Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman is a staunch ally of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, but in a Variety essay penned late last night he had the moxie to step back and coolly assess who performed “better” in the Walz-Vance debate. I don’t like his verdict — I think the vp debate was a draw so I don’t fucking agree with it — but his words nonetheless put a chill into my system.

I wrote last night that Walz “is a smart, decent, honorable fellow, but J.D. Vance is a taller, smoother operator with blue eyes and a nicely trimmed goatee. They’ve both indicated that they respect each other. Hell, they almost even like each other. Nobody’s doing any bitch-slapping here.

“I think the debate was a draw. Walz closed strongly, especially when discussing he Affordable Care Act and the criminal chaos of Jan. 6th. Vance did a little bit better, I think, during the first half-hour. Vance’s lying aside and attempts to sane-wash the crazy, it was a reasonable discussion for the most part. I don’t think it changes the Presidential race at all.”

Gleiberman was having none of this. He declared Vance the winner.

“Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are fighting to save America,” Gleiberman wrote. “Yes, they are, and I believe they’re the ones to do it. But the way you save America is by winning the election. And on that score, JD Vance gave an astonishingly impressive performance that was all wrapped up in the aura of a winner.

“With those piercing eyes and that perfectly coiffed hair, his FM-DJ-meets-Fox-News voice, and his absolute refusal to get riled about anything, even if it was one of his pet ideologies (like the evils of immigration), he worked the debate stage with remarkable panache.

“Vance had confidence; he had calm; he had a Mona Lisa smile that allowed him to stay above the fray. And, to my surprise, he had a touch of what Ronald Reagan did — the ability to make all his statements sound like a form of assurance. That was true even when he was selling pure malarkey.”

HE to Gleiberman: You’re basically saying that Walz is a better, more humane and highly principled man and a Minnesota straight-shooter but last night he put out antsy, nerve-jangled body and facial signals while Vance is a fucking liar who’s serving a total sociopath criminal beast but he lied in a very smooth and confident and well-coiffed Reaganesque way. So yay Vance!

Vance was mainly running for the 2028 MAGA presidency.”

Okay, Owen wasn’t actually saying “yay, Vance!” He was trying to discuss the thing that woke media never talks about: what actually wins elections. The fact that they don’t talk about this enough — and that the Republicans do — is part of the reason Kamala may, believe it or not, lose in a squeaker. Owen was trying to call the debate in a reality-based, non-woke way, and ‘yay Vance!’ has nothing to do with it.

9:05 pm: Bad camera decisions…we missed the walk-ons, the handshakes…Walz’s forceful reply on Israel-Iran is used to lob grenades at Vance. Vance replies with a generic, this-is-who-I-am stump speech, which then segues into an attack on Biden’s foreign policy.

Vance: “Donald Trump consistently made the world more secure”…WHAT? Walz furiously scribbling notes. Love that deep, raspy voice. Vance is lying and misrepresenting, but he’s younger, taller and thinner than Walz & his delivery is cool and measured. He’s doing okay. Walz is also doing well. Frank-sounding, lots of statistics, forthright delivery. And then right back to his notes.

9:17 pm: How many solar panels are being made in China, and how many here in the U.S.? Southern border immigration, “stop the bleeding”, fentanyl smuggling.

Walz: Trump torpedoed a Mexican immigrant bill “because he wanted a campaign issue to run on.” A verbal scuffle between Vance and moderators….Vance won’t stop yapping it up while the moderators are trying to adhere to structure and procedure.

Vance is really running for himself as a 2028 MAGA candidate — he knows Trump won’t be running in ’28, and he’s better at this than Trump ever has been or will be.

Frank Luntz focus group: Walz and Vance are better at digging into the issues than Harris and Trump were. Vance is a bigger liar — Walz is less combative than he could be. He’s a straight shooter, but he’s too decent of a guy to go in for the kill.

9:35 pm: Walz’s defense of Biden-Harris’s economic record is fast, vigorous and factual. Walz is reviewing his career. Travelling to China 35 years ago, but he “misspoke” about the timing of the visit. “I’ve learned a lot about China…now look, my community knows who I am…I’ve not been perfect but my commitment has been there from the beginning.”

9:45 pm: Vice-presidents don’t make policy. The vice-presidency “isn’t worth a warm bucket of spit,” as John Nance Garner once said. Vice-presidents are ceremonial figureheads. They control nothing — strictly backup.

