Month: August 2023

Little Did Hollywood Know

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On the night that Unforgiven won the Best Picture Oscar, which happened on 3.29.93, none of us had the slightest inkling that roughly two decades into the 21st Century (or 30 years hence) corporate Hollywood would be operating under the adhere-or-die principles of China’s Great Cultural Revolution, and that films that reflected the creative vistas, mindsets and inclinations of the dudes who were pretty much running things back in the early Clinton era would be all but suffocated.

Which isn’t to say that the moral, administrative and attitudinal changes brought about by wokester commandants starting around five or six years ago (post-Moonlight and post George Floyd BLM-ers, LGBTQ-ers, #MeToo) didn’t transform the Hollywood industry into a much more fair, just and humane thing. They did.

These changes also ensured, however, that the kind of urgent, occasionally irreverent and sometimes super-bull’s-eye films that occasionally poked through between 1930 and 2015…those kind of films would, for the most part, never again be made for theatrical.

Because the Hollywood Maoist system (“Don’t offend Zoomers or Millennials!…don’t wink at or even acknowledge outmoded attitudes!…don’t allow any representations of the way life was on the planet earth before woke-ism came along…all casts must prominently feature women, actors of color and LGBTQs”) has largely outlawed this approach or aesthetic.

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Oscar Poker: Roots & Journeys

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No Oscar Poker topics du jour this time. Instead Jeff and Sasha let their emotional hair down and share abbreviated versions of their life stories and career histories. Who they are, what they’ve been through, how they got to this point, etc.

Jeff writes for Hollywood-elsewhere.com, and Sasha writes for awardsdaily.com (and Substack).

Remember that late-night radio show hosted by Jack Nicholson‘s David Staebler in The King of Marvin Gardens? Which was basically about Stabler relating personal stories of his youth and whatnot, some of which were invented or at the very least exaggerated? Just for fun I could launch a whole mp3 series of 100% honest “David Staebler stories” about my oppressed, half-miserable childhood and my almost entirely miserable teenage years, full of trauma, unrequited lust, seething resentment and Kafka-like depression. I could record them weekly or twice weekly and post as I go along.

Anyone who says “aahh, fuck this jazz, just talk about movies…c’mon, that’s what we’re here for!”…well, I’ll include many tales of certain standout films that I saw as a young lad and largely clueless teen. When I feel like it, I mean. Maybe as a separate Substack.

Again, the link.

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Tunes To Ponder While Driving Across “Geo. Wash Bridge”

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If you listen in quick succession, these two tracks blend right together…this hit me last Saturday as I was driving across the George Washington Bridge to New Jersey…the same bridge that a car carrying Virgil Solozzo and Michael Corleone began to drive across, only to abruptly do a 180 and head back to the Bronx (“Nice work, Lou”)…the very same bridge that an excitable, barely awake Max Schumacher told a cab driver to take him to in the early ’50s, in response to which the cab driver said “don’t do it, buddy!…you’re young, you have your whole life ahead of you!”

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Robbie Robertson

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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:

Why Does “Maestro” Feel Like a NYFF Straggler?

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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?”

Ruimy’s Telluride Projections

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World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy has calculated…okay, authoritatively speculated that the following films will have their world premieres at Telluride ’23: The Holdovers (d: Alexander Payne), Wildcat (d: Ethan Hawke), Saltburn (d: Emerald Fennell), The Pigeon Tunnel (d: Errol Morris), The Royal Hotel (d: Kitty Green), Fingernails (d: Christos Nikou), Rustin (d: George C. Wolfe), Janet Planet (d: Annie Baker), All of Us Strangers (d: Andrew Haigh), The Bikeriders (d: Jeff Nichols).

The previously announced NYAD (d: Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin) is also on the lineup, but why is it capitalized? It’s the last name of swimmer and author Diana Nyad, but the caps make it look like an acronym for the New York Aquatic Division.

Yorgos Lanthimos‘ Poor Things will debut in Venice but have its North American premiere in Telluride.

Telluride’s Cannes/Berlin titles will apparently include The Zone of Interest (d: Jonathan Glazer), Anatomy of A Fall (d: Justine Triet), The Settlers (d: Felipe Gálvez), Perfect Days (d: Wim Wenders), Orlando, My Political Biography (d: Paul Presciado), Fallen Leaves (d: Aki Kaurismaki), La Chimera (d: Alice Rohrwacher), About Dry Grasses (d: Nuri Bilge Ceylan).

