u/growsonwalls

Time to take my detour from classic Hollywood Hollanovs. In my other non-Hollanov-related life I actually review dance, so I'm a big ballet nerd. And in the 1960s, there was actually a ballet heated rivalry in the form of Rudolf Nureyev and Erik Bruhn.

Rudolf Nureyev was a ballet phenom from the USSR. He was considered such a generational talent that despite a late start in ballet, he was accepted into the Kirov Ballet as a soloist immediately. In 1961, he defected to the West by approaching authorities in Paris. While in the USSR, he had watched Erik Bruhn tapes for inspiration. Nureyev was temperamental, flamboyant, and (unusual for his time), openly gay. He was known for his wild sex orgies and many many hookups. His dancing style was explosive and androgynous. He was rude and demanding, known as much for his tantrums and tabloid headlines as his onstage career.

Erik Bruhn was the opposite. He danced for the Royal Danish Ballet and American Ballet Theater. He was reserved, introverted, a harsh perfectionist, and constantly with his tyrannical, domineering stage mother. He suffered from depression and alcoholism. He and Nureyev fell in love immediately. They were inseparable for several years.

Both of them had highly acclaimed partnerships with ballerinas: Nureyev with Margot Fonteyn, Erik Bruhn with Carla Fracci. They were praised by the public for their chemistry with these ladies. Offstage, their relationships with their female partners was more besties than anything else.

It was a volatile romance. Nureyev was promiscuous, Bruhn was not. They were often jealous of each others' professional success, and fans pitted them against each other. Fans of Bruhn loved his clean lines, impeccable technique, and elegant stage presence. Fans of Nureyev loved his flashy style, charisma, and allergy to following traditional ballet rules. To get a sense of Bruhn's style, this video is a good sampler. To get a sense of Nureyev's style, this video is a good sampler.

By 1966, their romance had fizzled. Not because of any secrecy (they weren't secret), but because they were just incompatible long-term. But they remained close friends and apparently never got over each other. In 1986 Bruhn died of lung cancer (or AIDS? that was a rumor and in 1986 cancer was often used as a euphemism). Nureyev was by his side. In 1993, Nureyev died of AIDS.

Random thought bubble: anyone think that MAYBE Rose and Shane's sex after Club Disaster wouldn't have been SO bad if it had been any other night?

Just thought that by the time Rose and Shane got down to business, Shane was really going through it, and Rose had no idea. Shane had to play Ilya, and Ilya completely ignored him other than slamming him angrily into the boards. Then he saw Ilya in the club chewing on some girl's ear. It was so much drama in one night, and Rose had no idea. She just thought she was having a fun night out with her boyfriend.

I feel like MAYBE it could have gone better if Shane was in a better headspace. It wouldn't have been great, but it wouldn't have been a dumpster fire either. Rose picked the worst night to have sex with Shane.

Ok reuploading bc gifs can take a long time and a few got lost in my last post. Here is a post with gifs of all the times Connor used his eyebrows to act. I'm so obsessed with how actors use their eyebrows to act. From OG's of eyebrow acting like Vivien Leigh, Anthony Perkins and Jack Nicholson to modern eyebrow actors like Emilia Clarke and Nicholas Hoult and the Levy father and son.

Connor does so much eyebrow acting. Sometimes it's subtle (the eyebrow furrow and set jaw in gif 2 show he's big mad), sometimes it's over the top (like his "bitch please?" expression when Shane tells him to stay in the car). What's your favorite?

Ok so yesterday I talked about Tab Hunter and Anthony Perkins. Well, today it's a 1930s/40s Hollanov: Cary Grant and Randolph Scott.

Both of them were movie stars in the 1930s studio Hollywood, which meant everything about their lives was manicured and curated. Cary Grant's real name was Archie Leach, and he had one of the most horrific childhoods ever. His father sent his mother to a mental institution and told Archie she had died. When Archie was 15 his father sold him to the circus. Archie Leach became a talented vaudeville performer (which helped him when he later did so much physical comedy in his movies).

Anyway, back to Grant and Scott. These two actually had their own cottage that they nicknamed "Bachelor Hall." They had publicity photos taken of them at home. They were about as out as you could be in the 1930s.

They lived together for about 12 years. Then Scott married a woman, and Marlene Dietrich said that the studios said "new contract or Scott" and Grant chose the contract. They remained close for the rest of their lives. Grant married 5 different times.

