The New York Times - 12.09.2019

THE NEW YORK TIMES, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2019 N C3

Fill the grid with digits so as not to repeat a digit in any row or column, and so that the digits within each

heavily outlined box will produce the target number shown, by using addition, subtraction, multiplication or

division, as indicated in the box. A 4x4 grid will use the digits 1-4. A 6x6 grid will use 1-6.

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KenKen

TI NYbutMIGHTY

ACROSS

1 New York Times bestselling book; the perfect gift for cat lovers

1

ANGELIKA FILM CENTER

http://www.angelikafilmcenter.com

Corner of Houston & Mercer (212) 995-2000

EDIE

11:20AM, 1:50, 4:20, 7:00, 9:30PM

BRITTANY RUNS A

MARATHON

10:10, 11:35AM, 12:35, 2:10, 3:00, 4:45,

5:35, 7:15, 8:10, 9:45, 10:35PM

AFTER THE WEDDING

10:35AM, 1:10, 3:45, 6:20, 9:00PM

THE FAREWELL

10:00, 11:15AM, 12:20, 2:45, 4:30,

5:15, 7:45, 10:10PM

WHERE’D YOU GO, BERNADETTE?

2:00, 7:10, 9:45PM

Wordplay,

every day.

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New York Times Crossword.

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ACROSS

1 Extremity

5 Snags

9 2001 title role

for Audrey Tautou

15 What Elvis Aaron
Presley’s middle
name is spelled
with on his birth
certificate

16 Part of Q.E.D.
17 Spinal Tap
vis-à-vis 1980s
rock bands
18 Thataway, from a
crow’s-nest

19 Fury at a
husband leaving
his entire estate
to his mistress?

21 Mitch who wrote
“Tuesdays With
Morrie”

23 Escape
24 Sturm ___ Drang

25 What an in-group
uses for fishing?
27 Actor Reeves
29 Look at, biblically

30 Flight board abbr.
31 Pull a cork from

32 Org. that might
pocket your
checks
33 Org. that might
check your
pockets
35 Top of a
schedule, maybe

37 “Oh, I’m supposed

to be in the line

over there”?

41 Dog with an

upturned tail

42 One using foul

language?

43 World of

Warcraft, e.g.,

for short

46 Image on

the back of a

Canadian nickel

49 What “team” has,

it’s said

51 Ed of “Up”

53 Short staff?

54 Some alcohol

smuggled into a

rodeo, say?

56 Silverback, e.g.

57 Author of the

best-selling

children’s book

“Matilda”

58 Place in canopic

jars, say

59 Smudge on a

theater sign?

63 Secondhand sale

stipulation

65 Quick

66 Sunburn aid

67 Many a scuba

destination

68 “Fuhgeddaboudit!”

69 Those against

70 “Happy Motoring”

sloganeer, once

DOWN

1 Alitalia : Italy ::

___ : Poland

2 Asthmatic’s aid

3 Least crisp, as an

apple

4 Some Labor Day

events, informally

5 “It’s a ___” (“I’ve

changed”)

6 NPR host Shapiro

7 Butter, in a

dieter’s eyes

8 Without betraying

emotion

9 Stained-glass

window locale

10 Posting at many

a park entrance

11 Verdi’s “___ tu”

12 Japanese plum

13 “You got me”

14 Assessed

lasciviously

20 Word with suit or

blanket

22 Bonus features

on some DVDs

25 Longtime staple

of Thurs. night TV

26 Grendel, e.g.

27 Reason to wear a

brace

28 Grandson of

Abraham

31 One, on a one

34 Flutter one’s

eyelids, say

36 Words after “You

can’t fire me!”

38 Eat

39 “Hoo boy!”

40 Some triage pros

44 Flowers named

after the Greek

physician of the

gods

45 Trespasser’s

warning

46 Refrain from

“Mulan” before

“With all the

force of a great

typhoon”

47 City once

represented in

Congress by

Beto O’Rourke

48 Prevents

50 “Well, isn’t that

fancy!”

52 Cat’s opposite

54 Modern sweetie

55 Count for a

Facebook post

57 Very thought-

provoking

60 Status ___

61 Tony winner

Hagen

62 Walt Disney’s

older brother

64 Air hub between

LAX and Sea-Tac

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE

PUZZLE BY GRANT THACKRAY

9/12/19

1234 5678 91011121314

15 16 17

18 19 20

21 22 23 24

25 26 27 28

29 30 31

32 33 34 35 36

37 38 39 40

41 42 43 44 45

46 47 48 49 50 51 52

53 54 55

56 57 58

59 60 61 62 63 64

65 66 67

68 69 70

Crossword Edited by Will Shortz

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Read about and comment on each puzzle: nytimes.com/wordplay.

