Month: October 2023

…as they were 100 years ago. No differences, no evolution in social consciousness….all exactly the same. Con Coco knows, or rather she can sense it.

@con..coco Lesson to take about #killersoftheflowermoon ♬ original sound – Con Coco

11 months ago I wrote a big “whatever happened to?” piece, and it resulted in nothing whatsoever…no hints, suspicions, loose talk, red herrings…nothing at all. We’re talking about a kid behind the most famous blooper in movie history, and nobody knows who he was or whether he was killed in Vietnam or how his life turned out…nothing at all? So I’m trying again….somebody out there must have an idea who this damn kid was…someone must have a clue of some kind…c’mon.

Whatever happened to the Peck’s bad boy of North by Northwest? The earplug kid, I mean. Who was this little Southern California jackass and what was his basic malfunction? And what happened to the production associate who should have spotted this bad business during repeated takes?

The kid’s place in history is secure. NXNW was shot in ‘58, and he appears to be nine or ten. If he’s still with us the little fucker with the obstinate (or playfully sociopathic?) attitude and the Brylcreamed hair is in his early ‘70s now. Once you’ve seen that green plaid shirt and those nail-bitten adolescent fingers plugging those Jerry Mathers-type ears…there’s no un-seeing any of it.

Does anyone know his name? Or how his life turned out? Did he work his way into a good profession or achieve some measure of financial security or whatever? Did he get married and have kids? Did he wind up serving in Vietnam or participating in anti-war demonstrations in the late ‘60s? Given his mischievous inclinations the kid almost certainly grew up into a leftist. This was no obedient rule-follower. Maybe he became a writer or a politician or a Wall Street guy…who knows?

The plugged-ear kid is right in there with all the various dialogue-speaking characters invented by screenwriter Ernest Lehman…right in there with Glen Cove police sergeant “Emile Clinger” (John Beradino) and the older “good woman” with the CIA whose humanistic concern for the fate of Roger Thornhill is casually and patronizingly dismissed by Leo G. Carroll’s “professor” and with the unseen midtown Manhattan cab driver who dryiy and confidently states his ability to lose the pursuing followers (“Yes, I can”) only to fail to do so. Or the hot blonde (Patricia Cutts) in the Rapid City hospital room (“Stop!”)

“Kid Ears” is as much of an iconic NXNW presence as anyone else…as memorable as the Madison Ave. building custodian (Tommy Farrell‘s “Eddie”) who’s “not talkin’” to his wife, or the Plaza Hotel itself or “Victor” (Harry Seymour), the bald-headed Oak Bar maitre d, or “Elsie” the Plaza maid (Maudie Prickett), or the suspicious and somewhat surly overweight detective (Tol Avery) on the 20th Century Limited who questions Eva Marie Saint, or the slender, reedy-voiced farmer (Malcolm Atterbury) who chats with Cary Grant at Prairie Stop Highway 41, or the cultured hotel concierge at Chicago’s Ambassador East (can’t find his name) or “Sergeant Flamm” (Patrick McVey), the fleshy beat cop who co-arrests Grant at the Michigan Ave. auction only to drop him off at Midway Airport…

Earplug kid doesn’t speak, of course, and is the only discordant note in the entire film…the only accident that wasn’t corrected. He’s probably the only NXNW veteran besides 98 year-old Eva Marie Saint and maybe one other who isn’t dead as we speak. Or maybe he too has passed on. Either way he certainly belongs to the ages.

What discipline was handed out to the guilty party who failed to notice this Leave It To Beaver-aged troublemaker…who failed to spot this potentially disruptive behavior in front of those costly VistaVision cameras? Hitchcock’s continuity person or the 1st assistant director or whomever — somebody was responsible, and someone must have spotted him. My guess is that Hitchcock may have been told about the kid after Grant, Saint, James Mason and Martin Landau had satisfactorily performed the scene on an MGM Culver City sound stage, but he blithely ignored the potential for narrative interruption, figuring no one would notice (and nobody did until NXNW appeared on DVD, which allowed for easy freeze-frame capture).

…if Ridley Scott’s Napoleon (Columbia/Apple, 11.22) was still called Kitbag? I haven’t loved a movie title this much in a long time. Imagine those hundreds of thousands of Joe and Jane Popcorn types reacting in the usual ADD dumbshit way…”Kitbag…fuck is that?…let’s see something else.”

The Kitbag title was abandoned sometime in January ’22, or roughly 21 months ago.

The political rehabilitation campaign for former New York governor Andrew Cuomo began last night. Unfairly sandbagged by Millennial #MeToo-ers, or so the legend now goes.