Grant actually spoke about Scott later in life. He said, "Have you ever heard of gravity collapse? Some people call it love at first sight. This was the first time I’d felt it for anyone.” According to Grant, Scott was the one who ended it. "It was dreadful having to let go of him in my heart.” This actually makes me like Cary Grant even more as a person. He was classy. He didn't try to say Randolph Scott was "just a friend" or anything like that. He said "Our souls did touch."

If you look at these photos, my god the heart eyes.

Edit: just found out that they passed away within months of each other and later in life took vacations together. They also had dinner together when they were older and would hold hands. Aww.

I thank you all for indulging in my other obsession which is classic Hollywood lore.

So like ... two days ago I finally figured out how to make gifs. So ... I realized everything in the Hollandry era hockey game is a throwback to their earlier games. Which is your favorite contrast?

1. Pre-game texts: Shane smiles when he sees "Lily's" text pre-game. He does not smile when he sees Rose's text.

2. Ilya slams Shane into the boards as foreplay. He's smiling. Later, he slams Shane into the boards with real anger.

3. Ilya chats with Shane on the bench at their rookie year all-star game. In episode 4, Shane keeps looking over and he won't look back.

4. Ilya generally faces the opposing team's captain when he greets the team. But when Shane is with Rose, his back is turned.

I MIGHT NEVER STOP MAKING GIFS. Instead of reheating, maybe re-gifing?

So I'm a big film history nerd, and I was looking at photos of Tab Hunter and Anthony Perkins and think they're so 1950s Hollanov coded. They even look a bit like Hudson and Connor.

Both Tab Hunter and Anthony Perkins were young heartthrobs and one of the last few studio stars in the 1950s. They were with rival (!!!) studios (Perkins with Paramount, Hunter with Warner Brothers) and they were secretly in love. Hunter's father was very abusive, much like Ilya's dad.

Both of them repeatedly went on dates with other women. Natalie Wood was good friends with Hunter and always willing to be the beard for them publicly. Natalie Wood was a Rose Landry way ahead of her time: she was outspokenly pro-LGBT rights before it was acceptable to be for those things. The fact that this wonderful woman and vocal advocate for gay rights died such a tragic death and so young is just so sad.

What actually ended Tanthony was actually career: Perkins pitched a movie to Paramount that Hunter wanted to pitch to WB. Hunter felt betrayed and their relationship never recovered. Both Perkins and Hunter lost roles bc they were gay: Perkins got typecast after Norman Bates, and both of them auditioned for Tony in WSS and lost.

Perkins ended up marrying a "Rose" of his own: Berry Berenson. He underwent conversion therapy and they had two kids. Perkins died of AIDS in 1992. Hunter's career fizzled out, but he did marry his longtime partner in 2013.

Anyway, this is merging two of my obsessions: classic Hollywood with Heated Rivalry. And now I'm depressed just thinking about this story.

Edit: found this quote Tab Hunter made about Perkins. It is so, so TLG coded:

>But my God, he was shy! I think that’s why he was so popular. He wanted to be a movie star more than anything. I wanted that too, but not with the same kind of drive he had. We were such opposites – but then maybe that was the attraction.

Good to have this sub back up. Here's this really random, low-stakes thing that annoys me about the show: Rose's fashion. It is so not 2016/17.

Rose favors these wide-leg pants. Wide leg pants recently came back into fashion. In 2016/17, a super fashionable woman like Rose would have rocked skinnies. That was considered ur-fashionable. This isn't a case of Shane just not caring about fashions. Rose is specifically written as a super trendy woman who always dresses immaculately.

The other thing is ... it's winter in Canada. Why is she wearing such long, white pants? Winters in the Northeast are slushy and cold. Those white, long pants are going to need to go to the cleaners asap. If Rose is a Cali girl I would sort of get it. But she's written to be from Michigan, so she'd know that this is not winter clothing.

Ok rant over. I love Rose. She's awesome. But this is so not 2016 fashions.

So Jacob is generally very fond of closeups. Closeups create a sense of intimacy and capture microexpressions. Therefore, it always surprised me when he went for the long shot. What's your favorite dramatic long shot?

