Lewis John Carlino and Yukio Mishima‘s The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea (’76) was crap from the get-go. Kids killing a sea captain because he gives up sailing in order to become a landlubber husband…bullshit. Mishima’s fixation upon disembowelment and ritual sacrifice…gimme a break. In the view of John Simon the film was “very pretty to look at, but made absolutely no sense.” But what could the idea have been behind this poster? The film is a dour machismo metaphor of some kind, and yet Kris Kristofferson looks like he’s dancing.
As I understand the situation, the #DropOutBiden community wants Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden to suspend his candidacy so the Tara Reade thing — a single alleged incident of sexual assault that may have happened 27 years ago — can be fully investigated.
I’m not saying the accusation isn’t credible, but is it really worth putting the 2020 election, which Biden appears likely to win, in jeopardy? Is it really worth that much?
It would be one thing if there was reason to believe that Biden was a serial assaulter, but the Reade thing appears to be a one-off. Do Biden’s accusers really want to give Donald Trump a club to come after Biden with, absurd as that may sound given Trump’s own history, because Biden may have once acted like an insensitive brute in 1993?
If the allegation is true, it’s highly regrettable and nothing to brush under the carpet. But at the cost of wounding Biden’s decent-guy persona and possibly losing the election…seriously? #IBelieveTaraReade is really that important? The Trump criminality and derangement syndrome isn’t a thousand times more important?
Left Twitter purists, a portion of whom are probably part of #DropOutBiden, did everything they could to destroy the candidacy of Pete Buttigieg, and between their rantings and general hostility from voters of color (including the older homophobes) they gradually took him down. But you know what? If Pete was the presumed Democratic candidate right now, I doubt there’d be any sexual allegations of any kind.
If the Biden-Reade thing goes badly (and let’s hope it doesn’t become a tumor), all I have to say to the anti-Buttigieg contingent is “thanks, assholes!”
23 year-old Gladys Presley was a slender young thang when Elvis Presley was born in 1935. She’d put on a few pounds (but not too many) by the time he was 10, but had become quite chubby by the mid ’50s, when she was in her early 40s. (Elvis followed suit, calorically speaking, when he hit the same age.) In 1958 the poor woman died of heart failure (i.e., clogged arteries) at age 46, lasting four years longer than her illustrious son.
I’m mentioning this because Baz Luhrman has cast the svelte Maggie Gyllenhaal to play Gladys in his ’50s rock biopic, Elvis. Which means Gyllenhaal will have to (a) wear a fat suit with fat prosthetics or (b) pull a Christian Bale and pack on the pounds with bowls of pasta and ice cream every night.
That or the movie could just pretend that Gladys wasn’t overweight. Baz can obviously do whatever he wants.
The forthcoming Warner Bros. biopic will star Austin Butler (i.e., Tex Watson in Once Upon A Time in Hollywood) and Tom Hanks as Presley’s demonic manager, Colonel Tom Parker. Principal photography will begin this spring.
Elvis Presley, 21, and his 44 year-old mother Gladys in 1956.
Gladys, Elvis and Vernon in 1937 or thereabouts.
The best gig of my life has been writing Hollywood Elsewhere for the last 15 and 1/2 years. The second best was tapping out two columns per week for Mr. Showbiz, Reel.com and Kevin Smith‘s Movie Poop Shoot (’98 to ’04). General entertainment journalism for major publications (Entertainment Weekly, People, Los Angeles Times, N.Y. Times), which I did from ’78 to ’98 with a five year-break between ’85 and ’90, ranks third. But my fourth all-time favorite job was driving for Checker Cab in Boston. Seriously. The only non-writing gig I ever really liked.
Posted just under three years ago: The gig only lasted eight or nine months. I was canned for driving a regular customer off the meter up in Revere. But God, I felt so connected and throbbing and all the other cliches. Buzzing around one of the greatest cities in the world each night, learning something new every day, meals on the fly, incidents and accidents, hints and allegations.
At the end of every shift I was so revved that it always took a good hour to crash when I got home, which was usually around 1:30 or 2 am. And every night I had a new story to tell my girlfriend, Sherry McCoy, with whom I was sharing a nice little pad at 81 Park Drive.
