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Alan Tudyk was nearly 50 when he scored his first starring role in a TV series as the titular extraterrestrial Harry Vanderspeigle in Syfy’s “Resident Alien.” It’s not that he was underemployed or little known — he’s been celebrated in genre circles since “Firefly,” the 2002 single-season western-themed space opera in which he played the sweet, comical pilot of a spaceship captained by smuggler Mal, played by Nathan Fillion, with whom he has since been linked in the interested public mind, like Hope and Crosby, or Fey and Poehler. His own 2015 web series “Con Man” (currently available on Prime Video), based on his experiences at sci-fi conventions, in which he and Fillion play inverted versions of themselves, was funded by an enormously successful crowd-sourced campaign, which raised $3,156,178 from 46,992 backers; clearly the people love him.

You can’t exactly call “Resident Alien” career-making, given how much Tudyk has worked, going back to onscreen roles in the late 20th century and on stage in New York, but it has made him especially visible over a long period in a marvelous show in a part for which he seems to have been fashioned. He has, indeed, often been invisible, with a parallel career as a voice artist, beginning with small parts in “Ice Age” in 2002; since channeling Ed Wynn for King Candy in Disney’s 2012 “Wreck-It Ralph” (which won him an Annie Award), the studio has used him regularly, like a good luck charm. You can hear him in “Frozen” (Duke of Weselton), “Big Hero 6” (Alistair Krei), “Zootopia” (Duke Weaselton), “Moana” (Hei Hei), “Encanto” (Pico) and “Wish” (Valentino). He played the Joker on “Harley Quinn” and voices Optimus Prime in “Transformers: EarthSpark.” Performing motion capture and voice-over, he was Sonny the emotional android in “I, Robot” and the dry droid K-2SO in both “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” and again in “Andor.” (He’s a robot again in the new “Superman” film.) This is a partial, one could even say fractional, list. Among animation and sci-fi fans, being the well-informed sorts they are, Tudyk is known and honored for this body of work as well.

“Resident Alien,” whose fourth season is underway on Syfy, USA and Peacock (earlier seasons are available on Netflix, which has raised the show’s profile considerably), is a small town comedy with apocalyptic overtones. It sees Tudyk’s alien, whose natural form is of a giant, big-eyed, noseless humanoid with octopus DNA, imperfectly disguised as the new local doctor, whom he kills in the first episode. (We will learn that the doctor was, in fact, an assassin, which makes it sort of … all right?) Learning English from reruns of “Law & Order,” the being now called Harry will preposterously succeed in his masquerade, and in doing so, join a community that will ultimately improve him. (By local standards, at least.) It’s a fish way, way out of water story, with the difference that the fish has been sent to kill all the Earth fish — I am being metaphorical, he isn’t actually out to kill fish — although he is now working to save them from a different, nastier race of alien.

Some actors play their first part and suddenly their name is everywhere; others slide into public consciousness slowly, through a side door — which may lead, after all, to a longer, more varied career. Tudyk has the quality of having arrived, despite having been there all along. Like many actors with a long CV, he might surprise you, turning up on old episodes of “Strangers With Candy,” “Frasier,” “Arrested Development” or “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” or repeatedly crying “Cramped!” in a scene from “Patch Adams,” or in the movies “Wonder Boys,” “Dodgeball: A True Underdog Tale” or “3:10 to Yuma.” You might say to yourself, or the person you’re watching with, “Hey, that’s Alan Tudyk.” (You might add, “He hasn’t aged a bit.”) It was “Suburgatory,” an underloved ABC sitcom from 2011, though not underloved by me, where he played the confused best friend of star Jeremy Sisto, that, combined with “Firefly,” cemented Tudyk in my mind as someone I would always be happy to see.

He’s handsome in a pleasant, ordinary way. If he’s not exactly Hollywood’s idea of a leading man, it only points up the limitations of that concept. His eyes are maybe a trifle close set, his lips a little thin. There’s a softness to him that feeds into or productively contrasts with his characters, depending on where they fall on the good-bad or calm-hysterical scales. (In the current season of “Resident Alien,” a shape-shifting giant praying mantis has taken over Harry’s human identity, and this evil twin performance, which somehow fools Harry’s friends, is as frightening as the fact that the mantis eats people’s heads.) It makes his robots relatable and roots his more flamboyant characters, like Mr. Nowhere, the villain in the first season of “Doom Patrol” — who comments on the series from outside the fourth wall, inhabiting a white void where he might be discovered sitting on a toilet and reading a review of the show he’s in — in something like naturalism.

