Yesterday afternoon I spoke with novelist-screenwriter Roger Simon, who wrote the early versions of A Better Life (he ended up with a “story by” credit) before being rewritten by Eric Eason. But the basic bones of the screenplay are his. We did about 20 minutes in the offices of IDPR on Hollywood Boulevard.

Simon is CEO of Pajamas Media. He’s the author of ten novels, including the Moses Wine detective series, and six screenplays including Enemies, a Love Story, Bustin’ Loose, My Man Adam and Scenes from a Mall. His first non-fiction book, Blacklisting Myself: Memoir of a Hollywood Apostate in the Age of Terror, was published by Encounter Books in February 2009.

Environmental activist and Last Mountain star Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. delivered some brilliant and impassioned remarks last night following a special invitational screening at the Westside Pavillion. I only managed to capture a small portion of what he said (you don’t want to hear my excuses), but at least I captured a good riff about how you can’t rely on the news media to report the really tough stories because most of the news orgs are compromised to varying degrees by their corporate owners.

Yes, Kennedy has a hoarse and scratchy voice but he’s a real firebrand and he knows his facts and figures.

I ran into Warner Bros. Entertainment president & COO Alan Horn last night during an after-party for The Last Mountain at the Westside Pavillion. I asked him about that $300 million figure that some say is the tab for The Green Lantern. Correct, he said, if you count marketing. The film cost about $200 million and the worldwide marketing total is about $100 million.

Paddy Considine‘s Tyrannosaur, one of the most assuredly artful and emotionally affecting films I’ve seen this year, is playing on Friday (i.e., tomorrow) and Sunday at the L.A. Film Festival. I’d been presuming that an opportunity to interview Considine would be there for interested journalists. But Considine isn’t attending the festival deu to being on a shoot somewhere, and he’s not doing any phoners either, I’m told.

Tyrannosaur costars Peter Mullan, Olivia Colman, Eddie Marsan.

And there’s no YouTube trailer, although I’m informed that one is being finalized as we speak. I don’t get the absence of a trailer for a major film that played at Sundance 2011, which was six months ago, with the film about to show twice at LAFF. What could Strand be waiting for? I’m trying to persuade them to let me speak to Considine anyway.

Here‘s what I wrote last January:

“A publicist asked for a quote about Paddy Considine’s Tyrannosaur, and here’s what I gave her: “The most original adult love story I’ve seen in ages. Easily the biggest shock of the Sundance Film Festival so far. I didn’t see this one coming — it’s a much stronger and more focused film than I expected from a smallish British drama about an older working-class guy with a temper problem. It curiously touches.

“Tyrannosaur is a drama that deals almost nothing but surprise cards — a tough story of discipline, redemption and wounded love. Cheers to director-writer Considine for making something genuine and extra-unique. He’s not just an actor who’s branched into directing with a special facility for coaxing good performances — he’s a world-class director who knows from shaping, cutting, timing, holding back and making it all come together.”

“The performances from Peter Mullan, Olivia Colman and Eddie Marsan simultaneously stand alone and reach in and grab hold. In fact each and every performance (and I mean right down to the dogs) is aces.

“The beast of the title is Joseph (Mullan), an alcoholic, widowed, violence-prone rage monster who lives alone in Leeds. He all but melts when he encounters Hannah (Colman), a kind and trusting shop merchant who shows Joseph a little tenderness. Hannah talks the Christian talk but is just as close to alcohol, which she’s turned to as a sanctuary from her ghastly marriage to a homely, ultra-possessive monster of another sort (Marsan) who brings violence and subjugation to Hannah on a constant basis.

“Once Mullan and Colman have formed a kind of friendship, the inevitable final conflict with Marsan awaits. One naturally expects (and in facts savors, if truth be told) some sort of howling, knock-down, face-gashing fight between Mullan and Marsan, but…well, I’ll leave it there but it’s more than a bit of a surprise what happens.

“I was so taken with Tyrannosaur in the screening’s immediate wake that I shared my reactions with a young freelancer I’d spoken with in the cattle tent. He’d just seen it as well, and basically went ‘meh.’ My mouth almost fell open. ‘You think what we just saw is just okay?,” I thought but didn’t say. Jeezus Christ. It takes all sorts and sensibilities to make a world.”

This is one of the most romantic and beautiful couple-in-love photos I’ve ever seen in my life. It was taken last night in Vancouver by Getty Images’ Rich Lam, and wasn’t, it would appear, “staged.” It’s not just in the same league as that “Kiss by the Hotel de Ville” photo taken in Paris in 1950 by Robert Doisneau as well as Alfred Eisenstaedt‘s “sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square on V-J Day” — it’s also a lot sexier.

Official caption: “A couple kisses while police walk in the streets during riots following the Stanley Cup finals in Vancouver, Canada, on Wednesday, June 15. Vancouver broke out in riots after their hockey team, the Vancouver Canucks, lost in Game Seven of the Stanley Cup Finals.”

If the past is any indication, for the rest of his life Elvis Mitchell is going to lose or quit a never-ending series of cool film-industry jobs. And within two or three months of each departure he’s going to land another new cool film-industry job. Since the ’90s he’s been one of the most frequently hired guys in liberal Hollywoodland. And a cat — incapable of not landing on his feet. Mitchell’s latest bounce-back, announced by Indiewrie‘s Anne Thompson, is a gig as “outsourced film curator” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Mitchell will book films and guests.

Rep. Anthony Weiner will resign this afternoon. Revealing your tumescent animal member on any social-media platform robs you of any aura of authority. The more you allow Mr. Happy to run the show, the weaker and stupider you are. And it breaks my heart because Weiner’s speeches about the corrupted dynamic of Washington power were right on the money.

I’m hearing that Weiner isn’t independently wealthy and needs a job. What’s he going to do? Who’s going to hire the poor guy? He’s radioactive.

Until Monday night’s Republican presidential contenders debate, I hadn’t quite realized how tiny Rep. Michelle Bachmann is. Notice how shrimp-like she seems compared to the other guys (i.e., much shorter than Ron Paul, who’s about 5’9″), even in heels. She appears to be 4′ 11″, which is right next to dwarf territory. And nothing I’d heard or read about her previously even mentioned the height factor…odd.

(l. to r.) Former Sen. Rick Santorum, Bachmann, former House speaker Newt Gingrich, former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney, Texas Rep. Ron Paul, Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, businessman Herman Cain (i.e., “the Hermanator”).

I remain convinced that one of the many reasons Michael Dukakis lost to George Bush, Sr. in ’88 is that a certain percentage of voters felt he was just too short to be President. (He looked like Rocky the squirrel in that catastrophic tank footage.) Modest-sized candidates like John McCain (around 5’8″) will never take any height flack, and I would imagine even a candidate standing 5’3″ or 5’4″ would be semi-acceptable to most voters. But to be less than five feet tall strikes a symbolically inappropriate note on some level.

All this time I’ve been presuming that the big Moneyball dynamic would be between Brad Pitt and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. And maybe it will be in the actual film. But in this just-out teaser it’s between Pitt and Jonah Hill. You can feel the almost Martin-and-Lewis-like rapport. Pitt is the energy guy with the rap and the set-up, and Hill (pre-weight-loss) delivers the punchline.

Sony/Columbia will open Moneyball — directed by Bennett Miller, written by Aaron Sorkin, Stan Chervin and Steven Zaillian, and produced by Scott Rudin, Michael De Luca and Rachael Horovitz — on 9.23.

HE’s Dylan Wells attended the New York premiere of Andrew Rossi‘s Page One: Inside the New York Times (Magnolia Pictures/Participant Media) on Monday, 6.13, at the new Elinor Bunin Monroe Film Center on West 65th. It’s interesting to hear a view from a 21 year-old art student who’s developed a half-notion or suspicion that the Times, solid organization that it clearly is and always has been, isn’t necessarily the most trustworthy news source around.

CBS newsman Morley afer, N.Y. Times media columnist & reporter David Carr during Page One after-party at the Elinor Bunin Monroe Film Center.

“It’s important to note that I walked into this feature with a bias, which is that I’m generally distrustful of conventional news sources. Although I’m particularly disdainful of TV news, whether it’s MSNBC or Fox, I’m not entirely trusting of newspapers either. It’s not that I think these organizations are necessarily spreading disinformation, or that the people that work for them lack integrity. I just happen to believe that interests outside of objective news reporting have a tendency to seep through the cracks every now and then.

“You can certainly maintain a healthy knowledge of world and national events by strictly keeping up with the American news media, but I choose not to rely on it. Call me a conspiracy theorist or a misguided Chomsky-holic, but these are my beliefs and I do not seek validation.

“That said, the New York Times is more than just a newspaper. It is the standard, the American mecca of information. Not only does it serve as the paramount source of information for all other U.S. newspapers, but it is also the primary record of our history. Now and forever what is written in the Times will most likely be accepted as historical fact. That is what is what I find simultaneously incredible and terrifying about it. Much in the same way many goliath investment banks have been deemed ‘too big to fail’, the New York Times has long held a status of ‘too respected to misinterpret’.

“The Times is an integrity-laden, highly regarded institution, and for good reason, but it I find that it’s generally healthy to practice at least a moderate amount of skepticism in the face of such great power.

(l. to r.) Producer Celine Rattray, Magnolia honcho Eamonn Bowles, former Paramount marketing exec and WIE Symposium co-founder Dee Poku.

“Andrew Rossi’s Page One is more of a praising of the New York Times organization than anything else, but it certainly isn’t misguided. The documentary presents several valid reasons as to why it is such a great newspaper. Fine writing and reporting, first-rate journalists, high standards, exactitude. However much I would have liked to see a more critical eye turned towards the institution, if only for the sake of debate, I would be dishonest to say I did not have a rather pleasant time watching it.

“David Carr‘s personality made the movie for me, and judging by the amount of screen time he gets I don’t think Rossi would disagree. It’s delightful to watch him sit down and get old school with the cool-kid Vice Magazine team (no offense to Vice, I’m a big fan, but a certain head of the organization had it coming with the comment he made to Carr).

“As a graphic designer I also appreciate the animated transitions, and would perhaps even liked to see more of such. I think they could have taken that a step further. The shots of the newspaper factory also pleased me, much in the same way I drool in front of to back episodes of ‘How It’s Made’.

“All in all, Page One works, and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to learn the story behind ‘all the news that’s fit to print’. That said, if you’re looking for somebody to confirm your disdain for America’s greatest newspaper, I would stick to YouTube.”

In agreeing to play Jor-El, the biological father of Superman, in Christopher Nolan‘s Man of Steel, Russell Crowe has essentially taken out a huge trade ad that says, “I am now a high-end character actor….I am no longer the bankable movie star I was when I made The Insider and Gladiator and Master and Commander and Robin Hood. If Marlon Brando could take this paycheck role in the 1978 Superman, so can I. And if Nick Nolte could downshift and become a cool character actor in the ’90s, so can I. It’s all cool.”