It’s 11:20 pm and my midnight London flight is boarding, but the hugely crafty, creatively penny-pinching, super-influential Roger Corman — an industry giant, indisputably titanic, the godfather of hip-pocket cinema in the ’50s, 60s, ’70s and ’80s — has passed at age 98, and I’ve only time to say that anyone who doesn’t know who Corman was, is and always will be is absolutely required to watch Alex Stapleton‘s Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel.

Just watch it already — the whole amazing saga crammed into 95 minutes.

A vote for RFK, Jr. is for all practical purposes a vote for…?

Puck’s Matthew Belloni reported two days ago that Kathryn Bigelow (Zero Dark Thirty, The Hurt Locker) will direct a “hot script”, penned by Noah Oppenheim (Jackie), about “the White House reacting in real time to ballistic missiles headed for America.”

Which sounds like a fairly close cousin of Sidney Lumet‘s Fail Safe, no?

Keep in mind that Oppenheim’s Jackie script wasn’t really the basis of Pablo Larrain’s 2016 film. Here’s how I explained it three years ago:

“Oppenheim’s Jackie was originally going to be directed by Darren Aronofsky with Rachel Weisz playing Jackie Kennedy. Oppenheim’s script told the story of what happened that weekend and pretty much how it went down on a beat-for-beat, conversation-by-conversation basis,

“[In 2016] it seemed brash and brilliant for Larrain, who took over the project sometime in ’15, to forsake the historical and sidestep that mass memory and not deliver a rote recap of what Mrs. Kennedy, only 34 at the time, went through that weekend, but to make a kind of art film — to give her portrait a kind of anxious, fevered, interior feeling.

“Which is why I wrote that Jackie really is ‘the only docudrama about the Kennedy tragedy that can be truly called an art film…it feels somewhat removed from the way that the events of that weekend looked and felt a half-century ago…intimate, half-dreamlike and cerebral, but at the same time a persuasive and fascinating portrait of what Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy (Natalie Portman) went through between the lunch-hour murder of her husband in Dallas and his burial at Arlington National Cemetery three days later.

“But after re-watching Jackie a couple of weeks ago I went back and re-read a draft of Oppenheim’s script, which is a whole different bird. Pablo cut out a lot of characters and a lot of interplay and a general sense of ‘this is how it happened’ realism, focusing almost entirely on Jackie’s interior saga.

“And honestly? I discovered that I liked Oppenheim’s version of the tale a little more than Pablo’s.

“The script is more of a realistic ensemble piece whereas Larrain’s film is about what it was like to be in Jackie’s head. I respect Larrain’s approach, mind, but I felt closer to the realm of Oppenheim’s script. I believed in the dialogue more. The interview scenes between Theodore H. White (played by Billy Crudup in the film) and Jackie felt, yes, more familiar but at the same time more realistic, more filled-in. I just felt closer to it. I knew this realm, these people.”

…before the start of the exciting, high-stress, sleep-deprived ordeal of the Cannes Film Festival, which is always a kick when you first arrive…here we all are! Great to be back! La Pizza! That briney air and those early-morning cries of seagulls.

But before long that 18-hour-per-day grind feeling takes hold, and before you know it you’re Trevor Howard’s soot-coveted, tired-blood coal miner in Jack Cardiff’s 1960 adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers. A coal miner with a pink badge, I mean. Don’t get me wrong — Cannes is never less than a “fun”, flush time, to be sure, but it’s never a day at the beach.

Unless, of course, you happen to see a film that’s so good you feel rejuvenated, and then life is beautiful again.

My first Cannes Film Festival was in May ‘92 so don’t tell me.

The online reservation process for press began early Friday morning (5.10), or more precisely an hour past midnight in Manhattan or 7 am Cannes time. Four days in advance, one reservation day at a time. I reserved tickets for a Tuesday afternoon showing of the first half (I think) of Abel Gance’s Napoleon (‘27) and an evening screening of Quentin Dupieux’s The Second Act.

Early this morning I missed my 1 am wake-up (I arose at 3 am…unforgivable!) so I missed out on a couple of Wednesday films. (Don’t ask.) You have to pounce immediately at 7 am or you might be left out in the cold. It’s a semi-dicey, fraught process — many veterans yearn for the good old days of just lining up and come what may. Yes, you can still get into screenings on a last-ditch rush basis but…

Tonight’s 1 am reservation opportunity (Thursday’s screenings include Francis Coppola’s Megalopolis and Andrea Arnold’s Bird) happens one hour into my London flight, which departs at 11:59 pm. Let’s hope the Virgin Atlantic wifi will be in good working order.

Right now it’s 2 pm on Saturday, 5.11. For the last 22 hours I’ve been hanging in West Orange (and to some extent Montclair) with Jett, Cait and Sutton…TV time, soccer practice, book store, fresh market.

Like everyone else, I’m stunned by the sudden death of KTLA entertainment reporter Sam Rubin, 64…felled by a heart attack.

I can’t say I “knew” Rubin all that well, but I certainly ran into him at parties and press junkets over the last 25 or 30 years…joshingly, good-naturedly…and can say he was a smart, devotional movie hound…good fellow, disciplined pro, quick with a quip and a real eager beaver.

I’m very sorry that his curtain came down (or “rang” down as it were) this early. Tragic.

Emotionally Sam’s passing feels like the death of the well-liked Meet The Press moderator Tim Russert, who also died quickly from a heart attack. Tim was 58.

Condolences to Sam’s friends, family, colleagues, KTLA fans, industry acquaintances, etc.

Death has this occasionally rude habit of paying a call when it damn well feels like it, and when your number’s up, you’re done.

Al Pacino‘s career had three great surge periods — the early to mid ’70s, stand-alone Scarface and the ’90s.

Surge #1 was comprised of six films: The Panic in Needle Park, The Godfather, Serpico, Scarecrow, The Godfather Part II, Dog Day Afternoon.

The rest of the ’70s and much of the ’80s were almost a disaster for the poor guy — Bobby Deerfield, …And Justice for All, Cruising, Author! Author!, Revolution.

Scarface was its own surge, and then came The Glorious ’90s when Pacino’s character-actor instincts and exclamatory hoo-hah ignited a winning streak that lasted through 12 films — Sea of Love, Dick Tracy, The Godfather Part III, Glengarry Glen Ross, Scent of a Woman, Carlito’s Way, Heat, City Hall, Donnie Brasco, The Devil’s Advocate, The Insider and Any Given Sunday.

What brand-name actor has ever had a run like this?

Have I posted this David Simon Criterion interview before?

“There’s something about the juice and the camaraderie of war that undercuts every anti-war message. But not in this film. Because it’s not strictly an anti-war film — it’s an anti-authority film.”

My brain was in knots after reading this 5.9 THR piece about Emma Corrin, who’s always been my idea of a first-rate actress.

I honestly felt as if I was choking on all the “they/them” pronouns…like I was Kirk Douglas battling a giant squid in 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.

Thank you, non-binary Zoomer contingent, for making boilerplate trade-paper interviews into complex reading challenges, for completely up-ending grammar rules that have been in place for dozens of centuries, and for generally making all of us ask “how high?” when you crack your whip and say “jump.”

Imagine having grown up and spent several decades in a world that didn’t saddle Average Joes and Janes with all this “they/them” shit. This is what the world was like, in fact, as recently as five or six years ago. Growl, grumble.

So instead of flying straight to Nice I’ll be landing in London around Sunday noon (5.12), and staying in town for roughly 18 hours. Lots of walking around, a little pub-crawling (Cittie of Yorke, Ye Old Cheshire Cheese), a list of destinations. I’m flopping in one of the cheapest places I could find in my “home” neighborhood of Bloomsbury/Holborn.