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early20sfailingplenty · 2 years

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Danny Johnson fic ideas! He is super meticulous and follows his victims closely for a long time, he's really into stalking to get to know his victims so! I work at a coffee shop and would love it if he got to know me by being a regular my shop. We laugh and talk and flirt, I only know him by his civillian persona, Jen Olson, but he stalks me outside of work as Danny. Totally becomes obsessed with me and gets off on the dichotomy of being the nice regular customer and the cold hearted killer planning my eventual end. He also loves me being so unaware of his true nature. What seals the deal of hooking his interest in me is my Final Girl tattoo on my right forearm that is underlined with a bloody hunting knife. He wants me to be HIS final girl and sees the potential in me. Just something about his thought process and being so into me. Also maybe some breaking and entering and him being a creep going through my undwear drawer and/or watching me sleep (which I tend to do naked 👀) and taking small mementos. I own a lotta chapstick and mugs, he could probably take one without me noticing, or he takes a well loved one because he WANTS me to notice and get confused. General details, I love the color red, like a candy apple red and plaid. I love leggings and skirts and crop tops at home. I wear glasses. I usually have my hair in a bun at work and in a high pontytail at home when I'm cooking or writing, and down the rest if the time, its brown and falls to about midback. He loves to watch me cook and bake which I do often. Can be as NSFW as you want, sexual and violent is encouraged! I like him DARK! He could do something to me while or not, could just watch, (as if he wouldn't jerk off to me, or on me, while I slept.) But use your discretion! I trust you! Thank you again SO much, I love you dude! �� ~ @bisexual-horror-fan

Bex!!! My beloved!!!!😭😭😭💖💖💖First of all, a biiiiiig big happy birthday to YOU!!!!😍😍😍😍😍😍You're amazing, I love you so much, and I hope you have a day as wonderful as you!!!😭🫂💖💖💖 Second, I'm more than a little nervous to be posting this because until you sent this in, I had no idea what DBD was, I didn't know who Danny Johnson was, etc. etc. so I went into all the research I did totally blind (I'd be happy to share this with you once you've read this if you wanna know👀, but obviously while this was in the works I had to keep it all quiet), but I hope it all paid off and that you're able to connect with and enjoy this piece! I went in and I'm really excited for you to read it! It was a challenge to go dark but that's what makes it fun! I'll stop talking now and let you read! MWAH ~

Seek and destroy // Danny Johnson x Final Girl!Bex

TW; stalking, swearing, dramatic irony (my beloved💗), predatory behaviour from Danny, Bex is a fly in the web, obsessive behaviour, you're a to-be murder victim and you don't know it until you do, descriptions of physical violence and gore, Danny's a creep, broken boundaries, theft of possessions, NSFW, somnophilia (kind of), non/dub-con (male masturbation; Danny gets off to you while you're sleeping without you knowing and without your consent), panty sniffing, this is the darkest thing I've ever written and that includes the time I wrote about reader trying to kill themselves by sitting in Vincent's chair (yeah I went IN for you with this💕), NOT X READER!!! but you're welcome to read!!! Contains physical descriptions of Bex, personalised with permission (duh, it's your birthday gift), implicit cannibalism references, kind of meta because this references other horror films and other slashers (it fits in with the Scream origins of Danny, okay?), no dialogue, cum eating (Danny). He's a depraved, filthy bastard and you love him for it.

Word count: 3, 353.

Oh, but you are beautiful.

You don't even know it, do you?

You don't know that he's been watching you for weeks already. You don't know that he's watched you working through the window of your workplace, hidden by the darkness within him but also by the shadows afforded to the tall buildings which smother the skyline. You don't know that he knows your work schedule, he knows the particular routine you carry out to settle into a shift, he knows the routine you have to mentally leave the shift as you clock out. You don't know that you're in very grave danger. You don't know any of his plans, you don't know the game he's playing, you don't know that you don't know that he's a vicious, sadistic murderer who has been plotting your violent murder this entire time.

You don't know.

But Danny knows, and he supposes that it's more fun for him if you stay in the dark, where he wants you. Where you have been for the last month while he has stalked you, learned you, studied you, mapped you out, unravelled you for who you are and put you back together in the way he wants you to be... oh, but your potential is divine... the anticipation of what he's going to do to you, of what he is already doing to you, makes the chase, the hunt, the kill, all of it, even sweeter than it already is.

It was Danny Johnson who stepped into the shadows when you began your shift five hours ago, but it is Jed Olson who enters your coffee shop.

It is the beginning of the end, of your end and he is so excited.

Let the shadow games begin.

---

The first part of the game was silly, light-hearted. There was some kind of sick... joy in knowing something that you didn't. His impulsivity came from knowing that he could get away with what he was doing to you, with you; he was leading you down a slowly unwinding path which was of your own making. A joint effort, though only one party was privy to such information. From the very get go, Danny got off on the way he really was and the way you saw him. The way he wanted you to see him. Danny Johnson was sadistic, patient, a man in control who planned murders weeks in advance. The anticipation always made for a greater pay-off when the end was finally delivered. He was careful at crime scenes, a delicious, sick contrast to the way he was light-hearted towards the actual murder. But Jed Olson, oh... he always greeted you with a wide smile and gave modest responses to the flirtations you met him with. There was something about him which drew you towards him; like a moth to a flame. You would be burned, and it would make or break you, though you didn't know that. Yet. The dichotomy between who he really was and who he played for you kept him on his toes, and it only set to lure you further into the trap.

For every drink he ordered (always and deliberately your favourite, for he enjoyed the smile which lit up your gorgeous face like a Christmas tree as you complimented him on his tastes), for every cup you scrawled 'Jed' on, for every smile you gave him as he entered and left your coffee shop, you both turned further and faster down the dark road, tendrils of the achromatic heart he possessed, a withered and shrivelled thing, wrapping tighter and tighter around your own with every exchange.

You didn't suspect it, you couldn't even begin to guess at the severe mortal danger in which you found yourself.

You didn't know.

And so everything was going according to his carefully calculated, carefully arranged ritualistic sadistic game.

It was a game.

One of shadows, of deceit, of violence, of stalking, of his predation and your vulnerability, of broken boundaries... the game had more rounds than Danny had initially planned, but wasn't that what made it the most fun?

When the game surprised him and practically played itself, he knew it was a good one.

There was so much potential in you and he was eager to keep you caught like a fly in his web of lies so that he could reveal to you your truest, darkest self. You were right there, hidden beneath your surface, hidden underneath the underneath. Or so he told himself to begin with. Months to the day he decided to start following you, getting to know you in a very intense, very one-sided relationship, he started to follow you outside of your workplace. He merged your two realities so seamlessly that if he let his control slip for even a moment, he would lose track of whose routine was whose, whose home was whose. You were well and truly in the belly of the beast, swimming in hydrochloric acid waiting to be digested. You were right there, fresh and ready for the taking. For his taking. Wasn't that what you wanted? To go down in a fight? To stand up and take your life for your own, to take it back from the world which sought only to take and take and take; he knew intimately how exhausted you were after your six day work weeks. He knew well what those nine hour shifts did to you, how early you had to be awake to begin your day. You fought every single day and Danny had yet to figure out if you were aware of how strong you truly were. You were destined to be more than what you already were, he just had to get underneath your surface and dig you out of yourself.

You... You were made to be a final girl... no, no, that wasn't right, hang on... You were made to be his final girl. The tattoo on your right forearm told him everything he needed to know, and a part of him longed to launch over the counter top, seize your arm in his and carve his initials into the tattoo, on the bottom right hand side of the bloody hunting knife which underlined the bold 'final girl'. You wore your potential with pride, he had noted that very first day of visiting you in your coffee shop. Much fun was to be had in breaking you down and making you into who you really were... that dark light inside of you was to be his. You were made to be his, with just a bit more time, a lot more patience and persistence, and you would be dragged to your real self, kicking and screaming and soaked in blood – whether your own or someone else's was entirely up to you. Danny wasn't entirely heartless; you got to have a say in the end result, too. You just didn't get a say in how or when or why you got there.

That honour was Danny's.

One afternoon after another, he followed you home. Always at a safe distance, always three people behind you. It didn't matter if you saw his build way off in the crowd or not; Jed was fresh-faced, no mask, no costume, but Danny was masked as Ghost Face and stuck to the shadows; you had no way of knowing that the two were one and the same. Hell, nine times out of ten, you didn't even register the way the door to your living space took a little bit longer to close than it used to, as Danny darted in just before it could slam shut on you.

Danny stuck to the shadows so well that he became your shadow.

He was the slasher to your final girl.

Despite his patient approach to the way he stalked you and lived your life alongside you, with you totally oblivious all the while, unaware of his true nature, unaware that Danny and Jed were the same person (or even that Danny existed; he covered his tracks so well that you never thought to look for them. Why would you, when they were never visible?), Danny grew bored of just sneaking into your home and watching you cook or write, your hair in a ponytail. It was a different style to how you wore it when you were at work – it was interesting to Danny, because he and Jed were different, too, though his work was wholly different and entirely more sinister than your own. It was a bit of a stretch, the comparison, but he made it all the same as he began to think of ways to allude to you that there was something going on.

The solo round of his sadistic game was over and now... oh, now, it was your turn to play.

Every final girl deserved a chance. The fight wasn't fair, the play was rough and dirty, but he liked it like that, and he knew after all this time that you did, too. So much potential, so much raw energy just waiting to be cultivated, so much fun to be had.

It started with going through your underwear drawer while you were busy cooking in the kitchen. You were only rooms away, totally unaware of the violation of your boundaries... not the first and certainly not the last of many which Danny sought to bestow upon you. Like gifts, if you were. Strange, depraved, unwelcomed gifts. For now. But one day, oh... one day, he would cash in those receipts, and the gift of your life essence would run down his gloved hands, crimson rivulets seeping into the seams of the leather he favoured, staining his skin and leaving a metallic taste on his tongue. He hadn't yet had the pleasure of tasting you, but he would soon.

Some slashers chose to consume their victims in the physical sense. Some chose to eat away at their victims' resolve strand by strand until the victim unravelled at the seams and became a shell of themselves. Some chose to strip away at souls until the spirit broke. Some chose other methods, other means, but they all lead to the same sensation being fulfilled, the same cravings being satiated in a primal, predatory manner: taste. Touch. Possession.

Mine.

Was all Danny was thinking as he watched you get ready for bed. You slept naked, he noticed, and it only made it that much easier for him to get off on what he was putting you through. Whether or not you knew about it now, you would eventually, and that level of trauma would be with you for life. Danny would walk beside you, hidden in your shadows, for the rest of your life, and you had no idea. Yet.

He wanted to introduce himself to you. Slowly, slowly. You were a frog in a pot of water, the temperature turning in small increments from a simmer up to the boil, and it would be too late for you to hop out by the time you realised what was happening to you, what had been happening to you for almost a year by the time he decided to take a few momentos from your bedroom. To get you ready to meet him by planting a seed of suspicion in a mind as sharp, as beautiful, as yours. You were a work of art, but every art piece needs the artists' signature, and he would sign you off with a flick of his wrist, the flash of his blade... with a flourish worthy of the final girl you were.

You owned a lot of chapsticks and a lot of mugs; there was no way you would be able to use them all regularly, but Danny knew that you did. You had your favourites, of course, and you had your favourites, but you did use all your mugs, and all your chapsticks. You had such a big heart, plenty of room in your life, and with your love of horror and fantasy, Danny knew that there was plenty of room in you for him. Not that he would or could ever give you a choice. He had taken that away from you the very first day he had strolled into your coffee shop with a disarming smile as he ordered your favourite hot drink; white hot chocolate with cinnamon steamed in the milk. Very creamy, a little spicy, very sweet... like you.

You are what you consume, isn't that what people say?

The image of you spread out in bed, naked, sleeping and dead to the world, combined with famous quotes completely divorced from their original contexts, had Danny palming himself through his leathers. He got off on what he had been doing to you for all of this time, but never before had he been surrounded by you – your body, your scent, your possessions... the hand not palming himself found the collection of your favourite chapsticks and snagged the one you had used that morning. You would notice it wasn't there, you used it a lot of the time as your default option, and he could tell by the way the label was starting to peel off by the lid that it was a well loved chapstick.

You would notice it missing.

And in time, you would notice him, too.

No final girl ever gets away without first confronting her slasher. It's the ritual, the... the formula of any good horror film.

You stretched in bed, your arms over your head, your duvet crept down from your shoulders to just beneath your breasts, your chest rising and falling with every breath. Their numbers limited. Danny wondered what it would be like to climb atop your slumbering form and wrap his deft fingers around the column of your throat as you slept. Your pulse would thunder against his fingers, your body would jerk and writhe due to the oxygen deprivation, your eyes would be blown wide... or maybe you wouldn't wake. Maybe he would only make sure you never woke up, forever lost in a dream made only for you, dredged up from the oceanic depths of your vivid imagination. He would only get to kill you once, and that scenario wasn't how he wanted to do it.

He swatted the thought away like it was nothing more pesky than a fly as he undid his trousers and pulled himself out. He was rock hard, his head bright red and weeping. For you. For the way your walls would welcome him, for the way your back would arch into him but your hips would pull back into the mattress, the pleasure he would gift to you before his own pleasure somehow too much and yet... not enough.

He needed more.

How would your blood spray as he slashed your throat? Or, perhaps he would mimic your favourite slasher and slash you three times up the back, like claws, like... like a wild animal. He certainly wanted to fuck you like you were animals. He wanted you on all fours, your arse up in the air and your face down in a pillow (so easy would it be to smother you while he pounded into you from behind... you would be too lost in pleasure to notice him pressing you down by the nape of your neck, fingers delved into your brown hair, and you would lose consciousness and simply never wake up again). He wanted you under him, above him, but he mostly wanted you at his side. The final girl, the slasher's undoing. But you two would buck that trend, you would be partners in life and in crime. You had the potential and he wanted to make it his.

He wanted to make you his.

Black underwear in his peripheral vision.

Danny contorted his body and snagged them off the floor. He could just smell you through his mask and your sleepy noises, lost were you to the world, only spurred him on as he pressed the dirty panties to his mask as tightly as he could. He wouldn't take his mask off; it would ruin the ambience, make it only too easy for you to win the game before you had really begun to play if you woke up before he could finish, his hand working to get himself off as he thumbed at the beads of pre-cum gathering at his tip. He was red raw and it reminded him briefly of the candy red colour you favoured. You looked so good in red. One day, Danny would make you wear a crimson cape... again, whether it was your own or someone else's blood would be your own choice. But it would happen.

He had you so close to him and yet, so far, and on his legs did he stagger to your bedside, looking down at you as he continued to masturbate over you. Having you even closer to him only fuelled the speed at which he jerked himself off and as he bent over (somewhat awkwardly, but it was doable) to sniff your hair, one hand wrapped around his cock and the other tightly holding the panties he stole off your floor, you moaned in your sleep. He wondered what, who, you were dreaming about. For all his attempts, he couldn't climb into your head, and it enraged him. Still, in time, he would come to possess your mind, your body, your heart, your soul, he would consume you for all that you were as he took from you all that you could be. Life was full of possibilities and he wanted to take them from you, he would take them from you.

Thoughts of feeling you writhing beneath him as he murdered you tipped him over the edge in his mind from which he clung by his fingertips and he came with barely a sound, thick ropes of cum spilling over his head and dripping onto your abdomen. Your face creased lightly at the impact of wet where there shouldn't be and Danny watched as you settled again. You had no idea of how much danger you were in, of how much danger you had always been in, ever since he had decided that you were to be his next passion project, his next game and victim.

But you were to be the one who didn't get away, the one who met him where he was, the one who became his final girl. His, his, his.

His final girl.

Danny's chest heaved as he removed his mask, broke his own boundary while breaking so many of yours that it would be quicker and easier to list the ones he hadn't broken. By far, it was a shorter list.

He bent down some more and flattened his tongue along your abdomen, scooping up his cum with little fuss. You whimpered, shifted under what he was doing, and the taste of you had his eyes rolling back in his head. Fuck, why hadn't he done this sooner? Life was no fun without risks and Danny had put all of his and some of your own onto the table as he cleaned you up, tucked himself away, put your dirty panties in one of his many pockets, and stole out of your bedroom window as quickly as he had climbed through it.

Saliva glistened on your abdomen, exposed to the cool natural air, but you didn't wake. You slept on, unencumbered by the man who was stealing you from yourself, piece by piece by piece, until you would have nothing left. And then he would take more. And more. And more. Until your life left your eyes, your blood cooled on his blade, your body stilled, and he rejoiced.

But not yet.

Tomorrow, Jed would order coffee, Danny would plan, you would work, and all would go well for one of you.

For the other?

Nothing would ever be the same again.

It remained to be seen who would be who, and wasn't that fun?

Danny thought so.

#danny johnson #danny jed olsen johnson #dbd ghostface #bisexual-horror-fan #bex my beloved

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boasamishipper · 2 years

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EMILY YOUR TAGS IN THE LATEST POSTSS I'M DYING!! SPILL THE TEA - Sanji aka allkinds-oftrash

Okay.

So I was in the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy fandom for five whole years. From 2015 to 2020. Finn was my favorite character and Finnrey was my preferred ship, and if you know anything about the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy and what an enormous flaming shitshow it became (thanks a lot Rian Johnson and Kathleen Kennedy; I refuse to blame JJ Abrams because he did his best cleaning up their messes), you Know that I - and my fellow Finnreys and Finn stan mutuals - deserve So Much Financial Compensation.

How does this relate to my tags on that tg2 post the other day, you ask? Well......

So being an active Finn stan and Finnrey shipper in the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy fandom for so long (hereafter referred to as the SWST fandom) means that I saw the best of fandom (incredible fic and art and meta and graphics) and the worst of fandom (racism, sexism, misogynoir, I cannot emphasize enough how mindbogglingly, infuriatingly racist some of these fans were) all in one place. What I learned from those five years is something that I've seen in every fandom I've been in since (and in retrospect): characters of color (particularly Black characters) are consistently ignored and overlooked in favor of white characters. Whether this is purposeful or accidental bias is another question entirely that I honestly do not have the spoons to look into. All I'm gonna do is lay out the facts as I see them.

Back to the SWST. We have Rey, our female lead (played by Daisy Ridley, a white woman), introduced to us in The Force Awakens (2015). In TFA, TLJ, and TROS, we are shown that she is closest with Finn (played by John Boyega, a Black man), a former Stormtrooper turned Resistance hero who saved her life, and Kylo Ren, once known as Ben Solo, (played by Adam Driver, a white man) has been trying to manipulate her to the Dark Side (and when that fails, tries to kill her - and also mindraped / tortured her / killed her father figure in TFA).

Who does fandom ship Rey with the most?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Which brings me to Top Gun: Maverick (2022), which came out a little under two months ago as I write this. Our characters with the most screentime (and who they are shown ON SCREEN to be closest to) are as follows:

Pete "Maverick" Mitchell (Tom Cruise), shown to be closest to Iceman Kazansky (Val Kilmer), his wingman from the first movie; Hondo Coleman (Bashir Salahuddin), a close friend of his who worked with him on the Darkstar project; Warlock Bates (Charles Parnell), NAWDC commander, who Mav is stated to already be acquainted with pre-movie; Penny Benjamin (Jennifer Connelly), his old flame and on-again / off-again love interest; and Rooster Bradshaw (Miles Teller), who he views like a son ("I was trying to be the father he lost."). Mav has an antagonistic relationship with Cyclone (Jon Hamm), who does not hide his dislike of him for the majority of the movie. Mav was also very close with his RIO Goose Bradshaw (Anthony Edwards), who died in an accident when they were at TOPGUN in the first movie.

Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw (Miles Teller), shown to be closest to Phoenix Trace (Monica Barbaro), who knows him best, and Maverick Mitchell, who was a father figure to him after his father Goose's tragic death. He has a longstanding antagonistic relationship with Hangman Seresin (Glen Powell), who insults the way he flies (and vice versa) and insinuates that Rooster's father figure was responsible for the death of his father; he and Hangman do come to respect each other at the end of the film, after Hangman saves his and Mav's lives.

Jake "Hangman" Seresin (Glen Powell), shown to be actively disliked by many of the pilots, including Rooster, Phoenix, her WSO Bob Floyd (Lewis Pullman), and Payback's WSO Fanboy (Danny Ramirez). He is shown to be most comfortable around Coyote Machado (Greg Tarzan Davis), whom he holds in as high of a regard as he holds himself ("And here I thought we were special, Coyote."). See above for his relationship with Rooster.

