Last night’s SNL monologue by host Bill Burr has taken a lot of incoming today on Twitter. You could tell from the audience reactions that some of the material wasn’t landing. Burr knew the mob would come for him (“I’ll probably get cancelled…the nerve of you white women!”) and he did it anyway. Transphobic, misogynist, etc. I actually tittered at that “Rick Moranis getting sucker-punched on the Upper West Side” routine.

The reviews are correct, the rumors are true: Michelle Pfeiffer has lucked into the best role of her life in Azazel Jacobs‘ French Exit (Sony Pictures Classics, 2.12.21), a sardonic “comedy” with a gently surreal quality around the edges.

Which means that it’s not all that surreal, or at least not to me. A talking deceased husband (Tracy Letts) inhabiting the body of a cat or cryptically conversing with his widow and son during a seance…whatever. What French Exit is really about is dry gallows humor by way of a certain kind of “I won’t back down” resignation. And within that particular realm it’s very, very good.

If you’re going to make a bitter-end comedy with this kind of attitude or philosophy, you need to own it — no excuses or mitigations, no second thoughts, no third-act softenings. If nothing else French Exit is self-aware and highly confident, and therefore by any fair standard a first-rate effort. Is it “funny”? Well, not actually but it’s good company as far it goes. I was smirking. I was never bored. At the very least I was intrigued.

Exit is about Pfeiffer’s Frances Price, a suddenly destitute, formerly wealthy widow in her mid ’60s who decides to move into a friend’s Paris apartment with her extremely passive son Malcolm (Lucas Hedges) after learning that her once-ample bank account is all but empty. It’s also about how she does absolutely nothing to save herself. In fact she hurries the inevitable along.

But Pfeiffer really goes to town. She delivers every line with just the right shadings of jaded indifference, except it’s not a cold performance. It’s sly and fetching. You could almost say that Frances is a little bit like the Margo Channing role was for Bette Davis in All About Eve (’50) — a snooty bitch with nearly all the great lines. It absolutely represents a Best Actress Oscar nomination, and perhaps even a win. She’s as much of an assured contender as The Father‘s Anthony Hopkins.

The difference is that Davis was full of bite and gusto in Joseph L. Mankiewicz‘s 1950 classic while Pfeiffer is, like, really laid back in Jacobs’ film. So laid back that the only real observation or question about Frances is “okay, she’s having her fun because she really doesn’t give a shit and is comfortable with Parisian finality, so what method will she choose?”

Imagine that all of your money and marketable skills are somehow gone in a flash, and you have around 40K left in the bank. What would the HE community do?

Most of us would probably say, “Okay, I have to find a job or create a new income stream of some kind. The days of monetary comfort and treadmill engagement may be over, but it’s better to live and strive and hope for a better future than to collapse in a heap and give up.”

But a small minority might say, “The good times are over? I’ll have to sweat and struggle and use public transportation in order to survive? Okay, fuck it. Fuck it all. Let’s fly to Paris or Hanoi or Rome, rent a nice pad somewhere, eat well and enjoy the city, and when the money’s gone I’ll off myself with an overdose of heroin or something.”

You could describe the first response as noble or admirable — the classic “when the going gets tough, the tough get their asses in gear” approach that Jane Darwell shared at the end of John Ford‘s The Grapes of Wrath (’40). The second response is basically “if you think I’m gonna stick around while my life gets more and more desperate, you’ve got another think coming.”

Based on a same-titled 2018 novel by Patrick deWitt, French Exit is definitely about the second option. It’s about throwing in the towel, but always with a deliciously baroque attitude, a witty bon mot, a raised eyebrow or a frozen glare of some kind. It may be about extreme detachment but the deadpan nihilism is front and center and loaded for bear.

He’ll still be behind on the evening of 11.3.

By the way: A few minutes ago I was quizzing myself on the states in the above CNN map. Unlike Al Franken, I can’t draw the U.S. map on a state-by-state basis but since grade school I’ve been fairly solid on which state is where, etc.

So I felt…well, slightly thrown when I couldn’t remember which state is north of Iowa and east of the two Dakotas. I also drew a blank on the state below South Dakota; ditto the one below Iowa. The respective answers are (a) Minnesota, (b) Nebraska and (c) Missouri. Franken and the Coen Bros are from Minnesota so that should be easy to remember; ditto Nebraska and the legend of Alexander Payne. No solid connection with Missouri other than Harry Truman and staunch skepticism, even though I once visited “KayCeeMoe.”

I know my maps a lot better than any of those geographical doofuses Jimmy Kimmel or Jay Leno have talked to on the street, but otherwise I’ve no excuse. I only know that I eyeballed the above three and racked my brain, and the names just wouldn’t come. Truth be told I’ve always had a certain feeling of distance and disconnection when it comes to the Midwestern breadbasket region. New England, Mid-Atlantic, Deep South, Rocky Mountain states, Southeast, Southwest, Northwest rainforests and California…no problem. But the breadbasket is hazy.

I guess I’m basically saying that it’s the breadbasket states’ fault, not mine. Too flat, not distinctive enough, lacking in personality. Plus the ones I couldn’t remember all end in vowels.

Nothing on SNL made me laugh last night — a couple of titters, one muffled guffaw — but wokester terror was the theme of a couple of skits. And that was interesting. The best skit was the mob meeting in which Bill Burr‘s Don Whatever was constantly corrected by his capos for being using hurtful, insensitive terms.

Sitting atop my bedroom bureau, I mean. To my knowledge no go-getter has ever bought the rights and mass-produced for people like me.

Christ Unlimited, 1970 — created by Herman Makkink (1937-2013). Painted polyester and fiberglass sculptures of a naked, crucified Jesus dancing as if in a chorus line, numbered in red paint at the underside of each right foot 6 and 8 from the edition of 9, acquired by Stanley Kubrick for the 1971 Warner Bros. film A Clockwork Orange. 20 and 3/4 inches high.

Perhaps the most carefully measured, fully considered, persuasively phrased takedown of the N.Y Times‘ “The 1619 Project” was posted two days ago by N.Y. Times columnist Bret Stephens.

Key phrase: “The 1619 Project is a thesis in search of evidence, not the other way around.”

Final three paragraphs: “For obvious reasons, I’ve thought long and hard about the ethics of writing this essay. On the one hand, outside of exceptional circumstances, it’s bad practice to openly criticize the work of one’s colleagues. We bat for the same team and owe one another collegial respect.

“On the other, the 1619 Project has become, partly by its design and partly because of avoidable mistakes, a focal point of the kind of intense national debate that columnists are supposed to cover, and that is being widely written about outside The Times. To avoid writing about it on account of the first scruple is to be derelict in our responsibility toward the second.

“All the more so as journalists, in the United States and abroad, come under relentless political assault from critics who accuse us of being fake, biased, partisan and an arm of the radical left. Many of these attacks are baseless. Some of them are not. Through its overreach, the 1619 Project has given critics of The Times a gift.”

Select critics have been sent links to Ron Howard‘s Hillbilly Elegy (Netflix, sometime in November). Hollywood Elsewhere is looking very much forward to submitting to a cinematic rendering of J.D Vance’s 2016 memoir about growing up yokel. Seriously, no kidding, I’m into it.

We owe a debt of recognition, after all, to those fine rural people who voted for Donald Trump in ’16 and thereby pushed our country to the brink of totalitarian fascism. Most many of them are still wearing the red hat.

Vanessa Taylor‘s screenplay is actually about how Vance, portrayed as a teen by Owen Asztalos and as a young adult by Gabriel Basso, gradually escaped this horrid, dead-end culture and went on to attend Yale Law School and become a noted author.

HE to critic who’s seen it: “I have one question, [name]. How is Glenn Close‘s performance as Ma Bumblefuck?” (Her character is actually called “Mawmaw.”)

Yesterday an HE sorehead wrote that Florian Zeller‘s The Father (Sony Pictures Classics, 1.20.21) “isn’t happening. Or anything related to it. It’s another self-inflated bubble among movie pundits who will have no existence whatsoever in the real world.”

HE reply: “You’ve seen The Father? If you have you’re really crazy to have said that. It’s not a ‘bubble’ movie in the slightest. The idea of putting the audience into the shoes of an aging fellow with dementia is one of the most striking and inventive strategies for a domestic drama that I’ve seen in a long time. And Anthony Hopkins is nothing short of brilliant in the role. Everyone gets old and loses their edge to some extent. (Except for Gore Vidal, whom I spoke to a year or so before the end and seemed sharp as a tack.). And almost every family or middle-aged son or daughter has dealt with a declining parent. It’s about as un-bubbled and ‘real world’ a subject as you can find.”

Last night a former boozer wrote that “through the miracle of sobriety, I found my way back to the real world.” Good for him. Excellent. I know how he feels. However…

HE reply: “Speaking as someone eight and a half years sober, I can’t quite agree with calling it a ‘miracle.’ Because you did it one day at a time, and I’m 100% certain that the last time you looked in the mirror you didn’t say ‘man, you are one effing miracle of a human being!’ Nor is sobriety itself a miracle. It’s cleansing and liberating and wonderful in a kind of radiant rainbow way, but not quite (i.e., slightly shy of) miraculous. In the same way that anything involving will and focus and choosing life, good health and possibility over death, despair and the cocoon of ruin…it’s the only way to go, but I’ve been the recipient of serious, clear-light miracles in my life, and sobriety ain’t the same thing. It’s something to be proud about and grateful for but…well, I’ve said it.

“I wouldn’t use the word ‘restrained’ when describing Promising Young Woman. There’s nothing subtle about this movie, and it’s not realism at all. It’s a post-#MeToo fantasy, a feminist version of Death Wish…a justifiably angry woman (Carey Mulligan) punishing filthy men. Mulligan is depicted as heroic without any real-life consequences or police investigations or social media gotchas. It gives you a lot to chew on and talk about post-screening — in a sense it’s right at the forefront of the post-#MeToo conversation — but then again it’s not saying anything new. And it’s definitely a world apart. It charges into extreme realms.” — Word of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy.