“Republicans have indulged their crazies for far too long…”

Yesterday Paul Schrader wrote about admiring a waitress with “radiant” cafe au lait skin, and so he said “you have beautiful skin.” Paul’s wife and son were with him, and Paul’s not exactly a young buck on the prowl so he figured “I’m harmless so where’s the harm in sharing a discreet compliment?”

I’ll tell him where the harm is. The harm is in the fact that he’s an older white guy, and a decent percentage of urban progressive women (teens to mid 30s and perhaps beyond) would just as soon explode his life into smithereens as look at him. I’m not kidding. Guys like Paul Schrader are deer, and it’s deer hunting season everywhere right now, and if the Schraders of the world want to be dead all they have to do is give the “hunters” a reason to get out their high-powered social media rifles and fire at them.

There are only two options in your potential dealings with younger attractive women in any professional environment (including restaurants or bars), and that’s to (a) treat them with the utmost politeness and respect, and (b) think of them as overweight male Armenian garbage collectors who haven’t bathed in a couple of days.

Get this into your stupid thick head and keep it there: There are no attractive women out there — they don’t exist — and if you ignore this rule there’s a good chance you’ll be bruised, wounded or killed sooner or later. For if you convey the slightest appreciation of some aspect of their physical allure you are asking for trouble, and I mean potentially big trouble.

Tatiana says that complimenting a woman on her skin is too intimate if you’ve only just met her. Saying she has lovely skin isn’t quite like saying she has a great ass or nice breasts, but it’s in that vicinity. You can compliment a waitress on what she’s wearing — ring, bracelet, necklace, perfume — but no comments about her physicality. You can compliment a female relative or the wife of a friend on having nice skin, but not a waitress.

There’s only one safe way to tell a waitress that you approve of her, and that’s to leave her a large tip. Any other expression of approval will leave you open for Twitter assassination, Facebook sniping, TikTok takedowns, lawsuits, screaming fights in the parking lot and whatnot. Just shut up and order the food and that’s all. Remember — she’s an Armenian garbage collector, she’s wearing stained work overalls and lace-up work boots, and she weighs 285 pounds. Oh, wait…sorry!

If Sean Hannity offers tribute when a showbiz figure passes on, it’s fair to at least presume that the dear and departed might’ve been a rightwing dick.

Jackie Mason wasn’t always in that camp — in his ‘60s and ‘70s heyday Mason, a blunt-spoken Borscht belt comedian with a grim view of human nature and a rat-a-tat-tat patter, was a fairly funny guy. He hurt his career when he apparently gave the finger to Ed Sullivan in March ‘64, but Mason hung in there. To each his own voice and style.

But came the 21st Century Mason became an Obama hater, hence the Hannity allegiance. Finding that view horrid, that’s when I cut him loose. Mason was 93.

It took about 40 minutes before I remembered.

I’ve been watching Leos Carax‘s Annette for a while…two hours and 19 minutes all in…but now I have to hit the Apple store. Update: Okay, it’s fixed.

Honest initial impression: As they (Driver, Cotillard, Sparks guys, Carax, singers) were striding down the street at night while singing “May We Start?”, I wanted to see them attacked and eaten by snarling wolves. No, changed my mind — I wouldn’t want the wolves to hurt the kids or the female singers, and certainly not Cotillard. But definitely Russell and Ron Mael…that smug little half-smile that Russell wears and the way he folds his scarf around his neck as they leave the studio and stride out of the building and down the sidewalk, and especially director Leos Carax…the orchestrator of the whole thing. You might say I felt an instant animal dislike for this film.

Val Kilmer — haggard and roughed up by cancer but spiritually persistent as far as it goes. He was Mr. Hot Shit in the Reagan, Poppy Bush and Clinton eras (Top Gun, Batman Forever, The Doors, Tombstone, Heat, The Saint), but now he’s the semi-tragic star and cinematographer of Val. I saw this absorbing, dig-down portrait of the 61 year-old actor and onetime superstar yesterday afternoon, and for a while I didn’t know what to think except “uhm, well…”

Be honest — it’s a melancholy sit.

