The less afraid you are, the less intimidated you are, and the better you are. Same deal with writing.

“I didn’t have a lot of experience under my feet”…got it. The expression is “under my belt” but whatever.

Before I took my first tentative stabs at small-time Hollywood journalism in ’77 and ’78, I was a timid, floundering wannabe…a “secret genius” living in Santa Monica, suffering from occasional nightmares and wondering where and what the hell.

Right around that time or more precisely in December of ’74, I was an audience member during a taping of Both Sides Now, a short-lived, Los Angeles-based impromptu debate show that was co-hosted by the conservative-minded George Putnam and the iconcoclastic Mort Sahl.

Sahl, whom I finally met and chatted with at the Beverly Glen shopping area in ’02, had been one of my all-time favorite comedians. He broke ground for an entire generation of hip, social-critique comics who began to punch through in the ’70s and ’80s (George Carlin, Bill Maher, etc.).

The Both Sides Now guest that night was screenwriter Robert Kaufman (Getting Straight, Love At First Bite). Kaufman’s latest screenwriting effort, the Richard Rush-directed Freebie and the Bean, had just opened that month. I wasn’t a fan of the chaotic action-comedy tone and so when the q & a portion began I stood up and expressed this opinion. Kaufman pushed back rather curtly, initially by calling me inarticulate.

The irony is that in early October of ‘82 Kaufman and Ted Kotcheff, who was then doing press interviews (or who had recently done them) for First Blood…I met Kaufman and Kotcheff at Joe Allen one night, and they were giving me a big rundown on the convoluted pre-production and production experience of Tootsie.

Kaufman had been one of the Tootsie writers (along with Don McGuire, Murray Schisgal, Elaine May, director Dick Richards) and the stories were fairly wild, or certainly seemed that way at the time. The anecdotes were hilarious…a window into a flavorful and frenzied development process.

In my subsequent, highly entertaining discussions with Kaufman about Tootsie I naturally never raised the eight-year-old topic of our mild little Freebie and the Bean contretemps…a mere blip on Kaufman’s mid ‘70s radar screen.

“It Wasn’t A Comedy,” posted on 4.21.20: In the late fall of ’82 I wrote a big, laborious piece for The Film Journal (which I was managing editor of) about the making of Tootsie and particularly the then-astounding notion that a present-day New York comedy about an actor who can’t get a job could cost $21 million, which at the time was way above the norm.

I talked to several creative participants about it, including cowriters Robert Kaufman, Murray Schisgal and director Sydney Pollack. At at the end of the writing process I was fairly sick of the whole saga.

But I never heard this particular story from Dustin Hoffman before today.

The one Tootsie element I didn’t care for (no offense) was Dave Grusin‘s music. Too peppy, too coy, too cute-sounding, And I wasn’t a huge fan of Teri Garr‘s performance. But I loved the supporting turns by Pollack (as Hoffman’s agent), Charles Durning, Jessica Lange, Doris Belack, Bill Murray and Dabney Coleman.

Tomorrow (Friday, 3.22) is a “roaming around Manhattan and catching movies” day, and attraction #1 is Claude Sautet‘s Classe tous risques, which roughly translates as “risk everywhere you turn”. The trailer makes me feel as if I’ve already seen it. Lino Ventura (born in 1919, nudging 40 when the film was shot) stars with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Sandra Milo supporting. Boilerplate: “A French career criminal on the run with his family returns to Paris with help from a new criminal acquaintance and confronts the members of his old gang.”

When’s the last time Hollywood delivered a sequel to a film made 37 years prior?

From Screen Daily‘s “Cannes 2024: What’s in the running?” (3.21.24), co-written by Mona Tabbara, Jeremy Kay, Elisebet Cabeza, Emilio Mayorga and Rebecca Leffler:

The filming of Megalopolis began in November 2022 and concluded in March 2023.

I want an unequivocal, unmitigated apology from everyone (and especially from HE commenter Dean Treadway) who argued with me about the spelling of Road House. Everywhere in the country it’s spelled “roadhouse” and the movie title is just wrong…a weird fabrication. And guess what? Road House itself agrees.

