In Don Siegel’s 1971 version of The Beguiled, Clint Eastwood‘s Corporal McBurney is desired by Geraldine Page‘s Martha, kisses Elizabeth Hartman‘s Edwina and has sex with Jo Ann Harris‘s Carol. In Sofia Coppola‘s upcoming, same-titled remake (Focus Features, 6.23), Nicole Kidman is Martha, Kirsten Dunst plays Edwina and Elle Fanning is Carol. Abstain, be chaste, respectful — you’ll never be sorry.

I’m a big Irish Spring or Old Spice body wash guy these days, and when I run out there’s always bar soap (Irish Spring, Dove, Dial). Every so often I’ll not only manage to run out of both, but forget about their absence until I’m in the shower with all the hot water and steam. And then I’m stuck. One substitute that isn’t too bad, I’ve noticed, is shaving cream. I’ve taken more than a few shaving-cream showers. When I’m really in a jam I’ll scamper out to the kitchen to grab a plastic-squeeze bottle of dishwashing liquid — not as good as shaving cream but at least it’s something. What happens when there’s no body wash, soap, shaving cream, dishwashing liquid, deodorant or Aqua Velva? I steam rinse, towel off and then spray myself with Febreze. I’ve honestly done that once or twice.

Hollywood Elsewhere has long been bothered by illogical elements in classic films. One is the whopping absurdity of 19th Century settlers living in the barren wilderness of John Ford‘s Monument Valley (no grass for cattle, no rich soil, no river, no nearby forest). Another is the natives of Skull Island having built a huge wall to prevent King Kong and the dinosaurs from invading their village, and yet having also constructed a super-sized gate that could only have been built to allow a beast invasion.

To these I’m adding a third head-scratcher: what the hell are the residents of Black Rock, California — the tiny hole-in-the-wall ghost town in John Sturges‘ Bad Day at Black Rock — doing there in the first place? No soil, no industry, no oil, no trees, no gold mine, not much groundwater except for the well that the late Kimoko discovered, no lake, no tourists — nothing but rocks and heat and nothing to do except sit around, play cards and scowl.

Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin are too dumb to realize what a blessing and godsend Spencer Tracy is because at least he’s given them something to do — i.e., prevent Tracy from learning what happened to poor Komoko. Without Tracy poking around their lives would revert to the usual paralyzing nothingness.

What are Robert Ryan, Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Anne Francis, Walter Brennan and the rest doing there? Are they all…what, living on government relief checks? Why is there a hotel in Black Rock? Who the hell would ever visit?

Another issue: Are you telling me that in the middle of this parched desert moonscape that Francis’s Liz, the 20something sister of John Ericson‘s Pete, isn’t married or “seeing” anyone in town? In a town this dead you know that someone would have stepped up and wooed his way in, and yet Liz could have been played by Thelma Ritter or Mildred Dunnock for all the action she’s getting.

“And unfortunately, during her hearing, Betsy DeVos proved beyond a shadow of a doubt not only that her ideology is incompatible with the mission of the Department of Education, but that she is fundamentally incompetent to be its leader. Throughout [her] hearing, she was unable to answer basic questions about her views on important issues. She was unfamiliar with basic concepts of education policy. I can’t overstate how central growth vs. proficiency is to education…an extremely basic, important question, and [yet during Mrs. DeVos’ hearing] she had no idea what I was talking about.”

Sen. Al Franken‘s remarks become quietly hilarious around the 20-minute mark — the “how many yards does it take to get a first down?” football-question analogy is brilliant.

“When asked how he sees comedy changing in the Trump era, Oliver offered a thoughtful answer: ‘I think you’ve probably got to work harder. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. There’s a lot of low-hanging fruit with administrations like this, and you kind of need to reach past that.'” — from 2.6.17 Hollywood Reporter interview with Hilary Lewis.

Variety‘s Justin Kroll is reporting that Jack Nicholson, whom everyone had assumed had more or less retired from acting, will star in a U.S. remake of the Oscar-nominated Toni Erdmann for Paramount.

Sources have told Kroll that that Nicholson “was a huge fan of the original and approached Paramount’s Brad Grey with the idea, and Grey immediately worked with the team at Paramount to secure the rights.”

With Nicholson about to turn 80 on 4.22 and especially given his absence from movies since 2010’s How Do You Know, his Erdmann return will be widely processed as a swan song of sorts and is therefore guaranteed to be Best Actor nominated.

You know going in that Jack will hit a homer with this role, and even if he only manages a ground-rule double he’ll be nominated anyway as a career tribute gesture.

Kristen Wiig will play Edrmann’s uptight business executive daughter. No director has been hired or at least announced.

Last night I attended my first SBIFF Artisans panel, a tribute to some of 2016’s most distinguished below-the-liners. Ten in all, interviewed individually and ensemble by Variety‘s Tim Gray. Tim did a nice, smooth job of holding it all together, but if I’d asked the questions things would have been a bit more…what’s the right term? More specific? More inquisitive? I’d get into this a bit but I’m jammed for time….sorry. Maybe I’ll fill in sometime this evening.

(Standing l. to r.): Moonlight dp James Laxton, Arrival editor Joe Walker, Hacksaw Ridge sound mixer Kevin O’Connell, Sully sound editor Alan Murray, Hail Caesar production designer Jess Gonchor, moderator Tim Gray, Jungle Book VFX honcho Robert Legato, Suicide Squad makeup/hair guy Alessandro Bertolazzi, La La Land composer Justin Hurwitz; (seated) La La Land & Hail Caesar costume designer Mary Zophres, La La Land song lyricist Benj Pasek.

