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Nancy Reagan was the toughest, closest and most trusted adviser of her husband, Ronald Reagan, during his California governorship and U.S. Presidency. I never had any strong opinions about her one way or the other. I didn’t dislike her as much as I didn’t care. Except, of course, when she launched her infamous “Just Say No” anti-drug campaign in 1986, which nearly everyone regarded as an embarassment.

But my heart went out to her one day in the summer of 2013. It happened inside Alex Roldan hair salon, which is on the first floor of the London hotel in West Hollywood. She was driven from her Bel Air home to the salon every two or three weeks, my hair guy told me, but at age 92 she was obviously frail and her legs were apparently gone. I recognized the syndrome as my mother, who passed in 2015, was going through similar woes at the time.

Two people — a personal assistant and a hair salon employee — were trying to help Mrs. Reagan move from a shampoo chair into her wheelchair, and it was taking forever. I was about ten feet away and was on the verge of offering to help. It wasn’t my place, of course, so I just stood there and watched. The poor woman. Old age offers very little dignity, and no mercy at all.

Not only did the “owner of the car forgot to set the parking brake,” he/she also forgot to put the car in park or at least leave it in gear.

Whoa! Watertown Police say an unoccupied car rolled down a hill around 11 a.m. and jumped the curb landing on Main St by Echo Lake Rd. No injuries. There were no cars passing by either. The owner of the car forgot to set the parking brake & was issued an infraction. pic.twitter.com/i3McjGxd7I

— Carmen Chau (@CChauFOX61) December 12, 2021

I woke up this morning to the Golden Globe and Critics Choice Award nominations, and quickly succumbed to the same mixture of lethargy and depression that everyone else is feeling.

Not so much about the Globes — will anyone care which films they’ll celebrate? will their picks influence anyone or anything in any way? — but the CCAs.

I was primarily upset when a friend predicted this morning that the box-office collapse of West Side Story had dented its award cred (“Nobody likes to vote for a loser”) and that the odds seem to favor a Best Picture win for Kenneth Branagh‘s Belfast. With the CCAs, I mean.

When I heard this I went “wait…what?”

West Side Story is still the same emotionally affecting, inventively shot and cut, extremely well-made film it was before last weekend’s box-office calamity. It really is the superior contender out there, certainly by my sights.

The Globes won’t have their traditional NBC telecast because of the angry industry boycott over a previous lack of black members, but their show, set for 1.22.22, will be streamed.

GG Best Motion Picture, Drama: Belfast, CODA, Dune, King Richard, The Power of the Dog. HE personal pick among these five: King Richard. Likely winner: I can’t say it…don’t ask.

GG Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy: Cyrano, Don’t Look Up, Licorice Pizza, Tick, Tick … Boom!, West Side Story. HE personal pick among these five: West Side Story. Likely winner: Don’t ask.

I am swallowed in lethargy…drowning in the stuff. I used to feel such excitement for this and that awards contender. I used to be a big rooting fan of awards season favorites. I would cheer and whoo-whoo! when my “team” won. I was in heaven when Green Book won Best Picture and all the would-be wokester assassins seethed and muttered “curses!” Their rage was my joy.

Now there’s…I was going to say “nothing” but what I mean is that there’s not very much. I’m not feeling anything right now. The West Side Story collapse knocked the wind out of me.

CCA Best Picture nominees: Belfast, CODA, Don’t Look Up, Dune, King Richard, Licorice Pizza, Nightmare Alley, The Power of the Dog, tick, tick…Boom!, West Side Story. HE personal pick: West Side Story. Likely winner: I can’t say it. (The show will air on Sunday, Janary 9th.)

I’ll get into the actor nominations and likely winners later. I’m too depressed to sift through it all now.

Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone:
“It’s so many things at once. It’s COVID, primarily. It’s the comfort and isolation and security people have found in their homes this past year, with no desire to leave. It’s inflation — that is going to impact how people spend their money on stuff like movies since it impacts their gas prices and their grocery bill. Finding that extra cash to go out and sit in a movie theater probably isn’t a major priority at the moment. Richard Rushfield has been tracking the demise for a while now, with stories like “Will Movies Survive?” And “The Disappearance of Hollywood as We Know It” and “The Twin Plagues of Moviedom’s Assisted Suicide.”

