…hide your young ‘uns.

Last night and for the silliest of reasons, Facebook’s Douglas Himebaugh (“Widescreen: A Film Discussion Podcast”) asked for estimations of John Sturges‘ The Magnificent Seven (’60) vs. Antoine Fuqua‘s 2016 bullshit remake. The response was 90-10 in favor of “what’s wrong with you?” and “why are you even asking this?” Akira Kurosawa‘s The Seven Samurai (’54), which I’m not a big visual fan of, was not part of the discussion.

“Hell, I’d piss on a spark plug if I thought it’d do any good!” — Barry Corbin as General Berenger in John Badham‘s WarGames.

My first viewing of WarGames happened 37 and 2/3 years ago, but it feels like yesterday. A split second after Corbin said this line, I immediately muttered to myself “please, please don’t put awful images in my head…a fat Air Force General pissing on a battery in somebody’s ratty back yard in Bumblefuck, Tennessee…I’m telling you I can’t stand it!”

On one hand the SAG ensemble award nomination of Spike Lee‘s Da 5 Bloods is a harbinger of Oscar favor…no? There’s also the view that the Golden Globe shutout (no Best Picture nom, Delroy Lindo cold-cocked) is not really consequential or predictive at all in terms of Oscar favor. The SAG ensemble thing matters much more, I’m told. But another handicapper says the previous view is wrong, and that 12 films that were nominated for the SAG ensemble award have failed to snag a Best Picture nomination (12 SAG shortfallers) while only six Golden Globe nominees failed to land a Best Pic nom. The bottom line is that the Globes have a better Oscar track record than SAG.

And what about the BAFTA long list? 15 directors are on that roster (including The Mauritanian‘s Kevin Macdonald) ) but not Spike Lee. He’s a big enough brand-name helmer that he should be able to make the long list. On the other hand the same handicapper believes that Lindo has a decent chance. Lindo has won Best Actor trophies from the Boston, Chicago and New York critics. On top of which there’s the “if you don’t vote for Lindo, you’re probably a closet racist” card. Between the merit and the guilt, Lindo is probably in pretty good shape. Many admire his performance. My guess is that he lands a nomination but probably won’t win. Sorry but my gut says what it says.

This morning The Hollywood Reporter‘s Tatiana Siegel revealed that a secretly-shot, four-part documentary about the whole Woody-Mia-Dylan thing (Jesus…again?) will soon air on HBO. It’s called Allen vs. Farrow. Episode #1 will be shown on Sunday, 2.21 with subsequent episodes airing over the next three Sundays.

The tone of the Siegel article, in particular a paragraph that says the forthcoming Kirby Dick-Amy Ziering miniseries is “reminiscent” of Dan Reed‘s Leaving Neverland, another HBO-aired investigative piece about sexual predation, gave me concern in view of the fact that Reed’s doc eviscerated Michael Jackson with first-hand victim testimony. Not to mention Siegel’s statement that the Kirby-Ziering doc contains “exclusive, in-depth interviews on the subject with Mia Farrow, Dylan Farrow, Ronan Farrow and family friend Carly Simon“….what is this, some kind of deny-the-facts hit piece? Where are the Woody friendlies?

An hour ago I emailed and texted the following to co-director Kirby Dick:

“Kirby,

“We’ve conversed in Park City once or twice, but you’re not expected to remember. We know a few of the same people, etc.

“I have two urgent questions about Allen vs. Farrow, or more specifically Tatiana Siegel’s THR article about it, which broke this morning. Two points in particular have me concerned.

“One, by comparing it or making an analogy to HBO’s Leaving Neverland, Siegel instills a clear impression in the minds of readers that your doc is a hit piece — that it will get Woody big-time.

“Two, she states that a significant number of the talking heads are friendly to or otherwise supportive of the completely unfounded, completely unsupported by facts accusations against Woody. The talking heads mentioned in her piece are Mia Farrow, Dylan Farrow, Ronan Farrow, family friend Carly Simon…WHAT? Did you talk to Kate Winslet also?

“What about Woody himself, not to mention Moses Farrow, not to mention Soon Yi, not to mention eloquent Allen defender Bob Weide, not to mention…??

“I’m guessing that (a) Siegel might be a Mia-and-Dylan supporter and that (b) she therefore wrote this article in such a way as to give an impression that Allen vs. Farrow will torpedo Woody like the Neverland doc nailed Michael Jackson. That’s just a guess.

“The other interpretation is that Allen vs. Farrow does lean toward the Farrow side and away from the Woody side in defiance of all the facts, evidence and professional conclusions of the investigators.

“Question #1: Does Tatiana Siegel know something, or is she just presenting a sketchy impression that she would like to see realized in your four-part doc?

“Question #2: Did you really not interview anyone on the Woody side (outside of prosecutors, investigators and other official examiners)?

“A sooner-rather-than-later reply would be greatly appreciated.

“Cheers — Jeffrey Wells, Hollywood Elsewhere”

In my eyes, Christopher Plummer‘s absolute peak performance was his bite-your-head-off Mike Wallace in The Insider (’99). (Key line: “No, that’s fame…fame has a 15 minute half-life…infamy lasts a little longer”). His J. Paul Getty in All The Money in the World was fairly terrific also. Previous highlights do not include The Sound of Music….sorry. But they do include The Fall of the Roman Empire, Waterloo, The Man Who Would Be King (as Rudyard Kipling), The Silent Partner (creepy bad guy opposite Elliot Gould, Susannah York), Somewhere in Time, Dolores Claiborne, A Beautiful Mind, The New World, Beginners, Knives Out. I never once saw Plummer on stage — very sorry for that. He was 91 years old.

“The House on Thursday took the extraordinary step of ousting a lawmaker from two congressional committees, exiling Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia for endorsing the executions of Democrats and spreading dangerous and bigoted misinformation even as her fellow Republicans rallied around her.

“In a move without precedent in the modern Congress, the House voted 230 to 199 — over near-unanimous Republican opposition — to remove Ms. Greene from the Education and Budget Committees.

“The move effectively stripped Ms. Greene of her influence in Congress by banishing her from committees critical to advancing legislation and conducting oversight. Party leaders traditionally control the membership of the panels, and while Democrats and Republicans have occasionally moved to punish their own members by stripping them of assignments, the majority has never in modern times moved to do so to a lawmaker in the other party.” — N.Y. Times, reported by Catie Edmondson, Nicholas Fandos and Thomas Kaplan.

Rob Lowe to Variety‘s Cynthia Littleton about achieving sobriety: “Nothing can make you get sober except you wanting to do it. The threat of losing a marriage, losing a job, incarceration — you name the threat, it will not be enough to do it. It’s got to be in you. The reason that people don’t get sober 100% of the time when they go into programs is that people aren’t ready when they go to use the tools.”

HE to Lowe: It’s true that no threat will make you get sober. You have to want it for yourself, for your very own reasons. But nothing will make you want to get sober like gazing at close-up photos of your own puffy face.

It was the middle of March in 2012, and I was talking to Prague’s Esthe Plastika about having some touch-up work on my eyelids, eye bags and neck wattle. I explained what I wanted, and they asked me to take some close-ups of my face and neck area and send them along. So I did, and when I looked at those horrific snaps I went into catatonic shock. I was looking at the features of a bloated wine-drinking manatee.

The first thought that hit me was ‘okay, that’s it for the evening sips of Pinot Grigio and Sauvignon Blanc…I’m done.’ The shock of those photos was so great that I stopped that very night. I haven’t touched a drop since.

My nine-year anniversary will be celebrated on 3.20.21.

I’ve been visiting movie sets for 40-odd years. I’ve never worked on a feature or TV series on a day-to-day basis so I’m no authority. But over the years I’ve noticed over and over that sets are generally pleasant environments — caring attitudes, consideration for others, no hostility or temper tantrums to speak of.

On the other hand there’s always tension between directors of exceptional vision and eccentricity, and those who hate innovation and new ideas — who prefer to shoot films and TV shows in the usual way.

I remember reading that Brian DePalma once said that he was suspicious of happy sets because that indicated (to him) that people were goofing off. Back in the early ’80s an actor friend told me that director David Ward regarded the making of Cannery Row as a “constant war” with meddling studio execs and a crew that often resisted various outside-the-box ideas or ways of getting things done.

Today I was struck by a recollection from Booksmart director Olivia Wilde, which she passed along to Promising Young Woman director Emerald Fennell in a Variety video chat.

Wilde: “A very established actor and director in this industry” — two separate people, she apparently means — “gave me really terrible advice that was helpful, because I just knew I had to do the opposite. They said, ‘Listen, the way to get respect on a set, you have to have three arguments a day…three big arguments that reinstate your power, remind everyone who’s in charge, be the predator.’ That is the opposite of my process. And I want none of that.”

Wilde expands: “I think that it is an unfortunate part of the kind of the paradigm, that has been created over the last 100 years…the idea that great art has to come from a place of discomfort and anxiety. That the pressure cooker has to get to a point where it can be something intense and valuable in that way.

“I do think it may be a uniquely female instinct to say, ‘Look, we can be nurturing. And we can multitask.’ It doesn’t mean that anyone needs to be uncomfortable. And it doesn’t mean that I have to constantly remind you of my my position, because I don’t think anyone on a set has ever forgotten who’s in charge. It’s in fact, an incredibly hierarchical system.

“If anything, I think we’d all benefit to sort of remove the hero narrative from that structure, and to acknowledge that a director is a sum of all these parts, that we have the opportunity to delegate to all these incredible people that we’ve asked to come on board.

Fennell: “This idea of having three arguments a day…where do you differentiate between something that really important, and something that isn’t? I think that there are moments necessarily where you do have to be sort of fairly strict or straightforward to get things back on the rails.

“[But] I agree completely with what you say, I think there’s a sort of idea that being a tormented artist is the route to genius. I really do think, as I’ve sort of gotten older, it is just a mask for a lot of fear and anxiety. It’s kind of a sort of synonym for bullying.”

Question to production veterans: Have you ever worked under a three-argument-per-day director, and if so, how was the experience? Have you ever worked for alpha-lion types or persistent arguers who turned out to be really good, or is the general rule of thumb that the gentlest directors tend to be more effective?”

…and weasels never ripped it.

Anonymous source who’s “close to [Armie] Hammer“, speaking to Variety‘s Elizabeth Wagmeister: “[Armie has] never eaten human flesh, he has never drank blood, he has never cut off a toe, he has never locked anybody in a cage, or whatever else is in these crazy messages.

“These messages definitely shouldn’t be taken literally — even if he did text them. Anyone can say what they want and solicit craziness on Instagram or TikTok or Clubhouse. People think that kinky sex is weird and taboo, and maybe it is to most people, but clearly there are adults who engage in it and enjoy it.”

This is what I’ve been saying all along about the cannibal thing. Hammer describing himself in a text message as a “cannibal” didn’t literally allude to the eating of flesh, for heaven’s sake, but to the idea of cunnilingus cannibalism — voraciously tongue-bathing a certain area of a woman’s anatomy with exceptional vigor.

Can you imagine if Glenn Close finally wins her Oscar… for HILLBILLY ELEGY? pic.twitter.com/JWtjSQ0LQl

— Scott Feinberg (@ScottFeinberg) February 4, 2021

Posted by HE on 11.10.20.