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2023 World Baseball Classic The Netherlands Roster
Pitchers
#00 Derek Grant (Corpus Christi Hooks/Orange City, Florida)
#16 Lars Huijer (Honkbalclub Allen Weerbaar/Haarlem)
#17 Arij Fransen (Daytona Tortugas/Deventer)
#20 Mike Bolsenbroek (Heidenheim Heideköpfe/Apeldorn)
#29 Eric Méndez (Visalia Rawhide/Cura Cabai, Aruba)
#30 Dennis Burgersdijk (Honkbalclub Allen Weerbaar/Bussum)
#32 Jaydenn Estanista (FCL Phillies/Willemstad, Curaçao)
#33 Kevin Kelly (Neptunas/Willemstad, Curaçao)
#36 Jiorgeny Casimiri (Dunedin Blue Jays/The Hague)
#37 Tom De Blok (Neptunas/Amstelveen)
#39 Shairon Martis (Amsterdam Piraten/Willemstad, Curaçao)
#41 Ryan Huntington (Neptunas/Oranjestad, Aruba)
#45 J.C. Sulbaran (Indios Del Bóer/Willemstad, Curaçao)
#46 Pedro Strop (Leones Del Escogido/San Cristóbal, Dominican Republic)
#49 Jair Jurrjens (Tigres De Aragua/Willemstad, Curaçao)
#51 Dylan Farley (Amsterdam Piraten/Hoofddorp)
#55 Franklin Van Gurp (Estrellas Orientales/Philipsburg, Sint Maarten)
#58 Antwone Kelly (FCL Pirates/Oranjestad, Aruba)
#62 Scott Prins (Amsterdam Piraten/Haarlem)
#66 Aaron De Groot (Neptunas/The Hague)
#74 Kenley Jansen (Boston Red Sox/Willemstad, Curaçao)
#99 Wendell Floranus (Gigantes Del Cibao/Willemstad, Curaçao)
Catchers
#14 Chadwick Tromp (Gwinnett Stripers/Oranjestad, Aruba)
#21 Dashenko Ricardo (Neptunas/Willemstad, Curaçao)
#26 Sicnarf Loopstok (Amsterdam Piraten/Oranjestad, Aruba)
Infielders
#2 Xander Bogaerts (San Diego Padres/San Nicolaas, Aruba)
#3 Richie Palacios (Cleveland Guardians/New York, New York)
#7 Jonathan Schoop (Detroit Tigers/Willemstad, Curaçao)
#9 Andrelton Simmons (free agent/Willemstad, Curaçao)
#13 Juremi Profar (Bravos De León/Willemstad, Curaçao)
#15 Sharlon Schoop (Amsterdam Piraten/Willemstad, Curaçao)
#18 Mariekson Gregorius (Cangrejeros De Santurce/Amsterdam)
#23 Dwayne Kemp (Neptunas/Rotterdam)
#40 Zander Wiel (High Point Rockers/Murfreesboro, Tennessee)
Outfielders
#4 Wladimir Balentien (Gigantes Del Cibao/Willemstad, Curaçao)
#10 Jurickson Profar (free agent/Willemstad, Curaçao)
#11 Ray-Patrick Didder (free agent/Oranjestad, Aruba)
#50 Rogear Bernadina (Leones De León/Willemstad, Curaçao)
#77 Josh Palacios (Indianapolis Indians/New York, New York)
Coaches
Manager Hensley Meulens (Colorado Rockies/Oranjestad, Aruba)
Bench coach Andruw Jones (Atlanta Braves/Willemstad, Curaçao)
Hitting coach Tjerk Smeets (Corendon Kinheim/Amsterdam)
Pitching coach Bert Blyleven (Nederlands Honkbal/Garden Grove, California)
Bullpen coach Mike Harkey (New York Yankees/San Diego, California)
1B coach Gene Kingsale (Neptunas/Solito, Aruba)
3B coach Ben Thijssen (Boston Red Sox/Willemstad, Curaçao)
Quality control coach Evert-Jan Hoen (Nederlands Honkbal/Alphen Aan Den Rijn)
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‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’ at 25: An Oral History of Disney’s Darkest Animated Classic
Posted on Slashfilm on Monday, June 21st, 2021 by Josh Spiegel
“This Is Going to Change Your Life”
The future directors of The Hunchback of Notre Dame were riding high from the success of Beauty and the Beast. Or, at least, they were happy to be finished.
Gary Trousdale, director: After Beauty and the Beast, I was exhausted. Plus, Kirk and I were not entirely trusted at first, because we were novices. I was looking forward to going back to drawing.
Kirk Wise, director: It was this crazy, wonderful roller-coaster ride. I had all this vacation time and I took a couple months off.
Gary Trousdale: A little later, it was suggested: “If you want to get back into directing, start looking for a project. You can’t sit around doing nothing.”
Kirk Wise: [Songwriters] Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty had a pitch called Song of the Sea, a loose retelling of the Orpheus myth with humpback whales. I thought it was very strong.
Gary Trousdale: We were a few months in, and there was artwork and a rough draft. There were a couple tentative songs, and we were getting a head of steam.
Kirk Wise: The phone rang. It was Jeffrey [Katzenberg, then-chairman of Walt Disney Studios], saying, “Drop everything. I got your next picture: The Hunchback of Notre Dame.”
Gary Trousdale: “I’ve already got Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz. You’re going to do this.” It wasn’t like we were given a choice. It was, “Here’s the project. You’re on.”
Kirk Wise: I was pleased that [Jeffrey] was so excited about it. I think the success of Beauty and the Beast had a lot to do with him pushing it our way. It would’ve been crazy to say no.
Gary Trousdale: What [Kirk and I] didn’t know is that Alan and Stephen were being used as bait for us. And Jeffrey was playing us as bait for Alan and Stephen.
Alan Menken, composer: Jeffrey made reference to it being Michael Eisner’s passion project, which implied he was less enthused about it as a story source for an animated picture.
Stephen Schwartz, lyricist: They had two ideas. One was an adaptation of Hunchback and the other was about whales. We chose Hunchback. I’d seen the [Charles Laughton] movie. Then I read the novel and really liked it.
Peter Schneider, president of Disney Feature Animation (1985-99): I think what attracted Stephen was the darkness. One’s lust for something and one’s power and vengeance, and this poor, helpless fellow, Quasimodo.
Roy Conli, co-producer: I was working at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, doing new play development. I was asked if I’d thought about producing animation. I said, “Yeah, sure.”
Don Hahn, producer: The goose had laid lots of golden eggs. The studio was trying to create two units so they could have multiple films come out. Roy was tasked with something hard, to build a crew out of whole cloth.
Kirk Wise: The idea appealed to me because [of] the setting and main character. I worked with an elder story man, Joe Grant, [who] goes back to Snow White. He said, “Some of the best animation ideas are about a little guy with a big problem.” Hunchback fit that bill.
Gary Trousdale: It’s a story I always liked. When Jeffrey said, “This is going to change your life,” Kirk and I said, “Cool.” When I was a kid, I [had an] Aurora Monster Model of Quasimodo lashed to the wheel. I thought, “He’s not a monster.”
Don Hahn: It’s a great piece of literature and it had a lot of elements I liked. The underdog hero. [He] was not a handsome prince. I loved the potential.
Gary Trousdale: We thought, “What are we going to do to make this dark piece of literature into a Disney cartoon without screwing it up?”
Peter Schneider: The subject matter is very difficult. The conflict was how far to go with it or not go with it. This is basically [about] a pederast who says “Fuck me or you’ll die.” Right?
“We Were Able to Take More Chances”
Wise and Trousdale recruited a group of disparate artists from the States and beyond to bring the story of Quasimodo the bell-ringer to animated life.
Paul Brizzi, sequence director: We were freshly arrived from Paris.
Gaëtan Brizzi, sequence director: [The filmmakers] were looking for a great dramatic prologue, and they couldn’t figure [it] out. Paul and I spent the better part of the night conceiving this prologue. They said, “You have to storyboard it. We love it.”
Roy Conli: We had two amazing artists in Paul and Gaëtan Brizzi who became spiritual leaders in the production. They were so incredible.
Gaëtan Brizzi: [“The Bells of Notre Dame”] was not supposed to be a song first.
Paul Brizzi: The prologue was traditional in the Disney way. Gaëtan and I were thinking of German expressionism to emphasize the drama. I’m not sure we could do that today.
Paul Kandel, voice of Clopin: They were toying with Clopin being the narrator. So they wrote “The Bells of Notre Dame” to open the movie.
Stephen Schwartz: [Alan and I] got called into a presentation, and on all these boards [was] laid out “The Bells of Notre Dame.” We musicalized the story they put up there. We used the pieces of dialogue they invented for Frollo and the other characters. I wrote lyrics that described the narrative. It was very exciting. I had never written a song like that.
Kirk Wise: Early on, we [took] a research trip with the core creative team to Paris. We spent two weeks all over Notre Dame. They gave us unrestricted access, going down into the catacombs. That was a huge inspiration.
Don Hahn: To crawl up in the bell towers and imagine Quasimodo there, to see the bells and the timbers, the scale of it all is unbelievable.
Kirk Wise: One morning, I was listening to this pipe organ in this shadowy cathedral, with light filtering through the stained-glass windows. The sound was so powerful, I could feel it thudding in my chest. I thought, “This is what the movie needs to feel like.”
Brenda Chapman, story: It was fun to sit in a room and draw and think up stuff. I liked the idea of this lonely character up in a bell tower and how we could portray his imagination.
Kathy Zielinski, supervising animator, Frollo: It was the earliest I’ve ever started on a production. I was doing character designs for months. I did a lot of design work for the gargoyles, as a springboard for the other supervisors.
James Baxter, supervising animator, Quasimodo: Kirk and Gary said, “We’d like you to do Quasimodo.” [I thought] that would be such a cool, amazing thing to do. They wanted this innocent vibe to him. Part of the design process was getting that part of his character to read.
Will Finn, head of story/supervising animator, Laverne: Kirk and Gary wanted me on the project. Kirk, Gary, and Don Hahn gave me opportunities no one else would have, and I am forever grateful.
Kathy Zielinski: I spent several months doing 50 or 60 designs [for Frollo]. I looked at villainous actors. Actually, one was Peter Schneider. [laughing] Not to say he’s a villain, but a lot of the mannerisms and poses. “Oh, that looks a little like Peter.”
James Baxter: I was doing design work on the characters with Tony Fucile, the animator on Esmerelda. I think Kirk and Gary felt Beauty and the Beast had been disparate and the characters weren’t as unified as they wanted.
Kathy Zielinski: Frollo stemmed from Hans Conried [the voice of Disney’s Captain Hook]. He had a longish nose and a very stern-looking face. Frollo was modeled a little bit after him.
Will Finn: The team they put together was a powerhouse group – Brenda Chapman, Kevin Harkey, Ed Gombert, and veterans like Burny Mattinson and Vance Gerry. I felt funny being their “supervisor.”
Kathy Zielinski: Half my crew was in France, eight hours ahead. We were able to do phone calls. But because of the time difference, our end of the day was their beginning of the morning. I was working a lot of late hours, because [Frollo] was challenging to draw.
Kirk Wise: Our secret weapon was James Baxter, who animated the ballroom sequence [in Beauty and the Beast] on his own. He had a unique gift of rotating characters in three-dimensional space perfectly.
Gary Trousdale: James Baxter is, to my mind, one of the greatest living animators in the world.
James Baxter: I’ve always enjoyed doing things that were quite elaborate in terms of camera movement and three-dimensional space. I’m a glutton for punishment, because those shots are very hard to do.
Gary Trousdale: In the scene with Quasimodo carrying Esmeralda over his shoulder, climbing up the cathedral, he looks back under his arms, snarling at the crowd below. James called that his King Kong moment.
As production continued, Roy Conli’s position shifted, as Don Hahn joined the project, and Jeffrey Katzenberg left Disney in heated fashion in 1994.
Roy Conli: Jeffrey was going to create his own animation studio. Peter Schneider was interested in maintaining a relationship with Don Hahn. We were into animation, ahead of schedule. They asked Don if he would produce and if I would run the studio in Paris.
Don Hahn: Roy hadn’t done an animated film before. I was able to be a more senior presence. I’d worked with Kirk and Gary before, which I enjoy. They’re unsung heroes of these movies.
Kirk Wise: The [production] pace was more leisurely. As leisurely as these things can be. We had more breathing room to develop the storyboards and the script and the songs.
Gary Trousdale: Jeffrey never liked characters to have facial hair. No beards, no mustaches, nothing. There’s original designs of Gaston [with] a little Errol Flynn mustache. Jeffrey hated it. “I don’t want any facial hair.” Once he left, we were like, “We could give [Phoebus] a beard now.”
Kirk Wise: The ballroom sequence [in Beauty] gave us confidence to incorporate more computer graphics into Hunchback. We [had] to create the illusion of a throng of thousands of cheering people. To do it by hand would have been prohibitive, and look cheap.
Stephen Schwartz: Michael Eisner started being more hands-on. Michael was annoyed at me for a while, because when Jeffrey left, I accepted the job of doing the score for Prince of Egypt. I got fired from Mulan because of it. But once he fired me, Michael couldn’t have been a more supportive, positive colleague on Hunchback.
Kirk Wise: [The executives] were distracted. We were able to take more chances than we would have under the circumstances that we made Beauty and the Beast.
Don Hahn: Hunchback was in a league of its own, feeling like we [could] step out and take some creative risks. We could have done princess movies forever, and been reasonably successful. Our long-term survival relied on trying those risks.
One sticking point revolved around Notre Dame’s gargoyles, three of whom interact with Quasimodo, but feel more lighthearted than the rest of the dark story.
