title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: Because Earth is spherical, long-distance travel sometimes requires heading in different directions than one would head on a flat Earth. An example would be an airplane travelling in a straight line, taking a 90-degree right turn, travelling another , taking another 90-degree right turn, and travelling a third time. On a flat Earth, the aircraft would have travelled along three sides of a square, and arrive at a spot about from where it started. But because Earth is spherical, in reality it will have travelled along three sides of a triangle, and arrive back very close to its starting point. If the starting point is the North Pole, it would have travelled due south from the North Pole to the equator, then west for a quarter of the way around Earth, and then due north back to the North Pole.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: In spherical geometry, the sum of angles inside a triangle is greater than 180° (in this example 270°, having arrived back at the north pole a 90° angle to the departure path) unlike on a flat surface, where it is always exactly 180°.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: Low-pressure weather systems with inward winds (such as a hurricane) spin counterclockwise north of the equator, but clockwise south of the equator. This is due to the Coriolis force, and requires that (assuming they are attached to each other and rotating in the same direction) the north and southern halves of Earth are angled in opposite directions (as in, the north is facing toward Polaris and the south is facing away from it).


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: The laws of gravity, chemistry, and physics that explain the formation and rounding of Earth are well-tested through experiment, and applied successfully to many engineering tasks.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: From these laws, the amount of mass Earth contains is known, as is the fact that a non-spherical planet the size of Earth would not be able to support itself against its own gravity. A disk the size of Earth, for example, would likely crack, heat up, liquefy, and re-form into a roughly spherical shape. On a disk strong enough to maintain its shape, gravity would not pull downward with respect to the surface, but would pull toward the center of the disk, contrary to what is observed on level terrain (and which would cause major problems with oceans flowing toward the center of the disk).


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: Ignoring the other concerns, some flat Earth conjecturists explain the observed surface "gravity" by proposing that the flat Earth is constantly accelerating upwards. Such a conjecture would also leave open for explanation the tides seen in Earth's oceans, which are conventionally explained by the gravity exerted by the Sun and Moon.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: Observations of Foucault pendulums, popular in science museums around the world, demonstrate both that the world is spherical and that it rotates (not that the stars are rotating around it).


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: The mathematics of navigation using Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites assumes that they are moving in known orbits around an approximately spherical surface. The accuracy of GPS navigation in determining latitude and longitude and the way these numbers map onto locations on the ground show that these assumptions are correct. The same is true for the operational GLONASS system run by Russia, the in-development European Galileo, the Chinese BeiDou, and the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: Satellites, including communications satellites used for television, telephone, and Internet connections, would not stay in orbit unless the modern theory of gravitation were correct. The details of which satellites are visible from which places on the ground at which times prove an approximately spherical shape of Earth.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: Radio transmitters are mounted on tall towers because they generally rely on line-of-sight propagation. The distance to the horizon is further at higher altitude, so mounting them higher significantly increases the area they can serve. Some signals can be transmitted at much longer distances, but only if they are at frequencies where they can use groundwave propagation, tropospheric propagation, tropospheric scatter, or ionospheric propagation to reflect or refract signals around the curve of Earth.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: Equatorial mounts allow astronomers to point telescopes at the same celestial object for longer times while compensating for Earth's rotation in an easy way. The axis of an equatorial mount is parallel to Earth's surface when observing stars at Earth's equatorbut perpendicular to it when observing from one of Earth's poles. Equatorial mounts were specifically developed for a spherical and rotating Earth. If Earth were flat, an equatorial mount would not make sense.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: The design of some large structures needs to take the shape of Earth into account. For example, the towers of the Humber Bridge, although both vertical with respect to gravity, are farther apart at the top than the bottom due to Earth's curvature.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: People in high-flying aircraft or skydiving from high-altitude balloons can plainly see the curvature of Earth. Low-flying planes and commercial airliners do not necessarily fly high enough to make this obvious, especially when passenger windows narrow the field of view or clouds or terrain reduce the effective height from the visible surface. Trying to measure the curvature of the horizon by taking a picture is complicated by the fact that both windows and camera lenses can produce distorted images depending on the angle used. An extreme version of this effect can be seen in the fisheye lens. Scientific measurements would require a carefully calibrated lens.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: Photos of the ground taken from airplanes over a large enough area also do not fit seamlessly together on a flat surface, but do fit on a roughly spherical surface. Aerial photographs of large areas must be corrected to account for curvature.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: Many pictures have been taken of the entirety of Earth by satellites launched by a variety of governments and private organizations. From high orbits, where half the planet can be seen at once, it is plainly spherical. The only way to piece together all the pictures taken of the ground from lower orbits so that all the surface features line up seamlessly and without distortion is to put them on an approximately spherical surface.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: Astronauts in low Earth orbit can personally see the curvature of the planet, and travel all the way around several times a day. The astronauts who travelled to the Moon have seen the entire Moon-facing half at once, and can watch the sphere rotate once a day (approximately; the Moon is also moving with respect to Earth).


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: When the supersonic aircraft Concorde took off not long after sunset from London and flew westward to New York, it outran the Sun's apparent motion westwardand therefore passengers aboard observed the Sun rising in the west as they travelled. After landing in New York, passengers watched a second sunset in the west.


title: Modern flat Earth beliefs

text: Because the speed of the Sun's shadow is slower in polar regions (due to the steeper angle), even a subsonic aircraft can overtake the sunset when flying at high latitudes. One photographer used a roughly circular route around the North Pole to take pictures of 24 sunsets in the same 24-hour period, pausing westward progress in each time zone to let the shadow of the Sun catch up. The surface of Earth rotates at at 80° north or south, and at the equator.


title: Flushed Away

text: Flushed Away is a 2006 computer-animated adventure comedy film directed by David Bowers and Sam Fell, produced by Cecil Kramer, David Sproxton, and Peter Lord, and written by Dick Clement, Ian La Frenais, Chris Lloyd, Joe Keenan and Will Davies. It was the third and final DreamWorks Animation film co-produced with Aardman Animations following "Chicken Run" (2000) and "" (2005), and was the first Aardman project completely made in CGI animation as opposed to their usual stop-motion. The film stars the voices of Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Ian McKellen, Shane Richie, Bill Nighy, Andy Serkis and Jean Reno. In the film, a pampered pet mouse named Roddy St. James (Jackman) is flushed down the toilet in his Kensington apartment by a sewer rat named Sid (Richie), and befriends a scavenger named Rita Malone (Winslet) in order to get back home while evading a sinister toad (McKellen) and his hench-rats (Nighy and Serkis).


title: Flushed Away

text: The idea about rats that fall in love in sewers was created by animator Fell during the production of "Chicken Run". In 2001, Fell developed the concept into a story before pitching it to DreamWorks. The project was first announced in July 2002, followed with comic writing duo Clement and La Frenais contracted to write the script, which had the working title "Ratropolis". In 2003, Bowers joined in to direct the film with Fell. Because using real water can damage plasticine models, it is complex to render water with this technique, so they chose to make a computer-animated film.


title: Flushed Away

text: The film was released in the United States by Paramount Pictures on 3 November 2006, and in the United Kingdom on 1 December 2006. Despite receiving positive reviews, "Flushed Away" underperformed at the box office, prompting DreamWorks to end their partnership with Aardman and a $109-million write-down. It grossed over $178 million worldwide against its $149 million budget. The film received nominations for the BAFTA Award and Critics' Choice Award for Best Animated Feature. It also got 8 nominations at the 34th Annie Awards, winning a leading 5, including Writing in a Feature Production, and Voice Acting in a Feature Production award for Ian McKellen. The film would serve as Aardman's biggest box office bomb until 2018, as "Early Man" earned less money that year.


title: Flushed Away

text: Roddy St. James is a pampered pet mouse who lives in a large Kensington apartment. While his owners are gone away on holiday, a sewer rat named Sid spews out of the sink's drain and decides to stay and watch the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final. Roddy attempts to get rid of Sid by flushing down the toilet, but instead gets flushed down the sewers by Sid.


title: Flushed Away

text: Roddy finds himself in Ratropolis, a sewer city made out of various bits of junk that resembles London. He is told to seek out Rita Malone, an enterprising scavenger mouse who works the drains in her faithful boat, the "Jammy Dodger" who can possibly help him get home. Roddy and Rita are abducted by rats Spike and Whitey and brought before their boss, the Toad, as Rita stole back a prized ruby originally scavenged by her father. The Toad plans to have Roddy and Rita frozen with liquid nitrogen, but the pair escape. Rita takes the ruby, and a unique electric master cable required to control Ratropolis' sewer floodgates.


title: Flushed Away

text: Roddy deduces that the ruby is a fake and easily shatters it, enraging Rita. Roddy offers Rita a real ruby if she takes him back to Kensington, to which she agrees. The pair first stop to visit her family before setting off. During Roddy's stay, he overhears a conversation that causes him to assume that Rita is selling him out to the Toad, so he reneges on the deal and steals the "Jammy Dodger". When Rita catches up to him, she is able to clear up the misunderstanding. The pair evade pursuit from Spike, Whitey, and their accomplices.


title: Flushed Away

text: Incensed at his minions' repeated failures, the Toad sends for his French cousin, Le Frog. It is revealed that the Toad was Prince Charles' favorite childhood pet until he was abruptly replaced by a rat and flushed down a toilet, resulting in his hatred of rodents. Le Frog and his subordinates intercept Roddy and Rita to retrieve the cable, but the duo manages to escape out of the sewer drain and back to Roddy's apartment, though the "Jammy Dodger" is destroyed.


title: Flushed Away

text: Roddy pays Rita the promised ruby and an emerald, then shows her around his apartment. She at first believes he has family, but notices his cage and realizes he is a pet and alone. Rita tries to persuade Roddy to come with her, but he is too proud to admit his loneliness and rebuffs her. Rita leaves the apartment via the toilet only for her to be captured, with the Toad taking back the master cable. Roddy joins Sid to watch the game. When Sid mentions half-time, Roddy pieces together the Toad's plan: to open the floodgates during half-time of the World Cup, when all the humans will most likely be using their toilets, allowing the ensuing, enormous wave of drainage to destroy Ratropolis, allowing the Toad to use the depopulated city as a home for his tadpole children. Roddy entrusts Sid with his home and cushy position, and has Sid flush him back down the sewers again. He frees Rita, and together they defeat the Toad and his henchman by getting Toad and Le Frog’s tongues stuck to moving gears and freeze the wave of drainage with liquid nitrogen. Hailed as a hero, Roddy agrees to stay in Ratropolis with Rita. Soon after, the two, as well as Rita's family, set off on the "Jammy Dodger II".


title: Flushed Away

text: The idea for a film about rats that fall in love in sewers was proposed by animator Sam Fell during the production of Aardman Animation's "Chicken Run" (2000). At the time, Aardman encouraged everyone at the company to come up with ideas for features for the DreamWorks partnership. In 2001, Fell, development executive Mike Cooper, and producer Peter Lord then developed the concept into a story before pitching it to DreamWorks. The film was first announced in July 2002, and in what was then a surprise move, it was revealed as being Aardman's very first CGI feature project. Lord described the pitch as ""The African Queen" with the gender roles reversed". After the film was announced, Comic writing duo Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais were contracted to write the script, which had the working title "Ratropolis". In 2003, David Bowers joined in to direct the film with Fell.


title: Flushed Away

text: The film's sneak peak trailer advertised as "From DreamWorks, who brought you "Shrek", and Aardman Studios, who created "Wallace and Gromit"." But while international prints still say "From the creators of "Shrek" and "Wallace and Gromit"", North American advertisements mainly say that it's "From the Creators of "Shrek" and "Madagascar"".


title: Flushed Away

text: Traditionally, Aardman has used stop-motion for their animated features, but it is complex to render water with this technique, and using real water can damage plasticine models. It would have been expensive to composite CGI into shots that include water, of which there are many in the movie, so they chose to make "Flushed Away" their first all-CGI production. This is the third and final of three Aardman-produced films released by DreamWorks. Aardman's experience with DreamWorks during the making of the film led to a split between the two studios. Despite the character designs looking like they're from Nick Park, creator of "Wallace and Gromit", "Chicken Run", and "Creature Comforts", Park had zero involvement with the production of the film.


title: Flushed Away

text: On Halloween (31 October) 2006, the "Flushed Away: Music from the Motion Picture" soundtrack was released by Astralwerks.


title: Flushed Away

text: "Flushed Away" was released on DVD 20 February 2007. It includes behind the scenes, deleted info, Jammy Dodger videos and all-new slug songs. It was released in the UK on 2 April 2007, where it was also packaged with a plasticine 'Slug Farm' kit. The film was released on Blu-ray by Universal Pictures Home Entertainment on 4 June 2019. As of October 2010, 4.9 million units were sold.


title: Flushed Away

text: In July 2014, the film's distribution rights were purchased by DreamWorks Animation from Paramount Pictures and transferred to 20th Century Fox before reverting to Universal Studios in 2018.


title: Flushed Away

text: "Flushed Away" has an approval rating of on Rotten Tomatoes, and an average rating of , based on reviews. The site's critical consensus reads "Clever and appealing for both children and adults, "Flushed Away" marks a successful entry into digitally animated features for Aardman Animations." Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score to reviews from mainstream critics, gives the film a score of 74 out of 100 based on 28 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Flushed Away

text: Todd McCarthy of "Variety" gave the film a negative review, saying "As directed by David Bowers and Sam Fell, first-time feature helmers with long-term Aardman affiliations, the film boasts undeniably smart and eye-catching qualities that are significantly diluted by the relentlessly frantic and overbearing behavior of most characters; someone is always loudly imposing himself upon another, to diminishing returns of enjoyment." Owen Gleiberman of "Entertainment Weekly" gave the film a B+, saying ""Flushed Away" lacks the action-contraption dottiness of a Wallace and Gromit adventure, but it hits its own sweet spot of demented delight." James Berardinelli of "ReelViews" gave the film three out of four stars, saying "It's better than 90% of the animated fare of the last few years. It's refreshing not to have to qualify the movie's appeal by appending the words, 'for the kids'." Jan Stuart of "Newsday" gave the film two out of four stars, saying "Despite the efforts of five writers and Aardman's trademark puppets, with their malleable eyebrows and cheeks bulging like those of a mumps sufferer, none of these characters are particularly endearing." Ann Hornaday of "The Washington Post" gave the film a positive review, saying ""Flushed Away", Aardman's first computer-generated cartoon, does away with the clay but leaves the craft and emotion intact, resulting in a film that earns its place among the Aardman classics." Peter Hartlaub of the "San Francisco Chronicle" gave the film three out of four stars, saying "The short attention spans of directors David Bowers and Sam Fell are mostly forgivable because the movie is filled with so many entertaining characters."


title: Flushed Away

text: Richard Corliss of "Time" gave the film a negative review, saying "Deficient in the comedy of reticence discouragement that is Aardman's (or maybe just Nick Park's) unique strength. I don't want to say the Englishmen were corrupted, but I think they allowed their strongest, quirkiest instincts to be tethered." Ted Fry of "The Seattle Times" gave the film three and a half stars out of four, saying "Fans of Wallace and Gromit may be puzzled by a visual disconnect in "Flushed Away". They will certainly, however, be delighted by the unrelenting whimsy and fast-paced gags of a story that never slows down to think about where it's going next." Ty Burr of "The Boston Globe" gave the film two and a half stars out of five, saying "Kids will probably be in stinky-sewage heaven with the new computer-animated critter comedy "Flushed Away", but even they may realize they're up the proverbial creek in a boat with a faulty motor." Jack Mathews of the "New York Daily News" gave the film two and a half stars out of four, saying "Though "Flushed Away" duplicates the stop-motion, clay animation look of Aardman's earlier "Chicken Run" and "Wallace & Gromit", it was made using computer software and its liberated action sequences are truly dazzling." Kyle Smith of the "New York Post" gave the film three out of four stars, saying "How this thing got made in Hollywood is a mystery, but I laughed at most of it, especially the mean stereotypes about the French and the even meaner stereotype about England's soccer team."


title: Flushed Away

text: "Flushed Away" collected $64.6 million in the United States, which was below the average of other CGI films from DreamWorks Animation, and $113.6 million from international markets for a worldwide total of $178.2 million, making it the 24th highest grossing film of 2006, and the sixth Highest-Grossing Animated film of 2006. The film opened to number three in its first weekend, with $18,814,323, behind "Borat" and "". Produced on a budget of $149 million, poor box office reception resulted in a $109-million write-down for DreamWorks Animation, and in turn a termination of the partnership with Aardman Animations.


title: Flushed Away

text: Coinciding with the film's release, a video game adaptation was released on the PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube, Game Boy Advance, and on the Nintendo DS. Although having heavily negative reviews from critics, the game received an Annie Award for best animated video game.


title: High Noon

text: High Noon is a 1952 American Western film produced by Stanley Kramer from a screenplay by Carl Foreman, directed by Fred Zinnemann, and starring Gary Cooper. The plot, which occurs in real time, centers on a town marshal whose sense of duty is tested when he must decide to either face a gang of killers alone, or leave town with his new wife.


title: High Noon

text: Though mired in controversy at the time of its release due to its political themes, the film was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won four (Actor, Editing, Score and Song) as well as four Golden Globe Awards (Actor, Supporting Actress, Score, and Black and White Cinematography). The award-winning score was written by Russian-born composer Dimitri Tiomkin.


title: High Noon

text: "High Noon" was selected by the Library of Congress as one of the first 25 films for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" in 1989, the NFR's first year of existence. An iconic film whose story has been partly or completely repeated in later film productions, its ending in particular has inspired numerous later films, including but not just limited to westerns.


title: High Noon

text: In Hadleyville, a small town in New Mexico Territory, in 1898, Marshal Will Kane, newly married to Amy Fowler, prepares to retire. The happy couple will soon depart for a new life to raise a family and run a store in another town. However, word arrives that Frank Miller, a vicious outlaw whom Kane sent to prison, has been released and will arrive on the noon train. Miller's gang—his younger brother Ben, Jack Colby, and Jim Pierce—await his arrival at the train station.


title: High Noon

text: For Amy, a devout Quaker and pacifist, the solution is simple—leave town before Miller arrives—but Kane's sense of duty and honor make him stay. Besides, he says, Miller and his gang would hunt him down anyway. Amy gives Kane an ultimatum: she is leaving on the noon train, with or without him.


title: High Noon

text: Kane visits a series of old friends and allies, but none can or will help: Judge Percy Mettrick, who sentenced Miller, flees on horseback, and urges Kane to do the same. Harvey Pell, Kane's young deputy, is bitter that Kane did not recommend him as his successor; he says he will stand with Kane only if Kane goes to the city fathers and "puts the word in" for him. When Kane refuses, Pell turns in his badge and pistol. Kane's efforts to round up a posse at Ramírez's Saloon, and then the church, are met with fear and hostility. Some townspeople, worried that a gunfight would damage the town's reputation, urge Kane to avoid the confrontation entirely. Some are Miller's friends, but others resent that Kane cleaned up the town in the first place. Others are of the opinion that their tax money goes to support local law enforcement and the fight is not a posse's responsibility. Sam Fuller hides in his house, sending his wife Mildred to the door to tell Kane he is not home. Jimmy offers to help, but he is blind in one eye, sweating, and unsteady. Kane tells him he will call him and gives him money for a drink. The mayor encourages Kane to just leave town. Martin Howe, Kane's predecessor, is too old and arthritic. Herb Baker agrees to be deputized, but backs out when he realizes he is the only volunteer. A final offer of aid comes from 14-year-old Johnny. Kane admires the boy's courage, but refuses his help.


title: High Noon

text: While waiting at the hotel for the train, Amy meets Helen Ramírez, who was once Miller's lover, then Kane's, then Pell's. Helen, who is leaving as well, tells Amy that if Kane were her man, she would not abandon him in his hour of need.


title: High Noon

text: At the stables, Pell saddles a horse and tries to persuade Kane to take it. They end up in a fist fight. After knocking his former deputy senseless, Kane returns to his office to write out his will. The clock ticks toward noon.


