Month: April 2019

I’ve been unpacking boxes and moving things around, and a couple of days ago I came across this birth announcement. I sent it out to 40 or 50 friends nearly 31 years ago. I forget where I had it assembled, pasted down and duplicated but it was a bit of a project. Something like this today would take two or three hours to write and design on a Macbook Pro, and copies on any kind of paper stock could be handled at any Kinkos. In an odd sort of way it was more satisfying to do stuff like this when it was harder and took more of your time.

Jett became an excellent fellow all around. He’s smarter than me in some ways, and generally more of an adult. He got married a year and a half ago; he and Cait live in Jersey City with Joey (a pit bull) and Luna (a kind of beagle). I don’t see enough of him, but I’m probably not the only father who feels this way.

I became acquainted with actor-director Demian Bichir during the 2011-’12 Oscar season, or roughly seven and a half years ago. I was one of the more passionate supporters of his lead performance in Chris Weitz‘s A Better Life. Bichir wound up being Oscar-nominated for same. We became friendly acquaintances during this period (saw each other at a few Oscar-season events, exchanged messages) and have kept in occasional touch since.

In 2011 Bichir was going with model-actress Stefanie Sherk, who at the time was 37 years old. I never spoke with her outside the usual party chatter. She and Demian later married, although I’m not sure exactly when. They lived together in Sherman Oaks.

Yesterday Bichir announced on Instagram that Sherk, 43, had died on 4.20. It’s been reported that Sherk was found dead at the bottom of the couple’s swimming pool on 4.12. It was reported today that Sherk died by her own hand. The Daily Mail‘s Lauren Freun and Jabeen Waheed reported that the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner has ruled her death a suicidal drowning.

I’ve been in touch with Demian; I hope and trust he’ll get through this horrible, impossibly sad episode.

Netflix will begin streaming Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese on 6.12. I’m naturally presuming that the concert-tour doc will be more or less in the vein of Scorsese’s The Last Waltz or Shine A Light. Netflix copy: “Part documentary, part concert film and part fever dream, Scorsese’s film captures the troubled spirit of America in 1975 and the joyous music that Dylan performed during the fall of that year” and describes it as “part documentary, part concert film, part fever dream.” The night before the official release (or on 6.11), Netflix will screen the film around the globe on a one-night-only basis — London, Paris, Washington, D.C., Nashville, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Boston, Austin, Dallas, Houston, Portland, Tulsa, Tempe, Chicago, Cleveland, Minneapolis, Bologna and Sydney. The film will also screen in New York and Los Angeles, but on an extended basis.

The unofficial new title of Bond 25 is Jamaica, Mon…Dig It. Daniel Craig vs. Rami Malek as the bad guy. Caretaker producer Barbara Broccoli: “Bond is not on active service when the film starts. He is enjoying himself in Jamaica. We consider Jamaica Bond’s spiritual home. He starts his journey here.” Director Cary Fukunaga is saying with an apparently straight face that “Daniel is my favorite Bond”….bullshit! The 1962 model of Sean Connery is everyone’s favorite Bond, and I don’t want to hear any more about this. Back for more are costars Ralph Fiennes, Ben Whishaw, Naomi Harris, Jeffrey Wright, Rory Kinnear and Lea Seydoux.

Jamaica, Mon…Dig It will open in theaters on 4.8.20.

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There is, I believe, one overriding reason why Joe Biden is polling really well among registered, likely-to-vote Democrats: the Democrats being polled are older and backwards-gazing and lazy as fuck. They don’t like new; they like tried and true. And the sum total of their Biden thinking is more or less “smilin’, mellow Joe was Barack’s vp and best bruh…let’s have more of that.”

Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are good, wise and reasonably principled fellows, but they both need to be shut down. It sounds harsh to say that, I realize, but it’s true. They won’t go away on their own determinations so they both need to be toppled from their trusty steeds and slain with terrible swift swords. For the good of the country and the hopefully vibrant future of the Democratic party, they must be sent on their way. Because they’re both too old. Yes, it’s that simple.

From “The Case For and Against Joe Biden’s 2020 Chances“, by CNN’s Harry Enten: “A lot of the attacks on Biden are, from an electoral angle, silly. Going after Biden for his lack of liberal wokeness, for example, seems destined to fail, given that the polling shows that Democrats want the party to move in a more moderate direction.

“Biden’s age is more likely to derail his candidacy. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll taken in late February showed that only 33% of Democrats would feel enthusiastic or comfortable nominating someone older than 75. A 2013 study by political scientists Jens Hainmueller, Daniel J. Hopkins and Teppei Yamamoto came to a similar conclusion. Candidates older than 75 were penalized compared to younger candidates.
Biden, of course, would be 78 years old on Inauguration Day 2021.

“[Could] Democrats be opposed to an older candidate in the abstract? Sure. The yearning for a younger candidate may be a weak preference that could be overturned based on who is running. After all, Biden and the even older Sanders are doing well in the polls right now.

“Still, it’s important to note how low 33%, the percentage of people who would feel comfortable or enthusiastic supporting someone over the age of 75, is. It’s about equal to the percentage of Democrats who would be enthusiastic or comfortable backing an evangelical Christian or businessman. I’ve pointed out before that Democrats seemed to be penalizing candidates in early polls who were mainly known as businessmen.

“The fact that Biden is called ‘Sleepy Joe’ by Trump and is known to make gaffes may open the age question more than polling indicates right now.

“I’ve written previously on how the Democratic Party is more moderate and older than you probably think it is. About 50% of Democratic voters call themselves moderate or conservative, which is about the same percentage that are at least 50 years old. Most Democratic candidates running this year don’t seem to recognize that fact.

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After reading my Long Shot review, I received a message from a New York guy who shall remain nameless.

New York guy: I laughed from start to finish while watching Long Shot. I guess that means I’m 13.
Hollywood Elsewhere: Glad you, uhm, enjoyed it. I guess.
New York guy: And Booksmart is tremendous.
Hollywood Elsewhere: I don’t trust you on Booksmart if you also loved Long Shot. The word on the street is that it was overhyped at SXSW, and that it’s being overhyped right now.
New York guy: Fine — be that way. Booksmart has a few draggy moments, but they are brief.

Hollywood Elsewhere highly recommends Avengers: Endgame at any hour, but it’s an especially good idea to catch it very early in the morning. Between 4 am and 6 am or thereabouts, I mean. Which ticket-buyers will be able to do. I’m presuming, at 17 locations for four days straight, starting Thursday night.

I’m urging this because one of the most vivid screenings of my life happened when I attended a 5 am showing of THX 1138, which was part of a 24-hour science-fiction marathon. I was barely awake but felt very alive and open-pored when I arrived at the theatre at 4:40 am. The 5 am wake-up screening was a revelation in that I came out floored by THX 1138. Every little thing that George Lucas intended, I got. Especially the humor. I’ve been convinced ever since that the very early wee hours (following three or four hours of sleep) is the best time to see a movie.

The closest thing to a super-early show at the AMC Century City 15 happens on Friday at 6:45 am in the IMAX theatre. There’s a 3:30 am show in the Dolby theatre, but unless you’re somehow able to crash between 10 pm and 1 am beforehand that sounds like a tough one.

The Hollywood Reporter‘s Pamela McLintock reports that 29 AMC locations will be open around-the-clock Thursday, 4.25 through Friday, 4.26, while an additional 18 theaters are scheduled to be open around the clock between Thursday through Saturday, 4.27, or or between Friday and Sunday, 4.28. Only 17 AMC plexes are scheduled to be open around the clock Thursday night through Sunday, or for 96 hours straight.

To judge by the laughter at a recent press screening, Long Shot (Lionsgate, 5.3) is going to be a hit. Not to mention the Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic ratings of 86 and 71, respectively. Just don’t call it anything but a bizarre nerd fantasy, or more precisely a Seth Rogen romantic-sexual fantasy fortified by director Jonathan Levine, screenwriters Dan Sterling and Liz Hannah, and a team of producers including costar Charlize Theron.

