Amy Adams’s Spiritual Revival
By Tom Shone
Amy Adams usually views her own movies through a scrim of self-criticism, but at a recent screening of her new film, Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master, she watched with eerie detachment. “I was like, I don’t even know what I did in the film or what I didn’t do, or what I need to do, I have no clue.” Near the end, during a scene between her character, the wife of a cult leader, and Joaquin Phoenix’s drifter, “I just sobbed uncontrollably,” she says. “It really broke my heart. Oh God, I’m going to cry again if I think about it.”
We’re having lunch at the Loews Regency Hotel on Park Avenue, where Adams’s Cobb salad sits largely untouched. Suddenly, she tears up right in front of me. “I don’t know why it got to me, I’m not a crier,” she insists, collecting herself. “I’m always, ‘Oh, that’s so drama school.’ No. I’m not that kind of person.” When I ask what it was about the scene, she says it was Phoenix’s character, “so solitary, so seeking, so lost. I’d probably need to talk to a therapist to find out why that resonates with me so deeply.”
The Master is another of Anderson’s bad-nerve symphonies, its crisp 70-mm. compositions punctuated by bursts of psychic feedback, freak-out, and assorted Andersonian voodoo. Like his 2007 Oscar winner There Will Be Blood, it’s essentially a psychodrama played out between two men, an alcoholic veteran (Phoenix) who falls under the spell of L. Ron Hubbard–esque Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman), the leader of a new religion flourishing in the shadow of the Second World War. Adams plays his devoted wife, a Lady Macbeth–like amanuensis whose blue eyes boil with fury at unbelievers. “I do not want to run into her in a dark alleyway,” says Adams. “Give me [my character] Charlene from The Fighter any day, we can have a beer, talk about it, we’ll have fun. This woman scares the shit out of me. Excuse my language.”
Ever since it was announced that Anderson was making a film seemingly based, at least in part, on the founding of Scientology, the project has been cloaked in secrecy. “You’re the first person I’ve talked to about it,” says Adams, as if expecting a lightning bolt to strike. Anderson’s working methods were new to her. Even for scenes in which she was not scheduled to appear, she was instructed to show up, just to make her presence felt. “It was exhausting, but I love the effect,” she says. “She’s almost blurry.” Often, she had no idea whether the camera was on her, as during one scene in which Hoffman leads his followers in naked sing-along around a piano; Adams had to sit as demurely as possible, nude except for a pregnant-belly prosthetic.
“It was one of the most surreal evenings of my life, and I’ve had some pretty surreal evenings, up there with giving birth,” she says. “I was in a surreal place, because my daughter still wasn’t sleeping through the night and we were shooting nights. I felt like I was a little on edge, I was a little cuckoo, so I just sort of brought it.” For another scene in which Phoenix is ruthlessly “processed,” Anderson handed her a page of Victorian pornography and told her to read it straight to camera. “I’m like, Wait, is Paul trying to break [me] down? Is he doing this to me?”
It all sounds a little, well, cultlike, with the secretive Anderson imposing his will upon a cast and crew systematically discombobulated by working methods designed to keep them subtly off-balance throughout. “I won’t go that far,” she says. “But I do kind of worship Paul. He’s magnificent.” There’s a lot of the true believer in Adams, with her big blue eyes and bushy-tailed manner. That she was once a greeter at the Gap makes perfect sense. Her best performances — the motor-mouthed Ashley in Junebug (2005), the princess in Enchanted (2007) — have mined the comedy and pathos of the pathologically optimistic: sweet Pollyannas hoisting their beliefs aloft against a rising tide of reality.
“I do seem to be attracted to that,” she says. “Maybe I’m a disappointed optimist.” The fourth of seven children, she was raised a Mormon until the age of 12, when her parents separated and left the church, her father eventually moving to Arizona, Amy and her mother to Atlanta. “I’m always careful,” she says, “because I still have relatives I care very much about who are involved, but I definitely did see growing up a lot of women that were meant to be quiet and pleasant, and if you had something mean to say it’s probably best to keep a journal.”
If her early work came lit up with the infectious inner glow of the onetime believer, her more recent roles — in 2008’s Doubt, and The Master — have flipped that faith on its back like a beetle. Under the right directors — David O. Russell on The Fighter, Anderson on The Master — Adams has revealed real steel in those baby blues. “Amy is very private,” says Robert Lorenz, the director of this fall’s Trouble With the Curve, of one scene in which Adams lets Clint Eastwood have it in a diner for being an absentee dad. “I asked her during filming, which of her roles was the closest to the real Amy, and she said, ‘This one.’ She was definitely addressing some aspect of her personal life in the role.” Eastwood’s words to the director after the scene was finished: “You got the right girl.”
Since having a daughter herself — 2-year-old Aviana, with her actor-fiancé Darren Le Gallo — Adams has been much more aware of “how protective I am with my feelings. God, even telling you, I can feel this tightening in my chest.” She puts a hand to the base of her neck. “I think playing vulnerable, joyful characters was sort of a shield for me. You know, if I showed enough of who I was, maybe people wouldn’t look for anything else. I promised myself I wouldn’t go forward in my life and not be as honest as possible.”
This story appeared in the August 27, 2012 issue of New York Magazine.
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Tony Scott, Director of 'Top Gun,' Dies in Apparent Suicide
August 19, 2012
The U.S. Coast Guard told The Daily Breeze that a suicide note was found inside Scott's black Toyota Prius, which was parked on one of the eastbound lanes of the bridge. Officials said that Scott climbed a fence on the south side of the bridge's apex and leapt off "without hesitation" around 12:30 p.m., according to The Breeze.
