Josh Gad is apparently on-board to play Roger Ebert in Russ & Roger Go Beyond, a fact-based comedy about the making of Beyond The Valley of the Dolls, for which the 27 year-old Ebert wrote the absurdist screenplay under the tutelage of softcore producer Russ Meyer (Will Ferrell). 20th Century Fox financed and distributed the mind-bending, mildly awful sex farce about an all-girl rock band, opening it on 6.17.70.

Soft-porn producer Russ Meyer, Chicago Sun Times film critic Roger Ebert sometime in ’69 or ’70.

I was told about Gad’s casting by producer David Permut at today’s Variety brunch at the Parker Palm Springs. There was an earlier idea to cast Jonah Hill as Ebert, Permut told me a few months back, but that didn’t pan out. Hill has a thoughtful, whip-smart air about him — he would’ve been perfect. Ebert’s widow Chaz Ebert was at the same brunch, but had left by the time I heard about the Gad casting. I wonder what she thinks about her late film-critic husband being played by a guy who always seems to play hyper obsessives who can’t hold it in.

I was so taken aback by the notion of the geeky-mannered Gad playing the brilliant, urbane, smoothly-phrased Ebert that I forgot to ask Permut who will direct.

Russ & Roger Go Beyond has been described in Variety and Deadline stories as an upcoming indie since mid-2014. The screenplay has been written by Emmy winner Christopher Cluess.

From 11 am to 1 pm Hollywood Elsewhere attended Variety’s Creative Impact Awards and 10 Directors to Watch Brunch at the Parker Palm Springs. Totally relaxing…as pleasant and cheerful as this kind of thing gets. It was great shooting the breeze with The Judge costar Robert Duvall, Nightcrawler director-writer Dan Gilroy, Selma director Ava DuVernay, Leviathan director Andrey Zvyginstsev, Top Five director-star Chris Rock, Wild Tales director Damian Szifron, Sony Pictures Classics co-president Michael Barker, and Variety brunch host Steven Gaydos. And to discreetly gawk at Still Alice star (and almost-certain Best Actress Oscar winner) Julianne Moore, Foxcatcher costar Steve Carell and Boyhood director Richard Linklater.

(l. to r.) Wild Tales director-writer Damian Szifron, The Judge costar and likely Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominee Robert Duvall, Leviathan director Andrey Zvyagintsev at Variety‘s Palm Spring Film Festival brunch at the Parker Palm Springs.

(l.) Boyhood director Richard Linklater, (r.) Top Five director-star Chris Rock near end of ceremony.

Several attendees posing for a group shot. Don’t ask me to identity them all but obviously Chris Rock and Steve Carell are standing toward the left.

“At this point, everyone wants to know which film is going to win Best Picture,” MCN’s David Poland has written. “Anyone who tells you they know the answer is pulling their own chain. [But] it is looking more and more like Boyhood vs Imitation/Theory with the latter two splitting, allowing Boyhood to win. Birdman is divisive, especially amongst older voters.” Particularly older women, Poland neglects to mention. “There are a number of reasons why Selma is unlikely to win and two years in a row of ‘historical dramas focused on race’ is amongst them, whether we like it or not. Grand Budapest is a bit too light and magical and Whiplash is too thin, however entertaining. [And] Nightcrawler is just too brutal to win.”

I’m still waiting for a definitive sign that Boyhood is something more than a critics’ film, or more precisely a Steve Pond film. I’m not saying it isn’t that. Richard Linklater‘s Best Director campaign may indeed result in a win, but somebody needs to point out the solid indicators that say Boyhood‘s popularity is as deep and wide as the Jordan river. As much as I like and truly respect that film, I’m honestly questioning — unsure of — its strength amongst the fartists.

Mexican directors Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Alfonso Cuaron and Guillermo del Toro are “stealing Hollywood’s thunder now. They’re doing exactly what the French” — nouvelle vague-ists Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette — “did in the 1960s. Birdman bears much the same relation to Batman as Godard’s Breathless did to The Maltese Falcon: it converts a Hollywood formula into its own kind of free-form jazz. [And yet] the Three Amigos are the children of globalism, as conversant in franchise formulas as they are in Mexico’s indigenous cinema. Working away at the fault-line that separates north from south, blockbuster export from indie import, they are bilingual, speaking Hollywoodese but making up their own grammar and syntax.” — from “Hollywood’s Mexican Wave,” a piece by Tom Shone in Intelligent Life magazine, January/February 2015.

For me the standout event at last night’s Palm Springs Film Festival awards gala was the appearance of Still Alice‘s Julianne Moore, who was conspicuously absent from the Oscar campaign trail all through the 2014 Oscar season. Her campaign strategist no doubt instructed that the “she’s due” buzz, which began during last September’s Toronto Film Festival, was all they needed and so let well enough alone. With absolutely no one anticipating flotation from Alice, a Lifetime disease-coping movie, the best approach would be to do nothing at all until January when things kick off in earnest with the Palm Springs Film Festival, the Golden Globes, the BFCA awards, etc. Team Moore knows that the competition isn’t that strong (with the exception of Cake‘s Jennifer Aniston, who’s running the most successful go-for-it campaign) and that they’ll almost certainly coast to a win. But the rest of us are bored. It would be far more engaging if at least one other contender posed some kind of threat to Moore…alas, no. Then again Moore’s speech last night was spirited, relaxed…a bull’s-eye.

Birdman director Alejandro G. Inarritu, star Michael Keaton, last night on Palm Springs Convention Center red carpet.

I sat through the whole thing, man…four and a half hours of chit-chatting and smiling and eating the salad and and dessert and the mashy meat entree, grinding it all out in that huge, cavernous convention hall, dressed in my tuxedo-like black suit and tweeting now and then at table 1302. (In Contention‘s Kris Tapley sat to my right.) The venue, as always, was basically a tryout venue for speeches that everyone will be giving over the next seven weeks or so, and there was something to be said, naturally, for hearing them for the first time.

The horses…I’m sorry, the honorees were Gone Girl‘s Rosamund Pike (Breakthrough Actress winner), Selma‘s David Oyelowo (Breakthrough Actor), Whiplash‘s J.K. Simmons (Spotlight winner), The Judge‘s Robert Duvall (who got the evening’s only standing ovation), Boyhood maestro Richard Linklater (Sonny Bono Visionary Award), Moore, The Theory of Everything‘s Eddie Redmayne (uncharacteristically dressed in black), Birdman director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, The Imitation Game‘s Benedict Cumberbatch and Wild‘s Reese Witherspoon.

Brad Pitt schooled 2400 people at the Palm Springs Film Festival gala at the P.S. Convention Center on the proper pronunciation of David Oyelowo‘s last name. I’ve been telling people for months now that you don’t have to worry about the last “oh” syllable. Just say “oh-yellow” and you’re more or less okay. If you can rise to the challenge and include that last “oh” and really say “Oyelowo,” then you’ll really be cooking with high-test. But if you can’t, no one will blame you. By the way: Se7en will be 20 years old this year…two decades as of 9.22.15. I remember the all-media screening at the Village Westwood like it was last month.