Steve Pond's Blog, page 1978
February 22, 2020
‘Hunters': Were Those Nazi Concentration Camp Flashbacks Based on True Stories?
(This article contains some spoilers for “Hunters” on Amazon Prime Video)
“Hunters,” as you almost certainly know if you found your way into this article, is the story of a group of vigilantes, most of whom are Jewish, in the 1970s who are hunting down former Nazis who have been living in America since World War II. Several of these folks are Holocaust survivors, who managed to make it out of Nazi death camps alive — though certainly not unscathed.
These older hunters — Meyer Offerman (Al Pacino), Ruth Heidelbaum (Jeannie Berlin), Murray Markowitz (Saul Rubinek) and Mindy Markowitz (Carol Kane) — are of course marked by their time in those concentration camps, and a few of their targets are folks who were responsible for some of the truly astonishing crimes against humanity these four had witnessed.
It’s pretty heinous stuff. We get a story about a Jewish master chess player, who is forced into a game of chess in which the pieces are other prisoners in the camp. And when a piece is taken, the person is killed. Then there was the one where the Nazi running the camp forced a group of prisoners to sing a Nazi song, and if he would shoot anyone who he thought missed a note until only one was left. Then there was the one about a Nazi scientist who would force prisoners to drink seawater until it killed them, just to see what would happen.
Also Read: 'Hunters': Did the Government Really Bring a Bunch of Nazis to America in 'Operation Paperclip'?
There are more horror stories from the camps on “Hunters,” but those are the most extreme atrocities that were depicted in season 1. These bits are all very disturbing, but they’re also a bit, ah, out there. The Nazis proved over and over again that they were more than capable of that kind of pure madness, but some of these tales are so crazy that it felt like they might have been examples of creative license taken by “Hunters” showrunner David Weil and the writing staff.
Such license is to be expected, since “Hunters” is not a true story, and the main characters were not real people. This is a fictional tale. So their traumatic histories don’t have to match up exactly with those of real historical people who experienced the horrors of the Nazi regime.
And it turns out, they generally don’t. The chess story and the murderous singing competition appear to be original to the show, but the seawater thing is definitely not an invention of “Hunters.” The Nazis performed all sorts of the most horrendous “medical experiments” on prisoners at the camps, like freezing people in order to test hypothermia treatments. Or taking sets of twins and attempting to manually conjoin them, which is another thing that is mentioned on the show.
Also Read: 'Hunters' Creator Says We're Currently Facing 'an Epidemic of Anti-Semitism' Not 'Seen in Decades'
At Dachau, Nazi scientists would force prisoners to ingest salt water that had been filtered by various means, allegedly in order to find a method of making seawater drinkable. It didn’t work and nothing was learned, and the only effect was extreme dehydration of the subjects, who weren’t allowed to eat or drink anything other than salt water during the experiments.
But the addition of those other concentration camp stories is in line with the way “Hunters” plays with history. At another point in season 1, New York City experiences a blackout after an explosion occurs at a power plant. This was a real blackout that really happened, but the circumstances that caused it are different on the show than they were in real life.
And the disturbing singing competition and the earlier scene in which members of a small Jewish orchestra, forced to play for new arrivals at a concentration camp, are killed when they play the Jewish folk song “Hava Nagila” are certainly rooted in a very real musical tradition in the camps. Auschwitz, for example, had an orchestra with dozens of musicians. And having them play for new arrivals was a real thing.
Those Holocaust stories that are original to “Hunters” take place in real settings during true events, but for these fictional characters the exact details of their circumstances are a bit different than they were for real people.
That Time Pete Buttigieg’s Husband Chasten Endorsed #BeardedButtigieg
More than a year before #BeardedButtigieg became a trending topic on social media, the husband of the Democratic presidential candidate and former South Bend, Indiana, mayor weighed in supporting the idea of Pete Buttigieg growing facial hair.
“All in favor of @PeteButtigieg participating in #Movember,” Chasten Buttigieg tweeted in November 2018, referring to the charitable campaign to raise funds for men’s health issues in which men grow beards for the month of November.
“Grow the beard!” Chasten wrote in a follow-up response, before jokingly adding, “Pete with facial hair is 100 but his body his choice!”
All in favor of @PeteButtigieg participating in #Movember ????
