Month: October 2020

Alex Morgan surprised the world when she announced her move to Tottenham Hotspur in the FA Women’s Super League last month, the latest in a series of American players to go abroad this year. The 31-year-old has been out of action for over a year following injuries and the birth of her child, Charlie, in May. But Morgan is as hungry as ever to get back onto the field, training with her new team and watching from the sidelines with her daughter as she works to return to full fitness. As the 2021 Tokyo Olympics quickly approach, Morgan hopes to be ready to help the USWNT challenge for a fifth gold medal and her stint in London is the perfect place for the striker to get consistent playing time.

We caught up with the American star last week on behalf of GoGo squeeZ to discuss her recent move across the pond, the future of the NWSL and why she believes in the importance of youth sports participation in the U.S.

Your decision to play for Tottenham Hotspur in the FA Women’s Super League was obviously a big deal among fans and media alike. Why did you feel that now was the right time to make that move in your career?

I had to look at where I could get consistent training and consistent games. Unfortunately, with the NWSL, they had a plan to play for about 4-6 weeks and then shut down until next year, and with me coming back from pregnancy — and it being even more delayed with the Olympics postponed and the pandemic lingering on — it’s been about a year since I last played in a competitive environment. I needed to find a way back to the field and this was the best way to make it happen, knowing that there wasn’t really an avenue to do that in the U.S.

I know you’re getting back to full fitness after having your daughter — congratulations by the way. Where are you on the recovery front and how are you feeling about playing again after more than a year away?

I’m really excited to play. I wouldn’t have really pulled my family away from each other if I didn’t really need to do this for my career, so it is very important for me to get back onto the field and to feel good again, to get my touch back, my speed back and kind of my tactical mindset as well. I think over the last two weeks, my first introduction to team training has been sort of up and down because of little things here and there that have arisen within my body that would be expected after taking almost a year off of playing. So that has delayed things but nonetheless, I’m still really excited to get on the field and I’m doing everything I can to do so.

Recently, we’ve also seen Rose Lavelle, Sam Mewis, Tobin Heath and Christen Press move to England as well. Some people were mixed in their opinions on how this would affect the NWSL with so many of its stars leaving. How do you see these moves impacting the growth of soccer in the U.S. and impacting the USWNT at all?

Well, I think the NWSL is one of the best leagues in the world and I think it is one of the most competitive leagues across the board. I think a lot of the leagues around the world are quite imbalanced, but the NWSL creates more of a level playing field throughout the teams. And I think in the long term, this is not going to negatively affect the growth of soccer in the U.S. The NWSL is now the third league in the U.S. and has obviously lasted much longer than the first two leagues, but even the folding of the first two leagues had too much of a negative effect on the growth of soccer. I feel like in 2012, when we won the Olympics, we didn’t have a league at that moment. Now, I feel like the league is super important in identifying talent and getting Lynn Williams, Jessica McDonald and other players that you wouldn’t have otherwise found without a domestic league.

My hope is that the NWSL has a solid schedule next year, is encouraging players to want to play there and that players feel comfortable playing in the U.S. leading into the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. I think that there’s some things in the U.S. that are really hurting the NWSL and a lot of U.S. sports in general with the handling of the pandemic, but the NWSL is trying to make the most of what they can do and so, I’m really hopeful for the future. And obviously, I will go back to playing the NWSL whether that’s next season or not, my future for soccer is in the U.S. and I want to continue supporting the domestic league.

Let’s talk about this new initiative you are working on with GoGo squeeZ to reimagine youth sports and make them stronger and more inclusive. Why do you think youth sports participation is so important?

I was really fortunate growing up to have parents who encouraged me to play all different sports — I’m a huge advocate of having kids play multiple sports and one of the reasons is to keep it fun and not forget the important parts of being a kid. To create friendships on a team, to really gain these sort of skills in sports that you can’t gain otherwise — and I’m not talking about soccer skills or technical skills, I’m talking about teamwork and leadership and time management and dedicating yourself to something and following through with something. I feel like sports taught me so much of that without me even knowing as a kid.

Partnering with GoGo squeeZ on this is so important to me as well because I have seen firsthand so many kids drop out of sports, because of their parents not being financially able to have them continue or for them to not feel like they belonged anymore because it wasn’t fun or they found other things to take up their time.

One of the underrated tragedies of a loved one dying is not knowing how best to honor them. How do you sum up a whole life in one eulogy or memorial service? And once that’s over, then what? What does the act of remembering require of us?

For Justin Robinson, whose older brother Jordan died young from an aggressive form of cancer, remembering his brother required devoting eight years of his life to an entire self-produced and self-financed documentary, My Brother Jordan. He released it himself, for free, on his unmonetized personal YouTube page at the end of August, because, he says, “It was free to be Jordan’s brother.” My Brother Jordan has since received more than 7 million views, without benefit of distributor or ad campaign.

My Brother Jordan is sort of the ultimate “labor of love.” After various distributors told Justin — for whom film is also a day job, working in the camera department on various productions — that his film was “too personal,” or too narrow in scope for a mass audience, he chose to just put it out into the world rather than change anything. It was more a necessary part of his own process in making sense of it all than something he hoped would make him a famous documentarian.

That My Brother Jordan has become something of a phenomenon all on its own seems to prove that the business world’s predictions of audience taste at best lag behind actual audience taste. Just this month Netflix released Dick Johnson is Dead, another extremely personal documentary directed by a professional camera person about a loved one’s mortality, to widespread acclaim (it’s currently 100% on RottenTomatoes, with some critics calling it their favorite film of the year). To be sure, My Brother Jordan is probably a few degrees more personal than that, but no less an achievement — a 63-minute distillation of eight years, 102 interviews, more than 300 videotapes, and 450+ hours of total footage.

Maybe, paradoxically, the way to achieve true universality is by not skimping on the details. Justin and Jordan, who also have two older brothers, come from a family of home-schooled pastor’s kids, the kind of family that banned the screening of PG-rated movies until the kids were in their teens. It’s a milieu that, as someone who grew up around a fair amount of devoutly religious people myself, frankly has always skeeved me out a bit. But Justin, whose two older brothers are now pastors themselves, spares neither the self-deprecation (at one point he freeze frames the old home movies to diagram “the official home-schooled kid’s haircut”) nor downplays the Jesus talk. It comes off as a person simply being honest about their upbringing, something more directors should strive for.

From a certain perspective, it could be the ideal soft sell, a movie with faith as a theme that doesn’t go in for the usual culture war stuff. Yet even with contacts in the faith-based film community, Justin says the word on the street was that My Brother Jordan didn’t sell hard enough, wasn’t traditionally “uplifting” enough for the “faith-based” film community to rally behind.

It’s good for the world that Justin Robinson didn’t compromise his vision. If My Brother Jordan is too personal, too narrow, shares too much… well that’s kind of the whole point, isn’t it? Without that, it wouldn’t make sense that Justin had done all this. He goes damn near to the ends of the Earth just to give his brother the posthumous gift of a fully-formed remembrance. You don’t have to know the Robinsons personally to be touched by the gesture.

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Can you run through how long it took and everything you went through to put this whole project together?

My oldest two brothers, we’re not as tight as me and Jordan were, the age difference or whatever, but for whatever reason [Jordan and I] were like scientifically melded. Growing up, we did everything together. It was never the thing where the older brother hung out with the older friends and the younger brother was kicked out. We all shared the same friends. Then he moved away his freshman year of college to go play college basketball. When we came and visited him and he got cancer, 13 months later he died. And he had been dying for months and so it wasn’t necessarily a surprise, but… I mean, every death is original. No one dies in the same way and no one has the same family dynamics.

As a person who wanted to tell stories, this was the ultimate story because it was not just his story, it’s also my story. And when he died, I knew that I was going to tell his story in some way. I was pretty young and green in my filmmaking knowledge then, but I knew enough to shoot interviews and so it took me four years later after he died when I was a senior in college to start out on this journey.

I started in Florida, which was kind of the golden years of our relationship, but I started there and interviewed almost 35 or something people within a week. All my friends, coaches — just trying to gather as much information like a detective. And then a few years went by and then I started to feel like it was time to dig in and take it to the finish line, which I knew would be a year. So I started saying no to things. I’m freelance, I work in a camera department on movies here and there, and saying no to jobs as a freelancer, that’s not the greatest thing to do for money.

But I knew that it was the time so I started digitizing all these tapes and then really got invested. I ended up just driving to all these other states that we used to live, because we moved around a lot, and just started doing everything. I think someone asked me a question the other day, like, “What was the budget? What was the production company?” I’m like, I put gas in the car and drove to the story. There was no one behind me, I just kept doing it and kept at it.

The quantity was the biggest thing. There was so much footage and we had to go get the medical documents and get those released. There’s 1200 pages just of medical documents. I had to spend time going over those just to get it right chronologically to write the documentary’s voiceover. “Okay, this is July, in 2007. This is August and this surgery happened here…” It was massive. I lived in Dallas for almost two years of the main portion I was doing this and people would say, “How’s Dallas?” And I’m like, “I don’t know, I haven’t really left my apartment.”

And then how long between final edit and release?

I locked the edit in August 30th, 2018. So it took two years to get the color and the music. Everything was a journey, peaks and valleys of people coming in and working for free. And then my basketball coach who was close to me and Jordan, he randomly died of a heart attack, as you see in the documentary. That was a new challenge. He would have been the first person to see the full documentary. That kind of accelerated things, like “I got to finish this before someone else dies.” So much life had happened. I had out lived my brother. I’m older than he ever was by a long shot now, so I don’t know, it was just something that I was doing for myself. And then I wanted to screen it with friends, but the COVID hit, and that kind of became an ally in a sense. Because it’s a very personal watch. If you were seeing that publicly, maybe the world might not have been more open to the empathetic film that it is. So in a way with the year, I think everybody kind of needed a good cry in some way. I tried to kind of shop it to see if I could get it on streaming services anywhere and then people said, “It’s too personal, it’s not universal and you might have to cut some stuff. You might need to cut your coach out of it.” And I’m like, “No, I’m not going to do that.”

I assume you had basically finished it and then approached people to see about releasing it?

Yeah. I don’t have an agent or someone to sell it, but it was basically just colleagues in the industry that had connections or could’ve passed it along. And so January 8th, almost on the eight year mark of start to finish, I finished it. I started messaging around all year. And then COVID hit, which made it weirder for people to even take time to watch. And [they’d say things like] “I don’t know, it’s too personal. Maybe if you really knew him, it’ll be really great, but since you don’t know him, he’s not famous…” Like the classic things that you kind of assume going in.

There was one possible thing with maybe Vudu, they were like, “Maybe Vudu would buy it.” But I knew in the back of my mind that on August 19th it would mark 12 years of Jordan being dead, so I said internally, I’m just going to release it myself for free. Because, I mean, if you watch a movie and it’s $2, there’s going to be a pause of like, “Is it worth it?” Or is it worth the 20 seconds of typing in your debit card? I wanted to do it for free to eliminate everything so that all you have to do is click. And my YouTube channel is not monetized, so there are no ads. It won’t pause your viewing experience. It was free for me to be Jordan’s brother and it’s not free to make this, but I wanted it to be as free as possible in every sense of the word, financially and just available.

What’s the response been like now? I mean, you’ve had a lot of organic traffic to it now.

I mean, it was definitely surprising. It’s been [a big thing for] people that know me and people that knew Jordan for a long time because they had known [about this movie] for eight years. So I knew I had that momentum going for me. In the first two weeks, I felt like every person I’ve ever met shared it. And for the first time ever I had asked people like, “Hey, if you really dig this, it really does help to share it.” And it had like 20,000 views on YouTube and I thought, “Wow, this is kind of what I thought it would be like at the end of its life,” because I don’t have a big YouTube or Vimeo following.

And then it was about that 20,000 mark, it was like a Monday, then the next two days, it was just 40,000 more, 50,000 more, then a hundred thousand. People were leaving comments saying, “It’s on my algorithm. It just showed up on my page,” in New Zealand and Australia and the Philippines. And then people started sending me screenshots of TikTok videos, and it was like a bunch of 15-year-old girls crying watching the doc. It was like a reaction hashtag thing. That was new to me. Then it blew up on TikTok, so it was the wave of TikTok and the wave of the YouTube algorithm and then people were sharing it and it was on Reddit apparently. Then it just kept going. So at this point, it’s slowed down a little bit…and now it’s about to hit 7 million views. So it’s above and beyond my wildest dreams. But at the same time, it’s all cherries on top because I made it for me and the people that knew him. If you, a stranger, can see it and enjoy it, that’s awesome. It’s made for everybody, but I started making it for me.

Has anybody reached out that wants to distribute it now that they can see that there is a viewing market for it?

There was one group of people that talked about it and I haven’t heard. And they were just really interested when it hit a million views. I think that sets off big alarm bells for lots of people. So I don’t know if that’s going to lead to anything and then I’ve gotten a few emails from smaller things that sound shady, but nothing legitimate.

When you talk about doing it for yourself and when you finished it, it seems to me like that would be kind of like catharsis, like a chapter closed. Is it hard to have to talk about it all over again now that people want to interview you about it or you have to pitch it to someone who wants to distribute it or whatever, now that you’ve put like a decade into it already?

For me, not at all. A lot of the interview process was me kind of sharing my own heart. I drove a thousand miles to talk about him. I know there’s not a big vocabulary for death or grief. There’s like, “I’m sorry for your loss. I know how you feel. He lost the battle to cancer.” No one really expands on that. So for me, I was like, hey, I’m an open book. Jordan was the greatest person I’ve ever met. Not just because he was my brother, but I’m here to talk about him. I think he’s one of those people that falls into the genre of just the very simple, kind person that does something for no credit. And so in some ways, I wanted to give him the credit, but also tattoo this whole thing into my memory, [so that it will be there even] if I get old or forgetful one day. These were the glory days of my life thus far. So for me now, it’s not hard at all. It’s a joy to talk about him and to share.

So you guys were pastor’s kids. Are all your brothers pastors now?

My two oldest brothers are both pastors in Florida and then my dad is a retired Southern Baptist pastor.

And you’re still working in film production?

Not enough, but yeah. I’m not a pastor.

Do you think of this as a Christian movie?

No.

Do you think there’s…

No, just short answer, no. There was a pretty big acquaintance, colleague, friend who’s big in the Christian film world as a camera assistant or a camera operator. I’ve worked on a lot of the faith-based films, like some of the Christian movies and the ending [of My Brother Jordan] was not happy enough. There was a rebuttal that it was not ready to come out of the oven, so to speak. It was an interesting perspective from that genre and that audience because that’s the genre I grew up with and still see from time to time. I don’t picture it as a Christian movie. I have a handful of feature scripts I’ve written that fall within a backdrop of Southern religious culture that deal with that because a lot of those cultures are very cinematic. I don’t know if you grew up in church, but if you’ve ever heard of a country Baptist church potluck where they have a meal after the service, I mean, that’s some of the most cinematic things that you could ever photograph on film in a weird way. The things I grew up with are very interesting to me cinematically, but none of those I would consider Christian films. Even if I said it was a Christian film, someone would say, “No, it’s not,” or “It’s not Christian enough.” Even if God made a cameo, I think they’d probably say it’s not.

I was wondering that because I could see someone wanting to sell it as a Christian film. Do you think it’s because it doesn’t sell Christianity enough, is that why it wouldn’t work as that?

I think that was the gist of the email I got, was that it needs to sell it at the end, but I’m not a salesman — I’m a filmmaker. So yeah, I’m sure that that would be the goal for a lot of people, but the story is the story and the ending is never what people want — usually in life or in movies. I’m kind of okay with the endings that happen in life, as tragic as this one is.

Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

Yesterday, Ice Cube was on the receiving end of some backlash after it was revealed that he helped the Trump administration work on its Black outreach program, The Platinum Plan. He shared some responses to the backlash yesterday, and since then, he has spoken more on the topic.

One fan tweeted at the rapper last night, “My Hip-Hop HERO @icecube is working with the Darkside. I haven’t felt this low since Kobe passed. HEARTBREAKING. Cube, I’m not sure you understand how much we value your voice. And when we see you ‘jumping the shark,’ it KILLS us. Especially in 2020.” He replied, “Every side is the Darkside for us here in America. They’re all the same until something changes for us. They all lie and they all cheat but we can’t afford not to negotiate with whoever is in power or our condition in this country will never change. Our justice is bipartisan.”

He continued on the same thread this morning, tweeting, “Black progress is a bipartisan issue. When we created the Contract With Black America we excepted to talk to both sides of the isle. Talking truth to power is part of the process.” In response to a Washington Post tweet that reads, “Ice Cube once rapped about arresting Trump. Now he’s advising the president on policy plans,” Ice Cube wrote, “I will advise anybody on the planet who has the power to help Black Americans close the enormous wealth gap.”

Another Twitter user shared a screenshot of a 2016 tweet in which Ice Cube wrote, “I will never endorse a mothaf*cka like Donald Trump! EVER!!!” Ice Cube replied simply, “I haven’t endorsed anybody.”

Revisit our recent look at how Ice Cube and other rappers have long been shining a light on police brutality here.

Since the death of Pop Smoke, the late rapper has gotten on tracks with a lot of huge hip-hop names. His posthumous album, Shoot For The Stars, Aim For The Moon, was filled with collaborations, and now Smoke’s roster of musical friends has expanded every more as Lil Wayne hops on a new remix of “Iced Out Audemars.”

A preview of the collaboration surfaced earlier this month, and now the full track has dropped. On Wayne’s new verse (which replaces Dafi Woo’s), he begins with a shout out to Smoke, rapping, “Iced out Audemars / Wait, I told you so / Blacked out all my cars / Rest in peace to Poppy / Here today, we gone tomorrow.”

It can’t be understated how many guest rappers appear on Shoot For The Stars, Aim For The Moon, as the tracklist features Quavo, Lil Baby, DaBaby, Swae Lee, Future, 50 Cent, Roddy Ricch, Tyga, Jamie Foxx, Gunna, Young Thug, A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie, and others. That star power has helped give the album star power, as it is still hovering near the top of the Billboard 200 chart.

Listen to the “Iced Out Audemars” remix above.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

In the final years of his life, Tom Petty had dreams of releasing the ultimate version of Wildflowers, his beloved 1994 triple-platinum-selling album.

If you love the record, you probably know the legend: Petty had spent nearly two years making Wildflowers, accumulating enough songs for a double album. But he was persuaded instead to put out a (still expansive) 15-track single LP instead. It’s hard to fault this decision — Wildflowers spawned hits like “You Wreck Me,” “You Don’t Know How It Feels,” and “It’s Good To Be King,” and stands with Full Moon Fever and Damn The Torpedoes as one of Petty’s most popular records. But he knew he had a wealth of strong material that few people had ever heard. So, starting in 2013, Petty began plotting a reimagined reissue of Wildflowers outfitted with the tracks that got left behind.

This collection, called All The Rest, was almost released in the mid-2010s. But Petty held it back. He wanted to keep working on it. Occasionally, however, he would proudly play an unreleased track for a friend or family member. He knew he was sitting on an artistic goldmine.

Petty kept on thinking about Wildflowers during his final tour in 2017, even contemplating a special series of shows in which he would perform the album in its entirety with guest singers. But these plans were not meant to be. One week after the tour concluded in September, Petty died. He was 66.

Fortunately, not even Petty’s passing could hold back Wildflowers. A new box set out Friday, Wildflowers & All The Rest, includes the original album and the 10-song adjunct record that Petty envisioned, plus dozens of good-to-excellent outtakes, acoustic demos, and live tracks.

For fans of Wildflowers, the box set is an essential addition to the record’s legacy. When the sessions began in the summer of 1992 with producer Rick Rubin, Petty had recently turned 40 and was in the midst of a career renaissance sparked by the success of Full Moon Fever. His commercial stature afforded him the time and space, free of record-label meddling, to make exactly the kind of album he wanted. But while he was riding high professionally, he was dealing with fractured relationships in his personal life. His marriage to his first wife, Jane, was falling apart, and he was tiring off the oft-contentious dynamic with long-time Heartbreakers drummer Stan Lynch.

The album then was both a passion project and a refuge for Petty, a place where escape his problems while also examining them via his most personal collection of songs. This “hangout” aspect of Wildflowers’ creation also carries over to the experience of listening to it — if Full Moon Fever is all about the songs, then Wildflowers is all about the vibe (and also many remarkable songs). It’s the kind of album you want to live inside of.

For the people who helped Petty to make it, Wildflowers remains part of the architecture of their own lives. I spoke with three people who were intimately involved in the album’s creation: Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench of The Heartbreakers, and producer/engineer George Drakoulias. This is their story.

Benmont Tench (Heartbreakers keyboardist): I can talk about this stuff all day. I followed Mudcrutch around because I thought they were a great band. I was a fan when I joined. When that band broke up, I was gutted, because I wanted to keep playing with Tom and Mike. Then Tom liked the band I put together for some demos — we had Mike and Stan and Ron [Blair]. It’s like, “Hallelujah, I get to play again with Tom and Mike.” I come from just a fan standpoint and wanting to evangelize the band and to evangelize Tom.

Mike Campbell (Heartbreakers guitarist, Wildflowers co-producer): It seemed like there was a mutual respect and love there. It was just magic and a miracle, really, that it happened. We met each other and we ran down a dream together for 50 years.

George Drakoulias (Wildflowers consultant): Tom would do this old Southern football coach voice: “I’m out here looking for starters. Y’all want to start, you come onto my team.” I don’t want to sit here and say everybody knew it was going to be the most special record of his career. But no matter what was going on, everybody was paying attention. No one was phoning it in. Everybody was focused on the work.

MC: I know a lot of fans tell me that’s their favorite record. So it must be something that connects with people.

In mid-1992, Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers were in a unique position — for the first time in years, they had nothing planned. In the prior three years, Petty had put out two of his most successful albums, 1989’s Full Moon Fever and 1991’s Into The Great Wide Open. After several rounds of tours, he was now settling into an open-ended period when he would have the time and freedom to write and record songs on his own schedule. It would prove to be a pivotal time in Petty’s life and career, starting with his partnership with producer Rick Rubin, who shepherded the remainder of his ’90s output. Sessions for what became Wildflowers commenced in July, but Petty and his band were already tinkering with songs before that.

BT: We recorded four or five of these songs with Stan and Howie [Epstein] at Mike’s house before I knew anything about Rick. I think we recorded versions of “It’s Good To Be King” and “Honey Bee” and “Time to Move On,” at least. I don’t think Tom thought we got the best versions.

MC: It started out like all our records start out. I would get a phone call and Tom would say, “Do you got any music?” I said, “Yeah, I’ll send you over something.” And he said, “I’ve got like three or four songs.” Great, let’s go record them and see what they sound like. And then we had Rick.

BT: I think I knew Rick before Tom and Mike. I was working with Rick on a record, maybe Wandering Spirit with Mick Jagger. And at the end of the day we were outside in the parking lot and Rick said, “Hey, I’m going to produce Tom.” I was like, “That’s a great idea.” Because from the get-go, I loved working with Rick.

MC: He brought a new energy to it and we had to learn to trust his instincts along with ours.

In the early ’90s, Rick Rubin was still most famous for working with rap and metal groups like Run-DMC, Beastie Boys, and Slayer. But he was pivoting to rootsier legacy acts, including Johnny Cash on the first “American” album. Rubin became a Petty acolyte after Full Moon Fever, and then met the singer-songwriter on a cross-country flight from New York City to Los Angeles. Before starting Wildflowers, he enlisted his old Def Jam associate George Drakoulias as a “consultant” on the project. At the time, Drakoulias was himself a successful producer, having steered two multi-platinum albums by The Black Crowes and The Jayhawks’ critically acclaimed breakthrough, Hollywood Town Hall. The sound of the Drakoulias’ records — organic, handmade, live in the studio — points to the aesthetic of Wildflowers.

GD: I think Rick was a little bit intimidated by Tom in the beginning. He met him first on an airplane, but when we went to go talk to him about the record, he dragged me along to Tom’s house in Encino where he was living at the time. It’s funny, back then, 25 years or whatever, I think I was less intimidated, and I would say anything.

BT: I’m telling you, he worked me so hard the first day on Hollywood Town Hall. I came home and I went, “I’m never working with this guy again.”

GD: I mean, Ben is on every track. I think we did everything in two days. I explained to him my philosophy: Take the band as far as it can go and then bring someone in with talent to finish it.

BT: I finished the second day and I was like, give me more, because it’s so good. That Jayhawks record was just so good.

GD: There was a lot of activity going on, because Tom was going to do a greatest hits record and he was going to figure out if he wanted this one to be a solo record. And he was looking for drummers. I think the idea for the record was to keep it handmade, you know what I mean?

BT: I was never not in the fold, so to speak, but they wanted to try a different rhythm section. I don’t know why — maybe just to be fresh, maybe because there was a sound that Tom had in his head or just he thought he’d stir it up. Because at that point we’d been together for at least 20 years. We went to the studio day one and he broke out some songs and there were some drummers that came in and out and we played with them and they were great. Some of them were friends of mine that played just beautifully. But when Steve Ferrone showed up, who I didn’t know yet — Mike did — everybody’s eyes just lit up. That’s the cat.

MC: We had five or six things, and it became clear to us that this was not really a Heartbreakers record. So it became a solo record at that point. It was very casual and it was all about the songs.

BT: We made the record with Ferrone never intending for Stan to leave the band. Just like Full Moon Fever, most of it is Phil Jones on the drums, but Stan played “Free Fallin’” 200 different times on the road.

In terms of sound and process, Wildflowers is a decisive departure from the two albums that precede it. Working with Jeff Lynne, Petty relied heavily on overdubs for Full Moon Fever and Into The Great Wide Open. But for Wildflowers, he wanted the musicians to play together again in the studio. That meant relying on most of the Heartbreakers, even if this was technically a “solo” record.

MC: I love the Jeff Lynne records and I would make one with him tomorrow if he wanted to. Such a wonderful guy to work with. And his process is so together and fast and creative. But we did two records with him.

GD: Wildflowers is more of an acoustic-based record. Even though Full Moon Fever was an acoustic-based record, those acoustics are stacked and layered. It’s more like a sound than an individual playing. It becomes a wash, which is great. You know, I love Full Moon Fever.

BT: I’m not on much on the previous two albums. I’m on “The Apartment Song” on Full Moon Fever, and I play a little bit on Into the Great Wide Open. But that was mostly Tom and Mike and Stan and Jeff. And I think Howie and I came in in different places where we were needed because all those guys could play piano and if they have a good hook, they’re going to do it.

MC: We just thought in the back of our minds, it’d be nice to play live again in the studio, and go back to that approach of how we started. And then Rick Rubin showed up and he liked doing records that way, too.