In my original ecstatic review of David Fincher‘s The Killer (10.15), I noted that it could be (or even appears to be) be a form of self-portraiture — a seeming reflection of Fincher’s basic nature as well as my own. Here’s how I put it:

Last night (Friday) Paul Schrader took a half-swipe at The Killer, allowing that while it’s technically impressive it’s mostly an example of a film being “all hat.” Schrader also noted that Michael Fassbender‘s constant narration makes him “the Chatty-Kathy of hit men.”

facebook commenter William Speruzzi took exception to Schrader’s “all hat” remark, stating in no uncertain terms that if Fincher has ever made a film about self-portrayal, The Killer is the strongest in this regard.

Frank J. Lauta, the father of my ex-wife Maggie, passed a little more than a week ago. Maggie and our sons Jett and Dylan are attending a memorial service for Frank in Hamlin, New York — a suburb of Rochester. I’ve been watching a live–stream for the last hour or so. I’ve just posted the following on the church’s website:

“Frank was a good citizen, a kind soul and a compassionate human being. He was the father of my ex-wife, Maggie, and therefore ‘family’ for roughly four-plus years (‘87 through ‘92). We had sporadic contact for a few years. We all vacationed in the summer of ‘91 in Cape Cod when his grandsons (Jett and Dyian) were toddlers. I was honored to know him and his wife, Jeanne.

“I’m sorry that Frank never met his great-granddaughter, Sutton (daughter of Jett), but she’s part of him and he will always be part of her. Goodbye and farewell, Frank…you’re part of the infinite stream now.”

The Fifth Estate‘s Geoff Leo has uncovered documented proof that Buffy Saint Marie is not an indigenous Canadian ((Piapot Cree Nation), despite her having claimed decades ago and throughout her life that she was adopted and “probably born” on the Piapot First Nation reserve in Saskatchewan.

Various bios have referred to the 82-year-old Buffy as Algonquin, full-blooded Algonquin, Mi’kmaq and half-Mi’kmaq. Leo, however, has found her birth certificate, which states that she was born Beverly Jean Santamaria in Stoneham, Massachusetts on 2.20.41. Her parents are/were Albert and Winifred Santamaria.

Buffy is now bonded with other “pretendians” including the late Sacheen Littlefeather, Sen Elizabeth Warren and producer Heather Rae.

Until recently and for over four decades, Buffy Sainte-Marie has been regarded as the first Indigenous Oscar winner for co-writing “Up Where We Belong” from 1982’s An Officer and a Gentleman. There goes that distinction!

The Native American community can at least take comfort in the apparent fact that Killers of the Flower Moon‘s Lily Gladstone is a genuine member of Montana’s Blackfeet tribe. Specigically Gladstone is “of Piegan Blackfeet, Nez Perce, and European heritage and grew up on the reservation of the Blackfeet Nation. on her mother’s side of the family she’s a firs cousin, 4 times removed, of 19th Century British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone. One of Lily’s paternal great-great grandfathers was Red Crow, a Kainai Nation chief.

As far as I can discern Elvis Mitchell‘s “try-hard” shoes, worn during last Tuesday’s Academy q & a for David Fincher‘s The Killer, are made by Prada. A Prada web page describes them as “Monolith brushed leather lace-up shoes,” and says they cost $1270.

Before this mnorning I’d never seen Michael Epstein‘s 86-minute Hitchcock, Selznick and the End of Hollywood (11.1.99). I love Gene Hackman‘s narration! Epstein obviously reveres Hitchcock and thinks less of Selznick. Basically a story of creative conflict, Hitchcock vs. Selznick, the power of producers vs. directors and the end of Hollywood…how the power of the producer decreased. I immediately felt enveloped.

I need to finally watch Michael Ritchie‘s The Bad News Bears, I suppose, because a friend assures me it’s coarse and offensive and about as politically incorrect it could’ve been back then. But also hilarious.

That’s right — I never saw it. I ducked it like a champ. I thought I had seen it at first, but then I searched my memory but couldn’t find any shards.

Is it as coarse and un-p.c. as friendo is claiming? I’m asking.

If so, I would seriously pay $50 if L.A. Times critic Justin Chang would re-watch it and review it the way he’s just reviewed The Holdovers.

Friendo: “This movie showed how racism was in the 1970s. Meaning that no one took it that seriously — they made fun of it. This kind of film could never be re-made today. Everyone in the cast is mocked. It’s 100% politically incorrect. Every racial slur imaginable. N-word used freely. But absolutely hilarious. Tatum O’Neal as an 11 year old who smokes and talks about being on the pill. If only someone had the guts to make it today as it was then. A great little movie.”

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