…the below photo (posted as part of a 2.25 story called “Don’t Stand So Close To Me”) was an attempt at humor. A publicist friend tweeted or messaged me on Facebook to say, “Okay, you need to calm down” or words to that effect. And I replied, “Just having a little fun” or words to that effect. Seven weeks.

At best I was mixed on Slumdog Millionaire during the 2009/’10 Oscar season. I was 40% admiring and 60% annoyed, but I knew it wouldn’t do to make a fuss. So I had to sit there and take it for six damn months. In that sense it was a long Oscar season. Haven’t watched it since, will never watch it again.

Posted on 11.30.08: “How can anyone watch Slumdog and not be down with Jamal’s enormous dignity, strength of spirit and intelligence? And I understand (or think that I do) that Jamal’s life story is primarily a device that allows Boyle to dramatize the evolution of Mumbai chaos-culture over the past 15 or 20 years.

“But I just can’t believe that a kid who’s been subjected to such relentless cruelty and brutality his entire life — slapped, beaten, exploited, betrayed, booted, whipped, shat upon and made to suffer like a homeless dog day after day, year after year — would end up with this much patience and resolve and focus. Treat an actual dog like this and he’ll be incapable of showing anything but his teeth.

“Nor did I believe that the beautiful Freida Pinto‘s Latika wouldn’t be soiled and corrupted by her upbringing also, or that she’d stay emotionally loyal to and in love with Jamal through thick and thin. Things change, people grow up and move on, life is hard, get what you can, and nobody will save you but yourself. I know, I know…surrender to it, believe in love.

“But the cruelty in this film is relentless. Ugly behavior reigns during the first two acts. Except for the cop (Irfan Khan) who interrogates Jamal throughout the film, nearly every male character in Slumdog Millionaire is a cutthroat Fagin or Artful Dodger.

“And all through Slumdog I was muttering to myself how much I hate the Mumbai overload — the poverty, the crowding, the noise, the garbage landscapes, the public outhouses, the ugly high rises…the whole squalid cornucopia. I’ve never been especially interested in visiting urban India, but Slumdog settled things once and for all. If someone slips me a first-class Air India ticket from JFK to Mumbai, I’m trading it in for passage to Vietnam or China or Kampuchea or Katmandu.”

Johnny McQueen is a wounded, bleeding, half-delirious figure throughout Carol Reed’s classic 1947 film — after the robbery he’s never fully “there” and thereafter lies near the door of death, which constantly sings and beckons to him…”come to me, release your burdens, let me comfort you with my shroud”. And so Mason’s whole performance isn’t a tour de force but a fever-dream thing, and pretty much one-note — be honest. Poor rumpled Johnny is never strong or even conscious enough to say “I should do this” or “but I can’t do that.” He’s limp tissue, an invalid, a half-cognizant lamb waiting for the slaughter. His loyal girlfriend does him a favor at the end. Not a problematic performance as the sadness and resignation are constant and seeping, but certainly a limited one.

“Somehow, in their own way, the Rolling Stones split the difference, by performing ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want.’ (They could have said, a la Bono, ‘Donald Trump stole this song, and we’re stealing it back,’ but did not.) It was easy to focus on the practical aspects of what they were doing: Were they playing together, or recorded sequentially? Why did Ronnie Wood’s licks appear to be live but Charlie Watts’ air-drumming not so much so? Certain elements of that conjoined performance may remain a mystery, until they’re explained to us. But it was kind of delightful, regardless — even as it imparted the slightly unnerving message that what we want — the old normal — probably isn’t what we’re going to get.” — from Chris Willman’s Variety review, filed just before midnight.

Donald Trump left our country unprepared and unprotected for the worst public health and economic crisis in our lifetime — and now we're paying the price. pic.twitter.com/aCxcqQqUqw

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) April 18, 2020

Never saw this before today. Good quality, excellent color, nicely mixed. Madison Square Garden, New York — 8.1.71. I saw Dylan play live exactly once, at Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre in 2005. The Never Ending Tour.

The other day I was saying to a friend that in 1960 industry attitudes about films like Psycho (shock and scare, psychologically twisted protagonist, knife murders and perversion) were regarded as basement-dwelling genre films, and that the most that could happen, even with Psycho‘s phenomenal financial success, were Oscar nominations and not wins.

The friend reminded that Bernard Herrmann‘s Psycho score, easily one of the most distinctive and influential ever composed, wasn’t even nominated. Obviously a major snub — Herrmann’s score should have won.

All I can figure or theorize is that Herrmann might have been personally disliked or otherwise regarded askance by colleagues. (Or something in that realm.) I’ve never read a biography of the man. Has anyone?

Alfred Hitchcock was handed a Best Director nomination that year, but Billy Wilder won for The Apartment. Janet Leigh was nominated for Best Supporting Actress (an odd call as she didn’t deliver in any kind of striking way), but Elmer Gantry‘s Shirley Jones won. Psycho was also nominated for best black & white cinematography (John Russell), but Freddie Francis won for Sons and Lovers. Psycho‘s black & white art direction and set decoration was nominated (Joseph Hurley, Robert Clatworthy, George Milo), but the Oscar was won by The Apartment‘s Alexandre Trauner and Edward G. Boyle.

Incidentally: Whatever happened to the idea of Universal releasing a Bluray of the slightly more risque German version? I’d buy it without blinking.

I’d like to agree. Okay, I do agree. To some extent. I’d like to think that things aren’t as bad as certain headlines have indicated. Okay, maybe they’re not. Editors know that fear sells, and we know that they know this. So while the actual reporting is reliable and commendable, headline suspicion is an okay thing. (Right?) Otherwise all I know is that self-imposed imprisonment is no way to live. Well, it is but at such a cost.

From sea to shining sea Americans are undoubtedly drinking more, getting stoned, dropping Percocets, etc. It’s all part of the general atmosphere of depression and stasis. Time is standing still. Writing for writing’s sake is the only thing that keeps me going. That and phone surfing, watching films, taking strolls and safe (if technically illegal) hiking.

Last night Tatiana wanted to get high, so we walked up to The Artist Tree and bought a $51 container of Crescendo plus some rolling papers. For roughly the same cost they sell four pre-rolled joints, but where’s the fun in that?

Tatiana tried to talk me into joining her, but I can’t even flirt with the idea. Getting ripped has been out of the question since my mid 20s, which was when I realized that cannabis potentially re-ignites “the fear,” a state of acute anxiety and terror that I don’t even want to think about as we speak. I accidentally re-experienced this in the late ’90s when I stupidly ate a pot brownie. I don’t know what I was thinking.

But Tatiana had fun, got the munchies, etc.

I intended to watch the first three episodes of Mrs. America on 4.15, when they began streaming. So what happened? I’ll tell you what happened. Last Wednesday arrived and I didn’t get around to it. I kinda sorta forgot, to be honest. Plus I painted the hallway between the living room and the bedroom, above and beyond my column duties. Ditto Thursday and Friday. A three hour commitment isn’t a simple or easy thing. But today I will hunker down.

From Linda Holmes’ NPR review (4.15): “Mrs. America doesn’t ask you to sympathize with Phyllis Schlafly, exactly; it is unsparing in drawing her as a tremendously unkind and destructive person — and, increasingly as it goes on, a dishonest one. But it does seek to explain something about her. It seeks to use the story of her as a way to explain how power works and how politics works, as well as how the ERA came to fail after looking like it was on a clear path to ratification.

“But perhaps we are past needing all of this explained. Perhaps that is why the story of Schlafly feels wearying.

“To be clear, Mrs. America is made well (directing editing, acting). There are some playful and clever juxtapositions in the editing, as when you jump from a very sexy scene to one in which Schlafly is dutifully rubbing her husband’s tired calves. The re-creation of the aesthetic of the period is gorgeous and feels truthful, looking like the 1970s rather than a send-up of the 1970s. Across nine episodes, it never feels dull, even though it does sometimes feel a bit speechy. It doesn’t give in to too many of those moments in historical pieces in which names are dropped in a wink-wink kind of way, as when Schlafly meets two young men late in the series who seem unimportant and then introduce themselves as Roger Stone and Paul Manafort. Or when a young woman helping with the legal work is told, at the close of her one significant scene that perhaps she should assume a higher-profile role — and then she is addressed as ‘Mrs. Ginsburg.’ Winkety-wink.

“But something seems amiss, separate from the filmmaking, separate from the artistry. Maybe it’s just that it can be hard to separate Mrs. America‘s utter bleakness from its quality. Its conviction that determined public figures can persuade people to turn on their neighbors in response to invented threats is hard to argue with, but hardly a proposition for which one needs to turn to fiction — even historical fiction. As the old Palmolive ad of this era would have said: we’re soaking in it.”

Several times over the last few weeks I’ve told myself (not verbally but awash in my streaming mind waves), “This isn’t a dream…this is really happening.” And then, for a minute or two, I fall into a pit of depression. And then I gradually climb out of it.

From 1957 to ’66 the televized Perry Mason (played by Raymond Burr) was a wealthy, brilliant, barrel-chested attorney who was always a step or two ahead of everyone (especially William Talman and Ray Collins), and never lost a case when it went to court. Which was every damn time. Mason never settled or struck a pre-trial accommodation with anyone.

A new adaptation of Erle Stanley Gardner‘s paperback franchise is set in 1932 Los Angeles and features a grimy, hand-to-mouth shamus (played by Matthew Rhys) who might have been competitive with J.J. Gittes.

HBO’s Perry Mason, directed by Tim Van Patten, launches on 6.21.20.

Boilerplate: “While the rest of the country recovers from the Great Depression, Los Angeles is booming! Oil, Olympic games, talking pictures, evangelical fervor, etc. And a child kidnapping gone very, very wrong! [This] limited series follows the origins of American Fiction’s most legendary criminal defense lawyer, Perry Mason. When the case of the decade breaks down his door, Mason’s relentless pursuit of the truth reveals a fractured city and just maybe, a pathway to redemption for himself.”