Other close relationships shown to us onscreen include Bob and Phoenix's relationship and Payback (Jay Ellis) and Fanboy's relationship. Payback, Fanboy, Coyote, Warlock, and Hondo are the main characters of color. Halo (Kara Wang), Fritz (Manny Jacinto), and Yale (Raymond Lee) are pilots of color, but have few (if any) speaking lines.

There have been 1005 fics posted under Top Gun: Maverick (2020) - the fact that the tags were combined is a rant for another day - since May 24, 2022, which is the date of the early access premiere. Let's see our most popular ships. (This list excludes x reader fics and does not distinguish whether the ship listed is the Main Ship of a fic.)

Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw/Jake "Hangman" Seresin (397)

Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw & Pete "Maverick" Mitchell (148)

Robert "Bob" Floyd/Jake "Hangman" Seresin (116)

Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw/Pete "Maverick" Mitchell (105)

Tom "Iceman" Kazansky/Pete "Maverick" Mitchell (76)

Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw & Natasha "Phoenix" Trace (62)

Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw/Natasha "Phoenix" Trace (52)

Pete "Maverick" Mitchell/Jake "Hangman" Seresin (28)

Penny Benjamin/Pete "Maverick" Mitchell (27)

Pete "Maverick" Mitchell/Beau "Cyclone" Simpson (26)

Now let's take a look at the relationships laid out above that are missing from this list and see how many fics they have.

Bernie "Hondo" Coleman & Pete "Maverick" Mitchell (2)

Bernie "Hondo" Coleman/Pete "Maverick" Mitchell (0)

Solomon "Warlock" Bates & Pete "Maverick" Mitchell (0)

Solomon "Warlock" Bates/Pete "Maverick" Mitchell (0)

Pete "Maverick" Mitchell & Beau "Cyclone" Simpson (1)

Reuben "Payback" Fitch/Mickey "Fanboy" Garcia (12)

Reuben "Payback" Fitch & Mickey "Fanboy" Garcia (4)

Javy "Coyote" Machado & Jake "Hangman" Seresin (24)

Javy "Coyote" Machado/Jake "Hangman" Seresin (8)

Robert "Bob" Floyd & Natasha "Phoenix" Trace (21)

Robert "Bob" Floyd/Natasha "Phoenix" Trace (17)

And who is being written about the most?

Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw (743)

Jake "Hangman" Seresin (666)

Pete "Maverick" Mitchell (533)

Natasha "Phoenix" Trace (402)

Robert "Bob" Floyd (346)

Javy "Coyote" Machado (197)

Reuben "Payback" Fitch (142)

Mickey "Fanboy" Garcia (138)

Tom "Iceman" Kazansky (119)

Beau "Cyclone" Simpson (80)

Penny Benjamin (79)

Solomon "Warlock" Bates (33)

Bernie "Hondo" Coleman (26)

Notice a pattern here?

This post is not meant to make anybody feel guilty for choosing to write about one ship or another, nor is it arguing that anybody who does focus on one ship (ex. Hangster) over another (ex. Macheresin) is inherently racist. You can't choose what you're into. What I am saying is a fact: the characters of color in Top Gun: Maverick (no matter who their relationships are with) are not being written about as often as the white characters. And though I haven't personally delved into all 1005 fics in this tag, I can guarantee you that the vast majority of the fics in which these characters of color are being tagged in do not feature these characters in a leading role.

Just something to think about.

#thanks for asking!#top gun: maverick #fandom analysis #my stuff #as a mutual of mine once said #bob and coyote had basically the same screentime #bob is shown to dislike hangman and hangman disrespects bob (and phoenix) in return #and hangman is shown to be the closest with coyote whom he holds in as high of a regard as he holds himself #bob is played by lewis pullman. coyote is played by greg tarzan davis.#who is hangman shipped with more? the answer may surprise you!

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queen--kenobi · 3 years

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...so. I'm probably about to spam the hell out of you with children stuff, I beta read my friends works, and she sent me the cutest fucking dad fic ever. Like I had never thought of Trapper being an adorable dad lol. This shit got me obsessing right now, and I need to talk about children stuff.

But anyway. Let's say Danny and Frank both have a child about the same time... which dad do you think would be cockier/more prideful about their child's first milestones? Both men are equally prideful bastards, and you know damn well that shit would be a competition between them. "My child's walking first" "my child said a word first" "first tooth!" "My child is learning stealth training first!" Etc.

Imma just scream into the void now 😭

PLEASE spam me with that because that's so cute!

Oh man. The Trapper as a dad would be really cute??? I mean, provided he learned enough from his own dad to know what to NOT do

Danny for sure! Mostly because I get the sense that Frank would just. Not be present in the kid’s life lmao I don’t know how well I can articulate it, but I’m going to give it a shot. I think that Frank would be more proud of getting someone pregnant because that means he #fucks, but I just. I don’t know. I can’t see him sticking around and wanting to watch a kid grow up. He just. Man, I just get the vibe he’d be okay with being on Maury or Jerry Springer???

Danny on the other hand would realize that if he does stick around and is present that he could mold the child to be like him. He would see that he could have such an influence in the kid’s life ghskghd I also think that if Danny does have a kid that he knows about, he would also try to go for the image of a perfect family because that would play right into his narcissism? Like yes other families are dysfunctional, but. He has the Perfect Family, and you should be jealous because none of you could ever hope to have a Perfect Family like his

#Persephone speaks #Danny johnson meta #Frank is still just a teenager and unaware that he would fall into the same habits as his parents #DBD dad hcs

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nvctmgone · 2 years

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princess-of-the-worlds · 4 years

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Torchwood and the (Mis)treatment of its Characters of Color

Let’s be honest; despite its decent track record with queer characters, Torchwood has a problem with how it treats its characters of colors, and I say this as a South Asian, bisexual fan of the show.

For the purposes of this post, I will only be looking at the Torchwood television series (so spoilers for Seasons 1 and 2, Children of Earth, and Miracle Day), and not as Big Finish Torchwood releases since I do not believe myself to be well-versed enough in them to be able to make an accurate post. And also, as much as I love Big Finish for eveything they’re doing, on-screen POC representation is very different from audio POC representation. (And for the purposes of this post, I will not be addressing the mistreatment of Martha Jones, which really, if you think about it, stems from Doctor Who and not Torchwood.)

TLDR; Torchwood has neglected or mistreated its characters of color, given them little or no background, and brutally killed them off, often for shock value.

Let’s start with Suzie Costello.

Suzie Costello, played by Indira Varma who is a British actress of Indian descent, was promoted alongside the regular cast members in publicity material before “Everything Changes” aired, giving the impression that she would be sticking around for a while or would be a main character. Instead, she was unceremoniously killed off at the end of the first episode and only pops up once more in “They Keep Killing Suzie.” At no point was Suzie acknowledged as a woman of color or given much more background beyond her tumultuous, most likely abusive, relationship with her father.

Next, we get to Toshiko Sato, left as the only person of color on the team after Suzie’s death.

Wonderful, gorgeous, caring Tosh who, for all intents and purposes, is essentially a walking stereotype. She’s an Asian (Japanese specifically) technology genius who is unlucky at love. Need I say more? (Check out this Teen Vogue article if you’re wondering why that’s a bad thing, or, honestly, just quickly search Google.) And all three of the Tosh-heavy episodes (”Greeks Bearing Gifts,” “To the Last Man,” and “Adam”) feature her being unlucky in love (Mary betraying her, Tommy dying, and Adam manipulating her). Plus, there’s everything with Owen where she pines after him for years only for him to finally recognize that before he dies, and then he, well, dies; that plot arc only ends in death and sadness.

Additionally, we only have limited background for Tosh in comparison to Jack and Gwen (who I guess you could kind of say are the main characters) but even in comparison to Ianto (for whom more background was revealed only because he became a more prominent character in COE.) We know she was born in London, moved to Japan as a child, and at some point moved back before growing up in the United Kingdom. She had a younger brother (mentioned in a deleted scene in “Captain Jack Harkness”) and a grandfather who worked at Bletchley Park (mentioned in “Greeks Bearing Gifts” and “Captain Jack Harkness.”) She also very much loved her family, or at least her mother, enough to commit treason for her, despite her mother only being seen in “End of Days” and “Fragments.” But that’s about it.

There was so much more Torchwood could have done with Tosh. We could have seen more about her family or her education. We certainly could have seen more about her bisexuality; everything that happened with Mary was not a satisfying resolution. Instead, she was killed off alongside Owen in “Exit Wounds.” Torchwood used the death of a woman of color for shock value, and no matter how effective or emotional that was, it was not excusable. There was so much story left to be told with Toshiko Sato.

Tosh’s death brought the racial diversity in Torchwood down to zilch.

Next, we have Lisa Hallett.

Now, Lisa Hallett...what do we actually know about her? She worked at Torchwood One, dated Ianto Jones, and loved him enough to maybe fight cyberprogramming for him - this part might be subjective to your own interpretation of “Cyberwoman.” We don’t know anything about her, really, apart from how she is defined and described for a white male main character, which...is problematic enough. I mean, would it have been too much to ask the writers for maybe some further description? I mean, I don’t know. Maybe where exactly she worked in Torchwood London? How she joined? How she met Ianto? If she had any family, any other friends? Why she loved Torchwood and worked there? Heck, a flashback scene featuring a non-cyberized Lisa and Ianto would have been brilliant. Is that too much to have asked of the Torchwood writers? I don’t know.

Then there’s the entire fact that Lisa was turned into a Cyberwoman. Now, I have many problems with how Doctor Who and Torchwood uses its Cybermen, especially regarding its continuous brutalization of black and brown bodies for emotional and shock value (Lisa, Danny Pink, and Bill Potts are only some examples.) It sends a very, very nasty message to these shows’ viewers of color, especially if they’re younger and more impressionable. Plus, the depiction of Lisa in “Cyberwoman” was uncomfortable and unnecessarily sexualized, but this is a whole different essay. But in the end, Lisa Hallett was pumped with bullets many, many times, and her death only added to the emotional pain of a white man.

Now, we come to more minor characters.

Beth Halloran was a human who did not know her true identity as an alien sleeper agent. She had a very interesting and action-packed story arc in “Sleeper” before ending up dead at the hands of Torchwood. She had an emotional struggle between her human identity and her truth as an alien sleeper and chose to help save the world, intentionally ending up dead at the hands of Torchwood. That being said, she was still another character of color who Torchwood had bothered fleshing out who ended up dead.

Next, there’s Dr. Rupesh Patanjali.

