You’re missing the best bit of this scene, where Batman takes a can of SHARK REPELLANT off his belt an sprays the obviously foam rubber shark in the face to escape.
I don’t remember much about ‘60s Batman, but I remember that scene. (And how hot Eartha Kitt was as Catwoman. Meow.)
“Now Colin, you’ve always been seen as a romantic lead to the ladies. How did you apply this to a gay context? Was it difficult for you? How did you-”
Hero.
Not just that he said it, but that he seemed really angry that he had to.
I noticed that. He seems like he’s about 9000 percent done with bullshit on this subject.
I dunno, if you go through these 200 000 notes I can promise you an LGBTQ kid will tell you how utterly different queer romance is and that what Colin Firth said is highly offensive.
yeah, BEING gay is very different from BEING straight and that has an affect on our experiences, but like.
he’s talking about acting. He’s being asked how difficult it was to pretend to be in love with a man instead of pretending to be in love with a woman, and that question IS insulting, because it IS acting. If he’s capable of pretending believably to love and cherish some actress, it shouldn’t be hard to do the same with an actor, and the fact that it’s assumed to be is entirely because of how homophobic our culture is.
That’s why he’s mad. While the experience of being IN a queer relationship might be very different from being in a straight one, in the end, they’re both relationships between people who love one another, and from an acting perspective it SHOULDN’T make a difference, and I"m very glad he said it.
Okay I know we always go on about Marvel’s uncanny casting ability.
But if you thought they were the only ones, let me draw your attention to this man:
Viggo Mortensen, aka Aragorn son of Arathorn, aka Sexiest Ranger in Middle Earth
would hike, often for more than a day, to remote filming locations, in costume, for the sake of authenticity
was the best swordsman Bob Anderson (swordsmaster/instructor for LotR, Pirates of the Caribbean, etc) says he has ever trained
occasionally writes poetry (more book!canon than film!canon but um hello)
does all his own stunts
lived all over and speaks about 23940209384 languages
you know that scene at the end of Fellowship when he’s fighting the Uruk-hai? And one throws a dagger at him and he hits it away with his sword? Yeah, the guy who threw it was supposed to miss, but accidentally threw it directly at Viggo. Who just casually Aragorned and hit it away.
They actually cast Aragorn to play Aragorn
Can I just add a few things?
Would randomly give chocolates to the hobbits
According to John Rhys-Davis (aka Gimli), whenever you have a large cast, one or two actors will naturally become the leaders. Guess who ended up in that role.
Single-handedly convinced cast and crew to camp out to shoot a scene in the sunrise
Once hit a wild rabbit with his car by accident. Promptly stopped his car and went to see if the rabbit was dead, needed a vet or if the only merciful thing to do was to finish killing him. The rabbit was dead. Viggo realized he was hungry. So he took the rabbit, made a fire by the roadside and ate it.
According to cast and crew, sometimes you’d just see him disappear in the middle of the night and suddenly he’d come back with fish he’d caught
Had his sword with him at all times. Slept with once.
The best horse rider of the cast, hands down. Rides better than lots of pros, according to a horse trainer. Couldn’t bear to part with his horse at the end of the shooting, so he bough him. The next movie of his also involved horses, and he bought his horse in that one, too.
Knows how to survive in the wild. I’m not kidding.
Hand-stitched a few things in his costume for an authentic “I live away from civilization” Ranger feel. Also told the weapons department to make him a small bow because “Aragorn lives in the wild, he needs a hunting bow, or he’ll starve to death” – literally nobody else had thought about that. Also requested a small stone to sharpen his sword. Suggested that Aragorn would take Boromir’s arm guards after his death.
Speaking of hand-stitching, once he was touring Japan with a reporter for an article. Walked into a store, took a tshirt, bought it, cut off the print and hand-stitched it into the hat he was wearing. The reporter was going “?????????” the entire time.
Peter Jackson literally sometimes called him Aragorn by accident
• Came up with the tune for the Song of Lúthien that he sings in the Extended Edition.
• Not only was he the best swordsman Bob Anderson trained, prior to filming, he had absolutely no training WHATSOEVER.
• The fight on Weathertop was the first thing he filmed as Aragorn, with like a couple weeks of training, and he did in wonderfully.
• He and Sean Bean basically became brothers on the set, very much like how their characters came to consider each other brothers.
• He made friends with the stunt crew—who were almost entirely native Maori—by head butting them. It became so popular that it spawned the head-butting greeting between Balin and Dwalin in The Hobbit.
He grew so attached to his horse that he ended up adopting him and bringing him home to his ranch.
This is a social story, what many autistics in the 80s were “trained” to think to appear neurotypical at all costs
Some background information you need to know:
Social stories are still used today but back in the 80s it was like social stories on steroids. They were drilled into our heads, act “normal” at all costs. I know my parents were particularly keen on this. I went from special Education classes where they knew I was autistic and visually impaired, when we moved my parents took advantage of that to mainstream me and not pass my health information along to the new school. Social stories became all that more important. Must. Act. Normal. At. All. Costs.
Being autistic was treated like it was something to be ashamed of and that is a thought pattern that is hard to break to this day.
Growing up in the 80s and 90s with autism was very much the “quiet hands movement”, (https://juststimming.wordpress.com/2011/10/05/quiet-hands/ good article!) which is to say we were silenced and punished if we stimmed. (For allistic people The term “stimming” is short for self-stimulatory behavior and is sometimes also called “stereotypic” behavior. In a person with autism, stimming usually refers to specific movements that include hand- flapping, rocking, spinning, pen clicking, desk tapping, beatboxing or repetition of words and phrases amongst others.“)
Stimming can mean we are happy or stressed or angry or any other array of emotions. Stimming is not a universal trait and no too autistic people stim the same.
It was also the land of Applied Behaviour Analysis (refered to as ABA for the duration of this post) where any stimming or “undesired behaviours” were squashed out of you as quickly as possible and replaced with “desired behaviours”.
Every night before bed, we would go through the story of how to behave like a neurotypical person. Social stories began before I could read, at first they were pictures. Pictures of faces and facial expressions I couldn’t see or understand.
Location: lunchroom table, 4 of your friends or at least people who are semi-nice to you and a new girl. You know you should follow the steps to make the new kid not think you’re “weird”.
Get your lunch, resist slapping your hands down the rows of cubbies.
Sit down
Don’t rock
Don’t hum or tap your fingers
Get out your lunch
Don’t rock
Look at the new girl, in the eyes even though it feels bad
Smile
Don’t rock
Don’t pull your sandwich apart, normal people take bites
Don’t rock
Join in the conversation, even though they are all talking at once and bouncing between different subjects and when you finally think of something to say, it was 3 subjects ago and you feel dumb
Don’t squint because the overhead lights feel like you are standing too close to the sun.
Don’t rock
Also, don’t cover your ears because the lights buzz and the clock is loud (normal people don’t hear it) and everyone is talking at once and it’s loud and people’s lunch wrappers are crinkling.
Don’t wrinkle your nose at all the smells of everyone’s lunches mixed together with the smell of pinesol cleaner
Don’t rock
Don’t talk in big words you just learned, that isn’t normal, they don’t like that
Don’t touch your clothes, quiet hands, sit on them. Don’t touch the table or walls or other people.
Don’t look relieved that lunch is over.
Go to the library instead of outside. It’s safe there because there is no one but the librarian and she is nice and doesn’t talk or make me talk.
So that is a social story, that is what runs through my head at every interaction with another person. The situation changes but it runs through my head. Still.
It’s exhausting, continuous stream of orders. But I’ve been trained like a dog that was whacked with a newspaper when it did something bad that acting “normal” is paramount to anything else.
And it is virtually impossible to crack, let alone break.
All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king.
knitting in the dark 