If you needed a new TV on 3.16.72, or the day that The Godfather opened in five Manhattan theatres, you could take advantage of a special Macy’s sale and get a 25-inch console color set for only $399 — an exciting $150 reduction from the usual price of $549!

In 1972 $399 was equivalent to $2,623.15 in 2022 dollars.

And if you were on a budget you could snag a black-and-white TV for only $169 — $1,136.70 in 2022 dollars.

I watch the Godfather films (Parts I & II but not Part III) every three or four years. I’ll probably pop open the 2008 restored versions over the next two or three weeks. All hail this mecca of American cinema…this church, this temple, this place of worship and meditation, this wailing wall, this well of souls, this visit to a chapter in the young movie-nurturing life of Jeffrey Wells, this movie-comfort blanket to end all movie-comfort blankets.

Last weekend I watched Kim Aubry‘s Emulsional Rescue, a 19-minute doc about the restoration of the first two films. God, it’s so glorious to just settle into this tale of heroism and devotion and nobility — a story of a team of good guys (led by blue-chip restoration guru Robert Harris) saving the Godfather films and making them look better than ever before. And ohhh, those earthy ambers and Gordon Willis blacks!

If you’ve never had the pleasure, please set aside 19 minutes and dive in…

With the 50th anniversary of the theatrical debut of Francis Coppola‘s original Godfather less than a month away, I’ve been asking myself why there’s still no Bluray version of the chronological, extra-long Godfather saga — a 269-minute version of Part I (young Vito in Sicily to Michael murdering the heads of the five families in 1955) and a 149-minute version of Part II (strictly Michael from Lake Tahoe to Miami, Havana, New York, Las Vegas, Washington and back to Tahoe). That totals out at 418 minutes, or 2 minutes short of 7 hours. And that’s without Part III, which no one cares about.

This fan edit DVD version looks like hell, of course. So to properly celebrate the 50th why doesn’t someone get the lead out and issue a 1080p version? Or am I missing something?

Yes, I’m aware that the Coppola-approved The Godfather Saga — A Novel for Television, which aired in 1977 and obviously encompassed only the first two films, ran 435 minutes — 7 hours and 15 minutes or 17 minutes longer than the above-mentioned DVD set. A Coppola-sanctioned Bluray version of this one-time-only presentation would be a great thing to have and hold.

Emotional Rescue talking heads: Coppola, Harris, Steven Spielberg, director of photography Gordon Willis, consulting restoration cinematographer Allen Daviau, Paramount Post Production executive vp Martin Cohen, MPI senior technical advisor Daniel Rosen, MPI scanning technician Chris Gillaspie, senior digital artist Steven A. Sanchez, digital artist Valerie V. McMahon, and MPI technical director and senior colorist Jan Yarbrough.

Sometimes I hate comedy that you’re expected to “laugh” at. Almost as much as I hate people who hideously shriek and guffaw in cafes and bars after their second glass of wine. For most of my life I’ve been an LQTM type of guy. I worship at the altar of no-laugh funny. This is where the gold is.

Upon these two deadpan dialogue scenes hang all of the humor and informed attitude of Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Burn After Reading. Idiots will watch these scenes with sour, quizzical expressions and say “Where’s the funny? We don’t get it.” And they never will.

The senior artist — the guy who channels most of the music, does most of the dancing and “carries the ball”, so to speak — is the great David Rasche (Sledgehammer, United 93, In The Loop). J. K. Simmons is obviously on the same wavelength, of course, but he’s strictly a straight man. Rasche owns this scene.

It has been said that the absolute Coen peak of the aughts (and arguably of their careers) happened between ’07 and ’09, and involved three films in quick succession — No Country For Old Men (’07), Burn After Reading (’08) and A Serious Man (’09). My fourth favorite Coen film of the aughts is Intolerable Cruelty (’03).

Blood Simple was obviously the best Coen film of the ’80s. Fargo (’96) and The Big Lebowski (’98) were the crown jewels of the ’90s. The best Coen film of the 20teens, of course, was Inside Llewyn Davis.

Houston, we have a problem with the getting-on Bradley Cooper playing a significantly younger Jon Peters in Licorice Pizza. Cooper’s performance as the street-hardened Peters, who had a turbulent upbringing, is amusingly manic and overbearing but physically he’s too old.

Licorice Pizza is highly detailed and exacting about the way stuff looked in the early ‘70s. Wardrobe, cop cars, store signs, hair stylings — it gets damn near everything right.

And yet Peters, born in June ‘45 and therefore 28 during the gas crisis of ‘73, is played by an actor who was born in January ‘75. Filming happened between August and November of 2020, when Cooper was 45 or 17 years older than Peters was at the time. Cooper probably takes care of himself better than 90% of your typical mid-40somethings out there, but during shooting he didn’t look especially younger than his years.

There’s no shame in the handsome Cooper not having the face of a late 20something. It’s just a fact. The casting might have worked if Cooper had been the 30something Silver Linings Playbook guy, but that was a decade ago.

Are you telling me that Cooper’s dark-haired Prince Valiant wig doesn’t emphasize those stern, filled-out, no-longer-young facial features?

PTA obviously believed that Cooper could have fun with the excessive Peters machismo thing (and he did) and presumably wanted a name-brand actor with a strong personality in the role, but the simple physical reality jettisons the illusion.

This is definitely a sad week for guys associated with the National Lampoon‘s heyday. Three days ago Ivan Reitman, whose first big score came from producing National Lampoon’s Animal House (’78), died in Montecito at age 75. And now P.J. O’Rourke, who served as editor-in-chief of the National Lampoon in the late ’70s and for many decades was one of HE’s favorite satirists and comic essayists, has passed from lung cancer at age 74.

I interviewed O’Rourke in August ’15 to help promote Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead, Doug Tirola‘s doc about the NatLamp’s hey-hey. Here’s the mp3.

I’ve been chuckling at the flip, iconoclastic, world-weary smirkings and pot-shots of P.J. O’Rourke since the mid ’70s — a long journey. I can’t think of another rightie libertarian whose stuff I’ve laughed at quite so often. Come to think of it I can’t think of another rightie libertarian whose stuff I’ve laughed at, period.

One way or another I’ve always been a fan of his material. (For the most part.) Mainly, I suppose, because O’Rourke was editor-in-chief at the National Lampoon during that legendary publication’s last decently creative period, or ’78 through ’80, and because I truly worshipped that mag back in the day so there’s a carry-over effect.

O’Rourke is the author of 16 satiric, smart-ass books (including last year’s “The Baby Boom: How It Got That Way (And It Wasn’t My Fault) (And I’ll Never Do It Again),” which I haven’t yet read) and is currently a monthly columnist for the Daily Beast.

Two of my favorite O’Rourke books are “Holidays in Hell” and “Modern Manners“. I’ve also always loved the title of “Republican Party Reptile“, or more precisely the illustration of Dwight D. Eisenhower wearing a mohawk (which was dumped when O’Rourke’s publisher explained that relatively few targeted readers knew or cared who Eisenhower was). Honestly? I’ve never read “Republican Party Reptile”. No offense but why would I? I’m a leftie, and in some respects I’m selfish enough as it is.

Three months after catching it on a huge Westwood screen, I re-watched Paul Thomas Anderson‘s Licorice Pizza on a subtitled DVD screener. From the comfort of my living room…me and the cats.

It played a little better this time. I’ve been kicking it around and thinking it through all these weeks, and I still say that the finale in which Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman finally embrace like they mean it…this is still the best scene.

Yes, Pizza is still episodic and meandering, but that’s the idea and I get that now. And I still respect the courage that Anderson showed when he included those two scenes involving John Michael Higgins‘ Jerry Frick and his two (i.e., successive) Japanese wives. The courage, I mean, to say “presentism can blow me…the ’70s were the ’70s, and I’m going to stay true to how things were back then.”

But I have to say that the whole Jon Peters sequence rubbed me the wrong way…again.

