Month: November 2024

Only now can it be told…

It happened at least a year and a half ago, and possibly longer than that. I was chatting with the renowned director-writer Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton, Duplicity, Andor, Beirut) inside the AMC Lincoln Square IMAX theatre. It was prior to a hot-shot invitational screening, and we were standing next to our seats and shooting the usual shit.

After a few pleasantries Gilroy sat down and I turned to face the huge screen, and I somehow tipped over a bit, and then quickly tried regain my balance…nope. Perhaps my heavy leather computer bag was a factor, but the IMAX theatre seats are built upon a very steep grade — something close to 45 degrees — and so I tumbled forward and fell like a crash test dummy upon the row of seats in front of me.

Although it was no big deal in terms of bruisings or physical injury, I felt slightly embarassed because, you know, who loses his fucking balance and falls over a row of seats just before the start of an IMAX screening with a gathering of hot-shot journalists sitting and standing around nearby? I was Chevy Chase doing a Gerald R. Ford.

But you know what? Gilroy saw everything and didn’t say a word. Didn’t even raise an eyebrow. He knew it was a galumphy thing to have done but he maintained his poker face and kept his cool, and in so doing he kept mine.

Another friend might have shouted “oh my God…Jeff! Jeff! Are you okay?”, and in so doing would have prompted others to take notice or ask what had happened, and the next day it might have been a topic of derision and belittlement on the Six O’Clock News. But the taciturn and unshakable Gilroy said zip and nobody else did either (no yelps or “oops!”), and our lives went on as if nothing had happened.

Last week writer Vincenzo Barney revealed in a Vanity Fair article that Cormac McCarthy, the late author of Blood Meridien and No Country for Old Men, indulged in a years-long affair with a teenaged be-bop baby.

The woman in question is the now 64-year-old Augusta Britt, whom the celebrated author first met in ’76 or thereabouts, when she was 16 and he was 42.

McCarthy and Britt consummated the deal a year later. She was his “single secret muse”, etc. McCarthy died last year at age 89.

Conventional wokeism naturally asserts McCarthy groomed and exploited a presumably naive young woman, but Britt has insisted otherwise.

McCarthy from heaven: “Condemn all you want but as America was celebrating its Centennial and beyond, it was a be-bop baby for me-hee…a be-bop baby for me.”

…and he doesn’t even mention the twin identity campaigns of Lily Gladstone, who ran as a lead after clearly playing a supporting role in Killers of the Flower Moon, and Emilia Perez’s Karla Sofia Gascon, whose titular character is a strong presence but not a lead — Zoe Saldana has that honor.

Why did Wilson omit even a mention of these two? I’ll tell you why. Because he’s chicken, or because his editors are.

But as this photo was Facebook-posted yesterday (The Far Side) and then commented on by over 400 persons, my honest response is as follows:

I’m down with immodest beach garb as a rule, but there comes a time when nature doesn’t encourage modesty — it demands it. Not only should this headstrong, free-spirited woman not wear a bikini on a beach, but she shouldn’t even glance in the bathroom mirror when she’s toweling off from a shower.

Sorry, no offense.

Posted last night (Saturday, 11.23) in response to the famous Terry Valentine / Peter Fonda / Lem Dobbs line from The Limey…a revelatory line that said the proverbial ‘60s thing was “‘66 and early ‘67…that’s all it was.”

HE response, tapped out early this morning…

The most radiant or abundant part of any social-spiritual-musical movement is right before it catches on en masse with the avant garde bourgeois (i.e., plugged-in middle class)…when the spirit electrons and protons have built and buzzed and reached mass combustion levels just before the big explosion.

The ‘60s wave curled and crested and white-foam exploded all over the country with the Summer of Love, which was principally heralded by the June ‘67 release of “Sgt. Pepper” and particularly by that mad marijuana-mescaline glissando rush…that building, crashing, over-lapping orchestra rumble + crescendo in “A Day in the Life” (both of them) along with “Are You Experienced?” (May ‘67) and “Surrealistic Pillow” (released in February ‘67 but fed by ‘66 currents) and “For What It’s Worth” (released in December ‘66) and Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow–Up (fed by late ‘65 and ‘66 percolations and released in December ‘66) and Country Joe’s “Electric Music For The Mind and Body” (released in May ‘67) and the ‘67 Monterey Pop Festival (June 16, 17 and 18) plus all the amazing activities and inward ruminations and explosions described by Tom Wolfe in “The Electric Kool–Aid Acid Test” (published in August ‘68 but informed by the Ken Kesey–Neal Casady–Merry Pranksters adventures of ‘64, ‘65, ‘66 and early ‘67)…

Way too much to get into here but what Terry Valentine / Lem Dobbs meant is that the huge quaking social orgasm that was felt across the culture in the summer of ‘67 was cooler and more exciting for those who were “there” and had their ears to the railroad tracks in ‘66 and early ‘67 …it felt so much vibe-ier when the spiritual foreplay was happening and building and starting to ignite and come into being and amassing a certain subliminal power — that was when the most exciting and tingly stuff was being felt…”do you feel it? do you sense it? There’s something happening here,” etc.

Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker, posted in the Guardian on 5.17.18:

“In My Tribe”’s Arnold Kling, posted on 8.16.21:

One, the middle section of Anora never, ever drags…not once, not even briefly. It doesn’t really take off, in fact, until roughly the 50- or 55-minute mark. The first act is all set-up. It pays off in Act Two — farcically, comically — and then it goes to Vegas (“Your son hates you so much that he married me, and by the way he’s a fucking pussy”) and returns to Brooklyn, and then reaches inside at the very end and transcends itself.

Two, the fact that “it doesn’t really seem to have anything larger to say about the world today,” as Scott Feinberg has put it, is precisely, profoundly and deliciously why it’s such a standout. It’s not preaching or messaging or offering any “this is how life sometimes is”, food-for-thought material. It’s just Brighton Beach, man. It’s not La Strada, although it does deliver a certain catharsis if you let it in. Anora is specific rather than general or universal. Either you get that or you don’t.

…or not? My basic opinion was that it steamrolls with such eye-filling verve and intensity that it’s hard not to at least give the film credit for selling the shit out of itself.