WATCH: The Bravest Woman in Hollywood
Big announcements from directors and cast of big pictures that are being released, especially ones they have a lot vested in personally, are always a bit suspect, unless you are Lana Wachowski, née Larry, formerly brother of Andy, now his sister. What does Lana have vested in the release of Cloud Atlas? It might not be her own money, but at $100 million, it is by far the most expensive “indie” film ever produced, although I don’t know how people massage the word “indie” into its description when Warner Brothers was behind it all the way, probably with their usual 25% financing deal—I don’t know, I’m not privy to the contracts.
But I quibble. I quibble about Lana’s announcement, because I have always wanted to hear this lady speak and explain herself, and I quibble about the indie bit because Cloud Atlas is an audacious piece of filmmaking the likes of which nobody has seen before. As I wrote today in a Facebook comment, “It’s like Moulin Rouge: Nobody can deny that it isn’t a cracking good piece of colorful entertainment, and well worth the price of admission. Hating it is like saying you dislike the circus.”
After seeing this remarkable speech of Lana’s, given a week ago in front of a group of Gheys at the Human Rights Campaign, I’m now a huge fan; I even dreamed I adapted Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood as Over Hollywood with Lana as the First Voice. Do yourself a favor and skip the intro by the overly exuberant ringmaster queen in the beginning:
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1-Thank you for this. Yesterday, I found a feature about transfolk. http://www.owldolatrous.com/?p=2081 I had some issues with the semantics in the feature. However, I knew some of my facebook friends would enjoy it, though, so I posted it with a disclaimer. Of course, some people did not like my disclaimer. Oh the digital humanity.
2- I listened to this while posting a coming out piece for my blog. http://chamblee54.wordpress.com/2012/10/31/who-is-pg-2/ Letting the world know that you are intergalactic is a halloween thing.
3- The speech starts at the five minute point. I haven’t listened to the introductions, so let me know if I missed anything.
The Zorlack piece has all the pedigree trademarks of L. Ron Hubbard via Margaret Atwood’s “The Blind Assassin.” If you want a brief overview of Lana’s life and career, then watch the first few minutes. I keep thinking how New Yawk Lana is.
Why does people keep using my picture without crediting me? :'(
Here’s the source of the drawing, if anyone’s interested: http://tite-pao.deviantart.com/art/Larry-Lana-318323303
Please accept my deepest apologies, Tite. Very often the work we find online, on Tumblr and places like that, is uncredited. We do credit whenever we can. The correction has been made on the image, and embedded in the description as well. Needless to say, it is the best image of Lana I could find online, so many thanks for making the article that much better.