His body was recovered after the jump, said Bell.
Tony Scott's most recent movies were "Unstoppable" and "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3," both of which starred Denzel Washington.
He also was a producer of his brother's recent "Prometheus" and was exploring a possible sequel to "Top Gun."
The Scott brothers' company is Scott Free Productions, and Tony Scott has nearly 50 producing credits in his career, including the TV series "The Good Wife" and the Liam Neeson thriller "The Grey."
The Vincent Thomas Bridge is a suspension bridge over Los Angeles Harbor that links San Pedro with Terminal Island. It appears frequently in films and television.
Scott is married to Donna Scott (recently appeared fully nude on Cinemax's Femme Fatale), with whom he has two children.
Tony Scott: 1944-2012
What horrible, horrible news this is. Producer and director Tony Scott has died, at the age of 68. He jumped to his death in what is being treated as a suicide.
It's a terrible, tragic end to quite a brilliant life. I can't be the only one who's had immense pleasure and joy from Tony Scott's films over the years. I think in particular of the terrific trio of movies he made at the start of the 1990s immediately whenever I think of his work. It remains some achievement to make The Last Boy Scout, True Romance and Crimson Tide in a row.
But heck, just look at some of the other movies the man gave us. Top Gun (to which he had been involved in developing a sequel), Man On Fire, Unstoppable (his last film), Enemy Of The State and The Hunger, for instance. Of late, most of his films had been with Denzel Washington, with whom Scott had worked many times.
Tony Scott's family, including his brother Ridley, have asked that their privacy be respected at what's clearly a tragic time. We intend to do just that. We just wanted, though, to say a thank you to Tony Scott for a collection of films that really, few of his contemporaries are able to match. We've had a lot of fun watching them, and our thoughts go out to his family and close friends.
It's a terrible, tragic end to quite a brilliant life. I can't be the only one who's had immense pleasure and joy from Tony Scott's films over the years. I think in particular of the terrific trio of movies he made at the start of the 1990s immediately whenever I think of his work. It remains some achievement to make The Last Boy Scout, True Romance and Crimson Tide in a row.But heck, just look at some of the other movies the man gave us. Top Gun (to which he had been involved in developing a sequel), Man On Fire, Unstoppable (his last film), Enemy Of The State and The Hunger, for instance. Of late, most of his films had been with Denzel Washington, with whom Scott had worked many times.
Tony Scott's family, including his brother Ridley, have asked that their privacy be respected at what's clearly a tragic time. We intend to do just that. We just wanted, though, to say a thank you to Tony Scott for a collection of films that really, few of his contemporaries are able to match. We've had a lot of fun watching them, and our thoughts go out to his family and close friends.
Janina Gavankar and Jessica Clark
in True Blood [S5E11]
* You got to hand it to both J's (Jessica and Janina) for holding up the nudity ratio when other main cast members are or still chickening out on baring it. Coincidentally both are from East-Indian background and it's good tidings for the future. We need more nudes from minorities and these exotics creatures are leading the way.
Katy Perry : Jake Bailey photoshoot [2012]
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Jessica Biel : Dusan Reljin photoshoot [2012]
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Yvonne Strahovski : hot scene from Chuck
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Pick Jennifer Aniston's butt double:
Who's behind these behinds?
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| Left to right: Jen and her unnamed body double. |
The recently engaged 43-year-old's body double was spotted on the set of We're The Millers at the weekend performing stunts deemed too risky for Jen to do herself. What a bummer!
Standing in for Jen, the stuntwoman braved a series of dangerous explosions in merely a bra and panties, clutching the same costume Jen wore on the North Carolina set in late July.
And while she passes for Jen from behind, we're not convinced of the likeness from the front. Not that it matters when you're the stunt person!
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| Having a crack at it: Jen in July, and her "lookalike" filming a few days ago. |
We're the Millers is a comedy about "a veteran pot dealer [who] creates a fake family as part of his plan to move a huge shipment of weed into the US from Mexico", the IMDB synopsis reads.
In Millers, Jen's on-screen husband is her Horrible Bosses co-star Jason Sudeikis.
In her last film Wanderlust (which went straight to DVD in Australia), Jennifer fell in love with new fiancée Justin Theroux on set. Watch the video below to see them making every sexual innuendo possible around milking a cow.
Yep, that's love. No ifs or butts.
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Emma Watson Perks Up, "Everything Hanging Out"
The more we see and hear about a post-Harry Potter Emma Watson, the more excited we get about the 22-year-old starlet's future.
Her upcoming flick Perks of Being a Wallflower includes what will likely be a very memorable scene—she and her costars reenact portions of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
"We sat around in those Rocky Horror outfits for like four days—just like everything hanging out," Mae Whitman, the Parenthood star who plays Mary Elizabeth in Perks, told me at the Hit and Run premiere. "I wouldn't say it's too risqué, but it's definitely more Hermione than you've ever seen before."
The cast also includes Logan Lerman, Ezra Miller, Nina Dobrev, Kate Walsh and Paul Rudd, among others.
"It was crazy," Whitman said of the shoot. "It was probably more of a high school experience for me than my high school experience was. We were all in the same hotel on the same floor and we would work all these late hours and come back and have jam sessions till 7 in the morning.
"It was so fun," she added. "It was so fun and we loved each other so much and that's really what that story's about, kind of connecting with people in that way. So [director and writer Stephen Chbosky] definitely cast it right. It was a very special experience."
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It was always going to happen.
Keith Lemon: The Film is just days away from hitting our cinemas, but don't be surprised if the adverts look a little tamer than you'd been expecting.
The rude ones have been banned from TV.
