I know her story is compelling, especially to those who it rings close to their own lived experience, resonating at a deep level, even soothing, healing, someone else who understands and gets the shared trauma.
BUT...I also know that Sharon Stone is a professional actress. And a very good one, to put it mildly. A top of her profession actress. In Hollywood performers often will lean into controversial subjects, reveal sympathetic life arc's and whatnot for the PR they calculate to drive attention to their work...that they are paid for and have legacies they wish to build and leave behind. Any attention being good attention and all.
To completely surrender over to her interview and say 100% she doesn't lie is a stretch for me. She has said many things over the course of her public life that are opportunistic to advance her career.
I do not know if that is the case in the interview you are highlighting. But no one but Sharon Stone herself and the person's she names know if she is lying. Nobody else, no matter how much we want to believe it, who we can see ourselves in her shoes and appreciate that she's telling her story, laud her bravery.
I'm old enough to remember when Duke Lacrosse team members were destroyed by allegations of racist, sexist abuse. And when the allegations were revealed to be lies the accuser was still lauded because her accusations alone resonated with many who wanted to believe her and said they didn't care that she made it all up, that the controversy and trial of the team members "raised awareness" and therefore served a greater good.
I appreciate the sentiment you are conveying, the truths you carry, and the truths that Stone *may* also carry. But I won't suspend my judgement of her credibility because of an assertion that she doesn't lie. It's logical to be leery of any and everything that skilled professional actors say. Just sayin'.
Its surely about the perfecting techniques of social delegitimisation ,meter'd out by those who ventriloquise rather than allow 'any other narrative '?
Celia, you may not be aware, but Substack rolled out a new AI comment moderator and is hiding comments automatically. Per Alex Berenson, you should be able to turn it off on your end. Just an FYI because I see it is hiding things here.
Here's an explanation of what Facebook...errr...Substack just did that I put together from investigating it today after my comments started being shadow-banned...errr...automatically moderated:
I go over the how's and what's to be done, and the ramifications that go beyond Celia having an automatic moderator of comments on her Stack. The Substack Chatbot revealed some insights about what Substack's 'community standards' are that comments violate. Which means that Substack's 'community standards' also apply to individual Stacks, effectively shadow-banning them across the platform in the same way that comments get shadow-banned on individual stacks. Errr..."automatically moderated."
Any Substack author who retains Facebook's....errr...Substack's 'community standards' for comment moderation supports Substack's idea of what speech should be permitted in the broader community. Period. As tempting as it might be, retaining it is consent to your own muzzle. If you wish to moderate comments the new 'feature' allows authors to customize the moderation. If individual authors like Celia do that then at least it will reveal what their values and beliefs about free speech are, and readers can draw any conclusions they wish from that. But the "automated moderation" is blanket agreement and consent to the same exact censorship policies that Facebook, Twitter and ever other controlled speech platform has.
I strongly encourage Celia to turn off the "automatic moderation" toggle on her Stack's controls (how-to described on my Stack). And if she wishes to avail herself of the comment moderation feature to design a customized version.
Free speech isn't shadow-banned speech. Despite Elon Musk's assertion when he bought Twitter that it is, "freedom of speech isn't freedom of reach." He proclaimed. Bullocks!
This is a VERY touchy topic given Stone was said to be a pathological liar by her husband and by a judge. She has made up her brain stroke, her double mastectomy, cervical cancer, and her IQ. She infamously claimed of her breast tumors - “One of them was bigger than the size of my entire left breast,” She makes outrageous claims for attention. Of course - an impossibility. Coming from a two time breast cancer patient. She lost custody of her adopted child because the courts felt she was unfit... due to the fact that her statements were not realistic...
But then she said, I think, that biopsies were negative. So, was a mastectomy done? She was waving her hand over her upper chest, where breast cancer does not usually show up, when she said how big the tumor was. Plus, her stories about being beaten by the father, yet speaking of him in praise, just seems odd. It seems to me that if a parent attempts to destroy the personhood of a child by violence, that child would be less likely to praise the personhood of the adult.
Thank you Celia~I am an avid movie buff since a teenager~That is Sharon Stone without a doubt~I have watched and enjoyed most movies she has made~whether she has manufactured, elaborated or outright lied about her life story, what has she to gain in doing so? I am in my 70's and am contemplating writing my life story very honestly from my perspective according to my life experience to share a very full life, the good, bad and ugly. To listen to Sharon, is not to determine whether she is lying or not, but just to pull any nuggets of wisdom from her life's journey. I don't worship her or hold her on a pedestal as an actress but I think she's just trying to share with others in hopes she might enlighten their journey and help them to evolve in their own way. Just listen people, and stop judging. You might even learn something valuable.
"Erdely admits she set out to find a sexual assault story at an elite school. She looked at lots of other colleges, but none “felt quite right,” in the words of a Washington Post media column on the piece. But UVA — which Erdely would go on to describe in the Rolling Stone article as a school without a thriving “radical feminist culture seeking to upend the patriarchy” — was just right.
Erdely wouldn’t tell the Washington Post if she made an effort to corroborate the story with Drew, let alone the pledges. Bizarrely, she won’t even say whether she knows the rapists’ real names. She seems more eager to talk about public policy than the facts she reported.
The same goes for much of the media, which have yet to independently corroborate the story, loading it instead with context about the “rape epidemic” and evidence supporting the questionable statistic that 1 in 5 college women are sexually assaulted."
THEY say "just listen people, and stop judging. You might even learn something valuable."
Sorry, not sorry. You sound like an activist apologist for "noble lies." Do you realize you and Fauci are two peas in a pod?
right, she's not mischievously leading us into war, is she? she's doing her damnedest to dredge up some memories that sustain her. if she has to embroider, so be it. make believe is how you get through the day. it's a human thing, a mammalian thing. it's no good trying to stamp it out, especially in the area of self.
anyone who's been chewed up by the Hollywood system, especially actresses.
What an unusual interviewer. He finishes her answers, as if he was impatient.
It's fun how she plays her Dad when she tells the story when she called him because her first boyfriend wanted to beat her up.
I think this woman has been a victim of organized medicine, and she doesn't know yet. It's amazing the mental bubble that California stars live in. I like movies, but I rarely research actors' lives.
I remember a movie she made, but I don't remember the title. I remember Gene Hackman was playing the bad guy. It was a western, sort of. Her character was a female gunslinger. A crossdressing theme, which is "normal" and even frequent for actresses, who knows for what reason. The movie overall was boring, an adolescent quasi-erotic quasi-comedy film. The dramatic part was not very dramatic.
In the Western genre there is a lot of depictions of what now we are calling cptsd. One film which is very good about fawning, IMHO, is "The Outlaw Josey Wales." That movie has everything, even one scene where the hero (flight-fawn type, I would argue) saves a young woman from a gang of Comanches. He is always escaping, from tragedy, from defeat and from actual persecutors. But at one point he chooses to risk death to defend his new friends, which he didn't search for and which he doesn't like. After they are safe, surprisingly through diplomacy and not through firearms, he confronts the people who are hunting him, and then he escapes, which is the classic ending of many Westerns.
I'm guessing the escapism is a male character thing, at least in western movies. They escape from potential love, not from a deadly danger. For female characters escaping is not an option, but silence is. It's possible that Sharon Stone decided to remain quiet because she sees life as a play.
“The movie is "The Quick and the Dead," a 1995 American Western film directed by Sam Raimi, starring Sharon Stone and Gene Hackman. The film features Stone as a gunfighter seeking revenge in a deadly dueling competition.”
I remember that Downton Abbey thread. I did not wonder “why?” I would be surprised if anyone watching did.
Immolation might be a decentralized rape.
Or it might be the Ahab —monopolist of “justice”— ship of centralized rapine state.
Like it was that you wrote about in Serious Adverse Events.
Like it typically is, & always has been: the original & still the wurst gender-bendering of the liver x(rated)trusion called “social” & “civilization.”
I bought, read, a copy of SAE after I saw your memoriam to Duesberg — whose dissection of one node of the tumor, I read back in the day.
Duesberg did a good job. So did you.
Either possible, but not universally necessary, immolation depends on the individuals involved.
Nature does what it does, what it can do, what it must do, with nurture. Not the other way around.
Remember also that the Downton Abby scenes were written that way.
John Bates character was drawn such that he would exact justice “honorably.”
Or, put more accurately, John Bates, bat man in the Boer war to the very same Lord Grantham, would martyr himself before Ahab’s “authority” in good stiff upper lip order … if Anna “shared.”
Not sharing was legit, strength. Because Mr. Bates “honor” wouldn’t be.
I’ve no doubt that dispensed with & disappeared rapists does not generally occur as routinely as it once did, but it does still get done.
And the “Principal-Agent” problem, that emasculates & neuters, is a designed, engineered, feature of divide & conquer bugginess pandering to “social” biology … & it destroys far more innocents —collaterally & directly— than all The Ox Bow Incidents combined ever could.
Many more than do don’t know who they are … which is the main part of who those are.
Helix is useful. Less as dna imagery, more as rotation.
People with scoliosis —also good metaphorical imagery— will also typically have rotations (attempts at compensation) along horizontal & vertical planes in pelvis/hips, shoulders, knees, ankles … one leg will be shortened … balance will be rigid fragility rather than fluid proprioception.
And over time those rotations become hasps secured by rusted padlocks.
“Who am I?” S/he points, possibly, not often tho, at rusted padlocks in answer.
But conception —birth— is key. The slate is full from then on.
“Blank slate” is more incoming “who you are (or else)” divide & conquer, “social” caste casting couch closes:
“I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille … but, what’s my motivation?””
And most parenting does not revolve around co-discovery of who a child is.
Man On Fire:
Little girl Pita Ramos says, “I’m tough, Creasy.” And he says, “There’s no such thing as tough. There’s trained & there’s untrained.”
PTSD creased gov-man, passes it on, before eventually clawing back some redemption.
(The director, Ridley’s brother Tony Scott, later threw himself off the Vincent Thomas Bridge. A different image of “Scott Free.”)
(The relevant clip has been u-toobed. Good flick.)
The Razor’s Edge is a different Groundhog Day sometimes:
“What you’ve got to be before you can be a” sumo wrestler, or “a pole vaulter, is” a sumo wrestler, or “a pole vaulter” … “desiring a thing cannot make you have it” … & that even includes desiring to know the things you do have, desiring to know who you actually are:
John Wayne planted green beret seeds of Vietnam heroism in my kiddie nervous system.
Reagan, who coulda’ been an actor but wound up there (Dirty Laundry - Don Henley), dodged me a bullet when he decided not to fire the draft machine back up …
… And that there but for the Grace of Slick go I realization dawned many years before Seth Harp’s The Fort Bragg Cartel dropped.
Entertainers are pro manipulators is what they gotta be before they can be entertainers … leave a bit of slack, always, for rule-proving exceptions.
Robert Mitchum:
“John Wayne had four inch lifts in his shoes. He had the overheads on his boat accommodated to fit him. He had a special roof put in his station wagon. The son of a bitch, they probably buried him in his goddamn lifts.”
“I gave up being serious about making pictures around the time I made a film with Greer Garson and she took a hundred and twenty-five takes to say no.”
Which none of which knocks fiction per se, but just cautions against taking its expositors too literally:
Evey Hammond. Artist Dad used lies to tell the truth. But vice versa is done, too.
Rebel rock & rollers sang some truths & then required jabs & masks … cue the before the heebie-jeebie BeeGees, & Stevie (who some Wonder might not really be blind):
such a moving witness of her own life. I didn't expect ithat sort of follksy depth from her. I couldn't take her seriously as an actress. but she's so damn gutsy, something there wasn't room for in her movies.
she made a few high-power melodramas — Basic Instinct (1992) with Michael Douglas was one of those defining moments for Hollywood. still a fun flick, cheap and effective, with an obsessive 2h 7m runtime. actually, she worked a lot, stuff I never bothered with, tv, but it's all there on imdb.com.
She references husband Phil Bronstein, editor of San Francisco Examiner. he was famously bitten by a komodo dragon at a zoo, maybe in LA. they were somewhat ridiculous, but it seems things were even worse off camera.
she got old. she's had plastic surgery, so her skin has stretched over her skull, no more baby fat. and she's smart enough not to go the botox route, thank goddess.
she actually reminds me of that super English actress, what'shername, Gosford Park... Kristin Scott Thomas.
It is 9:45 AM central standard time. It is Saturday, June 6, 2026. I just finished watching what has to be the most amazing interview in recent memory about a woman that I had no idea what an amazing thoughtful, brilliant, beautiful woman she was/is. Thank you so much for sharing Celia. To say I am in awe of her is a grotesque understatement I'm going to share it with a lot of people that are near and dear to me. I don't know how you discovered this but thank you so very much. I could go on for 1000 words but I won't
it's just one guy's take but for quite some time I've felt there was something off-kilter about Sharon Stone. for instance, it just didn't sit well with me when I heard her bragging openly about being a member of Mensa. and I locate Charlize Theron and Blakely Lively in the same vicinity. I'm not saying they aren't talented. it has to do with their demeanor and conduct off-screen.
now I don't know anything about Blake Lively's upbringing but CT's father was an abusive drunk who was eventually slain by her mother in self-defense. that's a family history which speaks volumes.
it's been almost 20 years since I took the fateful trek to Central Casting and for 25 dollars attained the eligibility to be cast as a "background performer". the education I received during the next two years until the recession swamped my dreams of stardom was simultaneously grueling and liberating. when I arrived on set, it was always with an expectation of unpredictability. compare that with the quotidian routines that govern so much of our lives. it was very much like returning to the never-ending adventure that was childhood. but children are too immersed and unselfconscious to fully appreciate their good fortune. I had the advantage of being able both to scrutinize the proceedings -- without pause -- AND occasionally participate in a way that felt quite thrilling AND be aware of just how exceptional the opportunities were while they were happening, even if my participation was limited to spectating.
there was one scene set in a vast office space which required everyone to spontaneously break out in dance. I was wearing my pin-striped suit, the only suit I have ever owned, but it didn't inhibit me at all. one take followed another for who knows how long and for that entire time I was my dancing and my dancing was me. afterwards a couple of the professional dancers that were interspersed with the rest of us came over to compliment me on my improvisations and I proceeded to float a few feet into the air.
what the phenomenon of transforming a space, any space, into a "set" does is remove the ceiling of what it is humanly possible to achieve in that specific context. the tragedy is that 99.8% of the time, humans either impose a new ceiling or come up short. but when everything clicks and the magic happens and one can sense it happening, that high is supremely hard to match.
you seem to have an insight into the off-kilter world of show biz. Hollywood is the worst. why it attracts and sustains the off-kilter, those of us trying to right the ship of childhood.
did I know that about Charlise Theron? wow. have you seen her Aileen Wuornos inspired MONSTER, that put her on the map?
Sharon Stone's off-kilter-ness is what puts that gleam in her eye that makes you think anything's possible, not necessarily in a good way. I never feel that way about Carole Lombard.
to be fair, I did encounter "stars of the show" who behaved decently and were genuinely committed to their craft. fame is a dangerous Siren: some are equipped to resist the allure; a great many succumb and lose their bearings. Oscar nonsense aside, it's not a glamorous occupation.
I had intended to write: "such highlights came far and few between" but that initial conclusion was superseded by the paragraph above and thereby became redundant.
I know her story is compelling, especially to those who it rings close to their own lived experience, resonating at a deep level, even soothing, healing, someone else who understands and gets the shared trauma.
BUT...I also know that Sharon Stone is a professional actress. And a very good one, to put it mildly. A top of her profession actress. In Hollywood performers often will lean into controversial subjects, reveal sympathetic life arc's and whatnot for the PR they calculate to drive attention to their work...that they are paid for and have legacies they wish to build and leave behind. Any attention being good attention and all.
To completely surrender over to her interview and say 100% she doesn't lie is a stretch for me. She has said many things over the course of her public life that are opportunistic to advance her career.
I do not know if that is the case in the interview you are highlighting. But no one but Sharon Stone herself and the person's she names know if she is lying. Nobody else, no matter how much we want to believe it, who we can see ourselves in her shoes and appreciate that she's telling her story, laud her bravery.
