Abigail Disney‘s The Armor of Light, which I saw yesterday afternoon at the Middleburg Film Festival, is an attempt to modify the knee-jerk attitudes of pro-gun conservatives by appealing to them on spiritual grounds. It’s not aimed at existential, Michael Moore-supporting, loose-shoe lefties like myself  but at rural obstinates.  She presents her case by profiling (i.e., following around) pro-life Evangelical minister Rev. Rob Schenck, a nice guy who regards himself as a spiritual leader of gun-toting Tea Party types, and showing how he gradually comes to believe that being pro-gun and pro-life are antithetical. But that’s as far as Schenck or the doc are willing to go.

Disney, the granddaughter of the rightwing Roy (brother of Walt) Disney and therefore possessed of a certain insight into conservative thinking, doesn’t want the word “regulate” or the words “treat guns like cars” to escape anyone’s lips. She just wants to put the teachings of the Bible and particularly the sanctity of life on the table. Here’s her statement.

(l.) Armor of Light director Abigail Disney, (r.) Lucy McBath, mother of shooting victim Jordan Davis, during post-screening q & a at Middleburg Film Festival.

Disney believes that if you say “regulate” or “control” the gunnies will freak out. HE to Disney: They’re going to arch their backs no matter what. The God-fearing, cut-and-dried, John Wayne culture that they grew up with is more or less over and they know it, and they feel threatened. That’s what their guns are about — making them feel a little more potent, a little less scared, a little closer to God.

Every rightie heard in Disney’s doc believes that the left wants to confiscate the right’s firearms. No debate or discussion — that’s what’ll happen if we don’t stop any and all gun-control proposals, they all say.

Schenck never addresses the term “slippery slope,” which every NRA gun nut uses to justify opposition to common-sense regulation of firearms. Allow one regulation to be adopted and that’ll be the thin end of the wedge, they say. Before you know it another regulation will come along and then another, and one day semi-automatic and automatic rifles and shotguns will be banned (like Australia famously did in 1996) and then they’ll come for the handguns, etc.

I flew to London in December 1980 to interview Peter O’Toole for GQ magazine, and while there I caught a reasonably-priced performance of the original, much-hailed stage production of Ronald Harwood‘s The Dresser. Set in the mid ’40s, it’s about a strained, codependent relationship between “Sir,” a bombastic Shakespearean actor in his ’60s, and Norman, his personal dresser who’s approaching middle age. The 37 year-old Tom Courtenay portrayed Norman and the brilliant Freddie Jones, 47, played “Sir.” Peter Yates‘ film version came out in 1983, again with Courtenay but also with a miscast Albert Finney, whose “Sir” was overly broad — nowhere near as commanding as Jones had been. Now comes a BBC televised version with two septuagenarians — Ian McKellen, 76, as Norman and Anthony Hopkins, 77, as “Sir.” Whatever. As long as it’s better than the Yates version. It airs on BBC Two on 10.31, will surface on Starz down the road.

I was told yesterday there’s a Monday evening screening of Sam Mendes‘ Spectre (Sony, 11.6) in Washington, D.C. No, not the day after tomorrow but Monday, November 2nd. By which time I’lll be back in Los Angeles. I’ll be crashing at a Dupont Circle-area pad from Sunday afternoon through late Tuesday morning.

I can’t think of anything original to say about the late Maureen O’Hara, who passed earlier today at age 95. All I can summon are the usual cliches — she was tough and sharp, the original flame-haired Irish beauty, highly spirited, no pushover. Thank God for her collaborations with John Ford and John Wayne, right? Her career boiled down to nine movies — four made in her 1939 to ’52 peak period (The Hunchback of Notre Dame, How Green Was My Valley, Miracle on 34th Street, The Quiet Man) between the ages of 19 and 32, four made in her early-middle-aged period (Our Man in Havana, Mr. Hobbs Takes A Vacation, Spencer’s Mountain, McClintock!) between the ages of 39 to 43, and her swan song performance opposite John Candy in Only The Lonely (’91), when she was 70 or thereabouts. The rest were negligible or half-and-halfers. O’Hara was, of course, intensely attractive in the bloom of youth, especially in Hunchback (in which she played Esmeralda the gypsy) and How Green Was My Valley. In the mid ’80s an Irish girlfriend gave me a book called “The Joy of Irish Sex” — 150 blank pages. But I always had this fantasy that O’Hara was great in the sack. I remember being a bit disappointed when I read that O’Hara had proved she hadn’t been making out with some “Latin” guy in the rear section of Grauman’s Chinese, as a mid ’50s Confidential story had erroneously reported. I’m also sorry that she wore a body suit during the climactic scene in Lady Godiva of Coventry (’55). My ex-wife Maggie and I stayed at the Hotel Esmeralda when we got married in Paris in October ’87, and on some level I think I booked that hotel as a tribute to O’Hara.

Not hilarious but not wrong either. I want to see one of these cultural maps for Los Angeles.

“We made a commitment to let the facts play. We said let’s commit to the process — in its thrilling nature, in its mundane nature, in its tedious nature, in its relentless nature. Let’s just commit to that and the process of high-level journalism and, hopefully, because of the subject matter and actual thrust of the investigation, it will be interesting to our audience because it’s the truth.” — Spotlight director Tom McCarthy quoted by L.A. Times reporter Saba Hamedy in 10.24 story titled “Truth and Spotlight reflect yesteryear journalism with hints at modern-day angst.”

A 5.23 tweet from Matt Zoller Seitz: “Guy at the gym went on about how disappointed he was to have paid $30 to see Gravity in 3D then finally said, ‘Wait, I meant The Martian.'” This reminds me of several women I’ve known over the years who’ve expressed interest in seeing a film that I’ve described to them, and I don’t mean briefly. I’ll give them the whole rundown…title, cast, director, plot, visual style, snippets of dialogue…everything. And then we’ll pick a night and I’ll pop in the Bluray, and ten minutes in they’ll say “Oh, wait…I’ve seen this.” If this has happened once, it’s happened at least 20 or 25 times. Only women do this. Even HE’s own Svetlana Cvetko, a serious industry pro, has pulled this a couple of times.

Middleburg Film Festival attendees were seriously into catching yesterday’s 5pm screening of Meg Ryan‘s Ithaca…long lines, hopped-up chatter. They wanted to see Meg, of course, but this transferred into what seemed to be serious interest in the film. And then Ithaca played and the aftermath was “uhm, okay…ssshhh, keep it down, she’s right over there.” By contrast the pre-screening vibe before the 8 pm showing of Todd Haynes‘ Carol could be described as one of interest but not excitement. The “air” in the room felt settled (i.e., less than fully engaged) when it played, and my sense of the after-vibe was one of respect more than anything else. This is a conservative community, after all — I shouldn’t have expected the same near-euphoria that greeted Carol‘s first screening in Cannes. It played just as effectively for me, I can tell you. Cate Blanchett gives such a glammy actressy performance, so 1950s elegant in so many ways, mannered but vulnerable. And the cigarettes, my God! I was on the verge of coughing just from watching her ignite one after another. And there’s no diminishment from Rooney Mara, who deserved that Best Actress award from the Cannes jury. I understand, of course, the political strategy of running Mara as Best Supporting Actress, but also the irony as she’s arguably playing the lead role, despite what the title implies.

Initial reports indicate no fatalities so far from Hurricane Patricia…thank God. If I were near Puerto Vallarta I’m sure I’d be soaked and stressed. But from a visual entertainment perspective Patricia has been a bit of a ho-hummer…be honest. Turbulent shoreline, sheets of rain, high velocity winds…yawn. It was a much scarier weather news story when the satellite images first appeared than when it actually hit land. The news channels said Godzilla would wreak havoc…nope. Already downgraded, on the verge of being forgotten.

I don’t want to sound mean but Meg Ryan‘s Ithaca, which screened tonight at the Middleburg Film Festival, isn’t good enough to warrant a full review. It was shot too fast (23 days) for too little money in Virginia, and I’m afraid that Ryan’s inexperience sealed its fate. I’m sorry but that feeling when a movie isn’t cutting it is unmistakable. Ithaca lacks tension and at times clarity; it seems under-energized, even amateurish at times. I didn’t care at all for Andrew Dunn‘s cinematography (particularly the framings) and the lazybones editing by John F. Lyons; nor was I taken by Erik Jendresen‘s in-and-out screenplay.

Ithaca director-costar Meg Ryan introducing her film before a Middleburg Film Festival audience earlier this evening.

Set during World War II and based on William Saroyan‘s 1943 novel “The Human Comedy“, which began as a script for a same-titled, allegedly sentimental Mickey Rooney movie which opened a month after the book came out, Ryan’s film is basically about small-town residents coping with war-related death and loss.

It focuses on Homer (the good-looking Alex Neustaedter), a teenager working as a part-time telegram delivery guy in Ithaca, a small town in California’s San Joaquin Valley. If you’ve got a son or husband fighting Hitler or the Japs and you see Homer heading towards your home with an envelope in his hand…watch out! Ryan plays Homer’s widowed mom, Tom Hanks her deceased husband (a cameo-sized role, shot in a day) and Sam Shepard is Homer’s grizzled, laid-back boss at the telegraph office.

If Ryan had been content to shoot it simply like an ’80s TV movie it might have been something, but for my money she tries too hard (which first-time directors often do) and lays on the you-don’t-wanna-know. I’m sorry but it’s…fuck it, I don’t want to cause pain or say any more. HE to Ryan:  It’s very hard to make a good film — I get that.  Try, try again.

Times Square in March 1943 — the sentimental movie version of William Saroyan‘s The Human Comedy with Mickey Rooney in the lead role is playing at the Astor.

“Repressed sexuality is a major undercurrent in John Frankenheimer‘s Seconds (’66), signaling the sexual revolution movement among middle-class Americans in the 1960s. And so it’s easy to see why Rock Hudson, whose double life was a constant throughout his career despite its widespread knowledge throughout the industry, was drawn to a picture about the manipulation of appearances and the denial of one’s inner self.

“Before John Randolph opts into the program, there’s a bedroom scene where his wife makes her way onto her husband’s separate bed. She offers herself up to him, but he remains cold and unwilling, the moment as unsexy a depiction of middle-aged sexuality as ever to appear in cinema.

“Later, after his transformation into Wilson, Hamilton attends the bacchanalia festival with Nora (Salome Jens) and finds himself uncomfortable in his surroundings. Free spirits disrobe to their nethers and gaily dance about, the frantic cutting of the sequence reflecting Hamilton’s discomfort with his own desire to join them. He stands on the margins, watching, enticed and ashamed for it, until Nora strips and leaps into a grape crushing vat along with countless nude others.

“Finally the crowd gathers him and, though he protests, forces off his clothes; he’s plunged into the vat and covered in grape must. Clinging to Nora, he at last lets go and begins to shout with ecstasy and joy. Hamilton’s sexual repression seems cured, a hopeful idea for Hudson, whose secret could not be so easily or publically freed from its constraints at the time.” — from Brian Eggart’s Deep Focus review, posted on 8.18.12.