With the release date of every film on the calendar delayed until whenever, a discussion arose today about when a certain ready-to-open film might see the light of day. Which would depend, of course, on when the pandemic begins to lift.
Hollywood Elsewhere: “As far as I can discern the smart assessment is that the plague starts to lift in June, certainly by July. And then (per Dr. Fauci) a possibility of a resurgence in the fall.”
Knowledgable filmmaker: “The plague starts to lift in August, but then we need to be certain it doesn’t come back. No filmmaking until the new year. Except in New Zealand, Australia and Taiwan, which are islands that have acted intelligently to contain and eliminate the virus.”
Hollywood Elsewhere: “Okay, but who’s saying August exactly? June (or roughly seven or eight weeks hence) doesn’t seem at all crazy from this end, and certainly not July. China has lifted its lockdown; ditto South Korea. You’re telling me this country has to endure three and a half more months of cabin fever?”
Knowledgable filmmaker: “China and South Korea were methodical in dealing with the virus. America has been, and will continue to be, a mess.”
Three days ago the headline of an unpublished story by TheWrap‘s J. Clara Chan seemed to confirm the worst. Chan’s story apparently reported that THR and Billboard cutbacks were imminent. The story never surfaced but the headline leaked. The two publications along with SpinMedia are owned by the Greenwich, Connecticut-based Valence Media.
Industry colleague: “That place” — THR — “and its parent company have been financially [struggling] for a long time. Good opportunity for the mean owners to start job eliminating — no surprise here. Why not hit ‘em when they’re down?”
All along I’ve been thinking that The Eddy, an eight-episode, Paris-based Netflix series bowing on 5.8.20, was a Damien Chazelle enterprise that would star Moonlight‘s Andre Holland along with Cold War‘s Joanna Kulig in a significant leading role.
The opening line of the series’ Wikipedia page says “directed by Damien Chazelle”, and Kulig is paired with Holland in the recently released one-sheet.
Except I’m now reminded that the actual creator-writer is Jack Thorne, and that Chazelle was more or less a hired gun who directed the first two episodes (#1 and #2). Plus the trailer indicates the series is largely about Holland’s character, Elliot Udo, being harassed by goons (one of them played by Les Miserables costar Alexis Manenti).
And Amandla Sternberg, 21, seems to be playing a larger role than Kulig, whose character has some kind of relationship with Holland but is largely shown going through the motions of a petulant diva.
The poster says the series was co-directed by Chazelle and Alan Poul, although Poul directed only the last two episodes (#7 and #8). Two episodes were also directed by Houda Benyamina (#3 and #4) and Laila Mrrakchi (#5 and #6).
Kurt Russell, Bing’s son and in his early 20s at the time, served as co-manager and an occasional designated hitter. Russell is an impassioned and entertaining talking head in the doc.
I flipped over Battered Bastards when I saw it during Sundance ’14. Easily one of the most heartwarming baseball docs I’ve ever seen, in this or the previous century. Variety‘s Scott Foundas (now a hotshot, BMW-driving Amazon exec) described it as “so rife with underdog victors and hairpin twists of fortune that, if it weren’t all true, no one would believe it.” The Hollywood Reporter‘s Duane Byrge called the doc is “a charming anti-establishment yarn that transcends the game.”
The Battered Bastards of Baseball co-directors Chapman and Maclain Way on either side of Kurt Russell during last Monday night’s after-party at 501 Main Street in Park City.
Immediately after the Sundance showing there was talk about making Battered Bastards into a narrative feature. The film “is ripe for a big-screen redo given the feel-good nature of the story that summons memories of classic baseball sagas like A League of Their Own,” I wrote.
It was soon speculated and reported that In The Bedroom‘s Todd Field, who served as the Mavericks’ bat boy and is one of the doc’s talking heads, might direct the feature version. That was after Satan in the form of Justin Lin intervened, which I found horrific. I only know that when no one was looking the project had curdled and stalled. Why I don’t know. I’ve asked a couple of parties to share what happened on a non-attrib basis.
On 1.24.14 The Hollywood Reporter‘s Tatiana Siegelwrote that “after multiple buyers circled The Battered Bastards of Baseball, Justin Lin has acquired narrative remake rights of the film and will self-finance via his Perfect Storm banner. Lin, who will produce, beat out several pursuers for remake rights, including Columbia Pictures, Fox Searchlight and DreamWorks.
Here’s how I put in the same day as Siegel’s story: “During the post-screening dinner party I mentioned to Russell that BBoB is obviously excellent material for a feature, and his response was ‘hmm, yeah, maybe…who knows?’ I couldn’t believe Russell hadn’t at least thought about it, this being not just his dad’s story but his own. (Maybe he was pretending to be reluctant or noncommittal — maybe he just didn’t want to be candid with a journalist.) Somebody said at the party that if a movie version comes together an ideal director would be Todd Field (In The Bedroom).
“That was four nights ago. Today it was reported that a film version might indeed happen, but that the remake rights had been purchased by Fast and the Furious franchise helmer Justin Lin, who has always impressed me as one of the most brazenly shallow, corporate-kowtowing filmmakers working today. (Lin’s production company, Perfect Storm Entertainment, is the rights holder.)
Some faces need moustaches. Some movie-star faces (Clark Gable, Burt Reynolds, Sam Elliott, Tom Selleck) are almost unimaginable without them. For some movie characters (Robert Redford‘s Sundance Kid, Daniel Day Lewis‘s Bill the Butcher) moustaches were essential components.
But it just occured to me this morning that while two-week stubble and beards are par for the course these days (at least among customers of West Hollywood Pavilions), it’s become a relatively rare thing to run into a moustache upon an otherwise clean shaven mug. Not unheard of but rare, and to be honest a little curious looking.
That’s because there have only been three distinct phases over the last 90-odd years in which moustaches were “happening.”
Phase one began with Clark Gable‘s carefully trimmed ‘stache in It Happened One Night (’34) — an urban machismo profile that launched a thousand ships. The pencil-thin ‘stache lasted until death for Gable and Brian Donlevy and a few others but only into the late ’40s or early ’50s for everyone else.
Four or five years after Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid the “Castro clone” ‘stache exploded within urban gay communities, and it refused to retreat until…what, the mid ’80s? I know that for those paying attention, the gay clone look was suddenly hugely unfashionable soon after the failure of Alan Carr‘s Can’t Stop The Music (’80), so there was that.
Moustaches will never go away, of course, but they haven’t re-ignited over the last 40-plus years. Unless I’ve been missing something. I live in a gay neighborhood so don’t tell me.
Apparently Barack Obama‘s game plan was to wait for Bernie Sanders to officially endorse Uncle Joe before making his own declaration. So now he has. If he’d waited any longer, it would’ve become a thing.
All that aside, Obama’s remarks are that of a human being, a leader, a man of kindness and conscience, a good egg, a practical thinker, a visionary.
A 4.11 N.Y. Times story, reported by Eric Lipton, David E. Sanger, Maggie Haberman, Michael D. Shear, Mark Mazzetti and Julian E. Barnes, said that between late January and mid-March, President Trump lied, denied, side-stepped and fiddled while the pandemic spread and spread. Today he was asked about this — pure comedy.
From Andy Kroll‘s 4.15 Rolling Stone article, “‘Absolute Clusterfuck’: Inside the Denial and Dysfunction of Trump’s Coronavirus Task Force & how the White House fumbled its response to the worst pandemic in a century”:
“If you were to write a playbook for how not to prevent a public-health crisis, you would study the work of the Trump administration in the first three months of 2020.
“The Trump White House, through some combination of ignorance, arrogance and incompetence, failed to heed the warnings of its own experts. It failed to listen to the projections of one of its own economic advisers. It failed to take seriously what has become the worst pandemic since the 1918 flu and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. And when the White House finally awoke to the seriousness of COVID-19, the response it mustered managed to contain all the worst traits of this presidency. Trump and his closest aides have ignored scientists, enlisted family members and TV personalities and corporate profiteers for help, and disregarded every protocol for how to communicate during a pandemic while spewing misinformation and lies.”
Who in a besieged pandemic realm is in a mood to contemplate Denis Villeneuve and Timothee Chalamet‘s forthcoming Dune (Warner Bros., 12.18)? My first reaction was to instantly dismiss whatever the flying devices may be or represent or what-have-you. My second was “another seaside-cliff image in the wake of Portrait of a Lady on Fire and the forthcoming Ammonite?” My third was “why is Chalamet wearing a dark blue Barney’s winter overcoat circa 2005?”
J.C. Chandor‘s Margin Call (Lionsgate/Roadside) was one of the big highlights of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, or a decade ago. There’s no way that a film like Margin Call (a story about white financial elites grappling with a 2008-like Wall Street crisis, and costarring an accused sexual predator) would premiere at the Sundance Woke Festival of today, 95% of which focuses almost entirely on films about women’s issues, people of color, the LBGTQ community, etc.
This is why Sundance is essentially over — why it has come to the end of a long history of success and vitality (early ’90s to 2017) after succumbing to HUAC-style Khmer Rouge wokeness mixed with strong currents of punitive #MeToo consciousness. Not for being progressive, but for creating and feeding a political environment that (not absolutely but to a large extent) frowns upon the white-guy (and especially the older white guy) realm.
Margin Call is arguably Chandor’s best film ever, and it contains one of the finest Kevin Spacey performance of the 21st Century. Not to mention the performances by Jeremy Irons, Zachary Quinto, Simon Baker and Paul Bettany.
HE commenter: “Worked in investment banking during the 80’s. Most of the guys at the top tier (Spacey/Bettany characters) don’t know how to ‘read’ the numbers. The film drilled it home that they are salesmen. They wine and dine bright and aggressive young men and bring them in to the business. The boardroom scene hinges on the idea that all these financial geniuses look to a rocket scientist (Quinto) for confirmation that their business plan is screwed. 2008 is summed up with the correct conclusion — nobody knows anything. One of the year’s best.”
Senator Bernie Sanders has endorsed Doddering Joe Biden for the Democratic nominee for president — not a major thing. Who believes that the Bernie Bros. will turn the other cheek and endorse Biden now? Who believes that Michael Moore will become a staunch Biden guy? Get outta town.
Sanders: “We need you in the White House, Joe, and I will do all that I can to make that happen.” Biden: “Bernie, I uh…I want to thank you…that means a great deal…your endorsement means a great deal. I’m gonna need ya…not just to win the campaign but to govern.”
The differences between the internals (political allegiances, character, guiding philosophy, ethics) of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and ’50s-era Senate Majority Leader (and then Vice-President and U.S. President) Lyndon B. Johnson are stark.
During his mid ’50s to mid ’60s heyday Johnson was a tough and wily politician who pushed through progressive legislation.
Since he became Majority Leader in early ’15 McConnell has done nothing of significance except (a) block Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, (b) block pretty much all legislation that doesn’t serve corporate interests and (c) serve the agenda of an Oval Office sociopath.
For most of his Congressional political career Johnson hid his liberal-moderate colors while being fairly unscrupulous in his pursuit of naked power.
Every day McConnell coughs up hairballs of cynicism and serves the agenda of the most dangerous president in the history of this nation.
But I have to say (and it gives me no pleasure to do so) that while reading Mayer’s piece I was reminded of descriptions of Johnson in Dave Grubin‘s American Experience doc “LBJ” — descriptions offered by former aides and friends during Johnson’s Senate Majority days.
Howard Schuman, U.S. Senate Aide: “Well, one doesn’t know whether he was a liberal or a reactionary. Probably he was neither. He probably was just an extraordinarily skillful parliamentarian who was an opportunist and who sensed the wind and then went in that direction.”
Ronnie Dugger, LBJ Biographer: “…the absolutely unqualified opportunism of a successful politician of this particular mold.”
John Connally, LBJ Campaign Aide, LBJ Advisor: “He had no interests, really, except politics. That was his whole life. He was totally committed to it. He never read anything except politics. He didn’t care about any sports. He didn’t read any books. I don’t know of one book he read in all the years I’ve known him.”
Joseph Rauh, Jr., Americans for Democratic Action: “My opinion was that he was destroying the Democratic Party and not doing his job. His job was the opposition to the Eisenhower Administration and he didn’t do it. They were just playing hanky-panky with each other and there was really no Democratic opposition.”
With nothing much to say, a couple of shots from earlier today plus 17 or 18 images of life as it was not long ago…pre-masks, pre-surgical gloves, pre-incessant hand washings, etc.
