Day: February 24, 2013

I posted the followng on 9.26.12: A standard Zen 101 question is “why does the bird fly?” If your answer is “because that is the way for him…it’s his gift, his burden, his calling, his joy…the bird flies because he must,” you’ll probably have a place in your heart for Ang Lee‘s Life Of Pi. But if your reply is “what’s he gonna do, ride a Harley Davidson?,” then you might have issues with this 11.21 20th Century Fox release, which will have its world premiere tonight at the New York Film Festival.

Just as Anthony Minghella‘s Cold Mountain was described by the smart-asses as “a movie about a man walking through the woods” and Martin Scorsese‘s The Age of Innocence was called “a movie about cufflinks,” Life of Pi — a constantly eye-filling adaptation of Yann Martel’s 2001 novel — is going to be called “a film about floating in a lifeboat for months with a Bengal tiger.” By the primitives, I mean. It’s a spiritual journey flick, of course, but some people have no patience for that stuff.

Thing is, I have plenty of patience for meditative musings and I still thought Life of Pi was kind of a languid, inconclusive, space-casey thing…although quite gorgeous on a compositional, frame-by-frame level.

I think that Life of Pi is going to be regarded as a major visual feast by the visual-delight-for-the-sake-of-visual-delight crowd — the pure cinema geeks — and as a visually enthralling curiosity by the vast majority of the viewing public, as a non-starter by a significant portion of the family audience (i.e., as a bore by kids and their legendary short-attention spans) and as a respectable also-ran in the Best Picture contest. 2.24 Update: I turned out to be technically right.

No one will dismiss or disrespect it. It is a reasonably sturdy work of art. It is worth seeing. It is food for thought. It might even kick in with religious types of all shapes and colors. But there’s no way it gets into the Best Picture game. Sorry. 2.24 Update: I was obviously dead wrong with this statement.

That’s because it doesn’t tell much of a campfire story and it doesn’t really tie together, not for me anyway, and I’m saying this as one who experienced satori as a lad in my early 20s after taking LSD and reading the Bhagavad Gita, and therefore one who will always welcome notions of the mystical and the concept of clear light. But as God and Vishnu and Sri Krishna are my witness, I found it to be a mild little parable about the brutal, bestial nature of life and the relentless rough and tumble, and how we have to a choice to live in this world and be governed by these brutal terms or to see beyond these terms and achieve some level of transcendence — and that’s fine.

I also took to heart the lesson about how it sure sharpens your survival game if you have a hungry Bengal tiger to feed while you’re floating across the Pacific ocean. That’s true. I myself have been sharpened by this and that tiger on my own path.

But I found little or nothing mystical (or even mystically allusive or intriguing) in Life of Pi. What I found was heaps and mounds and waves of delirious CG eye candy in service of a very slow-moving tale children’s tale — honestly, this is a Sunday morning Clutch Cargo cartoon writ large and flamboyant and visually state-of-the-art — with a sluggish middle section on the high seas.

I’m not going to recount the story beat for beat (look it up) but 17 year-old Suraj Sharma plays young “Pi” Patel, and Irrfan Khan plays the adult Pi who tells his story to an author, played by Rafe Spall (and previously played by Tobey Maguire before Lee decided his performance wasn’t working).

The opening in the zoo (even the animals in this section look CG-ish) to Khan’s chat with Spall to Sharma sampling various faiths and religions as a kid to the sinking of the cargo ship takes…what, about 35 or 40 minutes? Then we have what seems like a full hour of struggling to survive on the boat and raft. And then a final 20 minutes of so talking to Spall again (who says the story is “a lot to take in”) and to the Japanese investigators and their surprising decision to choose a metaphorical story over a literal-sounding one.

Life of Pi is constantly inventive and diverting and obviously eye-filling, but there is next to nothing revelatory in the tale except that we all are given a choice to choose between a tale of the tiger and the hyena and the zebra and the open seas, or a tale about hunger and thirst and desperation and murder on the high seas, and that most of us tend to prefer a more literal and less metaphorical version of things.