Sara Tomko and Alan Tudyk in a scene from Season 4 of “Resident Alien.”

(USA Network / James Dittiger / USA Network)

As Harry, Tudyk is never really calm. Relaxed neither in voice nor body, he tucks his lips inside his mouth and stretches it into a variety of blobby shapes. The actor can seem to be puppeteering his own expressions, which, in a way Harry is, or splitting the difference between a real person and an animated cartoon, in the Chuck Jones/Tex Avery sense of the term, which is not to say Tudyk overplays; he just hits the right note of exaggeration. Harry often has the air of being impatient to leave a scene and get on with whatever business he’s decided is important.

Though he’s given to explosive bursts of speech, as the character has developed, the humor he plays becomes more subtle and quiet, peppered with muttered comments and sotto voce asides he means to be heard. He is, as he likes to point out, the smartest and most powerful being around, but he has the emotional maturity of a child. At one point, having lost his alien powers, Harry was willing to sacrifice the entirety of his species to get them back.

Where once he had no emotions, now he is full of them. Last season, he was given a romance, with Heather (Edi Patterson), a bird person from outer space, which has continued into the current run; he is also a father, with a great affection — anomalous in his species — for his son, Bridget, an adorably fearsome little green creature. And he loves pie.

And that Tudyk himself seems genuinely nice — there are interviews with him up and down YouTube, and my friend David, who worked on “Firefly,” called him “kind, grateful and curious” — makes him easy to like, however likable a person he’s playing. That possibly shouldn’t matter when assessing an actor’s art, but it does anyway.

What is it about brothers? So competitive, so determined to outshine the other, so very male. In popular music, there are numerous examples of passionate sibling partnerships that have burned bright only to flame out, leaving recriminatory anger and the occasional lawsuit in their wake.

The Everly brothers were no exception. Foundational pillars of 20th century popular music, they formed the first great harmony vocal duo to bridge country music and pop. Over a five year period from 1957 to 1962, the brothers recorded a series of singles — “Wake Up Little Susie,” “Bye Bye Love” and “All I Have to Do Is Dream,” among them — that imprinted themselves into the pop-music canon, their soaring, wistful, close-interval harmonies gliding straight into our souls.

You don’t have to look too hard to find Phil and Don Everly’s traces. The Beatles regarded them as the harmony group they longed to emulate; you can hear them sing a snatch of “Bye Bye Love” in Peter Jackson’s “Get Back” documentary, and Paul McCartney name-checked them in his 1976 song “Let ‘Em In.” Simon & Garfunkel wanted to be the Everlys and included “Bye Bye Love” on the “Bridge Over Troubled Water” album. In 2013, Billie Joe Armstrong and Norah Jones recorded “Foreverly,” an album of Everly Brothers songs.

And yet, biographies of them are scant. Barry Mazor’s “Blood Harmony” is long overdue, a rigorously researched narrative of the duo’s fascinatingly zig-zaggy 50-plus-year career, as well as a loving valentine to the pair’s enduring musical power.

In his book, Mazor is quick to refute many of the myths that have accreted around the pair, starting with the backstory that the brothers were reared in Kentucky, a cradle of bluegrass, and that their dad, an accomplished guitarist and singer, nurtured them up from rural poverty into spotlight stardom. In fact, Mazor’s book points out that the brothers, who were born two years apart, moved around a lot as kids — Iowa and Chicago, mostly — soaking in the musical folkways of those regions and absorbing it all into their musical bloodstream. Though they were apprenticed by their father to perform as adolescents, they were their own men, with a sophisticated grasp of various musical genres as teenagers.

“They were as much products of the Midwest as they were of Kentucky,” says Mazor from his Nashville home. “The music they learned and the culture they absorbed was in Chicago, where they lived with their parents for a time, and they picked up on the R&B there. All of this eventually adds up to what we now call Americana, which is music that has a sense of place.” The Everlys brought that country-meets-the-city vibe to pop music.

Another misconception that Mazor clears up in “Blood Harmony” is the notion that the Beatles were the first musical group to write and play its own songs. In fact, Phil and Don wrote a clutch of the Everlys’ greatest records, including Phil’s 1960 composition “When Will I Be Loved,” which became a mammoth hit when Linda Ronstadt covered it in 1975. It’s also true that Don is rock’s first great rhythm guitarist, his strident acoustic strum powering ”Wake Up Little Susie” and others. George Harrison was listening, as was Pete Townsend.

