Daily Archives: September 15, 2022

Is Canada getting its very own Donald Trump?

America's neighbor to the north is famed for what might be described as a distinctly un-Trumpian politeness and gentility. But that might be changing: The country's Conservative Party this week elected "firebrand populist" Pierre Poilievre as its leader, making him the leader of the opposition in Parliament, and a leading contender to become the next prime minister.

"You don't have to squint too hard to see the parallels between former U.S. President Donald Trump and newly crowned Conservative Party of Canada Leader Pierre Poilievre," Max Fawcett writes for Canada's National Observer. Both men are "economic populists" who have an "unusual ability to connect with their audiences through social media." (Oh, and social media superstar Jordan Peterson likes him a lot, too.) There are some important differences, yes, but Poilievre might represent a new front in the rise of right-wing populism around the world. Who is he and what does he want to do for Canada? Here's everything you need to know:

As long as we're making Trump comparisons, let's start with one obvious difference: Trump was a celebrity outsider who became a politician late in life. Poilievre is a lifer: The 43-year-old "has been a federal Member of Parliament for the last 18 years, becoming the youngest member in the House of Commons at age 25 in 2004," the BBC reports. He served in the government of Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper, as parliamentary secretary and as minister of employment and social development. He has served as the party's "shadow government" minister of finance since the Liberal party under Justin Trudeau came to power, and has built a "reputation for hounding the Liberal party on government spending and other government scandals."

Poilievre's approach involves "leveraging divisive, polarizing issues" that divide the Canadian public, Natasha Bulowski writes for the National Observer. (Sound familiar?) For example, he's made a habit of attacking his country's media:

Poilievre was also a vocal supporter of the "Freedom Convoy" that clogged traffic at the U.S.-Canadian border in February, which was part of a broader opposition to COVID vaccine mandates that Poilievre has also championed. "These mandates have become nothing more than a cruel attempt to demonize a small minority," he said this summer. "They are absolutely unnecessary and without any scientific basis."

Politics look different in different places. But it's fair to say Poilievre has evolved. In Parliament, he voted against same-sex marriage and for a study on whether a fetus is a human before birth. Politico reports that these days he describes same-sex marriage as a "success," and himself as pro-choice.

"Right-wing populism is not new to Canada; it has a long history in the prairies," The Washington Post notes. But it hasn't been popular at the national level before now. So Poilievre's task is to broaden his party's appeal "beyond its traditional base in rural Canada and the strongholds of Alberta and Saskatchewan" to include the suburbs of Toronto and Vancouver.

If Poilievre possesses another similarity with Trump, it's probably this: He's beloved by his party's base, but not necessarily as much among the electorate at large. CTV News reported in August that while Poilievre was the leading candidate among Conservatives, polling showed that Canadian voters of all parties preferred his Conservative rival, Jean Charest, to lead the country. But Aaron Wherry at CBC News writes that this seems to be an "opportune time" for Poilievre. "Inflation is high and interest rates are rising," and Trudeau has been in office for seven years already. "All things being equal, one would expect the Conservatives to have a very good chance of winning the next election."

Trudeau won't be giving up without a fight. He's already launched attacks on Poilievre. "Buzzwords, dog whistles, and careless attacks don't add up to a plan for Canadians," the prime minister said this week. "Attacking the institutions that make our society fair, safe and free is not responsible leadership."

Funny you should ask. We don't know precisely. The next fixed parliamentary election date is October 25, 2025. But it could come sooner if a deal between Trudeau's Liberal government and the New Democrats party falls apart before then. If not, Poilievre may have to wait three more years a long time in politics in any country before he gets his chance to lead Canada.

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Canada's Trump - The Week

Marcus Mumford opens his debut solo album with the most personal and straightforward and probably the finest song hes ever released: Cannibal, a stark acoustic ballad (at least until it erupts with pounding drums and pealing guitars) about the sexual abuse Mumford endured when he was 6 years old.

I can still taste you and I hate it, he sings over a hushed beating-heart riff, his dry, papery voice as close as your own thoughts, There wasnt a choice in the mind of a child and you knew it. The song in which Mumford goes on to describe the toll of keeping his abuse secret for decades is a startling achievement of emotional honesty from the 35-year-old singer and songwriter best known as the frontman of Englands foot-stomping, Grammy-winning Mumford & Sons.

But its not the only one on the deeply moving (self-titled), which Mumford made in Los Angeles with producer Blake Mills (a Grammy winner himself for his work with Alabama Shakes) and a crew of famous collaborators including Brandi Carlile, Phoebe Bridgers and Clairo. After Cannibal on the LP comes Grace, a jittery folk-rock jam that recounts Mumfords playing Cannibal for his mom for the first time; other tunes ponder faith both his parents are preachers guilt and self-deception amid arrangements that lurch and glimmer in unexpected ways.

Mumford, who has two children with Oscar-nominated actress Carey Mulligan, sat down in a recording studio in Hollywood to talk about the album, due Friday, and the future of Mumford & Sons, whose banjo player Winston Marshall quit last year after being criticized for voicing a variety of conservative beliefs.

Marcus Mumford of Mumford & Sons performs at the BottleRock Napa Valley Music Festival in 2019.

(Amy Harris / Invision / AP)

Youve made a record about a painful experience thats relatively uncommon Uncommon, you think? Im starting to think its more and more common than any of us think it is.

But its significance means youre being asked after having written songs about it to discuss the experience again in interviews. Does that seem like a terrible fate?No. Writing the songs felt like a natural part of the process for me as an artist who processes things through writing songs. Now, the first time I told the story amongst my community my friends and my family it was full-blown PTSD. Vomit, breathing, all that stuff. But the point of trauma work is to be able to tell the story without reliving it. So by the time Cannibal came out, Id already done the work. Its not hugely emotionally charged for me at this point, and I dont think Im kidding myself with that.

You sing about forgiving your abuser in the albums closer, How. As an outsider, it feels almost impossible to understand your ability to get there.I really, really believe in healing. I really believe in recovery. And I believe in it because Ive lived it. But I dont think its one and done. Its left-foot/right-foot, Aristotelian-type virtue stuff. If you want to be honest, you practice honesty, and if you want to be healed, you practice healing. Thatll be a process Im in for the rest of my life, which is fine because its much better than the alternative. But thats why its not wrapped up in a bow in the music. The lyric in How, its not like, Its all good I forgive you. At the beginning of the record, I say, If I could forgive you, and at the end its I will.

The first time I heard Cannibal, I obviously didnt know it was going to explode at the end. But every time Ive heard it since, that knowledge has colored my experience of the song.What does it make you feel?

I think it makes it slightly easier to go along with the narrator because you know catharsis is looming.Thats why I felt it was important to get Grace out quite quickly after Cannibal. Grace starts out: Well, how should we proceed / Without things getting too heavy? The demo for Grace was called I Just Want to F Around, because its like, OK, thats done now. Hopefully it represents some of the freedom and playfulness that has come despite this and that I do believe comes in peoples lives despite whatever they go through.

What was the response among the people in your life to a recent GQ article in which you spoke publicly for the first time about your abuse?I got more messages directly to my phone than I have for anything since we headlined Glastonbury. Some of them surprised me: Are you OK? I wouldnt have put the song out if I wasnt OK. Then Ive had a lot of responses of people telling me about their own stuff.

Are you open to that?I normally say, like, Thank you for sharing that, because it takes some effort to share it. I dont feel responsible for any kind of particular response, though I do think it presents a new challenge, one Id spent some time thinking about already. And one I asked for help on from some people who know much better than I do. The lyrics on the record, I went through each one with a trauma specialist.

To what end?Well, Im not a terrorist. But at the same time Im an artist who wants to reflect reality in my songs. So we went through it all and, actually, they felt there were no problems.

No triggers.Effectively. They use the word activation now instead of trigger. In a lot of trauma work its about: What are you responsible for and what are you not? And the main piece of advice I took on that was from an interview of Beyoncs, which was to always leave people with hope at the end of every record. I felt like I could try and achieve that because that was the reality of my situation.

Were womens voices something you knew from the beginning would be an important part of this album?It was intentional but it wasnt calculated. Honestly, Ive worked in a male-dominated environment for such a long time that it was a relief. I leaned a lot on Lucy Dickins, my agent; Jody Gerson, my publisher; Michelle Jubelirer with my label. And my wife, which is why the records dedicated to her. The feminine energy going into it was more present than it ever had been, and I found that every time I hit a brick wall, it was a woman who came along and helped lift me over it. I played Brandi the first two songs and she put her arm around me and said, Dude, whatever it takes to help get this out of you, I will do.

Actually, Elton [John] did the same thing within the same 24-hour period. We went out for dinner, and they both were like, We havent seen you since COVID and now you seem really different. I said, Well, there have been some changes, and Ive written some songs about it. That night I drove Elton home and played him the first two songs in the car. And up until that point hed been like, Darling, whatever you do, dont do anything else outside the band. Youve got to keep the band together at all costs. I played him those two songs and he said, This is definitely going to be a solo record.

