After innumerable savorings and re-savorings of Rod Serling‘s The Twilight Zone over the last several decades (no one ever seems to speak all that fondly of Night Gallery) and almost 50 years after Serling’s untimely passing at age 50, where is the acute hunger for a family-approved Serling documentary?

I’ve read all about Serling’s pre-Twilight Zone life and have seen Patterns and Requiem for a Heavyweight a couple of times and have watched all the noteworthy Twilight Zone episodes (which I own on Bluray) over and over…so what’s the idea exactly? To reach Millennials and Zoomers who’ve never heard of him?

Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way will produce the Serling doc; Jonah Tulis will direct. Serling’s daughters, Jodi and Anne, are in for a hefty slice of the action as executive producers.

I’m probably beyond the reach of psychotherapy, but thanks to all for the birthday greetings.

Here’s a link for an L.A. Times Calendar piece that I wrote 31 years ago about Dan Richter, the ’60-era mime who played the bone-tossing Moonwatcher in Stanley Kubrick‘s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Here are three scans of the original article — #1, #2 and #3.

My father met Dan at a Connecticut AA meeting in ’91 or thereabouts, and at my dad’s suggestion I called a while later and visited Dan at this home in Sierra Madre for an interview.

I remember he was dealing with chemotherapy at the time and not walking all that well, but he’s still here and doing fine.

In 2022 Richter published a 2012 memoir — “The Dream Is Over” — that’s mainly about a four-year period that he spent off-and-on with John Lennon and Yoko One (’69 to ’73).

Nancy Porter, an old childhood friend who was also living in Sierra Madre in ’93, came with me to visit Dan at this mountainside home. She later complained that he talked too much about himself. “But he’s the guy who picked up the bone to the strains of ‘Thus Spoke Zarathrusta’,” I replied. “And…you know, he hung with Lennon all those years and his stories are fascinating.”

If you’re hanging with someone who has lived large and touched serious history and has several first-hand recollections to share, you sit and absorb and give thanks. Either you get that or you don’t.

That settles it…he’s walking around with a certain aesthetic impairment…Saltburn is a painful film to sit through…it is…really.

N.Y. Times Kyle Buchanan (boldface) to Scott & vice versa:.

HE’s Saltburn review out of Telluride:

At age 86, is Gladiator II director Ridley Scott a reliable narrator of his own personal experience? And if so, could the 1977 Cannes Film Festival jury have been as whorish as the Golden Globes were reputed to be in the bad old days?

In an 11.7 N.Y. Times interview with Kyle Buchanan, Scott claims that his 1977 debut film, The Duellists, a competition entry, was on track to possibly win the Palme d’Or, or at least that jury chairman Roberto Rossellini told Scott that he wanted this to happen.

Alas, Scott recalls, Rossellini confided that the jury had rejected The Duellists “because somebody in there [had] bribed the committee” (which included New Yorker critic Pauline Kael) to give the big prize to Paolo and Vittorio Taviani’s Padre Padrone…”money had been chucked in at the top.”

Scott doesn’t mention that the jury handed The Duellists, which Scott had directed at age 39, a special “Best First Work” award.

I don’t believe Scott’s tale but you tell me.

From Buchanan’s article:

Jordan Ruimy recently polled over 100 name-brand critics and columnists (myself included) about the best films of the first half of the 2020s.

And as you might expect, the top five picks were mostly dreary or cerebral or vaguely punishing in a film-dweeb way. Mainly because the critics are status-quo sheep.

Christopher Nolan‘s Oppenheimer, which I respected but didn’t especally enjoy (my legs and my soul groaned in anguish) tallied the most votes. The first runner-up was Todd Field‘s TAR, which I saw four times without ever really tumbling for…it kept pissing me off.

In third, fourth and fifth place were The Daniels’ utterly infuriating Everything Everywhere All at Once (hated it with every fiber of my being), Ryusuke Hamaguchi‘s Drive My Car (too many Parliament cigarettes) and Jonathan Glazer‘s The Zone of Interest (an austere one-trick-pony).

The second five (#6 through #10) were Justine Triet‘s Anatomy of A Fall (a good film but kind of a slog to sit through, and I really hated that little cloying kid), Jane Campion‘s The Power of the Dog (effing despised it), Yorgos Lanthimos‘ Poor Things (yes! — the only film among the top ten that I really liked), Celine Song‘s Past Lives (fuck you) and Paul Thomas Anderson‘s Licorice Pizza (HE-approved with sight reservations) came in ninth and tenth.

I wasn’t a huge fan of the films that placed 11th and 12th either — Martin McDonagh‘s The Banshees of Inisherin and Emerald Fennell‘s Promising Young Woman.

HE’s top five films of the 2020-2024 period are Roman Polanski‘s J’Accuse (which premiered in Europe in late ’19 but wasn’t pirated for U.S. consumption until early ’20), Sean Baker‘s Anora, Steve McQueen‘s Mangrove, David Fincher‘s The Killer and Pedro Almodovar‘s Parallel Mothers.

My #6 thru #10 are Steven Zalllian‘s Ripley, Reinaldo Marcus Green‘s King Richard, Edward Berger‘s Conclave, Tran Anh Hung‘s The Taste of Things (The Pot au Feu) and Guy Ritchie‘s The Covenant.

Other HE faves: Maestro, The Holdovers, Happening, Quo Vadis, Aida?, The Pigeon Tunnel, The Apprentice, La Chimera, Riders of Justice, Spider-Man: No Way Home, The Worst Person in the World, The Beatles: Get Back, R.M.N., Bardo, The Trial of the Chicago 7, The King of Staten Island, The Trip to Greece, The Wild Goose Lake, Nomadland, In The Heights, West Side Story, Blackberry. (21)

In Robert Wise’s 1961 West Side Story as well as innumerable stage versions performed over the decades, the dance scenes are never acknowledged by passersby, much less performed for them. In fact, passersby barely exist.

With the exception of “I Feel Pretty”, the basic rule is that each dance number happens in the hearts and minds of the Jets or Sharks.

And one other thing: Except for the opening sequence (i.e., ballet-like daytime street fighting), the dancing happens in a restricted space of some kind (dance hall, tenement rooftop, back alley, dress shop, drug store, rumble under a highway), and always among Jets or Sharks and their immediatekin or sympathizers.

The dancing, in short, is restricted to the immediate “family.” Neighborhood civilians never notice or acknowledge that any carefully choreographed activity is going on. The dancing is rigorously intimate — members only.

Which is why that “America” scene with Ariana DeBose (Anita) and David Alvarez (Bernardo) in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story…dancing down and around San Juan Hill in the daylight — has been bothering me from the get-go. Because sidewalk neighborhood residents are clearly watching Anita and Bernardo and their friends “cut a Latin rug”, so to speak. And, one presumes, are enjoying the “show.”

That’s a violation of a basic West Side Story rule, and is where the the Spielberg film loses the mojo. Because the singing and dancing are absolutely not for onlookers.

Friendo: “Honestly? My first gut impression after glancing at this poster was that Paul Mescal is on crutches. Metallic multiple schlerosis crutches, of course. You can’t say that association isn’t there.”

Put another way, when oh when will Disney and Kathy Kennedy stop beating this irrefutably dead horse?

I’m sorry to report that the junket whores who were recently doing giddy cartwheels and back-flips over Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II…their ecstatic reviews are being disputed by…uhm, people who are not whores.

“Gladiator II is an absolute mediocrity,” a friend writes. “It pains me to say that Scott, at age 87, has lost his mojo. I don’t know how a studio can ever give Scott another big budget after this.

“And the over-rated Paul Mescal is absolutely terrible in the lead role. Denzel Washington’s supporting performance works, but that’s all.”

Friendo #2: “I thought it worked okay, but it’s no Gladiator.”

I haven’t seen Babygirl, and obviously I’m spitballing when comes to A Complete Unknown. But otherwise here’s a rundown of the best of the best and/or the likeliest Best Picture contenders.