Methods of the Stars is a Laptop computer Magazine unique collection that delves into the methods that superstars personal, whether or not it’s a snazzy laptop computer, a cool drawing pill, or a next-gen gaming console.
The horny fishnet leg lamp, Ralphie’s Pepto Bismol-colored bunny onesie, and the Italian-esque pronunciation of fragile are a number of the funniest moments within the iconic holiday-themed movie A Christmas Story.
However after all, not each scene evokes laughter — some arouse pressure and uneasiness, sending tingles down your backbone. Cue Scut Farkus, the villainous red-headed bully who terrorized Ralphie, his brother Randy, and his buddies Flick and Schwartz.
“Say uncle! Say uncle!” Scut demanded, twisting his victims’ arm for no motive aside from discovering enjoyment in being a merciless, sadistic jerk. “Cry child, cry!” he’d taunt after his quarries whined in worry. Nevertheless, in probably the most satisfying moments within the film, at a time when Ralphie had it as much as right here with individuals disparaging his BB gun-owning goals, Scut caught him on the flawed place and time — and received an ass whoopin’ of a lifetime. Ah, candy, candy revenge!
You thought that was the final you’ve seen of Scut, huh? Assume once more! Farkus is again, of us. Zack Ward, who performed Scut when he was simply 13 years outdated, is reprising his function because the unfriendly neighborhood menace practically 40 years later in HBO Max’s A Christmas Story Christmas. Dun, dun, dun!
I’ve at all times hated sequels wherein the characters we all know and love don’t return — however that’s not the case with A Christmas Story Christmas! Ralphie, Randy, Flick, Schwartz, and Scut are again in snowy Indiana as adults (and we get to look at how their colourful childhood affected their lives).
Though A Christmas Story was launched 38 years in the past, I’m not blowing smoke up Ward’s caboose once I say he doesn’t look a lot totally different from his early performing days. Laptop computer Magazine had the chance to interview Ward, interrogating him about the place he’s hiding the Fountain of Youth in addition to his private relationship with tech as our latest Methods of the Stars function.
Zack Ward’s MacBook Air is his anti-aging secret
Go watch A Christmas Story Christmas on HBO Max and also you’ll see what I imply. I’m not joking once I say Ward seems to be spectacular as Scut. After I demanded that he surrender his secrets and techniques as Ward glowed throughout our Google Meet name, he shooed me away and joked, “Yeah, er, my ‘secret’’ is that this blurry webcam!”
Ward advised me that he was utilizing a 2018 MacBook Air to take my name, which sports activities a 720p FaceTime HD digicam. Funnily sufficient, it’s 2022, and as a laptop computer reviewer, I’m nonetheless seeing laptops with 720p webcams — even after the pandemic elevated the demand for videoconferencing.
Ward was merely being tongue-in-cheek, however little did he know that made me reexamine my disdain for many laptop computer webcams. Is that this a “Watch out what you want for” state of affairs? When the laptop computer business does lastly make a behavior of rolling out first rate webcams, will we be eager for the times when our laptops didn’t decide up each single minute element, together with our insecurity-inducing flaws? After placing a pin on this thought, I curiously requested Ward what goal the MacBook Air at the moment serves in his life.
“What I do on the [MacBook Air] is a number of writing ‘trigger I write scripts,” he mentioned. “Clearly, I work on the web, evaluate photographs, and talk with it, too.”
Zack Ward makes use of an iMac Professional for video-editing wizardry
Positive the MacBook Air can deal with Ward’s light-weight workflows, however it might buckle beneath stress if the A Christmas Story Christmas actor tried to place it by way of his graphics-intensive, CPU-taxing, RAM-heavy, video-editing course of.
“I’ve an iMac Professional, an enormous flat one, that I exploit as an enhancing rig,” Ward advised me. The iMac Professional contains a gorgeous 5K Retina show (5120 x 2000-pixel decision to be exact), supporting one billion colours. It covers a variety of the DCI-P3 colour gamut, pleasing photograph and video editors who want to work with a color-accurate panel.
It may be configured with as much as an 18-core, 2.3Ghz Intel Xeon W processor and Radeon Professional Vega 64X graphics. When it comes to reminiscence, it may be full of as much as 256GB! Sure, that is overkill; 32GB, the minimal quantity of RAM discovered on an iMac Professional, is greater than sufficient to deal with app jugglers who love working a number of enhancing platforms concurrently. However hey, having a specced-out iMac Professional offers you a peace of thoughts that you could push it to the restrict with none fear.
So far as storage is anxious, you may pack this child up with as much as a 4TB SSD. If you’re working with 6K footage, it is simple to blow by way of storage like a rockstar with $100,000. A specced-out iMac Professional can set you again greater than $13,000!
Ward was additionally type sufficient to delve into the video-editing software program platforms he prefers, too. Adobe Premiere Professional was as soon as his go-to, however now he’s transitioning into changing into extra of a DaVinci Resolve man.
Needless to say Ward, alongside his spouse, owns a filmmaking studio in Solar Valley, California referred to as Sensible Display Studios. “It’s received three phases, eight, 17-foot-long vans, a number of cameras and lights, a large LED wall, Unreal Engine monitoring methods, and extra,” he mentioned excitedly. “It is a full movie-making facility!” As such, he wants a strong, beastly enhancing rig that may deal with the upper caliber, 6K content material he shoots there.
It is also value noting that Ward owns an M1 Extremely-based Mac Studio (2022). Candy!
