Los Angeles has been fairly balmy lately, but that doesn’t stop Tatyana from saying she’s “freezing” if the mercury drops below 60. She should try Howard Beach. Last night it was chilly and windy in the low-to-mid 40s, and it wasn’t much warmer this morning. It feels like Siberia. New York chilly is more arctic than Los Angeles chilly. The skies are gloomy gray here, and the half-wintry air whistles and blusters and blows your hair around, whereas in Los Angeles you mainly feel it in your bones. I’m glad I brought my heavy motorcycle jacket, the one with the bulky shoulders and elbow pads and that cool scrunchy sound. It makes me feel like Marlon Brando in The Wild One.

Four boomer women with money (actually three boomers and one from the “baby bust” generation) decide to try and rekindle their romantic lives after reading E.L. James‘ “Fifty Shades of Grey“, which (a) came out seven years ago and (b) is largely about sex by way of bondage and submission. Eros is the spice of life at any age, etc. Then again I’m recalling a story about an elderly frog who’s told by a wizard that with a wave of a magic wand he can be transformed into a young buck and fuck the prom queen, and the frog says “naaah, that’s okay, I’d rather read a book.” I know for sure that I don’t want to think about a present-tense Candice Bergen being trussed up like a turkey. The eligible boomer-age guys who come along are played by Andy García, Don Johnson, Richard Dreyfuss and Craig T. Nelson. I’ll take a pass, guys, but knock yourselves out.

My plane touched down at JFK fairly late last night. Rather than fork over the usual $250 for a no-big-deal Manhattan hotel room I decided to crash at the Surfside Motel — a “modest” establishment that smells like cigarettes in the main hallway, and with rooms that don’t even offer desks or table lamps — in Howard Beach, which is directly adjacent to the airport. The tab was only $115. I’m going to write a few minutes more and then get some breakfast at a local diner, and take the A train into town around noon. I’m loaded down with bags, of course. If there was a screening of interest I’d stick around, but I’m not aware of anything in that realm. I’ll probably just go right to Grand Central and train up to Connecticut.

Michelle Wolf‘s stinging bull‘s-eye remarks at the White House Correspondents Association dinner two night ago were completely appropriate, especially given the brutish and appalling attitudes about journalism and “alternative facts” that pour out of the mouths of Donald Trump and spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders on a fairly regular basis. Wolf laid it down sharp and hard — speaking nothing but straight truths. If you ask me she deserved at least a modicum of respect for having done so.

And yet many Washington establishment journos have trashed Wolf for being overly harsh and particularly for delivering a withering assessment of Sanders’ looks. In fact the line about Sanders “burn[ing] facts and using the ash to create a perfect smoky eye” alluded solely to the fact that SHS lies on a regular basis on behalf of her flailing authoritarian boss — nothing more. If you ask me the statement released yesterday by WHCA president Margaret Talev — “Last night’s program was meant to offer a unifying message about our common commitment to a vigorous and free press while honoring civility, great reporting and scholarship winners…unfortunately [Wolf’s] monologue was not in the spirit of that mission” — was cowardly and pathetic.

Embedded D.C. journos tut-tutting Wolf’s material are essentially looking to maintain political cordiality and access with the Trump administration. This implies attitudes of softpedaling and sidestepping as far as their journalistic duties are concerned — a far from admirable approach.

Sanders cartoon image appearing in today’s issue of The Washington Post.

via GIPHY

Posted at 5:40 pm, somewhere over Kansas: Several weeks ago I made a brainless assumption after booking my 12.29 LAX-NYC flight, departing at 12:30 am. In defiance of the facts I thought all along that the flight would leave tonight. As HE regulars know, I am nothing if not an advocate of my own secular belief system.

The fact that a 12:30 am flight on “Sunday night” meant that I’d in fact be leaving on the morning of Monday, 4.30…somehow that didn’t penetrate the Hollywood Elsewhere cranium.

Last night at 10:30 pm (i.e., late on Saturday, 10.28), Tatyana took her first look at my itinerary and told me that the flight was actually leaving two hours hence. Aack!

Fixing this bone-headed error cost me $271. My new Jet Blue flight left this afternoon at 2 pm, and will arrive at JFK tonight at 10:30 pm.

Satirist and screenwriter S.J. Perelman actually won a Best Screenwriting Oscar for his work on Around The World in Eighty Days. (He shared credit with James Poe and John Farrow.) The payoff came when Hermione Gingold accepted Perelman’s trophy at the 1957 Academy Awards. Imagine anyone accepting a major Oscar with similar remarks today.

The late Michael Anderson directed two films of particular note — Around The World in 80 Days (’56) and Logan’s Run (’76). Both were successful in their time (Around The World cost $6 million to make but earned $42 million worldwide, or the 2018 equivalent of $378 million) but both are regarded as meh-level today.

Anderson was a fine, get-it-done craftsman but nothing he directed really stands out today except, perhaps, for The Quiller Memorandum (’66). He also directed Shake Hands with the Devil (’59). The Wreck of the Mary Deare (’59). All the Fine Young Cannibals (’60), The Naked Edge (’61) and The Shoes of the Fisherman (’68).

The below clip from Around The World shows you what a stodgy and elephantine thing it was visually. It was a pompous travelogue flick that was sold as a classy reserved-seat event, and projected in 30-frame-per-second Todd AO.

Apparently true anecdote: Producer Mike Todd forbade the selling of popcorn during reserved-seat engagements.

Around The World played for close to two and half years straight — October ’56 to early ’59 –at Manhattan’s Rivoli Theatre. It played for 94 weeks straight at San Francisco’s Coronet Theatre, from 12.26.56 until 10.19.58. In 1959 it opened wide in 35mm widescreen. It won the Best Picture Oscar because it was financially successful, and because of all the pomp and braggadocio.

