In other words: General reporting about Supreme Court righties having side-stepped and folded on Donald Trump‘s behalf was brief and unsustained, while college activists ignored this acquiescence in favor of strident and agitated pro-Gaza occupations. We’re just about cooked.

20 months hence the obviously lucid, thoughtful and charming Dick Van Dyke will turn 100.

Life is good on Tetiaroa! Only for fat-wallet players, but as Max Bialystock said in The Producers, “That’s it, baby..if you’ve got it, flaunt it!

I’m on location for TFH in French Polynesia on Marlon Brando’s beautiful island of Tetiaroa so I can spend the week talking about the 3 epic movie versions of Mutiny on the Bounty where all the action took place! First up — Brando’s 1962 extravaganza: https://t.co/kWhLH8dGEw pic.twitter.com/1fyRETJUFE

— Larry Karaszewski (@Karaszewski) April 29, 2024

“This is the result of the extreme left and p.c. crap and people worrying so much about offending other people. When you write a script and it goes into four or five different hands, committee, groups…’here’s our thought about this joke’…well, that’s the end of your comedy.”

HE to psychotic, head-in-the-sand, comment-thread wokesters (“Radewart” and that ilk): Here’s your chance to bash on crazy, wackjobby Jerry Seinfeld and his baffling tendency to view everything with a preconceived bias against the progressive left.

Sasha Stone, “Yes, Jerry Seinfeld Is Right Again“:

Jerry Seinfeld: PC culture and fear of offending people is killing funny shows.

"When you write a script and it goes into four or five different hands, committee, groups—'here's our thought about this joke'—well that's the end of your comedy." pic.twitter.com/YZuWo5HlJu

— Katherine Brodsky (@mysteriouskat) April 28, 2024

In short, the festival hasn’t even begun but from an ideological, social-political perspective the fix is already in, more or less. Greta Gerwig + Lily Gladstone + Hirokazu Kore-Eda (Monster, Broker, Shoplifters) will presumably fill the role of the jury’s urgent humanist crusaders…the Batman + Robin + Commissioner Gordon social-inequity problem solvers…do the right thing, ”holy fruit salad!”, etc.

The only jurors I feel a strong cinematic kinship with are J.A. Bayona (The Orphanage, Society of the Snow) and Nadine Labaki (Capernaum). With much chagrin HE admits to never having seen Omar Sy’s standout performance in The Untouchables…my bad. Ebru Ceylan is the embedded screenwriting collaborator of her husband, director Nuri-Bilge Ceylan (Winter Sleep, About Dry Grasses).

Yeah, I know…who’s George Gobel?

Two new pop-throughs on the Faye Dunaway front: (1) A. Ashley Hoff‘s “With Love, Mommie Dearest: The Making of an Unintentional Camp Classic” (Chicago Review Press, 5.7.24), and (2) Faye, Laurent Bouzereau‘s sure-to-be-softballed profile doc that will premiere during the upcoming Cannes Film Festival. Dunaway and Bouzereau will attend the Cote d’Azur screening.

HE comment #1: Dunaway’s career hit a kind of pothole when Mommie Dearest came out, agreed, but I just re-watched it a couple of weeks ago and certain portions are still a hoot. For my money the film is a hugely pleasurable serving of classic Hollywood Kabuki theatre.

I saw it with several gay guys at the old Columbus Circle Paramount screening room in late August of ’81, and on the down elevator they were all shrieking with laughter, and I don’t mean the derisive kind. They were in heaven…delighted.

Alas, Mommie Dearest has been called an “unintentional comedy” by none-too-brights for so long that it looks like up to me, and I’m sorry but that judgment is just as wrong today as it ever was.

The Mommie Dearest “comedy” is not unintentional. The film basically serves a form of hyper-realism with a campy edge. It’s extreme soap opera, at times overbaked but winkingly so with everyone in on the joke.

If director Frank Perry had modulated Dunaway’s performance, some of the great lines — ‘No wire hangers EVER!,’ ‘Don’t fuck with me, fellas!’ — wouldn’t have worked so well. Those lines are the stuff of Hollywood legend, right up there with Bette Davis saying “what a dump!” and Vivien Leigh saying “I’ll never be hungry again.”

HE comment #2: Dunaway has been a first-rate actress since the early ’60s, and at age 83 is still at it, of course. But her peak years were close to 15 — Bonnie and Clyde (’67) to Mommie Dearest (’81). Her other highlights include The Thomas Crown Affair (fellatio simulation with a chess piece), The Arrangement, Little Big Man, Puzzle of a Downfall Child, The Three Musketeers, Chinatown, The Towering Inferno (the second best ’70s disaster flick, right after Juggernaut), The Four Musketeers, Three Days of the Condor and Network (Best Actress Oscar…the absolute peak).

Please understand that while some superstars have enjoyed 20-year peaks (Cary Grant, James Stewart, George Clooney), 15 is far more common so there’s certainly nothing tragic or mortifying about Dunaway’s career cooling down in the early Reagan era. Remember also that she rebounded with her Barfly performance in ’87, and that she landed three Golden Globes in the ’80s and an Emmy in ’94.

Clark Gable’s hottest years numbered 13 — between It Happened One Night (‘34) and The Hucksters (‘47). Humphrey Bogart happened between The Maltese Falcon (‘41) and The Harder They Fall (‘56) — a 15-year run. Robert Redford peaked between Butch Cassidy (‘69) and Brubaker and Ordinary People (‘80) — 11 to 12 years. Tony Curtis‘s hot streak was relatively brief — 1957 (Sweet Smell of Success) to 1968 (The Boston Strangler). Kirk Douglas also had about 15 years — Champion (’49) to Seven Days in May (’64).

Elizabeth Taylor had 15 years — 1950 (Father of the Bride) to 1966 (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf). Jean Arthur — mid ’30s to early ’50s (Shane) — call it 15 years. Katharine Hepburn — early ’30s to early ’80s (On Golden Pond). Meryl Streep — 1979 (The Seduction of Joe Tynan) to today…over 40 years and counting.

It’s a basic creative and biological law that only about 10% to 15% of your films are going to be regarded as serious creme de la creme…if that. Most big stars (the smart ones) are given a window of a solid dozen years or so in which they have the power, agency and wherewithal to bring their game and show what they’re worth creatively. Dunaway certainly managed that and then some.