They can monitor the growth of forests and help people online making them. Finally, a pure example of DIY and technology coming together to create a better world, a sustainable and beautiful world.
Focus on building the future in the most beautiful ideal you can imagine.
For me it’s making movies, growing forests, and building Rivendell. Think about it, we can create an entirely new and creative infrastructure with solar panels, charging batteries, and completely eliminate carbon emissions.
I’m not waiting for politicians for permission (I never have) and neither should you. Just do it if you can, in any small way with whatever you have. Be creative, because otherwise the world is crafted from an image that may not serve the Greater Good….
Everyone wants to take creativity for granted, never realizing that everything you see and use was first imagined in someone’s mind or heart before it was manifested into being. Never realizing modern conveniences and liberties have only been gained on the backs and deaths of freedom fighters and geniuses who likely lived in poverty and died in disgrace, isolation, and loneliness.
Please, I implore you, use your creative faculty to imagine the ideal world you would love to be living in. STOP acquiescing (to accept something reluctantly but without protest) to the images, feelings, and negativity that’s propagated by the megalomaniacs on the world stage. You’re feeding their image of their ideal world, not creating your own or subscribing to help achieve someone else’s ideal you believe in.
This is at the heart of what Arteagan do: We create a just world in our own lives and reject what doesn’t fit, thereby attracting and creating and propagating a safer, better world for all of us to live in. You can start right now.
Happy Halloween! Today I share tips and prompts to screenwriting familial villainy; Every hero needs a villain and in contrast to The Joker villain which I wrote about here, we will take a look at villains hiding in plain sight: family. What’s more terrifying than family trauma? And how do Heroes purge toxic family? Read this 2,000 word post that will strengthen your writing and ideally, the Hero or Heroine inside YOU.
The Adventures of Natalee Arteaga are rich in wisdom and full of close encounters, fantastic enemies, incredible mistakes, plentiful missions, brave speeches, and noble battles. Through it all I’ve conquered external and internal foes with Truth, Revelation, Boundaries, and Transparency. My life has been saved exclusively by Curiosity and Imagination, shielding me from total destruction at someone else’s hand or mine own. What saves your hero inside when the going gets the toughest?
To tailor your villain, first build your hero or heroine. Who is he? What does she believe in? What are their blind spots? When you build the character of your hero/heroine and their weaknesses, build up their equal opposite (or not, but I love how opposites attract!).
I watch lots of Christopher Nolan. I watched Inception three times in a row straight before I figured out the ending.
I FIGURED OUT THE ENDING TO INCEPTION ALL BY MYSELF!
Honestly, I never saw this coming.
I’ve unearthed a real life family villain. An occurrence I never could have written unless I experienced it first hand. If you’re stuck (and even if you’re not) the first place you should look for inspiration is in your own family and go down the list thinking about every single person and how they treat you and make you feel. Ask yourself, Have they passed the integrity test with me? Is there mostly love with a few character defects here and there or more abuse and harm to you than good times?
How could the mind that figured out the ending to Inception take this long to sever this connection to this toxic family member? Every hero has a blind spot! Mind stayed blind for almost 30 years before it could see!
*Peruse the ten links that support severing ties with toxic family here to 1. become familiar with others who have cut ties with overtly and covertly abusive family members and 2. familiarize yourself with other weapons you can use in your story.
You might learn about other forms of abuse that you’ve been subjected to that you had no idea were actually even considered abuse; perhaps it was that normalized. You’ll feel angry about it, and likely ashamed. It’s okay. You didn’t “let it happen” and their abuse on you was NOT your fault! I don’t care what you were told. I’m here with you. We’re okay.
This is my last communication with someone we will call BARF. I’m publishing this for two reasons:
1. Because she immediately disrespected my boundaries after explicitly asking her to honor them so now I’m sharing with the entire world the truth of how she treated me and how ugly she really is. (At least to me she was)
2. Because I didn’t have these words my whole life (this person has a very strong and manipulative personality and ran roughshod over me pretty much all of our interactions and especially when no one else was around when it was even worse) until right now. If anyone else is out there needing these words, I want you to have them and use them. I support all rawness in your letters because it’s part of healing.
