In my book, the very first stirrings began in the early ‘80s (i.e., tits and zits). Things got worse in the ‘90s, especially with the release of deplorable crap like Jan DeBont’s Speed 2: Cruise Control. But the most corrosive and definitive dumb-down began with the ascent of Marvel and D.C. in the early 20teens.
Things have been dumbing-down all over…
It is my conviction that there are no awful discourses on Hollywood Elsewhere. Okay, now and then but mostly never. Even when the wokesters are repeating their broken-record bullshit (or, alternately, pleading with me to post only about movies and leave cultural politics out of it), there is always the eloquent, brilliantly phrased filmklassik ready to jump in at short notice.
It was around dusk and peaceful in the ancient section of Rome on 6.2.17. My Macbook Pro was sitting on a small round table on a narrow cobblestoned street. I was using the wifi from a cafe called Barnum Roma (Via del Pellegrino, 87, 00186 Roma, Italy), and for a moment I stopped and stood up and took a slow-pan video, and as God is my witness it was one of the happiest moments of my life.
It doesn’t matter how long my Barnum Roma time lasted (an hour or so) — what matters is how serene and in-the-pocket I felt when I was standing there. It still gets me off just to watch this.
I’ll always be a fan of Al Pacino‘s big speech at the end of The Devil’s Advocate, but Keanu Reeves makes a re-watch so difficult. He’s stuck with all the clunky lines, of course, but the yelling, the anger and denial and pulling out the gun with that dumb glare on his face….everything he says and does is truly terrible.
This tediously moralistic Taylor Hackford film is 25 years old now, and if you ask me Pacino’s John Milton was at least partly based upon Donald Trump. (The producers rented Trump’s apartment for a scene, I’ve read.) The screenwriters were Jonathan Lemkin and Tony Gilroy, but the maestro behind Pacino’s big soliloquy was Gilroy, or so I’ve always understood.
I just want Ana Faris to know that I understand and support her journey, present and past. Life is hard and Hollywood is a jungle, and no one should ever regard the slapping of an actress’s ass as anything but wildly inappropriate, and that the perpetrator should have his own ass paddled until it’s pink and sore.
If I had been cast in a supporting role in Ivan Reitman‘s My Super Ex-Girlfriend (’06), and if Reitman had yelled at me, as he did with the 26-year-old Faris on the first day of shooting, my feelings would have definitely been hurt. I might have even been ““angry, hurt and humiliated,” as Faris recently told Lena Dunham on her Unqualified podcast.
If Reitman had slapped my ass, I would have been mortified. No, wait…I wouldn’t have been mortified. I would have reared around and slapped him across the chops, as Dustin Hoffman‘s Dorothy does to Dabney Coleman‘s sexist pig director in Tootsie (’82). Reitman surely saw Tootsie and understood that ass slapping isn’t cool, and yet, according to Faris, he did it anyway.
Faris to Dunham: “One of my hardest film experiences was with Ivan Reitman. I mean, the idea of attempting to make a comedy under this, like, reign of terror, he was a yeller. He would bring down somebody every day…and my first day, it was me.”
Posted on 3.22.16: “The single most terrifying film about death is Michael Tolkin‘s The Rapture (’91). Not death itself but the kind envisioned by fundamentalist Christian wackos. One look at that film and you’ll be able to at least consider the idea that hardcore Christians have taken something naturally serene and peaceful and created a terrifying new-age mythology that would give Satan pause.
“I need to amend what I just said, in fact — The Rapture is one of the most most terrifying films ever, about anything.”
So the dressing that flavored and annointed the salad that Olivia Wilde prepared for Harry Styles as their Don’t Worry Darling affair was just getting underway two years ago…the salad dressing was Nora Ephron‘s from “Heartburn“: “2 tablespoons of Grey Poupon mustard mixed with two tablespoons of good red wine vinegar. Then, whisking constantly, add six tablespoons of olive oil.”
There’s nothing like the rapture of a mad love affair as it’s just turning into something, but it never lasts, of course. The intensity dial always drops from 9 or 10 into a 6 or 7, and the lovers, if they’re good, have no choice but to find (or create) a day-to-day groove that may be nurturing and good for their souls and so on. But the sex always settles down.
HE to friendo: “Wilde lied about the timeline of the Styles affair, of course. She and Suidekis has fallen out of love, or she had at least. It happens. Harry Styles is cuter and sexier thsn Sudeikis, and Wilde went for it. I’m presuming that she and Styles are probably winding as a couple as we speak. She’s too old for him — it probably can’t last. Not with a big pop star.”
Friendo to HE: “Yeah, I saw them walking together in a recent photo and thought ‘that’s way too much baggage for him.'”
I came across the above description of Todd Field’s Tar yesterday — an analogy between Cate Blanchett‘s Lydia Tar and Daniel Day Lewis‘s Daniel Plainview.
The seed appeared in Jessica Kiang‘s 9.19 Film Comment roundup of the Venice Film Festival ** (“Venice ’22: Women on Fire“), to wit: “For over a decade I’ve wondered, off and on, when we would get a female movie character to equal the ferocity, charisma, and monumental destructive narcissism of There Will Be Blood’s Daniel Plainview. Though the two films could not be more different, I think I can stop wondering now. Lydia Tár would drink your milkshake without ever thinking it might not be hers to drink.”
Kiang’s month-old essay doesn’t mention “Girlboss” though. (Before failing to note the URL, I thought I had read “Bosswoman” or “Bitchboss”.) It comes, I’ve just been told, from a 10.15 Letterboxd piece by Brenda Nowicz. Hats off. (And thanks to “LightInfa” for the heads-up.)
I know that the There Will Be Blood association opened something up. A little light bulb switched on. One could even make the claim that the final shot in that Asian ComicCon gathering in Tar is equivalent to Daniel Day Lewis’s final TWBB line — “I’m finished!”
Tar may be a “monster”, as Kiang calls her, but over the decades I’ve been in the orbit of several such headstrong egoists, male and female alike, and when you become a big, wealthy visionary cheese such behavior sometimes (but not always) goes with the territory. Regrettable and possibly unpleasant for certain parties, but not evil. Kiang is one of those who regards Lydia Tar”s third-act takedown by woke “robots” as a justified thing. That, to me, is horrifying.
Tar is a piece of work, all right, and I wouldn’t want to get too close to a real-life counterpart for fear of stray venom pellets, but she’s not that awful — her behavior has been observed among many headstrong creators. Nearly ever powerful person in world history, especially the creatively powerful and world-famous, has used his or her power to persuade attractive young people to fuck or pleasure them or serve as arm-candy. They’ve all done it. Lydia Tar is no different. Way of the big, bad, grown-up world. And after you turn 20 you have to figure that stuff out.
Plus I”m still bothered by the fact that Field doesn’t allow a single sexual vapor into the film — he asks us to supply our own imaginings.
**Thanks to “SlashMC.”
