Day: November 9, 2017

Like most podcasters, Variety‘s Kris Tapley likes to keep things loose, chatty and breezy when he interviews a Hollywood guest. It’s fair to say that this mindset didn’t quite mesh with 82 year-old Donald Sutherland, star of Sony Pictures Classics’ The Leisure Seeker (1.19.18) and a trophy recipient at this weekend’s Governor’s Awards.

Sutherland is a truth-teller, a take-it-or-leave-it reality guy. He gushes about co-workers like anyone else, but if he didn’t get along with someone during the making of a film and still has a bad taste in his mouth about it, he doesn’t mince words. He went there this morning during a chat with Tapley, and it sounded to me as if Sutherland’s candor threw his host off-balance.

In this morning’s “Playback” podcast, Sutherland dissed (a) the late Great Train Robbery director Michael Crichton, basically calling him a cold, heartless prick; (b) spoke about what a shit director Richard Marquand was for arranging for Sutherland to smash his hand through real glass during the shooting of Eye of the Needle (’81); and (c) expressed disdain for the late Robert Altman when producer Ingo Preminger told him that Altman was against casting Sutherland in M.A.S.H. and, when told Sutherland was a keeper, said he didn’t want Sutherland to get top billing.

Sutherland also talked about what a serious and personal heartbreaker it was when the Dodgers’ Rick Monday hit a home run against the Montreal Expos in ’81.

“This is not the detour I was expecting,” Tapley said. “Why would you expect a detour?,” Sutherland replied. “What’s the point of expecting anything? You just concentrate.”

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“The specter of sudden and brutal death hangs over everyone all the time in Hostiles, a mournful, sorrowful, persistently powerful Western set in a world of beauty, tears and blood. There’s little new that writer-director Scott Cooper, in his fourth and best feature, can really add to what other films have said about the terrible inevitabilities embedded in the epic story of the settling of America’s frontier. But potent dramatic dynamics and the filmmaker’s self-evident deep immersion and investment in his material enrich this vivid account of the last spasms of Native American resistance in the 1890s.” — from Todd McCarthy’s 9.3.17 Telluride Film Festival review.

Hostiles will receive a N.Y. and L.A. platform opening on 12.22, followed by a 1.19.18 expansion. The distributor is Byron Allen’s Entertainment Studios Motion Pictures.

No, it’s not a “gulp” or an “oops!” that Louis C.K.‘s I Love You, Daddy was included in The Orchard’s screener package, which arrived a few minutes ago. Despite the career torpedo and distribution-plan-destroyer delivered today by that N.Y. Times story, I Love You, Daddy is a serious, subversive film with a different agenda than you might expect. As The Daily Beast‘s Richard Porton wrote, “Despite its longueurs, the most intriguing aspect of I Love You, Daddy is the film’s ambivalent view of its main characters.”

Update: HE’s own Mark Frenden has stepped into the breach and improved Joe Tate‘s mildly amusing idea. The only thing bothering me now is that Plummer’s face seems too well lighted. In the original shot Kevin Spacey wasn’t illuminated to this degree.

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Former Facebook president Sean Parker hits the company for its effect on society: "God only knows what it's doing to our children's brains" pic.twitter.com/8GI0DykJGB

— Axios (@axios) November 9, 2017

I caught my second viewing of I Love You, Daddy (The Orchard, 11.17) the other night. You’ve probably read it’s about a hot-shot TV writer-producer (played by producer-director-writer-editor-star Louis C.K.) who’s increasingly disturbed by his 17-year-old daughter China (Chloe Grace Moretz) falling into a relationship with a famous 68 year-old libertine (John Malkovich), and about his weak, barely noticable parenting skills.

After my first viewing I was saying to myself that while I don’t exactly “like” I Love You, Daddy I respect what it’s saying, which is that wealthy showbiz types and their liberal, laissez-faire approach to morality, relationships and especially parenting is a fairly vacant proposition. After my 2nd viewing I believe this all the more. The film is basically an indictment of “whatever, brah” liberal lifestyles and relative morality.

It is almost assured of getting a rave review from the National Review‘s Kyle Smith as well as other conservative critics and commentators. Which is all the more noteworthy because it was made by a successful stand-up guy known for his mostly liberal views.

I Love You, Daddy doesn’t play fast and loose with the notions of showbiz relationships and May-December romances. It’s not endorsing or winking at inappropriate older guy-younger girl relationships. It’s actually a sly capturing of a problem sometimes found within the entertainment industry and super-wealthy lah-lah circles. Louis C.K. doesn’t try to erotically or amusing entertain as much as push those “oh, shit” or “ahh, yes” buttons. It’s obviously a doleful Woody Allen-esque comedy of sorts, but it’s also a kind of familial tragedy.

And Malkovich is quietly brilliant as the libertine, Leslie Goodwin. Maybe I was tired or in the wrong kind of mood when I saw ILYD two or three weeks ago, but I somehow didn’t quite realize how mesmerizing his performance is until last night.

But that’s all out the window now because of a just-published N.Y. Times report about Louis C.K. having masturbated in front of (or asking to masturbate in front of) four female comics — Dana Min Goodman, Julia Wolov, Abby Schachner and Rebecca Corry — and a fifth woman who experienced something similar but asked The Times for anonymity.

What Louis C.K. is accused of having done is obviously appalling and reprehensible and serious as a heart attack, but at the same time it’s a shame that an unusually interesting and even subversive film like I Love You, Daddy will now most likely be shunned and tossed into the waste basket.

But those are the rules. Once you’ve been outed or accused of sexual harassment or assualt by reputable journalists who’ve spoken with named and verified sources, your work is discredited, your friends and colleagues don’t want to know you, and your career is most likely over, at least for the foreseeable future.

The Orchard, the distributor of I Love You, Daddy, is apparently thinking of washing its hands. The New York premiere of I Love You, Daddy has been canceled. The comedian’s planned appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert has also been deep-sixed.

The headline for this piece sounds cruel and harsh, but how does Louis C.K. recover from being the latest powerful, perverted famous guy to be exposed and shamed by a reputable publication (in this instance The N.Y. Times)? He’s just been thrown into a leaking lifeboat already occupied by Brett Ratner, Kevin Spacey, James Toback and Harvey Weinstein. The Times story reports that four female comedians — Dana Min Goodman, Julia Wolov, Abby Schachner and Rebecca Corry — and an anonymous source are claiming that several years ago Louis C.K. either jerked off in front of them or asked to do same or something along these gross lines. No assault but what asinine behavior! What is this “jerking off in front of women” thing? I’d never even heard about it until recently. What kind of blithering idiot even thinks about doing such a thing, which seems to be mainly about hostility and aggression?

It was one thing for Ridley Scott to replace the disgraced Kevin Spacey with Christopher Plummer in the role of J. Paul Getty in the forthcoming All The Money In The World (TriStar, 12.22). But his intention to shoot and insert the brand-new Plummer footage into the film within the next 30 days in order to stick to the locked-in release date…whoa! That’s one hell of a ballsy and dynamic move, especially for an 80- year-old. I haven’t done the research, but I’m almost certain this kind of casting switch-out has never happened to a major film only a month and a half before opening. HE to Scott: Please, please don’t junk Spacey’s scenes. Hang onto them and use them as an extra on the Bluray. By the way: When will the Academy expel Spacey from the Academy a la Harvey Weinstein and perhaps even demand that he return his two Oscars?  Not advocating for this, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

(l.) Brand-new All The Money in the World costar Christopher Plummer; (m.) director Ridley Scott; (r.) former All The Money in the World costar Kevin Spacey.