Hollywood filmmakers are learning not to mess with LGBT activists, particularly the transgender wing. Ben Stiller‘s Zoolander 2 is being media-slapped as we speak over what some LGBTs regard as a demeaning satire of a possibly transgender guy, played by Benedict Cumberbatch. The trouble started when Cumberbatch’s character, a model named All (as in “all in”), appeared in a recently-popped trailer for the 2.12.16 Paramount release. A petition against the film has reportedly gathered 5800 signatures. The petition, apparently penned by activist Sarah Rose, claims that Cumberbatch’s character “is clearly portrayed as an over-the-top, cartoonish mockery of androgyne/trans/non-binary individuals. This is the modern equivalent of using blackface to represent a minority. The last thing the transgender community needs at this moment is another harmful, cartoonish portrayal of our lives.” Question #1: apparently LGBT is a dated acronym as the newbie is LGBTQ — lesbian gay bisexual transgender queer. I don’t mean to sound like a clueless asshole but what’s the difference between gay and queer again? Question #2: To the best of my knowledge minstrel-show actors wore blackface not to demeaningly simulate the appearance of “a minority” but precisely and intentionally to demean African-Americans…right?

HE Best Picture Dream Picks (i.e., in this order & to hell with tea-leaf-reading predictions with The Revenant and Joy put aside for the time being): Spotlight, Mad Max: Fury Road, Brooklyn, Beasts of No Nation, Love & Mercy, Son of Saul, Carol, Everest, The Martian, Asghar Farhadi‘s About Elly, the last 25 minutes of The Walk.

HE Hardball Best Picture Predictions (obviously without having seen The Revenant and Joy): Spotlight, The Revenant (because I can feel it), Joy (ditto), The Martian (popcorn), Room, Brooklyn, Carol. Mystifying Add-Ons: Bridge of Spies, Steve Jobs.

Variety‘s Gordon Cox has reported about yesterday’s visit to the Paley Center for Media by Sony honcho Tom Rothman. It contains three sage observations:

Quote #1: “The myth that movies are redeemed in ancillary markets is really not true. If they ignore it in the theater, they’re going to ignore it later. You’re dead, and then you’re deader.”

Quote #2: Rothman noted that “back when he was running production at 20th Century Fox, the ultimate risk inherent in James Cameron’s Avatar wasn’t the 3D or the blue-skinned characters with tails or any of the other things people fretted over. ‘The risk in Avatar was it was original,’ Rothman said. ‘It wasn’t based on anything with a core fan base.'” In other words, it was execution-dependent — said to be easily the most horrific term in the vocabulary of a 21st Century production executive.

Quote #3: “We made a film this fall, one of the films I’m most proud of in my career, a film that Robert Zemeckis made called The Walk. Got incredible reviews, it was incredibly experiential, it opened the New York Film Festival. And nobody alive gave a fuck.” Correction: the easy-lay crowd gave it a mixed-positive pass, but discerning critics thought it mostly sucked…except for the final 25 minutes, which were pretty great.

Last night I re-watched a good portion of Paul Verhoeven‘s Showgirls at the Key West Theatre & Community Stage. Adam Nayman’s revisionist book about this reviled cult film (which was selling at the KWTCS and at Key West Island Books) tries to resurrect the rep a la F.X. Feeney going to bat for Heaven’s Gate, but Showgirls is just as ghastly and indigestible as it seemed 20 years ago. Almost every line offends in some way, and some of the performances (like Kyle MacLachlan‘s) are somewhere between comically and demonically awful. But I love Verhoeven — easily one of the most likable and charming directors I’ve ever spoken with or listened to. (My first chat with him happened at a party in Cannes in ’92.) Hayman and Verhoeven did a 30-minute q & a following the screening, and everyone went home in a good mood. Verhoeven’s favorite memory: the audience anticipating en masse Peter Weller‘s response at the end of Robocop when the corporate chief says “nice shootin’, son….what’s your name?”

Critic-author Adam Nayman, director Paul Verhoeven following last night’s KWFF screening of Showgirls.

Key West Marina — Saturday, 11.21, 8:20 am.

