Seriously. Iconic.

I’ve just purchased a Trivial Pursuit “Silver Screen” edition, which is only for older hardcore film buffs — Millennials and Zoomers will have a very tough time with it, and even younger GenXers may be stumped for the most part.

The questions were written in ‘85 or thereabouts so unless you’re up on the careers of William S. Hart, Jean Arthur, Rosalind Russell, Ben Hecht, Brian Donlevy, Edmond O’Brien, Ann Sheridan, Gregg Toland, Andy Devine, David O. Selznick (a racist, sexist, pep-pill-popping scumbag!), Joan Blondell, Myrna Loy, Pat O’Brien, Rudolph Valentino, etc.

It makes me sick to go through online movie trivia games that have obviously been written by (or are aimed at) clueless under-40s.

I wish for the sake of Thanksgiving gatherings that a 1984-to-2024 edition could be made available. Way back when I always aced the ‘85 questions, and I’d manage the same, of course, with my imagined Silver Screen 2. Maybe there is such a board game — maybe I’m overlooking something.

Last Friday (10.25) I posted a Nightmare on Elm Street election–anxiety freak–out piece so I can’t go there again — it’s only been 72 hours. My waiting-to-be-electrocuted feelings are only going to intensify between now and 11.5 — eight days!! — so medicating is almost certainly on the rise.

Ari Emanuel to Puck’s Matthew Belloni:

“[It’s] going to come down to 120,000 votes. You probably have 60 percent of the male vote for Trump, and the female vote is 60-40 for Kamala.” Wait — 40% of registered women voters are going for The Beast? Ari: “It’s a jump ball. We’re going to find out who wants this more — men or women.”

From Molly Ball’s 10.27 Wall Street Journal report, “America Is Having a Panic Attack”:

Here’s my favorite paragraph:

HE for one believes in the sleeping-male–Kamala–supporter theory…thank you! Okay, not really but I’d like to believe in it.

As I confessed last Friday…

A B-plus grade isn’t a major problem, but it is a slight one. It means that a certain percentage of the Conclave respondents had an issue or argument withg the ending. trust me. Traditional Catholics, traditional-minded people, Average Joes and Janes, etc. I saw it for a third time on Thursday night (I had to flush that awful Montclair Film Festivql screening out of my head), and there was a somewhat older couple sitting behind me, and when the lights came up they were obviously a bit displeased, and perhaps even a bit stunned. I could feel their vibe

I’m physically sick with worry about what may happen 12 days hence. James Carville has noted that just before close elections things tend to break one way or another, and right now…dear God I can’t even think it, much less say it.

I’ve suffered nightmares in which I’m about to be executed…two or three minutes before being led up the wooden steps of the gallows or tied to a Paths of Glory firing-squad post, and the burning, churning stomach acid sensations have been so intense and convulsive that I’ve awoken in a cold panic, Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo-style.

That’s what I’m feeling now except I’m wide awake, and God help us all. I’m Mia Farrow’s Rosemary Woodhouse, tied buck naked to a four-poster with Satan approaching….”this isn’t a dream…this is really happening!”

Tens of thousands of registered nihilists are telling pollsters that they believe that slapping down the extreme left (a goal I completely sympathize with) is more important than preserving a semblance of order, decency and democracy…

These under-educated, rural-or-suburban heartland psychos apparently believe that a Trumpocalypse, an authoritarian, Hitlerian revenge scenario…a threatened state of siege orchestrated by a clearly declining 78 year-old, foam-at-the-mouth criminal sociopath…is preferable to handing the reins of power to a decent, sensible humanist normie who may underwhelm due to her regulated mediocrity but then again she might not…who knows?

I’ve been trusting all along that fundamental decency would prevail in the end. Now I don’t know.

What kind of sick, reality-denying animals believe that bringing Trump back would be a good thing? I feel like I’m barricaded inside that house in Night of the Living Dead and that zombie Trumpies, naked and growling, are pounding on the doors.

Then again Kamala Harris has mostly done this to herself.

All she had to do was renounce the progressive crazies and pledge herself to sensible, constructive, classic liberalism, and she didn’t have the stones to do that…she didn’t even have the minimal courage to say that white males needn’t be a problem and that healthy masculinity can and should be a vital cultural ingredient…she couldn’t even admit that woke insanity is a thing, which it has been, of course, since ‘18 or thereabouts…

Dear God, I’ve never been this scared in my life.

Jill Stein could come to her senses, but of course, being who and what she is, that’s not an option.

Is Kamala Harris charismatic and razzle-dazzly enough to serve as the nation’s 47th president? She doesn’t need to be. What matters is that she’s a decent, ethically grounded, steady-as-she-goes and obviously intelligent politician.

Harris can memorize and repeat the necessary talking points and can project sincerity and conviction as far as it goes, but she isn’t much for thinking on her feet and verbally tap-dancing like some wowser wordsmith…she’s no Bill Clinton, no improvisational dynamo…generating occasional breakthrough moments and special political poetry seems to elude her for the most part.

Harris was pretty good during tonight’s CNN Town Hall but she’ll never be gifted at this stuff. We all understand this, I think. But you know what else?

Within the personality and basic approach of a hard-working, carefully constructed operator, she comes off as a serious, sensible, focused, practical–minded and fundamentally moral person who isn’t into fooling around or playing games or lowering the colloquial so the rubes can have a little fun…she is who she is, and Lord knows she’s a much better human being than Donald Trump, who is clearly dangerous and insane.

I’m going to repeat this: Harris is a much better person than Trump — more sensible, more mature, a believer in regulated thought. The woke thing burns within her and that’s unfortunate, but at heart she sees life in steady, practical terms. She’s no Gavin Newsom-level orator, but she won’t generate storms of madness and chaos.

“It doesn’t cost $60,000 to bury a fucking Mexican…don’t pay it!”

Emilia Perez “possesses the profound ability to change the world”? This guy is riding the back of the tiger…triumphant trans progressive bandwagon ho! The gay mafia may not be calling the shots (that’s Lisa Taback‘s job), but they’re certainly pulling strings. Either way the fix is in.

Before last night I had never watched Joshua Logan, Buddy Adler and Leon Shamroy’s South Pacific (‘58) in its entirely. I watched the whole thing (2 hours, 37 minutes) on my iPhone 15 Pro Max with JBL headphones — obviously an irreverent and sacrilegious way to watch a film shot in large-format Todd A-O. But at least it sounded good.

Anyway, I wrote yesterday that even in her prime South Pacific star Mitzi Gaynor, who passed last Thursday (10.17) at age 94, wasn’t any kind of sultry sensual presence. HE commenter K. Bowen took issue with this. I elaborated this morning:

“Gaynor had narrow, smallish eyes but her spritzy, bubbly, open-hearted manner was engaging. She had that gamine athletic thing going on, and was obviously quite pretty in her youth. She had a certain prim sexual appeal. Slim dancer’s body, approvable boobs, great gams. But earthy she was not.

“Gaynor seemed innately kind and caring, but there was something a tad antiseptic going on, at least in her South Pacific performance as Nellie Forbush — a proper, disciplined quality that felt Doris Day-ish or even Gale Storm-y, a quality that seemed to emanate from the bland, hemmed-in aesthetic of the ‘50s.

“And I don’t even know how to process Nellie’s bizarre racist repulsion when she learns of Rosanna Brazzi’s Emile de Becque having been married to and sired two kids with a fetching Polynesian woman who died some years earlier. Toward the end Nellie actually says the words ‘her color’…weird and ugly.

“Thespian skills aside, most popular actresses of the ‘40s and ‘50s activated or at least hinted at some form of inner heat…some kind of bedroom intrigue or fantasy. Whatever it was that Rita Hayworth or Lana Turner or Maureen O’Hara or Lizabeth Scott or Anna Magnani or Jean Simmons or Gloria Grahame or pre-Cleopatra Elizabeth Taylor or even Deborah Kerr had that indicated a vigorous or perhaps even a hungry-python approach to sex, Gaynor had almost none of.

But she had conveyed so much in the way of heart and kindness and a certain open-hearted decency, plus a strong one-man-woman quality. You just knew she wasn’t the type to cat around, and that’s attractive. (Well, whadaya want me to say, that a woman prone to catting around is attractive?)

Earlier today I obliquely discussed the “whoa, mama” finale of Edward Berger’s Conclave.

When this moment arrived during tonight’s Montclair Film Festival screening, the entire audience responded with mostly pleasurable surprise….damn near the whole place went “whoa-hooaahhwwwhhh!” When this same moment unfolded during the first Telluride screening, the reaction was subdued…some quiet “hmmm” and “uh-huhm” responses but very few.

Nobody will be able to discuss this until Conclave opens commercially on 10.25, and to be extra fair not until it’s played for at least a couple of weeks.

Warning: Habitual spoiler whiners are advised to see it as early as possible. Move it or lose it.

Incidentally: Earlier this evening I was about to post a riff titled “Worst Theatre Seat of My Entire Life.” Dyian and I were seated in upper-balcony “heaven”…row W, and I mean waaay up there with very small seats and no leg room. The movie screen looked like a standard business envelope…it was like watching a film on a 13-inch MacBook Pro from the other side of the room. And the festival had the chutzpah to charge $35 each for these wretched seats.

At least the sound was strong and distinct.

Catching my second viewing of Edward Berger’s Conclave tomorrow evening (Friday, 10.18) —- the opening-night attraction at the Montclair Film Festival.

On top of which Halloween weekend requires the wearing of a mask…no?

I asked if she’d ever heard of D-Day or seen The Longest Day or Saving Private Ryan or anything in that realm…uhm, nope. She didn’t know Susan B. Anthony or Martin van Buren either.

I like carrying heavy coins around. I love early 20th Century silver dollars. I’m also a sucker for $2 bills.

One less malicious anti-Israel fanatic, and an important one at that…just desserts, roast on a spit in hell. No more boom-boom for this ornery old cuss.