A friend and I were discussing Elegance Braton‘s The Inspection (A24, 11.18), a drama about homophobia in the Marine Corps. At one point I asked about the off-screen orientation of Jeremy Pope, who plays the lead character. Whoops!

“What does Pope’s sexuality have to do with anything?,” came the reply. “Who cares? He’s twice been Tony-nominated, and both noms were in the same year. And he’s spectacular in The Inspection. Plus he’ll soon be back on Broadway playing Basquiat.”

“I always want to know who’s who and what’s doing,” I said. “And, as you know, today’s rule of thumb when it comes to gay characters is that it’s inauthentic for straight actors to play them. Tom Hanks recently said that he couldn’t play his gay Philadelphia character in today’s realm, that audiences wouldn’t accept that, he said. I presumed from the get-go that Pope wouldn’t have been cast in The Inspection if he weren’t gay, but I asked nonetheless out of idle curiosity. If Pope was straight his casting would be unusual in a 2022 context, and I was wondering if anyone is defying or ignoring the basic requirements.

“The answer in this instance is ‘no — Pope’s Inspection casting went right by the book.'”

Significant Northeastern Critic: “I’m with you on this.”

Martin McDonagh‘s The Banshees of Inisherin opens today. All shrewd-minded, able-bodied Hollywood Elsewhere contributors need to see it tonight, tomorrow or Saturday and make their reactions known.

In a “reading the Oscar tea leaves” piece, IndieWire‘s Anne Thompson speculated that “the stealth candidate from wily Searchlight is Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin, which could build support from the speciality-leaning and international side of the Academy.”

Translation: In a pig’s eye.

Jordan Ruimy: “Banshees is brilliant, acerbic and tinged with melancholia, but it might be a tad too artfully vague for Oscar voters tastes.

“I’ll be more than happy if my assumption turns out to be wrong and McDonagh wins the top prize, but if you’ve seen Banshees then you know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s a bitter film about how bitter life is.”

HE: “A film about eccentric oddballs, incomprehensible Irish nihilism and bloody fat finger stumps is NOT going to connect with a plurality of Academy voters. Forget it.”

Northeastern Hotshot Critic: “I’m with you on this.”

Walter Hill is not crazy. He’s not eccentric. He turned 80 last January, and he’s Walter “you’d better believe it” Hill, and this is how he put it:

…who claims to have been “violently ill.” Even if you’ve become stricken with some awful stomach virus that results in uncontrollable vomiting, say, I don’t trust that term. It sounds too rehearsed or cooked up. Like something you might say after a facetime phone chat with your publicist.

The sickest I’ve ever been happened in Marrakech in the summer of ’76. It came after eating a dish of Couscous at a rooftop restaurant. I awoke around 1 ayem, weak and whimpering. I spent the next twelve hours “making love to the toilet,” as my girlfriend of the time put it.

But there was nothing “violent” about it. It was more about laying down and surrendering to the void. Around 3 or 4 am I said to myself, “Okay, this might be it…I might die. But at least when I depart this awful nausea will stop, and I can merge with the infinite in peace.”

Posted from Santa Barbara on 1.18.20: