Stone on SCARFACE
When Scarface Was In Trouble: Oliver Stone Looks Back in An Exclusive Excerpt From Chasing the Light
By Oliver Stone
Before Scarface launched a boatload of T-shirts, posters, memes, and dubious imitations of Al Pacino’s cocainized Tony Montana, the film, written by Oliver Stone, was just a movie in trouble.
In this excerpt from his new memoir Chasing the Light: Writing, Directing, and Surviving Platoon, Midnight Express, Scarface, Salvador, and The Movie Game, Oliver Stone recalls how he found himself caught between Pacino, Scarface director Brian De Palma, and Scarface producer Marty Bregman after a rough-cut screening of the movie that would soon become beloved as a classic of ’80s excess. Everything would work out, of course—in just a few years, Oliver Stone won the Academy Award for Best Director for Platoon, which also won Best Picture. Pacino and Bregman continued their long professional collaboration with Sea of Love and another De Palma film, Carlito’s Way.
De Palma’s next film after Scarface was Body Double, another very ’80s, freakishly watchable film that wasn’t an immediate success but has earned a ravenous cult following. And soon after he made another Al Capone-indebted gangster epic (one that got more initial respect than Scarface), The Untouchables. Stone eventually reunited with Pacino, this time as a director, in the adrenalized but surprisingly affectionate Any Given Sunday, another Miami-set tale of machismo, greed, and desperation.
Here’s Oliver Stone, recalling that fateful screening.
Back To The Horror
Why Low-Budget Horror Is Thriving This Summer
These dirt-cheap productions are making money, finding eager audiences, and garnering critical praise during a largely dead box-office season.
by DAVID SIMS
The gory thrills of Becky make the film solid drive-in theater viewing. QUIVER
Only during a global pandemic would the biggest film in the U.S. be not a superhero blockbuster or a Fast and the Furious sequel, but a low-budget horror movie about a teenage boy in the suburbs doing battle with a witch living next door. Thanks to the coronavirus disrupting the usual summer release schedule, The Wretched now belongs to a tiny group of films that have topped the U.S. box office for five weekends in a row, including Titanic and Avatar. Yes, those massive movies made a little more money (The Wretched pulled in a healthy $1.7 million at drive-in theaters) and faced slightly tougher competition. But it’s still surreal to acknowledge that, for the entire month of May, cinemagoers were most drawn to a weird little film with a naked woman wearing a deer skull on its poster.
And yet, most of the other films that have conquered the box office this summer are also dirt-cheap horror efforts: Becky, which features the comedy star Kevin James as a murderous neo-Nazi; Followed, a haunted-house thriller that plays out entirely on a computer screen; and, most recently, Relic, an Australian horror drama that was well received at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Under normal circumstances, these films would’ve followed a similar release pattern—a limited U.S. theatrical run combined with instant availability to rent online. Now they’re practically the only new films available for viewing at the country’s outdoor screens, with regular theaters shut down by the pandemic. It turns out that inexpensive horror flicks, which have been part of the Hollywood ecosystem as long as cinema has existed, are thriving as a result of a sparse film landscape and a largely quarantined moviegoing populace.
The Real Burning Bed
“The Burning Bed” Recalls the Case That Changed How Law Enforcement Treats Domestic Violence
By Anna Boots
For thirteen years, Francine Hughes’s husband, James (Mickey) Hughes, beat her routinely. Something as small as the inflection of a word would set him off: he’d pin her down in a chair and pummel her. They divorced in 1971, but, later that same year, he moved back in. “She did try to get away,” her son, James Hughes, remembers in “The Burning Bed,” a new short documentary from Retro Report. “But he would also tell her, ‘There is nowhere you can go, bitch, that I won’t find you.’ ”
One night, in 1977, Mickey subjected Hughes to a particularly humiliating beating. “Smashing food in the kitchen, dumping out the garbage, rubbing it into my hair, hitting me,” Hughes recalled in a television interview, years later. “I thought, I’m never coming back, never, and then I thought, Because there won’t be anything to come back to. That’s when I decided I would burn everything.” When Mickey fell asleep, drunk, that night, Hughes doused his bed in gasoline, lit it on fire, packed her four children into her car, and drove away as flames engulfed the house. Hughes was then charged with the murder of her ex-husband.
Hughes’s story has been told before—the new “Burning Bed” documentary borrows its title from the journalist Faith McNulty’s 1980 book about the Hugheses and from the 1984 TV-movie adaptation, starring Farrah Fawcett. The documentary emphasizes how groundbreaking Hughes’s case was. Lee Atkinson, who was an assistant prosecutor in her case, says that, at the time, police officers would not arrest someone for a misdemeanor unless they saw the crime committed. For Hughes, this policy meant that the police came to her house repeatedly and did not arrest Mickey. “Does she have bruises? Yes. Does she look like she’s been abused? Yes. The police will take a report, but they wouldn’t make an arrest,” he says. At a time when the criminal-justice system failed to deal with domestic violence because—as an “Evening News” broadcast put it—“traditionally, wife-beating has been considered a family affair,” Hughes’s case initiated a sea change, forcing a long-suppressed conversation about domestic violence in America.
Alexandrian Glass
Where Did Rome’s Famous ‘Alexandrian’ Glass Come From
By Ross Pomeroy
Two thousand years ago, the Roman Empire was cranking out glassware unsurpassed in intricacy, beauty, or design, with skill and efficiency that wouldn’t be topped until the advent of modern industry in the 18th century. Large production operations scattered across the empire combined sand and nitrate in kilns reaching 1100 degrees Fahrenheit, creating giant gobs of glass that were then cooled and distributed in huge hunks far and wide. Glassworkers would then purchase this solid glass, re-melt it, and craft it into vessels and other wares.
Various types of glass were manufactured, but the most prized may have been Alexandrian glass, described by one ancient writer as “colourless or transparent, as closely as possible resembling rock crystal.” Glassmakers achieved this feat by oxidizing the sand’s iron from blue Fe2+ to pale Fe3+ by adding antimony oxide. The glass offered a blank slate for decoration and was sought after for serving vessels. The glass’ name hints that it hailed from Egypt when it was a Roman province (the capital was Alexandria), but its precise origin has remained elusive to historians.
The Silver Swan
Homicide at Rough Point
BY PETER LANCE
In the fall of 1966, billionaire Doris Duke killed a close confidant in tony Newport, Rhode Island. Local police ruled the incident “an unfortunate accident.” Half a century later, compelling evidence suggests that the mercurial, vindictive tobacco heiress got away with murder.
On the last full day of his life—October 6, 1966—Eduardo Tirella flew into Newport, Rhode Island, the storied summer colony of the country’s old money families. He was met at the airport by Doris Duke, the richest woman in America, and they drove to Rough Point, her 10-acre estate on Bellevue Avenue—Newport’s Millionaire’s Row. Eddie, as friends knew Tirella, had just told intimates that after a decade as the artistic curator and designer of Duke’s estates in New Jersey, Bel Air, Honolulu, and Newport, he was planning to sever his professional ties with her, for good. Now, it was time to let his patron and constant companion know, face-to-face.
The handsome Tirella, a war hero and Renaissance man, had just finished advising on a new Tony Curtis film, Don’t Make Waves, and was amping up his Hollywood career. Anxious to move to the West Coast full-time, he intended to load his effects into a rented Dodge station wagon, drop them at his family’s home in New Jersey, and then fly back to California. But nobody left Doris Duke without consequences. Notoriously jealous and known for her violent temper, she’d once stabbed her common-law husband with a butcher knife when he’d angered her. And Tirella, who was gay, had been warned by his lover and friends that Duke might overreact to his pending departure.
Late the next afternoon, Tirella and Duke had a heated argument, overheard by the estate’s staff. Moments later, the pair got into the station wagon with Tirella behind the wheel and headed off for an appointment. Approaching the property’s immense iron gates, Eduardo stopped the car and got out to unlock the chain that held them closed.
