Palace Skateboards. The packaging features QR codes that customers can scan to get fun Loki content and buy pieces from the Palace collaboration.

Long after his conversation with Di Martino on the Citadel set steps, Wright and his team were developing season two, and they were finding it difficult to pick up a new Sylvie storyline. She had just killed He Who Remains in season one, where does she go? 

“When we stayed in the view of character, this woman who went on the run as a child, had been running through time, a fugitive of time, living in apocalypses, never being able to relax or slow down, the novelty of walking into a 1980s McDonald’s looked appealing,” say Wright. “You play a Little League game and go to McDonald’s. You go to a kid’s birthday party at McDonald’s. Someone like Sylvie would never have experienced that, and would be really taken by that.”

Marvel Studios has been a brand partnerships factory since Iron Man first ate a Whopper in 2008. Typically these things happen when there is a finished script, and producers go through it with the studio’s brand partnerships team to see where opportunities may be. A car chase, you say? What brand of car should we use? Maybe an Audi?

But this latest collaboration happened in reverse. A 1982 McDonald’s was specifically written into the script, so Wright approached Marvel’s partnerships people to talk to the brand about helping them out with the details. “I was worried that McDonald’s would think we wanted to do something ironic or make fun of them,” says Wright. “But we were selling an earnest story, a love letter to nostalgia through a character’s eyes who will see all of the novelty and joy of it.”

He needn’t have worried. “When I pitched it, our internal team said, ‘Uh, you realize we have a partnership with McDonald’s already, right? The fact we’re going to them wanting to do something makes it even better.”

Around that same time mid-last year, McDonald’s marketing execs were on a tour of sorts, meeting with content creators and creative teams at studios like Disney about the brand’s interest in participating in cultural moments beyond the typical product tie-in. That’s when the call from Marvel about Loki came in.

“We tend to embrace things like this,” says McDonald’s global chief marketing officer Morgan Flatley, “which we feel can be an opportunity for us to learn, especially because we felt that between Marvel and Loki, there was a real willingness to take their rabid fandom and mix it with a fan truth around McDonald’s and bring them together.”

The fan truth Flatley refers to is of McDonald’s as a congenial gathering place, a common experience for so many people. “Sylvie’s storyline perfectly aligned with how we think about our brand in terms of providing comfort and familiarity,” says Flatley. Familiarity is the key to the emotion of nostalgia and shelter that Wright was aiming for in the story.

That same familiarity is indicative of a brand so ubiquitous, it’s become a cultural touchpoint. Hence all the McDonald’s references in TV and movies. There’s a reason McDowell’s works as such a big bit in the classic comedy Coming to America. We all get it.

That all sounds great, but many brands get nervous or overprotective when they aren’t in full control of the creative. Not that long ago, McDonald’s was among them. The success of Famous Orders, allowing artists and partners like Cactus Plant Flea Market to play with its brand logos and characters, and the passionate response from fans—along with the sold-out merch and boosted sales—has given Flatley and the brand more confidence than ever in what she calls “sharing the pen.”

“I’ve become a big believer that if we lean into the right kind of creators in the right cultural phenomenon, and loosen some of our control on the brand, magic will happen,” says Flatley. “A few years ago, I don’t know that we would have felt as comfortable handing over key aspects of our brand to be part of a storyline like this, but today we’re really aware of the authenticity of our brand and the role that it can play.”

Wright is very familiar with the pitfalls of ill-conceived brand partnerships, and the impact they can have. “Wayne’s World was making fun of this stuff 30 years ago,” says Wright. “When it’s done poorly, it looks like business not driven by story. I don’t think that was ever a concern for us, mainly because we knew it was being driven by our story, and the more McDonald’s partnered with us, the better we were able to service the story.”

Multiversal marketing? Let’s see McDowell’s try that.

[specialagentartemis]

Having listened to the Graphic Audio full-cast audobook for All Systems Red, it was fun but I have some thoughts about the voice acting and direction. So now I’m just daydreaming about “if I had Billionaire Money I would buy the audio rights to TMBD and direct and produce another full cast audio version with voice actors handpicked and paid lavishly by Me.”

The cast being:

All Systems Red:

Murderbot: Kevin R. Free is the voice of Murderbot to a lot of people. I would think very hard about this but it would be a foundational return to form. However I feel like I want to reach out and find a non-binary VA because it's a niche that's been tragically underrepresented in Murderbot VAs. I joked before about Vico Ortiz playing live-action Murderbot but do they want to try their hand at voice acting?

Mensah: Cecilia Lynn-Jacobs. Voices Captain Lovelace on Wolf 359. Has incredible talent and range and does the Intrepid Galactic Explorer so well.

Pin-Lee: Emily Woo Zeller. An audiobook narrator I've consistently liked.

Ratthi: Stephen Dookie. He plays the part of Polites in Epic: The Musical and he's excellent in a very sweet, upbeat, friendly way.

Gurathin: Sungwon "ProZD" Cho. I'm picturing somewhere in the range of his Miles Edgeworth voice for this.

Arada: Michelle "Vixy" Dockrey. She's a singer not a VA but her voice sounds so nice.

Overse: Tanja Milojevic. Her range is incredible.

Bharadwaj: Rukhmani Desai (Captain Tripathi, The Strange Case of Starship Iris. She has that calm, reasonable, rational, desperately kind character voice she plays well in Starship Iris that I think would go well for Bharadwaj)

Volescu: Zach Valenti. The vibes are right.

Additional voices by Tanja Milojevic and Zach Valenti. Yes all of them.

Artificial Condition:

ART: Janelle Monáe and I mean it

Tapan: ItMe of InCo Podcast

The ComfortUnit: also ItMe because an important part of listening to faer acting is realizing in awe how fae voices so many characters at once and make them all sound distinct.

Tlacey: kinda thinking Ariela Rotenberg. she does smugly confidently evil very well. However we cannot discount casting ItMe for this role also

Additional voices by Tanja Milojevic and Zach Valenti.

Rogue Protocol:

Don Abene: Emma Sherr-Ziarko. She also deserves to be an intrepid space leader again.

Miki: ItMe again in InCo Season 2 Updated SAWA mode

Wilken: me. I want a part. I could totally be a badass evil space assassin

Gerth: does Gerth even have any lines.

Additional voices by Tanja Milojevic and Zach Valenti.

Exit Strategy:

Serrat: Zach Libresco. this casting + Janelle Monáe as ART were what drove me to make this post in the first place.

The Combat SecUnit: Ellen McLain in GLaDOS mode. All 2 lines it has.

Network Effect:

Amena: Ishani Kanetkar (The Strange Case of Starship Iris, The Godshead Incidental, excellent VA for a proud and curious but scared young person)

Iris: Jordan Cobb (Janus Descending, Primordial Deep, excellent VA for a gritted-teeth calm scientist in a strange and dangerous place)

Seth: Avery Brooks (I know it is not the 90s anymore. but. Captain Sisko. I can imagine <3 )

Martyn: Alexander Siddig / Siddig El-Fadil (Dr. Bashir). They're TV actors but! I want them as the Ship Captain Husbands

The rest of ART's crew: other podcast VAs I love who I haven't come up with a role for yet. Kristen DiMercurio, Beth Eyre, James Oliva.

Supervisor Leonide: Claudia Christian (Commander Ivanova on Babylon 5 <333 )

Eletra: Michaela Swee who is very busy working at An Actual Hospital but I have a billion dollars in this dream scenario so I can pay her to take a day and record like 4 lines

Ras: Zach Valenti. This is very important.

Three: Jackie Andrews who plays R. J. McCabe on Starship Iris and Elinor Lopez on The Pasithea Powder has the right Vibes For This

Zach Valenti as the Additional Voice of every goon and target who gets the shit scared out of them and/or dies.

Fugitive Telemetry:

Indah: Molly Olguin maybe. she could Be Indah. Absolutely means we need Jackie Hedeman to have a role in FT too.

Tifany: Michelle Agresti (Wolf 359, Arden)

Aylen: Tracey Sayed (also Arden)

Jollybaby, Tellus, Balin: I would open the floor to the delightful Murderbot fandom. Who wants to voice a Preservation bot

Additional voices by--well you know the drill.

[fromtenthousandfeet]

Documentaries!

Michael D. Ratner, friend of Scooter Braun, made Jungkook’s new documentary about Golden. Here’s his bio from imdb.com:

Michael D. Ratner is the founder and CEO of OBB Media, a vertically integrated content studio that is defining how a new generation of viewers consumes programming. At 26, Ratner launched OBB Media in 2016 and has led the company through explosive growth alongside co-founder and COO Scott Ratner. Michael most recently was named to the Goldman Sachs Top 100 Most Exceptional Entrepreneurs of 2023, and has previously been recognized as one of Variety's New Leader Creatives and a member of Forbes 30 Under 30.

Michael D. Ratner oversees all five verticals of OBB Media, including the recently launched OBB Studios. As the lead creative on OBB's marquee projects, Ratner has created, directed and produced many critically and commercially successful films & TV shows, receiving a Grammy nomination for Justin Bieber: Our World; amassing over 1.5 billion views with Kevin Hart's Cold As Balls; fostering dialogue around mental health awareness with Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil; and pairing content with commerce in Hailey Bieber's Who's In My Bathroom?. Most recently, Ratner produced the Netflix Original, Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa.

Additionally, Ratner is an entrepreneur and investor behind some of the fastest growing companies in the entertainment and consumer sectors, including Hailey Bieber's rhode skin. He has transformed how talent builds and grows their businesses, most recently partnering with Bieber to launch her beauty brand. Ratner is the founding partner of rhode skin, which has become an industry powerhouse, crossing the eight-figure revenue mark in its first eleven days of sales, accumulating over 1 million waitlist sign-ups, and recently expanding internationally. Ratner is the chairman of Myron Arthur Holdings, which focuses on investing in and advising media, entertainment and consumer brands. Ratner received his BA from the University of Pennsylvania, and an MFA from NYU Tisch.

- IMDb Mini Biography By: Anonymous

And here’s the bio for what made Jimin’s FACE documentary:

A Samsung phone + a mini tripod 😂

[ncisfranchise-source]

CBS PRESENTS “NCISVERSE: THE FIRST 1,000,” AN “ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT” SPECIAL, TO AIR MONDAY, APRIL 8

Hosted by “Entertainment Tonight’s” Kevin Frazier, the Special Will Take an Exclusive Look Inside the World’s #1 Television Franchise

CBS announced today the new special NCISVERSE: THE FIRST 1,000, an ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT special, to air Monday, April 8 (9:00-10:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network (live and on-demand for Paramount+ with SHOWTIME subscribers, or on-demand for Paramount+ Essential subscribers the day after the special airs)*.

This one-hour ET special, celebrating 1,000 episodes of the NCIS franchise, includes exclusive interviews with the stars of NCIS, NCIS: LOS ANGELES, NCIS: NEW ORLEANS, NCIS: HAWAI’I and NCIS: SYDNEY. The cast and guest stars share favorite memories and behind-the-scenes moments from 20 years’ worth of never-before-seen interviews from the ET vault. ET’s Kevin Frazier hosts from the NCIS studio lot, where the flagship show has been filmed and produced by CBS Studios for two decades.

Also included is a rare look inside with the cast and crews to produce TV’s #1 primetime drama franchise. The special reveals new details about the origins of NCIS including how the multi-show, global phenomenon was created and changed the face of the real NCIS.

Additionally, fans will get a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the franchise’s 1,000th episode, an episode of NCIS that will air Monday, April 15 (9:00-10:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.

[brokehorrorfan]

Night of the Demons will be released on 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray and Night of the Demons 2 and Night of the Demons 3 will be released on Blu-ray on October 3 via Scream Factory.

Shout Factory is offering an exclusive set with all three films with exclusive slipcovers by Joel Robinson, six posters, a prism sticker, a set of five enamel pins by Matthew Skiff (limited to 600), and a set of five lobby cards by Beyond Horror Design (limited to 500). Pictured below, it costs $199.99.

1988's Night of the Demons is directed by Kevin S. Tenney (Witchboard) and written by Joe Augustyn. Cathy Podewell, Amelia Kinkade, Linnea Quigley, Hal Havins, William Gallo, and Alvin Alexis star.

1994's Night of the Demons 2 is directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith (Leprechaun 3, Leprechaun 4: In Space) and written by Joe Augustyn. Amelia Kinkade, Merle Kennedy, Cristi Harris, Rick Peters, Jennifer Rhodes, and Christine Taylor star.

1997's Night of the Demons 3 is directed by Jim Kaufman and written by Kevin Tenney. Amelia Kinkade, Larry Day, Kristen Holden-Ried, Tara Slone, Gregory Calpakis, Patricia Rodriguez, and Stephanie Bauder star.

Night of the Demons has been newly restored from an earlier 4K scan of the unrated camera negative, presented with Dolby Vision HDR. Night of the Demons 2 has been newly transferred from the interpositive.

