After catching yesterday afternoon’s screening of A.J. Eaton and Cameron Crowe‘s David Crosby: Remember My Name, I sent the following email to Crowe:

“Triple grade-A doc…the antithesis of a kiss-ass, ‘what a great artist’ tribute, but at the same time a profoundly moving warts-and-all reflection piece…hugely emotional, meditative, BALDLY PAINFULLY NAKEDLY HONEST…God! There’s a special spiritual current that seeps out when an old guy admits to each and every failing of his life without the slightest attempt to rationalize or minimize…’I was a shit, I was an asshole, how is it that I’m still alive?,’ etc. Straight, no chaser.

“And this isn’t because I’m partial to boomer nostalgia flicks or because so many are being shown here, or because I grew up with the Byrds (12-string twangly-jangly), Joni Mitchell, Crosby, Stills and Nash and that whole long lyrical–frazzled history. It’s about the tough stuff and the hard rain…about addiction and rage and all but destroying your life, and then coming back semi-clean and semi-restored, but without any sentimentality or gooey bullshit.

“For me David Crosby: Remember My Name has EASILY been the most emotional experience of the festival thus far. Not to mention [Crowe’s] best creative effort since Almost Famous.”

Crowe: “SO HAPPY you were there, thrilled at your reaction. How amazing that Crosby got up there [after the screening] and shared his total shock at what we’d put into the movie. Such a real moment. He was emotionally devastated up there for a good three minutes — I don’t know if you could see that. Felt like the audience wrapped their arms around him at that point, and then he was okay. Amazing.”

From Steve Pond’s Wrap review: “As much as the film celebrates Crosby’s creativity and gazes unflinchingly at his failings, it also functions as a valedictory, almost a requiem of sorts. Think of it as the film version of the final albums made by Leonard Cohen and David Bowie, who made wrenching final statements that they likely knew would be their last.”

Posted by Deadline‘s Mike Fleming: “I had done a long interview with Green Book‘s Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen, where those actors kept saying they found the handle on their characters by listening to a series of audio tapes featuring the actual voices of Dr. Donald Shirley and Tony “Lip” Vallelonga.

“I thought tracking down and publishing them might help swing the narrative of Green Book back to the road trip as they sat in that car together and were the only ones who witnessed the events and the institutional racism and hatred they encountered in the Jim Crow South. I got my hands on these tapes and, with the help of an editor, put them in the digestible soundbites you can hear below.

“It takes a while to get through them, but you might want to do it soon. I got them on the sly, and have no idea if I’ll be told to take these down.”

In other words, listen to these tapes ASAP.

I really don’t care for the kind of wailing emotion, upper-register “aaaahh love you babeeee!” shriek songs favored by pop divas (Lady Gaga, Rhianna), mainly because they have the voices that can handle all that vocal stress.

I’m sorry but I like songs that I can hum or sing along to without a great herculean effort, and lyrics that aren’t necessarily about how deep or heavy or transforming my feelings are, blah blah. Turn it the eff down, will ya?

Incidentally: Bradley Cooper looks better with his longish Jackson Maine do than with his current flat-toppy brush cut.

So @DCfilmgirl and I are in Vegas for the @ladygaga Enigma show and Bradley Cooper just jumped on stage to do “Shallow” live!!! Insane!!! pic.twitter.com/4iYbs61t6q

— Kevin McCarthy (@KevinMcCarthyTV) January 27, 2019

After four up-really-early, to-bed-after-midnight sleeps in a row (Tuesday, 1.22 through Friday, 1.25) and then doing the same yesterday and staying up until 2:30 am, I decided to go absolutely radical this morning and actually get seven hours of sleep. It feels pretty good.

I’ll be filing until 1:30 pm, and then it’s off to Slamdance and Steven Soderbergh‘s High Flying Bird at 3 pm, followed by a 9:45 pm Eccles screening of Dan Gilroy’s Velvet Buzzsaw.

Incidentally: Yesterday morning we (Bob Koehler, Jordan Ruimy and myself) had to move out of our two-bedroom condo and into a one-bedroom-plus-bunk-beds unit. So I had to pack everything up, and that partly meant putting my big tall can of Tigi Bed Head hair spray (which I need because my top-thatch has no body) into my tan carrying bag along with a mash of T-shirts, socks, long johns and whatnot.

When I unpacked the bag at 11:30 pm last night I realized that the can (which had no plastic top) had somehow endured heavy pressure on the spray device, and so the whole can had been emptied and a couple of T-shirts and a pair of brown shoes were soaked or covered with hair-spray gunk. Delightful.

The main lobby of Park City’s Prospector Lodge used to have a nice, homey, slightly-sagging-at-the-seams feeling. Like a friend’s oversized living room. Warm and familiar.

A year or two ago some jerkwad bought the place and removed all the atmosphere. Now it has all the charm of a seen-better-days bus station in Akron or Trenton. Incidentally: The head has a metal door that clangs shut like a prison cell — loudest I’ve ever heard.

After seeing an 11:30 am screening of Untouchable at the Ray, I had to get to the MARC in a hurry for a 2:30 pm showing of A.J. Eaton and Cameron Crowe‘s David Crosby: Remember My Name. I flagged down a cab on Kearns, but the driver made a wrong turn and we didn’t get there until 2:31 pm.

I was feeling really rushed now, and this is when I tend to lose or forget things, when stress levels are high. Sure enough, somewhere between paying the driver and strolling onto the MARC premises I dropped my wallet. By the time I sat in my seat I knew it was gone — beautiful elephant-skin leather, $60 in cash, all the cards, some momentos.

Rather than freak out I decided to watch the Crosby doc (which is great by the way — the most emotionally moving, AA confessional, review-of-a-nearly-wrecked-rock-and-roll-life doc I’ve seen in a long, long while) and hope for the best. With all the alpha volunteers around I figured someone would probably find the wallet and turn it into the lost-and-found. But when the film ended the lost-and-found bin was empty and there were no messages from anyone.

So okay…tough luck but at least I didn’t lose my phone. A drag but I’d survive. I jumped on a bus and called Chase to cancel my cards. Then I decided to drop by the Park Regency to check in, and the instant I walked into the lobby a staffer waved, smiled and said, “We’ve got your wallet!” I’d apparently dropped it in the cab, and the driver had found a Park Regency business card next to the cash. What a wonderful all-is-well feeling. People are kind and thoughtful, etc.

Brief synopsis of Scott Z. Burns‘ The Report, which I saw this afternoon: Senate staffer with a huge honker Daniel Jones (Adam Driver) is assigned the daunting task of leading an investigation into the CIA’s torture policy on Islamic baddies. He has to fight, dodge and weave through a series of challenges, but he finally completes and publishes a damning 525-page public report.

Comment #1: “In the eyes of virtue signallers who attacked Zero Dark Thirty for allegedly endorsing torture (a bullshit notion), Scott Z. Burns’ The Report may be hailed in some quarters as a solemnly moralistic cinematic ZDT antidote.

Comment #2: “But oh, the solemnity! The tone of heroic righteousness! And the musical score that won’t stop reminding you of this. This film is so smugly virtuous it gives you a migraine headache.“

Comment #3: “Furious debate has broken out post-screening about whether or not m Annette Bening‘s Dianne Feinstein wig was made by the same hairdresser who created Steven Van Zandt ‘s ‘Silvio’ wig for The Sopranos.”

Annette Bening as Sen, Dianne Feinstein in Scott Z. Burns’ The Report.

“With the exception of Black Panther, which likely has no shot, Green Book is the only Best Picture nominee with an unequivocally happy ending, which probably accounts for a lot.

“Every other Best Picture nominee ending is ‘yes, but…[SPOILERS]

“Roma — The family is safe but you, Cleo, are forever doomed to be a maid that fancier humans will fly over in jet planes without even noticing.

