visionaryvoid

English actor Julian Sands — who did indeed star in the cult classic film Warlock, although he played memorable roles in a lot of films, including A Room with a View, Arachnophobia, Naked Lunch, and Leaving Las Vegas— went missing in January while hiking in the San Gabriel mountains in California, outside Los Angeles. Sands, who had just turned 65, was an experienced and avid hiker, but the area he was last known to be hiking in — Mount San Antonio, also called Mount Baldy — was hit by severe weather shortly after he was last heard from, which impeded the initial search for him (a search his three children took part in), and avalanches were reported in the region. Sands' cell phone last pinged on January 15, two days after he disappeared. While his wife and children have made no statement since the initial search, and may continue to hold out hope that he will be found alive, his brother, Nick, was quoted as saying that he's come to terms with the fact that his brother is “gone". Sands' best friend, fellow actor John Malkovich, also appears to believe his friend is gone, and said he is glad that “Jules" was at least doing something he loved when he disappeared. I understand that as long as no body has been found, we don't know for sure that Sands is dead, but it's been nearly three months since his disappearance, and the odds that he's somehow still alive are almost nil. So while I've enjoyed a lot of his work, and I'd love a miracle, I'm pretty sure that Julian Sands is dead, and I feel terrible for his family and friends. I hope they get closure one way or the other.

Russell Crowe isn’t a narcissist. The man had a drinking problem for a while, during this time he got into a lot of fist fights. South Park made a hilarious parody of Crowe’s dark days, in which they gave him a fictional cartoon, called “Fightin’ Round The World”. In South Park’s mock-cartoon, Crowe would go around the world in a sort of Steve Irwin impression — you know, the late great Crocodile Hunter. Crowe would lurk on his knees in bushes and behind trees and discuss the people he was about to beat up as if they were creatures in Irwin’s show. He’d then proceed to pummel the everlasting shit out of them. Russell Crowe was asked, years later, what he thought of his South Park parody, during an interview. Crowe said he found his depiction absolutely hilarious, and that it was good for him to see how he was perceived by two American comic writers who’d never met him… it gave him an opportunity to reflect on himself. Soon after, Russell Crowe went to rehab and kicked his drinking habit. He also kicked his ‘beating people up’ habit simultaneously. He took mockery in stride, and bettered himself — I won’t call this man a narcissist. Just a human being, who admits to his failings and fixed what was wrong

If you see a guy called Mark Sinclair walking around in his early twenties, chances are you won’t look twice. He’s not an ugly dude, mind you, but he’s not catching the attention of the crowd either. Just another fellow. The sort of smile that screams “I tell corny jokes but I’m a good dude at heart”. But at some point Mark Sinclair decided he didn’t want to be Mark Sinclair anymore. He wanted, instead, to be Vin Diesel. It was his alter ego and he adopted it, at first, because he wanted to work as a bouncer and “Mark” doesn’t sound anywhere near as menacing as “Vin Diesel”. He liked being Vin Diesel. So he became the alter ego. Shaved his head bald and worked out religiously for years until he was chiseled to the bones. He continued working part-time as a bouncer as he tried to get into Hollywood. And he managed to do exactly that. In high school, Vin used to pretend to be the father of his classmates to trick the school into believing they were sick… it was only in his twenties, after his name change, that his appearance and behavior began to match that deep voice. Mark Sinclair was just another dude doing his thing. He was into theater and far from a badass. Vin Diesel was a bouncer, a bodybuilder, he was Riddick, the Fast and Furious dude, Triple X, an action hero. He continued working part-time as a bouncer as he tried to get into Hollywood. And he managed to do exactly that. In high school, Vin used to pretend to be the father of his classmates to trick the school into believing they were sick… it was only in his twenties, after his name change, that his appearance and behavior began to match that deep voice. Mark Sinclair was just another dude doing his thing. He was into theater and far from a badass. Vin Diesel was a bouncer, a bodybuilder, he was Riddick, the Fast and Furious dude, Triple X, an action hero.

