As mentioned two or three times I got to know Charles Bukowski a little bit in ‘ 87. This was during the post-production period on Barbet Schroeder‘s Barfly, which I wrote the press kit for.
I visited, drank with and “interviewed” Bukowski (sans notes, Truman Capote-style) in his Long Beach home sometime around…I don’t know, maybe March or April or even May. Barfly opened on 10.16.87.
Barbet made me rewrite the press kit over and over and over, so much so that I couldn’t read it after the tenth or twelfth revision. I came to hate hat press kit, but you know what? It’s one of the most tightly composed pieces of writing I’ve ever authored.
All to say that somewhere during this period I experienced by very first reading of Bukowski’s “The Laughing Heart,” which I loved. Not as much as “The Genius of the Crowd” but still.
Originally posted on 7.28.08: Here’s a decent story about a celebrity-drinking incident, passed along second-hand by a friend. It involves Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart, as well as the non-drinking Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher**. It’s important to understand that no one had GPS on their phones, and that verbal driving directions were the law of the realm.
“It happened a week or two after the opening of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” I was told. “Or sometime in late May or early June of ’08. Harrison, Calista, Demi and Ashton all went out to dinner. The latter two weren’t drinking but over the course of dinner Harrison and Calista had…I don’t know, two or three bottles of wine between them and got fairly loaded. Too drunk to drive, in any case. It was therefore decided — responsibly, intelligently — that Ashton would drive Harrison home in his car, and Demi would follow with Calista in her car.
“But somehow Demi lost Ashton at a traffic light, and Ashton and Harrison are now heading towards Ford’s home in the Pacific Palisades on their own, presuming that Demi will catch up. Except Calista has succumbed to the alcohol and passed out. Okay, ‘gone to sleep.’ Dead to the world, in any event. Demi tries to rouse her so she can get the directions and the address, but with no luck.” Wells note: STrange as it sounds, Demi hadn’t typed in the address on the GPS software on her Blackberry or iPhone before leaving the restaurant,
“So as she’s driving along, Demi starts prodding and shaking Calista with her right hand to wake her up to get the address, and as a result of the shoving the car slows down and weaves a bit, and as luck would have it a couple of patrolmen notice this and pull them over.
“Have you been drinking? the cops ask. No, Demi answers. I was trying wake up my passenger to get directions to her home. Has she been drinking? Demi doesn’t want to say, says she doesn’t know. The cops suspect inebriation despite Moore’s denials — “I haven’t been drinking! I don’t drink!” — and make her do the walk and touch her nose and all that.
“Meanwhile, Harrison and Ashton have arrived at Ford’s home. It’s been a little while and they’re wondering what’s happened to the ladies. Ashton calls Demi on her cell and by this time she’s being questioned by the cops and they’re saying ‘no answering the phone while you’re being tested for intoxication.’ Harrison says to Ashton, “You want an omelette? It’ll calm you down.” Uhh, not really, Kutcher replies, having just eaten an hour or so ago. Ford leads him into the kitchen anyway and starts on the omelette. ‘You want herbs? You want cheese? You want onions?’
“Back on the road, the combined efforts of Moore and the two cops finally wake Flockhart up. It’s like she’s coming out of a coma. One of the lawmen ask, ‘Do you know where you live?’ She gives them the address and they all get into their cars with the understanding that the bulls will escort Demi and Calista to the house.
“A few minutes later Harrison and Ashton see the flashing lights outside and respond as you might expect — “Oh my God, are you guys okay?,’ ‘What happened?,’ ‘Why didn’t you answer your phone?’ The cops say goodnight and leave, all’s well that ends well, and everyone’s safe and sound. And Harrison says, ‘So…who wants an omelette?'”
** Moore and Kutcher met in 2003, married in ’05. After six years of marriage they separated in 2011. In 2015 Kutcher married former costar Mila Kunis. Moore is allegedly currently dating celebrity chef Daniel Humm.
…should be interesting, as I intend to prompt a discussion of (a) Dune: Part Two, (b) Sam Mendes‘ four-film Beatles project and (c) the last and final HE Oscar predictions, which are the same predictions that everyone else is making or standing by. Plus whatever else comes to mind.
But I laughed harder at this photo that at anything else I saw, heard or thought about today. I’m sorry but it’s funny. The slight hint of Shatner’s spray-tanned stomach flab, the tin-foil brassiere, the look of faint exasperation on the actress’s face…all of it plus the baked potato association. Perfect.
In my two-day-old review (2.29) of Dune: Part Two, I wrote the following: “If you can put aside the Frank Herbert story and just tune in to the other-worldliness, it’s quite a feast for the eyes — a major league art film. Stunningly exotic and quite original…quite the aural-visual knockout.”