Gary Trousdale: In the book and several of the movies, Quasimodo talks to the gargoyles. We thought, “This is Disney, we’re doing a cartoon. The gargoyles can talk back.” One thing led to another and we’ve got “A Guy Like You.”
Kirk Wise: “A Guy Like You” was literally created so we could lighten the mood so the audience wasn’t sitting in this trough of despair for so long.
Stephen Schwartz: Out of context, the number is pretty good. I think I wrote some funny lyrics. But ultimately it was a step too far tonally for the movie and it has been dropped from the stage version.
Gary Trousdale: People have been asking for a long time: are they real? Are they part of Quasimodo’s personality? There were discussions that maybe Quasimodo is schizophrenic. We never definitively answered it, and can argue convincingly both ways.
Jason Alexander, voice of Hugo: I wouldn’t dream of interfering with anyone’s choice on that. It’s ambiguous for a reason and part of that reason is the viewers’ participation in the answer. Whatever you believe about it, I’m going to say you’re right.
Brenda Chapman: I left before they landed on how [to play] the gargoyles. My concern was, what are the rules? Are they real? Are they in his imagination? What can they do? Can they do stuff or is it all Quasi? I looked at it a little askance in the finished film. I wasn’t sure if I liked how it ended up…[Laverne] with the boa on the piano.
Kirk Wise: There was a component of the audience that felt the gargoyles were incompatible with Hunchback. But all of Disney’s movies, including the darkest ones, have comic-relief characters. And Disney was the last person to treat the written word as gospel.
“A Fantastic Opportunity”
After a successful collaboration on Pocahontas, Menken and Schwartz worked on turning Victor Hugo’s tragic story into a musical.
Alan Menken: The world of the story was very appealing, and it had so much social relevance and cultural nuance.
Stephen Schwartz: The story lent itself quite well to musicalization because of the extremity of the characters and the emotions. There was a lot to sing about. There was a great milieu.
Alan Menken: To embed the liturgy of the Catholic Church into a piece of music that’s operatic and also classical and pop-oriented enriches it in a very original way. Stephen was amazing. He would take the theme from the story and specifically set it in Latin to that music.
Stephen Schwartz: The fact that we were doing a piece set in a church allowed us to use all those elements of the Catholic mass, and for Alan to do all that wonderful choral music.
Alan Menken: The first creative impulse was “Out There.” I’m a craftsman. I’m working towards a specific assignment, but that was a rare instance where that piece of music existed.
Stephen Schwartz: I would come in with a title, maybe a couple of lines for Alan to be inspired by. We would talk about the whole unit, its job from a storytelling point of view. He would write some music. I could say, “I liked that. Let’s follow that.” He’d push a button and there would be a sloppy printout, enough that I could play it as I was starting the lyrics.
Roy Conli: Stephen’s lyrics are absolutely phenomenal. With that as a guiding light, we were in really good shape.
Stephen Schwartz: Alan played [the “Out There” theme] for me, and I really liked it. I asked for one change in the original chorus. Other than that, the music was exactly as he gave it to me.
Gary Trousdale: Talking with these guys about music is always intimidating. There was one [lyric] Don and I both questioned in “Out There,” when Frollo is singing, “Why invite their calumny and consternation?” Don and I went, “Calumny?” Kirk said, “Nope, it’s OK, I saw it in an X-Men comic book.” I went, “All right! It’s in a comic book! It’s good.”
Stephen Schwartz: Disney made it possible for me to get into Notre Dame before it opened to the public. I’d climb up the steps to the bell tower. I’d sit there with my yellow pad and pencil. I’d have the tune for “Out There” in my head, and I would look out at Paris, and be Quasimodo. By the time we left Paris, the song was written.
Kirk Wise: Stephen’s lyrics are really smart and literate. I don’t think the comical stuff was necessarily [his] strongest area. But this movie was a perfect fit, because the power of the emotions were so strong. Stephen just has a natural ability to connect with that.
Will Finn: The directors wanted a funny song for the gargoyles and Stephen was not eager to write it. He came to me and Irene Mecchi and asked us to help him think of comedy ideas for “A Guy Like You,” and we pitched a bunch of gags.
Jason Alexander: Singing with an orchestra the likes of which Alan and Stephen and Disney can assemble is nirvana. It’s electrifying and gives you the boost to sing over and over. Fortunately, everyone was open to discovery. I love nuance and intention in interpretation. I was given wonderful freedom to find both.
Stephen Schwartz: “Topsy Turvy,” it’s one of those numbers of musical theater where you can accomplish an enormous amount of storytelling. If you didn’t have that, you’d feel you were drowning in exposition. When you put it in the context of the celebration of the Feast of Fools, you could get a lot of work done.
Paul Kandel: The first time I sang [“Topsy Turvy”] through, I got a little applause from the orchestra. That was a very nice thing to happen and calm me down a little bit.
Brenda Chapman: Poor Kevin Harkey must’ve worked on “Topsy Turvy” for over a year. Just hearing [singing] “Topsy turvy!” I thought, “I would shoot myself.” It’s a fun song, but to listen to that, that many times. I don’t know if he ever got to work on anything else.
Paul Kandel: There were places where I thought the music was squarer than it needed to be. I wanted to round it out because Clopin is unpredictable. Is he good? Is he bad? That’s what I was trying to edge in there.
Kirk Wise: “God Help the Outcasts” made Jeffrey restless. I think he wanted “Memory” from Cats. Alan and Stephen wrote “Someday.” Jeffrey said, “This is good, but it needs to be bigger!” Alan was sitting at his piano bench, and Jeffrey was next to him. Jeffrey said, “When I want it bigger, I’ll nudge you.” Alan started playing and Jeffrey was jabbing him in the ribs. “Bigger, bigger!”
Don Hahn: In terms of what told the story better, one song was poetic, but the other was specific. “Outcasts” was very specific about Quasimodo. “Someday” was “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”
Kirk Wise: When Don watched the movie, he said, “It’s working pretty well. But ‘Someday,’ I don’t know. It feels like she’s yelling at God.” We played “God Help the Outcasts” for him and Don said, “Oh, this is perfect.” That song is the signature of the entire movie.
Don Hahn: “Someday” was lovely. But I had come off of working with Howard Ashman, and I felt, “This doesn’t move the plot forward much, does it?” We ended up with “Someday” as an end-credits song, which was fortunate. ‘Cause they’re both good songs.
Kirk Wise: It was all about what conveys the emotion of the scene and the central theme of the movie best. “God Help the Outcasts” did that.
Everyone agrees on one point.
Stephen Schwartz: Hunchback is Alan’s best score. And that’s saying a lot, because he’s written a whole bunch of really good ones.
Gary Trousdale: With Hunchback, there were a couple of people that said, “This is why I chose music as a career.” Alan and Stephen’s songs are so amazing, so that’s really something.
Paul Kandel: It has a beautiful score.
Jason Alexander: It has the singularly most sophisticated score of most of the animated films of that era.
Roy Conli: The score of Hunchback is one of the greatest we’ve done.
Don Hahn: This is Alan’s most brilliant score. The amount of gravitas Alan put in the score is amazing.
Alan Menken: It’s the most ambitious score I’ve ever written. It has emotional depth. It’s a different assignment. And it was the project where awards stopped happening. It’s almost like, “OK, now you’ve gone too far.”
Stephen Schwartz: It’s astonishing that Alan has won about 173 Academy Awards, and the one score he did not win for is his best score.
The film featured marquee performers singing covers of “God Help the Outcasts” and “Someday”. But one of the most famous performers ever nearly brought those songs to life.
Alan Menken: I met Michael Jackson when we were looking for someone to sing “A Whole New World” for Aladdin. Michael wanted to co-write the song. I could get a sense of who Michael was. He was a very unique, interesting individual…in his own world.
I get a call out of nowhere from Michael’s assistant, when Michael was at the Four Seasons Hotel in New York. He had to [deal with] allegations about inappropriate behavior with underage kids, and the breakup with Lisa Marie Presley. He’s looking to change the subject. And he obviously loves Disney so much. So I mentioned Hunchback. He said he’d love to come to my studio, watch the movie and talk about it. So we got in touch with Disney Animation. They said, “Meet with him! If he likes it…well, see what he says.” [laughing]
There’s three songs. One was “Out There,” one was “God Help the Outcasts,” one was “Someday.” Michael said, “I would like to produce the songs and record some of them.” Wow. Okay. What do we do now? Michael left. We got in touch with Disney. It was like somebody dropped a hot poker into a fragile bowl with explosives. “Uh, we’ll get back to you about that.”
Finally, predictably, the word came back, “Disney doesn’t want to do this with Michael Jackson.” I go, “OK, could someone tell him this?” You can hear a pin drop, no response, and nobody did [tell him]. It fell to my late manager, Scott Shukat, to tell Michael or Michael’s attorney.
In retrospect, it was the right decision. [But] Quasimodo is a character…if you look at his relationships with his family and his father, I would think there’s a lot of identification there.
“They’re Never Going to Do This Kind of Character Again”
The film is known for the way it grapples with the hypocrisy and lust typified by the villainous Judge Frollo, whose terrifying song “Hellfire” remains a high point of Disney animation.
Gary Trousdale: Somebody asked me recently: “How the hell did you get ‘Hellfire’ past Disney?” It’s a good question.
Alan Menken: When Stephen and I wrote “Hellfire,” I was so excited by what we accomplished. It really raised the bar for Disney animation. It raised the bar for Stephen’s and my collaboration.
Stephen Schwartz: I thought the would never let me get away with [“Hellfire”]. And they never asked for a single change.
Alan Menken: Lust and religious conflict. Now more than ever, these are very thorny issues to put in front of the Disney audience. We wanted to go at it as truthfully as possible.
Stephen Schwartz: When Alan and I tackled “Hellfire,” I did what I usually did: write what I thought it should be and assume that [Disney would] tell me what I couldn’t get away with. But they accepted exactly what we wrote.
Don Hahn: Every good song score needs a villain’s moment. Stephen and Alan approached it with “Hellfire.”
Alan Menken: It was very clear, we’d thrown the gauntlet pretty far. It was also clear within our creative team that everybody was excited about going there.
Don Hahn: You use all the tools in your toolkit, and one of the most powerful ones was Alan and Stephen. Stephen can be dark, but he’s also very funny. He’s brilliant.
Gary Trousdale: The [MPAA] said, “When Frollo says ‘This burning desire is turning me to sin,’ we don’t like the word ‘sin.’” We can’t change the lyrics now. It’s all recorded. Kinda tough. “What if we just dip the volume of the word ‘sin’ and increase the sound effects?” They said, “Good.”
Stephen Schwartz: It’s one of the most admirable things [laughs] I have ever seen Disney Animation do. It was very supportive and adventurous, which is a spirit that…let’s just say, I don’t think [the company would] make this movie today.
Don Hahn: It’s funny. Violence is far more accepted than sex in a family movie. You can go see a Star Wars movie and the body count’s pretty huge, but there’s rarely any sexual innuendo.
Kathy Zielinski: I got to watch [Tony Jay] record “Hellfire” with another actor. I was sweating watching him record, because it was unbelievably intense. Afterwards, he asked me, “Did you learn anything from my performance?” I said, “Yeah, I never want to be a singer.” [laughing]
Paul Kandel: Tony Jay knocked that out of the park. He [was] an incredible guy. Very sweet. He was terrified to record “Hellfire.” He was at a couple of my sessions. He went, “Oh my God, what’s going to happen when it’s my turn? I don’t sing. I’m not a singer. I never pretended to be a singer.” I said, “Look, I’m not a singer. I’m an actor who figured out that they could hold a tune.”
Kathy Zielinski: I listened to Tony sing “Hellfire” tons. I knew I had gone too far when, one morning, we were sitting at the breakfast table and my daughter, who was two or three at the time, started singing the song and doing the mannerisms. [laughs]
Don Hahn: We didn’t literally want to show [Frollo’s lust]. It turns into a Fantasia sequence, almost. A lot of the imagery is something you could see coming out of Frollo’s imagination. It’s very impressionistic. It does stretch the boundaries of what had been done before at Disney.
Kirk Wise: We stylized it like “Night on Bald Mountain.” The best of Walt’s films balanced very dark and light elements. Instead of making it explicit, we tried to make it more visual and use symbolic imagery.
Gaëtan Brizzi: We were totally free. We could show symbolically how sick Frollo is between his hate and his carnal desire.
Kathy Zielinski: The storyboards had a tremendous influence. Everybody was incredibly admiring of the work that [Paul and Gaëtan] had done.
Don Hahn: They brought the storyboarded sequence to life in a way that is exactly what the movie looks like. The strength of it is that we didn’t have to show anything as much as we did suggest things to the audience. Give the audience credit for filling in the blanks.
Gary Trousdale: It was absolutely gorgeous. Their draftsmanship and their cinematography. They are the top. They pitched it with a cassette recording of Stephen singing “Hellfire”, and we were all in the story room watching it, going “Oh shit!”
Paul Brizzi: When Frollo is at the fireplace with Esmeralda’s scarf, his face is hypnotized. From the smoke, there’s the silhouette of Esmeralda coming to him. She’s naked in our drawings.
Gary Trousdale: We joked, maybe because they’re French, Esmeralda was in the nude when she was in the fire. Roy Disney put his foot down and said, “That’s not going to happen.” Chris Jenkins, the head of effects, and I went over every drawing to make sure she was appropriately attired. That was the one concession we made to the studio.
Gaëtan Brizzi: It’s the role of storyboard artists to go far, and then you scale it down. Her body was meant to be suggestive. It was more poetic than provocative.
Brenda Chapman: I thought what the Brizzis did with “Hellfire” was just stunning.
Roy Conli: We make films for people from four to 104, and we’re trying to ensure that the thematic material engages adults and engages children. We had a lot of conversations on “Hellfire,” [which] was groundbreaking. You saw the torment, but you didn’t necessarily, if you were a kid, read it as sexual. And if you were an adult, you picked it up pretty well.
