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Tag: Kiernan Shipka

  • Krysten Ritter & Kiernan Shipka Star in Stone Cold Fox Trailer

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    Vertical Entertainment has released the first Stone Cold Fox trailer, previewing the upcoming action thriller starring Krysten Ritter and Kiernan Shipka.

    “Fox (Kiernan Shipka) breaks out of an abusive commune, but when the queenpin (Krysten Ritter) kidnaps her little sister and sends a crooked cop (Kiefer Sutherland) after her, Fox has no choice but to infiltrate the very place she escaped,” reads the film’s official synopsis.

    Check out the Stone Cold Fox trailer below (watch other trailers):

    What happens in the Stone Cold Fox trailer?

    The trailer, narrated by Kiernan Shipka’s character Fox, recalls the story about how she got into a relationship with a drug queenpin. However, after things go awry, she takes her girlfriend’s money, leading to her and a crooked cop kidnapping her sister, leading to a battle between the two.

    Alongside Ritter and Shipka, Stone Cold Fox also stars Kiefer Sutherland, Jamie Chung, Karen Fukuhara, Mishel Prada, and Cristo Montt. The movie is directed by Sophie Tabet, from a script written by Tabet and Julia Roth. Stephen Braun, Eric B. Fleischman, Chris Abernathy, Jonathan Craven, Tabet, and Roth all serve as producers on the film.

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    Anthony Nash

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  • “Daddy! Mommy! Save Me From the Hell of Living!”: Longlegs

    “Daddy! Mommy! Save Me From the Hell of Living!”: Longlegs

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    As the 90s seem to be taking hold of the box office this summer (with Twister also reanimating as Twisters), it’s only right that someone should take a stab at what amounts to an updated version of The Silence of the Lambs and Seven. That person is none other than the son of Anthony “Norman Bates” Perkins himself, Osgood Perkins (formerly known as “Oz”). And yes, being a child of such a particular kind of actor has undoubtedly influenced Perkins’ overall “spooky” bent in terms of generally opting to make creepy films (some of his previous ones include The Blackcoat’s Daughter, The Girl in the Photographs, I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House and, more commercially, Gretel & Hansel). That in addition to playing “Young Norman Bates” in 1983’s Psycho II. But, obviously, more than anything, the lives and deaths of Perkins’ parents would be enough to inspire him to pursue this genre.

    It was already bad enough that Anthony, his long-closeted father (though, of course, it was an open secret in Hollywood), died of AIDS in 1992 (along with Robert Reed a.k.a. “Mr. Brady”), but then, nine years later, his mother, model/actress Berry Berenson, died in one of the planes that was hijacked and crashed into the World Trade Center. Really, shit doesn’t get more horrific than that in terms of parent-related trauma and loss. Which is exactly why one of the most standout lines from Longlegs is: “Daddy! Mommy! Save me from the hell of living!” This delivered hauntingly and, it goes without saying, memorably by Nicolas Cage in the titular satanic killer role.

    As for the nickname, well, it pertains to “Longlegs” approaching children with a life-size replica doll of themselves and, instead of bending down to meet them at their eye level, saying, “It seems I wore my long legs today.” The “jovial” saying usually directed at children (especially in a pre-twenty-first century era) is, thus, turned on its ear (or leg)—rendered bone-chilling in a way that one never thought possible, and all done so simply, too.

    Indeed, “simplicity” is the keyword for this film. As Perkins put it to The Wrap, in terms of conceptualization, “The basic step is to pick something that’s true. Write to a theme that’s a true theme for me. In the case of this, that true theme was, it’s possible for parents to lie to their children and tell them stories. It’s very basic and easily understandable. If you want to start building projects that way, it should be simple.” What builds out of that simplicity is a haunting, unforgettable story centered on a young FBI agent named Lee Harker (Maika Monroe, who, like Perkins, is also known for making mainly horror movies). Tasked with tracking an untrackable killer in the already ominous setting of the Pacific Northwest (rendering the supplemental Twin Peaks nod complete), Harker falls as far down the rabbit hole as Clarice Starling ever did. And, among one of her more unique skills (besides being what Karen [Amanda Seyfried] from Mean Girls would call “kind of psychic” and having a “fifth sense”), Harker is extremely well-versed in the Bible. A knowledgeability that leads her to decode Longlegs’ formerly undecodable letters to the police. Accordingly, Agent Carter (Blair Underwood), Lee’s superior, is starting to understand why he enlisted her to take on this case.

