Without giving it a second thought I bought this Eyes Wide Shut mask 20 years ago in Venice. It wasn’t just the Kubrick connection (his team allegedly purchased a truckload of masks from Ca’ Macana) but the pencil drawings on the mask’s left side. I wore it for ten minutes on my flight back home and also during a relatively recent West Hollywood Halloween parade, but mostly it’s just been a wall ornament.

No parade tonight, of course, but many people along Santa Monica Blvd. are costumed all the same.

Postscript: Last night an attorney friend and I tried to enjoy outdoor Japanese dining on Santa Monica Blvd. WeHo was appropriately besieged with Halloween revelers and the usual (if diminished) array of exotic cosplay. The problem was the constant noise and alarm provided by municipal services — flashing cop cars in a big hurry, howling ambulance sirens and (my personal favorite) a large thundering helicopter circling overhead. In short, Bring Out The Dead meets Apocalypse Now. Where did I get the idea that it might be otherwise?

Here's the clip from Trump's Reading, PA rally: “If we win on Tuesday or — thank you very much, Supreme Court — shortly thereafter…”pic.twitter.com/erqh5uNMsk

— The Recount (@therecount) October 31, 2020

You can tell from this trailer that Robert Machoian‘s The Killing of Two Lovers (Neon, 2.23) is something else. From Black Cape’s Sundance review, posted on 2.2.20:

“You can tell a lot from the opening scene of a film. First, there’s no music. Two people are asleep in bed. The camera pulls back to reveal a gun and then the man holding it. The loaded, cocked, and is pointed weapon is seconds away from changing the realities of everyone in this room. But wait, there’s the sound of an animal stampede, which parents in the audience will identify as young children rising for the day. Suddenly, our stone-cold killer is a mess of snot and tears. Soon he’s just a jogger on his way home in a small rural town that is just starting to awaken for the day.

“This is the beginning of The Killing of Two Lovers, starring Clayne Crawford as David, the almost murderer. The information trickles in from there. David and his wife Nikki (Sepideh Moafi) are separated, and Nikki is living in the family home with their four kids. They have agreed to see other people, but David is having a very tough time adjusting to this new normal. He wants it to be over quickly, but it’s obvious that Nikki wants something more. She finds it in a new man played by Chris Coy — the two [who] almost met their maker at the start of the film.

“This story is one that is playing out all over America, in working-class families. Some are forced into odd relationships because of financial barriers to divorce or separation. Others face a housing and/or logistical problems. Whatever the case, the couples need distance to heal but can afford to have that distance. This leads to misplaced emotions and especially sticky situations when one starts dating again. That’s the part of The Killing of Two Lovers’ audiences will relate to.

Four years after posting a 3.8.16 Kickstarter reach-out video, Alex Winter‘s Zappa (Magnolia, 11.27) is finally about to open. The lure is a trove of unseen material. Frank Zappa was The Man, and I don’t feel a need to explain that sentence. Winter’s doc chronicles “Zappa’s unconventional music career, as well as his many brushes with politics as an anti-censorship advocate and his interest in running for president of the United States as an independent in the late ’80s,” etc.

Zappa will play in theaters for one night only — Monday, 11.23.20 — before going to streaming on Friday, 11.27.

Yesterday in Texas a caravan of Trump-supporting dickheads surrounded and attempted to slow down Joe Biden‘s campaign bus, according to The Daily Beast‘s Kelly Weill. The incident happened on highway 35 between San Antonio and Austin. (I was on that road last March so don’t tell me.) There was enough of a hassle that Biden’s campaign canceled an event in Austin, Texas.

Isn’t attempting to blockade the bus of a Presidential candidate against the law? Doesn’t it qualify as terrorism on some level? I presume some Biden staffers wrote down some license plate numbers.

Excerpt: “When the Biden campaign bus drove to Austin [from San Antonio], it was greeted by a blockade of pro-Trump demonstrators, leading to what one Texas House representative described as an escalation ‘well beyond safe limits.'”

“Historian Dr. Eric Cervini was driving to help with the Biden campaign stop when he filmed a line of pickup trucks along the highway, many of them flying Trump flags. The drivers were ‘waiting to ambush the Biden/Harris campaign bus as it traveled from San Antonio to Austin,’ Cervini tweeted.

“’These Trump supporters, many of whom were armed, surrounded the bus on the interstate and attempted to drive it off the road,’ he alleged. ‘They outnumbered police 50-1, and they ended up hitting a staffer’s car.'”

This is a traffic violation and attempted homicide. Why hasn’t anyone been arrested? pic.twitter.com/QnfF4vXMQn

— haunting student debt owners (@mcbyrne) October 31, 2020

Sean Connery, the coolest, studliest and most commandingly masculine 007 of all time (especially in the first two Bonds, the mostly tech-free Dr. No and From Russia With Love) and a bald man among men when he cast aside the toupee and carved out a formidable (if spotty) post-Bond career with firmly grounded performances in The Hill, The Man Who Would Be King, The Wind and the Lion, The Untouchables, The Name of the Rose, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and The Rock…beautiful Sean Connery has risen from terra firma and is now hovering with angels.

A part of me feels a bit glum and forlorn, but then again the Scottish-born Connery had an amazing 90 years on the planet — 25 or 26 years of struggling to become a reputable actor, a bit less than 35 years at the top of the heap (Dr. No to The Rock) and the last 15 in luxurious retirement on New Providence Island in the Bahamas, in the flush Lyford Cay neighborhood.

Connery’s best Bonds (in descending order): Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball, Never Say Never Again. (I’m sorry but I rewatched You Only Live Twice a while back and it hasn’t aged well.)

Finest post-Bond films: The Hill, The Red Tent, The Molly Maguires, Zardoz (a respectable failure), The Wind and the Lion, The Man Who Would Be King, Robin and Marian, A Bridge Too Far, The First Great Train Robbery, Five Days One Summer, The Name of the Rose, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Hunt for Red October, The Russia House, First Knight, The Rock.

Mixed-bag Connery-Hitchcock outlier: Marnie, an interesting film if not exactly a good one.

Connery stinkers (in ascending order): Medicine Man, Finding Forrester, Rising Sun, Wrong Is Right.The Anderson Tapes, Family Business, Meteor.

Temperamentally Sean was rarely…well, not always a day at the beach. Nor did he need to be. He came from a working-class, rough-and-tumble background, and could flash a serious temper when riled. I’ve also heard he had quite the libido. Around the time of Wrong Is Right I heard a story about an impulsive sexual matinee with a journalist in a hotel room. I know nothing, just loose talk.

The wham-slam-bam train compartment fight he had with Robert Shaw in From Russia With Love is one of the greatest hand-to-hand bouts in cinema history.

Connery will always be remembered for dressing down Nic Cage in The Rock with the following line: “Your best? Losers always whine about their best. Winners go home and fuck the prom queen.”

Director-screenwriter Jonathan Hensleigh (Armageddon, Die Hard With A Vengeance, the forthcoming Ice Road) confides that the “prom queen” thing was “one of the earliest lines contributed by Ian La Frenais and Dick Clement, when they came in at Sean’s request to polish his dialogue.”

At that juncture Hensleigh “was working literally day and night to smooth out all the plot wrinkles required when Sean insisted that his character, SAS Captain John Patrick Mason, be re-imagined as a British national, thus requiring the almost overnight invention of the ‘aging James Bond’ character buried away in Alcatraz by the CIA and MI6.

“It’s a sad day,” Hensleigh remarks. “I loved Sean. He was difficult and demanding and made my life hell for six months, but [The Rock] was his comeback role and believe me, he knew it. I loved working with him.”

When the late William Goldman said “nobody knows anything,” what he meant was that (a) no one is an absolute Jedi master at this business, (b) there’s very little you can really take to the bank, (c) nobody knows anything for an absolute dead certainty, (d) there’s always an element of doubt and (e) hunches, intuitions and gut calls aren’t what they used to be.

A good portion of the usual political discourse seems to have downshifted over the last couple of days. As if everyone is storing their energy for Big Tuesday. Not that anything final will be decided by 11.3 (or by the wee hours of 11.4), but it’ll be hugely exciting. As in historic, jubilant, appalling, melodramatic, enraging, glorious…possibly all at the same time.

Significant pushback from good people (i.e., friends) and bad has prompted me to junk HE’s proposed Straight Shooters Oscar handicap chart.

All I was suggesting was a forum that would predict Oscar contenders without the woke filter, as woke filters are everywhere. But nope, bad idea, can’t do that, will only make things worse. Okay, fine. I wasn’t married to the idea — just tossing it out there.

But full steam ahead on HE’s “I Just Ran Out of Bullshit.”

Journo pally: “To me, you’ve never written one thing in this era that is illegitimate. But then neither did Andrew Sullivan. Despite the wokeness (it sounds like the title of a Stephen King novel: ‘The Wokeness’), he seemed to be thriving at New York magazine. And then…no. They wanted him out. For the crime of having been fearlessly honest. Sometimes that’s all it takes now.

“Not sure what you should do, to be honest. Don’t neuter yourself, that’s for sure.”

After catching Mank in the late afternoon to early evening, I streamed Lee Isaac Chung‘s Minari (A24, early ’21). I’d asked around and heard some mildly approving reactions. A Sundance-stamped, indie-level thing that works, they said. To my slight but welcome surprise it seemed better than that.

A hard-knocks family drama about a South Korean family trying to succeed at subsistence farming in 1980s Arkansas, it qualifies as a “modest” Spirit Awards thing. But something about Steven Yeun’s complex character (i.e., Jacob) and performance really got to me.

I’m speaking of a proud, obstinate man determined to make a stand and not be pushed around by bad luck. In moments of stress and self-doubt he’s clearly weighing two ways of responding to the situation. He may have chosen the wrong path, but he’s determined to stick to it regardless. That makes him a possibly tragic figure and definitely an interesting one.

I’m not sure if Yeun’s touching performance will yield a Best Actor nomination, but it could.

A while ago Variety‘s Clayton Davis was all excited about the possibility of Yeun possibly becoming the first Asian actor to be Oscar nominated for a lead role. That’s the wrong emphasis. Yeun has given a very strong and sad performance in a pretty good film, and he might snag a Best Actor nom for his trouble. But his South Korean heritage should be anecdotal, not a cornerstone of his campaign. Wokesters see it differently, of course.

I loved the grandmother (Youn Yuh-Jung) and the two kids (Alan Kim, Noel Kate Cho). Especially the little boy. And Paul (Will Patton), a flaky but good-hearted Jesus freak whom the somewhat insensitive Yeun doesn’t sufficiently respect. I dislike Christians for their evangelical leanings and support of Donald Trump, but if I was acquainted with one and he/she offered to pray for me, I would respond with respect and gratitude. Because such a gesture would mean a lot to them.

Jacob’s wife Monica (Han Ye-ri) is a good person but not exactly a portrait of steadfast marital support. She has this shitty, dismissive “I don’t like this” attitude from the get-go. They’re in a bad marriage.

I didn’t get the water situation. Jacob has bought (or rented?) a place with no water supply or sewage system? Isn’t is super-expensive to install your own sewage system and septic tank? Jacob presumably buys his own water heater, but in one scene he doesn’t have $500 to pay a professional well digger? Jaconb has drilled his own well with Patton’s assistance, but the water supply is limited — not enough nourish the crop and also provide shower water, kitchen water and whatnot.

For whatever reason my Apple TV mirroring system wasn’t working last night, and so I was forced to watch David Fincher‘s Mank — a film I’ve been looking forward to for many months, and particularly Eric Messerschmidt‘s silver-toned cinematography — on a 15-inch Macbook Pro. I’ve very sorry this happened. I’ve been hoping all along to catch it at a select theatrical venue of some kind (11.13), but with infections recently spiking that seems unlikely.

But at least I saw it, and for that I’m very grateful. Mank is obviously a brilliant, highly accomplished virtuoso act, and totally locked for several Oscar noms — Picture, Director (Fincher), Best Actor (Gary Oldman), Best Supporting Actress (Amanda Seyfried), Best Cinematography, Best Production Design, etc.

It hopscotches all around in a non-linear way, which of course is a tribute to the Citizen Kane scheme. I adored the use of clackety-clack scene descriptions dropping into the frame. And I loved re-hearing the line “it’s not the heat, it’s the humanity.” (Which apparently wasn’t written by Herman J. Mankiewicz but Alan Jay Lerner for Brigadoon.)

Mank is a very fine exercise in smarthouse entertainment. The nutritional value of the dialogue alone (written by Fincher’s late dad, Jack, in the mid ’90s, and then rewritten by his son and Eric Roth) should not be under-celebrated. Altogether the film didn’t quite levitate me off the ground, it did put me into a kind of subdued swoon mode — a certain form of aesthetic rapture that leaves you quietly stirred and pacified. That’s a fairly rare thing.

What’s the basic Mank arc? Basically that even for a self-destructive boozer like Herman J. Mankiewicz, life took a turn for the better when Orson Welles came calling. And that despite the political intrigues and whatnot, things worked out very nicely for an all-too-brief period. And at the end of the path came a Best Original Screenplay Oscar.

