In a cryptic conversation with Alec Leamas (Richard Burton), “Control” (Cyril Cusack) brings up Hans-Dieter Mundt (Peter van Eyck), head of East German intelligence.
Control: “And how do you feel about him?” Leamas: “Feel?” Control: “Yes.” Leamas: “He’s a bastard.” Control: “Quite.”
Another fascinating Cusack riff:
Control: “Fiedler, my dear Alec, is the lynchpin of our plan. Fiedler’s the only man who’s a match for Mundt, and, uhm… he hates his guts. Fiedler’s a Jew, of course, and Mundt’s quite the other thing.”
I’ve watched The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (’65) several times. Mainly for Oswald Morris’s black-and-white cinematography (the Criterion Bluray is wonderfully rendered in this respect) and especially for the pleasures of Oskar Werner’s performance as the brilliant Fiedler.
Richard Burton is good, of course, but playing the dour, sardonic and scowling Leamas requires him to be relentlessly draining. (He’s such a pill that he even turns down Werner’s offer of free recreational sex with an East German woman.) I actually hate that moment when Burton laughs at Claire Bloom when she confesses to being a devoted commie. She may be naive but at least she deeply cares, and Burton can only snicker at her conviction.
Last night’s viewing of White Heat (‘49) reminded me of the second such operation — the San-Val Drive-In Theatre (2720 Winona Ave. Burbank, 1938-1973).
Newspapers insisted on using a hyphen between San and Val; management disagreed. HE is siding with the news guys.
There’s an Act One scene in which James Cagney‘s Cody Jarrett, Virginia Mayo‘s Verna Jarrett and Margaret Wycherly‘s Ma Jarrett pull into the San-Val to escape a pursuing police car.
And man, the San-Val looks great! — towering big screen, blazing neon signage, car-hops with snazzy outfits.
There are just two…make that three curiosities.
The San-Val’s double feature (right on the marquee) is South of St. Louis (Joel McCrea, Alexis Smith, Zachary Scott, Dorothy Malone) and Siren of Atlantis (Maria Montez, Jean-Pierre Aumont), except the film on the big screen is Task Force (Gary Cooper, Jane Wyman, Walter Brennan).
Curiosity #2 is the fact that South of St. Louis opened on 3.6.49, and White Heat didn’t begin principal photography until 5.5.49…two months later. What are the odds that South of St. Louis played for over two months at the San-Val? I’m presuming White Heat‘s second-unit team shot the San-Val footage soon after the March ’49 debut.
Curiosity #3 is that White Heat opened on 9.2.49 while Task Force didn’t open commercially until 9.30.49. Pissed-off moviegoer: “Hey, I’ve seen a trailer for Task Force…it’s not opening for another month. How come the Jarrett’s are watching it way before the rest of us?”
But what’s the protocol (and I think this is a fair question) when the identity of Schrader’s accuser is fairly obvious to anyone searching around?
Especially given the fact that “Jane Doe” has been (a) anything but shy about her social media profile, (b) has been described in news reports as “a 26 year-old personal assistant to Schrader between ’21 and September ’24”, (c) has been photographed numerous times with Schrader, particularly at the 2022 Venice Film Festival and during last May’s Cannes Film Festival, and has even been identified in photo captions, and (d) has reportedly “posted on social media about how much she loved her job and referred to Schrader as an extraordinary mentor and ‘my man'”?
The AP has reported Jane Doe’s account that Schrader “trapped her in his hotel room, grabbed her arms and kissed her against her will last year while they were promoting his latest film, Oh, Canada, at the Cannes Film Festival in France.” Which, if true, was ridiculous.
Consensual sexual activity with a younger woman is one thing when you’re 60something, but no half-sane male in his mid to late 70s would even flirt with initiating some kind of touchy, vaguely intimate thing with a pretty 26 year-old Zoomer. Schrader is a consecrated Movie God, but appearance-wise “Jane Doe” is way out of his league, and if her allegations are even half-true it was flat-out crazy of him to even hope that anything might happen.
