Legendary test pilot and flying ace Chuck Yeager died yesterday at age 97. In 1947 the 24 year-old Yeager became first pilot to break the sound barrier. Tom Wolfe‘s “The Right Stuff” (’79) mythologized Yeager — made him into the ultimate jet pilot cool cat. Sam Shepard played Yeager in Phil Kaufman‘s wildly overrated film version, which I hated from the get-go.

Wolfe’s book was an absorbing, insightful take on the Mercury Space Program, a governmental patriotism initiative that promoted personalities and heroism to sell itself to the public. Wolfe passed along the technical intrigues of the early flights and especially the seminal Chuck Yeager lore and how that cockpit attitude influenced every pilot who ever lived. The film, sadly, was a popcorn denigration — an attempt to make populist puree out of almost everything fascinating that Wolfe had reported and made humorous.

[From BennettInk, posted in January 2017] In a letter to his editor about “The Right Stuff”, which he was in the midst of writing, Wolfe explained that it’s not really a book about the space program. It turns out that it’s not even, really, about flying. It’s about the importance of status to men, and what happens when the rules of any status game change.

There had been a status structure to the life of U.S. fighter jocks before the space program, and it was clear to everyone involved. At the top of the pyramid were combat pilots, and at the tippy top were the combat pilots who found their way to Edwards Air Force Base, in the California desert, to test new fighter planes. The courage and spirit required not just to get to Edwards but to survive the test flights. The pilots themselves never spoke of [them], but they were at the center of their existence.

That unspoken quality was what Wolfe called the right stuff, and the embodiment of the right stuff — everyone knows it and yet no one says it — is Chuck Yeager. Hardly anyone outside the small world of combat pilots has ever heard of him. Here is how Wolfe, in a single sentence [HE — but which I’ve broken up into paragraphs], changed that:

“Anyone who travels very much on airlines in the United States soon gets to know the voice of the airline pilot…coming over the intercom…with a particular drawl, a particular folksiness, a particular down-home calmness that is so exaggerated it begins to parody itself (nevertheless!— it’s reassuring)…the voice that tells you, as the airliner is caught in thunderheads and goes bolting up and down a thousand feet at a single gulp, to check your seat belts because ‘it might get a little choppy’.

“Perhaps more fundamentally [it’s a] voice that tells you (on a flight from Phoenix preparing for its final approach into Kennedy Airport, New York, just after dawn): ‘Now, folks, uh…this is the captain
…ummmm…We’ve got a little ol’ red light up here on the control panel that’s tryin’ to tell us that the landin gears’re not…uh…lockin’ into position when we lower ‘em…now, I don’t believe that little ol’ red light knows what it’s talkin about….I believe it’s that little ol’ red light that iddn’ workin’ right’ — faint chuckle, long pause, as if to say, I’m not even sure all this is really worth going into — still, it may amuse you — ‘But I guess to play it by the rules, we oughta humor that little ol’ light…so we’re gonna take her down to about, oh, two or three hundred feet over the runway at Kennedy, and the folks down there on the ground are gonna see if they caint give us a visual inspection of those ol’ landin’ gears’ — with which he is obviously onintimate ol’-buddy terms, as with every other working part of this mighty ship—’ and if I’m right, they’re gonna tell us everything is copacetic all the way aroun’ an’ we’ll jes take her on in’.

Posted this morning by David Handelman (aka wittiebanter): “Forty years ago today, John Lennon was killed. The next morning, 19-year-old college-sophomore me had a radio show to do. All the other Boston stations were playing ‘Give Peace a Chance’, ‘All You Need is Love’ and ‘Imagine.’ I felt darker than that. I played ‘Happiness is a Warm Gun’, ‘Run for Your Life’ and ‘Help!’

“Forty years later, I see Above Us Only Sky on Netflix, the Yoko-driven documentary about the making of the Imagine record at an English country house in the summer of 1971. The proceedings are shaggy and fun, George Harrison dropping by, Phil Spector at the helm, and then suddenly this unkempt, clearly troubled Vietnam Vet named Claudio shows up and insists on meeting Lennon because he believes Lennon wrote all his songs for Claudio.

HE interjection: Claudio and Mark David Chapman were more or less the same unhinged loon.

“The John-Claudio encounter is on film, and Lennon patiently hears Claudio out and tries to reason with him — ‘How could I know you?’ — and that he, like Bob Dylan, just writes things hoping people will relate. The encounter ends with Lennon telling Claudio he looks hungry and bringing him into the house for a meal.

“I read up on Claudio (here) and he worked on farms and then at a Ford auto plant. When it closed he bought himself an ultra-light airplane, flew it too low and slow and the plane stalled. It landed in a tree and tore his aorta from his heart. Dec. 22, 1981 — dead at 33.

“In light of what happened a year earlier, when another obsessed fan came with the same kind of delusional narcissistic energy and took John away from everyone else, the Claudio scene was so moving and chilling and I don’t even know what.”

Three or four weeks ago Jenna Ellis, President Trump‘s smiling zombie attorney who’s been insisting that the 11.3 election was rigged in Joe Biden‘s favor, appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher.

She and Bill engaged in a politely infuriating discussion about the validity of her fantasy claims. (Here’s a transcript of the chat from TheWrap‘s Ross A. Lincoln and Phil Owen.) Ellis’s patter struck me as robotic lunacy.

It’s therefore heartening to pass along a report by Axios‘ Jonathan Swan that Ellis has become the latest Trumpie to test positive for coronavirus. “Multiple sources” have told Swan that Ellis “has informed associates she’s tested positive for the virus.”

Swan excerpt: “When I gave Ellis visibility of my reporting on Monday night — that she had tested positive and that some senior staff weren’t happy because she may have exposed some people at a White House party last Friday night — she replied that it was ‘rude’ to text her after midnight, adding, ‘You must be more informed than me because I haven’t heard that.'”

I’m not suggesting that New Yorker film critic Richard Brody is the same kind of influential powerhouse that Pauline Kael (also a New Yorker-ite) was back in the ’70s and ’80s.

And yet earlier today a friend suggested that Brody, known for his exacting, headstrong, occasionally-composed-on-the-planet-Trafalmadore reviews, has become a Pauline-like figure. Not by design but because so many critics, he feels, are taken with Brody’s vigorous, high-toned film essays, as in “I have my own, very special way of looking at things!”

It started with a discussion of the recent Mank pushback. “I’ve been catching bits and pieces of the Mank anti-hype (the Kael thing, Oldman’s too old, etc.),” he said, “and it just seems as if the film is being demonized for…existing. It’s this year’s Movie We’re Not Supposed To Attack And So We’re Attacking It To Show Our Power.

“God, I’ve really come to loathe film critics. They’re becoming a cult of dishonest dweebs. They’re all turning into Richard Brody.”

The Kael followers of yore (David Edelstein, Stephen Schiff, Elvis Mitchell) were referred to as “Paulettes.” Could the Brody bunch be called “Brody-kins“?

“It’s all a one-upmanship game,” the friend continued. “Within a series of incredibly rigid — and, to me, tone-deaf — tastes (to the enlightened, Beanpole is a greater movie than Saving Private Ryan, whereas I thought it was trash), everyone is jockeying with everyone else to be the coolest, hippest, smartest, most exquisitely outré, and (of course) most anti-corporate, which means that you put a mainstream movie on your list at your peril.

“In a word, it’s all a big lie. Just like Tony and Manohla’s ’25 Greatest Women + People of Color Who Are Actors’ list.”

Asked by ET‘s John Boone about Warner Bros.’s recent decision to open all 2021 releases simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max, Tenet director Chris Nolan, a longtime advocate of theatrical presentation, expressed strong disapproval.

