Chris Rock knows that his forthcoming Martin Luther King biopic, reported yesterday by Deadline‘s Mike Fleming, can’t be hagiography.

This partly means that it has to get into MLK’s infidelities with white women, which the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover, armed with with secretly recorded motel-room tapes, tried to blackmail King with.

Years ago Oliver Stone and Paul Greengrass wanted to explore this aspect in their own respective King biopics, but both projects stalled. (Greengrass’s was titled Memphis.) On 1.17.14 Fleming reported the skinny.

If Rock paints a saintly, over-reverent portrait he’ll put everyone to sleep. Surely he understands this.

The fact that Rock’s untitled film is based upon Jonathan Eig’s “King: A Life” suggests that Rock will be taking at least something of a warts-and-all approach.

The book has been described by its publisher as an “intimate portrayal of King as a courageous but emotionally troubled individual who demanded peaceful protest while grappling with his own frailties and a government that hunted him.”

An 8.14.23 Amazon review by Bill Emblom states that Eig’s book “covers the adulteries that King was involved in…[the ones] that Hoover wanted to ensnare him in through bugging his phone or room at the Willard Hotel in Washington.”

Football star and actor Jim Brown was into white women also. Was this due to Brown being a somewhat frail, emotionally troubled guy, or was it because his tastes simply led him in this direction? Remember that Spartacus scene in which Laurence Olivier‘s Marcus Licinius Crassus says he enjoys both snails and oysters? Were Crassus’s appetites an outgrowth of his being an emotionally unstable fellow? As J.J. Hunsecker once said, “Are we kids or what?”

Steven Spielberg will executive produce via his Amblin with Kristie Macosko Krieger producing.

Five and two thirds years ago (1.14.18) I posted a piece called “New Oscar Bait Hinges on Tribal Identity,” in which I attempted to gauge the pulse of Hollywood’s award-season wokesters.

Stand-out comment #1 was from filmklassik: “A bit cheeky to say ‘never ever again’ (because who the hell knows?), but yeah, in this particular cultural moment it is all about Tribal Identity. And what’s disturbing is, we have a whole generation now for whom Tribal representation is, to use one critic’s word, numinous. The under-40 crowd has invested Race, Gender and Sexuality with a kind of cosmic significance. It doesn’t mean a lot to them — it means everything to them. Indeed, much of their conversation and writing seems to always come back to it.”

Stand-out comment #2 was written by Dan Gaertner: “Will Jeff Wells, Sasha Stone and Tom O’Neil be around in 5 or 10 years? To the new millennial film/award race culture, they’re dinosaurs from another dimension. They don’t approach film, art, or awards in the same fashion. They are tuned into a completely different frequency.”

HE to Gaertner [10.6.23]: Sasha and I are definitely still around, and to our way of thinking we aren’t dinosaurs but sensible, feet-on-the-ground realists and straight talkers. Tom O’Neil used to be a tough nut, but he joined the wokester cabal eight years ago when Jay Penske purchased Gold Derby. O’Neil became a Gold Derby consensus manager more than an occasional opinion guy.

This striking Vogue cover photo is about as good or glammy as it will probably ever get for Lily Gladstone…photography, lighting, the right angle, wardrobe…it all came together.

Leo looks great also…pushing 50 in actuality, he looks like his mid to late 30s.

After being attacked by Bobby Peru for allegedly diminishing Gladstone and her Killers of the Flower Moon performance, I responded thusly:

My conveying an honest, thought-through reaction to Gladstone’s KOTFM performance is not an act of diminishment. It’s a fairly rendered opinion.

My choosing to ignore the New Academy Kidz mindset…an attitude that rewards social-justice bonafides over traditional acting or film-making standards…this is not an attempt to diminish Gladstone. The white-guilt wokester choke hold has been an active political ingredient since 2016 or ’17, certainly by ’18.

My stating plainly that Gladstone talks with a rural (aka “shitkicker”) Montana accent…that’s a fact. You can call it diminishing but I wouldn’t point fingers if someone said that I speak with a slight northern New Jersey twang (which I do). Was it diminishing to say that JFK spoke with a Boston accent**? Or that Stephen King speaks with a reedy Maine accent? Or that Flannery O’Connor sounded like Savannah? Or that Jimmy Carter has a rural Georgian way of speaking? Or that LBJ sounded like the Texas hill country?

My stating an obvious political fact, which is that wokesters like Clayton Davis are promoting Gladstone for Best Actress, and that this is primarily about an opportunity to celebrate her Native American identity — my calling a spade a spade in this regard is not a form of diminishment. It’s a fact.

I’ve said over and over that Gladstone is good enough in KOTFM but she’s certainly not wowser. Mainly because all she mostly does is glare and seethe and lie in bed. Because the script doesn’t give her any big crescendo moments. She doesn’t even get to slap Leo’s face or sharply condemn what he and his evil uncle have done to some of the oil-rich Osage natives.

** It would be diminishing if I wrote that JFK spoke with a pretentious Hahvahd or Boston Irish clam-chowder-slurping accent.

Who would be ideally cast as Lana Turner, Johnny Stompanato, Cheryl Crane and Jerry Giesler?

Do Millennials and Zoomers have the faintest clue about any of the players in this sordid, 60-year-old saga? I doubt it.

Terrence Winter (Boardwalk Empire, The Sopranos, The Wolf of Wall Street) has presumably written the screenplay, and would produce.

[Originally posted on 4.6.20]

“Height is to men what breasts are to women,” an HE commenter said three years ago. To some extent yes, but not necessarily. Or not entirely. Tall or tallish guys enjoy an obvious pecking-order advantage, but towering fellows (6’5″ and up) can seem gangly and galumphy. Or even a tad freakish.

The bottom line is that broad shoulders are the real bodacious ta-tas in the XY realm. I came into broad shoulders when I turned 13 or 14, and believe me I know about the benefits. Ask anyone who’s been lucky by way of genetic inheritance. If you have broad-ass shoulders, you’re halfway home in terms of general estimates, job interviews, receptive women, etc.

By the same token narrow, rounded shoulders are generally not a good look. There’s never been a rounded, narrow-shouldered guy in the history of the planet who’s ever said “man, I am so lucky that I don’t have broad shoulders!” I see a fellow with narrow shoulders and I think “well, okay, I’m sorry…he’s obviously had his share of struggles.”

From “Physical Dominance vs. Psychological Security,” posted on 6.19.19: “I was in love with Alan Ladd and I went to a party at Romanoff’s. I’m 5’7” but in heels I’m 5’9” or 5’10”. They said, ‘Shirley, your favorite actor is here…come and meet him.’ I turned around. He was there and I went, ‘Oh hi, Mr. Ladd.’ He was about 4’9” and all my admiration disappeared literally in the dust.” — attributed to Shirley MacLaine but who knows?

Ladd was notoriously insecure about his height, which (to go by most accounts) was somewhere between 5’5″ and 5’6″. For his entire professional life this psychological albatross was draped around the poor guy’s neck. On the other hand James Cagney was roughly the same size (5’6″ or thereabouts) and he never squawked about it. He spent his whole adult life playing tough urban guys who slapped, punched or psychologically dominated other fellows, and nobody ever said “Jeez, he’s kinda short.” They said, “Shit, here comes Cagney…watch out.”

In short (pun), a good part of life is about owning the right kind of psychology — about feeling secure and confident about who you are and what you look like. It’s about planting your feet, looking the other guy in the eye and saying “take or or leave it but this is me…got a problem with that? Because I don’t.”

On the other hand I understand the Shirley MacLaine mindset. I’ve been a tall, slender, broad-shouldered guy with fairly good hair (augmented by Prague-installed follicles when I got older) all my life. I’ve been that guy since I was 11 or 12, and by the time I hit my early 20s I was feeling pretty cool about it. I know my looks helped in my hound-dog days in the ’70s and early ’80s.

But I’ve always had this unfair or prejudiced attitude about short guys, and I mean going back to when I was nine or ten. I’ve always had this belief that guys need to be 5’8″ or taller, and if they’re not…well, not a problem for me personally but they will have a certain gauntlet to contend with on a daily basis. Life is unfair and often cruel.

Early in the evening of Tuesday, 10.3, I chatted with respected Hollywood historian and biographer Joseph McBride about Billy Wilder‘s Stalag 17 (’53), and more particularly about Joe’s commentary track for Kino Lorber’s upcoming 4K Bluray version (out 11.21).

I haven’t seen the 4K Stalag 17 but…well, let’s wait for it. I own an older Bluray version which I’m happy with, but I’m always hot to own the latest upgrade.

McBride’s book on Wilder (“Dancing on the Edge“) came out in September ’21. He’s also written authoritative studies on John Ford, Howard Hawks, Orson Welles, the Coen Brothers, Steven Spielberg, Ernst Lubitsch, Frank Capra, etc.

Here’s part one of our discussion (roughly 29 minutes)…

And here’s part two (around 27 minutes):

It’s very easy to talk to Joe about Hollywood histories and backstories and just kick it all around. It was generally a fine, wide-ranging discussion, not just about the genesis and the making of Stalag 17 but about William Holden, Wilder, John Ford…everyone and everything. McBride can chew this kind of fat for hours on end without breaking stride.

Please forgive the occasional intrusions of purring and meowing Katya.