Month: May 2023

Directed by Eva Longoria and written by Lewis Colick and Linda Yvette (who based their script on “A Boy, a Burrito and a Cookie: From Janitor to Executive“), Flamin’ Hot (Hulu/Disney+) tells the rags-to-riches story of Richard Montanez, the onetime janitor who allegedly invented Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.

Alas, Montanez’s claim was called into question by Sam Dean’s 5.16.21 L.A.Times article, “The Man Who Didn’t Invent Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.” An internal investigation at Frito-Lay supported this argument. So let’s bend over backward and allow that Montanez may have had something to do with the 1992 launch of the Latino-friendly product. Okay, a little more than something. His initiative was co-owned — put it that way.

Montanez is played by Jesse Garcia. Costars include Annie Gonzalez, Dennis Haysbert, Tony Shalhoub, Emilio Rivera and Matt Walsh.

A crackpot is a person whose views and philosophy are regarded as way too eccentric or fantastical to be taken seriously. A crankpot, according to Manhattan gadfly and all-around smartass Bill McCuddy, is a fellow who’s regarded as overly influenced by a skeptical sourpuss attitude about life and movies and whatever else — i.e., too Andy Rooney-ish.

Which, of course, is nowhere close to being a fair description of yours truly. For years I have claimed with a certain degree of sincerity to be a 21st Century incarnation of Klaus Kinski’s anti-Bolshevik in Dr. Zhivago — “the only free man on this train.” Okay, perhaps that’s putting it too strongly but it’s a reasonably close assessment, especially considering the general fanaticism out there.

Six years ago Marshall Fine’s Robert Klein Still Can’t Stop His Leg, a fascinating, highly engaging doc about one of the greatest anguished Jewish comics of all time, disappeared into the maw of the Weinstein Co. bankruptcy of 2017.

Lo and behold, Fine’s Robert Klein doc is now available to stream on multiple platforms for the first time ever.

Roughly a year before the Weinstein envelopment, I saw Robert Klein Still Can’t Stop His Leg, and fully concurred with all the then-current praise.

From “Speaking As An Honorary Anguished Jew, I Relate To Smart Docs About Authentic Specimens,” posted on 4.24.16: “Yes, I’ve been friends with Fine for a long time and yes, I’ve admired Klein since I was a kid but this is a fine (sorry) doc that imparts wisdom, feeling, perspective and smarts.”

“It serves as not just a personal look at Klein, but as something larger,” Showbiz 411‘s Roger Friedman wrote on 4.20.16. “It’s a real piece of history. What Fine and Klein have done here is make an excellent companion piece to the very good Joan Rivers doc of a few years ago, A Piece of Work. Since Alan King died rather young and abruptly, and nothing’s been done on Stiller and Meara, there is very little documentary record of the great Jewish comics who launched from the Ed Sullivan Show era.

“The doc is also very funny. Klein is incredibly endearing and corny, while at the same time maintaining an edge. That’s why he made 40 appearances on Letterman. I hope The Weinstein Company can give Still Can’t Stop His Leg a good release in major markets before VOD or Netflix. Like a Robert Klein show, the film is intimate and hilarious.”

In the late ’70s a smart Jewish friend and fellow cineaste told me I had more Jewish guilt than he. That was the beginning of my honorary Jewhood, which thrives to this day.

Read more

After less than three hours of deliberation, a Manhattan jury has found Donald Trump guilty in the E. Jean Carroll civil lawsuit trial — not of clinical rape (which they felt had not been proved) but of (a) battery by way of sexual abuse and (b) lying on Truth Social that Carroll’s accusations about having been assaulted by Trump inside a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in early 1996 and therefore defaming her by calling her charge “a complete con job” and “a hoax and a lie.”

No, the jury said — Trump is the would-be con artist, not Carroll. And so they’ve awarded Carroll $5 million in damages, which Trump will presumably have to cough up.

The country (including MAGA voters) has long believed that Trump is an arrogant sexual opportunist and conquistador and has behaved that way for quite some time. But a jury specifically finding him guilty of sexual battery in a civil trial and declaring that he’ll have to shell out $5 million in damages…this is an excellent thing.

And the best prosecutions (i.e., Trump and pallies conniving to fix the Georgia vote and Trump inciting the MAGA faithful to attack the Capitol building on 1.6.21 in an attempt to stop the electoral college affirmation of Joe Biden‘s victory in the 2020 election) are yet to come. In the words of the late Ricky Nelson, “I got a feeling” that things are starting to pan out against this diseased sociopath, and that everything’s starting to “come up roses”, so to speak. The beast is clearly taking serious hits, and if nothing else his actions and karma are finally starting to catch up with him in a legalistic courtroom sense.

Like any stable, decent, caring parent, Marcia Gay Harden, 63, recently emphasized her support of her three kids, and particularly their orientation or persuasion or however you want to put it.

Last weekend the Oscar-winning actress, 63, explained during a telethon for “Drag Isn’t Dangerous: A Digital Fundraiser” that (a) her three kids are “all queer” and (b) “they teach me every day.”

This is what I would say if my kids had chosen this path. Compassionate, fair-minded parents have no choice but to embrace their children and show respect for their preferred orientation and/or identities.

Harden: “My eldest child is non-binary, my son is gay [and] my youngest is fluid.”

Harden’s Wiki bio reports that daughter Eulala Grace Scheel (born September 1998) is her eldest, and that twins Hudson Harden Scheel (born a bio-male) and Julitta Dee Scheel (born bio-female) were born on 4.22.04. Harden and the kids’ father, prop master Thaddaeus Scheel, divorced in February 2012.

All queer, in short, and yet Harden seems to be drawing distinctions between non-binary, gay and fluid. I honestly wouldn’t know how to define those distinctions.

For decades I never felt the slightest affection for Terner’s Liquor (SW corner of Sunset and Larrabee). It was always just a common, overlighted liquor store with clerks who’d absolutely never been to college. I visited from time to time, but I always wanted to bolt as soon as possible. (I’ve been in liquor stores that had nice settled vibes…places that I felt vaguely soothed by.) Terner’s was a soiled establishment.

Aaahh, but the skanky history of the place! The rock-industry druggies and clubbers (the Viper Room is right next door) who stopped in each and every night at Terner’s for smokes and 16-oz. cans of beer and whatnot. I would occasionally visit while waiting for a pizza from Panini across the street. I would buy cheap pocket combs when they were available, but never wine or champagne or cigars — Terner’s was always fundamentally sleazy and unworthy of anything more than incidental purchases.

Let’s not forget, by the way, that the people behind “Terner’s” were crassly imitating the name of the more reputable and storied Gil Turner’s Liquors (NW corner of Sunset and Doheny), which opened in 1953. Before that there was a liquor store on the same corner called Tobey’s. Check out the color photo below — notice how Tobey’s had a tidy and well-tended look, and didn’t seem the least bit cheap or tawdry?

Anyway Terner’s is permanently closed now. It’ll soon be torn down to make way for a large glass-box monstrosity called 8850 Sunset Blvd. Strange as it may sound, I’m half-sorry about this. Because as low-rent as it was, Terner’s had personality.

Read more

A couple of nights ago I was sitting through (i.e., not exactly watching) The Towering Inferno, and the truth of it hit me. When you break that film down there are three basic elements that make it work — the lead performances by Steve McQueen and Paul Newman and the score by John Williams. Every other element is weak or annoying in some way. Too many explosions, unlikely complications, You could even call the film tawdry, but Williams score gives it a veneer of class. Williams had to know that The Towering Inferno was pricey pablum, but he pulled himself together, manned up and did the job. He sold it.

In HE’s latest podcast, Jeff and Sasha jump into the latest sticky wicket — i.e., Pauline Kael, Laurence Olivier, Richard Dreyfuss, Othello, etc….an issue that has greatly disturbed Variety‘s Clayton Davis.

Recorded on May 7th…74 minutes.

I know he’s presumed to be Next Big Thing, mostly because of (a) his wimpy, weepy dad performance in Aftersun, (b) his Stanley Kowalski on the British stage earlier this year, (c) his having been tapped to step into Richard Linklater‘s adaptation of Merrily We Roll Along, and (d) his forthcoming starring role as Lucius, the son of Connie Nielsen‘s Lucilla, in Ridley Scott‘s Gladiator sequel.

But for me, the 27 year-old Paul Mescal is a problem. There’s something overly soft and sweet and smiley about the guy. He just doesn’t radiate that solemn, low-key, less-is-more studly male aura. It would be one thing if he had some Steve McQueen behavior going on, but he doesn’t. He’s just not my kinda guy.

World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy is conducting a critics poll of the preferred greatest films of the 1960s.

It not only broke my heart but caused great physical pain to not include The Hustler, Blow-Up, Rosemary’s Baby, Easy Rider, Breathless, Shoot The Piano Player, L’Eclisse, Cool Hand Luke, To Kill A Mockingbird, The Apartment, Repulsion, Psycho, A Hard Day’s Night, The Train, Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid, The Magnificent Seven, Bullitt, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round, Point Blank, etc.

It’s completely infuriating, but when you have to choose ten you have to be brutal, and it hurts so badly.

HE’s top ten of the ’60s: 1. Dr. Strangelove, 2. Midnight Cowboy, 3. The Manchurian Candidate, 4. L’Avventura, 5. Bonnie and Clyde, 6. 2001: A Space Odyssey, 7. This Sporting Life, 8. The Wild Bunch, 9. The Graduate, 10. Lawrence of Arabia.

Read more