Month: April 2022

I’m kidding, of course. House minority leader Kevin McCarthy, likely to become the House speaker after next November’s midterm rout of the Democrats, is a craven, two-faced liar and shameless kneepad whore when it comes to currying favor with Donald Trump.

McCarthy’s hypocrisy is being relished with last night’s release of tapes confirming that he’s been bald-facedly lying all along about his views of Trump’s complicity in the January 6th insurrection. The whole thing is covered in “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future” (Simon & Schuster, 5.3) by N.Y. Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns.

McCarthy on 1.11.22 phone call: “Let me be very clear to all of you, and I have been very clear to the president: he bears responsibilities for his words and actions — no if, ands or buts.

“I asked him personally today, does he hold responsibility for what happened? Does he feel bad about what happened? He told me he does have some responsibility for what happened and he’d need to acknowledge that.”

Robert Eggers’ The Northman is my idea of an admirable smarthouse DOA movie — a film you have to see because it’s Eggers, even though it does little more than demonstrate his absolute devotion to a harsh and bludgeoning world — a 100% commitment to a blood-and-intestines Viking flick that you can’t feel anything from, much less care about.

You do, however, come away with serious respect for the fierce and fearless performances by Anya Taylor Joy and Nicole Kidman. Seriously. I would give Kidman the edge — she really jumps into a boiling cauldron. One of the best lady villains ever.

Did Eggers actually say to that New Yorker interviewer that this version of The Northman (i.e., Focus Features pressed him for changes) is more commercial or entertaining than his own directors’ cut? Good God.

Give Eggers credit, at least, for going whole hog and not backing away from the extreme brushstrokes. But c’mon, man…The Northman is way, WAY too grim and gutty for its own good, or for anyone else’s.

The craft levels are tip-top but it immerses you so fully in dampness and cold and misery and sword wounds, and the killings are so extreme that it gradually tips into dark humor. One particular sword killing got the biggest laugh, but otherwise there’s nothing to feel or reflect upon. or thematically sink into.

It’s a tale about honor and obsessive revenge, obviously, but the focus is so invested in grotesque machismo — slashings, stabbings, howling, decapitations (including the first horse to lose its head since The Godfather), screaming — that I began to numb out after the first hour or so.

It’s almost entirely about brutality, savagery, top-tier production design (ninth century) and dazzling visual compositions from dp Jarin Blaschke. But story or character-wise there’s so little to invest in and the ending is so dismaying…it’s almost more of an extended technical demo reel than a film.

How many times did I hear scowling, sword-bearing warriors shouting at the top of their lungs “rrooaalrrraugHHHHRRR?”

Earlier notes: Technically and compositionally first-rate, at times amusingly ultra-violent, The Northman delivers the kind of suffocating, soul-draining ordeal that only a major artist could have provided.

I loved Eggers’ The Witch and The Lighthouse but I pretty much felt nothing this time around.

Excessive isn’t the word — startling, repetitious, numbing, eye-filling, confounding and yet all of a single harmonious compositional piece. Obviously the work of a serious artist. Handsome, exquisitely composed and about as bereft of humanity as a film in this vein could possibly be.

A few days ago a female producer friend told me it’s an empty film and that there’s no “there” there. She was right.

From Richard Brody‘s New Yorker review of Robert Eggers‘ The Northman (“Just a Bunch of Research and Gore“): “To tell this story, which Eggers co-wrote with the Icelandic poet and novelist Sjón, the director creates a pictorial world of visions and wonders, muck and gore, to evoke the crudeness and the cruelty, the mystical tenor and animistic passion, of the Viking realm — of rural Northern European medieval society over all.

“The cinematography conjures wetness and chill in a monochrome palette that’s interspersed with color images which are most notable for the mossy green of hilly fields. The prettiness of the pictures—the careful lighting, the calculated reflections, the gentle drift or dramatic rush of the camera—undercuts the roughness, the cruelty, the gore (decapitations, disembowelments, hacked-off limbs, bloody slashes and beatings), the freeze, the mud, the ice. The images undercut the movie’s sense of physicality altogether.

“[And yet] with its prettification of the bodily world, The Northman offers no synesthesia, no evocation of any sense beside vision.”

Posted on 7.2.20: “Synesthesia is when you hear music, but you see shapes. Or you hear a word or a name and instantly see a color. Synesthesia is a fancy name for when you experience one of your senses through another. For example, you might hear the name ‘Alex’ and see green. Or you might read the word ‘street’ and taste citrus fruit. The word ‘synesthesia’ has Greek roots.”

From Ted Johnson and Dominic Patten’s Deadline summary of today’s courtroom cross-examination of Johnny Depp: “The extent of Depp’s addiction to oxycodone and other substances was made crystal clear in a text one of his nurses who had commented on Black Mass. ‘I was high as a motherfucker when I made that film,’ Depp told the nurse with a digital laugh. ‘[But] it’s not like I took the pills to get high…I took the pills to get normal.”

It’s my earnest belief that the best things in life…the things that we tend to regard as the best things in life, I should say…are things that happen on their own…randomly, curiously, suddenly, quietly, oddly and sometimes even annoyingly. But they always drop in.

Sometimes they’re free and sometimes they happen as a result of being somewhere that you wouldn’t have had access to if you hadn’t attained a certain level of income or privilege or cunning.

