The only time I’ve ever seen those idiotic, irritating VHS scratches or static lines or whatever the fuck they are was on old, worn-down, VHS tapes that had recorded upon over and over. They never appeared on a store-bought or store-rented VHS tape.

John Gavin, who had only one truly decent role as an actor and, when you get right down to it, only one really good line in his entire career, has left this mortal coil. He was 86. Until today I never knew (or cared to know) that the tall, handsome, dark-complexioned Gavin was born Juan Vincent Apablasa, and that he was of Mexican and Chilean descent, and was fluent in Spanish at an early age.

Gavin’s moment in the sun came when he played Fairvale hardware store owner Sam Loomis, the randy boyfriend of Janet Leigh‘s Marion Crane, in Alfred Hitchcock‘s Psycho (’60).

His one great line happened when Marion’s sister Lila (Vera Miles) visited Sam’s store in search of Lila. When Sam realized the conversation was becoming too personal and agitated, he told store clerk Bob (Frank Killmond) to “run out and get some lunch.” When Bob said, “Oh, that’s okay, Sam, I brought it with me,” Loomis said, “Run out and eat it.”

The Rock Hudson-esque Gavin was also pretty good in Douglas Sirk‘s Imitation of Life (’59) and as the young Julius Caesar in Kirk Douglas and Stanley Kubrick‘s Spartacus, although he always brought a certain chiselled stiffness to whatever he played.

Gavin almost stepped in as the new post-George Lazenby 007 in Diamonds Are Forever (’71), but that went south when Sean Connery was lured back with a grand payday.

5:45 pm update: Rose McGowan has apparently cancelled her previously scheduled appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher, presumably due to the recent suicide of her former manager, Jill Messick.

Earlier: Two days after the tragic suicide of her ex-manager Jill Messick, Rose McGowan is due to appear on tonight’s Real Time with Bill Maher. If you were Maher, would you ask McGowan about that claim from Messick’s family that Messick was “victimized” and partly nudged towards self-destruction by certain charges alleged by McGowan? Or would you go easy in the name of sensitivity?

Producer friend: “Even though Rose is a victim whom I support, I think she went too far in bringing Jill into this. If I was Jill’s family, I would feel that Rose has some residual responsibility for Jill’s passing. It’s all too sad. I just hope Rose handles the Maher thing well and not in her usual manic way.” Me: “‘Residual responsibility’? If you accept that statement from Jill’s family, Rose’s comments about Messick to the N.Y. Times last October and in her Brave book prodded Jill toward suicide.”

Tonight’s other Real Time guests are Rep. Adam Schiff, Johann Hari, Richard Painter and White House journalist April Ryan.

Hollywood Elsewhere regrets having to leave Santa Barbara yesterday afternoon, and thereby missing last night’s SBIFF tribute to I, Tonya‘s Margot Robbie and Allison Janney, both of whom are Oscar-nominated in their respective acting categories. To judge by the clips Hollywood Reporter awards columnist Scott Feinberg did another swell job of interviewing. Robbie hasn’t a chance of winning Best Actress, as we all know — Three Billboards‘ Frances McDormand will almost certainly take it, although there’s a very slight chance of Lady Bird‘s Saoirse Ronan pulling off a surprise win. Janney, on the other hand, is almost guaranteed to beat Lady Bird‘s Laurie Metcalf (my personal pick) for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar.

I don’t know for a fact that Rod Lurie’s deathbed director (i.e., a major brand-name helmer who begged Lurie to never work with a certain actor, according to Lurie’s account) was the late John Frankenheimer, and that the actor Lurie promised to never hire was Val Kilmer. But these are pretty good guesses.

Lurie described the late unnamed helmer as a “mentor” on Facebook yesterday, which is the same term he used in describing Frankenheimer in a 10.4.16 interview to promote Killing Reagan. (Quote: “My mentor was John Frankenheimer.”) When I asked Lurie about this, he said “no comment.”

Frankenheimer is on the record for having loathed and despised Kilmer after working with him on the horribly troubled Island of Dr. Moreau shoot in the mid ’90s. Frankenheimer has been widely quoted as saying “even if I was directing a film called The Life of Val Kilmer, I wouldn’t have that prick in it.”

Frankenheimer was also quoted as saying “I don’t like Val Kilmer, I don’t like his work ethic, and I don’t want to be associated with him ever again.”

The late, great John Frankenheimer.

Frankenheimer, whom I knew slightly, died on 7.6.02. By that point Lurie, who apparently became chummy with Frankenheimer after writing something fair and respectful during a rough patch in Frankenheimer’s career (possibly during or after the Dr. Moreau debacle), was well situated as a feature director, having made Deterrence (’99), The Contender (’00) and The Last Castle (’01).

