HE to World of Reel’s Jordan Ruimy: “Whadaya mean by saying that The Holdovers is ‘far from Alexander Payne’s best film’?

“It is one of his best, and it’s very carefully rendered…every line and and every shot lands just so…each and every brushstroke contributes exquisitely to the whole…c’mon, man, don’t be a snob!”

Here’s my abbreviated Telluride review.

My recent Telluride viewing of Andrew Haigh’s All Of Us Strangers reminded me that I really, really don’t want to be subjected to explicit gay-male sex scenes, especially if they involve older guys with beard stubble. And double-triple especially if they involve Joaquin Phoenix…pushing 50, paunchy, salt-and-pepper, etc.

I wouldn’t want to watch Phoenix having sex with a woman either. Please.

Todd Haynes has told Variety’s Elsa Keslassy that his next film will be a 1930s-era gay love story starring Phoenix and a not-yet–cast younger guy, and that it will feature “explicit” or otherwise “challenging” sex scenes, and that during their discussions Phoenix had been “pushing it further into more dangerous territory, sexually.”

What the hell would “dangerous territory” mean? I could speculate but let’s not.

Compromise: Back in the 1950s and ‘60s producers used to shoot two versions of sex scenes — tamer, less graphic ones for the U.S. market plus racier, more explicit versions for Europeans. What about Haynes and Phoenix shooting explicit sex scenes for those who are game plus straight-friendly versions in the vein of Call Me By Your Name or Brokeback Mountain for fraidy cats like myself?

Jordan Ruimy’s version of the story:

Earlier today (9.7) Rolling Stone’s Krystie Lee Yandoli posted an extensively-sourced torpedo piece about The Tonight Show’s Jimmy Fallon. It describes the 48 year old host and comedian as something of a neurotic, erratic, hair–trigger type, and the show’s general atmosphere being on the stressed, unsettled, far–from–serene side.

Yandoli assembled the story from chats with 16 Tonight Show employees — two currently working there and 14 ex-staffers.

Secondly, we’re all familiar with this unfortunate syndrome, which for the time being we’ll call the Jimmy Fallon syndrome. Over the decades more than a few powerhouse comedic stars of hugely popular TV shows have, to varying degrees, tended to be difficult, turbulent bosses who have caused staffers to kvetch and suffer and briefly contemplate suicide. I’m sorry for the employees who’ve had to deal with the erratic whims and occasional outbursts that are par for the course when you work for intense, half-crazy, highly demanding types like Fallon, but the complaints in Yandoli’s article don’t represent a one-off — they represent a well-established pattern of abusive behavior that probably reaches back to the eras of George M. Cohan, P.T. Barnum, Edwin Booth and, quite possibly, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

I’m presuming that similar discomfort was felt decades ago by staffers who worked under Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Jackie Gleason, Jack Paar, Johnny Carson (although not Steve Allen, reportedly a more mild-mannered type than the others).

Similar vibes have also emanated, of course, from staffers who’ve worked for Ellen DeGeneres, James Corden, David Letterman, et. al. I don’t know about Jimmy Kimmel workplace vibes.

It does seem to go with the territory, Not always but often.

HE comment posted during Ellen DeGeneres brouhaha:

As of yesterday, the general Venice Film Festival response to Woody Allen‘s Coup de Chance had been largely positive. Not a half-hate, half-love thing, but something like an 85-15 or 80-20 split in favor of Allen’s infidelity thriller.

Despite this the N.Y. Times, seemingly aligned with and loyal to the hater camp, has posted a Kyle Buchanan piece that claims the Venice reception was “decidedly mixed.”

This is a fundamentally dishonest reading as any fair-minded assessment of the Coup de Chance response would necessarily dismiss anti-Woody protestors, as they’re basically a fringe hate group.

The response to any film at any major festival is always about what sophistos in the know — critics, fellow filmmakers, industry columnists — are saying. You can’t count what fringe nutters are howling about from the sidelines

Considering the likelihood that at least a few Venice Film Festival critics have tried like hell to respond as negatively as possible to Woody Allen’s Coup de Chance in order to satisfy the haters, it’s hugely exciting and satisfying to read how positive the overall response has been.

HE loves the idea of the #DeathtoWoody villains gnashing their teeth and muttering “drat! curses! foiled again! “We’ve managed to kill Allen’s domestic career, and now you’re telling us…what, that he’s back from the dead? Well, we won’t have it!! We’ve been terrorizing Hollywood and generally making everyone miserable for the last five or six years, goddamit, and we don’t want this to stop!”

Owen Gleiberman:

Several weeks ago a dismissive Cannes review of Aki Kaurismaki ‘s Fallen Leaves lowered my want-to-see. But at the urging of SBIFF kingpin Roger Durling I caught it yesterday afternoon, and was glad that I did. It’s a simple but pleasing romantic fable — bare bones, wholly believable, well acted and genuinely touching.

Nobody’s urging me to see Rustin, which screens at the Palm at 4:15. The reviews have been tepid. Trusted critic friend: “It does exactly what you expect it to do,” I’ll be attending but I won’t use one of my early-entry passes. It’s not worth it. If I don’t get in, fine. Pretty Things is at 7:30 pm.

Serious respect for the late Jimmy Buffet, who lived large and luxuriously off an enduring music career that stretches back to the ‘70s. Laid-back beach vibes, Caribbean atmospheres + rum and crushed ice in the blender, shots of tequila and “that frozen concoction that helps me hang on.”

I never related all that strongly to the Buffet legend or sensibility or whatever, which was basically about cynicism and resignation. But he did come to represent a “fuck it”, sandal-wearing, Hawaiian-shirt-wearing attitude toward the tensions and stresses of modern life, and you can’t say it didn’t resonate.

Posted in response to HE’s Saltburn review: