All hail Paul Walter Hauser for supporting Sebastian Stan by agreeing to do an “Actors on Actors” discussion with him for Variety.

Stan delivers a brilliant performance as Donald Trump in The Apprentice (ditto Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn), but various chickenshit publicists wouldn’t allow their clients to chat with Stan out of fear that they might be stained by some kind of vague Trump association.

Stan: “I couldn’t find another actor to do it with me, because their publicists were too afraid to sit down and talk about this movie.”

But now good guy Hauser has stepped up to the plate.

I felt profoundly disappointed last June when I saw a 70mm print of the much-heralded 4K restoration of North by Northwest.

The projected image at the Village East looked okay but failed to bring anything visually exceptional to the table — no “bump” over previous versions.

I’m now watching WHE’s just-released 4K Bluray of the restored NXNW and guess what? It pops! Bump city!

Plainly and emphatically stated, the 4K disc (no 1080 Bluray is included) reps an unmistakable visual upgrade — extra-vivid detail, more vibrant colors (fire-engine red cabs! bright yellow cabs! gleaming burgundy leather seats!), extraordinary wardrobe threads (the subtle plaid weave in Cary Grant’s Kilgour suit!) and organic textures (polished wood grain! chiseled adobe bricks adorning a Frank Lloyd Wright home! dusty Indiana farmland furrows) that seem a bit more pronounced and life-like…generally a feeling of film-negative newness and refreshment.

In a phrase, I’m experiencing immense eyeball pleasure. Thank you. I’ve been dreaming of this kind of upgrade for decades.

It follows that last summer’s NXNW 70mm advertising promotion was fraudulent bullshit. Two generations away from the core restoration appearance, projected film only diminishes the digital 4K refinements. 70mm projection used to really mean something, but it can’t compare with what pure digital data offers these days.

You can call me a wimp or a sell-out but I was quite “impressed” by the enormity of John M. Chu and Marc Platt‘s Wicked (Universal, 11.22). I felt completely flooded, walloped, steamrolled, avalanche’d by it. That’s not quite the same thing, needless to say, as being intimately touched or tickled or deeply moved.

Directed by Chu with the same vigor that made In The Heights work as well as it did, Wicked is quite an eyeful, quite the visual deluge, quite the immaculate pageant, quite the overwhelming beat-down, quite the wealth-porn extravaganza.

Every frame of it looks super-costly, I mean. It exudes so much of a flush fantasy vibe by way of super-lavish sets, eye-bath production design, immaculate costumes, spot-on makeup and CG magnificence that it almost leaves you gasping for breath.

Wicked keeps pushing harder with that old Chu pizazz. Every shot is intended to be processed as a wowser knockout moment. It quiets down in one delicate dancing scene, and I for one could’ve done with more of this, but mostly Chu opts for splendorific dazzle.

What is this Wizard of Oz origin story actually about? What’s going on inside Wicked?

The stage musical, of course, is/was about the plight of the disliked, suspiciously regarded Elphaba…the nascent sorceress who hums to her own music and marches to a different drummer (Idina Menzel in the original B’way show, Cynthia Erivo in the film) and how the disdain, derision and cruelty thrown at poor Elphy during her time at Shiz University eventually leads her to become the Wicked Witch of the West.


Elphy is easily the kindest, wisest, most soulful, most perceptive and least egoistic Shiz student, and so OF COURSE all the elite, cool kid go-alongers despise and ostracize her.

Elphaba’s green skin is a metaphor for magical, insightful being and vision…for outside-the-box thinking…for sensitivity, artistry, inwardness and standing against the tide, of course, but with Erivo in the role the green skin is an obvious allusion to blackness or, if you will, even queerness.

A friend tells me I’m off on my own eccentric broomstick, but Chu’s Wicked is clearly a racial parable — a grandiose super-musical fantasy about smug, haughty, entitled whites treating an unusual woman of color like shit and thereby goading her to fulfill her Wizard of Oz destiny as a mythical broomstick witch.

I can’t see how Erivo’s Elphy could possibly morph into Margaret Hamilton‘s enemy-of-Dorothy. I really don’t see it. Hell, nobody will.

Ariana Grande’s Glynda, the young version of the good witch of the north played by Billie Burke in the 1939 original, is re-imagined and played to the absolute hilt as a gentle-mannered, glamour-gowned lass in the most superficial sense imaginable…an empty, priveleged, super-entitled debutante type.

But boy, does she look great! Pure dessert! Every single gesture, every line, every strand of golden hair and every shot of Grande proclaims unequivocally that she’s a glowing movie-star specimen…exquisite, porcelain, princess-like, to-die-for.

Glynda is clearly lacking in terms of depth and introspection but she’s perfectly poised and lighted and a seriously luscious pixie girl.

Do you want a truly affecting parable about otherness…a sad but affecting human-scaled tale about a young green person bullied and ostracized for being different? Watch Joseph Losey’s The Boy With Green Hair (1948). Idina Menzel and Cynthia Erivo? Meet the 12 year-old Dean Stockwell.

Friendo: “Wicked was never a racial parable. The fact that the Idina Menzel character is now played by a Black actress does not make it such.

“Sure, you can now read that overtone into certain stray moments, but there’s a big difference between an overtone and the essential MEANING of the material, as scripted and acted and directed. It is an allegory of outsider-ness, about someone who feels SINGULAR and UNIQUE in her outsider status.”

There’s a third-act line when Jeff Goldblum’s Wizard (played by Frank Morgan in the ‘39 original) regards the flamboyantly designed sets and the general sound-stage lavishness and quips “I think it’s a bit much.” I laughed out loud — the only time I did so during Wicked’s entire 160-minute length.

The plan, obviously, is for The Studio (Apple, 3.26.25), a half-hour series produced by Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Peter Huyck, Alex Gregory and Frida Perez…the plan is to try and serve as a 21st Century, going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket sequel to Robert Altman‘s The Player (’92).

Rogen’s Matt Remick: “I got into this because I love movies. But now I have this fear that my job is to ruin them.”

Remick seems at least partly based upon Jason Blum, whose name signifies everything about Hollywood product that I hate. His Blumhouse output has long been regarded as a pox upon movies.

Who else could Remick be based upon? I want names.

Every single Hollywood hotshot over the last half-century has claimed to be a devotional Movie Catholic who’s trying to fulfill a kind of cinematic spiritual calling. Even Hollywood’s most despised movie executive, David Zaslav, has spoken this way from time to time.

Bryan Cranston is apparently playing the chief villain.

Rogen is only 42 and 1/2 years old, and he looks at least 58 or 60, minimally.

And arguably Luca Guadagnino‘s greatest film…seriously.

“Queer is much more transformative than Call Me By Your Name…it may be Luca’s best film ever, or his most out-there or whatever…I’m not sure how to label it but Craig’s performance is staggering…purely a matter of heart and spirit and twitchy emotion…all I know is that he’s uncovered something fresh and alive…really something else.” — from my 10.7.24 NYFF review.

Queer will allegedly open in the U.S. on 11.27.24, but you’d never know it from the absence of hype and promotion.

Deadline‘s Matt Grobar is reporting that Frank Marshall will be producing some kind of definitive, fully-authorized Fleetwood Mac doc.

Long-of-tooth or passed-on band members Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Christine McVie, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks will “reflect on their fortuitous meeting in 1974” and the “50-plus-year history that’s followed, from their record-breaking recordings and tours to their trials and tribulations, personal resilience, musical dexterity,” etc.

In other words, the doc will mainly cover the super-hot, mid ’70s heyday (Fleetwood Mac (1975–1976) + Rumours (1977–1978), and the still-hot-but-slowing-down period (Tusk (1979–1980) and Mirage (‘82).

And if I know Marshall, the doc will barely acknowledge the scruffy, struggling early years (the first FM album was released in ’68) and may even possibly ignore one of the late Christine McVie‘s best songs ever — the melancholy, raggae-flavored “Did You Ever Love Me?” (’73), which was from the Penguin album (’73).

“Did You Ever Love Me?” was written by McVie and Bob Welch and recorded by them, with McVie delivering a sad and soulful lead vocal. It was also released as a single.

President-elect Donald Trump appears to be throwing in in the towel as far as Matt Gaetz‘s chances of becoming Attorney General are concerned.

On top of which the N.Y. Times is reporting than an unidentified hacker has gained access to a file shared in a secure link among lawyers with clients who have given damaging testimony related to Matt Gaetz.

Excerpt: “The file is said to include sworn testimony by a woman who said that she had sex with Mr. Gaetz in 2017 when she was 17, in addition to testimony by a second woman who said that she had witnessed the encounter. The material does not appear to have been made public by the hacker.”

There are seven states in which the legal age of consent is 17: Colorado, Illinois, Louisiana, Missouri, New York, Texas, Wyoming.

There are quite a few more states in which the legal age of consent is 16: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, etc.

In short, there are roughly 35 states (more?) in which an adult male having sex with a 16- or 17-year-old, however distasteful or odious this might be if the male is significantly (more than ten years) older, is not illegal.

There are 12 states in which the age of consent is 18 — Arizona, California, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Kentucky, North Dakota, Oregon, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin.

HE’s personal view is that a woman is obliged to examine and scrutinize for herself when she hits 20. Once she’s experienced two full decades on this planet, she’s on her own. Before that age her judgment may not be what it could or should be.

What Bob Woodward meant, more precisely, is that Trump is an animal, and that we’e all condemned to cope with his snorting, territorial jungle behavior for the next four years and change. And so, from the bottom of our hearts, “thank you, bumblefucks!…thank you so much.”

Bret Stephens, posted 11.18.24: “Through hubris, Joe Biden destroyed his single greatest accomplishment, which was the defeat of Donald Trump.

“Through diffidence, he failed to achieve what might have been the most impressive goal of his term, which would have been Russia’s battlefield defeat in Ukraine, thanks to rapid and overwhelming U.S. assistance.

“Through inattention, he allowed a preventable immigration crisis to unfold, along with a huge spike in inflation that was the predicted result of his reckless overspending.

“Through imprudence, he permitted the Justice Department to prosecute his predecessor in a way that did more to resurrect Trump’s political fortunes than it did to bury them.

“Through self-delusion and the dishonesty or silence of his close confidants, he covered up the extent of his mental decline.

“Through political malpractice, he anointed Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee instead of encouraging a more open process that could have yielded a better candidate.”

A riff about depression and escape from depression in the midst of the pandemic, originally posted on 8.17.20:

Yesterday it was hot all across the Southwest, Los Angeles included. Hot and somewhat humid. I showered quickly around 5 pm, and despite the air-conditioned living room climate I had to wait and wait for my hair to dry.

I needed a drive on the rumblehog, I decided. I went downstairs, turned the ignition key, revved the engine. I then decided on the spur that it was too hot to wear headgear. So I took off with my white helmet under the seat….”fuck it.”

With my faintly damp hair getting whipped around as I motored north through quiet, tree-lined streets, it was one of the most glorious sensations I’ve felt in months.

The angel on my right shoulder was saying “okay, you’ve had your fun, now pull over and put the helmet on.” But the devil on my left shoulder said, “No, don’t…this is way too pleasurable, let’s keep going.”

Block after block, slowly cruising, my eyes peeled for the bulls. I became braver and braver. I crossed La Cienega and ducked into another side street. I was ecstatic about the wind fluttering through my Prague follicles; the feeling of coolness and the scent of this and that…absolute heaven.

After a while I began to think that getting a ticket might not be so bad. Well, it would have been but I was so delighted to re-experience a portion of what it was like to be 16. It used to be okay to ride around without a helmet. California’s mandatory helmet law kicked in on 1.1.92. Warren Beatty rides his Triumph without one in Shampoo.

Posted eight years ago: One of the healthiest things you can say about anything that’s over and done with is “okay, that happened.” Unless, of course, you’re talking about a stretch in a World War II concentration camp or something equally ghastly. Otherwise you have to be accepting, past it.

Especially when it comes to ex-girlfriends. We went there, it happened, nobody was right or wrong, that was then and we’re here now…let’s get a coffee and catch up.

All my life I’ve been friends with exes, or have at least been open to same. And they’ve been open to ease and friendship with me. Except for one.

She was (and most likely still is) a whipsmart blonde with a great ass, a toothy smile and a kind of young Katharine Hepburn vibe. She’d been raised in Brooklyn but always reminded me of a Fairfield County gal.

She’s married now and living in Pasadena; her husband — a slightly stocky, gray-haired guy of some means — doesn’t resemble me or her first husband (a doobie-toking small-business owner who owned a Harley) at all. Whatever attributes or nice qualities he’s brought to the table, he’s clearly a swing away from the past.

I gave up trying to be in touch with her toward the end of Barack Obama’s first term. She really wants to erase that part of her life — the first marriage (which began in the summer of ’96) and the affair with me that began in early ’98 and lasted two and two-thirds years, ending in late September 2000.

We last spoke in ’12. The most emotionally significant thing that happened before that was her friending me on Facebook, but what is that?

Our thing began at the ’98 Sundance Film Festival and finally ran out of gas in late ’00 when her husband found out.

Do you want a truly affecting parable about otherness and suffering derision for being different?…a sad, affecting, human-scaled drama about a young person bullied and ostracized for having shamrock green hair? Watch Joseph Losey’s The Boy With Green Hair (1948).

Idina Menzel and Cynthia Erivo? Meet 12-year-old Dean Stockwell.

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