Friend to HE: “Yes, but how can you put aside the Frank Herbert story? The car-wreck horror of Herbert’s storytelling is front and center. He’s the worst storyteller in the history of the planet. Dune: Part Two actually makes J.R.R. Tolkien seem interesting. I wouldn’t say that the movie has a bad script. I would say that it doesn’t have a script.
“I dug all the visual stuff you were talking about — the sandy colors, the moody grandeur of the fascist imagery. I’m not immune to that sort of visual-atmospheric pizzaz.
“But I still wanted to shoot myself. The film felt nine hours long to me. If you told me I have watch Dune: Part Two again, I would jump off a bridge instead.
“Some of the violence was good, and I really liked Austin Butler psycho baldie. But I did not think this was a good Chalamet performance. During the last act when he started shouting and asserting dominance, he started to remind me of Nicolas Cage.
“I’m just shocked that you got swept up in it…”
HE to Friendo: “I did so by deliberately ignoring the story particulars and large portions of the script. I was only interested in the acting and the design and atmosphere and cinematography and editing. I was totally bored by all that Fremen vs. Harkonnen bullshit. I could sense early on that I would soon feel tortured if I tried to follow the story. I decided instead to just turn on the phone and read the synopsis on Wikipedia.
“I didn’t care about the story, but I liked everything else about the film. It looks and feels really cool and exotic and unlike anything I’ve seen in this kind of dense fantasy realm…it’s a world unto itself, and the creation of it all is truly fascinating.”
Friendo to HE: “To me that’s like saying you liked everything about a restaurant — the look, the vibe, the service — except for the food.”
HE to Friendo: “I’ve never felt that a script is the primary supplier of the ‘food’ in a film. A script is obviously necessary in terms of exposition and expressing themes and providing basic story structure, but as Stanley Kubrick famously said, the payoff we get from most films is more from the emotional mood supply. The hook of a good film isn’t so much from the think of it but the feel of it.
“That said, I’ve actually felt this way about some restaurants. I’ve adored the lighting, the decor and design, the cultured vibe, the tablecloth and lighted candles, the conversation with the person or persons I’m eating with, the excellent service, the upscale bathrooms, etc. Sometimes the food is phenomenal and sometimes it’s just okay. But regardless of how good the food is, I tend to value the other things as much as the food and sometimes more than.
“There’s a restaurant in Paris that I’ve been to six or seven times, called Le Coupe Chou. When you walk downstairs to use the facilities there’s a door that leads to some kind of sub-cellar or subterranean tunnel that leads God-knows-where, and the rank aroma from inside that tunnel is astounding…it smells like Paris from the 15th or 16th Century, and you can’t sample that kind of aroma anywhere in North America, I swear…it’s strictly an ancient European city smell. This in itself sold me on Le Coupe Chou, regardless of how good the food is.”
My initial reaction (posted on 2.28.24) was that “nobody and I mean nobody can ‘play’ Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr. No matter who Mendes chooses to hire, it simply won’t work. Their faces and voices are too deeply embedded in every corner of our minds to convincingly replicate or even half-replicate in a narrative format.”
I’m nonetheless intrigued by the ambition behind the Mendes-Beatles project, particularly the idea of releasing all four films in tandem in 2027. You can’t accuse Mendes and Sony chief Tom Rothman of undue caution or timidity.
I was actually too generous in calling it “a marginally effective, vaguely muffled chick-flick account of Lennon’s teenage years in Liverpool, circa 1956 to ’60.
“I’m not calling it dull, exactly, but Nowhere Boy‘s somewhat feminized, all-he-needs-is-love story just didn’t turn me on.
“Matt Greenhalgh‘s script is based on a memoir called ‘Imagine This‘ by Lennon’s half-sister Julia Baird.
“I understand that this love and rejection were key issues in Lennon’s youth, but the film didn’t sell me on this. It seemed to be frittering away its time by focusing on it. Lennon’s anguish was primal enough (‘Mother, you had me but I never had you’) but my reaction all through it was, ‘Okay, but can we get to the musical stuff, please?’
“Nowhere Boy boasts a relatively decent lead performance by Aaron Johnson. He doesn’t overdo the mimicry and keeps his Liverpudlian accent in check. And yet it’s a somewhat overly sensitive, touchy-feely rendering of a rock ‘n’ roll legend who was known, after all, for his nervy, impudent and sometimes caustic manner, at least in his early incarnations.
“I didn’t believe the hurting look in Johnson’s eyes. All those looking-for-love feelings he shows are too much about ‘acting,’ and hurt-puppy-dog expressions don’t blend with the legend of the young Lennon (as passed along by biographies, articles, A Hard Day’s Night etc.) Emotionally troubled young guys tend to get crusty and defensive when there’s hurt inside, and this was certainly Lennon’s deal early on.