“Bohemian Rhapsody — You rocked it with the show of your life. Unfortunately, you’re on an HIV poz downward death spiral.

“A Star Is Born — You’re rich and famous! Sorry your alky, pant-peeing husband just killed himself.

“BlacKkKlansman — Racist plot foiled! Too bad they’ll just be more.

“Vice — Evil won because voters are dumb, as the ’00, ’04 and ’16 election confirmed.

“The Favourite — Congrats on being more devious than your rival! Enjoy life with a disgusting, insane person who has absolute power over you.” — posted on Facebook by Luke Y. Thompson.

I caught Matt Tyrnauer‘s Where’s My Roy Cohn? earlier today at the MARC. How can a study of perhaps the most notoriously ruthless attack-dog attorney in U.S. history be anything but a dark poem? A movie, I’m thinking, about ghosts, demons, banshees, goblins. A merging of fact and nightmare.

The film is actually less poetic than a smart, sturdy, well-assembled thing — an efficient portrait of a closeted, scabrous, old-school shithead. It’s fully respectable as far as it goes, but Cohn’s legend doesn’t feel all that linked or connected in the current zeitgeist. He was raised and shaped in another era, a darker time.

The only element that vibrates is the fact that Donald Trump admires Cohn’s fang-toothed approach back in the day. Yes, Cohn was an inspiration to the youngish Trump in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, but Trump’s hyper-aggressive approach to the rough and tumble of big-time politics, looking to exploit whatever fears and anxieties might be lying around…well, we knew that going in.

How absorbing is Where Is My Roy Cohn? — how sharply assembled, how hard-htting? Very, but at the same time it never really sheds its skin and transforms itself into something you might not see coming. I’m sorry but I didn’t enjoy it as much as Tyrnauer’s Scotty and the Secrets of Hollywood or Studio 54 docs, both of which were released last year.

Cohn was a cold, bloodless, out-for-numero-uno creep, and seemingly a drag to be around. As a subject, I mean, as well as in real life.

I guess I was looking for some kind of crazier current, maybe something borrowed from the realm of Mike Nichols‘ Angels in America. The film is “good,” as far as that goes. Tyrnauer is a gifted, highly intelligent filmmaker. I have no complaints with what it is — I just wish it had unfolded in a loopier, less conventional way.

Bill Maher “New Rules” rant on comic-book culture, aired tonight: “Can we stop pretending that the writing in comic books is so good? Please — every superhero movie is the same thing. A person who doesn’t have powers gets them, has to figure out how they work, and manages to find a glowing thing.

“Justice League, glowing things. Iron Man, glowing things. Spider-Man, glowing things. Captain America, glowing things. Glowing things, glowing things, glowing things!”

Maher to Multitudes of Middle-Aged Comic Book Fans: “I’m not glad Stan Lee is dead — I’m sad you’re alive.”

I’m determined to see Andrew Patterson‘s The Vast of Night at the Slamdance Ballroom on Monday, 1.28 at 8pm. A low-budget but allegedly resourceful ’50s sci-fi thriller, it’s about a single night in New Mexico in which a young switchboard operator and a radio DJ uncover a strange frequency (aliens?) that could change their lives, their small town and in fact the planet Earth.

Variety contributor Nick Clement recently saw Patterson’s film, and mentioned his admiration of it while interviewing director Steven Soderbergh, whose High Flying Bird will premiere at Slamdance the day after tomorrow (Sunday, 1.27, 3 pm).

Clement: “The interview was for a curtain-raiser piece about the 25th anniversary of Slamdance. I told Soderbergh how much I love Vast of Night and he asked to see it — and then he messaged me saying how much he loved it and how he’s gotta meet the filmmakers.”

Directed by Patterson and written by James Montague and Craig W. Sanger, The Vast of Night stars Sierra McCormick, Jake Horowitz, Gail Cronauer and Bruce Davis.