My scathing, irate, volatile message below, shortened for brevity:
““Barf”. I now fully understand the shocking extent of your efforts in keeping me alienated from family I could relate to and who would love me and accept me for who I am. [plot twist]
All those invitations you were asked to extend to me throughout the past 30 years that never reached me. The past 14 years I’ve been doing family research looking for family as I sat at your mothers kitchen table with you not uttering a word about my relatives living right in Chicago. You watched me spend an entire lifetime pursuing a livable career in the arts and never connected me to my cousins who shared the same passions, knowing it would make a difference in my life to have contemporaries I could relate to. Years of watching your daughters bully me and letting them get away with it. Covertly abusing me yourself with your own style of abusing power: betraying my boundaries, turning yourself into the victim to devalue my own feelings and autonomy, gaslighting, and other sick tricks until I got wise enough to demand the right to my own boundaries. You care so much about how you look to others and that you look like this staunch believer full of righteousness who prioritizes her family and her faith, because underneath you have an ugly heart that’s sad and jealous and an ugly mind filled with deception, cognitive bias, and familial sadism. You’re a liar. You lie.
You withheld a whole reservoir of familial love I have never known and it has made ALL the difference in the quality of life I have lived in every way possible.
Thinking of doing to [my 6 year old niece] what you did to me is chilling and incomprehensible. I could never treat her the way you treated me my whole life for a fraction of a second. I promise to your God that I am wholeheartedly authentically disgusted by your entire being you make humans call “Barf”. Gross.
[Now that I’m an Aunt myself – It is startlingly clear to me she definitely never loved me.] Our relationship could have been so different and it’s painful to think of how close we could have been and how deeply you have betrayed that potentiality.
I don’t care what contributed to the ugly person you are, you made the wrong choice over and over and over and over again for my entire life while smiling at me trying to look like the Good Samaritan who brought the cold washcloths. I know who you really are now. This is our end.
I don’t allow toxic miserable people in my life, so please stay away from me. [Me explaining this message isn’t to engage with her but to end our connection and move on]
[Me telling her to heed my warning, respect my boundaries, and keep everyone else out of it otherwise I’m going to expose her to other family members and online and more]
I deserve this boundary with you. Never dealing with you again is a gift I give to myself.
Lastly, I want you to know that you didn’t win; Not only do I still have my integrity intact, I never turned into an ugly hateful sabotaging person like you, and I DID get to have a real family after all. I fall in love with something in each new family member I meet and my life is a zillion times richer since the family reunion.
You’re a horrible miserable loser who lost me forever.
I won because I never let you break my spirit, I never gave up on myself, I never lowered myself to your sick level, and I never gave up on my dream of having a real family who loves me for who I really am.
Though I would hope you choose to heal, I don’t care. Your choices will never effect my life ever again and that’s all that matters.”
Her response:
“Excuse me Natalee, I will disregard your mis conception and forward this to your dad.”
Just so everyone understands incase this happens to you, check out my logical breakdown of what’s happening here.
Firstly, a misconception is a view that is incorrect based on faulty thinking.
All of my reasoning and logic is supported by the facts of the past and what actually happened between us. Not my faulty thinking. You don’t hurt someone and then tell them their pain is just their misconception. Clearly her natural response is gaslighting: manipulating mepsychologically into questioning my own sanity by telling me I’M the one who is mistaken. It’s a very simple psychological tool of mental/emotional/psychological fuckery once you get used to it. I didn’t respond to her of course, I blocked her across all platforms including her phone number. #win
Her cognitive bias? (Our thinking has evolved to take shortcuts, but a cognitive bias makes our judgement irrational – there’s a misfiring in the brain causing the person to lose objectivity) Reactance. She reacted in the predictably opposite way as a knee-jerk contrarian. Being uncooperative is her way of taking her power back and therefore, seeing herself as superior over me.
Her illogical reasoning? She’s using an Appeal to Authority. Saying she will “forward this to your dad” tells me her brain’s shortcut to solving her problems are going to be to go to the highest authority she can find and do whatever it takes to manipulate their favor, in this case: it’s my own father. An appeal to authority is not a valid argument, and she completely disregards the empirical evidence I put before her. She’s also now exploiting her relationship with him for unethical favors. She did this to me growing up too.
Using an appeal to authority can be dangerous when that authority is corrupt or wrong, therefore having no bearing upon the argument at hand. She’s taking something completely irrelevant and using it to somehow strengthen her position and intimidate me psychologically.
Also, it’s incredibly clear in her response her total inability to handle this adult confrontation on her own, still attempting to infantilize me like she’d always done. #boring
What does your family villain do to your hero or heroine psychologically? How does it go down when someone tries to stand up for themselves? How much can they take? Are they ever able to be truly free?
When I woke up the next morning I felt an entire burden was lifted off my life and I could see clearly and crisply into my future. It shines that much brighter now, every single time I do something great for myself. What feelings have you gone through? What is your hero going through?
While this is my scathing, irate, and raw message to this person who hurt me so deeply, now that I’ve confronted her and removed her from my entire life FOREVER, I am truly at peace. Meaning, I’m not angry anymore. At all. I put any vitriolic response to her abuse into that message and there is where it stays. All the negativity has left me completely, and I feel truly blessed to now have the grace of peace in my heart. She can’t upset me anymore, not with smear campaigns or anything else. She can’t hurt me. I’m free.
I feel secure and stable and happy. It hurt to do it, believe it or not, but this is what Heroes do. And this is what your hero needs to do: RISE above the villain.
In the very end of your story, your heroine or hero MUST RISE ABOVE THE VILLAIN.
Set your hero or heroine free at the end, not necessarily of the villain if their story continues, but of the ability of the villain to hurt your hero/heroine.
I choose to be Batman every single day. Make no mistake, this is my choice. I don’t want to go low, I want to be Batman! Let me share a story of what happens when YOU or your hero makes the sad choice and let the villain win….
In the Injustice Series the Joker manipulates Superman into killing Lois Lane and their unborn child. Superman, unhinged, goes to kill the Joker and has him by the collar.
The Joker, however, doesn’t plead for his life, or say any witticisms… he just laughs maniacally. This makes Superman angrier and angrier…
The Joker is of course laughing his fucking ass off because he knows he has won over Superman.He has proved his ultimate philosophy and dies cackling in his completely validated illusory superiority!
I can’t let that happen to me! Don’t let it happen to you!
You will have to make these choices for your characters and in your life too!
Choose wisely, let go of toxicity without and within. That’s the secret to elevation of Heroes and Heroines akin. Happy reading and writing for the silver screen. But most of all, Happy Halloween!!!
“I fucking love loving and love fucking Scorpios I fucking love.” ~ Natalee Arteaga
WELCOME TO SCORPIO SEASON
Scorpio is the only zodiac sign that never produces a superficial person. (I’ve always intuited this as a Capricorn female and that’s why we’re such naturally gravitated pals) You are individuals made complex through a lifetime of managing a reservoir of passion roiling beneath the surface of your consciousness at any given moment.
I have a new and even deeper appreciation for you as I write this today, sipping my coffee, wondering what your thoughts are on this and on that. Your insights are the hungriest, and you’re the only people I’ve ever met who can look me in the eye and hold that contact without ever looking away. I love this about you and I love that we can both communicate this way. It’s special, and it’s because you’re not afraid of anything: not even me. In fact, in you, I meet my match, and in me, you meet yours.
I admire your strength to carry on with all that suffering and knowing, to wear your masks so well that others wouldn’t dare challenge your quiet authority. What you decide to make of your pain, what determines your character, is defined by all three symbols of the Scorpio: The Scorpion, The Phoenix, and the Eagle. I have explicit compassion for the lower level scorpions whose souls have degraded to hatred, lies, pettiness, bigotry, ego, crime, and succumbing to the ease of manipulating the sheep around us. VERY few people know how to wield power judiciously, and that’s why we sense an inherent mutual respect between us, Scorpio. Capricorns have power/authority issues to work through too, so we also possess a sensitive awareness of the imbalance of power, misuse of authority, and karmic issues in controlling our own Selves throughout our lives. When a Capricorn or Scorpio walk into a room, this emanates and is sensed by others.
I love to indulge and breathlessly admire the higher evolved Eagle Scorpios who have crafted lives of unbreakable integrity with their pain, likely after many cycles of suffering where they were reborn in new wisdom and awareness after each scorching of their soul. The Eagle and Scorpion represent the two paths you choose from in life and the Phoenix represents the transformation that you go through to achieve it. { To Other Signs: Can you imagine living a life where you’re always in one of these three states? Does it sound exhausting? Why do you think Scorpios are nuclear power plants of energy? They have stamina, baby. }
Whether you manifest your intense powers for evil or for Goodness, the truth is that you bear the responsibility of making the choice to rise above the desire to create new pain, and to be honest with yourself about your difficulty in doing so.
People go their whole lives never touching a thought like that, but Scorpios deal with a subconscious intensity of this intuitive inner wrestling practically from birth. It manifests through personality and character in different ways, many times as a deep distrust of others, and it’s always fascinating for me to observe each individual for who they have chosen to be.
