Month: May 2019

“People like you must create, otherwise you become a menace to society.”

The last trailer for the endlessly bumped Where’d You Go, Bernadette didn’t mention director Richard Linklater. The newbie doesn’t state his name either, but at least it acknowledges it’s “from the director of Boyhood and School of Rock.”

The Annapurna film, which stars Cate Blanchett, Billy Crudup, Emma Nelson, Kristen Wiig, Judy Greer and James Urbaniak and has been described as a “mystery comedy-drama”, opens on August 9th.

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Keanu Reeves answered Stephen Colbert‘s question succinctly and gracefully. Everyone including Colbert approved, but of course KR sidestepped the question. Which struck me as a bit curious given a recollection that Reeves (a) has previously shared heavy-mystical-cat views about the scheme of things (or so I recall) and (b) played Siddartha in a Bertolucci film so he’s been down to the bottom of that well.

HE’s stock reply: “Life is a fountain, and each of us is a drop of water. The fountain shoots us out and we rise gloriously into the air, and then we fall back into the pool and get sucked down and then shoot out again. Okay, some water drops aren’t so glorious but it’s nonetheless a divine, infinite process.”

When the kids were young and asking these kinds of questions I used to say that when we die we become a baby again, except we never remember this. Well, every now and then some claim to.

Stockholm Arlanda is seemingly waaay out in the country. No sprawling suburbs or congested business strips nearby — just mile upon square mile of birch and pine trees, like you’re flying into Savannah. An unusually attractive airport setting. Not oversized, mellow vibe.

Plus it’s also somewhat pleasant to be around all these attractive Swedish people with their Nordic features, blonde hair (although black hair is equally plentiful) and relatively trim physiques. If you’ve done any travelling over the last 10 or 15 years you know that Jabbas are ubiquitious in U.S. airports, but there are almost none here. So it’s a nice place to hang.

During the flight I watched Dog Day Afternoon (’75), and spotted “Tony Lip” — i.e., Anthony Vallelonga, the real-life character who was portrayed by Viggo Mortensen in Green Book. Dog Day Lip is playing a plainclothes detective. He’s glimpsed at the end of the climactic JFK tarmac sequence, or right after John Cazale‘s “Sal” has been shot in the forehead by Lance Henricksen. (Spoiler!).

My Norweigan flight (Boeing 787) to Stockholm leaves at 6 pm, but I’ll be leaving for LAX at 3 pm. I like to arrive early so I can get a little filing done in the lounge. Update: Left at 3:30, traffic was ghastly, arrived at Bradley terminal 100 minutes before flight time.

The flight leaves at 3 am Stockholm time, and arrives at Stockhom- at 1:35 pm local time — 10 and 1/2 hours. Four and a half hours later the Nice flight leaves Stockholm, and arrives at 9 pm Sunday (or 12 noon Los Angeles time). A grand total of 18 hours. Horrific.

Seven topics to write about at LAX and on the plane:

(a) Knock Down The House and Alexandra Occasio Cortez‘s not-good-looking, carrot-haired, beardo boyfriend;

(b) Echoes in the Canyon;

(c) Bad Biden “middle of the road” climate change thinking;

(d) HBO’s Chernobyl;

(e) Zac Efron‘s chilling performance as Ted Bundy in Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile;

(f) The only way I can stand Los Angeles, arguably the ugliest city in the world architecturally (along with Honolulu and three or four others), is to stay indoors in the day and hang out at night in certain soothing, semi-fragrant, aesthetically pleasing pockets; otherwise the ugliness would smother my soul;

(g) My home town of Westfield, New Jersey, where I spent my childhood and early high-school years, hasn’t substantially changed — it looks more or less that same as when I was nine years old. Likewise a Tuscan village called San Donato, which I’ve been visiting off and on for 18 years, has barely changed during that time. Ditto many portions of Paris, Rome and Hanoi. A few small changes but not many. Too bad the world can’t follow suit. Why do populations and economies always have to grow? Why don’t parents just replace themselves instead of creating super-broods?

The late Alvin Sargent was one of Hollywood’s finest and classiest 20th Century screenwriters, especially in the realm of adult relationship dramas. On the same level as Bo Goldman, William Goldman, Ben Hecht, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, David Rayfiel, Paul Schrader, Robert Towne, etc. Ordinary People was the peak, but the runners-up were The Sterile Cuckoo (’69), Paper Moon (’73), Julia (’77), Straight Time (’78, w/ Jeffrey Boam), Dominick and Eugene (’88), Hero (’92 w/ Laura Ziskin and David Webb Peoples) and Unfaithful (w/ William Broyles Jr. — ’02). Toward the end of his career Sargent wrote or co-wrote three or four Spider Man scripts. Alas, his kind of movie had fallen out of favor and paychecks were there for the taking.

If a film’s second weekend grosses are down less than 20%, it’s definitely caught on to some extent. That’s what Lionsgate’s Long Shot is managing as we speak — a “sweet hold of -18%, or $8M, for a 10-day total of $21.6M,” according to Deadline‘s Anthony D’Allessandro. Nothing to necessarily pop champagne over, but better than anticipated. HE hereby apologizes for a 5.9 box-office story that was titled “On The Death of Long Shot.” Everyone spoke a little too soon.

I’m sorry but this morning’s Variety story about veteran hotshots Jeff Sagansky and Harry Sloan launching Diamond Eagle Acquisition Corp. put me to sleep. “$400 million public offering, a means for investors to participate in new players in the media and digital sector”….wilt.

I’ve been reading trade stories about Sagansky since the early ’80s, and the only one that ever sunk in was unsubstantiated and most likely made up. Which is too bad.

The story concerned an alleged 1982 or ’83 meeting between Sagansky, at the time an NBC executive, and legendary director Fred Zinnemann (High Noon, From Here To Eternity, A Man For All Seasons, The Day of the Jackal). Those who told the story explained that Sagansky was a 31-year-old executive whippersnapper at the time, full of beans and ’80s attitude. So Zinneman walks into Sagansky’s office, they shake hands and sit down, and Sagansky says, “So, tell me about yourself!” And Zinneman replies, “You first.”

Earlier today I googled “Sagansky Zinnemann” and found nothing that verified the story. I tried to discover if Zinnemann had met with some other whippersnapper around this period…zip. But I distinctly remember the story kicking around.

Hollywood Elsewhere disappeared this morning due to the gentlemen geniuses at WP Engine, a cloud-linked ISP that I’ve been with since 2017. Five hours of simulated death due to the failure of a shared server + “miscommunications” + largely incompetent WP Engine staffers who did absolutely nothing to improve the situation for hours on end.

WP Engine tried to explain the problem with a lot of bullshit techno-jargon.

While fretting and whining I came upon an eye-opening essay by internet marketer Matthew Woodward, titled “Why Your Business Must Avoid WP Engine At All Costs.” Woodward knows whereof he speaks, and he’s convinced that they’re really bad news.

One way or another I’m separating myself from WP Engine at the first available opportunity. Hollywood Elsewhere has suffered through the usual issues and outages over the years, but the site has never been unconscious for a five-hour stretch. On top of which these jerks tripled their monthly fee from $99 plus overages to $300 last January, and that was for putting me on a shared server with 100 other clients.

I love that this happened a day before leaving for France. And I haven’t begun to pack yet.

Woodward is advising alienated, WordPress-using WP Engine clients to sign up with a Bulgaria-based ISP called WPX Hosting. They have a server in Chicago but they won’t offer phone chats of any kind, even in an emergency.

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