My only enthusiastically preferred Democratic Presidential candidate of 2016 is Elizabeth Warren…end of story. I’ll accept Hillary Clinton, yes, and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. But a voice tells me it’s Warren’s to lose or fulfill. The Gods have picked her. Plus half the electorate, I sense, really wants to see a woman in the White House…finally.

The great Ben Gazzara has died at the age of 81. He had a long and rich life, and from the 1957 release of The Strange One (which is a very strange film) on he was “Ben Gazzara,” and that really meant something. But what? Gazzara was almost as much of a vibe as he was an actor. He was magnetic but also a bit of a hider. In film after film he was always some variation of a jaded, laconic, laid-back smartass with a very slight grin starting to emerge.

As a member of the ’50s generation that broke through in the age of Brando, Clift, Newman and Dean, Gazzara never really lucked out with that One Big Role that might have made him a star. I’m not sure he was really made of what you’d call “star material.” There was always something aloof and diffident about Gazzara. He was constantly urban and subterranean and coffeehouse and sometimes vaguely snarly and resentful, but at the same time smooth and cool and settled.

For me, Gazzara’s best performance was as Henry Chinaski in Marco Ferreri‘s Tales of Ordinary Madness (’83). There was also his volcanic work in John Cassevettes‘ Husbands (’70) and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (’76), of course, and in Peter Bogdanovich‘s Saint Jack (’79) and They All Laughed (’81`). Not to mention his snippy, sharp-mouthed murder defendant in Otto Preminger‘s Anatomy of a Murder (’59) and Jackie Treehorn, of course, in the Coen Brothers‘ The Big Lebowski (’97).

He was married to Janice Rule from ’61 to ’79, and reportedly had an affair with Audrey Hepburn between ’79 and ’81.

Gazzara’s Wiki bio reports the following: “During filming of the big-budget war movie The Bridge at Remagen co-starring Gazzarra and his friend Robert Vaughn, the U.S.S.R. invaded Czechoslovakia. Filming was halted temporarily, and the cast and crew were detained before filming was completed in West Germany. During their departure from Czechoslovakia, Gazzara and Vaughn assisted with the escape of a Czech waitress whom they had befriended. They smuggled her to Austria in a car waved through a border crossing that had not yet been taken over by the Soviet army.”

This is a great story. I wish I could say that I smuggled someone out of a country that had just been taken over by the bad guys. The waitress was probably in her early 20s when this happened. She’s in her mid ’60s today, if alive. Whatever happened to her? How did her life work out?

A highly dubious source confided this morning that a secret high-level meeting of Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences bigwigs happened two nights ago at Kate Mantilini. I wasn’t able to verify if Academy president Tom Sherak, COO Ric Robertson, and CEO Dawn Hudson actually met at 10:30 pm in a rear booth. I’ve only been told that a conversation might have unfolded as follows:

Sherak: I know it’s late, but thanks for coming, guys. (To waiter) I’ll have a Chardonnay and a bowl of whatever the soup is. What’s the special?

Waiter: Split pea with ham chunks.

Sherak: Uggh! I hate split pea.

Waiter: And also tomato basil, chicken noodle and gazpacho.

Robertson: That sounds good.

Sherak: Tomato. I’ll have the tomato.

Hudson: And I’ll just have a Merlot, thanks. So what’s up, Tom?

Sherak: Well, first of all, this meeting isn’t happening because we really can’t discuss what I’m about to bring up. But I feel we need to at least broach the subject.

Hudson: Is this about the 2013 telecast date?

Sherak: That’s for later. I’m talking about the Academy’s reputation in general, and Jean Dujardin‘s Best Actor chances in particular. Dujardin’s SAG award win last Sunday means he’s got a pretty good shot at winning the Best Actor Oscar, and that means The Artist will have a three-Oscar sweep — Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor.

Robertson: That’s bad?

Hudson: I love The Artist. It’s perfect.

Sherak: Me too! I’m easy. It’s fine. But it’s a very soft movie, and this looks to me like another Oscar watershed year — a year in which the honorable Academy membership will affirm its shallowness like they did when they gave the Best Picture Oscar to Driving Miss Daisy in ’89 and The Greatest Show on Earth in ’52 and Around the Wrold in Eighty Days in ’56. Its one of “those years” that will leave a lasting mark, and I’m thinking that’s not good at this stage of the game. Younger audiences see the Academy as a bunch of dilletantes with laughably mediocre taste.

