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INSIDE THE UNSETTLING, HOMOEROTIC TERROR OF ‘THE HITCHER’

Director Robert Harmon looks back on his 1986 classic, discussing the ambiguous relationship between its main characters, the brilliance of Rutger Hauer — and why he never thought he was making a horror movie

In the mid-1990s, Robert Harmon visited David Fincher on the set of The Game. “I’m a huge David Fincher fan,” Harmon tells me. “Seven, to me, is one of the great movies of all time — it’s just crazy-good, first to last.” But when the two directors met, Harmon discovered that the younger filmmaker was just as big a fan of his. “He said, ‘Your movie changed my life.’ It meant a lot to me, especially from somebody you admire so much.”

For more than 35 years now, Harmon has been pleasantly surprised whenever he learns that someone loves his first feature, The Hitcher, a nasty little horror movie with Hitchcockian vibes that terrorized viewers. The funny thing is that Harmon doesn’t consider himself to be a big horror guy — and, as he confides, “I don’t want to be controversial, but I was never even that much of a Hitchcock fan. His reputation just seemed way greater than his movies seemed to suggest it should be. I know it’s a minority opinion.”

And yet, this elemental story about a young man who foolishly picks up a hitchhiker in the middle of nowhere, realizing too late that he’s made a terrible mistake, remains a primal cautionary tale — a worst-case scenario of what your mom always warned you about in regards to talking to strangers. But few strangers are as unnerving as John Ryder, the enigmatic loner who torments feckless young Jim Halsey. The film’s power goes beyond its killer hook, however, touching on something bizarre and unspoken between hunter and hunted. At its core, The Hitcher is a film about a codependent relationship, maybe even a twisted love story. It’s about finding something you weren’t expecting out there on the highway, something that’s been waiting for you all along.

The Hitcher was the brainchild of Eric Red, an aspiring writer and filmmaker who had driven from New York to California. He was somewhere in Texas, fighting off exhaustion, when it happened. “I picked up a hitchhiker just to pass the time, to help keep me awake,” he’d later recall. “But the guy just sort of sat there, smelling dirty and staring at me. I started feeling uncomfortable about the whole situation and thought maybe it wasn’t such a good idea picking him up. He had a rough edge. I finally stopped the car a few miles down the road and asked him to get out. He left willingly enough, and that was it.”

But the brief encounter, mixed with his memory of the Doors’ “Riders on the Storm” — which contained the ominous lines “There’s a killer on the road / His brain is squirmin’ like a toad” — gave him the idea for a screenplay. Inspired by what he’d come up with, Red would later send that script to producers, declaring in an attached note, “When you read it, you will not sleep for a week. When the movie is made, the country will not sleep for a week.”

The 1980s were a haven for horror films, especially slasher flicks. What had started in the late 1970s, thanks to seminal works like Halloween, had morphed into a cottage industry, giving moviegoers franchises such as Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street. Cheap to make but potentially lucrative, horror movies preyed on adolescent fears, with the story’s bogeyman going after helpless, naive young people, punishing them for their horniness or lack of life experience. In these films, there was a strong sense that the victims had it coming.

The Hitcher played into that trend, while tapping into a deeper cultural anxiety. Hitchhiking had, at one point, been seen as an act of freedom, playing into a Kerouac-ian love of the open road and the possibilities out there beyond the horizon. It was a romantic notion, but as historian Jack Reid describes in his book Roadside Americans: The Rise and Fall of Hitchhiking in a Changing Nation, that wide-eyed optimism eventually faded away. “[H]itchhiking was [once] a common form of mobility for students and travelers of all ages,” he writes. “This held true from the Depression era, when those seeking work could find transportation by sticking out a thumb, through to the early 1970s. … Yet by the time Reagan reached the White House, hitchhiking had lost traction. … [I]n the 1980s few Americans saw hitchhikers as heroic. To them, hitchhiking was a taboo form of mobility reserved for desperate and often unsavory individuals.”

That shifting attitude toward hitching — mixed with fear and loathing directed at those who would engage in such an activity — put fuel in The Hitcher’s narrative tank. We don’t know this as the film begins, but Jim (C. Thomas Howell, who’d been in 1980s teen-centric movies like The Outsiders and Red Dawn) is on his way to San Diego, driving through the night, rain pouring down, when he sees a solitary man standing by the side of the road. Feeling bad for the guy and deciding he needs the company, Jim offers him a ride. (“My mother told me never to do this,” he tells John with a friendly smile.) And for the next 90 minutes, John (Rutger Hauer) toys with this kid, clearly enjoying having the upper hand. Early on, he pulls a knife on Jim, demanding, “I want you to stop me.” Freaked out, Jim is able to get John out of the car, but not unlike the Terminator, John just keeps coming, following Jim — sometimes inexplicably — wherever he goes. John is like a curse Jim has inherited: By stopping to give him a lift, he now will never be rid of him.

Harmon’s path to The Hitcher was not a straight line. He was already in his early 30s when the script came his way, supporting himself as a photographer. But movies were his passion. “I’ve always wanted to make films,” he tells me. “Even when I was making a living as a still photographer, which I did for quite a long time, I was just biding my time. First thing I did when I moved out [to Los Angeles] from Boston was to start putting myself out there as a cinematographer. I had no experience, so I did student films to start with. I was always working my way towards this.”

Born in 1953, growing up “outside of Manhattan,” he was one of those guys who never got over the thrill of being at the theater as a kid, the curtain opening and a movie playing on that big screen. “It may be the reason, among about 4,000 others, that 2001 remains, to this day, my favorite film of all time,” he says. “It wasn’t just the scale of the original Ziegfeld screening — it’s because it’s a real movie. It’s essentially nonverbal, which is very unusual for a commercial, Hollywood-style [movie].” Before seeing Stanley Kubrick’s sci-fi masterwork, Harmon had been tempted to apply to architecture school. “I saw 2001, I took the application, and I threw it in the garbage,” he tells me. “I never even sent it.”

When Harmon came out to L.A., “I had literally never directed anything,” serving as a cinematographer in order to see how people made films. Eventually, he was ready to direct his own: the 1983 short China Lake, which starred Charles Napier as a bad cop wreaking havoc across the California desert while on vacation. The short, which is currently available on YouTube, sans some of the original music, very much feels like an unintentional dry run for The Hitcher. Like his feature debut, China Lake probed the psychology of a disturbed individual, the action set against a vast, arid landscape that was both inviting and unsettling. “It was an insurance policy,” he says of making China Lake. “It was a kind of ‘If this whole directing thing doesn’t work out — if I’m going to spend every cent I have for X number of years on this — I better have some use for it so at least I can put it on my [cinematographer] reel.’”

He hustled to ensure China Lake opened doors for him. While writing the script, he saw Napier at a screening at L.A.’s venerable arthouse theater the Nuart, deciding that he had to play the cop. An attempt to get the script to Napier’s agent went nowhere, but then, through a friend, Harmon obtained Napier’s number and cold-called him, telling the character actor, a veteran of Jonathan Demme’s films, that he’d written the dark role with him in mind. “The reaction was very unlike anything I would’ve expected,” Harmon recalls. “He read it, loved it and fired his agent for not having ever even shown it to him.”

Short films tend to do only so much for a burgeoning director, but in the case of China Lake, it was enough to get him noticed. As Harmon remembers, “[Napier] dragged Jonathan Demme to a screening over at Warner Bros. It was great. It was really fun.” China Lake only played one festival — the prestigious Telluride Film Festival, in Colorado — but the response helped stoke interest. “We’d hardly shown it to anybody, and I was stunned by the reaction. The audience was, by my recollection, exactly bifurcated. People were on their feet, clapping and whistling — and other people were screaming and yelling. I very clearly remember a voice from the back of the theater: ‘Who admitted this piece of shit to the festival?’”

Harmon smiles: “The answer to her question was her husband, who was on the board of admissions of the festival.”

Soon, he’d signed with a top-flight agent at William Morris, which was fielding offers for his first feature. There was just one problem. “I didn’t like any of the scripts,” he says. “I didn’t [think] it would do me any good to make those scripts. Then at a certain point, I said to myself, ‘Who do I think I am? I’ve wanted to [be a filmmaker] for my entire life. I can’t keep saying no.’ And then I read The Hitcher.”

Red’s spec script hadn’t gotten much positive feedback in Hollywood, but David Bombyk, a development executive, was blown away by it. Speaking to the Los Angeles Times in 1986, he recalled that the screenplay was 190 pages, far longer than the traditional script. “I kept avoiding it,” he said, “but finally I picked it up. Then, it was just ‘Oh, my God!’”

The story’s violence and gore may have shocked Bombyk, who later would serve as a producer on the film, but Harmon was a little more muted when the screenplay came his way. “I thought, ‘Okay, I have all kinds of issues with this and with that,’ but I felt I could do something with it,” he tells me. “And it also had the thing I loved most in movies” — including his all-time favorite, 2001 — “which is, it was essentially nonverbal.” Many of the scripts Harmon had turned down after China Lake were, as he put it, “Much more slasher-y,” and even he acknowledges that Red’s screenplay made China Lake seem like “Hitcher Junior in a lot of ways.” Plus, Harmon felt pressure to finally commit to a project.

“Probably a good 50 percent of making me say yes was I’d said no too many times,” he admits. “I really thought, ‘I’d just like to do something.’ Not that it was a sacrifice, because I really did like the script — with some minor exceptions that we changed. And I liked the fact that it wasn’t run-of-the-mill. Eric Red is unique: Like him, hate him, his thing is a thing that you don’t find that often. It’s very singular and it’s very him. I think that’s rare.”

One thing he was clear about, though: The Hitcher wasn’t a horror movie. “I’m not the most objective person about that movie, but I don’t think of it as a horror movie,” he says. “I just don’t. We never did.” So what did he think he was making? “I was never conscious [of that],” he replies. “I didn’t have a target.”

Harmon had his heart set on Terence Stamp to play John, going so far as to have a picture of the Billy Budd actor in his wallet to show casting people who he had in mind. “But Terence turned it down,” Harmon recalls. “He said to me — and I thought it was actor bullshit, it may have been — ‘I don’t want to put myself through what it’ll take to do a good job on this part.’ But the sweetest thing in the world, I ran into him at some party years later, and he said, ‘That was one of my biggest, most sincere regrets, not having taken that part.’ Whether he meant it or not, it meant a lot to me. But still, how lucky could I have been to get Rutger?”

Hauer, who died in 2019 at the age of 75, was a Dutch actor who’d worked with the likes of countryman Paul Verhoeven before starting to make his mark in American films in the early 1980s, his big breakthrough coming in Blade Runner as Roy Batty, the serene, menacing leader of the Replicants, the future society’s enslaved robots who don’t want to be terminated. “It was just a miracle,” Harmon says about landing the in-demand actor just as he was getting hot. But he hoped Hauer could bring something to the character that wasn’t there on the page. “The script that I read, John Ryder was just a monster,” says Harmon. “He was just evil, just a force of awfulness. And that seemed less interesting than it could be.”

In a 2012 interview, Hauer noted, “Out of all the films I did, I never quite understood why I liked it so much. The Hitcher for me was another dance, like Blade Runner. It felt like a haunting dust bowl in the desert. The games played were like a tap dance on a drum. I sort of created a little bit of a vague backstory for myself; there should be some sort of mad, strange magic to this guy who always shows up in weird places; he’s a real ghost I think. You can only do that with film — in a book it’s harder, in film you can be a phantom.”

That level of unreality was something Harmon was pushing as well. “The idea that we eventually did was, this Rutger Hauer character wants to commit suicide, doesn’t have courage to do it himself and wants help,” Harmon explains. “He’s desperately looking for someone who’s up to the challenge. It’s in a lot of the dialogue we changed, and it’s in his performance. It seemed like an interesting thing: This guy is doing all this terrible stuff, but it’s really because he’s desperately depressed. I used to say to everybody who’d listen when we were shooting the movie, ‘The way this has to feel is, if Tommy Howell hadn’t driven down that road, Rutger wouldn’t have been on that road.’ He’s there for him — their [relationship] became sort of weirdly codependent.”

At one point, Matthew Modine, fresh off the romantic drama Vision Quest and about to dive into Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, was going to play Jim. Harmon admits that he didn’t necessarily have a particular actor in mind like he had for John, but Howell “was great, he was a delight.” As for Howell, it was a chance to graduate from the types of roles he’d been doing up to that point. “I was rolling from gig to gig as a kid,” Howell recalled last year. “I didn’t give a shit. I felt like it was never going to end, I was never going to grow up, and I was going to play this kid role forever. Well, I did The Hitcher, and it changed everything.”

It didn’t take much work for Howell to convey Jim’s fear of John. As Howell put it in that same interview, “I’ll never forget how everybody else on set was petrified of him,” remembering how “Rutger ate alone in his trailer every single day. Nobody would talk to him apart from perhaps the director if his back was against the wall and he had to give him a direction.” The one time Hauer did invite Howell to have lunch with him, Howell meekly tried to engage his co-star. “Everybody’s been talking about Blade Runner and his other movies, and how nobody plays the villain better than him, but I just looked at him, and with my squeaky, petrified voice, I was like, ‘So, Rutger, everybody says you’re an amazing bad guy, so why do you play bad guys so well?’ What felt like an eternity went by as he just finished that final drag on that cigarette, and he hissed at me in that guts deep whisper, ‘I don’t play bad guys,’ and didn’t say another frickin’ word. I didn’t know what to do. I think I inhaled the rest of my food and started to back out of the trailer. That rattled around my head for a long, long time.”

Harmon, who stayed friends with Hauer for the rest of his life, says, “[If] he was just sitting here listening, [he’d] be slightly intimidating. His hands are like the size of catcher’s mitts. He’s really big, and he just commands space. He doesn’t have to do anything. I don’t know whether he works on that, or if that’s just one of those things.”

For those who haven’t seen The Hitcher in a while — or who have never seen it — the film’s cat-and-mouse game deviates from the classic slasher narrative in certain ways. Traditionally, the hero is trying to stay a step ahead of the killer, hoping to get others to believe that he’s being targeted. But Harmon’s film isn’t so much about John trying to kill Jim — rather, it’s as if John wants to teach him something. Framing Jim for murder, which puts him on the run from the police, and pulling bizarre pranks — such as secretly putting one of his other victims’ fingers among Jim’s fries — John hovers around the periphery of the young man’s life, driving him to the brink of insanity rather than simply hunting him down. Jim doesn’t know what he’s done to deserve this harassment, but for John there’s almost something personal about his antagonism. The fact that he won’t quite reveal his motives makes it all the more upsetting.

When I press Harmon on The Hitcher’s themes, he’s reluctant to spell things out, although he makes the film sound, in some ways, like an unconventional coming-of-age saga. “Not to explain it all, because I don’t think that’s ever a good idea, but on some unconscious level, the Tommy Howell character knows that he needs help in his maturation process. He’s not turning into the man he wants to be. He’s so naive — so almost childlike — when he stops and [picks up John]. And as a result of meeting Rutger, this maturation process that would have taken another 10 years is compressed into four days — like a diamond [which is a] piece of coal under pressure.”

After being told that there’s almost something paternal about the way John seems to be doling out tough love to poor Jim, Harmon responds, “That was a key piece of direction that I know I bonded with Rutger [over]: ‘Treat him like your son, with love.’”

Indeed, there’s a weird occasional tenderness that Hauer brings to the role — in particular when the two men are in a diner, Jim pointing a gun under the table at John, who knows it’s not loaded. John seems to be encouraging the frightened young man, like a proud papa teaching his skittish boy how to ride a bike. “Why are you doing this to me?” Jim asks, near tears. John calmly puts pennies on Jim’s eyes, cradling the young man’s face in his hands. “You’re a smart kid,” John says, “you’ll figure it out.”

Of course, that tenderness was perceived in some quarters to be homoerotic — or, perhaps, homophobic, just one more example of a horror movie that queer-codes its villain. Harmon has heard the objection, but he doesn’t agree. Asked if he noted a homoerotic quality in the tense rapport between John and Jim, he says, “Sure, but only in the movie — it was not in the script. That was something that just evolved — it was never a part of a plan. But I think Rutger has a kind of almost gender-neutral kind of thing. As I said, he has very large hands — big guy, certainly masculine — but there’s something ethereal about him. His presence and Tommy Howell’s flailing around trying to find himself — I don’t know, one thing led to another, and suddenly there we were.”

Whether you wanted to read The Hitcher as a father/son story or something more erotically charged, there was no denying that the two characters felt connected, as if their destines had become intertwined when their paths crossed out on that highway. Jim wants to get away from John, but if John is simply trying to kill the young man, he passes up several opportunities to do it. (He has no such problem offing others along the way, including cops and innocent passersby.) That tension of Jim not knowing what John wants from him — why this crazed hitchhiker won’t just kill him — gives the film an existential dread that was unique among slasher/horror films of the time. And it posed a troubling question: If your seemingly all-powerful nemesis isn’t out to murder you, is there actually something even scarier about the fact that he won’t let you go?

At one point during our conversation, Harmon recalls working with Hauer on set and it dawning on him how the actor viewed John. “He’s been playing him like he’s God,” Harmon remembers thinking. “Almost regal. It was something beautiful and strong, and that was very interesting to me.” And just like God, John could be anywhere in The Hitcher, sometimes able to do things that, logistically, he wouldn’t have been able to be present for. (For instance, how did he get that severed finger into Jim’s fries?) But Harmon liked the script’s logic-defying elements.

“I never felt we had to ‘fix’ that,” he says, “because I think for those who are open to that kind of ambiguity, it helps to understand that this isn’t 100 percent real.” And by the way, in Red’s original screenplay, Jim finds an eyeball, not a finger, in his food. “This is indicative of the change in the tone between the original script and the movie,” Harmon says. “Not only was there an eye in there — I don’t remember exactly how it was described — but he must have bitten [into the burger] and thought, ‘Hmm, that’s weird, what is that?’ And he pulls the top of the bun off, and there’s an eyeball and a note that says, ‘I have my eye on you.’ [And I thought] ‘That’s got to go.’ I thought it was unforgivably wink-wink. It just was totally wrong to me.”

If The Hitcher is about the saga of these two men, locked in this odd death dance, the closest the film comes to introducing a significant third character is with Nash, the friendly waitress who makes that hamburger and fries for Jim, unaware of the human appendage inside it. She was played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, who’d had her breakout a few years earlier with Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Like many of the people involved in The Hitcher, she was someone Harmon landed on just before she got huge. His cinematographer was John Seale, who hadn’t yet received his Oscar nomination for 1985’s Witness, his first of five. (He won for The English Patient.) The music was written by Mark Isham, who was starting his composing career. (He’d later be nominated for A River Runs Through It and worked on the score for the Best Picture-winning Crash.)

Asked about getting such huge names for his first film, Harmon says the secret was simple: “They weren’t John Seale and Mark Isham at the time.” And that was also true of Leigh, who came in to read for the part like any other actress. “She might have been the third person we read,” says Harmon. “And then, we just stopped reading it — she was so fucking great. We all agreed: ‘As long as we can make the deal with her, let’s not waste our time seeing anybody else.’”

Nash becomes a potential love interest for Jim, but in keeping with The Hitcher’s playing around with genre tropes, nothing really comes of it. After all, not that long after she meets him, Nash meets a grisly, and memorable, end. Even those who have never seen the movie know what becomes of Nash. In his scathing no-stars review, Roger Ebert focused on that moment: “[T]he Leigh character’s death — she is tied hand and foot between two giant trucks and pulled in two — is so grotesquely out of proportion with the main business of this movie that it suggests a deep sickness at the screenplay stage.”

The scene had appeared in the original script. As Red later recalled, “I asked [truck drivers], ‘Well, look, if you wanted to kill a girl with a truck, how would you do it? They were suggesting things like ‘Put her in the back of the transom and run a kingpin through her.’” Technically, Ebert was incorrect — Nash is actually tied between a truck and its trailer, with John sitting in the cab behind the wheel — but, still, the image of a screaming, gagged Jennifer Jason Leigh begging for her life was a disturbing one. In the film, however, it was just the latest step in John’s plan to test Jim, egging the kid on to shoot him, which Jim won’t do because then the truck will lurch forward, ripping Nash in two. The scene amplified the idea that John just wanted Jim to end his life, but for Hauer it was more complicated, which Harmon discovered when they were about to start filming the sequence.

“[Executive producer] Ed Feldman comes to me and he says, ‘We got a problem,’” Harmon tells me. “I said, ‘Really? What’s the problem?’ He said, ‘Rutger won’t come out of the trailer. He doesn’t want to do the scene.’ I thought this was like a joke, because you hear about actors. That scene had not been touched from maybe the first draft — it had never been changed, there was never any discussion about it. So this came out of the blue.”

Harmon went to see Hauer, who “was almost near tears. He said, ‘I’m really sorry, I don’t mean to cause this production trouble, I know it’s costing time. But I just can’t play the scene the way it’s written. I don’t know what took me so long to realize this, but if I play the scene as written, the audience will think I’m the bad guy.’ I almost laughed, but I didn’t. A light bulb went off [in] my head: ‘That’s why he’s been so unbelievably great [in the movie].’” As he’d told Howell during that uncomfortable lunch, Hauer never thought of John as a villain.

Funny enough, in later interviews, Hauer would sometimes take credit for the grisly scene. “I mean, you know, they’ve been doing this for 400 years, but they did it with one or four horsepowers,” he once said. “They’d pull people apart. The Indians did it. In the Middle Ages and other countries they were doing that sort of stuff. And I thought, it might be nice to do it with a tractor trailer, that’ll just up the stakes a bit. And Robert liked that. The scene was originally, she was standing against a wall and the pickup truck was pinning her against the wall, and the final thing was that he would drive her against the wall. But that was weak. So I came up with the tractor-trailer. The tying. Cirque de Soleil.”

But according to Harmon, Hauer only agreed to do the scene if they included new dialogue that Hauer himself had written. “Luckily, I recognized immediately what he had done — and what he had done was ruin the scene.” Harmon can’t recall specifically what the new lines were, “but it was so wrong, I do remember that. But all the changes were right at the tops of the ends of the existing dialogue, so we shot the scene with all these godawful lines in there, and then we cut them out, so it [remained] the scene as Eric had written it. And I never heard a word about it from [Hauer]: ‘I can’t believe you [cut my lines]!’ Never mentioned it again.”

The scene was so traumatizing that some might forget that we never actually see Nash get dismembered. “I do remember very clearly there was no discussion about it,” Harmon says. “Nobody wanted to [show] it, including me. It just seemed gratuitous, even then.” Naturally, in the 2007 remake, the filmmakers show the dismemberment.

Making a feature film had long been Harmon’s dream, but that didn’t make the actual process any easier. “It was a rollercoaster,” he tells me, “and then it was really a rollercoaster to shoot it. I put a lot of pressure on myself, because it was very obvious to me that if I blow this, that’s that — I’ll never get another chance. Sometimes [the shoot] was fantastic and sometimes it was hellish for me, but mostly I put it on myself.”

Harmon shot for about 40 days, not quite sure what the outcome would be. “I had people around me telling me that they thought it was fantastic and it was going to be great, on and on,” he says. “I didn’t trust it ‘cause I didn’t know. I knew it wasn’t a piece of crap, and I liked certain things. I don’t think I ever felt worried ‘cause I guess I knew it was good enough not to be an embarrassment and to be a career-killer before I’d even done anything.” Yet even as the film was being prepped for release, he had to fight against the notion that he’d made a horror movie. “I don’t like the poster,” he tells me, “but they didn’t listen to me. It’s the poster for a horror movie — or much more of a slasher movie.”

The reviews were decidedly mixed when The Hitcher opened on February 21, 1986, but what Harmon most remembers is a particular L.A. Times profile piece that came out soon after the film’s release. “Infamous — for me, anyway,” he says. “We were completely — all of us, all the producers — duped by that reporter.” In the story, writer Deborah Caulfield detailed the gory elements of the original script and the finished product, asking, “How do films like this ever get made? What could the people who make these movies possibly be thinking about?”

The article provoked disgusted responses from readers, with one woman wondering, “How does a writer — or anybody — even think of such scenes as a woman ripped in two, an eye in a hamburger, et al? What does it say about our society that such an unconscionable film is deemed to have a market?”

“It didn’t really bother me that much,” Harmon says now about the L.A. Times piece. “I was so green at the time, just the attention was welcome.”

The Hitcher wasn’t a commercial success, although it put Harmon on the map in Hollywood. “I started getting offers right away and made some very bad decisions,” he says bluntly. “One was from Joel Silver for Lethal Weapon. And the other was from Sherry Lansing to replace Brian De Palma, who had fallen out of Fatal Attraction. And I turned them both down.”

How come? “Because I was an idiot,” he replies self-deprecatingly. But then he adds, “Just because those movies were wonderful and huge hits doesn’t mean that would’ve happened [if I’d directed them].” He goes on to explain that after making The Hitcher, which he describes as “really difficult for all kinds of reasons, mostly political,” he was leery of being involved in films whose producers were known for being a handful — especially Joel Silver. “Offers were coming in for real movies all over the place,” Harmon recalls. “And [my agent] said, ‘You don’t have to waste your time with that jerk — he’s just impossible, he’ll make your life hell.’ And I thought, ‘All right, there’s a good excuse not to do it.’”

As for Fatal Attraction, Lansing was paired with producing partner Stanley Jaffe “who had a reputation for being not an easy character. I had lunch with Ed Feldman to talk to him about whether I should do this Fatal Attraction thing. And he said, ‘If you think I gave you a hard time, you won’t survive [working with Stanley].’”

Harmon has no hard feelings about saying no to two massive hits, although he acknowledges the lesson he’d quickly learn: “I didn’t realize that every movie is traumatic. So how I keep doing it is I have to just accept the occasional trauma. My advice [to first-time filmmakers] is you cannot predict how you’ll feel [while you’re making a movie] — and it doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. There’s things coming at you from every direction — from the floor, from the ceiling, from every compass direction. That’s the way it is, and how you react to that is how you react to it. If you react to it negatively, you have to just find a way to deal with it. It doesn’t mean you’re fucking up — it’s just the nature of the work.”

In the ensuing years, he’d make movies with John Travolta (Eyes of an Angel) and Jean-Claude Van Damme (Nowhere to Run). He directed the 1996 HBO film Gotti, which won Armand Assante an Emmy and earned Harmon directing nominations from both the Emmys and the DGAs. (He garnered a second Emmy nomination for his 2004 television film Ike: Countdown to D-Day, starring his frequent collaborator, Tom Selleck, whom he’s worked with on Blue Bloods and a series of Jesse Stone TV movies.)

Meanwhile, The Hitcher’s influence and popularity has grown over time, unexpectedly impacting later projects. When Harmon was filming 2000’s The Crossing, a Peabody-winning A&E TV movie starring Jeff Daniels as George Washington, “We were out in the middle of a field, near Ottawa, on the St. Lawrence River. I’m wandering around because we have a big sequence due the next day, and I’m trying to get it blocked out in my head. And some guy walks across this field — this older guy — having heard that the director of The Hitcher was directing the movie. He wanted to know if I was him, and we talked about [The Hitcher]. Literally, nobody around as far as we could see, in the middle of fucking nowhere in Canada.”

The Hitcher inspired a direct-to-DVD sequel, The Hitcher II: I’ve Been Waiting, which came out in 2003. Howell reprised his role as Jim. Jake Busey played the new hitchhiker. (“That was probably a mistake, to be honest,” Howell said later. “It was mishandled. There was a time when Rutger was involved as well, so I sort of committed with the understanding that that was what was taking place, but then that didn’t happen. It was a bit of a mess. … It probably should’ve never been made. And thankfully, nobody really even knows it exists.”) Then, four years later, Michael Bay’s production company Platinum Dunes, as part of its plan to remake classic horror movies, did a new version of The Hitcher, with Sophia Bush and Zachary Knighton as college students who pick up Sean Bean’s mysterious loner.

“I don’t know what he wanted. I didn’t have to,” Bean said when he was asked about his character’s ambiguous motivations. “There are a number of possibilities. Maybe he wanted to die and be rid of the evil inside him? Maybe he just didn’t care? Maybe he just wanted to kill who he wanted until he was killed himself? Maybe it’s just a combination of all those things? Or maybe it was just nothing at all.” It was just one way in which the bloodier, less psychologically-resonant remake differed from the 1986 original. Harmon and Hauer didn’t want to explain everything about John — and his strange relationship with Jim — but it was clear they had ideas about it.

The original film is currently available in its entirety on YouTube and streaming on HBO Max. Ironically, you might be better off watching it on YouTube, where at least it’s presented in the right aspect ratio — the film on HBO Max is a fairly cruddy pan-and-scan version, which annoys Harmon to no end. “You cannot believe how angry I was,” he says. “I don’t know what to do about it. It’s awful, it’s really terrible.” He’s excited about an English company that will be putting out The Hitcher on Blu-ray for the first time. “They got the original negative. They’re doing [a new] transfer — it’s fantastic.” It will take some time, he reckons. “They [still] have to do the color correction. And a restored China Lake is also on there.”

That’ll be good news for all the Hitcher fans out there, whether it’s David Fincher or that random man who accosted Harmon in the middle of nowhere in Canada, or the thousands of other people who have been obsessed with that strange drifter who decides to insert himself into one unlucky kid’s life. “That experience is one of my favorite experiences in my career,” Howell said in 2013 about The Hitcher, “and it’s also one of my favorite films.”

The movie’s enigmatic attitude toward its two characters’ relationship carries all the way to the end, when Jim, convinced that he’s killed John by hitting him with his car, walks over to the body, lightly caressing John’s hair with the barrel of his shotgun, displaying the same surprising tenderness John had displayed earlier. To this day, Harmon doesn’t exactly want to assign meaning to that moment. “Make of that what you will,” he tells me. “But there was a very gentle gesture to someone who’d spent the entire movie trying to kill him.”

As for Harmon and Hauer, they stayed connected over the decades, sometimes meeting up if the actor was visiting L.A. “We’d have coffee and go to lunch or dinner,” Harmon tells me. The last time he saw his friend “was probably about a year before he died. He was doing his thing, making these very interesting, mostly European, smaller movies.” Their conversations were very rarely about The Hitcher. “I wouldn’t say we never mentioned it, but it certainly wasn’t centered on that. It was what we’re both doing — and that we had to find something [to work on]. ‘Let’s get back on set together.’”

They never got the chance. During my time with Harmon, he would sometimes talk about Hauer while gesturing at the empty seat next to us. “I’m pointing to that chair,” Harmon commented wistfully, “like he’s here.”

The impulse was poignant, but also fitting. After all, Rutger Hauer always said that John Ryder was a ghost.

#the hitcher #article I want to save

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anna1306 · 2 years

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What if poly! Lost boys had an s/o that practices witchcraft, even using it to protect the boys

Poly!Lost Boys x Witch!Reader

They wouldn't know from the start. Well, obviously you had some... Feeling around you that made them know - you are not so ordinary as it seemed at first.

They told you about themselves when you were already dating and your reaction was to question it. And not in a way "I don't believe it, prove", more like "Alright, I believe you, now tell me how that's work". If they were surprised by it, they didn't show it. They were more relieved that you didn't go anywhere.

The next evening they wake up to you, surrounded by some candles and herbs. Dwayne vaguely remembers what was what, but still can't remember everything and the main question remains - what are you doing? Paul steps to you, already opening his mouth to ask you about all of this, when...

Don't step on the circle or into it before I finish, I drew it for half an hour, if one of you ruins it, I'm gonna curse your immortal butts!

Curse? What, are you - a witch?

You sound surprised for a vampire, who's not human himself.

They learn the truth about you this evening and now it's their turn to ask questions. They are curious, as they have never met a witch before, only heard some stories, which looked more like legends or Halloween fairytales. So you had to explain them the coven system (no, David, it isn't necessary for us to live in one place, I don't know if there are others in Santa-Carla), your abilities (I can move you with my thought, but I need a spell for this, Paul, we're not in Carry movie), what were you doing here (it would make your place cleaner from evil spirits and possible intruders, plus make you more aware if anyone comes, Dwayne), and answer the stupidest questions (I don't fly on broomstick or have black cat, Marko, but I can try and find a spell to turn you into toad, just so you know how it is).

Dwayne is the most curious one. He has read a lot about other supernatural beings, wondering whether or not that was fantasy. And now he has you. He is also the most considerable. Whether he visits your home or knows that you are at the cave, he always knocks first or makes his presence known, so he wouldn't distract you from anything. He is eager to listen about everything you got to tell him about magical practices, tarot, candles and herbs and potions and spells and much more witch stuff. Sometimes he even takes you to places in the forest or wherever in Santa-Carla, where he knows something rare grows.

Marko is curious. He is always asking questions. What can you do? Do you wear a black hat? Do you have a cauldron at home? Do you have a cat? Do you have a crystal ball? The amount of questions is overwhelming, so you demonstrate him one spell. Silencing one. By the end of the second hour of it he is calm and ready to listen to you and not ask anything else. Though David asks you to keep the spell, you release Marko from it. He doesn't know as much as Dwayne, but he still brings you some stones or plants, thinking it's what you need. But he's more than lucky, sometimes it is something rare. So you aren't regretting it.

Paul tests you every now and then. Can you light the barrels? Can you move things? Can you freeze things? Can you turn something into something? It's funny to practice with him, so you don't mind necessarily his wish to be near you. He's the most curious though about illusions. He's the worst about messing with someone's brain, the best being David, so he likes to see you doing it. He is boosting your confidence up, reassuring you that you got it and that this spell is a piece of cake for you. He likes to tell everyone that he has a badass lover. Especially if you know some spells or potions for your alone time...

If Paul is the best companion for practical part, David is the best for theoretical. He knows more than it seems, so you may be surprised, when you cursing at the book because you can't find the necessary bit, and he just gives you one that has it. And even if you think he doesn't care that much about what you are - wrong. Practise something for too long? David is there with a bottle of water and a story, how Paul tripped on someone's body on the hunt and planted into the sand face-first. Think you are tired, even a little, he puts out all of the candles and takes you to your nest to cuddle. He knows what it's like to overexert yourself, and he doesn't want you to be too tired. He takes care of you, even if discreetly sometimes.

They all want to hear about witches, your hierarchy, how you live, whether you are obeying someone or not, so your talks can long for hours without end. And there is a reason for that, the boys are just afraid that your Supreme or whatever would be against your turning. Witches are mortal for most part, and none of the boys want to lose you. They all, especially David and Dwayne are concerned that you might choose your coven and mortal life. They don't want to live without you, it's no fun anymore, so if they have to speak with your higher witches to have you by themselves forever, they absolutely will do so.

One time your abilities find its use. The boys got the attention of the hunters, and they almost got them cornered. You, not knowing about the danger, went to the boys. And found hunters in the cave. In the day. Searching for their sleeping place. You got angry pretty fast, as the boys were your everything and the mere thought of someone's hurting them... Send you over the edge. The hunters weren't ready for spells and curses, but they still put up a fight, even if couple of them are killed in the beginning of it.

The boys went out in the evening to you, sitting lost, surrounded by bodies. There were blood, some things were burning out already. You looked up at them and caressed your wounded bloody hand.

They started it first with trying to harm you.

They were wrong when they thought they couldn't love you more.

The Lost Boys Taglist: @minafromasgard @starmullet

#tlb #thelostboys #thelostboys1987 #tlb1987 #david tlb #marko tlb #paul tlb #tlb dwayne #poly lost boys #poly lost boys x reader #lost boys x reader #the lost boys imagine #tlb imagine #reader insert #x reader #gender neutral

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theyreonlynoodlesmike · 3 years

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Oh, Loverboy: Part 10 (everyone x everyone, Star x Fem!Reader Centric)

<- Previous Chapter Next Chapter ->

Warnings: threatening Sam and the Frogs/threat of harm towards them, threatening Michael/threat of harm towards Michael, no harm actually done to kids/Michael, vampire character injury, blood mention, the boys are vampires and the kids tried to kill them so they're not gonna be nice, David is a scheming asshole

Word Count: 2k

You whipped around, your mouth already curled into a snarl, but you paused when you saw your bleach blonde haired boyfriend right in front of you. Stars scream had been loud, loud enough to wake up the entire cave it seemed. You glanced behind him, and quickly made out three other familiar silhouettes. And three unfamiliar ones.

Your eyebrows furrowed at the sight. Three boys, each being held and struggling in the arms of the rest of your coven. They weren't even trying to be nice. Dwayne was half-carrying his human, a dirty blonde haired boy that Dwayne was ignoring as he tried to push at his face and yell at him to let him down. As they came closer, you recognized him as Sam. Shit , you thought. Paul held the black haired boy in an arm-lock, one that kept his arm up and behind his back. You would've thought he'd be amused after having someone in such a hold, but your usual cheery boyfriend looked downright murderous. Your eyes flicked to the last of the group. Marko had a lighter haired brunette in a headlock, a boy with a red bandana around his head, and, from how close he was to snapping his neck, you almost didn't need David to throw two backpacks full of vampire hunting supplies at Michaels feet to know what they'd done. Attempted , you corrected. Even if you could smell blood, whatever scuffle had ensued hadn't been successful. Just like how Michael was currently attempting, and failing, to take Star out of the cave.

And to think you'd told them not to do something stupid.

"Mike!" Sam quickly yelled as he struggled when Dwayne set him down. He'd twisted in his hold and had gotten free for a second. Only a second. Dwayne was yanking him back by his cardigan and grabbing him by his arms. Still, Michaels attention was stolen from your crying Star.

"Sam!" He shouted, and nearly ran forward. When he approached the sliver of light, you tensed. Leaned back as if to pounce. It made Michael skid to a stop, and he eyed the light in front of his feet, before his gaze flicked to the three teens. "What the hell did the three of you do? You were supposed to stay in the main cave!"

"And become vampire bait? No way!" The one with the bandana yelled, attempting to pull off the iron grip that was Markos hold.

"The Frogs wanted to find the vampires and, well, we did!" Sam yelled, and you looked over at the other two. The Frogs , you thought. It was a fitting name, given one of them even looked a little bit like a toad, but it was unfamiliar. How long had these wannabe hunters flown under your radar? Either way, them and the Emersons were in deep shit. Another step forward and you were tempted to drain him dry. But David placed a hand on your shoulder, moving so he was at the front of the pack and you were behind him.

"So, what was the plan, Michael? You take Star and leave? Laddie too?" His voice was sharp, and it cut through their conversation with ease. David's face was neutral, his voice almost cocky. But you could see the anger boiling between his eyes. If you weren't separated by a line of light, you imagined David would be asking this question with his hands on Michaels throat.

"No one was supposed to get hurt." He said, and you heard a growl in response. And, yet, they did . It wasn't just Star, with her burned hand. If you could smell blood in the air, you knew Michael could too. You took a step back, turning to look over your shoulder. The smell still stung your nose, and you looked all of them over. It wasn't until your gaze fell to Markos thigh that you saw him shift. He was favoring one leg, and your eyebrows pulled together when you looked up at him. You hadn't heard him scream or yell. Or maybe you had and you'd been too preoccupied to notice.

Either way, he refused to meet your gaze. He was staring at David, his knuckles turning white from where he was gripping the teen in his arms. You knew that look. He was waiting for the word, for David's command. He was holding on by a string, and he was ready to snap. Hell, with the look in his eye, you could tell that he wanted to.

"Then why the reinforcements? Looks like they already did." His head tilted at him, daring the brunette to speak. To argue with him. You watched as Michael looked between him and the others. The kids he probably felt the need to protect. It was clear that he didn't know what to say, how to fix it. When he didn't reply, David said, "What if I made it even? Marko." Marko's nails sharpened in a second, but, before he could even lift his hand, Michael was yelling,

"Enough, David!" It was loud, and you watched as Michael shut his eyes and clenched his fists. It was clear that he could barely stand the smell of Markos blood, let alone more hitting the open air. "You made your point." His voice was quieter, but his words came out just as quick. David raised his hand, as if to pause the blonde behind him. Marko scowled, but he didn't disobey.

"Have I? She made her choice, Michael." And you watched as the words hit him. If her hand hadn't been enough confirmation, then this was it. She'd changed. You watched something change in his eyes, and he faltered back a step. He was alone. The only other half was Laddie, and he probably wouldn't be for long. "Is this yours? You worry about spilling blood, and yet this is the path you chose." David's words were cruel, his eyes pale in the darkness. He grit his teeth, and you swore that he was thinking the same thing you had. Two quick steps. That's all it'd take. You reached for him, touching the back of his coat.

"Hand them over and we can forget this ever happened. We won't come back." Michael was putting on a good show, you had to hand it to him. You could smell his fear, hear how quickly his heart was beating. Even if it was supposed to be a slow and nearly silent thrum, it was racketing in his chest. But his words were even and decisive. Nearly confident. Anyone else in his shoes would've started groveling.

David stared at him for a moment in disbelief. Your gaze moved to his face. You didn't have to look at the others to know they were looking to him too. Waiting for his word. David's emotions changed like the flick of a channel. He smoothed out his face, tilted his chin up almost defiantly.

"Oh, but you will. For one reason or another, you will." Michael looked confused for a moment, but then David was looking over his shoulder. He nodded to Marko and Paul, and you watched a flash of betrayal wash over each of their faces. But, when Paul opened his mouth to argue, Marko slapped his arm. They practically threw the boys over the patch of light, but David caught Sam before he could escape.

"Hey!" They ignored his cries of outrage, and you almost wanted to hand it to the kid. He was a fighter. He kicked his legs and squirmed in his grip, up until David let go of one of his arms and wrapped a tight hand around his throat. Just as Michael opened his mouth, David said, "Now, Star." And Michael stared at him. He seemed wary, so David added, "The sun won't be up forever."

Michael glanced to his brother. He'd quieted, only letting out a whimper as David tightened his grip. He didn't miss the meaning behind his words. The only reason they'd made it this far was because Michael had Star, and Michael wasn't willing to do even half the things the boys were. Finally, Michael gave him a nod. Michael helped Star up, and you pushed forward then. You lifted your arms, ready to catch her. She'd pulled her jacket over her head with Michaels help, and you saw that her eyes were glassy and wet as she eyed the light. She hesitated.

"I got you. Just be quick." You whispered, and you saw the way she twisted the fabric in her hands. Her one hand was already healing, but she didn't seem eager to burn it again. Still, she was through the light in less than a second, and you yanked her back and into a tight hug. You smoothed her hair, kissing her cheek, her jaw, and any other skin your lips could reach as you pulled her further and further back. Away from the humans. Away from Michael.

Michael held out his arms, similarly to how you did. But David didn't push Sam past the light.

"Now, Sam." Michael said, copying the phrasing David had used. Even from behind him, you could tell that David was smirking. Still, David didn't hand him over. "Give me my brother, David." Michael punctuated each word, agitation growing on his face from each passing second. David's words were slow as he said,

"No, I don't think I will." He tilted his head at the end, and you could imagine the smile he wore on his face. You stared at him, confusion lighting up in your brain. It was one of the Frogs that said,

"Hey! That wasn't the deal!" As he jabbed a finger at him. You were staring at the bleach blonde, holding Star to your side. You knew David could be a vengeful prick when he wanted to be, but this wasn't just about him. David had a coven to keep in line, a coven to please. You could practically feel the wrath rolling off your boys. They needed something. Something to make them pay. So, you weren't surprised when David said,

"I gave you two for one, so we're already more than fair. And Markos gonna need a snack if he wants to heal his leg-" And Sam let out a terrified sound just as Michael yelled,

"David! This isn't funny! Give me my brother-" Michaels voice was loud, but his anger didn't hide his fear. He was only a step away from crossing over, to trying to snatch him back himself. Even if he knew it would be a fatal mistake. David's calm, clear voice rang out,

"Or what?" He leaned forward, his nose nearly in the light. "You'll kill me?" David said, his voice taunting. Daring. He was daring Michael to agree. Daring him to say that he would. Michael clenched his fists as he stared at the vampire in front of him. From the way his lips curled, you knew he wanted to say something. Something stupid, in all likelihood. And even if you wanted nothing more than to watch David tear into him, you felt the way the girl besides you was gripping your arm. You looked at her, and you saw the way her wide eyes watched in horror. And you nearly sighed when you realized that if David hurt the boy in his arms, or the half-vampire across from him, that Star would never forgive him.

"David." It was barely a breath of a whisper, but it still made David's head tilt to the side. Towards the sound of your voice. You didn't say anything more. You didn't have to when you met his eyes. You were tired. The weight of the day was crushing you, and all your anger seemed to deflate out of you with each passing second Star was back besides you. There was no guarantee that he would listen. He hadn't even glanced at Star. But, whatever game this was, you wanted it to end. And he'd seen that, at least.

"Call this a trust exercise. You can have him back tonight."

#the lost boys #the lost boys 1987 #the lost boys paul #paul the lost boys #the lost boys marko #the lost boys dwayne #the lost boys david #marko the lost boys #david the lost boys #dwayne the lost boys #sam emerson #michael emerson #sam the lost boys #the lost boys sam #michael the lost boys #the lost boys michael #the frog brothers #edgar frog #alan frog

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seaglassandeelgrass · 3 years

Photo

Train-wreck ballads.

Cover is a lithograph of the 1867 Bray Head Railway Accident.

The Wreck of the Old 97- Flatt & Scruggs

The Wreck of the Virginian- Ashley & Shannon Campbell

Billy Richardson’s Last Ride- Hobo Bill

The Freight Wreck at Altoona- Elkville String Band

The Wreck of Main Line #4- George Davis

The Wreck of the 1256- Texas Ruby & Curly Fox

Limited Train, 1893- Painted Branch Creek

Wreck of the Happy Valley- Lee Moore

The New Market Wreck- Mike Seeger

The Wreck of Rock Island No.12- Teresa Black

Wreck of the Royal Palm- Hobo Bill

The Great Circus Train Wreck of 1918- Artese N Toad

Chatsworth Wreck- Johnsburg 3

Wreck of the Virginian #3- The New North Carolina Ramblers

The Sunshine Railway Disaster- Warren Fahey

The Rarden Wreck of 1893 (Wreck of the CP&V)- Bruce Buckley

The Wreck on the L&N Railroad- The Phipps Family

Hamlet Wreck- David Di Giuseppe

Quintinshill- The Amber Band

Engine 143- The Kossoy Sisters

Jim Blake, Your Wife is Dying- Arnold Keith Storm

The Wreck of the 252- Bill Morris

The Great Nashville Railroad Disaster- David Allan Coe

East Thompson, 1891- The Electric Trains

The Wreck of Old Number Ten- Wendell M. Tackett

The Wreck on the Western & Atlantic- Norman Blake

Wreck of the C&O Sportsman- The New North Carolina Ramblers

Wreck of the Number Nine- Ernest V. Stoneman

Wreck of the Old 97- Corbin Hayslett

29 tracks; 103 mins. [Spotify]

[my other playlists]

#original playlists #maybe it's the preponderance of boiler explosions but trainwreck ballads are to me the more visceral of disaster ballads than shipwrecks

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dontbecattyratty · 2 years

Note

What’s your opinions about the uk tour cast/character choices vs the west end?

Hi anon! Sorry this is late coming, for some reason Tumblr didn’t send me this notification.

I’m gonna go through and try to hit the main characters, in no particular order.

Mole: I think Fra Fee is adorable, and I think he does a great job with the wide-eyed curiosity of Mole, but I do find that he plays the character with broader strokes, which makes the show feel a bit more like children’s theatre, and less like a family show. With that said, his version of “A Place to Come Back To” is STUNNING, and might actually surpass Craig Mather’s performance for me.

Ratty: Oh boy. Uh. I am not a fan of Thomas Howes’ Ratty. One of my absolute favorite things about the West End production is how Ratty becomes a bit more of an everyman, and I think that Simon Lipkin brings a tremendous warmth to the role. Take this with a grain of “I think Simon Lipkin is the best Ratty of all time,” with the POSSIBLE exception of Richard Briers (and Peter Sallis, but I don’t think he’s a fair comparison because he got MUCH more material to work with, since he played Ratty in the Cosgrove Hall series, and never technically played him in an adaptation of the book itself). Thomas Howes’ Ratty reminded me a LOT of Mark Gatiss’ Ratty in the 2006 film, and I’ve never been a fan of him in the role, although he does have his moments. I think Thomas Howes’ portrayal can be quite mean-spirited at times, and as interesting as it was to see the nods to “Wayfarers All” in the musical, there wasn’t much payoff, since Ratty never made an actual attempt to leave the Riverbank. Since his arc was less about his relationship with Toad in the tour, I felt like his story didn’t go anywhere much. The Andrew Gordon adaptation of The Wind in the Willows does a lovely job incorporating “Wayfarers All” into the story, and I would have LOVED a similar treatment here.

Toad: I actually slightly prefer Rufus Hound in the tour! I think he’s got just a bit more pathos, and he gets some really funny moments that got cut for the West End production (“short of murder,” as an example). I love him in both productions, but I do think he’s slightly better in the tour. Overall I don’t have a lot to say about him though, because the performances are similar.

Badger: David Birrell is a lovely Badger, but I’m typically not the biggest fan of making Badger Scottish, because I feel like it leans into…whatever was happening in the Disney version too much (and yes, I do blame the Disney version, because MacBadger is the earliest version of Scottish!Badger I’ve been able to find, and it’s SURPRISINGLY prevalent). I also just think Gary Wilmot was a really good Badger. HOWEVER, it makes me so sad that they changed Badger’s line in the end to “no one’s ever said that to me before” from him saying that it had been a “long time” since anyone had said that they loved him on the tour. It really expresses Badger’s solitude and (in my opinion) his closeness with, at the least, Toad’s father. So BIG points for that. Overall, I really enjoyed David Birrell’s performance! I do slightly prefer Gary Wilmot’s voice. However, having read a quote from David Birrell discussing the character, he has a really lovely handle on Badger.

Chief Weasel: Honestly, I think Neil McDermott KILLS this role in both productions. I do think he got to play around a bit more vocally in the tour, but honestly, aside from that, he’s equally good across the board.

Lesser Weasel: Dylan Mason was a good Lesser, but come on, I think it’s no secret that the fandom LOVES Joshua Gannon’s Lesser Weasel. He really brings the role to life.

Cheryl Stoat: She has so little dialogue, it’s hard to compare. Both actresses sound great!

Mrs. Otter: I think Sophia Nomvete technically has a slightly better voice, but I prefer Denise Welch’s characterization. In Sophia’s defense, though, I think the tour really mostly looked at Mrs. Otter as a genderswapped version of Otter from the book, whereas she’s more of a new character in her own right in the West End production. Otter in the book is more of a friend/peer of Ratty’s, and I think that shows through in the tour, on but the West End she was more of a mother figure.

Portia: Holly Willock’s voice is GORGEOUS, but I think her dialogue was a bit too understated. Emilie du Leslay’s Portia felt more childlike. Once again, this might be to do with Portia becoming more of her own character, rather than a gender-swapped version of Portly, who was a bit milder in temperament.

The Hedgehogs: James Gant and Jenna Boyd are both too consistently good to compare them to themselves, in my opinion. They are excellent both times.

I think that covers the main characters! But I reserve the right to add onto this tomorrow, after I’ve slept.

Thanks for the question!

#wind in the willows #witw #wind in the willows musical #witw musical #twitw

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pikablob · 3 years

Note

I got a doozy of a crossover AU concept: Hilda/Amphibia. Basically, the main trio find the music box and get transported to the eponymous realm (Hilda with the frogs/Plantars, David with the toads/Grime, and Frida with the newts/Andrias)

Ehh maybe? Personally I don’t think the vibes work (for a few reasons) but that’s just me personally - if you wanna write it go ahead!! :))

#ask pika #hilda the series #hilda netflix #Amphibia

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isawagirlinmydreamsss · 3 years

Text

trying to get through life with only my trusty headphones and computer

minor (fourteen if you really care)

he/him

main names are Neo, Thomas and Toad

trans guy

unsure about my sexuality

atheist but any religions are cool with me

As a warning, I reblog wayyyy too much on this blog

NO TRUMP SUPPORTING HERE

Canadian bastard (so if I spell shit with extra u’s just blame my country)

We don’t support jk Rowling but I’m a ravenclaw (I just like the word)

previous urls: isawagirlinmydreamsss, isawfrogandtoadinmydreams, mechanial-hands-in-my-dreams

Current URL: its just truth aint it (old url was isawagirlinmydreams)

My internet roommate and friend is @gaysquid-jello (they’re so cool please go follow them)

My discord is neoo#3183 but if I don’t respond please don’t take it personally

My mental health is just not here today

I really love tally hall like so much I have written literal fanfics about their songs

I have become recently obsessed with frog and toad

I also love the haunting series

And minecraft

david bowie is my spirit animal

Minecraft username is NeoThePogFrog

Personal/fandom tag is “toad talks today” if you don’t want a bunch of tally hall stuff

Thanks for making it this far through this peice of shit of a post

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mearnsblog · 3 years

Text

"The Emperor's New Groove" (2000)

As previously mentioned, the turn of the century was not an especially enthralling era for the Disney Animation Studios. It was already a big drop in quality from the sensational "Mulan" to the just-fine "Tarzan," and neither "Fantasia 2000" nor "Dinosaur" turned out to have any lasting power. Most of the next several films after this one were not game-changers either.

Thankfully, "The Emperor's New Groove" is an exception in that it is exceptional in every sense of the word. What a fun movie! Sometimes, you don't have to think too hard to produce a quality animated film.

Such praise is somewhat ironic though. Behind the scenes of "Emperor's New Groove" was a vast story in its own right. It was originally planned as a classic Disney musical titled "Kingdom of the Sun" and would have featured a "Prince and the Pauper"-esque storyline with songs featuring Sting (like Phil Collins in "Tarzan"). There's a whole documentary about what happened to transform the film, but the short version is that Disney producers didn't like what was being made and told the team that they needed to overhaul almost everything. (Vulture recently did a great oral history on the whole process.)

So instead of a musical, we got a buddy comedy with two characters who look nothing like each other and a new story altogether. The funny thing is that the scramble to change everything (complete with a new director) worked like a charm. I would've been fascinated to see "Kingdom of the Sun," but I have no problems whatsoever with "Emperor's New Groove."

*A couple songs did sneak in, and they do work for what the movie actually turned out to be.

2000 was about the peak of David Spade's brand of sarcastic humor, and it's top-notch here as Kuzco. I've made my love of arrogant bastards known here before, and he works as a great antagonist of his own story in the first half of the movie. Yzma's a great villain, too! Eartha Kitt was an incredible get for this role, and while her song was cut since it no longer made much sense in the revised story, it's very good. There's a fine line to walk to be a standout Disney villain, and comedy is key. Both Spade and Kitt excel.

On the other side of the main cast, John Goodman is instantly likeable as Pacha and makes for a a fine audience surrogate to bear the brunt of frustration with Kuzco. You spend so much of the first 40 minutes or so of the movie furious that Kuzco won't stop being an asshole for just one minute and help the decent guy out! Of course when Kuzco finally gets humbled, it's rewarding to see their bond develop. I like that Pacha sets boundaries, too. He does everything he can to change Kuzco's behavior but finally does have to throw up his hands at one point and acknowledge that Kuzco must improve on his own. And he does!

Patrick Warburton? Patrick Warburton. Thank you for Kronk, Patrick Warburton. Nothing else needs to be said.

For simply being a straightforward, great movie, "Emperor's New Groove" gets a lofty spot on this list, and the only reason it doesn't place higher is that the movies above it are just elite. They take bigger swings and hit monster home runs. "Emperor's New Groove" is like a leadoff triple. No one's going to complain about it! Homers are just better.

It might be the Disney animated of its kind anyway. It'd be hard to top the pure comedy. BOOM, BABY.

Updated ranking

1. “Beauty and the Beast” (review) 2. “The Lion King” (review) 3. “The Little Mermaid” (review) 4. “Cinderella” (review) 5. “Mulan” (review) 6. “Sleeping Beauty” (review) 7. “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” (review) 8. “Aladdin” (review) 9. “The Emperor’s New Groove” 10. “One Hundred and One Dalmatians” (review) 11. “The Jungle Book” (review) 12. “The Great Mouse Detective” (review) 13. “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” (review) 14. “Fantasia” (review) 15. “The Rescuers Down Under” (review) 16. “Tarzan” (review) 17. “The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh” (review) 18. “Alice in Wonderland” (review) 19. “Lady and the Tramp” (review) 20. “Pinocchio” (review) 21. “Robin Hood” (review) 22. “Oliver & Company” (review) 23. “Hercules” (review) 24. “Pocahontas” (review) 25. “The Rescuers” (review) 26. “The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad” (review) 27. “Bambi” (review) 28. “The Aristocats” (review) 29. “Fantasia 2000″ (review) 30. “Dumbo” (review) 31. “Peter Pan” (review) 32. “Fun and Fancy Free” (review) 33. “The Fox and the Hound” (review) 34. “The Sword in the Stone” (review) 35. “The Three Caballeros” (review) 36. “Make Mine Music” (review) 37. “Dinosaur” (review) 38. “The Black Cauldron” (review) 39. “Saludos Amigos” (review) 40. “Melody Time” (review)

#disney

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penniesforthestorm · 4 years

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7 Comfort Movies

I was tagged by @opalgemblog to list 7 “comfort movies”-- I’m being fairly liberal with the interpretation here, but these are what came to mind. Tagging: the person reading this!

1. The Wind in the Willows (1995)- the Carlton TV adaptation, with narration by Vanessa Redgrave and the voices of Rik Mayall (Toad), Michael Palin (Ratty), Michael Gambon (Badger), and Alan Bennett (Mole). For years, this was my “sick day” watch-- it has some of the most beautiful hand-drawn animation I’ve ever seen.

2. Casablanca (1942)- What can I say about this that hasn’t been said?

3. Wings of Desire (1987)- “I wish I could see your face. Just look into your eyes and tell you how good it is to be here.”

4. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)- Out of the series, this is the one I’ve re-watched the most; of course there’s the uniquely Gothic style, and the main trio’s performances really come into their own, but I also think David Thewlis’ Professor Lupin is fantastic.

5. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)- OK, in theory this one has a “downer” ending, but it’s always been my favorite of the trilogy. That shot of Eowyn watching from the tower of Meduseld as Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli ride in, and the flag falling at Aragorn’s feet...

6. Badlands (1973)- Again, considering the subject matter, I guess this is a weird choice, but seeing those wide, lonely landscapes treated with such reverence, as someone who has four generations’ worth of family history on land like that... that’s my heart. I don’t know how else to explain it. The two of them dancing to Nat King Cole in the narrow glow of the headlights, with the huge dark night all around them...

7. Repo Man (1983)- OK, here’s some pure, unfiltered goofiness to finish us off. “For example, if you think about a plate of shrimp...”

#movies #tag games #7 comfort movies #here have a look at my brain

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time-qxeen · 4 years

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tag twenty-one people you’d like to know better some questions may be ‘ ??? ’ instead of answered

01. nickname: Nat 02. real name: All my online friends call me Nat. Except like... two people. 04. height: 5′8″ 05. what time is it: 10:50pm. 06. favorite musicians/groups: My Chemical Romance, Foo Fighters, Green Day, Papa Roach, Billie Eilish and Ed Sheeran. (Those last two sort of break the rock pattern, I know.) 07. favorite sports team: I have exactly zero interest in sports. 08. other blogs: legendsofwholock is my main, and tfw-adhd is my adhd blog!

9. do i get asks?: Sometimes! Not very often, though.

10. how many blogs do i follow?: ...612. I have a problem. 11. any tumblr crushes: Totally. 12. lucky number: 11 13. what am i wearing right now?: Leopard print shorts and a strappy pajama top. It’s 28 degrees. I’m dying. 14. dream vacation: Man... Somewhere cold. And I like caravan parks. 15. dream car: One that can be driven. 16. favorite food: If you mean a meal, then it’s toad in the hole. If you mean a singular item of food, then chicken nuggets. If you mean favourite thing to just pick up and eat, then pringles. 17. drink of choice: Soft drink? Pepsi Max. Alcoholic drink? Raspberry gin. 18. languages: English, and at one point I was learning BSL. I can barely remember it now, though. Same goes for French. 19. instruments: Used to play piano and ukulele. I have no memory of the chords for either, and my limit is now playing the opening to The Black Parade. 20. celebrity crushes: Oh, so many. Michelle Gomez, David Tennant, Jodie Whittaker, Tom Hiddleston, Jodie Comer, Robert Carlyle (I blame Kylie for my recent obsession with him), Ruby Rose... 21. random fact: Hm. Can’t think of one. I’m not interesting, I suppose. Although, I did recently change the spelling of my real, actual name, which confused some people, and made some people think that they’d just been spelling it wrong this whole time. That was fun. (But considering that I didn’t actually write my real name here, that won’t mean much to you guys XD)

Tagged by @darkerdeariegold (LITERALLY TWO MONTHS AGO. AND THEN I CLICKED LIKE BECAUSE I WANTED TO DO IT BUT I FORGOT UNTIL JUST NOW SO THANKS FOR THE TAG IF YOU ACTUALLY REMEMBER TAGGING ME IN THIS AHFJKAKG)

Tagging: @idontdosecondchances @godsmuses @magaprima @ooswcld @theiracademydaysareover @asterobellis @beyondthetardis @mostincrediblechange @heartonanoose

#ooc ask meme

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darkcloud-kcalifornia · 4 years

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You know, it’s been a while since I’ve done a rambling post while watching a show. Let’s change that. Oh yeah, it’s Mario time!

Alrighty, the live action segment this time is “The Marios Fight Back”. It appears to be about some reporter (David Horowitz) investigating their claim to be able to undo any clog within 3 minutes. Which normally speaking is a ludicrously obvious ad, but this is TV Land so it’s probably an actual reporter doing “investigative journalism” on an incredibly slow day. But then while showboating with over the shoulder tosses Mario accidentally… knocks out the reporter. During a world wide broadcast. So that’s a shenanigan right there. Some might call it a wacky one, but I’m a bit hesitant to use that designation. After the animated segment Luigi points out that not only is the reporter out cold, but they haven’t unclogged the sink. Mario in desperation tries sprinkling plant food in there as it looks kinda similar to their drain cleaner, and the two heads out for lunch. And after they leave the reporter wakes up… right as an abomination begins to rise from the sink. Dang it, I got enough sink emergent abominations from Parasite Eve! The reporter is of the opinion that he should be getting hazardous duty pay for this. Look buddy, if I don’t get it for having to deal with a conga-line of Karens all day during a pandemic you don’t get it for a hairy sink clog monster. But hey, technically speaking the sink’s no longer clogged now. And… the episode ends before that’s actually resolved. Monster menacing everybody. Well, guess that’s it. Mario Bros. are gonna die.

The cartoon is “The Fire of Hercufleas”. Though really that should probably read Herafleas. Anyway, the titular legendary hero is apparently an old friend of Toad’s (I’d love to hear of Toad’s adventuring career before the Marios came along some day), and he wants to ask the guy to help them take down Koopa, as well, it’d be kinda easy for him. But ol’ Herc has let himself go with eating habits almost as atrocious as Mario’s. Herc explains he’s got a steady job now as the guardian of the Great Balls of Fire. Which really lends credence to all of the jokes about heroes being murder hobos, if you stop doing it once you can find steady employment. Also, I think I vaguely recall from my childhood that the show once used “Great Balls of Fire” as a musical number, so if I’m recalling correctly it’ll probably be this one. Huh, now there’s an odd moment. While King Koopa is berating his minions and planning the theft of the Fire he refers to the Marios as “sewer simps”. And here I thought that was new slang. But anyway, some Flyguys manage to steal the Fire for Koopa, with one staying behind to both defeat and humiliate Herc so as to illustrate what a diet high in donuts does to a retired hero. I sense a training montage sometime in the future. Yup, there it is after the Marios’ failed attempt at Fire retrieval. Kinda odd that Mario would be acting as a coach to get somebody back into shape given his own figure though. Well, I guess you could argue he has plenty of muscle underneath the flab. You don’t need to be a showy bodybuilder to be strong. Kinda weird how getting buff again gave Herc a deep reverb voice though. Also really weird how apparently Mario’s grandma made garlic chip cookies. Just… ew. I don’t think even Cookie Monster would be able to stomach something like that. Anyway, the big fight scene happens after that. Kinda lackluster to be honest, but it is interesting to see Toad grab a fire flower for once and start chucking fire himself. Now I’m just waiting to see them give one to Princess Toadstool. Anyway, Koopa ends up expending the Fire in his literal fire fight with Toad, and so runs rather than try to take on both Toad and Herc. Huh, no musical number during that. Guess I remembered wrong. (POST EPISDOE ADDITION: Actually looking it up it seems like the musical numbers were removed due to copyright and licensing. Dang. I guess this means no Secret Agent Man later on either? Though this explains at least some of the lackluster music… it’s not what’s supposed to be there at all.) Anyway, Herc’s down about failing to protect the Fire leading to it being used up, but Toad just empties his Fire Flower power into the pot and it reignites. Which… leads me to question just how Great those Balls of Fire could have been if a Fire Flower was just as good. Well regardless, Toad got to be the hero of the day and gets a statue next to Hercufleas’.

Overall the episode wasn’t bad, though there was a few odd decisions in this one. Like having the monster situation in the live action segment still ongoing at the end. Or Toad being the main cast member focused on and hero during the animated segment. On the other hand those aren’t necessarily downsides, and it’s nice to mix things up every so often.

Moral of the day:

When in doubt, pose.

#tv talk #episode reactions #super mario bros super show #super mario bros #smbss ep 17

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sciencespies · 4 years

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Meet the Ecologist Who Wants You to Unleash the Wild on Your Backyard

https://sciencespies.com/nature/meet-the-ecologist-who-wants-you-to-unleash-the-wild-on-your-backyard/

Meet the Ecologist Who Wants You to Unleash the Wild on Your Backyard

The land is ten gently sloping acres in rural southeastern Pennsylvania, at one time mowed for hay, with a handsome farmhouse that Douglas Tallamy bought around 20 years ago. It isn’t much to look at, by the standards most Americans apply to landscaping—no expansive views across swaths of lawn set off by flowerbeds and specimen trees—but, as Tallamy says, “We’re tucked away here where no one can see us, so we can do pretty much what we want.” And what he wants is for this property to be a model for the rest of the country, by which he means suburbs, exurbs, uninhabited woods, highway margins, city parks, streets and backyards, even rooftops and window boxes, basically every square foot of land not paved or farmed. He wants to see it replanted with native North American flora, supporting a healthy array of native North American butterflies, moths and other arthropods, providing food for a robust population of songbirds, small mammals and reptiles. He even has a name for it: Homegrown National Park.

A creek on his land supports native plants adapted to “getting their feet wet,” Tallamy says, such as skunk cabbage.

(Matthew Cicanese)

On a June day in 2001, not long after he bought the property, Tallamy, an entomologist at the University of Delaware, was walking his land when he noticed something that struck him as unusual. Before he bought it, most of it had been kept in hay, but at that point it hadn’t been mowed in three years and “was overgrown with autumn olive and Oriental bittersweet in a tangle so thick you couldn’t walk. The first thing I had to do was cut trails,” Tallamy recalls. And walking through his woods on the newly cut trails, what he noticed was what was missing: caterpillars.

No caterpillars on the Oriental bittersweet, the multiflora rose, the Japanese honeysuckle, on the burning bush that lined his neighbor’s driveway. All around him plants were in a riot of photosynthesis, converting the energy of sunlight into sugars and proteins and fats that were going uneaten. A loss, and not just for him as a professional entomologist. Insects—“the little things that run the world,” as the naturalist E.O. Wilson called them—are at the heart of the food web, the main way nature converts plant protoplasm into animal life. If Tallamy were a chickadee—a bird whose nestlings may consume between 6,000 and 9,000 caterpillars before they fledge, all foraged within a 150-foot radius of the nest—he would have found it hard going in these woods.

Tallamy knew, in a general sense, why that was. The plants he was walking among were mostly introduced exotics, brought to America either accidentally in cargo or intentionally for landscaping or crops. Then they escaped into the wild, outcompeting their native counterparts, meeting the definition of an “invasive” species. By and large, plants can tolerate a wide range of environmental conditions. But insects tend to be specialists, feeding on and pollinating a narrow spectrum of plant life, sometimes just a single species. “Ninety percent of the insects that eat plants can develop and reproduce only on the plants with which they share an evolutionary history,” Tallamy says. In the competition to eat, and to avoid being eaten, plants have developed various chemical and morphological defenses—toxins, sticky sap, rough bark, waxy cuticles—and insects have evolved ways to get around them. But as a rule, insect strategies don’t work well against species they have never encountered. That’s true of even closely related species—imported Norway maples versus native sugar maples, for instance. Tallamy has found that within the same genus, introduced plant species provide on average 68 percent less food for insects than natives. Hence, a plant that in its native habitat might support dozens or hundreds of species of insects, birds and mammals may go virtually uneaten in a new ecosystem. Pennsylvania, for example.

Demonstrating that point might make for a good undergraduate research project, Tallamy thought. So he asked a student to do a survey of the literature in preparation for a study. The student reported back there wasn’t any. “I checked myself,” he says. “There was a lot written about invasive species. But nothing on insects and the food web.”

That, he says, was the “aha” moment in his career, at which he began to remake himself from a specialist in the mating habits of the cucumber beetle to a proselytizer for native plants as a way to preserve what remains of the natural ecology of North America. He was following in the footsteps of Wilson, his scientific hero, who went from being the world’s foremost expert on ants to an eminent spokesman for the ecology of the whole planet. “I didn’t exactly plan it this way,” Tallamy says with a shrug. “In the musical chairs of life, the music stopped and I sat down in the ‘invasive plants’ chair. It’s a satisfying way to close out my career.”

As a scientist, Tallamy realized his initial obligation was to prove his insight empirically. He began with the essential first step of any scientific undertaking, by applying for research grants, the first of which took until 2005 to materialize. Then followed five years of work by relays of students. “We had to plant the plants and then measure insect use over the next three years, at five different sites,” he recalls. “To sample a plot was an all-day affair with five people.” Out of that work eventually came papers in scientific journals such as Conservation Biology (“Ranking lepidopteran use of native versus introduced plants”), Biological Invasions (“Effects of non-native plants on the native insect community of Delaware”) and Environmental Entomology (“An evaluation of butterfly gardens for restoring habitat for the monarch butterfly”). And then popularizing books aimed at changing the face of America’s backyards: Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife With Native Plants and, this year, Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard. And in turn a busy schedule of talks before professional organizations, environmental groups, local conservation societies, landscape designers—anyone who would listen, basically.

Squirrels aren’t the only animals that like acorns. Weevils develop inside the oaknuts, and the larvae, in turn, nourish blue jays and woodpeckers

(Matthew Cicanese)

When insects disappear, humans may not take much notice, but the recent population declines of two species have received a great deal of attention: the monarch butterfly, because it’s an iconic, easily recognizable and beautiful creature; and the honeybee, because it’s needed to pollinate crops. But those episodes are symptomatic of a larger disruption in the ecosystem. Tallamy estimates that the worldwide population of arthropods, chiefly insects, has declined by 45 percent from preindustrial times. Without insects, it would be the case that lizards, frogs and toads, birds and mammals, from rodents up through bears, would lose all or a large part of their diets. “The little things that run the world are disappearing,” he says. “This is an ecological crisis that we’re just starting to talk about.”

Tallamy is 68, graying, soft-spoken and diffident. In his talks he cloaks the urgency of his message with an understated wit, as when he presses the unpopular cause of poison ivy, whose berries at certain times of the year are an important food for the downy woodpecker and other birds. “When do you get a rash from poison ivy?” he asks an audience. “When you try to pull it out! Ignore your poison ivy. You can run faster than it can.” To which many people would reply: “Nature had plenty of poison ivy and insects in it the last time I was there.”

But to Tallamy, that attitude is precisely the problem. It speaks to a definition of “nature” as co-extensive with “wilderness,” and excludes the everyday landscape inhabited by virtually all Americans. The ecosystem cannot be sustained just by national parks and forests. A statistic he frequently cites is that 86 percent of the land east of the Mississippi is privately owned. A large fraction of that acreage is either under cultivation for food or planted in a monoculture of lawn, a landscape that for ecological purposes might as well be a parking lot.

To Tallamy, spiders serve as a linchpin species to birds because they are the second most important food, outweighed in nutritive value only by caterpillars.

(Matthew Cicanese)

Tallamy incorporated his thinking into “Homegrown National Park,” an aspirational project to repurpose half of America’s lawnscape for ecologically productive use. That would comprise more than 20 million acres, the equivalent of nearly ten Yellowstones. The intention is to unite fragments of land scattered across the country into a network of habitat, which could be achieved, he wrote in Bringing Nature Home, “by untrained citizens with minimal expense and without any costly changes to infrastructure.” The plots wouldn’t have to be contiguous, although that would be preferable. Moths and birds can fly, and you’re helping them just by reducing the distance they have to travel for food.

“Every little bit helps,” Tallamy says. “Most people don’t own 50 acres, so it’s not going to be that hard. The minimal thing is, you plant a tree and it’s the right tree. Look at what’s happened at my house.”

The idea was picked up by the writer Richard Louv, who coined the term “nature-deficit disorder” in his jeremiad Last Child in the Woods, and by the Canadian naturalist and philanthropist David Suzuki, whose foundation is supporting an effort to implement the project on a limited scale in Toronto.

Even a small patch of Pennsylvania woodland, if allowed to grow wild, generates a vast ecosystem: Native crabapples persist into winter and feed foxes and wild turkeys.

(Matthew Cicanese)

Tallamy walks his land in all seasons, wrenching from the soil the occasional Japanese honeysuckle that made the mistake of venturing onto his property, checking up on his winterberries and sweet pepperbush, looking for leaves that have been chewed by insects and the stems of berries eaten by birds. Occasionally he will do a moth survey, hanging a white sheet in his woods at night behind a mercury vapor lamp. The diversity of insect life he encounters is eye-opening even to him; last year he added more than 100 species to his property list, including a few he had to look up to identify. (There are around 11,000 species of moths in the United States, and 160,000 worldwide.) Near his front door is a 35-foot-tall white oak that he planted from an acorn, ignoring the advice some landscapers give against planting oaks, because you won’t live long enough to enjoy them at their mature size, which may take 300 years. “Well, if you can only enjoy a 300-year-old oak, I guess that’s true,” he says dryly. He has collected 242 species of caterpillars from the tree in his yard—so far.

Tallamy is a great proponent of the ecological benefits of caterpillars, a single one of which has the nutritional value of as many as 200 aphids. “They’re soft, you can stuff them down the beak of your offspring without damaging their esophagus,” he says approvingly. “They contain carotenoids. Birds take the carotenoids and build pigments out of them. That’s how you make a prothonotary warbler.”

He acknowledges that not all homeowners enjoy the sight of caterpillars munching on the leaves of their trees. For them he recommends what he calls his Ten-Step Program: “Take ten steps back from the trunk and all your insect problems go away.”

Mushrooms enrich the teeming soil when they decompose.

(Matthew Cicanese)

Tallamy’s principles have a particular resonance with people—like me—who consider themselves environmentalists but landscaped on the principle “if it looks good, plant it.” He says he’s sometimes surprised at how well his message is received. “I thought there would be quite a bit of push back,” he muses. “But there hasn’t been. I’m suggesting we cut the lawn area in half. I assume they just aren’t taking me seriously. Early on I remember a nurseryman in the audience glowering at me, and I heard him muttering ‘You’re trying to put us out of business.’ I don’t want to put them out of business. I get a lot of invitations from the nursery industry, trade shows, landscape architects. All I’m saying is add one criterion to what you use when you choose your plants”—whether a plant is native. “You can’t argue against it.”

Actually, you can. Tallamy has a long-standing scientific disagreement with an entomologist at the University of California at Davis, Arthur Shapiro. Shapiro grew up in Philadelphia, where, he says, the Norway maple on his block in the 1960s was host to at least three species of moth caterpillar: the American dagger moth, the Crecopia silk moth,and the Lunate Zale moth. “Tallamy invokes the diversity of caterpillars as an indicator of the superiority of native plants over nonnative plants,” Shapiro says. “It’s unsurprising that most of them feed on native plants. What goes right by Tallamy is the extent to which native insects switch and adapt to nonnative plants.

“Here in California we are probably more heavily impacted by naturalized plants than any other state except Hawaii. Our low-elevation butterflies are heavily dependent on nonnative plants. Their native host plants have been largely eradicated, but to their good fortune, humans introduced nonnative plants that are not only acceptable but in some instances superior to native hosts. Most California natives in cultivation are of no more butterfly interest than nonnatives, and most of the best butterfly flowers in our area are exotic.”

The much-reviled (but also beloved by some) eucalyptus trees that have colonized the Central California coast now harbor overwintering monarch butterflies, Shapiro says, although for the most part the insect populations they support are different from those found in native habitats. But his attitude is, so what? The marine blue, a butterfly native to the desert Southwest, where it feeds on acacia and mesquite, has expanded its range into the suburbs of Southern California, feeding on leadwort, a perennial flowering shrub native to South Africa. It is botanically unrelated to acacia and mesquite, but by some accident of biochemistry is a suitable host for the marine blue caterpillar, which has adapted to its new host. “That sort of process is happening all the time all around us,” Shapiro says.

Tallamy begs to differ. The examples Shapiro cites, in his view, represent either anecdotal findings of limited scientific value (like the caterpillars on the street tree from Shapiro’s childhood), or anomalous exceptions to the rule that introduced species support a fraction of the insect life of the plants they replace. A ginkgo tree might look like a functional part of an ecosystem, but the Chinese native might as well be a statue for all the good it does. The well-publicized instances of alien species that found American vegetation to their taste—Asian long-horned beetles, European corn borers, gypsy moths—have created the misleading impression that to an insect, one tree is as good as another. But those are exceptional cases, Tallamy maintains, and the great majority of insects accidentally introduced to North America are never heard from again. “Remember, the horticulture trade screens plants before they introduce them into the market. Any plant that is vulnerable to serious attack by native insects is screened out.”

On one level, this dispute reflects that Tallamy and Shapiro have studied very different ecosystems. As Tallamy wrote in Bringing Nature Home, he was “forced to slight western North America and focus on the Lepidoptera that occur on woody plants in eight states of the eastern deciduous forest biome.” The scientists’ disagreement is also partly over time scales. Tallamy acknowledges that natural selection will allow some native insects to evolve the ability to eat whatever is growing in front of them, or be replaced by species that can, and that birds will figure out a way to make a living off the newcomers. But he thinks this is likely to take thousands of generations to have an impact on the food web. Shapiro maintains he has seen it occur within his own lifetime.

It’s fair to say Tallamy sometimes pursues his passion for native flora to the point of single-mindedness. He is the rare environmentalist who doesn’t bring up climate change at the first opportunity, not because he doesn’t care about it, but because he wants to stick to his chosen issue. “Climate change is not what’s driving this problem,” he says. “If there were no climate change anywhere, it would be just as important. It’s driven by poor plant choice and habitat destruction. I don’t like to mix the two. Right now the culture is, ‘Every problem we have is related to climate,’ and that’s not the case.”

He also can be nonchalant about some of the adjustments and sacrifices entailed by his plan for saving the planet. He suffered from allergies to ragweed pollen for decades, he writes in Nature’s Best Hope, but is willing to forgive the plant on the basis that “the ragweed genus Ambrosia is the eighth most productive herbaceous genus in the East, supporting caterpillar development for 54 species of moths.” He doesn’t sugarcoat the fact that the phylum of arthropods includes, besides butterflies and honeybees, about 900 species of Ixodida, which includes ticks. “I think I’ve had Lyme around a half-dozen times,” he says, as he plunges casually into a chest-high thicket in early autumn, “but I’m one of the people who get the rash”—the telltale bull’s-eye marker of an infected bite by the deer tick, which not all patients evince—“so I was able to catch it and treat it each time.”

Anyone following Tallamy’s landscaping dictums might want to, at least, tuck their pants into their socks when they walk around their yard. That is a small sacrifice given the enormousness of the problem he wants to solve. But even people willing to give over half their lawn for the benefit of caterpillars might be daunted by the task of replacing it according to Tallamy’s prescription. Saving the ecosystem isn’t as simple as just letting nature take over your backyard. In nature the race is to the swift, even for plants. “There’s a time in the spring when plants from Asia leap out before plants from North America,” he tells an audience, projecting a picture taken in a local park in late March. “All of the green you see is plants from Asia, the usual suspects: multi-flora rose, Oriental bittersweet, Japanese honeysuckle, privet, barberry, burning bush, ailanthus, Norway maple, all escapees from our garden. You go into almost any natural area around here, a third of the vegetation is from Asia.” Invasive species are called that for a reason, and repelling them is hard, and never-ending, work.

Moreover, not all native plants are created equal, at least from the point of view of an insect. Across a wide range of North American biomes, about 14 percent of plants make 90 percent of the insect food, he says. These are the keystone species that keep the food web healthy, and the most important are four genera of native trees: oaks, poplars, willows and cherries. But also hickory, chestnut, elms and birches, and joe-pye weed, aster, marsh marigold, skunk cabbage, snakeweed. Some seem worth planting just for the poetry of their names: Chickasaw plum, chokecherry, wax myrtle, devil’s beggar’s-tick, false indigo, hairy bush clover, cypress panicgrass.

But insects aren’t the only creatures that evolved to consume the native vegetation of North America. Tallamy’s ten-step rule for making insect damage disappear to the naked eye doesn’t apply to deer. As he trudges alongside a shallow ravine on his property he points to a small clump of trees on the other side that have been denuded from the ground up to nearly shoulder height. “There’s the browse line on Eastern red cedar,” he says sourly. One reason landscapers favor certain exotic species is that deer don’t eat them. Tallamy’s solution for controlling deer is another one of his idealistic, if not altogether practical, recommendations: “Bring back predators!” he says cheerfully.

Tallamy stops on his walk to adjust a wire barrier around a native azalea. “If I wasn’t around to keep up this fence,” he muses, “the deer would eat it all. So you say, why bother?

“That’s a good question.

“But I do.”

“Natural” doesn’t always mean untouched. Tallamy uproots invasive plants, like this fast-growing porcelain-berry, a vine originally from East Asia, introduced in the 1870s.

(Matthew Cicanese)

I visited Tallamy not long before he set out for ten days in the mountains of Peru, where he was consulting with organizations that promote the practice of growing coffee plants beneath the tree canopy (“shade-grown coffee”) to conserve bird habitat. He wanted to investigate which trees provide the best ecological diversity. Before I leave, he quotes Wilson one more time, from his famous talk on “The Importance and Conservation of Invertebrates.” The passage goes like this:

“The truth is that we need invertebrates but they don’t need us. If human beings were to disappear tomorrow, the world would go on with little change….But if invertebrates were to disappear, I doubt that the human species could last more than a few months. Most of the fishes, amphibians, birds and mammals would crash to extinction about the same time. Next would go the bulk of the flowering plants and with them the physical structure of the majority of forests and other terrestrial habitats of the world.

“The earth would rot.”

Wilson gave that talk in 1987. “It was,” Tallamy says dryly, “a theoretical worry back then.”

So it is less of a theoretical worry now, and more of a real one. But Tallamy is doing what he can to head it off, and he wants the whole country to pitch in. Homegrown National Park is meant to bring about not just a horticultural revolution, but a cultural one, bridging the human-dominated landscape and the natural world. “If you do this at your house or in your local park, you don’t have to go to Yellowstone to interact with nature,” Tallamy says. “You won’t have bison, you won’t have Mystic Falls, but you can have nature outside your door. Isn’t that what you want for your kids—and for yourself?”

To Tallamy, the nation’s backyards are more than ripe for a makeover. Here are some of his suggestions to help rejuvenators hit the ground running.

1. Shrink your lawn. Tallamy recommends halving the area devoted to lawns in the continental United States—reducing water, pesticide and fertilizer use. Replace grass with plants that sustain more animal life, he says: “Every little bit of habitat helps.”

2. Remove invasive plants. Introduced plants sustain less animal diversity than natives do. Worse, some exotics crowd out indigenous flora. Notable offenders: Japanese honeysuckle, Oriental bittersweet, multiflora rose and kudzu.

3. Create no-mow zones. Native caterpillars drop from a tree’s canopy to the ground to complete their life cycle. Put mulch or a native ground cover such as Virginia creeper (not English ivy) around the base of a tree to accommodate the insects. Birds will benefit, as well as moths and butterflies.

4. Equip outdoor lights with motion sensors. White lights blazing all night can disturb animal behavior. LED devices use less energy, and yellow light attracts fewer flying insects.

5. Plant keystone species. Among native plants, some contribute more to the food web than others. Native oak, cherry, cottonwood, willow and birch are several of the best tree choices.

6. Welcome pollinators. Goldenrod, native willows, asters, sunflowers, evening primrose and violets are among the plants that support beleaguered native bees.

7. Fight mosquitoes with bacteria. Inexpensive packets containing Bacillus thuringiensis can be placed in drains and other wet sites where mosquitoes hatch. Unlike pesticide sprays, the bacteria inhibit mosquitoes but not other insects.

8. Avoid harsh chemicals. Dig up or torch weeds on hardscaping, or douse with vinegar. Discourage crabgrass by mowing lawn 3 inches high.

#Nature

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