The Everlys produced hits, many of them written by one or both of the husband-and-wife team of Felice and Boudleaux Bryant: “Bird Dog,” “Love Hurts,” “Poor Jenny” and others. But the Beatles’ global success became a barricade that many of the first-generation rock stars couldn’t breach, including the Everlys. “Even though they were only a couple of years older than the Beatles, they were treated as old hat,” says Mazor.

Complicating matters further: A lawsuit brought by their publishing company Acuff-Rose in 1961 meant that the brothers could no longer tap the Bryants to write songs for them. The same year, they enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve and found, just as Elvis had discovered a few years prior, that military service did little to help sell records. By the time the lawsuit was settled in 1964, both brothers had descended into amphetamine abuse.

The Everlys had to go back to move forward. Warner Bros. Records, their label since 1960, had become the greatest label for a new era of singer-songwriters taking country-rock to a more introspective place. Future label president Lenny Waronker, an Everlys fan, wanted to make an album that would place the brothers in their proper context, as pioneers who bridged musical worlds to create something entirely new.

Author Barry Mazor is quick to refute many of the myths surrounding the Everlys.

(Courtesy of the author)

The resulting project, called “Roots,” drew from the Everlys’ musical heritage but also featured covers of songs by contemporary writers Randy Newman and Ron Elliott. Released in 1968, the same year as the Byrds’ “Sweetheart of the Rodeo” and the Band’s “Music from Big Pink,” “Roots” sold meekly, but it remains a touchstone of the Everlys’ career, a key progenitor of the Americana genre. “‘The ‘Roots’ album was one last chance to show they mattered,” says Mazor. “And there was suddenly room for them again. It wasn’t a massive seller, but it opened the door.”

If anything, it was their own fraught relationship that tended to snag the Everlys’ progress. Their identities were as intertwined as their harmonies, and it grated on them. Mazor points out that they were in fact vastly different in temperament, Phil’s pragmatic careerism running counter to Don’s more free-spirited approach. This push and pull created tensions that weighed heavily on their friendship and their musical output.

“Phil was more conservative in some ways. He was content to play the supper club circuit well into ‘70s, while Don wanted to explore and was less willing to sell out, as it were,” says Mazor. “And this created a wedge between them.” Perhaps inevitably, from 1973 to roughly 1983, they branched out as solo artists, making records that left little imprint on the public consciousness. They had families and eventually both moved from their L.A. home base to different cities.

But there was time for one final triumph. Having briefly set their differences aside, the brothers played a reunion show at London’s Royal Albert Hall in September 1983, which led to a collaboration on an album with British guitarist Dave Edmunds producing. Edmunds, in turn, asked Paul McCartney whether he would be willing to write something for the “EB 84” album, and the result was “On the Wings of a Nightingale,” their last U.S. hit, albeit a modest one.

“The harmony singing that the Everlys pioneered is still with us,” says Mazor. “If you look back, the Kinks, the Beach Boys, all of these brother acts all loved the Everlys. But there’s also a contemporary act called Larkin Poe, who called one of their albums ‘Blood Harmony.’ They set an example for how two singers can maximize their voices to create something larger than themselves. This kind of harmony still lingers.”

Sandra Hale Schulman
ICT

The latest: Canadian survival story, Maori history retold, global skin ink exposed, classic films at BAM

FILM: “Aberdeen,” a heart-wrenching fall and rise story

A raw affecting story from Manitoba filmmakers Ryan Cooper and Eva Thomas’ feature debut, “Aberdeen” focuses on a down on her self-inflicted bad luck woman Kookum Aberdeen, whose childhood trauma is seeing her traditional grandmother being over run by her hard-partying mother. As an adult and mother and grandmother herself, Aberdeen, played by the astonishing Gail Maurice, repeats past mistakes. A homeless alcoholic, she is forced from her tent encampment home along the Winnipeg banks of the Red River after it floods.

Now a climate refugee with nowhere to go, she loses her all-important tribal ID and status cards. Her reluctant family is forced to help navigate an indifferent government bureaucracy to secure her lost ID, start repairing her life and get her grandkids out of foster care as their mother, Aberdeen’s daughter, has become an addict herself.

The film also includes Billy Merasty, Ryan Black, and a sympathetic performance from Jennifer Podemski. “Aberdeen” is a kick-in-the-teeth reminder of the healing power of family.

“This was a story that Ryan was developing, and we became colleagues,” Eva Thomas told ICT from Toronto. “He asked me if I would co-write it and co-direct with him and I said yes. What I was hoping to do as a filmmaker was to create a sense of empathy for someone like Aberdeen. It’s not a character flaw. We are products of our history. I want the audience to understand who this woman was, how she became who she became, and to know that it’s a lot of trauma that people deal with and are still dealing with it.

“What’s really beautiful about Aberdeen is that we have five generations in the film and Aberdeen is the heart of that third-generation trauma. I’d like to think that the ending is hopeful. When Aberdeen looks down that lens, the audience takes that deep breath and feels like, ‘This woman, she’s going to be okay.’”

Jennifer Podemski is the heart of the film, Thomas says, “We love her. She adds so much warmth and relatability to her roles. I can attest that in real life she’s very warm and lovely and has such a big heart.

“We are working on a US premiere coming up very soon,” Thomas concludes.

“They’re more open to Indigenous stories here in Canada. The film and television industry is funded by the government who feels an obligation to represent the people of the country. Indigenous people are an important part of that. That’s why we’re getting all these great stories that are coming out of Canada, because it’s both a system to support them as well as with desire from broadcasters, because of what’s been going on in Canada with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the finding of the children’s bodies at the residential schools.”

“Aberdeen” premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September and has played many festivals. It’s streaming on Paramount Plus in Canada, as well as Air Canada, the airline. 

FILM: Culture clash in New Zealand 

“In the Fire of War,” an action film set in 1864 during the New Zealand Wars against the British, Haki, a Māori-European teenager, is fighting for the New Zealand colonial forces, when he is captured by the Māori resistance who resent his reluctant allegiance. He starts a shaky friendship with Kopu, a young girl believed to be a spiritual medium for the Māori god of war who misguidedly sends her people into a brutal battle with the British forces, where they are vastly outnumbered in a battle to death … or liberty.

The film stars Temuera Morrison (Bobba Fett) and Cliff Curtis (Walking Dead).

Lush rural settings, elaborate Maori tattoos, feathered regalia, and cultural ceremonies set this film apart in its intimacy and scope in a story told for the first time from the Indigenous point of view.

Reviews have been stellar: The New Zealand Herald review says: “Game of Thrones Comes to Mind” and “Mike Jonathan’s debut honors Merata Mita and packs a real punch.”  

The Film Experience review: “an immersive film that transports audiences back in time, conveying the stakes of this standoff and the way in which it mirrors so many other situations of colonialism where invading forces are so sure of their superiority.” 

BOOKS: Skin and ink

The needling art and customs of tattooing across ancestral lands, including Africa, the Middle East, the Americas, the Arctic, Oceania, Japan, Southeast Asia, and Siberia are explored in “Indigenous Tattoo Traditions: Humanity Through Skin and Ink,” released in May, that transports readers through history.

Author Lars Krutak, anthropologist, photographer and host of the Discovery Channel series “Tattoo Hunter,” explores how tattoos function as a form of “writing” that defines and structures community life, rites of passage, symbols of societal rank, and signs of marital or religious devotion.

The book features Jodie Potts-Joseph, star of “Life Below Zero,” a tattoo artist from Stevens Village Alaska who hand poked a chin tattoo and other markings on her daughter Quannah Chasinghorse, an Indigenous model redefining the notion of beauty. In turn, Quannah tattooed her cousin Lorena Village Center Simon, who said, “It was important for me to get my chin tattoo because I wanted to represent my people and connect with our ancestors.”

He further exhibits the heavily tattooed Li women of China’s Hainan Island with their elaborate facial and body tattoos, the bold indelible markings of Papua New Guinea’s Indigenous peoples, and innovative cultural tattoo practitioners who are rebuilding a skin-marking legacy for future generations to come.

With numerous images published for the first time, “Indigenous Tattoo Traditions” captures ancient tribal tattooing practices and their contemporary resurgence.

FILM: Classic Native film in Brooklyn

Brooklyn Academy of Music will screen Urban Native America Cinema Program, special films from the 1960s-70s,, each preceded by special and rarely seen shorts. The Cinema Program is being presented by City NDN, and includes films “The Exiles” by Ken Mackenzie and “In MacArthur Park” by Bruce Schwartz.

From their program: “From 1950 to 1968 over 200,000 Native Americans migrated to cities, leaving their reservations and traditional lands due to government policies. Known colloquially as the ‘Relocation Era,’ this period played a tremendous role in the growth of urban American Indian communities, eventually resulting in a majority of Native Americans living in urban areas in the following decades. Few films have captured this history, let alone as it was happening; this program, guest-curated by filmmaker Adam Piron, showcases a selection of essential titles and rarities that examine a moment of profound historical change.”

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