Not quite a full day in Palm Springs. Arrived last evening, up early this morning, hiking in Palm and Andreas canyons, cable-car to the peak of Mount San Jacinto (which I hate visiting because of the tourists) and then back to Los Angeles by 7:30 pm — 22 1/2 hours total.

It was suggested yesterday that in the absence of Movie City News, an industry-news-link aggregation feature could be a major selling point for HE-plus. Hollywood Elsewhere is hereby looking for a sharp journalism graduate to perform this task on a valued-intern basis. You can honestly claim on your resume that you served (are currently serving) as news editor for a prominent, industry-followed site that everyone reads, and you can get yourself into occasional L.A. and N.Y. screenings in exchange. A nice deal.

“Ten years ago at Telluride I said on a panel that theatrical distribution was dying. It seemed obvious to me. I was surprised how many in the audience violently objected: ‘People will always want to go to the movies!’ That’s true but it’s also true that theatrical cinema as we once knew it has died. Theatrical cinema is now Event Cinema, just as theatrical plays and musical performances are Events. No one just goes to a movie. It’s a planned occasion. Four types of Event Cinema remain: 1. Spectacle (IMAX-style blockbusters) 2. Family (cartoon-like features) 3. Horror (teen-driven) and 4. Film Club (formerly arthouse but now anything serious). There are some isolated pockets like black cinema, romcom, girl’s night out, seniors and teen grossouts, but it’s primarily those four. Everything else is TV. Now I have to go back to episode five of Looming Tower.” — posted yesterday on Facebook.

From “First Reformed Asks, Can God Forgive Us? Its Director Has an Answer,” a 6.20 N.Y. Times q & a between First Reformed director Paul Schrader and critic A.O. Scott.

Does Scott still disapprove of Woody Allen despite Moses Farrow’s essay? This has nothing to do with the Schrader q & a, but it irks me all the same.

Scott: “You take the audience into this condition of extremism, but you’re there as if it were a perfectly natural place to be.”

Schrader: “I’ll tell you the trick, and I figured it out years ago. It’s a three-stage trick. First stage is nonemotive narration. So it’s like intravenous feeding. You’re getting nutrition but you can’t taste it.

Than Hawke in First Reformed.

“The next stage is the world is only as our protagonist perceives it. You see no other reality. There’s never a scene that he’s not in. So now you’re seeing his life, you’re being filled up with his thoughts and after about 45 minutes or so, you’ve identified. How could you not identify?

“Then, often slowly, you have to go off the rails a little bit, a little bit, a little bit. The first few times it doesn’t bother you, but then all of a sudden [you’re] saying ‘whoa, I’m identified with somebody that I don’t think is worthy of identification.’ What do I do about that?

“And that’s a great place for an artist to take a viewer because you can’t predict how people will respond when they’re opened up that way, [and so] they’re going to have to do something to defend themselves. Here’s how you can defend yourself: Just take a jump, you know.”

Scott: “On one hand you’re appalled by what he’s contemplating and you realize that you are in some way rooting for…

Schrader: “A jihadist.”

Wells-Antropova impulsively drove out to Palm Springs yesterday. Three elements: (a) the bone-dry, 100-degree heat, (b) a little hiking in Indian Canyon on Sunday morning, and (c) the loud, coarse, after-dark culture on Palm Canyon Drive. The revelers are 90% under-30. No exaggeration — a third of the Palm Springs youth brigade is balloon-shaped, and a fair number of female Jabbas were wearing skin-tight, form-fitting knit dresses…”no apologies, this is who I am.” Karaoke bars (20somethings belting tunes that were popular when their parents were teens), loud bands delivering ’60s standards (“So Glad You Made It,’ “A Hard Day’s Night”). Fellini Satyricon meets Animal House. The elite movie folk who flocked here in the 1930s would be horrified at the devolution of their once-elegant getaway community. Then again the Spanish-styled Casa Cody (HE’s favorite PS hotel) is unchanged, and the rocky-brown hills to the south are eternal.