Month: August 2020

Retroactively Cancel Their Asses!

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It wasn’t as if Blake Lively hadn’t been warned about flirting with the lore of the Antebellum South.

Eight years ago certain eyebrows were raised when she and Ryan Reynolds got married at Boone Hall, a former slave plantation in South Carolina — a foolhardy thing by current standards but slightly less so eight years ago.

Roughly two years later refinery29’s Leeann Duggan posted a tut-tut piece titled “Oh, No: Blake Lively Pens An Ode To The Pre-Civil War South.” And three years ago The Daily Beast‘s Amy Zimmerman posted an article called “Blake Lively Needs to Get Woke — and Fast,” which partly referenced Preserve and the Antebellum thing.

So now Reynolds is gallantly taking a bullet for his wife, even though the slave plantation ceremony was totally her idea. This is what good husbands do, of course.

The 43-year-old actor addressed the eight-year-old controversy in an 8.4 interview with Fast Company “It’s something we’ll always be deeply and unreservedly sorry for,” Reynolds said. “What we saw at the time was a wedding venue on Pinterest. What we saw after was a place built upon devastating tragedy. Years ago we got married again at home, but shame works in weird ways.

“A giant fucking mistake like that can either cause you to shut down or it can reframe things and move you into action. It doesn’t mean you won’t fuck up again. But re-patterning and challenging lifelong social conditioning is a job that doesn’t end.”

Inner Reynolds plea during interview: “Please, descendants of Pol Pot and Maximilien Robespierre…don’t come after Blake and me! We’re good family people, we have kids, we just wanna make movies and entertain and make a lot of money and have a good time. Please don’t shut us down…please.”

Does Hollywood Elsewhere need to be re-patterned? Where could I go to have it done? Are there any re-patterning specialists I can hire in the West Hollywood area?

Yes, the Boone Hall nuptials were on the insensitive side but get real — 2020 culture is a lot different than that of 2012.

Eight years ago there wasn’t this instant BLM socio-political nightmare associated with Southern plantations. 12 Years A Slave hadn’t even been filmed at that point. Eleven years before the Reynolds-Lively wedding a scene from Peter Chelsom and Warren Beatty‘s Town and Country was partly filmed on a storied Southern plantation. And Forrest Gump, of course, had been filmed on a Georgia plantation eight years before that.

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Tree With Your Name On It

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I don’t know how many times I’ve used the phrase “did a tree fall on him?” but several times, I’d say. Today it actually happened to a contractor in his late 50s. I’m very sorry,

Talk about a old-school expression for sudden death. You’re walking along and suddenly a tree falls on you…instant transportation and a transfer of cosmic energy. A reminder that tomorrow is promised to no one and the only way to live is to presume that bad luck can come calling anywhere and any old time.

If I’d been sitting in that white SUV I would’ve heard the crack and snap and whoosh of the falling tree and immediately dropped to the floor. I might’ve been pinned inside for an hour or two, but I would’ve lived.

Posted at 3:22 pm today by N.Y. Daily News reporter Thomas Tracy: “A man sitting in his car in Queens was crushed to death by a falling tree early this afternoon during Tropical Storm Isaias, officials said. The massive tree came crashing down on the white-colored auto, landing across the car’s roof, on 84th Ave. near Smedley Street in Briarwood about 1 p.m.

Creeper

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You think I want to clear my desk so I can see David Ayer‘s The Tax Collector (RLJE Films, 8.7)? Because I really don’t. I received a link yesterday and I’ve been avoiding it like the plague. Well, not like “the plague” but I can think of 17 or 18 activities I’d rather engage in than watch this damn thing. Six Rotten Tomatoes critics hate it. A friend says it’s “terrible.” Okay, I’ll watch it later today.

The thing that’s getting in my way is that Shia Labeouf, second-billed role as a criminal psychopath called “Creeper”, has tattooed his chest and abdomen for real (i.e., can’t be removed) as way of getting into character.

What kind of a maniac does such a thing? For the rest of his life Shia will have to look at this extravagant, absurdly dominating tat every time he gets out of the shower, and all because he happened to play a malignant monster in a minor David Ayer film.

The tattoo artist is Brian Ramirez of the Reservoir Tattoo Studio, 1154 Glendale Blvd, Echo Park, Los Angeles CA 90026 / 213.908.5249 / email: Utgbryan@gmail.com)

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Penn-George

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A 32-year gap between a married couple isn’t a problem. As long as the guy is the older party, that is. If Leila George was about to turn 60 and Sean Penn was 28, you know what people would say.

As things actually stand, George — the daughter of The Player costars Vincent D’Onofrio and Greta Scacchi, and born sometime in ’92 or ’91 (nobody’s quite sure) — is the younger, and Penn’s hitting the big six-oh on 8.17.20. They’ve been “dating” since ’16, and tied the knot last Thursday.

Marriage is not about flesh or biology, but about the complementing of spirits. As long as the guy is the older one, and as long as he’s loaded.

One problem: All things being equal, who would want to marry an older dude who smokes? Who would want to live with that awful odor?

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Violent Fantasies

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In my heart of hearts I’d like to impose a Mississippi Burning payback fantasy upon Orange Plague, Mitch McConnell, Stephen Mnuchin and Senate Republicans who won’t budge on restoring the $600-per-week pandemic benefits. An angry crowd breaking through locked doors and beating these loathsome pricks…not killing them**, but delivering severe pain, boot-kicks, gashes, bruises, swellings, black eyes, blood trickling, etc.

Just a fantasy but if it actually happened? I wouldn’t condemn it. No one would. Some of us would cheer.

From Paul Krugman‘s “The Unemployed Stare Into the Abyss — Republicans Look Away,” an 8.3 N.Y. Times column about how “the cruelty and ignorance of Trump and his allies are creating another gratuitous disaster“:

“Around 1000 Americans are dying from COVID-19 each day…ten times the rate in the European Union. Thanks to our failure to control the pandemic, we’re still suffering from Great Depression levels of unemployment. [And] yet enhanced unemployment benefits, a crucial lifeline for tens of millions of Americans, have expired. And negotiations over how — or even whether — to restore aid appear to be stalled.”

“House Democrats passed a bill specifically designed to deal with this mess two and a half months ago. The Trump Administration and Senate Republicans had plenty of time to propose an alternative. Instead, they didn’t even focus on the issue until days before the benefits ended. And even now, they’re refusing to offer anything that might significantly alleviate workers’ plight. This is an astonishing failure of governance — right up there with the mishandling of the pandemic itself.”

“The policy proposals being floated by White House aides and advisers are almost surreal in their disconnect from reality. Cutting payroll taxes on workers who can’t work? Letting businesspeople deduct the full cost of three-martini lunches they can’t eat? Above all, Republicans seem obsessed with the idea that unemployment benefits are making workers lazy and unwilling to accept jobs.”

** “After all we’re not murderers, despite what this undertaker thinks.” — Vito Corleone, The Godfather.

Swan, Trump, Cringeworthy

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The COVID death tally “is what it is”? He could restore the $600 weekly to families living on the brink but chooses not to? He offers Ghislain Maxwell a friendly shout-out but adopts a tone of indifference and hostility when asked to comment about the life of John Lewis, whom he doesn’t like because Lewis didn’t attend his inauguration or sit obediently for his State of the Union speeches?

What kind of a deranged, fact-denying, reality-challenged, sweaty-faced, foam-at-the-mouth…?

@jonathanvswan: “Oh, you’re doing death as a proportion of cases. I’m talking about death as a proportion of population. That’s where the U.S. is really bad. Much worse than South Korea, Germany, etc.” @realdonaldtrump: “You can’t do that.” Swan: “Why can’t I do that?”

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Venice-Toronto-NYFF Prospects

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Jordan Ruimy: Chloe Zhao‘s Nomadland, Francis Lee‘s Ammonite, Steve McQueen‘s Small Axe anthology and Gianfranco Rosi‘s Notturno seem to be the hotties of this fall festival season.
HE: Five and a half months ago I wrote that Ammonite sounds like Portrait of a Woman on Fire, Part II. Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan are powerhouse, of course, but I still feel vaguely underwhelmed.
Ruimy: You know about Notturno?
HE: Sal Notturno, the Brooklyn pizza chain guy?
Ruimy: Hah, no. Copy reads “shot over the course of three years between Syria, Iraq, Kurdistan, and Lebanon, Notturno follows different people from near war zones in the Middle East, trying to start again with their everyday lives.”
HE: What a shitty year this has been so far.
Ruimy: Not just a shitty year but also a cataclysmically bad one for the future of the industry.
HE: Feels like the end of the world. Like everything is crumbling.
Ruimy: Regina King‘s One Night in Miami was added to Venice today. Based on a play by Kemp Powers, pic tells a fictionalized account of an actual February 1964 meeting that happened in a Miami Beach hotel room between Cassius Clay, Malcolm X, Jim Brown and Sam Cooke, as the group celebrates Clay’s surprise title win over Sonny Liston. Wiki insert: Two days after the 2.25.64 fight Clay announced that he’d joined the “Black Muslims” and adopted the name “Cassius X.” In March 1964 he was renamed Muhammad Ali by Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad.
HE: That’s the only title that turns me on. It’ll rise or fall depending on Eli Goree‘s performance as Clay and Kingsley Ben Adir‘s as Malcolm X. And on the writing, of course.
Ruimy: And then there’s Mona Fastvold and Casey Affleck‘s The World To Come TIFF was afraid to touch it due to Affleck’s involvement, but it’ll play Venice.
HE: Affleck is the new Polanski?

Upper West Side Shortfaller

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Deadline‘s Mike Fleming is reporting that Netflix is looking to buy Joe Wright‘s long-delayed The Woman in the Window from Disney/Fox. For months word around the campfire has been that this claustrophobic psychological nail-biter with Amy Adams, Julianne Moore, Gary Oldman, Anthony Mackie, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Tracy Letts is a “problem” movie. It’s been delayed and fiddled with and bumped again and finally taken off the schedule entirely due to COVID but mainly because it’s not very good, or so everyone says.

If Fate Hadn’t Intervened on 11.22.63…

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JFK would have had to present himself as a tough Cold Warrior in the ‘64 presidential race against Barry Goldwater. And after winning he’d find it difficult to disengage from Vietnam with the hawks breathing down his neck. He might withdraw or he might not, but if he began a phased withdrawal he’d have to take the blame for America demonstrating weakness and lack of resolve in standing up to Asian communism.

He’d eventually push through the Civil Rights bill and perhaps also the Voting Rights Act, but would he be as aggressive as Johnson was in establishing various liberal domestic programs? Dylan, the Beatles and the British Invasion, Stokely Carmichael, the Black Panthers, the New Left and the counter-culture would happen either way, and all this would manifest in a need for pitched conflict with a senior establishment figure, and who better than the President?

It wouldn’t be easy or pretty or without conflict. Then again strange detours might’ve happened. JFK might have quietly dropped a tab of mellow Orange Wedge (provided by Timothy Leary) during June of ’67 while listening to “Sgt. Pepper” on headphones. But 14 months later he’d have to grapple with Mayor Richard Daley‘s Chicago police riot during the Democratic National Convention in August ’68. And then — horror of horrors — his old nemesis Richard Nixon would return to run against JFK’s Democratic successor, his brother Bobby, only for the dynasty to collapse following the malice of Sirhan Sirhan.

The worst part is that JFK’s second and final term would end in January ‘69, right in the thick of late ‘60s chaos and upheaval and a spreading miasma of social disorder (SDS, Weathermen, tear gas in Harvard Square) and with Nixon victorious. What a terrible finale for an administration that began on 1.20.61 with so much hope and vigor.

Just as Abraham Lincoln’s murder saved him from the fierce conflicts of the Reconstruction era that led to Andrew Johnson’s impeachment, JFK’s death in Dallas saved him from the chaos and conflict of the mid to late ‘60s. [Originally posted this morning as a comment under “Obviously Time Travel“.]

Exceptional Perception

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Yesterday (8.2) I was slammed by some extra-sensitive readers for writing the following in my “Bad Ellen Vibes” piece:

“My attitude is that if you’re unlucky enough to be working for a difficult, bullying boss or supervisor, or one who could certainly stand to improve his/her people skills…if you’re in a bad situation like this you need to suck it in, man up and accept this unfortunate energy as the price of working on a popular TV show. You’re there to get paid and forge relationships and move ahead with your career. Hang tough, keep your head down, do the job, and land a better job when the opportunity arises.”

Today a “Page Six” story by Eileen Reslen quoted a 3.20.20 tweet by TV writer Ben Simeon, to wit:

“A new staff member was told ‘every day [Ellen DeGeneres] picks someone different to really hate. It’s not your fault, just suck it up for the day and she’ll be mean to someone else the next day. They didn’t believe it but it ended up being entirely true.”

I really do think that the HE comment-threaders who put me down yesterday need to apologize, preferably sooner rather than later.

Stunts Are Mostly Too Predictable

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I respect stunt professionals, and certainly admire their agility and bravery. But the only stunts that really make the grade are those that don’t look like stunts. The ones that look sloppy and accidental, I mean. The more skillfully “performed” a stunt is, the less believable it is. The stunts in Paul Feig‘s 2016 Ghostbusters exemplify this “fine but who cares?” aesthetic.

And forget car stunts. I know it’s extremely difficult to roll a car or drive it off a seaside pier or whatever, but flashy car stunts have been happening in action films for over a half-century now. The birth of serious stunt driving began 52 years ago with Peter Yates‘ Bullitt. I can’t even watch them any more.

What made Steve McQueen‘s Bullitt car chase through the hills of San Francisco seem so exciting and realistic? The sounds, for one thing — the roar of the muffler-free engines, the crashing sounds when the car chasses slammed into pavement after leaping through the air. Not to mention those metal hubcaps that kept flying off the tires of the bad-guy car. There must have been similar car chases in action films in which the hubcaps went flying, but I can’t recall a single one.

Biden Chokes, Kicks VP Can Down The Street

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Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden has wimped out and dropped the ball as far as picking his vice-presidential nominee is concerned.

The Washington Post is reporting that Uncle Joe has announced a two-week delay in naming the woman who will become his running mate.

Translation: “Man, it’s hard making a final decision plus there’s all this back-and-forth shit going on between reps of the contenders and in the media. I’ve had several months to figure this out but now I need a little more time. Maybe it’ll be easier if I delay my decision for a couple of weeks. I can only repeat that it’s hard, man…really hard to finally decide. Just ask the Lovin’ Spoonful.”

Biden recently said he’d name his pick sometime this week, which everyone presumed would be either today, tomorrow or Wednesday.

The alleged reason is that “the process has become a mess that has pitted women against woman.” So? Ambitious contenders gonna diss the competition. Politics is a rough-and-tumble profession. The point is that Biden needed to man up and make a call, and unfortunately this morning he revealed that he’s found this choosing thing to be too much of a headache. Better to kick the can down the street and hope that matters soon clarify

The Washington Post has reported that Biden supporters feel that the process has become “messier than it should be,” pitting women — and especially black women — against one another.” Biden’s solution: Prolonging the process by two weeks so things can get even messier.

HE to Biden: You can’t stop human nature, Joe. Just man up and make the call. Kicking the can down the street is for candy-asses.

The delay indicates there is no clear favorite among Biden or his allies to be his running mate. Translation: Biden probably likes Harris the most but she has enemies talking her down (i.e., “too ambitious”) and so he’s waffling and dithering.