Day: June 17, 2015

People, Places, Things is another schlumpies & dumpies relationship movie. Jemaine Clement simply isn’t sexy or good looking enough to have a dishy wife. He’s nice enough looking but just not attractive enough for the likes of her…sorry. Guys like him get married to moderately fetching, not-very-hot women as a rule. And look at the fat guy Clement’s wife is cheating with! He’s the slightly younger cousin of Harry Knowles. Lardy guys get lucky from time to time, I suppose, but the natural order and pattern of things seems to argue against this. Would an exceptionally pretty wife cheat on her clever, dweeby, ten-day-beardo husband with a guy who could play Santa Claus without a pillow stuffed under his T-shirt? We’re living in the Twilight Zone. The director is James C. Strouse, whom I’ll bet is no Cary Grant himself.

“Hey, look at that red-haired guy with the pot belly! I’m feeling an urge to cheat on my husband, and the instant I saw this fat guy I said to myself, ‘Now there‘s someone worth destroying a marriage for!’ I mean, he looks like Sam Kinison!”

About 20 years ago my parents bought three plots in Wilton’s Hillside Cemetery. My mother passed on Sunday, 6.7. Two days later I called the administrator about depositing her ashes with a small hand spade and she said “that’s not allowed…we have a maintenance professional who does that for plot owners, and our fee is $750.” I respectfully told her that I found this morally offensive. I might have agreed to pay $250 but no way am I paying triple that. (The average funeral in Connecticut runs about $13 grand, I was told by my mother’s accountant.) So I decided to discreetly spread her ashes around the Wilton Playshop, where my mom directed and performed in plays during the ’60s and ’70s. No, I didn’t ask permission. Her friends (which included renowned opera singer Betty Jones) just drove there en masse after last Saturday’s memorial gathering at Cobbs Mill Inn. I scattered the ashes in the ivy near the base of the theatre foundation and in a nearby garden area and into a flowing waterfall across the road. A perfect spot. If my mom could somehow learn of this she’d be delighted.

Sometime between last Saturday night and Sunday afternoon something happened to Zak, my one-year-old ragdoll. “Meow Mike”, my cat-feeder guy, said he last saw Zak on Saturday afternoon. If he’d been run over somebody would’ve probably read his name tag and called me but nobody has. Plus local authorities say they have no reports of any dead cats in my area. So the best guess is that (a) some malignant life form kidnapped him and drove off to Pico Rivera or Victorville or Gardena or Bellflower or (b) some thoughtless asshole within a two-block radius is “taking care” of him and not bothering with the fact that Zak has an owner. It’s a major heartbreaker on top of losing my mom a week and a half ago. No, I don’t believe in keeping cats prisoner inside a home or apartment. You can’t raise an animal and not let him/her feel the wind, walk on the grass, see the stars in the sky, feel the sun of his/her face, smell the flowers, etc. If it means a shorter life then that’s what it means. I am not a jailer. I do not work for the Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, New York. Last night I made up a bunch of “SEEN THIS GUY?” posters (catchy with color photos) at Kinkos and stapled them on a few local trees, taped them to juncture boxes, etc.

I saw A.D. Freese, Andrew Perez and Dillon Porter‘s Bastards y Diablos late Monday night after returning from my mother’s funeral back east. It’s about Ed and Dion (Andrew Perez, Dillon Porter), American-raised half-brothers in their late 20s, visiting Columbia to carry out the wishes of their recently-passed dad to scatter his ashes and connect with their roots and maybe absorb a thing or two….who knows? At first you’re thinking “uh-oh, a movie about a series of episodes but with no arc or climax,” but then you begin to realize that it’s doing all the things that good movies do, but in its own nativist, loose-shoe way. It gets there.

(l. to r.) Bastards y Diablos director-editor A.D. Freese (with the beard), producer/costar Dillon Porter (hat, glasses) and screenwriter/costar Andrew Perez, .

Bastards y Diablos premiered last weekend, reportedly to a standing ovation, at the Los Angeles Film Festival. The second screening happens this evening.

I did a sitdown interview late yesterday morning with Peres, Freese, Porter (who also produced) and costars Constanza Marek Otto and Bruni Otto. Here’s the mp3.

Having just scattered my mom’s ashes, I was definitely in a Bastards frame of mind. But it struck me as more than just amiable or familial or atmospheric or immersive. Add it all up and you’re left with what feels like a soul, which I would simultaneously define as a certain kind of believable moisture and fragrance and mood mist. I found it authentic (Perez’s script is based on an actual real-life adventure) and engaging. Apart from Freese’s Terrence Malick-influenced direction, much of the credit for the languid, aromatic vibe goes to dp Peter Grigsby.

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I was born and raised in New Jersey, teenaged and 20somethinged in Connecticut, earned my professional footing in Manhattan and have been in Los Angeles since ’83, but I “identify” as a Parisian. Honestly. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I don’t need a map, I have my favorite cafes and restaurants, I know where all the gas stations are, I know the Metro system like the back of my hand and I have a plan to keel over from a heart attack on the streets of Montmartre at age 97 or thereabouts. I also “identify” as an Irishman as I felt instantly at home there when I visited in the fall of ’88.

“Something important is happening, and in the long run it will matter a great deal,” N.Y. Times columnist Paul Krugman posted on 6.15. “Ever since Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980, Democrats have been on the ideological defensive. Even when they won elections they seemed afraid to endorse clearly progressive positions, eager to demonstrate their centrism by supporting policies like cuts to Social Security that their base hated. But that era appears to be over. The Democratic Party is becoming more assertive about its traditional values. Why?

“Part of the answer is that Democrats, despite defeats in midterm elections, believe — rightly or wrongly — that the political wind is at their backs. Growing ethnic diversity is producing what should be a more favorable electorate; growing tolerance is turning social issues, once a source of Republican strength, into a Democratic advantage instead. Reagan was elected by a nation in which half the public still disapproved of interracial marriage; Hillary Clinton is running to lead a nation in which 60 percent support same-sex marriage.

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