A curious conversation on Facebook Messenger…sorry.

Jeff [last name redacted]: “Watched The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance with the kids last night. It didn’t hold up much. However, I was singing the ‘end credits’ Gene Pitney song during the whole film, and then when we got to the end…no song. I looked it up and realized that I had originally seen the film on TV in the 70s and the song was not in the actual film, but some guy at the TV station must have overlaid it on to the end credits. Curious if you’ve ever heard of this weird TV artifact?”

HE: “’Some guy at the TV station’ couldn’t have overlaid or inserted the Gene Pitney song onto the end credits because there is no end credits sequence in Liberty Valance. It just ends with a final static shot of the moving train (25 mph!) that James Stewart and Vera Miles are riding on and then ‘The End.’ Maybe the TV station guy played the song over a black background or an artificial freeze frame.”

Jeff: “My memory is a bit foggy so I don’t know. I do know my brother and I sang the song for a month after we saw it, so the song and the film are inextricably entwined for us. Maybe John Ford had a sudden worry that the film would seem too light with a pop song bringing it home. Thanks for your two cents.”

HE: “What I told you isn’t my ‘two cents’ — it’s fact. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance doesn’t have an end-credits sequence. And it’s a stupid song anyway. It celebrates the awesome six-shooter bravery of the man who stood up to the evil Liberty Valance face to face and shot him dead. Stewart’s Ransom Stoddard character isn’t celebrated, but there’s a line that says “when the final showdown came at last, a law book was no good.”

Jeff: “A song doesn’t have to be smart to be catchy. I suppose the idea is that they were both somehow brave or noble. Stewart for standing up to Valance and Wayne for letting Stewart live, knowing that Vera Miles preferred him.”

Some may find it odd that handicappers are calling Lightyear (Disney, 6.17) dead meat despite earnings of $152 million worldwide and $88.7 million domestic. But you have to look at the details, and detail #1 is that Lightyear dropped 65% last weekend, earning a lousy $17.5 million after pulling down $50.5 million on opening weekend.

The Ankler‘s Sean McNulty is calling this the “worst-ever drop for a PIXAR film (not counting Covid-impacted Onward)….with Minions arriving on Friday, [Lightyear] was just a misfire. And cue the ‘PIXAR isn’t the same without Lasseter’ pieces in 3, 2…   Just remember to include the reasons why Lasseter was ousted.”

Two days ago N.Y. Post columnist Kyle Smith speculated that Lightyear was hurt by general audiences being fed up with films that secrete woke instruction. Not the brief lesbian kiss but a suggestion that Lightyear might have a hidden lecture or two up its sleeve.

“Hollywood was founded by, and for generations run by, pure showmen who were fanatically devoted to giving the audience what it wanted,” Smith wrote. “Today Hollywood’s message is, ‘Let us entertain you! But first, a brief lecture on what’s wrong with you, the audience…’

“One reason Top Gun: Maverick is such a huge success — the biggest movie of Tom Cruise’s career and probably the biggest movie of this year — is that it simply ignores all quarrelsome real-world issues. Maverick seeks merely to entertain, not to persuade you that the people who made it are virtuous.”

Remember those “Dirty Disney” trend stories from the mid ’90s? (I wrote one for the Sunday entertainment section of the N.Y. Daily News.) I’m not saying that “Dirty Disney” applies today, but between Lightyear‘s chaste, no-big-deal lesbian kiss scene and Disney fighting Gov. Ron DeSantis’s law that forbids instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade, The Mouse has clearly associated itself with the LGBTQIA agenda of the moment.

The legend continues to scream from the Hollywood hills…”go woke, go broke.”

Based on pure nutso speculation, Greta Gerwig‘s Barbie is going to be either Logan’s Run or Village of the Damned. Or a blend of the two. That’s what I’m sniffing in the air. I’m just putting this out there. I know nothing.

If I’m even a little bit intrigued by a film after a first viewing, there’s a slight chance I’ll watch it again. If I’m a bit more than mildly intrigued, I’ll almost certainly watch it twice. And if I’m flat-out intrigued or turned on even, there’s a decent chance I’ll see it three times or more.

