Daily
Pounding of Heels
If only we could get rid of people who walk heavy…boom! boom! boom! The kind of slam-heel walking that can make an older home vibrate and shudder. People who pound their heels like a weapon. My younger sister used to walk like this. When she used the stairway in our pre-war home you could hear those jackhammer heels ramming and thumping and giving pause to the main beams.
If you’re an elegant person (and by that I mean someone who also takes relatively short showers) you’ll walk around like you’re wearing hush-puppies. Like Swing Time Fred Astaire or Cary Grant over the Cannes rooftops in To Catch A Thief, or Marlon Brando shuffling across a sound stage in Guys and Dolls.
Remember Paul Newman describing Jackie Gleason as he was “shooting the eyes right off them balls” in The Hustler? “Look how he moves, he’s like a dancer!” It doesn’t matter if you’re big-boned or a Jabba; if you know how to walk you’ll always step softly.
There She Goes Again
The one-two punch of National Geographic‘s “Genius” series (Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso, Mary Shelley) and Gabe Polsky‘s In Search of Greatness doc has made me irritable. Because I can’t stand that awful word, even though I use it from time to time. And not just the word but people who seem to say it a lot, or more frequently than once in a blue moon.
The first time I recoiled at the word “genius” was when a New York girlfriend was explaining that she was dropping me for a guy who had his own advertising agency, Geoffrey something-or-other, and that he was a “real genius.” Fuck that guy and fuck anyone who calls anyone else the g-word, I decided then and there.
Decades have passed but I’ve noticed time and again that people who say “genius” the most — sycophants, ass-kissers, headline writers, wives and girlfriends, employees, speechwriters, radio-talk-show hosts — have the same kind of obsequious attitude about X-factor people. That’s my preferred term, by the way. No allusions to any sort of God-given brilliance or incandescence, but definitely off in some other realm.
I first heard the term when I was six or seven, when my mother was telling me who Albert Einstein was, and that was long before he changed his name to Albert Brooks. All I know is that I decided a long time ago to throw a little stink-eye at anyone who says “genius” in conversation. It’s one thing to type it and be done with it, but saying it out loud is like chalk on a blackboard.
Swoosh of the Sword
A semi-historic, invitation-only screening of Black Panther occured in Riyadh the night before last (i.e., Wednesday, 4.18). The premiere happened at a new AMC plex in the King Abdullah financial district, the first in the country since a 35-year-old ban on cinemas was lifted last December.
Video messages from various film industry bigwigs (Tom Rothman, Jeff Shell, Jim Gianopulos, Alan Bergman, Kevin Tsujihara) were screened before the feature. A message from producer and former AMPAS president Hawk Koch: “I’m sure that Saudi Arabian filmmakers are now going to start making the kinds of films that will gain recognition all over the world. And I bet very soon, a film from Saudi Arabia will get nominated for an Oscar!”
HE reaction: In my estimation, Koch’s encouraging vision is unlikely if not illusory. There’s a current p.r. effort underway to sell Saudi Arabia as a more liberal nation (i.e., a Saudi Arabian pavilion will appear at next month’s Cannes Film Festival), but it’s still a medieval-minded autocracy, and governed by a very hardline approach to Sharia Law. A harshly punitive government mentality has never been conducive to creative ferment, at least not in my experience.
The only thing Saudi Arabia is really liberal about, it seems, is beheading people, and they still occasionally stone people to death. A Wiki page says you can lose your head in Saudi Arabia for murder, treason, rape, blasphemy, adultery, sexual misconduct (anything non-hetero), sorcery or waging war on God.
Guillermo Banters With Hurricane Billy
Guillermo del Toro on the sweet smell of success: “You have to remain a scrapper, [and] success palliates that spirit. Success tells you ‘you’re a good boy.’ If you give into that impulse you get disoriented because you get patted on the back. The artist has a certain degree of rage against the people [who] are inside the candlelight banquet…success tells you, ‘come on in, have a piece of chicken, have a glass of wine,’ and you shouldn’t. If you go into that banquet you lose some of that scrapper spirit.”
HE response: There’s nothing wrong with a friendly candlelit banquet if you don’t drink, and if you go easy on the chicken. Everyone needs to come in from the cold from time to time. Also: Every artist suffers the same anxiety attack every morning, and the name of that attack is “Have I peaked? Am I more or less done? Am I dead but don’t it?” The natural knee-jerk response is “Hell, no!…I’m just beginning, more mountains to climb,” etc. But there’s another voice from deep inside that says “you think?”
