Day: September 17, 2016

Originally posted on 3.21.11, but now updated: One of the healthiest things you can say about anything that’s over and done with is “okay, that happened.” Unless, of course, you’re talking about a stretch in a World War II concentration camp or something equally ghastly. Otherwise you have to be accepting, past it. Especially when it comes to ex-girlfriends. We went there, it happened, nobody was right or wrong, that was then and we’re here now…let’s get a coffee and catch up.

All my life I’ve been friends with exes, or have at least been open to same. And they’ve been open to ease and friendship with me. Except one. 

She was (and most likely still is) a whipsmart blonde with a great ass, a toothy smile and a kind of young Katharine Hepburn vibe. She’d been raised in Brooklyn but always reminded me of a Fairfield County gal. She’s married now and living in Pasadena; her husband — a slightly stocky, gray-haired guy of some means — doesn’t resemble me or her first husband (a doobie-toking small-business owner who owned a Harley) at all. Whatever attributes or nice qualities he’s brought to the table, he’s clearly a swing away from the past.

I gave up trying to be in touch with her three or four years ago. She really wants to erase that part of her life — the first marriage (which began in the summer of ’96) and the affair with me that began in early ’98 and lasted two and two-thirds years. We last spoke in ’11 or ’12. The most significant thing that happened before that was her friending me on Facebook.

Our thing began at the ’98 Sundance Film Festival and finally ran out of gas in late ’00 when her husband found out. I took the hurt and the lumps. I was dropped six or seven times. It was easily the most painful and frustrating relationship of my life. Whether things were good or bad between us was entirely about her shifting moods. Her father had been a philanderer when she was fairly young and this had caused a lot of family pain, so she felt badly about following in his footsteps. But she kept coming back and oh, the splendor.

The bottom line, obviously, is that she’s not at ease with having been a beloved infidel in the waning days of the Clinton administration. Easing up and looking back by way of occasional contact or e-mails just isn’t a comfortable thing for her. 

I could write a Russian novel about what happened during our fractured romance.  I once flew to NYC just to hang with her for a couple of days without the nearby presence of her husband.  Toward the end we had a blissful rendezvous in Las Vegas.  But when all is said and done I’m basically a Woody Allen type of guy — the heart wants what it wants and all’s fair. Even if nothing hurts quite as badly as being the on-and-off boyfriend of a not-very-married woman.

But I’m past it. I’m not sorry it happened. And I’ve always liked her besides. She’s smarter than me. And a good judge of character, more practical, more planted, etc. But I’m deeper, stronger, a better writer.

This being a travel day (i.e., back to Los Angeles), Hollywood Elsewhere has been maintaining radio silence for the last few hours. The usual packing, cleaning and running around. Plus the Toronto weather today was warm and rainy, like Panama. My American Airlines flight is currently over eastern Colorado. The ETA is just before 10 pm Pacific. Sidenote: I didn’t want to mention this because I don’t like whining, but over the last six days I’ve been grappling with a bad case of Plantar fasciitis, or more specifically a really bad pain in my right heel. I’ve been hobbling around with a cane since last weekend. The plantar fascia is the ligament that supports the arch of your foot. If you strain or inflame it, you’re fucked. It’s not just over-40 types who suffer from PF but younger folks who are on their feet a lot, like athletes or soldiers. Sub-sidenote: People treat you gently when you’re carrying a cane. They get out of your way, let you go first, look at you with a measure of concern. Pretty girls have been eyeballing me more since I bought the cane — I guess they’re figuring I’m less of a threat than a guy with two good feet.

A friend accused me this morning of not being sufficiently supportive of Hillary Clinton in this, her hour of need as her campaign appears to be stalling if not collapsing. She’s Mondale, she’s Dukakis. I replied that I’m terrified at the prospect of Trump winning, but that Hillary is just too flawed a candidate and too blind as a strategist for me to go “Seig heil, Hillary is great, all hail Hillary!”

My friend then accused me of more or less being on Team Trump. “WHAT? You sound like you’re having a breakdown,” I replied. “Yes, I truly dislike Hillary Fainting Arrogant Goldman Sachs Establishment Eyebags but I WANT HER TO WIN. More to the point, I don’t want her to lose.” Friend: “If you don’t want her to lose then help her win. It’s not rocket science.”

She’s obviously the only rational, sensible choice, I answered, “but she’s such a terrible, terrible candidate. She’s sinking in the polls now and she’s just sitting there like a vegetable, recovering from her pneumonia.

“And she will NEVER, EVER BE FORGIVEN if she loses. Hillary alone will singlehandedly redefine the definition of pariah if Trump wins. She’ll be like O.J. Simpson — she’ll have to leave the country and live in southern Spain. Or just hide in her house in Chappaqua and never come out. When she visits Chelsea in Manhattan people will scowl and spit when her car drives by.”

Written yesterday afternoon to a critic friend after catching Walter Hill‘s critically lambasted (Re)Assignment, to wit: “I just saw it, and it’s nowhere near as problematic as I’d been led to expect. Pulpy and crude, yes, but fairly intelligent, a little slow but far from ludicrous, and generally not bad. It’s way, way better than either of the Sin City flicks. Michelle Rodriguez with a beard looks like Oscar Isaac in Inside Llewyn Davis. I suspect, however, that those ridiculous time & place title cards along with those animated freeze-frames were tacked on in post. It also seems as if those Tony Shalhoub-interviews-Sigourney Weaver exposition scenes might have been shot after principal photography. And what moron decided that (Re)Assignment was a better title than Tomboy? I’ve already mentioned that the plot bears a certain similarity to Pedro Almodovar‘s The Skin That I Live In. If Sam Fuller was still around he could’ve made something like this.

(l.) Frank Kitchen, the male version of Michelle Rodriguez in Walter Hill’s (Re)Assignment; (r.) Oscar Isaac in Joel and Ethan Coen’s Inside Llewyn Davis.

For whatever perverse motives, Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman and Indiewire‘s David Ehrlich last night praised The Edge of Seventeen (STX, 11.13). But they’re almost certainly being generous and obliging, in part (I suspect) because they don’t want to be seen as older cranky male critics shitting on a teen-angst dramedy, especially one from a female director-writer.

In the words of John F. Kennedy, I do not shrink from the occasional responsibility of shitting on a teen-angst dramedy — I welcome it. I was frowning and throwing my hands in the air and exhaling and checking my watch less than five minutes in. Okay, Edge became somewhat more tolerable during the last third, which is when neurotic characters in movies of this sort begin to fold and weep as they lay their emotional cards on the table. But God, that first hour. And the cliches! It poked and prodded and put me through long stretches of hell.

As noted, Edge isn’t all torture and yes, director-writer Kelly Fremon Craig is a cut above in some respects, but with James L. Brooks producing, I wanted a kind of angsty-teen-girl Bottle Rocket. Instead I got a misery flick. Mine, I mean, more than Hailee Stenfeld‘s because of prolonged exposure to the enraged, obnoxious, take-no-prisoners personality of her character, Nadine, whom Craig probably based upon aspects of herself.

The neurotic, obstinate and nearly friendless Nadine is suffering because (a) she’s an old soul and a secret genius (as was I during my high school years) and her classmates are too shallow to get her. Her father died some years back from a heart attack, and her frizzy-haired mom (Kyra Sedgwick) is ineffectual. On top of which Nadine’s resentment of older smooth-cat brother Darian (Everybody Wants Some‘s Blake Jenner) turns to seething hate when he falls in love with her lifelong best friend Krista (Haley Lu Richardson) and vice versa.

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