Gay Master Picture
Many people disagree with me on this, but I like to get important stuff out of the way as soon as possible. I tell people almost immediately that I'm HIV-positive and undetectable, and have mastered the art of inserting this personal info into casual conversations. Doing so makes my HIV something lighthearted and easy to talk about. No one needs to step lightly over it -- it will come up sooner rather than later.
gay master picture
When Selznick formed his own independent production company and went to work for his father-in-law, MGM's Louis B. Mayer, he brought Cukor along. The great Dinner at Eight (1933) followed. Back at RKO, Hepburn was an outstanding Jo in his Little Woman (1933). For MGM, he helmed the brilliant David Copperfield (1934). The failure of Sylvia Scarlett (1935), with Hepburn disguised as a boy for most of the picture, was blamed on her.
The Bluebird (1976), an international production filmed in chaotic circumstances in Moscow with Elizabeth Taylor, Ava Gardner, Jane Fonda, and Cicely Tyson, was dreadful. In 1977, he organized a magnificent memorial service for Crawford. He persevered, directing Hepburn for television in The Corn Is Green (1979), and making one more picture, Rich and Famous (1981), with Jacqueline Bisset and Candace Bergen. He infused it with a bitchy energy.
I've been on a journey to become a master blender since I began my studies in college. I've always had a passion for chemistry and wanted to work in beer or spirits, so after getting my bachelor's in biology and chemistry at Howard University, I continued my education at the Siebel Institute of Technology, a school in Chicago that focuses on the science behind brewing and distilling.
After school, I returned home to Barbados to work with a beer company on their brewing team. In 2014, I joined Mount Gay to work in quality assurance. There I met Allen Smith, the master blender at the time. He saw that I had strong knowledge of chemistry and distillation, a passion for the art of making rum, and what it would take to step into his role when he retired. He took me under his wing, and we worked closely together for five years.
When I began working with Allen, the team knew that he was planning ahead for retirement, which he finally did in 2019 after spending 13 years as master blender. We had many discussions about who would take over, when, and what that transition would look like.
I became Mount Gay's master blender in April 2019. In the beginning, it felt like all eyes were on me, waiting for what my first move would be. I'd already started working on the new blends for XO and Black Barrel, as well as my first edition of the Master Blender Collection, so I stayed busy and focused during my first few months. Once they were all bottled, I held my breath through the first few tastings.
Hitchcock was too young to enlist when the First World War started in July 1914, and when he reached the required age of 18 in 1917, he received a C3 classification ("free from serious organic disease, able to stand service conditions in garrisons at home ... only suitable for sedentary work").[36] He joined a cadet regiment of the Royal Engineers and took part in theoretical briefings, weekend drills, and exercises. John Russell Taylor wrote that, in one session of practical exercises in Hyde Park, Hitchcock was required to wear puttees. He could never master wrapping them around his legs, and they repeatedly fell down around his ankles.[37]
In the summer of 1925, Balcon asked Hitchcock to direct The Pleasure Garden (1925), starring Virginia Valli, a co-production of Gainsborough and the German firm Emelka at the Geiselgasteig studio near Munich. Reville, by then Hitchcock's fiancée, was assistant director-editor.[58][51] Although the film was a commercial flop,[59] Balcon liked Hitchcock's work; a Daily Express headline called him the "Young man with a master mind".[60] Production of The Pleasure Garden encountered obstacles which Hitchcock would later learn from: on arrival to Brenner Pass, he failed to declare his film stock to customs and it was confiscated; one actress could not enter the water for a scene because she was on her period; budget overruns meant that he had to borrow money from the actors.[61] Hitchcock also needed a translator to give instructions to the cast and crew.[61]
Hitchcock established himself as a name director with his first thriller, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927).[70] The film concerns the hunt for a Jack the Ripper-style serial killer who, wearing a black cloak and carrying a black bag, is murdering young blonde women in London, and only on Tuesdays.[71] A landlady suspects that her lodger is the killer, but he turns out to be innocent. To convey the impression footsteps were being heard from an upper floor, Hitchcock had a glass floor made so that the viewer could see the lodger pacing up and down in his room above the landlady.[72] Hitchcock had wanted the leading man to be guilty, or for the film at least to end ambiguously, but the star was Ivor Novello, a matinée idol, and the "star system" meant that Novello could not be the villain. Hitchcock told Truffaut: "You have to clearly spell it out in big letters: 'He is innocent.'" (He had the same problem years later with Cary Grant in Suspicion (1941).)[73] Released in January 1927, The Lodger was a commercial and critical success in the UK.[74][75] Upon its release the trade journal Bioscope wrote: "It is possible that this film is the finest British production ever made".[70] Hitchcock told Truffaut that the film was the first of his to be influenced by German Expressionism: "In truth, you might almost say that The Lodger was my first picture."[76] He made his first cameo appearance in the film, sitting in a newsroom.[77][78]
By 1938 Hitchcock was aware that he had reached his peak in Britain.[105] He had received numerous offers from producers in the United States, but he turned them all down because he disliked the contractual obligations or thought the projects were repellent.[106] However, producer David O. Selznick offered him a concrete proposal to make a film based on the sinking of RMS Titanic, which was eventually shelved, but Selznick persuaded Hitchcock to come to Hollywood. In July 1938, Hitchcock flew to New York, and found that he was already a celebrity; he was featured in magazines and gave interviews to radio stations.[107] In Hollywood, Hitchcock met Selznick for the first time. Selznick offered him a four-film contract, approximately $40,000 for each picture (equivalent to $770,000 in 2021).[107]
Selznick signed Hitchcock to a seven-year contract beginning in April 1939,[108] and the Hitchcocks moved to Hollywood.[109] The Hitchcocks lived in a spacious flat on Wilshire Boulevard, and slowly acclimatised themselves to the Los Angeles area. He and his wife Alma kept a low profile, and were not interested in attending parties or being celebrities.[110] Hitchcock discovered his taste for fine food in West Hollywood, but still carried on his way of life from England.[111] He was impressed with Hollywood's filmmaking culture, expansive budgets and efficiency,[111] compared to the limits that he had often faced in Britain.[112] In June that year, Life magazine called him the "greatest master of melodrama in screen history".[113]
Saboteur (1942) is the first of two films that Hitchcock made for Universal Studios during the decade. Hitchcock was forced by Universal to use Universal contract player Robert Cummings and Priscilla Lane, a freelancer who signed a one-picture deal with the studio, both known for their work in comedies and light dramas.[131] The story depicts a confrontation between a suspected saboteur (Cummings) and a real saboteur (Norman Lloyd) atop the Statue of Liberty. Hitchcock took a three-day tour of New York City to scout for Saboteur's filming locations.[132] He also directed Have You Heard? (1942), a photographic dramatisation for Life magazine of the dangers of rumours during wartime.[133] In 1943, he wrote a mystery story for Look magazine, "The Murder of Monty Woolley",[134] a sequence of captioned photographs inviting the reader to find clues to the murderer's identity; Hitchcock cast the performers as themselves, such as Woolley, Doris Merrick, and make-up man Guy Pearce.[citation needed]
At the time, I was on a strenuous diet, painfully working my way from three hundred to two hundred pounds. So I decided to immortalize my loss and get my bit part by posing for "before" and "after" pictures. ... I was literally submerged by letters from fat people who wanted to know where and how they could get Reduco.[141]
Vertigo contains a camera technique developed by Irmin Roberts, commonly referred to as a dolly zoom, which has been copied by many filmmakers. The film premiered at the San Sebastián International Film Festival, and Hitchcock won the Silver Seashell prize.[177] Vertigo is considered a classic, but it attracted mixed reviews and poor box-office receipts at the time;[178] the critic from Variety magazine opined that the film was "too slow and too long".[179] Bosley Crowther of the New York Times thought it was "devilishly far-fetched", but praised the cast performances and Hitchcock's direction.[180] The picture was also the last collaboration between Stewart and Hitchcock.[181] In the 2002 Sight & Sound polls, it ranked just behind Citizen Kane (1941); ten years later, in the same magazine, critics chose it as the best film ever made.[8]
The film scholar Peter William Evans wrote that The Birds (1963) and Marnie (1964) are regarded as "undisputed masterpieces".[154] Hitchcock had intended to film Marnie first, and in March 1962 it was announced that Grace Kelly, Princess Grace of Monaco since 1956, would come out of retirement to star in it.[196] When Kelly asked Hitchcock to postpone Marnie until 1963 or 1964, he recruited Evan Hunter, author of The Blackboard Jungle (1954), to develop a screenplay based on a Daphne du Maurier short story, "The Birds" (1952), which Hitchcock had republished in his My Favorites in Suspense (1959). He hired Tippi Hedren to play the lead role.[197] It was her first role; she had been a model in New York when Hitchcock saw her, in October 1961, in an NBC television advert for Sego, a diet drink:[198] "I signed her because she is a classic beauty. Movies don't have them any more. Grace Kelly was the last." He insisted, without explanation, that her first name be written in single quotation marks: 'Tippi'.[i] 041b061a72