Before last night I had watched David Fincher‘s Zodiac seven or eight times, give or take. Two press screenings of the shorter theatrical version (157 minutes), and the Bluray director’s cut (162 minutes) five or six times.

But last night’s viewing was different. For the first time I watched it with subtitles start to finish, and it seemed to make a profound difference. It felt more granular, more “police blotter” on some level. I know each and every scene of the 162-minute version backwards and forwards, and yet I found it spellbinding, especially the last 45 minutes or so.

The Zodiac Wiki page says “an early version of Zodiac ran three hours and eight minutes.” 26 minutes longer than the directors cut! It breaks my heart that the Director’s Cut Bluray didn’t present this version as an option.

HE to Fincher: Given that Zodiac‘s rep has grown exponentially since it opened 15 years ago, I would think that you might want to offer the 188-minute version (if in fact it exists) as a streamer. Have you ever considered this?

I’m still annoyed that research-screening audiences said they didn’t like (a) the two-minute news + music blackout montage that suggests the passage of four years, and (b) especially the scene in which three cops — Mark Ruffalo‘s Dave Toschi, Anthony Edwards‘ Bill Armstrong and Dermot Mulroney‘s Captain Marty Lee — report their findings about Arthur Leigh Allen (John Carroll Lynch) over a speaker phone in order to obtain a search warrant.

Another pleasant hang. We’re all accustomed to Piers Morgan being a tart, adversarial figure, but here he’s entirely personable and relaxed.

At the 31:30 mark, Maher blanks on Thomas Mitchell, the actor who played Scarlett O’Hara‘s father in Gone With The Wind. Mitchell’s two best performances — “Kid” Dabb in Only Angels Have Wings and Mayor Jonas Henderson in High Noon, who stabs Gary Cooper in the back.

Maher: “[Gone With The Wind], by the way…entertaining as fuck, and the people who need a disclaimer [about the 83-year-old racist content]…this is the problem, you fucking babies. Can’t you just see by the film stock that things were very different back then? History in general, we evolve. Just celebrate that we are not [as] racist any more. This generation [Millennials] needs a trigger warning and a Klonopin to get through an episode of [something or other].”

Around the 34-minute mark they talk about victim culture and “the end of the empire, what happens to successful civilizations, they get soft and mushy in the mind….weakness is celebrated and the stiff-upper-lip and resilience is now to be condemned.” And they get into pronouns around the 40-minute mark.

The key thing when you dine at a place like Osteria Mamma is not to anger your waiter. Don’t send too many things back, I mean. I sent back a puree-like green soup because it wasn’t exciting enough. Then I added insult to injury by asking the waiter to please re-heat the potatoes. So I was pushing it.

For a half-second I saw the waiter looking at me sideways and I knew…I didn’t think it was likely that he would spit in my one of my dishes, but the thought occured to me that if I don’t stop sending stuff back something like that might happen.

That said, he was a very nice and polite guy, and he spoke with a genuine Italian accent. The bill was split in half and we (i.e., attorney friend Mark and myself) tipped him 20% each. I know, I know…some waiters might seethe and mutter to themselves “fuck you…why didn’t you tip me 25%?” But I took a chance with 20%.

Roughly nine months ago I explained the basic ground rules when it came to flirtatious older guys and younger women in the year 2021. It’s now 2022 and things haven’t changed. I explained it as carefully as the English language allows, and in only three paragraphs. It was completely free (not a paywall post) and easy to find. And what happened?

Frank Langella completely ignored it, and now he’s been fired from Netflix’s The Fall of the House of Usher. The rules are the rules, and he couldn’t bothered to follow them, and now people are saying his career might be over.

Here’s what I said last July: “Some older white guys — the stupid, clumsy ones, I mean — don’t seem to realize that they’re deer, and that it’s deer hunting season out there right now. Because a decent percentage of urban progressive women (teens to mid 30s and perhaps beyond) would just as soon explode their lives into smithereens as look at them. If old guys want to be dead all they have to do is give the ‘hunters’ a reason to get out their high-powered social media rifles and fire at them.”

Here’s what Langella did wrong, according to TMZ: “As for what exactly happened, a source close to production tells us the 84-year-old actor allegedly made an inappropriate joke that was sexual in nature. Our sources also say in the context of his performance, possibly during rehearsal, he touched the leg of a female costar, and further drew attention to the action when he jokingly said something like ‘Did you like that?'”

Posted three days ago by Alex Simon on Facebook: “First, I’m glad there was an actual investigation, as opposed to Trial by Twitter. That’s how it’s done if things are run by grown-ups.

“Second, I think what we’re seeing isn’t another Harvey Weinstein-level predator. Langella was known for decades as a Warren Beatty-level ladies man. He never engaged in Weinstein-like behavior because, let’s face it, he was a gorgeous dude who didn’t have to. He loved women and he loved getting laid. And did. Among his conquests was an off-and-on relationship with Jackie O. for a number of years, a lady who was renowned for not being attracted to ‘nice guys.’

“This is my point about how this brand of guy, from the Mad Men era, was rewarded for their behavior. ‘Swaggering alpha male who goes after what he wants’ equaled ‘self-confident, strong man,’ and this behavior was rewarded by society and the world’s most spectacular women alike through my generation. It’s how things were, whether you feel it was “right,” or not.

“[Langella’s] ‘inappropriate touching’ might not have been viewed as such 20 or 30 years ago, prior to his being an old man. It might’ve been welcomed. Perhaps the real issue is [that] Frank [has] never came to terms with the fact that he’s gotten old. If his career truly is over, I shall miss him. He was always a fascinating actor to watch weave his magic.”

Don’t recite your resume or your hobbies, don’t tell us what you own or how your golf game has improved or how much you love your pets or anything peripheral…none of that…just tell us who you are.

Okay, here goes: I’m a guy who lives to write and writes to live. I believe that while certain bedrock behaviors are more or less constant if you’re sober, moods and perceptions are always tipping this way or that. There is no “real” essential identity. There is only our genetic history plus the constantly adjusting, moving-train way of things…influences, appetites, defense mechanisms, second thoughts.

I was angry as a kid because I’d suffered through a traumatic birth, and angry as a teenager because my functioning alcoholic dad managed to persuade me that I had to avoid turning out like him…that anything would be preferable to that. And yet I miss him on some level.

Nicholson to HE: That’s very nice, Jeff, but as usual you’re dodging. Who are you? Just say it.

HE to Nicholson: I don’t have a pat answer, and neither do you. Nobody does. I’m an imaginative egocentric refugee from a middle-class New Jersey suburb. I live for those transcendent moments that descend from time to time. (We all do, I think.) I’ve been lucky in some respects, and I’ve been blessed with a strong constitution. Otherwise I’m a reasonably stable, steady-as-she-goes workaholic.

I vastly prefer the poetry of cinema + great writing + music to the occasionally maudlin reality of day-to-day life. My eyes go all watery when certain memories surface, and especially when certain songs and passages from certain film scores are re-savored.

Most of us understand about God’s absolute and infinite indifference about whether we are happy or not, and that there is only “be here now” and the hum of it all, etc. And yet deep down I seem to spend a lot of time trying to re-savor or re-appreciate my deepest and most lasting memories from the 20th Century, and all the while hitting re-fresh.

I understand the rule about not mentioning cats and dogs, but they’re mostly wonderful (98% of the time) to hang with.