Posted on 9.2.19, and re-posted in honor of a new trailer: One measure of a gripping Telluride film, for me, is catching a 10:30 pm showing (and they always start late) and maintaining an absolute drill-bit focus on each and every aspect for 135 minutes, and then muttering to myself “yeah, that was something else” as I walked back to the pad in near total darkness (using an iPhone flashlight app to see where I was walking) around 1 am.

This is what happened last night between myself and Trey Edward Shults‘ Waves (A24, 11.1).

Set in an affluent ‘burb south of Miami, Waves is a meditative, deep-focus tragedy about an African-American family coping with the effects of high-pressure expectations and toxic masculinity.

The bringer of these plague motivators is dad Ronald (Sterling K. Brown), the owner of a construction business and one tough, clenched, hard-ass dude. He injects all of this and more into 18 year-old son Tyler (Kelvin Harrison, Jr.), a somewhat cocky high-school wrestling team star who’s looking at a top-notch college and a go-getter future.

Watching on the sidelines is Tyler’s kid sister Emily (Taylor Russell), a quiet, keep-to- herself type. Their stepmom Catherine (Renee Elise Goldsberry) is a gentle smoother-over, and a counterweight to Ronald’s aggressive approach to parenting.

Tyler’s situation is aggravated when he tears a shoulder muscle and is told by a doctor that he has to stop wrestling. Tyler naturally decides to hide this from Ronald. But the real flash point occurs when Tyler’s spunky-hot girlfriend Alexis (Alexa Demie) finds herself pregnant, and announces that she wants to “keep it.” It?

Tyler freaks (sudden fatherhood at 18 being more or less synonymous with economic enslavement and close to a death sentence in terms of college and opportunity), Alexis freaks right back and blocks him, he responds by snorting and drinking and driving off, and then things come to a horrific climax at a party.

And so ends Part One of Waves, which is a cleanly organized two-parter. And then begins Part Two, which is mostly about Emily quietly coping with the aftermath of Tyler’s tragedy, and Ronald and Catherine all but shut down and incapacitated by it.

The bulk of this section is about Emily meeting and then going out with Luke (Manchester By The Sea‘s Lucas Hedges, somewhat heavier and wearing the same tennisball haircut he had in Mid90s and Ben Is Back). They gradually start going on missions together (including a visit to Weeki Wachee, which I haven’t been to since I was 14) and talking about their buried backstories, in particular Luke’s dying ex-druggie dad.

And then finally Ronald and Emily have “the talk” in which Ronald more or less admits that he pushed the wrong buttons with Tyler and that he’s trying to forgive himself, etc.

The night before last (Monday, 10.28) I attended a screening of The Two Popes at the West Hollywood London. Tatyana couldn’t make it, but perhaps we could hook up later. The 6 pm pre-party was attended by director Fernando Meirelles and screenwriter Anthony McCarten along with the usual gaggle of press folk and Academy members, including HE homey Phillip Noyce.

I parked the bike in my usual spot in the basement garage. They never say anything — I just leave it there and nobody cares. But Monday night was different.

They wanted extra valet money so they said I had to go upstairs and get a valet ticket. I did that, but I told them no one would be allowed to drive the bike up to the greeting area in front of the main door. “That’s okay,” said a senior guy with a jacket and tie. “No one will drive your bike. And I’ll be here until midnight or later.” So I gave him my keys.

Before the screening Noyce had invited me to join him for drink and food with McCarten at the Sunset Tower hotel (8358 Sunset)…cool.

As noted yesterday (“White-Haired Holy Men“) I felt slightly more charmed and moved by The Two Popes than I did during my initial viewing in Telluride.

After it ended I got the parking ticket validated by a Netflix rep, and gave it to the girl at the outdoor valet desk. I told her no one could drive the bike — that I simply needed to get the keys so I could stroll down to the basement garage and drive off.

She didn’t like that idea, and said she’d have to check with her superior. “But I talked with your boss a couple of hours ago,” I said. “He assured me that no one would be driving the bike…that I just needed to surrender the keys for protocol’s sake.”

