Poppin' Open a Brand New Year
The New Year cometh! What's on your docket? What dragons will you slay, what cats will you herd, what other animal analogies will you concoct? JennyPop is ready for a new year! New Savannah of Williamsburg (Book IV finished and soon-to-be-published!), more Euro travel - likely with Tiny Mulder in-tow - and, as always, San Diego Comic-Con! Plus, whatever else may cross JennyPop's path. Who knows? Like Lemony Snicket's Violet Baudelaire, JennyPop's tying her hair in a ponytail and getting back to work after The Holidays, no matter the task ... as long as it involves reading, writing and bonkers-fun!
Happy New Year, kittens! Be courageous, be productive, be nice!
"Well, hey. I didn't spend all those years playing Dungeons and Dragons and not learn a little something about courage."
- Faulkner, The X-Files, "Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space'" (S3e20)
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SDCC 2017: Final Plans, MySched App and Yoda Slippers
One week out from San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC July 19 - July 23, 2017, incl. Preview Night, San Diego Convention Center)! If you're attending, most of your prep is likely finished: cosplay elements, travel and entertainment itineraries, recruiting a friend to watch your dog and feed your turtle. Of course, even with all your ridiculous-meticulous prep, so much of the unknown remains.
First things are first, whatever you do ... carry a travel-size deodorant in your bag. Trust me, Con days are long, active and exceedingly warm; you don't want to be part of the problem. Bring or buy a spare pair of shoes. Trust me here, again. I'm starting off with 5" OTK Lana Kane boots and will likely end up in Yoda bedroom slippers. Have Uberalready loaded on your phone so you're not tempted to drink and drive in the evenings, or don't want to wait for a trolley. Keep emergency cabbage on-hand for those impromptu Meet & Geeks; you never know when a martini or espresso can turn into a networking opp! Now, after you're set with all that, it's time to tend to your curious self and schedule all those fab SDCC panels, conferences and screenings!
Motherboy MMXLIII: The SyFy Interviews, 12 Monkeys
What are we going to do tonight, Brain?
Same thing we do every night, Pinky. Try to take over the world!
A simple yet brilliant storytelling device. Core, classical elements of drama. Man versus man. Evil archetype endeavours to take over the world; perky protag thwarts said-takeover. From Harry Potter to Shakespeare to Star Wars to every episode of Scooby-Doo, some bastard is trying to make it reign evil and it's up to a few benevolent souls - always with great hair - to save mankind. Pretty standard fare. Purge the pernicious pests so we all can get back to normal life and our frisée salads and Shiraz at Nordstron Café. Yet ... what to do when that evil genius is your own kid? Ah, well. Therein lies the rub.
Marge Simpson knows the harrows of a difficult child. Rosemary had severe misgivings about her Baby. You know Hitler's Mütti must have questioned her First Five interactions with the twee, finger-painting, mustachioed Adolf. Even as recently as FOX's recently-cancelled Sleepy Hollow, Katrina Van Tassel shouldered the emotional weight of an apocalyptic offspring: Henry Parrish, wingman to Moloch. So follows the pathos-laced saga of Dr. Cassandra Railly and her precocious tyke, a.k.a. The Witness: prophet of the Apocalypse and demon wrangler of the Four Horsemen. Awww, but he looks so peaceful when he sleeps.
SyFy's 12 Monkeys is back swinging on the top branch for another season and it's a well-heeled, time-travel itinerary through multiple era, including a grimy yet velveteen Medieval period, a lusty, luxe Baroque spell, post-War Paris' theatre scene - where Emily Hampshire's bonkers Jennifer Goines is a gorgeous study in nut-job perfection - and even the, relatively, boring 1980s.
S3e1, titled "Mother", sets Mama Cass on a new quest, crossing the boundaries of time, space and sartorial permutations to confront her demon seed: as a full-grown man and, in a clearly more complex, philosophical and moral haze, to contemplate the actual, iffy occasion of his birth.
12 Monkeys, "Mother" S3e1 Amanda Schull as Dr. Cassie Railly Photo by: Ben Mark Holzberg/Syfy
The Bad Seed is nothing new. Greek, Roman and Norse mythologies are replete with the mother-as-vessel-for-evil device. Greek myth gave us Echidna: the Mother of all Monsters. To that end, time-travel is also an ancient idea. Norse saga tell of the Three Norns: three women who alone control destiny, via time travel. However, the Norse view of time follows not a direct, linear course, but a cyclical one.