Back then the Checker garage was on Lansdowne Street, or right next to Fenway Park. I remember to this day my Motorola two-way radio with the cord-attached mike. One of the dispatchers was called Tiny (a tall, white-haired fat guy); there was another older gent with a kindly face and gentle voice. After I had gained a little seniority I was given a slick new Checker cab (#50), which I always kept whistle-clean. At the end of every shift I had a new story to tell.
Story #1: A youngish woman who got into the back seat near Boston Garden found a full wallet with no ID or anything — $400 and change, which was a fortune back then. We split the dough 50-50 — luckiest score of my young life.
Story #2: An attractive, slender, frosty-haired woman in her mid to late 40s started chatting about this and that, and before you knew it were were flirting and talking about erotic chemistry and whatnot. As I was dropping her off she opened the cash slot and we gently kissed goodbye. We never got out of the cab, never shook hands — all in the eyes. I saw her on Newbury Street three or four months later…”Yo!”
A 1.29 N.Y. Times report by Alison Krueger ranks high among the most synthetic capturings of the gutted spirit of the Sundance Film Festival. Over the last 30 years, I mean. Read it and gasp.
Krueger’s verse is about the profound emotional satisfaction that comes from wearing an exclusive Sundance ’20 limited edition “puffer” jacket. Manufactured by Canada Goose and worth roughly…oh, $850 or thereabouts, the gray-colored, Sundance-logo’ed jackets have been handed out to 400 directors and judges.
Krueger: “These filmmaker jackets are Sundance’s version of the Allen & Co. Sun Valley fleece, or the high school varsity jacket: a special badge of in-dom and status that advertises the wearer as part of a privileged group.
photo from Emily Pfeffer via Canada Goose and N.Y. Times.
“[It] turns out successful adults are as susceptible to the allure of free merchandise and what it signifies as any of us.
“’I am starting to see people who have one, and I know they are in the gang,’ said Erica Tremblay, a filmmaker who focuses on indigenous films. “I love being part of the group. We all understand what it took to get here and get the jacket.'”
All right, that’s it — Erica Tremblay‘s cred as a respected nativist filmmaker and documentarian lies in tatters. From here on when I hear her name I’m going to say “the salivating, in-crowd Sundance puffer woman?”
If I were in Park City right now I would be swollen with pride over the fact that I’m not wearing anything that even resembles a Sundance puffer. I would stride around town and ride the shuttle buses in my bulky leather motorcycle jacket atop an under-jacket with a big-ass scarf, black leather gloves and my black cowboy hat, and this outfit would essentially say…well, I’ve said it.
“Perhaps a poor, ill-favored thing, but mine own.” — William Shakespeare, “As You Like It.”
photo from Emily Pfeffer via Canada Goose and N.Y. Times.
2020 marks the 40th anniversary of John Landis’ The Blues Brothers (‘80), allegedly one of the biggest and most unmitigated cocaine movies ever made. HE is trying to recall other significant cocaine flicks of that era. Martin Scorsese’s New York, New York, for sure. Let’s try and come up with a fairly comprehensive list. The HE community can do this!
It’s also worth recalling, I think, the elephant-fart aroma that this film spread across the land. It was a comedy, of course, and so a certain raucousness was unavoidable. But it was also about a couple of Paul Butterfield-like devotees of Chess records, Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf. Poseurs, certainly, but sincere about it. Guys who’d responded to the heart, ache and grit of the Chicago blues and were looking to spread the gospel, so to speak. On SNL and in live shows John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd‘s Blues Brothers act was funny and cool, but when Landis stepped in it all turned brazen and soul-less — over-produced, over-scaled, over-emphasized.
From Janet Maslin’s 5.20.80 N.Y. Times review: “There isn’t a moment of The Blues Brothers that wouldn’t have been more enjoyable if it had been mounted on a simpler scale. This essentially modest movie is reported to have cost about $30 million, and what did all that money buy? Scores of car crashes. Too many extras. Overstaged dance numbers. And a hollowness that certainly didn’t come cheap.
“A film that moved faster and called less attention to its indulgences might never convey, as The Blues Brothers does in all but its jolliest moments, such unqualified despair.”
Anthony Freda‘s illustration says it all — cancel culture fanatics are the ogres of our time. I can’t wait until the culture swings back and around and everyone starts coming for them.
