No poet-songwriter worth his or her salt will explain what their song lyrics mean. The absolute king and ruler of this attitude is Bob Dylan, of course…he’s been rebuffing such questions since he first appeared 65 years ago.

On at least one mid ’60s occasion, however, Dylan not only relaxed his standards but eagerly offered specific analysis of each and every track on Bringing It All Back Home, released in April ’65.

Why the lyrics tutorial? Because Dylan wanted to put the high hard one to Marianne Faithfull, who was quite the erotic object of desire back then.

N.Y. Times correspondent Lindsay Zoladz reports that in “Faithfull: An Autobiography“, published 25 years ago, Faithfull wrote that Dylan “tried to seduce her by playing his latest album, Bringing It All Back Home, and explaining in detail what each track meant.”

Alas, no nookie for Bobby. “I just found him so…daunting,” Faithfull wrote. “As if some god had come down from Olympus and started to come onto me.”

The legend is that post-shutdown Dylan exacted a form of revenge by ripping up a poem he’d written about Faithfull. They nonetheless enjoyed a decades-long friendship.

Faihfull got fat when she aged into her late 60s or thereabouts, but that happens. She passed two months ago — 1.30.25 — at age 78.

“I see myself as a sensitive, intelligent human being, but with the soul of a clown.”

Val Kilmer, aged 65, took off sometime yesterday in Los Angeles. And I’m sorry…of course I am. But the announcement shocked no one. Kilmer’s bout with throat cancer that began in the mid teens, his jarring Will Sampson-like appearance starting around 2020, the vibe of diminishment he gave off in Top Gun: Maverick…we all understood he was on a gradual downswirl. There but for the grace of God.

A lot of people will be streaming Val, that better than-decent 2021 portrait doc, on Amazon tonight. Or Oliver Stone‘s The Doors (in which Kilmer did his own singing) or Top Gun or Tombstone (Kilmer’s grayish pallor and wheezy cough) or Batman Forever (that Batsuit ass shot) or Phillip Noyce‘s under-remembered but smartly engaging The Saint.

But for me the ultimate Val Kilmer film — the one I immediately default to when I think of this fine, conflicted, relentlessly passionate fellow, whom I knew very slightly and chatted with once or twice — is not one of his starring vehicles (for he was never really a superstar as much as a high-energy, high-commitment character actor) but Michael Mann‘s Heat (’95), an ensemble crime film for the ages.

Kilmer played Chris Shiherlis, a rugged, well-disciplined, first-rate thief with a gambling problem…a loyal soldier who absolutely ruled during that explosive shoot-out scene in downtown Los Angeles.

After watching Heat with one of my sons for the third or fourth time in the early aughts, I remember saying in a tone of hushed reverence, “If I was reckless and self-destructive enough to be a bank robber, which would never happen but still…if I ever got into a ferocious shoot-out with cats who wanted to take me down, I would want a hardcore guy like Kilmer defending my flank and covering my six.”

Not that shooting at street cops is any kind of decent or civilized thing, but when and if the chips are down and the bullet casings are flying…

True stuff: I went to a party at Kilmer’s Hollywood Hills home sometime in early ’03 or ’04. (Bill Maher was there also.) I never regarded Kilmer as anything more than just a name-brand actor I’d said hello to once or twice, but he was a friendly host that night. Cool to shoot the shit with in the kitchen. We talked about The Saint. There was a huge blowup photo of Angelina Jolie, his recent Alexander costar, on the living room wall.

Seven years earlier I did a fair amount of reporting on an Entertainment Weekly hit piece about the tumultuous shooting of The Island of Dr. Moreau. At one time or another the piece was called “Psycho Kilmer, Qu’est ca c’est?“. Did Kilmer know I’d helped out on this damning article? I only know that he didn’t mention it during our kitchen chat.

In 2011 I was interviewing Judy Greer at a West Hollywood La Pain Quotidien about her award-calibre supporting performance in Alexander Payne‘s The Descendants. Kilmer was there also, and we exchanged curt smiles and waves without speaking. We waved at each other again as he left 15 or 20 minutes later. When it came time to pay the bill for Judy and myself, I was told by the waitress that Kilmer had paid it.

Despite all the bumps and potholes, Kilmer was a good soul…for my money he exuded decency and seemed to be seeking transcendence at every turn.

Marc Antony in Julius Caesar: “This was a man!”

Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood ended with a nice late ’60s Hollywood fantasy — Sharon Tate and friends spared from terrible death, Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) dispatching Manson Family wackos Tex Watson (Austin Butler) and Susan Atkins (Mikey Madison), the possibility of Rick’s career re-igniting, etc.

So what new adventure or intrigue could Booth and Dalton encounter that would top their big Cielo Drive finale?

Suggestion: Whatver the plot, please bring back Julia Butters.

Apparently I have to write the words “yes, I know what day it is”, so now I’ve done that.

Jeff “Insneider” Sneider is all over this…

25 years have passed since my one and only viewing of Robert Zemeckis‘ What Lies Beneath (7.21.00). I was thinking last night about giving it another watch, but then I dredged up some memories and went “naaah.”

Besides not liking it much, I was also kind of distraught over Harrison Ford having made one of the biggest mistakes of his career by blowing off the role of Robert Wakefield in Steven Soderbergh and Stephen Gaghan‘s Traffic, which was shot around the same time as the Zemeckis and opened six months later (12.27.00).

Michael Douglas played the Wakefield role…skillfully, effectively. I couldn’t understand why Ford would reject this kind of acting opportunity in order to play a deranged husband in a piece of shit like What Lies Beneath. Douglas was totally fine in Traffic, but Ford might’ve been even better…we’ll never know,

“Gee, I really shouldn’t say that, being so normal and everything,” etc.

There’s something hilariously diseased in the way Peter Sellers improvises through this Lolita scene with James Mason. I laugh every time I watch this as it never stops being a sick-genius thing because (a) it feels so unhinged…an impishly eccentric, anything-goes riff on a closeted gay guy trying to ingratiate himself with a straight-arrow, and (b) at the same time Sellers is imitating Stanley Kubrick‘s Bronx-accented voice with a slight lisp…

“A couple of normal guys like us could get together and discuss world events…it’s great to have a lovely tall pretty little small daughter like that…I get sort of carried away, you know, being so normal and everything.”

Forget it, dude…Star Wars isn’t The 1619 Project…a 2020 complaint…let it go…Kathy Kennedy has killed Star Wars anyway.

The Dealey Plaza bullets will never add up or square with the official story. The first bullet missed, many have said, and hit a curb or something, the second bullet hit President Kennedy in the neck (although no one’s sure if it came from the TSBD or the grassy knoll) and the third bullet was the pink-spray head shot.

But there was a fourth bullet, of course, which secret service agent Paul Landis found, intact, “sitting on the back seat ledge, where the cushion meets the metal on the car.”

And no one will ever know what definitely happened because it’s been 62 years and people are still speculating and spitballing…forget it! The only irrefutable thing is that Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t fire four bullets.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again — forget the back-of-the-head blowout testimony. It’s not in the Zapruder footage, and there was a young crew-cutted father who appeared on a local Dallas TV news station right after the shooting, who reported that the right side of JFK’s head took the damage, just like the Zapruder film shows.

So forget those crazy Parkland Hospital doctors who claimed otherwise. And double-triple-quadruple forget those doo-wacky conspiracy guys who believe that the Zapruder film was secretly altered…bullshit. Plus Time-Life’s Richard Stolley saw the Zapruder footage hours after the assassination and never said boo, etc.

And I’ll tell you something else: I’ve been to Dealey Plaza and have stood behind the grassy knoll wooden fence, etc., and eyewitnesses have never said that Elm Street, upon which JFK’s limo was cruising when the shots rang out, is more of a downward hill than a gentle slope…it’s a steeper hill than news footage indicates.

One more thing: Oliver Stone, who had hair plugs put in four decades ago, needs to go my Prague hair guy. He just needs to fortify things…no biggie.

According to Kid Rock, Donald Trump and Bill Maher put on their “what the hell, let’s be congenial” masks during last night’s dinner at the White House.

Like all meetings of longtime antagonists (i.e., Richard Nixon and Chou en Lai in ’72), it was a performative (i.e., less that 100% sincere) experience that outraged progressive Dems, of course, but technically harmed no one.

Hey, we were both born and raised near New York City! And we both despise wokesters.

Despite what The Daily Beast‘s Leigh Rimmins has reported, KR didn’t specifically say that Maher’s “mind was blown” — he said that his mind was blown while everyone was pleasantly surprised by the vibes.

This doesn’t change the fact that Trump is still an under-educated guy who likes McDonalds and probably farts a lot…a dangerously un-inquisitive, animal-level authoritarian, liar, short-fingered vulgarian and sociopath who’s shown very little respect for the U.S. Constitution, and who sure as shit proved this on 1.6.21.

Most directors understand that human feet should never be shown. Two who resisted this rule were Richard Quine and Ron Underwood. It’s wrong of me, even, to have posted the below photo…aaagghh!

Really attractive, well-shaped, perfectly pedicured feet are very rare in any realm. Usually female peds are more pleasing to the eye than men’s, but not in this instance. The gentleman in question is James Stewart.

Great Warren Beatty quote: “Marriage requires a special talent, like acting. Monogamy requires genius.”

In a story posted three hours ago, La Parisien‘s Renaud Baronian reported that Luca Guadagnino‘s After The Hunt may be headed for Cannes. But who knows?

If true and if the film plays as well as it most of it reads, Julia Roberts will probably emerge as a hot contender for the festival’s Best Actress prize. Maybe. Where’s the harm in generating a little optimism?

Who the hell is Renaud Baronian, right?

The culture has been telling smart, ambitious women to walk away when this or that dude has an issue or two…”you don’t need the imperfect man”…get shut of him, shut him out.

The culture isn’t wrong.

I was batting around .300 or .350 between my early 20s and late 30s, and even then my general feeling was on the downish side…that things weren’t really working out and that there wasn’t much hope for the future, relationship-wise. I can’t imagine what it must be like for homely guys with tennis-ball hair and lumpy bods to be striking out time and again, over and over. But that’s the reality out there. I don’t blame women a bit for being choosy.