The wifi is mostly awful at the Park Regency. Okay, sometimes it’s tolerable but mostly the signal is so weak you have to work in the main lobby, and even from the lobby it stinks. (It crapped out twice when I was filing there yesterday morning.) But the password-free wifi inside the nearby Park City Marriott (a two-minute walk from the Regency) is totally fine so the hell with it — here’s where I work from here on. Warm and friendly with a bus stop right outside the hotel. The only bothersome aspect is the occasional yappity-yap-yapping of the hotel guests and visitors. You’d think they’d want to dial it down like, you know, the members of an old world’s gentleman’s club in London. Note: Video captured today (Friday, 1.22) at 6:25 am.

A N.Y. Daily News story by Joe Dziemianowicz and Don Kaplan reports that Manhattan’s legendary Ziegeld theatre, which opened in 1969, is toast and will close in “a few weeks.” Fisher Brothers, the landlord, has informed lease-holder Cablevision that “they have a new tenant for the location and, therefore, we will be exiting our lease in the coming weeks to accommodate the new tenant,” Cablevision officials said in a statement. The theater is expected to re-open in the fall of ’17 as the Ziegfeld Ballroom — a high-end space for corporate events.

Eight months ago The Hollywood Reporter‘s Mattthew Belloni and Pamela McLintock reported that the Ziegfeld — the glorious cinematic temple with the greatest sub-woofer bass speakers I’ve ever heard, where I had my socks blown off while watching Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Apocalypse Now in ’77 and ’79, respectively — was on the verge of closing because Cablevision, which operates the legendary theatre, was sick of the way the Ziegfeld had been losing money hand over fist. (Around $1 million per year.)

Last night I experienced three mildly unpleasant encounters in Park City. Okay, maybe not “unpleasant” but the kind of brushes with human behavior that make you roll your eyes and count to ten. We’re living in times that “try men’s souls,” and I was reminded of this last night, you bet. 

The first happened in the delicatessen department at Fresh Farms. There were three women working the counter, two 20somethings and a smallish woman in her late 60s or early 70s. I asked the older woman if I should take a number, and she said “we don’t do numbers here” — okay. She was busy slicing chicken meat for somebody. She was packing it up when a guy about 30 (definitely an out-of-towner) came over and asked to see it. “Are the slices extra thin?” he asked, inspecting with disapproval. “I said extra thin slices…I want to almost be able to see through them.” The woman rolled her eyes as she reached for more chicken. I felt sorry for her. “Ma’am…could I buy those chicken slices? Would that help?” She seemed relieved. I didn’t want the chicken but that guy was such a dick and he’d made her life more difficult.

The second encounter happened as I was walking up Park City’s Main Street. Three guys in their late 50s or early ’60s (skiiers, I guessed, or maybe distribution sales guys) were walking in front of me at a really slow pace, and of course they had the sidewalk blocked with their pudge-bods. Walking up Main Street is a cardiovascular challenge and I always do it with a certain vigor — I’m sorry but walking like a retiree with arthritis is not an option. So as I approached the three sea lions I said “excuse me?…sorry.” They glanced back and allowed me to pass, but not without comment. Their reaction was basically “sure thing but what’s your hurry?…have you ever heard of enjoying yourself and smelling the night air and not always racing when you walk?” My silent response: “Yeah, I’ve heard of it and I even walk slowly on my own from time to time, but never on Main Street uphill and especially when three guys are doing the mall meander in front of me.”

Hollywood Elsewhere arrived at the Park City Regency last evening around 6 pm. I shuttled right down to Fresh Farms (formerly Albertson’s) for groceries, went back to the pad to unload, and then hitched a lift to Main Street for dinner with HE’s own Svetlana Cvetko and David Scott Smith. After which the trouble started. Well, not “trouble” but certainly the first disappointment of the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.

Before Tuesday night’s screening of Hail Caesar! Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn told me about a little kickoff gathering on Woodside, which I naturally assumed was happening last night (i.e., Wednesday) as the festival’s first screenings — Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing‘s Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You and Chris Kelly‘s Other People — will happen at 5:30 and 9 pm, respectively.

On top of which Wednesday night is the only “free” social night for serious Sundance go-getters, many if not most of whom arrive on Wednesday so they can unpack, get groceries, get a good night’s sleep and hit the ground running on Thursday morning, which is what I’m doing as we speak.

Very effective, I’ll admit. I was kind of irritated by the idea of this film until now. But the chords of “Bohemian Rhapsody” are responsible for a good 40% of the impact. You need to step back and, you know, not be taken in. “Worst. Heroes. Ever” = huge owesies to Robert Aldrich‘s The Dirty Dozen.

“It’s like Jaws, except the shark is a tsunami and Chief Brody is geologist Kristian (Kristoffer Joner, also in The Revenant), who is all ‘We’ve got to close the beaches!’ (so to speak, and speaking in Norwegian) when he suspects that a mountainside in the fjord near the postcard-pretty little town he lives in is about to collapse and send an 80-foot wall of water into the cafes and the marinas and the sightseers. His skeptical colleagues worry about false alarms scaring away tourist money — see also: Jaws — and even his wife, Idun (Ane Dahl Torp), who works in the big hotel, tells him to relax, that ‘the mountain will be there for another thousand years.’ It won’t.” — from 11.16.15 review by Flick Philosopher‘s Maryann Johanson.

Just to underline I didn’t say anything to Guardian interviewer Rory Carroll about “most Academy voters [being] happy to preserve the status quo.” Maybe they are but I didn’t address it. I reiterated my long-held view that the Academy needs overhauling, and once again pushed the idea of “weighting Academy votes so that those cast by people currently working in film carried more sway than those of people who retired years or decades ago,” as Carroll conveyed it.

Excerpt #1: “Jeffrey Wells, a veteran Los Angeles-based film blogger, said others shared his view that the NWA biopic Straight Outta Compton and Michael B. Jordan’s’ performance in Creed, for instance, were not Oscar-worthy but that few would say so publicly.

“’Anyone who is accomplished enough to be an Academy member knows how the game is played. They’re not stupid and so they will duck their heads to not be tarred and feathered for having (supposed) racist attitudes.’

“The media [are] equally skittish, said Wells. ‘Nothing terrifies them so much as being seen as being insensitive so they go along with it. No one stands up and says such and such isn’t worthy.’

Excerpt #2: “The blogger said Straight Outta Compton and Creed, which was directed by Ryan Coogler, were well-made crowd-pleasers but lacked ‘refinement’.

All year long my Durango Dude outfit — cowboy hat, overcoat, gloves, black suede boots — sits in a closet, and then for 10 days in mid January I get to actually wear it. I love strolling around in this garb, and if it snows up there so much the better. Can you imagine going to Park City and wearing, I don’t know, some dorky day-glo orange down vest with a nickle-and-dime K-Mart scarf and some kind of knit cap…the kind of outfit that Girls costar Alex Karpovsky would wear if he attended? Famous last words if I get hit by a car on Kearns Blvd. because my clothing isn’t bright enough. The Southwest flight leaves Burbank at 11:30 am, stops in Pheonix, arrives in Salt Lake City around 4:30 pm.

$30 for a Twilight Time Last Detail Bluray? Yeah, I’d like to have it but the DVD looks fine. Rich, to-die-for hues and fascinating detail were never part of the scheme of this thing. Hal Ashby’s low-key 1973 film was intended to look a little grubby, a little worn-down. Which fit in with the vaguely seedy atmosphere and the schlubby swabby mentality that characterized Jack Nicholson‘s Badass Buddusky and Otis Young‘s Mulhall (a.k.a. “Mule”).  A small classic that doesn’t need high-def.  I’m buying the Bluray regardless.

It was announced this morning that Penske Media Corporation (PMC) has acquired Indiewire.com. Which means that industry tea-leaf reader Anne Thompson and leading indie-attitude critic Eric Kohn are now working for the same guy who pays the salaries of Deadline‘s Pete Hammond and Michael Fleming, Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil and Variety‘s Kris Tapley, to name but a few. Voices in a choir. And I’m still Charley Varrick, last of the independents, along with Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone, MCN’s David Poland and…I don’t know, you tell me.

I’m not much for analogies but I’m thinking that Hollywood Elsewhere is a bit like Wyatt Earp, Sasha is like Virgil Earp, Poland is the guy who owns the Tombstone livery stable and the Penske gang is a bit like the Clanton brothers. HE is drawing a bead and riding its own steed across the swamps of time. And I still like the sound of that slogan, “last of the independents.” It has a ring of finality.

I asked Kohn, Indiewire’s chief film editor and critic, how things are going. Is he getting a bump in salary? Will Kohn gradually lose the jeans, comfort shoe and hoodie look and start dressing more like a guy who subscribes to Esquire or GQ? What has he learned in life up to this point? What does it feel like for a former open-range cowpoke to be part of the big combine?

“I’m really excited about this acquisition and what it means for the future of Indiewire,” Kohn wrote back. (People always use the word “excited” in discussing any new job or business partnership.) “It’s early days yet. We’re still figuring out all the details, but I’ll be working out of the PMC office in NYC and the LA team will be doing the same for the one out there. See you at Sundance!”