title: Drag Me to Hell

text: The original story for "Drag Me to Hell" was written ten years before the film went into production and was written by Sam Raimi and his brother Ivan Raimi. The film went into production under the name "The Curse". The Raimis wrote the script as a morality tale, desiring to write a story about a character who wants to be a good person, but makes a sinful choice out of greed for her own betterment and pays the price for it. The Raimis tried to make the character of Christine the main focal point in the film, and tried to have Christine in almost all the scenes in the film. Elements of the film's story are drawn from the British horror film "Night of the Demon" (itself an adaptation of M.R. James' short story "Casting the Runes") such as the similar-shaped demons and the three-day curse theme in the film. The most significant parallel is that both stories involve the passing of a cursed object, which has to be passed to someone else, or its possessor will be devoured by one or more demons. Unlike his past horror films, Raimi wanted the film to be rated PG-13 and not strictly driven by gore, stating, "I didn't want to do exactly the same thing I had done before."


title: Drag Me to Hell

text: After finishing the script, Raimi desired to make the picture after the first draft of the script was completed, but other projects such as the "Spider-Man" film series became a nearly decade-long endeavor, pushing opportunities to continue work on "Drag Me to Hell" to late 2007. Raimi offered director Edgar Wright to direct "Drag Me to Hell" which Wright turned down as he was filming "Hot Fuzz" and felt that "If I did it, it would just feel like karaoke." After the previous three "Spider-Man" films, Raimi came back to the script of "Drag Me to Hell", wanting to make a simpler and lower-budget film. In 2007, Sam Raimi's friend and producer Robert Tapert of Ghost House Pictures had the company sign on to finance the film. Universal Studios agreed to distribute domestically.


title: Drag Me to Hell

text: After completing the script and having the project greenlit, Raimi started casting the film. Elliot Page was originally cast for the main role of Christine, but dropped out of the project due to SAG strike-related scheduling issues. The main role eventually went to Lohman, who did not enjoy horror films, but enjoyed doing the stunts during filming. Stage actress Lorna Raver auditioned for the role of Mrs. Ganush. Raver was not aware of the specific nature of her character until being cast, stating that all she had read was "about a little old lady coming into the bank because they're closing down her house. It was only later that I saw the whole script and said, 'Oh my!'". To prepare for this role, Raver met with a Hungarian dialect coach and asked to have portions of the script translated into Hungarian. Raimi would later ask Raver to use some of the Hungarian words in the scenes of Ganush's attacking Christine. Dileep Rao, who plays Rham Jas, made producer Grant Curtis mildly hesitant in casting him, stating that during his audition "he was a little bit younger than he read in the script. But as we were looking at his reading, Sam said, 'There's no minimum age requirement on wisdom.' Dileep has that wisdom and presence on screen, and that's what made him right. Once he got on camera, he brought that shoulder for Alison to lean on." Many of the actors playing secondary characters in "Drag Me to Hell" have appeared previously in Raimi's films, including Joanne Baron, Tom Carey, Molly Cheek, Aimee Miles, John Paxton, Ted Raimi, Bill E. Rogers, Chelcie Ross, and Octavia Spencer.


title: Drag Me to Hell

text: Raimi said he set out to create "a horror film with lots of wild moments and lots of suspense and big shocks that'll hopefully make audiences jump. But I also wanted to have a lot of dark humor sprinkled throughout. I spent the last decade doing "Spider-Man" and you come to rely on a lot of people doing things for you and a lot of help, but it's refreshing and wonderful to be reminded that, as with most filmmakers, the best way to do it is yourself, with a tight team doing the main jobs."


title: Drag Me to Hell

text: Production for "Drag Me to Hell" began on location in Tarzana, California. The production team included director of photography Peter Deming, production designer Steve Saklad and visual effects supervisor Bruce Jones. The film was produced by Grant Curtis and Rob Tapert. Tapert and Raimi are longtime collaborators, having attended college together in Michigan.


title: Drag Me to Hell

text: "Drag Me to Hell" was edited by Bob Murawski, who has collaborated with Raimi on several films including the "Spider-Man" series, "The Gift", and "Army of Darkness". Raimi has said of working with Murawski on "Drag Me to Hell", "He'd come (down to the set) to see how things were going and to let me know if he'd just cut something that wasn't working the way he'd wanted it to, or to suggest a pick-up shot I should get for a piece he felt we needed in a sequence I hadn't realized I needed. He's very detail-oriented... So we're very close collaborators." Raimi finds editing with Murawski to be "relaxing", adding, "I love it. For me, it's so relaxing, unlike pre-production, which is fraught with anxiety and fear about how we're going to do things, and production, which is so rushed and a sleepless time and you're just racing to finish every shot and worrying about focus and so on. So post is soothing and I can watch the film come together, so it's a time of discovery for me as Bob and I fit all the pieces together. I see new possibilities in post, as Bob puts the film together, sometimes in a way I never imagined..." The film was edited by Murawski on an Avid computer system in a West Los Angeles facility. The color grading was completed at Company 3 with colorist Stephen Nakamura. Nakamura used DaVinci Resolve. It was CO3's first start-to-finish feature in 4K resolution. "For us, post is a very creative time where it's not just about this factory producing the blueprinted product. It's really a very creative, experimental time where we try and take everything that's been written and then shot to the next level," said Raimi. The final sound mix was completed at the Dub Stage in Burbank with mixers Marti Humphrey and Chris Jacobson.


title: Drag Me to Hell

text: The effects in "Drag Me to Hell" were created in many different ways, including green screen, puppets, prosthetics and computer-generated imagery. Bruce Jones was the visual effects supervisor on the film. Of Jones, Raimi commented, "He brought a great can-do approach to the film... He's got a great team of artists and technicians with him, and he's got great instincts."


title: Drag Me to Hell

text: There were hundreds of visual effects in the film, and different effects houses were utilized. According to Raimi, the Bay Area's Tippett Studio was a big player. "We also had work done by Amalgamated Pixels, Ghost VFX, KNB Effects, Home Digital, Cinesoup and IE Effects," said Raimi. According to Raimi, "Bob (Murawski) and I kept adding visual effects as post proceeded. In this film, the supernatural, the unseen, is almost another character, so sequences were developed — even in post — that would suggest the presence of the supernatural, and we kept on adding. The same with the sound effects, so it was a very ongoing, very live process in post."


title: Drag Me to Hell

text: Director of photography Peter Deming tried to use realistic lighting in the film. Said Deming, "Normally, you'd put all corrected bulbs in, but we went with what was there, including the shots in the street. We used the streetlight look and mixed that with interior lighting. There were a lot of odd color sources that we chose to leave the way they would be naturally. It's a heightened sense of realism." One of the earliest projects the special effects teams did was the scene in which Mrs. Ganush attacks Christine in her car. To film the action, which included close-ups of Christine jamming her foot on the pedal, hitting the brake, and shifting gears, the team created a puzzle car which allowed the front engine compartment and back trunk — as well as all four sides and doors — to come away from the car. The roof came off in two directions.


title: Drag Me to Hell

text: The film score was composed by Christopher Young. Young has worked with director Raimi previously on his films "The Gift" and "Spider-Man 3". The soundtrack was released on August 18, 2009. Sam Raimi stated that emphasis was on using the soundtrack to create a world that didn't exist, a world of the "supernatural". The score contains elements of Young's previous work on "Flowers in the Attic". This is particularly apparent in the utilization of the ethereal childlike soprano vocals that feature prominently throughout the soundtrack.


title: Drag Me to Hell

text: "Drag Me to Hell" was first shown to the public as a "Work in Progress" print at the South by Southwest festival on March 15, 2009. The film debuted in its full form at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, where it was shown out of competition on May 20, 2009, as a midnight screening.


title: Drag Me to Hell

text: The film was released in the United States on May 29, 2009. The film opened at #4 with $15.8 million from 2,900 screens at 2,508 theaters, an average of $6,310 per theater ($5,457 average per screen). In its second weekend, it dropped 56%, falling to #7, with $7 million, for an average of $2,805 per theater ($2,514 average per screen), and bringing the 10-day gross to $28,233,230. "Drag Me to Hell" closed on August 6, 2009, with a final gross in the United States and Canada of $42.1 million, and an additional $48.7 million internationally for a total of $90.8 million worldwide.


title: Drag Me to Hell

text: On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 92% based on 270 reviews, and an average rating of 7.6/10. The site's critical consensus states, "Sam Raimi returns to top form with "Drag Me to Hell", a frightening, hilarious, delightfully campy thrill ride." On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 83 out of 100, based on 32 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Drag Me to Hell

text: Positive critical reception of the film generally praised the film's scary but humorous and campy tone. Owen Gleiberman of "Entertainment Weekly" gave the film an A rating, stating that "Raimi has made the most crazy, fun, and terrifying horror movie in years." Betsy Sharkey of the "Los Angeles Times" praised the film, stating that it "should not be dismissed as yet another horror flick just for teens. The filmmakers have given us a 10-story winding staircase of psychological tension that is making very small circles near the end." Michael Phillips of the "Chicago Tribune" described the film as a "hellaciously effective B-movie [that] comes with a handy moral tucked inside its scares, laughs and Raimi's specialty, the scare/laugh hybrid." Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun Times" gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, and stated that the film "is a sometimes funny and often startling horror movie. That is what it wants to be, and that is what it is." In a positive review, "Variety" said of the film: "Scant and barren of subtext, the pic is single-mindedly devoted to pushing the audience's buttons... Still, there's no denying it delivers far more than competing PG-13 thrillers."


title: Drag Me to Hell

text: Bloody Disgusting gave the film four and a half stars out of five, with the review calling it "quite simply the most perfect horror film I've seen in a long, long while... [It's] a blast and moved quickly from start to finish [and] is well on its way to becoming an immediate classic." The film was then ranked thirteenth in Bloody Disgusting's list of the 'Top 20 Horror Films of the Decade'.


title: Drag Me to Hell

text: Kyle Smith of the "New York Post" thought it was cheesy, with too many "gross-outs", Rex Reed of "The New York Observer" thought that the plot wasn't believable enough, and Peter Howell of "The Toronto Star" disliked Lohman's performance and thought it was "just not very funny".