I was okay with Elvis (certainly the final third in Las Vegas portion), but honestly? Right now I don’t have the slightest interest in seeing it again. It was too annoying and exhausting. Okay, I might catch it again when it goes to streaming…

Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman has already seen it twice, and he’s written a fascinating side-eyed take (“Why Isn’t Elvis A Home Run?“). You don’t have to read it if you don’t want to. But I did.

Variety‘s Chris Willman to Colonel Tom Parker biographer Alanna Nash: “What’s your overall feeling on the movie’s truth-ometer? Are the liberties worth it for creating an artistic picture? Does it veer off in ways that seem unnecessary?”

Nash: “The timeline…well, what timeline? It’s all a Baz Luhrmann fever dream. The past, present and future are all shook up like a ’50s milkshake and served with a thousand straws!

“Other than the tremendous pains Baz has taken to make this story seem ‘woke’, the liberties are essentially fair — except to Parker. In making him such an antagonist, they have robbed him of his many accomplishments with his client.

“Luhrmann has really framed this through a present-day lens. Elvis had just as many white influences and announced as early as seventh grade that he was going to sing at the Grand Ole Opry. Remember, he entered a talent contest as a child singing ‘Old Shep’ — warbling about dead dogs is about as country as it gets. An early hero in Tupelo was a hillbilly singer named Mississippi Slim.

“But living in a ‘colored’ neighborhood, as [Elvis] did, he certainly heard early r & b, jump-blues and swing tunes pulsating through the walls at the nearby juke joints, and he loved it, as he did both Black and white gospel. Still, the odds were heavily in favor that he’d be a country singer and his stint on the Louisiana Hayride seemed to point him in that direction.”

My first reaction to those hysterical screaming girls in Elvis…to those hormonal howls and wails in the Louisiana Hayride concert sequence, was “Baz is overcranking it again…he always does this…can’t help himself.”

But today I took a look at some ’50s footage of women watching Presley perform, and Luhrmann didn’t exaggerate all that much. The reality is that ’50s women responded on a level of 7.5 or 8 or perhaps even 9, and Luhrmann’s women took it to level 10 or 11. But they’re not that far apart.

And the sullen reactions of the guys in the audience in Elvis are spot-on…they hate him for turning the women on, but they also feel envious. The exact same thing happened in the mid ’50s.

The following are from Loving You (’57), Presley’s second film and his first in color:

Jon Stewart gonna Jon Stewart and and more power, but something snapped when I watched “The Problem With White People,” and things haven’t been the same since. A little more than a month ago Stewart was tributed at the Kennedy Center with the 23rd annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, and I really couldn’t get into it, man…sorry.

When I think of Stewart now, I think he could maybe sorta kinda go fuck himself…no offense.

A little more than three months ago my admiration for and approval of Stewart stopped dead in its tracks. To repeat, Stewart’s “The Problem with White People“, which aired on his Apple talk show on 3.25.22, is what did it.

On 3.30 I shared my skepticism and revulsion at what this one-sided woke indoctrination seminar was pushing, and particularly the dismissal of Andrew Sullivan‘s opinions by Stewart and another of his guests, the odious Lisa Bond of Race2Dinner…it was so enraging. I wanted to throw something at my computer screen, although I dismissed that instinct a millisecond later because it was only 15 inches in front of my face and what was I going to throw anyway? A sliced tomato? The juice would get into the guts of my Macbook Pro and then I’d really be in trouble.

Stewart and Bond were basically parroting woke talking points, to wit: (a) all disparity equals discrimination, (b) meritocracy is merely a systematic smokescreen for white dominance, (c) the low marriage rate among African Americans is the fault of whites, (d) almost all American sub-systems or social standards are guises for white power, (e) the whole societal system in which we work and live is gamed in favor of whites, and therefore (f) white people have a duty to cleanse and overhaul these systems in order to alleviate the stain and the shame of institutional racism.

I’ve responded to these talking points with three significant HE posts about The 1619 Project, which is pretty much the historical cradle for wokester theology in the realm of American racism. The best of them was “What’s Your 1619 Beef?“, posted on 7.30.20. Here’s an excerpt:

“Slavery has always been an ignominious chapter in the first 245 years of US history (1619 to 1865) and racism has stained aspects of the culture ever since, but to assert that slavery and racism (which other cultures have shamefully allowed and profited by over the centuries) are THE central and fundamental definers of the immense American experience strikes me as a bridge too far.

“Many factors drove the expansion and gradual strengthening & shaping of this country, and particularly the spirit and character of it — immigration, the industrial revolution and the cruel exploitations and excesses of the wealthy elites, the delusion of religion, anti-Native American racism and genocide, breadbasket farming, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick C. Douglas, the vast networks of railroads, selfishness & self-interest, factories, construction, the two world wars of the 20th Century, scientific innovation, native musical forms including jazz, blues (obviously African-American art forms) and rock, American literature, theatre and Hollywood movies, sweat shops, 20th Century urban architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright, major-league baseball, Babe Ruth & Lou Gehrig, family-based communities and the Protestant work ethic, fashion, gardening, native cuisine and the influences of European, Mexican, Asian and African cultures, hot dogs, the shipping industry, hard work and innovation, the garment industry, John Steinbeck, George Gershwin, Paul Robeson, Louis Armstrong, JFK, MLK, Stanley Kubrick, Chet Baker, John Coltrane, Marilyn Monroe, Amelia Earhart, Malcom X, Taylor Swift, Charlie Parker, Elizabeth Warren, Katharine Hepburn, Aretha Franklin, Jean Arthur, Eleanor Roosevelt, Carol Lombard, Shirley Chisholm, Marlon Brando, Woody Allen, barber shops & manual lawnmowers, the auto industry, prohibition & gangsters, the Great Depression and the anti-Communism and anti-Socialism that eventually sprang from that, status-quo-challenging comedians like Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce and Steve Allen (“schmock schmock!”), popular music (Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra and the Beatles), TV, great American universities, great historians, great journalism (including the National Lampoon and Spy magazine), beat poetry, hippies, the anti-Vietnam War movement, pot and psychedelia, cocaine, quaaludes and Studio 54, 20th & 21st Century tech innovations, gay culture, comic books, stage musicals, Steve Jobs, etc.

Two other HE retorts: (a) “Spreading ‘1619 Project’ Gospel,” a 7.8.20 piece that liberally quotes from Andrew Sullivan‘s “How The New York Times Has Abandoned Liberalism for Activism” (posted on 9.3.19), and (b) “Stephens: 1619 Project ‘Has Failed’“, an excerpt of Bret Stephens‘ “The 1619 Chronicles“, which appeared on 10.9.20.

We all knew it was coming, and yet somehow it feels a lot worse now that it’s official.

The overturning of Roe v. Wade is a scourge — a cruel, hideous imposition upon all women, right now and for the foreseeable future. Don’t even talk about what will happen in bumblefuck territories over the coming weeks, months and possibly years — removing the right of women (poor women especially) to choose their own biological fates and futures is draconian, deplorable and fairly close to medieval.

I’ve been thinking about this decision for most of the day, and particularly during my journey back from Berkshires. The likely real-world impact is sinking into my head in stages, and the air seems to get a bit colder each time.

As emotionally conflicted as I am about mid-to-late-term abortion (I went through a Jack Nicholson-like change of heart** when the news of Sutton’s arrival was shared), the right of a woman to choose one way or the other is absolute.

I’m certainly consumed with loathing for the six Supreme Court justices who struck down this fair, necessary and former law of the land, and especially the three Trumpies — Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, all of whom blatantly misrepresented their views on Roe during their confirmation hearings and concurrent discussions with legislators.

Europe is almost entirely supportive of a woman’s’s right to choose, leaving aside the banning of abortions in Andorra, Liechtenstein, Malta, Monaco, Poland and San Marino. (I was surprised to learn yesterday, by the way, that German law states that abortions should happen no later than twelve weeks into a pregnancy.)

Putting it mildly, Lawrence O’Donnell’s reaction [above] to the trashing of Roe v. Wade closely reflects my own, and almost certainly the reactions of at least two-thirds if not three-quarters of the country.

Key quote: “The current Supreme Court is not a product of democracy. It is a product of minority rule…a product of the corruption of constitutional processes by Senate Republicans, who refused to even allow for a vote on President Obama‘s final choice for a Supreme Court justice” — i.e., Attorney General Merrick Garland, who has so far shown himself to be a wimp in the matter of a possible federal prosecution of Donald Trump.

“The Republican justices on the Supreme Court share a dangerous Trumpian characteristic — they are incapable of embarassment.”