Day: August 7, 2022

Seasoned director–writer friendo: “I’ve heard from [a post-production guy] that the low Batgirl test scores are accurate and that it’s basically not releasable. Quote: ’It makes Catwoman with Halle Berry seem like Abel Gance’s Napoleon.’

“Kevin Smith and others are castigating David Zaslav for this, but a stinker is a stinker.”

Follow–up: “The info is from a transfer house that uploaded a digital internal workprint for online viewing. It was the same version that was test-screened…[he] had heard it hadn’t gone well and knew why.

“There were a copious amount of ‘scene missings’ and incomplete or vacant opticals, but [he] said it plays like a long unsold pilot for the CW.”

An 8.2 THR story by Aaron Couch titled “Behind The Cancellation of Batgirl” reported a test score of a “very early version” (also described as a “director’s cut”) of Batgirl in the “lower 60s.”

That’s definitely a subdued, unencouraging response — not necessarily a sign of major difficulty as horror films, according to Couch’s story, tend to test in the 60s. It reportedly tested in that 60something range, and the downish but dynamically styled Black Swan allegedly tested around 55.

But Batgirl is a feminist superhero flick with a Latina star (In The Heights’ Leslie Grace) so how exactly would that kind of film be regarded as one that pushes horror buttons and could therefore be afforded a little statistical slack? The noirish D.C. brand is one thing; horror another.

Any way you slice it, it’s hard to imagine a seasoned marketer being enthused about a superhero flick testing in the low 60s.

From a 2.10.17 THR story about an exceptionally high test screening of Guardians of the Galaxy 2:

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Dan Trachtenberg and Patrick Aison‘s Prey is obviously not my cup, but I’ve pledged to watch it regardless. (Probably this evening.) If you’ve seen it and feel strongly one way or the other, please share.

I’d much rather see Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99, a three-part doc about Michael Lang‘s infamous boomers vs. GenX/Millennial gathering that descended into rage and bonfires.

Full respect and admiration for the late Clu Gulager, who passed two days ago at age 93.

There’s a moment in Peter Bogdanovich‘s The Last Picture Show (’71) when Ellen Burstyn‘s “Lois Farrow” gives the finger to Gulager’s “Abilene”, her ex-lover (or sometime lover, I forget which) and Gulager responds with a slight grin. That, I submit, was his greatest moment as an actor; there’s no question that Abilene was his most respectable role.

Gulager’s performance in that landmark film is best appreciated via Bogdanovich’s 127-minute director’s cut, which is the only version you can stream or buy.

Gulager was also semi-memorable in Don Siegel‘s The Killers (’64) and in James Goldstone‘s Winning (’69). I’m sorry to have never seen Gulager’s A Day with the Boys, which vied for a Best Short Film prize at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival.

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So far John Leguizamo hasn’t answered why his role of Chi-Chi Rodriguez in To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything!…Julie Newmar wasn’t played by an actual cross dresser or trans person. He also played Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in Baz Luhrmann‘s Moulin Rogue!, despite being neither French nor a midget. He also played an Italian in 1993’s Super Mario Bros..  

What’s good for the goose ought to be good for the gander…no?

The Cuban-born Ana de Armas is playing Marilyn Monroe in Blonde.  Does Leguizamo have a problem with that? Doubtful.

Last night I caught Ron Howard‘s Thirteen Lives (Amazon Prime, 7.29), a 147-minute docudrama about the 2018 Tham Luang cave rescue. I found it admirable in every respect — brilliant, harrowing, gripping — and am sorry I didn’t catch it theatrically instead of in Jett and Cait‘s living room. I can’t imagine how a more riveting narrative feature could have been made.

No, I’ve never seen Tom Waller‘s The Cave (’19) or National Geographic‘s The Rescue (’21). For all I know they both provide a fuller immersion, but Thirteen Lives definitely works. It conveys a feeling of claustrophobic tension and pressure that holds you and damn near instills feelings of subdued panic, especially if you’ve ever felt slightly freaked from being in tight spaces (as I have once or twice).

And yet the Metacritic score is 66%, which is completely insane. For once a higher Rotten Tomatoes score (88%) is far more trustworthy.

Part of the problem is that damn near every critic has used the terms “white savior story” or “white savior narrative” in their reviews. This is because they’ve all been ordered by the woke comintern to look askance or at least suspiciously at any film set in a non-white country (Thailand) in which white guys are the principal heroes.

And so the verdicts have been tainted by phrases like “the film isn’t simply a white-savior story,” “keeps Thirteen Lives from completely succumbing to a white savior story,” “…can sink into a White savior narrative,” etc.

The fact is that the principal heroes behind the Tham Luang rescue — real-life divers Rick Stauton, Chris Jewell, John Volanthen, Jason Mallinson and Dr. Richard Harris — are white (British and Australian) and played respectively by Viggo Mortensen, Colin Farrell, Tom Bateman, Paul Gleeson and Joel Edgerton.

Sorry, asshole critics, if that goes against what you’ve been told to approve and/or disapprove. I understand what your marching orders are and I sympathize with your situation, but facts are facts.

It’s an old complaint but many wokester critics are so completely caught up in their own little bullshit anti-white narratives that it’s almost not worth reading them. This tendency was evident last April in some of the negative reviews of Michael Mann‘s Tokyo Vice, which was trashed by anti-white racists like Rolling Stone‘s Alan Sepinwall and Slashfilm‘s Josh Spiegel.

“Gentlemen, you have just seen me do a disgusting thing…but you’ll always remember what I just did. If no one remembers your brand, you’re not going to sell any soap.” I’ve seen The Hucksters exactly once, and honestly? I don’t remember a thing about the plot or any lines spoken by Clark Gable or Deborah Kerr or Ava Gardner…nothing. But I’ve never forgotten that glob of spit.

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When you drop your sunglasses in the orangutan enclosure…

Credit: minorcrimes on TikTok pic.twitter.com/7qjf6JZptE

— Steve Stewart-Williams (@SteveStuWill) August 6, 2022

What, finally, has the dambreak success of Top Gun: Maverick taught us? Basically that mainstream audiences are sick to death of woke shit, and that if Hollywood is ready to dropkick that attitude and get back to the business of crafty, absorbing, grade-A entertainment minus the poison pill of progressive instruction, things may gradually get better.

News flash: Hollywood has gone mental over the last five or six years. You know what I’m talking about. Everything is about race, gender and sexuality now, backed up by the always looming threat of Stasi persecution. And it’s fucking nuts.

One practical way of addressing the awful and possibly turning things around (or at least sensibly counter-balancing the 2024 diversity rules) is to bring in a sensible person as the new Hollywood Diversity Czar. Don’t laugh, but I could be this Changer of Games if enough people find this reasonable. Seriously.

If appointed, fairness will be my basic policy, and statistical proportionality my mantra. and transcendence will always be a contemplation or, you know, a possible “thing.”

For I am “John Leguizamo” in a sense, and I’m also (ahem) “me” — a guy who’s lived, struggled and mostly profited in Los Angeles for nearly 40 years and who knows all about tristate-area attitudes (grew up in New Jersey and Connecticut, did hard time in 20th Century Manhattan and 21st Century Brooklyn) and who’s seen and spiritually merged with God knows how many thousands of movies good and bad (including most of the great classics as well as classic genre fare like The Hidden) and who’s dropped acid and mescaline and just, you know, mixed it up into one big bowl of ghoulash.

Because I’ve been up, down and all around. Because I’m one of the few bigmouth columnists who really and truly gets it…who not only grasps The Whole David Thomson Equation but The Whole Cosmic Equation, and am constantly passing along calculations, permutations and perceptions of same on Hollywood Elsewhere.

You think I’m kidding? Obviously I am but maybe I’m not. Who knows? I’ve seen it, done it, been through it all. I am a white guy, yes, but a cosmic white guy and there’s the difference. I have no axe to grind — only Krishna truths to tell. And I have excellent taste in shoes. And there’s no way I would have approved the reality–defiant casting of Daniel Ranieri and Briana Middleton in The Tender Bar.

Will I make mistakes? Probably. Who doesn’t? But I am fundamentally fair, and at the end of the day my policies and proclamations will help to restore a semblance of what the film industry used to be. We can’t go home again, but we can at least try to behave in a sane, practical, pro-popcorn manner.

How did I get started on this? One of the most fruitful ways to get going on a riff of some kind is to think of something kinda crazy, and then go into a state of creative denial by explaining and justifying the crazy in a way that almost makes sense. Or does make sense in a way.

And more on its mind, to put it mildly.