Leigh Francis' alter-ego Keith is known for being controversial - so it's not a MASSIVE surprise to hear that telly-boss-type people decided the promo for his feature length film was too raunchy.
Of course, by banning the clip they have just ensured that millions of people are now going to hunt it down to see what all the fuss is about.
Like us. We did that. Here it is for your viewing pleasure.
What did you think - did it offend your innocence?
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Coffee that tempts you to go nude!
20 Aug 2012
Kuala Lumpur : A coffee-flavoured beverage that makes drinkers feel dizzy, hot and eventually forces them to take off their clothes is making its rounds in nightclubs in Hong Kong. According to the daily Nanyang Siang Pau, several girls had fallen victim to the drink, which came from mainland China, a major newspaper reported.
The beverage is made from powder, and is spiked with several “stimulants.” The powder is called ‘coffee powder’ for its similarity in smell, had also been marketed in Taiwan.
Each 100gm of sachet was reportedly sold for between HK 3,000 dollars and HK4, 000 dollars although some unscrupulous dealers repacked these into smaller packets.
* Where I can make the order? We need some of powder in Hollywood as well to help the prudish American actresses overcome their nudity shyness. We need to reduce our dependance on the foreigners.
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Blake Lively Says No To Nudity
Blake Lively doesn't think she will ever strip off nude for a film or TV role because she thinks it is unnecessary.
Blake Lively will never do nude scenes.
The 'Gossip Girl' star insists she will never strip for an acting role because she finds on screen nakedness unnecessary and ''distracting'' to the plot.
In an interview with Style magazine, she said: ''When I see nudity in movies, I am always distracted by it. I know that if I am watching a scene and someone has their boobs out, then that's all I'm looking at - I can't help it. I just don't think that will ever be right for me.''
Although she is reluctant to show it off, the 24-year-old actress has an enviable body.
However, Blake - who is the face of Gucci's new fragrance Gucci Premiere - insists she does virtually no exercise to maintain her slim figure.
Blake admitted: ''I am terrible; I don't do any exercise - I'm going to have to learn the hard way. I love food too much, and my family is from the South, so the food I like is not necessarily the best for you.
''There are days when I will be like, 'Oh my goodness, I am not happy with the way I look because I cannot fit into any of my clothes'. So I eat quinoa that week, and then I feel good.''
Blake recently purchased a house in New York with her boyfriend and 'Green Lantern' co-star Ryan Reynolds.
* This is bad. Really bad. If she cited someone else as a nudity barrier (my grandma won't like it or don't want to make my parents feel uncomfortable) then we have good chance of seeing the titties. She have gone the way of Jennifer Love Hewitt and Kristin Bell in publicly proclaiming of becoming a long-term nudity dodger. There is hope. Don Cheadle needs to keep working his persuasion powers on Kristin and she will eventually capitulate. Particularly when the show needs a rating boost. Hewitt horrid Lifetime series needs to bomb quickly. Hewitt is 33-years old and will be an unemployed actress. At that age and (God forgive me) without her late mom's strict 'moral compass' to depend on.....hallelujah baby.
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Californication Stars Redefine Chemistry
Sometimes chemistry surfaces in a gaze, or even a glance. It’s true for the self-indulgent novelist Hank Moody and his longtime, long-suffering love/baby mama Karen van der Beek, the on-again, off-again nexus of Showtime’s sexy, LA-centric comedy Californication. And it’s true for the actors who play them, David Duchovny and Natascha McElhone. “Even just the looks they throw each other,” says the show’s creator, executive producer and sole writer Tom Kapinos. “It’s like you believe that this is a couple who have been in love for a long time and can’t quite shake each other.”
The difference, of course, is that Hank and Karen’s magnetic attraction is fueled by a rocky but always intertwined history, a shared child, codependence, and mind-blowing sex. Duchovny and McElhone’s spark comes simply from two actors savoring each scene—funny, sexy, or sad—they share together.
The difference, of course, is that Hank and Karen’s magnetic attraction is fueled by a rocky but always intertwined history, a shared child, codependence, and mind-blowing sex. Duchovny and McElhone’s spark comes simply from two actors savoring each scene—funny, sexy, or sad—they share together.
They’re not entirely from different worlds, but certainly different continents. Duchovny, 52, was born and reared in New York City—his father, a writer and publicist, his mother, a teacher and school administrator—and, befitting an actor known for radiating a cool intelligence, attended Princeton, then Yale before Hollywood beckoned, ultimately culminating in his breakout role as Fox Mulder on The X Files. McElhone, 41, was born in Brighton to an Irish journalist mother (her British step-father was also a journalist and media pundit) and graduated from the prestigious London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, eventually moving from the theater to high-profile film roles as a warmly elegant love interest to leading men including Anthony Hopkins, Jim Carrey, Brad Pitt, and George Clooney. Duchovny has two children with actress Téa Leoni; McElhone has three sons by her late husband, plastic surgeon Martin Kelly. Both actors split their time between LA and their homes in New York and London, respectively.
“Natascha and I have just been able to have a very easy working relationship, and I didn’t know that was going to be the case because I didn’t know Natascha and I didn’t know anything was going to work” says Duchovny, whose only insight as to why their particular back-and-forth frisson succeeds is because they make it work. “People talk about chemistry. I always think it’s your job to make it happen if it’s not there, to create it—that’s what an actor is supposed to do.”
“Natascha and I have just been able to have a very easy working relationship, and I didn’t know that was going to be the case because I didn’t know Natascha and I didn’t know anything was going to work” says Duchovny, whose only insight as to why their particular back-and-forth frisson succeeds is because they make it work. “People talk about chemistry. I always think it’s your job to make it happen if it’s not there, to create it—that’s what an actor is supposed to do.”
McElhone doesn’t try to analyze it too deeply, either. “How do you define chemistry anyway?” she wonders aloud in the British accent she casts aside for the character. “You can’t really analyze it for real. You can’t break it down into its component parts. And if you do, then of course it’ll evaporate,” she says.
“We don’t hang out or have an overly established, entwined friendship so it keeps it really about the work, which is pretty great,” she adds, admitting that at the end of the day both actors generally retreat to their respective families. “We mostly connect as our characters. And I love it like that.”
Whatever they’re doing, it’s working. Californication is entering its sixth season in early 2013, and no matter how far afield either character wanders (Hank in particular wanders with just about everyone with two X chromosomes that crosses his path) somehow the audience is still rooting for them to figure out that they belong together—no easy feat for any television coupling. “From the beginning, I was like, ‘Well, what is the show about?’ I didn’t want it to be about tits and ass,” explains Duchovny, despite Hank’s boundless appetite for the latter items. “It’s about this relationship. You say, ‘What if you got it right the first time’—that was the line that Tom hooked me with—‘but you screwed it up in some way, and how do you get it back and how do you make it work?’”
“That’s really the only dramatic through-line,” agrees Kapinos. “Hank is in love with this woman, he messed it up and he can’t quite get back to it, but that’s what he wants more than anything else. It’s enormously tricky, but somehow in the casting we got it right. I knew we had it right with David, and then Natascha came along and from the pilot you knew they had something.” The producer says from the outset his leading man “fit so seamlessly into what I wrote in the pilot, a lot of people said, ‘Did you develop this for David Duchovny?’ That wasn’t the case. The script existed way before he [came along], but it’s just one of those really nice, serendipitous examples of actor meeting material and it all fitting together. I just kept writing Hank the way that I knew him and he kept fitting right in there. That said, I started to hear little things in my head that were the way David might do something,” says Kapinos.
“Natascha is a more traditional example of me watching what she was doing, and that definitely informed the character over the years,” he adds. “She was able to give you the sense that she was just slightly out of his league and he was always going to be shooting for her and she would keep him at arm’s length. Somehow we just lucked out there. You go out searching for that and it’s hard to put exactly into words what you’re looking for, but we definitely got it right with those two.”
Evan Handler, who plays Hank’s literary agent and best friend, Charlie Runkle, breaks it down: “They’re both awfully attractive, aren’t they? That never hurts. And look, they’re both good at what they do.” But Handler admits he’s surprised Hank and Karen’s will-they/won’t-they dynamic still fascinates. “It’s been puzzling as hell to all of us, really. David and I said at the end of shooting the pilot, ‘That was a lot of fun, but how do you get a season out of it?’ Then we said the same thing at the end of the first season: That was a lot of fun, but how do you do more?’ We always kind of laugh that we kept saying that—and yet it’s been more and more.”
“That’s the hardest thing, to keep fresh,” agrees Duchovny of the central relationship—including the upcoming season, in which both characters’ now-unfettered love lives left even the performers a bit confused on occasion as to where they stand romantically. “Like, ‘Where are we exactly?’ Because there’s nothing in the way, and yet we’re not together. ‘Why is that?’ We can’t quite figure it out. She’s not involved with someone else. She’s not getting married to someone else. She’s not pissed at me about something. I’m in love with her, but I’m not pursuing her,” he says.
“The short answer is that there’s no way to keep it f resh, because either you’re together or you’re not,” he shrugs. “Either one of you is with somebody and that’s the problem or the other one is with somebody and that’s the problem. There’s not that many permutations, outside of amnesia. I don’t think we’re going to go there yet. That’s the soap-opera version of it: ‘Hank has forgotten who he is.’”
“We don’t hang out or have an overly established, entwined friendship so it keeps it really about the work, which is pretty great,” she adds, admitting that at the end of the day both actors generally retreat to their respective families. “We mostly connect as our characters. And I love it like that.”
Whatever they’re doing, it’s working. Californication is entering its sixth season in early 2013, and no matter how far afield either character wanders (Hank in particular wanders with just about everyone with two X chromosomes that crosses his path) somehow the audience is still rooting for them to figure out that they belong together—no easy feat for any television coupling. “From the beginning, I was like, ‘Well, what is the show about?’ I didn’t want it to be about tits and ass,” explains Duchovny, despite Hank’s boundless appetite for the latter items. “It’s about this relationship. You say, ‘What if you got it right the first time’—that was the line that Tom hooked me with—‘but you screwed it up in some way, and how do you get it back and how do you make it work?’”
“That’s really the only dramatic through-line,” agrees Kapinos. “Hank is in love with this woman, he messed it up and he can’t quite get back to it, but that’s what he wants more than anything else. It’s enormously tricky, but somehow in the casting we got it right. I knew we had it right with David, and then Natascha came along and from the pilot you knew they had something.” The producer says from the outset his leading man “fit so seamlessly into what I wrote in the pilot, a lot of people said, ‘Did you develop this for David Duchovny?’ That wasn’t the case. The script existed way before he [came along], but it’s just one of those really nice, serendipitous examples of actor meeting material and it all fitting together. I just kept writing Hank the way that I knew him and he kept fitting right in there. That said, I started to hear little things in my head that were the way David might do something,” says Kapinos.
“Natascha is a more traditional example of me watching what she was doing, and that definitely informed the character over the years,” he adds. “She was able to give you the sense that she was just slightly out of his league and he was always going to be shooting for her and she would keep him at arm’s length. Somehow we just lucked out there. You go out searching for that and it’s hard to put exactly into words what you’re looking for, but we definitely got it right with those two.”
