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Cinemascope‘s Yair Raveh has passed along Barack Obama‘s handwritten prayer note, written on hotel stationery, that the Democratic presidential candidate slipped between the stones at Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall during his visit to the site two days ago.

“Journalists then promptly stormed the wall and ransacked his note,” he writes. It turned up in today’s issue of Maariv, a popular Hebrew-language daily. “It’s a big faux pas from a Jewish traditional point of view to steal a written Wailing Wall prayer,” Raveh writes, “and I’m quite certain that if Obama were Jewish no mainstream reporter would’ve dared violate his privacy so bluntly.”

The decision by ABC/Disney honchos to hire E! Entertainment critic Ben Lyons and Turner Classic Movies host Ben Mankiewicz as the new Ebert & Roeper on a revamped At the Movies is one of those basic no-brainer moves that 50-something executives do when they don’t know what the hell else to do. A syndicated movie-review show starring two older guys (Roeper and Chicago Tribune critic Michael Phillips) isn’t attracting the under-35 demo? Solution: Replace them with two young bucks with TV experience, engaging personalities and the royal genes of an entertainment-establishment family.

Ben Mankiewicz (l.), Ben Lyons (r.)

Lyons is the congenial, golf-playing, to-the-manor-born son of notorious easy-lay film critic Jeffrey Lyons, and the grandson of N.Y. Post columnist Leonard Lyons; Mankiewicz is the grandson of Citizen Kane screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz and the great-nephew of the legendary Joseph Mankiewicz, director-writer of All About Eve and A Letter to Three Wives.
If I watch the show, Mankiewicz is the guy I’ll have an easier time with. He seems low-key, thoughtful, sardonic. I would prefer if, actually, if the show featured Mankiewicz and his Young Turks partner Cenk Uygur. I love that guy — blowhardy, smart, take-it-or-leave-it.
I don’t like Lyons because you can tell right off the bat that he’s too much of a glider and a gladhander. Plus he went to school with Ivanka Trump. Plus he once called Nikki Blonsky his good buddy. Plus there’s something inauthentic about a supposed film maven who plays golf. Golf has its own spiritual kwan and undercurrent, of course, but 90% of the people who play it do so because they want to schmooze their way into power. Golf courses and clubhouses are havens for conservative-minded ex-fraternity guys who love wearing those awful pink and salmon-colored Tommy Hilfiger polo shirts and trading insider info with their pallies over mixed drinks after the game. You can’t serve golf and movies any more than you can serve God and Rome. They represent entirely different theologies.
I also wonder if the era of sitting passively in front of a TV screen and listening to a couple of guys trade opinions about movies has the same vitality that it had when Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel started Sneak Previews on PBS in 1977. It was a whole different world 31 years ago. Audiences these days like to talk back and argue and engage interactively. I’m not sure that a show that basically says “we’re the cool-ass GenY film critics with the famous dads and granddads, and you guys get to listen” is going to connect all that well.

Terry Gilliam‘s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, which will open in England and Australia in early ’09, will contain the shards of Heath Ledger’s very last performance, although his character of Troy will also be played by three other actors — Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law. Nonetheless, and no matter how Gilliam-esque Parnassus turns out out to be, Ledger’s name on the marquee will certainly boost business. Especially given the excitement associated with his Dark Knight/Joker performance.

And yet Gilliam has told The Telegraph‘s Tim Walker (a.k.a. “Mandrake”) that the idea of a Ledger Oscar campaign as “nothing more than a cynical publicity stunt” by Warner Bros. Has Gilliam lost his mind? A Best Supporting Actor Oscar campaign on Ledger’s behalf would probably be the best commercial godsend that could happen to Dr. Parnassus. And Warner Bros. wouldn’t be mulling a campaign if the support wasn’t there among fans, press and industry. What could Gilliam be thinking?
Warner Bros. “will do anything to publicize their film,” Gilliam told Walker. “That’s just what they do and you can’t get upset because it’s bullshit. They’re like a great white shark which devours whatever it can.”
Gilliam directed Ledger in some outdoor London scenes for Dr. Parnassus just two or three weeks before the actor’s accidental death last January.

I used to recreate with drugs (pot, hallucinogens, opiates) in my 20s, I had a vodka problem in the early to mid ’90s, and I had an alcoholic dad who passed along a good amount of emotional misery before joining AA in the mid ’70s, so I know a little something about substance-abuse pitfalls. Addiction is the banshee that could have taken me to hell but shrugged and gave me a “get out of jail” card instead. I was spared, grew past it, whatever…and yet there but for the grace of God.

I’ve therefore been very interested for some time in reading a forthcoming book by N.Y. Times columnist David Carr called The Night of The Gun, which is about his former life as a drug user and coke dealer (in the ’80s), and his struggles with alcohol addiction more recently.

Night of the Gun (Simon and Schuster) has an Amazon.com publishing date of August 8th.

I got the book yesterday and read most of it right away. If you know Carr’s media column or his Oscar-season writings as “the Bagger,” it should come as no surprise that it’s exquisitely written. I love Carr’s voice, which is at once flip and candid and yet elegant and wise. But the book is also a gripping, dead honest and well-reported confessional. And at the same time — no mean feat — dryly entertaining.

Night of the Gun is one of those “I did this and whoa…I’m not dead!” books, but of a much higher calibre. Much. Carr is a man of immense steel balls to have written this, and particularly to have gone back into the damp muddy tunnels of the past and fact-checked everything for three years. He did some 60 interviews with the witnesses and participants. He pored over the depressing documents (arrest reports, medical sheets) that all drug-users accumulate sooner or later. It must have revived nightmares. But Carr went and did it and bravely wrote this book, and did a bang-up job of it. Hat off, head bowed.

David Carr

Carr offers this succinct sum-up on page 16: “WHAT I DESERVED: Hepatitis C; federal prison time; HIV; a cold park bench; an early, addled death. WHAT I GOT: A nice house, a good job, three lovely children. WHAT I REMEMBER ABOUT HOW THAT GUY BECAME THIS GUY: Not much. Junkies don’t generally put stuff in boxes; they wear the boxes on their heads, so that everything around them — the sky, the future, the house down the street — is lost to them.”

A truly first-rate website has been put together to explain the book and the story and the whole thing. Tomorrow’s N.Y. Times magazine (in the 7.20 Sunday edition) will contain an excerpt from the book titled “Me and My Girls.”

Carr’s book reminded me of the “farewell, my dignity” aspect of drug use. Constant assaults on your self-esteem, stains on your sheets and your soul, humiliations unbridled. One way or another, if you do drugs you’re going to be dragged down and made to feel like a low-life animal. Because that’s what you are as long as you let drugs run the show.

Drugs didn’t exactly “run the show” when I was 22 or 23, but they sure were my friends. I saw my life as a series of necessary survival moves, spiritual door-openings, comic exploits, adventures, erotic intrigues — everything and anything that didn’t involve duty, drudgery, having a career and mowing the lawn on weekends. Pot, hashish, mescaline, peyote buttons, Jack Daniels and beer were my comrades in crime.

(I’m going to leave aside discussions of my Godhead Siddhartha discoveries with LSD, and I’d just as soon forget my relatively brief encounters with blithering idiot marching powder from the late ’70s to mid ’80s.)

The particular story that David Carr’s book brought back was me and my upper-middle-class friends’ flirtation with opium and, for a brief time, heroin. The way we saw it, smack was much hipper than your garden-variety head drugs. Opiates were more authentic, we figured, because guys like William S. Burroughs and Chet Baker did them. Where today I see only the danger, the depravity and the recklessness, back then we saw only the contra-coolness.

I was never much of a user, but I did flirt from time to time. I was a candy-ass in junkie circles because I confined myself to snorting and smoking the stuff. One thing I learned pretty quickly is that “chippers” (casual users) have to be careful because heroin will make you throw up if you smoke or snort too much because your body isn’t used to it. Which mine never was because I wasn’t…you know, dedicated.