Present returns to the past, past is altered; present is now altered, having absorbed the altered past ... and so on. Similar to the Germanic languages, there is no future tense, per se; there is only the contingent possibility of a future. As with the Norsemen, Cassie's future is contingent upon what happened, or will happen, in the past ... or, the present ... or, ... wait. It is a constant Butterfly Effect, in effect. (Note the various butterfly imagery throughout the series, notably butterfly jewelry.)
"To call past and future to the rescue of the present," thus spake the experimental physicists of Chris Marker's post-WWIII, dystopian, French film La Jetée (1962), the inspiration for Terry Gilliam's mindf#&% film starring a magnificently twisted Brad Pitt, 12 Monkeys (1995). Gilliam's Brad Pitt vehicle is, in turn, the basis for the legend's latest iteration, SyFy's 12 Monkeys (2015).
In the current Monkey tale, James Cole (Aaron Stanford) travels to our present, from his future date of 2043. It is then The Army of the Twelve Monkeys releases (released? will release? will have released? will have had released?) a plague that wipes out most of humanity. In our present, he meets Dr. Cassie Railly, a virologist whom he believes can eradicate this future minesweep. However, it seems the Monkey Corps and its diabolical leader, The Witness (Mommy's Little Numnum), have more vile deeds to carry out and it's up to our Dystopian Duo, Cassie and Cole, to travel hither and thither, through time and space, to thwart those evil, evil monkeys so we can all get back to our refreshing, summer salads and wine.
No matter the outcome, you've got time to bring out your dead. 12 Monkeys S4 has already been greenlit (will be greenlighted? will have had been greenlitten?), a rare security before the previous season even airs. To boot, S3 proffers the illustrious Christopher Lloyd (Back to the Future, The Addams Family, Taxi) - eternally Uncle Fester to some of us - in a guest-starring role as Zalmon Shaw, sociopathic and sadistic Dir. of Recruitment and Membership for The Monkey Club. (Membership is free, but initiation is pure hell.)
The end of the world could eventually come. So, mark your calendar, kids, and find yourself a nice, purple track suit on eBay. Friday May 19, 2017, the quest for world domination resumes on SyFy. 12 Monkeys S3 airs in one epic, weekend "binge-a-thon": all ten S3 episodes from Friday 5/19 - Sunday 5/21, airing 8p.m. - 11p.m. ET/PT each night. In case mankind is wiped out by a plague, it's a good thing you get to watch the whole season this weekend.
In the meanwhile, for your reading pleasure, I chatted with Aaron Stanford (James Cole) and Amanda Schull (Dr. Cassie) about their roles, the writers' inspirations and Jennifer Goines' 99 Luftballons.
12 Monkeys, "Masks" S3e8 Aaron Stanford as Jame Cole, Amanda Schull as Cassandra Railly
Photo by: Dusan Martincek/Syfy
Interview with Aaron Stanford (James Cole) and amanda Schull (Dr. Cassandra Railly)
Monkey Interview Date: May 12, 2017 9:00 am PST
Please note: Transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity, only where JennyPop! questions are concerned. Talent answers are transcribed here in full.
JennyPop!: Good morning! So I have a question and your answer might be largely based on your relationship with your writers because it’s more of a writer-oriented question.
But I noticed as a viewer, I see a lot of parallels between your storylines and classical mythology, primarily Norse and Greek. I was wondering if the writers talk to you about some of their inspirations for different characters. I’m thinking of the Norse characters, the Three Norns. They are three women who control destiny and I sort of see them in Cassie, Jennifer, and Magdalena. Basically, they follow not a linear timeline of mankind but a cyclical one, where they go from present to past, change the past, and then re-enter a new present, which absorbed the changed past. It kind of just goes in cycles like that. And your storyline kind of speaks to me in that way.
Aaron Stanford: I’ll tell you what, if they’re not making allusion to that they should be. I don’t have the answer to that. I don’t know if they specifically used that myth. I know that they are influenced by mythology in general. You’ll definitely notice references to Greek mythology.
These guys are big genre and sci fi fans and most of the best sci fi is actually based on ancient mythology. A film franchise like Star Wars is known as the Birth of Modern Mythology. All these rules for storytelling were laid out in the poetics and they sort of adhere to these same rules and that’s just what good storytelling is. So I do not have an answer to that question – whether or not that specific myth comes into play – but I know the writers definitely, definitely lean heavily on ancient mythology.
