Jeffrey Wells The first viewing of a film is a date. The third viewing of the same film indicates definite interest, hot cinematic “sex” and a potential for going steady. The seventh or eighth viewing means you’re living together and still having good sex, but oh, those first three or four times! The fifteenth viewing means you’re married and locked in the long haul, but the thrill is gone.
HE to Owen Gleiberman: So much of life and living is propelled by illusion. But for me, Margaret Hamilton’s cackling, green-skinned witch is an absolutely genuine, real-deal figure of campy fun and wicked frolic. Matriarchy schmatriarchy!
Political journalist Ryan Lizza felt betrayed, naturally, when he discovered five years ago that journalist Olivia Nuzzi, his live-in fiancé at the time, had done the gasping slurpy nasty with former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford, whom she had profiled for New York magazine in late ‘19.
Four years later came Nuzzi’s second affair of sorts — not an actual slippin’ and slidin’ thing, Nuzzi has written, as it was all about sexting — with an older politician, the hoarse-voiced Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. , Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Except in his second Substack piece about Nuzzi’s outre sexual entanglements, Lizza has posted a salacious excerpt from a “poem” that RFK allegedly sent to Nuzzi — one that not only challenges her “American Canto” account of an allegedly non-sexual involvement with RFK (whom she alludes to in the book as “the politician”) but graphically alludes to a pulse-quickening blowjob he may or may not have received from Nuzzi during their 2024 mess-around…hey, I’m just reporting this stuff.
Lizza has described “American Canto” as “a largely fictitious and self-serving account” of her thing with RFK. The honesty factor or lack thereof is between Nuzzi, her publisher and her readers, but it’s icky and rather vicious of Lizza to have posted RFK’s alleged account of…this is really distasteful in more ways than one…the adoring Nuzzi swallowing his “river” without spilling a drop.
Lizza’s (and possibly RFK’s) odious excerpt:
Even if Nuzzi did provide exceptional pleasuring last year to the nation’s current Health and Human Services honcho, Lizza’s attempt to publicly humiliate an ex-girlfriend reflects poorly upon his own character and temperament. Deciding to post that sliver of a b.j. “poem” was mean and toxic.
Lizza on discovering Luzzi’s Sanford betrayal — a note that alludes to more swallowing
A couple of months ago Nuzzi landed a West Coast editor position with Vanity Fair. Will Lizza’s posting RFK’s possibly genuine or possibly fanciful b.j. “poem” lead to VF cutting her loose? I say keep her on.
Nuzzi is obviously a tiny bit wacko, but she’s also a memorable “character” in the tradition of Isadora Duncan or Tallulah Bankhead or Marlene Dietrich, and who among us doesn’t enjoy colorful accounts of reckless, go-for-the-gusto living and yaddah-yaddah? Does each and every female political reporter or columnist have to radiate astringent, button-down posturing and no-monkey-business professionalism? The system can’t allow for an occasional free-spirited sensualist, just to liven things up?
It takes all sorts to make a world.
…and they are selling such books (I read them to Sutton last night), why not create children’s books based upon The Wild Bunch and The Towering Inferno? Hell, why not go real-world? Tyke books based upon the 9/11 catastrophe, the Kennedy assassination and the Cambodian genocide of the ‘70s, say.
Howard Hawks, Paul Newman and HE are now a power-sharing, chrome-steel triumvirate.
From this point on the guiding light perceptions of HE (all high-quality films feature a late-second-act pivot), Hawks (“three great scenes and no bad ones”) and Newman (Newman’s Law of 15 at the front and back) comprise the core of our movie-assessing philosophy.
Hawks, Newman and HE are hereby resolved to move forward in this moviegoing life based on the clarity and radiance of shared perceptions and accumulated life wisdom (i.e., long is the way and hard that, out of darkness, leads up to light).
Apparently the late, great Paul Newman once passed along a rock-steady cinematic truth — one that rivals Howard Hawks’ declaration that all award-worthy films have “at least three great scenes and no bad ones.”
Newman’s Law states that all first-rate, award-worthy or at least commercially successful films start and end with a certain gravitational punch or pizazz. They grab the audience during their opening 15 minutes, and then really bring it home during the final 15. If the opening and the closing deliver the right stuff, the film is a keeper.
Like The Wild Bunch, say. Or Dr. Strangelove or Out of the Past or From Here to Eternity or The French Connection or The Exorcist or The Best Years of Our Lives or Paths of Glory or Viva Zapata or…
Think of The Hustler’s opening sequence (Newman and Myron McCormack using subterfuge to take several tavern patrons) and the 15-minute finale (Newman beats Jackie Gleason, has it out with George C. Scott over the death of Piper Laurie).
Or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (beginning with Robert Redford being accused of cheating at poker, “hey, kid…how good are ya?”, and closing with that doomed, small-town shoot-out with Mexican militia).
Or The Verdict (alcoholic Newman enduring the humiliation of ambulance-chasing vs. semi-sober Newman’s big jury sermon + the jury finding for the plaintiff and against St. Catherine’s).
How does Newman’s Law apply to One Battle After Another? As much as I hate admitting this, Paul Thomas Anderson’s agitprop film does the double bang — a great opening 15 or 20 with the French 75 pulling off an immigration-camp raid, and a great car-chase finale out in the barren rolling hills.
How does Newman’s Law apply to Hamnet? It doesn’t because the effectiveness of Chloe Zhao’s drama is all about the final 15 — the opening 15 don’t really do the drill.
Sentimental Value delivers Newman satisfaction because it more or less begins with Renate Reinsve’s stage-fright breakout, and ends with a sound-stage filming scene that ties it all together.
Name one classic film (critically approved or popular with the mob) that doesn’t deliver the Newman.
During a summer day-trip to Washington, D.C., my young sister Laura and I experienced a short period of bathroom panic as we drove around with our mother, Nancy, at the wheel. Nancy said it was partly because of all the large fountains…all that gushing water was weakening our resolve.
It follows that millions of Los Angelenos felt the same psychological pressure yesterday due to the city coping with constant rainfall.
HE to Cozzalio: One “potty” break during the screening of Nouvelle Vague, and then another during a subsequent showing of Breathless?
So no attending to business BETWEEN these films, as some of us might do. Instead you sit down and watch both films and then in the middle of each one you go “whoops!…sorry, heh-heh, excuse me!” Then you get up and miss maybe three or four minutes of each film.
What is that? This is not serious movie-watching. Godard would have sneered at this. Ask anyone. Ask Scorsese or DeNiro.
So you go through your daily life submitting to bathroom breaks…what, six or seven times each waking day, not counting waking up at 2 or 3 am (or 3 or 4 am) to take a whiz or a dump?
Forgive me for making a coarse assumption, but “potty break” sounds to me like sit-down action. It’s basically a child’s term like “I went poopie” (I have a four-year-old granddaughter so don’t tell me) or, if you’re standing up, “I went pee-pee” or “wee-wee”.
I would have gone for more oblique terminology like “I used the facilities” or “I hit the head” or “I heeded the call of nature”, all of which allude to or allow for the possibility of stand-up action.
I shudder at the idea of hitting a bathroom this many times per day. It sounds like a form of tyranny.
Speaking of “sit-down action”, I posted a related piece 14 years ago.
[Posted on 9.19.11] Last night Jett, his roommate Sonya and I caught a 7:50 pm screening of Drive at Brooklyn’s UA Court Street Stadium plex. My second viewing. Great film.
I hit the smallish bathroom after it ended. Two urinals and a toilet stall with six or seven guys lined up. I should have bailed right then and there, but I was looking for a little sit-down action and wasn’t sure of my alternate options.
A guy left the stall and a 30something black dude took ownership and, like, didn’t come out. Three, four minutes. Five minutes. Six. Could he be undergoing self-administered surgery? Filling out a mortgage application?
Then, still on the pot, he began talking to his girlfriend on his cell, flirting with her, settling in. “How ya doin’? Movie’s over…yeah. You wanna eat somethin’?,” etc.
If I had any balls I would have knocked on the stall door and, just like Tom Cruise in Collateral, said, “Yo, homey!” I didn’t, of course. I just stood and waited like a sap, listening to this jerkoff go on and on. The idea of showing consideration to others simply hadn’t occurred to him.
Around the seven- or eight-minute mark I gave up and went outside and used the facilities at a nearby Barnes and Noble.
It’s simply a matter of culture and manners. Let’s face it — some people are low-lifes.
I’ll be attending an invitational screening of George Clooney‘s The Ides of March at the Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday. If I happen to hit the bathroom after it ends I can absolutely guarantee that nobody will sit in a toilet stall for several minutes, ignoring the fact that several others are waiting, while chit-chatting with a girl. I’ll put $100 on this right now. I’ll bet anything.
Criterion publicist to Scott Mantz: “Before we set up your Zoom interview with Eyes Wide Shut dp Larry Smith, we need you to give us your solemn oath…”
Mantz to Criterion: “Sure, whadaya need?”
Criterion to Mantz: “We want your promise that you’ll never mention the word ‘teal’ during your chat.”
Mantz to Criterion: “Teal? Me?”
Criterion to Mantz: “We’re serious, Scott.”
Mantz to Criterion: “Worry not! I’m your boy. I don’t think I even know what teal means.”
Remember that scene in Broadcast News when Albert Brooks‘ Aaron explains that William Hurt‘s Tom, while being “a very nice guy”, is the devil? We have a similar situation here. Mantz obviously doesn’t have hooves and horns and a long spiky tail, but…
HE to Mantz on Wednesday afternoon, 11.19: “I’m watching your 30-minute chat with Larry Smith, and you don’t even mention the obvious teal-tinting on Criterion’s EWS 4K Bluray. Unless I wasn’t paying attention, you don’t even MENTION it!! Nobody has ever had any problems with the brightness levels, as Larry mentions. It’s the fucking TEAL poisoning!”
[Note: Yesterday I shared my negative reactions with Mantz and, just to be sure, asked if he mentioned the word teal and/or asked Larry to comment about teal-ing. Scott ghosted me, of course. HE to Mantz: “I’m going to reasonably interpret your silence as confirmation that you never uttered the word.”]
“Larry says ‘the theatrical blues were the theatrical blues…we didn’t mess around with any of the main [color] structure’….bunk! That’s precisely what Larry and his ignoble Criterion cohorts have done. The vivid blue iron gates in that envelope-handover scene have been changed to somber subdued teal.
Robert Harris’s HTF review: “Are the blues deep rich blues? No. They do lean toward a teal.”
“Early on Larry says the film wasn’t color-timed or fine-tuned before it was released because of Kubrick’s untimely passing. Oh, yeah? I spoke to EWS producer Jan Harlan a few months (or was it weeks?) after EWS was released, and he was very deeply involved. He really cared.
“But Larry is telling us…what, that Harlan didn’t try to finesse the color as best he could before the film was released in ‘99?? Nobody stepped into the color-correcting breach after Kubrick passed on March 7, 1999? (EWS was released four months later — 7.13.99.) I don’t buy that. Nobody does.”
Larry also says that EWS “was too grainy,” a condition that he presumably remedied. And yet in his Home Theatre Forum review of the 4K Criterion disc, Harris writes “grain haters need not reply.”
Since when is Ryan Coogler’s Sinners a movie for old-timers, much less a highly recommended one?
It’s a drawling, drooling, blues-savoring, bloody-faced cunnilingus vampire exploitation film aimed at POCs and under-40 wokesters with TikTok accounts.
Are AARP execs aware that old farts of both sexes aren’t exactly into ravenous oral sex, and that the mere mention of this arcane sexual practice makes them uncomfortable?
And why haven’t you recommended Sentimental Value? Have you even seen it?
What else are you recommending to the walker-and-wheelchair set? Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom?
Everybody messes up from time to time, myself included, but you can’t misreport when two 1974 classics were released, and in the lede paragraph yet!
You can only harvest what was captured by 75- or 80-year-old cameras back in the day…35mm film was what it was…there can be no glorious visual revelation from a 79-year-old Oscar winner…you just have to say “okay, good enhancement but mid ‘40s film technology was obviously of its time, and that’s as far as it went.”
HE to “riboleh”: That’s a nicely written report — hats off. But let’s get real. I presume you own the 2013 Best Years Of Our Lives Bluray, which looks truly great for a 35mm monochrome film shot in 1945 or thereabouts. (35mm is 35mm — Wyler’s film wasn’t shot in large-format VistaVision.)
Are you saying that the 4K enhancement you saw at the Academy museum represents a significant bump over the Bluray? If that’s what you’re saying, I don’t believe you. Due respect but it can’t be “whoa, baby!” better than the Bluray. A Greg Toland masterwork, yes, but it was just 35mm and you can’t transform this film into an ice cream sundae with whipped cream and a cherry on top.
