Day: October 3, 2015

I’ve been Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead-ing for eight and a half months now, or since I fell for this snappy, punchy-assed doc at last January’s Sundance Film Festival. I’ve raved and raved (“Quite the cultural landmark…about something that nearly everyone understands or identifies with to some degree, which is the seed and birth of anarchic, counter-conventional, ultra-outlandish comedy, which everybody takes for granted today but was a whole new thing when it popped out of the National Lampoon in 1970″). I’ve expressed surprise that it took six long months to cut a deal for theatrical release. I sought out and interviewed columnist, author and former National Lampoon editor P.J. O’Rourke. I’ve noted the film’s popularity at film festivals over the first seven months of this year, etc. I’ve riffed on it every which way.

Doug Tirola, director of Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead, at Andaz Hotel last Wednesday afternoon.

So when I was offered a chance to speak with director Doug Tirola a few days ago, I responded “but of course!” I was an hour late. (Sorry.) We met in a conference room at the Andaz in West Hollywood (i.e., the former “Riot House.”) . We batted the ball around but I was feeling a little sloppy in the brain. The vibe was easy and relaxed but something wasn’t quite clicking. Amiable ping-pong for the most part.

Then I struck a vein. I noted that with the film in circulation now would be an excellent time to make available all those years of National Lampoon issues (’70 to ’80) online. Tirola nodded, grinned. And then he half-shrugged. “So why isn’t it?,” I asked. “What’s the hold-up?” He answered that the National Lampoon operation is now headed by CEO Jerry Daigle and president Alan Donnes and that they had mainly managed to calm things down and put out fires. Whatever that means. I know that despite knowing for at least a couple of years that Tirola’s doc would almost certainly be hitting theatres sometime in’15, these guys haven’t been able to get it together enough to offer online sales of back issues.

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As one who has suffered over and over from the shrieking, ear-rupturing laughter of groups (particularly women) who’ve had a couple of glasses of wine, I heartily agree with giving such rabble the heave-ho. I’ve sat through this dozens of times in bars and cafes from coast to coast, and giggly wine laughter is gross and repulsive. I therefore applaud last month’s decision by conductors on a Napa wine train to boot 11 women who wouldn’t stop wailing and howling and having a gay old time. The fact that this was an African American group (i.e., The Sistahs on the Reading Edge Book Club) may have been a factor. It certainly shouldn’t have been, and it absolutely wouldn’t have if I’d been the conductor, I can tell you. The only consideration would have been an apparent lack of breeding. Warning #1: “Hey, girls…we’re all here to have a good time but could you maybe keep it down a little bit? People are complaining.” Warning #2: “Please, ladies of the grape…not so loud…think of the other folks on this train.” Third warning: “Ladies, if you can’t show a little consideration for your fellow wine lovers you’re outta here.” Final communication: “All right, that’s it…you guys are off at the next stop.” The issue isn’t ethnicity but manners. Uncouth is uncouth, vulgar is vulgar. The more times loud people get disciplined, the better for civilization as a whole.

A 10.3 box-office assessment piece by Forbes‘ Scott Mendelson reports what was obvious to anyone who visited a plex last night — The Martian is kicking ass while The Walk is going “whoa, whoa…what happened?…shit, I dropped my balancing pole! No, no, no, no….aaagghhhhhhh!” The Robert Zemeckis film opened on 441 IMAX screens to jumpstart word-of-mouth (it doesn’t open big-time until next Friday) but “it’ll be lucky to earn $1.75 million during its first five days,” Mendelson writes. Compare that to the $7.22 million earned by Everest during its opening IMAX engagement. Question for HE readers: what happened to the two conversational points that were supposedly driving interest in The Walk — (1) “You have to see the last 25 minutes!” and (2) “Are you man enough to handle the WTC walk sequence without throwing up?” That whole daredevil-vomiting thing seems to have flatlined. Mendelson: “I’m not sure how helpful it was for we critics to harp on how the first two acts weren’t that great while the third act was a barnburner. Audiences don’t exactly have the option of paying 1/3 of the ticket price to only watch the last act of the film.” Was that a factor, knowing that people like myself were saying that the first four-fifths of the film blows? I still say it’s essential to see The Walk for the last 25 minutes alone.

I paid a visit a couple of days ago to the construction site of Sunset LaCienega, the Las Vegas-like eight-story complex that’ll be completed sometime next year. It’s actually modest by Vegas standards but it does interrupt or diminish views of (or from) the Hollywood hills to some extent. Buildings have to get bigger and taller to accommodate an expanding population and business environment — I get that. You can bitch and moan but you can’t stop progress. But I would be more than a little unhappy if my view of the flatlands (or of the hills) was being blocked by this, or by the other big-ass Strip buildings that will surely follow. I’m not happy with this thing on general aesthetic grounds. I would prefer it, frankly, if the Strip looked like it did in the video after the jump.

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Ask any 1.85 fascist (like occasional HE commenter Pete Apruzzese) to explain the basic aspect-ratio laws and you’ll hear the same thing time and again: All non-Scope films released after the fall of 1953 should be presented at 1.85 unless otherwise specified by the director. They’ll allow for exceptions among some 1950s and early ’60s releases (various British films, United Artists releases) and/or when the director specifies 1.66 or 1.78 or whatever. But their general attitude is 1.85, 1.85 and 1.85 unless otherwise noted. Most of the 1.66 Bluray croppings are found in films from the ’50s and ’60s, but they begin to radically thin out when you move into the ’70s and beyond. (One glorious exception: the 1.66 aspect ratio of John Schlesinger‘s Sunday Bloody Sunday.) Which is why my heart soared when I noticed a 1.66 aspect ratio being used for the Criterion Bluray of James Ivory‘s A Room With A View (’86). The fact that the a.r. was approved by Ivory kills any pushback, but the thought of Apruzzese and Glenn Kenny and all the other 1.85 strict constructionists seething and gnashing their teeth is just heaven to me.

Monica Belucci, 50, will become the oldest “Bond girl” in history when her performance as Lucia Sciarra, “the widow of an assassin killed by Bond”, is seen in Sam Mendes‘ Spectre (10.26 in England, 11.6 worldwide). The below b & w photos are from Esquire. They remind us of one the most tedious aspects of the Bond franchise — i.e., the legendary no-nips policy and a general rule that erotic suggestion can’t exceed that of a typical 1956 LIFE magazine photo spread. 007 franchise producers Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli have insisted all along that the Bond films must be family friendly. What other movies or franchises live in this kind of time-capsule realm? Isn’t the term “Bond girl” culturally synonymous with “Playboy bunny” and all those other randy terms left over from the Eisenhower-Kennedy-LBJ eras?

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