Day: August 30, 2019

In 2040 or 2041, Richard Linklater‘s film version of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth‘s Merrily We Roll Along, a musical, will stream worldwide. Costarring Ben Platt (25 now, 45 in ’40), Everybody Wants Some!’s Blake Jenner (who will be 47 or thereabouts when the film debuts) and Booksmart’s Beanie Feldstein (who will also be 45 upon release).

Linklater, significantly, will be 80 or 81 when it’s all over.

Merrily We Roll Along is a nearly 40 year-old stage musical. It’s based on the 1934 play of the same name by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart.

Anne Thompson to Eric Kohn in a Mountainside Inn echo chamber: “A lot of Netflix and Amazon here.” Renee Zellweger and Adam Driver are being tributed here, which means they’ll both be Oscar-nominated.

“I’ve heard Zellweger’s performance is great,” Thompson says, implying that the film itself may be…who knows? Likewise, “I hear good things about Adam Sandler‘s performance in Uncut Gems.”

Randy Newman, composer of Marriage Story score, is here! First-out-of-the-gate Ford vs. Ferrari happens Friday afternoon. Thompson: ScarJo “is a movie star…a major movie star” who went for the Marvel franchise dough and sort of got off the quality-movie track, but now she’s back.

Every year I run this photo…same angle, same banner, same crowds, same skyscape. A perennial.

An involvement in a messy, months-long extra-marital affair probably isn’t going to enhance the political prospects of Representative Ilhan Omar, the 37 year-old Somali-American who reps Minnesota’s fifth Congressional district, and who is no stranger to political storms. She’s the one who referred to 9/11 perpetrators in curiously vague terms (“some people did something”) and who’s also been unfairly characterized by President Trump as anti-Israel.

Especially with Tim Mynett, the 38 year-old married political consultant (E Street Group) Omar is allegedly involved with, having reportedly been paid “roughly $222,000 from 2018 to 2019 for fundraising consulting, travel consulting, and internet advertising.”

I understand and to some extent sympathize with people who’ve been carried away by love’s torrential currents. The fact is that good people sometimes fall out of love and move on to other partners, and especially to guys when their partners are older and (I’m sorry) less fetching than the newbie. I think people should be left alone by reporters when sad stuff like this happens, but that’s not how things work. This thing popped three days ago, and it’s not going away.

E Street Group’s Tim Mynett, Rep. Ilan Omar.

Beth Mynett

The applicable rule from Omar’s perspective is “never, ever fuck the help”, especially if you’re in the public political eye and married to someone else, and especially if the “help” is married to a significantly older woman. Tim Mynett has “been” with 55 year-old Beth Mynett, medical director of the D.C. Department of Corrections, since ’06 and married to her since ’12. They have a 13 year-old son.

Stories by NBC News, the Washington Examiner, the N.Y. Post and UK’s Daily Mail stem from Beth Mynett having filed divorce papers earlier this week.

She said in the divorce filing that she was “devastated by the betrayal and deceit that preceded [Tim’s] abrupt declaration” of love for Omar last April, but she told her husband that she “loved him and was willing to fight for the marriage.” However, she said he told her that “was not an option for him,” according to court documents.

It’s a mess, a mess, a hot mess.