William Friedkin on his French Connection Oscar glory: “I feel like I kind of lost myself. Absolutely.”
HE response: The thing about success and power is that they goad people into revealing their dark sides. If a person has snarly tendencies embedded in his/her personality, success makes them rise to the surface. Also: For the 109th time, the Billy train hit a wall when Sorcerer flopped, but — BUT! — it’s a brilliant film. The mistake was having the mob assassins come for Roy Scheider at the very end. The poor guy had just made it through a terrible ordeal through sheer moxie and determination. He deserved a measure of peace, and perhaps even a ticket out of that South American hellhole. But Friedkin had him killed. When that happened, the audience went “fuck this movie.”
Friedkin and Del Toro got together under the banner of a Talk House podcast, posted by The Playlist‘s Rodrigo Perez.
Where Did This Come From?
The Wikipage says Sony originally scheduled The Equalizer 2 (Sony, 7.20) for a 9.29.17 release. This was later shifted to 9.14.18 and then 8.3.18 before finally settling on 7.20. What does that mean?
Incorrigible Old Fox
I bought the idea of Robert Redford playing a career thief in Peter Yates‘ The Hot Rock (’72) because he wasn’t really invested in the character, John Dortmunder. Redford was obviously cruising easy as he went through the escapist motions, plus he was only 35 and really good-looking back then.
20 years later, the 55 year-old Redford played a computer hacker in Phil Alden Robinson‘s Sneakers (’92), but his character, Martin Bishop, wasn’t a ne’er-do-well as much as a clever operator looking to play both sides.
In David Lowery‘s upcoming The Old Man and the Gun (Fox Searchlight, 10.5), the 81 year-old Redford plays the real-life Forrest Tucker, a career criminal and prison escape artist. It looks and sounds like good fun. I don’t really believe the elderly Redford as a hardcore bank robber, but the trick of these films is to nudge you into going along despite your reluctance. Casey Affleck, Sissy Spacek, Danny Glover, Tika Sumpter, Tom Waits and Elisabeth Moss costar.
The last really good old-criminal movie, of course, was Phillip Borsos‘ The Grey Fox (’82). It starred Richard Farnsworth (61 during filming) as real-life bank robber Bill Miner.
The Old Man and the Gun director David Lowery, Robert Redford during filming.
Cannes Additions
This morning Deadline‘s Andreas Wiseman actually described the new additions to the 2018 Cannes Film Festival as “very exciting.”
Let me tell you what exciting would be. Exciting would be an announcement that the three big no-show Netflix titles — Alfonso Cuaron‘s Roma, Paul Greengrass‘s Norway and Orson Welles‘ The Other Side of the Wind — will screen following a surprise resolution of the Cannes-Netflix dispute.
I’m intrigued by the addition of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s The Wild Pear Tree (competition) and Kevin Macdonald’s Whitney (midnight), but not so much by Lars von Trier’s The House That Jack Built (sans competition), Terry Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (screening on closing night) and Ramin Bahrani‘s Fahrenheit 451 (midnight).
HE’s Jordan Ruimy has heard that Ceylan’s film is “slow as molasses and his most experimental movie,” and that Cannes accepted the film “with reservations.”
No one was a greater Von Trier fan than myself during the period of Breaking the Waves (’96), The Idiots (’98), Dancer in the Dark (’00), Dogville (’03) and The Boss Of It All (’06). But Antichrist, Melancholia and the Nymphomaniac films underwhelmed. I’m sensing shock and brutality from The House That Jack Built, which isn’t a competition film — unusual for Von Trier.
The Gilliam won’t screen until after the awards ceremony on the evening of Saturday, 5.19. My plane back to the States (actually to Dublin) leaves that night at 11:35 pm so I guess not.
Bahrani’s 99 Homes, his Florida real-estate movie with Andrew Garfield and Michael Shannon, was a predictable slog; ditto At Any Price, the Dennis Quaid-Zac Efron father-son drama. You can see what Fahrenheit 451 is up to at a glance — same 99 Homes dynamic only with Michael B. Jordan in the Garfield role.
McDonald’s Whitney doc may be dismissible unless he’s straight-from-the-shoulder about Whitney Houston‘s drug problems, and especially her self-destructive relationship with Bobby Brown. I’m getting tired of people tippy-toeing around the facts.
Vision, Focus, Midnight Oil
I finally caught Betsy West and Julie Cohen‘s RBG, a clean, concise and well-ordered doc about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Watching it wasn’t electric or thrilling or breathtaking, but then neither is Ginsberg. But for years she’s been been a steady, exacting and quietly brilliant workhorse who has focused on women’s right issues and helped to nudge the culture and the patriarchy along in her own way. RBG is one of those deliberate, connect-the-dots biographical portraits, but I was very pleased with it. It radiates sincerity and respect, and is good humored when the material warrants. West and Cohen made me wish with all my heart that Ms. Ginsburg might continue to serve on the Supreme Court for another 40 or 50 years. I sincerely hope this will happen.
Bardem Teaches Chalamet How It’s Done
In an interview with Paris Match‘s Dany Jucaud, Javier Bardem stood up for former collaborator Woody Allen. The thought! Asked by Jacaud if he was “ashamed” of having worked with Allen on Vicky Cristina Barcelona (’07), Bardem replied: “Absolutely not. I am very shocked by this sudden treatment. Judgments in the states of New York and Connecticut found him innocent. The legal situation today is the same as in 2007. If there was evidence that Woody Allen was guilty, then yes, I would have stopped working with him, but I have doubts.”
Bardem has presumably considered various points raised by Robert Weide last December and in a previous piece dated 5.30.16, not to mention what Moses Farrow has said about the whole matter.
Coward That I Am
A week ago I was invited to participate in a silent theatrical environment thingy called PLAY (242 South Broadway, LA 90012), which is the creation of actress (and Damian Chazelle’s partner-fiance) Olivia Hamilton.
I was instantly terrified, of course. I didn’t want to be dismissive or impolite, but Hollywood Elsewhere doesn’t pretend or play or dance around or any of that carefree pre-school stuff. Life is duty, focus, nose to the grindstone, devotion, manning up, late hours, etc. I don’t want to revert to being a five-year-old, but I’m not putting anyone down who might enjoy this. It’s just not me. I’m too grumpy, too deep, too Siddhartha. (Or do I mean Steppenwolf?)
But I didn’t have the courage to level with Olivia and just tell her this. I just kept putting it off. And then six or seven hours before showtime last weekend, I couldn’t stand my cowardice any more so I wrote her a “sorry with apologies” note.
HE to Hamilton: “It just hit me that ‘the silent PLAY‘ begins sometime after 10 pm this evening. Please forgive me, but (a) I’m too afraid of attending in general and (b) I can’t attend something that starts this late. I’m sorry for not reading the particulars until just now. I’m a daily columnist and on too strict of an early-morning wake-up schedule. Plus I’m a coward.
“If there’s any way I can help by posting, say, a video piece about ‘the silent PLAY,’ I’d be happy to do that.
“My blood ran cold at the thought of attending this to begin with — socks, silence, play, masks, wigs, etc. But I was going to throw caution to the winds and attend anyway because [Santa Barbara Film Festival director] Roger Durling told me it’s great.” HE Interjection: I’m not exactly “blaming” Durling for getting me into this, but he was definitely the instigator.
“Please forgive me, Olivia. I don’t want to hurt your feelings or not show support as far as I’m emotionally able. Please send me any video clips or essays or anything of that nature, and anything in the way of a first-person review or what-have-you, and I’ll be glad to post it. I really want to help and do what I can short of ‘playing.’ I feel guilty, but I feel even more intimidated and terrified of attending. Not to mention the late hour.
“Love and mercy, Jeffrey Wells, HE”
Cohen Knows Truth Of It
Michael Cohen dropping his lawsuits against Fusion GPS and Buzzfeed means what? Obviously that he doesn’t want to submit to the discovery process and/or testify under oath that he was or wasn’t in Prague in the late summer of 2016. But in the wake of a two-day-old Washington Times article in which a Mueller staffer warned that “many” articles about the Trump-Russia probe have been “wrong,” there is pressure upon McClatchy’s Peter Stone and Greg Gordon to deliver a follow-up to their 4.13 story that said Team Mueller has “evidence” that Cohen did in fact visit Prague, according to “two sources.”
Cohen is basically a thuggish, Trump-beholden Michael Clayton…right? Without the moral awakening. Instead of Cohen saying “you’re so fucked” to Tilda Swinton or some other steely adversary at the end of the third act, knowledgable attorneys along with the entire Twitterverse are saying this to Cohen, day in and day out.