Sunday, February 22, 2009
penguin research videos again
I guess the videos did not take last time, so let's try again, shall we?
Gorilla activist videos
It's been a lot harder than I anticipated to find videos I thought worked well for my character. Here are a few that are somewhat relevant.
Male gorillas do a lot of sitting still and moving just their heads. They're alert, ready to move, but very still. These women do that while chained to the fence in front of a facility that destroys part of the Amazon rainforest.
These activists are camping out to save some trees. The blonde one is most like my character.
There are about a million different kinds of people in this video, but this is the kind of event she'd be involved in, and a few times I can see her in some of the marchers.
Male gorillas do a lot of sitting still and moving just their heads. They're alert, ready to move, but very still. These women do that while chained to the fence in front of a facility that destroys part of the Amazon rainforest.
These activists are camping out to save some trees. The blonde one is most like my character.
There are about a million different kinds of people in this video, but this is the kind of event she'd be involved in, and a few times I can see her in some of the marchers.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Trevor - ELEPHANT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjSRo9sLmyg
Chris Farley's mask resembles the Elephant's mask. He has the grin and the cheek structure:
Brian Baumgartner has a great Elephant mask and a lot of resemblances in the way that he moves and breathes (embedding was disabled on this one, here's a direct link:)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjSRo9sLmyg
Another Monkey Vid
Jim Carrey in Ace Ventura is very obnoxious and monkey like. He also tends to lead from the head which the colobus tends to do as well.
Meerkat People/Characters
I like the mangy qualities of this character. Messy hair. Dark eyes. Fabulous.
This character has the regal and very alert qualities of the Meerkat.
Teen pregnancy
Here are two scenes from For Keeps with Molly Ringwald
Her voice isn't always sustained but a lot of her motions are...
(in this first video she gives birth for the second half - ignore that it doesn't apply)
good example of sustained ---> reactive (but this is actually pretty funny)
In these next two these are just the slow, sustained, vulnerable nature of a pregnant teen and a teen mother.
Notes from Class
Hi there
Some thoughts from yesterday:
Denver :
- Ducks can also be mischievous… maybe explore those moments more
- I wish you had explored his infidelity more.
- Explore his solo/private voice vs. his public voice
Grey :
- take time to explore how he would grab something
- Where can your eyes go when you speak?
- Careful of foot tapping and leg pumping – not really gorilla-like
- Your hand/arm tempo is faster than the rest of him. Try and ground your gestures
- Perhaps explore a lower vocal tone
Lilli :
- play with how her hair could mimic a meercat
- keep exploring the height of the character and how a human spine an be like a meercat’s spine
- How does this animal sit on a chair? What happens to the lower body?
- Voice could be explored further
Trevor :
- try using a hand and arm as the trunk of the elephant
- you can slow down even more
- how useful can the non-trunk hand be, given that elephant’s don’t have digits?
- Where is the smile?
- Where in the body would this character keep the secret? How can he access it?
Miranda :
- how could her hair get more ‘gorilla-like’?
- keep playing with the mouth
- could she be dirty from the garage?
- Use her hands like the gorilla
- Red show laces seem odd for a character based on a gorilla
Alex :
- Keep the whole body alive as this mole rat – particularly the spine
- Ho alive can the feet be, especially while sitting?
- Eyes go where when he talks?
- Hands are stil marking you as Alex, rather than mole rat
- LOVELY vulnerability
- How does the hat help? How about some false teeth to mimic the rats?
Christian :
- you need a much stronger ‘lift’ through your body to achieve this animal’s pride
- how would this character laugh, especially given the bird’s sounds?
- Keep using undulations and fight against collapsing physically
Jessie :
- Keep all the tentacles alive. They could be arms and elbows, knees and ankles.
- Maybe she is always being moved by an ‘undulating ocean’?
- Could she have deadlocks? Or tentacle-like hair?
- The goggles confuse me a bit – any glasses that might make them a bit less obvious?
- Where in body is fear? Where in body is hunger to hunt?
Marquis :
- I don’t get the cape… is this an age thing?
- Activities really seem to help you – like those towels you were ripping up
- All the dialogue went up into your brow – keep him grounded
- What’s his breathing like?
- In the booth you were physically demonstrating what you were explaining in your story. And I think that’s a bit dangerous. Say it and support it in your body, rather than illustrate that
Noah :
- how does the hat work?
- Why aren’t the clothes black with white like the animal? It might add something…
- Eyes go where when he speaks?
- Careful of how much you use your right arm/hand to speak. Is it like the animal or like Noah?
- I wanted the character to BELIEVE more that someone was going to take a brain. Invest in your own imaginative stories and so will we…
Ava :
- there is a lovely pervasive sadness in her now
- find a lower voice – avoid making her sweet and ‘cute’
- her walk still needs some attention
- Keep exploring the specificity of her fingers and hand shape
Amy :
- Where in the body does the impulse to move come from?
- How can her feet stay as flippers? I really like the foot tapping you used in the booth
- Keep her horizon high, and keep her spine LONG and supported
- Keep exploring her voice
- Keep exploring how her hands can be like flippers
Amanda :
- I think she might benefit from a long-sleeved sweatshirt. That way her arms can hold more weight
- Keep exploring how much time/effort it takes to move this amount of weight
- Voice is GREAT
- How do eyes ‘search’ the space while speaking?
- What is her breath like?
- Careful of overworking your fingers – especially given her animals have flippers
- Did she LIKE swimming naked, maybe? Could THAT have been the confession?
Josh :
- you must keep lifting up out of your hips and work with greater support through your spine.
- You could emphasize the undulations more, especially in his spine
- How can the legs move like the animal?
- Your hands and wrists did most of the work in your booth – which doesn’t really reflect the animal. How can the BODY tell the story
Adam :
- explore the undulation in the spine, and the ‘loping’ from side to side a large cat can have
- keep his whiskers alive
- impulse to do something comes from WHERE in his body (Im thinking about the moment in the booth when you fetched the coin from your pocket)
- voice could be explored more
- where could “displeasure” live in his body?
Annie :
- Could her voice go lower and find broader resonance?
- Where in the body do these moves originate? From spine? The navel? The sacrum?
- Keep the movement that sustained and focused.
Some thoughts from yesterday:
Denver :
- Ducks can also be mischievous… maybe explore those moments more
- I wish you had explored his infidelity more.
- Explore his solo/private voice vs. his public voice
Grey :
- take time to explore how he would grab something
- Where can your eyes go when you speak?
- Careful of foot tapping and leg pumping – not really gorilla-like
- Your hand/arm tempo is faster than the rest of him. Try and ground your gestures
- Perhaps explore a lower vocal tone
Lilli :
- play with how her hair could mimic a meercat
- keep exploring the height of the character and how a human spine an be like a meercat’s spine
- How does this animal sit on a chair? What happens to the lower body?
- Voice could be explored further
Trevor :
- try using a hand and arm as the trunk of the elephant
- you can slow down even more
- how useful can the non-trunk hand be, given that elephant’s don’t have digits?
- Where is the smile?
- Where in the body would this character keep the secret? How can he access it?
Miranda :
- how could her hair get more ‘gorilla-like’?
- keep playing with the mouth
- could she be dirty from the garage?
- Use her hands like the gorilla
- Red show laces seem odd for a character based on a gorilla
Alex :
- Keep the whole body alive as this mole rat – particularly the spine
- Ho alive can the feet be, especially while sitting?
- Eyes go where when he talks?
- Hands are stil marking you as Alex, rather than mole rat
- LOVELY vulnerability
- How does the hat help? How about some false teeth to mimic the rats?
Christian :
- you need a much stronger ‘lift’ through your body to achieve this animal’s pride
- how would this character laugh, especially given the bird’s sounds?
- Keep using undulations and fight against collapsing physically
Jessie :
- Keep all the tentacles alive. They could be arms and elbows, knees and ankles.
- Maybe she is always being moved by an ‘undulating ocean’?
- Could she have deadlocks? Or tentacle-like hair?
- The goggles confuse me a bit – any glasses that might make them a bit less obvious?
- Where in body is fear? Where in body is hunger to hunt?
Marquis :
- I don’t get the cape… is this an age thing?
- Activities really seem to help you – like those towels you were ripping up
- All the dialogue went up into your brow – keep him grounded
- What’s his breathing like?
- In the booth you were physically demonstrating what you were explaining in your story. And I think that’s a bit dangerous. Say it and support it in your body, rather than illustrate that
Noah :
- how does the hat work?
- Why aren’t the clothes black with white like the animal? It might add something…
- Eyes go where when he speaks?
- Careful of how much you use your right arm/hand to speak. Is it like the animal or like Noah?
- I wanted the character to BELIEVE more that someone was going to take a brain. Invest in your own imaginative stories and so will we…
Ava :
- there is a lovely pervasive sadness in her now
- find a lower voice – avoid making her sweet and ‘cute’
- her walk still needs some attention
- Keep exploring the specificity of her fingers and hand shape
Amy :
- Where in the body does the impulse to move come from?
- How can her feet stay as flippers? I really like the foot tapping you used in the booth
- Keep her horizon high, and keep her spine LONG and supported
- Keep exploring her voice
- Keep exploring how her hands can be like flippers
Amanda :
- I think she might benefit from a long-sleeved sweatshirt. That way her arms can hold more weight
- Keep exploring how much time/effort it takes to move this amount of weight
- Voice is GREAT
- How do eyes ‘search’ the space while speaking?
- What is her breath like?
- Careful of overworking your fingers – especially given her animals have flippers
- Did she LIKE swimming naked, maybe? Could THAT have been the confession?
Josh :
- you must keep lifting up out of your hips and work with greater support through your spine.
- You could emphasize the undulations more, especially in his spine
- How can the legs move like the animal?
- Your hands and wrists did most of the work in your booth – which doesn’t really reflect the animal. How can the BODY tell the story
Adam :
- explore the undulation in the spine, and the ‘loping’ from side to side a large cat can have
- keep his whiskers alive
- impulse to do something comes from WHERE in his body (Im thinking about the moment in the booth when you fetched the coin from your pocket)
- voice could be explored more
- where could “displeasure” live in his body?
Annie :
- Could her voice go lower and find broader resonance?
- Where in the body do these moves originate? From spine? The navel? The sacrum?
- Keep the movement that sustained and focused.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Tiger Vidz
Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman in American Psycho
Al Pacino as Michael Corleone in The Godfather: Part 2
And for good measure and fun (and for all the tweens reading this),
Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen in a personal favorite, the film adaptation of Twilight
A combination of the three, really.
Sometimes strong, sometimes light, direct, sustained, except when hunting, then remarkably sudden.
Al Pacino as Michael Corleone in The Godfather: Part 2
And for good measure and fun (and for all the tweens reading this),
Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen in a personal favorite, the film adaptation of Twilight
A combination of the three, really.
Sometimes strong, sometimes light, direct, sustained, except when hunting, then remarkably sudden.
real-life octopal-like actions...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ4nj-ZwBOw
not everything in sinead's nature pointed to an octopus, but some things i really latched onto. her face, for one, doesn't move-it remains neutral with eyes wide. her mouth barely moves when she's talking and she repeatedly licks her lower lip. her legs are pulled up with her in the chair, making her body fairly compact within her environment for the most part while her right arm drapes over the arm of the chair-returning again and again to the same spot. in addition, she is nearly always moving some part of her body--her hand touching her feet, her fingers moving on her face, her fingers twisting her hair...i shall keep looking...
...and since we all need to breathe and count to ten once in a while...check it out if you have time...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HMm9jrgDzM
not everything in sinead's nature pointed to an octopus, but some things i really latched onto. her face, for one, doesn't move-it remains neutral with eyes wide. her mouth barely moves when she's talking and she repeatedly licks her lower lip. her legs are pulled up with her in the chair, making her body fairly compact within her environment for the most part while her right arm drapes over the arm of the chair-returning again and again to the same spot. in addition, she is nearly always moving some part of her body--her hand touching her feet, her fingers moving on her face, her fingers twisting her hair...i shall keep looking...
...and since we all need to breathe and count to ten once in a while...check it out if you have time...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HMm9jrgDzM
Dance Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3PMCD7aMRI
well...this is a dance piece, but it reminded me so much of the fluid, yet suprisingly sudden action of an octopus--especially the beginning that i HAD to share...
well...this is a dance piece, but it reminded me so much of the fluid, yet suprisingly sudden action of an octopus--especially the beginning that i HAD to share...
GORILLAS=FRAT BOY JOCKS?
VIDEOS:
First, here are a few scenes from Revenge of the Nerds, showcasing the college, frat boy image in the Alpha Beta house.
And I thought this was really entertaining. Here is a jock, performing a monologue about not wanting to be stereyotyped as a "dumb jock". Pay attention to his body language in this video, and in the others I've posted.
penguin research videos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBfPpmP2qpE&feature=related
This is Holly from the E! network show Girls Next Door. Very penguin like posture and flitting direction with sustained focus. (Watch only till the intro music starts. After that there are boobies. BLURRED OUT OF COURSE)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_yAohOt1el&feature=related
Dr. Phil holds his head in a penguin way, and he always looks like he is about to peck at someone.
http://www/youtube.com/watch?v=C6slj0oJ23M
Kate Gosselin (the woman being interviewed) is one hell of a penguin. Her face, her inner occupation and inner life are things I'm really trying to work from right now.
What say you, class?
Flamingo Qualities
So the actors that i'm looking at with flamingo qualities are Adrian Brody in the Pianist
and Stefan Brogren from Degrassi High ( the 80's version)
Please feel free to let me know who else I should consider, it would help tremendously.
and Stefan Brogren from Degrassi High ( the 80's version)
Please feel free to let me know who else I should consider, it would help tremendously.
Peacocks (Christian's research)
“The peacock is one of the most beautiful birds in the world. We think of the peacock as a thoroughly masculine bird, proud, showing of, flamboyant and aggressive. We accuse him of strutting proudly, even referring to him when displaying as being ‘in his pride’."
|
Fast Facts: Type: Bird Diet: Omnivore Average lifespan in the wild: 20 years Size: Body, 35 to 50 in (90 to 130 cm); Tail, 5 ft (1.5 m) Weight: 8.75 to 13 lbs (4 to 6 kg) Did you know? A male peafowl is one of the largest flying birds when the combined length of its train and its large wingspan are considered. |
Peacocks are large, colorful pheasants (typically blue and green) known for their iridescent tails. These tail feathers, or coverts, spread out in a distinctive train that is more than 60 percent of the bird’s total body length and boast colorful "eye" markings of blue, gold, red, and other hues. The large train is used in mating rituals and courtship displays. It can be arched into a magnificent fan that reaches across the bird's back and touches the ground on either side. Females are believed to choose their mates according to the size, color, and quality of these outrageous feather trains. | ||||
-National Geographic
Because of its gorgeous appearance, the peacock has long been famous outside of its native countries of Southern Asia and Malaysia, and was kept for centuries by people first in China and then in Europe.
The Phoenicians brought the peacock to Egypt more than three thousand years ago. Historical records indicate that Solomon kept several peacock species, among other pheasants, with the India Blue being his favorite peacock. Peafowl were extensively raised by the Romans for the table as well as for ornamental purposes, and medieval Europe carried on this practice as well. It is only after the XVI Century, when turkeys were imported from Mexico, that the peacock was discarded as a table bird for the more fleshy American birds.
Today, thousands of people all over the world keep and breed peafowl as a hobby or business around their homes or on game bird farms. Many peafowl also live at freedom and breed in parks and gardens.
Peafowl were also considered a delicacy in these cultures for centuries. Fortunately, few of peacock speciesare used for food today, except in some of the more remote and less civilized places where they are found in nature. See the printed magazine for more information on man's long held fascination and cultural aspects of the peacock.
There are but two naturally occuring peacock species, the Indian peafowl Pavo cristatus from India, often called Blue peafowl, and the Green peafowl Pavo muticus which lives farther east in Burma, Thailand, Indo China, Malaya and Java. It is curiously absent from Sumatra and Borneo. The latter peafowl has three subspecies: Spicifer in Western Burma, a duller, bluer race; Imperator in Eastern Burma, Thailand and Indo China, much brighter wid greener: andmuticus in Java, which is still more brilliant. The last two are usually kept in America at present, and probably mixed, but for practical purposes they are just the same, the differences being noticeable only on close examination.
There are many mutations and breeds of peacocks that have been developed and are commonly available from peacock breeders.The India Blue Peacock is commonly kept and bred in captivity by people across America and around the world. They are not expensive and thousands of them are bought and sold each year. They are hearty and easy to keep, even in cold districts. The Green species is not bred as often as the India Blue and is therefore more expensive. You can see that the tail of the green peacock is exceptionally beautiful! The Green is more susceptible to cold and needs to receive adequate protection from the cold.
Peafowl can be quite sociable and often display their feathers right in front of you in the springtime. The male peacock in the spring displays his gorgeous tail feathers and also utters an awakening call which is loud yet quite delight to hear!
Peacock feathers are popularly used in unique crafts and decorations.
You can feed a peacock the same as any other pheasant. The diet provided by many people includes mixed grains, game bird crumbles (such as Mazuri available at many feed stores), and a variety of greens. The birds hardly ever become sick and we have a record of one peacock that lived to be 40 years old!
Peahens are excellent mothers, but peachicks can be reared just as well in a brooder. They are among the easiest birds to raise. One thing to be careful about is to give them good shelters in the autumn and winter following their birth, as they are not fully grown before eight or ten months.
The Indian Blue Peacock has produced several mutations in captivity. These include the Black-shouldered, in which the male has the wings blue, green and black, the female being very pale; the White; and the Pied, in which the normal plumage of the Indian Blue is irregularly marked with white. The so-called 'Spalding' variey is a hybrid between the Indian and the Green species. It is very beautiful bird, intermediate between the two parents in colors, in hardiness and in temperament.
-gamebird.com
“Jupiter and his wife Juno were responsible for the remarkable ocelli being placed in the peacock’s plumage. Jupiter could never resist a beautiful human maiden, and this made Juno extremely angry when she caught him out. One of these unfortunate females was lo, whom Jupiter had to transform quickly into a cow in an attempt to hide her from his wife’s anger. Juno demanded the cow be given to her and charged her cowherd, Argus, who had one hundred eyes all over his body and so never slept, with the task of guarding lo. Argus was killed and Juno preserved his hundred eyes by transferring them onto the train feathers of her royal bird, the peacock.”
Natural History
The earliest history of the peacocks cannot be established, mainly because bird skeletons do not lend themselves well to the process of fossilization. Peacocks are close relatives of pheasants, nearly all of which come from Asia. The Congo peacock is the only species of pheasant that is naturally distributed outside Asia. All peacocks have iridescent plumage with impressive displays, small heads, long necks and strong spurred legs(unusually, the females also carry spurs). Like pheasants, they all roost in trees for safety. Another characteristic they have in common with pheasants is their preference for thick, shady undergrowth where they skulk and are difficult to observe. Consequently, the status of the peacock is largely unknown in the wild. Peacocks are in full plumage from June to December, the peahen laying eggs and nesting during July and August. The long train is discarded entirely in January. Both sexes go through this period of swift moulting, long revovery and then rapid regrowth, though the female carries no train. In the period when they have short feathers, the males appear to be depressed and seek seclusion. The peacock’s legs, grayish brown with dark claws, are typical gallinaceous or barnfoul like the chicken, sit oddly with the glamour of the rest of the bird. Not many birds have stories about their feet, but the peacock has been accused of being so ashamed of its large legs and feet that when it catches sight of them its stops displaying and cries aloud in protest at having them imposed on it.
The Proud sun-bearing Peacock with his feathers
Walks along, thinking himself a king.
And with his voice prognosticates all weathers,
Although God knows but badly he doth sing;
But when he looks downe to his base-black Feete,
He droopes and is asham’d of things unmeete.
In reality they are powerful aids when escaping, for all peacocks prefer to run into thickets rather than take flight. They can run at speed, outdistancing a pursuing man over a short distance. The spurs are only 2.5 centimeters long but can be uses to slash at another male like fighting-cocks in defence of territory at breeding time. Fights take place with males facing each other, leaping in the air and raking downwards.
The curious gait of the peacock, especially while displaying his train, has led to it being accused of swaggering and strutting. However, the stiff-legged strut and apparent swagger are due merely to the mechanical effort to keep balanced. In a high wind, these movements are correspondingly exaggerated and pecocks are reluctant to display when it is windy. Shakespeare described the strut of the peacock as “a stide and a stand” (Trolius and Cressida III.iii, 253-4)
The peacock’s call, said to resemble paaaavoo (pavo – latin for peacock) is described as being harsh, strident, screeching and unpleasant. The peacock can almost seem mute, due to the brevity of its calls over time. Some do not call throughout an entire day. Their call is heard primarily upon attack, or threat. It is a rare and intriguing treat.
Peacocks can live for 20-25 years, breeding from their third year onwards. The female normally lays three to five eggs. The nest is a mere scrape on the ground with a few dry sticks and leaves, hidden away in the shrubs. The chicks run around as soon as they are hatched and take a few weeks to become independent. Male chicks take three years before they have a full train. The birds are at their most spectatcular in the breeding season when the polygamous males spend a good deal of time displaying. The train is full breeding plumage projects from 100 to 120 centimeters (sometimes more) beyond the end of the true tail containing around 100-150 feathers.
There are three species of peacock: blue, green, and Congo. There are three variations of the blue peacock: white, pied, and black-winged. White peacocks are seen in many wild musters, as well as among captive birds. Entirely white birds are not true albinos for they have the normal brown eyes and breed true. The ocelli on the train are barely visable. They are every bit as spectacular and as beautiful as their colored relations. Some birds exhibit their odd white feather amoung their normal plumage, giving a pied effect. The bird may have a white peacock in its ancestry, but no one is quite sure why this occurs.
The green peacock differs from the blue peacock and is easily distinguished from it physically by the cock and hen being brighter and greener in color; in his peculiar facial coloring; the long barbed crest of straight, stiff, narrow feathers; a voice that is not as loud, even less frequently heard, and of a deeper tone; and longer legs. The effect of the display of the green peacock is of a golden-bronze hue. There are three variations of the green peacock similar to that of the blue.
The Congo peacock was discovered in 1937. It is much smaller than the green and blue and bears no train. Unlike the green and blue peacocks, the Congo peacock is monogamous and more vociferous, calling throughout the night.
There are many other species of animals that have now been labeled as peacock, ranging from insects such as butterfly, to fish, and to flowers. There is even a constellation in the sky called Pavo; and its largest star, 183 light years away, is called Peacock.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Glenn Close Interview
An early scene in the new TV series of Damages features an exchange between Glenn Close's character and a politician. "Girls today could learn something from you, Patty," he tells her smoothly. "You know how to wear a skirt." The real compliment, though, comes in his qualification: "But you're one of the boys. Always have been."
There has often been a touch of the masculine in Close's career. From Alex Forrest, the deranged siren of Fatal Attraction who seduced Michael Douglas with the very male fantasy of uncomplicated infidelity, then exacted a violent revenge, to the Marquise de Merteuil in Dangerous Liaisons, plotting to corrupt a young virgin for her own advantage, Close has played parts unencumbered by conventional feminine restraint. In Air Force One she played a tough vice-president - and even at her most comically camp, as Cruella de Vil, she was still a woman who would do anything to get what she wanted.
