The following suggestions are exercises in Orwellian neuter-speak, and Jeremiah Owyang, CMO of @rlynetworkassoc (advisor, speaker), is exactly the kind of fellow that I never, ever want to be or even get close to.

If you have any affection at all for vivid, arresting, semi-flavorful language or ripe figures of speech…please. Joan Didion, Tom Wolfe, William Styron, Toni Morrison, Dorothy Parker, Studs Terkel, Charles Bukowski, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Eugene O’Neil, Jack Kerouac, Truman Capote…they’d all be appalled.

Friendo: “Might as well just hand it all over to ChatGPT or whatever that open AI system is. I hate what has happened to the left.”

…then I’ll find a way to scrounge my way over there. Ditto if Alexander Payne‘s The Holdovers plays there, although I doubt it will. All the hotshot publicists agreed long ago that presumed award-season headliners (which The Holdovers is definitely said to be — ditto Killers of the3 Flower Moon) are not helped by even a glorious reception in Cannes, as they’ll just have to start the engine all over again when the early fall festivals launch. Who knows? Playing it by ear.

Here’s Jordan Ruimy’s latest Cannes ’23 spitball.

I’m not sure if Myrna Loy (1905-1993) ever gave a great performance. She shares a great “welcome home” scene with Fredric March in The Best Years of Our Lives (‘46), and is dryly amusing in a somewhat stiff-necked way in The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer (‘47). But she was certainly in full command of a sexy exotic vibe in her late 20s and early 30s. She also gave great vibe in the Thin Man series.

Previously unreported fact: I stood five feet from the still curiously radiant Loy at a National Board of Review awards ceremony in late ‘81 or early ‘82. Ragtime costar James Cagney was also there; ditto Warren Beatty, who said something flattering about Loy — something about her beauty still making his pulse race a bit.

Please absorb the basics of (a) the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, (b) Stanley Kramer‘s Inherit the Wind (’60), and (c) the small-town Christian zealots who condemn the sensible, scientific-minded Bertram Cates (Dick York), his defense counsel Henry Drummond (Spencer Tracy) and especially Baltimore Herald journalist E.K. Hornbeck (Gene Kelly).

In damn near every scene, the holy-rolling Bible-thumpers are positively throbbing with the spirit, completely convinced of their God-given righteousness, and unwavering in their conviction that Cates, Drummond and Hornbeck deserve to suffer the pains of hell and then some.

Now remove yourself from this small Tennessee town (i.e., Hillsboro) of nearly a century ago, and ask yourself if these Old Testament wackazoids remind you of any particular group or social movement today. Think about it. Take your time.