Michael Hogan

Don Draper's A Monster, And Here's Why We're Finally Noticing

2013-06-18T11:51:51-04:00

Are you starting to hate Don Draper? Don't worry, you're not alone.

Don Draper doesn't kill people. He doesn't cook or deal drugs. He doesn't oversee an organized-crime syndicate. Hell, he doesn't even use the F-word.

But there's no question he's a monster, as Peggy put it so succinctly in Sunday's episode. He lies. He cheats. He seeks out opportunities to undermine and humiliate his colleagues. He cheats some more. He lashes out at everyone, women and children included.

Did I mention he cheats?

And yet, in spite of it all, there has always been something about Don that makes us love him anyway. We know what a scoundrel he is, but we just can't quit him.

His upbringing is part of it. We know he started at the bottom and absorbed some seriously warped lessons about love and sex along the way.

But plenty of people have had screwed-up childhoods, and we don't forgive most of them for letting us down again and again and again. (And again.) There's something else about Don.

I think I know what it is: Don is cool.

Being cool isn't the same thing as being nice. Far from it. When Don puts somebody down, establishing for the zillionth time that he has the upper hand, he's being a dick -- but he's also defending his alpha-dog status.

Being the alpha dog is cool.

But power alone isn't enough. Bert Cooper is powerful, but he's not cool. Not anymore. He can't be bothered to keep up anymore. He can't even be bothered to wear shoes.

Don's creativity, coupled with his proven ability to persuade others to pay him for it, is the true foundation of his coolness. Ginsberg may be more talented, but he doesn't know how to work a room. Ted may know how to work a room, but he's a dork.

Only Don and Peggy have the killer combination of creativity and street smarts that translates into true status.

Ted is a dork because he's too nice, he talks too much and he doesn't have good taste. Like Thelonius Monk, Don doesn't talk unless he has something to say. And when he does have something to say, its purpose is either to draw you into his web or take you down a notch.

In the show, we've seen one woman after another fall for this routine. In real life, I've discussed Don with a lot of women, and most have said the same thing: "He's a bastard, but I love him."

As time goes by and Don gets older, however, his cool is starting to lose its luster.

For one thing, it's increasingly clear that he has a serious alcohol problem -- the kind where you either quit or die. Drinking a perfectly mixed Old Fashioned is cool; puking in the potted plants is not.

For another, it's hard to be hip when you're on the wrong side of the generation gap. Sure, Don's still handsome enough to seduce a hippie hostess, but he's slowly losing his grip on the zeitgeist -- the one that has always enabled him to get the girl, land the account, cut down the rival.

He's not out of touch yet, but it's a matter of time.

Vince Gilligan, the creator of "Breaking Bad," envisioned that show as a good man's descent into evil. Maybe something similar can be said for "Mad Men." Matt Weiner, a man so defensively nerdy that he corrects people who pronounce his name the way it's spelled, has given us the ultimate specimen of coolness -- and proceeded to tear him down, drink by drink.

As Don's veneer crumbles, we see what he really is: needy, cruel, mendacious, weak, self-serving, self-loathing, pathetic, fake.

In 2009, Weiner told Vanity Fair's Bruce Handy that his true goal was to rescue Don and Betty's generation from "baby-boomer propaganda." At one point, he answered a question about Don with this telling remark: "Think of your grandfather."

What if that grandfather wasn't so nice? What if Weiner's central question is something like this: How on Earth did that broken-down old crank shuffling from the kitchen to the living room ever enjoy so much power, so much money, so many women?

Season six isn't over yet, and it's not too late for Don to pull out of his tail spin and make some dramatic change. (Divorcing Megan, whom he clearly does not love, might not be the worst place to start.)

But I don't believe "Mad Men" is in the business of doling out happy endings. If character is destiny, this show is teaching us a grim lesson about what happens to those who cherish their coolness over everything else.

Game Of Thrones: pourquoi le dernier épisode de la saison change la donne

2013-06-11T10:41:41-04:00

Il était inévitable que le dernier épisode de la saison 3 de Game Of Thrones serait décevant, pas seulement par ce que les Noces Pourpres de la semaine dernière étaient traumatisantes, mais aussi parce qu'il restait à régler de nombreuses questions en suspens. Oui, Arya et le "Limier" devaient s'échapper et les Lannister et les Baratheon devaient digérer la nouvelle que Robb Stark avait été tué, mais comme on parle quand même de Game Of Thrones, il fallait aussi faire avancer une douzaine d'autres intrigues.

ATTENTION! NE PAS LIRE SI VOUS N'AVEZ PAS VU LE DERNIER ÉPISODE DE LA SAISON

On devait savoir qui tourmentait Theon Greyjoy (réponse: le fils illégitime de Roose Bolton) et s'il y avait ne serait-ce qu'un espoir pour le seigneur indiscipliné des Iles de Fer (il y en a un, maintenant que sa sœur a mis les voiles) ; si Bran et sa bande de têtes brûlées allaient réussir à franchir le Mur ; ce qu'il adviendrait de Sam et Gilly une fois qu'ils seraient enfin parvenus au Châteaunoir ; comment Tyrion, Sansa et Shae géraient-ils leur - décidément très étrange - ménage à trois ; si Gendry allait finir par donner plus de sang à la campagne de magie noire de Mélisandre ; ce qui arriverait à Jaime et Brienne quand ils seraient revenus à Port-Réal ; quelles nouvelles atrocités étaient nées de l'esprit malade de Joffrey ; comment les habitants de Yunkaï allaient-ils répondre à l'occupation pacifique de Daenerys ; et bien sûr, si Ygrid allait vraiment mettre ses menaces à exécution une fois qu'elle aurait retrouvé Jon Snow (réponse : il aura de la chance s'il peut encore enfanter).

Est-ce que j'ai oublié quelque chose ? Probablement. C'était ce genre d'épisode. Mais il avait aussi ses thèmes dominants : les obligations familiales, le ressentiment chez ceux de haute lignée, le choix cornélien entre agir pour soi ou agir noblement, le pouvoir libérateur de suivre son instinct. Il contenait aussi un avertissement général. Pour reprendre les mots de Mélisandre: "Cette guerre des cinq rois ne signifie rien. La véritable guerre se prépare dans le nord, mon roi. La mort avance vers le Mur."

Diantre, vraiment!? Nous commençons enfin à voir la façon dont les pièces du puzzle, même aussi éloignées que celles de Yunkaï et Châteaunoir, pourraient un jour s'assembler. Si l'obsidienne est la seule matière capable de tuer les Marcheurs blancs, alors il va en falloir beaucoup aux armées du royaume des Sept Couronnes. Et si les dragons jouent vraiment un rôle dans la fabrication de l'obsidienne, alors Daenerys pourrait, elle, jouer un rôle fondamental dans la bataille contre les Autres.

Mais tout ceci est de la pure spéculation. Revoyons de plus près ce qui s'est passé dans l'épisode final.

Qui pourrait résister aux yeux de labrador légèrement paniqué de Sandor Clegane tandis qu'il se fraie un chemin à travers les camps enflammés au pied de la forteresse de Walder Frey? Les forces des Stark sont écrasées et il n'y a rien d'autre à faire que de tirer Arya hors de là, le plus rapidement possible. Malheureusement, avant qu'ils ne s'échappent, on offre à Arya le spectacle du corps de son frère exhibé à travers les camps, sa tête remplacée par celle de son loup bien-aimé. "Roi du Nord", scande la foule moqueuse.

On n'a pas besoin d'imaginer quel genre d'effets cette vision aura sur Arya, qui, après tout, a assisté il y a peu à l'exécution de son père. Quand Sandor et elle croisent une bande de soldats de Frey se vantant d'avoir participé au massacre et la profanation du corps de Robb, elle utilise sa pièce "Valar Morghulis" pour les rendre moins méfiants, puis poignarde violemment à mort le profanateur avec un couteau qu'elle a volé à Sandor.

C'est une toute nouvelle étape pour Arya. On l'avait vue il y a longtemps geler un garçon d'écurie, mais c'était vraiment de la légitime défense. Ici, il s'agit d'un meurtre de vengeance pure, certes motivé par la colère, mais exécuté avec une froide intelligence. Au moins, ce geste a été fait au nom de sa famille, et non pas dans un but calculé.

En parlant de calcul, à Port-Réal, la sœur d'Arya, Sansa, et son mari, Tyrion, débattent des moyens de se venger des personnes qui se moquent d'eux. L'idée de Sansa de les "changer en mouton" semble assez faiblarde, mais au moins, les époux se parlent. Ce qu'ils ne font pas, en revanche, c'est consommer le mariage, un sujet de grande inquiétude pour Tywin. J'adore cette scène où Tywin envoie Joffrey au lit sans son dîner, pour reprendre les mots de Tyrion, et j'étais soulagé de voir tout le Conseil royal reculer devant le fantasme tordu de Joffrey de servir lors de son mariage la tête de Robb à Sansa. En cet instant, même Cersei ne trouve pas le courage de défendre son fils, bien qu'elle s'accroche à son souvenir de lui quand c'était un bébé joyeux, qui lui donnait l'impression de n'être là que pour elle.

Mais j'ai attendu en vain de voir Tywin prendre en compte les analyses astucieuses de Tyrion et commencer à le traiter avec un minimum de respect. Je pense que Tyrion se raccroche aussi à cet espoir, mais cela se solde systématiquement par une humiliation. Vous pouvez toutefois comprendre pourquoi Varys estime que le mouton noir de la Maison Lannister est le meilleur espoir du royaume des Sept Couronnes. Même s'il n'était pas le beau-frère de Robb, Tyrion aurait sûrement choisi de se débarrasser de lui de façon plus pacifique - en tout cas moins susceptible d'engendrer une nouvelle génération d'ennemis mortels - que le massacre des Noces Pourpres.

J'ai d'ailleurs apprécié les scènes entre Varys et Shae. En fin de compte, Varys a probablement raison de dire que Shae met en danger le bien-être de Tyrion, mais elle-même a raison de refuser d'être écartée. Comme Daenerys le dira plus tard aux habitants de Yunkaï, vous seuls pouvez revendiquer votre propre liberté, n'est-ce pas ?

Le billet se poursuit après la galerie

Avec toutes ses prouesses de guerre, Bran est resté dans l'heureuse ignorance du destin de son frère et de sa mère - et pourtant, l'histoire qu'il raconte à propos du Cuisinier assassin suggère probablement que Walder Frey et Roose Bolton vont bientôt subir de sérieuses représailles. À mon humble avis, les Bolton sont en train de rivaliser avec les Lannister pour obtenir le titre de famille la plus répugnante de Westeros. Roose ne plaisante pas quand il dit à Frey que son bâtard a sa propre façon d'agir. Espérons que cette façon d'agir ne s'exercera pas ailleurs. Se moquer de Théon avec cette saucisse de porc, le surnommer "le Puant", adresser cette menace étrange à son père - ce gars est un psychopathe complet (et puis, qui a eu l'idée de lui mettre dans la bouche ce terme clinique de "membre fantôme"?)

Voir la tronche de Balon et de Yara Greyjoy quand ils rejouent la chanson "Dick in a Box" avec le membre coupé de Théon valait son pesant de cacahouètes. Et puis rappelez-moi de ne jamais faire connaissance avec le père de George R. R. Martin. Ce type est à l'évidence enfoncé jusqu'au cou dans un complexe d'Oedipe non résolu - et je suis vraiment heureux que Yara se soit enfin décidée à braver l'indifférence paternelle et à s'en aller porter secours à son frère, aussi peu qu'il le mérite.

Tout comme Yara, Davos décide d'agir noblement et libère Gendry, après s'être lié avec l'héritier (ignorant de son statut) de la Maison Barathéon grâce à leurs tendres souvenirs communs des flots merdiques de Culpucier. Gendry aide Davos à réaliser que ses loyaux services envers le noble Stannis ne lui ont pas servi à grand chose finalement, mais c'est le message de Châteaunoir qui lui permet de sauver la vie du garçon. Même Mélisandre doit admettre que Stannis aura besoin de Davos dans la guerre à venir contre les Marcheurs blancs.

L'annonce de cette guerre, qui promet pourtant de bouleverser totalement le Royaume des Sept Couronnes, vient en effet d'une modeste source : Samwell Tarly, qui est si peu prétentieux qu'il ne rompt même pas son vœu de chasteté lorsqu'il escorte la jeune et fertile Gilly pour la mettre à l'abri. Mais même Sam n'est pas impressionné par Bran et sa bande d'excentriques. Si le Président du club d'échecs vous annonçait qu'il allait vaincre l'armée d'Hitler, vous auriez l'air aussi convaincu que Sam lorsqu'il demande : "Vous, vous allez les arrêter ?"

Qui sait ? Peut-être y parviendront-ils. Pendant ce temps, Sam sera occupé à requinquer son vieil ami Jon. Jon est en train de rincer les blessures de son visage dans un ruisseau quand Ygrid le retrouve, et vous voyez qu'il est un Stark juste à sa façon de réagir. Je sais que je t'aime. Je sais que tu m'aimes. Bla, bla, bla... Attends, pourquoi tu tires des flèches sur moi ? Hé mon pote, dans une autre série, tu aurais été bien à l'abri, mais tu as vu la première saison ? Ou le dernier épisode ? Grimpe sur ton cheval et tire-toi d'ici !

Ce qu'il y a de bien dans Game of Thrones, au moins, c'est que les flèches ne suffisent pas à tuer les personnages principaux. Du coup, je suis à peu près certain que Jon se remettra de ses blessures, même si ses cicatrices resteront peut-être, façon Tyrion. Je suis même certain que lui et Ygrid se retrouveront, peut-être une fois qu'il sera exclu de la Garde de nuit. Dieu sait bien qu'il ne ferait jamais une chose aussi grave que mentir au Lord Commandant à propos de sa sexualité.