title: High Noon

text: Kane then goes into the street to face Miller and his gang alone. Amy and Ramirez ride by on a wagon with their luggage, bound for the train station. The perspective elevates and expands, showing Kane standing alone on a deserted street. The gunfight begins. As the train is about to depart, Amy hears the gunfire, leaps off, and runs back to town. Kane guns down Ben Miller and Colby, but is wounded as Miller attempts to burn Kane out of a barn. Choosing her husband's life over her religious beliefs, Amy picks up Pell's pistol and shoots Pierce from behind, leaving only Frank Miller, who grabs Amy as a human shield to force Kane into the open. When Amy claws Miller's face, he pushes her to the ground, and Kane shoots him dead.


title: High Noon

text: Kane helps his bride to her feet and they embrace. As the townspeople cluster around him, Kane throws his marshal's star in the dirt and departs with Amy on their wagon.


title: High Noon

text: The production and release of "High Noon" intersected with the second Red Scare and the Korean War. In 1951, during production of the film, Carl Foreman was summoned before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) during its investigation of "Communist propaganda and influence" in the motion picture industry. Foreman had once been a member of the Communist party, but he declined to identify fellow members or anyone he suspected of current membership. As a result, he was labeled an "uncooperative witness" by the committee, making him vulnerable to blacklisting. After his refusal to name names was made public, Foreman's production partner Stanley Kramer demanded an immediate dissolution of their partnership. As a signatory to the production loan, Foreman remained with the "High Noon" project; but before the film's release, he sold his partnership share to Kramer and moved to Britain, knowing that he would not find further work in the United States.


title: High Noon

text: Kramer later asserted that he ended their partnership because Foreman had threatened to falsely name him to HUAC as a Communist. Foreman said that Kramer feared damage to his own career due to "guilt by association". Foreman was indeed blacklisted by the Hollywood studios due to the "uncooperative witness" label and additional pressure from Columbia Pictures president Harry Cohn, MPA president John Wayne, and "Los Angeles Times" gossip columnist Hedda Hopper.


title: High Noon

text: According to "Darkness at High Noon: The Carl Foreman Documents"—a 2002 documentary based in part on a lengthy 1952 letter from Foreman to film critic Bosley Crowther—Foreman's role in the creation and production of "High Noon" has been unfairly downplayed over the years in favor of Kramer's. Foreman told Crowther that the film originated from a four-page plot outline he wrote that turned out to be very similar to a short story by John W. Cunningham called "The Tin Star." Foreman purchased the film rights to Cunningham's story and wrote the screenplay. By the time the documentary aired, most of the principals were dead, including Kramer, Foreman, Zinnemann, and Cooper. Victor Navasky, author of "Naming Names", a definitive account of the Hollywood blacklist, told a reporter that, based on his interviews with Kramer's widow and others, the documentary seemed "one-sided, and the problem is it makes a villain out of Stanley Kramer, when it was more complicated than that".


title: High Noon

text: Richard Fleischer later claimed he helped Carl Foreman develop the story of "High Noon" over the course of eight weeks while driving to and from the set of "The Clay Pigeon" (1949) which they were making together. Fleischer says his RKO contract prevented him from directing "High Noon".


title: High Noon

text: John Wayne was originally offered the lead role in the film, but refused it because he believed that Foreman's story was an obvious allegory against blacklisting, which he actively supported. Later, he told an interviewer that he would "never regret having helped run Foreman out of the country". Gary Cooper was Wayne's longtime friend and shared his conservative political views; Cooper had been a "friendly witness" before HUAC but did not implicate anyone as a suspected Communist, and he later became a vigorous opponent of blacklisting. Ironically, Cooper won an Academy Award for his performance, and since he was working in Europe at the time, he asked Wayne to accept the Oscar on his behalf. Although Wayne's contempt for the film and refusal of its lead role were well known, he said, "I'm glad to see they're giving this to a man who is not only most deserving, but has conducted himself throughout the years in our business in a manner that we can all be proud of ... Now that I'm through being such a good sport ... I'm going back to find my business manager and agent ... and find out why I didn't get "High Noon" instead of Cooper ..."


title: High Noon

text: After Wayne refused the Will Kane role, Kramer offered it to Gregory Peck, who declined because he felt it was too similar to his role in "The Gunfighter", the year before. Peck later said he considered it the biggest mistake of his career. Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, and Charlton Heston also declined the role.


title: High Noon

text: Kramer saw Grace Kelly in an off-Broadway play and cast her as Kane's bride, despite Cooper and Kelly's substantial age disparity (50 and 21, respectively). Rumors of an affair between Cooper and Kelly during filming remain unsubstantiated. Kelly biographer Donald Spoto wrote that there was no evidence of a romance, aside from tabloid gossip. Biographer Gina McKinnon speculated that "there might well have been a roll or two in the hay bales", but cited no evidence, other than a remark by Kelly's sister Lizanne that Kelly was "infatuated" with Cooper.


title: High Noon

text: Lee Van Cleef made his film debut in "High Noon". Kramer first offered Van Cleef the Harvey Pell role, after seeing him in a touring production of "Mister Roberts", on the condition that Van Cleef have his nose surgically altered to appear less menacing. Van Cleef refused and was cast instead as Colby, the only role of his career without a single line of dialog.


title: High Noon

text: "High Noon" was filmed in the late summer/early fall of 1951 in several locations in California. The opening scenes, under the credits, were shot at Iverson Movie Ranch near Los Angeles. A few town scenes were shot in Columbia State Historic Park, a preserved Gold Rush mining town near Sonora, but most of the street scenes were filmed on the Columbia Movie Ranch in Burbank. St. Joseph's Church in Tuolumne City was used for exterior shots of the Hadleyville church. The railroad was the old Sierra Railroad in Jamestown, a few miles south of Columbia, now known as Railtown 1897 State Historic Park, and often nicknamed "the movie railroad" due to its frequent use in films and television shows. The railroad station was built for the film alongside a water tower at Warnerville, about 15 miles to the southwest.


title: High Noon

text: Cooper was reluctant to film the fight scene with Bridges due to ongoing problems with his back, but eventually did so without the use of a stunt double. He wore no makeup to emphasize his character's anguish and fear, which was probably intensified by pain from recent surgery to remove a bleeding ulcer.


title: High Noon

text: The running time of the story almost precisely parallels the running time of the film—an effect heightened by frequent shots of clocks to remind the characters (and the audience) that the villain will be arriving on the noon train.


title: High Noon

text: The movie's theme song, "High Noon" (as it is credited in the film), also known by its opening lyric, "Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling", became a major hit on the Country-Western charts for Tex Ritter, and later, a pop hit for Frankie Laine as well. Its popularity set a precedent for theme songs that were featured in many subsequent Western films. Composer Dimitri Tiomkin's score and song, with lyrics by Ned Washington, became popular for years afterwards and Tiomkin became in demand for future westerns in the 1950s like "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral" and "Last Train from Gun Hill."


title: High Noon

text: Upon its release, critics and audiences expecting chases, fights, spectacular scenery, and other common Western film elements were dismayed to find them largely replaced by emotional and moralistic dialogue until the climactic final scenes. Some critics scoffed at the unorthodox rescue of the hero by the heroine. David Bishop argued that had Quaker Amy "not" helped her husband by shooting a man in the back, such inaction would have pulled pacifism "toward apollonian decadence". Alfred Hitchcock thought Kelly's performance was "rather mousy" and lacking in animation; only in later films, he said, did she show her true star quality.


title: High Noon

text: "High Noon" has been cited as a favorite by several U.S. presidents. Dwight Eisenhower screened the film at the White House, and Bill Clinton hosted a record 17 White House screenings of it. "It's no accident that politicians see themselves as Gary Cooper in "High Noon"," Clinton said. "Not just politicians, but anyone who's forced to go against the popular will. Any time you're alone and you feel you're not getting the support you need, Cooper's Will Kane becomes the perfect metaphor." Ronald Reagan cited "High Noon" as his favorite film, due to the protagonist's strong commitment to duty and the law.


title: High Noon

text: By contrast, John Wayne told an interviewer that he considered "High Noon" "the most un-American thing I've ever seen in my whole life," and later teamed with director Howard Hawks to make "Rio Bravo" in response. "I made "Rio Bravo" because I didn't like "High Noon"," Hawks explained. "Neither did Duke [Wayne]. I didn't think a good town marshal was going to run around town like a chicken with his head cut off asking everyone to help. And who saves him? His Quaker wife. That isn't my idea of a good Western."


title: High Noon

text: Zinnemann responded, "I admire Hawks very much. I only wish he'd leave my films alone!" In a 1973 interview, Zinnemann added, "I'm rather surprised at Hawks' and Wayne's thinking. Sheriffs are people and no two people are alike. The story of "High Noon" takes place in the Old West but it is really a story about a man's conflict of conscience. In this sense it is a cousin to "A Man for All Seasons". In any event, respect for the Western hero has not been diminished by "High Noon"."


title: High Noon

text: In Chapter XXXV of "The Virginian" by Owen Wister, there is a description of an incident very similar to the central plot of "High Noon". Trampas (a villain) calls out the Virginian, who has a new bride waiting whom he might lose if he engages in the gunfight. "High Noon" has even been described as a "straight remake" of the 1929 film version of "The Virginian" in which Cooper also starred.


title: High Noon

text: "Entertainment Weekly" ranked Will Kane on their list of "The 20 All Time Coolest Heroes in Pop Culture".