Last night Michelle Wolf, a 32 year-old standup comedian, former contributor to The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and future host of a Netflix talk show, put herself on the national map. She did so with some wonderfully blistering material at the White House Correspondents Association dinner, which was held at the Washington Hilton.

It wasn’t so much that Wolf tore into Donald Trump — everyone does that — but that she infuriated White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

“Every time Sarah steps up to the podium, I get excited,” Wolf said. “I’m not really sure what we’re going to get, you know? A press briefing, a bunch of lies or divided into softball teams. ‘It’s shirts and skins, and this time don’t be such a little bitch, Jim Acosta.’

“I actually really like Sarah. I think she’s very resourceful. But she burns facts and then she uses that ash to create a perfect smokey eye. Like maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s lies. It’s probably lies.

“I’m never really sure what to call Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Is it Sarah Sanders, is it Sarah Huckabee Sanders, is it Cousin Huckabee, is it Aunt Huckabee Sanders? What’s Uncle Tom but for white women who disappoint other white women? Ah, I know…Aunt Coulter.”

During a Tribeca Film Festival discussion/interview held yesterday, director Alexander Payne described last year’s Downsizing, by any definition a critical and box-office disappointment, as a tough row to hoe.

A 4.28 Indiewire story by Michael Nordine said Payne described the making of the futuristic fantasy as “difficult on every level — writing, financing, editing.” Payne also “addressed the lukewarm reviews it [received after] opening late last year, suggesting that its ambitious narrative may have been too much to fit into the framework of a single film.”

Whatever that means.

If I’d been in Payne’s shoes, I would have just blurted out the following: “I wish it had turned out as well as Election or Sideways or The Descendants, but it didn’t. It hurts but occasional failures are unfortunately part of the commercial filmmaking process, and at a certain point you just have to say ‘okay, fuck it…I liked it but the critics and the public didn’t…next.’

“Downsizing had a killer concept, an excellent first act, and a really great transformation sequence that went over like gangbusters at Cinemacon in March 2017. But the second act wasn’t quite as good, and the third act…all that off-to-Norway, climate-change, methane-gas stuff…really didn’t work and I couldn’t fix it.

“Plus half the audience couldn’t understand Hong Chau. Plus I read somewhere that younger audiences hated it. Obviously I pushed their buttons, just not in a way that I was expecting.

“I probably should have taken Jeffrey Wells’ advice and thrown in some Incredible Shrinking Man stuff. Tiny Matt Damon getting chased by a house cat, getting pecked by birds, coping with cockroaches. The popcorn crowd would’ve gone for that, and Downsizing would’ve probably have made more money if I had. I’m just not low-rent enough. I’m too upmarket in my thinking.”

Look at these jowly, bearded, T-shirt-wearing lowlifes…here they are, the joyful, good-natured fanboys whose appetites have helped to degrade if not destroy the commerciality of adult-angled, quality-aspiring theatrical cinema over the last decade or so. You know…movies about actual human beings and their lives…stories that don’t involve CG or super-powers or flying around or destroying cities?

You can chuckle or shrug your shoulders and say “whatever” about the 31-hour Marvel movie marathon that began four days ago at Manhattan’s AMC 25, and ended Thursday evening with a screening of Avengers: Infinity War. Justa buncha goobers having a good time, right? Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger (my second favorite Marvel flick after Ant-Man), The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Captain America: Civil War, Doctor Strange, Spider Man: Homecoming and Black Panther. Sleeping bags, energy bars, spare iPhone batteries, water bottles.

But these are the bad guys — slap-happy geeks whose tastes and ticket-buying power have re-shaped and all but poisoned the theatrical realm, congregating at a kind of ground zero movie temple. Yes, HE-favored films still play at the plexes between October and December. Yes, civilized cinema can still be found here and there. And when that doesn’t work, it’s simply a matter of flopping onto the couch and watching cable and streaming in this, a golden era for home-viewing.

About the marathon itself, here’s (a) a 4.27 N.Y. Times piece by Jason Bailey and (b) a David Ehrlich Indiewire piece about the same, also posted on 4.27.

Obviously built on dismissive racial stereotypes, this Mel Blanc-Jack Benny routine was regarded as hilarious back in the day. If I were to really let my guard down I’d admit that it’s still half-funny now, albeit in a lame, stupid-ass way. Four years ago a YouTube commenter named Armando Vertti said “I’m Mexican, and I find this SO FUCKING FUNNY!” It shows how different American attitudes were back in the Eisenhower-Kennedy days. (The sombrero-wearing guy was Mel Blanc, who voiced all the big WB cartoon characters — Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tweety Bird, Sylvester the Cat, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn, etc.) The tide turned in the mid to late ’60s, of course. Bill Dana dropped his Jose Jimenez routine in 1970. Will I get into trouble for posting this? I’m just saying “this is how it was.”

Words can’t express the joy, rapture and ecstasy I’m feeling over the huge success of Avengers: Infinity War. Knowing that Marvel fans and general moviegoers will be parting with roughly $245 million by Sunday night…well, it just tickles my soul and lifts me out of my seat. The second largest all-time domestic debut, second only to the $247 million earned by Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Hell, Infinity could even beat Force.

Four questions for anyone who saw it yesterday or earlier today: (1) Did you see any kinds “bawling” about the deaths of certain Marvel characters?, (2) Leaving aside the digital disintegration deaths (which of course are certain to be reneged upon in the next and final installment), do you feel that enough Marvel characters died?, and (3) Did anyone notice any audience members expressing surprise or dissatisfaction about the ending? Did anyone say “what?” when the film cut to black?