Hacker News Reader

Comment by danielvaughn | Hacker News Reader

Lee Pace's performance in that show is one of my all time favorites. It's incredibly hard to play a charismatic marketing guru because in some sense, you're not acting. In a given scene, the character might be trying to convince people around him of some crazy idea, but if he hasn't convinced you, the viewer, then the entire illusion falls apart. So he really has to do in real life what he's pretending to do on screen.

edit - a great example and one of my favorite scenes from the show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOR8mk0tLpc

View on HN

Funny that this came up today. Last night I started re-watching the series after several years. Just this afternoon I was reflecting on how genuinely charismatic Lee Pace's Joe McMillen is.

You really feel it. Even when we know he's a manipulative sonuvabitch. It's mesmerizing. You have to admire his ability to spin shit into gold. The man has vision.

There's a sequence around S01E07 that I'm looking forward to reaching again, in which Joe is out on the front lawn with Donna's daughters during a hurricane and it's FEELS like magic. His performance feels earnest, and hypnotizing, and genuinely magical as he puts on a show for these young girls in the rain.

There's something intangible and hard to describe about the series. The writers have a way of making it transcend it's core drama and feel very different from just about any other show I can recall. Somehow it feels like pure creative expression that manages to defy outside expectations and tell a story that feels true to life and convey the ambitions of creative people who are fighting to make something beautiful.

You're making me really want to start a rewatch.

It's shocking how few people have seen this show, let along watched it. Part of that probably has to do with how inaccessible it is on streaming. It's only readily available on AMC+. And no one has AMC+.

This is one of those shows that would likely shoot to the top if Netflix got the rights to it and even did a mild push. It's genuinely peak prestige TV.

40-episode box set is $30 ($16 today) on Apple TV.

And just like that, their sales skyrocketed.

Not in Europe?

It does seem to be available on ITVX in the UK.

It's available on Prime Video (at least on amazon.de). For a long while they would only sell access to season 1, but I've just checked now and all 4 seasons are available at the moment.

Thanks that’s correcr

Apple TV is distributing physical media?

Scroll past the subscription options to find the full series listing. "Box Set" licensing terminology is as anachronistic as "Seasons", but both are used in Apple TV product listings for non-subscription streaming media purchases.

I'm not seeing anything anachronistic about either term. "Seasons" is absolutely aligned to the way television series are still produced and distributed. "Box Set" implies physical media. Using the latter term to refer to something else sounds like a case of false advertising.

Apple offers refunds for unwanted digital purchases, and this description in Apple TV app:

  When you purchase access to this item, you can permanently download it to your iPhone, iPad, Mac, or PC. Once downloaded, you can access this without an internet connection, and Apple can't remove it from your device.

Wait, so it's actually a standalone, DRM-free download? If that's the case, then while the term is still somewhat misleading, it's considerably less so than I assumed.

Not DRM free, but unlike most streaming services Apple TV will download purchased media via different countries or VPNs and has no time limit to watch the download. In practice, it "just works". Buying all 4 seasons individually would be 4x$13=$52.

I don't see how it qualifies as a legitimate download or ownership. You cannot save the file to a disk you control and you have no way to ensure you have continued access to it. Apple or the IP holder can cause this "download" to dissapear from your device/account without prior warning. Its actually written in the terms.

Is a monthly subscription better? Few are willing to buy and rip physical media.

That's a problem for the "many" then to sort out. Everyone else that wants to own their media just uses Automatic Ripping Machine.

With the advent of digital music, "record album" morphed from referring to the physical medium, to referring to the recording that would be put on it. I think something similar is happening for "box set".

Not sure I'd agree. "Record album" never specifically referred to anything physical, and just means "collection of recordings", regardless of what medium is used for them.

The term "album" by itself did originally refer to something physical -- a collection of photos bound into a book by a glue made from egg whites ("albumen") -- but the semantic shift to "album" meaning any kind of collection offered as a single unit happened well before "record albums" were a thing.

But the term "box set" has not experienced a comparable semantic shift, and still implies the presence of an actual box.

Also free to watch on The Roku Channel: https://therokuchannel.roku.com/details/523a290683575d449483...

Also free to pirate for LLM training purposes

That is where I originally watched it. It was on Netflix at one point. And now, it is not. Which is most of the problem with streaming service in general.

> It's shocking how few people have seen this show, let along watched it

Huh?

I think they mean “seen” in the sense of “know it exists”, as in seeing it advertised on a billboard or the sea of thumbnails in a streaming service.

I recommend AMC+ if you like horror because you also get Shudder. I get to watch Joe Bob Brigg's "Last Drive In."

Plus all the Prestige Y2K Television - Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Walking Dead.

It used to be available as part of Prime. I've watched that series 3 times. It is very good..one of my all time faves, actually.

> There's something intangible and hard to describe about the series. The writers have a way of making it transcend it's core drama and feel very different from just about any other show I can recall.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halt_and_Catch_Fire_(TV_series...

  [actors gathered] at Pace's house on weekends to prepare dinner, drink wine, and discuss the scripts and their characters.. "it was really nice, because you got to hear other people's point of views about your character." For the third season, Pace, Davis, and McNairy lived together in a rented house in Atlanta, with Toby Huss joining them for the fourth season..

  Rogers called Lisco the duo's mentor, saying: "He.. showed us the ropes.. it was a master class in how to run a room, both in terms of getting a great story out of people, and.. being a really good and decent and fair person in what can sometimes be a brutal industry.." Between the second and third seasons, all of the series's writers departed to work on their own projects, requiring Cantwell and Rogers to build a new writing staff.

Well said, I rewatch it every few years and few shows come close to making me feel the way this one does.

I have Lee Pace on the radar since Singh's The Fall.

Your assessment of movie magic is only partially correct. Obviously, a character has to be convincing by himself but the heavy lifting of the illusion is done by the peer characters acting as if they believe the role he plays.

"The king is always played by the others"

Not sure who is to credit for this quote but in my opinion it is one of the most important insights to understand how movies work and also why movie characters are never relevant role models.

Often in movies you have the scrappy character that rises to the occasion by making a great speech, winning everybody over. I used to love those scenes.

Now, I've realized, in real life they wouldn't have let them finish their first sentence.

stuff like this. if i enjoy a movie but the script simply doesn't check out from a rational perspective (plot holes, implausible behavior, inconsistencies etc.) then i sometimes decide to switch to a fairy tale mental mode where those issues are excused magically. only works with some movies. kingdom of heaven comes to mind.

Project: Hail Mary, a fantasy world where geopolitics are trivially simple and every state in the world collectively agrees how great it would be to cede power and work together. (And therefore enable a genuinely fun and amazing science story which was the actual focus of the book to begin with, 10/10).

He's also extraordinary in Apple's Foundation, some say he carries the show. I treasure The Fall and every frame of it, in this he's uniquely blended with other great actors and images.

Apparently part of The Fall's magic stems from the fact that the girl playing Alexandria (Catinca Untaru) somehow didn't really understand that she was playing in a movie. The director, as well as Pace, received some criticism for this manipulation. She also didn't really continue acting afterwards.

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1942458/

Last season's Brother Dude was awesome. I really felt sad for him. I have to say, however, my tolerance for manipulative sociopaths is very low - I'd totally punch McMillen in the face.

I was only aware of The Fall for its brilliant photography.

The Fall is a great movie but still more style than substance imo.

It's forgivable, as long as it has A LOT of style.

IMO the plot of Apple's "The Foundation" is an infuriating insult to the original series. However, the production is great and Lee Pace is awesome as usual.

I kind of love it when movies/TV don't follow the books too closely. It means more content in a world I enjoy without repeating too much.

I generally agree, and also that it's impossible to take a book to video without change. I tend to try to think of it like this, imagine Bob and Jim watched a battle scene, but one from the west, the other from the east side. Bob wrote the book, Jim the movie.

Naturally, although it was the same battle, they'll have seen different things up close, and have different views on the battle overall.

Having said that...

It's like someone wrote the Foundation movie three generations after the book was written, turned into a play, and then told over the campfire for decades.

It literally has no more connection with Asimov's works, than Star Wars is like Star Trek. All of the technology is different, the size of the Empire is wildly different, literally almost nothing maps.

Is it good? Yes, sorta. But it's not Foundation, by any stretch. It's not even remotely in the same "world".

My problem is that the show essentially "says" the opposite of the novels.

For compelling TV you need recurring characters for the audience to become invested in. But the whole point of Foundation was that the individuals don't matter (mostly).

The show had to jump through all these hoops to keep the same actors around and make them heroes. And it expanded/emphasized the metaphysical element in a way that undermined the psychohistory. And IMO makes/will make (honestly don't know where they're at now) the series ending reveal far less interesting and thought provoking.

I think it's best appreciated as an original space opera that just happens to have the same name, especially given that so much of the show is genuinely original.

Even though Pushing Daisies ended too abruptly, I thought he was GREAT in that series as well.

Yeah, someone saw a love struck pie maker and thought: Ronan the Accuser.

He has range!

Check out Wonderfalls, his first series.

Lee Pace is such a phenomenal actor. He really just transforms the roles he's in and makes something special out of each show he's in.

He's also fantastic in Apple TV's Foundation and it's been really impressive seeing his range put on display there.

Dig up Wonderfalls, his first series, and Pushing Daisies. They form the Lee Pace Triumvirate (with Halt and Catch Fire) as far as I'm concerned.

