#datebook

On this date, a magazine comes out where some guy I've never heard of says "English groups won't last" and Bob Dylan comes out swinging against "message songs."

The sustained hero’s welcome that K-pop group Tomorrow X Together received Thursday, July 21, at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium when they entered the stage after three years away felt like a long-awaited airport lobby group hug.

The sold-out show served as a joyful give-and-take — from their MOA (“Moments of Alwaysness”) fan base to TXT for providing inspiration and solace during tough times, and from TXT to MOA for rocking with the group during a period of pandemic-related isolation.

Group member Yeonjun summed it up when addressing the crowd: “Physical distance is not a drawback. MOAs and Tomorrow X Together are always together.”

The South Korean quintet has had to live up to outsized expectations. In 2019, TXT was the second boy band to debut for its Big Hit (now HYBE) management company — the first being BTS. On the strength of its debut single “Crown,” and follow-up “9 and Three Quarters (Run Away),” the five-member unit (Yeonjun, Soobin, Beomgyu, Taehyun, and Hueningkai) was an instant hit, exceeding and exploding expectations. With catchy songs, powerful choreography, and youthful energy, it was seemingly following a path to superstardom freshly snow-plowed by its Big Hit big brothers.

Then COVID struck.

The band members’ schedules and lives rearranged, they regrouped and released increasingly savvy, challenging music that distanced them from their fresh-faced rookie era. Subsequent releases still held moments of joy but also reflected frustrations and confusion of adolescence and an uncertain world. With tours canceled, the music served as comforting ravens to their fan base in the form of danceable, thinkable pop like “Can’t You See Me?” and “We Lost the Summer.”

Eddie Redmayne has made some remarkable physical transformations to bring the stories of real-life people to the screen, from theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking to early 20th century transgender artist Lili Elbe. But in playing Charles Cullen, thought to be the most prolific serial killer in recorded history, he had to play himself.

Well, a version of himself, at least. Redmayne is widely regarded as one of the nicest stars in Hollywood, and a giving actor to his co-stars. As a nurse, Cullen often displayed a caring and charming demeanor toward his patients and co-workers.

But underneath that friendly exterior was a killer. In “The Good Nurse” — which opens in select theaters Wednesday, Oct. 19, and streams on Netflix beginning Oct. 26 — the star of the “Fantastic Beasts” franchise relished the challenge of exploring the dichotomy of a man who might have killed some 400 patients from 1988 to 2003, yet was a trusted friend to a fellow nurse, played by Jessica Chastain, who eventually helped bring him to justice.

“The thing I loved about the script was that it defied definition,” Redmayne told The Chronicle in an exclusive interview in San Francisco hours before “The Good Nurse” closed the Mill Valley Film Festival on Oct. 16. “I went into it thinking it was going to be a true-crime story, which on the one hand it is, but it focuses on the woman who was able to prevent this man from doing these things. The violence was ended through her compassion, ultimately.

“But also it felt like it was highlighting the cracks in the system. It was dumbfounding to me that this may well be the most prolific serial killer in American history and I’d never heard of him. And he had worked at nine hospitals, many of whom had a great sense of what he was doing.”

Chastain plays Amy Loughren, the real-life nurse who worked with detectives (played in the film by Nnamdi Asomugha and Noah Emmerich) to arrest him. Redmayne said he and Chastain, who are good friends, prepared for the role by spending time in nursing school, and both had conversations with Loughren.

Danish director Tobias Lindholm, known for his work with Mads Mikkelsen in “The Hunt” and “Another Round,” said the idea was not to make “The Good Nurse” a thriller but, as he put it, “a friendship story.”

“What Eddie and I were struggling with the most was to keep him friendly, never to invite us into his darkness,” said Lindholm, who accompanied Redmayne and Asomugha to Mill Valley. “I think that helped because you like him, even though you know he did it, there’s no signs of it. You are a little, ‘But he’s so nice. Could it really be him?’ I mean, he’s such a good friend to Amy.”

Redmayne said the fact that he and Chastain are friends — they met a decade ago at Giffoni, the noted children’s film festival in Italy, and have remained in touch since — created instant chemistry.

“We’d always dreamt of working together, and then this came along — it was a no-brainer,” said Redmayne, who laughed as he explained, “but my expectations were high. I’m a bit of a pessimist. I therefore think that if it’s fun to make, maybe the thing won’t be great. But Jessica is wonderfully galvanizing, so despite the subject matter, we had a really wonderful time making it.”

There was at least one day, though, that wasn’t much fun. It was during an intense interrogation scene between him, Asumogha and Emmerich when Redmayne displayed the type of transformation he achieved in his Oscar-winning performance as Hawking in “The Theory of Everything” and in his Oscar-nominated work as Elbe in “The Danish Girl.”

Lindholm said Redmayne requested that the set be chilly, so cold air was pumped in between takes. Then the director surprised his lead actor by handcuffing his wrist to the interrogation table. That was not in the script.

“We put on the handcuff, there’s this little click sound,” Lindholm recalled. “And he looks up and smiles. It’s like he found something there. I know that he’s the kind of actor who feeds from these real settings, real obstacles, and I realized ‘Oh my god’ when I saw what he’d found when we handcuffed him.”

Lindholm said the scene took 11 hours to shoot. Asomugha — known to Bay Area sports fans from his days playing football for Cal, the Oakland Raiders and the San Francisco 49ers — remembered it well.

“He’s pounding the table and he’s yelling and screaming. The camera was on him, and he did that nonstop for maybe 30 minutes,” said Asomugha of Redmayne. “Then the camera turned around and was on us. And he did the exact same thing, maybe with even more energy than he did when the camera is on him — just to aid us as actors.

“You don’t get that a lot. You hope to get that a lot from other actors, but the reality is you don’t. And for him to do that, I knew immediately, ‘Oh, this is a guy who not only cares about his work, but he cares about the people who are working opposite him.’ That’s exactly who he is as a person. He just genuinely cares about you and what you have to say and what’s going on in your life, and how your day was versus ever talking about himself, which I think is just remarkable.”

What’s going on in Redmayne’s life is that he is using his schedule promoting “The Good Nurse” and some treasured downtime with his family — he is raising two young children with wife Hannah Bagshawe, whom he first met in high school — to come down from the high of his first theater role in a decade.

He recently finished playing the Emcee opposite Jessie Buckley’s Sally Bowles in a production of “Cabaret” in London’s West End, and it was among the most rewarding professional experiences of his career. Both he and Buckley won the coveted Laurence Olivier Award for musical acting.

Redmayne said the experience took him back to his roots.

“When I was like 10 or 11, I was one of a hundred children in a production of ‘Oliver’ in the West End, at the London Palladium, a very beautiful old Victorian London theater,” Redmayne said. “I used to get to leave school, to go travel across London on the Tube to Oxford Circus, to go through the stage door of this stunning theater. I found it very seductive and and romantic. That’s where I got the bug for acting.

A scene in which Grandpa cajoles Grandma into a little dance in the living room is about as romantic as anything you’ll ever see. — Chicago Sun-Times

Hill endows his protagonist with unparalleled innocence and affability. His face expresses the frustration and the confusion with the murky rules of the adult world one would expect from an actual child.

… from the opening the film boasts a number of intriguing shot choices that really catch the eye (along with the effortless occasional switch between black-and-white and color). It’s lovely, and one of the best shot films of the year.