Month: April 2021

“Easter Bunny Cartoon Cash”

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Over the last decade I’ve ignored anything whatsoever to do with Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency — instant toilet-flush of definitions, explanations, graphs, charts, market analyses. Sorry but I feel good about this. Like Bill Maher and many others I too believe…okay, sense that there’s nothing actually “there”, that it’s all hat and no cattle.

Maher: “I’ve read articles about cryptocurrency, [and] I’ve had it explained to me and I still don’t get it. And neither do you or anyone else.

“In 2008 an anonymous person or persons made up Bitcoin out of thin air by using the fake name ‘Satoshi Nakamoto“, which I think are the Japanese words for monopoly money.”

Hilarious Bird Beaks

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I’ll never forget the first time that my sons (Jett, Dylan) and I watched Alfred Hitchcock‘s The Birds together, and more particularly their reaction to the “homicidal crows attack the fleeing schoolchildren” scene. They were somewhere around 8 or 9 years old, as I recall, and basically found it hilarious. The more the schoolkids cried and screamed and fell to the ground and bloodied their knees, the more J & D laughed. A better word is “cackled.”

This happened, I immediately presumed, because the boys found the absurdly mannered and constricted behavior of the kids ridiculous. (Hitchcock was always terrible with children). They especially couldn’t stand the stilted, formal-sounding dialogue that poor Veronica Cartwright was obliged to say. And who, by the way, who doesn’t loathe that awful, perfectly phrased song the kids were singing inside Suzanne Pleshette‘s schoolhouse just before the attack?

Excerpt from Camille Paglia’s book-length essay about The Birds (BFI Film Classics): “It’s another race, this time foot versus wing. Like Furies, the crows harass the children from behind, nipping their necks and cheeks, as we seem to slide helplessly backward downhill, with the mob about to trample us. There’s a tremendous noise of mingled screams and raucous bird cries.

“After the first flash of real horror, I generally settle down to laughing and applauding the crows, whom I regard as Coleridgean emissaries vandalizing sentimental Wordsworthian notions of childhood. It’s like my idol Keith Richards cuffing about Pollyanna and Beaver Cleaver. There’s an exuberant, Saturnalian, Mad magazine zaniness to the whole grisly business.“

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Scott’s “Strangelove” Story

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Certain George C. Scott recollections about the never-seen Dr. Strangelove pie-fight sequence were recently posted on Facebook by director-writer Patrick Reade Johnson. Johnson directed Scott in Angus (’95), and presumably got the following from him during shooting.

I’d never read Scott’s story until this morning, and I have to say two things. One, I don’t believe that Strangelove director Stanley Kubrick would have behaved in the petty, wimpy, small-minded way that Scott describes. And two, I’ve found a photo of Kubrick directing Scott during the pie-fight sequence so take the following with a grain:

Johnson: “Scott told me a couple great stories from the Strangelove shoot. One contradicted a popular myth about the film — that the removal of the pie-fight scene was due to concerns over a line in which Scott’s General Buck Turgidson (or someone else in the scene) said, ‘Gentlemen, our beloved president has been struck down in the prime of his life!’ It was deemed insensitive in the wake of JFK’s assassination.


Obviously the rear angle means we can’t be 100% certain this is a shadowed Stanley Kubrick directing the pie-fight sequence, but it sure looks like him.

“Another theory holds that Kubrick just felt the scene didn’t work.

“’Bullshit!’, roared George, when asked about it. ‘The scene was terrific! Which is WHY Stanley CUT it!” George’s eyes narrowed, a big, toothy grin spreading across his face… “Because the sonofabitch didn’t DIRECT it! THE FIRST A.D. DIRECTED IT!”

“I asked George why Stanley would entrust his first A.D. (possibly Eric Rattray) with directing a high comedy scene, featuring most of his leading cast. And why the venerable actors would even agree to that arrangement.

Scott: “We DIDN’T agree to it! But on the day when we all showed up to shoot the fucking scene, including the guy with 500 goddamn pies, Stanley was nowhere to be found! We sat around on our asses for an hour or so, until the 1st A.D. walked in and said Stanley had a terrible cold…ALL OF A SUDDEN…and that he wouldn’t be able to work today.

