The concluding line in this Catch 22 conversation between Lt. Milo Minderbinder (Jon Voight) and Cpt. Yossarian (Alan Arkin) was not written by original novel author Joseph Heller but Buck Henry. Heller reportedly approved.

Minderbinder: “Nately died a wealthy man, Yossarian. He had over sixty shares in the syndicate.”

Yossarian: “What difference does that make? He’s dead.”

Minderbinder: “Then his family will get it.”

Yossarian: “He didn’t have time to have a family.”

Minderbinder: “Then his parents will get it.”

Yossarian: “They don’t need it, they’re rich.”

Minderbinder: (beat) “Then they’ll understand.”

The legendary Buck Henry has passed at age 89 from a heart attack. From the mid ’60s to mid ’90s Henry was a screenwriting king and highly valued pinch-hitter who specialized in quippy, ascerbic humor, as well as a well-known deadpan comedian who acted in scores of comedies and social satires. 30 years at the top of the heap, and closer to 40 if you count his early TV writing days.

Buck was also very decent and helpful to me during my Entertainment Weekly and L.A. Times Syndicate column-writing days (’91 to ’98) as he would always pick up the phone and help if he could. He could be testy and crabby from time to time, but that came with the territory. Generally an excellent human being.

It’s ironic that a guy as dryly mannered and emotionally low-key as Buck adapted a film with one of the happiest endings of all time (despite the final 40 to 50 seconds), and then ten years later co-directed another film with one of the happiest endings of all time.

And in between these two he adapted a talking-dolphin movie that wanted to be one of the most emotionally devastating films of its type ever made. It didn’t get there but the effort was vigorous.

The first two films in question are The Graduate, directed by Mike Nichols, and Heaven Can Wait, which Buck co-directed with Warren Beatty. These alone put Henry in the 20th Century pantheon of legendary screenwriters and co-directors.

He also co-created the original Get Smart NBC series with Mel Brooks. He also wrote or co-wrote Catch-22 (’70), The Owl and the Pussycat (’70), What’s Up, Doc? (1972) (with Peter Bogdanovich, Robert Benton and David Newman), First Family, Protocol, To Die For, Town & Country and The Humbling.

He also appeared on several Saturday Night Live episodes in the ’70s and ’80s. He also played supporting or bit parts in The Graduate (the hotel desk clerk…classic!), Catch-22 (Lieutenant Colonel Korn), Taking Off, The Man Who Fell to Earth (Oliver Farnsworth who was thrown out of skyscraper window), Heaven Can Wait (the heavenly escort), First Family, Eating Raoul, Defending Your Life, The Player, Short Cuts, To Die For and Town & Country.

Important anecdote: While adapting The Graduate Henry stuck fairly close to the original 1963 Charles Webb novel, but he invented the famous exchange when “Mr. Maguire,” a 40ish businessman, offers Dustin Hoffman‘s Benjamin Braddock some career advice.

Maguire: “I just want to say one word to you…one word.”
Braddock: “Yes sir.”
Maguire: “Are you listening?”
Braddock: “Yes, I am.”
Maguire: “Plastics.”
Braddock: (beat, beat) “Exactly how do you mean?”
Maguire: “There’s a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?”
Braddock: “Yes, I will.”
Maguire: “Enough said. That’s a deal.”

From Variety‘s Rick Schultz: “In a 1997 interview with National Public Radio, Henry said he almost dropped the line, thinking it was ‘a sort of ’50s society way of complaining about falseness.’ But it resonated with younger audiences and helped turn the film into a classic.”

Poor Vicky Krieps had her hands full with Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day Lewis), a problematic headstrong creative type, in Phantom Thread. And now she’s dealing with another headstrong creative (a screenwriter played by Tim Roth) in Mia Hansen-Love‘s Bergman Island, which will open…uhm, “to be announced.”

Vicky Krieps, Tim Roth in Bergman Island.

Why does their rented house look so utilitarian? Where’s the foundation shrubbery?

Boilerplate: “Bergman Island revolves around an American filmmaking couple who retreat to the island for the summer to each write screenplays for their upcoming films in an act of pilgrimage to the place that inspired Ingmar Bergman. As the summer and their screenplays advance, the lines between reality and fiction start to blur against the backdrop of the island’s wild landscape.”

I could’ve seen Kelly Reichardt‘s First Cow (A24, 3.6) during last September’s Telluride Film Festival. But I didn’t. It just didn’t seem important enough. You have to make choices at festival, and First Cow wound up with the short end of the stick.