It was so peaceful this morning inside Harpoon Harry’s around 7:20 am, when I strolled in for an omelette du fromage and some fruit. And then right around 8 am, the short and sandal-wearing tourist mob came in…chatter-chatter-chatter-yakkety-yakkety-yakkety-yak.

I’ll be hitting Pepe’s tomorrow morning…maybe. Come to think of it, maybe not because it doesn’t open until 8 am and you know what that means.

In yesterday’s (11.20) address about responding to the Paris terror attacks, Hillary Clinton said the following: “Islam is not our adversary…Muslims are peaceful and tolerant and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.” I’m somewhere between appalled and horrified at the post-Paris attitudes of Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Ben Carson about Muslims and Syrian refugees in particular, but Clinton was flat-out wrong. A small but significant percentage of Muslims have openly described themselves as not just intolerant but supporters of the psychopathic barbarism of ISIS

An 11.17 Pew poll states that a small but noteworthy percentage of Muslims in nations with significant Muslim populations support ISIS. 4% of the Arab population in Israel, or roughly 42,000 souls, have a favorable view of that fiendish organization. 5% and 8% of Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank are also pro-ISIS. Positive ISIS numbers among Nigerian Muslims is around 20%, and 12% of Malaysian Muslims feel the same way. And you know that a certain percentage of the “don’t know” crowd are also pro-ISIS — they just don’t want to lay their cards on the table.

The bottom line is that a small percentage of Muslims support ISIS, and that the possibility of a Muslim community harboring or shielding ISIS militants is not, at the very least, a crazy racist notion. This is the fear driving conservatives in this country. I don’t agree with pushing away moderate Muslims or fanning hateful attitudes (which will play right into the ISIS scheme) and I have nothing but compassion for Syrian refugees, but I doubt that the PEW statistics are wrong.

Today I attended a Key West Film Festival PorchChat panel (2:30 to 3:30 pm) titled “Critics on Critics.” Deadline.com’s Brian Brooks moderated; panelists included Washington Post critic Ann Hornaday, Indiewire critic/editor Eric Kohn, CinemaScope critic and Showgirls revisionist/apologist Adam Nayman, Key West Citizen critic Shirrel Rhodes, Wall Street Journal critic Steve Dollar, Newsday/N.Y. Times contributor John Anderson and a well-mannered guy from Miami who wasn’t Rene Rodriguez but was hanging with the Univ. of Miami’s Anna Morgenstern.

Anderson said two things I disagreed with — one, that Suffragette isn’t a good film (it very definitely is) and two, that Abigail Disney‘s The Armor of Light (which is playing at KWFF) is an “important” film that festivalgoers should see. It’s an honest, well-made film but important it’s not — the gist of my Middleburg Film Festival review is that it’s a good-hearted doc about a reprehensible culture (i.e., rightwing gunnies).

Almost two months ago (9.25) former N.Y. Daily News film critic Joe Neumaier interviewed Beasts of No Nation costars Idris Elba and Abraham Attah at the SVA theatre on West 23rd Street. I love the crack and timbre of Elba’s voice, but Attah’s African accent defeats me. (I wish I could say otherwise.) You’ll notice both are wearing suits that closely resemble the famous gray suit worn by Cary Grant in North by Northwest (’59). Technically Grant’s was a lightweight wool Kilgour suit, in a blue/grey fine glen plaid pattern while Elba and Attah’s suits are a lighter silver gray color.

Never has the legend of Cary Grant’s North by Northwest suit been so diminished as when Seth Rogen wore a facsimile for a Vanity Fair Hitchcock tribute piece that run in February ’08.