— Chasten Buttigieg (@Chas10Buttigieg) November 1, 2018
Grow ???? the ???? beard!????
Grow ???? the ???? beard!????
— Chasten Buttigieg (@Chas10Buttigieg) November 2, 2018
Pete with facial hair is ???? but his body his choice
— Chasten Buttigieg (@Chas10Buttigieg) November 1, 2018
Also Read: Pete Buttigieg's Husband Chasten Says He's Used to 'Dealing With the Likes of Rush Limbaugh'
#BeardedButtigieg became a trending topic late this week after “Trick” director Jim Fall posted images of a more hirsute Buttigieg using FaceApp, which alters existing photos to add facial hair or tattoos or otherwise change a person’s appearance. “I’m voting that Buttigieg should have a beard,” Fall wrote in a Thursday post that soon went viral.
Fall told The Advocate that he created the images after being “impressed” by Buttigieg’s performance in Wednesday’s Democratic debate in Las Vegas. “I’m still on the fence about who I’ll vote for ultimately, but both Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren have stayed at the top of my list,” he said. “Elizabeth doesn’t look so good in a beard or mustache, so I didn’t post those.
“It’s amazing to me that we are living in a time where an out gay married man is a serious contender for the presidency,” he added. “No matter what you feel about his specific politics, the LGBTQ community should be celebrating. I see so many gay men on social media knocking him down, and it’s disheartening.”
Reps for the Buttigieg campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Related stories from TheWrap:
Pete Buttigieg's Husband Chasten Says He's Used to 'Dealing With the Likes of Rush Limbaugh'
Joe Biden Responds to Rush Limbaugh: Pete Buttigieg Has 'Courage' and Is 'Smart as Hell'
Sanders Edges Buttigieg in New Hampshire Primary as Klobuchar Surges to Third
‘Hunters': Did the Government Really Bring a Bunch of Nazis to America in ‘Operation Paperclip’?
“Hunters,” the new series from Amazon Prime Video which dropped on Friday, is a work of historical fiction. Which means the actual plot is made up, but the story is firmly rooted in real historical events.
Those roots manifest in many ways on “Hunters.” Like the flashbacks to Nazi concentration camps. The very real 1977 New York City blackout that was not just a freak accident in this version of history. And, of course, the United States government sweeping up a bunch of prominent Nazis and giving them important jobs in America.
Though so far as the public record goes the Nazis did not make a concerted effort to establish the Fourth Reich in the US, it is true that after the war the government brought a large number of Nazi scientists to America instead of punishing them. A lot of important folks got a free pass because of their skills, most notably Wernher von Braun, who got a high placement at NASA and has lots of stuff named after him. Von Braun was just one of many Nazis who worked at NASA back in the day.
This whole thing, dubbed Operation Paperclip, is the spark of the plot in “Hunters,” which is all about a squad of vigilante spies, basically, verifying these folks and taking them out. Though in this version of history those Nazis weren’t just hanging out living their lives — they were plotting to take over the country.
Also Read: 'Hunters' Creator Says We're Currently Facing 'an Epidemic of Anti-Semitism' Not 'Seen in Decades'
If you want to know more about Operation Paperclip, you’ve come to the right place. Below we’ll run down the basics of the real-world version of Paperclip, but we’ll avoid spoilers for the sake of those who aren’t finished with “Hunters” season 1 yet.
So despite a reputation in popular culture for almost science fiction level technology, Nazi Germany actually lagged far behind its rivals in several key fields, like nuclear physics.
But in some other fields, particularly rocketry, Nazi German scientists were actually ahead of the U.S. and USSR. In the latter months of World War II Germany developed the first guided ballistic missiles, which they used to attack cities in England and Belgium, among others. By contrast, the otherwise far more advanced America had to use standard issue bomber planes to deploy the first nuclear bombs.
After Nazi Germany surrendered in May, 1945, the country was divided up under zones of US and Soviet control, who ended up with custody of a lot of those scientists. This is where it gets complicated.
The German scientists were of course Nazis, in many cases high ranking Nazis. Which meant there was a high probability they were personally involved in Nazi atrocities like biological weapons research, concentration camp deaths, slave labor and human experimentation.
This was less of a problem for the Soviets, whose zone of control included the site where Germany developed its most advanced rockets, giving them a huge advantage just as relations with the US were turning sour. The USSR reverse engineered the whole thing and rebuilt it inside Soviet borders. They also forcibly conscripted more than 2000 scientists.
The situation was different for the US, who was in the process of very publicly declaring itself the defender of human rights in the postwar era. No matter — America wanted to get an advantage over the USSR, and also had real concerns that Nazi scientists might take their skills to other countries (there were several nations that didn’t participate in WWII but nonetheless were Nazi allies).
In late 1946 President Truman issued a secret directive authorizing “operation overcast,” which fast-tracked immigration papers for more than a thousand former Nazi scientists. It was later renamed “Operation Paperclip” because a paper clip would be attached to someone’s file, indicating they were to be allowed in without too much scrutiny.
Also Read: Here's Everything New Coming to Amazon Prime Video in March
Once in the US, they formed the core that developed America’s nuclear missile array during the 1950s — they also developed weapons for America that almost certainly violated international law.
In 1960, they were reassigned to newly-created NASA, where they oversaw the staggering scientific and engineering advances during the space race. Among them was Wernher von Braun, Germany’s top rocket scientist during the war. He designed the rocket that sent Apollo 11 to the moon.
But about those aforementioned war crimes: Operation Paperclip, ahem, papered over the records of recruited Nazi scientists, some of whom were outright monsters. Here are just a few examples:
-According to Annie Jacobson in her 2014 book Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America, Walter Schreiber, a medical researcher who served as a key witness for the prosecution in the Nuremberg trials, was brought to the US under Paperclip in 1951. Just weeks later the Boston Globe exposed his ghastly human experimentation research at Ravensbrück concentration camp, and he fled to Argentina (with US military help).
-Rocket scientist Arthur Rudolph was brought into the US in 1945 and for the next 40 years served US military and scientific interests. He became a US citizen and even received NASA’s highest award. Then in 1984 it came out that he made heavy use of slave labor from Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp during World War II. Rudolph renounced his US citizenship and left the country in order to avoid a war crimes trial.
-Hubertus Strughold, former head of medical research for the Luftwaffe, came to the US in 1947 and through his subsequent work was honored as “the father of space medicine.” The Aerospace Medical Association even named its most prestigious award after him. Unfortunately he almost certainly conducted insidious experiments on humans, including children, at Dachau concentration camp. While he was never punished during his lifetime, the SMA retired the Strughold Award in 2013 following a Wall Street Journal expose of his crimes.
-As for von Braun, there is some evidence he also participated in war crimes, and he was accused of personally selecting slave labor. And, of course, he was a card-carrying member of the Nazi Party. But he also ran afoul of Nazi authorities, who suspected him of sedition and communist sympathies. In later life he consistently denied any direct participation in Nazi war crimes and said he felt helpless to do anything about the war crimes he knew about. His complicated legacy aside, he remains a revered NASA founding father with awards, buildings, streets and even a crater on the moon named after him.
So yeah, Operation Paperclip is certainly not a fictional thing that was made up for “Hunters” or the “Captain America” movies — you may recall that Hydra took over SHIELD as a result of Paperclip. The reality of it is, so far as we know, just a bit more mundane than these fictional tales.
February 21, 2020
Lindsey Renee Lagestee, Singer With Country Band Dixie Crush, Dies at 25
Lindsey Renee Lagestee, a singer and founding member of the country music cover band Dixie Crush, died Monday due to complications after being struck by a car last Friday, the Chicago-based band announced on their Facebook page. She was 25.
“To our Dixie Crush family, aka the #CrushCrew, thank you so much for the outpouring of love and support these past few days,” the statement reads. “Some of you may have already heard the terrible news, but It is with the heaviest of hearts, we sadly share that Lindsey Renee passed away on Monday due to complications from the accident last Friday. Our hearts are broken over this senseless tragedy.”
Lagestee was hit by a car while crossing the street to play a Valentine’s Day show at the Firewater Saloon in Chicago that night.
Also Read: Ja'net Dubois, 'Good Times' Star, Dies at 74
“She had just parked a couple of blocks down for the club we were scheduled to play,” fellow Dixie Crush member Jim Nonneman told Taste of Country. “She exited her pickup truck and was making her way to the venue when she was struck by a car.” Lagestee was rushed to the hospital and died from her injuries three days later.
The band’s Facebook message goes on to say that bandmates have received notes, texts, emails and posts from hundreds of friends and fans expressing their sympathy and condolences. “The common thread was love. If you have a Lindsey story, please post it and tag Dixie Crush.”
A GoFundMe for Lagestee’s family was set up by a friend of the band to help with expenses for her funeral, which will be held on Feb. 22 in Lansing, Illinois.
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Watch Caleb and Dolores Meet Cute in 3rd Hidden ‘Westworld’ Season 3 Trailer: It’s ‘35% More Romantic’ (Video)
Oh, oh, it feels like we’re dreamin’ because HBO has released yet another hidden trailer for “Westworld” Season 3, and this one is a rom-com style video that could not be more different in tone from the Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy-created sci-fi series.
Seriously, it even has an upbeat soundtrack and inspirational title cards, one of which promises this season will be “35% more romantic.” And that romance is coming courtesy of Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) and her new human friend Caleb (series newcomer Aaron Paul).
In the trailer, which you can view above, you’ll see Dolores and Caleb meet cute when the Host runs into him in the real world, having escaped the confines of Westworld at the end of Season 2.
“Who the hell are you?” he asks her, out of breath. “I’m Dolores,” she responds, matter-of-factly. “Nice to meet you,” Caleb says.
Then she offers to buy him breakfast and places his order for him: “He’ll take a cheeseburger and strawberry shake, two cherries.”
Caleb calls that a “neat trick” and wants to know how she knew his favorite foods. “I’ve had my eye on you,” she says, “I think you’re the one I’ve been waiting for.”
Also Read: 'Westworld' Season 3 Trailer: Aaron Paul and Dolores Are Teaming Up to 'Kill Everyone' (Video)
Wait, what does that mean exactly? Well, she’s working on something big, apparently, and thinks he can help her “start a revolution.”
See? So cute.
The video continues with a montage of romantic/adventurous moments between the two, which leads to Dolores saying, “I’m just a girl, trapped in this mechanical body — and I’m starting to fall for you.”
Then things get, uh, a little more intense with an ambulance and guns and fire, building up to Caleb telling Dolores, “You are the first real thing that has happened to me in a long time.”
Also Read: James Marsden 'Can't Answer' Whether or Not Teddy Is Alive on 'Westworld' (Video)
The trailer ends with a quick scene featuring Lena Waithe and Marshawn Lynch’s characters, also new additions for Season 3, coming in to help Dolores and her “loverboy.”
This video marks the third hidden trailer HBO has released to promote the upcoming third season of “Westworld.” You can view the official trailer here and the other two secret trailers here.
“Westworld” Season 3 premieres Sunday, March 15 at 9/8c on HBO.
Related stories from TheWrap:
Watch 2 Hidden 'Westworld' Season 3 Trailers – Because of Course There Are Hidden Trailers (Video)
'Westworld' Season 3 Trailer: Aaron Paul and Dolores Are Teaming Up to 'Kill Everyone' (Video)
James Marsden 'Can't Answer' Whether or Not Teddy Is Alive on 'Westworld' (Video)
Anderson Cooper Calls ‘Bulls–‘ on Rod Blagojevich for Saying He Was a ‘Political Prisoner’ (Video)
CNN’s Anderson Cooper got into a heated exchange with Rod Blagojevich on Friday’s edition of his show, calling “bulls—” on the former Illinois governor’s assertion that he was unfairly treated by the justice system.
The interview first became tense after Blagojevich said he was railroaded by “corrupt” prosecutors and described himself as a “political prisoner.” The statement was met by an immediately skeptical response from Cooper.
“Nelson Mandela was a political prisoner,” Cooper said. “Political prisoners have no due process and are unjustly jailed. You had a jury convict you, you had appeals courts look at your sentencing. You even appealed to the Supreme Court twice, and they refused to hear you. You’re hardly a political prisoner.”
Also Read: CNN Journalists Respond to Sean Hannity's Twitter Attacks on 'Arrogance' of Rival Network's 'Hacks'
“The idea that you are comparing yourself to somebody who has actually been railroaded by an apartheid system is just nuts, and frankly offensive,” he continued.
Blagojevich was impeached in 2008 and received a 14-year prison sentence for soliciting bribes in exchange for political appointments, including attempting to sell the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama when he was elected president. Blagojevich served nearly eight years in federal prison until his sentence was commuted by President Donald Trump earlier this week.
In Friday’s interview, Blagojevich said he was a victim of an unfair justice system, comparing his imprisonment to the mass incarceration of black and Latino Americans. “What I’m saying is that I was thrown in prison and spent nearly eight years in prison for practicing politics, for seeking campaign contributions, for no quid pro quo,” he said.
Also Read: Fox News and MSNBC Get a Ratings Bump on Primary Night While CNN Viewership Drops
He called on Cooper to join the effort to reform the justice system, an idea the host found laughable. Cooper called Blagojevich’s statements “ironic and, frankly, a little sad and pathetic and hypocritical.”
“There’s a lot of people in Chicago, there’s a lot of people in Illinois that actually spit up when you say that,” Cooper said. “Because when you were actually in power, and when you were actually governor and you could’ve actually helped thousands of people with clemency cases, you blew it off.”
Blagojevich called his failure to do more in the area of criminal justice reform one of his “biggest regrets” from his time as governor. “I didn’t know how corrupt the criminal justice system was until it did it to me,” he said.
Also Read: Impeachment Vote Cable News Ratings: Fox News Wins, CNN and MSNBC Continue Competing in Key Demo
Cooper closed the interview with one final dig at Blagojevich’s attempt to paint himself as a victim.
“You got out, you do have an obligation to at least admit what you did wrong, and you refuse to do that,” Cooper said. “You’re creating a whole new alternate universe of facts, and that may be big in politics today, but it’s still, frankly, just bulls—.”
Related stories from TheWrap:
CNN Hires Former Presidential Candidate Andrew Yang as Political Commentator
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Fox News and MSNBC Get a Ratings Bump on Primary Night While CNN Viewership Drops
Bernie Sanders Picks Up Key Endorsement From Dick Van Dyke: ‘Age … It Really Doesn’t Matter’
Bernie Sanders has had no problem energizing young voters, but now he’s picked up an endorsement sure to earn favor with people closer to his own age: television legend Dick Van Dyke.
“I’m Dick Van Dyke and I’m a very enthusiastic supporter of Bernie Sanders,” the “Dick Van Dyke Show” star said in a new video released by the Sanders camp Friday. “I don’t think age — it really doesn’t matter, except for his experience and the years he’s put in.”
For the record, Sanders is 78, while Van Dyke is 94 and still has all his marbles, as he puts it.
Also Read: Ocasio-Cortez Insists Bernie Sanders 'Works Very Hard' to Tamp Down Bernie Bros' 'Toxic' Messaging
“I can’t understand why, according to the polls, he’s having problems with older citizens like me,” Van Dyke continued. “Why wouldn’t an older citizen vote for somebody with that kind of a record and that kind of experience and honesty? It just doesn’t make sense to me that he’s not getting my generation. And I want to urge my generation to get out and vote for him, please.”
Van Dyke closed his video by joking, “I think somebody younger, like Bernie, would be a perfect candidate.”
Watch the endorsement video above.
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Harvey Weinstein Trial: What to Make of the Jury Note Hinting at Deadlock on 2 Key Charges
Legal experts monitoring Harvey Weinstein’s trial believe the jury’s latest note on Friday suggests the panel is deadlocked on the most serious charges, predatory sexual assault, but unanimous on guilty verdicts for the rape and criminal sexual act counts against the disgraced mogul.
“This is all very bad news for Weinstein and his defense team — and it could potentially get much worse,” Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor who now runs West Coast Trial Lawyers, told TheWrap. “The prosecution has to be pretty giddy right now.”
There are, however, several caveats when interpreting or speculating on how the jury could be deliberating based on that note, lawyers who spoke with TheWrap cautioned.
“We don’t know what goes on in the jury room, we don’t know whether they’re understanding the directions, we don’t know the order which they took the charges,” Deborah Tuerkheimer, a former assistant district attorney in the Manhattan D.A.’s office, told TheWrap. “We will not know how this ends until it ends.”
Also Read: Harvey Weinstein Jury Deadlocked on 2 Key Counts, Sent Back to Deliberate Further
But with that in mind, the note, which said, “We the jury request to understand if we can be hung on [counts] 1 and/or 3 but unanimous on the others,” could offer a window into how far the jury has come over the past four days of deliberations.
Weinstein, who has pleaded not guilty, faces five charges:
1. Predatory sexual assault (as pertaining to the testimonies of Miriam Haley and Annabella Sciorra)
2. Criminal sexual act in the first degree (Haley)
3. Predatory sexual assault (as pertaining to the testimonies of Jessica Mann and Sciorra)
4. Rape in the first-degree (Mann)
5. Rape in the third-degree (Mann)
The jurors were instructed that if they were to find Harvey Weinstein guilty of count one, predatory sexual assault (pertaining to Haley and Sciorra), they must not consider count two. But if the jury finds Weinstein not guilty of predatory sexual assault because the jurors don’t believe Sciorra’s account, then Weinstein must also get a not guilty verdict for count three, predatory sexual assault (pertaining to Mann and Sciorra). The jury may continue to consider the second charge, criminal sexual act in the first degree, which is tied to Haley’s testimony.
If the jury finds Weinstein guilty of count three, predatory sexual assault (pertaining to Mann and Sciorra), then the jurors must disregard counts four and five, the two rape charges connected to Mann’s account. But if the jury finds Weinstein not guilty of the Mann/Sciorra predatory sexual assault charge because they don’t believe Mann’s account, then the jury must also find Weinstein not guilty of count four, rape in the first-degree, and move on to the fifth charge, rape in the third-degree.
Also Read: Inside the Harvey Weinstein Jury's Tricky Task and Why They Can't Find Him Guilty on All 5 Counts
Rahmani said the note could suggest the jury has “unanimously agreed to return guilty verdicts on the non-predatory counts” because they appear to be considering the predatory sexual assault charges, which require the prosecution to prove that Harvey Weinstein raped at least two people.
“If the jurors were unanimous that … the Haley and the Mann rapes didn’t happen, then, by definition, there can be no predatory sexual assault,” Rahmani said. But because the note suggests that they may have come to a unanimous decision on the individual Haley and Mann charges, Rahmani said “it sounds like some jurors are uncertain or on the fence or ‘not guilty’ votes when it comes to [Sciorra’s] specific sexual assault.”
Given that the prosecution requested on Friday afternoon that the jury go back and continue deliberating, Rahmani said they’re likely wanting to “go for the home run” and get guilty verdicts on the two predatory sexual assault charges, which hold the possibility of life sentences.
Also Read: 6 Harvey Weinstein Accusers Have Testified at His Trial - Here's What They Said
Douglas Wigdor, who represents one of the “prior bad acts” witnesses in the trial, also agreed.
“The last jury note indicates that the jury has found #HarveyWeinstein guilty of at least rape first degree (Mann) or criminal sex act first degree (Haley), both B felonies,” Wigdor tweeted on Friday afternoon. “The note suggests that the jury does believe either Mann or Haley (or both). But they need to also believe Sciorra in order to come to a guilty verdict on either count of predatory sexual assault, which carries a max sentence of life in prison.”
There is always the possibility that the jury is unable to come to a unanimous decision on the predatory sexual assault charges — or that they choose to acquit Harvey Weinstein on those charges. And there is always the possibility that the jury is unanimous on a “not guilty” verdict for the remaining charges and that the note is being misinterpreted by lawyers and journalists alike.
But the “reasonable interpretation,” according to criminal defense attorney Mark Geragos, is that “they’re probably unanimous on conviction.”
“If I’m the defense lawyer in this case, this is not a good thing,” Geragos told TheWrap. “If I was on Harvey’s defense team? I’d be preparing the appeal.”
Related stories from TheWrap:
Harvey Weinstein Jury Deadlocked on 2 Key Counts, Sent Back to Deliberate Further
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Inside the Harvey Weinstein Jury's Tricky Task and Why They Can't Find Him Guilty on All 5 Counts
Watch 2 Hidden ‘Westworld’ Season 3 Trailers – Because of Course There Are Hidden Trailers (Video)
HBO finally gave “Westworld” fans the Season 3 trailer they’d been waiting months for yesterday. Actually, they gave us more than one — you just had to know where to find them all.