BT: If you build a track [with overdubs], something is static and cannot change. At a certain point, there is not going to be a surprise. Nobody’s going to make an accident that’s better than the idea they had in the first place. I love the conversational aspect of music. I really love it.

One of Tom Petty’s gifts as a songwriter was the ability to come up with fully formed songs extemporaneously. The greatest example of this is the title track from Wildflowers, which he wrote off the top of his head while recording the demo at home. The song spoke to Petty’s frayed state of mind over his failing marriage, and his desire to finally break free. But Petty made up other really good songs, too.

BT: He’d just do it in soundchecks. Or he’d do it while we were recording between other songs.

MC: He used to walk up to the mic and maybe sing a line, and then we would go, “That sounds interesting.” And then he’d sing the next line, which had this really clever rhyme. And he would just channel it right on the spot. I’ve never really seen anybody do that quite like that. It was a special talent he had.

BT: If you’re a songwriter, that can happen. It’s just that it isn’t usually “Wildflowers.”

MC: “Girl On LSD” [a beloved Wildflowers era B-side] is like that. I don’t think he even had any of the lyrics. He just kind of saw it in his head and made it up on the spot.

The process of recording Wildflowers followed a pattern: Petty would bring a song in to the band, and if the room responded well the musicians would instinctively add their own parts. This was especially true of Campbell and Tench, his best and most loyal sidemen, who are such a crucial part of his sound that they might as well be his right and left hands. When it came to the song “Wildflowers,” Tench hit upon a stunning piano lick that perfectly accented Petty’s vocal at the end of the track. It’s one of the album’s best moments.

BT: We played “Wildflowers” and I knew I wanted to play that lick at the end of the song. I practiced because when Steve came in, he’s a really precise guy. You can time him with a stopwatch. My whole life I’ve played music with different people with the kind of feel that Stan plays. Steve comes in, I’m like, holy moly, I got to find a way to play so that it fits with this guy’s feel. I was home practicing with a metronome, because I loved this part and I wanted to play it really well. I think it’s from my lifelong obsession with banjo, because that piano figure is almost like a banjo figure.

GD: They’re just a fantastic American rock band. This might be a case where the sum is as equal as the parts. Because each guy has gone on to do great things. Mike’s written amazing songs and had hits with Don Henley. And Ben’s played on thousands of records and brings his thing. As a band, they’re incredible.

BT: We would just play. If he wrote the song on a keyboard, he showed me the way he wrote it and asked me to pretty much to play that. But in general, with everybody, he’d just see what you’re going to do because that’s why you have a band.

MC: I don’t want to compare Tom and I to them per se, but it’s a very Keith and Mick relationship. I could bring music to him that he might not think of because typically when he wrote on his own, it would be jangly country strumming, which is great. But sometimes I would bring him tracks with a different approach, bluesy or whatever. I think he liked that I had a well of different music. At the same time, we had the exact same influences. So we were kindred spirits, musically. As soon as we met, it’s like, wow, you’re just like me.

BT: We were all on the same page from the get-go, from the time I saw Mudcrutch. I think McCartney said that when Ringo came in, they were like, “Holy shit!” Because when the right people play together, it’s not work. It happens.

MC: It’s mostly intuition. I think that’s why Tom liked me. I could sit down with him as he showed me the song and start playing along, not knowing where the song was going necessarily, but just intuitively filling in the right holes, making him sound better and following the direction he wanted to go. That was just a natural thing that we always had. That’s why 95 percent of the guitar parts on the records are off the top of my head. They’re not orchestrated are written out at the beginning. We never really worked that way. You just go in the moment and something happens and we always seemed to agree on what helped a song.

GD: An average Tom song, once the band got a hold of it, would sound like the best song of an average band. It was like all of a sudden it would exceed your expectations. They would bring their taste and their skill to it. It was a blessing and a curse, in a way.

One pretty good Tom Petty song that is elevated to excellence by the band on Wildflowers is “A Higher Place.” The track ends with a majestic guitar solo by Campbell, who made a habit of wrapping up Tom Petty songs with majestic solos — everything from “American Girl” to “Even The Losers” to “Don’t Come Around Here No More” to “Runnin’ Down A Dream” to “Mary Jane’s Last Dance.”

MC: I think that comes from the music I grew up on, with The Beatles, The Stones, The Beach Boys, The Kinks, The Animals. I’ve just loved the way those guitars worked within the song. It wasn’t about ripping a solo or showing off how fast you could play. It was coming up with something that really complimented the song and help the voice along. That’s the way I try to play. But I also liked to play out. I like Mike Bloomfield a lot and Clapton and Hendrix, but a lot of Heartbreakers songs aren’t in that mold. But occasionally there would be a spot at the end where there’s no vocal. You can go anywhere you want. So in those few places, I would explore a little more of the lead guitar stuff, but within a song I like to just fit in like George Harrison.

BT: I don’t know if you call it telepathy, but Michael Campbell and I, there’s an interlocking thing. Or just giving each other room, and knowing when somebody is going to play. It’s a great joy in my life to do that with Mike.

MC: We found a way instinctively to compliment each other with our tones and our parts. Tom would show us a song, and Benmont would do what came to his mind, I would hear that, and see what came to my mind. He might hear, “Oh, Mike’s going there” and he’ll answer. We were able to find a tonality between my guitar and his keyboards that made a sound. It was kind of unique to us.

As producer, Rick Rubin stayed focused on the essentials — keeping the band tight and no-frills, and encouraging Petty to come up with the best material.

BT: On some songs, he’d kind of program Steve. He’d be like, no, don’t play any cymbals. Can you go, boom, boom, flat here?

MC: I wrote the music for “You Wreck Me” at home. I was probably thinking about Bo Diddley, something upbeat and exuberant feeling. I got the chorus and structure together and gave it to Tom, on a tape with a bunch of other ideas. About a week later, he said, “I liked that, we could do something with that.” Later I said, “Have you done anything with it?” He said, “Well, you know, I don’t know, it’s in a drawer somewhere” and it got forgotten.

Later, Rick asked, “Do you have any songs?” And I said, I gave him one, but he didn’t ever do anything with it. I played it for Rick and he goes, “That’s great, I’ll go tell him to do it again.” So Rick presented it to him again and he acted like he didn’t even remember it. But he did write to it. And it did come out really good.

BT: At the end of “It’s Good To Be King,” I started playing this repetitive figure and after like six bars or something I moved off of it. Rick went, “No, no, no, you play that figure all the way to the end.” That’s the reason I love Rick.

GD: We used to love “It’s Good To Be King.” We just thought the lyrics were so much fun, and we’d quote them. “To be there in velvet” was just a great line. A lot of the lyrics became part of the lexicon of what we were doing in studio. “I’ll be the boy in the corduroy pants.”