I was chatting with Sammy, a 20something blonde from Chicago, during last night’s KWFF party at the Ernest Hemingway home. After about a half-hour the guy she came with (a Key West resident whom Sammy befriended when she lived here three or four years ago) walked over. I didn’t get his name but he was tall, good-looking, friendly — let’s call him Tom. The conversation turned to the film festival and Papa, Bob Yari‘s film about Hemingway which had screened earlier in the evening and which none of us had seen. I asked Tom if he’s seen Spotlight, which I said would be opening tomorrow (i.e. today) at the Tropic. “Uhhm, we have something else going on tomorrow,” he said. It’s not a festival film, I said — it’s opening commercially at the Tropic. “Oh, okay,” Tom said. So you’ve never heard of it? “No.” So you’re not much of a movie guy? “I’m a production guy,” he said with a certain pride and joie de vivre — a below-the-liner who works in the area. I asked if he knows about Atlanta being a hot place to shoot due to Georgia tax breaks and Pinewood Studios Atlanta. “Atlanta? Uhm, no,” he said. Inner dialogue: So how does that work, Tom? You’re a South Floridian in the business of making movies and commercials, and yet (a) you don’t have clue #1 about Atlanta being the hottest domestic place for film and TV production jobs and (b) you haven’t even heard of a film with a 97% Rotten Tomatoes rating and which has a reasonably good chance of winning the Best Picture Oscar? Talking to subdued-brain-wave guys is somewhere between stifling and infuriating. How deep is the quicksand?

Ron Howard‘s In The Heart of the Sea (Warner Bros., 12.11) has been trailering for ten months now. I’m close to numb at this point. Is there any possibility that it’s all an elaborate ruse — that Sea is just a series of impressive trailers and not actually a film? All this time it’s been portrayed as a “Chris Hemsworth and his shipmates vs. Moby Dick” thing. But now, suddenly, the focus is on Tom Holland as cabin boy Thomas Nickerson, who will eventually grow into Brendan Gleeson‘s Nickerson who, decades later, tells the Moby Dick source tale to Ben Whishaw‘s Herman Melville. What kind of marketing campaign introduces a new major character after almost a year of trailering, and with less than a month before opening? Something’s off — I can feel it.

The Boss (Universal, 4.8.16) appears to be a Melissa McCarthy programmer of no exceptional distinction — a rich-bitch-gets-her-comeuppance comedy. Expectations are modest due to the directing and co-writing contributions of Ben Falcone (McCarthy’s husband who also directed Tammy). But hats off to McCarthy for her reported 50-pound weight loss. Heavy is fine but obese is appalling, and McCarthy has finally understood that. Serious HE respect. McCarthy wears more turtlenecks in this film than Diane Keaton has in her entire screen career. Do the math.

Andrew Renzi‘s The Benefactor (formerly Franny) has been on the festival circuit since debuting last April at the Tribeca Film Festival. I blew an opportunity to see it last night at the Key West Film Festival because (a) it hasn’t been well reviewed, (b) I have a prejudice against dramas in which the inciting incident is a car crash, and (c) I wanted to attend the big KWFF party at Ernest Hemingway’s old home instead. But you have to admit that white-haired Richard Gere looks awesome with that big red scarf looped around that natty tuxedo. Samuel Goldwyn will release this character-driven drama about grief (another one!) and obsession on 1.25.16.

From John DeFore’s 4.18.15 Hollywood Reporter review: “We all have one: That old family friend who dotes on us shamelessly, buying us houses and paying off student loans, beaming whenever we enter a room. They’re the worst, right?

“Andrew Renzi explores the worrisome side of Uncle Warbucks in The Benefactor, where Richard Gere plays a billionaire suffering addictions not just to morphine but to others’ attention and his own privilege. It’s easy to understand the actor’s interest in the part, in which charm, Gere’s bedrock asset, is a thin shell whose protection chips away painfully. But Renzi’s uneven script makes this a less sturdy vehicle than 2012’s Arbitrage, and a less marketable one given the absence of thriller elements that sustained that film’s character study. Still, there’s plenty here for Gere’s admirers to appreciate.

I wouldn’t go to see The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2 with a knife at my back; ditto The Night Before and the week-old Love The Coopers. I wouldn’t watch any of these if I was bored to tears on long plane flight and they were offered for free. In my mind they don’t exist; they represent only toxicity and cancer. Key West residents are out of luck, by the way, as far as catching Billy Ray‘s Secret In Their Eyes, the somber, 37%-rated, all-but-commercially-dead crime thriller. It isn’t booked at the local Regal sixplex, which is where all the mass-market megaplex crap can be found, and so I can’t even pay to see it. (My only L.A. screening opportunity was the night before last.) But here’s to to director Billy Ray for dismissing a “how much pressure?” question from Moviefone’s Phil Parrello — all journalists who ask “how much pressure?” need to be shunned.