Daily

Stockholm Arlanda is seemingly waaay out in the country. No sprawling suburbs or congested business strips nearby — just mile upon square mile of birch and pine trees, like you’re flying into Savannah. An unusually attractive airport setting. Not oversized, mellow vibe.

Plus it’s also somewhat pleasant to be around all these attractive Swedish people with their Nordic features, blonde hair (although black hair is equally plentiful) and relatively trim physiques. If you’ve done any travelling over the last 10 or 15 years you know that Jabbas are ubiquitious in U.S. airports, but there are almost none here. So it’s a nice place to hang.

During the flight I watched Dog Day Afternoon (’75), and spotted “Tony Lip” — i.e., Anthony Vallelonga, the real-life character who was portrayed by Viggo Mortensen in Green Book. Dog Day Lip is playing a plainclothes detective. He’s glimpsed at the end of the climactic JFK tarmac sequence, or right after John Cazale‘s “Sal” has been shot in the forehead by Lance Henricksen. (Spoiler!).

My Norweigan flight (Boeing 787) to Stockholm leaves at 6 pm, but I’ll be leaving for LAX at 3 pm. I like to arrive early so I can get a little filing done in the lounge. Update: Left at 3:30, traffic was ghastly, arrived at Bradley terminal 100 minutes before flight time.

The flight leaves at 3 am Stockholm time, and arrives at Stockhom- at 1:35 pm local time — 10 and 1/2 hours. Four and a half hours later the Nice flight leaves Stockholm, and arrives at 9 pm Sunday (or 12 noon Los Angeles time). A grand total of 18 hours. Horrific.

Seven topics to write about at LAX and on the plane:

(a) Knock Down The House and Alexandra Occasio Cortez‘s not-good-looking, carrot-haired, beardo boyfriend;

(b) Echoes in the Canyon;

(c) Bad Biden “middle of the road” climate change thinking;

(d) HBO’s Chernobyl;

(e) Zac Efron‘s chilling performance as Ted Bundy in Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile;

(f) The only way I can stand Los Angeles, arguably the ugliest city in the world architecturally (along with Honolulu and three or four others), is to stay indoors in the day and hang out at night in certain soothing, semi-fragrant, aesthetically pleasing pockets; otherwise the ugliness would smother my soul;

(g) My home town of Westfield, New Jersey, where I spent my childhood and early high-school years, hasn’t substantially changed — it looks more or less that same as when I was nine years old. Likewise a Tuscan village called San Donato, which I’ve been visiting off and on for 18 years, has barely changed during that time. Ditto many portions of Paris, Rome and Hanoi. A few small changes but not many. Too bad the world can’t follow suit. Why do populations and economies always have to grow? Why don’t parents just replace themselves instead of creating super-broods?

The late Alvin Sargent was one of Hollywood’s finest and classiest 20th Century screenwriters, especially in the realm of adult relationship dramas. On the same level as Bo Goldman, William Goldman, Ben Hecht, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, David Rayfiel, Paul Schrader, Robert Towne, etc. Ordinary People was the peak, but the runners-up were The Sterile Cuckoo (’69), Paper Moon (’73), Julia (’77), Straight Time (’78, w/ Jeffrey Boam), Dominick and Eugene (’88), Hero (’92 w/ Laura Ziskin and David Webb Peoples) and Unfaithful (w/ William Broyles Jr. — ’02). Toward the end of his career Sargent wrote or co-wrote three or four Spider Man scripts. Alas, his kind of movie had fallen out of favor and paychecks were there for the taking.

If a film’s second weekend grosses are down less than 20%, it’s definitely caught on to some extent. That’s what Lionsgate’s Long Shot is managing as we speak — a “sweet hold of -18%, or $8M, for a 10-day total of $21.6M,” according to Deadline‘s Anthony D’Allessandro. Nothing to necessarily pop champagne over, but better than anticipated. HE hereby apologizes for a 5.9 box-office story that was titled “On The Death of Long Shot.” Everyone spoke a little too soon.

I’m sorry but this morning’s Variety story about veteran hotshots Jeff Sagansky and Harry Sloan launching Diamond Eagle Acquisition Corp. put me to sleep. “$400 million public offering, a means for investors to participate in new players in the media and digital sector”….wilt.

I’ve been reading trade stories about Sagansky since the early ’80s, and the only one that ever sunk in was unsubstantiated and most likely made up. Which is too bad.

The story concerned an alleged 1982 or ’83 meeting between Sagansky, at the time an NBC executive, and legendary director Fred Zinnemann (High Noon, From Here To Eternity, A Man For All Seasons, The Day of the Jackal). Those who told the story explained that Sagansky was a 31-year-old executive whippersnapper at the time, full of beans and ’80s attitude. So Zinneman walks into Sagansky’s office, they shake hands and sit down, and Sagansky says, “So, tell me about yourself!” And Zinneman replies, “You first.”

Earlier today I googled “Sagansky Zinnemann” and found nothing that verified the story. I tried to discover if Zinnemann had met with some other whippersnapper around this period…zip. But I distinctly remember the story kicking around.

Hollywood Elsewhere disappeared this morning due to the gentlemen geniuses at WP Engine, a cloud-linked ISP that I’ve been with since 2017. Five hours of simulated death due to the failure of a shared server + “miscommunications” + largely incompetent WP Engine staffers who did absolutely nothing to improve the situation for hours on end.