Once you’ve become a mid-to-late 70something you’re more or less finished…it’s over. Okay, unless you’re Richard Gere (75) or Michael Douglas (80), but I’m not so sure about even those guys.
As emails were allegedly involved…I don’t want to think about it.
It just doesn’t calculate that a person as obviously wise, seasoned and street-savvy as Schrader could have possibly put his neck into this kind of noose.
Bill Murray, 54, was sitting on a couch during a Broken Flowers after-party at Manhattan’s Maritime Hotel. The date was Wednesday, 7.27.05. Jett and I were standing nearby. The Focus Features publicist had explicitly said “no photography” and yet some guy snapped Murray regardless. Murray immediately leapt up and over a coffee table to confront the renegade shutterbug with an outraged “what are you doing, man?”, etc.
I was quickly told I couldn’t write about the incident and I didn’t, but hey, it was 20 years ago.
Murray still isn’t taking shit from photographers.
The below snap was taken at Chelsea Cinemas on 7.27.05 by Hollywood Elsewhere.
Repeating: Indications are that Paul Feig‘s The Housemaid (Lionsgate, 12.25), based onFreida McFadden’s three-year-old novel, a feminist potboiler that has since grown into a multi-book franchise, is going to be a bit of a groaner…perhaps even a forehead-slapper.
All feminist airport fiction is based upon a single premise, which is that the principal male character is a toxic piece of shit who has made his own bed and deserves all the bad karma that’s sure to come his way.
It certainly seems unlikely that Feig’s film will deliver the intrigue and complexity of <strong>Im Sang-soo</strong>’s <em>The Housemaid</em> (’10), which I recall as being half-decent. Both versions have vaguely similar plots with the husband banging (or at least looking to bang) the housemaid, and the wife freaking out and the usual blowback kicking in.
@mtvuk Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried talk about working together on upcoming psychological thriller The Housemaid. We are so excited for these performances #TheHousemaid, based on the novel by Freida McFadden, is about a young woman with a troubled past that takes a job as a housekeeper for a very affluent family. #sydneysweeney#amandaseyfried#thehousemaidmovie#mtvceleb♬ original sound – mtvuk
For the behavior of Jason Isaacs‘ Tim Ratliff character alone, I already hate White. And I didn’t start season 3 feeling this way. I began with feelings of hope and intrigue. I’d been fairly happy with the Sicily season.
Jon Gries (“Gary” or Greg): “Whatever you think you know [is coming in the finale], you’re probably wrong.”
I’ve lost my limo job and need to pass the hat again. Just a little more. There…I’ve said it. Humiliating but true.
Undisciplined or loose-shoe as this may sound, I realized last night that despite HE’s recent GoFundMe campaign having raised enough dough to cover travel and lodging at both the 2025 Cannes and Venice Film Festivals*, I’m still short of a steady footing given two “uh-ohs” that recently happened: (a) pressing, unforeseen expenses related to a Santa Barbara Film Festival rental-car scraper (no one’s business but my own) that occured in February and (b) losing the limo-driving job two weeks ago, which I didn’t want to mention because whining about misfortune is a very un-Lee Marvin-ish thing to do.
And yet I couldn’t sleep last night (I had to pop an Ambien) so I guess I have to mention it. A bear is growling outside my door. When your regular work income evaporates, it doesn’t feel right or safe to be galavanting around Europe twice within a four-month period. If I could cancel my Cannes air fare for a refund, I would do so but I didn’t purchase that kind of ticket. Plus I don’t want to leave Jordan Ruimy in the lurch.
Those who may wish to donate anonymously are requested to do so via my Venmo account — @gruver56
So, yes, this is it…HE is asking for a follow-up GoFundMe booster. Just a bit more to steady the ship. My sense of shame went out the window a long time ago when my advertising vaporized. Perhaps a few regular readers who didn’t contribute before could pitch in? Perhaps those whom I had wished cancer upon (two or three guys at the most) but are completely healthy and tumor-free as we speak…?
I’m not looking for a windfall. Just a few hundred more. Okay, a grand or two.
