I’m truly astonished that Johnny Depp has won his defamation case against Amber Heard.
I thought the system had irrevocably decided the following: (a) “believe all women or at the very least give them the benefit of the doubt” and (b) “older white guys are generally bad news, especially the rich ones who’ve struggled with drugs.”
Is it fair to interpret this shocking verdict as some kind of seminal #MeToo setback? As in “the carte blanche era has come to an end”? Or is it just a matter of “Amber couldn’t sell it but Johnny could”? You tell me.
Something about sitting in seat 18C, high above the Atlantic and coping with vague screaming boredom makes me want to listen to lightweight mid ‘60s pop songs, especially those that lean on catchy harmonies.
But after doing this for five or ten I tell myself “no, stop this, enough.”
And that turn in the road leads to one of my all-time favorite mid ‘60s ditties — Tony Powers and George Fischoff’s “98.6”, an unpretentious shuffle tune with arguably one of the catchiest melodies ever crafted. Lead vocal by Keith (still with us) and backing harmonies by TheTokens (“The Lion Sleeps Tonight”).
You need to try and imagine listening to “98.6” in a car driven by a friend, and you’re both ripped.
Two days hence Watcher (IFC Midnight), which I’ve been hyping since last January, finally opens. It’s an expert, quietly creepy, Polanski-level thriller, and well worth the price.
Set in present-day Bucharest and costarring Maika Monroe (It Follows), Karl Glusman and Burn Gorman, Chloe Okuno and Zack Ford‘s film is unquestionably scary and unnerving.
In my view it stops short of elevated horror — it’s more of a low-key, Roman Polanski-level thriller in the vein of Repulsion and The Tenant. First-rate chills and anxieties ensue. And not the “midnight movie” kind either.
Scream-level morons may respond in their usual way, but Watcher is as good as it gets with this kind of palette and approach.
I smirked when Brad Pitt hocked a kind of loogie at ZachGalafianakis back in ‘14. I watched it again this morning and laughedmyassoff. I hated Zach then and I still sorta hate him now. That’s not true actually. I don’t know why I just said that.
Where’s Zach been lately?
Pitt’s appearance was part of a promotional effort for David Ayres’ Fury, which I found vaguely annoying. Here’s an excerpt from my review, titled “Olly Olly In Come Fury.”
“The climactic situation, as you know, comes when the weary Brad Pitt and his four bone-tired men (Logan Lerman, Shia LaBeouf, Michael Pena and a revolting redneck animal played by JonBernthal) are stuck next to a country farmhouse with their tank temporarily disabled by a land mine. And then they discover that 300 well-armed German troops are marching in their direction.
“Pitt has been ordered by his superior, Jason Isaacs, to protect a supply train, but five guys in a broken-down tank vs. 300 German solders is just suicide, plain and simple. They’ve no chance so why does Pitt decide to fight it out? To what end? They aren’t trapped. They could run for the trees and meet up with U.S. forces later and live to fight again. But no.
“You can call it bravery but I call it nihilism.
“I understand crazy courage and uncommon valor and all that. I choke up every time I think of Sam Jaffe climbing to the top of the temple so he can blow the bugle and warn the British troops of an ambush at the end of Gunga Din.
“And I understood the situation during the finale of Pork Chop Hill when 30 or 40 trapped U.S. troops have nothing to do but fight back against hordes of Chinese troops.
“And the ending of Platoon when U.S. troops were being overrun by North Vietnamese but they fight on regardless and even call in an air strike against their own position.
“And I certainly understand the Wild Bunch finale when William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Warren Oates and Ben Johnson decide that they’re getting old and their lives are over so why not go out in a blaze of gunfire against the corrupt Mapache troops?
“But the Fury finale is nothing like any of these scenarios.
“My friend responded that ‘that’s not how it went down.’
“I said, ‘What do you mean that’s not how it went down’? That’s exactly how it went down. Pitt said ‘Nope, I’m gonna fight it out….you guys run for the trees if you want.’ Think about that decision for four or five seconds. It was uttersuicide and for what?”
“The friend said, ‘If they made a movie about guys who ran for the hills I don’t think it would be quite the same, would it?’
“Not ‘run for the hills’,” I said. “Hide in the trees until the company passes by, and then regroup with the nearby American troops and fight on. What’s wrong with that? They weren’t fighting the enemy in order to give other Allied troops time to achieve some other objective — this wasn’t the Alamo. They weren’t ordered to protect a bridge at all costs, like the guys in SavingPrivateRyan. This was April 1945 — the end of the war. Hitler would be dead in a couple of weeks. It didn’t matter.
“If Pitt and his homies had abandoned the tank and run like thieves I would have jumped out of my seat and said ‘Yes! Run for it! All right!'”
“The friend said the finale was analogous to ‘those two cops in the mean streets of Los Angeles in Ayer’s EndofWatch.’
“Not the same thing at all,” I replied. “Sorry but you’re throwing out bad analogies. And that finale in EndofWatch was ridiculous also. L.A. cop Jake Gyllenhaal is shot by gangbangers, what, 12 or 15 times and he’s attending the funeral of his partner in the next scene?
“’I will stand to the end of this thread defending my analogies just like Brad ‘Wardaddy’ Pitt did against the Nazis!,’ my friend replied.
“During the big court-martial scene in Paths of Glory a French infantryman, Private Maurice Ferol (Timothy Carey), is asked by the prosecution why he retreated after his comrades had all been killed in an attack on the Ant Hill (i.e., a German fortification). The question is satirically re-phrased by Colonel Dax (Kirk Douglas), the defense counsel. “Why didn’t you attack the Ant Hill single-handed?” Dax asks. “Single-handed? Are you kidding, sir?,” Ferol replies. “Yes, I’m kidding,” Dax says.
“If it’s a choice between self-destruction and running for cover in order to live and fight another day, just call me Jeff ‘run for the treeline’ Wells.”
4:30 pm Paris time, 10:30 am New York time. We’ve been airborne since 1:30 pm with nearly five hours to go. I chose Air Canada to save $$… big mistake.
All the sublime Parisian soothings of the last four days were erased this morning in one fell swoop. Everything has been hell. 5:30 am wake-up, idiotic Uber driver, wallet explosion on Roissy bus to CDG, interminable air terminal lines, etc.
Air Canada made me get a $35 Covid test, and we’re all wearing fucking masks on the flight. Newsflash: The pandemic is more or less over, guys, and fuck Monkey Pox. I hate hate HATE this crap so much.
Slightconsolation: I’m wearing a very cool-looking Cannes Film Festival mask.
I needed something to take my mind off of this morning’s awful Air Canada / Charles DeGaulle gauntlet (150 minutes of Chinese water torture waiting), so I re-read lastnight’sthread about the unfortunate casting of Moses Ingram in the ObiWanKenobi Disney+ series.
It’s one of HE’s most fascinating threads in recent months, and I want to congratulate VicLaz6 for revealing to the world what a pack of salivating racist dogs many of the commenters are.
Seriously, most of the adverse comments alluded to impressions that Ingram’s Baltimore patois didn’t seem to belong in the StarWars realm — the style and manner of her performance doesn’t fit, and therefore hurts the show’s credibility. (Along with the allegedly poor calibre of her acting plus the lousy writing.)
But the basic thrust, many said, was that the fault was less Ingram’s and more the casting directors.
I haven’t read most or even a fair percentage of the negative responses overall — only the HE sliver — and for all I know a good portion have been flat-out racist in nature. But something tells me the reactions are probably more mixed, and that Ewan McGregor’s fairly sweeping denunciation of all the naysayers as racist was unfair.
RegionalFriendo: “Just saw TopGun: Maverick…holy shit, that last act! Someone’s seen and plagiarized [a film released in 1977]!
HE: “Yup.”
RegionalFriendo: “Wow…the hard-to-hit target, the steep mountain run [equals vulnerable target in ’77 film], even down to [Maverick costar repeating exactly what costar of ’77 film did during a big climactic action moment]. Five fucking Maverick writers to come up with that?”
HE: “As I’ve written, I would have respected it more if they’d followed the ending of TheBridgesatToko Ri (’54).”
RegionalFriendo: “No way that was gonna happen. Too much money to make back.”
HE: “It would have hit home if they’d both died.”
RegionalFriendo: “It’s not that kinda film. The audience would’ve revolted.”
HE: “‘Not that kinda film’? You sound like Jerry Bruckheimer.”
RegionalFriendo; “I’m just telling you like it is
It’s exactly a JB film…it’s an audience film, not for Oscars. No studio would have green-lighted a film in which Cruise AND Teller die in the end.
It is what it is.”
All films set in the past or in fantasy realms have adhered to certain ways of speaking for the good and bad guys. Generally speaking villains allied with or backed by powerful forces tend to sound more disciplined and mannered in a high-class way than their underdog victims.
In Stanley Kubrick‘s Spartacus (’60), for example, the slaves were played by proletariat types with American accents while the Romans were played by British actors or distinguished college-dean types.
Likewise, in the Star Wars realm the classic approach has been (at least back in the old days) that the Empire baddies have sounded like officious, cultured British elites, or at least like people who went to expensive prep schools.
I’m going, of course, by the example set 45 years ago by Peter Cushing‘s Grand Moff Tarkin in the original Star Wars (’77).
Billy Dee Williams‘s Lando Calrissian sounded like a smooth American hustler, of course, in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. But it wouldn’t have worked as well if Williams had been cast as an Empire villain.
I don’t care who plays who in Disney+’s Obi Wan Kenobi series, but I can half-understand why some might say that a female Empire villain shouldn’t sound like a tough Baltimore girl. She should sound like a RADAinstructor or a seniorofficial with British Airways or a Whitehallbureaucrat of some kind.
I just think it’s fair to mention the pattern established by Cushing and others in the old days. Otherwise I couldn’t care less and I’m certainly not going to argue about it.
My all-time favorite pre-geezer Eastwood vehicle is Don Siegel‘s Escape From Alcatraz (’79). My favorite unregenerate-geezer Clint is Gran Torino (’08). Today he hit 92.
“Beauty is a short-lived tyranny” is one of the truest statements about beauty ever spoken or written. It was mentioned the other day by Joe Rogan while discussing Amber Heard, but it’s an observation that goes back to Socrates.
It means one thing and one thing only: When you’re young and considered beautiful (or, in dude terms, unusually good-looking), you have a great deal of temporary power. It only lasts for 10 or 15 years, 20 at the outside. Once your peak beauty factor fades you naturally have to rely on what you have inside or what you’ve learned in terms of skills and wisdom and whatnot. But when everyone loves your face and physique, you have the power of a modest tyrant.
Most guys are fairly honest about this. I was relatively fetching in my 20s and 30s, and I knew that my looks were a help as far as landing job interviews and meeting women, etc. I was too insecure and miserable in my early to mid 20s to take advantage of this, but in my late 20s and 30s I had a batting average of at least .400, which is pretty good considering that in the ’70s and ’80s (perhaps the greatest nookie era in American history) nobody was batting .1000 or even .750.
Ask most women to define beauty and nine times out of ten they’ll say something along the lines of this Audrey Hepburn quote: “The beauty of a woman is not in a facial mode but the true beauty in a woman is reflected in her soul. It is the caring that she lovingly gives the passion that she shows. The beauty of a woman grows with the passing years.”
To that I say fine, but as Stanley Kowalski once said, “I never met a dame yet who didn’t know she was good looking or not without being told.”
An observation from 2011: “In the age of Botox and plastic surgery, beauty can be a much longer-lived tyranny than Socrates first believed.
“To men, the tyranny of beauty is all the things they do to entice it, capture it, and keep it, only to find that, like a flower, it only lasts so long.
“To women, the tyranny of beauty is the effort and time (and, often, no small amount of pain) required to be considered beautiful for as long as they can, by staving off the inevitable effects of aging.”
The official credit for the Crimson Tide screenplay was owned by Michael Schiffer (story by Schiffer and Richard P. Henrick). But the flavor, pizazz and cultural oomph came from three pinch-hitters — Robert Towne (the stateroom Von Clauzewitz scene), Quentin Tarantino (the references to Scotty and Star Trek warp speed and Kirby being the dominant artist of the Silver Surfer comic books) and Steven Zallian.
These three are the only ones I know about…there may have been others. But they primarily served as sauciers rather than heavy-lifting screenwriters.
“Don & Jerry: Go The Gay Way,” posted on 4.14.14: “In April of ’95 I did a hotel-room interview with producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer during the Crimson Tide junket.
“A few months earlier I’d laughed hard at Quentin Tarantino‘s ‘go the way way’ riff in Sleep With Me (’94), in which he discussed a struggling-with-homosexuality undercurrent in Top Gun. So I proposed to Don and Jerry that they should reach out to gay moviegoers by re-marketing all their films as secret gay movies that were fraught with homosexual themes and iconography (i.e., the phallic-shaped submarines in Tide).
“Bruckheimer froze with a grin on his face but Simpson smirked and kicked it around.
“When I asked them to sign my Crimson Tide script at the end of our chat, Simpson suggested that the gay subcurrent thing was more in my head than in their films.”
