Okay, Jill Biden didn’t say the word “assholes” when she addressed the Nashville booers, but that’s what she meant — trust me. The bumblefuck factor has resulted in Tennesseeans lagging behind the national vaccination average — only three or four in ten have been vaxxed. Jerks.

Having been tasked by President Biden to engage with the southern-border immigration crisis, Kamala Harris has been repeatedly criticized by rightie belligerents (including the Flatulent Florida Fatass himself) for not visiting the southern border and doing the requisite photo-op and press conference, blah blah.

Harris resisted at first, but now she’s finally caved — Politico is reporting that she’ll be visiting El Paso on Friday.

Do you want to hear a game-changing maneuver that will shut those cheap fucking righties up for good? Harris and a couple of tough security guards need to secretly do a Brubaker — she and the two bodyguards need to change into some tattered Target clothing and slip quietly into Mexico (Laredo, say) and then make their way by bus or foot toward the U.S. border and try to cross illegally, mixing with actual illegals and coyotes and really experiencing the reality of the situation. First-hand experience.

“Do a Brubaker” alludes to incoming prison warden Robert Redford anonymously pretending to be a prisoner and absorbing the situation as he never could through the usual official channels. I could have said “do a Sullivan’s Travels” but most of the readership wouldn’t recognize the title.

Kirk Douglas‘s last brawny action film was Jeff Kanew‘s Eddie Macon’s Run (’82), which he made in his mid 60s. He continued to play strong characters in challenging situations into the early aughts (The Man From Snowy River, Tough Guys, Final Countdown, Greedy), but the rugged action stuff seemed ill advised after Eddie Macon — why push it?

Harrison Ford (born on 7.13.42) was different — Douglas was Douglas but Ford had his own path to follow, and so he continued to make action films into his ’70s. Alas, he fractured his ankle (or was it his leg?) during shooting of Star Wars: The Force Awakens in 2014, when he was 71. (More bad luck than age-related.) And then those piloting mishaps occured — the Venice golf-course crash on 3.5.15 (the plane’s fault, not Ford’s), and two strategic landing errors — one at John Wayne Airport on 2.3.17, and a second at Hawthorne airport on 4.24.20.

And now he’s suffered a shoulder injury on the set of Indiana Jones 5, and is taking a break from filming while the wound is treated.

We all admire Ford’s spirit and gumption, but he’ll be 79 next month — it’s not exactly a surprise that he’s succumbed to injuries and errors of judgment, is it? Same difference when Robert DeNiro, a year younger than Ford, damaged one his quad muscles last month while working on Martin Scorsese‘s Killers of the Flower Moon.

Part of the syndrome is psychological, I’m guessing. When presented with a physical challenge of some kind, older guys will say to themselves “I might be in my 70s but I feel like I’m 47…fuck it, I can do this, no sweat.” And then they do the thing and the body — surprise! — doesn’t perform as expected.

A bit less than a month ago (5.26.21) a Sharon Stone interview by Zoomer‘s Joanna Schneller (“Sharon Stone On Healing Through Her New Memoir, Hollywood and the Idolization of Meryl Streep“) popped up. I’m sorry but it escaped my attention.

The money portion was about Stone complaining that Streep has been placed on too high of an industry pedestal, even if she’s better at certain kind of roles than Stone might be because, all things being fair and equal, Stone owns other kinds of roles and she might be under-valued all around, and yet Streep is shown too much deference, etc.

“‘If we worked in a supermarket, Meryl can’t always be the No. 1 checkout girl,” Stone says. “We’re all doing our jobs. Everybody gets to get better, and everybody gets to sometimes have that not great a day. Even Meryl.”

Translation: Many of us are “older”, yes, but our Wikipedia pages say I’m nine years younger than Streep, and I want a shot at some of the same roles she’s always routinely offered. C’mon…loosen up, adjust your thinking!

Yesterday Jordan Ruimy texted me: “Have you written about Sharon Stone’s comments on Meryl Streep? I only read about it today.”

HE to Ruimy: “11 and 1/2 years ago Stone told The Independent‘s Anita Singh that Streep looked ‘like an unmade bed.'”

Ruimy to HE: “Here it is — a Zoomer interview. The good stuff starts around paragraph 20.”

HE to Ruimy: “The article is dated 5.26.21…TOO OLD.”

Ruimy: “No one’s really covered it. Stone isn’t wrong.”

HE to Ruimy: “Casting jealousy and resentment. Generic industry stuff, last month’s news.”

This morning Ruimy texted the following: “Sheer coincidence, but IndieWire‘s Jack Sharf covered the Stone interview today — almost a month after publication.”

HE to Ruimy: “Jesus.”

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.