I haven’t basked in the lore of a working megaplex since early March — six months ago. A 7 pm Tenet show begins in six minutes…no, five. A beautiful Harkins plex on Marketplace Drive in Flagstaff. I love the tens of millions of pine trees here, and the nearby foothills and country clubs and whatnot. A nice, polite vibe here. 1/3 liberal, 1/3 MAGA, 1/3 independent. Tolerable traffic, not overbuilt, fresh air, hills. The population of Flagstaff is only 75,000.

Two and a half weeks ago Rose McGowan tweeted about a sexual misconduct allegation episode (technically statutory rape) that happened, she said, between her 15-year-old self and director Alexander Payne, who was then in his late 20s.

McGowan was 15 between September ‘88 and September ‘89, so by her account the incident happened between 31 and 32 years ago.

I posted about the alleged encounter on 8.17 (“Payne Detour“).

This morning Payne posted a brief essay on Deadline that basically said “uhm, sorry, Rose, your memory is faulty…but no offense taken.” He’s saying they dated twice in ’91, but that was two or three years later, of course.

“Rose McGowan and I have always had very cordial interactions, and I have admired her commitment to activism and her voice in an important, historic movement. However, what she has said about me in recent social media posts is simply untrue.

“Rose is mistaken in saying we met when she was fifteen, in the late 1980s. I was a full-time film student at UCLA from 1984 until 1990, and I know that our paths never crossed.

“She claims that I showed her a ‘soft-core porn movie’ I had directed for Showtime ‘under a different name.’ This would have been impossible, since I had never directed anything professionally, lurid or otherwise. I have also never worked for Showtime or directed under any name other than my own.

“Rose and I did meet years later, in 1991, during my first directing job, when she auditioned for a comic short I was making for a Playboy Channel series. Although she did not get the part, she left a note for me at the casting desk asking that I call her. I had no reason to question how old she was, since the role she read for required an actor who was of age. We later went out on a couple of dates and remained on friendly terms for years.

“While I cannot allow false statements about events twenty-nine years ago to go uncorrected, I will continue to wish only the best for Rose.”

George Gallo‘s The Comeback Trail (Cloudburst, 11.13) is a sardonic Hollywood farce that seems similar to Mel Brooks‘ The Producers. Directed by Gallo and co-written with Josh Posner, it stars Robert De Niro, Tommy Lee Jones, Morgan Freeman, Zach Braff, Emile Hirsch and Eddie Griffin.

Boilerplate: “Max Barber (De Niro), a film producer in debt to the mob, finances a badly written western in the hopes of the production killing its aging star, Duke Montana (Jones).”

Pic is a remake of a 1982 film of the same name, directed, co-produced and edited by Harry Hurwitz and costarring Chuck McCann and Buster Crabbe (in the Duke Montana role). Cameos by Hugh Hefner, Henny Youngman and Professor Irwin Corey.

“If the statements are true, the president should humbly apologize to every Gold Star mother and father and every Blue Star family that he’s denigrated and insulted. Who the heck does he think he is? And quite frankly, if what was written in the Atlantic is true, it’s disgusting — it affirms what most of us believe to be true, that Donald Trump is not fit to be commander in chief.”

Mr. President, if you don’t respect our troops, you can’t lead them. pic.twitter.com/hcX9hGgdm5

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) September 4, 2020

“Watching Trump accept the nomination of the Republican Party in the people’s house during a pandemic he exacerbated was like watching Michael Corleone swear a sacred oath while his underlings settled scores across the city.” — from “Truth, Justice, and a World Without Trump,” a 9.3 Atlantic piece by Jim Carrey.

Okay, but comparing Donald Trump in any way, shape or form to the eternal idea of Michael Corleone is a form of flattery. Both are cold-hearted bastards and sociopathic killers, agreed, but Corleone is miles higher than Trump in terms of intelligence, emotional maturity, self-control and professional focus. Evil but sane.

If the Gods willed that the U.S. had to have a New York crime-boss president starting in January 2017, the country would have been much better off with Corleone running things.

— from “The Trump Era Sucks and Needs to Be Over“, posted yesterday by Matt Taibbi.

“Mulan is a dour drag as a work of art and entertainment, an empty if occasionally impressive-looking spectacle propped up by some incredibly clunky writing — the screenplay is credited to Lauren Hynek, Rick Jaffa, Elizabeth Martin and Amanda Silver. If someone were to do a shot every time a character mentions ‘honor,’ they would surely die of alcohol poisoning before the credits roll under a new recording of ‘Reflection’ from Christina Aguilera.” — from Alison Willmore’s Vulture review.

“I am Mulan. Mulan Skywalker.” Probably the worst line from the #Mulan movie. pic.twitter.com/5qNl0r5T8X

— Chris Gore (@ThatChrisGore) September 4, 2020

We’re staying in a kind of plain wood, ranch-style motel adjacent to a fake Disneyworld “Old West” town (like the Spahn ranch of the early ‘60s but built for easily impressionable tourists rather than the film industry). The place is a mile from the western rim of the Grand Canyon, site of the dreaded Skywalk (a beacon for Shallow Hal types) as well as where the GC helicopter rides leave from. Tatiana is scheduled for a 45-minute thrill excursion at noon.

There’s nothing to do here but read or surf so we wound up crashing (partly out of boredom) around 10:45 pm or thereabouts. But then (and God help me) I awoke at 2:30 am, and I knew I was stone cold fucked — unable to sleep, unable to turn on a light with which to read Glenn Kenny’s Goodfellas book for fear of waking Tatiana, unable to watch a movie on the MacBook…stuck in a post-midnight, pre-dawn void, sitting on the outdoor porch in relative blackness with only Twitter and WordPress postings for distraction.

After the chopper ride we’re driving back to Flagstaff with plans to catch Tenet at one of the plexes. IMAX would be nice but we’ll see how the access and timing work out…

When Tom Hanks was infected with Covid last March or thereabouts, nobody knew what that meant but the story seemed to convey a faint tinge of “uh-oh.” But not if you thought about it.

Despite their age I knew Tom and wife Rita Wilson would almost certainly pull through due to (a) being rich and in a presumed state of very good to excellent health, (b) not being obese or plagued with a vitamin D shortage, (c) not being smokers or afflicted with any kind of chronic respiratory ailment.

The assumption, in short, is that outside of curious head-scratcher fatalities Covid mostly kills your older, fatter, sicklier and/or more genetically vulnerable types (tough luck of the draw) but not wealthy movie stars and their families.

So when the news popped yesterday about Robert “Rbatz” Pattinson getting infected after three days of shooting The Batman, my reaction was “okay, tough break but whatever.” Basically just another pandemic pothole or time-out. He’ll be fine and Matt Reeves’ film will eventually wrap. I’m nodding out as I write this.