It turns out that the Ving Rhames assistant who was found dead somewhere on Rhames’ property on 8.3, reportedly from what appeared to be wounds from two of the actor’s mastiff dogs, wasn’t killed by the hounds after all. And yet no one can figure exactly what happened. The poor guy’s name was Jacob Adams, he was 40 years old, and West Hollywood Police Lt. Ray Lombardo is describing the cause of his death as “undetermined.” I still think that anyone who owns a pack of snarly scary dogs is expressing something about who they are deep down, so I’m not modifying that piece that I wrote about this incident on 8.8.

Tom DiCillo‘s Delirious (Peace Arch, 8.15) is a relationship story about a gauche, low-level Manhattan paparazzi (Steve Buscemi) and a scruffy wannabe actor (Michael Pitt ) who talks the photographer into giving him a gig as his unpaid assistant. Buscemi shows Pitt the ropes of Manhattan celebrity-stalking, then a pretty but insecure young singer (Alison Lohman) takes a shine to Pitt and before you know it he’s working on a TV show and being snapped himself and Buscemi is the odd man out with his nose against the glass.

Delirious director-writer Tom DiCillo at Four Seasons hotel — Monday, 8.6.07, 1:25 pm

You can spot the references right off the top — a little Midnight Cowboy, a little Star is Born, etc.
The reactions to Delirious so far are running 100% positive on Rotten Tomatoes. One of the better written raves is by New Yorker critic David Denby, who calls it “a strong, bitter movie [about] a brutal and unstable process” — i.e., the icky, often ugly relationship of mutual loathing and reciprocity between celebrities and papar- azzi. He also called it “exhilarating in a way that only hard-won knowledge of the world can be.”
I didn’t feel exhilaration at all. I was okay with it by way of a certain respect, a certain recognition, a certain liking.
Delirious is a good in-and-out film (sometimes hilarious, sometimes just okay, sometimes sad and tender) but deep down it seems to be driven by feelings of outwardly-directed loathing on DiCillo’s part, for paparazzi riff-raff as well as fringe losers in general. I’m not saying this is absolutely the case, but it feels this way to me. This is my explanation, in any event, as to why the film feels seems less particular and perceptive than it ought to be.
Buscemi’s character is the main problem. All through the film he’s an immature jerk and an undisciplined id monster — screaming at doormen, acting rash and desperate and often unclassy, making stupid social blunders. In a racket as tough as celebrity photography, even the scummiest bottom-feeder needs to act like someone much better than he or she is when it comes to dealing with other profes- sionals — you need to put on a wise, cultivated and diplomatic Henry Kissinger face.

I know a little bit about getting into hot parties and dealing with door guys and publicists, and there’s just no way that Buscemi’s character could make any headway in the real world. I admit I don’t personally know any paparazzi so Buscemi’s guy may be an accurate representation, but he’s way too much of a creep for my tastes.
A guy in his late 40s who gets all upset because his parents don’t respect his work is, to my mind, a child, and who has time for that? I didn’t buy Buscemi’s home-visit scene either — what parent blatantly tells an offspring that what they’re up to professionally is worthless? Invited to a small private party with Elvis Costello in attendance, Buscemi’s guy just pulls out his camera and starts snapping away, which naturally pisses off Costello to no end. Even animal-level paparazzi would know not to play it this way. Celebrity-world operators without charm or finesse are pathetic.
If DiCillo respected guys like Buscemi a bit more he might have delved more in the minutae of who they really are and what their lives are actually like, and he would have created a slightly more rounded and particular portrait. Or at least one that wouldn’t get this kind of reaction from the likes of me.
Why, then, did I sit down with DiCillo last week and talk with him if I was mixed on the film? Because he’s a good guy to shoot the shit with — frank, confessional — and because I absolutely worship Living in Oblivion, his 1995 film that Denby accurately calls “the best movie made about independent filmmaking.” DiCillo and I spoke eight days ago for about 15 or 20 minutes in the ground-level restaurant at the Four Seasons hotel.

“I recently wrote that I could happily do without any more movies devoted to the breaking of the male bond,” David Denby writes in his 8.20 New Yorker review of Superbad. “Yet here’s an uproarious and touching picture on that theme [that] combines desperately filthy talk with the most tender, even delicate, emotion. [It] succeeds as a teen’s wild fantasy of a night in which everything goes wrong, revised by an adult’s melancholy sense that nothing was ever meant to go right.

