Day: February 25, 2021

On The Matter of “If…”

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HE to Paul Schrader on Facebook:

Paul — I’m a contented owner of a Criterion Bluray of Lindsay Anderson‘s “If…” I recently re-watched it, and I was just swooning over the arc of it, the disciplinary culture that Mick Travis (Malcolm McDowell) and his two irreverent roommates and spiritual brothers-in-arms are less and less tolerant of…actually five when you count the dark-haired girl and the young blonde gay kid…the way it blends myth and romantic fantasy and sexuality and then escalates into surrealism and metaphors of violent revolution and finally explodes with outright murder and gunfire and grenades without actually, literally killing anyone.

It’s really quite phenomenal how it articulated the dreams of social upheaval that were simmering and percolating in the late ‘60s without actually embracing anything that could be called literally or pragmatically “political”…it was all a delirious sort of irrational longing or play-acting…a young man’s dream movie…a dream that was part poem, part mysticism, part loathing of strict Bible-quoting authoritarians, part snifters of brandy, part pot & psychedelia, part Paul McCartney‘s moustache, part black hat and cloak, part “Roland the headless Thompson gunner” in the Belgian Congo, part SDS, part homoeroticism from a distance, part William S. Burroughs…what a dive into the pool.

And then I came upon this “If…” review you wrote in June ‘69, and I can’t help but wonder how you could have possibly back-handed this film, which may have over-played or under-played in one way or another but was clearly channeling what was happening at that strangely unsettling, occasionally magical moment in time.

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Moose Matson!

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During the promotion of The Nice Guys (’16) Ryan Gosling called Abbott & Costello‘s Hold That Ghost (Universal, 8.6.41) “kind of a masterpiece.” I wouldn’t go that far, but it’s an agreeably silly deal — sloppy but lively, fast-paced, everyone’s on mescaline including the tough-guy gangsters**. On top of which I’m a fool for handsomely mastered 1080p versions of silvery black-and-white films of the ’40s. Which is why I’d love to get my hands on a Hold That Ghost Bluray.

The problem is that it isn’t selling or renting as an individual unit. You have to shell out $105 for an Abbott & Costello Complete Universal Collection box set. I wish the Universal home video guys would ease up and issue a stand-alone Bluray. That’s all I have to say.

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Ogilvy, Touffou, Strawberries

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Herewith a brief encounter with the legendary David Ogilvy, the Godfather of all Mad Men and the poet laureate of ’50s and ’60s smooth-as-silk advertising.

It happened in June of ’76 at Chateau de Touffou, a medieval French mansion Ogilvy had purchased in 1966. He had once been married to Anne Cabot, the sister of the mother of my girlfriend at the time, Sophie Black (a descendant of the Cabot family, later to become a fairly renowned poet), and so during our European travels Sophie arranged a drop-by.

Ogilvy was about 65 at the time. He was a wise, learned, blue-blood type with a capacity for snooty bon mots (he described his castle as being located “in the South Dakota of France“) but was quite friendly and gentle and polite. We got along pretty well. I told him my father had been a J. Walter Thompson exec back in the ’60s, and then a Direct Marketing pioneer in the ’70s.

Ogilvy spotted right away that my French was all but non-existent (if it had existed it would have been called moronic), and considerately told his wife Herta that we should only speak English.

David and Herta were as kind and gracious as they come. A delightful interlude. Ogilvy died in July 1999.

Chateau Touffou’s garden had the most luscious, apple-sized strawberries I’ve ever seen or tasted in my life. There was also an underground jail (a leftover from the middle ages) with tiny little cells…horrid.


The strawberries grown at Chateau Touffou were huge, almost apple-sized. If I had to classify their shape, I would say they were long-wedge

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Arthur Miller Would Be Horrified

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Friendo #1: “Kudos to the N.Y. Times for publishing Michael Powell‘s story about the Smith College kerfuffle surrounding Oumou Kanoute (“Inside a Battle Over Race, Class and Power at Smith College“). How this got published is a miracle. We need more journalists with brass balls to keep writing about this. PBS should do a Frontline on it, or will they be too afraid? This story reads straight out of Salem in 1692.”

