Last August Tatyana Antropova, the fabled SRO and wife of Hollywood Elsewhere, began the application process for a green card and Employment Authorization card. A lot of work, a lot of forms, roughly $1700 in fees.

We were informed on 10.16.17 via I-797 (“notice of action”) that the USCIS (U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services) had approved her application for employment authorization (otherwise known as an EAD or work permit card) and that it would be arriving soon in the mailbox. All seemed well.

Then it all went bad. In early November we were informed that the letter containing the work permit had been mailed to our address but sent back. This was apparently because the letter had a 90046 zip code instead of the correct 90069, and so the mailman decided not to deliver it. That was six months ago, and despite countless pleas, appeals, letters, phone calls and visits to the downtown L.A. USCIS office (300 No. Los Angeles Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012), the work-permit card senders, based in a building in Lee’s Summit, Missouri, about 10 miles southeast of Kansas City, haven’t re-mailed the card.

Because of one lame-ass decision by a West Hollywood mailman (the zip code is a meaningless distraction as there’s no other Westbourne Drive in the entire city and 90046 is right nearby), poor Tatyana has been without a work permit for a full half-year, and to this date we still haven’t received it in the mail.

We have received, mind, several USCIS letters about other immigration matters at this address, but never the work permit. We have received letters with the incorrect and correct zip codes. We have repeatedly informed the USCIS that the correct zip code is 90069, and they have confirmed to us that their “system” now understands this, but we’ve still gone six months without a card. So much frustration and hair-pulling, so much draining of the spirit.

What government agency mails you something, and then, when it gets sent back to the agency for a nonsensical reason, refuses to re-send? These people are bureaucratic fiends.

Lisa D’Apolito‘s Love, Gilda will open the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival on 4.18. The late Gilda Radner made millions laugh, but like any half-decent comedian she always told the unfettered truth. And she apparently never side-stepped or shilly-shallied when she was diagnosed with cancer in late ’86, at age 40. She wrote about it candidly in “It’s Always Something,” a 1989 autobiography. To go by a 2014 fundraising trailer [after the jump], the primary focus of Love, Gilda focus is Radner’s four-year battle with cancer. It’s also about Gilda’s Club, a community organization for cancer copers.

I’ve watched this old Steven Spielberg clip a few times. I love it because it’s a reminder that serious artists have no interest in hearing nice bullshit from their alleged friends and admirers. Give it to me straight or don’t say anything at all.

Stanley Kubrick had to sit on Spielberg’s chest and force him into being honest about his true, deep-down feelings about The Shining. He had to grill and interrogate the truth out of him, otherwise Spielberg (who has since come to love The Shining) would have never given it up.

Husbands and wives are like this also — they always lie to protect each other’s feelings. The only way you get the real truth from a husband or wife is when you’re arguing with them and they’re really angry at you and losing their temper, and so they’ll tell you some uncomfortable fact or observation they would otherwise keep quiet about.

Before I stopped drinking (I’ve been sober since 3.20.12) I told an ex-girlfriend that I was starting to feel horrified about my weight and that I was starting to resemble a 50ish lesbian in a cowboy hat. “Stop it…you look fine!” she insisted. She lied — I was turning into Wallace Beery in Min and Bill. Hell, I was turning into Marie Dressler. Everybody lies about everything, including your enemies.

Once upon a time zombie movies were cool. Certainly between the debut of George Romero‘s Night of the Living Dead (’68) and Dawn of the Dead (’78), his first sequel. Since then mongrels have taken over the genre. As a matter of routine policy Hollywood Elsewhere spits on 21st Century zombies. I haven’t paid the slightest attention since Juan Carlos Fresnadillo‘s 28 Weeks Later (’07) and before that Danny Boyle and Alex Garland‘s 28 Days Later (’02).

But I’m down for Dominique Rocher‘s Night Devours The World (La Nuit a devore le monde) because (a) it’s French, (b) it has a great poster, and (c) it avoids standard zombie movie tropes like the plague. This in itself wins my absolute allegiance.

From Jordan Mintzer‘s 3.7.18 Hollywood Reporter review: “Imagine 28 Days Later without the action, The Walking Dead without the ensemble cast or [Rec] without the video camera and white-knuckle suspense, and you’ll get an inkling of what goes on in The Night Eats the World.

“A minimalist arthouse zombie movie set almost entirely inside a Paris apartment building, this debut feature from director Dominique Rocher has some clever ideas and well-crafted moments, but in terms of horror fodder, it’s so pared down you’ll practically miss it if you blink. Still, it probably deserves a lower-case ‘z’ for “zeal,” taking the subgenre to a place it hasn’t quite gone before. You’ve got to give the filmmakers some credit for eschewing the predictable gory antics in favor of something more artsy and contemplative.”

Six years ago Wes Anderson‘s Moonrise Kingdom opened the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. A great honor and much red-carpet hoopla, for sure, although an opening-night choice is sometimes excluded from festival competition.

At a mid-festival press conference Anderson told a story about sharing the news with a Parisian cineaste friend. “Competition is better,” the friend said. As it turned out Moonrise Kingdom was slotted as a competition film, but a film chosen to open the festival is always presumed to be slightly less consequential than a competition film…a tiny bit underwhelming or off-the-mark in some way. Or a political “gimme” of some kind. Always a cause for concern.

It is in this context that the selection of Asghar Farhadi’s Everybody Knows, a “psychological thriller” with Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem and Ricardo Darin, as the opener at next month’s Cannes Film Festival…it is in this context that the announcement needs to be processed.

(l. to r.) Everybody Knows selfie: Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Asghar Farhadi, Eduard Fernandez, Ricardo Darin.

A Separation, About Elly, The Past, The Salesman — nobody worships Farhadi like Hollywood Elsewhere. The man is hardcore and ultra-meticulous and thoroughly invested in character-driven stories, and is all but incapable of making a mediocre film, much less a bad one. It is a near certainty that Everybody Knows, a Spanish-language family reunion film about disturbances and disruptions, will be a strong, satisfying film. But the opening-night thing is scaring me a teeny-weeny little bit. A hint of slight foreboding.

Everybody Knows (aka Todos Lo Saben) is only the second Spanish-language film to open Cannes. Pedro Almodovar’s Bad Education (’04) was the first. It’s also a departure for the Iran-based Farhadi, having made his first film in Spanish and his second not in his native Farsi.

I’m in no way dismissing Everybody Knows because of its opening-night selection. It’s just that I know what “opening-night selection” tends to mean. Will it be better than last year’s opening-nighter, Arnaud Desplechin‘s Ismael’s Ghosts (Les fantomes d’Ismael), which, apart from Marion Cotillard‘s nude scene, was agony to sit through? Almost certainly.

A friend: “Moonrise Kingdom was in competition. Other opening nights, like Moulin Rouge, have been too. It’s at the determination of the festival and the filmmakers. The problem is that because most opening-night films at most festivals are NOT in competition, somehow even when you are in competition the film tends to get disregarded by the jury anyway. So it’s something of a double-edged sword, but those are the facts.”