“But then he added that Stanley had also said that if we didn’t forge on without him, the scene, which everyone LOVED, would NEVER get DONE!”.

Johnson: “So, you just went ahead and…“
Scott: “And SHOT a goddamn SCENE for a fucking STANLEY GODDAMN KUBRICK FILM that was NOT DIRECTED BY STANLEY GODDAMN KUBRICK! Which is WHY the fucking scene never made into the fucking MOVIE!”

Johnson: “But what about JFK and being sensi—“

Scott: “OH, what a load of CRAP! Stanley couldn’t have cared less about that! If ANYTHING, he PROBABLY HATED not having something so GODDAMN IRREVERENT in his FILM! He just didn’t hate it as much as he hated his First A.D.’s goddamn DIRECTING!”

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Changed My Mind

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For what it’s worth episode #2 (“Fathers”) of Mare of Easttown felt more engaging. I felt myself giving into the limited series, the mucky rural Pennsylvania milieu aside. I forgot that I’m not much of a Winslet fan. Her character’s limp stopped bothering me. I got used to the town and the natives, and now I’m looking forward to episode #3 (“Enter Number Two”). I’m down for the entire run.

HE to Guy Pearce’s Richard Ryan character: If you invite a woman whom you’re involved with to a book-signing event, you immediately engage when she enters the book store. Offer greetings, take her coat, get her a drink, thank her for coming and invite her to take part in the discussion that was underway when she arrived. You never just wave and go right back to talking to fans who want you to sign their book copy, and then come over to her 10 or 15 minutes later.

In Short Supply

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The following excerpt from Sasha Stone‘s “94th Oscars — It’s Time to Rethink Oscar Coverage” (4.30) doesn’t once mention the “w” word. Nor does she mention the legacy of Maximilien Robespierre or allude to new-styled blacklists or HUAC committees, etc. So HE readers who get upset or annoyed or threaten to abandon this site when the concept of woke terror is mentioned can rest easy:

Sasha: “Where bloggers were once the outspoken ones, the ones willing to puncture the status quo and say what couldn’t be said, now they have become hamstrung and silenced out of fear.

“If, say, Scott Feinberg or Kyle Buchanan or even Anne Thompson ever dared speak out about the things that all of us see going on [every day] ** — if they ever started to puncture the status quo the way bloggers used to do way back when — they’d be out of a job by the end of the day. If Next Best Picture’s Matt Neglia or Will Mavity stepped outside of the Twitter ideology for even a minute, both would be viciously attacked and eventually tossed onto the shunned pile.

“No one in the real world cares all that much about their online platform but if you work in any kind of media, content or entertainment you have to. You are under the thumb of the hive mind. You have only one option: total compliance. ‘When you have ’em by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.’

“Not only is dissent not allowed in film coverage — it isn’t allowed in news either. Even if the regular person out there doesn’t pay attention to Twitter, what they’re seeing around them is shaped by Twitter — CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post — all of it is under the thumb of the tiny minority of Twitter users who control 80% of the content.

“They are purists, they are strident and they will come for you if you slip up even once. Sure, you can offer the withering apology. That is always an option but in general, they will keep coming at you, scrutinizing your past for any offense and going in for the career kill.

“Even the little bit of pushback I have been doing has essentially blackballed me from Film Twitter. David Poland has been likewise purged and shunned from Film Twitter for having slightly controversial views. Jeff Wells has been stripped of his Broadcast Film Critics membership for posting an anonymous conversation that was deemed offensive. I have to wonder what David Carr would make of today. Would he pander to the hive mind out of fear? Would he be outspoken? Would he be fired?

“Wells and Poland were among the few who helped launch Oscar blogging in the early days” — late ’90s. “It isn’t that they’ve stopped writing what they think — they do. It’s just that Twitter pays little attention to them because what Twitter wants from them is something they can no longer give, and it’s something I can no longer give: total compliance. It’s just not happening for those of us from a different generation who remember what it was like to get noticed for being controversial.”

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Contrasting Color Schemes?

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Two years ago a suggestion was planted that Steven Spielberg‘s West Side Story (12.10) would feature the usual desaturated milky-gray palette that dp Janusz Kaminski has used over and over, regardless of subject, mood or theme.

