Edge-of-a-steep-cliff character actor Peter Greene was “found” dead yesterday in his East Village apartment. The N.Y. Daily News broke the story, but my first awareness came from Mark Ebner, a onetime friend of Greene’s, on Facebook. Greene had “demons”, as the saying goes. Smack and crack in the ’90s and perhaps beyond.

There was a fascinating, well-written Premiere article about Greene that appeared in November 1996. Here’s an excerpt:

“In many industries, an employee found getting high on the job might get one shot at a hush-hush rehab, and then be shown the door. Unless they’re just fired on the spot. That’s not how they do it in L.A., where industry mechanics can be somewhat more perverse.

“Here, sometimes the trick is to keep ‘edgy’ stars sated with just the right amount of drugs to enable them to function (if merely for the benefit of the cameras), but not enough to push them over the brink. One-take wonders like Jan-Michael Vincent can be propped up in front of cameras until the day their liver explodes, their last ancillary market is exploited, and they become yesterday’s tabloid news–or until they break their neck in a car wreck, as Vincent did recently.

“If they’re luckier, like recovering cocaine addict Gary Busey, they get a chance to cycle through the Hollywood system again and again, making more comebacks than mere mortality can explain.

“Unlike some no less tragic has-been actors, the fiercely talented Peter Greene delivers. Marginally talented or charismatic screwups are a dime a dozen, but a true junkie artist is a rarity. And in Hollywood, such creatures are deified for living outside of the lines of self-control and responsibility until an industry of celebrity winds up flourishing around their tombstones.

“During filming on The Usual Suspects, Greene luxuriously improvised a memorable filmic moment by flicking a lit cigarette into Stephen Baldwin‘s face. Suspects writer Christopher McQuarrie calls Greene a ‘million-dollar day player,’ which could be translated as ‘Get him in, nail the money shot, and get him out before he wreaks havoc.'”

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If I could spread the Best Supporting Oscar wealth by way of re-categorizing, I would arrange for Sentimental Value‘s Stellan Skarsgard to win the traditional BSP trophy with One Battle After Another‘s Benicio del Toro winning a Best Supporting Underground Smuggler Chill Bro Oscar.

How do you pronounce Yvonne Villarreal‘s last name again? I’m not too bad with Spanish, but I’ve listened to her pronunciation three times…no dice.

Christopher Nolan’s six-minute Odyssey prologue is currently playing in IMAX theatres that are showing (choke, gag) Sinners and One Battle After Another. Well, there’s no effing way I’m paying $20something to catch Sinners again and I’ve already seen OBAA twice so eff that jazz. It’s being reported that the full prologue will be attached to Avatar: Fire and Ash 70mm IMAX screenings starting on Friday, 12.19. (I hate the idea of watching Cameron’s latest but I might submit.) Non-IMAX screenings will be getting a truncated version of the prologue. Nolan’s Odyssey flick pops on 7.17.26.

Will it be fair to call The Odyssey a sword-and-sandal flick? I’m asking. Swords, sandals, helmets, beards and loincloths.

Ethan Hawke‘s Dano riff begins at 1:35…Will Hawke’s Lorenz Hart performance snag the Best Actor Oscar?…it’s either him or Timothee Chalamet.

In a “live” chat this morning with Telos subscribers, Olivia Nuzzi’s seemingly revenge-driven ex-fiancé Ryan Lizza asked for and replied to various questions.

Here’s what I asked:

“Boiled way down, what in your view is Olivia’s default rationale or susceptibility when it comes to older guys…Olbermann, yourself, RFK, Sanford? One naturally presumes that her relationship with her dad is at the root of it, but what was the exact basic nature of that relationship? What precisely happened or didn’t happen? Surely you’re familiar with the backstory. This is the nub of it.”

Zip reply so far.

From Lizza’s latest Telos chapter (“Loyalty Test”, posted on 12.11):

“The acting in Hamnet feels stagey until the movie reaches an actual stage, at which point the earthen, feral, ardent work that Jessie Buckley has been doing reaches its apogee. Agnes witnesses, at last, what her absent husband has been up to in the wake of their family’s tragedy. And the way Buckley registers what’s before her is one of the great acts of beholding I’ve ever seen.

“Her spectator’s journey from rude belligerence to almost drunken bewilderment to chatty hypnosis to biblical revelation was pretty much mine. Through tears, I laughed at the odyssey of Buckley’s facial thesaurus. At some point, she extends a hand up to the proscenium and the actor (Noah Jupe) onstage clasps it, and the bereft epiphany that blasts out of her explains why Buckley’s work in the rest of the movie had felt so primitive: This is a human discovering the fire they call art.” — N.Y. Times critic Wesley Morris, posted on 12.11.

There’s an obvious affinity between Alfred Hitchcock, Robert Burks and George Tomasini‘s handling of the mountain road chase in To Catch A Thief (’55) and the Florida coast beach-speeding scene in Hitch’s Notorious, which was shot by Ted Tetzlaff and edited by Theron Warth.

Cary Grant riding shotgun both times; the laid-back Grace Kelly and Ingrid Bergman at the wheel, and the law on their trails.

Burks’ Oscar-winning VistaVision photography for Thief is handsome, beautifully balanced and easy on the eyes, and Tomasini’s editing makes the sequence feel centered, relaxed and at peace with the universe. The reactions of Grant and Kelly to the various intrigues and impediments are just right; ditto the insert shots of Grant’s nervous hands. In both films, I mean.

I saw Ella McCay a few hours ago. I was the only one there so I had my phone on the whole time, although I watched the film fairly closely and carefully. For a guy with his phone on.

It was agony to sit through, of course, but I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself. I felt sorry for the cast — Emma Mackey, Jamie Lee Curtis, Albert Brooks, Woody Harrelson, Jack Lowden, Kumail Nanjiani, Ayo Edebiri, Julie Kavner, Spike Fearn. They give it everything they had and then some, but they didn’t write or direct Ella McCay. It’s all the doing of James L.Brooks.

The constant undercurrent, the never-ending refrain in this film is that most of the men are pathetic, whiney, selfish asshats. Not Brooks’ “Governor Bill” but the characters played by Harrelson (Ella’s bad, former hound-dog dad), Lowden (Ella’s jerkoff husband) and Fearn (Ella’s ding-dong younger brother). All the women are consequential, open-hearted, protective, judgmental, proud as racehorses.

Actually, of all the actors I was sympathizing with, I felt the least sympathy for Jamie Lee Curtis. Ella McCay delivers a shitload of viewer anguish and pique, but Curtis brings the fingernails screeching on the blackboard. Her over-acting reminds me of her IRS agent performance in EEAAO. But like I said, it’s Brooks’ fucking fault. He wanted her to crank it up to level 11, and she gave him that. He did this to her.

This film has already been assassinated. No point in beating a dead horse, much less one that’s on its way to the glue factory.

Brooks’ performance as “Governor Bill” is the least problematic. He’s actually pretty good, considering. His final scene — a straight-talking sidewalk confession moment with Mackey — is rather satisfying. “Good for you, Albert,” I was muttering to myself.

I can’t write any more. McCay is too sad, too deflating. What a waste.