Zack Stentz

Screenwriter (Thor, X-Men: FC, The Flash, Rim of the World, Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous, Empire of Wolves, Raven.)

[Zack Stentz @MuseZack]

1: I finally got my account back.
2: A thousand apologies to all of you, especially anyone who got the phishing messages and might have been hacked in turn.
3: Bring me the head of Coach Antonia.

[Zack Stentz @MuseZack]

@ThatchEffendi @RealRayDonE I've worked with Shane the DP on other projects and he's an incredibly innovative cinematographer and perfectionist as well as a good guy, but like many DPs sometimes could get tunnel vision & forget about the actors' needs. Bale blew up, they worked it out & moved on. No biggie.

[Zack Stentz @MuseZack]

It's odd to see people still re-litigating the Christian Bale Terminator Salvation blowup nearly 20 years later when Bale and Shane the DP patched things up the same day and moved on. Film sets are emotional, sometimes volatile places. Sometimes yelling happens. Not a big deal.

[Zack Stentz @MuseZack]

@RealRayDonE A cinematographer having tunnel vision and only thinking about how the shot looks while forgetting about the actors needing to get into their headspace isn't exactly an uncommon occurrence on a set.

[Zack Stentz @MuseZack]

@SaveYourCinema @ArcLightCinemas Arclight was great. A few bucks more for a premium experience that as you said, centered moviegoing. The iPic model of recliners and ninja waiters bringing you full meals during the film went too far.

[Zack Stentz @MuseZack]

@leanmediaorg @FranklinH3000 I lived in the UK during late 1991 and discovered Viz then. Great stuff.

[Zack Stentz @MuseZack]

@arttavana The ghost of Malcolm McLaren cackles.

[Zack Stentz @MuseZack]

@stefanoscalia The classic film Point Break spoke of this.

[Zack Stentz @MuseZack]

@mailstormio I always say please and thank you to ChatGPT so I feel like we're bros and I will be spared during the ASI apocalypse.

[Zack Stentz @MuseZack]

The disconnect between X and Bluesky regarding AI is really quite something. One site seems to think we're a year out from superintelligence and possible human extinction and the other thinks it's all a fake hype bubble that's about to collapse.

[Zack Stentz @MuseZack]

@GoIntoTheStory Shawshank Redemption is the first adaptation I remember where with a few changes and compressions they pretty much just shot the novella, scene for scene and line for line in places.

[Zack Stentz @MuseZack]

@CharlesCMann @TheAtlantic Aquatic Ape Hypothesis truthers, our time is now!

[Zack Stentz @MuseZack]

@Steve_Sailer KUSC our local classical station is all in on trying to reach the next generation through orchestral video game music. https://t.co/OnXbjupn5i

[David Hines @hradzka]

Rare longpost (threads were better): Stacy Keach was a lot of things to a lot of people, but he is always my Richard III.

When I was in high school, my mom and i moved from North Carolina to the DC burbs, and about the first thing my mom did was get tickets for Stacy Keach’s Richard III at the Folger Library. Not the current theater; this was in the library itself, in a theater so small it felt almost like watching the actors in your living room.

For those unfamiliar with the play, Richard III starts out as the crippled Duke of Gloucester, whose lifelong disabilities have embittered him into monsterhood. (In real life, we only recently learned from Richard III’s grave that he suffered from scoliosis; the play gives him a hunchback and a withered arm. Keach’s production added a leg brace.)

The first thing Richard does is tell the audience that he is an utter son of a bitch. The second thing Richard does is reassure his cousin that the cousin’s arrest, which Richard arranged on false grounds, is surely a misunderstanding and everything will be fine (Richard plans to have the cousin murdered). The third thing Richard does is seduce the widow of the Prince of Wales (whom he murdered) literally over the corpse of the previous king (whom he also murdered).

All of this is absolute gold, and to make the scenes work, especially the seduction scene, the audience has to believe in Richard 100%. It’s so challenging to sell I once saw an audience laugh at *Ian McKellan.* (To be fair, on that occasion he was let down by an appalling Lady Anne ). Nobody in the Folger’s tiny theater doubted Stacy Keach for a second.

But one bit that stuck with me forever involved the intermission. Keach’s Richard, as I’ve mentioned, wore a leg brace. The intermission came at the end of Act III, with the announcement Richard would be crowned King of England.

A word about the stage: it was built out starkly, using scaffolding in the shape of a capital H. Two staircased towers to either side formed the uprights; a gantry between them, running above the main stage, formed the H’s bar. After Richard’s imminent coronation was announced, and everyone else exited, Keach limped out onto the gantry alone. He bent, unbuckled his leg brace, and then stood erect. His eyes blazing, holding the discarded leg brace overhead, he yelled a thrilling stage cry of the most fearsome triumph.

Richard’s next scene after intermission was the second scene of Act IV. Keach made his entrance chuckling with delight, showing off his braceless leg with a little “Eh? Eh?” before going on with the actual text of the scene.

Except a little later, Richard gets angry, and he goes to storm about —

— *and he puts his weight on the bad leg, and it folds.*

Keach crumpled to the stage with a WAIL of agony. The spear-carriers hastened to him and fastened the leg brace right back on, where it stayed for the remainder of the play.

Ian McKellan’s one-handed donning of a glove is justly celebrated, but for me Stacy Keach’s leg betraying him is the Richard III physicality of all time. Greatest Shakespearean performance I’ve ever seen. I’ll remember it to the day I die.

Leaving the theater, I said to my mom, “If nothing else happens, this move was worth it.” RIP.

[Zack Stentz @MuseZack]

@Ed_Realist Do you remember the 1992 SNL sketch where Clinton, Jerry Brown, and Paul Tsongas (!!!) are all addressing a Star Trek convention trying to get votes?

[Zack Stentz @MuseZack]

@baltimorron @VyceVictus Oh holy shit, someone did it!

[Zack Stentz @MuseZack]

@DavidLambertArt @staticbluebat I remember complaining about Syd Field's prescriptiveness to a veteran script reader and he deadpanned "Do you think most novice writers suffer from too MUCH structure?"

[Zack Stentz @MuseZack]

@VyceVictus The fact that we were in Afghanistan 20 years and never got a "A raid on a high value target goes horribly wrong when SEALs accidentally release a fallen angel" movie out of it is unconscionable.

[Zack Stentz @MuseZack]

@VyceVictus It is an absolutely gold premise and story engine, from Aliens to Predator to Dog Soldiers to so much more.

[Zack Stentz @MuseZack]

@kunley_drukpa The seeming contradictions in the Chinese character-- "irreligious but incredibly superstitious, hardest workers on the planet but happy to blow it all at the gaming table" are endlessly fascinating.

[Zack Stentz @MuseZack]

@WildBillWellman Twilight of the Idols.

[Zack Stentz @MuseZack]

@RhettReese Which one of you saved Sarah Connor from the robots?

[Zack Stentz @MuseZack]

@willmenaker The Long Riders having the Keach, Carradine, Quaid, and Guest brothers playing the James-Younger gang was such a fascinating experiment that actually paid off. He will be missed.