Walz is recounting the story of the late Amber Thurman, who died due to a slowup of procedure due to the absence of Roe vs. Wade regulations.

My head is spinning. Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat….ratta-ratta-ratta. I can’t keep up with all the point-counterpoint…whew. But these guys are evenly matched. Nobody’s losing or winning.

10 pm: Should parents be held responsible for school shootings? The easy availability of automatic weaponry is obviously at the root of this.

Walz: My 17 year-old son witnessed something violent close by. In Minnesota we enacted “red flag laws, backup checks.” Finland doesn’t allow these horrible things to happen. We can keep our weapons and still make this work. Sometimes it’s just the [availabilty of] guns. Death from at-home suicides. Kids getting guns and accidentally shooting themselves.

Vance is making an excellent case that despite his lies and evasions, he’s a better, more issue-oriented and mature-minded debater than Donald Trump.

Walz: Kamala Harris will stand by Obamacare (i.e., the ACA) and you will not suffer if stricken by a disese because of the pre-existing conditions clause.

Tim Walz is a smart, decent, honorable fellow, but J.D. Vance is a taller, smoother operator with a nicely trimmed goatee. They’ve both indicated that they respect each other. Hell, they almost even like each other. Nobody’s doing any bitch-slapping.

I think the debate was a draw. Walz closed strongly, especially when discussing he Affordable Care Act and the criminal chaos of Jan. 6th. Vance did a little bit better, I think, during the first half-hour. Vance’s lying aside and attempts to sane-wash the crazy, it was a reasonable discussion for the most part. I don’t think it changes the Presidential race at all.

From Thomas L. Friedman‘s 10.1 N.Y. Times article, titled “The First Volleys of a Ballistic Missile War in the Mideast” and posted last night between 8 and 9 pm:

“We may be about to enter what could be the most dangerous moment in the history of the modern Middle East: a ballistic missile war between Iran and Israel, which would almost certainly bring in the United States on Israel’s side and could culminate in a full-blown U.S.-Israeli effort to destroy Iran’s nuclear program.”

Good Marrakech paragraph, posted on 12.6.10: “Everyone you run into in Marrackech is polite and calm and gentle to a fault. There’s apparently no such thing as an impolite Marrakech resident.

“Okay, I did run into a couple of ruffians on a bike on Saturday night who tried to assault me and steal my wallet — I later named them Dick and Perry — but I pushed one of them in the chest and told them both to fuck off and then ran in the opposite direction and they were good enough not to follow, so even the thieves and the roughnecks are…well, not exactly polite but accommodating.

“And there’s no indoor smoking ban. And there are no helmet laws so you can scooter down the street with the wind blowing through your hair. And the food is wonderful. And the energy in the main old-town square (Jemaa el Fnaa) is so exciting and heavenly.

“And there are horse carts all over the city, and sometimes as you’re scootering down the street you can smell horseshit, and that is a very good thing. The older you get and the more plastic and corporate the world becomes, the better horseshit smells.”

“The sickest I’ve ever been happened in Marrakech in the summer of ’76. It came after eating a dish of Couscous at a rooftop medina restaurant. I awoke around 1 ayem, weak and whimpering. I spent the next twelve hours ‘making love to the toilet,’ as my girlfriend of the time put it.

“But there was nothing jolting or spasm-like going on within. Those twelve hours of agony were more about laying down and surrendering to the void. Around 3 or 4 am I said to myself, ‘Okay, this might be it…I might die. But at least when I depart this awful nausea will stop, and I can merge with the infinite in peace.’”

I spoke a couple of times to Herbert Ross when I was a Cannon press kit writer. It was in the fall of 1987 when his Mikhail Baryshnikov film, Dancers, was being prepared for release. During our second chat I was asking him about something I wanted to put into the Dancers press kit, and somehow I miscommunicated my intention. Ross got the idea I was trying to debate him.

“Look, this isn’t that kind of conversation!,” he said sternly, almost shouting. I immediately backpedaled and grovelled. “No, no, Mr. Ross…I apologize, that’s not what I meant,” etc. I cooled him down but after I hung up, I said to myself, “Jesus God, that is one fierce hombre! He was ready to take my head off!”

Of course, any director who’s elbowed his or her way into mainstream Hollywood and maintained power in that realm over any period of time has to be tough as nails.

“All strong directors are sons of bitches,” John Ford allegedly said to screenwriter Nunnally Johnson sometime in the late ’40s or early ’50s. His point was that Johnson, in Ford’s view, was too much of a nice, thoughtful, fair-minded guy to cut it as a director. Directors basically can’t be too mellow or gentle or accommodating. They need to try and be reasonable and constructive about the usual problems, but they also need to be tough, pugnacious and manipulative mo’fos in order to get what they want. And if they’re too deferential, they won’t last.”

Contrast my Ross anecdote with his analysis of The Last of Sheila (’73), which he produced and directed between early ’72 and early ’73: “If you have a group of people on a ship, the ship becomes a metaphor for existence,” he said. “You can’t help it. It’s not a symbol one strives for, but it does happen. It’s not a picture about film people, it’s about people…I’ll tell you what this picture is about. It’s about civilization and barbarism. You cannot make up for the absence of civilization.”

Set on a yacht off the Cote d’Azur, Sheila is about venal, barbaric behavior, sure, but “not about film people”? Not about talented but necessarily opportunistic scrappers who are invaruably shrewd, manipulative, gregarious, clever, hungry and deceptive? Of course it is!James Coburn‘s producer character certainly meets the standard. The whole film, really, radiates the way things felt back then (pre-Watergate Nixon administration)…a certain jaded, opportunistic, defiantly anti-spiritual mindset.

Sheila is a darkly playful parlor game about seven dodgy, flinty, cynical people playing ruthless mind games with each other. It’s a glamorous vacation film, quite cynical and entirely cerebral. There’s no trusting the emotional moments, of course, because the players are such gifted liars so it doesn’t exactly radiate depth. But thanks to Anthony Perkins and Stephen Sondheim, it’s very sharply written.

The irony for me is that a character who seems like the least malicious and easily the most mild-mannered, sensible-sounding fellow on board — Richard Benjamin‘s Tom Parkman, a screenwriter — turns out to be the worst of them.

On-screen, I mean. Off-screen, the worst may have been costar Raquel Welch.

According to an 11.12.72 Chicago Tribune piece titled “Raquel Plans Suit Against Director”, there were also complaints about Welch’s behavior.

Welch announced she was suing director Herbert Ross for assault and battery as a result of an incident in her dressing room. She claimed she had to flee to London during the shoot “to escape physical harm”. Warner Bros. later issued a statement supporting Ross and criticizing Welch for her “public utterances”.

Excerpt: “Shooting the monastery sequence just off Cannes proved to be troublesome for Welch. Gale force winds and rain disrupted the night shoot, and Welch was reluctant to leave her Venice hotel for fear of getting stuck in the storm.”

Mason said that Welch “was the most selfish, ill-mannered, inconsiderate actress that I’ve ever had the displeasure of working with”.

McShane: “Raquel Welch isn’t the most friendly creature. She seems to set out with the impression that no one is going to like her.”

From an AFI catalogue: “An 11.22.72 Variety article reported that the film was made for a little over $2,000,000.

“During production actress Raquel Welch, who portrayed ‘Alice Wood,’ took a brief leave from the film to promote her 1972 film Kansas City Bomber. As her absence necessitated a change in the shooting schedule, according to the article, James Mason reportedly called her departure ‘inconsiderate.’ Her public rebuttal and subsequent criticism of the film, as well as Warner Bros.’ disapproval of her comments, were widely reported in the press.

“An 11.15.72 Variety news item reported that production was temporarily shut down due to threats by Black September, the Palestinian terrorist organization, which took offense at the number of participants in the film who were Jewish.”

Repeating: Halina Reijn‘s Babygirl (A24, 12.25) is reportedly a B & D variation on the “Type-A cougar has it off with a hot young dude” genre.

Friendo #1: “Actors will love it. Nicole is raw and great (as always) and it is HER show…she’s stunning, but whether it goes beyond that Oscar-wise remains to be seen. I also loved Antonio Banderas as her husband. Weird story…kinda Last Tango-ish with clothes mostly kept on, or 9 1/2 Weeks in some ways. Not at all romantic.”

Friendo #2: “Pic will gather multiple noms — Best Actress (Kidman), Best Actor (Harris Dickinson), Best Direction and Writing (Reijn).”

Honestly? People have been remarking for quite a while about a look of stretched tightness in Nicole Kidman‘s facial features, and in particular around her eyes. For whatever reason I never shared this reaction. But when I saw this Babygirl trailer, my first thought was “whoa, her face looks tight as a drum.”

Friendo who’d seen Babygirl the night before, quoted on 9.16.24: “A groundbreaking investigation of female sexuality by a female writer-director.”

And the gut reaction from the HE community…?

I’ll give you a gut reaction. Nicholas Hoult‘s Justin Kemp character has to come clean and face the music, and if he doesn’t audiences will hate this movie. Plain and simple.

Juror #2 (aka Juror No. 2) will premiere at L.A.’s AFI Fest on Sunday, 10.27, and then open commercially on Friday, 11.1.

Late to this…sorry…posted on 9.22.24.

Last weekend the Three Amigos (Alejandro G. Innaritu, Alfonso Cuaron, Guillermo del Toro) had dinner at KOL, a trendy Mexican-British fusion restaurant in London’s Marylebone restaurant (9 Seymour Street), with Tom Cruise, who’s currently collaborating with Inarritu on a mystery project that Cruise is starring in and producing. The costars in the Cruise-Inarritu are Sandra Huller, John Goodman, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jesse Plemons, Sophie Wilde and Riz Ahmed.

The blonde is HE’s own Kim Morgan, GDT’s wife and screenwriting collaborator; the guy on the right is KOL chef Santiago Lastra. Guillermo was with a cane because he’d broken a toe.

You’ll notice that with the exception of Lastra they’re all wearing thick-soled, leather lace-up boots. Even Morgan is wearing Doc Martin lace-ups. Was it because damp weather was expected or something? Because otherwise I don’t get it. If I had been there I would’ve eiher worn my brown suede Beatle boots or my suede, Italian-made hush puppies. I believe in sleek, unobtrusive footwear. Mostly the kind of dapper shoes that Cary Grant or Fred Astaire would’ve worn. Boots are klumpy things. They’re about dominance, power, alpha-male attitude.

So it’s reasonable to presume that some kind of feisty slap-around might happen from time to time. Presumably Walz has prepared some zingers a la Lloyd Bentsen to Dan Quayle (“Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy”), and I mean something more here-and-now than just calling Vance “weird.” Vance will lie his ass off, of course.

Barring a limo trip to JFK or LGA, HE expects to live-blog this evening’s 9 pm debate, airing on CBS and coming from the CBS Broadcast Center on West 57th Street (between 10th and 11th avenues).

(More…)

HE friendo Bill McCuddy sent this problematic man-ped photo from his high-security, five-star fortress in…he didn’t say but most likely Fez or Marrakech. (The last time I visited Casablanca it was a sprawling industrial hell hole.)

HE reply: “Swimming pool, palm trees and flip flops. You could be in Palm Springs or Acapulco.  

“I’m presuming you’re in Marrakech but with a strict avoidance attitude — no conversations with locals, no roaming through the Medina, no snake charmers, no exotic Moroccan cuisine, no posing with camels, no camping out in the desert, no horse-drawn carts, no Dar el Bacha Palace, no visiting the Man Who Knew Too Much shooting locations (La Mamounia hotel), no conversing with French-accented Louis Bernard types, none of that.

“Please correct if I’m wrong but you seem to be enjoying a well-protected Kardashian experience. At least you’re not wearing Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves curled-toe slippers.”

McCuddy message accompanying photo: “Hope you didn’t just eat.”

It was the middle of March in 2012, and I was talking to Prague’s Esthe Plastika about having some touch-up work on my eyelids, eye bags and neck wattle. I explained what I wanted, and they asked me to take some close-ups of my face and neck area and send them along.

So I did, and when I looked at those horrific snaps I went into catatonic shock. I was looking at the features of a bloated, wine-drinking manatee.

The first thought that hit me was “okay, that’s it for the evening sips of Pinot Grigio and Sauvignon Blanc…I’m done.” The shock of those photos was so great that I stopped that very night. I haven’t touched a drop since.

My 12-year sober anniversary was celebrated on 3.20.24.

Josh Brolin describing a lot of stuff but drilling down on how and when he decided upon sobriety: