The other day I was driving and listening to “Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine” and marvelling at Country Joe McDonald‘s smooth twangy croon and Barry Melton‘s super-clean, sharp-as-a-blade guitar and that wonderful boppin’ organ, etc. “And finally blow out my brains…”
Bad relationship songs have cut both ways for a long time in the pop realm. Irritating or bad-vibe girlfriend songs by male blues singers and macho rock groups surged in the ’50s, ’60s and early ’70s, but have pretty much disappeared this century. (Or am I not paying attention?)
Are bad-girlfriend songs even allowed these days? I can’t think of any but what do I know?
Classic-era bad girlfriend (or irksome women) songs: “You Talk Too Much” (Joe Jones, ’60), “Black Hearted Woman”, “Every Hungry Woman (The Allman Brothers, ’70), “I Hear You Knockin’” (Smiley Lewis, ’55), “Stupid Girl,” “Under My Thumb” (Rolling Stones, ’65), “I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better” (The Byrds, ’65), “96 Tears” (Question Mark & The Mysterians), “I Can See For Miles” (The Who, ’67), etc.
I don’t have the time or energy to explain what I’m on about. I’m not even sure if I know myself. This is basically a Chris Willman piece that I accidentally stepped into out of enthusiasm for Country Joe and “Martha Lorraine.”
GOP consultant Mike Murphy: “Biden is doing very well with older voters. Florida is…I don’t care if Wisconsin snaps back or somehow you say it’s Michigan…put aside the trouble in Arizona, which would be a big win for the Democrats…Florida will break [Trump’s] political neck so it oughta be priority #1. [And[ there’s absolutely no doubt that the state is in play now in a big way.”
HE agrees that Jon Stewart‘s Irresistable (Focus Features, streaming on 6.26) is bit too mild-mannered for its own good. It lacks provocation, nerve, now-ness. It’s not just that this rural political-spin comedy is set in ’17 or thereabouts, but the film itself seems to be have been made two or three years ago. Or 10 or 15. And yes, I agree that it’s not especially funny. It is, however, mildly amusing in an LQTM sort of way. And it’s a smooth package by any fair standard — nicely shot, performed, paced, edited.
So I don’t see the big problem. It’s something to stream (or not) this weekend if you’ve nothing better to do. You and your wife or girlfriend or pallies sit on the couch, pay the money, etc. And yet the critics have ganged up and beaten the shit out of this poor, harmless little film. The Rotten Tomatoes gang has rendered a 39% rating, and the Metacritics have given it a lousy 50% score. People will watch what they want to watch, of course, but score-wise this puppy is basically D.O.A.
I would only repeat that it’s not a criminal offense to be a tepid, mildly diverting chuckler or, you know, a nice, meh-level, ripple-free distraction. You know what I mean. It’s not a bother to watch it. It doesn’t irritate or piss you off. It just does the old soft shoe and wraps things up (credits included) within 102 minutes.
Set in some small town in rural farm country (Wisconsin? Iowa? does it matter?), it’s about an election for mayor of said town that becomes, for curious reasons, a wildly expensive, nationally hyped super-show.
Steve Carell and Rose Byrne are hot-shot political operators (Democrat and Republican respectively) who descend upon this small hamlet and stir things up. Chris Cooper is the soft-spoken candidate you want to see win, etc.
Stewart’s script was “partially inspired by the 2017 special election for Georgia’s 6th congressional district, where the Democratic and Republican parties and groups supporting them spent more than 55 million dollars combined — the most expensive House Congressional election in U.S. history.”
Agreed — watching Carell deliver another variation on his standard screen persona (a neurotic, intensely focused, clenched-fist fussbudget with a spoiled, effete attitude) has felt old or at least over-deployed for some time. I still think his peak moment happened in Little Miss Sunshine (14 years ago!) and that his last well-grounded, fully-charged performance happened in The Big Short (’15). But I didn’t mind him in Irresistable. I was just “okay, here we go again, not bad, whatever.”
And the film does deliver a hidden-card ending that’s…well, somewhat unexpected. At least it’s not Welcome to Mooseport.
Remember Stewart’s “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear“, which happened on the Washington mall in October 2010? (And which I attended.) The focus was on politics as usual, and the idea was more or less that “we, the people are better than all the left-right rancor so let’s calm down and listen to each pther.” Or something like that. Irresistable is drawn from a similar well.
