If there’s one thing I loathe about screen villains it’s the tendency of screenwriters to simply portray them as evil incarnate — evil, rotten fuckface psychopaths who love dispensing pain and cruelty and almost cackle with glee when they can slug or plug someone…the sheer joy of ugliness for its own sake.

That kind of portrayal might be fun for third-rate actors, but in real life villainy has its reasons and rationales. When bad people look in the bathroom mirror they see a flawed but half-reasonable man/woman who’s just doing what he/she has to do to keep moving, keep earning and not get arrested.

In Quentin Tarantino‘s Jackie Brown, Samuel L. Jackson‘s Ordell Robbie — a smooth but ruthless gun dealer who lives in Hermosa Beach — is no one’s idea of a nice guy, but he has his reasons for doing what he feels he needs to do. He’s not a Satanic emissary with horns on his head, but a guy who’s simply trying to protect himself and stay alive and not get popped.

When Chris Tucker‘s Beaumont Livingston is arrested with a machine gun or two in his car (weapons that Robbie had smuggled or was about to sell or something in that realm), Robbie knows that Livingston will rat him out to escape a long prison sentence, and so Ordell has to kill him — it’s a straight case of his survival or Livingston’s. He’s not looking to kill Livingston because he loves committing murder — he’s dead certain (and he’s right) that if he wants to keep going as a gun dealer he has no choice in the matter.

Same deal with Robert DeNiro‘s Louis Gara, a none-too-bright criminal whom Ordell first met in prison, and a guy with a hair-trigger temper who’s impulsively and idiotically shot Bridget Fonda‘s Melanie in the Del Amo shopping plaza parking lot.

When Gara tells Robbie what happened and especially the part about the money gone missing and Gara not putting two and two together and realizing that Max Cherry’s presence near the department store dressing room meant something, Robbie knows that Gara is a loose-cannon dumbshit and untrustworthy and that one way or the other he’ll do something that will put Robbie in jeopardy. And so, Robbie quickly realizes, he has no choice but to kill Gara.

Again, it’s not that Robbie loves killing or that he dislikes Gara personally, but strategically Gara is an obvious liability and so he has to go. Robbie doesn’t pull the trigger out of venality but practicality — he’s just trying to save himself from ugly consequences around the bend.

I’m not saying Robbie is a sympathetic character, but at least you understand where he’s coming from. He’s cold and ruthless, but he has his reasons for doing what he feels he has to do. When he gets it in the end, you almost feel sorry for the guy. Not quite but almost.

Now that Jon Chu and Lin-Manuel Miranda‘s In The Heights has gone down in flames, what fate awaits the next POCs-singing-and-dancing-on-the-streets-of-New York musical — i.e., Steven Spielberg‘s West Side Story (20th Century, 12.10)?

More to the point, in what ways will Woke Film Twitter (or anti-Woke Film Twitter) try to bruise or take it down? In what ways might it be vulnerable or dismissable?

Before we start it’s fair to consider the possibility that West Side Story won’t be attacked by anyone — that it’ll be received as a better-than-decent and possibly even excellent musical by Zoomers, Millennials, GenXers and Boomers alike. They all might say “yes!…hail this darkly flavorful, excitingly performed, heart-massaging interpretation of Stephen Sondheim, Leonard Bernstein and William Shakespeare‘s stage musical, which opened at the Winter Garden theatre a lonnnnnng time ago — 9.26.57.

A more likely reaction is that Boomers and GenXers will approve, but Millennials and Zoomers will dismiss it as a sentimental relic of a world that no longer exists.

Another possible reaction is that critics and urban cultural progressives will shrug and say “again?” Their complaint might be that the material was been performed and re-performed and revived too many times, and that it’s just too familiar and shop-worn, and that we’ve been West Side Story-ed to death.

Wokesters might feel alienated by the film’s tragic theme — prejudice and tribalism invite tragedy. Because their view is that whites and only whites are to blame for racial hatred in any given situation, and that the Manhattan-residing Puerto Rican immigrants of the story are pure victims. In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (which West Side Story is a musical remake of) the Montagues and the Capulets are equally guilty of spewing tribal hate.