What if a bearded, bulky-bod, hairy-chested journalist with an extremely blunt and adolescent writing style and a name (i.e., Fred Flarsky) that says “I’m a dork”…what if the current U.S. Secretary of State, a 40ish foxy type named Charlotte Field (Theron), used to babysit Flarsky (Rogen) when he was 10 or 11 and she was 16 or thereabouts, and is now thinking about running for President because the current Oval Office occupant wants to become a bigtime movie actor?

And what if Flarsky suddenly meets Field at a party and (a) they recognize and reminisce, (b) she decides to hire him as a speechwriter because she needs a guy who writes like a pissed–off seventh grader but also (c) quickly develops an attraction for Flarsky, and before you know it is doing him six ways from Sunday? And then love enters the picture and the movie is suddenly about values.

Given the extremely improbable story line in Long Shot, I figured they’d try to aim it at a late-teen sensibility, perhaps even at 20 or 22 year-olds. Low and semi-coarse and therefore “funny”, but occasionally sounding and behaving like, say, a Seth Rogen-flavored In The Loop. Remember that Armando Iannucci film? How fast and sharp it was? How skillful and sure-footed?

Well, guess what? In The Loop isn’t stupid enough for the Long Shot crowd. It isn’t stoned or digressive or downmarket or druggy enough. (There’s a scene in which Seth and Charlize drop some “Molly” in Paris.)

Long Shot, alas, is aimed at a 13 year-old mentality. Okay, a 14 year-old mentality. Every line, every scene save for three or four half-decent moments (did I hear a Brett Ratner joke in there somewhere?) plays to the stoners and dipshits in the cheap seats, otherwise known as the Seth Rogen crowd.

This would be totally forgivable, of course, if Long Shot was funny, but it’s not. When you play it this broadly and this coarse, when every bit and line is written and played on an obviously farcical but brainless jack–off level without the slightest respect for the venal but semi-grown-up political milieu out there or for human behavior as most of us know it, IT’S NOT FUCKING FUNNY.

I wrote Long Shot off (and I mean right the hell off) in the opening scene when Flarsky is stuck in an apartment full of Jew-hating neo-Nazis who are looking to beat him senseless because he’s been pretending to be an anti-Semite with his audio recorder going, and so he needs to get the hell out of there. So Flarsky dives out of a second-story window and slams into a parked car 15 feet below — a fall that would’ve put Evel Kneivel in the hospital for at least six months. Flarsky groans a bit but gets up and stumbles down the street.

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There’s apparently no stopping Average Joes and Janes from taking vertical video. For whatever reason they just can’t wrap their heads around the idea of tilting their phones to the left so they can get a horizontal capture with a 1.66:1 or 16 x 9 aspect ratio. Which is how every cinematographer, landscape artist and photographer in human history has always composed and presented images. But no longer — Joe and Jane have their own aesthetic. They won’t listen, won’t reconsider…a done deal.

From my early childhood on Hollywood Elsewhere has always shot film and video like Sergei Eisenstein. Okay, during a weak moment or two I may have taken a “portrait” video, but I regret this now and will never repeat if I can help it.

A couple driving home from a fishing trip in Sweden was surprised to encounter not one, but two large animals moving toward their car—first a moose (known as an elk in Europe), and moments later, a bear. https://t.co/cNNfFIO6aV pic.twitter.com/rd2uytw6fh

— ABC News (@ABC) April 24, 2019

I was happy this morning at 6:50 am, researching and Twittering on the soft living-room couch with the hazy morning light just starting to give way to sunshine. The world felt calm and settled and even serene, at least from my vantage point. And then all of a sudden this happened. A baseball-cap-wearing Latino guy with a gas-powered leaf blower! Then my mood turned foul and rancid. Me and hundreds of thousands of other Los Angelenos.

Ten minutes later I read a USA Today story about Tesla CEO Elon Musk having announced yesterday on Twitter that his company will “develop a quiet, electric leaf blower.” Musk sent a follow-up tweet: “Tesla blows.”

USA Today‘s Dalvin Brown reported that “electric leaf blowers already exist” — they do? “But a Tesla version of the silent petal-blowing contraption may actually happen.”

The key question, of course, is whether or not electric leaf blowers will be as affordable as the noisy kind. We all know the answer.