Suddenly, Duke slid into the driver’s seat, released the parking brake, shifted into drive, and hit the accelerator. The two-ton wagon sped toward Tirella, burst through the gates, smashed a fence across the street, and crashed into a tree. As Duke sat stunned behind the wheel, Tirella’s body lay crushed under the rear axle.
With massive injuries to his lungs, spinal cord, and brain, he died instantly. Ninety-six hours later, with no inquest—and basing their account of the crash entirely on the word of Duke—Newport police chief Joseph A. Radice declared the death accidental. Case closed.
Campfires On The Sun
Closest pictures of sun ever taken reveal mysterious ‘campfires’
The closest-ever images taken of the sun have revealed mini solar flares called “campfires” dotted across its surface.
The images were captured last month by the Solar Orbiter, a European Space Agency (ESA) probe designed and built in the UK. Scientists say the pictures could shed light on the mysterious process that means the outer layer of the star is so much hotter than the layers below.
The spacecraft came within 47 million miles of the sun’s surface and passed between the orbits of Venus and Mercury.
David Berghmans from the Royal Observatory of Belgium said: “When the first images came the first thought was this is not possible, they cannot be that good, it was really much better than what we dared to hope for.”
How The Plague Begat The Essay
Montaigne Fled the Plague, and Found Himself
As disease and war ravaged the nation, he left town and invented the essay.
By Robert Zaretsky
In the summer of 1585, the mayor of Bordeaux learned, from the comfort of his nearby chateau, that the bubonic plague had burst upon his city. Those who could were fleeing, he was told, while those who could not were “dying like flies.” What to do? His term in office, on the one hand, was nearly over and his last official duty was to attend the transition ceremony. On the other hand, perhaps his duty was with those still inside the city walls.
Both hands on the reins of his horse, the mayor rode to the city’s edge and wrote to the municipal council to ask whether his life was worth a transition ceremony. He did not seem to receive a reply and returned to his chateau. By the time the plague subsided, more than 14,000 people — about a third of the city’s population — had died horrible deaths. As for the former mayor, he returned to a far more pressing task: the writing of essays.
The mayor was Michel de Montaigne. Known today as the author of the “Essays,” the classic of self-reflection and self-knowing, Montaigne was better perhaps known in his own lifetime as a man of politics. Yet his efforts — quite literally, his essais — at politics and his essais at portraying himself are not unrelated. In both cases, Montaigne probed the limits of what he could do in the world and what he could know about himself.
Bordeaux was a hot spot for both bacteriological and theological plagues in the late 1500s. The wars of religion, a series of eight distinct conflicts between Catholics and Protestants — replete with massacres on both sides — had ravaged France between 1562 and 1598. As both mayor and diplomat, Montaigne tried several times to broker accords between the two sides. He was known (and despised) by both sides as a politique: someone who, for the sake of all, tried to find common ground in a land savaged by zealotry.
LKJ Wins PEN Pinter Prize
from Brixton Blog
Top literature prize for Linton Kwesi Johnson
Linton Kwesi Johnson has been awarded this year’s PEN Pinter Prize.
Judges praised his work, saying: “Few post-war figures have been as unwaveringly committed to political expression in their work.”
The local poet and reggae artist will receive the award in a digital ceremony co-hosted by the British Library on 12 October.
The prize was established in 2009 by the charity English PEN, which defends freedom of expression and celebrates literature, in memory of the Nobel Laureate playwright Harold Pinter.
Camping Goes Viral
‘Everyone wants to get outside’: boom in camping as Americans escape after months at home
by Miranda Bryant in NEW YORK
The pandemic has put many people off hotels and planes – but socially distanced outdoors holidays are enjoying a surge
The coronavirus has sparked a surge in RV or motorhome purchasing and rental, and enthusiastic camping and “glamping” bookings as Americans attempt to escape months of quarantine for a summer break while avoiding flights and keeping their distance.
The pandemic, which continues to rage across the US, has made many traditional holiday activities either impossible or unappealing, putting millions off flying abroad, going to crowded resort hotels, group holidays or cruises. But experts say the apparent lower risk of transmission in the open is making outdoor holidays in demand – and attracting new fans.
Editing Mitochondria
Gene-editing discovery could point the way toward a ‘holy grail’: cures for mitochondrial diseases
Biologist David Liu was in the middle of his morning commute to the Broad Institute two summers ago when he opened the email. We just discovered a new toxin made by bacteria, explained the note from a researcher Liu had never spoken to, and it “might be useful for something you guys do.”
Intrigued, Liu phoned the sender, biologist Joseph Mougous of the University of Washington, and it quickly became clear that the bacterial toxin had a talent that was indeed useful for what Liu does: invent ways to edit genes. On Wednesday, they and their colleagues reported in Nature that they had turned the toxin into the world’s first editor of genes in cell organelles called mitochondria.
If all goes well, the discovery could provide a way to study and, one day, cure a long list of rare but devastating inherited diseases resulting from genetic mutations in the cell’s power plant.
No Mask, No Yogurt
Yuma man jailed for showing gun over yogurt shop’s mask rule
By: Associated Press
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YUMA, Ariz. (AP) — A Yuma man who was ejected from a frozen yogurt shop for not wearing a mask is facing charges for pulling out a gun in response.
Yuma County Sheriff’s officials say the incident happened around 6:15 p.m. Thursday when 64-year-old Steven Covington entered Tiki Hut Frozen Yogurt. According to the staff, Covington was agitated when told to wear a face covering and gloves provided by the store.
Covington then started dispensing frozen yogurt into his bare hands. He was escorted out but returned with a handgun. He fled but was located later by deputies.
Metroid Sonifying Space
Space Is the Place: How Metroid’s Music Captures the Essence of Space
By Dia Lacina
When the Challenger exploded, my parents tried to hide it from me. They did okay for a few days. But it was inevitable. They knew how fixated I was on space, how I wanted to be an astronaut, and they didn’t want to take that away from me.
Turns out you have to be a die-hard nerd, a low-key jock, AND have led an unimpeachable boring public life to be an astronaut. I talk too much shit for NASA.
But space still rules. Planets are cool.
One of the ways we “see” space and celestial phenomena is through sound. Radio waves turned into data, meaning applied to it. You can also get sick album art for sick albums out of it.
I think a lot about how we sonify space. How we communicate emptiness, fullness, and the truly “alien.” Mapping sound to soundless vacuum to express cosmic immensity, like Priscilla Snow does in Voyageur. There’s Kubrick’s usage of classic music—expressive, expansive, cost-effective. Or James Horner’s James Horner-ness. For every vision of space, there is a score. Jack de Quidt has managed no less than three, distinctvisions for the Milky Way.
How we turn the space of space into place, pressing our apprehensions and exhilarations onto the dreams of life off-world is fascinating. Militant or gentle. Banal fantasy. A corporate nightmare. Or the unquestioning delight of “discovery.”
We are made of stars, we live among them. It’s fitting that our relationships to the heavens should be as complicated and diverse as the ones to ourselves.
Real Life Ride
NJ woman survives harrowing ride through Passaic’s drainage system during flood
A Newark woman went for a mile-long ride under the city of Passaic during Monday’s flash flood. She survived the ordeal after being “shot out” into the Passaic River, a result authorities referred to as “miraculous.”
Nathalia Bruno, 24 and a driver for DoorDash, was in Passaic on Monday afternoon when she attempted to drive through deep water near High Street and Benson Avenue, said Passaic Fire Chief Patrick Trentacost.
A powerful storm ripped through New Jersey on Monday afternoon, leaving thousands of homes without power and cars trapped across the northern part of the state.
