Awards Circuit‘s Clayton Davis has been running around the award-season mulberry bush for 15 years, and now he’s ridden that horse into a new gig as Variety‘s film awards editor — the same position held by Kris Tapley until he left the trade publication 17 months ago, and more or less same job held down by The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg.

A sharply observant, politically fleet-footed type of guy (and who can blame him in this current climate of political terror?), Davis will begin his Variety duties as of Sept. 1.

Davis will deliver the usual award-season razzmatazz and soft-shoe tap dance — racetrack odds on various Oscar contenders, predictions about this and that, softball interviews, assessments of the intrinsic or historic value of you-name-it and who-the-fuck-knows?, etc.

Variety film-awards editor Clayton Davis

The art of award-season coverage was aptly summed up by Laurence Olivier in a third-act line to Jean Simmons in Spartacus: “You tread the line between truth and insult with the skill of a mountain goat!” (Or, if you will, the line between truth and flattery.) Most showbiz journos and columnists never approach that line, much less tread it. They like to hang in the shade.

No offense and due respect but Davis will almost certainly never use the term “Ma Bumblefuck” as a nickname for Glenn Close‘s “Mamaw” character in Ron Howard‘s Hillbilly Elegy. (The term was coined by Hollywood Elsewhere on 2.24.20.) Variety doesn’t want that, and that’s not who Davis is.

Another likelihood: If West Side Story‘s Ansel Elgort is once again attacked by Twitter wolves over the non-issue of having insensitively cut things off with “Gabby” after a brief romantic fling, Davis isn’t likely to stand up and call bullshit like Sasha Stone did on 6.21.20, and like I did on on 6.19.

Davis now stands side by side with Variety‘s award-season team — the longstanding Tim Gray, deputy awards and features editor Jenelle Riley, senior editor and red carpet guy Mark Malkin, and Artisans editor Jazz Tangcay.

A remastered 20th anniversary 4K version of Darren Aronofsky‘s Requiem for a Dream will pop on 10.13.20. The critically admired film, based on Hubert Selby Jr.‘s 1978 novel and worshipped by Midwestern Evangelical audiences, opened on 10.6.00. (I’m kidding about the Evangelicals.) Presented in Dolby Vision with a new Dolby Atmos audio track + a pair of new behind-the-scenes featurettes.

Danny Wolf and Paul Fishbein‘s Skin: A History of Nudity in Movies (on demand, 8.18) is a sharp, highly intelligent doc that covers its own waterfront in a diverting, dryly amusing fashion. It’s not so much the nudie clips (here’s a three-hour, 45-minute reel that offers a lot of the same stuff) but the commentary that seals the deal.

I wasn’t expecting that much at first, but I sat up as I began to realize that the talking heads were elevating and deepening the focus with sage observations and occasional razor-sharp quips.

I’m talking about Sean Young, Peter Bogdanovich, Eric Roberts, Traci Lords, Pam Grier (who’s put on a few pounds since Jackie Brown), Malcolm McDowell, Sybil Danning, Bruce Davison (who delivers a funny line about Ben), Mr. Skin‘s Jim McBride, HE’s own Joe Dante, former employer Kevin Smith, the great Amy Heckerling (Fast Times at Ridgemont High), the late Sylvia Miles, the very much alive Erica Gavin, Liz Goldwyn, critics Amy Nicholson, Richard Roeper and Mick LaSalle, CARA ratings board member Joan Graves, film maven Irv Slifkin, The Hollywood Reporter‘s Tatiana Siegel and several others.

I was a tiny bit scared about reviewing this doc with any enthusiasm for fear of getting the side-eye from #MeToo types. Right now we’re living through the blandest, most buttoned-up, erotically stifled and almost Victorian eras in U.S. (or even human) history, more so than even the Eisenhower 1950s

Time and again actors (mostly actresses) who were in their prime back in the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s and early aughts remind us that time and biology are assassins — they spare no one. You can’t watch this film and not think “wow, aging is a mother.”

As we watched Tatiana asked what my all-time favorite nude scene is, and I honestly couldn’t think of one off the top of my head. Now I’m thinking it might be Kim Novak‘s bedroom scene in Of Human Bondage (’64). In and of itself nudity has always gotten my attention, but it’s never been that transporting. The tingle quickly fades.

Boilerplate: “The definitive documentary on the history of nudity in feature films from the early silent days to the present, studying the changes in morality that led to the use of nudity in films while emphasizing the political, sociological and artistic changes that shaped that history. [Also] a study of the gender inequality in presenting nude images in motion pictures and will follow the revolution that has created nude gender equality in feature films today. It culminates in a discussion of ‘what are nude scenes like in the age of the #METOO movement’ as well as a look at CGI nudity that seems a large part of motion pictures’ future.”

Does anyone know any reasonably healthy, non-neurotic fellows in their late 40s who smoke? A significant percentage of party people (i.e., druggies and boozers) tend to smoke in their teens, 20s and 30s, but most of them realize they have to step off that train by age 40 if not sooner. Ben Affleck is 47, and days away from his 48th. I don’t know if he’s a regular smoker or if he’s just chipping, but giving in to a nicotine urge is just a step or two removed from drinking again. For years I was a Cannes Film Festival smoker, but that doesn’t count. U.S. residents can steal guilty cigs in Europe or Asia but no smoking on home ground — that’s the rule.

As it must to all men, death came yesterday to Sumner Redstone, the scrappy, swaggering, carrot-haired media magnate and “daring dealmaker” with a huge ego and, over the last 15 or 20 years, a messy “House of Borgia” private life. Not to mention that odd episode when he fired Tom Cruise off the Paramount lot for behaving like a hyper, couch-jumping eccentric.

The Boston-based Redstone began his entertainment career in the mid ’50s with a 12-theater drive-in chain (i.e., Northeast Theater Corp.). He gradually built it into a major megaplex exhibition chain in the ’60s and ’70s. In 1987 at age 63, Redstone engineered a hostile takeover of Viacom, the syndication company that owned MTV and Showtime, for $3.4 billion. In early 1994 he took control of Paramount in a $10 billion deal. Not to mention Blockbuster, CBS, yaddah yaddah…always the drive to dominate, acquire more money and power, a few missed opportunities and miscalculations, etc. You don’t wanna know. Okay, maybe you do.

And…well, read about his combative life if you care to, but it’s exhausting. Reviewing all of the super-strenuous clutching, grabbing, conniving, plotting and scheming by Sumner, his family members and especially a pair of girlfriend gatekeepers will drain your soul. Two Vanity Fair pieces — this and this — tell part of the tale.

I spent 75 minutes refreshing my memories of the man this morning…whew, whatever, later.

The 1979 Copley Hotel fire incident was quite the episode. Redstone nearly died, suffered major burns, needed about a year to fully recover.

If I’d been in Redstone’s shoes in the ’70s and ’80s I would have paid for some neck-wattle surgery, but that’s me.

And over the side with two dummies bouncing and flailing around in the front seat. Then it happens again at the finale.

If you listen to Dave Kehr, Otto Preminger‘s Angel Face (’53) is “an intense Freudian melodrama” and “one of the forgotten masterworks of film noir…a disturbingly cool, rational investigation of the terrors of sexuality…the sets, characters, and actions are extremely stylized, yet Preminger’s moving camera gives them a frightening unity and fluidity, tracing a straight, clean line to a cliff top for one of the most audacious endings in film history.”

…because of the mess it would leave on the carpet. This may be my favorite wiggy-flicky-schizo Nic Cage scene of all time (and that includes all of his eccentric behaviors in Vampire’s Kiss).

kamala harris marching with marching band drums playing dancing drummers dancers walking cheering happy pic.twitter.com/uHqNWPhWow

— reaction videos (@findurmeme) November 7, 2019

I haven’t received my Kindle review copy of Glenn Kenny‘s “Made Men” (Hanover Square Press, 9.15.20), a 400-page history of the making of Martin Scorsese‘s Goodfellas (’90).

Critic and book author Shawn Levy (“Rat Pack Confidential”, “The Castle on Sunset”), whom I’ve known for years, has called Kenny’s book “impeccably researched, fluently written, and infused with insight, wit and mastery…exactly what you want from a making-of-your-favorite-movie book. From mob stories to the nuts-and-bolts business of crafting a masterpiece, it’s all here…you’d have to be a real schnook not to read it.”

I don’t want to make a big deal about this but I was little perplexed about the book’s front cover, which shows the rear half of a bullet-riddled pink Cadillac.

The allusion, of course, is to the pink Caddy bought by Frank Pellegrino‘s Johnny Dio (aka “Johnny Roastbeef”) with a wad of stolen Lufthansa loot. Robert De Niro‘s Jimmy Conway, the Lufthansa heist ringleader, is infuriated that Johnny bought the damn thing after being warned not to spend money on anything flashy.

Johnny tries to explain it away (“It’s in my mother’s name”), offers a soft apology (“Sorry, Jimmy”), etc. Nonetheless three or four scenes later he and his blonde wife end up whacked in the front seat of the Caddy.

The problem is that Johnny Roastbeef’s pink Caddy is a 1979 model with a white top, and the caddy on the book cover is a ’63 or ’64 model with mild fins and no white top. Plus the color of movie version is ripe and loud while the book-cover version is pinkish beige.

This is not a capital crime on the part of the book-cover designer, but why not use the caddy we all saw in the movie? Obviously it’s an easy get — a no-brainer. I’m just not understanding the ’63 or ’64. The snafu doesn’t hurt anyone or get in the way of the actual content (i.e., Kenny’s research, reporting and seductive prose style) but again…why?

Rear section of a 1963 or ’64 pink Cadillac.

Johnny Roastbeef’s 1979 pink Caddy as shown in Goodfellas.

Poor Trini Lopez, 83, died earlier today from COVID complications. Lopez was first and foremost a pop singer who caught a wave between the late ’50s and late ’60s, particularly from his recordings of Pete Seeger and Lee Hays‘ “If I Had A Hammer” (’63) and Will Holt‘s “Lemon Tree” (’64).

Wiki excerpt: “Lopez was still recording and performing in recent years. He took part in a benefit concert to raise money for the victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami and recently appeared as a guest performer in a number of shows held in Maastricht in the Netherlands with the Dutch violinist and composer André Rieu. Lopez’s ‘El Immortal’ was released in 2010, and in 2011 he released his 65th album, ‘Into The Future.'”

I’m not sure if Lopez was a serious Rat Pack member or not, but he did take part in a 1965 Soupy Sales pie-fight taping with Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr.

Yes, Lopez costarred in The Dirty Dozen but that was hardly his most noteworthy achievement.