I was living in a crash pad in Southport, Connecticut. My sole source of income at the time was working part-time for a guy who ran a limousine driver service. Business guys looking to go to Kennedy or LaGuardia or Newark airports would call and I’d come over and drive them to the airport in their car, and then drive it back to their home. Doesn’t sound like much of an idea, but there were definitely customers calling from Westport, Weston, Easton, Wilton, Georgetown, Redding, Southport and Fairfield.

My deal with my boss, Peter, was to be on call at all times. A guy leaving for the airport in a couple of hours would call Peter, he’d call me, I’d drive over and so on. So one afternoon — a Sunday, possibly — a friend and I happened to have some of that snort-smoke stuff, and had retired to a barn out back for a little indulgence. We rolled a nice fat joint and soon I was royally Baker-ed. But just as we got back to the house the phone rang. It was Peter telling me to dress nicely and be at a certain client’s home in 45 minutes if possible, certainly no later than an hour. A trip down to Kennedy.

If I were less of a fool I would have said then and there, “Sorry, Peter — no can do.” But I was broke and needed the money. Go for it, I told myself. I figured I’d take a quick shower, change into a dress shirt and sport jacket, and be relatively straight by the time I got to the client’s house. But the shower didn’t help and I looked like a wreck. My pupils were little black micro-points. So I put on a pair of deep-black shades and then had the inspiration to put on a cowboy hat, the idea being that the manly-conservative cowboy vibe might rub off and make me look less drugged out.

But I was feeling way too wasted as I got into my car so I got my friend to drive me over in his. I figured the stuff would wear off sooner or later and I’d be okay.

I started to feel more and more nauseous as we drove over. When I realized with a jolt I was going to be sick, I rolled down the window and lurched halfway out and spewed. Except we were moving at a good clip — 40 or 45 mph — and so the vomit splattered along the side of my friend’s bright red car.

You need to imagine yourself raking leaves on the front lawn of your beautiful Southport home, blue sky, your toddlers playing nearby, birds chirping in the trees, when all of a sudden you see this ratty red Impala rolling along with some guy leaning out the passenger window and spraying clam chowder. You have to think of it in those terms.

It was all we could do to keep the client from calling the police once he saw me — pasty-faced, straw cowboy hat, unable to stand straight, slurring my words, flecks of vomit on my sport jacket. I was screamed at and, of course, fired by Peter. Never before had I felt like such a piece of detritus, and nothing has happened since to equal this. It was so humiliating that the opiate-usage thing ended very soon after. I told myself I was the rebellious but capable son of suburban middle- class parents who led productive, organized, reasonably moral lives, and here I was acting like a complete degenerate.

The purple rage on Peter’s face, the look of contempt in the client’s eyes, my own self disgust. If these things didn’t wake me, nothing would have. But they did.

It’s looking like it might be prudent to back away — for the time being, at least — from today’s 7.19 report by Fox 411’s Roger Friedman that Tom Cruise won’t be doing that Edwin A. Salt movie with Philip Noyce, from a script by Kurt Wimmer. Freidman is saying Cruise has “apparently” bailed “because of money” and that Will Smith has now stepped into the role. Not so, says a well-placed source who’s focusing on the creative side.
Freidman’s story more or less claims that the Salt producers haven’t offered Cruise his usual massive salary because they feel he isn’t the same box-office powerhouse he was five years ago…which of course he isn’t. But my guy says the Smith story is complete horseshit, and that Cruise’s issue isn’t the money (as far as he knows) but the Wimmer script, which has given Cruise concern because the Salt character is too much like Mission Impossible’s Ethan Hunt, whom Cruise has played three times.
“Cruise is waiting for the new [Wimmer] draft which is coming out in the next couple of weeks,” I was told this morning. “He’s never been officially attached to the film…never said that he absolutely wants to do it. The main concern is about the character being too close to Hunt.
“He’s always had this concern about repeating himself. Salt is a character working for the CIA, being extraordinary at disguise and athletic…there are a whole lot of similarities there. It’s possible that salary discussions may have taken place, but that’s not my area. All I know is,we’re waiting on a new script that will arrive in a week or two.”
What’s the motive of the people feeding the Cruise-is-out story to Friedman? “Everybody wants to bring down Tom Cruise,” my source said. “Except everyone associated with Edwin A. Salt would like Tom to be in it.”