Will Finn: “Hellfire” was uncomfortable to watch with a family audience. I’m not a prude, but what are small kids to make of such a scene?
Kathy Zielinski: When I was working on “Hellfire,” I thought, “Wow. They’re never going to do this kind of character again.” And I’m pretty much right.
“Straight for the Heart”
“Hellfire” may be the apex of the maturity of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, but the entire film is the most complex and adult Disney animated feature of the modern era.
Gary Trousdale: We went straight for the heart and then pulled back.
Kirk Wise: I was comfortable with moments of broad comedy contrasted with moments that were dark or scary or violent. All of the Disney movies did that, particularly in Walt’s time.
Don Hahn: A lot of it is gut level, where [the story group would] sit around and talk to ourselves and pitch it to executives. But Walt Disney’s original animated films were really dark. We wanted to create something that had the impact of what animation can do.
Will Finn: Eisner insisted we follow the book to the letter, but he said the villain could not be a priest, and we had to have a happy ending. The book is an epic tragedy – everybody dies!
Kathy Zielinski: It’s a little scary that I felt comfortable with [Frollo]. [laughing] I don’t know what that means. Maybe I need to go to therapy. I’ve always had a desire to do villains. I just love evil.
Don Hahn: Kathy Zielinski is brilliant. She works on The Simpsons now, which is hilarious. She’s very intense, very aware of what [Frollo] had to do.
One specific choice in the relationship between Frollo and Esmeralda caused problems.
Stephen Schwartz: I remember there was great controversy over Frollo sniffing Esmeralda’s hair.
Kirk Wise: The scene that caused the most consternation was in the cathedral where Frollo grabs Esmeralda, whispers in her ear and sniffs her hair. The sniffing made people ask, “Is this too far?” We got a lot of support from Peter Schneider, Tom Schumacher, and Michael Eisner.
Kathy Zielinski: Brenda Chapman came up with that idea and the storyboard. I animated it. It’s interesting, because two females were responsible for that. That scene was problematic, so they had to cut it down. It used to be a lot longer.
Brenda Chapman: I know I’m probably pushing it too far, but let’s give it a go, you know?
Kirk Wise: We agreed it was going to be a matter of execution and our collective gut would tell us whether we were crossing the line. We learned that the difference between a G and PG is the loudness of a sniff. Ultimately, that’s what it came down to.
Brenda Chapman: I never knew that! [laughing]
Don Hahn: Is it rated G? That’s surprising.
Gary Trousdale: I’m sure there was backroom bargaining done that Kirk and I didn’t know about.
Don Hahn: It’s negotiation. The same was true of The Lion King. We had intensity notes on the fight at the end. You either say, we’re going to live with that and it’s PG, or we’re not and it’s G.
Brenda Chapman: I heard stories of little kids going, “Ewww, he’s rubbing his boogers in her hair!” [laughing] If that’s what they want to think, that’s fine. But there are plenty of adults that went, “Whoa!”
Don Hahn: You make the movies for yourselves, [but] we all have families, and you try to make something that’s appropriate for that audience. So we made some changes. Frollo isn’t a member of the clergy to take out any politicizing.
Gaëtan Brizzi: We developed the idea of Frollo’s racism against the gypsies. To feel that he desires Esmeralda and he wants to kill her. It was ambiguity that was interesting to develop. In the storyboards, Paul made [Frollo] handsome with a big jaw, a guy with class. They said he was too handsome. We had to break that formula.
Stephen Schwartz: I [and others] said, “It doesn’t make any sense for him to not be the Archdeacon, because what’s he doing with Quasimodo? What possible relationship could they have?” Which is what led to the backstory that became “The Bells of Notre Dame.”
Don Hahn: The things Frollo represents are alive and well in the world. Bigotry and prejudice are human traits and always have been. One of his traits was lust. How do you portray that in a Disney movie? We tried to portray that in a way that might be over kids’ heads and may not give them nightmares necessarily, but it’s not going to pull its punches. So it was a fine line.
Stephen Schwartz: Hugo’s novel is not critical of the church the way a lot of French literature is. It creates this character of Frollo, who’s a deeply hypocritical person and tormented by his hypocrisy.
Peter Schneider: I am going to be controversial. I think it failed. The fundamental basis is problematic, if you’re going to try and do a Disney movie. In [light of] the #MeToo movement, you couldn’t still do the movie and try what we tried to do. As much as we tried to soften it, you couldn’t get away from the fundamental darkness.
Don Hahn: Yeah, that sounds like Peter. He’s always the contrarian.
Peter Schneider: I’m not sure we should have made the movie, in retrospect. I mean, it did well, Kirk and Gary did a beautiful job. The voices are beautiful. The songs are lovely, but I’m not sure we should have made the movie.
Gaëtan Brizzi: The hardest part was to stick to the commercial side of the movie…to make sure we were still addressing kids.
Kirk Wise: We knew it was going to be a challenge to honor the source material while delivering a movie that would fit comfortably on the shelf with the other Disney musicals. We embraced it.
Roy Conli: I don’t think it was too mature. I do find it at times slightly provocative, but not in a judgmental or negative way. I stand by the film 100 percent in sending a message of hope.
Peter Schneider: It never settled its tone. If you look at the gargoyles and bringing in Jason Alexander to try and give comedy to this rather bleak story of a judge keeping a deformed young man in the tower…there’s so many icky factors for a Disney movie.
Jason Alexander: Some children might be frightened by Quasi’s look or not be able to understand the complexity. But what we see is an honest, innocent and capable underdog confront his obstacles and naysayers and emerge triumphant, seen and accepted. I think young people rally to those stories. They can handle the fearsome and celebrate the good.
Brenda Chapman: There was a scene where Frollo was locking Quasimodo in the tower, and Quasi was quite upset. I had to pull back from how cruel Frollo was in that moment, if I’m remembering correctly. I wanted to make him a very human monster, which can be scarier than a real monster.
Roy Conli: We walked such a tight line and we were on the edge and the fact that Disney allowed us to be on the edge was a huge tribute to them.
“Hear the Voice”
The story was set, the songs were ready. All that was left was getting a cast together to bring the characters’ voices to life.
Jason Alexander: Disney, Alan Menken, Stephen Schwartz, Victor Hugo – you had me at hello.
Paul Kandel: I was in Tommy, on Broadway. I was also a Tony nominee. So I had those prerequisites. Then I got a call from my agent that Jeffrey Katzenberg decided he wanted a star. I was out of a job I already had. I said, “I want to go back in and audition again.” I wanted to let them choose between me and whoever had a name that would help sell the film. So that series of auditions went on and I got the job back.
Kirk Wise: Everybody auditioned, with the exception of Kevin Kline and Demi Moore. We went to them with an offer. But we had a few people come in for Quasimodo, including Meat Loaf.
Will Finn: Katzenberg saw Meat Loaf and Cher playing Quasimodo and Esmeralda – more of a rock opera. He also wanted Leno, Letterman, and Arsenio as the gargoyles at one point.
Kirk Wise: Meat Loaf sat with Alan and rehearsed the song. It was very different than what we ended up with, because Meat Loaf has a very distinct sound. Ultimately, I think his record company and Disney couldn’t play nice together, and the deal fell apart.
Gary Trousdale: We all had the drawings of the characters we were currently casting for in front of us. Instead of watching the actor, we’d be looking down at the piece of paper, trying to hear that voice come out of the drawing. And it was, we learned, a little disconcerting for some of the actors and actresses, who would put on hair and makeup and clothes and they’ve got their body language and expressions. We just want to hear the voice.
Kirk Wise: We cast Cyndi Lauper as one of the gargoyles. We thought she was hilarious and sweet. The little fat obnoxious gargoyle had a different name, and was going to be played by Sam McMurray. We had Cyndi and Sam record, and Roy Disney hated it. The quality of Cyndi’s voice and Sam’s voice were extremely grating to his ear. This is no disrespect to them – Cyndi Lauper is amazing. And Sam McMurray is very funny. But it was not working for the people in the room on that day.
Jason Alexander: The authors cast you for a reason – they think they’ve heard a voice in you that fits their character. I always try to look at the image of the character – his shape, his size, his energy and start to allow sounds, pitches, vocal tics to emerge. Then everyone kicks that around, nudging here, tweaking there and within a few minutes you have the approach to the vocalization. It’s not usually a long process, but it is fun.
Kirk Wise: We decided to reconceive the gargoyles. We always knew we wanted three of them. We wanted a Laurel and Hardy pair. The third gargoyle, the female gargoyle, was up in the air. I think it was Will Finn who said, “Why don’t we make her older?” As the wisdom-keeper. That led us to Mary Wickes, who was absolutely terrific. We thoroughly enjoyed working with Mary, and 98% of the dialogue is her. But she sadly passed away before we were finished.
Will Finn: We brought in a ton of voice-over actresses and none sounded like Mary. One night, I woke up thinking about Jane Withers, who had been a character actress in the golden age of Hollywood. She had a similar twang in her voice, and very luckily, she was alive and well.
Kirk Wise: Our first session with Kevin Kline went OK, but something was missing. It just didn’t feel like there was enough of a twinkle in his voice. Roy Conli said, “Guys, he’s an actor. Give him a prop.” For the next session, the supervising animator for Phoebus brought in a medieval broadsword. Before the session started, we said “Kevin, we’ve got a present for you.” We brought out this sword, and he lit up like a kid at Christmas. He would gesture with it and lean on it. Roy found the key there.
Gary Trousdale: Kevin Kline is naturally funny, so we may have [written] some funnier lines for him. When he’s sparring with Esmeralda in the cathedral and he gets hit by the goat. “I didn’t know you had a kid,” which is the worst line ever. But he pulls it off. He had good comic timing.
Kirk Wise: Tom Hulce had a terrific body of work, including Amadeus. But the performance that stuck with me was in Dominic and Eugene. There was a sensitivity and emotional reality to that performance that made us lean in and think he might make a good Quasimodo.
Gary Trousdale: [His voice] had a nice mix of youthful and adult. He had a maturity, but he had an innocence as well. We’re picturing Quasimodo as a guy who’s basically an innocent. It was a quality of his voice that we could hear.
Don Hahn: He’s one of those actors who could perform and act while he sang. Solo songs, especially for Quasimodo, are monologues set to music. So you’re looking for someone who can portray all the emotion of the scene. It’s about performance and storytelling, and creating a character while you’re singing. That’s why Tom rose to the top.
Stephen Schwartz: I thought Tom did great. I had known Tom a little bit beforehand, as an actor in New York. I’d seen him do Equus and I was sort of surprised. I just knew him as an actor in straight plays. I didn’t know that he sang at all, and then it turned out that he really sang.
Paul Kandel: [Tom] didn’t think of himself as a singer. He’s an actor who can sing. “Out There,” his big number – whether he’s going to admit it to you or not – that was scary for him. But a beautiful job.
Brenda Chapman: Quasimodo was the key to make it family-friendly. Tom Hulce did such a great job making him appealing.
Kirk Wise: Gary came back with the audiotape of Tom’s first session. And his first appearance with the little bird, where he asks if the bird is ready to fly…that whole scene was his rehearsal tape. His instincts were so good. He just nailed it. I think he was surprised that we went with that take. It was the least overworked and the most spontaneous, and felt emotionally real to us.
Kathy Zielinski: Early on, they wanted Anthony Hopkins to do the voice [of Frollo]. [We] did an animation test with a line of his from Silence of the Lambs.
Kirk Wise: We were thinking of Hannibal Lecter in the earliest iterations of Frollo. They made an offer, but Hopkins passed. We came full circle to Tony, because it had been such a good experience working with him on Beauty and the Beast. It was the combination of the quality of his voice, the familiarity of working with him, and knowing how professional and sharp he was.
Though the role of Quasimodo went to Tom Hulce (who did not respond to multiple requests for comment), there was one audition those involved haven’t forgotten.
Kirk Wise: We had a few people come in for Quasimodo, including Mandy Patinkin.
Stephen Schwartz: That was a difficult day. [laughing]
Kirk Wise: Mandy informed Alan and Stephen that he brought his own accompanist, which was unexpected because we had one in the room. He had taken a few liberties with [“Out There”]. He had done a little rearranging. You could see Alan’s and Stephen’s spines stiffen. It was not the feel that Alan and Stephen were going for. Stephen pretty much said so in the room. I think his words were a little sharper and more pointed than mine.
Stephen Schwartz: I’ve never worked with Mandy Patinkin. But I admired Evita and Sunday in the Park with George. He came in to audition for Quasimodo. When I came in, Ben Vereen was sitting in the hallway. Ben is a friend of mine and kind of a giant star. I felt we should be polite in terms of bringing him in relatively close to the time for which he was called.
Mandy took a long time with his audition, and asked to do it over and over again. If you’re Mandy Patinkin, you should have enough time scheduled to feel you were able to show what you wanted to show. However, that amount of time was not scheduled. At a certain point, I became a bit agitated because I knew Ben was sitting there, cooling his heels. I remember asking [to] move along or something. That created a huge contretemps.
Kirk Wise: Gary and I stepped outside to work on a dialogue scene with Mandy. As we were explaining the scene and our take on the character, Mandy threw up his hands and said, “Guys, I’m really sorry. I can’t do this.” He turned on his heel and went into the rehearsal hall and shut the door. We started hearing an intense argument. He basically went in and read Alan and Stephen the riot act. The door opens, smoke issuing from the crater that he left inside. Mandy storms out, and he’s gone. We step back in the room, asking, “What the hell happened?”
Gary Trousdale: I did a drawing of it afterwards. The Patinkin Incident.
Stephen Schwartz: Battleship Patinkin!
