Earlier today I spent a few hours reading this and that portion of Quentin Tarantino‘s “Once Upon A Time in Hollywood” paperback. I have to say that I relished almost all of it.

QT’s prose isn’t quite on the level of the great Elmore Leonard, but it reads straight and clean and without a hint of hesitance or snazziness for its own sake. Page by page it doesn’t fuck around, and delivers all kinds of ripe flavor and embroidery in terms of the various characters and their backstories, and overall you just fly through the chapters.

The book, which I bought last night at the New Beverly for $11 and change, is somewhat “better” than the film, to be honest, and the more I read the more I wished that OUATIH had become a ten-part Netflix series, using each and every line in this 400-page novel. Just go for it…just sprawl it all the fuck out.

I was especially taken with a two-page scene between a red-kimono-wearing, half-bombed Rick Dalton and the real Steve McQueen, the latter sitting behind the wheel of his car outside the gate to the Polanski-Tate home and kind of half-dismissing Dalton but at the same time half-listening to him. Then they reminisce how they once played three pool games (okay, two and a half) at Barney’s Beanery back in ’62.

Not in the movie, of course…

I also love a chapter called “The Twinkie Truck” (pgs. 156 to 175). It’s mostly about the adventures, ambitions and psychology of one Charles Manson, who really wanted to be a rich and famous rock star and knew deep down that all of his spiritual guru sermons and posturings were more or less a bullshit side activity.

This is real-deal history according to QT and common knowledge, and it’s fascinating to consider some of the particulars about Manson’s interactions with Dennis Wilson, Terry Melcher, Candice Bergen and Mark Lindsay, and how one night Manson even jammed with Neil Young.

There’s another chapter called “Misadventure”, and it basically focuses on Cliff Booth‘s half-accidental murder of his needling, boozy wife, Billie, with a “shark” gun (whatever the hell that is) and the ins and outs of that episode. Again, you’re asking yourself “why wasn’t some of this material used in the film, and if it couldn’t fit why didn’t Tarantino shoot it anyway and create a 10-hour version down the road?”

Excerpt: “No one really knew for sure if Cliff shot her on purpose. It could have been just a tragic mishandling of diving equipment, which is what Cliff always claimed. But anyone who had ever seen a drunken Billie Booth berate Cliff in public in front of his colleagues didn’t buy that.

“How did Cliff get away with it? Easy — his story was plausible and it couldn’t be disproven. Cliff felt real bad about what he did to Billie. But it never occured to him not to try and get away with murder.”

Excerpt #2, pg. 167, focusing on Sharon Tate: “She liked the bubble-gum hits she heard on KHJ. She liked that song ‘Yummy Yummy Yummy’ and the follow-up song by the same group, ‘Chewy Chewy.’ She liked Bobby Sherman and that ‘Julie’ song. She loved that ‘Snoopy vs. The Red Baron’ song.

“Someone asked me once where I thought my resilience came from. I hesitated, then said, ‘For women, too often, I think what we mistake as resilience is actually just endurance.’ I don’t know if my endurance has served me well. It takes a special kind of endurance to look at the train barreling down the tracks and say, ‘But what if it doesn’t hit me this time?'”

— from Kelly Sundberg‘s “Some People Flip Real Estate — I Flip Men,” posted in the N.Y. Times on 7.2.21.

Hollywood Reporter columnist Scott Feinberg has never been one to let grass grow under his feet. The 2021 Cannes Film Festival starts the day after tomorrow — Tuesday, July 6 — and Scott is already shufflin’ up and down the Croisette. That’s because he’s fast on his feet and his middle name is Hopper — hip-hop, hip-hop, hippity-hop, hippity-hop, hippity-hoppity, hippity-hoppity, etc.

If it was my show I’d still be in Paris, man…strollin’ around Montparnasse and through the Jardin du Luxembourg and maybe over to Passy (the Last Tango in Paris building!) and the non-touristy parts of Montmartre, etc. And I’d be there tomorrow (7.5) also, and then I’d catch the Paris-to-Cannes train on Tuesday (7.6) at 7:15 am.

Incidentally: Always pan slowly, and sometimes it works better if you don’t pan at all. Go with a series of static tableaus, blending one into the other.

Back covering Cannes for the 1st time in 8 years! Last time: GATSBY, FRUITVALE & NEBRASKA; Harvey, Toback & Franco; breakouts JLaw & MBJ; legends Redford & Riva. This time: COVID tests/masks; Spike; a lineup with Damon, Cotillard, Baker, Kousmanen & Farhadi; that same great view. pic.twitter.com/Wx0U8sMxam

— Scott Feinberg (@ScottFeinberg) July 4, 2021

Copies at Amoeba (I’m told, didn’t get there). Book Soup was closed; sold out at Barnes & Noble at The Grove. The NewBev was my last resort…success!

