The Shadows Know...

While Adrienne G. was the most notable and most (almost) decorated person working with Spyglass View, she was, of course, not the only person making films for them. As a much smaller studio, Spyglass View tended to have, on its various labels, anywhere from three to six releases per year for the whole group. (Paramount, by contrast, has 15 releases scheduled for the current year as of this writing.) One of the other directors working with Spyglass View, Trinh Yoonji Hye, along with screenplay and story author Brook Auspoussin, after making a series of smaller but relatively successful films, got the assignment to take on Spyglass View's first foray into a major superheroic type of character.

ELIZABETH EDINBURGH, head of the Spyglass View Group: Oh my, getting everything cleared up to work with the Shadow was so MESSY! We originally thought that it wouldn't be that bad, because almost everything to do with him happened at least two copyright regimes ago. The character was technically out of copyright, the visual elements had been introduced on the covers for the original novels and short stories, so they were out of copyright, the radio plays hadn't been produced in 50 years, so they were out of copyright ... but then there was that movie with Alec Baldwin. And then there were more recent comic books.We had to look at what characters we were doing, and which elements we were using, because anything that was new to the movie or new to the comics was something we couldn't use without clearance. We wound up doing negotiations to get the rights to use things that we knew we would use, things we thought we wouldn't use but wanted to have available just in case, things we weren't sure about ... it took ages. That's one of the reasons for the extremely streamlined budget. We needed to do a superhero nobody really cared that much about, and we needed it not to be a special effects monster. We had to have a truly solid script with good character writing, and good character work.

Once everything was cleared, of course, the screenplay had to be written.

BROOK AUSPOUSSIN, screenwriter: I started working on the base story with Trinh, and as part of that we looked at the old stories, we looked at some of the movie to see what it was ... and we realized we had an issue. The Shadow is very much of his time. So for the older works, that means a lot of anti-Asian, anti-Japanese sentiment, with just a dollop of Asian mysticism added. The movie -- kind of surprisingly for its time -- went heavily into both the evil Asian and mystic Asian tropes, usually at the same time. And, well, even if I'd been willing to write it, Trinh wasn't having any of that. So we had to reshape the story to a sort of ... mysterious mysticism, rooted in family history. The first -- first-Ish -- Shadow, the one we know of from the original stories, Lamont Cranston the first, got his abilities and powers from ... somewhere. The originals never bother to explain beyond "mysterious powers from the East", so we didn't either. Then we had a second Shadow, his son, who was active during the 1950s and 1960s, who clearly got his powers from his father. Then a third, active in the 1970s through the nineties, who got his powers from *his* father. And then our guy, the fourth Cranston in the direct line. And that's it. That's all the origin we gave it. Runs in the family. When our story starts, the eldest Cranston, the first Shadow, has just finally died at the age of 105 or something like that. And on his death, his Shadow powers pass to the oldest direct descendants who aren't already using them.  And, of course, superhero stuff, villains, all that. But, of course, our biggest twist was saved for near the end. Trinh should tell you about that, because it was her idea.

TRINH YOONJI HYE, director: We already knew we wanted to have a more diverse cast, in a non-exotic Asian way. And the Etta sisters came to mind. EJ Etta had been working in other films in a smaller way, and was poised to break out big soon. Her sister, Querube, had been doing modeling work, and commercials and we thought it would work really well to have sisters in the film, to have an actual visible family element that the audience would know about. So we brought EJ in to read for the role of Margo, and Querube to read for her sister Alice. And we immediately ran into a huge issue. We'd already cast Andre Phoenix, who started out as a dancer, and he had done an ad for PHFT a while back, and then had moved on to some smaller parts. We knew he'd be right for the role. So there he was reading with EJ, and there was... nothing. No chemistry, nothing. Now, for obvious reasons, given where the script ultimately goes, we didn't want hot-and-heavy chemistry, but their chemistry was so absent that you couldn't even believe that their characters would like each other as friends.

We had Querube in to read for the part of her sister's sister. She was just starting to make the move from modeling to acting, so she thought a small role, where she'd have the security blanket of her sister to help her through, would be great to start. And it was ... just not how she meant. I mean, her reading with her sister was fine, of course. And then someone had the bright idea to have her read with Andre, just to see what would happen. And it was like the skies opened, and the heavenly choir came down to annoint her as the one true star or something. Not only did they have chemistry together, but they actually seemed to enjoy each other, to have fun with the reading.  So of course, first we had to let EJ know she didn't get the part, and that was awkward, but I don't think it surprised her any. But then, on her own, she asked to read for the role of the sister, and since we were already thinking of giving Querube the role of the main female character, that was just ... it was about as perfect as it could get. Of course, things were a little awkward at first, but they were both professionals and it settled out quickly.

Initially, we thought Querube would need a lot of work to be able to handle her part of the stunts, so we got her a trainer. Come the end of the first day, we get a call from the trainer, asking why we hadn't told him she had a brown belt in judo. And of course, we hadn't known. We asked her what she did, and she only mentioned the usual gym sorts of stuff. It turns out that she's one of those people who is very athletic but somehow doesn't look it, like Queen Latifah.

The big deal, of course, was the final twist near at the end. Everyone was used to Margo Lane being the Shadow's girlfriend and sidekick. She stands around looking glamorous, she gets to be a distraction for the bad guys, she's his sounding board, she helps him set up the bad guys. And we kept all that. We also wanted people thinking of them as sort of a couple at first, even though we had a few instances of them being asked and reacting like, "Ew, yuck! We grew up together! It would be like doing something with my brother, or sister!" At the same time, we were very careful to make sure that she was doing a lot of the physical stuff -- doing it in a way that would make people think, "Oh, they're just expanding her role because people think differently about women's roles in these sorts of things." And yeah, that was part of it. But the payoff was that big scene near the end. It's not just that the role of the Shadow is dynastic or genetic, but we had a villain that worked the same way. The father against the first Cranston, the son against the second, the granddaughter against the third, and now her daughters against Andre's Shadow. They get the drop on the father and grandfather, and Andre's Shadow has to rescue them, and of course Margo goes with him. And when the father and grandfather watch her work, they realize that she is one of the Shadows herself.

Andre's father had had an affair with Margo's mother when his wife was pregnant with Andre, through a very difficult pregnancy. She died giving birth to him, and he was raised by his father along with his grandmother -- played by Agnes Phoenix, who is actually Andre's ... great-aunt, I think. What none of them knew -- at least not for certain -- was that Margo's mother had also gotten pregnant by him. Since she was a married woman, it was possible that Margo's father was the man she was married to. Nobody knew for certain until she used the Shadow powers to help rescue them. Those only work for the direct line, so that clearly meant that Margo and Lamont Charles Cranston -- Charlie -- were brother and sister. And, of course, the last scene is the two of them on a rooftop, both in full Shadow regalia. We thought about doing the posters or other publicity with her in costume, but that would have destroyed the big reveal.

The advantage for a studio like Spyglass View of doing something like the shadow is that it could be done without a back-breaking CGI budget. Nobody expected The Shadows Know to be a special effects extravaganza. As a result, it could be made for a surprisingly tidy $65 million -- an upper end of the usual SVS budget -- and made $300 million domestic and $750 million international and domestic combined.

-- I. Noah Lott, professor of current history, comparative and modern mythology and modern media studies, Serenity Falls University, Hollywood Roars, book 2: the story of one little studio and how it couldn't before it could.

* * * * * * * * * *

So. The facts were these: Meshitup released the DM (Dark Man) Suit, and the idea for "The Shadows Know" leapt into my head. But I've got Adrienne G's storyline planned out for some time to come -- with dates, even -- and there was absolutely no way she could do it. As it stands, her typical work year, she has one film in active production, she's writing another, and she's got another in editing and post. And she does that for YEARS. There's no way she could fit another one in. But ... it occurred to me that, unless they were a really really tiny studio, Spyglass View would have multiple productions with multiple directors and writers all at once. The main throughline is going to stay with Adrienne G., but there are going to be other films and productions to give a fuller view of what exactly Elizabeth Edinborough is doing with her studio. (She has plans. Oh, yes she does. And eventually, you'll get to see her, and She Will Reveal All ... but not yet. We're also going to loop back in time to 2012 [... I think] to see 102-year-old Edinburgh himself, but that won't have anything to do with anything relevant.) Anything to do with the other directors is probably going to be undated for now, and then I'll come back and figure out sequence later.

The other thing was that a specific image I had done came into my head as a scene from the beginning of the film. Only ... I couldn't find it. Not only that, but the master file had been lost in the (say it with me!) Great EnDUFening Meltdown, so I couldn't re-render. I had to redo it, and that will be seen momentarily.

We have, of course, seen Querube Etta before. (I had to tame her hair in favor of evoking period without actually being period, alas. She's wearing 50s Hollywood Hair and the RPublishing Black Lust suit, which is startlingly versatile.) We've also seen Andre before, but that will also be discussed momentarily, since it's more appropriate there. Set is, as the poster notes, Urban Sprawl 3. Or, more properly, its rooftops. (That scene was almost ready to render just before Urban Sprawl 3 came out. Needless to say, things changed drastically.)

Because EJ Etta isn't known yet, this takes place before Femmes Fatales; how long before, I know not.