Hollywood Elsewhere will be checking out of the Duval House this morning, and with few regrets. Thanks to the Key West Film Festival guys for putting me up here, but life is short. My second-floor Duval room is cool but the wifi is all but worthless up there — the only location where it really functions is on the front porch adjacent to Duval Street — and the TV is showing distorted images. Plus the bathroom sink is all stopped up. Plus I had a marginally unpleasant encounter last night with a couple of scurvy, cigarette-smoking hinterland guys. They’re almost certainly Trump supporters, I figured, and I have to admit I gave one of them a mildly dirty look before we exchanged words around 11 pm or so.

I was filing my Burt Reynolds piece on the porch, and they came sauntering over from whatever bar they’d been drinking at. The younger guy (buzzcut, slender, upper-torso tattoos) said to me, “Are you still working on that computer?” I just looked at him. Asshole. The older guy (cutoffs, cigarette stink, sandals) asked if I was a hotel employee. “No, I’m just here as a guest,” I said. “Well, this area of the porch is ours,” he said. “We paid for that room so this is our territory so you need to sit elsewhere, if you don’t mind.” I didn’t care so I said “sure” and he said “thank you.” A front porch at any hotel is common territory for all guests, of course, but I figured it wasn’t wise to argue with a pair of louts who’d had a few. Hey, John Mellencamp — were you were thinking of fine upstanding citizens like these guys when you wrote “ain’t that America”?

I’m off to the Merlin House around noon.

Patriot’s Day reviews penned by Variety‘s Peter Debruge, The Hollywood Reporter‘s Shari Linden and Indiewire‘s Steve Greene suggest that Peter Berg and Mark Wahlberg‘s Patriot’s Day is a more layered and complex ensemble-type deal than the promos have indicated.

The only unfortunate aspect may be the decision to wedge Mark Wahlberg‘s Sgt. Tommy Saunders, a composite character, into the action whenever and however possible so he can play the impassioned, connect-the-dots hero.

“To the extent that the film works as a composite celebration of the dozens of people who came together to make ‘Boston strong,’ it’s an unwelcome distraction trying to follow Wahlberg’s character as he elbows his way into scene after scene, the way Jack Bauer or some fictional anti-terrorist action figure might,” Debruge writes.

“Wahlberg may be the star, but he’s not the hero of Patriots Day,” Debruge explains. “That would be Dun Meng (Jimmy O. Yang), the young Chinese immigrant who called 911. And Sgt. Jeffrey Pugliese (J.K. Simmons), the small-town police officer who actually tackled one of the terrorists. And Sean Collier (Jake Picking), the MIT campus cop who refused to let them take his weapon.”

“Wahlberg is no less engaging than in any of his somewhat under-appreciated screen performances,” says Linden. “Yet this is the least interesting of the men of duty he’s played for Berg, more a stand-in for the American working-class hero than a fully fleshed character. It’s no fault of Wahlberg’s when his brief third-act monologue remains a screenwriterly statement of theme, never finding a pulse.”

Burt Reynolds sat for a q & a this evening at Key West’s San Carlos Institute folllowing a screening of Jesse Moss‘s Bandit (which isn’t half bad). Good old Burt. His usual, familiar smoothie self — cool and collected, deadpan humor, mellow vibe. But with a beard and tinted shades. The audience was laughing, applauding, in love. Burt’s legs are on the frail, shaky side but he walked out without a cane — good fellow. Here’s an mp3 of the whole thing. The interviewer was Rolling Stone critic David Fear.

Reynolds, who resides in Jupiter, Florida, teaches an acting class every Friday, he said, for students ranging “from ages 18 to 88.” He’s recently acted in a couple of smallish films (I didn’t write the titles down but he described one as kid-friendly with a feel-good vibe) and he’s got another couple of roles coming up.

I was sitting in the front row and raised my hand right away when Fear asked for questions. HE: “If you could do it over again would you still turn down Jack Nicholson‘s role in Terms of Endearment (’83)?” Reynolds: “I’ve done a lot of dumb things in my time, but that was one of the dumbest…no, I’d do it.” He actually may not have said the word “dumbest” (I haven’t transcribed the recording) but the thrust of his response was basically “yeah, I fucked up.”

After the half-hour chat ended Reynolds stood up, leaned over and began speaking to a good-looking little blonde boy (maybe six years old) who was sitting with his family in the second row. “Wow, you’re really gorgeous,” Reynold said, and then cautioned the kid to be careful and use his head. It’s a good thing David Ehrlich wasn’t there. He would have been enormously upset by this, a reminder that sometimes attractiveness really does help in certain ways.

Again, the mp3.

