Month: January 2017

Happy Birthday: James Cromwell

[on the Black Panthers movement of the 1960s] The goal of the government was to get all the leaders of the Black Panther Party in jail so that they could be killed systematically through prison violence, and that way they could stop what was a very powerful and evolving movement. I don’t think we would have the kind of prison population now and what happens in this country with the gangs if the Panthers had been allowed to continue what they decided to do, which was basically empower black communities to take back their self-control and reestablish the dignity of being a black person in this country

 

Happy Birthday: Rosamund Pike

[on David Fincher’s suggestion that she use Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy as a model for Amy Dunne in Gone Girl (2014)] I ordered old copies of the Vanity Fair in which she appeared on the cover. I scoured the internet for any footage of her or, even better, any interviews or recordings which captured her voice. And I realized that David had basically given me a cipher to study. There are countless photographs of Bessette: gorgeous portraits in Vanity Fair; vibrant, intimate photographs taken of Bessette and Kennedy engrossed in each other at parties; shots of her walking the New York streets, wrapping herself in cashmere as protection against the cold and probably photographers, head down, her long blond hair shielding her face from full view. There are even a fair few shots of her and Kennedy clearly in the midst of blistering rows in Central Park, in the street, but I could find nothing of her in her own words. And I thought, Well, maybe that’s fine. Amy, as she wants to be seen, should be created from outside in. I tried to find a way to own that body language, the self-protective seductiveness, head down, hair falling….I couldn’t really read her face, and so I tried to use that quality. You meet Amy, she smiles, but her eyes are always scanning you, assessing, seeing if you can play the game, surprised and pleased when you score a point, feeling that you might after all be worthwhile. It is not a relaxing way to live.