Month: October 2019

Near the end of Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman an 80something Frank Sheeran (Robert DeNiro) is being questioned about his criminal past by a couple of dark-suited guys — not necessarily cops, possibly journalists or biographers. Sheeran doesn’t want to talk despite the fact that everyone he’s ever dealt with in a criminal capacity is dead, as one of the inquisitors points out.

In a decade-old draft of Steven Zallian‘s Irishman script, the inquiring journo-biographers are used as a framing device. The script begins and ends (not precisely but near the end) with questions for Sheeran that are left unanswered or deflected. The below dialogue constitutes the first two and half pages of the ’09 draft. Scorsese may have shot it but it didn’t make the final cut. No regrets or laments as the film unfolds and pays off like a symphony, but the dialogue is good and true.

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When the spirit is upon him, which is often, nobody can hold a candle to William Jefferson Clinton. This (along with the third-party candidacy of Ross Perot) is why he beat George H.W. Bush in ’92. But I have to be honest. My primary impression as I watched him speak about the great Elijah Cummings this morning was that he looks and sounds weak and frail — like a guy in his mid ’80s rather than his mid ’70s. He looks and sounds older than Joe Biden, and Biden was born four years earlier than Clinton. Think of the tough, steely bearing of Bernie Sanders — 78 and recovering from a heart attack, but seemingly a lot stronger and flintier than Clinton.

A Buzzfeed story by Amber Jamieson explains it all. It happened at the Downtime Bar (25 Avenue B, between 2nd and 3rd). Harvey and some actor pallies at a table, looking down and pretending it wasn’t happening, etc. But it was. It did.

It was announced two days ago (10.22) that Lori Loughlin, her husband Mossimo Giannulli and nine other well-heeled parents are now being charged with conspiring “to commit federal program bribery by bribing employees of the University of Southern California (USC) to facilitate their children’s admission.” Loughlin and Giannulli were previously indicted on one count each of money laundering and honest services fraud for allegedly paying bribes to get their daughters into USC as fake crew recruits. Obviously the prosecutors are trying to pressre Loughlin and the others into pleading guilty.

There’s something vaguely satisfying about the notion of elite one-percenters doing time in the Big House along with Cody Jarrett — exercising in the yard, talking to visitors through a glass partition, eating the same crappy food as regular hardened blue-collar cons, etc. I haven’t figured why this scenario seems agreeable on some level, but it does.

It’ll be a late night for hundreds of industry operators and finaglers this evening. Netflix insists that the 7pm Irishman premiere at the Chinese will start on time (as premiere screenings always start a good half-hour later than announced). If it actually starts on time, which I doubt, it’ll be over at 10:30 pm. I’m figuring more like a 7:15 pm launch and a 10:45 pm conclusion. And then comes a big party at the Roosevelt, which will likely endure until 1 am if not later. I can’t wait to see it again. The first time is for recognition of quality, of course, but it’s mainly about getting wet, swimming the required number of laps and then towelling off. The second time is always the meditative charm.

Box-Office Mojo, my favorite go-to site for box-office numbers and history for many years, has not only been dismantled and re-constructed in ruinous fashion, but is now sitting behind an IMDBPro paywall. Damn the IMDB geniuses all to hell for doing this. May they roast in hell on a spit for all eternity. I depended on this site, and it was so easy to find your way around inside it. Now it’s a disaster.

I see a lot of grimy, grim-faced actors in medieval garb, but all I’m sensing are sullen 21st Century poses and arch attitudes and echoes of acting classes.

Obviously I need to open myself up to this puppy (Netflix, 11.1) and stop sniping from the sidelines. It’s been playing in theatres since 10.11, and therefore my laziness amazes me, I’m branded on my feet, I have no one to meet, and the ancient empty street’s too dead for dreaming.

“What should be soaring is instead lugubrious; what should be a ripping good yarn is instead dutiful and a little bit dull. There are images and ideas to value in “The King,” especially as a glimpse at the costs of bellicose posturing, manipulative power-seeking and overcompensating masculine pride. But it still feels like a wan copy of something more vital.

“Perhaps the most abiding lesson of The King is that if you come for the Bard, you’d best not miss.” — from Ann Hornaday’s 10.23 review in The Washington Post.

On the set of One-Eyed Jacks, sometime in the fall of ’59. I presume they were speaking French, which Brando became fluent in…uhm, sometime in the early to mid ’50s.

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Trombone duet at the SE corner of M Street and Wisconsin Avenue on Monday, 10.21, around 9:30 pm, give or take. If anyone can identify the tune these guys are playing, please advise.