I'm old enough to remember when Duke Lacrosse team members were destroyed by allegations of racist, sexist abuse. And when the allegations were revealed to be lies the accuser was still lauded because her accusations alone resonated with many who wanted to believe her and said they didn't care that she made it all up, that the controversy and trial of the team members "raised awareness" and therefore served a greater good.
I appreciate the sentiment you are conveying, the truths you carry, and the truths that Stone *may* also carry. But I won't suspend my judgement of her credibility because of an assertion that she doesn't lie. It's logical to be leery of any and everything that skilled professional actors say. Just sayin'.
The skeptic in me agrees with you!
Its surely about the perfecting techniques of social delegitimisation ,meter'd out by those who ventriloquise rather than allow 'any other narrative '?
Celia, you may not be aware, but Substack rolled out a new AI comment moderator and is hiding comments automatically. Per Alex Berenson, you should be able to turn it off on your end. Just an FYI because I see it is hiding things here.
Here's an explanation of what Facebook...errr...Substack just did that I put together from investigating it today after my comments started being shadow-banned...errr...automatically moderated:
https://freedomfox.substack.com/p/alert-substack-shadow-banning-deployed
I go over the how's and what's to be done, and the ramifications that go beyond Celia having an automatic moderator of comments on her Stack. The Substack Chatbot revealed some insights about what Substack's 'community standards' are that comments violate. Which means that Substack's 'community standards' also apply to individual Stacks, effectively shadow-banning them across the platform in the same way that comments get shadow-banned on individual stacks. Errr..."automatically moderated."
Any Substack author who retains Facebook's....errr...Substack's 'community standards' for comment moderation supports Substack's idea of what speech should be permitted in the broader community. Period. As tempting as it might be, retaining it is consent to your own muzzle. If you wish to moderate comments the new 'feature' allows authors to customize the moderation. If individual authors like Celia do that then at least it will reveal what their values and beliefs about free speech are, and readers can draw any conclusions they wish from that. But the "automated moderation" is blanket agreement and consent to the same exact censorship policies that Facebook, Twitter and ever other controlled speech platform has.
I strongly encourage Celia to turn off the "automatic moderation" toggle on her Stack's controls (how-to described on my Stack). And if she wishes to avail herself of the comment moderation feature to design a customized version.
Free speech isn't shadow-banned speech. Despite Elon Musk's assertion when he bought Twitter that it is, "freedom of speech isn't freedom of reach." He proclaimed. Bullocks!
And it’s stopped allowing likes here and there! It’s not consistent. I couldn’t like your post! Which I do like! 😉
This is a VERY touchy topic given Stone was said to be a pathological liar by her husband and by a judge. She has made up her brain stroke, her double mastectomy, cervical cancer, and her IQ. She infamously claimed of her breast tumors - “One of them was bigger than the size of my entire left breast,” She makes outrageous claims for attention. Of course - an impossibility. Coming from a two time breast cancer patient. She lost custody of her adopted child because the courts felt she was unfit... due to the fact that her statements were not realistic...
A.I. confirmed that actress Sharon Stone did claim that: “One of them [her tumors] was bigger than the size of my entire left breast.”
Makes one wonder if she's exaggerating or lying about a lot of her other claims too.
I believe that was and is the prognosis.
But then she said, I think, that biopsies were negative. So, was a mastectomy done? She was waving her hand over her upper chest, where breast cancer does not usually show up, when she said how big the tumor was. Plus, her stories about being beaten by the father, yet speaking of him in praise, just seems odd. It seems to me that if a parent attempts to destroy the personhood of a child by violence, that child would be less likely to praise the personhood of the adult.
Thank you Celia~I am an avid movie buff since a teenager~That is Sharon Stone without a doubt~I have watched and enjoyed most movies she has made~whether she has manufactured, elaborated or outright lied about her life story, what has she to gain in doing so? I am in my 70's and am contemplating writing my life story very honestly from my perspective according to my life experience to share a very full life, the good, bad and ugly. To listen to Sharon, is not to determine whether she is lying or not, but just to pull any nuggets of wisdom from her life's journey. I don't worship her or hold her on a pedestal as an actress but I think she's just trying to share with others in hopes she might enlighten their journey and help them to evolve in their own way. Just listen people, and stop judging. You might even learn something valuable.