Workprints/alternate cuts of all three films are included. Special features are detailed below.

Night of the Demons 4K UHD special features:

Audio commentary by director Kevin S. Tenney, executive producer Walter Josten, and producer Jeff Geoffray

Audio commentary with director Kevin S. Tenney, actors Cathy Podewell, Billy Gallo, and Hal Havins, and special makeup effects creator Steve Johnson

Audio Commentary with director Kevin Tenney, actors Linnea Quigley and Phillip Tanzini and casting director Tedra Gabriel

Interview with writer/producer Joe Augustyn (new)

Interview with actress Jill Terashita (new)

Interview with special effects artist Nick Benson (new)

International cut (standard definition)

Night of the Demons Blu-ray special features:

Audio commentary by director Kevin S. Tenney, executive producer Walter Josten, and producer Jeff Geoffray

Audio commentary with director Kevin S. Tenney, actors Cathy Podewell, Billy Gallo, and Hal Havins, and special makeup effects creator Steve Johnson

Audio Commentary with director Kevin Tenney, actors Linnea Quigley and Phillip Tanzini and casting director Tedra Gabriel

Night of the Demons workprint (under the title The Halloween Party)

The Halloween Party alternate title card

You’re Invited: The Making of Night of the Demons - 2014 documentary with cast and crew

Interview with actress Amelia Kinkade

Interview with actress Allison Barron

Interview with actress Linnea Quigley

Alternate R-rated scenes

A Short Night of the Demons - 6-minute version of the film shown to potential distributors

Theatrical trailer

Video trailer

TV spots

Still galleries

Promo reel

Still galleries - Behind-the-scenes, special effects and makeup, stills, posters and storyboards

It’s Halloween night and Angela is throwing a party… but this is no ordinary Halloween party. Everybody’s headed to Hull House, a deserted funeral home, formerly the home of a mass murderer. But when the partygoers decide to have a séance, they awaken something evil - and these party crashers have a thirst for blood. Now it’s a battle to survive the night in Hull House.

Pre-order Night of the Demons.

Night of the Demons 2 special features:

Audio commentary by actors Cristi Harris, Jennifer Rose, Darin Heames, and Johnny Moran (new)

Audio commentary by director Brian Trenchard-Smith and director of photography David Lewis

Interview with directors Kevin S. Tenney and Brian Trenchard-Smith (new)

Interview with actor Amelia Kinkade (new)

Interview with actress Cristi Harris (new)

Interview with special effects artist Steve Johnson (new)

Interview with producer Jeff Geoffray (new)

Night of the Demons 2 workprint 

Dailies

Trailer

Behind-the-scenes gallery

It’s Halloween and the teenagers from St. Rita’s High School want to party at the neighborhood’s haunted house. For years, the Hull House has sat in eerie silence – tales of its haunted past have turned into gory jokes and no one really believes anything ever happened there. However, Angela (Amelia Kinkade), the hostess from hell, is summoning her army of teen demons to the blood-curdling contest between the school’s priests and herself, the princess of darkness.

Pre-order Night of the Demons 2.

Night of the Demons 3 special features:

Audio commentary by director Jimmy Kaufman

Audio commentary by writer Kevin S. Tenney and special effects artist Roy Knyrim (new)

Interview with director Jimmy Kaufman (new)

Interview with writer Kevin S. Tenney (new)

Interview with actress Amelia Kinkade (new)

Interview with producer Jeff Geoffray (new)

Night Of The Demons 3 director’s cut (workprint)

Night Of The Demons 3 TV cut

Behind-the-scenes footage

Alternate title sequence 

Dailies 

Trailers 

It’s Halloween! The gates of Hull House have creaked open once again and Angela (Amelia Kinkade) is waiting for her treats. When a group of rambunctious teens take refuge in the foreboding funeral home to escape the law, they soon realize their grave error.

Pre-order Night of the Demons 3.

[fredseibertdotcom]

Emil Rensing, photographed by Elena Seibert, 2001

My mentor: Emil Rensing 

Emil Rensing changed my life. I’ve been lucky that as I’ve gotten older instead of completely settling in (though there’s naturally a lot of that too) there are folks around me that kept me from thinking “old.” Scott Webb and the Nickelodeon promo team, the Fred/Alan gang, the great artists and writers in my cartoon lives. But, I must say, I think when the consumer internet came buzzing, I was just about ready to turn off my brain to it and let the yung’uns take over. Jed Simmons tried to stop me, but I was tired, I was done. Then came Emil. 

For many years, like everyone else, my mentors had been older me (excepting Bob Pittman, my original MTV boss, who was two years younger). But when I was almost 50, it flipped on me. And the first kid that started teaching me a lot of stuff was... Emil Rensing. 

Emil has a number of super powers, not the least being a superior, raw intelligence. He’s a computer engineer, sure (he was one of the early employees of the then-revolutionary AOL), but... My experience has been there are engineers who know how to invent things, build things, fix things, but there are few who understand the human who use those things. On the other hand, the folks who can comprehend humans, don’t often have grasp on where technology is going, they can only figure out where it’s been (I’m probably on that spectrum). Emil, he can connect the dots. It’s seems simple when I’m writing this, but trust me it’s not. Emil appreciates, deduces, discerns, interprets, recognizes, penetrates. Emil sees. 

Emil and I met in 1999, but here’s the quick backstory. 

After a try at becoming a record producer, a stint in country radio and cable television, I had somehow or other found myself happily, thrillingly, in the cartoon business. Then, a few months after insisting to a friend that I was happy just learning to be an independent cartoon producer, the internet was for others, I became the first/only president of MTV Networks Online. Just like any other occupation I’ve had, I had no idea what I was doing. 

A friend from the animation biz, Charlie Fink, someone always interested in ‘what’s next,’ had left Hollywood and joined the early, money losing, what-the-fuck-is-this-internet-thing. He suggested I meet a young engineer –Signore Rensing– he’d worked with. I did, and even though –maybe because!– Emil was 25 years younger, I asked him to join my team, he did. 

It’s hard for me to say what happened in the next year, but for me, it was confusing. The company didn’t really want to succeed in the internet, they just wanted some of that internet moolah that was floating around, and I still didn’t know what I was doing other than occupying space. Soon enough, it was clear to me I couldn’t move the company in any useful direction, so it was equally clear I had to quit. When I told Emil I was leaving he announced he’d quit earlier that day. 

Frederator/NY announcement posters by Hatch Show Print, Nashville

Spontaneously, I blurted, “let’s start a company together. You keep showing me what the internet will mean to me and I’ll you how to make TV shows.” He agreed and we were in business. Frederator Studios –Eric Homan and Kevin Kolde– kept the cartoon fires burning (My Life as a Teenage Robot, Random! Cartoons, Fanboy and Chum Chum, Adventure Time, et cetera) and we started a media/internet consultancy in New York.  The details don’t matter, we did some good work, we made some TV shows, we started some of the early internet video successes, eventually we started, then sold, yet another new company that paced the world in the new vision of streaming video. 

Next New Networks, founded by Emil Rensing & Fred Seibert, posters by Frank Olinsky

Most importantly, Emil kept me young, kept me smart, helped set my stage for the next 20+ years. Emil Rensing changed my life. 

Thank you buddy. xxoo 

I’ve posted often about my mentors, the people I’ve learned the most from. And I’ve noted how often how many of them beg to differ as to whether or not I should credit them as such. So, I’ve calmed down in my titling. But still…

[markedbyindecision]

1) if you had to live in a fictional universe, which would you pick and why? 2) what are three shows/movies/books that you think go really well together? like if you were planning a themed media day, what would the theme & shows be? 3) what’s your fave thing you’ve ever cooked or baked?

1) theoretically Shadowhunters/TMI bc they have everything (demons! werewolves! faeries! vampires! mermaids! angels!) but truly i would probably want to live in the Psych universe and be a bystander watching the shenanigans from the safety of the sidelines

2) Kevin Can F**k Himself, Sex House (the web series by the Onion), and UnREAL - they all deal with some sort of deconstruction of the way tv is produced, in like a negative way

3) i’m actually making pretzels right now and they smell really good so i’ll pick those!

[mattnben-bennmatt]

As half of the world's most dazzling celebrity couple, Ben Affleck's life outshone his career. So now that the Ben and J.Lo show is over, what comes next?

A HOLLYWOOD ENDING

Rolling Stone (1 April 2004)

by Janice Dunn

What was your tipping point when it came to Ben Affleck, the moment you threw your hands up and said, "Enough"? Was it when he and Jennifer Lopez canceled their wedding? When he bought her a Bentley? When she fried up chicken cutlets for him on TV? When his career became secondary to their celebrity? Maybe it was the precise moment that he put his hand on her bikini-ed butt in the "Jenny from the Block" video. Until that point, the nation feasted on the details - his strip-club visit, the six-carat rock that he gave her. The Latina bombshell - with her fur coats and high heels, her ex-husbands and her appetites - and the handsome square-jawed movie star! She's Bronx, he's Boston! Then indigestion set in. "Our relationship was written about so much that it just alienated people," says Affleck, who claims that he is as sick of the spectacle as you are. "I feel like a guy who is almost at the finish line. Then I'll sort of disappear for a good long time, and not be... this person."

The pair's year-and-a-half romance ebbed in January, and now Affleck is in the awkward position of having to talk about "Jersey Girl", a film that actually documents their falling in love. Affleck plays a music publicist whose wife, Lopez, dies in childbirth soon after the film begins.

"Jersey Girl" is no "Gigli" fiasco - it focuses much more on his relationship with his young daughter and his later love interest, played by Liv Tyler, than it does on Lopez, whose face has been banished from the ads and posters. "This is my favorite thing that I've done," says Affleck, lounging in his office at his LA production company, which is staffed with swinging young employees who sift through tapes for the Project Greenlight cable series that he co-produces for Bravo. Affleck recently asked JG director Kevin Smith, his longtime pal, if he was angry at him for suggesting that Smith cast Lopez as his wife. "It was more a way of saying, 'Hey, I'm sorry. I didn't mean for this to happen.' I felt badly that the tabloid craziness would overshadow what is a really personal work."

Affleck, unlike most other actors, is tall in person (six feet three). He wears jeans, work boots and a gas-station jacket. Usually gregarious, he is incredibly closed off on this particular day. He won't make eye contact, and there are uncharacteristically long silences before he speaks.

"You caught me at the tail end of a life spent entertaining the press, and I'm a little bit weary of it, having been betrayed hundreds of times," he says. "But don't worry. I'll warm up." He looks at the floor.

OK then. Who gets the ring? "That's a ballsy way to start," Affleck says with a brittle laugh. "There was no ring. It was a fraud perpetrated on the American public." He won't reveal the reason why the two split. "I haven't had conversations with my close friends about this relationship."

Smith has his own theory on the breakup. "I totally blame the media," he says. "It's tough to live your life under a fucking microscope, and now turn that microscope into a high-powered, shooting-into-space telescope that's constantly focused on you like a laser. I thing that really played a big, big fucking part."

Affleck says he still talks to his ex and allows that the split was mutual. "I think any relationship that ends, by definition, ends mutually," he says. He clears this throat. "Sensible people are able to recognize that. I mean, relationships are mysterious and hard to fathom, but when it doesn't work, it doesn't work, and you just have to accept it gracefully."

He tosses a baseball in the air, faster and faster. "I'm not that interested in assigning blame, because I think it's illusory, anyway," he says, although he does agree with his ex-girlfriend Gwyneth Paltrow's recent comment that he makes life hard for himself. "She's probably right about that," he says. "I trust her opinion about most things. Not all, but most. I think I probably do get in my own way."

That said, he maintains that he is an easy person to live with. "I'm a very pleasant, low-maintenance guy," he says. "I'm not picky about things, like the house has to be this way or that way. I don't have some particular way I like to eat, or 'We have to go to this restaurant.'" He lights a cigarette and takes a vigorous drag. "But really living with somebody is about more than who does the dishes and if they pick up after themselves. And in some ways I'm probably not the easiest guy in the world." He is restless, for instance. "I have lots of interests, lots of energy, but there's definitely a negative side to that as well."

He and Lopez first lived together in Philadelphia during the filming of JG, then afterward in Los Angeles in Lopez's house. Now that he has moved out, he is staying with friends while he searches for a place to rent. He was interested in one house, but someone else had put an offer on it first. "It was Nelly," he says ruefully. "Me and Nelly, vying to rent a house. Nelly got it, by the way."

Affleck is self-effacing without actorish false humility, and will beat you to any punch line about himself, making jokes about his save-the-world film roles and calling "Gigli" a "bomberoonie, the 'Ishtar' of our time." The phone rings in his office.

"I can't pick up," he bellows at his assistant. "The light isn't flashing."

"It is, too," she hollers back.

"Quit talking about the light flashing," yells another employee.

"You see the respect I get around here?" he says, pushing phone buttons.

In person, Affleck is deeply likeable. Quick-witted, with a ribald sense of humour, he's an excellent mimic, endlessly entertaining with a stream of constant "bits." An equal-opportunity flirt who loves bantering back and forth, he's the sort of guy who leaves a party and everyone else trails out five minutes later.

"He's not completely obsessed with himself, like other people in his profession," says his pal Chris Moore. "He can talk about who should be the next president, or why he thinks it's OK that the Red Sox didn't get A-Rod. And he's just been a real loyal friend. He's always found time to be there when I needed to talk to him."

Affleck is fully aware of the schaedenfreude directed toward him and studiously avoids reading magazines or watching any TV shows in which he might be featured. "Otherwise I'll just get bent out of shape," he says. "I'm not even going to jump up and down and send letters to the lawyers anymore. I tried suing. It doesn't work."

Affleck is used to sniping - a mini-backlash occurred after "Good Will Hunting", with gay rumours and whispers that he and Matt Damon didn't write the script (in "Matt and Ben", an off-Broadway play about the pair, the script falls from the sky). Some fans have been upset with Affleck's subsequent roles in big-budget popcorn flicks such as "Armageddon" and "Pearl Harbor", preferring that he stay on the "Chasing Amy" path as a John Cusack for Generation Y - a smart, sensitive everyguy.

But it was his union with Lopez that really rankled, particularly when her glittery lifestyle drew him in, and he traded his scruffy jeans and Red Sox caps for slicked-back hair and velour tracksuits (although who among you has not had a wardrobe tweaked by a new love?).

Affleck says he doesn't know why their union caused such a hostile reaction. "Hopefully I can get far enough away from it in time to be able to get a better sense of it," he says, although he suspects the hostility "had something to do with race and class. That pushed a button. This is a country that flew into a gigantic uproar about Janet Jackson's breast. There's still a heavy-duty puritan influence going on, and we still hold ourselves to a pretty chaste ideal, which includes, buried within it, the tradition of people being with people like them. We were thought of as two different kinds of people, not just racially but culturally." Perhaps that's why the tabloids have gone easier on Lopez dating singer Marc Anthony. Affleck lights another of his menthol Marlboro Lights. "Basically, it just came down to, "Wow. I never thought those two would get together."

Affleck and Lopez met on the set of "Gigli" in December 2001, when she was still married to dancer Chris Judd, but it was during the filming of JG, the following summer, that they fell in love. As did the public: This reporter was present on the last night of filming on Park Avenue in New Work, when the frenzy was just cresting. On that day, the two were on the front page of both the Daily News and the New York Poster, and a hundred-strong mob of rambunctious paparazzi was gathered at the edge of the set, hoping for more shots.

Suddenly the two appeared - he in a sharp suit, she looking lusciously beautiful in a fur coat, towering high heels and bare, tanned legs. The crowd went berserk. They shot a scene, over and over, in which they chitchat for a moment and then he kisses her. Their make-outs continued after Smith yelled "cut," and were so intense that it felt invasive to watch.

The day before was even more frenetic, when Smith filmed in Central Park for a scene in a horse-drawn carriage. "It was bizarre," says Smith. "These were just guys in guerilla-warfare outfits, snapping photos like we were in the DMZ. As soon as we would yell cut, voom, they would just descent like a cloud of locusts. I was like, 'Jesus Christ, why? Like two famous people have never fucked before?'"

The film was shot mostly in Philadelphia, where the pair shared an apartment. Affleck recalls it as a "great, wonderful time."

"They'd come to the set together, they'd get made up together, they'd be in their trailer together," says Smith. "If you found one, you'd find the other. If we had any problem with the movie, it was that you'd want to go get them, but the trailer was rocking. So you'd just let them be."

The couple announced their engagement in November 2002, but signs of strain appeared by next summer. The tabloids reported that Affleck, in Vancouver to film "Paycheck", had frolicked with strippers at Brandi's Exotic Nightclub, although he dismisses reports of hanky-panky. "There have been plain, baldfaced lies people have told about me for money," he says.

Then "Gigli" was fricasseed, making just $3.8 million on its opening weekend. A few says before their scheduled September wedding in Santa Barbara, California, the pair issued a statement saying the nuptials were postponed due to media scrutiny. "That really was the truth," Affleck says. From there, the relationship seemed to limp along, finally ending in January.

"It was weird," says Smith. "In the course of time from JG's wrap up until now, it was watching the entire cycle of the public's fascination, then revulsion and the fallout."

Did the two fan the flames of interest? There's no need to read between the lines of Lopez's song "To Ben," for instance: "I think God made you for me/A mix of passionate fidelities/Baby, you're so complete/I write this song to let you know/That you will always be to me/My lust, my love, my man, my child, my friend and my king..."

Madonna, of all people, even weighed in. "To a certain extent, they courted the media attention," she said. "At the end of the day, there needs to be a part of the relationship that you keep private."

Affleck shakes his head. "You can probably file that quote in the dictionary of cliches under the heading of 'pot and kettle,'" he says, throwing his baseball. I mean, I didn't do a book with me naked."

He maintains that the two "lived regular lives" and that much of the overexposure happened without their participation. So why, for instance, did he phone Howard Stern last December when he knew full well Stern would ask about J.Lo's ass?

"I loved it," says Affleck. "With Howard, you know what you're getting. It's not CNN, where there's some snide prick named Anderson Cooper pretending to do real news, when there's nothing substantive about it at all."

While a dig a Cooper is always welcome, it doesn't answer the question. How about his comment, beamed all over the world, that sex with Lopez "lasts for ten minutes?" Why go there? "I'm doing foreign press for some movie," he says, "and this Australian lady says, 'How does it feel to have your sex life be so much an object of everyone's fascination?'" He sighs, exasperated. "And I said, 'What do you mean, they're fascinated? It's not like there are people outside my window, clocking it, going, "That was only ten minutes!"' It was a bit. Then it sort of turned around."

Affleck grabs his keys. He wants to go on a field trip to show just how misinformation can mutate. "Let's take a drive," he says, heading to the parking lot where his black Beemer awaits. First, he busily discards the ten empty soda bottle piled in the front seat, then turns up a Johnny Cash CD and imitates Cash's cover of U2's "One." "One love," he sings in a deep drawl that sounds more like John Wayne than Cash. "One liiiife." He laughs. "On road trips, people say, 'Stop singing, please, you're ruining the music.'" It's a perfect California say, golden and crisp, and the air rushing by smells like gardenias. Affleck guns the engine, weaves in and out of traffic and grins. This is sort of fun, being in Lopez' stilettos for the day. Whoo!

"For fuck's sake!" Affleck says at a hesitant driver, before running a red light. "I learned to drive in Boston," he says, "and there's a certain kind of make-your-own-way thing that happens."

Affleck applied the same philosophy to his career. He grew up in Cambridgeport, an ethnically integrated part of Boston, with younger brother Casey, also an actor; mom Chris, a schoolteacher; and father Tim, variously a janitor, bartender, mechanic, and bookie. "He made some book, yeah," says Affleck. "When we got a new washing machine or a VCR, my father said 'You can thank Steve Grogan.' He was the quarterback for the Patriots, and everybody in New England bet on the Patriots, and Grogan was constantly fucking up, and he had bad knees."

Tim drifted from the family when Ben was eleven. "My mother did the lion's share of raising my brother and me, but she was a great mom," he says. "Unconditional love, that was her thing." He maintains close ties with Chris, who keeps her son down to earth, insisting that he stay over when he visits his childhood home. "My mother gets all made at me if I stay in a hotel," he carps. "I'm thirty-one years old, and I don't want to sleep on a sleeping bag down in the basement. It's humiliating, you know what I mean?"

Affleck didn't have much contact with his father during his teen years, but he later reconnected with him after his dad, an alcoholic, went through recovery. Tim now lives in Indio, CA. "I visited with him yesterday," says Affleck. "My dad's a good man. We have a good relationship."

Affleck himself got sober after a month-long stint in rehab in 2001. "It's not something I think about all that much anymore," he says. Although after the breakup, he did get a flood of calls. "They say, 'Hey, are you OK? You need to talk?' So that's kind of a constant reminder." He laughs. "Then I'm too irritated to have a drink."

Affleck's father was also an actor, which sparked his son's interest in a young age (although Affleck Sr. cautioned him by saying it was "the stupidest fucking job in the world"). He and his best friend Matt Damon, who lived two blocks away, would conduct "business meetings" about their acting careers in the high school cafeteria. "It was just us sitting there in a nerdy way and saying, 'We should go to New York for this long a time, and then probably move to LA,'" he says. "Meanwhile, we auditioned for all kinds of terrible things."

Young Ben would do anything; student films, corporate videos, a slew of commercials. "I did a Levi's 501s commercial when 501 Blues were the big thing," he says. He briefly attended the University of Vermont, then dropped out and moved to LA to live with a gang of young wanna-be actors. "I was turned down for everything," he says, waving to a carload of smiling teens who honk their horn. "'Dead Poets Society'. I lost 'License to Drive' to Corey Haim." At one point he nearly wavered from his goal when he was sent to see a friend of a friend who was an older struggling actor. "He had all these birds," he recalls. "He really wanted to get stoned, and I never liked dope all that much, and it was harsh and I was really paranoid. And he told me, 'I've been an actor for thirty years, and you know how much I've made? Eight thousand dollars.'" Affleck was ill for a week. "I don't know if it was the guy's weird marijuana or his bird-flu virus, but it was an all-around horrible experience."

Meanwhile, Damon was a student at Harvard who was also being cast in one disappointing role after another. Out of frustration, in 1993 the two started writing GWH, about a troubled math genius from the wrong side of town. "I've always been insecure because I only had a little bit of college and knew a lot of people from fancy schools," Affleck says. "All that sort of resentment in GWH about people who went to college came from me feeling on the fringe."

GWH earned nine Oscar nominations and made Affleck and Damon instant stars. "It was like being on a roller coaster," Affleck says. "You know, it's exciting, but what you're aware of mostly is just the sense of movement. It's hard to digest, even in retrospect."

As he coasts down Sunset Boulevard, Affleck reluctantly admits that he trusts his charm more than his talent. Even if he is able to command $15 million a picture, he knows the pitfalls of too many big-studio movies. "You do too many and people start to think of you as Action Guy," he says. "I always felt like Larry Bird, the guy who had to work harder than the next guy. I always felt like I had to compensate in so many different ways. I mean, I don't think anybody really believes they're the cure for cancer." He laughs. "And I have been told both. I am cancer, and I'm the cure."

"JG allowed me to try new things as an actor," says Affleck, but he's not sure he agrees with Smith's assertion that his smoldering feelings for Lopez amped his performance. "There's also the Frankenheimer school of thought," he says. He recalls being fulled aside by John Frankenheimer, who directed him in "Reindeer Games", the 2000 thriller in which he co-starred with Charlize Theron. "He said, 'I'm going to give you a speech I give every actor. Don't fuck the leading lady. Leave it on the screen.'"

Affleck smoothly pilots the car around a corner. "You never totally feel like you're from here," he says, gesturing. "L.A. feels temporary, like a hotel room. You can keep going back to it, but it never feels quite like home." He pulls into the parking lot of a favorite Mexican joint called Paquito Mas.

"Watch what happens," he says. Sure enough, just as we take our seat at an outdoor table, a photographer appears. "See the guy in the truck, in the pink shirt?" he says. "That took three seconds. That's good stuff. You'll be the 'unnamed female.'" Often, he says, the valets tip off the paparazzi to make some extra cash.

He tells me to hide my tape recorder and to act naturally. While the guy snaps away at a discreet distance, Affleck talks about his future plans. First, he is off to a poker tournament. He rebuffs all the "hysterical stories" about his gambling problem. "I don't even play blackjack anymore," he argues. "I play poker, where you are playing against other people. There's no edge, there's no house, so you're not destined to lose." He resents the theory that as an addictive personality, he has traded booze for Lopez and Lopez for gambling. "That's the most common thing said about people who have been in twelve-step programs," he says. "If you're associated with any one of those, you must have other problems, too." His stint in rehab, he says, should be seen positively. "Here's a sensible guy who wants his life to go in a certain direction, so he cuts the problem off at the pass so he can have a good life. He's someone who has a pretty good watch on himself. Instead it's seen as 'This guy's crazy.'"

Affleck's next movie is a comedy called "Surviving Christmas", and after that he hopes to phase out leading roles and focus instead on directing and writing (he's currently adapting a novel by Dennis Lehane, the author of Mystic River). "I'm not making any grand proclamations, but I would like to act in supporting roles, where it isn't incumbent on me to promote the movie and talk about my personal life," he says.

His friend Chris Moore says his relationship put a spin on his public image that "was unfair, but not hard to understand." When Affleck spoke recently at the Daytona 500, some of Moore's friends were there. "They said, 'I hated him when he was dating Jennifer, but I love that guy - he was funny as hell.' I mean, he has that charisma. He is that guy for real." He laughs. "But you can't go shake everybody's hand to get them to love you again."

While Affleck lays low, he wants to do a little traveling, perhaps visit Damon in India while he shoots a "Bourne Identity" sequel. "It's not like I'm getting all Alanis Morissette, like, 'Thank you, India, for my peace of mine," but I've worked really hard, and now I have the opportunity to do things like that," he says. Perhaps now he'll slow down a little. He is starting to feel his age for the first time.

"I play this basketball game once a week," he says, "and now I'm that guy who wakes up in the morning and says, 'Ooh, my back.' The guys I play with are the exact guys that when I was nineteen, I said, 'Look at these sad, sorry bastard. That will never be me. They sweat so bad that they would slime you if you touched them. They're real slow and all they did was foul you.' And now that's me."

The photographer outside the restaurant is losing interest and beginning to back away. "Let's hold hands as we leave," he says. Nah, too obvious. He puts his arm around me, and the guy moves in closer. "You're too stiff," he says in my ear. "Gotta loosen up." I assume a guilty expression as we run to his car. I'm J.Lo for the day! Damned if it isn't sort of exciting!

The photographer follows in a car. "I take great pains to avoid them knowing where I'm staying here," Affleck says, gunning the engine.

Despite the carnival that his life has become, he is upbeat. "I'm not saying, 'Woe is me,'" he says. "I have a good life, and I take responsibility for everything I've done." He is a little shellshocked, but he is not contrite. "I'm not one of those guys that got arrested," he says. "I didn't actually do anything wrong." He pauses. "Is there something I would do differently? Not really. I suppose the temptation is to say that I wouldn't have done any of the press we did for "Gigli", but you're paid really well to do these movies and the expectation is that you're going to support them."

He shrugs. "Being optimistic, I can say that I had the opportunity to experience something not many people get to experience," he says. "You can liken it to space travel. Although it's probably a lot less pleasant than being in space."

Affleck has finally given the photographer the slip, and now he has a meeting with Jay-Z, who wants to discuss a cross-branding opportunity. Affleck struts a little. "I have a lot of street cred, I don't know if you noticed," he jokes. Then he waves goodbye. "I hope to God they run the pictures," he calls as he lives.

There was a bidding war for the photos of the "unnamed woman," and the winning tabloid ran the story the following week. The Lord, it seems, was listening.

[justforbooks]

The path from successful character actor to becoming a star is difficult. It’s even harder when you’re self-destructive. Tom Sizemore, who has died aged 61 after a brain aneurysm, will be best remembered for his roles in Saving Private Ryan, as Tom Hanks’s wise sergeant, and in Heat, as the muscle in Robert De Niro’s bank-robbing crew.

His characters were often informed by their volatility: affable nihilism could explode into violence, which made him a natural player of bent cops and detectives, as believable in straight roles as in over-the-top variations, such as Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers. But his own personality bore many of those same traits. His career was sidelined repeatedly by addictions to heroin and methamphetamines, and his peripatetic drug-fuelled sex life led to repeated cases of domestic violence.

In 1998, after starring as the criminal gangster boss John Gotti in the television film Witness to the Mob, Sizemore received a visit from De Niro and his mother, who forced him into rehab. Steven Spielberg then hired him for Private Ryan, provided Sizemore be drug-tested regularly, and threatening to reshoot all his scenes if he failed a single test.

Five years later, on the verge of television success as the lead in Robbery Homicide Division, he was kicked off the set of a movie, Piggy Banks, accused of molesting an 11-year-old female actor, and convicted of domestic violence against his then girlfriend, “Hollywood madam” Heidi Fleiss. The double scandal contributed to the TV show’s cancellation.

The two sides of Sizemore’s talent could be traced back to childhood. Born in Detroit, he was the son of Thomas Sr, a lawyer and philosophy professor, and Judith (nee Schannault), who worked in the city ombudsman’s office. A self-described “wayward, angry teen”, he was drawn to acting after watching Montgomery Clift, James Dean and Marlon Brando playing such roles, and by De Niro in Taxi Driver.

He was also influenced by his father’s two brothers. His sober father won a scholarship to Harvard; his uncles were exuberant denizens of a world of drugs and crime. Sizemore tried for years to produce a script about them, An Honest Thief, written by his lawyer brother Aaron, which nearly got made in 2014, starring Sizemore and Danny Trejo. It fell through; a much different version, Good Thief, eventually appeared, without Sizemore, in 2021.

He studied theatre at Wayne State University, Detroit, taking a master’s at Temple, in Philadelphia. He began in off-Broadway theatre in New York; his friends included James Gandolfini, John McGinley and Edie Falco, with whom he had a relationship.

His first film role was in Lock Up (1989), and among his other three roles that year was a part in Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July. He did Blue Steel (1990) and Point Break (1991) for Kathryn Bigelow, the Wesley Snipes vehicle Passenger 57 (1992), and the Quentin Tarantino-scripted True Romance (1993), directed by Tony Scott, where he turned down the part originally offered him because he did not want to beat up Patricia Arquette on screen, and suggested Gandolfini, in his first Hollywood movie, for the role.

During the filming of Natural Born Killers (1994) he and Juliette Lewis began an affair; for four months they stayed in her mansion, doing drugs and having sex. “Temptation is impossible for me to resist,” he said. “Come on, this is Hollywood … it’s in the job description.”

From there he played Bat Masterson opposite Kevin Costner’s Wyatt Earp (1994) and was excellent in Bigelow’s overlooked Strange Days (1995). He had earned a lead role, which came in Peter Hyams’s The Relic (1997), but another small though telling part in Enemy of The State (1998), along with Private Ryan, seemed to lock him into supporting roles.

In his memoir By Some Miracle I Made it Out of There (2013), Sizemore detailed a long affair with the actor Elizabeth Hurley. In 1996 he married Maeve Quinlan, who had also been in Natural Born Killers; they divorced three years later amid accusations of drug use and physical abuse.

He had leads in three TV movies before Robbery Homicide Division, based on the original Michael Mann script that eventually became Heat. When he was not charged with molestation Sizemore returned to Piggy Banks (retitled Born Killers, to capitalise on his notoriety). Fifteen years later, the child actor, now 26, sued him for $3m, but a Utah court dismissed the lawsuit; Sizemore dismissed the allegations as “misconstrued”. His 2003 conviction in the Fleiss case resulted in seven months in jail after he failed drug tests during his probation.

At the same time he began a relationship with Janelle McIntire. In 2005 the couple had twin boys, named Jaden and Jagger. Yet at that point he made a video film called Triple X Tom, with Jersey Jaxin and three other porn actors, in which he claimed to have slept with Paris Hilton. When the celebrity denied it, he said he had made it up to impress the other actors . He did receive an XRCO award nomination as “Best New Stud”. When McIntire divorced him in 2006, he began an affair with Maxine Entwistle, the former wife of the Who bassist John.

Arrests for drug possession and spousal battery followed. He appeared on two Celebrity Rehab shows in 2010 and reunited with Fleiss on Dr Phil (2013). He ping-ponged between scandals and small parts in as many as 16 films in a year, yet still held recurring parts in series such as Hawaii Five-O and Shooter. He was dropped from Shooter when, after accidentally running over a stunt man, he was convicted in 2017 of two charges of domestic abuse against a girlfriend. He was allowed to finish his probation sentence despite a 2019 arrest for heroin possession. His last big film was playing Liam Neeson’s FBI rival William Sullivan in Felt (2017).

Sizemore wrote in his memoir: “There are so many guys who had good lives, great lives, and blew it … I think there are some guys who think they don’t deserve to have good lives.”

He is survived by his sons.

🔔 Tom (Thomas Edward) Sizemore, actor, born 29 November 1961; died 3 March 2023

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[dwsavideos]

Here is a guide to the Sing Street cast’s original music and other projects in case you’re a fan of Sing Street or if you’re interested in learning more about both Sing Street (musical) and the cast! Since they met in 2019, this cast has been making things together almost nonstop. It’s a very long post so just scroll through and click the links to the songs if you are interested!

Max Bartos (OBC Darren): Max’s biggest musical inspiration is Green Day plus he’s a huge fan of Spring Awakening. His music really reflects his musical favorites and his talent in his album called “Such Is Life” and his single “Playlist of My Life.” You can listen to those anywhere you stream music. Max is also in the process of writing a musical, another album, and he has a podcast called “Clowns ‘R’ Us” where he talks about all things horror! Max also has his own theatrical group who will be putting on a Spring Awakening Concert at the Laurie Beechmen Theatre in NYC on June 17th. Former Sing Street cast mate Skyler Volpe (OBC Anne Lawlor) will be in this concert playing bass in the band. (Tickets are on sale for my many Spring Awakening fans if you’re interested and live in NY!)

Ilan Eskenazi (OBC U/S Conor): has a sensuous song out called “Next to Me” which features the voices and musical talents of himself, along with former Sing Street cast mates Skyler Volpe (OBC Anne Lawlor) and Brendan C. Callahan (OBC Gary). “Next to Me” is available on all streaming platforms.

Skyler Volpe: As mentioned above, Skyler is one of the featured voices in Ilan Eskenazi’s song “Next to Me”. Skyler also plays the bass in an NYC band called “Themme” and also occasionally plays other gigs around New York- a few being with former Sing Street cast mates Gian Perez, Anthony Genovesi, and Sam Poon; and she also sometimes plays at 54 Below. Skyler is also in the Original cast recording of a show called “The Hello Girls” which is really good. That cast recording is streaming on all platforms. Skyler also wrote a play called “One Drop Cool” and is currently working on staging it!

Sam Poon (OBC Eamon): releases music under the name “Spoonuel”. Some popular songs of theirs that I personally like are “B With Me”, and “A Manic Hello”. They also produce music for their girlfriend and fellow DIY music artist Chloe Berry. Both Sam and Chloe constantly have music coming out, and their music can be streamed on all platforms. Sam also produces music for former Sing Street cast mate Brenock O’Connor, and sometimes plays gigs with other Sing Street alumni such as Gian Perez (OBC & Boston Kevin), Anthony Genovesi (OBC & Boston Declan), and Skyler Volpe. Sam and Brenock’s most recent song together is called “Macho”.

Anthony Genovesi: is a drummer who plays gigs in NYC with many with his former Sing Street cast mates’ bands such as Gian Perez, Jakeim Hart (OBC Larry), and Sam Poon. Anthony also has his own song out titled “Swim ‘Til You Die”.

Sophie Hearn (OBC Raphina U/S): has a beautiful song out titled “Wasn’t I” streaming on all platforms.

Gian Perez: Is in a band called “Office Hours” and also in a band called “SU$HI” with Anthony Genovesi. He also releases music as a solo artist under the name “No Love For Cowboy”. He is also still acting in theatre and TV.

Brenock O’Connor (OBC Conor Lawlor): is in England currently playing gigs and releasing his own music under the name “McGovern”. Brenock often collaborates with his former Sing Street cast mates, especially Sam Poon. Brenock also has one song out with former Sing Street cast mate Michael Lepore (OBC Conor, Eamon U/S & Boston Gary). Their song is called “When Your Lips Disappear”. Brenock just recently released an EP titled “Maybe Everything Could Be OK” and the bitter-sweet music video for one of the songs “Let Me Know When It’s Yesterday” features nostalgic footage of fellow former Sing Street cast mates Brendan C. Callahan, Ilan Eskenazi, Anthony Genovesi, Jakeim Hart, Gian Perez, Sam Poon, and Skyler Volpe.

Michael Lepore: has a few songs released, one with former cast mate Brenock O’Connor as mentioned above, and one of his own titled “Tongue Twisted”. Both songs are streaming everywhere.

Zara Devlin (OBC Raphina), Johnny Newcomb (OBC Barry), and Gus Halper (OBC Brendan Lawlor) do not have any music out- but Zara is still doing theatre and film in Ireland, and Gus is still doing TV and film as well.

ALSO: Brendan C. Callahan, Ilan Eskenazi, Jakeim Hart, Gian Perez, Brenock O’Connor, Sam Poon, and Skyler Volpe were in a band together (before Covid) called “The Kings of Positivity” and there are fun videos on YouTube of their performances and one-take covers.

[bowtiesnmusicals]

Here is my recap of Everything’s Turning Up with Romy Rosemont episode of the podcast.

Today they have a really special friend and they are gabbing. They could talk all day. Kevin said I feel like you can get a good sense of what their relationships are like with all the people they have on and they are just kicking it and talking and having a good time.

Today is no exception because Romy Rosemont, Carole Hudson, Finn Hudson’s mother, who is a star and a sweet sweet person and an excellent baker and an excellent crier. The most fun person you will ever have on a tv or film set. Enjoy their conversation catching up with Romy Rosemont.

