The truth is that all day I’ve been afraid to acknowledge the death of porn publisher Larry Flynt, much less say anything about the guy. That’s because I’m afraid that progressive industry women might somehow get the idea that I’m a fan or that I respect Flynt’s career accomplishments or vaguely approve of his cultural influence, etc. Which I never have in any regard. I always thought Flynt was an icky sort. Not my kind of heavyweight mogul. The only thing I ever liked about him was Milos Forman‘s The People vs. Larry Flynt (’96) — a better than pretty good film. Let’s leave it at that.

Who cares if Bruce Springsteen was arrested in New Jersey last November on suspicion of DUI? I’m presuming he wasn’t totally sloshed and slurring his words and vomiting on the side of the road when he was popped, and that he’d probably had two or three glasses of wine and was moderately buzzed. And so what? Jeep has removed the youTube link to his Super Bowl spot, titled “The Middle.” Big deal.

Driving while impaired isn’t cool, but Springsteen hasn’t lost his authority as a working-class folk hero because of it. I’m guessing that all proletariat salt-of-the-earth types drive buzzed from time to time. Against the law but negotiable.

I used to drive half-slurry during my vodka-and-lemonade days (’93 to ’96) as well as during my Pinot Grigio period. Don’t bring up my Connecticut party-animal behavior in the mid to late ’70s. I drove semi-inebriated every weekend. I used to believe that I was a better driver when I was half in the bag. Obviously not good, but I didn’t hurt anyone. How many times did I get into a fender-bender due to my semi-compromised state? Never — not once. It was only during my Los Angeles vodka-and-lemonade period that I got into vehicular trouble. Don’t ask.

Yohana Desta has written a 2.9 Vanity Fair cover story about the late Chadwick Boseman, titled “Inside Chadwick Boseman’s Grand Finale.”

The article is a smooth conveyance of two ideas — one, that Boseman deserves a Best Actor Oscar for his work in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, and two, that “Levee,” the randy, cornet-playing hustler with the cool shoes who suffers a tragic emotional breakdown at the finale, is “the performance of [Boseman’s] career.”

I’m sorry but the performance of Boseman’s career was James Brown in Get On Up. In that 2014 biopic he delivered the same kind of highly-charged, go-for-it quality that defined two previous performances that won posthumous Oscars — Peter Finch‘s “Howard Beale” in Network (’76) and Heath Ledger‘s “Joker” in The Dark Knight (’08).

Everyone knows that Boseman’s “Levee” doesn’t blow the doors off the hinges — not really. It’s a poignant performance (especially during the scene in which Levee recalls a sad episode involving his mother), but the main reason Boseman has been hailed as a Best Actor (and in the case of Da 5 Bloods, a Best Supporting Actor) nominee is because of his tragic passing last August, which broke everyone’s heart.

I understand the sentiment behind giving Boseman a special tribute, of course, but giving him an Oscar for performances that are no more than approvable — good acting but lacking that certain extra-ness or crackling charge — feels like a disproportionate thing to do.

Texting early this morning…

HE: “A deeply tragic turn for a gifted actor and a nice guy, but giving him an Oscar for a pair of okay performances is a stretch. “We all feel really badly that he died so young” shouldn’t translate into a Best Actor or Best Supporting Actor Oscar. Most above-the-line Oscars are about three things — audience feeling, a zeitgeist bull’s-eye and first-rate craft. A Boseman Oscar would be mainly about feelinga of sadness, and that’s really not enough. If Chad’s dying performance had been James Brown, that would’ve been a different deal.

Friendo: “Of course, but during a pandemic people want something to feel good about. Giving an Oscar to a young black actor who just died is too incredible a narrative to resist. Who knows, he might even win two Oscars! He might beat Anthony Hopkins’ masterful performance in The Father. He might beat Riz Ahmed in Sound of Metal.”

HE: “All he does in Ma Rainey is grin and grin some more, and then he talks about his arranging ideas and songwriting plans and argues with Ma, and then he puts the moves on Taylour Paige‘s Dussie Mae. And then he grins some more. And then, at the very end and out of the blue, he loses his temper over the song-publishing rejection and suddenly stabs Glynn Turman‘s Toledo out of a sense of misplaced rage. The killing at the end is historically understandable but feels insufficiently motivated in a dramatic sense.”

Friendo: “He seems to overact as Levee because Ma Rainey is essentially a stage play. Same with Viola Davis’ grotesque burlesque singer.”

HE: “He should just be given a special tribute. A special sad Oscar. But ‘the performance of his career‘? That’s just dishonest. It’s a good performance but it’s not a piece of the constellation.”

Has anyone honestly concluded that Boseman’s Levee is the equal of the performances given by Hopkins and Ahmed?

Southern Friendo to HE: “Here’s a simple solution to the theater attendance issue:  Once you’ve been vaccinated twice, you get issued a card with a scannable barcode/chip that says you’ve gotten two stabs (or have been vaccinated with the single-stab Johnson & Johnson).  Use this to get into restaurants, theaters, etc. If you’re not vaccinated, no card and no admittance to public places where you can potentially spread. REPEATED DUE TO IMPORTANCE: Your card can only be issued after you’ve had two vaccinations.”

The packaged food industry has been erasing racial stereotyping in terms of brand names and marketing. Last September Mars, Incorporated changed Uncle Ben’s Converted Rice (aka Uncle Ben’s “Perverted” Rice) to Ben’s Original. And Quaker Oats’ deep-sixed Aunt Jemima pancake brand will henceforth be known as Pearl Milling Company pancakes. Companies keeping in step with the times, etc.

When’s the last time Hollywood Elsewhere ate a breakfast plate of Aunt Jemima pancakes or enjoyed a bowl of Uncle Ben’s rice? Not since I was eight or nine years old, and I really don’t care.

But (and I say this with a slight twinge of trepidation) I have a sentimental attachment to the character of “Gussie”, a black maid working for Jim and Muriel Blandings (Cary Grant, Myrna Loy) in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (’48), and especially the WHAM ham ad slogan that Gussy dreams up at the finale — “If you ain’t eating WHAM, you ain’t eating ham.”

Obviously Gussie is just as much of a woke cultural prohibition as Aunt Jemima or Uncle Ben or Uncle Remus from Song of the South. You know that wokester activists would like to digitally erase Gussie out of existence if they could; ditto Hattie McDaniel‘s “Mammy” in Gone With The Wind. But if they did, Mr. Blandings wouldn’t end with that socko slogan. It’s a problem.

I’m kidding. I’m kidding. John Krasinski‘s A Quiet Place Part II, originally slated to open on 3.10.20 before being bumped into oblivion by the worldwide pandemic, is now, after two previous delays, set to open theatrically on 9.17.21 — seven months hence.

Maybe, I should say. Be honest — who believes that theatres will be up and running and packing them in next September when tens of millions of idiots are refusing to take the jab? That’s why I joked about a ’22 opening. Because I don’t think we’ll be truly free of this gloomy, narcotized, walking-dead lifestyle until the spring or summer of ’22. I wish it were otherwise. I fear it may not be.

But honestly? I lost all interest in the sequel when Krasinki rejected Richard Brody‘s 4.1.18 riff on what A Quiet Place was about deep down — i.e., the social undercurrent element. Key passage from his New Yorker piece, titled “The Silently Regressive Politics of A Quiet Place”: “In their enforced silence, these characters are a metaphorical silent white majority, one that doesn’t dare to speak freely for fear of being heard by the super-sensitive ears of the dark others.”

Almost two years later I happened upon a similar notion. In an HE essay called “Eureka — A Quiet Place Metaphor,” I wrote that “all you have to do is change ‘don’t make a sound’ to ‘don’t make the wrong sound’ or more precisely ‘don’t say the wrong thing.’ Then it all fits. The big brown monsters are fanatical wokesters who rush in like the wind and destroy your life and livelihood if you mutter the wrong phrase or use incorrect terminology or happen to like Real Time with Bill Maher or late-period Woody Allen films or if you posted the wrong thing in 2009, etc.”

Earlier this year Krasinki dismissed these interpretations — insights that lend metaphorical heft to the 2016 original. “That narrative is certainly not the narrative I intended to put out there,” he told Esquire‘s Matt Miller last February. “I never saw it that way or ever thought of it until it was presented to me in that way. It wasn’t about being, you know, silent and political…if anything it was about, you know, going into the dark and, and taking a chance when all hope looked lost, you take, you know, you fight for what’s most important to you. Again, my whole metaphor was solely about parenthood.”

My spirit sank into a heap when I read the words “solely about parenthood.” That was it — Krasinki, I realized, will never be any kind of deep, thoughtful fellow. He only deals with the obvious. To him, undercurrents and metaphors are oddities, foreign concepts, exotic elements.

The last time Variety apologized for a movie review was in 1992. The film was Philip Noyce and Mace Neufeld‘s Patriot Games, the critic was Joseph McBride, and the National Society of Film Critics stood up for McBride, just like they did today for the critic with tire tracks across his back, Promising Young Woman reviewer Dennis Harvey.

I’ve read Peter Biskind‘s “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls” twice, but I somehow never got around to seeing Kenneth Bowser‘s 2003 documentary version, which runs just shy of two hours. A half-hour ago I happened upon an HD YouTube version, and it plays pretty well. Narrated by William H. Macy, it was screened out of competition at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival. (I was there but missed it.) Rated 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.

12 and 1/2 months after the 1.26.20 Kobe Bryant helicopter crash, which killed nine people including Bryant, his daughter and the pilot, the National Transportation Safety Board has rocked the world by coming to the same conclusions that any half-informed person would’ve arrived at a day or two after the tragedy.

Once again for emphasis — (a) way too foggy for flying above the Calabassas hills that day, (b) pilot Ara Zobayan was swallowed by spatial disorientation, (c) any competent, half-prudent pilot would have gotten the hell out of there but Bryant, a Type-A personality, was almost certainly generating intense “get there” vibes and so Zobayan pushed into the fog…hard left and a rapid decent at a speed of 160 knots…wham. A reckless journey.

No one is allowed to say that the crash was half Bryant’s fault and half Zobayan’s fault, but when you factor in the “get there” pressure how can you say it was all on Zobayan? Two-thirds pilot, one-third Bryant? 60-40?

In a Variety video chat between Oliver Stone and Da 5 Bloods helmer Spike Lee, Stone mentions that his four-hour JFK assassination doc has (a) been invited to play at the Cannes Film Festival in July, and that (b) he can’t find a U.S. distributor, apparently because of a concern about questionable readings and allegations.

Stone’s description of the situation is a bit vague, but he says that both Netflix and National Geographic have declined to distribute. Here’s part of the convo:

Spike Lee: You’re doing your doc series, right?

Oliver Stone: [I’m] doing documentaries because they’re direct and I can go right to the audience and say this and this. [But even in that realm], I’m having problems. I’m doing one on energy and one on JFK. Four hours [and] very powerful. It’s based on the facts that came out of the [1991] movie. The movie kicked off the assassination records review board for five years. They were not empowered to investigate, but they were empowered to clarify. And they did the best they could with these limitations. The facts that they presented, we go into. It makes the case harder, tighter. It’s about real facts that are shocking to people.

Lee: So you can’t you can’t find a home for this doc?

Stone: Not yet. Not for the American side. Cannes invited us for July of this year. That’s a big step for us because, at least, if it can’t be recognized in America as a document, it will be [internationally].

Lee: I can’t wait to see this four-hour JFK [doc].

Stone: In Europe.

Lee: Netflix said no?

Stone: Yeah. [And] today I just got the word that National Geographic has also said no.

Lee: What was the reason?

Stone: They said they did their fact check. Yeah. Where are you going to find this information except in this film? If they do a fact check, according to conventional sources, of course it’ll come out like this is not true. How can you go and prove that it’s true? It’s very, it’s very tough. You have to have some imagination here.

Lee: I have to see it in Cannes, where I’ll be president of the jury. Let’s have a drink, sir.

While Variety editors debate and dither over the trade paper’s response (if any) to the National Society of Film Critics’ condemnation of its recent behavior in the Carey Mulligan-Dennis Harvey-Promising Young Woman brouhaha, Hollywood Elsewhere is submitting the following for Variety‘s consideration, should they wish to explain themselves more fully:

“Variety acknowledges, understands and respects the position of the National Society of Film Critics in its just-posted (2.9) criticism of Variety‘s 11-months-later apology for a certain paragraph in Dennis Harvey‘s 1.26.20 review of Promising Young Woman.

“If we were NSFC-allied critics instead of Variety editors, we might well agree with and support this morning’s statement wholeheartedly.

“However, Variety respectfully suggests that the NSFC has missed the point in this matter. Because what the NSFC has condemned us for — disrespecting a top-ranked stringer and needlessly bruising his sterling reputation, plus showing a lack of editorial ethics and backbone — happened for what we believe to be a good and noble reason.

“Simply put, we did what we did because we believe that #MeToo solidarity counts more than editorial integrity.

“We are living through a revolutionary era in Hollywood history, one in which women, people of various ethnicities and LGBTQs are righteously claiming a larger share of power and pressure — power that the white-male heirarchy has singlehandedly wielded for decades. Women in particular are standing up, pushing back and challenging sexist norms.

“And so when Carey Mulligan complained a few weeks ago to N.Y. Times columnist Kyle Buchanan about what she (and, frankly, we) judged as a viewpoint with a certain sexist or misogynist undercurrent, our hearts were stirred.

“And so it seemed necessary, important and perhaps even vital to us that Variety should stand alongside Mulligan, offer an unprecedented editorial apology and say “classic editorial journalistic ethics are well and good and we’re certainly not abandoning most of them, but women need to stick together in this, an era of #MeToo solidarity and change…we’re with you all the way, Carey. And don’t worry about Harvey and his fuddy-duddy defenders…they’ll get over this little speed bump and we can all go back to business as usual.

“In other words, when we decided to apologize to Mulligan and Focus Features for the tone and phrasing in a single, allegedly inflammatory paragraph in Harvey’s review, our thinking was fundamentally driven by political rather than ethical or critical considerations.

The fact that Arnold Schwarzenegger felt compelled to post a drive-by vaccine video is, of course, a tacit acknowledgement that there are tens of millions of morons out there who don’t want to take the stab, and so maybe it couldn’t hurt to remind them that the “good” Terminator knows what’s safe and what’s best, etc.