In March ’20 a Vanity Fair spread seemed to confirm that West Side Story would instead use vivid, real-life colors.

Last weekend a new West Side Story teaser appeared on the Oscar telecast, and now it appears that the film has two side-by-side color schemes — standard milky-drab Kaminski tones when the focus is on outdoor street-gang activity (Sharks vs. Jets) vs. brighter, fuller colors — bright rose, yellows and gleaming whites — when the focus is on the (mostly indoor) women in the film, and particularly on Tony (Ansel Elgort) and Maria (Rachel Zegler).

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Despondent

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Due respect, Hollywood Elsewhere would rather swallow a handful of cyanide capsules than watch Our Flag Means Death, a forthcoming HBO Max comedy starring Taika Waititi as Blackbeard the pirate. To each his own, people like what they like, no harm or foul, etc. But make no mistake — this is what studio execs usually mean when they say the word “content”. Okay, this may not be a cyanide situation but it’s very depressing.

Toll Tale

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A little less than two years ago I posted a story about a toll-booth lawbreaking incident on the Connecticut turnpike. It never got any traction despite being about an everyday ethical issue that anyone could relate to. Here it is again:

Highway tolls are collected via E-ZPass (created in ’87) or by throwing coins into a metal bin. Human toll-collectors — people dressed in some dull gray uniform whom drivers literally hand coins to — are still around, I guess, but not, I would guess, for much longer.

Back in the pre-automated ’70s manned tollbooths were fairly common. On the Connecticut turnpike a red traffic light would beam as you approached the toll station. You would come to a halt, hand over 50 or 75 cents to the guy/gal, the light would turn green and you’d gun it.

One dusky evening in ’77 I was approaching a West Haven toll station on the Connecticut turnpike. I was driving my 1975 LTD station wagon, which always got lousy gas mileage. I realized a mile out that I didn’t quite have the full 50 cents, and no cash in the wallet. I was counting the coins as I approached…a quarter, a dime, a nickel and six pennies…no, seven pennies! Three cents short.

I sure as shit wasn’t going to pull over and accept some kind of traffic summons for being three cents light…c’mon. So I decided to be Steve McQueen in The Getaway.

I pulled up to the booth and handed the guy the 47 cents. I started to inch forward as he was counting and saying out loud “35, 40…hold on, hold on.” I hit the gas and the guy freaked — “Hey, wait a minute, whoa!” There was no gate so the red light and the violation alarm (ding-ding-ding-ding-ding!) would have to go fuck themselves. I was Clyde Barrow after a bank robbery.

The booth guy went into fury mode…”Hey, hey…stohhhhp!…whoooaaa!” I looked in my rearview as I pulled away. Toll-booth guy had stepped out of the booth and was standing in a half-crouch position…”whoooaaa!!”

I contemplated my situation as I drove away. I had just broken Connecticut state law and didn’t feel good about that. But there was something a bit wrong with that guy. I wasn’t a criminal. It wasn’t like I’d given him 12 or 13 cents or something. Who screams and shouts over a three-cent shortage? Within seconds I’d completely shorn myself of any guilt over shortchanging the state, and decided that the toolbooth guy…that howling uniformed goon was the asshole in this situation, not me.

Did the toll-booth guy get my license plate? (This was before instant photographic capture.) Would he put in a call to the state police, telling them to pull over a young long-haired guy in a brown LTD wagon? I considered getting off the turnpike and driving for a few miles on local roads, just to be safe. Then I realized how loony-tunes that would be. The toll-booth guy was just an oddball with a temper, an obsessive without a life. I stayed on the turnpike and all was well.

But that haunted feeling of being a lawbreaker on the run is still with me.

Red House

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What makes this photo so great is a strong likelihood that no one arranged for the red hardtop Mustang (probably a ’65 model) to be cruising east at the corner of Sunset and Clark at this very moment. And even if someone did plan it, it’s kinda mindblowing that the Mustang and the Whisky are almost exactly the same shade of red**. This was probably taken sometime between 5.19.67 and 5.21.67, which is when the Byrds were headlining and the Doors were the openers.

** Yes, the Whisky red is a tiny bit earthier…a faint touch of brown.