Deadline‘s Michael Fleming announced this morning that Kristen Stewart will play the late Diana, Princess of Wales (aka Diana Spencer) in Pablo Larrain‘s Spencer.

Due to roll in early ’21, the Steven Knight-scripted drama will “cover a three-day period in the early ‘90s, when Diana decided her marriage to Prince Charles wasn’t working, and that she needed to veer from a path that would put her in line to one day be queen,” Fleming reported.

Diana’s chosen path, as we all know, turned out to be sporadic and wayward, and was chiefly defined by a series of extra-marital and post-marital affairs (Barry Mannakee, James Hewitt, James Gilbey, Oliver Hoare, Theodore Forstmann, JFK Jr., Bryan Adams, Hasnat Khan). It ended tragically when she and the totally worthless Dodi Fayed died after a high-speed car crash in Paris on 8.31.97.

Right off the top, the Larrain-Knight project is flawed for two reasons.

One, nobody cares about Diana’s decision to bail on her marriage to Prince Charles in ’91 or thereabouts. What they want to see, of course, is a Harold Pinter-esque drama about her tragic, idiotic affair with Fayed with a special focus on (a) the particulars of her last few hours of life, and (b) the worldwide reaction to her death including the funeral and the Elton John performance of “Goodbye, English Rose.”

And two, the 5’5″ Stewart is way too short to inhabit the physical realm of the 5’10” Diana. Diana was seriously statuesque (5’10” in heels = six feet) and nudging the giraffe realm while Stewart — be honest — is smallish. It would be one thing if she stood 5’7″ or 5’8″ but she’s five full inches shorter than the Real McCoy — you might as well call it half a foot.

Plus Stewart doesn’t look anything like Diana in terms of eye shape or facial bone structure. She was a passable Jean Seberg as they shared certain similarities, but even the makeup guy who transformed Charlize Theron into Megan Kelly would be at a loss.

By the way: The 5’10”, 44 year-old Theron would be too old to play the 31 year-old Diana in Larrain’s film, but she could play the 36 year-old Diana in the Dodi Fayed version.

Larrain has twice cast too-short actresses as famous women — the 5’3″ Natalie Portman as the 5′ 7″ Jackie Kennedy (which didn’t work — Portman was simply too runty), and now Stewart as Spencer.

My pet theory is that Larrain, who himself only stands 5’7 1/2″, prefers to cast women who are shorter than himself.

It’s been quite a few years since anyone saw a “boxy” (1.37:1) version of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, which opened almost exactly 60 years ago. Yes, it was shot with an assumption that first-run theatres would project it at 1.85:1, but it was protected for boxy viewings as well as 1.66 aspect ratios, and the prints weren’t hard-matted at 1.85 either. I know because I inspected one in a booth once. (I was a licensed projectionist in Connecticut starting in ‘81.). And TV stations used to broadcast it boxy. Ditto VHS cassettes.

All to say I would kill to be able to buy a Bluray of a boxy Psycho. And what about Universal offering a domestic Bluray of that German TV version with the slightly risqué added footage?

“Okay, you might catch something if you pay to see Chris Nolan’s Tenet, sure. But life is full of risk, and if you don’t go out on a limb you won’t be able to reach any fruit. Your choice — be bold and hit the virusplex, or stay home on the couch and count your blessings.”

In a 6.12 piece called “The American Press Is Destroying Itself“, Matt Taibbi has nailed the current p.c. zeitgeist, and his observations are downright frightening.

“The American left has lost its mind, [having] become a cowardly mob of upper-class social media addicts, Twitter Robespierres who move from discipline to discipline [while] torching reputations and jobs with breathtaking casualness.

“The leaders of this new movement” — the BLM absolutists, Millennial wokester “safeties” and their terrified chickenshit allies — “are replacing traditional liberal beliefs about tolerance, free inquiry, and even racial harmony with ideas so toxic and unattractive that they eschew debate, moving straight to shaming, threats, and intimidation. They are counting on the guilt-ridden, self-flagellating nature of traditional American progressives, who will not stand up for themselves, and will walk to the Razor voluntarily.

