classic

Three or four weeks ago the driver’s side window in my VW Passat gave up the ghost. It went down but wouldn’t go up again. The front-seat passenger window worked fine and still does; ditto the two backseat windows.

A broken open window obviously means no protection, so I had to handle it pronto. I asked Vinny, a local mechanic whom I respect, if he could fix it. Sure, he said. The next day I met him at a vaguely down-at-the-heels Bridgeport shopping plaza.

Vinny took the door apart and determined that the electrical mechanism that controls the up-and-down motion of the window had suffered a short circuit. The short was caused by a small pool of water that had collected in the door well. To fix it correctly he’d need to find a new white-plastic window mechanism, Vinny said, but he managed to manually crank the window upward.

It was gratifying, at least, that the window was closed and locked in that position. All I had to do was remember to not hit the down-window switch.

I told Vinny I’d get in touch after I returned from Ontario and would promptly pay him to buy and install the mechanism, etc.

Vinny was buried in another job when I returned but that was okay.

Last Saturday I went to a local car wash, and as I approached the vacuum section a Latino guy in a low-thread-count T-shirt motioned for me to lower my window so we could speak. I was temporarily spacing out or daydreaming, but like a total idiot I unthinkingly hit the switch and lowered the driver-side window…gaaahh! It was once again stuck in the open position, and the car was 100% vulnerable to scurvy, slime-fingered thieves.

I immediately called Vinny and said, “Yo, Vinny…the window is down again. Can you help me today or tomorrow or soon?” He said he’d been sidelined with a bad foot (gout) but that he’d search for a used mechanism and we could hook up the next day or certainly the day after.

The following night (i.e., Sunday) it was lightly raining as I sat in the Wilton Library parking lot. I turned the engine on and began listening to music. I was concerned, of course, about more rain water getting into the car through the open window. My left arm was sitting on the elbow rest but I wasn’t touching any buttons or window switches. I sat and listened to Randy Newman and thought about my life.

And then, like magic, the driver window activated itself….whrrrrrrr. The window went up halfway, stopped, thought about it for two or three seconds, and kept going up until the window was completely closed shut.

My mouth fell open. I gasped. It was a moment straight out of Irving Pichel‘s The Miracle of the Bells (’48). Just like the statues of St. Michael and the Virgin Mary slowly turn on their pedestals until they face the coffin of Alida Valli‘s Olga, the driver’s side window had closed itself…the hand of God or some tekekinetic force had intervened.

Vinny’s foot was still hurting yesterday (i.e., Monday afternoon) but we’ve planned on a Wednesday afternoon meet-up.

Jordan Ruimy is reporting today what most of us have been presuming all along.

One, widespread Stalinist obstinacy about Woody Allen‘s alleged guilt in the 31 year-old matter of Frog Hollow has all but eliminated any possibility of Allen’s Coup de Chance finding a U.S. distributor.

And two, the chances of Coup de Chance being favorably reviewed by U.S. film critics at the Venice Film Festival are fairly low, given the fact that critics are no longer “allowed” to give his movies a fair shake.

So given the near-certainty that (a) many American critics are going to slag Coup de Chance despite reports that it’s one of his better films, (b) the fact that it won’t be playing Telluride, Toronto or New York because their respective programmers are terrified of being condemned for showing Allen’s French-language film, and (c) the fact that many on the Woody side of the fence (i.e., critics and columnists who are highly skeptical of the Clinton-era allegations against Allen) won’t be attending the Venice Film Festival…

Given all this doesn’t it make sense from Allen’s strategic perspective to allow these opinion-sharers a chance to see it prior to Venice, either via a NYC screening or a special link?

You’d certainly think so, but with roughly three weeks to go before the Venice Film Festival there’s nothing shaking in the Woody camp.

Over the last several weeks I’ve twice written Allen’s sister Letty Aronson, with whom I’ve exchanged emails and whom I interviewed at Shutters several years ago, about my interest in wanting to see Coup de Chance prior to its Venice Film Festival debut. I was hoping she might steer me to someone charged with arranging screenings or sending out links.

With Woody’s former publicist Leslee Dart retired and knowing that Roger Friedman and Keith McNally saw the film last April in NYC, reaching out to Letty seemed reasonable. Alas, total flatline from her end. A friend tells me Letty “has someone” who works with her, etc. But it’s like they’ve taken a vow of omerta.

It seems inconceivable that Woody and/or his reps wouldn’t be open to showing the film to friendlies and neutrals prior to Venice. I’m a regular Telluride attendee, but of course that festival’s honcho, Julie Huntsinger, isn’t “allowed” to show Coup de Chance in the same sense that Thierry Fremaux wasn’t “allowed” to show it during last May’s Cannes Film Festival. In response Coup de Chance dp Vittorio Storaro called the Cannes shut-out appalling and deplorable (“They’ve lost all common sense“).

I’ve been moaning and groaning for weeks about the seemingly unfortunate fate of Tran Anh Hung’s The Pot au Feu, which I praised several weeks ago during the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.

The greatest foodie flick of the 21st Century and a hit waiting to happen among over-35 viewers, this Cannes award-winner (i.e., Best Director) was hit with a waffle iron when it was acquired by IFC Films and Sapan Studios earlier this summer.

The instant I heard this I went “oh, God…no.”

As I wrote on 6.28 (“What A Bummer for The Pot au Feu), I’ve long believed that an IFC Films distribution deal is almost tantamount to a kiss of death, as IFC Films seems to specialize in acquiring exciting, critically hailed titles only to bury them.

Will The Pot au Feu show up in Telluride? One can only hope, but I’ve been developing a theory that cash-poor IFC Films (which is based in Manhattan) might be reluctant to offer The Pot au Feu at Telluride and Toronto because they’re too cheap to pay for air fare and hotel rooms for a modest Pot au Feu entourage (i.e., no actors due to the SAFG/AFTRA strike).

I might be wrong, but my intuition tells me these guys REALLY have no discretionary income.

I was thrown even further today when The Pot au Feu didn’t even appear on the New York Film Festival lineup. Right in their home town. Infuriating.

There’s no question that The Pot au Feu is one of the best-directed, most audience-friendly films out there, and yet none of the early fall festivals seem to be playing it. NYFF hasn’t announced its slate of premieres (to be unveiled sometime around 8.24 or 8.25), but why the hell would they leave it off their prime list? Tran Anh Hung won the Best Director prize last May on the Cote d’Azur. Indiewire‘s David Ehrlich called it “some kind of masterpiece.” Variety‘s Guy Lodge praised it to the heavens.

All I can figure is that IFC Films’ management is not offering it to the festivals for some totally perverse reason. Or a candy-assed one. They’re specialists at suffocating films by not promoting them, I realize, but…

Friendo: It has a shot at Telluride.
HE: Based on what intel?
Friendo: Based purely based on Julie Huntsinger‘s tastes.
HE: Just tell me — am I crazy?
Friendo: The Pot au Feu is not the type of highbrow movie that NYFF programmers tend to screen. I never expected it to show up. I’ve been saying all along it’s a perfect fit for Telluride.
HE: What the fuck is going on?
Friendo: I’m surprised it’s not at TIFF but Cameron Bailey has destroyed that festival by insisting on world premieres. Due to this policy, there’s a lot of stuff missing this year from the TIFF line-up.
HE: When you say “highbrow NYFF pick,” you mean “a film that Dennis Lim likes.”
Friendo: Precisely. Slow arthouse cinema. Film Comment-level stuff.

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The late Abraham Zapruder was a good fellow and family man who, through sheer happenstance and an odd quirk of fate, captured the most famous home movie footage of all time.

But in my heart of hearts I can’t help regretting that Zapruder was the one who happened to be filming from that Dealey Plaza slope on 11.22.63. In my heart of hearts I wish that a more devotional movie nerd had been standing there instead of unexceptional, penny-pinching Abe.

8mm home movie cameras were the default choice for tens of millions of families in the mid 20th Century, but the 8mm images were jumpy and hazy and basically looked like shit compared to 16mm, and Abraham Zapruder KNEW that.

Did Zapruder care about the difference in quality? Above and beyond being a decent man who loved his family, I’ll tell you one thing Abe cared about. Like most responsible-minded fathers and business owners, he cared about SAVING MONEY.

You know who cared much more about visual values and cinematic quality? 17 year old Steven Spielberg, a fledgling filmmaker who in late ‘63 was living in Arizona with his family (and who shot his first feature, Firelight, the following year).

If only Spielberg had somehow made his way to Dallas (a school trip? a special family adventure?) and shot the assassination footage in 16mm color instead of Zapruder with his boilerplate 8mm family-man camera!

On top of which Zapruder’s amateurish eye for framing was atrocious. He allowed the Kennedy limo to sink to the very bottom of the developed image during the low 300 cycle of frames (the final 15 or 20 before the explosive head shot). 85% to 90% of these frames captured almost nothing but green grass and a few spectators.

The truth is that unexceptional, well-meaning Abe almost managed to eliminate JFK and Jackie plus John and Nellie Connolly altogether, but they clung to the bottom of the frame for dear life.

So Zapruder earned two failing grades — one for using a vagueiy shitty 8mm camera when he could have bought and used a vastly superior, professional-grade 16mm device, and the second for exhibiting piss-poor visual framing instincts.

I know this article sounds a bit silly, but imagine what the JFK assassination community would have had to work with if a serious cinema worshipper, a devotional, Gregg Toland-like crazy man with a 16mm Arriflex or Bell & Howell, had been standing in Abe’s shoes.

From HE’s own Nerdword (youngish, Canadian, female) comes another lament about aggressive, dude-dissing fembot narcissism having led to a mass emotional abyss in which everyone seems to have forgotten what happiness or at least emotional contentment looks like.

Nerdword: “I’ve noticed a trend in the last few years with female empowerment shows and movies. They typically don’t include a romance. And if there is a male side character, they usually play second fiddle to the female and know it.”

I’ve never liked Victor Fleming’s Red Dust (‘32) or the remake, John Ford’s Mogambo (‘53). They’re both tepid eye-rollers about a pair of anxious, somewhat hungry women wanting to seduce and maybe bunker down with the randy, rugged-ass Clark Gable (Jean Harlow and Mary Astor in the black-and-white ‘32 version, Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly in the Technicolor retread).

Ford’s version, shot by Robert Surtees and Freddie Young, is the more visually captivating — I’ll give it that much.

I’m mentioning all this because of a 7.1.23 AirMail article about the late 1952 location shoot (mostly Africa, some Londön) of Mogambo. Nicely written by Richard Cohen, it’s titled “Sinatra in the Jungle” but is really about the whole shooting magilla…all the various political and logistical intrigues.

Maybe the title was chosen because Gardner’s husband, the fallen-upon-hard-times but “good in the feathers” Frank Sinatra, was in a weakened psychological condition while visiting the shoot and doing next to nothing except attending to the usual conjugal passions with Ava, who reportedly paid for the poor guy’s long-distance air fare to Kenya. Tough times.

So yes, Sinatra’s career was in a ditch during filming in November and December of ‘52, but early the following year he landed the energizing, perfect-groove role of Pvt. Maggio in Fred Zinnemann’s From Here to Eternity (‘53), and won a totally back-in-the-pink, career-rejuvenating Best Supporting Actor Oscar in March ‘54.

And yet Cohen’s article claims Sinatra’s career was still flatlining in ‘54…wrong.

Repeating: Down & despairing in late ‘52, lucky pocket-drop casting in a strong film in early ’53, Oscar champ in March ‘54. Sinatra’s actual career skid years were ‘49, ‘50, ‘51, ‘52 and early ‘53, give or take.

Posted twice before: I adore this clip from Don Siegel‘s Charley Varrick (’73), in which Walter Matthau‘s titular character tells John Vernon, portraying a mob-connected banker, that he wants to return a pile of ill-gotten mafia money.

Just after 1:03 Vernon conveys something about serendipity with a wonderful economy, using a gently changed expression and a little gesture with his left hand. Arguably the most elegant piece of acting that Vernon ever performed, the gesture seems to say “sometimes there’s God, so quickly!” — a Tennessee Williams line from A Streetcar Named Desire.

In ’85 I was working in publicity and had a chance to speak to Vernon on the set of Hail To The Chief, a TV series about a female U.S. President (Patty Duke) in which Vernon played a hawkish military advisor. I told him I was a huge admirer of this little slice of Varrick, but he didn’t seem to get what I was saying. He just brushed it aside and indicated he wouldn’t mind if I left him alone. I was probably the only guy on the planet who’d ever recognized, much less said to him, that his Charley Varrick hand gesture was some kind of beautiful.

Or he did feel a certain pride but didn’t care to share it with a fan? Whatever. Perhaps he felt insulted by my not praising some meatier part that he once played (the Mal Reese character in Point Blank, his Cuban revolutionary Alfred Hitchcock‘s Topaz, the husband of Sophia Loren in Ettore Scola‘s A Special Day).

Vernon died at age 72 on 2.1.05, following complications from heart surgery.

I am a bad Sesame Street Cookie Monster person, or at least I was last night.

“Bad” in the sense that when I ordered a cup of Cookie Monster ice cream at Guerriero’s Gelato (476 Pleasant Valley Way, West Orange, NJ 07052), I wasn’t thinking of the teal-colored Sesame Street Muppet character but of a standard cookies-and-cream-type flavor…you know, vanilla ice cream with oreo cookies and whatnot, etc.

The Guerriero flavor menu offered various kinds of different oreo flavors (banana oreo, mint oreo, coffee oreo, samoa cookie) and I just wanted something plain and unexciting, and so, not being a Muppet person, I figured Cookie Monster would be a thicker or richer cookies and cream flavor…right? So I asked for a medium cup with sprinkles.

When I saw the teal-colored dish, I said “what’s that? I don’t want greenish-blue ice cream.”

Right away the principal server — an overweight Zoomer woman of color — began to dig in her heels and look at me like I was wacked. I had made a big mistake by not being a better Sesame Street person, granted, but all I was asking for was a different flavor. Zoomer woman didn’t want to hear it — her basic response was contrarian, and she seemed to be saying (a) you ordered this, (b) no substitutions and (c) no refunds.

When I persisted (at one point I said “I don’t give a shit” — an unwise thing to blurt out in an argument), she threw her hands up, as if to say “I’ve had it with this belligerent dick!” and went to the manager.

The manager came over and asked what the problem was. I explained and disputed a bit more, and then asked for a refund. Zoomer woman was glaring daggers and agitated, and I just wanted to get the hell out of there. Up until that instant I thought this had been a dispute over my ice-cream-flavor cluelessness, but I suddenly realized this had suddenly become a kind of cultural dispute that had something to do with my being an older white mansplainer.

The manager gave me my money back and asked me to leave, and then she tried to calm down Zoomer woman by holding her arm, but Zoomer Woman abruptly yanked her arm away as if to say “are you on his side?…don’t touch me!”

I said to Zoomer Woman, “Hey, you’re doing great there!…arguing with your own manager now! Not to mention your excellent customer relation instincts!” The manager again asked me to leave and I said “sure, no problem.”

I went to a pizza place two doors down, and ten minutes later Zoomer Woman came in with a friend and I said, “Hey, there she is!” She glared more daggers and said “don’t look at me!”

The cops weren’t called and so nobody was arrested, but I was amazed how a relatively minor misunderstanding on my part, one that could’ve been easily solved by “no problem, sir…what flavor would you like instead?”…a relatively minor ice cream thing had, in the space of 20 or 25 seconds, blown up into something else entirely.

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Four days ago (on Saturday, 6.10) I tapped out my latest riff about the bizarre deletion of a brief scene in William Friedkin‘s The French Connection (’71), which was apparently done (it physically pains me to type these words) with Friedkin’s approval or at his behest.

The day before (Friday, 6.9) HE commenter “The Multiplex” had reported that “in Disney’s DCP asset list the currently-streaming version of The French Connection is listed as ‘2021 William Friedkin v2.'”

This info, I noted, “is seemingly fortified by a statement from The Criterion Channel, passed along by “The Connection” in another 6.9.23 HE story titled “HE to Friedkin re Censorship Fracas.” CC’s statement said that “according to our licensor [Disney], this is a ‘Director’s Edit‘ of the film.”

I spoke yesterday to a Hollywood veteran, and one of the things I asked him was “why the hell would Friedkin betray the original artistic intent of his own Oscar-winning film by approving the deletion of a nine-second scene that uses the N-word?”

His reply: “Well, he’s entitled to do this, and the original film hasn’t disappeared — it’s available on physical media even if the streaming version is missing the censored footage.”