Zack would not really feel pressured to get sucked into the Apple ecosystem
So Zack’s a Mac man, whether or not he’s browsing the online, writing scripts or enhancing 6K footage, however what’s his each day driver with regards to his telephone? “He’s in all probability received an iPhone, clearly!” is probably going what you’re pondering.
*Buzzer* Improper!
Zack prefers proudly owning an Android — the Samsung Galaxy S20 FE to be precise (we have reviewed it and it is fairly rattling good). Though he has Apple-branded laptops, and his spouse owns an iPhone, he has no need to snag an iOS gadget.
“However wouldn’t or not it’s simpler to switch your information out of your telephone to your laptop computer, and vice versa, if your whole gadgets are locked contained in the Apple ecosystem? What about AirDrop? iCloud?” I requested curiously.
Zack shrugged with an unfazed demeanor. “Nah. If I have to switch information from my Android to my MacBook, I simply use a cable,” he mentioned.
“Together with your spouse proudly owning an iPhone and also you being an Android man, doesn’t the dearth of interoperability get to you two?” I requested.
“Not likely; My spouse’s cool!” Zack mentioned. “Oh, however there’s one factor. Once we ship movies to one another, we have to use WhatsApp because of the compression points, however aside from that, we’re positive.”
After I advised him concerning the controversy Apple has kicked off by singling Android customers out because the “green-bubble of us,” inflicting some Android customers to be on the receiving finish of bullying, Ward advised me that the tormentors want to search out higher issues to do with their lives than fixate on such minute, insignificant particulars.
The A Christmas Story actor advised me that his father is affected by Alzheimer’s, so from his perspective, and anybody else who has an ailing guardian, inexperienced bubbles — and the individuals who scoff at them — don’t matter within the grand scheme of issues.
“This coming December seventeenth from 10 a.m. to three p.m., I will likely be on the A Christmas Story home. I will likely be signing autographs and taking images with followers at no cost. I’m elevating cash for the Alzheimer’s Affiliation. On December 18, in Akron Ohio, there will likely be a free screening of A Christmas Story Christmas, very charitably donated by HBO and Warner Bros,” Ward mentioned.
Each of those occasions are free, however to spice up Alzheimer’s analysis and consciousness, attendees can donate to the trigger.
Why Android over iPhone?
Why does Zack favor Android over iOS? It’s fairly easy actually — he’s not a fan of how his selfies come out on the iPhone.
The images convey out the redness in his complexion, which he doesn’t like. Plus, the white steadiness on the iPhone isn’t his cup of tea, making him look too pale and ghostly for his tastes.
Ward revealed little-known tidbits about ‘A Christmas Story’
As a teen, Ward initially auditioned for the function of the bully’s sidekick — not the bully. He received the function for it whereas Yano Anaya (who performed Grover Dill) secured the bully function. When A Christmas Story’s director Bob Clark noticed Ward and Anaya in particular person, he felt it didn’t make sense for the sidekick to be the tallest, so he advised Ward to swap traces with Anaya. And that’s how Ward grew to become the bully in A Christmas Story.
One factor that at all times bugged me concerning the film is that the narrator Jean Shepherd mentioned that Scut had “yellow eyes, so assist me God, yellow eyes!” In the meantime, as a viewer, it’s clear that Scut’s iris isn’t remotely near amber, so what offers? Ward advised me that A Christmas Story relies on a e book authored by Shepherd referred to as, “In God We Belief: All Others Pay Money” (a set of semi-autobiographical tales for Playboy within the Sixties). Within the e book, Scut’s father is dust poor and works at a neighborhood scrapyard, and because of this, he couldn’t afford to feed Scut correctly. Consequently, Scut had yellow eyes (i.e., jaundice) as a result of he suffered from vitamin deficiency. Though Ward’s eyes are inexperienced, the director determined to stay to the script, more likely to dramatize Scut’s snarling, villainous look from Ralphie’s perspective.
One other attention-grabbing tidbit? Ward advised me that lots of the scenes in A Christmas Story, significantly contained in the Parker residence, are intentionally shot from a baby’s point-of-view and angle.
Oh, and one other factor: Ward advised me that “Scut” is Scottish for shite. You study one thing new on a regular basis!
Backside line
Do you know that Ward was in Transformers? Sure, the one with Megan Fox and Shia LaBouef. In truth, should you have a look at Ward’s IMDB web page, your mind will explode with the sheer variety of TV exhibits and films he’s appeared and/or starred in all through his characterful life.
Nevertheless, Ward humbly accepted that A Christmas Story — a timeless traditional — is the film that resonates with individuals probably the most. In any case, each kids and adults adore the film as a result of they’ll at all times discover one thing to narrate to, whether or not it’s the hilarious passive-aggressive relationship between Previous Man Parker and Mom Parker, dwelling vicariously by way of Ralphie as Scut will get his comeuppance, or coping with an aunt who by no means appears to get it proper with regards to Christmas presents.
Nonetheless, with Methods of the Stars, it’s our hope that readers don’t simply see Ward because the “yellow-eyed, inexperienced tooth” bully in a pop culture-entrenched, Christmas-themed movie, however as a profitable working actor who owns a filmmaking studio and is aware of his means round tech {hardware} and software program to ship optimum video footage. On high of that, Ward is a large proponent of martial arts, having fun with Jiu Jitsu throughout his free time and practising self protection with sticks and knives. In different phrases, don’t sleep on Ward — and don’t mess with him both!
