Last night at Spin I attended a special, Snagfilms-sponsored screening of Jonathan Bricklin‘s The Entrepeneur, a cerebral procedural doc about his celebrated dad, automotive innovator and wheeler-dealer Malcolm Bricklin, trying to put together a U.S. distribution deal with Chery, the Chinese auto maker. It’s a tribute to the old fire-in-the-belly tenacity that propels all movers and shakers. The elder Bricklin (who was there last night with Jonathan and the latter’s partner-girlfriend Susan Sarandon) is a trip-and-a-half. The film also reminds (as if we needed reminding) that big business realms are sometimes colored by the perverse ethical behavior of some real world-class motherfuckers.
Daily
Boots That Knock
I generally steer clear of Broadway musicals — “fun” and relentlessly “spirited,” of course, but way too expensive and attended by far too many madras-shirt-wearing 60ish tourists. But a couple of weeks ago my significant other nudged me into getting tickets to Harvey Fierstein and Cindy Lauper‘s Kinky Boots, and we caught the matinee show yesterday afternoon at the Al Hirschfeld theatre. It’s a jolt and a hoot and a glittery wow — a 100% delightful adrenalizer and lifter-upper. For two hours-plus I surrendered to the whole emotional Fierstein-Lauper drag-queen fantasia, and I mean the whole swoony magilla of it. I clapped and laughed and cheered and tapped my feet and went out on a high that, some 18 hours later, has only slightly subsided.
Jasmine On The Fly
After seeing Woody Allen‘s Blue Jasmine on July 9th a publicist asked me what I thought. Instead of posting a full-on review (which is difficult sitting at a Starbucks on Eighth Ave. at 6:05 pm with a 7pm screening to catch), I’m just going to post my response and fill things in later: “It’s a very good film that often sinks in, but it’s not a great one,” I began. “The Streetcar Named Desire parallels are obvious and abundant, but it also has its own flavor and motor and undercurrent. Blue Jasmine isn’t a tragedy — it’s an examination of the venality of the 1% by way of the personality and choices of one extremely fucked-up, vodka-slurping woman who’s adrift and panicking.
“Allen’s film is appropriately dispassionate in this regard, but there’s also something a wee bit cold and clinical about it. To a slight fault, I mean.
“Like many of Woody’s films Blue Jasmine feels like something that should have been refined and rewritten before going into production. If it had it could’ve been that much better. I was with it as far as it went. I’m not putting it down by calling it a B-plus level achievement for Woody. It’s fine. It’s just not A or A-plus-level.
The Kid Was A Killer
Rolling Stone‘s decision to run an intriguing, semi-attractive, clearly-intended-to-flatter rock-star photo of Jahar Tsarnaev, the Boston marathon bomber, is a gross and heinously cynical act. It basically announces (and not for the first time) that sales and controversy are everything, and that all celebrity is equal and that the reason for this or that person being temporarily famous is immaterial. What say the HE heavy cats? Is it cool or even so-whatty to run a cover photo of a sexy, dreamy-faced enemy of the people?
Golden Gleaming Paychecks
A Hollywood salaries Forbes article by Dorothy Pomerantz reports that Liam “Paycheck” Neeson was only the 10th highest compensated superstar actor for the period between June 2012 and June 2013. Robert Downey, Jr. (Iron Man, Avengers) was in first place with earnings of $75 million, and Channing Tatum was second with earnings of $60 million, due in large part to his producer points on Magic Mike.
Hugh Jackman came in third with $55 million. Fourth-place Mark Wahlberg earned roughly $52 million with his Ted revenues while Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson nabbed $46 million for a fifth-place slot. And then you’ve got Leonardo DiCaprio in sixth place with $39 million (is that all? a mere $39 mill?), Adam Sandler in seventh place with a modest $17 million. The bottom three are/were Tom Cruise, Denzel Washington and the afore-mentioned Neeson.
Wells to Cruise, Washington, Neeson: You’re slipping, guys. Before you know it you’ll be the twelfth-highest paid and then the seventeenth-highest and then the 25th highest, and then you’ll wake up one day you’ll be even further down the totem pole, and eventually you’ll be out of the game and wondering what happened. People will be saying “Tom who?” or “Denzel used-to-be.” Get that price up now while you can. Make that dough! Get yourself a nice CG sci-fi bullshit action-thriller to star in — you can do it! Do you guys realize that Downey is laughing at you behind your backs right now, as we speak? If I know Tatum he’s howling with laughter…he’s rolling on the floor at how much of a bigger deal he is than any of you three. “They used to be the big cheeses,” he’s giggling to himself. “But not so much any more…hah!” Are you going to take that?
Was 1953 A Choice Year Like ’39 and ’99?
Times Square, 1931
Shocker
Variety and the other news services are quoting Canadian authorities about the cause of death last Saturday of Glee star Cory Monteith, 31. Are you sitting down? He died of “mixed drug toxicity, involving heroin and alcohol.” In other words, he bought it. No sympathy whatsoever.
We’re Only In It For The Money
If you want the really fat paychecks, this is the kind of shit you have to make. Does anyone out there believe that Doug Liman, Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt made this film because they felt they had to or needed to, because it turned them on, because they wanted to feel proud, because they care about their legacy and want future generations to know what they were about, etc.?
Ford to NY: Drop Dead
Three months ago Buzzfeed ran these New York City subway shots taken in 1973. Forty years ago. When armies of tourists from Norway and Sweden descended upon New York City with spray-paint cans and turned it into Graffiti City. Paint retailers must have cleaned up. And to think that Norman Mailer wrote a book that year that more or less praised graffiti as an urban art form. Imagine being transported back to that time in the flash of an instant. I mean, were there any air-conditioned cars back then? I doubt it.
I Can’t Stand It
Hey, wait a minute…you can’t put me in irons and make me a slave! Fuck away from me! I’m a free man with a family, you fuck. I’m a man of taste and breeding and character who dresses well and knows from good wine. Jesus…this is awful. I’m a slave and it’s a terrible way to live. Good God, that Michael Fassbender guy…what a venal piece of shit! And I can’t do anything about it because I’m a slave. Well, at least I’m the main protagonist in a film that says that slavery was and always will be a revoltingly evil thing. Quentin Tarantino‘s Django Unchained wasn’t emphatic enough about this. We need to remind ourselves over and over again. Oscars!
Values and Principles
I often run into a certain guy at Manhattan screenings, a guy I’ll sometimes shoot the shit with, but mostly I tend to avoid him because he’s always talking but never saying anything. Everything out of his mouth is droll, flip and glib. Nothing is of any consequence. Nearly ever word slides across the surface like a gravel rock across an ice pond. This guy is so comme ci comme ca about almost everything that I sometimes want to shove him. You have to stand strongly against or for something to have any contour or character or personality. You can’t just go “yeah, I heard about that and I tweeted about that and I saw her on Jimmy Kimmel and blah blah blah blah” about everything. You have to give that shit a rest every so often.