A small contingent of Twitter morons will probably try to revive the “Ansel Elgort was guilty of sexual assault!” conversation, which was ludicrous to begin with. The alleged victim, who called herself “Gabby,” was a legal and consentable 17 when her relationship with Elgort happened in December 2014. It was an empty Twitter drama, but that’s never stopped the #MeToo and safe-space Twitter mob when they lose their shit about whatever.

Will the same agitators who complained about In The Heights ignoring the presence of Afro-Latinos in Washington Heights…will they make a comeback and repeat the same colorist gripe about West Side Story?

Will Puerto Rican artists and activists post angry tweets about West Side Story not conveying cultural authenticity in its portrayal of Puerto Rican immigrants in Eisenhower-era Manhattan, and/or that it presents an offensively negative portrait of Puerto Rico? Remember that the beloved musical conveys negative views of Puerto Rico in “America”, an ensemble tune that is chiefly sung by Bernardo’s sexy g.f. Anita (respectively played by Chita Rivera, Rita Moreno and Ariana DeBose in the original stage show, the 1961 film version and the 2021 remake). The sassy lyrics weigh the pros and cons of life in New York City vs. San Juan.

What else could screw things up for West Side Story?

I for one would love Spielberg’s version to succeed — I’ve long felt that Robert Wise‘s 1961 Oscar-winning film feels too “Hollywood” and lacks authenticity — too much bright red paint on the sides of tenement buildings, etc. I suspect that Elgort and Rachel Zegler‘s performances as Tony and Maria will deliver and then some. Ditto Ariana DeBose‘s Anita, David Alvarez‘s Bernardo and Mike Faist‘s Riff.

Rachel Zegler (i.e., “Maria” in Steven Spielberg‘s West Side Story) seems like the right choice to play Snow White in Disney’s forthcoming live-action musical version, which Marc Webb will direct sometime in ’22. Beautiful, sings like a bird, etc.

There are just two problems. One is the name Snow White, which obviously reeks of racist arrogance and entitlement. Wouldn’t it make more sense in this day and age to call her Snow Brown? (I could roll with that.) Secondly, how will Webb and producer Marc Platt handle the whole “Prince Charming awakening Snow White from a deep coma with a kiss is wrong because it’s non-consensual” thing? Snow White is right on the edge of death, and yet it’s bad bad BAD for Prince Charming to have awakened her because she had no say in the matter because she was in a coma…of course!

Yes, a completely bonkers attitude or viewpoint but welcome to the 2021 lunatic asylum.

Which is the more odious viewing prospect — Coke Daniels‘ Karen, a horror-thriller based on the “Karen” meme (entitled racist white woman) or the latest “The New Normal,” a Washington Post video essay, hosted by Nicole Ellis, that focuses on toxic whiteness?

Karen is a BET Jordan Peele joke, but the Ellis video strikes me as vaguely horrifying — the scourge of fair-skinned evil. Democrats would have 60% of this country accept blame as the enemy within, and the only way the prosecution will back off is if we go through these rituals of admitting guilt + self-abasement. We bad.

Friendo on Nicole Ellis/WaPo video: “So the Democrats, aware that the right is glomming onto Critical Race Theory as the leverage they will need for 2022, are defending and doubling down on CRT. The same thing happened with Defund the Police heading into the ’20 election. Those who objected were too scared to speak against it and the loudest voices defended it until the election. This is much worse — the media and so many others are making this seem to be what the entire Democratic Party is about and what they want America to be about. I am not sure this can be stopped.

“Does this or does this not look like an informercial for a cult?”

It’s actually “drive from WeHo to La Piedra State Beach”-day. The journey lasts 70 minutes if you’re lucky. Once you’re there it’s cool — remote, high cliffs, tranquility base, a better class of visitor — but what an ordeal to get there. From Santa Monica to Malibu Canyon PCH is arguably the ugliest, most congested beachside highway on planet earth.

We were married on LPSB on 6.30.17, hence the champagne.

Eric Adams, a tough pol who packs heat like Bill Duke in The Limey or Gary Cooper in High Noon or Sidney Poitier in In The Heat of the Night or Glenn Ford in The Big Heat, will apparently be the next Mayor of New York City.

It’s been two and a half months since Brendan Fraser, 52, finished his work on Darren Aronofsky‘s The Whale. Fraser was presumably asked to bulk up as he was playing a 600-pound depressive.

