HE to Cameron Crowe, author of “Conversations with Wilder“, a 1999 career retrospective book in which he and Billy Wilder discussed damn near everything:

If anyone was an auteur-level director from the ’40s to early ’50s, it was the great Billy Wilder. And yet he ducked out of the realm of personal filmmaking for a 4 and 1/2 year period in the mid ’50s. Call it his house-director phase in which he made five engaging, pro-level studio entertainments that nonetheless didn’t exactly have that distinctive Wilder stamp.

The films were Sabrina (’54), The Seven Year Itch (’55), The Spirit of St. Louis (’57), Love in the Afternoon (’57) and Witness for the Prosecution (’57).

During those 4 1/2 years, beginning with the release of Stalag 17 and ending when he began work on Some Like It Hot in early ‘58, Wilder apparently decided it would be better to stop being “Billy Wilder” for a while.

Was it because the studio chiefs (and perhaps even Wilder himself) had recoiled from the battery-acid tone and financial failure of Ace in the Hole? Was it the basic schmaltzy mood of the mid ‘50s, the era of Eisenhower-era conformity, the underlying mindset of Invasion of the Body Snatchers?

Was it some kind of twitch in his chest, something in the air that told him that it would be temporarily smarter to put away the acrid pen and sharp satirical impulses and just submit to the flow of the times? Did Wilder decide to just enjoy the money and be a successful director because there was nothing wrong with that?

Jarring social changes happened during these 4 and 1/2 years. Brando-ish rebellion (“Whadaya got?), Elvis, Little Richard & Jerry Lee, “Howl” and Neal Cassidy and Jack Kerouac, spiritual fatigue and ennui in your middle-class suburbs (No Down Payment), blacklisting & Commie witch hunts, H-bomb testing in the Pacific, monster and sci-fi movies, black leather juvies, Fats Domino, be-bop babies, The Blob.

Did Wilder feel thrown by all this? Was he amused by it? Excited? Energized? Confused?

Surely you raised these topics during your hours and hours of conversation with Wilder in the mid to late ‘90s. Did he ever give you a money quote or some kind of concise answer about any of this?

Mr. Crowe to HE: “I think there’s truth in the theory that the lack of success of Ace in the Hole gave him pause. He was very proud of that movie, he said, particularly with that wickedly dark tone that could hold a line like his wife Audrey pitched — ‘kneeling bags my nylons.’ While I was interviewing him, he heard that Spike Lee wanted to remake Ace. He was very pleased about that. He was a fan of Spike Lee and the sharpness of his voice. When I wrote other directors to ask if any of them had questions for Wilder, Spike wrote back in twenty minutes about Ace. This made Billy VERY happy.

“But in the ‘house director’ phase you are pinpointing, there are certainly movies that he was very proud of. He loved Sabrina, particularly the Holden performance. He really disliked Bogart, but was still proud of the movie and the filmmaking. Love in the Afternoon was his Lubitsch tribute, and he was proud of that, even with the age difference that kept Cooper in the shadows for many of the set-ups. And Witness had his favorite actor of all-time, Charles Laughton.

Set in Paris, Billy Wilder’s Love in the Afternoon (’57) is about an unlikely romance between a 20something cello student named Ariane Chavasse (Audrey Hepburn) and a 50something Lothario named Frank Flannagan (Gary Cooper). I’ve never seen it and am still reluctant. There’s a reason.

All my life I’ve felt that the 28 year age gap between the 55 year-old Cooper (born in ’01, film shot in ’56) and the 27 year-old Hepburn (born in ’29) was too much. In fact if you wanted to crank yourself up you could call Love in the Afternoon a late-arriving #MeToo lightning rod film….cancel Billy Wilder! He wrote and directed a “romantic” scenario in which Cooper preyed upon a naive and unsuspecting Hepburn!

I would have watched it if Cary Grant (whom Wilder tried to get) had played the Cooper role — he was 52 when the film was made in ’56, but looked mid to late 40ish. So we’d have been talking about an apparent 20-year age gap instead. That would’ve gone down pretty well.

If Cooper had better genes and looked younger (i.e., like he did in The Fountainhead, shot in ’48 when he was 47) he would’ve been a better fit for Love in the Afternoon. But Coop looked around 60 or 62 in Wilder’s film. If you squinted your eyes Love in the Afternoon felt like a thing about a guy wanting to diddle a woman who was young enough to be his granddaughter.

Wiki admission: “The film was a commercial failure in the United States. It did not resonate with American audiences in part because Cooper looked too old to be having an affair with Hepburn’s young character. Wilder himself admitted, ‘It was a flop. Why? Because I got Coop the week he suddenly got old’. However, in Europe, the film was a major success, released under the title Ariane.”

Recorded at the wedding of songwriter Peter Rafelson (son of director Bob Rafelson, a longtime Nicholson friend and collaborator), sometime in the early to mid ’80s.

Jack is speaking about an ancient toothpaste called Ipana, manufactured by Bristol-Myers Company. Infamous for its yellow color, the wintergreen-flavored toothpaste (0.243% sodium fluoride was its active ingredient) reached its peak market penetration during the 1950s. Marketing of Ipana used a Disney-created mascot named Bucky Beaver.

HE is about to watch Coming 2 America. Sorry for being the slow guy. I was going to watch it last night, and then…you don’t want to know. It’s streaming worldwide. I wasn’t a fan of the original 1988 film because I felt it was too wealth-porny, and I guess I’m not feeling today’s current because the C2A trailer makes it feel like more or less the same.

I was a huge fan of early, extra-nervy Eddie Murphy. Mr. T in a gay bar, that line of country. In ’81 or thereabouts I caught him live at the old Catch A Rising Star (1st Avenue between 77th and 78th). I saw him again at the Universal Amphitheatre in ’83…blew the roof off. His Rudy Moore in 2019’s Dolemite Is My Name was obviously a huge, historic comeback. but Craig Brewer’s film was as far away from wealth porn qs it could get.

Re-watching this poorly tinted Citizen Kane at 60 fps is (I have to be honest) arresting. My eyes are “telling ” me this. I’m sorry but increasing the frame rate energizes Gregg Toland‘s 24 fps cinematography. It’s too bad that the home-use colorizing software developed by Alexander Kozhevin isn’t more sophisticated. All it does is generate a brownish-sepia overlay. I’ll always prefer to watch black-and-white films in their original form, of course, but 60 fps conversion adds without distorting. You can’t say it doesn’t.

Congrats to Promising Young Woman‘s Carey Mulligan for being chosen as the recipient of the Cinema Vanguard Award at the 36th annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival (3.21 to 4.10). It always a favoring omen when a Best Actress contender is selected for this honor by Roger “Nick the Greek” Durling, longtime honcho of the SB festival. Mulligan will receive the award on Monday, April 5, so to speak. Hollywood Elsewhere has attended and reported on the beloved SBIFF for nearly 20 years, and it totally breaks my heart that this year’s gathering (March 31-April 10) will happen “virtually”.

Last night I filled out my final Critics Choice Awards ballot. All votes have to be in by tomorrow evening at 3 pm Pacific. The 26th annual Critics Choice Awards ceremony will be held on Sunday, 3.7, and will be broadcast live on The CW television network. Here’s how I voted…

