And sometimes after a long day of writing and rehearsing and sketching and rewriting you just wanna draw Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn! Cause she’s chaos and confidence and madness and all things kickass! That’s why. Portrait by @adammarcusartworks@adammarcus13 #harleyquinn #margotrobbie
Okay, big confession…. As a kid, I did not like Meryl Streep. It’s true. I thought she was impressive at accents and I thought she was hiding behind them. I had seen all of her film work. All of it. I even loved the movies she was in, I just didn’t love her. Then, I go to see Albert Brooks’ Defending Your Life. Now, I’ve been a HUGE Albert Brooks fan since Real Life, so I was excited to go. But the fact the Streep was the love interest, I was like… eh.
And then it happened. She came on screen, no accent, no deep dive into the life of a holocaust survivor, no eight months learning how to play the violin from Itzhak Pearlman. Nope, she was just playing a really accomplished woman with a family and friends who lived in the suburbs and treated everyone with kindness and really loved eating. And suddenly I realized she was playing… herself. And like lightning, my heart was struck with an overwhelming adoration for this beautiful actor. She was funny, and lovely and brilliant. I immediately went back and watched every single thing she ever did over again. And yeah, it’s a lot of accents, but it’s also a tapestry of the greatest, most soulful, genius of our age. Meryl Streep is the GOAT! She dives deep like Day Lewis, she adapts to new skills like Cruise, and she embraces who she is like Hepburn or Kathy Bates. She is also a remarkable human being. Funny, smart, political, extraordinary. I got to meet her briefly in New York many moons ago and I can tell you, that smile is genuine. So yeah, Meryl Streep is my hero. Big time.
Julia: We went to visit some friends for the weekend. Everybody wanted to go into town, but I wanted to stay at the house and go swimming. So I went outside, tripped over the chaise lounge, hit my head on the cement and rolled into the pool.
Daniel Miller: What did the East German judge give you?
Well, this judge gives her a 10! Every damn time.
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Portrait by Adam Marcus.
#merylstreep #goat #defendingyourlife #albertbrooks
“My name is Judy! J-U-D-Y! Judy! And I’d like somebody to call me by my name! Oh, okay I took my life in my own hands, I made a mistake fine I’m sorry! I’ll never do it again! I wanna wear my sandals... I wanna go out to lunch. I wanna be normal again!”
Today, we continue my love of actors in roles that not only defined their careers but also made me reconsider my own path. Goldie Hawn obliterated gender stereotypes and glass ceilings with nearly every single role she took on, and no one fucking talks about it… ever! She went from being the sexualized “sock it to me” girl in the politically savvy “Laugh In” to winning the Academy Award for best supporting actress in her first major screen role in Cactus Flower! First role, folks! And she parlayed that into a career of risky (Sugarland Express, anyone) and heartbreaking (Butterflies Are Free) choices of roles. But when she acquired real power and she started producing the films she would star in, she chose things like Private Benjamin! A movie where the way people perceived her was once again turned on its head. Here’s this spritely, sexy, easy-to-discount woman illuminated the tale of a spoiled princess learning to step out of the darkness of being labeled by the men in her life and finding a path to her inner strength and ultimately to herself. Yeah, revolutionary! Hawn’s genius, not unlike so many of my filmmaking idols, was to hide the vegetables with huge mound of the ice cream of comedy. It’s her humor that never let you see her coming. And she continued this crusade for women to be seen as more than their sex with beautiful films like Wildcats and Swing Shift and the insanely underrated political statement that is The First Wives Club. Goldie Hawn gave me an obsessive love of funny women and she is my freaking hero! Full fucking stop!
“And I mean, look at this place. The army couldn’t afford drapes? I’ll be up at the crack of dawn here!”
More incredible women to come….
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Portrait by Adam Marcus.
Speaking of incredible women, this post is dedicated to my two Goldie Hawns, Erika Lane Enggren & Kaliegh Ronan.
#goldiehawn #actor #glassceilingshattered
“I am what I am”! After a couple posts about my favorite salty dog Quint, I thought it appropriate to land on the most badass sailor man of all time, Popeye. Now, this is no ordinary interpretation of the stuttering, spinach addicted, love struck sea dog. No sir! This is my sketch of Rick Baker’s sculptured version. Rick Baker has been my hero for most of my life. His work has always been an inspiration to me and so many of my friends in the world of FX, especially makeup. Years ago, he sculpted a magnificent concept of what a very old, set-in-his-ways version of Popeye would look like and this is him. It’s one of my favorites and tomorrow y’all get to see my sculpted exercise version of this design as well. Now that’s a face only Olive Oyl could love. .041 #popeye #popeyethesailorman #rickbaker #iamwhatiam
“Farewell and adieu to you, fair Spanish ladies.
Farewell and adieu, you ladies of Spain”
I know I’ve been showcasing a lot of my portraiture sketches as of late but because I just put up my sketch of the remarkable Robert Shaw in his most iconic role, I figured I needed to post my sculpture of my favorite sea-fairing captain! He’s made of several Polymer clays, wood, metal and resin. He stands at nearly 12” tall and makes me smile every time I see him.
“…For we’ve received orders for to sail back to Boston. And so nevermore shall we see you again”. .040
Sculpture by Adam Marcus.
Roger Corman could be the single most influential filmmaker since the dawn of movies. Yup, I said it. Not just because he was a terrific director and producer of Edgar Allan Poe films that would scare generations of children (and a lot of adults), but because he discovered and nurtured an entire generation of the greatest filmmakers to ever make films. Coppola, Demme, Howard, Scorsese, Nicholson, Hopper, DeNiro, Stallone, Bogdanovich and on and on and on…
My first apartment in Los Angeles was a couple blocks south of Roger Corman’s weird movie studio in Venice, CA in the early 90s. And even though I never got to work with the low-budget master himself, he was instrumental in my filmmaking journey (most specifically getting the chance to write and direct Jason Goes to Hell). Here’s what happened…
I had moved to LA to be the assistant of Sean S. Cunningham in 1990 and I was staying with a friend in Beverly Hills (long weird story for another time) and occasionally living in the car I had purchased (a 1963 Canary Yellow VW Bug - worst car in history to try and live in, btw). I was trying to get a strange horror-comedy-musical that my collegiate best pal, Dean Lorey had written that I had workshopped with him at NYU called “Johnny Zombie” funded. I intend for it to be my first feature film. I was 21 and knew very few people in the industry in LA, and at that moment I was Sean’s personal slave working on the film, House 4. My responsibilities included delivering scripts, getting lunch, having his car detailed and being the crash test dummy for the makeup department on the film. Yes, I was the test for the living Pizza effect (still have the Polaroids). I was a kid with very few resources. (Continues in comments…)
And sometimes, after a day of hiking and calling every mother you know to wish them all an incredible Mother’s Day, you wanna do a drawing of Scarlet Johansson as Black Widow. Why? Because she’s awesome! Because like all the really good mamas out there she’s a super hero even though she has no super powers. Because she’s a woman who gets it done. She doesn’t need saving, she does the saving. Because she represents every amazing woman I’ve ever truly loved. Smart, strong, funny, a wiseass with a heart of gold. Yeah, like I said, she’s awesome!
Hope y’all had an awesome Mother’s Day, y’all!
Portrait by Adam Marcus.
#ScarlettJohansson #blackwidow #sistersaredoingitforthemselves #hitlikeagirl
To a woman who deserves the trophy for World’s Greatest Mom every single day! Whether it’s for our two legged babies or our four legged ones. For our legion of actors or our beautiful grand babies. This woman finds the love and compassion for each and every one of them. She also knows that children will have a ton of friends in their lifetimes but only one Mother. So she’s unafraid to do the hard parts of parenting that sometimes make you the “bad guy” because you are doing the right thing for your child. She’s a fierce lion of a mother while always being a soft place to land with a warm smile that lets you know you’re safe. Debra, you are simply the best there’s ever been. Love you, knuckahey!
I just wanted to say happy Mother’s Day to my mom, Susan Lamy and to all the women who love, nurture and sometimes just have to put up with all the children who have no other way of entering this life! You are the creators! You are the teachers! You are the ones who hold the true power and strength of our world. So to all the mother’s and mother’s to be, happy mother’s day.
“Don’t you see that killing me is not going to bring back your apples”? -Sergeant Neil Howie The Wicker Man I’ve loved The Wicker Man since I first saw it on channel 11, waaaay past my bed time when I was about 9 years old. Before the remake that should never have happened and before the very talented Ari Aster made the completely stolen and incredibly misguided Midsommar, there was the remarkable Wicker Man! Written by the brilliant Anthony Shaffer and directed by the never spoken of, Robin Hardy, this film creeps up on you slowly and assuredly, setting in Stonehenge stone images that will surely last a lifetime. Terrifying in a real way. With brilliant performances by the whole cast, lead by British masters, Edward Woodward and Christopher Lee.
The film was disturbing in a way I had not yet experienced. The idea of a good man being lured by his righteous (yet rigid) morality to a remote location and then being (spoiler alert) burned alive as a ritual sacrifice was a new level of terrifying to haunt my nightmares. The 1970s was a glorious time for these kinds of paranoid thrillers, “The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea”, “The Dark Secret of Harvest Hime”, “Race with the Devil” to name a few. These films were accompanied by a slate of non-genre paranoid thrillers the likes of “The Parallax View”, “Three Days of the Condor” and the granddaddy of them all “Marathon Man”. All of the above mentioned are among my favorites because all of them haunt me every time I watch them. But there is something about The Wicker Man that has made it weirdly more relevant and therefore more frightening in my own life…
The temptation of chaos.
(Continued in comments…)