ZESTS AMI GA HAR

A L PHA GODOT AGO

H I REDPERSON R I P

NEYO UNA DOODL E

CAT T LEFODDER

RAW STS RANDR

INIGO SIT MICK

MA R S F OR I N S T A N C E

STET X I S I NKED

HAS I T ONE SDS

SPAACCESSORY

MY I DO L AM I A RMS

ERR PERFORAT I ON

LEE EATEN LEONA

LSD SNERD FSTOP

Raphael Bob-Waksberg and Kate Purdy
work together on the Emmy-nominated
Hollywood satire “BoJack Horseman.” But
their latest animated series delivers a nar-
rative that’s even more surreal than the
tribulations of a self-loathing talking horse.
“Undone,” premiering Friday on Amazon
Prime Video, follows a jaded millennial
named Alma (Rosa Salazar) on a reality-
warping head trip set off by a nearly fatal
car accident. What begins as the typical
confusion of waking up in a hospital bed
quickly descends into a feverish frenzy of
spontaneous time shifts and out-of-body ex-
periences as Alma is thrust into a meta-
physical mystery surrounding the death of
her father, played by Bob Odenkirk.
To take viewers through the looking glass
along with Alma, the eight-episode series is
animated using rotoscoping, in which art-
ists trace over motion picture footage,
frame by frame. The technique, rare in tele-
vision, was popularized by the Richard
Linklater films “Waking Life” and “A Scan-
ner Darkly.” An international team of art-
ists, overseen by Michael Eisner’s Tornante
Company, worked on “Undone,” which de-
picts Alma’s disorientation in vivid, visceral
fashion.
“We started playing with conceptions of
reality and asking what it would mean if re-
ality were more flexible than we tradition-
ally perceive it to be,” Purdy said.
The initial idea for what would become
“Undone” struck Purdy while she was writ-
ing a similarly hallucinatory “BoJack”
episode called “Downer Ending,” in which
the equine star embarks on a drug binge
that triggers visions of an alternate life
path. Purdy also pulled from her own per-
sonal struggles with depression and anxi-
ety, and her attempts to heal herself by
studying shamanism.
Alma’s timeline fluctuates wildly as she
splits time between her bland existence —
dead-end job, well-meaning boyfriend,
overbearing mother — and hopping on and
off this earthly plane with her dead father.
In one scene, Alma is stuck in a loop of her
daily recovery routine. A few scenes later,
she’s drifting out of time and space com-
pletely and into a dream world.
“We wanted this to be a real situational
dramedy that was grounded in reality,” Bob-
Waksberg said. “When reality didstretch,
we wanted it to feel cohesive. So then the
question of format was: ‘What’s the best
way to sell that? And how do we play with
that grounding, which then becomes some-
thing much more fantastical?’ ”
Enter the Dutch animator Hisko Hulsing,

who had previously pushed animation

boundaries in his acclaimed short film

“Junkyard” and in his contributions to the

documentary “Kurt Cobain: Montage of

Heck.” Hulsing was the one who chose roto-

scoping as the ideal method for depicting

Alma’s uncanny odyssey. Tommy Pallotta, a

producer on “Waking Life” and “A Scanner

Darkly,” joined the “Undone” team as an ex-

ecutive producer.

Rotoscoping “makes reality both

strangely familiar and oddly different,” Pal-

lotta said, noting that the technique cap-

tures spontaneity and involuntary micro-

expressions in a way that traditional anima-

tion can’t. “At the end of the day, beautiful

images won’t carry a story; you need the

emotion of the characters to make it come

alive.”

Once the creative team decided on the

format, what ensued was a puzzlelike pro-

duction process, with pieces moving from

Los Angeles to Austin, Tex., to Amsterdam

and back over the course of a year and a

half. (By contrast, a 12-episode season of

“BoJack” takes about a year to make.)

First, the actors recorded the script as

though it was a radio play. From there,

storyboards were created in Amsterdam by

Submarine, an animation production stu-

dio. Then it was back to Los Angeles for live-

action shoots on a black-box set, where ac-

tors worked with little more than tape

markings as guides and apple boxes as

props. After shooting wrapped, the footage

was sent to be rotoscoped by the Emmy-

winning animation house Minnow Moun-

tain in Austin.

The resulting composite footage looked

“like a coloring book,” Purdy said, and was

then sent to Amsterdam to be painted by

Submarine’s team of about 85 artists.

“Sometimes, it made us all feel that we were

being taken on our own epic journey

through time and space along with Alma,”

said Femke Wolting, a founder of Subma-

rine.

The artists also designed and illustrated

the houses and background locations of the

show’s San Antonio setting, using reference

photographs Purdy had uploaded onto Pin-

terest. (San Antonio is her hometown.)

Then the finished footage was layered atop

oil-painted backdrops, which themselves

were a monumental project: Hulsing spent

three months training nine artists, re-

cruited from all over Europe, to paint them

by hand in his preferred Dutch Realist style.

He estimated they created more than 800

backdrop paintings to be paired with

400,000 drawings.

“It was, by all definitions, a huge under-

taking,” Hulsing said. “We did the equiva-

lent of two feature films, with a very high

level of animation, in one and a half years.”

The result is a show with direct nods to

“The Matrix” and “The Wizard of Oz,” tak-

ing magical, menacing and mind-bending

cues from both.

“The process really encouraged us to

push the limits of what this show could be —

the way we could express emotion, memory

and adventure,” Bob-Waksberg said. “Ev-

ery layer brings a new chance for the char-

acters to sing and glow.”

Animated Odyssey Stretches Limits of Reality

The Amazon series ‘Undone’

is a surreal trip that required

painstaking preparation.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY AMAZON STUDIOS

Top, Rosa Salazar and Bob

Odenkirk in “Undone,” which

was animated using

rotoscoping, a technique that

requires artists to trace over

motion picture footage frame

by frame. Above, artists spent

months training to do the oil

paintings for the show’s

backgrounds.

By LEIGH-ANN JACKSON

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