In early March of ’05 I attended Argentina’s Mar del Plata international film festival. Four or five days, as I recall. Before flying back to Los Angeles I was able to spend nine hours in Buenos Aires. Here’s what I filed on 3.10.05:

“I flew out of Mar del Plata around 12:30 and landed at the slightly east-of-downtown Buenos Aires aeropuerto an hour later, and went straight into town to nose around and explore. I had about nine hours before my plane for Los Angeles was due to leave around 10:45 pm.

“I left my bags at the Hotel Intercontinental and walked over to the Casa Rosada, the ornate, three-story presidential residence with the famed second-floor balcony that Eva Peron addressed her followers from. (The paint isn’t exactly rose — it’s more like a fleshy off-pink). I walked around the San Telmo district and visited the open-air flea market. A big crowd was watching a couple dance the tango. I gave them ten pesos when they passed the hat.

“Director Fabian Beilinsky (Nine Queens) told me to go to a restaurant in San Telmo specializing in Argentine beef, called La Brigada (Estados Unidos 465). The aroma of perfectly-broiled steaks was transporting. I could tell right away it’s a class joint, although a bit too popular with the local swells. People were milling around outside and some kind of ticketing system was in place that I couldn’t figure out. I eventually gave up.

“I then rented a bike and pedaled all the way up to Palermo, in the eastern section of town. Palermo is the emerging hip section, like Manhattan’s Soho was in the early to mid ’70s.

“Buenos Aires is almost completely flat all the way around town, so biking anywhere is no sweat. You just have to be fearless about buses and crazy cab drivers. I travelled about five or six miles, all in.

“I ate at a small cafe/restaurant on a quiet, tree-lined street in south Palermo, called Viejo Indecente (El Salvador 4960). It has an alternate name of Maldito Salvador, which is what it’s called on the business card and on the website .

“There was an attractive woman with Tourette’s Syndrome sitting behind me. She didn’t seem to be swearing as much as shouting. It was kind of a cross between a loud scream and a loud sneeze. (‘Aaaggghh‘!) I kept asking myself as I ate, ‘Do I want to move outside or something?’

“Buenos Aires is a flat, somewhat hot and sweaty city with superb restaurants and deeply beautiful women, some with bedroom eyes and many with long slender toes. The best part for me was the absurdly low prices. Everything is one-third the cost. It put me in the greatest mood not to have to spend any serious money. I felt like a trust-fund kid.

“I cruised past the brick-walled cemetery where Eva’s remains are entombed, and the whole area around it was covered with T-shirted tourists, swarming like ants. The nearby restaurants were all cheap fast-food joints (McDonald’s, etc.). The vibe felt lurid and grotesque. I peddled on without stopping.

“B.A. is very much the bustling, pulsing place — crowds, music, culture, intensity — but the buses spew out exhaust like there’s no tomorrow, and you’re forced to breathe in the fumes as you’re peddling along, and with all the heat and clamor and the lack of much in the way of old-world architecture I began to conclude that Buenos Aires isn’t as sexy or intriguing as Paris, Rome or Prague. Or Berlin, even.

“But at least it’s gritty and alive, and I’m sure it’s a richer thing for X-factor people who live and work there and congregate at the right places.”

Two award-season signifiers are making my blood run cold and unleashing Beetlejuice shrieking. I’m left with no choice but to drop to my knees and beseech all HE readers with a semblance of spine and aesthetic perspective to stand tall and firm against the apparently genuine possibility that Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert‘s Everything Everywhere All At Once might win the Best Picture Oscar.

I’m totally okay with either Avatar 2: The War of Water (which I won’t even see for another couple of days) or Top Gun: Maverick taking the top prize, but the idea of EEAAO winning…the symbolism of such an event would be devastating….my soul would be crushed flat.

I know I shouldn’t allow myself to get all wound up about such a possibility…it would mean that the wrong people are running the circus…that Millennial standards have more or less taken over…I know that many people out there despise EEAAO, but if a win were to happen there would be a great shattering cry heard across the land…oh, the A24 of it all!

Between THR‘s Scott Feinberg putting EEAAO at the top of his Best Picture spitball roster plus this infuriating A24 release corralling 14 nominations from the Critics Choice org…this is really and truly a bad, bad thing…really. And it’s almost totally a generational split. Only Millennials and Zoomers like EEAAO, and the only way to address this situation is to assess the generational chasm…

If this isn’t the basis for a serious Academy war, I don’t know what could or would be…GenX and Boomers standing hard and resolute against Millennials and Zoomers…a standoff between voters of minimal taste and admirers of one of the most infuriating films to flirt with Best Picture contention in Academy history….words fail.

What percentage of Academy voters are male and over 50? Because that’s the demographic that will absolutely not vote for EEAAO. They hate this fucking film and, speaking from experience, went through the pains of hell trying to watch it. Only Millennials and Zoomers like it. What does the HE commentariat think? What’s the conversation?

Last night I finally watched Santiago Mitre’s Argentina, 1985, and it held me start to finish. Altogether a morally sobering experience, a disturbing history lesson and finally an affirmation of civic decency.

Based on the true story of the Trial of the Juntas, the film focuses on Argentina’s great moral reckoning — the prosecution of several fascist junta bigwigs who, during Argentina’s military dictatorship, had embarked on a campaign to exterminate hardcore leftists like a gardener eliminates crabgrass. An estimated 30,000 Argentinians were “disappeared” by the junta during the late ’70s and early ’80s.

Heroic Buenos Aires prosecutor Julio Strassera, assisted by Luis Moreno Ocampo and a team of young researchers, brought a complex case against the baddies, and put a lot of them (but far from all) in jail, and certainly made a moral statement that resonated worldwide.

I saw Argentina, 1985 with the original Spanish-language dialogue (Amazon streaming idiotically defaults to English dubbing). I still don’t care for the first half-hour (too whimsical and anecdotal and digressive) and I felt increasingly annoyed by the constant cigarette smoking, but this is nonetheless a fact-based, disciplined, well-ordered story of good guys vs. bad guys. Based on the historical record, pic exemplifies how a first-rate, down-to-business research procedural and courtroom drama should operate.

Just before watching it I had been bickering with a smart guy who knows his Latin American history. He had been reminding me that Argentina has a long history of being a bad-news country that believes in white supremacy and racially repressive policies, and for many decades had made life very difficult for native Argentinians and POCs. The finale of Argentina, 1985 doesn’t leave you with this kind of residue at all. It leaves you with a great feeling of humanitarian compassion and decency. So there’s a basic conflict of perceptions.

Here’s a taste of how our discussion had been going prior to watching Mitre’s film…

Latin American history guy to HE or LAHG: “The fact is that Argentina, just like the U.S., committed genocide against its native population, so that today only about 1% of the country is indigenous, and lives in the south, hundreds of miles from Buenos Aires. The country’s black population is also miniscule, about 1%. The majority are European immigrants, primarily from Italy, Spain, Germany and England.

“Of all the countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, only Argentina and Chile (which also did a number on its indigenous population) have an overwhelmingly white population. All the other countries are a mix of black, mixed black and white, mixed white and indigenous, and pure indigenous.”

The consensus after Joshua Logan’s Picnic opened in December ‘55 was that William Holden, who’d turned 37 the previous April, was too old to play Hal Carter, whom original author William Inge had written as a drifter in his mid to late 20s.

But Holden’s Picnic miscasting would have paled alongside another mismatch that mercifully didn’t happen. The film was Arthur Hiller and Paddy Chayefsky’s The Americanization of Emily (‘64), in which Holden had been cast as dog-robber Charley Madison. He wisely pulled out.

James Garner, who had previously been cast as “Bus,” the role that James Coburn ultimately played, took the Madison role.

Holden would have been at least a decade too old to play Madison, who is supposed to be a youngish, slick-operator type (mid 30s — Garner was 35) and certainly not 40ish and world-weary.

Filming on The Americanization of Emily happened in late ‘63 (a hotel party scene was filmed on 11.22.63) and, I believe, early ‘64. A drinker, Holden was 45 at the time and looked every inch of it. He was even looking a bit haggard and baggy-eyed in The Counterfeit Traitor, which was filmed in ‘61 when Holden was 43.

Remember how over-the-hill, creased and saddle-baggy Holden looked in The Wild Bunch, which was filmed in ‘68?

Which other major roles were filled by actors who were clearly too old to play them? Ben Platt in Dear Evan Hansen doesn’t count — too recent.