Whether they are older Scorpios or wise young ones, who they are showing you and as much of themselves as they are revealing, are very deliberate choices. So you should feel grateful whenever one of these special people have chosen to reveal anything about themselves with you or to you. When you’re someone they can be comfortable enough to be more, most, or all of themselves with, they truly glow with a luminous intensity that should only ever be protected, appreciated, nurtured, and respected, in privacy.
This poem is for you. To show you you’re not alone, there’s an introvert Capricorn screenwriter in Chicago who is offering digital comfort, LOL. Because the Good Scorpios, the Eagles of Integrity, you are my Superheroes. I don’t idolize celebrities or famous people. I idolize ideals that are close to my heart, and I know what their traits and expressions look like in others. Browsing through my past, it’s been you Eagle and Phoenix phase Scorpios who have inspired me to be my own personal greatest, and today I celebrate the beginning your new season of the next transformative epoch of your life. Happiest of happy birthdays to all Scorpios, I hope your gifts this year include peace and solace for an aching heart, resolution for a deep pain, swift removal of all toxicity, and plenty of self-multiplying love, wisdom, creativity, and happiness to fill all your empty cups till they runneth over.
Bad Days Stranger
I believe that, whatever doesn’t kill you simply makes you… stranger
Though I didn’t exactly feel that way when my life was in danger
I grew stronger after defeat, failure, depression, and survival
But those obstacles changed me with each demise and revival
Trauma, abuse, and the grit I bit to remain
Living breath to breath to ease the pain
Whatever hasn’t killed me seared on me their stigmata
Bizarre seeing me, the scarred persona non grata
Pristine persons who try to interact encounter confusion
When I don’t behave predictably in expected collusion
To that person I am “strange”
To me I was meant to change
They say I’m unsettling and unusual
Blind to keloid beauty, original construal
What couldn’t kill me made me strange and left me with scars
Bad days taught me, you shouldn’t lust for deranging stars
I want anyone who’s going to be a great filmmaker or screenwriter to be that version of themselves as soon as possible. In doing everything in my power to help you get there, enjoy my words on how you can use a movie– your screenwriting, to create truly original artwork that reflects who you are and asserts your deepest convictions in an entertaining fashion. Today I discuss Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight and illustrate how he used the Jokers evil appeal to further his own philosophical thesis.
Me – Ahead of my Curve
I’ve always had issues with authority. Recently, I wrote the screenplay that was to exist to correct the devastating imbalances of justice I suffered throughout my life. Knowing I had to unite the previously marginalized through our common pain, I gave my soul words to create this theatrical exorcism of suffering, poignancy, and irrefutable truth. I wrote my script also using the evil appeal to entertainingly share my philosophy with the world. Throughout the two-hour historical thriller, I put down the words on women, metaphysics, politics, spirituality, men, ego structures, friendship, will to power, abuse, history, money, manipulation, fame, values, justice, order and chaos, meaning and absurdity, good and evil and how everything boils down to The personal responsibility of choice.
That script is not only my first masterpiece but also my thesis aggressively asserting a very deep philosophical argument that my internal tension seems to generate.
Christopher Nolan
Nolan (and his brother – but I’m going to refer to just one Nolan here for ease) asserts LOTS of existential philosophical arguments in his movies through the expression of his characters. This is what we do as writers.
In The Dark Knight, Nolan gifts us a savagely witty Joker as the embodiment of a philosophical argument taken to violent extremes.
It’s clear in his body of work this is a man who thinks; look at Memento or Inception (a personal favorite!); His explorations of existentialism are crystal clear after you watch his movies again and again and again and again. In TDK he neatly inserted this philosophical argument between Batman and the Joker. Bale proves to be a perfectly immovable Bruce Wayne and a believably idealistic Batman. That idealism had to hold up against the Joker’s point in order to make their trauma-bond real and their push and pull believably fascinating. They both shine under Nolan’s direction thus gifting us with a truly historic and valuable piece of film history forever. Ten years on and the film holds up like it’s still new. That’s a masterpiece!
Now, let’s take a look at how he might have done it and how you can take what’s important to you and put it in your scripts.
The Dark Knight
Existentialist themes are the poetic bedrock upon which the entire plot stands. I outline briefly a few key definitions to make it easy.
Existentialism: Asserts the total absence of rules, morals, and codes except the ones we make up in our heads to feel better about being alive. Existentialists embrace an idea of a universe without any preordained values. In effect, through exploration and conscious deliberation they choose what has value and meaning in life, for themselves.
Nihilism: Rejects all religious and moral principles. Often in the belief that life is meaningless anyway. It’s pretty extreme skepticism.
Übermensch: An individual who overcomes the fear and dread of a potentially meaningless life. An individual able to define their own values, assign meaning to things, people, and ideas themselves, and carefully choose their own purpose. An Übermensch is a true individual who embraces their will to power and chooses their own fate and therefore writes their own ticket, remaining uninfluenced by anything but their own wise counsel. We never betray the integrity we have with ourselves.
Will to Power: The driving force. “I embrace my will to power and drive it to change the world around me for the better” is a positive übermensch statement. The Joker embraced his will to power and drove it to create chaos. The Batman struggled personally with his own will to power throughout TDK.
Illusory Superiority: the cognitive bias in all of us that causes us to think too highly of our own positive qualities and far too little of our own negative ones.
Batman and the Joker engage in an epically fierce philosophical battle over the course of three glorious hours.
Because Thomas Hobbes wrote Leviathan in the 1600’s, the entirety of Western Civilization is organized on the belief that without government structure people will rape, pillage, and murder each other like primal animals without any sense of natural justice, self-control, or morality. Everyone feared this immoral chaos, so therefore, government, law, and order were “an absolute necessity” and we’ve been living under their control ever since. I have thoughts on this since politically I’m a 19th century anarchist reformist. Did I just make you feel weird or mad for a second there? GOOD. You have a perspective on this too. Write. It. Down. Argue with me in your head and write. It. DOWN.
Just like you and I, Batman and the Joker have different opinions on civilization…
Joker’s Philosophical Position
“Everyone is as Evil as I am! No one is really better than me, no one is really ‘nice’. These people are really savages who are faking it and I’m going to prove it, just watch! I’m going to push Gotham to destructive anarchy, force civilians to kill each other, free the bad guys and burn 30 million dollars in front of them, make the Batman break his one rule, destroy Harvey Dent’s belief in Justice by killing Rachel, AND THEN YOU’LL SEE!“
I disagree with Alfred, who tells Bruce that some people just like to watch the world burn and that the Joker is one such person. Alfred is right about those types of maniacs, but that’s not who the Joker is. No one in TDK understands him. The Joker has a philosophical point to prove, remember? So do YOU, as a screenwriter. Corrupting the “incorruptible” is his objective and how he needs to prove his philosophical point to the Batman. If it’s that simple then he’s not really chaotic is he? He’s actually a Mastermind, not at all a “dog chasing cars”. It just looks like anarchy because SCHEMERS can’t understand him.
He only tells Dent that in the hospital to exploit Dent’s pain at the arbitrariness of the Jokers’ cruelty against Rachel as his tipping point beyond objective justice to fully become Two Face… He definitely has a plan, as true masterminds always do… like you do too. Tell me, do you ever add the liberating element of randomness to your carefully constructed little plans? Or are you a hard-core “Schemer”?
Batman’s Philosophical Position
“People are Good! Some are like you, defected. But for the most part, people just want to live a good life and not be harassed by broken miserable criminals. I’m going to save Rachel, save Harvey, save Gotham’s citizens, protect my true identity, restore faith in Gotham’s justice system, and then retire to have lots of sex and babies in my multiplied wealth and prove you wrong AND THEN YOU’LL SEE”
Batman is an Übermensch who drives his will to power to correct injustice in an unlimited, unsanctioned and illegal way. He struggles with his own internal tension and is baffled at the apparent absurdist nature of the Joker.
He tries to know his man, figure out what he’s after. When the Joker doesn’t work that way, burning millions of dollars and annoying him with darkly augmented philosophical witticisms, Batman is forced to learn through the experiences the Joker puts him through.
This is his mistake the whole movie… he doubts his will to power and struggles with internal tension that makes it difficult for him to be honest with himself about his own character defects and blind spots that prevented him from seeing the Joker for who he really is.
The Game
Each übermensch tries to prove their point through not only their own actions, words, and interactions with and against each other…. But through the actions, results, and responses of Rachel, Harvey, and Gotham’s citizens in response to the stimuli fed to them by both Joker and Batman. Those who already have a little pleasure in hurting people won’t take much to be nudged to destructive anarchy. Those who want to believe in the best don’t take much to openly support Batman’s idealized justice.
The Result
If Batman embraced his will to power and drove it to accurately assess his own defects and see the Joker clearly for who he really was, he wouldn’t have played his game and he would have been able to save both Rachel and Harvey. Thinking clearly would’ve allowed him to outwit the Joker. But he couldn’t see it and played right into the Jokers hands. He thus paid the highest price for his own Illusory Superiority. He lost Rachel.
Even so. When the night is darkest just before the dawn…. even after losing the only person who could ever understand him, know him, and truly love him with a kind of devotional love men dream of…. he proves himself to be truly incorruptible. He never breaks his One Rule.
Batman stands by his values and never betrays the integrity he honors in himself as a knight and thus truly achieves Übermensch status.
Harvey Dent was Gotham’s White Knight, full of authentic integrity, a real passion for unobstructed and impartial justice, and a paragon of Fairness. This point was an easy score for the Joker. All he had to do was kill Rachel. (We’ve all suffered errors in judgement in selecting mates so I’m not judging I’m elucidating: Rachel chose Harvey over Bruce which was a mistake. Harvey wasn’t a real übermensch because he proved corruptible, Bruce was the better man… )
We then saw him swing to the alarming nihilistic extreme… killing five people, “two of ’em cops!” and reducing their fates to the arbitrariness of chance. His fucked up two-headed coin whose one side got toasty when Rachel got toasted.
Acting the complete opposite of due course in a functioning justice system he strived his whole life up to that point to actualize. Flipping a coin to determine human life, Harvey’s spiritual regression proves the Joker’s philosophy correct and his mission successful in disrupting society’s sense of Illusory Superiority.
The “schemers” who try so hard to control everything, right? The fake “civilized” people who care about money and cars who think they’re “better than”…. Yeah, the Joker humbled Gotham by bringing them back down to their primal savage origins through Harvey’s soul degradation.
Batman did everything he could to try and save both the love of his life and the city’s paragon of hope…. In the end even going so far as to absorb the blame for Dent’s injustices so that the people may still believe in Goodness. The way those citizens on the boats showed Batman and Joker goodness can still triumph. This is how he becomes The Dark Knight.
Because Gotham’s citizens not only proved the Joker wrong. They proved his philosophy wrong to themselves and each other. Whatever anyone thought about society and civilization when they boarded those boats, they know after that ordeal where the city stands with itself. Gotham effectively broke up with their abusive boyfriend who was deploying a logical fallacy to present two alternative states as the only options (blow up the other boat or die) when in fact more possibilities exist (like doing the right thing and believing in the best in the other boat to do the same) by refusing to play his game.
Batman wouldn’t let the Joker take what Harvey stood for from the people… He saw a tipping point for his beloved city when his citizens proved him right on the boats. He learned from them.
So he runs… he runs to give Gotham “a little push” in the direction of goodness… hoping they too will run with it.
This is what makes me cry at the end.
Harvey Dent is the hero Gotham needs but doesn’t deserve…
Batman is the hero Gotham deserves… but doesn’t need…
Argh! Nolan sure knows how to make sapiosexuals swoon. Nolan Nolan Nolan, Nolan gives us this Cinegasm to vicariously live through and experience for ourselves.
It is about sending a message, what do you have to say as a writer?
Our idealistic hopes for our own lives and the future of humanity stick to Christian Bales face for three hours, making him handsomer over time as we watch him overcome each moralistic blow dealt by the Joker and stick to his integrity.
Our Jungian shadow-side shamelessly indulges in anarchistic delight in step with Heath as we watch him humble authority figures by obliterating their illusory superiority, outwitting them, and killing them in funny ways.
We laugh with him and delight in the true freedom in which he acts, like letting Rachel’s hand go when he’s instructed to “Let her go.” – wouldn’t that have occurred to you as well, and wouldn’t it be hilarious? Teeheehee!
The freedom criminality appears to offer when one disregards all other life in totality is something Heath Ledger masterfully exorcises with visceral control over his effect that is spellbinding, perfectly illustrating the appeal of evil.
The End
In the end… they both win. This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object.
They are bonded forever, meant to use each other to advance or regress spiritually and inspire the world to do the same in a lifelong philosophical battle until one of them dies.
Now that you understand a work of genius more intimately, it’s your turn to go write something legendary.
Let me know how it goes: Natalee@NataleeArteaga.com
Remember in Sin City when he thinks she’s saying “STOP!” but she’s actually saying “He’s a COP!”? That’s how I tried to see Hocus Pocus and ended up accidentally in BTATER. I thought it would end in 15 minutes and HP would start at 7… it didn’t.
