HE to Blonde spoiler whiners: This post discusses the August 1962 death of Marilyn Monroe, which is what Andrew Dominik‘s Blonde (Netflix streaming, 9.28.22) ends with.

HE to friendo #1: “Yesterday I slogged my way through Andrew Dominik‘s Blonde, which I regard as artful torture porn. And then I happened upon a Matt Lynch tweet that analogized Blonde and a landmark 1988 film, and the instant I read it I said ‘yes!'”

“I’m thinking not just of the incessant dismissals and degradations and spiritual uncertainties, but the anguished and agonized relationship between the main protagonist and the elusive ‘father.’

“Just as Willem Dafoe sips a goblet of sacramental wine before submitting to his final fate, Norma Jean swallows alcohol and barbiturates before her final episode of passion at her Fifth Helena Drive abode (the delivery man, the fuzzy tiger, the shattering note). And like Dafoe’s Jesus, a spectral Marilyn smiles and separates from death, and greets the immortality that she still enjoys today a la Andrew Dominik.”

Friendo #1 to HE: “That’s a brilliant interpretation. Celebrity is in its own way like religion. It still is. The fandoms online are like churches. Which says more about us than it does Marilyn. Lynch is saying we treat her like a kind of deity. Very smart. The myth is the truth.”

Friendo #2 to HE: “Well, there’s no doubt that she was a supreme martyr of 20th-century feminine glory and trauma. But the Jesus comparison feels a little abstract to me. What I think you’re possibly leaving out is that Blonde, dark as it is, is not torture porn. It’s a movie that’s trying to capture who Marilyn Monroe really was.”

HE to Friendo #2: “I really do think it’s primarily torture porn of an artful nature. Yes, it does capture who Monroe really was, but at what a price! Yes, it’s about the MYTH, or precisely THE TRAGIC but TRANSCENDENT MYTH. Marilyn suffered for our sins, but she’s lived eternally ever since and, in an underlined and undeniable sense, more splendidly and blessedly over the last 60 years than she did in her own biological life span, which lasted only a mere 36 years.

“The last thing Marilyn does, after dying, is become a happy ghost…she separates from her body as she smiles delightedly at the camera. As if to say, ‘The torment is finally over, and now the eternally blessed myth takes over, and I will revel in the glory of that myth for ever and ever.’” Or, if you will, “It is accomplished.”

Friendo #2 to HE: “That’s what I liked about Blonde. It’s probably the best account of what was truly occurring inside Monroe’s mind. Other depictions have failed in trying to convey the inner torture she was feeling.”

HE to Friendo #2: “Oh, it was torture, all right!”

Friendo #2 to HE: “I think it’s torture psychodrama. That’s what’s fascinating about it. She’s one of the most important artists of the 20th century, and I found the spectacle of what was happening inside her quite gripping. The cornerstone of her trauma, remember, isn’t all the men who exploited or didn’t understand her. It was her insanely abusive upbringing. It’s boring to say but that, in a nutshell, is why she was so fucked up.”

HE to Friendo #2: “Agreed. The mother and the father were demonic.”

Friendo #2 to HE: “Not just because the Hollywood system was patriarchal and exploitative and oppressive. But because the Hollywood system crumpled this already broken person.”

HE to Friendo #2: “After meeting and hanging with Montgomery Clift, Monroe told a friend ‘I’ve just met someone who might be as fucked up as I am, and maybe more so.'”

Friendo #2 to HE: “I don’t see how all of that, portrayed truthfully and with a fair degree of artfulness (although there are a number of things in the film I didn’t care for), adds up to ‘torture porn.'”

HE to Friendo #2: “Artful torture porn.”

Friendo #2 to HE: “And the bottom line is — this is the grand paradox the movie captures — Marilyn’s search for ‘daddy’ became the cornerstone of her art.”

HE to Friendo #2: “Good point. Especially the squinting, Arthur Miller-like daddy figure she speaks of in Some Like It Hot. Not to mention Clark Gable (The Misfits), Louis Calhern (The Asphalt Jungle), George Sanders (All About Eve), Laurence Olivier (The Prince and the Showgirl), and even, in a stretch, Charles Coburn and Cary Grant in Monkey Business.”

