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Horror Pride Month: Make-Up Designer and Entrepeneur Thomas Ariel Zeek
A lot of talk goes on during Pride Month about corporate pandering. Companies around the world suddenly get really queer-friendly, only to disappear when the month of June ends. During this time, it’s important to rally around and support queer-owned businesses, and Thomas Ariel Zeek and his company, Gothic Garden Cosmetics, are exactly what we mean.
I spoke to Thomas on a typical morning in May as he wrangled his kids ages seven, five, and three, took care of the family dog, and somehow managed to carve out a little time to tell me his remarkable story.
He and his wife met several years ago when Thomas was a high school senior and his wife was a college freshman. They both hung out at the same mall with friends, and Thomas admits he had never noticed her, but she had definitely spotted him.
As a joke, he and a friend made a dating profile for himself and lo and behold, his wife was there. They spoke on the phone for two weeks, and after their first meeting, something just clicked and things progressed as they do.
When Thomas became pregnant with their first child, small things he’d thought about himself before became much larger. He began seeing a therapist and working through those feelings which ultimately led to his coming out.
It has been just over three years since Thomas fully embraced his trans identity, and he’s been taking hormones for two years, now. At the same time, his wife also came out as a trans woman and began her transition, as well.
She’s an army veteran and due to complications during her service, suffers from a small tremor that made it nearly impossible to apply make-up herself. Thomas, naturally, stepped in and began helping her outside match who she was on in the inside.
That was when they began to run into a few issues.
“There were shades that we wanted that we couldn’t find on mattes that were workable,” he explained. “I tried a lot of different name brands and couldn’t find the colors she wanted that would blend really well. So, I started studying the science of make-up and began developing my own.”
As the colors and shades began to come to life and he finally had what they’d both been searching for, he found that he had a surplus of his creations. With a little encouragement from his wife and friends, Thomas took the plunge and began to sell his creations.
“It takes a while to come out with new palettes,” he admitted, “but that’s because I formulate and formulate, testing the products, and sending them out to friends with different skin types. I never want to have a product that I don’t feel good about. I’m really proud of what I’ve created.”
As a lifelong horror fan with a special place in his heart for supernatural and paranormal films like Poltergeist and The Conjuring, Zeek’s creations reflected those darker sensibilities first in single shades which then expanded into palettes of colors that speak to him personally.
“I’m a huge horror fan,” he said. “It’s sort of my coping mechanism. When I’m having a lot of anxiety, I’ll turn on a horror movie and it actually relaxes me. I’ve always had a soft-goth appearance. I may dress formally on occasion but I always wear combat boots. I collect decorative skulls and display them year around. That just kind of mirrored itself into my company.”
That company has become one of his children, and he spoke lovingly about how both he and Gothic Gardens have grown in the last year.
In the beginning, selling single shades, Zeek painstakingly crafted individual envelopes for shipping. When he expanded to creating full quads and larger palettes, he knew he wanted something different that was still unique in its presentation.
He committed himself to learning the process of book binding, and began creating hand bound small books for each of his creations.
Thomas Ariel Zeek does nothing half way.
In fact, at the moment, he’s working on a series of eyebrow pomades that will be releasing soon designing brushes that look like quill pens with the pomades stored in inkwell-style containers.
But what does he have available, now?
First up is The Garden Pond View quad.
“It kind of tells the story of finding a pond in a little gothic garden and the colors you’d see there,” Zeek explained.
Then there’s The Garden Bed quad which Zeek explained is based on the colors you might find in his Gothic Garden.
Hidden Cemetery is a stunning palette of colors that plays out its own horror story of finding a mysterious unmarked grave.
When Valentine’s Day was looming, Zeek committed to creating a color palette that was unlike anything he’d seen for what is normally marketed as a romantic couples’ holiday.
“I called it the Not So Romantic Goth,” Zeek said, sheepishly. “It sort of came from the idea that sex and love aren’t always connected. I wanted something that was completely separate from the lovey-dovey stuff you see for Valentine’s Day.”
The designer really went for it, taking his customers through a not-so-typical (maybe?) night out: Sunset, Drive-In, Starry Night, Dinner for Two, Heart Locket, Nightcap, Foreplay, Spank, Choke Me, Tied Up, Night Stand, and I’ll Call You!
My personal favorite is a palette he specifically designed for Pride Month called Coming Out of the Coffin. The palette not only allows you to embrace the rainbow, but Zeek donates a portion of the proceeds to the Ali Forney Center, which offers outreach resources to LGBTQ youth.
The color names here also give customers a glimpse into the causes and issues that are personal to Zeek, himself: Not Even My Final Form, Stop Policing, People’s Lives, Pay It No Mind, Breaking The Norm, My Bed My Business, They/Them Aren’t Hard To Use, There Are Even Gay Animals, Stop The Hate, Science Updates Everyday, Gendered Clothing Is Weird, and Da Vinci Was Gay BTW.
Gothic Gardens Cosmetics does much more than eyeshadow palettes, however. They also offer a small variety of blushes and highlighters at the moment, but he says he intends to branch out even more as the company continues to grow.
“I’m working toward adding products so that the entire face can be made up with my cosmetics,” he said, excitedly. “I’m in the testing phase for all of it!”
As I hit End Call on our conversation, I could not help feeling that I’d just spent a half an hour with a man who can and will shape the future of cosmetics as well as someone who will become a leader in our community through quiet commitment and perseverance.
To say the least, I was utterly impressed.
To learn more about Thomas Ariel Zeek and his company, you can follow Gothic Gardens Cosmetics on Facebook or visit his website to see which products are currently in stock and available for order.
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Movies
‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments
It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.
We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.
“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”
That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”
Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:
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Movies
‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening
Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.
Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.
Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.
Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.
Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.
The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.
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Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date
Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.
Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.
These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:
According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”
Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.
Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.
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