#fl meta

In April 2014 Jared was in Thailand, mind you, ten years after the shooting of Alexander had ended there, and he used the trip for a little sightseeing and a big ol’ non mention of the movie that allegedly “changed [his] life”. The year before, while campaigning for the Oscar, he had successively morphed back into his Hephaistion form - long, flowing hair and on/off beard - and then stayed this way for the next decade.

Thank you, Google Lens! These are the places he posted. All of those pictures (and some more) were captioned and sounded like a personal dialogue with someone.

left: “My view right now. Yours?”

middle: “Paradise. #ThinkingAboutYou.”

right: “The secret beach. #paradisefound”

Who could that someone be?

He went there after the shooting of Alexander had wrapped in February 2004 to recuperate. Depending on which old news source you trust, he fell down hotel stairs or from a table while dancing or jumped from a second story balcony, shitfaced in every scenario, thereby doing to himself what you can see in the picture and also jeopardizing the movie shoot, just a few days before it was to end. But he pushed through anyway and delivered some cool scenes. The photo shows him at Maya beach, the “secret beach” that Jared chose to post too ten years later. Colin also stayed in Rai Leh/Railay at a resort, where, ten years later, Jared chooses to make a sunset selfie and an intimate dedication. Such nice coincidences.

Was this the last great episode of FL signalling?

You sent me a link to a 2018 radio interview where Jared mentioned Colin just like that. As if it were normal. And we all know it is NOT normal.

I know this interview. Recently someone sent me the link to it, to what I call the "That's an easy one" - interview and I mildly freaked out. Discussed it here:

I haven't yet processed the fact he just said the name 😂 Yet, in 2021 he was weird again not mentioning him in an interview - which was the "Not my hair but Alexander's hair"- interview - about the movie. He called Colin Alexander instead of, well, Colin. Although the problems he talks of only popped up because of the actor being black Irish and not blond, so he looked slightly like an 80ies glam metal singer with his hairdo and extensions, something Alexander's actor who shall not be named once called "low hanging fruit" to pick on the movie. Jared took the opportunity right there. "Not my hair, but Alexander's hair" - give me a break. Totally normal.

The disguised face is often used as a warning that someone is trying to either hide something from you or someone else, or that they are lying and pretending to be someone they aren't (even if only by not showing their full true self. .....🤭 true!

This 👆

The emoji still puzzles me, though. Taking time to add this silly thing... why 😆

I mean it looks like Colin, with the mustache and those brows and Colin being dependent on glasses when off camera. Yet Colin wasn't the one he was spending his time with at the resort. From what I've seen, it's been 20/80 in favor of Ersatzcolin and some occasions for TTT to be his arm candy. He left her behind and spent New Year's with Ersatzcolin in Tokyo. Which is all so amusing, somehow.

I go with the disguise and hide meaning. He's still pretending to be someone who he really is not, which is like the inverted meaning of The Kill. 🥸

Excellent points! I share your feelings about Hurricane! The "no matter" part - that's a good observation. Absolutely agree with the insomnia reference and the WTSHNN link! Colin talked so often of his insomnia and loneliness. I wonder if "poison rain" could also be a drug reference? Then the mention of "breathing" or not being able to breathe; sold secrets, selling and buying as a theme, making it literally sound as if there are financial transactions at play -> Modern Myth, and the line "to buy the truth and sell a lie". Maybe there's a kind of development between "selling a lie" and "selling secrets"?

J said he wrote Hurricane at the end of 2007 in Berlin. Which would be two years post C's OD and first rehab. Could this song deal with the whole of 2005 when Colin started to spiral during the shooting of Miami Vice? He lived in the town from April on. I think Jared was in Florida most of the year too. Acting in "Lonely Hearts Killers" with Salma Hayek and playing concerts in Florida. I suspect they spend time together there until they didn't... Hurricanes Katrina, Wilma and Rita and other tropical storms that year impeded the production of the movie and Colin was in the midst of it, losing himself. This is from an interesting essay about the aesthetic of Miami Vice (2006)

I think some of TSTM's Hurricane video aesthetic mirrors the style of Miami Vice, the movie, maybe even the synth soundtrack, but maybe that's just me.

Also, please, the Hurricane metaphor, there is nothing in the band's or J's biography to warrant such a title if not... I think it stands for events in their personal lives that had the force and effects a Hurricane would and since the lyrics are fairly blunt and emotional it was about a relationship; it stands for a certain period and Katrina and the Hurricane season of 2005 was the overshadowing natural disaster of the 2000s in the US; the movie Miami Vice and this weather period are intrinsically interwoven; and yes, probably it refers to a person with a stormy personality, too.

edit: because I remember it now, Colin contributed to Total Recall (2012) by learning to play the piano. In the movie there’s a scene where his character Hauser plays The Tempest by Beethoven and thus discovers the key - a literal piano key - to his identity, there’s a recording hidden inside or something. In the Hurricane video from 2010 each band member discovers a key to something, truth or whatever, too. Not that these things are connected, but 😂

Concerning the unreleased song Revenge

I rediscovered a stunning performance on YT stemming from November 2009. It's not only what he says, it's overall a reminder of how much he's changed in the last 15 years. But to be fair, 15 years is a very long time so change is bound to happen. Anyway, why is he so angry here addressing a virtual someone who's mistreated him? I don't think he's given such an intro ever again for the song.

Can I just dedicate this song to anybody out there who feels like they could've been treated a little bit better by somebody and who may have been a little too scared to stand up for yourself but finally found the courage to say you know what, fuck you, I'm not gonna take it anymore!

Revenge is probably a song about his band's troubles with Virgin/Emi and the lawsuits and whatnot, as documented in Artifact (2012). But in November 2009 they had settled and it was over and This is War was about to be released in December that year. This dedication sounds a lot more personal than that, and like a fresh wound.

What was Colin up to during that time? Let me recapitulate ... Colin was about to make a short trip to Mexico with Alicja BC at the end of November, early December, shortly after baby Henry's birth, but without him. This trip was a rather public one because paps were able to picture them at the airport, on a hotel balcony and at the pool, scantily clad. Unusual for Colin now and then. And back in LA he started looking for a house. For her. I don't think he ever moved out of his. His statements over the years concerning their relationship were confusing and what I got from this is that it was over between them pretty quickly - he once said about their relationship (Jonathan Ross Show, Feb 2010):

JR: "And so you fell in love while making [Ondine]?" CF: "We certainly fell in like, yeah..." JR: 👀

And Colin pretty openly swooned about Elizabeth Taylor having been his romantic crush, a woman he sent flowers to after he met her PA at the hospital where ABC was giving birth to their son in October 2009 and ET had had heart surgery. Later (2022) he said about Elizabeth:

"I fell in love with her. In my short time with her, I got a sense of how magical it may have been to have loved her in a romantic way, and to have felt the romance of her romantic love."

Again, Anon, THANK YOU! I knew of these concerts but have never tracked video material down or didn't find it when I searched. This was a double concert. They played the whole A Beautiful Lie album in a midnight show after the first show. They played ABL some time later in London also, and I think never again after that.

This rendition of A Modern Myth is so effing incredible! His words... He was so different back then. This is totally genuine. And for him who's often prone to hyperbole and repetitive slogans, this is a rare expression of deeply felt emotion. It's so baffling. And then he doesn't stop after the "Goodbyes" and sings on? Wow.

Maybe for context: this is how he spoke about Colin to the Irish Independent in a promo interview for the Dublin concert..

I don't know if you've spent any time in Colin's company, but that guy is just so amazing. His zest for life is infectious. I consider him to be a good friend and hopefully if he's in Dublin when we're there, we'll get to hang out.

Barely a week before the Dublin gig, maybe just days, he'd been in Park City at the Sundance Film Festival 2008 for NO apparent reason. It was the one that birthed the infamous coked up Paris Hilton smooching pic. Anyway, Colin was there too for his big comeback movie In Bruges. It was kind of the headliner movie for this festival. And Colin's bestie Bono and U2 were also there, and started a frenzy because everybody wanted to see their 3D concert movie. Jared and his then symbiotic bestie Bolthouse were in the thick of it. Colin and Jared roamed the same three streets of this packed small town for several days and never crossed paths? Sure...

I wonder, who else could these introductory words be dedicated to? Who is missed by JL at this point to his "bare bones, to the bottom of your being, to your core"? (wow, again...) Maybe Heath Ledger could elicit such emotional outbreak, but then again, were JL and he that close? Wouldn't J drop a name or more hints as to what happened? Second guess, Ashley Olsen, then 21, whom he (then 36) apparently had made out with at a Hollywood gala in January, just before the SFF... lol no. (Her sister Mary-Kate was at the festival, hugged and chatted with Colin, while at her home in NY Heath Ledger OD-ed, which sent her spiraling in the aftermath.)

Just let this settle, that he chose to say such heartbreaking words, before the probably most Alexander-ish song ever written and then could barely bring himself to stop singing it. In Dublin.

I believe the same, the Alexander days have bound them together...

BUT ANON! I can't believe I've lived under a rock for six effing years?

I didn't know that interview, and I'm mildly freaking out? He called him by his name, like a perfectly normal person would do ... Omg :D

Thank you! I wanna hug you right now! This is gold!

How come this went under the radar for so long? I don't recall anybody mentioning it back then or after.

And how come that six years on, he hasn't mentioned him again. That sounds so casual and normal here. Casual and normal usually isn't normal with FL. There's another interview from 2021 where he's avoiding to say his name when he's talking about Alexander, instead of "Colin's hair" he says "Alexander's hair". It sounds as if he's deliberately avoiding the name. What was different in 2018 that it came out so quickly after not having mentioned him publically for 10 years at that point? I mean the Dublin gig he chats about, that was on May 30, 2018. May 31 was Colin's 42nd birthday. May 30 was his shadow girlfriend's 24th birthday. Don't know if she was around in Dublin. But certainly his and Colin's close friend Bono left a message that evening

Ooh sorry I haven't been on here for some time. Thank you for that ask! It's long, could've used a few paragraphs ;), but I love to read long rants about FL. It's gotten so rare. This strange rabbit hole has been following me for 13 years now (whut?!) I still feel the pull.

2015/2016 was when I needed a timeout from them... C was parading his much younger on-and-off amour around for several years without ever getting somewhere. But J was really starting to get on my nerves. This acting out, midlife crisis. With this barely-legal gf by his side, I don't know, he looked like an idiot. This really took off in summer 2014, but he knew her longer. Yuck. But you know, the way he treated her really put me off. Everything about it was a little loathsome.

So she won the lottery and good for her, but he? He's still tripping somehow, all mememe, and his conservative billionaire consort is insufferable, and I fear they don't have a good influence on each other. Or maybe they are good for each other, because they match their freaks as money hungry self-involved middle-aged bimbos/nerds. Gosh, I'm ranting without knowing where it comes from, but knowing he's constantly spending time with that man and his self-important thoughts, but never rekindled his connection with C is unfathomable to me. That guy has nothing on C, never had, never will! But he's the perfect mirror for J. I seriously doubt J's judgment.

I used to give him the benefit of doubt back then, but nowadays, I don't know, there's hardly anything authentic about him anymore. He's perfected his public persona and that's probably a wise thing to do, when you're always just one step away from pr disaster because of questionable behavior in your past, but I don't find him relatable or interesting at all anymore. He's bland and self-involved and moody, still craving attention, not even fighting it any longer. He's at peace with being like that? And I could see why C probably hasn't much in common with him at this point, what is there that would still connect them? I want to believe there's still some common ground...