Henry Silva‘s most memorable role was “Chunjin”, a Korean guide and turncoat, in John Frankenheimer‘s The Manchurian Candidate (’62). Silva’s biggest scene was a martial-arts duke-out with Frank Sinatra in the Manhattan apartment of Laurence Harvey‘s “Raymond Shaw”, for whom Chunjin was working for as a servant, cook and driver. (Angela Lansbury, playing Harvey’s malevolent mother, calls him “Chu Chin Chow.”)

Silva, however, was of Sicilian and Spanish descent, so he would have had a tough time playing a Korean under today’s woke theocracy.

During his ’50s and ’60s heyday, Silva also played a Mexican peasant farmer who confronted Marlon Brando in Viva Zapata (’52), a Manhattan heroin dealer in A Hatful of Rain (’57), a generic bad guy in The Bravados (’58), a forest-dwelling Venezuelan in Green Mansions (’59), a Vegas sharpie in Ocean’s 11 (’60), a Native American in Sergeants 3 (’63), a Sicilian assassin in Johnny Cool (’63), a Japanese detective in The Return of Mr. Moto (’65), and an Apache in Five Savage Men (’70).

Silva died two days ago (9.14) at the Motion Picture & Television Fund home in Los Angeles. He was 95. Respect & condolences. Woke fanaticism never touched him, and he lived a bountiful life for that.

Bill Maher to Aaron Rodgers, starting at 1:12 mark: “The Republicans are actually more dangerous, and they’re certainly more…I can’t say the word anymore but it begins with ‘r’…we’re not allowed to say it anymore, which is why I hate woke because we need that word desperately because the country is…but the woke side is so much more obnoxious…the level of hate that they engender in me, with the kind of shit that they do…is like…”

Rodgers to Maher: “Why would they not move to the middle? They would get everyone on their side!”

Maher to Rodgers: “I say that every week. If they just would shed this skin…this woke skin of pregnant men and [equity over meritocracy] and ‘let’s make crime legal’…math is racist…whatever nonsense they’re into…all that shit, and it would be so easy to just leave it behind, and they would win every election.”

…and is more or less ready to be shown commercially, what would your reaction be if you were a distributor in a position to purchase distribution rights?

I can tell you what my reaction would be. My reaction would be “this is such a good film that we need to not release it for another 15 or 16 months, just to be on the safe side….we need to put it on ice and let things just cool off and simmer down. Let’s not go into this situation half-cocked.”

I’m kidding. That wouldn’t have been my reaction. That was Focus Features’ reaction when they bought Alexander Payne‘s The Holdovers.

A guy (or guys) who saw The Holdovers last Sunday (i.e., five days ago) in Toronto shared reactions with TheWrap‘s Brian Welk

Reaction #1: “Outside a screening of Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers at the Scotiabank Theatre in Toronto on Sunday, one attendee left feeling that he had seen the best movie playing at the festival, even though it wasn’t an official selection of TIFF, and almost no one knew the screening was happening.”

Reaction #2: “[An] individual close to the project described it as touching, funny and very emotional, blending comedy and drama in the way that Sideways or Payne’s other films have managed with ease. Not only does The Holdovers reunite Payne with his Sideways star Paul Giamatti, the film fits snugly into Payne’s larger repertoire, moving away from the high-concept social satire Downsizing and instead evoking Payne’s humanism and the frustrations about ‘life being bewildering.'”

A difference of opinion has arisen about The Woman King‘s immediate prospects.

On one hand you’ve got Showbiz411‘s Roger Friedman all but calling Gina Prince-Bythewood‘s historical action drama dead in the water, and on the other Forbes‘ Scott Mendelson is going “wooh-wooh!!…The Woman King had a nice promising Thursday night and will probably do decently if not better by Sunday night….break out the champagne!”

Friedman: “The much touted Gina Prince-Blythewood film took in just $1.7 million last night at 3,271 theaters. That’s just $520 per screen…ouch! You could tell from the seat maps at major AMC theaters across the country that there was no enthusiasm for the much praised Viola Davis action film. Sony simply failed to make it exciting in any way.

“Now comes the actual weekend, so word of mouth should be good enough to lift the numbers. But if Sony had any Oscar expectations other than Viola for Best Actress they’d better turn on the charm fast.”

Mendelson: “In what could hopefully be an end to the post-Bullet Train slump at the domestic box office, Sony’s The Woman King earned a promising $1.7 million in Thursday previews. The showings began as early as 3:00 pm and suggest that the $50 million action drama would make anywhere from $13.5 million to $22.5 million over its domestic debut. Splitting the difference would be around $17 million, a debut on par with Sony’s female-targeted Where the Crawdads Sing from back in July.”

Halle Bailey as Ariel in Disney’s new live-action The Little Mermaid film (5.26.23)? It recently became a thing.

My basic reaction was “whatevs…Bailey is a beautiful, cocoa-skinned Rachel Zegler type, and a professional singer to boot and can presumably act pretty well so why not?…nobody’s going to hire a white girl in this punish-bad-whitey climate so why fight it?…and if Malcolm X had reddish hair why can’t Bailey’s mermaid have the same?”

Matt Walsh argues that racism is racism is racism (which it is) but he refuses to acknowledge today’s woke institutional position, which is that racism that favors BIPOCs is cool because (a) whites have it coming and (b) new social terms and dynamics need to be established.

In terms of casting movies and plays, woke racism (replacing historically or previously white characters with BIPOC actors) is, in the eyes of the terrified corporate establishment, a corrective measure that will not get them into trouble. In other words, a little reverse racism is okay and even cleansing because it counterbalances decades and centuries of racism by whites.

But in the same light casting James Franco as Fidel Castro is, according to wokesters, the same old racism that resulted in Jack Palance being cast as Fidel a half-century ago, in Richard Fleischer‘s Che (’69).

That’s the set-up and that’s the deal and Walsh knows this, of course, so why doesn’t he just say it? Because to do so would make him sound like an angry racist reactionary, so he lays out the situation with logic and lets the chips fall.

[From a comment thread assessment posted late last night]:

I paid to see Greg Mottola & Jon Hamm’s Fletch film this evening. The title is Confess, Fletch but it really, REALLY should be called Fletch Whatevs, and that’s not a putdown in the slightest. I counted five people in the theatre (AMC Danbury) but I liked it. It’s certainly a much better, more adult-minded Fletch package than whatever was provided by those Chevy Chase films in the ‘80s.

Fletch Whatevs is an agreeably quirky, mildly entertaining time killer…a low-key, loose-shoe Boston runaround stolen-art caper thang. It’s all jizz-fizz and that’s fine. I had a better-than-okay time but why couldn’t the AMC guys have heated the popcorn?

Hamm is totally cool and knows exactly how to project the right kind of laid-back Fletch attitude. (His personality mantra is — you’ll never guess this — “whatevs.” Which is fairly close to the personality mantra that Elliott Gould swore by in The Long Goodbye, or “ladies, it’s okay with me.”) The supporting cast (Marcia Gay Harden, John Slattery and Kyle MacLachlan are standouts but partly because their names are easier to remember as I write this) take their cues from Hamm.

There are only three problems. Okay, make that four. One, Hamm lifts his bare feet right in front of the camera in one early scene — a big no-no in the HE manual. Two, he’s gained a little weight since the Mad Men heyday. (He could’ve easily tread-milled himself back into Don Draper if he wanted to.) And three, Hamm should have put mousse or Brylcream in his hair.

The fourth thing is that Fletch Whatevs should have spent more time in Rome. I really love it there.

I’m not really “complaining” because there’s no point in dismissing such a cool, witty, unassuming jack-off movie with several spunky, spirited and relatable supporting characters. The movie is good company in an inconsequential hang-out way. No bad things happen, and there are no energy drops or pacing issues except for a single strange, overly broad scene with Annie Mumolo…don’t ask.

Incidentally: Somebody said there was only enough money to shoot for a single day in Rome. I’m not sure I believe that. There’s a breezy montage sequence of a helmeted Fletch scootering all over town. (The helmet looks dorky.) There’s a two-minute dialogue scene overlooking some ancient Roman ruins. There’s a chatty cafe sitdown scene (Hamm orders a Negroni) in Piazza Navona. They didn’t shoot all that in just one day. Two or three days, I’m guessing.