For years I’ve been trying to buy or stream Martin Scorsese and Kent Jones‘ Letter to Elia, which I saw once at the 2010 New York Film Festival. It’s basically Scorsese talking about his worship of Elia Kazan over the decades, and “a delicate and beautiful little poem,” as I wrote nine years ago. It’s one of the most touching docs of this sort that I’ve ever seen.

But you can’t buy a stand-alone DVD or Bluray version, and you can’t stream it. It’s part of Fox Home Video’s Elia Kazan Collection, but I can’t find it anywhere. (In my home, I mean — I bought it in 2010.) Nine years ago it played on PBS‘s American Masters series, but right now there’s only a webpage.

The blockage presumably boils down to a rights issue. Two or three years ago I asked Jones why it’s unviewable (except for the box set), and he mumbled a non-response. I took that to mean that the absence of Letter to Elia is a conversational non-starter.

Posted on 11.24.10: “Letter to Elia is a personal tribute to a director who made four films — On The Waterfront, East of Eden, Wild River and America America — that went right into Scorsese’s young bloodstream and swirled around inside for decades after. Scorcese came to regard Kazan as a father figure, he says in the doc. And after watching you understand why.

“It’s a deeply touching film because it’s so close to the emotional bone. The sections that take you through the extra-affecting portions of Waterfront and Eden got me and held me like a great sermon. It’s like a church service, this film. It’s pure religion.

“More than a few Kazan-haters (i.e., those who couldn’t forgive the director for confirming names to HUAC in 1952) were scratching their heads when Scorsese decided to present Kazan’s special lifetime achievement Oscar in 1999. Letter to Elia full explains why, and what Scorsese has felt about the legendary Kazan for the last 55, going on 60 years.”

As someone who’s visited and hung out at the Hanoi Cinematheque two or three times, this birthday greeting (sent by an old friend) meant something. If only the artist in question had tried a little harder to (a) tilt the wall lettering a bit more to the left and (b) make the font stylistically align….oh, well. I only just noticed this. It got me.

Pete Buttigieg officially launched his presidential campaign on 4.14.19 — seven months ago. Most of that time he was fourth or fifth in various polls — well behind Biden, Warren, Sanders, etc. But he’s always managed to raise a lot of money. And then he decided to become a centrist in order to attract Biden supporters. And then he went after Warren on Medicare For All. And now, finally, he’s leading in Iowa and in third place in New Hampshire (or more precisely neck-and-neck with Warren and Sanders for second place). If it weren’t for African-American voters (who are more homophobic than the Twittering class will admit to), he’d be the clear frontrunner. I just think it means something that he’s finally getting through after all these months on the trail. It means he’s not a flash in the pan. It means that his path has been the opposite of Beto’s.

Does it ever occur to filmmakers that average people might not want to see what they’re preparing? Or that some journo-critics might want to run in horror? I didn’t even want to watch this 150-second trailer for A Million Little Pieces (Momentum, 12.6). The idea of sitting through the 113-minute feature version makes me shudder. Drunks and druggies are not interesting, and it takes a sober person to fully understand this. This dramatization of James Frey‘s real-life rehab travails…no thanks, not ever.

Except for his performance as Count Vronsky in Joe Wright‘s Anna Karenina, Aaron Taylor-Johnson has always irritated me. Pieces will be his second collaboration with director-wife Sam Taylor-Johnson (Fifty Shades of Grey); Nowhere Boy (’09) was their first.

Sidenote: His performance as the young John Lennon in Nowhere Boy (’09) was affected and ungenuine, and I hated the film with a passion. Before they shot it I wrote that “they’d better get Lennon’s hair color right — light reddish-honey brown, and Johnson had better wear that signature Lennon schnozz…if they screw these things up they’re dead.” Guess what? Johnson’s Nowhere Boy hair was jet black, and they ignored the Lennon nose entirely. I wrote these turkeys off and never looked back.