No, not punitively — I don’t want to see anyone’s career threatened or damaged — but wokesters deserve to be exposed for who and what they are, as no different in temperament or attitude than the rightwing legislators of the early to mid ’50s who destroyed the careers of several reputable screenwriters for being ex-Communists.
The 11.2 N.Y. Times article, written by John McDermott, is called “Those People We Tried to Cancel? They’re All Hanging Out Together.”
The best portion of the article focuses on the remarks of Jonathan Kay, an editor of Quillette, “an online publication that touts itself as a defender of free speech and has emerged as a home for the canceled to plead their cases.”
Excerpt: “Mr. Kay clarified that Quillette will not publish just anyone, however. ‘Being canceled is like autism — it’s a spectrum,’ he said. Harvey Weinstein would be a ‘no’ for him.
“’We’re much more interested in the opposite end of the spectrum, where you have people who have been accused of things that are much less serious, and don’t nearly approach a criminal level,’ Mr. Kay said.
“Readers want to hear from the canceled, but the larger motivation is philosophical. Quillette’s editorial point of view is that so-called cancel culture is overly punitive and lacks nuance.
“’When I went to law school, in the ’90s, the presumption of innocence was seen as a progressive value,’ Mr. Kay said. ‘Because who is mostly wrongly accused of crime? Racialized minorities. Blacks, Hispanics, the poor. More often than not, it protects marginalized communities. And now the presumption of innocence is seen as a conservative value. And that troubles me.’”
All great or extra-impact films say something that audiences recognize as truthful — things they’ve learned and accepted through their own travails, and which prompt a muttering of at least two things — (a) “Yup, that’s how it is, all right” and (b) “this movie knows what goes.”
The Social Network said that even cold-hearted geniuses have emotional needs and vulnerabilities. The Godfather, Part II said that close-knit families were drifting aport and falling into spiritual lethargy, especially given the fact that mafia karma is a bitch. High Noon says you can’t trust your fair-weather friends — only yourself. The Spy Who Came In From The Cold says that little people will always get squashed in the eternal battles between ruthless governments. Prince of The City says that you can’t purify your soul without ratting out your friends so live with your misdeeds. Shane says that being a gunslinger is a stain that can’t be erased. Sunset Boulevard says we all need to live in the present and that constantly looking back will kill you. North by Northwest says you can’t live a life of shallow, affluent diversion — that you have to man up and do the brave and noble thing. Raging Bull says that if you live like an animal, you’ll end up a lonely animal in a dressing room. Unforgiven says you can’t escape your basic nature, and that no one blows guys away like snarling Clint.
The Irishman says a lot of things, but the most profound takeaway is you can’t lie to your children or keep them at arm’s length. Well, you can but at your peril. Because old age, walking canes, Depends and death are just around the corner, and you might want a caring someone to talk to and hold your hand during the downswirl. Nobody gets out of life alive.
Consider the following capsule assessment of texasartfilm.net‘s Dustin Chase: “Two good performances and some technical wizardry doesn’t warrant [The Irishman‘s] excessive running time and crippled pacing. [For it] gives the audience very little to take with them or apply to their own lives.”
The natural, obvious, fall-on-the-floor response is “WHAT?” Followed by “what kind of a life has Dustin Chase lived?” God knows, but it hasn’t involved much in the way of mortal meditation. When I staggered out of that first Irishman press screening everyone was feeling gut-punched and gobsmacked by those last 30 to 40 minutes. An older actress friend had tears in her eyes.
And “two good performances”? Try 11 or 12, minimally — Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Stephen Graham, Marin Ireland and the wordless Anna Paquin are the stuff of instant relish and extra-level pulverizing. Not to mention Harvey Keitel, Ray Romano, Bobby Cannavale, Kathrine Narducci, Domenick Lombardozzi as “Fat Tony” Salerno, Sebastian Maniscalco as “Crazy Joe” Gallo, etc. Everyone in this film is perfect. The awareness that you’re watching actors giving performances goes right out the window almost immediately. You’re just there and so are they and vice versa.
“Excessive running time“? The Irishman feels like two, maybe two and a half hours, max.
“Crippled pacing”? Who is this guy?
A few days ago the Broadcast Film Critics Association announced its Best Documentary nominations. The awards will be presented on Sunday, 11.10, at BRIC in Brooklyn, per longstanding tradition.
