The near-simultaneous deaths of Jeanne Moreau, arguably the greatest French screen actress of the 20th Century if not of all time, and Sam Shepard, the laconic, soft-spoken actor, onetime heartthrob and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, were revealed early today.

That’s quite a sock in the jaw for a Monday morning. Hugs and condolences to friends, family, colleagues and fans on both sides of the Atlantic. Two gaping holes in the cultural-legend fabric.

Shepard and Moreau are definite, rock-solid inclusions in the death reel during next February’s Oscar telecast. And I think their passings are enough for today, thank you. Nobody else in the Great Movie Realm is allowed to die for the next 14 hours.

Shepard was 73, an apparent victim of Lou Gehrig’s disease. In his day Shepard was iconic, an epic figure, a playwright, a poet and a chronicler of bitter, fucked-up heartland types with all kinds of shit buried inside. Curse of the Starving Class, True West, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Buried Child, Fool for Love, etc. I love that he called his last play A Particle of Dread. My life is nothing if not filled with those particles. My bloodstream is filled with them.

Most people know Shepard for his low-key, craggy-mannered, no-bullshit screen performances, particularly during his sexy period from the late ’70s to early ’90s. Days of Heaven (his big breakout), The Right Stuff (Oscar nominated for playing legendary flying ace Chuck Yeager), Crimes of the Heart, Steel Magnolias, Baby Boom, Black Hawk Down, August: Osage County, Bloodline, et. al.

In the ’70s Shepard was a kind of drawling Lancelot of the cool vanguard. He was a total peer and a collaborator with Bob Dylan (he did some writing on the completely deplorable Renaldo and Clara) and especially Patti Smith, with whom he co-authored a minor surrealist play called Cowboy Mouth.

I last spoke to Shepard during a promotional luncheon for Wim Wenders‘ Don’t Come Knocking at the ’05 Cannes Film Festival. During a brief discussion of his plays Shepard reacted somewhat adversely when I mentioned Cowboy Mouth, which was based on his relationship with Smith. “Why’d you mention that one?” he said. “I don’t know…I always liked the title,” I replied. After only one performance Shepard, in which he and Smith more or less played themselves, Shepard blew out of town without explanation.

“How we conduct ourselves around strangers every day — at shops, restaurants, on public transport, in theaters and cinemas, on the street — is a test of the social contract. When we sit down somewhere to watch something, that refines the contract. Someone is about to perform for us. Our job is to drink it in, to experience whatever it is.

“We do that together. We’re no longer in the domestic hive. We’re not at home. We’re out. We’re among others. We actually have to turn off the stuff and distraction of life — our phones, our babble with our buddies — and focus on the astonishing fact of the thing that has been written and is being performed or screened in front of us.

“The cinema and theater are civilizing tests for groups of strangers, and currently we have a collective fail.

“Every rustle, every whisper or word, every kick on the seat, slurp, burp, interruption, ping of a phone, or barging person, is yet another sign of what a selfish, stupid society we have become.

“At this weary point it feels far too late for a return to peace in the stalls. So, instead, from and for those of us who like to go to the theater and cinema to actually watch something, here is the simplest, easiest instruction to follow: Sit down, shut your phones down, shut the hell up, respect the space of others around you, and watch the damn play or film.

“Or do the rest of us a favor — it will be most appreciated — and stay at home.” — from “Please Just Shut the Hell Up at the Theater & the Cinema,” posted by Daily Beast‘s Tim Teeman on 7.29.

If I had written this, I would have ended it thusly: “Or do the rest of us a favor — it will be most appreciated — and stay the fuck home.”

“HELP WANTED: Possible attorney general opening. Must quash Russia investigation into president of the United States. Also, must go after leakers. Willingness to endure criminal prosecution for obstruction of justice a plus.” — from 7.27 HuffPost piece, “Making Obstruction Of Justice Normal Again. Er, Actually, For The First Time,” by S.V. Date.

Christopher Reeve did well by critics when Richard Donner‘s Superman popped in December of ’78. This was partly due to the fact that by late ’70s standards Reeve was quite the hunk. “Reeve’s entire performance is a delight,” wrote Newsweek‘s Joe Morgenstern. “Ridiculously good-looking, with a face as sharp and strong as an ax blade, his bumbling, fumbling Clark Kent and omnipotent Superman are simply two styles of gallantry and innocence.”

What upper-echelon actors in today’s realm are ax-blade handsome in that tall, broad-shouldered, WASP-ian way? Two guys I can think of — Armie Hammer and (when he’s not summoning memories of Ernest Borgnine) Henry Cavill. But that’s about it.

Because ax-blade handsomeness isn’t trusted, much less admired. It’s even despised in certain quarters. Because it’s now synonymous with callow opportunism or to-the-manor-born arrogance. Men regarded as “too” good-looking are presumed to be tainted on some level — perhaps even in league with the one-percenters and up to no good. It’s been this way since Wall Street types and bankers began to go wild in the mid ’80s.