Rob Reiner‘s Misery (’90) is a very well-known film. Ditto the 1987 Stephen King book that it’s based upon. In the annals of fiction “Paul Sheldon” is arguably as well known as “Jason Bourne” or “Vito Corleone.” And yet it never even occurs to the Barnes & Noble clerk that this angry crazy woman is doing a bit? The guy works in a book store and he doesn’t even know Sheldon’s name? And that (hello) there are no Misery novels in actuality? And what about the people standing around and pretending not to notice (but are surely listening to every word she’s saying)? This is what stands out for me — the coma-like passivity of the onlookers. Note: This performance was recorded eight years ago.

“The most devastating thing about the impeachment proceedings this week has been the knowledge that this is not just how Trump treats Ukraine but how he operates in every area of government: wheeling and dealing, threatening, malicious, disregarding the law, dismissive of the national interest, trampling on professionalism and integrity, small-minded, misogynistic, Russia-besotted, valueless, manipulative, untruthful, gross and contemptuous of his oath of office.

“I think the Senate has grounds to convict the president. It won’t. Trump will have to be dislodged the conventional way.” — from “How to Dislodge the Brute in the White House,” an 11.15 N.Y. Times column by Roger Cohen.

Teorema was my very first Pasolini film. It’s about a kind of spiritual redeemer and bringer of perfect satori (Terrence Stamp) who visits a wealthy Milanese family as a houseguest, and methodically has ecstatic, Christ-like sex with everyone except the family dog — dad, mom, their teenage son and daughter, and the eccentric, obsessive maid.

All are wondrously transformed by Stamp’s divine influence, but they all go nuts when he suddenly leaves.

It’s a curious, emotionally distant film that will grab and hold if you let it. One way of interpreting Teorema is that middle-class people can’t handle the mystical — that they’re probably better off not breaking through to Aldous Huxley‘s “other side” as they’ll find it too upsetting or disorienting. Or something like that.

All to say that I’m definitely down with re-watching Teorema via a forthcoming Criterion Bluray (available on 2.18.20), which reps “a new, restored 4K digital transfer.” The only problem is that Bluray jacket, which is so milky blue and pastel-ish and opaque that it seems to be saying “please don’t buy me…don’t re-watch this film…just ignore it…please.”

Hollywood Elsewhere is not, shall we say, the biggest fan of the Safdie brothers Uncut Gems, but I’m a rapt admirer of Adam Sandler‘s pinball-machine performance as an insane gambling junkie.

In a post titled “Sandler’s Finest Performance,” I wrote that “within the realm that the Safdies have created, he’s completely authentic. We all know what Sandler’s screen persona has been for the last 25 years — droll, laid-back, quippy, sarcastic smart-ass. Howard Ratner is different. Sandler has never given himself to a character like this before. I just want to make that clear. You could say that Sandler is better than the film. I completely respect what he’s done here.”

Right now we’re smack dab in the middle of ad-buying for award-season contenders, and A24, the distributor of Uncut Gems, is spending like everyone else. The other day I noticed a big front-and-back-cover Hollywood Reporter supplement praising Sandler’s performance. Are you listening, Hollywood rank-and-filers? A24 wants you to hear their plea.

Speaking as the Charley Varrick of conversation stirrers (along with Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone), I would be delighted to run some A24 Sandler ads along with, say, a special two-day advertorial telling everyone how extra-wowser he is. I really would, and my aim is true. But A24 doesn’t want to know about Hollywood Elsewhere.

As we speak most of the big-time distributors are down with Phase One and Phase Two ads on HE (a tried-and-true reality since HE launched in August ’04), but not A24. They won’t even pick up the phone. They’ll spend God know knows how many thousands on this and that promotional venue or activity and God bless them and their strategies, but they don’t believe in award-season blogaroos. Their attitude is basically “thanks for pushing Sandler, bruh, but ad-wise we’re not into the Last of the Crop-Dusting Independents….no offense, love your stuff.”

“They just don’t advertise that way,” a producer confides. “[Display ads] are not in their quiver. It’s got nothing to do with you. It’s just not what they believe in.”

Okay!

Just before the 76th Academy Awards everyone was writing about the inevitability of Peter Jackson‘s Return of the King winning the Best Picture Oscar, myself among them. But I was the only one, I believe, to write that the only suspenseful question, Jackson-wise, will be “when will the studs in Jackson’s tuxedo shirt pop open and perhaps fly across the room like scud missiles” (or words to that effect).

Almost 15 years have passed since that highly questionable, impossible-to-watch-a-second-time film won the Big Prize, but last night I was the one dealing with a tuxedo shirt popping open — repeatedly — because of a sit-down bulky stomach issue.

It was mortifying, especially with fashion plate Roger Durling gently admonishing me for allowing this to happen.

If I was a baldly honest, no-holds-barred, Klaus Kinski type I would have confessed to Durling that when I bought my Kooples tuxedo shirt (which has black mini-buttons instead of stud holes) six or seven years ago, I was a good ten pounds lighter. And so the shirt was trying very hard to hold the line and maintain proper appearances, but my gut was a little too much to contain. Everything is cool when I’m standing, but when I sit down the middle button is struggling and swearing and saying to me “Jesus, this is tough…wait, hold on, can you suck your stomach in a bit?…you can’t?…oh, crap…oh, Jesus, I can’t…pop! Sorry, bruh…can you rebutton it? C’mon, hurry up…please, rebutton it before Durling comes over. Shit, here he comes!! Oh, you have re-buttoned it? Well, it popped again! Suck your stomach in, you fat fuck.”

Wells to Jackson: I’m sorry, bruh. I shouldn’t have said what I said back in early ’04. I should have contained myself. I’m nowhere near as gutty now as you were then, but I understand the pain you were going through. If someone were to write “the only question of the night will be when Jeffrey Wells’ Kooples shirt will pop open due to his inability to maintain the slim form that he enjoyed for so many years”…if someone were to write this I would be plunged into despair…it would be like a knife in the heart. The obesity epidemic is obviously real and yes, some people need to man up and stop eating for the wrong reasons, but from here on I solemnly pledge to never joke about someone’s tuxedo shirt popping open and metal studs flying through the air…never again.

Sidenote: What character in what late 1930s film said the line “Well, bust my buttons!”

Leonardo DiCaprio, Al Pacino, Roger Durling, Sasha Stone, Anne Thompson, Tatyana Antropova, Lisa Taback, David Poland and yours truly attended last night’s Martin Scorsese tribute at the Ritz Carlton Bacara. Or, if you will, the presenting of the 2019 Kirk Douglas Award for Excellence in Filmmaking to the director of The Irishman, who of course was there also and full of the usual vim and vinegar and poetry and soulful sharings. The man is indefatigable…a locomotive.

The Irishman will win the 2019 Best Picture Oscar. It will, it should, it must, the Godz insist, etc. I’ve seen it three times now — at Netflix, at the Chinese premiere, and a few days ago at the Westside Pavillion.

Key Scorsese passage: “I realize that commitment and dedication to the art form are always rare so, you know, when you see it, this incredible commitment and dedication, please don’t take it for granted. It’s a new world today, of course, and we have to be extra vigilant. Some actually believe that these qualities that I’m talking about can be replaced by algorithms and formulas and business calculations, but please remember it’s all an illusion because there’s no substitute for individual or artistic expression…as Kirk Douglas knew and as he expressed through his long film career.”

The event was attended by roughly 300 rich people + four or five journalist blogaroos. Nice vibes, nice food, excellent video tributes, legendary speeches, etc.

Sasha picked me up at the corner of Laurel Canyon and Riverside at 3:50 pm, and we arrived two and a half hours later. Tatyana arrived maybe 15 minutes after we did. We decided against staying at the Villa Rosa Inn (the room was chilly and odorous and a bit haggard), so the Beetle carried us straight home. The return trip took about 90 minutes, Santa Barbara to West Hollywood.