Don’t ask me how or why but earlier this summer I started going steady with Coke Zero. I knew it wasn’t good for me but I figured an occasional small-sized bottle would be okay. Plus I liked the flavor and took faint comfort in the fact that at least it didn’t have sugar. But two or three weeks ago I started to feel a kind of weird chemical sensation in my bloodstream, and I realized that I wasn’t sleeping all that well because of this. My body sensed that it was something in the Coke Zero. Maybe the potassium benzoate, which is used to protect the flavor of the beverage. Or the acesulfame potassium. In any event I suddenly said to myself “what the hell are you doing?” and threw all the Coke Zero out. Here’s a piece by health writer Ted Elliott that looks a little too forgivingly at the ingredients.

I flipped out this morning when I read Marshall Fine’s pan of Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig‘s Mistress America (Fox Searchlight, 8.14). Me: “How could you do this to such a neurotically and luminously alive film? With such a precise and unique voice? With such a timeless theme — i.e., ‘writers are always selling somebody out’? The first reinvention of 21st screwball comedy that holds together & which isn’t an homage to ’30s screwball (like Peter Bogdanovich‘s She’s Funny That Way) and you take a dump on it? Are you proud of yourself?” Fine: “The truth about Greta Gerwig and the emperor’s new clothes (i.e., lack of acting ability) will eventually get out.” Me: “Dead wrong. She’s a manic neurotic 21st Century Carole Lombard.” Fine: “Let’s agree to disagree. Don’t take it so personally.” Me: “You wouldn’t if you were her? Gerwig is doing something exciting here. She’s breaking new ground on top of being a funnier, flakier, taller and less chubby Lena Dunham. In fact she’s not chubby at all.”

For years the saga of the much-written-about effort to assemble a completed version of Orson Welles‘ never-finished The Other Side of The Wind has been missing a key element — i.e., a bad guy. Whenever a collaborative project stalls, it’s usually because somebody in the loop is being unreasonably demanding or flaky about something. Like Larry Silverstein, the obstinate greedhead who held up the reconstruction of the World Trade Center. The mark in this instance is Oja Kodar, Welles’ lover and comrade-in-arms for the last 24 years of his life and a current, Croatia-residing holder of rights to TOSOTW. Wellesians have long been reluctant to speak ill of Kodar given her tender history with Welles, but now a key chronicler has said “fuck it, let’s call her out.”

A piece posted yesterday (8.10) by Wellesnet.com‘s Ray Kelly claims in concise, chapter-and-verse form that Kodar is the Larry Silverstein of the Other Side of the Wind realm.

Oka Kodar

“And now we face the sad realization that Oja may be stalling the completion of The Other Side of the Wind,” Kelly writes early on.

“In Joseph McBride‘s What Ever Happened to Orson Welles?: A Portrait of an Independent Career, Wellesians first learned of the troubled efforts to finish TOSOTW and how Oja and Peter Bogdanovich sacked McBride, a key player in brokering a $3 million deal with Showtime to finish TOSOTW in 1999. The pact soon fell apart.

“In Josh Karp‘s Orson Welles’s Last Movie, numerous individuals (investors, attorneys, executives and others) who have been involved with the project during the last 15 years all told a variation on the same tale in which Oja derailed attempts to complete the film by (a) reneging on agreements, (b) pitting investors against each other, (c) secretly shopping for better deals and (d) shifting her allegiances at critical junctures.

“Oja’s actions prompted an attorney for the Boushehri family, a co-owner of the film, to write in a 2007 memo: ‘We have been waiting for many years for her to agree to a deal…my own personal feeling is that she is incapable of making a deal with anyone..our client has never been the problem. Kodar has been.'”

The word since last May is that the burn-through performance in Paolo Sorrentino‘s Youth is given by costar Jane Fonda. Not to take anything away from star Michael Caine, who believably inhabits the life of an 80something conductor as he chills and contemplates while staying at a Switzerland spa, but Fonda owns this movie. It’s just a single short scene between her character, an actress, and Harvey Keitel, a successful director who wants her to play a role in his latest film, but Fonda — trust me, I know what goes — is an all-but-guaranteed contender for Best Supporting Actress.

The ongoing attempt to fund the editing of Orson Welles‘ The Other Side of the Wind is well short of an initially stated goal of $2 million. An Indiegogo campaign has raised $406,405, which came from 2,858 donors. I was told this morning by a source close to the fundraising that $406K is “just a fraction” of what will be needed. I don’t have all the information and I certainly don’t know how it’ll play out, but it sure seems as if the project needs a Daddy Warbucks.