Everything in my life has got better without drinking, so Im not in a rush to go back to it, says Marcus Mumford.

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

Does this project feel fundamentally different from Mumford & Sons?It does. I worked harder on the craft of this record than I ever have in the band. Theres a spirit in the band, which has always been: Lets just try and get down versions of the songs that will act as advertisements for our live show, which is where its really at. I said that to Neil Young once, and he was like, Nah, mate you got it all wrong. And now I think he was right.

What Id want is that the band could represent to me the same creative curiosity that the making of this record felt like. We havent gotten in a room and written music together again yet, so I dont know if it can. But theres so much I love about Ben [Lovett] and Ted [Dwane] and playing with them. Ive got a bunch of songs I want to show them, and hopefully itll be a better creative engine than it has been in the past.

Winstons departure created a certain messiness, though. There are people who are turned off Mumford & Sons because of his admiration for right-wing provocateurs like Andy Ngo and Jordan Peterson.And there are people turned off by the fact that hes not in the band anymore.

Is that messiness a burden to return to?I feel like weve dealt with a bunch of it. I dont feel the need for band statements. You start writing band statements, youre gonna write a hundred of them in a year at a time like this. Musicians are terrible spokespeople. Its not what you want.

What is lambing? The GQ story said you do it at your farm at home in England.Lambing is when you help ewes deliver their young. Its a verb: I lamb, you lamb, we lamb. Theres all these amazing words in Devon, where we live. Tedding is when you cut the hay in the field and you turn it so that one side dries in the sun.

Youre really about that farm life.I think its helpful to have things that completely distract your brain from the thing that you do. And I spend so much of my time working in cities that when Im not working for a long period of time and if Careys not working for a period of time we like to be in the countryside.

Carey Mulligan and Marcus Mumford arrive at the Academy Awards in 2021.

(Chris Pizzello / Pool Photo)

You and your wife met at church camp when you were 12, long before either of you were famous. Would you ever have pictured yourself married to a movie star?No way. That was never in my head. When we got together, I think we recognized in each other the kind of person that wed been, that wed so enjoyed as kids that wed written letters to each other and stayed in touch outside of camp. So we instantly were like, Oh, I know you. The fact that we both do this other stuff, Im sure it helps us relate, connect, whatever.

Fair to say that, prior to the two of you reconnecting, you would have gone out of your way to avoid some kind of Hollywood hookup?I was a fat kid from London. No starlets were knocking down the door.

Youve spoken recently about struggling with addiction.Did I use that language? Im not sure I used addiction. I think I used addictive behaviors.

But youll be back on the road soon with all its temptations.Im stoked about doing that with a bit more control. Its not daunting to me because I feel like I know myself better. And Im not so binary in my view of addiction anymore. I think addictive behaviors are like faders on a mixing desk. Whenever somethings too high in the mix, it dominates everything else.

Do you drink at all now?I just havent. It felt like low-hanging fruit for me because I was able to stop before I had to stop. I didnt require the 12-step stuff, so in that sense I guess I probably could drink. But everything in my life has got better without drinking, so Im not in a rush to go back to it.

Last thing: Steven Spielberg directed his first-ever music video for Cannibal. Did you worry about whether or not your song was good enough to live up to that billing?No. First off, it wasnt like we had a list of famous directors that we went through and Spielberg said yes. He and [wife] Kate [Capshaw] heard the record and got it. And hes just made this movie about his childhood and was in a period of time where it seemed like he really believed in art being a helpful tool in processing stuff.

So, weirdly I mean, I get how strange this is the video felt like the safest place to launch this record. In the room it was Steven; Kate; Kristie [Macosko Krieger], their producer; Carey and me. No production, no lights, literally a phone. Steven was like, Man, I havent operated a camera in a while! It was so intimate, and I felt so understood.

I generally hate music videos. Just feels like a weird concept. But I sent the cut to my folks, and my dad called me at 3 oclock in the morning having watched it. Hed already heard the song a bunch, but the visual helped him process what the song is about. He was like, OK, can we talk this through?

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How Marcus Mumford turned torment into healing on solo album - Los Angeles Times

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The billionaire owner of Patagonia has given the company away to environmental causes in a bid to help fight the climate crisis.

Standing by the morals the sportswear and outdoors fashion brand has always aligned with, and in a move that is no doubt setting the standard when it comes to environmental corporate leadership, Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard and his family are giving away the entire company valued at $3 billion to a uniquely-structured trust and non-profit.

The move is designed to put all of the companys profits into saving the planet.

Previously, Patagonia had given away 1% of its sales each year, and 2018, it said it was in business to save our home planet but now, reluctant billionaire Mr Chouinard has said he feels this is not enough.

I never wanted to be a businessman, Mr Chouinard explained.

I started as a craftsman, making climbing gear for my friends and myself, then got into apparel [but] as we began to witness the extent of global warming and ecological destruction, and our own contribution to it, Patagonia is committed to using our company to change the way business was done.

If we could do the right thing while making enough to pay the bills, we could influence customers and other businesses, and maybe change the system along the way.

Kicking off the next 50 years, Patagonia says its going purpose instead of going public.

All ownership has been transferred to two new entities Patagonia Purpose Trust and the Holdfast Collective.

Most significantly, every dollar that is not reinvested back into Patagonia will be distributed as dividends to protect the planet.

The Patagonia Purpose Trust now owns all the voting stock of the company, and exists to create a more permanent legal structure to enshrine Patagonias purpose and values, and will help ensure that there is never deviation from the intent of the founder.

It will facilitate what the company says it continues to do best demonstrate as a for-profit business that capitalism can work for the planet.

The Holdfast Collective now owns all the non-voting stock, and will use every dollar received from Patagonia to protect nature and biodiversity, support thriving communities, and ultimately, work on tackling and preventing climate change.

Each year, profits that are not reinvested back into the business, will be distributed by Patagonia as a dividend to help fight the climate crisis.

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Announcing the transfer of the company, Mr Chouinard: Its been a half-century since we began our experiment in responsible business, but if we have any hope of a thriving planet 50 years from now, it demands all of us doing all we can with the resources we have.

As the business leader I never wanted to be, I am doing my part.

Instead of extracting value from nature and transforming it into wealth, we are using the wealth Patagonia creates to protect the source.

Were making Earth our only shareholder I am dead serious about saving this planet.

Featured Image Patagonia

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100-year-old Wythenshawe man one of the last to receive birthday card from Queen Elizabeth II - The Manc

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All right, lets get the stuff youre here for out of the way. For starters, theres something to be said about timing. When I interviewed Olivia Wilde back in mid-August for Dont Worry Darling, the most pressing controversy surrounding the film was rather innocuous. It was, as we all know, the project where Wilde, the films director, began a relationship with her actor, the teen-heart-throb Harry Styles.

Because Styles fans are, lets say, deeply devoted, Wilde had already become a daily trending topic on Twitter for months, and not in a good way. Head to Twitter and type in Olivia Wilde dancing and feel the waves of anonymous, intergenerational resentment. The fact that Wilde, a 38-year-old mother-of-two, might be seen dancing off-stage at the arena concerts of the fantasy boy shed stolen from them was too much for some young uns. The bitter commentary veered from quips like so embarrassing to GIFs of Elaine dancing on Seinfeld.

Olivia Wilde pulls double-duty as an actor and director in Dont Worry Darling.

And so, during our tight, 20-odd minute Zoom chat at 10pm on Monday, August 15 which, just to set the mood, I took in my mouldy, wet bathroom (my kids were asleep, and it was the only remaining room in the house with a door), with Wilde unknowingly (and figuratively) sitting on a stool in my shower, and I, precariously hovering in front of the toilet roll holder to maintain the illusion that I was speaking from any ordinary, nothing-to-question-here room I asked her about it.

Im sure youre aware that youve been trending on Twitter, like, almost every morning since the news of you and Harry first came out, mostly due to, I guess, young fans upset that youve stolen their man or something? I asked and even paused to giggle to show her I too was aware of the absurdity of the whole thing. Are you nervous that its pulling focus away from the film itself?

Wilde, Chris Pine and Florence Pugh at the films Venice premiere.Credit:Invision

Needless to say, Wilde did not care to discuss this line of questioning.

Rob, I totally get why you want to ask that, but Id rather we just keep it to the film, she said from her hotel room in Toronto (coincidentally, on the same day Styles was due to perform at Torontos Scotiabank Arena; someone add investigative reporter to my title). Wilde wasnt brusque in her response, just setting the parameters. I get it. Like, I get it, she added firmly. But lets just keep it to the film.

Of course, a mere months retrospect sure changes the story, doesnt it? About a week later, Variety ran their wild cover interview with Wilde, which instigated the unending circus that has plagued the films pre-release run to date. A brief recap, if we must:

1. There were the rumours of a tiff with the films star, Florence Pugh, supposedly sparked by her horror at watching her director and her co-star hook up on set and exacerbated by Wildes public focus on the films female-gaze sex scenes. Men dont come in this film, Wilde proudly told Variety. Pugh told Harpers Bazaar: When its reduced to your sex scenes, or to watch the most famous man in the world go down on someone Its not why Im in this industry.

2. There was the ghost of Shia LaBeouf returning from Hollywood purgatory to refute Wildes claims that he had been fired (and replaced with Styles) before the film started shooting due to his combative energy, and leaking a private video chat with Wilde as receipts.

3. There was the nonstop carnival that was the movies Venice Film Festival premiere, which involved the internet parsing over the casts relationships with Zapruder-like intensity, including Pughs limited campaigning on behalf of the film (she has been labelled a quiet quitting icon for her less-than-bare commitment to the films pre-release PR) and a viral video that suggested Styles had spat on co-star Chris Pine, which prompted the incredibly insane clarification, Harry Styles did not spit on Chris Pine, from Pines PR rep.

Wilde didnt talk to me about any of this, perhaps because a) at that early point in the films press run she mightve thought she could still keep a lid on such tabloid-y distractions, or b) they hadnt happened yet, time being linear and all. Maybe, also, I have a face that says to celebrities, Nah, dont trust this guy, or maybe Wilde had noticed I was interviewing her from a toilet seat. Either way, and this might be your invitation to exit, the circus portion of the discussion more or less ends here.

At a private preview screening of Dont Worry Darling in a theatre also hosting a personal rep for cinematographer Matthew Libatique and a Warner Bros studio employee there to run the reels, the only reaction we could muster among us as its final credits rolled was a well, that was interesting! with a polite chuckle. If visually stunning and thematically intriguing, the film closes with a twist ending that in early reviews has already proven divisive: to some, it punctuates the films pulpish topicality and Wildes ambitious bravado; to others, it undercuts everything that came before it, turning what mightve been a stark allegory into strictly nonsense, as Entertainment Weekly scathingly wrote.

For Wilde, the big swing was part of the films appeal. Coming off her 2019 indie debut Booksmart, a critical success starring Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever as two high-school overachievers whove realised theyve overlooked a key part of their youth (i.e. the irresponsible partying), Wilde had already defied the typical expectations of the actor-turned-director, the movie star who decides theyve got what it takes to step behind the camera.

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I mean, there were no expectations of me before Booksmart whatsoever like, literally nothing. I dont think anyone had any idea of what I could do, Wilde recalls.

By any standards, Booksmart is a modern masterpiece a film perfectly realised in tone, visuals and performances; warmly empathetic in its depiction of female coming-of-age; and so creatively open to playing with filmmaking conventions. Booksmarts unlikely success convinced Wilde her follow-up had to be ambitious.

I wanted to take a big leap, to try something completely different. Its also, like comedies, another genre I love so much, psychological thrillers, and I was hopeful Id have the chance to play in that genre, she says. And so I feel lucky we got to do it because, also, its really rare now to get distribution for something that isnt a franchise, you know? Its kind of a miracle that we actually get to have this original piece of content open globally.

Not to harp on the relevance of my rejected question but lets face it: the tacky pre-release hoopla hasnt done any favours to Wildes ambitious intentions. Written again with her Booksmart collaborator Katie Silberman, Dont Worry Darling is a vicious skewering of patriarchal nostalgia, and the central myth behind Trumpisms MAGA, defined by Wildes feminist lens.

Set in an idyllic 1950s TV dream of a world, amid the manicured lawns and palm trees of West Coast suburbia, the film follows Alice (Pugh) and Jack (Styles), newlyweds living and working among the mysterious Victory Project, led by the daunting, messianic Frank (Chris Pine, highlighting his underrated charm).

Wilde directs Pine behind the scenes on Dont Worry Darling.

[The film] has everything to do with modern incel culture and this kind of problematic nostalgia for a time in the past when men ruled the Earth without threat, Wilde explains. Theres this idea that there was a time when things were perfect which, you know, nostalgia is only ever positive for straight, white men. Theres no one else that any other time was better for.

Incels, a loose online collective of toxic young males who describe themselves as involuntary celibates, gained notoriety in mainstream spaces in recent years (in 2019, Vox described them as a support group for the dateless [that] became one of the internets most dangerous subcultures) as an example of the anonymous radicalisation fostered by social media and online forums such as 4chan. Dont Worry Darling takes their ethos a call for the return of traditional masculinity, and a reversal of woke cultural gains as the stuff of cinematic horror.

Styles and Pugh play newlyweds Jack and Alice in the film.

Pines Frank, a charismatic leader with his gang of dweeby man-boy followers, evokes the subcultures figurehead Jordan Peterson (who, coincidentally, is touring Australia in an arena tour in November; Peterson has praised the casting of attractive Pine as his stand-in, although attacked the latest bit of propaganda disseminated by the woke, self-righteous bores and bullies who now dominate Hollywood). The film does a stylish job of depicting a society that has returned to the sexual dynamics of the idyll 50s, where gender roles were defined to the point of suffocation. (Its effective if not subtle: just watch Pugh wrap her head in cling wrap, or get almost squeezed to death against the windows shes cleaning.)

What convinced Wilde this would make a good setting for a Hollywood psychological thriller?

Well, I mean, I dont think theres anything more terrifying than a disenfranchised white man, she says with a laugh. Chris character is very much based on Peterson and a combination, also, of some different cult leaders and political leaders. Its that pseudo-intellectual, deeply misogynistic rhetoric that is somehow disguised as scientific theory or something biological. Its so disturbing.

Wilde and Silberman deep-dove into 4chan forums and YouTube algorithms as part of their script research. The pandemics reinforcement of social distance and online remoteness only intensified the relevance of their themes.

I think what weve seen, with the internet creating an opportunity for wide reach and for these sub-communities to be built and for people to hide behind usernames, is theres a really dangerous kind of mob mentality out there and I think its the source of some of the most devastating tragedies happening in our world today, says Wilde.

Wilde, Pugh, prop master Joshua Bramer and cinematographer Matthew Libatigue on the set of Dont Worry Darling.

Im fascinated by the rise of strange internet cults, like QAnon, and how do we raise a generation that is more discerning about information shared on the internet, a generation that understands that algorithms are distorting the information theyre seeing, and a generation that doesnt rely on community solely in this kind of faceless world? I felt really inspired to dive into what I think is a really dangerous trend, and one that is very modern because it requires a technology which weve embraced without truly understanding its ramifications.

As far as its messages reach, Dont Worry Darling might be preaching to the converted. But the numbers of misogynistic, young trolls online arent insignificant. Is Wilde intrigued to see how theyll respond to the film?

She laughs loudly. Intrigued, yes in a twisted way. But quite often people fail to see themselves in material thats very clearly based on them. I wonder But also, you know, I think that community probably isnt my greatest fan base anyway, so I doubt theyll be first in line to see it.

Dont Worry Darlings box office take will itself be intriguing; we might yet get an answer to the perennial question of whether all publicity is good publicity. Well also see whether the media circus scares off Hollywoods studios on Wilde and dents the forward momentum her directorial career had established following Booksmart. Among the directing projects she has already been linked to are Perfect, a biopic on American gymnast Kerri Strug, and an untitled Sony/Marvel project rumoured to be a Spider-Woman film.

Wilde waves to fans at the films Venice premiere.Credit:Getty Images Europe

We have so many fun things on the burner, she says, giving away nothing. At this point, I just want to keep trying things that push me further because Im learning so much as I go and I just want to continue to challenge myself. I feel lucky Ive been able to choose exactly what I want to do, which is great, and I think Im in a position now where I can get films greenlit that wouldnt otherwise have a chance in hell, which is a real honour.

But, you know, once [Dont Worry Darling] is released, it will feel like the end of an era. Ive been making this movie for three years, and Im looking forward to kind of handing it over to the world and then getting back to work on the next thing.

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The goal, says Wilde, is to not let her adventurous eye be diminished by any external criticism.

I still feel proud to have earned my directing title with Booksmart. It was, in a way, so liberating to be able to try something without any expectations. But I think if you can kind of maintain that as an artist internally, at least youll continue to take risks.

I remember when I got my DGA [Directors Guild of America] card, I cried because Nora Ephron was the photograph on the card that year, and I felt inducted into a community that I so deeply respect and it felt really incredible, very humbling, she says. And so now its like, OK, youve earned your place, stay here and see if you can make something else worth watching. And I just hope I can keep taking risks and not ever create anything from a place of fear.

Lets hope the truly bizarre experience of Dont Worry Darling hasnt crippled Wildes creative ambition, because that would be worrying.

Dont Worry Darling is out in cinemas on October 6.

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Olivia Wilde on creating the most controversial film of the year - Sydney Morning Herald