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Post by walkingdeadrules on Aug 5, 2017 16:18:27 GMT -5
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Post by walkingdeadrules on Aug 9, 2017 21:48:02 GMT -5
variety.com/2017/tv/news/american-horror-story-cult-season-7-election-1202521663/Details are scarce about the upcoming new season of “American Horror Story,” as always. But at a panel titled “The Women of ‘American Horror Story,'” held during the Television Critics Association press tour on Wednesday, a few details were revealed, including confirmation that the past presidential election will somehow play a role. Executive producer Ryan Murphy had said back in February that the upcoming season was “going to be about the election that we just went through,” but executive producer Alexis Martin Woodall said Murphy’s announcement was more thematic. “It’s more about what’s going on in our world around us, the idea of paranoia,” she said. “It’s not what you think it is. Knowing less is so much more because it’s going to unfold for you. But it is an element in our launch point.” The panel also featured series stars Sarah Paulson, Alison Pill, Billie Lourd, Adina Porter, and Leslie Grossman, costume designer Lou Eyrich, and makeup artist Eryn Krueger Mekash. The stars acknowledged that they were scared during the making of the show. “This particular season has a streak of paranoia that’s infectious,” said Pill. “I’d be happy to bid that slightly creepy feeling adieu.” Pill, who joined the ensemble this season, praised her co-stars, particularly Paulson. “It’s good to have members of the cast who know much more than I do what to expect,” she said. A set tour revealed that two women will be living together, which Paulson confirmed. “There are two women married to each other in that house,” said Paulson. “It may or may not be me and Allison.” Pressed to offer some clues about the season holds, Woodall said, “We’ve got bloody tension, a well-cooked meal, and an exciting trip to a grocery store.” She continued, “It is true to our brand, which is you’re going to be in a whole new world all over again and fall in love with these really special characters. You’ll hate yourself for watching it before you go to bed and love when you wake up in the morning for having gotten through the night.” Porter, who plays a broadcast news journalist, would not reveal much else about her character. “I’m so incredibly lucky to be working. To be able to still be in stunts and not be 12 is pretty spectacular,” she said. “I appreciate that.” Lourd said that this role allows her to be more dramatic than her work on Fox’s “Scream Queens.” “This is straight-up horror drama. It’s definitely less of my comedic side, more of my dark side,” she said. “I do have emotions this time, which is really exciting.” Other cast members lined up for this season include Emma Roberts, Evan Peters, Billy Eichner, and Lena Dunham. Paulson said she doesn’t know how this season will end, adding that in the past, she’s been told the ending but it’s changed as the season has gone along. Asked about her character’s “love story” with Peters, which Murphy teased on Instagram, she said, “I think it’s going to reveal itself in surprising ways.” “American Horror Story: Cult” will premiere on FX on Sept. 5.
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Post by Ripley on Aug 10, 2017 16:34:37 GMT -5
Variety "AHS: Cult Will Focus on ‘What’s Going on in Our World’"
...But at a panel titled “The Women of ‘American Horror Story,'” held during the Television Critics Association press tour on Wednesday, a few details were revealed, including confirmation that the past presidential election will somehow play a role.
Executive producer Ryan Murphy had said back in February that the upcoming season was “going to be about the election that we just went through,” but executive producer Alexis Martin Woodall said Murphy’s announcement was more thematic. “It’s more about what’s going on in our world around us, the idea of paranoia,” she said. “It’s not what you think it is. Knowing less is so much more because it’s going to unfold for you. But it is an element in our launch point.”
The panel also featured series stars Sarah Paulson, Alison Pill, Billie Lourd, Adina Porter, and Leslie Grossman, costume designer Lou Eyrich, and makeup artist Eryn Krueger Mekash.
The stars acknowledged that they were scared during the making of the show. “This particular season has a streak of paranoia that’s infectious,” said Pill. “I’d be happy to bid that slightly creepy feeling adieu.”
Pill, who joined the ensemble this season, praised her co-stars, particularly Paulson. “It’s good to have members of the cast who know much more than I do what to expect,” she said. A set tour revealed that two women will be living together, which Paulson confirmed. “There are two women married to each other in that house,” said Paulson. “It may or may not be me and Allison.”
Pressed to offer some clues about the season holds, Woodall said, “We’ve got bloody tension, a well-cooked meal, and an exciting trip to a grocery store.”
She continued, “It is true to our brand, which is you’re going to be in a whole new world all over again and fall in love with these really special characters. You’ll hate yourself for watching it before you go to bed and love when you wake up in the morning for having gotten through the night.”
Porter, who plays a broadcast news journalist, would not reveal much else about her character. " I’m so incredibly lucky to be working. To be able to still be in stunts and not be 12 is pretty spectacular,” she said. “I appreciate that.”
Lourd said that this role allows her to be more dramatic than her work on Fox’s “Scream Queens.” “This is straight-up horror drama. It’s definitely less of my comedic side, more of my dark side,” she said. “I do have emotions this time, which is really exciting.”
Other cast members lined up for this season include Emma Roberts, Evan Peters, Billy Eichner, and Lena Dunham.
Paulson said she doesn’t know how this season will end, adding that in the past, she’s been told the ending but it’s changed as the season has gone along. Asked about her character’s “love story” with Peters, which Murphy teased on Instagram, she said, “I think it’s going to reveal itself in surprising ways.”
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Post by Ripley on Aug 18, 2017 17:02:57 GMT -5
THR "...Week One CULT ID NO. 1438: It's official, THR has joined the Cult. Initiation week serves as an invitation to "join us" and, in typical Murphy fashion, the courtship seems to be defined by a less-is-more approach. Creating intrigue and playing to viewers' curiosity, the cult signup is marked official after a variation of a brief chat with one of the cult leaders — as the group is only speaking in the royal "we" for now. "You were afraid. We are here to remove that fear. We are here to free you," reads the welcome message via Facebook's messenger app — similar to the first official promo. Encouraged to ask only one question, their answer to what this is all about remains vague: "You will learn. Now is time to commit. You will be contacted again." Courtesy Photo What is known about the 11-episode season is that it will be set in Michigan and that the Trump-Clinton election will be used as a jumping point for a season that plans to highlight "people who don't have a voice in our culture," Murphy told THR. Adding, "People who are ignored by the current administration and who are afraid and feel terrorized that their lives are going to be taken away." Week one provides a first look at those who have felt ignored...." www.hollywoodreporter.com/amp/live-feed/american-horror-story-cult-season-7-plot-details-spoilers-cast-characters-1024732Video linked
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Post by Ripley on Aug 21, 2017 19:05:04 GMT -5
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Post by Ripley on Aug 27, 2017 9:23:34 GMT -5
Variety
"‘American Horror Story: Cult’: Ryan Murphy Talks Donald Trump, Lena Dunham and the ‘Cult of Personality’
Executive Editor, TV Debra Birnbaum Executive Editor, TV @debrabirnbaum American Horror Story Cult opening creditsYOUTUBE SCREENSHOT AUGUST 25, 2017 | 07:34PM PT Judging from the trailer, it’s clear “American Horror Story: Cult” is going to address the presidential election. But executive producer Ryan Murphy cautioned fans that it’s not what they expect. “I think people have the wrong idea about what it’s going to be, but that’s because people know my politics,” said Murphy in a Q&A with FX CEO John Landgraf after a preview of the first three episodes of the new season.”
“It’s not about Trump, it’s not about Clinton,” he explained. “It’s about somebody with the wherewithal to put their finger up to the wind and see that that’s what happening and using that to rise up and form power. And use people’s vulnerabilities about how they’re feeling afraid… and they feel like the world is on fire.”
Added Murphy, “Yes, the jumping-off point of the show is election night, and the characters have very strong points of view about Trump and Clinton, but it really is not about them. It really is about the rise of a cult of personality that can rise in a divided society.”
Murphy said that for many past seasons, the runner-up idea has been Charles Manson and the Manson family. “But it never felt right to me, because it’s been done a million times, and I didn’t know how to make it fresh,” he said. “But I kept coming back to the idea of the cult of personality.” This season he finally gets a chance to explore that. Evan Peters — in what Murphy says is the “best performance” of his career — will play a series of cult leaders, including the fictional Kai Anderson, Charles Manson, Jim Jones, David Koresh, and Andy Warhol. “We really examine how those people rise to power and why did people follow them,” he said.
RELATED American Horror Story Cult Trailer ‘American Horror Story: Cult’ Trailer Teases Consequences of 2016 Election
He also revealed details about Lena Dunham’s character: She’ll play Valerie Solanas, the woman who tried to assassinate Warhol. She’ll appear in episode 7, which is titled “Valerie Solanas Died for Your Sins, Scumbag.”
“That episode is about the female rage then and in the country now,” he said. “[Solanas] told women to kill all men, and that was the only way you could rise to power.”
This season also stars Sarah Paulson and Allison Pill as a married couple, along with Billy Eichner, Leslie Grossman, Billie Lourd, Cheyenne Jackson — as well as John Carroll Lynch reprising his infamous role as “Twisty the Clown.” Emma Roberts will return this season as a Michigan newscaster who is promoted above Adina Porter’s character “simply because she’s much more superficial and willing to do what it takes to survive,” and he said he was confident other “AHS” alums like Jessica Lange and Kathy Bates would eventually return to the franchise. “I’m sure she’ll be back some day,” he said of Lange. “It’s a very fluid way of working to have a group of people you love and can bring back and forth.”
RELATED Billie Lourd, Alison Pill and Sarah PaulsonFX The Women of 'American Horror Story' panel, TCA Summer Press Tour, Los Angeles, USA - 09 Aug 2017 ‘American Horror Story: Cult’ Will Focus on ‘What’s Going on in Our World’
Landgraf said while “Asylum” has been his favorite season to date, but based on what he’s seen, he says “Cult” has taken its place. He added, too, that trailer views have set record levels. This season is also the most grounded of them all, they revealed — there are none of the supernatural elements that appeared in seasons past.
Murphy was asked if he thought Trump would tweet in response to the show. “I would hope that he would have more important things to do,” he said. “I know he’s always been obsessed with the entertainment industry. All I can do is I can only be in charge of my side of the street….I think the work speaks for itself. I would be so shocked if he did — and yet not.”
Murphy said the season was fueled by his own anxiety over the election, which fueled much discussion in the writers’ room. “I’ve loved this season because the writers’ rooms have been so volcanic and emotional,” he said.
Added Murphy, “I’ll ask the writers’ room who they voted for Emmy awards, but I’ll never ask who they voted for president.”
And he said this season does represent both sides and that everybody is fair game. “Part of being an artist is being able to write about the world you live in and the times that you’ve been a part of,” he said. “We’ve been very careful to be fair…We’re not burning people in effigy.”
“American Horror Story: Cult” premieres on FX on September 5."
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Post by Ripley on Sept 4, 2017 14:57:24 GMT -5
A breakdown of the season premiere. walkingdeadrules "WaPo Horror Story: Cult.” (Frank Ockenfels/FX)
President Trump’s election last year immediately sent audiences and critics on a hunt for political themes in current TV shows, movies, literature and songs — parsing the content for vital resonance or meaning or yet another chance to use the phrase “now more than ever.” Outrage is easy to find when you’re looking for it, so it hardly mattered that most of the scripted TV shows on the receiving end of this fresh scrutiny had been in production months before the election, which means that any real-life politics layered on them were almost entirely in the eyes of their beholders.
Hulu’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” for one very good example, was completed and on its way regardless of the 2016 election outcome. Trump’s rhetorical talent for stirring the fascist beast that lurks within the national character merely helped the show seem more conceivable and therefore more frightening.
Now, 10 months after the election and on the brink of the fall TV season, we have what amounts to our first big drama that explicitly addresses the only person we ever talk about anymore. It’s “American Horror Story: Cult,” the seventh iteration of Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk’s FX anthology series of sicko, scary tales that aim to both celebrate and subvert the horror genre. No subtext about it — this time the horror is the president.
Deploying their perfected weaponry (camp, irony and gore, along with a sadomasochistic mandate that nothing is ever truly taboo), Murphy, Falchuk and company deliver a premise that’s as blunt as it can possibly be, but also satirically sly in the way it holds a mirror up to the double standards on either extreme of the political spectrum.
The first episode of “Cult” (premiering Tuesday) wastes no time setting itself up: It’s the oh-so-long-ago night of Nov. 8, 2016, and a group of friends has gathered to watch election returns at the tastefully yuppified small-town Michigan home of Ally and Ivy Mayfair-Richards (Sarah Paulson and Alison Pill), a nice lesbian couple who run a successful locavore restaurant on a quaint Main Street nearby.
Stoked for a Hillary Clinton victory, the women and their friends are instead subjected to the live nightmare of Trump’s triumph — and it is indeed portrayed with such screaming and weeping and cursing of statistician Nate Silver that it terrifies Ally and Ivy’s nerdy young son, Oz (Cooper Dodson), who asks if his mommies will be able to stay married.
“Oh God, Ivy,” wails Ally, with each new realization. “Merrick Garland! What’s going to happen to Merrick Garland?!”