Introduced in COE, he’s a medical doctor who catches Jack and Ianto working on a case and ends up piquing their interest after he makes some shit up. Spoiler alert: he’s an MI-5 plant. We see Gwen attempt to conduct orientation and recruitment with him. He has a fun setup to be a potential new Torchwood member and inside spy, but instead, he lures Jack to the hospital where Jack’s implanted with a bomb. And despite doing his job as requested and doing it rather well, Rupesh Patanjali is shot dead by Agent Johnson that very episode, just like Beth.

Then we have Lois Habiba, arguably the most interesting and fun character introduced in COE.

She’s a naive newcomer, almost like Gwen, but during her first week working in the Home Office, she finds herself committing treason, conspiring against her boss Frobisher, and helping save the world from an alien invasion. She’s smart, resourceful, and principled, very much like Ianto. Like with a lot of the characters on this list, we know next-to-nothing about her background, which is odd considering her rather major role in COE. And despite being seemingly set up to become a member of Torchwood, we never see her again.

Finally, we come to Miracle Day and its two new characters of color, Rex Matheson and Dr. Vera Juarez. I won’t be getting into too much detail here, especially since MD has its own problems.

Ah, Rex.

Torchwood finally has a man of color for a main character who seems like he could be an interesting foil to Jack (a high-ranking CIA agent with a high bullshit meter), and what do they do...they kill him in his first scene. Oh, and they make him “lightly” homophobic, because that’s always fun. And then he ends up immortal in some kind of bullshit plot hole...I have enough to say there.

Vera, however, was quite interesting. Again, little to no background besides the basic (from San Antonio, had an ex-husband, is a surgeon), but she was still a Latina medical doctor. She had morals and was very stubborn and determined to save people, which is why she insisted into helping Torchwood sneak into the overflow camp. And what did she get for that? She ended up brutually shot in front of her lover Rex, which traumatized them both, and then literally burnt alive. Thrown on top of that? In a quite meta move really, the death of another woman of color was used to incite outrage around the country, and the world, and expose the wrongdoings of the United States government regarding the Miracle. Good stuff? Either way, it came at the cost of the death of one strong woman of color and the further trauma of another man of color.

Plus, there’s everything about how unnecessarily violent and graphic some of the deaths of these characters of color. To put it into perspective, think about how Owen or Ianto or Esther died. (I’m not trying to reduce the values of their deaths; I’m just trying to get you to think about it.)

So yeah, that’s all I have to say about that. Torchwood, you could have done better with your characters of color. (And thank you if you stuck all this way with me.)

TLDR; Torchwood has neglected or mistreated its characters of color, given them little or no background, and brutally killed them off, often for shock value.

#torchwood #characters of color #torchwood meta #suzie costello #toshiko sato #lisa hallett #beth halloran #rupesh patanjali #rex matheson #vera juarez #children of earth #miracle day #nik wrote a literal essay

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britesparc · 3 years

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Weekend Top Ten #498

Top Ten Movie Cameos

The first time I think I ever noticed someone cameoing in a movie was Steven Spielberg. I was watching The Blues Brothers, and there was this guy, who I was sure was Mr. The Berg. I must have seen him in some behind-the-scenes something or the other. But he was a director, not an actor, so it couldn’t have been him, right? Then years later I was reading Empire, and sure enough, I was vindicated. It was indeed the play mountain himself. But more on that later.

So, cameos, then. What is a cameo? Now, in my opinion, I think it really has to be small. Really, it should just be one scene – or even one shot. The smaller the better. I’ve seen people online refer to Judi Dench in Shakespeare in Love or Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder as cameos, which is very, very daft, as those are clearly supporting roles – even if they are quite small (and remember, Dench didn’t win her Oscar for “Best Cameo”, she won it for “We Meant To Give You This Last Year”, which is a very important category in the Oscars). I also think the best cameos should be unexpected; a nice surprising treat. And usually they’re funny – the incongruity of seeing that person in this film. Because that’s the other thing: for a cameo to really work, the person cameoing has to be kinda famous. For instance, some might say that Ashley Johnson in The Avengers is a cameo, but whilst she’s obviously awesome and prodigiously talented, I don’t think she’s instantly recognisable enough (which, y’know, she’s mostly famous as a voice actor); also there’s nothing inherently funny or surprising about her role, she’s a waitress who’s saved by Captain America. It doesn’t feel like it’s saying anything to have Johnson play that role, other than I guess Joss Whedon wanted her in the movie (it’s actually funnier that her brief scene is referenced in Loki, because Kate Herron had the whole of the MCU to draw from in a montage, but chose to use an unknown character who’s in one tiny bit of one film, entirely because she’s a huge fan of The Last of Us – see, that is arguably a cameo).

So my rationale for what is and isn’t a cameo might seem complex or even arbitrary, but when has that stopped me in the past? And so, with no further ado, we now get deep into the weeds of it and celebrate my favourite movie cameos of all time. Oh, and there’s no Bill Murray here; I know, I know, it’s a really famous cameo, but, er, I’ve never seen Zombieland. Sorry.

Stan Lee in Pretty Much Everything (2000-2019): I mean, who else? The absolute King of Cameos. Lee was a massive publicity hound all his life, and passed up no opportunity to get in front of the camera, so once big, proper movies were being made of his comics, he was right there, selling hot dogs in X-Men (2000), rescuing children in Spider-Man (2002), and then right through every MCU film until his sad death in 2019 (and even popping up in Teen Titans!). Hearing him tell Miles Morales “I'm going to miss him,” in Into the Spider-Verse chokes me up every time.

Carrie Fisher & George Lucas in Hook (1991): this has always been one of my favourites because unlike virtually every other entry in this list, you only know this if you’ve been told. But it’s funny and it’s sweet. When Tinkerbell takes Peter to Neverland, she flies over a bridge, where a silhouetted couple are seen canoodling. Her pixie dust falls across them, and they begin to float into the air. And apparently the unrecognisable couple are played by Princess Leia and the director of Star Wars. Which, I think you’ll agree, is pretty cool (Hook is really good for cameos).

Brad Pitt in Deadpool 2 (2018): having an invisible character offers plenty of opportunity for some good gags, especially in a Deadpool movie, but the real laugh in the film comes when the Vanisher is electrocuted and we get to see his face for a split second. And – ha – it turns out to be the hugely mega-famous Brad Pitt. It’s funny because he’s a massive star.

Martin Sheen in Hot Shots! Part Deux (1993): it’s one thing for the movie to do an Apocalypse Now gag, as Charlie Sheen’s Topper Harley sails down a river on a military boat, but hanging a lampshade on it by making it cross over with Martin Sheen’s Willard from the classic seventies Vietnam epic is another thing entirely. And then both actors notice each other – ha, funny, they’re father and son in real life – and say in unison, “I loved you in Wall Street!”. Very on-the-nose all the funnier for it.

Steven Spielberg in The Blues Brothers (1980): well, I mentioned him, and here he is, a totally nonplussed-looking administrator bloke just merrily eating a sandwich. He’s frightfully young (I’m guessing he was probably about 32 or 33) and he’s got a big brown tache instead of his usual ‘Berg Beard, he’s dressed very smartly and he’s awfully polite. His demeanour is hilariously in stark contrast to the mayhem around him, and his public persona is also hilariously in contrast to the raucous and ribald mood of the movie.

Cate Blanchett in Hot Fuzz (2007): this is one I didn’t even notice till I read about it after seeing the movie. In a very funny scene where Simon Pegg’s Nick Angel chats to his ex-girlfriend Janine, she is head-to-toe in forensic gear throughout, with a mask covering her face, so all we see are her eyes. But the gag of it is, she’s played by the phenomenally famous Cate Blanchett. You get a megastar to do one scene but make her unrecognisable. So funny it beats Peter Jackson’s evil Santa.

Don Ameche & Ralph Bellamy in Coming to America (1988): this is another one I remember finding hilarious when I was a kid. Walking down the street late at night with love interest Lisa (Shari Headley), Akeem (Eddie Murphy) nonchalantly gives a huge wad of cash to some poor homeless bums. But it turns out that they’re played by Murphy’s old Trading Places co-stars Ameche and Bellamy – and they refer to each other by their character names from that earlier film. “We’re back!” declares Ameche, referencing the end of Trading Places, when their crooked broker characters were defeated and ruined by Murphy and Dan Aykroyd. It’s a great bit of shared-universe tomfoolery, and very funny for fans of Murphy’s movies. Oh, and speaking of Aykroyd…

Dan Aykroyd in Casper (1995): in 1995 it had been six long, bitter years without a new Ghostbusters film; back then, we could still hold out hope for a proper Ghostbuster 3. Sadly that never came to pass, but it was a very pleasant surprise when Ray Stantz himself popped up in Casper, of all things, fearfully running out of Whipstaff Manor in full ghostbusting regalia and declaring, “Who ya gonna call? Someone else!”. I mean, after facing down Gozer and Vigo and who knows what else, you’d think three sarcastic arsehole ghosts would be no match for him, but maybe the ‘busters were having tough times. Maybe this will all be backstory in Ghostbusters: Afterlife. Maybe Cathy Moriarty and Eric Idle will return the favour and do cameos of their own. We can but hope.

Matt Damon, Luke Hemsworth, & Sam Neill in Thor: Ragnarok (2017): twenty years ago you could point to Goldmember as the, er, gold standard in multi-character cameo pile-ups. And while that is great – Danny DeVito giving the finger, Spielberg back-flipping – I think it’s been surpassed by this minor gaggle of stars hamming it up. Matt Damon – famouser than anyone actually billed in the movie – is An Actor Playing Loki. Dr. Alan Grant from Jurassic Park is An Actor Playing Odin (whilst Odin’s actor, Anthony Hopkins, plays Tom Hiddleston playing Loki playing Odin – do keep up), and Thor’s Real-Life Brother plays An Actor Playing Thor. It’s all delightfully meta and hilarious.

Ollie Johnston & Frank Thomas in The Incredibles (2004): this one’s really sweet, and like the Hook cameo, would very easily slip you by. At the end of the film, after the climactic battle, two old men cheer on the superheroes – “That’s old school!” “Yep, no school like the old school!” – but what’s great is that they’re voiced by – and designed to look like – Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas, the last two surviving members of the famous “Nine Old Men” group of Disney animators, who’d worked on many of the classic Disney films. This was Pixar and director Brad Bird giving a tip of the hat to the legends who came before them, and made all the sweeter by the fact that Johnston and Thomas (both sadly now deceased) were absolute best buds in real life. A cameo that educates and makes you think! How nice!