Jenna said lets go back to the beginning of Glee and asked Romy how she got the show. Romy said she was called in to audition for Jane’s part. She absolutely knew she wasn’t going to get it because she knew she needed to look like a cheerleader, like Megan Hilty, or look like Jane or Dot who have a presences. Kevin said they are are towering figures. Romy said they are just such a presences and she did the best she could. She knew she wasn’t going far because neither of them fit. She said she can tumble with the best of them. She can definitely do some comedy if someone wanted to lift her into a pyramid and fall down on cue. Then they called her in for Finn’s mom, Cory’s mom, when she saw it there were no lines. It was Ryan saying, she had to throw the milk carton and weep and yell, whatever that was, wear the bike shorts. Her hair was so large. She said when they were shooting the pilot, she worked for two days, Ryan was like and then I am going to do this and then I am going to do this. Jenna said and then you got inklings of things that were coming and knew that she was a recurring character, so she knew she was coming back. Romy said yeah but she never believes that. Kevin said you’ve been around too long and know better to trust that. Romy said so she didn’t know and all Ryan said was that he was interested in telling the story of a single mother with the high school quarter back who is in Glee club. She said they thinks they started where they were really poor and haggard and whatever and she was always asking so what does Carole do. What’s she do, does she work at a bank, nope no one? Kevin said that’s for you to figure out. Romy said that’s my back story but it didn’t matter because you never saw Carole away from the house which is Finn, Burt, or Kurt. She said that was their running joke that later in the season Carole was in the basement. Once she got married, once Burt happened, she was watching and was like they had prom and was like oh I’m in the basement. She said what was amazing is no one even referenced her and they didn’t even have to do that much. It was so hilarious at one time she was like did Burt kill me. I thought Burt murdered Carole. Romy said those were good times. Jenna said that basement was very cobwebby and dirty. Romy said it was.

Jenna said she was reading a document their wonderful producers made and it said Romy was in 18 episodes but it felt like a hell of a lot more of then that. Romy said that’s what people say. Kevin said only 18 episodes. Jenna said that’s what I’m saying. Romy said she thinks that because, Kevin joked smoke that imaginary cigarette, when she comes on their was a presence and she was somebody’s mom. She said what she treasures were those intimate scenes that she and Cory had that she thinks that kids could relate to. She said that is what she got from any kind of fans was I wish you could be my mom. Kevin said Carole and Burt were the model parents for anyone. He said he thinks also the complicated situations they were both in in your own right individually and how those characters navigated them so gracefully, eloquently, trying to say the right thing but as human as it is, it’s going to be a little imperfect which makes it even more relatable. He said watching you and Mike O’Malley at the standing at the alter was just..Jenna said the sweetest…Kevin said also you wear yr heart on your sleeve and he feels like a good gust of wind and you might tear up a bit which makes him tear up because she is the sweetest, most giving, caring person and then watching you two he was like oh god I can’t watch them. Then Mike O’Malley’s about to cry during the reception. Kevin was like these too. He said he has been told his whole life that he is cold. Romy said she does not find that at all. Kevin said no one gets him like Romy. He loses his shit and it’s a testament to her ability as an actor and her just as a person and that is why it feels like she was in more then 18 episodes. He said yes Jane and Dot have a presences but ooh so you do you.

Romy said she never understood why Carole and Kurt didn’t have a me independent relationship because he lost his mother and then his dad marries the woman who is the mother of someone who he has a massive crush on. To her their were opportunities to dive into those topics and discover it or just they did it with one scene, she knows they are doing Furt today, she said that scene where she thinks Finn got Quinn pregnant. She said she figures that is the difficult things about telling stories with recurring characters because no matter what the recurring character has to be there with whoever they are attached to but she doesn’t necessarily believe that. You can find that conversation that is just between Carole and Burt, it’s like for the parents. Romy said she has a stepson and in the beginning its hard because you don’t have a voice. It was kind of dramatic license that Burt was so involved in Finn’s life, Finn wouldn’t have been that embracing to someone taking, you know what I mean, that kind of wouldn’t happen. You honor the script that has been written and she appreciates that and thank you. Jenna said there also 25 characters on this show. Romy said and there also bright shiny objects that became important in selling it and the powers that be deciding that. She said you aren’t going to say if Sarah Jessica Parker, let’s say, says ooh I want to do some. As a business person you aren’t going to say no. She said also you guys wearing as many a hats as you guys do as business people which is why you have a successful podcast their are certain decisions you might not have made as just Jenna and Kevin. They both said you are right. Kevin said it’s like instead of doing this extra scene we could throw in another song and then put that on that soundtrack that is selling.

Kevin asked if Romy would have felt comfortable raising those thoughts to the posers that be or no. Romy said their wasn’t the room. She wasn’t invited to that room for that conversation so her job was to, she said she always looks at a job as a success if she walks away with a friend and was a good experience. She said it was overflowing with Glee. Kevin said you can’t get rid of us. Romy joked that she’s tried. She said she literally could have given birth to everyone, maybe not Jane and Dot, but on the whole. There are people that would have and in that way she respects the positions.

Jenna asked what was Romy’s experience or does she remember the first time she worked with Cory, the first scene they shot together. What was it like when they shot scenes together. Romy said she met Cory very briefly during the pilot because she didn’t work with adult Cory, she worked with child Cory. So she didn’t get to work with him until that scene where he hits the mailman. That very brief thing. Kevin said but one of the best. Romy said she was very taken with his manner. He was just such a sweet soul. Then when they had to do the more dramatic, intense, emotional stuff he was always like I can’t cry, I just can’t cry. Romy said you don’t have to but you definitely can. She said he thinks that he so much wanted to be good and she respected that. She remembers even when the shot Furt and they were at that weird churchy thing and he was panicked that the paparazzi were going to see and they would no the storyline. Jenna said aww. Romy said he would have his coat up and she was like we’re good. She said he believed in the show and wanted to protect the surprise and all of that. She said she considers herself very very lucky that they got paired because let’s face it they don’t look alike at all. Jenna said such a good pairing. Kevin said your chemistry together was unreal. Romy said she thinks he felt that too and that he felt like I get to act today. Jenna said, yep, totally. Romy said she was flattered and honored to be a part of that because it was just the two of them until Carole and Burt got married in the second season. Kevin said anytime their was sort of what they would say was an adult in the scene they were like oh god we have to get our shit together to keep up. They were used to being clowns in the choir room, singing a song, making ‘em laugh. The teen drama stuff is so funny and fun but when the adults came out you knew it was time. Romy said hopefully what they learned from the adults was that you can’t stop having fun. It freaks her out when people are too serious. She is like wait come on. Kevin said you are the reigning champ. You are the most fun on set. They have talked about the alcohol escapades before. Romy said it was this episode that started it. Kevin and Jenna both said it was this episode. Romy said everybody was done, everybody was done working and they were just sitting there. Romy said there was just a little bit of dance and whatever and she pulled out a bottle of patron. Jenna said she pulled it out of a black duffel bag, she was like what. Romy came in wearing a wedding dress with a black duffle bag and and pulls out a bottle of patron. Jenna said they were like Romy. Kevin said there is a reason I don’t remember doing that number at the reception. Romy said this was the first time she was like oh my god these kids can drink, holy crap. She said she was not, she loves her tequila and she has one maybe two. She said she doesn’t know if it was Lea or Heather might have ended that bottle or two. She can’t remember if she brought one or two bottles.

Jenna said there was another wedding day where they were like let’s do it it again. Romy said that was the one where the took shots with Gloria Estefan. Jenna said we did take shots with Gloria Estefan at the ranch for the Brittana wedding. Romy said Yes! Kevin said he as so excited and was like do you think Romy has the booze today. Romy said she has that picture and that is when she brought that snuggy. Kevin and Jenna got into it together and Jenna got scared. Kevin said what a weird time, Gloria Estefan, Jennifer Coolidge, and Gina Gershwin…what is happening. He said he remembers being in crafty with Gina Gershon and I don’t know, I don’t think I can, I have to leave. He said he couldn’t be alone with anyone, he was like I don’t know how to operate like a normal human. Jenna said it was an overwhelming wedding. Romy said totally overwhelming and she felt like she was old hat, she pretended to smoke a cigarette, and was like come on ladies follow me. Kevin said yes, they were in good hands. Jenna said the cast chairs were all the way down in like a really big trailer because there were so many of us. Romy said, yeah in that white trailer and it was freezing. Jenna said hey we’re in heels and their was dirty everywhere. Kevin said in the mountains. Romy said that wardrobe they put the moms in was just something. They were definitely something. Jenna said it was fancy. Kevin said you know what we could have more of us was more mom musical numbers. Jennas said definitely. Kevin said that was a treat. He said by that point he didn’t know what was happening, he doesn’t know if he didn’t read the script, talk about being unprofessional. Jenna said definitely didn’t read the script. Kevin said when the moms started performing and they are in the scene he was like wait what is this. Romy said this was the first time she really experienced Chord. Kevin and Jenna just laughed. Kevin said one of his favorite things is for people to experience Chord for the first time. Romy said she was like huh, alright, yeah I like it, it was definitely like okay I can’t believe this has taken me this long. Kevin said such a character. Jenna said it was Brad Buecker. Romy said because she didn’t have a wedding in real life, she eloped, for her wedding that was a full blown wedding. She has only worn wedding dresses on film. She said her own wedding dress she got for $63 dollars at Lowmans. Kevin said that’s right. Romy said it was because she was going to walk into the water. Jenna said you wear it once and it goes into a box. Romy said that Jenna’s was so gorgeous that Emma’s got to wear it. Jenna said she preserved it and hopes Emma breaks it up and makes little purses. Kevin said a crop top. Jenna said their is this woman that this gorgeous Japanese fabric from her great-grandmothers wedding and was like I can’t wait to take this and make it into purses for my brides maids. It was like the most gorgeous dress and people came at her. Jenna said she can do what she wants with it but the people online came after her and were like you are going to make it into purses and rip it up. Kevin said did she do it. Jenna said I don’t know, I want to know, I’m sure she did. You are gong to do what you want to do and you should. Romy said it’s her dress. Jenna said exactly her grandma gave it to her. Romy said people got to get out of other peoples business. Jenna said everybody thinks they have liberties.

Romy said because A. I am not a name and B. I’m always playing sympathetic characters on a whole she kind of dodged the hecklers so to speak. Kevin said they have had a couple people on and they have talked about playing an unlikeable character and the stuff they would get online, the hate, was omg. Jenna said horrible. Romy said it’s insane. Romy said a friend of hers from high school has been on the Young and the Restless literally since the dinosaur age, don’t repeat that because its rude. She said she has built herself such and amazing career but she used to get followed in her car. They were in peoples homes int he middle of the day, everyday, and they are positive they know them. Romy said she would get threats and it was insane. Jenna said those day times soaps are something. Romy said it’s a religion. Kevin said he grew up watching General Hospital with his mom. Jenna said Guiding Light. Romy said the summer between her freshman and sophomore year and her sophomore and junior year in college she worked for General Hospital. The first summer she worked in the front office and the second summer she worked for the writers.

Kevin said when did you decide, you worked all these jobs from the age of 12. Romy said her dad was a producer. Kevins aid you clearly were in the entertainment business from childhood, Romy said was exposed to it, but when did you start actually being like I need to be in front of the camera, I need to act. Romy said she always wanted to but she was insecure. She said she was never pretty enough or character enough and so confidence that she was funny, she knew that but ther was no bells and whistles to it. She didn’t have a funny voice and wasn’t really charactery. She said it still happens but people didn’t know what to do with her because she didn’t know where she fit in. She did a lot of improve in college and thinks like that. When she graduated she worked in ICM and CAA for a year and a half. Kevin said did you do acting in college, did you go to school for that? Romy said she was a theatre major and switched to radio, tv, film, at Northwestern. That is where she discovered improv and hat her brain worked that way. She said it took her a long time and she pushed like nobodies business in comedy and that is the worst thing you could do. She said she really didn’t know she could do drama and she did the 100th episode of Ally McBeal and she was like oh god crying comes easy. From then on, people were like, oh she know, Jenna said cry, Romy said she could cry so she was always the crying mother. She said they used to joke around that she should have a reel of snot cry, choke cry, hysterical crying, all of that. It would be like a menu. Jenna said which would you like. Romy said then just give me a minute to listen a sad song. Jenna said that is when she remembers meeting her for the first time. She remembers Romy being on set, maybe it was when Finn was singing to the sonogram, she remembers Romy was listening to her ipod. Romy said do you remember this, Jenna and Lea came up to her and said the had seen something, they were so sweet. She was aware that Jenna was not in the first cast of Spring Awakening and she was listening to Pretty in Summer, the one where she is saying she was molested, she was listening to that and was just like what this is crazy. Jenna said that is where she got the music from when they decided Tina was gong to cry all the time. Romy said it literally says crying list. She said if the material is good. She said especially if you’ve got ADD, her ability to carry on many conversations at once is high, but if her job is to do this then she was like oh I need a way to stay in that because she won’t. That’s why she will put on music. Kevin said that is interesting. Romy said people saw the headphones coming out and she would be amazed when they would be like what are you listening to, are you listening to something to make you cry. Jenna said what did you eat this morning. Kevin said are you good at crying. Romy said just finished playing something were she plays a very officious person to the nth degree and she got home and was like I kind of missing crying, I kind of want to cry. She said it’s been awhile since she had to pretend cry. Jenna said that’s really really funny. Kevin said he could have used that playlist trick, he could have used that. Jenna said she needed it because of her crap wasn’t about crying or about sad content, that’s the thing, it came out of nowhere. She was cringing while singing My Funny Valentine and you are like how do you make that work, it’s supposed to be funny, but she still had to cry.

