A little less than two years ago I posted a story about a toll-booth lawbreaking incident on the Connecticut turnpike. It never got any traction despite being about an everyday ethical issue that anyone could relate to. Here it is again:

Highway tolls are collected via E-ZPass (created in ’87) or by throwing coins into a metal bin. Human toll-collectors — people dressed in some dull gray uniform whom drivers literally hand coins to — are still around, I guess, but not, I would guess, for much longer.

Back in the pre-automated ’70s manned tollbooths were fairly common. On the Connecticut turnpike a red traffic light would beam as you approached the toll station. You would come to a halt, hand over 50 or 75 cents to the guy/gal, the light would turn green and you’d gun it.

One dusky evening in ’77 I was approaching a West Haven toll station on the Connecticut turnpike. I was driving my 1975 LTD station wagon, which always got lousy gas mileage. I realized a mile out that I didn’t quite have the full 50 cents, and no cash in the wallet. I was counting the coins as I approached…a quarter, a dime, a nickel and six pennies…no, seven pennies! Three cents short.

I sure as shit wasn’t going to pull over and accept some kind of traffic summons for being three cents light…c’mon. So I decided to be Steve McQueen in The Getaway.

I pulled up to the booth and handed the guy the 47 cents. I started to inch forward as he was counting and saying out loud “35, 40…hold on, hold on.” I hit the gas and the guy freaked — “Hey, wait a minute, whoa!” There was no gate so the red light and the violation alarm (ding-ding-ding-ding-ding!) would have to go fuck themselves. I was Clyde Barrow after a bank robbery.

The booth guy went into fury mode…”Hey, hey…stohhhhp!…whoooaaa!” I looked in my rearview as I pulled away. Toll-booth guy had stepped out of the booth and was standing in a half-crouch position…”whoooaaa!!”

I contemplated my situation as I drove away. I had just broken Connecticut state law and didn’t feel good about that. But there was something a bit wrong with that guy. I wasn’t a criminal. It wasn’t like I’d given him 12 or 13 cents or something. Who screams and shouts over a three-cent shortage? Within seconds I’d completely shorn myself of any guilt over shortchanging the state, and decided that the toolbooth guy…that howling uniformed goon was the asshole in this situation, not me.

Did the toll-booth guy get my license plate? (This was before instant photographic capture.) Would he put in a call to the state police, telling them to pull over a young long-haired guy in a brown LTD wagon? I considered getting off the turnpike and driving for a few miles on local roads, just to be safe. Then I realized how loony-tunes that would be. The toll-booth guy was just an oddball with a temper, an obsessive without a life. I stayed on the turnpike and all was well.

But that haunted feeling of being a lawbreaker on the run is still with me.

I’m very sorry about the passing of Rifleman costar Johnny Crawford, which happened yesterday (4.29) at age 75. The poor guy began grappling with Alzheimer’s disease two or three years ago. Hugs and condolences for fans, friends, family, colleagues.

What makes this photo so great is a strong likelihood that no one arranged for the red hardtop Mustang (probably a ’65 model) to be cruising east at the corner of Sunset and Clark at this very moment. And even if someone did plan it, it’s kinda mindblowing that the Mustang and the Whisky are almost exactly the same shade of red**. This was probably taken sometime between 5.19.67 and 5.21.67, which is when the Byrds were headlining and the Doors were the openers.

** Yes, the Whisky red is a tiny bit earthier…a faint touch of brown.

…it’s good writing. (And good acting!) And if it was spontaneous, it’s one of the greatest off-the-cuff lines ever heard on TikTok.

Please enjoy Harrison Ford watching a magic trick & then reacting in the only way Harrison Ford reacts to anything pic.twitter.com/oAoUlDT3GY

— Clarisse Loughrey (@clarisselou) April 28, 2021

The anti-Kidman, pro-Messing mob is getting more and more strident. Kidding…we’re probably just talking about 40 or 50 Twitter soreheads, and possibly fewer. The complaints will mostly vaporize when Aaron Sorkin‘s Being The Ricardos comes out…what, later this year?

In a 2014 Fade-In interview with the late F.X. Feeney, Nebraska director Alexander Payne said the following:

“Some studio people asked me out to lunch a couple of months ago, and they said, ‘Look, if we let you run the studio, what changes would you make?’ I said, ‘Well, thanks for asking. I believe in the $25 to $45 million adult comedy and adult drama. Why does everything now adult have to be absolutely shrink-wrapped and be robbed of the production value it could have? Where is Trading Places today? Where is Groundhog Day today? Intelligent summer comedies. Where are the intelligent ones?’ Then the studio guy said, ‘Well $45 million…I think I might disagree with your price point.’ I said, ‘You might, but where is Out of Africa today? Why don’t we have films like that?”

Payne wasn’t crazy to ask this. Others felt the same way. The middle-class Spotlight came out the following year (2015) and Manchester By The Sea happened in 2016. But look at how things are now. Good God. It’s just noteworthy, I think, that Payne’s viewpoint seemed entirely legit and reasonable and not in the least bit eccentric only seven years ago.

I’ve never seen and will almost certainly never see Steel Magnolias start to finish. Ditto Beaches. That’s all I can think of right now. There are dozens that aren’t coming to mind. My brain engine won’t turn over.

I once worked with a woman who had never seen Heat. When asked why, she said, "Because every man I've ever worked with has all but DEMANDED I watch it. My life is just fine without it." Me, I've never seen Scarface. Prolly not gonna. What's your "never seen/won't see" classic? pic.twitter.com/ELfL9EDbGG

— Tolkien Negro (@marcbernardin) April 29, 2021

Earlier Joe Rogan: “Are you a healthy person? Like, look, don’t do anything stupid, but you should take care of yourself. You should…if you’re a healthy person, and you’re exercising all the time and you’re young and you’re eating well, like, I don’t think you need to worry about this.”