A few for your consideration:

1. After the closeups in the shower, Jacob actually pulls the camera back for a longshot of the locker room. Kind of makes Shane look small and ridiculous for nervously dropping his shoe.
2. In the rooftop scene, the camera zooms out into a long shot of him walking away from Ilya. So the camera is tracking Shane distancing himself (both literally and figuratively) from Ilya.
3. Camera zooms out into a long shot of Shane and Ilya racing each other up the stairs. Kind of shows how horny they are that they're actually sprinting up the stairs together to bang.
4. This longshot emphasizes the difference between Ilya and Shane. Shane is with his buddies at the Olympics, Ilya is all alone watching from afar. His all-black attire makes him look as funereal as his mood.
5. The long tracking shot of Ilya's chair drag. 10/10, no notes.
6. The camera zooms out into a long shot of Scott watching Kip celebrate with his friends. Obviously inspired by the final scene of Stella Dallas, where Stella watches her daughter get married through a window.
7. A long shot of Shane's first visit to Ilya's house. The extreme distance of the shot kind of gives this scene a weird foreboding. It's like how in horror movies the long zoom out is always "bad things are happening!"
8. The long overhead circular shot of Shane and Rose going up the stairs. The distance and circular shot gives the viewer vertigo.
9. Nice cinematic longshot of Ilya approaching Shane at the beach (actually them just sitting on vinyl and a green screen). Thanks u/bibi for correcting me! The longshot emphasizes that Ilya really had to look for Shane.
10. Switch from closeup to longshot of Ilya in the tunnel. Kind of emphasizes how small he is and how defeated his body language is. He's crouching and the snow in the background adds to the Russian winter bleakness.
11. Longshot of Ilya smoking a cigarette on the rock. It's a parallel scene to the beach. I love this longshot because it's almost like Jacob is telling us "Ilya needs a moment alone. Respect his privacy."
12. A long tracking shot that actually acts as David's eyes as Ilya and Shane come into view. I love this one.

P.S. Can you tell I finally figured out how to make gifs???

Edit: why did my gifs disappear? YAY THEY;RE BACK. EDIT NOW THEY'RE GONE AGAIN. OK FINALLY FIXED. YAY.

Basically what this says. What's your favorite circular shot?

Here are a few:

1. It's brief, but Jacob does a circular shot of the moment Ilya and Shane kiss in Episode 2. Heightens the romance.
2. The infamous club Bisexual Terminator scan. The camera does a circular shot as Ilya scans the entire club looking for Shane.
3. The staircase shot. As Rose and Shane go up the stairs, the camera does a circular shot of them in the opposite direction, which adds to the disorientation.
4. The Skip kiss. Circular shot to give a 360 view of the kiss from the people in the arena.
5. A circular shot as Ilya and Shane are in the cottage together for the first time, to make it clear how nervous both of them are. They're both jittery, and the camera adds to that.
6. A circular shot of Shane watching David drive off, which adds to the panic of the scene.

EDIT: I REALIZED I MISSED ONE CIRCULAR SHOT. IT'S THE ROSE AND SHANE PLAY CARDS SCENE. THERE'S A CIRCULAR SHOT THERE BUT I MISSED IT/FORGOT IT. OOPS. GUESS BC IT'S NOT THAT MEMORABLE OF A SCENE.

EDIT I MADE ANOTHER GIF OF THE SKIP KISS WITH ILYA REACTION SHOT. CHECK COMMENTS.

Both sex attempts were awful, and Rose clearly wasn't happy when she woke up the night after Club Disaster. The morning in his bedroom, she was already treating him with the impersonalized niceness you'd treat a fan at a Comic Con meet and greet. But Shane actually seems pretty surprised when Rose breaks up with him.

It's as if he knows how bad the sex is, how much he dreads actually being intimate with her, and how he's just not crazy about her the way he should be. But he still wants it to work and is surprised when she's like "nah, calling it quits."

Ok so the other day I wondered how you create lack of chemistry. A google image of gifs made me compile these gifs to show how they create both lack of chemistry (Rose/Shane and Ilya/Rando) and chemistry (llya/Shane), despite the fact that Ilya and Shane never actually talk or even come near each other in the club scene.

Rose/Shane: this gif shows how out of sync they are. They're supposed to be dancing in a trendy club, but this is giving awkward-kids-at-a-7th-grade-school-dance energy. Shane is not looking in Rose's direction while he dances, their movements are completely uncoordinated, and there seems to be an invisible line between the two of them that neither cross. Rose is dragging Shane's arms up and down for some half-hearted dancing. Shane's body language is so uninterested.