JennyPop!: Interesting because I wondered, and especially Amanda, as like the visual storytellers for the writers, do you kind of feel the, I don’t know, sort of the heft of legend to portray…. Like your character reminds me of Greek mythology's Echidna, who is the mother of all monsters. Your character makes me think of Echidna so I wonder, as a female lead in the series, and there are so many female characters of mythology that put the world on its axis – do you feel any of that in your character?
Amanda Schull: Absolutely. Well Aaron is right that the writers are very influenced by Greek mythology. If you even consider my character’s name, they changed it from the movie which was Kathryn Railly, or Reynolds, I believe. I can’t remember her last name, but they changed Kathryn to Cassandra of the Greek myth. And that was a particularly powerful storyline for Cassie in the first season –knowing the fate of the world and knowing what was going to happen and nobody listened to her.
And you’re right in that Cassie does have a lot of the strengths and weight, similar to Greek mythology, on her shoulders throughout the entire season. But I would go further to say that it’s the women in the show, the female roles that these men, these male writers, have created that allow the weight to shift from one character to the next.
But in particular for these women, allowing them strength that is often reserved for male characters is of particular fascination to me, and flattery as well. And it also just really works with the mythology of our personal show but of course is also very strong in Greek mythology as well.
JennyPop!: Clearly. I like to observe the subtext within the show and I see a lot more under the water, so to say, than when I first started watching. So I am enjoying it and, Season 3 episode 2, Jennifer’s character’s performance is just spectacular! I absolutely love - j'adore! Her "99 Luftballons" is fantastic – so, a fantastic show.
Amanda Schull: We’ll pass that along to her!
JennyPop!: Great, thank you very much. Have a wonderful afternoon, thank you.
Amanda Schull: Thank you, you too.
Aaron Stanford: Thanks.
JennyPop!: Bye-bye!
12 Monkeys, "Guardians" S3e2 Emily Hampshire as Jennifer Goines Photo by Ben Mark Holzberg/Syfy
"Jennifer ... she's lost in time. Way back. Locked away somewhere inside that primary, pinball machine brain of hers is the answer to everything." - 12 Monkeys
12 MONKEYS
Production (Because credits are important, especially if you're listed. Stay for the credits, kids.)
Written by Terry Matalas, Travis Fickett, Janet Peoples and David Webb Peoples
Directed by David Grossman
Produced by Atlas Entertainment
Distributed by SyFy, NBCUniversal and Netflix
Cast
Amanda Schull as Dr. Cassie Railly
Aaron Stanford as James Cole
Emily Hampshire as Jennifer Goines
Kirk Acevedo as José Ramse
Barbara Sukowa as Katarina Jones
Todd Stashwick as Deacon
- Acclaimed guest stars joining S3 include Emmy winner Christopher Lloyd (Back to the Future), Hannah Waddington ("Game of Thrones") and James Callis ("Battlestar Galactica").
So Many Monkeys SyFy Original Series Helix
No monkeys here. Too many monkeys here. Is that a monkey? Frozen monkey field. These are not the monkeys you're looking for. Look, we've been at this over an hour and still no monkeys.
Helix, SyFy's newest original series, is an experiment in extremes: viral containment, climate, human isolation and monkeys. Set in a cutting-edge research facility in the Arctic, Helix could easily be a next-generation, X-Files spin-off, picking up after any one of the Black Oil Mythology episodes, or even Scully and Mulder's Alaskan exploits in "Ice" (S1e7).
It is safe to say, should you be an X-Phile, you will once again enjoy the glacial-blue light of Friday night, sci-fi-thriller TV. So, grab some snacks, zip up your Snuggy and leave a hand free; you'll need it for your chocolate-covered frozen bananas and a handily-placed stun baton. It's Helix time.
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Like many a thriller, our secretive, U.S. government provides unwitting and reluctant heroes plucked from deep within federal cubicle farms. This time, it's the CDC and the protags, de rigueur, have a bevy of personal and interpersonal issues compiling their newly assumed duties. All this makes working in a lockdown facility full of sharp, shiny, metal instruments, and possibly run amok with infected monkeys, situated on an merciless, frozen tundra, if one could escape, extra fun.
Shot on-location in Montréal, Québec, including on a sound stage dubbed "The Freezer", Helix effectively presents viable, unsettling, virtual feelings of claustrophobia and agoraphobia. Add what Maeda calls "an invisible villain", and you've got fear and panic factory-sealed in an icy gift box.
"You can't touch it. You can't taste it. But it's there," Maeda added in a SyFy press call with Helix actress Kyra Zagorsky (Smallville, Soldiers of the Apocalypse) who plays the emotionally severe yet painfully professional Dr. Julia Walker.
Zagorsky concurred about the fictional virus:
This virus ... it’s something that they’ve never seen and that, in itself, is quite frightening in a story because this is something that happens all the time, a real life epidemic scare, you know. I mean, I think there was just a couple reported cases this last week in Vancouver of some deaths of people passed away with H1N1. You know, it’s something that’s really out there for people.At the Ilaria Corporation high-tech research facility, Arctic Biosystems, the true menace is neither simian nor even meteorological in form; although the agoraphobic nature of nothing but white death for leagues and leagues does present itself as its own, haranguing character.
Banking on mankind's truest fears, like recurrences of the Black Death, Spanish Flu, Chernobyl and even the still-worrisome Fukushima Daiichi fallout, Helix' writers, and actors, understand they are straddling a very fine line between fiction and reality. Audiences like to be scared by the likes of Paranormal Activity and Fire in the Sky because it feeds some primal need for adrenaline in our luxurious, SUV seat-heater, caramel double-latte, fingerless cashmere iPad-gloves, modern world. Audiences know ghosts and aliens won't actually harm them, mostly. Yet, a mysterious illness, emerging out of nowhere, killing indiscriminately and painfully at a near 100% mortality rate whilst fueling its autonomous need to propagate? That's not just terrifying, it's possible.
Interviewing Helix actors Catherine Lemieux (Blue Violin, White House Down), who plays Dr. Doreen Boyle with a hard realism, and Mark Ghanimé (Soldiers of the Apocalypse, Emily Owens, M.D.), who brings a confident approachability to the role of Major Sergio Balleseros, I was afforded an opportunity to chat with them about the story devices of fear and hope, human nature and dealing with mankind's paramount fear of the unknown.
Catherine Lemieux: Wow. Wow. I think that that's just a reflection of life really like life is a balance of those two things in a sense of fear and hope through that and of conquering the fears that we get. So I think that's kind of like a true reflection, the show kind of reflects the balance of life that we all try to achieve. And we all have fears and we all have to face them in that sense. So it's a very, very human experience in that. It also being a Sci-fi experience and having this disease be completely unknown and completely from out of this world maybe, who knows. Mark Ghanimé: Exactly what Catherine says, and also the fact that if you look at some of the characters as we develop the story in the season some of the infected - the people that get infected in the base there is - there is the fear and the hope that these people from the CDC can help them. And, I mean, that kind of - it's a very important story line on the secondary and the guest star characters in the show. A lot of times you don't see too too much of the fear and the hope on the surface of the hero characters. But, we have that support from the guest stars on our show. You really get to see what the true feelings are of these people in the space. And I think, yeah, it is exactly human nature.Does Helix face a difficulty down the line, putting a fictive slant on such a sobering subject, I wondered?
Mark Ghanimé: We've echoed this a lot on our previous interviews. The fact that what we're doing in this show is not fantastical, is not supernatural, is not beyond the reach of the real world I think that in itself lends a built-in fear in that it can happen. You look outside your door and those things can occur. And I think that itself is enough to put the fear of God into people. Yeah, for lack of a better term.Catherine continued with the idea of character-identification, linking that sympathetic emotion of fear between actor and viewer.
Catherine Lemieux: The possibility, I think, of it - the possibility of any situation that's on television or on film or what have you is definitely the link with the audience in that sense. If an audience member can identify and see themselves in this problem that these characters are having then you really do have a connection."The primary goal," directs the CDC's head of Special Pathogens, Dr. Alan Farragut, played sternly by Billy Campbell (The O.C., The 4400) "identify the pathogen."