“They’ve conned organization after organization into empowering panels to search out thoughtcrime, and it’s established now that anything can be an offense, from a UCLA professor placed under investigation for reading Martin Luther King’s ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail’ out loud to a data scientist fired from a research firm for — get this — retweeting an academic study suggesting nonviolent protests may be more politically effective than violent ones! And now this madness is coming for journalism.

“Beginning on Friday, June 5th, a series of controversies rocked the media. By my count, at least eight news organizations dealt with internal uprisings (it was likely more). Most involved groups of reporters and staffers demanding the firing or reprimand of colleagues who’d made politically ‘problematic’ editorial or social media decisions. The New York Times, the Intercept, Vox, the Philadelphia Inquirier, Variety, and others saw challenges to management.”

Please read the whole thing, but the bottom line (and just because Mark Harris might disagree with this notion doesn’t mean it’s not true) is that the progressive left HAS lost its mind, and you don’t have to be a conservative or (God forbid) a Republican to acknowledge this. I began as a good Democrat in my tweener and teen years, and I’ve regarded myself as left-leaning iconoclast since I was 20 or thereabouts. But over the last two or three years calling myself a staunch leftie has become untenable. Because the left has gone lunatic.

The wokester “safeties”, POC feminist blame-shriekers, cancel culture advocates, #MeToo tunnel-visionists (Taibbi doesn’t even mention the nonsensical conviction, in defiance of established facts, that Woody Allen is guilty of molesting Dylan Farrow in August 1992), progressive guilt-trippers and fanatical Khmer Rouge purists are running the journalist asylum.

These people are beyond scary, and yet the idea that come November voters will have to choose between allowing these progressive banshees free reign and giving another term to the salivating, sociopathic racism and curdled delusion of Donald Trump is a false scenario.

The thing to cling to in this surreal hurricane is sensible, skeptical, carefully measured liberalism — the kind that isn’t so terrified of being accused or white privilege and/or racism that a semblance of reality actually penetrates the cerebellum. I’m talking about the Bill Maher, Joe Rogan (except for his hateful dismissals of Doddering Joe), Matt Taibbi, Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, Brett Stephens, Bari Weiss, Sasha Stone, Richard Rushfield, Jordan Ruimy and Katie Herzog cabal.

Boiling it down to eight words, I really can’t be a leftie any more. Because the 21st Century “woke” terror (named in honor of Maximilien Robespierre and the “French reign of terror” of the 1790s) has become too manic, too smothering, too horrifying.

I’ll never be a rightie (I took too many acid and mescaline trips in my 20s for that to ever happen) and the idea of being a comme ci comme ca centrist sounds boring as hell. I just know that the shrieking, accusatory, career-cancelling, sensitive-to-a-fault left has gone around the bend and over the waterfall. They’re just as unhinged and foam-at-the-mouth frightening as the bumblefuck Trump supporters who will attend the Tulsa rally on Juneteenth (i.e., Friday the 19th).

And while I still trust the N.Y. Times‘ reporting on foreign matters, COVID and climate as well as book, film and theatre criticism, I don’t trust them at all in terms of reporting about our domestic racial turbulence and certainly not on the opinion pages — they’ve totally gone over to the regimented BLM-filtered side and are now representing the activist journalism fraternity in this respect.

To bring it all back home, Taibbi has written that “people depend on [journalists] to tell them what we see, not what we think. What good are we if we’re afraid to do it?”

Publicist to HE (received on Monday, 6.15): “We know it is hard to predict your schedule for this summer, given the current state of the world right now, but he’d like to know if you are still planning on attending the Telluride Film Festival, like last year. Keep us posted if you will be there and your coverage plans. Thanks in advance!”

HE to Publicist: “All paid up and booked up, and wouldn’t miss it for the world!”

Tatiana is also attending this year. We’re once again staying at the Mountainside Inn, the “poor man’s Telluride Film Festival lodging option”. Except the lease-holder got greedy and decided to up the rent, so I’ve paid $1700 total for five nights (9.2 through 9.7). As Tatiana has never seen the Grand Canyon or Monument Valley, the plan is to fly to Phoenix (Southwest’s LAX/Burbank to Phoenix “El Cheapo” fare is $49 each way, $90 RT), drive to the GC on the way up, and stop in Monument Valley on the way back.

Clint Eastwood celebrated his 90th birthday on Sunday, 5.31. A cruddy-looking YouTube capture was posted on Tuesday, 6.2. Hollywood Elsewhere has chosen to run a higher-quality TikTok version.

A month ago a filmmaker friend told me that “the major [exhibitor] chains have moved their opening date from June 26th to July 8th. This is why Tenet moved, I think. And who knows if July 8th will hold? I wonder what this will do to the Russell Crowe film?”

The trades reported this morning that the the biggest chains — Regal, AMC and Cinemark — will begin phased re-openings on Friday, 7.10. The first two releases will be Crowe’s Unhinged and Sony’s The Broken Hearts Gallery. Disney’s Mulan (which I am making an absolute point of never, ever seeing) opens on 7.24 and then Tenet (originally set to premiere on Friday, 7.17) opens on Friday, 7.31.

Regal Cinemas will start the openings on 7.10, with all 541 sites humming by Friday, 7.24. AMC Theatres and Cinemark Theatres are more or less following suit.

Don’t let that headline fool you. HE will attend the all-media screening of Tenet in a hazmat suit, and will then attend a public screening because if I know Nolan, I’ll need at least two viewings to even begin to figure out the basics.

I’ve never wanted to see Billy Wilder‘s A Foreign Affair (’48) and I probably never will see it for one basic, fundamental reason. Male lead John Lund isn’t good enough to romance (i.e., have carnal relations with) Marlene Dietrich or Jean Arthur. Yes, it’s that simple.

When I say “not good enough” I mean he’s not an A-lister. Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Gregory Peck, Frank Sinatra, Gene Kelly, Kirk Douglas or John Wayne would’ve been acceptable, but not Lund. I will never patronize a film in which a B-level actor (especially one with a Gable-like moustache) gets down with an A-level actress. Bad for morale, bad all over.

Lund, who died in 1992 at age 81, was eulogized in a London Times obituary as follows: “[His] film career was cut to a familiar pattern: the young actor imported to Hollywood after a big success on Broadway begins by playing the handsome guy who gets the girl, then descends by gradual degrees to being the male lead in minor westerns and occasionally, in major films, being the handsome guy who does not get the girl because he lacks the spark of the hero who does.”

Until I read about this morning’s landmark Supreme Court decision, I didn’t realize it was legal in more than half the states to fire workers for being gay, bisexual or transgender. But no longer!

Workplace protections to millions of LGBTQs have now been extended, and what a surprise that Justice Neil Gorsuch, a shit-heel Trump appointee, joined Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan in rendering this decision.

“An employer who fires an individual merely for being gay or transgender defies the law,” Gorsuch wrote for the majority.

Hollywood Elsewhere approves and applauds.

I’m still wearing my USA flag mask and washing my hands like Howard Hughes, but out in the big West Hollywood world people were congregating and celebrating and basically saying “fuck it…enough!” I was rumblehogging up and down the Sunset Strip around 5 pm yesterday afternoon, and you should have seen the outdoor crowds and the capacity-filled tables and sensed the general merriment…the relief! It was like being in Arkansas or Arizona or, better yet, Paris! Just about every significant cafe and eatery was open to capacity business. (Outdoors, at least.) Urth Caffe, Pink Taco, Mel’s Drive-In, Wahlburgers, Coffee Bean. And you know what percentage of the customers were wearing masks? Maybe 15%, if that. Okay, 20%.