Ilya/Rando: this one is trickier, because they are making out. And Ilya seems into it (or is better able to fake being into it). But again, there's a lack of coordination between the two of them. And Ilya's shoulders are tense and kind of not leaning towards the random chick, so this looks like a "is this where we bang?" portion of a ho-hum tinder date rather than actual chemistry.

Ilya's Bisexual Terminator scan: compared to how not into it he seems with the rando chick, you can see here, this is Ilya when he's fully engaged. His eyebrows are activated, his pupils seem dilated, and his entire body seems to be sending out signals.

Ilya/Shane: they finally see each other across a crowded club. Jacob does an incredible job showing how the rest of the club and the dancers don't seem to exist anymore. He keeps switching back and forth to them staring at each other, to give the idea that they're completely obsessed. Shane's body language is night and day from when he's dancing with Rose. Shane here is so tense, like it's taking all his self-control not to go across the club to talk to Ilya. His pupils are dilated. For Ilya, rando chick is still grinding him but it's as if she doesn't exist anymore either. This level of obsession would be unhealthy if it weren't so mutual.

So anyway, that's how Jacob creates a sense of chemistry/lack of chemistry in one scene.

Shane talking about how much his mother loves hockey and the Metros, and the face on Ilya as Shane's talking about his mother. So pained. He also starts self-soothing with his thumbs to deal with Shane going on about Yuna. A great contrast of their different life experiences.

And now I'm depressed thinking about how Ilya must hate both Mother and Father's Day for different reasons.

So we all know that chemistry is one of those things that's extremely hard to create/predict. Certain people have it, others don't. To use a classic film example, Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck (Roman Holiday) had it. Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart (Sabrina) did not. Or a modern tv example: in Game of Thrones, Jaime and Brienne had chemistry. Jon and Dany did not.

It's not necessarily romantic either. Matthew MacFayden and Nicholas Braun (Tom and Greg on Succession) had such great chemistry the actors wrote more Tom and Greg into the script because they wanted to capitalize on it. Tom and Greg weren't ever dating or together.

What Connor/Hudson have in terms of chemistry can't really be recreated by every acting pairing. (Edited bc accused of parasocialism which ... whatever.)

But how do you think actors create not-chemistry? Thinking about this while watching Sasha/Ilya, Rose/Shane, and Sveta/Ilya. All three pairs have a distinct lack of chemistry that is deliberate, even as the characters have/had some sort of sexual and romantic history. With Rose/Shane and Sveta/Ilya, the actors even convey that there is a lot of friendship/fondness, but no romantic or sexual chemistry.

Lighting? Music? Physical distance? Good acting/body language? Edit: writing?

I have this pet theory that Ilya's crying emoji actually changed his and Shane's life forever (at least in the show). Jacob has Shane semi-ignoring Ilya for two years (in the books it's different). It seems as if Shane is determined to ignore Ilya again in this texting chain. But then Ilya sends a crying emoji, and Shane for the first time makes vague plans to "text him after the game."

It's like the idea that Shane is actually making Ilya sad that gets Shane to relent.

Everyone says Ilya's never winning an argument because of Shane's sad, tearful puppy eyes. But seriously? Shane's never winning an argument either bc Ilya's pouting, whining, passive-aggressive, "you-did-NOT-just-say-that" guilt-tripping faces are next level.

If neither of them are ever winning an argument, obviously the solution is to ... never argue. Right?

I just realized that when Ilya is talking about his mother, he's also indirectly talking about himself. I mean consciously he's talking about his mother, but he's doing that classic thing where you're highlighting the qualities of someone else that are actually about yourself. It's the way writers always have a way of putting themselves in their fictional characters.

Everything he says about his mother he can apply to himself:

1. "I don't want you to think she was weak" - a big insecurity because that's what his father and brother have drilled into him, that he's weak and lazy.
2. "She was so funny and beautiful" - this is Ilya to a tee.
3. "She was so sad" - again, that's Ilya.
4. "My dad was so hard on her" - we saw how cruel his dad was to him.

In this scene, he's talking about how he sees himself, and how he wants Shane to see him, as much as he;s talking about his mother.