As of right now, Peter Jackson‘s misbegotten King Kong remake (’05) has been officially forgotten and erased from mass consciousness. You can never trust trailers, of course, but Jordan Vogt-Roberts‘ Kong: Skull Island (Warner Bros., 3.10.17) seems to be a superior creation. Clearly. Apocalypse Kong with a super-plus-sized ape — 70 or 80 feet tall as opposed to the 25 foot tall creature from the 1933 original. I love the vibe of this thing — it looks like wall-to-wall dessert.

As long as we’re briefly thinking about fast-car redneck movies, let’s give it up again for Lamont Johnson‘s The Last American Hero (’73), which is finally available via HD streaming.

It’s about a young hot-dogger named Junior Jackson (Jeff Bridges) who’s more or less content to smuggle illegal hooch until he gets pinched and his soul-weary dad (Art Lund) persuades him to think twice. Jackson eventually uses his car-racing skills to break into stock-car racing. Geraldine Fitzgerald, Ed Lauter, Gary Busey and Valerie Perrine costar.

Hero was widely admired (nearly all the serious film critics got behind it, especially Pauline Kael). And its influence in Hollywood circles seems hard to deny, its commercial failure aside, for the simple fact that it was the only backwoods-moonshine movie at the time that was seriously respected for what it was, as opposed to being (nominally) respected for what it earned.

Hero (aka Hard Driver) was loosely based on Tom Wolfe’s legendary 1965 Esquire article about one-time moonshine smuggler and stock-car racer Junior Johnson.

The once-legendary Burt Reynolds, 80, is being honored tonight at the Key West Film Festival. A 6pm screening of Jesse Moss‘s Bandit, a tribute doc about the relationship between Reynolds and director Hal Needham, will kick things off, followed by a q & a between Reynolds and Moss, and then a reception at the Truman Little White House.

From my 8.6.16 piece titled “I Love Ya, Buddy — Now Kill My Career”: “Reynolds’ Achilles heel was his loyalty to Needham, a pal since the ’50s and a one-time roommate. His decision to star in a string of atrocious (if financially bountiful) Needham-directed drive-in flicks from the mid ’70s to mid ’80s cast a shitkicker pall over Reynolds’ image. It wasn’t all Needham’s fault, granted, but by ’85 or ’86 Reynolds’ heyday had come to an end.”

Reynolds’ heyday lasted for about 12 years, or from Deliverance (’72) to Cannonball Run II (’84). Between that high and low point he can be proud of his performance in the following: (1) Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (’72). (2) The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing, (3) The Longest Yard, (4) At Long Last Love, (5) Hustle, (6) Nickelodeon, (7) Smokey and the Bandit, (8) Semi-Tough, (9) The End, (10) Hooper, (11) Starting Over, (12) Sharky’s Machine, (13) The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, (14) Best Friends and The Man Who Loved Women.

As Ben Affleck‘s Live By Night began screening last night for elite press, Hollywood Elsewhere was hanging at The Porch with the Key West Film Festival guys — founder & chairman Brooke Christian, director of programming Michael Tuckman, p.r. honcho Julia Pacetti — and Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn.

It’s 12:55 pm now. Sunny and around 80 degrees, and more than a little humid. I’ve rented my bicycle. I’m sitting inside Coffee Plantation, a nice little cappucino-and-croissant bungalow on Caroline Street, as I tap this out. Key West is basically about peace, flora, shade, sea air, serenity and Bahamian architecture to die for. Not to mention evening fragrances that will transform your basic outlook on life. What better place to hang or have a film festival, for that matter?

Adjacent to Key West cemetery.

Remember when people use to sweep their sidewalks and patios with brooms? Before the invention of obnoxious leaf-blowers, I mean. Their relentless use has turned Los Angeles into a kind of coughing, motor-revving hell, and all because Latino groundskeepers swear by them.

Indiewire critic Eric Kohn hanging last night at Key West’s The Porch.

Most of us regard zoos as penitentiaries for animals. I riffed on this when I wrote about Cameron Crowe‘s We Bought A Zoo (i.e., We Bought A Jail). But Niki Caro‘s The Zookeeper’s Wife, a World War II drama set in Poland, isn’t about the glories of running a zoo but saving the lives of Jews who might have otherwise been exterminated by Nazis. Boilerplate: “A true story about the Warsaw Zoo keepers Jan and Antonina Żabiński (Johan Heldenbergh, Jessica Chastain) who saved many human and animal lives during World War II by hiding them in animal cages.” Written by Angela Workman, based on the non-fiction book of same name by Diane Ackerman, costarring Michael McElhatton and Daniel Bruhl.

The idea of Ben Affleck‘s Live By Night becoming a Best Picture contender may or may not penetrate among Academy and guild members, but it definitely impresses in a below-the-line sense — cinematography, editing, production design, etc. This, at least, is the view of Variety‘s Kris Tapley, who attended last night’s DGA screening for elite critics and blogaroos.

“It makes sense that Warner Bros. is leading the conversation on Live By Night with crafts,” Tapley wrote, “because all of those bits and pieces — as well as the sound design — are what could register in the upcoming awards race.”

Critic friend who attended last night’s screening: “I was thinking the whole time that I bet you would have liked it because it has that very specific, meticulous kind of directing that both of us really love.”

Affleck said during a pre-screening schmoozer and during a post-screening q & a that “the idea for him was ‘blending a throwback vibe with modern energy,'” Tapley writes. “And that’s fitting: In Lehane’s novel, Affleck has found a gangster yarn akin to the ’30s and ’40s genre pictures that inspired him, but one with a fresh face. It moves from the Depression-hit Boston metropolis to the melting pot of Tampa, Florida (filmed largely in Georgia), giving Affleck’s below-the-line team a rich opportunity.”

All year long Warner Bros. has been cagey or iffy or hazy-minded (choose one of the three) about positioning the film as an Oscar contender. Last June they abandoned the previously announced October 2017 release to January ’17, which everyone know meant some kind of platform release later this year. But WB declined to formally announce the film’s 12.25.16 platform release until relatively recently.

Jon Stewart, currently plugging a new Daily Show oral history book, needs to memorize a page or two from the Michael Shannon playbook. Say it again: when Stewart and Stephen Colbert organized their 2010 Rally to Restore Sanity And/Or Fear, he was essentially saying he was open to projecting and persuading on a mass national scale. This translated as “I might conceivably run for office some day…who knows?” Stewart could have launched a Presidential campaign after announcing in February 2015 that he was leaving The Daily Show, and — make no mistake — he definitely could have won. But he decided to spend time with his kids instead. We all have our paths to walk and destinies to fulfill, but as far as I’m concerned Stewart is almost a kind of villain for not rising to the challenge. Again: If Stewart had managed to beat Hillary Clinton in the primaries and become the Democratic nominee, Trump wouldn’t now be the president elect.

Hollywood Elsewhere will be attending the 2016 Key West Film Festival between now and Sunday. My flight from Miami touched down at Key West airport around 7 pm, give or take. The festival is putting me up at the Caribbean-styled Duval House (815 Duval Street). It’s very good to be here. The tropical air is warm and fragrant and soothing. I’m about to hit the opening-night party at the Audobon House.

Earlier this evening Jessica Chastain asked film crickets on Twitter what advice they might have for a woman looking to break into this devotional calling or difficult racket or however you want to describe it. She got the usual responses — knock on doors, start your own blog, submit pieces to established publications, network your ass off, live online, attend the best film festivals, get to know the community, knock on more doors, etc. Total boilerplate.

So I decided to insert three suggestions that no one else had mentioned. One, make double-sure that you’re a talented enough writer to even give it a shot because if you’re not innately talented to some degree, you’re wasting your time. Two, look at yourself in the mirror and ask if writing about movies matters more to you than anything else, including earning a half-decent salary or even eating regularly. And three, don’t even try to break in unless you’re willing to eat shit — i.e., to do whatever it takes without any thought to how well or poorly you’re being paid, or if you’re being paid at all. You need to be tenacious as fuck, and that might mean having to write for free or next to no money and enduring all kinds of deprivations for a year or two or even longer. Because that’s what I had to do.

And then I thought of something else, which was that it would help if you’re “fetching” along with being a good networker. And right away the p.c. brownshirts, in this instance led by anal-cavity-residing Indiewire critic David Ehrlich, jumped all over me for using the “f” word. I was an animal, they felt, for suggesting that presenting a nice, attractive image at parties and editorial meetings and film festival panels and whatnot will help you, as will being a good schmoozer and chit-chatter. Ehrlich was appalled that anyone would even suggest that an attractive appearance might have something to do with how you’re received in mixed company or by potential employers.

Well, appearances do matter along with all the other stuff. In any profession an attractive or at least a pleasant-looking person coupled with all the other necessary traits will tend to experience better career progress than that of a brilliant job applicant who looks like Charles Laughton‘s Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame or Shirley Stoller in Seven Beauties or The Honeymoon Killers.

Do you have to be moderately attractive or pleasant-looking to make it in the film critic realm? For the most part, no. Not that many critics are lookers. But it sure as shit doesn’t hurt, and that’s all I was saying.