Lili Anolik‘s Vanity Fair piece about Pauline Kael’s misbegotten attempt to become a Hollywood producer and then a Paramount development executive, which happened between 1979 and ’80, is a hugely enjoyable read — wonderfully sage and lusciously phrased. It’s certainly one of the best inside-Hollywood articles I’ve consumed in ages — the story of a creative Hollywood demimonde that was destined to run aground — and a reminder of why I used to really love reading VF.

“In 1979, New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael, 59, accepted an offer from actor-director Warren Beatty, 41, to help him produce Love & Money, a script his production company had acquired and set up at Paramount,” the story begins. “Love & Money was to be the second feature of writer-director James Toback, 34, whose first feature, Fingers, Kael had reviewed ecstatically the year before. Toback was also a personal friend. She took a leave of absence from The New Yorker, headed to L.A.

“Kael and Toback began working together. She wanted substantial changes to the script. He did not want to change the script substantially. She was removed from the project. Beatty secured a new deal for her at Paramount as a creative production executive.

“At the time, Paramount’s chairman was Barry Diller, a fan. It was not to Diller, however, that she would be reporting. It was to Don Simpson, senior vp of worldwide production. There were a number of properties she wished to develop. Simpson rejected all but one. Her contract was for five months. When it lapsed, it wasn’t renewed. She returned to The New Yorker in the spring of 1980.”

That’s the basic set-up but consider the following passages, which are so beautifully concise and on-target they’re making me want to read it again.

Excerpt #1: “And didn’t that spate of Hollywood movies from 1967 to 1979, from Bonnie and Clyde to, say, Apocalypse Now, feel like a crime spree? As if the American New Wavers were pulling a fast one? The spree couldn’t last, of course. Sooner or later lawmen, i.e., studio men, would catch up. Or, worse, audiences wouldn’t. Times had changed.

“Kael understood this. In 1978’s ‘Fear of Movies,’ she wrote: ‘Now that the war has ended…[people have] lost the hope that things are going to be better…so they go to the movies to be lulled.’ But I’m not quite sure Beatty, who was considerably younger and had been knocked around far less, did.

“The chaos of the ’60s and early-to-mid-70s — Vietnam, Watergate — made for an opening, though it was closing quick. Kael prophesied the end of Pauline and Warren when she wrote of the ‘new cultural Puritanism,’ as surely as Bonnie prophesied the end of Bonnie and Clyde when she wrote of the ‘sub-gun’s rat-a-tat-tat.’ Did Kael foresee, too, the medium’s end? That the VHS revolution was just around the corner? That the 70s would be the last decade in which movies were truly a tribal experience?”

To any astute, fair-minded moviegoer Octavia Spencer‘s Best Supporting Actress nomination for her performance in Hidden Figures was a fitting tribute to a focused, lived-in thing. Spencer always hits that emotive sweet spot, never too showy or quiet, and her channeling of the late mathematician Dorothy Vaughn fit right into the humanistic scheme of Theodore Melfi‘s historical drama, which is now at $119 million since opening on 12.25.

Hidden Figures Oscar nominee Octavia Spencer.

I’ve been hey-hey friendly with Octavia for roughly five and a half years, or since I first met her during a press gathering for Tate Taylor‘s The Help in July of 2011. I got to know her a little better during some Fruitvale Station press events a couple of years later, and better still during the launch of Mike Binder‘s Black or White in the fall of 2015.

We did a phoner just before I drove up to the Santa Barbara Film Festival, and it’s taken me this long to post it — my bad. Every day I’m juggling six or seven bowling pins, and I always drop one or two. Here’s our chat.

Back in ’12 or ’13 Octavia and I were in Prague at the same time (I noticed she’d tweeted about being there) and so I tweeted back “Yo, Octavia….Jeffrey Wells in Prague also!…let’s meet for brewskis!” But she never replied.

Everyone knows that Fences‘ Viola Davis is going to win the Best Supporting Actress Oscar on Sunday, 2.26. I know it, Octavia knows it, every HE reader knows it and the 20th Century Fox publicity team knows it so why play games? But Octavia is one of the friendliest and gentlest souls I know in this racket, and seeing her is always an absolute pleasure so here I am, giving her the old “hey hey” again.

Octavia with Emma Stone, Matt Damon and Natalie Portman during Monday’s Oscar nominee luncheon.

Keep in mind that this obviously formulaic, connect-the-dots programmer — a descendant of any number of exotic-locale, fish-out-of-water pratfall comedies going back to the Hope-Crosby road movies — won’t open until 5.12.17 so you can depend on being deluged by trailers and promos for at least the next three months. Which reminds me — I need to buy my annual plane fare to Paris/Cannes and elsewhere sooner rather than later.

Posted five or six weeks ago: “An emotionally distraught 30something woman (Amy Schumer) takes a vacation in Ecuador with her mom (Goldie Hawn), and of course fall prey to a gang of no-good slimeballs. Will the nice-guy boyfriend do the right thing, or will he cut and run?

“No one is allowed to mention anyone’s facial ‘work’ (just ask Owen Gleiberman what happens when you do) so I guess I can’t say anything.

Stated a few weeks ago, bears repeating: The primary blame for the Trump catastrophe is born, of course, by stubborn, racist, pea-brained rurals, who’ve always been and always will be fearful and uncomprehending and gullible. But the real architects of the current horror are the corporate-suckling Democratic establishment machine types and particularly the evangelical genderists (“It’s time for a woman in the White House, even one as deeply unappealing as Hillary!”).

The fatal factor wasn’t that a woman ran for President, but that the woman who ran was the braying, testy, fainting-like-a-sack-of-potatoes Hillary Clinton, who promised nothing change-y, and nothing beyond the fact that she was highly experienced (which of course she was) and would handle her Presidential duties in a cautious, responsible way (ditto).