HE to Earlier Rogan: “You know some younger people who eat well? Most of the younger people I’ve known eat crap and carbohydrates and drink a whole lot. People generally don’t start eating well until they get into their 30s and 40s.”

Today’s [4.29) Rogan: “I’m not an anti-vax person…in fact I said I believe they’re safe. I encourage many people to take them. My parents were vaccinated. I just said that I don’t think that if you’re a young healthy person, that you need it. [Fauci’s] argument was you need it for other people [to avoid infecting them]. But that’s a different conversation. And yes, that makes sense.”

Extra Rogan: “I am not a doctor. I am a fucking moron. I am a cage-fighting commentator. I am not a respected source of information even for me. But I at least try to be honest about what I am saying.”

HE clarity: “Is there potential harm in getting the vaccine? No. Is there potential harm in not getting the vaccine? Yes. End of discussion.”

Sidenote: Thank God Rogan’s ditched that atrocious red-tanning-bed studio design.

Viewers considering the merits of Chamber of Horrors (’66) were probably given pause by the fact that the director’s first name was “Hy” — short for Hyman. “Hy” is not the name of a director of a horror film — it’s (a) the host of a benefit variety show, (b) a guy you might play golf with, (c) a guy who owns a Palm Springs restaurant-bar or (d) runs a San Francisco comedy club.

Hy’s full name was Hyman Jack Averback. He was a fairly successful radio, TV and film actor who directed a lot of TV shows, and who co-produced F Troop.

Chamber of Horrors was originally shot as a feature-length pilot for a proposed series called House of Wax. It was considered too intense for the tube, so Warner Bros. marketers dreamt up the “fear flasher” and “horror horn” gimmicks. Shot at Warner Bros. studios in Burbank (Tony Curtis performed an uncredited cameo), it opened on 10.21.66.

The narrator of the trailer is William Conrad.

Last weekend I posted a pick-up piece that was based upon a 4.23 piece by Vulcan Reporter containing what I’m told was mistaken reporting.

The article ended with the following: “While Warner Bros is not abandoning home video media completely, the amount of Warner Bros films and shows that will be getting physical media releases will be going down as the idea is to develop more interest in HBO Max.”

A knowledgable source says that the story was based upon “an improper or misunderstood comment from Jerry Beck to someone who had left their fact checker in their sock drawer.

“No one from Warner Archive said anything. [Beck] knew some release info that was not to be discussed, and mentioned it in an interview. That info was taken totally out of context, and then put in an article by a journalist without a clue.

“The studio isn’t the problem. The pick-up piece you ran on 4.24 was neither true nor accurate.”

If you have a liking for “hang-out” films, consider a view that Fred Zinnemann‘s The Sundowners (’60), which isn’t even available via HD streaming, is one of the better ones.

Nicely shot by Jack Hildyard (The Bridge on the River Kwai) and running 141 minutes, it’s about a family of itinerant Australian sheep drovers (Robert Mitchum, Deborah Kerr, Peter Ustinov, Michael Anderson, Jr.) driving a large herd to market.

It’s a hang-out film because it’s leisurely, laid-back and pretty much plotless — it just ambles along from one episode to another. Okay, there’s a third-act focus on possibly buying a home and settling down, but there’s never much urgency about this.

In hang-out films dramatic conflicts, second-act pivots and third-act crescendos barely poke through and are otherwise subordinate to the ebb and flow of relationships between the main characters. A focus on mood, flavor, attitude and atmosphere (be it laid-back or existential).

In the latter sense you could almost call Michelangelo Antonioni‘s L’Avventura (’60), L’Eclisse (’62) and La Notte (’63) hang-out films.

One of my personal faves is Jim Jarmusch‘s Only Lovers Left Alive — actually half of a hang-out film and half of a “distressed bohemian” interior-design trip.

In 2014 Quentin Tarantino was quoted saying that Howard Hawks‘ Rio Bravo (’59) was his favorite hang-out movie.

Five years later his own Once Upon A Time in Hollywood mirrored Rio Bravo‘s aesthetic.

The 1930s-era film that David O. Russell has been shooting since early this year and which stars Christian Bale, Margot Robbie and John David Washington (and costars Rami Malek, Zoe Saldana, Robert De Niro, Mike Myers, Timothy Olyphant, Michael Shannon, Chris Rock, Anya Taylor-Joy. Andrea Riseborough, Matthias Schoenaerts and Alessandro Nivola) allegedly has a firm title — Canterbury Glass.

I don’t believe it — a $250 million period ensemble piece (“a doctor and a lawyer form an unlikely partnership”) with a title that sounds like a high-toned PBS historical drama or documentary?

In their man-on-the-street geography quiz interviews Jay Leno and Jimmy Kimmel have shown that average Millennials and Zoomers are cretins when it comes to identifying continents and countries, much less regions and cities, and that maybe 1 out 500 might know that the title refers to the medieval stained glass windows (between 800 and 900 years old) in Canterbury Cathedral, and that the allusion is to something aged, fragile and extremely valuable.

With a notoriously uneducated and incurious populace, presenting a super-expensive caper film titled Canterbury Glass is like saying “we know you guys don’t know or care what the title means and we don’t care if you do or don’t…we’re calling it this in order to goad and confound you, and to make sure you understand that the people who made this film live in their own aesthetic and cultural membrane, and that they’d rather please themselves than reach out to you with a title that adds up in a way you might understand or relate to.”

IMDB Pro page capture: