Mercutio

I use it as much as I can.

In Drunk Romeo and Juliet, I play Mercutio.

Oh, yeah.

And my Mercutio is very much inspired by the Leo DiCaprio version of Romeo and Juliet, where that Mercutio is just... bold and flamboyant and obviously gay and plays with gender a lot.

I might even be weaponizing it at this point.

You know what I'm saying? I might be weaponizing it at this point because I try my best to just put it into all of my arcs, with Romeo and Juliet, Dracula, with pirates even, and pirates during my drunk shows.

but it

sounds not Romeo and Juliet so much as Juliet and Mercutio.

This is more Agatha Christie.

This is less William Shakespeare.

I'm Dustin Goes to Hollywood tonight.

I'm Nathan Simmons tonight, and I've got Mercutio written all over me.

And I hope you're all ready for some fucking...

Danger! Because this is The Silver Linings Playlist, a podcast that tries to find the silver lining in some of cinema's bleakest endings.

he's rocking a casual vest yes so you gotta question him right off the bat

uh-huh he tells amy that he took the drama course because he thought it would be an easy a yeah great movie fuck every guy who's ever done that by the way and then he said i need you to write our paper for us because i got cast as mercutio and i have a few thousand lines to learn guys mercutio dies at the end of act two yeah You're fine, Eddie.

I've played Mercutio twice.

He has maybe 20 lines total.

Did a million of them.

Mercutio and Horatio for Will.

I tried for The Fool and Lear, but apparently I wasn't profound enough.

Didn't we work with that Miller guy on the one about his dad? Yeah, you were Biff and I was Bernard.

I typically write history that has something a little weird going on, something fantastical.

And my most recent novel is called Mercutio, and it is about the best character in Romeo and Juliet and what may have led to his Queen Mab speech.

Basically, it's an entire novel about where the Queen Mab speech comes from.

So fairies and Shakespeare, I'm here.

I'm like, this audience will get it.

Yeah.

So I really imprinted on John McHenry's Mercutio as being he was my foundational Mercutio and the way that he and later Harold Perrineau also plays Mercutio in a different way, but also with a sense that there's some PTSD behind that speech, that there's something dark that's happened to Mercutio that he expresses almost accidentally through this speech about a fairy.

And we don't get to know what that is.

what I just referenced, the one-winged angel, the Sephiroth theme, is highly reminiscent of some areas of Stravinsky's Rite of Springs.

Or maybe you can even say parts of, I think it would be the Death of Mercutio for Romeo and Juliet, with these stabbing strings and these high-pitched whirlwind of woodwinds And you can really see the influences that classical music has had on

all of these genres.

Can you tell me, John, why these conventions of science fiction, and you've taken the name of your concert from these conventions of science fiction, fantasy science fiction, gaming, are called Armageddon? Mm-hmm.