Preface: The insanity out there is such that anyone sharing sensible, scientific views about transgender issues has become, in the eyes of some wokesters, extra-heinous due to the recent horrific murder of Laura Ann Carleton, 66, in Cedar Glen (just east of Lake Arrowhead) by Travis Ikeguchi, a 27-year-old wackjob who was killed by police in a shootout.

In other words, if you hold sensible, moderate opinions about trans choices and lifestyles you’re an accessory to murder. This is why the term “Crazy Town” has caught on these days; because some on the extreme left have completely lost their minds. [End of preface]

Friendo: “’HumanaHumana‘ is very bright, Jeff, and consistently on-point. I was reminded of this yet again in his comments on your post about that sworn enemy of all trans people, Carlos Santana.

“But what really amazes me is the sheer volume of zealots who descend upon you every time you post your anti-woke stuff.

“I can’t get over this. You’d think the ratio of woke to anti-woke would be the opposite of what it is — 20% woke vs. 80% anti-woke, let’s say, or at worst 50/50.

“But nope — it’s more like 90% woke-favoring vs. 10% sensible and grounded in reality.

“Would you have seen this coming as recently as ten years ago?

“Imagine if someone had said the following to you back in 2013: “Jeff, let’s say that in the near future, cross-gendering and cross-dressing becomes a political football. Let’s imagine that in 2023, you wrote a comment in support of a rock star who affirmed the idea that there are only two genders and that basically roosters and roosters and hens are hens.

“If you had to guess, what percentage of your readership would AGREE with your support of this man, and what percentage would CONDEMN it?”

“Wouldn’t you have guessed (as I would have) that at least 80-90% of your readership would come down on the side of common sense? That is, in SUPPORT of the gender binary?”

I’ve just finished reading an IndieWire Emmy-hype interview with The Last of Us co-showrunner Craig Mazin.

Written by Ben Travers, it gets right into the divided reactions to Episode 3, which was titled “Long, Long Time.” Divided, I mean, between heartfelt admiration (although some critics were afraid of going negative for fear of being called homophobes) and serious squeamishness, especially in the matter of Nick “please don’t drop that towel!” Offerman.

Posted on 2.1.23: “So the producers of The Last of Us decided to abandon the basic zombie apocalypse narrative in order to tell a domestic love story (a sad one) between two middle-aged men with hairy chests and beards.

“It’s very well finessed all around (I half-chuckled at the gay strawberries scene until it led to smooching) but I’m afraid I’ve been permanently traumatized by that sex scene in the upstairs queen bed.

“Watching a prelude to the naked-ass Bartlett giving naked-ass Offerman a blowjob…good God in heaven and Jesus H. Christ! I’m not endorsing the IMDB review bombing, but I understand it. I’ll be having nightmares about this, and about images of bear sex in particular.

“I will never, ever derive the slightest amount of anything from watching older bearded guys…I don’t want to think about it.

“I was terrified of watching Offerman and Bartlett…truly and profoundly uncomfortable. And I’m saying this as one of the biggest fans ever of Brokeback Mountain.”

Travers excerpt: “When The Last of Us released its third episode, ‘Long, Long Time,’ reactions surfaced faster than fungi on an infected host.

“Many (including IndieWire) praised the episode for its aching love story, wherein Bill (Nick Offerman), a survivalist holed up in a makeshift fortress, and Frank (Murray Bartlett), a stranger who wanders into one of Bill’s traps, fall in love and — despite their post-apocalyptic environs — build a life together. Seeing that life unfold marks a pivot (or departure) from the original plot, tracking new characters whose story can stand on its own, even when it eventually loops back to our primary leads.

“Not everyone liked it. Today’s day and age of second-screen viewing paired with snap judgements doesn’t always reward atypical TV structure, and ‘Long, Long Time’ faced its share of backlash.

Mazin: “Some people didn’t like Episode 3 because, you know, gay stuff. And then they kind of retroactively try and come up with a [different and inoffensive] reason why. [But] one of the complaints I saw was, ‘Oh, it’s just a filler episode…it doesn’t advance the story.’ And I was like, ‘I think this episode advances the story more than any other episode we have’ — because it’s not plot, it’s character. It’s the letter Bill leaves behind to Joel that powers the rest of the show.”

…a critic I know posted an image that belittled Chris Christie. I wrote the following in response: “Why are you showing hostility to the only Republican candidate who has bluntly labeled Donald Trump a sociopath criminal? Nikki Haley has criticized Trump but none of the others have said in so many words ‘this guy is obviously an unbalanced hooligan and unfit to be president.” And you’re TRASHING him? What’s wrong with you? Christie has, yes, in some ways shown himself to be a transactional opportunist, but what he’s been saying about Lex Luthor is balls-up.”

The last time I heard a film character use the term “balls-up”, by the way, was in John McNaughton‘s Mad Dog and Glory (’93) — David Caruso‘s “Mike” telling Robert DeNiro‘s “Wayne” that he did a brave thing when he came upon a store robbery in progress. Now that I think of it, I don’t recall anyone using this term at all in any context. The screenplay was written by Richard Price — maybe Price coined it.

I’m trying to recall the first time I heard the above line, which has to be one of the most familiar men-in-war cliches of all time.

A voice is telling me it’s either from (a) Howard Hawks‘ Red River (i.e., a spooked Walter Brennan spooked before an Indian attack, or possibly Noah, Berry, Jr. saying the same thing later in the film), or (b) Cy Endfield‘s Zulu (Michael Caine or Stanley Baker spooked by a possible dawn attack by Zulu warriors), or (c) a World War II pre-battle scene (possibly Raoul Walsh‘s Objective, Burma! or Lewis Milestone‘s A Walk in the Sun).