HE Honestly? I don’t care how on-the-money Rushfield is with his doom-and-gloom assessments about how theatrical is basically finished, or certainly for people like me. I’m getting really fucking sick of hearing how horrible everything is, and how doomed we all are, and how the animals are doing their share and then some to bring this about.

Back to Sasha: “We can be aware of what’s happening. We can watch what’s happening. But probably only something like the news of West Side Story’s dismal box-office could provide that moment of ‘oh wow, everything really has changed.’

“It breaks my heart. There is so much content being produced every day that is occupying the attention spans of people that might have previously gone to the movies. At least we know teenagers are still going to go to the movies — for something to do on a Saturday night, for a place to go where their helicopter parents won’t follow, a place to go to make out. Parents will also still take their kids to the movies. The movies that will continue to thrive will be animation, fantasy, horror and genre movies.” HE comment: “That’s so sickening! We are truly witnessing the downfall of the “good movies are usually supported by smart audiences” holiday aesthetic. We are spiralling into decline. The end of a way of life.

Sasha: “I was hoping West Side Story would be our deus ex machina. Looks like we’re going to need a bigger boat.”

I travelled for over 11 or 12 hours yesterday, leaving Jett’s home at 1:45 pm New Jersey time and not arriving back home in WeHo until after 10 pm Los Angeles time (1 am by Jett’s clock). I had a great seat with ample leg room, right next to the main exit door. But I also paid a certain price for being more visible to the stewardesses.

For the first time since the pandemic hit 21 months ago and after five or six LA-NY round-trip flights, I was constantly pestered about my mask behavior. Pestered, in fact, four or five times by a fickle, pain-in-the-ass stewardess for not keeping my mask above my nostrils.

We all know the rules, but I like to go mask–casual after sitting down in a plane, a restaurant, a bar or some other commercial enclosed space. We take our masks off once we’re seated in a restaurant, but in planes we keep them on. I for one like to let my mask droop a bit below the tip of the nose in order to avoid all that warm steam fogging up my glasses. 1/3 of an inch below my nostrils…big deal.

For this I was hassled relentlessly by a certain stewardess. This has never, ever happened to me before. Nearly two years of this shit and I’ve never had a single dispute with any steward or waiter or security guard or anyone else about mask-wearing. I might have dropped the mask three or four times while sipping a drink and munching pretzels and whatnot. I didn’t argue or get snippy or argumentative, but it was awful. I am not a rule-breaker in this regard. I have always followed correct Covid protocols. Life is too short not to.

As a general rule of the future I think I’ll be avoiding United if at all possible. A very unpleasant flight in this regard.

Is Hideo Nishijima‘s Drive My Car now currently positioned as the likely favorite to win the Best Int’l Feature Oscar? Probably. Okay, maybe not. Snooty critics carry only so much cred. I’m an Asghar Farhadi man myself.

Jett dropped me at the NJ Transit station in Orange at 1:45 pm. Short trip to Penn Station, A train to JFK Howard Beach station, Air Train to Terminal 7, etc. I passed through the final United security gate at 4:45 pm. Three effing hours.

I ordered a heated mozzarella and tomato sandwich at some cut-rate deli stand in the food court. The lady wanted $14.85. I apologized and said “no thanks…you’re charging at least $5 too much.” She gave me a dirty look. “Sorry but $10 would be pushing it.”

[Posted on 6.27.06 — 15 and 1/2 years ago] “‘Is it possible to be a great star without appearing in very many great movies?,’ asks N.Y. Times DVD guy David Kehr in a brief riff on Clark Gable, before getting into the subject of Warner Home Video’s new Gable box set.

“Gable, says Kehr, ‘is one of the few major box office stars of the 1930s who might produce a glimmer of recognition from a contemporary audience, but after Gone With the Wind and perhaps It Happened One Night, most people would be stuck naming many more of his films.’

“Simple answer: Gable generally made decent but run-of-the-mill programmers, most of which are unwatched today.

“I have a better example of this never-so-few syndrome — Steve McQueen. He made 23 or 24 films between 1960 and 1980, and his mythical reputation arose out of only five films, one of which — 1962’s Hell Is for Heroes — the public is barely aware of.

