Month: January 2026

Before this morning, my first mass-culture association with the word “awful” was a kind of milkshake called the AWFUL AWFUL, which originated in the mid-20th Century. It was primarily promoted by the Rhode island-based Newport Creamery (and later adopted by Friendly’s).

But that’s out the window now (too unhealthy) and the new AWFUL, according to the N.Y Times‘ Clyde McGrady, is a rightwing hate term that refers to ardent, combative, ultra-progressive leftie Karens.

AWFUL is an acronym for Affluent White Female Urban Liberal. Except the late Renee Good, apparently an AWFUL figurehead, wasn’t affluent — just a struggling, Honda-owning middle-class woman with a kid and a wife.

But without agreeing with the idea behind the term (hate grenades aren’t good for anyone), I get what it’s about. AWFULs are shrieking elitist wokeys, the righties are saying. They aren’t just pushing back in force against the Minnesota ICE bullies (which I agree with and totally support), but are also strongly in favor of AOC or Kamala Harris running for the White House in ’28.

HE is for any sensible centrist liberal of any gender who can beat JD Vance, but an AOC/Kamala candidacy will never, ever happen. It would be a flat-out calamity if either of them got nominated, AOC in particular. Both women seem like the epitome of AWFUL, and that would totally kill the Democratic cause. The Dems need to run a sensible, decent, democracy-loving, non-authoritarian normie like Gavin Newsom…please.

During a recent Paul Schrader-led discussion of Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons (‘42), Facebook commenter Dan Leo wondered why Welles didn’t play George Amberson Minafer instead of the under-talented, charisma-challenged Tim Holt.

HE response: Welles as young George Minafer? Too fat for that.

Even at age 26, Welles, who had seemed slender** and fresh-faced and unmistakably young man-ish in 1941’s Citizen Kane, which began filming in June 1940 when he had just turned 25…Welles had noticably gained weight during the filming of Ambersons (10.28.41 to 1.22.42).  

Look at the on-set Amberson photos…the proof is clearly in the pudding. At a time when most young men are delighted to be in their trim, athletic, well-toned, glow-of-youth prime, the mustachioed Welles was already on his way to Lardbucket Land.

Every morning Welles probably looked into his bathroom mirror and muttered “not fat enough…I want to look seriously fleshy and large-breasted…I want be bigger boobed than Lana Turner or Rita Hayworth!…I want to be Baby Huey or maybe even Sidney Greenstreet or, you know, some kind of Wisconsin sumo wrestler…I want to be Oliver Hardy’s slightly less girthy kid brother now but in 15 years, upon reaching my early 40s, I want to look like a dessicated, beard-stubbled, Mexican border-town detective…I could call him Hank Quinlan.”  

Flush with success and with easy access to anything he felt like stuffing or shoving or cramming into his mouth, Welles, ruled by ravenous appetites, ate like Henry VIII (huge sizzling steaks, a dozen fried eggs for breakfast, gallons of ice cream with chocolate syrup, mashed potatoes covered in melted butter and steaming hot gravy, crème brulee, tapioca pudding, more steaks). 

** Welles reportedly had to wear a corset for some Kane scenes (i.e., the early New York Inquirer portions) , as his slovenly marshmallow physique made him look besotted and almost middle-aged.

Peter Glenville‘s Becket, a truly great film, opened on a reserved-seat basis at Loew’s State (B’way and 45th) on March 11, 1964. It was still playing there when Richard Lester‘s A Hard Day’s Night moved into the Astor on 8.12.64 — exactly five months later. And for a few short weeks they played opposite each other in the very heart of Times Square — literally a stone’s throw apart.

Which film is the more highly regarded today? A Hard Day’s Night, of course — better known, a genre groundbreaker, “the Citizen Kane of jukebox musicals,” etc.

But also because Becket is, to this day, still a generally underseen, certainly under-appreciated drama about ethics, political maneuvering, and the delusion and corruption of power, not to mention having been the very first mainstream Hollywood film that, five years before the Stonewall riots, explored something very close to an actual love affair between dudes…albeit a sexless one.