I’m a tiger guy myself, but I appreciate the point of view of the meat-and-potatoes crowd who will snort and say, “Aww, horseshit…tell us what really happened!” I could write a review of Life of Pi by Joe Pesci‘s character in Goodfellas and/or one of Denis Leary‘s pals in the Rescue Me firehouse, and I could make it funny. But I don’t want to be snide or disrespectful. But you know what one of those guys would say.

In a letter directly to Martel, Barack Obama described his book as “an elegant proof of God, and of the power of storytelling.” I’m going to vote for Barack Obama, but if he says the same thing about the film I would challenge him to explain in detail precisely where the proof of God is.

What this movie delivers without question is proof of devotion to and obsession with CG visuals. If there is “proof of God” in Life of Pi, there is also proof of God in Happy Feet, Jurassic Park, Come Back Little Sheba, Who’ll Stop The Rain, T2, Hatari!, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Elmer Gantry, The Rains of Ranchipur, Titanic, The Silver Linings Playbook, Siddhartha, Dude, Where’s My Car?, From Here to Eternity, Stanley Kramer‘s Judgment at Nuremberg and Cecil B. Demille‘s The Greatest Show on Earth.

In its most primitive and basic form, Life of Pi is magical realism by way of what can almost be described as a CG cartoon — none of it feels “real” except for the interview portions and the portions showing Sharma/Khan as a young kid. I understand that the “unreality” of most of the film is deliberate, of course — a visual correlative to an imagination and a mindset of a man who is enthralled by and determined to find the mystical and exceptional in his processing of life. But we’re still left with the fact that the majority of the movie doesn’t look “real”, and by that I mean less real than Avatar.

Life of Pi is “painted” up the wazoo, and I don’t care if there was an actual Bengal tiger who acted in certain scenes — I don’t believe it anyway. It’s all about the hard drive. It’s all about the paint and the brushstrokes and the hanging of the canvas on the art gallery wall.

To try again, Life is Pi is a parable about the savagery of life but not, by my sights, a movie that points to or articulates anything meaningful in a mystical sense. It basically says that it’s a dog-eat-dog, hyena-eats-zebra, tiger-eats-hyena and carnivorous-plant-island world out there….survival-of-the-fittest, tooth-and-claw, watch your back and be resourceful. But (I’m repeating myself) it sure sharpens your game if you have a hungry Bengal tiger to feed, etc. Life is hard (which is entirely God’s doing) but you don’t have to think or be “hard.” If you wish to rise above instinct and raw survivalism, you can. The choice is yours. The journey is there for the taking if you want it.

I respect enormously the commitment to a precise and particular vision on Lee’s part (and that of producers Gil Netter and David Womark, and before that producer-shepherd Elizabeth Gabler and directors M. Night Shyamalan and Alfonso Cuaron), and Fox 2000 in financing it and 20th Century Fox in distributing it. This is not a movie that dives right into commercial conventionality, and into what most people (certainly what most younger people) want. These things in themselves are to be respected, particularly given the production costs and whatnot.

After Wednesday afternoon’s screening I heard a colleague talking about how she’s an atheist but she was shattered by it. Another person in her realm was very impressed by it. So I may be in the minority and that’s fine. Life of Pi deserves respect and whatever hossannahs it can get. I don’t want to stand in the way of that.

Brian Bethune of Maclean‘s once described Martel’s book as “a head-scratching combination of dense religious allegory, zoological lore and enthralling adventure tale, written with warmth and grace.” That’s pretty much what Ang Lee’s film is if you substitute “written” with “composed.” It’s fine for those who will get off on it. It’s quite the visual feast but it’s really a doodle. It’s a movie that lights or doesn’t light a match in the head of the viewer, and if you’re one of those who gets that special “something” out of it, great.

But truly great movies deliver the goods to the perceptive and the not-so-perceptive simultaneously, and that is why Life of Pi is not Best Picture material. For the not-so-perceptive, it’s an CG-driven eye-candy adventure with a slow and even draggy middle section, and a story that’s kind of interesting but also kind of “meh.” That is what 80% to 85% of viewers will think or say.

Update: In response to HE reader Mark G., the 3D is very nicely rendered. The tiger leaps out, the chunks of meat pop through, etc. I just don’t feel that much enthusiasm for 3D these days…sorry. I could have easily gone with Life of Pi being screened in 2D. That’s not a comment about the quality of the 3D work — that’s a comment about me.

Further update: Variety‘s Justin Chang, The Hollywood Reporter‘s Todd McCarthy and Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson have all posted friendlier reviews than my own. MCN’s David Poland is more on my side of the fence.

8:56 pm: Jack Nicholson introduces Michelle Obama from the White House to pass along general congrats to the nominees — an Oscar first. And then Nicholson takes it back to read the nominees, and back to Michelle and the announcement that Argo has won the Best Picture Oscar. An emotional Grant Heslov goes on a bit. Ben Affleck: “[Here’s to] eight great films that have as much of a right to be up here as we do.” Affleck is speaking right from the heart, openly, from his life. “Everyone gets knocked down,” or words to that effect. “All that matters is that you’ve gotta get up.”

8:48 pm: Daniel Day Lewis, a total lock for Best Actor for many, many weeks, is genuinely moved by his win. The Margaret Thatcher-Abraham Lincoln role swap between DDL and Meryl Streep is fairly funny. A touching speech. He’s an elegant man. “For my mother….thank you very much.”

8:43 pm: Silver Linings Playbook‘s Jennifer Lawrence wins Best Actress Oscar, and vulnerably, touchingly falls on the steps going up to the stage. Good moment, sweet, satisfying.

8:39 pm: Life of Pi‘s Ang Lee wins for Best Director. Nice effort, very pretty, drowned in CG-looking CG, maddeningly obtuse. I don’t emotionally agree with any of what’s happened tonight. It’s a kind of nightmare for me. Lee is a sweet, intelligent, obviously gifted man. But Life of Pi is not and never will be a knockout film, and…I don’t want to talk about this any more. Waltz! Tarantino! Lee! Fuck me.

8:24 pm: I’m taking this opportunity to remind everyone reading this column that Quentin Tarantino‘s original screenplay of Django Unchained (a riff on Italian spaghetti westerns by way of rehashing his revenge scenario from Inglourious Basterds in a slavery context…not too original!) doesn’t hold a candle to Mark Boal‘s brilliant screenplay for Zero Dark Thirty or Michael Haneke‘s for Amour. There’s just no comparison, and there’s something really, really wrong with this year’s Oscar awards. Something diseased, I mean. The Academy has really “shit the bed” this year, in the words of Sasha Stone.

8:24 pm: Dustin Hoffman and Charlize Theron presenting the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar to Chris Terrio for Argo. I guess most of us saw this one coming. I’m nto feeling it. I’m not feeling this whole show, if you want to know. It had a surprise at least — Waltz!

8:21 pm: The three-hour mark is approaching. There might be…what, 20 or 25 minutes remaining?

8:17 pm: Has Chicago been promoted fully enough? Chicago — one of the greatest and most beloved movie musicals of all time! Congrats to Adele and whatsisname, the co-creators of the “Skyfall” song, for their Best Original Song Oscar.

8:14 pm: Nora Jones isn’t belting it. Her voice is too quiet. She’s almost murmuring.

8:10 pm: Life of Pi wins for Best Original Score. This again reiterates the likelihood of Ang Lee winning fthe Best Director Pscar.

8:06 pm: McFarlane: “In a few minutes Rex Reed will be out here to review Adele’s performance of Skyfall!” — funny! Plus that line about “this show being gay enough.”

8:01 pm: And the late Marvin Hamlisch gets the biggest tribute — a segue out of the “In Memoriam” reel with Barbra Streisand singing “The Way We Were.” Sorry but her voice isn’t as strong as it used to be. Not soaring or flying.

7:48 pm: Co-presenter Kristen Stewart appears to have put on a little bit of weight, and she seemed to be hobbling on her way to the mike. Right? The Best Production Design Oscar goes to Lincoln? Okay.

7:40 pm: Robert DeNiro lost to Christoph Waltz? Tommy Lee Jones lost to Christoph Waltz? Philip Seymour Hoffman lost to Christoph Waltz? I can understand people preferring Waltz to Alan Arkin — I can sympathize with that. But otherwise…

7:36 pm: Adele is a big girl in a nice sparkly dress, but her great voice and general aura of confidence and command are what matter. The chorus and the string section are a nice touch.

