Month: January 2019

During the mid-fall of 1987 I had a couple of chats with director Herbert Ross. I was the press kit writer for Cannon Films, and Ross’s Dancers, a mezzo-mezzo Mikhail Baryshnikov film, was being prepared for release. During our second chat I was asking Ross about something I wanted to put into the Dancers press kit, and somehow I miscommunicated my intention and Ross got the idea I was trying to debate him. “This isn’t that kind of conversation!,” he said sternly, almost shouting. I immediately backpedaled and started mewing like a kitten — “No, no, Mr. Ross…I apologize, that’s not what I meant, I’m sorry.”

I cooled him down but after hanging up I said to myself, “Jesus God, that is one fierce hombre! He was ready to take my head off!”

Seven and a half years ago I tapped out a piece called “Bastards vs, Mellowheads.” It basically said that directors have to be muscular, tough-ass mofos or they won’t last. That doesn’t mean they don’t or shouldn’t play the sweet-talk, back-rub game that the film industry more or less runs on, but they have to guard against people trying to roll over them 24/7. If they over-react to this pressure they become known as crazy hotheads; if they under-react they’ll get seriously bitten or eaten by this or that carnivore.

“All strong directors are sons of bitches,” John Ford allegedly said to screenwriter Nunnally Johnson sometime in the late ’40s or early ’50s. His point was that Johnson, in Ford’s view, was too nice, thoughtful and fair-minded to make it as a director. Directors basically can’t be mellow or gentle or accommodating. They need to be tough, pugnacious and manipulative mofos in order to get what they want. And if they’re too deferential, they won’t last.

After the piece ran Wes Anderson got angry with me for mentioning him in this context. But I had done so with respect. Wes is no pushover, no wallflower. All I said in the original piece was that occasionally he seemed to exemplify hard-core battlefield thinking. All movies are wars — enemies all around, one skirmish after another, betrayal lurking, bullets whizzing by your ears

All good directors (Mann, Stone, Tarantino, Cameron, Kurosawa, Nichols, Kubrick) are known to have operated like this in their prime. They don’t kissy-face or twinkle-toe their way through the making of a film — they stress and scheme and argue and finagle to get whatever they want any way they can. Making a movie with them is an organized, guns-blazing, duck-and-weave enterprise that requires hard work. It’s no day at the beach.

That aside all smart, socially attuned directors go out of their way to not be mean or manipulative, of course, being political animals and all. But deep down they have to be that snarly John Ford guy, or the system will eat them up.

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I’ve finally paid attention to the Jeff and Mackenzie Bezos divorce and the presumed 50-50 splitting of his $137 billion fortune. It’s a familiar scenario. If a super-rich guy has been married for a couple of decades to a quality-level, less-than-dynamically-alluring wife and business partner, sooner or later he’s going to cash out and trade up for a seemingly more cultured, erotically enticing, world-class newbie.

Alpha guys want women who will make them look good and enhance their brand. When they schmooze with other captains of industry in Sun Valley they want ostensibly classy, well-educated women who read books — women with depth and superior genes and excellent cheekbone structure (or, failing that, women who’ve had first-rate “work” done). Remember that Moneyball line about how “a homely girlfriend means no confidence“? Guys everywhere accept that analogy.

But the recent reporting about private sexting between Bezos and Lauren Sanchez? God, that’s grotesque. The reporting, I mean. How low can you go?

Legendary producer and studio chief Alan Ladd, Jr. has long been regarded as one of the good guys — a smart, well-respected industry fellow who had quite a run from the mid ’70s to early ’90s.

Ladd was the intrepid 20th Century Fox-based producer of George Lucas‘s Star Wars, promoting and guarding it during a notoriously dicey era when Fox execs feared it might be a clunker. A year or so later his regime also produced Ridley Scott‘s Alien.

