I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of relationships between people from different countries and cultures, and what happens after they pair up and have to deal with basic choices and life situations that they may (and usually do) handle differently. And how the differences tend to shake out in different ways.

So today I want to talk with you about some differences between Russian and American women.

Their portraits: Both are 30-45 years old. Both live in a megalopolis (New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Moscow, Saint-Petersburg). Both have a good education and have developed their careers.

The Russian woman was born and raised in USSR or Russia. The American has been born and raised in the U.S.

Let’s get started…

1. APPEARANCE

Russian women seem to pay more attention to their appearance: hair, makeup, clothing. As a result, they are perceived as more finely groomed.

American women don’t seem particularly concerned about how they look in everyday life. Ease and convenience seem to be more important to them. Hence unexceptional T-shirts, shorts, sneakers, minimal makeup or no makeup at all.

Personally, I once watched a disheveled American woman come to a beauty salon in pajamas and flip-flops. I can’t say that they are poorly dressed; in my opinion, just sad and somehow gray in general.

2. SELF-PERCEPTION

An American woman learns from a young age to position herself as a free person. Ownership of her own life is prized above all. Call it healthy selfishness.

The Russian woman needs a feeling of being protected by a man. She prefers to see herself as fragile. Sometimes this is just a pretense. The explanation is very simple: to give a man an opportunity to feel like a real man, and in exchange she wants the calming feeling of being protected.

Everything goes back to our childhoods.

Thanks to Neon and Acme for inviting Hollywood Elsewhere to last Friday’s invitational drive-in screening of Alex Gibney, Ophelia Harutyunyan and Suzanne Hillinger‘s Totally Under Control. It happened at the Vineland Drive-In in the City of Industry, which I’d never once visited in all my years here. And why the hell would I?

Under the best traffic conditions a late-night drive between West Hollywood and Industry would take 35 to 40 minutes. Alas, the screening was at 7:30 pm. We left around 6:20 pm. It took us about 90 minutes to get there. Mostly stop-and-go misery. Obviously we asked for it.

I had assured Tatiana that Gibney always delivers first-rate docs, and that visiting Industry might be a kind of exotic adventure. I can’t say that it was. Tatiana respected the film, but didn’t seem as engaged as I was. Screen-content aside the coolest thing about the screening was the close proximity of railroad tracks and watching a couple of double-decker Amtrak trains roll by.

Next time I’m invited to the Vineland, I’ll probably say “thanks but no thanks and all the best.”

I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen John Irvin‘s City of Industry (’97). Harvey Keitel, Timothy Hutton, Stephen Dorff, Famke Janssen, et. al.

Alex Gibney, Ophelia Harutyunyan and Suzanne Hillinger‘s Totally Under Control (Neon, 10.13 on demand, 10.20 on Hulu) is a smart, swiftly paced, well-organized exploration of how Donald Trump singhandedly managed to make the Covid-19 pandemic worse…make that much worse than it needed to be.

If you’ve been closely following this forehead-slapping bureaucratic farce since last February (as I have) there’s nothing exactly “new” in this 123-minute doc. But it does offer a satisfying condensation or re-review, if you will. With a lot of frank and informative talking-head commentary.

Every stupid, blind, oblivious, wrongheaded move that Trump and his executive branch flunkies made over the last eight months or so is covered. Trump’s endless lies and denials and fantasy evasions, the “lost” five-week period (late January ’20 to early March ’20) when the virus might’ve been carefully managed and at least minimized to some extent but wasn’t, ignoring the passed-along Obama playbook on dealing with a pandemic, the failure to mass-produce masks in the early stages, the lack of a coordinated federal testing program, etc.

Not to mention the hydroxychloroquine hoax, Trump’s macho aversion to wearing masks, the “liberate the states” bullshit in May-June, the failure to follow scientific protocols, disagreeing with Dr. Fauci, etc.