Romy said there were times she would get the the first draft and be like Carole has some good stuff, then she would get the second she would be like okay I can still make that work and then she would get the shooting script and she would have Hitchcock coming up to her and being like I’m so sorry we’ve taken out all the transitions. She said that happened when she told the truth about Finn’s dad. There was supposed to be this whole thing leading up to that and they took it all away and she had to literally go from 0 to 60 and you are like everyone out of my way, I’ve got some snot to make. Jenna said, yes, yes, yes, exactly. Kevin said you and Viola Davis. Romy mentioned Truly, Madly, Deeply. She said be ready it’s emotional. It’s with Juliet Stevenson and Alan Rickman. She said it’s kind of like Ghost. She said Juliet had scene where she is a full on, you know those times where you are crying so hard you choke, it’s coming out of everywhere. It was this independent film and she was mesmerized because it was so real. It’s hard to make network stuff real because there is a formula and people have to be brave and try to make it be real but you can’t be brave unless you have stature sometimes. Kevin said he as going to ask how you do it. Network stuff is hard to make and making grounded network stuff is hard to make. Glee wasn’t the necessarily the most grounded show on the planet but your stuff always was. Are you conscious of genere, like the type of show you are on, or is it a scene by scene basis, these are the scenes I am in and this how they read to me so this is what we are doing or are you thinking on a larger scale, macro level of what the show is and the network it is on? Romy said not network, not any of that, she said she thinks you need have to get the tone of the show but in those moments because she does believe that as wild and Glee was you have to have the other stuff or it’s too much. Jenna said totally. You literally have to have that quiet moment. It went from Finn singing to a sonogram, bonkers, to his mom coming in being like what are you, and then realizing oh shit, he’s gotten someone pregnant. She said to her the only way to do that is to play it real. Her trick if there are no transitions is you talk like a human. People don’t talk everything out like it’s a script. We do pause or mumble, or repeat ourselves or whatever. She said that’s what she does, she tries not to rehearse it even in her head as much. She really trusts, to her if its in something where you’ve got another partner, she tries to find a common ground Brent the partner, whatever that is, and therefore there is a chemistry. She said we can all pretend their is chemistry between someone but you can’t replace the real stuff. She said that is what is unique about all of you guys is that all of you had chemistry together. That was rare and it was definitively a unicorn. It wouldn’t have if you was just you were watching separate things. Kevin said you can feel that as a viewer, you might not be conscious that is what you are feeling but you know it’s not exactly right or as magical or magnetic as it could be. Romy said it’s part of the job so she always thinks when she gets something really bad and she has to do it she just does it.. Kevin said it if it’s particularly something you don’t think is of quality it can be another challenge of how do I make this work. Romy said she did two seasons of something. She said on a television show when you have a bunch of characters of different ages and stuff like that it has to be represented. Kevin said people talk differently.

Romy said when you have a younger single person dialogue it’s going to be mom dialogue so her job is to throw in the noises. Kevin said the acting school of Romy. Kevin and Jenna said that is what I need. Romy said she just finished something with Pete Holmes. She is 5’4 and he is 6’6 and she as his superiors in this show, they were interrogation agents. She said some of the stuff they had to keep repeating and a lot of her stuff was looks and at some point she was like I am fresh out of, I can’t. She was back and forth and she was like I think I need a little bobo right up here. Kevin said bobo is Botox for those in the know. Romy was like not too much, then it hit, and she was in make-up and there was no surprise. She said I will never do that again. She said their was a lot of big eyes and mouth open. Jenna was laughing. Romy was like oh dear that is not going to turn out well. Jenna said it is always fun to work with funny people. She said they were always sitting and there was a scene where she was standing and all of a sudden he goes you’re tiny. Jenna said you just figured this out now. Romy said your 6’6 and he goes we are always sitting. She said and think about it Cory was 6-3, she is always with super tall people. Jenna said they were in like four different cars going from one city to another on the Hot Topic tour very early on in the the Glee life and they stopped at a gas station to pee and get some snacks. Cory gets out, all the girls had finally taken their heels off, and he looks at them at the gas station and was like fuck I’m tall. Kevin laughing said I remember this. Jenna said Cory said you are short and they were like we know, it was Jenna, Amber, and Lea all next to each other and they are like average 5’2 maybe. Cory was like god. Kevin said had completely forgotten about that, he was in the next aisle. Romy said that is hilarious.

Jenna said so you came back even after Cory passed away, she said obviously that isn’t what we were thinking about but did Romy think oh that’s it for my character or did you think there was stuff because of Burt and Kurt and everything. Romy said no she didn’t think she would be back. She said when she found out they were doing that we don’t know how Finn passed she said she hoped she would be part of that. She said when Jenna and her had a scene, in a hotel room at regionals, she never thought she would be back. Kevin said that makes sense. She said you know because Chris wasn’t even there because it was later on. Jenna said yeah he was off in New York. Romy said she was very very very surprised. Jenna said she didn’t even think about that. Romy said she wasn’t in the last season of a Million Little Things, it was a half season, she was only in 9 episodes. Jenna said wow. Romy said when you are dealing with an ensemble cast there are so many stories to tell, that is the kiss of death for a recurring unless the arc is about that person. Kevin said what we would have done. Jenna said and obviously the last one where everyone came back. Romy said remember Furt, Carol Banker directed it, she remembers everyone walks down and then she walks down, and cut. Carol goes you are mouthing the words but don’t need you to sing. Romy said yes oh my god. Romy said time and time again she just got so into the Marry You song she was no I’m not and Carol was like I have it on film. She said she remembers it was crazy for everyone else if you think about production but it was super fun. Jenna so much fun. Kevin said we have a blast. Jenna said she remembers this one. There are some episodes that kind of go by the way side and there are some like Furt that are very vivid. Kevin said it is also help connecting to a place that is different then what they were used to seeing every single day and the Tequila. That was memorable. Jenna said of course. Romy said Tequila brings people. Kevin said oh it did, when that happened they were like she is amazing. Jenna said can we have Carole come back all the time. Romy said she bakes.

Jenna asked Romy what is the feeling that Glee leaves you with now. Romy said that she takes away all the positive stuff which was friends and it was definitely an opportunity for her. There was the negative parts of it which was like that she never got to audition for anything else on Fox for 6 years but only did 18 episodes. When she found that out she was like wait this is keeping me from potential working. That was upsetting on another level. Jenna said an actor level. Romy said also on a what is fair level. It just didn’t seem totally fair. She said she always gets excited to see all of them in real life and that wouldn’t happened if they didn’t have that. She said she might have gotten disappointed in the lack of stuff sometimes but the experience for her was only positive. She wished she had more or a stronger storyline or a more challenging one but when she was there she always had a blast. Jenna said they always had a blast with her. Kevin said you made it a blast for everyone else too. Jenna said you also brought us a lot of bake goods. Romy said you helped me think about tiny bites even though it didn’t turn into anything. She brought muffins and everyone would only eat half. She was like no that doesn’t work and brought them in as balls and then squares. Kevin said he remembers the trays. Jenna said she remembers the tiny bites a lot. Kevin said delicious. Romy said you could totally double fist. Kevin said he wouldn’t have left half a muffin. Jenna said Kevin would never have left half a muffin but she might have left half a muffin. Romy said because you had to get into those costumes. Jenna said exactly. Kevin said everyone is so tiny, as he has been watching he noticed everyone is so little, and skinny. Romy said you guys were young. Jenna said exactly they were in their heyday. Romy said Chris was 18 and asked Kevin if he was the next youngest. Kevin said yes, until Chord came around. Chord is between Kevin and Chris. Jenna said what a time, children, truly children. Romy said now you have your own, that is bonkers. Jenna said that is such bonkers. She said they were watching an episode the night before and her husband turned to her, because she makes him watch them all with her, and said that’s Emma’s mom and she was like that’s really sweet. Kevin said aww. Romy said that’s so sweet. Jenna said you don’t think about it that way, but then she was like oh god she will never watch this show…I’m just kidding, one day. Romy said when she starts dancing and stuff like that. Jenna said her nieces started watching it when they were little, just the musical numbers, except for Push It.

Jenna said anyways, we love you, and they are so grateful to have her as a friend. Romy said I love you guys and thank you. Kevin said thank you for spending this much time with us today. Romy said you know I wish that it was in person. Jenna and Kevin said I love you to her and Romy said bye bye.

Jenna said we warned you. Kevin said we could talk for days. So much love. It doesn’t have to be about anything, we just talk. Jenna said I know, got to love her.

Until next week.

[popculturebuffet]

Evil Dead Rise: Mommy's with the Maggots Now (Comission for WeirdKev27)

Hail to the king baby! It's halloween, it's this blog and that mean's it's time for me to pull out my volume of the Necronimcon Demento and review another chapter of the evil dead.

So for those new here

I'm Jake, I review stuff and things, and two years ago I did an evil dead retrospective, covering all 4 films. From that stupid bitch scotty to ash laughing madly, to the film of a thousand catchphrases to that one that had Jane Levy, some good gore and little else, it was a fun ride.

So naturally with a new evil dead film out, it's only natural that I returned to review the latest film in the franchise: Evil Dead Rise. It's also a special review as it's my belated reviewversry with friend of the blog and over time of the me, WeirdKev27.

Kevin was my first client and the one who made me able to make a living doing this, and while he has zero interest in ever seeing Evil Dead Rise, he's more an horror-action and horror-comedy kind of guy, this gives him a chance to see what it has. Plus really after covering the last 4 even if he didn't agree to sponsor it, I'd be doing this anyway as I both love this film and hate not having the complete set. It's thanks to kev I have all I do now, so thanks man.

Evil Dead Rise is the franchises second attempt at a soft reboot after Evil Dead 2013. The plan after that one was to do two sequels: Evil Dead 2, which would follow Mia, Jane Levy's final girl from the requel and the only character who wasn't huffing paint thinner the whole film, and Army of Darkness 2. This ended up falling through, with Alvarez moving on to other projects and AOD2 being retooled into Ash Vs the Evil Dead, a three season tv series on stars that sadly got cancelled but from all accounts fucking rocked and I definitely want to cover at some point.

From there Ash's story was seemingly done on screen. While Dynamite will likely publish army of darkness comics till the end of time, Bruce Campbell had decided he was aging out of the part and wanted to pass the chainsaw on. That said while Campbell was seemingly done playing Ashy Slashy, he wasn't done with the franchise, staying on as a producer alongside Sam Rami and Robert Tapert. Rami and Campbell were done MAKING the films, but still wanted the franchise to live on.

So in 2019 a new film got the greenlight, with Rami handpicking rookie director Lee Cronin for the part, having impressed rami while working on the short lived quibi series 50 States of Fright. Cronin easily took to the cast and once filming COULD kick off in 2021, he hit the ground running. The result is a fresh take on the franchise that was so well done that WBD decided it was too good to just pop on streaming and much like Blue Beetle, bumped it up to theaters. The result was a 19 million dollar film.. scoring nearly 150 million in the box office, a huge success that , unlike most films only GREW it's audience as the weeks went on, always a great sign.

As a result the franchise's future seems secure, with Cronin not only already having 4 ideas for a sequel, which i'll get to later, but the results were so Groovy Bruce decided he wasn't finished yet, meaning an ash film is also in the cards.

So the question is how groovy is this film and how does the franchise fair without it's iconic cabin setting or iconic catchphrase spewing chainsaw man? The answers to all of this is under the cut. So turn the page, wash your hands, and prepare for 1717 Gallons of Bloodshed as I look at Evil Dead Rise.

Evil Dead Rise starts off a day after the main plot, with three 20 somethings having gone to a cabin in the woods woooooooooooooo not realizing what franchise their in. They are Jessica, Teresa, Jessica's cousin and Caleb, Jessica's douchey boyfriend. Caleb annoys Teresa with a drone, nearly clipping her with it and mansplaning after she says it nearly clipped her head off that it would've ground her face up instead.

Teresa proves to be just as obnoxious as Caleb, berating Jessica for leaving her alone with him, fair.. but then also being mad at her for being sick, laid up in bed and thus unable to give her the keys.

Thankfully this is an evil dead movie so Jessica quickly ends our suffering as she wants to swallow souls, taking off Teressa's scalp in a gory, horrifying and awesome practical effect before putting the drone to her own face and jumping into the lake. Caleb proves he's both not a COMPLETE asshole but still a complete idiot by diving in after her and we get the films awesome opening shot: Jessica rising from the lake, drenched in water and blood as the title rises behind her.

While I do like that TITLE CARRRD and scalping, overall i'm not a big fan of this opening. While it's well shot like the rest of the film, it's too short to really make me care and feels like it was thrown in there because the main plot ran a tad short and was too tightly paced to add to. It's a how we got here sort of thing that dosen't really work and feels like i'ts just there so we can have a sequel.. depsite the film having MULTIPLE other valuable sequel hooks dangling around. It's unnecessary in a film that otherwise really dosen't DO unnecessary. It also feels tonally off, feeling like a 2000's era "Kill the douchebags" sort of film than the tightly paced well characterized film we get after.

Thankfully we soon meet our actual protagnist, Beth. Beth, played by Australian Actor Alyssa Sulivan, gets a great introduction that does a lot of nice exposition without actually saying any: we quickly find out from her being sick in a stall and having some douche she works with who can't do his job himself and just let her go to the bathroom for five minutes knock on it that sh'es a roadie, her hiding it tells us she's pregnant and doesn't want anyone else to know, and Suilivan's awesome facial acting tells us she has no idea how to process this.

We soon cut to LA in a high rise, a setting change I utterly love. Before this most evil dead works were in a rural setting: a cabin in the woods for the first, second and fourth films, artuhrian times for the third, and some small towns for ash vs the evil dead. We haven't seen the deadites in an urban setting before this and LA was a great set.

The choice of setting within is also great: an old crumbling high rise in the middle of a busy city no one would give two shits about or really investigate in the middle of the night. It keeps the isolation of the cabin but puts a new spin on it that allows for new set pieces.

The main one of these is Ellie's Apartment. Ellie is played by the stunning and talented Alyssa Sutherland, previously known for Vikings, which I haven't seen. Sutherland is the easy breakout of the film, the center of most of it's marketing and the most terrifying part about it... eventually.

Part of that terror is we see her first as a fun, responsible mom and tattoo artist dealing with three children, all creatives themselves in some way: Bridget (Gabrille Echoles) is an activist, her brother Danny (Morgan Davies) is a dj and their young sister Cassie cuts up her dolls to create staves to body check her sister with.

This family, which doesn't have a last name, is the core of the film and the first 20 minutes are really just setting them up as people: Beth is a tad snarky but clearly loves her kids and is tough but fair with them, Bridget is sarcastic to just about everyone but her aunt, Danny is a bit of a reckless fuckwit but has a good heart, more on the former later, and Cassie is a sweetie pie. Their not super deep characterizations, but the talented actors give them a lot of character simply by action, and one of the films best asset is how great these people are at facial acting.

Beth flies in and after scaring the shit out of Ellie. The two actresses have great chemistry and you can feel the tension as the two clearly haven't talked.. and Beth missed a lot as Ellie's ex husband abandoned the family and this high rise is condemned, with the family only having a month. So naturally Ellie isn't that excited to see Beth, both for Beth dodging her calls, despite getting her messages, and showing up at the worst possible time.

That said the film also does a really good job with the sibling dynamic: like me with my own brother Ellie may be annoyed with Beth.. but she's there for her, getting this visit wasn't just out of the blue and her sister really needs her and waits till the kids have left to pick up pizza to ask, but does so gently yet firmly. These characters feel like family and building up this empathy and character is key to everything being as horrifying as it is. It's something many horror films, including this very film in it's opening and the previous film fail to grasp: just because

Dosen't mean we should WANT them too. It's fine to throw in a few assholes to kill so not EVERY death is a downer, depending on the film, but when you can't empathize with most of your cast it makes the wait for the bloodshed tedious. It's why the previous film REALLY didn't work for me: outside of mia NONE of these idiots were likeable and as such having to spend a film with them being stupid and waiting for them to die while the only likeable one was turned into a deadite wasn't fun. Here by making everyone we encounter likeable, grounded, and interesting.. it makes the horrifying slaughter we're about to witness that much more tragic. It makes us WANT these characters not to be dead by dawn.

Anyways we're soon reminded this is LA as we get an EARTHQUAKKKEEEE, with the bathroom set our sisters are in having been rigged to shake really well. The kids thankfulyl weren't driving at the time and instead are trying to take the pizza back up when it hits. They drop it, but do live.

Sadly for them and everyone else on their floor Danny suffers from a terminal case of dumbass and upon seeing a giant crack in the ground leading to a mysterious old bank vault just HAS to investigate in the dark. He finds some old records, which.. fair enough, it's some neat historical stuff, could be fun to paly with soundwise and could help them fincally. Him taking stuff romt he hole is mildly stupid.. but I get it and I probably would. What I wouldn't do is upon finding a room guarded by a bunch of hanging crucafixes and seeing a book with teeth and bound in human flesh, take it with me. And I mean teeth as this Necronomicon has a nasty but awesome set of chompers. I praise the set design here on this, it's iconic as the original, still recognizable as being it's sibling, but the teeth give it it's own flair.

Anyways the kids get back to the apartment and Danny decides the best thing he can do during a dark night with quakes a poppin.. is to pry open his new book. Which granted is what i'd do, but my recent book is about a trans woman's first year post transition and is damn good...

Highly recommend it and it's sequel, which I got first. Also guarnateed not to summon the evil dead.. which I understand is a dealbreaker for some of you. Good news i'm pretty sure that manga about Joker raising a baby batman does, so have at it if that's what your after.

Sadly Danny is not taking my book recommendations and opens the things finding a bunch of spooky pictures and... being genuinely horrified. He's a LITTLE fascinated but it's clear his reaction is "shit this thing isn't good is it. Not hleped is that when he pricks his finger on the books mighty jaws, it drinks some blood Audrey II styles. Bridget sees this and has the right reaction.

Or rather chuck it back down the hole they got it from. Danny can't because their mom won't let them out of the apartment after the quake which is fair.. what's less fair is that he dosen't wrap the book in something or hide it. Keep it from trying to nible on some face. You have 4 other people in the house Dan be considerate!

That said Dan still takes the darwin award winning step of playing the wax records he got. NOw on paper Danny being this dumb shoudln't work.. but in practice Rise does an excellent job showing why Danny would be like this: we've seen he's an audophile, that he's reckless as he went down a crevice in an earthquake, and that he's curious to a fault, willing to take the book in a first place. So he's being stupid.. but it's in a way where it's a character flaw and not just bad writing.

It also helps that while playing the records is risky.. you can kinda see why. He found a creepy vampiric book in the basement. He probably gets he might not be able to just chuck it in a hole and have it not come back or have already infected them or something. it didn't, but he can't know that. So knowing what the FUCK this thing is might be a good idea.

As it turns out we get some exposition from a preist long ago: he found the book and proposed to his fellow preists to explore it. His Fellow preists didn't want to die today and loudly decired it as blasphemous.

So he decided to take it and study it because that's never gone horribly wrong and lead to about a dozen deaths in this franchise, along with cameo Bruce Campbell and some other guy. He also decides to read it and to Danny's credit, he tries to stop the record there... only for it to keep playing. The Evil Dead have come baby.

Before we move on I need to talk about the danny thing a bit more, mostly because not only was this whole inciting incident well done, being rooted in character stupidity instead of just bad writing.. but it also feels like a direct response to the last film. For those who either haven't seen it, you blessed people you, or need a refresher, in Evil Dead 2013 the Necronomicon was found in a basement full of rotting corpses and next to a shot gun. it was packed in a garbage back, covered with barb wire, and had bright red writing implicitly from ash telling you NOT TO FUCKING READ IT OUTLOUD.

So enter Eric, full time teacher part time fuckwit who hears about the corpses, sees all of this and not only cuts the barbed wire but READS THE BOOK.

So it's nice the followup decided to use the same plot device.. but actually use it instead of making a character brain dead.

So with that the evil dead has risen and the nightmare time has arrived. And the first victim of the Evil Dead is Ellie, whose experincing some ELEVATED horror while taking the elevated when some cables grab her.

The sequence is quick horrifying and also has her trying in vain to fight off the possesion before the evil dead kills her, and she returns as a deadite.. and as the real breakout of the piece. While Beth is the lead and Lily Sullivan does greath, it's Sutherland whose the main attraction.. and not just because a good half of the audience's reactoin to Deadite Ellie was

Which isn't me, but I entirely get. It's also intresting to have a horror film where the deadite is the real hammy star instead of our hero. Sutherland is iconic in this roll, from the creepy smiles to how unsettling she plays possesed elly: the pitched down voice HELPS.. but it's the unceasing smile, creepy grins and offputting behavior that make Deadite Elly so awesome and so electric to watch. There's good reason her possesion was spoiled int he marketing: She's the center of this film's horror. She's not the only deadite, we'll get a few more, but she's the main threat, the main focus and the main thing fucking with our heroes heads, starting with the brilliant egg sequence where Cronin and Sutherland make simply making eggs fucking unerving.

She's also the main source of black comedy in the film, from calling her children titty sucking parasites, to her game of eeny meeny miney you, to later making her daughter repeat the eyeball gag from 2, her haminess is well played: enough to keep the film from getting TOO bleak but not so overplayed it takes you out of how horrifying thigns are.

Deadite ellie is the biggest symbol of the films tone: Cronin keeps it pitch black like the requel, but unlike that film Cronin realizes that too MUCH bleakness overrides everything else. But giving us characters to root for and want to live through the night and some dark humor, it helps contrast the utterly bleak situation. It gives us something to go what the fuck at with the humor and something to cling on to. I hate that I keep making this review "Whyt his one works and why the remake didn't" as Fede Alvarez seems like a genuinely nice person. This film is good on it's own, not just because I like it more than the other... but it's also impossible to not bring up the two as they tried to do the same thing: bring back the franchise without ash, without contiuing the original story. I don't WANT to keep using the 2013 film as a punching bag... but it's hard not to when this feels like the better version of it, making an evil dead that's closer to straight horror.. but still gets what the franchise is. It keeps the frantic pacing of 2, it just makes it less of an over the top comedy and more an over the top nightmare our heroes can't escape. it's frantic out of urgency rather than out of throwing weird, hilaroius or horrifying shit at y ou constantly. Well except the last part.

Anyways at first everyone just assumes Deadite elly is sick, and they turn to their neighbors, Gabriel (Jayden Daniels) and his father Mr. Fonda (Mick Michelson). Gabe is a kind man implied to have a thing for elly while his father is very mildly crotchety but a kind cat owner , both helping: Gabe tries to treat Elly while his pop pop tries to figure out HOW to get her to help. As it did with the bridge, the Evil has taken out the stairs and already trashed the elvator, leaving a fire escape through a conedemed apartment as thier only escape.

So while gabe and his dad plan to run through, everyone else is left with Elly. We also get a really nice use of modren tech: in most films they usually have to do the "cellphones out" dance, which I understand but got old. Here... what we know about the evil dead from other films provides a nice way... they get no signal.. because it can control that because it can control anything in it's radius. If it can posses a moose head working the wifi shoudln't be that hard.And it thus has Ellie, trapped inside her deadite counterprat clal her sister for help before convulsing.... and whne put inj a tub crawwling out of it

Mayhem ensues as the family has to ward off Deadite Ellie, and we get a lot of nice iconic bits of violence: Ellie's now iconic line of "mommy's with the maggots now", going "eeneie meanie miney you" and using a CHEESE GRATER on her daughter while attacking her in the kitchen. Which while Cronin overhyped it before release, it's a nasty wound but in a film caked in blood, it's still a very creative gore moment in a film packed with them. The gallons of blood I listed before the cut were how many it actually took to make this film. It's another way the film works: it keeps the over the top nature of the series, it just emphasises the horror more, a way to keep the series fredsh but not ignore what made it good.

Our heroes are barely able to lock Ellie out and we get one of the best sequence sin the film: our heroes look in the peep hole.. and we see bits and pieces as Ellie masacres Mr. Fonda, gabriel and two local teens I didn't mention because they literally just hit on Bridget once and then die horribly here. Even Mr. F having a boomstick dosne't save him. And it's stuff like this that works: the high rise on paper is safter, less isolated... but in practice our heroes are nwo trapped in a cramped space, no way out with a bloodthirsty monster wearing their loved one's face. It's a brilliant take.

Naturally as is Evil Dead tradition, the group falls apart a bit: Danny is in tears taking the blame for this and it's again why I like him: he may be stupid.. but while eric just kinda hid we see the toll casuing this put on Danny. Bridget rips him apart for it and normally you'd think one would go outside and die.. but in a nice twist on the old formula Beth stops them: Danny MAY of caused this but they CANNOT turn on each other. It's what's out there that they need to fight.

