Month: May 2020

Actress Lori Loughlin and husband Mossimo Giannulli, arrested 15 months ago for alleged complicity in the college entrance exam cheating scandal but having pled not guilty all along, have suddenly flipped. Not guilty, not guilty, not guilty, not guilty…okay, we’ll pay the fines and do some time.

They were guilty all along, of course, but were somehow persuaded they’d get a better deal from prosecutors if they didn’t throw themselves upon the mercy of the court. It was always about strategy, negotiations, obstinacy vs. acceptance, etc.

Now the couple will plead guilty and accept relatively modest penalties. Laughlin will serve two months in jail, pay a $150K fine, perform 100 hours of community service and submit to two years of probation. Her husband, apparently the more aggressively contentious in the eyes of prosecutors, will serve five months in the joint, pay a $250K fine, serve 250 hours of community service and submit to two years of probation.

The first note was written by Cary Grant to Sophia Loren, sometime in ’57 or ’58. North by Northwest told us that the matchbook note was also written by Grant (in the person of “Roger O. Thornhill“) to Eva Marie Saint (aka “Eve Kendall“). I’m no handwriting expert but there are rough similarities between them. The Sophia note is obviously more elegant and flourishy and was almost certainly written on a desk or flat surface of some kind; the matchbook note was written on the fly. Opinions?

Earlier today I noticed some surging Twitter tributes for Edgar Wright‘s Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, which opened in August 2010. The nostalgia faucets were gushing all over the sidewalk. I was living in Brooklyn a decade ago, and one of my Scott Pilgrim recollections is that it prompted a brief suicide fantasy. God, that movie! And oh Lordy, the joy when the domestic gross topped out at $31 million ($47 million worldwide) after the film itself cost $85 million, not to mention the marketing.

An hour ago I re-read my 8.12.10 Scott Pilgrim review (“Pilgrim Reckoning“) and realized it was one of my better cranky pans of that era. So here it is, take it or leave:

Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) is obviously a nervy, fairly bright and moderately gifted director — seriously, no jive — and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, even though it seems to be putting out a kind of aesthetic nerve gas, is some kind of cool-ass, smarty-pants, richly stylized…uhm, waste of time?

It’s kind of nifty if you want to feel connected to a movie that under-30 moviegoers are apparently responding to. It’s empty and strained and regimented, but…you know, cool and funny and clever, heh-heh. It has wit and vigor and smart music, and it gradually makes you want to run outside and take an elevator to the top of a tall building and jump off.

Did I just say that? I mean that it’s a masterpiece of its kind. That sounds facile, doesn’t it? I think I might actually mean that Scott Pilgrim is a seminal and semi-vital thing to experience right now. My kids set me straight on this. Call me unstable or impressionable but I’ve also come to think that Michael Cera might be a fresh permutation of a new kind of messianic Movie God — a candy-assed Gary Cooper for the 21st Century.

No, seriously, it’s not too bad. I mean, you know…just kill me.

I was sustained, at times, by the meaning of the seven ex-boyfriends. They’re metaphors for the bad or unresolved stuff in Mary Elizabeth Winstead‘s life. If you’re going to really love and care for someone, you have to accept and try to deal with everything in their heads and their pasts, and not just the intoxicating easy stuff. Scott has to defeat these guys in the same way that any boyfriend or husband has to defeat or at least quell the disturbances in his girlfriend’s or wife’s head. That’s how I took it, at least.

I’m not doubting that Cera has been a Scott Pilgrim graphic novel fan for years, but the movie, I think, came out of his wanting to transform into a tougher, studlier guy in movies by becoming a kind of ninja warrior fighting the ex-boyfriends in a Matrix-y videogame way. I really don’t think it was anything more than that. Seriously.

“No offense, Michael, but the world thinks you’re a wuss,” Cera’s agent said one day on the phone. “They see you as a slender reed, a worthless piece of shit girlyman with a deer-in-the-headlights expression and a little peep-peep voice. Somehow we need to toughen you up, and having you fight a bunch of guys, even if it’s in a fantasy realm, is certainly one way to do that.”

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I’m sorry to have taken my time with The Eddy, the eight-episode, Paris-based Netflix miniseries that began streaming on 5.8. I’m actually still taking my time as I’ve only seen the first two episodes, which were directed by Damien Chazelle, the hotshot helmer of La La Land, Whiplash and the (presumably) forthcoming Babylon. (Three other directors — Houda Benyamina, Laïla Marrakchi and Alan Poul — directed the remaining six episodes.) Chazelle also executive produces.

But even within the realm of episode #1 and #2, I was slow to get into it. Because The Eddy, by design, is slow to get into itself. It slips and slides and shuffles into its own rhythm and razzmatazz, adopting a pace and an attitude that feels casual, unhurried and catch-as-catch-can. Which is cool once you understand what The Eddy is up to.

Written or co-written by Jack Thorne, it’s about a Belleville/Oberkampf jazz club owner named Elliott (Andre Holland) and the friends, fragments, tangents and pressures of his life — debts, uncertainties, his daughter (Amandla Sternberg), the resident jazz band’s diva-like singer (Joanna Kulig), his business partner (Tahar Rahim), bad guys, business permits, sudden tragedy, etc.

Toward the end of episode #2 it finally hit me. In a certain unannounced sense The Eddy is an atmospheric musical — a drama of friends and families in Paris that’s punctuated with spirit-lifting jazz sequences. (The original music was composed by by Glen Ballard and Randy Kerber.) It’s a film that says over and over that “life can be hard and cruel, but music will save your soul.”

Which also means, not incidentally, that the French-speaking Chazelle is recharging his on-screen love affair with jazz, which began with Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench (’09) and continued with Whiplash (’14) and La La Land (’16).

This is how it feels to me. This plus a tangled mystery about finding the killers of Farid, the business partner. Plus the constant savorings of the Oberkampf and Belleville districts.

Boilerplate: Elliott, a semi-retired jazz pianist, and Farid run The Eddy together — Elliott handling talent, Farid doing the books. Things begin with Elliott’s daughter Julie (Sternberg) hitting town. The club is financially struggling (what else?). Elliott is trying to arrange a record deal for the house band. The singer is the moody, no-day-at-the-beach Maya (Kulig) with whom Elliott has been romantically entwined, and the pianist is Kerber.

The main complication is Farid’s murder, along with the fact that Paris detectives think Elliott might be the culprit.

Apparently each episode focuses on a different character — Elliott, Maja, Julie, etc. — with the storylines intersecting.

To repeat myself, the main thing in The Eddy is the music. It’s completely worth it for this element alone. It made me feel like I’d really been somewhere.

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Alfred Hitchcock made a brilliant decision when he and Vertigo screenwriters Alec Coppel and Samuel Taylor were plotting the opening scene. After the beat cop falls to his death, it appears that Detective Scotty Ferguson (James Stewart) hasn’t a chance. Hanging from a flimsy rain gutter, no way to pull himself up…forget it. Beyond that, what are the odds Ferguson could continue to hold on until a police rescue team shows up, which could take at least five or ten minutes if not longer?

And so the rascally Hitchcock solves the problem by doing a quick fade-to-black. And in the next scene Ferguson is alive and well and hanging out in Barbara Bel Geddes‘ apartment. What?

Before this no director had ever left a movie star in this kind of jeopardy without depicting or promising a rescue of some kind. Hitchcock decided to ignore the rules by leaving Ferguson (and, in a sense, the audience) hanging from that gutter for the rest of the film. No other name-brand director at the time would’ve attempted such a strategy, and as far as I can recall no director had done anything like this since. Am I wrong?

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I hate this kind of credibility-defying, pushed-to-the-limit thrill sequence. Harold Lloyd used to make comedies out of such situations, but Vertical Limit director Martin Campbell and screenwriters Robert King and Terry Hayes played it straight. The apparent idea was to out-do a similar opening sequence in Renny Harlin‘s Cliffhanger (’92), but it’s one CG bullshit stunt after another.

Boilerplate: Tragedy strikes a family of three — Peter Garrett (Chris O’Donnell), his sister Annie (Robin Tunney) and their father, Royce (Stuart Wilson) — as they scale a sheer cliff in Monument Valley. After two falling amateurs leave the family dangling, Royce forces Peter to cut him loose to save Peter and Annie from a horrible, howling, skull-shattering demise.

I have to admit that when the climbers whose carelessness started all the trouble…when these two fall to their deaths, it’s hard not to raise your fist and shout “yes!”

Vertical Limit opened 19 and 1/2 years ago. Call it 20. Doesn’t seem that long, does it?

O’Donnell, 29 or 30 during filming, was still recovering (at least in his own head) from Batman and Robin (’97). Even with the financial success of Vertical Limit ($215M worldwide), O’Donnell took a four-year hiatus. He returned to features in Bill Condon‘s Kinsey (’04) but was pretty much a TV guy after that. He’s now in his late 40s and starring in NCIS: Los Angeles.

Tunney was enjoying a career spurt at the time. She’s now 47, hanging in there, playing poker.

How many of us have dreamt of finding a huge amount of cash in a bag or suitcase somewhere? With no papers or ID or anything to indicate whose money it is…no clues at all.

Please read this short N.Y. Post story and tell me if you agree with what was done when roughly $1 million in untracable bills (and with no security cam footage being taken) was found on a rural road in Virginia’s Caroline County.

The same approximate thing happened to me when I driving for Checker Cab in Boston in ’72 or thereabouts. Somewhere near Mass General a young woman who’d flagged me down climbed into the back and excitedly announced that a wallet was lying on the floor. With cash in it. It came to a little over $400 ** but with no cards, photos or identifying paper of any kind. Not a single scrap of vague information to go by. So we split it 50/50, and it was glorious because there was no basis for feeling guilty. Manna from heaven.

** In ’72 $400 was worth roughly $2,453.48 in 2020 dollars.

Former Today host Matt Lauer has posted a Mediaite essay about Ronan Farrow‘s passing along a rape allegation in “Catch and Kill” and more particularly about Ben Smith’s anti-Farrow N.Y. Times piece (5.17), “Is Ronan Farrow Too Good to Be True?”

Lauer (whom I’m not especially comfortable quoting) has posted his essay for roughly the same reason that Robert Kennedy announced his Presidential candidacy in the wake of Eugene McCarthy‘s surprise showing in the ’68 New Hampshire primary — because perceptions have changed and right now the winds are relatively calm from Lauer’s POV.

Lauer isn’t denying he was a manipulative, predatory hound during his Today heyday, but he does state the following: “On October 9, 2019, I was falsely accused of rape. The allegation came from Brooke Nevils, the same woman whose complaint resulted in my termination at NBC. It was made public as part of the promotional rollout for a new book by Ronan Farrow. This accusation was one of the worst and most consequential things to ever happen in my life. It was devastating for my family, and outrageously it was used to sell books.

“At no time did Brooke Nevils ever use the words ‘assault’ or ‘rape’ in regards to any accusation against me while filing her complaint with NBC in November of 2017.”

A little more than 16 years ago (i.e., sometime in early April 2004) I interviewed Man on Fire director Tony Scott inside a Four Seasons hotel room. I’d been knocked flat by Man on Fire, and could’ve easily besieged Scott with questions for a couple of hours, but I only had the usual 15 minutes.

As we discussed this or that I was suddenly struck by how cool his hiking boots looked. Smooth brownish tan deerskin with red laces…excellent! I had to ask where he’d got them. I don’t remember his exact reply but it was some familiar outlet — a Bloomingdale’s or an A16. “I’m struck because I’m a hiking boot nut and they don’t look like anything I’ve ever seen,” I remarked. “I found them in the women’s section,” Scott replied. His feet were small enough and he obviously didn’t care.

“Wow”, I said to myself, “this is how serious directors think. Scott doesn’t care if an article in question was made for women or men…he just cares if it looks right.”

I was also charmed because, I realized, Scott shared my attitude about apparel. Or vice versa, I should say. Totally X-factor, indifferent to the norm.

A good part of the HE readership would bristle at the idea of wearing a shoe or T-shirt or scarf or windbreaker made for women. But I never have. I was savaged by commenters a decade or so ago when I bought a pair of canary-yellow laceless sneakers. “Wear a man’s shoe!” the commenters grumbled. “I’m wearing what I like,” I replied. This is the difference between guys who are enslaved to the code of muscularity and machismo vs. those who are free-thinkers.

Partly because of our shared shoe sensibility, I was extra-devastated when Scott committed suicide in August 2012.

Back in the old days of commercial aviation (i.e. three months ago and earlier), civilians used to fly whenever and wherever. I used to fly to New York City, London, Paris, Nice, Prague, Key West, Honolulu, Hanoi…you name it. Big Apple-wise I always flew into JFK or Newark, but this final approach to LaGuardia is quite beautiful. East across Queens and over uptown Manhattan, following the Hudson River south, curving about the Battery (you can see the WTC pools next to Freedom Tower) and forth to Midtown and east across Queens (observe the remnants of the ’64 World’s Fair as well as good old Shea Stadium) to LGA…magnificent. I really miss flying. (The below video was shot three-plus years ago, but who cares?)