Did you know that Matt Mulhern‘s Duane Hopwood is a film that people were talking about 15 years ago? And that it played Sundance ’05, and was positively reviewed by both Roger Ebert and Variety‘s Robert Koehler?

But did you also know that other critics were less happy with it, and that the general consensus resulted in 53% and 55% scores on Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes, respectively?

Did you also know that later that year IFC decided against releasing Duane Hopwood in New York City and Los Angeles, focusing instead on Philadelphia, Tucson and Kansas City? And that the film ended up with a total domestic gross of $13,510?

Earlier today Collider‘s Gregory Lawrence wrote that “if you’re going to watch one New England-set character study about an alcoholic father struggling to regain control and cathartically work through his traumas, watch Duane Hopwood, not Manchester by the Sea.”

Two of Lawrence’s reasons for offering this view, that Manchester is “overlong” and “oppressively morose”, are nothing sort of asinine. One suspects that his main reason is because Casey Affleck, who won the Best Actor Oscar for his Lee Chandler performance, is, in Lawrence’s words, “a noted sexual predator.”

I’m not saying Lawrence is a p.c. kumquat, but he kinda sounds like one.

The bottom line is that no amount of icky (not to mention financially settled and apologized for) behavior on Affleck’s part can possibly negate the effect of his performance or Kenneth Lonergan‘s film. And no amount of Collider spin can enhance the reputation of the smudgy, obviously second-tier, all-but-forgotten Duane Hopwood. There was a reason, trust me, why it wasn’t deemed worthy of a NY or LA opening. One look at the below videos (and a single sampling of Judah Friedlander‘s failed-actor character) tells you everything.

Here’s proof that I’ve been keeping tabs on Hollywood balding trends for a good 26 years. (Although I’ve been focused on such matters since my mid teens, which is when I first suspected that my own follicles might one day be in jeopardy.) I sent a snail-mail pitch to Esquire, and they went for it almost right away. I was paid something like $350 or $400. The same year I began writing a weekly Sunday piece for the N.Y. Daily News entertainment section. I also began a stint as a weekly columnist for the L.A. Times Syndicate, which I did for five years (or until ’99).

HE to Rural Bumblefucks, Young Party Animals, Southerners, “Karens”, Mask-Refusing Righties: Thanks, guys!

Just-posted analysis from Cowen analyst Doug Creutz, a managing director and senior research analyst covering the media and entertainment sector since ’03:

“We had previously assumed that the spread of COVID-19 would be relatively halted, with social distancing requirements significantly lessened, by late 2020. We have now extended that timeline out to at least mid-2021; the situation remains very fluid, and we do not rule out the possibility that the impact could last even longer.”

“[We expect] no film releases in fiscal year 2020,” and that “domestic theaters [will] be largely closed until mid-2021, in part because we don’t think studios will be interested in releasing their largest movies into a capacity-constrained footprint.”

HE comment: Okay, so every awards-contender is going to be streamed….terrific.

Jordan Ruimy comment (backed up by below graph]: “What I don’t understand is that COVID deaths in the U.S. have gone down by 75% since April, so why all the bloody panic?”

This morning in a Facebook David Edelstein thread…

…I don’t hear or see “mask up.” Because I’ve been masking up since early March. What I get is that we live in a country so rock-dumb, yokel-ignorant and arrogantly entitled that Gov. Andrew Cuomo and producer Jane Rosenthal felt that a series of PSAs (“Mask Up, America”) might help the situation. Because unlike every other nation on the planet except Brazil and maybe one or two others, the USA has proved itself a joke at fighting the scourge. The hinterland regions, I mean — Oklahoma, Florida, Georgia, rural and rightwing California. People who are too weak and stupid to act responsibly. Celebrity participants in the campaign include director Kathryn Bigelow plus Robert De Niro, Jamie Foxx, Morgan Freeman, John Leguizamo, Anthony Mackie, Rosie Perez, Ellen Pompeo and Jeffrey Wright.

I reviewed Vaclav Malhoul’s The Painted Bird, an adaptation of Jerzy Kosinski’s 1965 novel, on 10.13.19. IFC Films will begin streaming it on Friday, 7.17. Here’s a modified refresher:

Within its own ravishing and diseased realm, Vaclav Marhoul‘s The Painted Bird is a certain kind of “great” film — exquisitely made, but utterly hellish to the core in terms of its depiction of the human condition. Which makes it a tough sit.

I saw it last night and holy moley holy fucktard. It’s about a little Jewish kid (Petr Kotlár) trying to survive all on his own in eastern Europe during World War II, and man, does he suffer the drawn-out pains of hell. So did I in a manner of speaking.

I’m calling The Painted Bird a “beautiful” highbrow art film for elite critics and cineastes who have the fence-straddling ability to enjoy magnificent b&w cinematography (all hail dp Vladimir Smutny) and austere visual compositions while savoring the utmost in human cruelty and heartless perversion.

The vile, animal-like behavior is unrelenting; ditto the highly sophisticated monochrome arthouse chops. Marhoul is quite gifted, determined and uncompromised, and quite the bold cinematic painter. He is also, as Kosinski was, one sick fuck.

I mean that in a good way as Marhoul is a Bergman-like in the application of an unrelenting clinical eye; he never panders or tries to soften things up for the mom-and-pop schmuckos — he’s totally playing to Guy Lodge and his ilk. This is a movie about some awful, horrific, beastly people (Harvey Keitel‘s priest and the kid’s father excepted), and what agony it can be to suffer under them on a prolonged basis.

I read Kosinski’s “The Painted Bird” when I was 22 or 23, and I somehow absorbed all the horrific sadism and cruelty and lonely agony without incident because of the dry, matter-of-fact Kosinski prose. It’s quite another thing to hang with that feral, dark-eyed little kid who doesn’t talk for the entire film.

What is the perverse obsession with people and animals being hung upside down by ropes? What was so terrible about servicing that hot-to-trot farmer’s daughter (Jitka Cadek Cvancarova)?

The instant you see white-haired, beard-stubbled Udo Kier, you go “oh God, here comes another cold, maniacal, salivating monster performance.” Harvey Keitel is totally subservient to the mise en scene — just playing an old, white-haired priest who coughs a lot and then dies. Julian Sands plays a total salivating beast. Barry Pepper (who was young 20 years ago but no longer) is interesting as a Russian soldier with no love for Communism or Josef Stalin.

From “Bari Weiss Takes a Flamethrower to The New York Times On Her Way Out The Door,” subheaded by “Finally, the Call-Out Machine got Called Out.” Posted late this afternoon.

…you must be some kinda clueless whitebread whose mom never served Spanish dishes. I’ve loved Spanish-Mexican-TexMex cuisine in restaurants all my life, but over the last four decades I’ve never even glanced at a can of Goya beans while shopping. Not once. Until the Trump-Ivanaka thing came up I’ve never considered the option. In any event, cancel Goya beans! Send that company into bankruptcy! I’m serious. I shouldn’t say this as I despise cancel culture, but every rule is subject to amendments.

Two and a half years ago I wrote that I was “almost teary-eyed with nostalgia for the time I spent in New York City during the 2013 Christmas holiday.” That nostalgia has double-downed over the last few months, or since the world more or less slammed to a halt last March. And now with the “live free or die” red-state assholes and under-40 party animals having taken us all back to square one in terms of fighting the silent scourge, I’m pretty much weeping for a life that I used to take for granted.

My New York holidays were a regular thing, but seven years ago the furlough felt extra-special. It lasted six or seven days. Christmas isn’t really Christmas unless you’re roaming around midtown and lower Manhattan at night, and then maybe taking a train to visit friends in the suburbs for a day or two. (I seem to recall Jett and I visiting my mother, who passed in 2015, at her assisted living facility in Southbury, CT.) Or if you’re roaming around London, which I was lucky enough to do in December of ’80. Nippy weather, overcoat, gloves, etc. The chillier the air, the better the holiday.

The high point was when I took a friend to see The Wolf of Wall Street at the gone-but-not-forgotten Ziegfeld on a Saturday night. An alert, decent-sized crowd in attendance, and it was just heaven. Especially during the quaalude scene. The whole night was glorious. The energy, the air, the aromas…all of it.

Remember those dim-bulb Academy members who harangued Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio after that first Academy screening because they didn’t get the satirical thrust behind all the coarse vulgarity (which was delivered both literally and within “quotes”)? And how Scorsese and DiCaprio had to attend screening after screening and patiently explain that they were depicting the louche adventures of Jordan Belfort and his cronies to make a point about the character of the buccaneers who have fleeced this country and will definitely fleece again? Remember the brief shining moment of Hope Holiday?

You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone. I would have that life again. Perhaps I will someday. Or maybe not.

Richard Starkey turned 80 about a week ago. I wasn’t paying attention at the time, but the ticking cosmic clock never quits. Yesterday I happened to listen to Peter Frampton‘s solo YouTube performance of “It Don’t Come Easy“, which was posted as a birthday greeting on 7.7.20. The 1971 song, first performed at the Concert for Bangladesh, was co-written by Starkey and George Harrison.

Four thoughts about the Frampton video: (1) This is not only the best cover version I’ve ever heard of “It Don’t Come Easy” but the best version ever, especially if you listen on headphones; (2) Frampton appears to be in excellent physical and spiritual shape but my God, he looked like a 16 year-old on that cover of “Frampton Comes Alive” (’76) and looked like a happy 40something in Almost Famous, but now he looks like his own grandfather; (3) The landscape outside Frampton’s apartment (or wherever he recorded the video) looks hellish — glass and steel high rises, busy highway, hazy smog; (4) Frampton has excellent teeth for a guy his age.