Friendo sez…

39 years ago I was part of a unit publicity effort in support of Tim Burton’s Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure ‘85), which shot in the late summer and fall of ‘84. I never met Paul Reubens but I watched him behave and perform a lot. Funny, fascinating dude.

I’m sorry that he’s succumbed to cancer, but when your number’s up, it’s up. Hugs and condolences…life is way too short.

It’s been 43 years since I had my one and only viewing of William Richert’s Winter Kills (‘79). I didn’t just dislike this paranoid, overly-flamboyant fantasy fiction about the JFK assassination — I was infuriated by it. But I’ll give it another shot. What the hell. It’ll play the Film Forum and the New Beverly later this month.

Hollywood Elsewhere began reading stories and essays by the great Charles Bukowski in the early ‘70s. And then, while working the Barfly press kit for Cannon in ‘86, I actually met and hung with the guy at his Long Beach home.

At a certain juncture in our chat he spoke of me and himself in the third person. “He admires Bukowski,” he said. “He’s influenced by Bukowski.”

HE Plus, 6.29.19: There’s a great Charles Bukowski line from one of his short story volumes, a line about how good it feels and how beautiful the world seems when you get out of jail.

I can personally confirm that. Not only does the world look and feel like the friendliest and gentlest place you could possibly experience, but it smells wonderful — food stands, car exhaust, sea air, asphalt, window cleaner, green lawns, garbage dumpsters. Compared to the well-scrubbed but nonetheless stinky aroma of the L.A. County Jail, I mean.

I did three or four days in L.A. County in the ’70s for unpaid parking tickets. Remember that Cary Grant line in North by Northwest about the cops chasing him for “seven parking tickets”? Well, I went to jail for not paying the fines on 27 of the damn things. That’s right — 27. I had a half-arrogant, half-cavalier attitude back then, to put it mildly. I didn’t agree with the idea of forking over hundreds in parking fines. The money they wanted was excessive, I felt, especially after the penalties increased after I didn’t pay in the first place.

One night after 9 pm I was driving west on Wilshire Boulevard, not too far from Bundy. I was pulled over for running a red light. They ran my plates and I was promptly cuffed and taken down to the West Los Angeles police station on Butler Avenue.

The desk cops discovered my multiple offenses after doing a search, of course, They printed out copies of each arrest warrant for each “failure to pay fine.” I remember some laughter as the printer kept printing and printing and printing.

I was taken down to L.A. County later that night. It was just like what Dustin Hoffman went through in Straight Time. A shower, orange fatigues, bedding. I was put into a cell with three other guys. Being in close proximity to bald naked winos who smelled horrible…memories!

Over the next three or four days I was driven around to the various municipalities where I’d failed to put quarters into the meter — Santa Monica, Van Nuys, Malibu, Central Los Angeles. In each courtroom I was brought before a judge, listened to my offenses, pled “guilty, your honor” and was given a sentence of “time served.” I was released at the end of the fourth day.

It was an awful thing to go through, but I managed to eliminate a total debt of at least $2K (it might have closer to $2500) so when I got out I didn’t owe a thing to anyone. So in a sense I earned or was “paid” at least $500 a day.

I know enough about mingling with other lawbreakers to recognize the truth of a line that Hoffman’s Max Denbo said in Straight Time: “Outside it’s what you have in your pockets — inside it’s who you are.”

I remember spending several hours in a common-area holding cell with nine or ten guys. One flamboyantly gay guy was jabbering with everyone and discussing his life and values and colorful adventures. He talked a lot about how much he loved hitting his favorite bars in “Glitterwood” (i.e., West Hollywood). At one point he came over to me and flirted a bit…sorry.

There’s nothing like getting out of jail to make you feel like Jesus’ son. It reminds you what a wonderful and blessed place the world outside is, and what a sublime thing it can be to walk around free and do whatever you want within the usual boundaries, and how serene it can be to be smiled at by strangers in stores and restaurants. People you wouldn’t give a second thought to suddenly seem like good samaritans because of some act of casual kindness.

Jail doesn’t just teach you about yourself but about your immediate circle. “If you want to know who your friends are,” Bukowski once wrote, “get yourself a jail sentence.” Or do some time in a hospital bed.

Yes, Barbie will be Best Picture-nominated, but not for what it is cinematically or certainly thematically, which boils down to pure misandry.

It will snag a nom because it became a unique thing — the theatrical explosion element plus the throngs of sartorial pinkie-winkies in theatre lobbies.

The only other time I’ve considered the idea of a flaxen, drop-dead beautiful butterscotch hair color was when that famous Owen Wilson term surfaced in 2006.

HE to Harlan Jacobson: Do you mean “pretty New York” like an adjective of approximation as in “yeah, that’s pretty good” or “pretty bad”? Or is this is an ironic allusion to “pretty” New York, as in Queens will NEVER be pretty because it’s fucking Queens as in “jeez, I’m stuck here”?

