…is about judgment, bitter gruel, the wrong kind of karma, deflation. That said, I’ve never once read or researched the lyrics. It’s the chops, the punctuation, the garage-band guyness of it. It began playing on the Passat sound system of its own volition when I started the car around noon. I found this meaningful on some level, and I was never really a huge Guess Who fan.
Wiki excerpt: “[Guitarist and Co-writer Randy Bachman] was walking down a city street with several vinyl albums under his arm, when he saw three ‘tough-looking biker guys’ approaching. He felt threatened and was looking to cross the street when a little put-put car pulled up to the men.
“A five-foot-tall woman got out, shouting at one of them, asking where he’d been all day, that he’d left her alone with the kids, didn’t take out the trash, and now was down here sniffing around. The man’s grungy friendos walked away, and he was suddenly alone. Tail between his legs, he got into the car. The woman’s parting shot: ‘And you can forget about any sugar tonight.’”
Eight years ago I watched roughly a half-hour’s worth of footage from Jerry Lewis‘s The Day The Clown Cried. Here’s what I wrote at the time:
Poasted on 6.16.16: “The Day The Clown Crieed is a kind of ghost cult film, one that’s been written about and discussed and derided in absentia by film sophistos for several decades.
“It’s a fascinating piece. I’m glad I saw what I saw. I now have a rough idea of how TDTCC plays and feels emotionally. It may not be anyone’s idea of a great or profound film, but it’s nowhere near as bad as I’d heard it was for so many years.
“Yes, the basic scheme is labored. One could call it grotesque in its attempt to whip up emotions via the cold-blooded mass murder of an isolated group of small children. But it’s a bit more measured and shaded than I expected — not absurdly over the top but delivered in smoky, grayish tones, and crafted with a feeling of noirish, downbeat gradualism.
“The ultimate consensus may be that it’s not a profoundly effective film, but nor is it the gaudy wipeout I had expected. It’s somewhere in between.”
How could the celebrated director of Platoon, JFK, Salvador, Born on the 4th of July, Wall Street, Natural Born Killers, Nixon, Any Given Sunday and W.….how could Oliver Stone drop to his knees in praise of effing Wicked, of all the ‘24 films he could have singled out?
Wicked is a fine, well-produced musical but it obviously doesn’t represent the values that Oliver has put forth since the mid ’80s. Why then has he praised it above and beyond the obviously superior Anora, A Complete Unknown, Conclave, A Real Pain, etc.?
Seven months ago Shiloh Jolie-Pitt, 18, filed legal papers to change her name to a Pitt-less Shiloh Jolie. The basic idea was to publicly proclaim that she regards her dad, Brad Pitt, as some kind of living embodiment of Satan and therefore wanted the Pitt struck from her last name.
Angelina Jolie, Shiloh’s deeply neurotic mother, was the engine and the propellant behind that legal initiative, trust me.
6.1.24: “Why is the divorce initiated by Angelina Jolie against William Bradley Pitt still ongoing and unresolved eight years later? Sane exes don’t behave this way as a rule.
“I’m not the first person on planet earth to rhetorically ask ‘what exactly is Angelina’s basic psychological malfunction?’
Then again I may be thinking too narrowly. Perhaps Pitt is the devil incarnate, and therefore deserves to be hunted down with clubs and spears and burned like Joan of Arc or Oliver Reed’s Father Grandier from Ken Russell’s The Devils….right?
Flash forward to 12.31.24: It was announced at 1:08 am today that Pitt and Jolie have finally settled their divorce after eight ridiculous years of acrimony.
Statement to People magazine from Jolie’s attorney James Simon:
“More than eight years ago, Angelina filed for divorce from Mr. Pitt. She and the children left all of the properties they had shared with Mr. Pitt, and since that time she has focused on finding peace and healing for their family. This is just one part of a long ongoing process that started eight years ago. Frankly, Angelina is exhausted, but she is relieved this one part is over.”
I’ve travelled through the Pyrenees mountains twice. The first time (June of ‘76) I was hitchhiking with girlfriend Sophie; the second time was during a France-to-Spain journey in a rental car, sometime in the late aughts.
My “Bernstein on the Staten Island ferry” moment happened the first time around. We were strolling (or were we sitting in the back seat of a car?) along a narrow Pyrenees blacktop and looking up at a huge, very steep, grass-covered mountainous foothill and being struck by the sight of a distant herd of sheep about, oh, a third of a mile away but way up there…high, high, all the way to the sky.
They were so far off you couldn’t hear those little cowbells that shepherds loop around the baahers’ woolen necks. But it was such a magnificent sight…awed by the enormity of that emerald-green Pyrenees slope, and the serenity that came with that.
Dylan and I caught a FSLC screening of Anora around 3 pm (he’d never had the pleasure) and then we took the B train down to Grand Street station, which is three or four blocks from Kiki’s, a smallish, crowded, very lively Greek restaurant with two separate bars. Luscious cuisine, cool staff, darkly lighted, not murderously expensive.
Earlier this evening HE spoke to the remarkable Eddie Ginley, film maven, HE correspondent and longtime resident of Melbourne, Australia. The primary topic was Brady Corbet‘s The Brutalist.
Ginley is a fan but on a limited basis — “Impressed by certain aspects, but other aspects are frustrating,” he said. We kicked it all around, and dipped every so often into other topics.
Random thoughts and jabs: (a) The Brutalist announces itself as a major film by way of the 215-minute length, an overture, the use or VistaVision and a grand thematic indictment (European ingenuity and creativity vs. American arrogance, dominance and short-tempered impatience; (b) Why did I feel so much empathy for Brody in The Pianist and none for him here?; (c) What’s up with the heroin habit?; (d) unfair as it sounds, I’ve never liked Brady Corbet — I’ve disliked his vibe since Funny Games and Lars von Trier‘s Melancholia — hated him in Simon Killer; (e) Many if not most critics feel that Corbet managing to shoot an “epic”-sized film for only $9.6 million warrants special respect, or so it seems from this corner.
The discussion lasted roughly an hour. I’ve broken it down into two parts.
If any other HE big-mouths want to engage in one-on-one discussions on any topic, I’ll be happy to pick up the phone and post an audio file. 30 to 45 minutes, something like that
During his four years in office (1.20.77 to 1.20.81), Jimmy Carter was more of a gentle country preacher than an effective U.S. President. He spoke softly, wore cardigan sweaters, urged Americans to try and use less energy and be better people. Ethically and morally he was easily the 20th Century’s finest and noblest Oval office occupant — a real Christian and a peace-seeker who talked the talk and tried to walk the walk.
Alas, most Americans don’t really want a good and gentle man running the show — they want a Gary Cooper-in-High Noon or an Alan Ladd-in-Shane type of guy….a mature, steadfast fellow who wears a pair of iron revolvers but also believes in justice and restraint…but also a man who doesn’t back away from a fight.
Carter was too gentle, too thoughtful, too much the peanut farmer, not “street” or slick enough.
When his Iranian hostages rescue mission failed, his presidency was kaput.
If you want to analogize recent presidents with the main characters in Deliverance, Carter was Ronny Cox‘s Drew Ballinger — easily the most morally driven, the most concerned about decency and fairness. Barack Obama was Jon Voight‘s Ed Gentry — an intelligent, fair-minded man who stepped up and did the necessary thing when the situation required it. In his dreams Trump thinks he’s Burt Reynolds‘ Lewis Medlock but he’s really Ned Beatty‘s squealing Bobby Trippe.
I don’t know who Joe Biden or Bill Clinton were….maybe James Dickey‘s Sheriff Bullard.
A moment of respectful silence for dear Mr. Carter, a good man whose presidency, I’m sorry to say, mainly served as a cautionary tale.
Before posting the below I thought long and hard about the most beautiful monochrome films ever shot, but I’m sure a few deserving titles were overlooked. Not necessarily the most expressive or artful but the most visually delicious on a frame-by-frame basis. Please tell me what to add….thanks.
