WEIRDLAND: Irresistible Charm: Robert Taylor, Kyle Chandler

Monday, March 10, 2014

Irresistible Charm: Robert Taylor, Kyle Chandler

"Acting daily with Miss Turner fascinated Robert Taylor. He took it as long as he could and when he discovered she was making no effort to ignore his attentions and in fact, was physically drawn to him, he knew he had to be with her alone. 'She became an obsession. I had to have her, if only for one night….'" -"Robert Taylor: The Man wih the Perfect Face" (1989) by Jane Ellen Wayne

"Rationality and reason now look like poor bets to save us on their own, although the contrary tendency to abandon them altogether is another dangerous dead end. Indeed, the whole arena of the ‘Imaginary’ has become more significant, as people are forced to seek out new ways of representing themselves and their identities and to recognise the way identity is learned and not given. But widening the sphere of experience and perception to include emotion and acknowledgement of desire —of the unconscious— requires a comprehensive revision of what it means to be a man." -"Sexual Difference: Masculinity and Psychoanalysis" (1994) by Stephen Frosh

"The Tastemaker: Carl Van Vechten and the Birth of Modern America" (2014) by Edward White - American culture, perhaps more than any other, is populated by dazzling personalities that, for a brief time, dominate the scene, shape the conversation, and then are largely forgotten. In a society preoccupied with the new and the offbeat, neglect and oblivion seem to be the price one pays for fame and success. Carl Van Vechten illustrates that phenomenon as well if not better than any other twentieth-century figure. With his camera, he captured the likeness of nearly every noteworthy twentieth-century African American creative genius, from Billie Holiday to Mahalia Jackson and James Baldwin.

Wherever he looked, Van Vechten saw the world in black and white. He was the opposite of color blind. Then, too, he took stunning photos of nearly every famous American artist and writer in the 1920s and 1930s, including F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein, but those portraits, they're less dramatic. Source: www.swans.com

A vital change in the characters made by Peter Jackson in "King Kong" (2005) is to Jack Driscoll. In the original "King Kong" (1933), Driscoll (played by Bruce Cabot) is the first mate of the Venture and a regular-Joe leading man of the era. Even though he thinks dames are quite a nuisance, Driscoll falls for Ann, famously played by Fay Wray.

Jackson splits Driscoll into two characters [in his new version]. One is Bruce Baxter (Kyle Chandler), who is a spoof of Hollywood leading men of the 1930s. 'Heroes don't look like me in the real world,' Baxter says. -"Masculinity and Monstrosity in Contemporary Hollywood Films" (2013) by Kirk Combe and Brenda Boyle

Kyle Chandler received one of the faux "Bruce Baxter" posters from King Kong (2005) as a souvenir. His wife hung it up in their bedroom.

F. Scott Fitzgerald is quoted during a toast in "Broken City" (2013): “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther... And one fine morning- borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

"Picnic" is about the impact of a young, unabashedly virile male on a tiny, repressed Kansas town during the Depression; its rhythms are full of yearning and languor. Scott Ellis invariably conducts them with a lighthearted beat. Ellis has found a powerful protagonist in Kyle Chandler. Physically imposing (that's highbrow for "a hunk"), Chandler also has an irresistible charm that makes his ability to unhinge an entire town plausible. As the young woman who abandons a respectable future for him, Ashley Judd only comes into her own in the final scenes, particularly the one in which she realizes her feelings for him doing an impromptu dance. She does not really project the bottled-up emotions driving her until then. Source: www.ibdb.com

It's nearly impossible to get Chandler to exert even a moment of self-congratulation about his game-changing run as Coach Taylor on FNL. Such an inbred grasp of humility no doubt helped the actor transform one of the great archetypal characters into a quiet study of self-conscious masculinity. As with Britton, the final season allowed for unexpected turns in Chandler's onscreen persona; we saw him, for the first time, challenged by the person who loved him most. Chandler made his mark. To see him triumph over flashier competition like Jon Hamm would be a true "full hearts, can't lose" moment. Source: www.hollywoodreporter.com

Coach Eric (Kyle Chandler) to Tami Taylor (Connie Britton): "I love you. I respect you. I am proud of you. I am in love with you completely. And you're a hell of a hot wife."

Coach Taylor became extremely embarrassed when it came time for any of the lovey-dovey parts. In fact, Season 2 was supposed to open with a Tami-Coach sex scene, but apparently, Chandler was so uncomfortable filming the bit that the producers deemed the footage unusable, and cut it out of the show. From then on, Friday Night Lights wouldn’t attempt another Taylor-couple love scene, and we now know who to blame. Damn you, Chandler. You couldn’t have pulled it together for us? That stings. Source: www.bustle.com

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