So let’s imagine Lurie sitting by Frankenheimer’s bedside sometime in early or mid ’02, except Lurie isn’t Lurie — he’s me. Speaking with my attitude, my philosophy, my sense of things.

Including the fact that I harbor no ill feelings about Kilmer. I helped report that “Psycho Kilmer” Entertainment Weekly article that ran in mid ’96, but I had a nice chat with him at a party he threw at his home back in ’04 or thereabouts. (He had just finished working on Oliver Stone‘s Alexander.) I ran into Kilmer again in the fall of ’11 while having lunch with Descendants costar Judy Greer. We waved and smiled as Kilmer sat at a nearby table. When I tried to pay the bill the waitress told me the check had been taken care of by “that man sitting over there,” except Kilmer had left by that point.

Anyway….

Frankenheimer: I want you to promise me one thing, Rod. I may not be around much longer, but I want to know that you’ll never, ever work with that prick. Please.

Lurie: Uh-huh.

Frankenheimer: Will you promise me this?

Lurie: No Kilmer?

Frankenheimer: I want your word.

Lurie: For what…the rest of my life?

Frankenheimer: We’re friends and I want you to promise me this.

Lurie: Look, John, I love you like a father and I’m sorry for what you went through, but you can’t…

Frankenheimer: What?

Lurie: You know as well as anyone that we all…

Frankenheimer: Rod…

As we all know, the hairs on the sides and lower rear of your head never fall out. When hair surgeons do the micro-replacement procedure to follically enhance the above-the-forehead area, they use hairs from the back of your head for this very reason. But they do it selectively, or not so you’d notice. It therefore makes no sense that the rear of President Trump‘s windswept head would look like the ass of a pig. Puzzling. I can only surmise that Trump’s hair surgeons removed every last hair from the back of his head for top-of-the-head implants. As one with a certain Czech Republic perspective on such matters, I am totally fine when the wind kicks up.

The family of the late Jill Messick, a chronic depression sufferer who committed suicide yesterday, is claiming that Messick was “victimized” and partly nudged towards self-destruction by certain charges alleged by former client Rose McGowan.

McGowan’s charges appeared in a 10.28.17 N.Y. Times story as well as her recently released “Brave” book.

A longtime producer and former Miramax exec who served as McGowan’s manager when the actress was allegedly raped by Harvey Weinstein in January 1997, Messick allegedly felt diminished by statements that McGowan made about her not being a vigilant-enough defender of McGowan during a time of great anger and trauma, and then undermining her claim of having been raped in an email written to Weinstein.

Jill Messick and Brad Grey, now both deceased, in 2007.

In a 10.28.17 story by N.Y. Times reporter Susan Dominus, McGowan said that the 1.28.97 Sundance Film Festival meeting with Weinstein at Deer Valley’s Stein-Erickson lodge was arranged by Messick.

McGowan has said that Messick comforted McGowan when she learned of the attack. “But in the months to come,” Dominus wrote, “McGowan did not feel supported by her management team.

“Anne Woodward, now a manager herself, was a young assistant in Messick’s office at the time, and was in on many of Ms. Messick’s calls. ‘I remember that Rose was extremely upset and did not want to [accept a hush money offer from Weinstein],’ Ms. Woodward said. ‘She wanted to fight.’

“[But] no one around her, as Ms. Woodward recalls, supported that instinct. ‘It was an emotionally shocking way to see a woman being treated,’ Ms. Woodward said. ‘That’s what stuck with me.'”

Sam Rockwell, the likely winner of a Best Supporting Actor Oscar next month, was given the royal tribute treatment last night at the Santa Barbara Film Festival.

Critics-award-wise, Rockwell’s performance in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was lagging behind Willem Dafoe‘s in The Florida Project all through December, but then Rockwell suddenly surged at the Golden Globes and has the been the heir apparent golden boy ever since. This aspect wasn’t mentioned, of course, by Vanity Fair contributor and moderator Krista Smith.

The only beef I had with the presentation is that no mention was made of Rockwell’s performance in Lynn Shelton‘s Laggies, one of those confident, charismatic, rock-steady performances that doesn’t miss a trick.

(l. to r.) Krista Smith, Rockwell, actor-director Clark Gregg.

From “Rockwell’s Moment,” posted on 10.26.17: “I’ve been a Sam Rockwell fan for ages. He’s primarily known for playing loopy eccentrics or crazy fucks. He plays a somewhat more interesting character in Three Billboards outside of Ebbing, Missouri — Jason Dixon, a small-town, none-too-bright deputy who screws his life up with violence and stupidity, and then actually self-reflects and grows out of a place of despair and self-loathing. And you admire him for that. This is why, I suspect, Rockwell is looking at a likely Oscar nomination.