I know for a fact that a version of this line is heard near the end of George Roy Hill‘s The Little Drummer Girl (’84). In a pre-dawn moment Kalil the Palestinian terrorist (Sami Frey) and Charlie the conflicted heroine (Diane Keaton) are sleeping in a remote country cottage that has been surrounded by Mossad special forces who intend to either capture or kill Kalil. Frey suddenly wakes when he realizes that the usual early morning sounds of nature are absent…he says something about not hearing birds or grazing cows. (No, I never got around to watching the 2018 BBC version, in which Keaton’s role was played by Florence Pugh.)

My other favorite line of this type is “I don’t like it when things go too good, and I don’t like it when things go too bad…I like ’em in between.” This line was definitely spoken by Hank Worden‘s “Sims Reeves” character in Red River.

Every sane person feels an alignment with Carlos, of course, but liberal-minded types are afraid to say otherwise for fear of wokester retribution.

Maestroleon concept poster is, at the very least, an excellent start. Visual designer: “I couldn’t find a good high-rez Leonard Bernstein so I just enlarged Joaquin’s nose and gave him glasses.”

Posted on 8.15.23:

I know this expression. I’ve worn it myself a few times. It says “I’ve been practicing this hard-ass glare in my Bedminster bathroom since this morning.”

Borrowed from the N.Y. Post…thanks.

Merch for sale!

He clearly rehearsed and refined the glare and achieved a certain “don’t tread on me” theatricality.

I’ve no intention of seeing Dune: Part Two no matter when it gets released. It had been slated to open on 11.17.63, and before that on 11.3.23, and prior to that on 10.20.23. It’s now scheduled to open on 3.15.24, or roughly seven months hence. Because of the SAG/AFTRA strike. Whatever.

The candidates who helped themselves the most during last night’s Republican debate were Nikki Haley (the most sensible and presidential sounding) and Vivek Ramaswamy. Tbe best of them, Chris Christie, didn’t do as well as he should have, but he said some good things. Haley came off the best.

There’s a new Rebecca Keegan THR article about Sofia Coppola‘s Priscilla (A24), and the support she got from Priscilla Presley, whose life with Elvis Presley from age 14 to 24 (barely pubescent girlfriend to wife-mother) is the subject of the film.

Repeating for emphasis, the article says that the Tinkerbell-sized (4’11”) Cailee Spaeny plays Priscilla “from age 14 to age 24.”

In other words Coppola’s film omits the last three years of Elvis and Priscilla’s strained and occasionally tempestuous relationship (they separated in February 1972 and divorced the following year), not to mention Presley’s untimely death in August ’77.

Priscilla wasn’t around at the time, of course, but c’mon…it’s about her long relationship with Presley and Coppola ignores his death, which happened only four years after their 1973 divorce?

To go by Keegan, the film’s 14-year saga happens between Priscilla’s first meeting with Elvis in 1959 at a party in Germany (she was born in May 1945) and sometime in mid 1969, or roughly two years after their Las Vegas wedding on 5.1.67. Exactly nine months later the now-deceased Lisa Marie Presley was born (2.1.68).

A few weeks or months later Priscilla “began taking private dance lessons” while the constantly-catting-around Elvis was filming Live a Little, Love a Little (released on 10.23.68), and she fell heavily for the instructor, identified only as “Mark” in Priscilla’s “Elvis and Me.” They did the nasty but not for long.

Priscilla had another, longer-lasting affair with Afro-haired karate instructor Mike Stone in ’72, but that, apparently, was after her separation from Elvis. There was apparently some back-and-forth, some push-pull variance of feeling. Presley forcefully had sex with Priscilla after he got wind of the Stone affair, or something like that. They did, however, divorce the following year. And yet they were seen holding hands after it was finalized.

The forceful-sex story seems to contradict reports that Elvis declined to have sex with Priscilla after Lisa Marie’s birth. (He apparently had some kind of bizarre hangup about mothers being used goods.) As many Presley biographers have reported, Elvis was totally into jailbait, or young teens starting around the age of 14.

All in all, Coppola’s film bypasses a lot of dramatic potential. It doesn’t even include their separation and divorce…c’mon.

Keegan’s story ends with this paragraoh: “[Last] May, Coppola screened the film for Priscilla. ‘When I saw the movie, I tried to separate myself and live it as if I was just a fan or just someone that’s wanting to see the movie,’ she says. ‘At the end, I actually…I was quite emotional. Only being 14. You look back and you go, ‘Why me? Why am I here? Why am I driving in a limo, going through the gates of Graceland with Elvis?’”

She meant that? Priscilla, 78, knew who Elvis was as well as his many biographers, and she was actually wondering why she was being driven through the gates of Graceland at age 14 or 15 or whenever it was?

It goes without saying that Keegan never mentions the bizarre 18-inch height disparity between Spaeny and Jacob Elordi, who plays Elvis in Coppola’s film.

The real-life Elvis and Priscilla were separated by eight inches of height — Elvis was 6’0″ and Priscilla was (and presumably still is) 5’4″. But in the film, the former Priscilla Beaulieu (later Presley) is played by the 59-inch-tall Spaeny (roughly the size of a ten-year-old) and Elvis is played by the 77-inch-tall Elordi.