Joanna Moore’s downfall showed how fame and addiction can shatter motherhood’s most basic duties. Moore was a popular television actress in the 1950s and 60s, who appeared in scads of TV series, including Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Maverick, Perry Mason, Gunsmoke, The Fugitive, and The Rifleman; she also appeared in a number of films, and had a notable recurring role on The Andy Griffith Show as Andy's love interest, Peggy McMillan. As Peggy (with Andy Griffith) 1 Moore married fellow actor Ryan O'Neal in 1963; they had two children, Tatum and Griffin, before separating in 1966. The dissolution of her marriage led Moore to begin abusing substances (mainly alcohol and amphetamines) heavily, which in turn led her to be incredibly neglectful of her kids, who were 2 and 3, respectively, when the divorce became final in 1967. Moore would routinely leave her children home alone, often with no food, for days at a time when on a bender; Tatum recalled at least one time when she and Griffin ate dog food out of the pantry because there was nothing else to eat. The children also were never enrolled in school, were not bathed regularly or given clean clothes, and were never taken to the doctor or dentist. In 1971, when Tatum was 7 and Griffin, 6, Moore was arrested for DUI, and the extent of the neglect was soon discovered by the authorities, who removed them from her home and awarded custody to Ryan. The irony, of course, is that Ryan himself was an addict and a terrible father, who abused his children physically and emotionally, and got both addicted to drugs (he would later get his youngest son, Redmond, whose mother was O'Neal's longtime partner Farrah Fawcett, hooked on drugs as well). Moore's substance abuse derailed her acting career, and she would be arrested for additional DUIs multiple times throughout the 1970s and 80s. By that time, she was being fully financially supported by Tatum — who may have felt some sympathy for her mother due to her own addiction problems — and Tatum would continue to support her mother until Joanna's death from lung cancer in 1997 at age 63. With Ryan, Tatum, and Griffin in 1965, before things went off the rails 2

The circumstances of his birth. Richard Pryor grew up in a brothel — his mother, Getrude, was a working girl in said establisment. And his grandmother, who primarily raised him, was the madam of the brothel. Pryor’s father, LeRoy Pryor, was a boxer and a pimp.  Richard Pryor was raised mostly by his grandmother, “a violent and scary woman” as his other was constantly drunk or high. He saw a lot of things a child should not see. And yes, he was a victim of abuse. There was drugs all around him. At fourteen, he dropped out of school and at eighteen, he ran away from the brothel he called home and joined the army — he then spent nearly the entire time in army prison. After this, Pryor went to New York to make it as a comedian. When you’re born and raised in a brothel, the child of addicts and an addict yourself, when you have your first heart attack at age 36, you could make a convincing case that your “downfall” occurred at birth and it is a miracle this man lived to be 65. Brilliant comic, tragic life. He never had a chance to be a normal, healthy and well-adjusted human being.

Joel McCrea was an actor I admired. Not only for his movies but for his attitude to his work. Like Sterling Hayden, it was only a job, a means to an end. For Sterling it was to go sailing on his boat, and for Joel to maintain his first love, ranching. Very early in his career, he had become friends with Will Rogers who advised him to put his money in land, which he did. Will personally vouched for him to the bank as Joel needed a large loan. He knew his place in the firmament of stars. He once said he got the comedies that Cary Grant turned down and the Westerns that Gary Cooper passed on. When WWll broke out he was in his mid-thirties and too old for war. Again, acknowledging his shortcomings, he realised he would not look right on the screen acting a young war hero and refused to do any war pictures. When the war ended he had just turned 40 and spent the rest of his career on Westerns, with the exception of, Shoot First, 1953, aka Rough Shoot. When the time came to retire he recognized it, and he hung up his spurs spending his last days happily on his large ranch. Towards the end of his life, he was asked if he had any regrets. “I have no regrets, except perhaps one: I should have tried harder to be a better actor.”

Jamie Lee Curtis’ impression is tainted by location. She lives in Los Angeles. Everyone around her either isfamous or is desperate to become famous. In some quiet little European town or somewhere in rural America, you’re a lot less likely to encounter the type of duck-lipped botoxed monstrosities she encounters on a daily basis… Still, the trend has made its way overseas. I, too, have seen the lip fillers. The fake bronzer. The stretched skin, buccal fat removals and the Brazilian butt-lifts — which apparently come with their own distinct odor of rotten flesh and death. And don’t get me wrong; natural beauty still very much exists. But there is a growing subset of people who spend a fortune on looking “better”. And their plastic surgery habit soon becomes an addiction that completely ruins their appearance forever. I’ve seen too many girls who start with just a simple lip filler and go overboard. An aunt of mine had a little work done on her face in his mid-sixties — by seventy, her face seemed incapable of smiling without her skin looking so tightly stretched it looks in danger of tearing. Human vanity is a tragic affliction, when our quest for beauty causes us to morph into something so needlessly hideous. And people pay tens of thousands of dollars just to be professionally deformed.

The one you see least of is the most authentic Kardashian . The one who has curves, but does not flaunt them. The one who has the same brown doe eye, but looks away from the world. The one who also has a kid, but keeps her out of the spotlight. The one who doesn’t like to be on the show, but just happens to share the same DNA and last name… Rob Kardashian. The only brother. They liked him, too. They kind of wanted him on their show before. Because he was handsome and good-looking and they enjoy surrounding themselves with good-looking people. Poor ol’ Rob got fat, so he got the boot. He was cut out of the show, the way Tiffany Trump disappeared when she gained too much weight. Maybe it was a defense mechanism, who knows? Like how a pufferfish would swell up like a balloon in order to say: “Watch out, I’m big and scary! Don’t you see, how big and scary I am? Please, let leave me alone now…” So now he’s left alone. His sisters continue chasing fame, even with the show cancelled. And Rob just wants to live his life, eat good food, raise his daughter Dream Kardashian — she’s literally called Dream! — and be left alone Like a pufferfish. Like Tiffany Trump. Like all the other ‘lesser’ siblings and children of famous clans who want to remain unbothered by the spotlight and stay out of the tabloids. Very hard, with a family like Rob’s. But I cannot say I blame the guy for trying his best.

Truman Capote was a sneaky little bastard with total recall. He was eloquent, he was witty, and he seemed harmless… at first. Traveling to Japan with the famous British photographer Cecil Beaton, Capote had his eye set on an interview with the world’s most reclusive moviestar of the era — Marlon Brando. The director of the film Brando was shooting, aware of Capote’s reputation, refused to allow the diminutive author on set. Capote, undeterred, invited himself to interview Marlon Brando by calling up the star himself. Brando was warned by literally everyone around him not to, but he figured having dinner with the writer wouldn’t harm anyone? Just dinner! Not too many drinks. No tape recorder. And he’d have a friend call him up every hour or so just so he could mumble something impossible to understand in the phone and seem important, and busy — and to have an excuse to kick out Capote should the evening prove in any way unpleasant.  Capote was tiny, 5′3″ and very slight of build. He had a high-pitched voice, spoke with a heavy Southern drawl and he was effeminate to the point of caricature. To Brando, he was entirely unthreatening, and he had a thing for society’s underdogs, anyway — a tiny little gay man was exactly the sort of fellow he’d have punched a guy on the nose for if he saw him get bullied or harrassed. Capote, however, had a tactic. An angle: "The secret art of interviewing—and it is an art—is to let the other person think he’s interviewing you. You tell him everything about yourself, and slowly you spin your web so that he tells you everything. That’s how I trapped Marlon." The writer brought no notebook, no pen, no recording device. But he did bring vodka, and share personal details about his life, past trauma, sad reflections. The type of things men bond over. Brando, felt a connection, felt he could trust Capote. And despite the fact that Brando was twice Capote’s weight and a much more physically powerful presence, the tiny interviewer could drink like a fish — alcohol barely affected him at all. Soon, Brando began to spill his guts. All of his intimate secrets, worries, trauma, his troubled relationship with his unwell and alcoholic mother… When the interview, called “The Duke in His Domain” was published in The New Yorker in 1957, it devastated Marlon Brando. He felt deeply betrayed on a personal level, exposed, his carefully designed mystique pierced and his secrets spilled. He also had to admit, to his annoyance, that Capote did have perfect recall and had remembered it all with painfully brutal accuracy. He never trusted a journalist ever again.

This is a hoax I, myself, fell for. Everyone did, at the time. See there’s this lady, Sacheen Littlefeather. She died in 2022. Her biggest claim to fame was being a Native American rights activist. In 1974, she refused an Oscar for Best Actor, on behalf of Marlon Brando She did this to “raise awareness for the plight of Native Americans”. It caused a huge uproar, and it was enormously controversial at the time. Incredibly effective activism, too. Anyway the lady died and her sisters — last name Cruz — came out and said she had been lying, misrepresenting her heritage. [1] Born Maria Louise Cruz, “Littlefeather” was the daughter of a Mexican immigrant and a white mother of French, German and Dutch heritage. Sacheen Littlefeather has ZERO association with any Native American tribes. Her whole identity was as fake as the name she adopted for herself. She was, for all intents and purposes, the Rachel Dolezal of Native American activism. And for over fifty years… most bought it. Hell, in 2022 the Oscars even came out with an “official apology”.