As we speak there’s only one copy selling on EBay, but there are quite a few more available in Russia.

Posted on 4.2.20:

The great John Waters on the nonbinary sexual revolution, as reported last week by the Desert Sun’s Ema Sasic:

Last night I re-watched George Pal and Rudolph Mate’s When Worlds Collide (‘51), an ambitious if under-budgeted sci-fi disaster flick. Early on I was intrigued by (i.e., fantasizing about) 23 year-old costar Barbara Rush, whom I’d never paid much attention to (and who is still with us, by the way, at age 97).

She was unquestionably front and center during the ‘50s, but my most vivid memory of Rush is from Warren Beatty and Hal Ashby’s Shampoo (‘75).

There’s a scene in which Beatty’s Beverly Hills hairdresser (i.e., George Roundy) is trying to persuade a bank officer (George Furth) to give him a loan to start his own hair salon with. When asked about collateral, Roundy tries to explain that his business value is largely based upon celebrity client loyalty. “I have the heads…I do Barbara Rush,” he states. Alas, this isn’t enough for the bank officer.

Married to Jeffrey Hunter from ‘50 to ‘55, Rush was very fetching in her 20s, but augmented this with a certain interior, deep-drill quality that seemed rooted in good character and basic values. Call her the trustworthy, on-the-conservative-side, guilt-trippy type. This was especially evident in 1958’s The Young Lions and ‘59’s The Young Philadelphians.

It was this sense of duty and restraint plus a corresponding low-flame quality when it came to hints of sultry sensuousness that probably limited Rush’s appeal as she got into her 30s. Wikipage: “She was often cast as a willful woman of means or a polished, high-society doyenne.”

For two or three weeks I’ve been watching a brief YouTube solicitation for donations to the Biden-Harris re-election campaign.

The spot might persuade a certain percentage to donate, but it mainly reminds that Joe Biden is too old and over-the-hill to be an effective campaigner.

Can Joe do the actual job? Mistakes and elite woke allegiances aside, he’s shown that he’s a moderate veteran who knows the ropes and can handle the demands after a fashion.

Does Joe project prime-of-life strength and hard-snap vigor? Please.

The 62 year-old guy on the left is clearly attractive, mentally sharp and possessed by natural charisma. The pale 81 year-old guy on the right is squinting too much — obviously in a state of natural great-grandfatherly decline — and he hoarsely mumbles more than enunciates.

I used to visit my late mom in an assisted living facility so don’t tell me.

This ad is telling us, in short, that the guy on the left has it and the guy on the right mostly doesn’t.

I want Biden to be re-elected and yet it’s obvious that he might not make it, as Steve Kornacki and that recent, seriously stunning NBC News poll suggests.

If Biden loses next November his name will be mud until the end of time.

Rather than accept reality and strategically step aside, historians will lament, he arrogantly insisted that he was the best candidate to defeat The Beast, and in so doing plunged the nation right back into another four years of deranged, law-defying chaos and neo-totalitarian horror.

Substitute Michelle Obama for Kamala Harris and the whole picture changes. People despise Harris and are terrified of a succession scenario, but the same folks would be down (or at least a lot happier) with Michelle.

I’d never heard of these magazines until late yesterday morning (Sunday, 2.4). They were sitting on a checkout rack at a ShopRite market in West Orange — a ten-minute drive from Jett, Cait and Sutton’s home.

The reason for their absence from HE radar is that my most-visited food haunts over the last two years — Wilton’s Village Market and WeHo Pavilions — wouldn’t dare offer them because this would suggest that Trumpers and obesity-sufferers are regular shoppers, which is somewhat degrading from a cultural standpoint.

The irony is that there’s nothing overtly coarse or downmarket about the ShopRite in question. And yet someone in ShopRite management figured these rags would appeal to customers. Do the math.

I wouldn’t say that Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility” has fallen victim to presentism, as that sounds vaguely negative. Any way you slice it this new Hallmark version is a perplexing fantasy. The question arises, “To what end?”

Suggestion: Embrace reality — the researched and documented historical truth. It may seem difficult at times, but it’ll never let you down. Social fantasy is fine but it only gets you so far, and then what?

Sasha Stone and I have concluded that Tim Burton has only two casting options for his Attack of the 50 Foot Woman remake. One, a foxy POC chick with big boobies (Black, Asian, Asian) or — this is much better — persuade Taylor Swift to play the part. Better yet, cast Swift as a gay N.Y. Times columnist — Attack of the 50 Foot Lesbian.

Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, an adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ early ‘50s novel that will star Daniel Craig as a “top” roaming around Mexico, will debut at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.

I’ve been given a copy of the script but have only read two pages so far — a scene in which Craig’s “Lee” character is fucking a young Mexican lad.

This is why I’ve said Craig is playing a top but what do I know? I know that “Lee” is self-portraiture — a stand-in for the guy Burroughs was 70-odd years ago, presumably after his Junkie period.

…for HE to post regular recollections of what the film business looked, sounded, felt and tasted like before the terror — i.e., before 2017 but mostly focused on the glorious ‘90s (the indie revolution), the aughts (last stabs before superhero plague) and the early to mid teens (Zero Dark Thirty, 12 Years A Slave, Drive, The Social Network, Moneyball, Carol, Manchester By The Sea).

In other words: rather than overdose on cursing and condemning the present darkness (although I will never abandon this hard but necessary duty) it might be better to invest more energy into shining a light upon the above-mentioned good times (‘90 to ‘17 or just shy of three decades) and thereby possibly inspire a longing for films that aspire to more than just delivering “content” as well as persuading at least some of the fiercely progressive descendants of Maximilian Robespierre and Josef Stalin to possibly ease up on their social justice crusades and just…you know, try to make good movies that are less “instructive”?

Then again I wouldn’t want to descend into the pit of too-much-nostalgia…all right, fuck it, I’m not changing the game.