I didn’t care for season #1 of The White Lotus because of the shallow or otherwise odious characters, the general atmosphere of greed, indifference and insensitivity, and especially the focus on men’s anuses — Murray Bartlett‘s Armond performing anilingus on Lukas Gage‘s Dillon, and Armond later defecating into a suitcase owned by Jake Lacy‘s Shane.

What I mean is that early on I inhaled the perverse or otherwise depraved imaginings of series creator Mike White, and I didn’t care for the odor.

After season #1, I swore to myself that I will never again watch a sex scene imagined or directed by White — I don’t want the term “sexual behavior”and Mike White to ever again cross paths in my head. And I’ll certainly never watch another Mike White scene in which a drunken guy takes a dump in another guy’s suitcase. I’m sorry but that’s a hard and fast rule.

Alas, some more Mike White sexuality slithered through the gate in last night’s White Lotus episode…episode #5, season 2, set in Sicily. It involves Quentin (Tom Hollander), an older gay guy who lives in Palermo, and his supposed nephew Jack (Leo Woodall) and Tanya McQuoid-Hunt (Jennifer Coolidge).

First Quentin, Jack and Tanya attend an opera, and then they all drive back to Quentin’s lavish Palermo villa. Late at night Tanya peeks her head into one of the rooms and is surprised to find Jack engaged in incest with Quentin, ass-pumping his uncle with extra vigor.

You know what I keep getting from White and his sex scenes? A little touch of Pier Paolo Pasolini and particularly a Salo vibe. There was a lot of anal in that 1975 film, I can tell you. Salo was Pasolini’s metaphor for the brutal degradations of fascism; it was also about his enjoyment of young curly-haired men with tight buns. White has been indulging his own predilections in The White Lotus, trust me.

White: “There’s a pleasure to me as a guy who is gay-ish to make gay sex transgressive again. It’s dirty…men are having sex and you have this ‘Psycho’ music underneath. I just think transgressive sex is sexier. I guess I’m old school. There’s this Gothic vibe of walking through a haunted hotel or haunted house and people are having sex behind closed doors.”

Hollander has spoken to Variety‘s Ethan Shanfeld about pretending to be fucked in the ass in a way that looks and sounds convincing.

“It’s more technical than anything else when you’re actually doing it,” Hollander says. “You know, ‘Is this the right angle? Does this look right?’ But there was a mutually respectful energy between us, too. And on the set, the production was very tender around those moments. It certainly was around that one. We just wanted to do it right.

“There is fantasy, and you’re going through your head going, ‘I hope I look good.’ But when they say action, in a way that goes, and you actually just find yourself thinking, ‘I want this to be a true representation of an intimate moment between two people.’ You just want to do it right,” Hollander said.”

This is HE’s least favorite all-time quote by an actor about performing a sex scene.

The plan is for Jett and Cait to bring one-year-old Sutton into Manhattan this Saturday (i.e., five days hence) with a special interest in showing her the big Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center.

In the same sense that kids can’t really appreciate the unique cultural pleasures of Europe until they’re ten or so, tykes probably can’t really “get” the midtown holiday splendor thing until they’re two or three. Plus I’m not looking forward to mingling with suffocating masses of bridge-and-tunnel tourists.

That isn’t stopping us, of course. Sutton might be taken aback at the size of that 80-foot-tall tree or the ornamental lights and whatnot, and the mere possibility of such an impression is enough.

I was three during my first visit to Manhattan. The tree aside, the focus back then was eyeballing the window displays at Sak’s Fifth Avenue and visiting Santa Claus at Macy’s.

The first Rockefeller Center Xmas tree was erected in 1931. It was only 20something feet tall and was paid for, notably, by construction guys who were building 30 Rock.

During a just-posted Club Random chat with Dave Rubin, Bill Maher discussed his dislike of Stephen Colbert and vice versa. But he doesn’t totally trash him and leaves the door slightly ajar.

Maher: “Colbert and I are not friends. He doesn’t like me and I don’t like him, and we don’t deny it.”
Rubin: “But he’s nothing. He’s just giving the machine what it wants all the time while you…”
Maher: “That is well said. Giving the machine what it wants. I wish I had thought of that phraseology. That’s exactly right. [But] maybe we’ll become friends one day…who knows? I’ve had that happen before. You get off on the wrong foot [with someone, but then it cools down or gradually turns a corner]. He’s the very opposite of me…a married Catholic,” etc.

I’m not suggesting this is Jack Benny vs. Fred Allen or that anyone needs to care in the slightest, but when did this contretemps first pop through? Or is it just some animal dislike thing (i.e., Charles Laughton vs, Laurence Oliver)?

Earlier this afternoon I read an 11.25 review of Todd Field‘s Tar by WBGO’s Harlan Jacobson. Definitely worth reading or listening to.

Final portion: “Tar is a lineal descendant of Josef von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel (’30), with Marlene Dietrich’s Lola dangling a heel in a cabaret to undo Emil Janning’s Professor Rath, wrecking the old world with a flick of an ash.

“Add a queer spin nearly 40 years later and you’ll find Tár in 1973’s The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant, another German milestone. Director Rainer Werner Fassbinder had the cheek to tell the story of a dissolute lesbian fashion designer (Margit Carstensen) who turns her back on her S&M lover-factotum when she becomes fatally attracted to a vanilla young thing (Hanna Schygulla).

“Even at 2 hours and 37 minutes, some critics say, Tár still fails in its duty to be passionate about music or life, which is not what the film is about. That’s another film. As it happens Tar is passionate about music, if doubtful about the life inside it.

“But this is the year of the two-and-a-half-hour film — they’re everywhere. And Tár had me on the edge of my seat for all of it, as if it was named War, not Tár.”

“No…no, you’re not. You’re not going to hang these men.”

No film released in ’22 contained scenes as strong as these two….scenes that rivet and resonate and settle into your bones….family discord that drills right down.

Nothing comparable was delivered by Top Gun: Maverick or The Fabelmans or Everything Everywhere All At Once. Nothing in Elvis, The Banshees of Inisherin, The Whale, The Woman King, Wakanda Forever or Nope comes even close. Nothing in White Noise, Decision to Leave, Women Talking, Bros, Blonde, Till, The Good Nurse, Babylon, Glass Onion…not on Red River‘s level.

She Said and The Menu are first-rate efforts. Happening was/is pretty great as an abortion period piece. All Quiet on the Western Front was intensely powerful in its own way. Ditto Bardo, which operates in its own meditative dream realm.

…there’s no way it was as funny as all that, certainly to go by Marlon Brando and Edmond O’Brien’s half-giddy, half-terrified expressions. Will you look at these guys? Five’ll get you ten Georges Danton wore the same expression just before the guillotine dropped. Please, for God’s sake…turn it down.

Anyone who would wear a walking shoe with this kind of design should be fined and perhaps even prosecuted.