“Join the Party”
The darkness in the film made it difficult to market. Even some involved acknowledged the issue. In the run-up to release, Jason Alexander said to Entertainment Weekly, “Disney would have us believe this movie’s like the Ringling Bros., for children of all ages. But I won’t be taking my 4-year old. I wouldn’t expose him to it, not for another year.”
Alan Menken: There was all the outrage about Jason Alexander referring to it as a dark story that’s not for kids. Probably Disney wasn’t happy he said that.
Jason Alexander: Most Disney animated films are entertaining and engaging for any child with an attention span. All of them have elements that are frightening. But people are abused in Hunchback. These are people, not cute animals. Some children could be overwhelmed by some of it at a very young age. My son at the time could not tolerate any sense of dread in movies so it would have been hard for him. However, that is certainly not all children.
Don Hahn: I don’t think Jason was wrong. People have to decide for themselves. It probably wasn’t a movie for four-year olds. You as a parent know your kid better than I do.
If everyone agrees the score is excellent, they also agree on something that was not.
Alan Menken: God knows we couldn’t control how Disney marketing dealt with the movie, which was a parade with Quasimodo on everybody’s shoulders going, “Join the party.” [laughing]
Roy Conli: I always thought “Animation comes of age” would be a great [tagline]. I think the marketing ended up, “Join the party.”
Brenda Chapman: Marketing had it as this big party. And then you get into the story and there’s all this darkness. I think audiences were not expecting that, if they didn’t know the original story.
Kathy Zielinski: It was a hard movie for Disney to merchandise and sell to the public.
Gaëtan Brizzi: People must have been totally surprised by the dramatic sequences. The advertising was not reflecting what the movie was about.
Stephen Schwartz: To this day, they just don’t know how to market “Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame.” I understand what their quandary is. They have developed a brand that says, “If you see the word Disney on something, it means you can take your 6-year old.” You probably shouldn’t even take your 8-year old, unless he or she is very mature, to Hunchback.
Alan Menken: We [Disney] had such a run of successful projects. It was inevitable there was going to be a time where people said, “I’ve seen all those, but what else is out there?” I had that experience sitting at a diner with my family, overhearing a family talk about Hunchback and say, “Oh yeah, we saw Beauty and Aladdin, but this one…let’s see something else.”
Stephen Schwartz: I did have a sense that some in the critical community didn’t know how to reconcile animation and an adult approach. They have the same attitude some critics have about musicals. “It’s fine if it’s tap-dancing and about silly subjects. But if it’s something that has intellectual import, you can’t do that.” Obviously we have Hamilton and Sweeney Todd and Wicked. Over the years, that’s changed to some extent, but not for everybody.
Roy Conli: Every film is not a Lion King. [But] if that story has legs and will touch people, then you’ve succeeded.
Kirk Wise: We were a little disappointed in its initial weekend. It didn’t do as well as we hoped. We were also disappointed in the critical reaction. It was well-reviewed, but more mixed. Roger Ebert loved us. The New York Times hated us! I felt whipsawed. It was the same critic [Janet Maslin] who praised Beauty and the Beast to the high heavens. She utterly shat on Hunchback.
Don Hahn: We had really good previews, but we also knew it was out of the box creatively. We were also worried about the French and we were worried about the handicapped community and those were the two communities that supported the movie the most.
Will Finn: I knew we were in trouble when the first trailers played and audiences laughed at Quasimodo singing “Out There” on the roof.
Kirk Wise: All of us were proud of the movie on an artistic level. In terms of animation and backgrounds and music and the use of the camera and the performances. It’s the entire studio operating at its peak level of performance, as far as I’m concerned.
Gary Trousdale: I didn’t think people were going to have such a negative reaction to the gargoyles. They’re a little silly. And they do undercut the gravity. But speaking with friends who were kids at the time, they have nothing but fond memories. There were adults, high school age and older when they saw it, they were turned off. We thought it was going to do really great. We thought, “We’re topping ourselves.” It’s a sophisticated story and the music is amazing.
Kirk Wise: The 2D animated movies used to be released before Christmas [or] Thanksgiving. The Lion King changed that. Now everything was a summer release. I always questioned the wisdom of releasing Hunchback in the summertime, in competition with other blockbusters.
Paul Kandel: It made $300 million and it cost $80 million to make. So they were not hurting as far as profits were concerned. But I thought it was groundbreaking in so many ways that I was surprised at the mixed reviews.
Kirk Wise: By most measures, it was a hit. I think The Lion King spoiled everybody, because [it] was such a phenomenon, a bolt from the blue, not-to-be-repeated kind of event.
Gary Trousdale: We were getting mixed reviews. Some of them were really good. “This is a stunning masterpiece.” And other people were saying, “This is a travesty.” And the box office was coming in, not as well as hoped.
Don Hahn: I was in Argentina doing South American press. I got a call from Peter Schneider, who said, “It’s performing OK, but it’s probably going to hit 100 million.” Which, for any other moviemaker, would be a goldmine. But we’d been used to huge successes. I was disappointed.
Peter Schneider: I think it was a hit, right? It just wasn’t the same. As they say in the theater, you don’t set out to make a failure.
Don Hahn: If you’re the New York Yankees, and you’ve had a winning season where you could not lose, and then people hit standup singles instead of home runs…that’s OK. But it has this aura of disappointment. That’s the feeling that’s awful to have, because it’s selfish. Animation is an art, and the arts are meant to be without a price tag hanging off of them all the time.
Paul Brizzi: We are still grateful to Kirk and Gary and Don. We worked on [Hunchback] for maybe a year or a year and a half. Every sequence, we did with passion.
Gaëtan Brizzi: Our work on Hunchback was a triumph of our career.
Kathy Zielinski: There are certainly a whole crowd of people who wish we had not [done] the comedy, because that wasn’t faithful. That’s the main complaint I heard – we should’ve gone for this total dramatic piece and not worried about the kiddies.
Gaetan Brizzi: The only concern we had was the lack of homogeneity. The drama was really strong, and the [comedy] was sometimes a little bit goofy. It was a paradox. When you go from “Hellfire” to a big joke, the transition was not working well. Otherwise, we were very proud.
James Baxter: We were happy with what we did, but we understood it was going to be a slightly harder sell. The Hunchback of Notre Dame usually doesn’t engender connotations like, “Oh, that’s going to be a Disney classic.” I was very happy that it did as well as it did.
Jason Alexander: I thought it was even more mature and emotional on screen. It was an exciting maturation of what a Disney animated feature could be. I was impressed and touched.
“An Undersung Hero”
25 years later, The Hunchback of Notre Dame endures. The animated film inspired an even darker stage show that played both domestically and overseas, and in recent years, there have been rumors that Josh Gad would star as Quasimodo in a live-action remake.
Alan Menken: I think it’s a project that with every passing year will more and more become recognized as a really important part of my career.
Stephen Schwartz: This will be immodest, but I think it’s a really fine adaptation. I think it’s the best musical adaptation of the Victor Hugo novel, and there have been a lot. I think the music is just unbelievably good. I think, as a lyricist, I was working at pretty much the top of my form. I have so many people telling me it’s their favorite Disney film.
Alan Menken: During the pandemic, there was this hundred-piece choir doing “The Bells of Notre Dame.” People are picking up on it. It’s the combination of the storytelling and how well the score is constructed that gets it to longevity. If something is good enough, it gets found.
Paul Kandel: I think people were more sensitive. There was an expectation that a new Disney animated film would not push boundaries at all, which it did. For critics, it pushed a little too hard and I don’t think they would think that now. It’s a work of art.
Gaëtan Brizzi: Hunchback is poetic, because of its dark romanticism. We have tons of animated movies, but I think they all look alike because of the computer technique. This movie is very important in making people understand that hate has no place in our society, between a culture or people or a country. That’s the message of the movie, and of Victor Hugo himself.
Jason Alexander: I think it’s an undersung hero. It’s one of the most beautiful and moving animated films. But it is not the title that lives on everyone’s tongue. I think more people haven’t seen this one than any of the others. I adore it.
Peter Schneider: What Disney did around this period [is] we stopped making musicals. I think that was probably a mistake on some level, but the animators were bored with it.
Don Hahn: You know people reacted to Beauty and the Beast or The Lion King. They were successful movies in their day. You don’t know the reaction to anything else. So when [I] go to Comic-Con or do press on other movies, people started talking about Hunchback. “My favorite Alan Menken score is Hunchback.” It’s always surprising and delightful.
Kirk Wise: I’ve had so many people come up to me and say, “This is my absolute favorite movie. I adored this movie as a kid. I wore out my VHS.” That makes all the difference in the world.
Paul Kandel: Sitting on my desk right now are four long letters and requests for autographs. I get 20 of those a week. People are still seeing that film and being moved by it.
Alan Menken: Now there’s a discussion about a live-action film with Hunchback. And that’s [sighs] exciting and problematic. We have to, once again, wade into the troubled waters of “What is Disney’s movie version of Hunchback?” Especially now.
Jason Alexander: Live action could work because the vast majority of characters are human. The story of an actual human who is in some ways less abled and who is defined by how he looks, rather than his heart and character, is timely and important, to say the least.
Kirk Wise: I imagine if there were a live-action adaptation, it would skew more towards the stage version. That’s just my guess.
Stephen Schwartz: I think it would lend itself extremely well to a live-action movie, particularly if they use the stage show as the basis. I think the stage show is fantastic.
Kirk Wise: It’s gratifying to be involved in movies like Beauty and the Beast and Hunchback that have created so much affection. But animation is as legitimate a form of storytelling as live-action is. It might be different, but I don’t think it’s better. I feel like [saying], “Just put on the old one. It’s still good!”
Gary Trousdale: There were enough versions before. Somebody wants to make another version? Okay. Most people can tell the difference between the animated version and a live-action reboot. Mostly I’m not a fan of those. But if that’s what Disney wants to do, great.
Don Hahn: It’s very visual. It’s got huge potential because of its setting and the drama, and the music. It’s pretty powerful, so it makes sense to remake that movie. I think we will someday.
Brenda Chapman: It’s a history lesson. Now that Notre Dame is in such dire straits, after having burned so badly, hopefully [this] will increase interest in all that history.
James Baxter: It meant two children. I met my wife on that movie. [laughs] In a wider sense, the legacy is another step of broadening the scope of what Disney feature animation could be.
Kirk Wise: Hunchback is the movie where the final product turned out closest to the original vision. There was such terrific passion by the crew that carried throughout the process.
Roy Conli: It’s one of the most beautiful films we’ve made. 25 years later, I’d say “Join the party.” [laughs]
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AHHH HELLO ITS FINALLY DONE!!! A big group photo based off of this post by @deus-ex-knoxina !!! I added little interview excerpts if y’all want to read them! They might be ooc tho,,,,
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An Interview with the Day-Josten-Minyard trio
Koam: Many were shocked by your revelation last month. I myself must admit I was taken by surprise!
Neil: Yes well, I will say it came as a surprise to me as well. I remember one day in the locker room, Kevin told me [imitates kevin] it will be easier to remain heterosexual. [Kevin rolls his eyes and Andrew scoffs] Ironic, considering where we are now.
Kevin: [chuckling] Well was I wrong? I was speaking from experience after all. On a more serious note, many athletes in the LGBTQ community face this issue. Even in today’s society, people like us are still under a lot of pressure and scrutiny.
Koam: Oh, that’s a very good point. You three have been the talk of exy fans everywhere for the past few years! Lately a lot of fans have been taking an interest to Andrew.
Andrew: My main reason for playing this stupid sport is these two idiots over here. Someone has to make sure they don’t hurt themselves. Especially Neil. He almost got red carded 4 times.
Neil: Harkey was full of shit, you know it, I know it, hell, he probably knows it too. I didn’t say anything but the truth.
Andrew: Your mouth runs faster than you do, and that’s saying something.
Neil: Anyways, don’t let him fool you, I’m sure he finds some enjoyment. He loved pissing off Bryant. 
Kevin: I’m pretty sure the whole team did. He wasn’t exactly likable.
Andrew: This is exactly what I mean, someone needs to make sure they don’t start another shitshow on Twitter.
————-
An interview with Sara Alvarez and Laila Dermott
Koam: I hear that you two have been together since college! How was your former team with your relationship?
Laila: The Trojans? Oh they were really cool about it. Very supportive. They were so oblivious when it came to Jeremy and Jean though. It was hysterical.
Sara: Jeremy was having a crisis. Even Jean with his whole stone face thing was getting a little irritated.
Koam: I see... Were they not supportive of Jeremy and Jean?
Sara: Oh, no that’s not it at all. The Trojans as a whole are very sweet and supportive, but we’re all idiot jocks at heart.
Laila: [snickering] Jean would kill you if her heard that.
Sara: Laila, He almost used the word bro while crying over his math homework. And he hangs around Jeremy all the time, it’s gonna happen if it hasn’t already.
Laia: Fair enough. You know, maybe the team was just too in love with Jeremy to accept him being in a relationship.
Sara: Oh yeah, there was that one guy who joined because he had a crush on him.
Laila: Didn’t he say he joined for his a-
Sara: AMAZING FOOTWORK. YES. Ahem. Jeremy is very good with his feet.
[Laughter]
————
An Interview with Jeremy Knox and Jean Moreau
Koam: So how was everything with you? I’m sure you two got your fair share of things to deal with after the championship game.
Jeremy: I suppose? We haven’t been very active on social media lately... Or at least I haven’t. 
Jean: I haven’t either. Things have been a little bit hectic recently.
Koam: Understandable. Forgive me if I am overstepping... But how was the transfer? I heard there was a huge scandal a few years back with the Ravens.