“Vin in The Magnificent Seven , “Cooler King” Hilts The Great Escape, Jake Holman in The Sand Pebbles and Frank, the taciturn San Francisco detective who drove a mean Mustang fastback and occasionally smiled at Jacqueline Bisset in Bullitt…and that’s all. Everything else he did was marginal, not bad, pretty good, so-so.

“There are several others whose esteem rests upon two or three or four films. Look at Willem Dafoe — Platoon, The Last Temptation of Christ and ‘Clark’ in Clear and Present Danger…that’s it. Tom Berenger and Charlie Sheen have only Platoon. Most actors, I would venture to say, are lucky to star in only one incandescent classic film….just the way of the draw. Life is short, chances are few, count your blessings.”

Who over the last 15 years qualifies for a Gable- or McQueen-like reputation?

Remember Lin Manuel Miranda‘s In The Heights, the pizazzy, well-reviewed, media-adored, ethnically-celebrated New York City musical that became one of the biggest crash-and-burn calamities of recent times?

Initial first-weekend projections had it earning as much as $25 million; that figure dropped to the low teens after the first day of release yielded a lousy $5 million. The final opening weekend tally was $11.5 million. Shrieks of shock and disbelief echoed ’round the twitterverse…”what the eff happened?” In The Heights needed $200 million worldwide to break even, but ended up with $43.9 million…wipe-out.

It was generally surmised that Steven Spielberg‘s West Side Story would do better — ecstatic reviews, greater brand recognition, great songs, adored by older demos, respected by upmarket X-factor Millennials. Especially given that it opened without a competing day-and-date streaming option (which In The Heights had). Plus Jett and Cait wanted to see it this weekend at their local West Orange plex and every after-dinner weekend show was sold out — they had to settle for Monday evening.

As recently as yesterday morning it was projected by CNN Business’s Frank Pallotta to earn “roughly” $15 million. But WSS only managed a paltry $4.1 million on Friday (including Thursday previews) and will probably end up with a fizzly $10.5 million by tonight — over a million less than In The Heights.

This basically translates into a big nope.

Deadline‘s Anthony D’Allessandro: “[While] the end game for West Side Story is a marathon [and] not a sprint, the mainstream box-office media [can now] feasibly write that a Spielberg film with a $100 million-plus production cost” — rumored to be as high as $130 million, and that’s without prints and ads — “is a bomb.”

Thanks, Millennials who fucking ignored this exceptionally well made and emotionally affecting film and yet intend to storm theatres next weekend for Spider-Man: No Way Home…thanks, Zoomers…and thanks older people (especially older women) who were too busy or too Covid-concerned to show up. You joined your various lethargies and worked together to help kill the theatrical aura (but hopefully not the long-term potential) of one of the finest and most alive-on the-planet-earth films of the year.

Yes, West Side Story is looking at a long game, but how do you work your way out of under-performing compared to In The Heights? Especially considering that West Side Story cost twice as much as Miranda’s film, and probably shouldered heftier p&a costs.

Jett (33 year old Millennial): “There was nothing about West Side Story that was new or immediate or star-driven or which felt like any kind of direct feed or boost from today’s culture. It’s not a streaming-age movie, and the here-and-now element is minimal. It’s basically a nostalgia show for older audiences, and not enough older viewers came out for it.”

67% of In The Heights audience was over 25; 63% female and 40% Latino. 52% of West Side Story ticket buyers were over 35 and 57% female.

No way around it — this was a shit-level opening for West Side Story. And if it finds no traction next weekend, what left will there be to say?

Nick “Action Man” Clement: “I find it interesting that anyone would have thought that this movie would have actually been a box-office hit. Nobody cares. This would have been the case pre-COVID, but mid-COVID? The movie was doomed from the start.

“I haven’t seen it yet — doubtful I’ll have the chance to see it on the big screen — but this spells the end of the studio-fortified adult drama-slash-big musical. If an ecstatically reviewed Beardo film can’t put butts in seats, what can?

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If I was looking to threaten Tom Cruise with a typed-out note, I wouldn’t have typed it the way it appears in Eyes Wide Shut. My note would have said “stop poking into matters which are not your concern. Don’t mistake gentility and polite phrasings as an indication of temperance or a lack of resolve on our part. Back off immediately or your life will become a raging sea. From this point we will communicate with actions, not words. Trust us, you don’t want to be the recipient of anything further.”

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