…begins with a single strum. Two years, four months on the planet.

…were the wokesters (i.e., those who feel that the celebration of this or that non-white or non-straight identity is more important than the cherishing of art and craft and soul from whichever contender).

Not lying. An observable fact. They were polite but there is no doubt that many people in the room wanted a different outcome. Be happy people are viciously attacking her, which is what I thought might happen. https://t.co/85MWDc157C

— Sasha Stone at Awards Daily (@AwardsDaily) March 12, 2024

John Cena‘s recent nude moment on the Oscar stage reminided me of something I’ve never mentioned and had almost forgotten about.

I’ve written before about having servied four days in L.A. County Jail, for the crime of having failed to pay 27 parking tickets. It happened sometime in the late spring or early summer of ’74, and it was during the initial processing (when they create your identity card, make you take a shower and give you the orange jumpsuit and your bedding) that I noticed that the Oscar streaker guy, Robert Opel, was also being processed.

Opel’s photo had been in the papers; he’d also been interviewed by local TV news shows so the recognition was instant. Did I go over and strike up a conversation? Nope — wimped out. But it was him, all right.

Opel was born in 1939 in East Orange, New Jersey. After graduating from a Pittsburgh-area college he allegedly worked as a speechwriter for California Governor Ronald Reagan.

Opel was teaching for the Los Angeles Unified School District at the time of the Oscar streaking incident, and was canned because of that.

Opel was mostly gay with a little bi action on the side. After moving from L.A. to San Francisco during the mid ’70s, he opened Fey-Way Studios, a gallery of gay male art, at 1287 Howard Street. The gallery helped bring such erotic gay artists as Tom of Finland and Robert Mapplethorpe to national attention. But in the mid ’79 he was in a relationship with Camille O’Grady.

At age 39 Opel was shot to death at his San Francisco studio — it happened on July 7, 1979. His killer was Maurice Keenan, a thief who is still doing time for the crime.

There’s a documentary about Opel on YouTube. It’s called Uncle Bob, directed by Opel’s nephew and namesake.

You haven’t lived until you’ve fallen though thin ice in the middle of February, and then, having instantly acquired human icicle status, having to walk a mile and a half back home. I was shivering so badly I was barely able to breathe.

It happened at the peak of my miserable teenaged life in Westfield, New Jersey. The location was an oblong-shaped pond near the corner of East Broad Street and Gallows Hill Road.

A friend (Joe Frederick) and I were gliding across the pond without much effort, having a great time, no stress, etc. I must have been 14 or 15.

I was moving at a pretty good clip when I suddenly noticed I could see through the ice, and at the same millisecond I heard a little symphony of cracking sounds. I said to myself “okay, here we go.” Some kind of instinct told me to drop down and slide on my back as I spread spread my legs and arms. A second or two later I was waist deep in ice water and scrambling to crawl onto the thicker, unbroken ice. I was actually out in a flash, but I’ll never forget the sight of Joe throwing his head back and laughing uproariously as he skated along.

By the time I made it back home I was blue from the cold. Right after the submersion I managed to take the skates off and change into shoes, but that wasn’t much help.

A year earlier I went skating on the same pond with my dad, Jim Wells. I distinctly remember Jim losing his balance or his skate getting caught in a rut or something and him leaving the ice for a second or two and crashing down hard. I didn’t laugh at this (I wasn’t that callous) but I was secretly pleased.

During the Sideways junket the shoot was described by Alexander Payne as extremely pleasant — great.

Naturally I was inspired to ask a contrarian question. I asked Payne and producer Michael London if there’s anything analogous between on-set alpha vibes and first-rate final cuts.

I wasn’t saying everyone has to be miserable during shooting in order for a film to turn out well, but creative endeavors of consequence are rarely a slap-happy thing. Distillation, compressing, honing and re-thinking are not day-at-the-beach activities.

Legend has it that Brian DePalma used to say “I don’t trust happy shoots or happy crews” or something like that.

There’s no fixed rule, of course. Bad films have been made on happy sets and superb ones have come from sets in which almost everyone hated each other or the shooting conditions were especially arduous.

I’m sure there’s a very long list of commendable films that turned out well but were unpleasant to make. Here’s a short roster — Waterworld, Jaws, The Northman, Titanic, Ishtar, The Abyss, Star Wars, Heaven’s Gate, Fitzcarraldo, Caddyshack, The Blues Brothers, The Bridge On The River Kwai, Apocalypse Now.