The sessions for Wildflowers stretched from the summer of 1992 to the spring of 1994, a nearly two-year process that was far longer than the typical Tom Petty record. He wanted to take his time to make the best possible album, but he also loved being in the studio. The clubhouse-like environment of Wildflowers was a refuge during a difficult time.

MC: The thing to remember is there’s a lot of songs, but they were split over two years.

GD: We spent two years to make it sound like it was recorded in a weekend. That’s a skill.

BT: There wasn’t any pressure. I don’t think that there was a tour lined up, and I never heard about a hard finish date. It took 18 months, but we weren’t in there all that time.

GD: I think we took four days to overdub one bass part. No one was standing over anybody’s shoulder going, “You got to deliver this thing now.”

BT: We would record a bunch of songs he had and take a break and then we’d get the call to come back a month or however much later. We’d go in and Tom would have the songs. He and Mike might’ve had a notion about how to do them, but most of the time he just showed to us on guitar and on piano and we’d play it.

GD: It was kind of a problem-free zone. I mean, you can tell some of the lyrics are pretty heavy-duty and hard, but we didn’t sit there and analyze them. There were no group hugs, really. It’s fitting that we would stop the sessions on Thursday nights to watch Seinfeld. What was their thing? “No hugging, no learning.”

MC: We would record for a week, maybe two, and then maybe take a month off and just wait for new songs to come in. So in a way it was prolific, but in a way, it wasn’t. There was time to wait for the songs.

BT: The length of time wasn’t because we were slaving over it and couldn’t get the takes right. Everything came really quickly. It was a lot of fun to make the record.

GD: It became like a frat house, in a good way. Or a clubhouse. I like to call them lifestyle records — you get up in the morning and you take your shower and have a little breakfast. Then you head over to the studio, discuss what you’re going. And that was what your day was going to be.

MC: Some of these songs were in the early writing phase, and then you would live with them for a while and he’d come back and go. “I don’t like that, I got something better.” And we just kept refining it.

GD: “Don’t Fade On Me,” that was — not a difficult one — but a lot of work and care went into it. It was recorded several times in several set-ups. It was finally done at Mike’s house, just Tom and Mike playing to each other acoustically.

BT: Then Ringo shows up. I knew Ringo a little, but to have him come play with us, that was so cool. He was in The Beatles, which means he was a Beatle-quality drummer.

GD: There’s stuff like “Cabin Down Below” that was a lot of fun. We’d dance in the control room.

MC: On “You Wreck Me,” he couldn’t get the chorus quite right. And he just kept coming in and changing it and waiting for a better idea to come in. He was like that — he wouldn’t always settle with the first thing. He would live with it and improve on it as time went on.

GD: One of my favorite things is Tom’s sense of humor and just his joyful way of living. He would laugh and his whole body, literally from his toes, would just get into it. If I told him a good joke it was as good as writing a good song.

BT: There are parts of it I don’t remember recording. They sent me a copy of a test pressing and “Crawling Back To You” came on. It’s like, I’m having an out of body experience. I don’t remember recording that! And you know what? I was stone-colds sober for five years when we started the record and I’m 32 years now. It wasn’t that I was drug-addled. We were working hard. Slowly it came back, but we recorded so many songs.

So many songs, in fact, that Wildflowers was originally conceived as a double album, But Petty was persuaded by his record label, Warner Bros., to pare back to to a single 15-song record.

MC: I have no regrets about that at all. I liked the original record the way it came out and I knew eventually the other songs we’d find a home. And I thought it was probably more effective than putting out a double album at that time on a new label. It was probably a better statement just to take the best stuff and stick it on one record.

BT: I don’t think anybody made Tom do it because nobody ever made Tom do anything. It’s a hell of a lot of songs as a single CD. As a single CD, it’s probably as long as a double LP and maybe as long as The White Album. Would you have wanted “Something Could Happen” to get lost in the shuffle? I wouldn’t. I remember cutting that. We cut it with Stan and Howie, and then I think we cut it again with Steve. The one that’s on the [box set] is the one we cut with Stan and Howie, and I just loved it when Tom showed it to me. I loved the groove. I didn’t really understand why it was just put aside. At the time I got the impression that they didn’t think that we got a good take of it. But I listen to it now and I’m like, “I knew it was a good take.” I’m so glad that that song’s seeing the light of day.

In the process of assembling the new box set with producer Ryan Ulyate and Petty’s daughter Adria, the musicians rediscovered scores of songs that they hadn’t heard in more than 25 years.

BT: There’s so much stuff. Jane or Adria found some demos. Ryan would go, “Do you remember recording this?” And he’d play us something that we hadn’t heard since 1993 or ’94 and it’d be like, “Well, damn, that’s just beautiful. Yeah. I remember that. That’s the one that sounds like the Buffalo Springfield.” It was just a beautiful sense of discovery.

MC: I like “Something Could Happen,” I think that’s really good, and “Hope You Never,” which might have been released before on something. [It came out originally on 1996’s She’s The One—ed.] There’s an alternate take of “Wake Up Time,” that’s really good. And an alternate take of “Don’t Fade On Me” that I really like.

BT: There was a song that I had never heard before, “Harry Green,” which is a really beautiful song.

MC: I remember hearing it, but I think it was probably in a batch of other songs and we passed over that to work on the other songs. So it was very vague to me. But you know, it’s basically just Tom and a guitar and a story. He was really good at that.

BT: I don’t remember hearing “There Goes Angela.” Mike does, but I don’t remember hearing it at all because I would’ve been going, “Hey, we got to cut that!” We never cut it with the band.

GD: When I heard that, I was like, “Oh my God, Tom. Really? Why were you hiding that?”

MC: I remember “Leave Virginia Alone” well. It’s a very Tom song — his rhythm, his style on the guitar, and it’s very identifiable. It’s the way he writes. I know it was shipped off to Rod Stewart at one point and I can’t really speak for Tom, but maybe he figured if he was going to ship it out, that he would hold our version back till later.

The Wildflowers box set arrives just over three years after Petty’s passing. Listening to these songs for those closest to him can still be difficult.

MC: There were times when I would just say, “I really can’t do this right now,” because I couldn’t handle hearing his voice and knowing he wasn’t there. So I dealt with that, but we got through it.

GD: The acoustic demos on the box set are really fantastic. They’re really beautiful and intimate. Now it just makes me miss him more.

MC: It’s exciting to hear the stuff, that it’s good, that we can now put out and share with everybody. And I enjoyed going through the archives and hearing everything. I love the record.

BT: Mostly, it’s really, really happy. I love this band, we were so good. It was such a joy to play in The Heartbreakers and to play with Tom. Wildflowers was an extension of that.

All Heartbreakers fans are wondering: Will this band ever play together again? Nobody can say either way for now. But Campbell and Tench both say they still consider themselves members of Tom Petty’s band.

MC: I’m the co-captain. And I love those guys. I’m still in the band. Tom’s just not there.

BT: We’re family. It’s blood. You keep a band together that long because you love each other. We might get really mad at each other, but I don’t think anybody ever hit anybody. Oh, maybe Ron and Stan one time in a hotel hallway in 1977. But mad as anybody might be, nobody could go anywhere because it’s family.

MC: We’re still grieving. We have to grow through our grief to a point where we can all be in the same room and try to make music without our captain there. That’s going to take a while. It just doesn’t feel right yet to me.

BT: He was a really gifted man, and he was funny as hell. And he was a great rock ‘n’ roller. Everything he sang was real. Pretty cool for a kid from Gainesville, Florida.

Wildflowers & All The Rest is out Friday via Warner Records. Get it here.

Tom Petty is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

It’s nice to think that by this time next year, there will be a vaccine for COVID-19 and we’ll be able to go back to concerts and sporting events without concern for health. Nice, and possibly unrealistic. But no matter what happens with the virus — whether we find a cure and even if we do, if anything can afford it — at least our other national crisis will be resolved: Halloween Kills is coming out in 2021, “vaccine or no vaccine.” Phew (?).

Jason Blum told Forbes that he has no intention of delaying the sequel to 2018’s Halloween again (it was originally scheduled to come out on October 16, but due to the pandemic, it was pushed back to October 2021). “If this is still going on next Halloween? No, we’re not holding it,” the Blumhouse producer said. “Halloween Kills is coming out next October come hell or high water, vaccine or no vaccine. It is coming out.” I’ll admit that it’s extremely weird not seeing horror movies in a theater around Halloween (so much popcorn is not being dropped on the floor in a comical fashion), but at least there’s still drive-ins. And, as Blum explained, there’s always premium video-on-demand:

“I think PVOD will ultimately be great for a movie-going. I think that after there’s a vaccine, and it’s safe to go back to movie theaters again, you’ll see a lot more movies and movie theaters playing for a lot shorter time. Those things are connected because there’ll be room for more. The theatrical audience is always complaining that all there is in the movie theaters is horror movies and tentpoles. I think that’s all going to change. Honestly, for those of us who make movies and love movies, I think that’s great.”

Michael Myers: an early mask-wearing warrior.

The next Blumhouse title, The Craft: Legacy, comes out on October 28.

(Via Forbes)

This week’s planned second POTUS debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden got cancelled when Trump decided that it wasn’t worth his time to do the event virtually. Since Trump walked away from the event, ABC decided to hand that empty air time to Biden for a town hall, and not to be outdone, Trump wanted his own town hall, too. NBC stepped up, but they did it in an arguably shady way: by scheduling Trump for the same time slot as Biden: Thursday night at 8:00pm. People weren’t pleased, especially with NBC’s history of looking the other way when it comes to Trump behavior.

It’s also not possible for viewers to watch both events at once to stay informed (unless they want to do it in stereo). Don Lemon let all of his disgust fly to that effect on Wednesday night. “This not inform the electorate,” he declared. “It’s a complete ratings ploy… you should be embarrassed, NBC.”

Lemon continued to stress how silly (and strange, as well as antagonistic) it is for both events to happen simultaneously, and he argued that the equal-time rule would be easily satisfied by staggering these events on different nights or even simply a different time slot. “You don’t have to do it, at the same time, and then divide the country further by having them choose,” Lemon argued. “The whole point of it was to bring them together to have a debate.”

Instead, NBC decided to schedule their event (with Trump doing a town hall outside in Florida) after ABC had already booked Biden (who will do his thing in Philadelphia). Brian Stelter joined Lemon to spread word from what he’s heard from NBC employees: they aren’t happy, and they’re worried that this looks like “collusion.” Whatever the case, these clashing town halls will be an utter mess on Thursday night.

Horror is a very useful genre. No, really. Even the campiest B-productions, the gorefests, and early aughts parodies have something to teach us. About the root causes of our insomnia. About childhood traumas we have yet to fully explore. About our internal moral compass and the very specific level of inhumane treatment we can watch others suffer through. It can also introduce us to new fears and phobias we had no clue were lurking under our hollow shell of functioning adulthood. Mundane things, like crowds or clowns, basements, and bathtubs. Horror knows what frightens us, sometimes better than we know ourselves which is why, during this holiest of months for fans of the genre, we’re digging into one of the most chilling tropes that seems to pop up in every on-screen fright fest: the sit-down dinner scene.

Horror has understood how bizarrely masochistic our human ritual of eating together is, long before anyone was using their self-diagnosis of social anxiety to skip out on family get-togethers and Friendsgivings. Inescapable exercises in formal etiquette, the consumption of a meal someone else has prepared, the life-draining amount of small-talk necessary to survive – the dinner table truly is The Hunger Games of horror, a gladiator-esque arena where people live and die by how well they play the game.

What that game is depends mainly on who you’re dining with. Is it your significant other’s parents? Then the game is making a good first impression. Is it your extended family? Then the game is making it out without wading into a political debate with your insufferable uncle. There are all kinds of games we play at the dinner table, performances we put on so that we can fill a basic need without cutting to the meat of our psychological hang-ups. We all inherently understand how to behave during these social ceremonies, which is why watching them play out in horror movies is so damn unsettling.

In Get Out, Jordan Peele prefers staging some of the film’s most unnerving scenes around the dinner table. Whether that’s a parental interrogation over afternoon tea or a more formal verbal sparring match at the family’s formal place-setting, Peele channels the eerie calm before the storm over a five-course meal. Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) has been welcomed into the Armitage family too easily, something that discomforts both him and the audience, but his combative interaction with Rose’s brother Jeremy (Caleb Landry Jones) builds the tension to intolerable heights. As they debate MMA fighting techniques and Jeremy creepily appreciates Chris’s build and “genetic makeup,” Peele makes sure to linger on the rest of the family’s reactions, how they fidget and glance and squirm as these two men go at it. Chris is held hostage by a construct of civility throughout the film – he has plenty of uncomfortable interactions that would warrant his escape but he stays out of politeness and an ingrained sense of courtesy he’s been taught to extend to white people – and that inability to leave is magnified in this scene, slowly turning what should be an awkwardly-average rite of passage into something more sinister. It’s that ability to take something so routine and make it this bloodcurdling event that elevates other psychological horror films too.

Ari Aster has mastered it, first with his familial exercise in grief around the dinner table in Hereditary. Free of pyrotechnics and seances, the fairly normal meal reeks of the dysfunction and demonic possession to come. Annie (Toni Collette) quietly seethes, picking at her food while her husband and son, Peter (Alex Wolff) look on nervously. Peter can’t ignore the tension which leads to Annie delivering a terrifying monologue. Possessed by rage and bitterness, she blames her son for her daughter’s death and dredges up hurtful memories, hurling them at both men as her face contorts in unnatural ways. It’s another way horror often uses the communal act to tease hidden truths and buried secrets and Aster makes us writhe in our seats with the hair-raising dread he elicits in this scene.

