Dead Like Me : Rube's art book

Rube's art book

In the Nighthawks episode, can anyone make out the title of his book of art?
Would be much appreciated!

Re: Rube's art book

The Master Painters

by Gore and Jones


Maybe this book was a prop created for this episode. Gore and Jones are the names of people in the art department for the series.

Re: Rube's art book

Don't forget the picture of of the girl who was a spitting image of Daisy in one of the portraits. Rube said she didn't have Daisy's mannerisms, while George corrected her, especially seeing Daisy leave the restroom with a near-identical pose as the girl in the painting, leading us viewers to speculate that the girl was indeed Daisy Adair.

Re: Rube's art book

It never occurred to me that the girl in that painting might be Daisy Adair. It does look like her, but because that book seems to be a prop - so you won't find it anywhere. Note that the author name is someone working on the show.

I took George's comments as letting us know there was more to Daisy than seems. George lives with her so she might have guessed as much.

In the second to the last episode (214) Godchaux and Masius told us in Daisy's dialogue with the guy singing for tips - Anderson - just before the window washer fell to his death that she saw herself as the main character from 'A Streetcar named Desire'.

Daisy: Doesn’t it bother you, having to depend on other people’s handouts?
(Perhaps as it’s bothered Daisy the last 60-70 years.)
Anderson: I’ve always relied on the kindness of strangers.
D: Well, I’ve played Blanche DuBois for a lifetime, so….
A: So you must get it.
D: I do.

I suspect that G&M gave this key to understanding the only reaper character that they created - the rest were inherited from Fuller - before the show came to an untimely end. And Daisy is complicated. Comments I wrote elsewhere about this reveal:

"And there we go. Daisy has played Blanche DuBois for a lifetime. Blanche DuBois is a key character in the play ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ written in 1947 by American playwright Tennessee Williams.

As per Wikipedia, “Blanche DuBois is a fading, but still-attractive, Southern belle whose pretensions to virtue and culture only thinly mask alcoholism and delusions of grandeur. Her poise is an illusion she presents to shield others (but most of all, herself) from her reality, and an attempt to make herself still attractive to new male suitors.”

The only nit to pick here is that the Daisy character we get in DLM is physically frozen at the age she died, 24, which given her 60 plus years as a reaper is holding up pretty good and we can expect will until she passes over. Mentally tho she fits this template. The Blanche character’s signature line: "Whoever you are, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers."

There’s another darker implication regarding our Daisy character that the writers point to by drawing our attention so directly to this character template for Daisy. In the movie it’s clear that Blanche’s history includes selling her sexual favors to strangers i.e. prostitution, and it’s this secret, which is used deliberately by Stanley, Stella’s husband, to block and then destroy any hope that Blanche might have had in recovering some sort of future with the besotted suitor Mitch. With this last desperate option closed down and as she is being forced to leave the last refuge – Stella’s apartment - Blanche loses her sanity. Daisy may be delusional as a reaper but her fresh as a daisy looks are safe and presumably forever with them her sanity. However, while this implied aspect of her past may have been ambiguous in S1 and until this point in S2, it’s now clear at least in the writers’ minds how Daisy can afford her lifestyle without any pesky office work like George. Remember that with Betty we were shown in one booth scene that she was an avid shoplifter giving us some idea how she got her extensive wardrobe, and now it’s clear how Daisy gets hers.

In our DLM narrative, Daisy’s looks are forever preserved and therefore her sanity safe, and altho there’s no Stanley to thwart Mitch’s, or in our case Mason’s, pursuit of Daisy, there is another obstacle - she’s a reaper and there can be no happily ever after, which is forever out of her grasp.

Or is it? The Daisy we were first introduced to desperately needed the attention of men with some combination of TV/movie producer career and/or celebrity status in order to fulfill her imagined needs. But Daisy in fact meets up with a very masculine TV producer who in fact puts her in front of a real camera and what does she do? She clearly chooses Mason and gives the finger to Ray as she walks away from him. And Mason proves himself by using his last day on Earth (he believes) to give her that engagement ring – true love? So maybe our Daisy character found her way around the quicksand that suffocated Blanche thru to a place where she finally found someone – however imperfect – who actually loves her."

Re: Rube's art book


It never occurred to me that the girl in that painting might be Daisy Adair. It does look like her, but because that book seems to be a prop - so you won't find it anywhere.


While the book might be a prop, it's basically a book of the paintings of Edward Hopper (the name of the episode is Nighthawks). The painting of the theatre lobby is a real Hopper painting; I'll have to search for the name later.

Re: Rube's art book

Re: Rube's art book

The pic of the girl is indeed a famous Hopper painting. She is standing in the lobby of a movie theater.

I love his paintings. Nighthawks is his most famous painting.

Hopper is probably appropriate to the show because he painted scenes of people in urban areas, mainly, who were isolated. The viewer always seems to be peeking on something private. A view through the window of a highrise apartment of a man and woman who are seated isolated on opposite sides of the room, or of a woman brushing her hair with slouched shoulders. In Nighthawks, there are several people, but each seems isolated and withdrawn. Love his paintings.

When I was a kid there was a theater in my town that looked similar to the theater in the Hopper painting.

Re: Rube's art book


The pic of the girl is indeed a famous Hopper painting. She is standing in the lobby of a movie theater.


I always felt like the association of Daisy with that painting was a hint that rather than an up-and-coming starlet she was really an usherette in a movie theater and fantasized everything.

Re: Rube's art book


The only nit to pick here is that the Daisy character we get in DLM is physically frozen at the age she died, 24 ...


But her soul continues to age and, apparently, wither with loneliness.

Re: Rube's art book

Just wanted to give a quick "thanks" for posting the thread and for those who answered it.
I really enjoyed looking up Edward Hopper's work.
Thank you :)

doo doo doo dooda dooda

Re: Rube's art book

That's an interesting angle - that Daisy may not have been in the movies at all.

When George asks the gang if they ever had their name in the paper Mason says that Daisy must have been listed in the obituaries when she died on the set of Gone With the Wind. Daisy says no because it was such a large cast.

If all she ever did was sleep with producers etc. that would indeed make her a very sad person.
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