Each day I put certain HE posts behind the Patreon wall. I usually wait until a few people have commented to do so. Yesterday’s “Sex Is Between The Legs” post, for example, had nine comments when I paywalled it. And it says that (“9 comments“) if you’re reading HE on a laptop. (Or at least on my 15” Macbook Pro.) But if you glance at the same post on an iPhone, it says “0 comments.” Which indicates it was a nothing post, which obviously diminishes interest.

This problem only arose last weekend. For two days I’ve been trying to fix it with no luck. My latest move has been to hire an individual tech guy from India — he’s on the case as we speak. But it’s infuriating.

The running time of Matt Reeves‘ The Batman is 175 minutes. I for one am disappointed. I want a Reeves-Batman flick that will run no less than 200 minutes (3 hrs., 20 mins.). I also want an overture, intermission, entr’acte and exit music. Seriously — if you’re gonna go big and weighty, shoot for the moon.

Jordan Ruimy: “Supposedly heavily inspired by Fincher’s Zodiac.”

I was part of a Facebook discussion this morning about Sydney Pollack‘s The Way We Were (’73), a romantic tragedy set in New York and Hollywood of the ’40s and ’50s. I’ve never been a huge fan, largely due to the oddly obstinate nature of Barbra Streisand‘s Katie Morosky vs. the vagueness and lack of substance inside Robert Redford‘s Hubbell Gardiner character. She’s too hardball and he’s too half-hearted. Doomed from the start.

The discussion, however, launched three topics or questions.

Topic #1: Pauline Kael once described Pollack’s film as “a fluke — a torpedoed ship full of gaping holes that comes snugly into port.” What she actually meant, I said, was that it’s “a torpedoed ship full of gaping holes that is saved by the Hubbell-reconnects-with-Katie scene outside the Plaza hotel at the very end.” Which led me to wonder which other films are admired in this particular way — okay or mildly effective and sometimes frustrating in an in-and-out way, but they save themselves at the last minute with a killer ending. Please submit candidates.

Topic #2: According to commenter Andrew Williams, Kael also wrote that Redford is the object of desire in this movie, relatively passive, and Streisand is the active one. This relatively unassertive, quietly handsome quality, Kael went on, is why Redford didn’t work in The Great Gatsby because nobody bought him as the pursuer rather than the desired object. What actors in today’s realm (if any) qualify in this regard — devastatingly handsome and effortlessly sexy but unconvincing in a role requiring any degree of romantic aggression?

Topic #3: “Redford’s Hubbell Gardiner is very appealing, very magnetic,” I wrote, “but many have overlooked one very troubling aspect of his character. Not so much his lack of depth and conviction, or his brief affair with Lois Chiles or his bizarre decision to leave Streisand’s Katie just after she gives birth to their daughter (who DOES THAT?). I’m referring, rather, to Redford’s inexplicable, years-long friendship with Bradford Dillman’s character, J.J. — one of the most repulsively glib and shallow lightweights ever created in the history of American cinema.

“I ran into my share of these entitled guys in my suburban middle-class youth in New Jersey (Union County) and Connecticut (Fairfield County). Dillman’s fraternity buddy character is the proverbial country-club dickhead — a born Republican who likes his martinis at sundown and wears checked pants and plays a helluva game of golf.

“What a repulsive, heartless, value-less, quarter-of-an-inch-deep scumbag! And out of all the life forms crawling and slithering around on the planet earth in the 1940s and ‘50s, Hubbell Gardiner chose this TRULY REPELLENT HUMANOID as his best bruh, his pally, his affable drinking buddy. For the J.J. factor alone, Gardiner is a deeply flawed fellow in the eyes of God, Jesus, Krishna, Siddhartha, Buddha and the rest of the heavenly choir.”

A one-hour video of a director’s discussion, hosted by The Hollywood Reporter‘s Rebecca Keegan, popped this morning. Three of the films made by this group are damn near perfect — King Richard, Parallel Mothers and A Hero. I don’t admire these three films — I love them.

In no particular order the participants are (1) Belfast‘s Kenneth Branaugh (who should “do something” about the eyebags and maybe touch up the neck wattle — a very simple Prague procedure — and also grow his hair out a little bit), (2) King Richard‘s Reinaldo Marcus Green (brilliant fellow, smooth patter, good looking), (3) Parallel Mothers’ Pedro Almodovar, (4) A Hero‘s Asghar Farhadi, (5) The Power of the Dog‘s Jane Campion, and (6) Nightmare Alley‘s Guillermo del Toro.

I’ve gone bowling maybe 10 times in my entire life, 15 at the outside. Not that I mind throwing a few. I enjoy failing at bowling as much as the next guy. I never scratch but I rarely throw strikes, and after a while this pisses me off. There are always one or two pins left after my second throw. What am I doing wrong?

I realize, of course, that bowling is more of a laid-back pastime than a “sport.” Hang out, get buzzed on Budwiesers, make fun of someone’s technique or frequent gutter balls, flirt with the women in the next lane. But those relatively shitty scores that I always end up with are bothersome. This is one of the many, many reasons why I’ve never liked Kingpin (’96).

The basic thing is that I’ve never felt especially at ease with the people who frequent bowling alleys. They’ve alway struck me as low-rent animals who don’t read much or appreciate fine cinema — vaguely schlubby proletariats, Lebowski-cult stoners, beer-heads, horrible dressers, fatties, guys in dad jeans, loud families. Not my kind of people.

I began feeling vaguely alienated from bowling relatively early in life. I remember going bowling with my cub-scout troupe when I was nine or ten. There was this kid named Howard Schoffler whose mother had orchestrated the excursion. We quickly learned that she had been teaching Howard how to bowl for some time, and that he’d become pretty good at it. So right away I was seething about what a set-up this was. Howard’s mother wanted us to “have fun” and we did, but the visit to the bowling alley was mainly about everyone taking note of Howard’s bowling skills.

I was also irritated by Howard having mastered the hook or spin-ball technique — he would throw the ball down the right side of the lane with a leftward spin on the ball, and them five or six feet before impact the spin would kick in and the ball would crash into the center of the pins for a perfect strike. My reaction wasn’t a hearty “wow…good throw, Howard!” My reaction was a silent “fuck you, showoff.”

Ever since that day I’ve been generally against the idea of hooking the ball. Because I don’t ever want to be like Howard Schoffler. I use the arrows as guides, and I throw straight and true and hard. I love it when one of my “fastballs” slides down the lane without rolling, or halfway at least.

I’m very sorry about the shocking ski-slope death of 37 year-old French actor Gaspard Ulliel. I thought he was fascinating in Bertrand Bonello‘s Saint Laurent, which I saw in Cannes in May 2014. I also respected his performances in Xavier Dolan‘s It’s Only The End of the World (’16) and, 12 years earlier, Jean Pierre Jeunet‘s A Very Long Engagement.

Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho (Parasite) and RPatz (also know as RBatz) are teaming for a futuristic sci-fi film based on Edward Ashton’s upcoming novel Mickey7.

From Justin Kroll‘s Deadline report, filed this morning “In Ashton’s book Mickey7 is an Expendable, a disposable employee on a human expedition sent to colonize the ice world of Hoth Niflheim. Whenever there’s a mission that’s too dangerous — even suicidal — the crew turns to Mickey. After one iteration of Mickey dies, a new body is regenerated with most of his memories intact. After six deaths, Mickey7 understands the terms of his deal…and why it was the only colonial position unfilled when he took it.”

If it was within my power to produce a dream project for Bong Joon-ho to direct, I would choose a Parasite prequel titled Maid In The Rain.

I’m envisioning the full story of Lee Jung-eun‘s Moon-gwang, the once-employed housekeeper for the wealthy Park family who managed to somehow persuade the Kim family to let her into the Park home during a rainstorm while the Kims are drunk.

Maid in the Rain would explore all the whys and wherefores of this curious incident while exploring various alternate scenarios that might explain one if the greatest mysteries of 21st Century cinema.

In late December 1974 I caught my first screening of The Godfather, Part II. It was fairly cold that day in Connecticut, and I clearly recall that the theatre, located somewhere north of downtown Stamford, was closed when my sister and I first arrived around 1 pm, and that the manager arrived a few minutes later and hurriedly opened the place up, and that the theatre was damn chilly inside. We kept our overcoats on.