In Damages, Close plays Patty Hewes, a litigation lawyer not without humanity, but with a chilling willingness to compromise it to win a case, even if that means ordering the murder of her firm's young protege. Driven, chic, ruthlessly self-controlled, Hewes is a study in the moral fallibility of Manhattan ambition. If the casting seems almost impossibly perfect, it's because the part was written specifically for Close.
"It was their idea to explore what power does to people," Close explains. "That's what interested me. Because I think for a woman it's always a very, very tricky position to know how to maintain your power, in a world that's mostly dominated by men."
Close has maintained her power in Hollywood for more than a quarter of a century now. Her face has been familiar to us ever since she starred in the Big Chill in 1983, yet when she enters the room it comes as a shock, for the faintly mannish angles of her screen features are softened into a dewy, petite glow. She is quite extraordinarily beautiful. At 61 her appearance retains the same ageless quality that made it hard to say if she was in her 20s, 30s or 40s when she starred at 39 in Fatal Attraction. Sheathed in a black dress, with one elegant ankle curled behind the other, she settles on to the sofa looking almost regal, like Princess Michael of Kent. Close wouldn't look out of place at a Republican party gala - or, for that matter, an upscale Manhattan law firm.
Does she share any other traits with Patty Hewes? "Not that I know of." She laughs softly. "No, I'm not like Patty. I'm really not into confrontation at all."
She is, nonetheless, in many ways quite like a typical male interviewee. Questions are carefully parsed, and some answered with almost clinical precision. The poise doesn't lack warmth, but she is not what therapists would call a social rescuer; there is no impulse to fill the air with noise. Only the occasional twisting of a manicured finger, and the slightly watchful expression, suggest anything less than unshakeable self-possession.
When Close was first approached with the script for Damages, she had recently guest-starred in the TV drama The Shield on FX. The actor had told the channel, "If you ever come up with anything set on the east coast," where Close lives, "then come and talk to me." The pedigree of Damages was never in doubt; its team included writers from The Sopranos, "and I just thought it was an amazingly strong, powerful script". But I wonder whether, as a five times Oscar nominee and triple Tony winner, Close had any difficulty in transferring to the small screen.
"Well I found it very hard in the beginning, just because it is so different. You don't know your back story, you don't know how it's going to end, so you have to really trust the writers. I still don't know stuff about my character, because the writers want to keep their options open. They're writing in a way that means a lot of times you get so many last-minute revisions to the script that you have to learn to be very flexible, and you don't have as much time. It's got to the point where I don't even learn my lines until the day of shooting. You develop," she smiles dryly, "a very acute short-term memory.
"That's the first time I've ever worked like that, and I felt quite insecure about it at first, but now I think it's a very good acting process. It keeps you on your toes, and I love it. It's very intense, and you have to trust them, and just say, 'OK, what do you want me to do now?'"
William Hurt joined Damages for series two, but hated the pace of filming, and won't be involved in future series. Yet every year the number of Hollywood women competing for Emmys rather than Oscars seems to grow. Close refers half-jokingly to herself and others, including Holly Hunter and Sally Field, as "the sisterhood of TV drama divas", but it has been suggested that their transition to television owes less to professional preference than pragmatism. "We're seeing these actresses on television," the TV editor of Variety said recently, "because there aren't any decent parts in the feature world for them." Close readily agrees there aren't enough strong roles for older women: "That is a reality, there are nowhere near enough." But the notion of television as a consolation prize provokes a firm shake of the head.
"Oh no, I don't think so at all. I could do five movies and I would still take this role; it's an extraordinary role. I think the days when there was this big divide between movies and television no longer exists. You know, I think that view is a hold-over of the snobbery that people used to feel about TV. With Damages I was offered a part that was as good as anything I had read as a film script."
Close prefers to attribute the trend towards television not to gender, or ageing, but to technological progress. "Before, if someone missed an episode or two of this show they would have stopped watching because they couldn't catch up. But because of the way technology is changing, these days kids can watch TV on their iPhones. Now they can see those episodes, and that means that we can make what are almost mega-movies. And the narrative arc is extraordinary, with so much character development. With Damages we've made two series that you can almost watch back-to-back as one mega-movie."
For an actor who has played such fearlessly dangerous women, Close seems surprisingly wary of anything that could be construed as contentious. When I ask how she has had to operate to survive in an industry dominated by men, she replies quickly: "Oh, I would say the industry has definitely changed during my career. There are lots of powerful women in Hollywood now; it's really changed. I remember Dawn Steel [the head of production on Fatal Attraction]. She came in for a lot of censorship, by which I mean criticism, because she was very strong and very direct. It is that syndrome. Men and women like women who are a little bit more apologetic and feminine, rather than own their position and go for it. But in fact I think Hollywood might be one of those areas where things have really changed."
How does she account for her longevity, when so many other women have found themselves disappearing?
"I don't know. I'm good at what I do. In this crazy profession, everyone is lying if they say, 'I mapped out my career and every move is what I planned.' That's bullshit, that can never happen. You just make the best choices possible and suddenly you've done it for 30 years and your career is the sum of those choices."
Close's career began on the stage in New York in the mid-70s. In the early 80s each of her first three films - The World According To Garp, The Big Chill and The Natural - earned her an Oscar nomination, but it was Fatal Attraction in 1987 that defined Close as Hollywood's new mistress of complex and emotionally conflicted roles. Today, the movie remains one of the few, if only, films to have inspired a new phrase in the English language that neither derived from the title, nor was ever even uttered in the script. "Yes, I know," Close agrees, smiling. "I was talking to my hairstylist here, and she said that men here use the term bunny boiler all the time, even now."
In the past Close has described a certain pride when hearing the phrase. But over time it has come to be applied not just to female stalkers, but to women who show no more than mild interest in a member of the opposite sex. Does the vague misogyny implied by its popularity ever trouble her? She looks faintly surprised. "Well, I certainly don't take it personally."
