Month: April 2024

Around 9 am eastern an HE commenter called “Really?” wrote a response to last night’s post about (a) the Monday morning (4.1) suicide of cartoonist Ed Piskor over social media accusations of inappropriate texting conversations between Piskor and two women in their late teens, and (b) Jeff Sneider‘s 4.1 post about this tragedy (“Murdered by Internet Bullies“).

“Really?” to HE: “Did you google Piskor and the case for one moment? There’s obviously more to the story than somebody being ‘murdered by the internet.’ Pity that your obsession for cancel culture cancels your ability to be a critical thinker.”

HE to “Really?”: “Are you saying that speaking or texting suggestively or even lewdly to a young girl or two (young but above the age of consent) is a cancellable offense? Which can harm or kill a career or worse, as we’ve just seen with Piskor.

“Unwanted sexting sounds a bit icky, agreed, but if Piskor crossed a line the girl in question could have said ‘no way and hasta la vista’ and terminated the chat or conversation, no?

“Plus the age of consent in Pennsylvania is 16. Doesn’t that mean that in situations involving unwanted attention, lawmakers trust or expect or assume that teens 16 and over can and should exercise agency on their own part?

“It’s unfortunately part of the rough and tumble of life for teenagers to occasionally get hit on by older persons. (My mother used to warn me about predatory older women.) It’s obviously gauche and uncool but if it’s just a texting or phone situation there’s a fairly easy remedy.

“I clearly recall being hit on by an older gay guy in a Connecticut work situation when I was 17, and finding the idea highly distasteful. I told a couple of friends but did I write a complaint to his boss? No. Did I write a letter of condemnation to my local Connecticut newspaper? No. I simply said ‘nope, no thanks’ and moved on with my life. Imagine!”

“’Nobody gets moral unless they want to get something or get out of something.’ — Paddy Chayefsky, 1964.

Reply/comment from Sasha Stone an hour later:

“The same culture that pretends Poor Things is about sexual empowerment is shocked, shocked that sexuality is going on here. They order their little chess pieces to make sure everything is in strict compliance…”her agency” this and “grooming” that. They go along with an entire system that thinks it’s okay to confuse toddlers with conversations about their private parts to “decide” what gender they are. They go along with extreme and overt sexuality UNLESS — God forbid — a heterosexual male enters the chat.

“Even though certain younger but legal women are attracted to him, come on to him, pretend that they’re interested in him, if he takes the bait — PREDATOR!

“This is the most hedonistic, end-of-empire, Caligula-like culture I’ve ever lived through with one exception: masculine men cannot partake because eeww, icky predators. Give me a break. Hypocrites. And don’t bother lecturing me about power this and consent that. Text messages — please.”

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Posted yesterday by Jeff Sneider in his “InSneider” newsletter — a sad reflection about the suicide of cartoonist Ed Piskor — “Murdered by Internet Bullies”

Ed Piskor took his own life on Monday morning at the age of 41. This followed allegations that he was being creepy online, though that’s where it ended.

One woman accused him of “grooming” her when she was 17 years old, though they never actually met, while another alleged that he tried to barter an industry connection for oral sex — the second accused thereby making it a “pattern” of predatory behavior.

The news was literally beginning to break as I was finishing Red Room, which is a wild coincidence, seeing as how Piskor seems very concerned with the concept of justice for those online creeps who organize, perpetrate, and view such red rooms.

WARNING: Piskor’s suicide note is absolutely devastating and heartbreaking to read.

Piskor writes that he was “murdered by internet bullies…massive amounts of them,” and while I think that’s rather unfair, as it was ultimately Piskor’s decision to end his own life, I do feel this could be a seismic moment for social media — a blight on society that I, obviously, participate in and sometimes benefit from. Other times, it has cost me a job.

I would love to leave Twitter altogether, but I feel like I need it to promote my work. It’s a deal with the devil — a Faustian bargain, if you will.

But imagine that — not being able to pay your bills or feed your family because of something you hastily wrote online. Obviously we all have free will, and there are consequences to our actions that we all accept, but those consequences should fit the crime. People are being “canceled” left and right when no actual crime has been committed.

Some, like Shane Gillis, can pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and rather than complain, they can instead find their audience, forcing the mainstream that once rejected them (looking at you, SNL) to come crawling right back. But others simply don’t have that kind of fight in them.

Some just succumb to the tidal wave and are swept under the water.

I believe in social justice, but that can be a slippery slope. And yet these days, social media plays judge, jury, and executioner. To fight back against the online mob is pointless. Once one forms against you — and it could, at any moment — you are helpless to its power. It can take everything you’ve built and strip you of it in a matter of minutes without even so much as an investigation.

You don’t even get to plead your case on social media, and those who dare to try only make it worse for themselves. Either way, the mob leaves them crushed and questioning their own self-worth. It’s happened to me, it’s happened to people I know, and it’s going to keep happening.

The allegation against Piskor didn’t kill him — it was the subsequent pile-on by people who think they know what happened and what the consequence should be — but they don’t. And neither do I.

I’ll be praying for Piskor’s family tonight. I don’t believe he’s a martyr, as I do believe he knew what he was doing and was up to no good, regardless of the age of consent in Pennsylvania (16, apparently), but if I was named in his note, I would struggle to sleep tonight. I’m curious whether they think a societal good was done here today, or whether they have any remorse for playing a part, in Piskor’s mind, in his death.

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…stops at Matt Friend, 25. I’m a serious fan of the guy. Excellent Trump voice. “I’m an ass man!” Okay, I don’t like the too-short pants (nobody wants to look at calf skin) and the shoes, which don’t look Italian enough. But these are minor matters.

Ever since Broadway’s Hamilton popped in ’15 movies and stage shows been force-feeding progressive instruction to audiences…a hammering education about how things should or could have been in the past, if whites hadn’t been such racist assholes.

In the HE realm I’ve been calling it woke presentism for…what, three or four years?

In a 3.31.24 N.Y Times Sunday Magazine piece, written by By Kabir Chibber, it’s called “the Magical Historical Past.”

Yes, the N.Y. Times has finally summoned the courage to take notice of this widespread, years-long phenomenon. It actually calls it “Hollywood’s New Fantasy.” Hot off the presses.

Chibber quote: “You might call this kind of defiantly ahistorical setting the Magical Multiracial Past. The bones of the world are familiar. There is only one change: Every race exists, cheerfully and seemingly as equals, in the same place at the same time. History becomes an emoji, its flesh tone changing as needed.”

We all know the drill. Josie Rourke‘s Mary, Queen of Scots. Lynsey Miller and Eve Hedderwick Turner‘s Anne Boleyn. B’way’s Hamilton. Joel Coen‘s The Tragedy of Macbeth. Dev Patel as David Copperfield. Marvel’s Norse pantheon with a Black deity. A recently released version of Jane Austen‘s Sense and Sensibility is all Soul Sistahs. Bridgerton‘s Regency England ruled by a Black queen and a multiracial royal court. In BBC One’s Murder is Easy, originally written in 1939 and set (I think) in the 1950s, the lead protagonist and investigator is a Nigerian immigrant.

“Variety reported something on Friday that we simply cannot get out of our heads: the upcoming Joker sequel, Joker: Folie à Deux starring Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn, will reportedly be a jukebox musical with at least 15 well-known songs [performed or lip-synched] in the movie.

“There are some things in life that are just too good to be true, and this sounds like one of them.” — USA Today‘s Cory Woodroof, 3.23.24.

Joker: Folie A Deux, an all but guaranteed Venice Film festival headliner (and hopefully Telluride also!) opens on 10.4.24.

Last weekend in Manhattan a smallish stone was thrown at the great Michael Stuhlbarg (A Serious Man, Call Me By Your Name, Boardwalk Empire) but apparently it wasn’t that big of a deal.

The stone hit Stuhlbarg in the neck but he “declined medical attention” — a potentially serious wound that welcomely turned out to be a bit of nothingburger.

Stuhlbarg nonetheless chased the guy who threw the rock, 27 year-old Xavier Israel, and grabbed him or something. This led to Israel being arrested and charged with assault. The incident happened in Central Park near east 91st Street.

When I first read the story Stuhlberg was described as having been “attacked with a rock,” which makes it sound like some guy viciously beat Stuhlbarg with an apple-sized rock in his hand.

Stuhlbarg was assaulted, of course, but stones were thrown at me when I was a kid (thrown by “friends”) and it wasn’t the end of the world. Kids assault each other all the time, but if the same behavior happens in the adult realm cops, district attorneys and lawyers jump in and it becomes a whole big thing. Especially and justifiably if bodily harm results. Alas, this wasn’t the case with Stuhlbarg.

Compare the Stuhlbarg incident to the moment in Wes Anderson‘s Rushmore when Jason Schwartzman‘s “Max Fischer” shoots Stephen McCole’s “Magnus Buchan”, a beefy Scottish blowhard, in the ear with a pellet gun. McCole howls in pain but the attack is history ten seconds later as he and Fischer have moved on to other topics.

Think about it — The Rushmore “assault” is the same kind of aggression that happened to Stuhlbarg, but it didn’t warrant much attention on the Rushmore campus, much less significant headlines in People, Variety and The N.Y. Times.

The pellet gun moment happens at the 3:25 mark.

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The three finest films in which the bad guy wins (i.e., totally outwits the good guys and demonstrates his absolute supreme dominance at the finale) are, of course, David Fincher‘s Se7en (’95), Gregory Hoblit‘s Primal Fear (’96) and Roman Polanski‘s Rosemary’s Baby (’68).

These three are top of the pops in this regard (okay, it’s not so much Satan but Team Satan that wins at the end of Polanski’s film), but perhaps I’m forgetting something?

Okay, Jonathan Demme‘s Silence of the Lambs counts to a large extent because of Hannibal Lecter‘s brilliant prison escape, but Lecter doesn’t “win” at the end — he’s just escapes to the Caribbean for a little rest and recreation.

The extremely clever Keyzer Soze gets away at the end of The Usual Suspects but he doesn’t “win” — he just eludes the grasp of the law.

Same with Anton Chigurh at the end of No Country for Old Men — he slips away with a fractured arm but hasn’t demonstrated that he’s better than Tommy Lee Jones‘ sheriff or that he’s the absolute king of wicked hill. He’s obviously fallible.

Alex De Large doesn’t “win” at the end of A Clockwork Orange — he’s simply restored to his original venal nature by the authorities.

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Wealthy, play-frequenting London liberals will eat this shit right up.

Two months ago (2.5) I posted a few words about Barbara Rush, whom I had just seen for the first time in It Came From Outer Space (‘53) and then re-watched in When Worlds Collide (‘51). And now, as it must, death has placed a gentle hand upon her shoulder. She was 97. A rich, full life — and every time a movie fan watches Warren Beatty’s George Roundy try to get a bank loan in Shampoo, Rush will be re-remembered.

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But I own a streaming 4K UHD Chinatown on Vudu and it looks quite beautiful. That’s right — because I don’t seem to know the difference between 4K streaming and a 4K disc, I am a total effing peon.

Despite the fact that Rod Lurie and Kyra Davis are first-rate people (seriously), they seem oblivious to the fact that frolicking in Las Vegas is tantamount to injecting poison into your soul.

HE would’ve loved to have partied in the Las Vegas of 65 years ago…Frank Sinatra-Dean Martin-Sammy Davis Jr. rat pack craps slots chickie baby booze broads bubbly “hold the Clyde” yong yong ring-a-ding-ding, etc. That’s all gone now.