    Alas, the case quickly starts to take her on instead, permeating Lee’s entire life until it leads her down the path of having to question her mother, Ruth (Alicia Witt, who, incidentally was in Twin Peaks: The Return), about Longlegs’ appearance in Lee’s childhood decades prior, at a time when Marc Bolan and T. Rex would have been all the rage. As far as Longlegs is concerned though, T. Rex remains “king” in his world (well, apart from Satan) as he constantly belts out chilling ditties of his own in the style of Bolan. This, of course, was already foreshadowed by the opening title card featuring the “Get It On (Bang A Gong)” quote, “Well you’re slim and you’re weak/You’ve got the teeth of a hydra upon you/You’re dirty, sweet and you’re my girl.” “His girl,” unfortunately, extends to many children who grow up not fully aware that they’re under his spell (in this sense, there’s more than a touch of Charles Manson [no stranger to satanism and the occult] to the Longlegs character). Chief among them being Carrie Ann Camera (Kiernan Shipka, who also starred in Perkins’ The Blackcoat’s Daughter), the sole survivor of one of Longlegs’ killings, which always follow the pattern of infiltrating a family’s home and miraculously getting the father to slaughter his wife and children, with no signs of outside force anywhere.

    With Lee’s gift for what some might call “supernatural” intuition (though not quite to the extent of Phoebe Halliwell’s [Alyssa Milano] premonitory abilities in Charmed), Perkins adds another element into his elixir of ideas that are often incorporated into different sub-genres of thriller/horror films. As he described, “This movie is very pop. And it starts with reproducing Silence of the Lambs. If it’s pop art, then you want to adhere to certain indicators. And so the nineties became an easy indicator that we were in the realm of Silence of the Lambs and Seven. We were wanting to sit alongside the good ones and invite the audience into a safe space.” Of course, what’s also important about the nineties as the film’s backdrop is that it makes it much more difficult for law enforcement to track a killer without the modern technology of today. And yes, even the Longlegs of 2024 would be forced to have a phone, freakshow or not.

    But no matter what decade Longlegs existed/came of age in, he seems the type that was doomed to be a failure. And it is precisely that failure that turns him toward darkness, toward channeling his “talents” toward killing. Like the aforementioned Manson, Longlegs might not have become a satanic serial killer if his music career had taken off. As Perkins speculated, “Longlegs probably wanted to be a guitar player in a glam rock band called Longlegs. One day, the Devil started sounding through his headphones and through his records in the Judas Priest sense.”

    More than being a movie about a devil/glam rock-worshiping serial killer that targets children as the weak link for entry (a.k.a. possession), it is a movie that speaks to the ways in which parents lie to their children from an early age. All under the pretense of “protecting” them, of course (even from music like the kind T. Rex made)—but, in the end, that protection usually turns out to be a disservice. Especially as the child, in their “grown-up” years has to learn how to actually grow up after being insulated from harsh reality for too long. Again, Perkins knows all about this, better than most people, in fact. To that point, he would also state of this particular theme in the film, “It’s a bad world, and when Ruth finally comes out with her truth and tells the story, it makes me think about my own parents. That resonates as the most dynamic section of the movie; the revelation.” No biblical pun intended…probably.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Kiernan Shipka’s Touching Tribute To Co-Star Chance Perdomo After His Death At Age 27

    Kiernan Shipka’s Touching Tribute To Co-Star Chance Perdomo After His Death At Age 27

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    Following his tragic passing, many are waiting to hear Kiernan Shipka’s response to Chance Perdomo’s death. The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina star has yet to weigh in on her cast mate’s death, but others who worked closely with Perdomo over the years are beginning to pour in with tributes of their own to honor the late actor.

    On March 30, 2024, Perdomo’s publicist released a statement announcing that the actor died following a motorcycle accident. “On behalf of the family and his representatives, it is with heavy hearts that we share the news of Chance Perdomo‘s untimely passing as a result of a motorcycle accident,” the statement read. Their statement went on to reveal that no one else was involved in the crash, but no further details regarding the accident—such as when or where it took place—were immediately released. Perdomo was 27.

    Perdomo first gained widespread recognition for his role as Ambrose Spellman on the Netflix series Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. Created by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, the show diverged significantly from its predecessor, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, featuring a darker and more mature tone. Perdomo played Ambrose Spellman, a pansexual warlock (who also happens to be Sabrina’s cousin) and specializes in necromancy. Chilling Adventures of Sabrina concluded in 2020 after four seasons, and Perdomo starred alongside Kiernan Shipka, Miranda Otto, Tati Gabrielle, Ross Lynch, and other cast members, throughout the series’ run.

    Following the news of his sudden passing, creator Aguirre-Sacasa posted a tribute for Perdomo on Instagram, describing the young actor as “a light” during his time on the series. “A generous, funny, open-hearted, wildly intelligent, and fiercely complex and soulful human being. The loss is heartbreaking and staggering,” Aguirre-Sacasa captioned the post, which featured a behind-the-scenes photo of Perdomo and Shipka taken while filming the pilot episode of Sabrina. “My thoughts and prayers are with his family and loved ones. Oh, how I wish Aunt Zelda’s words were true today (and perhaps they are): “There is no true death for witches, only transformation.” Rest in peace, Chance. We all loved you so, so much, cousin.”

    One of Perdomo’s most recent roles was on Gen V, a college-centered spin-off of Amazon Prime’s popular show, The Boys. He starred in the series, which premiered in September 2023, alongside Jaz Sinclair, Patrick Schwarzenegger, and Shelley Conn, among others. Amazon MGM Studios and Sony Pictures Television, the makers of Gen V, said the show’s cast and crew were “devastated” by his sudden passing.

    “We can’t quite wrap our heads around this. For those of us who knew him and worked with him, Chance was always charming and smiling, an enthusiastic force of nature, an incredibly talented performer, and more than anything else, just a very kind, lovely person,” the series’ producers said in a statement. “Even writing about him in the past tense doesn’t make sense.”

    Schwarzenegger was among the first to take to social media to honor his late cast mate, sharing a series of photos with Perdomo to his Instagram Story. “Rest in peace Chance,” read one photo. “Love yah buddy, hope you’re up in heaven with a cigar.”

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    Jenzia Burgos

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  • Totally Killer Shows How “Wild” the 80s Were, And How Much the Decade Fucked With the Heads of the Marginalized

    Totally Killer Shows How “Wild” the 80s Were, And How Much the Decade Fucked With the Heads of the Marginalized

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    As far as gimmicky horror movies go, there’s been no shortage since Scream reanimated the genre in 1996. And, in the decades since its initial release, Kevin Williamson effectively gave permission to writers everywhere to be as meta as possible with horror (/comedy horror). Which is why we now have shows such as The Other Black Girl literally calling out in the dialogue how it’s just like the premise of Get Out (and yes, it pretty much is). In Totally Killer, our sort-of final girl, Jamie Hughes (Kiernan Shipka), also has no trouble calling out the cinematic similarities of the plot she’s living through. Specifically, its similarities to Back to the Future and the aforementioned Scream. Mainly the former because Jamie accidentally ends up traveling back to the 80s (October 27, 1987, to be exact) after her best friend, Amelia (Kelcey Mawema), invents a time machine based on her mother Lauren’s (Kimberly Huie) abandoned scrawlings from a high school notebook. 