7:32 pm: Sandra Bullock announcing the Best Editing Oscar. Argo is expected to win this. And it happens. William Goldenberg (who also edited Zero Dark Thirty) accepting.

7:27 pm: Les Miserables has gotten a huge bump out of this show so far. You know that producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron are big fans, and they’ve showed it.

7:20 pm: Christopher Plummer deftly strolls out to announce that Anne Hathaway has won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar. “It came true!” Graciously acknowledges how good her four competitors are. A generally gracious and humble speech. Good for A.H. And now that that’s done…

7:18 pm: A Nazi joke! We knew it was coming!

7:12 pm: The Oscar for Best Sound Mixing goes to Les Miserables. There’s no live orchestra playing inside the Dolby theatre? Jewish joke from Mark Wahlberg and Ted (meh)….Best Sound Editing Oscar decision is a tie — one for Zero Dark Thirty, another for Skyfall. The Oscar telecast has been going for just over 105 minutes and the pace feels fine.

6:58 pm: You can have this big, passionate, showstopping Bob Fosse/”All That Jazz”/Dreamgirls/Jennifer Hudson/Les Miserables/Hugh Jackman extravaganza. Wait, I take part of that back — the Les Miserables portion is pretty good, actually. Russell Crowe walks out and sings on stage! This is actually terrific. What a promotion for the film…what a score! I liked the last 40 minutes or so of Tom Hooper‘s film, but this number was better. Okay, as good.

6:51 pm: Amour, totally predicted and universally agreed upon, wins Best Foreign Language Feature Oscar. I take it back slightly about director Michael Haneke slightly resembling George Clooney, or vice versa. He does, they do. But Haneke has a bald spot, looks a bit older. And he says “sank you” when saying “thank you.” Amour is a rough but very powerful film. Hats off.

6:44 pm: Best Documentary Feature Oscar goes to Searching for Sugar Man — totally predicted. Fine. No complaints. Director (whom I met in Santa Barbara) is a cool guy.

6:41 pm: “The guy who really got inside Lincoln’s head was John Wilkes Booth. Still too soon, huh?” — Seth McFarlane.

6:37 pm: Liam “Paycheck” Neeson takes the stage to present the next array of Best Picture nominee promos.

6:35 pm: Curfew has won the Live Action Short Oscar. And the Documentary Short Subject Oscar voes to Inocente.

6:23 pm: James Bond tribute…meh…reminds us all that the early Connery’s were the coolest. I was going to say that Shirley Bassey‘s voice isn’t quite what it used to be. But she’s all right, I guess. It just seemed that the punch and the snap and the ferocity weren’t there at first. But she’s okay. Big applause. I guess I’m still recovering from Waltz.

6:18 pm: Jacqueline Durran has won the Best Costume Design Oscar for Anna Karenina — deserved. And the Makeup and Hair Style Oscar goes to the Les Miserables‘ Lisa Westcott and Julie Darnell. Both of whom take forever to get to the stage.

6:07 pm: The Avengers guys aren’t funny. Mark Ruffalo looks a little bit heavy. Give ’em all the hook. The Best Cinematography Oscar goes to Claudo Miranda for Life of Pi. The winner should have been Anna Karenina. All right, fine…fine! Ang Lee is going to win for Best Director. Best Visual Effects Oscar goes to Life of Pi….well, what other contender were they going to honor in this category? I’m just not feeling this Pi stuff. None of it. John Williams‘ Jaws music used as warning?

6:05pm: Bearded George Clooney looks like Amour director Michael Haneke. He just needs a pair of wire-rim glasses. They should pose together.

6:04 pm: Why are they running short tributes to the Best Picture nominees this early in the show? The first three, I mean. Curious.

5:58 pm: I never saw Paperman, winner of the best Animated Short. Very few have. If you were to send me a screener I’m not sure that I’d watch it all that quickly. But good for the guy who made it. Good God! Brave, which I saw and didn’t like all that much and which isn’t all that novel or clever, has won the Best Animated Feature Oscar. This and Waltz — two bad calls so far. Is this is going to be as rough of a night as I’m afraid it might turn out to be?

5:41 pm: Oh, my God! They gave the Best Supporting Actor Oscar to Christoph Waltz for giving the exact same kind of performance in Django Unchained that he gave in Inglourious Basterds? No!!! Jack Nicholson is stunned. I’m on the floor. They did this! They gave it to Waltz! What…the….fuck? This doesn’t bode well for David O. Russell winning Best Director. I’m detecting the faint whiff of an Ang Lee win.

5:41 pm: “We Saw Your Boobs!” sung by Gay Men’s Chorus — perfect. Okay, mildly funny. Flight re-enacted by sock puppets…decent. Flying Nun Sally Field bit. This is McFarlane’s persponality but it’s also kind of Vegas-y and ….gay? “You know they’re going to give it to Anne Hathaway.” McFarlane can sing. “Story of Argo is so top secret that the director is unknown to the Academy.” Jean Dujardin insult joke. This is 90. Roman Coppola anguish. Django Unchained: Chris Brown and Rhiannon date movie. Screenplay is loosely based on Mel Gibson‘s voicemail. Cpt,. Kirk to the rescue. “Your jokes are tasteless and inappropriate and everyone hates you. Why couldn’t they just get Tina and Amy? Channing Tatum‘s spats don’t look as good as George Raft‘s. JGL and Daniel Radcliffe…if you say so. What’s with Robert De Niro‘s hair?

I’m refusing as a matter of bedrock principle to watch any of the red-carpet Oscar bullshit. But I’ll be doing the usual live-blogging starting….uhm, 56 minutes from now. A little more than 70 or 75 minutes from now we’ll know if Seth McFarlane is the new Johnny Carson…or not. The show is expected to last three hours and 40 minutes, and perhaps a bit longer.

All I ask for is a surprise or two. Please. I don’t believe for a second that Amour‘s Emmanuelle Riva has any kind of shot at winning Best Actress but it’ll be sorta kinda cool if it happens. (But it won’t.) David O. Russell winning Best Director and/or Best Adapted Screenplay would work just fine. (Ang Lee winning for Life of Pi won’t work.) Robert DeNiro winning for Best Supporting Actor will be welcome…check.

I tweeted this morning that if Best Picture Oscar could have been re-balloted this morning through some sort of instant quickie technology, Argo might not win. There’s a real sense out there that the Academy mainstream has blown it once again by “going for the softie” in the tradition of The Artist, Chicago,The King’s Speech, Driving Miss Daisy, Around The World in Eighty Days, etc.

I’ve been belly-aching since early November 2009 about Sony Home Video’s refusal to release a Bluray of From Here to Eternity, despite Grover Crisp‘s digital restoration having been completed three and a half years ago. Over and over I’ve written about Sony spokesperson Fritz Friedman, an extremely kind and considerate guy, giving me the old friendly run-around whenever I ask. “Maybe next year…before too long…down the road,” etc.

Sony management obviously doesn’t see much revenue potential for a Bluray of this, one of Columbia’s crown jewels, but why can’t they make it available through some kind of Warner Archives-type arrangement or at least offer a digital download through iTunes or Amazon Prime?

I’m writing this because I had never seen Crisp’s high-def version of Fred Zinneman‘s 1953 Best Picture winner until it played on Turner Classic Movies a couple of nights ago. It’s clearly a significant enhancement over the DVD version that everyone has been looking at for the last 11 years or so. “Prettier”, less contrasty, smoother skin tones, greater specificity (especially in terms of the fabrics, hair follicles and the glistening look of rain-soaked streets) and so on. I like my Blurays to “pop” above and beyond what i’m used to from DVD versions, and Crisp’s Eternity definitely does that.

Why doesn’t Sony just sell the Bluray rights to Criterion?

It’s just a shame that a better-looking version of a venerated classic is being kept out of collector hands ad infinitum. Here it is Oscar night, and 59 years ago at the 1954 Oscars ceremony this puppy won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay (Daniel Tarsdash), Best Supporting Actor (Frank Sinatra) and Best Supporting Actress (Donna Reed), and the home video division of the remnant of Harry Cohn‘s once-great Columbia Pictures refuses to honor it with a Bluray version that offers an unmistakable visual upgrade? Later this year Paramount will issue a 60th anniversary Bluray of George Stevens‘ Shane, another 1953 standout. Why doesn’t Sony get the lead out?

