Seriously. Iconic.

The truly legendary Paul Morrissey, world-renowned for his Andy Warhol-associated films and whatnot, has died at age 86.

Posted on 2.3.22: “Sometime in 2009 or ’10 I was seated next to Morrissey at a Peggy Siegal luncheon in some plush Manhattan eatery. I recognized him right away, but even if I hadn’t I would’ve felt instantly at home with the sardonic attitude and the seen-it-all, slightly pained facial expressions.

“I love guys like this. They’ve lived long enough and have met enough people of consequence to know that much of what constitutes modern life (even in a first-class town like New York City) is distasteful or disappointing or phony. And yet they soldier on with their squinty smiles and witty asides.”

If there’s one serving of advice I have consistently rejected and in fact despised all my life, it’s “invest in love rather than disdain,” “glass half full rather than half-empty,” “always look on the bright side,” etc.

Do you think Mark Twain or George Orwell or Paul Morrissey ever bought into that happy-faced crap?

I’ve always looked at things as they are or seem to be, and free of vibes of forced smiley-face happiness or rose-colored glasses or any of that jazz. Life is not Disneyland.

Yesterday’s world of the streets of the Lower East Side — warmer than warm, in some ways bland, shade-less, somewhat sticky and certainly dreary — was what it fucking was. It was certainly no cultural blessing to be there, I can tell you. The architecture mostly lacked intrigue and character, certainly compared to the nabes of Paris, Rome, Prague, Bern, Barcelona, Cefalu, San Francisco, etc.

Manhattan has always been a must-to-avoid on summer days. Stay the hell out of town until after Labor Day. They’ve all said that for decades. Nothing cranky about it — just the way it is.

I wrote about the Lower East Side yesterday with exactly the same spirit and attitude with which I wrote about Buenos Aires 18 years ago, in March 2005.

Earlier today I felt honestly unclear about Karla Sofia Gascon’s situation. I asked around but no one gave me any answers of any kind. So I searched around on my own.

In Emilia Perez, Karla’s titular character submits to full-on surgical transitioning including, one gathers, the removal of male genitalia. I realize that a specific question to Karla Sofia’s reps along these lines is considered gauche or insensitive in certain circles, but here goes anyway: has Karla Sofia Gascon submitted to the same Emilia Perez-type procedure? Or is she walking around with a package?

I know questions of this type sound disrespectful to wokesters, but Gascon’s Best Acress Oscar campaign is far more identity-driven than performance-based, so why can’t we just lay it out on the kitchen table?

Karla Sofia began life as a man, and has worked as an actor/actress for quite a while. Her dead name is Juan Carlos Gascon, which she went by until 2018.

I honestly think that Juan Carlos Gascon, with his once-slender face, blonde-ish hair and bro whiskers, looks more fetching in his original biological state than Karla Sofia Gascon does as a woman now. Karla’s face is rounder. She seems larger somehow.

Karla was born 52 years ago in Alcobendas, Spain, but since 2009 has been a resident of what I’m presuming is Mexico City. A shamelessly softball profile of Gascon by Deadline‘s Antonia Blyth, posted this morning, only says that she lives “in Mexico.” If Blyth were to run an interview with Angelina Jolie, would she report that Jolie lives in the United States?

It would appear that Karla Sofia is, after a fashion, “straight.” Gascón is married to Marisa Gutierrez. They met at a nightclub in Alcobendas when Juan Carlos was 19, or in 1991. Together they have a daughter, who was born in 2011. It’s not my place to speculate about Karla Sofia and Marisa’s marriage, but if they were to split up Karla would presumably still be into women as a rule. Her trans sexual behavior is apparently the same as Lana Wachowski‘s…she enjoys being a lesbian.

If I’m wrong about any of this, please inform.

The first time in my life that I heard the term “fascist rally” was during my first viewing of The Manchurian Candidate, sometime in the early ’70s. I seem to recall it being shown at the Leo S. Bing theatre at the L.A. County Museum of Art, which was quite a score by Ron Haver as John Frankenheimer‘s 1962 thriller had been commercially withdrawn for some years at that point.

The term was used hy John McGiver, portraying the ultra-liberal Senator Thomas Jordan. He was speaking to James Gregory, who was playing Senator John Yerkes Iselin, a reactionary conservative who was modelled on the real-life Senator Joseph McCarthy.

The scene happens at a loud, raucous party at Iselin’s vacation home…a party to celebrate the engagement of Laurence Harvey‘s Raymond Shaw and Jordan’s daughter, Jocelyn (played by Leslie Parrish).

Iselin: “Tom! Tom, boy! So great you could come!”
Jordan: “I am here at this fascist rally because my daughter has assured me that it was important to her that I come. There is no other reason.”
Iselin: “Good old Tom!”

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I’ve just purchased a Trivial Pursuit “Silver Screen” edition, which is only for older hardcore film buffs — Millennials and Zoomers will have a very tough time with it, and even younger GenXers may be stumped for the most part.

The questions were written in ‘85 or thereabouts so unless you’re up on the careers of William S. Hart, Jean Arthur, Rosalind Russell, Ben Hecht, Brian Donlevy, Edmond O’Brien, Ann Sheridan, Gregg Toland, Andy Devine, David O. Selznick (a racist, sexist, pep-pill-popping scumbag!), Joan Blondell, Myrna Loy, Pat O’Brien, Rudolph Valentino, etc.

It makes me sick to go through online movie trivia games that have obviously been written by (or are aimed at) clueless under-40s.

I wish for the sake of Thanksgiving gatherings that a 1984-to-2024 edition could be made available. Way back when I always aced the ‘85 questions, and I’d manage the same, of course, with my imagined Silver Screen 2. Maybe there is such a board game — maybe I’m overlooking something.

Last Friday (10.25) I posted a Nightmare on Elm Street election–anxiety freak–out piece so I can’t go there again — it’s only been 72 hours. My waiting-to-be-electrocuted feelings are only going to intensify between now and 11.5 — eight days!! — so medicating is almost certainly on the rise.

Ari Emanuel to Puck’s Matthew Belloni:

“[It’s] going to come down to 120,000 votes. You probably have 60 percent of the male vote for Trump, and the female vote is 60-40 for Kamala.” Wait — 40% of registered women voters are going for The Beast? Ari: “It’s a jump ball. We’re going to find out who wants this more — men or women.”

From Molly Ball’s 10.27 Wall Street Journal report, “America Is Having a Panic Attack”:

Here’s my favorite paragraph:

HE for one believes in the sleeping-male–Kamala–supporter theory…thank you! Okay, not really but I’d like to believe in it.

As I confessed last Friday…

Aaron Schimberg‘s A Different Man opened around five weeks ago and promptly bombed. I can’t imagine why. If there was ever a dark comedy made for Joe and Jane Popcorn…a film that’s partly about a pretty, sexy theatre director (Renate Reinsve) falling in love with a modern-day Elephant Man (i.e., a guy afflicted with neurofibramitosis, played by Adam Pearson)…talk about a date movie!

The theme, as you might presume if you’ve seen the trailer, is basically “you are what you are inside” or, if you will, “ignore the physical in order to concentrate on the interiors.”

I was initially resigned to watching it last month, but at the end of the day I couldn’t go there. I wimped out.

A majority of critics, possibly fearful of being labelled as brusque or cruel or insensitive by shrieking neurofibromatosis wokies, bestowed thumbs-up reviews (92% Rotten Tomatoes, 78% Metacritic).

I didn’t want to see it for obvious reasons (one of them being that I didn’t want to be reminded of nature’s random cruelty), but now that I’ve read the Wiki synopsis I’m stunned to learn that Renate’s character enters into a full-on, fucking-and-fellatio relationship with Pearson’s Oswald character.

On top of which before hooking up with Oswald, Renate’s Ingrid is sexually involved with Sebastian Stan‘s Edward, another victim of neurofibromatosis who is magically transformed into a normal-looking fellow through surgery.

A friend explains that A Different Man is presented as a tongue-in-cheek fable or fairy tale. I don’t care whose tongue is in what cheek…there’s no buying Renate Reinsve fucking a charming Elephant Man…no!

We all understand the necessity of expressing kindness and compassion in our lives, but I’m not sure I can do this…cue the neurofibromatosis wokies…”you slithering bastard…you need to commit suicide!”

A Better Man will begin streaming on Tuesday, September 5.

