Seasoned critic, scholar and documentarian Marshall Fine has written an assured and comprehensive take on the streaming takeover of (nearly) all things Hollywood. It’s in a forthcoming issue of Cigar Aficionado (i.e., Brian Cox on the cover). I have two or three quotes in it; Cinetic Media’s John Sloss, Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman, Christian Science Monitor critic and LAFCA member Peter Rainer, and five or six others also chime in.

At last night’s West Side Story premiere at Lincoln Center, costar Ansel Elgort (who is quite confident and kind of Brando-ish as Tony — don’t listen to the haters) was, no offense, wearing the wrong haircut. With his traditional black tux and tall, slender frame, Elgort needed to look less like Jared Kushner and more like a slightly scruffy street shuffler of some kind….more like a daydreamer who sometimes forgets to visit the barber shop. A family-of-Trump vibe isn’t the right thing to rock in this particular climate.

21 years ago I sat down with Tony Curtis at the Beverly Glen shopping center, just south of Mulholland Drive. I waved to him above the heads of several customers sitting outside a popular, packed delicatessen. Curtis waved me over and led me to the inside of a less-crowded Starbucks — fewer people, fewer stares.

When he ordered coffee for both of us, the woman at the counter insisted on a freebie. “Really?” he said to her. “Well, thank you so much!”

We talked about everything — politics, drug-dependency (Curtis had difficulties in this area during the ’80s), Burt Lancaster, old Hollywood, his website (tonycurtis.com, a venue for selling his paintings), women, new technologies, etc.

At midpoint I handed Curtis a list of his 120 films and asked him to check those he’s genuinely proud of. He checked a total of 18. He checked Sweet Smell of Success (naturally) but not The Vikings. Some Like It Hot (of course!) but not The Outsider. He checked Houdini. Every film he made after Spartacus in 1960 up until 1968’s The Boston Strangler, he didn’t check. He checked his role as a pair of mafiosos — Louis ‘Lepke’ Buchalter in 1975’s Lepke and Sam Giancana in the 1986 TV movie Mafia Princess.

Among his notable TV guest appearances, Curtis checked only one — the voice role of ‘Stony Curtis’ in a 1965 episode of The Flintstones.

Imagine my sitting down with Dwayne Johnson under similar circumstances. Imagine my handing Johnson a list of the nearly 40 films he’s starred or played a strong co-lead in over the last 20 years, and asking him to check those he’s genuinely “proud of”.

Dwayne’s answer would have to be “well, if you’re asking me that in the same way you asked Tony Curtis the same question, my answer would have to be zip. Because I’m not genuinely proud of any of my films. I’m glad a lot of them were popular and made money, and I’m certainly glad that I’ve become a hugely successful brand and all. But I’m not a Tony Curtis-level actor, and I never will be.”

Imagine my sitting down with Chris Pratt under similar circumstances. Imagine my handing him a list of the 14 or 15 films he’s starred or played a strong co-lead in over the last, say, 10 years, and asking him to check those he’s genuinely “proud of”.

Pratt’s answer would have to be “well, if you’re asking me that in the same spirit that you asked Tony Curtis and Dwayne Johnson, my answer would have to be that among the films I’ve starred in, I am genuinely proud of nothing. I’m ‘proud’ a lot of my films made money, and I’m certainly glad that I’ve become a hugely successful, bulky-bod, conservative-minded actor with big money and big homes.

“I’m genuinely proud of three films that I played a supporting role in between 2011 and 2013 — Bennett Miller‘s Moneyball, Kathy Bigelow‘s Zero Dark Thirty and Spike Jonze‘s Her — but that’s another subject. The bottom line is that as a movie star I make commercial fast-food movies and that’s all. If I’m the star, you know it’s going to be a throw-away, more or less. You know it, I know it. I’m really sorry I did Passengers, which everyone hated, but the money was good so I took it and ran like a thief.

In the wake of West Side Story‘s post-premiere hoopla, the Ansel Elgort crazies, as predicted, have returned in force.

I’ve just asked a few of these pitchforkers to please post factual evidence that proves Elgort, co-lead of West Side Story, is in fact a predator, a sexual assaulter and/or a pedophile. Because my understanding (and please forgive if there’s something substantial that I’ve missed) is that Elgort isn’t guilty of a damn thing except for having possibly behaved brusquely (i.e., insensitively, heartlessly) with this or that lass.

Consideration #1: The “Gabby” episode — the one that happened in 2014 and blew up on Twitter for three or four days in late June 2020 — is nothing, or at least nothing indictable.

Consideration #2: I don’t think flirtatious texts between a 20something Elgort and this or that teenaged girl are proof of anything.

Here’s how I put it 18 days ago: If and when the hair-trigger Twitter mob tries to to revive that idiotic Ansel Elgort + “Gabby” narrative about alleged statutory rape, just remember that the whole story was completely fraudulent. ‘

The story ignited in June 2020 and ran out of gas after three or four days.

Ansel and “Gabby’s” relationship happened in New York State in late 2014, when she was old enough (17) to consent. Elgort turned 20 on 3.14.14. He and Gabby were sexual and then Elgort hurt her feelings by ignoring her messages in some kind of passive-aggressive way. That’s all it was. It was nothing. Relationships will occasionally leave bruises. I know what it feels like to be casually dumped or abruptly ignored by a lover, but it happens. Tough shit, life in the big city, etc.