Boozing issues aside, Mank is depicted in each and every scene as a humanist and a good guy — a man who sides with the weak and unlucky, with the less fortunate and downtrodden. He’s good company.

Oldman is wonderful. I was initially not looking forward to spending over two hours with a pot-bellied drunk, and the fact that he looks like a bloated 62 year old rather than a plump, dessicated 43 year-old didn’t thrill me. But Oldman’s charm and particularly that thin, raspy little voice tossing off one witticism after another…he simply won me over. I just fell for the whirling patter and verbal derring-do.

It would be wonderful if Mank winds up winning the Best Picture Oscar. HE personally approves of this scenario. And yet even the staunchest admirers will have to admit it’s not exactly audience-friendly in the buttered-popcorn sense of that term. Unless, of course, sharp direction, whipsmart writing, superb production design and immaculate performances top to bottom get to you on a primal level. (As they do me.) In which case Mank is about as audience friendly as a classic Hollywood film could possibly be.

First and foremost Mank has been made by and for film monks — smartypants types, devotional cineastes, those with a general sense of X-factor sophistication. That probably leaves out a certain portion of the community who will bestow earnest praise for its technical accomplishments. We all know what that means.

Mank is not just about the writing of the Citizen Kane script, which the film definitely credits Mankiewicz with the lion’s share of the credit. Welles pruned and streamlined, it says, and of course directed the film magnificently.

Earlier today an industry pally asked if I’d be weighing in on Jodie Turner Smith playing Anne Boleyn. I shrugged and muttered to myself, “What’s the point?” Then a producer chum wrote about this and urged “just ignore it…it probably won’t work anyway.”

This may come as a shock to some, but there used to be a kind of standardized approach when it came to making historical films. The idea (and I know it sounds eccentric by today’s standards) was that depictions of this or that era would strive not just for historical accuracy in the usual ways but (are you sitting down?) to some extent culturally, atmospherically and psychologically exotic. That is to say different from our own. And when I say “different,” I mean insufficiently evolved.

There’s no avoiding what might be called the projection syndrome, or depicting historical realms so they resonãte with contemporary audiences. No historical film has ever been purely submissive to recorded history. Hollywood’s been allowing present-tense attitudes to seep into historical flicks for over a century now. But once upon a time certain aspiring filmmakers used to at least try to convince you that characters in their films probably looked and talked like their real-life counterparts did back in the day.

I’m not talking about Michael Curtiz‘s Robin Hood or Richard Thorpe‘s phoney-baloney Ivanhoe, of course, or Cecil B. DeMille‘s The Sign of the Cross or Samson and Delilah or Rudolph Mate‘s The Black Shield of Falworth or Dick Powell‘s The Conqueror, all of which were applications of broadly winking kitsch.

But some films have at least appeared to try for seemingly realistic presentations of this or that historical time period. Stanley Kubrick‘s Barry Lyndon (’75), for one. Or Fred Zinneman‘s A Man For All Seasons. Or Philip Borsos‘ The Grey Fox (’82).

Recent exceptions like The Favourite aside, the Kubrick approach has pretty much been thrown out the window. Multicultural, color-blind, Hamilton-styled casting has been embedded for the last five or six years now, and for the most part there’s just no interest in doing anything other than to re-imagine history according to current standards and aspirations.

The main idea is to not just recreate history but progressively correct it, and thereby make things safe for future generations.

Plus the style of acting (i.e., behaving) and speaking in whatever role and by whichever actor is all 21st Century these days. Very few, it seems, will even attempt to sound “period”, and those that do don’t have the chops to make it work. I’m happy to say Ethan Hawke is not one of them. The other night I finally caught episode #1 of Showtime’s The Good Lord Bird, and his John Brown is worth the price.

I knew that Michael Mann‘s Last of the Mohicans had been given a certain cultural spin, but the historical authority was brilliant and Daniel Day Lewis Hawkeye was magnificent. Did the actual Marcus Brutus look and sound at all like James Mason in Joseph L. Mankiewicz‘s Julius Caesar? Highly doubtful, but I bought the performance for the skill and discipline that Mason deployed. Did Henry II sound like Peter O’Toole‘s versions in Becket and The Lion in Winter? Perhaps Probably not, but there was no trouble believing that O’Toole had immersed himself in Jean Anouilh and 12th Century England and obtained a certain command of the realm.

That kind of RADA + force-of-personality command is hard to come by these days. All I know is that I’m feeling a kind of instinctual, across-the-board dismissal of any historical film directed, written by and/or starring Millennials or Zoomers. Because I know going in that I won’t believe it.