A long early shot shows protagonist Lucky Gagin (Montgomery) arriving in the fictional New Mexican town of San Pablo with revenge on his mind. He puts a check in an envelope and deposits it in the bus station locker. When he buys a stick of gum from a vending machine and starts chewing, you know what’s going to happen next. He attaches the gum to the key and conceals it on the back of wall map.
The movie is based on the novel of the same name by Dorothy B. Hughes, a journalist who lived much of her life in Santa Fe and reported for the Albuquerque Tribune, Los Angeles Times, New York Herald-Tribune and others. Hughes died in 1993 and penned another hard-boiled classic, “In a Lonely Place,” that was also turned into a noir classic starring Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame.
The mysterious Pilar (Wanda Hendrix) and Tio Vivo operator Pancho (Thomas Gomez) hide the wounded Gagin from the bad guys in the merry-go-round after Pancho and Gagin bond over a night of tequila drinking.
Folks who have lived in Taos much longer than I have off and on over the years say locals flocked to theaters when the movie was released to see their beloved Tio Vivo on the silver screen.
Author/journalist Hughes drew upon her New Mexico experiences to imbue her writing with a non-Anglo perspective, critics say. Hughes’ talents have not been forgotten. The reissue of Hughes’ 1963 novel “The Expendable Man” has “given readers the opportunity to rediscover the extraordinary Dorothy B. Hughes,” Christine Smallwood wrote in a 2012 article for The New Yorker. Her books were “widely praised for their atmosphere of fear and suspense,” the article says. Source: www.abqjournal.com
Paranoia feeds the suspense in Mr. Robot: Paranoia is a tricky device to deploy well. If your hero thinks everyone is out to get them, they can quickly lose credibility. But, when the plot feels earned and suspense is carefully maintained, paranoia can be a powerful tool. Because we aren’t sure who’s after Elliot, or even if the people he sees coming for him actually exist, paranoia works incredibly well in Mr. Robot.
In Elliot’s calmer moments, we get the sense that he is lost deep in his own mind. The pace of the editing slows down; the shots get wider; the soundtrack takes over, washing onto the shores of the dialogue. The editing doesn’t just enforce Eliott’s point of view, it brings us deep inside his mind. Source: www.vh1.com
But despite memorable moments for Michael Cristofer, Stephanie Corneliussen, all the members of fsociety, and even the actor playing the suicidal Evil Corp exec, this episode, like the season, belonged to Rami Malek. You just can't get away with building an hour around a character demanding many answers and only getting a few without an actor this compelling, and this sympathetic even playing a guy who willfully (sort of) plunged the world into such a big mess (even if it's one that's beneficial to the people who just got their debts erased). Watching Elliot rage at the absent Mr. Robot, and then suffer the physical consequences of letting Robot take the driver's seat in his body, was just riveting. Elliot lashes out because he's broken, but also because he feels the world is broken. Source: www.hitfix.com
-While I haven't been able to work it all out in my head, there have been times where I've questioned if Tyrell is real or another manifestation of Elliot's. Do you think at some point you have to establish ground rules about what the audience can believe in since Elliot is clearly an unreliable narrator?
Esmail: -Ultimately, anything that we discover with Elliot, we can always bank on. We can always say, "This is the firm ground." And when Elliot's not on firm ground, we can comfortably say, "We're not on firm ground here," because he never lies to us. He's always honest as much as he can be with us, [even as] he admits he's our unreliable narrator. Honestly, if it wasn't for Rami and his great performance and holding onto that authentic truth about how he's feeling, we would've lost the audience already. But because we really buy that this guy really doesn't know what's going on, that this guy is blurring the lines of reality, we're with him, and that's the thing that's tethering us to this world. Source: www.seattlepi.com
Malek makes the show, the perfection of Malek is the key. I wouldn’t want to imagine it, but you could probably put someone other than Bryan Cranston in Breaking Bad or Jon Hamm in Mad Men and have either series work, at least for a little while: a superb but ill-fitting actor in place of Cranston or Hamm gets you maybe four episodes before the evidence suggests that something is off. Something is missing. But there was so much else going on in those shows — specifically the writing — to carry them well beyond what the main star brought to the table.
