In the matter of the 50th anniversary Broadway presentation of Mart Crowley‘s The Boys in the Band, which opened on 4.30.18, the response was “okay, cool, nicely done,” etc.

But the question was “why?” — why revive a play that the gay community began to turn its back on around the debut of William Friedkin‘s film version, which opened in March 1970. That was nine months after the June 1969 Stonewall rebellion, and the sea-change in gay consciousness and values that happened in its wake — pride, solidarity, political militancy — had no room for a rather acidic drama about a group of Manhattan gays gathered at a friend’s birthday party in the West Village, and with three or four consumed by loneliness, misery and self-loathing.

The answer was “uhm, well, it’s a very well written and highly engaging classic play, and where’s the harm in looking back a half-century? Plus we’ll probably do good business.”

In the matter of Joe Mantello’s Netflix feature version of same, costarring all the members of the 2018 revival, the response is “okay, cool…those of us who didn’t catch the 2018 play can sample the wares and once again sink into the whole magilla.”

But the question is “why?” — why make another film version that will naturally be compared to the excellent Freidkin adaptation? Why remake it if it’s not clearly better than the 50-year-old chestnut? Or if you don’t have something new to say in a textural or cultural sense?

I’m mentioning this because Mantello’s film (debuting on 9.30) is good enough or “fine” or whatever kind of “attaboy” you want to apply. I liked it as far as it went, but it’s not as good as the Freidkin version. I’m sorry but it’s not, although it isn’t half bad. The fact of the matter is that the Friedkin is funnier, smoother, more touching, better edited and definitely better performed in terms of the two strongest characters, Emory and Harold.

I’m not dismissing Robin de Jesús‘s Emory in the newbie — he especially catches fire during the telephone confession section — but Cliff Gorman‘s Emory is at least two of three times better. Nobody has ever said or ever will say “sort of makes you want to rush out and buy a slide rule” better than Gorman; ditto “hot cross buns!” and “who do ya have to fuck to get a drink around here?”

And despite the amusing, often riveting performance by Zachary Quinto as Harold, the bitter, acidic “32 year-old pockmarked Jew fairy”, he’s just not the giddy but wicked tongue-snapper that Leonard Frey was in the Friedkin film. Quinto is very good — Frey was great. I’m sorry but that’s how it seems.

Plus I found Frederick Combs‘ performance as the droll Donald somewhat more engaging than Matt Bomer‘s opaque version in the Mantello. And Robert La Tourneaux‘s “Cowboy Tex” definitely outpoints Charlie Carver‘s in the Netflix version. Ditto Peter White‘s closet case (i.e., “Alan McCarthy”) in the Friedkin, who’s a bit more compelling than Brian Hutchison in the newbie.

On the other hand I felt a bit more empathy for Jim Parsons‘ Michael than the overly acidic Kenneth Nelson in the ’70 version. Ditto Tuc Watkins‘ “Hank”, who sinks in a tiny bit deeper than Laurence Luckinbill‘s performance in the Freidkin — both are fine, no fault, no foul. Keith Prentice‘s “Larry” is just as good as Andrew Rannells in the Mantello. And I would rate the two “Bernard” performances — Michael Benjamin Washington in the oldie, Reuben Greene in the Mantello — as roughly the same.

The only added element in the Mantello are some memory vignettes from the telephone confession portion — fleeting images of men whom this and that partygoer has always loved and never forgotten.

Filed on 5.31.13 from Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland: I clench up every time a table of three or four people erupts in loud sustained giggling. Laughter is basically about the releasing of feelings that you’ve kept bottled up for whatever reason. Freeing these suppressed judgements and emotions from the cage is exhilarating — an occasion for pure joy.

I’ve been there a few thousand times in my life, and will hopefully go there again very soon. But it’s over within five or ten seconds, max. And then I settle into “the space.” Because I don’t have that much bottled up to begin with. No healthy person does.

What good are you if you can’t be Zen about things? The Zen guy or the Bhagavad Gita gal lives 24/7 with the hum of the universe animating his/her spirit and zapping every molecule, and therefore he/she doesn’t explode in spazzy giggling fits at breakfast tables…on and on and on, dropping silverware on the floor, getting louder and louder.

It’s not “she knows too much to argue or to judge” — it’s “she knows and feels too much to giggle for 30 or 40 seconds straight.”

The fact is that anyone who succumbs to boorish and sustained giggling fits means they’ve probably got a shitload of bottled-up feelings and rage and bad memories, which obviously indicates they’re living in a fairly conflicted or repressed place, and are therefore probably miserable to some degree, not to mention immature. So if you’re the type of person who giggles in loud, prolonged, hyena-like bursts in a Swiss breakfast room at 8:25 am you’re probably a bit of an asshole. You probably need years of therapy, but if you haven’t done the therapy by now you probably never will.

Does it matter that you’re irritating others with your gales of hideous gaiety? Of course not. Why should it? You’re on your vacation and you worked hard to pay for it and so you can do what you want, whenever you want…right? So you’re a sociopath to boot.

Note: The below video was taken during a forest hike near Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland in late May 2013. Rather than take a late-afternoon train ride from Interlaken to Lauterbrunnen I decided to hike up a trail alongside the Lütschine river.

One of the most infectious bass lines in pop music history was performed by Bill Church on Van Morrison‘s “Wild Night” (’71), a track from his fifth studio album, “Tupelo Honey.” Written by Morrison almost 40 years before he became an anti-masker, “Wild Night” was recorded in the spring of ’71 at San Francisco’s Wally Heider studios (245 Hyde Street, between Turk and Eddy). It was released as a single in ’71 and reached #28 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Reported two days ago: “Basketball legends Shaquille O’Neal and Charles Barkley are facing backlash over their response to the grand jury decision on the Breonna Taylor case.

“I feel just bad the young lady lost her life, but we do have to take into account her boyfriend did shoot at the cops and shot a cop,” Barkley said during pregame coverage of the NBA’s Western Conference Finals Thursday.

HE interjection: White people have not been allowed to say and are currently prohibited from saying what Barkley said. Because if they did, they would be instantly tarred and feathered for spewing toxic racism.

Back to story: “The decision sparked protests and demonstrations across the country. Many NBA players have used their platform to bring attention to Taylor’s case and to amplify calls for change. And yet two days ago, On a grand jury decided not to bring charges against Louisville police for Taylor’s March 13 killing and only three counts of wanton endangerment against fired Officer Brett Hankison for shooting into Taylor’s neighbors’ homes.

“O’Neal, also anchoring the pregame show, agreed with Barkley and argued that while “no-knock warrants” should be abolished, the officers involved were simply following orders.

“A homicide occurred, and we’re sorry a homicide did occur, but if you have a warrant signed by a judge, you are doing your job. And if someone fires at you, I would imagine that you would fire back,” O’Neal said.

Barkley then took a stance against defunding the police. “I’m like, ‘Wait a minute’, he said. ‘Who are black people supposed to call…Ghostbusters? When we have crime in our neighborhoods? We need police reform.”

“Social media reaction came swiftly, with many denouncing the former NBA players’ response.”

Plus: “Not to relitigate old wounds, but all the Hillary equivocators from 2016…the people who said she was racist, not really that different from Trump…the ones who voted third party…the ones who stayed home because, you know, ‘the lesser of two evils’…sorry but you all have to eat it one more time. Because oh, how I would love some of that Hillary evil right now.”

Plus: “Let’s look at the alternative universe if a few more people in 2016 had told themselves, ‘Yes, she’s not my favorite but you only get two choices in our system, and it’s probably better that this sane, competent person gets in as opposed to a malignant narcissist.”

Plus: “I hope you like carrying your rape baby to term. You can name it Jill Stein.”

Friendo: “When will HE be addressing the middling Metacritic score (75%) for The Trial of the Chicago 7, especially given your recent comment that ‘any film with a Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic rating below 80% obviously has an issue or two’?”

HE reply: The Metacritic figure may seem mildly troubling at first, but if you look more closely it’s not so bad. 22 out of 26 reviews (written by Chicago Sun-Times‘ Richard Roeper, Uproxx‘s Mike Ryan, Time‘s Stephanie Zacharek, Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman, the Washington Post‘s Ann Hornaday, TheWrap‘s Steve Pond, USA Today‘s Brian Truitt, The Telegraph‘s Robbie Collin, The Hollywood Reporter‘s David Rooney, the Boston Globe‘s Ty Burr) range from solidly approving to borderline ecstatic. The 75% grade was caused by four lone wolves — the N.Y. Times‘ A.O. Scott, A.V. Club‘s A.A. Dowd, The Film Stage‘s Matt Cipolla and especially The Guardian‘s Peter Bradshaw, the biggest sorehead of the bunch.

Otherwise the Rotten Tomatoes score for Aaron Sorkin‘s film is 92%, which is excellent.

Is Trial a perfect creation? Maybe not, but even the most widely acclaimed films have met with one or two detractors. It goes like that. The seriously admired Manchester by The Sea, which earned a 96% positive on Metacritic, was panned by The Guardian‘s Lanre Bakare.

I made it fairly clear on 9.22 and again on 9.23 that Aaron Sorkin‘s The Trial of the Chicago 7 is a truly exceptional smarthouse drama — a character-driven procedural that will hook adults of whatever age.

Despite the tumultuous late ’60s milieu it’s not about the usual noise, rage and chaotic energy, but about thought and procedure and agendas laid face-up on the table. It’s about clarity and drillbits and impressive brain-cell counts.

“This is great,” I was muttering to myself. “I love that I’m in the company of some brainy and passionate people who know about honing and sculpting sentences…why can’t more movie characters talk like this?” Possible answer: Because certain producers, directors and screenwriters are afraid that younger audiences will be put off by screenplays that sound “written” — by rhetorical precision and fine argumentative fencing? I for one loved being in this realm.

The endless trial (September ’69 to February ’70) was about a Nixon administration attempt to nail eight anti-establishment activists for activities tied to violent conflicts during the August ’68 Chicago Democratic convention.

Four of the defendants were Abbie Hoffman, Tom Hayden, Jerry Rubin and activist David Dellinger, respectively played by Sacha Baron Cohen, Eddie Redmayne, Jeremy Strong and John Carroll Lynch. The idea was to convict them for violating the Rap Brown law by crossing state lines in order to incite a riot. In so doing Nixon’s attorney general John Mitchell was ignoring a previous assessment by LBJ’s attorney general Ramsey Clark (Michael Keaton), which was that the conflict was primarily provoked by the Chicago police.

The number of defendants was reduced to seven when the attempted prosecution of Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen) was declared a mistrial.

The Trial of the Chicago 7 works because it’s all on the page — because of Sorkin’s shaping and honing — emphasizing and de-emphasizing to achieve a certain focus and tone. And then he assembled a top-tier cast and hired Phedon Papamichael to shoot it without any muss or fuss. Sorkin could’ve made a half-dozen other films about the Chicago 7 trial with all kinds of attitudes and approaches, but he decided to make this one.

The film’s central conflict is not a good guys vs. bad guys thing, but between Hayden and Abbie Hoffman — between their differing approaches to stoking or harnessing the social unrest.

Hayden’s approach was cerebral and sensible — classic political organizing, focused pragmatism, position papers, non-violence. Hoffman was about trusting in theatrical instinct — hippie-yippie tribalism, generational anger and a vaguely understood practice of cultural revolution for the hell of it (i.e., irreverence, impulsiveness, cranked-up emotion).

The Hayden approach dominates, certainly as far as the defense strategy is concerned, but Hoffman’s (and Rubin’s) wise-ass theatricality and flamboyance punches through.

It’s actually a kind of four-way debate by way of defense attorney William Kuntsler (played by the always-good Mark Rylance) and co-attorney Leonard Weinglass (Ben Shenkman).

But the payoff (and it’s a rouser) comes when Kuntsler decides to put Hoffman on the stand, which sets the stage for one of those robust Sorkin-crescendo moments.

In so doing Sorkin has burnished Hoffman’s legacy. As noted last Tuesday, he’s made him into a more charismatic and compelling speaker than Hoffman ever was in actuality. Partly because Cohen was enabled to portray Hoffman in just the right way — a certain physical resemblance, a decent stab at his western Massachusetts accent plus the Sorkin makeover. To hell with the fact that the 6’3″ Cohen is almost a foot taller than the Real McCoy — Cohen blows all such thoughts out of the water.

And what a pleasure it is to watch Eddie Redmayne play a reasonable adult in a recognizable realm — no handicaps, no gender-switches, no Les Misérables, no Jupiter Ascending showboating, no Fantastic Beasts, no helium balloons…just a regular, well-educated guy wearing 20th century clothing.

This is a film about radical ’60s behavior and agendas that actually adds up and makes sense in 21st Century terms. There’s no watching it without considering contemporary echoes. Enough said.

A couple of days ago screenwriter Daniel Waters asked followers to post four or five films that they deeply admire or feel guilty-pleasure pangs for, but which are generally regarded as insufficiently loved.

Five films, in short, that the hoi polloi never seemed to care very much for (or never knew much about or have forgotten) but which you privately swear by.

Five years ago I posted a list of HE’s 160 greatest all-time films , but none apply here because each is loved and respected. We’re talking lone-wolf, off-in-the-corner films. So here are five…make it six picks:

Sandra Nettlebeck‘s Mostly Martha (’01). Probably the greatest sensual foodie + unlikely love affair flick I’ve ever seen. Martina Gedeck and Sergio Castellitto‘s lead performances are perfection. Scott Hicks‘ No Reservations, an American remake costarring Catherine Zeta Jones and Aaron Eckhart, missed the mark.