Smacks of...
https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-oe-goldberg-uva-rape-rolling-stone-20141202-column.html
"Erdely admits she set out to find a sexual assault story at an elite school. She looked at lots of other colleges, but none “felt quite right,” in the words of a Washington Post media column on the piece. But UVA — which Erdely would go on to describe in the Rolling Stone article as a school without a thriving “radical feminist culture seeking to upend the patriarchy” — was just right.
Erdely wouldn’t tell the Washington Post if she made an effort to corroborate the story with Drew, let alone the pledges. Bizarrely, she won’t even say whether she knows the rapists’ real names. She seems more eager to talk about public policy than the facts she reported.
The same goes for much of the media, which have yet to independently corroborate the story, loading it instead with context about the “rape epidemic” and evidence supporting the questionable statistic that 1 in 5 college women are sexually assaulted."
THEY say "just listen people, and stop judging. You might even learn something valuable."
Sorry, not sorry. You sound like an activist apologist for "noble lies." Do you realize you and Fauci are two peas in a pod?
You seriously have too much time on your hands, dude~go find a productive job or hobby and stop this destructive pastime.
My hobby is disintegrating lies. And those who peddle them.
right, she's not mischievously leading us into war, is she? she's doing her damnedest to dredge up some memories that sustain her. if she has to embroider, so be it. make believe is how you get through the day. it's a human thing, a mammalian thing. it's no good trying to stamp it out, especially in the area of self.
anyone who's been chewed up by the Hollywood system, especially actresses.
The more reading I get the harder it is to sit through any movie.
What an unusual interviewer. He finishes her answers, as if he was impatient.
It's fun how she plays her Dad when she tells the story when she called him because her first boyfriend wanted to beat her up.
I think this woman has been a victim of organized medicine, and she doesn't know yet. It's amazing the mental bubble that California stars live in. I like movies, but I rarely research actors' lives.
I remember a movie she made, but I don't remember the title. I remember Gene Hackman was playing the bad guy. It was a western, sort of. Her character was a female gunslinger. A crossdressing theme, which is "normal" and even frequent for actresses, who knows for what reason. The movie overall was boring, an adolescent quasi-erotic quasi-comedy film. The dramatic part was not very dramatic.
In the Western genre there is a lot of depictions of what now we are calling cptsd. One film which is very good about fawning, IMHO, is "The Outlaw Josey Wales." That movie has everything, even one scene where the hero (flight-fawn type, I would argue) saves a young woman from a gang of Comanches. He is always escaping, from tragedy, from defeat and from actual persecutors. But at one point he chooses to risk death to defend his new friends, which he didn't search for and which he doesn't like. After they are safe, surprisingly through diplomacy and not through firearms, he confronts the people who are hunting him, and then he escapes, which is the classic ending of many Westerns.
I'm guessing the escapism is a male character thing, at least in western movies. They escape from potential love, not from a deadly danger. For female characters escaping is not an option, but silence is. It's possible that Sharon Stone decided to remain quiet because she sees life as a play.
Outlaw Josey Wales, 1976. A Clint Eastwood film.
The woman in Outlaw Josey Wales was Sondra Locke, as Laura Lee Turner.
Locke was Eastwood’s love interest for a number of years from 1975-1989.
“The movie is "The Quick and the Dead," a 1995 American Western film directed by Sam Raimi, starring Sharon Stone and Gene Hackman. The film features Stone as a gunfighter seeking revenge in a deadly dueling competition.”
Hi Celia. This sounds interesting but is that actually Sharon Stone? It looks nothing like her!
Yes, it’s her. Google Sharon stone interview, then select “images” for confirmation.
I remember that Downton Abbey thread. I did not wonder “why?” I would be surprised if anyone watching did.
Immolation might be a decentralized rape.
Or it might be the Ahab —monopolist of “justice”— ship of centralized rapine state.
Like it was that you wrote about in Serious Adverse Events.
Like it typically is, & always has been: the original & still the wurst gender-bendering of the liver x(rated)trusion called “social” & “civilization.”
I bought, read, a copy of SAE after I saw your memoriam to Duesberg — whose dissection of one node of the tumor, I read back in the day.
Duesberg did a good job. So did you.
Either possible, but not universally necessary, immolation depends on the individuals involved.
Nature does what it does, what it can do, what it must do, with nurture. Not the other way around.
Remember also that the Downton Abby scenes were written that way.
John Bates character was drawn such that he would exact justice “honorably.”
Or, put more accurately, John Bates, bat man in the Boer war to the very same Lord Grantham, would martyr himself before Ahab’s “authority” in good stiff upper lip order … if Anna “shared.”
Not sharing was legit, strength. Because Mr. Bates “honor” wouldn’t be.
I’ve no doubt that dispensed with & disappeared rapists does not generally occur as routinely as it once did, but it does still get done.
And the “Principal-Agent” problem, that emasculates & neuters, is a designed, engineered, feature of divide & conquer bugginess pandering to “social” biology … & it destroys far more innocents —collaterally & directly— than all The Ox Bow Incidents combined ever could.
Many more than do don’t know who they are … which is the main part of who those are.
Helix is useful. Less as dna imagery, more as rotation.
People with scoliosis —also good metaphorical imagery— will also typically have rotations (attempts at compensation) along horizontal & vertical planes in pelvis/hips, shoulders, knees, ankles … one leg will be shortened … balance will be rigid fragility rather than fluid proprioception.
And over time those rotations become hasps secured by rusted padlocks.
“Who am I?” S/he points, possibly, not often tho, at rusted padlocks in answer.
But conception —birth— is key. The slate is full from then on.
“Blank slate” is more incoming “who you are (or else)” divide & conquer, “social” caste casting couch closes:
“I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille … but, what’s my motivation?””
And most parenting does not revolve around co-discovery of who a child is.
Man On Fire:
Little girl Pita Ramos says, “I’m tough, Creasy.” And he says, “There’s no such thing as tough. There’s trained & there’s untrained.”
PTSD creased gov-man, passes it on, before eventually clawing back some redemption.
(The director, Ridley’s brother Tony Scott, later threw himself off the Vincent Thomas Bridge. A different image of “Scott Free.”)
(The relevant clip has been u-toobed. Good flick.)
The Razor’s Edge is a different Groundhog Day sometimes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cx8NIU2Mwug
“What you’ve got to be before you can be a” sumo wrestler, or “a pole vaulter, is” a sumo wrestler, or “a pole vaulter” … “desiring a thing cannot make you have it” … & that even includes desiring to know the things you do have, desiring to know who you actually are:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDVD3YTRAV8
John Wayne planted green beret seeds of Vietnam heroism in my kiddie nervous system.
Reagan, who coulda’ been an actor but wound up there (Dirty Laundry - Don Henley), dodged me a bullet when he decided not to fire the draft machine back up …
… And that there but for the Grace of Slick go I realization dawned many years before Seth Harp’s The Fort Bragg Cartel dropped.
Entertainers are pro manipulators is what they gotta be before they can be entertainers … leave a bit of slack, always, for rule-proving exceptions.
Robert Mitchum:
“John Wayne had four inch lifts in his shoes. He had the overheads on his boat accommodated to fit him. He had a special roof put in his station wagon. The son of a bitch, they probably buried him in his goddamn lifts.”
“I gave up being serious about making pictures around the time I made a film with Greer Garson and she took a hundred and twenty-five takes to say no.”
Which none of which knocks fiction per se, but just cautions against taking its expositors too literally:
Evey Hammond. Artist Dad used lies to tell the truth. But vice versa is done, too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oncINP0OORQ
Rebel rock & rollers sang some truths & then required jabs & masks … cue the before the heebie-jeebie BeeGees, & Stevie (who some Wonder might not really be blind):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oALKAh_bL5g&list=RDoALKAh_bL5g&start_radio=1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxrzT8WNxDc&list=RDQxrzT8WNxDc&start_radio=1
The more reading I get the harder it is to sit through any movie.
such a moving witness of her own life. I didn't expect ithat sort of follksy depth from her. I couldn't take her seriously as an actress. but she's so damn gutsy, something there wasn't room for in her movies.
she made a few high-power melodramas — Basic Instinct (1992) with Michael Douglas was one of those defining moments for Hollywood. still a fun flick, cheap and effective, with an obsessive 2h 7m runtime. actually, she worked a lot, stuff I never bothered with, tv, but it's all there on imdb.com.
