Excerpt: “Ken and Sarah Burns‘ The Central Park Five, a 2012 documentary, was one thing (i.e., not without problems but compelling). But a dramatic miniseries will be a whole ‘nother challenge.
“The case was about the assault and rape of Trisha Meili, a female stockbroker, in Manhattan’s Central Park on 4.19.89. Five young black dudes — Anton McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Kharey Wise and Yusef Salaam — were wrongly prosecuted and falsely imprisoned, only to be exonerated and freed several years later.
“The whole episode was a clear expression of racist hysteria (particularly on Donald Trump‘s part) and institutional corruption.
“Duvernay is nonetheless facing two significant problems in terms of her main characters — one being the bizarre police confessions by the five alleged assailants.
“If DuVernay fudges, sidesteps or fabricates (as she did to some extent with her depiction of Lyndon B. Johnson‘s actions in Selma), she’s going to run into trouble.”
Asked by The Hollywood Reporter‘s Jordan Riefe whether Ad Astra will premiere at Cannes ’19, director James Gray hems and haws and says “uhm, well, we’d like to show it there but..”
Gray quote: “We’re trying, we’re certainly hopeful. The issue is a little bit out of our hands because the shots come in from the VFX houses and right now our delivery date is late April, early May, which is really, really cutting it close. You want your visual effects to be so good that nobody thinks about them, that people don’t think of them as visual effects. We have hopes, but the whole team, Plan B and Brad [Pitt] and, thankfully, New Regency, have been fantastic through this.
“We’re all just anxious to put out the very best movie, and whether we actually get to make Cannes on May 18 — or whatever the hell the day is — is of secondary concern to getting the film to look exactly right. And I’ve been wonderfully blessed with great support from them. That’s where the focus is now and we’re just sort of keeping our fingers crossed.”
Ad Astra began filming in August 2017. A premiere in Venice/Telluride/Toronto is obviously starting to sound more likely than Cannes. Which would clear the way for Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood to be the only Brad Pitt film on the Cote d’Azur in May.
On one hand, the 2020 Democratic Presidential candidate can’t just be championed by the politically correct SJW militants — he / she also has to command a certain allegiance among your Midwestern pudgebods. (Which is where Kamala Harris will run into trouble.) On the other hand, facts argue against anyone getting too romantic about who and what the Trump proletariat is deep down. Never forget that all along Trump voters have been lazily under-informed, defiantly low-information, fact-challenged, deluded. They’re guided by rash, nihilistic, moronic instincts (i.e., keep the predatory “other” from coming into this country). They’re really bad people, in short — the kind of proletariat cattle who championed Hitler and Mussolini in their day. The best approach is to welcome their support in a manner of speaking, but mainly to wait for them to die off.
David Harbour is the new Hellboy in the same way that Glenn Strange played the monster in Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein (’48). Guillermo del Toro has nothing to do with this R-rated…what is it, a reboot or the third part of the trilogy? Directed by British horrormeister Neil Marshall (The Descent, Game of Thrones) and set in England, blah blah. Hellboy trying to stop a resurrected Queen Nimue (Milla Jovovich) from destroying the planet, blah blah. Also starring Ian McShane, Daniel Dae Kim, Sasha Lane, Sophie Okonedo, Thomas Haden Church, Penelope Mitchell, Brian Gleeson, Kristina Klebe, blah blah.
Perlman statement on being elbowed aside: “Look man, I did two Hellboy movies, I invested a huge amount in playing the character. I spent a long, long time really poking and prodding the bear to get the third one made and I felt sure…I felt like we had owed the fans closure and I just couldn’t…there were too many people who were moving in too many other directions, that I just couldn’t pull it off. If you ask me about it, it’s kind of still an open wound. I wish everybody [on the reboot] well, but I prefer to leave it be.”
Non-truths flood our communal atmosphere, not because we’re compulsive liars but because of our disrespect for various parties.
Nobody’s 100% honest with their bosses or supervisors; ditto their wives or girlfriends. Familiarity breeds contempt, and with that a willingness to dispense occasional evasions and half-truths.
Very few parents are 100% honest with their tweener and teenaged kids. Almost no drivers are honest with traffic cops. If I truly respect and fully trust you, I’ll be as honest as the day is long. But we live in a universe full of short days.
This goes double or triple from a celebrity’s perspective. Pretty much every famous person lies through his or her teeth when it comes to public statements. Not blatantly but in a mild, sideways fashion.
But that’s okay because they’re well motivated. They’re lying because they despise the gossip-driven media and feel that dealing with a corrupt and disreputable entity means all bets are off.
I think I understand the ethical system they’re embracing because it was explained in a couple of respected ’60s westerns.
Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch is one of them. I’m thinking of a scene in which William Holden’s Pike Bishop expresses moral support for Robert Ryan’s Deke Thornton because he gave his “word” to a bunch of “damned railroad men,” and Ernest Borgnine’s Dutch Engstrom defiantly argues, “That ain’t what counts! It’s who you give it to.”
Burt Lancaster says the same thing in The Professionals when he discusses flexible ethics with Lee Marvin. When Marvin reminds Lancaster that he’s given his ‘word’ to Ralph Bellamy’s J.W. Grant, a millionaire railroad tycoon, Lancaster replies, “My word to Grant ain’t worth a plug nickel.”
Tom Cruise was J.W. Grant-ing, in effect, when he told Oprah Winfrey he was in love with Katie Holmes and wanted to marry her and so on. He was saying, “This is what you’re going to get from me, and if you don’t think I’m being honest then too bad because my life is my own and you guys don’t rate the real truth because you’re scumbags who pass along tabloid fairy tales.”
You’re hot or you’re not. Earlier this month I posted two thumbnail assessments of the careers of Tony Curtis and William Holden. They both enjoyed relatively brief hot-streak periods. Holden’s lasted six or seven years, or between Stalag ’17 (’53) and The Horse Soldiers (’59). Curtis’s fortunate-son period ran 11 or 12 years, or between Sweet Smell of Success (’57) and The Boston Strangler (’68).
As noted, Holden kept plugging until his death in ’81, but from The Horse Soldiers on (or over the next 22 years) Holden only made six genuinely good films — The Wild Bunch, Wild Rovers, Breezy, Network, Fedora and S.O.B. Curtis had no luck at all after The Boston Strangler.
Burt Lancaster‘s career was different in that he was always a long player. His commercial hot streak of the late ’40s to mid ’50s (westerns or action-swashbuckler films mixed with two or three dramas) happened between his late 30s and mid 40s, but except for his 1950s peak achievement of From Here To Eternity (i.e., Sgt. Milt Warden) along with The Rose Tattoo and The Rainmaker, he was more into commercial bounties.
Then came a prestige-drama-mixed-with-action period — 12 or so years, 1957 to 1969, between his mid 40s and mid 50s — that turned into Lancaster’s greatest run. Oh, the glories of Sweet Smell of Success, Run Silent, Run Deep, Separate Tables, The Devil’s Disciple, The Unforgiven, Elmer Gantry, The Young Savages, Judgment at Nuremberg, Birdman of Alcatraz, A Child Is Waiting, The Leopard, Seven Days in May, The Train, The Hallelujah Trail, The Professionals, The Swimmer, Castle Keep and The Gypsy Moths.
In the ’70s Lancaster, entering his 60s, downshifted into mostly genre-level, mezzo-mezzo films — seemingly a getting-older, wind-down cycle. The highlights were Robert Aldrich‘s Ulzana’s Raid, Luchino Visconti‘s Conversation Piece and Bernardo Bertolucci‘s 1900.
Then came the ’80s and a resurgence with three great performances in three commendable films — aging wise guy and Lothario Lou Pascal in Louis Malle‘s Atlantic City, oil tycoon Felix Happer in Local Hero (’82) and the kindly Moonlight Graham in Field of Dreams (’89).
Lancaster was not a great actor, but he was a graceful and commanding alpha-male presence, and he had a great sense of style, and he knew how to sell it. What was his greatest performance? I’m torn between From Here To Eternity, Elmer Gantry, The Swimmer and Atlantic City (“Boy, that was some ocean”).
Dave Itzkoff has a 2.28.19 N.Y. Times story called “Can Captain Marvel Fix Marvel’s Woman Problem?” The problem, historically speaking, is a leering, less-than-enlightened attitude about Marvel’s female characters over the decades. The idea is that Captain Marvel might popularize a less sexist, more liberated agenda. Yes, I’m putting myself to sleep as I write this.
You know that Sam Rockwell and Michelle Williams‘ performances as Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon are going to be Emmy-level. You know it. The limited series will debut on 4.9.19, and run eight episodes.
The dominant themes or undercurrents seem to be that (a) serious creative innovation is rare, (b) women value fidelity, (c) it’s all over much too quickly, and (d) fast-lane living comes at quite a cost.
Fosse only lived to age 60 — cigarettes, uppers, alcohol, stress. He died of a heart attack on 9.23.87, outside the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C. Verdon died at age 75, on 10.18.00.
There’s still no credited director but the guy who shouted “action” and “cut” is probably Thomas Kail — Kail, Rockwell, Williams, Steven Levenson, Lin-Manuel Miranda, George Stelzner and Joel Fields served as exec producers.
The costars are Margaret Qualley (Ann Reinking), Norbert Leo Butz (Paddy Chayefsky), Nate Corddry (Neil Simon), Aya Cash (Joan Simon), Susan Misner (Joan McCracken), Bianca Marroquín (Chita Rivera), Kelli Barrett (Liza Minnelli), Evan Handler (Hal Prince), Rick Holmes (Fred Weaver), Paul Reiser (Cy Feuer), Ethan Slater (Joel Grey), Byron Jennings (George Abbott) and Laura Osnes (Shirley MacLaine).
It’s time to write another “oh, God, help me…I hate living in a damaged-back prison cell” piece. I haven’t written one since Tuesday, 2.19, or two days after I fell flat on my back in the Sierra Nevadas, a few miles above Lone Pine.
A friend wrote me a few minutes ago, asking if I’m out of the “pain dungeon.” I replied that I’m “35% or 40% out but still in it. Still painful, still a huge ache in my soul, just not as much as before.”
I’m living in a kind of minimum-security prison with a fucking cane and 10 or 15 hydrocodone pills. (Thanks to the HE reader who slipped me the narcotic remedies.) I hate it so much. It’s so spiritually suffocating. I’ve been in excellent shape all my life — loose and limber, hiking, lifting this or that, running here and there, riding on the hog, no stiffness and aches whatsoever. And now, suddenly, I’m 89 years old. It’s fucking awful.
Do I feel less acute pain now than I did a week ago? Yes. Will I be out of the pain woods a week from now? Not necessarily. If God is with me I’ll probably be feeling pretty good by 3.15, or roughly a month after the accident.
Wall Street Journal reporter Reid Epstein has tweeted that Joe Biden has described Mike Pence as “a decent guy, our vice president.”
That’s it! Biden is done, finito, over and out. In this highly charged, intensely contrarian atmosphere, a possible Democratic presidential candidate cannot be exuding collegial, business-as-usual, hail-fellow-well-met vibes about a culturally ass-backwards, white-haired rightwing fiend who’s stood foursquare behind our mafia-crime-boss President, and who once ratted out his fraternity brothers for having a beer keg.
There’s no room for that kind of casually jocular, country-club, “Mike has his flaws but he’s an okay guy” attitude. Forget it!
On top of which Epstein and Janet Hook have filed a WSJ piece about how Democratic leaders in Iowa “are hungry for a young standard-bearer who will usher in generational change,” which is basically a “not now, too late, you’ve missed your chance” message aimed at Biden, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
The Pence quote plus that 1.23 N.Y. Times story about Biden accepting a $200K speaking fee from the Economic Club of Southwestern Michigan weeks before the November 2018 election, and during his speech supporting Representative Fred Upton, a long-serving Republican ‘who in 2017 helped craft a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act'”…that’s it.
Biden is toast — he will not make it through the Democratic primary process.
The likeliest Democratic nominees are now Beto O’Rourke (who will be announcing within a few days) or KamalaHarris, and at the end of the day O’Rourke will probably be the victor.
If someone were to remake Elmer Gantry with, say, Leonardo DiCaprio or Matthew McConaughey or Joaquin Phoenix in the lead role, they definitely wouldn’t re-shoot this scene. Because if they did, the Stalinist wokesters would tear them apart on Twitter for daring to patronize African-American churchgoers of the ’20s, and in fact for projecting a borderline racist characterization.
Justin Chang and Guy Lodge would sputter and howl and lead the charge. They and their brethren would accuse the filmmakers of trying to make white audiences feel good about themselves, of trying to ignite fantasies about how soulful and open-hearted whites imagine themselves to be in the gentlest of spiritual circumstances.
In the original Elmer Gantry (’60) this scene was one of Burt Lancaster‘s all-time finest — a charismatic movie-star scene — and one reason why he won the Best Actor Oscar that year. But God help any actor or filmmaker today who would be stupid enough to imagine that an evil white person could step into a black church and just blend right in, etc. Only a white supremacist at heart could imagine such a scenario.
