All Hollywood hiring practices are “performative.”

The primary goal has always been to make money, of course, and in the case of Barbie it didn’t seem unusually risky to tap into the mythology of a 60-year-old doll franchise and then give it a sassy progressive spin.

That said, nothing will weaken your standing or get you fired faster than your rivals sensing you’re trying to do something other than make money.

Ask yourself this: if you were the progressive-minded senior editor of a sweeping USC–funded study of Hollywood hiring practices regarding women and persons of color, and particularly if your report was created under the imprimatur of the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, would you be inclined to be (a) critical or admonishing or punitive or (b) less so in that regard?

Three Fundamental Hollywood Laws: (a) nobody knows anything, (b) nobody wants to stand out by making bold creative decisions of any kind, and (c) you don’t need a conspiracy of cowardice given that cowardice is so deeply embedded in our DNA.

…you think first and foremost of a kind of gentle but vaguely flinty mindset (intelligence, insight, sensitivity). Then you think of drink-and-dial Miles Raymond in Alexander Payne’s Sideways (‘04). The current focus, of course, is Barton Academy’s ancient history professor Paul Hunham in The Holdovers (Payne + David Hemingson), but in a certain light Miles lingers because of what happened…a grievous wrong that must be addressed and corrected at long last.

…is not Bugsy Malone (‘76), for heaven’s sake. It’s Evita (‘96)…c’mon! I agree, however, that Albert Brooks’ greatest film is Lost in America (‘85).

Posted on 7.24.15:

A year ago Robert Eggers and HE agreed (almost) on The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (’48):

Answer: Nobody.

170 formerly anonymous associates of the late Jeffrey Epstein will be mildly embarrassed when names are made public tomorrow in a “doc dump” connected to a Virginia Giuffre court maneuver of some kind.

The bottom line is that the nation’s 42nd President is “not expected to be implicated in any illegal activity,” according to an ABC News report.

The media shorthand equation is that if a person had even a slight social relationship with Epstein, they are automatically evil ogres who deserve to be shunned or cancelled. It’s certainly unwelcome to be associated with a notoriously perverse figure, but does this necessarily add up to deplorable behavior?

Obviously my love for Bradley Cooper’s Maestro has become a minority viewpoint. Obviously the tide of public opinion has turned against it. I was completely swept up by Cooper’s stylistic audacity and particularly by Carey Mulligan’s performance as Felicia Montealegre, but you can’t fight City Hall or at least you can’t instruct or badger people into broadening their aesthetic horizons. All I can say is that I’m very sorry.

Partly because it sounds like woke gobbledygook, I suppose. Because it suggests that the simple bedrock concept of gender (as in primarily two, as in male/female) has been imposed by a foreign power to establish political control over a native culture. Which is bullshit, of course.

Thank you, God, for sparing me from the burden of such terminology throughout most of my life. Thank you for that blessing.

At the same time I felt curiously charmed by the “Little Horse” character in Arthur Penn’s Little Big Man (‘70), and I loved Chief Dan George’s “Old Lodge Skins” character (a performance that was Oscar-nominated for Best Supporting Actor) and his “live and let live” approach to life.

HE agrees with World of Reel’s Jordan Ruimy. If Antoine Fuqua is producing, Paul Schrader’s Three Guns at Dawn (great title!), Schrader should just direct it already. Stop pussyfooting around by worrying about cultural appropriation. Fuck ‘em if they don’t like it. Balls up.