Do you think it’s some kind of coincidence that Al Pacino‘s hot-tempered, early ’80s Miami drug dealer and the jovial, family-friendly Bengal tiger who’s represented Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes for God knows how many decades…do you think it’s a coincidence that they share the same first name?
The instant I glanced at the cover of Glenn Kenny‘s “The World Is Yours: The Story of Scarface” (Hanover Square Press, May 7) I totally guffawed. I said to myself, “Now that‘s a great cover for a Scarface book!”
Amazon copy: “With brand-new interviews and untold stories of the film’s production, longtime film critic Glenn Kenny takes us on an unparalleled journey through the making of American depictions of crime. ‘The World Is Yours’ highlights the influential characters and themes within Scarface, reflecting on how its storied legacy played such a major role in American culture.”
Woody Allen‘s Steve Allen Showmonologue happened almost exactly 60 years and three months ago.
It happened at the home of the syndicated version of The Steve Allen Show, known informally as the Westinghouse Show. 1228 No. Vine Street (east side), south of Fountain and north of DeLongpre. The show ran from June 1962 to October 1964.
I love the way Allen pronounces divorce — “divauhhsss.”
“[And] it feels as if almost all masculinity [itself] is considered toxic, and so I think that many young men may not feel welcome.
“It’s not so much of a pull by guys like Andrew Tate as much as a push. Like if you show up and just wanna be, like, a regular guy’s guy, you may not be eating enough kale and doing enough yoga to fit in on the left.” — Van Jones duuring last night’s Real Time Overtime segment.
Last night’s Eras Tour show happened in Melbourne. 90 thousand women attended. Two more nights there, and then on to Sydney.
Friendo: “You know what I think this is really about? White women starved for representation.”
Translation: Where oh where are all the black chicks at Taylor Swift concerts? I’ve read that a small percentage of her fans are black, but I never see them at concerts.
The footage starts around the 6:30 mark, give or take.
John Clifford Floyd III is a criminal defense attorney who raised Fani Willis in both California and Washington, D.C.
AJC.com excerpt: “Floyd took part in sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in 1965 in Memphis, Tennessee. After a sneering white man spit tobacco juice on top of his head, he decided to take a more confrontational stance. He joined a faction of the Black Panther movement in 1967 in Los Angeles. He renounced violence and enrolled at UCLA to study law after two Panthers, Bunchy Carter and John Huggins, were shot and killed in an altercation at a Black Student Union meeting.”
I suspected there would be an angry crowd in front of Manhattan’s Russian Embassy (9 east 91st Street), but for whatever reason I couldn’t find advance confirmation.
Tapping out yesterday’sriff about three approvable Taylor Hackford flicks (TheIdolmaker, AnOfficerandaGentleman, AgainstAll Odds) led to a re-watch of Odds (‘84), and good God…I humbly apologize!
It’sbeenalmost exactly 40yearssincemyinitial late Februaryviewingatthegood oldAcademyauditorium(Wilshire&LaPeer), and I guess I just wasn’t perceptive enough back then.
Eric Hughes’ plot (loosely based upon 1947’s OutofthePast) and especially the dialogue (or good-sized portions of it) are chores to sit through, and Jeff Bridges’ painfully unsubtle performance as main protagonist Terry, an aging, none-too-bright football player, gave me a splitting headache.
Young Bridges was often too emotionally emphatic and actor-ish, and in this thing he’s certainly too childish. I was starved for the adult attitude that permeates OutofthePast. Fortified by Daniel Mainwaring and Frank Fenton’s tart dialogue, laconic Robert Mitchum knew how to play this kind of material. Which is to say a bit cooler.
I was nonetheless okay with the opening 20 or 25 in Los Angeles (love the ridiculous hot-dogging on Sunset Blvd. at 80 mph) and especially that hot, flavorful lovers-in-Yucatán section (Terry blissing out with Rachel Ward’s Jessie), but when Alex Karras interrupts their lovemaking inside a ChitchenItza temple the whole thing suddenly turns bad, and then it stabs itself in the chest by returning to L.A. for the final 40 or 45 minutes, which are mostly atrocious.
Ugly people behaving horribly…sullen, scowling, sneering, snorting blow. You can all go fuck yourselves.
The exception is a Century City office sequence in which the excellent SwoozieKurtz, playing a secretary to Saul Rubinek’s odious sports agent, does Terry a great favor by stealing a trove of incriminating documents, and with a hostile Doberman growling and breathing down her neck.
Lessonlearned: If you have fond memories of a Taylor Hackford film you saw when young, don’t re-watch it decades later. Leave it there.
The original OutofthePast is a shining, gleaming city in the hill…a much, much better film.
