Day: March 6, 2016

Former First Lady and legendary tough cookie Nancy Reagan died today at age 94. She was the toughest, closest and most trusted adviser of her husband, Ronald Reagan, during his California governorship and U.S. Presidency. I never had any strong opinions about her one way or the other. I didn’t dislike her as much as I didn’t care. Except, of course, when she launched her infamous “Just Say No” anti-drug campaign in 1986, which everyone regarded as an embarassment.

But my heart went out to Mrs. Reagan one day about three years ago, give or take. It happened inside Alex Roldan hair salon, which is on the first floor of the London hotel in West Hollywood. She was driven from her Bel Air home to the salon every two or three weeks, my hair guy told me, but she was obviously frail and her legs were apparently gone. I recognized the syndrome as my mother, who passed last June, was going through similar woes at the time. 

Two people — a personal assistant and a hair salon employee — were trying to help Mrs. Reagan move from a shampoo chair into her wheelchair, and it was taking forever.  I was about ten feet away and was on the verge of offering to help. It wasn’t my place, of course, so I just stood there and watched. The poor woman. Old age offers very little dignity, and no mercy at all. Now she’s off the coil.

From a 12.20.89 Washington Post article about Peggy Noonan‘s “What I Saw at the Revolution: A Political Life in the Reagan Era“: 

“The most devastating commentary on Reagan comes from this exchange between Noonan and her boss, Bentley T. Elliott…Noonan: ‘The president is clearly an intelligent man, but I get the impression sometimes his top aides don’t think he’s very bright.’   Elliott: ‘There are people who say that’s why the First Lady is so protective of him…because she thinks he’s not smart…because she really thinks he’d do anything, he’s so innocent and dumb.” 

“Noonan gives the First Lady a modicum of sympathy. After all, it’s tough to be confined to a job with no job description. But then, Noonan brings out the long knives:  ‘They called her Evita, they called her Mommy, they called her the Missus and the Hairdo with Anxiety. Her power was everywhere…She was everywhere.'”

Nina Simone will always be a legend. She was obviously a gifted jazz/blues singer. And she was certainly an activist from the mid ’60s to mid ’70s. But “survivor”? She lived until she was 70, but her life became more and more of a disaster zone from 1970 on. Survivors are people who soldier on through great adversity that has rained down upon them. But Liz Garbus‘ What Happened, Miss Simone? makes a convincing case that Simone was her own worst enemy. Pretty much all of her adversity was self-created. A more honest poster for Nina (RLJ, 4.22) would read “Singer. Activist. Legend. Piece of Work.”

Read more

The muffled dialogue and whispery, muttered voice-overs in Terrence Malick‘s Knight of Cups were barely intelligible when I saw it a month ago. The film is mixed that way. But the subtitles on the German Bluray definitely altered things. I still don’t like this film but I no longer despise it. Because now, at least, I know what some of the characters are on about. Words and sentences are very significant components in our lives; it helps when they’re understood.

At the beginning of the Knight of Cups Bluray a title card suggests that the disc should be played loud. I would have done that but the shitty Sony sound bar I bought the other day can’t go any louder than it already is, which is medium to pronounced.

This spot has obviously been made by a first-rate team. Excellent production values. I wonder how many days it took the Saturday Night Live guys to scout and shoot? Probably two — a day of location scouting (northern New Jersey?), a day of shooting. TV commercials tend to take a couple and sometimes three or four days to shoot, and they always cost a shitload. I’ve watched a couple so don’t tell me. It takes them forever to dress and light shots, and the director is always playing the role of the heavy-cat artist, sitting in his canvas chair like Michelangelo Antonioni…shades, furrowed brow, impassioned discussions with his dp and top crew people.

Read more