And of course, no mention at all of HE’s beloved The Pot au Feu — directed by Tran Anh Hung, a French foodie masterpiece, destined to be a huge hit with slightly older audiences.

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Curious Silence From Team Woody

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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“).

Similar Stamps

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On top of which Bill Maher is rich and I’ve become relatively poor, thanks in no small part to industry banshees and the unhinged insanity of the identity-focused left since ‘19 or thereabouts. So there’s that.

Corrections: I meant to say (a) we were both “raised by liberal families who discussed politics at the dinner table” and (b) that Kenny was “raised by an Irish-Italian family.”

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Vanity Fair’s Feinberg Headline is Dead Wrong

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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.

Bill Maher Roughed Up Over Anti-“Barbie” Tweet

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Earlier today Variety’s Zack Sharf, The Hollywood Reporter’s James Hibberd and Vanity Fair’s Savannah Walsh bitch-slapped Real Time’s Bill Maher for tweeting that Barbie is a “man-hating zombie lie.”

One, there’s absolutely no question that for all its spritzy satire and humor, Barbie positively seethes with contempt for guys. It’s a “fun” flick, a huge hit and a major cultural event, but there’s no arguing this.

Two, if a male director was suicidal enough to make a fantasy film that radiates the same degree of loathing for women that Barbie throws at men, Sharf, Hibberd and Walsh would be part of a mob calling for his immediate lynching and subsequent dismemberment.

Infuriating “Pot au Feu” Stasis

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I’ve been moaning and groaning for weeks about the seemingly unfortunate fate of Tran Anh Hung’s The Pot au Feu, which I praised several weeks ago during the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.

The greatest foodie flick of the 21st Century and a hit waiting to happen among over-35 viewers, this Cannes award-winner (i.e., Best Director) was hit with a waffle iron when it was acquired by IFC Films and Sapan Studios earlier this summer.

The instant I heard this I went “oh, God…no.”

As I wrote on 6.28 (“What A Bummer for The Pot au Feu), I’ve long believed that an IFC Films distribution deal is almost tantamount to a kiss of death, as IFC Films seems to specialize in acquiring exciting, critically hailed titles only to bury them.

Will The Pot au Feu show up in Telluride? One can only hope, but I’ve been developing a theory that cash-poor IFC Films (which is based in Manhattan) might be reluctant to offer The Pot au Feu at Telluride and Toronto because they’re too cheap to pay for air fare and hotel rooms for a modest Pot au Feu entourage (i.e., no actors due to the SAFG/AFTRA strike).

I might be wrong, but my intuition tells me these guys REALLY have no discretionary income.

I was thrown even further today when The Pot au Feu didn’t even appear on the New York Film Festival lineup. Right in their home town. Infuriating.

There’s no question that The Pot au Feu is one of the best-directed, most audience-friendly films out there, and yet none of the early fall festivals seem to be playing it. NYFF hasn’t announced its slate of premieres (to be unveiled sometime around 8.24 or 8.25), but why the hell would they leave it off their prime list? Tran Anh Hung won the Best Director prize last May on the Cote d’Azur. Indiewire‘s David Ehrlich called it “some kind of masterpiece.” Variety‘s Guy Lodge praised it to the heavens.

All I can figure is that IFC Films’ management is not offering it to the festivals for some totally perverse reason. Or a candy-assed one. They’re specialists at suffocating films by not promoting them, I realize, but…

Friendo: It has a shot at Telluride.
HE: Based on what intel?
Friendo: Based purely based on Julie Huntsinger‘s tastes.
HE: Just tell me — am I crazy?
Friendo: The Pot au Feu is not the type of highbrow movie that NYFF programmers tend to screen. I never expected it to show up. I’ve been saying all along it’s a perfect fit for Telluride.
HE: What the fuck is going on?
Friendo: I’m surprised it’s not at TIFF but Cameron Bailey has destroyed that festival by insisting on world premieres. Due to this policy, there’s a lot of stuff missing this year from the TIFF line-up.
HE: When you say “highbrow NYFF pick,” you mean “a film that Dennis Lim likes.”
Friendo: Precisely. Slow arthouse cinema. Film Comment-level stuff.

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