Day: June 2, 2016

I caught Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow‘s De Palma (A24, 6.10) last night on Rodeo Drive, and pretty much loved every second of it. So much so that I intend to see it a second time at the Aero on Sunday night. It put me into film-maven heaven. It’s basically MCU footage of Brian De Palma sitting and talking about every film he’s ever made (process, personalities, politics, technique) and regaling the viewer with whatever anecdotes come to mind. No personal revelations or intimate details are offered — the film is strictly about nuts and bolts and personalities.

My only gripe is that De Palma moves too briskly and is over way too soon. (I would have preferred a running time of 120 or even 160 minutes rather than 107.) I’ve shared plenty of complaints about De Palma’s films over the years, especially the ones made after Snake Eyes, but they were all magically set aside as I watched the doc. I just sat there and kind of melted. The film is so much fun if you know the terrain.

I was touched by De Palma’s honest recountings of his ups and downs. He admits to his failures (he really doesn’t care for The Fury), is proud of his successes and quite specific about why this or that film didn’t work out. But he doesn’t address the constant criticism about so many women being disrobed and taunted and stabbed and sliced in his films — he only says that women are much better at playing victims than men.

De Palma‘s story is my own in a sense, the story of a film-worshipping life that’s been going strong for 40-plus years. I started out as a huge fan of the guy in the ’70s, and then an in-and-outer in the ’80s, and then I began to fall away in the late ’90s.

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Having been fully mesmerized by the Roundabout’s currently-running production of Eugene O’Neill‘s Long Day’s Journey Into Night, I was moved earlier today to buy a combination DVD and faux-Bluray of Sidney Lumet’s admired 1962 film version with Ralph Richardson, Katharine Hepburn, Jason Robards and Dean Stockwell.

I’m presuming the DVD/Bluray will look like weak tea, which is a shame. Lumet’s version is surely one of the finest American dramas ever captured on film. Some outfit (Kino, Twilight Time Criterion) should create a proper Bluray out of the elements, whatever their present condition. Producer Joseph E. Levine (The Graduate) bought Lumet’s film for distribution but then took a bath. “You cannot stay in business by making O’Neill pictures,” he allegedly said.

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I was going to call this post “sedagive” but not enough people (i.e., those who’ve never seen Young Frankenstein) would get it. I’m simply mentioning that I’ve fallen into the habit of watching this 25-minute chapter from Smiley’s People before going to bed. I love the soothing, settled tone of Alec Guinness‘s George Smiley voice, and how he never once allows himself to become irritated or annoyed or verbally imprecise, and how his careful manner gradually calms down Michael Lonsdale‘s Grigoriev. It’s very calming.

Real men don’t walk it back. If they’ve said or tweeted something that has made the Twitterverse go apeshit, they stand their ground and say “okay, you don’t like what I said or maybe you don’t like me, I get that…but I said what I said and that’s that.” I wish I could say I’m a real man in this respect, but I’m not. I’ve walked a ton of stuff back. It’s all very well to talk about backbone, but when the p.c. ghouls and banshees and stormtroopers are calling for your arterial blood it’s so much easier to become a mouse and go “squeek squeek squeek…I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean it!”

Seriously, when I do recant or rephrase or otherwise apologize, I try and do it with restraint. I’ll restate what I meant and explain that people are taking it the wrong way, etc. Unlike Sing Street and Begin Again director John Carney, who in apologizing for slagging Keira Knightley‘s acting abilities in an Independent interview pretended as if a demon had invaded his person and turned him into someone else. Coward.

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So much for the notion that women are cleaner and more fastidious than straight guys as far as subletting my place goes. That supposition is probably still true for the most part, but the woman who stayed in my place while I was away for the last 31 days was an exception to the rule, you bet.

The first thing I saw were two and half cat-vomit piles on the Oriental rug. The second was a baby photo of Jett which had been hanging on the kitchen wall but now was lying on the floor in pieces. The third was that the cat litter had been scooped out but changed only once, if that. The fourth was only a few pellets of cat food in the bowls and no cat drinking water. The fifth was three soiled bath towels lying on a heap on my living-room couch. (My cleaning person got sick and couldn’t spruce the place up for my arrival, but still.) The sixth was two wide-open bags of dry cat food, which are kept on the top of the refrigerator, sitting on the kitchen counter next to the coffee-maker. Why? Because it was easier to keep them there — because Ms. Fastidious couldn’t be bothered to seal the bags and put them where they belong. Are you seeing a pattern here?

It was like an animal had broken into the place and rummaged around for a few hours, eaten most of the cat food, taken two shits on the rug and left. It was like a homeless person had broken in with a screwdriver and wiped his ass with one of my dress shirts and then slept on the couch for a night or two. The place is being professionally cleaned tomorrow morning but good God.