“Cult” also zeros in on the immediate blame and recrimination: How could this happen? What went wrong? Because they live in a district in which Clinton crucially lost by a mere 10,000 votes, one of their party guests blames his wife for surfing Pinterest all day instead of voting. Even worse (and I caution that the rest of this sentence merits a slight spoiler alert), it turns out that someone in the Mayfair-Richards household didn’t pull the lever for Clinton in the voting booth.
Twisty is back in the latest season of “American Horror Story.” (Everett Collection/FX Networks)
The outcome sends Ally, who has struggled with phobias and anxiety for years, on a downward spiral. Remember in 2016 when Americans were briefly gripped by a spate of coulrophobia (the fear of clowns) and started seeing and reporting creepy clowns stalking their communities? “American Horror Story” certainly remembers and considers the Trump victory a splendid time to capitalize on it. Not only have they brought back Twisty the Clown (a memorably murderous character from a previous season), but they’ve also sent in all the clowns, who act as a kind of Manson family, leaving smiley faces painted in blood at their crime scenes. Ally starts seeing them everywhere, even in her grocery store, where the only other person around is a gloating cashier in his red Make America Great Again baseball cap.
Across town, the Trump victory has electrified Kai Anderson (Evan Peters), a twisted young man who exalts in the moment, smearing his face with orange Cheetos dust and styling his dyed-blue hair into a Trumpian pompadour. Kai begins to menacingly assert his power as one of the president-elect’s “forgotten” Americans — free to taunt his community with politically incorrect remarks and aggressive behavior while he campaigns to fill a newly vacant city council seat, as the previous occupant has been gruesomely murdered.
Ally is one of Kai’s favorite lefties to intimidate, and as she sends up all kinds of warning flares, both her therapist (Cheyenne Jackson) and her wife tell her she’s being paranoid. Her increasing desperation leads her down a path of extremism that she had previously deplored in others. Before she knows it, she’s a gun owner being accused of white privilege.
Whether she’s seeing things clearly or not, Ally’s world is changing in front of her. A weird and brash couple (Billy Eichner and Leslie Grossman) moves in across the street, saying and doing things that seem designed to further provoke Ally’s anxieties; same goes for Oz’s creepy new part-time nanny (Billie Lourd) who, unbeknown to Ally and Ivy, is working alongside Kai.
The most notable aspect of “Cult” is how it seems to mock Ally’s constant state of panic, as if sending a message to anti-Trump worrywarts relentlessly crying those sweet liberal tears: Get a grip already and stop freaking out over every last Trump tweet and executive order. At the same time, the show gives a compelling, visionary shape to the monstrous aspect of American discourse in 2017 — a literal manifestation of the bubbling, roiling evils of racism, homophobia, xenophobia and hate. The show is here to justify your revulsion.
Sarah Paulson as Ally Mayfair-Richards in FX's “American Horror Story: Cult.” (Frank Ockenfels/FX)
It would be nice to be able to declare all of this to be a brilliant and timely effort to process our world, but “Cult” brings with it many of the problems that have plagued past seasons of “American Horror Story.” The show has never been known for its restraint, favoring a fire-ready-aim approach to storytelling that causes a typical season to swerve from episodes that are disturbingly wonderful to episodes that seem like time-consuming detours.
Nuance is never a factor when Murphy and his team are at their most unhinged; the only selling point is the show’s constant cleverness and commitment to form. They never worry about laying things on too thick; consequently, “American Horror Story” always lays things on too thick, which gets tiresome for anyone who wanted a story instead of a carnival ride. The first three episodes of “Cult” made available for this review are just a hint of what’s to come in a world gone mad with Trump and killer clowns — and they leave a lot of room for improvement.
As smart and topical as this show could be, the plot begins to sputter and wheeze way too soon; in trying to come up with the scariest thing it can think of, “Cult” is oddly low on the sort of chills that would keep a viewer up at night. Even with the idea of the president as a constant (if theoretical) boogeyman, it’s difficult to sustain the sort of energy it takes to live in constant fear of him or what he’ll do. And once a viewer gets past that, the unfortunate truth is that this “American Horror Story” is just another slasher tale that features a bunch of bad clowns.
American Horror Story: Cult (one hour) premieres Tuesday at 10 p.m. on FX.
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Post by Ripley on Sept 6, 2017 10:02:54 GMT -5
Slate
"In the near-year since Donald Trump was elected president, it has become a popular parlor game to see him and the larger cultural trends that elected him in our every fiction. I Spy Donald Trump in The Handmaid’s Tale. I Spy Donald Trump in Manchester by the Sea. I Spy Donald Trump in Taylor Swift’s “Look What You Made Me Do.” I Spy Donald Trump everywhere. If it sometimes takes a magnifying glass or the will of a workaholic semiotician to espy the Donald’s trace, that dusting of orange, in every piece of entertainment, he is as easy to spot as a blenderful of Cheetos in American Horror Story: Cult, the seventh installment of FX’s gonzo camp anthology series. In the season’s opening moments, Cheetos are, in fact, blended and then smeared all over an antisocial basement dweller’s face, in homage to his newly elected hero.