Speaking of which Deadite Ellie prays on her youngest, gaslighting cassie by pretending to be "all better now"

Though i'll give them points for style. This force Beth and Danny to save her.. and thus leaving them open for Bridget as in a horrifying sequence we see the dead slowly flow thorugh her before she startsb leading black blood out her nose... and becomes the dead.

Another horrifying scuffle insues with her targeting danny and barfing blood on him and nearly killing him before cassie FUCKING IMPALES HER. God damn kid.

They tie bridget up in a sack and Beth finally gets Danny to spill about the book and comes up with a plan: since playing the record got them into this, playing the record will get them out of this.

It's a desperation move.. but like Danny's earlier shenanigans that lead to this blood party.. it makes some sense: they can't read the book, and frankly trying to may just make MORE deadites, and if the guy actually survived long enough to make a third album, it means they MIGHT have a way out. We also get a nice ash style montage of her getting the DJ equipment to work as at this point the power is out. It also nicely makes her music career into a hell of a chekovs gun.

Tragically.. they don't. HIs album simply outlines the horrors idiot priest man faced, what he's lost and how only complete and total dismemberment works. Granted we knew from the intro they probably wouldn't' make it but by this point, the film's got us too invested to care. I still dont' LIKE the intro making it clear this doesn't work from the get go, but at least the films well paced enough to compensate.

Things then get somehow worse as Bridget rises and stabs danny to death, coughing up blood and everything. It's brutal as it is amazingly designed. He does manage to fire her out of the impartment... with fire, while Ellie sneaks in through the vents, something set up by the old man's lost cast earlier.

Ellie attacks Beth and in a VERY unerving moment detects she has a baby inside her, mocks her as deadites do then tries to rip it out.

But before she can get that fetus, kill that feetus and before I can go to hell for that joke, Bridget saves her. And props to Gabrille Echoles for her excellent child acting, an alex vincent level performance.

With our party down to 2 1/3, our heroes ventur eotuside and now EVERYONE'S a deadite. Highlights include Mr Fonda grabbing Ellie's leg as she grabs his boomstick

And my favorite bit.. the two deadite children hovering over a seemingly prone deadite ellie, seemingly crying for thie rmom.. before it turns into dark.. piercing laughter. It's one of the most effective scares in the film and all the deaddites joining in is just chilling. It's a scaled back but effective version of the entire cabin laughing from evil Dead 2

The final girls hide in the elevator as what's left of their family fuses into The Marauder, our final deadite for the evening and a grotesque combination of their family, a grim reminder of what's happened and just a gross thing to look at. As is standard for this film, it's awesome and I love it.

SPeaking of awesome and I love it we then get another destined to be iconic bit: the elevator fills with BLOOD. What's more impressive is they got the scene in one: had they failed they would've had to clean up and start again, which given this scene involves a GIANT pool of pracitcal blood and leaves both characters drenched in it for the rest of the film, is a LOT to as and is a LOT of moving parts to nail on your first try. But they did and the result is a horrifying sequence as the elevator fills, our heroines barely survive..a nd then get tosse dinto the parking garage drenched.

The good news: now they can escape. The bad news is Deadites love final boss fights, so The Marauder is there to oand stalking them. The final fight is a tense sequence as Elly ducks it but thankfully noticces some landscaping equipment. You know what that means... CHAINSAW BLOOD MOTHERFUCKERS

So Elly takeas a fucking chainsaw to it, which gives her an edge, and later uses her fucking boom stick and tells it to "come get some". I like these little nods, obvious enough to notice btu not distracting enough if you haven't seen the other films.

What finally does it in is fucking aawesome though: a goddamn woodchipper. look is a woodchipper being here convient? yes. is the fact the deadites only sent one convient? yes. is Ellie putting a deadite through a goodamn woodchipper with her niece and now adopted daughter turning it on fucking glorious and goryious?

It's a great finale and with that Ellie, her unborn child and her niece head off into the sunset.. while our opening deadite comes into being.

Evil Dead Rise is a glorious new chapter in the franchise: still very much evil dead, but with a darker and somehow even bloodier spin on things. It's a worhty sucessor and very worthy of being the highest grossing film in the franchise, and with that acolade a sequel is hopefully inevitble.

LIke I said Cronin had four ideas, all of them brillian 1. Returning to the Cabin: While admitely I dont' care about those characters, a new cabin in the woods would be neat. This is my least faviorite as the NEXT one.. but I woudln't mind it eventually. 2. Focusing on Ellie: Seeing where she goes next, which I badly want. 3. A prequeL: focusing on the preist. another solid idea. And my faviorite 4. The cleanup crew: returning to the high rise to ask "how the hell would people react to the leftovers of the carnage we just saw".

their all great and with Bruce wanting to return now after this entry, the future is bright and this will likely not be the last time we read from the book of the dead. But it was a great return of it and I can't wait to read the next chapter. Until then hail to the king baby.. and thanks for reading

[hvneybxns]

Jasper Sinclair | 68 | Producer ( Kevin Costner. )

Lucielle Sinclair | 65 | Talent Manager ( Michelle Pfeiffer. )

Julian Calvary | 37 | Actor & Director ( Henry Cavil. )

Persephone Sinclair | Actress & Singer 37 ( Candice Swanepoel. )

Archie Sinclair | 22 | Actor ( Drake Rodger. )

Austen Sinclair | 22 | Actress & Gymnast ( Nicola Peltz. )

With mom and dad out of the picture, just two children themselves unable to protect the lives they had created, Archie Sinclair was placed in front of his first camera at 12 months old, Aussie right at his side as they became the picture perfect children of Ralph Lauren. If Jasper and Lucielle were going to have to do damage control for Persephone then her children would be able to pick up the slack, the extra funds the twins would pull in more than enough to help cover the family secrets. He was still to young to really know that arms that comforted him through exhaustion from the long days on set belong to the very people tugging on his puppet strings. Still too young to realize he should have had his mothers love, not just passing visits with a woman that felt like home every time she was around.

At four years old, Archie heard the first threat fall from his grandmother lips as Austen demanded that she didn't want to go to another audition. There won't be any more gymnastics for you if not. The warning fell so easily from the lips of the woman he had learnt to trust would protect them from anything, Archie locked in this memory of the first time he felt scared. Worried too, Austen was his best friend, she was his person and he didn't want her to be punished. She was just tired. "I can work." The sentence fell from such innocent lips so easily, so unaware of what it was he was signing himself up to. Not that it mattered to him if Austen got to still have fun - Archie was on his first set two months later in his first big role in Little Stewart.

At six years old, Archie had clued onto the fact that things were bad. His mothers visits hurt now, watching as they played a role for the cameras much like when he was on set, his fathers visits just as infrequent but he couldn't let anyone know that he didn't like it - not when dad had told him to keep his chin up little soldier. By this point he was too busy being the balance to Austen anyway, there was no time to fall apart over missing his parents. His twin was already a wrecking ball, feeding on the lies that they were fed every time their parents came and went and Archie knew that she would be punished if she kept it up. He tried to be the calm to her storm, to be more reasonable and pliable so that they might take it easy on her, but when that stopped worked he decided to be a bigger wrecking ball than his sister was in the house. If she yelled, he screamed, if she broke something he broke two more. When the darkness came he would crawl into her bed and try and talk her down, to try and convince her the game he had already figured out, but she never did when they woke again the next morning and so the cycle continued.

Each year he grew older there was a new level of emotional intelligence that fell on shoulders that were too small to carry the weight that he had piled on but it was too late to take it off now. At school, when he got to attend, Archie denied that his parents were the people that he posed in photos with. He ignored the leering that happened every time he walked through the school halls, kids already so cruel at seven, throwing insults shared by parents that had no idea how deep each hit went when their children repeated them to the young Sinclair.

With three large movies under his belt, Archie was proving to be quite the little actor and each time he was successful he felt the pride, or that's what he was sure it was, roll from his grandparents so he picked up more work, took on a TV role that his grandma describes as a once in a life time opportunity. He'd be on the couch of every talk show that the Sinclair's can get him on. He'd part of the Super bowl half time show. He was offered for taping a Christmas special, his young voice angelic as he's forced to tape hours of Christmas carols.

At home, the affection lasted for five minutes till his grand parents were onto the next thing, talking about what he could be better next time. He thought about asking them why he couldn't just play like his friends but Archibald knew better than that - sometimes you just have to have a stiff upper lip, dad had told him the last time they had seen each other. He knows his parents don't love each other, despite the lies the twins had been filled with and there is already a level of mistrust for the man in front of him, so he takes the advice with a pinch of salt. Mistrust for his dad that always seemed so fine and a sense of concern with each new clip he caught of his mom on the TV - then the first magazine was left in his locked, his mom wasted on the front page.

Archie braved taking the article home and he asked his grandma if mom was ok. It was a bad idea, poison was spilt from her lips once more and Archie and Austen never got that visit they had been looking forward to the following week. From then on, the magazines we're kept but secretly so, the boy making sure to keep any photo of his mom that he can find where she is smiling and when the photos were not so nice, he made his best friend Monroe take care of those ones. He didn't want to read those articles anyway. The twins hadn't long since turned nine when Archie had his first breakdown on his mom. They were supposed to be having a family beach day but she was more spaced out than Archie had ever seen her. He knew that she wasn't 'wasted' as the papers said, he'd heard his grandparents making sure but that only served to upset him more. He was doing his part, he was laughing and joking even though he had been scolded the night before for the tantrum he had thrown to take the heat from Austen so why couldn't she just act like his mom for one damn day. A wasted talent, that's what his grandmother had told him and as he looked back at her with a fixed icy gaze, Archie felt the need to inform her that his grandparents were right. The twins were better off without her if this was how she was going to act in the rare times that they got to actually see each other.

The next pictures that Archie found of his mother in the magazines were pictures of her crying as he had run away from her on the sand.

His grandmother was the first to let him know just how disappointed she was with his behavior on the beach and he spent the next two months in back to back auditions and out of school limiting his time with his friends and anyone that he might have seen as a support system. He got the message loud and clear and he learnt to fix his face better than anyone else around them, Archie was a good actor on screen but he was putting on his biggest performance of his life at home and his tantrums slowly stopped. Instead he made himself a master at reading his sister, anticipating each of her moods and actions before even she could. Throwing paddies was going to get them no where, he saw that now, he would just have to make sure that he got to her first and keep her out of any trouble in the first place. Any emotions that should have been felt by a nine year old were locked down and he became a master at playing the people around him to believe in the mask that he wore.

When the visits from Persephone first stopped, he took it in his stride. He figured that someone was being punished for something and he wasn't sure what the hell he had done to warrant something like this again but it was easier to stay quiet and keep up with his new plan than it was to let anyone know that it bothered him. But a visit from Julian was enough for him to figure out that something was wrong and when his father could barely meet his eye as he muttered the apology he found the bravery to ask where his mom was. The news she wouldn't be around for a long while shook him but as he had been doing for months Archie simply nodded at his dad and slid from his chair, offering his dad a hug if he needed one. Hours later he slipped out of the house with a backpack of his things having left Austen a note that he was going to see their Aunt Jord's and he spent ten days hiding out at his god mothers house where he fell asleep crying in her arms each night until his grandmother appeared and told him it was time to get back to work and come home. Archie didn't return to his own bed though and instead moved into Austen's room for a while, their hands interlocked as they fell asleep instead.

The reappearance of Persephone in the twins life was the first thing that shook Archie in a long time, and he had to fight to stop himself from crying at the thought of her. It didn't matter that he was angry at her for the time that she had been away, even through all the pretenses he had been a true momma's boy and he wanted to fling himself into her arms the second his eyes landed on her but the same level of mistrust he had come to have for all adults in his life stopped him and the male simply welcomed her home - wondering what was so different about her.

Sitting in court, he got to hear just what was different, each time he and Austen were carted in to be asked questions, whether that was publicly or in a closed room with people who just wanted to make sure they were doing what was right. In front of anyone else, Archie and Austen were a united front, communicating most of the time with nothing more than looks and a squeeze of the hand but behind closed doors a might different story was being told and the twins were having their first ever real fall out. Archie wanted to go with mom. Austen wanted to stay. Eventually Archie managed to convince her that Persephone was going to be the lesser of the two evils, that they should give her a chance and promised her that if Persephone did prove to be crazy or worse than their grandma he would take them back home themselves.

When asked where they would prefer to go, Archie spoke for them when they said that if allowed, they would like to live with their mom and after several more rounds of horrible questions, the twins were sent home with their mother. Though he was still reserved at first Archie took being with Persephone and doing nothing much easier than his twin did, but he was still on edge for the first few months of living with her, waiting for the conditions of her love to follow her new found custody of them. Relief didn't seep into him until the first time he was falling asleep on her knee watching a film and he heard the familiar song that she had sung to him for years, lulling him into his first real peaceful sleep in his eleven years.