The org’s top nominees are The Biggest Little Farm, Apollo 11 (an HE fave) and Peter Jackson‘s They Shall Not Grow Old (ditto). I’m a loyal and respectful BFCA member, but ignoring A.J. Eaton and Cameron Crowe‘s David Crosby: Remember My Name is, no offense, deranged. The film is mystical, mythical, uplifting and brazenly honest — it restoreth your soul. And it doesn’t matter if Crosby didn’t get along with Scott Feinberg two or three months ago. Please…a non-issue.
HE’s list of the finest and most award-deserving 2019 documentaries, 14 in all and in this order:
(1) David Crosby Remember My Name, (2) Martin Scorsese’s Rolling Thunder Review (except for the fantasy fake-out interviews), (3) Madds Bruger‘s Cold Case Hammarskjold, (4) Asif Kapadia’s Diego Maradona, (5) Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman‘s Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice, (6) Untouchable, (7) Mike Wallace Is Here, (8) Alexandre O. Philippe‘s Memory: The Origins of Alien, (9) Apollo 11, (10) Dan Reed‘s Leaving Neverland, (11) Peter Jackson‘s They Shall Not Grow Old, (12) Matt Tyrnauer‘s Where’s My Roy Cohn?, (13) Ken Burns‘ Country Music and (14) The Edge of Democracy.
The spirit of the great Robert Evans has left the earth and risen into the clouds. A fascinating character, a kind of rap artist, a kind of gangsta poet bullshit artist, a magnificent politician, a libertine in his heyday and a solemn mensch (i.e., a guy you could really trust).
For a period in the mid ’90s (mid ’94 to mid ’96), when I was an occasional visitor at his French chateau home on Woodland Drive, I regarded Evans as an actual near-friend. I was his temporary journalist pally, you see, and there’s nothing like that first blush of a relationship defined and propelled by mutual self-interest, especially when combined with currents of real affection.
There are relatively few human beings in this business, but Evans was one of them.
You’re supposed to know that Evans was a legendary studio exec and producer in the ’60s and ’70s (The Godfather, Chinatown, Marathon Man) who suffered a personal and career crisis in the ’80s only to resurge in the early ’90s as a Paramount-based producer and author (“The Kid Stays in the Picture”) while reinventing himself as a kind of iconic-ironic pop figure as the quintessential old-school Hollywood smoothie.
From my perspective (and, I’m sure, from the perspective of hundreds of others), Evans was a touchingly vulnerable human being. He was very canny and clever and sometimes could be fleetingly moody and mercurial, but he had a soul. He wanted, he needed, he craved, he climbed, he attained…he carved his own name in stone.
The Evans legend is forever. It sprawls across the Los Angeles skies and sprinkles down like rain. Late 20th Century Hollywood lore is inseparable from the Evans saga — the glorious ups of the late ’60s and ’70s and downs of the mid ’80s, the hits and flops and the constant dreaming, striving, scheming, reminiscing and sharing of that gentle, wistful Evans philosophy.
He was an authentic Republican, which is to say a believer in the endeavors of small businessmen and the government not making it too tough on them.
Rundown of Paramount studio chief and hotshot producer output during the Hollywood glory days of the late ’60s, ’70s and early ’80s — (at Paramount) Rosemary’s Baby, Love Story, Harold and Maude, The Godfather, Serpico, Save The Tiger, The Conversation; (as stand-alone producer) Chinatown, Marathon Man, Black Sunday, Urban Cowboy, Popeye, The Cotton Club, Sliver, Jade, The Phantom, etc.
Not to mention “The Kid Stays in the Picture” (best-selling book and documentary) and, of course, Kid Notorious. Not to mention Dustin Hoffman‘s Evans-based producer character in Wag the Dog.
And you absolutely must read Michael Daly‘s “The Making of The Cotton Club,” a New York magazine article that ran 22 pages including art (pgs. 41 thru 63) and hit the stands on 5.7.84.
I finally caught Noah Baumbach‘s Marriage Story Saturday evening. With all the buzz I was more or less expecting the moon, I suppose, but I wasn’t disappointed. It didn’t quite melt me down like Kramer vs. Kramer did 40 years ago, but it sure softened me up. Which it to say I felt “met” on adult terra firma, and within a fully recognizable realm.