Robertson: People have been taking shots at the Oscars for years. Goes with the territory.

Sherak: Yeah, but it’s worse now. We’re under siege. We have to protect the brand and stand for something besides flabby emotional consensus choices among the Boomer and older GenX lightweights. I’m thinking 10 or 20 years down the road. It’s a matter of honor, of values and of organizational integrity. The Artist is nice movie, but this is embarassing.

Robertson: What can we do? You can’t mandate good taste.

Hudson: I love The Artist! And the dog…what’s his name? Poochie?

Robertson: Uggie.

Hudson: Huggie?

Robertson: Uggie, like the boots. (to Sherak) What are you thinking?

Sherak: What I’m thinking about is something I haven’t been thinking about, if you catch my drift. I know there’s no stopping The Artist or Michel Azzanavasheetos.

Hudson: Vasheetos?

Robertson: Pete Hammond says it rhymes with Dr. Seuss, but Sid Vicious is the safest way to go.

Sherak: So there’s no stopping Sid Vicious. But I’m not comfortable with Dujardin winning Best Actor. He just grins and tap dances and mugs and doesn’t shave in Act Three when his career goes south. We’re talking privately here, and I’m telling you there’s no honor in Dujardin winning. If it happens it’ll be seen as a concession to all the things I’m worried about…all the things that people seem to despise the Academy for. George Clooney or Brad Pitt or Gary Oldman winning, fine. I like Oldman, if you wanna know. Pitt is a happy man, and George is loved by everyone. He’ll be nominated again in a year or two.

Hudson: I love Jean’s moustache. And he’s so charming in person!

Robertson: What can we do about it, Tom?

Sherak: Nothing. Obviously. I guess I’m just venting. I want somebody else to win Best Actor and I wish I could do something to help bring that about.

Hudson: We’ll be fine. It’s going to be a great show.

Sherak: The show will be fine. I’m not talking about the show. I’m thinking about our brand, about our future.

Robertson: I’m afraid we can only do, absurdly, what has been given to us to do. Right to the end.

Explanation & apology: I don’t know what happened but somehow an earlier version of this post disappeared. I managed to find the coded version but the comments were lost.

Deadline is reporting that Zalman King, director of high-toned erotic features like Two Moon Junction, Wild Orchid and Red Shoe Diaries and producer/co-writer of Adrian Lyne‘s 9 1/2 Weeks, died today at age 69 from cancer. King and wife Patricia Louisianna Knop co-wrote 9 1/2 Weeks (’86), which co-starred Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger, and Wild Orchid (’89), starring Rourke and Jacqueline Bisset plus several episodes of Red Shoe Diaries, the Showtime series.

Let no one accuse Hollywood Elsewhere of not standing by its opinions despite financial consequences. My anti-Artist jihad has apparently resulted in a lack of Phase Two ads from the Weinstein guys. Many thousands down the drain. But it’s fair game and totally their call. I hear what they’re saying, and no worries. For what it’s worth an ad on HE doesn’t mean I follow suit with obsequious endorsement. It just means that the Oscar conversation is happening on this site and…you know, whatever, have at it. I know that Artist ads are currently on The Wrap, Deadline, Hitfix and L.A. Times. C’est la guerre.

My first significant activity after returning to Santa Barbara yesterday was a second viewing of Amy Berg‘s West of Memphis, a tightly compelling and superbly woven doc about the nearly-20-year saga of the West Memphis 3. (My first was in Park City a week and a half ago.) It played at the Lobero theatre, and was followed by a q & a with Berg and John Byers, stepfather of one of the three murder victims.

West of Memphis participant John Byers, director Amy Berg during last night’s post-screening q & a at Santa Barbara’s Lobero theatre.

Byers sparked a Twitter kerfuffle last night when he slammed Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky‘s three documentaries about the West Memphis 3 case (Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, Paradise Lost 2: Revelations and Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory), obviously because he resents the dredging up of circumstantial evidence in the mid ’90s that indicated to police that he was a suspect in the deaths of the three boys. He said last night that the docs were compromised because several portions were “staged.”