Month: April 2020

King of Coronavirus Dramedies

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Judd Apatow and Pete Davidson‘s The King of Staten Island (Universal, 6.19) has bailed on theatrical. Which is a shame but that’s how things are.

We’re all sick of streaming stuff at home. I for one would love to catch it at a special all-media Arclight screening for masked, glove-wearing journalists who’ve recently tested negative for COVD-19 or are otherwise willing to risk death in order to watch a movie on a big screen again. With everyone sitting three seats apart, of course. I’m willing. Especially since we’re talking six or seven weeks from now.

The new plan is for The King of Staten Island to the usual digital platforms starting on 6.12. A 48-hour rental will set you back $20 bills.

The plot of the semi-autobiographical coming-of-age comedy, cowritten by Apatow, Davidson and Dave Sirus, is as follows:

“Scott (Davidson) has been a case of arrested development ever since his firefighter father died when he was seven. As his younger sister (Maude Apatow) heads off to college, Scott, now in his mid 20s, spends his days smoking weed, hanging with the guys and hooking up with his best friend (Bel Powley).

“But when his mother (Marisa Tomei) starts dating a loudmouth firefighter (Bill Burr), it sets off a chain of events that will force Scott to grapple with his grief and take his first tentative steps toward becoming Pete Davidson.”

Typical for an Apatow film, TKOSI runs 136 minutes.

The costars are Steve Buscemi, Kevin Corrigan, Ricky Velez and Domenick Lombardozzi.

Sound-Stage Fashion

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All below-the-line people look the same on movie sets — T-shirts, baseball caps, comfort shoes, hoodies, jeans, work boots, mandals with socks.

An electrician or wardrobe person or union carpenter or sound recorder will never dress like, say, Michelangelo Antonioni did on the set of The Passenger or Brian DePalma while shooting Scarface or Dressed To Kill (i.e., safari jacket) or Steven Soderbergh while directing Magic Mike.

Because the below-the-line Hollywood rulebook states they will never step outside the fashion realm of a basic sound-stage grunt. Not a complaint or lament — just how it is.

It was the same way 50 and 60 years ago, only different. Union guys who worked on sound-stage shoots wore the same regulation outfit — (a) a checked short-sleeve sports shirt or long-sleeve business shirt, (b) a pair of baggy, pleated, hand-me-down business pants, and (c) brown or black lace-up shoes with white socks.

On top of which sound stage guys of the ’50s and ’60s were almost always bald or balding. Somewhere between 85% and 90%. And if they had more than a few follicles they always looked like beefy-faced mafiosos or longshoreman from On The Waterfront.

Look at the Ten Commandments guy helping Charlton Heston — like a guy who might have worked at a small-town hardware store or at a shop where they built raw wooden furniture. Look at the bald guy handling the boom mike during the shooting of Psycho.

Hollywood union guys all had this shlubby look…a million guys who looked like the brother or cousin of “Hogeye,” the lighting guy who shined the light on Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard.

Never Forget Rogen’s Stinker

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A handful of films starring Seth Rogen, or those cowritten by or co-produced by Rogen and Evan Goldberg, have felt unbelievable (i.e., posing a strenuous or obstinate argument with reality or any kind of internal logic) in this or that way. Often in many ways. Knocked Up, The Green Hornet, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Neighbors, Neighbors 2, The Interview, Sausage Party, Long Shot — all surreal fantasy bullshit devoid of any relationship to human behavior as most of us understand it. Even the wildly hilarious Pineapple Express steps into absurdity quicksand toward the end.

Rogen’s best films and performances — 40 Year-Old Virgin, Superbad, Funny People, 50/50, The Disaster Artist — have happened when he played supporting characters.

The disaster trigger (for me at least) is when an attempt is made to sell Rogen as a sexual being who scores or at least gets lucky. That is a total stopper. If I was some kind of Supreme Hollywood Dictator I would say “keep those dopey Rogen-Goldberg films coming but Rogen can never get laid again with an attractive woman…that scenario is OUT for the rest of his career. Rogen is 38 but looks 49 if a day, and the idea of him participating in any sexual scenario with anyone or anything (including a love doll) doesn’t work for me…that is my final edict.”

All to say that streaming Long Shot was recently suggested, just for the goofy fun of it. And I said “no, no…I can’t, I really can’t. Because it farts in the face of reality at every turn, and because I sat there like a sphinx when I saw it in a theatre.”

My review posted almost exactly a year ago. Here’s most of it:

“What if a bearded, bulky-bod, hairy-chested journalist with an extremely blunt and adolescent writing style and a name (i.e., Fred Flarsky) that says “I’m a dork”…what if the current U.S. Secretary of State, a 40ish foxy type named Charlotte Field (Theron), used to babysit Flarsky (Rogen) when he was 10 or 11 and she was 16 or thereabouts, and is now thinking about running for President because the current Oval Office occupant wants to become a bigtime movie actor?

“And what if Flarsky suddenly meets Field at a party and (a) they recognize and reminisce, (b) she decides to hire him as a speechwriter because she needs a guy who writes like a pissed–off seventh grader but also (c) quickly develops an attraction for Flarsky, and before you know it is doing him six ways from Sunday? And then love enters the picture and the movie is suddenly about values.

“Given the extremely improbable story line in Long Shot, I figured they’d try to aim it at a late-teen sensibility, perhaps even at 20 or 22 year-olds. Low and semi-coarse and therefore ‘funny’, but occasionally sounding and behaving like, say, a Seth Rogen-flavored In The Loop. Remember that Armando Iannucci film? How fast and sharp it was? How skillful and sure-footed?

“Well, guess what? In The Loop isn’t stupid enough for the Long Shot crowd. It isn’t stoned or digressive or downmarket or druggy enough. (There’s a scene in which Seth and Charlize drop some ‘Molly‘ in Paris.)

“Long Shot, alas, is aimed at a 13 year-old mentality. Okay, a 14 year-old mentality. Every line, every scene save for three or four half-decent moments (did I hear a Brett Ratner joke in there somewhere?) plays to the stoners and dipshits in the cheap seats, otherwise known as the Seth Rogen crowd.

“This would be totally forgivable, of course, if Long Shot was funny, but it’s not. When you play it this broadly and this coarse, when every bit and line is written and played on an obviously farcical but brainless jack–off level without the slightest respect for the venal but semi-grown-up political milieu out there or for human behavior as most of us know it, IT’S NOT FUCKING FUNNY.

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Matthews Resurfaces

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Chris Matthews to Vanity Fair‘s Joe Hagan on why he resigned early last month: “I didn’t argue about it, I didn’t deny it. I accepted the credibility of the complaint in the article. I didn’t want to challenge the person that made the complaint and wrote the article. I thought it was very credible and certainly within the person’s rights to write that article, of course. That was highly justified. Basically, as I said, to repeat myself, it’s inappropriate in the workplace to compliment somebody on their appearance, this is in the makeup chair, and I did it.”

Key Matthews excerpt: “On the matter of Biden’s vice-presidential pick, Matthews thinks Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar is the ideal choice for helping Biden grab the center, especially in the Midwest.

“‘It looks like she could be president if necessary, but not determined to have the office right away kind of thing,’ he said. ‘It’s very tricky when you have a president who will be in his 80s [for] half his first term or his only term perhaps. To pick the other person that’s too ready to be president, you want somebody who’s willing to be vice president for a while. Be vice president and not look like the guy’s a lame duck and I’m ready to take over.’


Embed code for Hive podcast insisted on including a large blank space so I trashed it. Click here for podcast.

“At the same time, Matthews sees the recent leadership of state governors like Gretchen Whitmer, Andrew Cuomo and Gavin Newsom as a preview of what national leadership in a post-Trump era might look like. ‘I think that’s a pretty good indicator what normal will look like when we get back to it,’ he said. ‘One of these governors may be the next president.'”

Vanity Fair‘s Joe Hagan: “[To me life is currently feeling like] Groundhog Day as written by Dostoevsky…we’re in a Russian novel that’s never going to end.”

Before introducing his Matthews discussion (which doesn’t happen for a good 10 or 12 minutes), Hagan sounds like a quivering p.c. candy-ass when he says he initially felt a little funny about even talking to Matthews, given his controversial canning from MSNBC for making a sexist comment to a Hardball guest in a dressing room, and for being generationally out-of-synch with the New Stalinism.

Hagan is right. Matthews is generally out of synch and he did say the wrong thing to the guest in question. But for decades he was a hotshot talk-show host, a veteran political news guy and Washington insider (and still is the latter two)…and Hagan feels funny about even talking to him?

The Answer Is “Sometimes Instantly”

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If a film is a classic, I know it almost immediately and certainly before it ends. I knew The Silence of the Lambs was a classic as soon as the first meeting between Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lecter had begun. I knew No Country For Old Men was a classic when Javier Bardem told that store proprietor to “call it.” I knew The Wolf of Wall Street was a classic when the quaalude scene had gotten underway.

I also know right away if a film is a pat-on-the-back-but-no-cigar. I knew that Moonlight was an approvable non-classic the instant that Barry Jenkins‘ film tried to convince me that Trevante Rhodes was the grown-up version of the wimpy little kid played by Alex Hibbert and Ashton Sanders. One look at Rhodes and I heard the penalty buzzer. I will never, ever see Moonlight again, by the way, and that goes double for If Beale Street Could Talk.

Lesson in Comic Editing

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The “do you have any hobbies?” bit lasts exactly eight seconds — 1:19 through 1.26. The idea isn’t to make you “laugh” but feel a slight ripple of a chuckle about sexual perversity, or John Lennon‘s cavalier sharing of same as a way of tweaking social propriety. Here’s the thing: If Richard Lester had cut on the female journalist’s shocked expression at 1:27 instead of 1:26, the bit wouldn’t land. 1:27 would have been an ounce too much — 1.26 is just right. It’s very, very hard to make a comedic bit work just so. Timing is everything.

Exactly What 90% of Critics Don’t Understand

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Or, worse, understand but won’t address. Most critics tend to be dweeby, cerebral, analytical-to-a-fault types. You can tell that by just looking at some of them. Guys who never got the girl in high school…portraits worth a thousand words. And for the most part they process films in cerebral, academic terms…as objects of study rather than journeys. They know who they are, and so do some of you. Hollywood Elsewhere has always gotten the feeling thang, of course, along with a relative handful of top-dog critics — Ann Hornaday, Owen Gleiberman and Todd McCarthy, not to mention the late Roger Ebert, Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris. If you suppress or sidestep the emotional current, you’re missing the essence of a film or certainly a good portion of it.

“Nice and Tight”

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A two-day-old N.Y. Times story reported about President Trump‘s sudden, arbitrary announcement to deliver a commencement address at West Point in June. This will mean two things. One, West Point seniors, who’ve been studying from home due to COVID-19, will have to return to the military academy for the Trump address. And two, they won’t be able to sit six feet apart because Trump wants the seating to be “nice and tight.”

That phrase rang an immediate bell for me…Randy Newman! 37 years ago Newman used it in a “Trouble in Paradise” song called “There’s A Party In My House.”


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Weekend at Fatty’s

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The general consensus is that North Korea’s Kim Jong Un — five foot seven, 300 pounds, heavy smoker — has died and gone to hell. Or that he may be a comatose vegetable. But why settle for half measures?

Nehandaradio.com, posted today: “Shijian Xingzou, a vice director of HKSTV Hong Kong Satellite Television, a Beijing-backed broadcast network in Hong Kong, claimed that Kim is dead, citing a ‘very solid source.'”

The Nehandaradio headline says that “multiple sources claim North Korean dictator died Saturday night.”

“[Shijian Xingzou‘s] post on the Chinese messaging app Weibo has been shared widely on social media, according to a report in the International Business Times.

“It was being reported as fact by media outlets in China and Japan that the 36-year-old dictator was dead. Because of the nature of the ultra secret regime in North Korea claims of Kim Jong-un’s death are very difficult to verify before an official state announcement.”

Speculation says that Kim Jong Un’s 31 year-old sister, Kim Yo Jong, could take his place, when and if the North Korean regime finally decides to acknowledge that Kim Fattycakes, 36, is indeed down for the count.

Aljazeera.com: “In the last two years, Kim Jong Un’s younger sister has been the most visible presence around the leader, serving formally as a vice director of the ruling Workers’ Party’s powerful Central Committee but unofficially as her brother’s chief of staff.

“Kim Yo Jong was named an alternate member of the party’s Central Committee Politburo this month, continuing her climb through the leadership hierarchy.

“The leader’s sister, believed to be 31, has firm control of key party functions, setting herself to be the main source of power behind a collective leadership.”

via GIPHY

Not Half Bad

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Pete Davidson: “Tired of sitting in the dark, got nothing to watch, I already did Ozark…hand sanitizer is now my best friend, using it so much it’s chapping my hands…going crazy, crazy.”

Adam Sandler: “I’m done with selfies so don’t even ask. I’m stayin’ in the house in an underwear mask. Only pet my dog with a baseball mitt, baking my own bread and it tastes like shit. I broke my legs two weeks ago and I’m too scared to go to the hospital. Never go outside because I might see my neighbor. I’m using both sides of my toilet paper.”