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Gavin Newsom is a shrewd, fleet-of-mind, left-moderate governor with mostly good deeds on his record (along with a few not-so-good calls…nobody’s perfect). Yes, a bit slippery but he’s primarily a sensible, pragmatic fellow (“good on his feet,” Shapiro admits) who genuinely believes in democracy and playing the game more or less honorably, and certainly much more honorably than The Beast. He’s really “wrong”, I believe, in terms of trans kids and school involvement in potential trans-kid scenarios, but otherwise he did pretty well with Ben Shapiro earlier today.

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I watched Mattfleck’s The Rip this morning on the iPhone 15. Half of it, I mean. Smartly written, well cut, reasonably decent. Until the Joe Carnahan guns start blazing. Automatic weapon shoot-outs are boring. The fewer bullets, the better. Shane understood that.

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Last weekend the GoFundMe and Venmo donations to HE’s 2026 GoFundMe campaign (a Cannes and Venice double-header, looking for $8K total) was going great guns. I was at $3K last Tuesday and presumably climbing, and then it just…effing…stopped.

I’ve got enough to chip in my share for the Cannes pad ($1300) and buy the NYC-to-Nice air fare with a few hundred left over, but hater sentiments are apparently gaining steam or at least are thriving.

I’ll keep the current campaign going until, say, Valentine’s Day and see where things are at that point. If the donations haven’t moved I’ll have to figure out the Venice situation in March or April. One step at a time, I’ll get there, etc. Not the end of the world but I feel a bit hurt or…what’s the word?….drained?

Thanks so much to the longtime supporters who’ve quickly and generously coughed up over the first three or four days, and a pained congratulations to the haters who’ve been slugging it out in the HE batting cage for free for all these years and who currently have zero interest in turning the other cheek….there’s not much I can say at this point except “gee, I love you too” and I’ll never effing back off.

The campaign continues!

But I fucking gave up. “Interesting” and in some ways fascinating in a surreal sort of way, but too long, too labrynthian, too complicated, too many odd tangents. distractions and trail-offs. Plus I’ve never been a fan of King’s rural, inelegant writing style.

A decade ago I tried watching JJ Abrams’ Hulu adaptation when it first popped on 2.15.2016, partly because I knew James Franco (whom I came to know slightly around 15 years ago) and Chris Cooper would be excellent. And they were. But I gave up after two or three episodes. Again, too labrynthian, etc.

Last night I finally watched the last three episodes, and holey moley! I found myself melting down from the dance-hall ending with old Sadie (Constance Towers**) giving her “Texas Woman Of The Year” speech….touching, affecting…hell, devastating. Absolutely one of the most poignant sum-up poems about the pain and joys of life to be used in a filmed drama.

One one level, the finale of 11.22.63 radiates a kind of yogi wisdom about letting things play out according to their own roulette wheel scheme and basically letting the chips fall.

On another level it says “if there’s a choice between saving the life of your beloved, blonde, true-heart girlfriend (young Sadie is played by Sarah Gadon) and preventing President John F. Kennedy from suffering a bloody, brain-splattering death in Dealey Plaza, the blonde wins. Partly because letting Kennedy live means George Wallace will be elected president in ’68.

** Shock Corridor, The Horse Soldiers, Sgt. Rutledge, married to John Gavin…still with us at age 92.

Old Sadie Dunhill’s poignant speech at the finale:

“We did not ask for this room or this music. We were invited in. Therefore, because the dark surrounds us, let us turn our faces toward the light. Let us endure hardship to be grateful for plenty. We have been given pain to be astounded by joy. We have been given life to deny death.

“We did not ask for this room or this music. But because we’re here, let us heed the words of the great David Bowie — ‘let’s dance.’”

Director Magggie Gyllenhaal and actor Jessie Buckley finished The Bride! (Warner Bros., 3.6), a social-justice re-imagining of The Bride of Frankenstein which began filming in March 2024.

Soon after wrapping Buckley flew to England to begin work on Hamnet, which began lensing in July 2024 (London, Herefordshire and the village of Weobley).

Gyllenhaal’s horror musical-slash-revenge saga takes place in 1930s Chicago but was shot in New York City.

