I’d forgotten that before Clint’s Dave Garver slugs Jessica Walter’s Evelyn Draper and sends her plunging to a rocky seaside death, Walter gives DonnaMills’ Tobie Williams a severe haircut.
That has to be one of the ugliest and creepiest things a cinematic serial killer has ever done to a victim — “Before I stab you to death I’m going to chop half of your hair off.”
Clint was a young-looking 40 when he directed and starred; Walter was 29, Mills was 30 or 31, and John Larch, who played the amiable, well-dressed, Martin Balsam-like detective, was in his mid 50s.
Evelyn and Glenn Close’s Alex Forrest are birds of a feather. Okay, Evelyn is a bit more manic and unhinged. But they both slashed their wrists, and both threatened the hero’s significant domestic other during the climax.
I’m not saying that if either Wicked, Emilia Perez or The Brutalist win the Best Picture Oscar, it’ll feel like an apocalypse to me personally. Actually I am kinda saying that, to be honest.
If either Perez or Wickedwin, I’ll feel the next morning like I did on 11.6.24.
THR’s Scott Feinberg recently wrote that a vote for Perez and/or Karla Sofia Gascon could be seen around town as a fuck-you vote against The Beast, and that this symbology could be a determining factor.
Please don’t do this, Academy. On a certain level movies like Emilia Perez and the attendant wokey influenza within are among the reasons that Trump won.
The bumblefucks didn’t so much vote against Kamala Harris as they voted against men competing in women’s sports. Please don’t make things worse by doubling down on this shit. Please consider backing away from radical gender fluidity and transitioned six-foot biomales competing againet female swimmers, and come down to the normal earth amidst the mindsets of Joe and Jane Popcorn.
Al Kooper needs to be re-saluted for his guerilla commando raid during the 6.15.65 recording of “Like A Rolling Stone”. I’m suggesting this because a highly abbreviated version of this session is included in A Complete Unknown. Kooper is played by Charlie Tahan, but Kooper’s personal recollection of what happened is, like, ten times better.
If unusually frank words had been exchanged between Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on Sunday, July 21st, and if Harris had followed through on this frankness, the presidential race might have turned out differently. Maybe.
Biden: “If I don’t fold the tent and pass the torch, Pelosi and the gang will further challenge and undermine me, and I’ll almost certainly wind up losing to Trump by an even greater margin than previously projected, and I’ll go down in history as an even greater villain…a withered, stubborn old coot who surrendered the country to MAGA facism, and all because of my Irish, bone-headed arrogance.”
Harris: “I’ve always supported you. I participated in the general gasllghting about you being mentally alert and fully able to continue doing the job, and I’m supporting you now…I respect and support your decision to withdraw.”
Biden: “So it’s on you now, Kamala. Do your best and go with God. You’ll need to hit the road running. I presume you and your team have been preparing for this all along, and particularly since my absent-minded debate performance last month.”
Harris: “Actually, no, we haven’t.”
Biden: “You haven’t?”
Harris: “We’ve been in kind of a holding pattern, waiting to see what you’d do.”
Biden: “Since 1.20.21 you’ve been one heartbeat away from the Presidency, and you haven’t done a single thing to prepare, policy-wise and contingency-wise, for the possibility of taking over if something, God forbid, were to happen to me? You’ve just been plotzing?”
Harris: “We didn’t want anyone saying that we were preparing to take over prematurely. That would’ve looked ugly and craven.”
Biden: “Jesus, man!”
Harris: “What’s important now, Joe, is that I’m going to be the Democratic candidate. I’m grabbing the reins, and…well, please don’t take this the wrong way but I have to speak frankly to you, and more importantly to the voters between now and November 5th.”
Biden: “Uh-oh, here it comes.”
Harris: “If I’m going to have even a prayer of winning, I’ll need to throw you under the bus a little bit. I can’t run as Kamala Biden…I can’t be a rubber-stamp successor. If I do that, Trump will win. Your numbers have been in the toilet for a couple of years so let’s cut the shit. I have to be able to say two things. One, the vice-presidency is a ceremonial position without any real agency of its own. Every vice-president except Cheney has acknowledged this and said as much to journalists and historians. I was obliged to be loyal to you and that’s how I played my cards up unti now.”
