I haven’t time to post about It Ends With Us until later this evening, but I’ll try and post some thoughts and observations between now and 9 pm.

If, back in the summer of 2007, James Mangold had been a man of honor, precision and decency he would have only forwarded the portion of my sixteen-paragraph letter that he thought would be of interest to Lionsgate marketing hotshot Tim Palen — a portion in which I discussed my having recently spoken to Elmore “Dutch” Leonard, original author of “3:10 to Yuma” (the short story published in March ‘53) about Mangold’s adaptation of same.

I can’t recall if Dutch had seen Mangold’s film at the time (I don’t think he had) but we did discuss Delmer Daves’ 1957 adaptation with Glenn Ford and Van Heflin. I definitely recall that mild-mannered Dutch of Bloomfield Hills thought Daves had missed the essence or messed it up to some degree.

Anyway THAT, in Mangold’s view, was the most compelling portion of my long letter and not the digressive, adolescent, piddly-dick paragraph about Vinessa Shaw, which I, coasting along on the white-water rapids of my second glass of Pinot Grigio, had forgotten about two minutes after tapping it out .

Alas, Mangold wasn’t enough of a tech-savvy fellow of precision and discretion to simply copy and paste the Dutch section of my email and forward it to Palen. That, for Mangold, apparently required too much vigor, too much technical exactitude.

So Mangold, Sloppy Joe-style, just forwarded the whole damn email to Palen, who, as fate would have it, was miffed over my having characterized the Beau Brummell western duds worn by costar Ben Foster, images of which were used in ads for Lionsgate’s 3:10 to Yuma, as gay cowboy-ish or metro-sexualish or otherwise disrespectful of the Old West atmosphere.

This was why Palen, a genius photographer and marketing wiz** but also a vicious & scheming flying monkey if there ever was one, forwarded the letter to Nikki Finke, the vindictive, green-faced, broom-riding Wicked Witch of the West who was determined to get me for having passed along a second-hand tale about Finke to a couple of N.Y. Daily News guys…a loose-talk story about Finke having allegedly faxed an early draft of an EW story to a source — a story I had only “heard” and knew almost nothing about, but which seemed of mild interest to a couple of N.Y. Daily News colleagues during a no-big-deal water cooler moment in ‘94.

And that was what happened, o my howling, screeching, petty and profoundly detestable winged monkeys of the HE sewing circle.

Being a straightforward, high-thread-count T-shirt-wearing straight guy I am not calling myself the Dorothy figure in this Wizard of Oz saga. I am, rather, an Average Suburban Joe who is one-part sentimental Tin Man, one-part Cowardly Lion, one-part brainy Scarecrow and one-part Professor Marvel. In the shower or in the car I tell myself I can sing as well as Jack Haley and certainly better than Ray Bolger or Bert Lahr.   

** https://hollywood-elsewhere.com/?s=Tim+Palen

I’m not going to lie and say I absolutely adored Gena Rowlands‘ many sterling performances over the years. I always admired her but never quite fell for her.

I respected the hell out of her chops — she was obviously a top-of-the-line, Barrymore- or Streep-level performer and then some — but I never felt all that emotionally entwined with her characters. She always seemed propelled by ferocious integrity, intensity and technique, and less propelled by an interest in reaching out to Joe and Jane Popcorn.

To keep the engine chugging for 94 years in relatively good health (except for the awful Alzheimers affliction of the last few) is a blessed thing. Good for Rowlands living a long full one. Her last gig (Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks) was 10 years ago.

Rowlands peaked between the late ’60s and late ’80s — call it 20 years. Her Mount Everest achievement was A Woman Under the Influence (’74), made when she was 43 or so. Her most vulnerable, least attention-seeking performance was as Kirk Douglas‘s understanding but frustrated girlfriend in Lonely Are The Brave (’62), made when she was 32 or thereabouts.

10 Rowlands essentials: Faces, Minnie and Moskowitz, A Woman Under the Influence, Opening Night, The Brink’s Job, Gloria, Tempest, Love Streams, Light of Day. Another Woman.

Rebecca Keegan‘s long-foretold hit piece on Sasha Stone (“How an Oscar Blogger Became a MAGA Darling“) dropped today.

