I’ve been getting by on journalist earnings since roughly ’81. Actually ’80, come to think. Since HE launched in August ’04 I’ve been a fairly happy person, especially so when the ad revenues began to climb around ’07. But last night I was recalling how much I hated my various pre-journalism jobs. Oh, the feeling of relief that would start to kick in on late Thursday afternoon! Thursday night and then all day Friday and Saturday — about a 60-hour period.

Then those feelings of dread and even mild depression would kick in on Sunday morning. You could feel Monday breathing down your neck. Then it arrived like mustard gas and another four-day hell period would begin.

Journalism saved me from that awful cycle. I’m not tooting my horn when I say I feel badly for persons who’ve been coping with that “please, God, make Friday come sooner” mentality all their lives. I lived that for too long. I remember the gloom, the drinking, and that half-hostile, half-resigned mentality. It’s a terrible way to live.

Since August ’04 I’ve taken no days off, and worked much longer hours (minimum of 10 to 12 per day = between 70 and 80 per week). I know I’ll never stop. Please, God, keep it coming.

I’ve been looking at the Millennium Falcon for nearly 41 years now, but until today I’ve never actually studied the layout. And I have to say that I’m shocked — shocked! — that the cockpit (#6) isn’t centered over section #10 (or just above the freight loading bay) but located off to the right, or to the left if you’re standing in front of the Falcon’s front area.

Imagine driving a car not from the front seat and looking over the hood, but from inside a little glass-enclosed cockpit mounted on the right fender and extending a couple of feet from the main chassis. Who the hell would want to drive a car like that?

A good pilot can get used to anything, I realize, but it just seems weird to visually navigate this “bucket of bolts” from a fishbowl compartment on the far right. It’s silly to complain about this now, of course, but from a command-and-control perspective it still seems like one of the most lopsided, poorly-designed vehicles I’ve ever laid eyes on.

I’m also not wild about the crew quarters (#14). You’ll notice the room is pretty small, and that it contains three bunks, two bathroom compartments and one toilet [after the jump]. I’m actually presuming that the Falcon has two toilets but the architect forgot to draw the second one. I’m also guessing that Falcon being the Falcon, the bathroom ventilation system probably doesn’t work like it should, or certainly not like the bathrooms on any large Empire vessel. I’m thinking of Lando Calrissian exiting the bathroom and finding Princess Leia waiting outside, etc. Nuff said.

From N.Y. Times, filed at 4:10 pm Pacific: “President Trump angrily unloaded on his top law enforcement officials on Monday night, complaining that the F.B.I. ‘broke into’ the office of Michael D. Cohen, his personal lawyer, and assailing the early-morning raids as a ‘disgraceful situation’ and an ‘attack on our country in a true sense.’

“The president repeatedly said the raids were part of a ‘witch hunt’ against him that has been conducted since he took office, and he mused about the possibility that he might soon fire Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel in the Russia inquiry. ‘We’ll see what may happen,’ Mr. Trump said as he began a meeting with senior military officials to discuss responses to a chemical attack in Syria. ‘Many people have said you should fire him.'”

JUST IN: President Trump responds to question "why don't you just fire Mueller?"

"Well, I think it's a disgrace what's going on. We'll see what happens … many people have said you should fire him. Again, they found nothing." pic.twitter.com/1k1bkdb7LZ

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) April 9, 2018

Last year the New Academy Kidz (i.e., the younger, more diverse members invited to join in 2015 and ’16 by former Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs) decided that horror-genre films can and should be regarded as Oscar bait, as evidenced by Best Picture nominations for The Shape of Water and Get Out.

And so, naturally, John Krasinski‘s hugely successful A Quiet Place, having earned a first-weekend haul of $50 million, is now being trumpeted as a potential Best Picture contender. Or it is, at least, in the speculative mind of In Contention‘s Kris Tapley.

Hollywood Elsewhere says no — Krasinski’s film is very well done but (a) having a baby in the middle of a scourge of sound-driven monsters is flat-out ridiculous, (b) the hearing-aid finale doesn’t quite slam it home and (c) at the risk of sounding hopelessly out-of-it, just because a very smart and efficient film has made a lot of money…am I allowed to say this?…making a lot of money doesn’t necessarily put a film in the class of a Best Picture contender.

I know, I know…the New Academy Kidz, whose taste buds, one could argue, aren’t exactly refined and high-end, don’t necessarily see things that way. They don’t much care for traditional old-fart Oscar-bait material, they have a place in their hearts for horror and genre stuff, and they want to give others in the industry a chance so sure…why not?

Focus Features has announced that Spike Lee‘s Black Klansman, which may or may not play the Cannes Film Festival, will open on 8.10.18. Which suggests that Focus is going for the money rather than thinking about an award-season run. They’re probably thinking about the early August openings The Help (8.10.11) and Straight Outta Compton (8.14.15) having reaped $216 and $201 million, respectively.

On the other hand Annapurna’s 7.28.17 release of Kathryn Bigelow‘s Detroit didn’t work out as well.