(l. to r.) Frank Sinatra, Montgomery Clift, Deborah Kerr, Burt Lancaster, James Jones and Fred Zinneman on way to Honolulu for filming.

Deadline‘s Michael Fleming is reporting that the Weinstein Co. will soon acquire domestic rights to Grace Of Monaco, in which Nicole Kidman will play actress-turned-princess Grace Kelly under director Olivier Dahan (La Vie en Rose).

Tim Roth, of all people, will play Monaco’s Prince Rainier III.

TWC will pay $4 million up-front and commit to an 800-screen opening next December with a $10 million p & a fund, Fleming reports. Dahan is a serious and exacting director, of course, and the December debut suggests that Harvey is betting on Grace being an awards-season player.

I’m sorry but I see a roadblock right away in the casting of Kidman and Roth. Fleming writes that the film will focus on a period in the early ’60s (specifically ’62 to ’64) when Princess Grace helped her husband settle a dispute between Monaco and Franch president Charles De Gaulle over tax laws. Kelly, born on 11.12.29, was between 32 and 34 when the story occurs, and Kidman, who will turn 46 in June, is, all due respect, too old to play someone in her early 30s. She can pretend to be that age and we can pretend along with her, of course, but it won’t feel right. The beautiful and well-tended Kidman has delivered fine performances under the right directors, but you can’t fake youth. She would have been a perfect choice to play Princess Grace about ten years ago. She’s a lot closer right now to the 52 year-old Grace who died in a car crash in September 1982.

And the idea of the 51 year-old Roth playing Rainer (who was around 40 at the time of the story) is looney-tunes. The physical resemblance is non-existent. Roth-as-Rainer is the same realm as casting Seth Rogen to play President Warren G. Harding. You know who looks like Prince Rainer now and could have almost pulled it off despite his being too old? Tom Hanks.

Pledging to spend $10 million on an 800-screen opening is actually a fairly modest thing. It may well be that Grace of Monaco will turn out to be as good as La Vie en Rose, but it seems to me like more of a box-office bet than an award-season contender.

You look back at last year’s Best Actress race and you can’t quite believe that anyone really thought that Meryl Streep might not take it for The Iron Lady. Viola Davis, good as she always is, did not play anyone’s idea of a lead role in The Help, and that’s why she didn’t get there. Glenn Close‘s nomination for her work in Albert Nobbs was strictly a career-retrospective gesture and only a little bit about her performance, which was overly poised and in fact rigid. Michelle Williams was certainly good enough in My Week With Marilyn, but she never came close to being a knockout — no one thought otherwise. And Rooney Mara‘s nomination for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was strictly about rounding out the field. But there’s was so much speculative hot-air bullshit thrown around last year (as it is every year) that people were actually saying, “Hmmm, who might win?”

I was one of the few keyboard-tappers allowed into last night’s (Saturday, 2.23) Weinstein Co. party at West Hollywood’s Soho House. It was quite the hot-shit event, let me tell you. The currently configured creme de la creme of the Weinstein realm was there (Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Lawrence, Leonardo DiCaprio, David O. Russell, Katy Perry, Harvey himself, Joaquin Pheonix, Amy Adams, Christoph Waltz, Quentin Tarantino, Phillip Noyce, Bladimiar Norman, Scarlett Johansson, Juno Temple) plus my girlfriend and myself and weren’t we pretty hot also? It felt like that for a while, at least.

Jennifer whatsername in the elevator-foyer entrance to last night’s Soho House Weinstein party.

It was loud and crowded with live music and everyone was in their 40s or younger (almost no gray or white hair in sight) and dressed to the nines and going “whur-whuppa-wallah-wullah-wullah-whoa-whur-wuppah-dumba-doodah-doppa-wadda-badda-boo.”

Sincere thanks to Lisa Taback for waving me in. Yes, it felt a little too crowded at times. Yes, it took an average of 10 to 12 minutes to get the bartender’s attention every time you wanted a drink. (And no, they had no non-alcoholic beer — assholes.) But that fantastic penthouse-floor view always makes up for everything.

