From Kareem Abdul-Jabbar:

so powerful pic.twitter.com/yIk9HbHfNM

— kylee (@tomakeupwityou) May 31, 2020

Clint Eastwood‘s acting was always mounted upon steely defiance and seething disdain — the squint, the snarl, the snippy retort. His best performances used this mannered foundation to reach outward and inward to explore the sadder, more tender realms. For me his greatest streak in this regard happened between ’92 and ’95 — Unforgiven (’92), In the Line of Fire (’93) and The Bridges of Madison County (’95 — Robert Kincaid was arguably his saddest and most sympathetic role). Clint surged again with two roles in the mid aughts — Million Dollar Baby (’04) and Gran Torino (’08). Five performances for the ages, and all delivered in his 60s and 70s.

After his three-year, three-picture hot streak (The Last Picture Show, What’s Up, Doc?, Paper Moon), Peter Bogdanovich injured himself and his career in three significant ways.

One, the casually smug and arrogant thing, which seemed to intensify after Peter and Cybill Shepherd were the focus of a 5.13.74 People cover story. Two, Bogdanovich seemed to give up on the idea of substantive, reality-driven subjects after The Last Picture Show (post-’71 he never delivered another poignant scene that touched bottom and emotionally penetrated like “Sam the Lion at the swimming hole”). Three, he concurrently began to over-invest in the mythology of nostalgia and old-time Hollywood — the result was a one-two-three punch (Daisy Miller, At Long Last Love, Nickelodeon) that totally took the wind out of his sails.

Saint Jack, They All Laughed and Mask (a director-for-hire gig) restored some of the lustre, but the magic dust had evaporated.

If Bogdanovich had decided to switch horses right after Paper Moon and directed a couple of films that delivered reality currents (some kind of divorce drama or a paranoid political thriller or maybe a Rainman-type family thing) that were tethered not to the ’30s but the ’50s, ’60s or ’70s, things might have turned out differently.

Plus for all his acumen as a director-writer and film historian, Bogdanovich’s social-political instincts were not brilliant.

Over the last couple of centuries many honorable writers have been put behind bars, regardless of the charge…Jean Genet, Oscar Wilde, William S. Burroughs, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Jack London, Malcolm X, etc. To this list we can now add David Poland.

pic.twitter.com/fKwVCgbyZy

— David Poland (@DavidPoland) May 31, 2020

“Some say it’s your nose, some say it’s your toes, but I think it’s your mind.” — Frank Zappa, Mothers of Invention.

Husband and wife beaten with 2x4s while defending store in Rochester, NY. from r/Rochester

what the actual fuck pic.twitter.com/rIRSyNgZCS

— gianna (@lonelyfilms) May 31, 2020

I mean. They couldn’t stop themselves from blatantly escalating things. Even for a few days, even cynically, even for the optics. pic.twitter.com/YVDjnvVGnY

— Anna Kendrick (@AnnaKendrick47) May 31, 2020

This is now a documentary pic.twitter.com/xIY1Xhp0c7

— Gary (@splungekik) May 31, 2020