BEST PICTURE: The Trial of the Chicago 7
BEST ACTOR: Riz Ahmed, Sound of Metal
BEST ACTRESS: Carey Mulligan, Promising Young Woman
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Paul Raci, Sound of Metal
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Olivia Colman, The Father
BEST YOUNG ACTOR/ACTRESS: Helena Zengel, News of the World
BEST ACTING ENSEMBLE: The Trial of the Chicago 7
BEST DIRECTOR: Chloé Zhao, Nomadland (spread it around)
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Aaron Sorkin, The Trial of the Chicago 7
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Christopher Hampton and Florian Zeller, The Father
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: Hoyte Van Hoytema, Tenet
BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN: David Crank, Elizabeth Keenan, News of the World
BEST EDITING: Mikkel E. G. Nielsen, Sound of Metal
BEST COSTUME DESIGN: Trish Summerville, Mank
BEST HAIR AND MAKEUP: Mank (although I have to say I didn’t care for Gary Oldman‘s haircut)
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS: Tenet
BEST COMEDY: The King of Staten Island
BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM: Minari
BEST SONG: Io sì (Seen) — The Life Ahead
BEST SCORE: Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross, Mank

…it never manifested, not even a little bit. Just remember that.

Obviously a fascinating cult film and a phenomenal atmosphere thing, but the perpetual nightscape, constant acid rain, smokestacks belching fireballs into the black muck, too many people, vast disparities between street culture and high-rise corporate sanctums, flying taxis, huge video billboards, Times Square meets corporate Bangkok meets smoggy Seoul meets endless squalor….Blade Runner was basically over-imagined, over-produced and quite delusional.

Three and 1/3 years ago: Ridley Scott‘s Blade Runner milieu — nightmarish, gloom-ridden, poisoned — is obviously a trip in itself and great to wallow in, but the sprawl of real-world Los Angeles has exposed that realm as absolute noir-fetish fanboy bullshit.

“Blade Runner 2049 is, of course, a prophecy of ecological run to come, and that’s where we’re definitely heading with criminals like Scott Pruitt running the EPA,” I wrote on 10.7.17, “but BR49‘s idea of what Los Angeles will look like 32 years hence is almost surely just as ludicrous as Scott’s.

The twin Blade Runner realms have sunk their visions into our heads and will probably never be dissipated. But facts are facts. Los Angeles of 2021 doesn’t bear the faintest resemblance to Ridley Scott’s nightmare city. Because 39 years after the release of Scott’s film, today’s Los Angeles isn’t even accidentally reflected by Scott’s toxic metropolis. Air quality and Long Beach oil refineries aside, there isn’t even a coincidental depiction that rings true.

George Orwell’s 1984 wasn’t validated by reality 37 years ago, but it has been semi-validated since, at least as far as everyone having lost their privacy and paying obsessive attention to Big Brother-ish Twitter banshees doing their level best to intimidate, condemn and control.

But the Los Angeles of today isn’t even suggested by Scott’s toxic metropolis. Air quality and Long Beach oil refineries aside, there isn’t even a coincidental depiction that rings true.

Excerpt: “Where did the Blade Runner universe actually come from? From legitimate fears of industrial ruination, of course, but also from the despairing, fatalistic moods and attitudes that once resided inside Philip K. Dick, Ridley Scott, Hampton Fancher, David Peoples, Jordan Cronenweth, and, one could argue today, from the devotional geeks who regard the handed-down Blade Runner vision as absolute gospel, and have now made a film about that devotion.”

Kelly Marie Tran, whose Rose Tico character in The Last Jedi (2017) and The Rise of Skywalker (’19) struck me as engaged and agreeable, is on the cover of The Hollywood Reporter. The core conveyance of Rebecca Sun’s profile piece is basically “okay, that was tough and people can be cruel, but I’m back and all the stronger for it.”

The title is “The Resurrection of Kelly Marie Tran: On Surviving Star Wars Bullying, the Pressures of Representation, and Raya and the Last Dragon.”

The basic paraphrased message of the piece is (a) “the fanboys tried to hurt me and actually did for a while, but I bounced back and here I am”, and (b) “I’ve also dropped a noticable amount of weight in order to look good in sequined gowns while at the same time telling the Instagram bullies to go eff themselves.”

