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Over the last 40-plus years scores of filmmakers have used rock tunes to deliver undercurrents in their films, but no one has ever done this as masterfully as Martin Scorsese, the cinema’s ultimate rock-music maestro. No, this is not an original observation.

But here’s a semi-original one: What makes Scorsese’s rock-scoring so memorable is that once you watch a Scorsese passage that’s been perfectly blended with a well-known track (like that Goodfellas montage of Jimmy Conway murders underlaid with Eric Clapton‘s “Layla” or Harry Nilsson‘s “Jump Into The Fire” augmenting that classic cocaine-frenzy scene with Ray Liotta running around), the song always acquires an extra dimension of some kind — it becomes a stronger song for the association. As in forever.

Example #1: I’d always enjoyed Jimmy Castor‘s “Hey Leroy, Your Mama’s Calling You,” but it acquired a mythic element when Scorsese used it in that cranked-up Stratton Oakmont scene in The Wolf of Wall Street. It retains that association to this day.

Example #2: That Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore scene in which Scorsese takes us from a Gone With The Wind-ish yesteryear sequence with young Alice singing that Alice Faye song (“You’ll Never Know”) to Socorro, New Mexico circa 1974, and this is achieved with the playing of Mott The Hoople‘s “All The Way to Memphis.” It was this scene that sold me on Mott The Hoople — this plus “All The Young Dudes,” I mean.

Example #3, #4, #5 and “#6: The “Mean Streets” quartet — the “Be My Baby” opening credits, the Rolling Stones’ “Tell Me” scene in which Harvey Keitel enters the bar and says hello to everyone, the scene in which Robert DeNiro enters the same bar to the sounds of “Jumpin Jack Flash” and the “Please Mr, Postman” fight scene in that basement-level pool hall.

Example #7: The Mickey & Sylvia “Love Is Strange” moment in Casino when Robert De Niro decides that he’s gotta have Sharon Stone‘s hellcat hustler.

Big question: What non-Scorsese films have delivered phenomenal rock-tune scorings? List your top two or three.

Tatyana was detained early yesterday evening by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection guys, simply because she struck them as detainable and harassable. Because she’s Russian-born and isn’t a U.S. citizen (although she has a green card), and because they figured “let’s get her.” They asked Tatyana to step out of the passport line and then held her for an hour or so inside a large, locked-down room with 40 or so non-American types (mostly Asian, Mexican and African).

Because this is what the border guys do — they give exotics (i.e., anyone they don’t like the look of or whose name strikes them as weird-sounding) a hard time. And this isn’t just a Trump administration thing — this apparently happened a lot during the Obama years. I did a few Google searches about detainments, and the complaints stretch back a good eight to ten years.

I repeatedly texted and called Tatyana a good seven or eight times, but they didn’t let her answer. There were several signs on the detention room wall that said “no cell phone usage”, but that’s not fair to the detainees’ loved ones…c’mon! So when she tried to very briefly give me an idea about what was happening they told her “put that phone down.” She was finally allowed to leave after 80 minutes or so. Nice operation, guys. Keep harassing those foreign types, let ’em know what for.

I offered to divulge the ending of Once Upon A Time in Hollywood to a friend, and she said “sure.” I sent it along. Her reaction: “Oh, I kind of like that. But it’s definitely a shitstorm waiting to happen.”

I offered the same info to a producer friend. She politely declined but mentioned that “the ending is posted on Wikipedia” so it’s not a big deal anyway. I went right to the page….hilarious! The Wiki ending is all but completely fabricated.

In a 6.6. Hollywood Reporter piece about Quentin Tarantino’s film, Tatiana Siegel wrote that “the road will inevitably get bumpier for Tarantino over the ensuing weeks,” in part because “the film features graphic depictions of violence against women.”

Siegel is alluding to beatings along the lines of what happened to Jennifer Jason Leigh‘s character in The Hateful Eight, which I for one found sadistic and repellent. No specifics, of course, but I didn’t have this same reaction to the alluded-to violence in OUATIH.

From 5.23.19 Intercept podcast titled “Joe Biden Would Be A Disaster”:

Excerpt #1: “I think it is patently absurd the notion that [Joe Biden] thinks he’s the future of a party where, in fact, he’s been one of the backbones of it for the better part of five decades.”

Excerpt #2: “Biden is that guy. He’s the guy who is so familiar. He is the middle of the road, I take the train, Amtrak, Delaware, folksy, aw shucks, not perfect, not polished, not ivy league, not a woman, not a person of color, not gay, right? Like, he’s all the things that revert back to who historically had always had the grip on power and the reassurance that that kind of person might still have a grip on power.”

Excerpt #3: “People say ‘electable, electable,’ but this is the era of Donald J. Trump. Does anyone even know what electable means anymore? What counts as electable? Never forget [that] in 2016, 17 Republicans ran for their party’s presidential nomination and the guy from Home Alone 2 won. So anyone who tells you at this stage that Biden has this in the bag is either a liar or a fool.”

Our 11 and 1/2 hour Norweigan Airlines flight (Paris to Los Angeles) touched down around 6:20 pm. I really hate extra-long flights. “Comfortable” but vaguely agonizing, seemingly endless, confinement, cat-napping, never-quite-slumbering, tolerable, watching this and that, listening to my iPhone music, eliminating iPhone photos…anything to stave off those soporific waves of boredom.

I watched episodes #7 and #8 of Fosse Verdon (the finale is devastating), watched most of Out of the Past for the 17th time, watched all of The Limey, read five or six chapters of Sam Wasson‘s “Fosse“, gave myself two whore baths, read about 75% of Brett Easton Ellis‘s “White” (anti-snowflake, anti-identity politics, anti-“woke” watchdogs, anti-safe spaces…”a veritable thirst trap for the easily microaggressed”) and generally suffered like I always do.

3:45 pm in Paris, 6:45 am in Los Angeles: For the next 11 hours Hollywood Elsewhere will be subject to a form of solitary confinement. Norweigan Airlines won’t be offering Wi-Fi until sometime next year, and so posting-wise I’m up shit creek without a paddle. I’ll use the time to watch the last two episodes of Fosse Verdon, which I’ve downloaded to my Kindle 10.

Boilerplate: “Astronaut Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) travels to the outer edges of the solar system to find his missing father and unravel a mystery that threatens the survival of our planet. His journey will uncover secrets that challenge the nature of human existence and our place in the cosmos.” Liv Tyler crying again?

For the first time in the history of U.S. presidential elections, a strong majority of likely Democratic voters — 57% — is in favor of electing one of two Presidential candidates who will hit 80 less than two years after taking office.

We’re all healthier and more athletic these days, 70 is the new 60 and Joe and Bernie have always sounded fairly sharp and shrewd to my ears. (Although Bernie has always struck me as the more lucid.) But anyone with older grandparents or great-grandparents knows what 80 and beyond tends to be like for the most part. Not always (depending on genetics + lifestyles) but often enough.

People generally enjoy 45 years of dynamic prime-time expertise and accomplishment, usually from age 30 to 75. Or 25 to 70. Or 35 to 80 or something like that. Ronald Reagan, our second oldest President, was in his late 70s at the end of his two-term Presidency. The prospect of a U.S. president turning 80 at the beginning of a first term has never been considered before, much less regarded as a likely scenario.

This is a totally new thing in the history of this country, and it seems to me that no one is really getting into this out of a general fear of sounding ageist, which the p.c. community correctly regards in the same light as racism, homophobia and fat-shaming. (Godzilla–shaming isn’t the same thing.)

I despise ageism, but that doesn’t change the fact that this country’s voters have never before seriously considered the idea of an 80something President. Think about this for 30 seconds.

If your gut you know it feels like a better idea for a younger person to succeed Trump. It just does. But I’m deathly afraid that Elizabeth Warren, whom I love and respect, might not prevail in the general election, although I can’t imagine anyone of sound mind not preferring her to Cheetoh.

It’s hitting me over and over what a terrible jam the Democrats are in right now. There’s no candidate except for Mayor Pete who’s really got the magic mojo, who’s exactly right for the job and who’s exactly the right age. And yet only 7% of likely voters favor him.

I’m sorry but it’s somehow comforting to hear that Simon Kinberg‘s Dark Phoenix (Fox/Disney, 6.7) really and truly blows.

“If a movie can be said to suffer from low-grade depression, this one certainly seems to be, shuffling in its socks and bathrobe through a not-quite-two-hour running time with an attitude that is closer to grudging obligation than enthusiastic commitment.” — Washington Post critic Michael O’Sullivan.

Sung to the tune of Randy Newman‘s “Short People”:

“Dark Phoenix got no reason to / Dark Phoenix got no reason to / Dark Phoenix got no reason to exist.”