The blue sky doesn’t count, of course — same sky over the entire tristate area and probably beyond.

Note: This is not a comment about the Tashkent Market branch in question (Halal food, 64-48 110th Street, Forest Hills) which is apparently well thought of despite the fact that “Tashkent” is one of the least appealing names of a supermarket that anyone could possibly come up with.unless they’re in north Löndon or rural England.

Tashkent? If I were a casual shopper I’d prefer a brand name like Axolotl or Moxie or Zorbb.

I’ve never liked Victor Fleming’s Red Dust (‘32) or the remake, John Ford’s Mogambo (‘53). They’re both tepid eye-rollers about a pair of anxious, somewhat hungry women wanting to seduce and maybe bunker down with the randy, rugged-ass Clark Gable (Jean Harlow and Mary Astor in the black-and-white ‘32 version, Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly in the Technicolor retread).

Ford’s version, shot by Robert Surtees and Freddie Young, is the more visually captivating — I’ll give it that much.

I’m mentioning all this because of a 7.1.23 AirMail article about the late 1952 location shoot (mostly Africa, some Londön) of Mogambo. Nicely written by Richard Cohen, it’s titled “Sinatra in the Jungle” but is really about the whole shooting magilla…all the various political and logistical intrigues.

Maybe the title was chosen because Gardner’s husband, the fallen-upon-hard-times but “good in the feathers” Frank Sinatra, was in a weakened psychological condition while visiting the shoot and doing next to nothing except attending to the usual conjugal passions with Ava, who reportedly paid for the poor guy’s long-distance air fare to Kenya. Tough times.

So yes, Sinatra’s career was in a ditch during filming in November and December of ‘52, but early the following year he landed the energizing, perfect-groove role of Pvt. Maggio in Fred Zinnemann’s From Here to Eternity (‘53), and won a totally back-in-the-pink, career-rejuvenating Best Supporting Actor Oscar in March ‘54.

And yet Cohen’s article claims Sinatra’s career was still flatlining in ‘54…wrong.

Repeating: Down & despairing in late ‘52, lucky pocket-drop casting in a strong film in early ’53, Oscar champ in March ‘54. Sinatra’s actual career skid years were ‘49, ‘50, ‘51, ‘52 and early ‘53, give or take.

I was thrown pretty hard by that early Oppenheimer scene with the poisoned green apple. Actually a lethal apple, injected by Cillian Murphy‘s titular character with liquid cyanide. The intended victim is Patrick Blackett (James Darcy), a Cambridge University instructor and physicist whom Oppie despises.

At the very last minute Oppie comes to his senses, realizes that murdering a professor may impact his life adversely, runs back to the classroom and prevents the apple from being consumed. Except the guy who almost bites into it isn’t Blackett but Danish physicist Niels Bohr (Kenneth Branagh).

Post-injection my immediate thoughts were (a) “the fuck?”, (b) “What kind of loose-cannon psycho twerp is this asshole? Who does this kind of thing?”; (c) “Oppie almost killed once so who’s the next possible victim? Will he strangle Florence Pugh‘s Jean Tatlock after having sex with her? Will he stab Robert Downey, Jr.‘s Lewis Strauss in the back of the neck with an icepick?

Once you’ve opened the Pandora’s Box of premeditated murder, character-wise you can’t close it. And so the cyanide apple half-hovers over the entire film. Or it did for me, at least.

Yesterday HE commenter “Correcting Jeff,” a consistently irritating bringer of nagging neghead vibes for several years, took issue with my…actually the world’s opinion that the sad legend of the late Sinead O’Connor was launched and powerhoused over an eight-year period — Dublin ‘85 to late ‘92, or between age 17 and 24.

HE reply: It’s a FACT, Clarabelle. I know, I get it…the concept of peak years and career arcs is so upsetting to you. Hell, to most of us. Why can’t we just say that Sinead’s career was simply and radiantly wonderful from start to finish?

Brilliant surges come and go, ebb and flow. What are artists but mere conduits of random lightning bolts?

What mental health issues, right?

Why can’t we at least agree that Sinead saved and freed herself by ripping up that Pope photo?

Well, here it is…

Like it or not, those of us with a semblance of drive and ambition tend to experience the same chapters — early stirrings, ascending, peak crackerjack, settle-down and gradual decline.

John Lennon’s peak Beatle years numbered seven or eight — ‘62 Hamburg to ‘69 or ‘70. His peak solo years came to four or five — Plastic One Band (‘70) to the L.A. lost weekend / Harry Nilsson phase of ‘74 and early ‘75. His last act rebound happened mostiy in late ‘79 and ‘80.

After charting her abusive childhood, the acclaimed 2022 Sundance documentary Nothing Compares focuses on Sinead’s mid ‘80s Dublin breakout and ends with the harshly negative reaction to her SNL Pope trashing in ‘92. It doesn’t dismiss her career since that climactic incident but it adheres to the basic summary, the basic rise-and-fall dynamic of those eight years.