Now that In The Heights has opened and failed to make box-office history and now that between half and two-thirds of the moviegoing public has written it off or at least decided to defy Eric Kohn and watch it on HBO Max…now that it’s regarded as a ruptured duck and people have left it behind, does anyone who saw it yesterday or today agree with the following?

One, that it’s a first-rate, well-made, go-for-the-gusto, real-deal musical, shot and performed and edited to the professional utmost but two, it’s also a film that strangely makes you feel a bit trapped and suffocated…a film that you’d like to escape from but you can’t because you shouldn’t because you paid to see it and you might as well tough it out. Does anyone feel that way?

I’m serious about the quality of John Chu‘s film — Heights is an absolutely first-rate production in every department.

#InTheHeights fans, don’t let that bad box office buzz bring you down. The film’s financial story is FAR from over, and no matter what, nothing can diminish its impact or the immense joy it has brought to *so* many audiences around the world. Keep your head up 💃🏼 pic.twitter.com/ewXt8v4Q57

— Zach Gilbert (@zachbgilbert) June 12, 2021

I know it’s about basically a revenge story, or about planning payback. Freddy Gale (Jack Nicholson) is distraught over his daughter’s death in a five-year-old car accident. When he finds out that the guy who ran his daughter down (David Morse) is about to be released from prison, he decides “I’m gonna make this guy suffer, or maybe even die…I’ll play it by ear.”

It opened 25 and 1/2 years ago, and I swear to God I don’t remember a single scene, a single line of dialogue, a single shot, the ending…none of it. Is it me or the film?

“…is that what you say doesn’t have to make sense, or jibe with the facts, or ever be challenged lest the challenge itself be conflated with racism. Seeing clearly is necessary for actually fixing problems, and clearlyt racism is simply no longer everywhere. It’s not in my home, and it probably isn’t in yours. We date human events as A.D. and B.C. but he need a third marker for Millennials and GenZ…B.Y., or Before You.” [Starting at 4:58 mark]

Forbes‘ Scott Mendelson is calling In The Heights “the first real heartbreaker of the summer.”

And that statement was based upon estimates of “a frankly mediocre $5 million Friday” and “an over/under $15 million weekend launch.” Except Variety is now reporting that Heights earned a piddly $4.9 million on Friday with an expected weekend tally of “just under $13 million“…I’m sorry but there’s a word for this, and the word is “bust.”

Compare this to woke media hypesters projecting at least $20 million and, per Mendelson, “even a $25-$35 million launch on par with Crazy Rich Asians.”

Mendelson’s dagger in the chest: “Film Twitter convinced themselves that In the Heights was The Force Awakens, but general audiences viewed it as Terminator: Dark Fate.

“In the Heights sold itself as a celebration of Hispanic-American culture but had little else to offer (no stars, no high concept, no IP, etc.) to those who those who didn’t view such a noble sentiment as automatically ‘worth seeing in theaters.'”

Are you reading this, Eric Kohn and Anne Thompson?

Did the ticket-buying public consider my 6.8 review and a certain sentence in particular and decide to blow it off or at least wait and see? The sentence in question read, “No question about it — In The Heights is one of the best films I’ve ever felt vaguely suffocated by.”

Mendelson: “Barring incredible legs (which is still possible), the $55 million In the Heights could be another example of audiences acting in opposition to online media narratives.” Otherwise known as the “whatever Eric Kohn is urging us to do, we’re doing the opposite” syndrome.

Mendelson: “We say we want Widows, but audiences show up for Venom, Halloween and The Grinch. Film Twitter championed Birds of Prey, but audiences showed up for Joker. Film Twitter decried Peter Farrelly’s Green Book and Bryan Singer’s Bohemian Rhapsody, while both films from ‘problematic’ directors, won multiple Oscars and grossed $322 million (the biggest-grossing Best Picture winner in a decade) and $905 million (the biggest-grossing straight drama ever) respectively.

“Meanwhile, during that 2019 Oscar season, Kevin Hart and Bryan Cranston’s ‘problematic’ The Upside earned $108 million domestic from a $20 million debut. Conversely, alt-right trolls didn’t stop Captain Marvel from topping $1.128 billion, a lesson that came too late for Disney’s Star Wars trilogy.

In the matter of the stunning, inexplicable suicide of Anthony Bourdain, it has long been my belief…okay, my strong suspicion that Bourdain was tragically triggered by the behavior of his turbulent girlfriend, Asia Argento.

I’m sorry but there was just too much sensual and philosophical and person-to-person pleasure in Bourdain’s life…he was seemingly all but smothered by the stuff, perhaps not by the reality but certainly the appearance of one orgasmic Zen delight after another…not to mention the charge of travelling from one place to another on a near-constant basis.

Of all the people who’ve ever offed themselves, Bourdain has to be the least likely of all time. And hanging himself just doesn’t make sense without some kind of emotional trigger, without some kind of brief drop into despair…some kind of cause-and-effect.

It is my belief that in the parallel realm of the last scene in Vertigo, Asia Argento was Scotty Ferguson and Anthony Bourdain was Judy Barton.

How do I mean that? I mean that Asia unwittingly (or carelessly) pushed Anthony over the cliff as surely as that shadowed nun in Vertigo scared Judy Barton into fearfully leaping out of that San Juan Batista bell tower.

Did Scotty kill Judy? No, he did not. She leapt out of her own sense of panic, clearly of her own accord — but Scotty was damn sure part of the reason why her life ended so suddenly and tragically.

And you’d better believe that without Asia Argento in his life, Anthony Bourdain might well be with us today.

To what extent does Roadrunner, Morgan Neville‘s just-premiered doc about Bourdain’s life, get into the whole Asia Argento mishegoss, or at least fiddle around with the possibility that Argento’s influence served as a fatal trigger in Bourdain’s psyche?

According to early Roadrunner reviews as well as a heads-up from a friendo, Neville “barely” goes there. Which sounds to me like he glances at the Argento factor without getting into it. He takes a snapshot or two and then moves on.

Here are some notes and thoughts I assembled this morning…partly from past HE posts, partly not:

So Roadrunner doesn’t get into the whole Asia Argento flagrant-infidelity-in-Rome thing? Various reports stated that she was fucking Hugo Clement, a younger journalist, just before Bourdain hung himself. It seemed to many of us that this may have tipped the secretly depressed Bourdain into nihilist despair and self-destruction. Maybe.

And the film more or less ignores the whole paying-off-Jimmy-Bennett thing?

And therefore the film barely ponders the distinct possibility that Bourdain’s suicide was significantly influenced by Argento’s messy (i.e., human) appetites and messy (i.e., human) life?

All along I’ve been naturally assuming that when the former Bruce Jenner transitioned into being Caitlyn Jenner, that she had simply grown her hair out to a traditional female length. Right?

I’m sorry but when Jimmy Kimmel used the term “Caitlyn Jenner wig” I was thrown. I realize that what Kimmel said could be construed as transphobic but…

At 5:25 Kimmel mentions Caitlyn’s Thursday visit on The View, during which the California gubernatorial candidate refused to admit that ex-president Donald Trump had lost the 2020 election. Trump did “some good things,” Jenner claimed, adding that she wants to be a “disrupter” in the state capitol like Trump was.

Good fucking God Almighty.

Kimmel’s reply: “Are we sure that isn’t Donald Trump in a Caitlyn Jenner wig?” Also: “She’s just trying to get attention. Caitlyn Jenner has a better chance of being the next Batman than she does governor of California. She knows little to nothing about anything, really.”