“Reality is an acquired taste, and I’ve had a great deal of problems acquiring it.” — Matthew Perry. Go to the “open house” anecdote at 3:35.

I’m very sad and sorry about the death of Friends star Matthew Perry, 54. Drowned in his jacuzzi, they’re saying, but one way or another…it feels cruel to blurt it out but we all suspect that Perry’s decades of off-and-on drug abuse probably had something to do with this. Success, money, luck, good looks, and he couldn’t make it work. A tragic tale from any angle. Chandler, adieu.

No marriage, no kids, 54 years old.. Nobody just falls asleep in a jacuzzi and drowns,

This just happened this afternoon…

Friendo: Just saw Jeff Nichols‘ The Bikeriders and loved it. Why the mixed reviews? Jody Comer and Tom Hardy are terrific. Oscar nom potential for Jody.
HE: It’s gotten mnixed reviews because it’s, like, terrible.
Friendo: The audience here loved it. Gave it a standing ovation.
HE: Jody Comer is very conspicuously doing a working-class accent on Saturday Njght Live. It’s awful.
Friendo: She’s from working class Liverpool. Has had a lot of trouble in the snobby London theatre scene so it’s a nice comeuppance. She’s a future huge star. Watch.
HE: Comer is a good actress but she needs to steer clear of trashy biker flicks.
Friendo: That shouldn’t be too difficult. And even though you may think it’s trashy, Austin Butler is the next Brad Pitt.
HE: Maybe but he needs to be in something solid and gritty. He’s a posturing pretty boy. He was kind of a drag in Tarantino’s OUATIH (“I’m here to do the devil’s bidness”), a vigorous and acceptable but not very Elvis-y Elvis, and now this. All hat, no cattle.
Friendo: The women in the audience beg to disagree and they’re the ones who count.
HE: Stanislavsky says avoid chain-smoking cigarettes — they’re a cheap device.
Friendo: That goes for Hardy also, you’re saying.
HE: Correct.
Friendo: And Bette Davis.
HE: I felt I was getting cancer just watching them inhale those fucking things.
Friendo: We weren’t looking at the cigarettes when it come to Butler.
HE: Actors use them to hide behind. If Marlon Brando had smoked like a chimney in The Wild One, no one would have called his performance iconic.
Friendo: Cigarettes would have been an awkward addition in The Wild One performance. Yes, he was iconic. But I still loved Bikeriders.

In my original ecstatic review of David Fincher‘s The Killer (10.15), I noted that it could be (or even appears to be) be a form of self-portraiture — a seeming reflection of Fincher’s basic nature as well as my own. Here’s how I put it:

Last night (Friday) Paul Schrader took a half-swipe at The Killer, allowing that while it’s technically impressive it’s mostly an example of a film being “all hat.” Schrader also noted that Michael Fassbender‘s constant narration makes him “the Chatty-Kathy of hit men.”

facebook commenter William Speruzzi took exception to Schrader’s “all hat” remark, stating in no uncertain terms that if Fincher has ever made a film about self-portrayal, The Killer is the strongest in this regard.

The Fifth Estate‘s Geoff Leo has uncovered documented proof that Buffy Saint Marie is not an indigenous Canadian ((Piapot Cree Nation), despite her having claimed decades ago and throughout her life that she was adopted and “probably born” on the Piapot First Nation reserve in Saskatchewan.

Various bios have referred to the 82-year-old Buffy as Algonquin, full-blooded Algonquin, Mi’kmaq and half-Mi’kmaq. Leo, however, has found her birth certificate, which states that she was born Beverly Jean Santamaria in Stoneham, Massachusetts on 2.20.41. Her parents are/were Albert and Winifred Santamaria.

Buffy is now bonded with other “pretendians” including the late Sacheen Littlefeather, Sen Elizabeth Warren and producer Heather Rae.

Until recently and for over four decades, Buffy Sainte-Marie has been regarded as the first Indigenous Oscar winner for co-writing “Up Where We Belong” from 1982’s An Officer and a Gentleman. There goes that distinction!

The Native American community can at least take comfort in the apparent fact that Killers of the Flower Moon‘s Lily Gladstone is a genuine member of Montana’s Blackfeet tribe. Specigically Gladstone is “of Piegan Blackfeet, Nez Perce, and European heritage and grew up on the reservation of the Blackfeet Nation. on her mother’s side of the family she’s a firs cousin, 4 times removed, of 19th Century British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone. One of Lily’s paternal great-great grandfathers was Red Crow, a Kainai Nation chief.