Jake Gyllenhaal: Can I ask a question?
Jessica Williams: Sure.
Gyllenhaal: Why is it called the Road House?
Williams: Whadaya mean?
Gyllenhaal: Isn’t roadhouse one word?
Williams: Yeah. That’s the joke. It’s a roadhouse, but it’s called the Road…House. Get it?
Gyllenhaal: Still unresolved.
Williams: Well, I don’t know. My uncle had a unique sense of humor.

“Everything I’ve worked for [is gone]…over a fucking bouncer!”

I liked Doug Liman’s half-dopey, self-satirizing Road House much, much more than Rowdy Harrington’s 1989 version.

I don’t remember Harrington’s film being even randomly amusing, but Liman’s is occasionally hilarious, especially during the last half-hour, a CG extravaganza that plays like a kind of aquatic Road Warrior.

Jake Gyllenhaal‘s Elwood Dalton is a kind of grinning, shoulder-shrugging Shane-like figure — a deadpan space-case with a dry sense of humor, and some guilt by way of Robert E. Lee Prewitt thrown into the mix — a soft-spoken Zen guy with a fear of his own rage — a dude with an undertow of depression who almost wipes himself out on a rural railroad track at the very beginning but then goes “aahh, maybe not.”

Several weeks ago (i.e., 1.24.24) Liman called Gyllenhaal’s Dalton “a career-best performance.” That sounded like a reach when I read Liman’s Deadline essay, but now I see what he meant. At times you’re thinking it’s a lazy performance, and at other times one imbued with real spirit. And at the end you’re thinking “wow, that was exceptional in a fart-around way.”

The only problem with Liman’s version is that Henry Braham‘s interiors are under-lighted. The outdoor sunshine stuff is fine, but the bar scenes are nearly impossible to see, mostly mud and murk (or at least it looked this way on the 65-inch Sony OLED) — I was squinting my damn eyes and shouting at Liman and Braham, “C’mon, guys, there are ways to light these scenes without it looking like movie lighting!”.

Dean Cundey‘s lensing of Harrington’s version is certainly easier on the eyes.

Tatiana and I drove from Miami to Key West (i.e., the Overseas Highway) in November of ’17, and I was underwhelmed by the over-crowded downmarket vibe. “Just a slowish, congested, two-lane graytop with very little to recommend or be intrigued about,” I wrote.

The setting of Road House is a fictional community called Glass Key. As it turns out 99% of Liman’s film was shot in the Dominican Republican (Punta Cana and Santo Domingo). The only footage of the actual O.H. is a shot of Fred the Tree.

Did you know you could get stabbed in the stomach and keep fighting because it’s just a stab wound and only pussies let this kind of thing get in the way?

Did you know that many of the characters in Road House are related by blood (daughters, fathers, sons)? Well, they are.

Did you know that Gyllenhaal aside, most many of the Road House good guys are played by (a) actors of color, (b) the bad guys by scurvy, tattooed, chopper-riding white guys and (c) that the supporting cast includes an obese bartender?

Cheers also for the maniacal Conor McGregor as the chief growling animal, a shirtless beast named Knox…all I can say is, Travis Kelce has some serious competition as far as becoming Hollywood’s next high-testosterone guy .

I loved Billy Magnussen‘s performance as “Ben Brandt”, a shithead yuppie villain, because he clearly telegraphs that he knows he’s in an amusingly written attitude film, a put-on punch-out thing, and doesn’t give a shit either way.

I was also pleased by Joaquim de Almeida‘s sheriff, a 70-plus bad guy.

Daniela Melchior handles the significant girlfriend role (played by Kelly Lynch in the ’89 film) with assurance and solemnity. Hannah Lanier does pretty well as a laid-back teenaged bookseller. Jessica Williams is also approvable as Frankie, the owner of the Road House.

I have been a Ghosbusters vomit-bagger for almost 40 years now.

I hated at least 90% of Ivan Reitman’s 19884 original, and felt disgusted by the megaplex adoration. Some of Bill Murray‘s quips were amusing, sure, but I despised the third act with a passion — that idiotic demon dog, Sigourney Weaver‘s possession by “Gozer” and especially that huge marshmallow monster clomping around Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

A woman I was seeing at the time, a marketing exec, found it delightful. I think on some level this may have contributed to our eventual breakup. I remember taking a walk one afternoon and realizing that her Ghostbusters worship was a bridge too far.

Exactly five years later came Ghostbusters II (6.16.89), and the few aspects I found tolerable or vaguely amusing about the ’84 version had been more or less eliminated.

The public was spared any further 20th Century sequels, and for a long stretch the idea of a 21st Century Ghostbusters rehash seemed unlikely. Thank you, God.

Then came Paul Feig’s feminist version, Ghostbusters (7.15.16). The partly sexist fanboys hated it but I found it half-tolerable until the final godawful 35 minutes.

Review excerpt: “It’s formula bullshit, of course — what else could it be? — but if you can lower your standards and just sit back and take it, it’s 80 minutes of silly ‘fun’ — fun defined as nodding submission to a super-budget presentation of a franchise concept that’s moderately amusing here and there and doesn’t piss you off. And then, with 35 minutes to go, Ghostbusters becomes a massive CGI show to end all massive CGI shows — Zack Snyder‘s Man of Steel finale meets the Independence Day sequel meets the Pillsbury doughboy monster meets the end of the world.”

And that was it. I got off the boat and have never even flirted with the idea of getting back on. And so I blew off Jason Reitman‘s Ghostbusters: Afterlife (’21), and there’s no way in hell I’ll be watching Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire> (opening tonight).

The great M. Emmet Walsh, whom I worked for in late ’85 and early ’86 and got to know moderately well during that brief period, has passed at age 88….just shy of 89.

Walsh’s three finest performances were given in Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Blood Simple (sleazy private detective), Ulu Grosbard‘s Straight Time (Dustin Hoffman‘s sleazy parole officer) and a flinty high school swim coach in Robert Redford‘s Ordinary People (’80).

I first became acquainted with Walsh while working as a unit publicist on New Line’s Critters (’85). I told him that his Blood Simple performance as oily shamus Loren Visser was the stuff of film noir legend and that it warranted a Best Supporting Actor campaign.

Walsh agreed and subsequently hired me to run the show, so to speak — creating press releases, creating trade ads and generating press attention that might push his candidacy along.

Walsh had a snappy, feisty mind, and he didn’t hesitate to tell me when my press kit prose was slightly off-kilter or over-baked.

We ultimately couldn’t persuade the Academy, but Walsh won the 1985 Spirit Award for Best Male Lead. I’d like to think I had something to do with that. Plus I got to join Walsh for a lunch with Joel and Ethan somewhere in downtown Manhattan in early ’86.

The Walsh campaign was the highlight of my publicity work during the mid to late ’80s (staff writer at Samuel Goldwyn, unit/in-house publicity for New Line Cinema, press kit writer for Cannon Films).

I ran into Emmet three or four years ago inside a Spirit Awards tent. Good to see him again.

“Same Old Song,” posted on 1.23.14: “The thing I dearly love about this ending is the fact that the mortally wounded Lorren Visser is, at the end of his life, suddenly very concerned about a tiny droplet of water on a water pipe that’s about to land on his face.

“It’s not the slug in his stomach, which he can do nothing about. He knows he’s about to go and is even cackling about it, weird guy that he is. What Visser can’t accept is that damn little glob of H20. Taking shape, getting heavier, larger. The water looks down at Visser and he looks up at it. Waiting, waiting…and then it drops.”

In a 3.19.24 q & a with theface.com’s Jade Wickes, Adam Driver is asked for any descriptions he can provide about Francis Coppola‘s Megalopolis, which may or may not be debuting in Cannes.

Driver: “It’s kind of undefinable, which feels very general until you watch the movie. Then my answer will be perfect. There’s not a lot of precedent for it and it’s wild on a big scale, which is what’s really unique about it.”

Wickes: “You play Caesar, a renegade architect. Can you describe him in one sentence?”

Driver: “He’s a visionary. He’s very much Francis [Ford Coppola], in a way, where he’s investigated every way of how people can do something and is trying not to get stuck on the right answer. That’s an idea that’s moving to me, and one that reflects Francis.”

I think we know what Driver is saying here.

Generic Wiki synopsis: “A young new York woman, Julia Cicero, is divided between loyalties to her father, Frank Cicero (Forest Whitaker), who has a classical view of society, and her architect lover, Caesar, who is more progressive and pining for the future. Caesar wants to rebuild New York City as a utopia following a devastating disaster.”