Narvik is the mystery pathogen. Narvik is its name, killier black goo is its game. Whether you get strain-A or -B is when the game comes afoot and that is up to fate, and the writers: Cameron Porsandeh (Helix), Misha Green (Heroes, Sons of Anarchy), Keith Huff (House of Cards, Mad Men) and Ronald D. Moore (Caprica, Star Trek: First Contact). To boot, climate conditions at Arctic Biosystems are so heinous they wreak havoc on helicopter mechanisms, making it futile to depend on, or even hope for, outside help, thus adding desperation and panic to fundamental fear and those oh-so-gelled, previous feelings of claustrophobia and agoraphobia everyone is experiencing, including the pathos-brimming rats and monkeys.
Fair warning to the squeamish and the animal-empathetic. Animal lovers might spend a good deal of each show watching through closed hands. Lab rats and monkeys make regular appearances in various stages of distress and infection. SFX, MUA, CGI and robotics they might be; still, the visuals are disturbing and one wonders how much animal suffering some viewers will stomach before switching over to a much-needed dose of happy and silly via Archer or Bob's Burgers on Netflix? Animal testing was funny at Springfield's "Screaming Monkey Medical Research Facility", as seen on The Simpsons episode "HOMR" (S12e9). Alas, it is not on Helix. Still, Catherine Lemieux assuaged the concern about the animals on-set, assuring viewers everyone is well-cared for, without a doubt.
Catherine Lemieux: I just wanted to point out that we also had a vet on set. And she was great. She's somebody that I could use a total resource. Her name was Ev and I don't know her last name. But I considered that such a gift from production to be able to speak to somebody who actually is a veterinarian and who deals with that on a day to day basis. So that was really, really a great help.
At the end of the interview, I asked both Lemieux and Ghanimé about an ad for Ilaria's Infinity contact lenses. How does it link to the untenable situation at Arctic Biosystems. The query was originally posited by, of all people, the Chair of Ophthalmology at U.C. Davis. The good doctor and I wondered if it could have something to do with the inhuman, silver eyes of Dr. Hatake (played astringently by Hiroyuki Sanada). The question was responded to with an immediate aaahhs and hmmms; one could almost hear them shifting in their seats as they pondered my question. All to no effect, though; Ghanimé's answer was curt.
Mark Ghanimé: I have a huge answer. It's a juicy one. Are you ready for this? No comment. We cannot talk about that ... said with all humor of course.
New episodes of Helix air on SyFy, Fridays @10p/9c
Follow @JennyPopCom #Helix
Savannah Meets George Washington
Savannah of Williamsburg devotees have been anxiously awaiting Book IV in my 18thC. historical-fiction series. Well, pour some tea and put up your feet, folks ... be prepared to wait a little longer. Happily, my non-Savannah writing affords me a bevy of opportunity: as of late, covering various comic book conventions, reviewing the odd TV series, interviewing other writers and some producers and actors, to boot. As I am inextricably bonded to geek culture, I heartily enjoy writing in this genre. Although, because it is raw-ther niche, the more I write, the more call I get to do so. It's a nerdy, vicious cycle, my pretties. Unfamiliar with some of my geek oeuvres? Find them at GoodToBeAGeek.com, under the pseudonym Miss Hannah Hart, ghostdame of the Hotel del Coronado, and syndicated at RocketLlama.com and, soon, Nerdspan.com!
Savannah Squirrel Gets the Centerfold
In a springtime issue of Next Door Neighbors magazine, author Jennifer Susannah Devore was interviewed by Suzi Drake about from whence the idea for the series originated, how the author was enjoying her new life on the East Coast and what was next in the literary hopper.
Savannah of Williamsburg: Being the Account of a Young, London Squirrel, Virginia 1705 and Savannah of Williamsburg: The Trials of Blackbeard and His Pirates, Virginia 1718 are discussed in the interview.
Jennifer Susannah Devore donates Book III to the WRL
Meet the Characters George Washington Braddock and the Western Frontier
As of late, yours truly has been greatly distracted and engaged by the likes of my dear pal Miss Hannah Hart, ghostdame of the Hotel Del (her latest piece being a gracious and geeky ode to Charles Dickens, Mark Twain and Leonard Nimoy on the former's 200th birthday); my Darlings of Orange County and it's forthwith release; the launch of my website JennyPop.com and the great fun of being @JennyPopCom.
In those spare moments when I'm not Tweeting, blogging, editing, primping, ghosting and pirating, I have been dutifully and diligently researching, developing and gathering facts, dates, details and tidbits like a perky squirrel gathering perfect branches and bits of shiny, gold string for her new nest. Sans doute, this next installment of Savannah of Williamsburg is proving the most difficult yet of all past titles.