Now that Matt Tyrnauer‘s Studio 54 is playing on both coasts and some have presumably seen it, what are the reactions? There’s no way I’ve oversold or overpraised it but does anyone think I might have? Is it mostly an older person’s nostalgia trip or is there some interest among 20- and 30somethings? It made around $28K at Manhattan’s IFC Center after a week; the Los Angeles Nuart booking began last night.

Here’s a chat I did with Tyrnauer 10 or 11 days ago.

In the wake of Richard Brody‘s “why is First Man so white?” critique (“Brody Fulfills Prophecy,” posted on 10.11), RealClear’s Thelma Adams is the latest to carry the identity politics torch:

“Fifty years [after NASA’s first manned flight to the moon] America doesn’t do such an out-of-this-world job when it comes to racial inclusivity,” Adams has written. “First Man is a reminder of such inequality.

“The early reception for Damien Chazelle’s space epic since its premiere at the Telluride Film Festival last month has been superlative. Under the National Review headline “First Man is the movie of the Year,” my friend and former New York Post colleague Kyle Smith joined with the majority who found the biopic 82 percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. He crowed “First Man is why we go to the movies.”

“To that I ask, ‘What do you mean we, white man?’

“Nothing like the last month in America shows the cracks in the American melting pot, and the impossibility of a cultural ‘we.’ Most semi-woke individuals sometime during the 141-minute movie will notice the absence of people of color in speaking roles. Not there on the mammoth screen. Not there historically. Not in space. And possibly absent from the audience.”

In other words, Adams seems to be saying, First Man would have been more in synch with woke America and might have generated a more bountiful box-office if Chazelle had ignored history and cast an African=American actor in one of the principal roles.

She seems to be suggesting that First Man would have been in better cultural shape if Chazelle had cast, say, Chiwetel Ejiofor as Ed White, one of the Appollo astronauts who tragically died on the Cape Kennedy launch pad in 1967. Or as Roger Chaffee or Virgil “Gus” Grissom.

Why not, right? The only thing that matters these days is inclusion and representation. Hollywood has a duty to push back against racial discrimination in all its forms, and that includes accurate but harmful depictions of U.S. history.

While watching Paramount’s 4K-restored, wire-free War of the Worlds, I was again perplexed by that vaguely obnoxious Colonel character (played by the late Vernon Rich) pronouncing “hill three” as “hill thuh-ree“. This always struck me as an excessive application of military-speak. Obviously “thuh-ree” is about verbal clarification over a possibly squawky military radio, but what other other number sounds even a little bit similar? Saying “thuh-ree” for emphasis is like saying “fi-yi five” or “ay-yay-eight” or “ni-yi-nine.” Again, the mp3.

Chelsea Handler obviously wasn’t implying there was anything wrong or unfortunate about Sen. Lindsey Graham possibly being closeted, which I know nothing about one way or the other and am not interested in discussing. Handler was alluding to a possible vein of hypocrisy on his part, given HRC’s 2016 statement that Graham “has been a consistent opponent of everything from marriage equality to protecting LGBT workers from employment discrimination.” If, that is, there’s some factual basis to the loose talk.

I’m not saying all high-school girls are fickle and flighty, but a lot of them are. Or were, at least, when I was an awkward, insecure schlemiel.

In my senior year I had it bad for a great Irish blonde named Sally Jo Quinn. Or so she seemed at the time. Short, slender, magnificent blue eyes, straight blonde hair, smallish feet, slender hands with chewed nails. No dad at home; just her single mom who worked as an administrative something-or-other at the high school. I can’t recall if the parents had divorced or if the father had died or what.

All I could do was dream about putting the moves on Sally. She wasn’t entirely averse to my attentions as a couple of hot and heavy episodes did happen. Once in my car (i.e., my father’s train-station car) and once while lying on a bed of brown pine needles in a woodsy area near the town reservoir.

[Click through to full story on HE-plus]

Will you look at the on-the-nose emotional triggers in this trailer? Right away you can smell the calculation, the family-friendly pablum, etc.

I haven’t time to write even a half-assed review of Julian Schnabel‘s Vincent Van Gogh film, At Eternity’s Gate, but it does deliver an intimate channelling of the visions and torment that surged within this angst-ridden impressionist, and the effect is fairly on-target. The film is more into communion than visions — intuitions, intimacy, revelations.

As Schnabel said during the post-screening press conference, “Rather than a movie about Van Gogh, I wanted to make a film in which you are Van Gogh.” He’s more or less done that, I feel. Which pretty much says it all.

Is Willem Dafoe‘s performance as Van Gogh the best thing he’s done since The Last Temptation of Christ, which was 30 friggin’ years ago? I’d say so, yeah. Dafoe seems to be so open to the ache of this poor man, and immersing himself so completely in his emotional, artistic and spiritual struggles, that (I realize I’ve said this a few times over the years) he really doesn’t seem to be performing or pretending. I wish I could think of some other way to say this, but whatever.

The interesting part is that Dafoe, now in his early 60s, is 25 years older than Van Gogh was when he died at 37, and yet this isn’t a problem. You don’t even think of it. Poor Vincent was so bothered and self-flagellating that Dafoe looking somewhat older than a guy in his mid 30s…well, of course.

The other thing is a scene in which Van Gogh, temporarily incarcerated in a mental asylum, has a somewhat testy conversation with a doubting priest (Mads Mikkelsen). The priest is softly contemptuous, saying in so many words that he thinks Van Gogh’s paintings simply aren’t very good, and that he’s almost certainly deluding himself by thinking that God meant him to pick up a brush.

Van Gogh responds just as softly that he might be painting for people who haven’t been born yet (or words to that effect). The instant Dafoe said this some guy sitting behind me went “uhm-huh” and I muttered the same thing to myself — “That’s right…that’s exactly what he’s doing.”

Schnabel: “This is a film about painting and a painter and their relationship to infinity. It is told by a painter. It contains what I felt were essential moments in his life. This is not the official history — it’s my version. One that I hope could make you closer to him.”

George Clooney remarks at Variety’s Power of Women event in Los Angeles: “When you call an entire religion your enemy, you might very well make an enemy out of an entire religion. When you tell a whole race of people that you value them less, you can’t be surprised when they question your values. When you tell women that coming forward to testify about their abuse is a joke, don’t be shocked when they’re standing on your lawn, laughing on November 7.

“After all the jokes and insults and reality show frenzy, what will be remembered, what will stand the test of time, is holding responsible these wolves in wolves’ clothing.”

HE to Clooney: I hope you know something I don’t. I hope that the blue wave turns out to be as real and formidable as many of us hope. Thing is, an awful lot of women voted for Donald Trump two years ago, and there were even a fair number of Trump Hispanics that turned out. People think and behave in amazingly stupid and lazy ways. Just when you think they can’t get any dumber, they defy your expectations. Here’s hoping things work out for the better.

Hollywood Elsewhere will catch today’s 3 pm New York Film Festival press screening of Julian Schnabel‘s At Eternity’s Gate. The CBS Films release (opening on 11.16) is a Vincent Van Gogh-in-Arles film that allegedly contains Willem Dafoe‘s greatest performance since The Last Temptation of Christ. The costars are Rupert Friend, Oscar Isaac, Mads Mikkelsen, Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner and Niels Arestrup.

I know the territory to some extent. I’ve been to Arles. I’ve stood inches away from some of Van Gogh’s paintings at the Musee D’Orsay. I’m very familiar with the Montmartre apartment building that Vincent and Theo shared in 1886 or thereabouts. I’ve seen Vincente Minnelli‘s Lust for Life a couple of times. All of it, the whole Van Gogh ride, all my life.

I don’t want to deal with James McAvoy again. Really. Willis and Jackson, whatever, but please, not McAvoy….please. Universal will nonetheless open Glass on 1.18.09.

Studio boilerplate: “Following the conclusion of Split, David Dunn (Bruce Willis) pursues Kevin Wendell Crumb’s (James McAvoy) superhuman persona of The Beast in a series of escalating encounters while the shadowy presence of Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), going by ‘Mr. Glass’, emerges as an orchestrator who holds secrets critical to both men.”

I’ve said this a couple of times, but now that Damien Chazelle‘s First Man has begun its commercial run, please try and catch it in a real IMAX theatre. The moon landing sequence at the end is 40% to 50% better on an IMAX screen, I swear.

Key HE observation: “Chazelle’s film operates so closely to the personality of the low-key Neil Armstrong that to some it feels chilly and remote-feeling and a little too tech-heady. But this isn’t a problem for me at all.

“One thing I really like about First Man is Chazelle’s refusal to do the Ron Howard thing by cutting to wide or establishing shots for standard perspective’s sake. Instead Chazelle keeps us inside the cockpit seat alongside Neil almost the whole time. And Ryan Gosling‘s subdued, often muted performance is actually daring in its own way — he’s delivering the full emotional boatload but in spare, somber, minimalist fashion.”

Pull-quote from Tomriss Laffly’s Film Journal review: “Damien Chazelle’s technically astonishing First Man is a poetic non-blockbuster of claustrophobic intimacy.”