In honor of Tuesday Weld‘s 76th birthday on 8.27, screenwriter-critic-essayist Kim Morgan re-posted a 2017 New Beverly essay about Frank Perry‘s Play It As It Lays (’72). Except she mainly focused on the film, or rather it’s failure to catch in the way it should have.

Morgan apparently feels the same about Play It As It Lays as I do. It’s a brilliant translation of Joan Didion‘s source novel, and my nominee for the most…I don’t know, curiously arresting film ever made about cold, rotten, corroded Hollywood. Weld’s performance as sad, spaced-out Maria (pronounced Mar-EYE-ah) Wyeth is easily her best ever.

Morgan: “Play It As It Lays floats and swerves and cuts with observations and weirdly timed statements like this throughout, brilliantly matching the fragmented time fame and switching POV of Didion’s novel, while wandering from place to place and person to person with Maria’s depressed but succinct sensitivities.

“It’s often genius-level, and so the fact that Play It As It Lays was poorly to adequately received at the time (though Roger Ebert loved it) seems unduly unjust to me. Many critics thought it very pretty, and Weld and Perkins fantastic (they are), but very empty (it’s not, and it is, precisely the point). Or that Perry was all wrong for Didion (he’s not).

“Didion’s novel has sometimes single-paragraph sentences, terse observations met with deadpan responses, and Perry visualizes her manner stunningly. And he does so as a Perry film, not just a Didion film — this is what happens when another is helming your own work, even if you write the screenplay — you cannot control your narrative once it’s in the eyes of the other beholder.”

Noah Baumbach‘s Marriage Story doesn’t screen until Saturday evening, so following the brunch Friday’s HE slate will include (a) James Mangold‘s Ford vs. Ferrari in the mid-afternoon, followed by (b) Renee Zellweger and Rupert Goold‘s Judy at 6:30 pm, and finally (c) a 9 pm showing of Edward Norton‘s Motherless Brooklyn.

Friday evening is an either-or between Norton and the Safdie brothers’ Uncut Gems, but I’ll catch the latter on Saturday at 12:30 pm.

A wise and cultured cineaste friend (woman) and I were waiting in line before an Alamo Rental Car kiosk. Durango La Plata Airport. 11:20 am.

Cineaste Pally: How ya been?
HE: Just reading the Venice Film Festival raves for Marriage Story.
Cultured Cineaste Pally: I don’t know anything.
HE: Don’t wanna read the reviews?
Cultured Cineaste Pally: I don’t want to read what other people think.
HE: You can’t get away from it.
Cultured Cineaste Pally: Nope.
HE: You have to let it in.
Cultured Cineaste Pally: Naahh.
HE: Venice is the first wave. Okay, that’s what Owen Gleiberman and other critics are saying…fine. But Telluride is right after that. That’s who and what we are — second wavers. Immediately after Venice. And if Venice is wrong, if they over-gush, we straighten their asses out.
Cultured Cineaste Pally: Not doing that.
HE: Okay.

Something hit me when I looked at Venice Film Festival photos of Ad Astra costars Brad Pitt and Liv Tyler. A familiar perception, tinged with unfairness and a shake of the head so please understand that I mean no harm or disrespect by sharing this.

The fact of the matter is that Brad, whose Cliff Booth performance is a slam-dunk nominee for Best Supporting Actor, has never looked cooler or salt-and-pepper seasoned or more in the Zen groove while Liv…well, biology can be really unfair. Some actresses age like cork-bottled Cabernet Sauvignon and others have a slightly more difficult time of it. Some women (like my wife Tatyana) look dishier in their 40s than they did in their 20s, but that’s more the exception than the rule.

If guys don’t smoke or put on weight, a lot of them tend to look pretty good in their late 40s and 50s and even their 60s. I’m sorry but they do. If they watch their weight…a big “if”.

Straight from the shoulder, I have to be honest — I don’t like this. What the trailer is putting out, I mean. It feels like a fucking family movie. Dad, mom and the kids munching popcorn. The idea seems to have been to create product that would make money. I know it’s based on the real-life balloon exploits of James Glaisher (played by Eddie Redmayne), but Felicity Jones‘s Amelia Wren character was invented to satisfy “woke”-ness. A seat-of-the-pants feeling tells me this isn’t trustworthy. I don’t believe any of it. The movie (which will show at Telluride) might be a different deal but I doubt it.