Close has always been reluctant to describe herself as a feminist. "I've certainly never been the kind of person who wants to stand up on a soapbox and start shouting," she agrees cautiously. "And I've never been very comfortable with so-called celebrity political activism. The first time I ever went on a march it was a pro-choice march in Washington, but it was just after my daughter had been born, so I felt slightly differently about it then. I wore my daughter's pacifier [dummy] round my neck. But then they put me right at the front, and so I was there with Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda." She laughs, and rolls her eyes. "And they were all going" - she imitates a roar, with raised fist - "and I was going" - and she pulls a sheepishly startled, what-am-I-doing-here? face.
But she was back there last month, joining the great crowd in Washington for President Obama's inauguration. "It was extraordinary, just amazing to be part of this huge, very solemn human mass moving together up the mall to witness this historic event." Had she voted for Obama in the primaries? "Well, of course, it was very difficult. We had the first female candidate, and we also had the first African-American. But yes, I did, because in the end it had to be about who I thought had the best chance of winning."
Close has been a committed Democrat for so long that her early political life is rarely mentioned these days. The daughter of a blue-blooded New England family, she grew up on a 500-acre estate, and was educated at boarding schools in Switzerland and Connecticut. Her surgeon father was a member of Moral Rearmament (MRA), an ultra-conservative pressure group that campaigned for family values, patriotism and anti-communism - and by the age of 17 Close had joined an MRA-supporting folk group. While liberal America was protesting against the Vietnam war and for civil rights, Close spent five years touring military bases, bolstering troop morale and even marrying the group's lead guitarist. Close has never elaborated on the personal or political epiphany she experienced at 22, but the pair divorced, she enrolled in drama school, and the chapter she has referred to as her "dark days" was left behind.
"I don't want to talk about that," she says as soon as I mention Moral Rearmament. "It's impossible, in an interview of this length." Even an oblique enquiry about her private self is crisply rebuffed; when I ask which role in her career she has most closely identified with, she replies: "What is that question? What I do for a living, my craft, is to create characters. It's not really about saying, 'This is like me.' I don't approach a character at all like that. As an actor I try to find where I can find some entrance into their humanity, but that's all."
Today she belongs to a small elite of actors whose fame has never been traded for privacy. Her personal life has not been uneventful; in the 80s she remarried briefly, to a venture capitalist, before becoming involved with the producer David Starke, by whom she had her only daughter, now 20. In the 90s she almost wed the head carpenter on the hit musical Sunset Boulevard, and three years ago she married for the third time, to her long-term boyfriend, David Shaw, a biotech entrepreneur. Yet her romances have never become the currency of celebrity culture coverage, and I wonder how she has managed this. She and her husband live in remote Maine, which probably helps, and she thinks the fact that she became a name relatively late, in her mid-30s, played a part in protecting her as well.
"But I just don't talk about things that are impossible - that are like a book. I just don't think it's important to my work that people know about my life. And I think it's very important in this crazy vociferous celebrity world that I keep me and my family as much out of it as possible."
The one aspect of her private life she is happy to bring to work are her dogs - a pair of West Highland white terrier crosses called Jake and Bill. The dogs can regularly be found just off camera on the set of Damages, and she and her husband run a website called Fetchdog.com, where Close blogs about her own and other famous people's pets. For a woman whose career has been distinguished by truly sensational acts of violence towards pets - not merely boiling a rabbit, but having a witness's dog murdered in Damages, and plotting an unthinkable fate for 101 Dalmatian puppies - there is a certain irony to her answer, when I ask what she would have done with her life had she not been an actor.
"Oh," she says quietly, "I think I would have done something in nature with animals."
(form the Guardian Newspaper, UK, Feb 15th 2009)
There has often been a touch of the masculine in Close's career. From Alex Forrest, the deranged siren of Fatal Attraction who seduced Michael Douglas with the very male fantasy of uncomplicated infidelity, then exacted a violent revenge, to the Marquise de Merteuil in Dangerous Liaisons, plotting to corrupt a young virgin for her own advantage, Close has played parts unencumbered by conventional feminine restraint. In Air Force One she played a tough vice-president - and even at her most comically camp, as Cruella de Vil, she was still a woman who would do anything to get what she wanted.
In Damages, Close plays Patty Hewes, a litigation lawyer not without humanity, but with a chilling willingness to compromise it to win a case, even if that means ordering the murder of her firm's young protege. Driven, chic, ruthlessly self-controlled, Hewes is a study in the moral fallibility of Manhattan ambition. If the casting seems almost impossibly perfect, it's because the part was written specifically for Close.
"It was their idea to explore what power does to people," Close explains. "That's what interested me. Because I think for a woman it's always a very, very tricky position to know how to maintain your power, in a world that's mostly dominated by men."
Close has maintained her power in Hollywood for more than a quarter of a century now. Her face has been familiar to us ever since she starred in the Big Chill in 1983, yet when she enters the room it comes as a shock, for the faintly mannish angles of her screen features are softened into a dewy, petite glow. She is quite extraordinarily beautiful. At 61 her appearance retains the same ageless quality that made it hard to say if she was in her 20s, 30s or 40s when she starred at 39 in Fatal Attraction. Sheathed in a black dress, with one elegant ankle curled behind the other, she settles on to the sofa looking almost regal, like Princess Michael of Kent. Close wouldn't look out of place at a Republican party gala - or, for that matter, an upscale Manhattan law firm.
Does she share any other traits with Patty Hewes? "Not that I know of." She laughs softly. "No, I'm not like Patty. I'm really not into confrontation at all."
She is, nonetheless, in many ways quite like a typical male interviewee. Questions are carefully parsed, and some answered with almost clinical precision. The poise doesn't lack warmth, but she is not what therapists would call a social rescuer; there is no impulse to fill the air with noise. Only the occasional twisting of a manicured finger, and the slightly watchful expression, suggest anything less than unshakeable self-possession.