One of the best things I’ve ever done is ride a bicycle along the dirt roads of Caye Caulker, just after sunset. I never would have tasted that experience if I hadn’t earned some coin to begin with.

One of the worst…okay, stupidest things I’ve ever endured is getting bitten in the ass by a Caye Caulker pit bull. And yet, looking back, memory-wise, it’s a weird keeper.

The original lyrics of this 1927 song were written by Buddy DeSylva and Lew Brown, and I honestly think they’re crap.

I know for a fact that the best things in life almost never happen to bums or addicts. If you don’t work hard and avoid the usual pitfalls and show some discipline and achieve a certain level of economic stability you’re never going to sample the best of anything.

And you must have good wifi everywhere, at all times, forever. Have you ever sampled the wifi aboard the Paris metro? You’re sitting in your seat, the train is racing from stop to stop, Parisians are getting on and off, the sounds are great and the totality of the experience…it’s glorious, man…really glorious.

All my life I’ve tried to follow the example of Cary Grant, and this has served me well. Always try to be gracious and gentlemanly. Stay as trim as you can. Be a cheapskate. Try to eat less. Enjoy good wine but stay away from the booze. LSD can be good for the soul if you treat it with respect and keep a copy of the Bhagavad Gita nearby.

And don’t go bald. If you’re going bald anyway or developing a bald spot, buy a ticket to Prague.

Robert Redford: “Life is essentially sad. Happiness is sporadic. It comes in moments and that’s it. Extract the nutrients from every moment.”

Bill Murray doesn’t suffer fools, and I love that about him. When he’s not being funny he can be rather brusque and dismissive. Especially with clueless or insipid journalists. Which is why, in a certain light, he’s long been one of my personal heroes.

Friendo: “God only knows what that’s about. The alleged ‘Bill Murray did or said something inappropriate on the Aziz Ansari film’ thing.”

HE: “He doesn’t crap around or play the game. I’ve seen him in action. The inference is that he acted inappropriately in a sexual way. But I’ll bet money that whatever he did or said, it wasn’t that bad. And that the complainer is a Millennial woman. And that her beef was about Murray being insensitive on some level.”

Friendo: “I’ll bet it isn’t sexual but, as you imply, some kind of sarcastic or angry response by him. Somebody was offended by something he said, and so they complained.”

HE: “Murray’s been in this racket for 40-plus years without significant incident, and suddenly he’s going to… what, inappropriately hit on someone? I can’t wrap my head around that. Why do you think it’s non-sexual? Just curious.”

Friendo: “He’s not that guy…not the lunging horndog. He’s just annoyed and irritated with everyone.”

HE: “Who suspends a movie in mid-production over something that might seem offensive in a certain context, but which isn’t all that serious?”

Minutes after hearing of the sad passing of 90 year-old Robert Morse, I was watching his Tony Award–winning, one-man-band performance as Truman Capote in Tru (‘89).

Written by Jay Presson Allen, the whole show is on YouTube, broken up into nine segments. I’ve only watched two, but it’s obvious Morse’s Tony was well deserved.

Quick — what was Gore Vidal’s alleged response when asked about Capote’s slow, haphazard, Montgomery Clift-styled suicide of ‘84?

Last night Variety’s J. Kim Murphy and Matt Donnelly reported that Searchlight has suspended production on Being Mortal, a comedy that Aziz Ansari is directing with himself, Seth Rogen, Bill Murray and Keke Palmer costarring.

The problem is a “complaint”, presumably lodged by someone working on the film about someone else in the production’s employ.

Variety doesn’t divulge particulars but given the dubious sexual misconduct allegation that Ansari was wrongfully tarnished with four years ago, the natural presumption on the part of industry readers is that the “complaint” has something to do with inappropriate behavior, possibly of a sexual or racial nature (though perhaps not).

And yet Murphy and Donnelly wait until paragraph #4 to state that the complaint is not directed against Ansari.

With Ansari’s photo on top and the words “Suspends Production” in the headline, what casual glancer wouldn’t presume that Ansari has once again stepped into something? Either way it was awfully nice of Murphy and Donnelly to clarify.

Based on a 2014 non–fiction book by American surgeon Atul Gawande, Being Mortal is reportedly about halfway through filming.

Whatever the merits or particulars, it seems odd that a huge commercial enterprise has been shut down over what may have been a single unwelcome incident. Was someone killed? The word “complaint” suggests not. Remember the old adage “the show must go on”? Not so much nowadays.

…in WeHo Gelson’s parking lot — Tuesday, 4.20, 7:25 pm. The driver was irritated when I asked for the model year. At first he tried stonewalling. Calmly and matter-of-factly, I said “just tell me the year…please.” Snooty-cakes fumed behind his rolled-up window…his expression said “my God, will you leave me the fuck alone?”

“Please.”

“Nine-nuh-mee-mee-mee.” (muffled)

“What?”

“Nineteen sixty–three!”

Hugs and condolences for fans and friends of the late Catherine Spaak, the actress-singer who passed on 4.17 at age 77. You’ll forgive me for very briefly confusing Spaak with Camilla Sparv, the 78 year-old, still-with-us Swedish actress who was briefly married to Robert Evans and costarred with Robert Redford in Michael Ritchie’s Downhill Racer (‘71).

Classy European ladies, three-syllable first names starting with C, one-syllable last names starting with S….sorry.

Today the N.Y. Times admitted to a serious pronoun error. Ezra Miller is miffed but willing to forgive.