A new trailer for THE POT-AU-FEU / THE TASTE OF THINGS, for which Tran Anh Hung won Best Director at this year's @Festival_Cannes. Starring Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel and in French cinemas November 8. pic.twitter.com/fRZhRvwxiN

— Notebook (@NotebookMUBI) September 15, 2023

…here’s an updated “friendo” interpretation of the latest WGA vs. show–runners vs. producers negotiating contretemps:

“The showrunners have had it up to here with the hardline WGA all-or-nothing rhetoric…they’ve had it!

“And so the showrunners (aka the upper echelon) are applying pressure for a deal to be made, compromises yielded, a willingness to accept 80 percent over 100 percent of the demands, etc.

“The showrunners are also pushing back against mandatory staffing and the like. They have their own selfish agenda, but their income and dues drive the guild so they cannot be dismissed.

“This confirms your HE assessments as well. Enough is enough. The solidarity in the WGA is mostly from the unemployed. Those that are flourishing and have name value are fed up.

“Meanwhile, Disney is considering selling ABC. That means even less scripted programming as linear TV dies. Writers will have better terms when the strike is over, but less opportunity.”

Note: Apart from Sean Penn’s basic, well-founded point, I would still be delighted if AI technology could somehow one day resuscitate dead movie stars and thus allow them to have second careers.

From a 9.13 Sean Penn interview with Variety‘s Stephen Rodrick: “Aggressive pop-offs are a Penn staple and not limited to global events. I ask him his thoughts on the Hollywood strikes. He is particularly livid over the studios’ purported lust for the likenesses and voices of SAG actors for future AI use.

“[Penn] has an idea that he is convinced will break the logjam. It starts with Penn and a camera crew being in a room with studio heads. Penn will then offer trade: ‘So you want my scans and voice data and all that. Okay, here’s what I think is fair: I want your daughter’s, because I want to create a virtual replica of her and invite my friends over to do whatever we want in a virtual party right now. Would you please look at the camera and tell me you think that’s cool?”

“Penn pauses long enough for me to check if he is serious. That is an affirmative.

“’It’s not about business,’ he says. ‘It’s an indecent proposal. That they would do that and not be taken to task for it is insulting. This is a real exposé on morality — a lack of morality.'”

Anyone familiar with the famous jail-cell scene in Martin Scorsese and Robert DeNiro‘s Raging Bull knows something about irony. For watching a crude and bestial man experience the absolute nadir of his bruising (and bruise-dispensing) life…his explosive acting out of feelings of absolute and overpowering self-loathing…this horrific episode results, for viewers, in something oddly cleansing and almost therapeutic.

This was DeNiro’s all-time peak moment…the kind of bravura acting moment that only a young or youngish fellow can capture or deliver. It was also the grand crescendo of DeNiro’s initial glory chapter (’73 to ’80), the highlights of which were Bang the Drum Slowly, Mean Streets, The Godfather Part II, 1900 and Taxi Driver.

Chapter Two began right after Raging Bull and continues until this day — The King of Comedy (’82), Once Upon a Time in America (’84), Brazil (’85), Midnight Run (’88), Goodfellas (’90), This Boy’s Life (’93), Heat (’95), Casino (’95), Analyze This (’99), the Meet the Parents films (2000–2010), Silver Linings Playbook (2012), The Intern (’15) and The Irishman (’19).

If you start with Brian DePalma‘s Greetings (’68), DeNiro has been at it for 55 years.

Two-time Oscar winner Shelley Winters (1920-2006) was the absolute best — no side-stepping, said what she felt, straight-from-the-gut candor at all times. And I’m not just saying this because I ran into her a few times and liked her from the get-go. Always an artist first and a diplomat second. Smarts, steel, liberal-progressive views, etc.

I never realized she was a frank and gutsy personality until I saw her go up against the chauvinistic Oliver Reed on Johnny Carson‘s Tonight Show — a legendary encounter that ended with Winters pouring an alcoholic drink over Reed’s head.

My first conversation with Winters happened inside the Plaza Hotel during the filming of Frank Pierson‘s King of the Gypsies (’78), in which she was costarring with Sterling Hayden, Susan Sarandon and Eric Roberts. A brief exchange of pleasantries, nothing more.

My second Winters encounter happened in Los Angeles around five years later, in late 1983. I was seated right next to her at a Cannon Films press luncheon for Over the Brooklyn Bridge (held just prior to shooting). We were chatting amiably about everything…good vibes. When producer-director Menahem Golan got up before a mike and began making a speech, Winter began shaking her head and said to anyone within earshot at our table, “Don’t like him… nope, don’t like him.”

That was it — I was in love.

I met Winters again in 1997 at the Silver Spoon, a now-destroyed breakfast place in West Hollywood, while interviewing with Jackie Brown‘s Robert Forster She walked up to our table, Forster introduced us, I recapped our slight history, etc. Winters told me I reminded her of an old boyfriend from New York.

Winters knew Marilyn Monroe pretty well, roomed with her for about a year between 1947 and ’48. For decades after Monroe’s passing Winters was repeatedly asked about her, and offered pretty much the same recollections.

Monroe began to enjoy life a bit in the late ’40s, Winters said, and had a genuinely thrilling and abundant life in the ’50s, but not so much in the early ’60s. Monroe wasn’t well educated but was highly intelligent and constantly reading. Totally into older-guy father figures. No family, no support group, suspicious of most would-be friends or acquaintances. Key quote: “If she’d been a little dumber, she would’ve been happier.”

Monroe began to slip into an increasingly troubled place when she hit her mid 30s, which, back in the day, was when actresses needed to begin thinking about transitioning into character roles and/or playing mothers, or so Winters believed. But in the early ’60s the big studios didn’t want Monroe as a character actress — they wanted her to go on being a 25-year-old blonde sexpot forever. (When Winters signed to play a 40ish old-school motherly type in The Diary of Anne Frank, for which she later won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar, director George Stevens told her that “because of this role you’ll be able to work for the rest of your life.”)

Winters believed that Monroe’s August 1962 death from a sleeping-pill overdose was most likely an accident, and that she’d just forgotten how many she’d taken earlier. “I’ve done that,” Winters said.

The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg has posted his first spitball projection of the Best Picture Oscar race (alng with other projections in other categories).

“HE truth bullet” commentary represents the kind of bottom-line reality check that Feinberg isn’t allowed to pass along at this stage, as he’s obliged to be diplomatic.

BEST PICTURE FRONTRUNNERS:

Oppenheimer (Universal) / HE truth bullet: Academy members have no choice but to nominate Chris Nolan‘s film because of the great reviews and excellent box-office. The bottom line is that despite its many commendable aspects, Oppenheimer is overly dense (i.e., it doesn’t breathe) and is rather punishing to sit through when you watch it for the second time. Plus Nolan wimped out by avoiding the horrors of Hirsoshima and Nagasaki.

The Holdovers (Focus) / HE truth bullet: A well-written, perfectly acted, old-fashioned ’70s relationship film…pure crowd pleaser, total home run, flawless within its realm.

Barbie (Warner Bros.) / HE truth bullet: Guaranteed to be nominated for the box-office explosion aspect alone, and it might even wind up winning, especially given its popularity among the quarter-of-an-inch-deep New Hollywood Kidz. But it’s pure feminist candy and is really too misandrist when you step back and think about it. Best Picture Oscars should be about more than just the mere earning of big money.

Poor Things (Searchlight) / HE truth bullet: A glint-of-madness feminist fantasy…wildly imaginative, Terry Gilliam-like sexual Barbie with actual fucking going on. The sexual current will put off some within the 45-plus community.

Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple/Paramount) / HE truth bullet: A highly respectable historical drama as far as it goes, but far from a home run. No strong point of view about anything. HE gives it a respectable B or B-minus.

The Zone of Interest (A24) / HE truth bullet: Searing moral perceptions by way of alluded-to Nazi horrors, but overly dry, chilly and oblique. Yes, I know — “oblique” is the basic idea.

Past Lives (A24) / HE bullet: Forget it — an unsatisfying, wafer-thin non-romance that lacks nutritional value. Not happening.

American Fiction (Amazon — haven’t seen it)

Anatomy of a Fall (Neon) / “Good’ European courtoom drama but too long, too protracted, no real surprises, doesn’t really pay off.

Nyad (Netflix — haven’t seen it but Oscar action sounds like a stretch).