A day or two after the passing of Peter Fonda author and film scholar Joe McBride posted a Facebook comment about Roger Corman‘s The Wild Angels (’66), in which Fonda played the first significant role as a motorcycle-riding guy. McBride called it a much better film than Dennis Hopper‘s Easy Rider (’69), in which Fonda played his second significant role astride a Harley.
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This was told to me second-hand. It happened to a Connecticut guy whose high-school nickname was Jungle. (And was later changed to Nate.) Sometime in the early ’70s at some outdoor rock concert, the name of which escapes. But the godly Allman Brothers were on stage and performing “Ain’t Wastin’ Time No More”…sturdy sound, chugging rhythm, heavy bass and drums.
Jungle was all the way in front, maybe 15 feet from the stage, and “tripping his brains out”, as that phrase goes. And thinking, as people on halucinogens sometimes do, about the spiritual currents in his life and how he needed to stop fucking around like some doobie-smoking hippie loser and really get going.
Jungle somehow climbed up even closer to the stage. And as he listened, having scaled a fence of some kind, to the mighty thundering Allmans, he stepped out of the immediate and saw himself at a metaphorical midway point in his life, situated between this mythical super-group (symbols of power, strength and divine purpose) and the scurvy, grungy hippies below.
Jungle turned to the crowd and looked at the hippies and particularly some pathetic beardo in cutoffs and sandals (“Spare change, man?”). Again Jungle looked at the band, and then a muscular spasm went through his body as he said to himself “Jesus God, this is me…this is my choice…and I’m not gonna be a fucking hippie any more! From here on I’m with the Allmans, which is to say the realm of focus, control, vision, hard work and discipline…no more fucking around! ‘Cause I ain’t wastin’ time no more!”
Congratulations to Quentin Tarantino and wife Daniella Pick on their announcement that a baby is on the way. Whatever the child’s gender, he/she will naturally be subjected to a relentless education about film. By the age of seven or eight he/she probably will have seen each and every Sam Fuller film ever made, and will be able to recite the release years of each, the principal cast members, the cinematographer and aspect ratio used, etc. Not to mention the films of Sergio Leone, Martin Scorsese, Howard Hawks, Richard Linklater, Brian DePalma, etc. By the time the kid is ten he/she will be blase about visiting the major film festivals. I could go on and on. His/her future is all mapped out.
Having opened in Poland on 7.26 and in Lithuania on 8.2, and with openings in Greece (8.22), the Netherlands (8.29) and Turkey (8.30) over the next few days, Woody Allen‘s A Rainy Day in New York will open the Deauville American Film Festival on 9.6. Followed by openings in France (9.18), the Czech Republic and Slovakia (9.26), Spain (10.4), Italy (10.10) and Vietnam (10.11).
And then the grand Mexico opening on 10.25, which will be celebrated by Hollywood Elsewhere with an actual visit to one of Tijuana’s megaplexes. I’m presuming that a subtitled version will be viewable somewhere.
Catching Rainy Day in Tijuana unfortunately involves an agonizing four-hour drive, give or take. It’s one of the most miserable things you can do in life, slogging it out on the 405 and 5 south, stop and go, hour after hour, miserable San Diego traffic, border backup, etc. The only way to beat it is to leave on Thursday and come back on Saturday.
I haven’t been to Mexico in six or seven years so as long as I’m doing this I might as well rent a modest room in Poco Cielo (south of Rosarito Beach) and have a nice dinner at the storied La Fonda, which has the greatest outdoor balcony overlooking the sea. La Fonda suffered a fire a couple of months ago, I’m told. Party animals were apparently to blame.
Consider this view without considering the source: “Liberals have become utterly, pathetically illiberal, and it’s a massive problem. This snowflake culture that we now operate in, the victimhood culture…everyone has to think a certain way, behave a certain way, everyone has to have a bleeding heart and tell you 20 things that are wrong with them. Liberals are getting it so horribly wrong. It’s [grown into] a kind of version of fascism. If you don’t lead your life the way I’m telling you to, then I’m gonna ruin your life. I’m gonna scream abuse at you. I’m gonna get you fired from your job. I’m gonna get you hounded by your family and friends. I’m gonna make you the most disgusting human being in the world.”
Couple this with a Bret Easton Ellis remark from last month: “This is the one thing that has bothered me the most about the left. And as a creative it is something that worries me. I often wonder how you can be a writer, an artist, a director, a filmmaker, and ally yourself with a party that is basically subsidizing an authoritarian language belief on what you can say and what you can’t say and how you can express yourself or how you can’t express yourself.”
