The Topic Wasn’t Berlin or Cuba

I don’t know what the subject was, but if I had to guess I would say it had something to do with votes, campaign cash or poon.

JFK was known to use the “p” word, but in the 21st Century only a sexist dog would even toy with such a term. What should I use in its place? Tail? Talent? I know — just as bad. Women of distinction?

Sundance Puzzlement

People are still wondering why the anemic, all-but-finished Sundance Film Festival is leaving Park City. It’s something to do with money, I realize, but what are the particulars?

Four days ago THR‘s Scott Feinberg reported that Boulder, Colorado may be the new host city of the Sundance Film Festival. Feinberg called it a “strong candidate.”

I re-read Feinberg’s piece this morning and was kinda flabbergasted by a paragraph that asks why Sundance is leaving in the first place. Feinberg implies that the reason is that because certain Utah laws are homophobic and transphobic.

Clementine

Friendo: “This is from your Knox Bronson post from yesterday…”

Friendo: “‘Mainly by his kind’ — meaning white men.

“And…

“White women ‘shut the door on other races.’

“Jeff, who the eff is this Clementine Kruczynski?
person? And why the eff is he/she so effing comfortable being racist??

“And why is nobody on the HE threads calling her out on it?”

Walmart Dialogue

After poking around the Walmart shoe section and having no luck, I flagged an overweight Walmart floor person.

HE: “May I ask a question? I’m looking for those soft shoe pads…you know, you slip them into your shoes for comfort?”

Floor person: “That aid udda shoedairsh.”

HE: “Shoe gain?”

Floor person: “No, sir — the shoe department.”

HE: “Aahh, thank you!”

There was no point saying that I’d already done a couple of laps around that department. There was only a sense of ennui, hopelessness. I finally found the pads upon my third try.

Naked Dracula + Howling + Rats

Obviously Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu (focus, 12.25) will be intense, highly impactful, etc. Hundreds of rats.

Bill “freakout” Skarsgård as Count Orlok. Nicholas Hoult and Lily-Rose Depp as Thomas Hutter. Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Emma “spikey dieky” Corrin as Friedrich and Anna Harding. Willem Dafoe as Professor Albin Eberhart Von Fran (i.e., Von Helsing or Peter Cushing)

Alternate Moon Scenario (Just In Case)

Greg Berlanti‘s Fly Me To The Moon (Sony, 7.12) is yet another riff on the alleged faking of the 1969 moon landing legend — a myth that has been kicking around for decades.

It would appear that this version, produced in part by star Scarlett Johansson, is light and bouncy and romcommy. Channing Tatum costars with Scarjo. I’m attending an invitationql Manhattan screening on Monday, 7.8.

Posted on 6.15.14: Last night’s Black List reading of Stepheny Folsom‘s 1969: A Space Odyssey, Or How Kubrick Learned to Stop Worrying and Land on the Moon was somewhere between okay and underwhelming. It was great to visit the Los Angeles theatre (which was built in 1931 or thereabouts) but the sound was imprecise and echo-y and ricocheting all over the large auditorium, and so I really couldn’t hear a good portion of the dialogue.

Plus the show began 45 minutes late, which is pretty close to unforgivable in my book unless you offer an apology once the show finally starts. (Nobody did.)

As for the script itself…well, I can only say that the reading didn’t feel like enough. It’s an amusingly crafted piece about a con job that never quite comes off, and about the natural disharmony between a bunch of Washington tap-dancers and flim-flammers and a genuine artist with a prickly personality.

All I got from it was a rat-a-tat-tat feeling. The applause was polite and perfunctory and that’s all.

Want my advice? Start the fucking show promptly next time.

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