There you go. Sadly no room for any of the many great Star Wars cameos, from Daniel Craig through to George Lucas’ entire family. Oh well!

#top ten #cameos #stan lee #thor #hook #incredibles #ghostbusters #eddie murphy #deadpool #steven spielberg #hot fuzz

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ghostguise-a · 5 years

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UNDER A READ MORE FOR LENGTH BUT LIKE.... META TIME ??? both for current verse and then ties into post-realm

in all honesty, the reason why Danny doesn’t go by Jed Olsen in the Realm is because he doesn’t really care if these people know who he really is. outside of the Realm, Danny Johnson committed suicide and Jed Olsen heavily hinted at being Ghostface before his sudden disappearance, leaving an apartment full of photos and materials heavily hinting at being the stalker of the prior victims. In the Realm, Danny literally carries around two different wallets and identifications.

what Danny left in that apartment wasn’t just evidence of his murders, but was planted evidence of Jed Olsen being Danny’s murderer... that it wasn’t a suicide, hence the disappearance. that was what he left behind before the Entity took him.

so when he gets out of the realm, he realizes that authorities have pieced together that Jed Olsen was actually Danny Johnson, and that they linked him to the Ghostface murders. he also takes notice of several copycat killers running around in the same getup as him, to which he starts knocking them down one by one. but the realm has made him more creative! it goes from stalking, to the usual unknown / blocked number phone calls, to a very ominous WHO SAID YOU COULD WEAR MY MASK? before he fucking kills them on the spot. he even kills those who have been imprisoned... while they’re still in fucking prison.

he wants the survivors to get out of the fog and tell authorities that the ghostface is making a comeback. tell authorities that Danny is still alive and will strike again. but he’s dormant for a year, goes a full year without killing. no weird phone calls, only stalking, watching from afar and in the shadows. once he grows accustomed to modern technology, he goes fucking hard. bodies start dropping like fucking flies. and it ALWAYS starts off with the copycat killers, letting authorities know that they should’ve fucking listened and that nobody can ever hold a candle to his work.

and oh my fuck does he get artistic with it. there is so much POETIC SYMBOLISM in every murder that it’s kinda... beautiful in its own grotesque way? like Hannibal levels of beautiful symbolism, without all of the finesse of an artistic killer. see, Danny is more of a writer than an artist, so he’ll write something on a victim’s skin or carve a poem / riddle into their bones. it’s all levels of fucked up because... he misses the realm. he misses the adrenaline rush and the fun of it, but most importantly he’s LONELY again. and bored, so fucking bored.

HIS ONLY REGRET? his parents, bless their souls, had to deal with the backlash of his actions during the time he was gone. they had the public absolutely torment them, saying it was their fault for creating a murderer, THEIR FAULT for not raising Danny right, just to have someone to point fingers at when Danny disappeared. he loved his parents, STILL DOES, and visits them the night before he kills again... clad in his mask and cloak... just to walk through their house while they sleep to see that they kept family photos up and framed. it genuinely hurts him to see that after everything, they still see him as their son, and still refuse to believe that sweet Danny could never be the monster Jed Olsen was, and still is.

he kills less so for himself, and more-so for them. so people stop pointing fingers at them, and can point at him. but he still blends into society as HARLEY SINNETT, a psychiatrist with an english degree. Harley’s the kinda person to visit cafes that are open into early hours of the morning, flirt with the waiter / waitress, and strike friendly conversation about books and music.

#👻🔪 ·٠• { meta. } — ⁽ ʰᵉᵃᵈᶜᵃᶰᵒᶰˢ ⁾#👻🔪 ·٠• { post-realm. } — ⁽ ᵛᵉʳˢᵉ ⁾#long post /

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newyorktheater · 5 years

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Beetlejuicethe Broadway musical differs in crucial ways from Tim Burton’s 1988 comic horror movie, as the character Beetlejuice himself (portrayed by Alex Brightman) makes clear from his first appearance on stage.

The musical begins with the funeral for Lydia’s mother, with the teenage Lydia (Sophia Anne Caruso) singing movingly of her loss.

Suddenly, there’s Beetlejuice perched on the coffin

“Holy crap! A ballad already?” he exclaims, shattering the melancholy mood. “And such a bold departure from the original source material.”

If you remember the movie (and I didn’t; I watched it again this week on Amazon), Beetlejuice doesn’t appear until about the half-way mark, and his high octane obnoxiousness and show biz wisecracking are delivered in memorable but limited doses. The musical’s Beetlejuice, hyper and foul-mouthed, takes center stage nearly from the get-go, and without letup. Most to the point, the demon sets the turbo-charged pace and loud tone for the entire proceedings. I’d say this was a fatal mistake, but in a musical comedy about death and the netherworld, that might sound like a good thing.

Still, if you can tolerate the bombardment, and don’t mind sappy scenes mixed in with the comically macabre plot, Beetlejuice the musical does have its pleasures – principally a few standout performances and especially the vivid visuals.

The story in outline is more or less the same as in the movie. Young couple Adam Maitland (Rob McClure) and his wife Barbara (Kerry Butler) die by falling through a hole in their living room. Lydia’s father Charles (Adam Dannheisser) moves in with his family. Adam and Barbara don’t want them in their house, and Beetlejuice tries to scare them away, but it backfires. Lydia, wearing black and in mourning for her mother, makes a connection with the deceased couple. Beetlejuice would like to make a connection with Lydia…by marrying her.

Alex Brightman, who scored big as the original star of School of Rock, makes the most of the meta theatrical wisecracking in “Beetlejuice”; does what he can with Beetlejuice’s crude jokes; wears out his welcome (through no fault of his own) with the character’s extended hyper-adrenalized antics. But the musical’s “departure from the original source material” helps create showcases for a couple of the other cast members. Leslie Kritzer portrays Delia, whom Charles hired to be Lydia’s life coach, and is secretly having an affair with Charles. Kritzer makes comic hay from quoting her conman guru Otho (Kevin Moon Loh), e.g.: “Sadness is like kale salad. No one likes it. Throw it out.”

Sophia Anne Caruso, 17, who has wowed New York theatergoers for years with her startling talent and uncomfortable precocity in such shows as The Netherand Lazarus, has a show-stopping number early in Beetlejuice, “Dead Mom.” Despite the cheeky tone of that song, the musical allows her to mourn, which makes her character less of a cartoon. But then Lydia tries to enter the Netherworld to retrieve her loved one – a plot served to much better effect by another new Broadway musical, Hadestown, especially musically.

Indeed, few of the songs by Eddie Perfect are anything more than serviceable in Beetlejuice, though the lyrics can be clever and funny. They can also be puerile and profane.

The book, too, by (former New York Magazine drama critic) Scott Brown and Anthony King, feels at odds with itself. At the end of “Beetlejuice,” there is a sentimental family reconciliation and also a crass, loud game show parody – reflecting the two contrasting, and conflicting, tones of the show. I suppose mentioning these could be considered spoiler, if they weren’t both so overdone and predictable.

Yet, one aspect of “Beetlejuice” does stand out — its design. This makes sense. The movie won its sole Academy Award for best makeup. Five of the seven Drama Desk Award nominationsthat Beetlejuice the musical received this afternoon were for its design, as were three of the four Outer Critics Circle Award nominations.(Both also nominated Leslie Kritzer.)

Set designer David Korins (Hamilton, Dear Evan Hansen) gives a Tim Burton vibe to the show, not just from Beetlejuice but from other movies Burton directed, including The Nightmare Before Christmas and Edward Scissorhands, as he offers three different versions of the Victorian house — first one being restored by the Maitlands, preservationists at heart; then the tasteless redo by Charles and Lydia, and finally the ghoulish abode inhabited by, well, ghouls, once Beetlejuice takes over. Puppet designer Mark Curry (Frozen, Young Frankenstein) brings some of the monsters from the movie to life, most effectively the giant sandworm, and creates some of his own. Jeremy Chernick and Michael Weber create the special effects, like burning hands and levitation. Costume designer William Ivey Long and projection designer Peter Nigrini do their usual spot-on spectacular jobs. As a result, when Beetlejuice suddenly replicates into a chorus line of clones, you don’t cringe, you revel in all those stripes.

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Beetlejuice. Winter Garden Theater Directed by Alex Timbers, Score by Eddie Perfect, book by Scott Brown & Anthony King, music supervision, orchestrations and incidental music by Kris Kukul, choreography by Connor Gallagher. Scenic design by David Korins, costume design by William Ivey Long, lighting design by Kenneth Posner, sound design by Peter Hylenski, projection design by Peter Nigrini, puppet design by Michael Curry, special effects design by Jeremy Chernick, illusions by Michael Weber, hair & wig design by Charles G. LaPointe, make-up design by Joe Dulude. Cast: Alex Brightman, Sophia Anne Caruso, Kerry Butler, Rob McClure, Adam Dannheisser, and Leslie Kritzer, with Jill Abramovitz, Kelvin Moon Loh, Danny Rutigliano, and Dana Steingold, Tessa Alves, Gilbert L. Bailey II, Will Blum, Johnny Brantley III, Ryan Breslin, Natalie Charle Ellis, Brooke Engen, Abe Goldfarb, Eric Anthony Johnson, Elliott Mattox, Mateo Melendez, Sean Montgomery, Ramone Owens, Presley Ryan and Kim Sava. Running time: Two hours and 30 minutes, including one intermission Tickets: $69 – $300

Beetlejuice Review: A Broadway Musical From Tim Burton’s Comic Macabre Movie Beetlejuicethe Broadway musical differs in crucial ways from Tim Burton’s 1988 comic horror movie, as the character Beetlejuice himself (portrayed by Alex Brightman) makes clear from his first appearance on stage.

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exiitiosus · 1 month

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thinking about pre-fog Danny, and the amount of people he has tricked with his well crafted person; how many people he managed to charm under the guise of Jed; and how many of them thought they were taking home the quite and yet charming journalist just to end up stepping into Danny's claws, the plan like always a success, and the poor souls ending up gruesomely gutted in the ending of a perfectly crafted story mmh

#danny johnson: meta.#meta.#the man isn't shy from seducing people to get info about his next victims #but also seducing victims when it's needed #it's all part of the plan for him #and who can resist the cute journalist anyways?#especially when he knows how to shift his demeanor to appeal to his target?#he is so calculating and detached it's fascinating #and make it more fun to think at the possibility of something backfiring #even if getting attached is something that never happens mmh

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chaosmultiverse · 5 months

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Danny probably is used to not doing anything around the holidays other than taking advantage of sales and going to whatever events his job is putting on but like not decorating and it's not like he has anyone to vist

#Danny Johnson ☆hc & meta☆#Xmas #Copied from discord

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queen--kenobi · 3 years

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Ugh I know this is going to sound odd, but I personally think Jed/Danny would make a good dad. And he'd be kinda doting (but not helicopter parent). Almost like that trope where villain father is so evil and terrible and happily does evil things, but when it comes to his baby, he'd destroy the world for them if it means he could hear "love you daddy" with a smile on their face.

