Updated with comment added: Daily Beast contributor Gerald Posner reported today that yesterday (12.28) “a Los Angeles entertainment honcho shared a text message with [him] that Mickey Rourke had sent him about Sean Penn: ‘Look seans an old friend of mine [but] i didnt buy his performance at all — thought he did an average pretend acting like he was gay besides hes one of the most homophobic people i kno'” [sic]

Needless to say, it’s extremely scummy of Posner’s anonymous “Los Angeles entertainment honcho” to pass along a privately-sent text message with the idea that it might possibly turn up in a Daily Beast story. It’s craven and low. I posted the item because Posner is a highly respected investigative reporter and author, and because the Daily Beast is a top-of-the-pile, high-profile site. But two key factors were at work here. One, the story wouldn’t have been considered persuasive or titillating enough to run without the text message quote. And two, Posner and the DB obviously know that running the text message quote essentially amounts to a double-edged smear, plain and simple. I think it’s going to backfire against Rourke and in Penn’s favor.

Posner writes that “several entertainment industry sources” have said that Rourke is “trash talking” Penn, but he only mentions two — the text message plus an alleged comment Rourke made backstage after a “Late Night with David Letterman” taping on 12.23. Rourke allegedly said “he was surprised that so many people seemed to think that Penn was his Oscar competition since ‘I’m not even sure he’ll get a nomination.'” Doesn’t the word “several” mean at least…what, four or five? (If I had three sources on a story, I wouldn’t say I had “several” sources — I would say I had three.)

A friend has written HE with the following comment: “Gerald Posner’s use of an unattributed source for his Daily Beast story about the Mickey Rourke/Sean Penn texting reminds me of the sermon in Doubt in which Philip Seymour Hoffman speaks about gossip and compares its irreparable damage to the feathers from a pillow dispersing in the air.”

Two Lovers (2929 Prods., 2.13.09) is a very decent…no, better-than-decent blue-collar drama from director-writer James Gray. It plays in the vein of Paddy Chayefsky‘s Marty, and has very fine performances from the entire cast, but especially from Joaquin Phoenix, Gwynneth Paltrow and Vinessa Shaw.

The ten biggest-grossing films of the year, two of which — WALL*E and The Dark Knight — were serious knockouts. A third — Jon Favreau‘s Ironman — was a very satisfying commercial fanboy flick. The other seven represented varying grades of muck and disappointment.

“If you’re looking for definitive proof of how our culture (and particularly our film culture) is steadily devolving and dumbing itself down, check out the Ben Lyons-Ben Mankiewicz version of At The Movies, which premiered a few days ago. This is not a TV show about how good or bad the latest movies are. It’s a show about the End of Civilization as some of us have known it. If the Eloi of George Pal‘s The Time Machine were to produce their own movie-review show, this is how it would play.” — originally posted on 9.16.08 in a piece called “Forget These Guys,” and re-posted to contribute to the current pile-on, as evidenced by today’s riff by Mark Graham of New York/Vulture.

Two weeks ago I met Revolutionary Road costar Michael Shannon, whose brief but quite breathtaking performance in that film ought to win him the Best Supporting Actor Oscar. It happened in Tribeca. I was told by his publicist that photography couldn’t happen, and then we sat down in a restaurant that was too noisy for the recording of our chat to be of any value.

Michael Shannon, snapped at a Revolutionary Road party last month at 21.

Not having anything to work with prompted a bit of a delay in writing this piece, but at least I’ve gotten around to it. It certainly wasn’t for a lack of enthusiasm or fascination with Shannon, who’s a very intriguing piece of work.

I’m a bit angry that none of the critics groups or kiss-ass groups (BFCA, HFPA, NBR) have given Shannon a Best Supporting Actor award or nomination. He’s totally brilliant and hilarious as the nutjob mathematician who spells out exactly (if uncomfortably) what’s going on between the film’s unhappy married couple, Frank and April Wheeler, portrayed by the excellent Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.

Shannon’s Road turn registers in nearly the same way that Heath Ledger ‘s does in The Dark Knight, as both give portrayals of truth-telling loons. The difference is that Shannon, playing a period character, is quieter, more concentrated and buttoned-down. And of course, far less showy. But no less bull’s eye.