Why exactly was Tran subjected to so much racist and sexist online harassment by Star Wars neckbeards? Esquire‘s Dom Nero posted the following on 6.5.18:

“Since the earliest promos for The Force Awakens, members of this testosterone-fueled community have flooded the internet with their regressive criticisms that Star Wars seems to no longer be a white male-led franchise. In spite of virtually every movie in the new Disney iteration of the series being headlined by white actors, many fans feel that there is a ‘social justice warrior’ or ‘liberal’ conspiracy within the new Star Wars films — and it’s no surprise that this level of unrest has come about only when Kathleen Kennedy, a woman, stepped in to be the new president of Lucasfilm.

“These fans were especially, as they would say, triggered by Tran’s character in The Last Jedi, namely because she is (a) an Asian-American of Vietnamese descent, b) a woman, and (c) not the [right kind of] Hollywood female body type.”

More or less delighted by the 1.6.21 sacking of the Capitol building because of his sociopathic obstinacy and totalitarian strong man instincts, ex-President Trump didn’t want to send the the D.C. National Guard over to the Capitol. He conveyed his position to various loyalists and flunkies — particularly acting defense secretary Christopher Miller and Lt. Gen. Charles Flynn, the younger brother of rabid Trump dog and acolyte Michael Flynn.

And this, according to a 3.3.21 Washington Post article by Dana Milbank titled “Did the Pentagon wait for Trump’s approval before defending the Capitol?“, is fundamentally why it took three hours and 19 minutes for any help to show up.

I thought this was generally known, at least among those with a basic inclination to consider facts. Yesterday Maj. Gen. William J. Walker, commanding general of the D.C. National Guard, discussed how it all went down from his perspective. He received authorization to assist Capitol police at 5:08 pm.

(More…)

This color test footage for Rowland Lee‘s Son of Frankenstein (released on 1.13.39), was probably shot in the early fall of ’38. This clip has been on YouTube since 2011, but I saw it for the first time today. It’s actually the first color image I’d ever seen of Karloff in Frankenstein monster makeup, period.

The makeup genius was Jack Pierce (1889 — 1968). Yes, that’s Pierce getting strangled starting at the 45-second mark.

Karloff’s tongue improv (35-second mark) is good for a chuckle, but what genuinely surprised me was the mint-green skin. Widely circulated color snaps of Peter Boyle‘s Young Frankenstein monster (’74) also showed green skin, but I always thought that was a one-off. One presumes that the mint-green makeup was chosen by director Mel Brooks and Young Frankenstein dp Gerald Hirschfield because it delivers an extra-deathly pallor in monochrome.

Either way I’d never read or been told that Boris Karloff‘s monster had the same skin shade, at least as far as Son of Frankenstein was concerned. No clues if Karloff and Pierce went green for the previous two he starred in, Frankenstein (’31) and Bride of Frankenstein (’35).

I’d actually come to believe, based on a December 2012 visit to Guillermo del Toro’s “Bleak House,” that Karloff’s monster had mostly grayish skin with perhaps (at most) a faint hint of green. (The below photo, taken on 12.22.12, shows life-sized wax models of Pierce working on Karloff for James Whale‘s 1931 original.) Nobody is a more exacting historian or connoisseur of classic monsters than GDT, so I naturally presumed that the skin tone on Karloff’s wax model was accurate. I stand corrected.

One of many shots snapped at Guillermo del Toro’s “Bleak House” — posted on 12.22.12.

I used to derive serious pleasure from the annual Vanity Fair Hollywood issue, as I did from the generally knowledgable and delicious grade-A writing during the Graydon Carter era.

Carter left VF in 2017, Radhika Jones has been running the shop since, and nobody likes the magazine as much. You know what I mean. VF has “changed with the times.” It looks and feels like a lightweight hand-out — serving those who allow it to keep afloat. That special storied vibe from those Hollywood issues of the ’90s, aughts and early teens — a feeling that you were absorbing some kind of thought-through reconnaissance of where Hollywood culture was at that year and with one or two carefully sourced recollections of its own past — is totally out the window.

The only thing I like about the cover is the inclusion of Judas and the Black Messiah‘s Lakeith Stanfield.