“Superbad is a suburban mock-epic. Seth (Jonah Hill) and Evan (Michael Cera), with the help of their friend Fogell (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), agree to buy the booze for a party that the coolest girls in their class are throwing. The boys are convinced that if they deliver the goods the girls will get so drunk that they’ll make out with guys by mistake. ‘We could be that mistake!’ Seth shouts, hopefully. Getting themselves to the party, however, turns out to be a journey somewhat more difficult than that endured by the Greeks coming home from Troy.
“In spirit, Superbad isn’t so different from Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) and other rude teen comedies made years ago. But the tone of Superbad, like that of other recent teen movies, is so profane and anatomical that it would shock Sean Penn‘s loutish Spicoli.
“The boys in Superbad are all internet-porn addicts. Their talk is not just dirty but bizarrely detailed — spangled with fantasy, odd practices, and curious devices. They know more about sex than boys did a couple of decades ago, but they’re frightened by what they know — the expectation of performance is so much more explicit. For them, the only mystery is flesh itself, and the presence of a willing girl sends them into anguished fits of dithering.”

If you’d asked me last night which big-name director is best known for simulating a face-punch by having an actor pretend to punch the camera lens, I would have said Alfred Hitchcock. He does this twice (and with a good amount of pizazz and precision) in North by Northwest when a bad-ass South Dakota cop slugs Cary Grant at the end of Act Two, and then about 15 minutes later when James Mason decks Martin Landau.
Then I read Dave Kehr‘s N.Y. Times video column this morning and remembered that Samuel Fuller trail-blazed this effect in I Shot Jesse James (1949), his debut film, when “a barroom brawler takes a poke right at the camera’s lens, the defining moment in a style that Jean-Luc Godard would later characterize as ‘cinema-fist.'” I’d read this, you see, but I’ve never seen this Fuller film.
I Shot Jesse James is now part of a new Criterion DVD package called “The First Films of Samuel Fuller.”

I can’t find my Sea of Love DVD, but if I had it I could run an MP3 of Al Pacino doing his “Holy cow!” imitation of Phil Rizzuto — the former N.Y. Yankees shortstop who became a much-loved Yankees broadcast commentator and Money Store pitchman– who died earlier today at age 89. Here’s a Money Store clip from the ’80s.

It’s taking me two or three seconds to mentally separate Justin Theroux‘s Dedication (Weinstein Co., opening 8.24, expands 9.14), Gavin Hood‘s Rendition (New Line, 10.12) and Joe Wright‘s Atonement (Focus Features, 12.7) whenever any one of these films comes up in casual conversation. Any journalist who denies experiencing at least a slight twitch when discussing these three is flat-out lying.

An arbitrator has sided with talent agent Ed Limato‘s desire to leave ICM after 32 years and take his hot-shot clients — Denzel Washington is the biggest, along with Mel Gibson (temporary toast), Richard Gere (on the way down), Steve Martin (a lot less than what he was), Billy Crystal (diminishing returns) and Liam Neeson (Abraham Lincoln!) — with him to the next gig. ICM didn’t want that to happen and they tussled, but now it’s over and Limato, in the words of ICM General Counsel Richard B. Levy, “is now able to accept new employment opportunities.” The Denzel loss alone is obviously bad news for ICM, and is sure to further observations that this once-major super agency isn’t what it used to be. Nikki Finke will jump into this sometime soon.

It may be a mistake for the official Indiana Jones site to be using John Williams‘ almost gruesomely familiar trumpet-solo theme to herald the arrival of Indy 4 movie. For every middle-aged Jones fan who sprays shorts when he hears this anthem, there’s probably at least two or three younger viewers who are saying, “Is this some memory-lane theme-park movie or are they making a film that has at least something to do with right now?” (Apart from Shia Le Bouf being in it.)

There’s a cardboard standee reprinting all or most of Todd McCarthy‘s 5.18.07 review of Joel and Ethan Coen‘s No Country for Old Men (Miramax, 11.9) in at least one Los Angeles movie theatre lobby, and a Miramax guy just told me the standee is in 250 theatres nationwide. Here’s the review once more.

Read Dennis Harvey‘s review of Loretta Alper and Jeremy Earp‘s War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death, and tell me that seeing this somewhere today doesn’t reverberate like hell given this morning’s news about the departure of Karl Rove. I’d review it in a New York minute if someone would send me the DVD.

“A lot of people out there just kind of dismiss me as an irresponsible kid. All of Hollywood is old, old, old, for that matter. There are as many good young actors and directors in America as there are in Europe, but Hollywood shuts them out. Hollywood is afraid of young blood. It’s a ghost town. I’m 28 years old. I’ll give you five seconds to name me another Hollywood leading man under the age of 35.” — Warren Beatty speaking to Roger Ebert 40 years ago in London during a Bonnie and Clyde interview.

Tracking on The Invasion (8.17.07) is now at 67 aided awareness, 27 definite interest and 4 first choice….look for $10 million this weekend, perhaps a bit more. Superbad is finally starting to get traction — 54, 39 and a first choice rating of 9 among films opening this week. I can feel it climbing, climbing….it could crack $20 million this weekend, maybe more. The Last Legion is at 25, 19 and 2.