ANYWAY. It must have been fated because it changed my mind about two actors: Dakota Johnson and Chris Hemsworth (while I revisited a favorite and discovered a few new greats!). I never saw any of Johnson’s work and only saw the first Thor of Hemsworth’s years ago.
I’m happy to say both Johnson and Hemsworth delighted me in this stylish and very classy pulp fiction by Drew Goddard.
Dakota Johnson
I finally discovered Johnson’s on-screen appeal which is VERY lovely but it didn’t sink in right away. I then understood how she hadn’t been on my radar all these years (I read 50 Shades and it sucked, so I didn’t see any of the movies) Her talent doesn’t deliver in a sucker-punch style, it’s much more nuanced and easy to overlook. She could shine very bright in her own rays of light if she’s nurtured and directed correctly.
She needs a script written like a custom perfume blend: Tailored to her uniqueness in a balanced way. The layers of her talent are time-released fragrances that shouldn’t be rushed. A good screenwriter can layer and pace her “top”, “base”, and “middle” “notes” over the course of a two-hour film.
Chris Hemsworth
I was also delightfully surprised that Hemsworth is as talented as he is attractive. I also noticed how different his voice sounded, or maybe, that I didn’t remember his voice sounding like that? His voice stands out because his chest and packs of muscles are displayed for 100% of Hemsworth’s screen time (that I saw, though I’m preeeeeetty sure he was topless the beginning of the movie too) and that’s what you end up staring at.
I hadn’t thought about him much since Thor 1– wait, I think I saw something he was in where he had short hair with cuts in the side, but I know I fell asleep so I forgot what it was. Anyway, so when he appeared on screen I just waited for the movie to end (as I still thought HP might start after whatever this was ended soon, silly me) and watched the strings of each of his muscles twitch, contract, and loosen at his will. Or I’d be looking at the deep shadows between the mountainous abs of 6 or I’d be gazing at the lean lack of any substance between pure muscle and well-moisturized and tanned ab muscle-covering skin and mental-monologue respect for his discipline to eat clean because I love chocolate donuts and bread and butters and ethical meats and cheeses and to get abs like that you have to eat really clean and lean because no matter how much you work out you can’t compensate for a bad diet and that’s how I know I’ll never want 6 separate ab muscles because I’m quite slender and having a trim enough waist is enough to keep me happy– I then noticed that distinctive voice of his and was brought back to the movie plot. I kept listening to it and it’s really quite interesting. He could do very well in lots of different noir-ish homages (like BTATER but where we can root for him) or stories featuring unique characters made so by their voices and beliefs. I hope he gets the chance.
He was good, but only as good as he’s written. He can do more and it’s easy to see why he’s overlooked, his abs are blinding…. I’d really like to see Hemsworth as a mortal hero who uses his emotion and his unique (literal and figurative) voice to conquer the bad guys and and save the word in a different film… He’s more than good enough for BTATER though, as he also dances a funny ab-dance which will be a gif soon enough.
Billy Lee might be written a bit lazily, I really don’t know. I didn’t see the beginning of the film to see if he’s more developed than what I saw. Or perhaps Hemsworth was incongruent between the first and second half in some way. I don’t know. I am inclined to think Hemsworth could’ve done more if he had more to do, writing-wise, in BTATER though. I feel like he was written as “vain sexy self-absorbed cult leader” and that was that. He, unfortunately, cannot do what Cynthia Erivo can do… read on to read what that is!
Everyone Else
I already know and LOVE Jeff Bridges. He was, as he always reliably is, perfect <3
His voice is so evocative of sympathy it’s uncanny. Goddard uses him perfectly in BTATER.Last night I fell IN love with Cynthia Erivo, she’s simply magic and someone to watch. I can’t believe we’ve been going on all this time without her in the public consciousness. We need more of her. Her imdb lists three upcoming films: Chaos Walking and Needle in a Timesack which are both in post-production. It looks like she’s currently filming Harriet as Harriet Tubman!! I might be expecting too much from the script but I know whatever she’s given she will give it back having multiplied it’s worth tenfold somehow.She will do that. Cynthia Erivo took a sheaf of paper Drew Goddard gave her and gave him back Darlene Sweet. I still hope they write her very very greatly in the Tubman bio-pic. Her voice is H E A V E N and the first time I heard her sing on camera I felt truly privileged ^_^Cynthia made this role her own and it’s hard to imagine anyone else doing it; she’s
a double-threat: she can both act AND sing. This isn’t to be taken for granted, because there’s usually one that’s more favored or more adept than the other. Beyonce is more of a singer than an actress. Nicole Kidman is more of an actress than a singer, but she still sang in Moulin Rouge!
Cynthia Erivo makes it difficult to discern which she can do better (act or sing), as she oozes easy talent doing both at the same time as naturally as I’m sure she reads the morning newspaper, and probably just as graceful.
Lewis Pullman makes acting look effortless. He’s natural, he’s real, he’s present and very reactive. He’s feeling every single thing newly, freshly, in the moment, moment to moment. He’s actually just as perfect as Jeff Bridges.
Lewis Pullman is alive on camera and it’s fascinating to watch.
This is also due to Drew’s good writing, and armed with a stellar script Pullman’s talents are clear and confident. It was wonderful to experience him and I hope we see more of him too.
Written and Directed by Drew Goddard, I predicted 25-30% of it. But after about 20 minutes I stopped even trying and that’s the best part. I noticed that the great things I clocked were consistent and that I was watching something sophisticated and therefore pleasurable (sapiosexuals will enjoy this film). He steered his project successfully and artfully.
Goddard is clearly another deep thinker, dedicating thought-forms to philosophizing, reflection, and imagining. The product of all that alone time is clear in BTATER: his pulp fiction characters representing multiple sides of the philosophical arguments in his head. The way they express themselves showcase Goddard’s creativity in a classy and stylish fashion. While he could’ve taken it much further philosophically and mentally– he relaxed and leaned a lot on the style and genre, he still did an amazing job on this project he got to both write and direct.
I loved the cast, the story, and the overall filmmaking. Bravo, everyone!
I ALSO LOVE THAT HE PUT ‘THE LETTER’ IN THE MOVIE because it’s one of my favorite songs. I would sing it with my little sister and our father in the car growing up <3
BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYAL OPENS THIS THURSDAY OCTOBER 11TH, SEE IT WITH FRIENDS OR FOR SECOND DATES!
A year ago people questioned the efficacy of the Me Too hashtag that spread virally in October 2017. Since then, it has been used by survivors to reveal the prevalence of sexual assault and harassment. We live in stirring times— tea stirring times, indeed!
We’ve also been watching our country live through an abusive relationship with it’s narcissist president… which means America is destined to rediscover her self-worth and truly begin practicing self-love through far-reaching reformations, mental health care, and redressing systemic injustice. Here’s why.
Going through a long-lasting and intense period of low self-esteem made me susceptible to walk straight into an abusive relationship. I had been able to successfully steer clear from men who would disrespect me or otherwise act against me until then.
It was during this time that, by trying to help the world (a characteristic of Empaths, which I now realize I am), any protective boundary I had enough self-respect to uphold vanished and with it the last of my confidence.
All of this happened subconsciously, over time. On the outside, I was being love bombed (overwhelming someone with adoration and attraction early on) by a talented manipulator who knew that reflecting my own positive traits back to me (like idealism, a strong sense of justice, and creativity) would create a bond that would endear me to them. I thought they were real traits this person possessed. That love bombing attention would change to multiple forms of devaluation like gaslighting, smear and slander campaigning behind my back, lying, cheating, insulting, blaming… and get much worse from there.
Disrespecting me became normalized, as well as the emotional rollercoaster of breakups and makeups. I stepped onto a rat wheel of ongoing abuse with a convincing liar. Trauma-bonding in a ubiquitous cycle of pain.
Don’t believe half-hearted progress or any short-lived peace. They’re constructed lies to keep you hopeful and idealistic about change and improvements they never intend on actually making.
<insert the breaking point, revolution, escape, & healing here>
It broke my heart to see with open eyes the lack of regard I had for myself, because allowing anyone to hurt me is not who I am.
I was a woman who stood up for themselves every single instance of trespass against her. Who fought bullies, empowered women, marched rallies, and fearlessly defended the marginalized— and I STILL succumbed to an abusive relationship! I was temporarily weak and that’s when it happened. It could happen to you if you’re not vigilant about how you want to be treated.
It doesn’t matter if you’re plain Jane or Halle Berry, they’re out there waiting for bright lights like us to doubt our luminosity so they can take what they’ll never be able to make.
Wisdom costs pain. But as bad as it was, I’ve promised to myself and in this post to not pay the same lessons twice. The lessons that truly test you in the fight for your life.
Existentialism: Asserts the total absence of rules, morals, and codes except the ones we make up in our heads to feel better about being alive. Existentialists embrace an idea of a universe without any preordained values. In effect, through exploration and conscious deliberation they choose what has value and meaning in life, for themselves.
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