One of the most deeply rooted images of my entire filmgoing life. If I could find a nice impressionist rendering on canvas I’d hang it on my living-room wall.

Name some noteworthy films that started out as one thing, and ended up as another.

All serious-minded films are designed and executed with a certain moralistic or thematic or sensationalist intention. They’re made to stir emotions. Or merely excite or amuse. Or cast light upon certain aspects of the culture. Or make some kind of political point…whatever. But every so often the intended doesn’t happen when the film plays before paying audiences and it becomes something that the filmmakers never expected.

This is what happened to Martin Ritt‘s Hud (’63). The below excerpt from a 2003 conversation with Hud screenwriters Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank, Jr. and Michigan Quarterly Review‘s William Baer explains the basics.

The most obvious kind of “wait, what happened?” is when a film is made as a straightforward drama or melodrama, only to “land’ as an unintentional comedy because of ineptitude or an overload of attitude or something. Another is when a film is ostensibly made as some kind of half-crude exploitation but is nonetheless received as a sophisticated genre commentary in “quotes” (Mark Lester‘s Truck Stop Women), or something along these lines.

BAER: “Well, Hud was certainly a unique picture in many ways, but, most significantly, it dared to portray a central character who was a pure bastard, and who remained totally unredeemed and unrepentant at the end of the picture.”

RAVETCH: “Yes, we sensed a change in American society back then. We felt that the country was gradually moving into a kind of self-absorption, and indulgence, and greed. Which, of course, fully blossomed in the ’80s and ’90s. So we made Hud a greedy, self-absorbed man, who ruthlessly strives for things, and gains a lot materially, but really loses everything that’s important. But he doesn’t care. He’s still unrepentant.

FRANK: “In our society, there’s always been a fascination with the ‘charming’ villain, and we wanted to say that if something’s corrupt, it’s still corrupt, no matter how charming it might seem. Even if it’s Paul Newman with his beautiful blue eyes. But things didn’t work out like we planned.

BAER: “It actually backfired.”

RAVETCH: “Yes, it did, and it was a terrible shock to all of us. Here’s a man who tries to rape his housekeeper, who wants to sell poisoned cattle to his neighbors, and who stops at nothing to take control of his father’s property. And all the time, he’s completely unrepentant. Then, at the first screenings, the preview cards asked the audiences, ‘Which character did you most admire?’ and many of them answered ‘Hud.’ We were completely astonished. Obviously, audiences loved Hud, and it sent us into a tailspin. The whole point of all our work on that picture was apparently undone because Paul was so charismatic.

“Lake Arrowhead Is Scenic and Fragrant But…,” posted 5 and 1/3 years ago: “Before yesterday I had never visited Lake Arrowhead. High in the mountains (about 5000 feet), quite hilly, the scent of pine and wood chips, forests of towering fir trees, about 30 minutes north of San Bernardino.

“It seems wonderful when you first arrive, but then you start noticing things.

“Like the sparsity of sidewalks and bike-riding and general hiking paths — the town is strictly about cars, and big fat SUVs at that. Not to mention the blue-collar, vaguely bumblefuck atmosphere — you can immediately sense a downmarket culture that is at least somewhat lacking in educated, upscale sensibilities. I knew something was up when I spotted a couple of streetside banner ads celebrating the local ‘heroes’ who’ve served in Iraq and Afghanistan. On top of which many of the homes lack architectural integrity and have obviously been built with cheap materials. On top of which Lake Arrowhead Village is so overdeveloped that any concept of charm probably went out the window 50 years ago.

“In a phrase, the town lacks a certain refinement. It’s for people who like to eat at McDonald’s. It almost feels like some kind of low-security, blue-collar prison camp. The town that F.W. Murnau shot Sunrise in 90 years ago was a very different place, I’m sure. Many decades before the middle-American mob moved in and transformed this little mountain village into Mulletville. This is not a community that would appeal to Bernardo Bertolucci or Michelangelo Antonioni in their prime. Europeans do lakeside resorts with a lot more class and style.”

“The only reason I had any success was because of you. And I was grateful for that at that time.” — the late Sue Lyon to Stanley Kubrick, written and presumably sent sometime around ’95.

Saying that she was grateful for her limited success as an actress “at that time” (i.e., the ’60s and ’70s) indicates that perhaps she wasn’t so grateful for this chapter as she got older. Maybe. And why would it be so difficult to locate Kubrick’s mailing address, what with their history and all? Her former agent or agency couldn’t help? She couldn’t reach out to Kubrick’s producing partner James B. Harris (who’s still with us)?

Friends of Richard Rudman, to whom Lyon was married in the mid ’90s and apparently had ties with her at the time of her passing, expressed condolences on Facebook. Lyon was married five times, which suggests she wasn’t exactly a day at the beach. Rudman wrote a day or two ago that “she’s in a better place now, finally at peace and rest…” The suggestion is that things were rather difficult for Lyon toward the end, possibly due to poor health.

Today, tomorrow (Friday, 1.3), the weekend, Monday (1.6) and Tuesday (1.7). And that’s all the time there is to submit Oscar noms. Hubba hubba.

Click here to jump past HE Sink-In

Give Shia LaBeouf‘s Honey Boy an A for honesty, and an extra A for soul-baring. It warrants respect and admiration — for LaBeouf’s screenplay and lead performance (playing his own abusive dad), for the performances of Noah Jupe and Lucas Hedges who play LeBeouf (called Otis Lort) at ages 12 and 22, respectively, and for the efforts of Israeli director Alma Har’el.

Since opening on 11.8, Honey Boy has been critically praised (Rotten Tomatoes 94%) and polled well with Joe and Jane Popcorn (91% on RT, an IMDB rating of 7.5.)

Honey Boy is a straight-up,  take-it-or-leave-it thing — half  cinematic therapy (LaBeouf wrote it in rehab) and half sordid family saga. It tells the truth about what Shia endured as a kid and what he’s grappling with now as a 33 year-old. And it’s no stroll in the park. But it doesn’t sidestep or shilly shally. It’s trustworthy.

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We’ve all come to know the LaBeouf saga over the last 13 or so years, and how reactive and turbulent and issue-laden it’s been all along. He became a successful child actor at age 9 or thereabouts (around ’95) and then a 21 year-old marquee name with his lead performance in Disturbia and then, starting in ’08 or thereabouts, an obviously troubled hotshot with standout performances in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (’10), Lawless and The Company You Keep (’12), Nymphomaniac (’13), Fury (’14), American Honey (’16), Borg vs McEnroe (’17) and The Peanut Butter Falcon (’19).

Not to mention the arrests, altercations, conflicts, provocations. Over the last decade LaBeouf has become far better known for his issues than his talent or achievements.  By the term “issues” I’m alluding to what some have perceived as obnoxious, self-regarding behavior.  But that’s a fair call, LaBeouf has said.

“I don’t think you were wrong for thinking I was a dick,” he told The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg a while back. Feinberg had confessed to feeling guilty for making dismissive assumptions about him in recent years as he repeatedly wound up in the headlines for all of the wrong reasons. “I think context is really important,” LaBeouf explained. “And I think what Honey Boy does is contextualize who I was publicly, and kind of plays on it. And I’m grateful it’s effective.”

Out of 31 Gold Derby experts, only four — Variety‘s Tim Gray, Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone, Decider‘s Chris Rosen and myself — have stood up for Dolomite Is My Name‘s Da’Vine Joy Randolph. Her performance as Lady Reed is arguably the most touching and open-hearted of the year. In any category.

And 27 GD know-it-alls have blown her off. Nice one, guys!

Three other contenders deliver the intrepid beating heart thing. The Farewell‘s Zhao Shuzhen, who plays the ailing grandmother, Nai Nai. Bombshell‘s Margot Robbie, who portrays a fictitious Fox News comployee, Kayla Pospisil**, but in a stunned and shattered victimhood mode. And Richard Jewell‘s Kathy Bates, in her most noteworthy feature film performance since…what, Gertude Stein in Midnight in Paris?

The performances of the other three highly-rated contenders — Marriage Story‘s Laura Dern, Hustlers‘ Jennifer Lopez and Little Women‘s Florence Pugh — are all about spunk and spirit and strutting around. (Pugh delivers all this plus impudence.)

I respected Robbie’s performance and felt sorry for Pospisil (that awful scene in Roger Aisles‘ office), but at no time did I feel any kind of profound or meaningful kinship with her (mainly due to the rightwing thing). The emotional currents that seep out of Randolph’s Lady Reed are far more affecting, and yet Robbie has been included on 25 out of 31 GD lists. She’s obviously a bigger name that Randolph, but her performance isn’t in Randolph’s league. At all. Seriously.

Dern and Lopez are on pretty much everyone’s list. Shuzhen is on 17. Pugh is on 20.

The last time I checked performances that make you feel something deep and poignant are the ones that result in acting nominations…no? I guess gutsy and ballsy have more clout these days.

** Pospisil is a very strange last name. A mixture of a prescription drug and an opossum.

Decent tease. January 17th.

“Trump has never had the cities…right? Now he’s lost the ‘burbs. But he still polls well in the hamlets, whistle stops, one-horse towns, bumfucks and wide areas of the road.” Wait…”bumfucks?”

Yesterday The Atlantic‘s David Sims posted a piece titled “The 10 Best Movie Scenes of the 2010s.”

I agree with two or three of his choices, but it’s astonishing that one of Sims’ picks is the notorious Parasite scene when the fired maid rings the bell during the rainstorm and the drunken family lets her in. This is arguably one of the most confounding and unsatisfying scenes in any major 2019 film bar none, and Sims calls it one of the year’s best?

Consider a Zero Dark Thirty substitute. Actually three scenes that involve the final decision to send Navy Seals to Abbottabad to kill Osama bin Laden. I’m especially taken with the scene in which James Gandolfini‘s Leon Panetta asks his CIA advisors to state unequivocally and without “any fucking bullshit” whether Osama bin Laden “is there or is he not fucking there?”

The 1st runner-up is when Jessica Chastain‘s Maya tells Panetta that she’s “the motherfucker who found” the target, and Panetta, suddenly charmed and obviously amused, says “really?”

Rob Reiner and Nora Ephron‘s When Harry Met Sally is 30 years old. My view has always been that it’s an agreeable relationship comedy with underpinnings of recognizable emotional realism. It’s occasionally glib and schmaltzy, but what continues to save it are (a) Ephron’s dialogue and (b) Billy Crystal‘s delivery of same. The football-game confession may be the best scene. Mainly because the story of how Crystal’s ex-wife Helen broke up with him feels half-believable. People always lie about their motives for breaking up. They never lay their cards face-up. And movers never say anything to anyone.