“Everything now is so politically correct. So boring. So expected. And everyone is so scared of what will happen if they go too far. A few tweets and it’s done…their career is over.” — Charlotte Gainsbourg speaking to the Guardian‘s Arwa Mahdawi, in a piece posted last weekend.

So far the critical consensus on Apple’s The Morning Show is that it’s a bust.

Not a disaster or a wipeout, mind, but when your Rotten Tomatoes + Metacritic average is 61%, you’re talking about a failing grade. On top of which it’s hard to feel enthused about a two-season show (10 episodes each) that cost $300 million to make. That’s not a typo — $300 million or $15 million per episode. The instant I read these figures, I said to myself “naahh.”

I also decided early on I didn’t want to watch Jennifer Aniston playing a defensive, huffy, arched-back, pissed-off co-host of a Today-like show…later.

The basic beef seems to be that The Morning Show has been written by a #MeToo committee.

Variety: “[Tries] to sell all sides of its story without committing to telling a single one well…not a human worth caring about in sight.” Indiewire: “[It’s] a bit like watching The Big Short, except nothing is said straight-to-camera and nearly everything is boring.” Chicago Tribune: “The Morning Show pushes one excellent actor after another into misjudged shrillness and Big Moment fireworks, giving the various crises and machinations nowhere to go but sideways. The inconsistencies and false notes pile up.”

I’d better shake off the lethargy and start watching this puppy right away. The first three episodes begin streaming on Friday, and then the remaining seven on a weekly basis.

Boilerplate: “Alex Levy (Jennifer Aniston) runs The Morning Show, a popular news program broadcast from Manhattan that has excellent TV ratings and is perceived to have changed the face of American television. After her partner of 15 years, Mitch Kessler (Steve Carell), is fired amidst a sexual misconduct scandal, Alex fights to retain her job as top newsreader while sparking a rivalry with Bradley Jackson (Reese Witherspoon), an aspiring journalist who seeks to take Alex’s place.”

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.

President Trump was booed loudly by the fans at Nats Park when he was shown on the big screen.
Then came a loud chant: “Lock him up.” @wusa9 pic.twitter.com/LBbgSAHd6k

— Adam Longo (@adamlongoTV) October 28, 2019

There’s a scene in Dolemite Is My Name in which Rudy Ray Moore (Eddie Murphy) and a friend have a hard time watching Billy Wilder‘s The Front Page (’74). The white audience is laughing, but it’s not funny to Rudy.

Trust me — Wilder’s remake of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s 1928 play wasn’t funny to anyone.

[Click through to full story on HE-plus]

Famed costume designer Ruth E. Carter sat for a q & a following yesterday afternoon’s screening of Dolemite Is My Name. Carter’s polyester hood duds are certainly one of Dolemite‘s visual standout elements, and the talk is that she’ll probably be Oscar-nominated for this. Again. Carter has been in the business for 31 years. She won a Best Costume Design Oscar last year for Black Panther; her costumes were also Oscar-nommed for Spike Lee‘s Malcolm X (’92) and Steven Spielberg‘s Amistad (’97).

Larry Karaszewski to HE: “Ruth is amazing. She makes the flamboyant ’70s costumes look lived in. They are outrageous but you believe they are Rudy’s clothes. They’re not a cartoon.”

HE comment: The polyester costumes look hot, dense and heavy — definitely not something you’d want to wear in July or August.

I would love to watch to a 60-minute essay doc in which Martin Scorsese examines the genesis and development of superhero films (Marvel and D.C.), breaking it all down and assessing the relatively few highs vs the abundance of lows and providing a general aesthetic toxicology report. Would he want to invest the time in such a thing? Probably not, but I’d love it if Marty or Francis Coppola (or someone of their background and stature) could deliver a grand damning indictment. The industry and the culture need something like this — something to point to and say “look at what’s happened to us.” A kind of The Sorrow and the Pity-type deal. It could be mythic.

Yesterday afternoon I finally saw Craig Brewer and Eddie Murphy‘s Dolemite Is My Name (Netflix, currently streaming). Loved it, very cool, super-likable, at times hilarious. Call it a reconsecration of the Larry Karaszewski-Scott Alexander brand, and a definite bounce-back for Brewer and especially Murphy.

Let’s clearly understand that first and foremost this is a Scott and Larry film, and is basically a blaxploitation version of Ed Wood — same spirit, same or similar arc for the main character, same pluck and never-say-die determination, same indifference to (or an inability to recognize) the basic concept of quality, same naive but dedicated crew of co-conspirators.

The difference between Ed Wood and Dolemite is that a sizable African-American audience responds with enthusiasm and joy to the crappy cinematic creations of the real-life Rudy Ray Moore (played by Murphy) while nearly everyone despised Plan 9 For Outer Space (except for purveyors of camp a decade or two later).

The slight downside is that Dolemite Is My Name doesn’t have its own Bela Lugosi character, much less someone like Martin Landau portraying him, and it doesn’t have a facsimile of that gay Bill Murray character.

Then again Ed Wood didn’t have the open-hearted Lady Nancy Reed (played by Da’Vine Joy Randolph).

Dolemite is My Name is a tribute to tenacity and one man’s relentless belief in himself, despite his utter lack of talent and/or inspiration, and especially his absolute lack of respect for the craft of cinema, let alone any artistic potential.

Shitty, low-rent filmmaker makes good because he won’t quit, and because people with no taste ** like what he’s selling!

The funniest scene, for me, is when Rudy and his Dolemite homies are reading the initjal reviews. One critic, Earl Calloway of the Chicago Defender, wrote that “Dolemite is not fit for a blind dog to see…it’s coarse, bold, crude, and rude.” For whatever reason I started laughing uncontrollably when I heard this, and I’m what you might call an LQTM type.

Another critic called it “Dull-emite.”

The Beast doesn’t get to take a bow for killing Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. On 10.22.12 he tweeted that President Obama had been overpraised and/or didn’t deserve credit for Osama bin Laden‘s death because “Navy Seals killed [him].” By the same token Trump had almost nothing to do with the ISIS leader’s death. He was merely told that al-Baghdadi had been targeted and was about to be hit, and so he said “yeah, go for it, whatever.”

Here's the moment: Trump downplays the operation to kill Osama bin Laden under President Obama because bin Laden didn't become "big" until the World Trade Center attacks and al-Baghdadi created a caliphate. pic.twitter.com/efLwLu1ROZ

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) October 27, 2019

From N.Y. Times story: “Mr. Trump said Mr. al-Baghdadi was chased to the end of a tunnel, ‘whimpering and crying and screaming all the way’ as he was pursued by American military dogs. Accompanied by three children, Mr. al-Baghdadi then detonated a suicide vest, blowing up himself and the children, Mr. Trump said.”

Imagine Trump being somehow caught in in the crosshairs, alone and without bodyguards and being chased down a tunnel by terrorists. Is there anyone on the planet earth who believes he would die like Jim Bowie or Davy Crockett at the Alamo, manfully and with fierce brave dignity? Is there any chance he wouldn’t beg for his life by suggesting that he and his would-be killers “could make a great deal”?

There’s no question that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was a radical homicidal animal. Let no one doubt that his having reportedly killed three children along with himself with a suicide vest was a selfish and cowardly act. But does anyone think that Trump would have the cojones to off himself under any circumstance, if he was looking at doom either way?

Again: “Mr. al-Baghdadi’s body was mutilated by the blast, but Mr. Trump said a test had confirmed his identity. The president made a point of repeatedly portraying Mr. al-Baghdadi as ‘sick and depraved’ and him and his followers as ‘losers’ and ‘frightened puppies,’ using inflammatory, boastful language unlike the more solemn approaches by other presidents in such moments. ‘He died like a dog,’ Mr. Trump said. ‘He died like a coward.'”

But never forget that ISIS was essentially created by the 2003 invasion of Iraq by U.S. forces and the administration of Baghdad that followed, and that the real villains in this whole mess are George Bush and more precisely Dick Cheney.

“A recent screening of Atlantique (aka Atlantics) was really good. So well captured. All the amateur actors were earthy and real. Not only was it about the desperation of boat refugees trying to get to Spain from impoverished Senegal, but woven together with a throughly believable story of true love. After the screening I spoke briefly with the delightful director/ ex-actress Mati Diop, and we talked about how hard it is to find real obstacles in telling love stories in the 21st century. This is a definite international feature Oscar nom. It will be hard to beat the current popular tidal wave of Parasite and Pain and Glory, agreed, but this is a seriously worthy contender.”