And a quote from Sarah Silverman on a recent Bill Simmons podcast: “’Righteousness porn‘ is ‘really scary and it’s a very odd thing that it’s invaded the left primarily…it’s like, if you’re not on board, if you say the wrong thing, if you had a tweet once, everyone is, like, throwing the first stone. It’s so odd. It’s a perversion.”
There’s no question about the accuracy and legitimacy of these opinions. Having tasted wokester “cancel culture” myself a few months ago, courtesy of the Sundance People’s Committee, I’m naturally susceptible to such views. And to the gist of quote #1. But quote #1 has a problem, and that’s the person who said it. Not to mention the talk show that this person said it on. So when you pull it all together and weigh the political schemes and ramifications, I feel obliged to distance myself from quote #1….even though it’s a fairly accurate assessment.
This is a chickenshit way to react, agreed. That’s because I’m torn and afraid at the same time. We’re living through a time of terror. Lillian Hellman would be appalled, not to mention Dashiell Hammett.
According to an 8.21 N.Y. Times report by Nicole Sperling, the ongoing dispute between Netflix and two major exhibition chains, AMC Theatres and Cineplex, about the theatrical release of Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman boils down to an unrealistic expectation on the exhibition side.
The chains want Netflix to delay streaming The Irishman for “close to three months” after its theatrical opening day while Netflix, following their Roma model, wants to begin streaming 21 days after the theatrical debut.
This despite a claim by former 20th Century Fox distribution exec Chris Aronson that “more than 95 percent of movies stop earning their keep in theaters at the 42-day mark,” according to Sperling’s article.
Exhibitors nonetheless fear that the proposed 21-day window will persuade ticket-buyers to bypass The Irishman in theatres, as they would only have to wait three weeks to see it at home.
90% of The Irishman‘s theatrical revenue will come from educated, review-reading, 35-and-over types who will want to immerse themselves in Scorsese’s wiseguy epic (it allegedly runs around three hours) and be part of the conversation, and most of these transactions will happen during the first three weeks, four at the outside. A portion of the under-35 megaplex mongrels may attend out of curiosity, but the bulk of the business will come from Scorsese loyalists and cultivated cineastes.
So if Netflix wanted to be accommodating, they would agree to wait 45 days to stream — half of the window that exhibitors want. My hunch is that the deal with AMC and Cineplex will result in a 30-day delay. Somewhere between 30 and 45 — that’s where the peace lies.
Netflix will want The Irishman to be in theatres during the heat of award season, or from mid-October to early December. Open it in theatres on Friday, 10.18 and keep it in plexes for seven weeks, or until Thursday, 12.5. We all understand that peak Irishman business will happen between the weekends of 10.18 and 11.15, max. And more likely between 10.18 and 11.7 — be honest. Especially considering the allegedly somber, meditative tone (“It’s not Goodfellas“) and three-hour length.
In the exhibitor fantasy realm The Irishman, given the theoretical 10.18 theatrical debut, wouldn’t begin streaming until mid-January. Unlikely. Especially with the currently abbreviated Academy voting window.
Kayla Pospisil (Margot Robbie), a fictional Fox News producer, is apparently dreading an imminent meeting with ogre-ish Fox honcho Roger Ailes (John Lithgow). Also unsettled, it seems, are fellow elevator riders Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron) and Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman). They’re so rattled by what may be in the offing (or what’s in the air) that they don’t even small-talk each other. Then Carlson says it’s “hot in here.”
Pospisil (weird last name, a mashing of “possum” and “possible”) and Carlson get out, but the coolly observant Kelly doesn’t.
After the oddly muted response to Showtime’s The Loudest Voice, the Bombshell challenge will be to prove itself as the bigger, better, more pointed Ailes drama, above and beyond the marquee-name aspect.
Directed by Jay Roach and scripted by Charles Randolph, Bombshell will pop theatrically on 11.20. If it’s any kind of award-calibre thing…well, we’ll see.
Bombshell costars Kate McKinnon, Connie Britton, Mark Duplass, Rob Delaney, Malcolm McDowell and Allison Janney.
I don’t know why I’m posting this, but on top of Trump’s scrapping a state visit in Denmark over their refusal to sell Greenland (an autonomous country of the kingdom of Denmark), this morning’s tweet of sincere thanks to rightwing eccentric Wayne Allyn Root about Trump’s allegedly exalted status among Israel’s rightwing community…I can’t even.
