In a fair and just world James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown (Searchlight, 12.25) would just be a film and that’s all…an experience to be judged and savored and possibly enjoyed according to how good it is, period..,how straight and true and honest it feels on a no-bullshit, deep-down, character-driven basis.

But of course it won’t be processed that way.

For Mangold and Jay Cocks’ Bob Dylan biopic is arriving at the tail end of the boomer nostalgia era, which arguably began 41 years ago with Lawrence Kasdan’s The Big Chill (‘83) and peaked with Robert Zemeckis ‘ Forrest Gump (‘94).

HE commenter Eddie Ginley posted this yesterday:

Throw in Zemeckis’ Here (Sony, 11.1) and the forthcoming Jeremy Allen White-Bruce Springsteen biopic and you have to admit that the hour has probably come for boomer sagas and sentimentalists to give it a rest and sorta kinda go away…to hand the mythological movie torch to GenXers and even, God forbid, Millennials, some of whom who are now in their early 40s and are probably nurturing sentimental looking-back notions of their own (i.e., Eminem, Korn, Limp Bizkit).

A friend insisted this morning that no matter how crafty or admirably well-written or emotionally affecting or compellingly performed A Complete Unknown turns out to be, the younger Academy members and particularly the mutants who adored Parasite and Everything Everywhere All At Once are too dug into their boomer hatred, which is why Steven Spielberg’s The Post was blown off.

If a generational yardstick has to be used, a fair way to frame A Complete Unknown would be as the last noteworthy boomer flick…the last ambitious ‘60s atmosphere film….an auld lang syne to the pot and protest and sexual revolution generation (nookie from the late ‘60s to early ‘80s was really and truly astounding) in the same way that Saving Private Ryan, Flags of Our Fathers and The Fog of War were seen as farewell-to-the-greatest-generation movies.

She’ll be Best Actress-nominated, of course, but in the blink of an eyelash our tectonic plates have shifted and…wait, what’s happening?…identity campaigns are no longer a compelling poker hand.

Or so says an 11.2 N.Y. Times article by Jeremy W. Peters and “Identity Trap” author Yascha Mounk in particular.

If you ask me Killers of the Flower Moon’s Lily Gladstone losing the Best Actress Oscar vote earlier this year to Poor Things’ Emma Stone was an early indication of this cultural-turning-the-road thang.

Eat shit, wokesters!

Fascination, intrigue, recognition, emotional alignment, spiritual uplift, a reflection of a cultural-political era, etc.

Late to this but bear with me: Colman Domingo will reportedly make his feature directorial debut with Scandalous, a late 1950s period drama about an alleged romance between Kim Novak (Picnic, Vertigo, Bell Book & Candle) and singer-dancer Sammy Davis Jr., and the brutal, bigoted intimidation (Harry Cohn, Johnny Roselli, Mickey Cohen) that the pair faced once their relationship made the gossip columns.

Sydney Sweeney and David Jonsson are “in talks” to play Novak and Davis.

Just one problem: In March ’21 Novak told THR‘s Scott Feinberg that she and Davis never actually got down. Davis had the hots for Novak and certainly pursued her, an effort that resulted in at least one special date when Novak attended a Thankgiving dinner at the home of Davis’s parents, followed by Davis paying an impromptu visit to Novak’s family home in Chicago a few weeks later.

But there was never an “affair” to speak of…no sliding salami action, no D.H. Lawrence-level passion, no heavy breathing, no splendor in the grass, no making out in the car…nothin’.

Why would Novak, now 91, lie to Feinberg? In 2021 the Davis boogaloo had happened 64 years earlier.

Novak told Feinberg, in fact, that Davis may have done a Bill Cosby on her (i.e., fucked her while she was unconscious) after Tony Curtis, a close Davis pal, slipped her a Mickey Finn.

Davis was pressured by Columbia honcho Harry Cohn, or more specifically by mobsters Johnny Roselli and Mickey Cohen at Cohn’s request. Wiki excerpt: “The one-eyed Davis was threatened with the loss of his other eye or a broken leg if he did not marry a black woman within two days. Davis sought the protection of Chicago mobster Sam Giancana, who said that he could protect him in Chicago and Las Vegas but not California.”

In 1960 Davis and actress May Britt (still with us at age 90) not only had an actual interacial affair but got married. Like Jim Brown, Sammy obviously had a thing for white women.

Britt’s and Davis’s late daughter Tracey Davis (’61 to ’20) alleged in a 2014 book that the marriage to Britt resulted in President Kennedy‘s staff refusing to allow Davis to perform at JFK’s 1961 inauguration. The snub was confirmed by director Sam Pollard, who revealed in a 2017 American Masters documentary that Davis’s invitation to perform at the inauguration was abruptly canceled on the night of JFK’s inaugural party.

Davis and Britt divorced in 1968 after Davis admitted to an affair with singer Lola Falana.

And then, of course, Davis hugged Richard Nixon on the Republican National Convention stage in 1972.

I chatted with Davis at a late-night party in 1983. No charm or smiles, dark mood, not a happy camper.

Posted on 2.9.15: “Doggone, you wabbit…waaaahhhh!”

“Elmer Fudd was one of my first impressions. I wasn’t great at it but I wasn’t half bad. 

“I was just remembering that one of the first big laughs I got from classmates was when I recounted a chat with a 7th-grade substitute teacher, whose name was <strong>Mr. Hilse</strong>.  He was Swedish- or German-looking…slim, fair-haired, medium height. Kind of a dweeby type. Had a reedy, crackly voice and a very slight speech impediment — he had trouble with the letter “r.”

“Anyway the kids in Hilse’s class were all walking down the stairs one day and I, ever the exhibitionist, decided to hop down. Hilse: ‘Walk like a human being and not like a rabbit.’ Later that day I entertained my pallies by doing Hilse as Fudd: ‘…and not like a wabbit.’

“This was one of the most glorious moments that happened to me in seventh-grade, as I was pretty bad at paying attention or getting decent grades, and I was a complete failure with girls.  I had begun to find my voice. Diminish authority figures with derision, jokes…anything that made them seem small or petty.

Kris Tapley has allegedly seen A Complete Unknown, but David Poland apparently hasn’t. I’m completely serious about the “Poland curse” — whatever James Mangold’s film turns out to be, I don’t want it to suffer because of this write-up. It wouldn’t be fair.

Last night in Glendale, Arizona, Donald “king of beasts” Trump summoned a violent fantasy by seeming to threaten Liz Cheney with a potential shooting…”nine barrels aimed at her.” But not so fast.

To be fair Trump was using the same kind of hypothetical that a late ’60s or early ’70s anti-war protestor might have been suggested in the cases of Robert MacNamara or Henry Kissinger during the Vietnam War — “If Kissinger or MacNamara were suddenly thrust into combat duty in Vietnam, the war would very quickly come to an end” or words to that effect.

Trump mentioning the idea of Cheney facing bullets was obviously a rogue, stupid, inflammatory thing to say, and once he said this you can bet that a sizable contingent of gun-toting rightwing wackos immediately began to imagine Cheney being shot. But Trump, I think, was mainly trying to buttress his argument that Cheney is a “radical war hawk”, apparently because she favors supporting Ukraine in its long war against Russia.

Quentin Tarantino to Brett Easton Ellis on Joker: Folie a Deux:

Posted on Hollywood Elsewhere, 10.3.24: