It’s been 30 years since I saw Paul Schrader‘s The Comfort of Strangers (’90), and mostly I remember the tantalizing erotic tease and the spooky Venice atmosphere, and of course Christopher Walken‘s dry and deflecting perversity, a quality that he brings to pretty much every role. But I don’t remember what happens in the second half except that Rupert Everett and Natasha Richardson get more and more entangled in a spider’s web spun by Walken and Helen Mirren. Honestly — my memory is a blank.

I do remember feeling disappointed that a script by Harold Pinter (based on an Ian McEwan short story) didn’t amount to more. It didn’t really pay off, or so I (don’t) recall.

Criterion will release a Strangers Bluray — a “restored 4K digital transfer, supervised by cinematographer Dante Spinotti” — on 8.18.20.

The silky, unctuous tone used by the narrator of this trailer just about ruins the whole thing:

Tweeted by Trump but apparently authored by one of his rightwing slimeball goon fans.

Here is a more realistic video showing @realDonaldTrump "leadership" during a crisis#Resist #TrumpLiesPeopleDie #VoteBluehttps://t.co/WC5xmh40iA pic.twitter.com/CKiMhZCspW

— Nestor "the boss" Gomez (@soloyochapin) May 16, 2020

Rod Lurie on Facebook: “Biden has already said he was going to pick a woman. Picking a POC…would be righteous and politically expedient move. Many of you know that my personal choice would be Illinois senator Tammy Duckworth (first Thai-American woman elected to Congress, first female double amputee in the Senate). But my antenna is now moving to Florida representative Val Demings, one of the impeachment managers during the prosecution of Donald Trump.”

HE response: Both are fine, presumably charismatic public servants, but why would Biden choose anyone who hasn’t been on the national stage? Why would he not choose someone whom Average Joes are at least slightly familiar with? Which is why Kamala Harris still makes sense. Or, if you will, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, whom I like and admire for having stood her ground against the “open up” bumblefucks.

Amy Klobuchar would be painted as an administrative blue meanie and therefore a negative factor. And the bumblefucks have never liked Elizabeth Warren so there’s that also.

Five and a half months ago: Sen. Kamala Harris, the only significant woman person of color in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, is dropping out. If Cory Booker was a realist he would drop out also — ditto Andrew Yang, Julian Castro and Amy Klobuchar. They’re all finished, and they know it.

Next year’s Democratic presidential nominee is almost certainly going to be a stammering whitey-white male in his late ’70s, which means the vp pick could turn out to be…Harris? Although the smarter vp pick would be Buttigieg — running with a 37-year-old genius would offset the doddering factor.

Here we are in the pre-primary Democratic presidential home stretch and it’s an all-Anglo race now with three post-retirement-age poll champs — Droolin’ Joe Biden, Stubborn Old Goat Bernie and nagging schoolmarm Elizabeth — and a grand total of one sane, super-brilliant, sensible, catching-on candidate who’s under the age of 65 — Mayor Pete.

But of course, the South Bend Mayor is doomed to come up short because of the determination of African American voters to stick us with the 77 year-old Biden, who’s going to gaffe and stumble and brain-mulch his way through the primaries and during the campaign…can’t wait for that endless agony.

If anyone outside of the black community thinks Typewriter Joe is really and truly the man to lead the country into the 2020s…God help their synapses. If there’s really and truly no way out of nominating a septugenarian, I would much rather see Michael Bloomberg run against Trump.

Harris never broke out poll-wise. She was constantly in the lower single digits (in the same general realm with Yang, Booker, Castro and Klobuchar). She had that one surge following her busing contretemps with Biden during…what was it, the first or second debate?

Not that this has anything to do with shopping at Dana Point Gelson’s, but there’s a belief or suspicion out there that “Karen”…forget it, I know nothing. The video speaks for itself.

Karen has a meltdown because store won’t let her in without a mask.

They offer to give her a mask.

They offer to shop for her.

She says she’s calling corporate. #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/oQSFueFn4T

— chris evans (@notcapnamerica) May 17, 2020

Apart from being in excellent shape (and not just for his age), Mr. Hopkins, a Malibu resident, has excellent taste in paintings. Video captured on TikTok.

From an L.A. Times interview (1.30.20): “Agnosticism is a bit strange. An agnostic doubts and atheism denies. I’m not a holy Joe — just an old sinner like everyone else. I do believe more than ever now that there is a vast area of our own lives that we know nothing about. As I get older, I can cry at the drop of a hat because the wonderful, terrible passion of life is so short. I have to believe there’s something bigger than me. I’m just a microbe. That, for me, is the biggest feeling of relief…acknowledging that I am really nothing. I’m compelled to say, whoever’s running the show, thank you very much.”

Posted three times previously: 20 years ago I went on a grand and glorious two-wheeled Steve McQueen journey during the Cannes Film Festival. On a scooter, I mean. In the hills above Cannes, Juan Les Pins, Antibes and Nice.

Some would say that the word “scooter” automatically disqualifies my adventure as McQueen-level. This is how Elvis Mitchell (at the time the chief N.Y. Times critic) responded when I told him about it later that night. “I’m not saying I did the McQueen thing by classic Great Escape standards,” I replied. “I was buzzing around winding curves and taking in the scenic grandeur and kinda feeling like McQueen…okay? Because I was playing Elmer Bernstein‘s score in my head. It was rapture.”

I rented a decent-sized scooter around 10 am that morning. (It was a Sunday.) I drove into the hills above St. Paul de Vence and headed east, tooling along serpentine roads, village to village, stopping for photos or just to pause.

I had lunch in St. Paul and ordered a steaming lobster bisque with a submerged folded white tortilla filled with lobster meat. I visited a tiny little village that I forget the name of but which you can see for a few seconds in To Catch A Thief.

Then I made my way down to the coast west of Nice and headed back to Cannes, tooling along the beach roads, stopping now and then to bask in the warm sun. I returned the bike around 6 pm.

I haven’t solo’ed like that since.

Posted on 5.10.11: For nearly my entire life I’ve been on extremely familiar terms with John Robie’s (i.e., Cary Grant‘s) mountainside home in To Catch A Thief. Yesterday Sasha Stone and her daughter Emma and I actually visited the place.

It’s located on the main road leading up to the medieval village of Saint Jeannet, and it’s absolutely dead real — relatively unchanged from when Alfred Hitchcock shot his classic 1955 film — with only the addition of a driveway gate and a tall thick hedge in front.

Poor Lynn Shelton, the much-admired indie director who peaked with Laggies, has died at age 54. Sick for a week, underlying blood condition, took off last night…God.

Shelton had been in a relationship with podcaster/comedian/actor Marc Maron. Here’s how Maron shared:

“I have some awful news. Lynn passed away last night. She collapsed yesterday morning after having been ill for a week. There was a previously unknown, underlying condition. It was not COVID-19. The doctors could not save her. They tried. Hard.

“I loved her very much, as I know many of you did as well. It’s devastating. I am leveled, heartbroken and in complete shock and don’t really know how to move forward in this moment. I needed you all to know. I don’t know some of you. Some I do. I’m just trying to let the people who were important to her know.

“She was a beautiful, kind, loving, charismatic artist. Her spirit was pure joy. She made me happy. I made her happy. We were happy. I made her laugh all the time. We laughed a lot. We were starting a life together. I really can’t believe [this] is happening. This is a horrendous, sad loss.”

I was a fairly big fan of Shelton’s Humpday (’09). I was less enthused about Your Sister’s Sister (’11), Touchy Feely (’13) and Outside (’17). I haven’t seen her latest feature, Sword of Trust, which starred Maron. Shelton directed four episodes of Hulu’s Little Fires Everywhere, which I’ve seen the first two episodes of.

But Laggies, which Shelton directed and was written by Andrea Seigel, was really delightful, or so I felt. I interviewed Shelton about this disarming comedy at Sundance ’14. Laggies costarred Keira Knightley, Chloë Grace Moretz, Sam Rockwell, Kaitlyn Dever, Jeff Garlin, Ellie Kemper and Mark Webber.

I’m very, very sorry about this. Hugs and condolences to family, friends, colleagues, fans.

Three and a half years ago I posted “What The Hell Is Tom Hardy Doing?“, a short riff in which I noted that Hardy was 100% committed to playing psychopaths, sullen weirdos and half-crazy scuzballs. The basic thought was that Hardy would never even try to land a role like, say, Bradley Cooper‘s in Silver Linings Playbook…that he’d never play a sympathetic guy who falls in love with a manic pixie dream girl or anything in that realm…that his investment in the idea of weirdness was absolute.

Now comes a 5.16 Owen Gleiberman Variety piece, “The Unbearable Mumbleness of Tom Hardy,” that voices more or less the same complaint. Why does Hardy insist on playing troglodytes from another planet? Why can’t he star in more films like Locke?? What’s so terrible about playing relatable human beings?

The curiously hilarious Fred Willard has passed at age 86. Hugs and condolences to Willard’s family, friends, colleagues and fans.

I realize I’m obliged to highlight his Christopher Guest collaborations — A Mighty Wind, Best in Show, Waiting for Guffman, This Is Spinal Tap (directed by Rob Reiner) and For Your Consideration. But the Willard performance that tickled me the most was the Mr. Chompers producer in Permanent Midnight (’98), an arresting dark dramedy based on the same-titled Jerry Stahl autobiography (opiate addiction + Hollywood screenwriting).

The principal auteurs of Permanent Midnight were director-writer David Veloz, Stahl, Ben Stiller and producers Don Murphy and Jane Hamsher. The costars were Elizabeth Hurley, Maria Bello, Owen Wilson, Cheryl Ladd, Peter Greene and Janeane Garofalo.

Willard to Stiller: “Here’s a piece of shit, Jerry…I wrote and rewrote it but it ain’t workin’. If you can make it work, you’re on…okay?”

Stiller played Stahl. I was with People magazine when Permanent Midnight was in post-production, and at one point I’d been told that in order to lose weight Stiller had submitted to Dick Gregory’s Bahamian Diet, a nutritional powder that junkies have used for sustenance because it provides all the nutritional basics. Stiller’s reps somehow decided that this would cast a negative light upon his reputation, and I remember being poked and grilled for looking into this. They were alarmed by the term “junkie diet.” I thought it was admirable that Stiller was serious about losing weight and adopting the Gregory method, etc. Hollywood people can be so touchy, so weird.

“300 Euro Mistake“, filed on 5.17.17: I awoke Tuesday morning at 5 to catch a 7:20 am train to Cannes. Finished packing, tidied up, had a coffee, called for an Uber. Everything felt right and well-ordered. I left the apartment keys on the kitchen counter and dragged two bags — a 24-inch upright suitcase and a leather carrying bag — onto the third floor landing, and then for some drooling, jelly-brained reason closed the apartment door with my computer bag still sitting inside.

Did I just do that? My mind went into freeze-panic mode. I’ll be missing my train, but how and when can I get back into the pad? My goal was to somehow do this, snag the bag and catch a 10:19 am train to Cannes from Gare de Lyon. Four hours hence.

I texted Romain, my Airbnb contact guy, but he didn’t answer until 7:40 am. When he finally replied he said I couldn’t get back in until the cleaning person arrives, which would be about noon. I begged him to call this person and offer a 50-euro reward to show up by 9:30 am. A few minutes later I upped it to 75. Romain said he’d try — “It’s not an issue of money” — but that I shouldn’t get my hopes up. A few minutes later I said I’d gladly and happily pay the cleaning person 100 euros to show up early, no questions asked.

Two or three minutes later Romain revealed that he himself had a key to the apartment (new information!) but not the street door or foyer-door key. But he would figure something out. He offered to meet me at the place by 9 am. When I got there he was waiting across the street with my computer bag. I gave him the hundred euros and a pat on the shoulder, and tore off to Gare de Lyon.

When I got there the ticket lady said my 70-euro ticket on the 7:20 am train was worthless (no redeeming), and that I’d have to pay full price — 185 euros — for a first-class ticket on the 10:19 am. I hadn’t the will to protest or plead. I paid, found my seat, finally relaxed. The 10:19 train arrived in Cannes around 3:35 pm. An hour later I picked up my pink-with-yellow-dot pass.

If you count the two Uber rides I took between 7 am and 9 am (don’t worry about the other one), I forked over 300 euros for that one dumb-ass mistake.