Shannon is a very cool, free-thinking fellow. My son Jett (who sat with us) liked him alot but thought his eyes looked a bit scary. Naaah, I said — more like the eyes of a 16 year-old kid who’s very bright and perceptive but isn’t 100% sure who he is or what he’s up against. A guy who doesn’t have it all worked out but is open about that, which is a very good thing from the perspective of a watcher or listener.

For me Shannon is a cross between ’50s poet-adventurer Neal Cassady and the prophet Elijah in Herman Melville‘s Moby Dick, only a bit more vivid in that he seems to be really and truly living in his own realm.

I asked him at one point if he owns a Blu-ray player, and he talked about how the name Blu-ray sounds a little spooky, like “some kind of sea animal” — a blue sea monster that can kill with a single strike of its tail, say. Talk to 100 people about Blu-Ray and 99 of them will talk about the picture quality or how they’d love to finally buy one or whatever. Only one in 100, maybe one out of 1000, will answer the way Shannon did.

When Shannon was answering a question in front of a Screen Actors Guild audience following a Revolutionary Road screening a couple of weeks earlier, he spoke as if he was in a kitchen and talking to some guy standing nearby as he’s fishing through the freezer and looking for ice cream. He doesn’t give a performed answer, in other words — he speaks like a regular guy talking about how he worked on his car’s brake lining the other day and needs to go back and finish the job. Nothing to prove or put across. Just the facts.

Shannon’s next job is Werner Herzog‘s My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?, which will begin shooting next month. The first phase of filming will go from January12th to 20th. This will keep Shannon away, unfortunately, from the ’09 Sundance Film Festival, where two of his unseen films will be showing. He’d like to go, he says, but duty calls.

The Sundance film Shannon is especially proud of, he says, is Noah Buschel ‘s The Missing Person . Shannon plays a private detective looking for a guy who’s ostensibly disappeared on a train from Chicago to Los Angeles, but then it is gradually learned that the cause of the disappearance was something else entirely. The film costars Amy Ryan.

Shannon and a woman I can’t identify, between shots on Revolutionary Road.

The other is Shana Feste‘s The Greatest, a drama about a family coping with a son who’s been killed in a car crash and the young girl who is carrying the son’s child. Susan Sarandon and Pierce Brosnan play the grieving mom and dad; Shannon plays the other driver.

Shannon is only 34 (same age as Leonardo DiCaprio), but he’s been acting in films since 1992, when he was only 18. He played bit and character parts throughout the ’90s and the early ’00s. Two of his smaller roles that I remember with some clarity are cock-eyed military types in Joel Schumacher‘s Tigerland and Michael Bay ‘s Pearl Harbor.

Shannon’s attention-getting breakout came in ’06 when he starred in William Friedkin ‘s Bug, an upscale horror film that I’ve never seen. (Apologies.) Then he played the savior of the two buried guys in Oliver Stone‘s World Trade Center — the guy who leaves his job in Wilton, Connecticut, on 9/11, puts on his military clothes and drives into Manhattan to help pick through the rubble and help out any way he can.

Shannon’s next punch-through came when he played a cold-eyed nogoodnik looking to scam or rip-off Ethan Hawke in Sidney Lumet‘s Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead.

Shannon began his career as a stage actor in Chicago, where he helped found A Red Orchid Theatre and has also worked with Steppenwolf Theatre Company and the Northlight Theatre. He currently lives in the Red Hook area of Brooklyn with his wife (or perhaps just his girlfriend), actress Kate Arrington, a Steppenwolf ensemble member . They have a daughter, according to his Wikipedia bio page.

The reasons for the disappearance of Jennifer Seitz, the 36 year-old Florida woman who went over the side of a cruise ship off the coast of Cancun last Friday night, were speculated upon by an MSNBC guest commentator a few minutes ago.

The one that got me was the Titanic scenario — i.e., an allegation that lots and lots of drunken cruise ship passengers over the years have gotten bombed and then staggered out to the bow section and done Leonardo DiCaprio’s “I’m the king of the world!” routine (standing on the rails, beating their chests and screaming) and then lost their balance and fallen over.

