Jeffrey Wells Second to last paragraph in Sasha Stone’s Awards Daily piece (9.20.22) about Hollywood’s devotion to to radiant Academy values (virtue, goodness, inclusion, equity, Millennialism): “It isn’t just that people are no longer watching the Oscars; it’s that people are tuning out the whole community.”
This is a sad Carnegie Hall Cinema story from late ‘78 or early ‘79. I was working as a manager of this cellar-level, not-for-profit repertory house, which was owned and operated by the moustachioed, semi-rapscallion Sid Geffen (who also ran the Bleecker Street Cinema).
The name of the young woman who worked in the CHC ticket booth has faded, but let’s call her Deirdre of the Sorrows. When I called this a sad story I meant it was about unfairness, and it boils down to this: Not only did poor Deirdre suffer trauma through no fault of her own, but she was blamed for it.
One fine weekday afternoon the Carnegie Hall Cinema was robbed of $170 or $180. (Or more — I was never much for numbers.). A stick-up man walked up to the street-level booth (Seventh Ave. just north of 56th), pulled out a pistol, told terrified Deirdre to fork over and she did.
I quickly called the fuzz. I can’t recall if it was a plainclothes or a uniformed beat cop who dropped by, but he interviewed Deirdre and myself and maybe Sid, filed a report, etc.
Two days later the place was hit again — same guy, same gat, same terrified Deirdre. So Sid fired her.
Sid had figured or intuited one of three things: (1) Deirdre had made the first robbery too easy or anxiety-free for the thief, so much so that he figured that double-dipping would be no-sweat, (2) Deirdre was “in on it” with the thief — a theory that I found paranoid and silly, knowing Deirdre as I did (and no, I hadn’t even thought about trying for any sort of erotic entanglement — that would have been crude and unprofessional plus she wasn’t my type), and (3) Deirdre was a Jonah or a bringer of bad luck.
I didn’t think Sid gave any serious credence to the cahoots theory, but anyone would consider (1) and (3), especially the easy-mark thing.
Sid never asked for my opinion, but if he had I would have said “Deirdre is a responsible, decent person…this was just bad cards.” And those last five words would have, in Sid’s eyes, helped to seal her fate.
Dooley Wilson’s “Sam” in Casablanca: “Leave him alone, Miss Ilsa. You’re bad luck to him.”
…is an excellent thing to smell, taste, feel. I spent two hours getting tickets for the NYFF. I was right at the front of the line and OF COURSE they were sold out of seats for both She Said screenings. And then I caught a 2 pm screening of a film I can’t write about until Tuesday, 10.4.
A Woody Allen rep is spinning Allen’s recent quote (provided to La Vanguardia, a storied Spanish publication) about making his currently shooting film his last and final.
“Currently [Allen] has no intention of retiring,” the rep said. “He said he was thinking about not making films, as making films that go straight to streaming platforms is not so enjoyable for him, as he is a great lover of the cinema experience.”
HE to Allen rep: Allen is first and foremost a filmmaker, and has been for the last 50-plus years. How is “thinking about not making films” not a de facto declaration of an intention to retire, at least as far as filmmaking is concerned?
The same thing happened four years ago when Robert Redford announced he was packing it in. The very next day a p.r. spokesperson said “no, no, not true…Bob is still very much active and in the game!” Redford said that his retirement statement was “a mistake.” And then, of course, he retired.
Two nights ago Bill Maher devoted his “New Rules” segment to a rant about presentism. Terrific, I told myself — one of HE’s pet peeves will get an airing on Real Time! Then I watched it and went “oh.”
I naturally figured Maher would mention the movie manifestations of this trend, or an insistence among producers, directors and casting directors over the last four or five years that POCs were just as socially prominent in the past as they are today (hence Bridgerton, the Yale girlfriend switch-out in George Clooney‘s The Tender Bar, Jodie Turner Smith playing Anne Boleyn, African and Asian actors filling costarring roles in Mary, Queen of Scots, Olivia Wilde‘s Don’t Worry Darling**, wealthy travellers of color in Kenneth Branagh‘s Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile). Not to mention the virtue-signalling reflected in the absence of Dahomey slave-trading in The Woman King,
But Maher decided against mentioning this because…I don’t know…because it might sound to some like he was against diverse casting of any kind when it comes to any historical sagas or settings? Which, certain factual histories aside, might get him into trouble. So he side-stepped it.
What he focused on instead was a James H. Sweet article called “IS HISTORY HISTORY? / Identity Politics and Teleologies of the Present,” which was posted a month ago on historians.org.
** Seemingly presentism, I should say. As it turns out it actually isn’t.
From a 9.17 Air Mail piece, written by Jonathan Dean, about Moonage Daydream director Brett Morgen:
I wrote this last summer, but it was precisely Morgen’s “clear set or rules” that gradually put me off Moonage Daydream when I caught a Cannes midnight showing on 5.23.22. Now that Neon’s Moonage Daydream is finally playing here and there, I’m wondering what the HE consensus might be.
Here’s a wise comment from Justin Michael Ptak, posted on 5.234.22:
“I realized a way to reinvigorate the band/artist biopic. The filmmaker cannot go through their entire, randomly ordered, rags-to-riches-to-rags to rehab to rejuvenation to what-come-may tale, but instead focus on one specific, seminal moment in that artist’s/bands creative/destructive life and just allow the audience to soak that in and bring them along for a ride in that specific time and place.
“One can think of any number of tales told about this artist or that band that would make a very cool, condensed retelling if kept to those constraints.
“George Gershwin and his Rhapsody in Blue moment, Jimi Hendrix realizing he can really play guitar in his own stratospheric way, Brian Wilson creating Good Vibrations, Bob Dylan‘s transition from folk to electric, the Beatles making Revolver, Ronnie Van Zant insanity surrounding Sweet Home Alabama, Pat Benatar‘s Battlefield of Love, Spike Jonze shooting the Beastie Boys Sabotage video, any 48 hours with Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr.’s J Mascis connecting with Lou Barlow, a week in Athens, Georgia with Jeff Mangum and Neutral Milk Hotel, etc.
“Tie these creative sagas into the on goings and vibe of the period and times a la Quentin’s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, and you have yourself a pretty chill picture.”
…it’s “why oh why hasn’t Lorne Michaels hired a non-binary cast member?” The absence of such a weekly presence may have really hurt the show, and now we can all relax…we can all say “this glaring flaw has finally been addressed.”
Does this mean, in this particular instance, that Molly Kearney (aka Molly Meatbrick) was born…er, male-ish but has since transitioned?
There are very few things in life that are more depressing (to me personally, I mean) than being in the company of a relentlessly joyous and alpha-minded person who is completely and totally in love with life or movies or what-have-you…who is so happy and buoyant that he/she can’t stop glowing and smiling and tingling. No offense but I would much rather spend time with sardonic, gravel-voiced, half-cranky types like Paul Morrissey or Paul Schrader.
Posted on 11.14.12: “It was sometime in the early ’80s when I began using ‘happiness pills’ as a term of disdain and derision. It came from a phoner I did with screenwriter Ed Naha, who later went on to co-write Honey, I Shrunk The Kids (’89). Ed was nice and obviously bright, but a little too euphoric and positive-minded. Alpha, alpha, gimme-a-break alpha. Like he was scared of even glancing at the sardonic or cynical or battle-weary side.
“It got to the point in our conversation that I started to mutter to myself, ‘Is there anything in the world that you’re not fucking delighted by or blissed out about, you relentlessly Pollyannic fuck?’
“I complained about him later with a friend, saying that he must have been swallowing great handfuls of happiness pills. Ever since then I’ve used this term whenever I meet someone who overdoes the cheerful. Because it feels like a kind of cover-up. It feels strenuous. Like Sally Hawkins‘ Poppy character in Mike Leigh‘s Happy Go Lucky (’08).
“And yet oddly, I haven’t been feeling this way since I stopped drinking. But I still can’t abide the kind of happiness that seems to come from a place of fear and/or avoidance.”
A difference of opinion has arisen about The Woman King‘s immediate prospects.
On one hand you’ve got Showbiz411‘s Roger Friedman all but calling Gina Prince-Bythewood‘s historical action drama dead in the water, and on the other Forbes‘ Scott Mendelson is going “wooh-wooh!!…The Woman King had a nice promising Thursday night and will probably do decently if not better by Sunday night….break out the champagne!”
Friedman: “The much touted Gina Prince-Blythewood film took in just $1.7 million last night at 3,271 theaters. That’s just $520 per screen…ouch! You could tell from the seat maps at major AMC theaters across the country that there was no enthusiasm for the much praised Viola Davis action film. Sony simply failed to make it exciting in any way.
“Now comes the actual weekend, so word of mouth should be good enough to lift the numbers. But if Sony had any Oscar expectations other than Viola for Best Actress they’d better turn on the charm fast.”
Mendelson: “In what could hopefully be an end to the post-Bullet Train slump at the domestic box office, Sony’s The Woman King earned a promising $1.7 million in Thursday previews. The showings began as early as 3:00 pm and suggest that the $50 million action drama would make anywhere from $13.5 million to $22.5 million over its domestic debut. Splitting the difference would be around $17 million, a debut on par with Sony’s female-targeted Where the Crawdads Sing from back in July.”
Halle Bailey as Ariel in Disney’s new live-action The Little Mermaid film (5.26.23)? It recently became a thing.
My basic reaction was “whatevs…Bailey is a beautiful, cocoa-skinned Rachel Zegler type, and a professional singer to boot and can presumably act pretty well so why not?…nobody’s going to hire a white girl in this punish-bad-whitey climate so why fight it?…and if Malcolm X had reddish hair why can’t Bailey’s mermaid have the same?”
Matt Walsh argues that racism is racism is racism (which it is) but he refuses to acknowledge today’s woke institutional position, which is that racism that favors BIPOCs is cool because (a) whites have it coming and (b) new social terms and dynamics need to be established.
In terms of casting movies and plays, woke racism (replacing historically or previously white characters with BIPOC actors) is, in the eyes of the terrified corporate establishment, a corrective measure that will not get them into trouble. In other words, a little reverse racism is okay and even cleansing because it counterbalances decades and centuries of racism by whites.
But in the same light casting James Franco as Fidel Castro is, according to wokesters, the same old racism that resulted in Jack Palance being cast as Fidel a half-century ago, in Richard Fleischer‘s Che (’69).
That’s the set-up and that’s the deal and Walsh knows this, of course, so why doesn’t he just say it? Because to do so would make him sound like an angry racist reactionary, so he lays out the situation with logic and lets the chips fall.
[From a comment thread assessment posted late last night]:
I paid to see Greg Mottola & Jon Hamm’s Fletch film this evening. The title is Confess, Fletch but it really, REALLY should be called Fletch Whatevs, and that’s not a putdown in the slightest. I counted five people in the theatre (AMC Danbury) but I liked it. It’s certainly a much better, more adult-minded Fletch package than whatever was provided by those Chevy Chase films in the ‘80s.
Fletch Whatevs is an agreeably quirky, mildly entertaining time killer…a low-key, loose-shoe Boston runaround stolen-art caper thang. It’s all jizz-fizz and that’s fine. I had a better-than-okay time but why couldn’t the AMC guys have heated the popcorn?
Hamm is totally cool and knows exactly how to project the right kind of laid-back Fletch attitude. (His personality mantra is — you’ll never guess this — “whatevs.” Which is fairly close to the personality mantra that Elliott Gould swore by in The Long Goodbye, or “ladies, it’s okay with me.”) The supporting cast (Marcia Gay Harden, John Slattery and Kyle MacLachlan are standouts but partly because their names are easier to remember as I write this) take their cues from Hamm.
There are only three problems. Okay, make that four. One, Hamm lifts his bare feet right in front of the camera in one early scene — a big no-no in the HE manual. Two, he’s gained a little weight since the Mad Men heyday. (He could’ve easily tread-milled himself back into Don Draper if he wanted to.) And three, Hamm should have put mousse or Brylcream in his hair.
The fourth thing is that Fletch Whatevs should have spent more time in Rome. I really love it there.
I’m not really “complaining” because there’s no point in dismissing such a cool, witty, unassuming jack-off movie with several spunky, spirited and relatable supporting characters. The movie is good company in an inconsequential hang-out way. No bad things happen, and there are no energy drops or pacing issues except for a single strange, overly broad scene with Annie Mumolo…don’t ask.
Incidentally: Somebody said there was only enough money to shoot for a single day in Rome. I’m not sure I believe that. There’s a breezy montage sequence of a helmeted Fletch scootering all over town. (The helmet looks dorky.) There’s a two-minute dialogue scene overlooking some ancient Roman ruins. There’s a chatty cafe sitdown scene (Hamm orders a Negroni) in Piazza Navona. They didn’t shoot all that in just one day. Two or three days, I’m guessing.