The keys weren’t findable and things were turning strange. Noyce suggested that I join him in an Uber for the 1/2 mile drive to the Sunset Tower. “Fine,” I decided. “I’ll get the rumble hog later.”

When we got to the hotel I called Tatyana and gave her the address. Unfortunately I searched too quickly and repeated the address of the Sunset Towers office building (8730 Sunset) so we spent a few minutes of confusion on that score. My bad.

We all finally met in the rear of the darkly lighted main floor. Two small tables, five or six chairs, great food and wine, etc. The window behind McCarten offered a perfect view of downtown Los Angeles.

We talked about anything that popped into anyone’s head. The Two Popes, Bohemian Rhapsody, Freddy Mercury, the self-destructive tragedy of Bryan Singer, woke-minded critics and the failed attempt to stop Green Book at the Oscars, and the forthcoming John Lennon-Yoko Ono biopic that Mccarten has written and which Jean-Marc Vallee will direct.

No mention of who will play Lennon, but the script, which McCarten wrote last year, will cover the whole span of their relationship, from ’68 to ’80.

Just after Murray the K‘s death in early ’82, a friend passed along a bitter joke. Q: “What do they call Murray the K in heaven?” A: “The second Beatle.”

When I returned to the London for the bike, the staffers were still in a weird organizational tizzy. Despite Netflix having validated my ticket and despite the jacket-and-tie guy telling me everything would be cool if I returned by midnight (which I did), they said they wanted an extra $10 for parking because the ticket time had expired.

I gave them the ten-spot but talk about greedy and ungracious.

I’m sitting in Chips (11908 Hawthorne Blvd, Hawthorne, CA 90250), a nostalgic old-school diner, while the recently purchased VW Beetle is being maintenanced.

With its naugahyde booths, formica tabletops and Venetian blinds on the windows, Chips is a close relation of the diner that was held up by Pumpkin and Honey-Bunny (Tim Roth, Amanda Plummer) in Pulp Fiction. That scene was shot in the Hawthorne Grill, an actual, since-demolished restaurant (14763 Hawthorne Blvd.) about 20 blocks south of Chips.

Otherwise this is a horrible area of town — a cultural Siberia pockmarked with the usual strip malls, modest bunaglow neighborhoods, small trees, gas stations, auto parts stores, stray dogs and friendly people coping with this or that form of quiet desperation.

The only other place of interest besides the Hawthorne Grill was the original Murry Wilson home (where Brian, Carl and Dennis grew up), but that was flattened in the ’80s to make way for the 105. Nothing in Hawthorne makes you want to stay — the whole area says “get the fuck out of here…run for your life!…run!”

And the music on the Chips sound system…yeesh. Right now they’re playing “Sugar Shack,” a 1963 cutesy pop tune about a guy falling in love with and then marrying a waitress. “Sugar Shack” was recorded by Jimmy Gilmer and the Fireballs at Norman Petty Studios in Clovis, New Mexico. Wiki excerpt: “The unusual and distinctive organ part was played by Petty on a Hammond Solovox, Model J.”

“Sugar Shack” is 56 years old. Do you think that people having breakfast in Americana diners 56 years hence (2075) will be playing tunes from the 20-teens? Not likely. They’ll probably be playing the same old dooh-wah-diddy-bop. Music from the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s never ends.

A day or two ago Variety‘s Chris Willman attended a Sharon Tate triple feature at the New Beverly — Valley of the Dolls (awful), Fearless Vampire Killers (lesser Polanski but tolerable) and The Wrecking Crew (flat-out stinkeroonie).

Willman: “I enjoyed The Wrecking Crew maybe a little less than the audience at the Bruin in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood but what a doll.” What did Willman actually mean when he said he “enjoyed it a little less,” etc.? We can only guess, of course, but my presumption is that Willman hated it so much that at the halfway point he suddenly bolted into the New Beverly bathroom and threw up.

The fact that poor Sharon Tate died in a ghastly and horrific way doesn’t automatically mean that the films she made in the late ’60s were any good.