"... what he's pretending to do on screen"

I remember seeing this discussed around the show The Marvelous Mrs Maisel, which is about a midcentury NYC divorcee getting into the world of stand up comedy. Overall it works and is a funny and enjoyable show, but there's definitely some of the standup routines depicted on-screen that are not actually as funny as the baked-in audience laughs might indicate. Because yeah... you can't really fake delivering good standup, even with a whole writer's room preparing the jokes and all the editing magic in the world, you still have to actually stand there and tell them in a funny way. That part can't be faked.

Hacks does it fairly well, or it may just be jean smart

It never occurred to me that the jokes were oversold. I think the show is genuinely funny, with a very high batting average. Easily one of the funniest shows on television.

I sure do miss 'Mrs. Maisel'. What a stellar series.

I think I really loved Barry for exactly the opposite of this reason. Seeing a truly great actor play a bad actor was both impressive and hilarious at the same time.

A stand up audience from the 1950s shouldn't be reacting to jokes the same way a 2020s audience would.

Sadly, Season 1 Joe is just incohesive. Like, you want there to be some structural reason behind his madness and there just isn't any, because there's too much of crazy. Season 2 tries to walk much of that back.

I haven't yet seen season 3 and beyond, but it's clear the OP blogger agrees:

> The best thing the show’s writers ever did was realize that Joe wasn’t the most interesting character.

Like, Lee is a good actor for sure, he was just given a poorly story crafted role.

His character makes much more sense in later seasons.

If you like Lee Pace, check out The Fall (2006). It's my favorite film, incredibly ambitious and funny and yet virtually unknown to the public. Lee's performance is incredible, as is his young co-star's.

I'll give that a shot. Found it it on torrent already.

Yeah, it's somewhat splintered in that you're unsure what movie you're watching between different parts, but I have a strong love for movies that dare, and that one certainly does.

I'll also second your comment about the kid, which is one of the best child performances I've seen.

If you like Lee Pace, watch Wonderfalls and Pushing Daisies.

He also stars in The Fall, one of my favorite movies ever.

And Wonderfalls and Pushing Daisies, two of my favorite shows ever.

Are we watching the same clip? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.

This is from the pilot and I watched it based on high recommendations, and I couldn't keep going because the character you're describing as so convincing and charismatic is so dramatically unlikeable!?

In this scene, he is:

* disrespectful and entitled with a coworker

* privileged and self-important about his background with a client

* then makes an admittedly pretty rousing speech, but TBH the show doesn't really trust us to understand that "this is meant to be inspirational" because it keeps cutting to the other character reacting "inspired", which is significant because

* he doesn't make the sale

* then proceeds to verbally scream abuse at the other character.

and then i'm supposed to be excited about watching the two of these start a computer company together? ..........why?

Great show! Toby Huss is also good as the guy you underestimate. He had a great scene in Weapons last year.

Scoot McNary is good in lots of things-- Monsters is a favorite. Mackenzie Davis in Station 11!

Viewers may have missed the show but casting agents didn't.

The guy gives me chills, he reminds me of every sales douche who has ever tried to pull the wool over my eyes, or sell a customer something so horrendous and undeliverable as to be actively business ending.

An absolute legendary performance.

> The guy gives me chills, he reminds me of every sales douche who has ever tried to pull the wool over my eyes, or sell a customer something so horrendous and undeliverable as to be actively business ending.

The thing is, Joe is supposed to actually have substance and vision. He's not faking it. The difference is that all those sales guys are pretending to be someone like Joe.

I dont know about substance, but possibly vision. Its an old pattern, he kept selling more until the technical reality caught up with him. And he would abuse the technical staff to try and squeeze more out, but mostly because his reputation was riding on having sold it.

He's basically supposed to be a Steve Jobs character - manipulative, with weak technical knowledge, but with high charisma. The part where he takes credit for Gordon's work is very much a reference to the Jobs/Wozniak relationship.

No, Joe wants to have substance and vision. The tragedy of his character is his slow realization that he just doesn't have it. Indeed it's the tragedy of all the main cast that each has some of what it takes to make something truly revolutionary, but they lack some key aspect. They each know that another has the missing piece they need, but they can't sustainably maintain a relationship with them.

Great take.

There's a line in the first season that runs as an undercurrent through the whole show ("Computers aren't the thing. They're the thing that gets you to the thing"). Joe originally says this to make the viewer think about technology, evoking the dawn of the personal computer and subsequently the internet. But later on, you're invited to re-interpret that statement as being about people: computers and technology were the thing that got the main characters to work together. It's the -people- that are the thing.

Part of what makes the show so good is that it's one of the few renditions in TV / movies of the joy of engineering something, and the constant tension that comes from working with great people. Great people inspire you, but they also challenge you. The show does a great job of portraying realistic conflicts that arise between different personality types and roles, as well as cleverly exposing the limitations of those personalities. With just Gordon, you'll get a stable and well engineered product but it won't be revolutionary. Joe has the vision but he can't actually _do_ the substantive part. Cameron has great substance and technical ability, but she's impractical and inflexible. Donna is responsible, effective, and clear-eyed - but unchecked, purely rational decisions erode the soul of a company into nothing. These differences frustrate our characters, and yet there can be no success without them.

I think many of us spend our whole careers chasing those rare moments where the right people are in the room solving problems, butting heads, but ultimately doing things they could never do all by themselves.

It was easy to dismiss the show at the time because, though Pace’s performance was great from the beginning, it felt like he was a Temu Don Draper in an 80s Mad Men wannabe with ‘tech’ replacing ‘ads’.

The show is not at all that if you stick with it for even a short while.

Totally agree, he was incredibly good in that show.

He's also really great in the show Foundation, with a pretty different role. I watched Foundation much more recently and it took me a while to realize it was the same actor from Halt.

I got really disappointed at the mainframe booting into PC-DOS with a CGA font on a 3278 terminal. The show made such an impeccable job at rebuilding the 3033 CPU and the 3278 terminal just to make such a horrible job depicting its boot process. A VM/SE banner or an MVS login screen would have been sufficient (if inaccurate, if we are looking at the operator console). Did the research point out mainframes don't run PC operating systems?

Lee Pace is a first rate actor but I could not recognize him or indeed, most of the characters in this show, as representative of their roles. I struggled to suspend my disbelief. The show felt like it was written by people who imagined what it must have been like rather than people who had any experience of it. I still enjoyed it somewhat. Not Silicon Valley good but okay.

I'm always surprised Lee Pace doesn't get more recognition; I've loved a lot of his quirkier projects like Wonderfalls, Pushing Daisies, and Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, but it's not like he hasn't also been in mainstream things like The Hobbit and Guardians of the Galaxy.

Don't forget https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fall_(2006_film)

He's in very heavy makeup in Guardians of the Galaxy (and his blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo in Captain Marvel), and while you can get a good look at his face in The Hobbit, his character doesn't get much screentime and isn't especially prominent - and indeed I don't think the Hobbit trilogy really turned any actors into household names which weren't already.

I love Lee Pace but there really hasn't been a blockbuster where he's front and center.

That's fair. I think his starring moment was really Pushing Daisies, but that kind of thing is not for everyone; even just the hyperreal aesthetic would be a barrier for some.

> I struggled to suspend my disbelief. The show felt like it was written by people who imagined what it must have been like rather than people who had any experience of it.

This! It's not a bad show but people calling it the Best Drama are wildly overselling it.

I really liked the show despite Lee Pace's performance.

Pace really nails the intense Jobs vibe, but having seen his other work, it seems like it might not be 100% acting. There's consistency to the off feeling he gives across roles.

Gordon's role was probably the most setting accurate, but I do feel the story would have suffered if the entire cast was realistic to 80s standards rather than translated into late-2010s sensibilities.

Almost no such thing as acting. It's all casting.

It seems fewer than 1 in 20 actors act, the rest are cast.

He also played Ronan in Guardians of the Galaxy and King Thranduil in Lord of the Rings!

how dare you mention Lee Pace and -not- mention his role in Foundation, he carried that entire show on his way too muscley back

It’s not cancelled, there’s a fourth season on the way.

But yes, him and Jared Harris are pretty much the primary reasons to watch. And given the limited Harris screentime, definitely Pace carries it.

People are using past tense, as David S. Goyer is leaving the show behind.

oh no, this is how i found out my favorite show is dead wtf

The articles I can find say he's staying on as a EP, just stepping down as the main show runner. That seems very different than leaving the show behind.

Yes, it could be there's no impact from any of it. I just remember seeing the headlines about the change.

Maybe I should watch a full episode but this clip doesn't sell -me- on it. Heavy handed and a bit phony. Great talent in these scenes, not directed or crafted for my tastes. I'm saying my feelings not downvoting!

he reminds me of truly the best bosses

also something about him with a good engineer

reminds me of me and my boss, i hope lol

Probably help him land Foundation. The narcissism is its own skill.

More recently, I loved how he killed it in Foundation. Another great casting for a great actor.

foundation has an incredible cast but even among such talent he's a clear outlier

maybe some sales look like this but anyone who models themselves after this or madmen or whatever… good luck.

Anyone modeling themselves after someone, isn't going to have that electricity.

You really have to believe in yourself and your plan, and have a real plan even if its in flux, to communicate like that and carry it off. But when audacity is backed up by substance, it really gets people's attention.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com