Ce qui nous ramène donc à Daenerys. Sa scène hors des portes de Yunkaï semblait un peu trop cousue de fil blanc, mais elle et Jeor Mormont sont du genre à orchestrer les choses comme ça, n'est-ce pas ? Je ne sais pas de combien encore de scènes de libération la série va-t-elle pouvoir se sortir, mais celle-ci a fonctionné pour moi. Je n'ai pas aimé les corps portés par la foule, mais j'ai apprécié les chants "Mhysa ! Mhysa!" (conseil de pro : cette série a deux fois plus de sens quand on met le sous-titrage pour sourds et malentendants). Et la vue aérienne à la fin m'a donné ce sentiment d'excitation que j'attends venant de Game Of Thrones.

Nous y voici donc. La Mère des Dragons avance. L'hiver arrive. Mais nous devrons attendre jusqu'à la prochaine saison pour savoir ce qui va se produire. Ça a été un plaisir et un privilège de résumer la série pour vous - merci d'avoir lu et partagé vos commentaires.

Avant que de partir, dites-nous ce que vous avez pensé de ce dernier épisode !

Game Of Thrones : pourquoi le dernier épisode de la saison change la donne

2013-06-11T03:11:41-04:00

ATTENTION SPOILER ! NE PAS LIRE SI VOUS N'AVEZ PAS VU LE DERNIER ÉPISODE DE LA SAISON

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Est-ce que j'ai oublié quelque chose ? Probablement. C'était ce genre d'épisode. Mais il avait aussi ses thèmes dominants : les obligations familiales, le ressentiment chez ceux de haute lignée, le choix cornélien entre agir pour soi ou agir noblement, le pouvoir libérateur de suivre son instinct. Il contenait aussi un avertissement général. Pour reprendre les mots de Mélisandre : "Cette guerre des cinq rois ne signifie rien. La véritable guerre se prépare dans le nord, mon roi. La mort avance vers le Mur."

Diantre, vraiment ?! Nous commençons enfin à voir la façon dont les pièces du puzzle, même aussi éloignées que celles de Yunkaï et Châteaunoir, pourraient un jour s'assembler. Si l'obsidienne est la seule matière capable de tuer les Marcheurs blancs, alors il va en falloir beaucoup aux armées du royaume des Sept Couronnes. Et si les dragons jouent vraiment un rôle dans la fabrication de l'obsidienne, alors Daenerys pourrait, elle, jouer un rôle fondamental dans la bataille contre les Autres.

Mais tout ceci est de la pure spéculation. Revoyons de plus près ce qui s'est passé dans l'épisode final.

Qui pourrait résister aux yeux de labrador légèrement paniqué de Sandor Clegane tandis qu'il se fraie un chemin à travers les camps enflammés au pied de la forteresse de Walder Frey ? Les forces des Stark sont écrasées et il n'y a rien d'autre à faire que de tirer Arya hors de là, le plus rapidement possible. Malheureusement, avant qu'ils ne s'échappent, on offre à Arya le spectacle du corps de son frère exhibé à travers les camps, sa tête remplacée par celle de son loup bien-aimé. "Roi du Nord", scande la foule moqueuse.

On n'a pas besoin d'imaginer quel genre d'effets cette vision aura sur Arya, qui, après tout, a assisté il y a peu à l'exécution de son père. Quand Sandor et elle croisent une bande de soldats de Frey se vantant d'avoir participé au massacre et la profanation du corps de Robb, elle utilise sa pièce "Valar Morghulis" pour les rendre moins méfiants, puis poignarde violemment à mort le profanateur avec un couteau qu'elle a volé à Sandor.

C'est une toute nouvelle étape pour Arya. On l'avait vue il y a longtemps geler un garçon d'écurie, mais c'était vraiment de la légitime défense. Ici, il s'agit d'un meurtre de vengeance pure, certes motivé par la colère, mais exécuté avec une froide intelligence. Au moins, ce geste a été fait au nom de sa famille, et non pas dans un but calculé.

En parlant de calcul, à Port-Réal, la sœur d'Arya, Sansa, et son mari, Tyrion, débattent des moyens de se venger des personnes qui se moquent d'eux. L'idée de Sansa de les "changer en mouton" semble assez faiblarde, mais au moins, les époux se parlent. Ce qu'ils ne font pas, en revanche, c'est consommer le mariage, un sujet de grande inquiétude pour Tywin. J'adore cette scène où Tywin envoie Joffrey au lit sans son dîner, pour reprendre les mots de Tyrion, et j'étais soulagé de voir tout le Conseil royal reculer devant le fantasme tordu de Joffrey de servir lors de son mariage la tête de Robb à Sansa. En cet instant, même Cersei ne trouve pas le courage de défendre son fils, bien qu'elle s'accroche à son souvenir de lui quand c'était un bébé joyeux, qui lui donnait l'impression de n'être là que pour elle.

Mais j'ai attendu en vain de voir Tywin prendre en compte les analyses astucieuses de Tyrion et commencer à le traiter avec un minimum de respect. Je pense que Tyrion se raccroche aussi à cet espoir, mais cela se solde systématiquement par une humiliation. Vous pouvez toutefois comprendre pourquoi Varys estime que le mouton noir de la Maison Lannister est le meilleur espoir du royaume des Sept Couronnes. Même s'il n'était pas le beau-frère de Robb, Tyrion aurait sûrement choisi de se débarrasser de lui de façon plus pacifique - en tout cas moins susceptible d'engendrer une nouvelle génération d'ennemis mortels - que le massacre des Noces Pourpres.

J'ai d'ailleurs apprécié les scènes entre Varys et Shae. En fin de compte, Varys a probablement raison de dire que Shae met en danger le bien-être de Tyrion, mais elle-même a raison de refuser d'être écartée. Comme Daenerys le dira plus tard aux habitants de Yunkaï, vous seuls pouvez revendiquer votre propre liberté, n'est-ce pas ?

Avec toutes ses prouesses de guerre, Bran est resté dans l'heureuse ignorance du destin de son frère et de sa mère - et pourtant, l'histoire qu'il raconte à propos du Cuisinier assassin suggère probablement que Walder Frey et Roose Bolton vont bientôt subir de sérieuses représailles. A mon humble avis, les Bolton sont en train de rivaliser avec les Lannister pour obtenir le titre de famille la plus répugnante de Westeros. Roose ne plaisante pas quand il dit à Frey que son bâtard a sa propre façon d'agir. Espérons que cette façon d'agir ne s'exercera pas ailleurs. Se moquer de Théon avec cette saucisse de porc, le surnommer "le Puant", adresser cette menace étrange à son père - ce gars est un psychopathe complet (et puis, qui a eu l'idée de lui mettre dans la bouche ce terme clinique de "membre fantôme"?)

Voir la tronche de Balon et de Yara Greyjoy quand ils rejouent la chanson "Dick in a Box" avec le membre coupé de Théon valait son pesant de cacahouètes. Et puis rappelez-moi de ne jamais faire connaissance avec le père de George R. R. Martin. Ce type est à l'évidence enfoncé jusqu'au cou dans un complexe d'oedipe non résolu - et je suis vraiment heureux que Yara se soit enfin décidée à braver l'indifférence paternelle et à s'en aller porter secours à son frère, aussi peu qu'il le mérite.

Tout comme Yara, Davos décide d'agir noblement et libère Gendry, après s'être lié avec l'héritier (ignorant de son statut) de la Maison Barathéon grâce à leurs tendres souvenirs communs des flots merdiques de Culpucier. Gendry aide Davos à réaliser que ses loyaux services envers le noble Stannis ne lui ont pas servi à grand chose finalement, mais c'est le message de Châteaunoir qui lui permet de sauver la vie du garçon. Même Mélisandre doit admettre que Stannis aura besoin de Davos dans la guerre à venir contre les Marcheurs blancs.

L'annonce de cette guerre, qui promet pourtant de bouleverser totalement le Royaume des Sept Couronnes, vient en effet d'une modeste source : Samwell Tarly, qui est si peu prétentieux qu'il ne rompt même pas son vœu de chasteté lorsqu'il escorte la jeune et fertile Gilly pour la mettre à l'abri. Mais même Sam n'est pas impressionné par Bran et sa bande d'excentriques. Si le Président du club d'échecs vous annonçait qu'il allait vaincre l'armée d'Hitler, vous auriez l'air aussi convaincu que Sam lorsqu'il demande : "Vous, vous allez les arrêter ?"

Qui sait ? Peut-être y parviendront-ils. Pendant ce temps, Sam sera occupé à requinquer son vieil ami Jon. Jon est en train de rincer les blessures de son visage dans un ruisseau quand Ygrid le retrouve, et vous voyez qu'il est un Stark juste à sa façon de réagir. Je sais que je t'aime. Je sais que tu m'aimes. Bla, bla, bla... Attends, pourquoi tu tires des flèches sur moi ? Hé mon pote, dans une autre série, tu aurais été bien à l'abri, mais tu as vu la première saison ? Ou le dernier épisode ? Grimpe sur ton cheval et tire-toi d'ici !

Ce qu'il y a de bien dans Game of Thrones, au moins, c'est que les flèches ne suffisent pas à tuer les personnages principaux. Du coup, je suis à peu près certain que Jon se remettra de ses blessures, même si ses cicatrices resteront peut-être, façon Tyrion. Je suis même certain que lui et Ygrid se retrouveront, peut-être une fois qu'il sera exclu de la Garde de nuit. Dieu sait bien qu'il ne ferait jamais une chose aussi grave que mentir au Lord Commandant à propos de sa sexualité.

Ce qui nous ramène donc à Daenerys. Sa scène hors des portes de Yunkaï semblait un peu trop cousue de fil blanc, mais elle et Jeor Mormont sont du genre à orchestrer les choses comme ça, n'est-ce pas ? Je ne sais pas de combien encore de scènes de libération la série va-t-elle pouvoir se sortir, mais celle-ci a fonctionné pour moi. Je n'ai pas aimé les corps portés par la foule, mais j'ai apprécié les chants "Mhysa ! Mhysa!" (conseil de pro : cette série a deux fois plus de sens quand on met le sous-titrage pour sourds et malentendants). Et la vue aérienne à la fin m'a donné ce sentiment d'excitation que j'attends venant de Game Of Thrones.

Nous y voici donc. La Mère des Dragons avance. L'hiver arrive. Mais nous devrons attendre jusqu'à la prochaine saison pour savoir ce qui va se produire. Ca a été un plaisir et un privilège de résumer la série pour vous - merci d'avoir lu et partagé vos commentaires.

Avant que de partir, dites-nous ce que vous avez pensé de ce dernier épisode !

'Game Of Thrones' Finale Recap, Season 3: This Changes Everything

2013-06-10T00:14:27-04:00

Note: Do not read on if you have not yet seen the Season 3 finale of HBO's "Game of Thrones," titled "Mhysa."

It was inevitable that the Season 3 finale of "Game of Thrones" would feel anticlimactic, not just because last week's Red Wedding was so traumatic, but also because there were so many loose ends to tie up. Yes, Arya and the Hound needed to escape and the Lannisters and Baratheons needed to digest the news that Robb Stark had been killed, but, this being "Game of Thrones," there were also about 12 unrelated story lines that needed advancing.

We needed to know who has been tormenting Theon Greyjoy (answer: Roose Bolton's bastard son) and whether there's any hope at all for the wayward Ironborn lord (there is, now that his sister is setting sail); how Bran and his band of freaks were going to make it past The Wall; what would become of Sam and Gilly once they made it to Castle Black; how Tyrion, Sansa and Shae are managing their ultra-awkward menage a trois; whether Gendry was going to end up donating any more blood to Melisandre's campaign of black magic; what would happen to Jaime and Brienne when they returned to King's Landing; what fresh atrocities have been fermenting in Joffrey's diseased imagination; how the residents of Yunkai were going to respond to Daenerys' non-violent occupation; and, of course, whether Ygritte would make good on her threats when she caught up with Jon Snow (answer: he's lucky he can still reproduce).

Did I leave anything out? Probably. It was that kind of episode. But it wasn't without its overarching themes: familial obligations, resentment of the highborn, the tension between doing the shrewd thing and the right thing, the liberating power of going with your gut. There was also an overarching warning. As Melisandre put it, "This war of five kings means nothing. The true war lies to the north, my king. Death marches on The Wall."

Boy, does it ever. And we're beginning to see how pieces of the puzzle as far afield as Yunkai and Castle Black could someday snap together. If dragonsglass is the only substance that can kill White Walkers, then the armies of the Seven Kingdoms are going to need a lot of it. And if dragons really do play a part in the production of dragonsglass, then Daenerys could prove vital in the struggle against the Others.

But that's just speculation. Let's take a closer look at what happened in tonight's finale.

Who can resist Sandor Clegane's slightly panicked puppy-dog eyes as he navigates the burning encampments outside Walder Frey's castle? The Stark forces are getting crushed and there's nothing to do but haul Arya out of there as fast as possible. Unfortunately, before they escape, Arya is treated to the site of her brother's body being paraded through the camps, his head replaced by that of his beloved dire wolf. "King of the North," the armies chant, jeeringly.

We don't have to imagine what kind of effect this will have on Arya, who, after all, was present for her father's execution not so long ago. When she and Sandor come across a band of Frey soldiers bragging about their participation in the slaughter and subsequent desecration of Robb's corpse, she uses her "Valar Morghulis" coin to lull them into complacency, then brutally stabs the desecrator to death with a knife she lifted from Sandor.

This is new territory for Arya. We saw her ice a stable boy way back when, but that was effectively self-defense. This is a straight-up revenge killing, driven by anger to be sure, but executed with cold-blooded cunning. At least it was done on behalf of her family, and not to achieve some calculated end.

Speaking of calculated, back in King's Landing Arya's sister, Sansa, and her husband, Tyrion, are debating ways to take vengeance on the people who laugh at them. Sansa's idea of "sheep-shifting" them seems pretty tame -- especially when it becomes apparent that she thinks "shift" means "shit" -- but at least the married couple is communicating. What they're not doing is consummating, which is of grave concern to Tywin. I absolutely loved the scene where Tywin sent Joffrey to bed without his supper, as Tyrion put it, and I was relieved to see the whole King's Council recoil at Joffrey's warped fantasy of serving Robb's head to Sansa at his wedding. At this point, even Cersei can't muster the energy to defend her son, though she's holding tight to her memory of him as a happy baby who made her feel as if she had someone just for her.

But I keep waiting in vain for Tywin to take note of Tyrion's shrewd analyses and start treating him with a modicum of respect. I think Tyrion's holding out hope, too, but it ends in humiliation every single time. You can see why Varys thinks the black sheep of House Lannister is the best hope for the Seven Kingdoms, though. Even if he weren't Robb's brother-in-law, Tyrion surely would have chosen to dispatch him in a manner less offensive -- and less liable to spawn a new generation of mortal enemies -- than the Red Wedding massacre.

I enjoyed the scene between Varys and Shae. Ultimately, Varys is probably right that Shae's presence is a danger to Tyrion's well-being, but good for her for refusing to be swept aside. As Daenerys will later tell the Yunkai'i, only you can claim your own freedom. Right?

For all his warg prowess, Bran remains blissfully ignorant of the fate that befell his brother and mother -- and yet the story he told about the Rat Cook certainly suggested that Walder Frey and Roose Bolton are in for a serious karmic reprisal. If you ask me, the Boltons are beginning to rival the Lannisters for the title of Most Repulsive Family in Westeros. Roose isn't kidding when he tells Frey that his bastard has his own way of doing things. Let's hope those ways don't catch on anywhere else. Taunting Theon with that pork sausage, renaming him "Reek," sending that bizarre threat to his father -- the guy's a complete psycho. (Also, whose idea was it to have him use the jarringly clinical term "phantom limb"?)

How priceless were Balon and Yara Greyjoy's faces when they re-enacted "Dick in a Box" with Theon's severed manhood? Also, remind me that I never want to meet George R. R. Martin's father. This dude has daddy issues out the wazoo -- and I'm just glad Yara finally decides to defy her papa's heartless indifference and set out to rescue her brother, however little he may deserve it.

Like Yara, Ser Davos decides to do the right thing and set Gendry free, after bonding with the unwitting Baratheon heir over their fond memories of shit streams in Flea Bottom. Gendry helps Davos see that his loyal service to the highborn Stannis hasn't served him so well after all, but it's the message from Castle Black that empowers him to save the boy's life. Even Melisandre has to admit that Stannis will need Davos in the coming war against the White Walkers.

News of that war, which promises to reshape every aspect of life in the Seven Kingdoms, comes from a modest source indeed: Samwell Tarly, who is so unassuming that he actually didn't violate his celibacy oath while squiring fertile young Gilly to safety. But even Sam isn't impressed by Bran and his crew of oddballs. If the president of the chess club told you he was going to take down Hitler's army, you'd sound about as confident as Sam does when he asks, "You're gonna stop them?"

Who knows? Maybe they will. In the meantime, Sam will be busy nursing his old friend Jon back to health. Jon is rinsing the talon wounds on his face in a stream when Ygritte catches up with him, and you can tell he's a Stark from the way he reacts. I know I love you. I know you love me. Blah blah blah, wait, why are you shooting arrows at me? Dude, any other show and you'd have been completely safe, but did you see the first season? Or the last episode? Get on your horse and get the hell out of there!

The nice thing about "Game of Thrones," at least, is that arrows aren't enough to kill main characters. So I'm pretty sure Jon will recover from his wounds, even if those scars may linger, Tyrion-style. I'm even confident that he and Ygritte will reunite, maybe after he's expelled from the Night's Watch. God knows he'll never do anything as sensible as lying to the Maester about his sexual history.

I think that brings us to Daenerys, doesn't it? Her tableau outside the gates of Yunkai felt a little over-choreographed, but then she and Ser Jorah are the types to arrange things just so, aren't they? I don't know how many more scenes of liberation this show can get away with, but this one worked for me. I didn't love the crowd-surfing, but I enjoyed the chanting: "Mhysa! Mhysa!" (Pro-tip: this show makes 100-percent more sense when you turn on the closed captioning.) And the aerial view at the end gave me that tingly feeling I look for from "Game of Thrones."

So that's it. The Mother of Dragons marches onward. Winter is coming. But we'll have to wait until next season to see what comes next. It's been a pleasure and a privilege recapping the show with you guys -- thanks for reading and sharing your comments.

Before you go, tell us what you thought of tonight's finale!

'Game Of Thrones' Arya Stark Speaks: Maisie Williams On Season 3 Finale, Her Red Wedding Vine

2013-06-09T17:08:38-04:00

Note: Do not read on if you have not yet seen Season 3, Episode 10 (the season finale) of HBO's "Game of Thrones," titled "Mhysa."

This was the season we learned to love Arya Stark.

The younger daughter of Ned and Catelyn Stark, Arya, who is portrayed on HBO's "Game of Thrones" by the 16-year-old English actress Maisie Williams, came into her own over the course of Season 3, falling in (and out) with the Brotherhood Without Banners, stirring up enough chemistry with her traveling pal Gendry (Joe Dempsie) to inspire a legion of Internet "shippers" and eventually joining forces, however reluctantly, with one of the men on her infamous kill list, Sandor "The Hound" Clegane (Rory McCann).

Arya wasn't present for the Red Wedding, thank heaven, but she witnessed enough to know that her life will never be the same. The sight of her brother Robb's corpse, its head replaced with that of his beloved direwolf, seems guaranteed to cure her of the clumsy do-gooderism that has so far handicapped her family in its war against the ruthless Lannisters. As the only remaining Stark who knows how to fight, Arya seems destined to become our new hero -- that is, if she can retain enough of the family virtue to keep us on her side. (As Williams herself points out, "If you want something to happen on the show, it almost certainly will not happen.")

Meanwhile, Williams, who grew up noticeably between last season and this one, has revealed herself to be an entertaining presence on social media. Her adorable Vine video in response to last week's episode gained her a new legion of followers, but she was a fan favorite long before then, thanks to such charming digital artifacts as this viral video of her dance company flash-mobbing an English plaza.

On a recent school night, HuffPost TV interrupted Williams' exam prep to grill her about Arya's recent travails, the joys of acting opposite Rory McCann and the perks of accidental social-media fame. Here are the highlights of our conversation. (Note that neither this reporter nor Williams has read ahead in the books.)

I heard that you were busy with some schoolwork tonight.
Yeah, I've got a few exams coming up for a performing arts college that I attend.

I have to ask about the Vine you posted after the Red Wedding episode. What inspired that?
I have this really bad habit of doing things on the Internet and forgetting that the whole world is going to see it. I hadn't actually watched the episode, but my phone started blowing up with all the tweets and stuff. So I was reading them for a bit, and then -- yeah, I don't know. I did one where I was just sort of giggling, and then I deleted that and did that one in my kitchen, just like, "They're dead, um … " I didn't want to tweet or anything; I didn't really know what to say. I'm a little bit awkward on Twitter, like, I'm never really sure what to say. So I just did that, and then my Vine blew up and I got loads of followers, and then Twitter went crazy and I got, like, so many followers overnight, and yeah. [Laughs.] And then Mum was like, "Maisie, you're in the Daily Mail!" I was like, "Oh my God, seriously?"

Do you enjoy having that ability to have a two-way conversation with your fans?
Yeah, I think it's fantastic. You know, there's some people that obviously abuse social networking or whatever, but I think it's a fantastic idea. I've never had any bad encounters with any of it.

Have you met any people that you admire on social media?
Yeah, Ed Sheeran. He's a British singer-songwriter. He tweeted about "Game of Thrones," and then a couple of people were like, "Oh, did you know that Ed Sheeran likes 'Game of Thrones?'" I was like, "That's really cool!" So I just tweeted him, and then he didn't tweet me back for, like, three days, and I was like, "Oh, how embarrassing is this?" And then he tweeted me back and called me a "top lass," and it was really cool. So now we're Twitter buddies, and he invited me to one of his concerts.

How do you think Arya is feeling, given the events of the last two episodes?
When she lost Gendry and Hot Pie, we kind of saw her start to put up these walls, I think. And it seems like she's getting a lot of bad luck all at once. She's starting to get this sort of love-hate thing with the Hound. She doesn't really like him, but she knows that he's a good guy to be with, because she's not going to get in trouble [while he's protecting her]. But I think now she's really put up this barrier and she's not willing to trust anyone fully anymore. And I think she really did struggle with that anyway, properly trusting people. She's really kind of kept herself to herself. I think now she's not really sure what she's going to do. She doesn't really have a goal anymore.

Because her goal had been to go back home?
Yes, to go home and see her family, and now I think she thinks, "Well, maybe home isn't safe anymore. And if they're here, then who's at home?" And she saw all these Stark guards getting killed straight in front of her, and I think it was kind of a wake-up call, where she was like, "Home doesn't mean you're going to be safe." At the moment, she's completely numbed by the whole thing, but I think in the long term she has a bit of a struggle to see where she's going to go.

I interviewed Michelle Fairley (Catelyn Stark) last week, and she said that the Starks are "too honorable" and that the kids are going to have to learn to adapt and maybe even become more like the Lannisters. Do you think that that's gonna happen to Arya?
Yeah, I think Arya is always doing the right thing, and it might not be the best thing. I can see her really now kind of changing and realizing, "No one else is going to do anything for me, and no one's actually here to help me." I think we're going to see a darker side to her, and maybe not the honorable Stark that we know already. I think it's maybe going to start getting a bit more nasty and brutal from here on in.

Tell me about acting opposite Rory McCann. You guys really went at each other in the second-to-last episode. What was that like?
We were having a great time! That was a fantastic day. I was riding on the horse for a bit that day, and it was lovely weather, and I just remember having such a relaxing day. I met Rory in the pilot episode, and he's just a really, really nice guy. In that scene, we'd done a few rehearsals before with [director] David Nutter, just to see how everything was gonna go. So by the time we started shooting, we were quite confident. There weren't many hiccups, apart from I kind of fell off the horse and my foot got caught in the reins.

Oh, really?
Yeah, it was really funny, actually. My leg was, like, caught up by my ear, and I was like, "Oh, brilliant." [Laughs.]

I love the fact that you and Rory don't pull any punches with each other. The fact that he's a very large adult man and that you're a teenager doesn't seem to be an issue.
Yeah, I think the Hound kind of admires Arya and the fact that she can really upset someone just by using words. They're usually two very violent characters, and you're used to seeing them just getting their sword out and getting all violent on each other. But here they're just sitting down and spiteful.

Were you there when they shot the Red Wedding scene?
No, and I was kind of sad, because I was like, "Oh my God, I'm gonna be in a scene with Michelle and Richard [Madden (Robb)] again, and I'm gonna be in a scene with Oona [Chaplin (Talisa Maegyr)]," and then they filmed it on separate days. So we did all of our night shoots, me and Rory, outside, and then they went and did all the inside stuff.

Did you get a chance to say goodbye to them?
I did. I recently saw them both in America. We did some press out there when Season 3 premiered, so I've seen them recently. So I have said goodbye, but not on set, which was sad.

I know there are a lot of people who want Gendry and Arya to get together, and I know you've said that you might even be one of them. How did you feel watching that scene where Melisandre seduces Gendry and then extracts his blood with leeches?
I thought it was quite a cool scene. I didn't read that in the script, so that was a bit of a shock to me. When I was on set with Joe [Dempsie], he was saying that his mum wanted to come out and watch him on set, and he was just praying that she didn't pick Episode 8. He was like, "Oh man, that would be the most awkward thing ever." [Laughs.] So I knew obviously there was something embarrassing happening. But yeah, I think it was kind of stupid of Gendry to stay with the Brotherhood, because he got taken. From Arya's perspective, she's kind of like, "Dude, why didn't you listen to me! We could have been in this together." [Laughs.]

Did you hear from fans who were upset that he was at least vaguely betraying Arya?
I got a few tweets and stuff. People were like, "Oh, you're so stupid, why did you let him go?" Everyone always thinks it's Arya kind of leading it, but I think it was kind of rude of Gendry to leave this little girl on her own, you know?

So do you think the Arya/Gendry shippers are going to end up being disappointed?
I think so, yeah. [Laughs.] It's just too cliché, I think. [Author] George R.R. Martin would never do that. If you want something to happen on the show, it almost certainly will not happen. It's always gonna go the other way. And personally, I also see Arya being on her own in the end and doing quite well. She's one of the only characters that could actually do it on her own and survive. Robb without his army would be nothing -- well, now he's nothing. [Laughs.] So I never really saw her being in love and whatever. I see her as a bit more of a killer and a fighter than that.

Speaking of fighting, has your dance training helped you learn all those combat moves?
Yeah, it's helped me so much. I think when I started the water dancing, the fighting, I realized it was just like choreography, just with a sword. There were still obviously difficult parts to it. I was doing it with my left hand, and my arm got tired more quickly than it would have if I had been using my right hand. So there were added difficulties that I gave myself, stupidly. [Laughs.]

I know Arya is left-handed in the books and you're right-handed, but did they let you choose which hand to use?
Yeah, that's the stupid thing, that it was completely my choice. I remember reading on the Internet, people were like, "But that person's horse is supposed to be brown, and it's white!" And I was like, "Oh God, these guys are really --" So I was like, "OK! I'll do it left-handed." And now I'm like, "This is really difficult. Why did I do this?" [Laughs.]

I love that flash-mob video your dance company made.
Oh, thanks. We did that to promote Susan Hill Dance School, the local dance school I attend. When I'm dancing, I don't know where the confidence comes from, but I just pretend I'm someone else, I think, and then I go out and dance. And then it went viral on the Internet, and the whole world saw me being really ... attitude. [Laughs.] So, yeah.