Evan Handler, who plays Hank’s literary agent and best friend, Charlie Runkle, breaks it down: “They’re both awfully attractive, aren’t they? That never hurts. And look, they’re both good at what they do.” But Handler admits he’s surprised Hank and Karen’s will-they/won’t-they dynamic still fascinates. “It’s been puzzling as hell to all of us, really. David and I said at the end of shooting the pilot, ‘That was a lot of fun, but how do you get a season out of it?’ Then we said the same thing at the end of the first season: That was a lot of fun, but how do you do more?’ We always kind of laugh that we kept saying that—and yet it’s been more and more.”
“That’s the hardest thing, to keep fresh,” agrees Duchovny of the central relationship—including the upcoming season, in which both characters’ now-unfettered love lives left even the performers a bit confused on occasion as to where they stand romantically. “Like, ‘Where are we exactly?’ Because there’s nothing in the way, and yet we’re not together. ‘Why is that?’ We can’t quite figure it out. She’s not involved with someone else. She’s not getting married to someone else. She’s not pissed at me about something. I’m in love with her, but I’m not pursuing her,” he says.
“The short answer is that there’s no way to keep it f resh, because either you’re together or you’re not,” he shrugs. “Either one of you is with somebody and that’s the problem or the other one is with somebody and that’s the problem. There’s not that many permutations, outside of amnesia. I don’t think we’re going to go there yet. That’s the soap-opera version of it: ‘Hank has forgotten who he is.’”
McElhone suggests that, via Hank’s through-the-looking-glass-style sexual misadventures across LA’s hedonistic landscape, the show always engages the audience enough that “you feel when you come back to Hank and Karen like, ‘Oh, okay, there we are again. The compass has sort of reset itself.’ You come back to the home base where it all seems mundane and dull and his other life is so much more exciting—but the people don’t think that! They seem to want them to be together.”
Duchovny says playing the centerpiece of the show’s funny, frank take on sex, addiction, and self-destructive behavior hasn’t changed him personally. (“I’ve never been the kind of actor who has to live a certain way in order to play a certain guy, so there hasn’t been any of that.”) But the opportunity to play Hank Moody h as h ad a profound impact, he admits, especially when it came to satisfying a long-burning desire to show off his ability to mine laughs after his serious, smoldering stint on The X Files.
“It made me less frantic artistically, trying to show something, trying to prove something. Being able to succeed in this role comedically—and so different from The X Files—made me less insecure, less irritable and more aware of what I can do. Rather than saying, ‘Hey, I’m funny, guys! I’m funny. I’m funny,’ just going and being able to do it meant a lot to me, as a professional and as a person.”
Alternately, McElhone says she’s unchanged by walking in Karen’s hippie-chic shoes—for the most part. “I mean, other than having to do an American accent! Maybe that slightly changes my syntax.” But she’s discovered that many other people feel her character’s romantic travails acutely. “I remember after the first season, someone came up to me, literally took me by the shoulders and shook me and said, ‘You have to leave that guy!’ I was like, ‘It’s okay, I’m not with him. And he doesn’t really exist. It’s a character.’ They’re so attached to it that they overidentify with her plight and they want to rescue her. It was kind of cute…but not really.”
“We’re making a comedy—we’re not trying to solve these problems,” adds Duchovny. “We’re certainly not showing them in the dark light that they might be. This is a guy who has been drinking steadily for six years and has very little negative to show for it. When people say to me, ‘Hank Moody is my hero,’ I say, ‘You might want to think about that!’ Because this is not a life that ends well outside of the comedy universe. If you were to take it into another universe, it’s a tragedy of wasted talent, wasted love, whatever you want to call it.”
Still, the audience is hoping for a happy ending for Hank and Karen, albeit one that’s perhaps another season or two away. Kapinos knows their endgame: “I have it, roughly,” he reveals. “But we’re having so much fun, we all still like each other—which is a minor miracle—and so I’ll do it forever and run it into the ground!”
Duchovny dreams of a not-so-cheery closure. “Part of me wants to get to repercussions,” he says. “I don’t think Hank is going to die, but I always wanted him to die. I thought that would be a great way to end the show: It just catches up with him, eventually. My image was that he was going to marry Karen on his deathbed, basically, and that he was going to get it all. And not be able to enjoy it.”
Duchovny says playing the centerpiece of the show’s funny, frank take on sex, addiction, and self-destructive behavior hasn’t changed him personally. (“I’ve never been the kind of actor who has to live a certain way in order to play a certain guy, so there hasn’t been any of that.”) But the opportunity to play Hank Moody h as h ad a profound impact, he admits, especially when it came to satisfying a long-burning desire to show off his ability to mine laughs after his serious, smoldering stint on The X Files.
“It made me less frantic artistically, trying to show something, trying to prove something. Being able to succeed in this role comedically—and so different from The X Files—made me less insecure, less irritable and more aware of what I can do. Rather than saying, ‘Hey, I’m funny, guys! I’m funny. I’m funny,’ just going and being able to do it meant a lot to me, as a professional and as a person.”
Alternately, McElhone says she’s unchanged by walking in Karen’s hippie-chic shoes—for the most part. “I mean, other than having to do an American accent! Maybe that slightly changes my syntax.” But she’s discovered that many other people feel her character’s romantic travails acutely. “I remember after the first season, someone came up to me, literally took me by the shoulders and shook me and said, ‘You have to leave that guy!’ I was like, ‘It’s okay, I’m not with him. And he doesn’t really exist. It’s a character.’ They’re so attached to it that they overidentify with her plight and they want to rescue her. It was kind of cute…but not really.”
