Closing remark: “It shouldn’t be this scary to talk about anything. It’s made my job incredibly difficult and to be honest with you, I’m getting sick of talking to a crowd like this. I love you to death and I thank you for your support, and I hope they don’t take anything away from me. Whoever ‘they’ are.”
Day: November 12, 2022
Endurance Test
6:24 pm: I’m in my seat (E9) for a 6 pm showing of Wakanda Forever…God help me. I intend to tough it out no matter what.
Trailers put a deep scowl on my face. Movies for ADD morons. Nobody hates animation and those highly paid digital animators more than myself. If the ghosts of John Calley, Irving Thalberg, Daryl F. Zanuck or Dore Schary were sitting beside me and watching this shit…words fail.
I’m clutching my leather computer bag to my chest for warmth — November jacket weather outside and the AMC guys have the a.c. on.
9:50 pm: I lasted with Wakanda Forever for 90 minutes. I. Could. Not. Stand. Another. Minute.
I started to disengage when it got into the backstory of the Yucatán aquatic blue people. I knew I had another hour-plus to go. I just couldn’t do it.
Friendo #1: “The blue Yucatán people is the worst part. They should have lost it. The whole movie is obviously too long.”
Friendo #2: If you bailed at the 90-minute mark, you missed the best part.”
HE: “Good! Fine!”
Massachusetts Statehouse + Rat Silhouette
I accepted the death of Matt Damon‘s “Colin Sullivan” in The Departed, but I wanted Leo DiCaprio‘s “Billy Costigan” to live. Up to no good and loyal to Jack Nicholson‘s demonic “Frank Costello,” Sullivan earned that bullet in the head. But Costigan had performed cunningly and bravely — he deserved to live. Plus William Monahan‘s screenplay got that famous Chinese laundry saying wrong — in the film Costello says “no tickee, no laundry” but the actual line is “no tickee, no washee.”
Don’t Trust Any Film Critic Under 40
I don’t mean this literally, of course. There are always exceptions to the rule. But I do regard Millennial- and Zoomer-aged critics askance. Too many of them have bought into the bullshit. Too few of them think and write like men, and I mean that in the Robert Ryan / “Deke Thornton” sense of that term (i.e., “We’re after men, and I wish to God I was with them”).