Scream Inside Your Heart
Reopened Theme Parks Ban Screaming on Roller Coasters. Riders Are Howling.
Japan’s park recommendations aim to prevent the spread of Covid-19, but thrill seekers find keeping quiet isn’t easy
By River Davis
TOKYO—At the Fuji-Q Highland amusement park recently, the chief executive and his corporate boss took a ride on the park’s No. 1 attraction, the Fujiyama roller coaster, and plunged 230 feet without so much as a peep.
A video showed the two executives, both clad in masks, sternly riding the coaster in complete silence. It ended with a message: “Please scream inside your heart.”
Sedan Gone
No Luxury Sedan Is Safe From the Scourge of the SUV
With Bentley ending production of its flagship Mulsanne, is the category in danger of dying off for good?
BY ALEX LAUER
As Jerry Seinfeld said, a classic ‘60s Rolls-Royce is not so much a car as “a nice living room with wheels.”
In the latter part of the 20th century and into the 21st, however, the marque and its contemporaries all but perfected the car part, too. For much of our modern era, the epitome of style, opulence, exclusivity and leg-room in automobiles has been embodied in the four-door touring sedans made by Rolls, Bentley, Maybach and the like.
Last week, the Bentley Mulsanne, a standard bearer for these $100K-plus land yachts, ended production after over a decade in the marque’s lineup. “It is the last of the great coachbuilt cars. This car is made entirely by hand,” Peter Guest, Bentley product line director, said in a video marking the end of production. Dave Barton, a production colleague, added, “There will never be another of its kind.”
Morricone Gone
Oscar-winning Italian composer Ennio Morricone dies at 91
By DAVID COLKER
Oscar-winning film composer Ennio Morricone, who came to prominence with the Italian western “A Fistful of Dollars” and went on to write some of the most celebrated movie scores of all time, has died. He was 91.
Morricone’s longtime lawyer, Giorgio Assumma, told the Associated Press that the composer died early Monday in a Rome hospital of complications following a fall, in which he broke a leg.
A native of the Italian capital, Morricone composed music for more than 500 films and television shows in a career that spanned more than 50 years. At first he was closely associated with “A Fistful of Dollars” director Sergio Leone, for whom he scored six films, including “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” and “Once Upon a Time in America.” Established in his own right, Morricone turned out classic scores for films such as “Days of Heaven,” “Bugsy,” “Cinema Paradiso,” “The Untouchables,” “La Cage aux Folles” and “Battle of Algiers.”
A favorite of critics, directors and other composers, Morricone’s score to the 1986 film “The Mission” was voted best film score of all time in a 2012 Variety poll. On his sixth nomination, he finally won a competitive Oscar, in 2016, for his score for Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight.” The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had awarded Morricone an honorary Oscar in 2007.
3BlackDot @ NewsFronts
3BlackDot Announces 2 New Shows at NewFronts Debut
The production studio behind the film Queen & Slim also specializes in connecting brands with gaming influencers
By Scott Nover
Gaming took center stage at the 2020 Digital Content NewFronts today.
The entertainment studio claims to do a little bit of everything: producing feature films like the 2019 crime drama Queen & Slim, web series featuring YouTube stars and selling merchandise. And through brand and product integrations, they want to connect advertisers to their “hard-to-reach” audience.
At NewFronts, the company announced two new original series: Alpha Betas, an animated show in partnership with Starburns Industries, which produced the first two seasons of Cartoon Network’s Rick and Morty; and Party Chat, a scripted comedy, they described as the gaming analogue to the FX fantasy football-focused series The League.
Naturally, both series feature influencers in the gaming space—3BlackDot’s niche.
The company also bragged about its vertical integration.
“We own the ecosystem,” Dana Pirkle, vp, talent at 3BlackDot, said in the presentation. “We craft the content, we own the distribution and we deliver the monetization—all of it managed, directed and executed from within our network at a global scale.”
Happy 4th
The Demise of Porkopolis
Hot dog mystery: Why can’t you find Kahn’s anymore?
Cincinnati’s favorite hot dog has disappeared
By: John Matarese
Kahn’s hot dogs have been a Cincinnati favorite for generations, even being named the official hot dog of the Cincinnati Reds.
But as we approach the Fourth of July, many grocery shoppers are asking: What happened to them?
Libby Turpin has loved Kahn’s hot dogs since she was a child, but her Kroger Marketplace store in Lebanon, Ohio, has had either empty shelves or other brands in the Kahn’s spot.
“I went out to find some Kahn’s hot dogs or Big Red Smokeys to throw on the grill for the holiday weekend and couldn’t find any,” she said. “I thought maybe I was just a little late to the game.”
She checked another Kroger store, this time in Deerfield Township. No luck.
The shelves had no Kahn’s Wieners, hot dogs or Big Red Smokeys.
“They are on the website, but they do not have them,” she said. “Other friends have checked, too, at other Kroger stores, and no one can find them.”
Kahn’s dogs and wieners are as Cincinnati as Skyline Chili and LaRosa’s Pizza, two brands they actually predate.
The brand, founded by Elias Kahn in 1883, helped give Cincinnati its “Porkopolis” nickname.
The Wisdom of Eno
Death Riches
When a third of Europe’s population was lost, wealth concentrated into tiny groups. Could Covid-19 trigger something similar?
By Eleanor Russell, University of Cambridge and Martin Parker, University of Bristol
This article originally appeared on The Conversation, and is republished under a Creative Commons licence.
In June 1348, people in England began reporting mysterious symptoms. They started off as mild and vague: headaches, aches, and nausea. This was followed by painful black lumps, or buboes, growing in the armpits and groin, which gave the disease its name: bubonic plague. The last stage was a high fever, and then death.
Originating in Central Asia, soldiers and caravans had brought bubonic plague – Yersina pestis, a bacterium carried on fleas that lived on rats – to ports on the Black Sea. The highly commercialised world of the Mediterranean ensured the plague’s swift transfer on merchant ships to Italy, and then across Europe. The Black Death killed between a third and a half of the population of Europe and the Near East.
This huge number of deaths was accompanied by general economic devastation. With a third of the workforce dead, the crops could not be harvested and communities fell apart. One in ten villages in England (and in Tuscany and other regions) were lost and never re-founded. Houses fell into the ground and were covered by grass and earth, leaving only the church behind. If you ever see a church or chapel all alone in a field, you are probably looking at the last remains of one of Europe’s lost villages.
The traumatic experience of the Black Death, which killed perhaps 80% of those who caught it, drove many people to write in an attempt to make sense of what they had lived through. In Aberdeen, John of Fordun, a Scottish chronicler, recorded that:
This sickness befell people everywhere, but especially the middling and lower classes, rarely the great. It generated such horror that children did not dare to visit their dying parents, nor parents their children, but fled for fear of contagion as if from leprosy or a serpent.
These lines could almost have been written today.
They’re Getting Closer
A Mysterious Rhythm Is Coming From Another Galaxy
Astronomers have been tracking fast radio bursts for years, but they’ve never caught one like this before.
by MARINA KOREN
For about four days, the radio waves would arrive at random. Then, for the next 12, nothing.
Then, another four days of haphazard pulses. Followed by another 12 days of silence.
The pattern—the well-defined swings from frenzy to stillness and back again—persisted like clockwork for more than a year.
Dongzi Li, a doctoral student at the University of Toronto, started tracking these signals in 2019. She works on a Canadian-led project, CHIME, that studies astrophysical phenomena called “fast radio bursts.” These invisible flashes, known as FRBs for short, reach Earth from all directions in space. They show up without warning and flash for a few milliseconds, matching the radiance of entire galaxies.
Astronomers don’t know what makes them, only that they can travel for millions, even billions, of years from their sources before reaching us. In the past decade, astronomers managed to detect about 100 of them before they vanished.
Li was monitoring FRBs, tracking their arrival times at a radio telescope in British Columbia, when she noticed that unusual pattern from one FRB source—four days on, 12 days off. (This is, perhaps, the purest definition of radio silence.)
The FRB, known by the bar-code-esque designation 180916.J0158+65, is the first to show this kind of regular cadence. Astronomers traced the source to a spiral galaxy about 500 million light-years away, where it’s still going strong.
Baked Sperm
THC-Infused Semen Can Be A Side Effect Of Frequent Marijuana Use, Study Finds
Many people have had to take a urine test for cannabis, perhaps as a job requirement. Using the popular procedure, marijuana metabolites can in some cases be detected for weeks after a person’s last use. But here’s a question few may have thought to ask: Can THC be detected in semen?
According to a new study by a team of Harvard Medical School researchers, the answer is yes—at least sometimes. In a study of 12 participants who regularly consumed marijuana by inhalation, the researchers were able to detect delta-9 THC, the main psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, in two subjects’ semen samples. And at least one metabolite of THC—what’s left over after the body processes the compound—could be detected in all samples capable of being analyzed. “Two semen samples,” the report says, “had insufficient volume to be analyzed.”
Why the focus on THC in semen? In a word, pregnancy. Men of reproductive age, the study’s authors note, “are the most prevalent consumers of marijuana, with 19.4% of men in the USA reporting use.” A 2018 study cited by the authors found that 16.5 percent of men and 11.5 percent of women reported using marijuana while attempting to conceive.
‘Alpha Betas’ from 3BLACKDOT
Starburns, 3BLACKDOT Team for ‘Alpha Betas’ Starring Top Gamefluencers
3BLACKDOT (3BD), the leading entertainment studio that sits at the intersection of gaming and culture, announced Friday it is developing a new animated comedy series, Alpha Betas, in partnership with the award-winning animation studio Starburns Industries (Rick and Morty, Anomalisa). The half-hour comedy is the first long-scripted television series from the group, who bring a collective audience of over 40 million fans across social media.
Alpha Betas stars leading gaming influencers VanossGaming, BasicallyIDoWrk, I AM WILDCAT and Terroriser. The supporting cast also includes Chris Parnell (Rick and Morty, Saturday Night Live), Paget Brewster (Criminal Minds), Stephanie Beatriz (Brooklyn Nine-Nine), John DiMaggio (Futurama, Adventure Time), Brent Morin (Undateable, Merry Happy Whatever) and more.
Creators Chris Bruno & David Howard Lee (Facebook Watch’s Human Discoveries) will serve as showrunners and executive producers, and Starburns Industries will animate. Regi Cash, James Frey, Zennen Clifton and Mitchell Smith of 3BLACKDOT, along with Starburns’ Casey Rup, James Fino, Simon Ore and Paige Dowling, will also serve as executive producers on the project.
The pilot episode will debut in early 2021.
Always Fun
Hasselhoff Ain’t Got Nothin’ On Jessica
Topless hero Jessica saves family from drowning in Cornwall
‘Not all heroes wear capes, some of them don’t even wear bikini tops’
By Lee Trewhela
A woman from Cornwall is being hailed a hero after saving a family from drowning … while topless.
As one of Jessica Layton’s friends put it, “not all heroes wear capes, some of them don’t even wear bikini tops”.
The 28-year-old from Penzance was sunbathing on naturist beach Pedn Vounder, near Porthcurno, yesterday (Tuesday, June 23) when the drama happened.
She told Cornwall Live: “It was just after 3pm and the tide was coming in. I decided to go for a final dip before going home.”
“I was topless in the sea when I saw two young women struggling to swim near rocks. Another member of the family ran in to help them and she started struggling too.
The COVID Bulge
The Covid 15: Lockdowns Are Lifting, and Our Clothes Don’t Fit
Apparel shoppers upsize after putting on weight in quarantine, boosting sales—and returns; ‘Holy moly, I gained 11 pounds’
By Suzanne Kapner
Amanda Ponzar knew she had gained weight from all her baking while sheltering at home in Alexandria, Va., but she hadn’t realized how much until she ordered shorts online from Walmart Inc.
They had an elastic waist but were still too tight. “You need smaller thighs to wear those,” her 12-year-old son told her.
Invasion Rome
Rome sees scooter invasion as city emerges from lockdown
by Herve Bar, AFP
Electronic scooters are all the rage in Rome after lockdown, especially with the young (AFP Photo/Vincenzo PINTO)
Rome (AFP) – With Rome emerging from lockdown into warm summer days, electric scooters have invaded its streets as the Italian capital joins the debate over urban public transport during the pandemic.
During a recent sunny weekend, thousands of users, mostly young people, slalomed through Rome’s historic centre, on the road leading to the Colosseum and around the famed Piazza Venezia.
Two-wheel scooters were parked on the sidewalks, arranged side by side, or in other cases isolated on street corners, or lying abandoned in the roads.
For some Romans the self-service battery-run scooters, already common in other European cities, ease congestion and help people avoid packed-out public transport in times of pandemic.
For others they are messy, unregulated nuisance.
“Fuck, that’s a man.”
The Man Who Surfs the World’s Biggest Waves Without a Board
Kalani Lattanzi is your favorite surfer’s favorite surfer
Early one morning in October of 2015, a 21-year-old Brazilian surfer named Kalani Lattanzi stepped onto the sand at Praia do Norte in Nazaré, Portugal. Muscular and clad in a tight wetsuit, Lattanzi was indistinguishable from the many surfers who, each day, stood on the beach where he now stood. Like all of his peers, Lattanzi was preparing to enter hallowed water, a devilish patch of ocean revered and feared for producing the world’s biggest swells. Just two years earlier, American surfer Garrett McNamara had been towed by a jet ski into an estimated 100-foot wave in these waters, a world-record ride that cemented Nazaré’s place in the pantheon of surf spots.
Lattanzi, however, planned to employ a different approach to surfing these legendary waves. He was going to paddle into the chaos without a critical piece of equipment: a board.
Later that morning, Australian Ross Clarke-Jones and American Jamie Mitchell, both professional big wave surfers, arrived at the beach. A major swell had descended on Praia do Norte and the two men were eager to get into the water before any other surfers arrived. As they headed out into the surf, Clarke-Jones was stunned to discover that they were not alone.
“The sun was rising and I saw this like, what appeared to be someone in the water swimming,” says Clarke-Jones in Kalani: Gift from Heaven, a short film documenting Lattanzi’s life and exploits in Nazaré. “Is that a seal, or is that a dolphin, or is it a shark? Fuck, that’s a man.”
Joel Schumacher Gone
Joel Schumacher, Director of Batman Films and ‘Lost Boys,’ Dies at 80
By Carmel Dagan
Joel Schumacher, costume designer-turned-director of films including “St. Elmo’s Fire,” “The Lost Boys” and “Falling Down,” as well as two “Batman” films, died in New York City on Monday morning after a year-long battle with cancer. He was 80.
Schumacher brought his fashion background to directing a run of stylish films throughout the 1980s and 1990s that were not always critically acclaimed, but continue to be well-loved by audiences for capturing the feel of the era.
Schumacher was handed the reins of the “Batman” franchise when Tim Burton exited Warner Bros.’ Caped Crusader series after two enormously successful films. The first movie by Schumacher, “Batman Forever,” starring Val Kilmer, Tommy Lee Jones, Jim Carrey and Nicole Kidman, grossed more than $300 million worldwide.
Schumacher’s second and last film in the franchise was 1997’s “Batman and Robin,” with George Clooney as Batman and Arnold Schwarzenegger as villain Mr. Freeze. For “Batman Forever,” the openly gay Schumacher introduced nipples to the costumes worn by Batman and Robin, leaning into the longstanding latent homoeroticism between the two characters. (In 2006, Clooney told Barbara Walters that he had played Batman as gay.)