11 years ago Steven Spielberg took part in a promotional taping for Cowboys & Aliens, which he exec produced. Sitting with director Jon Favreau and producers Brian Grazer and Ron Howard, Spielberg recalled his 1965 meeting with legendary director John Ford, when Spielberg was only 18 years old.

It’s a great little story, and the dialogue sounds so much like cranky, crotchety Ford of legend…the ornery cuss with a cigar and a black eyepatch.

The Ford meeting is reenacted near the end of Spielberg’s The Fabelmans, which will have its big premiere at the Toronto Film Festival. A person who caught last night’s research screening of The Fabelmans says it’s a great scene, and that it leads to a great ending (which I won’t divulge). David Lynch plays Ford, and Gabriel LaBelle plays young Spielberg, called “Sammy Fabelman” in the film.

Another discussion stirred by Ethan Hawke‘s The Last Movie Stars…, and especially by Paul Schrader‘s observations about Hud…

HE to Schrader: “Your observation is 100% spot-on, but the kicker in Hud is the ending — when Newman, the last one in the house, pops open a beer, strolls over to the kitchen door, gazes at the departing Brandon de Wilde, reflects for seven or eight seconds, and then delivers that cynical ‘fuck it and to hell with it’ gesture…that‘s what sunk in, what altered the American male identity from 1963 onward, at least as far as movies were concerned.”

Newman: “‘We thought [the] last thing people would do was accept Hud as a heroic character. His amorality just went over [the audience’s] head — all they saw was this western, heroic individual.’”

HE to Newman: “They saw the amorality, of course, but they still liked Hud’s irreverence, rogue swagger and cocksure fuck-all attitude…his general disdain for old conservative values. And they liked that all those women, married and single, went to bed with him.”

Update: Tony Dow has passed, and may God rest his soul.

Earlier: Tony Dow, who is still with us, lived as full of a life as his strength and luck and spirit allowed. 77 years worth. It’s dismaying that the poor guy’s deathwatch has become the most newsworthy or attention-getting thing that Dow has generated since costarring in Leave It To Beaver in the late ’50s and early ’60s.

I’d like to think that if Dow is conscious and checking his smart phone (and people facing the final slumber occasionally do that — they’ll suddenly wake up and start chatting or picking up the phone) that he’ll get a laugh out of the headlines.

Billy Wilder-like epitaph: “If you’re having a hard time and life is leaking out of you like sand, it’s important to remember than not that many people care. Unless, of course, your death is announced prematurely and therefore inaccurately, in which case the whole world will wake up and pay attention…the heartless so-and-sos.”

The Disqus comment count function (top right of each post) has returned! Heartfelt thanks to HE’s own Sasha Stone and a Manhattan tech guy named Dan, who saved the day when he reported the problem to the Disqus tecchies, and then they fixed the issue…whatever it was.

The comments themselves never disappeared but the count did. It felt awful when it vaporized — sure feels great to have it back.

…than to learn that the Marvel machine has finally, irretrievably ground to a halt. 14 years of this shit. Alas…

From Richard Rushfield‘s “Who Killed the Marvel Juggernaut?,” an Ankler piece that appeared this afternoon:

“What has been the effect of having new Marvel material — directly tied to the films — rolling out constantly on TV?

“Part of the wonder of Marvel films was their scarcity. As social media grew simultaneously and pushed to show you every nook and cranny of the latest news cycles phenomenon, as stars raced to display ever more of themselves to feed the monster, Marvel was releasing a handful of movies a year. A lot by movie standards but by the standards of the culture, a stately output.

“Now there’s a new Marvel thing every week. There’s always a new Marvel thing. And yes, the Marvel movies are a bigger thing in theory — at least they have a bigger marketing budget behind them — but how much of that gets lost? In people’s minds, is the rollout of Shang-Chi of a different dimension of magnitude from the rollout of Hawkeye?

“There are those, like the folks filling Hall H last week, who can’t get enough. You could give them 27 new series a week and they’d still be camping out in costume for opening day of Thor 15.

“But for the rest of the world, where the trick, now more than ever, is convincing them that this new film is an event worth leaving the house for, how does the constant availability of new Marvel material affect that?”

Deadline‘s “The Dish” (Justin Kroll + Mike Fleming, Jr.) has heard that Martin Scorsese‘s Killers of the Flower Moon, which has been screened in rough-cut form and raved about, is skipping the ’22 Oscar race in favor of a possible “global showcase premiere” at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. This would be followed by Flower Moon opening theatrically through Paramount before the big Apple + debut in the mid-to-late fall, blah blah.

HE worships Mr. Scorsese and is down for Flower Moon this year or next or any which way, but there’s no masking the immense clouds of disappointment that this story has created…a deep black shadow has fallen over the Oscar landscape.

The idea of Apple, Paramount and Scorsese having seemingly lost their nerve and cut bait on the ’22 Best Picture race…it’s just shattering.

I’m not saying that I know anything or that the alleged take-it-to-Cannes plan is locked in (I hope it isn’t!), and yes, this may be thin speculation on Kroll-and-Fleming’s part, but Variety‘s Clayton Davis is also saying it’s real, and I’ve got the blues, man…I’ve really got the blues.

If the Kroll-Fleming-Davis story turns out to be true, here’s my theory: When Scorsese’s The Irishman, a brilliant, gut-slamming gangster epic for the ages, lost the Best Picture prize to Bong Joon-ho‘s generally decent but slightly underwhelming Parasite (certainly in terms of the con-artist family letting the fired maid into the home during a cats-and-dogs rainstorm — easily the most moronic plot turn of the 21st Century), Hollywood marketing savants were confronted with a new social chemistry.

Scorsese’s loss told them that (a) younger Academy voters regarded the Scorsese gangster brand (and in fact white-guy directors in general) as yesterday’s news, and (b) were more excited about giving the Best Picture Oscar to a South Korean film that was directed and written by a chubby, non-white guy…that was the message they wanted to send.

So even though Killers of the Flower Moon, a sprawling historical melodrama set in 1920s Oklahoma, qualifies as an anti-white-guy “woke” film, there is concern on the part of nervous-nelly Apple and Paramount execs. After the Irishman setback they’re a tiny bit afraid that the once-prestigious Scorsese brand is no longer a slam-dunker (certainly among younger, female and person-of-color Academy members), and that Flower Moon needs a big, months-long build-up campaign because your 50-and-under Academy members (not to mention the overseas contingent) are half-inclined to look askance at a big, costly, ambitious film by a white-guy director who, after all, has had his four-decade period of glory (Mean Streets through The Wolf of Wall Street), and that the worm has turned and it’s time to celebrate movies that are either about or made by people of color for a change.

This, I’m afraid to say, is what might be behind the Great Killers of the Flower Moon Withdrawal Strategy of mid ’22, if, God forbid, the Kroll-Fleming-Davis story turns out to be true. Which it probably is.

It was announced two and a half months ago that Leave It To Beaver‘s Tony Dow had been stricken with liver cancer. (His second or third bout.) It was announced today that the 77 year-old sculptor and former actor-producer, a resident of Topanga Canyon, has passed.

Update: An early morning 7.26 post from The Hollywood Reporter‘s Mike Barnes states that while Dow is on his last legs in a hospice, he hasn’t actually died yet.

Dow apparently led a frustrating life in some respects, but who hasn’t grappled with ups and downs and crummy detours and shitty moods from time to time? In the ’90s Dow was coping with resentment and depression (which is often about anger turned inward), but if it hadn’t been for his Beaver fame certain doors might not have been opened and he might’ve had a more difficult time of it…who knows?

Wiki moment: “In December 2008 Dow was chosen as one of three bronze sculptors to show at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts exhibition, in the Carrousel du Louvre in Paris. He represented the United States delegation, which was composed of artists from the Karen Lynne Gallery.”

Or, if you will, just desserts.

I know I shouldn't laugh! 🤣🤣pic.twitter.com/nwWlNfCobU

— Figen (@TheFigen) July 25, 2022