    The apparatus used? A photobooth at the abandoned Vernon carnival grounds where the high school science fair is going to be held. When Jamie approaches the desolate, creepy place (called Billy’s Boardwalk) to find Amelia, she can’t help but ask why the principal would want to hold the fair here. Amelia responds matter-of-factly, “Principal Summers got it for free. You know, to help bring people back in. This used to be the place to hang in Vernon, but now it’s just another stop on the murder tour.” And, speaking of the murder tour, it’s a real thing that’s actually run by Chris Dubusage (Jonathan Potts), the self-styled “expert” on the Sweet Sixteen murders that happened in 1987 (basically, he’s sort of the Gale Weathers [Courteney Cox] of the movie). The murders that have made Jamie’s mom, Pam (Julie Bowen), hyper-paranoid and very helicopter parent-y (that’s right, she deliberately smacks of Sidney Prescott [Neve Campbell]). Which is why, when Jamie says she wants to go to a concert with Amelia on Halloween and Pam proceeds to get all protective and foreboding about it, Jamie snaps back, “So I can’t go to a concert because your friends were murdered thirty-five years ago?” Jamie keeps up the harshness by adding, “I sort of wish you guys would just get over it.” 

    But, obviously, there are many things that both Pam and Jamie’s dad, Blake (Lochlyn Munro), haven’t gotten over since 1987. For Blake, it’s an ongoing contempt for Chris Dubusage and his exploitative ways. For Pam, it isn’t just that her friends were murdered, but also a high-key obsession with Molly Ringwald—hence, dressing as Claire Standish from The Breakfast Club for Halloween. This is no coincidence, as Jamie soon finds out. For her mom’s friend group in high school is referred to as “the Mollys” because they all like to dress in different iterations of her movie characters. This being somewhat ironic considering that Ringwald never played a “popular girl” (save for Claire), favoring instead the underdog characters from the “wrong side of the tracks” (this phrase being literal in Pretty in Pink). Perhaps it was ultimately a sign of Pam’s humanity beneath all the mean girl bravado, what with her role as the leader of the group dictating that Heather (Anna Diaz), Tiffany (Liana Liberato) and Marisa (Stephi Chin-Salvo) should also dress like the “ain’t she sweet” teen queen of the 80s (even though Tiffany is the only redhead). But before unearthing any of that humanity, Jamie is shocked to find out the kind of person her mother was as a teenager after her unexpected bout with time travel. The one caused by being chased into the photo booth by the revived killer (who has already stabbed Jamie’s mom by this point). 

    When the killer accidentally stabs at the glass plate where the date is displayed, it manages to create the extra metal conduction Amelia was missing to make the time machine work. So it is that Jamie returns to October 27, 1987 (consider it her version of Marty McFly’s November 5, 1955), the date preset by Amelia, who wanted to help Jamie catch the killer from the start so that her mother won’t be murdered in the present. On the other side of time, Jamie is relieved to have evaded the killer, but that relief is gone the instant she realizes (to the initially faint tune of Bananarama’s “Venus”) that she is very much back in 1987. 

    And, of course, that makes things rife for comedy…which happens to be director Nahnatchka Khan’s specialty (lest anyone forget, she wrote and directed Don’t Trust the B- – – – in Apartment 23…where, incidentally, Kiernan Shipka cameo’d as herself in an episode). Tackling the script by David Matalon, Sasha Perl-Raver and Jen D’Angelo, Khan visually plays up the shock on Jamie’s part. Not just at having time traveled, but how “problematic” things are in 1987, including the sight of a man wearing an “FBI (Federal Booby Inspector)” shirt at the carnival. When Jamie chastises him for wearing it, his girlfriend notes, “I like your shirt.” Just another indication that the collective mind hadn’t yet been reprogrammed to understand the insidious presence of misogyny in every facet of culture. 

    Jamie is further appalled when, after asking a woman with two kids what year it is, she offers to give her a ride back to school…where she’s supposed to be at this time of day. Jamie replies, “I can’t get in a car with you, you’re a total stranger. You could be a serial killer.” The woman laughs and says, “Would a serial killer wear Gloria Vanderbilt?” Thus, Jamie rides in the smoke-filled station wagon (another amplification of how different things were back then because a mother was willing to freely suffocate her children with secondhand smoke) to the school. Where she’s met with even more anathema interactions that don’t jibe with her Gen Z perspective. Starting with her sighting of the Vernon “mascot” on the side of the school: a “Red Devil” a.k.a. Native American. She remarks to herself, “And there’s the racism. Knew that was coming.” But with the bad, Jamie takes the good—for instance, a total lack of concern with security on the part of the admin lady she approaches at the front desk with a fake story about being an exchange student from Prince Edward Island. When the woman cuts her off and asks her what grade she’s in so she can give her a catch-all schedule, Jamie asks incredulously, “You don’t need to verify anything?” The woman scoffs, “What is this, Fort Knox?” 

    Later on, when Jamie needs to figure out what class Amelia’s mom is in, she also approaches the admin lady with the same view she would in the present, figuring that such information can’t be given out because it’s private. But no, the admin lady readily tells her that Lauren is in Earth Science and gets back to reading her romance novel. In disbelief, Jamie notes to herself, “Flying on a plane right now must be insane.”

    It is the “insanity” of the 80s overall that Khan and the writers highlight as much as an appreciation for Halloween, Back to the Future and Scream. However, even more significant than that is the racial element that eventually makes itself known by the time the killer is revealed. For the culprit behind the three murders (Pam’s murder thirty-five years later serves as the additional plot twist) turns out to be a person of color whose girlfriend died as a direct result of the Mollys’ bullying. Save for Pam, who wasn’t there on the night in question, and therefore wasn’t targeted by the murderer in 1987.

    That the killer chooses to dress in a quintessential 80s douchebag mask (one that’s kind of reminiscent of a Donald Trump face) is also telling of “the other” during that decade trying especially hard to fit in with the rest of the white mold held up as an “exemplar” of “how to be.” Not to mention how telling it is that Marisa and Heather so gladly go along with emulating Ringwald because that’s what the white leader of their clique wants to do.

    What’s more, the fact that the killer was constantly bullied and ostracized himself heightens the message that things weren’t really “better” “back in the day.” They were simply more convenient for the white majority that didn’t have to “watch itself” as much as it does now (that it’s becoming a minority). 

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • That Littering Scene in Mad Men Cuts to the Core of How Corporations Would End Up Pulling A Fast One on Their Consumers

    That Littering Scene in Mad Men Cuts to the Core of How Corporations Would End Up Pulling A Fast One on Their Consumers

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    Amid the many scenes from Mad Men that still linger in one’s mind, one of the oddest (at least to modern eyes) is the moment where the Drapers, on a rare family outing together, happily discard all their trash after a picnic. Taking place in season two, episode seven—entitled “The Gold Violin”—the year of this particular nonchalant act on the part of the Drapers is meant to be in 1962. A different world from the “Don’t Be A Litterbug” one that we know today. Considering that popular discourse loves to place all responsibility for the current climate crisis on baby boomers, this scene is especially topical. And yet, being that the chemicals and technologies we’ve come to know as categorically detrimental (e.g., pesticides, nuclear power, Teflon, etc.) were still new and deemed beacons of “progress” rather than implements of destruction that only corporations would benefit from in the long-run, maybe it’s unfair to blame boomer consumers who didn’t know any better at the outset.

    In fact, so “uncouth” were they with regard to environmental etiquette that they needed a campaign to tell them not to litter. Thus, people such as Don (Jon Hamm), Betty (January Jones), Sally (Kiernan Shipka) and Bobby (played by Aaron Hart in the second season) tossing their trash onto the ground like it was nothing would not be out of the ordinary for the (lack of) social mores of the day. Complete with Don chucking his beer can into the distance like a football and Betty shaking out their trash-filled picnic blanket onto the grass without a second thought. It’s not as though there was a nearby garbage can handily available, after all. For these were in the days before there was much initiative on the part of the government to regulate its population “correctly” disposing of waste, with fines for littering coming later. While, on the one hand, it can be taken as a sign of “barbaric” Silent Generation and boomer comportment, on the other, it’s apparent they couldn’t see the full weight of the mounting effects of “modern convenience,” including the Santa Barbara oil spill (which would ultimately bring about the first Earth Day in 1970), until the end of the 1960s. According to environmental historian Adam Rome, “I think [the oil spill] was one of the ultimately most important in a series of accidents or problems that made people realize that a lot of the modern technologies that seemed miraculous…posed unprecedented risks to the health of the environment and ultimately to ourselves.”

    These were risks that the corporation never wanted the average American consumer to take note of. Indeed, the real reason the Keep America Beautiful campaign was even started served as part of a deflection from the real issue: corporations needing the consumer to keep buying shit over and over again by building it not to last. Ergo, more waste from manufacturing and packaging. So of course there was bound to be more potential for littering.

    Per Mother Jones’ Bradford Plumer, “Keep America Beautiful managed to shift the entire debate about America’s garbage problem. No longer was the focus on regulating production—for instance, requiring can and bottle makers to use refillable containers, which are vastly less profitable. Instead, the ‘litterbug’ became the real villain, and KAB supported fines and jail time for people who carelessly tossed out their trash, despite the fact that, clearly, ‘littering’ is a relatively tiny part of the garbage problem in this country (not to mention the resource damage and pollution that comes with manufacturing ever more junk in the first place). Environmental groups that worked with KAB early on didn’t realize what was happening until years later.” When the indoctrination had already taken hold anyway. Americans held themselves accountable for being pieces of shit while corporations and their head honchos kept laughing all the way to the bank as a result of the misdirection.

    As for Mad Men’s creator, Matthew Weiner, born in 1965, he likely would have still been witnessing casual, cavalier littering in his own childhood. For it wasn’t until 1971 that the first vehemently guilt-tripping Keep America Beautiful ad came out—the one with the famous “crying Indian.” Preying on the germinal phenomenon of white guilt, the ad has been described as one of the greatest ever made. We’re talking Don Draper-level shit. Focused on a Native American (played by an Italian, obviously) canoeing through trash in what turns out to be oil rig-filled waters, a narrator says, “Some people have a deep, abiding respect for the natural beauty that was once this country.” At this instant, the Native American finds himself at the side of a highway as someone throws a bag of trash out their window that explodes open as it lands at his feet. Here the narrator concludes, “And some people don’t.” Read: and some oblivious white yuppie cunts like the Drapers don’t. To that point, it’s appropriate that Sally, in this particular picnic scene, asks her parents if they’re rich. Betty, ever the avoider of real topics, replies, “It’s not polite to talk about money.” Nor is it polite to throw trash wherever one pleases, but Betty and Don hadn’t yet gotten the literal (litter-al?) message. Along with the rest of their generation and the one that they had just begat.

    At the end of the “crying Indian” PSA, it’s declared, “People start pollution. People can stop it.” Ironically, the “people” who actually could stop it—corporations (legally deemed people, in case you forgot)—are not held accountable in any way in such ads that place all responsibility on the individual a.k.a. consumer to “do their part.” And yet, trying to put all the onus on the consumer to “self-regulate” feels like a small drop in an oil spill-filled ocean of what could actually be done if corporations weren’t a bottomless pit of profit-seeking.

    While this moment of littering in “The Gold Violin” is an accurate re-creation of what would have gone down in 1962 after a picnic, it’s also a larger statement from Weiner (who co-wrote the episode) about the false veneer of perfection that existed in those days in general and in the lives of Mad Men’s characters in particular. Because, beneath the surface, it was all a steaming garbage heap waiting to spew forth. For example, although Don has just bought a shiny new convertible to match his shiny new success at the agency, the bubbling up of consequences resulting from his latest affair with Bobbie Barrett (Melinda McGraw) is about to explode his marriage as he once knew it. Elsewhere, Sal (Bryan Batt) invites Ken (Aaron Staton) over to his apartment for dinner, where his wife, Kitty (Sarah Drew), is made to feel like the third wheel—giving her that evermore uneasy sense about Sal that doesn’t crystallize until episode two of season three, when he does his Ann-Margaret in Bye Bye Birdie impression for her. Then there’s Bert Cooper’s (Robert Morse) acquisition of one of Rothko’s signature “red square” paintings. Prompting Ken, Jane (Peyton List), Harry (Rich Sommer) and Sal to enter his office without permission while he’s away so that they can view it. Although Sal, as “an artist,” claims that it “has to” mean something, Ken counters, “I don’t think it’s supposed to be explained… Maybe you’re just supposed to experience it.”

    This idea that existence is dominated by total chaos as opposed to some “deeper meaning” would come to define the 1960s and beyond. Even as corporations did their best to insist that all chaos—especially of the environmentally-related variety—was simply the result of poor individual “manners” and “self-control.”

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    Genna Rivieccio

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