I’ve had this mint-condition, foam-mounted Sexy Beast poster for nearly 20 years now. I snagged a copy during the 1999 Toronto Film Festival. The “devilBenKingsley” ad concept was abandoned when Fox Searchlight acquired it for distribution, so it’s a relative rarity. But I’ve always found it too extreme to hang on my living room wall, and Tatyana has told me to throw it out. So it’s going to waste in a dark closet.
I’m figuring someone out there might want to own it and display it proudly. After 20 years I’m figuring it’s worth at least $250. No negotiations — take it or leave it.
Sean Penn has posted an essay on Deadline that basically castigates the industry for refusing to give any awards to A Star Is Born director Bradley Cooper.
A well-placed source has sent Hollywood Elsewhere what is alleged to be an early draft of Penn’s Deadline essay. I’m not saying this was actually written by Penn, but he may have…who knows? Or maybe someone else did. Either way it reads as follows:
“Bradley Cooper has a problem, all right, and it’s you, the industry voters. Seriously, what’s up with you guys? Are you blind, resentful, obstinate…what’s your problem? Cooper has made the most successful contemporary love story of all time and you’re blowing him off across the board? So far he hasn’t won shit. We all know he’s isn’t winning the Best Director Oscar and the film sure as shit isn’t winning the Best Picture Oscar.
“I mean, you guys were told and told for months that this film is a stupendous fucking award-winner, and now you’re saying ‘fuck you’ to Bradley, me, and even Variety‘s Kris Tapley? Did you guys take a secret vote and decide to stick it to A Star Is Born for spite? Or…what, to fucking embarass us? The other day Bradley said he’s embarassed that he didn’t get nominated for Best Director. You embarassed him!
“I told you guys last March that A Star Is Born is ‘one of the most beautiful, fantastic…it’s the best, most important commercial film I’ve seen in so many years.’
“And then last September Tapley told you that A Star Is Born “is an across-the-board Oscar contender…it has the muscle to achieve what only three films in movie history ever have: Win all five major Academy Awards (picture, director, actor, actress, and screenplay).’
“You guys were instructed, you were prepared, you were given cuecards and told how it was going to play out by people who know what goes, and then you all gave us the finger and told us to take a fucking hike. Well, fuck you right back!
“In the end, the apples and oranges of film competition, and the inequity of advertising budgets has always left the Academy Awards with some inevitable aftertaste of the alcohol most of us have to drink to get through them. To spare myself potential disappointment, I’m raising a glass in advance to Bradley Cooper and A Star is Born. Surely a raised glass is as legitimate as a globe of gilded gold or a male statuette minus a penis (also gold gilded). God forbid it have balls this year!
“A Star is Born is simply everything that movies should be. If we honor anything, this should be it.”
Albert Finney, rest his soul, was always a flinty, lion-like actor of the first alpha-male order. When I recall his best middle-period work I think of the angry drunk in Under The Volcano, George Dunlap in Shoot The Moon, “Sir” in The Dresser — edgy contrarians, bellowing, lashing out. But there’s a difference between delighting in a young actor’s dash and pizazz, and admiring or saluting the work of an older, non-dashing fellow who enjoys bending the elbow and has settled into a certain workmanlike approach to his craft.
Much of Western Civilization (certainly the female half) swooned over the slender, rakishly handsome Finney in his mid to late 20s, the fellow who starred in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (’60), Tom Jones (’63) and Two For The Road (’67). I wish I could have seen him perform on-stage in the late ’50s, when he was completely engaged and on fire.
But then Finney’s drinking started to add to his frame and he more or less become a chunky character actor of consequence, certainly by the early ’70s, and that is who and what Finney was for most of his life — a gifted, justly admired, somewhat beefy and then flat-out bulky guy who was never less than first-rate when the writing was up to speed and the pressure was on.
“’As a youth, it seemed relatively attractive to be the roaring boy,’ Finney says. ‘You know, where you drank at the pub during lunchtime and then gave a performance. I went through a period where I thought, ‘Oh, yes, it’s terrific to be like that, to be John Barrymore,’ that kind of syndrome. I found the idea of it appealing, playing that role, but my system in those days — it’s [become] more hardened since — actually couldn’t cope with it. I used to go on these drinking sessions with various mates, and after a bit, they’d help me out of the bar so I could throw up somewhere.
“I guess it’s possible that it was a kind of escape hatch. If you’re regarded as someone of talent, expected to be an achiever, perhaps if you screw yourself up, they’ll say, ‘Well, if only he hadn’t become an alcoholic, he would have fulfilled the promise.’ But it didn’t happen for me because I simply couldn’t do it. I could not be John Barrymore.’
“It isn’t that Albert Finney is abstemious these days, only that he generally stays away from the hard stuff. He can imbibe quite seriously, but no one’s ever mentioned him in league with, say, Peter O’Toole. And it has never, by all accounts, affected the work. ‘Albert could drink a gallon of wine at night, be on the set the next morning and do everything perfectly the first time,’ says John Huston, the director of Annie.
Tonight Hollywood Elsewhere will be attending a Michael B. Jordan tribute at the 2019 Santa Barbara Film Festival. The almost 32-year-old actor (his birthday is on 2.9) is being presented with the Cinema Vanguard award, which went last year to The Florida Project‘s Willem Dafoe.
Jordan broke out six years ago as the doomed Oscar Grant in Ryan Coogler‘s Fruitvale Station. His second big slam was the titular lead in Coogler’s Creed (’15), which costarred Tessa Thompson and Sylvester Stallone. His third high-impact role was Erik “Killmonger” Stevens in Coogler’s hugely popular Black Panther, which opened on 2.16.18. His next major role is real-life attorney Bryan Stevenson in the biographical drama Just Mercy (Warner Bros., 1.17.20), which costars Jamie Foxx.
I’ll be driving back to West Hollywood when the show ends at 9:30 pm. Thanks to festival honcho Roger Durling and all the staffers, publicists (principally Sunshine Sachs) and volunteers. I had a thrilling if demanding time, but that’s how we like it. It was somewhat chilly and rainy during at least half of the festival, although right now it’s 56 degrees and sunny. The weather had to wait until my final day to improve.
In a self-posted essay on medium.com, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos alleged today that reps for National Enquirer owner American Media Inc. (AMI) had tried to extort and blackmail him with compromising photos of himself and g.f. Lauren Sanchez.
AMI basically threatened to publish lewd or suggestive photos of Bezos and Sanchez if the Washington Post, which Bezos owns, didn’t back away from an investigation over leaked text messages that resulted in his marriage going south.
Bezos included copies of back-and-forth emails. One is an especially incriminating email from Dylan Howard, Chief Content Officer of AMI, to attorney Marty Singer, who is repping Bezos and investigator Gavin de Becker.
Excerpt: “In the interests of expediting this situation, and with The Washington Post poised to publish unsubstantiated rumors of The National Enquirer’s initial report, I wanted to describe to you the photos obtained during our newsgathering,” Howard writes. And then Howard describes the contents of nine photos. Howard concludes by saying “it would give no editor pleasure to send this email…I hope common sense can prevail, and quickly.”
Berlinale jury member Juliette Binoche on Harvey Weinstein: “I almost want to say peace to his mind and heart, that’s all. I’m trying to put my feet in his shoes. He’s had enough, I think. A lot of people have expressed themselves. Now justice has to do its work. I never had problems with him, but I could see that he had problems. As a producer he was wonderful, most of the time. I think he was a great producer. That we shouldn’t forget, even though it’s been difficult for some directors and actors and especially actresses. I just want to say peace to his mind and let justice do what it needs to do.”
Harvey Weinstein allegedly did what he did and has to face the legal music. I’ve read the New Yorker and N.Y. Times articles about his alleged misdeeds, and I saw Untouchable during Sundance ’19. But just imagine if Binooche’s words, shared this morning at a Berlinale press conference, had been spoken by any guy from any aspect of the film industry. That guy would be roasting on a p.c. spit. He would be in such hot water on Twitter right now that he’d be envying Liam Neeson.
Yep — they’re just calling it plain old Shaft (Warner Bros., 6.14). Obviously a tongue-in-cheek, wise-ass meta comedy — directed by Tim Story, cowritten by Kenya Barris and Alex Barnow. Jessie T. Usher is playing a sensitive, wimp-ass son of Samuel L. Jackson‘s Shaft (who was last seen 19 years ago). Richard Roundtree‘s original Blaxploitation-era Shaft (i.e., Jackson’s uncle and Usher’s grandfather) is also along for the ride. Costarring Regina Hall, Alexandra Shipp, Luna Lauren Velez. Straight paycheck project. Who remembers Shaft in Africa?
Flashback: I met Pryor at a Comedy Store press event sometime in the mid to late ’90s, when he was in a wheelchair and a thin, frail remnant of his former self. Pryor had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1986, and was confined to a wheelchair starting in ’93. We spoke for a few minutes but I could barely hear his voice. Mixed feelings, to say the least.
Just about every office-holding Democrat has called upon Virginia governor Ralph Northam to resign over a racist photo in his 1984 medical school yearbook, in which he apparently wore blackface. Then came an admission from Virginia’s Attorney General Mark Herring (who could become governor if Northam and Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax ** resign) that he wore brown makeup and a wig to look like a rapper at a party in 1980, when he was a 19 year-old University of Virginia student.
Hollywood Elsewhere is not suggesting that these two should be cut any slack, but it seems fair to ask what form of SJW punishment has been visited upon Billy Crystal. I’m referring to Crystal having impersonated Sammy Davis Jr. in brownface in a 1986 HBO Special “Don’t Get Me Started” as well as, according to the Christian Science Monitor, during a bit on the 2012 Oscars? (Note: Crystal’s impression works because he can “do” Davis’s voice just so.)
Not to mention Robert Downey, Jr.‘s blackface performance in Tropic Thunder, which opened a little more than a decade ago.
What Northam and Herring did in the ’80s was obviously icky, but their main crime, it seems, was having been college students instead of professional entertainers. Because the culture wasn’t freaking out about blackface impersonations as recently as ten or even seven years ago.
While reading this Bill McCuddy Twitter thread about Roma vs. Green Book, keep in mind that last year McCuddy said that Academy voters would never give the Best Picture Oscar to “aqua man” (aka Guillermo del Toro‘s The Shape of Water). Exact McCuddy quote: “I didn’t say it wouldn’t get nominated. [I said it] won’t win. Fantasy. LaLa Land.”
It was just over a year ago when Woody Allen offered his most recent denial of Dylan Farrow‘s accusation of his having allegedly molested her in August 1992. I seem to recall his also asserting, sometime within the last year or two, that he wouldn’t be denying the charge again, as all the evidence is behind him and that the #MeToo community will never consider the facts of the case even-handedly so what’s the point?
Well, that particular posture has been left at the wayside. Around 9 am this morning it was reported that Allen has filed a $68 million suit against Amazon Studios, alleging that the distributor has backed out of a four-picture deal due to “a 25-year-old, baseless allegation.” In fact Dylan’s charge was first aired a day or two after the alleged incident took place on 8.4.92, which was 26 and 1/2 years ago.
Allen is alleging that Amazon has refused to release A Rainy Day in New York, “though it has been complete for more than six months.” The suit states that Amazon “has given only vague reasons for dropping the project, and for reneging on a promise to produce three other movies.”
Lawsuit excerpt: “Amazon has tried to excuse its action by referencing a 25-year-old, baseless allegation against Mr. Allen, but that allegation was already well known to Amazon (and the public) before Amazon entered into four separate deals with Mr. Allen — and, in any event it does not provide a basis for Amazon to terminate the contract. There simply was no legitimate ground for Amazon to renege on its promises.”
Indeed, there is no evidence to support Dylan’s claim. But there’s a fair amount of evidence and ample indications that an enraged Mia Farrow made it all up to “get” Woody during an early ’90s custody battle, and as part of this determination coached Dylan to make the claims that she did. I happen to personally believe this scenario. There’s simply no rational, even-handed way to side with the “I believe Dylan Farrow” camp.
Amazon will almost certainly settle this case out of court, as there is virtually no evidence to support Allen’s alleged guilt in the Dylan Farrow matter, and therefore any reluctance on Amazon’s part to fulfill the Allen deal. In the unlikely event that they decide to argue the case in court, the proceedings will be an absolute humdinger with every last scintilla of evidence regarding the original 1992 allegation examined and cross-examined ad infinitum. But who believes this will happen?
Camilla Gibb‘s “Sweetness in the Belly“, a culture-clash love story, was initially published 12 years ago. It’s a tantalizing title for a book — right away you want to know what it means. But it’s not a movie title. The producers are asking for trouble by sticking with it. Your average megaplex bruh or couch surfer is going to mutter “maybe the girlfriend but not me” and move on. The British-made drama has been directed by Zeresenay Berhane Mehari. The cast includes Dakota Fanning, Wunmi Mosaku, Kunal Nayyar and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II. It’s debuting at the Berlinale.