title: Drag Me to Hell

text: Reviews have also received the film as a comedy horror in a more classic Raimi vein. Vic Holtreman of Screenrant claims the film is a long-awaited movie that combines both genres as "Army of Darkness" had done. A reviewer at UGO Networks says that the film is very much more a comedy than horror and that this is in keeping with Raimi not having produced a "true horror" film since he began directing.


title: Drag Me to Hell

text: The film was nominated for "Choice Movie: Horror/Thriller" at the 2009 Teen Choice Awards, which the film lost to "Friday the 13th" (2009). At the 2009 Scream Awards show, "Drag Me to Hell" won the awards for Best Horror Movie and Best Scream-play.


title: Drag Me to Hell

text: "Drag Me to Hell" was released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc in the US on October 13, 2009. Both media include an Unrated Director's Cut as well as the Theatrical Version. In its first two weeks the DVD sold 459,217 copies generating $7.98 million in sales. It since accumulated $13.9 million in DVD sales in the United States.


title: Drag Me to Hell

text: On February 13, 2018, Scream Factory released a two-disc Collector's Edition of "Drag Me to Hell", which included both edits of the film remastered from the 2K digital intermediate, archival interviews and featurettes and all-new interviews with Alison Lohman, Lorna Raver and Christopher Young.


title: Fallout 4

text: Fallout 4 is a 2015 action role-playing game developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks. It is the fourth main game in the "Fallout" series and was released worldwide on November 10, 2015, for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The game is set within an open world post-apocalyptic environment that encompasses the city of Boston and the surrounding Massachusetts region known as "The Commonwealth". It makes use of a number of local landmarks, including Bunker Hill, Fort Independence, and Old North Bridge near Concord, as the bridge out of Sanctuary Hills.


title: Fallout 4

text: The main story takes place in the year 2287, ten years after the events of "Fallout 3" and 210 years after "The Great War", which caused catastrophic nuclear devastation across the United States. The player assumes control of a character referred to as the "Sole Survivor", who emerges from a long-term cryogenic stasis in Vault 111, an underground nuclear fallout shelter. After witnessing the murder of their spouse and kidnapping of their son, the Sole Survivor ventures out into the Commonwealth to search for their missing child. The player explores the game's dilapidated world, completes various quests, helps out factions, and acquires experience points to level up and increase the abilities of their character. New features to the series include the ability to develop and manage settlements and an extensive crafting system where materials scavenged from the environment can be used to craft drugs and explosives, upgrade weapons and armor, and construct, furnish and improve settlements. "Fallout 4" also marks the first game in the series to feature full voice acting for the protagonist.


title: Fallout 4

text: "Fallout 4" received positive reviews from critics, with many praising the world depth, player freedom, overall amount of content, crafting, and soundtrack. Criticism was mainly directed at the game's visuals and technical issues. The game was a commercial and critical success, generating within the first 24 hours of its launch, and received numerous accolades from various gaming publications and award events, including the respective awards for Game of the Year and Best Game at the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences and British Academy Games Awards. Bethesda has released six downloadable content add-ons, including the expansions "" and "".


title: Fallout 4

text: "Fallout 4" is an action role-playing game set in an open world environment. Gameplay is similar to that of "Fallout 3" and "", the two previous primary iterations in the series. But unlike the previous two titles, the gun-gameplay was handled by id Software. Returning features include a camera that can switch between a first-person and third-person perspective. "Fallout 4" introduces features including a layered armor system, base-building, a dialogue system featuring 111,000 lines of dialogue, and a crafting system which implements every lootable object in the game. Enemies such as Mole Rats, Raiders, Super Mutants, Deathclaws, and Feral Ghouls return along with the companion Dogmeat.


title: Fallout 4

text: The player has the ability to freely roam in the game's world and leave a conversation at any time. If the player has discovered a certain location they may fast travel to it. Weapons can be customized too; the game includes over 50 guns, which can be crafted with a variety of modifications, such as barrel types and laser focus, with over 700 modifications available. Power Armor has been redesigned to be more like a vehicle than an equipable suit of armor, requiring fusion cores and being essentially dead weight without it and can be modified, allowing the player to add items such as a jetpack or selecting separate types of armor for each part of the suit.


title: Fallout 4

text: A new feature to the series is the ability to craft and deconstruct settlements and buildings. The player can select and break down many in-game objects and structures, and use the resultant raw materials to freely build their own structures. In addition, the towns can be powered with working electricity, using a power line system. Merchants and non-player characters can inhabit the player's settlements, for which the player must provide sustenance by growing food in makeshift patches and building water pumps. The player can build various defenses around their settlements, such as turrets and traps and bombs, to defend against random attacks.


title: Fallout 4

text: The Pip-Boy, a personal computing device strapped to the player character's wrist, allows the player to access a menu with statistics, maps, data, and items the player has acquired. The player can find game cartridges, called Holotapes, which can be played on the Pip-Boy or a terminal. A new feature for the Pip-Boy interface is a downloadable application for iOS, Android, and Windows smartphones and tablets. This optional app allows players to access the Pip-Boy interface on a separate screen, and play the collected game cartridges when not playing the main game. Another returning gameplay feature is the Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System (V.A.T.S.). While using V.A.T.S., real-time combat is slowed down (instead of stopped entirely as in previous entries), and action is played out from varying camera angles in a computer graphics version of "bullet time". Various actions cost points, limiting the actions of each combatant during a period of time, and the player can target specific body parts for attacks to inflict specific injuries; headshots can be used for quick kills or to blind, legs can be targeted to slow enemy movement, and opponents can be disarmed by shooting at their weapons. Unlike previous games, in which the player had a random chance to inflict a critical hit, they are now performed manually through V.A.T.S.


title: Fallout 4

text: At the beginning of the game, players are given points to spend on a character progression system called S.P.E.C.I.A.L. The system represents seven statistics, namely strength, perception, endurance, charisma, intelligence, agility, and luck. When the player earns enough experience points to gain a new level, they unlock an ability. When the player allocates more points to a statistic, more abilities can be unlocked. These perks can be upgraded to improve the protagonist's efficiency and to further unlock abilities. There are about 275 perks available for the player to unlock. There is no level cap and the game does not end once the main story is complete.


title: Fallout 4

text: The player may travel with only one companion at a time, although other characters also accompany the player in certain quests. For the first time in the series, these companions can interact with the environment on the player character's behalf. For example, if the player character does not have required skills to hack a terminal or pick a lock, they can order the companion to do it for them. Any companion present besides Dogmeat will react to certain player actions in one of four ways (love, like, dislike, or hate), which either raises or lowers their "affinity". Raising a companion's affinity to 1,000 points will result in them "idolizing" the player and granting a specific perk. The companion will leave if affinity drops low enough, and some actions can turn them hostile on sight.


title: Fallout 4

text: "Fallout 4" takes place in the year 2287, ten years after the events of "Fallout 3" and 210 years after the Great War, a war between the United States and China over natural resources that ended in a nuclear holocaust in 2077. The setting is a post-apocalyptic retro-future, covering a region that includes Boston and other parts of New England known as "The Commonwealth". Unlike the previous titles, "Fallout 4"s story begins on the day the bombs dropped: October 23, 2077.


title: Fallout 4

text: The game takes place in an alternate version of history that contains 1940s and 1950s aesthetics such as diners and a drive-in theater and design and technology advance in the directions imagined at that time. The resulting universe is thus a retro-futuristic one, where the technology has evolved enough to produce laser weapons, manipulate genes and create nearly-autonomous artificial intelligence, but all within the confines of 1950s' technology such as the widespread use of atomic power and vacuum tubes, as well as having the integrated circuitry of the digital age. The architecture, advertisements and general living styles are also depicted to be largely unchanged since the 1950s, while including contemporary products, such as a robotic rocking horse for children in one advertisement, or posters for the underground Vaults that play a central role in the storyline of the game.


title: Fallout 4

text: There are four main factions that the player can choose to support throughout the story; the Brotherhood of Steel, an anti-synth faction hoping to preserve technology in the Commonwealth; the Institute, a secretive organization that specializes in the creation of synths; the Minutemen, a faction that aims to drive out raiders and other threats out of the Commonwealth; and the Railroad, a secretive organization dedicated to rescuing synths from the Institute.


title: Fallout 4

text: The player's character (voiced by either Brian T. Delaney or Courtenay Taylor) takes shelter in Vault 111, emerging exactly 210 years later on October 23, 2287, and assuming the name of the "Sole Survivor". There are thirteen possible companions in the story. Dogmeat, a loyal German Shepherd, is the only mandatory companion, but six others must at least be encountered; Codsworth (Stephen Russell), the Sole Survivor's robot butler; Deacon (Ryan Alosio), a Railroad agent; John Hancock (Danny Shorago), the mayor of Goodneighbor; Nick Valentine (Stephen Russell), a synth detective; Piper Wright (Courtney Ford), an intrepid reporter; and Preston Garvey (Jon Gentry), the reluctant leader of the Minutemen. The other six possible companions are Cait (Katy Townsend), an Irish-accented cage fighter; Curie (Sophie Simone Cortina), a robot scientist turned Synth; Danse (Peter Jessop), a Brotherhood of Steel Paladin; MacCready (Matthew Mercer), a mercenary; Strong (Sean Schemmel), a human-sympathetic Super Mutant; and X6-88 (David Paluck), an Institute Courser.


title: Fallout 4

text: Seven of the companions become romance options once they idolize the Sole Survivor, regardless of the gender of the player character: Cait, Curie, Danse, Hancock, MacCready, Piper, and Preston.


title: Fallout 4

text: The story begins in 2077 in Sanctuary Hills, located near Concord, Massachusetts. The player character is at home with their spouse (Nate or Nora depending on the player character's gender), their son Shaun, and Codsworth, a robotic butler. A Vault-Tec representative admits the family into Vault 111, the local fallout shelter. Moments later, a news bulletin warns of an incoming nuclear attack. As the detonation occurs, the family evacuates to the Vault, where they are tricked into entering cryogenic tubes and frozen alive. After an unknown number of years, they are reawakened by two strangers, who murder the player's spouse and kidnap Shaun. The player is put back into cryogenic sleep and awakens again when the life support system malfunctions. The player, nicknamed the "Sole Survivor" of Vault 111, vows to avenge their spouse's death and find Shaun.