It’s more Ingmar Bergman than Robert Benton-esque. But sensibly so. Like all fine, steady, smart films that open between October and December, Marriage Story delivers the goods in a way that seems to fundamentally apply. It’s “one of those.” And I didn’t think of it as Black Widow vs. Kylo Ren. Well, if their defenses were considerably lessened.
I felt vaguely unsure where it was going or what it was up to a couple of times, but I mainly felt like I was in good, safe hands — gripped, touched, respectful, comfortable (because it never goes crazy or overly dark, it never breaks the trust) and always recognizing the truth of what’s on the plate.
Marriage Story is easily Baumbach’s best film, above and beyond The Squid and the Whale, and surely contains the best, most fully felt, deep-from-within performances that Adam Driver and Scarlet Johansson have given thus far. It’ll be really, really difficult for them to top this.
Best Picture nom, Best Director/Original Screenplay noms (Baumbach), Best Actor and Actress (Driver, ScarJo) and maybe a Best Supporting Actress nom for Laura Dern because of a single, third-act rant she delivers about society’s unfair attitudes toward women in terms of idealized “male gaze” expectations, and probably a nomination for composer Randy Newman.
The costar performances are just right — Azhy Robertson as Henry, Alan Alda and Ray Liotta as attorneys with radically different styes, Merritt Wever, Julie Hagerty, et. al.
It’s an honestly felt, emotionally complex (and sometimes convulsive) marital-downswirl drama, but with a rather middle (moneyed) class attitude…acrimony tempered by sensible sensibilities. Fundamentally decent people with the usual issues and shortcomings, but nobody’s a raving lunatic Nobody throws up or gets busted in some lewd, embarassing infidelity or throws a frying pan or drives a car off a bridge or runs naked into a traffic jam.
Driver and ScarJo are the married, Brooklyn-residing Charlie and Nicole, the latter a successful theatre director and the former his star performer who feels overshadowed by Charlie’s egocentric attitudes and looking to possibly re-launch her acting career in Los Angeles with a promising TV series.
The iconic and legendary Peter Fonda (or “Peter Fondue,” as Dennis Hopper once called him) passed this morning at age 79. Now Wyatt and Billy are in biker heaven together, cruising on some two-lane blacktop somewhere in New Mexico. No, they’re not actually — death has simply paid them both a visit now, and I’m very sorry. Hugs and condolences to the Fonda family (Jane in particular), Peter’s filmmaking colleagues, friends (in Los Angeles as well as Paradise Valley, Montana) and fans.
Like anyone else Fonda had his up and down periods, his dark or fallow or inactive periods, but during the heyday of the ’60s, man, or more precisely between mid ’65 and the release of Easy Rider on 7.14.69, Peter knew the language…he knew his way around.
By HE calculations Fonda created, participated in or partly authored six culturally important events in his life.
One, when he told John Lennon that “I know what it’s like to be dead” while they were tripping (along with a few others) in a Benedict Canyon hillside home in August ’65. This inspired Lennon to write “She Said She Said.”
Two, when Fonda starred in a pair of influential mid ’60s counter-culture flicks — Roger Corman‘s The Wild Angels (’66) and The Trip (’67).
Three, when Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson re-ordered the motion picture universe with Easy Rider (’69).
Four, when Fonda directed and starred in The Hired Hand (’71), easily his finest directing effort and arguably the second best film he ever starred in.
Five, his near-perfect performance as Terry Valentine in Steven Soderbergh‘s The Limey (’97).
And sixth, his performance in Victor Nunez‘s Ulee’s Gold, which I saw at Sundance in January ’97.
Fonda was always cool if you had something to say. He was with me, at least, on three or four occasions. The first time we spoke was when I interviewed him about his Split Image role (a cult leader) for the N.Y. Post. (One of the sub-topics was Biker Heaven, a proposed sequel to Easy Rider that would have costarred Fonda and Hopper.) Then at a Toronto Film Festival party for The Limey in September ’97. The last time I saw Fonda was toward the end of a party for Silver Linings Playbook at the Chateau Marmont, six or seven years ago. You’d say whatever came to mind and Fonda would return the volley if you were making any sense.
He loved his aloof dad, Henry Fonda, and in fact told me so when we did that ’82 interview in Manhattan. Peter would look right at you and hold the stare when he said stuff like this. He had kind, trusting eyes and what seemed to me like a fairly large heart.
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