A day or two ago I was speaking about the OSOTW situation with a journalist friend, and he mentioned that “everyone’s saying that Frank Marshall [one of the producers of the OSOTW project] should just pony up the money and get Steven Spielberg to pitch in as well, but it’s the same old story — only use other people’s money, never your own.” He suggested that a good portion of the cost could be raised “if Spielberg would sell the Rosebud sled, but that’ll be the day.”

Spielberg bought one of the three Rosebud sleds (the other two were burned during filming of Citizen Kane‘s final scene) for $60,500 at an auction at Sotheby Park Bernet on 6.10.82, or the day before E.T., The Extra-Terrestrial opened nationwide and six days after the opening of Poltergeist on 6.4.82. Today it would be worth…what? At least $250K or $300K, possibly a half million.

I’m a devout Bernie Sanders believer and supporter as far as it goes. I have a Bernie bumper sticker on my door and Bernie buttons stuck to my saddlebags. But no way was I going to wait in line for three or four hours to get into last night’s Sanders rally as the L.A. Sports Arena. To have done so would have meant abandoning the editing of yesterday’s Bogdanovich piece and not taking the cats to Laurel Pet Hospital so they could get some Comfortis pills for fleas.

This is basically nothing apart from that one Leni Reifenstahl shot of rows and rows of troops, which of course is a steal from the final scene of Episode 4. And that shot of some red-tinted helmet dude going “stop” like he’s a traffic cop in a ballet? That’s no good, man. Seen this before, that before…it’s Force Awakens jizz whizz. I’m already sick of that shot of Kylo Ren flashing his light sabre in the dark woods. Give me fresh material or give me nothing. Make me wait for the good stuff.

As mentioned I caught two Peter Bogdanovich movies last night — one a nimble, old-fashioned Bogdanovich-directed screwball comedy and the other a documentary that doesn’t feel well-ordered or smooth enough. But despite its faults, the doc — One Day Since Yesterday: Peter Bogdanovich and the Lost American Film — is far more affecting. Because it’s a story about promise, loss and tragedy, and particularly how life can sometimes knock your lights out at the drop of a hat. And the way it’s been made doesn’t get in the way of that.

(l. to.r) They All Laughed costars John Ritter, Dorothy Stratten, director Peter Bogdanovich during filming in the spring of 1980.

In his late ’60s-to-early ’70s directing heyday (Targets, Directed by John Ford, The Last Picture Show, What’s Up Doc, Paper Moon), Bogdanovich had the world at his feet. Plus a cocky swagger thing going on. Every time you saw him on TV (he visited the Dick Cavett Show two or three times if not more) Bogdanovich always seemed dryly amused, a bit smirky…the gifted bon vivant. But since the tragedy of They All Laughed (’81) and more particularly the gruesome murder of poor Dorothy Stratten, the film’s 20 year-old costar for whom Bogdanovich had fallen head over heels, followed by his financially disastrous decision to buy They All Laughed from an unenthusiastic 20th Century Fox in order to save it from being shelved, some essential spark began to slowly drain out of him. Or so it seemed.

Bogdanovich essentially risked all to validate They All Laughed because he needed as much of the world as possible to know what an inspired choice he’d made in hiring Stratten and how good she could be. He did this as a tribute to her memory and what they had together. Understandable but unwise. Bogdanovich admits this in the doc.

Last night I chose to catch an Aero double bill — Peter Bogdanovich‘s She’s Funny That Way and Bill Teck‘s One Day Since Yesterday: Peter Bogdanovich and the Lost American Film, a sad doc about the making of They All Laughed and the marginally delated state of Bogdanovich’s career ever since. That meant not seeing “Omega Station,” the 90-minute finale of True Detective‘s second season. I still haven’t seen it. I’ll watch it sometime later today or tonight, I guess, but as I mentioned last week I don’t really care that much. I know that Vince Vaughn and Colin Farrell went down and that Rachel McAdams ended up with a child (sired with Farrell) and — this is really strange — living in Venezuela with Kelly Reilly. I don’t have to see the finale to know this was an ignominious series and that Nic Pizzolatto is definitely a damaged brand. If I was Pizzolatto I wouldn’t drive out to the desert (i.e., the usual HE remedy when something hasn’t worked out) — I would fly to Italy and drive around for at least two or three weeks, just to be safe. If anyone feels like posting reactions to “Omega Station,” feel free. And if you haven’t gotten around to seeing it or saw it and don’t feel much of anything, I understand.

Random impressions of Gabriele Muccino‘s Fathers and Daughters, a decades-spanning relationship drama that apparently has no U.S. distributor as we speak: (1) With A Beautiful Mind lingering in the mind, I’m not sure I’m interested in watching Russell Crowe grapple with another debilitating, career-threatening condition that causes great personal trauma for his character (a writer this time) and a loved one (a daughter); (2) I’m not sure I’m prepared to invest in a relationship drama in which longtime HE nemesis Aaron “tennisball head” Paul portrays the mature but sensitive young suitor of Amanda Seyfried…sorry; (3) the worldwide film industry needs to declare a ten-year moratorium on plots in which a devastating car crash has a significant impact on a major character; (4) Muccino’s two films with Will Smith (’06’s The Pursuit of Happyness, ’08’s Seven Pounds) along with Playing for Keeps (’12) have made his brand synonymous with ungenuine (i.e., mushy, calculating) romantic emotionalism; (5) I can’t forget memories of a younger, thinner Crowe during the 15-year run between Romper Stomper and Cinderella Man, and he really needs to lose 20 pounds with, say, a Billy Bob Thornton vegan diet.

All hail the return of Oscar Poker…Jeff and Sasha relaxed about everything, a lot of chuckling, etc.  We tried to cover the whole award-season waterfront and bounced all over the place, as usual. I said that after Interstellar I’m not sure I want to see another Chris Nolan film ever again. We discussed Ed Norton‘s recently-voiced notion about shutting down all award-season campaigning. We discussed Marnie, Miles Teller and the temporary destruction loop, transgender cultural issues, Michael Keaton, the persistence of Love & Mercy, Eddie Redmayne and The Danish Girl, etc. I’m not going to try and summarize any further but Sasha came up with two interesting observations. One, a current stand-out strategy is to run a Best Actor-level performance in Best Supporting, two examples being Jason Segel and Paul Dano‘s performances in End of the Tour and Love & Mercy, respectively. Not to mention Carol‘s Rooney Mara, Best Actress winner at last May’s Cannes Film Festival, being run as Best Supporting Actress. And two, there are seven strong Best Actor contenders now — Michael Fassbender in Steve Jobs, Eddie Redmayne in The Danish Girl, Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant, Johnny Depp in Black Mass, Bryan Cranston in Trumbo, Joseph Gordon Levitt in The Walk/Snowden and Tom Hardy in Legend. And possibly one of the actors in Spotlight (Mark Ruffalo?). So who might not make the cut? Again, the mp3.

Last night I caught Joel Edgerton‘s The Gift (STX, 8.7) at the urging of an old journalist friend, and now I’m obliged to pay him back. One way or another I’m going to talk this guy into catching another extremely irritating, poorly motivated, button-pushing thriller that adds up to very little. Yes, a much-admired stalker thriller (92% at Rotten Tomatoes) is basically a load of hackneyed cliches that dissolve into slop once you examine them closely. Plus it leaves you adrift and hovering without anyone to identify with because (a) the two lead males are obviously repulsive and (b) the lead female (Rebecca Hall‘s Robin) is almost worse than the guys — an all-but-brainless cypher with a pixie haircut. At times she merely annoyed me; at other times I despised her.

The Gift is basically about a wounded psycho-loser (Edgerton’s Gordon, a.k.a. “Gordo the weirdo”) who skillfully insinuates himself into the life of Jason Bateman‘s Simon, a former high-school classmate who’s now a married, well-to-do security company executive, and who’s just moved to Los Angeles with his ultra-delicate dodo-bird wife (Hall). And then, bit by bit, creepy Gordo causes increasing paranoia and chaos. Simon, it turns out, is a manipulative amoral shitheel who ruined Gordo’s life in high school (or so Gordo believes) with a heartless gay-smear gossip campaign. We’re further informed that Simon is still fucking people over with loose gossip at work so it’s time for him to pay the piper because the chickens have come home to roost…right?

The basic idea is that if you did something cruel in high school you have to pay for this as an adult by being completely destroyed. “You might be done with the past,” Gordo tells Simon, “but the past isn’t done with you.” I’m sorry but that’s almost 100% bullshit. The dawn of every new day tells us to shed our old skins and fears and start anew. Many of us do that. Remnants of past errors or traumas may linger in this or that way (guilt, nightmares, self-destructive habits) but unless you’re a former murderer or child-molester healthy people move on. Sometimes they transcend. We’ve all done things we’re sorry for. I’ll never forgive myself for repeatedly whacking a turtle’s shell with a board when I was seven or eight and causing the poor thing to bleed. (I thought it was a snapping turtle.) But you have to try to forgive yourself and try and grow into a better person. Unless…you know, you’re Josef Mengele and the only option is a black capsule.