Catching up with quite a bit of extra stuff in the last few days. Glimpses BTS are always exciting, and you can bet that I *immediately* saved and screen shot all those detail shots of Ray Levine’s shop/flat when the set designer posted those. But those have to wait for another day – I need to gather my thoughts on all that photography pron in those shots 😍. So today is really a catch-up with the make-up department. If you are on Twitter, you have already seen it, but nevertheless, the pictures are quite swoon-worthy, so here goes.
Sam Marshall, the hair and make-up designer, documented her splendid work here. Make sure you click through all the images in the embedded IG post above because it ends on a mini video where she films “early Ray” 360°. (And yes, “it” talks, too, even though just briefly.)
From this angle, the hair style looks decent – and the wig is very convincing, I must say. I had wondered whether they had actually cut his hair and shot out of sequence, or whether this was a wig. They caught his hair colour really well, and in this little clip it really sits quite nicely on Mr A’s pretty head. – Even though I think RA looks quite convincing when his hair is coloured Thornton-black, I do actually think the dark-blond/brownish tone suits him well, too.
If you look through the following post that feature RA with Ray’s tattoos, his hair looks almost as if highlighted with some blond strands.
Not a wig! But definitely getting jiggy here… *oops*
My subjective response to the different styles of early Ray and later Ray, however, was that I didn’t really buy his earlier style. I understand why they gave him a different hair style – they needed to make him visually different so that the viewer understood that this was the Ray of 17 years ago. To me the shorter hair made him look older than younger, though. And for me it also didn’t really quite mesh with *my* image of a supposedly happy and successful/promising photographer. The whole look, including the costume choices for earlier Ray, was a bit too “grandpa” for my taste, and did not fit the “unconventional artist in love with the stripper” kind of guy.
Overall, they did well with Ray’s look, though. Washed-out or not, that whole super-casual look with hoodies and leather jackets really did remind me of some of my ex-colleagues. The tats were a nice visual – although to me it does not make sense that somebody would tattoo images on their skin of places that they cannot remember, or of events that he isn’t sure about himself. Why carry that reminder with you? And in any case, how does the clean-cut, perfect son-in-law suddenly turn into a tat-loving, walking work of art? Ah well, I guess it’s all explained by the traumatic and life-changing experience…
Anyway, massive thank you to the make-up artist for documenting her work. It is great to see the details up close.
Guylty Pleasure 
Personally I would never voluntarily have a tattoo for any reason, but I think the view reflected in the show (of tattooing as a means of processing grief or trauma is pretty standard these days.
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Yep, I can understand that. I just didn’t really buy that someone would tattoo something traumatic on their skin, especially if they can’t remember the scene.
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It has a certain logic. If you “write it on your body,” you never have the chance to forget the fragments that you have, and it forces others to confront them. There are a bunch of articles in this general vein here (see right hand margin, too).
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01639625.2020.1738641?journalCode=udbh20
I have the opposite problem — much more that I would like to forget than that I want to remember. But if you only had fragmentary memories of what you saw as the decisive event in your life, it would be a compelling way to hang on to them.
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Ha, you have explained that better than Armitage did, Servetus. I really didn’t get what he was trying to do with those tats, but the way you are explaining it – a way to remember the bits that he can recollect – makes sense to me now. (Still not convinced that that unfashionable-looking guy in his mid-twenties would resort to heavy tattooing, though 😂. But that’s more to do with the styling than with the intended characterisation of the character.)
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Keeping in mind that I didn’t read the book, I think Armitage just likes tattoos (thinking back to Lucas North — that was all his idea, too). And he was clearly into the Red Dragon ones, too. If he can come up with some kind of rationale, whatever, but it’s really about the tattoos. That’s my theory.
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😂 You are on to something here. He’s been peddling the tattoo stories for a while now. He might as well go the full hog and get some ink himself. 🤦♀️ (but he’s probably afraid of the needle 😜)
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i did wonder if the short hair was a wig, it looks great in the video and stills but in the show it lacks movement. I think the colour is as close to his natural colour as possible though-as well as that wave.
The tattoos are just a bit ugly imo, lol
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That’s it. It lacks movement. It came across as a bit of a helmet in the film.
I like the designs of the tats, particularly the ones on his forearms where the untattooed, white skin is the integral part of the picture.
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He was asked about it at some point years ago and he said it made it harder to get roles.
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Yeah, he says so… but what can be imposed on skin, can also be covered. 😉 Tbh, I don’t really read him as a tattooed hard guy. But well, it sounds good to be saying so…
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I guess I wouldn’t have assumed that those two terms (“hard guy” and “tattooed”) necessarily belong together. But if you don’t like sitting in makeup, getting a tattoo in a conspicuous place is a way to assure that you’ll have to do it for every role. The deal with Lucas was that he was reported as saying that he was eager to shed his image as a handsome heartthrob. (That didn’t work out well, though.)