In the Season 3 finale, Arya sees Robb's body with his direwolf's head stitched to his neck. What was it like filming that?
When I was doing my reaction, it was just a guy riding a horse -- there wasn't the big head and the gory bits. But I stayed behind afterwards to watch them actually film the gory bit. Me and Mum, we just sat there in the freezing cold. [Laughs.]

And what about the scene where Arya brutally murders one of Walder Frey's soldiers?
Yeah, that's Arya's epic finish for this year. It was a really long day, but it went really well. I was on the horse for a lot of it, in a really awkward position on the neck, so my legs were kind of jelly by the end of it.

It's a change for Arya to be murdering people in a rage, isn't it?
Yeah. And it's different. She's usually very graceful with her sword, but just basically hacks at his neck. It's horrible.

How emotional was it, ending the season with such intense and violent scenes?
Well, this was the first season that I didn't actually cry on my wrap. I usually cry, and I didn't and I don't know why. I was really happy, actually. I had a really, really good year, and I didn't want to cry. I have a stunt double and a body double, and we all had our picture together, all in the same outfit with the same hair, and it was just really nice. It was emotional, but I didn't cry. I really wanted to end on a high note.

Jeremy Scahill's 'Dirty Wars' Takes A Noir Detective Approach To Obama's Drone Strikes

2013-06-06T14:55:51-04:00

Jeremy Scahill's new documentary, "Dirty Wars," is a cinematic chronicle of one journalist's investigation into America's secret global campaign of targeted killings. It raises a stark question: Is Team Obama's aggressive expansion of drone strikes and night raids doing more harm than good?

The film, co-written by Scahill and David Riker and directed by Rick Rowley, is structured like a noir detective story. It follows Scahill from the lawless hinterlands of Afghanistan, where he interviews the surviving members of the family of a U.S.-trained police chief decimated in a secret night raid; to Yemen, where he inspects the wreckage of a drone strike and meets the father of Anwar al-Awlaki, one of four American citizens to be assassinated abroad by the U.S. (al-Awlaki's 16-year-old son was another); to Somalia, where he tags along with Somali war lords on the U.S. payroll, who brag of committing war crimes as they rampage through the rubble of Mogadishu.

Scahill, 38, an award-winning journalist with The Nation and author of an acclaimed book about Blackwater, shares his thoughts and feelings about all this in a voice-over, including his concern that the U.S. may be rushing into the very thing President Barack Obama says he doesn't want: war without end.

Scahill spoke to The Huffington Post about his reporting, his views on what motivates Obama and his initial discomfort with letting his own experiences anchor the film.

Do you think the tide is really changing for the Obama administration, in terms of no longer getting away with stuff that they've been getting away with for a long time?
Well, it's a tough question to answer. I really think President Obama and his administration are trying to have it both ways. On the one hand, in the president's recent speech, he was hitting a lot of notes that -- for critics of the targeted killing program or the drone program -- sounded like the right notes. He said we can't be in a state of perpetual war, we want to bring accountability to this. He acknowledged the killing of four Americans and said that the civilian deaths caused in some of these strikes are going to haunt them forever. That sounds pretty extraordinary for an American president to be saying. But hidden within all of that, and behind the scenes, his administration is simultaneously making moves to ensure that we are going to be in a state of perpetual war and that the strikes that have caused civilian deaths are going to continue.

What are some of those moves?
The U.S. is continuing to use these things called signature strikes, where you don't necessarily know the specific identity of the people you're targeting and you don't necessarily have evidence that they're involved with a terror plot or criminal activity. It's this sort of pre-emptive way of waging war against people that we suspect might, in the future, attempt to commit an act of terrorism against the United States.

It's like "Minority Report," the Tom Cruise movie.
It is! Except in "Minority Report," in most of those cases, they knew the name of the person and what crime they were gonna commit, and they actually were in the process of committing it. It was sort of this imminent threat. Under the Obama administration, we know from the leaked white paper that they've redefined the term "imminent" to mean that you have, at some point in the past, plotted against the United States. Which is not what the word "imminent" means. And so we're using sort of Orwellian terms to justify this war against terrorism.

My biggest concern, to be honest with you, is that when we are killing innocent people in drone strikes or cruise missile strikes or special operations night raids, we're creating more enemies than we are killing terrorists. We're growing the very threat that we claim to be trying to defeat.

Obama has acknowledged that as a concern, and it's strange that so much of what you describe in the film seems to contradict not just what he's said recently but his whole philosophy. Do you have a sense of what is driving Obama to make these decisions?
Well, look, I think that Dick Cheney was sort of this cartoonish villain. I really do imagine him sort of sitting in the bunker, plotting the destruction of the world for the benefit of Halliburton's stock. But I don't see President Obama that way at all. I think he's a sincere, deliberative guy who believes that what he's doing is the best way available to him as the commander-in-chief to keep the country safe. I disagree that that's what he's doing, but I don't question his sincerity.

Right.
But look at it from his perspective. He comes into office after campaigning on the idea that he was going to push back the Bush-era excesses and end the war in Iraq. A lot of liberals projected onto him this idea that he was the anti-war candidate, even though he'd never claimed to be the anti-war candidate -- he claimed to be the anti-Iraq War candidate. So he comes into office, he has no military experience, very limited foreign policy experience based on his couple of years in the Senate, and he's briefed by General David Petraeus, Admiral William McRaven, General Stanley McChrystal, the director of the CIA. And they paint a picture for him of a world where there are hundreds and hundreds of concurrent plots being organized to try to blow up U.S. airplanes, poison American water supplies, attack U.S. embassies. And they say to him, "If you don't continue with the Bush-era authorizations for us to strike in countries where we see any threat pop up, then the American homeland is going to be at great risk."

Americans will die on your watch, basically.
Right. So what's President Obama, who has no military experience and limited foreign policy experience, gonna say to those guys? Is he gonna say, "Stand down, General"? What would happen then, if a month into his administration or two months, there was what they call a "spectacular" terrorist attack against the United States? Politically, I think his advisers -- Rahm Emanuel and [David] Axelrod and those guys -- they knew that if there was a major terrorist attack against the United States, that Obama would have been a one-term president.

So I think that you had a combination of political considerations and the fact that he didn't want to be sending in troops to countries around the world. And he basically embraced JSOC [Joint Special Operations Command] as the policy -- not just as the implementers of the policy, but as the policy itself, this idea that you can go and decapitate networks, systematically take out people that are plotting against the United States. And I think that that's what they believe that they're doing. And he's killed, under his administration, several dozen known terrorists around the world. No question about that. But what they won't acknowledge is that they've killed a tremendous number of innocent civilians in their so-called surgical campaign.

If you had to estimate, how many civilians would you say they've killed?
I think it's very dangerous to get into that game. There are very conservative reports that were pulled together by Peter Bergen and others at the New America Foundation. Then you have estimates that I think are more reliable from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, out of London. But whether it's 1,500 people or 2,000 people or 4,000 people, in a way it's irrelevant. The fact that we have killed civilians in large numbers, regardless of what those numbers are, is encouraging the very threat that we claim to be fighting.

You've spent a lot more time on the ground in these places than President Obama has. What's your sense, from being on the ground in those places, of what's really happening?
Look, I'm not naive. I've talked with people who are sworn enemies of the United States. I've met with tribal figures in south of Yemen who were among those that were giving shelter and protection to Fahd al-Quso, one of the USS Cole bombing plotters who actually was killed several months ago. So I have no illusions that there are people who want to blow up American airplanes and kill Americans because they're Americans. The threat is there.

How big of a threat is that? It's not an existential threat. It's not even in the top 10 of the real threats facing most Americans in the world. And I think we're largely operating on fear. And what I've seen from my reporting on the ground, it's tribal leaders, for instance, in Yemen saying to me, "I saw Said al-Shihri and Nasir Wuhayshi" -- the two heads of [militant group] Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula -- "I saw them the other day at a restaurant in Shabwah. How come I can see them and the Americans can't find them, but your drones seem to be able to find our children in Bedouin villages? You say that al Qaeda is terrorist -- well, we say your drones are terrorism." And I think we've lost a real opportunity in Yemen to bring people over to our side and give an incentive to tribal leaders to bring to justice the relatively small number of wackos who are plotting to attack the United States on any given day. I think we've engaged in an extraordinarily stupid counterterrorism policy in Yemen in particular, and it's backfiring.

So the clumsy behavior of the government and these forces may not outstrip the terrorist threat, but it's creating substantial problems.
Look, we have engaged in a strategy in Yemen where we've outsourced our intelligence to drones. We actually have no serious on-the-ground intelligence capacity in Yemen. I've reported on numerous strikes that the U.S. has conducted in Yemen where it seems abundantly clear that we were fed bad intelligence by the Yemeni government in an effort to take out people who were domestic political opponents of the regime, and not al Qaeda figures. We are being used in Yemen, and in night raids in Afghanistan, to settle scores of local people or of officials against other officials.

I'm at a point now where I really think that we should have a moratorium on drone strikes. Whether you ultimately agree with drone strikes and with the president and you think that that's a legitimate way to wage war or not, I think we all can accept that innocent people have been killed. I think we should have a moratorium on the drone strikes so that we can assess who have we killed, what were their connections to terrorism, and is this making us less safe or more safe as Americans.

Do you think that there will be any significant change with Susan Rice coming in as national security adviser?
I always feel like I'm the wet blanket in these conversations. I mean, Susan Rice is cut of what I call the cruise-missile-liberal cloth. She's a pretty hawkish interventionist. And I think that when she is advising the president as the national security adviser, she's going to be a passionate advocate for what they call humanitarian intervention, or "military humanism."

What does that translate into, in actual fact?
She's been pushing for the U.S. to enter into Darfur [a war-torn region of Sudan], for instance, militarily. I think she's going to be pretty hawkish in her advice to the president. She's definitely on the hawkish end of the Democratic Party.

Our own Ryan Grim recently quoted you in an interesting piece drawing a connection between the Justice Department's investigation of journalists and the case of Abduleleh Haider Shaye, a journalist in Yemen who remains in prison at the request of President Obama.
I've been reporting on his story for years now. You know, I find it shameful that the powerful U.S. media organizations that worked with him -- The Washington Post, ABC News and others -- have said nothing about his imprisonment. Americans have to understand: There is an independent, good journalist who is in prison in Yemen because our constitutional law professor/Nobel Peace Prize-winning president is keeping him there by intervening in his case. And when you put that in the context of what's happened with the Associated Press and the seizure of their phone records, with the crackdown on whistleblowers, that sends a very disturbing message about the state of media freedom under President Obama. And I think all of us as journalists should form a unified front in saying, "These attacks against the press have to stop."

You mention in the film that you believe your laptop was hacked --
Well, I know it was.

Do you think the U.S. government was responsible for that?
I have no idea, and I haven't accused anyone of doing it. Look, I'll just tell you the real story of what was going on then. I was starting to do my initial reporting on JSOC. I was working also on a story involving the CIA and a network of companies that were part of the Blackwater empire. And what happened is that my computer was compromised really late one night. I got a hacker friend to go back and reverse-engineer the hack and look at how it happened. So my computer was breached, and parts of my hard drive were copied -- the files that pertained to the investigations I was working on. And then a TextEdit file was left on my desktop, and it just had a name on it. And it was the name of a confidential source of mine. And I had never put that person's name in my computer, on my phone, in any searchable way that you could access. It was chilling. And I had to then get in touch with that source and say, "I'm not sure who did this or how it was compromised, but someone is aware that you've been talking to me."

I don't think I'll ever find out who did that. It could have been a private company, or it could have been someone else. But it was clearly someone who was privy to communications outside of my computer, because they had the name of someone that I had been communicating with -- his actual name. And you know what he actually said, when I finally was able to meet with him and tell him this? "F**k them." [Laughs.]

One of the interesting things about this film is the way you put yourself into it. Talking to you now, you seem upbeat, but does this type of work beat you down at some point? Do you sometimes look around and think, "Why the hell isn't anybody paying attention to this? Why is everybody keeping up with the freaking Kardashians?"
[Laughs.] I unfortunately don't keep up with the Kardashians. I've never been invited to the White House Correspondents' Association dinner, so I don't get to chuckle with the commander-in-chief about drone strikes. But having said that, I was gutted, as a person, in the process of writing the narration for the film, because I don't write articles in the first person and I don't tend to talk about myself when I'm reporting. And I think that I had been trying to run away from some of the realities of what I was witnessing and the stories that I was hearing. And by personalizing the story -- which I didn't want to do at the beginning -- it was like floodgates opened and you start to remember all of these people and stories. It's like 10 years of your life flash before your eyes, and the past 10 years of my life has been spent talking with people, for the most part, who experienced loss in such a horrible way. But I will say that I love to laugh. Maybe I feel liberated now that the film is coming out and I can laugh again.

I'm glad to hear that. Are there any re-creations in the film? It seems like you guys shot some amazing things in real time, but is there anything that was re-created after the fact?
Re-creations? No. What happened is that Rick [Rowley], the director of the film, was driving me insane by constantly filming me when I wasn't supposed to be the character -- and I think somewhere he knew that he wanted to do this. We had cut a version of the film where I was not me, I was just sort of like a tour guide through the archipelago of these covert war sites. And then when we started to change the way we were going to tell the story, we went back to the cutting room, and all the s**t that I told Rick not to film became the stuff that made the film possible.

In other words, he just ignored you and kept filming.
Yeah, it drove me kind of nuts. And I know my own facial expressions. I can see myself in the movie where I'm in a car, and it might look like I'm really tense about something, but it's just that I've just yelled at Rick and told him to get the f**king camera out of my face. I'm like, "I'm trying to file my story, man, leave me alone." I still have trouble watching it, to be honest.

Is there any talk of adapting the documentary into a narrative feature?
I've been pressuring Mitchell Hurwitz to actually make a fifth season of "Arrested Development," but based on our movie.

I like that idea!
I mean, what if they had a "Never Nude" convention in Afghanistan, and Dr. Tobias Fünke was the keynote speaker? It would be amazing.

And then they could have drones that look like bananas from the banana stand.
I would support drones that fired frozen Bluth bananas, rather than Hellfire missiles. That's a national security policy I can get behind -- banana diplomacy.

"Dirty Wars" opens in limited release on June 7.

'Game Of Thrones' Recap, Season 3, Episode 9: The Starks Fall Apart

2013-06-02T23:48:36-04:00

Note: Do not read on if you have not yet seen Season 3, Episode 9 on HBO's "Game of Thrones," titled "The Rains of Castamere."

I can't decide if I envy or pity those of you who didn't know what was coming in this episode.

I interviewed Michelle Fairley last week about this episode, so I had a pretty good idea of what was to come. And yet, even so, I feel pretty devastated right now.

Knowing that the episode would end the way it did cast a pall over everything that came before -- the strategy meeting between Robb and Catelyn, in which they kissed and made up over their shared determination to stick it to the Lannisters at Casterly Rock; the haunted, defeated faces of every single person in the Frey household as Walder faked hospitality to Robb, Talisa and Catelyn; Robb's sadly prophetic apology to the Walder girls: "All men should keep their word, kings most of all;" the oh-so-Stark efforts by Arya and Jon Snow to protect those innocent old men; Jon's escape from his Wildling captors, which could have positioned him to give Robb some much-needed help in his war against Tywin; even Bran's sudden realization that he can control not just animals, but humans -- or at least Hodors -- with his mind, coming a moment too late to make any kind of difference for his family.

Yep, it was all one big capital-"I" Irony in the old, Greek-tragedy sense of the world. Our heroes didn't know they were doomed, but those of us who'd succumbed to spoilers (or read the books) sure did.

Anyway, let's backtrack a bit. I guess we can stop worrying about this big Casterly Rock plot, since Walder Frey did anything but cooperate. Still, it was nice to see Robb and Catelyn bury the hatchet before being buried themselves.

And so it was on to the Twins, where that fool Edmure Tully was set to wed the Frey household's very own Marilyn Munster. My houseguest, who has read all five books, tells me that was salt and bread they were passing around -- a symbol of hospitality. Once you eat it, you're supposed to be safe within your host's walls. Another irony, I guess.

For a minute there, Walder was behaving reasonably well, but it all started going south when he slow-clapped Robb's apology. He really skeeved everybody out with his unsolicited appraisal of Talisa's physical attributes. "He betrayed me for firm tits and a tight fit," he said, not without admiration.

Usually, I like to take one storyline at a time, but we're going to have to come back to this one.

On the outskirts of Yunkai, Daenerys is testing out her new boy toy, Daario Naharis, who has a plan to sack the city by sneaking in the back door with two good men and turning the slave warriors against their masters. Ser Jorah, who has been crushing on his Khaleesi since the Khal Drogo days, doesn't like the way Daario touches her hand and fears a trap. But Grey Worm likes the cut of Daario's jib, so they do the job. As it turns out, Daario is the best whistler in the world, but his ruthlessness is what really matters. It takes him about three seconds to dispatch the first few guards he encounters and not much longer to fight off the next round in a scene that had all the production values of The History Channel's "The Bible."

The Starks, by contrast, are hopelessly wishy-washy. Arya won't let the Hound kill the old salt-pork vendor, even though "dead rats don't squeak," as the Hound succinctly explains. I was reminded of Brienne's decision to spare the fellow who spotted her and Jaime Lannister -- and who later turned them in. And though I'm a peaceful man who generally opposes using homicide to silence senior citizens, I'm beginning to think that, for the purposes of this show, slitting someone's throat is always the way to go. Hesitation is death.

Just ask Jon Snow, who likewise can't bear the thought of letting his Wildling friends murder the old man who keeps horses for the Night's Watch. Somehow, the Wildlings' idea of a stealth attack formation ("Everybody, run as loudly as possible across this completely open field!") doesn't catch the old man off-guard, and he escapes on horseback. First, Jon pulls an A-Rod on Ygritte when she's aiming at the guy ("Miss it!"), and then he refuses to slice his throat when Orell demands a show of loyalty.

The whole thing with Bran learning how to control everyone's minds in the heat of battle was pretty cool, and I love me some direwolf action. It was also exciting when Orell's eagle swooped down, drone-style, and tried to pluck Jon Snow's eyes out. But the craziest thing that happened here was when Jon abandoned Ygritte. Look, I'll give him this: She's pretty scary. I've lost count of how many times she's threatened to cut off his nuts (OK, it was at least once). Also, fast-forward 10 years and I can see him getting tired of being addressed by his full name every time she can't remember where she put her keys. But I thought these two were in love! Was it all part of his cover? I think not -- and, knowing how hopelessly honorable Snow is, I suspect he felt Ygritte would be safer with her friends than riding away with him.

Before we get to the wedding, let's pause for a moment in that clearing with Arya and Sandor Clegane. This was such a great scene. Maisie Williams kills it week in and week out as Arya, but give credit to Rory McCann for going toe-to-toe with a 16-year-old without ever condescending or pulling punches. The Hound starts this round, taunting Arya about her (well-founded) fear of not making it to the Twins in time to reunite with her family. She jeers back, reminding him of the time his brother "pressed your face to the fire like you were a nice juicy mutton chop," to which he responds with a line about the man who "snipped your daddy's neck." And then she trots out this conversation-ender: "Someday, I'm gonna put a sword through your eye and through the back of your skull." Don't try that one at home, kids.

OK, here we go. The Red Wedding. Well, it started pretty well, didn't it? Edmure's betrothed turns out to be the one Frey girl who doesn't look like she answered an open casting call to play Broom-Hilda. (How great is that smirk Walder Frey gives Robb when the hottie is unveiled?)

But then it's on to the reception, where the band is playing rather badly and Roose Bolton is suddenly on the wagon. Robb and Talisa, meanwhile, can barely keep their hands off one another, but what else is new? "Don't insult them," Talisa says, when Robb leans in for a kiss, but thankfully he manages to get one in. Sadly, it'll be their last.

Walder Frey is a master of repulsive lines no one wants to hear an old man say, and here's a prime example: "A sword needs a sheathe, and a wedding needs a bedding. To bed!" Turns out Ned Stark and Tyrion Lannister are the only grooms tough enough to spare their brides from this tradition.

Ugh, that conversation between Talisa and Robb about naming their child Eddard Stark. And then a guard closes the door behind the bedding couple, locking the guests in the reception room, and the band starts playing the "Rains of Castamere." Catelyn spots chain mail under Roose Bolton's sleeve, and then Frey gives the word. A man attacks Talisa, stabbing her pregnant belly, and archers rain arrows on Robb, Catelyn and the rest of the Stark-Tully contingent.

Arya sneaks away from The Hound and witnesses a group of conspirators kill some Stark soldiers and then slay Robb's dire wolf. And then Sandor finds her. "It's too late," he says, before knocking her out and hauling her away. Poor Arya's kill list is getting very long indeed.

Robb is paralyzed by grief for Talisa. Say what you want about those two -- they were seriously in love. Catelyn drags Frey's wife from under the table, where she's cowering for safety. She begs Frey to spare Robb, and says she'll kill the girl if he doesn't. "I'll find another," the vicious old bastard says.

"The Lannisters send their regards," Roose Bolton says as he stabs Robb to death.

Part of me wants to watch Michelle Fairley's performance here a hundred more times, and part of me never wants to see it again. She screams. She slits the girl's throat, blood spraying outward. She drops to her knees. And then she dies as a guard draws his dagger across her throat.

And that's that. The credits are accompanied by silence.

So ... what did you think?

The Season 3 finale of "Game of Thrones" airs Sunday, June 9 at 9 p.m. ET on HBO.

'Game Of Thrones': Behind Catelyn's Death Scene With Michelle Fairley

2013-06-02T22:00:00-04:00

Note: Do not read on if you have not yet seen Season 3, Episode 9 on HBO's "Game of Thrones," "The Rains of Castamere."

Earlier this season, Catelyn Stark (Michelle Fairley) delivered a monologue suggesting that there is a curse on House Stark -- and that it's all her fault.

But the Irish actress behind Catelyn on HBO's "Game of Thrones," doesn't think the curse is real. "I don't think she's to blame at all," Fairley told The Huffington Post via phone last week in an interview timed to this week's shocking episode, in which Catelyn Stark is killed along with Robb Stark; his wife, Talisa; and their unborn child.

Still, Fairley acknowledged that Catelyn's fierce maternal instinct had caused plenty of trouble, ultimately prompting her to make the fateful choice that sealed her own doom at the so-called Red Wedding.

Operating under the assumption that her younger children, Arya, Sansa, Bran and Rickon, have all been killed, Catelyn can't bear to see Robb die at the hands of Walder Frey's hired goons. "She thinks they're all gone, so she has absolutely nothing to live for," Fairley said. "Basically, when she slits the throat of Walder Frey's wife, she's inviting her death. She's already dead inside."

Fairley will be missed by fans who've taken comfort in her character's steely resolve. even as the Starks' fortunes have tumbled ever downward.

Below, Fairley explains how emotional it was to shoot the Red Wedding scene, reveals the treat she gave herself when it was finished and declares that Catelyn would not give her blessing to a marriage between Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen. She also reveals how the various Starks got their accents, and says why she doesn't object to the theory that the Starks are Democrats and the Lannisters are Republicans. Read on for more!

When did you first find out that your character was going to meet this grisly end?
I only read a book per season, but some of the actors had gone ahead and read all of them, so most people knew about the Red Wedding. And you know how long your contract lasts as well. So that’s a bit of a clue in itself.

People who've read the books tell me there's a chance you could reprise your role at some point in the future. Any truth to that?
I think you’re just going to have to keep watching and find out.

Speaking of the books, there are some differences between this Red Wedding and the original, aren't there? Robb's wife in the book, Jeyne Westerling, doesn't die at the wedding.
Obviously, there’s more at stake in the television series because you have more characters there. The stakes are higher.

Why does Catelyn threaten Walder Frey's wife?
She's trying to reason with Walder Frey in the hope that possibly, he loves his wife as much as Catelyn adores her son. At that point, she’s not concerned about her own life. She just wants her son to stay alive, basically. And unfortunately, it doesn’t go the way she wants it to go. Walder Frey doesn’t have that compassion or care for his wife. Robb gets stabbed, and Catelyn witnesses it. And then, as her final act, she slits Walder Frey’s wife’s throat, and in doing so, it’s enough to sign her own death warrant. But at that point, she’s convinced that she has nothing left to live for.

Because she thinks her other children are dead.
She thinks they’re all gone. So she has absolutely nothing to live for. There would have been no point to her life. Her whole life since the death of Ned has been to get her family back together again. Constantly, that’s the drive that has kept her going. And the fact that she’s witnessing the death of who she thinks is her final surviving child is enough for her to want to be dead herself. Basically, when she slits the throat of Walder Frey’s wife, she’s inviting her death –- she’s already dead inside.

It’s that maternal instinct that we always see with her, which has caused a lot of trouble -- her decision to take Tyrion hostage in retaliation for the attempt on Bran's life, her decision to send Jaime Lannister back to King's Landing in exchange for Arya and Sansa.
Yes, absolutely. Very much so. It’s coming from a good place, but it’s ultimately flawed at the same time. Her whole bit of operational drive comes from her being a mother and getting her children back together, but to her own detriment as well. She is prepared to do whatever it takes to get her children back.

How emotional was the Red Wedding shoot?
Very. We had a week to shoot the whole sequence, and it was shot chronologically. We started with the wedding ceremony on the Monday, then worked continuously until the Friday evening. On the Friday evening ,we reached a point where Catelyn was the last one standing. It was incredibly emotional because of what was in the scene. The stakes are high at that point for all of the characters. But also for me, internally, because you know this is a point where you’re possibly saying goodbye to people that you’ve come to know incredibly well and care about and love. It’s a very emotional thing to be involved in. You have to concentrate on the work. You can’t allow that to distract you.

When it was all done, did you and Richard Madden [Robb] and Oona Chaplin [Talisa] have a going-away party?
No, the cast had a shoot the next day. Richard went back to England that night, and I went and had my hair cut. Our wonderful hair designer, Kevin Alexander, said, "Listen, when this is all done, come in and I’ll cut your hair." I underestimated just how much the whole week took from me. I just felt completely exhausted. I’ve never felt anything like it in my life. But it was a wonderful sort of exhaustion, because you hope to have achieved something. And then we went for dinner with [co-creator and showrunner] David Benioff and a couple other people. And drank a lot.

In the episode "Dark Wings, Dark Words," you had an incredible monologue where Catelyn reflects on her cruel treatment of Jon Snow and suggests that she may have brought a curse down on House Stark. Do you think the curse is real, or is she simply looking for a way to explain the horrible misfortunes that have fallen on her family?
She has tried to live her life in an honorable way, and she’s a religious person as well. She worships the old gods. I think with religion, there’s a lot of self doubt -- questioning your actions, especially if you have a conscience. I think that’s a natural state for her to find herself in. I don’t think she’s to blame at all, but I think the fact that she couldn't love [the baby Jon Snow] -- I think that comes from within. It’s misplaced anger. She can’t take that out on Ned, so she takes it out on an innocent child. A motherless child. That highlights her inadequacies and her frailty.

So the curse is real to her, at least.
I totally think she believes in it. It’s a measure of the doubt and the questioning constantly running through her veins. But she continues to do the honorable thing. She tries to have recompense for this right up until her last breath. Yes, she goes against honor and slits someone’s throat, but that is honorable in itself -- even though it’s murder.