And if the psychology of sitting down with strangers and family members to a nice meal isn’t your particular brand of nightmare fuel, don’t worry: the dinner scene serves a dual purpose. Because as unsettling as the social dynamics are, what’s physically on the table often adds another element to this edible hellscape.

The most obviously horrific items on the menu fit the cannibalistic diet. In Ridley Scott’s Hannibal, the film ends with a stomach-churning scene that uses a bit of dark humor and a certain part of the human anatomy to play up the repulsiveness of its villain’s eating habits. While Julianne Moore’s Clarice sits paralyzed at the dinner table, Anthony Hopkins’ serial killer carefully cuts into the brain of Paul Krendler (Ray Liotta), peeling back the organ’s sack and carving a piece of his frontal lobe – the part of the brain that controls manners, ironically enough – before frying it and feeding it to the guy. Scott makes sure to engage the senses in this scene, forcing us to listen to the sawing of bone, the squish of organic material being manipulated, and the sizzle of Paul’s brain matter in the pan. And Lecter almost normalizes the whole interaction, describing it’s appetizing scent and unique taste in such a bleakly funny way that you’re left confused as to whether the whole meal is comedically surreal or disturbingly wrong.

Tobe Hooper was able to do something similar with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, though his pound of human flesh came with more screams as Sally is surrounded by her psychotic dinner mates who prefer her fingers as appetizers. Park Chan-wook used his neo-noir action thriller Oldboy as a piece of subversive commentary on the evils of junk food with his live-octopus eating scene. Squiggling tentacles and lifeless appendages are nauseating on their own, but when served on a platter with serial killers, deranged animals, and revenge-driven ex-convicts, they leave an even more upsetting aftertaste.

But the horror in a good dinner scene doesn’t have to rely on threatening undertones or revolting delicacies. Sometimes, a meal can turn into a nightmare with a good bait-and-switch.

It Chapter Two did this fairly well when it gathered the old crew from Derry together for a Chinese dinner decades after they’d defeated Pennywise and forgotten the horrors of their small-town upbringing. The group reminisces on happier times, laughing at Bill Hader’s wise-cracking Richie and ribbing Ben’s recent weight-loss, ignoring the looming specter in the room, the supernatural reason why they can’t seem to recall important details about their shared pasts. It’s that sinister mystery that eventually corrupts the very food they eat, turning their joy into something dark and twisted before we have enough time to realize it.

And Aster perfected this illusion of safety when it comes to terrifying dinner scenes with his most recent work, Midsommar. Whether you view the film as an allegory about travel and colonialism, or a metaphor for toxic relationships and the corrosive nature of grief, the movie’s many feasts, all held outdoors in a blindingly bright atmosphere surrounded by beauty and nature, are some of the darkest moments of this thriller. Aster manages to use Pinterest-worthy place settings and cottage-core cult costumes to evoke a sense of calm and purity. The people have strange customs, but they’re welcoming and innocent-seeming. The food isn’t great but it’s being offered freely. It isn’t until we learn of a demented romance ritual that involves placing pubic hair in pie and menstrual blood in a glass of juice that we understand the darkness lurking in this idyllic setting.

Eating, the act of consuming something that used to be alive, is a naturally barbaric thing. We dress it up with silverware and cocktails and social rituals to make it less so. Why these kinds of scenes, whether they take place around a family’s dinner table or a cult’s outdoor feast, succeed in traumatizing us feels less concrete. Maybe it’s a combination of social anxieties and squeamish stomachs. Maybe it’s the constraint of that specific setting, the tension laying ripe on the placemat, the unspeakable truths traded over a meal when there’s nothing else to distract us from reality. Who knows? What is clear is that horror knows, and it’s starting to perfect the art of turning dinnertime into our worst nightmare.

Demi Lovato was one of the performers at the Billboard Music Awards last night, and for her time on stage, she delivered the live debut of “Commander In Chief,” a scathing criticism of Donald Trump. If Lovato was trying to make a point with her performance, the full message may not have gotten across, as some think that she was partially censored.

At the end of Lovato’s performance, the word “VOTE” appeared in giant text on a screen behind her. That wasn’t seen during the NBC broadcast, though, as the final shot was instead a close-up of Lovato. TMZ cites sources who say “the network pulled the plug on the ‘VOTE’ message because the song itself was a slam on Trump and the ‘VOTE’ message was a call to vote against him,” also noting that “show producers allegedly felt the word was too divisive and cut it from the final product.”

This left fans upset and taking to Twitter to ask questions like, “Hey @nbc any reasonable explanation on why you censored Demi Lovato’s performance of Commander in Chief on #BBMAS2020?”

Meanwhile, another user had a positive takeaway from the situation, writing, “you did it, demi. you got their attention, they censored your 4 words message, they are disturbed. people are having conversation. your purpose is fulfilled. i’m proud of you @ddlovato.”

Lovato also premiered a new video for the song last night, so check that out below, followed by more reactions to the alleged censorship.

Timothée Chalamet was director Denis Villeneuve’s “first and only choice” to play Paul Atreides in Dune, the big-budget science-fiction film that also stars Zendaya, Oscar Isaac, and sandworms. I’m sure Timmy and the CGI worms got along splendidly, but the Call Me By Your Name actor really hit it off with Harley-loving surfer bro Jason Momoa.

“I felt like Timothée was deeply seduced — or maybe not seduced, but I just felt it was like a kid being with older brothers,” Villeneuve said in a new GQ cover story. “He was younger, he was the little one on set, and everybody loved him. There’s a scene in the movie where Timothée runs into the arms of Jason Momoa, and Jason grabs him like a puppy and lifts him into the air like he was a feather. And that’s real! They really loved each other. It was very beautiful to see this young man being influenced by these people he admires.” Is anyone else picturing this scene from Dirty Dancing?

Saoirse Ronan also had some glowing things to say about her hella tight Lady Bird and Little Women co-star. After Chalamet told GQ that she would never judge him for “the Coachella of it all,” referring to his occasional love of being in the spotlight and hanging out with musicians, the four-time Oscar nominee responded with a laugh, “I’ve been to Coachella; I just never got photographed at Coachella… We’ve weirdly gone through this together for the last few years. We’ve both become more accessible. But he’s had one sort of attention — I do feel like boys get it on a whole other level. I know that ultimately what he wants is to be good at his job. And that will always steer him on the right path.”

Outside of Dune, which is scheduled to come out on October 1, 2021, Timmy will also appear in Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch (no release date) and James Mangold’s Bob Dylan movie, where he plays the former-Robert Zimmerman. There is a zero percent chance he hasn’t made a playlist with “Lay Lady Lay” on it to impress a girl.

(Via GQ)