The truth is that enough was raised to cover both festivals but not much more, and after I was cut loose by the limo company two weeks ago** the cautious, practical-minded guy who lives in my chest was saying “cool your jets…it’s wiser right now to spend less by forgetting about Cannes and just do Venice and focus on finding a new job.” But I’d accepted donations with the understanding that Cannes was part of the package, and it’s bad faith and bad for the brand, obviously, to say “help me with Cannes” and then blow it off out of monetary anxiety.
An especially gracious friend-of-HE has donated twice to help with Cannes. I’m honor-bound to fly to the Cote d’Azur for the sake of this guy’s generosity alone.
Whatever you think a trip might cost, always double your projection and nine times out of ten it’ll cost even more.
* I’ve bought the RT plane tickets (JFK-to-Nice and back, JFK to Milan and back). And I’ve paid for the Venice pad ($2100), and I’ll be splitting the Cannes rent ($2500) with Ruimy.
** I could explain why the limo job went south, but on another occasion.
In that recently posted Club Random chat between Bill Maher and Maureen Dowd, Maher shared an unusual anecdote about visiting Ireland. Unusual for Maher, I mean, as he’s not the emotional-sharing type.
Maher’s jet was approaching Irish soil (presumably Dublin airport), he recalled, and just as as it touched down on the tarmac he melted…something took over and he began to cry. Some atmospheric whatever got to him, something that his body or spirit recognized…a homeland vibe.
My ancestral roots are British and not Irish, but I felt almost the same thing when I visited Dublin in the fall of ’88. Maggie and I and five-month-old Jett flew to Dublin from London, and right away I felt something. One of my first thoughts as we left the Dublin region and drove into the countryside was “I could die here.”
Related: A similar thing happened in London in 1980. For the first time in my life I heard my last name pronounced correctly, or at least in a richer, more tonally satisfying way than I myself had ever pronounced it.
It’s an English name, of course, so no surprise that I experienced my “woke” moment when a British Airways attendant said “Mr. Wells?” He said it with a zesty, just-right emphasis on the “ell” sound. (I tend to use an “euhll” sound.) The British Airways guy had it down…made me feel proud of my heritage.
I haven’t spelled it out in so many words, but the Big Memory-Lane Question is this: try to recall a moment on foreign soil when you immediately and perhaps inexplicably felt at home…at peace…welcomed…relieved.
Because of some sudden wash-over feeling…maybe a person or persons you ran into on a bus or subway or an Uber into town…maybe the way the early-morning air or a curbside food stand smelled…some hard-to-pin-down scent or vibe that seeped into your pores and took you back to a place of ease and familiarity or even serenity.
I’m not talking about hotel-brand comfort (“feels just like checking into a Comfort Inn in Pensacola!”)…some travelers take pleasure in familiarity, I realize, but that’s not what this is…I’m speaking of a feeling that snuck up on you, an air-sniff or a Bill Maher-like (or Bill Murray-ish) nudge of surprise…an out-of-the-blue thing in Guatemala or Scotland or Wagga Wagga (west of Canberra) or the southeastern coast of Spain.
“I don’t think you should be asking a comedian [about this stuff]. You’re a journalist. No, no, that’s weak. That’s you guys passing the buck. You guys need to have balls again. Which you don’t. You guys always say, ‘Should we be thinking this?’ You guys present stuff like that. You need to get your balls back.”
Last night I slammed my way through all four episodes of Adolesence, Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham‘s British miniseries that’s been streaming on Netflix since 3.13.25.
It’s basically about a mood of anti-female malevolence and hostility among young teenage males, and about how it’s all hidden or simmering under the surface, and as such doesn’t feel especially real or recognizable, or at least not to me and my understanding of things.
Yes, teenage knifings have become a thing in England over the last two or three years but the Andrew Tate manosphere — toxic masculinity, bullying, incel inferences — carries a very weird vibe, and I didn’t know what to do with it. What’s wrong with these fucking kids? What’s gotten into their blood? What’s the disease?