I’m sorry if this sounds insensitive, but the images of Annette Bening and especially Meg Ryan in this poster for The Women (Picturehouse, 9.12) simply don’t resemble the actresses in their 21st century incarnations. Bening, bless her enormous talent and sense of class, had been made to look like her Bugsy or American Beauty self, and Ryan…c’mon. Did she ever look like this? What happened to the Botox lips that nearly killed her career? It’s all the doing of the art person behind the poster, of course. A simple case of over-sweetening.

A couple of days ago You Tube began running the horizontally-squeezed 1.33 to 1 version of the 1.85 trailer for James Marsh‘s Man on Wire (Magnolia, 7.25) — see below. Here, also, is the better looking Apple.com version with the correct aspect ratio. Talk about a movie that sinks in like a feeling, a thought, a prayer.

On 6.20 I wrote that this story “of Phillipe Petit‘s illegal high-wire walk between the World Trade Center’s towers in August 1974 is the most stirring and suspenseful film of its kind that I’ve seen since Touching The Void. It’s too electric and gripping to be called a mere documentary; another term has to be found.”
This trailer passes along the soul, suspense, wonder, poetry. And (important element) the sophisticated chops. Man on Wire will be an ’08 Oscar nominee for Best Feature-Length Doc, trust me.

Dear Josh,
After reading what (apparently) really happened in that shitkicker bar in Shreveport last weekend, I just want to say that you and Jeffrey Wright have earned the lifelong respect of blue-state men everywhere for kicking some redneck ass. I’ve been in two or three fights and know how stupid and humiliating they are, but they can also seem dopey-funny in retrospect and…well, kind of half-satisfying, depending on how many cuts and bruises you get and how you look in the mirror the next morning and how banged-up the other guy is, especially if he was an asshole.
In any event this fight, to judge by Bill Zwecker‘s Chicago Sun Times account, sounded very cool because (and tell me if I’ve gotten the wrong idea) you and your homies made those barroom crackers feel the pain.
I have a serious request to make about this. I’m asking you — begging you, really — on behalf of those who now regard you as man of newfound respect who fought the good fight against ignorance to please consider making a short film based on this incident. It would absolutely kill on the festival circuit, and all the suits who were too lazy to see X will run out to see it for sure. Please think about this because I’m not kidding.
It would be doubly great if you could get Wright and everyone involved in the brawl to take part. You already have the dialogue, you have the non-story, you have the actors, you have the action sequences all laid out — all in your head! Start with the cell-phone footage, or cut it into whatever you shoot. You could film it in two, three days, cut quickly, submit it to Sundance by October. It won’t affect the W marketing because it won’t be seen until early ’09.
Jeffrey Wells

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The Dark Knight will pull in north of $120 million this coming weekend — it may even hit $130 million. Update: Okay, I was being too conservative. It may hit $150 million, but forget anything over that. The tracking — 97 general, 68 definite and 44 first choice — tells the tale. Mamma Mia! is running at 84, 28 and 14….$25 to $30 million, maybe more. Space Chimps are Dead Chimps — 54, 17 and 2.
Stepbrothers (opening 7.25) is 78, 35 and 6…but consicousness is low on this thing because of the Batman film. Give it time to build and breathe. X-Files: I Want To Believe (7.25) is running at 71, 26 and 4. The Rocker (Fox) is looking pretty bad at 17, 11 and 0. The Mummy (8.1) is at 87, 38 and 5…not bad, getting there. Kevin Costner‘s Swing Vote is running at 43, 16 and 1…nothing yet, work to do.

Let’s help Envelope columnists Tom O’Neil and Pete Hammond narrow down their possible Best Picture Oscar list, shall we? O’Neil has just posted a big long contender rundown but a lot of titles are instant scratch-outs, I feel, and a few are big maybes.

Brad Pitt in David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

My choices for the leading or most deserving Best Picture contenders right now, in order of likelihood: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (certainly not the front-runner, but the contender with the best script), Milk, Doubt, Gran Torino, Frost Nixon, W and The Visitor. I say this knowing that The Visitor has an uphill climb ahead of it. I’m hearing “yes” and “no” about Doubt. I know that W works on the page. If I was one to recommend that WALL*E be nominated for Best Picture instead of Best Animated Feature, it would definitely be on this list, but since I strongly believe in maintaining the Berlin Wall between reality and animation, it’s not listed.
In my eyes, Steven Soderbergh‘s Che (i.e., The Argentine and Guerilla) easily qualifies as a Best Picture contender — it’s a phenomenal history lesson, high art and a first-rate epic. Of course, there’s reason to wonder if it’ll even open this year, to hear it from the buyers. I know it damn well ought to open and at least try for some award-season propulsion, but guys like myself saying “it’s great” doesn’t cut much ice with the bottom-liners.
I’m sketchy on several titles right now, but I would think the following could be tossed without a second’s hesitation: Appaloosa (possibly worthy Ed Harris western but New Line leftover status dooms it); Burn After Reading (a dry Coen brothers goof, not an Oscar film); Body of Lies (I know nothing about this brilliant Middle Eastern spy thriller that would qualify it as Oscar bait); Changeling (Best Actress nom for Angelina Jolie but the film, while dramatically solid and well made, just isn’t stratospheric enough); The Dark Knight (are Tom and Pete having us off?), Defiance (an Ed Zwick World War II movie about Russian-Jewish resistance guerillas…hello?); Mamma Mia! (all right, that’s enough); Miracle at St. Anna (a Spike Lee movie in which a bank teller is shot by an old guy having a memory seizure?) and Vicki Cristina Barcelona (can’t and won’t happen).
I don’t know enough one way or the other about Australia (younger audiences groaning at the trailer?), Cheri, Happy-Go-Lucky, The Reader, Secret Life of Bees, Seven Pounds (Will Smith treacle factor?) and The Soloist.

Admittedly, Gillian Armstrong‘s Death Defying Acts (Weinstein Co., 7.11) fared poorly with the Rotten Tomatoes gang (50% positive with the homies, 20% positive with the elites). And yes, it’s my own fault for missing the one screening that was made available by Weinstein Co. publicity (i.e., last Thursday night at the Grove). Still….

It seems strange or head-scratchy or something that this not-inexpensive drama about magician Harry Houdini (Guy Pearce) being conned by a fake medium (Catherine Zeta Jones) in a search for his dead mother has opened so quietly. It’s as if the film slipped into theatres through the back door. Part of the reason for the deafening silence is that the Weinstein Co. isn’t very flush these days, okay, but this was a really quiet opening. You could hear a pin drop.

A 7.9 report by Blogspout’s Karina Longworth about an apparent intention to show Steven Sodebergh‘s Che at the next New York Film Festival was noticed today by Lou Lumenick‘s N.Y. Post blog (along with a half-amusing headline — “Lincoln Center Braces for Che-Mania as Film Fest Books Commie Epic“).

Longworth found her information on the evening of 7.8 while perusing the online version of the July/August issue of Film Comment (like NYFF, a production of the Film Society of Lincoln Center) and on the issue’s index page, there was a preview of the magazine’s September/October issue [which apparently referred to a Che presence at the NYFF]. “For whatever reason,” says Longworth, “if you go to that page today the preview no longer exists, but since it’s still in the Google cache, I was able to screencap it.”
Longworth also links to an announcement from Mumbai’s UTV World Movies channel that Che will be shown on Indian television sometime later this year, apparently in concert with the 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution, or sometime in December.