Jean: The Ravens were... strict to say the least. Hell, strict is an understatement. The transfer to the Trojans certainly wasn’t easy, but the Trojans surprised me. In a good way for the most part. The Ravens were very cut-throat, and you were only as good as your ability on the court. Dating as a whole was off limits, and homosexuality was even worse. But the Trojans were all about rest, and support. The final three years I spent there have helped me tremendously. And of course, Jeremy. Mon soleil.
Jeremy: [beaming] Jean adjusted really well. Some of the other team members were pretty intimidated by him though, I mean Toame compared him to Darth Vader. He’s really amazing when you get to know him. He cares a lot, you can see it if you actually look. [smiling at Jean]
Jean: [pecking him on the cheek with a smile] That I do.
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rpsabetto · 6 years
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Roller Coaster Rabbit
(USA 1990)
I saw Dick Tracy during its original theatrical run, and I don’t remember a Roger Rabbit cartoon with it. Then again, I don’t remember tee shirt tickets, either. So, what do I know?
Directed by Rob Minkoff and Frank Marshall, Roller Coaster Rabbitis essentially a Warner Brothers cartoon — right down to the logo at the beginning. Roger Rabbit (Charles Fleischer) is left to babysit Baby…
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Trumpsters And Conservatives Voting List
The following people are who we support for office in 2018                            Please get out and VOTE                                                 Alabama
       Senate
       House of Representatives 
R - Martha Roby
          Arizona
       Senate
R - Martha McSally
       House of Representatives 
          California
       Governor
R - John Cox
       Lieutenant Governor
None
       Secretary Of State
R - Mark Meuser
       State Controller
R - Kostas Roditis
       State Treasurer
R - Greg Conlon
       Attorney General
R - Steven Bailey
       Senate
       House of Representatives
District
08 - R - Paul Cook
10 - R - Jeff Denham
16 - R - Elizabeth Heng
22 - R - Devin Nunes
25 - R - Stephen Knight
39 - R - Young Kim
45 - R - Mimi Walters
48 - R - Dana Rohrabacher
49 - R - Diane Harkey
     City
     Okland
Mayor - None
          Florida
       Senate
R - Rick Scott
       House of Representatives 
R - Matt Gaetz
R - Ted Yoho
          Hawaii 
Governor - Andria Tupola
       House of Representatives 
          Indiana
       Senate
R - Mike Braun
       House of Representatives 
          Kansas
       Senate
       Governor
R - Kris Kobach
       House of Representatives 
R - Kevin Yoder
       Atoorney General
R - Derick Schidt
       Secratary Of State
R - Scott Schuab
          Lousiana
       Senate
       House of Representatives 
R - Clay Higgins
          Massachusetts
          Governor
R - Charles D. Baker
          Lieutenant governor
R - Karyn Polito
          Senate
I - Shiva Ayyadurai - He is running as independent however he is a member of the Republican Party and backs the Trump agenda 
          House of Representatives
District
1 none
2 R - Tracy Lovvorn
3 R - Rick Green
4 none
5 R - John Hugo
6 R - Joseph Schneider
7 none
8 none
9 R - Peter Tedeschi
          Minnisota
       Senate
R - Karin Housley
       House of Representatives
R - Tom Emmer
R - Jim Hagedorn
R - Dave Hughes
R - Jason Lewis
R - Pete Stauber
          Mississippi
       Senate
R - Roger Wicker 
R - Cindy Hyde Smith
       House of Representatives 
          Missouri
       Senate
R - Josh Howley
       House of Representatives 
          Montana
       Senate
R - Matt Rosendale
       House of Representatives 
          Nebraska
       Senate
R - Deb Fisher
       House of Representatives 
          Nevada
       Senate
R - Dean Heller
       House of Representatives 
R - Danny Tarkanian
          New Jersey
       Senate
       House of Representatives
R - Jay Webber
       New york
       Senate
R - Dan Donovan
R - Tom Reed
R - Lee Zeldin
          North Carolina
          House of Representatives
District
01 R - Roger Allison
02 R - George Holding
03 R - Walter B. Jones
04 R - Steve Von Loor
05 R - Virginia Foxx 
06 R - Mark Walker 
07 R - David Rouzer 
08 R - Richard Hudson
09 R - Mark Harris
10 R - Patrick McHenry
11 R - Mark Meadows
12 R - Paul Wright
13 R - Ted Budd 
          North Carolina House of Representatives
District
58 - D - Amos Quick - because we oppose Peter Boykin 100%
          North Dakota
          Senate
R - Kevin Cramer
          House of Representatives 
          Ohio
          Senate
R - Jim Renacci
       House of Representatives 
          Pennsylvania
       Senate
R - Lou Barletta
       House of Representatives
R - Kieth Rothfus
          South Carolina
       Senate
       House of Representatives 
R - Katie Arrington
          Tennessee
       Senate
R - Marsha Blackburn
       House of Representatives 
R - David Kustoff
          Texas
       Senate 
R - Ted Cruz
       House of Representatives 
District 01 - D - Shirley McKellar 
District 02 - R - Daniel Crenshaw 
District 03 - R - Van Taylor
District 04 - R - John Ratcliffe 
District 05 - R - Lance Gooden
District 06 - R - Ronald Wright
District 07 - R - John Culberson
District 08 - R - Kevin Brady
District 09 - I - Kesha Rogers
District 10 - R - Michael McCaul 
District 11 - R - Mike Conaway 
District 12 - R - Kay Granger 
District 13 - R - Mac Thornberry
District 14 - R - Randy Weber
District 15 - D - Vicente González 
District 16 - R - Rick Seeberger
District 17 - R - Bill Flores
District 18 - R - Ava Pate
District 19 - R - Jodey Arrington
District 20 - None
District 21 - R - Chip Roy
District 22 - R - Pete Olson
District 23 - None
District 24 - R - Kenny Marchant
District 25 - R - Roger Williams
District 26 - R - Michael C. Burgess
District 27 - R - Michael Cloud
District 28 - None
District 29 - R - Phillip Arnold Aronoff
District 30 - None
District 31 - R - John Carter
District 32 - R - Pete Sessions
District 33 - R - Willie Billups
District 34 - None 
District 35 - R - David Smalling
District 36 - R - Brian Babin
          Utah
       Senate
R - Mitt Romney
       House of Representatives 
          Virginia
       Senate 
01 - R - Cory Stewart
       House of Representatives 
          West Virginia
       Senate
R - Evan Jenkins
R - Patrick Morrisey
       House of Representatives 
          Wisconsin
       Senate
R - Leah Vukmir
       House of Representatives
R - Bryan Steil
          Wyoming
       Senate
R -  John Barrasso
       House of Representatives 
          Special Elections 2018
New York's 25th ------------- R - James Maxwell --- November 6, 2018
Pennsylvania's 7th ---------- R - Pearl Kim ------- November 6, 2018
Pennsylvania's 15th --------- R - Marty Nothstein - November 6, 2018
U.S. Senator from Minnesota - R - Karin Housley --- November 6, 2018
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theliberaltony · 6 years
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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight
Welcome to our Election Update for Thursday, Sept. 13!
The biggest update: We now have a Senate forecast to go with our House forecast! The “Classic” version of the Senate forecast currently gives Democrats a 1 in 3 chance of flipping the upper chamber. Meanwhile, the “Classic” version of our House forecast hasn’t really changed much since yesterday: Democrats still have a 5 in 6 chance of winning control. Across thousands of simulations, Democrats’ average gain was 39 seats.
Several of those Democratic pick-ups are likely to be in districts carried by Mitt Romney in 2012 but Hillary Clinton in 2016, as I wrote in my Election Update yesterday. There are only 13 such districts nationwide — all currently represented by Republicans — but all of them are competitive (to varying degrees) in 2018.1 Let’s check in on what our forecast has to say about them each specifically.
Three districts where Republicans have the upper hand
As of 11:45 a.m., Republicans are favored in three Romney-Clinton seats. The Illinois 6th District and Kansas 3rd District are both “lean Republican,” and the Texas 32nd District is “likely Republican.”
While polling remains close in all three districts, the fundamentals — non-polling factors like fundraising, candidate quality and a district’s voting history — still favor Republicans. The Texas 32nd, for example, has a FiveThirtyEight partisan lean2 of R+10. In Kansas’s 3rd, GOP Rep. Kevin Yoder has raised dramatically more money than Democratic challenger Sharice Davids. Perhaps most importantly, all three incumbents demonstrated a clear ability to woo crossover voters by winning their 2016 races by at least 10 percentage points3 even as Clinton carried their districts.
Three pure toss-ups
Three other Romney-Clinton districts are toss-ups, with Democrats ever so slightly favored. These include the California 39th District, Texas 7th District and Texas 23rd District.
In the California 39th, a relatively robust4 collection of polls, on average, point toward a slight lead for Democrat Gil Cisneros — the most recent poll gave him an 11-point lead, although it was a Democratic internal poll and far off the mark of other polls showing a closer race. Republicans have also attacked Cisneros over the airwaves for his alleged unwanted sexual advances toward a state-legislative candidate, which could hurt his standing: Our model penalizes Cisneros based on how other candidates under the cloud of scandal have performed. But the Texas 7th and 23rd are the California 39th’s mirror image: Polls favor Republicans, while the fundamentals are pretty Democratic.
Three districts that lean Democratic
Next, as we move along the spectrum of increasingly vulnerable Republican seats: Three districts are rated “lean Democratic” — the California 48th District, New Jersey 7th District and California 45th District. Generally speaking, this means both the polls and fundamentals portend good things for Democrats in these districts. For instance, the California 48th District has had two high-quality polls done, and both (once adjusted for house effects) gave Democrat Harley Rouda a lead.5 The fact that Robert Mueller is investigating incumbent Rep. Dana Rohrabacher’s dealings with Russia probably doesn’t hurt the Democrat’s chances either.
In the New Jersey 7th, Democrat Tom Malinowski has outraised Rep. Leonard Lance $1.9 million to $780,000 in individual contributions and also led by 2 points in the only poll of the race thus far. And although the polls in the California 45th are better for Republicans than they initially appear,6 Democrat Katie Porter has pocketed $1.2 million more in individual donations than Rep. Mimi Walter, who may be suffering from an extremely party-line voting record. (Both factor into our model’s fundamentals step.)
Four districts where Democrats are favored
Finally, Democrats are in a great position — “likely Democratic” — in four Romney-Clinton seats: the California 49th, Arizona 2nd, California 25th and Virginia 10th. The first two are open seats where the Democratic nominee is much stronger than the Republican one. In the California 49th, Democrat Mike Levin has outraised Republican Diane Harkey $2.5 million to $490,000 in individual contributions. And in the Arizona 2nd, Democrats nominated Ann Kirkpatrick, who is not only an experienced politician, but she also won three terms in Congress in a neighboring seat even redder than the 2nd District. If we just look at the fundamentals, we would expect a nearly 13-point Democratic win in both districts, which is well ahead of both districts’ R+1 partisan leans.
As for the two “likely Democratic” districts that aren’t open seats, the California 25th is another case where the fundamentals are stacked against incumbent GOP Rep. Steve Knight. He narrowly won in 2016, and he, too, has been outraised by his Democratic challenger. In the Virginia 10th, it looks like Rep. Barbara Comstock is going to be one of the first Republicans ousted on Election Day. She trails in an adjusted average of the polls (including a high-quality one from Monmouth) by 7 points and the fundamentals are against her by 6. Her chances of winning — 21 percent as of 11:45 a.m. — are so bad that national Republicans are reportedly considering triaging her from their pool of limited resources.
Next up: We’ll take a similar look at Obama-Trump districts.
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murroyilodel · 6 years
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The Art of the Hunchback of Notre Dame: Quasimodo (link) | Esmeralda (link) | Frollo (link) | Phoebus (link) | Clopin (link)
The Misshapen Bell-ringer
The character and his journey from oppression to freedom aroused empathy in many key contributors to the project. Marshall Toomey, the cleanup key for the character and an African-American, asserts, “I’ve lived Quasimodo’s life. I was one of the first people to get bussed in the early 1960s. I got called all kinds of names. I felt so inferior and so ugly. I know what’s in Quasimodo’s heart because of what I’ve been through in my life.” Writer Noni White asserts, “Someone once said that anti-Semitism is a light sleeper. All bigotry is a light sleeper. Because Quasimodo and the [Romani] are outcasts, the story touches a universal theme: Why can’t we see each other as human beings and not judge one another based on looks, beliefs, or race?”
Full write-up behind Read-More
Taking that step forward required the filmmakers to extract the essence of some of literature’s more memorable and sharply etched characters Hugo evokes Quasimodo, for instance, as “a giant broken in pieces and badly reassembled,” with “a huge head sprouting red hair; between the two shoulders an enormous hump, the repercussions of which were evident at the front; a system of thighs and legs so strangely warped that they met only at the knees and looked, from the front, like two scythe-blades joined at the handle; broad feet and monstrous hands.” Still, beneath the surface, “There was a radiance about that somber and unhappy face.”
In the novel Quasimodo may be viewed as a symbol of the unacknowledged evil of his guardian, Claude Frollo, as well as a scapegoat for the fears and superstitions of the medieval populace. Yet the Disney filmmakers saw that behind these misconceptions lay another Quasimodo entirely. Observes concept artist Jean Gillmore, “Quasimodo was limited not so much by his own physical restrictions as by people’s opinions of him. People of that time feared anything out of the ordinary, and Quasimodo embodied those fears, fuelled by the superstitions and dogma of the church. To them something that hideous on the outside must also be hideous inside.”
Rather than dwell solely on the physical qualities of the character, whom Hugo variously describes as “a living chimera,” and “hunchbacked, one-eyed, and lame,” and with a “dome for a back and twisted columns for legs,” the Disney moviemakers chose to dramatize Quasimodo’s internal struggle with the shame, insecurities, and self-loathing Frollo has created in him. Don Hahn, who previously produced Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King before being asked to produce The Hunchback of Notre Dame, views Quasimodo as “an abused child who has to struggle far less with his physical challenges than with the huge oppression of being told by his father figure, Frollo, that he is a monster, a freak unfit to venture out into the world.” Kirk Wise terms the relationship of Quasimodo and Frollo “classically dysfunctional. Frollo constantly reminds Quasimodo of how ugly, how worthless, he is and whenever the poor kid gets his hopes up, Frollo smashes them down. It’s almost like some insidious form of brainwashing that keeps Quasimodo in a trance.”
The moviemakers determined that their Quasimodo should hew close to the age Hugo ascribes to him, about twenty, rather than the fortyish man he appears to be in previous film versions. The choice lends him an innocent appeal. Hugo’s conception that Quasimodo was “vicious in fact because he was anti-social; he was anti-social because he was ugly” evolved in the filmmakers’ minds to a more modern conceit. Gary Trousdale maintains that it was crucial for Quasimodo to not be “malevolent, bitter, and vicious, but a put-upon guy who, beneath his surface appearance and his being emotionally stunted, has a loving heart of gold.” “It’s not so much how much he looks, it’s a really his inner soul trying to break free,” concurs Kirk Wise.
No Disney animated character, from Mickey Mouse to Captain John Smith or from Snow White to Pocahontas, has sprung easily into existence. Few could have presented more challenges than Quasimodo, whose transcendent spirit can be glimpsed only be those willing to see beyond his unconventional outward appearance. Key decisions were required as to how he would look and move, and how great his physical challenges should be. It had been suggested, for instance, that half his face might be deformed, but hidden under a cascade of beautiful hair. The filmmakers vetoed that notion because, as writer Bob Tzudiker put it, “This is a story of someone who must overcome his perception of his own deformity. If we hid his deformity, we’d be avoiding telling the story.” Many of the Studio’s most gifted artists – among them Joe Grant, Burny Mattinson, Ed Gombert, Jean Gillmore, Thom Enriquez, Rick Maki, Geefwee Boedoe, Kevin Harkey, James Baxter, and Rowland Wilson – created prototypical inspirational approaches to the character that ranged from nightmare creatures to singular-looking boys. In the end, a blend of the designs of illustrator Peter DeSeve, whose surrealistic style is perhaps known best from his New Yorker work, and animator James Baxter, best known for his work on Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King, were chosen to balance Hugo’s Quasimodo with Disney’s. From the first moment Quasimodo appears on screen, lovingly urging a hesitant, frightened young pigeon to at last fly free of Notre Dame, the character, as animated by Baxter, appears sympathetic, psychologically battered, winsome, a full-hearted and appealing underdog. “James Baxter’s animation of Quasimodo is so moving, that it’s easy to forget that the performance as created with a pencil and paper,” producer Don Hahn says. “The energy from his animation is something audiences can feel when they look at the screen.”
Baxter designed Quasimodo with a stress on horizontal shapes rather than vertical ones. Says Baxter, “His shape contrasts deliberately with the other major characters, especially Frollo, who is very tall and Gothic. Frollo seems to fit in with the Gothic architecture while Quasi doesn’t.” Despite Quasimodo’s physical appearance, he had to be designed to be very adept and active. “He’s deformed but not disabled,” says Baxter. “His being bent over was a metaphor for his wanting to hide. We wanted him wrapped in on himself, able to bend over and cower in his most oppressed moments.”
The artists of the layout, background and effects departments worked to create an environment for Quasimodo which reflected his character and his moods. Psychologically, the cathedral is, in Baxter’s words, “Quasi’s comfort zone. When he’s on his own or with the gargoyles he’s at ease; it’s very different from when he’s in the square.” Says head of layout Ed Ghertner, “There are places in the belltower where Quasimodo has all these found and manufactured objects and they really tell you a lot about who he is, what his preoccupations are.” As the movie progresses the color and environment change subtly to suggest changes in Quasi’s mood. “Though his environment starts out cold, it becomes warmer when he shows his space to Esmeralda and magical and ethereal when he dreams of heaven’s light,” says head of backgrounds Lisa Keene.
It is through his relationship with another element of the cathedral, the gargoyles Hugo, Victor, and Laverne, that the directors chose to reveal an important aspect of Quasimodo’s character. Voiced by Jason Alexander, Charles Kimbrough, and Mary Wickes, respectively (Jane Withers took on the role of Laverne after Mary Wickes passed away in October 1995), “the gargoyles help us see the warm and funny side of Quasi that shuts down when Frollo’s around,” says Gary Trousdale. “Not only does this add humour and lightness to the film, it shows an aspect of his character you wouldn’t otherwise see, an aspect that he isn’t allowed to express to others.”
The character and his journey from oppression to freedom aroused empathy in many key contributors to the project. Marshall Toomey, the cleanup key for the character and an African-American, asserts, “I’ve lived Quasimodo’s life. I was one of the first people to get bussed in the early 1960s. I got called all kinds of names. I felt so inferior and so ugly. I know what’s in Quasimodo’s heart because of what I’ve been through in my life.” Writer Noni White asserts, “Someone once said that anti-Semitism is a light sleeper. All bigotry is a light sleeper. Because Quasimodo and the [Romani] are outcasts, the story touches a universal theme: Why can’t we see each other as human beings and not judge one another based on looks, beliefs, or race?”
To voice and sing the character, Tom Hulce, an Oscar nominee for his role as Mozart in Amadeus, was, according to coproducer Roy Cohn, “the guy as soon as we heard him sing because he has this wonderful, innocent quality to his voice, yet it still has the kind of power and depth you’d expect from Quasimodo.” Hulce got put to the test on “Out There,” the song written for Quasimodo by composer Alan Menken and lyricist Stephen Schwartz in which the character’s feelings well up, compelling him to express his longing for one sing day amid the throngs he watches from the distant heights of the belltower:
            All my life I wonder how it feels to pass a day,             Not above them,             But part of them…
For Gary Trousdale, the song “defines Quasimodo as a yearning, child-like guy watching life pass him by from the belltower, as frustrated as anyone might be if the Tournament of Roses Parade or Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade passed by your window, but you could never go.” Victor Hugo probably never imagined his malformed, melancholy creation breaking forth into song. Yet, Baxter’s animation, Menken’s melody, and Schwartz’s lyrics speak powerfully of the character’s lonely isolation, oppression, and feeling of being an outsider.
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How anti-Trump activists shaped Democratic wins in California
https://uniteddemocrats.net/?p=3312
How anti-Trump activists shaped Democratic wins in California
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Photo: Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press
Democratic state Sen. Kevin de León, running against U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, greets supporters during an election party. He is running a distant second behind Feinstein.
Democratic state Sen. Kevin de León, running against U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, greets supporters during an election party. He is running a distant second behind Feinstein.
Photo: Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press
Mike Levin, a Democrat running to take retiring GOP Rep. Darrell Issa’s 49th Congressional District in San Diego County, and his wife, Chrissy, talk to supporters while waiting for results at a primary night party. less
Mike Levin, a Democrat running to take retiring GOP Rep. Darrell Issa’s 49th Congressional District in San Diego County, and his wife, Chrissy, talk to supporters while waiting for results at a primary night … more
Photo: Hilary Swift / New York Times
GOP Assemblywoman Diane Harkey (left), R-Costa Mesa (Orange County), and Assemblywoman Anna Caballero, D-Salinas, discuss California’s budget in Sacramento. Harkey is running to keep Rep. Darrell Issa’s seat Republican. less
GOP Assemblywoman Diane Harkey (left), R-Costa Mesa (Orange County), and Assemblywoman Anna Caballero, D-Salinas, discuss California’s budget in Sacramento. Harkey is running to keep Rep. Darrell Issa’s … more
Photo: Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press
GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Costa Mesa (Orange County), is being opposed by Democrat Harley Rouda, who is locked in a tight race with another Democrat to see who will run against Rohrabacher in November.
GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Costa Mesa (Orange County), is being opposed by Democrat Harley Rouda, who is locked in a tight race with another Democrat to see who will run against Rohrabacher in November.
Photo: Bill Clark / CQ-Roll Call Inc. 2015
How anti-Trump activists shaped Democratic wins in California
The most significant endorsement that Democrat Mike Levin received en route to a runoff spot in a California House district that his party would love to flip didn’t come from a big-name politician, he said. It came from grassroots activists who held 67 demonstrations in front of retiring GOP Rep. Darrell Issa’s office during the past year.
”It was an essential part of our victory,” said Levin, an attorney who will face Republican Diane Harkey in what has long been a GOP district in San Diego County. “Having the grassroots activists at our back is what propelled us to victory on Tuesday and what I believe will propel us to victory (in November) as well.”
The protesters who showed up again and again outside Issa’s office were among the most visible grassroots groups that style themselves as the resistance to President Trump and are trying to help Democrats take the House from Republicans. Those groups helped to boost state turnout in Tuesday’s primary to upward of 35 percent, according to early figures, far better than the record-low 25 percent in the 2014 midterm primary.
In Issa’s district and several others that Democrats think they can grab from the GOP in California — in part because Trump lost them to Hillary Clinton in 2016 — Democratic turnout was up by more than one-third from 2014, preliminary figures show.
“The existence of the grassroots groups was indispensable,” said David Meyer, a UC Irvine sociology professor and author of “The Politics of Protest: Social Movements in America.” Those groups, he said, looked at the 2016 results and concluded that “there’s a chance for doing something here, even in Orange County. For years, people thought that when you go beyond the Orange Curtain, abandon all hope if you’re a Democrat.”
Many of the people who gravitated to these groups were searching for ways to express their frustration and anger with Trump’s election. They started out with street protests, then moved to calling and writing to members of Congress. Then they turned to partisan politics and began going after Republicans they wanted to kick out of office.
Meyer said pressure from such groups contributed to the decisions by a record 44 Republican House members who are either retiring, resigning or running for another office. Two of those who are retiring — Issa and Rep. Ed Royce of Fullerton — represent Southern California districts that Democrats are trying to flip.
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Photo: Josh Barber / Special To The Chronicle
Democratic candidate for Congress Mike Levin listens to a phone call during a day of fundraising.
Democratic candidate for Congress Mike Levin listens to a phone…
“The rate of retirements is really high, and that’s a result of the grassroots threat,” Meyer said.
Katie Porter, a Democrat who will face incumbent Rep. Mimi Walters, R-Irvine, in November, said she got a lot of help from grassroots groups.
“Those resistance groups (that) began immediately after the (2016) election were doing some of the most important work that this campaign had to do to be successful,” Porter said. “Like educating people on the voting record of Mimi Walters.”
Some of the new activists gravitated to newly created national organizations, like Indivisible, that initially were trying to pressure members of Congress. Eight hundred of its 5,000 chapters are in California. Others, like Swing Left and Flippable, focused on channeling activist energy into removing Republicans from office.
Several groups in the Orange County district held by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Costa Mesa, set up a system for vetting and endorsing candidates. When Indivisible announced that it was endorsing Harley Rouda out of a crowded field, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee quickly followed suit, citing Rouda’s support from grassroots activists. At week’s end, Rouda was still locked in a close battle with fellow Democrat Hans Keirstead for the right to face Rohrabacher in November.
In Issa’s district, another anti-Trump group called Flip the 49th Neighbors in Action evolved into a super PAC that has spent $75,547 on candidates this year.
And over the final weekend of the campaign, Swing Left volunteers made roughly 32,000 calls in key Orange County House races and in the Central Valley district held by Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Turlock (Stanislaus County). Democrat Josh Harder, a venture capitalist and first-time candidate, finished second in the primary there and will face Denham in November.
“When you have these hot races, that’s where you see the turnout,” said Jennifer Eis, Swing Left’s deputy national field director.
“The blue wave is alive and well,” said Aram Fischer, a San Franciscan who organizes across the state with Indivisible. “We are more organized than ever, and our impact will be felt in November.”
California Democratic Party Chairman Eric Bauman has encouraged party organizers and campaigns to work with the grassroots groups, saying, “I think they brought a lot of new people in.”
However, grassroots groups reacting to Trump didn’t deliver for all candidates who reflected their values.
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Photo: Drew Angerer / Getty Images
GOP Rep. Darrell Issa is retiring from his San Diego County district and Democrats have targeted his seat as one to flip in the midterm elections.
GOP Rep. Darrell Issa is retiring from his San Diego County…
State Sen. Kevin de León, D-Los Angeles, who mounted a progressive challenge to longtime incumbent Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, squeaked into the runoff with only 11 percent of the vote — just ahead of Republican James Bradley, who barely campaigned. Feinstein beat de León by 33 points.
De León launched his candidacy after Feinstein told a San Francisco audience that she hoped Trump “has the ability to learn and to change. And if he does, he can be a good president. And that’s my hope.” For months before that, activists protested outside Feinstein’s offices, upset that she supported about half of Trump’s top nominees to federal positions.
But that grassroots protest of Feinstein didn’t translate into electoral support for de León. One possible explanation: The enthusiasm of a small group of activists hasn’t swept over the whole state.
Plus, “Trump was not on the ballot,” said Donnie Fowler, a San Francisco political consultant who has worked on seven Democratic presidential campaigns. “California’s Republicans, now a third party in the state, are also really motivated to vote.
“Don’t confuse the time and energy that the tiny percentage of us activists devote to politics with the limited time and energy that most regular voters give to it,” Fowler wrote last week in Medium. “We are not normal. We are nerds.”
Conservatives like Republican consultant Matt Shupe said the new groups “may force us to play defense in a few more places than we ordinarily would, but it’s not like Republicans are thinking, ‘Oh, my God, there’s 20 protesters outside Darrell Issa’s office. The world is ending.’”
Shupe considers the new groups the latest in a line of left-leaning organizing groups like MoveOn, Code Pink and the Occupy movement.