All four episodes are “oners” — real time, no cuts. The first thing I asked myself was “how would these episodes play if they’d been shot in the usual way?”, and the answer, I told myself, was that they’d feel more tightly focused and concise and perhaps more dramatically affecting. That’s not to say I found the “oner” approach unworthy or frustrating, but there is a general feeling of cinematic technique exerting more control than the serving of dramatic basics.
The strongest episode by far is part 3, which focuses entirely on a gentle interrogation of Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper), a 13 year old accused murderer, by forensic psychologist Briony Ariston (Erin Doherty).
There’s a fair amount of dodging and denial on Jamie’s part, as the cops have video of him knifing the deceased victim, Katie, so his evasions and whatnot feel decidedly strange as well as futile. The atmosphere intensifies when Briony asks about Jamie’s sex life, which seems odd in itself as he’s slight and kid-like and tweener-ish. One gradually detects currents of suppressed hostility that are rooted in rejection and whatnot. Jamie’s mood fluctuates between amiable and resentful, wich leads to a sudden, standing-up outburst. The session ends with Briony telling Jamie this will be their final meeting, which triggers anxiety and pleading and then another outburst.
Who is this kid? What’s with the lying and denial? Where has all the “red pill” anger, insecurity and rage come from?
What does “nonce” mean again? Something to do with sex offender?
I’ve repeatedly made it clear that I pretty much despise the British actors who’ve been hired by director Sam Mendes to play Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr — Paul “hawknose” Mescal, Joseph Quinn and Barry Keohgan, respectively — in his quartet of Beatle biopics.
Only the handsome Harris Dickinson, who will play John Lennon, gets an HE stamp of approval. This despite his towering over Mescal when the actual Lennon and McCartney were both 5’10”.
This may sound disturbing to wokeys and dopeys, but early to mid ’60s pop groups had to have reasonably good-looking members to attract the girls — that was the standard set by the Beatles, Herman’s Hermits, The Dave Clark Five, etc.
Three of the Beatles (McCartney, Harrison, Lennon) were generally regarded as good-looking and then some, which, like it or not, was a key to the group’s popularity. (Ringo’s puppy-dog charm easily overcame his huge honker.)
Keohgan may or may not be able to overcome his evil-warlock features in an attempt to revive that old Ringo spirit, but the hard fact of the matter is that Mescal and Quinn simply aren’t fetching…certainly not in the darkly handsome way that McCartney and Harrison were perceived to be in the early ’60s. They’re a bit funny looking, and during the LBJ administration funny-looking guys weren’t allowed to be pop stars.
Mid ’60s pop groups had to have reasonably good-looking members — that was the reality of the day. And then along came The Association — a six member group that had two handsome guys and four with the oddest, most homely-looking faces in pop-music history.
The dorkiest was Terry Kirkman, who could have been cast as a college-aged serial killer. Next came Larry Ramos (died in 2014 at age 72), a chubby guy who looked like a typical member of an A.V. Squad. The thick-featured Brian Cole (who passed in ’72 at age 30) looked like a bouncer or a rugby player. Russ Giguere was semi-presentable but couldn’t pass the dishy-pop-star test — too geeky, granny glasses, thin moustache.
Jim Yester and Ted Bluechel were the only ones you could honestly call “good looking.”
Yes, the “they have to be cute” thing quickly went away when the Rolling Stones, the Byrds and The Who became popular, but not in ’64 and ’65 when the Beatles were just catching on. Plus the Beatles were clearly in their mid 20s while there’s no dodging the fact that Mescal, Dickinson, Quinn and Keoghan are 30somethings.
I realize that Mescal is popular with gay guys, but to me he’s Satan’s emissary. His hawk nose is actually a lot like the actual Lennon’s nose, but the McCartney resemblance factor is off the charts wrong/bad. Plus Mescal’s pointy chin resembles that of John Barrymore’s Mr. Hyde.
Since the CinemaCon appearance of the Mendes quartet I’ve developed a new hate thing for Quinn, who will completely fail to convince anyone that he’s George Harrison or is even half-channeling him. The notion that Quinn, who was okay in A Quiet Place: Day One but generically repulsive in Gladiator II, could “be” Harrison is nothing short of ridiculous.