Three interpretations: (a) Black Klansman is a good movie-movie and not an award-season thing, and that’s cool — nothing wrong with being a solid people-level thing; (b) Black Klansman is an award-season thing but Focus is looking to ignore the traditional Venice-Telluride-Toronto scheme but score nominations regardless; or (c) Focus would rather go for the late-summer revenue potential than endure the award-season gauntlet, which is another way of saying that (a) is the basic reality.

Posted on 4.5: “Set in the late ’70s, pic isn’t literally about a black guy joining the Klan but an undercover investigation of the Klan by Stallworth when he was ‘the first black detective in the history of the Colorado Springs Police Department.’

“After initial correspondence with the Klan, Stallworth received a call in which he was asked if he wants to ‘join our cause.’ According to an Amazon summary, ‘Ron answers the caller’s question that night with a yes, launching what is surely one of the most audacious, and incredible undercover investigations in history. Ron recruits his partner Chuck to play the ‘white’ Ron Stallworth.’

Brad Anderson‘s Beirut (Bleecker Street, 4.11) is a gripping, finely crafted adult war drama of the highest order — exactly the kind of smart, disciplined thriller (91% Rotten Tomatoes rating) that I live for.

Set in Lebanon’s war-torn capital in the early ’80s, it’s about a former U.S. diplomat (Jon Hamm) returning to Beirut to help save a kidnapped friend from way back. All kinds of danger, intrigue, suspicion. My idea of a truly satisfying, adult-level war drama. Hamm savors his meatiest, best-written role since his Don Draper days in Mad Men, and gives the best big-screen performance of his life. Really.

Earlier today I was speaking with Beirut’s producer-writer Tony Gilroy, the legendary director-screenwriter (Michael Clayton, Duplicity, The Bourne Legacy) who arguably saved Rogue One from disaster by coming in with a big rewrite and then directing new portions.

Halfway through our chat Gilroy mentioned Volker Schlondorff‘s Circle of Deceit (aka Die Fälschung), a 1981 drama that was shot in Beirut as the Lebanese civil war was raging blocks away. He insisted that I see it at the earliest opportunity.

Gilroy’s first viewing of Circle happened in the early ’90s, when he was working on the Beirut script (a task that took him a full year) for Ted Field‘s Interscope. He says he spoke to the projectionist after Circle ended, and that the projectionist said “what was that?”

The film costars Hanna Schygulla as Ganz’s temporary lover and Jerzy Skolimowski (director of Deep End, Moonlighting, The Shout) as his journalistic ally.

I rented a standard-definition version of Circle of Deceit on Amazon, and plan on watching it by the weekend.

Circle follows a German journalist (Bruno Ganz) sent to Beirut to report on the Lebanese Civil War. The conflict began in ’75, took 120,00 lives and generated an exodus of a million residents, and didn’t end until ’90. Circle was filmed in 1980 “under remarkable conditions with its crew confined to ‘safe’ portions of Beirut while the fighting went on elsewhere, but with ubiquitous evidence of real warfare everywhere.”

The New York Times described it as “a balanced, thoughtful, extremely moving vision of wartime tragedy.”

A lot of people will be trashing Netflix if they fail to cut some kind of arrangement with the Cannes Film Festival and wind up yanking five films from the festival slate, including Orson Welles‘ The Other Side of the Wind, Alfonso Cuaron‘s Roma and Paul Greengrass‘s Norway.

The near-final answer will come on Thursday, 4.12, when the festival announces the 2018 slate. Yes, there are always add-ons but who knows?

One guy who is speaking well of Netflix is author, screenwriter, former Variety critic and Other Side of the Wind costar Joseph McBride. The SF State University film professor plays a film critic, Charles Pister, in the Welles film, and not for some walk-on cameo. McBride went before the cameras for a six-year period during production on The Other Side of the Wind, from the early to mid ’70s, and had actual lines. Anyway, he recently posted the following on Facebook:

“There’s been a big flap over how villainous Netflix supposedly is threatening to withdraw its films from Cannes, including Orson Welles’s nearly completed The Other Side of the Wind and Morgan Neville’s companion documentary, They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead (both of which I am in).

“Netflix stepped up to the plate after Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Clint Eastwood, Oliver Stone, Roger Corman and everyone else in Hollywood passed up the opportunity to finish The Other Side of the Wind. For that alone Netflix [deserves] the eternal gratitude of film history. They are heroes in this saga. As I wrote, it was my idea to bypass theatrical after two decades of futility, so people can blame me for that, but if not for Netfix the film would still be in cans in the Paris lab. Kudos to the producers for making this finally happen and to Netflix for supporting it so generously.

HE response to McBride: Netflix definitely stepped up and saved this film, but at the end of the day we all know that a Netflix streaming berth, though welcome, has a certain arid component. I’m sure you agree that a big whoop-dee-doo Cannes Film Festival debut of The Other Side of the Wind will provide a much-needed moment of emotional satisfaction — completion, closure — for all the players (including Peter Bogdanovich) who’ve been involved for so many decades.

You know that the ghost of Orson Welles will definitely be watching and perhaps even raising a glass a la Celeste Holm at the end of A Letter To Three Wives.