It currently has a 90% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but you can’t trust critics when it comes to Kelly Reichardt films. She’s a deeply respected indie auteur and they’ve all drunk the kool-aid, and they’re just not going to level with you. I will but they won’t.

First Cow costars John Magaro, Orion Lee, the late René Auberjonois, Toby Jones, Ewen Bremner, Scott Shepherd.

“While not a lot happens in First Cow by the standards of most two-hour narrative films, and some may wish for a less open-ended conclusion, the drama’s rough-edged lyricism kept me rapt the entire time.” — The Hollywood Reporter‘s David Rooney.

Variety‘s Joe Otterson is reporting that the 2020 Oscar telecast (airing on 2.9.20) will be host-less. Again. Second year in a row. Which probably means we’ll NEVER see an Oscar host again. Because of Twitter.

Exactly one year ago Variety‘s Matt Donnelly reported that the Academy honchos had given up trying to find an Oscar host, largely due to (a) the mustard gas after-affect of the Kevin Hart debacle plus the fact that (b) nobody they’ve reached out to had accepted the thankless gig because (c) they all know that the Khmer Rouge twitter brigade will find something dicey that they’ve done, said or tweeted and rape their reputation to shreds.

And so it was decided that the 2019 Oscars would be hostless. “The Oscars are poised to embark on one of the most radical reinventions in the awards show’s long history,” Donnelly reported. “For the first time in nearly three decades, the biggest night in movies plans to go without a host.”

Now the same decision has been made. Except this time the reaction is “whew, okay, fine, no host…who’d want the gig anyway? At least we have Twitter off our backs.”

This morning “handsome solo” posted a hard–nosed comment about Quentin Tarantino‘s “beautiful angel” depiction of Sharon Tate in Once Upon A Time in Hollywood. He was promptly derided as a “misogynistic troll” for, as one commenter claimed, saying that in the actual world Tate “had it coming because she was no saint.”

Solo (who has since deleted his post) didn’t say or mean that. Allow me to elaborate.

Solo’s basic assessment is correct. Tarantino created a Sharon Tate lacking in any recognizably adult specifics, certainly in any kind of closely observed, semi-complex fashion. She’s more of an alpha vibe than a person. All she does in the film, really, is flash that radiant smile and listen to Paul Revere and the Raiders and bop around and have a good time.

There’s not even an attempt at some kind of interesting definition or shading in QT’s Tate dialogue. No texture, no hints, no unspoken conveyances…nothing. Remove the tragic fate aspect (which we all supply on our own, of course, except for those Millennial and GenZ dingbats I heard about who reportedly didn’t get the ending) and she’s basically presented as a glowing cypher in go-go boots.

Sharon Tate, Roman Polanski sometime in late ’68 or early ’69.

Once Upon A Time in Hollywood was never intended to be any kind of portrait of Tate and Polanski — it’s a portrait of Rick Dalton and Cliff Booth. But you know what? That N.Y. Times stringer who challenged Tarantino at the Cannes Film Festival press conference wasn’t just whistling dixie.

Are you telling me that if, say, Eric Roth, Robert Towne, Diablo Cody, Paul Schrader, William Goldman, Susannah Grant, Jay Presson Allen, Tom Stoppard, Paddy Chayefsky, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Leigh Brackett, Greta Gerwig, James L. Brooks or the Lawrence Kasdan of the ’80s and ’90s had written their own versions of Once Upon A Time in Hollywood (i.e., sticking to the basic bones but adding embroidery here and there) that they would have written Tate as a rich hippie-chick Barbie doll?

Sharon Tate was in fact a driven woman with a presumably complex inner life. She was certainly more than just a blissed-out ditzoid. She was a limited (you could say mediocre) actress in a somewhat turbulent marriage. She and Roman Polanski had their infidelities. Hair stylist Jay Sebring was in love with Tate. He knew Polanski was to some extent an aloof and selfish husband, more tethered to his work than to Sharon, and so Sebring was just waiting for an opportunity to move in.

Tarantino isn’t ignorant of Tate’s personality and history and ups and downs, but he certainly chose to ignore them. All you get from the film is that QT wanted to be as kind and cherishing and chivalrous as possible to poor Sharon, considering what actually happened to her.

That said, saving her life (and that of Sebring, Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski and Steven Parent) at the very end is quite welcome and in fact constitutes one of the happiest endings ever delivered by a mainstream, big-budget film in this century. This is the spark of my initial affection for Once after catching it in Cannes, and partly why I’m still a fan.