Jeffrey Wells

David Poland has written a frank recollection of the long, brutal, bruising relationship he had for years with the late Nikki Finke. It strikes me as one of the best columns he’s ever written.

And she wasn’t. But she was tough and tenacious, and she certainly left her journalistic mark in the ‘90s and aughts. Give the devil her due.

There’s more to the trials and tribulations of life than just being liked or disliked. Most people would dispute this, and I wouldn’t argue with them. Human warmth (friends, family, strangers) is worth its weight in gold, but a bit more credit is arguably due to to gifted hustlers, obstinate renegades, generals, pathfinders, pyramid builders, geniuses, inventors, etc.

That said, Finke was my idea of a very harsh and vindictive person. A serpent, a meanie. I’m not exaggerating.

“We’re here and then we’re not here. Somewhere else…maybe.” — Terrence Stamp’s “Willie Parker” in Stephen Frears The Hit (‘84).

Showbiz 411‘s Roger Friedman (filed at 12:54 pm):

I received a little pushback about yesterday’s riff about Florida governor Ron DeSantis wearing those awful white rubber boots during a tour of the coastal Florida areas devastated by Hurricane Ian.

I was informed that DeSantis is wearing standard-issue shrimp boots, which are common apparel for fishermen on shrimp boats. Moisture protection, snake protection.

My reply is that it doesn’t matter how many Cajun shrimpers own a pair of those Nancy Sinatra go-go boots — they look ridiculous.

Any allegedly straight male who wears white go-go-boots on a shrimp boat automatically causes his alpha male credentials too be questioned. And it WAS DeSantis’s Michael Dukakis on a tank moment (aka “Rocky the squirrel”).

If DeSantis was a MAN, he would have worn these black boots. If I was a shrimper, these would be my jam.

White people are a problem. Obviously. They need to be devalued and dismissed. Help me out with the Kanye and Candace thing.

I’m sorry that Bros flopped — perhaps an understandable thing from a Joe Popcorn perspective but a deeply wounding thing from the viewpoint of the Movie Godz, given the generally excellent craft levels — tight script construction, naturalistic acting, revelatory writing, etc.

All I can figure is that people know Billy Eichner from Billy on the Street and Parks and Recreation, and they just didn’t want to watch him in flagrante delicto.

Over the last 20-plus years Average Joes and Janes have gone through a sea-change in their attitudes about gay people, but generally speaking they don’t want to pay $16 at the megaplexes to watch certain bearded guys doing certain things bare-assed.

Last weekend Bros producer Judd Apatow told CNN’s Chris Wallace that the gay community has been “underserved.” Did he mean in terms of sex scenes featuring bearded guys or hunky good looking ones like Luke Macfarlane? No offense and due respect but given what happened last weekend, the gay community should probably get accustomed to being “underserved” in this regard.

It probably wouid have been more comprehensive to say to Wallace that over the last 20 or 30 years the gay community has been slavishly catered to by Hollywood six ways from Sunday, and particularly by way of emotional investments in films and TV series, general glamorizing, image enhancements and political alignments.

Apatow’s response to Wallace about his preference for “just funny”, or the stuff that many comedies put into their first halves, because he lives an overworked and over-stressed life…that was funny.

Apatow also mentioned how his two daughters, Maude and Iris, never let him soak in any sort of satisfaction when a civilian compliment comes along. When some random passerby praises Apatow for one of his comedies, say, “as soon as he’s out of earshot they’ll make fun of that person for, like, ten minutes.”

Hugs and condolences to fans, friends and colleagues of Sacheen Littlefeather, the proxy who famously rejected Marlon Brando’s Best Actor Oscar at the 1973 Oscar ceremony — the brooding actor’s response to the film industry’s historically demeaning depictions of Native Americans.

The cancer-afflicted Native American activist passed yesterday (10.2) at age 75. She departed only 15 days after a special Academy tribute on 9.17 that offered apologies for the dismissive treatment Littlefeather received in the wake of her 49-year-old Oscar appearance.

 

…how pronounced are the reactions? Nobody is mild about it — it’s a hate-or-worship thing.

For a gripping account of the ghastly 1955 murder of 14 year-old Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi, and the despicable perversion of justice that followed, Stanley Nelson and Marcia A. Smith‘s The Murder of Emmett Till, a 2003 American Experience doc, is your best bet.

Having just seen and been moved by Chinonye Chukwu‘s Till (UA Releasing, 10.14), I’m actually planning to rewatch the PBS doc.

Partly (and I don’t mean this in a naysaying sense) because Till is not a tightly focused, chapter-and-verse procedural about the tragic facts, and that’s what I, a shameless just-the-facts type, more or less wanted the whole time.

Which is not to say Till is a problem film — it’s not. It’s just that it’s strictly focused on the agonizing ordeal of Emmett’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley (Danielle Deadwyler), and about the dignity and resolve that this half-broken woman summoned in order to bring about a form of justice for her son.

Not legal justice, of course — not in the Jim Crow south of the mid ’50s. But the justice of history and all the facts being known.

Co-written by Michael Reilly, Keith Beauchamp and Chukwu, Till recounts the basics of Emmett’s Chicago life (sharing a home with Mamie, his colorful personality and natty clothing) before his visit to Money in late August of ’55, and how his expression of hormonal arousal (a wolf whistle) directed at Carolyn Bryant, a married 21 year-old storekeep, led to his killing by her husband and half-brother because he’d violated a sexual racial barrier.

The heart of the film is how Mamie dealt with this horrible occurence, and particularly her decision to reveal her son’s mutilated, bloated, bashed-in head to the world by opening the casket lid during his Chicago funeral. This was followed by her Mississippi testimony at the trial of his killers.

Till’s murder is aurally suggested but mercifully not shown.

Till is sad and penetrating and well acted up and down, but award-season-wise it’s mainly an acting showcase vehicle for the gifted Deadwyler, who will obviously be nominated for a Best Actress Oscar. She channels three simultaneous currents — devotion, devastation, steel.

Till is deeply appalling and sadly factual. But it’s not a satisfying story because the actual story itself was unsatisfying. Not only were the bad guys not convicted but they even pocketed a fat fee when they admitted to killing Emmett in a Look magazine article.

If you want the kind of emotional satisfaction that results when the bad guys pay for their foul deeds, re-watch the fictional Mississippi Burning. But if you want to submit to a wowser, soul-deep lead performance, see Till.

Friendo: “Watched Greatest Beer Run Ever, and found it merely okay. The problem is not the actors but the whole concept. Not sure how ‘true’ the actual story is…I mean did the real Chickie get some kind of hard lessons in Vietnam?

“I’d imagined this to be some kind of MASH-style satire but it was deadly earnest and I’m sorry but you’re right about one thing — the scope of this film exceeded Peter Farrelly’s grasp. Russell Crowe is actually very good and I liked Zac Efron but the film is too long and its history-lesson preaching is outdated, obvious, and too broad to stick. A barely passable time-waster but nothing to write home about.”

HE to Friendo: As I understand it the real Chickie gradually became skeptical about the Vietnam War, but he didn’t return home an abruptly changed man. His beer-run adventure was the beginning of his consciousness-raising, but not the all of it.

Last May the understanding was that Apple + had chickened out of releasing Antoine Fuqua and Will Smith’s Emancipation, the fear being that Smith’s Oscar slap incident would overshadow the film, at least in terms of award-season recognition.

But yesterday’s THR report about yesterday’s screening in Washington, D.C. strongly indicates that the Apple team has changed its collective mind. Sounds good to most of us! Bring it on, boys.

Delaying this film for a year wouldn’t have made a damn bit of difference, damage-control-wise.