John Flynn‘s The Outfit (’73). A classic hard-boiled revenge film, lean and blunt and crafted in the tradition of Point Blank. Outside of noir cultists and film bums, few have paid much attention. Robert Duvall, Karen Black, Joe Don Baker, Joanna Cassidy and Robert Ryan.

Bob Rafelson‘s Stay Hungry (’76). Love, character, destiny, Southern culture and body-building. Charming, low-key, funny. Arguably contains the most winning Arnold Schwarzenegger performance ever. Definitely my all-time favorite Jeff Bridges film. Sally Field, R.G. Armstrong, Robert Englund, Helena Kallianiotes.

Frank Perry and Thomas McGuane‘s Rancho Deluxe (’75). Another Jeff Bridges film about destiny and character, this time by way of Montana cattle rustling. Harry Dean Stanton and Richard Bright played Curt and Burt, and of course their names are a running gag. Not a lot of narrative urgency, but that’s also the charm of it.

Lamont Johnson‘s The Last American Hero (’73). One of the best redneck flicks ever. Yes, Bridges again. The story of racecar driver Junior Johnson, called Elroy Jackson in the film. Based on Tom Wolfe‘s Esquire piece titled “The Last American Hero Is Junior Johnson…Yes!”.

Susanne Bier‘s Things We Lost In The Fire (’07). My all-time favorite film about drug addiction, containing my favorite Benicio del Toro performance. Fans were few and far between when it opened in ’07, but I was instantly sold. Alone but hooked,

Out of Hollywood Elsewhere’s 10 projected Best Picture Oscar contenders, I’ve seen exactly four — Chloe Zhao‘s Nomadland, Aaron Sorkin‘s The Trial of the Chicago 7, Florian Zeller‘s The Father and Chris Nolan‘s Tenet. The other six are in the wings. I’ve heard that David Fincher‘s Mank is totally masterful and bucks-up approved, and I will be trusting in that assessment until I see it and make my own. So far the standings for the Best Director Oscar contenders…check back with me later. But it looks right now like Nomadland‘s Frances McDormand and The Father‘s Anthony Hopkins are in the top slots for Best Actress and Best Actor, respectively.

“He cannot pitch and roll with what people may think about him…this humiliation that he feels but can’t bear to feel…there’s a great sadness in that, for me. There’s something internally wrong with the guy, and you’re saddened by that. The fact that he can’t ignore slights, is sorta nuts. He’s a keyboard warrior coward.” — The Mooch.

Imagine actually choosing to stay in a gaudy, Las Vegas-styled hotel on the Sunset Strip…a modern stopover for young dipshits, ablaze with nocturnal, motion-flow blue lighting. I’m speaking of the Pendry Hotel (corner of Sunset and North Olive), which is a different idea and structure than the Pendry residences.

I was friendly to some extent with production designer Richard Sylbert, whose location choices for Chinatown were the stuff of legend, and I’m telling you he’d be appalled by this place. It’s rancid, soul-less.

“A legal career is but a means to an end, and that end is building the Kingdom of God.” — presumed Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett.

“Building” the kingdom of God? What, the same way a construction team might build a 12-unit condo in Orlando? The last time I checked “the kingdom of God” began to build itself X number of eons ago and will continue this building for X number of eons hence, regardless of any notions of good or evil or “do unto others” or any of that jazz. The kingdom of God is not a theological projection or a moral proposition but an infinite realm of ever-expanding micro-cellular creation by way of intelligent (or at the very least unified) design.

The staunchly Catholic Barrett, on the other hand, believes that God is some kind of benevolent, all-seeing, magnificently moral being who roots for the good guys (i.e., the Christians) down on planet Earth, but at the same time has an iron-clad rule about not stepping into the situation too aggressively.

Like any good Catholic, Barrett respects this hands-off, absentee landlord, “it’s up to humans to do the heavy lifting” policy, but at the same time believes that God is on her side and will be pulling for her confirmation, if and when she’s nominated, and that once on the court he wants her to implement His Moral Vision for life on our poisoned planet. She will be, in short, His loyal agent — the servant of his bidding.

In short, Amy Coney Barrett is a religious fanatic.

The origin of the above quote, by the way, appears to be an essay titled “The Purpose and Vocation of the Catholic Lawyer,” written by Rich Garnett and posted on mirrorofjusticeblogs on 5.2.12.