“We’re making a comedy—we’re not trying to solve these problems,” adds Duchovny. “We’re certainly not showing them in the dark light that they might be. This is a guy who has been drinking steadily for six years and has very little negative to show for it. When people say to me, ‘Hank Moody is my hero,’ I say, ‘You might want to think about that!’ Because this is not a life that ends well outside of the comedy universe. If you were to take it into another universe, it’s a tragedy of wasted talent, wasted love, whatever you want to call it.”
Still, the audience is hoping for a happy ending for Hank and Karen, albeit one that’s perhaps another season or two away. Kapinos knows their endgame: “I have it, roughly,” he reveals. “But we’re having so much fun, we all still like each other—which is a minor miracle—and so I’ll do it forever and run it into the ground!”
Duchovny dreams of a not-so-cheery closure. “Part of me wants to get to repercussions,” he says. “I don’t think Hank is going to die, but I always wanted him to die. I thought that would be a great way to end the show: It just catches up with him, eventually. My image was that he was going to marry Karen on his deathbed, basically, and that he was going to get it all. And not be able to enjoy it.”
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Hannah by Antony Nobilo for Bambi
Photographer: Antony Nobilo
Model: Hannah Glasby @ IMG
Stylist: Sally Dixon
Hair and makeup: David Novak-Piper
For Bambi Magazine issue 11
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‘Game of Thrones,’ ‘True Blood,’ ‘Mad Men,’ ‘Copper’: Inside TV’s Prostitute Fixation
Jace Lacob examines the sudden proliferation of prostitutes on television, from Game of Thrones and Crimson Petal to True Blood and Copper, and what may be behind the trend.
Aug 20, 2012
No more than 10 years old, Copper’s Annie (Kiara Glasco) acts as a conduit to a story arc about child killers, child prostitutes, and righteous vengeance. Within Copper, a whorehouse serves as one of the main backdrops for the Tom Fontana and Will Rokos-created drama, a sexually laced boozer where the cops come to unwind after a hard day chasing (and often killing) criminals. Franka Potente’s Eva oversees the establishment, counting money when she’s not indulging in some hot sex with Weston-Jones’ Corcoran. Across town, a French madam, Contessa Popadou (Inga Cadranel), rules her brothel with an iron fist sans velvet glove, indulging rich gentlemen’s tastes for young flesh.
Given that prostitution may be the world’s oldest profession, it’s no surprise that a show about the seedy underbelly of 19th century Manhattan’s Five Points would contain a whore or four, but the presence of prostitutes—which perhaps owes a debt to HBO’s Deadwood—isn’t limited to Copper. From True Blood and Game of Thrones to Justified, Hell on Wheels, and next month’s British import The Crimson Petal and the White, there’s a virtual proliferation of prostitutes on television right now, one that positions the women somewhere on the spectrum between victim and empowered hero. But while some of them represent financially attainable forbidden fruit (it is surely no coincidence that several recent TV hookers are named “Eva”), the omnipresence of these prostitutes underpins a disturbing development within real-life society.
That trend isn’t limited to literal whores either. In this season’s most controversial and polarizing episode of Mad Men, Christina Hendricks’ Joan Harris sold herself to a client in order to secure a seat at the table with the male partners. It’s within stories such as these that the viewer is given a glimpse into both the struggle of women to move beyond being objects of sexual desire, beautiful things to be owned, and the viewer fantasy of transformation that these situations engender.
There’s a distinct prurience to the appearance of the prostitute within a narrative. The shows mentioned above are all created by men (though it’s worth noting that The Crimson Petal and the White, based on the novel by Michael Faber, was adapted by Lucinda Coxon), so it’s hardly surprising that the male gaze would be turned on women whose job it is to service men sexually.
But not all of these characters are in need of a Prince Charming. In Crimson Petal, Romola Garai’s Sugar may be the talk of the town, but she’s also a canny player who has taught herself to read and who is writing a novel about enacting her bloody vengeance upon her male clients, dreaming of plunging a knife into their bellies even as they plunge deeper into her.
Sugar’s story is that of transformation, and it’s here that these characters become instruments of self-change, gaining an upper hand. Just as Hendricks’ Joan changes from single mother to female partner by selling her body, her journey is echoed in the decisions made by widowed Margaret Schroeder (Kelly Macdonald) who becomes a kept woman in HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, and by Hell on Wheels’ “tattooed harlot,” Eva (Robin McLeavy), who settles for marriage even as she dreams of a passionate affair with a former slave.
And in Crimson Petal, Garai’s Sugar tries on a series of identities along the path toward reinvention. In the BBC miniseries, Sugar discovers an escape hatch even as her tormentors try and force her to fulfill the endless cycle embodied by the pathetic brothel madam Mrs. Castaway (Gillian Anderson). In finding her own empowerment, outside of the influence of the men who have ill-used her, Sugar becomes both feminist victor and hero of her own story, shattering her destiny and society’s expectations. She refuses, full stop, to be a victim.
Elsewhere, True Blood’s snarky Pam (Kristin Bauer van Straten) evolves from an abused prostitute to a vampire when she encounters her “maker,” Eric Northman (Alexander Skarsgard), the victimized whore becoming a bloodthirsty predator. On Game of Thrones, Esmé Bianco’s Ros attempts to improve her life by moving to King’s Landing only to be forced to beat another whore almost to death and to be savagely used and abused herself; she’s given a lifeline by eunuch schemer Varys (Conleth Hill), who sees the making of a spy in the redheaded courtesan. These acts of self-reclamation, even if achieved with assistance from men, turn these women into something entirely new instead.
This isn’t always the case, however. One prostitute this season on Southland (played by the great Karina Logue) repeatedly sold her teenage daughter to johns for quick cash. The meth-addicted prostitutes of Justified don’t have many aspirations beyond getting paid and getting high and surviving, something that’s as difficult in Harlan County, Kentucky as it is in Game of Thrones’ Kings Landing. Here, the whores are presented as more or less vapid-eyed cows headed for slaughter, pack animals with no real means of escaping their fates.
Back in Manhattan’s historical Five Points, the adult prostitutes on Copper may have their eyes on various men, but their struggles are relatively shallow overall. It’s the young Annie Reilly who remains firmly embedded in the dark fairy tale with which these characters often surround themselves. By the end of the series’ second episode, Annie’s situation is miraculously—and rather bloodily—transformed altogether. As in many fairy tales, the charwoman becomes a princess, the whore becomes a paragon of virtue. Real life, however, is rarely as kind.
Perhaps it’s our desire to see prostitution as a liminal state, a layover on the road to something greater for these female characters, that makes us root for the prostitutes in these stories. Our collective hope is that they’ll better themselves and get out of circumstances that force them to earn money on their backs.
Of course, the reason that there are so many prostitute characters on television today may have to do with culture providing a mirror to contemporary mores: these women are the literal embodiment of a mercenary behavior pattern that we’re seeing emerge within our society, the need to sell both ourselves (and even our bodies) and each other out to the highest bidder.
It could be that, in peering into the boudoirs of Sugar and her working sisters, we’re seeing ourselves reflected back.
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Magic City Wants You to Be an Extra, Maybe
by Ciara LaVelle
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| These Magic City extras got to watch Jessica Marais dripping wet in a bikini. Just saying. |
When word got out that Magic City's casting directors had trouble finding Miami actors without breast implants a couple months ago, hundreds of this city's au naturel women cursed at their newspapers and computer screens: I'm right here, dammit, and I deserve to breathe the same air as Jeffrey Dean Morgan too.
Ladies, now's your chance.
Magic City's returning for a second season in 2013, but before filming gets underway, producer Mitch Glazer and company need to fill their sets with Miami hotties in '50s attire. And they're launching their search this weekend.
The casting call takes place Saturday and Sunday in Hollywood, at the Fred Lippman Center's Shuffleboard Auditorium. Even the casting location must be retro, apparently. What, Dania Jai-Alai was booked?
Representatives from the show will be looking for "all types 18 years of age and older, especially people with a late 50s early 60s look." You're encouraged to play up your own mid-century appeal by dressing in costume: "If you have a favorite hat, shirt or outfit that has a late 50s/early 60s vibe to it, wear it."
The casting doesn't specifically say that surgically enhanced actors are out of the running -- though tattoos must be covered and piercings must be removed for the auditions. But there is one part of the body that must look unmodified: "natural hair colors only," the call specifies.
Visit opencastingcalls.com for more information on how to audition. Good luck, you naturally busty bombshells!
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Terry Gilliam Says 'Zero Theorem' Will Mostly Take Place In A Chapel, Feature Four Main Characters, Nudity and More
Yes, Terry Gilliam is finally at work on a new film that is actually greenlit, has funding, is in pre-production and looking at a scheduled shooting start date. Announced last week, "The Zero Theorem" will star Christoph Waltz as Qohen in a futuristic story about a computer hacker whose work to find the reason for human existence is constantly diverted and interrupted thanks to the Management, who send a teenager and lusty love interest to distract him. If anything, Gilliam must be glad to be talking about a project that isn't "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote," and indeed he's spilled a few details about what we can expect from his next effort.
Comparing the film to "12 Monkeys," Gilliam says the logline for the movie makes it sound heavier than it will likely turn out. "It's very funny. That synopsis sounds much darker and broodier than it is," he told Dreams, a fansite for the director, as he gave his own summation of the story. "The main character is literally living in this burnt-out chapel which one could take as a metaphor for old beliefs and old systems. He's a computer genius but he's just sitting there waiting for a phone call, which he's hoping will give meaning to his life....It really is about relationships, and discovering what's really important in life."
And at least at the script stage, there is some nudity, but how much makes it into the final movie, Gilliam is still sorting out. "There is a bit of nudity in the script, whether it will be that nude in the film I don't know. When you've got people flying around through space, sucked into black holes naked… that can be very difficult to do," he said, revealing even more curious elements that perhaps make the film sound like some kind of sci-fi epic. But Gilliam elaborates that the setting is rather contained.
"Two-thirds of it -- if not more -- take place in a ruined chapel," he said, while adding that fact will make it particularly intriguing to shoot. "The interesting thing about it is because it takes place in this one place, this chapel -- that's going to be the challenge, because I have never shot like that before, in that limited space. So to keep it interesting is what I'm going to have to master. The acting is crucial to it -- there is no car chase nor a shootout -- none of those things you can fall back upon to keep the film going. It's about the acting and that is why Christoph is so incredible."
And speaking of casting, Gilliam says, "There are only four main characters in this thing." So it truly will be a performance driven movie so it will be interesting to see who comes along for the ride when shooting starts on October 22nd for 36 days (his shortest schedule since "Monty Python and The Holy Grail"). Gilliam notes that casting is underway with more news to come soon.
It's truly a blend of ingredients that can be described as Gilliam-esque, and his usual team of collaborators will be on board as well, including designer Dave Warrren, costume designer Carlo Pogiolli and more. We'll see how this develops, but until then, hit Dreams to read more from Gilliam about the movie and his upcoming opera work.
