I don’t want to be attached to anyone. I want to just at least maintain the illusion of free will, you know?
Russian Doll (2019)
I found this old drawing in a sketchbook that I bought years ago, and I used it like twice because the paper’s pink and cute and I don’t wanna ruin it
This is the water and this is the well. Drink full and descend.
Twin Peaks: The Return, Part 8 “Gotta light?” (2017) dir. David Lynch
Btw I also watched the first episode of Fosse/Verdon last week, because why not just veer entirely off my usual course and watch three dang shows at once, two currently airing. When was the last time I did any of this, I don’t even know.
Anyway, this is a hyper-specific sort of show (historical musical theatre personalities miniseries) that is almost certainly going to draw an equally hyper-specific audience, but I’m in that niche so here I am! In fact I rather grandiosely think I may be ideally positioned to enjoy it, having exactly the right amount of lay & professional theatre background to enjoy Sondheim jokes where no one ever says the name of the play, but not so much that I’m going to get distracted nitpicking Broadway history details, because I’m not that deep in.
(Incidentally, and right on the nose for the premiere episode, I had actually just watched Fosse’s Oscar win for the first time, the ‘72 Liza Minnelli Cabaret. But when I was living in New York I had seen the second Mendes/Marshall Broadway revival with Alan Cumming as the Emcee, somewhere in the winter of 2014-15 during Emma Stone’s run as Sally Bowles, taking over for, ironically, Michelle Williams. Watching Michelle Williams on a recreation of the movie set just a few weeks later picking out those exact 70s-as-30s costumes for their very game Liza Minnelli impersonator was surreal.)
But yes, Fosse/Verdon. This feels like a TV show made by theatre people who are really excited to be making TV for the first time, which make sense because it is! It has fun, slightly out-of-the-box stylistic ideas of the manner of those fresh to a field—for instance I LOVE that the show just throws you in and then bounces around in time to create these mosaic tone poems at the beginning and end. But I also felt more of the scaffolding than I would have with more experienced TV-makers. “Wait, did we just skip over a commercial break?” I asked of FX’s video player on more than one occasion, and we had not, it was just a seam.
There’s the politics of the very existence of the thing, as another show about a bad man who makes good art. But in the genus of dick geniuses, Rockwell’s Fosse is one of the less glamorized ones. He isn’t a cool asshole, he’s a sad and frustrating one because he’s so clearly and unhappily just fucking up everyone’s lives, his own and the people around him. But what really saves it from the ash heap of antihero shows I think, is that this show is called Fosse/VERDON. It’s half about her, and while we could probably use less projects about difficult men, I think we could use more highlighting the under-sung women of history, geniuses in their own right next to the men they supported. Gwen’s artistic (& managerial) brilliance is given equal weight to Bobby’s—it’s a partnership. And that’s what I signed up for: to watch Michelle Williams and Sam Rockwell be messy problematic dance legends.
Which brings me to the thing I actually said the most while watching this episode, increasingly as if I had a drink in my hand: “Let the boy dance!” Surely they will eventually?? You hire Sam Rockwell to be a scumbag who can MOVE. (You hire Michelle Williams to walk into a room filled with richly perfect period details and still be the only thing you want to look at, and that she already IS.)
rainbowrites asked:
we were finding meaning in everything over those hours. Title card colors. Organic vs Inanimate. It's all a video game! I feel like that's a real journey in itself that the story also asked. What is important and what is not? What small actions radiate outwards? What tiny threads make up the tapestry? How many possible stories are out there for us to discover? Everything had meaning because everything has meaning. What then matters is if we choose to view things, and people, as meaningful
Aaaaaahhhh, yeeessssss, girl this is so beautiful
Save my obsession with trying to figure out how many days have passed for characters, thankfully not applicable here!! I’m not really a Rubick’s cube person, looking for the Clue To All Mythology that will let me lay out the mechanics of a world in my head and see by their shape what it all means. I’m a this kind of person, a Meaning Is In the Experience person. Bless the tangents, for they will set you free!
“So you think you were hit by a car while you were chasing your cat, and now you’re reliving your birthday?”
RUSSIAN DOLL — 1.01 “Nothing In This World Is Easy”