But his two most likable performances, for me, were variations of droll — Owen, a droll father figure type, in Nat Faxon and Jim Rash‘s The Way, Way Back (’13), and Craig, a droll single dad and a possible romantic attachment for Keira Knightley, in Lynn Shelton‘s Laggies (’14). And he was even more winning as the perversely droll Mervyn in Martin McDonagh‘s A Behanding in Spokane, a B’way play that happened in 2010.

Paul Schrader recently opined about a view of Jessica Chastain’s that was posted on Indiewire three or four days ago. I half agree with Schrader and Chastain both. I abhor watching cruelty or brutality, especially the sadistic kind, but I recognize that you can’t outlaw horrible behavior in movies as it unfortunately exists all over.

Yesterday on Facebook director Rod Lurie posted the following: “Some time ago a director friend of mine, a true giant in my industry, died. Before he passed away, he made a deathbed request of me. He made me promise not to work with a specific actor, so filled of rage was he at the hell this particular thespian put him through. In that moment, which was very sad and heartfelt, I agreed.

“That actor has now been brought to me as a perfect choice for one of my films, and he may well be. [But] I think I have to keep my promise, right?”

George C. Scott as the cynical Bert, Paul Newman as the gifted Eddie Felson in Robert Rossen’s The Hustler.

I replied as follows: “Absolutely not — do what’s best for your film at all times, to your last dying breath. If the director you made your promise to was still with us, I would say ‘of course, keep your word.’ But he’s with the angels now, and you’re here and trying to make the best film possible. That’s all that matters. You kept your word to the departed director before he died, right? You did the right thing then. Now move on and make the best film that you can, and if you feel that casting the Devil himself will help you achieve that goal, then do that.”

I was also thinking that the dying director had a strange attitude about this allegedly awful actor and especially about “water under the bridge” in general. Who on his deathbed is thinking about trying to arrange that some actor, who must have had some value and some understanding of what it takes to socially survive in this industry, never works with a friend or vice versa? What kind of dying person cares about stuff like this?

Paul Schrader joined the thread and said something along the lines of “fools make promises but artists make art,” and that’s all that Lurie should care about — the movie, not the promise.

Some guy said that Lurie has to keep his word or he’ll have a hard time looking in the bathroom mirror for the rest of his life. To which I replied, “What are you, the local priest? To be a good director you must either be a natural sonuvabitch or learn to be one. That’s what John Ford allegedly said at one time to Nunnally Johnson.”

Last night I dreamt about discovering a mindblowingly great film about a Syrian or Iranian immigrant family trying to survive in Manhattan or Brooklyn or somewhere back east. It was basic and elemental but world-class. It lasted two and a half hours, but it got better and better as it went on. It was like an Asghar Farhadi film, a simple tale that becomes more and more complex as more and more details are revealed. I was imagining it in amazingly specific terms during the dream but they fell away the instant I woke up.

It was one of those films that you think you’ve got figured out, and then it takes a turn in the road that you didn’t expect, and then it takes another and then sinks in deeper and deeper, and after a while you’re going “whoa, whoa…wait a minute.”

I knew along with the 30 or 40 other critics who had seen it for the first time (the film strangely hadn’t premiered at Telluride or Toronto and was just emerging at the end of award season, sometime in November or December) that this wasn’t just a major discovery but an all-time masterpiece, and I was feeling that heartbeat, those feelings of profound oh-my-God excitement that I didn’t feel during ’17. The rushes I was feeling after seeing Dunkirk, Lady Bird and especially Call Me By Your Name were strong, but not as intense as what I was feeling last night.

I was so excited about this film that I was telling myself within the dream that I needed to wake up and write down the details before forgetting them — it was that good.

In a 2.7 Hollywood Reporter interview with Ben Svetkey, Willem Dafoe mentioned the peace of mind he gets from hand-washing his undies or visiting nearby laundromats when he’s staying in “strange” cities. “I did that in France recently,” he says. “I was shooting a movie there, and it was a beautiful experience. For some reason, people are really nice to me in laundromats and I have these great encounters. Talk about fun and sexy.”

Mon experience exactement. Well, not sexy but fun in a mild, calming sort of way.

15 years ago I was staying in a place on rue Durantin in Montmartre. Early one evening I lugged my pillowcase of dirties over to the Laverie Automatique (2 rue Burq, just north of rue d’Abesses) and tried to figure out the centrally computerized system they have there. One wall-mounted device accepts tokens for all the washing machines and dryers. A young Australian woman noticed my distress and showed me the ropes. We would up chatting for a while.

Why am I remembering that otherwise uneventful evening with such clarity? Because it was pleasurable and almost joyous on a certain level. Oh, and unlike Dafoe, I love folding after removing the socks and T-shirts from the dryer.