My second viewing was back in Los Angeles the following month. I attended a mid-evening weekday show with a friendly acquaintance (i.e., not quite a friend) named Mitch. The showing might have been at the National Theatre in Westwood, and if not there then at a small theatre on Wilshire Blvd. near 14th Street in Santa Monica.

I was enthralled with Francis Coppola‘s film, of course, but Mitch was muttering about how cold and frosty Al Pacino‘s performance was. (He preferred the younger, more open-hearted Michael Corleone in The Godfather.)

And then Mitch did the unthinkable. He fell asleep! During The Godfather, Part II! He went out roughly a half-hour before the ending, and was snoring to boot. I got up and sat four or five rows closer to the screen so I wouldn’t hear his bear noises. I was furious with the guy. He had nodded off as an expression of critical disapproval by way of boredom, or so I believed, and I found that intolerable.

And so the film ended, and Nina Rota‘s music filled the theatre during the closing credits. And then the lights came up and I got up and walked by the still-dozing Mitch. The natural joshing “guy” thing would have been to nudge him awake and say “congratulations, asshole — you missed the last half hour” or something along those lines. But I was too consumed with disdain so I walked to the rear of the theatre and just stood there, thinking “fuck that guy, what a douche.”

I wasn’t going to leave on my own (we had driven to the theatre together), but I damn sure wasn’t going to wake him up. Mitch had to understand what a crime it was to fall asleep on a film that was obviously first-rate, and that would go on to win the Best Picture Oscar of 1974.

The theatre had been roughly one-third filled, and of course eventually the lights were turned all the way up and whole place was emptied out and only slumbering Mitch was left. Eventually the ushers started moving through the aisles and cleaning the place up. I stood my ground and watched as an older usher slowly roused Mitch with a couple of shoulder taps. He got up, sleepy-eyed and foggy-headed and a bit stumble-footed, and made his way up the aisle. He was seething.

“The fuck you leave me there for?”, Mitch said. “Why didn’t you wake me up?” I should have said “Sorry, man, but you needed to be lightly punished for falling asleep during a great film.” Instead I lied and said, “I don’t know, you looked so comfortable…I didn’t have the heart to wake you.”

Mitch had been a comme ci comme ca pally but was nothing close to a good friend. I never saw another film with him — I can tell you that much.

We all understand that discussing women’s facial work is totally verboten these days, as the Renee Zellweger vs. Owen Gleiberman facial work kerfuffle of June 2016 made clear. While HE is willing to play along, it has long been my position that expert, quality-level work should be respected. (I can say this as a recipient of certain Prague-based procedures myself.) Consider this before-and-after of Marilyn Monroe. Obviously an excellent adjustment — one that requires appropriate praise for plastic surgeon Michael Gurdin, who obviously knew what he was doing.

Last night I read Lila Shapiro’s “Joss Whedon Exposed.” It had been described as an urgent must-read. It’s certainly long and well-written in a semi-dramatic sort of way, and seemingly thorough as far as these types of articles (i.e., saga of a reputed shitheel) tend to go.

Over the last two or three years (longer?) there’s been an emerging consensus among co-workers that Whedon, once regarded as a feminist-minded creative producer & show-runner who understood and celebrated women, has behaved in a cruel, callous, dishonorable way (including sexually), and that he’s now, to quote the “Vulture” subhead, “an outcast accused of misogyny.”

Shapiro’s piece, based in large part on an interview with Whedon that happened last spring, reiterates and expands upon these claims. The basic thrust is “Whedon, a bad man, has become a toxic figure whom many if not most producers and distributors and streamers don’t want to work with any more, but his full, harmful toxicity hasn’t been fully understood, not really, and so Whedon must continue to be lashed & shamed for these failings.”

It led me to conclude that as powerful Hollywood types go, Whedon may have behaved as badly as Kirk Douglas’s Jonathan Shields character did in The Bad and the Beautiful. (Or worse.) He may have been as cruel and exploitive as Harry Cohn, Louis B. Mayer, Daryl F. Zanuck, Jack L. Warner, David O. Selznick and other producer kingpins may have been in their day. (Or something like that.) Hollywood has long rewarded or at least not interfered with powerful abusive types for many decades, and sometimes the karma snaps back and the chickens come home to roost . And…?