The Bride! was originally set to open on 9.26.25 and then 10.3.25, but then Warner Bros. distribution apparently freaked and bumped it into a 3.6.26 opening.

The Bride! will probably be applauded by feminist wokey lah-lahs, but it’s obviously going to tank theatrically as far as Joe and Jane Popcorn are concerned. That spilled-inkwell tattoo on Buckley’s right cheek…nuff said.

Will HE’s Kristi Coulter bend over backwards to praise it, or will she bring out the tough love?

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I always avoided the 42nd Street grindhouses like the plague.

In my mid teens I would grab a Westfield-to-Port Authority bus on Saturday mornings and then roam around Times Square and maybe catch an afternoon show, but I almost always restricted myself to the first-rate, reserved-seat houses — Criterion, Loews State, Rivoli, Capitol, DeMille, Warner.

Okay, except for now-and-then visits to the Paramount, Astor and Victoria, which were regular popular-price theatres.

When I look at the grindhouse marquees I think mostly of older gay guys accidentally bumping into me and copping a feel.

If she’s still with us, the blonde in John Lennon’s arms is probably around 80, give or take. If Mark David Chapman hadn’t come along, Lennon would be 85 today.

Notice the almost total lack of similarity between the very young Paul McCartney (born in June 1942, 22 when this shot was snapped in March ’65) and the about-to-turn-30 Paul Mescal, who has a hawk nose, a pointy chin and tufts of gray in his hair.

The Marietta hotel (Ringstrasse 8, Obertauern, Austria) is still a going concern, although it’s now called [PLACES] Obertauern by Valamar.

John Lennon quotes from his 12.70 Rolling Stone interview, eight months after the Beatles broke up:

“The circle around the band was a portable Rome of money, sex and drugs…when we hit a city we really hit it, and everyone wanted in.

“Don’t take away our portable Rome, where we can all have our houses and our cars, our lovers and our wives, and our office girls and parties and drink and drugs.”

“If we couldn’t land groupies, we hired whores…whatever was going.

“There were photos of me crawling round on my knees coming out of whorehouses in Amsterdam with people saying ‘good morning, John.'”

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Written this morning: I haven’t yet seen The Rip (Netflix, 1.16), but it’s certainly interesting that topliner and co-producer Ben Affleck costarred a few years ago in a vaguely similar action thriller — J.C. Chandor’s Triple Frontier.

Basic-concept-wise, Triple Frontier is fundamentally The Rip’s older, south-of-the-border brother — struggling working-class, loaded-for-bear professionals who stumble upon a huge pile of criminal cash that’s been stashed in a home.

This in itself is quite striking.

HE was a huge instant fan of Triple Frontier, a Netflix show which opened in March 2019. Since then I’ve re-watched it a good five or six times.

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A 1.14.26 Pamela McLintock THR story says that Marty Supreme–ola has earned more domestic coin than One Battle After Another.

It’s also on track to beat the b.o. total of Everything Everywhere All At Once, she reports.

Marty Supreme has shattered one record after another since opening over the holidays. Its latest box office milestone came Tuesday when it passed Leonardo DiCaprio’s rival Oscar contender One Battle After Another to end the day with an estimated cume of $72.27 million, according to A24.

“From director Paul Thomas Anderson and Warner Bros., One Battle After Another has earned slightly north of $71.6 million to date domestically (unlike Marty, it’s already playing in the home as its theatrical run winds down.) Internationally, One Battle is still far ahead, earning $154.5 million at the foreign box office for a domestic total of $206.1 million.

“But Marty Supreme is only now beginning to roll out in earnest overseas, where it has earned nearly $10 million to date from just a few markets, including a best-ever showing in the U.K. for an A24 pic with north of $8.4 million. Based on early returns, box office experts believe Marty Supreme could do substantial business overseas and end up north of $170 million to $180 million globally, if not higher.

“And it is now just days away from overtaking Oscar best-picture winner Everything Everywhere All At Once ($77.2 million) to rank as A24’s top-grossing film domestically of all time. Marty will also become Chalamet’s top-grossing original film this weekend at the global box office when passing up last year’s Oscar contender A Complete Unknown, which grossed $75 million in North America (the Bob Dylan biopic’s global total was $140.4 million).”