Seven days ago I raved about the Kino Lorber Bluray of Marty Feldman‘s The Last Remake of Beau Geste (’77), which is considerably enhanced by Alan Spencer‘s delicious, I-was-there-because-I-was-Marty’s-friend commentary track.

A day or two later I watched a KL companion disc — a Bluray of Feldman’s In God We Tru$t, a 1980 anti-religion, anti-corporate satire that proved to be Feldman’s undoing.

The film contained a brief riff that insulted Universal/MCA by comparing it morally to the Ku Klux Klan. Feldman was told to remove the bit but he refused, contractually fortified as he was with final cut. In so doing he effectively terminated his five-film deal with Universal.

Plus In God We Tru$t wasn’t very funny. Not a total wash (it’s an inventive effort and carefully assembled) but that mescaline-in-the-blood feeling was in low supply.

Spencer’s commentary is just as first-hand candid and knowledgable as his Beau Geste shpiel, but the God We Tru$t saga is basically a downer. I’m sorry but it’s hard to feel intrigued, much less turned on, by a story about a comic genius who simultaneously killed himself (Feldman smoked five to six packs of cigarettes per day) and deep-sixed his career at roughly the same time. It’s an emotional tale from Spencer’s perspective, but tinged with a wasteful residue.

Feldman died of a heart attack in a Mexico City hotel in 1982, while filming Yellowbeard.

Our favorite Sunday hiking path…Whittier Drive and Lexington, north to Bridle Lane and then left on Angelo Drive and up, up, up and winding like a snake, right on Davies Drive, up and down and winding down to Cielo Drive and down to Benedict Canyon south, right on Roxbury and back to Lexington. Roughly a two-hour journey including breathers.

I wouldn’t watch Godzilla vs. Kong under any conditions…not for free, not if you offered to pay me $50 or $100, not if you offered to pick me up at my home in an SUV limo…nothing would suffice.

Excerpt #1 from David Rooney’s 3.29 THR review: “The pinhead, pear-shaped figure and tiny hands perhaps inevitably mean Zilla will always be runner-up in both the beauty and personality portions of the pageant.”

There are many ways of describing the physique of Fatzilla, but “pear-shaped”? Okay, we get it. Critics can’t be too careful these days.

“In the sometimes laborious franchise-crossover tradition of Moneymaker 1 vs. Moneymaker 2 — think Freddy vs. Jason, Alien vs. Predator, and ugh, Batman v Superman — Godzilla vs. Kong is a worthy enough match, and definitely a giant leap forward from their first battle, in the 1963 Toho production.

“If only it had the wit of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.”

HE add-on: Hell, if only it had the wit of Abbott and Costello Meet The Mummy.

This is an image from a film that was regarded at the time of its original release as sorta kinda scary. By the standards of ten years later (or the early Dario Argento period) the film in question wasn’t that scary at all — it was slow, ponderous, pretentious and stiff-necked. I’m betting that right now nobody will be able to identify it. Hint: the film bears a faint resemblance to The Vanishing.

58 years ago the Bronx Zoo installed an exhibit called “The Most Dangerous Animal In The World”. It was between the Mountain Gorilla and Orangutan cages. The exhibit was a barred mirror with an inscription below it — “This animal, increasing at a rate of 190,000 every 24 hours, is the only creature that has ever killed off entire species of other animals. Now it has achieved the power to wipe out all life on Earth.”

In short, Bronx Zoo management had detoured into a vein of misanthropic contemplation — an exhibit that basically said “look at yourselves” and “think it over.” And that was during the Kennedy years. It was perhaps appropriate that I experienced a similar moment of Bronx Zoo insight a few years later.

I was there with four or five friends sometime around ’71 or thereabouts, and we were all fairly ripped. And I was hit with my first “holy shit” realization about the nature of borough people — suddenly confronted with the fact that average families were icky and unrefined (not elegant, pot-bellied, compulsive junk-food inhalers) and poorly dressed (shorts, sandals, loud shirts, pork-pie hats) and not the sort of folks that, say, the Kennedy family might not invite over for brunch in Hyannisport.

I remember huddling with three or four friends who were mulling the exact same impressions, and we were all shaking our heads and muttering “Jesus, look at these people…wow.”

Roger Corman‘s Teenage Caveman (’58) has been a joke movie for decades. Long ago Robert Vaughn (who died at age 77 in 2016) called it “the worst movie ever made”, and it may still be that.

But remember that it had a decent third-act twist: the prehistoric world of the film was actually a post-nuclear holocaust realm. In short, it ended like Planet of the Apes.

Vaughn obviously didn’t look teen-aged in the film. He was around 25 when it was shot, and looked 29 or 30. He would’ve been convincing if the film had been titled 20something Caveman With a Mortgage and a Baby On The Way.

…for being male, cisgender, gender-conforming, heterosexual, a fertile parent, tall and reasonably attractive, able-bodied, healthy, not fat, a product of an upper-middle-class upbringing, urban, qualified in writing, editing and column-writing, literate, English-speaking, a former Episcopalian, descended from Anglo-Europeans and therefore white.

I realize that these traits usher in all kinds of presumptions about me being a bad person with the mark of Satan on the back of my neck. All I can say that I’m sorry…not for who and what I am, but for your asinine presumptions.

Jett, Cait and I had a great time in Hanoi in mid-March of 2016 — a year and three-quarters before the launch of wokester terror. Why am I mentioning this now? Because Facebook brought it up…

Three and three-quarter years ago a few friends joined Tatiana and I in celebrating our June 2017 marriage at The Little Door, a Parisian-style brasserie.

We returned to that Third Street establishment last night for a light dinner. We love the cozy vibe, the blue paint, the fireplace and the candlelight, and the food is always pretty good. And the conversational levels are low so you can actually hear each other.

We had a nice, peaceful 60 or 70 minutes, but then a group of seven or eight Zoomers came along and sat down near us, and before long they started shriek-laughing…good God. We knew it was time to leave.

Friendo: “What do you think Bill Maher meant the other night when he said ‘don’t make me watch Nomadland‘?”

HE: “That he watched (part of) it and found it tiresome? Or that a friend of his did?”

There’s a certain pushback sentiment about Nomadland that’s currently being shared. It’s just not a wildly popular film among smart, discerning film sophistos. The Nomadland narrative is a perfect fit, of course, and everyone agrees that it fits into the presently-constituted zeitgeist, but on the merits of the film alone, your middle-aged, think-for-themselves cool kidz are saying “overpraised,” “a Covid movie,” “calm down” and so forth.

Yes, it’ll still win the Best Picture Oscar, but my God, would I love it if either The Trial of the Chicago 7 or Sound of Metal were to win instead!

There’s nothing glorious and soul-cleansing about being executed by Roman arrows. Plus it would hurt like hell, and death probably wouldn’t come quickly. Plus one of the archers might aim poorly and shoot me or my fiance in the eye. Or I might get an arrow in the groin.

If I been in the sandals of Marcellus (Richard Burton), a confirmed Christian and deeply in love with the gentle Diana (Jean Simmons), and if Caligula (Jay Robinson) had demanded that I renounce the teachings of the executed carpenter known as Yeshua of Nazareth and the nascent religion he’d recently come to stand for, I would say “damn straight, your excellence.”

What difference would a few words make one way or the other? It’s deeds that count. The court of Caligula is pure political theatre, and therefore meaningless. Moral relativism is the only way to travel.

HE solution in a nutshell: (a) Renounce Christ out of one side of my mouth, (b) Diana and I are then free to move to Capri and live a life of Christian leisure (mountain hikes, sailing, swimming + eating dates, grapes and fresh fish), and (c) Caligula would soon be killed anyway by the Praetorian Guard.

What glorious purpose would Diana and I serve by going to our deaths? You know the answer. The answer is “fuck this jazz.” The secondary answer is “martyrdom might look like an act of transcendence at the end of a 1953 20th Century Fox release, but in real life it isn’t worth it.” Because you know what? When you’re dead it’s simply lights out…no choir, no shining cosmic light, no Godly white clouds…you’re just dead.”

Smart, middle-class, middle-budget “heart” movies like As Good As It Gets (’97) are gone from the landscape…erased from Hollywood’s communal creative unconscious. When I first saw it 23 and 1/3 years ago I naturally presumed that the actual Harold Ramis (1944 – 2014) bore an incidental resemblance (if that) to the doctor he played in James L. Brooks‘ dramedy. I nonetheless fell in love with Ramis after I saw this scene, and I’ve never been able to shake this impression. In my memory he’ll always be an incredibly kind and caring person.