She references husband Phil Bronstein, editor of San Francisco Examiner. he was famously bitten by a komodo dragon at a zoo, maybe in LA. they were somewhat ridiculous, but it seems things were even worse off camera.
surprising choice, Celia. made me cry.
Hi Celia. This sounds interesting but is that actually Sharon Stone? It looks nothing like her!
Hi Jacqui, I don't know, as I don't know what any of these people look like to begin with. I think it's her, yes.
she got old. she's had plastic surgery, so her skin has stretched over her skull, no more baby fat. and she's smart enough not to go the botox route, thank goddess.
she actually reminds me of that super English actress, what'shername, Gosford Park... Kristin Scott Thomas.
It is 9:45 AM central standard time. It is Saturday, June 6, 2026. I just finished watching what has to be the most amazing interview in recent memory about a woman that I had no idea what an amazing thoughtful, brilliant, beautiful woman she was/is. Thank you so much for sharing Celia. To say I am in awe of her is a grotesque understatement I'm going to share it with a lot of people that are near and dear to me. I don't know how you discovered this but thank you so very much. I could go on for 1000 words but I won't
Thank you dear friend
Allen.
it's just one guy's take but for quite some time I've felt there was something off-kilter about Sharon Stone. for instance, it just didn't sit well with me when I heard her bragging openly about being a member of Mensa. and I locate Charlize Theron and Blakely Lively in the same vicinity. I'm not saying they aren't talented. it has to do with their demeanor and conduct off-screen.
now I don't know anything about Blake Lively's upbringing but CT's father was an abusive drunk who was eventually slain by her mother in self-defense. that's a family history which speaks volumes.
it's been almost 20 years since I took the fateful trek to Central Casting and for 25 dollars attained the eligibility to be cast as a "background performer". the education I received during the next two years until the recession swamped my dreams of stardom was simultaneously grueling and liberating. when I arrived on set, it was always with an expectation of unpredictability. compare that with the quotidian routines that govern so much of our lives. it was very much like returning to the never-ending adventure that was childhood. but children are too immersed and unselfconscious to fully appreciate their good fortune. I had the advantage of being able both to scrutinize the proceedings -- without pause -- AND occasionally participate in a way that felt quite thrilling AND be aware of just how exceptional the opportunities were while they were happening, even if my participation was limited to spectating.
there was one scene set in a vast office space which required everyone to spontaneously break out in dance. I was wearing my pin-striped suit, the only suit I have ever owned, but it didn't inhibit me at all. one take followed another for who knows how long and for that entire time I was my dancing and my dancing was me. afterwards a couple of the professional dancers that were interspersed with the rest of us came over to compliment me on my improvisations and I proceeded to float a few feet into the air.
what the phenomenon of transforming a space, any space, into a "set" does is remove the ceiling of what it is humanly possible to achieve in that specific context. the tragedy is that 99.8% of the time, humans either impose a new ceiling or come up short. but when everything clicks and the magic happens and one can sense it happening, that high is supremely hard to match.
such highlights came far
you seem to have an insight into the off-kilter world of show biz. Hollywood is the worst. why it attracts and sustains the off-kilter, those of us trying to right the ship of childhood.
did I know that about Charlise Theron? wow. have you seen her Aileen Wuornos inspired MONSTER, that put her on the map?
Sharon Stone's off-kilter-ness is what puts that gleam in her eye that makes you think anything's possible, not necessarily in a good way. I never feel that way about Carole Lombard.
to be fair, I did encounter "stars of the show" who behaved decently and were genuinely committed to their craft. fame is a dangerous Siren: some are equipped to resist the allure; a great many succumb and lose their bearings. Oscar nonsense aside, it's not a glamorous occupation.
I had intended to write: "such highlights came far and few between" but that initial conclusion was superseded by the paragraph above and thereby became redundant.
What a great interview! It just opens the heart up full. Thanks for sharing it with us.
Sharon Stone is a great person, mentioned her once
https://geoffpain.substack.com/p/geelong-corpse-plant-what-has-this
Thank you for the post. I look forward to watching the interview.