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Said tongue-in-cheek 😉. Tats are mainstream now, as evidenced by old bags like me having a tattoo. (Miniscule, of course, but done in the most pain-sensitive place *doh*) It makes sense for an actor *not* to have a tattoo. Keeping all his options open. But I just find that his constant reiteration of “I was very tempted to get it tattooed permanently” rings a bit hollow. Just like his “I don’t want to be the handsome heartthrob (anymore)” denials.
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I agree. I haven’t bought his protestations for a while.
My own theory is that he gets to play out/ explore some of his “fantasies” whilst in the safety of the character. Looks like he would have satisfied the desire to play an edgy, inked photographer. That said, I felt the tats and thumb rings did not quite match Ray’s character as portrayed. I didn’t find Ray particularly edgy, just a bit tragic.
I am looking forward to RA’s next role requiring piercings!
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Absolutely agree, Zigzag. Not edgy and cool in the past at all, and then later tragic not cool. There were a couple of details that didn’t mesh for me – even down to things like Ray’s super cool Eames lounger in his studio. A really expensive piece of furniture. Yes, very much on point for style-conscious, artsy types. But then that image for me wasn’t really reflected in Ray’s earlier look nor his present-time neglected and disheveled state. (I’m totally nit-picking here, btw. Searching for mistakes with a magnifying glass 😂. And all of my criticism is more or less balanced out by the fact that I did like the Ray character as such.)
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It’s hard for me to say without knowing him personally, but I identify with him strongly on the problem of wanting to do one kind of work and constantly getting pushed into another. Although I am not constantly interviewed about it, one could say it was the defining problem of my early career. But I agree that there’s a point at which the rubber hits the road.
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Nicely put, Servetus. “Rubber hits the road”. I am sure the whole issue of pigeonholing is extremely difficult for actors, especially if they have more scope than just “handsome stranger”. In that sense I understand that it was important to him to escape that image and make it clear he had other aspirations. Maybe age will now solve this issue for him, anyway?
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oops. Wrong place.
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Hehe, I didn’t even notice. No worries.
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I rather like the arm tattoos.
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I do, too, and now they also make sense to me. (Although I still don’t think that they fit with the clean-cut look of early Ray’s persona.)
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I’ve not seen it yet. Between work and being determined to get my house together, I’ve been stretched to the gills. I’ve not even finished watching Wheel of Time. Wanted to do that over the Christmas holidays. At least I’ve seen the Witcher.
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I’ve never cared for tattoos, but I agree that the reverse ones (where the “positive” image is the bare skin and the “negative” background is the ink) are the most artistic. I wonder if we can know that the tats were a “sudden” transformation. More likely applied over several years as Ray gradually recalled salient events from that night.
As for the hair, I also was surprised the shorter do was a wig, but never thought it looked stiff, unless compared to the longer do that had lots of movement, especially in the fight with Dave. The way Ray had to keep flinging it back out of his eyes set my screen afire! BTW, wondering if a stunt double was used in this scene.
Appreciated Sam posting this BTS info and you sharing it with us. I wonder if she meant “unkempt” rather than “unkept” in the 2nd IG message. Seems to me unkempt (disheveled, intentionally messy) is accurate, yet knowing Ray’s state of mind, perhaps unkept (neglected, not caring at all how he looks) is really more appropriate. So perhaps her omission of one letter was deliberate after all.
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I prefer the tats to his ‘youthful’ wig, although the little video is interesting – the wig is so realistic and I love RA’s remark, and little chuckle, at the end about the ‘hair video’!
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The tats were good – the wig, ah well, looked good there in the video but didn’t suit the guy imo.
Typical RA to make some sort of funny quip and lighten up what must have been a self-conscious moment…
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Smoking gun (due to grading papers on the representation of philosophical ideas in popular films): Armitage talked about “Memento” in the runup to “Sleepwalker.” Memento has a main character with a brain injury who tattoos things on his body so he won’t forget them.
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“Memento” was my first thought when Armitage started talking about the tattoos prior to the release of the show on Netflix.
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I hadn’t seen until I had to grade this paper. I just remembered him mentioning it when I read the paper.
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Full disclosure: I haven’t even seen Memento 😂. But I remember that the concept of the film (and of memory-keeping via skin art) really made an impact on me at the time. Hehe, and I kind of thought to myself that Richard’s idea re. tattooing Ray’s memories on his skin was kind of “lame” – as in “meh, been done before”…
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I don’t think I’d heard of it until he mentioned it. I’m not sure “been done before” is necessarily an automatic problem with an artistic work. I mean there are things that are repeated across art over centuries and we admire them. The question is whether it’s done well.
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True. In that sense, everything has been done before, and that is perfectly fine. I may have misunderstood the way RA talked about his idea of giving Ray tattoos as a way of remembering – it just felt to me as if he was presenting it as a new-and-never-been-seen idea, and I immediately thought “Memento”, hence my “that’s lame” reaction. But he actually didn’t expressly say that it was his original, bright and revolutionary idea; I just interpreted it that way…
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