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Friendo: “Have a great time at Telluride. Keep it real.”

HE: “I try to respond plain and straight every day, and double especially whenever the Crazy Town nutters go on the attack, which is every other day.”

Friendo: “I don’t trust many opinions that come out of that festival except yours and maybe two or three others. Most of the Telluride critics are dishonest whores. Anyway, I’m hoping a few winners pop up.”

HE: “I’m going to dislike Rustin — I can feel it in my bones. I know I’m going to love The Holdovers, and I can’t wait to re-experience The Pot au Feu, or the unfortunately re-titled The Taste of Things.”

Friendo: “Keep your eye out for Saltburn, The Holdovers, All of Us Strangers and Poor Things. Oh, and all the humorless NYFF elitists fell head over heels for Annie Baker’s Janet Planet.”

HE: “Strangers might work. A gay guy conversing with his deceased parents…interesting idea. What doesn’t work for me is watching the problematic Paul Mescal in any context. I don’t know what the solution is. Maybe if Mescal were to pop one too many tabs of mescaline and suffer an overdose.

“Isn’t Poor Things supposed to be a problem film? I read that somewhere.”

Friendo: “Oh yeah? Who said that? I’m surprised since Venice, Telluride and NYFF all selected it.”

HE: “It’s in the wind.”

I once ordered a narrow double shot of Aquavit, a kind of Scandinavian liqueur. I didn’t much care for the taste (i.e., black licorice) so that was all she wrote.

But the reason I ordered it was because Sterling Hayden’s Roger Wade kept a chilled bottle of the stuff in The Long Goodbye (‘74), and during a chat at his Malibu beach house offered a glass of it to Elliott Gould’s Philip Marlowe.

“Okay, that’s it,” I muttered in my 13th row seat at the Aero. “I’m ordering Acqavit the next time I’m in a bar.

Marlowe wasn’t an aquavit drinker himself — he merely told Wade he would “have whatever you’re havin’” out of politeness. Wade almost hugged Marlowe for that. Wade: “Well, God love ya…so many snooties say when I ask what they want, they say ‘I’ll have some of this and a little bit of that and a twist of lemon.”

In Marlowe’s own Hollywood habitat, the shadowy, down-at-the-heels bar where they take messages for him, he orders Canadian Club and ginger ale on the rocks. Plus he chain-smokes unfiltered cigarettes (Camels or Lucky Strikes or Pall Malls) — Marlowe would never touch any kind of filtered smoke…Parliament, Kent, Benson & Hedges, L & M…God forbid!

Anyway on the occasion of this, Gould’s 85th birthday, I felt obliged to point out the particulars to Kim Morgan, a Long Goodbye fan from way back.

I know it well. Unhappy, disappointed, despairing. It means trouble…hours or days of discomfort

Carey Mulligan’s Felicia Bernstein: “Yes, we love and care for each other and our kids, of course, but sexually the boys come first in the case of Lenny. That’s just how it is.”

Photo appropriated from Vanity Fair.

HE’s sleepover at a modest Airbnb near LaGuardia was…uhm, fine as far as it went. American #1626 (LGA to Dallas/Ft. Worth) leaves at 9:30 am — arrival in Albuquerque by 2-something this afternoon.

Likeliest, Well-Fortified, Semi-Inevitable (7)

Chris Nolan‘s Oppenheimer (Universal, 7.21 — Nolan’s pic diminished after my second viewing because — be honest — it’s overly dense and therefore punishing)
Alexander Payne‘s The Holdovers (Focus Features, 11.10.23….here’s hoping)
Greta Gerwig‘s Barbie (Warner Bros., 7.21 — enthusiasm is understandable, but it would be wrong, wrong, terribly wrong if Barbie were to win the Best Picture Oscar…don’t do it!)
Ridley Scott‘s Napoleon (Apple)
Martin Scorsese‘s Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple / Paramount)
Bradley Cooper‘s Maestro (Netflix)
Michael Mann‘s Ferrari (STX)

Semi-Likely (4)

Celine Song‘s Past Lives (A24)
Ben Affleck‘s Air (Amazon, 4.5)
Matt Johnson‘s BlackBerry (IFC Films, 5.12)
Emerald Fennell‘s Saltburn (Amazon/UA releasing)

And The Rest…(10)

David Fincher‘s The Killer (Netflix)
Wes Anderson‘s The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (Netflix)
Sofia Coppola‘s Priscilla (A24)
Blitz Bazawule‘s The Color Purple (Warner Bros., 12.20)
Todd Haynes‘ May December
Yorgos Lanthimos‘ Poor Things (Searchlight)
Ari Aster‘s Beau Is Afraid(A24, 4.21)
Sean Durkin‘s The Iron Claw (A24)
Yorgos Lanthimos‘ And (Searchlight — anthology film)
Jonathan Glazer‘s The Zone of Interest.

Sutton on Sunday means that I don’t post my usual quota of five or six stories. I am, however, posting today (Monday, 8.28) from West Orange, New Jersey. At 6 pm I’ll be catching an all-media screening of Denzel Whupass in Italy (i.e., The Equalizer 3) at the Regal Union Square. And then over to an Airbnb rental two or three blocks from LaGuardia. My flight to Albuquerque leaves tomorrow morning at 9:30 am. I may or may not be in Telluride by Tuesday night, but I’ll certainly be there by noon Wednesday. Planes and automobiles, unfortunately no trains.

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Maggie Haberman to Jake Tapper (Friday, 8.25, beginning at 1:30 mark):

“[Trump] doesn’t want to look weak. In his mind, he [projected strength because] he didn’t concede. And that has been how he has operated for decade after decade after decade…through business failures, though bankruptcies of his casinos, through losses, through products failing, through divorces…if you pretend it is not happening, if you create your own reality, if you don’t give in to what other people are acknowledging as objective reality, then maybe it isn’t really there.

“He is somebody who doesn’t think in terms of long-term strategy…he thinks in very short increments of time….and it’s all about just getting from one post to another.

“This doesn’t really get said enough about [Trump], which is that he lived a fairly consequence-free life before he was President…he did not like the press [and] was very unhappy about it..but he [always] had his father to bail him out, and has moved from one thing to another without having to face the kind of consequences that other people might have [to deal with].”

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Four and a half weeks ago (6.26.23) an ABC News story out of Osseo, Minnesota, reported by Kristina Watrobski, stated the following:

“Teachers for students as young as elementary school are allegedly being trained to discuss gender identity and conceal students’ preferred pronouns from their parents in a Minnesota school district.

“Two parents read a letter written by an Osseo Area Schools (ISD 279) elementary school teacher during the district’s school board meeting [on Tuesday, 6.20]. The teacher claims that ISD 279 employees were required to attend a training called ‘Creating Gender-Inclusive Schools’ earlier this year.

The letter detailed several aspects of the training that the ISD 279 elementary school teacher felt uncomfortable with, including employees being asked to discuss their ‘definition of gender’ before learning the district’s own definition.

One year earlier (6.21.22) Osseo’s Maple Grove High School announced that the school board had approved LGBTQIA+ history and culture resolution. Read the first five or six graphs — it’s a beaut.

Cue HE’s Crazy Town pushback brigade…”this isn’t true, it’s been made up by evil transphobes, there’s no such things as grooming of young children,” etc.

YouTube commenters: “Imagine living in a society where child abuse is not only condoned but glorified…childhood used to be about playing with your friends, enjoying ice cream and learning basic math, science and history — now it’s all about sexuality and defining your gender…get your kids out of the public school system…in my day we used to call it child grooming, and it was criminal…I applaud this woman for her bravery against the evil in our schools…it’s not about education any longer, but indoctrination…I’m a retired teacher , this is appalling and so dangerous…this is just disgusting and crazy…School is about reading, writing, math, history etc., and not gender or sexuality…this insanity must stop.”