And then he said something interesting: “I don’t think Friedkin is playing the same close attention to this matter that you are.” I took that to mean that Friedkin may not be paying super-close attention in general.

The industry veteran then suggested that I drop the matter. “But it sets one hell of a precedent,” I replied. “What if it happens again with another important film…another woke censoring issue of some kind? I should drop that also?”

And yet I haven’t heard zip from Friedkin (I wrote him about this a while back) so in classic journalism terms the story has stalled.

I had presumed that Glenn Kenny‘s article on the matter would appear in the N.Y. Times, but my presumption, I gather, is erroneous. Some other outlet will run it this week.

This sparked a thought in my head, however, which was “why the hell wouldn’t the N.Y. Times want to run a story about this?”

The Times movie section may not have been formally pitched on this story, but why, I’m asking myself, would the paper of record blow it off? Could it be because (I’m just wildly speculating) they’ve basically become a woke activist newspaper, and they don’t want to post an article that might faintly imply some kind of vague endorsement of a nine-second scene in which the N-word is used?

The central issue is nonetheless huge and unmissable — should a half-century old classic film, raw and occasionally profane and, yes, punctuated with racist dialogue here and there, be censored in order to fall in line with current woke dictates — which are only a temporary spasm of passing cultural socialism — or should The French Connection be streamed in its original form, as most anti-censorship types would argue, out of respect for the original creative intent that was decided upon in 1971, even if the director has recently capitulated to the wokesters?

It’s one thing to include a preface or intro of some kind to a recently altered film, explaining the reasons for a deleted scene, and quite another thing to just lop off a nine-second sequence without comment or explanation. It’s too big of a deal to try and sneak this through.

The story appears to have boiled down to one about cowardice, I regret to say. A story in which a willful, hard-charging, tough-minded director — a guy I’ve admired all my life — has suddenly, in his mid ‘80s, became a squishy go-alonger and a weak sister…an obedient slave to woke commissar mandate thinking.

That’s a big effing issue with all kinds of precedent-setting implications, and the N.Y. Times doesn’t want to touch it over…what, racial profiling concerns?

At what point can The Woman King, which cost $50M to produce and another significant chunk of change to sell, be considered profitable? Theatrical revenues are, of course, just one aspect of the overall revenue stream these days, and The Woman King hasn’t really opened internationally yet. But right now the worldwide earnings after the second weekend are around $37.5M. Not bad, I guess, but not earthshaking.

The film has nonetheless connected to a decent or moderate degree. Will it end up as a break-even, which is to say earnings of well over $100M (as you do have to add marketing costs)? You tell me.

Right now I would describe The Woman King, all things considered, as a modest, respectable success. That’s fair, no? A friend says that “given its budget and lack of star power, it was never meant to break the bank. But it’s done quite well.” Sure, no arguments, respectable showing.

But this morning I looked at the Woman King audience scores on three aggregate sites — Rotten Tomatoes (99%), Metacritic (2.5%) and IMDB (6.1%). And the evidence seems clear (or strongly indicates) that the Rotten Tomatoes gang has “cooked the books” as far as The Woman King‘s audience score is concerned. With the other two aggregates reporting much lower audience reactions, what are the odds that RT’s 99% score is trustworthy?

Not even Goodfellas, which everyone likes or admires, has managed a 99% audience score.

Three days ago (9.22) Evie‘s Gina Florio took note of this incongruity. Her article is titled “There’s Speculation That The Woman King Audience Score And Reviews On Rotten Tomatoes Are Manufactured.”

Florio links to a Twitter dude named @fatherquads, who believes that a faction within RT is indeed posting fake audience numbers.

“The [RT] profile claims to have 99% audience score, and over 2,500 verified reviews,” he tweets. “The only problem is that [the blurbs are] all short, posted soon after one another, and don’t talk much about the content of the movie, rather how much of a YAS SLAY QWEEN Viola Davis is.”

Friendo: “RT is a totally corrupt and despicable entity that I’ve loathed from day one and never pay the slightest attention to. Their data is mostly meaningless (or so obvious that it tells you zilch). ‘Interpreting’ RT tells you nothing. And who cares what demo The Woman King is appealing to? Who cares what action fanboys think? The fact that black women had an action film to call their own is, I would say, a good thing. I mean, why not?”