Month: September 2023

Things We’re Not Allowed To Say

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Imagine if a straight white male had directed May December (Netflix, 11.17), a movie about a Savannah-residing, May-December couple (Julianne Moore, Charles Melton) and the arrival of a famous actress (Natalie Portman) who will soon be portraying Moore in a film about the couple’s scandalous history.

The couple is based, of course, upon the notorious Mary Kay Letourneau and Vili Fualaau, who began a sexual relationship in 1996 when Letourneau, a grade-school teacher, was 34, and Fualaau, one of her sixth-grade students, was 12. Letourneau did a seven-year stretch for the rape of a minor (1998 to 2004).

They were married in May 2005 when Letourneau was 43 and Fualaau was 22. The marriage lasted 14 years until their separation in 2019. Letourneau died of cancer the following year, at age 58.

May December concerns the long-term outcome of a relationship that began under diseased circumstances — i.e., the sexual grooming of a lad by a woman 22 years his senior. Has anyone said boo about the icky aspects since the film premiered in Cannes last May? They have not.

Imagine if May December was about a gray-haired actor paying an extended visit with a Woody Allen-ish director in his mid 80s along with the director’s wife, a 50ish Asian woman. As with May December, the actor would have been signed to portray this Allen-like director in a film, and his goal would be to learn as much as he can about the beginnings of their relationship in the early ’90s and how they’ve dealt with the public condemnation that resulted from some quarters.

Do you think if Manohla Dargis were to review such a film that she would cream in her slacks like she did when she saw May December four months ago?

Once More With “Johnny Concho”

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[Initially posted on 7.16.15] This may not pass muster with traditional Western devotees (i.e, readers of Cowboys & Indians) but arguably one of the most influential westerns ever made is Johnny Concho (’56), a stagey, all-but-forgotten little film that Frank Sinatra starred in and co-produced. For this modest black-and-white enterprise was the first morally revisionist western in which a big star played an ethically challenged lead character — i.e., a cowardly bad guy.

The conventional line is that Marlon Brando‘s One-Eyed Jacks was the first western in which a major star played a gunslinging outlaw that the audience was invited to identify or sympathize with — a revenge-driven bank robber looking to even the score with an ex-partner (Karl Malden‘s “Dad” Longworth) who ran away and left Brando’s “Rio” to be arrested and sent to prison.

This opened the door, many have noted, to Paul Newman‘s rakishly charming but reprehensible Hud Bannon in Martin Ritt‘s Hud two years later, and then the Spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone (beginning with ’64’s A Fistful of Dollars) and particularly Clint Eastwood‘s “Man With No Name.”

But before One-Eyed Jacks audiences were presented with at least three morally flawed western leads portrayed by name-brand actors. First out of the gate was Sinatra’s’s arrogant younger brother of a notorious gunslinger in Concho. This was followed in ’57 by Glenn Ford‘s Ben Wade, a charmingly sociopathic gang-leader and thief, in Delmer Daves‘ 3:10 to Yuma. And then Paul Newman‘s Billy the Kid in Arthur Penn‘s The Left-Handed Gun (’58).

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Maher-Carville…One Of The Best Yet

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Go to the 49-minute mark…

Carville: “The last eight polls are all the same. 72%, 73% of the country…call it 75% of the country doesn’t want Biden to run again. That’s a big fuckin’ number, man.”

Maher: “That’s a very big number [for] something that is crucial…it’s ridiculous.”

Carville: “Biden vs. Nikki Haley. 49% to 43%. I have never seen an incumbent president at 43%. Do people actually know Nikki Haley’s position on anything? Naah.”

Maher: “Haley is another ‘this is as good as it gets’ Republican. It’s not going to get better than [Republican candidates like her]. There is no imaginary Alan Alda-from-The West Wing Republican. Am I right?”

Carville: “You’re right in that over recent years….[the Republicans] have stupid voters.”

Maher: “This is why they hate you. You just said ‘stupid voters’ and…I like to channel everybody’s side. They’re saying ‘yeah, okay maybe we’re stupid but do you think you’re doing stupid things in your own way? Like pregnant men?’ That’s what they say, and I get it.”

Carville: “About 10% or 11% of Democrats describe themselves as progressive liberals. Survey after survey, and these people are annoying, silly. And most people don’t know what they’re talking about. And the number of MAGA people among Republicans is 65%. So we pay a greater price for 10% of progressive wokesters than the Republican pay for 65% of their people. The identity people on the left are silly…they’re not evil…they’re just goofy. The original woke term came from a black jazz musician who was born in Shreveport and died in Houston. And then over-educated coastal white people got hold of the word, and they completely fucked it up and pissed everybody in the country off. If we could just get the faculty at Amherst to shut the fuck up, we’d be a lot better off.”

Carville: “Do you think that Joe Biden…if you tried to explain to Biden what woke is, do you think he could even understand it?”

Maher: “He’s like the dad who doesn’t really understand what the kids are into, but he doesn’t want to fight about it either. So when the wife is like ‘honey, the kids want to cut their dicks off and tear down statues of Lincoln’, he’s like ‘whatever, I’m watchin’ the game.'”

Carville: “Most of these older guys…they don’t even understand what [the kids] are talking about.”

“Balthazar” Over “Barbie”

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This, thank God, is the beginning of the nascent “Stop Barbie!” movement. Enough with the Oscar talk, in other words. Nominations are fine but no above-the-line wins. It’s great that Barbie and Oppenheimer performed so well commercially, and in so doing revived the relative fortunes of exhibition. But c’mon, seriously…calm down on the Oscar front.

Schrader-Shamed, Bickle-Shamed

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It is my belief…okay, suspicion that Paul Schrader and perhaps others influenced Robert DeNiro‘s decision to bail on performing a Travis Bickle parody in the service of an Uber commercial. De Niro is still performing for Uber, still pocketing that cash…just no Travis stuff. Friendo: “Shame works.”

Perverse Snidely Whiplash Flourishes

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“There were two actors who managed to perform in The Ten Commandments without disgracing themselves — Yul Brynner and Edward G. Robinson. He realized the perverse comedy in the part of Dathan. DeMille was completely baffled by what Robinson was doing, and wanted to fire him. if it hadn’t been location shooting I suspect he would have.” — John Ellis on Facebook, recently.

HE comment #1: Every Robinson scene was shot on the Paramount lot — zero location work. HE comment #2: Charlton Heston didn’t embarass hiumself — he obviously knew a lot of what he was called upon to perform was swill, but he got through it with dignity. HE comment #3: Sir Cedric Hardwicke and Vincent Price also played their lines with perverse humor.

Thanks, #MeToo-ers!

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I don’t know when I’ll be able to stream Woody Allen‘s Coup de Chance. A streaming bootleg will probably be available before too long, but I’d love to catch it in a nice theatre somewhere. Alas, the #MeToo Stalinists won’t permit it.

How does it feel to suppress art, guys? To still the beating of a pulse? I’ll bet it burns your ass that Woody is alive and thriving.