In yesterday’s “Oscars in April ’21…But Of Course!” piece, I speculated (and not all that brilliantly) that with the Sunday, 2.28 Oscar telecast expected to be postponed “by as many as eight weeks,” the new Oscar date will either be 4.18.21 or 4.25.21, which of course are both Sundays.

It was announced this morning that the Oscar telecast will indeed air on 4.25.21, and that the 2020 release year will be extended for a full two months, or until Sunday, 2.28.21. I’m assuming that the Academy voting deadline will come a week or so before 4.25. Let’s say Friday, 4.16 or Monday, 4.19. That will leave roughly seven weeks of campaigning between 2.28.21 and the voting cut-off.

What will this mean as far as the Phase One (pre-Oscar nomination) and Phase Two (post Oscar nomination) mindsets are concerned? I’ll tell you what it means. It means there will be two (click!), two (count em!), two Phase Ones and one Phase Two.

It also means that with the Telluride, Toronto, Venice and N.Y. film festivals sticking to their usual early fall dates, we’re looking at an extended award season that will last nearly eight months instead of the usual five-and-a-half or six (Labor Day to late February).

This is a one-off situation, remember. It’ll be back to business-as-usual for the ’21 and early ’22 Oscar year. We’re in uncharted territory, yes, but it’s not that hard to figure the angles and strategies.

To repeat, Phase One is not going to be shortened or pushed back — it’s going to expand. Remember that a good portion of the Oscar contenders are still going to “open” (even if that means a streaming debut) by 12.31.20. Today’s announcement is about accommodating the overflowers whose post-production skeds have been delayed by COVID.

But there won’t be any backing away from the traditional Phase One promotions of November and December. Parties and promotion-wise, people are 100% accustomed to Oscar season happening in November and December, partly if not largely because the holiday period is when the non-devotional dilletantes go to the movies (along with the summer).

So the traditional Phase One (call it Phase One A) will still happen in November-December, and then the brand-new Phase One B (which will naturally include some Phase One A repeats and redoublings) will kick off in late January and February.

And then, after the nominations are announced in early to mid-March, Phase Two will kick in, lasting from mid March to roughly April 16th or 19th, give or take.

So to summarize, we’ll be seeing two Phase Ones followed by a two-months-later-than-usual Phase Two. And then comes the most glorious Oscar telecast of all time on 4.25 — a Night of a Thousand Superstars with an up-with-Hollywood, “America needs movies and movies need America!”, rally-round-the-flag-boys esprit de corps that will be awesome to behold.

Jennifer Schuessler‘s “The Long Battle Over Gone With the Wind,” a perceptive and mostly fair-minded summary of the varied reactions to David O. Selznick‘s 1939 classic over the decades, appeared in yesterday’s N.Y. Times.

I felt conflicted about paragraph #24, which says that when GWTW opened “white audiences…were largely swept up in celebration of the nearly four-hour Technicolor epic, with its hundreds of extras, lavish costumes and themes of grit and survival that resonated with a country emerging from the Depression.”

I said roughly the same thing in my 6.9 piece about reactions to the film (“A Minor Point At Such A Moment“). As a parable about the deprivations of the Great Depression, I wrote, GWTW “is fundamentally about how life separates the survivors from the victims when the chips are down, and about the necessity of scrappy, hand-to-mouth survival under the cruelest and most miserable of conditions…it basically says ‘only the strongest and the most determined survive.'”

But how was this something that only “white” audiences understood?

True, African Americans have long dealt with far more hardships and uphill situations than whites, and especially during the 1930s, but grit and steel are necessities within any tribe or culture in any time period. “Survival of the toughest” is a recognized rule all over the world.

From Schuessler’s essay:

From “A Minor Point At Such A Moment,” posted on 6.9.20.