Malek’s wide-eyed shyness but determined, expressionless stare – no distracting ticks and head shakes – makes that happen. But Esmail is also asking him to be a combination of addicted, addled and empty – an unreliable narrator (there’s that voiceover again) who can and will lead us astray. The entire show demands that viewers just go with it – that they follow Elliot’s dubious mental transgressions and life decisions as the story careens ever more wildly from episode to episode. With the wrong actor, nobody gets out of here alive. Nobody watches a second episode, much less an entire season. Source: www.hollywoodreporter.com
Mr Robot (It's the End of the World) video, featuring pictures of Rami Malek and co-stars, mostly from "Mr. Robot". Soundtrack: "It's a Crazy Mixed Up World" by John Lee Hooker and "It's the End of the World As We Know It and I Feel Fine" by REM.
"Seconds" (1966) directed by John Frankenheimer. Plot: An unhappy middle-aged banker agrees to a procedure that will fake his death and give him a completely new look and identity - one that comes with its own price.
You can buy everything in America - even a new life. This is exactly what Arthur Hamilton, a successful middle-aged banker, discovers after one of his old and supposedly dead friends begins calling him at home. At first Arthur refuses to believe that he is the same man he knew years ago, but after he points out details from his past no one else could have known he changes his mind. Encouraged by his friend, Arthur also agrees to visit the office of a company specializing in procedures that allow its customers to reinvent their lives.
Soon after he returns to his lavish beach house, Tony meets the attractive blonde Nora Marcus (Salome Jens, Savages). The two then visit a Bacchanalian grape-stomping ceremony that forces Tony to reexamine his new and supposedly better life. It is an indisputable fact that John Frankenheimer's Seconds was well ahead of its time. Completed in 1966, the film asks a number of questions that are frequently debated in the media today. To see that Frankenheimer was able to imagine a future reality and more importantly accurately describe how technology could alter people's perceptions about right and wrong is indeed quite extraordinary.
Seconds is structured as a thriller, but there are various themes in it that actually make it an unorthodox study of morality in America. There are two major character transformations in it that are linked to different perceptions about success and happiness and the price one may have to pay for them. As the film progresses, Frankenheimer carefully forces the viewer to ponder whether the two are related or simply misunderstood. Cinematographer James Wong Howe shot select sequences with a hand-held camera and many of them greatly enhance the sense of paranoia that permeates the film. Seconds is also complimented by a terrific, very dark soundtrack courtesy of award-winning composer Jerry Goldsmith. Source: www.blu-ray.com
Seconds cuts even closer to the bone, exposing the precariousness of the American dream through a vertiginous blend of genre elements: horror, noir, and science fiction collide with suspense worthy of Hitchcock, outrageousness worthy of Kafka, and an acid critique of American capitalism.
Frankenheimer told an interviewer that he wanted to adapt David Ely’s eponymous 1963 novel because “all of today’s literature and films about escapism are just rubbish, [since] you cannot and should not ever try to escape from what you are.”
The attack on advertising was particularly relevant less than a decade after Vance Packard’s best seller The Hidden Persuaders skewered the original Mad Men for their amoral manipulation of American consumers. Frankenheimer was a thoroughgoing liberal in his politics, incidentally, and in Seconds he found excellent parts for three gifted actors who had endured much hardship in the Hollywood blacklist years: Jeff Corey as a Company executive named Mr. Ruby, Will Geer as the unnamed Company chief, and Randolph as Arthur, his first Hollywood role after the studios banished him in 1955.
Seconds is both Frankenheimian and Frankensteinian, carrying Mary Shelley’s concept of a “Modern Prometheus” into territory that James Whale and Boris Karloff never dreamed of. Since the Company is cagey about its location, for instance, Arthur can’t go there directly. Instead, he’s routed through other businesses like a character in a fairy tale: first a claustrophobic laundry where steam-hissing trouser presses hint at the surgical smoothing in Arthur’s future.
At its deepest level, Seconds is also a resurrection story. It’s a deeply dystopian one, however, where the body is reborn but the spirit stays dead. A particularly haunting element is Geer’s brilliant performance as the folksy old gent who founded the Company and still clucks over it like a mother hen. He chats with Arthur more than once during the film, coaxing the prospective customer into his fold with smooth talk and therapy-speak. In one of their fateful conversations, the camera’s framing makes the brim of his hat look like a glowing halo; “I believe you,” Arthur murmurs in response, like a little boy in Sunday school. Almost half a century after its premiere, Seconds remains unique—a probing psychological adventure, a merciless assault on social evils, and one of the most startling, spellbinding rides you’ll ever take. Source: www.criterion.com
"He stepped closer to it; obediently, the image advanced to meet him. He wondered whether it would not be possible for him to merge with it finally, so that he might become forever fixed in the coldness of the shining glass, a two-dimensional representation of a man." —"Seconds" (1963) by David Ely.