From Scott Feinberg’s intro to his “THR Awards Chatter” podcast with Shia (Honey Boy) Lebeouf: “I had just told the 33-year-old that Alma Har’el‘s Honey Boy — a film that he wrote about his traumatic upbringing as a child actor, and in which he plays his abusive father — not only impressed me, but left me 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.

Lebeouf: “I think context is really important, and I think what Honey Boy does is it contextualizes who I was publicly, and kind of plays on it. And I’m grateful it’s effective.”

“Honey Boy, which premiered in January at Sundance, has played the fall film fest circuit and will be released by Amazon on Nov. 8. It is one of two LaBeouf projects currently garnering widespread acclaim. The other is Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz’s The Peanut Butter Falcon, a $6.2 million indie that premiered in March at SXSW, was released by Roadside Attractions on Aug. 23 and has grossed $20 million in the U.S., making it the top platform release of the year so far.

“It was while working on Peanut Butter Falcon that LaBeouf hit a personal low point that led to the beginnings of Honey Boy. Collectively, they represent one of the great comebacks in Hollywood.

But the melody is clear enough. Either you recognize it or you don’t.

All hail Hildur Guðnadóttir‘s cello-ish Joker score, which seems to seep into and finally inhabit Arthur Fleck’s tortured psyche. A classically trained cellist, the 37-year-old Guðnadóttir is an Icelandic musician and composer. She’s played and recorded with several bands I’ve never heard of, including Pan Sonic, Throbbing Gristle, Múm and Stórsveit Nix Noltes.

#Joker composer Hildur Guðnadóttir talks about the journey of the film, which is led by the cello, and how it reflects Arthur's mindset pic.twitter.com/4phD1ZCMKc

— Variety (@Variety) October 29, 2019

Catholicism and the Pope are concepts that millions still cling to worldwide. Because they offer a feeling of steadiness and security in a tumbling, tumultuous world. Included among the faithful, one presumes, are thousands of movie-worshipping Catholics, and so Fernando Meirelles and Anthony McCarten‘s The Two Popes (Netflix, 11.27) is, not surprisingly, faring well as a potential Best Picture nominee. The fact that it won the Audience Award at the 2019 Middleburg Film Festival is an indication of this.

I saw The Two Popes for the second time last night, and I felt slightly more charmed and moved than I did during my initial viewing in Telluride.

I have nothing but respect and admiration for the film, and particularly for McCarten’s script (which is based on McCarten’s 2017 play, The Pope). In my humble opinion McCarten should definitely be nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay. And it seems increasingly likely that Jonathan Pryce‘s performance as the future Pope Francis (aka Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio) will be Best Actor-nominated as well.

But honestly? I still feel emotionally removed from The Two Popes (as I wrote in my 9.1.19 Telluride review). Because I don’t feel any sort of kinship, much less a profound one, with the Catholic Church. I never have and I never will.

I don’t believe in holiness. I don’t believe in the Vatican carnival. I don’t believe in robes. I don’t believe in red shoes. I believe in Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel frescoes and in Charlton Heston‘s performance in The Agony and the Ecstasy, but I haven’t the slightest belief in those Vatican City guard uniforms or the mitre or the scepter of any of the theatrical trappings. I believe in humanity and simplicity. I’m not exactly saying that I believe in Pope Lenny more than Pope Francis, but in a way I kind of do. Almost.

I don’t believe in the Bible…not really. I certainly don’t believe in celibacy for priests, and I despise the thousands of priests who’ve molested children worldwide and the countless bishops and cardinals who’ve protected them from the consequences. I believe that women should definitely be admitted into the priesthood. And while I understand and respect the fact that millions believe in the Catholic mission and its hierarchy, I myself don’t. Catholicism is more against things than for them.

“Robe, Mitre, Scepter,” posted from Telluride on 9.1.19:

Fernando Meirelles‘ The Two Popes is an interesting, mildly appealing two-hander as far as it goes. I had serious trouble with the refrigator temps as I watched, but I probably would have felt…well, somewhere between faintly underwhelmed and respectfully attentive even under the best of conditions.

It’s a wise, intelligent, non-preachy examination of conservative vs progressive mindsets (focused on an imagined, drawn-out discussion between Anthony Hopkins‘ Pope Benedict and Jonathan Pryce‘s Pope Francis a few years back) in a rapidly convulsing world, and I could tell from the get-go that Anthony McCarten‘s script is choicely phrased and nicely honed. But I couldn’t feel much arousal. I sat, listened and pondered, but nothing ignited. Well, not much.

Possibly on some level because I’ve never felt the slightest rapport with the Catholic church, and because for the last 20 or 30 years I’ve thought of it in Spotlight terms, for the most part.

I love that Pope Francis (formerly or fundamentally Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina) is a humanist and a humanitarian with simple tastes, and I was delighted when he jerked his hand away when Donald Trump tried to initiate a touchy-flicky thing a couple of years ago. And I’m certainly down with any film in which two senior religious heavyweights discuss the Beatles, “Eleanor Rigby” and Abbey Road, etc.

“I’d rather be remembered than rich.” — the late Robert Evans in a 1977 interview.

There’s something terribly somber and sobering in the idea of the churning Evans dynamo being silent and still, above and beyond the fact of a life having run its course and come to a natural end. I don’t like finality as a rule. I prefer the idea of fluidity, of a beating pulse and the constant search for action and opportunity. I don’t like it when a store closes and is all emptied out and boarded up with “for lease” signs pasted on the windows. Keep it going, sweep the floors, stock the shelves, pay the bills. All things must pass, of course, but not now…later.

The last time Evans and I saw each other was over dinner at the Palm in ’02, sometime around the release of Nanette Burstein and Brett Morgen‘s The Kid Stays in the Picture. Evans covered the meal, but they never brought him a check. I didn’t ask and he didn’t explain. Some kind of gratis deal he had with management — Evans arrives, orders, eats, leaves a generous tip and leaves.

In the published view of director Peter Bogdanovich, Evans “was good Hollywood, not bad Hollywood.”

When Evans broke in as a producer in the mid ’60s “he brought a fresh kind of attitude to the movies,” Bogdanovich says. “He had very good taste and he produced movies of his own that were damn good.

“He was a movie fan too. It’s rare to have executives that really like movies. Not all executives are like that. He was really enthusiastic, and he encouraged talent. I loved Bob. He was friendly and amiable and charming.”

In a 10.28 tribute piece Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman wrote that “you can see why they thought Evans would be a movie star in the late ’50s. Evans was gleamingly handsome, yet he always had a touch of the geek about him. With his toothy grin and beautiful slick coif, he looked like a cross between Tom Cruise and the young Donald Trump, and as his career as an actor fizzled, the role of producer became the perfect fit for him. He was born not to tell a story but to sell it.”

Bogdanovich agrees: “Bob was the last of a breed. He connected to the Hollywood of the ’50s. They made fun of him because he was an actor who became a studio head. But why not? He played the part very well.”

But Glieberman and Bogdanovich disagree about Evans’ vision of a genetically Italian Godfather.

“The Godfather was the most important film of the decade, and it wouldn’t have been made the way it was without Robert Evans,” Gleiberman notes. “In hiring Francis Ford Coppola to direct, Evans grasped that the then-moribund gangster genre needed a major helping of ethnic authenticity; as much as that, he saw that it needed to be epic. The result was a new benchmark in operatic Hollywood realism.”

“Oh, yeah?” Bogdanovich more or less replies. “Evans offered me The Godfather right after The Last Picture Show. [But] I just wasn’t interested in doing a mob picture.” Not to mention the fact that Bogdanovich’s Serbian-Austrian heritage wasn’t exactly an ideal perspective for understanding and conveying the saga of the Corleone crime family.

What this means, of course, is that Evans only gradually came to understand that The Godfather had to be directed by a guy who understood Italian culture — the music, food, expressions, traditions, flavorings. Evans was’t a perfect genius but when the right idea came to him, he knew it.

“The evil that men do lives after them…the good is oft interred with their bones.” Not in Evans’ case. He was never my idea of even a half-evil guy, but he had his flawed aspects. But nobody’s talking about that stuff now. Only the good, only the glorious. That’s what friends are for.