Fringe - The Observer/Michael Cerveris #5 Will the the "fedora-wearing, eyebrow-free September" please come back?

@l3jandra · 10-23-2012, 04:35 PM

The Observer/Michael Cerveris #5:
Because September has to come back. He's our favorite Observer.

About

In The Arrival, the Observer is seen taking notes in a small black notebook,
writing using an unknown set of characters, and, for the first time, speaking.
This may be code or another language altogether, but is presumably taking
notes on his observations of The Pattern.
The Observer, and possibly the other Observers, seem to have the ability to share thoughts
with others telepathically; he can also read and accurately predict the thoughts
of others, as he demonstrates during his encounter with Peter Bishop.

It is also suggested that they are able to observe time, a suggestion supported by the rogue Observer named August in August after
he prevents a girl named Christine Hollis from being on a plane that is destined to crash some hours later.
Appearing at many Fringe-related incidents involving Olivia, the Bishops and the Pattern.
He does not seem to be involved in the direct cause of the events, but simply observing them.
In Fracture, as he eats in a diner, the Observer receives a briefcase with surveillance
images of Walter from a secretive courier. The images contain data much like the images he saw through his binoculars in The Arrival.

He uses a specialized communications device in The Arrival, Brown Betty and Marionette.
In Walter's tall tale during Brown Betty, he is called Gemini and is referred to as a Watcher.
The Observer is bald with very pale skin and appears no eyebrows. He wears simple dark business suits,
plain light-colored shirts and a simple dark tie. Outside he typically wears simple dark sunglasses along with a plain, dark fedora on his head.
He admits to Walter that he has very little sense of taste, explaining the extreme amounts of spices
he adds to his food; Walter also notes he seems oblivious to cold temperatures. This implies he has dulled senses,
or does not experience the 'five senses' in the same way ordinary humans do.
The Observer exhibits a calm, disinterested demeanor. In times when people are panicking, such as during the crane collapse in The Arrival, he acts calmly.

Background

In the alternate universe 1985, The Observer enters Walternate's lab and distracts him just as the cure to
Peter's genetic ailment is discovered, and lost.
In the alternate universe 1985, The Observer confesses to fellow Observers that he interfered in
the alternate Walternate's experiment to cure his son.
In the 1985 local universe, The Observer saved Peter and Walter Bishop from drowning after
falling through frozen Lake Reiden, just after Walter abducted young Peter from the alternate universe.
He was on-hand at the first documented arrival of the Beacon at Quantico MB in 1987.

Quotes

"It has arrived..." - (into his cell phone just after the Beacon resonated itself to the surface)

"Thank you for hiding the Beacon. I can't touch it myself. I know you have questions. Soon you will have answers." -
(to Walter after Walter drugged Astrid and hid the Beacon from Mosley)

"Departure on schedule." - (into his cell phone just after the Beacon resonated itself back into the ground)

"This coin looks similar to the one you're thinking of. But it is from another place. There is more than one of everything.
I have said too much, I am not supposed to get involved. I have taken you as far as I can."
(encouraging Walter to search his old beach house to find the device hidden there that can seal the gap between the parallel universes)

"They are all unique. That is not reason to interfere with the course her life was meant to take" - (to August, about his fixation with Christine Hollis)

source

supporters

1. joy4jate
2. killed the lights
3. Addison Montgomery
4. Stubborn Tomato
5. Rolfi Cole
6. Emsea
7. Mandy
8. *OldHollywoodStarlet*
9. star_gazer02
10. pandaX
11. forever yours
12. pervy minion
13. stlavin95

X

X

Past Threads

http://www.fanforum.com/f297/observe...-him-62860807/
http://www.fanforum.com/f297/observe...side-62984347/
http://www.fanforum.com/f297/observe...ends-63033516/
http://www.fanforum.com/f297/observe...rver-63055378/

Survivors

The Observer Season One Scenes
The Observers Season Two Scenes
The Observers Season Three Scenes
The Observers Season Four Scenes

sofiab · 10-23-2012, 04:43 PM

Thank you, Betty. We'll add a title later.

Quote:

Broadway star Michael Cerveris also finds time for 'Treme,' 'Fringe'

The shows couldn’t be more different, but Fox’s sci-fi “Fringe” and HBO’s low-fi “Treme” share a couple of things: One, they’re both ratings-challenged cult-TV phenomena that have survived multiple seasons due in part to birthright status via creators J.J. Abrams and David Simon. Two, actor Michael Cerveris, who plays a mysterious, dimension-hopping “Observer” called September in “Fringe,” and Annie T.-mentoring music manager Marvin Frey in “Treme.”

A Yale-educated, Tony Award-winning stage star, Cerveris is currently playing on Broadway in a hit revival of “Evita,” which, he said during a recent phone interview, might allow him to own a piece of New Orleans.

An habitué of the city since he acted here in the 2009 film “Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant,” Cerveris is hoping his “Evita” run will help fund a new New Orleans dwelling.

“A good half of the reason why I took the job and wanted to do it was that I'm hoping that it's going to afford me the opportunity to be able to get a place in New Orleans,” Cerveris said. “Basically I'm hoping Andrew Lloyd Webber is going to buy me a place in New Orleans. I was on the verge of buying a place when I was down there initially, when I was doing the movie. I had a Realtor.

“It's been my definite goal and aspiration. I'm ticking off my residency application requirements. I've been to the Chalmette Crawfish Festival. I’m getting all of my honorary-citizenship points.”

And then some. In the months after “Cirque du Freak” wrapped, he built houses with Habitat for Humanity and taught some classes at NOCCA and Lusher Charter School. He’s working with local musicians (Paul Sanchez, Rod Hodges, Shamarr Allen among them) on an upcoming CD of original music he categorizes as “chamber folk” and which will be titled “Piety” for the Piety Street Studios where it’s being recorded. He made a quick recent weekend trip from New York just to attend a New Orleans Saints home game.

“I'm always looking for any excuse -- and it can be the thinnest of excuses -- to get me back down there,” he said.

“Treme” proved to be one of those.

“As soon as the series was announced, I was basically telling anybody who would listen that I would be happy to play a tree on the show just to be on the show,” he said.

A mutual friend provided a link to “Treme” co-creator Eric Overmyer, an acclaimed playwright before turning to TV, and accordingly acquainted with Cerveris’ stage work.

“So we met at Satsuma and had coffee one day,” Cerveris said. “I was all ready with my sales pitch about why I should be somebody or something somehow on ‘Treme.’ And before I could even get to it, he said, ‘Would you ever want to do something on “Treme?” We have this idea for this character, a music manager, and we’re not sure where we'll go with it or how many episodes it will be, but are you interested?’ I said, ‘Absolutely.’ That’s how it all came about.”

Marvin Frey has been a bit of an enigma so far, seemingly set up as an exploitative presence in Annie’s career and life, but so far not crossing any lines.

“I've absolutely been in the presence of characters like this,” Cerveris said. “The theater-world version of them is slightly different from the music-business version of them, but there are similarities. What's been interesting, though, is that I don’t think David and Eric are interested in black-and-white characters. I think they want people to be complex and not simply good and evil, and I think the character begins much more sketchily than he ends up, necessarily.

“The advice he gives Annie, for the most part may not be the most nurturing and paternal, but it actually is kind of right. If she wants to have a music career, in the music business the way it is, these are the things that she has to do. And these are the things she has to care about and not care about. So he hasn't so far really lied to her about anything.”

Cerveris compares working on “Treme” to some of the indie films he’s appeared in.

“My favorite experiences working on camera have often been the little indie films and stuff I've done where the cast ends up carrying cables for the crew because it just makes more sense and it’s is easier to get to the next shot before we lose daylight,” he said. “Everybody pitches in and carries something. It doesn't get to that extent on ‘Treme,’ but it is a human-scale kind of production, which I think lends to a more humanistic kind of production. You don't feel like you're part of this vast machine.”

Though he’s got models to call upon for his portrayal of Frey, Cerveris’ “Fringe” character – the fedora-wearing, eyebrow-free September -- is a different kind of being altogether, though Cerveris did have a model.

“The physical characteristics, a lot of them I took from my dog, who sadly passed away a little while ago,” he said of Gibson, a rescue pet (“mostly border collie”) he’d had for more than 16 years. “That kind of cocking of the head, the way a dog sort of takes you in, and you know that a lot is going on in their head but you have no idea what it is. That seemed to be appropriate for the character, too.

“It was interesting. When we first started working with J.J. and Jeff Pinkner (a “Fringe” co-creator), they really left a lot of the character up to me. The first meetings I had with wardrobe, I went in expecting like usual to be shown what I was going to be wearing. And instead I was shown a rack of suits and a series of hats. They said, ‘So, what do you want to wear?’ I said, ‘I thought that was what you were going to tell me.’ So I went through and picked.

