Several years ago a guy suggested that a miniseries based on Steven Bach‘s “Final Cut: Dreams and Disaster in the Making of Heaven’s Gate” could be great. A sprawling, dialogue-driven, slow-motion calamity flick, set mostly in Hollywood and New York with occasional detours to the shooting set with fascinating, whip-smart dialogue and one of the most unusual villains of all time — director Michael Cimino.

The instant I heard this my brain spun around, clicked its heels and said “yes!” I’m still high on the idea. A sprawling six-episode Max or Netflix or Amazon series, I’m thinking.

I’m aware of what a complete friggin’ nightmare it can be to produce films about the making of this or that classic film/play/anything if any of the principals are alive. I don’t know if getting the rights to Bach’s book (which of course was legally cleared when it was published 30 years ago) would lessen difficulties or not, but I’m dead certain that the entire world would stop whatever it’s doing to watch a miniseries about this catastrophic Hollywood saga. I got so high on the idea that I ordered a paperback version of Bach’s book — I haven’t read it in over three decades.

If you haven’t seen Michael Epstein‘s Final Cut: The Making and Unmaking of Heaven’s Gate (’04), here it is. Well ordered, smart as a whip, 78 minutes, narrated by Willem Dafoe.

In yesterday’s “Strange Architecture” piece” I criticized the odd decision of Ben-Hur‘s production designer to build a large, visually obstructive island in the middle of the Jerusalem chariot-race stadium. The result was that a significant portion of the crowd was only able to see half the racetrack and therefore half the action.

This triggered a bizarre response from “Brenkilco,” who claimed that “they only built half the track with stands on one side,” and that “a lot of fancy editing was employed but the chariots were always racing down the same straightaway.” This “illusion,” he said, “concealed the fact that there was nothing on the other side.”

Poppycock, I replied, but I couldn’t find any smoking gun photos that proved that the racetrack was completely whole with two sides. And then “SlashMC” came to the rescue with two such photos. It makes you wonder which HE commenters besides “Brenkilco” are just talking out of their ass half the time. Thanks ever much to SlashMC.

I’ve mentioned before (and I’m saying this as a relatively fit guy with broad shoulders) that actors with small, rounded shoulders are looking at an uphill situation in terms of seeming physically attractive. It’s hard not to rate if you have broad shoulders, and it’s hard not to seem…well, underwhelming and diminished if your shoulders are narrow and smallish. Sorry — it may sound cruel to say this, but it’s true.

In the eyes of some straight women a guy with broad shoulders and a relatively trim waistline radiates the same allure that straight guys sense when regarding women with big breasts.

The other night I was watching Edward Dmytryk‘s Murder My Sweet (’44) and there’s a scene in which Dick Powell takes his shirt off, and it’s not a good look…I’m tellin’ ya.

What’s the female equivalent? Well, movie cameras rarely zero in on women’s feet, but those with beefy, oversized, somewhat indelicate feet (and I’m not saying that this is any kind of widespread trait) should feel…well, relieved. I’m not naming names. Okay, I’ll name one — Jean Simmons. I’m not trying to make something out of this, but everyone understands that Elvis Presley was known for being averse to women with big thick feet. He preferred Japanese geisha feet.

My poor mom had German feet and felt self-conscious about same, and so she wore too-small shoes during her early 20s and pretty much mangled her feet a a result. I always felt badly for her in this regard.

Posted earlier today on Reddit by u/NomadSound: I’ve studied a large version of this photo of the Deliverance crew and inspected each and every face, and the following actor/characters are missing: Bill McKinney (“Mountain Man” / hillbilly rapist…”weeeeeee!“), Herbert Coward (“Toothless Man”), original novel author James Dickey (“Sheriff Bullard”), Billy Redden (genetically deformed banjo boy) and Macon McCalman (sheriff’s deputy whose brother-in-law is missing). Not to mention the Griner brothers and the old hillbilly with the hat who asked Burt Reynolds “are you from the power company?”

The woman sitting behind (and to the left) of director John Boorman and the lead actors is Ned Beatty‘s wife, Belinha Beatty. She played Jon Voight‘s wife in the final scene.

I’d really like to find a photo of Beatty and McKinney posing side by side with shit-eating grins and their arms draped around each other’s shoulders.

Last night I watched Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi‘s Personality Crisis: One Night Only, and I came out of it knowing and caring a bit…okay, a lot more about David Johansen than I had before I sat down.

It’s basically standard documentary portraiture, of course, but primarily a relaxed, low-key lounge concert film, shot in the Carlyle bar in January 2020.

The doc is augmented with recent interview footage (apparently shot in Johansen’s home by his stepdaughter Leah Hennessey, daughter of wife Leah Hennessey) plus some performance footage from the good old days (New York Dolls, ’70s solo career, Buster Poindexter in the ’80s and ’90s).

And the thing that stuck in my head, frankly, is the made-plain fact that Johansen is a free-floating existentialist dancer-singer-performer who’s more or less cool with the fact that he’s not stinking rich. He and his family are living with a certain amount of style, comfort and swagger, but the difference between David Jo’s lifestyle and that of, let’s say, Mick Jagger is apparently considerable or at least noteworthy. (There’s a moment during the Carlyle show when he repeats a famous line from Ira Levin‘s Deathtrap — “Nothing recedes like success”.) I also loved it when Johansen tells his stepdaughter about never having had a grand master plan for his life, and that he’s always considered his journey (Johansen is 73) in five-year increments.

Posted on 3.16.23: Along with ex-girlfriend Sophie Black, who matured into a respected poet, I co-produced two Save The Whales benefit rock concerts in Wilton, Connecticut. Both were held on a 52-acre property owned by Sophie’s parents, David and Linda Cabot Black. The first happened over the July 4th weekend in ’76; the second (for which Sophie and I were interviewed for a 6.26.77 N.Y. Times piece) happened a year later.

And I was proud and gratified to book the David Johansen band for the ’77 show, as I’d been a fan of the New York Dolls; ditto “Not That Much” and “Funky But Chic.”

Back to right now: A couple of months prior to the ’76 concert Johansen and I chatted in some downtown Manhattan bar, and I really liked his charm, aura, self-deprecating humor, etc. Plus I learned that night that Johansen loves (or loved) to play-act and pretend to be someone else. DJ made bank on play-acting when Buster Poindexter came along in the ’80s, but when I spoke to him that night he was speaking with a working-class British accent. Pretending to be, in a manner of speaking, some Jagger-like rocker from East London or something. It was well known at the time that Johansen was a lifelong New Yorker (raised in Staten Island), and so I was flat-out thrilled and fascinated that he was performing for me — an audience of one. Johansen was dishy in a Jagger-ish way back then, and the accent fit right in. I’ll never forget that moment as long as I live.

The Scorsese-Tedeschi doc is worth the price and the time.