“It’s a pretty smart organizing tool that helps to create narratives,” Shupe said. “I wish I saw a little more of that on the Republican side.”
Ultimately, if Democrats want voters to back them in November, they have to give them something more than an anti-Trump message, said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.
“The resistance energy undergirded the ability of Democrats to have a wave this year, but if we want to win a wide swatch of voters, we can’t just have an anti-Trump message,” Green said. “We have to tell them what we’re for.”
Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicle’s senior political writer. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @joegarofoli
Read full story here
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90smovies · 1 year
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hutansuci · 5 years
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risingsportsnetwork · 7 years
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2017 Season Preview
The draft is over, each team is preparing their plan of attack, and the fans are starting to pull out the body paint. The 2017 RISING Basketball season has arrived. People everywhere rejoice!
For today’s edition we’ll be taking a look at the steals of the draft, our way too early MVP candidates, and each team’s season outlook.
Boys, let’s get to it 
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DRAFT RECAP
Round-by-Round Steals
1st - Blaine “Buzzsaw” Tiller
2nd - David Stonikas
3rd - Trey Campbell
4th - Cam Malcolm
5th - Madison Hanes
6th - Paul Griffin
7th - Austin Mann
8th - Gilbert Cribb
9th - Bonnie Clement
Pre-Season Outlook
The Dark Side - First year captain and commissioner Jack Norman didn’t hold back with his bold draft strategy this year as he looked to find the biggest personalities the league could offer when he drafted Jacob Harkey and Kyle Norton. When asked if he felt like it was another ‘13 Lakers, Norman immediately referred to his pickup of silent pieces Erik Hove and Cam “Chef” Kitchens who hope to quell the two hotshots. When asked about week one Norman repeatedly said “Cash us ousside howbow dah.” We can’t wait to see this team on the courts.  Purple Rain - Jacbo Barry who is perhaps the leagues best kept secret weapon is building an even bigger arsenal around him. Nuclear warheads Jon Kysel and Kevin Westbrook will look to explode onto the court, and out-manuever the competition with speed and fury. Oh yeah, let’s also not forget that this team holds the dual-wielded Curl father-son combo. Yeah be afraid everybody.  Meerkats - Fleming not only inherited the Meerkats team name, but also looks to have inherited that Meerkat tenacity. “With #1 overall pick Nate Muth on this team, our expectations are nothing short of going 7-0. Yeah I said that, 7 and 0 baby” Fleming affirmed. We’ll see how the captain’s confidence translates to on-court success during the long and grueling season.  Tune Squad - Carter and Black Magi... errr Tune Squad will hope to keep Dwight Howardesque center Kyle Shumeyko hungry for the ball by feeding him “Kyle’s Secret Stuff” and the ball down-low. With Shumeyko’s presence in the paint and the ever-present perimeter threat of Carter and Campbell; this team looks to rack up some points in hope’s of bringing home a title to MJ and the Looney Tune gang.  The Monstars - Blaine Tiller. The guy look to run this team not only as a captain but looks to run the court too with his ability to cut through the defense like a buzzsaw. With a team stacked to the brim full of veterans, experience is hoping to pay-off for this team on the hardwoods. Looking up and down this team it is hard to argue they aren’t early favorites for the title (they’re the Monstars so they obvi stole basketball powers), but let’s see how their age handles a myriad of double-headers down the road. Blue Team - Graham and the rest of “Blue Team” look to be ahead of the curve with team chemistry all but figured out. The one thing this team hasn’t figured out is finding a non-generic team-name. Blue Team? BORING! On the court this team is TALL, like HUUUUGGGEEEE. With both Powers bros. and Duke Holland, this team will be a menace down-low. Don’t forget it’s shooters @cam_malcolm, @grumcreery, and @bpatlaxbro who will look to carry the point scoring load. This team has my dark-horse pick for running away with the championship this year. 
Way too early MVP Candidates
1. Nate Muth
2. Erik Hove
3. Steven Curl
4. David Stonikas
5. Kyle Shumeyko
And that wraps up our 2017 season preview. Join us all season long here for updated stats, the league’s juiciest rumors, and the road to glory.
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Cole Carter, Senior Writer
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theloniousbach · 4 years
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50 Years of Going To Shows, Part 4: The ANGLO-CELTIC Hillbilly Connection
When Judy Stein, the Queen of Focal Point, had a KDHX show, “Family Reunion,” she said her brief was “the Anglo-Celtic-Hillbilly connection.”  That is, she aimed to trace how the music from the British Isles influenced traditional American music.  Both Focal Point and KDHX have had decisive impacts on my musical culture, debts that I can only imagine beginning to repay by being parts of those communities and being committed to sharing music.
This installment in this series on seeing live music for lo these many years then will center on the traditional British and Celtic music we’ve gone to largely via The Focal Point.  That music was the common ground Ellen and I settled on as the family music.  She had a deeper appreciation, but I found the virtuoso playing, tradition, and core repertoires that blues and jazz also have.Let me though start, as usual, with guitars and even what I might have thought was an unattainable relic of the long 1960s.
The Pentangle was a favorite—virtuoso playing, a jazz rhythm section, acoustic guitars, and an at the time deep and mysterious repertoire.  They were obscure enough to not have toured the American Midwest.  I would never see them.  Except I did, sort of: guitarists John Renbourn and Bert Jansch with pure voiced singer Jacqui McShee (Triangle?) played The Focal Point as did Renbourn and McShee as did Renbourn and Robin Williamson of the Incredible String Band as a follow up to their “Wheel of Fortune” album which was recorded at a Focal Point show (they said they should be The Incredible String Tangle).  And then several Renbourn solo shows (one with a borrowed guitar as an airline had done very bad things to his; another with 8 year old Sam falling asleep leaning on me during the second set; one I came home from KC for around my birthday, the last time I saw my father as he died in Scotland just a week later; and probably at least one more.)
John Renbourn was a hero and, as with many Focal Point artists, he became someone I kind of knew.  He played jazz and baroque, Celtic (Scottish gloom and doom, he called it) and British songs.  He was fluid and magical.  Larger than life as a 60s hero and a key part of the folk revival of the 60s (London version) and yet there he was.  St. Louis was a place to rest up mid-tour or start or finish.  To this day, I have a straw hat that he had while here in St. Louis for a stretch between legs of a tour in the summer time.  He had a similarly big head, so I could wear it too.  The John Renbourn hat has gone on many Lake Michigan vacations and kept the sun off me as I spend hours transfixed by the water.
Martin Carthy taught Paul Simon “Scarborough Fair” and is another giant of the London Folk Revival who is another old friend of Focal Point.  Son David helped arrange a small US tour for Martin so that he could play St. Louis for Judy and Eric Stein’s 50th Wedding Anniversary.  I think we saw him first with wife Norma Waterson and a then teen aged daughter Liza in the first iteration of Waterson: Carthy as well as once more and then a tour where Norma couldn’t travel.  Wonderful songs—spooky, ancient, and fun—from all three of them; his primordial modal guitar; Liza’s fiddle.I recall an earlier solo tour and one with old partner Dave Swarbrick too.  Swarbrick was in Fairport that time I saw them in KC opening for Weather Report, so I asked about that, pulling back the screen from those old days.  Carthy is a real student of the music, offering from the stage the same kind of background that sneak into discursive liner notes.  He’s warm and garrulous, but also charmingly compulsive, stopping/restarting tunes, including once three or more verses into a long ballad, if he’d made a mistake only he noticed.
Another giant/huge friend of Focal Point is Brian McNeill, a founder of the foundational Scottish band, The Battlefield Band.  Just last weekend, as I write this, he invited Gwen Harkey, to play a tune with him.  She’s a Morris Dancer because she comes along with her dad (Jay of the Wee Heavies whose second CD was produced by Brian) and little sister to Mississippi River Rats Border Morris practice.  I was at a folkie gathering that he came to with his fiddle and just sat down to play.Brian has played numerous shows, showcasing whatever thematic project he’s been writing songs about (the Scottish diasporae to both the Americas and Eastern Europe plus recovering episodes of Scottish history, frequently from the perspectives of the downtrodden, crafters, travelers, miners, other unionists.  There are fiddle tunes, guitar pieces (on Eric Stein’s wonderful Martin dreadnought) and songs, sometimes guitar, sometimes a beast of a bazouki.  He’s here every year, so sometimes I see him and sometimes I don’t.  We’re amazingly lucky that we can take him for granted.  But we shouldn’t and there will be a time when he won’t be back.
The first time I saw him though, I can only remember that it was just days after that Renbourn show and even fewer days after Dad died in Scotland.  Even Mom wasn’t back, so there was nothing to do but wait and be stunned.  So we held our tickets and went to see Brian with Dick Gaughan do a heavy Scottish and political show.  But I only know that I was there.
For a long time, fiddle players were the virtuoso soloists who regularly dropped my jaw.  Relatively early on we saw the original Celtic Fiddle Festival of Johnny Cunningham, Kevin Burke, and Christian Lemaitre: Scottish, Irish, and Breton playing each other’s tunes.  Lemaitre’s Breton music was ear opening, Celtic sure but with a little bit more.  I saw him later in KC on a reunion tour of Kornog and he came back with a later version of CFF (he had a broken bone in an arm, no cast but I’m sure in pain as he played) with Andre Brunet from Quebec and La Bottine Souriante replacing Cunningham who died way too soon.  Cunningham was amazing, clever verbally and musically, both perhaps as deflections from just how  brilliant his playing was.  Like his brother Phil (whom we saw just once with Aly Bain), his own records were overproduced just a bit, too many clever ideas cluttering the space.  But live, both of them would shine, a little bit of the simple taste showing through.
That was also the first time we saw Kevin Burke and he is just a giant.  He plays effortlessly so his brilliance sneaks up on you.  There are “wait a minute” moments where you catch yourself wondering how he just did what you heard while watching what seems like an easy session.  We saw him with Patrick Street (Andy Irvine, Jackie Daly, and the ubiquitous Ged Foley), with Daly on box, with Cal Scott, and solo at least twice.  Sam helped do sound at one of them and I got to stand at the back while he wrapped up cords while Burke put away his fiddle.  They stood by the stool that held things during the show symmetrically silhouetted by the back light, my kid chatting amiably and naturally with a commanding figure of this music.  In telling that story in a guided session on the lessons of stories, I came up with what is a pretty good slogan: “if you’re there and engaged, then you belong.”  I have gotten behind the scenes often enough to seem like an insider, but I should—but don’t—have imposter syndrome.   I’m just there and engaged.
That access to artists is such a gift from Focal Point.  It really is folk music, music made by folks for folks, without pretension or artifice. And being to witness that magic, in this case, at such close range has been a treasure.
St. Louis also has John D. McGurk’s as a nightly source of Irish music as it has been particularly even before I came to town in the early 1980s a key entry point for Irish musicians playing in the States.  The pictures on the wall attest to numerous giants on the music playing, too often over conversation, in this pub.  Early on Joe Burke, by then a box player, was the artistic director.  We stopped my on several Sunday or Monday nights for sets by Bernie and Barbara McDonald playing tunes, songs, and O’Carolan compositions.  Joe and Bernie were hosts of “Ireland in America” on KDHX, our community radio station.  I got myself FCC legal following in Sam’s footsteps and his apprenticeship on Judy Stein’s “Family Reunion.”  That was his four year high school community service project; then Ellen and I went for the three years he was in college.  I filled in for Judy and Bernie and now for shows for Americana and Eastern European music.  All have been part of my music education.
In more recent years, we trekked to McGurk’s to see box players like John Redmond, Peter Browne, and Johnny B. Connolly after they had been scouted out by friend Jesse who himself played at McGurk’s in the 1970s.  I remember magic from all of them.  Redmond and banjoist Darren Maloney weaving in and out of tunes together, realizing that no matter my enthusiasm I couldn’t get away with saying, “no really, the banjo AND accordion were amazing together.”  I’d probably get accused of liking bagpipes too—and I am guilty of that.  Peter Browne was some combination of bored and shy but he would jam very odd noted phrases into seemingly simple jigs and reels.
Sam helped Eric Stein with sound for a couple of years at the Tionol, the Irish music festival with classes and concert.  I invited myself along (rationalization: he didn't drive) and hung out back stage.  Even after that rationalization past, I told myself I was helping stage manage by getting musicians lined up to go on stage.  So even more of the magic there and at the sessions at various pubs, particularly McGurk's on Sundays.  While the big names tended to gravitate together, there still were nifty moments of rank beginners and recording stars working through a tune set.  No matter what, there was that intimate informality where everyone was playing for themselves and the music itself.
One fixture has been John Skelton whom we saw twice with the House Band (always Chris Parkinson and Ged Foley, once with Roger Wilson) including a time when I announced them as Judy had lost her voice.  Skelton also brought in The Windbags, a pipes/whistles version of the Celtic Fiddle Festival that was remarkable in range and texture.  The guitarist was Tony Cuffe who was a treat himself and a great loss to cancer.But at the Tionol and in his shows, Skelton displayed great wit, always good for an annual polished joke.  But he too could do sessions with jokes--so we have played that game together.
Tionol's have brought in marvelous fiddle players like Liz Carroll and Tommy Peoples, too nervous to live up to the legend.
Martin Hayes is probably my favorite fiddler and I got to see him with Dennis Cahill at UMSL in November 2011, paying extra for a VIP ticket so that I could have the Focal Point experience.  He had said at a pre-show gathering that Celtic music owed more to Baroque counterpoint than blues based chord changes and that has triggered an extended study of that music as my starting point for European Tradition Art Music which I am vainly trying to establish as an alternative to Classical music.  Hayes did a wonderfully eclectic and extended tune set in the performance proper and then created another one on the fly with requests from the audience.  Since these tunes have multiple names, he didn't place the called out one so he asked for the first few notes and he placed it in two--or said he did.  My minute conversation was about his sympathetic interactions with Dennis Cahill and their ensemble sound, evocative to me of Bill Evans with his bassists.  He said they listened to Evans too.
I saw Aly Bain, the Shetland fiddler, once with his long-time band, The Boys of the Lough; once with Phil Cunningham; and once with Ale Moller, from Sweden's Frifot.  All were memorable--Phil's virtuoso piano accordion matching the fiddle in both skill and range of styles and influences; the Shetland/Sweden intersection is bracing and exhilarating; the Boys were always amazing in their own breadth.  Leader Dave Richardson's brother was a friend from the Missouri Botanical Garden so he had a connection with St Louis and Focal Point.  Cathal McConnell is a stunning singer and left handed flute player (he did a duo tour as he really needs a keeper); the box player we saw mostly, Brendan Begley had his own batch of songs; and they recruited another Shetland fiddler to replace Bain.
Besides the show with Bain, Moller was in with Frifot twice and widened my ears to all Nordic music.  In time, I've developed a sense of the variations in style and have seen the great Arto Jarvela with a young Finnish American band from Chicago.  And, the Danish Gangspil has played here these past two years.  Wonderful stuff.
The Boys and this whiff of Scandinavia (not really Celtic, but, as Leif Sorbye, leader of the Norwegian Celtic surf rock band and another long time friend of Focal Point say, Atlantic music is a better way to put it.Besides Tempest and the Bretons we've heard, the Asturian band Llan de Cubel won that style of Celtic music to our hearts.  LIke Breton, it is certainly Celtic—jigs/reels with the right instruments (fiddle, flute, pipes, even hand drums—but it is quirkily and naturally Spanish too.
At the heart of this catholic view of what Celtic music is is a real fondness, even preference for Scottish music.  Besides McNeill, we have seen the seminal band he helped found, Battlefield, at least twice, possibly three times.  I think it was twice with founding keyboard player Alan Reid and once with none of the original members during McNeill’s residency in town (he didn’t sit in the back).  While it wasn’t the Battlefield Band, it was good.
Another band that we’ve seen in a couple of iterations was Old Blind Dogs, twice with Jim Malcolm and once in the newer iteration.  Malcolm is stunning with powerful songs, his voice harmonizing with his DADGAD guitar and the band during the OBD days.  But Malcolm did at least three captivating solo tours through St. Louis.  There is something at least harmonically intriguing if not jazzy in his musical conception.
My family has been more attuned to songs than I, but I am the one who insisted they see the local a capella  quartet The Wee Heavies who sang a couple of tunes at Brian McNeill's set break.  He ultimately produced their second CD.  They have great songs, amazing arrangements, and a fun presence.
So does/did The Finest Kind whom we saw twice, including once when Ian Robb had no voice.  But in the presence of such singers, I'm impressed.  They built harmonies in impressive ways.  They were staying with Judy when the Morris Dancers came over to practice.  I saw them come out and created a song arrangement on the spot for one of the tunes they were dancing too.  It was stunning.
Ellen and Sam saw Louis Killen and then brought me along on a return tour.  A concert of unaccompanied solo singing was frankly a bit much.  But he was a giant of the repertoire, hugely influential, and kept singing after she transitioned as Louise.
Brian Peters came through a couple of times with engaging concerts of songs and box playing.  He probably was a school teacher, given his travel pattern and the thoughtful curation of his repertoire.  As impressive as his accordion is, he has an album of songs, “Sharper Than The Thorn,” that we got to hear most of one special night at Focal Point.
I should be a bigger fan of Richard Thompson than I actually am.  He’s a brilliant guitarist and songwriter, but also steeped in the traditions.  He wasn’t with Fairport the night I saw them open for Weather Report back in KC, so I only saw him on a very snowy night for the 1000 Years of Popular Song tour which implemented a brilliant conceit of tracing songs from “Sumer Ich Acumen” and an ancient ballad or two through Victorian music hall and Stephen Foster through vaudeville and Tin Pan Alley to some odd bits of pop songs including ABBA.  He had a percussionist, another vocalist, and his guitar, managing a very thorough sound somehow.
And, since guitars are where I start and stop, let me end with the amazingly fluid and versatile Martin Simpson.  He’s English and has that repertoire in hand.  But then he also has Celtic and American gospel music albums of the first order.  He spent enough time in New Orleans to record an album called “Righteousness and Humidity.”  He also does blues, playing slide in DADGAD, and Dylan.  So we saw him several times.
Let his eclecticism stand for this whole chapter of discovering music.
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xpaladinorg · 5 years
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American Firearms: Owned by The NRA
The National Rifle Association is spending huge sums of money in the defense of “the right to bear arms.” They maintain and fund a hard line opposition to any gun regulation, restricting assault weapons ownership, gun purchase and ownership databasing (tracking), mandatory gun training and licensing, gun show background checks, and any change in the registration of firearms.
“Over the past few years, NRA-ILA members and the NRA have decidedly changed politics in America. Across the country, from the presidential race to Congress to state legislative races, there has been a noted increase in ads proudly proclaiming candidates' pro-gun credentials.” - NRA-ILA
Total NRA Spending during the 2018 Election Cycle:
$873,071 in Contributions to Candidates
$5,076,000 in Lobbying Efforts
$9,551,320 in Outside Spending (General Election Spending)
National Rifle Assn (PAC) Independent Expenditures: $8,204,264
NRA Institute for Legislative Action (501c) Independent Expenditures: $785,546
NRA Institute for Legislative Action (501c) Communication Costs: $561,510
below is a CONCISE breakdown of the NRA’s 2018 Election Cycle Spending (CONTRIBUTIONS and Lobbying):
PARTY COMMITTEES
National Republican Congressional Committee $45,000
National Republican Senatorial Committee $30,000
Republican National Committee $16,752
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Aderholt, Robert B (R-AL) - $3,000
Diaz-Balart, Mario (R-FL) - $3,000
Dunn, Neal (R-FL) - $3,000
Gooden, Lance (R-TX) - $3,000
Latta, Robert E (R-OH) - $3,000
Lesko, Debbie (R-AZ) - $3,000
Marino, Tom (R-PA) - $3,000
Norman, Ralph (R-SC) - $3,000
Rodgers, Cathy McMorris (R-WA) - $3,000
Rogers, Mike D (R-AL) - $3,000
Russell, Steven (R-OK) - $3,000
Smucker, Lloyd (R-PA) - $3,000
Steube, Greg (R-FL) - $3,000
Valadao, David (R-CA) - $3,000
Young, Don (R-AK) - $3,000
Bishop, Mike (R-MI) - $2,500
Bishop, Sanford (D-GA) - $2,500
Blum, Rod (R-IA) - $2,500
Gaetz, Matt (R-FL) - $2,500
Harkey, Diane (R-CA) - $2,500
Harris, Andy (R-MD) - $2,500
Harris, Mark (R-NC) - $2,500
Hudson, Richard (R-NC) - $2,500
Marshall, Roger (R-KS) - $2,500
Pence, Greg (R-IN) - $2,500
Perry, Scott (R-PA) - $2,500
Smith, Jason (R-MO) - $2,500
Walters, Mimi (R-CA) - $2,500
Williams, Roger (R-TX) - $2,500
Abraham, Ralph (R-LA) - $2,000
Amodei, Mark (R-NV) - $2,000
Arrington, Jodey (R-TX) - $2,000
Arrington, Katherine (R-SC) - $2,000
Babin, Brian (R-TX) - $2,000
Banks, Jim (R-IN) - $2,000
Biggs, Andy (R-AZ) - $2,000
Bishop, Rob (R-UT) - $2,000
Brady, Kevin (R-TX) - $2,000
Bucshon, Larry (R-IN) - $2,000
Burgess, Michael (R-TX) - $2,000
Byrne, Bradley (R-AL) - $2,000
Cloud, Michael (R-TX) - $2,000
Collins, Chris (R-NY) - $2,000
Blackburn, Marsha (R-TN) - $15,800
Culberson, John (R-TX) - $9,900
Faso, John (R-NY) - $9,900
Peterson, Collin (D-MN) - $9,900
Poliquin, Bruce (R-ME) - $9,900
Renacci, Jim (R-OH) - $9,900
Rothfus, Keith J (R-PA) - $9,900
Ryan, Paul (R-WI) - $9,900
Sessions, Pete (R-TX) - $9,900
Stauber, Pete (R-MN) - $9,900
Tenney, Claudia (R-NY) - $9,900
Zeldin, Lee (R-NY) - $9,900
Handel, Karen (R-GA) - $8,950
Chabot, Steve (R-OH) - $7,950
Coffman, Mike (R-CO) - $7,950
Barr, Andy (R-KY) - $7,450
McSally, Martha (R-AZ) - $7,450
Cuellar, Henry (D-TX) - $6,950
Lewis, Jason (R-MN) - $6,950
Rohrabacher, Dana (R-CA) - $6,950
Carter, John (R-TX) - $5,950
Balderson, Troy (R-OH) - $5,500
Brat, Dave (R-VA) - $5,000
Roby, Martha (R-AL) - $5,000
Stivers, Steve (R-OH) - $5,000
Barletta, Lou (R-PA) - $4,950
Comstock, Barbara (R-VA) - $4,950
Goodlatte, Bob (R-VA) - $4,950
Hagedorn, Jim (R-MN) - $4,950
Hurd, Will (R-TX) - $4,950
McCarthy, Kevin (R-CA) - $4,950
Nothstein, Marty (R-PA) - $4,950
Saccone, Rick (R-PA) - $4,950
Bost, Mike (R-IL) - $4,500
Budd, Ted (R-NC) - $4,500
Hill, French (R-AR) - $4,500
Mitchell, Paul (R-MI) - $4,500
Cline, Ben (R-VA) - $4,000
Curtis, John (R-UT) - $4,000
Denham, Jeff (R-CA) - $4,000
Cole, Tom (R-OK) - $3,750
Bacon, Donald John (R-NE) - $3,500
Conaway, Mike (R-TX) - $3,500
Estes, Ron (R-KS) - $3,500
U.S. SENATE
Cruz, Ted (R-TX) - $9,900
Hawley, Josh (R-MO) - $9,900
Heller, Dean (R-NV) - $9,900
Morrisey, Patrick (R-WV) - $9,900
Rosendale, Matt (R-MT) - $9,900
Wicker, Roger (R-MS) - $8,950
Barrasso, John A (R-WY) - $5,500
Braun, Mike (R-IN) - $5,200
Housley, Karin (R-MN) - $4,950
Hyde-Smith, Cindy (R-MS) - $4,950
Strange, Luther (R-AL) - $4,950
Vukmir, Leah (R-WI) - $4,950
James, John (R-MI) - $2,500
BILLS LOBBIED IN 2018
S.446 Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017
H.R.3668 Target Practice and Marksmanship Training Support Act
H.R.38 Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017
S.733 Sportsmen's Act
S.2495 Student, Teachers, and Officers Preventing School Violence Act of 2018
S.2513 School Safety and Mental Health Services Improvement Act of 2018
S.1662 Science Appropriations Act, 2018
H.R.3267 Science Appropriations Act, 2018
H.R.3354 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2018
H.R.3219 Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2018
H.R.4025 Multiple Firearm Sales Reporting Modernization Act of 2017
H.R.424 Gray Wolf State Management Act of 2017
H.R.4290 To require the Attorney General to study whether an individual's history of domestic violence can be used to determine the likelihood of such individual committing a mass shooting.
H.R.445 Buyback Our Safety Act
H.RES.367 Establishing the Select Committee on Gun Violence Prevention.
S.1214 Hunting, Fishing, and Recreational Shooting Protection Act
S.1939 Equal Access to Justice for Victims of Gun Violence Act
S.2045 Domestic Violence Gun Homicide Prevention Act of 2017
S.1397 Protecting the Second Amendment Act
S.1505 Silencers Help Us Save Hearing Act
S.1541 A bill to modify the definition of an antique firearm.
S.59 Hearing Protection Act of 2017
H.R.367 Hearing Protection Act of 2017
S.159 Firearms Manufacturers and Dealers Protection Act of 2017
S.2135 Fix NICS Act of 2017
source:
Center for Responsive Politics, National Rifle Assn, June 10, 2019 https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000082&cycle=2018
FEC.gov, National Rifle Association Of America Political Victory Fund https://www.fec.gov/data/committee/C00053553/
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vosdpodcastnetwork · 5 years
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Well, the Election Happened
San Diego’s political landscape is changing.
Up in North County, Democrats were able to flip the 49th Congressional District seat for Democrat Mike Levin, who beat Republican Diane Harkey by 7 points. The seat had been long been held by Republican Rep. Darrell Issa.
But the city of San Diego received the biggest shocker of them all. Two Democrats vying for a seat on the City Council were able to knock off incumbents from their posts. As of Friday morning, Monica Montgomery led Council President Myrtle Cole 56 percent to 44 percent. And Councilwoman Lorie Zapf lost her re-election campaign to Jen Campbell by 12 points.
That gives Democrats a 6-3 majority on the City Council, meaning they can pursue a progressive agenda without worrying about the mayor’s veto.
So, what does this all mean for the future of politics in San Diego?
On this week’s podcast, hosts Scott Lewis, Sara Libby and Andrew Keatts sit down with Ashley Hayek, president of GoldenState Consultants, and Dwayne Crenshaw, CEO of Rise San Diego, to analyze the most surprising outcomes of Tuesday's election.
Also on the podcast, the crew considers Mayor Kevin Faulconer’s role after several of his preferred candidates and plans failed Tuesday. The mayor’s office doesn’t agree that he's a lame duck.
Voice now has a podcast texting club for listeners. To join, text the word “podcast” to 619-202-9051. We’ll send you links to new episodes weekly and solicit questions and ideas for future podcasts.
  Listen now.
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