title: Fallout 4

text: The Sole Survivor heads home to find Sanctuary Hills in ruins. They reunite with Codsworth, revealing that 210 years have passed since the war. Codsworth suggests that the Survivor go to Concord for help. The Survivor finds and befriends Dogmeat, and assists the Minutemen faction in evacuating to Sanctuary Hills. The Sole Survivor travels to Diamond City, a fortified settlement based in the ruins of Fenway Park, where they meet Piper. There, they learn about a secretive organization called the Institute that has been terrifying the Commonwealth by kidnapping people and replacing them with "synths", synthetic humans indistinguishable from real humans.


title: Fallout 4

text: After locating and rescuing Nick Valentine, the Sole Survivor uncovers the identity of their spouse's killer: Conrad Kellogg (Keythe Farley). After learning from Kellogg that Shaun is being held in the Institute, the Sole Survivor kills him and retrieves a cybernetic implant from his brain to access his memories. During this time, the Brotherhood of Steel arrives in the Commonwealth on the "Prydwen", an airship. The Sole Survivor learns from Brian Virgil (Matthew Waterson), an ex-Institute scientist, that teleportation is the only way to enter the Institute. After the Survivor retrieves a chip and decodes it with the help of the Railroad, Virgil provides the blueprints for a teleportation device, which the Sole Survivor constructs by allying with the Brotherhood of Steel, Minutemen, or Railroad.


title: Fallout 4

text: The Sole Survivor successfully enters the Institute and discovers that Shaun is the Institute's director. Shaun, now an old man calling himself Father (Tony Amendola), reveals that he was kidnapped by Kellogg to become a specimen for synth experiments due to his pure pre-war DNA, and that the Sole Survivor remained in stasis for a further sixty years before being reawakened. He invites the Sole Survivor to join the Institute. If accepted, Shaun reveals that he is dying of cancer and wishes for the Survivor to become his successor. After initiating a purge in the Commonwealth, wiping out the Brotherhood of Steel and the Railroad, the Survivor assumes control of the Institute after Shaun's death. Otherwise, the Sole Survivor devises a plan with their faction to fight the Institute. Siding with the Brotherhood or Railroad will force the Sole Survivor to destroy the other faction. The Sole Survivor detonates a nuclear reactor, destroying the Institute. After this feat, if the Survivor sided with the Minutemen, they must lastly wipe out any remaining hostile faction. Otherwise, they will remain neutral.


title: Fallout 4

text: The initial plans for "Fallout 4" were formed in 2009, when director Todd Howard wanted to explore the world of "Fallout" before the bombs fell. Thus, a team began production on the game that year, including Istvan Pely, lead artist of "Fallout 3", after finishing that game's downloadable content (DLC). Meanwhile, development on "" had Bethesda's full attention, and after that game released in 2011, the studio continued to regularly support it until 2013 with updates and DLC. After that content was finished, "Fallout 4" entered full production from mid-2013 to mid-2015.


title: Fallout 4

text: Unlike the previous two titles—"Fallout 3" and ""—which used the Gamebryo engine, "Fallout 4" uses the Creation Engine, which was used in "". Modified for "Fallout 4", the Creation Engine includes a revamped character editor system that allows freeform creation of faces without the use of sliders seen in previous games. Instead, the player can click and drag each feature of the face to accurately customize their character, which can either be a man or woman as the previous "Fallout" titles have featured. Bethesda announced that the game would run at 1080p resolution and 30 frames per second on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Bethesda revealed that mobile devices would be integrated into the game as a form of second screen, acting as a secondary display for the Pip-Boy.


title: Fallout 4

text: For the first time in the "Fallout" series, the player's character, the Sole Survivor, is fully voice acted, including all decision-based dialogue options. Brian T. Delaney and Courtenay Taylor are the two player character voice actors.


title: Fallout 4

text: Todd Howard revealed that mods for the PC versions of the game would be usable on the Xbox One version and that the team hoped to bring them to the PlayStation 4 version eventually. When asked about the failed effort to add a paid mod system to "", Howard stated there were no plans for a similar effort with "Fallout 4". The mods created by PC players through The Creation Kit, which contains the official modding tools, were released for Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in May 2016 and November 2016 respectively.


title: Fallout 4

text: "Fallout 4" uses Bethesda's Creation Engine, which was created for "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim". Just after "Fallout 3"s release, the team devised numerous design objectives to meet for "Skyrim"—which were updated for "Fallout 4"s hardware requirements. The updated Creation Engine allows for graphical improvements over Bethesda's previous efforts. For instance, the draw distance renders much farther than in previous "Fallout" games.


title: Fallout 4

text: Dynamic lighting allows shadows to be created by any structure or item in the game world. Howard stated in the E3 2015 Press Conference that the updated Creation Engine allows for next-generation god rays and advanced volumetric lighting. The engine features a variety of visual effects not present in previous Bethesda games such as motion blur, temporal anti-aliasing, height fog, dynamic dismemberment, screen space reflections, filmic tone mapping, an updated material system—for wet textures—among numerous others. The engine allows the Bethesda team to add more dynamic lighting to every scene as well as "paint surfaces with realistic materials". Bethesda released an example on how the engine works: "When a rain storm rolls in, our new material system allows the surfaces of the world to get wet, and a new cloth simulation system makes cloth, hair, and vegetation blow in the wind."


title: Fallout 4

text: The updated Creation Engine allows for a more advanced character creation system, which uses sculpting—forgoing the series of sliders present in previous games. In detail, the new character creation system introduces a new, freeform, slider-free facial editor controlled via dynamic, real-time modeling interface.


title: Fallout 4

text: With regards to the aforementioned fluid animations, the updated engine also allows a much more open approach to conversations with NPCs—wherein the camera views can change depending on the player's preference from a first-person view to a cinematic third-person view—compared to "Fallout 3"s rigid and instanced conversation system. The protagonist features dynamic dialogue, which is context sensitive and allows players to back out of a conversation. In Howard's words, "you are free to walk away anytime if you want, or you can even shoot him in the face."


title: Fallout 4

text: On June 2, 2015, Bethesda published a countdown timer scheduled to expire on June 3, 2015, at 14:00 UTC. The game's website went live slightly ahead of schedule, revealing the game along with its box art and platforms. The site was taken down later but was put back up again at the scheduled time. The trailer was released when the countdown timer expired, and the game was confirmed to take place in Boston and its surrounding Massachusetts countryside, as suggested by earlier rumors. More details were given during Bethesda's E3 2015 press conference on June 14, 2015.


title: Fallout 4

text: "Fallout 4" became available for pre-order following the product announcement. In addition to the standard edition of the game, there is a collector's edition which includes a wearable replica of the Pip-Boy. This is able to house a smartphone device, which can run the second screen functionality of the game. As a pre-order bonus for the Windows version of the game, an announcer pack featuring the voice of Mister Handy was released for the multiplayer online battle arena game, "Dota 2", developed by Valve. Bethesda announced that "Fallout 4" had gone gold on October 23, 2015. The game was released for Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on November 10, 2015.


title: Fallout 4

text: After "Fallout 4"s release, Bethesda has released several patches to address some of the issues that were present at the game's launch along with presenting features that improve general gameplay. The first patch—coded as patch 1.2—fine-tuned the game by improving the frame rate. Patch 1.2 fixed a few bugs and errors present at the launch of the game but interfered with unofficial mod support. Patch 1.3 improved the game's graphics on all platforms, along with presenting the game with new features such as an added status menu for settlers in settlements. With regard to the graphical updates introduced in this patch, the PC platform was given a new weapon debris effect and a new ambient occlusion setting. The patch fixed several bugs and glitches present in the game. Patch 1.4 was designed to ready the game for the upcoming Creation Kit and downloadable content. Patch 1.4 brought a variety of additions to the settlement building mechanic of the game by adding a symbol to new content placed in by the modding community along with adding a variety of items, such as Raider and Super Mutant decors. The patch also brought general improvements to the game's stability. The 1.5 patch added a revamped survival mode along with support for the downloadable and included bug fixes. Similar to the previous Bethesda games, "Fallout 4"s fan community-created unofficial patches to address issues and bugs unaddressed by the official patches.


title: Fallout 4

text: During E3 2016, a virtual reality mode for the game was announced, to be released in 2017. "Fallout 4 VR" was released as a stand-alone game on December 4, 2017, for PC on the HTC Vive platform.


title: Fallout 4

text: On February 16, 2016, Bethesda announced details, prices, and release dates for the first three add-ons for "Fallout 4". The first add-on, "", which allows the player to build their custom robot companion by using robot parts while adding additional quests, was released to the European and North American markets on March 22, 2016. This was followed by "Wasteland Workshop" on April 12, 2016, which introduces new build options for settlements and the ability for the player to put captured creatures or humans in a cage, and adds new decorations like neon lights and lettering. The third add-on, titled "", is a story expansion set in the post-war city of Far Harbor, Maine, and was released on May 19, 2016. On June 12, 2016, at E3 2016, Bethesda revealed three new add-on packages for the game; the first two, "Contraptions Workshop", released on June 21, 2016, and "Vault-Tec Workshop", released on July 26, 2016, are structured similarly to the "Wasteland Workshop" add-on, offering the player more build options and decorations; the "Vault-Tec Workshop" also adds a brief narrative. "Fallout 4"s third add-on, "", which was released on August 30, 2016, adds an amusement park-based area for the player to explore, in which the player can either side with or put an end to various raider groups residing in the park. If the player decides to do the former, they can help one of the raider groups take control of various settlements in the Commonwealth from the base game.


title: Fallout 4

text: At E3 2017, Bethesda announced that "Fallout 4" would support Creation Club, an in-game support system to purchase and download custom content. Creation Club went live in August 2017.


title: Fallout 4

text: "Fallout 4" received "generally favorable" reviews on all three platforms according to review aggregator Metacritic.