It’s a diligent if superficial, half-tabloidy, rat-a-tat-tat thing that portrays Stone as a kind of political blunderer who has apparently alienated a few purse-string holders within Hollywood’s publicity, marketing and ad-buying realms by overplaying her MAGA allegiance. But the piece has no feeling, no soul, no intuition, no heart…no sense of grounded, shake-it-off honesty about the whole, tangled-up, identity-driven mess that we’re all living through.

Sasha’s perceptions about the destructive effects of Hollywood’s woke infection are 100% spot-on, but I’ve told her over and over that if she’d only confined her political jottings to riffs about woke ugliness and anti-cancel culture rhetoric and left Orange Beast out of it, Keegan & Co. would have never come after her. But Sasha felt too wedded to what she sees as the fundamental truth of things to back off even slightly. A victim of her own obstinate integrity.

Keegan’s piece is not technically inaccurate but it’s cheap, scolding and rather cruel in a brusque sort of way, and it couldn’t be more shallow, written in a “just the facts, ma’am” police blotter fashion while completely ignoring and in fact suppressing various underlying Big Picture truths…the vapors, aromas, and toxic social realities of our very own woked-up version of China’s Great Cultural Revolution…the superficially glamorous but rigidly instructive and punitive concentration-camp atmosphere that we’ve all been living under since ’18 or thereabouts.

On top of which the THR editors chose a somewhat unflattering photo of Stone to accompany the headline, and that really tells you where they’re coming from. Sasha has great eyes and a bountiful smile and a generally pleasing earth-momma radiance, but the THR photo makes her look like Bernadine Dohrn on the lam.

Friendo: “The impetus was obviously the ‘white power’ tweet. But since Sasha’s actual views are much more circumspect, what are they really saying about her? Since Keegan’s story accepts that the tweet was a sarcastic joke, what the Hollywood gatekeepers REALLY seem to be saying is, ‘You can’t call our identity politics out like that. That’s toxic.’

“Seriously — everyone in Hollywood and the media piling on Sasha is the quintessence of hypocrisy. I honestly don’t know how these people sleep.”

Keegan excerpt #1: “A quote from Sasha Stone is toxic now,” one executive told me, saying that their studio was pulling their ad dollars from Awards Daily. A representative for another studio said they would no longer invite her to screenings and events. ‘If she’s trying to be sarcastic,’ said a high-profile Academy member, ‘It’s not funny.’ HE sez: Ooohhh, no!!…an Academy member isn’t amused by Sasha’s sarcasm!! Talk about a damaging faux pas…off with her head!

Keegan excerpt #2: “While Stone has provoked reactions from cringe to outrage for her comments on race, gender and sexuality”…” HE sez: “Cringe and outrage” for speaking plainly and frankly about the smallpox epidemic of Hollywood’s identity politics, among other matters? There was no mistaking the fact that Lily Gladstone‘s Best Actress campaign was entirely about identity-brandishing; ditto Karla Sofía Gascon‘s forthcoming Best Actress campaign for Emilia Perez.

Keegan excerpt #3: “[Stone’s] white power remark may be the one to finally get her exiled from Hollywood. In some ways, the ostracism seems like what she’s wanted, living proof of her thesis on the left’s growing intolerance.” HE sez: Notice how Keegan hasn’t a single honest word to say about the cloud of Stalinist wokethink and how the only choice a sensible careerist has is to play along in order to survive?

Keegan excerpt #4: “[Sasha] used to be a little bit anti-bullshit,” says one publicist who represents multiple Oscar winners. “She gave a real read. We appreciated that.”

Keegan excerpt #5: “[Stone] defended Ansel Elgort during the 2020 rollout of Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story when the actor was accused of sexually assaulting a 17-year-old girl (Elgort has denied the allegation).” HE sez: Accused of sexual assault without a shred of credible evidence or testimony, Keegan should have explained. For the alleged victim’s description of what happened “doesn’t sound like sexual assault at all,” I wrote on 6.19.20 . “The sex began as consensual if not eager-beaver on her part, but she felt badly afterwards. It almost sounds like an Aziz Ansari-type situation. In the real world, of course, a 20 year-old guy legally having it off with a 17 year-old is far from Polanski-ville.”

Keegan excerpt #6: “When Green Book was at the center of a debate over its racial politics and old stories about director Peter Farrelly and a tweet from co-writer and producer Nick Vallelonga surfaced, Stone was quoted in the Wall Street Journal decrying the ‘destruction’ of the filmmakers.” HE sez: Green Book‘s basic game plan was to tell a fact-based road movie about racial relations and values according to the prevailing values and attitudes of 1962. The fanatics were enraged that it didn’t tell the story from the perspective of 2018 woke sensibilities.

Keegan excerpt #7: “One of Stone’s few remaining friends is another self-styled anti-woke writer, Hollywood Elsewhere’s Jeffrey Wells, whom she once dated and who is best known for having asked director James Mangold for nude outtakes of an actress and for writing about subjects like Emma Stone’s ‘slender, shovel-like feet” in a review of last year’s Oscar contender Poor Things.” HE sez: I humbly apologize for reporting that Emma Stone has “slender, shovel-like feet”, but this is a dead fact. As for Keegan’s other cheap ditty, which dates back to 2007 or 17 years ago…really? A single paragraph out of a private, 15-paragraph letter that I wrote to Mangold after two glasses of Pinot Grigio still matters to whom exactly? The Boogie Man? If Keegan were to tap out a capsule description of the 42nd President, she would write “Bill Clinton is best known for having been orally pleasured by Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office, and secondarily for not coming in her mouth but on her dark blue dress.”

Keegan excerpt #8: “Stone says she still plans to attend the Telluride Film Festival this Labor Day weekend, where she says people ‘tolerate her.” Come again? Stone “still” plans to do Telluride despite the compromising assertions in Keegan’s earth-shaking article? Don’t flatter yourself, Rebecca.

Either you understand the idea of manning through a difficult workplace situation or you don’t. I don’t even need to mention the stoic Lee Marvin thing.

I’m presuming the SNL host who made Yang and others cry was Bill Burr, who hosted in October ‘20.

This is the music heard just after Vivien Leigh‘s Blanche Dubois is freaked out by the old, darkly lighted woman selling flowers for the dead — an omen that is too much for her.

Why was Bill Paxton‘s Hudson, a cowardly Marine with the emotional maturity of a 13-year-old, included in a possibly dangerous rescue mission? The kind of guy who instantly wimps out when things go badly. Plus Paxton played a guy who confessed to having “a little dick” in True Lies (’94), and his Apollo 13 astronaut, Fred Haise, was also a whiner.

Paxton was 30 or 31 when he made Aliens. When did he finally graduate out of playing chumps and candy-asses? Answer: When Jan de Bont cast him as the tornado whispering hero in Twister. This apparently inspired James Cameron to cast Paxton as a non-boobish submersible guy in Titanic, and then Sam Raimi cast him as Bridget Fonda‘s morally conflicted husband in A Simple Plan. By ’98 he was out of that hole.

Steve Allen to Manhattan pedestrians: “If a brilliant presidential candidate was an admitted homosexual, and yet was clearly the brightest and most emotionally mature guy among all the candidates, truly a fair-minded man for all seasons and a guy with a liberally measured and compassionate view of what governing should or shouldn’t do overall…would you vote or not vote for him because of his sexual orientation?”

Delmer Daves’ Broken Arrow (‘50), which starred James Stewart and Jeff Chandler, was shot in June, July and August of 1949. Stewart was 41 during filming, and 15 year-old Debra Paget, born in late August of 1933, played Sonseeahray, the love interest and eventual wife of Stewart’s Tom Jeffords.

Imagine a 41 year-old superstar playing the lover and husband of a 15 year-old actress today. A 26 year age gap! #MeToo fury!

I propose cancelling Stewart and Daves posthumously. As a minor Paget had no agency and was clearly manipulated into submitting to sexual wifely situatione, exposing her to carnal matters at an inappropriate age.

I’ve long regarded Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone as an exceptionally brilliant and perceptive diviner of the human condition and especially political behavior in both the Hollywood and Washington, D.C. realms.

She’s also an excellent, true-blue human being — certainly among the most loving and supportive friends I’ve ever known. We’ve had our spats over the years and I certainly don’t agree with her about certain political matters, but she’s made of fine, honorable, gold-bullion stuff

Sasha’s political views began to lean right around four years ago, which is fine. But alas, she’s concurrently developed a curious affinity for…I can’t say it! I can’t say the name!

And within the last year this affinity has allegedly caused her…well, a few minor political problems within a certain branch of the Hollywood community, particularly the progressive totalitarian thought police brigade…you know, the Robespierres who’ve been controlling the proverbial conversation since woke theology began to take hold around the mid teens, and who have thereby inserted a climate of fear among filmmakers (woke casting criteria + the Clayton Davis lobby + celebrate and certainly don’t offend women, POCs, LGBTQs or trans, especially with Emilia Perez coming down the pike!) and have generally caused certain Hollywood films to become vehicles for woke talking points and social instruction (Killers of the Flower Moon, Disney’s forthcoming Snow White, etc.).

It’s common knowledge that The Hollywood Reporter‘s Rebecca Keegan has been researching what sounds like a Sasha hit piece over the last couple of weeks. The idea (i.e., rake her over the coals) apparently began in response to Sasha having satirically or facetiously tweeted “white power” when discussing “White Dudes for Harris”, but also for having expressed certain MAGA-ish viewpoints that have rubbed some in the skittish Hollywood community the wrong way.

Keegan has spoken to Sasha as well as Variety columnist Jazz Tangcay, who used to write for Sasha’s site, Awards Daily contributor Megan MacLachlan, and, I’ve been told although I haven’t confirmed, THR award season columnist Scott Feinberg.

I’ve been using the term “hit piece” because Keegan hasn’t spoken to me (Sasha told her about our devout friendship) or longtime associate and friend Clarence Moye, who’s been writing Awards Daily TV commentary for ten years and is about to launch www.the-contenders.com, largely because Sasha has been urging him to do so in order to thrive without having to cope with the smoke that Sasha’s viewpoints have apparently generated among the Orwellians.

Earlier today I spoke to Moye, who intends to launch The Contenders on Monday, 8.26, about what’s been going on, Sasha-wise.

Moye: “Sasha has encouraged us (myself, Megan, Joey Moser) to consider breaking out on our own for several years, but we haven’t considered going out until this year. I know that a few years ago Sasha was getting attacked by pro-trans activists for questioning the hate bombs thrown at J.K. Rowling. We stood by her and fully support her when it comes to being against left bullying and cancel culture. As long as what she says isn’t hurtful.

“But Sasha has been encouraging us to do this for four or five years now. She wants us to be spared. I for one have not heard any advertisers say they are uncomfortable with this messaging. I have heard publicists say ‘what’s going on with Sasha?’ Fellow awards contenders have also said this from time to time. They don’t get the embracing of MAGA culture, which for some has been the tipping point.

“Sasha is free to say what she wants. I think if she only focused on woke and anti-cancel culture rhetoric, most of the feedback would be manageable. It’s mainly the MAGA commentary, and it’s really just been [happening] over the past year. Somebody will come up and say ‘what’s going on?’ She doesn’t represent my opinion. She has her own voice. The only thing I and Joey and Megan have objected to was politics being tweeted via the Awards Daily brand…we were concerned about the Awards Daily brand becoming toxic. This is what seemed to be the tipping point for many.

“I am not a social media person. I don’t care about being ridiculed. There have been a few tweets about ‘the Awards Daily writers must be horrible people because they support her.’ But Twitter is a cesspool. The anti-woke culture stuff, I don’t think, would have been seen as all that bad, considering the worm has started to turn.

“I am looking at a place where I need to make a name for myself. Sasha has given me so much, and I feel like it’s time to fly the nest, and to put my own voice out there. I’ve been writing for Sasha for ten years, I saw that ‘white power’ tweet and I knew it was a joke. But an unwise joke I would add, given the insane asylum that is Twitter and the fact that informed conversations are a rarity.”

Keep in mind that Clarence Moye isn’t the first journalist to graduate from the Sasha Stone academy. 15 and 20 years ago Sasha’s site (formerly known as OscarWatch.com) served as an opinion and Oscar-handicapping platform for Feinberg, Kris Tapley, who couldn’t be bothered to reply to an inquiry I sent about this history or even acknowledge that I was reaching out, and Awardswatch.com‘s Erik Anderson.

Sasha quote (8.13.24): “It is strange that we live in a time in which someone thinks this is a story. I wonder why there aren’t more interesting things to write about, and then I remember how paralyzed everyone has become in this climate of fear. One thing I’ve tried to do is become more tolerant by humanizing the accused witches, and I have paid a price for that. But you have to live a truthful life as best you can, stand up for what you believe is right and that is what I’ve done.

“I am too careless on social media. No one ever interacts with my tweets. It’s been a ghost town since years ago when the bullying began. So I guess I didn’t realize the Eye of Sauron was watching me. If I’d known it would lead to this of course I would not have posted it. I thought it was a funny joke. My friends and I used to say all the time ‘white rights!’ because it was so ridiculous. Now, of course, if you say it people think you mean it literally. And therein lies to answer to why American culture has collapsed into itself.

“There are a lot of people who feel like I do but they are too afraid to speak out. I hear from them in DMs.”

Christian Toto, HollywoodinToto.com: “Sasha Stone is an old-fashioned Hollywood success story. A single mother whose love of film became a full-time career. Her political evolution has been both fascinating and unexpected, and her industry colleagues would be wise to at least listen to what she has to say and write. She’s been able to roll with industry changes via her sly Substack account while other journalists have been understandably caught up in the industry’s seismic makeover. If only Celebrity Nation mirrored her passion for free expression, one of her signature passions.”

A well-connected fellow says he’s “heard very casually and very second-hand that someone is talking to studio/streamer campaign types, but beyond that I know nothing about [Keegan’s article]. Over the past few weeks I did hear from a couple of people at studios expressing concern about advertising with someone who might be regarded as politically toxic from a certain perspective and how that might be a question, but at least one told me they really like Sasha’s awards site and so are somewhat perplexed. Either way I’m sure this hubbub will make Sasha a hero in MAGA-land for sticking it to Hollywood.”

Personal aside: Ever since Hollywood’s woke thought police began to target me in late ’18 or thereabouts and especially since the Great Awokening of 2020, I’ve been increasingly enamored (or at least open to the opinions) of varioue sensible, plain-spoken, anti-woke headliners….Sasha, Bill Maher, Bret Stephens, Bari Weiss, Adam Carolla, Joe Rogan, Chris Gore, Dennis Quaid…even the tart-tongued Megyn Kelly from time to time. Kelly is an out-and-out-Trumper, but she hates the Orwellian left and that’s music to my ears. Otherwise you could call the other seven or eight “independents” or “center-right contrarians”, but I regard them as voices of the new counter culture.

I draw the line, however, at odious MAGA theology and bowing down to that hideous, corpulent, felonious, flatulent one-man plague who’s running against Kamala Harris. In my book he’s a despicable, low-rent, mouth-breathing animal from Queens who, trust me, will be going down hard when he loses the election come November.

Added note: The thought police seriously damaged my ad income between ’21 and the present, and it was never about Trump. It was about nothing but scurillous bullshit. This history exposes these monsters for who and what they are.

My first reactions to James Cameron‘s Aliens in ’86 (38 years ago!) were “magnificent verisimilitude, great military vigor and excellent cutting, but it looks too grainy.”

I’ve always wanted to see Cameron’s de-grained 4K version of Aliens. but I never got around to buying it. After reading dweeb complaints about the lack of grain, I’m even more excited about catching this version.

The only problem is that $54 price tag for the Ultimate Aliens Collectors Edition 4K.

“Anti-Grain Kahuna,” posted on 8.17.10:

“During an Avatar: Special Edition interview last week James Cameron told a Coming Soon guy that he’s “just done a complete remaster of Aliens (the Bluray of which will be included in the Alien Anthology set, due on 10.26), and that he did the work with the same colorist with whom he had worked on Avatar, and that he’s “completely removed all noise and grain from the extended version of the film.” Yes!

“It’s spectacular,” Cameron said. “We went in and completely de-noised it, de-grained it, up-rezzed [and] color-corrected every frame, and it looks amazing. It looks better that it looked in the theaters originally.

“Aliens was shot on a high-speed negative that was a new negative that didn’t pan out too well and got replaced the following year, so it’s pretty grainy. [But] we got rid of all the grain. It’s sharper and clearer and more beautiful than it’s ever looked. And we also did that to the long version, to the ‘director’s cut’ or the extended play.”