I was thinking this morning about how Reeve and Robin Williams were the best of friends for 30-plus years (they bonded at Juilliard in the early ’70s), and now they’re both dead. And they didn’t go peacefully into that good night either.

After his 1995 horse-riding accident, which turned him into a quadraplegic, Reeve became a kind of never-say-die spiritual hero. There’s no question that his becoming an impassioned stem-cell-research advocate left a more profound impression on the world than his performances ever did. But he was a fine, appealing actor.

Reeve had a ten-year run (’78 to ’88) as a marquee name. Superman launched him; Switching Channels finished him off. His best film performances were in Jeannot Szwarc’s Somewhere in Time (’80), Sidney Lumet’s Deathtrap (’82) and James Ivory’s The Bostonians.

His best performance ever was in the Broadway stage production of Lanford Wilson’s The Fifth of July, in which he played a gay paraplegic Vietnam veteran. It ran in the late summer or fall of 1980. Jeff Daniels and Swoozie Kurtz co-starred.

In these DVD Beaver captures from the Silkwood Bluray, Meryl Streep, Kurt Russell and Cher look so young, and they’re not even “young” but around 35. Well, I guess that’s kind of young.

What kind of dork uses the term “aeroplane“? They’re called airplanes or better yet planes, flights or jets. Aeroplane? It’s actually not a dork thing but a British thing. For whatever reason the English are hung up on this spelling, which sounds like it hails from the World War I era if not earlier.

Here’s an oldie-but-goodie about the worst on-the-job mistake of my life. Nothing to do with politics, but I posted it four days after Barack Obama’s election (11.8.08). The incident happened when I was working for a chain-link fence company in Fairfield, Connecticut, when I was in my early 20s. It’s a good story because I wasn’t just “fired” but kicked to the curb for an error of classic proportions. A lulu.

I worked with two other guys for the company. Every day we loaded big coiled-up bundles of chain-link fence and schlepped them around to this and that job site. We would dig several holes, pour cement into each one and then insert metal poles. We would then return to the job a couple of days later to put up the fence, unspooling it yard by yard and fastening each length to the poles with hard metal coils or “ties.”

It was agony moving the chain-link rolls off the flatbed truck and then lifting them up with sheer brawn every time a section had to be unspooled. Especially in the horrid winter with the cold metal freezing your fingers and the tips of the fences making scratches and cuts on your hands every time you manhandled them. My job attitude was half-hearted at best. It was awful, awful work.

I was the guy who would back the truck up and get it into position before the fence rolls were unloaded in front of the poles.

One time we were putting up a fence near a large dirt lot. The road was a couple of hundred feet away from the location of the poles, and for whatever reason it was decided not to park the company’s flatbed truck right next to the poles but up near the road.

In any event it got to be 4:30 pm one day — time to get the truck and bring it back to where the un-mounted fence sections were lying on the ground. The rear of the truck was facing the far side of the road. The obvious plan was to back it into the road and then whip it leftward and drive across the lot.

I started the truck and checked the two rearview mirrors. The coast seemed clear although there was a bit of a blind spot. My coworkers were collecting tools and whatnot, so it was just me and my wits.

The truck was parked on an incline, however, and there was a lot of mud under the tires and I couldn’t get any traction when I hit the gas. So I tried rocking it back and forth — no luck. I then decided to put a couple of pieces of scrap lumber under the rear tires for traction. I again put it in reverse, hit the gas and finally the truck lurched backwards.

The reason I say “so don’t tell me” all the time is because of this From Here To Eternity scene, and more particularly the way Mickey Shaughnessy says it to Burt Lancaster. Every time I write those four words I am Shaughnessy — I’m channelling his pugnacious attitude.

Right now the likeliest 2017 Best Picture nominees are Christopher Nolan‘s Dunkirk, Luca Guadagnino‘s Call Me By Your Name (Sony Pictures Classics, 11.24); Steven Spielberg‘s The Papers (20th Century Fox, 12.22); Alexander Payne‘s Downsizing (Paramount, 12.22); Paul Thomas Anderson‘s Phantom Thread (Focus Features, 12.25) and Hugh Jackman‘s The Greatest Showman (20th Century Fox, 12.25).

That’s six, but there could be two or three more: Guillermo Del Toro‘s The Shape of Water, Dan Gilroy‘s Roman Israel, Esq. and Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris‘s Battle of the Sexes.

Denzel Washington as attorney Roman Israel in Dan Gilroy’s film of the same name, due for Columbia Pictures release on 11.3.

That’s my best guesstimate so far. Leaving aside the excellent Dunkirk and Call Me By Your Name, the others will most likely register as pretty good if not more so. But the surest way to calculate the odds is not to consider suspected quality as much as the socio-cultural agendas of this or that group that will champion this or that film.

I’ll tell you right now that the lack of a significant contender portraying an African-American milieu (unless you want to consider Roman Israel, Esq., an ethical drama starring Denzel Washington, in this light) or made by an African-American director means things are wide open as we speak.

Dunkirk will have the support of anyone with the ability or willingness to acknowledge grand, ahead-of-the-curve greatness when they see it. It will surely gather special support from 40-plus males and members of below-the-line guilds.

Call Me By Your Name will definitely corral those who are soothed by naturalism and stirred by its lulling emotional bath elements and bucolic travelogue delights. It will occupy a special place for those with the ability to appreciate and revel in an Eric Rohmer-like realm.

The Spielberg drama, which is about how Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham (Streep) decided to grow a journalistic backbone in the midst of the Pentagon Papers episode of ’71, will obviously have the 40-plus feminist vote and the support of sedate older boomers who automatically kowtow to anything bearing the beardo stamp.

As Battle of The Sexes is another feminist-themed drama set in the early ’70s, it may be highly competitive with The Papers as far as the older-woman or feminist-sympathy vote is concerned. If, that is, it turns out to be exceptional.

The Greatest Showman, a brassy musical about P.T. Barnum, will obviously excite those voters who prefer cheery, sparkly entertainments to solemn, thoughtful dramas or this or that sort.

I’ve only seen 10 or 12 minutes’ worth of Downsizing, but my impression following a viewing of said excerpt during last March’s Cinemacon is that it’s a visionary, Metropolis-like film that will definitely turn heads.

The only ones I really know about about are Dunkirk and Call Me By Your Name. I’ve read early drafts of The Papers and Downsizing. Everything else is spitballing.

On Facebook this morning Rod Lurie posted a lamentably familiar Joe Popcorn view about Christopher Nolan‘s Dunkirk. Lurie basically said that (a) it’s too brilliant not to be nominated for Best Picture but (b) it can’t win because the SAG contingent will find it too Olympian, too studied and not character-driven enough. Pretty much the same complaints could have been levelled at Barry Lyndon, right?

Dunkirk, of course, is much grabbier and more commercial than Lyndon ever had a hope of being, but the sons and daughters of the peons who spoke dismissively of Stanley Kubrick’s 1975 masterpiece are just as vocal today, sad to say.

“Yes, Dunkirk is a masterpiece,” Lurie wrote. “One of the great war films of our time, maybe one of the greats period. It’s an auteur’s work. Celluloid Beethoven. I saw it for a second time last night on IMAX — and the experience was different. Immersive. Ethereal. Especially in the ‘air’ segments where we were so in the sky that I feared running out of oxygen. And yet… and yet…Dunkirk will not win the Best Picture Oscar.

“Nolan likely gets the directing statue, so brazenly original a movie it is, so arduous an exercise it might have been, but it’s not getting the top award.

“Best Picture Oscars go to character-driven films. Pretty much every time they go to movies that are humanly driven and not necessarily creatively driven. Maybe that’s because ‘human’ movies are actor-dependent and actors are the plurality of the Academy.

From N.Y. Times report filed a few minutes ago: Reince Priebus, the establishment Republican-turned-loyalist to President Trump who served as his White House chief of staff for the last six months, was pushed out Friday in the latest convulsion in a chaos-wracked West Wing to which he had repeatedly failed to bring some semblance of order.”

There’s nothing worse than knowing you’re probably about to be fired and just waiting for it to happen. Tick, tick, tick. Hollywood Elsewhere wants Steve Bannon to get the axe next. Communications director Anthony Scaramucci made it clear in that New Yorker interview that he regards Bannon as a self-fellator. Kick his ass to the curb!

Another Times excerpt: “In barely half a year on the job, Mr. Priebus never won the full confidence of the president nor was granted the authority to impose a working organizational structure on the West Wing. Always seeming to be on the edge of ouster, Mr. Priebus saw his fate finally sealed a week ago when Mr. Trump hired Mr. Scaramucci, an edgy Wall Street financier, over the chief of staff’s objections. Mr. Priebus’s ally, Sean Spicer, the press secretary, resigned in protest.”

A guy who passed along reactions to an Detroit screening a while back mentioned that there might be some grousing about the film not sufficiently investing in black women characters, whatever that means or implies. Consider this excerpt from Angela Jade Bastien’s 7.28 review:

“Before the film’s release, a lot of fury was unleashed when it became clear black women wouldn’t be important to this story. Films about black history seldom grant black women the importance they deserve. In Detroit, black women are in the margins. They’re dutiful wives placing a gentle hand on the shoulder of their husbands; they’re silent spectators in courtrooms; they’re sweet hotel clerks with no real weight in the story. Although an elderly black female character voices dialogue that is the closest the film gets to any commentary: ‘No way would they do this to white men,’ she says angrily to a news reporter hungry for a pull quote.

“But Detroit’s disinterest in black women despite significant time in the film being spent beyond the Algiers Hotel incident is the least of its problems. What leaves the film feeling grotesque and even a bit exploitative is its soullessness.”