The Irresistable supporting players — Byrne, Cooper, Mackenzie Davis, Topher Grace, Natasha Lyonne, Will Sasso, et. al. — are fine. Bobby Bukowski‘s cinematography and Bryce Dessner‘s score are fine. It’s all fine. It was partly filmed in Rockmart, Georgia, which is roughly 30 miles northwest of Atlanta.
28 years ago this scene from Abel Ferrara‘s Bad Lieutenant was par for the course. Harvey Keitel‘s bad cop is just another felon, etc. The little girl might report the details to her father (or grandfather) when he returns, but Keitel will skate regardless. Could anyone make such a film today? Probably not. If they did the two teenage thieves could no longer be African American, of course. How about young white ayeholes with ugly tats and shaved heads?
Two days ago a Winona Ryder interview, written by Laura Atkinson, appeared in the London Sunday Times (6.21). It contains two iffy quotes about Hollywood anti-Semitism, on top of which William Earl‘s 6.23 Variety piece about same omits the historical context regarding one of them.
Quote #1: Ryder tells Atkinson “there was a movie that I was up for a long time ago, it was a period piece, and the studio head, who was Jewish, said I looked ‘too Jewish’ to be in a blue-blooded family.”
HE question: What if this producer has told Ryder that she doesn’t look WASPy enough? There is such a thing as a fair-skinned, blue-eyed, descended-from-European royalty, to-the-manor-born appearance, no? Or is such an observation considered racist by today’s standards? Either way aren’t industry Jews allowed to say this to other industry Jews? It’s one thing for a WASP or Nordic or German-descended Hollywood hotshot to say “too Jewish,” but surely people of the tribe are allowed to share this opinion with one another…no?
Quote #2: Ryder repeats a mid-’90s story about running into a drunk, cigar-smoking Gibson at a Hollywood party (possibly at agent Ed Limato‘s annual Oscar shindig), and Gibson saying to Ryder, “You’re not an oven dodger, are you?”
HE comment: Obviously racist-creepy to the max, but Earl’s rewrite allows the lazy reader to presume that Gibson might have said this recently. In fact the same Ryder story appeared in a 12.16.10 GQ story by Alex Pappademas, to wit: “I remember, like, fifteen years ago, I was at one of those big Hollywood parties. And he was really drunk. I was with my friend, who’s gay. He made a really horrible gay joke. And somehow it came up that I was Jewish. He said something about ‘oven dodgers,’ but I didn’t get it. I’d never heard that before. It was just this weird, weird moment. I was like, ‘He’s anti-Semitic and he’s homophobic.’ No one believed me!”
So it happened around ’95 or thereabouts. Gibson suffered a career meltdown 11 years later when he was popped in Malibu for drunken driving and was famously quoted as having told a cop that “the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world!” For what it’s worth, Gibson allegedly went into rehab soon after and apologized for his racist remarks and tried to mend fences. Not that anyone believed him.
This morning Gibson denied saying what Ryder has claimed.
In addition to a statue of the slave-owning George Washington being trashed last weekend, there is also some thought being given to allowing Lakota native Americans to do whatever they want with Mount Rushmore. The memories and legacies of all 19th and 18th Century slave owners are being trashed. Remember the statue-toppling that happened during China’s Great Cultural Revolution of the mid ‘60s?
A new Sony 4K UHD Bluray player with HDR/Dolby Vision arrived early this afternoon, and so I took a couple of mildly frustrating hours to set it up. It’s a fine, first-rate unit for the most part, but all TV tech pisses me off in one way or another. It’s actually the TV that’s bothering me but I’ll work out the kinks.
I love Jenny Slate but I’m also inclined to duck movies costarring Zach Galifianakis. (Okay, Birdman excepted.) So this is an ixnay, I’m afraid.
To go by descriptions, David Wnendt and Rebecca Dinerstein‘s The Sunlit Night (Quiver, 7.17) is a total Sundance flick — “a twee running-from-romance-only-to-find-it comedy set at that far Northern remove…the kind of movie that Sundance audiences love (the opening-night crowd laughed in all the right places) but hardly anyone goes to see in general release…the kind of crowd-pleaser that will be lucky to find a crowd.” — from Peter Debruge‘s Variety review, filed on 1.26.19.
Poor Steve Bing, the 55 year-old film financier, political donor and philanthropist who ran Shangri-la Entertainment, has killed himself by jumping from a 27th floor Century City condo.
The guy was loaded and could have gone anywhere or done anything, but he was reportedly depressed by the same coronavirus isolation that we’ve all been coping with. This, at least, is a theory being reported by TMZ.
What a sad and inexplicable ending for a well-liked guy who certainly had options and remedies for whatever was ailing him.
Bing had been in a brief relationship with Elizabeth Hurley, and was the father of her son, Damian, who was born in 2002. (Bing initially denied paternity, but a DNA test proved he was the biological dad.)
Shangrila Entertainment films include The Polar Express (2004), Albert Brooks‘ Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World (2005), Martin Scorserse‘s Shine a Light (’09), BarryLevinson‘s Rock the Kasbah (’15), Warren Beatty’s Rules Don’tApply (‘16) and Matthew Vaughn‘s Kingsman: The Golden Circle (’17)
The six-foot-four Bing co-wrote the 2003 feature film Kangaroo Jack. He executive produced Sylvester Stallone‘s Get Carter (’00).
The grandson of real-estate tycoon Leo S. Bing, Steve — born on 3.31.65 — inherited $600 million while a Stanford University junior.
Hugs and condolences to Bing’s friends, colleagues, family. I’m very sorry.
Yesterday evening an HE commenter named “Jimmy Porter” brought upJan De Bont‘s Twister, and said I reminded him of “Bill ‘The Extreme’ Harding”, the Tornado whisperer played by Bill Paxton. I never took that film seriously (who did?) and I never felt that Harding was much of a character. Twister is a bad film but “fun” in pieces. It’s basically a series of FX sequences strung together by a romantic triangle story (Paxton, new flame Jami Gertz, old flame Helen Hunt).
HE to Porter: “Thanks for the Bill Paxton analogy. (I guess.) The instinct guy, feels the tornado energy in his bones, etc. I can’t even recall Cary Elwes’ antagonist character in Twister. I saw it once 24 years ago at a Westwood all-media screening. (Critically pummeled but the second highest-grossing film of ‘96 with $495 million worldwide, Twister was a career peak for headstrong director Jan De Bont, who would gradually flame out with Speed 2: Cruise Control, The Haunting and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider.). I naturally recall Paxton and Helen Hunt and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. And Lois Smith’s grandma character who fed them all steak and gravy and mashed potatoes in one downtime scene.”
I’ve been ducking Twister for 24 years, and now — oddly — I’m suddenly thinking of watching it again.
Joel Schumacher text message from heaven to Indiewire‘s Ryan Lattanzio: I don’t mind saying that in life I was a better-than-capable director and sometimes a first-rate one. The Client, A Time to Kill, Tigerland, Phone Booth, Veronica Guerin, The Phantom of the Opera, Trespass, etc. But my finest and most confident film — ask anyone — was Falling Down (’93), an angry-white-man drama starring Michael Douglas and Robert Duvall.
Falling Down didn’t have bat nipples or butt shots, but it was sly sociology and the most on-target, perfect-pocket-drop film I ever made — and one that connected with the culture in some kind of resonant and fundamental way. It came out 27 years ago and it feels like it was yesterday. Especially in heaven where there’s no sense of time anyway.
But then 2020 rolls in and I finally succumb to cancer and arise into the clouds, and the first thing I see when I arrive (they have iPads up here) is your Indiewire obit, and you don’t even mentionFalling Down? Because…what, it’s not politically correct to pay respects to or even mention a movie about an angry white guy? Because middle-aged white dudes are regarded as bad news by wokesters, BLM-ers and #MeToo-ers…right?
I’m sure you’re a nice guy, Ryan, but this is why some people hate Indiewire. Because sometimes it tries to editorially convey a certain view of life. It observes but also instructs to a certain degree. Because it’s Woke Central, progressive to a fault, the People’s Central Committee, etc.
And on top of this your obit headline highlights three of my lesser achievements — St. Elmo’s Fire, The Lost Boys and Batman Forever? I don’t mind if people associate my career with the two Batman films and maybe have a laugh, but I don’t want to be “remembered” for them, if you catch my drift.
I did better, and I’m truly angry that you ignored my ultimate work. I’ve always held myself in check on earth and was certainly never one to lose my temper, but if I could come back to earth right now I would find the Indiewire offices and walk up to your desk and give you the dirtiest look imaginable. And I would hold it for a full minute.
