All my life I’ve been asking myself, “What does it mean for somebody to be ‘crockin‘ all the time?,’ which is how Elvis Presley described some guy he doesn’t like or respect in the 1956 pop song “Hound Dog“. When I learned this morning that Jerry Leiber, the guy who co-wrote the song with Mike Stoller, had passed at 78, I checked the Hound Dog lyrics and read that the lyric is “cryin’ all the time” and not “crockin’.”

Jerry Leiber (l.) and Mike Stoller (r.)

You know something? The hell with that. It is “crockin'” that Presley is singing, and I don’t want to hear any differently.

Lieber co-wrote “There Goes My Baby” (I love Cat Stevens‘ version, which Wes Anderson used in Rushmore), “Kansas City,” “Yakety Yak”, “Poison Ivy”, “Stand By Me” (with Ben E. King), “Jailhouse Rock”, “Love Potion No. 9”, “Searchin'”, “Young Blood” (which Leon Russell covered well in The Concert for Bangla Desh), “Is That All There Is?” (wait…he co-wrote that Peggy Lee song?), “On Broadway” (with Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil) and “Spanish Harlem” (Leiber co-writing with Phil Spector).

In the annals of ’50s rock, late ’50s to early ’60s doo-wop and AM pre-Beatles ’60s rock, Leiber and Stoller are/were absolutely legendary, world-class songwriters on the level of Irving Berlin or Rogers and Hart or Rogers and Hammerstein or whomever….right up there, voices of a generation, lightning in a bottle.

It’s important to read their co-authored “Hound Dog: The Leiber & Stoller Autobiography.”

Jon Huntsman is the only sane, more-or-less reasonable-sounding Republican candidate for the Presidency outside of Mitt Romney, who has disqualified himself for being a slithering, say-anything shape-shifter. Huntsman’s mildly thoughtful, fair-minded mentality, however, is presumably going to cause him great difficulty with the impassioned wingnuts who are expected to vote heavily and devotedly in the 2012 Republican primaries. Some commentators are saying Huntman is dead — he’s way too measured and logical to make it with the wackos.

I’m going to suppress my anger and vote for Obama in 2012, but if a Republican were to win, I could at least tolerate Huntsman. Tolerate, I say — not support. The country needs more than just a good-looking, to-the-manor born Mormon…please. But at least he’s not a reality-denying, corporate-fellating primitive and Christian-visionary wackazoid like Rick Perry or Michelle Bachmann.

Martin Scorsese‘s George Harrison: Living In The Material World, a 208-minute documentary portrait of the late musician and one-time Beatle, will play at the New York Film Festival before premiering on HBO and then becoming available on 10.10 from Amazon.

It’s fairly astonishing that in 2011 — 49 years after the debut of Dr. No, the first James Bond film, and 46 years after the first wave of 007 spoofs — that there’s still a market for another Pink Panther-meets-Austin Powers film. Tens of thousands will pay to see Johnny English Reborn (Universal, 10.28) and go “hah-hah-hah!” and wipe tears from their eyes, etc. The first Johnny English (’03) cost $40 million to make and only made $28 million here, but the worldwide gross was $160,583,000.

I’ll admit that the chopper-trimming-the-tops-of-cypress-trees bit is funny.

Tall can marry short…it happens. But the “birds of a feather” rule is obviously the basic universal aesthetic — super-tall lanky guys hooking up with extra-tall or at least sizable women, shortish women with guys who aren’t much more than three or four inches taller, etc. It therefore seems not just odd but borderline perverse to see a couple that is 19 inches apart — the almost-freakishly-tall New Jersey Nets basketball player Kris Humphries and the under-sized Kim Kardashian — get married.

What kind of bizarre pyschologies would lead these two to hook up, much less tie the knot? Proportionately-speaking the 6’9″ Humphries marrying the 5’2″ Kardashian is like a six-foot man hooking up with a woman who’s four-foot-five, or a 5’8″ guy going out with a woman who’s 4’2″. From a size-alone perspective it’s like a moderately tall man having sex with a second- or third-grader. It’s kind of sick. Kardashian’s apparent need for security and submission (i.e., taking comfort from being protected by a guy who’s almost as big as Richard Kiel‘s “Jaws”) needs to be written about by a psychologist who knows more than I do.