After launching The Ladd Company in ’79, “Laddie” produced or otherwise backed Chariots of Fire, Night Shift, Blade Runner, The Right Stuff, Police Academy, The Right Stuff, Moonstruck, A Fish Called Wanda, Thelma & Louise and Gone Baby Gone.

A classy, conservatively dressed, soft-spoken guy who was never much for interviews or colorful quips, “Laddie” — the son of ’40s and ’50s superstar Alan Ladd — was widely respected by filmmakers. Like Warner Bros. honcho John Calley, Ladd brandished something that very few producers would dare to mention in 2019 — upmarket taste. He even occasionally found the balls to take creative risks on what he believed was first-rate material.

He was also the guy who didn’t seem to strongly believe in Blade Runner (he insisted that Harrison Ford record a narration track) and who released a truncated cut of Sergio Leone‘s Once Upon A Time in America for its initial release. (Leone’s director’s cut version is the one everyone thinks of today.) And Laddie had a terrible time as the head of MGM in the mid ’80s, when the company was owned by fraudster Giancarlo Parretti

The trailer for Amanda Ladd-Jones‘ Laddie: The Man Behind The Movies strongly suggests it’ll be a cottonball portrait — basically Laddie’s filmmaker pallies telling us what a shrewd, dependable and admirable guy he was, etc. Ladd-Jones is his daughter — the chances of her delivering even a hint of a warts-and-all approach are probably somewhere between slim and none.

I’m nonetheless interested in catching it at the American Cinematheque on Friday, 1.18. The AC’s website informs that the doc runs 184 minutes — almost certainly a typo. If this was the actual running time, I would be genuinely excited.

Remember the good old days when Oscar-season takedowns weren’t about offending the woke twitter comintern?

Not that Oscar contenders shouldn’t be taken to task (sharply reprimanded but not necessarily killed) if some form of ghastly conduct comes to light, but remember when widely–read opinion pieces were the talk of the town, and which sometimes helped determine the Oscar fate of this or that film or performance?

Like, for example, the late William Goldman‘s controversial hit piece about Martin Scorsese‘s Gangs of New York (“Crashing The Party for Poor Marty”), which ran in Variety on 2.2.03?

Did Goldman kill Gangs at the Oscars? Maybe to some extent, but Gangs mainly killed itself. Scorsese’s brutally violent historical epic was nominated for 10 Oscars, and won exactly none. Reason: Nobody really liked it. Four years later Scorsese’s The Departed won the Best Picture Oscar. Reason: People liked it.’

Green Book has been twittered to death, but where is the definitive William Goldman-esque takedown of A Star Is Born? Oh, how I wish Bill was still among us so he could bang it out. If he was still here and in good health, he’d almost certainly write about (a) the first drop-out moment (i.e., when he stopped believing in Bradley Cooper‘s film), and (b) how it’s probably not the greatest idea since the invention of sound to give the Best Picture Oscar to a remake of a remake of a remake of a remake — i.e., the fifth version of a showbiz saga that dates back 86 years.

Here’s the Goldman vs. Gangs piece:

“I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am sick unto death of feeling guilty about Martin Scorsese.

“Here are the names of five great directors: Charlie Chaplin, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick and Orson Welles. What do they have in common? For all their fame and brilliance, none has won the Oscar for best direction.

“Neither has Scorsese.

“Should the five have won? Absolutely. But it’s not a mortal sin they didn’t. Should Scorsese? You bet. A couple of times. Taxi Driver, obviously. Raging Bull, obviously. But I fell in love with his talent earlier on, with Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.

“This year, more than ever, it’s like there’s a Byzantine plot to get Scorsese the honor. As if the phonier critics all dropped to their knees and looked up at the Hollywood Gods, going in unison, ‘Oh pwease, we twied so hard wif Kundun, we even twied wif Bwing Out the Dead, so pwease pwease wet Marty win this year, he wants it sooooo bad.”

“That he does. The Hollywood parties he is attending must make him want to barf, but there is, glad-handing anyone in the vicinity who is an Academy member who might throw him a vote.

