Elated by Chalamet’s Best Actor SAG Win; Ditto “Conclave” Taking SAG Ensemble

Anora doesn’t have to win everything. It’s okay — it’s still the front-runner for the Best Picture Oscar.

Brutalist topliner Adrien Brody losing the SAG trophy for Best Actor and A Complete Unknown Timothee Chalamet taking it instead truly warms the cockles of my heart…thank God! I would have been crestfallen if Brody had triumphed. Brutalist haters, unite!

And hooray for Team Conclave taking SAG’s Best Ensemble. Does this mean there’s a chance that Conclave might win the top Oscar prize? Yes, there’s a decent chance of that happening. But it’s not all that likely.

Am I slightly bummed by Demi Moore snagging SAG’s Best Actress award? Yes, that bums me out a bit. Will I get over it? Yes, I will.

A Name-Brand Actor Dared to Say These Words

“I’ve worked with a lot of actresses who could be cancelled for inappropriate behaviour. It’s not just boys [who] behave that way. It happens on both sides of the street. But men don’t talk about it because they would fear [other men] would say, ‘why are you complaining?’”

Zero Day‘s Matthew Modine speaking to the Telegraph‘s Helen Brown (2.20.25).

Famous Folk Who Died While Rolling in the Hay

A few fellows have famously died during (or as a result of) coitus, but to the best of my knowledge this fate was suffered by only one woman in the showbiz realm.

One female movie character, I should say — Jane Fonda‘s Christine Bonner, a free-spirited but unhealthy young woman who dies after going to bed with Peter Finch‘s Murray Logan in Robert StevensIn The Cool of the Day (’63). The film stinks.

The most famous American real-life victim of the sex-death syndrome was Nelson Rockefeller, who served as New York State governor for 14 years (1959-1973), ran for president a couple of times and then served as Gerald Ford‘s vice-president (1974-1977). On 1.26.79 Rockefeller suffered a fatal heart attack while boning 25-year-old Megan Marshack, a personal aide or mistress or both, inside a Manhattan townhouse at 13 West 54th Street.

Roughly two weeks before Rockefeller’s demise Richard Pryor: Live in Concert, a classic capturing of a Pryor stage performance, was released. During the show, which was filmed in Long Beach on 12.10.78, Pryor revealed that his father, LeRoy “Buck Carter” Pryor, had died during sex at age 53. Pryor: “He came and went at the same time.”

Felix Faure, president of France between 1895 and 1899, allegedly died while his girlfriend, actress Marguerite Steinheil, was…uhm, blowing him. Steinheil was thereafter nicknamed “kiss of death”. I’m mentioning Faure because of I’ve walked along rue Felix Faure in Cannes for many years.

I’m not including guys who died from auto-erotic asphyxiation (i.e., Michael Hutchence and David Carradine). They obviously bought it — were actively involved — tempting death. HE’s list is solely about people who didn’t see it coming and then whoosh….expiration.

Who am I missing? Movie characters, real-life victims…anyone who just keeled over at the moment or orgasm, or soon after.

Significant Emotional Gesture

Soon after they enter the Taft Hotel, Elaine Robinson (Katherine Ross) is at first puzzled and then vaguely alarmed that so many staffers are (a) effusively greeting Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) and yet (b) addressing him as “Mr. Gladstone.”

After a midget bellboy adds his own Gladstone greeting (“And how are you this evening?”) Elaine’s alarm slightly intensifies, and yet she expresses this by removing her left hand from her coat pocket and touching Ben’s right elbow.

The chaotic wedding finale aside, Elaine’s gesture represent the gentlest, most emotionally sincere and curiously touching moment in the entire film. It happens at the :15 mark.