Godzilla vs. Kong (Warner Bros., 3.21.21) is a movie made by deranged adolescent lunatics with too much money to spend. Okay, I didn’t mean that. Adam Wingard and the Kong vs. Godzilla producers aren’t lunatics. They’re evilwingedmonkeysfromhell, pretending to be human.
This movie actually made me feel like one of those monkeys, except I was more the old-fashioned kind with wires on my back and serving Margaret Hamilton‘s Wicked Witch of the West. I started to hop around the living room, cackling and snickering and clapping my hands as I pretended to fly.
Kong to Godzilla at the finale: “Yo…truce?”
Kong too easily flies around like a winged bat or a big helium-stuffed panda bear or a giant mosquito dressed in an ape suit. The fucker weighs hundreds and hundreds of pounds and he yet floats and leaps and falls dozens of stories and it’s all cool. This movie doesn’t respect physics!
But the screenwriters — Eric Pearson and Max Borenstein with “story” assistance from Terry Rossio, Michael Dougherty and Zach Shields — had to be on hallucinogens when they cooked up some of the more wackazoid imaginings. I respect LSD too much to suggest that you, the potential viewer, should see Godzilla vs. Kong on acid, but you could theoretically do that.
And if you were a batshit insane person to begin with, you might get more out of it that way. If you have no soul to begin with and you wouldn’t know satori or enlightenment if they bit you in the ass, why not?
This is the nuttiest, craziest, most imaginative monster destruction-derby movie I’ve ever seen in my wasted, ruined life. And, at a projected budget of $160 to $200 million, probably one of the most wasteful. But if the lower figure is true, Wingard has spent slightly less money that Rian Johnson will spend on the first Knives Out sequel, so at least there’s that.
Does it bother anyone that King Kong has a visible navel? They probably should’ve given him a large schlongola….c’mon, why not?
This movie, by the way, has three overweight characters — Brian Tyree Henry‘s “Bernie Hayes”, Julian Dennison‘s “Josh Valentine” and Fatzilla himself. Kong is actually in pretty good shape all around. Washboard abs. I think it was really cruel, however, to “contain” Kong inside a huge artificial Kong Dome on Skull Island. Leave the poor guy alone…God. Not to mention the cost.
I need to watch Ingmar Bergman‘s Wild Strawberries. Or George Cukor‘s Sylvia Scarlett. Something sane and semi-sedate. Nope, changed my mind. I’ve decided to watch John Carpenter‘s Assault on Precinct 13.
Friendotext (6:32 am Pacific): “I can’t believe you liked that corporate funded, juvenile scripted POS.”
HEreply: “‘Liked it’? It made me scream and howl. It injected feral madness into my veins. The fine fellows who made this film are evil. It’s an insane hallucinogen carpet ride. Corporate derangement syndrome. Sickness incarnate. And yet…dopey!”
Charles Shyer, whom I was friendly with during the aughts and early teens and whom I quite liked after we got to know each other following his divorce from longtime creative partner Nancy Meyers, has left the earth. He was 83.
Shyer’s salad days as a director-writer of mainstream feel-good relationship movies lasted for 20 years — Private Benjamin (’80 — directed by Howard Zeiff but co-written by Charles and Nancy), Irreconcilable Differences (’84), Baby Boom (1987), Father of the Bride (1991), Father of the Bride Part II (1995), The Parent Trap (which Nancy directed — Charles co-wrote and produced). Then came The Affair of the Necklace (’01) and Alfie (’04).
Nancy not only flourished but surpassed Charles after the turn of the century.
Friendo: “This one really hurts. Great guy…really funny and insightful.”
HE: “I considered Charles a fairly close acquaintance back in the aughts and up until 2014 or ‘15, and I liked him a lot….he had soul and grit and saw through the bullshit, and he really went for it. He didn’t lie. Very sad about this.
“The key Shyer moment for me was discovering moldy strawberries in his office after dropping by for a chat about The Affair of the Necklace. That told me he was a regular dude like myself. I really liked him after that.”
HE riff on dudes with the ability to have green baskets of moldy strawberries sitting in their work space:
