Diahann Carroll, the respected actress and racial-barrier pathfinder, has passed at age 84. When I heard the news I immediately flashed to her Tony-award-winning role in Richard Rodgers‘ No Strings, a 1962 stage musical in which she played Richard Kiley‘s lover — regarded at the time as a big barrier-breaking deal.

Six years later Carroll broke another barrier in Julia (’68 to ’71), a TV series about a nurse and her son — the first time that a woman of color had played a non-servant role on TV. (I know, I know.) The series was criticized at the time for presenting an unrealistic, overly sanitized portrait of a single black mom. Wiki excerpt: Gil Scott-Heron‘s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” (’71) “referred to Julia in the same breath as Bullwinkle, implying that the character was something of a cartoon.”

Carroll was Oscar-nominated for her performance in Claudine (’74), as another single mother (of six!) who finds romance in Harlem with a sanitation engineer (James Earl Jones).

After shooting in the NYC-New Jersey area for 11 weeks, Steven Spielberg‘s West Side Story wrapped a week ago — on 9.27.19. The Daily Mail posted the below video today (10.4). Yes, that’s Spike Lee paying a visit.

HE continues to maintain two things:

(1) It was probably a bad idea to remake West Side Story for 2020 audiences. The original idea came from early to mid ’50s NYC gang culture, and the original B’way stage play opened in 1957 — 62 years ago. The 1961 film version was derided up and down for being glossy and inauthentic. Spielberg will almost certainly deliver a more realistic ’50s milieu, but the basic, strongly emotional song-and-ballet material probably won’t connect with under-35s, who will probably regard it at arm’s length. Romeo and Juliet is eternal, but West Side Story has essentially become a nostalgic timepiece for boomers;

(2) If a single young actor (either a Jet or a Shark) says “daddy-o”, West Side Story will collapse like a house of cards.

Incidentally: It’s nobody’s business if costars Ansel Elgort and Rachel Zegler have developed an off-screen relationship of some kind. (Or not.)

There are three kinds of people in this world, as defined by the words “Moulin Rouge.” The first kind are typical average Joes with disposable income who say “yeah, Moulin Rouge…the next time we go to Paris let’s pay a visit…I hear it’s a lot of fun.” The second kind are people who saw the 18 year-old Baz Luhrman musical version with Nicole Kidman and Ewan MacGregor, in part because they’d heard of the dance number scored to “Lady Marmalade.” The third kind (and there are very few of us left) say “oh, wow….John Huston’s 1952 film with Jose Ferrer as Toulouse Lautrec, which is noteworthy for Oswald Morris‘s misty, rose-tinted, somewhat subdued color cinematography!”

The Technicolor execs back in Hollywood didn’t like Huston’s idea because the colors wouldn’t be strong and vivid enough. Huston wanted the film “to look as if Lautrec had painted it,” or words to that effect. Huston and Morris collaborated on two other color experiment films — Moby Dick (’56), for which they created a grayish black-and-white color, and Reflections in a Golden Eye (’67), which they tinted with a sickly mixture of pink and gold.

In a video attached to Marc Malkin‘s 10.3 Variety piece about A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Tom Hanks offers the following observation about the late Fred Rogers, whom Hanks plays in the film:

“I do not have the skill that Fred had, which was to meet somebody and make it seem as though as if they’re the most important person in the world. Everybody that we met at KQED…they all said that ‘when you talked to Fred, you felt as though you were the most important person in the world.'”

Excuse me, but Hanks is talking about an elementary Hollywood skill that all successful actors are highly efficient at using for their personal benefit. It’s probably the second most essential skill in the game of creating a successful acting career, after knowing how to act. Many of them do it like absolute samurai pros.

I’ve been the recipient of this special kind of attention hundreds of times. Mostly from actors but sometimes from directors or producers. They look right into your soul and convey that you’re a special, fascinating, world-class person, and that your thoughts on whatever topic are truly spellbinding.

You know it’s an act, of course, but you can’t help feeling charmed and flattered.

Hanks is one of the absolute Zen masters of this routine. He’s one of the most likable human beings on the planet, and once you’ve sat in a hotel room with him for 15 or 20 minutes you become a lifetime convert.

Warren Beatty is another Yoda-like figure in this regard. I’ve never felt so enthralled and alpha-vibey as I did after Beatty and I had one of our first serious discussions back in…oh, ’92 or thereabouts. All he said was “how are ya?”, but the way he said it made me feel like some kind of inner lightbulb had been switched on. Even though I knew he was just turning it on like a gardener turns on a sprinkler system. Because he’s so good at it.

At the top of each HE post there’s always a number telling you how many comments have posted. In months past I’ve noticed that the software would occasionally get it wrong, declaring that 11 or 12 people had commented when in fact the number was close to 19 or 20. But now the numbers are completely missing. Each and every post says “0” at the top.

Yo, Disqus…any chance of fixing? Or paying attention at least?

I tried reaching out an hour ago, but they can’t be bothered with a chat service. You can apparently send them an email (hello@disqus.com) but who knows if they’re paying attention? I’d love to tell them what’s happening and ask for the best solve. If I had the time and the extra scratch, I would fly to San Francisco (they’re at 717 Market Street, Suite 700, 94103) and personally buttonhole each employee, one by one, until SOMEBODY listens and offers an intelligent suggestion.

I would gladly pay Team Disqus to solve this problem on a one-shot basis, but of course they can’t be bothered to offer such an option. And why should they?

Speaking as one who embraced sobriety seven and a half years ago (on 3.20.12) and have never attended more than two or three AA meetings, I’ve never felt the slightest urge to re-watch Blake Edwards‘ Days of Wine and Roses (’62). Not once. I respect it but that’s all.

It’s a reasonably effective portrayal of the horrors of alcoholic enslavement and how difficult it can be for some people to unshackle themselves for good. The script by JP Miller is a little too on-the-nose, but it doesn’t exactly get in the way. And it’s certainly well acted by Jack Lemmon, Lee Remick, Jack Klugman, Charles Bickford, etc. But it also manages to make inebriation and sobriety seem equally miserable.

Lemmon and Remick’s sloppy alcoholic shenanigans during the first third seem empty, juvenile and demeaning — they’re acting like giddy idiots. And when they turn sober it’s like they’re both covered with some kind of awful gloom sauce — like they’re taking two misery pills with breakfast and two at dinner. You’re watching it and going, “Jesus, I wouldn’t want to hang with these dullards drunk or sober.”

Sobriety isn’t easy at first, granted, but the morning wake-ups are wonderful, and you gradually learn how to smile and even laugh again. And that feeling of a terrible 700-pound wet gorilla no longer clinging to your back is heavenly.

Drinking, for me, was a lot more fun that what Lemmon and Remick were up to. I was never a pathetic, falling-down drunk, and I recall experiencing some truly insane and hilarious episodes when I was buzzed. Especially in my 20s and early 30s. I was almost never shit-faced (or at least not after high school), but at the same time my motto was “life would be unbearable without alcohol.” I was just having a good time. Thank God I got to carouse around Italy two or three times before I renounced. Drinking good wine in a sensible way can be wonderful.

My first cold-turkey renunciation happened in ’96 (I was mainly determined to quit vodka), but after two or three years I gradually started to sip wine from time to time, and it felt pretty cool for the most part. My last and final quit (no wine, no beer, no nothing) happened because nightly Pinot Grigio sippings had began to play hell with my looks, and because it gradually over-heated my personality and made me behave in an intemperate manner from time to time.

Sobriety has been the best thing to happen to me this century, no question. But if I ever want to feel badly about what I didn’t go through with alcohol, I’ll watch Days of Wine and Roses.

“I know why…it’s because I’m an animal. And arrogant. And because I’m stupid, so stupid…stupid.”

Read the 10.3 N.Y. Times story, written by Julia Jacobs, about Robert De Niro and his ex-Canal Productions employee Chase Robinson suing each other over mutual dissatisfaction with work behaviors, and then consider the following HE assessments:

(1) Let me explain something. When you work for someone directly or personally, you’ll find out soon enough who they really are. And they’ll find out soon enough who you really are. And this familiarity will breed contempt. And then you’re stuck with each other until (a) you mutually build or create your way past this state of mutual loathing and/or disrespect, or (b) until someone quits or is fired. That’s life.

(2) Naturally Chase has accused De Niro of belittling behavior on his part — asking her to “button his shirts, prod him awake in his hotel room, doing his laundry and vacuuming — making her effectively an ‘office wife’ even as she was promoted…not to mention berating her, often while intoxicated, calling her names including ‘bitch’ and ‘brat’”…not to mention “gratuitous unwanted physical contact” (i.e., playing the #MeToo card).

(3) DeNiro seemingly resented what he regarded as Chase’s casual, profligate, laissez-faire attitude about her job. DeNiro seems to feel that she basically didn’t work hard enough. Too extravagant, too entitled, too many perks, too many extras. She loafed around, slacked off. Business-expense-wise, she spent waaaay too much money on pricey Italian restaurants, handbags, Ubers and whatnot.

(4) Chase was probably bored by her tasks. She felt resentful about an equal-status male employee being paid more. She undoubtedly resented the requests for back-scratchings and listening to DeNiro pee while talking to her. Too much information but here goes anyway (and De Niro should take note): If nature calls while I’m speaking to someone on the phone, I always sit down.

(5) Chase basically overplayed her profligate hand, her entitled approach to the job, and De Niro eventually asked himself, “Why am I paying her all this money and giving her this extravagant lifestyle? For what?”

(6) And what about that special N.Y. Times photo portrait of Chase that accompanies the article [after the jump]? Nice tasteful lighting. Nice green background. Nice antique-looking chair. Nice tasteful dress.

(7) And what about this recording, which happened in 2012? DeNiro was hugely pissed off, obviously — didn’t like her haughty attitude, declining to return his calls, etc. He was apparently on the verge of firing her, and yet their relationship recovered and she continued to work for him for another five years…odd.

Poor Richard Jewell…falsely harassed by the news media and hounded by the FBI in ’96 over suspicions that he was the Centennial Olympic Park bomber, derided for his corpulent weirdo appearance (Jay Leno called him the “Una-doofus” and a federal agent called him “Unabubba“), and finally dead at age 44 from heart failure and diabetes, which was partially due to genes (bad luck) but almost certainly exacerbated by too many cupcakes. Poor guy, hard knocks, tough life.

No one is allowed to mention the unmentionable element in this sad saga (you will certainly never hear a word about this from the fine folks at Indiewire), but I’m going to mention it anyway. Does anyone believe that Jewell would have been zeroed in on and accused as much as he was if he’d looked like Jon Hamm instead of Paul Walter Hauser? People saw a moustachioed beach ball and figured, “He looks like a dweeby basement dweller…he has an aura of otherness about him…has this guy ever worked out?…he probably wakes up for snacks at 3 am.”

Jewell was unfortunately guilty of not looking like Cary Grant, but otherwise everyone was wrong — Jewell was innocent of wrongdoing. The authorities ultimately nabbed, convicted and imprisoned another guy for the bombing.

Clint Eastwood’s film (Warner Bros., 12.13) will be all about Jewell’s raw deal, and how the news media machine (especially Atlanta Constitution reporter Kathy Scruggs, played by Olivia Wilde, with a special boost from NBC’s Tom Brokaw) turned his life upside down and sent poor Richard into the darkest corners of hell.

Sam Rockwell has the good-guy role, portraying Jewell’s real-life attorney L. Lin Wood but under another name, “Watson Bryant.”

There’s nothing catastrophic or even dramatic about a guy in his late ’70s having a stent put into a heart valve after experiencing chest pains. But it’s obviously a bad thing for a 78 year-old Presidential candidate. It just reminds everyone what naturally happens among people of Sanders’ age. Nobody will ever call him “drooling” Bernie — he’s a sharp, tough, tenacious bulldog, and a much more vigorous candidate than “Typewriter” Joe Biden. I’m just saying that people don’t want to know from heart conditions when it comes to would-be Presidents. Sanders has been sinking in the polls; cruel as it may sound, this episode will probably cause him to sink further.

Guillermo del Toro‘s 13-part tweet stream on The Irishman is pretty damn good. I’ve pasted six of the tweets in an order that I prefer, as opposed to the order in which GGT posted them. Sorry but I’m allowed to do this. Here’s the whole thing.

Boiled down, GDT is acknowledging or reminding that everybody fucking dies sooner or later, and the “withering on the vine” and assisted living part is no joke, and boy, does this film remind us of where we’ll all headed sooner or later, and that arriving at this point without a George Harrison-like mystical current inside you or, failing that, at least a good spiritual hand-holding current by way of family and friends…approaching the Big Sleep without these things is not advisable. Not having them, in fact, is horrible. Because one way or the other we’re all approaching a Barry Lyndon state of total and absolute equality.

Last night Joaquin Phoenix offered a Hollywood Elsewhere-style apology to Joker cinematographer Lawrence (“Larry”) Sher for having bitched about Sher’s constant whispering during shooting and giving Phoenix the nickname “Cher.” It happened on the Jimmy Kimmel Show after Kimmel played some video footage (supplied by Joker director Todd Phillips) of Phoenix carping on the Joker set.

Phoenix’s apology begins around the 10:15 mark…love it!

Phoenix to Larry: “The constant whispering…just shut the fuck up, dude. I’m trying to find something real. Sorry. It’s not a big deal, it’s not a big deal. Yeah, it kind of is. I know you started the Cher thing, Larry. It’s not even an insult. ‘Cher’, really? She’s a singer, actor, dancer, fashion icon. How is that a fucking insult? I’m fucking out of here with this guy.”

By “Hollywood Elsewhere-styled” I mean the kind of apology in which you say “look, I wasn’t actually wrong for calling you a rancid dick because that’s who and what you are and probably always will be if you don’t get some therapy, but I’m sorry, you know, for the bad vibes…even though it was mostly your fault.”

Don’t get me wrong — I’ll never hesitate to offer a sincere apology when warranted (it’s a mark of true character to be able to express humility and honest regret), but I also love offering the half-assed kind in which you say “sorry but blow me.” When the shoe fits, I mean.