We’re allowed to say that guys like Jeremy Allen White or Benedict Cumberbatch lack conventional attractiveness, but if you say this about any actress you need to be seized, thrown into a hungry wolf pit and torn into shreds.

Bill McCuddy to HE: If the movie is all tap dancing and bullshitty, who do you even care for? It’s not a film — it’s a series of sketches about a very unlikeable guy. And you can calm down about O’Leary who is just playing himself.

HE to McCuddy: Have you seen Marty Supreme? It’s the bolt and the buzz and the sheer fuckoff-edness, but Chalamet is not channelling Don Logan….he’s not playing a malicious psychopath but a pushy, charming pogo stick…a user, taker, grifter and tap-dancer. (Who plays a great game of ping-pong.) He’s a crazy artist, an obsessive believer, a go-go guy on the make.

Life is struggle, y’see. And Marty isn’t just an irrepressible life-force — he’s a metaphor. We all have to claw, climb, hustle, push, goad, seduce, charm. All he needs to do is acquire kindness, a conscience, a sense of decency. Which he begins to do at the end.

Safdie, as noted, ignores the ’50s period trappings and atmosphere by using ’80s music on the soundtrack, but you know what he should’ve also used, and for the closing credits in particular? “Hungry,” that mid ’60s Paul Revere and the Raiders song. Because the lyrics sorta kinda sum up the Marty ethos or attitude. Not exactly but somewhat.

“Girl, you got this need to know what I’m all about
And that there’s something that you dig
You can’t figure out

“Well, you wanna know what moves my soul
And what ticks inside of my brain
Well, I’ve got this need, I just can’t control
And now it’s, it’s drivin’ me insane

“Girl, I’m gonna have it all someday
If you’ll just hang on to my hand
And if I break some rules along the way
Girl, you gotta understand

“It’s my way of gettin’ what I want now
‘Cause I’m hungry”

Rob Reiner to Conan O’Brien on 12.13 (two or three hours prior to the start of Conan’s Christmas party): “My son Nick is really whacked out now, Conan. So whacked that I’m spending tens of thousands each month to have him professionally watched and cared for, but he’s also seething and fuming all the time and I’m afraid that if Michele and I leave him home in order to come to your party this evening, he might…Jesus, maybe whack out and destroy something or maybe even burn our house down….who knows?

“So is it cool if we bring Nick with us? He might agitate a few guests and he won’t be dressed appropriately and he might even pull his dick out and urinate on the plants, but we’re afraid of leaving him alone. I love my son, Conan, but he’s a fucking nutbag. On top of which he’s an ape…6’3″ and kinda fat.”

Nick Reiner to Bill Hader at Conan’s party: “Are you famous?”

Hader to Nick Reiner: “This is a private conversation”, which translates into “get away from me, fat babycakes…you’re obviously trying to piss people off by asking hostile questions, and you’re obviously not worth talking to.”

Nick Reiner to self: “That’s it…I’m just been figuratively spat upon by one of my father’s famous friends. That makes me very angry, and I might…well, who knows but I might want to strike back…return the pain that’s just been injected into my system.”

I know what I saw. I know what I felt. I know what Marty Supreme is on the surface as well as deep down. It’s an all tap-dancing, all bullshitting, antsy, ping-pong-driven bop-shoo-wop hellzapoppin’. It’s the bolt and the buzz. It got me off in ways that never even occurred to Paul Thomas Anderson when he was making OBAA. It isn’t a “story” or a “saga” as much a nervy, insistent, wild-ass heebie-jeebie ride in a stolen (okay, borrowed) car. I LOVE the early (70-year-old) Scorsese New Yorky vibe. I love that Chalamet is more or less aping or paying sustained tribute to Robert DeNiro’s “Johnny Boy” in Mean Streets. I love the plunging bathtub scene. I love that it’s set in the early ‘50s and uses ‘80s pop music (Tears For Fears) on the soundtrack. I love that scrappy, raspy-voiced Abel Ferrara plays a stand-out supporting role. I love that Gwyneth Paltrow is the ground-zero, cut-the-bullshit, shower-sex center of it all. Kevin O’Leary totally owns and occupies the adversarial but at the same time flabbergasted role of Paltrow’s ornery pen millionaire hubby. I loved the mouthy, pushy, emotionally open-hearted Odessa A’zion. I loved the Central Park necklace-cops-and-cunnilingus scene. I need to see it again right away.

35 or so years ago I read a pretty good “spec” script by the late L.M. Kit Carson. It dealt in ironic machismo and dry comedy, and the lead male character was called “Riggers”.

Warner Bros. will open Digger on 10.226.

Alejandro G. Inarritu to Deadline:

The Housemaid (suffered through during dinner hour) is worse than I feared — phony, empty, ludicrous junk…stunningly hollow, reality-averse, filled with derangement…pure suburban schlock…wealthy-male-despising poison.

Capsule review by Kirk Douglas’ “Colonel Dax”: “Gentlemen of the court, there are times when I’m ashamed to be a member of the human race, and this is one such occasion.”

I’ve only a half-hour before my dreaded 5:15 pm AMC Lincoln Square screening of The Housemaid (okay, 50 or 55 minutes if you count the disgusting shitbox trailers, which I’ve no intention of sitting through) but I recently emerged from a 1:30 pm showing of Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme and it’s way, way better, not just inventively and cinematically but in basic holy-shit-this-film-is-really-crazy terms, than One Battle After Another…way the fuck better! Not to mention at least 10 if not 15 times better than Uncut Gems — it’s a primal knockout thing.

It’s entirely driven by Timothee Chalamet’s amoral, selfish, thoughtless, greedy-as-fuck young guy (but greedy for juice, triumph, acclaim and glory rather than money) who’s a serious go-getter, prick, thief, pusher and hustler, not to mention a gifted ping-pong athlete…a guy who never stops and never hesitates…okay, he acquires a little character and a couple of twinges of self-doubt toward the end, but ladies and germs and all the ships at sea…this is world–class cinema!…an alive, contentious and heavy-chugging run-around and hop-around fever dream that never lets you know what’ll happen next.

Chalamet constantly, compulsively, deplorably and always half-charmingly lies, takes, deceives, uses, goads, wounds, gives head, impregnates, insults, boasts, bullshits…and it’s not about morality or “story” or even who wins the big climactic ping-pong match in Japan, this thing…well, it’s finally about shards of decency and morality toward the end, but Marty Supreme is primarily and gloriously about character…and that’s what’s exciting about it. Character, values (or lack of), choices. Coming aggressively from the gut.

Okay, so Kristen Stewart is no longer a box-office powerhouse, but that’s hardly a felonious offense. Now 35, she’s an indie-brand hyphenate — actress, director, outspoken cultural provocateur — who will undoubtedly…okay, probably keep plugging and choo-chooing for many decades hence. So what’s the problem? Critical Drinker’s critical-rant video doesn’t even mention The Chronology of Water. Or the forthcoming The Wrong Girls.

Greenwich Entertainment posting a new trailer for Michel Franco‘s Dreams goes squarely against their longstanding policy of suppressing awareness of this provocative drama, which premiered in Berlin 10 months ago but has avoided nearly all festival opportunities since (except for a quick peek-out at the Hamptons Film Festival).

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Terms like “waste of skin” were dreamt up so that spoiled rotten ego-fiends like Nick Reiner could be correctly described.

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The self-loathing, emotionally destroyed, psychologically torn-and-frayed Reiner will face arraignment on 1.7.26.

N.Y. Times shoe-leather duo Tim Arango and Soumya Karlamangla reported around 1:15 pm eastern that Reiner had “appeared briefly in court on Wednesday morning.” The 32-year-old Reiner’s physical appearance in court doesn’t appear to jibe with other accounts, but then I wasn’t there.

When Rob Reiner, Conan O’Brien, Larry David and Martin Short were schmoozing, eating and drinking at Giorgio Baldi back in early ’22, they lacked clairvoyant understanding of what the future would bring. They guessed or suspected this or that but knew nothing. No idea that Trump would be re-elected in ’24, much less that awful tragedy would befall Reiner in early December of ’25.

Life is so much better and more soothing when you’re Giorgio Baldi-ing rather than grappling with the hard, thorny, oh-my-God stuff at home or at work.

I’ve eaten at Giorgio Baldi twice…no, three times. The first time was 15 years ago with Hurt Locker screenwriter Mark Boal (Zero Dark Thirty was years off at the time). Clint Eastwood and Sean Penn were sharing an indoor table. Three or four years later I ate there on my own dime, and then returned again in ’16 or thereabouts. It’s pricey but excellent. The Dover Sole is heavenly — moist and light, bursting with flavor, sprinkled with lime.

But I’ll tell you one thing. If I was rich or famous enough to have a security guy with me, and if he were to gently place his hand on my back as I stepped into the waiting SUV, I would probably stop and turn around and ask, “Why are you putting your hand on my back?”

Security: Sir?
HE: Why did you place your hand on my back as I was stepping into the car?
Security: We’re just here for you, sir. No issues.
HE: What are you trying to do, guide me into the car?
Security: Just an instinct, sir. We’re right behind you.
HE: I know you’re right behind me, but don’t touch me.
Security: Sorry.
HE: It’s okay. Just don’t do it.
Security: Okay. Understood.
HE: I’ve been stepping into SUVs all my life.
Security: Of course.
HE: I’m sure you’re a good man.
Security: I try to be.
HE: And you are.
Security: Yes sir.
HE: Okay, good.

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