The great Robbie Robertson, 80, departed earlier today in Los Angeles.

Good fellow, great musician. The Hawks, Bob Dylan guitarist in the early electric days, The Band (“The Weight”, “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”, “Up on Cripple Creek”), solo recording artist and soundtrack composer for Martin Scorsese (Raging Bull, The King of Comedy, The Color of Money, Casino, The Departed, The Wolf of Wall Street, Silence, The Irishman, Killers of the Flower Moon).

After catching Flower Moon during last May’s Cannes Film Festival, I noted the following: “Robertson‘s musical score ignites with a reverb-y guitar riff that heralds the mixed-blessing discovery of oil on Osage land, and soon after settles into a steady metronomic rhythm that suggests the sound of native drums in the distance or perhaps just over the hill.”

Posted on 11.30.19:

I’m sorta kinda wondering why the New York Film Festival honchos didn’t select Bradley Cooper‘s Maestro (Netflix), the much anticipated Leonard Bernstein biopic costarring Cooper and Carey Mulligan, to fill one of their major gala slots.

The film will have its world premiere in early September at the Venice Film Festival, but it’s long been calculated or at least presumed that Maestro will have its U.S. debut at the NYFF’s Lincoln Center venue, Alice Tully Hall — right next door to where Bernstein often conducted.

Cooper, Todd Phillips, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg are among the producers, which makes it feel like kind of a heavyweight deal. So why wasn’t Maestro chosen as the festival’s opening night, centerpiece or closing night attraction?

I’m presuming it’ll be announced later this month as a special premiere, but it all feels a tiny bit weird. It makes you wonder “what’s wrong with it?” Why are the NYFF programmers giving Cooper’s film the “sit down and wait in the lobby” treatment?”

Jordan Ruimy is reporting today what most of us have been presuming all along.

One, widespread Stalinist obstinacy about Woody Allen‘s alleged guilt in the 31 year-old matter of Frog Hollow has all but eliminated any possibility of Allen’s Coup de Chance finding a U.S. distributor.

And two, the chances of Coup de Chance being favorably reviewed by U.S. film critics at the Venice Film Festival are fairly low, given the fact that critics are no longer “allowed” to give his movies a fair shake.

So given the near-certainty that (a) many American critics are going to slag Coup de Chance despite reports that it’s one of his better films, (b) the fact that it won’t be playing Telluride, Toronto or New York because their respective programmers are terrified of being condemned for showing Allen’s French-language film, and (c) the fact that many on the Woody side of the fence (i.e., critics and columnists who are highly skeptical of the Clinton-era allegations against Allen) won’t be attending the Venice Film Festival…

Given all this doesn’t it make sense from Allen’s strategic perspective to allow these opinion-sharers a chance to see it prior to Venice, either via a NYC screening or a special link?

You’d certainly think so, but with roughly three weeks to go before the Venice Film Festival there’s nothing shaking in the Woody camp.

Over the last several weeks I’ve twice written Allen’s sister Letty Aronson, with whom I’ve exchanged emails and whom I interviewed at Shutters several years ago, about my interest in wanting to see Coup de Chance prior to its Venice Film Festival debut. I was hoping she might steer me to someone charged with arranging screenings or sending out links.

With Woody’s former publicist Leslee Dart retired and knowing that Roger Friedman and Keith McNally saw the film last April in NYC, reaching out to Letty seemed reasonable. Alas, total flatline from her end. A friend tells me Letty “has someone” who works with her, etc. But it’s like they’ve taken a vow of omerta.

It seems inconceivable that Woody and/or his reps wouldn’t be open to showing the film to friendlies and neutrals prior to Venice. I’m a regular Telluride attendee, but of course that festival’s honcho, Julie Huntsinger, isn’t “allowed” to show Coup de Chance in the same sense that Thierry Fremaux wasn’t “allowed” to show it during last May’s Cannes Film Festival. In response Coup de Chance dp Vittorio Storaro called the Cannes shut-out appalling and deplorable (“They’ve lost all common sense“).

The wolves are circling and the hyenas are hee-hee-ing over yesterday’s Vanity Fair story, penned by Charlotte Klein, about THR columnist and executive awards editor Scott Feinberg allegedly asking for me-first screening access as far as hot film festival titles are concerned.

Let every Oscar pundit and chatterbox know, whether it wishes Feinberg well or ill, that the headline of Klein’s article is flat-out erroneous, and that the jackals looking to lick Feinberg’s blood are also dead wrong.

In an email to studios and strategists last week, Feinberg did not request “priority” access (as in “me before everyone else!”) to early-bird screenings. He asked for concurrent access along with the other swells. Not “me first!…me! me! me!” but “please allow me to see hot-buzz festival films at the same time as the elite trade critics and long-lead journos and editors.”

Feinberg didn’t say the following but he could have also put it this way: “Please don’t favor these guys and gals over me…the people who are routinely shown the hot-ticket films early and who have filed their reviews before the big premieres in Cannes or Telluride and Toronto…please let me into this elite fraternity…don’t give them preferential treatment over me as every second counts during film festivals, and it’s not fair to let a tiny handful of hotshot critics have the first crack while I have to scramble and hyperventilate and file reactions on the fly.”

Again — the implication of Klein reporting that Feinberg “requested priority access to the hottest movies coming this year” is an obscuring of the truth. Asking for priority access doesn’t mean exclusive priority access. In some people’s minds the word suggests “me first” but that’s not what Feinberg wrote or meant.

Feinberg: “As you plan the rollout of your film(s), I would like to respectfully ask that you not show films to any of my fellow awards pundits before you show them to me, even if that person represents himself or herself to you as (a) a potential reviewer of it, (b) needing to see the film in order to be part of decisions about covers, or (c) really anything else.”

As for the portion of Feinberg’s email that implied a certain degree of THR pushback if publicists fail to consent to his request…well, that’s not what any experienced industry vet would call a capital crime. There isn’t a power player in Hollywood who hasn’t said at one time or another “do not fuck with me because if you do…well, actions have consequences.” I’m sorry but this falls under the heading of standard negotiating postures.

A publicity source confides that Feinberg has already sent a clarifying letter to the recipients of his original email, but if I were in his shoes I would plainly state that (a) the word “concurrent” was and is key to the original import, and (b) that he shouldn’t have implied any sort of quid pro quo retaliation if publicists failed to consent to his request.

We all make tactical or phrasing errors from time to time. Feinberg wasn’t wrong in the first place, but just to cover the bases I would apologize for the sabre-rattling and for temporarily overplaying his hand. Not a huge deal. This is merely a Twitter/X flurry.

I would also bicker with Erik Anderson’s claim about Feinberg having posted “misogynistic” tweets about Letitia Wright last November, which was more bullshit. Feinberg simply stated that Wright, who didn’t have a prayer of landing any kind of acting nomination for Wakanda Forever, had baggage due to allegedly promoting anti-vax messaging. Which she did.

Statement of values: There are few things more disgusting than Twitter/X predators ganging up on this or that person who has allegedly said or written or tweeted the wrong thing. You can hear the snarls and see the saliva-coated sabre teeth and feel the hot breath of pathetic pisshounds…”the genius of the crowd,” as Charles Bukowksi once wrote. I have never taken part in a mass pile-on, and if I have I’ve forgotten about it. Wokesters are great at this stuff, and I am completely proud to spit in their faces for this behavior.