Day: October 5, 2023

Lighting Is Almost Everything

by

This striking Vogue cover photo is about as good or glammy as it will probably ever get for Lily Gladstone…photography, lighting, the right angle, wardrobe…it all came together.

Leo looks great also…pushing 50 in actuality, he looks like his mid to late 30s.

After being attacked by Bobby Peru for allegedly diminishing Gladstone and her Killers of the Flower Moon performance, I responded thusly:

My conveying an honest, thought-through reaction to Gladstone’s KOTFM performance is not an act of diminishment. It’s a fairly rendered opinion.

My choosing to ignore the New Academy Kidz mindset…an attitude that rewards social-justice bonafides over traditional acting or film-making standards…this is not an attempt to diminish Gladstone. The white-guilt wokester choke hold has been an active political ingredient since 2016 or ’17, certainly by ’18.

My stating plainly that Gladstone talks with a rural (aka “shitkicker”) Montana accent…that’s a fact. You can call it diminishing but I wouldn’t point fingers if someone said that I speak with a slight northern New Jersey twang (which I do). Was it diminishing to say that JFK spoke with a Boston accent**? Or that Stephen King speaks with a reedy Maine accent? Or that Flannery O’Connor sounded like Savannah? Or that Jimmy Carter has a rural Georgian way of speaking? Or that LBJ sounded like the Texas hill country?

My stating an obvious political fact, which is that wokesters like Clayton Davis are promoting Gladstone for Best Actress, and that this is primarily about an opportunity to celebrate her Native American identity — my calling a spade a spade in this regard is not a form of diminishment. It’s a fact.

I’ve said over and over that Gladstone is good enough in KOTFM but she’s certainly not wowser. Mainly because all she mostly does is glare and seethe and lie in bed. Because the script doesn’t give her any big crescendo moments. She doesn’t even get to slap Leo’s face or sharply condemn what he and his evil uncle have done to some of the oil-rich Osage natives.

** It would be diminishing if I wrote that JFK spoke with a pretentious Hahvahd or Boston Irish clam-chowder-slurping accent.

Son of Broad in the Shoulders

by

[Originally posted on 4.6.20]

“Height is to men what breasts are to women,” an HE commenter said three years ago. To some extent yes, but not necessarily. Or not entirely. Tall or tallish guys enjoy an obvious pecking-order advantage, but towering fellows (6’5″ and up) can seem gangly and galumphy. Or even a tad freakish.

The bottom line is that broad shoulders are the real bodacious ta-tas in the XY realm. I came into broad shoulders when I turned 13 or 14, and believe me I know about the benefits. Ask anyone who’s been lucky by way of genetic inheritance. If you have broad-ass shoulders, you’re halfway home in terms of general estimates, job interviews, receptive women, etc.

By the same token narrow, rounded shoulders are generally not a good look. There’s never been a rounded, narrow-shouldered guy in the history of the planet who’s ever said “man, I am so lucky that I don’t have broad shoulders!” I see a fellow with narrow shoulders and I think “well, okay, I’m sorry…he’s obviously had his share of struggles.”

From “Physical Dominance vs. Psychological Security,” posted on 6.19.19: “I was in love with Alan Ladd and I went to a party at Romanoff’s. I’m 5’7” but in heels I’m 5’9” or 5’10”. They said, ‘Shirley, your favorite actor is here…come and meet him.’ I turned around. He was there and I went, ‘Oh hi, Mr. Ladd.’ He was about 4’9” and all my admiration disappeared literally in the dust.” — attributed to Shirley MacLaine but who knows?

Ladd was notoriously insecure about his height, which (to go by most accounts) was somewhere between 5’5″ and 5’6″. For his entire professional life this psychological albatross was draped around the poor guy’s neck. On the other hand James Cagney was roughly the same size (5’6″ or thereabouts) and he never squawked about it. He spent his whole adult life playing tough urban guys who slapped, punched or psychologically dominated other fellows, and nobody ever said “Jeez, he’s kinda short.” They said, “Shit, here comes Cagney…watch out.”

In short (pun), a good part of life is about owning the right kind of psychology — about feeling secure and confident about who you are and what you look like. It’s about planting your feet, looking the other guy in the eye and saying “take or or leave it but this is me…got a problem with that? Because I don’t.”

On the other hand I understand the Shirley MacLaine mindset. I’ve been a tall, slender, broad-shouldered guy with fairly good hair (augmented by Prague-installed follicles when I got older) all my life. I’ve been that guy since I was 11 or 12, and by the time I hit my early 20s I was feeling pretty cool about it. I know my looks helped in my hound-dog days in the ’70s and early ’80s.

But I’ve always had this unfair or prejudiced attitude about short guys, and I mean going back to when I was nine or ten. I’ve always had this belief that guys need to be 5’8″ or taller, and if they’re not…well, not a problem for me personally but they will have a certain gauntlet to contend with on a daily basis. Life is unfair and often cruel.

Read more

Fisher’s Ghost Winces at HE Commenter Cruelty

by

[Originally posted on 12.31.22] She likes strong, dominant men and you, ya putz…you’re too smooth and mushy to qualify. Plus she’s sexier and better looking than you. It would be one thing if you were gym-toned with big broad shoulders to match her large breasts, but you’re not. Plus she’s much more powerful than you (economically, fame-wise) and she’ll soon be punishing you for these shortcomings — trust me. Plus she’ll eventually humiliate you when a more suitable lover comes along. And you’ll never really recover from this. You’ve fucked yourself. If only you’d stayed with Debbie Reynolds…

Here comes the snark and the cruelty…

(1) “I’ve never seen a picture of Taylor in a bikini before. Recall reading somewhere that she was self-conscious about her legs. Clearly her standards were higher than mine. Eddie Fisher ‘knew’ Debbie, Liz and Connie Stevens. So despite his rep as a feckless wastrel, I don’t feel I’m in a position to badmouth him.”

(2) “Eddie was a nice Jewish boy from Philly who got to bang Liz Taylor. Seems like nothing to sneer at.”

(3) “I never understood what any women saw in him, much less Liz. Big schlong, maybe? I’m always amused, when watching Laugh-In reruns, how many Eddie Fisher jokes they did.”

(4) “If you ever get a chance to see the Bright Lights documentary you’ll get a chance to see just how bad things got for Eddie. Even though he abandoned Carrie and Todd (and obviously Debbie) Carrie continued to care for him and in one final bit of footage…well, I’ve never seen a live human being look as dead as Eddie did then. Huge payback from a disgruntled fate…or something.”

(5) “Yeah, I don’t know much about the guy, but I did read that his life pretty much unraveled after he took up with Liz.”

(6) “If Satan came to me and said I can be married to Elizabeth Taylor in her 20s but only for three years, my reply would be, ‘Where do I sign?’

(7) “Not a single reference to camel toe. I’m beginning to lose faith.”

(8) “She was a shrill drunkard who liked to fight. Best to walk away.”

(9) “None of Taylor’s husbands were much to look at. Richard Burton had nice eyes but his face looked like the surface of the moon and his physique was worse than Fisher’s.”