“Miramax, the greatest movie company of the era (and the most brutal — and maybe they have to go together) is so all-out for Scorsese it’s heart-stopping. They do a brilliant job and I honor that — but I will never forgive them for hyping the Oscar to Roberto Benigni, the scummiest award in the Academy’s history. And I suspect Scorsese will win too.

“But he sure doesn’t deserve it, not this year. Because Gangs of New York is a mess.

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I’m delighted with our West Hollywood abode — two cats, great location, hardwood floors, nicely furnished, low rent — but there’s this guy upstairs with a loud voice. He’s one of those friendly smoothie types, and totally in love with his own honky voicebox — actually a combination of a foghorn and a French horn.

The problem is that he bellows in a mild sort of way — his voice volume is always set to at least eight — with occasional high-pitched giggles and tee-hees. Always on the phone, always chuckling and smooth-talking his pallies and always extra-double audible.

My guess is that deep down this guy is some kind of frustrated talk-show host or March of Dimes charity emcee, but I’m telling you that listening to that honking voice for hours on end is awful.

Most people who’ve been decently raised and acquired a little cultivation understand by the time they’re ten or twelve that there are three voice levels in polite society — (a) intimate (low), (b) conversational (medium) and (c) addressing people in a Madrid bullfight stadium without a microphone (the guy upstairs).

Foghorn Leghorn doesn’t know, doesn’t care, can’t be bothered…he just adores that wonderfully lulling sound, that calming vocal-chord vibration, that feeling of being the ostensible “charmer” with the smoothly braying donkey voice. On top of which he has heavy feet — he’s always clomping around, which is another indication of a lack of couth.

Needless to add this guy represents a common plague of the modern age — loud, coarse people who are more or less indifferent to the fact that they might be aurally torturing (or at least afflicting) others nearby. Guys like this are all over. A couple of summers ago I was sitting with Tatyana at an outdoor table at Cafe Camille, and we were rolling our eyes about the sound of four or five Ugly Americans a couple of tables away who couldn’t (wouldn’t) keep their voices down. I got into trouble when I complained about this syndrome in 2010 — my mistake was mentioning that the ethnicity of the bellowers.

Over the last year or so I’ve noted certain apparent similarities between Tatyana Antropova and Vladimir Putin, and I mean that as a compliment. A brilliant organizer-manager (at which she excelled during her peak professional years in Russia), Tatyana is nothing if not bright and shrewd and skilled at divining the ins and outs of the fluctuating American zeitgeist. Commercially, culturally or spiritually, she’s constantly separating the wheat from the chaff — sniffing, exploring, comparing, assessing.

Tatyana is on Twitter, of course, and a fervent Instagram and Facebook player, of course, and while driving around she’s a total WAZE hound (and can’t speak poorly enough of Google Maps). If she was a professional gambler she’d be the Russian Amarillo Slim. Plus she hates the noisy guy upstairs as much as I do, and has excellent taste in clothing and interior design, and over the last couple of years has blended into Los Angeles culture as well as can be expected, and probably better than most other Russian expats.

Tatyana’s command of English is 90% to 95% “there”, and to her credit she’s always asking about this or that noun or verb or slang expression. (She’s obviously way ahead of me in terms of being bilingual and understanding the gist of many European tongues.) But one thing she hasn’t mastered, English-wise, is modifying her strong Russian accent. Which I, selfish to the last, find delightful.

Tatyana is a go-getter, as noted, but her first stabs at pronouncing this and that are sometimes fascinating and always, for me, heartwarming. I love her mispronunciations, and how it sometimes takes two or three minutes of question-and-answer discussions to get to the bottom of things. If I was a better partner I’d be a tougher taskmaster, but I can’t help but be charmed.

The other day it was about “Hahnray BOHNduhl.” I eventually discerned that she was talking about Henri Bendel, the financially struggling women’s accessory chain. The correct pronunciation is “AhnREE BenDELL.” I guarantee that most under-40 American female customers mispronounce it also — 90% of them probably say “Henry BENdul.” The difference between Tatyana and American women is that she’s always correcting herself, always sharpening her game. Most younger American women? Maybe not so much. Because they have nothing to prove.

Tatyana and I attended a special gathering Friday night for Cold War director Pawel Palikowski and star Joanna Kulig. The elegant affair happened at the Brentwood home of producer and hostess supreme Colleen Camp. A sea of faces both familiar and distinguished — Alexander Payne, Michael Mann, Phillip Noyce, Helen Hunt, Dustin Hoffman, David O. Russell, Robert Towne, screenwriter Michael Tolkin, producers Art Linson and Albert Berger. It was great speaking with Kulig (due to give birth to a son in early February) and her husband, documentarian Maciek Bochniak. The evening ended with Kulig singing three songs, accompanied by a skilled, low-key pianist and a stand-up bassist. (I regret that the videos I took were unsteady and poorly angled.) Awesome buffet, desserts to die for. A special thanks to Camp for her gracious hospitality.

Waiting for valet guys outside Colleen Camp home — Friday, 1.11, 10:45 pm.

Have any HE readers recently accepted the Bird Box challenge? Which is to say have they attempted any activities that normally require eyesight while blindfolded? Has anyone tried to play darts, make an omelette, sit on top of a flagpole, walk a tightrope, cross a traffic-heavy boulevard or build a house of cards without using their eyes?

[Click through to full story on HE-plus]

Posted on 12.22.13: We all know Springsteen’s “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out.” Well, here’s an early ’70s occurence called “Gas Pedal Space-Out.”

We were all young and wasted and riding around the wilds of Wilton, Connecticut. Five of us, no direction in mind, maybe 11 pm or midnight. Wilton is exurbia — all shady and winding country roads with woods all over, woods and big lawns and colonial rock walls guarding homes on two and three-acre lots. I was sitting shotgun with two others in front and three in back, and I swear to God the episode is as clear now as if it happened last night.

While engaged in a fairly mesmerizing conversation (are there any other kind when you’re fried on cannabis sativa?) the driver gradually forgot to keep his foot on the gas. The car went slower and slower until it came to a dead stop. And nobody noticed for a good five or ten minutes, of course, until some guy pulled up behind and flashed his lights and honked. If it had been a Wilton patrolman he would have have searched the car and our pockets, and somebody would have been popped for possession.

Two or three years earlier the same driver was motoring across a bridge in Kansas City with four or five friends. Somebody had a recently-bought ounce of something potent. They were all passing a pipe around when someone noticed a cop behind them. Instant paranoia. “Be cool, just be cool,” etc. Then the cop flashed his lights and gave a short blast with the siren, and the person with the bag decided the only thing to do was dump the contents out the window. He poured it out the driver’s side window and, sure enough, the finely-ground pot blew right back into the car, covering everyone and everything.

Here and now. Anyone who was getting high in the ’70s or ’80s has at least a couple of stories like this. I asked this five years ago and I’m asking again in 2019: Has anyone ever experienced a late-night car slowing and then stopping for the above-described reason?

Posted on 5.11.13: I had an issue today with the wonderful people at Superfit, a health club in Berlin Charlottenberg (Wilmersdorferstrasse 54). I wanted to just hit the treadmill and use some of the machinery, but I didn’t think to bring sweats or shorts with me to Europe. So I tried to skirt the fashion norm by paying my 10 euro-per-day fee and using the facilities with my Nike workout shoes and jeans. Yes, I know, of course — jeans don’t pass muster in a workout club. It’s not cool and I get that. They’re totally right. But I was looking for a little leniency.

Call me a cheapskate but I just couldn’t see shelling out 20 or 25 euros for a pair of bathing suit trunks or gray sweatpants so I could pay 10 euros to do two miles on a treadmill for one time. I was being a pain and a bit obstinate, okay, but was it really that crazy to ask for a little slack? As a one-time deal?

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