Month: February 2019

Rocketman (Paramount, 5.31) might approach the success of Bohemian Rhapsody, but I doubt it. It certainly won’t match or exceed it. Because while Rami Malek sounded almost exactly like Queen’s Freddie Mercury (his “voice” was a mixture of his own, Freddie himself and a gifted imitator), Taron Egerton sounds like a mediocre Elton John wannabe singing on a cruise ship. The effect doesn’t work, and the movie is going to suffer because of it.

On top of which I hate Egerton’s face — one look and I knew it needed punching — and I really hated those two fucking Kingsman movies and that godawful Robin Hood movie, which earned a 15% Rotten Tomatoes score and lost møney besides.

The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg has posted an oral-history piece about how Harvey Weinstein‘s hard-charging and in some ways ethically shady Best Picture campaign for Shakespeare in Love overwhelmed the campaign for DreamWorks’ Saving Private Ryan.

It’s called “‘Harvey Always Wanted More’: Weinstein, Spielberg and the Oral History of the Nastiest Oscar Campaign Ever.”

Hollywood Elsewhere doesn’t dispute that Weinstein’s Oscar-season blitzkreig was a key factor in Shakespeare in Love winning the Best Picture Oscar, but I’ve always suspected that the main reason was the fact that Saving Private Ryan caused its own defeat.

One, Ryan actually did peak during the 24-minute D-Day Omaha Beach sequence, and two, director Steven Spielberg CHEATED HIS ASS OFF with that early time-jump cut that suggests the old coot having an emotional breakdown in the Omaha Beach cemetery is either Tom Hanks or Edward Burns.

Here’s how the late William Goldman put it in ‘late ’98:

“Hanks is dead, the awful pretentious voice of the actor playing General Marshall is treacling away, we hear ole Honest Abe’s letter again and I am now waiting for the shot of Ed Burns with the big-boobed girls back at the cemetery.

“Why do I know that is coming? Well, only two members of the squad are left [at the end of the film], Burns and the cowardly translator, and I know it can’t be him because he was not with Hanks and the squad during the twenty-four minutes of glory at the start of the film. So it has to be Burns standing there among the graves.

“Now the morphing shot comes, and I am looking at the old face of Matt Damon at the cemetery.

“Well, you can’t do that. Don’t you see, he wasn’t fucking there. He knew nothing of the attack on the beach, knew nothing of the odyssey that followed, and he never had a chance to hear about it. The only spare moment he had was when he was telling us all about his brothers and the ugly girl and setting the barn on fire.

“When he was great, and he was great, Spielberg was a phenomenal storyteller. All gone. That or he doesn’t care.”

Here’s how I put it last year:

“The greatest offense comes from Harrison Young‘s awful over-acting as the 75-year-old Ryan. His face is stricken with guilt as he shuffles through the Omaha Beach cemetery, and he walks like a 90-year-old afflicted with rheumatism.

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To go by this trailer, the marketing strategy behind Leaving Neverland (HBO, 3.6 and 3.7) is to tred as lightly as possible. The allusions are vague but discernible if you listen carefully to what Wade Robson and Jimmy Safechuck are saying, and if you study their facial expressions, etc. I saw the four-hour doc in Park City last month so I’m past the allusion stage. There isn’t the slightest doubt in my mind that Michael Jackson began having man-child sex with these guys at very young ages — when Robson was 7 and Safechuck was 10. Diehard Jackson believers have been denying this all along, but I want to read their tweets after the doc airs.

A statement of temporary support for embattled Empire star Jussie Smollett was issued today by 20th Century Fox Television and Fox Entertainment. It said that Smollett “continues to be a consummate professional on set and, as we have previously stated, he is not being written out of the show.”

In other words, they intend to wait for a final, official and definitive confirmation about Smollett’s alleged complicity in staging a racially-motivated hate attack in Chicago on 1.29.19. Until then, everything’s cool.

There’s no question that the crime spree of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, the bank-robbing desperadoes who killed nine police officers and several civilians, had to be stopped. On 5.23.34 they were ambushed and killed in a Louisiana backwater by a special posse consisting of four Texas-based lawmen (Frank Hamer, B.M. “Manny” Gault, Bob Alcorn, Ted Hinton) and two Louisiana officers (Henderson Jordan, Prentiss Morel Oakley).

A grim but necessary task, okay, but can someone please explain what was so cool and bad-ass about this? Firing 300-plus rounds into two people from a cover of bushes and whatnot, and generally cutting them into ribbons?

John Lee Hancock‘s The Highwaymen (Netfix, 3.29) seems to be selling da coolness. Hamer (Kevin Costner) and Gaulty (Woody Harrerlson) were grizzled and cussy old boys, but they had the balls and the moxie to do the dirty deed. Or something like that.

A whole different mythology was sold by Warren Beatty and Arthur Penn‘s Bonnie and Clyde (’67). Back then there was more of an oppressive socio-economic context — common rural people had been fucked over by the Depression and the predatory banks, and Bonnie and Clyde were wild and reckless enough to just steal whatever the hell they wanted.

Everyone remembers Denver Pyle‘s Frank Hamer — a joyless, moustachioed guy with a pot belly.

“Hollywood is now irrelevant. It was these six movie companies essentially were able to extend their hegemony into everything else. It didn’t matter that they started it. When it got big enough, they got to buy it.

“[But now and] for the first time, they ain’t buying anything. Meaning they’re not buying Netflix. They are not buying Amazon.”

“In other words, it used to be if you could get your hands on a movie studio, you were sitting at a table with only five other people. And so that table dominated media worldwide. That’s over.” — from a 2.18 interview with Recode‘s Kara Swisher.

Posted on 8.17.12: I was riding along last night with the radio on, and “Do You Know The Way To San Jose?” — the 1968 Burt Bachararch-Hal David pop tune that was sung most famously by Dionne Warwick — came on, and for some reason I started thinking about what the lyrics really say.

Here’s what they say: “I fucking quit…this town is too tough for me…this place is full of souless, grasping hustlers, and I’m too spiritual and self-respecting to make it with these hounds.”

This spirited bouncy little tune is basically an anthem for losers. It’s the opposite, spiritually speaking, of the Alicia Keys song “Empire State of Mind” or the hopeful go-getter optimism of “New York, New York” as sung by Liza Minelli and Frank Sinatra.

“Do You Know The Way To San Jose?” is akin to that line in the Atlanta Rhythm Section‘s “I’m Not Gonna Let It Bother Me Tonight” that says “the rats keep winning the rat race.” Which is another way of saying “eff this noise and eff this scene…I’m going back to Bedford Falls where I have friends and loved ones.”

A song that is right between “Do You Know The Way to San Jose?” and “New York New York” is Peter Gabriel‘s “Don’t Give Up,” which was co-sung by Kate Bush.

“Fame and fortune is a magnet / It can pull you far away from home / With a dream in your heart you’re never alone / Dreams turn into dust and blow away / And there you are without a friend / You pack your car and ride away.”

I’ve heard these words spoken by many, many people in real life, and they were all saying the same thing, which is that they came to the big city with initial hopes and dreams, but they lacked the talent and the moxie (which is understood in some circles as “claw-your-way-to-the-top ambition”) and so they were packing it in and moving back to a smaller, less difficult pond. I was on the brink of this myself in the early days, but I grimmed up and doubled down and finally broke through.

The world is for the few.

A friend comments: “Interestingly Warwick was on CBS Sunday Morning this week and mentioned this song as the only one she truly hates.”

The great Tony Curtis died eight and a half years ago — on 9.29.10. A decade earlier I had a great little lunch-hour interview with the guy. It happened in a Starbucks at the Beverly Glen shopping plaza. Curtis wasn’t a dodger or side-stepper — all name-brand actors are bullshitters to some extent, but I didn’t sense much from him. Well, a little.
‘
Halfway through our session I handed Curtis a list of the 120 films he’d starred or costarred in and asked him to check the ones he’s genuinely proud of. He checked 18 — a fairly standard batting average. Screen actors who’ve made it big or starred in zeitgeist button-pushers (like Sweet Smell of Success or Some Like It Hot) are always sent the best scripts. For a few years at least.

Curtis didn’t check The Vikings. He didn’t check The Outsider. He checked Houdini. Every film he made after Spartacus in 1960 up until 1968’s The Boston Strangler, he didn’t check. He checked his role as a pair of mafiosos — Louis ‘Lepke’ Buchalter in 1975’s Lepke and Sam Giancana in the 1986 TV movie Mafia Princess.

I wrote in a March 2000 piece that Curtis enjoyed his hot streak from the early ’50s to roughly ’68 — a 16-year run. The truth is that Curtis’s streak had that special incandescence (critical huzzahs + big paydays) for only four or five years.

Curtis wouldn’t have becomes “Tony Curtis” if he hadn’t starred or costarred in Sweet Smell of Success (’57), The Vikings (’58), The Defiant Ones (’58), Some Like It Hot (’59), Spartacus (’60) and The Outsider (’61) — six films in all plus The Boston Strangler (’68) for a total of seven. Plus that great little voice cameo as Donald Baumgarten in Rosemary’s Baby.

Which leads to a question: Which present-day heavyweight actors are in the same position that Curtis was in the late ’60s? Actors or actresses who’ve done a lot of great work over the years, but who no longer have the heat and are most likely never going to enjoy a reoccurence. That probably covers the vast majority of above-the-title actors, but nobody ever said this town was a bowl of cherries.

“Few modern films are as riveting as Jonathan Demme‘s The Silence of the Lambs, which swept the 1992 Oscars and whose central villain (besides Hannibal Lecter) is the wannabe transsexual Jame Gumb (played by Ted Levine) who happens to be a serial killer — a character, according to Demme, who simply hated himself and wished he was a woman.

“This brilliant and terrifying movie contained a handful of memorable movie characters (from Hannibal to Clarice Starling to Dr. Frederick Chilton to U.S. Sen. Ruth Martin to, yes, Jame Gumb) who are all in a swirling pitch-black thriller for adults and not starring in a public service announcement. It wasn’t concerned with ideology or representation (though in many ways it is a feminist movie), and its main focus was to simply tell a gripping story with everyone working at the peak of their craft.

“One gets the terrible feeling that this classic would never be made today, let alone win the Oscar, in our current culture where everyone is screeching about victimhood and inclusivity and representation and identity politics — all of which distort reality and have absolutely nothing to do with creating art.

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In early July of ’76 my girlfriend Sophie and I were hanging in the back yard of a two-story Paris home on rue du Bac. It was the storied residence ** of Georges and Francois Raymond, a 40ish couple for whom Sophie has worked as au pair girl. A nice hot day, tall glasses of iced tea on a serving tray, relaxation all around.

Anyway we were taking turns shooting at a paper target with a heavy-duty, spring-loaded pellet gun, and as Georges was loading a part sprang loose and slammed into his abdomen. He had to be in awful pain, but Georges held his breath, clenched his teeth, didn’t make a sound. I remember thinking to myself, “Wow…tough material.”

That’s not me. I’m about to start my third day of godawful rib pain due to my falling accident in the Sierras last Sunday afternoon, and I’ve probably said “owww!” at least 30 or 40 times since the incident. I’ve also said “aagghh!” and “oh, God!” and “fuck fuck fuck!” a few times. I’ve also said “Jesus H. Christ!”

As much as I admire the Georges Raymond or Lee Marvin approach to pain (acknowledge but don’t succumb, no crying or moaning) I can’t live up to it. I’ll talk a tough game but when serious pain comes a callin’ I’m a wuss.

Every physical movement that requires the slightest use of back or rib-area muscles hurls me into the worst pain dungeon I’ve ever experienced in my life. Coughing is agony. Just raising my right arm can be murder. I’ve barely been able to sleep in the conjugal bed (no shifting positions, strictly on my back) but for some reason I’ve been able to nap on the couch in the wee hours. I can’t dress or undress without pain. I’ve had to ask Tatyana for help putting on jeans, slipping on socks, tying shoelaces, etc.

I was so distracted this morning I couldn’t make myself write. My adjustable cane is my constant companion, and it doesn’t help very much. I’ll be visiting a CVS later this afternoon to buy one of those supported rib-brace bandages. I’ve discovered a few Tramadol in my bathroom cabinet, which at least is something. Tomorrow I have a 2 pm appointment with a holistic chiropractor named Fernando Mata, whom I went to in ’13 after lifting heavy boxes up some stairs and screwing up my back big-time. There’s a strap-on heating pad arriving sometime this afternoon via Amazon. What else can I do?

Oh, to be where I was last Saturday, not a pain or care in the world, happy and speeding on a Nevada highway.

1:30 pm update: I’ve decided to go see a holistic chiropractor at 2 pm. A local guy, Santa Monica Blvd., takes some insurance but not mine.

** The Raymond home has a long tunnelled driveway right off rue du Bac, and this part of the home was used by the What’s New, Pussycat? people when they shot in Paris in ’65.

From the second half of a 2008 HE piece called “Obama 2.0,” posted on 8.25.08. It alludes to Beto O’Rourke and the notion that Presidential candidates have to be deeply experienced with the right kind of governmental background, etc.

“A guy on a Yahoo answer page wrote the following about two weeks ago, to wit: ‘Experience is evidently not a reliable measure. When judging presidential performance vs. their experience, it’s all over the map. No reasonable correlation between experience and performance exists.

“Of course, the same is true in business. For example, most of the computer companies that are now mega-corporations were started by kids in garages.

“I myself got hired by a very big, very famous company into a pretty important position with no experience, I just convinced them to do it. I wound up being one of their two top performing executives and brought very significant turnaround to several departments in the company. No experience.

“Nowadays, I hire people because of what they can do, not what they have done (or not).

“If experience was so important, then only the top senators would have a chance in elections, the ones that have been in the senate for 25 years or more. Has this been the case? Ever?

“Experience does not matter, either to performance nor to the American people. Because we’re smarter than that. Experience doesn’t guarantee a person — it just tells you about what type of person they are.”

Most of us, I suspect, are at least half-convinced that the alleged attack upon Empire costar Jussie Smollett was performed and not real. Given the latest reports there doesn’t seem to be any way to dodge this tentative conclusion.

Smollett apparently paid Olabinjo and Abimbola Osundairo to “attack” him on 1.29 in the Streeterville section of Chicago, “according to multiple sources with direct knowledge of the investigation.”

If things pan out as they seem to be panning out, this episode obviously indicates a worrisome pathology and a reckless streak. Not to mention a lack of street smarts.

And yet no one was physically harmed and no real felonies were committed. It was basically a self-produced staging of live political theatre.

My prevailing reaction is one of sympathy for the poor guy. To go to all this trouble and obviously risk his whole career…words fail. But I don’t believe in capital punishment. I believe in therapy and potential probation and temporary exile (i.e., Moses in the desert) and second chances.

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