TheWrap has learned there are two hidden “Westworld” Season 3 trailers, in addition to the official one, buried within the Incite Inc. website. These videos are HBO’s Easter eggs for all you superfans willing to do a deeper dive for clues about the upcoming season of Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy’s sci-fi series. And we’ve heard there could actually be more trailers waiting to be discovered.
You can watch the first hidden trailer, titled “Freedom Is Not Free,” via the video above, and the second one, titled “Your World,” below.
Also Read: 'Westworld' Season 3 Trailer: Aaron Paul and Dolores Are Teaming Up to 'Kill Everyone' (Video)
If you look closely at the very quick scenes shown at the end of the first hidden trailer, you’ll see shocking moments like the Man in Black (Ed Harris) being tortured and the return of Katja Herbers, who played the Man in Black’s daughter, Grace, on Season 2. Until, you know, he killed her. (You can read what Herbers previously told us about her possible appearance on Season 3 here.)
If you aren’t a fan who goes hunting for these sorts of things, you may have never been to the Incite Inc website, created by HBO. Well, that’s OK, because all of us “Westworld” fans still know very little about the fake tech company, which was first introduced to us via a teaser that dropped last November. All we know for now is that it appears to be some kind of competitor of Delos Inc., the parent company of Delos Destinations, the maker of Westworld.
Here’s Incite’s description, which comes courtesy of the fake tech giant’s website, which you should definitely explore if you hope to find another hidden trailer.
Also Read: James Marsden 'Can't Answer' Whether or Not Teddy Is Alive on 'Westworld' (Video)
The world can feel chaotic: big problems, no solutions, no one to lead the way. Global issues may seem so complex that untangling the answers feels impossible. Here at Incite, we want to make “impossible” a thing of the past. Chaos is merely a pattern waiting to be uncovered. You can help us chart a better future.
Powered by our revolutionary strategy engine, we are able to calculate sophisticated solutions to problems large and small, from global climate change to personal career growth. We believe we have a personal responsibility to make the world a better place, starting at home. Here at Incite, your data doesn’t work for us — we work for you.
“Westworld” Season 3 premieres March 15 at 9/8c on HBO.
Related stories from TheWrap:
'Westworld' Season 3 Trailer: Aaron Paul and Dolores Are Teaming Up to 'Kill Everyone' (Video)
James Marsden 'Can't Answer' Whether or Not Teddy Is Alive on 'Westworld' (Video)
NBC Picks Up Re-Enactment Series ‘True Story’ Hosted by Ed Helms, Randall Park
NBC has given a six-episode pickup to the “Drunk History”-style re-enactment series “True Story,” co-hosted by Ed Helms and Randall Park.
Based on the Australian format “True Story with Hamish & Andy,” “True Story” will see everyday Americans sit down with Helms and Park to “share their most extraordinary and unbelievably true stories.” The stories will be brought to life by a star-studded cast of comedians and actors in “heightened, dramatized re-enactments of cinematic proportions.”
“I can’t wait to bring ‘True Story’ to American audiences with my buddy Randall Park,” said Helms, who also serves as executive producer on the show. “It’s an incredibly warm, hilarious and kind-spirited show that celebrates the lost art of laughing at ourselves … with a little help from epic reenactments.”
Also Read: 'Superstore' Renewed for Season 6 at NBC
“I’m so excited to be a part of a show that combines three of my favorite things: great stories from real people, my pal Ed Helms and couches,” Park added.
“True Story” is executive produced by Tim Bartley, Hamish Blake, Andy Lee, Ryan Shelton, Ed Helms, Mike Falbo and Nicolle Yaron, who will also serve as showrunner. The series hails from Warner Horizon in association with Pacific Electric Picture Co. and Universal Television Alternative Studio.
“‘True Story’ is the perfect combination of heart, humor and ingenuity that has become synonymous with the NBC Alternative brand,” said Meredith Ahr, president, Alternative and Reality Group, NBC Entertainment. “We believe that truth can be stranger (and funnier!) than fiction, and Ed and Randall are the ultimate duo to help real people bring their incredible stories to life.”
“‘True Story’ is an entirely new kind of funny television,” added Mike Darnell, president of Warner Bros. Unscripted & Alternative Television. “Ed and Randall are innovators on the comedy circuit making them the perfect combination to headline this show for NBC.”
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