Year: 2015

You think Noam Chomsky gets all misty-eyed on the 4th of July? I feel proud of the achievements of the great American artists, writers, thinkers and doers. That’s my kind of patriotism. I feel immensely proud that I come from the same country as Mark Twain, Hoyt Wilhelm, Jack London, Allen Ginsberg, Woody Allen, Amelia Earhart, Marilyn Monroe, John Coltrane, Bobby Kennedy, Muhammud Ali, Brian Wilson, Bob Dylan, Walt Whitman, Meryl Streep, Gene Hackman, Frank Sinatra, Jimi Hendrix, Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone, Chris Rock and David Fincher. And especially Bernie Sanders. A few years ago I wrote that I haven’t felt “patriotic” in ages. Except lately Sanders’ candidacy has romanced me into feeling semi-patriotic, which is unusual for a “beyond borders” leftie like myself. Hillary is fine but she puts me to sleep. Bernie has my heart beating.

Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner got into trouble yesterday on Twitter after sharing a sexist remark (or what sounded like one to Megan Ellison and others) during an interview with Goldie Hawn at the Aspen Ideas Festival. No one’s arguing that Eisner, 73, is an enlightened feminist, but what he said, however clumsily put, wasn’t entirely divorced from reality.

Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner during Thursday night’s discussion with Goldie Hawn at the Aspen Ideas Festival.

“In the history of the motion-picture business,” he said, “the number of beautiful, really beautiful women — a Lucille Ball — that are funny, is impossible to find.”

What Eisner should have said, first of all, is not that it’s “impossible” to find really beautiful female comedians but that for the most part they’re few and far between. (I know — that sounds dismissive in itself but I’m trying to modify here.) And then he should have explained himself a bit. But now that the milk is split and outrage is spreading, allow me to explain for him.

Innately talented people, including comedians, don’t tend to develop their gift unless life has instructed them to do so or else. He meant that if you’re doing pretty well on your good looks or trust fund you’re probably not going to develop your potential as much as those who aren’t grade-A beauties or who don’t come from a rich family. Every creatively successful person has been goaded early on by disappointment and frustration in life. They’ve been told that if they want a bountiful career or a big income or if they want to meet interesting people they’ll have to develop their creative potential or, in the case of would-be female comics, learn to be fucking funny. Because if they don’t they’re going to be driving a cab or waiting tables or doing telemarketing.

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Ava Duvernay has said in an Essence interview (posted today) that she won’t be directing Marvel’s Black Panther movie. So much for the dream of Ava scarfing up a fat Marvel paycheck while mapping out the kind of films she really wants to do.

Duvernay: “I think I’ll just say we had different ideas about what the story would be.” Most Likely Translation: “I was a dramatic indie-level director when I made Middle of Nowhere but since Selma I’ve transformed. I’m now a political-minded…make that a revolutionary-minded director who makes bold statement films about proud, gutsy, self-defining African-American characters, and those Marvel guys didn’t want Black Panther to exude too much of that — they more or less wanted a generic superhero movie with some African-American seasoning.”

DuVernay: “Marvel has a certain way of doing things and I think they’re fantastic and a lot of people love what they do. I loved that they reached out to me.” Most Likely Translation: “What a bunch of greedy, formula-following, white-ass cyborg assholes.”

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Obviously Jenny’s Wedding was made well before the Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision but I’m getting a little…well, not tired of it but…okay, ease up and take the movie on its own merits. Calm down. I’m just starting to feel a tiny bit fatigued about the whole LGBT commissar mentality. I know that doesn’t sound right and that I’ll probably get beaten up today by Twitter goons but my first reaction when I saw this trailer was “another one?” And I’m saying this, of course, as a huge, huge fan of Carol.

“We’ll” is, of course, a conjunctive for “we will,” and it’s pronounced…actually, it depends. If you want to be absolutely correct you need to say “wheel” but many people find that too demanding. I say “wheel” from time to time but I also pronounce it as “whil,” a one-syllable thing. I also occasionally attempt a one-and-a-half-syllable thing with an emphasis on “whee.” The word is not, after all, referencing Will Scarlet or Will Penny but “we” plural. There’s also a third, even lazier group that finds even my “whil” too difficult. They pronounce it “wuhl,” as in Robert Wuhl. “Okay, wuhl be there at 4 pm” or “wuhl be okay with that” or whatever.

I’ve lately been in touch with a couple I’ve known for ages, going back to the mid ’70s. The guy is a serious Movie Catholic who used to run a repertory cinema and in fact hired me as a projectionist in ’80 or ’81. A lot of frolic back then, and even some perversity. We used to score quaaludes together at the old Edlich Pharmacy on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Anyway we were talking on the phone and they said they’re planning a trip to Italy in September but within budgetary limits. I naturally volunteered my usual-usual about the difference between tourists and travellers (I belong to the latter group) and how nobody stays in hotels any more with all of the glorious (and delightfully less expensive) Airbnb options available and how only dinosaurs consult with travel agents about where to stay.

Well, it pains me to say this but my old friends are evolving into dinosaur-hood. Their choice and their money, of course, but they’re firmly committed to avoiding Airbnb rentals due to fear of “issues.” I assured them that these presumptions are wives tales but they won’t budge. They’ll almost certainly be paying 30% or 40% more by staying in hotels (not to mention mimicking the typical tourist lifestyle) but to each his own. But I thought it might be nice to join them in Venice and so as a last-ditch effort I told them about a two-story loft where I stayed with Dylan in late May 2014, a place owned by a classy lady named Federica Centulani. I sent them a video of the place. [See above.] I explained that if we split the $150 per day rent at Federica’s it would only be $75 each. And they still won’t budge.

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I happened to watch Richard Fleischer‘s The Boston Strangler last night. No, not at the Aero but on Vudu. Not bad but not much of a policier either. Two-thirds of it is about what passed for perversity in early ’60s Boston and a third is about the catching and examination of Albert DeSalvo (Tony Curtis). I was actually less impressed by Curtis’s look-at-me performance and more impressed by Henry Fonda‘s as Detective John Bottomly, and particularly by Hurd Hatfield‘s as Terence Huntley, a closeted but upfront, well-mannered gay guy. This led me to a poster for The Picture of Dorian Gray (’45), in which Hatfield played the lead. It made Hatfield a “star” (i.e., not really) even though the second-billed George Sanders got top billing on the poster because nobody knew Hatfield in ’45. This reminded me of the 2011 Arthur poster debacle in which Greta Gerwig, who played the co-lead romantic role that Liza Minelli had in the ’81 original, was left off early versions of the poster entirely.

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The reviews had made it clear that Magic Mike XXL is a wank and a throwaway, but with the otherwise-engaged Steven Soderbergh having shot and cut it I expected something slick and semi-cool — a movie in which nothing happens but with intriguing detours and a louche, hang-loose attitude. It’s about a group of lightweight hot bods (Channing Tatum, Matt Bomer, Kevin Nash, Adam Rodriguez, Joe Manganiello) making their way from Tampa to Myrtle Beach to compete in a male-stripper contest…and that’s all. Okay, maybe. But a feeling of waste and nothingness welled up as I watched this piece of shit yesterday afternoon. I began with stirrings of mild irritation but had worked up a fairly angry lather in less than 30 minutes. N.Y. Times critic A.O. Scott had the nerve to call this “a coherent and rigorous theory of pleasure that is also an absolute blast” — a statement I honestly feel he should not only be ashamed of but should atone for.

Movies about “nothing” (i.e., those lacking conventional dramatic tension or a payoff) can work nicely if done right. This may sound fogeyish but my idea of an agreeable easygoing movie about floating along and never really coming to a boil is Fred Zinneman‘s The Sundowners. Yes, Magic Mike XXL fails the Sundowners test. And I’m not just saying it doesn’t belong in the same sentence as the original Magic Mike (which I called “one of those summer films that comes along once in a blue moon — a fun romp filled with yoks and swagger and whoo-hoo, but also sharp, wise and shrewdly observed, and flush with indie cred”). I’m saying it’s a film that smirks and piddles around but also pisses on you. A big yellow stream shooting out of the screen and onto my lap.

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Updated, rewritten: I came out of Asif Kapadia‘s Amy with a sense of sadness, of course. But I didn’t have any one reaction, to be honest. Ten minutes after the screening ended I bought Back to Black.  When Amy Winehouse was great, which was nearly every time she sang, she was insanely great. But she was a mess for so long and such a foregone conclusion in terms of an early death that when it finally happened it was hardly a shock. It was almost a relief because at least the tortured aspects of her life had come to an end. That sounds a bit heartless but some people seem so bound for oblivion that you can’t help but feel a certain distance and disinterest.

My basic thought when the doc began was “Okay, how much purr and ectsasy before she starts to downswirl and die?” By the time Amy ended I was hissing Blake Fielder, her bastard ex-husband who definitely shortened her life with his cavalier attitude about drugs. Ditto her asshole dad, Mitch Winehouse, who very definitely leeched and didn’t help his daughter in the right guiding way. Without those two motherfuckers, Amy Winehouse might still be here.

And I’ll repeat again that the old saga of the self-destructive musical genius or famous performer — grew up gnarly, found fame with a great gift, burned brightly for a relatively brief time and then died from drug or alcohol abuse — has been told so many times that the tragic after-pall has seriously faded. How many times can we go there? Winehouse, Jimi Hendrix, Hank Williams, Brian Jones, Elvis Presley, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Charlie “Bird” Parker, Edith Piaf, Bix Beiderbecke…a story as old as the culture of recreational drugs and “yeah, man” indulgence itself.

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I don’t know who David Poland has spoken to but in a 6.28 Best Picture spitball piece he sounded confident about Martin Scorsese‘s Silence coming out later this year. I’d been under the impression that a 2015 bow was a maybe at best, and that a 2016 release was just as likely. Nonetheless Poland flatly declared that we should “expect a December berth and a November premiere.”

The Josh Gad-resembling guy, the red T-shirted lardo who explains the sexual wackamole game to the mom at the dinner table, is Zack Pearlman. Characters like this make me want to throw something at the screen. And yet low-rent comedies always seem to have at least one — a fat guy so coarse and hormonally obnoxious that he hasn’t the first hint of how appalling he is, and yet everyone kind of shrugs him off and goes “Yeah, well, he’s colorful.” And we’re stuck with guys like this because of Gad, more or less. Jack Black probably looks at guys like this and goes, “Wow, fairly pathetic.”

Message received last night from Manhattan broadcast media guy Bill McCuddy: “Just saw Trainwreck in a media/real people screening. Played great in the room. I loved it. Apatow’s best since Funny People.”

“What about Amy’s performance?,” I wrote back. “She wasn’t just funny — she reached way down and pulled out some real feeling and serious melancholia in some of those second and third-act scenes. That funeral eulogy? Seriously good stuff.”

McCuddy: “She’s great and I agree — especially some of her takes/reactions when other characters can’t see her. But that eulogy was also in the writing.” [Schumer wrote the screenplay.] “A lot of the movie is better written than audiences will give it credit for.”