And the women were wall-to-wall, top-to-bottom magnificent to…well, not stare or gawk at but discreetly eyeball. Every one of them said “this is it…this is the top, and my being here verifies my being in the upper .005% of desirability, and if you’re not really comfortably connected to this realm by way of wealth and creative contacts and whatever else…I don’t have to say it, do I? Just forget it. But I’ll chat if you have a clever mind or a line or…whatever, I’ll smile and listen and laugh. And why not? I’m easy-going. I’m not crass or thick or uneducated. I get it.”

The coolest part of these things is arriving in your car and then getting past the first lady with the invitees on her iPad and then the second lady with same, and then being waved into the ground-floor elevator foyer (this is where I first saw Jamie Foxx and his entourage…”here we are, all six or seven of us! No, wait…nine!”) and going upstairs and walking into the main lobby and then up the grand staircase and doing your first walk-around and saying hello to familiar faces. It doesn’t get any better than that.

And then, minute by minute, Diet Coke by Diet Coke, chat by chitty-chat, it very slowly starts to dissipate. After a couple of hours you’re ready to pack it in. I got there at 10:05 pm and left just a little past midnight.

I was more ready to leave this party than others because — I have to be honest here — most of the cool people were packed into an elite inner-sanctum back room that the general populace was discouraged from trying to get into. Or so it seemed. There was a line to get in and yes, I saw Amy Adams waiting along with several others, but I don’t like parties that pull this elite shit. I really don’t. But that’s SOP for Soho House, which is all about selling exclusive access to people who aren’t sure if they’re hot shit but are willing to pay in order to feel that way.

If you’re connected enough to get into a party of this magnitude you should ideally be good to go all around, I think. The Silver Linings party that I attended at the Chateau Marmont on Friday, 12.7, was much cooler and friendlier because there wasn’t any effing back room. The best and/or coolest people (David O. Russell, Diane Keaton, Josh Brolin, Melissa Leo, Jane Fonda, Robert DeNiro, Mel Gibson) were everywhere and there were no giant-sized security goons in sight.

The Oscar night after-party at the Beverly Hills hotel when Shakespeare in Love beat Saving Private Ryan (14 years ago!)…that was another relaxed, well-handled, unlimited-access event. The more the people giving a party try to rope off the elite with special rooms and goons, the less cool they are and the less cool their party is and the more you want to leave.

I was standing at the top of the staircase and looking down at Tarantino, who was wearing a black beret like he’s worried about a hair-loss issue or something. He’s really big these days. He’s borderline Orson Welles. The difference between the way he looks in this 19 year-old Pulp Fiction cast photo and now is the difference between how Welles looked in 1938 when he did that radio broadcast of War of the Worlds and how he looked when he played Quinlan in Touch of Evil.

The other journalists at the party were Hollywood Reporter columnist Scott Feinberg, Showbiz 411‘s Roger Friedman, Daily Mail columnist Baz Bamigboye, and N.Y Post columnist Cindy Adams.

Until this morning I never saw this 2000 Charles Schwab ad in which Sally Field parodied her “you really, really like me!” Oscar speech. (Or I don’t recall having seen it…whatever.) But what Field actually said is “You like me…right now, you like me!” Intolerably sappy as her basic sentiment is and always will be, the quote did not include “really, really.” Repeating “really” is what makes the line legendary, but Field didn’t say it even once. Think about that.

On top of which the words “right now” mitigates somewhat. If you want to be generous about it Field wasn’t just making tens of millions of people gag en masse and say “good God, put a lid on it!” She was also acknowledging, a bit sadly, the cosmic impermanence of absolutely everything.

Field was saying that all glory is fleeting, that life is a constantly moving and shape-shifting thing and that the “like” she was feeling was good, really, only for that precise moment, and that the next morning the mood would change along with everything else. And indeed it did. Field soon became a joke, a punch line, a poster girl for Hollywood egoism and self-indulgent sentimentality. She spoke these words on Oscar night in 1985 — a little less than 28 years ago. The actual quote is on the Places in the Heart Wiki page. But it might be time to cut her a break because of the “right now.” I’m just trying to be fair.

I should also acknowledge that Robert Duvall has aged only slightly since that night.