Robert Blake, the brilliant veteran actor who wasn’t convicted of plotting to kill his wife, Bonny Lee Bakley, on 5.4.01, but whom many believe was guilty of complicity in the crime, died earlier today from heart disease in Los Angeles. He was 89 years old.

A belief in some quarters that Bakley was a fairly bad egg obviously doesn’t excuse or justify her unfortunate demise. Even the worst of us are entitled to live another day and maybe make things right. But prosecutors had no forensic evidence implicating Blake in the murder, and could not tie him to the murder weapon. Blake was found guilty, however, in a civil trial.

I somehow missed the fact that Quentin Tarantino‘s novel of “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”, based on his film of the same name, is dedicated to Blake. Brad Pitt‘s Cliff Booth character is also accused of offing his wife.

A personal recollection posted on 3.17.05: “I used to tool around on a white Vespa scooter when I first came to Los Angeles in the early summer of ’83. One day in the late fall of ’83 it was stolen. I reported the loss to the cops right away, and a few hours later an officer called to say it had been found in Studio City. I was told where to go to pick it up (i.e., a location on the concrete L.A. river bed near Magnolia,

“I forget how I got there without wheels but somehow I did, and as I approached the location I saw two uniformed cops approaching from a couple of hundred yards away with a much shorter civilian walking between them. Closer, closer…who’s the pint-sized guy in the middle? It was Blake — he was the one who had spotted the abandoned scooter and made the call. I was introduced and thanked him profusely. Ever since I’ve felt a certain affection, a certain debt.”

I know one thing — JLaw needs to save herself from what’s been happening for the last seven or eight years. (Longer?)

Read this 10.31.22 Script Shadow review of the No Hard Feelings screenplay (co-written by John Phillips and director Gene Stupnitsky) and then watch the trailer and tell me what you think. Sony will open No Hard Feelings on 6.23.23.

Will ya look at what Scott Menzel wrote? Loony tunes. A kid is 9 years old — a 19 year-old is a man or close enough. Jesus. Try watching Murmur of the Heart or Beau Pere, Scott. Live a little.

What was Boris Karloff‘s finest film of the second half of his career, in which he arguably gave his finest-ever performance?

His two most iconic films (containing his most iconic performances) were the original Frankenstein (’31) and Bride of Frankenstein (’35). His most interesting supporting roles were in Howard Hawks‘ The Criminal Code (’31) and Scarface (’32), as a Christian fanatic in John Ford‘s The Lost Patrol (’34), and as a cruel-hearted examiner in Val Lewton‘s Bedlam (’46).

And he was reputedly wonderful as serial killer Jonathan Brewster in the Broadway stage version of Arsenic and Old Lace — Jonathan was the older brother of Mortimer Brewster (played by Cary Grant in the 1944 Frank Capra film version) who was enraged when people said he resembled Boris Karloff.

But the grand old actor’s fullest performance was as himself (a Karloffian horror star named “Byron Orlok”) in Peter Bogdanovich‘s Targets (’68), which is certainly among his all-time best and arguably his best since Bride of Frankenstein.

What’s great about Karloff in Targets is that he finally played his own actual self — a kindly, well-dressed and impeccably-mannered English gentleman. And above all a fellow of dignity and refinement.

There’s a great little moment when Orlok is being driven from one Los Angeles location to another, sitting in the back seat and gazing out at the ugly billboards, used-car lots, taco stands and tacky mini-malls. He sighs, shakes his head and says, “This used to be such a lovely city” or words to that effect.

Directed and written by Bogdanovich, Targets is about the elderly Orlok agreeing to make a promotional appearance of The Terror (’62) at a Los Angeles drive-in theatre and also (concurrently) about a Charles Whitman-like psycho who murders his family, picks off several innocent drivers on the 405 freeway, and ends up being thrashed by Orlok as he’s about to shoot patrons at the same drive-in.

At long last, the white-haired, 80 year-old Karloff was no longer sinister but a hero and vanquisher!

Leaning on a recent Ipsos poll, a 3.8 USA Today article by Susan Page contends that “most” Americans — 56% — regard “woke” as a positive term, or a characterization of people who are aware of social inequities and attuned to social justice.

HE doesn’t believe this survey as it sharply argues with a 10.10.18 Atlantic article by Yascha Mounk that claims most Americans despise wokeness, which is almost invariably accompanied by notions of p.c. beratings and condemnations.

Last night the USA Today piece provoked a debate between myself and a journalist friendo.

Friendo: The Atlantic poll is over four years old. The USA Today poll is recent. Maybe things have changed.

HE: Bullshit. Average Americans loathe and despise the cancel culture crowd.

Friendo: Are you prepared to critique the methodology of the poll? If not, it’s just your opinion.

HE: The 56% in the USA Today Ipsos poll who regard the term favorably are defining it, somewhat Pollyanically, as attuned to social fairness, aware of inequities, focused on decency and justice, etc. In other words, they were misled or boondoggled by a dishonest definition provided by dishonest Ipsos pollsters. Wokeness is a cult religion focused on purist p.c. ideals, revolutionary social correction and punitive measures for those who aren’t sold on it. As Quentin Tarantino once wrote, “Sell that bullshit to the tourists.”

Friendo: The definition of woke is “alert to injustice and discrimination in society.” That seens to be what the pollsters [are running] with.

HE: That’s an evasive definition, to put it politely. In the realm of actual social reality it’s a lying bullshit definition, and the pollsters know that. And so do you.

Friendo: Straight out of the dictionary, my friend.

HE: The people behind the dictionary definition are sidestepping the truth of the matter. Another way of putting it is that they’re being willfully oblivious.

Friendo: A dictionary is apolitical. You want a political definition, go somewhere else.

HE: Beginning in the early 1950s, American anti-Communist activists were dedicated to protecting this country from internal subversion, and their efforts to keep Hollywood films free of this socialist influence were honorable and vigilant. If you want a political definition, search elsewhere.

Friendo #2: The USA Today poll was probably skewed more towards Democrats-leaning voters — that’s a demographic that would overwhelmingly be pro-woke. No surprise that the article states that almost 80% of Democrat respondents said they were pro-woke. I mean, are you surprised?

I didn’t get lucky until I was 18 or so, and so the very first time that my teenage eyes feasted upon a live, buck-naked woman (and a ginger at that, if memory serves) was in a summer sketching class at the Silvermine Art Center, a short drive from our home in woodsy Wilton, Connecticut. I was 16, and you can imagine the internal combustion factor.

“Inside the ‘Blood Sport’ of Oscars Campaigns,” a N.Y. Times piece by Irina Aleksander, appeared this morning at 10:55 am.

It covers a realm that HE is deeply familiar with, but rather than post a sweeping assessment here are four or five stand-out portions of the article, and in most instances my reactions to same:

1. End of the 2nd paragraph: “The [Andrea Riseborough] campaign was described as organic and grass roots, but some celebrities had posted suspiciously identical language, describing “To Leslie” as “a small film with a giant heart.” That Viola Davis (The Woman King) and Danielle Deadwyler (Till) were not nominated despite predictions to the contrary made it look as if a bunch of actors campaigned on behalf of a white actress, leading to the exclusion of Black actresses.”

HE reaction: This is the same old “sore loser” response that Davis, Deadwyler and the directors of their films, Till‘s Chinonye Chukwu and The Woman King‘s Gina Prince-Bythewood, voiced in the wake of the Oscar nominatons.

From “Andrea Riseborough + Duelling Concepts of Meritocracy vs. Equity,” posted on 2.15.23: “In their minds they all got blanked by embedded white elitism or misogynoir or some other racist variant.

“In response Everything Everywhere All At Once‘s Michelle Yeoh, a Best Actress nominee, suggested that they should cool their jets and wait their turn.

“Prince-Blythewood: ‘There is no groundswell from privileged people with enormous social capital to get behind Black women. There never has been.’ Deadwyler: ‘We’re talking about misogynoir. It comes in all kinds of ways. Whether it’s direct or indirect, it impacts who we are.’

“The essence of the lament seemed to be ‘we’re looking for some equity here and we haven’t received it…progressive Academy members know that the BIPOC narrative is about giving us the respect and adulation that is our due for the work but also in a payback sense, considering the decades upon decades of racist exclusion in this industry…we know we delivered first-rate work and yet we got shut out…some of you won’t say what happened but we can smell it in the wind…Andrea Riseborough‘s white supporters pushed her though but perhaps at our expense, or so it seems.”

2. Bottom of the third paragraph, also about the Riseborough campaign: “’I don’t believe academy members should be posting about how they’re going to vote,’ Oscar strategist Cynthia Swartz said, ‘or urging others to vote in a certain way.’ Tony Angellotti, a consultant on The Fabelmans, put it less mildly. ‘There are very specific rules about direct outreach…clearly, here, those rules were broken.’

“Neither To Leslie‘s director [Michael Morris] nor his wife [Mary McCormack] are members of the academy. But consultants I spoke to said it didn’t matter. A couple joked that it was a little like the Jan. 6 insurrection: President Donald Trump may not have personally stormed the Capitol, but he encouraged others to do so.”

HE reaction: Though smirk-worthy, offering an analogy between the Riseborough campaign and the Jan. 6th uprising is somewhere between absurd and slanderous, and it further establishes that the Times, a woke-minded, POC advocacy newspaper if there ever was one, strongly sympathizes with the sore losers.

3. Top of the ninth paragraph: “Negative narratives are usually attributed to the diabolical workings of rival strategists: the stories about abusive directors, overblown budgets, whether the real people behind biopics should really be celebrated. (See: A Beautiful Mind.) ‘They try to change someone else’s narrative by adding dirt to the layer,’ Angellotti told me, citing the old rumor that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck didn’t really write Good Will Hunting.”

HE reaction: I was involved in that Good Will Hunting rumor right up to my neck, and the rumor wasn’t as Angelotti describes — i.e., that Matt and Ben didn’t really write it. The rumor was that the late William Goldman has done a polish of their screenplay. Nobody was whispering Matt and Ben didn’t write it, only that Goldman spritzed it up. I was the one, in fact, who passed the rumor along to Goldman, and he in turn called the Good Will Hunting team and said, “Hey, this rumor is making the rounds…I just heard it from Jeff Wells.”