HE to Friendo #1: “Smith College is, plainly and simply, nothing less than an insane asylum. Because the consciousness of the student body is clearly over the waterfall. As in stark raving mad. Oumou Kanoute is a fanatical paranoid — in a fair and just world she would face consequences.”

Friendo #2: “It’s the new cult consciousness, and it’s on college campuses everywhere. It’s about race and gender and fear and paranoia. ‘[Fill in the blank] is attacking me and/or making me feel unsafe!” It’s an absolute mental illness, and it’s spreading like wildfire.”

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Bated Breath

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Two nights ago Woody Allen defender Robert Weide called out the Allen v. Farrow team — producer Amy Herdy, co-directors Amy Zeiring and Kirby Dick, HBO Docs — for the Episode #4 challenge to Moses Farrow‘s claim that there was no functioning electric train set in the attic crawl space where the alleged offense took place.

Weide called the doc’s presentation of a schematic drawing of the attic, allegedly supplied by Connecticut police, a “failed hat trick”. It suggested two possibilities, he said — Herdy, Zeiring and Dick are “really half-assed investigators” or “are inherently manipulative and dishonest.” He asked if they wanted him to reveal what he knows from court transcripts or if they’d prefer to do it themselves — “your move.”

After which, he said, “we can move onto all the other falsehoods you’ve jammed into your 4-hour hatchet job, [which] I can disprove without breaking a sweat.”

So when will someone (Weide, Allen v. Farrow producers) expand upon this? It’s been almost 48 hours. Hubba-hubba.

Friendo: “How long is Weide going to tease us about this? His implication is serious — that Herdy, Zeiring and Dick basically lied about the train set. If proven, this would blow a fatal hole in their reputation as filmmakers. I assume he’ll explain soon.”

Violent Dognapping

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If it came down to some psychopathic hooligan aiming a pistol at me and saying “let go of your dogs or you die,” I’d probably let go. The dogs would obviously be traumatized but they’d probably live and could possibly be recovered. Dog loyalty goes only so far in this corner. The soprano-voiced Ryan Fischer, an employee of Lady Gaga‘s, was walking three (or was it two?) of the singer’s French bulldogs. It happened last night on Sierra Bonita Ave. around 9:40 p.m. Lady Gaga, currently in Italy, is reportedly offering $500K for the dogs’ return.

Honest Assessments of GG’s + Rooney-Feinberg

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The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg and David Rooney have posted a “should win” / “will win” piece about the Golden Globe awards, which will happen on Sunday, 2.28. Rooney offers the shoulds; Feinberg projects the wills.

Herewith are HE’s reactions with a particular focus on two questions in the matter of Best Picture, Drama. One, does the viewer want to “live” in the world of a given film or performance? (A major consideration that journos almost never ponder.) And two, what does the film in question say about life on the planet earth right now that strikes a resonant chord?

Best Picture, Drama

SHOULD WIN: Rooney says Nomadland
WILL WIN: Feinberg says either The Trial of the Chicago 7 or Nomadland.
HE SEZ: Nomadland is a sad, sporadically spirited mood poem about “houseless”-ness — about good people who’ve suffered blows and lost the battle but continue to push on like the Joad family. The cultural/political winds obviously point to a Nomadland win. We all feel the heart current, but who wants to “live” in this world of roaming 60-plus vagabonds who exchange stories, sit around campfires and take care of business in buckets? Answer: Nobody. Which is why The Trial of the Chicago 7 might win because hanging, strategizing and arguing with the likes of Hoffman, Kuntsler, Hayden, Rubin, et. al. is a more vital way to be.

What does Nomadland say about our current communal state that’s real and truthful? Thank God for strength, reaching out and resourcefulness in this most brutal difficult soul-draining of realms, but who rejects a good deal (safety, security, better hygiene, a bathroom) when it’s offered? What does Chicago 7 say? We may have our strategic differences and combative personalities, but there’s the spit and spunk of it all. Fight on!

Best Picture, Musical or Comedy

SHOULD WIN: Rooney says Hamilton (“In a weak category this year, it has to be Thomas Kail‘s performance-capture recording of the Broadway juggernaut that bottles the thrill of live theater with rare skill,” he says.)
WILL WIN: Feinberg says Borat 2.
HE SEZ: Hamilton is a play that was captured by cameras…period. Borat 2, a film that ridicules red-hat bumblefucks and Rudy Giuliani, will win. What does Borat 2 say about our current communal state that’s real and truthful? Answer: There are assholes aplenty out there (including the medieval sexists of Eastern Europe), and it’s fun to laugh at them. No harm, no foul.

Who wants to “live” in the world of Borat 2? Answer: No choice — we are living in that world.

Best Actress, Drama

SHOULD WIN: Rooney says Carey Mulligan.
WILL WIN: Feinberg says Mulligan. “Frances McDormand and Viola Davis won recently,” Scott reasons, “whereas Mulligan never has.”
HE SEZ: Mulligan. She’s good in Promising Young Woman in a dry, brittle, controlled fury way. She was at least five if not ten times more affecting in Sarah Gavron‘s Suffragette, Thomas Vinterberg‘s Far From The Madding Crowd, Lone Scherfig‘s An Education, in 2015’s Skylight on Broadway, in BBC/Netflix’s Collateral, etc. And she’s very good in The Dig. But sometimes you win for the performance that you win for — just happens that way. Mulligan won’t thank Variety‘s Dennis Harvey, of course, but that whole kerfuffle probably did a lot to cement her winer’s circle status.

Who wants to “live” in the world of Promising Young Woman? Answer: Not this horse. Young men are pigs, but I’d prefer to live in a realm in which guys who resemble Bo Burnham‘s pediatrician stay the way they were written for the first seven-eights of the film, and don’t pull a last-minute switcheroo to satisfying some arbitrary “we need a twist” requirement.

Best Actor, Drama

SHOULD WIN: Rooney says Ma Rainey‘s Chadwick Boseman.
WILL WIN: Feinberg says Anthony Hopkins (“Only Hopkins’ The Father is up for best pic, plus the HFPA adores him…eight noms going back 42 years!.
HE SEZ: Boseman might win, but a Best Actor trophy should be about more than expressing a great collective sadness about a young actor’s untimely death. The finest performance of Boseman’s career was James Brown in Get On Up. Plus “everyone knows that Boseman’s ‘Levee’ doesn’t blow the doors off the hinges — not really. It’s a poignant performance (especially during the scene in which Levee recalls a sad episode involving his mother). I understand the sentiment behind giving Boseman a special tribute, of course, but giving him a posthumous GG award for a performance that is no more than approvable feels like a disproportionate thing to do.” — posted on 2.10.21. The GG trophy should go to either Hopkins or Sound of Metal‘s Riz Ahmed.

Who wants to “live” in the world of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, The Father and Sound of Metal? Answer: Ixnay on the first two, but the world of Sound of Metal is vast and cosmic and full of wonder.

Best Actress, Musical or Comedy

SHOULD WIN: Rooney says French Exit‘s Michelle Pfeiffer (“Her withering hauteur and spent surrender elevate every moment”).
WILL WIN: Feinberg says Borat 2‘s Maria Bakalova.
HE SEZ: Rooney is right — the award should go to Pfeiffer. Critics have been hailing Bakalova’s praises all along, and she’s totally fine in the film but the fact that she’s won 19 Best Supporting Actress prizes around the country is, like…what? Strictly a falling-dominoes dynamic.

Best Actor, Musical or Comedy

SHOULD WIN: Rooney says Borat 2‘s Sacha Baron Cohen. (“Andy Samberg‘s role in Palm Springs doesn’t extend his range, Lin-Manuel Miranda isn’t Hamilton‘s strongest player, and James Corden is abrasive in The Prom.”)
WILL WIN: Feinberg says Cohen
HE SEZ: Cohen.