title: Fallout 4

text: GameSpot's Peter Brown awarded it a score of 9 out of 10, saying ""Fallout 4" is an argument for substance over style, and an excellent addition to the revered open-world series." Brown praised the "thought-provoking" narrative, "intuitive" creation tools, the large amount of content, the overall combat, and the overall freedom the player is given. "Game Informer"s Andrew Reiner scored the game a 9 out of 10 and said: "Bethesda has created another game you can lose your life in. New experiences just keep coming, and you always have another perk to unlock." Reiner praised the "vastly improved" combat, the "denser" world, and the "brilliant" score, but had mixed feelings about the visuals. Dan Stapleton of IGN scored the game a 9.5 out of 10 and wrote: "The world, exploration, crafting, atmosphere, and story of "Fallout 4" are all key parts of this hugely successful sandbox role-playing game. (It is) an adventure I'll definitely replay and revisit. Even the technical shakiness that crops up here and there can't even begin to slow down its momentum."


title: Fallout 4

text: Phil Savage of "PC Gamer" mentioned that "Fallout 4" is "a loving production. It's filled with care and attention to detail" and that it was "a pleasure to pick through the world". He concluded his review stating "many of "Fallout 4"s problems, like every Bethesda RPG before it, are a consequence of what makes them unforgettable". Polygon awarded it a score of 9.5 out of 10, saying ""Fallout 4" brings great gameplay to match its world and ambiance". Destructoid gave the game a 7.5 out of 10, writing "a lot of the franchise's signature problems have carried over directly into "Fallout 4"".


title: Fallout 4

text: "Fallout 4" sold 1.2 million copies on Steam in its first 24 hours of release. The game also sold more digital than physical copies on day one of launch. With almost 470,000 concurrent Steam players on launch day, "Fallout 4" broke "Grand Theft Auto V"s record for having the most concurrent online players in a Steam game not developed by Valve. Bethesda shipped 12 million units to retailers within the first 24 hours, grossing .


title: Fallout 4

text: In early 2017, Pete Hines announced that "Fallout 4" had sold more copies over the same time period than "Skyrim", though he did not provide an official number.


title: Fallout 4

text: "Fallout 4" received numerous awards and nominations from gaming publications such as GameSpot, GamesRadar, EGM, Game Revolution, IGN, and many more. The game received a "Game of the Year" award from the 19th ceremony of the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences—also known as the D.I.C.E. Awards—among numerous nominations for the award from The Game Awards, "The Daily Telegraph", "PC Gamer", IGN and more. It was also placed on various lists of the best games of 2015 in which GameSpot put it at sixth, GamesRadar at fourth, among others top lists. The game also received awards and nominations for Role-playing game of the year with it winning the award from Game Critics and D.I.C.E. with nominations from various other gaming publications.


title: Fallout 4

text: A class-action lawsuit was filed against Bethesda Softworks and ZeniMax Media in 2019 over its DLC packages. The suit asserted that the Season Pass was sold as offering "all of the Fallout 4 DLC we ever do" for a single price, but later with the introduction of the Creation Club in 2017, those that purchased the Season Pass have to purchase the Creation Club content if they wished to use it. During the suit's litigation in court, ZeniMax and Microsoft had announced plans for ZeniMax to be acquired into Xbox Game Studios which was anticipated to close by June 2021. The plaintiffs in the case sought a preliminary injunction to block the acquisition as to prevent Microsoft from shielding ZeniMax's assets should they be found liable in the case, which is expected to be heard in 2022.


title: Divine (performer)

text: Harris Glenn Milstead (October 19, 1945 – March 7, 1988), better known by his stage name Divine, was an American actor, singer, and drag queen. Closely associated with independent filmmaker John Waters, Divine was a character actor, usually performing female roles in cinematic and theatrical productions, and adopted a female drag persona for his music career.


title: Divine (performer)

text: Born in Baltimore, Maryland, to a conservative middle-class family, Milstead developed an early interest in drag while working as a women's hairdresser. By the mid-1960s he had embraced the city's countercultural scene and befriended Waters, who gave him the name "Divine" and the tagline of "the most beautiful woman in the world, almost". Along with his friend David Lochary, Milstead joined Waters' acting troupe, the Dreamlanders, and adopted female roles for their experimental short films "Roman Candles" (1966), "Eat Your Makeup" (1968), and "The Diane Linkletter Story" (1969). Again in drag, he took a lead role in both of Waters' early full-length movies, "Mondo Trasho" (1969) and "Multiple Maniacs" (1970), the latter of which attracted press attention for the group. Milstead next starred in Waters' "Pink Flamingos" (1972), which was a hit on the U.S. midnight movie circuit, became a cult classic, and established Milstead's fame in the American counterculture.


title: Divine (performer)

text: After starring as the lead role in Waters' next film, "Female Trouble" (1974), Divine moved on to theater, appearing in several avant-garde performances alongside San Francisco drag collective, The Cockettes. He followed this with a performance in Tom Eyen's play "Women Behind Bars" and its sequel, "The Neon Woman". Continuing his cinematic work, he starred in two more of Waters' films, "Polyester" (1981) and "Hairspray" (1988), the latter of which represented his breakthrough into mainstream cinema and for which he was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male. Independent of Waters, he also appeared in a number of other films, such as "Lust in the Dust" (1985) and "Trouble in Mind" (1985), seeking to diversify his repertoire by playing male roles. In 1981, Divine embarked on a career in the disco industry by producing a number of Hi-NRG tracks, most of which were written by Bobby Orlando. He achieved international chart success with hits like "You Think You're a Man", "I'm So Beautiful", and "Walk Like a Man", all of which were performed in drag. Divine had a condition called cardiomegaly. Stress on his enlarged heart led to a heart attack that killed him shortly after the release of "Hairspray".


title: Divine (performer)

text: Described by "People" magazine as the "Drag Queen of the Century", Divine has remained a cult figure, particularly within the LGBT community, and has provided the inspiration for fictional characters, artworks, and songs. Various books and documentary films devoted to his life have also been produced, including "Divine Trash" (1998) and "I Am Divine" (2013).


title: Divine (performer)

text: Milstead was born on October 19, 1945, at Women's Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. His father, Harris Bernard Milstead (May 1, 1917 – March 4, 1993), after whom he was named, was one of seven children born in Towson, Maryland, to a plumber who worked for the Baltimore City Water Department. Divine's mother, Frances Milstead (; April 12, 1920 – March 24, 2009), was one of 15 children born to an impoverished Serb immigrant couple who had grown up near Zagreb (in today's Croatia) before moving to the United States in 1891. When she was 16, she moved to Baltimore where she worked at a diner in Towson where she met Harris, a regular customer. After marrying in 1938, they were both hired at the Black & Decker factory in Towson. Due to muscular dystrophy, Harris was not required to join the U.S. armed forces in the Second World War; instead, he and Frances worked through the war years in what they considered "good jobs". Frances suffered two miscarriages in 1940 and 1943.


title: Divine (performer)

text: By the time of Divine's birth in 1945, the Milsteads were affluent and socially conservative Baptists. Describing his upbringing, Divine recollected: "I was an only child in, I guess, your upper middle-class American family. I was probably your American spoiled brat." His parents lavished almost anything that he wanted on him, including food, and he became overweight, a condition he lived with for the rest of his life. On his request, his parents and friends called him by his middle name, Glenn, to distinguish him from his father.


title: Divine (performer)

text: At age 12, Divine and his parents moved to the Baltimore suburb of Lutherville, where he attended Towson High School, graduating in 1963. Bullied because of his weight and perceived effeminacy, he later reminisced that he "wasn't rough and tough" but instead "loved painting and [he] always loved flowers and things". At 15 he took a part-time job at a local florist's shop. Several years later, he went on a diet and skinned down from , giving him new confidence. When he was 17, his parents sent him to a psychiatrist, where he first realized his sexual attraction to men as well as women, something then taboo in conventional American society. He helped out at his parents' day care business, including dressing up as Santa Claus to entertain the children at Christmas time. In 1963, he began attending the Marinella Beauty School, where he learned hair styling and, after completing his studies, gained employment at a couple of local salons, specializing in the creation of beehives and other upswept styles. He eventually gave up the job and for a while was financially supported by his parents, who catered to his expensive taste in clothes and cars. They reluctantly paid the many bills he ran up throwing lavish parties where he dressed in drag as his favorite celebrity, actress Elizabeth Taylor.


title: Divine (performer)

text: Milstead developed a large coterie of friends, among them David Lochary, who became an actor and costar in several of Divine's later films. In the mid-1960s, Milstead befriended John Waters through their mutual friend Carol Wernig; Waters and Milstead were the same age and from the same neighborhood, and both embraced Baltimore's countercultural and underground elements. Along with friends like Waters and Lochary, Milstead began hanging out at a beatnik bar in downtown Baltimore named Martick's, where they associated with hippies and smoked marijuana, bonding into what Waters described as "a family of sorts". Waters gave his friends new nicknames, and it was he who first called Milstead "Divine". Waters later remarked that he had borrowed the name from a character in Jean Genet's novel "Our Lady of the Flowers" (1943), a controversial book about homosexuals living on the margins of Parisian society, which Waters – himself a homosexual – was reading at the time. Waters also introduced Divine as "the most beautiful woman in the world, almost", a description widely repeated in ensuing years.


title: Divine (performer)

text: Waters was an aspiring filmmaker, intent on making "the trashiest motion pictures in cinema history". Many of his friends, a group which came to be known as "the Dreamlanders" (and who included Divine, Lochary, Mary Vivian Pearce and Mink Stole), appeared in some of his low-budget productions, filmed on Sunday afternoons. Following the production of his first short film, "Hag in a Black Leather Jacket" (1964), Waters began production of a second work, "Roman Candles" (1966). This film was influenced by the pop artist Andy Warhol's "Chelsea Girls" (1966), and consisted of three 8-millimeter movies played simultaneously side by side. "Roman Candles" was the first film to star Divine, in this instance in drag as a smoking nun. It featured the Dreamlanders modeling shoplifted clothes and performing various unrelated activities. Being both a short film and of an avant-garde nature, "Roman Candles" never received widespread distribution, instead holding its premiere at the annual Mt. Vernon Flower Mart in Baltimore, which had become popular with "elderly dames, young faggots and hustlers, and of course a whole bunch of hippies". Waters went on to screen it at several local venues alongside Kenneth Anger's short film "Eaux d'Artifice" (1953).


title: Divine (performer)

text: Waters followed "Roman Candles" with a third short film, "Eat Your Makeup" (1968), in which Divine once more wore drag, this time to portray a fictionalized version of Jackie Kennedy, the widow of recently assassinated U.S. President John F. Kennedy. In the film, she turns to kidnapping models and forcing them to eat their own makeup. Divine kept his involvement with Waters and these early underground films a secret from his conservative parents, believing that they would not understand them or the reason for his involvement in such controversial and bad-taste films; they would not find out about them for many years. Divine's parents had bought him his own beauty shop in Towson, hoping that the financial responsibility would help him to settle down in life and stop spending so extravagantly. While agreeing to work there, he refused to be involved in owning and managing the establishment, leaving that to his mother. Not long after, in the summer of 1968, he moved out of his parental home, renting his own apartment.


title: Divine (performer)

text: Divine appeared in Waters's next short film, "The Diane Linkletter Story" (1969), which was initially designed to be a test for a new sound camera. A black comedy that carried on in Waters's tradition of making "bad taste" films to shock conventional American society, "The Diane Linkletter Story" was based upon the true story of Diane Linkletter, the daughter of media personality Art Linkletter, who had committed suicide earlier that year. Her death had led to a flurry of media interest and speculation, with various sources erroneously claiming that she had done so under the influence of the psychedelic LSD. Waters's dramatized version starred Divine in the leading role as the teenager who rebels against her conservative parents after they try to break up her relationship with hippie boyfriend Jim, before consuming a large quantity of LSD and committing suicide. Although screened at the first Baltimore Film Festival, the film was not publicly released at the time, largely for legal reasons.


title: Divine (performer)

text: Soon after the production of "The Diane Linkletter Story", Waters began filming a full-length motion picture, "Mondo Trasho", starring Divine as one of the main characters, an unnamed blonde woman who drives around town and runs over a hitchhiker. In one scene, an actor was required to walk along a street naked, which was a crime in the state of Maryland at the time, leading to the arrest of Waters and most of the actors associated with the film; Divine escaped, having speedily driven away from the police when they arrived to carry out the arrests. In their review of the film, the "Los Angeles Free Press" exclaimed that "The 300-pound (140 kg) sex-symbol Divine is undoubtedly some sort of discovery."


title: Divine (performer)

text: In 1970, Divine abandoned work as a hairdresser, opening up a vintage clothing store in Provincetown, Massachusetts using his parents' money. Opening in 1970 as "Divine Trash", the store sold items that Divine had purchased in thrift stores, flea markets and garage sales, although it had to move from its original location after he had failed to obtain a license from the local authorities. Realizing that this venture was not financially viable, Divine sold off his stock at very low prices. In the hope of raising some extra money, he sold the furniture of his rented, furnished apartment, leading the landlady to put out a warrant for his arrest. He evaded the local police by traveling to San Francisco, California, a city which had a large gay subculture that attracted Divine, who was then embracing his homosexuality.


title: Divine (performer)

text: In 1970, Divine played the role of Lady Divine, the operator of an exhibit known as The Cavalcade of Perversion who turns to murdering visitors in Waters's film "Multiple Maniacs". The film contained several controversial scenes, notably one which involved Lady Divine masturbating using a rosary while sitting inside a church. In another, Lady Divine kills her boyfriend and proceeds to eat his heart; in actuality, Divine bit into a cow's heart which had gone rotten from being left out on the set all day. At the end of the film, Lady Divine is raped by a giant lobster named Lobstora, an act that drives her into madness; she subsequently goes on a killing spree in Fell's Point before being shot down by the National Guard. Due to its controversial nature, Waters feared that the film would be banned and confiscated by the Maryland State Board of Censors, so avoided their jurisdiction by only screening it at non-commercial venues, namely rented church premises. "Multiple Maniacs" was the first of Waters's films to receive widespread attention, as did Divine; KSFX remarked that "Divine is incredible! Could start a whole new trend in films."


title: Divine (performer)

text: Following his San Francisco stay, Divine returned to Baltimore and participated in Waters's next film "Pink Flamingos". Designed by Waters to be "an exercise in poor taste", the film featured Divine as Babs Johnson, a woman who claims to be "the filthiest person alive" and who is forced to prove her right to the title from challengers, Connie (Mink Stole) and Raymond Marble (David Lochary). In one scene, the Marbles send Babs a turd in a box as a birthday present, and in order to enact this scene, Divine defecated into the box the night before. Filmed in a hippie commune in Phoenix, Maryland, the cast members spent much of the time smoking cigarettes and marijuana and taking amphetamines. All of the scenes had been heavily rehearsed beforehand. The final scene in the film proved particularly infamous, involving Babs eating fresh dog feces; Divine later told a reporter, "I followed that dog around for three hours just zooming in on its asshole", waiting for it to empty its bowels so that they could film the scene. The scene became one of the most notable moments of Divine's acting career, and he later complained of people thinking that "I run around doing it all the time. I've received boxes of dog shit – plastic dog shit. I have gone to parties where people just sit around and talk about dog shit because they think it's what I want to talk about." In reality, he remarked, he was not a coprophile but only ate excrement that one time because it was in the script.


title: Divine (performer)

text: The film premiered in March 1972 at the third Annual Baltimore Film Festival, held on the campus of the University of Baltimore, where it sold out tickets for three successive screenings; the film aroused particular interest among underground cinema fans following the success of "Multiple Maniacs", which had begun to be screened in New York City, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. Being picked up by the small independent company New Line Cinema, "Pink Flamingos" was distributed to Ben Barenholtz, the owner of the Elgin Theater in New York City. At the Elgin Theater, Barenholtz had been promoting the midnight movie scene, primarily by screening Alejandro Jodorowsky's acid western film "El Topo" (1970). Barenholtz felt that being of an avant-garde nature, "Pink Flamingos" would fit in well with this crowd, screening it at midnight on Friday and Saturday nights. The film soon gained a cult following at the Elgin Theatre. Barenholtz characterized its early fans as primarily being "downtown gay people, more of the hipper set", but after a while he noted that this group broadened, with the film becoming popular with "working-class kids from New Jersey who would become a little rowdy". Many of these cult cinema fans learned all of the film's lines, reciting them at the screenings, a phenomenon which became associated with another popular midnight movie of the era, "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" (1975).


title: Divine (performer)

text: While keeping his involvement with Waters's underground filmmaking a secret from his parents, Divine continued relying on them financially, charging them for expensive parties that he held and writing bad checks. After he charged them for a major repair to his car in 1972, his parents confiscated it from him and told him that they would not continue to support him in such a manner. In retaliation, he came by their house the following day, collected his two pet dogs and then disappeared, not seeing or speaking with them for the next nine years. Instead, he sent them over fifty postcards from across the world, informing them that he was fine, but on none did he leave a return address. Frances and Harris Milstead retired soon after and moved to Florida at the advice of Harris's doctor, who prescribed the southern state's warmer weather as being beneficial for Harris's muscular dystrophy.


title: Divine (performer)

text: When the filming of "Pink Flamingos" finished, Divine returned to San Francisco, where he and Mink Stole starred in a number of small-budget plays at the Palace Theater as part of drag troupe The Cockettes, including "Divine and Her Stimulating Studs", "Divine Saves the World", "Vice Palace", "Journey to the Center of Uranus" and "The Heartbreak of Psoriasis". It was here that he first met androgynous performer Sylvester. Divine purchased a house in Santa Monica, which he furnished to his expensive tastes. On visits to Washington D.C. during the early 1970s, Divine and Waters attended the city's balls that were frequented by LGBT African-Americans. Here, Waters encouraged Divine's drag persona to become more outrageous, exposing her overweight stomach and carrying weapons. He later commented that he wanted Divine to become "the Godzilla of drag queens", a direct confrontation with the majority of Euro-American drag queens who wanted to be Miss America. In his private life, Divine became the godfather of Brook Yeaton, the son of his friends Chuck Yeaton and Pat Moran; Brook and Divine remained very close until Divine's death.


title: Divine (performer)

text: In 1974, Divine returned to Baltimore to film Waters's next motion picture, "Female Trouble", in which he played the lead role. Divine's character, teenage delinquent Dawn Davenport, embraces the idea that crime is art and is eventually executed in the electric chair for her violent behavior. Waters claimed that the character of Dawn had been partly based on the mutual friend who had introduced him to Divine, Carol Wernig, while the costumes and make-up were once more designed by Van Smith to create the desired "trashy, slutty look". In the film, Divine did his own stunts, including the trampoline scene, for which he had to undertake a number of trampolining lessons. Divine also played his first on-screen male role in the film, Earl Peterson, and Waters included a scene during which these two characters had sexual intercourse as a joke on the fact that both characters were played by the same actor. "Female Trouble" proved to be Divine's favorite of his films, because it both allowed him to develop his character and to finally play a male role, something he had always felt important because he feared being typecast as a female impersonator. Divine was also responsible for singing the theme tune for "Female Trouble", although it was never released as a single. Divine remained proud of the film, although it received a mixed critical reception.


title: Divine (performer)

text: In 1977, Divine co-starred in the revue "Restless Underwear", alongside Canadian rock band Rough Trade, which played at Massey Hall in Toronto. In 1980, the revue appeared at the Beacon Theater on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Bernard Jay, Divine's manager, said that it was a "gigantic disaster", as Divine did not have as large a part in the revue as audience members expected.


title: Divine (performer)

text: Divine was unable to appear in Waters's next feature, "Desperate Living" (1977), despite the fact that the role of Mole McHenry had been written for him. This was because he had returned to working in the theater, this time taking the role of the scheming prison matron Pauline in Tom Eyen's comedy "Women Behind Bars". Performed in New York City's Truck and Warehouse Theater, the play proved popular and was later taken to London's Whitehall Theater next to Trafalgar Square. Containing a new cast, it proved less successful than it had in New York. It was in this city that Divine met a group of people whom he would come to know as his "London family": fashion designer Zandra Rhodes, photographer Robyn Beeche, sculptor Andrew Logan and the latter's partner, Michael Davis. While in London in 1978, Divine attended as the guest of honour at the fourth Alternative Miss World pageant, a "mock" event founded by Logan in 1972 in which "drag queens" – including men, women and children – competed for the prize. The event was filmed by director Richard Gayer, whose subsequent film, entitled "Alternative Miss World", premiered at the Odeon in London's Leicester Square as well as featuring at the Cannes Film Festival, both events which were attended by Divine.


title: Divine (performer)

text: Impressed with Divine's performance in "Women Behind Bars", playwright Tom Eyen decided to write a new play that would feature him in a starring role. The result was "The Neon Woman", a story set in 1962 featuring Divine as Flash Storm, the female owner of a Baltimore strip club. It played at the Hurrah! club in New York City before moving on to the Alcazar Theatre in San Francisco. Divine remained very proud of the work, seeing it as evidence that his acting skills were coming to wider recognition, and his performances were attended by such celebrities as Eartha Kitt, Elton John, and Liza Minnelli. It was during the New York leg of the play's tour that Divine befriended Jay Bennett; they subsequently began renting an apartment together on 58th Street. In the city, Divine assembled a group of friends that came to be known as his "New York family": designer Larry LeGaspi, makeup artist Conrad Santiago, Vincent Nasso, and dresser Frankie Piazza. While there, he frequented the famous club Studio 54, having a love of partying and club culture.


title: Divine (performer)

text: Divine eventually decided to abandon his agent, Robert Hussong, and replace him with his English friend Bernard Jay. Jay suggested that with his love of clubs, Divine could obtain work performing in them; as a result, Divine first appeared in 1979 at a gay club in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where his unscripted act included shouting "fuck you" repeatedly at the audience and then getting into a fight with another drag queen, a gimmick that proved popular with the club's clientele. Subsequently, he saw the commercial potential of including disco songs in with his act and, with Tom Eyen and composer Henry Krieger, created "Born to be Cheap" in 1981. In 1981 Divine appeared in John Waters's next film, "Polyester", starring as Francine Fishpaw. Unlike earlier roles, Fishpaw was not a strong female but a meek and victimized woman who falls in love with her dream lover, Todd Tomorrow, played by Tab Hunter. In real life, tabloid publications claimed a romantic connection between them, an assertion both denied. The film was released in "Odorama", accompanied by "scratch 'n' sniff" cards for the audience to smell at key points in the film. Soon after "Polyester", Divine auditioned for a male role in Ridley Scott's upcoming science-fiction film "Blade Runner". Even though Scott thought Divine unsuitable for the part, he claimed to be enthusiastic about Divine's work and was very interested in including him in another of his films, but ultimately this never came about.


title: Divine (performer)

text: That same year, Divine decided to get back in contact with his estranged parents. His mother had learned of his cinematic and disco career after reading an article about the films of John Waters in "Life" magazine, and had gone to see "Female Trouble" at the cinema, but had not felt emotionally able to get back in contact with her son until 1981. She got a friend to hand Divine a note at one of his concerts, leading Divine to telephone her, and the family was subsequently reunited. The relationship was mended, and Divine bought them lavish gifts and informed them of how wealthy he was. In fact, according to his manager Bernard Jay, he was already heavily in debt due to his extravagant spending. In 1982, he then joined forces with young American composer Bobby Orlando, who wrote a number of Hi-NRG singles for Divine, including "Native Love (Step By Step)", "Shoot Your Shot", and "Love Reaction". To help publicize these singles, which proved to be successful in many discos across the world, Divine went on television shows like "Good Morning America", as well as on a series of tours in which he combined his musical performances with comedic stunts and routines that often played up to his characters' stereotype of being "trashy" and outrageous. Throughout the rest of the 1980s, Divine took his musical performances on tour across the world, attaining a particularly large following in Europe.


title: Divine (performer)

text: He also appeared in films by Rosa von Praunheim, for example in 1979 in "Tally Brown, New York". Divine was friend with both (the director and Tally Brown).


title: Divine (performer)

text: Divine's career as a disco singer continued and his records had sold well, but he and his management felt that they were not receiving their share of the profits. They went to court against Orlando and his company, O-Records, and successfully nullified their contract. After signing with Barry Evangeli's company, InTune Music Limited, Divine released several new disco records, including "You Think You're a Man" and "I'm So Beautiful", which were both co-produced by Pete Waterman of the then-up-and-coming UK production team of Stock Aitken Waterman. In the United Kingdom, Divine sang his hit "You Think You're A Man" – a song which he had dedicated to his parents – on BBC television show "Top of the Pops". He gained a devout follower, Briton Mitch Whitehead, a man who declared himself Divine's "number 1 fan", tattooing himself with images of his idol and eventually aiding Bernard Jay in setting up for Divine's show onstage. In London, Divine also befriended drag comedy act Paul O'Grady, with Jay helping O'Grady obtain his first bookings in the U.S.


title: Divine (performer)

text: The next Divine film, "Lust in the Dust" (1985), reunited him with Tab Hunter and was Divine's first film not directed by John Waters. Set in the Wild West during the nineteenth century, the movie was a sex comedy that starred Divine as Rosie Velez, a promiscuous woman who works as a singer in saloons and competes for the love of Abel Wood (Tab Hunter) against another woman. A parody of the 1946 western "Duel in the Sun", the film was a critical success, with Divine receiving praise from a number of reviewers. Divine followed this production with a very different role, that of gay male gangster Hilly Blue in "Trouble in Mind" (1985). The script was written with Divine in mind. Although not a major character in the film, Divine had been eager to play the part because he wished to perform in more male roles and leave behind the stereotype of simply being a female impersonator. Reviews of the film were mixed, as were the evaluations of Divine's performance.


title: Divine (performer)

text: After finishing his work on "Trouble in Mind", Divine again became involved with a John Waters project, the film "Hairspray" (1988). Set in Baltimore during the 1960s, "Hairspray" revolved around self-proclaimed "pleasantly plump" teenager Tracy Turnblad as she pursues stardom as a dancer on a local television show and rallies against racial segregation. As he had in Waters's earlier film "Female Trouble", Divine took on two roles in the film, one of which was female and the other male. The first of these, Edna Turnblad, was Tracy's loving mother; Divine later noted that with this character he could not be accurately described as a drag queen, proclaiming "What drag queen would allow herself to look like this? I look like half the women from Baltimore." His second character in the film was that of the racist television station owner Arvin Hodgepile. In one interview, Divine admitted that he had hoped to play both the role of mother and daughter in "Hairspray", but that the producers had been "a bit leery" and chose Ricki Lake for the latter role instead. Divine went on to state his opinion on Lake, jokingly telling the interviewer that "She is nineteen and delightful. I hate her." In reality they had become good friends while working together on set. Reviews of the film were predominantly positive, with Divine in particular being singled out for praise; several commentators expressed their opinion that the film marked Divine's breakthrough into mainstream cinema. He subsequently took his mother to the film's premiere in the Miami Film Festival before she once more accompanied him to the Baltimore premiere, this time also with several of his other relatives. After the screening, a party was held at the Baltimore Museum of Art, where Frances Milstead granted an impromptu interview to the English film critic Jonathan Ross, a friend and fan of Divine's.


title: Divine (performer)

text: Divine's final film role was in the low-budget comedy horror "Out of the Dark", filmed and produced in Los Angeles with the same crew as "Lust in the Dust". Appearing in only one scene within the film, he played the character of Detective Langella, a foul-mouthed policeman investigating the murders of a killer clown. "Out of the Dark" was released the year after Divine's death. Divine had become a well-known celebrity throughout the 1980s, appearing on American television chat shows such as "Late Night with David Letterman", "Thicke of the Night", and "The Merv Griffin Show" to promote both his music and his film appearances. Divine-themed merchandise was produced, including greeting cards and "The Simply Divine Cut-Out Doll Book". Portraits of Divine were painted by several famous artists, including David Hockney and Andy Warhol, both of whom were known for their works which dealt with popular culture.


title: Divine (performer)

text: On March 7, 1988, three weeks after "Hairspray" was released nationwide, Divine was staying at the Regency Plaza Suites Hotel in Los Angeles. He was scheduled to tape a guest appearance the following day as Uncle Otto on the Fox network's television series "Married... with Children" in the second season wrap-up episode. After spending all day at Sunset Gower Studios for rehearsals, Divine returned to his hotel that evening, where he dined with friends at the hotel restaurant before returning to his room. Shortly before midnight, he died in his sleep, at age 42, of heart failure. His body was discovered by Bernard Jay the following morning, who then sat with the body for the next six hours, alongside three of Divine's other friends. They contacted Thomas Noguchi, the former chief coroner of Los Angeles County, who arranged for removal of the body; Divine's friends were able to prevent the press from taking any photographs of the body as it was being carried out of the hotel.


title: Divine (performer)

text: Divine's body was flown back to Maryland and taken to Ruck's Funeral Home in Towson, where a casket was obtained for him. The funeral took place at Prospect Hill Cemetery, where a crowd of hundreds had assembled to pay their respects. The ceremony was conducted by Leland Higginbotham, who had baptized Divine into the Christian faith many years before. John Waters gave a speech and was one of the pallbearers who then carried the coffin to its final resting place, next to the grave of Divine's grandmother. Many flowers were left at the grave, including a wreath sent by actress Whoopi Goldberg, which bore the remark "See what happens when you get good reviews." Following the funeral, a tribute was held at the Baltimore Governor's Mansion. In the ensuing weeks, the Internal Revenue Service confiscated many of Divine's possessions and auctioned them off, as restitution for unpaid taxes.


title: Divine (performer)

text: After developing a name for himself as a female impersonator known for "trashy" behavior in his early John Waters films, Divine capitalized on this image by appearing at his musical performances in his drag persona. In this role, he was described by his manager Bernard Jay, as displaying "Trash. Filth. Obscenity. In bucket-loads". Divine described his stage performances as "just good, dirty fun, and if you find it offensive, honey, don't join in." As a part of his performance, he constantly swore at the audience, often using his signature line of "fuck you very much", and at times got audience members to come onstage, where he would fondle their buttocks, groins, and breasts. Divine and his stage act proved particularly popular among gay audiences, and he appeared at some of the world's biggest gay clubs, such as Central London's Heaven. According to Divine's manager Bernard Jay, this was not because Divine himself was gay, but because the gay community "openly and proudly identified with the determination of the "female" character Divine".


title: Divine (performer)

text: Divine became increasingly known for outlandish stunts onstage, each time trying to outdo what he had done before. At one performance in London's Hippodrome coinciding with American Independence Day, Divine rose up from the floor on a hydraulic lift, draped in the American flag, and declared: "I'm here representing Freedom, Liberty, Family Values, and the fucking American Way of Life." When he performed at the London Gay Pride parade, he sang on the roof of a hired pleasure boat that floated down the Thames past Jubilee Gardens. At a performance Divine gave at the Hippodrome in the last year of his life, he appeared onstage riding an infant elephant which had been hired for the occasion. Divine was nevertheless not happy with being known primarily for his drag act, and told an interviewer that "my favorite part of drag is getting out of it. Drag is my work clothes. I only put it on when someone pays me to", a view he echoed to his friends.


title: Divine (performer)

text: During his childhood and adolescence, Divine was called "Glenn" by his friends and family; as an adult, he used the stage name "Divine" as his personal name, telling one interviewer that both "Divine" and "Glenn Milstead" were "both just names. Glenn is the name I was brought up with, Divine is the name I've been using for the past 23 years. I guess it's "always" Glenn and it's "always" Divine. Do you mean the character Divine or the person Divine? You see, it gets very complicated. There's the Divine you're talking to now and there's the character Divine, which is just something I do to make a living. She doesn't really exist at all." At one point he had the name "Divine" officially recognized, as it appeared on his passport, and in keeping with his personal use of the name, his close friends nicknamed him "Divy".


title: Divine (performer)

text: Divine identified as a gay man. During the 1980s, he had an extended relationship with a married man named Lee L'Ecuyer, who accompanied him almost everywhere that he went. They later separated, and Divine went on to have a brief affair with gay porn star Leo Ford, which was widely reported upon by the gay press. According to his manager Bernard Jay, Divine regularly engaged in sexual activities with young men that he would meet while on tour, sometimes becoming infatuated with them; in one case, he met a young man in Israel whom he wanted to bring back to the United States, but was prevented from doing so by Jay. This image of promiscuity was disputed by his friend Anne Cersosimo, who claimed that Divine never exhibited such behavior when on tour. Divine initially avoided informing the media about his sexuality, even when questioned by interviewers, and would sometimes hint that he was bisexual, but in the latter part of the 1980s changed this attitude and began being open about his homosexuality. Nonetheless, he avoided discussing gay rights, partially at the advice of his manager, realizing that it would have had a negative effect on his career.


title: Divine (performer)

text: Divine's mother, Frances Milstead, remarked that while Divine "was blessed with many talents and abilities, he could be very moody and demanding". She noted that while he was "incredibly kind and generous", he always wanted to get things done the way that he wanted, and would "tune you out if you displeased him". She noted that in most interviews, he came across as "a very shy and private person". Divine's Dutch friends gave him two bulldogs in the early 1980s, on which he doted, naming them Beatrix and Claus after Queen Beatrix and her husband Prince Claus of the Netherlands. On numerous occasions he would have his photograph taken with them and sometimes use these images for record covers and posters. Divine suffered from problems with obesity from childhood, caused by his love of food, and in later life his hunger was increased by his daily use of marijuana, an addiction that he publicly admitted to. According to Bernard Jay, in Divine's final years, when his disco career was coming to an end and he was struggling to find acting jobs, he felt suicidal and threatened to kill himself on several occasions.


title: Divine (performer)

text: As to his gender identity, lifelong friend and close collaborator John Waters said, “People [think] Divine — they always think wrong — was trans. Divine never dressed as a woman except when he was working. He had no desire to be a woman... He didn’t want to pass as a woman; he wanted to pass as a monster. He was thought up to scare hippies. And that’s what he wanted to do. He wanted to be Godzilla. Well, he wanted to be Elizabeth Taylor and Godzilla put together.”


title: Divine (performer)

text: "The New York Times" said of Milstead's 1980s films: "Those who could get past the unremitting weirdness of Divine's performance discovered that the actor/actress had genuine talent, including a natural sense of comic timing and an uncanny gift for slapstick." In a letter to the newspaper, Paul Thornquist described him as "one of the few truly radical and essential artists of the century... [who] was an audacious symbol of man's quest for liberty and freedom". "People" magazine described him as "the Goddess of Gross, the Punk Elephant, the Big Bad Mama of the Midnight Movies... [and] a Miss Piggy for the blissfully depraved". Following his death, fans of Divine visited Prospect Hill Cemetery to pay their respects. In what has become a tradition, fans have been known to leave makeup, food, and graffiti on his grave "in memoriam"; Waters claims that some fans have sexual intercourse on his grave, which he believes Divine would love.


title: Divine (performer)

text: Divine has left an influence on a number of musicians. During the mid-1980s, the androgynous performer Sylvester decorated the powder room of his San Francisco home with Divine memorabilia. Anohni of the band Antony and the Johnsons wrote a song about Divine which was included in the group's self-titled debut album, released in 1998. The song, titled "Divine", was an ode to the actor, who was one of Anohni's lifelong heroes. Her admiration is expressed in the lines: "He was my self-determined guru" and "I turn to think of you/Who walked the way with so much pain/Who holds the mirror up to fools." In 2008, Irish electronic singer Róisín Murphy paid homage to Divine in the music video for her song "Movie Star" by reenacting the attack by Lobstora from "Multiple Maniacs".


title: Divine (performer)

text: Divine was an inspiration for Ursula the Sea Witch, the villain in the 1989 Disney animated film "The Little Mermaid". Due to Divine's portrayal of Edna Turnblad in the original comedy-film version of "Hairspray", later musical adaptations of "Hairspray" have commonly placed male actors in the role of Edna, including Harvey Fierstein and others in the 2002 Broadway musical, and John Travolta in the 2007 musical film. A statue in the likeness of Divine by Andrew Logan can be seen on permanent display at The American Visionary Art Museum in Divine's hometown of Baltimore.


title: Divine (performer)

text: "I Am Divine", a feature documentary on the life of Divine, was premiered at the 2013 South by Southwest film festival, and had its Baltimore premiere within Maryland Film Festival. It is produced and directed by Jeffrey Schwarz of the Los Angeles-based production company Automat Pictures. In August 2015, a play based on the final day of Divine's life, "Divine/Intervention", was performed at the New York Fringe Festival.


title: Divine (performer)

text: Divine's manager and friend Bernard Jay wrote a book titled "Not Simply Divine!", published in 1992 by Virgin Books. Admitting that he was "immensely proud" of Divine and the cause which he "strived for", Jay noted in the book's introduction that he wrote the work because he felt that Divine deserved a "memorial" that would act as a "record for posterity". He insisted that "Not Simply Divine!" was "not the bitter revenge of an unappreciated manager, eager now to get his share of his praise", but that equally it was not "a gushing homage" designed to paint Divine as "both saintly and legendary". He expressed his hope that the book shines light on the "shades of grey" between the man and his female persona, portraying a "warts and all" picture. The book was criticized by Divine's mother, Frances Milstead, who accused Jay of writing a "mean-spirited" work that provided an incorrect image of her son. "Not Simply Divine!" was also criticized by Divine's friend Greg Gorman, who remarked that, "there was so much hostility and so much meanspiritedness in the way Divine was portrayed in the book, that it was just 180 degrees from who he was".


title: Divine (performer)

text: Frances Milstead subsequently cowrote her own book about Divine, entitled "My Son Divine", with Kevin Heffernan and Steve Yeager, which was published by Alyson Books in 2001. "Postcards From Divine", a book composed of over 50 postcards Divine sent to his parents while traveling the world between 1977 and 1987, was released by the Divine estate on November 5, 2011. "Postcards From Divine" also includes quotes and stories from his friends and colleagues, including Waters, Mink Stole, Mary Vivian Pearce, Channing Wilroy, Susan Lowe, Jean Hill, Tab Hunter, Lainie Kazan, Alan J. Wendl, Ruth Brown, Deborah Harry, Jerry Stiller, Ricki Lake, Silvio Gigante and others.


title: FA Community Shield

text: The Football Association Community Shield (formerly the Charity Shield) is English football's annual match contested at Wembley Stadium between the champions of the previous Premier League season and the holders of the FA Cup. If the Premier League champions also won the FA Cup, then the league runners-up provide the opposition. The fixture is recognised as a competitive super cup by The Football Association and UEFA.


title: FA Community Shield

text: Organised by the FA, proceeds from the game are distributed to community initiatives and charities around the country. Revenue from the gate receipts and match programme sales is distributed to the 124 clubs who competed in the FA Cup from the first round onwards, for onward distribution to charities and projects of their choice, while the remainder is distributed to the FA's national charity partners. The fixture was first played in the 1908–09 season, replacing the Sheriff of London Charity Shield.


title: FA Community Shield

text: The current holders are FA Cup winners Liverpool, who defeated Premier League winners Manchester City 3–1 in the 2022 match.


title: FA Community Shield

text: The Community Shield evolved from the Sheriff of London Charity Shield that had been introduced in 1898 as a professionals vs amateurs cup (the gentlemen and players tradition). The Football Association Charity Shield, as it was known at the time, was designed to replace the Sheriff of London Charity Shield after the leading amateur clubs fell out with the FA. The new format was to have the Football League First Division champions play the Southern League champions, and the first match was in 1908 between Manchester United (the First Division champions) and Queens Park Rangers (the Southern League champions). The match was drawn 1–1, so the game was replayed when Manchester United won 4–0. This is the only Charity Shield game to go to a replay. Both games were played at Stamford Bridge.


title: FA Community Shield

text: The competition format varied over the years: in 1913 the Shield was contested between Amateurs and Professionals XIs, while in 1921 the Shield was contested between the Football League and FA Cup winners for the first time. The format continued to vary in the 1920s, usually along the lines of Amateurs vs Professionals, including one year (1927) where the Professionals were represented by the FA Cup holders Cardiff City and the Amateurs by the Corinthians, echoing the format of the trophy's predecessor, the Sheriff of London Charity Shield.