I know I know, this is very specific, but I've been watching and reading lots of things where this trope happens, and Danny has been my new obsession lol. And my fiance told me that this is what I talk about when I drink 😂

Anywho, I absolutely love your take on DBD Ghostface, kinda refreshing in a way I can't explain

I kind of agree with you?

I feel like he wouldn’t want anything to do with a kid for a bit because ew. Babies and toddlers. At a certain point, he would become involved in the kid’s life. Probably around 3 tbh because he would absolutely encourage the kid’s mischief. He’d then become progressively more involved until about teenage years and then his involvement depends entirely on whether or not the kid is Like Him (and probably Like The Kid’s mom lol Danny wouldn’t be able to marry someone meek because he’d see them as so breathtakingly stupid even if they aren’t change my mind)

I also feel like it totally depends on the gender but like... opposite of what you would expect? Like theoretically he would want a boy to continue doing his work until he realizes a daughter could do it too. Prodigal Son fans know what I’m talking about. Anyway, he wouldn’t trust a son to do it right because teenage boys are so fucking stupid that he just wouldn’t be able to deal with it. So he’d trust a daughter with it!

For the council’s consideration: imagine the first guy to break Danny’s daughter’s heart or really hurt her in any way. That boy is just breathtakingly screwed.

A note on the consideration: Imagine that’s either Danny and his daughter’s first official hunt together OR they both run into each other while stalking the bastard. The first one is the meme from Into the Spiderverse while the second one is the meme with Spiderman pointing at the other him

Also consider the “love you Daddy” said while his daughter is just covered in someone else’s blood. He’d never been more proud

dkshgkfs thank you!!! I actually really appreciate that!

#Jed Olsen/Danny Johnson #Danny Johnson Meta #persephone speaks #I will not write a prodigal son ending for triple trouble I will not

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bluesdoodles · 6 years

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Tonight three acts in harmony, united together by the love of the blues, and the power of vocals to shape the song. Also the fact that Bluesdoodles found all three women’s current albums they are stupendous with ten doodle paws. Three different acts brought together under the banner Ladies of the Blues. As Kyla Brox, Connie Lush and Erja Lyytinen delivered blues that raised the temperature in The Tunnels tonight.

First up Kyla and her husband Danny Blomeley as a duet astounding everyone who has not heard Kyla’s beautiful, colourful voice with an astonishing vocal range shaping the lyrics making every song special. With no set list the pair were flying blind, the music was played with pure joy. Unsurprisingly many of the numbers were from her latest album Throw Away Your Blues. This duet is not all about the vocals but also the shimmer and shine of Danny’s guitar of choice tonight an acoustic with silky licks and riffs that add tonal texture and a percussive edge filling in the bass parts.

Kyla is a performer engaging the audience with smiles and chatting, so the audience feels they are in the presence of a friend. The performance was stunning, breathtaking a duet that is pure class and then Kyla picks up her flute adding a tonal texture counterbalancing the voice. Kyla is in total control of both the flute and her majestic voice, Kyla is the Queen of the Blues. The audience was delighted to join in on 365 with the call and holler. We all hollered back 3-6-5 with enthusiasm. The blues flowed with passion and the final number Kyla gave the audience a choice, Etta James, or Sam Cooke or Leonard Cohen – we were greedy and wanted all three so Danny decided. The opening chords rang out and then Kyla picked up the mood closing the opening forty-five minute set with Nina Simone’s, Feeling Good. As usual a brilliant set from the empress of the Blues!

Next up the award-winning fun loving Grand Dame of British Blues the effervescent Connie Lush and her band. Another marvellous voice full of soul and a husband and wife team with Terry on bass. Connie is so entertaining, chatting with the audience as if they are old friends, laughing and sharing the joy that she spreads every time she steps foot on stage. Connie and her band delivered pure electric blues of the highest quality. What a night we are having. Her set list was full of her favourites and numbers from her latest album Renaissance, the wonderful slow blues of Lonely boy and the poignant Don’t Say Goodbye. A favourite of Connie has always been Bobby Bland and tonight she delivered a very special version of 24 Hours Blues. The fun side of Connie’s personality came out with their version of Rolling & Tumbling with the expected banter introducing the song. Closing the set out with the song Connie wrote for her mother Blame It all on Me, leaves you humming the refrain long after the music is silenced.

The music was not silenced for long tonight it was Erja Lyytinen the Finnish slide player extraordinaire the final act of the evening in the company of The Ladies of The Blues. The first vocalist that also played the guitar. What a fabulous combination the six-strings and her unique vocal delivery. This was another change is style, another high-class act that fits perfectly on the complicated and diverse roadmap of styles that make up the family defined as the Blues. Erja’s band brought us the first keys of the evening and slide guitar the electric blues shimmered filling The Tunnels with textured delight. The style is blues, at times less traditional, contemporary and with the hardened edge of rock. With highlights numbers from her stylish album Stolen Hearts.

The set was forty-five minutes but that did not curtail Erja’s style and fitted in her prog-rocky Black Ocean always a stunning ten-minutes with that magical combination of guitar and vocals from the Finnish Wildcat in total control of the Tunnels tonight. Erja had two amazing acts to follow with the impeccable standards set by Kyla and Connie she didn’t disappoint the rise in tempo and energy was an intoxicating mix for everyone in the audience tonight at The Tunnels.

Erja had no need to prove her blues credentials. The slow blues was simply awe-inspiring followed by a showcase of blues style. As her slide, blues guitar gave us an insight into the tonal magic of Son House, Muddy Waters, Mississippi John Hurt and finally Robert Johnson. This blues party piece proved that blues has always been flexible and the classics all come to the blues through different manipulation of the mighty six-strings. Finishing off her set with Rocking Chair we had been royally entertained by The Ladies of The Blues.

The stage fell silent, what would be the encore? All three came on singing acapella a fantastic finale for a magnificent night of the blues. The night was not yet to end as Erja’s band joined the trio to deliver (I can’t get no) Satisfaction it was glorious and everyone left the building very satisfied.

Get ready to be excited having heard the studio and now recorded versions of the first single, Without You from Erja’s much anticipated forthcoming album, due out in the autumn.

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The Tunnels Welcoming The Ladies of The Blues Tonight three acts in harmony, united together by the love of the blues, and the power of vocals to shape the song.

#Blues #Bristol #Connie Lush #Erja Lyytinen #Kyla Brox #Ladies of the Blues #Teh Tunnels

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the-master-cylinder · 4 years

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SUMMARY Fifty years after a nuclear holocaust, mankind is decimated and the surviving nations—the western-influenced Market and the Russian-influenced Confederation—have agreed to outlaw traditional open war. In their place, disputes are settled with gladiator-style matches between giant robots operated by pilots called “robot jox” who are contracted to fight ten matches. The Confederation champion is Alexander (Paul Koslo), who has killed his last nine opponents thanks in part to a spy in the Market leaking information to the Confederation. The Market’s champion, Achilles (Gary Graham) has won nine fights and will fight his final match against Alexander for the territory of Alaska. Achilles is supported by robot designer “Doc” Matsumoto (Danny Kamekona) and strategist Tex Conway (Michael Alldredge), the only jox to win all ten of his contract fights.

As Achilles gets the upper hand in the match, Alexander launches a rocket fist at him. The projectile goes out of control and heads toward the bleachers. Achilles intercepts the projectile but his robot takes the full force of the impact and is knocked into the crowd, killing over 300 people. The referees declare the match a draw and order a rematch, but Achilles, shaken by what happened, declares this was his contractual tenth match and announces his retirement. He goes to live with his brother Philip and his family, and finds he is publicly branded a traitor and a coward. Meanwhile, a new jox is chosen to face Alexander, a genetically engineered “gen jox” named Athena (Anne-Marie Johnson), who is the first female jox. Worried for Athena and attracted to her, Achilles returns to the Market and agrees to fight Alexander again, infuriating Athena.

As Achilles’ robot is rebuilt, Matsumoto refuses to divulge any knowledge of its new weapons so it cannot be leaked by the spy, and Conway confides in Achilles he believes Matsumoto is the spy. Conway confronts Matsumoto in his office. Matsumoto reveals he has analyzed Conway’s final fight and deduced that the “lucky” laser hit Conway claims allowed him to defeat a clearly superior opponent was in fact deliberately aimed; Matsumoto accuses Conway of being a Confederation agent. Conway confesses and shoots Matsumoto, who secretly records the deed as part of the mission briefing. Conway informs the Market leadership that Matsumoto was the spy. On the day of the fight Athena drugs Achilles and steals his jox suit to commandeer the robot. Unable to stop the fight once she takes the field, the Market decides to support her. While watching Matsumoto’s briefing on the robot’s new weaponry, the footage of Conway killing Matsumoto is played and Conway jumps down the robot’s elevator shaft to his death.

Alexander takes the field against Athena. Athena takes the early advantage, but Alexander overpowers her and incapacitates the robot. The fight is declared in Alexander’s favor and referees order him to stand down. Achilles arrives on the field and takes over the robot from Athena while Alexander smashes the referee hovercraft; the two jox stand to continue the fight. Both robots take to the air and a short space battle ensues. Alexander critically damages Achilles’ robot, forcing him to crash land and flee for cover to the arm of Alexander’s robot Athena sliced off earlier in the fight. Achilles hotwires the arm to launch its fist at Alexander, destroying his robot. Alexander emerges from the wreckage and the two battle with poles before Achilles finally convinces Alexander a match does not have to end with the death of a jock. Alexander throws down his weapon, and they salute each other with the jox’s traditional “crash and burn” fist bump.

DEVELOPMENT Gordon conceived Robot Jox while making Dolls in Rome. “I’m a big fan of the Japanese Transformer toys,” he explained from his office, which overlooks Sunset Boulevard. “While there have been animated cartoons based on these giant robots, no one has ever attempted a live-action feature about them. It struck me that it was a natural fantasy for the big screen-and a terrific opportunity to take advantage of the special effects that are available today.”

Steve Burg’s 1986 concept art

Gordon approached science-fiction writer Joe Haldeman to write a screenplay based on Gordon’s original story itself based on the story of Achilles from Homer’s Iliad-having worked with him two years prior on an ambitious stage adaptation of Haldeman’s most celebrated book, The Forever War: Dennis Paoli (co-author of Gordon’s Re-Animator and From Beyond) put the final draft through various rewrites.

“Joe is part of an Air Force think tank to develop weaponry for the future,” explained Gordon, “so he was able to incorporate a lot of actual existing technology into the script and to hypothesize where it might all lead. Then we started storyboarding the film. The reaction to Dave’s footage was excellent, and Charlie was able to get the project rolling on a projected $10 million budget-a huge budget for an Empire film. I think Charlie saw it as Empire’s chance to move up into larger-budget films.”

“Haldeman did 11 drafts of the script,” the director recalls. “Joe’s experience in Vietnam was helpful here because the story’s about our future, 50 years after an atomic war. The world is basically broken down into two superpowers: The Market, which is like the Common Market except that Japan and the United States are part of it, and the Confederation, which is everybody else. Earth has vowed no war will ever take place again, so international disputes are settled by single combat between pilots of huge robots.” These pilots are called robot jockeys or robot jocks

The sequence, using robots designed by Kevin Altieri, was storyboarded by Altieri from the prologue to the script by science fiction writer Joe Haldeman, set in a snowscape where a heavy fog covers an apparent “elephants’ graveyard” of broken, battered robots, the fallen warriors of a robotic battlefield. Here and there among the shells, fires sputter near the latest casualties while a big, menacing robot stands over its victim.

“I thought it turned out very well,” said Allen of the test footage. “The style is quite different from anything else we did subsequently because it was all shot interior while everything else has been done exterior. It didn’t splice together perfectly because it depended upon live-action which hadn’t been shot.”

PRE-PRODUCTION Six months passed while Empire continued efforts to raise financing for the film while at the same time revising the effects complexities of the script to bring them in line with budget realities, mostly by simplifying the robot action. During these delays designer Altieri left the production to accept work as a full-time director at DIC Animation Studios.

Gordon said he brought Cobb into the project “to bring a real sense of believable technology to the robots, so they could be something an audience could accept as a reality as opposed to a cartoon show. Cobb designs things that could actually work,” said Gordon. “What we ended up with was a look that was different from the look of the Japanese toys. It’s very utilitarian and it looks big, like it has the power to do what it has to do.”

Cobb explained that when he was approached by Gordon to work on ROBOT JOX he was already committed to another project and could only work on weekends. “When I left, I told them they should make Steve Burg production designer or give him the clout of production designer because he was the only person that knew how the robots went together and was the only person that could police the construction,” said Cobb. “They just walked all over him. Eventually it was wrenched out of his hands. Everything went to pot when he left. The designs got really confused. The final shape and form of the film has obviously had problems, too.”

“I was most intrigued to design the cabs and how the interactive body motions were translated by waldos to the entire robot. I was trying to think of a reason for transformation. If it could translate into different modes of fighting, that might make sense. The idea really is silly, of course, but I wanted to keep it believable and then over and above it all, it’s humorous. It’s not a serious picture, and it isn’t meant to be.”

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Cobb was also asked to design robotic parts made of heavy-duty plastic (with metal armatures underneath) which special FX supervisor David Allen could reshape, using different models for different shots during the film’s major transformation sequences. Another Cobb-assisted movie is Stuart Gordon’s Robot Jox. “Again, that was in my conceptual design mode, so I basically opted to do all the key technology and moved on. Steve Burg was involved, and carried out many of my designs. We wanted a kind of non-Japanese version of a Transformer robot, which is very, very clever technologically speaking. We weren’t going to have them turn into semi-trucks or something, but we were going to have them break apart and operate in different functions and modes. I always liked the idea where the entire head became a little aircraft. I believe that has been changed-now the whole robot flies and changes.

According to Allen, Cobb came up with a new look for Achilles and Alexander, the main robojock pilots, their robots, and a few sets, including a gantry and silo. When the project encountered more delays, Cobb too, departed. “I suspect that payments to Ron started to flag,” said Allen. “There was sort of a painless transition. Ron left Steve Burg in charge to do the refinements and subsequent modifications.”

Steve Bury was brought in to assist Cobb with the robot detailing, since Cobb had a limited amount of time to devote to the project. “We were constantly referring to Ron’s drawings, and Steve continued to report back to Ron to show him what he was doing and to get Ron’s approval. As a matter of fact, Ron and Steve hit it off so well that they’ve worked together ever since.”

LIVE ACTION PHOTOGRAPHY Robot Jox began principal photography at Empire’s Rome facilities in January 1987, and wrapped in April. Gordon then turned over the post-production effects to Allen, who had selected El Mirage, a dry lake bed near the Mojave Desert, as the site for filming of the live-action robot skirmishes. (Some stop-motion work would be done at Allen’s Burbank studios; the live-action filming made use of the 5-foot, 50-pound cable-controlled models of Achilles and Alexander.)

“There wasn’t too much choice as far as shooting outdoors because Empire didn’t own a local stage we could work on,” Allen explained. “And even then it would have to have been huge; we would have had to hang and paint a cyclorama and then put tables out and light everything artificially. We would have been into a tremendous set rental situation over an extended period of time, which would have been a huge cash drain.”

El Mirage was chosen for its brilliant blue skies and unobstructed panorama, but the year of on-again, offagain shooting that transpired-Allen and his crew would make a total of three trips out to the desert location proved to be anything but smooth sailing. The weather was so temperamental Allen considered it a good day if he got two or three good shots in the can.

The heat wasn’t so bad, but as we were in a geothermally unstable area, we were at the mercy of the elements,” Allen said. “We had to contend daily with clouds, rain, dust storms and hellishly high winds-our outhouse got blown over constantly. Sometimes the dust was so bad you couldn’t see in front of you. When that happened, we’d go back to the motel or drive back to L.A. When it rained the lake bed would fill up and our cars were in danger of getting stuck.”

Numerous delays caused by the weather-and requests made by Gordon for additional effects-made location shooting more costly than Empire budgeted for. Still, Allen bristles at the suggestion that his unit work might have set the film back. The location shooting was probably more expensive than Empire expected, yeah. However the problem wasn’t that we were breaking the bank but that we weren’t getting money sent to us regularly enough. If by week four we didn’t have a check, we had to go back to L.A. Rain or shine I still had to put up 10 or 12 guys in a motel.”

David Allen

SPECIAL EFFECTS PHOTOGRAPHY With the designs set, the robots were finally transferred from the drawing table into three-dimensional models, constructed in two sizes: a stop motion size of about 20 inches tall and a larger cable-articulated miniature, closer to 50 inches high. Allen pointed out that the robot miniatures were particularly difficult to build because their joints had to be cosmetic as well as practical.“A robot doesn’t have implied’ joints like a foam rubber model,” said Allen. “It has actual working interstices: the hinges and swivels and all the hydraulics and the pistons have to be tracked. It isn’t like rubber that just mushes out of its own way. If you don’t design it right, the joints will all freeze up and lock. A robot can look good and be totally musclebound or joint bound.”

“The transformations sort of suffered due to the realities of the schedule and the budget,” said Burg. “The changes were generally not that extensive. The rocket mode, for example, had some wings pulled out and cockpits reoriented, but it was still recognizable as being the same thing, whereas with some of the TRANSFORMERS cartoons, it looks completely different. That would have been possible, but it would have taken an enormous amount of time to figure it out cleverly and would have taken a lot more resources to execute.”

Dennis Gordon, a long-time Allen associate, supervised the construction of the robot miniatures for Allen. Ron Thornton was brought in to head another construction team, and Mark Goldberg and Patrick Cox of the Local Motion Company were hired to build the cable-activated controls and armatures. Mark Rappaport built many of the robot’s weapons. Construction crews of up to twenty craftsmen worked for many months to complete the miniatures.

During this time, Allen was working full-time for ILM in San Rafael on BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED, a four month assignment he had accepted during one of the many production delays on ROBOT JOX. The ILM work stretched into a full year, keeping Allen away from his shop except for weekend visits to supervise the progress of building the ROBOT JOX miniatures. Allen compared overseeing the consortium of effects people at work to “managing D-Day.” During the weekend visits to his LA studio, Allen also completed stop-motion work for Gordon’s DOLLS.

Good actors are essential in selling special effects, making them seem believable, and Gordon said he felt that his cast was very good at “being able to create that sense of combat, one-on-one, which depends on the actors involved to be able to react with each other and play off of each other. The feeling that we were going for was something like ROCKY,” said Gordon. “There are real ups and downs in these battles and real emotional reactions to things that are going on. The robots are basically tools and weapons that are carrying out the war of these men.

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David Allen began post-production work on the carefully storyboarded robot battles, filming stop-motion at his studio and taking a crew out to a dry lake bed in El Mirage, near the Mojave desert, to film the large cable-activated robots live. Allen executed the stop-motion work with Paul Jessel, who animated the Achilles robot after Athena takes control.

Said Allen about working with Gordon, “Stuart is a person who showed himself to be quite decided about things, but he doesn’t dig in his heels. He accepts realities when .he’s satisfied that what he wants is impractical or not possible. I had a pretty free hand considering what I imagine Stuart is like on a set where he would usually be expecting to control his movies—that’s what any director expects to do. He was pretty good about letting us work in a loose kind of way. Of course, the [story]boards are very important. I don’t deviate from them too much unless I have to or I feel I can improve them or in some cases I just feel they are not very filmic. My changes have usually been appreciated rather than resented. I think we have a good relationship compared to the horror stories I often hear about with other directors.”

“Conceptually, filming there was a wonderful idea but, in reality, it turned into a huge ordeal for Dave’s crew because they were shooting out there for almost a year, completely at the mercy of the desert. When they came back, they all looked like Lawrence of Arabia.”

Additional robot weaponry includes cannons, machine guns and a Smart missile, on which is mounted a video camera for point of-view shots. For hand-to-hand combat, there are saws, drills and a magnesium flare which can suddenly blind an opponent.

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But, says Gordon, “the human story must be the center of it all. No matter how great your FX are, if the audience doesn’t care about the people, then there’s no movie. That’s why I was drawn to the story of Achilles, the warrior who doesn’t want to fight anymore but is forced back into it because of his lover’s death. That’s the center of ours as well, though we’ve put it into science-fiction terms.”

Along with some stop-motion FX added later, Allen and his crew shot on location in the Mojave Desert utilizing large models for these mechanical effects; others were used for pyrotechnic explosions, while some doubled as “stunt robots” for shots in which they couldn’t destroy their carefully detailed models.

“By shooting in Death Valley, David was able to do extensive foreground miniature work, as opposed to doing it optically in post-production,” explains the director. “So most of the effects work was done in the camera, which gives it a very realistic, seamless look, because you’re seeing real mountains, sky and sunlight behind these robots.” This technique also offered the filmmakers a tremendous depth of field, keeping both the foreground and background in focus.

The live location shooting of the big miniature robots at El Mirage proved to be the biggest headache for Allen. When the location work cost Empire more than expected, Allen’s crew had to pack up and leave until more funds became available. All in all, Allen and his crew made three extended trips out into the desert. “I think if you took all the periods and added them up, we were out there for at least six or seven months,” said Allen. “That’s a long time to have a second unit crew on location. We made a very large commitment to that decision. It was a decision dictated by my recommendation, but also by practicalities.” The alternative would have been to shoot in an enormous warehouse or hanger with cycloramas, which would have been an even more expensive proposition for Empire, according to Allen.

“It takes a certain daring to shoot outdoors,” said Allen about the decision. “That’s why movies were made indoors for thirty years, because of the pressures of the industry to force predictability and control on the product. There were a lot of problems in El Mirage. We underestimated those problems.”

According to Gordon, one of the reasons the effects are taking so long is that Allen is shooting in sunlight out in the desert to incorporate real mountains and skies as a backdrop. The vastness of the desert is being used to combine the miniature robots with vast cheering throngs of spectators by shooting the cable-controlled models up close with a stadium set far in the background.

Allen is also shooting background plates for stop-motion work to be completed at his own studio. “I think the effects are really going to blow people’s minds,” said Gordon. “Although this is Empire’s largest budget, anyone else attempting this picture would want to budget three times as much.”

Gordon also pegged the film’s delay to the time-consuming special effects techniques being used to bring the story’s giant, transforming, fighting robots to life. The work, supervised by Oscar nominee David Allen, is said to be spectacular by those who viewed a product reel of footage shown by Empire at the American Film Market earlier this year. To realize the film’s complex effects action inexpensively, Allen wedded today’s sophisticated puppet technology to the low-budget effects techniques used by Howard and Theodore Lydecker on the Republic serials of the ’40s, filming the robots live against real backdrops.

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“It’s an approach that I don’t think anyone would attempt unless they were looking at this as we were—from a very low budget,” said Gordon about reviving the Lydecker approach. “Rather than light a miniature on a stage, they would take the miniature outdoors and light it with sunlight, using real sky and real clouds. It gives the miniature work greater realism. The effect is seamless because it is done in the camera.”

Gordon thinks audiences will be able to notice the difference from the blue screen optical compositing techniques that have become commonplace in effects films. “I think audiences are starting to get wise to those techniques and are able to spot them and know exactly what you’re doing,” he said. “By going back to these older techniques, our effects have a freshness about them.”

Allen and his crew spent over a year in the desert shooting the film’s robot scenes using natural sunlight, painstakingly matching the variable lighting conditions for sequences filmed over a prolonged period of time. At the mercy of the elements, the crew endured wind, rain and sandstorms which often made the shooting a waiting game. Beside the weather, the financial climate at Empire resulted in its own delays. “At one point they had to shut down production and pull Allen and his crew out of the desert until the cash flow improved,” said Gordon.

Allen accomplished most of the scenes of robot warfare live, using cable-controlled models, although stop-motion is used for some scenes. He has a second set of robots that are in a smaller scale which he uses for stop-motion,” said Gordon. “When he’s not able to get the large ones to do it, he uses stop-motion. One of the things that I am amazed at is that he’s able to meld the two in terms of being able to go from a stop motion shot to a puppeted shot. I don’t think the audience will be able to tell the difference in most of the cases. It’s a wonderful blend.”

Allen was pleased with the realism provided by the natural lighting and backdrops, but using a natural sky meant that the sky was always changing, making it sometimes difficult to match shots. And the sky at El Mirage was like Mark Twain’s comment about the Hawaiian Islands: “If you don’t like the weather, wait a few minutes and it’ll change.” Noted Allen dryly, the weather almost always seemed to get worse on any given day rather than better.

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Allen’s right-hand man on the shoot was associate effects director Paul Gentry. Ray Goode served as effects crew foreman and pryotechnician Joe Viskocil handled the fire and explosions. Winds proved especially bedeviling for the numerous shots requiring pyro effects, blowing the fire and smoke hysterically, giving away the small scale of the miniatures. The wind also blew sand off the elevated tables that the miniatures were filmed on and into the faces of the cable operators and camera crew. The difficult shoot was exhausting to everyone on the crew. Seemingly simple sequences would take hours to get on film because the process by which the robots were manipulated had to be hidden and their movements painstakingly detailed and adjusted. But Allen is very pleased with the results that were achieved.

“A major studio could not have afforded to put up a second unit working in the conditions under which we produced these shots,” said Allen. “A lot of days we simply couldn’t do anything and had to sit it out. It would be ruinously expensive to work that way for a major studio. For them, it would have been cheaper to work indoors. But for Empire it would have been much more expensive because they were not committed to the union way of doing things. To put a second unit out under those conditions, you would have to have a lunch wagon and a guard and all the facilities and amenities. We had my old R.V. and we were like a bunch of ragtag Eagle Scouters practically.”

Looking back on the years of work on ROBOT JOX, Allen remembered with some irony his first conversation with Empire chief Charles Band about ROBOT JOX, indicating the naivete with which Empire entered into the complex effects project.

Joe Haldeman

Interview with screenwriter Joe Haldeman What kind of working relationship did you have with Stuart Gordon? Joe Haldeman: I enjoy working with Stuart because he’s one of the best administrators I’ve ever seen in the arts. He and I had many pretty good-natured arguments over what the movie was going to be about, and about what science fiction was supposed to do. He usually won, being the director. We identified the problem without actually solving it-I was trying to make an adult movie that children would enjoy, and he was trying to make a children’s movie that adults would enjoy. Those are two really different kinds of movies, and I guess we never did resolve them.

How did you get involved? Joe Haldeman: Stuart called me. He’d had two successes with From Beyond and ReAnimator, and the producer gave him more or less carte blanche. He wanted to do a hard SF movie, so he called me up and he said, “I don’t have much money, but how would you like to write a movie that actually gets made?”

And I said, “Yeah!” So, he said, “What I want to do is a science-fiction version of The Iliad.” I said, “Great,” and he said, “I’ll send you a couple-page outline.” So, I get this outline, it’s pretty much like The Iliad, except it has a love interest, and people walk around in great big robots. I worked up a proposal to pitch it to the producers. They sent us out to Los Angeles and I pitched it, and they bought it. I wrote it and rewrote it-all six drafts of it.

Did you meet with the actors? Joe Haldeman: Yeah, I loved the actors. That happened because I did six drafts, and then another draft written by somebody else came in the mail. It was just awful! I wrote Stuart a long letter detailing why he shouldn’t use that script. I didn’t hear from him for months, and I thought, “Well, that’s it.” Then, they called me in December and said, “We read your criticism, you’re completely right and we want you to write the final version. Can you be in Rome tomorrow?” You can imagine how weird that was. I said, “It’s nearly Christmas, I can’t come to Rome tomorrow. Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve got a family.” I said I would be in Rome by the first week of the New Year. They said, “OK.”

They put us up in a really grand hotel on the Via Veneto in Rome. I sat there with my little manual typewriter and rewrote the script word-for-word. It was a whole new script because I got to talk to the actors, the male and female leads. We hashed out the main characters together so that they were comfortable with them. I would get up about 2:00 a.m. and write until 7:00, when the actors were going out. I would go down and copy the pages for them, and they would get in the limo and go out to the studio to act ’em out. It was a really vibrant and exciting way to live. When you’re going through something like that, you realize, “God, this is changing my life forever!” I really loved working on that project, loved being a team player rather than being the only guy responsible for the whole product.

I’m eternally grateful to Stuart for choosing me for that. He could have chosen many people who are more tractable. I think he got a good movie out of it. You can’t tell until all the various elements come together. We got good actors, we got one hell of a good writer (Smiles), we got one of the best directors around.

And the special FX? Joe Haldeman: The special FX were great. They took us out to the studios at the largest soundstages in Europe. The story involved robots 500 feet high, and they had actually build one up to the knees inside of that huge soundstage. I don’t know what I had expected, but there were futuristic automobiles, and the interiors of futuristic homes, military training stuff. I walked into the wardrobe room, and there were 200 costumes that were made for people who before had only inhabited a universe in my mind. All of this stuff, millions of dollars and hundreds of people working thousands of hours, were all there to make solid the things that I just imagined the way I imagined a novel. That was a mind-blower! It should only happen to every science-fiction writer.

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Robot Jox (1989) Frédéric Talgorn Frédéric Talgorn, who had previously composed the music for the 1989 horror film Edge of Sanity, wrote the orchestral film score for Robot Jox, which was performed by the Paris Philharmonic Orchestra. Since Prometheus Records reissued the soundtrack in 1993, it has received generally high acclaim. An editorial review by Filmtracks.com stated that “Talgorn’s usual strong development of thematic ideas is well utilized in rather simplistic fashion in this film, perfect for the contrasting characters and their underdeveloped dimensions.”

CAST/CREW Directed Stuart Gordon

Produced Charles Band

Screenplay Joe Haldeman

Story Stuart Gordon

Music Frédéric Talgorn

Gary Graham – Achilles Anne-Marie Johnson – Athena Paul Koslo – Alexander Robert Sampson – Commissioner Jameson [sic] Danny Kamekona – Dr. “Doc” Matsumoto Hilary Mason – Professor Laplace Michael Alldredge – Tex Conway Jeffrey Combs – Spectator/Prole #1

CREDITS/REFERENCES/SOURCES/BIBLIOGRAPHY Cinefantastique v17n01 Cinefantastique v18n04 Cinefantastique v19n01-02 Horrorfan#02 Starlog#145 Starlog#158

Robot Jox (1989) Retrospective SUMMARY Fifty years after a nuclear holocaust, mankind is decimated and the surviving nations—the western-influenced Market and the Russian-influenced Confederation—have agreed to outlaw traditional open war.

#80sFilms #BAND #EMPIRE

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