Trump did it, Trump did it, Trump did it, Trump did it, Trump did it, Trump did it, Trump did it. Really. “It’s a Democratic hoax”, what do the scientists know?, possible Chlorox injections, America needs to get back to work, Covid “will dissipate with the heat” and will probably disappear “like a miracle,” etc.

Key narration line: “Ignoring expert advice became an act of patriotism.”

Trump became infected a day or so after Gibney’s film wrapped, so “don’t be afraid of Covid…don’t let it dominate your life” didn’t make the cut. But Trump’s remarks to Bob Woodward last February did: “It goes through the air…that’s always tougher than the touch. You don’t have to touch things, right? But the air, you just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed. And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flus.”

The Trumpies really could have gotten a handle on the virus early on (February) if Trump wasn’t so afraid of spooking the stock market…if they’d just appealed to everyone’s good sense and marshalled federal resources and called for tough measures early on. Like South Korea and New Zealand did, and like Italy eventually did last summer after that early scare. What a mess, what a disaster.

During the 2018 Brett Kavanaugh hearings I reminded that formal oath-swearings are always accompanied by an open right hand. (And sometimes with the left hand on a Bible.) But you always swear with your fingers closed, not open. Open fingers are symbolic of insincerity or a lack of solemnity. Sir Thomas More: “When a man makes an oath, Meg, he’s holding himself in his own hands, like water. And if he opens his fingers then he needn’t hope to find himself again.”

Previously posted on 12.29.12, and again on 1.9.16: I am living a kind of Steve Winwood “high” life without the big money, or life as defined by a series of highs rather than one of “stability” in the old-fashioned, white-picket-sense of that term (which my parents invested in). I live in order to feel high and spread highs of a certain kind. My own and those of like-minded souls, of course, but usually born of little half-sparks in my head that are built outwards.

Another way to put it is that I live in order to celebrate dream states that have obviously been made, at root, to fuel the fires of commerce, which is where the vaguely dirty aspect comes in. Except I love revenue. Who doesn’t?

All I know is that writing this column sure beats working. Which is what Robert Mitchum often said about acting. And yet I’m a 14-hour-per-day slave to it. The downside of following those half-sparks, of course, have been occasional Twitter pushbacks of an acutely ugly and ignorant cast. I understand that the “constant fighting with people who disagree and are looking to spread poison by tearing you down any which way” will never go away. I have to accept that — what else can I do? But Twitter has fundamentally changed my view of humans, and not for the better. Five years ago the term “kneejerk p.c. fascism” wasn’t in my vocabulary, but it sure as hell is now.

Many of us are in love with the idea of living the life of a literary Dean Martin but without the drinking and the cigarettes and the endless cynicism. Okay, some of us are. What do I actually mean by “literary Dean Martin”? I don’t know but give me a minute or two and I’ll figure something out. Don’t be afraid to start a sentence just because you’re not sure how to finish it. It’ll come to you. I learned that a long time ago from Patti Smith.

“I’ve never been a fan of that “plink plink plink plink plink pink plink plink” Twilight Zone theme, which replaced Bernard Herrmann‘s music after the first ’59-to-’60 season. Herrmann’s original closing-credit score is wonderfully solemn and vaguely creepy, and much more affecting in a moody-undercurrent way than anything that followed.” — originally posted on 11.27.14.

Amy Coney Barrett is a member of a South Bend, Indiana–based Christian sect called People of Praise.
In a 7.15.18 interview with the South Bend Tribune, the group’s “coordinator” Craig Lent confirmed that People of Praise opposes abortion, gay rights, and marriage equality. Am I certain she’d vote to terminate the Affordable Care Act? No, but that’s the general presumption. There’s little doubt that she’d favor striking down Roe v. Wade, if given the opportunity.

A 2019 Pew Research Center poll found that “public support for legal abortion remains as high as it has been in two decades of polling. Currently, 61% say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 38% say it should be illegal in all or most cases.”