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Jena Sims (Attack of the 50ft Cheerleader) Interview By Ken Spector at 2012 VH1 Do Something Awards
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Watching pornography 'could make men better weightlifters' study says
by Anna Edwards
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James L. Fisher: No 'Shades of Grey' at Olympics; sex abounds in Olympic villages — what has happened to the world?
— in more ways than games Olympics debauchery, 'Shades of Grey' signs of decline of American proprieties.
I was on a plane bound for Minneapolis. An Attractive young woman sat down next to me. She told me that she was a member of her college swim team and was headed for Olympic tryouts. She asked what I was reading. The new book about Alexander Hamilton, I told her. I asked what she was reading. Without a twinge of embarrassment, this young woman said, "Fifty Shades of Grey." I'd heard that the book was the rage among mature women across the country.
After landing, I asked my wife to buy a copy. I thumbed through the book; it was laced with what we used to call pornography: S-and-M (dominance and submission) and was poorly written.
What is happening? Yes, years ago, there was "Forever Amber," "Tobacco Road," etc., and some graphic stuff was read in secret, behind closed doors, and parents certainly didn't know about it. There were "nice" girls and a few "easies." And now we have chest-thrusting women and college girls unabashedly applauding at all kinds of "hookups." I was nonplussed.
Then I read a report about sex, drinking and drugs in the Olympic villages. In that event, which is supposed to be "17 days that unite the world" (in more ways than we had thought) it's estimated that 70 percent to 75 percent of athletes have sex in the Olympic villages.
In the 2000 Olympics organizers provided athletes 70,000 condoms. The stockpile ran out in a week and this year they supplied 100,000, expected to last a little longer.
Michael Phelps, all-time gold-medal winner, was caught smoking pot in 2008 and a woman said that he enjoyed threesomes and should get a gold medal for lovemaking.
Gold medalist Hope Solo reportedly said "celebratory sex" was for the winners, and for the losers sex is a "consolation prize."
A javelin thrower reported that he had sex with three women a day during the 2000 Olympics.
In "The Secret Olympics" an anonymous female Olympian writes about "getting wasted the night before the post-games trip to the White House" to shake hands with the president. She wrote she "woke up in bed that morning with a guy she didn't know and reeked of liquor" during her White House visit. Apparently "being drunk at the White House has become an Olympic tradition."
Why haven't we heard about these things? A female Olympian said, "The USOC (U.S. Olympic Committee) wants a particular image and brand," and tries to keep it under wraps.
My head spinning, two days later, sitting with a group of friends, wives and husbands, the subject of the evening was the "Shades of Grey" and its companion books and the new movie, "Magic Mike," about male strippers. The women enthusiastically agreed to exchange copies of the books and attend the movie together. The next day I learned that the packed movie included one man in the back row along with a full house of happy women. Later, a police officer friend told us of seeing parents with children standing in lines to see X-rated movies.
What does this outpouring represent: the sexual emancipation of women, political correctness gone amok, the continuing decline of American proprieties, the birth of sexual harmony, a passing fancy, investing more in testosterone treatments, lawyers' fees in more male sexual harassment suits? You decide ...
Oh, later, I saw the young woman on TV. She made the team!
James L. Fisher, Vero Beach, is president emeritus of Towson (Md.) University.
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13-14 month calender featuring the stunning original Nude Fine Art Photography of Chris Haber.
I am producing a series of 2013 calendars TO BENEFIT CHARITY. This one features stunning fine art nude images in an all female calender for 2013 and I am already partially through the process which I am funding out of pocket until the completion of this Kickstarter project.
I am extremely well reputed in the local photography community, have great working relationships with numerous models, run the largest camera club in my area, teach photography seminars for the local camera shop and have a photographic art book of my work inside NASA being released late next year by a real publisher (not self-published).
Expenses I will need to cover include hiring 13-14 models, hair/makeup artists for all those separate shoots, rental of studio space, securing outdoor shooting locations, printing and shipping rewards, traveling expenses, copies of the calendars for the models, etc. Depending on budget I would like to include a body painted model or two as well which requires hiring a body painting artist and licensing their work for publication.
I've already begun casting and photographing models at my own personal expense until this Kickstarter project ends and the funding is received. I will I will continue to get as much of the project done out of pocket as possible until the project deadline. As such I have set the funding minimum extremely low. The funding minimum does not reflect actual projected costs.
A portion of the proceeds of the calendar sales will benefit Stanford Medical's Folding@Home project researching
HERE ARE A COUPLE OF THE COMPLETED MONTHS. (of course the calender won't be watermarked)
Expenses I will need to cover include hiring 13-14 models, hair/makeup artists for all those separate shoots, rental of studio space, securing outdoor shooting locations, printing and shipping rewards, traveling expenses, copies of the calendars for the models, etc. Depending on budget I would like to include a body painted model or two as well which requires hiring a body painting artist and licensing their work for publication.
I've already begun casting and photographing models at my own personal expense until this Kickstarter project ends and the funding is received. I will I will continue to get as much of the project done out of pocket as possible until the project deadline. As such I have set the funding minimum extremely low. The funding minimum does not reflect actual projected costs.
A portion of the proceeds of the calendar sales will benefit Stanford Medical's Folding@Home project researching
- Cancer and P53
- Alzheimer's Disease (AD)
- Huntington's Disease (HD)
- Chagas Disease
- Malaria
- Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI)
- Antibiotics
- Parkinson's Disease (PD)
- Viral diseases
HERE ARE A COUPLE OF THE COMPLETED MONTHS. (of course the calender won't be watermarked)
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