3:50 am update: It feels better to be disciplined and awake than to be asleep. 8.28, 10:40 pm: I have to arise at 3:30 am so I can take an Uber to LAX at 4:15 am, arrive there by 5 am. My American flight to Phoenix leaves at 6:05 am. The Phoenix-to-Durango flight leaves at 8:53 am. Then a cappuccino, a rental car transaction and into the mountains. Arriving in Telluride sometime around 1 pm. Unless I pull over somewhere and take a nap.

“I loved Alexandre O. Philippe‘s Memory — The Origins of Alien (Exhibit A, 10.4), which I saw last night at 10 pm. It digs down, re-explores and triple-dip examines each and every aspect of Ridley Scott’s 1979 classic…an absolute delight. It has everything, delivers everything…you leave completely sated, satisfied and well fed. Guillermo del Toro is going to worship Memory, and tweet his ass off about it.” — posted from Park City on 1.25.19.

There are two kinds of movie devotees, and they can be neatly divided by their reactions to the news that Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman runs three hours and 29 minutes. The first group of supposed movie lovers is aghast at this news (“My God, my aching ass! And the bathroom breaks!”), but at the same time they’re totally down for an eight-hour couch marathon watching David Fincher‘s Mindhunter 2. The second group is utterly delighted by the news that a genius-level filmmaker, a half-century veteran whose vision and knockout chops have been hailed time and again, has made a nice, long, super banquet-sized film…”I can’t wait!”

Second group to first group: No good movie is too long, ond no bad movie is too short. Period. End of story. Shut up.

Director Joel Schumacher, who used to pick up the phone when I called during the ’90s, has been interviewed by Vulture‘s Andrew Goldman. In the second paragraph before the q & a portion begins, Goldman mentions six Schumacher films of varying quality — St. Elmo’s Fire, Flatliners, Phone Booth, Batman Forever, A Time to Kill, The Lost Boys. But not, for some inexplicable reason, the one incontestably good, verging on great Schumacher film of his whole career — i.e., Falling Down.

Early on Schumacher mentions that he and Woody Allen are longtime friends, which allows Goldman to ask “what are your thoughts about what’s happened to Woody?”

Schumacher’s reply: “I saw the interview with Dylan. She believes it happened. Her brother certainly believes it. Mia absolutely believes it. And I’m not saying it happened. I’m just saying they believe it happened. But she was so young at the time that I don’t know.”

Correction: Dylan was seven at the time, yes, but her brother Satchel (the one who looks like the son of Mia Farrow and Frank Sinatra and is now known as Ronan Farrow), was even younger, as in four and a half. I’m sorry but implying that a boy of that age was alert and catching everything that was going on in the Farrow Bridgewater abode on 8.4.92 strains credulity. Sure, Ronan “believes it” now but that’s not exactly a compelling fact, given what he was able to know at the time or is now inclined to believe, especially given his journalistic brand.

But Dylan’s older brother Moses, who was 14 at the time and therefore more intellectually developed, was also present on that fateful day and emphatically doesn’t believe it, and in fact has offered proof as well as much circumstantial doubt to the contrary.

If you’ve ever seen a fight, you know they always involve a lot of wrestling and swearing, and are usually over within 30 to 45 seconds, and sometimes less. And that the combatants are always winded and whipped at the end.

The film was James Gray‘s The Yards, co-written by Gray and Matt Reeves. I remember telling Phoenix during a chat at the 2005 Toronto Film Festival how much I admire the choreography here, and his telling me that he and Wahlberg worked it out together, being careful to make it look unrehearsed. I didn’t recognize Charlize Theron in this scene — did anyone?

I can be fairly critical and at times even despairing about Oscar Poker chats, but this morning’s hour-long discussion with World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy is a goodie.

Discussion of Joker trailer and themes therein, echoes of present-day shooters lost in despair; Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg‘s fight scene in The Yards; The King with Timothee Chalamet, “perhaps not the greatest casting call.” All eyes on Venice Film Festival. Ad Astra and Marriage Story screening tomorrow [Thursday, 8.29]. How will Marriage Story compare with Kramer vs. Kramer? Strong emotional current. Flinty, aggressive vibes emanating from ScarJo character? Attention spans have definitely weakened, hence sporadic complaints about The Irishman length, and why didn’t Netflix ask Scorsese (who spoke of “300 scenes” in the film during a May 2018 appearance) to create a six-episode Irishman miniseries? Reactions to The Laundromat, and Steven Soderbergh‘s wonderfully low-key sense of humor. A surprise Telluride flick? Not Dark Water but something? Jay Roach‘s Bombshell is more of a story of the Fox women who suffered through Roger Ailes‘ aggressions than a saga of the aggressor. Problematic gender quotas at film festivals.

Again, the mp3.