If I had my druthers, I would lead a guns-blazing Libyan-styled revolution (metaphorically speaking, of course) against the 21st Century ditzoid female psychology that celebrates the reality-show nothingness of Kim Kardashian.

Some truly ghastly and horrific acts have been committed against civilians by pro-Gaddafi forces. Now that the conflict is coming to an end with rebels holding most of Tripoli and the last of the loyalists fighting back as we speak, decisions are being made about how to deal with pro-Gaddafi brutes (including the militant pro-Gaddafi female news anchor Hala Misrati, who was taken prisoner two or three hours ago). War is cruel, and the one centuries-old constant whenever a tyrant is overthrown is that the rebel forces will know the satisfaction of payback.

Gaddafi and the worst of his thug militia must pay for their sins, and I mean pay through the nose with all kinds of screaming and howling, if you catch my drift. If they were characters in a Tony Scott or Oliver Stone film, you know what would happen to them. The Gaddafi guys have made their blood-stained bed, and now they must lie in it.

In an 8.20 interview with Le Figaro‘s Jean-Paul Chaillet, Sean Penn basically threw up his hands and said “what the eff?” in a comment about The Tree of Life and the creative workings of Terrence Malick.

“I didn’t at all find on the screen the emotion of the script, which is the most magnificent one that I’ve ever read,” Penn said. “A clearer and more conventional narrative would have helped the film without, in my opinion, lessening its beauty and its impact. Frankly, I’m still trying to figure out what I’m doing there and what I was supposed to add in that context! What’s more, Terry himself never managed to explain it to me clearly.”

In short, whatever Penn had responded to or become excited about as an actor was “there” in the script, but then Mr. Intuitive Light of God started tossing the lettuce leaves around during filming and definitely in the cutting and hey, that’s the Malick process. “Lean” and “lucid” and “straight-shooting” are never the ultimate result.

I said a vaguely similar thing in a 6.29.11 riff about Malick’s 10.1.96 draft of The Thin Red Line. “It was tight and true and straight to the point, and it had no alligators sinking into swamps or shots of tree branches or pretty leaves or that South Sea native AWOL section or any of that languid and meditative ‘why do we vie with ourselves?’ and ‘why is there such strife in our hearts?’ stuff.

Remember also what I wrote during last May’s Cannes Film Festival, which was that there was once a much-longer cut of The Tree of Life and that Penn’s character had all kinds of dialogue on this version with a character arc and everything.

“I heard from a trusted source yesterday that Penn’s part in The Tree of Life, which is barely there with maybe ten lines of dialogue, if that, was fairly substantial in earlier cuts,” I wrote. “But like Adrien Brody‘s character in The Thin Red Line, it was gradually cut down to nothing. Penn is here but didn’t attend the Tree of Life press conference because…ask him.”

Tree of Life cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezski, remember, told Cahiers du Cinema that Malick was working on a six-hour cut of The Tree of Life.

A couple of nights ago I popped in a Bluray of Get Shorty (’95). For old times’ sake or whatever. Sixteen years ago and it feels like…I don’t know, six or seven years ago. And it hit me as I watched that most of the people who costarred in this thing are kind of done now, and they were so hot and kicking and on their game back then, or so it seemed. Savor the moment because it doesn’t last long.

The only two cast members who are still happening are John Travolta and James Gandolfini. And you could argue that Gandolfini’s career is more vital and/or necessary than Travolta’s these days, especially considering reports about Travolta intending to costar with Sylvester Stallone in Expendables 2. There’s no way Gandolfini would even flirt with a film like that.

Rene Russo fell off the map about five or six years ago (her last big score was ’99’s The Thomas Crown Affair), although she played Odin’s wife in Thor. Gene Hackman has retired. Danny DeVito used to be “Danny DeVito” — now he’s “Danny DeVito on TV.” I think most of us suspected he was over theatrically when he costarred with Parker Posey in The Oh in Ohio (’06). The last time I took notice of Delroy Lindo was when he was in Domino six years ago. Bette Midler has her musical career but movie-wise she pretty much stopped mattering after The First Wives Club (’96), and her last role of any consequence was the titular character in Drowning Mona (’00). David Paymer…what’s he doing?

I’m not faulting any of these people, mind. They’re fine talents, etc. I’ve enjoyed their best performances as much as the next guy or gal. I’m just saying “it sure gets away from you.” Your life and career can feel right and high-throttle and the sky’s the limit, and then you turn around and it all turns to ether.

But I am sure am glad that Barry Sonnenfeld is no longer a directorial force to be reckoned with.

Yesterday afternoon I posted some commentary — 95 words, to be exact — along with the latest trailer for Vera Farmiga‘s Higher Ground (Sony Classics, 8.26), which I’ll finally see Monday night. What I said was fairly dismissive about the concept of “God”, believers in Christian theology and/or those who live life in search of divine guidance. An hour or two after the post (which I called “God Is A Drag”) appeared, it un-posted itself and refused to appear.

The reason, I naturally and immediately assumed, was that some sort of cosmic force had decided to intervene. So let’s give it another go, shall we? I’m also going to re-post the nine responses from HE readers.

“People whose lives are, in their minds, basically about finding spiritual fulfillment and deliverance after they’re dead are ridiculous figures,” I wrote. “They’re certainly appalling. The only reason religions are good for society is that they keep the nutters (i.e. those who would otherwise be seeking solace in alcohol or drugs or in the ravings of some antisocial cult leader) in line, and they instill a sense of moral order and temperance among people who lack the intelligence or drive or hunger to seek spiritual satori on their own.”

HE readers know that I’ve been a blown-away fan of Paddy Considine‘s Tyrannosaur since catching it at Sundance 2011. But I’ve been feeling frustrated ever since that no online trailer has turned up. I learned today that Considine, in defiance of any basic concept of fend-for-yourself distribution survival, is still cutting it together, despite Tyrannosaur being locked to open in England seven weeks hence. Who takes this long to finish a trailer?

(l. to r.) Paddy Considine, Peter Mullan, Olivia Colman during Sundance 2011.

Marcu Hu‘s Strand Releasing is planning to open Tyrannosaur stateside sometime in November. (Hu declines to give a specific date.) He said he “cannot control Paddy’s final decision on the trailer. Of course we want it up soon, but we are respecting his decision with the producers to create what he wants. Paddy is very deliberate and wants a trailer that is as perfect as possible.”

Two months ago, on 6.16.11, I asked Hu why there’s no Tyrannosaur trailer, and he said it’s “being done right now with Paddy Considine overseeing it.” And here it is two months and four days later.

“What are you guys doing?,” I asked Hu today. “This is one of the best films I’ve seen this year with a female performance — Olivia Colman‘s — that truly screams out for award-season consideration, and it’s been almost eight months since it showed at Sundance, and two months since it played the LA Film Festival, and it’s opening in England seven weeks from now (on 10.7) and THERE’S STILL NO TRAILER?”

Plus there’s no website, English or American.

If Hu and Considine were secret “mole” agents whose true goal was to diminish and/or kill awareness of & interest in Tyrannosaur as much as possible, they would have made the same calls that they have so far.

“I was knocked out by this film, Marcus — I KNOW when I’ve seen something truly major — and you’re treating it like a some kind of fleabitten mutt dog who’s living in your back yard inside a cardboard box. What is Considine’s malfunction? The movie was finished nine or ten months ago and he can’t finish a trailer that he’s happy with? This is totally nuts.”

The somewhat nebulous, dramatic-content-avoiding, “what is this actually saying?” one-sheet came out in early July, fine. Give the team a pat on the back.

Sunday, 6:35 am: Thanks to “ModernLifeIsRubbish” for providing the just-changed headline.

I’ve tried and tried to find the right-sounding Godzilla ringtone, and this is the best I can do. The “ahrrOOM” sound at the end needs to sound deep and thundering, like it’s coming out of a beast that stands 120 feet tall. The “ahrrOOM!” here sounds like it’s coming out of an AM car radio.

Two days ago I shared my Albuquerque-to-Telluride driving itinerary, and only one guy — CMed1 — pointed out that 550 north to Durango is the fastest way of all. I did some checking and realized this was so. Three to four hours driving time. So no more Chama — that’s history. Thanks loads to all the experienced, knowledgable drivers who’ve travelled between these two cities and failed to mention the 550, and thanks especially to CMed1.