If Hoffman’s “Gary Valentine” is one thing besides a good actor, he’s an ambitious businessman (water beds, pinball machines). He knows that a business owner has to keep it together and respect the rules of commerce and keep things at par with his customers. And yet while installing a water bed at the home of a semi-famous guy who’s dating Barbara Streisand, Gary decides that Peters’ bullying manner and asshole personality is bad news and that he has to be somehow flipped off. And so, despite Peters having said there’ll be hell to pay if Gary messes his house up, Gary pulls the watering hose out of the bed and tosses it on the floor, and then he and Alana blow out of Peters’ home and jump into the big truck.

What does Gary think will happen as a result? That the hyper-aggressive Peters will just forget about it? He knows that Peters will hunt him down and turn his life into a raging sea. It’s therefore a completely idiotic scene, and one that completely undermines Gary’s character, and yet Anderson makes it almost entirely about everyone being short of gas.

That aside, Pizza seemed a slightly better film than when I saw it at the Village Westwood on Saturday, November 6th. It’s a much more interesting and humanistic and life-like film than The Power of the Dog.

A trailer for Baz Luhrmann‘s Elvis pops on Thursday — three months before its likely Cannes debut, a bit more than four months before it opens on 6.24. And I’m taking this moment to voice a concern.

Austin Butler is Luhrmann’s Elvis, and ever since this was announced I’ve been wondering why. Because Butler doesn’t look like Elvis. He doesn’t have those surly eyes and lips, I mean, or that vaguely bashful “aw shucks” Memphis rockabilly thing. And he sure as shit isn’t pretty enough.

You have to wonder why Luhrmann didn’t choose someone who could actually be the resuscitated, back-from-the-dead Elvis of the ’50s. There are dozens of spot-on Elvis imitators out there (and a few on YouTube), and a certain portion of these can probably act. Nobody wants to watch a guy who doesn’t quite look or sound like the Real McCoy — they want to watch something close to a dead ringer. So why didn’t Luhrmann find one?

I’ve been worried about Butler ever since he played his big scene as Charles “Tex” Watson in Once Upon A Time in Hollywood (“I’m the devil, and I’m here to do the devil’s bizness!”). The instant he said that line, I muttered to myself, “Nope…not good enough.”

When it comes to handing out Oscars, the dumbest tendency among Academy voters is to honor the “most acting” — shouting, weeping, ranting, hair-pulling, howling. The second dumbest is a tendency to favor performances that involve heavy makeup and/or weight alteration.

Southern friendo to HE: 14 times the winners of makeup Oscars have won because they altered the appearance of a nominated actor (lead or supporting).  Eight of those wins correlated with the actor winning. I’m going back to the 80s. But in terms of recent history, it’s five out of seven.

HE to Southern Friendo: What are the recents again?

Southern friendo to HE: The five are La Vie en Rose, Iron Lady, Les Miserables, Dallas Buyers Club and Darkest Hour. All I’m saying is that if Eyes of Tammy Faye wins makeup, Jessica Chastain has a damn good shot at winning Best Actress,

HE to Southern Friendo: That’s ridiculous!

Southern friendo to HE: Nevertheless.

HE to Southern Friendo: Matthew McConaughey lost weight for Dallas Buyers Club. No makeup.

Southern Friendo to HE: A friend did the makeup on Jared Leto and he won. Doesn’t matter about the weight. it’s a statistic, plain and simple. Like Film Editing nominations correlating with Best Pic winners.

HE to Southern Friendo: My God, the stupidity! Not you — the stupid Academy members who vote for makeup acting.

The jokes, material and general pizazz factor may be engaging and even hilarious come March 27th, but we all understand the reasons why Amy Schumer, Regina Hall and Wanda Sykes have been hired to co-host this year’s Academy Awards ceremony.

One, the wokeness factor — three women, two BIPOCS, the right kind of progressive attitude. (Don”t even dispute this.). And two, Film Twitter will leave them alone while any dude (or dudes) who might have been chosen would have been picked apart and savaged for this or that past misdeed, one way or the other.

“Every choice Hollywood makes, whether it’s hosting a show or casting a movie, is done out of fear — fear of bad headlines, fear of Twitter, fear of that wave of hysteria that made them get rid of their host in the first place.” — Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone, just a few minutes ago.