Edited by Leo Scott and Ting Poo, Val is all catch-as-catch-can video footage — stuff that Kilmer shot over the last 40 years, ’80s and ’90s VHS and onward into digital and 1080p. Some of it is just faces and moments and time-grabs, and some of it is steady and gentle and poignant, and after a while it gets you…it’s a serious doc about a serious, intense guy…haunting, intimate and often (how could it not be?) quite sad at times.

“I think of myself as a sensitive, intelligent human being with the soul of a clown…”

You can sense that whomever and whatever Kilmer might have been when he was young and pugnacious and humming with hormones in the ’80s and ’90s, age and cancer have definitely taken him aside and whispered in his ear “time to turn that shit off, bruh…those chapters are over.”

Kilmer has not only modified what and who he is inside but age and disease have molded him into a different physical being — he now looks a bit like Will Sampson from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest only older and grayer. Imagine if Cary Grant had aged into William Hickey in Prizzi’s Honor or Oskar Homolka — it’s on that level.

And everyone had to wonder why Kilmer didn’t show up in Cannes a week or two ago for the Val premiere. It was easily the biggest moment of his life and career this century, and yet for some reason…

You know what Val tells you? I’ll tell you what Val tells you. It tells you that when you grow older, life does not fuck around. Especially when cancer comes along and says “hey man…are you ready for some serious shit in your life? Because I’m about to fuck you up but good.”

There were four…no, five standout moments for me. But before I mention them I should share an opinion, which is that Val would have been a better package if it had devoted, say, 35% or 40% of its running time to professional-grade video interviews with, say, eight or ten talking heads — friends, colleagues, agents, producers, journalists…people with a little perspective outside of KilmerDome.

For me the five most affecting moments are (a) Kilmer arguing with director John Frankenheimer on the set of Island of Dr. Moreau (“Will you turn the video camera off, please?”), (b) Kilmer sitting by a fireplace and cutting off hunks of his long hair with a knife (this was the one sequence that made me think of getting up and leaving), (c) Kilmer and his son Jack dressed in mid ’60s Batman and Robin costumes, (d) a weary Kilmer telling an assistant that he needs to take a break from autograph-signing and fan-greeting, due to some physical ailment, and (e) Kilmer driving through his childhood neighborhood of Chatsworth and muttering “this place is hell…pure hell…I hate it.” (Or words to that effect.)

Paraphrasing a line from a 5.6.20 Taffy Brodesser Akner N.Y. Times piece about Kilmer: We still need to believe that all our efforts weren’t for nothing, that we could — we will — survive a dark moment in our history and that when that happens, we won’t be left without the things that made those moments decipherable and meaningful and therefore tolerable.”

Repeating: what Val finally tells you is that life doesn’t fuck around.

My iPhone 12 Pro Max, bought only six weeks ago (June 11), stopped working this morning. Total freeze-out, won’t let me sign in. Tried the usual YouTube tutorials…nothing. I now have a Genius Bar appointment for 7 pm this evening. If a relatively new iPhone doesn’t even reboot there’s something fundamentally wrong — I definitely have grounds to demand a new one.

Remember the old solution to start-up problems or otherwise frozen iPhones? You’d use a paper clip to push the hole in the side of the phone for a “soft” reset…remember? That’s been eliminated in the newer models — no more hole or paper clips. Now the soft reset solution is to briefly hit the up and down volume button, and then press the power button down and wait. Even that procedure doesn’t work with my newbie.

I didn’t do anything to the phone…no accidental liquids. Okay, I dropped it a day or two ago but that’s part for the course. Plus I have a plastic shock-absorber cover.

I just saw M. Night Shyamalan’s Old. It delivers a hooky premise (wealthy tourists are unable to leave a cliffside cove in which the laws of time and biology are bizarrely suspended) but without much rhyme or consistency.

It’s interesting and trippy and semi-spooky — I was certainly never bored — but there are all kinds of loose ends and head-scratchy developments that don’t line up or unify. And yet despite the haphazard plotting it feels oddly intriguing.

In other words, the fact that the low-key horror elements don’t make sense or build into a cohesive whole strangely works in Old‘s favor. It feels like a first draft of an experimental creeper, written by someone new to the game who doesn’t care about following the usual rules. I was saying to myself “this is kinda sloppy but at least it’s different, and I’ve no idea where it’s going.”