With the process of emasculation complete, Wilson willingly sells his mediocre existence for a chance at personal freedom. However, the Faustian exchange is superficial, enacted only on the surface of Wilson’s body, and the act of rejuvenation ultimately divides Wilson against himself. He faces the stark realization that his manufactured self has no core, that the change in his physical body has not transformed his inner being. Rather than lending coherence to the self, Wilson’s metamorphosis has merely created a disjointed and fragmented identity.
Wilson’s transformation is not a rebirth but a stillbirth; Wilson is reborn dead. As the dreadful nature of the company’s operation is confirmed, Wilson sees nothing but vast expanses of emptiness and corruption. Seconds can be read as a liberal cautionary tale against the feminine lure of totalitarianism. —"The Double as Failed Masculinity in David Ely’s Seconds" (2005) by Marilyn Michaud
"What kind of man is he? There's grace in the line and color, but it doesn't emerge pure. It pushes at the edge of something still tentative, unresolved - as if somewhere in the man there is still a key unturned." —Nora Marcus (Salome Jens) in Seconds (1966)
There are many ways to interpret what Elliot dreamed. The most important thing is that Elliot is repeatedly given a key and Elliot doesn’t know what it opens. We also see him revisiting his old house, where now there’s only a sign of “Error 404. Not Found”. He goes back to his apartment where he finds Tyrell, but instead of talking to him, he talks to the fish. The fish complains about always seeing the same thing (which would go back to Episode 2’s question of “Are you a 1 or a 0?”). The fish is later eaten by Angela, who is having dinner with Elliot. Elliot ends up choking with a key. The key here represents a ring, to which Angela says “yes”.
They go to the FSociety headquarters where they are dressed to get married (Elliot is still wearing his hoodie over his tuxedo). Angela says “You’re not gonna do it, are you? Change the world… Figures, You were only born a month ago. You’re afraid. Afraid of your monster. Do you even know what it is?”. Then she gives him back the key and says “it didn’t fit”. When he asks why not, she replies “You’re not Elliot“. After this strange trip, Elliot wakes up and repeats over and over again that he is alone. Source: thedailyfandom.com
“My approach with Elliot,” Malek explains, “is to dig deeply, but know that I just have to find a way to distance myself from him before it really becomes something that physically and mentally can torment me.” There is a level of transparency and control in reading and writing code, whereas one can never truly know what’s going on inside another person’s head. Human emotions, however, can be hacked with the right amount of precisely applied brute force, which Elliot does as easily as he breathes.
“Elliot is trying to numb himself from the world and remove himself, in a way,” Malek says. “But at the same time, Elliot’s on the search for humanity as well. He may not go at it in the most productive way, but he’s definitely searching for something.” Our addiction to technology and comfort has made us debt slaves at the service of corporate greed. We’re in danger of becoming a little less human.
Mr. Robot’s pilot won the Audience Award in the Episodics category at South By Southwest, and the series itself has enjoyed near universal acclaim. But as the season finale nears, it’s still searching for a larger audience. Even so, USA has already picked up season two – fortunate, since the end of season one is already leading to more questions just as quickly as it’s revealing answers. Malek is under strict instruction not to reveal any details about the final episodes.
“I hate when actors say it took a while to shed that guy, but it had an impact on me psychologically. How could it not? The exploration of what makes these men so complicated is something that I’ve always been drawn to,” Malek says. “I’ve traveled to some really dark places playing both of them, and I’ve learned from playing Snafu that there’s only so deep that I can go before it really starts to take over?”
“I started to think about the ways Elliot’s mind functions. His reclusive self brings him to sit in front of a monitor. “That’s one way that gives his mind peace, which I think is interesting,” Malek adds. “Because for me, that is the exact opposite.” He goes on to add, “I actually did my own audition process of who would be that voice. And I always pictured a woman’s voice in my head. I wanted that.” Asked why, he replies, “I don’t know. Maybe I can be more honest with women in my life, and I found that Elliot might have the same thing. He might be yearning for that, in a certain way. To speak honestly, or to hear the truth, might come from that perspective. Source: www.geekwire.com
Mr. Robot Is Fight Club’s Spiritual Successor: Just as Rebel Without A Cause couldn’t have predicted Taxi Driver’s post-Vietnam disillusionment, and Taxi Driver in turn couldn’t have foreseen the ad-led consumerism that Palahniuk savaged in his debut novel, Fight Club had little notion that the world was just years away from a tech revolution that would endow corporations and governments with levels of intrusive power that make its diatribes against IKEA seem quaint by comparison. Front and centre is the series’ voiceover by lead Elliot (Rami Malek), which captures the same sense of paranoia and sardonicism as Edward Norton’s fast-talking Fight Club narration. Source: www.denofgeek.us
Rami Malek as Elliot Alderson and Christian Slater as Mr. Robot in "Mr. Robot" (2015)
With his raised black hoodie, vacant good looks, withdrawn demeanour and counselling sessions, Mr Robot’s lead Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek) even channels the hero of another turn-of-the-last-century cult favourite: Donnie Darko. Moving even further down the timeline, casting Christian Slater as a co-lead almost certainly knowingly takes the influences back to 1990’s Pump Up The Volume and 1988’s Heathers, and Slater’s anarchic, criminal mischief-makers characters, Hard Harry and J.D. Source: www.denofgeek.com
Donnie stands out as an anomaly. His parents pay for him to see an expensive psychotherapist, Dr Thurman (Katharine Ross), who prescribes him various pills with exotic-sounding names, but still Donnie doesn't quite fit in. From beginning to end, Donnie Darko straddles the line between the dreamlike and everyday, between the glossy, rose-tinted memory of what the 80s were like and the sharper-edged reality. Donnie's school is introduced in a delirious sweep of the camera and slow-motion shots cut to Head Over Heels by Tears For Fears.
Indeed, the sci-fi fable Kelly weaves around the central character could easily be read as a symbol of Donnie's troubled perception of the world around him. Frank could represent the area of Donnie's psyche that both disturbs and fascinates - a small but naggingly persistent part of an otherwise intelligent and likeable young man. Kelly isn't afraid to tell a story that goes against the grain of Robert McKee-type storytelling. He's since cited Terry Gilliam and David Lynch as being among his favourite directors, and there's more than a hint of their surrealist attitude in Donnie Darko. To regard Donnie Darko as a puzzle to be solved is to miss the powerful humanity in its drama. Source: www.denofgeek.com
After discovering that Slater’s character is actually his father, Elliot (Rami Malek) will confront him about not revealing this to him earlier. The promo video of the next episode shows Elliot coming to terms with the fact that the leader of the hacker group FSociety is his father. Slater’s character, however, is more focused on Evil Corp and their plan. He asks Elliot to “stick to the plan” and ensure that the hacking of the company goes smoothly. The Chinese Hacker White Rose had revealed the flaws in FSociety’s plan and had set a deadline for the hackers to remove a “honeypot” from an Evil Corp server. Source: www.ibtimes.com
Chuck Palahniuk (author of the "Fight Club" novel) explained: "Really, what I was writing was just The Great Gatsby updated a little. It was 'apostolic' fiction - where a surviving apostle tells the story of his hero. There are two men and a woman. And one man, the hero, is shot to death."
"I wanted to write the great American novel, but I also loved rock & roll," Reed told an interviewer in 1987. "I just wanted to cram everything into a record that these people had ignored... I wanted to write rock & roll that you could listen to as you got older, that wouldn't lose anything, that would be timeless, in the subject matter and the literacy of the lyrics." A collegiate creative writing student who played covers in bar bands and briefly held a job writing pop song knockoffs in the Brill Building era, Reed drew inspiration both from literature (Sacher-Masoch's Venus in Furs, William Burroughs' Naked Lunch) and his own life — the fellow Warhol collaborators that informed quintessential Reed character studies like "Candy Says" and "Walk on the Wild Side." Besides writing about the psychology of polymorphous sexuality and drug users, he penned some of the most beautiful love songs in history ("Pale Blue Eyes," "I'll Be Your Mirror"). Reed was also a sound scientist who, with the Velvet Underground and after, advanced what was possible with simple chords and electric guitars. Source: www.rollingstone.com
"No Money Down" is a song written by Lou Reed, released as a single in 1986 and originally featured on Mistrial. The 1986 music video (directed by Godley and Creme) is a simple animatronic version of Reed singing along to the music. During the final verse, gloved human hands violently tear away at rubber and plastic parts of the robot, revealing wires and parts.