title: FA Community Shield

text: In 1930, the match returned to being contested by the winners of the Football League and the FA Cup, and with a few exceptions, that format has remained to the present day. Notable exceptions include the 1950 Shield, which involved the England World Cup team against an FA team that had toured Canada that summer, and the 1961 Shield, when Tottenham Hotspur became the first team of the 20th century to win the Double, and so played a Football Association XI.


title: FA Community Shield

text: The game was moved to the start of the season from 1959 onwards. The question of which two teams should contest the Shield should one team win both the FA Cup and League continued to linger. In 1971, Arsenal became the second team to win the Double since the Shield's foundation, but owing to their previously arranged pre-season friendly matches, they could not take part. Leicester City were invited as Division Two champions to play FA Cup runners-up Liverpool instead and went on to win the trophy, despite at the time having never won either the League or the FA Cup.


title: FA Community Shield

text: In 1972, league champions Derby County and FA Cup winners Leeds United both declined to take part in the Charity Shield, so Manchester City, who had finished in fourth in the First Division, and Third Division champions Aston Villa were invited to take part; Manchester City won 1–0.


title: FA Community Shield

text: After league champions Liverpool and FA Cup winners Sunderland declined to play, despite finishing the season 11th in the league City also contested the 1973 Charity Shield but lost 1–0 to Second Division champions Burnley.


title: FA Community Shield

text: In 1974, the then FA secretary, Ted Croker, created the current format with the match being played at Wembley Stadium, and being contested by the reigning League and FA Cup holders.


title: FA Community Shield

text: Between 1949 and 1991, the Shield was shared on 11 occasions, after the matches ended in a tie. Four drawn games in the 1980s and early 1990s resulted in each team holding the trophy for six months, but in 1993 penalties were re-introduced to decide drawn games.


title: FA Community Shield

text: With the formation of a new top league, the FA Premier League, the Shield became a showcase match between the Premier League and FA Cup winners from the 1993 competition onwards.


title: FA Community Shield

text: In 2002, the Charity Commission found that the Football Association had failed to meet its legal obligations under charity law, by failing to specify what money from ticket sales went to charity, and delaying payments to the charities nominated. As a result, the competition was renamed the Community Shield. Arsenal were the first winners of the renamed Community Shield with a 1–0 victory over Liverpool.


title: FA Community Shield

text: In 2016, the FA's official silversmith Thomas Lyte restored and rebuilt the Football Association's original 1908 Charity Shield to mark 50 years since England beat West Germany in the 1966 FIFA World Cup. The trophy was sold at auction, raising £40,000 for the Bobby Moore Fund for Cancer Research UK. The Bobby Moore Fund became the FA's charity partner in July 2016. The auction was held at The Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington, where the England team celebrated the 1966 victory.


title: FA Community Shield

text: The rules of the Community Shield are generally the same as those of the Premier League, with a team of 11 starting players and 7 substitutes. However, unlike in most other competitions where only three substitutions are permitted, teams in the Community Shield are permitted up to six substitutions. If the scores are level after 90 minutes, the teams play a penalty shootout. If a team wins both the Premier League and the FA Cup, the runner-up from the Premier League will play.


title: FA Community Shield

text: Serving as England's super cup between the previous season's Premier League champions and FA Cup winners, the Community Shield is regarded as the "curtain-raiser" and is the first competitive game of each top-flight English football season. However, it has been treated with varying degrees of seriousness by participating teams, with some using it similarly to friendlies in their pre-season schedule – as an opportunity to give match practice to fringe members of their squads or those returning from injury. BBC Sport pundit Mark Lawrenson and "The Guardian" writer Tom Bryant both described the match as a "glorified friendly". Prior to the 2008 FA Community Shield, Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson summarised his opinion of the competition: "The Community Shield is a prestigious match but I have used players in it who were not quite fit... it's always a game we never quite use as a do or die thing; we use it as a barometer for fitness".


title: FA Community Shield

text: Others, however, continue to recognise the status of the match as the first official game and trophy of the domestic season. Ahead of the 2016 FA Community Shield against Manchester United, Leicester City manager Claudio Ranieri asked, "Why do you say this question, a friendly? When is the Community Shield a friendly? Of course we will be at the maximum and Manchester United will be at their maximum. The two teams want to win. I am very excited." The following year, Chelsea manager Antonio Conte affirmed the significance of the cup, stating "It is not a friendly game. It is an official game and there is a trophy so for us it must be important" ahead of his side's clash with Arsenal, the team that had denied his club the double the previous season. Likewise in 2018, Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola referred to his side's clash with Chelsea in the competition as "the first final" of the season.


title: FA Community Shield

text: The fixture was originally played at various neutral grounds or at the home ground of one of the competing teams. In total, there have been eighteen host grounds other than the aforementioned permanent three. The first ground to host the fixture was Stamford Bridge in 1908 and the last ground that guest hosted the fixture was the King Power Stadium in 2022, which was due to Wembley hosting the final of UEFA Women's Euro 2022 on the following day.


title: FA Community Shield

text: Seven clubs have hosted the fixture at their ground on a single occasion: St James' Park in 1932, "Roker Park" in 1936, "Burnden Park" in 1958, Turf Moor in 1960, Portman Road in 1962, Anfield in 1964, and Elland Road in 1969. In addition to these, Leicester City have hosted the fixture twice, once at each of: "Filbert Street" in 1971 and the King Power Stadium in 2022, bringing the total of one-off host stadia to nine. A further nine grounds have hosted the fixture on multiple occasions (see table).


title: Bridesmaids (2011 film)

text: Bridesmaids is a 2011 American comedy film directed by Paul Feig, written by Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig, and produced by Judd Apatow, Barry Mendel, and Clayton Townsend. The plot centers on Annie, who suffers a series of misfortunes after being asked to serve as maid of honor for her best friend, Lillian, played by Maya Rudolph. Rose Byrne, Melissa McCarthy, Ellie Kemper, and Wendi McLendon-Covey co-star as Lillian's bridesmaids, with Chris O'Dowd, Rebel Wilson, Matt Lucas, Michael Hitchcock, Jon Hamm, Franklyn Ajaye, and Jill Clayburgh, in her final film appearance, in supporting roles.


title: Bridesmaids (2011 film)

text: Actresses Mumolo and Wiig wrote the screenplay after the latter was cast in Apatow's 2007 comedy film "Knocked Up", and budgeted at $32.5 million. Upon its opening release in the United States and Canada on May 13, 2011, "Bridesmaids" was a critical and commercial success. The film made $26 million in its opening weekend, eventually earning over $288 million worldwide, and surpassed "Knocked Up" to become the top-grossing Apatow production to date, and served as a touchstone for discussion about women in comedy.


title: Bridesmaids (2011 film)

text: "Bridesmaids" was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy. It received multiple other accolades. In 2012, the film was nominated for both the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Melissa McCarthy and Best Original Screenplay for Wiig and Mumolo. This made "Bridesmaids" the first Apatow-produced film to be nominated for an Academy Award.


title: Bridesmaids (2011 film)

text: Annie Walker is a single woman in her mid-thirties living in Milwaukee. Her bakery failed during a recent recession, wiping out her savings, and causing her boyfriend to leave her. Having lost her passion, she works a stressful, underpaid job at a jewelry store and shares an apartment with weird British immigrant siblings Gil and Brynn. Annie has a casual sexual relationship with the wealthy and self-absorbed Ted, who treats her like an object. The only positive presence in her life is her lifelong best friend, Lillian. When Lillian becomes engaged to her boyfriend Doug, she asks Annie to be her maid of honor.


title: Bridesmaids (2011 film)

text: At the engagement party, Annie meets Lillian's bridesmaids: Lillian's long married and cynical cousin Rita; Lillian's naïve newlywed coworker Becca; Doug's raunchy, foul-mouthed but friendly sister Megan; and the wealthy and snobby Helen, Doug's boss' trophy wife. Annie and Helen are instantly jealous of each other's friendship with Lillian and become increasingly competitive for her attention. However, Helen genuinely puts in the effort to be friends with Annie, who is completely hostile to her in return.


title: Bridesmaids (2011 film)

text: Annie takes the bridal party to a Brazilian steak restaurant before visiting an upscale bridal shop, where Helen uses her influence to gain entry as Annie failed to make a reservation. While trying on gowns, the entire party – except Helen, who chose not to eat – begins vomiting and experiencing uncontrollable diarrhea from food poisoning, with Lillian voiding her bowels in the middle of the street while wearing a wedding dress.


title: Bridesmaids (2011 film)

text: Annie's suggestion for a bachelorette party at Lillian's parents' lake house is overruled in favor of a Las Vegas trip planned by Helen. Unable to afford a first-class ticket and too proud to allow Helen to pay, Annie books a ticket in economy class. Annie accepts a sedative and liquor from Helen to calm her massive fear of flying and she begins to hallucinate, ending in a paranoid outburst leading to her being apprehended by a U.S. Air Marshal. The plane makes an emergency landing and the party takes a bus back home. Annie apologizes, but Lillian decides it's best if Helen takes over planning the bridal shower and wedding.


title: Bridesmaids (2011 film)

text: Annie grows close with Nathan Rhodes, an Irish-American Wisconsin State Patrol officer who lets her off without a ticket for broken brake lights. Nathan, who had been a customer at Annie's bakery, repeatedly encourages her to open a new bakery. After a romantic night together, Nathan surprises her with baking supplies, but Annie is annoyed and leaves.


title: Bridesmaids (2011 film)

text: Annie is fired from the jewelry store for having a profanity-laden argument with a teenage customer and is then kicked out by her roommates, forcing her to move in with her mother. She then travels to Helen's home in Chicago for the extravagant bridal shower, which is Parisian-themed - an idea of Annie's that Helen had previously rejected. After Helen upstages her heartfelt gift by gifting Lillian a trip to Paris, an enraged Annie throws a tantrum and destroys the outside décor; angry that Annie has now ruined every event in her wedding, Lillian kicks her out of the shower and the wedding. Driving home, Annie's still-broken taillights result in a car accident, but the other driver flees. Nathan arrives on the scene and admonishes Annie for not fixing her taillights or taking responsibility for her life. Ted arrives to give Annie a ride, causing Nathan to storm off. When Ted suggests Annie perform oral sex on him in the car, she demands he let her get out and she walks home.