Anthony and Joe Russo‘s The Gray Man wants a little love from the HE community. Open your hearts and show that you care, and if you can’t do that at least be kind in your dismissals.

“Corporations are getting away with price gouging because they face little or not competition, and they’re using the spectre of inflation as a cover. Last year corporations raked in their highest profits in over 70 years.” — excerpted from below video, written and spoken by Robert Reich.

11 years ago Steven Spielberg took part in a promotional taping for Cowboys & Aliens, which he exec produced. Sitting with director Jon Favreau and producers Brian Grazer and Ron Howard, Spielberg recalled his 1965 meeting with legendary director John Ford, when Spielberg was only 18 years old.

It’s a great little story, and the dialogue sounds so much like cranky, crotchety Ford of legend…the ornery cuss with a cigar and a black eyepatch.

The Ford meeting is reenacted near the end of Spielberg’s The Fabelmans, which will have its big premiere at the Toronto Film Festival. A person who caught last night’s research screening of The Fabelmans says it’s a great scene, and that it leads to a great ending (which I won’t divulge). David Lynch plays Ford, and Gabriel LaBelle plays young Spielberg, called “Sammy Fabelman” in the film.

Another discussion stirred by Ethan Hawke‘s The Last Movie Stars…, and especially by Paul Schrader‘s observations about Hud…

HE to Schrader: “Your observation is 100% spot-on, but the kicker in Hud is the ending — when Newman, the last one in the house, pops open a beer, strolls over to the kitchen door, gazes at the departing Brandon de Wilde, reflects for seven or eight seconds, and then delivers that cynical ‘fuck it and to hell with it’ gesture…that‘s what sunk in, what altered the American male identity from 1963 onward, at least as far as movies were concerned.”

Newman: “‘We thought [the] last thing people would do was accept Hud as a heroic character. His amorality just went over [the audience’s] head — all they saw was this western, heroic individual.’”

HE to Newman: “They saw the amorality, of course, but they still liked Hud’s irreverence, rogue swagger and cocksure fuck-all attitude…his general disdain for old conservative values. And they liked that all those women, married and single, went to bed with him.”

Update: Tony Dow has passed, and may God rest his soul.

Earlier: Tony Dow, who is still with us, lived as full of a life as his strength and luck and spirit allowed. 77 years worth. It’s dismaying that the poor guy’s deathwatch has become the most newsworthy or attention-getting thing that Dow has generated since costarring in Leave It To Beaver in the late ’50s and early ’60s.

I’d like to think that if Dow is conscious and checking his smart phone (and people facing the final slumber occasionally do that — they’ll suddenly wake up and start chatting or picking up the phone) that he’ll get a laugh out of the headlines.

Billy Wilder-like epitaph: “If you’re having a hard time and life is leaking out of you like sand, it’s important to remember than not that many people care. Unless, of course, your death is announced prematurely and therefore inaccurately, in which case the whole world will wake up and pay attention…the heartless so-and-sos.”

The Disqus comment count function (top right of each post) has returned! Heartfelt thanks to HE’s own Sasha Stone and a Manhattan tech guy named Dan, who saved the day when he reported the problem to the Disqus tecchies, and then they fixed the issue…whatever it was.

The comments themselves never disappeared but the count did. It felt awful when it vaporized — sure feels great to have it back.