I was recently urged by two friends to see Tina Satter’s Reality (HBO, 5.29), an 82-minute transcription drama about the June 2017 interrogation and arrest of Reality Winner, a contractor who bravely leaked classified info about Russian interference in the 2026 Presidential election.

Based solely on FBI transcripts, Reality is about an interaction between Ms. Winner (Sydney Sweeney) and a pair of kindly, soft-spoken FBI agents (Josh Hamilton, Marchant Davis). It’s mildly compelling in the sense that it’s certainly watchable and not boring, but at the the same time I wouldn’t call it earth-shattering. It’s engrossing as far as it goes. The first half-hour is completely banal, but it finally gets going…sort of.

I believed every minute of Reality (naturally) but Sweeney could be playing any 20something woman responding to any interrogation about anything of grave concern. She speaks to the FBI guys in what could be called “limited candid”…truths, half-truths, sidestepping, etc. Sweeney also speaks in a typical half-slurry vocal-fry manner, as many 20something women have been doing for the last 15-plus years. Her performance is perfectly fine but I didn’t believe she was fluent in three languages, as the actual Reality is. She seems too banal so I don’t honestly get the breathless praise.

I emerged from Reality, however, with a profound respect for what Ms. Winner did, which was to funnel classified proof to The Intercept about Russian interference, etc.

A high-profile, middle-aged husband (45) and wife (41) whose issues led to a recent separation (followed by a subsequent rapprochement) are further rocked by the wife’s discovery last March of the husband’s brief affair with a 25-year-old climate activist who bears a strong resemblance to the wife and is certainly the same physical type.

This needn’t be a terrible Shakespearean tragedy. A rupture of trust, obviously, but more of a passing thunderstorm than Krakatoa, East of Java. Younger men (under 50) are dogs and may act upon this if marital discord is an ongoing issue, and especially if the other woman is 20 years younger.

Be honest — hurtful things occasionally happen in some marriages, but the smart play is to lick your wounds and give it another shot. My Mad Men dad indulged in an episode in his mid 40s, and was busted when the girlfriend wrote a note. Thinking of the kids and contemplating her husband’s dog-like instincts, the wise wife will follow the usual script, which is to make their lives an agonizing hell for a few months and then gradually let it go.

An alleged Clint Eastwood quote, according to a famous actor who ran in the same circles: “Show me a hugely attractive, impressively accomplished, stupendously beautiful woman, and I’ll show you a longtime husband or boyfriend who’s tired of fucking her.”

Ryan Gosling’s idea, I’m presuming, was that post-Barbie he needed to butch himself up, hence the 19th Century gold prospector beard and the styled but un-styled Sutter’s Mill coif. At the same time he didn’t want to over-smother the Barbie association, hence the unbuttoned, chest-baring black shirt and the pink western duster

Saying ixnay to SEXISM, RACISM, FATPHOBIA, HOMOPHOBIA, TRANSPHOBIA, ABLEISM (i.e., giving shit to handicapped people and generally lording it over them) and HATEFULNESS is well and good and noble. But of course wokesters are the spiritual fathers and mothers of AGEISM, or a general all-around dismissal of older white people (and males in particular) who “don’t get” or have otherwise barked at the tenets of woke Maoism. Nobody is more ageist than wokesters — they own it from here to eternity, and it will be carved into their gravestones.

There is no apparent visual evidence that famed director Howard Hawks was ever young. There are many indications, in fact, that he was literally born at age 46 with short silver-gray hair and wearing a series of exquisitely tailored tweed sport jackets.

Hawks gradually aged, of course, into his 50s, 60s, 70s and beyond. He passed at age 81 in December 1977.

Which other Hollywood heavyweights were never young or at least persuaded a good portion of the world that they began their lives in their 40s?