Posted twice before: I adore this clip from Don Siegel‘s Charley Varrick (’73), in which Walter Matthau‘s titular character tells John Vernon, portraying a mob-connected banker, that he wants to return a pile of ill-gotten mafia money.

Just after 1:03 Vernon conveys something about serendipity with a wonderful economy, using a gently changed expression and a little gesture with his left hand. Arguably the most elegant piece of acting that Vernon ever performed, the gesture seems to say “sometimes there’s God, so quickly!” — a Tennessee Williams line from A Streetcar Named Desire.

In ’85 I was working in publicity and had a chance to speak to Vernon on the set of Hail To The Chief, a TV series about a female U.S. President (Patty Duke) in which Vernon played a hawkish military advisor. I told him I was a huge admirer of this little slice of Varrick, but he didn’t seem to get what I was saying. He just brushed it aside and indicated he wouldn’t mind if I left him alone. I was probably the only guy on the planet who’d ever recognized, much less said to him, that his Charley Varrick hand gesture was some kind of beautiful.

Or he did feel a certain pride but didn’t care to share it with a fan? Whatever. Perhaps he felt insulted by my not praising some meatier part that he once played (the Mal Reese character in Point Blank, his Cuban revolutionary Alfred Hitchcock‘s Topaz, the husband of Sophia Loren in Ettore Scola‘s A Special Day).

Vernon died at age 72 on 2.1.05, following complications from heart surgery.

I was particularly annoyed by the second-to-last scene when Wombat wouldn’t let Indy “stay in Syracuse,” so to speak, and thereby separated the poor old guy from what he really and truly wanted (“All my life,” he said). And then she slugs him and suddenly they’re back in his New York apartment, and his heart is completely broken. So was mine.

In what realm is old, aching Indy rekindling things with old, withered Marion (Karen Allen) better than Indy hanging out with Archimedes and possibly managing to save his life from that Roman solder who slew him in actuality?

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny doesn’t end on anyone’s idea of a happy, vigorous or triumphant note, but Indy and “Arky” joining forces as they explore an array of scientific possibilities as well as the physical ancient world? Are you kidding? That’s a glorious ending. It would be like being reborn.

Who remembers Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? A trifle, 45 years ago, barely recalled but a catchy title. Right now it’s nonsensically coming to mind because the burning question of the moment is “who or what is behind the departures of all those DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) executives?”

Four have ankled over the last ten days or so, and three since last Wednesday.

Disney’s chief diversity officer and senior vp Latondra Newton, hired in 2017, exited on 6.20 to pursue “other endeavors.” A symbolic beheading over the somewhat disappointing returns on Disney’s The Little Mermaid (especially in China and South Korea), which could arguably be blamed on the casting of Halle Bailey? Or is that a reach?

Eight days later (6.28) the ankling of Vernā Myers, Netflix’s chief of inclusion strategy since 2018, was announced. She’ll apparently remain as an advisor to Netflix as she focuses her attention on her consulting company, The Vernā Myers Company.

Two more diversity execs flew or otherwise exited the coop on Friday, 6.30. Karen Horne, Warner Bros. Discovery’s SVP of diversity, equity and inclusion since March 2020, was laid off, and the contributions of Jeanell English, EVP of Impact and Inclusion with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences since July 2022, came to a sudden and mysterious end.

You can call this activity a coincidence and maybe it is, but if this was a thriller of some sort you’d be saying to yourself “something seems to be up.” A case for a latter-day Hercule Poirot a la Clayton Davis with a long pointy moustache?

From Bari Weiss’s 7.1 Free Press interview with Republican Presidential candidate Chris Christie:

“And particularly to females 35 and under” — from Pamela McLintock’s 6.29 THR box–office report about the 7.21-to-7.23 weekend, which foresees Greta Gerwig’s social-metaphor comedy trouncing Chris Nolan’s historical horror film about the A-bomb by at least $25 to $30 million.

Congrats to Team Barbie for achieving a successful sell, even as they privately acknowledge what I’ve been saying all along, which is that Barbie’s mostly Millennial and Zoomer female fans will be lining up “for the wrong reasons,” or certainly going in.

Media types (critics, editors, bloggers, podcasters) love to perform for each other whenever they congregate, which mostly tends to be at all-media screenings. A lot of them live lonely, concentrated lives in front of screens (myself included), and so the emotional spigots tend to flow when they all get together, and boy oh boy, do they turn on the personality and the charm and do what they can to wow each other!

If you’re sitting solo but not too far from the crowd, you’ve no choice but to listen to all the jokes and repartee and sage witticisms and smart-ass cracks, etc. Very few of these guys are into quiet murmurings or sharing thoughts of an earnest nature. They’re all “on-stage” in a sense, and listening to them is…I don’t want to sound like a curmudgeon but listening to them can feel like a faint form of hell. The only cure is to have a conversation of your own, which is probably what I should have done, looking back.