WP Engine tried to explain the problem with a lot of bullshit techno-jargon.

While fretting and whining I came upon an eye-opening essay by internet marketer Matthew Woodward, titled “Why Your Business Must Avoid WP Engine At All Costs.” Woodward knows whereof he speaks, and he’s convinced that they’re really bad news.

One way or another I’m separating myself from WP Engine at the first available opportunity. Hollywood Elsewhere has suffered through the usual issues and outages over the years, but the site has never been unconscious for a five-hour stretch. On top of which these jerks tripled their monthly fee from $99 plus overages to $300 last January, and that was for putting me on a shared server with 100 other clients.

I love that this happened a day before leaving for France. And I haven’t begun to pack yet.

Woodward is advising alienated, WordPress-using WP Engine clients to sign up with a Bulgaria-based ISP called WPX Hosting. They have a server in Chicago but they won’t offer phone chats of any kind, even in an emergency.

Read more

Is Renee Zellweger doing her own singing here?” Because the singer (whoever it is) sounds only vaguely like Judy Garland. Even a withered version. Does anyone know anything? I’ve read nothing.

Garland was only 47 when she died on 6.22.69. She looked like she was nudging 60.

Boilerplate: “An adaptation of the Olivier- and Tony-nominated Broadway play End of the Rainbow, Judy is an upcoming British-American biographical musical-drama film directed by Rupert Goold. It’s based on the life of American singer and actress Judy Garland, focusing on the late 1960s as she arrives in London for a run of sell-out concerts at the Talk of the Town. Zellweger as Garland; Rufus Sewell and Michael Gambon in supporting roles.

“Principal photography for the film began on 3.19.18, in London. The film will be distributed in the UK by Pathé, and in the US by Roadside Attractions and LD Entertainment. The film will be released in the US on 9.27.19.”

As Hollywood Elsewhere will depart the Cannes Film Festival at midday on Friday, 5.24, I was concerned by Thierry Fremaux’s 5.1 statement that Mektoub My Love: Intermezzo, the four-hour, sexually frank Abdellatif Kechiche film, would screen at the tail end of the festival “so the DCP has time to get there.”

Most of us presumed that the first showing would happen on Friday, 5.24 — a no-go pour moi.

Well, the press and public screening schedules appeared online a few hours ago, and the first press screening of Intermezzo will be on Thursday, 5.23 at 10 pm. Obviously a tough screening (breaking at 2 am) but good news all the same.

Read more

Disney and Guy Ritchie‘s live-action Aladdin had its big premiere in Paris last night. Several critic friends (myself included) have received invites to an all-media screening on Tuesday, 5.21, at the Hollywood Arclight, or 12 days hence. Three days later it opens worldwide. The rub is that a good majority of the top-tier critics will be in Cannes that day so the second-stringers will have a field day.

Note from Disney publicity: “In order to give audiences around the world the opportunity to enjoy our movies to the fullest and allow them to discover any surprises and plot twists, we respectfully ask that you as press refrain from revealing spoilers and detailed story points in your coverage, including on social media. The official review embargo is Wednesday, May 22nd at 6 am Pacific.”

Critic friend: “Yeah, I’ll bet a live-action mixed with CG film that essentially exists to duplicate a 25-year-old animated film is full of plot twists & surprises.”

A couple of days ago I happened to listen to Jimmy Webb and Richard Harris‘s “MacArthur Park.” It was quite the innovative single in the spring of ’68, and I still like the complex orchestration (or at least portions of it). But it hasn’t aged well. It feels too precious and weepy and forlorn.

It’s based on a shattered affair Webb had when he was 19 or 20. The girl worked in an office building near MacArthur Park, and they used to meet there for lunches or something. Some of the things Webb noticed at the time (the melting green cake icing, old men playing checkers) went right into the song.

But it sounds a little stodgy now, and Harris’s singing is labored — he’s pushing too hard and a bit outside his range.

In 1992, Miami Herald humorist Dave Barry conducted a poll among his readers, and they selected Harris’s recording as the worst song of all time, both in terms of “Worst Lyrics” and “Worst Overall Song”.

Barry: “It’s hard to argue with this selection. My 12-year-old son, Rob, was going through a pile of ballots, and he asked me how ‘MacArthur Park’ goes, so I sang it, giving it my best shot, and Rob laughed so hard that when I got to the part about leaving the cake out in the rain, and it took so long to bake it, and I’ll never have that recipe again, Rob was on the floor. He didn’t BELIEVE those lyrics were real. He was SURE his wacky old humor-columnist dad was making them up.”

But “MacArthur Park” reminded me of one serious, real-deal thing, which is that young people (late teens, early 20s) don’t deal well with romantic break-ups, as a rule.

I certainly didn’t. Whenever it happened I would collapse into a puddle. And it was almost always me getting dumped and not the other way around. (The same seemed to happen with Jett at that age.) After an especially painful jilting I remember being in my ex-girlfriend’s kitchen late at night (she was attending Marlboro College in Vermont while I was staying in a converted chicken coop on her parent’s spread) and just weeping my ass off.

The first time I dropped someone was in ’79, and I recall feeling really, really badly about it. But I had to because I’d fallen in love with someone else, and it felt like the real deal. (Plus she was sexy and super-smart) That “someone else” dumped me four or five months later. Life is a comedy written by a sadist.