“White Light/White Heat” (1968): The title track to the band’s brain-busting freakout of a second album, “White Light/White Heat” sets the template for the ensuing 40 minutes of guitar-driven panic that would change the face of rock and roll forever, even if it took rock and roll another decade or so to figure it out. A hugely catchy song overdriven by heavily distorted guitars and a pounding boogie piano, Reed sings about various states of severe mental confusion in a bemused monotone, adding yet another layer of cognitive dissonance to the entire affair. Source: www.stereogum.com
Lou Reed & Nico during the recording of The Velvet Underground's Banana Album (1966)
Portia Doubleday plays Angela Moss in "Mr. Robot" (2015)
Portia Doubleday (here in a photoshoot for Foam magazine) reminds me slightly of Nico and Amanda Seyfried.
Nico (born Christa Päffgen) in the 1960s.
Nico with Lou Reed in Los Angeles, 1967.
Portia Doubleday and Rami Malek in the pilot episode of "Mr. Robot"
"I don't have a sense of time. Time is timeless to me." —Nico
"I've always had a more spatial mind, mathematical, than literal." —Portia Doubleday
Nerdist: There is always going to be something great about vigilante justice and the hacking does just that, but what Angela’s doing, going after Evil Corp, is perhaps the more logical path.
Portia Doubleday: One of my favorite moments from the show is the scene between Angela and Terry Colby when he completely devalues her and she comes back with the response of, basically, “You can go through with not taking this deal but inevitably you won’t have what you want most, which is respect and power.” Because that’s what she can identify with—and inevitably that changes his mind. Those two characters are very analogous though, which is interesting because he’s monstrous. In the next scene when she talks about her mother’s death, though, he has a moment of reflection and is humanized—[which is] interesting because we’re humanizing evil.
Portia Doubleday: “I don’t want to know what happens,” but I can’t help but think about it. And your guess is as good as mine: I don’t know what’s going to come out of Sam’s head. I was just going to text Sam today and say, “I have a couple hypothesis and theories about what he’s going to do, but I have no idea. No idea. The show is so unpredictable but it always lands, and it’s not that far-fetched, which makes it even more tantalizing.” Source: nerdist.com
Rami Malek, wow'd us in HBO's The Pacific. We got the blue-eyed babe to reveal his top unexpected turn-ons. Posing Post-Shower: "I love when a woman comes out of the shower and wraps a towel around her hair in front of me. It's sexy and dramatic." Sparkling Debate: "I am looking for the type of person who will challenge me in conversation, who will defend her values." Laughing Your Butt Off: "If she is graceful and elegant in so many ways, it's a turn on if she has a quirk like a laugh that makes everyone stop in their tracks and wonder who she is." Sleeping Like A Baby: "You get to see this peaceful, unguarded side. There are no walls." Going For It: "The type of woman I want on my arm is spontaneous." Getting Sweaty: "After a run, when her clothes are sticking to her skin.... wow." -Cosmopolitan magazine, Interview to Rami Malek (June 2011)
—The show with its off-kilter hero and anti-establishment monologues has drawn comparisons to Fight Club. There are still some people who wonder if Christian Slater’s Mr. Robot character is completely made up. Is that something you play with or have people grabbed the wrong end of the stick in terms of what kind of show this is?
—I think it’s easy to question . . . you’re talking about a guy who, from the beginning of the series, explains that he’s creating an imaginary person in his head and everyone watching is a part of that. I think the more we get to know Elliot the more you’ll realize what exactly his reality is and I think he’ll also come to realize what his reality is. And as vague as that sounds, I think these questions are going to keep coming up well beyond this first season. I don't want people to think, What if the whole thing is just in his imagination? I know we do take some creative liberties but I promise that this is not all for naught.
—I think that’s what’s so captivating about him is he’s very human. In his attempt to be superhuman you realize just how flawed he is and how relatable he is. Source: www.vanityfair.com
Rami Malek "Far Gone" video. Soundtrack "One of these days" (One of these days Ain't it peculiar Gonna look for me And baby I'll be gone You gonna call my name And I'll be far gone) by The Velvet Underground, "The Joke Explained" (I never held your gaze I never know my place I stare at the eyes staring at my face It always ends in a tie There is no knitting the divide I cry at the joke explained Ah but if I had known I would have never believed It's a staring contest, In a hall of mirrors I sweat tears but I don't ever cry I cry at the joke explained) by Wilco and "The tale of the horny frog" (Because I love you, what kind of hell do I put myself through? He hopped on down the road There is no pain this way to the truth Pleasures so painful, it seems the joy is in the pursuit He hopped on down the road Knowing he finally found some truth) by The Flaming Lips.
Rami Malek attending SAG Foundation Actors Center's "Conversations" screening of "Mr. Robot" on August 11, 2015 in L.A.