I just know my guard always goes up when I hear how much fun it was to make this or that film. Nobody seemed to get what I was saying when I mentoned this to Payne and London. They both said, “You don’t have to be miserable to make a good movie.” I didn’t say you had to be miserable. I said…that’s okay, forget it.

“Sipping Sideways,” posted on or about 9.22.04: Fox Searchlight invited several press people up to Santa Barbara last weekend for a Sideways film junket. I accepted at the drop of a hat.

The deal included a suite at the Bacara hotel and spa in Goleta (about 12 minutes west of Santa Barbara, just past Isla Vista), a complimentary T1 line in the hotel room, too much food, a wine-tasting party, moonlight walks on the beach, all kinds of beautiful women everywhere, more food, and chats with Sideways writer-director Alexander Payne and costars Thomas Haden Church and Virginia Madsen. Paul Giamatti wasn’t there due to a family situation.

I drove up late Saturday afternoon. About 90 minutes, give or take. I checked into the Bacara around 6 pm. Swanky, expensive, built four years ago. Spanish mission style. A series of two-story buildings sloping downhill and all of it landscaped to death. The cheapest rooms go for $400 a night. The vibe felt a bit too rich for my blood.

The drive back to Santa Barbara for the Sideways wine party felt longish. If the Bacara were farther away it couldn’t be in Santa Barbara — it’s really out there.

Publicists at the door told me I’d missed a 5 pm screening of Sideways, which nobody told me about. I’d like to catch it again soon.

Payne was there without his wife, Sideways costar Sandra Oh. I asked him why his usually longish hair was cut short. “You have to cut back the rose bush every fall,” he replied. I spoke briefly to Madsen. I saw Church but didn’t approach.

Best part of the article:

I’m a particular fan of Church’s performance as Jack, an actor friend of Giamatti’s Miles who’s due to be married in a few days and is determined to get laid during their wine-country safari any which way. It’s one of those last-gasp, go-for-the-gusto-before-surrendering things.

Jack is a selfish, immature child, but Church gives him a kind of dignity because he takes hound-dogging very seriously.

You should have heard the journos at the table imparting their p.c. sentiments about what a despicable misogynist Jack is. Bullshit — he’s like 80% of all the engaged guys I’ve ever known or heard about. And for what it’s worth, I’ve been lucky twice with women who were about to get married. I know that the main reason they waved me in was because they knew this was their last shot before reciting marriage vows.

End of the best part of the article.

Update, posted today: I had totally forgotten about T1 internet connections.

Episode #3 of “The Misfits” features Jeffrey Wells, Glenn Kenny (“The World Is Yours: The Story of Scarface“), Jeff Sneider (i.e., Hollywood’s most fearless journalist”) & “Talking Movies” co-host Bill McCuddy (recorded on Monday, 3.11, at 1 pm).

Profuse apologies for being too much of a klutz to have correctly posted the pod early last evening.

I’m not a total idiot with this stuff — I did manage to organize and record the Zoom video and then down-convert via Handbrake (with help from Glenn Kenny) and then incorrectly post it on Substack. So I’m getting there. But I’ll never be a whiz kid at this stuff.

Enormous thanks to the great Sasha Stone for helping me correct my errors.

During the pod I mentioned the likelihood that John Cena wore a “sock” during his nude moment at the Oscars.  Nobody bit (one or two of my colleagues vaguely shuddered) so the subject fell by the wayside.  But The Hollywood Reporter‘s Beatrice Verhoeven has done the reporting.  

Just like my having also mentioned the advisability of Lily Gladstone returning to the way she looked three years ago while filming Killers of the Flower Moon. (She looks different today.) Lily will never be Emma Stone, but elemental logic tells us she’d be more suitable for a wider range of parts if she could adopt a somewhat leaner profile. But no — only a “bad” person (and I mean someone deserving of condemnation if not a Julius Caesar-like stabbing) would bring this up in casual conversation.

Does anyone think Amy Schumer could have played the lead in Trainwreck at her current proportions?  

Directors, casting agents and casting directors don’t tiptoe around this topic (or dodge it) when they talk turkey with each other.  Tom Hanks didn’t dodge it when he mentioned a few years back that some actors have diminished their careers by bulking up.  Everyone understands that Brendan Fraser lost his star luminosity when he became the “new” version of himself.  Just saying.

Again, the link.

I’m trying to at least post an acknowledgment of the universally expected Best Picture Oscar win for Oppenheimer. Maybe this will post and maybe it won’t. But it was a great show! And I fell over backwards in my chair when the deserving Best Actress winner was announced. Wow…my faith in humanity semi-restored.