“And Johnson is needlessly compromised, I feel, by a curious decision on Taylor-Wood’s part to create her own, reality-defying physical version of Lennon. She ignores the fact that he had light brown, honey-colored hair by allowing Johnson to keep his own dark-brown, nearly-jet-black hair. Nor did she have Johnson wear a prosthetic nose — one of the oldest and easiest tricks in the book — in order to replicate Lennon’s distinctive English honker. Where would the harm have been if they’d tried to make Johnson look more like the real McCoy?”
HE commenter #1: “This portrait of Lennon seems to be far too cuddly to be credible. From what I’ve read, he had a mile-wide cruel streak, was more than a bit of a brawler and, if Albert Goldman is to be believed, almost beat another man to death for making a pass at him.
HE commenter #2: “Actually I think the movie makes Lennon look like the world’s biggest twat. Which he may have been, but when you remove all the context of who he becomes, then it’s just an annoying, unpleasant watch. There’s very few redeeming qualities about this film, and Johnson’s noxious portrayal didn’t help things.”
In HE’s judgment, 25 exceptional, high-quality films were released in 1959. (There were another 9 or 10 that were good, decent, not bad.) By today’s standards, here’s how the top 25 rank:
Jordan Ruimy: “Dune: Part Two is actually night and day compared to the 2021 Dune. I loved it. Dune 3, however, is actually going to be very different. Chalamet is going to be a dictator.”
HE: “I don’t want to see that film. Last night’s viewing was an eye-opener….transporting visual material delivered with profound stylistic pizazz. I don’t want to descend into a dictatorship.”
Ruimy: “It’s a very different book. More solemn, less action.”
HE: “I’m not saying the first Dune (’21) was Star Wars — it certainly wasn’t — but Dune: Part Two is analogous to The Empire Strikes Back. It was a similar kind of exciting, darkly-shaded, going-deeper quality.”
Yeah, I know — I should wait until next year (mid July of ’25) to do a “looking back at my beloved decade-old Trainwreck” piece.
Judd Apatow‘s film premiered big-time at South by Southwest on 3.15.15 (just shy of nine years ago) and opened commercially on 7.17.15.
But in my mind Trainwreck is actually ten years old now, as it was in pre-production in the late winter and spring of ’14, and began principal photography on 5.19.14 in New York City. So let’s celebrate the 10-year anniversary today…pull up a chair.
A good comedy is just as story-savvy, character-rich and well-motivated as a good drama. Good comedies and dramas both need strong third-act payoffs. Take away the jokes, the broad business and the giggly schtick, and a successful comedy will still hold water in dramatic terms.
And yet most comedic writers, it seems, start with an amusing premise, then add the laugh material, and then, almost as an afterthought, weave in a semblance of a story along with some motivation and a third-act crescendo that feels a little half-assed.
Remember Amy Schumer‘s eulogy at her dad’s funeral in Trainwreck? That was a great scene, and it was part of an excellent comedy.
Posted on 6.30.15: Trainwreck is dryly hilarious and smoothly brilliant and damn near perfect. It’s the finest, funniest, most confident, emotionally open-hearted and skillful film Apatow has ever made, hands down. I was feeling the chills plus a wonderful sense of comfort and assurance less than five minutes in. Wow, this is good…no, it’s better…God, what a relief…no moaning or leaning forward or covering my face with my hands…pleasure cruise.
I went to the Arclight hoping and praying that Trainwreck would at least be good enough so I could write “hey, Schumer’s not bad and the film is relatively decent.” Well, it’s much better than that, and Schumer’s performance is not only a revelation but an instant, locked-in Best Actress contender. I’m dead serious, and if the other know-it-alls don’t wake up to this they’re going to be strenuously argued with. Don’t even start in with the tiresome refrain of “oh, comedic performances never merit award-season attention.” Shut up. Great performances demand respect, applause and serious salutes…period.
I still think Schumer is a 7.5 or an 8 but it doesn’t matter because (and I know how ludicrous this is going to sound given my history) I fell in love in a sense — I saw past or through all that and the crap that’s still floating around even now. For it became more and more clear as I watched that Schumer’s personality and performance constitute a kind of cultural breakthrough — no actress has ever delivered this kind of attitude and energy before in a well-written, emotionally affecting comedy, and I really don’t see how anyone can argue that Schumer isn’t in the derby at this point. (A columnist friend doesn’t agree but said that Schumer’s Trainwreck screenplay is a surefire contender for Best Original Screenplay.)