Nolan: [My reaction was one of] disbelief. Especially the way in which they did it. There’s such controversy around it, because they didn’t tell anyone. In 2021, they’ve got some of the top filmmakers in the world…they’ve got some of the biggest stars in the world who worked for years in some cases on these projects very close to their hearts that are meant to be big-screen experiences. They’re meant to be out there for the widest possible audiences…and now they’re being used as a loss-leader for the streaming service — for a fledgling streaming service — without any consultation.

“So there’s a lot of controversy. It’s very, very, very, very messy. A real bait-and-switch. Yeah, it’s sort of not how you treat filmmakers and stars and people who…[I mean] these guys have given a lot for these projects. They deserved to be consulted and spoken to about what was going to happen to their work.”

I may be wrong, but Francis Lee‘s Ammonite (Lionsgate, 1.21) seems to have lost its footing in the award-season conversation. One reason is that roughly a third of critics have found it wanting in one way or another. Another, I’m telling myself, is that a couple of months ago star Kate Winslet generated accusations of award-season opportunism by trashing the innocent Woody Allen, her director in the reasonably decent Wonder Wheel (’17).

Three days ago TheWrap‘s Steve Pond posted a pulse-of-the-industry column piece titled “5 Things to Worry About This Oscar Season, From Virtual Ceremonies to Awards Boredom.”

One of the problems, he writes, is that “we may have already seen almost all the big contenders.”A possible solution, he says, may come from Sundance ’21. Excerpt: “With Sundance taking place (largely virtually) at the end of January and Oscar qualifying extending to the end of February, a film or a couple of films could take Sundance by storm, schedule an immediate qualifying run, ride that burst of momentum to Oscar nominations and invigorate the race.”

HE to Pond: Sundance movies don’t take anything “by storm” any more. The days of Park City knockouts like An Education, Margin Call, West of Memphis, Manchester By The Sea and Call Me By Your Name bursting out of Sundance and reverberating all over the culture are over.

Three or four years ago Sundance transformed itself into a Khmer Rouge snow camp — a feminist-POC-LGBTQ wokey-woke forum for Millennial and Zoomer-favored Sundance head-trip flicks — films that will be streamed down the road by people who believe in the Sundance brand, but which will be mostly ignored by everyone except the Gotham and Spirit award nominators, and perhaps not even those guys.

If 17th Century poet John Milton had somehow joined Tatiana for a Runyon Canyon hike this morning, he might have said “long is the way and hard, that out of hell leads up to light.”

This Carey Mulligan closeup is from Emerald Fennell‘s Promising Young Woman (Focus Features 12.25), which I highly approve of for the most part. I’m presuming that Mulligan is wearing a wig, but maybe not. Either way I haven’t been this taken with an elaborate hair color job in a long, long time. The IMDB says credit belongs to key hair stylist Bryson Conley and hair department head Daniel Curet.

Yesterday I finally saw a good portion of Steve McQueen‘s “Small Axe” quintet — specifically Mangrove, Red White and Blue and Lover’s Rock. (I’ve yet to watch Alex Wheatle, which I’m been told is the least of the five, and Education.) I was delighted to be finally sinking into the Big Three. McQueen is such a masterful filmmaker. He elevates material simply by focusing, framing and sharpening. His eye (visual choices) and sense of rhythm are impeccable. This, I was muttering to myself, is ace-level filmmaking….this is what it’s all about.

I was hugely impressed by all three, but especially by Mangrove, a gripping, well-throttled political drama which echoes and parallels Aaron Sorkin‘s Trial of the Chicago 7.

Both are about (a) landmark trials involving police brutality in the general time frame of the late ’60s and early ’70s, (b) activist defendants and flame-fanning media coverage, (c) an imperious, disapproving judge (Alex Jennings is McQueen’s Frank Langella), (d) a passionate barrister for the defense (Jack Lowden as a kind of British Bill Kuntsler), and (e) a decisive verdict or narrative aftermath that exposed institutional bias.

Mangrove (Amazon, currently streaming) is primarily about the late Frank Crichlow (Shaun Parkes), the owner-operator of a neighborhood-friendly Notting Hill restaurant that served spicy food, attracted a cutting-edge clientele (locals, journalists, activists, Jimi Hendrix) and became a kind of community nerve center for political hey-hey.

Racist British cops raided the Mangrove 12 times between January ’69 and July ’70. A “hands off the Mangrove” protest march happened in August ’70. The event ended in violence and the arrests of nine protesters (the “Mangrove Nine”), who were tried in the Old Bailey. They were almost entirely acquitted of all charges.

Everything about the 128-minute Mangrove is perfectly fused and balanced just so — the brilliant script by McQueen and Alastair Siddons, Shabier Kirchner‘s cinematography, Chris Dickens‘ editing and just about every performance (Parkes, Jennings, Letitia Wright, Malachi Kirby, Lowden, Rochenda Sandall, Nathaniel Martello-White , Darren Braithwaite, Sam Spruell).

The decisive way in which McQueen focuses on Crichlow/Parkes when the jury verdicts are finally read — staying on him, never cutting away, drilling down on the feeling — is one of the most riveting courtroom shots I’ve ever seen.

I was saying to myself that if Mangrove was a Best Picture contender, it would absolutely be right at the top of my list. Actually it is at the top of my list, except Amazon hasn’t categorized any of the “Small Axe” films (which were aired as a British miniseries) as features, and is aiming them, award-wise, at Emmy voters. But Mangrove is easily good enough to stand alongside Nomadland, Mank, Trial of the Chicago 7 and any other highly-rated 2020 film you might want to celebrate.

Mangrove is a major, grade-A motion picture — angrily alive, emotionally and atmospherically vibrant and urgent, heartfelt and rooted in real-deal history and hurt. And yet Amazon has decided, for reasons that no doubt make sense from a certain perspective, that it doesn’t belong the Best Picture competish. For me Mangrove is the second major 2020 film that warrants the top prize but which no one will be considering, the other being Roman Polanski‘s J’Accuse (i.e., An Officer and a Spy), which I saw earlier this year and went totally nuts for.

Mangrove currently has a 98% Rotten Tomato4es score, and a 90% score on Metacritic.

“Meryl Streep Isn’t on Our List of Greatest Actors — Here’s Why” is a 12.4.20 Times Insider piece by Sarah Bahr. The article explores the thinking about A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis‘s recent, widely ridiculed “25 Greatest Actors of 21st Century” piece.

Does Bahr address the obvious, which is that the 25 were (a) chosen according to a progressive woke checklist that favored women, POCs, international actors and Wes Studi, and (b) downplayed white cis males (i.e., Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, etc.)? Of course not. Does she allow or encourage Scott to dispute the forehead-slapping response to his not only having selected Keanu Reeves but put his name near the top of the list? Nope.

I get the idea behind celebrating a “man of the people” actor whose emotive gifts are, shall we say, on the somewhat brusque or understated side. If Tony and Manohla had somehow time-tripped back to 1975 and prepared a “25 Greatest Actors of the Last 25 Years” article, I would have completely understood if they’d picked the original Steve McQueen, and offered special praise for his less-is-more acting in The Sand Pebbles, Bullitt, Junior Bonner and The Getaway. That I would have totally agreed with, but Keanu effing Reeves?

Here’s Scott’s Keanu statement:

Senator Kelly Loeffler (R-Georgia) is a blondie, zombie, chilly-souled Republican who spouted the usual scary-liberal accusations against her opponent, Rev. Raphael Warnock, in today’s Georgia Senate runoff debate.

How can Georgians vote for Loeffler after a federal financial disclosure document showed last March that she and husband Jeffrey Sprecher, chairman and CEO of the Intercontinental Exchange (a corporation that owns the New York Stock Exchange), “sold stock in companies vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic with an aggregate value of several million dollars, and that they began selling stocks on 1.24.20, the same day Loeffler attended a private briefing of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions on the spread of the disease”?

Warnock is clearly, obviously a better human being. Loeffler, whose personal worth is in the hundreds of millions, is obviously in it for the money.