“Fortunately, I picked a suit that I like, because I was going to be wearing it for a long, long time. I picked the fedora that we use, because I liked that best out of all the fedoras that we had.”

Cerveris has contributed to “everything from the character's movement to the way he spoke,” he continued. “Some of it was kind of gestured at in the dialogue, and in the script. But they gave me a lot of freedom to play around and develop it.”

Earlier in the series’ run, Cerveris got to participate in an offbeat promotional campaign, as September turned up at several different Fox telecasts, including an NFL game, pro-baseball games, a NASCAR race and an “American Idol” broadcast.

“That was all me,” he said. “It was pretty great. It was such a bizarre campaign, because you had to already be watching the series to really know who it was or what I was there for. It was more of a reward for fans of the show, and maybe hoping that people will be curious enough to try to find out who this was or what it was. It was pretty great. Josh Jackson, who plays Peter on the show, was always complaining good-naturedly about it. He’s there working 12 hours a day every day and I'm getting to go to the NFC playoffs and ‘American Idol’ and the Texas Motor Speedway.”

Currently amidst its fifth and final season (a new episode airs at 8 p.m. Friday (Oct. 26) on WVUE), “Fringe,” like “Treme,” was given a life-extension by its network so the show’s writers can complete their story.

Hesitant for spoiler-protection reasons to comment on his participation in either show’s final season (“Treme” will begin production on its concluding fourth season in November), Cerveris feels lucky to have been aboard for both.

“When the call came in from my agents about the (“Treme”) job, the casting people said to my agents, ‘Now, tell him that this is not like a lot of shows. It’s kind of a different scale and a different way of working. We just don't want him to have unrealistic expectations.’ I said, ‘No, look, I understand. I've been riding my bike around town and going past this little film crew and thinking, ‘What student film is being done here? Oh, it’s “Treme.”’

“They don't have 30 trucks and 1,000 crew people. Because sometimes series, especially series that shoot in New York, it's just like a huge, massive machine, and there are so many people. And you have no idea what 90 percent of them are doing.

“On ‘Treme,’ you feel like you're a little guerrilla team out there trying to capture something quick and fast and a little messy, which is all very appropriate for the stories that they’re telling, and especially the place where they're telling them. I feel like the ‘Treme’ film set really reflects the city they’re shooting in, in really wonderful ways.”

And Cerveris said he’d be “perfectly content” if September is the role that “a large number of people remember me for.”

“As a sci-fi geek fan as a kid, and monster-movie fan, I really appreciate and recognize the significance of those kinds of iconic characters, especially in this genre,” he said. “There's something really wonderful about the significance of those characters, and the love that fans of those shows have for those characters, so I'm really proud to have that kind of status in the series. And because I got to have so much input into developing the look and the characteristics of the character, I feel a certain amount of pride and investment in the character. I'm happy to be recognized and remembered fondly for that character.

“There was a list somewhere, I’m not sure whose list it was, but it was the top sci-fi characters of the last 50 years or something, and September made the list. I just thought that was pretty awesome.”

source[/QUOTE]

sofiab · 10-26-2012, 12:46 PM

What about this? It's from the article above.

Will the the "fedora-wearing, eyebrow-free September" please come back?

Fringe First Look: Check Out the Observers Playing Nice (or Are They?!)

star_gazer02 · 10-27-2012, 02:38 PM

I like the title suggestion Sofia!

September needs to come back and tell the Team just exactly how to get rid of the Dark!Observers. They have overstayed their welcome. They need to leave ASAP!!

sofiab · 10-27-2012, 03:04 PM

I think he will come back; I don't know if in the flashback scenes or in the actual timeline, but September was part of the plan, he will come back. You know who else is probably going to come back? Sam Weiss! JW replied with a "hmm, maybe" on Twitter.

Remember the times when the observers were the mystery of the show? When they looked noble and majestic? Now they simply look like a bunch of sociopaths!

[URL"
http://broadwayworld.com/article/Photo-Coverage-Michael-Cerveris-Loose-Cattle-Give-54-Below-Preview-20121025 "]SOURCE[/URL]

star_gazer02 · 10-27-2012, 03:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sofiab (View Post)

I think he will come back; I don't know if in the flashback scenes or in the actual timeline, but September was part of the plan, he will come back. You know who else is probably going to come back? Sam Weiss! JW replied with a "hmm, maybe" on Twitter.

Remember the times when the observers were the mystery of the show? When they looked noble and majestic? Now they simply look like a bunch of sociopaths!

Well I think September needs to get himself over to 2036 NOW. The Fringe Team has no idea what the plan is so they need his help. I would love it if Sam came back!

I don't know if they ever looked majestic but they did look noble. They certainly didn't look like they wanted to murder humans and take over the planet.

sofiab · 10-27-2012, 03:56 PM

The plan is a mess! Why they don't just get all the tapes out of amber at once? I know it's Walter, but using tapes in 2015?

I think that September and Bell have to come back for them to execute the plan. And MD.

I think there was something majestic in the way they conducted themselves, the way the talked, dressed, and of course, how they seemed to be the guardians of the universe, not their destroyers.

star_gazer02 · 10-27-2012, 04:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sofiab (View Post)

The plan is a mess! Why they don't just get all the tapes out of amber at once? I know it's Walter, but using tapes in 2015?

I think that September and Bell have to come back for them to execute the plan. And MD.

I think there was something majestic in the way they conducted themselves, the way the talked, dressed, and of course, how they seemed to be the guardians of the universe, not their destroyers.

Wait all the tapes are in Amber? At the Lab? I thought they were out there somewhere in the world!

We don't know where September is but Bell must be held by the Observers.

Yeah they were guarding the universe so no one else but them could destroy it.

sofiab · 10-28-2012, 10:24 AM

So far the tapes were at the lab. The first one gave them the clues to go to the forest to retrieve those stones. Now in this episode they had to go to Penn station. The tape was damaged but Walter remembered. I’m assuming the tapes are at the lab, and they have to follow the clues to go somewhere and get what they need to make the plan work. I don’t know if it’s correct but it’s what I’m assuming.

sofiab · 11-01-2012, 09:01 AM

Quote:

Michael Cerveris' Hedwig and her Angry Inch Returns to NYC for Super Secret Performance

Hedwig, the transgender bombshell star of cult off-Broadway classic Hedwig and the Angry Inch, made her first appearance in New York in over a decade on October 18, 2012, when Tony Award-winner Michael Cerveris slipped back into his heels and corset for a super secret pop-up performance at Chelsea's Barracuda.

The appearance, featuring an epic rendition of "Wig in a Box" which brought down a packed house of Broadway gypsies and drag queens, was arranged in honor of longtime Broadway hair supervisor Rick Caroto's birthday. Caroto currently tends to Cerveris' pate as his wig guru on Evita, in which Cerveris stars as Juan Peron.

So why would Cerveris don Hedwig's blonde Farrah Fawcett get-up for a birthday party, after turning down similar appearances for years?

"Rick is my friend," he explains simply. "Also, when you're bald, you really have to treat your hair people right."

Cerveris, who was hand-picked by Hedwig and the Angry Inch show creator and original title star John Cameron Mitchell as his successor during the show's original off-Broadway run, also says he's eager to pull the wig off the shelf for longer than a one-night-only appearance. When asked if he would ever do a full run of the show again:

"I would love it," he says. "I adored it here, I adored it throughout London and Los Angeles. I miss her [Hedwig] very much."

source

star_gazer02 · 11-01-2012, 08:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sofiab (View Post)

So far the tapes were at the lab. The first one gave them the clues to go to the forest to retrieve those stones. Now in this episode they had to go to Penn station. The tape was damaged but Walter remembered. I’m assuming the tapes are at the lab, and they have to follow the clues to go somewhere and get what they need to make the plan work. I don’t know if it’s correct but it’s what I’m assuming.

I understand the part about the tapes being clues. I just didn't realize they were all at the lab. I thought one tape will give clues to find the next tape. But they are just retrieving items or whatever they need from the secret locations to put the plan together.

Sofia I am forever traumatized to see September in drag.

sofiab · 11-02-2012, 03:19 PM

^ Amy, that's how September will trick the badservers

source

star_gazer02 · 11-03-2012, 12:47 PM

^

Oh gosh that would be so hilarious to see!!! Observes wouldn't even have a reaction to it except for a tilt of their head.

sofiab · 11-04-2012, 03:26 PM

Was I the only one who was disappointed that apparently the observers are nothing more than some tech? All it needs to be an observer is a chip? Who produces them then?

sofiab · 11-11-2012, 11:52 AM

you were three years, one month, and five days


Fan Forum > Archived Television Shows > Fringe > The Observer/Michael Cerveris #5 Will the the "fedora-wearing, eyebrow-free September" please come back?