I knew there must be at least one other Ed Wood fan around here.
Posted on 05/31/2003 7:54:16 AM PDT by I_Love_My_Husband
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May 23 2003 |
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By David Edwards |
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EVEN by Hollywood's bizarre standards, it's a tale that for sheer weirdness, is right off the scale. The Matrix Reloaded may be wowing audiences with its spectacular special effects and technology but its director and mastermind is busy creating another set of fireworks. Larry Wachowski has abandoned his wife of nine years - childhood sweetheart Thea - to pursue a sado-masochistic relationship with a dominatrix. Now he's being sued by his estranged wife, who is furious after she was asked to help pay for a luxury lovenest for the couple.
BESOTTED: Larry Wachowski with Karin in Los Angeles Thea Bloom has already convinced a Los Angeles judge to sign an order which means Wachowski won't earn another penny from the film - which has grossed $134million in the first week of its US release - and its sequel until he comes clean about his finances. "Larry has been extremely dishonest with me in our personal life," she says, "and I believe he is hiding information from me regarding our financial affairs. "I confronted him about the companies having received almost $16million (£10m) which I didn't know about. He admitted they'd received large amounts but that there was hardly any left. "He has no understanding of his legal obligations to me and now wants me to co-operate in his purchase of a $2.7million (£1.6m) home in San Francisco." The order was made a day before Wachowski attended Reloaded's premiere at the Cannes Film Festival last week. Sporting dangly earrings and a knitted cap, he was accompanied by 36-year-old Karin Winslow - a well-known sado-masochistic dominatrix, who had just left her trans-sexual husband and taken on Wachowski as her "slave". WATCHING the Cannes highlights at his flat in New Orleans was her estranged husband, Jake Miller. "I want people to know the truth," he says. "When Larry walked down that red carpet with my wife he was probably wearing a bra and panties under his suit. "He's been cross-dressing for years and everybody knows it. But in Hollywood, money talks. And if you are a director of a hit like The Matrix, you can get away with anything. I hope Larry is man enough to admit who - or what - he is." Jake's claims might go some way to explaining the secrecy which Wachowski - and his brother Andy - have always cloaked themselves in. "We don't like the idea of selling ourselves," says Andy, 35, who co-directed the films, which star Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne and Carrie-Anne Moss. Even growing up, the brothers made little impression on teachers at the Whitney Young High School in Chicago. Physics teacher Michael McIntosh says: "Nobody really has any specific memories of them - they seemed to keep themselves to themselves." Born to a businessman father and a mother who worked as a nurse, the brothers went to university but dropped out to work in housepainting, carpentry, construction and comic-book writing. Then, in 1984, Larry fell for Thea, finally marrying her nine years later. The brothers eventually hit paydirt with Assassins, which was made into a film starring Sylvester Stallone, and later with Bound. In 1998, the studios gave them the green light to create The Matrix. Set in a future where machines have enslaved humans in a virtual reality, the film easily overshadowed the Star Wars prequel, The Phantom Menace and made the brothers "players" overnight. In 2000, Wachowski and Thea bought a £1.1million house in Venice, LA. It might have seemed an extravagance but Wachowski was about to become very rich. For the two Matrix sequels, the brothers were promised £10million which they would split 50-50. They also earned an advance of £1.5million for the video game and got a cut of the box-office receipts. It was a year after moving to LA that Wachowski first walked into The Dungeon fetish club. It was there he met Karin, who was earning £156 an hour whipping and beating clients. Karin first experimented with S&M after leaving school and by then had become one of the most famous dominatrixes in the city. In one interview, she said: "My favourite activities range from worshipping my stiletto heel to piercing, rope-suspension bondage and bullwhipping." At the time, she was happily married to Jake, who, although born a girl, underwent a sex-change operation in 1995, three years before he married Karin. JAKE, now 40, stresses: "What she did was not prostitution. There were three rooms set up to cater for every fetish. They were filled with whips and chains and sex toys. "Karin had never appeared starstruck before but she told me: 'The director of The Matrix came to see me today!' "A few days later, Karin told me she had a special client and we went into the bondage room and there was this man lying there in a dress, no panties and blonde wig. "Karin said: 'That's Larry Wachowski.' I said hello and told him he looked pretty. Karin said Larry wanted to be called Lana and, from then on, that was his name." Unknown to Jake, Karin became infatuated with her client and when Wachowski left for Australia in August 2001, he begged her to go with him. "By this stage, I knew she was falling in love with him," says Jake. "I let her go to Australia because I was scared of losing her. When she got back, things had changed. She told me Larry worshipped her. "She said Larry's favourite colour is pink and that he loves wearing leather skirts. He is also obsessed with Marilyn Monroe and spiky heels." The trio met up at a nightclub to try to resolve the situation but, recalls Jake, it ended in failure. "They walked in looking like giant drag queens. Larry could barely look me in the eye. Karin said, 'Lana's feeling very shy tonight'. It was a disaster and I left. That's when I realised my marriage was over." Karin last spoke to Jake a week ago, when she told him of their plans to buy a home in San Francisco - the plan which finally made Thea snap. Jake says: "Karin also told me Larry was taking hormone pills. When you look at the picture of them on the red carpet, he looks feminine." Today, Larry and Karin share a mansion in Venice, yards from the home he had with Thea, and he isn't getting any more out-going. "I didn't know he had anything to do with The Matrix," says one neighbour. "I don't see them that much as they stay indoors." The Wachowskis have always shunned the limelight, insisting on a no-publicity clause in contracts. But as lawyers prepare for Larry's showdown with Thea, he's now learning that there is no such thing as a Hollywood life out of the spotlight. |
I knew there must be at least one other Ed Wood fan around here.
(g) My kids have a new expression, they kind of squeak "Thanks for sharing" in a singsong voice. Picked it up from some cartoon--It's always good for a laugh.
I did really like that rescue of the Keymaker, with that French guy being so disgusting...was he the program for Jaques Chirac? Would like to see Persephone developed as a character.
The bare feet have some sort of significance that I haven't figured out yet. If you'll remember, when the kid that sort of worships Neo was running to the huge cavern where Morpheus was about to give his speech, he hurriedly took off his shoes for some reason. I'm still puzzling over that one.
Yeah, I never saw it as an orgy either. I couldn't figure out why people were describing it as such. But at any rate, I noted the directors focused on the sweat, bare feet and mud. Maybe something symbolic in there- who knows. Maybe it'll turn up in the next movie.
I didn't think that scene was that long personally. It seemed like it lasted about 15 or 20 seconds- it was over before I knew it at any rate. The freeway chase scene was a little long for my tastes but I guess that's what it's all about isn't it? Personal taste.
I don't have a television and it's been over a decade since I saw any American television but over here, you would see much more graphic sex scenes on normal television (than in the Matrix)- I mean much more graphic. Nudity is common on British television. Is it that way on American television? Do the daytime soaps not have sex scenes? Just curious. And like I mentioned about the ballet earlier- there was nudity on the stage and many small children in the audience. How does that work in the States? Or would that ballet be banned?
(I thought Trinity and Neo were wrestling. Looked like he had her pinned...) ;-)
Regular cable offerings do not have nudity, that I'm aware of...but so many new stations enter the picture that I can't keep track of them. I filter out network TV, and put up with some rather vulgar cartoons that my kids like.
"Spirited Away" was truly excellent.
However, Matrix II is dark, pagan and depressing.
We should remember there are forces in the entertainment industry, as elsewhere, who benefit from destroying people publicly as well as obliterating any lingering trace of morality.
Mike Ovitz said the gay mafia was out to get him, his wife and his children.
I believe him. It happens daily, and nowhere more successfully than in Hollywood.
Pod People live, and they're often dressed in lavender.
That is a matter of opinion though, isn't it?
We've all got our opinions and they all stink- yours included ;-)
It's all about perspective.
Some modern dance is really nice. I wouldn't want to live in a world where all dance had to be in the classical form. I like classical as well but I certainly wouldn't want my choices limited to it. I like a few options myself. A little room for interpretation.
I don't know how far I'd go in describing all forms of modern dance as 'ballet' per se, but clearly, much of it is. Last night's ballet opened with a bit called 'Hurricane'. Set to Bob Dylan's song of the same title. Overtly political. The perfomance could just as well have been done in a city square by a street performer- it carried the same effect. The dancer's interpretation was interesting but it wouldn't have ever occurred to me to label it ballet and it wasn't what I paid to see (which was Ghost Dances- which was ballet).
Pathetic as ever.
What's your take on "Bruce Almighty?" I haven't seen it yet.
Carrey amazes me with his ability to turn ridiculous plots into hilarity.
When he's good, he's wonderful. But when he's bad, he's terrible, like in "Cable Guy" and anything with Rene Zellweger.
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