And then during the final 15 minutes Old suddenly loses its nerve and turns logical — it tries to impose order by making sense of things (villains, conspiracy, arrival of law), and in so doing it betrays and destroys itself. A complete collapse.

As I left the theatre a guy booed. But without the imposition of logic and rationality during the finale, I’m betting that the booing guy would have been more accepting and perhaps even won over.

But of course rural bumblefucks don’t have common sense. Because they’re stupid bumblefucks who live in their own little vacuum-sealed Trumpian or Marjorie Taylor Greene echo chambers.

I’ve never felt that the term “re-shoots” is a fair one, as it suggests that a film in question hasn’t worked out in editing, and that it’s been re-thought, re-written and re-shot because what was shot before wasn’t good enough. That’s not what re-shoots typically means. Re-shoots mostly means that new material been shot. Perhaps a scene or two will be re-shot, and that’s rare. And so what if that happens? Every writer working on anything of any size or scope always rewrites, re-thinks, re-shuffles and re-shapes. Filmmakers also, and it’s all to the good.

Bill McCuddy to HE (written last week): “I love you. You know that. I’ve been a fan for 20 odd years, but the column seems to be more for you than us. If this is The Sopranos, I want to be Tony, not Dr. Melfi. I know what I’m about to suggest involves more work, but the stories that I pay to see have to be mouth-watering. So far I’m dry coughing.”

HE to Friendo: “‘Mouth watering’? What am I, a hamburger chef? A gelato guy with a push cart? A trained seal? I bleed every day onto the keyboard and you’re saying ‘mmmm, I want more flavor, more gusto, better jokes, more pepperoni on the pizza.’ Jesus!”

McCuddy to HE: “The stuff we want to pay for has to be sexier and stickier, in my opinion. Air Mail is kind of getting it right but even they are struggling. I want you to succeed. Will keep you posted.

“P.S. For the record I’m fascinated with the evolution of the space and your battle with the Stalinist wokesters so, while I may in the minority, I’m good there. (Why not make all of THAT POLITCAL-CULTURAL SHIT the subscriber stuff?) And no, I’m not pissed that I wasn’t one of the insiders you gave a free pass to.”

HE to McCuddy: “Fine. Whatever. Thanks for the notes.”

McCuddy to HE: “Really or just being nice? Okay, I’ll take it either way.”

HE to Friendo: “What do you think I am, a news bureau here? A cable station with three anchors, four news writers, three tech guys, five producers and a couple of van drivers on call? I’m not Saturday Night Live, for Chrissake. It’s just me and the movies and whatever streams or opens and whatever happens on a real-deal basis…whatever comes to mind or pours out. I know you’re right, and that I have to generate more flavor, tastier ice cream, a dynamic twice-weekly podcast, steaks with more sizzle and drugs with more potency…I have to be a chef, a high-end drug dealer, a dramatist, a magician, an Uber driver, a comedian on the level of Dave Chapelle, a juggler, circus acrobat…all of that and more, and it still won’t be enough.

“Everything that happens or erupts goes into the column…everything including my entire 40 year history in this racket, my strange inability to see Nicolas Cage‘s Pig, not going to Cannes but going to the forthcoming Telluride Film Festival, my loathing of the Sundance and Toronto agendas, lost keys, trips to Prague and Zurich and Mexico, the souls of cats and kittens and pit bulls, lost wallets in the dumpster, side-eyes from fans of atrocious hip-hop at West Hollywood gas stations, lost iPhones, recollections of this and that…anything I can pull out of my head…fuck!

“Do you know of another one-man-band + long-standing bigmouth who generates even a third as much content? I’m not blah-blahing here…every day I’m digging fucking ditches.

“I’ve been grinding this shit out 24/7/365 since ’06 — 15 years straight. If you count the HE launch in August ’04 I’ve been doing it for 17 years. And 23 years if you count the launch of Mr. Showbiz and the other columns, beginning in October ’98. Every drop of blood I could squeeze out along the way, I’ve squeezed out. Every damn day and twice on Sundays, and it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. And it’s not enough for Bill McCuddy.”

McCuddy to HE: “THAT’S NOT WHAT I’M SAYING. I’m saying to build a subscriber base you gotta reconfigure some of what you’re saying to make it more irresistible. It’s MARKETING, not changing. And what do mean ‘not enough for me”(?) I come at least three times a day!”