When Close was first approached with the script for Damages, she had recently guest-starred in the TV drama The Shield on FX. The actor had told the channel, "If you ever come up with anything set on the east coast," where Close lives, "then come and talk to me." The pedigree of Damages was never in doubt; its team included writers from The Sopranos, "and I just thought it was an amazingly strong, powerful script". But I wonder whether, as a five times Oscar nominee and triple Tony winner, Close had any difficulty in transferring to the small screen.
"Well I found it very hard in the beginning, just because it is so different. You don't know your back story, you don't know how it's going to end, so you have to really trust the writers. I still don't know stuff about my character, because the writers want to keep their options open. They're writing in a way that means a lot of times you get so many last-minute revisions to the script that you have to learn to be very flexible, and you don't have as much time. It's got to the point where I don't even learn my lines until the day of shooting. You develop," she smiles dryly, "a very acute short-term memory.
"That's the first time I've ever worked like that, and I felt quite insecure about it at first, but now I think it's a very good acting process. It keeps you on your toes, and I love it. It's very intense, and you have to trust them, and just say, 'OK, what do you want me to do now?'"
William Hurt joined Damages for series two, but hated the pace of filming, and won't be involved in future series. Yet every year the number of Hollywood women competing for Emmys rather than Oscars seems to grow. Close refers half-jokingly to herself and others, including Holly Hunter and Sally Field, as "the sisterhood of TV drama divas", but it has been suggested that their transition to television owes less to professional preference than pragmatism. "We're seeing these actresses on television," the TV editor of Variety said recently, "because there aren't any decent parts in the feature world for them." Close readily agrees there aren't enough strong roles for older women: "That is a reality, there are nowhere near enough." But the notion of television as a consolation prize provokes a firm shake of the head.
"Oh no, I don't think so at all. I could do five movies and I would still take this role; it's an extraordinary role. I think the days when there was this big divide between movies and television no longer exists. You know, I think that view is a hold-over of the snobbery that people used to feel about TV. With Damages I was offered a part that was as good as anything I had read as a film script."
Close prefers to attribute the trend towards television not to gender, or ageing, but to technological progress. "Before, if someone missed an episode or two of this show they would have stopped watching because they couldn't catch up. But because of the way technology is changing, these days kids can watch TV on their iPhones. Now they can see those episodes, and that means that we can make what are almost mega-movies. And the narrative arc is extraordinary, with so much character development. With Damages we've made two series that you can almost watch back-to-back as one mega-movie."
For an actor who has played such fearlessly dangerous women, Close seems surprisingly wary of anything that could be construed as contentious. When I ask how she has had to operate to survive in an industry dominated by men, she replies quickly: "Oh, I would say the industry has definitely changed during my career. There are lots of powerful women in Hollywood now; it's really changed. I remember Dawn Steel [the head of production on Fatal Attraction]. She came in for a lot of censorship, by which I mean criticism, because she was very strong and very direct. It is that syndrome. Men and women like women who are a little bit more apologetic and feminine, rather than own their position and go for it. But in fact I think Hollywood might be one of those areas where things have really changed."
How does she account for her longevity, when so many other women have found themselves disappearing?
"I don't know. I'm good at what I do. In this crazy profession, everyone is lying if they say, 'I mapped out my career and every move is what I planned.' That's bullshit, that can never happen. You just make the best choices possible and suddenly you've done it for 30 years and your career is the sum of those choices."
Close's career began on the stage in New York in the mid-70s. In the early 80s each of her first three films - The World According To Garp, The Big Chill and The Natural - earned her an Oscar nomination, but it was Fatal Attraction in 1987 that defined Close as Hollywood's new mistress of complex and emotionally conflicted roles. Today, the movie remains one of the few, if only, films to have inspired a new phrase in the English language that neither derived from the title, nor was ever even uttered in the script. "Yes, I know," Close agrees, smiling. "I was talking to my hairstylist here, and she said that men here use the term bunny boiler all the time, even now."
In the past Close has described a certain pride when hearing the phrase. But over time it has come to be applied not just to female stalkers, but to women who show no more than mild interest in a member of the opposite sex. Does the vague misogyny implied by its popularity ever trouble her? She looks faintly surprised. "Well, I certainly don't take it personally."
Close has always been reluctant to describe herself as a feminist. "I've certainly never been the kind of person who wants to stand up on a soapbox and start shouting," she agrees cautiously. "And I've never been very comfortable with so-called celebrity political activism. The first time I ever went on a march it was a pro-choice march in Washington, but it was just after my daughter had been born, so I felt slightly differently about it then. I wore my daughter's pacifier [dummy] round my neck. But then they put me right at the front, and so I was there with Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda." She laughs, and rolls her eyes. "And they were all going" - she imitates a roar, with raised fist - "and I was going" - and she pulls a sheepishly startled, what-am-I-doing-here? face.
But she was back there last month, joining the great crowd in Washington for President Obama's inauguration. "It was extraordinary, just amazing to be part of this huge, very solemn human mass moving together up the mall to witness this historic event." Had she voted for Obama in the primaries? "Well, of course, it was very difficult. We had the first female candidate, and we also had the first African-American. But yes, I did, because in the end it had to be about who I thought had the best chance of winning."
Close has been a committed Democrat for so long that her early political life is rarely mentioned these days. The daughter of a blue-blooded New England family, she grew up on a 500-acre estate, and was educated at boarding schools in Switzerland and Connecticut. Her surgeon father was a member of Moral Rearmament (MRA), an ultra-conservative pressure group that campaigned for family values, patriotism and anti-communism - and by the age of 17 Close had joined an MRA-supporting folk group. While liberal America was protesting against the Vietnam war and for civil rights, Close spent five years touring military bases, bolstering troop morale and even marrying the group's lead guitarist. Close has never elaborated on the personal or political epiphany she experienced at 22, but the pair divorced, she enrolled in drama school, and the chapter she has referred to as her "dark days" was left behind.
"I don't want to talk about that," she says as soon as I mention Moral Rearmament. "It's impossible, in an interview of this length." Even an oblique enquiry about her private self is crisply rebuffed; when I ask which role in her career she has most closely identified with, she replies: "What is that question? What I do for a living, my craft, is to create characters. It's not really about saying, 'This is like me.' I don't approach a character at all like that. As an actor I try to find where I can find some entrance into their humanity, but that's all."
Today she belongs to a small elite of actors whose fame has never been traded for privacy. Her personal life has not been uneventful; in the 80s she remarried briefly, to a venture capitalist, before becoming involved with the producer David Starke, by whom she had her only daughter, now 20. In the 90s she almost wed the head carpenter on the hit musical Sunset Boulevard, and three years ago she married for the third time, to her long-term boyfriend, David Shaw, a biotech entrepreneur. Yet her romances have never become the currency of celebrity culture coverage, and I wonder how she has managed this. She and her husband live in remote Maine, which probably helps, and she thinks the fact that she became a name relatively late, in her mid-30s, played a part in protecting her as well.
"But I just don't talk about things that are impossible - that are like a book. I just don't think it's important to my work that people know about my life. And I think it's very important in this crazy vociferous celebrity world that I keep me and my family as much out of it as possible."
The one aspect of her private life she is happy to bring to work are her dogs - a pair of West Highland white terrier crosses called Jake and Bill. The dogs can regularly be found just off camera on the set of Damages, and she and her husband run a website called Fetchdog.com, where Close blogs about her own and other famous people's pets. For a woman whose career has been distinguished by truly sensational acts of violence towards pets - not merely boiling a rabbit, but having a witness's dog murdered in Damages, and plotting an unthinkable fate for 101 Dalmatian puppies - there is a certain irony to her answer, when I ask what she would have done with her life had she not been an actor.
"Oh," she says quietly, "I think I would have done something in nature with animals."
(form the Guardian Newspaper, UK, Feb 15th 2009)
"In The Octopus's Garden"
From: "In The Octopus's Garden"
by Julie Zeidner Russo
--"marine mammals that feed on octopuses include seals, sea lions, sea otters, and killer whales, at least." -David Scheel
from the zoo...
--"researchers study the middens or refuse heaps outside the octopus den to learn more about their diets, which include crustaceans, small crabs, scallops, bivalves, snails, fish, and even other octopuses."
--shallow waters may be important for "rearing purposes."
--conservation efforts are made more challenging due to octopuses "solitary nature" and camouflage-they're hard to count.
--it's hard to know how to keep track of them properly...
*for more info see: http://www.nurp.noaa.gov/Spotlight/Octopus.htm
**pictures taken at the PPG Aquarium
-->I have tried repeatedly over the past few days to upload the 20 minute video I took at the zoo, but my computer wouldn't have it...so...the last photo in this post is in fact the starting shot of the video...perhaps I'll get it to work in future-octopuses are fascinating to watch in motion...
Nature Knows...
KNOWS...
--other cephalopods (squid, cuttlefish, etc.) usually have some sort of external shell, but all known octopus species are without-instead this would be outer shell has evolved "into a firm but flexible sack of tissues."
--they can fit in extremely small spaces-those in captivity have been known to hide away in aspirin bottles, soft drink cans, or even under the floor of the plastic aquaria.
--when hunting, they will chase their prey into tiny cracks reaching in with their long arms to get them out of one sticky situation and into a stickier one...
--when mating time rolls around, they use bright colors to attract attention.
C H R O M A T O P H O R E S
--special skin cells (chromatophores) are what cause the rapid change in color.
--"each chromatophore consists of 3 bags of pigment."
--"by squeezing or expanding the bags octopuses can change the color displayed by each cell."
Colors:
white=fear red=anger brown=relaxation
--"octopuses have the most complex brains of all invertebrates."
--"the octopus grabs its prey with its arms and suckers and then injects poison inside with its beak-like mouth. This poison disables the prey and also helps to dissolve the tissue so the octopus can slurp up its meal."
--"like Pacific Salmon, octopuses reproduce only once in their life."
*from http://wcs.org/67378/factsheetarchive/factsheet-octopus
--"each chromatophore consists of 3 bags of pigment."
--"by squeezing or expanding the bags octopuses can change the color displayed by each cell."
Colors:
white=fear red=anger brown=relaxation
--"octopuses have the most complex brains of all invertebrates."http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8cf7tPoN5o
here's another haha http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aH0JNSIrBA4
--"unlike most other invertebrates, an octopus will make eye contact with you and watch you from its tank as you move around the room."here's another haha http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aH0JNSIrBA4
--"the octopus grabs its prey with its arms and suckers and then injects poison inside with its beak-like mouth. This poison disables the prey and also helps to dissolve the tissue so the octopus can slurp up its meal."
--"like Pacific Salmon, octopuses reproduce only once in their life."
*from http://wcs.org/67378/factsheetarchive/factsheet-octopus
GPO according to National Geographic
Fast Facts:
type:invertebrate
diet:carnivore*
average lifespan in wild: 3-5 years
size:9.75-16 feet
weight:22-110 lbs
*shrimp, clams, lobsters, and fish--even sharks on occasion
-->the appendages are actually called arms-not tentacles as is usually assumed...
--both females and males die soon after breeding
--generally reddish brown in color
--nocturnal hunters
--found "throughout the temporate waters of the Pacific from Southern California to Alaska."
--GPO have learned to open jars, solve mazes, and even mimic octopuses in other aquariums...smart farts, eh?
Last Friday and This Monday
Hi everybody
so sorry about Friday's class - I witnessed a very bad accident and was detained by cops for multiple statements... weee.....
anyway, for tomorrow's class, we'll do what was planned for last Friday (namely, job interview improv). id like to try and make up for the time we all lost, so bring your calendar's with you to class as well
Hope you've all started to find costume pieces
matt
so sorry about Friday's class - I witnessed a very bad accident and was detained by cops for multiple statements... weee.....
anyway, for tomorrow's class, we'll do what was planned for last Friday (namely, job interview improv). id like to try and make up for the time we all lost, so bring your calendar's with you to class as well
Hope you've all started to find costume pieces
matt
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