If I had done that in a state of total drunkenness and fallen into the sea and been fished out and lived, I would’ve called my attorney the next day and sued the pants off director-writer James Cameron, DiCaprio, 20th Century Fox, Bill Mechanic, Jon Landau , Paramount and anyone else who had anything to do with that 1997 film. Yes, I’m kidding.

That king-of-the-world stunt is an alpha male thing, no? What 36 year-old woman in her right mind would do that? I think Seitz’s husband…I don’t know anything. But we all suspect the same thing, don’t we? She goes over the side around 8 pm, he goes off and fucking gambles and then waits eight hours to report that she’s missing? As Willem Dafoe‘s Jesus says about God’s intentions in The Last Temptation of Christ , “I think he wants to push me over !”

Me to Star Hotel proprietor: “I found a place in Park City but I can’t move in until Friday the 16th. Would you let me crash on the living-room couch for the first two nights (1.14 and 1.15)? Which I’ll pay you for, of course. It would be greatly appreciated if you could grant me this small favor, as you left me in the lurch this year. I thought I’d made it clear as a bell that I intended to return, having stayed in your wonderful abode the last two years and leaving my cowboy hat there and telling you I’d wear it when I returned in ’09 and so on. Anyway, can ya do me this one?”

So now that David Fincher‘s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button has earned $39 million on 2988 screens — the second-best Christmas Day opening of all time — it’s an even safer bet to be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar and perhaps take the win from Slumdog Millionaire, which has been selling fewer tickets. That’s what everyone’s thinking, right? All comes down to dollars and cents?

Me : Got any screenings this week? Anything? I don’t have a thing. Not a damn thing.

N.Y. Journalist Friend: Silent Light tomorrow morning at Film Forum, and that’s it though I don’t think I’ll make it. There won’t be anything until next week and that’s mostly small stuff and early January movies like Unborn. Let me know if you get any pre-Sundance screenings. I’ve only gotten In the Loop from Falco.

Me: I guess I’m not in the loop on that. Why wouldn’t Falco send me an invite for this? Who’s handing the Silent Light thing?

N.Y. Journalist Friend: [Provides name and e-mail address.]

Me: Why don’t publicists take this lull opportunity to screen some Sundance films for select journos? I’d love to see Tom DeCillo‘s When You’re Strange, for instance. How does it benefit sellers to keep a good Sundance movie totally under wraps? If it’s good it’s good and the word gets around.

So the Best Foreign Language Oscar race is between Matteo Garone‘s Gomorrah and Ari Folman‘s Waltz With Bashir….right? Because Bashir, which obviously qualifies as an animated feature, can’t hope to beat WALL*E?

I’m not sure about Gomorrah being “the best film about organized crime since The Godfather” because it’s acutely unemotional and docu-drama-like and therefore an entirely different species, although it is a gripping look at a hellish mafia-plagued realm. The fact that it won Best Film and Best Director at the European Film Awards ain’t hay.

It can be easy to succumb to tobacco lust in Europe. You make a deal with yourself along the lines of “I’m here two or three weeks, time out from real life, what the hell, do what the Romans do.” Smoking is considered heinous and unthinkable in this country, to the point that when people like Salma Hayek are photographed smoking it’s considered a bust.

But even here I’ve had moments of weakness. God forgive me. When you’re feeling alone and besieged and under heavy pressure, cigarettes are in your corner, on your side, providers of solace. Revolting concept, but there it is. Smoking, it seems, is generally for self-destructive lower middle-class and underclass types, and for successful under-35 actors of both genders.

I feel for anyone who hasn’t got their chops down as a public speaker — it’s a tough thing to get right if you’re not a “natural” — but Caroline Kennedy has now embarassed herself to the point that there’s almost no chance that Gov. David Paterson will appoint her to Hillary Clinton‘s Senate seat. The smart thing right now would be to withdraw her name from consideration and salvage some dignity. A woman who’s worth $100 million obviously has options in life. She’ll be fine.