Month: September 2021

I’m thinking of a climactic scene from Roland Joffe‘s Fat Man and Little Boy when J. Robert Oppenheimer (Dwight Schultz), wearing tinted eye goggles, is witnessing the first nuclear explosion outside Los Alamos (or wherever it happened) from inside a sand-bag bunker, and kind of convulsing at the sight of it, the wind velocity causing his mouth to contort, exposing his teeth. At first he seems to be thinking “my God, what have we done?” Then you realize he’s excited by this stunning sight. Triumphant, in fact. High-fiving a colleague. Not “I am become death, destroyer of worlds” but “Yo, we did it!!!”

Give Joffe credit — this is a powerful cinematic moment.

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Larry Elder has underperformed in the California recall election, thank God, and Governor Gavin Newsom will remain in office. No matter what the final tallies report, the crazies will assert that this was a totally rigged election but that Elder will get to the bottom of it. “Statistical analyses used to detect fraud in elections held in third-world nations (such as Russia, Venezuela and Iran) have detected fraud in California resulting in Governor Gavin Newsom being reinstated as Governor,” blah blah. California’s Secretary of State, Shirley Ann Weber, has told Newsweek that Elder’s claims are “baseless.” HE to Elder: Don’t let ’em get you down, fight on, never say die.

What could Chris Nolan bring to the saga of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the atom-bomb creator whose life and career came to symbolize moral dilemmas facing the scientist in the nuclear age.

Nolan will probably deliver two or three ribcage-shattering recreations of nuclear explosions, but there have been two or three tellings of the Oppenheimer story and…I don’t know what to think or feel.

I’m seeing a political persecution angle, of course — echoes of anti-Semitism, obvious parallels to today’s woke terror intimidation.

My favorite of all the re-tellings is The Trials of Robert Oppenheimer, the 2009 David Strathairn-starring docudrama, directed by David Grubin for PBS and The American Experience.

Dwight Schultz portrayed Oppie in Roland Joffe‘s Fat Man and Little Boy (’89), but that film was primarily focused on Paul Newman‘s performance as Colonel Leslie Groves, the Project Manhattan taskmaster.

Whatever Nolan may have planned, I’m not sensing a project of landmark importance.

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Out of respect for the legacy of The Sopranos, and for the upcoming, keenly anticipated The Many Saints of Newark (Warner Bros., 10.1) and especially due to David Chase‘s feelings of despair and resentment about the day-and-date opening (theatrical plus HBO Max), I’m planning to see Many Saints with a paying crowd on the evening of Thursday, 9.30.

Chase: “I don’t think, frankly that I would’ve taken the job if I knew it was going to be a day-and-date release. I think it’s awful. I’m still angry about it.”

Same deal applies to Clint Eastwood‘s Cry Macho, which will hit selected screens on Thursday, 9.16.

After reading yesterday’s riff about Matt Drudge appearing as a character in Impeachment: American Crime Story, a filmmaker friend wrote the following: “I remember seeing you with Drudge on the Paramount lot at that early Titanic screening. I think you were in the front row? Or maybe I was.”

HE reply: You were in the front row. Drudge and I were sitting with the late Marvin Antonowsky around the middle of the orchestra. The screening happened on or about 11.21.97, and it was raining when I arrived.

Remember when it used to rain in Los Angeles? Two or three times a year, mostly between December and March.

Gregg Brilliant was the Paramount publicist with whom I spoke on the way out. (I think.). I was very emotionally affected by Gloria Stuart’s death-dream finale. As was Drudge. The current was palpable. The physical and technical achievements aside, I knew in my heart of hearts that 93% of Titanic was only good (or pretty good), but that the last 15 or 20 minutes were heartbreaking, and that the finale was levitational.

A day or two later Drudge wrote that he’d just seen Titanic, and had “left the show in total tears.”

Because of the heavy rain and dark clouds during my drive between People headquarters to the Paramount lot, I had naturally turned my lights and windshield wipers. Upon parking I killed the wipers but forgot to turn the lights off. So when I returned to the car three and a half hours later, the battery was drained. Hello, AAA!

Nobody will ever feel the Titanic vibe the way a lot of us did back then. It was ruined, in a sense, by the worldwide mob loving it so much. The more popular it became with K-Mart Nation, in fact, the less affection I was able to feel for it. Or express my feelings for with any freedom.

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This morning I wrote Russian producer Alexander Rodnyansky to convey my shock and concern over the reportedly severe Covid illness of director Andrej Zvyagnitsev, 57, the legendary, hugely admired director of The Return (’03), Elena (’11), Leviathan (’14) and Loveless (’17)

Zvyagnitsev’s infection, which began two months ago, recently became so serious that he was flown to Germany for intensive care. A recent report states that his lungs are 90% infected, or conditions to that effect.

Three immediate and obvious questions: (1) Was Zvyagintsev not vaccinated (the Russian vaccine is called Sputnik)?; (2) And if so, why is he so godawful sick? The vast majority of vaccinated people never get this close to death; (3) What is it that’s so derelict or unreliable about Russian hospitals that Zvyagintsev had to be flown to Germany?

Zvyagintsev has been planning his first English-language film, What Happens, which will be shot in the U.S. Produced by Rodnyansky and written by Oleg Negin, What Happens “is the director’s contemplation on the nature of human relationships, the state of modern man and the fragility of human life.’

Here’s hoping Zvyaginstev will get through this…please.

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Guillermo del Toro‘s Nightmare Alley (Searchlight, 12.17) intends to resuscitate 1940s noir melodrama with all the pulpy trimmings — a rural old-style carnival, fake mind-readings, geeks biting off chicken heads, a slimey snake-in-the-grass lead (Bradley Cooper) and secondary characters with names that scream out yokel origins — Clem Hoately, Pete and Zeena Krumbein, Ezra Grindle, Bruno, Hayseed McGillicutty. (Okay, I made the last one up but the other five are real.)

The script, co-penned by GDT and Kim Morgan, is based on William Lindsay Gresham‘s 1946 novel, which was immediately adapted into the renowned 1947 noir starring Tyrone Power.

We all understand that Guillermo and Kim’s basic idea was to remake the Power film, which was directed by Edmund Goulding, but to massage it in their own way by leaning on the novel. And yet each and every time a famous film is remade, the filmmakers always say that they were guided by the original book. They never, ever say that the initial film adaptation was the inspiration.

Born in 1914, Power was in his handsome-young-man prime (32 or 33) when he played Stanton “Stan” Carlisle in the Goulding film, and I think it’s fair to say that his youthful aura mitigated or modified Carlisle’s sleazy maneuverings. Cooper was 45 or so when he played the same character in the Del Toro version. (Silver Linings Playbook was eight years ago.) It’s a different thing when a guy who’s close to pushing 50 plays a doomed, duplicitous character; age often makes an actor look a bit weary, creased and compromised.

The 1947 original ran 111 minutes; Guillermo’s version run two hours, 19 minutes. The newbie opens on 12.17.21 — three months hence.

For those who know the ’47 original, here’s how the casting lines up:

Stanton “Stan” Carlisle (Bradley Cooper now, Tyrone Power then); Molly Carlisle/Cahill (Rooney Mara now, Coleen Gray then); Zeena Krumbein (Toni Collette now, Joan Blondell then); Dr. Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett now; Helen Walker then); Bruno (Ron Pearlman now, Mike Mazurki then); Ezra Grindle (Richard Jenkins now, Taylor Holmes then).

I didn’t know Norm MacDonald was grappling with cancer, and why would I have? I’m just saying this hit me like a ton of bricks. MacDonald didn’t just make me laugh; I also loved his basic attitude, which was more or less “there are many things to laugh at or make fun of, but there are some real slimeballs and monsters out there, and so it’s kind of funny to occasionally say ‘hey, this guy’s a real slimeball and that one’s a real monster!”

I also loved that the wokester Stalinists hated Mcdonald. I can’t recall if he was condemned for sharing sexist or insensitive attitudes (which I don’t relate to or agree with) or being blunt-spoken about something else, but I know that the sensitives hated him as much as they allegedly hate me and Bill Maher and a few others, and that they did what they could to tarnish his rep by talking shit and whatnot.

I loved MacDonald’s impudence.

Ahh, the SNL glory days of ’93 to ’98! Michael Jackson, Bill Clinton, O.J. Simpson, etc. “Well, it’s finally official: murder is legal in the state of California.”

Well, at least the wokesters have something to celebrate now.

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First, as one who was friendly with Matt Drudge in the mid to late ’90s, I’m seriously impressed with Billy Eichner‘s impersonation of the guy (voice, physical resemblance, the hat) in the below clip from episode #2 of Impeachment. Listen to Eichner’s voice between :21 and :27 — “I hear you’re working on a new story about another woman our dear leader harassed.” Sounds a lot like the Real McCoy — just saying.

It’s odd how Impeachment producers have obviously gone to a great deal of trouble to make various cast members closely resemble the characters they’re playing, and yet they chose Beanie Feldstein to play Monica Lewinsky.

Second, there’s a scene in which Hillary is enraged at Bill for having lied to her about the Lewinsky thing. Hillary is far from stupid, and everyone knew Bill was an incorrigible hound when he was Governor of Arkansas in the ’80s and early ’90s. Plus everyone understands that leopards almost never change their spots. So what’s the possible basis for Hillary feeling betrayed and enraged over yet another infidelity during their White House years?

Hillary had a right to feel angry, of course, but about looking foolish by telling reporters that her husband was innocent. Bill broke their agreement by getting caught, and that made Hillary look like a liar or a fool. Generally speaking she obviously knew who he was in terms of randy behavior (watch Primary Colors) and couldn’t have been shocked to learn that he and Lewinsky had been intimate.

** We saw Titanic together on the Paramount lot in late November ’97, and a few weeks earlier he dropped by the People offices in West L.A. at my request to help me with a technical problem.

[WARNING: HE regulars who routinely complain about political-minded or inside-the-Hollywood-beltway posts should just ignore this. It’s just an angry reply to an ex-friend that I wrote last weekend. Don’t worry about it.]

A journalist I’ve known for a long, long time recently repeated an accusation that he’s hit me with before — that my blunt prose and occasional stridency isn’t a social fit these days, and that I’m not sufficiently emphasizing my passion for films and generally not being enough of a love machine in my jottings, and that my failure to do this since woke terrorism began to manifest in mid ’18 has been self-destructive.

My troubles are my own, he basically meant. He was also subliminally hinting that if there ever was a time to drop to my knees and start aggressively smooching ass, it’s right now.

Something snapped when I read his email, and so I sent him a sternly-worded reply. After being in this racket for 30 years (a little over 40 years if you go back to my NYC freelance days), he was basically saying “you need to recreate yourself…you need to eat a little humble pie and audition for your tormentors as a way of saying ‘hey, guys, I’m not that bad because I love movies!’ I thought about my reply this morning, and decided to share it with the world:

“I have written the best HE column I can, each and every day, for 17 years now (i.e., HE launched in August 2004). I was part of the serious film journo crowd starting in the early ’90s, and I stayed there for nearly 30 years — on all the screening and festival lists, occasionally quoted or written about, good to excellent ad income, liked by many, tolerated by others and, except in the minds of a few cancerous and malevolent personalities, certainly respected.

“And then (hello?) Trump was elected and THE CULTURE WENT INTO CONVULSIONS, the hinterland uglies came out of their gopher holes, the hate currents intensified, wokester advocates began to spread terror in liberal circles, and the crime of being an older white male (even a liberal, thoughtful one) suddenly became a ‘thing’ to avoid or identify as, and before you knew it older white dudes were presumed to be suspiciously toxic on all fronts (especially if your views on CRT and the 1619 Project were similar to Andrew Sullivan’s), and when questioned the only thing a white dude could do was drop to his knees and plead for forgiveness and insist (as was the case in my corner) that he’s a moderate left-centrist and that he despises the nutbag right.

“And somewhere in the midst of this process (i.e., starting around mid ’18 and certainly by ’19 and ’20) persons like yourself and the sickening fiends you schmooze and smile with decided it was time to murder my life and livelihood because…I don’t know, because people can be vile when given half a chance? Because Hollywood’s progressive, diverse, anti-racist, #MeToo agendas had to be furthered and mandated top to bottom, and that meant cancelling certain belligerents (i.e., people who thought Moonlight was good but not great, or who despised the Soderbergh Oscarcast or who loathe most of the Marvel/D.C. films or thought that Parasite fell apart after they let the maid in during that evening rainstorm, or who find ‘presentism’ in historical films to be a bizarre form of fantasy-projection or who regard the normalizing of morbid obesity to be grotesque).

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