Day: June 3, 2025

Decades before woke-driven cancellations became all the rage in the late 20teens, arguably the first-ever cultural death sentence was handed down to a pair of big-time musicians — Lovin’ Spoonful singer, guitarist and co-founder Zal Yanovsky (12.19.44 – 12.13.02) and bassist Steve Boone.

Their crime was ratting out a pot dealer, Bill Loughborough, after they were popped for marijuana possession in San Francisco in May 1966.

Fearful of being deported to Canada, Yanovsky (and also Boone apparently) folded under pressure from narcs and fingered Loughborough.

This led to Loughborough and certain members of the underground press ranting and raving over the uncoolness of such a move. It pretty much destroyed the group’s reputation.

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I’m toying with an idea of seeing Michelangelo Antonioni‘s L’Eclisse at the Walter Reade this coming Saturday (6.6) at 8:30 pm. I’ve seen it on Bluray three or four times, but never in a theatre. I know that the projected Walter Reade version can’t hope to match the Bluray quality, but I’m thinking it might be….I don’t know, haunting in a way I’ve never quite experienced.

There’s a social distancing element in this 1962 film that gets me every time. We’re all living in an L’Eclisse-like world…a numbing, vaguely gnawing sense of isolation…an atmosphere of existential stillness and solitude…a portrait of angst and alienation. The 1962 classic is the climax of Antonioni’s alienation trilogy, the first two films being L’Avventura and La Notte.

Consider this excellent assessment of the film and the Bluray by The Dissolve‘s Scott Tobias.

In his My Voyage to Italy documentary, Martin Scorsese describes how this film haunted and inspired him as a young moviegoer, noting it seemed to him a “step forward in storytelling” and “felt less like a story and more like a poem”. He adds that the ending is “a frightening way to end a film…but at the time it also felt liberating. The final seven minutes of Eclipse suggested to us that the possibilities in cinema were absolutely limitless”.

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Alfred Hitchcock‘s Jamaica Inn (’39), his last British-produced film before moving to Hollywood, was shot in immaculate black-and-white by Bernard Knowles (The 39 Steps, Sabotage, Secret Agent) and Harry Stradling (Suspicion, The Picture of Dorian Gray, A Streetcar Named Desire).

And yet this colorized version isn’t altogether offensive. Because it has a certain beige-like, semi-drained quality — colors that appear soft, honey-toned, tea-tinted, amber-ish — that was not uncommon in the early days of color. Or so I’ve been told.

A few years ago I was invited to share a nice West L.A. dinner with former Boston Herald critic James Verniere, whom I’ve known since the early ’80s. Verniere suggested Guido’s, an old-school haunt favored by over-50 types…the burnished spirit of Frank Sinatra and Don Rickles, red-leather booths, old-guy waiters, delicious garlic bread, etc. I loved it, and now I’m sad to report that Guido’s is history, finito, kaput, shuttered, dead as a doornail.

Verniere: “Yeah, I’m very upset. Guido’s was my hangout. I brought all my friends there. We had a farewell dinner a couple of weeks ago with my son and his girlfriend and several others. I got take-out on the last night it was open. Sad.”

Three and a half years ago a review of Seth Reiss‘s “A Big Bold Beautiful Journey,” a BlackListed screenplay, appeared on Scriptshadow.

The unnamed reviewer called it “500 Days of Summer meets La La Land meets Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind meets A Christmas Carol.”

Incomplete, misleading synopsis: “At the behest or suggestion of a magical GPS app built into a 1996 VW Passat, two thirtysomething strangers who’ve attended the same wedding — Margot Robbie‘s Sarah and Colin Farrell‘s David — embark on a Christmas Carol-like memory odyssey (okay, call it a ‘big, bold, and beautiful journey’ if you want) in which they both relive failed relationships and romantic encounters from their respective pasts.”

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey (Sony, 9.19.25) is opening too early in “the season” to warrant serious intrigue or confidence. It costars Kevin Kline, Lily Rabe, Jodie Turner-Smith, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Billy Magnussen and Sarah Gadon.

This could be a commercial breakout for Kogonada, the South Korean-born, American-raised director (Columbus, After Yang).

The first story appeared today (6.3.25) in the New York Post. After a seven year-old boy was killed in a traffic accident in Gastonia, North Carolina, his parents were charged with involuntary manslaughter for having allowed the boy to walk to a nearby store with his 10-year-old brother — basically for failing to helicopter.

The second story is an HE account of an episode that happened when I was eight years old — an adventurous, six-mile hike I embarked upon with a seven-year-old girlfriend.