If I were Fraser I would have begun crash-dieting like a motherfucker as soon the film wrapped in order to look reasonably proportioned when the film opens. I would also fly to Prague and get my hair fixed. All right, I’ll admit it — I’m posting this because I was distracted by the term “glorious fat phoenix.”

Note to jackals and wokesters: I’m not using this term to express any personal thoughts about corpulence. I simply saw the item on Twitter. If you want to cancel anyone, cancel Lance St. Laurent — I’m just an innocent bystander.

I’ve watched three episodes of Hacks, the HBO Max relationship comedy series about a Las Vegas-based, boomer-aged standup comic named Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) who’s been told that her career will be in trouble if she doesn’t punch up her act, and so she reluctantly hires a 25-year-old, down-on-her-luck comedy writer named Hannah Ainbinder (Ava Daniels) in hopes of doing so.

Right away I was hooked and pleased by the sharp dialogue (the writers are Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs and Jen Statsky) and the fact that when Vance and Ainbinder start trading barbs (it doesn’t take long) Hacks is genuinely funny, or at least chuckle-worthy. And that was very welcome.

I was afraid, you see, that Hacks might play like Late Night, the 2019 Amazon comedy that used the same basic set-up — a crusty, boomer-aged talk-show host named Katherine Newbury (Emma Thompson) whose ratings have been sinking, and thereby pressured into hiring a young comedy writer named Molly Patel (Mindy Kaling), but mainly because she’s a woman of color.

Hacks is at least occasionally funny; Late Night, which bombed with the public after being embraced by the Sundance cool kidz, didn’t make me crack a smile. And for a good reason: Kaling’s Molly didn’t talk, think or behave like a comedy writer.

All good writers wield swords. They think in terms of cutting, mostly unkind observations about whatever. We all understand that jokes which “land” and actually make people laugh are always zingy and sometimes flirt with cruelty. A certain pointed irreverence is essential.

Molly’s bottom line was that she seemed to value being respected and treated courteously by Katherine and her comedy-writer colleagues above everything else, and that she’d rather swallow her tongue than wound the feelings of her fellow writers (all white guys) or anyone else for that matter. She was basically a p.c. Miss Manners type — more woke than joke.

Ainbinder is no stranger to wokester sensibilities (it comes with being in your mid 20s) but she’s not afraid to slice and dice when angered or otherwise aroused, and right away I was saying “okay, she’s a writer…she gets barbed humor…wounded and recognizable…the shoe fits.”

That’s all I’m saying for now — Hacks works because it’s funny, and because there’s no trouble believing that the two main characters are actual people. Everyone gets wounded or punctured or side-swiped in this series. Life is pain.

The opening of Quentin Tarantino‘s Jackie Brown is a tracking shot of the titular character (Pam Grier) on a moving treadmill inside LAX. Right away you’re noticing how stiff she is — no noticable reaction to her surroundings. Grier’s almost entirely frozen features (she blinks three or four times but otherwise doesn’t move a muscle) suggest the soul of a mannequin.

Right away everyone noticed a close resemblance to the famous opening-credit tracking shot from Mike Nichols‘ The Graduate — a view of Dustin Hoffman‘s Benjamin Braddock on a similar LAX treadmill. Every so often the immobile Hoffman reacts to this or that — the overhead lighting, a person walking nearby, a p.a. announcement — but mostly he just stands there like a robot. The idea was to suggest that Braddock was anxious and intimidated and fearful — afraid to move one way or the other.

In short, there was a point to be derived from Hoffman’s treadmill behavior. But what was the point of Grier doing it? I could never figure that out.

Jackie Brown is not a submerged or intimidated type — she’s a reasonably crafty, mentally alert, alive-on-the-planet-earth flight attendant (Cabo Airlines) who’s just arrived from some destination (presumably Cabo San Lucas). A follow-up shot shows her running to a gate in what appears to be the same terminal, where she’s expected to check people in for a flight. She makes it in time and performs her duties.

The first time I saw Jackie Brown I was immediately muttering “what the hell is this? Why is Grier doing a Dustin Hoffman? What’s the connection?” I still don’t know.

M*A*S*H (’70) is easily the coolest, funniest and most financially successful Robert Altman film ever made, not to mention the inspiration for a hugely successful TV series that ran for 11 years. I therefore found it surprising, at first, that out of 20 Altman films The Guardian‘s Ryan Gilbey had ranked M*A*S*H in 19th place. My actual reactions were “how…why…what the fuck?”

Then it hit me: Gilbey is on the youngish side, presumably born in the early to mid ’80s, and probably receptive to this or that wokester concern. (Three years ago Gilbey wrote that “it is difficult to see how the unquestioning reverence of directors can continue in this new climate of hyperawareness, where the constant drip-feed of discrediting stories proves once and for all that time’s up” — i.e., fuck Polanski, Allen and Bertolucci.) This led to a suspicion that Gilbey had probably downgraded M*A*S*H because of the cruel and abrasive way that Sally Kellerman’s uptight “Hot Lips Houlihan” is treated by M*A*S*H‘s Elliott Gould, Donald Sutherland, Tom Skerrit and the rest of the gang.

In short, this celebrated 1970 film has apparently fallen afoul of the #MeToo brigade and its allies.

I’m presuming that the outdoor shower humiliation sequence is regarded as particularly egregious. But the basic idea behind giving “Hot Lips” a hard time (along with her uptight boyfriend, Major Frank Burns, played by Robert Duvall) is that she’s an officious prig and “a regular Amy clown,” as Sutherland calls her in one scene.

“Hot Lips” (her actual name is Margaret) isn’t humiliated because she’s a woman or because Gould, Sutherland and the rest enjoy humiliating their betters or anything in that vein — she’s punished for being a rigid bureaucratic asshole — an officer more concerned with protocol and appearances than with behaving like a human being and somehow weathering the horrors of war, bloodshed and daily death. She walks around with a high regard for military tradition, and with a broomstick up her butt.

Roger Ebert, 51 years ago: “If the surgeons didn’t have to face the daily list of maimed and mutilated bodies, none of the rest of their lives would make any sense. When they are matter-of-factly cruel to ‘Hot Lips’ Hoolihan, we cannot quite separate that from the matter-of-fact way they’ve got to put wounded bodies back together again. ‘Hot Lips,’ who is all Army professionalism and objectivity, is less human because the suffering doesn’t reach her.”

In her 1.24.70 New Yorker review, Pauline Kael described “Hot Lips” as “a pompous fool.”

Kael also called M*A*S*H “the best American war comedy since sound came in, and the sanest American movie of recent years.” Pretty much everyone was in agreement back then.

M*A*S*H was set in 1951 Korea but was obviously played by actors rooted in the late ’60s. Gould and Sutherland’s hairstyles alone would never be tolerated in any 20th Century American military culture, and one of the first overheard lines (spoken by a M*A*S*H nurse) is that something-or-other is “a real drag.”

The mood of M*A*S*H was a revelation and a soother, and 1970 audiences fell head-over-heels. These irreverent surgeons were “hip Galahads,” as Kael put it, and “always on the side of decency and sanity.” Did they behave in a somewhat sexist manner, according to the standards of 2021? Yeah, but they weren’t jerks or dumb hounds — what mattered to them was getting through the Korean War their own way, and sometimes that included having it off with a willing nurse or downing of one or two martinis with fresh olives. Being smart fellows, they were simply accustomed to outsmarting the fools.

Ryan Gilbey is obviously not obliged to agree with Ebert, Kael and the multitudes who went wild over M*A*S*H back in the day, and he’s perfectly entitled to dismiss it because of behavior that doesn’t seem to pass muster by #MeToo standards. But posting this opinion makes him seem a little stiff-necked.

Most of Pauline Kael’s review:

“M*A*S*H is a marvellously unstable comedy — a tough, funny, and sophisticated burlesque of military attitudes that is at the same time a tale of chivalry. It’s a sick joke, but it’s also generous and romantic – an erratic episodic film, full of the pleasures of the unexpected. I think it’s the closest an American movie has come to the kind of constantly surprising mixture in Shoot the Piano Player, though M*A*S*H moves so fast that it’s over before you have time to think of comparisons. While it’s going on, you’re busy listening to some of the best overlapping comic dialogue ever recorded. The picture has so much spirit that you keep laughing – and without discomfort, because all the targets” — including “Hoi Lips” — “should be laughed at.

Friendo chimes in….

Please note Joe Pesci‘s exaggerated expression of alarm at :20 mark. It would’ve been extra-great if Pesci had flashed the same expression when Sharon Stone went down on him in Casino.