Willa Paskin WILLA PASKIN Willa Paskin is Slate’s television critic.
Past seasons of AHS have featured serial killers, ghosts, aliens, exorcisms, the Holocaust, freaks, torture, witches, vampires, slavery, and clowns. With remarkable speed, Ryan Murphy has added MAGA to this rotation of terror, hip to the sentiment that Trump’s election is the horror story from which we cannot wake. The new president is a nightmare for Cult’s protagonist, well-heeled lesbian and all-around phobic Ally Mayfair-Richards (Murphy’s muse, Sarah Paulson), who cannot tell if she is hallucinating murderous clowns because the election has destabilized her or if murderous clowns are actually on the loose. (Guess which!)
Advertisement Through the first four episodes, Cult forswears the large time jumps that have been a staple of the series, focusing on the election and the weeks before and after it. The season begins on election night in Michigan, juxtaposing the viewing party of Ally and her wife Ivy (Allison Pill) as they stare at the returns, emitting the common refrain, “Fuck you Nate Silver!” and that of Kai Anderson (Evan Peterson), a blue-haired, crazy-eyed Trump voter who reacts to the results by humping his flat screen.
Kai is not your average MAGA-er, but a wannabe ubermensch who believes, qua FDR, the only thing to fear is fear itself, and so, qua a maniac, opts to terrorize people. (He puts his blue hair up in a man bun when he’s trying to be presentable: It works.) Kai wants chaos to reign, so that power is freely handed over to people like him. To achieve his goal, he attracts various furious and lonely people into his orbit, and incites them to violence. He also, just as an example, throws condoms full of urine at a group of Hispanic men, yells slurs at them, and then tapes the ensuing beatdown for the local news. “President Trump called them criminals and rapists and he was viciously attacked by PC police!” Kai says at the resulting press conference, in which he announces a run for city council.
Unsurprisingly, though, it is not Cult’s take on Trump voters that has any real frisson. Murphy doesn’t respect that point of view enough to make it sound like anything other than raving semi-philosophy. But the show is more scathing about liberals and Ally in particular. She and Ivy run a restaurant called The Butchery on Main and refer to our former president as “Barack.” Despite wailing “What about Merrick Garland!” on election eve, Ally voted for Jill Stein in the privacy of the voting booth—not a great ally, really. She finds herself aligning more and more with a MAGA worldview as her life comes apart Since Glee, Murphy has always saved his harshest insults for the characters he loves most, and he has a secondary character level at Ally the possibly accurate, identity politics–exploding dig, “Hello, lez, I think you are a horrible racist.”
Ally and Kai both believe the election proves they are especially attuned to America. He thinks it’s a sign it’s time for him to take power. She believes it proves she’s a barometer of America, her phobias a reflection of its rottenness. She tells her therapist that the election has left her vindicated: “My entire being was telling me the world is fucked up. The election made it worse.” They are both egoists. The election is all about them.
And where does that leave us, the audience? Horror, when it works, makes us scream and jerk and cover our eyes. When it’s over, we’re creeped out, worked up, rattled, and relieved. The bogeymen—the cults, the clowns, the serial killers, the blue man bun—retreat to a cathartic distance, even if it’s only outside our front door. But the scariest thing about American Horror Story, the world we are actually living in, remains even after you turn it off."
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Post by Ripley on Sept 7, 2017 15:08:33 GMT -5
walkingdeadrules"TV Ratings: 'American Horror Story: Cult' Debut Down From Last Season's Premiere" American Horror Story: Cult's debut episode was down from last season's premiere of the FX anthology series from Ryan Murphy. On Sept. 5, the show pulled 3.93 million viewers and a 2.02 rating among adults 18 to 49. That number marks a 24 percent drop from the total number of viewers that tuned in to the Sept. 14, 2016, premiere of American Horror Story: Roanoke. In the key demo, the rating dipped by 29 percent. Still, the episode was the highest rated in cable and the second-highest-rated original series on TV that night, following NBC's America's Got Talent..." linkI don't know if you want to set up a topic for ratings? This is your area, so, of course, you decide how you want things to be.
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