I don't know how closely you follow U.S. politics, but I like to joke that the Starks are like the Democrats and the Lannisters are like the Republicans.
Well, if there’s a possibly that I could be married to Mr. Obama, then that’s nice. I like that.

I guess I mean that the Lannisters are much better at the game. The Starks are noble, but then, they make dumb mistakes and people get really hurt.
Yeah, they’re too honorable. There is such a thing as being too honorable. They don’t take risks in any way, shape or form. They’re good people, but they will be outwitted because they don’t think outside of the box, really. They don’t have that sort of mind that the Lannisters have. They are much better able to survive than the Starks are in the world that they actually live in. The Starks are the innocents abroad, basically. And their honor is the most important thing. They learn slowly, and I think you’ll start to see that happen with the children. Even though they have that good moral code in their genes, they are out in the world on their own. They have to survive, and that involves thinking like your opponent, and being one step ahead of him.

It’s interesting that Catelyn had that special relationship with Littlefinger, the master of the game and the climb. Is that an opposites-attract thing?
He was brought up with the Tully family, so there is a history there. He has been constantly, for all his life, in love with Catelyn. Littlefinger may be a master manipulator, but when it comes to affairs of the heart, he can’t control that. He’s still smarting from [losing Catelyn], and that’s what gives him momentum to achieve, because he’s getting retribution. But she places a lot of trust in him because he is a childhood friend. She won’t think badly of him. It takes a long time for her to realize that this is not an honorable human being.

Do you think Catelyn knew deep down when Rob married Talisa that they were all doomed?
I think there’s an issue with definitely not trusting Walder Frey. This is a man you do not cross. But the other issue is that you do not break your honor, either. You do not break your honor. And he is the king. If you want people to trust you and follow you and respect you, and possibly give their lives up for you, you have to set the example for them. If you break your word, that’s not an honorable thing for a king to do. So though the omens are already starting to form when he does this and she knows it. At the same time, she is the mother of her boy, who is now the king. So how do you talk to a king? Do you talk to him like a son, or do you give him the respect of a king? Are you a subject or a mother, basically? His actions there are not actions that she agrees with at all. Absolutely not.

Some fans like to speculate that Jon Snow and Daenerys are going to get together in the end and rule the Seven Kingdoms. Ice meets Fire, as it were. Do you think Catelyn would bless that union?
Considering the fact that she detests Jon Snow [laughs], absolutely not. She wants her son -- Robb -- to be the king.

Max Read of Gawker wrote an obsessive article about the accents on the show. Did you guys discuss who gets what accents?
Yes, absolutely. Ned was the head of the family and that was Sean Bean, and Sean’s accent is a Sheffield accent. It’s northern. Therefore, the older children were to speak the way Robb speaks, with a northern accent. But Catelyn is originally from the south, so she wouldn’t have a northern accent. And the children are educated. Some of the kids have northern accents, and Jon Snow has a northern accent. It was discussed individually with each actor about what they were expected to be.

So Arya and Sansa have educated accents because they're younger?
Yeah.

And what is Dinklage doing?
Peter? Peter’s doing English.

Just a stage English, Shakespearean English?
Yeah.

You've had a long and illustrious career on British television, and you played Hermione's mom in a Harry Potter movie, but this show must have brought you a new level of visibility. What's it been like getting recognized everywhere you go?
In my mind, I see a completely different looking woman than myself as Catelyn Stark. I don’t see my face as Catelyn's. I imagine somebody else. I’m always surprised when people recognize me. There was one guy who was crossing the road and he tripped ... His head did this theatrical turn. I was like, "Oh my God. Am I that bad?" [Laughs.]

I'd say it means you're that good!
I constantly get people who are like, "Hello, how are you?" And you can see it dawn on them that they don’t actually know me. But it’s incredibly humbling because, without people who watch it, we would not have a job. So huge thanks to them for continuing to follow it and stay with it.

"Game of Thrones" airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO.

Brad Pitt's World War Z Isn't Just 'Mayhem Porn'

2013-05-23T12:56:16-04:00

I saw World War Z last night at a small screening at the MoMA. There were a few journalists, some industry types and a pretty large collection of celebrities: Bruce Willis and his wife, Emma Heming; Sting and Trudie Styler; Kevin Bacon; Jemima Kirke; one of the Olsen twins (I can never tell which I'm looking at); Oliver Stone; and Darren Aronofsky, in front of whom I humiliated myself at the post-party by mistaking him for screenwriter Damon Lindelof. ("You owe me one!," he said, laughing, as he walked away. Indeed I do.)

Before seeing the film, I read the Vanity Fair cover story about how the filmmakers scrapped the original ending and created a whole new one, written on very short notice by Lindelof and his friend Drew Goddard and shot with about 20 actors. Once you've read the VF story, you'll be able to see where the shift happens -- it's just over an hour in, when Pitt leaves Jerusalem on a plane. I don't want to spoil the movie, so I'll just say this: instead of getting even bigger, the story gets much smaller. The original ending had Pitt squaring off with zillions of zombies; this one has him facing a more personal, even intellectual challenge. There's action, but it's confined.

I think it works, though I suspect some people who see the movie cold will wonder why its scale contracted instead of expanding. The reason, according to the article, was to keep things focused on the characters.

Brad Pitt introduced the movie and spent a good long time socializing at the party afterward. Earlier in the night, he made a surprise appearance in New Jersey. So clearly, he's invested in the success of World War Z. One journalist I talked to, who didn't like the movie as much as I had, wondered why Pitt had bothered to make it. This person thought Pitt should stick to making films like Moneyball. It's an interesting question. I think Pitt, whose company, Plan B, produced the film, would like to prove that he can create and sustain a bankable franchise. But I also think the themes of the movie appealed to him. He liked the idea of a global action movie. There's also an environmental critique bubbling under the surface of World War Z, even if it starts strong (the opening montage is heavy on global-warming references) and quickly peters away. But maybe the biggest selling point was the emphasis on family. Pitt's character, Gerry Lane, begins the movie as a stay-at-home dad, and the safety of his wife (played by Mireille Enos of The Killing) and two daughters remains his primary concern throughout.

That family focus is one reason World War Z felt like something other than just another serving of apocalyptic mayhem porn (though there's plenty of that). And I think that's why it was smart to reduce the scale for the last hour, reminding us that Pitt's character is a man and a father -- not just a soulless killing machine.

I'm curious to see how this all looks in 3D (before the film, Paramount CEO Brad Grey informed the audience that director Marc Forster is still finishing the 3D conversion), and I'm curious to know what a paying audience will think. But for now, at least, the dark rumors that World War Z would be dead-on-arrival appear to have been greatly exaggerated.

Review: Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers At NYC's Beacon Theatre

2013-05-21T08:55:59-04:00

On April 24, 1989, Tom Petty released "Full Moon Fever," his first solo album. I had just turned 14, and I can still remember the complicated emotions the album summoned in me. Fourteen is a funny age -- you're not a kid anymore but your ticket to teenagerdom hasn't really been punched yet. At least mine hadn't been. I somehow felt that I understood the things Petty was singing about -- love, loss, the inability to live up to a young girl's expectations -- but I had no experiences of my own to draw upon, and no real prospects for gaining any anytime soon.

Maybe that's why I abandoned Petty as soon as I began to find my way socially. He became a slightly embarrassing thing I did "when I was younger" (don't you love when kids say that?), like playing with G.I. Joe figures or beating "The Legend of Zelda." I moved on to music my parents were less likely to understand or endorse: Public Enemy, The Smiths, Jane's Addiction, Fugazi.

It was my younger brother who reintroduced me to Petty about 12 years ago. I was hosting a party at my apartment in Astoria, and he put "American Girl" on the stereo. At the time, my brother lived in Greenpoint and belonged to the original generation of hipsters, so even the uncool stuff he liked became cool, simply because he liked it. I remember standing in my kitchen, listening to the joyful sonic assault beaming out of the living room speakers and thinking, "Is this possible? Is it OK to like Tom Petty again?"

I know, I know -- that's ridiculous. People shouldn't like or dislike music just because it is or isn't cool. But we do, don't we? Especially when we're young. And it helps explain why I'd never seen Tom Petty before last night, when he kicked off a series of five concerts with his longtime band, The Heartbreakers, at the Beacon Theater on Manhattan's Upper West Side. (They play again tonight, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday.) I mean, I'd watched Petty on the Super Bowl, like everyone else, but I'd never seen him in person. I wish I'd gotten the memo sooner.

Petty doesn't play a supercharged oldies revue like the Rolling Stones. Nor does he distort his catalogue into willfully eccentric renditions that separate "true" fans from mere pretenders, a la Bob Dylan. (Don't get me wrong: I love this about Dylan.) Petty doesn't perform for three and a half hours, like Bruce Springsteen, and he doesn't rely on expensive bells and whistles, like pretty much everyone else.

Monday night, at least, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers satisfied themselves with a tight, confident, two-hour set that featured a handful of hits, a few well-chosen covers and lots of deep album cuts. (You can check out the complete set list at the bottom of this post.) His band has been playing together for more than 30 years -- he was only half-kidding when he introduced drummer Steve Ferrone, who joined in 1994, as "the new guy" -- and they couldn't be more in sync. Lead guitarist Mike Campbell shreds aplenty, and keyboardist Benmont Tench unleashed a solo during "Melinda" (a staple of the band's live set that has never made its way onto an album) that ranged from Jerry Lee Lewis to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. But that was the extent of the fireworks.

Petty's voice has never been conventionally pretty, but it's well preserved, and he sounds great sneering over all those chiming Telecaster chords and squealing Les Paul riffs. He also looks better than ever, thanks to some bold but effective fashion choices (who woulda thunk a red tie, a black army jacket and brown velvet pants could jibe so well?) and a beard that nicely softens his beaky features.

Lyrically, Petty's the guy who's always shaking off his shackles and bee-lining for the open road. "Everybody's gotta fight to be free," he sings on "Refugee," a Top 40 rock anthem from 1980 that sounded absolutely gorgeous, and it's clear he means it. On 1985's "Rebels," he sings that he was born "with one foot in the grave and the other on the pedal." Even the covers fit the theme: "(I'm Not Your) Stepping Stone" anyone?

It all added up to a coherent night of expertly performed rock music -- even if that's not precisely what some of the Type-A New Yorkers in attendance had in mind. At these prices, people expect to hear hit after hit. It's possible Petty is spreading out his most recognizable tunes over the course of the four shows, but I think it's just as likely he prefers to play less familiar material. Either way, "Free Fallin'," "Here Comes My Girl," "Breakdown" and "Don't Come Around Here No More" were just a few of the audience favorites that didn't turn up in the set list. (UPDATE: It seems Petty usually plays his greatest hits; this is a special run of shows highlighting lesser-known tunes.)

Having studied set lists from the last few shows, I at least felt confident he would end the night with "American Girl." But first, the band tore through one last cover -- "Carol," which Chuck Berry once released as the B-side to "Johnny B. Goode." You could tell they were having a blast -- only to sink back down to Earth for "American Girl," which felt vaguely workmanlike. I don't know if Petty can't hit the song's high notes anymore or just couldn't be bothered trying, but this wasn't the climax I'd been hoping for.

I was beginning to feel ever-so-slightly let down when Campbell began carving out the high-speed riff that kicks in just as the song is ending. Staring out into space, Petty suddenly smiled -- not in a showy way, in a way that showed he'd heard something he liked. A moment later, he was mugging for the audience, but it was that spontaneous expression of pleasure that stayed with me. Here he was, playing his greatest song for what had to be the 100,000th time, and he was still finding new joy in it.

If that's not cool, I don't know what is.

Set List for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Beacon Theatre, May 20, 2013

1. So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star (The Byrds cover)
2. Love Is a Long Road
3. I Won't Back Down
4. Fooled Again (I Don't Like It)
5. Cabin Down Below
6. Good Enough
7. I'm Not Your Stepping Stone
8. A Woman in Love (It's Not Me)
9. Billy The Kid
10. Tweeter and the Monkey Man (Originally recorded by the Traveling Wilburys)
11. Rebels
12. To Find A Friend
13. Angel Dream
14. Willin' (Little Feat cover)
15. Melinda
16. I Should Have Known It
17. Refugee
18. Runnin' Down a Dream

Encore:
19. You Wreck Me
20. Carol (Chuck Berry cover)
21. American Girl

'Game Of Thrones' Recap, Season 3, Episode 8: The Wedding From Hell

2013-05-19T11:50:51-04:00

Note: Do not read on if you have not yet seen Season 3, Episode 8 of HBO's "Game of Thrones," titled "Second Sons."

"Game of Thrones" can be a relentlessly dark show, one where evil always seems to find a way to eke out a victory over good. Though this episode certainly served up plenty of doom and gloom, it also gave the optimists among us new reason to hope, as Tyrion, Sam and even Ser Davos notched some unlikely victories over the generally ascendant forces of destruction.

The opening interlude between Arya and the Hound set the tone. Arya, who never met an enemy she didn't want to kill, is ready to crush the Hound's head with a rock -- but she loses her nerve when he dares her to do it, warning that he'll break both her hands if the blow proves less than fatal. So it's back on his horse she goes. Only instead of King's Landing, they're off to the Twins, where Edmure Tully is about to wed Walder Frey's daughter -- and where the Hound plans to ransom Arya to Robb and Catelyn. "Quit trying to bash my skull in and we might just make it there in time for the wedding," he tells her, after sharing the charming tale of how he saved Sansa from a gang of murderous rapists.

Maybe the Hound is right: It could be a lot worse for Arya. We'll find out if she decides to see it that way.

Next we meet the so-called Second Sons -- after whom this episode is named. Mero of Braavos is exactly the kind of vulgar, misogynistic creep that Daenerys lives to punish, and it's fairly obvious from the outset that he's not going to make it out of this episode alive. More promising is Daario Naharis, who's handsome in that cover-of-a-romance-novel way Khaleesi seems to like. (Khal Drogo, anyone?) Emilia Clarke plays the tent scene gorgeously -- gamely laughing along with the repulsive Mero and then, once he leaves, instructing Ser Barristan to "kill that one first." I'm guessing every woman alive can relate.

Later, we learn that Daario believes the gods have blessed men with two great pleasures: "The thrill of fucking a woman who wants to be fucked and the thrill of killing a man who wants to kill you." I guess that's a long way of saying that he's not a whoring low-life like Mero, but the philosophy also fits reasonably well with Dany's anti-slavery thing. The scene where he interrupts her evening bath felt a bit contrived -- if he had already killed the other "Sons" and opted to serve the Mother of Dragons, why bother sneaking around and putting a knife to Missandei's throat? And yet, there was something grand and impressive about the way Dany climbed out of that (weirdly small) tub to face him, unabashedly naked. Clearly, she's attracted to him, and he to her, but the crucial point is that the Khaleesi blushes before no man.

So yes, what had been shaping up to be a very unpleasant battle turned into another cake walk for Daenerys, thanks to Daario's simple strategy of doing what he wants, whenever he wants. I do wonder, though, what will happen when Khaleesi gives him an order he doesn't like. And something tells me Jorah Mormont isn't going to like this dude one bit.

I was worried that Stannis would be jealous of Gendry, but then it seems I had misinterpreted Melisandre's plans for the boy. I thought she was going to make him impregnate her so she could produce another one of those murderous smoke monsters, but apparently, she just wants his blood.

I have never liked Stannis. If you ask me, he's a self-important prig who pursues his own gratification and aggrandizement under the guise of destiny and religion. So I was pleasantly surprised to see him free Ser Davos and even take his advice on the topic of Gendry. Sure, it's only Gendry's Baratheon blood that makes Stannis even remotely interested in whether he lives or dies, but we'll take what we can get with this guy. And it seems that, between them, Stannis and Davos persuaded Melisandre to extract Gendry's blood in small doses, at least for now -- hence the kinky S&M leech scenario that rather uncomfortably echoed Theon Greyjoy's last sexual hurrah.

Of course, only on "Game of Thrones" are you winning if you only have a leech full of your own blood ripped from your genitals.

I have one more thing to say about this, though: I despise Melisandre and suspect her Lord of Light is actually something closer to Lucifer (a name, after all, that can be translated "light-bringing"). But if a few drops of Gendry's genital blood can bring harm to Joffrey, then by God I say, "Slurp away, leeches!"

Speaking of Joffrey, how does he even come up with all these new ways of being an evil little shit? Like, where did he get the idea of giving Sansa away? And how would it even occur to him to remove Tyrion's little step ladder? (If Peter Dinklage wins an Emmy, it'll be for this episode.) The "bedding ceremony," on the other hand, is vintage Joffrey: It's an opportunity to humiliate and destroy just about everybody, all at once. How could he resist?

We'll come back to that in a moment, but first, attention must be paid to Cersei, who sets new records for bitchiness at this wedding. I hope Lena Headey enjoys playing these scenes because, in their own twisted way, they are a joy to watch. I loved the way Natalie Dormer's Margaery had to fake-smile her way around the room as Cersei told that terrifying story about the Rains of Castamere. And then, the threat at the end: This woman does not want to be called sister! And what about that little interlude with Loras? "Nobody cares what your father told you" -- and yet her entire life is dictated by what Tywin tells her. I believe they call that irony.

But back to Sansa, poor girl. I thought the nuptials in Lars Von Trier's "Melancholia" were nightmarish, but this wedding from hell might be worse -- except that, for all his drunkenness, Tyrion actually saves the day, twice. First, he foils Joffrey's wicked plan to strip Sansa naked in front of all the guests (and rape her later), and then he chooses decency over filial loyalty and elects not to consummate the marriage after all. This has the added benefit of scoring him points with Shae, who arrives in the morning to find Sansa's sheets pristine and unbloodied. Is it too much to hope that these three will work out an "arrangement"?

There was so much good acting in this episode, but I think Sophie Turner deserves a special mention for her portrayal of Sansa. In the first season, before her father was killed, Sansa seemed like just another vain, spoiled, rich girl. But she's been through hell, thanks to Joffrey, and has acquired a measure of character -- without ever quite losing the impatient-princess vibe that always set her apart from Arya. In a way, it wasn't surprising to learn that she's just 14. She's still naive and still arrogant, but she never stops growing. I wonder what she and Tyrion will achieve together.

Of all the achievements I might have imagined for Samwell Tarly, killing a White Walker was never one of them -- although, in retrospect, I probably should have guessed that this was coming. This whole sequence was brilliantly done, and I loved how the Hitchcockian cacophony of crows ratcheted up the suspense, only to go dead silent as the blue-eyed monster approached. Even the kitchen-sink drama inside the hut (OK, there's no kitchen sink, but you get my meaning) was engrossing. Gilly may not even know how first and last names work, but she's got an earthy appeal that definitely works for Sam. And she doesn't mind keeping warm with him under the furs, as long as he doesn't use too many fancy words.

I'm not clear what was going on with those crows, or why they wound up chasing Sam and Gilly through the night. But on the basis of this episode, I'm not going to assume the worst. Not yet, anyway.

"Game of Thrones" airs Sundays at 9 pm on HBO.

KISS' Paul Stanley: 'I Don't Need The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame'

2013-05-18T08:47:34-04:00

When this year's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony airs on HBO Saturday night, Rush, Heart, Public Enemy, Donna Summer and Randy Newman, among others, will be seen joining those already enshrined in the Cleveland museum. But one group that won't be represented, yet again, is the self-proclaimed "hottest band in the world," KISS.

Longtime fans can't believe the group that taught America how to rock and roll all night and party every day still hasn't made the cut. The Huffington Post asked lead singer Paul Stanley if there's hope of a reprieve.

"Well, it depends on who lives longer, us or Jann Wenner," Stanley said, referring to the Rolling Stone editor-in-chief who co-founded the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame back in the mid-1980s.

Fans have a tendency to blame Wenner for the KISS snub. (One brave loyalist even confronted Wenner on the street to demand answers.) But the real obstacle may be journalist Dave Marsh, who plays a key role in the selection process and once told MTV, "Kiss is not a great band, Kiss was never a great band, Kiss never will be a great band, and I have done my share to keep them off the ballot."

Stanley, who has been making the media rounds to publicize the opening of a new branch of his Rock & Brews restaurant chain, questioned the legitimacy of the hall itself.

"Look, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is marketing," he said. "You've got a bunch of faceless people in a back room who trademark a name that sounds very official. Well, if you had thought of it first, you would have been the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame."

Stanley, who turned 61 in January and has been playing with KISS for 40 years, also complained that artists who aren't generally considered rock 'n' rollers keep getting inducted, even as his group keeps getting overlooked.

"I am one of the biggest Laura Nyro fans. I still listen to that stuff incessantly. Laura Nyro does not belong in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Songwriter Hall of Fame? Absolutely," he said.

Some rock purists dismiss KISS as a "comic book rock band," to quote Steven Tyler, but their kid-friendly costumes and easy-to-learn riffs have arguably enhanced their influence over ensuing generations of musicians. Garth Brooks, Lenny Kravitz and Mike McCready of Pearl Jam have all expressed their indebtedness to the band.

"It's absurd for anybody to look around and hear the acts and artists who cite us as an inspiration, and then tell me that we're not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame," Stanley said.

Not that he cares! "I'm not here to make converts, and I think that the people who choose not to see things, I'm not missing their adoration."

If anything, Stanley said, he'd like to see KISS recognized for the sake of the fans. "I would certainly accept on their behalf because it seems to be a major sore spot for them," he said. "But I don't need the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame."

The third Rock & Brews restaurant opened on the Pacific Coast Highway in Los Angeles on May 8. According to a press release, Stanley and KISS co-founder Gene Simmons, who are partners in the franchise, plan to open "as many as 100 Rock & Brews restaurants over the next five years."

"I'm a real foodie," said Stanley, adding that he admires the chefs Thomas Keller and Julian Serrano. (KISS has deep roots in Brooklyn, but Stanley, who grew up in New York, admitted he hasn't yet sampled the borough's now-celebrated fare.)

It's tempting to assume that Stanley handles the food and Simmons, who once vied for the approval of Donald Trump on "Celebrity Apprentice," is the marketing whiz, but Stanley said that's not the case.

"I would say if somebody said to the two of us, 'You guys should make a cake,' Gene would tell me that it's gotta be six feet tall and what color it should be, and I'd say, 'Yeah, but there's gotta be a cake underneath it.' But we work great together," Stanley said. "Our track record together is far better than on our own."

The Rock & Brews restaurants promise to give rock fans a place to bring their kids and eat well. Asked if he and Simmons found the bring-the-whole-family angle awkward after four decades of selling themselves as skirt-chasing rock gods, Stanley said, "I am a rock god still, but I think the biggest change is what goes on when I'm not on stage."

Today, Stanley lives in Los Angeles with his wife and their three youngest children. Their oldest, a son, studies music at New York University.

"I look back with tremendous, tremendous fondness and great memories on a life of debauchery, but I sure as hell would find it sad to still be there," Stanley said. "There's nothing more pathetic than seeing the guy in the club who you think is a little past being there."

Baz Luhrmann, 'Great Gatsby' Director, Explains The 3D, The Hip Hop, The Sanitarium And More

2013-05-13T09:13:08-04:00

Baz Luhrmann was ready to take the blame if "The Great Gatsby" flopped.

Now that it's a hit, he has every right to take the credit.

Luhrmann and his wife, Catherine Martin, spent three years "living and breathing" F. Scott Fitzgerald's life and works in preparation for this film. "We are total and utter research nuts," Luhrmann told The Huffington Post on Friday. "We could research forever and never make the movie."

Case in point: Luhrmann read that Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda, had glimpsed the Statue of Liberty one morning from an ocean liner arriving in New York Harbor. "So we went to England and we came on an ocean liner to New York," he said.

Luhrmann's monumental research effort informed every aspect of the film -- and it helps explain why a collection of prominent Fitzgerald scholars and insiders have embraced the adaptation, even as some critics cry, "Sacrilege!"

The Atlantic film critic Christopher Orr, for instance, objected to the "odd and off-key additions" supplied by Luhrmann and his writing partner, Craig Pearce, singling out a line where Nick Carraway, played by Tobey Maguire, laments that "All of us drank too much back then … and none of us contributed anything new."

Scholars, however, recognized those lines -- or versions of them -- from Fitzgerald's posthumously published essay "My Lost City."

"Young people wore out early -- they were hard and languid at twenty-one, and save for [the New Yorker cartoonist] Peter Arno none of them contributed anything new," Fitzgerald wrote. A few sentences later, he added, "Most of my friends drank too much."

"I remember as I was watching the movie I kept thinking, 'That's not 'Gatsby,' but that's Fitzgerald," said the writer and lecturer Anne Margaret Daniel. "And indeed that was the case."

To Luhrmann, at least, something similar can be said for his controversial decisions to shoot the picture in 3D, commission a hip-hop-inflected soundtrack from Jay-Z, and ship the narrator, Nick Carraway, off to an insane asylum, where he produces the pages of "The Great Gatsby" as a way of recovering from "morbid alcoholism."

"I can say not a person on this film made a decision flippantly," Luhrmann, best known for "Moulin Rouge" and "Romeo + Juliet," said.

"It's Like Your Homework Is Coming Right At You"

Take the choice to shoot in 3D. Luhrmann knew it would be controversial. (In a special segment devoted to the movie, Stephen Colbert joked, "It's like your homework is coming right at you.") But the last thing he wanted to do, Luhrmann said, was adapt this conscientiously modern book "through a sort of sepia-toned lens. It's gotta feel modern, of the moment."

Inspired by James Cameron's vision of 3D as a medium destined to evolve beyond its "comin-atcha" origins, as well as by the intimacy of Alfred Hitchcock's "Dial 'M' For Murder," Luhrmann became fixated on the idea of shooting the climactic tug-of-war for Daisy's affections at the Plaza Hotel in 3D.

"The noise, the razzle dazzle, it's in the book. But [the whole novel] strips down to five people in a room going, 'You loved him? But I thought you loved me.' It's absolutely pure, simple five-handed drama. And I thought, seeing actors at top click in 3D, just acting, what would that be like?"

Luhrmann shot some tests, liked what he saw and opted to forge ahead. "I went, 'I know there's gonna be noise, eyeball-rolling, a whole lot of easy cheap shots. Go for it, my friends.' But the bottom line is, Fitzgerald wouldn't have looked away from that new step, embracing that modern technique."

As for the notion, floated in some quarters, that the film was shot in 3D to boost box office profits, especially overseas, Luhrmann dismisses it out of hand. "I had to convince the studio in the first place that it was a good idea," he said. (In the end, just 33 percent of domestic ticket-buyers paid extra to see "The Great Gatsby" in 3D during its opening weekend.)

Jay G. Meets Jay-Z

The hip-hop soundtrack, too, stemmed from Luhrmann's understanding of Fitzgerald as an unflinching modernist. "He took African-American street music, jazz, and he put it front and center in the novel," Luhrmann said. "He did that because he wanted the book to feel immediate and dangerous." But the jazz of the 1920s has long since matured into something "classical and quaint," so Luhrmann turned to a newer form: hip hop.

The resulting soundtrack, produced by Luhrmann, Jay-Z and executive music producer Anton Monsted, is already a hit, likely to debut at No. 2 on the Billboard Top 200. Just as important, from Luhrmann's perspective, is the seal of approval the music has received from Fitzgerald's granddaughter, Eleanor "Bobby" Lanahan. "This really was Baz Luhrmann's take on 'Gatsby,'" she told The Huffington Post, "and I think he had every right to pump it up with music and make it very lively for our modern ears."

"We Were Like A Theater Company"

Lanahan saw the film at its world premiere in New York on May 1. She liked it considerably more than she'd expected to. "From the trailers, I thought it was going to be a movie on steroids," she said. "Everything was going to be pumped-up, the emotions were going to be exaggerated, they were going to be about as in-depth as Bruce Willis. But I was very happily surprised that the characters were moving. They were touching. I cared about Daisy, actually, and I cared about Gatsby and all of them."

Mulligan's Daisy is a touch more sympathetic than the careless heiress of Fitzgerald's novel, and once again the explanation can be found in the filmmaking team's extensive research. Because the novel is so short -- and so light on dialogue -- Luhrmann, Pearce and the actors drew liberally from Fitzgerald's other works, as well as his unpublished drafts and letters, to flesh out the story.

To play the elusive Gatsby, Leonardo DiCaprio steeped himself in an early draft of the novel, titled "Trimalchio." "When it was time to play a scene, he would read the script, then the passage in 'Gatsby' and then the passage from 'Trimalchio,'" says Dr. James West, who edited the edition of "Trimalchio" published in 2002.

And Carey Mulligan looked beyond the Daisy of the novel, poring over letters by Zelda as well as Fitzgerald's first love, Genevra King. "We were like a theater company, and we literally got all the actors to read and learn everything so that they could call on and invent themselves and collaborate," said Luhrmann.

Inside the Perkins Sanitarium

The biggest character transformation, however, is the one visited on Tobey Maguire's Nick Carraway. In the novel, it's never precisely clear how or why Carraway is telling us all this. And while that's perfectly fine for a book, a film demands greater specificity. If words are going to be said, or displayed on a screen, someone has to be saying them, and that person has to be in some concrete location for some concrete reason.

"We're not going to be able to use much of Fitzgerald's language unless we're actually able to see him writing the book," Luhrmann said he remembered thinking. "Who could he be writing the book with?"

Luhrmann and Pearce toyed with the idea of showing Fitzgerald and his editor, Max Perkins, working together on a manuscript. But they concluded that Perkins would become "too big a character," giving notes and generally interfering, as editors do.

Then they came around to the notion, supported by academic thinking, that Nick is a stand-in for Fitzgerald himself. Both were Ivy League-educated Midwesterners, even if Nick, who turns 30 at the end of the summer of 1922, was a few years older than Fitzgerald.

The notion of Nick as author got a boost when the filmmakers spotted a phrase from Chapter 3 of the novel, where Nick begins a sentence with the words "Reading over what I have written so far … "

"I'd forgotten that," admits Charles Scribner III, the art historian and grandson of Fitzgerald's publisher. "So Nick clearly is writing it out. He's not just a narrator. He's the author."

It was Luhrmann's script assistant, Sam Bromell, who discovered the key to Nick's back story in a draft of Fitzgerald's unfinished novel, "The Last Tycoon." In that early version, the narrator, Cecilia Brady, told her story from inside a sanitarium.

The setting wouldn't have been unfamiliar to Fitzgerald, given Zelda's agonizing struggles with mental illness. "Fitzgerald and Zelda were not strangers to sanitariums," Luhrmann said. "Fitzgerald was not a stranger to being destroyed and decimated by alcoholism."

But the fanatical research team wasn't going to institutionalize Nick Carraway without establishing a historical precedent. Luhrmann located a sanitarium that opened in Topeka, Kansas, in 1925 and met with its former director, Dr. Walter Menninger. Menninger's grandfather and uncle had founded the institution, and Luhrmann asked how patients in those days were treated.

"He said, 'Well, we used to get them to express themselves,'" Luhrmann recalls. "And I'm thinking, Anything else, Walter? I'm thinking, Please say writing. Please say writing!"

As it turned out, "automatic writing" was indeed a favorite technique for encouraging patients to express themselves. And so it was resolved: Baz Luhrmann's Nick Carraway would write the manuscript of "The Great Gatsby" under the supervision of a kindly doctor, based on Walter Menninger, at the Perkins Sanitarium, named for Fitzgerald's famous editor. Luhrmann even shot video of Menninger psychoanalyzing Tobey Maguire, in character as Nick. "That whole thing in the beginning is basically a reproduction of that moment, using an actor instead of Walter," Lurhmann said.

Not everyone in Fitzgerald Land loves the framing device. "That was maybe my least favorite thing," said Bobbie Lanahan, the granddaughter of Fitzgerald and Zelda. "I would have left it open-ended, probably, the way Fitzgerald did."

But Charles Scribner III, who spent part of the 70s correcting the Scribner edition of the novel, considers it "a sheer stroke of brilliance." Luhrmann, he said, "solved the question mark as to 'Why are we hearing this voice?'"

The Buck Stops With Baz

The scholars and insiders quoted here are those who advised the filmmakers or reached out to them after seeing the film to express their approval. There's no question many others will look less kindly on the framing device, the soundtrack, the 3D, the added dialogue and who knows what else.

But one thing they can all agree on is that the credit -- or blame, as the case may be -- belongs to Baz Luhrmann.

"I make all the decisions," he said. "So all those terrible negative reviews? That's my fault. I am responsible for everything in it."

But he's also responsible for a film that, despite profound skepticism and a distinct lack of men in capes and tights, grossed a whopping $51.1 million in its opening weekend during the height of superhero season. It's also scheduled to open the Cannes Film Festival this Wednesday.

"We've been in profound lockstep from Day 1 to try and claim the 'Summer of Gatsby' and to be under the skin of the culture," Luhrmann said. "Is it a battle plan? Yes. But what's so funny is how quickly it goes from 'Oh, they'll get slammed' to 'But of course.'"

"And there's no 'but of course' about it."

'Game Of Thrones' Recap, Season 3, Episode 7: Brienne Vs. The Bear

2013-05-12T23:39:34-04:00

Note: Do not read on if you have not yet seen Season 3, Episode 7 of HBO's "Game of Thrones," titled "The Bear and the Maiden Fair."

We have to start with the bear, right?

That claw mark on Brienne's neck looked pretty fierce. She's gonna feel that in the morning. But I suspect the scar will always remind Jaime and Brienne of the ties that bind them. Clearly, these two are more than just friends at this point, though I'm still not bullish on their romantic prospects.

We know Jaime went back because he realized Brienne was going to be the "entertainment" for Locke and his gang of cretins, but I think something else clicked inside him during that talk with the Josef Mengele of Westeros, don't you? Maybe it was the reminder of his better self -- the self that saved half a million people in King's Landing. Or maybe he just remembered the moment of vulnerability when he told Brienne that story. She's his secret sharer. How could he abandon her to her fate? Of course the news that Locke had turned down her father's ransom of gold because of a lie Jaime had told certainly played a part, too. Maybe knowing he was responsible for her predicament helped him see that he wasn't as powerless as he thought to save her from it.

In any event, the bear fight was good TV, not least because I was entirely prepared to see Brienne get the life knocked out of her right then and there. That's what the beheading of Ned Stark has done to all "Game of Thrones" fans, I suppose. In the end, though, I was glad Jaime rescued her, and I only wish Locke had suffered a more painful comeuppance (though "Sorry about the sapphires" was a pretty good line). Maybe next episode.

You know whose comeuppance has gone far enough? Theon Greyjoy's! Not even the excitement of a threesome followed by a forcible castration can rescue this subplot from Boredomtown. What exactly are we learning here? We still don't know who this anonymous sadist is (I know, I know, read the book!), and it's not as if anyone watching thought to themselves, "Oh, what's this? Two random women just showed up and started having sex with Theon? Everything must be fine now." It was obviously a setup from the beginning, and even though I didn't guess that it was going to end with the emancipation of Little Theon, I probably should have.

I suppose Theon never shared any of his famous sexy-time tips with Jon Snow, since he's now being forced to listen to the Wildling equivalent of Tencious D's "Fuck Her Gently," courtesy of his northern marching partners. He also has to laugh along as Ygritte ruthlessly ridicules his people's namby-pamby military customs -- never mind that his people have successfully driven her people back across The Wall and into a snowy wasteland six out of six times over the past 1,000 years. And never mind the fact that she's so country, she thinks a windmill is some kind of architectural marvel. I felt for Snow when he finally called her out on her naive arrogance. But I loved her romantic response: "You're mine, as I'm yours. If we die, we die. But first, we'll live." Amen, sister!

Poor Bran is the only Stark boy who isn't getting at least some action in this episode. "King" Robb is so eager to get it on with Talisa that he doesn't even pretend to care about making Edmure late to his wedding with the Frey girl. There's a lot of caressing and preening and ass wiggling, and then Talisa informs Robb that she's pregnant. It takes a while since Robb isn't exactly the sharpest sword in the armory, but eventually, he gets the picture and tells her he loves her. Do you hear him? He loves her! But on this show, good news generally presages dire misfortune, so I wouldn't get too attached to these two.

What is Tyrion to do about Sansa and Shae? To Bronn, the answer is simple: "Wed one, bed the other." But Tyrion's a romantic at heart, and at the end of the day, he can't bear to make two women unhappy. Margaery is working on Sansa, explaining to her why an experienced fellow like Tyrion can be a blessing. "We're very complicated, you know. Pleasing us takes practice." (How great is the moment where she decides to lie and say, yeah, she learned everything she knows about sex from her mother?) But it's up to Tyrion to sort things out with Shae, and so far, that's not going too well. Since he doesn't intend to become a juggler on the other side of the Narrow Sea, he has no choice but to do his duty and marry Sansa. "While I empty her chamber pot and lick your cock when you're bored?" Uh, that's not what he meant, but ... kind of? Can't really blame her for storming off, can you?

Elsewhere, Tywin has put Joffrey in his place by climbing the steps and talking down to him. "Oh, yes, Your Grace, we'll be sure to consult you whenever it's necessary, you insolent little shit." Arya has run away from the Brotherhood Without Banners -- and right into the arms of the Hound. And Melisandre has informed Gendry of his royal origins as the bastard son of Robert Baratheon. I think we can safely move on, folks. Nothing to see here but exposition (though I did enjoy that aerial shot of Stannis's sunken fleet in Blackwater Bay).

Instead, let's end with Daenerys and her dragons. Tywin may think (or at least say) there's nothing to fear from this crew, but methinks otherwise -- that is, unless Khaleesi's staunch abolitionism winds up clouding her judgment. I certainly hope she doesn't pay a price for her ideals, because I frankly find it really exciting to think of her as an avenging angel leading an army of liberated slaves to victory over these inbred families with their castles and crests or whatever they have. Maybe the world really will bend to her vision.

And if not, well, remind me: What happens to things that don't bend?

"Game of Thrones" airs Sundays at 9 pm on HBO.

Dasha Zhukova, Mike Bloomberg Introduce Circle, An Art-Tech Symposium In St. Petersburg

2013-05-10T14:31:08-04:00

"You look around this room and ask, 'What binds the people in this room together?'" New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at Casa Lever on Park Avenue Thursday night. "It's that they're all creators, they're all doers."

Those words certainly applied to the high-powered collection of about 100 artists, developers, moguls and, yes, movie stars (Leonardo DiCaprio! Anna Paquin!) who convened to celebrate a bold new effort to bridge the worlds of art and technology.

The event was co-hosted by Bloomberg and Dasha Zhukova, the 31-year-old art impresario and former magazine editor who has two children with the Russian billionaire Roman Abramovic. Less than a month after giving birth to a baby girl, Zhukova was introducing her next bundle of joy: Circle, a three-day art-and-tech symposium ("I don't like the word 'conference' for it," she said) to be held in St. Petersburg, Russia.

"What Dasha and Roman are doing is bringing the arts and technology together, and that's the wave of the future and they're really making a difference," Bloomberg said.

Circle will take place in July 2014 on New Holland, a 16-acre island in the heart of the city that Peter the Great built and Dasha Zhukova has turned into a vast and bustling art center.

"I think St. Petersburg is an incredibly important city in many respects, obviously," Zhukova told The Huffington Post, "but it hasn't necessarily crossed the bridge to the now. In many ways, it's asleep, and it needs an infusion of young energy. I hope that by bringing this initiative there we can help stir something up."

As any visitor to the Winter Garden galleries in St. Petersburg can attest, Russians have long forged connections with faraway cultures through art, and Zhukova hopes to achieve something similar again. "There are so many creative young people in St. Petersburg that are so hungry and thirsty to learn and to be part of what's going on in the world, and I think art can do that," she said.

Zhukova originally hoped to have the first event this year, but she opted to devote more time to planning. The delayed launch also gives her more time to hand-pick attendees and persuade them to make the trip -- though, judging from the turnout last night, it's hard to imagine who would turn her down.

In addition to DiCaprio, who acknowledged handing out a few catalogues to his upcoming charity auction at Christie's, attendees included IAC chairman Barry Diller and his wife, the fashion designer Diane Von Furstenberg; the artist Taryn Simon; "CBS This Morning" co-hosts Charlie Rose and Gayle King; NewMuseum curator Lauren Cornell; Ivanka Trump and her husband, "New York Observer" owner Jared Kushner; Wendi Deng Murdoch; VICE CEO Shane Smith; mysterious investors Jean Pigozzi and Vivi Nevo; and Tumblr founder David Karp.

During his pre-dinner remarks, Bloomberg announced that he was making Zhukova and Abramovic honorary citizens of New York, then joked, "We need a translator. Roman's going to have a heart attack thinking he has to pay taxes." (He also pointed out that Zhukova, who spent much of her childhood in Los Angeles, is already a US citizen.)

That moment of political humor aside, it was an evening of lofty ideals and grand ambitions. Bloomberg, whose term as mayor ends next year, is expected to attend Circle and help recruit talent. And he made his admiration for Abramovic and Zhukova plain in his pre-dinner remarks: "The two of them are great collectors, they are great entrepreneurs, they are changing the arts scene in Russia, and we are thrilled to have them doing the same thing here in New York."