…when using non-attributable quotes for a serious state-of-things piece was considered journalistic malpractice? Or at least it was 26 years ago. In the minds of David Poland and Peter Bart, I mean.

In an Indiewire piece posted earlier today, producer, industry consultant and former Fine Line production executive Liz Manne outed herself as a major anonymous source for a controversial, once-heavily-criticized 1998 Premiere story that described a culture of sexual harassment at New Line Cinema, which at the time was run by Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne.  

The article, written by John Connolly and fact-checked by Premiere staffers (including then-editor Jim Meigs and senior film editor Glenn Kenny), was called “Flirting With Disaster.”

The article asserted that all kinds of nasty shenanigans (drinking, drugs, sexual harassment) were happening at New Line, and that Shaye and Lynne ran the place “like a college dorm,” according to a producer who spoke anonymously to Connolly. The piece began with a story about a boozy New Line party that happened the year before (1992) at a lodge in Snowmass, Colorado, and about how Lynne made an aggressive sexual pass at an unnamed female executive. 

That executive, according to Manne’s Indiewire piece, was Manne herself. As noted, she flat-out admits to having been one of Connolly’s anonymous sources.

In hindsight, the Connolly piece can be appreciated as a tough expose that described a predatory climate that sounds all too familiar by today’s understandings. But because it depended on anonymous sources (when she left the company Manne signed an exit agreement that forbade her from talking to anyone about anything in any context) the article was strongly attacked as an example of reckless or irresponsible journalism.

Two of the attackers were Movie City News’ David Poland and Variety‘s Peter Bart. Coincidentally, there was also a “Reverse Angle” article on page 51 in that same issue of Premiere, written by Harvey Weinstein of all people, that complained about “the reckless use of unnamed sources.”

From Poland’s 6.17.98 MCN article: “Can you say ‘hatchet job?’ I know for sure that Premiere magazine can. It had to be the phrase of the day when it decided to print its story, ‘Flirting With Disaster’” on alleged sexual and drug-related misconduct at New Line Cinema. I am often disgusted with the state of entertainment journalism, but usually it’s because we throw softballs in exchange for access to the talent that sells magazines, newspapers and TV shows. (And yes, some Web sites.) This time, it’s the opposite. 

“What was Premiere thinking when it ran the results of John Connolly‘s eight-month ‘investigation’ which added up to little more than a handful of gossipy accusations by unnamed sources that any reporter working this beat on a regular basis could have come up with over a three-day weekend?”

Full respect and affection for the late Phil Lesh, who famously and joyously played bass for the Grateful Dead for 30 years (’65 to ’95) and then kept playing with The Other Ones and one or two other groups into the early teens.

Lesh was 84 when he passed on 10.25.24, apparently from cancer.

This may sound off but when I heard of Lesh’s departure, the first thing I flashed on was that Altamont footage from Gimme Shelter (’70)…that brief discussion between Lesh, Dead headliner Jerry Garcia and Santana drummer Mike Shrieve about the Hells Angels beating people up, etc.

I remembered it because the very first time I saw this 1970 Alfred and David Maysles documentary I was struck by Lesh’s slight hesitancy in condemning what had reportedly happened.

Jerry Garcia: “Oh, that’s what the story is here?”
Mike Shrieve (Santana): “Yeah.”
Garcia: “Oh, bummer.”
Shrieve: “Really, man. I mean, like…it’s scary.”
Phil Lesh: “Who’s doing all the beating?”
Shrieve: “Hell’s Angels.”
Lesh: “Hell’s Angels beating on musicians?”
Shrieve: “Marty [Balin] got beat up. Hit in the face.”
Lesh: “It doesn’t seem right, man.”
Shrieve: “It’s really weird, man. It’s really weird.”
Garcia: “Oh, man. Really?”

Doesn’t “seem” right? My immediate reaction way back when was “hey, Phil, don’t go out on a limb!”

A B-plus grade isn’t a major problem, but it is a slight one. It means that a certain percentage of the Conclave respondents had an issue or argument withg the ending. trust me. Traditional Catholics, traditional-minded people, Average Joes and Janes, etc. I saw it for a third time on Thursday night (I had to flush that awful Montclair Film Festivql screening out of my head), and there was a somewhat older couple sitting behind me, and when the lights came up they were obviously a bit displeased, and perhaps even a bit stunned. I could feel their vibe