From Dwight Garner’s 6.28 N.Y. Times review:

Seven or eight days ago I mentioned that World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy was polling critics on the five best films of 2021. My top five, submitted to Ruimy later that day, were Thomas Anders Jensen’s Riders of Justice, Jasmila Zbanić‘s Quo Vadis, Aida?, Simon Stone‘s The Dig, Phillip Noyce‘s Above Suspicion, and Jon Chu and Lin-Manuel Miranda‘s In The Heights.

I waffled later that night and deleted In The Heights in favor of Michel Franco‘s New Order.

I had a testy conversation with God that night. It was actually more of a threat than a debate. “All I can say is that Ruimy’s critics had better not vote In The Heights into the top slot,” I warned. “That wouldn’t be fair or right. It would be, in fact, hugely depressing, as it would be seen as a sympathetic bro hug from critics who’d approved of Chu and Miranda’s film only to see it dramatically underperform at the box-office and also disappoint as an HBO Max streamer.”

Yesterday Ruimy published the results of his poll, based on the preferences of more than 100 critics, and Quo Vadis, Aida? emerged as the top vote-getter. “Thank God,” I blurted out, although In The Heights polled a close second.

Ruimy: “Jasmila Žbanić’s Quo Vadis, Aida? has been named the best movie of the first six months of 2021. Although it had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival last September, the film was only released Stateside on March 5th of this year. Tackling the harrowing journey of a Bosnian UN translator torn between family and work as the Serbian army takes over her town, the film earned rave reviews and even managed to garner a Best International Feature Film Oscar nomination.

“The newly installed Oscar eligibility rules made it possible for many critics to include films such as The Father (#7) and Judas and the Black Messiah (#8) into their lists. However, one future Oscar contender that is very much a 2022 movie finished as the runner-up to this poll — John Chu’s In the Heights.”

Married journo pally to HE: “We were listening to sounds in the car when up popped a tune from Tom Waits’ score for One From the Heart. I’ve always loved this bluesy/jazzy collaboration with Crystal Gayle, and have long felt that it, along with Curtis Mayfield‘s ‘Superfly,’ may be the finest song composed exclusively for a film….ever, I mean.

“Maybe your readers could have some fun with this? What’s the best song score composed exclusively for a film? Broadway shows and previously recorded works don’t count.”

HE to Married Journo Pally: Excellent topic and thanks for suggesting it, although I’m frankly mystified that you would find Waits and Gayle’s One From The Heart song and especially their performance of it…I’m dumbfounded that you find it captivating.

I’m primarily talking about Waits, a seriously respected and certainly a distinctive song stylist, but he’s always infuriated me — to me he’s always has always sounded like a slurry, drunken, degenerate bullfrog lying in the gutter. And you can never understand a word he’s singing — Waits would rather die than fall into line on that score.

Again — I’m not putting Waits down. Well, I am but at the same time I’m acknowledging that he’s revered by people who know the music realm better than I. If I was smart I’d keep my yap shut about him, but I can’t help it. He always sounds the same and does the same thing every damn time with every lyric and song — same mood, same feeling, same “whoaaagghhh!!…rejoice and soak in the hoarse and gravelly boozer sounds I’m putting out here….like Charles Bukowski I’m a man of the bottle or at least I sound like one, and I tell the truth every damn time.”

I’ve never been that much of a fan of Mayfield’s “Superfly” either — a decent early ’70s AM-radio track but calm down.

My two favorite songs written directly for the screen were created in the early ’80s, and less than three years apart.

#1 is “We Don’t Need Another Hero,” the Tina Turner song from Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (’85) — lyrics by Terry Britten and Graham Lyle.

#2 is “Up Where We Belong” from Taylor Hackford‘s An Officer and a Gentleman (’82) — composed by Jack Nitzsche and Buffy Sainte-Marie, lyrics by Will Jennings.

And no, I don’t care if the music snobs put me down for having shallow or banal taste in movie tunes. I recognize and respect the artistry of Tom Waits but I’ve never really liked anything he’s ever performed. Sue me but “Up Where We Belong” and “We Don’t Need Another Hero” are pleasing, arresting — they have a catchy, hook-y quality, and are well produced, and they seem to enhance the value of the films from whence they sprang.

Neither Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome or An Officer and a Gentleman are grade-A films, but…I suppose what I’m actually saying is that the songs are better than the films. They reach in and turn the tumbler.

Say it loud, repeat often: Fuck the snobs.

Oh, and speaking of banal: Bill Conti‘s main-title melody for Broadcast News [after the jump] is about as drippy and whore-ish and old-farty as it gets, but it’s well-produced and it works. I’m sorry but it does.

Does anyone remember Dave Karnes? Or more precisely Michael Shannon‘s portrayal of Karnes in Oliver Stone‘s World Trade Center (’06)?

Karnes was the ex-Marine who ducked out of his office job in Wilton, Connecticut, and drove into Manhattan on the afternoon of 9/11/01 and made it through police barriers and onto the WTC site by dinner hour, and who later found Port Authority cops John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) and Will Jimeno (Michael Pena) buried under the mashed-up rubble, and brought the rescue teams to their aid.

World Trade Center was an odd Stone film because it had nothing to “say” except (1) “McLoughlin and Jimeo sure went through hell that day”, but (2) “thank God for Karnes and his dogged persistence.” No politics, no Hollywood leftie attitude — just a straight drama about a lot of good people pulling together to save a couple of guys from the jaws of death. A movie about caring, family, duty, perseverance.

If Karnes hadn’t put on his Marine uniform and gotten himself a Marine haircut at a Stamford barbershop and driven down to Manhattan and all, it’s quite possible McLoughlin and Jimeno might not have survived. (Who knows?) Shannon portrays him as a bit of a nut, but a good kind of nut in a situation like 9/11 — a guy who laser-beams right into what needs to be done, and then does it.

Curiously, Stone decided to omit a character detail that I’ve always found really interesting. Karnes drove into Manhattan in a recently purchased Porsche 911 convertible, and at times, according to a 9.02 Slate story by Rebeca Liss, at speeds of 120 mph.

That’s a fascinating trait for a 9/11 savior — tear-assing down the Connecticut Turnpike and the Henry Hudson Parkway in a muscle car with the top down, and stopping at a McDonald’s along the way.

Why didn’t Stone show this? My theory is that he wanted Karnes to appear selfless and monk-like — a slightly loony military saint. And I think he knew this impression wouldn’t fly with audiences if he had Karnes driving a Porsche 911 because a lot of people think that guys who drive Porsches are dickheads.

But I had read about Karnes and his Porsche two or three years ago and was waiting for that shot. I felt that Stone sold Karnes short by trying to simplify him into a ex-Marine who resembled the real-deal Karnes in some ways but not entirely.

HE Plus, 6.29.19: There’s a great Charles Bukowski line from one of his short story volumes, a line about how good it feels and how beautiful the world seems when you get out of jail. I can confirm that. Not only does the world look and feel like the friendliest and gentlest place you could possibly experience, but it smells wonderful — food stands, car exhaust, sea air, asphalt, window cleaner, green lawns, garbage dumpsters. Compared to the well-scrubbed but nonetheless stinky aroma of the L.A. County Jail, I mean.

I did three or four days in L.A. County in the ’70s for unpaid parking tickets. Remember that Cary Grant line in North by Northwest about the cops chasing him for “seven parking tickets”? Well, I went to jail for not paying the fines on 27 of the damn things. That’s right — 27. I had a half-arrogant, half-cavalier attitude back then, to put it mildly. I didn’t agree with the idea of forking over hundreds in parking fines. The money they wanted was excessive, I felt, especially after the penalties increased after I didn’t pay in the first place.

One night after 9 pm I was driving west on Wilshire Boulevard, not too far from Bundy. I was pulled over for running a red light. They ran my plates and I was promptly cuffed and taken down to the West Los Angeles police station on Butler Avenue. The desk cops discovered my multiple offenses after doing a search, of course. They printed out copies of each arrest warrant for each “failure to pay fine.” I remember some laughter as the printer kept printing and printing and printing.

I was taken down to L.A. County later that night. It was just like what Dustin Hoffman went through in Straight Time. A shower, orange fatigues, bedding. I was put into a cell with three other guys. Being in close proximity to bald naked winos who smelled horrible…memories!

Over the next three or four days I was driven around to the various municipalities where I’d failed to put quarters into the meter — Santa Monica, Van Nuys, Malibu, Central Los Angeles. In each courtroom I was brought before a judge, listened to my offenses, pled “guilty, your honor” and was given a sentence of “time served.” I was released at the end of the fourth day.

It was an awful thing to go through, but I managed to eliminate a total debt of at least $2K (it might have closer to $2500) so when I got out I didn’t owe a thing to anyone. So in a sense I earned or was “paid” at least $500 a day.

I know enough about mingling with other lawbreakers to recognize the truth of a line that Hoffman’s Max Denbo said in Straight Time: “Outside it’s what you have in your pockets — inside it’s who you are.”

I remember spending several hours in a common-area holding cell with nine or ten guys. One flamboyantly gay guy was jabbering with everyone and discussing his life and values and colorful adventures. He talked a lot about how much he loved hitting his favorite bars in “Glitterwood” (i.e., West Hollywood). At one point he came over to me and flirted a bit…sorry.

There’s nothing like getting out of jail to make you feel like Jesus’ son. It reminds you what a wonderful and blessed place the world outside is, and what a sublime thing it can be to walk around free and do whatever you want within the usual boundaries, and how serene it can be to be smiled at by strangers in stores and restaurants. People you wouldn’t give a second thought to suddenly seem like good samaritans because of some act of casual kindness.

Jail doesn’t just teach you about yourself but about your immediate circle. “If you want to know who your friends are,” Bukowski once wrote, “get yourself a jail sentence.” Or do some time in a hospital bed.