The look of endearment between the young Mexican couple as they munch on a single kernel of popcorn…that magical sparkle as their unexceptional clothing suddenly turns pink…and when they realize they’re actually sitting next to the great Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling and America Ferrara…well! That little wink from Margot is so…what’s the word?…sisterly.
HE to Patton Oswalt: I hear ya, bro…loved it too!
No, not literally the snarly Clint Eastwood detective of 40 or 50 years ago. No .357 Magnum action, no “do ya feel lucky, punk?”. But if you’re telling me you’re not fantasizing about a team of uniformed security guys stepping into this Nordstrom mob theft incident and tackling the bad guys and maybe busting them up a bit…if you’re telling me you’re totally cool with this shit, you’re either a wokester or a liar.
This retail theft mob happened at a Nordstrom in California today. Because of broken state laws, these crimes are considered “non-serious” and “non-violent” and nobody will go to state prison, even if caught and convicted. State laws need to be fixed and YES, many people need to… pic.twitter.com/nESaJSxj4p
— Jeff Reisig (@jeffreisig) August 13, 2023
Patrick Humphrey‘s “Cleopatra and the Undoing of Hollywood: How One Film Almost Sunk the Studios” (History Press) isn’t due until next April, at least according to Amazon.
And yet the Guardian‘s Vanessa Thorpe has posted an article about it and the film itself. Thorpe’s piece is titled “Cleopatra at 60: new book reveals ‘stunning profligacy’ of infamous Hollywood epic.”
Cleopatra‘s 60th birthday was actually celebrated a couple of months ago but who’s counting? The ill-fated Rouben Mamoulian version, shot in England, began filming on 9.28.60. The final version, directed and written by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, opened on 6.12.63. The final cost was around $40 million in 1963 dollars, or just shy of $400 million today.
Yes, Cleopatra eventually made its money back, slowly but surely.
Thorpe’s article covers the basics about this 251-minute epic (mainly a talkfest but persuasively acted and very handsomely produced), and lists many of the production-out-of-control anecdotes we’ve all read about for decades.
Perhaps Humphrey has uncovered fresh material or perhaps not, but the whole magillah and more is contained in Kevin Burns and Brent Zacky‘s ‘Cleopatra’: The Film That Changed Hollywood, a two-hour, first-rate doc that came out in ’01. It was a DVD supplement at first, and is now included in the Cleopatra Bluray.
Honestly? The Burns/Zacky doc is better than the film itself. It always has been.
An excellent making-of-Cleopatra book is Jack Brodksy and Nathan Weiss‘s “The Cleopatra Papers“, originally published in January ’63.
Here’s Part One of the Burns-Zacky; Part Two is pasted below.
Below is the humble, unassuming, easy-to-chuckle Greta Gerwig of yore. The woman I knew and really liked back between the late aughts and mid-to-late teens. This is her Lynn Hirschberg W interview, posted on 3.21.17.
Remember what it was like six and a half years ago? It was the calm before the storm. Mao’s cultural revolution of the ’60s and ’70s hadn’t yet migrated to our shores, and being a somewhat older white industry male wasn’t necessarily a felony. The N.Y. Times (Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey) Harvey Weinstein expose wouldn’t break until 10.5.17. Woody Allen‘s Wonder Wheel opened at the N.Y. Film Festival that same month and nobody said boo. The woke virus was a thing, of course, but still simmering in the frying pan and not yet coursing through the cultural bloodstream.
Six and a half years ago, but more like four score and seven. We’re all living in an entirely different country now.
And if you decided to mutually celebrate this huge cultural event, this amusing rite of self-flagellation for straight guys, this exuberant swan dive into Hollywood-stamped misandry, would you wear peach instead of proper pink?
It’s one thing to gracefully go with the Barbie flow while simultaneously shrugging it off, but I would never pull this shit with my 15 year-old son…never. Unless he was really, like, hot to see it or something.
Justin and Xavier Trudeau, roughly six days ago:
I would probably be more interested in taking Jett and Dylan to see John Huston and Arthur Miller’s Misfit Barbie, but that’s me.