title: High Noon

text: "High Noon" is considered an early example of the revisionist Western. Kim Newman calls it the "most influential Western of the 1950s (because) its attitudes subtly changed the societal vision of the whole (Western) genre". The traditional format of the Western is of a strong male character leading the civilised against the uncivilised but, in this film, the civilised people fail (in a way described by John Wayne as "un-American") to support their town marshal. Newman draws the contrast between the "eerily neat and civilised" town of Hadleyville and the "gutlessness, self-interest and lack of backbone exhibited by its inhabitants" who will allow the town to "slip back into the savage past" from which Kane and his deputies once saved it. In his article, "The Women of "High Noon": A Revisionist View", Don Graham argues that in addition to the man-alone theme, "High Noon" "represents a notable advance in the portrayal of women in Westerns". Compared with the "hackneyed presentation" of stereotypical women characters in earlier Westerns, "High Noon" grants the characters of Amy and Helen an expanded presence, the two being counterpoints. While Helen is socially inferior, she holds considerable economic power in the community. Helen's encounter with Amy is key because she tells Amy that she would never leave Kane if he were her man – she would get a gun and fight, thus predicating Amy's actions. For most of the film, Amy is the "Eastern-virgin archetype" but her reaction to the first gunshot "transcends the limitations of her genre role" as she returns to town and kills Pierce. The gang's actions indicate the implicit but very real threat they pose to women; as is suggested by the Mexican woman crossing herself when the first three ride into town. Graham summarises the many references to women as a community demoralised by the failure of its male members, other than Kane. The women, he asserts, equal Kane in strength of character to the extent that they are "protofeminists".


title: High Noon

text: In 1989, 22-year-old Polish graphic designer Tomasz Sarnecki transformed Marian Stachurski's 1959 Polish variant of the "High Noon" poster into a Solidarity election poster for the first partially free elections in communist Poland. The poster, which was displayed all over Poland, shows Cooper armed with a folded ballot saying "Wybory" (i.e., elections) in his right hand while the Solidarity logo is pinned to his vest above the sheriff's badge. The message at the bottom of the poster reads: "W samo południe: 4 czerwca 1989", which translates to "High Noon: 4 June 1989."


title: High Noon

text: The 1981 science fiction film "Outland", starring Sean Connery as a federal agent on an interplanetary mining outpost, has been compared to "High Noon" due to similarities in themes and plot.


title: High Noon

text: "High Noon" is referenced several times on the HBO drama series "The Sopranos". Tony Soprano cites Gary Cooper's character as the archetype of what a man should be, mentally tough and stoic. He frequently laments, "Whatever happened to Gary Cooper?" and refers to Will Kane as the "strong, silent type". The iconic ending to the film is shown on a television during an extended dream sequence in the fifth-season episode "The Test Dream".


title: High Noon

text: "High Noon" inspired the 2008 hip-hop song of the same name by rap artist Kinetics, in which "High Noon" is mentioned along with several other classic Western films, drawing comparisons between rap battles and Western-film street showdowns.


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: Virginia Vallejo García (born 26 August 1949) is a Colombian author, journalist, television director, anchorwoman, media personality, socialite, and political asylee in the United States of America.


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: On 18 July 2006, the DEA took her out of Colombia in a special flight to save her life and cooperate with the Department of Justice in high-profile cases, after she had publicly signaled several Colombian presidents and politicians of being beneficiaries or accomplices of the leading cocaine cartels.


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: In 2007, she published her first book, "Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar", which led the Colombian justice system to reopen the cases of the Palace of Justice siege (1985), and the assassination of the presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán (1989). The book was translated to fifteen languages and made into a movie in 2018.


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: Vallejo currently resides in Miami, Florida. In 2019, she returned to her work as a television journalist for the international channel Actualidad RT.


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: Virginia Vallejo was born on 26 August 1949 in Cartago, Valle del Cauca, Colombia, near her family's ranch. Her parents were Juan Vallejo Jaramillo, an entrepreneur, and Mary García Rivera. Her paternal grandmother, Sofía Jaramillo Arango, was a descendant of Alonso Jaramillo de Andrade Céspedes y Guzmán, a nobleman from Extremadura, Spain. Several members of her family were ministers, writers and ambassadors, such as her paternal grandfather Eduardo Vallejo Varela, minister of economy (1930); her great uncle Alejandro Vallejo Varela, writer and close friend of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán; and his great-uncle Jaime Jaramillo Arango, minister of education (1934), ambassador to several countries in Europe, and co-founder of the Anglo Colombian School.


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: In 1950, the young family returned to Bogotá, where her siblings, Felipe (1951), Antonio (1955–2012), and Sofía (1957) were born. She studied first in the kindergarten of Elvira Lleras Restrepo, sister of President Carlos Lleras Restrepo, a friend of her family. She then attended the Anglo Colombian School.


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: In 1967 and 1968, she worked as an English teacher in the Centro Colombo Americano in Bogotá and, in 1969, in the presidency of Banco del Comercio. The same year, she married Fernando Borrero Caicedo, CEO of Borrero, Zamorano and Giovanelli, but they were divorced in 1971. In 1972, while she was working as director of public relations of Cervecería Andina, she received an invitation to join an upcoming television program directed by Carlos Lemos Simmonds and Aníbal Fernández de Soto.


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: In 1978, she married David Stivel, the Argentinian television, theater and film director, and head of the "Clan Stivel". The marriage ended in 1981.


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: Until 1998, there were only three television channels in Colombia that belonged to the Government: two commercial and one official. Inravisión, the official broadcasting entity, leased spaces to independent television producers known as " programadoras", many owned by prominent journalists or presidential families. This was the reason why Vallejo could work simultaneously as a news anchor and presenter of other programs.


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: From 1972 to 1975, she was as the presenter of ""¡Oiga Colombia, Revista del Sábado!"", a program directed by Carlos Lemos Simmonds and Fernández de Soto. From 1973 to 1975, she was the host of the television musical shows ""Éxitos 73"", ""Éxitos 74"" and ""Éxitos 75"", produced by "THOY", the "programadora" of the family of President Julio César Turbay.


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: In 1973, she began working as a reporter on "TV Sucesos-A3", the newscast directed by Alberto Acosta; and, from 1975 to 1977, she became the international editor. In the early and mid seventies, she hosted other television programs, like the quiz show "TV Crucigrama", a cooking show with chef Segundo Cabezas, and a program for children.


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: In January 1978, she became the anchorwoman of "Noticiero 24 Horas", which aired at 7:00 PM, and was directed by Mauricio Gómez, Ernesto Rodríguez Medina and Sergio Arboleda. In March, the Government of Taiwan invited her to the inauguration of President Chiang Ching-kuo. The same year, she was elected as the vice-president of the board of directors of the ACL, "Asociación Colombiana de Locutores" (Association of Colombian Speakers). In 1978, 1979 and 1980, she won the award as the Best Television Anchor of the APE, "Asociación de Periodistas del Espectáculo" (Association of Entertainment Journalists).


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: In 1979, she co-starred in the movie "Colombia Connection" by Gustavo Nieto Roa. In November, she appeared in Town & Country, opening the section "The Beautiful Women of El Dorado". In 1979 and 1980, she presented "¡Cuidado con las Mujeres!", a program by RTI Producciones, directed by David Stivel.


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: In 1981, she founded her own programadora, "TV Impacto", with the journalist Margot Ricci. That same year, the Government of Israel invited them to do a special program about The Holy Land.


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: In 1980 and 1982, she worked at Caracol Radio. She was the only journalist sent by a Colombian media outlet to London to cover the wedding of the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer on 29 July 1981. Vallejo's broadcast for Caracol lasted three hours. She covered the Miss Colombia pageant for the same station until 1985.


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: Between 1981 and 1983, she directed her program "¡Al Ataque!" She was the first television journalist to interview Pablo Escobar in January 1983. The interview was filmed at the garbage dump of Medellín. During the interview Pablo Escobar described the charity project "Medellín Sin Tugurios" (Medellin without slums) launched by Escobar and his partners. The interview propelled Escobar on to the national stage.


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: In 1983 and 1984, she presented "Hoy por Hoy, Magazín del Lunes (Magazine Today, Monday)" at 7 pm. In 1984, she made a television commercial for "Medias Di Lido" (pantyhose), in Venice, Italy, followed by another three in Rio de Janeiro, San Juan and Cartagena. In 1983 and 1984, she presented the musical "El Show de las Estrellas", directed by Jorge Barón. In 1984, she became the international editor of the Grupo Radial Colombiano (a network founded by the Cali Cartel), directed by Carlos Lemos Simmonds. In 1985, she became the anchorwoman of the newscast "Telediario", directed by Arturo Abella.


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: In 1985, she appeared on the covers of "Harper's Bazaar" and "Cosmopolitan". Also, in "Elenco", a magazine of "El Tiempo" that presented her as ""the symbol of an era"".


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: In 1988, she won a scholarship from the German Government, and she studied economic journalism in Berlin at the Internationales Institut für Journalismus.


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: In 1991, she returned to Colombia to co-star in the soap opera "Sombra de tu Sombra" of Caracol Televisión. In 1992, she presented "¡Indiscretísimo!", directed by Manuel Prado. From 1992 to 1994, she worked at Todelar radio. In October 1994, she ended her career in the Colombian media to open the South American operation of a multilevel company based in the United States.


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: Between 2009 and 2010, she worked as a columnist for the Venezuelan newspaper "6to Poder", directed by the opposition journalist Leocenis García; but, President Hugo Chávez closed the newspaper and jailed the director.


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: In 2019, Vallejo returned to her work as a television journalist for the international channel RT en Español or "Actualidad RT". The twelve episodes, titled as "Sueños y Pesadillas" – "Dreams and Nightmares" in English – were inspired by the "American dream", and describe problems like the huge gap between wealth and poverty, violence and guns, LGBTQ and discrimination of gender, and the high cost of healthcare, among others.


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: In early July 2006, Vallejo offered her testimony in the case against Alberto Santofimio, a former Justice Minister and associate of Pablo Escobar, head of the Medellín cartel and her lover from 1983 to 1987. The politician was on trial for conspiracy in the assassination of Luis Carlos Galán, a presidential candidate killed by Pablo Escobar on 18 August 1989. The following week, the Prosecutor Edgardo José Maya Villazón closed the case "for lack of evidence". All of Escobar's hitmen in the crime and several key witnesses against Santofimio had been killed, so Vallejo contacted the American Embassy in Bogotá and asked the US Government to help save her life in exchange for information on the associates of Pablo Escobar and brothers Gilberto and Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela of the Cali cartel, Pablo Escobar's nemesis. The brothers had been extradited by President Álvaro Uribe, and the trial was due to begin in Miami in a few weeks.


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: Vallejo's flight made news worldwide, and a home video that Vallejo had taped before her departure to protect her life was aired by Canal RCN of Colombia; according to the channel, it was watched by 14 million people, with higher rates of audience than the Football World Cup final of 2006 on 9 July. Six weeks later, Miguel and Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela pleaded guilty; they were sentenced to 30 years in prison, and the United States Department of Justice collected $2.1 billion ($ billion today) in assets without going to trial.


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: In 2007, Vallejo published "" (In English: "Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar"), in which she describes, among other topics, her romantic relationship with Pablo Escobar, head of the Medellín Cartel, from 1982 to 1987; the origins of the rebel organizations in Colombia; the reasons for the explosive growth of the cocaine industry; the birth of MAS ("Muerte a Secuestradores"), which in English means 'Death to Kidnappers', The Extraditables, and the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia; the links among the Medellin and Cali cartels, Caribbean dictators, and the Colombian presidents Alfonso López Michelsen, Ernesto Samper, and Álvaro Uribe; the siege of the Palace of Justice in 1985; Escobar's relationship with the extreme left and extreme right rebel groups; the horrors during the era of narcoterrorism from 1988 to 1993; and the hunt for and death of her former lover on 2 December 1993. Vallejo's memoir became the number one bestselling Spanish-language book in both Colombia and the United States.


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: against her; only hundreds of threats from members of the Colombian government, media outlets owned or directed by the family of vice president Francisco Santos Calderón and defense minister Juan Manuel Santos, and the paramilitary squads Águilas Negras (The Black Eagles).


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: On 3 May 2010, the United States of America granted Virginia Vallejo political asylum under the United Nations Convention against Torture. She received it due to her political opinion about powerful politicians, her testimony in high-profile criminal cases, a brutal car crash she had suffered on her way to testify in the Colombian Miami consulate, and thousands of threats against her life and integrity posted under her name in the Internet. Though most of them were withdrawn from the search engines in the following two weeks, they remain in Vallejo's case in the Miami immigration court.


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: In July 2008, the Colombian Government ordered Virginia Vallejo to testify in the reopened case of the Palace of Justice siege ( 6 and 7 November 1985), a massacre that cost the lives of more than 100 people, including 11 Supreme Court Justices, rebels of the M-19, government agents, and dozens of unarmed civilians. In the Colombian Consulate in Miami, a prosecutor sent by the Colombian Attorney General asked the author to confirm the events described in her memoir, in the chapter "That Palace in Flames" (Aquel Palacio en Llamas). So, during the next five hours, she explained the roles of all the actors involved in the tragedy: "Though the M-19 and the Medellín cartel were responsible for the siege, the military were responsible for the massacre". The journalist signaled also the lack of action of President Belisario Betancur: "The rebel commanders of the M-19 took the Justices as hostages, to force the government to listen to their claims, including the elimination of the extradition treaty with the United States. But, President Betancur refused to take the calls of the President of the Supreme Court, Magistrate Alfonso Reyes Echandia, pleading to save their lives, and instead he allowed the army and the police to bomb a building with 400 people inside". In her testimony under oath, she described what Pablo Escobar had told her the following year, after 10 months of separation: "The people detained after the fire, many with third degree burns, were sent to military garrisons where they were tortured – and the women gang-raped – to find the hiding places of other rebel commanders, and the money that I had paid them to steal my files before the Court ruled on our extradition; later, they were killed and disappeared in cans of quicklime and sulfuric acid." At the end of that chapter, Virginia Vallejo summarized the tragic events: "That conflagration was the holocaust of the Colombian justice system, with the triumph of the establishment, the traditional parties, and "Los Extraditables" with Escobar at the head".


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: In July 2009, Vallejo testified in the reopened case of the assassination of presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán which occurred on 18 August 1989, and signaled Alberto Santofimio as the main instigator of the candidate's assassination.


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: She described how, in 1984 and 1985 and in her presence, Alberto Santofimio had repeatedly asked Pablo Escobar to "...eliminate Senator Galan before he could become the president and extradite him".


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: Twenty-five years after the Palace of Justice massacre, on 9 June 2010 judge Maria Stella Jara sentenced Colonel Alfonso Plazas of the army to 30 years in prison for forced disappearance of the detained. President Uribe attacked the verdict on television and offered his protection to the military. The next week, with a European human rights organization, Judge Jara had to flee Colombia and went into exile.


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: After 18 years of delays and appeals, in 2007 Alberto Santofimio received a sentence of 24 years in prison for conspiracy with Pablo Escobar in the assassination of Luis Carlos Galán.


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: The romantic relationship between Virginia Vallejo and Pablo Escobar has inspired soap operas, serials, and movies, aired coast to coast in the United States and seen in many countries. All of them were fictional, and produced by two Colombian television channels owned by billionaires that Vallejo had mentioned in the memoir "Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar"; or co-produced with a cousin of President Juan Manuel Santos that Vallejo had accused of corruption in her book, columns and interviews. To sensationalize the character Escobar, the scriptwriters fictionalized many historical events, ignored presidential corruption, and made derogatory assumptions.


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: The first was in "El Capo" (2009) of Canal RCN of Colombia, owned by the family of Carlos Ardila Lülle. It was coproduced by Fox Telecolombia, and aired in the United States by UniMas, in 2010. The Colombian actress Marcela Mar plays the role of a middle-class reporter in love with a narco.


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: The second was in "Escobar, The Drug Lord" (2012) of Caracol Televisión, owned by the family of Julio Mario Santo Domingo. The Colombian actress Angie Cepeda plays the role Regina Parejo, a naïve and elementary television presenter.


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: The third was in the serial "Narcos" (2015) of Netflix and Gaumont, co-produced with Dynamo of Colombia, directed by a cousin of President Juan Manuel Santos-Calderón that met the scriptwriters in the presidential palace. The Mexican actress Stephanie Sigman plays the role Valeria Velez, an unscrupulous journalist and key supporter of Escobar's political ambitions that instigates crimes and is finally killed by The Pepes.


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: The fourth portrayal was in the movie "Loving Pablo" of Fernando León de Aranoa, where the Spanish actress Penélope Cruz played the role of Vallejo, while Javier Bardem played Escobar. It was produced by Millennium of Nevada, and sponsored by the Colombian Government.


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: director and co-producers created an entire adaptation with fictional scenes and characters, like an agent of


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: the DEA or an ex-husband plastic surgeon that never existed. In real life, Vallejo and Escobar met in 1982, when they were both 32 years-old, and she never met any officers of the DEA until she arrived to Miami in 2006. She was never fired to be replaced by a younger presenter, or threatened her directors or anyone. She was not living in Colombia during Escobar's bombings and kidnappings, and she never visited Escobar in La Catedral prison.


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: In fact, Vallejo had ended her relationship with Escobar in 1987, never saw him again, and spent the following years in Germany.


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: changed completely the story to make such a derogatory portrayal of the author. In an interview, Bardem explained that "the


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: Vallejo explained that behind her defamatory portrayals were not only the accusations she had made against


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: members of the Colombian government and the Santos family, but also the millions of dollars that the television and movie


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: Calderón, thanks to a cinema law that he had created in 2012 to promote Colombia as a touristic destination.


title: Virginia Vallejo

text: In Latin America, including Colombia, the title of the movie was changed to "Escobar’s Treason", possibly to distance Leon de Aranoa's fictional narrative from Vallejo's events described in "Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar".


title: Jackson Rathbone

text: Monroe Jackson Rathbone V (born December 14, 1984) is an American actor, singer, and musician best known for his role as Jasper Hale in "The Twilight Saga" film series. From 2008 to 2012, he was the vocalist and occasional guitarist, bassist, drummer, and keyboardist of the funk rock band 100 Monkeys.


title: Jackson Rathbone

text: Monroe Jackson Rathbone V was born in Singapore on December 14, 1984, the son of American parents Randee Lynn (née Brauner) and Monroe Jackson Rathbone IV. He has three sisters, including ceramic artist Kelly Rathbone. He is distantly related to Civil War general Stonewall Jackson and English actor Basil Rathbone, being descended from the Rathbone family of Liverpool. His great-grandfather, Monroe Jackson Rathbone II, was the chairman of Standard Oil, which later became Exxon. Because of his father's job at Mobil Oil took the family to different places, he lived in Singapore, Norway, and Indonesia before settling in Midland, Texas.


title: Jackson Rathbone

text: Rathbone attended the Trinity School of Midland and started out in local theater with the Pickwick Players youth actors program, initially doing musical theater. For his junior and senior years of high school, he attended the Interlochen Arts Academy in Interlochen, Michigan, where he majored in acting. After graduation, he planned to further study acting at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow, but was rejected and instead decided to move to Los Angeles to look for acting work.


title: Jackson Rathbone

text: After being in Los Angeles for a short time, Rathbone was cast in "Disney 411", where he interviewed up-and-coming personalities like Hilary Duff and the sister duo Aly & AJ. He also had guest roles on "The O.C." and "Close to Home". His film roles include work in "Molding Clay", "Pray for Morning", and "Travis and Henry". In 2005, he got the role of Nicholas Fiske in ABC Family's original series "Beautiful People". In a 2008 interview, he stated it was his first leading role and was his most difficult role to fit into. Rathbone also played a role in "Criminal Minds" as Adam and Amanda.


title: Jackson Rathbone

text: In 2008, he played Jasper Hale in the film "Twilight", based on the best-selling novel by Stephenie Meyer. He reprised his role in the sequels to "Twilight", "", "" and "" and . In 2009, Rathbone played Jeremy in "S. Darko". In addition to that role, he won kudos for his performance as a serial killer on "Criminal Minds". Rathbone played the role of Sokka in "The Last Airbender", a 2010 film based on Though the film was a commercial hit, it was universally panned by critics. Among the criticism was the casting of Rathbone, whose character drew inspiration from Inuit. Rathbone himself is not of Inuit descent.


title: Jackson Rathbone

text: Rathbone formerly performed in a funk band called 100 Monkeys with two friends whom he met in high school at Interlochen Arts Academy, Ben Graupner and Ben Johnson, as well as close friends Jerad Anderson and M. Lawrence Abrams ("Uncle Larry"). Jackson plays the guitar, bass, drums, keyboard, mandolin, trumpet, harmonica and is on vocals. The band released three albums in 2009. In December 2009, 100 Monkeys began a 100-city tour that took them to nearly every state in the US by mid-2010. The band continued to tour into 2011 to coincide with the release of their new album, "Liquid Zoo", which was released in June. The band headed overseas for their first international dates in winter 2011.


title: Jackson Rathbone

text: Rathbone appeared in an episode of "No Ordinary Family" on November 9, 2010. In November 2010, it was reported he had been cast in the Warner Premiere and Dolphin Entertainment action comedy web series "Aim High" alongside Aimee Teegarden. The show in which he portrays Nick Green, a high school junior who's just starting a new school year as one of the country's 64 highly trained teenage operatives, premiered on October 18, 2011, on Facebook being the first "social series" ever created.


title: Jackson Rathbone

text: In May 2011, Rathbone began shooting "Live at the Foxes Den", a film in which he plays the lead role of lawyer Bobby Kelly. In November 2014, Rathbone joined the cast of "Pali Road". Rathbone has a production company, PatchMo Entertainment, and a record company, Happy Jack Records.


title: Jackson Rathbone

text: Rathbone is an honorary board member for Little Kids Rock, a national nonprofit that works to restore and revitalize music education in disadvantaged U.S. public schools. He has shown support for the organization in several ways, including donating a signed "Twilight" script for auction, visiting a Little Kids Rock classroom, and delivering instruments to students.


title: Jackson Rathbone

text: Rathbone married his Iraqi-American girlfriend, Sheila Hafsadi, on September 29, 2013. They reside in Alpharetta, Georgia, and have three children: son Monroe Jackson Rathbone VI (born July 5, 2012), daughter Presley Bowie Rathbone (born May 31, 2016), and son Felix Valleau Rathbone (born December 31, 2019). His close friend and "Twilight" co-star Nikki Reed is the godmother of their oldest son.


title: Jackson Rathbone

text: On September 18, 2014, Rathbone was on a jetBlue flight to Austin from Long Beach when its engine exploded. The plane returned to Long Beach for an emergency landing. There were four injuries, but all passengers survived.


title: The Fountain

text: The Fountain is a 2006 American epic romantic drama film written and directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz. Blending elements of fantasy, history, spirituality, and science fiction, the film consists of three storylines involving immortality and the resulting loves lost, and one man's pursuit of avoiding this fate in this life or beyond it. Jackman and Weisz play sets of characters bonded by love across time and space: a conquistador and his ill-fated queen, a modern-day scientist and his cancer-stricken wife, and a traveler immersed in a universal journey alongside aspects of his lost love. The storylines—interwoven with use of match cuts and recurring visual motifs—reflect the themes and interplay of love and mortality.


title: The Fountain

text: Aronofsky originally planned to direct "The Fountain" on a $70 million budget with Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett in the lead roles, but Pitt's withdrawal and cost overruns led Warner Bros. to shut down his production. Aronofsky rewrote the script to be sparser, and was able to resurrect the film with a $35 million budget with Jackman and Weisz in the lead roles. Principal photography began from November 2004 to February 2005, and mainly took place on a sound stage in Montreal, Quebec. Aronofsky used macro photography to create key visual effects for "The Fountain" at a low cost.


title: The Fountain

text: The film was released theatrically in the United States and Canada on November 22, 2006. It grossed $10,144,010 in the United States and Canada and $5,761,344 in other territories for a worldwide total of $15,978,422. Critics' reactions to the film were divided, but it has gained a cult following since its release.


title: The Fountain

text: Conquistador Tomás Verde in New Spain fights a band of Mayans to gain entry into a pyramid, where he is attacked by a Mayan priest. The story intercuts to a similar looking man, tending a tall tree in a glass dome biosphere travelling through space, annoyed by a woman called Izzi. Finally, a third iteration, present-day surgeon Tom Creo, is losing his wife Izzi to a brain tumor. Tom is working on a cure using samples from a tree found through exploration in Guatemala, which are being tested for medicinal use for degenerative brain diseases in his lab. Izzi has come to terms with her mortality, but Tom refuses to accept it, focused on his quest to find a cure for her. She writes a story called "The Fountain" about Queen Isabella losing her kingdom to the Inquisition and a commission given by her to Tomás Verde to search for the Tree of Life in the Central American forest in Mayan territory. As she does not expect to finish her book, Izzi asks Tom to finish it for her. As they look up at the golden nebula of Xibalba, she imagines, as the Mayans did, that their souls will meet there after death when the star goes supernova. She dies shortly thereafter and Tom dedicates himself to curing not only her disease but death itself after seeing experimental success in reversing aging. His colleagues fear that this drive has made him reckless, but they support him in his scientific work and emotionally at Izzi's funeral. Tom plants a sweetgum seed at Izzi's grave in the manner of a story she told him relating how a Mayan guide's dead father lived on in a tree nourished by the organic nutrients of the buried body.


title: The Fountain

text: In the Mayan jungle, Tomás finds that most of his fellow knights are exhausted and refuse to continue searching for the Tree of Life. After a failed coup and the death of their priest guide, he takes the few who remain loyal with him to a pyramid, carrying a ceremonial dagger. Once he arrives at the pyramid, the first scene repeats and Tomás engages in combat with the Mayan priest. The space traveller (whether this character is a version of Tom, an element of Izzy's story, or Tom himself in the future is unclear) spends much of his time performing physical or mental exercises, including a form of meditation allowing him to perceive and interact with the past. In that past, Tomás is stabbed in the stomach but, just as the priest is about to kill him, he appears before the figurehead. The priest now believes Tomás is the "First Father" who birthed all life. Tomás kills the priest as a sacrifice and proceeds to a pool with a large tree, convinced this is the Tree of Life. Tomás applies some of its sap to his torso and is cured of his stab wound. He drinks the sap flowing from the bark. But in a reenactment of the Mayan creation myth recounted earlier, his body is turned into flowers and grass that burst forth from it and he literally gives rise to new life, killing himself in the process. In space, the tree finally dies just before the spaceship arrives at its destination, much to the horror of the version of Tom tending it. A final vision of Izzi appears, comforting him in the face of his acceptance of death. The star goes supernova, engulfing the ship and everything within. The traveler's body, engulfed by the dying star inside of the nebula, is absorbed by the tree, causing it to flourish back to life. Izzi's apparition picks a fruit from the new tree of life and hands it to Tom, who plants it in Izzi's grave, accepting her death and moving on.


title: The Fountain

text: The three stories are interwoven with match cuts and recurring visual motifs; Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz play the main characters in all three narratives. Whether the actions in these stories are actual events, or symbolic, is not clear: director Darren Aronofsky emphasized that the storylines in their time periods and their respective convergences were open to interpretation. The director has said of "The Fountain"s intricacy and underlying message, "[The film is] very much like a Rubik's Cube, where you can solve it in several different ways, but ultimately there's only one solution at the end."


title: The Fountain

text: In a 2012 interview outlining the path of life depicted, Aronofsky stated that "ultimately the film is about coming to terms with your own death" oftentimes driven by love. The film asks such questions as "What if you could live forever?" and depicts one man's journey to overcome death. Related to this path, Darren Aronofsky described the core of the film as "a very simple love story" about a man and a woman in love, with the woman's life cut short. The director researched people who were dying young, and learned from doctors and caregivers that such patients find new ways of coping. Aronofsky observed that the patients often die more alone because their families cannot recognize what happens with them, calling it "an incredible tragedy":


title: The Fountain

text: Instead of facing this tragedy in terror, she is coming to terms with what is happening to her... Many patients actually start opening up to the possibility of what's happening to them, but there's very little vocabulary to help them deal... We decided to expand it with this woman [Izzi] offering a gift to her husband as a metaphor that tells him where she's come to in her awe inspiring journey towards death. Hopefully through time he'll be able to understand it and basically get where she is.


title: The Fountain

text: "The Fountain"s theme of fear of death is "a movement from darkness into light, from black to white" that traces the journey of a man scared of death and moving toward it. The film begins with a paraphrase of Genesis 3:24, the Biblical passage that reflects The Fall of Man. Hugh Jackman emphasized the importance of the Fall in the film: "The moment Adam and Eve ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, humans started to experience life as we all experience it now, which is life and death, poor and wealthy, pain and pleasure, good and evil. We live in a world of duality. Husband, wife, we relate everything. And much of our lives are spent not wanting to die, be poor, experience pain. It's what the movie's about." Aronofsky also interpreted the story of Genesis as the definition of mortality for humanity. He inquired of the Fall, "If they had drank from the Tree of Life [along with the Tree of Knowledge] what would have separated them from their maker? So what makes us human is actually death. It's what makes us special."


title: The Fountain

text: Aronofsky's sensibility can be placed between Kubrick's exploration of humanity, and Spielberg's emotionality as he "combines elements of Kubrick’s excess visible in the human condition and leading us toward the limit of existence in obsession or madness, and of Spielberg’s emotion and the wish to leave a ray of hope, regardless of how


title: The Fountain

text: Director Darren Aronofsky sought to produce "The Fountain" after the release of "Requiem for a Dream" in 2000. In April 2001, he entered negotiations with Warner Bros. and Village Roadshow to direct the then-untitled film with actor Brad Pitt in the lead role. "Requiem for a Dream" was screened for Pitt, and the preliminary script for "The Fountain" persuaded the actor to join the project. Aronofsky prepared for production by traveling with a crew to Central America to consult with Mayan experts and to explore the Mexican ruins of Palenque. The group also visited Tikal, a jungle location featured in the 1977 film "Star Wars". In addition to the trip, the films "Aguirre, the Wrath of God" and "The Holy Mountain" were screened for the crew to inspire it in designing a rainforest set for "The Fountain". In June 2001, actress Cate Blanchett entered talks to join Aronofsky's project. Aronofsky, who wanted the film's actual title to be a secret, gave the project the working title of "The Last Man". Production was postponed to improve the script and to wait for Blanchett, pregnant when she joined, to give birth to her child in December 2001. The start date for production was tentatively set in summer 2002.


title: The Fountain

text: In June 2002, Warner Bros. met with Aronofsky and producer Eric Watson, expressing concerns over an escalating budget and threatening to cease the project unless a co-financier was found. Watson petitioned independent production companies for support and was able to enlist Regency Enterprises for assistance. Production was ultimately set for late October 2002 in Queensland and Sydney, Australia. The film, officially titled "The Fountain", was 'greenlit' (approved for production) with a budget of $70 million, co-financed by Warner Bros. and New Regency, who filled the gap after Village Roadshow withdrew from the project. Preparation for production of "The Fountain" cost $18 million. Abruptly, Pitt, whose requested screenplay revisions were not met, left the project seven weeks before the first day of shooting. The actor went on to star as Achilles in director Wolfgang Petersen's "Troy". With the studio threatening to shut down the project, Aronofsky sent the script to actor Russell Crowe as a potential replacement for Pitt. However, Crowe, worn out from recently completing "", declined. In September 2002, Jeff Robinov, President of Production at Warner Bros. Pictures, announced that "The Fountain" would cease production, with Blanchett receiving compensation for her time and the Australian crew being fired from the halted project. Sets built for the production of the film, including a 10-story Mayan temple, were eventually auctioned off, in addition to props and other items. Pitt said that he was disappointed to leave and added, "I remain encouraged that "The Fountain" will yet have its day."


title: The Fountain

text: Aronofsky began to develop other films. When he looked over the books he used to research for "The Fountain", he decided to return to "The Fountain", feeling closer to it creatively than the other possible projects. Without a studio and an actor, he decided to write a "no-budget" version of the film, using his experiences filming "Pi" and "Requiem for a Dream" with small budgets. In February 2004, Warner Bros. resurrected Aronofsky's project and began to court actor Hugh Jackman to replace Pitt in the lead role. The film received a second greenlight with a budget of $35 million, in part because of the director's willingness to leave costly set pieces out of the screenplay. In August, actress Rachel Weisz joined Hugh Jackman for the film, filling the vacancy left by Blanchett. Filming lasted 60 days in early 2005 and took place mainly on a sound stage in Montreal.


title: The Fountain

text: Darren Aronofsky and his friend Ari Handel created the story for "The Fountain", and Aronofsky wrote the screenplay. When Aronofsky saw "The Matrix" in 1999, he considered it a film that redefined the science fiction genre. He sought to make a science fiction film that would explore new territory in the genre like "The Matrix" and its predecessors "Star Wars" and "". Aronofsky had in mind a science fiction film that would go beyond the other films whose plots were driven by technology and science. The director said, "We've seen it all. It's not really interesting to audiences anymore. The interesting things are the ideas; the search for God, the search for meaning."


title: The Fountain

text: In 1999, when Aronofsky turned 30 years old, his parents were diagnosed with cancer. He began reflecting on human mortality, "That was a really heavy-duty emotional time. I know it's a very young age, but turning thirty marks when your twenties are over and you could start considering, 'Wow, one of these days I'm actually going to die.'" While his parents overcame cancer, he began to focus on the concept of a young man saving a loved one from a life-threatening disease. He shared the concept with Handel, his undergraduate school roommate at Harvard University. Handel earned a Ph.D in neuroscience from New York University but was uncertain about a future in neuroscience. He recalled the discussion, "Darren and I just started talking about the story. We kept wanting to talk more about it as the story kept getting bigger. I decided to make some life choices to continue working with Darren, because it was so much fun."


title: The Fountain

text: The director relied on a change of locale to inspire him to write "Pi" and "Requiem for a Dream". For "The Fountain", Aronofsky was inspired by a research trip he took to Guatemala with Handel to learn about Mayan history and philosophy. The script for "The Fountain" was influenced by the accounts of Uruguayan journalist Eduardo Galeano, who wrote examples of myth from an indigenous perspective, particularly Galeano's "Genesis" trilogy. The film "Once Upon a Time in America" also served as an influence on the script. Aronofsky, influenced by Bernal Díaz del Castillo's "The Conquest of New Spain", applied the narrative in writing the film's conquistador scenes.


title: The Fountain

text: Aronofsky realized that since writing in 2000 the battle scene between the armies of Mayans and conquistadors, "The Lord of the Rings" film trilogy, "Troy", "King Arthur", and other films had featured massive battle scenes. He felt less inclined to mimic the scale and rewrote the battle to be mainly between Jackman's conquistador character and the Mayans. The director realized that, with one man against the army, the rewrite was a suitable metaphor for his film's theme of a man defying odds to do the impossible and conquer death.


title: The Fountain

text: The filmmakers researched space travel and Mayan culture, including its history, religion, and spirituality. They attended brain surgeries with the actors. With the research in place, Aronofsky said, "We decided which things we wanted to be purely factual and which things we wanted to bend." The director did not strive to be historically accurate with the various time periods, perceiving the entire film as a setting of a fairy tale. He said, "It was more about painting a relationship between a queen and her warrior, and just using that for more fantasy reasons."


title: The Fountain

text: Aronofsky saw Hugh Jackman perform as Peter Allen in the Broadway musical "The Boy from Oz" and was impressed with his performance. The director met with Jackman, who sought "a role that could show a lot of dimension," and cast him into the lead role in "The Fountain". Jackman starred previously as the muscular character Wolverine in the "X-Men" films, so for "The Fountain", he exercised to adopt a slimmer figure. Jackman practiced t'ai chi for seven months to demonstrate it in a 30-second scene. He also practiced yoga for over a year to achieve the lotus position for scenes set in space. For these scenes when he is seen in the position in mid-air, he was immersed in a swimming pool and harnessed to a rig that rotated him 360 degrees so his clothes floated freely about him.


title: The Fountain

text: Jackman also watched a woman undergo brain tumor surgery and was shaken to see the woman have similar blond hair to his wife: "All I could think of was my wife on that table. As much as I'd read the script and theorized and practiced philosophy, I knew in that moment that I was so not ready for death." For his various characters, the actor assumed a different posture for each persona. As the conquistador, Jackman was upright and forward-leaning to evoke an unstoppable nature. As the scientist, the actor hunched over with a dedicated focus on his character's work, being weighed down by the "world on his shoulders." As the space traveler, Jackman practiced the state of zen but also exhibited a continued persistence in his endeavor.


title: The Fountain

text: Jackman suggested that Aronofsky cast Rachel Weisz as his character's wife. The director, who was in a relationship with the actress, had originally hesitated to show the studio signs of favoritism in casting Weisz. With Jackman's earnest recommendation, the actress was cast as Izzi/Isabel. For her role, Weisz read books and first-person accounts about people who had terminal illnesses. The actress also visited hospitals to see young people who were dying and under hospice care. "There were a few days where I was in the headspace where I could say: 'I could go now'," said Weisz.


title: The Fountain

text: "The Fountain" also stars Ellen Burstyn as Dr. Lillian Guzetti, Tom's superior, and Mark Margolis as Father Avila, who accompanies Tomás the conquistador. Burstyn and Margolis appeared in Aronofsky's "Requiem for a Dream", and the director wrote into the script roles for both of them. Sean Patrick Thomas, Donna Murphy, and Ethan Suplee were cast as assistants to Tom's lab work. Cliff Curtis was cast as Captain Ariel, a fellow conquistador, and Stephen McHattie was cast as Grand Inquisitor Silecio, a religious fanatic who threatens the Spanish queen. Seventy extras were cast as Maya warriors, including twenty who had actual Guatemala Mayan backgrounds. One of the twenty, a real-life spiritual leader, was cast as the Maya spiritual leader in the film.


title: The Fountain

text: The film's locations, with the exception of scenes filmed at a museum and at a farmhouse, were built on the Montreal sound stage. Production designer James Chinlund and his crew built sets for "The Fountain" in a large warehouse in Montreal. The sets included the 16th century jungle settings and the bubble-shaped spacecraft containing the tree of life and its garden. The spacecraft set was placed against greenscreen, and the crew hung colored reflective material, which included green, black, gold, and silver, on three circular tracks around the set. One material would be moved into place instead of the heavy equipment, and with the other materials partitioned off, a light source was used with the preferred material. Silver was used for scenes in which the spacecraft moved through the stars, and gold was used for when it entered the nebula.


title: The Fountain

text: In "The Fountain", the Tree of Life was a central design and part of the film's three periods. The tree was based on Kabbalah's Sefirot, which depicts a "map" of creation to understand the nature of God and how he created the world ex nihilo (out of nothing). The Sefirot Tree, being two to three hundred feet tall in lore, had to be resized for "The Fountain" to fit in the camera's frame. Pieces of driftwood and pieces from real trees in Canada were collected for the tree's branches and roots, and sculpted molds of the pieces were applied to a steel frame to create the tree's body. According to production designer James Chinlund, the tree, part of an enormous set surrounded by green screens, and other sets presented difficult logistical problems because of the small budget given to the resurrected project. The tree set itself had been a collaboration between Chinlund, Aronofsky, and cinematographer Matthew Libatique to create the appropriate design, particularly the palette in comparison to the biospheric ship that carries the tree in the astronaut period. Aronofsky described the astronaut period as a homage to David Bowie's "Space Oddity"; the protagonist's name "Tom" originating from the Major Tom of the popular song. Co-writer Ari Handel researched biospherics, such as the Biosphere 2, to help design the ship that carried the protagonist and the tree through space. With respect to the glass-sphered ship's design, Aronofsky argued, "There is no reason a spaceship would be built like a giant truck in space."


title: The Fountain

text: Aronofsky and cinematographer Matthew Libatique also discussed using a limited palette of colors, an approach that started with Aronofsky's "Pi" and continued with "Requiem for a Dream". In "The Fountain", the primary colors are gold and white. Gold represents "the Mayans, a sort of fool's gold, a false truth"; Aronofsky explained the choice, "When you see gold, it represents materialism and wealth and all these things that distract us from the true journey that we're on." White was chosen to represent mortality and truth. Weisz's characters are white, and wear white or are enveloped in white light to accentuate this presentation. Secondary colors are green, representing the color of life, and red, representing death. The director also used similar geometric constructs in the film to distinguish the three storylines. The 16th century conquistador's tale reflected triangles through pyramids and constellations, the 21st century researcher's period reflected rectangles through doors, windows, and computer screens, and the 26th century contemplative's journey reflected circles and spheres through the spacecraft and stellar bodies.


title: The Fountain

text: Principal photography for "The Fountain" began on November 22, 2004 and wrapped up in February 2005. Cinematographer Matthew Libatique shot "The Fountain" under Aronofsky's direction. Libatique, who worked with Aronofsky throughout the 1990s, prepared for over a year for "The Fountain" when Aronofsky tried to produce the film for the first time. When production restarted on a smaller budget, Libatique felt that the more budget-conscious approach resulted in a better film, "I think the streamlining of the film helped us tell the story more effectively. It's been stripped down to its core, to what it's really about: a search for immortality, when the truth of life is mortality."


title: The Fountain

text: Aronofsky planned to have a strong presentation of the thematic movement from darkness into light. He originally sought to show only a silhouette of the man until the second of the film's three acts, but he chose not to be so extreme, wanting to be more communicative to the audience. The movement was presented less aggressively in the film; Jackman's characters are seen in silhouette at the beginning, kept out of key light. In each of the three periods, the lighting on Jackman's characters is initially dim and gradually grows brighter as the storylines unfold. Meanwhile, Weisz's characters are frequently awash with light in the storylines. Libatique described the metaphoric change of the lighting on Jackman's characters, "We follow the arc of the Thomas character as he gets closer and closer to the truth."


title: The Fountain

text: Aronofsky preferred to use one camera whenever possible, only using a second camera if the scene was more about the setting and could be shot from two distinctly different axes. Libatique said Aronofsky preferred the eyeline match, "Darren is big on eyelines, and if you sacrifice an eyeline on an angle, he feels it nullifies the shot and de-emphasizes the performances." Aronofsky originally intended to have Jackman's characters always moving in an "unusual" left-to-right direction across the frame, but the plan was complicated by the spacecraft needing to move upward toward a light source.


title: The Fountain

text: When production restarted in 2005, there was a more budget-conscious approach to filming "The Fountain", whose original budget was mostly intended for visual effects. Libatique reflected, "Visual effects a lot of the budget in the original conception. The popcorn moments were in there to justify the budget and bring target audiences into the theater. Ultimately, I think the streamlining of the film helped us tell the story more effectively. It's been stripped down to the core, to what it's really about: a search for immortality, when the truth of life is mortality. I think at the end of the day, the theme of the film will be easier to feel."


title: The Fountain

text: To create a death scene, Aronofsky drew from Mayan mythology the description of flowers and butterflies emerging from the bodies of valiant warriors when they die. Aronofsky excluded butterflies from the death scene to minimize the film's computer-generated imagery but kept the effect of flowers bursting from the body.


title: The Fountain

text: Jeremy Dawson and Dan Schrecker, who had provided visual effects for Darren Aronofsky's "π" and "Requiem for a Dream", returned to "The Fountain" to help the director with the film's effects. The pair was assigned the task of creating as little computer-generated imagery as possible, a difficult task with a third of the film taking place in deep space. Aronofsky chose to avoid effects that would make the film look dated in several decades but instead hold up as well as a film like "". Dawson said, "Using CG is really the easy route because it's so prevalent and the tools are great. What it did was really force us to come up with creative solutions to solve a lot of our problems."


title: The Fountain

text: One creative solution was uncovering Peter Parks, a specialist in macro photography, who had retrieved deep-sea microorganisms and photographed them in 3-D under partial funding from the Bahamas government. Parks brewed chemicals and bacteria together to create reactions that Schrecker and Dawson shot, recording 20,000 feet worth of film over eight weeks. To create the effects, Peter Parks took advantage of fluid dynamics, which affected the behavior of the substances that he photographed. "When these images are projected on a big screen, you feel like you're looking at infinity. That's because the same forces at work in the water—gravitational effects, settlement, refractive indices—are happening in outer space," Parks said. The specialist's talent convinced the film's creative department to go beyond computer-generated imagery and follow Parks' lead. Instead of millions of dollars for a single special effects sequence, Parks generated all the footage for the film for just $140,000.


title: The Fountain

text: The visual-effects company Look Effects worked on 87 shots for "The Fountain" that included major set extensions, digital mattes, image enhancement, face replacement and blemish removal, as well as animating key elements to the film's story. Henrik Fett, the visual effects supervisor of Look Effects, said, "Darren was quite clear on what he wanted and his intent to greatly minimize the use of computer graphics... [and] I think the results are outstanding."


title: The Fountain

text: Clint Mansell—the composer for Aronofsky's previous films "Pi" and "Requiem for a Dream"—reprised his role for "The Fountain". The San Francisco-based string quartet Kronos Quartet—who previously performed for the "Requiem for a Dream" soundtrack—and Scottish post-rock band Mogwai also contributed to the film score. Mansell researched possible scores to compose one tying together the three storylines and sought to have an organic feeling to the score and explored implementing orchestral and electronic elements that would have "a real human element to them that breathes." While reading the script, Mansell was reminded of the post-rock music of Mogwai as well as Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Sigur Rós and initially planned a score based around percussion before adding the string quartet and choir. The soundtrack was released by Nonesuch Records in 2006 and received numerous award nominations.


title: The Fountain

text: When Warner Bros. shut down pre-production of "The Fountain" in 2002, Aronofsky reserved rights to publish a graphic novel based on the script that was not produced. He said, "I knew it was a hard film to make, and I said at least if Hollywood fucks me over at least I'll make a comic book out of it." He shopped the story to Vertigo Comics and met comic book artist Kent Williams, whose illustrations impressed him. Aronofsky hired Williams to create the graphic novel, and Ari Handel, co-writer for the film, provided Williams with research, photographs, and images on "Mayans, astronomy, pulsars, and all kinds of cool stuff" for the graphic novel's design. Aronofsky gave Williams the freedom to interpret the story as the artist saw fit.


title: The Fountain

text: "The Fountain" was originally scheduled to be released on October 13, 2006, but the film was delayed to create a "long-lead campaign" and generate anticipation via word of mouth. The release date was ultimately set for November 22, 2006. Aronofsky shared his screenplay with eleven artists: Phil Hale, Martin Wilner, Jason Shawn Alexander, Kostas Seremetis, Dave Gibbons, Barron Storey, James Jean, Jim Lee, Olivier Bramanti, Seth Fisher, and Bill Sienkiewicz. He invited them to interpret the screenplay in each one's chosen medium, and the interpretations were intended to be available on the film's website. Aronofsky also published a book about the film that contained production stills, the original script, original art, and observations by the film's creators. The content and research agency Ramp Industry launched The Fountain Remixed, an official website driven by user-generated content. Users could download freely provided audio parts from "The Fountain"'s film score, remix the music, and upload the work onto the website to be evaluated by other users.


title: The Fountain

text: The film had its world premiere at the 63rd Venice Film Festival on September 2, 2006. Several critics booed "The Fountain" at the festival's press screening, while the film received a 10-minute standing ovation at the public screening the following evening. "The Fountain" was released in 1,472 theaters in the United States and Canada on November 22, 2006, a day before the American Thanksgiving holiday. The film earned $3,768,702 in the U.S. and Canadian box office during the opening weekend of November 24. "The Fountain" earned $10,144,010 in the United States and Canada, and $5,761,344 in other territories. The film, which had a production budget of $35 million, grossed $15,978,422 in theaters worldwide. The box-office performance was considered a flop with the film only earning back 54% of its budget.


title: The Fountain

text: Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade C− on scale of A to F. "Newsweek" reported how people received the film, "Its supporters admire the film's beauty and daring; its detractors find it overblown and hokey."


title: The Fountain

text: Michael Atkinson, writing for "Sight & Sound", reviewed Aronofsky's endeavor, "It's difficult to recall another American film that, in pursuing a passionate and personal vision, goes so maddeningly, uproariously wrong." Atkinson said of the narrative, "The erratic and pointless leapfrogging between its storylines is torporific ... all three stories are assembled piecemeal, many of which repeat over and over as flashback and flashforwards." He complained of the numerous motifs, "It's difficult to swallow the amalgamation of Mayan, Biblical, Buddhist, Taoist and New Age iconography, all of it tossed as if into a stew." In contrast, Glenn Kenny of "Premiere" wrote of the film, ""The Fountain" is probably the deftest stories-within-stories narrative film I've seen ... By "The Fountain"s end, the multilayered meta-narrative... resolves (or does it?) into a kind of diegetic Möbius strip, to stunning effect." Kenny called the film "as demanding as it is dazzling" and compared Aronofsky's direction to Stanley Kubrick's "in terms of conceptual audacity and meticulousness of execution." He concluded, "It's a movie that's as deeply felt as it is imagined."


title: The Fountain

text: Anthony Lane, reviewing for "The New Yorker", called "The Fountain" "a gorgeous nimbus of confusion." Lane complained about the film's up-close and far-away shots, "What fails to concern or attract Aronofsky is the place where most of us hang out—the in-between, the midshot of everyday existence." He summarized, "The movie may have significant truths to impart, although I have my doubts, but it feels too inexperienced, too unworldly, to have earned the right to them." Roger Ebert, who admired Aronofsky's previous films, conceded in the "Chicago Sun-Times" that "The Fountain" was "not a great success." He identified the film's problematic aspects: "too many screens of blinding lights," "too many transitions for their own sake," and "abrupt changes of tone." He believed that the scaling down of the film from Aronofsky's original ambition lost some elements and anticipated a director's cut truer to Aronofsky's vision.


title: The Fountain

text: In the book "Positive Psychology at the Movies: Using Films to Build Virtues and Character Strengths", Ryan M. Niemiec and Danny Wedding cite the film as one which depicts the development of perspective. "[Jackman's character's] denial and work addiction are obstacles to the development of the strength of perspective, but he is able to confront those obstacles as he develops acceptances and wisdom, represented by themes drawn from both Buddhism (meditation, rebirth, reincarnation) and Christianity (eternal life, faith, and love)."